> Especially since with Lightning Apple tipped their hand and revealed that their ultimate goal was to license a subset of DRM-encoded USB standards. It feels pretty obvious that Apple's movement towards wireless is mostly about killing the specter of standardized connectivity.
I understand this argument and see where you're coming from, but I just don't agree.
Can you provide examples of where Apple has substituted non-standard connectivity where standard-compliant would have worked as well?
You mentioned Lightning. That's a great example from my perspective: I was enthusiastic about the move to USB-C on iPhone. Now that it's happened, my opinion has changed. I actually miss the lightning connector now that it's gone in that role. I can look around my office and find a dozen Lightning cables, all of which are very old and still work just as well as they did initially. I've never had to replace a Lightning jack on a device, and the only cables I've tossed over the years are ones where my kids wore out the cable itself through repetitive stress. In retrospect, I find Lightning to be a superior connector to USB-C.
It sucks that we have a mix of both right now, but that's a consequence of Lightning having failed to gain wider adoption, not of it being a bad product.
From my perspective, it feels like you're seeing Apple in the role of Microsoft in the 90s: basically "embrace, extend, extinguish". I 100% agree that Apple is doing the first two steps of that, but I can't think of an example where they've even attempted to extinguish the competing standard and capture the market. As far as I can see, wherever Apple has made decisions counter to the prevailing standard, they did so because the path they chose was more compelling overall.
I leave open the possibility that I'm just not seeing the "evil" aspects here through myopia.
> Look at external drives; how is wireless going to replace this anywhere? Bluetooth can't even hit SATA speeds, much less 4k streaming speeds without re-encoding and compressing the source material.
I think we're agreeing here - the future I'm predicting isn't here yet. The tech hasn't caught up to Apple's vision. The status quo is far from optimal.
> You might get somewhere with WiFi Direct, but Apple doesn't support that in the first place and requires people to use their proprietary alternatives.
The difference here seems to be the way we're framing it.
You seem to be saying that fully wireless isn't possible right now, so products should be built with that in mind.
I'm saying that Apple wants fully wireless devices, and is willing to compromise usability in their devices for much of the market in order to move closer to their vision. I believe they're doing that intentionally to drive the development of the necessary technology to make it a reality.
Firewire was once the gold standard for external storage, especially if you were working with video. Firewire "lost" that battle and USB-C "won" - but we now have external storage devices with the transfer speeds necessary to work with large files directly on the external device. Once that became apparent, Apple killed Firewire support. In fact, they killed it earlier than a lot of people would have preferred. People were left with lots of money invested in Firewire hardware that simply didn't work with the next generation of Apple devices.
If Apple was trying to kill off USB-C, it would have made much more sense to go all-in on Firewire back when it still had a chance. Instead, they killed it when it was still superior to USB-C - a format that they did not control - because they judged that the market was moving that direction and that USB-C would soon catch up.
> Seriously, I want you to sit down and ask yourself one question. If Macs went full-wireless tomorrow, do you sincerely believe that the majority of Mac owners wouldn't own new wireless dongles?
I'm truly trying to discuss this with an open mind, and consider your perspective fully. I do see where you're coming from. Most of your conclusions I agree with. The only place where we seem to actually disagree is on what we judge Apple's motivations to be.
To answer your question: yes, if Macs were fully wireless tomorrow, there would be a plethora of adapters.
Apple would release their own. They'd be expensive, but they would work well. Third-party adapters would be cheaper, but they'd be less robust and either only partially implement the standards or would be almost as expensive as Apple's.
... but I believe that hardware manufacturers would soon start supporting the wireless standard by default. Prices for those devices would come down quickly, and before long non-Apple devices would support it as well. At the end of the day, the entire ecosystem would benefit. Non-Apple devices would have physical ports for much longer, and as a result would be easier to use and require fewer adapters. During that transitional period, Apple products would cost their users more because of all the required adapters.
Bottom line: I see Apple as developing a vision for the near future and designing their products to match that vision. Their doing so drives the market as a whole to improve and makes everyone's lives easier at the end of the day. That works for Apple because they see their market as being more affluent and able to bear the cost of forcing these advancements.
I don't think that's evil. I think it's a rational tradeoff. You don't have to agree with me on that :)