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Comment by mojuba | Hacker News Reader

There seems to be a lot of negativity around Apple's recent products, both justified and unjustified. What I'm fearing is, that Apple's management will disregard them all as unjustified, i.e. see, CR just rushed to report bad battery life but it kinda wasn't our fault and it wasn't the battery.

But battery life aside, there are legitimate concerns that haven't been addressed, such as no updates for a long time. Phil Schiller saying "I have never seen a great new Apple product that didn’t have its share of early criticism and debate — and that’s cool", then missing sales targets for the iPhone 7 - these things may be a sign that they are gradually losing the sense of reality.

Obviously they are hearing, but are they listening?

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I think that technology is slowing down. Skylake to Kabby Lake was a negligible performance improvement. It's hard to get everyone excited about the new lineup when there's not a whole lot that's new and cool in the full-size computer world.

What people need is not necessarily faster systems, but often just quality workhorse computers to replace their previous (broken or worn off) ones. Fingerprint security, better audio and better battery life would have been a good enough increment to a lot of people to buy the new series. In fact the MBP did perform well in sales, though it could've been even better if all 3 of the above were available on all models.

The iPhone 7 though is a big disappointment, and the fact that Apple themselves overestimated the demand is indicative of that. I think to a lot of people it looked like a decrement rather than increment, i.e. it's a 6 without the headphone jack. Camera? I don't know if I need the new one really. Faster CPU? I'm not sure it's critical for the apps I'm using. Personally, it's the first time since iPhone 3 that I don't want the new one.

Maybe it's all normal and maybe Schiller is right in that every new product will always be met with criticism. Apple's stuff is now too popular and too important to be dismissed if it's a flop. Who cares if Dell's next laptop is ugly and/or overpriced? No one cares. But Apple is a near-monopoly because of OS lock-in and millions of people's jobs (I'm guessing) literally depending on them.

It's this sense of panic that Apple is slowly building up a bubble around themselves. We don't even know whether it's the usual secrecy around R&D or they simply don't know what to do next.

The problem is the new MBP is a new product masquerading as an upgrade. Had they called it the Macbook Touch and just bumped the specs on the current Pro, everyone would be happy, and they could see for themselves whether anyone cares or whether it's a useless gimmick. That's how they handled the Air.

>The iPhone 7 though is a big disappointment, and the fact that Apple themselves overestimated the demand is indicative of that. I think to a lot of people it looked like a decrement rather than increment, i.e. it's a 6 without the headphone jack. Camera? I don't know if I need the new one really. Faster CPU? I'm not sure it's critical for the apps I'm using. Personally, it's the first time since iPhone 3 that I don't want the new one.

The headphone port aside, it's an incremental update, with big internal technology boosts (cpu, gpu, camera setup, etc) as always (and waterproof, which is big).

What exactly would the disappointment be? And the 7 is selling more than fine, who said anything about "overestimating demand"?

"In the US, iOS grew 7 percentage points year-over-year, from 33.5% of smartphone sales to 40.5% in the three months ending October 2016. This represents the strongest rate of growth for the OS in more than two years, as well as the highest share seen since the three months ending January 2015 (42.8%). And while Android remains the dominant OS in the US, at 57.9% of smartphone sales, this latest data represents the 5th consecutive year-on-year period decline"

The iPhone enjoyed its largest gains in the UK, where sales of Apple’s iPhone lineup grew 9.1% year-over-year to 48.3%. At the same time, Kantar says Android’s share of smartphone sales slid 1.8% to 49.6%. iPhone’s share of the market also grew in France, Italy, Spain and across the EU5 region as a whole.

other source:

Overall, Slice says, revenues from iPhone sales in November and December 2016 were up 66.9% from the same period last year.

>And the 7 is selling more than fine, who said anything about "overestimating demand"?

Apple[1] reduced Tim Cooks bonus for failing to meet sales goals in the last quarter - thats a pretty good measure of how c

The statistics you provide are all too vague to reach any conclusions about the iphone 7, as they are about iOS or all iphones. The CNN article specifically notes that iphone sales have seen a decline in each of the last 3 quarters.

[1]http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/06/technology/apple-tim-cook-pa...

There were reports a few weeks ago that Apple is going to cut production of iPhone 7 because it overestimated demand, at the same time it underestimated demand for iPhone SE and other cheaper models. It may still be huge, or even "bigger than ever" but the fact that they under- or overestimate things is an indication of something being not quite right with Apple.

A lot of those reports are just rumors and the opposite pans out.

Longer lasting charging cables would be good.

I have a 5s. I'd like more RAM and disk. I don't need a faster processor/bigger screen and I like my headphone jack, thanks.

4k Netflix is an easy to understand new feature, that will have an impact on the non-technology aware consumer.

Not many "non-technology aware consumers" watch 4K (or even have the bandwidth to without crappy buffer lags).

> CR just rushed to report bad battery life but it kinda wasn't our fault and it wasn't the battery.

I'm an Apple user, but I'm sad to say this is absolutely on par with the company's past behavior. It brings up memories of the iPhone antenna story where the phone would lose connectivity if you held it "wrong". Apple clearly and emphatically stated that users were at fault for putting their fingers on the enclosure and the phone was supposedly working as intended.

It's the same with the MacBook Pro now. The battery isn't too small, you're just using the laptop "wrong" by making it do more work than Apple intended. This is corroborated by the article where CR implicitly admitted fault for not browsing content that was already in the device's cache during the test.

This sounds absolutely ridiculous, and it is, but this pricey downgrade of a laptop is still selling like hotcakes.

Personally, as an Apple user, I'm not in a rush to buy "new" hardware from them anytime soon.

Not only that, this seems like a deviation from Consumer reports' normal policy of testing the end-user experience. If an ordinary end-user ran into an edge case which caused the battery life to plummet beyond the advertised level, as a number seem to have, Apple wouldn't rush to find and fix the issue. They're effectively retesting with a special fix aimed at their test process, and there are so many ways this could be rigged (for example, by throttling performance during the test).

Of course you can use the computer in a way that the battery will last shorter than the advertised battery.

The advertised battery is neither minimum or maximum number of hours the machine can run without needing a charge. If CR wanted to find the minimum battery time, fine. But that is not what they are after, so triggering an edge case the increases battery usage is a bug.

The writing's on the wall. Apple computer hardware and software have declined/been neglected the last few years. It's obvoiusly not a priority anymore.

After almost 10 years I am leaving the Apple ecosystem, and my next computer will not be a Mac.

To quote another commenter right above you:

You don't invent an entirely new hinge mechanism, a completely new keyboard mechanism and integrate an entire computer subsystem with touch based interface, together with thorough updates to all your software to support it, in a product you're neglecting. The only credible criticism I've seen of the new MBP is that it's limited to 16 GB RAM and that's because that's the maximum limit of low profile RAM the Intel mobility processors support. That should change this year. For the iMac, the move to 5K and wide colour gamut were huge upgrades. I think they bought themselves a few more months of runway on those, given the paucity of Intel's roadmap over the last year. The real pain is with the Mac Pros. The situation there is just plain embarrassing. But looking at the Mac as a whole, Apple has been pouring in innovation and attention to detail. No other manufacturer is coming close to the level of effort going into their systems. Contrast the Surface line with bought-in commodity touch tech and clunky component choices (5400 rpm hard drives? Really?).

The new keyboard mechanism is a slight modification of the keyboard on the existing Macbooks. The touch bar is new, granted, but it's riddeled with bugs and the usability is low. In short, it's a gimmic. The new laptops are thinner, but the overall chassis design is the same and is getting very stale.

MacOS is getting slower and more buggy by each update. I used to look forward to updates. Now I dread them, afraid of what will break next. Apple is removing features from their own Mac apps, dumbing it down.

Everything Apple has done on the Mac platform lately seems uninspired and lacking in commitment. See also: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-20/how-apple...

>The new keyboard mechanism is a slight modification of the keyboard on the existing Macbooks. The touch bar is new, granted, but it's riddeled with bugs and the usability is low.

Usability might be low, but it's a whole new subsystem. It will have some bugs, that will be ironed out in future updates (and those are software bugs anyway).

>The new laptops are thinner, but the overall chassis design is the same and is getting very stale.

On the contrary, it's timeless. Even in 20 years, with 5 new redesigns in between then and now, they will still look good, like a 2000's era Powerbook or a metallic G5 still does 10+ years on.

I think people criticized new products when they didn't understand them. This is a laptop, we all know what it is. It's a minor change where Apple is telling us what we want. Sure, they've done it before, but now they seem tone deaf.

What's also completely dismissed is the erroneous result(s) that were around 18h battery life... my MBP is rated for 12hrs (of light use) and I've got it to 14 once, but I can't imagine getting to 18.

They will probably be waiting for the quarterly financial report for units sold. Though last time I check didn't the macbook, mac product range make a small portion of their overall revenue stream?

That's only relative. In absolute numbers the mac is a large business.

Yes, but compared to mobile it's an order of magnitude smaller for Apple. It makes sense for them to focus on mobile, but it seems like they're doing that almost to the extent where they're neglecting Mac.

The only credible criticism I've seen of the new MBP is that it's limited to 16 GB RAM and that's because that's the maximum limit of low profile RAM the Intel mobility processors support. That should change this year.

For the iMac, the move to 5K and wide colour gamut were huge upgrades. I think they bought themselves a few more months of runway on those, given the paucity of Intel's roadmap over the last year.

The real pain is with the Mac Pros. The situation there is just plain embarrassing. But looking at the Mac as a whole, Apple has been pouring in innovation and attention to detail. No other manufacturer is coming close to the level of effort going into their systems. Contrast the Surface line with bought-in commodity touch tech and clunky component choices (5400 rpm hard drives? Really?).

Only relative matters.

I'm not blaming, just trying to better understand what's going on.

I'm not grumpy with Consumer Reports. I don't know that I would have caught the debug mode bug. For future, I'd encourage them to contact reviewees when something seems out of whack.

Their only mistake was a weak mea culpa. I can't speak to that.

Consumer Reports has done excellent work in the past. Our society is better for their efforts. But I'm disappointed that they haven't adapted to digital media. I now refer to The Wire Cutter more than CR. How'd that happen?

Apple's laptop line is being screwed by Intel's new CPUs ship dates slipping.

I can't find the specific analysis right now... I thought it was Chuq, but this is all I've found:

https://chuqui.com/2016/10/how-apple-could-have-avoided-much...

https://chuqui.com/2017/01/apples-2016-in-review/

I have no idea if the Touch Bar is any good. But I'm glad Apple is doing it. Just like I was excited by switching from gorilla glass to sapphire. OLED is the future and Apple needs build that core competency. Better to try and fail than not try at all.

I'm worried that Apple dropped their screens and wifi hubs. If they can persist with the Apple TV, then they can keep those other niches products alive.

I worry about the Mac Pro. I don't like the feeling of abandonment. I'll always need a desktop and it's about time for me to refresh. There's been lots of suggestions; I like Matt Yglesias's notion about making the Mac division a special case within the org.

http://www.vox.com/new-money/2016/11/27/13706776/apple-funct...

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2016/11/28/yglesias-apple-f...

Apple has acknowledged the desktop problem and said "hold on, it's coming." I'm content to wait and see for now, maybe another 6 months.

Apple is doing so much right in so many other ways. I'm an ecstatic Apple customer. I've transitioned family members to Apple hardware; my support burden is now greatly reduced. And I totally buy-in to their emphasis on services going forward.

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