I respect Ive's design skills but I think that Ive leaving is one of the best things to happen to Apple in decades.
They're slowly going from Ive's minimalist artistic designs back to useful computing devices and user interfaces.
They're slowly going from Ive's minimalist artistic designs back to useful computing devices and user interfaces.
There does seem to be more collaboration and sensible compromises from all internal stakeholders than at any time at Apple, at least that is how it feels as an end user. Apple products of the last few years have less head scratching omissions and/or design/engineering decision.
The MacBook Pro from 2016 to 2021 is the embodiment of that weirdness.
Mac suffered a lot under Jobsless Ive (Cook doesn't care about product one way or the other), surviving the butterfly / touchbar winter because customers were able to keep their old Retina laptops, customers groaned and beared with lemon laptops for a few years, and desktop declined in overall relevance (except gaming where Apple never had a presence anyway), and started to recover in the post-butterfly/post-touchbar/M1 era.
I’m not arguing that Ive is a great designer. Ok just saying that the iMac hockey puck mouse doesn’t invalidate that claim.
I’m not an Apple Watch fan myself (still clutching my Pebble for dear life), but I can understand why the uber-expensive Apple Watches would appeal to a certain audience.
I never could understand why Apple (or anyone else) this would be a possibility. Luxury watches are almost synonymous with heirloom; there is no way anyone will be wearing a functional Gold Apple watch in 2085 with the anecdote "This was my dad's watch" - it would be hopelessly outdated, and likely non-functional by then. This is not the case with other luxury watches. This has little to do with branding, but everything to do with expected longevity and utility.
Passing down a watch or car is an incidental thing and the watches real old money passes down are not the ones like Patek Phillipe who find it necessary to run ads suggesting otherwise to the middle class readers of The Economist.
This is somewhat true throughout all of apple's products. Release a new Mac or iPhone, you'll notice a lot of people (especially musicians) buying them for no utilitarian reason other than because it's new and because it'll be theirs - and it's expensive. Apple's marketing and reputation is so brilliant it's ingrained almost like a religion (Certainly socially what religion was to a ye olde' peasant)
But a lot of people wear luxury watches simply to show off how much disposable income they have. To these people, having a watch that is recognizably expensive is the only requirement.
> nonrecurring engineering costs led Apple’s business division to suspend the iPad [redesign]
That doesn’t sound like Ive had unconstrained power?
With the speed of the M-series processors, and the fact that I can get one with ports and without an idiotic touchbar, I've started considering an Apple laptop for the first time in years.
I'm sure it's just a matter of time before the pendulum swings back again, alas.
We got a decade or more to enjoy this time of “doing things right”
Up to two external displays with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz at over a billion colors (M1 Pro) or up to three external displays with up to 6K resolution and one external display with up to 4K resolution at 60Hz at over a billion colors (M1 Max)
To clarify the M1 Macs, not Pro, Max, or Ultra can only support one external display. This also seems to be the case with the non-Pro/Max/Ultra M2 macs.
The parent comment: “Maybe by next decade, all the MacBook "pro" models will support more than one external display.”
The 13” M1/M2 MBP is the only one that doesn’t support more than one external display.
I already have a half-dozen Apple devices that I use every day. I don't really need more of them.
I steadfastly refused to use a smartphone and a tablet when the products came out but ended up making them an integral part of my daily life. Apple has made products that have fundamentally altered our idea of a computer a few times, our idea of a phone once, and our idea of a music player once, and a consumer information consumption device (tablet). I'm talking about that level of innovation here. A laptop without ports and that is x mm thick is not a 'new' consumer product from this perspective.
As an outsider, I have no idea whether this is the case. But I could imaging that if they had stayed on a more evolutionary design path, their current laptops might not be quite so amazing.
Is this a subtle attack on USB-C?
This failure resulted in a support program that covered the entire output of the Apple MacBook Pro product line for half a decade.
Nothing subtle about that at all.
It could also be a widespread cultural issue where Apple is unable to admit fault. Sure, Apple removed the butterfly after he left, but they're still quite stubborn about not putting USB-C on iPhones, for example.
The annoying thing was the lack of everything else except usb-c. Especially in 2017 when it was uncommon and for devices featuring only 2 ports. „Dongle life“ was a serious step backwards.