- Apple has missed plenty of ship dates in the past; I refer you to the Saga Of The White iPhone.
- The Watch is selling well (dominating its category), iPhone 7 selling well (same), new MacBook is too early to tell.
- No drive? I wonder how well-informed you are if you think Tim Cook has no drive. He's not a product guy but contrary to popular belief, a CEO does not necessarily need to be.
- FoundationDB? Tuplejump? Turi?
> The Watch is selling well (dominating its category), iPhone 7 selling well (same), new MacBook is too early to tell.
Apple Watch revenue barely shows up on their 10Q and 10K (see the mysterious other category), it is basically a non-factor to their performance and stock. I question why they even released the watch. iPhone actually is not selling as well as expected, they have cut orders[1] multiple times. There are widespread reports of users returning their new MacBook Pro's as well and switching to PCs/Linux.
FoundationDB was acquired in 2015 nearly 2 years ago. The others I can't speak too, but doesn't seem like it will make any impact. Think about this, Apple could and should have acquired either NetFlix or Tesla if they wanted too either last year or the year before... Now, both are too large and expensive for Apple to buy.
[1] - https://www.google.com/search?q=apple+cuts+iphone+orders
Without any data to back the claim up, I'm reasonably sure this is just a loud, extremely small, minority. There are some things wrong with the new MacBook Pros, but, in my opinion, they are still, very likely, the best laptops out there.
[1] - http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/10/14225716/apple-macbook-pro...
I'd love to hear how Consumer Report managed to get a nearly 20-hour battery life result in one of their tests, though.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2010/jun/25/ipho...
Best case, I'll skip this generation, but I'm strongly considering razer blade stealth + core.
If there was any clarity as to when we could expect a new MBP, I'd very strongly consider waiting. But otherwise, I'm thinking I'll just bite the bullet on the current one, mainly because of the keyboard (entirely subjective, but I very much like it), and the screen (just as subjective). Anecdotally, I've seen a reasonable number of people say that the new MBPs run cooler and quieter, which, to me, is very appealing in a laptop.
As far as TouchBar goes: while playing with it at the store, I found some reasonably cute uses that might offset the loss of function keys, such as the seek-bar for Picture-in-Picture or AirPlay videos. And, of course, TouchID.
I guess what I'm trying to say is: if at all feasible – definitely wait for a refresh. But, personally, after taking the time to think about it, I've found sufficient reasons to upgrade even to the 2016 model.
Switching back to Linux no longer feels like a downgrade after a year of VIM over SSH.
So to me its a near-total useless 'feature' that has the potential to be reverted in the next generation. Unless I see a really killer app for it, I'll just continue ignoring it - and one of the reasons I may not see it, is that Apple are discouraging developers from using it as a display and requiring, rather, that it be used as a control surface. If I had an RSS feed on the thing, I'd find it a lot more useful - but Apple have a policy against that sort of thing. This seems like a broken policy, to me, though ..
It usually takes a few iterations for an Apple product before it becomes successful. The iPhone, iPod, and iPad all had pretty weak sales for a few years before they take off. I say it's too early to judge the success or failure of the Apple Watch.
> iPhone actually is not selling as well as expected, they have cut orders[1] multiple times.
There have been reports of Apple cutting iPhone orders basically every year. People somehow seem to forget that.
> There are widespread reports of users returning their new MacBook Pro's as well and switching to PCs/Linux.
The Mac line is what I'm actually worried about. I think we'll see this year how they see the future of the Mac. My guess is that they are to switch to their own ARM based processors, especially now when Microsoft is developing ARM support for Windows. Perhaps not this year but not too far into the future.