Comment by joakleaf | Hacker News Reader

Comment by joakleaf | Hacker News Reader

So what is Apple working on now?

• iPhone 7 looks like iPhone 6 sans the headphone jack. So no design changes for 3 years. To me, 7 does not feel like a significant update over 6.

• Macbook Pro got a touch bar. Otherwise, minor design changes since last revision. Does not feel like a significant update.

• iMac not updated for 12 months. No significant design changes for years, but the screen resolution is now Retina.

• Macbook Air not updated since March 2015 (still low resolution). No significant design changes since introduction.

• Mac Mini not updated since 2014. No design changes since 2011.

• Mac Pro not updated since 2013.

• iOS 10 and macOS are minor revisions.

• Thunderbolt display and now Airport extreme/express are dead

• The iPad Pro 9.7" looks like iPad air (1 or 2). iPad pro 12.9" looks like any existing iPad but bigger. The iPad minis all look alike.

• They didn't release new iPads this fall. Isn't that a first?

It feels like the hardware line-ups are getting more confusing: Two different iPad sizes called Pro as wells as "Air 2" and the minis. It made sense that the Pro was the largest one, but they confused us by releasing a smaller Pro that looks like an Air 2, but has a better display than the large Pro. How many iPads do we need?

There is the main iPhone line (... 6 6S and 7) that comes in two sizes, and then the evil cousin called iPhone SE which looks like a 5.

The laptop line is getting more messy too. The Macbook is like a slower Macbook Air but with higher resolution and 12". They killed the 11" Air, but we now have 3 laptops at 13" (Air + two types of Pro). Is the 13" Pro without touch bar option really necessary?

All these series ("", Air, Pro, SE, Mini) which pop in and out of existence feels like they are trying different names for marketing reasons (especially for the iPads).

I appreciate the yearly impressive but predictable CPU/GPU and software improvements, but it is really starting to feel like they are either struggling a bit, or working on something that takes a lot of resources from non-essentials and focus.

They released a watch line which is marketed largely as a fashion accessory, and an online radio station. Neither is of interest to me at all, but took a bunch of people and investment to execute.

Unless they've got something wonderful up their sleeves, it seems like they really did become a 'lifestyle brand' instead of making the technically best stuff they can.

The release of the stupidly expensive gold watch was a watershed moment. Literally no functionality improvement over the base model and several hundred percent more expensive. A big long-term error in positioning and philosophy in my opinion.

... I completely forgot their watch :-). It has never interested me.

In any case, the Watch 2 looks almost identical to the Watch 1, so from a design point of view, even that is stagnant.

They're working on services. From the Q4 earnings call,

"What should we read into the fact that R&D has more than doubled over the past three years while sales growth was sort of a fifth of that? Are R&D investments just less efficient than they were in the company's history, or should we think about that as incremental spend for products that haven't yet come to market?

Timothy Donald Cook - Apple, Inc.

There's clearly some amount of R&D that are on products that today are in the development phase that have not reached the market, and so that's a part of it. And we feel really great about the things that we've got. We've also put a lot of emphasis on our Services business as well and on making the ecosystem even better. And so we're very much, we're confidently investing in the future, and that's the reason you see the R&D spend increasing."

My super informal analysis of where Apple's priorities are:

  Term      Count
  iPhone    64
  Mac/macOS 17
  Services  16
  iPad      15
  Watch     8

(http://seekingalpha.com/article/4014922-apple-aapl-q4-2016-r...)

But surely the overlap between the people who used to work on routers and the people working on services must be minimal.

However, maybe some of the hardware guys who used to work on the router are now busy with the watch. It would make sense that they would sacrifice the routers in favor of the watch (although I would prefer the routers).

Generally yes, but another quote from the call: "We are making important investments in data centers because we want to support our services business." Maybe that's taken some of their hardware resources.

This reminds me of when Jobs came back to Apple and the first thing he did was clean house. At the time they have tons of different computer models (Performa 2xx, 3xx, 4xx, 5xx, 6xx, 63xx, 65xx, etc.) built specifically to cater to dealers. Jobs came in and said that they only needed 4 computing devices; home desktop, home portable, pro desktop, pro portable. This made is much easier to decide what to purchase - everyone loved it! Except the dealers, I guess.

Anyway, it just feels like there are way to many different models now. Are they trying to please the bean-counters and not the customer? What advantage is there is having so many different types of computing devices that really are very similar?

That's exactly how I feel too.

The worst part is that the old Macbook Pro was my go-to model previously, but the new one just feels like a more expensive step in the wrong direction.

I don't really want a touch bar (I use an external keyboard 75% of the time), and I do actually like to have the earphone jack, SD card, Magsafe, and traditional USB ports.

... So despite the messy list of models, there isn't really one that I want anymore.

Oh, well. Maybe it will make sense in a year or two.

Except Cook went sideways by renaming standard laptop to Pro and getting rid of the real Pro.

I really don't get it either. They killed the car project as well...

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