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BatFastard

The last sentence summed it up.

"It’s not a conspiracy theory, it’s a business plan."

Apple has a habit of killing tech they can't control.

Headphone jack is eliminated so they can license and control what talks to the phone.

Safari is intentionally the worst browser for HTML5 so that people don't go around the app store.

Flash is banned from browsers because then you have to go thru the app store and give them your 30%.

You have to have a Mac to write apps for iOS or Macs, why because it increases their sales.

So drink the cool aid if you must, but recognize it as great business plan that encourages you to buy only apple licensed products

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Apple is like the Microsoft of the 90's with a good taste for design.

Even that is not true any more. A few recent examples:

- iPhone 6s/6s+ are heavier & thicker than iPhone 6. They have worse, especially low-light, cameras compared to iPhone 6 and have smaller, therefore worse, batteries. All of this for a gimmicky, screen that pops up a contextual menu that is covered by your finger that brought it up.

- A computer with a single port for everything, even charging, i.e. MacBook.

- Apple TV 4th gen. remote and usability.

- Charging situation with Magic Mouse 2.

- Charging situation with Apple Pencil.

- Removal of the perfectly usable headphone jack on iPhone 7.

- iPhone 7 has stereo speakers in landscape orientation but the Music apps in iOS is portrait only.

And don't get me started on their software.

It's just that they failed to mitigate the obvious risk factors in their marketing plan.

The justified ridicule about the removal of the audio jack started already months before the release so to many people selecting courage as the leading word portrays Apple's willful ignorance regarding the issues they cause. If they offered or emphasized their solutions for wired earphones their marketing wouldn't have had to take such a beating.

On the other hand, if they succeed in impressing their fans with the remaining features the audience will find a interpret the topic name in a positive light. For instance, it's the courage to move away towards the more comfortable wireless ear/headphones. Just scroll down and you'll see various people describing that they support the design since they themselves don't really need those old-style earphones. Psychologically predictable behavior.

> It's just that they failed to mitigate the obvious risk factors in their marketing plan.

Possibly. We won't know that for a fact until there's a couple of Q's of sales volumes.

What we can say for certain is that it's received an awful lot of, unpaid for, press coverage. As bad marketing goes it's quite impressive.

"It's not courage, it's a business plan." would have been a better closing sentence :)

The only item that deviates from this is Apple Music. I wonder why they built that app for Android as opposed to continuing to wall it off within iOS.

Apps like Apple Music do better with the maximum number of subscribers. Why close off your business to 80% of potential users.

Though as someone who has business apps on the AppStore and the PlayStore, the AppStore generates a LOT more business for us.

That's the theory , but:The Apple Music App is pretty shitty. Hangups, bluetooth doesn't work well, the App takes 800MB ram , etc. (bw the phone has 2GB ram and snapdragon 615, and most things run well on it) - and it's just a music app .

So their Android strategy isn't clear. Maybe it's just something to convince you that Apple is better, or something to get some leverage in the industry. IDK.

So i

They never seem to get products that are not on their base right. Like iTunes for Windows is an abomination...

Assuming a company the size of Apple has more than enough resources to develop decent software on any platform, I think it's fair to assume they willingly make subpar versions of their apps on what they consider to be "rival" OS, disingenuously trying to make the point that UX is better on MacOS/iOS.

They are bluetooth headphones. How can Apple control anything?

They are proprietary, not BlueTooth, although they do leverage BlueTooth.

What, you thought Apple used a standard?

So my Bose headphones are not going to work with the iPhone 7?

Exactly!

Where have you read that iPhone7 bluetooth is proprietary? How can they be backwards compatible if they aren't bluetooth? I can't seriously believe Apple would release a phone that is incompatible with the many excellent bluetooth headphones out there.

Gruber makes it clear, http://daringfireball.net/linked/2016/09/08/airpods-hands-on, the only thing proprietary is the pairing between the iPhone and Airpods with the case. Other than that, these are just plain bluetooth headphones. They will work fine with other devices, and other devices will work fine with the iPhone 7.

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