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Comment by rblatz | Hacker News Reader

People are all up in arms about headphone jacks, USB-C, and dongles. When the real issue is Apple completely missing huge new markets.

Apple had Siri out and was in the lead with voice control, then they wasted it. I never use Siri, she is nearly worthless, but I do use Alexa multiple times a day. Amazon is Leading the voice assistant market, and Google is right on their heels.

Home automation was supposed to get better with HomeKit but arrived basically stalled. They announced all these partners and sold their products at the Apple Store. Then when HomeKit finally was ready none of those products worked with HomeKit. You had to buy newer versions that had some proprietary Apple chip in it.

Apple's cloud offering is confusing and hard to manage, also it doesn't work with other platforms besides their own. Amazon and Google both do this much better.

AppleTv is a great product but Apple can't seem to really work with partners to make it actually innovative. The TV app is a cool idea, but I've yet to find any reason to actually use it.

It just seems like they've been wondering aimlessly and dropping half products out there then never iterating and finishing them. Is there some other hidden project (car?) taking all their top talent? Is there some sort of corporate culture issue that has driven all the best and brightest brightest elsewhere? Is there a lot of mismanagement and mixed signals coming down from above?

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Steve and the unified vision is gone.

While on winter holidays my fiance pointed out to me:

- She just got a new Macbook Pro from her new job, which has only USB C ports

- She just got a new iPhone 7 from her new job, which is only a Lightning port

She cannot connect her phone to her computer to charge without a dongle. EDIT: a Lightning to USB C cable does exist now. That is still equivalent to a dongle in my opinion, as the consumer still has to buy it and it is a cable that won't be used for anything else.

She has to carry two sets of headphones, one for her computer, and one for her phone.

The unified vision at Apple is gone.

Here's my personal conjecture based on owning most products in the Apple lineup and trying to predict the future a bit.

So far as I can tell the idea is Lightning ports for devices which require charging, and USB ports for devices which require data transfer.

All cables designed to provide power utilize a USB A connector - this is the majority of Lightning cables. In their current lineup this can be used to charge an iPad, iPhone, Apple Watch, and Air Pods case.

I recognize a lot of users still use the Lightning cable to transfer data to/from the phone to/from a computer. I'm betting Apple views these users as the current edge case.

Given that - it seems only a matter of time until an iPhone which has no ports, similar to the Apple Watch.

I imagine they'd rather not deal with USB-C on their devices at all - given the madness behind the different power capabilities of cables that seem to plague the specification. But they also recognize that is the future of general-use cables and are embracing it accordingly.

Given the lack of ability to charge any Apple peripheral directly from the newest Macbook (12" or Pro) models I suspect the internal rule is that devices with batteries aren't considered charging sources.

I'm personally excited to see the directions Apple keeps moving towards. I think it'll end up a more unified future than we've had yet. But I'm also ready to be wrong. I'll try to look back on this in a few years and see how we are.

> Given that - it seems only a matter of time until an iPhone which has no ports, similar to the Apple Watch.

Unless we invent seriously good wireless charging, I just can't see that happening. There's too many cases where having your phone "docked" just doesn't work.

Personally, I usually fall asleep with my phone laying on the bed next to me playing YouTube/Netflix/etc. No way to do that if it has to be resting on a pad like the Watch.

And what about cars and navigation? Can't throw your phone in your cup holder and pull up Maps anymore. You either need a new car with wireless charging or need to strap some sort of wireless charging pad to the back, which defeats the entire purpose of wireless charging.

The Apple Watch doesn't use a pad charger - it uses a magnetic puck which attaches fairly firmly* to the device. Right now the puck is fairly large and thick, but I can hope that in the next 5 years Apple can manage to reduce its size a bit and provide an interface for it which works with the iPhone.

Given that general design I imagine sleeping with the phone next to you in bed or in a cup holder shouldn't be much different than it is now - if anything the rotational flexibility provided by the magnetic puck charger would be advantageous in both situations.

Jony Ive has a thing for reducing devices to their core-most functionality. It's a design trait picked up from the likes of Deiter Rams. One of the easiest ways to reduce a device is to reduce or eliminate points of ingress. An iPhone which has no port for charging and the updated speakers from the Series 2 Apple Watch designed for waterproofing would be more ideal.

* Firm enough that you can pick up and move the watch about using only the puck as leverage.

> Jony Ive has a thing for reducing devices to their core-most functionality. It's a design trait picked up from the likes of Deiter Rams.

Ive likes to associate himself with Rams, and people like to throw around the "as little design as possible" meme, but Ive and Rams are really very different in their execution of that idea, which counts for a lot. Ive is much more willing to challenge convention in his reductions, which sometimes pays off, but sometimes it means his products are a pain in the ass for the user to figure out when they ship. This can't be said of Rams.

They would have to switch back to a non metal back to do wireless charging. I doubt they'd do plastic on their main models and glass seemed to give them a lot of trouble with shattering the last time they did it so I'm not sure they'll do it.

I believe Lightning was added to the iPhone (and the headphone jack removed) only for the purpose of waterproofing the device. But that's just off the top of my head.

I doubt it, S7 has both, headphone jack and an micro USB port, and it is still waterproof.

>Lightning ports for devices which require charging, and USB ports for devices which require data transfer

Except the new macbooks use USB C for charging, and one of the things Apple emphasized when they switched from 30-pin to lightning was the increased data rate. There's no consistency. This is just another case of everyone moving toward a standard (micro-usb and now usb-c) and Apple ignoring it, except this time Apple doesn't have any excuse.

>the unified vision is gone.

I disagree, their unified vision is a wireless one. But you could say they rushed it at the expense of the consumer.

That's why the very first thing I mention is Steve.

Didn't Apple recently stop developing their wireless routers?

And yet they don't offer wireless charging.

Who offers true wireless charging ? I have the so-called Samsung Galaxy wireless charging, which is no different than just plugging in. I don't even bother

I used to use wireless charging every day with my old Nexus 5, I loved it! I had a wireless charging puck at work where I would sit my phone on whenever I was at my desk, it was so easy that I could do whatever I wanted with my phone whenever and not worry about battery, ever (I also rarely needed to charge when I got home). I'm now using a Oneplus 2 phone and miss the wireless charging feature every time I need to plug in a cable, if I can, my next phone will support wireless charging again, I miss it so much.

Good luck charging your phone wirelessly

I've done it with about 5 dollars worth of hardware (total for both Qi emitter and receiver), and it was a bit fiddly to place the encased phone on the charger in the right place, but no luck was actually required.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/100-Original-QI-Wireless-Cha...

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Qi-Wireless-Charger-Receiver...

> 5 dollars worth of hardware

But how many dollars worth of experience, education, and attentiveness?

Unified vision was nice. What interested me first in the Apple ecosystem was its use by high-end pros. Photographers, creatives, filmmakers. Then they announced MacOS X, built upon NeXT/BSD, and the mac pro products.

Now Microsoft has dedicated products for high-end creatives (Surface studio won't sell but still shows interest in pros), Linux Bash shell in windows 10. Meanwhile Apple wants pros to use a 9" tablet instead of a laptop.

If 2017 turns out to be the year the VR starts to hit the main stream, which it could be, it will be interesting to see what Apple's response will be.

What's hitting the market? Didn't hear anything.

Windows 10 Creators Update along with a slew of headsets from major PC vendors (HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc.) starting at $300.

The problem I see is that VR would be great with dual 2K screens and 120+hz , but we don't have the GPUS to push that many pixels today (in any remotely affordable way...maybe quad TitanX would work).

Cheaper, lower-quality VR headsets will leave a bad impression on consumers. I don't think that's the direction we should be going. I'd rather see HTC and Oculus release higher-res, faster refresh rate HMDs, but I doubt they'd do that with no single GPU able to run those today.

When you get to scale, you can start doing things like manufacturing displays with higher PPI near where the lenses are centered. That way you have the same number of total physical pixels but a higher resolution contributing to the image.

You can further reduce the computational costs by using foveated rendering(http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/johnsny/papers...). You can use low-latency eye-tracking to spend more time rendering the portions of the frame that the user is actively looking at.

I think the combo of falling gpu prices, and clever hardware design means we will probably see headsets with effectively higher and higher resolutions sooner rather than later.

That's going to be difficult given how often and how fast eyes move and how sensitive they are.

You'd need a new lens design for that really. Right now the lenses that are used aren't really good if you start looking to the side too much. When I get going in VR I generally just look with my head instead of my eyes to avoid those lens issues like chromatic aboration.

a slew of headsets from major PC vendors (HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc.) starting at $300.

Wonder if that will help or hinder VR. Personally I think the Vive is just about the bare minimum needed for VR to barely be acceptable. If peoples first impression of VR is something less than that I doubt they'll be impressed enough to actually use VR for more than 15 minutes over the first 2 weeks after purchase.

It will be a year when VR hype scales back. Not the first time and not the last one.

VR in 2017 will be 90+% about gaming, and Apple has never really cared about gaming. I doubt they'll start caring now all of a sudden.

VR is all about immersive experiences. Apple always cares about experiences.

And my thoughts are that Apple cannot bring the same Stevie vision of simplicity and use to VR, which is why they will never care about it.

I'm not sure about that. It seems to me that VR is ripe for a high-end offering that is vertically integrated and quality assured. The VR landscape is already a bit fragmented and it probably won't get less so.

They'll have to stick better graphics cards in their computers, but that's doable.

Probably their biggest challenge would be coming up with a headset that is "Apple-y", given that the design issues involved in creating them right now still create something fundamentally klunky. (VR is starting to take off not because anyone's figured out how to make it not klunky, but because it transitioned from intolerably klunky to tolerably klunky. Along with the latency improvements.)

I'm not saying they're going to do it. But they could.

They make billions off gaming...

Fair enough. They've never cared about the sort of gaming commonly done on the sort of computers that will be able to do VR in 2017. When we get to the point where the iPad/iPhone can do high quality VR then I'll re-evaluate my statement.

How? Everyone suddenly realizes they have been closet gamer for many years and comes out for VR?

VR has a massive hurdle to get over. You can't expect people to drop $600 on a headset _and_ (at least) $1k on a machine that can run it.

Costs will come down, but 2017 won't be the year. I expect VR to grow, but only in the gaming market.

You don't need a $1K machine for VR. Example:

GTX 970 = $155: http://ebay.com/itm/371833128329

GTX 980 = $235: http://ebay.com/itm/291993305929

Gaming PC with GTX 970 = $540: http://ebay.com/itm/112250177638

Gaming PC with GTX 1070 = $690: http://ebay.com/itm/222369412011

I think ebay is the last place I'd buy pretty much anything. Especially when the price discrepancy between those listings and fully legit stores is so different. Just a personal observation.

Buy from the sellers with good reviews and lots of reviews, and you will be fine. And if you pay with PayPal, eBay guarantees to return your money if something goes wrong.

Not according to Microsoft, VR is going to be a big push for them this year. Granted a lot can go wrong, but they are addressing all the points you just listed:

* Headset Pricing: Major OEMs will be releasing headsets starting at $300 [0]

* Lowering system specs for VR [1]

* Not just a gaming focus: Windows 10 creators update puts an emphasis on 3D and Mixed-Reality, including a 'holographic' interface [2]

[0] http://1reddrop.com/2017/01/06/microsoft-announces-299-windo... [1] http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2016/12/08/microsoft-unveils... [2] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/upcoming-features

I have actually been able to play around with a Hololens (AR vs VR but close enough) and it is extremely cool.

It honestly feels like only minor improvements in size/speed/usability will make it massively useful in normal life very soon.

I think Microsoft is 2-3 years too early (or maybe that's the plan?). The technology just isn't there yet. Headesets need to double the resolutions on the displays and increase the frame rate by 50%.

Agreed, I find the current resolution on VR headsets a huge letdown. Actually made worse by the fact that everything else I have these days is retina, 4K, etc so at a very high resolution.

I want to buy a VR headset but I currently cannot justify it due to the cost+use of the device.

I, and I think enough other people, already have a $1k+ PC for the huge amount of non-VR games it gives access to.

But the big catch for me is that there just doesn't seem to be enough content that will work with and (more importantly) be enhanced by a VR experience. I simply don't have the cash-on-hand to justify spending ~$800 to make Elite Dangerous slightly more immersive. But if a good VR headset was more in the $200 range (like the very similarly limited hotas I bought for the same reason) I would probably jump.

It does seem like this year may bring the cost of the devices down low enough that more devs and more audience can get on board and bring it in to the main stream because it is very nearly there already.

Enter Google Daydream. Only need $650 phone (much cheaper ones were just announced that support it I think) and a $80 headset. And most importantly they are building it correctly so that many/most high end VR games will also run on Daydream.

VR could find use in other market segments that existing technologies are insufficient for at a scale that make it affordable.

Take theaters for example. They have been looking for a market for years but since people have screens and streaming at home they don't tend to go as much. However they could find a new life by purchasing VR headsets in bulk and selling livestreams of plays/musicals/operas, and possibly sports games as well. These will always be experiences better seen live, but VR would be a significant step above television.

That way someone could enjoy VR at a very low cost, and possibly spur them to buy a headset themselves, when the price is right.

I know I'm probably a minority of HN users and other tech enthusiasts on this issue, but I'm totally uninterested in VR. I've tried it a few times and my general impression was, "Neat." That's a far cry from an impression like, "OMG this is the most amazing thing ever!" which is what I was kind of expecting to think.

I'm more interested in AR, personally. But it's hard for me to articulate why exactly because honestly I don't have much experience with it yet. It just seems more interesting to me. I'd really like to get a Hololens to start experimenting with, but can't really justify the cost of it right now.

(disclosure: I work for Microsoft, which makes Hololens. Not meaning to promote it, these are my personal opinions)

You're not alone.

I work at an AEC firm. We give money and some privilege to 2-3 people at work to experiment with VR. It's interesting to some degree but, beyond being a marketing tool, I don't really see it being useful as a professional tool any time soon.

These things are hard to call though, like anything in future tech (or the future in general). They consider it revolutionary new tech whereas I'm on the side of "shiny new toy" and "wait and see" but the powers that be have no issue spending the money on it while I see some of core competencies and actual training for the future being ignored (transitions to BIM and training in better 3D modeling programs).

Not my company or money though.

I have a computer that can run vr (i7-6700k + 1080) enough disposable income to afford a headset and I'm still not interested. There just hasn't been anything released for vr that doesn't seem like a gimmick.

Have you played one yet? I thought the same thing, argued with people, etc. Played at a friends house and ordered one the next day.

Yea. Google is taking amazing steps to kill it in this market with Daydream. I have it and for the price (diff vs non high end phone) and $80 headset is it perfect.

I highly doubt it will be. And this is coming from an owner of a GTX 1080 and HTC Vive. There are some really awesome games and experiences, but there is nothing that I really want to keep going back to. No Rocket League or Minecraft (Well, there is vivecraft, but minecraft in VR just isn't that much more appealing to me than the vanilla game.) PSVR might get some stuff but for now it seems like most large companies are just putting their toes in the water by giving out small tech demos.

VR needs a couple of things, and they aren't going to happen in less than a year. First and most importantly, cheaper and better hardware. Daydream is nice, but at most it is good for 360 video and some cheap games. Get some head tracking in there somehow and then it becomes interesting. Also, it needs something like the oculus touch controllers or vive controllers so you can actually use your hands for things.

Secondly, an actual killer app. Some kind of game that only works in VR. Something that you want to keep coming back to.

Lastly - simplicity. Daydream is simple but too limited. The vive has all the features but setting up lighthouses is a pain unless you can permanently mount them. Also being tethered to your computer sucks (A solution for that is on the way, but it will only add to the cost.) Headsets are still bulky and uncomfortable to wear for long periods.

My point I guess is that Apple's typical timing with things would put them entering the market in 2018 at the earliest. This is like the early Windows Phone/PalmOS days before the iPhone (But I doubt Apple will be the one releasing the "iPhone" of VR.)

Maybe. Of course killer apps don't have to spring full formed as launch titles. Visicalc arrived two and a half years after the launch of the Apple II. I don't think we can count out people coming up with something remarkable in 2017 given that there are platforms from Facebook, Google, Steam and Sony.

As for myself, even without a killer app, VR has gotten me saving memories as photo spheres, in addition to pictures and videos.

Tech Journalist Robert Scoble seems to be super certain that the next iPhone this year will be AR/VR and blow everyone away, he apparently has credible sources. Personally i don't buy it at all and can't wait for everyone to tell him "i told you so"

Surface Studio is actually selling at 2x what Microsoft anticipated it selling for, so it seems to be a bigger market than one would think.

The quality of the current line of surfaces is pretty good. A few friends who have needed a replacement computer/laptop but need to use Windows for work have opted for the Surface. Gives them nice portability and they don't really need an iPad (or can't afford a laptop and iPad).

> Now Microsoft has dedicated products for high-end creatives (Surface studio won't sell but still shows interest in pros)

Every single professional who uses the Surface Studio practically has an orgasm.

If Microsoft keeps support up for it long enough that the CAD program developers are willing to take the plunge on the new features and integrate them into their programs, it will completely displace Apple with the high-end professionals.

The question is whether Microsoft will keep pumping money into the line long enough to get the application developers on board. They've been burned several times.

I think it has huge potential outside of CAD. Anything that deals with complex flows of data/material would benefit from such an interface.

> They've been burned several times.

I see a fundamental shift has taken place at Microsoft under Satya's direction. Open-sourcing the core technologies that act as the foundation for Microsoft is a huge deal. Surface Studio uncompromisingly for pros (a big problem for MS hardware in the past is that they try to hedge their bets- try to jam stuff in there for everyone).

When you think about how quickly this has changed, it looks like Satya has a clear vision for MS, and pros are part of that vision. When's the last time you've seen a 'visionary' Microsoft (that didn't involved delusional thinking)?

That's what I thought too about Satya's tenure. I had heard great things about win10, and then I saw the ads and freemium paywall ware that lines the standard install of win10.

Hard pass.

Welcome to what Windows has been on non-pro consumer hardware for decades.

The difference is now Microsoft is providing the crapware, the crapware isn't malicious (like say, Superfish was), and it's not that difficult for power users to disable it or tuck it out of the way.

I love Windows 10 (at least, as much as my love for Windows goes), yes MS made some moves towards treating it a bit like Google and Apple treat their mobile OSes, but not horridly large steps.

+1 and I agree and I personally run linux on my desktop, but I will say that if you buy your laptop from microsoft directly at least they do a good job of making sure that the only crapware pre-loaded is from microsoft, even if otherwise the same model laptop you'd get from any other store that comes with crapware from anyone willing to pay a few bucks. (or few cents?, what does a pre-install from the big vendors go for these days?)

The surface studio isn't entirely uncompromising - it comes with a really unimpressive GPU for the type of monitor it's pushing and the type of people it's marketed to. On the plus side, egpus should work with it.

I do agree though the Surface Studio gets my interest in a way that iMacs haven't since the iMac G4. It seemed like after the G4 they just kept phoning it in with yet another pizza box iMac.

I would say the initial release of the Intel iMac is the last time an Apple desktop release excited me. Seeing those impossibly thin aluminum bezels with huge purple nebulae onscreen really felt a little bit like the future.

> I see a fundamental shift has taken place at Microsoft under Satya's direction.

I haven't seen it yet, but it's still early days.

You cite some examples, examples that are real, eye-catching, but for me not substantive. The fundamental shift I'm looking for is a true shift in customer focus. Microsoft's big customer is enterprise I/T, who is not the end user for much of the tech. Azure seems designed to help State Farm (to pick an F500 at random) add some of that new cloud stuff to their Windows ecosystem. A good business decision, but in the age of AWS and even google services, it's simply incremental.

I could be unfair in saying "not substantive" to the open source initiatives, simply because it's such a huge philosophical shift (to a small part of their business, at least so far). Otherwise, I'm not seeing it yet.

But it takes a very long time to steer a big ship like Microsoft or Apple.

> Linux Bash shell in windows 10

Despite their "this is all about the developer" statements, making Windows Subsystem for Linux unable to co-exist with VMware and other virtualization tools was a deal-breaker for me.

Can you expand on this? Are you saying I can't run VMware while Windows Subsystem for Linux is running? I wasn't aware of such a limitation (because I don't use vmware etc.), but would like to know more.

I believe it's based upon hyper-v, which typically precludes using other VM software on the same machine. Docker toolbox for Windows 10 has the same issues.

I don't know much but the bash on windows thing was a completely separate thing from vm's.

No, WSL does not require hyper-v. It is a totally separate system from hyper-v and does not rely on virtualization of any kind. You can use WSL alongside any other VM software.

Actually, I might be wrong. I thought it required Hyper-V, since it ran an Ubuntu under the covers, and that assumption might incorrect.

Specifically, it's enabling Hyper-V which makes Windows incompatible with VMware. The incompatibility results in more issues than just those with the bash shell. The big one for me is Docker for Windows:

https://forums.docker.com/t/docker-for-windows-w-vmware-inst...

I think I will just try it out and revert back if there's an issue, since I can't find clear documentation about it being incompatible. So I assume I'm wrong.

I can let you know if you like.

It does run an ubuntu/GNU userspace, but not ubuntu Linux. WSL is a Linux ABI layer for Windows so no virtualisation is needed. It's more like WINE.

Heyo, PM for WSL here. Neither VMware, HyperV or any other VM software is required to use Bash on Windows.

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/wsl/2016/04/22/windows-subs...

WSL PM here. No virtualization software is required to use Bash on Windows.

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/wsl/2016/04/22/windows-subs...

> She cannot connect her phone to her computer to charge without a dongle.

Is it still a valid point once USB-C to Lightning Cable is out?

http://www.apple.com/us/shop/product/MK0X2AM/A/usb-c-to-ligh...

Does Apple include that cable with either the iPhone or the MacBook though? I consider it to be unreasonable to expect consumers to fork over more money to connect two devices from the same company to one another.

No, the current expectation is the consumer to buy it :/

You don't, though, iPhones will sync with the macbook over wifi: the only real problem is that the iPhone won't charge without the usb -> lightning cable or a power adapter.

The point is people don't want to carry a bag of dongles with them everyday.

Especially the Pro model consumers. It's fine for reduced ports on an Air or MacBook, you're going to make sacrifices for portability. For a flagship laptop consumers expect options.

Meh, I have exactly the same problem with Nexus 6p. I need one USB-C/USB-A cable for data transfer, another USB-C/USB-C for fast charging from the power brick that came with the phone, but back again to USB-C/USB-A to charge from the car. And don't get me started about the lack of good car charges that that support USB 3.1 PD.

It seem some friction to be inevitable when new physical connector is introduced.

But don't worry, in 5 years it'll be ubiquitous, like USB-A is now! You'll see it on planes, busses, hotel room USB outlets...all those places which now have USB-A with 500ma charging which are now obsolete. The hotel alarm clocks with 30-pin connectors are especially hilarious to me, since they're "new" but already obsolete. It's still not reasonable in 2017 to travel and forget your charger, and it'll get worse (again) before getting better.

Exactly like the FireWire ports on my older macs.

Most of those cables are "stationary" though (quotes because your car moves). And a stationary cable isn't that much hassle or friction.

I have a cable that never moves from my bedside, it plugs my Pixel C-to-C into the brick. I have C-to-A cables at my desk at work and at home, neither moves. Your car's C-to-A cable (presumably) doesn't leave your car.

The move to C on the host end is something that hasn't happened recently (not since A took off >10 years ago), but the move to C on the device-end is comparable to the move to the original 30-pin i-device cable, Mini/Micro-USB, or Lightning. It's obnoxious but inevitable.

Didn't some market study show that almost nobody plugs their phone into their computer anymore?

At least i can't remember the last time I did.

Is there no Lightning to USB C cable?

As per previous comments, _very_ recently one came out. It was not out with the initial rollout of the devices.

What? Apple's shipped in March, and third party cables have been available since at least May, 2015. IIRC there was ~a month between release of the USB-C MacBook and the first such cables, but they were available for over a year before the MacBookPro shipped.

Buy an iphone. Buy a macbook. Now try to connect the two. That's what he meant. It's possible with additional accessories, but that's not the point.

Well, this seems to be a trend. Buying a new power adaptor for new macbook:

* Buy adapter. * Buy extension cord. * Buy USB-C cable.

Those aren't packaged together anymore so now you get 3 separate boxes full of packaging just for a power adaptor. It feels wasteful... not to mention annoying if the apple sales person forgets to tell you you need to buy USB-C separately! And the correct one at that.

Reminds me of using an iMac 20 years ago...

But most people aren't buying an iPhone 7 and a MacBook at the same time, and Apple only had one laptop with USB-C ports until a month after the iPhone's release.

An iPhone 7 buyer is far more likely to find a USB-A port to plug into. Your idea would be to make the masses buy a dongle, instead of the minority who own brand new laptops.

I think you're missing the point that it's fundamentally un-Apple-like to have two new products that out-of-the-box can't connect with each other.

That might be OP's point, but that ignores the fact that Apple would likely dealing with a much worse PR disaster when millions of users can't plug their phone into literally anything they own without first buying a USB-A cable.

Seems like you don't know apple. They have always favored fancy features and out of box experience with other apple products over out of the box backwards compatibility.

It's really not usual at all especially for devices that are not required to be connected to each other or span different generations of Macs.

The AirPort has never come with an Ethernet cable

The iPod never shipped with both FireWire and USB to 30 pin cables

The ThunderBolt Display was incompatible with Macs without ThunderBolt ports

The 30" Cinema display was only compatible with the Mac Pro when it launched and later required adapters (not included) to be used on other Macs

The original iPhone's recessed headphone jack required an adapter to use older iPod headphones

The first generation of Apple USB mice/keyboards did not come with an ADB adapter

Why can't Apple ship both a USB-A and USB-C cable? In the early 2000s, Apple bundled both a USB and a Firewire cable in the packaging with a new iPod, presumably to facilitate exactly the sort of transition they're confronting now.

I don't follow how this is an example of what you conclude.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but we never been able to connect iPhone's to computers without a special cable.

It's baffling, but not new.

Sure 30-pin and Lightning to USB-A cables are both "special." But in the past users have been able to connect the phone to the current MacBook lineup out of the box. Now users of the current MacBook lineup have to buy a new Lightning to USB Type-C cable as it is not included. It is certainly an example of disunity among their product lineup.

Thank you, this is exactly what I meant.

> The unified vision at Apple is gone.

My theory is that something happened and Apple felt it was forced to release the new MBP 6 months or maybe 1 year before the whole line was ready.

Microsoft Surface happened and was being more Apple than Apple.

I purchased and received my new 15" MBP over the holidays as well (already have the new iPhone 7) and it blew my mind that the MBP had the old headphone jack.

I would say it "gets better": I have the 12" MacBook. I only have a USB-C port. I have an iPhone. I need a USB-C cable to connect my MacBook to my iPhone. So far, so good!

But, I only have one USB-C port. I also want to charge my laptop. So I have a ludicrous dongle from Apple that lets me plug HDMI, USB, and power (over USB-C) at one time.

But, the USB port on the dongle is USB-A, and I need to use the USB-C port to charge, so I would have to use a USB-A cable to connect my iPhone if I am using that dongle.

Yes: I could always use the dongle and the USB-A cable. But that dongle is so annoying to bother with that I actually carry around all three: two cables and the dongle.

Wow. Now that is hell.

I hear this argument a lot but for some reason i never plug my iPhone into my laptop for charging, mainly because its a lot slower than using an outlet. 95% of the time i charge it at night and that's fine for the day. In the rare cases where i need to charge on the go i use an outlet or a small powerbank i always have with me.

I do not understand your comment as I almost never plug my iPhone into my laptop for charging: I plug my iPhone into my laptop as USB is a much faster and more stable transfer conduit than bluetooth (for tethering) and is essentially required for doing most development work.

Ah ok, i didn't think about the mobile developer usecase, thats a valid point. Tethering works fine for me via Bluetooth but i don't use it very often, so that might be valid too. But then a simple USB-C -> Lightning cable will solve your issues right ?

But then we come back to the premise, as you are literally just stopping at the end if my first paragraph: that works until I need to charge my phone and tether or develop at the same time, something of particular importance as there is no way to connect the phone over USB without it draining the battery of the computer into the phone.

Maybe the understanding gap here is that you don't really use your laptop very much? I use my laptop constantly. I am a developer (as are probably most people on this website), and I own a fancy laptop so I can be mobile: not thinking about the use case of a mobile developer is very strange in the context of a conversation about mobile computers in a large group of developers.

(To be clear, to avoid even more miscommunication: despite the relatively small warts in this setup which seem to violate the standard design process of Apple, I like this computer and purposefully chose it with complete knowledge of what cables it would require. I wish it had a second USB-C port instead of the headphone jack, even though that would cause me to carry around another adapter, as the adapter usage would be less, but I appreciate this was essentialy their beta of USB-C and was not where and when they wanted to start the headphone war.)

I use my laptop for work and private 10-12 hours a day and am a developer myself, i just don't develop mobile apps, mostly backend services with python/go/php so i actually hardly connect my phone to the Laptop.

Sorry i actually did not reread your original comment when replying and was assuming this was about the Macbook Pro... If you only have one port there is indeed only the usb-c hub solution which can be annoying.

I have a 13000mah charger unit with 2.1A out for my Samsung phone etc. Quite neat design; why not just get one of these if you're going to be carrying so much stuff around anyway? Could use it as a bit of spare power for the 12" as well.

I don't understand how that helps: that just replaces the power supply. So now I have my laptop charging from the power brick over USB-C and I still need the dongle to attach the phone at the same time as I charge my laptop. (I am guessing you meant to charge the phone; but not only wasn't the premise--the laptop is the device that is going to need to charge, particularly when you are using the phone over USB--it doesn't come up often as the power block for the laptop is just a 29W USB-C charger, so when it doesn't make sense to charge the phone from the laptop as if the laptop were a battery pack I can plug it directly into the wall.)

Yep I meant to charge the phone; my thoughts were if you are going to be carrying extra stuff to charge the phone then might as well carry parts that extend overall battery life. (And I was thinking of away from wall usage scenarios.)

It wouldn't make any sense to provide a Lightning/USB-C cable instead of Lightning/USB-A.

Far more people own laptops with USB-A ports, and far more people never even plug their phones into anything besides their wall charger.

The iPhone isn't just for Mac users.

They could've provided one cable with an adapter.

USB type-c to type-a doesn't require an active dongle.

The irony is that say she has a macbook pro and a google pixel phone, its trivial to plug the pixel phone into the usb c port on the mac book pro without any dongles, using the cable that came with your phone.

The headset jack issues on the iPhone 7 make me more angry about a product I own than anything I can recall in recent memory.

Utterly frustrating.

Wow, I love this being trotted out every single time.

Unless the latest macbook and the latest phone are released at exactly the same time, this was always going to happen.

They could have added 2 cables, which is a huge waste since most people only need one.

Or they could have kept a shitty USB-A port on the macbook, which is not progressive enough for Apple.

Or you put a USBC-Thunderbolt cable in the new macbooks box

If a Lightning to USB-C cable (which has existed for a while now) is a dongle then what is the USB-A equivalent ? How do you think people have been charging their iPhones to date ? And you realise you still need a "dongle" if Apple used USB-C on the iPhone ?

And why does your girlfriend need two sets of headphones when there is an included 3.5mm adapter with the iPhone ?

So many questions. Because literally nothing you wrote seems to make much sense.

That the new MacBookPro doesn't at least ship with two dongles (for USB and Lightning) is pure arrogance from Apple.

That MacBookPro 13" without touchbar comes with just two USB-C and an old-school audio port (gone in iPhone7) is just stupid, as one USB-C port is used to charge the notebook.

Steve Jobs vision and his personal testing of products is missing. He would have prevented such things leaving the factory.

Beside that little ports and touchbar fiasco, the MacBookPro is a good notebook. (though I wished Intel would get their act together and finally release a chipset for 32GB RAM)

I agree. They seem to be making the same mistake as Microsoft did in the Ballmer years. Yes, they are poking at some new markets, but quite half heartedly and believing their own ecosystem hype too much.

It feels like all the protests about Vista back then. When in reality this was trivial compared to the fact there was virtually nothing exciting coming out from them and they misstepped on huge new markets.

I honestly get the impression they are shocked that people don't love all the new stuff as much as they expected.

It shouldn't surprise anyone. Tim Cook and Steve Ballmer shared a similar roll when they were under their respective CEO/Celebrities.

I know this isn't what you meant by car, but I want to take this opportunity to mention that my least favourite thing about my car is the Apple software which runs on it; Apple CarPlay.

I live in London. Apple maps is a disaster. Businesses which have moved shop years ago are in the wrong place. Traffic routes which are congested every day are recommended. It's literally a waste of my life to use this software.

Despite this flaw (and the fact that the head unit is actually useless until your plug in your iPhone), Apple maps is the only navigation software permitted to run on these head units; even though, it is permissible to use Google Maps or Waze when I am walking on the pavement; even though, it is permissible to mount my phone to my car and use an alternative navigation software.

Additionally, on the subject of "wireless grand unification," you can only connect your phone via USB.

CarPlay has supported wireless functionality for some time, but car manufacturers and 3rd party addons are only starting to support it now.

No defense for the maps restriction, however.

You're right, however, CarPlay is already a very recent development. Bluetooth seems like quite a major omission, especially when you consider that it has been an established technology in cars since at least the turn of the millennium.

Thankfully that doesn't bug me so much, because I tend to want to charge my phone when I drive anyway.

It's not a restriction. Apple simply hasn't built out a fully featured third party SDK for CarPlay yet. It's impossible to build a maps app using the currently available third party CarPlay APIs.

> Apple maps is a disaster. Businesses which have moved shop years ago are in the wrong place.

Are people submitting corrections? It's amazing how quickly they respond here in the US, at least where I am. I submit corrections and usually see a notification within a week that it's been addressed.

I haven't tried, but I'm sure they would be quick to address a correction. Unfortunately I don't think the typical car buyer should be smacked with the choice between poor data and the opportunity of volunteering for the upkeep of a product they paid for. Personally I don't think it reflects well on the company. Traffic problem still remains.

The thing that just makes me throw my hands up in exasperation is that Apple could have been early to the "home hub" game with AppleTV but they just didn't see it.

Imagine if, instead of Apple Watch, they had put those folks into building the AppleTV into a home hub based on Siri. I feel like Apple Watch was to be their "always available assistant" but I just don't see it succeeding in that market for most people.

(Siri isn't as good as Alexa or Google's thing but that's a separate issue...)

Imagine how so many Sony and then Microsoft fans feel. Either the Playstation or XBox could have been a wonderful device to centralize around in a home. Yet they constantly bungled it from generation to generation. Sony was promising when they had PS2 compatible with PS1.

The problem was they each always try to just extend their corporate wall around your home. Rather than giving an inviting place to encourage innovation in your home. Apple has the same "our way, on our time" mentality that stifles innovation by third parties. For a time, this was offset by the awesome innovations they were providing. That time seems to be ending.

Great point- and if I'm not mistaken there was voice recognition available on the XBox 360 and the PS3 through their add-on camera kits, which meant only some relatively small portion of installs had it. Then they both did the exact same thing in the following gen.

The XBox has Cortana, I think, but does the PS4 have a "smart assistant"?

Cortana requires a mic attached to Xbox or the controller. But I never use one. It would be nice to have a mic built into Xbox, which would act like Alexa or Google home.

My wife and I both use our Xbox One with Kinect and Amazon Echo daily. Alexa works extremely well, but Cortana works only 80% of the time and so slowly we usually pick up a controller, even just to pause Netflix.

Xbox one can be controlled remotely with Xbox mobile app, you might find that useful. I didn't get the Kinect by the way.

but Cortana works only 80% of the time and so slowly we usually pick up a controller, even just to pause Netflix

That's why I unhooked the Kinect that was forced upon me when I bought a launch day box, and put it in the garage. That pile of garbage worked just often enough to trick me into trying to rely on it. But 80% isn't anywhere near good enough, IMO.

I've read speculation that the last AppleTV update was supposed to come along with a big content deal that didn't materialize. Of course, maybe the "old" Apple would have been able to wrestle the bargain.

    - Apple had Siri out and was in the lead with voice control, then they wasted it.
    - Home automation was supposed to get better with HomeKit but arrived basically stalled.
    - Apple's cloud offering is confusing and hard to manage
    - AppleTv is a great product but Apple can't seem to really work with partners

3 out of 4 of the above has to do with UX and software. Apple is losing its way with UX with particular pieces of software. In the old days, the errant groups would get spanked by Steve Jobs or his chosen lieutenants. In the old days, the last one would also be brought home by Steve Jobs or his chosen lieutenants.

> Apple had Siri out and was in the lead with voice control, then they wasted it.

I think this statement can be generalized to almost every single product Apple sells or has sold. They've seriously excelled at innovation in the past (tons of great historic computers, the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, Siri, etc.) but then it's like the whole company eventually gets bored with Product X and moves on because "Innovation is Out There!"

I honestly want to know what was innovative about Siri. Android already have voice commands at that time, they just didn't have a cutesy name for it. I guess Siri was "innovative" in that it had a clever marketing campaign behind it, that Google, Microsoft, and Amazon later copied.

Siri was a big distraction when it came in the box with humor.

But otherwise, it was the future. Just think if you were supposed to control your device with voice only. Blind people could use it. Car drivers could use it. Lazy people could use it.

Siri took a long time to integrate into apps. Siri took a while to get some intelligence. Siri took a while to integrate more into the OS. Siri became just another app but with a hardware shortcut. Nothing more. Future spoiled.

But Siri wasn't voice activated at the start. It actually got that feature after Google Now had it. So again, I don't see anything that was innovative about Siri at its release.

> Android already have voice commands at that time, they just didn't have a cutesy name for it.

So did iOS, well before Android. They just didn't have a cutesy name for it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_command_device#Voice_com...

> Amazon is Leading the voice assistant market, and Google is right on their heels.

That's rather subjective. My experiences with Siri have been way better than with Google.

> You had to buy newer versions that had some proprietary Apple chip in it.

Not accurate at all.

> Apple can't seem to really work with partners to make it actually innovative.

Neither can Google or Roku. Content providers are stubborn.

> they've been wondering aimlessly and dropping half products out there then never iterating and finishing them

You just described Google, actually.

I mean, they're making billions a year in revenue in the markets they are in, so maybe they don't care?

(side note: in my experience Alexa is much worse at understanding what I'm asking)

edit: to quote the article: "Shrinking iPhone sales last year caused Apple to suffer its first annual revenue decline in 15 years." Apple is incredibly successful, all of this declaring them dead because they had a bad quarter is kind of dumb.

HomeKit doesn't require a proprietary Apple chip, I have no idea where you got that idea. It just has very high security standards.

All I know is that I have Philips Hue lights, Belkin Wemo switches, and a Nest thermostat and none of them connect to HomeKit. For the Hue I have to buy a new bridge, Belkin says that they can't support it without completely new hardware[1], and Nest is completely mum on the issue but presumably there's no hope of support in the near future.

These devices all have active developer communities and good API/interaction. I plugged my Amazon Echo in and it immediately detected all three and allowed me to control them seamlessly. I don't know what the specific issue is but it sure seems like Apple is the problem.

[1]: http://www.belkin.com/us/support-article?articleNum=187953

The issue is Apple's security standards.

The same standards that let a stranger stand in front of your door and say "hey Siri, open the front door" and walk right in?

Out of curiosity, how does the required chip/hardware help defend against this?

Yes, it is a security standard issue, but it's enforced with hardware. So, while this is there for a reason (possibly even setting a standard for these IoT devices), it's not simply a lack of developers building secure software. It's with the hardware not being spec'd to meet these "arbitrary" security standards. I say arbitrary because clearly no one else in the game is using it. So, I think the OP is correct here, Apple has made a product that simply doesn't work with other products due to their own decisions.

Edit: Typos

As a disclaimer I'm not really an apple fan and have found all of their products to be blah to me.

Considering the rise in IoT based DDoS attacks and the ftc going after companies like D-Link for poor security practices, aren't security standards like Apple is requiring something we want to commend?

Insteon is still an insecure and unencrypted protocol, just the new homekit hub is 'more secure' now, controlling insecure items.

You can also install a general homekit proxy with a general nodejs server called homebridge. That homekit proxy can control anything with any kind of security.

So at this point it's just another proprietary standard unfortunately :( Might as well call it another MFi program.

It is part of the MFi program.

What would you like Apple to do?

> "HomeKit doesn't require a proprietary Apple chip, I have no idea where you got that idea."

A few sources disagree:

http://www.ibtimes.com/apple-homekit-devices-wont-include-go...

> "Apple’s MFi guidelines require manufacturers to use only Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, and also include a specialized chip for authentication"

http://www.digitaltrends.com/home/everything-that-works-with...

> "The certification ensures that these smart home devices have an authentication chip and have undergone rigorous testing to get Apple’s official seal of approval"

http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1327267

> "Apple Inc. requires anyone making a device compatible with its HomeKit environment to buy and use a special identity chip."

Now, I don't have access to the official docs for MFi - so maybe these sources are all wrong. But I'm pretty confident a special chip is required.

The Homebridge project provides HomeKit compatibility without Apple authorization. I don't know if Apple controls this using patents or trademarks but you don't technically need Apples authorization.

From what I can tell from Homebridge they provide HomeKit emulation - not compatibility. You're running a local Node server to emulate the Homekit API.

Still neat - but hardly the sort of thing that implies you can ship a product utilizing Homekit without following the MFi spec.

To emulate the iOS HomeKit API, meaning you can write plugins for it to provide support for non-HomeKit-enabled devices. But presumably Homebridge itself must still vend itself as a HomeKit-enabled device on the network or else you wouldn't be able to control it.

I'm pretty sure that when you register a Homebridge instance to your Apple device though you get a message about the accessory being in test mode.

Homebridge is presumably making use of some debug mode that you wouldn't use in a shipping product - and if you did, Apple wouldn't let you advertise it as officially compatible with HomeKit.

Huh, you might be right. I've never run across any references to this before, all I've seen in the past is about how HomeKit has very high security standards and that's why a lot of devices don't work. Still, without access to the MFi documentation, it's not clear if this chip is actually required or if it's just the easiest way to meet the security requirements that HomeKit imposes.

I was going to reply to the person that replied to you (I had agreed with you and thought it was just beefier hardware they'd need to handle the encryption demands) but it turns out they specifically require a certain type of coprocessor:

> Where many companies fail to secure their products at all or use simple 128-bit encryption, all HomeKit certified hardware includes a dedicated security co-processor paired with 3072-bit keys and the very secure Curve25519 key exchange system

http://www.howtogeek.com/232235/htg-explains-why-does-apples...

> Home automation was supposed to get better with HomeKit but arrived basically stalled.

No clue where you're getting this from. HomeKit is bigger/better than ever. There are tons of new HomeKit compatible devices being shown at CES this year. You can goto major hardware stores like Home Depot and Lowes and buy HomeKit lights, outlets, switches, door locks, etc. Apple made some nice improvements to HomeKit in iOS 10 by adding the 'Home' app and including control of HomeKit accessories in Control Center. They also added a bunch of new features to the HomeKit APIs to support new types of devices. I've never heard anything about incompatible HomeKit devices. It's possible but I'm using all first-gen devices and they work fine so I doubt it.

> Apple had Siri out and was in the lead with voice control, then they wasted it.

Just ask "Who's the next President of the United States of America." OK Google gets it. Siri shows you a list of web/wiki articles.

Also, remember Maps? Such a useless app. Can't cache anything, and no updates since ever.

Actually, maps has improved dramatically which is why it's the one complaint about Apple that is rarely repeated.

No cache at all is horrible mobile experience

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