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Comment by rackforms | Hacker News Reader

How is Tim Cook still CEO of Apple? Forget sales for a moment and just consider the damage Apple's brand is suffering. $300 books, headphone jacks, unreliable cloud services, missed product launches. In may ways Apples becoming the butt of jokes, a symbol of ignorance. Apple's in total disarray right now and the most loyal followers, myself included, are either jumping ship or seriously considering. The mistakes being made are all, without question, completely avoidable and yet here we are. So I ask again? Why benefit is Apple gaining keeping him on?

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The company you say is in "total disarray" still made $45.7bn in profit in 2016, and grew its share price by 10%. Those are the facts.

Outside of the technology bubble, most people don't know or care about many of the issues you cited, or what "loyal followers" on internet forums think. Major investors, who are the only people who could force Cook out, care about the numbers. And while Apple's revenue declined this year, it's still insanely good by any reasonable, and unreasonable, measure. Plus, it comes on the back of many years of growth, much of which was delivered under Cook's leadership.

If there's a continued decline of revenue and profits, then you might see Cook forced out in a couple of years, but to ask why he hasn't been forced out already only demonstrates a total lack of understanding of how business works.

I completely agree. Very few people outside of HN and r/apple that I have talked to have negative opinions of what Apple is doing.

I see no evidence that Apple's products are becoming less popular. The iPhone is still the go to smartphone that I would recommend to anyone. I have switched back and forth between iPhone and Android since they came out, but I would never recommend an Android phone to a casual user. If they want the newest phone they get the iPhone 7. If they just want a phone the iPhone SE is a great phone for the price. It will last years and be secure with continued security software updates.

The Apple Watch is the only smartwatch I've seen bought en mass by non-techies.

The MacBooks are still the go to laptop for college students that can afford it. With the exception of some engineering circles where the Surface is popular, MacBooks are ubiquitous.

And while the AirPods had a delayed launch, they are in my opinion an amazing first gen Apple product. The ease of use and quality of the Bluetooth connection is not something I've experienced in Bluetooth before.

Up until recently Apple was sort of in a league all of its own, it had an aura about it of what I would perhaps describe as "justified hubris", before Apple perhaps only Microsoft has had that same kind of aura when it was firing on all cylinders. I think people are sensing that Apple has passed the top of its curve and is now losing momentum, the hubris isn't really justified anymore.

Apple will still be a hugely profitable and influential company, but it's no longer in a league all of its own.

Agreed.

Though for security of personal information it's still leagues above Android and Windows.

You don't think that declining sales and revenues are evidence that Apple's products are becoming less popular?

For certain categories of problem it seems the general public is ignorant. OTOH, the headphone jack seems to be the talk of my non technical iphone associates, and more than one regular upgrader has mentioned they aren't ready to upgrade their iphone 6's because of it.

My wife is the apple user in the house, and I think she is indicative of a lot of them at this point. She chooses apple because they are cool status symbols and her friends have them. The issues with the iphone7 modem (yah I went out of my way for the qualcomm and then had an entertaining conversation with her about it) and headphone jack were completely off her radar. The apparent short life of her iphone 5s battery, and the weird wifi issues with the ipads after OS upgrades/etc don't enter her head as problems with the devices.

Annecdotally, I know 2 long time iPhone users who I helped switch over to a Google Pixel and both of them have been happy. I've been surprised how little they complained or asked questions about anything after 5 minutes of android training.

Your comments aren't unfair nor even incorrect. However, there is something systemically wrong inside of Apple that those with a gift for "hyperbole" might call total disarray.

Yes, I would be happy to take their recent results in my own business and wouldn't at all be disappointed. You could also point out that management may well be taking the long view of a post-Jobs Apple and giving Cook room to find that Apple of the future... as opposed to being driven purely by short term results/quarterly reports: something that I think many on HN condemn in other contexts.

Still... think of post-Gates Microsoft. They had huge momentum (which showed in the financials as well), but everybody including me thought there was something deeply wrong with Microsoft, too. They were coasting on that momentum and doing very little aside from coddling their more conservative customers... just as you suggest Apple can get away with. Microsoft was losing their leading position and was getting on the slow death-march path. They may have turned that around while they still could.

No doubt, casting MAJOR screw-ups aside, Apple will not die as a company anytime soon. Apple and Cook are still completely in position to turn things around. But atrophy and possibility of ending-up as some sort of also-ran... that's not impossible and it's also fair to point that out.

>Your comments aren't unfair nor even incorrect. However, there is something systemically wrong inside of Apple that those with a gift for "hyperbole" might call total disarray.

Yes, but then again, those without a gift for prophecy had called Apple's impeding DOOM several times a year since 2001.

Yeah, and those people's wrongness was pretty well-established by Apple's ever-increasing sales, revenues, and establishing new market categories. All of which have ended.

I have, I think, a pretty nuanced view of Apple. It's looking increasingly like 2015 was the best year ever for Apple. 2016 was worse, and there's very little sign that 2017 will be better than 2016. That said, 2015 was the high water mark for a uniquely valuable company with a uniquely valuable product. There's a lot of value in Apple that doesn't require being literally the single most successful year in, like, the history of capitalism.

And I think that most of Apple's decline is due to secular, external forces -- basically, the maturation of the smartphone market -- not because Cook is fucking up. Probably any CEO Apple had would have had pretty similar results -- or worse ones.

But that said, all the people who are like, "What? No, there are no problems with Apple" are obviously wrong on the face of it. iPhone sales are falling. iPad sales fell off a cliff more than a year ago. The Apple Watch has not been successful enough for Apple to even tell us how many units were sold. This is not the picture of the company in 2007, 2010, 2012, 2014.

Yes. And this is where people that are Apple investors have to try and sort out which side are they on: those that think the doom answer is correct will sell (or short) the stock and those that are on what seems to be your side (yes, I might be wrong) will buy. Over time, those that are right will profit (or at least not lose) and those that are wrong will (should) eat their misguided notions. Anyone else... simply is armchair quarterbacking and frankly, doesn't matter.

I am in the "doesn't matter" category... I'm less interested in Apple (I'm not an investor in Apple, in any sense of the word, nor even a customer) and more interested in how perceptions about a companies are formed and how companies in similar circumstances can have very different conclusions drawn about them. Emotional appeal, brand loyalties, etc. can have some interesting influences in this regard.

That doesn't mean they'll be wrong forever.

No, a broken clock is also right twice a day.

You can make profit for a number of years before things go badly; profits are a lagging indicator.

> The company you say is in "total disarray" still made $45.7bn in profit in 2016, and grew its share price by 10%.

Microsoft was very profitable with Ballmer at the helm, but it can be argued he put the company in a very bad position that took them significant effort to fix and right the ship.

Very profitable? Their stock flatlined for a decade while it's peers sky rocketed.

The stock was flat but they were very profitable. Look here: "Microsoft was very profitable during Steve Ballmer's tenure. As you can see from the chart, revenue doubled and net income doubled as well. Nearly $19 Billion in net income from $62 Billion in revenue is nothing to sneeze at, and that kind of growth is not easy for a company that large." [1]

[1] https://www.quora.com/Did-microsoft-make-a-profit-under-stev...

Many of these same type of things were said about Microsoft during the early Ballmer era. His emphasis of the bottom line over vision and innovation inflicted a lot of damage that Microsoft is still recovering from. Yes, total disarray is an exaggeration, Apple isn't going anywhere, but there are a lot of parallels with Ballmer's Microsoft.

Oh how quickly the Steve Jobs era is forgotten. Remember the white iPhone 4 that was delayed almost a year after Steve announced it? Or when they changed from the 30 pin to Lightning? Or when they dumped the floppy and optical drive?

Apple is focused on the iPhone because that's where almost all their profits come from. It's annoying for us long time Mac users, but even Steve was focused on iOS devices when he died.

Update: also Antenna Gate, the fact that Steve didn't want any third party apps on iOS, the G4 Cube, iPod Hi-Fi, MobileMe (if you think their cloud services are a mess now...), iTunes Ping, etc etc. The list goes on.

The hockey puck mouse and the iPod HiFi might deserve places on that list.

I got the HiFi, but yes that mouse! Also his complete rejection of the obviously better multiple button mice in general. That was literally form blocking the way of function.

Lightning came out pretty long after Steve Jobs died. And I thought it was generally agreed — not right at the time, but not long afterward — that Apple made the right call getting rid of floppy drives on their Internet-focused consumer machines.

Nope. The reaction to floppy-less iMac was more or less a direct replay of the current headphone jack, escape key, and USB-C "outrage":

>Long-time users were outraged that they'd be forced to buy new peripherals and couldn't back up the 4 GB hard drive with a waist-high pile of diskettes. They also wondered about the wisdom of using USB ports, ports that weren't yet widely accepted by the industry.

http://www.applematters.com/article/may-6-1998-the-original-...

So much this! The parallel-to-USB dongles for printers were ludicrously expensive and really flaky! For us old-time Apple users, this current round of caterwauling is highly amusing.

You said "nope" and then posted something that agrees with what I said. I suspect you did not read my comment very carefully.

Fair point, though it was close enough that I bet he knew about it (iPhone hardware has a long lead time).

What was wrong with the G4 cube? (speaking as someone who has always wanted to own one)

Among other things: underpowered for the price, touch sensitive power button was too easy to accidentally trip, ports were all on the bottom so you'd have to tip it over to get at the USB/Firewire.

It was a total flop sales wise, it only lasted about a year. It was underpowered and overpriced, you were paying for the design and it turned out most people didn't want to do that.

They're cheap on eBay though (~$100), go get one!

>How is Tim Cook still CEO of Apple?

Because he was the COO that made them the most valuable company on earth, and the CEO that hit record points and maintained that position?

>just consider the damage Apple's brand is suffering. $300 books, headphone jacks, unreliable cloud services, missed product launches.

They always had BS hyperbole against them. It's the easiest click-bait target for hack journalists.

And those "unreliable cloud services" not only are much more reliable than they were in Jobs day (their old Cloud stuff was a joke) but earn tens of billions (just the iOS app store paid around 20 billion dollars to developers in 2016 alone), and are used by close to a billion people.

Your whole list of complains for damage to the brand is BS:

"$300 books" -> They put out a high-end, limited run, coffee table book. Didn't force anyone to buy it, and it's just a homage to their 30+ years of design work.

"headphone jacks" -> Competitors already had models out without headphone jack, and Samsung is following suit too. Some people might lament them, but going forward they bet on wireless for most people -- plus they offer an adaptor so all existing headphones can be used.

"unreliable cloud services" -> Compared to what? And how? I already spoke about their Cloud services above anyway.

"missed product launches" -> It's not the first time and it's not a big deal either. When you design for million unit production runs (unlike the smaller runs of competitors with 50+ product configurations), and you push the envelope in construction, machining, engineering tolerances, etc, you get those things. Not many places that can arbitrarily manufacture your stuff. They could always put out cruder products and get them out faster, but that's not their thing. Besides, Intel delays launches all the time, Microsoft has done it time and again, Google and co put out BS projects that often get lauded from the press for innovation but are half-thought, sell badly and get pulled (Google Glass for one, several first iterations of the Surface, etc.).

Your first reason for him being a bad CEO is a $300 book. A lot of companies have these type of books which are also costly, I don't think it's a good idea to start argument about him being a bad CEO with a book example.

I took the order of arguments in this case to be random, not in order of strength. While I agree that it's generally best to lead or finish on the strongest arguments, it seems pretty clear here that these are randomly ordered.

I think they were also randomly selected from the list of all possible english sentences.

It's perception I'm talking about, the real damage being done by releasing this type of tone-deaf product at the same time good, hardworking and long-time users can no longer afford their products.

That book is really more about Jony Ive's legacy as a designer than anything else. It is mostly going to be appearing in libraries and the offices of other designers, not on people's coffee tables.

I think the "perception" you are talking about is just from gossipy tech blogs and people on Internet forums who have made a hobby out of getting upset about things like this.

>> I think the "perception" you are talking about is just from gossipy tech blogs and people on Internet forums who have made a hobby out of getting upset about things like this.

Well a lot of these things have made the rounds on late night talk shows, which are watched by normal people (on TV and on viral YouTube clips).

Colbert made fun of the book [1]. Conan made fun of the airpods [2] and even has an Apple Spoofs playlist [3]. Kimmel made fun of Apple fans [4] a few months ago.

While Conan doesn't get big TV ratings, his Youtube videos do get a lot of views. I'm guessing the reason why Fallon doesn't do as many spoofs is because he is in some iPhone ads.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W63_N63Qy-w

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_wImaGRkNY

[3] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVL8S3lUHf0RCRdtpshOa...

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfxmhZD-IZk

" "users can no longer afford their products"

Er, what? Going back to the last iPhone that fell mostly in the Jobs era - the 4S - it was priced at $599 for the 16GB version.

Compare that to the iPhone SE which starts at $399 for the 16GB version. Or the iPhone 7 which starts at $649 for the 32GB version.

I'm not sure how users who could once afford the products no longer can.

No, it's a fine example, and makes a succinct point.

It's a hobby project that keeps designers feel valued and most companies do it. Some release it, some don't. But they all do it.

Honestly, this cost is on par with other book-based photographic collections from small, bespoke printing companies (Such as Lodima Press). The real question is how many copies did they run. This will determine whether or not the cost is justified for the value you get from it.

As an example, a few years ago, I purchased a copy of Edward Weston's "Life Work" from Lodima when it was released. I think I paid ~$150 for it. They're now selling it for $1000 per copy because they have a limited number left.

If Apple printed thousands and thousands of these, then I doubt the cost is justified. But if it was a limited run, say less than a few thousand? Seems appropriate to me.

>>If Apple printed thousands and thousands of these, then I doubt the cost is justified. But if it was a limited run, say less than a few thousand? Seems appropriate to me.

What bothers me out of this discussion is that people are getting upset about the price they choose to sell the book at. People feel way too entitled. They could sell it at a million bucks each and if people were willing to pay that then why would anybody complain. Unless you feel you somehow have a God given right to decide how people sell their own products.

I don't have a problem with their pricing decisions. It works for some people, it doesn't work for others.

I was just noting that the pricing mirrors what I've seen in the photo/art book world.

What point does it make? I am not interested in buying the book, but to me it suggests that Apple highly values design and its design team. I think the book is something Steve Jobs would have loved.

Would have loved, Sure. Would have done, No.

The book took 8 years to make. He died in Oct 2011. He probably knew about it.

The problem is not the book, the problem is the pricing for the book which he had nothing to do with.

At 30$ or 300$ the company is not going to get meaningful revenue, or likely enough to pay the cost of production back. So, the pricing needs to relate to something else.

The point of the book wasn't to juice the "Other revenue" line in their quarterly report, it was to produce a high-end art book of their design work. It actually makes more sense as a high dollar item considering that allows it to be made with high quality materials and become a collectors item. At $30 it would probably be junk, uninteresting to collectors/designers and the mass market alike.

The argument is they could use the same materials and sell it for 30$. At 300$ they are already going to be out millions. So, the difference in price is just not going to be meaningful until they start selling 30,000+ copies.

The bugatti veyron for example sells for ~$1.5 million, but it costs more than twice that to make ($6.25 million). However, as VW only sold ~50 veyron's per year it's was just not an issue for VW compared to the 10.14 million cars they sold per year.

I don't have a time machine, but why do you think he wouldn't have done the book? He was responsible for the ridiculous 20th Anniversary Mac ($7499 in 1997!):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twentieth_Anniversary_Macintos...

That's a way bigger time/money sink than allowing your designers to put together an art book of Apple products.

I don't think he was responsible for the 20th Anniversary Mac, which was released in March 1997. Apple bought NeXT in february 1997, and Jobs only be became de facto chief of Apple after Amelio was ousted in July 1997.

That's fair, but I still think he would have loved the book and quite well may have known about it or even approved it.

Is it, though? It had to have been one of Ive's first projects at Apple, and you can't get good industrial design without putting stuff into the hands of users. Who knows how much collective knowledge and experience Apple internally acquired with that work.

As far as a consumer product or a moneymaker, yeah, it's crap.

The point being made is your house is on fire and the firefighters show up with an ice cream cone. It's a lovely gesture in the right context, but we've got way bigger problems at hand.

In every market segment Apple plays in they're facing incredibly stiff and in many cases, superior competition. To make matters worse Apple "playbook", that attention to detail, the advertisements, etc -- yes it's taken a while but it's been mostly cracked. To be clear that's good for any of us who've been fans of that book, but it's absolutely not good for Apple should they choose to remain stagnant.

The result is a situation where Apple's hard won customers -- like me -- are looking to other companies and they're "speaking our language", offering products and services that are on-par and in many cases, simply better.

And it's not just desktop -- Siri is stagnant/broken, the iOS App Store is a mess, Email, on and on.

My point is at a time where competition and strategic advantages are under incredible stress, where incredibly obvious mistakes are being made in core product lines, Apple releases an outrageously high-priced picture book. It's totally fine, understandable, admirable even, if you think all's going well, but I do not think things are going well.

I don't understand why I can't plug the lightning headphone that comes with my brand new apple phone in my brand new apple notebook.

EDIT: Oops, the adaptor goes the other way. I didn't really think that through. Still, not being able to use your lightning earpods with your Mac isn't a big loss.

You can. Your brand new iPhone also came with a tiny little cable that you attach to your lightning headphones and now you can plug them into your Mac. It's really not that hard.

More generally, the reasons for ditching the 3.5mm jack on the iPhone aren't really applicable to the Mac, so there's no reason to remove that jack from the Mac, which means it still has it. And the iPhone uses lightning for a lot more than just headphones, whereas if the Mac got lightning, it would literally be for just headphones. So it's really kind of a waste to add a second port on the Mac that is intended for just headphones, even though you can attempt to plug other shit into it (like a USB charger), which would be confusing, and since the Mac already has a dedicated port for headphones. Oh, and your lightning earpods came with a little adaptor that makes it work on the Mac. Also, don't forget, Apple's really trying to push wireless headphones as the future, and wireless headphones work on the Mac just like they do on the iPhone.

So it's really not that hard to see why Apple decided not to put a useless port on the Mac that would simply cause a lot of confusion down the road, seeing as there's really no reason to do that.

No I can't, it came with p2 to lightning adapte not the oposite.

the iPhone 7 comes with a lightning to headphone adapter. plug that into the side of your new macbook pro...

What are you talking about? No it didn't. It came with an adapter that has a female 3.5mm headphone jack on one and and a male Lightning adapter on the other end to allow you to connect headphones with a 3.5mm connector to your Lightning-only iPhone 7. To connect to a 2016 MBP, you would need the opposite—a cable which does not currently exist.

No no, cust0m is right, I didn't think it through. It comes with a 3.5mm female to lightning male adaptor, not a lightning female to 3.5mm male adaptor.

That fine line between Courage and Cowardice. Enough courage to make you buy a product (bluetooth headphones) to fully make use of the phone that most of us upgrade, but not enough courage to use it with the personal computer that only some of us upgrade.

Because the headphones are meant for the phone?

Since the iphone was released was posible to use the headphones with computer I don't get why this change.

To save space (inwards, not height), nudge users to wireless which they believe is the future, and help with waterproofing?

Or why you can't plug the USB cable from your brand new iPhone into your brand new MacBook Pro?

The list goes on and on.

I swore I'd never buy a mac when I was 10 because the mouse had only 1 button.

I have the same feelings when I look at the latest macbook but using the previous years macbook I must say I can see the appeal and I might consider buying one.

It's funny that just when the public ire is growing I discover myself wanting to buy it....but the new chromebook from google with stylus pen and keyboard that can be flipped into a tablet + millions of android apps is a really good offering as well.

>I swore I'd never buy a mac when I was 10 because the mouse had only 1 button

It's not like "the more the better".

Macs still did right click context menus (it's Control + click), and of course could accommodate two and three button mice just fine and use all of their buttons.

One button mice also meant that all apps were designed to be more usable with one button operation (and interactions like drag etc) compared to merely stuffing important stuff in context menus.

it also means every app is a mess of modals, and people likes it, for whatever reason.

Not in my experience (and I've used Windows too up to Vista and can compare). Can you give an example of how Mac apps overuse modals?

Apple is in "disarray" in the same sense that Facebook is dying.

If your judgment of the entire company comes down to whether a new iPhone can be physically plugged into a new MacBook Pro, then I suppose it might seem to be in disarray. Apple's taking some heat now because they're working towards an ecosystem that is not based on wires at all to the greatest extent possible.

Apple has been the butt of jokes at least since 2008 when I first got my first Apple product (an old 17" MacBook Pro). Back when I was looking at laptops then, I saw the same complaints that I see about the new MacBook Pro: too expensive, specs aren't good enough, etc., etc. None of this is new.

>> Apple has been the butt of jokes at least since 2008 when I first got my first Apple product (an old 17" MacBook Pro). Back when I was looking at laptops then, I saw the same complaints that I see about the new MacBook Pro: too expensive, specs aren't good enough, etc., etc. None of this is new.

But actually some of it is new. I go back to the Apple ][ days, so I've seen my share of disdain of Apple products from people who weren't users of Apple products.

A lot of the uproar in the past several months, however, has come from vocal Apple users who feel let down.

I even saw complaints about MacBook keyboards back then. RAM from Apple was not just limited but hilariously expensive.

Even the controversial use of new ports or removal of old ones is not unfamiliar in the history of Apple.

I'm not trying to defend every decision Apple has been making, and I don't necessarily agree with them all myself. But, honestly, it mostly feels like business as usual to me.

For the Macbook keyboard complaints - that was for a new product and didn't affect a lot of existing customers on the higher selling Macbook Air or Macbook Pro users.

The removal of ports with the first iMac happened when Apple had a much smaller customer base in a different era. Nobody was looking at Apple under a microscope the way they are today.

I may not like the direction Apple has taken (which caused me to switch a couple of years ago) but I don't have a problem with it. They are following the money. Who can blame them for that?

But anecdotally speaking -- since the 2016 Macbook Pro announcement, there have been more-than-usual negative Apple headlines (many of them being from Mac using bloggers) trickle into the HN front page, and I have never ever seen so many comments by Mac using HN'ers looking for non-Mac alternatives. I get that HN'ers are probably a small percentage of Mac users, but I also tend to think HN'ers are probably technology influencers in their social circles as well.

Next upgrade I'm moving to MS Surface or something similar. The dongle thing did it for me, which is pretty sad.

I was also a bit surprised to find out that 95% of the gaming market is still on PC [1]. Guess I was a disillusioned Mac user, but I thought Mac was bigger in games.

[1] http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

You're not disilliusioned, the Mac always was a niche player for games.

Everyone for the past 2 decades knows you don't buy a Mac for games.

Part of it's probably availability of games on the platform (which has gotten better but is still poor), but part of it's because you can buy both a lower-end Mac (an Air, say, or an entry-level MBP) and build a pretty nice gaming PC for less than the cost of just a gaming-capable mac.

Also as far as I know you can't bypass OS X's video compositing which adds latency to the rendering, which means that for latency sensitive games you will not be as competitive as a PC.

Ports aren't really an issue to me...in a couple of years everything will be USB-C and/or wireless charging/headphones anyway.

Big issue is Apple has no new innovative products. Apple Watch isn't really enough of new product to drive iphone like sales at least not yet and there is nothing else on the horizon.

> Ports aren't really an issue to me...in a couple of years everything will be USB-C and/or wireless charging/headphones anyway.

Everything new maybe, but old audio gear, monitors/tvs/keyboards/drives, et c stick around a hell of a long time. I'll be surprised if my family's at more than 20% of peripherals, displays, and audio equipment on bluetooth/USBC in 5 years, personally. Probably more like 5-10%. 10 years? That's another story. Assuming the standard hasn't shifted again.

>Everything new maybe, but old audio gear, monitors/tvs/keyboards/drives, et c stick around a hell of a long time.

That's not much of an issue to the kind of customers that can afford a new expensive Apple laptop.

Am I to understand that most people in the market for a $1700 laptop are also going to be OK with replacing $3-10k of perfectly good other equipment at or around the same time?

Yes. They not be "OK" in principle, but they are the demographic most likely to do it (and to be able to do it) anyway.

You mention: "monitors/tvs/keyboards/drives". Well, keyboards and drives are trivial, as they use USB. So those people can just buy a USB-A to USB-C cable for $10 and be done with it (no dongle required if the keyboard doesn't have a fixed cable, and hard disks don't have fixed cables in the first place).

As for tvs and monitors, not sure how hey wont be able to use them with the new Apple devices, but they can afford a new one if they are so inconvenienced to use an adaptor.

I've had a couple dozen keyboards dating back to the AT over the years, and I can't recall any with a non-fixed cable. That'd be pretty cool. :-/

It's more that I can carry my 2014 macbook anywhere in my house or office or anyone else's and probably connect it to anything I want or need to, without an adapter. Works, say, 99% of the time. With the 2016 it would work 0% of the time today (well, audio equipment excepted I guess, since they weren't courageous enough to remove the headphone jack on the MBP, fortunately), and it would take a half-dozen dongles to come even close to that 99%. I don't expect the success percentage for a dongle-less 2016 MBP to go up much in the next 2 years. That makes stretching my 2014 for another year or two, or switching to another vendor, way more appealing than it might be otherwise, especially with the non-trivial price hike adding insult to injury.

[EDIT] OK, half-dozen was a slight overstatement. At least 4, maybe 5.

>I've had a couple dozen keyboards dating back to the AT over the years, and I can't recall any with a non-fixed cable. That'd be pretty cool. :-/

High end keyboards sometimes feature one. E.g:

http://www.coolermaster.com/peripheral/keyboards/novatouchtk...

Are you telling me that dongles aren't adequate? You must have native connectors? Then by all means replace that $3-10k worth of equipment.

That's what the forward march of progressing standards is about - you upgrade some, with adapters for legacy interfaces.

I think Apple considered TouchBar innovative, but it's not a product. I keep having the vision of Tom Cruise in Minority Report, while navigating the screen with his fingers, keep looking down at his keyboard/TouchBar for emojis.

I have thought about Tim Cook being fired / stepping down as well. Myself and other close friends and family are all pulling away from Apple at the current moment. As I've mentioned on HN before, after the last MacBook launch I saw self-described Apple fan-boys loudly complaining about Apple's current path. The function bar is absolutely useless for me and I think the machine itself is only 20% better than my 2012 model. Microsoft out-Appled Apple with their Surface release set to Pure Imagination. I can't fathom how a new MacBook got greenlit with such mismatched ports with their latest phone. The dongle jokes are everywhere.

All that said, I feel bad for Tim—Does he even have time to read/focus on these products in any meaningful way right now? He is bombarded by the FBI, has to sit awkwardly with Trump (http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/58586bf5ca7f0c24018...), is working on the mothership with Ives, etc.

>I have thought about Tim Cook being fired / stepping down as well. Myself and other close friends and family are all pulling away from Apple at the current moment.

Not sure about the impact that will have, but my family and friends are doubling down on Apple purchases, so our anecdotes probably cancel each other out.

Anecdote fight - my extended family are moving towards Apple products - mostly to interact with other family members.

I have several inlaws who <3 Samsung but have iPads, others who do everything on their iPhones - in all of these cases they were running Archos, Blackberry or Windows exclusively.

Macs aren't growing, but iCloud/iMessage (mainly through iOS) is entrenched and extending.

> working on the mothership with Ives, etc.

Generally investing in your "headquarters" like this is a sign the company is in trouble.

It means that you don't have a better place to put all that money in the business itself.

> $300 books, headphone jacks, unreliable cloud services, missed product launches.

Don't forget all the criticism towards MBP 2016.

> So I ask again? Why benefit is Apple gaining keeping him on?

Who says they aren't, or won't? This is what is publicly seen as a slap on the wrist.

It is a smart way to perform damage control. It is basically saying to the criticism towards Apple [from both shareholders as well as users]: "we know, we screwed up, you are right" without going into detail on who or what is exactly right.

I think Ive is a real driving force behind some of these decisions too. He's always trying to push design over function.

I am waiting for a Windows phone to make the jump. I still have an iPhone 4S and have exactly zero interest in upgrading.

I keep thinking that it's a good time for Microsoft to make another push in that space—a decent Surface Phone might at the very least re-capture a small foothold. There appear to be a lot of people disillusioned with iOS and Android these days.

I think its coming this year. Few signs: 1. Surface range of notebook is doing well. 2. Latest Snapdragon 835 is compatible with Windows 10. 3. I've seen somewhere MS said or demoed plugging in Windows Phone to an LCD and run the full desktop version of MS Office apps.

Who would be the alternative?

Scott Forstall was probably the next best bet, and he was ousted long ago.

Tim Cook is to Apple as Melissa Mayer was to Yahoo. An underdog and perceived as a business maverick that cares about the environment and philanthropy. We love them in movies, literature, and politics - because they give us a sense that we can do anything if we rise above.

But what we have now is a fragmented ecosystem of Apple Products that no longer "just work" and even worse, fit together like square pegs in a round hole. They call it "courage" but really it's lack of a cohesive vision and borderline greed to pull as much money from customers.

That Tim Cook / Melissa Mayer comparison doesn't really fly. Tim Cook isn't an 'underdog' at all. He's worked for Apple since 1998. He's risen to CEO by ruthlessly optimizing Apple's supply chain over time and making them into the profit powerhouse they are today.

He's an underdog to the public. A minority and perceived as a business maverick that also cares about the environment. You would group Cook with Musk and Mayer long before you would group him with the CEO of Exxon Mobil.

Apple's philanthropic and environmental toting has largely surpassed their hardware innovation under Cook's direction. Yet one has to wonder - if these environmental footprint reductions costed more money than they saved - would Apple risk their profits to save the environment?

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