The void left by Apple
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This in itself would not be a problem for me, if it weren't for the lack of competition. Mac OS is so far ahead in terms of "getting things done" and "just working" that it isn't even funny. And yes, I do know, I also regularly use Windows (10) and Linux (Ubuntu 16 LTS). I feel locked in: both "competing" platforms are huge time-wasters for me. I know some people feel different — past discussions have shown that most people do fewer things with their computers than me (for example, if all you need is a web browser, Ubuntu is a great choice).
Now that Apple is abandoning me as a customer (I'm not the mainstream), I feel squeezed: where do I go from here? What's even worse is that the cost of entry is now so high: developing an environment that works, and then convincing developers to embrace it is nearly impossible. And the only companies that have the resources to do it (Microsoft and Google) do it badly.
Slow hardware helps one write good software after-all..
As it is, i've just spent £1400 on a XPS 13 fully loaded and instead of a iMac i'll be buying a Surface Tablet. The missus after having each iPhone since the first is going to be buying a Pixel.
Apple have lost the plot and are taking the piss out of their users. We are voting with our wallets.
Of course, it's still Windows underneath. Sooner or later, I'd get tripped up by the pathetic reality of 8.3 case-insensitive filenames buried in a not-deep-enough grave.
You can disagree with the reasons, and certainly many do, but it's just silliness to allege that moving to USB-C was done for "no good reason".
It's the exact same silliness that surfaced in the griping about removing 9-pin serial ports, and optical drives, and Ethernet ports in laptops, and FireWire in favor of something more than an order of magnitude faster, and every other innovation by Apple.
It's always for a good reason.
Losing the ethernet jack on Pro laptops is also pretty bad. The reason is thinness, I dunno if that's good or not. WiFi is sufficient for most people, but it sure as hell isn't better when you need high bandwidth and consistent low latency.
I suspect there was a point. This is part of Apple's standard MO.
It's a way to wean people onto wireless (BT). Apple's expensive BT headphones point the way to cheap third party BT headphones that aren't painful to connect (right now bluetooth infrastructure is pretty sucky).
Once people are comfortable without the headphone wires they will have inductive charging like the watch and have a water resistant device like the new watch.
If your answer is power delivery, remember that not all cables and not all devices support power delivery on USB-C so it's nothing that couldn't have been done with "USB4" utilising the same plug we've always had.
* HDMI and DP alt modes make laptop docks a lot cheaper and more universal
* Don't need an OTG cable to use a Type-C device on my Type-C phone
* Potential Thunderbolt 3 port reuse
But let's take it as an example: adding USB-C was a great idea.
Removing every other kind of port, including the fantastic Magsafe, on the other hand, was a bad idea. Many people try to justify it by saying that it had to be done so that we can "make progress". Well I'm fine with progress, but I don't want to be held hostage. And it certainly feels like it: if I buy the new Macbook, I will be able to connect exactly ZERO of my devices to it.
But — what I actually meant was things like magsafe, charging light on magsafe, function keys, Esc key, little wire organizers on the charger, keyboard key travel, or the headphone jack on the iPhone. You could easily make the same case for battery life (I'd happily trade 2mm of thickness for longer battery life) and ports: I really don't care that much about thickness, so don't sacrifice ports to make my machine 2mm thinner. Again: we lose good functionality for no good reason.
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dareobasanjo/2004/08/25/the...
Is this ever avoidable once you gain a large swath of market share, but are still under pressure to grow even more?
It seems however though, and this is an assumption I can only base on personal experience of what I see, that people like all the 'stuff' during their work that eats battery and memory and cycles.
All the animations and things that go on in the popular wms and OSs and browsers that deliver no 'direct value' to me (like said; this is I personal thing I believe) seem a must for most people even though they are devving.
Why would one use the incredibly heavy and animated WMs over something fast and simple which even works faster (for me!). When I use Unity (latest) my laptop has 5 hrs battery; switch to i3 and plop 10+ hours more.
Do people like that so much or am I just completely wrong?
(one other reason I see with colleagues is very heavy IDEs but let us not go onto that)
For example, I'm working on a Macbook, but inside a Linux VM. It was running at 3-4 GB RAM for a long time, but I had to bump it up to 6 GB when I was working on an interconnected set of Rails applications. (Ruby and Rails are notoriously memory-inefficient.)
Another example: In 2010, I had to upgrade my notebook from 1 GB to 2 GB of RAM, not because of KDE 4 (which was considered absurdly resource-intensive at the time), but because of Git. (Git is designed to use the filesystem cache extensively, and will become absurdly slow when the cache is too small.)
I was responding to many people who 'cannot work' because they have less than 16gb, the latest discrete gpu and cpu. Which is where all the mb pro whining now revolves around. You are playing to 'if you have more you spend more?' human condition right? If you have more money, memory, speed whatever, you will find some way to use it fully; that is true. But you do not /need it/. I was the same a few years ago until I dropped Mac OS in favor of Debian and bought a stack of old (2011) laptops. After tweaking everything but the stuff I do not need on it, it works as well /for te dev I need it for/ as the last (2015) MB pro I touched for a fraction of the price and i3 does make me more productive.
Anyway; I am not trying to convince or sway anyone, just saying that, imho, it is nonsense that most (by very far margins) really need that kind of metal. But sure, if you can get them, then get them. In my slightly older age I try to get back to simpler and more optimal. The cyclewaste/bitwaste is getting annoying to me (IF it is waste; I do deep learning and play/fiddle with games on heavy metal).
It sucks but IMO the memory line of argument is probably the weakest in this whole discussion.
PROs can work with anything, not matter how bad, and get results done.
However, that not mean we are so STUPID to not know when a tool is made for us or not.
Is about a specific spec? NO!.
Is about the trend that Apple have in the whole ecosystem.
Just now, after years waiting for a refresh, what is given is a stronger confirmation that the trend not only is unstoppable but the trade-off is not good enough.
I picture this being written on a Commodore 64.
A 2016 MBP... I can't see it holding up. The cap on RAM I'm already butting up against it...
Photoshop, VMs, site crawls, loading large spreadsheets and trying to crunch the numbers... 16 GB taxes my current system.
I've sort of just given up, I have a gaming desktop I built myself a year or so back with 64 GB of RAM. I just use that when I want to do "work" now... everything loads faster. Freakin' hate that I can't just buy a new MBP for that stuff, but... it's not top of the line, isn't built to last like previous generations were.
I'll keep my 2013 MBP until it gives out on me I guess... running out of Apple Care on it and the battery cycles are high... also not wild about trusting work to a 3-year-old SSD... but cross my fingers I guess.
My sister still uses my old MBP from 2008 or so -- it holds up for most of her needs after a replacement battery and SSD, it's still a solid computer. I don't see these new MBPs holding up like that at all.
Not going to say the new MBPs are shit, but they aren't built to be light-years ahead like they once were. That's what I think everyone is upset about.
This is virtually unprecedented in the history of computing, and the last time these kinds of shenanigans happened was at the tail end of the 8-bit era, and all of those companies, even ones who had a virtual monopoly on the market, don't exist anymore.
I wouldn't touch MacOS for it. It's nowhere comparable in productivity for me to something like current KDE Plasma 5 on Linux. Not sure if you ever used it, but Linux is nowhere limited to Ubuntu's Unity.
BTW, Windows 10 is slightly better, but not by much. The major difference being that one can predictably get a signal on both monitors, I guess, which is good, but then the HiDPI story is still pretty bad.
For different DPI on each monitor you'd need to use Wayland though.
To name a simple example, pressing CMD + Shift + -> moves an application to the next monitor, with macOS you should pay for a window manager to get a similar functionality, or give up the keyboard and embrace a touchpad-centric gimmick like Expose, which I perceive as distracting with these animations.
It is certainly an example of YMMV.
Meanwhile, multi-monitor support in Plasma 5 has worked for me for years without any trouble whatsoever.
* https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=365455
* https://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2016/07/multi-screen-...
This also was rather annoying and took a long time for distros to catch up: https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-42985
Since Plasma 5.8.x, it's much much better.
mjg59 wrote a number of comments on this subject.
Budget cuts, delaying releases for arbitrary reasons, more and more technical debt on key portions of iOS seem to be the norm rather than the exception. Each subsequent release of iOS is more bloated than ever, and teams are reluctant to port their stuff over to Swift because of the aforementioned technical debt.
Fundamentally, the problem is that the software org at Apple is a third class citizen. In order for that to change, there needs to be a shift in resources toward the SW org. But I don't see it happening any time soon :)
I am sticking with my Macbook but on my next laptop purchase it will be a matter of if Apple hardware quality makes up for their software failings. I haven't looked closely in 2 years but back then I didn't see any hardware close to Apple's laptop quality.
I do agree with those disappointed with the MacBook Pro (or whatever they call it now) but those disappointments are not as great as my disappointment with Apple software quality the last 5 years.
My work iphone automatically sent balloons to a coworker when I messaged "happy birthday, send me the file". I also have to cancel out of "send with effects" screen each time I press the send button a fraction too long. If I turn my phone sideways, I get the handwritten message screen. All this in addition to the hidden buttons and other UI problems. Ugh.
That was the most frustrating, poorest experience with an IDE and software development environment I have ever had, and I've dealt with most operating systems, Visual Basic, Pick, Cache etc. Even keyed in a 6502 assembler back in the day which was more fun.
Crashing constantly, bizarre "4GL" drag-and-drop of controls onto source code to link them, atrocious documentation, awful GUI builder/layout managers, random behaviour... ugh. I cannot understand how anyone would be enjoying iOS development.
Based on Apple's history, we should really be expecting them to crush the Echo and Chromecast sometime in the next few years.
An Echo competitor would be possible but has Siri made any noticeable revolutionary leaps recently?
As for the Apple TV and Chromecast, I've been using a Chromecast (1st gen) for the last few months since I gave my Apple TV to my parents, and I miss my Apple TV. The Chromecast is great when it works, but it's extremely hit or miss depending on the app you use to stream. YouTube and Netflix work perfectly, but HBO Now and FX are terrible. There's no option to scrub backward/forward, and often when you hit pause the app will disconnect. With HBO Now and the FX app, it usually takes a good 3-4 tries to connect and actually watch something. With the Apple TV, everything worked as expected.
I think the major factor stopping the Apple TV from crushing the Chromecast is price. The old Apple TV is $70 - they should really be pushing for a much lower price point for this to compete with the Chromecast, but Apple doesn't even list this one on their site as far as I can tell.
Our AppleTV and PVR have both gone now.
Funniest thing with the Apple TV OS was when my 7 year old complained that it was broken as pressing the right arrow on the remote (as indicated by the right arrow on screen) didn't work - I showed him you had to press OK, but for a business that's supposed to pride itself in great UI it's a spectacular fail
My impression is that Apple is far behind in the machine learning/AI/personal assistant space, and does not have the engineering resources to catch up.
I'd like to be wrong about that, because I like Apple products and I believe that competition is good, but I'm pessimistic.
They don't want to get engineering resources on par with competitors, for whatever reason.
Apple's corporate culture has a variety of things that I would find hard to imagine not suppressing their ability to hire and retain the best; I'm sure others have a better idea than I, but the #1 thing staring us in the face is that software is not respected.
It's not that black and white. No-one is suggesting or implying that Apple throws some money at HR and Monday morning comes around and they're sitting down a new multi-hundred person engineering team like magic.
But at this point, OS X/macOS improvement has been in obvious decline (since 10.6? 10.8?) for _several years_.
No, Apple can't just magic an engineering team out of thin air.
Apple can, however, create engineering teams given several years of it being a pressing priority. They were able to for iOS, for watchOS, etc.
But therein lies the rub - with every month that goes by, it's clear that to call it a "pressing priority" to Apple would be to give it an importance that they clearly don't feel it has.
The question is, what is Apple's priority right now? The latest iPhone and Apple Watch models are incremental upgrades, and in the case of the iPhone, everyone expected a redesign (and Apple had two years to make that happen, but they either chose not to, or failed). macOS or whatever they call it now hasn't changed much in several years, as you pointed out. The Mac Pro is stagnant. The Mac Mini is stagnant. The new Macbook Pro model has the touch bar, after several years of sameness.
The only recent Apple products that are a notable upgrade from their previous versions are the Apple TV with Siri, and potentially the touch bar Macbook Pro. That's all I can think of since the release of the iPhone 6 in 2014. I guess you could throw in the giant iPad Pro too, but I've never actually seen one outside of an Apple Store, so I don't know if they sell that well.
I hope Apple has some exciting products lined up for 2017, because the past few years have been incremental at best.
Pretty much the only thing that didn't change on the iPhone in the latest rev was the form factor. Apple is also very well known for continual incremental upgrades. Yes, I'm going to quote Gruber:
In every regard, from performance to battery life to camera image quality to haptic feedback to water resistance to wide color gamut displays to sound quality from the speakers, the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus are impressive year-over-year improvements over the 6S/6S Plus, and stunning improvements over the two- and three-year old iPhone 6 and 5S — which are the models most people considering the new iPhones will be upgrading from.
https://daringfireball.net/2016/09/the_iphones_7
Is the lack of a form factor change in the iPhone 7 make you think the iPhone is not (still) a priority for Apple?
Frankly, John Gruber is a poster boy for rationalization of Apple's mistakes. He's like a dog that gets kicked and keeps coming back to its owner. If the iPhones were exploding instead of Galaxy Notes, Gruber would have defended Apple. If Apple decides to release smallpox in 2017 instead of a new iPhone, Gruber will eventually come around to Apple's side, like he always does.
At what point do you approach a near-perfect design? Look at the other phones out there, pretty much mimicking Apple's lead (with some exceptions, granted. The Samsung wrap-around screen is pretty cool). The whole attitude of "Apple isn't innovating fast enough, but I don't have any ideas as to what they might come up with, but I want something new and shiny" gets old. For me, I'd like to see a return to something like the 4s (I have small hands), but I'm okay with the 6. I'd also like a more camera-like camera, as I have some difficulty lining up the lens with the subject as the lens isn't centered on the body. I'm used to a DLSR. I don't take a lot of pictures, so this isn't a big deal for me, and a lot of people seem perfectly happy with the current set up. A lot of other phones have similar lens positions.
What aspects of the iPhone form factor would you like changed?
That's not what I'm arguing. I don't care if the insides of the iPhone 7 are 100% different than the insides of the iPhone 6S.
The bottom line is that Apple created an expectation, and failed to meet it. The particular expectation in the case of the iPhone was for an external redesign, but that's not really what matters. What matters is that Apple created an expectation and failed to meet it. That's not what good businesses do. Either they don't care, which is bad, or they can't meet the expectation, which is worse.
Looking back at the history of iPhone releases:
Source: http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobil...
- iPhone 1 June 2007
- iPhone 3G July 2008 (13 months)
- iPhone 4 June 2010 (23 months)
- iPhone 5 Sept 2012 (27 months)
- iPhone 6 Sept 2014 (24 months)
There have been 3 cycles of the bienniel updates, the majority. Honest question, is that alone enough to set expectations?
Should they iterate even when they really don't have any idea how to improve it? Iterate for iteration's sake? Wouldn't that mean at least meaningless cost at best, and possibly decrease the value of the design?
Given that the iPhone is a major source of Apple revenue, this is an important question. How much can we read into Apple's prospects for the future based on the lack of a significant form factor update with the iPhone 7?
By the way, I agree with you on the Mac Pro and the Mac mini. I'd really like to see strong updates in these areas. However, I don't know what the market looks like for these form factors these days. Of the two, I'm only interested in a mini. I have been for quite a while (it would replace a PowerPC model, FFS) yet I haven't pulled the trigger, so am I really in the market? Same with pro-level software such as Final Cut and Aperture (pretty significant when it came out).
Apple either develops their own stuff, or acquires a company and brings it in house (that's how they got Siri in the first place, as well as their own processor designs). Apple is not going to buy IBM.
This is why Apple is stagnating and only seems to care about phones and locking down that ecosystem. They are the new Nokia.
Of course Amazon and Google have their cash cows too, so they are not much different. Their home speakers are ways for them to more aggressively market and capture customer buying behavior. Personally I consider them deeply creepy for this reason and will not get one.
The true innovation is going to come from hungrier players: startups or older companies that are on the ropes like Apple once was. Microsoft is getting interesting again, and I'd also keep an eye on old PC vendors like Dell and HP or even old IBM. These companies now have nothing to lose.
Apple seems to still be operating as if it can only focus on one core platform at any given time as opposed to two or three. The talk on HN is only about the core OSes -- macOS and iOS -- but what about their productivity apps? They haven't seen a meaningful update in years (Pages, Keynote, etc. in case you are unaware).
With their huge cash reserves, Apple needs to recognize that it can build multiple platforms in parallel without sacrificing the quality of either. It could very well be that Jony Ive not being a core software guy is the issue. It could not. I don't have insider access. I will say this: Apple needs a hard core software leader and it doesn't seem to have one today. That's the 'real void'.
That being said, I also hate talking on the phone so this may be more of an issue at interacting vocally with a device. It's somewhat lessened when I use FaceTime with my phone but only because I can see who I'm talking to.
I share the author's concerns about Apple's devices since about 2012 being underwhelming but I don't agree with their conclusion that Google and Amazon are filling the void. The distressing part for me is that as far as work computers go nobody is.
It is absolutely a category, especially if you have a larger home where your phone isn't near you. Instead, you just speak to it and it responds without having to find a device instead. It's integration with an ecosystem in your home means it's the new remote -- one that's far more powerful.
I just write it down on a notepad rather than buying a $150 device.
That said, you do you. If y'all like it, have at it and I won't be one to criticize the way you spend your money.
There's a slight difference in a lot of the tech that gets pushed as AppleProduct-Killers in that most of the time the products usually kill the Apple equivalent only on paper; historically, when push comes to shove, it's been iPhones, iPads, and MacBooks people seek out or ask for because they're still considered hot items. This isn't to dismiss the quality of other products, but it's also not the same as everyone wanting them specifically.
Another example of this is Photos apps - Google Photos constantly calls back to the cloud and showers you with computer curated albums, auto-slideshows and "remixes", and automatically tag peoples' faces, while Apple Photos does its learning on-device and buries the "creepy" facial/background recognition features deep in its menus.
If voice control was significantly more capable it would make devices which are constrained in other input methods (e.g. the Apple Watch doesn't have a physical keyboard or the space for much on-screen input, legal restrictions on touchscreen use when driving) much more useful.
I love OS X and I still believe it's the best desktop OS out there, but I'm very disappointed in Apple's direction, and this experience has made me realized the dangers of being locked to a specific hardware platform: if Apple doesn't make the hardware you want, then there are no alternatives if you want to stay on OS X legally. It was a fun ride while Apple made the hardware I wanted. But Apple started changing direction from powerful, expandable, upgradeable Macs to non-upgradeable, disposable computers for those whose computational needs aren't very intensive. I considered jumping ship back in 2013, but due to the controversies of Windows 8, GNOME 3, and KDE 4 at the time, I held my nose and bought a MacBook Air despite its non-upgradeability. This time I plan to jump ship. I learned my lesson regarding relying on closed platforms for my computing needs; you're at the mercy of the provider of the platform. For this reason alone I'm interested in returning to Windows and Linux/BSD, although I wish they one day will have the same level of polish as OS X.
He certainly did great at Apple but Pixar succeeded despite him rather than thanks to him.
I'm scratching my head.
The result is a very meaningful improvement and a change to how you interact with technology in your home.
Yes, we understand that Apple is no longer innovating at all, much less at the clip that they used to.
Chromecast is the best Google can do? Color me un-worried.