Apple's Blue Ocean
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• MST (DisplayPort daisy chaining) in MacOS. The hardware has supported it for over a decade. The OS is the weak link here. It's the difference between spending $75-$300 for a dock in addition to the cables and just connecting the monitors together along with a single cable to the first monitor.
• Non-soldered storage. Seriously. Storage is the most likely component to fail. SSDs only have so many write cycles.
• BIOS on a separate chip. To make matters worse, with the introduction of the T2 chip, the BIOS is stored on the SSD as well. This means if the SSD fails, you don't just lose your data; you have an expensive brick. You can't even boot to external drive anymore if one of the two SSD chips fails.
• Safer SSD chips. If a cheap capacitor fails on newer Macs, 13V gets shorted straight to the SSD. The SSD commonly doesn't survive this. And since the BIOS is on the SSD now… Literal ten cent part blows up your multi-thousand dollar laptop with zero warning.
Storage. Hard drives and SSDs.
Since 2018 and the T2 chip, the BIOS is stored on the soldered storage chip pair. Either one of those two chips or a capacitor adjacent to them dies, you've not only lost your files and OS. You can't replace them. You can't even plug in an external drive to boot off of since the BIOS is now stored on the SSD chips as well instead of a separate ROM as before.
2016-2017 soldered the storage, but you could at least work around it. 2018+, there are no more workarounds. If any part of your SSD fails now, you've got an expensive useless brick.
Swapping wear your SSD out faster? SOL. Capacitor fails and shunts 13V through your SSD? SOL. Anything at all happens to either one of your SSD chips? SOL.
Either pay for that AppleCare in perpetuity or buy a whole new laptop. There are no more workarounds.
> One study commissioned by NEC and conducted by researchers at the University of Utah showed that people using a dual-display machine to do a text-editing task were 44 percent more productive than those who used a single monitor.
I think it's fair to say that any research from 2014 isn't the most relevant now. Both screen size and (importantly) software has changed to better support both multiple screen usage as well as large screens.
The argument for single screens in the NYT is mostly that it reduces distractions:
> But for most people, the time spent juggling two windows or scrolling across large documents isn’t the biggest bottleneck in getting work done. Instead, there’s a more basic, pernicious reason you feel constantly behind — you’re getting distracted.
This seems to indicate they were comparing a maximized window on a single screen vs non-maximized windows on multiple screens, and probably in the days before modern notifications on desktop OSs.
Based on this it is fair to say more research is needed, but it is inaccurate to claim that studies support the idea that one monitor is better.
I have a 34" main monitor positioned directly in front of me, a 24" in vertical orientation I use mostly for multiple terminals and my MPB screen below the 34".
I don't think this is an unusual setup.
> Tilt your head in those directions
This applies to large single monitors too. I think (hope?!) most people have a setup where their main work is right in front of them.
> If you think modern notifications are less distracting I'll respectfully disagree.
No I'm saying they are more distracting, so reduce the relevance of old articles claiming a single monitor reduced those.
From an ergonomic point of view this is no different than using a single monitor. They are at the right height and the right angle and with a good chair. The trick is to rotate the chair rather than your head. And it does take a bit of space.
The NYTimes article is actually explicit about that:
> Unlike monitor makers with their multidisplay studies, I have no research proving you’ll find as much benefit from a single monitor as I did.
In other words “there are actual studies proving multimonitor setups enhance productivity, but Big Screen(tm) paid for them so they must be wrong” which has no basis in science at all.
Also:
> “Two monitors are a double-edged sword,” said Gloria Mark, a professor who studies workplace distractions at the University of California, Irvine. Ms. Mark hasn’t specifically researched how second monitors might affect focus, and when she recently had a chance to work at a two-monitor machine, she felt that it did make some of her tasks easier. “But most people have their email up on the second screen, and of course, when anything comes in, it’s a great source of distraction,” she said.
So the only actual scientist in all of this actually said “hey, this is making me more productive, unless I fill the screens with distractions”
The tl;dr is that people need to set up their workspace to enhance their flow and focus, and reduce distraction to be productive. The amount of screens is about as relevant to that as the weather outside. (“Hey, the sun is shining and the birds are singing, it is a beautiful day outside, let’s go out!”). As per your own conclusion (“the studies don’t indicate it’s universal” - setting aside the fact that there _are_ no studies) It is not universal.
Trying to whitewash Apple’s lack of DP Daisychaining support as “You don’t need this anyway, Apple simply cares about your productivity!” Is silly.
Three in this thread alone, and shifting the goalposts from “studies show it is bad” to “I don’t know anyone with multiple monitors” or “It is tiring to move your head around all the time” indicate you are not debating this in good faith, so I am done with this chat.
Have a great day!
With specialized software ( multi track AV) and/or ad hoc setup ( e.g. deeply tuned Linux) the more the screens you throw at it, the better.
Also, NVIDIA cards in eGPUs and Thunderbolt (arm64) aren't supported.
The best solution is either don't use Apple, or have a machine under warranty and very good backups.
Complaints aside, the Anker 777 dock does 5K-8K DP over USB-C, 1 GbE, 100w charging, 4 USB-A and more and works with m1 and m2 MBPs. Add a quality magnetic USB-C connector, and it's "MagSafe" docking to a monitor, power, and accessories with one cable. I'm in the camp of 1 giant 49" monitor, with occasional AirPlay to a nearby Apple TV 4K on an 85" TV.
This specific model is a 840/845 G8 (I have both, they're the same, one Intel and the other AMD). I haven't seen the current G10, but I've seen the supposedly higher-end 1040 G10 and, like the Dell, it looks the part, but it's clearly all plastic. Complete with creaking noises if you look at it wrong. And the one I'm talking about was brand new, maybe 5 hours old.
> the screen shifts colour when a slight pressure is applied on the lid
Heh. Must be nice to have a screen whose color is consistent if you leave it alone. My HP changes colors if I shift my head. No, these are not cheap 2003 models. Yes, they cost as much as a similar MBP.
It’s not that hard to find a high-end/$2000+ PC laptop for 40% or so off 1-2 years after its release, not so much a macbook. Apple is still selling refurbished M1 airs for $849.00 from 2020 ($999 was the price on introduction)
This doesn't match either my experience, the experience of others I know or the good resale value Apple devices continue to have.
They have made mistakes. Like the battery in my current 2015 MBP is too hard to replace. And I avoided upgrading for a long time due to the known issues with the keyboards. But it seems like they generally correct when making mistakes like that.
I do agree that SSDs shouldn’t be soldered on though. Hopefully it’s one of the mistakes they’ll eventually fix. I kind of understand the motivation.. you can make it impossible to effectively steal a device, or access its contents. The device becomes very simple and robust in some ways. But they could come up with a good compromise.
Like, sure, keep the concept of not having an SSD controller on the drive, and firmware on the SSD. But sell replacement SSDs with the firmware and a recover OS preloaded. One that lets you provision the new drive with the SOC through your iCloud account. Depending on the on-chip storage and whether it’s fuse/EPROM-based or flash, the number of possible drive replacements might be limited. But that’s an OK compromise.
I have to laugh at this.
Apple had a well known strategy of denying that obvious problems with their devices were not actually problems with their devices until 5-10 years later when no one would be using those devices anymore, at which point they would announce a recall, which involved a tedious process of proving it's the right device, and shipping it to Apple for days or taking it to an Apple Store for repairs.
In the meanwhile they would deny that it was ever a problem. The good thing was that a lot of Apple Geniuses were absolutely decent people and would probably give you a repair for free although they were supposed to try to get you to pay for the repairs.
I mean, just consider how long Apple denied the following, highly public recall worthy issues (and then extrapolate that to how they would behave with something that was less publicized and had a failure rate of about 10% as opposed to the much higher failure rates exhibited in these situations):
1. You're holding it wrong, iPhone 4. 2. No, your battery is not degraded...you're just imagining that your battery life is low 3. We fixed the degraded battery....no your phone hasn't slowed down...you're just imagining it. 4. Butterfly keyboards.
This is just patently false.
I guess you should say include "Modern" Apple Mac. Macbook Post 2015 are pretty bad compare to older MacBook. Those who are EE or interested in Hardware should watch a few of Louis Rossmann video.
But then because the rest of the industry are so poor in reliability they still get to say they are once of the most reliable notebook. May be apart from Lenovo.
I have a 2007 iPod nano that I still use pretty regularly. It still works, and I can load new music to it from my Mac.
I would say it was engineered to last.
If you're an Apple engineer then thanks for your forward thinking. Please keep it up, people do appreciate it, even if you don't hear it that often.
Got any sources for that? I find that hard to believe.
> MST (DisplayPort daisy chaining) in MacOS. The hardware has supported it for over a decade. The OS is the weak link here.
This is indeed annoying, but with USB4/Thunderbolt support becoming more common in monitors, I believe this is going to be less of an issue going forward.
So even I get puzzled whenever I see “storage is the most likely component to fail”. Maybe I just got lucky?
A sister comment to mine referred to this too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38066645
No write intensive usage. Just normal office use with occasionally compiling code.
With typical usage, it should hopefully be out many more years than the laptop gets security updates.
Well, that's a good question, isn't it? Especially when you're selling memory-limited hardware and shoving the swap in your SSD
(And using it past the availability of security updates should be the user's prerogative, not Apple - you can run Linux on the ARM laptops)
I spent so long troubleshooting and trying to figure out why it didn't work before I stumbled on this article[1].
[1]: https://sebvance.medium.com/everything-you-need-to-know-abou...
* Nothing to add.
* Hardware enclave is a requirement for most corporate/government computers so you're just comparing two different classes of computer. All the enterprise Windows machines also do this.
* Same as above
Not everybody has a zillion dollars to spend on expensive thunderbolt displays and they shouldn't have to when the Displayport standard (and other operating systems) support daisy chaining.
It doesn't support it, exactly, it supports a compressed image in each of the multiple streams transported, which can introduce quality problems when doing the production work people use higher end Macs for.
"the combined data rate requirements of all the displays cannot exceed the limits of a single DP port" -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DisplayPort#Multi-Stream_Trans...
Arguably, compared to TB ports transmitting a full quality image to each screen, this could be "unexpected behavior".
That said, TB3/TB4 should be able to handle dual 4K at 60Hz from a single DisplayPort connection to the laptop.
One thing to note is the quality of Apple’s storage is above and beyond anything else you can buy. They have teams at every level of the storage stack and have an amazing focus on quality. From individual chips all the way up to the filesystem, all of the software is customized to extend the lifespan of the device. They do wear-leveling so the larger the drive you buy with your device the longer the device will last, but honestly the drives they come with will last much longer than 99.9 of people will ever actually use a Mac.
Average good experience of other users doesn't make a guy having a failing SSD feel any better. The absence of easy repair/replacement just adds an insult to injury.
> They do wear-leveling so the larger the drive you buy with your device the longer the device will last
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like a description of an average modern SSD. Heck, I was reading similar things about wear leveling regarding USB drives, like, a decade and a half ago.
I think you're being overly creative in your interpretation of average, like you're imagining a bunch of people people that have it fail after a year of regular use and then others that have it fail after 30 to 'average it out' and mask a bad experience for many people.
It is widely known macOS paging out a lot more than Windows. On a multiTab Safari you could easily have 100GB write or higher per day. Kernel_Task lock up are extremely common on google search.
If it were just a matter of replacing a capacitor, I'd agree with you. But the wiring decisions from their "amazing focus" defaults to a 13v short to storage chips—all your files AND the BIOS up in a puff of literal smoke.
And finally, Apple doesn't design and manufacture solid state storage devices. They contract out to other companies. Those other companies also sell NVMe storage devices with substantially similar chip designs.
Don't believe the hype. A ten cent capacitor taking out a $3K laptop isn't "above and beyond"; it's penny pinching at the expense of reliability with no concessions made to either repairability or resilience.
• That storage is soldered unlike the vast majority of laptops on the market, which use standard NVMe sticks?
• That the BIOS is stored in those soldered SSD chips making a single point of failure?
• That if even one of the chips fails, you lose all the data including the BIOS boot logic and brick the device?
• That the board layout sends 13v down the rail directly to the aforementioned SSD chips on capacitor failure?
• That they cannot be repaired anymore, even by experienced professionals?
• That replacement parts that aren't severely compromised (unknown number of write cycles for SSD chips) simply aren't available?
Which part is false and requires a disclaimer? And I ask this as someone who has personally used Macs exclusively on the client since 2003 and professionally since 2011. Owned nothing but iPhones since the original was released in 2007. 5 iPads in total.
I'm no blind Apple hater.
Rossmann-based answers look like interesting "original thought" comments till you're a few sentences in, and realize you're reading a Rossmann rehash.
Did the same to my 2009 unibody, put a 500GB hybrid solid state hard drive in it and bumped the RAM first to 6GB and then to 8GB.
Not only did I bump the RAM in my 2012 unibody to 16GB—which wasn't even a build option when initially released—but replaced the DVD drive with a second 2.5" drive, ran two SSDs in RAID-0, and got 1GB/sec r/w transfer rates, which for that vintage was unheard of, especially since it started with a 240GB HDD. That one lasted me quite a while where the only real drawback from a new one was the screen resolution. I was able to upgrade the screen to a slightly higher res when I broke the screen, so at least a minor improvement there.
Then the Retinas started. Stuck on 16GB RAM on my 2015 MBP, but I loved the new screen, and I eventually replaced the stock 512GB SSD with a 1TB NVMe stick, then a 2TB NVMe stick. This is still my personal laptop, and I'm eyeing a 4TB upgrade for it now, 8 years after initial release.
Got a 2022 M1 Max for work, and it was great, but it did have a boot hiccup six months back. (SSD issues.) Got it "repaired" (really just a replacement since the whole mainboard was useless) and luckily I made regular backups, but became wary once I learned this wasn't an isolated issue and why the problem probably popped up in the first place.
Most of those laptops still work! The parts that died first almost without exception were the storage devices. The CPUs generally kept plugging along well after their usefulness had expired. Screens still light up. RAM still plugging away. The drives have clearly been the weakest link, but when storage is replaceable, we can keep the rest of the laptop out of the trash for many more years. (Assuming you keep them plugged in due to the battery being shot, but even batteries are replaceable or the laptop is usable as a desktop alternative for a loved one.)
Therefore now I'm far more reluctant to purchase a new Mac for personal use precisely because of the design issues found in recent Macs.
Sufficiently original and non-rehashed?
We've had some SSDs fail, but it's virtually unheard of. It's so rare, I can't recall a specific instance. I submit that failure rates within a Mac's usable lifetime is so rare that it's a non-issue.
That said, I'm always going to strongly want user-replaceable, modular components everywhere I possibly can. Barring that, I want cheap repair options (buying stuff like logic boards from Apple is obscenely priced.)
I also factor AppleCare+ into device cost, because forget buying a $2,000-3,000 Apple device without it.
One of the things that doable "now" that wasn't doable "then" is wireless charging. I love that I can put my phone on a pad next to the bed at night and it charges, pick it up and there is no trailing wire to unplug, put it down and there is no wire to find and plug in. This is a big improvement in my user experience.
Another of the things that have moved us forward is that power efficiency has gone up dramatically, as a result a smaller battery can give the same "run time" as a large battery of old without the bulk associated with the larger energy storage capacity.
Why not combine them?
Why not no battery in the device? Seal it against the elements. Then put in a pocket where a battery that is a wireless "charger" can drop into a slot on the device and provide the power. Current demands on a modern device are low enough that you just go wireless all the time for main power. Now your device takes a sealed "toaster pastry" sized unit that looks innocuous, but slide it into the slot and poof the device powers up, put it on a recharging mat and it starts charging up itself.
Now you have no exposed terminals to "short out", no worries about the battery in your device becoming a "pillow of doom"[1]. And you can carry a couple of extras if you're going to be away from power for a while.
You get all the benefits of replaceable batteries and none of the downsides with the possible exception of a "slot" in your device that looks funny when there isn't a battery in it.
I totally should have patented this :-)
[1] Just Google it :-)
My second concern would be size - is the total package going to get a lot bigger here? If we forgo the pocket and just use magnets at each corner maybe it gets slimmer, but can it be about as slim as they are today?
If we could overcome those two hurdles, I'd be a huge fan of the idea.
So before we could dismiss the idea, we would really need to run the experiment of "running" via wireless power to see how the current requirements in that state would be reflected in device heating (or not). I agree with you though that if the answer was "always smoking hot" then it is a non starter.
As for size, the "wireless" part is really really thin (a loop antenna). Battery size is a function of how much electrolyte it can carry and LiOn batteries are about 0.5g/cc and 250Wh/kg (or .25Wh/g) iPhones are around 12Wh so about 48g of battery which is 96cc of Lithium. Call it 100cc and you're looking as a "7.8 x 15 x 1" cm "battery card" (order of magnitude approximation based on that math and rough measurements of my iPhone 13SE which is a smallish phone)
I like the idea of magnets but I don't like the idea of the battery being "jostled off" my phone in my pocket and so effectively turned off when I think it should be on. So I think that would take some design work to get right.
It’s also pretty easy to design a connector with exposed pins that are totally inoffensive until something real is exposed. In fact, modern USB charging already works like this : a charger will not send anything over 5v x 150mA before having negotiated with the device to know what it needs.
They didn't sell well, apparently.
It's kind of an interesting play because apple could make a super thin phone that has 30 min battery life and then a few different size pop tarts with different capacities. You want 3 days, get the mondo brick.
The palm pre and several early android phones had both removable batteries and wireless charging. The back panel just had pogo pins for the coil to transfer power.
How about a nuclear battery, aka radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG)? This would be sealed in (carefully!) and would last the lifetime of the device, with no need for charging, ever. Would need special steps/handling to ensure safe disposal at end of product life, however.
There isn't really a theoretical limit to how small a fusion reactor can be, although clearly this would not achievable for a long time.
Black holes can hold charge, and thus electromagnetism works on them.
(Not really useful for a phone, of course. But manipulating black holes like that is not any harder than manipulating an equally massive lump of ordinary matter.)
> Therefore, a black hole needs to be at least 9.49 × 10^{22} kilograms in mass to emit 100 watts of Hawking radiation. This is about the mass of the Moon.
No clue whether those numbers check out.
EDIT: poking bard a bit more gives this correction:
> However, for a black hole to emit 100W in gamma rays, it would need to be very small, with a mass of only about 10^22 kilograms. This is much smaller than the Moon, which has a mass of about 10^25 kilograms.
But poking more and more makes me less and less confident, because bard seems to believe that bigger black holes emit more than smaller black holes.
[1] Beta Voltaics a new kind of nuclear battery -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betavoltaic_device
It would be a fun engineering challenge and a good use of nuclear waste but difficult to sell politically because the association with "nuclear." And yes, it isn't actually practical at this level. Looking at where folks are looking at this seriously it seems to be more of a spacecraft thing (long duration probes far from the Sun kind of thing)
"Not melting itself" is not the threshold we need to meet for a phone. We should probably consider 5 thermal watts the limit. If we have a 30% efficient betavoltaic panel, then we can produce 1.5-2 watts of device power within that limit. If we have a 5% efficient panel, then we're only getting a quarter of a watt. A quarter of a watt can stop an idle phone from draining, but you'd only recover about 1% of a normal phone battery per hour.
By the time we're considering external devices, I think "battery bank with a solar panel" beats betavoltaic on the technical merits even when we're ignoring difficulty and radiation. Even a tiny panel built into the back of a phone generally wins.
Optional accessories could harvest the heat to heat water, make coffee, cook food, etc?
If it's separate from the phone then you don't have to worry about that, but again if it's separate from the phone the entire scenario that made you want this kind of device starts to collapse because the requirements are so different.
However wireless charging from a battery pack is not ideal because the battery will have to be bigger. I already feel my phone is too big to be comfortable in my pocket, and I know it's even more of an issue for smaller people/women's clothing with tiny pockets.
It's an interesting idea though.
Did you mean a damaged, blown up battery pack? At least that's what I expected to find.
Apple has designed the Mac to become obsolete in approximately 10 years. That’s when you lose official OS support. And yes, you can get your battery serviced but nobody’s going to buy a $200 battery for a laptop worth $500. Adding it back wouldn’t be a blue ocean, it would just be Apple ceding profits to nobody.
Apple’s blue ocean is stacking ecosystem benefits. If you have an iPhone it makes more sense to own a Mac or an Apple Watch. If you own a Mac or Apple Watch it makes more sense to own AirPods. If you own AirPods it makes more sense to own an Apple TV.
Let me fix that for you.
Blue ocean is roughly the idea of inventing new markets. While it might apply to Nintendo, that's really a stretch and I view it as product differentiation in a highly entrenched market where Sony and Microsoft are clear sharks in the water.
If you look at Apple's product and marketing history, blue ocean has not applied in two decades. The iPod was hardly the first MP3 player -- Diamond Rio was already in that space. There were several smartphones in the market before apple shipped iPhone, people were speculating on when for years before it was announced. Smartwatches supported android 2 years before Apple Watch Series 0 shipped. HomePod shipped 5 years after the first Amazon echo. What Apple does is wait for other people to prove out the market, and then produce an expensive high end version. This is an effective strategy that captures a lot of high margin & affluent demand, but it's very clearly a red ocean strategy.
A blue ocean strategy doesn't have to shout "Think Different," your product uniqueness is obvious and usually confusing. A red ocean strategy means focusing on margins, inventory, and balancing product differentiation versus convention. It means keeping your product secret until the big announce and suing competitors who copy you. At one point Tim Cook was calling himself the Atilla the Hun of operations, and was quoted in articles as saying "inventory is the root of all evil."
Even the iPad, which has clear lineage decades back to the horrible Windows XP tablets, create a whole new market category out of thin air.
> Even the iPad, which has clear lineage decades back to the horrible Windows XP tablets
And maybe even the Newton. That was a better example of "blue ocean" product strategy.
My 2013 Macbook Pro has just such a battery, rated for 80% capacity after 1000 cycles, and it lasted over 6 years before the battery's internal resistance rose enough that heavy load would cause a brownout and the machine to force sleep.
Yet they are not in widespread use; most devices have prioritized capacity/weight/size over longevity, Apple included. My current M1 has lost 10% of its capacity after just 120 cycles and less than a year of ownership, even using a utility that allows you to set a limited maximum charge level to preserve the battery. And the battery is less accessible, less replaceable.
Battery companies and device manufacturers don't care. There's no incentive for anyone involved and consumers have gotten used to replacing devices every few years.
Solid state batteries with 10k charge/discharge cycles are never going to happen for the same reason incandescent bulbs are purposefully manufactured by every single lightbulb manufacturer to fail when they figured out a hundred years ago how to make them last forever.
We need something like a e-waste import duty, tax, fee, or 'recycling deposit' on devices with non-replaceable lithium ion batteries.
My first phone was NiCad Nokia. Later Nokia monochrome display phones used Li-ion well before smartphones. I use an iPhone now, but if a user-upgradeable Android phone came out with a solid-state battery, I would switch.
Saying that the Dubai Philips LED bulbs really do last a lot longer since they have twice the filaments and run the filaments a lot less hard as a result (as well as being more efficient). It is possible nowadays to make an LED that wont fail anytime soon although LEDs are already much better than incandescents in that regard but there are ones that will likely survive your lifetime available at a higher price but only in Dubai. Most LED bulbs are designed to fail sooner, but they are also cheaper.
Those 10k recharge batteries are absolutely coming and we will have them in a few years time, li-ion as it stands today will simply be obsolete.
Remember that 60W incandescent bulbs costing $0.25 used to be available that met that goal. We've taken huge steps backwards on interior household lighting.
I do remember in the early days of LED bulbs, many were quite unreliable, especially dimmable ones. It was probably more the electronics in them failing more than the LEDs themselves?
But now days LED bulbs seem much more reliable and I very rarely have to replace them. In fact the only bulbs I can recall replacing in the past 18 months living in my current house were some old CFL bulbs that hadn't actually completely failed, but had gradually become a bit too dim.
Certainly, now days, I need to replace bulbs far, far less often than in the old incandescent days where it was a regular chore in any house.
(Also, now days I avoid using old-style dimmer switches, and even removed some in one house I lived in. Better to get a smart bulb with it's own built-in dimming if you want it.)
I'm consistently replacing one or two bulbs a month around the house. I don't know if it's the electronics or the LEDs; I don't really care either.
I started going Cree when I was renting 10 years ago, I've yet to have a single failure of the bulbs that I've drug with me to the place I live now. Have at least 25 bulbs currently in the house that are Cree LEDs. Their reliability actually has me frustrated at the current trend of lighting fixtures with integrated LEDs that I have 0 trust in.
Are you sure your power isn't bad in some way?
If LED bulbs are inherently prone to failure I’m not seeing it.
I do agree they’re more expensive, even if you adjust for inflation, but as far as I can tell they last forever.
They’re Philips Hue bulbs, a mix between LWB010 and LTW001, but even the cheap supermarket bulbs have lasted so long I also couldn’t tell you when I last changed them. Some of them have been in the house longer than I have.
They do sometimes flicker when they're in a traditional dimmer set at an intermediate level, even though the ones I've bought claim to work with a dimmer. That's frustrating.
But I haven't had any outright failures.
If it helps: I bought mostly SANSI bulbs off Amazon.
IME the worst are the ones that get really hot. I've had multiple (rather expensive) LED spotlights like that in my kitchen which never lasted more than a year or so.
Would be much easier instead of embedding an AC/DC converter inside each bulb that we now get standard 12V DC for lighting throughout homes - That would centralize the voltage sensitivity and allow larger circuits / capacitors to regulate this.
That was possible back in 2002. LEDs weren't yet "super bright" and an LED from back then had a lifespan measured in, well, human lifespans.
A simple way to significantly extend battery longevity is to limit charge to 80% (only charging to 100% occasionally when you know you might need it, like a long day travelling).
Unfortunately Apple doesn't yet provide this option on most of it's devices, other than the iPhone 15 line. But you can use third-party apps to do it on Macs.
it has this though: https://www.macinstruct.com/images/2022/optimized-charging.p...
Technology Connections has an interesting video on this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb7Bs98KmnY
If anything, I would have thought that devices are good enough know that people don't exchange them quite so often? Especially laptops.
I can still reasonably comfortably use my 2016 laptop today. In 1993 using computer from 1986 would have been a much bigger downgrade.
Please tell me what that utility is--I've long wanted something like that but have yet to find anything like it.
FWIW, I've been doing something similar with my phone, but manually. I found an unusually low current charger that charges the phone at a rate of ~5% per hour, and I almost always keep the battery level between 25% and 75%. So far the phone is 4 years old and iOS claims that the maximum capacity of the battery is still 92%.
10k cycles (~27y) sounds absurdly good - I think 80% of original capacity by 10y would be more than adequate. Basically you never need to replace the battery throughout the useful life time of a device.
1) They are no longer dependent on the loss of battery capacity to drive new device purchases — meaning this issue is effectively over. Batteries now last all day for longer than most new device users will keep a device.
2) Margins on services sold to hand-me-down family devices are a growing high-margin and young-user market and much of the market isn’t open to buying a device here — they will only use the service if they get a device for “free.”
3) The net outcome is an increase in service revenue and decrease in recycling costs for Apple.
All these trends will only accelerate from here.
The apple self service program is apples ideal of right to repair. A shitty program where you can buy board assemblies and larger parts for fairly high prices with no changes to their software approach whatsoever. A battery change through this program is ~$120 up front (if you rent the tools, which you probably should) with a $30 refund when you return your dead battery. A battery change via the apple store is $99. You can only buy parts if you give them the device serial number up front (so fuck independent shops) and you need to call apple at the end to pair the part on their end.
A pointless program with tons of waste still created. A short on your laptop motherboard? Better buy a new motherboard. An issue with the camera on your MacBook? Better buy a new lcd assembly.
They will suddenly become very against right to repair the moment it starts to actually fight for things like schematics and board diagram access, component availability and not just parts assemblies, parts pairing that’s done in a consumer friendly way, etc.
imagine legislation that says apple has to change parts pairing so that if a consumer unlocks their phone the parts have to be able to be sold as well? Or that they can no longer enter a contract with Texas Instruments to buy 100% of their stock of a usb c controller ic for a MacBook Pro so repair shops can’t buy it on digikey or mouser? Etc. they will fight that hard and then just find a way to circumvent it (like making their own usb c controller ic)
[1] yes, the trillion dollar company is better than everyone else
It's weird people forget the main message Apple has been touting for years now: services revenue.
Even without removeable batteries, with right to repair device longevity will increase, and they've seen the writing on the wall for a long time.
Apple will continue increasing services revenue. They'll fight the bitter end for the 15/30% tax on everything, iCloud tiers, Apple Music, TV, etc.
If they find a blue ocean, it will be in services. Their entry into emergency satellite calls and other "wouldn't you feel bad being dead because you didn't pay us ?" push could be that.
Apple might have an interesting angle for embracing that because unlike their competitors they profit from the whole stack, have a robust service portfolio, and retail presence near a large portion of their customers. Turning device longevity into a competitive point really puts pressure on anyone who can't easily switch from Qualcomm's blink-and-you-miss-it support period or negotiate some kind of revenue sharing agreement between themselves, Microsoft/Google, and services like Spotify or Netflix, and unlike most other attempts to make it harder to compete with them this would actually be seen as a general good by almost everyone other than their direct competitors.
Yellow Tail Wine and Nintendo’s Wii were text book examples. They both found an untapped audience, novice consumers who don’t know nor care for over the top quality. In Nintendo’s case, hard core gamers valued graphics and performance as quality. To Yellow Tail it was Wine enthusiasts and their interest in vineyards, vintages, and hints of whatever.
Apple products are novice, but they aren’t cheap. The Chromebook is a better example of Blue Ocean. It does only what an entry level consumer wants in a laptop. It browsers the web, writes documents. Google said “hey, pretty much everyone who owns a MacBook but isn’t an artist or techie could use this”. Like MacBooks it doesnt require expertise, it offers a similar user quality experience, but unlike them it’s affordable because it doesn’t have unnecessary hardware specs and Swiss watch leveled build quality.
I don’t blame the author for not reading the whole ass book. But for god sakes, at least read the wiki page about it, don’t use a gaming magazine as your source. Because he clearly took the Wii example in the magazine and ran with it. He thought he could map it onto Apple products because what, they get rid of stuff and are innovative like the Wii was?
I’m glad I’m not the only one who found the battery ramble irrelevant.
But regardless, easily removable batteries are going to create more e-waste, not less. Replacing a battery is perfectly doable right now, but there is a hurdle you have to jump over - you aren’t going to do it until you really need it. Once those batteries are easy to replace, people are going to be replacing them much more frequently, they’re going to be buying spares, etc. And people are going to be throwing old batteries in the trash without even thinking about it.
So don't think removeable batteries of the past held together by a sliding cover - more like grab an eyeglass screwdriver and a few minutes later its out.
I think the distiction is slight but there is a difference between an object meant to attach/de-attach (like old laptop batteries) and the m2 hard drive in my laptop. Both are technically replaceable, only one was designed to be removeable.
To make a comparison to cameras, I don't know how many people care to buy spare batteries outside of pros and people actually going through 2 or 3 batteries on their trips. Everyone else is probably using the one coming with their camera until it dies and then replaces it.
Replaceable batteries gives an out to that situation, as one battery maker somewhere in the world could be enough to keep the remaining laptops alive, with no need for invasive serviceing.
Of course that brings Apple close to nothing in revenue, but would boost good will from users and let them tout sustainability?
Also won't resonate if you're cycling through devices every 2 years anyway.
https://www.ifixit.com/products/macbook-air-13-late-2010-201...
"with no third party repair shop willing to work on your laptop at a reasonable price."
I am not aware of any third party repair shop who would refuse to work on a 2017 MacBook Air. Unless it is a repair shop that refuses to work on Apple products in general.
I have a 2013 Macbook Pro and I'm getting the battery replaced next week by Apple.
My laptop is over 10 years old and they're still doing it at their standard battery replacement price.
Could it be regional differences ? I rechecked on the online support page - both Jp and Fr -, and repair support falls off right at 2015 (which is nothing to sneeze at for a maker, but I'd still wish for more)
When I did, they couldn't guarantee to repair my 2013 laptop, but they sent out a parts request to see if they had a replacement part in the warehouse (top case), and they did have one, and they were happy to use the battery replacement price if my battery showed the "service recommended" state, same rule as for newer models.
They don't provide a warranty for repair on such an old machine, because they can't guarantee being able to find another replacement part.
I asked for a price on a screen replacement too and they didn't have a screen, so couldn't do that. The screen is in pretty good shape though.
IOW - the device becomes 30-50% lighter (on its own), and the buyer determines how heavy his/her experience will be based on which Qi-pack [s]he has chosen to run their phone
Want a 10,000mAh battery? No problem!
Want only a 2,000mAh battery? Again: no problem!
This even solves a problem Apple has let other vendors 'solve' with regard to cases - want an OtterBox? CrayolaCase? SiliconSoftie? Go get your case from any of a thousand manufactures
Apple could provide a pair (or trio, etc) of Qi-packs for their devices, and let other manufacturers go banana pants coming up with other options
This modularizes the iPhone in a smart way (not like that goofy Motorola method (which was reminiscent of IBM in the 80s open-standardizing the buses for their Personal Computer) whereby the only thing you "have" to get from Motorola was the core module
Apple's "core module" with such a program would still be iPhone ... and that is still the biggest differentiator Apple has vs the 80 scadzillion Android makers out there: iPhone is only Apple. Android is whomever wants to make one.
Because Apple has had this for years a while now with the MagSafe battery pack.
I actually think it should become a standard that all companies adopt. It's far easier and quicker to use than removable batteries and doesn't remove valuable space inside the phone.
None of them turned out to matter, at all. What does matter is a solid feel and solid construction and the flash and batteries lasting the lifetime of the product. I'd rather have that than replaceable.
Most iPhones are still very useful devices by the time their batteries have deteriorated below 70% original capacity.
The devices start glitching and/or won't run newer apps as well as they should long before the battery goes on them
If the hardware is failing then I guess fair enough (it shouldn't be, that's a design defect), but inflated hardware demands to compensate for increasingly sloppy code isn't a reasonable justification to demand dropping another $500+ on a device that works fine.
I recently gifted a used iPhone X to a relative. It's still an exceptional device on which the hardware works as well as it ever did, minus the reduced battery life. I would have been happy to keep using it if I could replace the battery simply and it was still getting O/S updates.
(As it is, the device still receives security updates, which I can't really grump at Apple for after almost six years - but only because they're better than the rest of the industry. It's still a poor situation).
Yes - in general, the apps I am running are doing more and are better than they were when I first got a given model phone :)
I went from the 4S to the 6S Plus to the 11 and am waiting on my backordered 15 Pro currently
I still have the 6S Plus in a drawer in my utility room - it "works" for lite tasks like web browsing, but will not run most of the productivity apps I need/want for work or the educational apps my kids need/want for school. So, for me, it is a "useless" device (so the kids get to play with it - and nobody cares what happens because it is 8 years old)
My 11 still "works", too - but it is getting very long in the tooth
I am continually astonished at folks who expect OS and/or security updates past a few years (this is not a slight against you, just an observation on my part)
A lot of folk like to gripe about "planned obsolescence" or similar because eventually their device is no longer supported
Yet the fact that manufacturers support equipment as long as they do is ... kind of astonishing
The higher the volume of production, the shorter you would expect a manufacturer to support it (a 747 is worlds different from a pickup truck which is worlds different from a phone or laptop)
The cost-benefit analysis of continuing to support/update a given device has to be taken into account ... and - for most phones (since that is what we are talking about in this thread) for most people, that means that between 3 and 4 years after release, it makes [nearly] no economic sense to keep supporting them
That Apple does for so long speaks volumes about their commitment to their customers (even though, of course, they would like you to get a new phone every year, I am sure)
iOS 17 may not be technically able to run on the A11 chip in the iPhone X, but only on the basis that it's been designed not to do so. Any features that genuinely needed extra neural cores (or whatever limitation there might be) were clearly designed that way with the intention of forcing a new purchase - the software could have in all likelihood run just fine on the A11 if they wanted it to. OCLP kind of proves this on macOS, which should (in theory) be even harder to maintain support for than iOS, as there are many more binary driver blobs that Apple doesn't control the source code for and therefore can't stand over/patch if the original vendor has stopped doing so.
How many is “a few” to you?
Many people finance their phones through carrier deals that last three years. It should at least be supported that long.
And why not expect longer? To an outsider looking in, the software isn’t changing that much. I still have a messaging app, a browser, a camera app - that all basically haven’t changed their core functionality in the time I’ve had my device.
Just like computers, I think there is a correlation between price and expected support. If I’m paying $1,500 for an iPhone 15 Pro, I am doing so with the expectation that in 5 years it will be supported. If I am paying $100 for a cheap Android, my expectations are lower.
And lose 20% percent efficiency? A bigger battery for the same usage time and my device is constantly warmer? Sign me up! /s
I could totally see getting a second laptop-footprint-shaped pod for my MBA that would click on and give me another 20-40h of run time between charges!
Battery technology has improved so much that removable batteries are less desirable.
Replaceable battery and matte display! I hate that these features were eliminated.
> Lately, I’ve been thinking about the blue ocean strategy in the context of Apple. Like Nintendo ...
Well, Apple is certainly not differentiating on 'low price'. And I don't know that high margin is "innovative blue ocean".
- Advance encryption in iCloud/iPhone its something not present in other products and services currently.
- FindMy network to find lost keys and iphone
- Private relay for more private browsing
- AirDrop for fast file transfer
The point is, Apple has had a strategy for a while now. It’s not going to win against Android in the phone wars. It’s going to win in the AR/XR space if they can manage to get a decent wearable out and provide cores within cores within cores for AI NN’s.
This whole paragraph is delusional. Apple users carrying and swapping out batteries? Apple supporting and allowing people to simply swap out a battery instead of going to the apple store for a certified repair? Apple??
In terms of blue oceans it’s where they see a lack of innovation because you can have many blue oceans within in anything you do if you see the problems that exist in a way that your competitors don’t and then you apply great engineering with great marketing (although sometimes it’s just marketing) to reach the numbers you need.
>Starting in 2009, Apple began to phase out removable batteries across its laptop line in favor of batteries that were sealed inside the case and were not user-accessible. >The upsides, which Apple touted, were many: lighter weight, smaller size, better reliability, longer battery life.
What are you talking about? The link provided to Apple's press release for that laptop did not include anything about why a non-removable battery was advantageous. They provided other reasons the new battery was great, but they did not say the elimination of user-serviceability allowed for any of those benefits.
>The iPhone defied so many other norms that the sealed battery was less remarked upon than it might have been, but it was still noted.
Noted by who? Remarked upon by who? It sounds like this author is generalizing his own opinions to the entire population. I'm sure this comment sounds nitpicky but I just don't like this kind of fast and loose writing.
At least, that's my assumption based on their massive spend on infrastructure related to AI. I've been waiting for their cloud hosting project to jump out of stealth mode, if it's still in progress, but maybe it was never intended for anyone other than Apple's use. If that's the case then it makes more sense that they'd sort of pull a Google and invest more heavily in the backend server side for one product that could really be a killer, which would most likely be something AI. An answer to Google's search product that isn't search.
I was going to rant. But it is pointless. These companies find ways to hold customers because of their tailored experiences and it has less to do with technology and more with targeting.
They could make slick, elegant devices which are still repairable and have replaceable batteries.
I remember the original iMac G5 had a great design which let you simply remove the backplate with 3 screws and access everything. Of course in the next iteration they changed the design entirely so that opening it up became a huge ordeal.
What are you basing this on? How do you operationalize "more tech savvy"?
Not saying it's a bad machine or anything, but the "half the price compared to a MacBook" meme is now more irrelevant than ever.
But excuse me while I throw up in my mouth a little with this "Blue Ocean" nonsense. Apple makes an original, user-hostile decision for the sole purpose of increasing planned obsolescence and to make them more money, and then when the winds shift they might go back the other way - but, again, they'll likely be forced to anyway. No need for poetic blog posts.
I suppose we're owed another "Blue Ocean" missive about how Apple led the way with Lightning connectors and then found another Blue Ocean with ... USB-C. Puhleeez.
Apple indeed innovated in multiple ways and markets, but un-removable batteries wasn’t one.
But over the years, as John has gotten older (and as the other members of ATP) I find that my values are starting to diverge. It feels much more of a news show than a tech show and I find I’m not gaining much insight from their discussions or opinions. Even their tech insights are starting to feel out of touch with the rest of the world.
It makes me confused that while they’re working on the show(s) full time, the quality is dropping? It’s less interesting somehow?
You make it sound like the decision comes with no benefits.
All of the hardware to support removable battery means less space for the battery.
And especially in the early days the iPhone was struggling to reach a normal working day.
Lighter devices? That's irrelevant, no one cares about device weight.
Cheaper to manufacture? That's just a ploy to gasp make more money! How dare they?!
Waterproofing? Well I don't go SCUBA diving with my phone, so clearly no one else does. And if they do, just put it in a ziplock bag!
And so on.
It stands to reason that a company as large as Apple is capable of making decisions that impact large amounts of people. It's not just Right to Repair enthusiasts that care about that impact, it's extended to regulatory bodies that are tired of meaningless standards competition and arbitrary market separation. Apple can excuse these base truths with whatever feature or novelty they choose, but it doesn't overwrite the insidious functionality of their choices.
You're basically describing the situation in reverse, from the perspective of foreign markets and regulatory watchdogs:
"Another special, licensed connector for data and power? Why do consumers need that!"
"An App Store? Why give Apple complete control over a feature as basic as installing software?"
"Only one browser engine? How are new technologies intended to compete on a platform that doesn't acknowledge newcomers?"
So on and so forth.
The weight difference from sealing the battery is negligible. If it saved several hundred of grams, it would one thing, but a replaceable battery adds at most tens of grams.
Even if the sticker price of device is cheaper, I would still have to pay more to replace the entire device once the battery is worn. This is the primary reason for most companies sealing the battery, to force buying an entire phone. Having a replaceable battery would save me money.
Sealing the battery was not responsible for waterproof phones. There were already waterproof phones with replaceable batteries.
The only point that you really list that is defensible is waterproofing. Lighter devices? Cheaper to manufacture? The idea that making a removable battery would make a phone noticeably heavier or impact the cost more than a cent or two is laughable.
Even with the waterproofing, I'm dumbfounded on how one hand people can laud Apple for their truly amazing engineering capabilities (I may question its utility but the Vision Pro is really an incredible piece of engineering), yet somehow a waterproof removable battery (which some other phones have) is beyond their grasp.
At least based on what I've seen on camera mechanisms you're taking about 10-20% reduction in the battery cell.
Assuming "All day battery life" (24h) a 1% reduction in battery life is about equal to 15minutes but frankly I can't see the replaceable battery reduce the capacity at all if you are doing halfway good engineering - there is plenty of void space in an iPhone even now. By that I mean space over/under PCBs where the battery cannot go because it is still just a rectangular polygon even in say the iphone 15. I think it has 2 rectangular smaller cells with a casing around them to make an L shape.
So why doesn't apple forgo the "casing" and take that sweet 10 to 20% extra capacity? :)
But I agree that "Apple makes an original, user-hostile decision" is a bit too simplistic. I have long since come to the conclusion that Apple simply always chooses the cheapest option for them in cases where user-serviceability is concerned or to maybe put it another way they ignore user-serviceability semi-actively. Routing screw posts costs time and wear on tools. screwing in extra screws costs time thus just mainly gluing the battery in place is the cheapest option.
Soldering on flash and RAM saves on costs and makes the PCB design easier. At the same time it "locks" the longevity of the device neatly. This leads to not-overlong replacement cycles simply for practicability reasons - for instance modern chrome eats all the RAM.
What?
There are still plenty of Android devices that have user serviceable batteries, but they don't sell as well because what the majority of users want is to minimize size and weight at any cost. The minority of geeks out there who think something like this is important doesn't move the needle. Apple (particularly under Tim Cook) only cares about maximizing profits. Their environmental schtick is merely dressing in front of the ruthless profit making machine at work.
Obviously Siracusa can't deal with the dissonance that his precious Apple doesn't care about the environment as much as he does. Thus typing up silly articles like this...
I think in the current market we have no idea of what the majority of users want because there's no combination of all the available options.
The majority of users might value iOS more than any specific hardware feature. Second to that, they might value price and career rebates.
That makes fringe android phones failures irrelevant and would leave us with only random guesses on what people would want outside of what Apple and Sumsung is offering right now.
* Macintosh
* iPhone
* Apple Store