Stuff I expected, under "one more thing ..." (or earlier):
The Mac Pro ships with enough bandwidth to drive three 4K desktop monitors, yet Apple's most recent monitor -- the 27" Thunderbolt Display -- dates to 2011 and has the same resolution as the current 15" Macbook Pro. Bluntly, this is disgraceful. Serious video folks are going to be buying Mac Pros and then paying ASUS three times as much for the monitors! Where's the Apple 4K Thunderbolt Display?
A keyboard cover -- like the Logitech Ultra-thin Keyboard Cover, or Microsoft's Surface keyboards -- would be nice. (I suppose Apple are relying on the after-market, as witness the startlingly fast announcements by Belkin et al.)
Finally, the "software is free" announcement ... yes, they're taking aim at Microsoft, but iWork 5 on OSX turns out to be a mixed blessing; there are regressions all over, especially in scripting (they've virtually dropped AppleScript from their office apps). What is this, an attempt to build market share for MS Office? (The mind boggles.) What other power user features have they planed away in the pursuit of a clean and consistent user interface across all platforms? (Which in practice seems to mean dumbing down the apps on the Pro platform -- OSX -- for compatibility with the mass market platform -- iOS.)
This is really about the desktop/laptop market and not the mobile market. It's important to separate these two markets when looking at this decision.
Right, they are taking aim at MS, but not in the way I think most people here are talking about. For most Windows users, Windows is either free or transparent (OEM install so the price is both ridiculously reduced over consumer, and it's just part of the computer purchase). You'll also generally get years of significant updates to Windows for $0.
For Apple, selling the OS has always been kind of weird. 99.999% of people who get the latest OS X are going to run it on their Apple built and sold computers anyway. And Apple obsoletes their hardware from the upgrade path faster than the Microsoft equivalent. So most users might see 3 or 4 years of solid updates before getting obsoleted out.
(Anecdote, my Windows desktop from early 2007 is still able to be upgraded to the very latest MS desktop OS. My MBP from the same time frame is so obsolete I can't even get a version of Flash that runs on it.)
So what changed? Surface. Apple has never competed well in the desktop/laptop market until very recently. Despite all the MBP and MBA I see at Starbucks, Apple only owns about 10-11% of the global market. But tight vertical integration and a very loyal customer base means they can squeeze that 10% for lots of profit. A user who upgrades their Mac every 3-4 years...well $100 for an OS license isn't all that much. And Mountain Lion? What was that $20?
So Surface changes this, Apple knows that Microsoft has the appetite to swallow ungodly amounts of money trying to get Surface some marketshare. And with Surface the OS is basically free with the device. A Surface Pro 2 isn't a bad little computer and is a better MBA competitor than any ultrabook is. This is the first time that Microsoft has really built, marketed and sold their own computer which means that the OS really is free. A couple price cuts and Surface Pros will dominate the Starbuck's scene (at least outside of the Valley).
While not really important to Apple right now, Apple needs to strategically move to cut this off quickly for the future. As a company Apple is just now finally starting to get large groups of people to move to their computing platform, and it'd be a shame to lose their momentum right now.
You're right, and you are the first person I've seen say it out loud.
Further evidence: the Office competitor from Apple is also free. Why? The low-end Surface devices bundled Office for free, and one cycle later Apple began bundling its Office version alongside new devices. Microsoft would bundle Office with the high-end Surface devices (Surface Pros) if it weren't for pesky anti-trust threats looming (Windows RT is advertised to regulators as a separate OS from the Windows NT line, and a lot of weirdness stems from this distinction). It's very clear that Apple is trying to head off the Microsoft efforts with these pricing games.
Personally? I'm bummed there was no mac mini update... I need a new personal server at home, and I had been waiting for a supposed refresh... now I need to build and set up my own Linux server... that was fun when I was in my early 20s, but now it just feels tedious.
Good to know. Mine's a 2006 MBP. :( Stuck on something so ancient I don't even want to pull it out and fire it up to figure it out. It's too bad when a $300 netbook from the same year has outlasted my very expensive laptop in utility.
I hope my current rMBP gets a better life expectancy.
I would think you could update that laptop to at least Lion if you wanted. I know a couple people who are still using Snow Leopard just fine since it was solid and fast. The only major app I know of that they've had issues with is the newest version of Lightroom 5 requires Lion.
Perhaps we're still seeing the aftereffects of suing their largest component supplier, who also happen to be one of the largest LCD panel manufacturers in the world?
The 4K Panel Asus use for their monitor is a Sharp part, not a Samsung part; Sharp is, indeed, apparently the only company making these at the moment. Which may be part of why we don't see an Apple one; they tend to go with at least two suppliers for LCDs (possibly three) and Sharp's volume is likely very low for now.
This is one of the key factors. I think the other is that when they shove a high density display into a phone/tablet, it's simply a bigger deal.
When Apple finally does sell a 4k monitor, they won't be selling mountains of them. It won't be a niche halo sports car product like the Mac Pro. It'll just be an expensive monitor with a ThunderBolt hub. There's simply less incentive, so they're going to wait until suppliers catch up rather than pushing the suppliers.
Yup; I also think they'll need to wait a while just for prices to fall. If they made a $1000 4K monitor, they could sell that in moderate numbers; it's in reach of the enthusiast market. At over $3k, they're looking at a segment of the professional graphics market only, and that's probably too small; it'd be even more niche than the Mac Pro, which is at least of some interest to enthusiasts and some developers.
They’re South Korean business conglomerates, controlled by a chairman who has power over all the operations. Often, the leaders of the divisions are blood relatives. The chaebol have enormous influence in South Korean politics. The largest chaebol are Samsung, Hyundai, and Lucky Goldstar (LG).
Yes very true; I remember hearing once (I don't know how true this bit is), that Samsung Group alone make up around 20% of the South Korean economy...
It may just be me, but I do detect a slight slowing down of Apple's supply chain in recent years though. I know that they've had a lot of trouble when trying to move away from Samsung, simply because Samsung were/are the only single supplier that is able to provide the sheer quantity of components that Apple need.
Also, Apple always used to have a habit of having their big product announcements available for order and shipping on the day that they announced them, not 2 months down the line. When you add in potential omissions like the 4k monitors (or any kind of monitor refresh since 2011), you have to start thinking that perhaps they have a few troubles down the line.
Whether it's suppliers being difficult, or just a factor of the sheer size that Apple has reached, I really don't know.
> I remember hearing once that Samsung Group alone make up around 20% of the South Korean economy
It was. Right now, South Korea GDP is 1687 trillion Won. Samsung’s revenue is 252 trillion Won. That makes Samsung’s share 15 percent. Hyundai adds another 12% and LG 11%. That’s 38% of the economy in hands of just three companies. Effectively, South Korea is an oligarchy[1].
Exactly my guess too. There's no way they make a Mac Pro that can make a 4k display look good without making one themselves. My guess is after Christmas though, maybe a Spring event of some sort.
Given that Samsung hasn’t shipped any 4k displays so far, I suspect Apple would rather go with a manufacturer that has experience building them and with whom they don’t have such a complicated relationship. I’m thinking of 4k panel makers like AUO, Innolux, Sharp, and LG.
Yes, it can handle 4K ‘Ultra HD’ over HDMI 1.4, like the 15" rMBP.
The new 13" rMBP can also drive 2 Thunderbolt Displays plus the notebook’s internal display (which has the same resolution as a Thunderbolt Display, 2560x1600 pixels.)
4K UHD is 85% more pixels than the 13" rMBP’s internal display. Driving 2 Thunderbolt Displays, which the 13" rMBP can do, involves 6% more pixels than one 4K display at full resolution.
The Mac Pro still won't be out for two more months. They could launch a 4K display then. Nobody is going to buy a 4K monitor today for the Mac Pro they're getting in January.
Yeah, that's what I'm hoping too. But then it's a bit weird to keep it a surprise. If true, they would announce both at the same time. So my best guess is that they are behind for their display revamp, or it's a product in its own right (TV) and will be announced later. Maybe they missed the holiday season.
I have been waiting for a new apple display since about Apr. Money in hand ready to go, just want a new one. I went away from the event, thinking the same as you about 4k monitors. Shrugged my shoulders and said, "Fine. I'll give my money to someone else" .
I really appreciated the made in USA bits and the enviro bits though.
I'm surprised anyone was expecting an Apple 4k announcement. The tech is not affordable yet. Apple is premium, but not that premium. They're not going to release a $3,400 monitor and hype about it at their event, when only 1% of people are going to be able to afford it. The monitor will be branded Retina, and their current Retina mobile displays aren't exclusive to the 1%, regular consumers can afford them.
It was a different market at the time, though. Consumer monitors didn't have the colour accuracy for photo and video professionals, and those people were accustomed to paying a _lot_ for their computers and monitors; the 30" display was going up against even more expensive things from the likes of Ilyama.
Today, it's different. 4K displays haven't (yet) become entrenched in the professional space, and a lot of graphics professionals pay much less for their computers and monitors now. And besides that group, is there really a market for a >$3000 monitor at all? I'd be surprised.
That is true, so it isn’t unprecedented, but when Apple announced that display, it also lowered the prices of its other displays to $699 and $999, which it continued selling.
I believe that if and when Apple releases a 4K display, it will not be its only offering. I expect it to be accompanied by a revamped (thinner) 27" display that supports Thunderbolt 2, USB 3, and MagSafe 2 – priced the same as the current Thunderbolt Display ($999).
The Seiki 39" 4K display is $700 [1]. It has some limitations (you can read all about them at Amazon), but it establishes that the $3,400 price-point set by ASUS and its ilk is quite possibly made up mostly of profit.
I contend that Seiki could outright dominate the desktop display market if they replaced their display's HDMI 1.4 with 2.0 and made the display function a little less like a television and more like a monitor (no splash screen, no speaker, no remote control, better support for ACPI). Drop some things, upgrade some others, keep the same $700 price.
A smaller offering around 32" would also be welcome, I'm sure. But the 39" model makes for a superb desktop display assuming you can be made comfortable with the 30Hz refresh rate thanks to HDMI 1.4.
Apple sold about 30 million Mac notebooks in the US in the last 4 years. Even if only half of those units were bought by unique individuals, that makes for 5 percent of the US population, a far cry from 0.1 percent.
(Background data: Apple has sold 100 million Macs in the last 4 years. 40% of those were sold in the US. Over 70% of the computers Apple sells are notebooks.)
You're saying >5% of all people in USA own a Mac notebook first sold in the last 4 years? That's quite unbelievable to me, I'm [relatively] poorer than I thought(!). Does anyone have corroborating stats on this - most pertinent I could find in a short search was that 75% of USA households have general-purpose computers (from 2011 http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/p20-569.pdf [it's probably higher now]; ~50% use smartphones apparently). Combining those two suggests that >7% of all general purpose computers in the USA are Mac notebooks.
In any case the thread concerns the Mac Pro, not sure why I said laptop. At best it would be MBP sales that were relevant.
>"[...] The NPD Group’s 2009 Household Penetration Study, approximately 12 percent of all U.S. computer owning households own an Apple computer, up from 9 percent in 2008. While Apple ownership is growing, those households are decidedly in favor of mixed system environments. Of those 12 percent, nearly 85 percent also own a Windows-based PC.
Multiple computer ownership is a common thread in Apple computer households, with 66 percent of households owning three or more computers, compared to just 29 percent of Windows PC households. Apple owning households are decidedly more mobile as well, with 72 percent of them owning a notebook, whereas only 50 percent of households that have a Windows PC own a notebook." //
That gives us 72% of 12%, ~9% of households who have an Apple computer that also have some brand of notebook.
All the numbers and percentages I used came from Apple’s financial statements. Mac sales have gone up significantly since 2009, but the NPD survey you quoted is in line with what I wrote earlier.
As for Mac Pros: of course that market is tiny. There are no official sales figures available, but I estimate that around 2 million Mac Pros were sold in the US in the last 4 years. That’s less than 1 percent of the population, but a lot more than 1 percent of 1 percent.
Same here, I've been waiting a year now. I don't even want 4k! I just want something that's not 3 years old. I would take a slimmed down monitor (like the new iMac) with the new thunderbolt adapter in a heartbeat, but I can't bring myself to buy the current one.
iWork 5 is awful. The Inspector was by far the most innovative UI ever seen; brought in by SJ with NeXTStep, and they killed it for a tablet-ish UI.
I'm quite sick of the trend that things have to be dumbed down for the average user so that things look "slick." It's happening in the Linux world, too, look at GNOME 3. At least, there, you have the option to get rid of GDM and Mutter, install OpenBox, and be merry.
Can't do that if you're vested in the Apple ecosystem, unfortunately... which is one of my most vehement dislikes about them.
I'll keep buying Apple because it's the best, but I still wish somebody would produce computers and software for real professionals. I don't care if it's thick; I want an optical drive with Blu-Ray, a decent soundcard, an array of ports, and user accessibility, with the best CPUs, battery life, and nVidia graphics, and with Linux preinstalled; maybe a custom Arch derivative with Wine, and XFCE or Cinnamon installed.
Once Wine matures to the point where virtually all the libraries are in place, I might even switch to running Linux full time and ditch OS X.
> I'm quite sick of the trend that things have to be dumbed down for the average user so that things look "slick."
This has been one of the primary complaints about the One Macintosh Way since the first Mac proved that 1984 was going to be like Nineteen Eighty-Four and its largest competition was systems built around command lines, such as the Apple ][ and Commodore 64. It's never hurt Apple yet, and their durable majorities in coffeeshops and design hausen don't look eager to abandon them over it now.
> At least, there, you have the option to get rid of GDM and Mutter, install OpenBox, and be merry.
You... you understand that Linux has more than one GUI! Are you a god?
My wife has been using a 4K monitor on her desktop for a few weeks now. It's fantastic. This evolution to 4K on the desktop is so overdue that I am simultaneously delighted by it and frustrated that it took so long.
I too am disappointed that 4K (or even better!) has not been adopted by hardware vendors, Apple included. But I personally have made the argument that Microsoft should embrace ultra-high-end desktop computing as a competitive advantage [1] because they seem to be most in need of something to differentiate them from the crowd.
I will open my wallet and tap it empty for the first vendor to deliver desktop computing that is immersive, with bezel-free large form-factor displays. I'm not suggesting Apple should pave the way—if anything they have distanced themselves from desktop computing—but it is nevertheless disappointing that they are not advancing that front even modestly.
The lack of a new Thunderbolt (which I've been waiting for over a year) was the biggest disappointment for me, I'm not sure how much longer I'll have to wait but I definitely wont be getting their current obsolete models. If it doesn't come in December along-side the new Mac Pro's then I'll be shopping around for one.
But the new iPad's do look amazing. I was destined to get a new iPad mini if it came with Retina display and now it does at the same resolution (and even A7 chip) as the 10" no less! But then now the iPad Air is much lighter and smaller (which were my main issues with it), so now I have buyers uncertainty and have to physically go into the Apple Store to see which one I prefer. I generally prefer going for the 'best experience' Apple has to offer, and if the 10" stayed the same size and weight the iPad mini would've been a no-brainer - now not so sure.
The same with the MacBook Pro, I was going to get the new 15" MBP, but it looks like the 13" got the biggest upgrade and is the better value, and then if you're considering a 13" you'll also have to consider ultra portable 13" Air for max portability.
Personally my "un-ease" with the new products is that it seems to be less clear which products have the best value (well other than the iPad2-filler). It's nicer when the products you want get the best upgrades re-enforcing your decision, not-so-nice when the alternative models get the value/feature bumps - increasing the fear you might get the wrong one!
This. I am going to US now in November and the one thing I wanted to come back to Brazil with was an Apple 4K Thunderbolt Display... I even had hopes for it being the one more thing but no.
There's another story on HN that says, "The PC is not dead, we just don't need new ones." That's actually my exact situation with Apple right now. My iPad Mini, iPhone 5, Mac Pro, Apple TV and MBP are all more than adequate. Making them gold or shaving off a few ounces isn't very exciting.
The iPad was released less than 3 years after the iPhone. Now we're three years past the release of the iPad with nothing new to talk about. I'm sure there are exciting things happening under the hood at Apple, but the event was a bit boring.
Apple should also rethink their television ads. The style they popularized has become trite and they ooze with self-importance. The iPad mini video with the pencil reminded me of Facebook's terrible Chair ad. I miss the lightness and humor of watching a John Hodgman riff with what's-his-name.
Is three years a long time ?
There is a theory that Apple products are priced at more or less 1$ a day for their expected life span, and it matches m y experience pretty well.
A MBP easily goes 3000$, you could be expected to be satisfied with it for 3 years at least. Apple shouldn't need to convince people having bought an iPad 2 years ago to absolutely buy one now, same goes for the iPhone 4S or 5 (the 5 is from last year, yeah you might not _need_ a new one)
Looking at the software support charts, 2 or 3+ years devices are all still fully supported.
For comparison, I bought a 2010 MBA, it's plenty usable, but I'm having a hard look at the new generation MBP because it's actually a very very nice upgrade with featuers that really make a difference in everyday use. Same thing for the ipad, looking at the first ipad, I can't imagine anyone saying "that's good enough for me, why go retina, have 4x the RAM, 4x the speed all of these for half the weight ?"
> There is a theory that Apple products are priced at more or less 1$ a day for their expected life span
Using your MBP example, that would put it at $3 a day. You’d have to keep using the MBP for another 7 years for the ‘$1 a day’ rule to be accurate. Let’s not even do the math on Mac Pros, the rule just doesn’t work out for the Pro products.
But let’s try the rule on consumer Macs. I have a 4 year old mid-range Mac mini. It runs Mavericks fine, so I’ll continue using it for another year. That means the computer will have cost me $0.55 a day. I have a top-of-the-line MacBook Air I bought last year. I expect I will use it for 4 years. That will mean it cost me $1.02 a day. My mom has a 5 year old MacBook Alu, which I just upgraded to Mavericks. She won’t buy a new notebook for another year. By then, the MacBook will have cost her $0.50 a day.
I don't think it would apply to all products, but I am still using my 2008 Macbook which cost me around $2,500 i think... I have installed new HDD twice (1TB and then moved to a smaller SSD), also replaced the battery twice in that time. Probably adding another $1,000 to the cost. It is still going strong, probably keep working on this until it dies...
My MacMini is a 2011 model, I will probably install a SSD into it in 6 months and get another two years of life out of it...
iPhones on the other hand are pretty much 24 month life cycles for me.
iPad, I am still rocking a launch day iPad 2... it probably only has about another 6 months of life left. The battery only lasts maybe five hours of solid use which is barely enough for what I need each day at work.
Is the amount of time you spend in dealing with the resale included in the overall costings? My impression is that most people who do the resale dance aren't cheap when paid by the hour.
5 years is about long enough for a paradigm shift in software. Technology in general perhaps but this is a really odd question to try and answer adequately. I think it is a long time.
Android of 3 years ago doesn't look anything like it does today.
Change is often incremental. No one is suggesting you should replace your <1 year old iPad mini with the new model. To see how much tablets have improved, compare an original iPad with its original software to the new retina iPad mini running the current OS and apps.
Exactly this. I didn't buy an iPad since the first generation one, and it's been getting really long in the tooth.
I was really looking forward to the new series of iPads because I would like a new one, and also one which uses the same charger connection as my iPhone 5. :)
Now I expect the iPad Air to last me for quite awhile.
"Making them gold or shaving off a few ounces isn't very exciting."
I agree. Things I have bought or preordered recently, however: Oculus Rift (not a developer, just want to see what it does) and Thalmic's Myo. Both because they are exciting.
This irritates the hell out of me. Who is this "we"? Fine if Marco wants to suggest that they suck, but I'll take a shot in the dark and say he hasn't even tried to give one a fair shake...would love to hear from him if he actually has.
I have never found a use for a tablet, but I have several around my house including iPad Mini, iPad 3, Nexus 7 (1st gen), and now a Surface. The Surface is the best of those devices and the only one I can see myself continuing to use going forward.
I would challenge anyone to just open their minds if they haven't tried one and jump in completely for a week or so then make up your mind. Definitely not saying the device is perfect, there are some things (both hardware and software) I'd like to see added but it's a damn nice device!
The Surface Pro got a rave review from Penny-Arcade: http://www.penny-arcade.com/2013/09/23/the-surface-2 (seen on HN). I'm an Apple guy now, but if I were to do college again I'd probably opt for a Surface Pro 2 (with the Wacom stylus). The mechanical engineering course notes I've seen generated with OneNote look fantastic, plus the ability to search through them via handwriting recognition would be a great advantage over a stack of notebooks.
A more precise wording would have been "We know Apple thinks Microsoft's tablets suck." He's not hitting Microsoft in that sentence, he's hitting Apple for being predictable and boring.
Because despite the fact that he is a wild-eyed Apple fan with hugely distorted opinions and is horrifically wrong much of the time, he has connections and insights into the Apple ecosystem that nobody else does. Just hold your nose and scan for the actual information in between lines of rubbish.
With a massive markdown on inventory last Q I think it's fair to say that even most MSFT executives would tell you that they screwed up most everything around their go to market on tablets (to date) Doesn't mean they won't correct it. I think Marco's point was that it's kind of lame of Apple to beat such a currently dead horse.
this makes no sense, you say "I have never found a use for a tablet" yet go on to say "The Surface is the best of those devices and the only one I can see myself continuing to use going forward."
which is it? you use a tablet or not?
to anyone that's actually used a surface and ipad it's really really easy to see why Marco said that Microsoft's tablets suck. They do, Surface is a joke compared to the iPad.
I thought I was clear, but re-reading it I agree I wasn't.
What I meant was that I found little use for a tablet until I got the Surface. It still doesn't play a major role in my day to day activities but I'm using it daily and Windows 8.1 on the Surface is a wonderful experience.
If any other company was behind it I honestly think it would be more successful, but because it's Microsoft there is this natural hate. Just reading your comment, "Surface is a joke compared to the iPad" seems to indicate a lot of disdain for a product that I doubt you've even held in your hand. Am I wrong?
That's Marcos hyperbole based on the fact that Android has, according to IDC, a 63% tablet marketshare in 2013 (iOS has 33%), yet, as you stated, only 25% browsing share. So, Android has double the market share, but only a quarter the browsing share. Hence, the comment generalizing that people with Android tablets aren't browsing the web with them.
The whole thing is silly because browsing is clearly a reflection of installed base while "market share" is (usually) talking about the current rate of sales, which are fluctuating year by year on an exponential scale.
> Android phones came a year after the release of the iPhone
In 2010, 3 years after iPhone release, Android had around 8% market share. It grew something like 1200% that year. These things aren't linear with time.
Currently, Android has 80% smartphone market share. Android smartphone market share growth is over. And yet, iPhone web usage share remains much higher than Android’s.
Eh, no. Hitslink’s data[1] comes from approximately 160 million visitors per month. StatCounter’s data[1] comes more than 3 million websites. Caveat: StatCounter’s hasn’t been reporting very reliable global stats lately, it’s most useful for Europe and North America.
Personally, I use Mint[3] for analytics on my websites, iOS usage share is much higher for those.
I agree with this but in a much less snarky way. ;) I have an iPhone 4 and an HTC One. I find the 4 now frustratingly small and I'm sure if it were my only phone I'd use an iPad mini or iPad at home a lot more. With my HTC One I'm rarely frustrated. I'd be interested in a tablet but just don't feel I'd really use it because the HTC One is bigger. So that might be an odd factor driving iPad Mini's/iPad's in an Apple centric customer.
Eh? That's all I mostly do on my 7" Asus, it's what my friends and family use their Android tablets for. Unless "browses the web" means something different in Apple parlance? But hey, no surprises from Marco with his partisan love of Apple, no doubt we'll have some additional Apple waffle like this from from Gruber on the front page.
He's not wrong. The presenters kept saying slightly the wrong words and having to go back and correct themselves. The constant untucked-shirt comments were painful, and completely out of their usual presentation style.
The Mac Pro is absolutely hilarious in it's pricing. When converted back to USD, it's almost 30% more expensive in Australia for absolutely no understandable reason. The fact that it wasn't released is very strange too, along with it's very vague "December" date. Makes me feel like they expected to be releasing it but ran into problems with their process.
I readily agree that Australians generally pay high premiums for a lot of goods (having lived there myself at one point).
However, the cost of doing business in all countries is not the same. Doing business in Australia definitely costs more than the US. I know; I've done both.
There's also still the question of whether they would assemble the Mac Pros in the US and then ship them to Australia (if so, that would obviously cost more).
I understand the desire to have equivalent pricing, but that's choice by the company to eat additional costs or avoid market cannibalization.
I'm not claiming the 30% difference is entirely justified; but I suspect a 10-15% difference might be. In the end, if you believe it's not a fair price, don't buy it, or get your elected officials to fix it (which I believe they're looking into in general).
Everything in the history of Apple has been "30%" more expensive or more outside the US than inside. This is completely no surprise and in line with every other pricing strategy of Apple before.
I wouldn't say that, usually it's $100 or so, literally 30% is an incredibly markup for a $3000 USD device. Throw a 4K screen in, and it'll be cheaper to fly to the US and buy a setup there.
Technically there is duty owed when you bring something back worth more than $1,000...
At the moment the difference between the MacPros is $1,000. So if I bought it in the states after currency conversion I might save $750 or something. I would need to bring a lot of them back to cover my flight.
Plus then I might get stung at customs and owe 10% of the total value anyway.
10% more just for GST, some buffer for exchange rate fluctuations, and they also need extra to cover the more onerous warranty requirements in Australia. I'd expect all these costs to be around 25-30%.
Apple flat out ignores their legal obligations with warranty, so I don't see that as a factor. I had the logic board replaced in my year-and-a-bit-old MacBook and got a massive bill ($1400+), laughed and told them that the warranty was two years in Australia, and it was miraculously replaced with a $0 fee with no questions asked. If I'd not known and paid it, they'd have ripped me off for the value of the machine.
They attempt to avoid refund laws as well. Apple claim you can't get a refund on the App store. Although they have to provide one if an App you purchase does not do what was advertised. (This was brought up on The Chasers show "The Checkout")
I accidentally purchased a $5 app not too long ago (it was in the group of apps that were free for the 5th anniversary of the App Store). I selected the "Didn't mean to purchase this item" option in iTunes and got a refund immediately. No problem.
That might be import duty imposed by the Australian government your paying there. Everything being about %10-%20 more expensive in Canada compared to the US on average is partly because of that.
What exactly would you compare the new Mac Pro with? I can’t think of any other computer that is similar in size and features.
Even disregarding form factor, energy consumption, and ports like Thunderbolt 2: I just configured a HP Z820 on HP’s website to match it to the $4k Mac Pro. I couldn’t even get the same CPU & GPU specs, but the HP behemoth would cost over $8k.
For me the most notable parts of the whole event were the software-related announcements. Nothing about any of the hardware was in the least bit surprising. My notes:
- The Mac Pro is still not available. I don't believe it's ever been like Apple to pre-announce something this far out.
- The iPad update was the first not to make me want the new one. I'm perfectly happy with my iPad 4 and see no reason to update yet.
- An iPad Mini with a Retina display is nice, but I've never been attracted to that screen size so it doesn't do much for me.
- There was no "One more thing..." or anything more surprising than them making all of their consumer software free.
- There were brief mentions of new versions of both Aperture and FCPX, but that was it. I only found out later that the Aperture update is just a small dot update and now requires Mavericks.
Maybe I'm just a consumer whore, but this update hit it out of the park for me:
- I was waiting for the rMBP Haswell update.
- I love my mini, but the shitty screen is the worst thing about it.
- My wife loves the 10" form factor of her iPad, but it's heavy and the half pound weight reduction is substantial.
Also, as a practical matter, I like that Apple realizes what their products' pain points are and appreciate incremental updates like these to address them. This is something you really don't see in PC space where each new product iteration can have totally different flaws. E.g. with the Vaio Pro 13, Sony did a great job with battery life. But then its bigger, heavier Flip PCs have worse battery life! Huh?
I like that Apple realizes what their products' pain points are and appreciate incremental updates
Please realize there's a bit of rose colored glasses here. After an iPhone 3g, iPhone 4 and iPhone 4s I couldn't stand the wait for a larger screen any longer and was forced into switching away from iPhone. I chose a Lumia 928. A co-worker of mine ended up with a Galaxy S4. The Lumia 928 is the best phone I've ever owned and my co-worker says the same thing about his Galaxy. You really don't realize the pain points you had with an iPhone until you have something else. For example: the fact that the screen is so narrow means that they had to come up with the hack of hiding the address bar unless you're at the very top of Safari. That's a pain. To reduce that pain they came up with the hack of tapping the very tippy top of the screen which whisks you instantly to the top of the page. Not a bad hack - until you're on page 9 or 10 of reading something and accidentally trigger the immediate scroll to top thereby losing your place.
There are a ton of things that users have been clamoring for in every Apple product and most of these things, Apple just ignores.
The thing I thank Apple for in the smart phone arena is raising the bar so high with the original iPhone that it led to having several decent choices today. It's a shame they've stagnated since then though and the competition has significantly passed them.
Look, I'm an Android fan. But your claims of Apple being surpassed are hot air. Name a single Android phone the size of the iPhone 5s that's even close to its capabilities. You can't. Android phones are laptops, while iPhones are Macbook Airs. Android manufacturers still can't touch the iPhone for what it is. Namely, the best damn phone money can buy in its category (ultra-light and compact). Your complaint about Apple is that they should make larger phones for you--a valid argument--but that doesn't mean Apple is falling behind. They're not even in the game, yet. A Galaxy S4 is so much bigger than an iPhone it's practically a separate category of phone.
> A Galaxy S4 is so much bigger than an iPhone it's practically a separate category of phone. Name a single Android phone the size of the iPhone 5s that's even close to its capabilities.
Motorola X.
It's literally designed to be the Android version of an "iPhone" form factor. (It's technically larger than an iPhone, but only marginally.)
I have the orig. Nexus 7 tablet and I sorely miss the tapping the titlebar to get to the top functionality. I don't think it's a hack, although I think they need a reverse type of feature where tapping it at the top sends you to your previous location near the bottom for exactly the situation you describe.
Personally I don't like larger phones. I like the smaller size of the 4S mainly because I like stuff to fit comfortably in my pocket.
I too have an OG Nexus7 and I'm sorely disappointed by it. The flash modules Google put in them were shit and Android didn't support TRIM until very recently, so memory performance degraded very quickly. As soon as I hit over 40% full, it becomes unusable.
On the otherhand, I've been overall very happy with all the HTC devices I've bought...HTC is really the Apple of the OEM world
Just wanted to point out that the weird "hiding the address bar" thing isn't as bad as you describe (the behavior you talk about might have existed in one of the betas, but trying on my iPhone now it seems to be gone). Instead, if you press the top of the screen the address bar now appears, and pressing the top again makes you scroll to the top of the page.
Sony seems to be in a positive transition off late. All products havent been refreshed. I was surprised how good the Xperia Tablet Z was. Was lighter and thinner than any comparable tablet when it launched around Mar this year.
They pre-announce things that have no chance of cannabalizing things they care about. The Mac Pro announcement is probably meant to slow sales of Wintel pro boxes. The current Mac Pro line is already way out of date.
My main complaint with the 4 is that it was too thick/heavy, and I'm glad that the iPad air (wtf, we're still going to call it iPad 5) is thinner/lighter.
There was no "One more thing..." or anything more surprising than them making all of their consumer software free.
But that was a huge one more thing, yet somehow they managed to deflate giving an enormous quantity of top quality software away for free. I completely agree that in the end it was very ho hum, but I still can't even place why that is.
Similarly, the Mini announcement had a real potential of being huge...everyone expected a new screen, but few expected the new processor. To have pinnacle gear in a minuscule, big-pocketable, relatively inexpensive device...killer....or ho hum blah.
The MBP updates are fantastic. Maybe expected, but geez that's a killer bit of kit in an amazing form factor at a remarkable price.
They really did have amazing things to announce. Somehow the presentation (and perhaps the endless leaks) managed to suck the life out of it. As Marco mentioned the scripted commentary (and complete inability to adlib on a mistake, making it just painful to watch) and the already-seen videos were just really bad decisions. This could have been a soft web release.
And they've played the Mac Pro for too long already. They've spent too much time on it. And really, of all of Apple's recent products that one is by far the most dubious of them all. The value proposition isn't there, and the potential base is tiny compared to the other products.
So what part about the rMBP upgrade was fantastic? The part where they reduced the amount of RAM, or the part where they used Iris/Iris Pro graphics like every other PC manufacturer is going to be doing pretty soon? When Intel releases new CPUs, everyone starts using them soon after, how is that in any way remarkable?
If a person's in the market for a super high-res laptop, the new rMBP is still one of the best options, but personally I found this upgrade underwhelming.
So far Tim Cook is to Apple as Bobby Kotick was to Blizzard. He may be increasing profit margins, but he is clearly doing so to the detriment of the company's reputation, and to the detriment of the customers that made them what they are.
>The part where they reduced the amount of RAM, or the part where they used Iris/Iris Pro graphics like every other PC manufacturer is going to be doing pretty soon?
1) It seems like they introduced a "cheap" model with only 4gb ram and 128gb SSD.
2) However, the previous version with 8 GB ram and 256gb SSD is _costs less as well_.
3) Iris Pro graphics aren't bad - it's certainly better than Intel HD 4000.
4) Apple did not remove any dedicated graphics card on the 13" retina. For the 15", a dedicated card (nvidia 750m) is still there.
Basically, if you want a MacBook Pro with Retina Display, there's a new model that's now a whopping $200 less, the previous low-end model is $100 less, but with brand new cpu, graphics and battery life. There's even more money to save when buying the 15" models.
I don't understand what you people want from Apple
I'm just saying that its not really a "fantastic" upgrade. Apple can price their products however they want, but I would have been impressed if they reduced the price by $200 without removing $30 worth of RAM from the machine. It just seems kind of petty to do it, that's all. It gives the impression that they are nickel and diming their customers, just like it did when they spent a bunch of money developing the overpriced 5C, when all their customers really wanted or expected was an iPhone 5 at a cheaper price.
We are used to Apple charging a premium for their products. That's fine, because they have historically made some really nice stuff. What we aren't used to is watching them take obvious, public actions to reduce manufacturing costs.
If we ignore the RAM reduction for a moment, its not a bad upgrade, its just not "fantastic." The 5S was a fantastic upgrade (even if most people won't use the extra horsepower), the iPad Air is a fantastic upgrade, the original rMBP was a spectacular upgrade, but this is just ordinary.
3. The GPUs are amazing for integrated graphics, but that's Intel's accomplishment, and soon everyone will be using them.
4. I didn't say that Apple removed a GPU from anything.
If we're just discussing your definition of fantastic who cares really?
They lowered prices by $200-300, made them faster, more battery life, basically all you can do to improve a product, along with making a bunch of software free, that's several hundred more dollars there too.
I mean the Retina MacBook has no competitors. They don't need to lower prices.
Adding to that, a good quality laptop is honestly the same price or higher at other companies.
I guess Apple is nickel and diming their customers, though. That definitely follows...
>If we're just discussing your definition of fantastic who cares really?
I was responding to someone who said the he felt the upgrade for the rMBP was "fantastic." He expressed his opinion (which no one is obliged to care about) and I did the same. If you don't care, why take the time to respond?
>They lowered prices by $200-300, made them faster, more battery life, basically all you can do to improve a product, along with making a bunch of software free, that's several hundred more dollars there too.
If they did all you could do to improve a product, they wouldn't have cut the amount of RAM in the baseline model, when people were already complaining about the previous model not having enough.
Another issue is that the improvements are incremental. Like I said, I don't consider incremental improvements a "fantastic" upgrade.
These are opinions, if you disagree, that's an opinion too.
>I mean the Retina MacBook has no competitors. They don't need to lower prices.
Incorrect. You personally may not like any of the alternatives, but there are now several machines, around 3.5 lbs, with full HD and retina displays, targeted towards professionals.
There's the Yoga 2 Pro, which features a 3200x1800 display, and improved upon every aspect of the original. It doesn't have Iris Pro graphics, but many people have already been comparing it to the rMBP. Apple has excellent keyboards, but many people prefer Lenovo's. Having used both of them, I have a slight preference for Lenovo.
Lenovo also has the T440s, and the T440p coming out soon, with Full HD IPS screens. They are close in size and weight, and also marketed towards professionals.
Asus has a few things either on the market or in the works, which are clearly designed to compete with the rMBP.
The rMBP has quite a bit of competition in 2013, and 2014 isn't going to be any different. Some people act as if its a foregone conclusion that any non-OSX system is going to be inferior to something made by Apple. In reality, there are quite a few really nice systems out there, and some of them run Windows by default.
>along with making a bunch of software free, that's several hundred more dollars there too.
Apple's software simply isn't worth hundreds of dollars. As much as I would like for something cheap or free to replace Microsoft Office, it isn't going to happen any time soon.
>Adding to that, a good quality laptop is honestly the same price or higher at other companies.
Build quality does cost money, I agree. My issue lies in the fact that a company shouldn't downgrade any aspect of a system when they release a new one. RAM is inexpensive enough to make Apple's decision mind-bogglingly stupid. It would of made more sense to reduce the price by $170 instead of $200 and leave the extra 4GB in. Once again, this is a matter of opinion. You are entitled to disagree.
Thinner. Lighter. Cheaper. Faster. 9 hour+ battery life.
I am reminded of that Louis C.K. bit where he talks about everything being amazing and no one being happy. I'm not sure what else Apple could have done, but to me the new MBPs are absolutely spot on.
> But that was a huge one more thing, yet somehow they managed to deflate giving an enormous quantity of top quality software away for free. I completely agree that in the end it was very ho hum, but I still can't even place why that is.
I think it had to do with timing. In many cases, the timing of the presentation seemed...somehow "off" -- aside from Federighi whose parts of the presentation I enjoyed. Lots of "ok now watch this video we made", untucked shirts that seemed "forced" somehow, the feeling of "forced" humor (Cue especially), etc. It almost seemed like the whole thing felt somehow rushed and/or unpracticed. Weird.
Just to be accurate, iWork is not free. It's free with the purchase of a new computer. I can't get it for free on my current laptop. So it's built into the cost of computers, which is nice, but different than free.
Apple is one of the largest consumer electronics company in the world. iPads and Macs and iPhones and iPods are owned by every strata of the consumer ecosystem, from McDonalds employees to CEOs.
The old "Apple customers are like BMW owners" (you didn't say this, but that is the general idea of such sentiments) theory does not correspond with reality. People "self-select" as Apple customers because they like the product, not because they are foolish about money.
And, it should be mentioned, the news was cared about by just about everyone (Mavericks being free was #1 here on HN). It just didn't have any magic to it.
I think the more apt comparison is that Apple customers are like Honda owners.
Apple is one of the largest consumer electronics company in the world. iPads and Macs and iPhones and iPods are owned by every strata of the consumer ecosystem, from McDonalds employees to CEOs.
From what I understand (and I don't have any of the data handy), this is only true for the American consumer ecosystem.
I was specifically talking about the crowd who watches those events and that 'magic' reaction. I probably should have been more clear.
I didn't mean to suggest that they wouldn't care at all, just that they wouldn't react to a price cut and updated internals like they would, say, 4k displays, an app store on the apple tv, a watch, etc.
"We know that effectively nobody browses the web on their Android tablets full of stretched-out phone apps."
Really? I use my Android tablet all the time and love it. So much so, I'm switching from an iPhone to and Android phone. In turn, this also makes using a Mac computer far less important for me.
I wouldn't read too much into those paragraphs. Marco famously wrote "there is no tablet market, only an iPad market" so this is just goal post moving.
So we're way past criticizing a thing somebody makes. Instead we're criticizing the "product messaging" that goes along with the thing.
The complaint seems to be that this event, despite all the time spent on the usual "The things you fans bought have indeed turned out to be very popular, yay for you" message, didn't deliver the same sense of materialist cult excitement that some people had become accustomed to.
And that apparently is generally viewed as a criticism worth making, worth discussing. It's considered important.
Oh jeez. It's almost like there's a certain ... legendary source of charisma and showmanship missing. Give the hand-wringing a break. Steve Jobs could have changed his wardrobe and people would say it would have had an impact on the feel of the presentations. Now the guy's dead. Of course they're different.
Marco has never been one to wonder "if only Steve were still alive..." That's not the point at all, he's never made these comments about previous post-Jobs presentations.
Further to this point: the iPhone 5S event last month also had nothing but already known and completely predictable updates. There was no "one more thing". It even featured pretty much the entire same cast of presenters. It even had the more difficult task of selling prices that were much higher than the media and the market had expected.
But no-one seemed to think it was odd.
Plenty of people griped about the lack of the wondrous "one more thing"s they'd invented in their own fevered imaginations -- but it didn't leave people mumbling to one another, "did that seem weird to you?"
It's a trajectory. Look at Apple before Jobs' return and the time it took to turn the company around. Now, that trajectory has changed, and this moment may well be the inflection point.
That's not it at all, this is not the first post-Jobs press release. The presentation lacked modern salesmanship. Perhaps, they don't really want to sell a lot of these products. Why would they want that? I bet the mini iPad is being sold below cost, thus Woz's comment that the 128GB iPad isn't a big enough premium price for his tastes, he's trying to pull the market away from the low-end offerings by popularized consumer fads, preserving some of the value of his AAPL holdings.
If you ask me, the entire "games" black hole looks for all the world like they're on the cusp of something that isn't quite ready.
They introduced official gamepad support coming to iOS7 at WWDC, both standalone gamepads and iphone/ipod-wrapping cases. A couple MFI partners even teased things to come. And then... nothing.
It became actually real in the release of iOS7. The iPhone event even dedicated some serious stage time to gaming and a few higher-profile apps were updated to support it. But, still, nothing.
The iPad event came and went and they didn't even mention the iPod Touch, let alone gaming. I don't think they've ever talked about the iPad without talking about gaming.
So I wonder if the event was "off" because a tent pole feature, something that encompassed phones, tablets, ipods and maybe even the appleTV, just wasn't ready to go.
I've often wondered about Apple's reluctance to fully take advantage of iOS as a serious gaming platform. At the WWDC they mentioned some key partnerships to deliver console-style controllers for iPhones and iPads -- I don't understand why they don't just find a way to integrate console controls onto iOS devices on their own and DOMINATE the space.
I want to play AAA titles on my iPad with AAA-caliber controls, not some flaky touch screen stopgap.
> I don't understand why they don't just find a way to integrate console controls onto iOS devices on their own and DOMINATE the space.
You'd be talking about essentially a dedicated device. The 'hard-core' console market, where the manufacturer takes a loss on the device and hopes to make it up on the games, someday (it took Microsoft about a decade), is probably not something Apple would be too keen on, given their business model. Of course, they also have no experience making console controllers. Probably better to leave it up to the partners.
I've heard this rebuttal before, but I really think with some clever engineering (which Apple has no shortage of) it could be done in way that would preclude a dedicated device, and wouldn't be intrusive to people who have no need for it.
That's an interesting thought. I think the missing piece is really the Apple TV playing games, and for whatever reason (maybe storage?), they just can't or don't want to make it happen.
As to storage, they've got the fusion drive. It doesn't sacrifice speed. It can (economically) be large enough to avoid feeling cramped. And it's been real-world tested for a couple years now.
Personally, I think the hold-up is that Apple is working on some new method of interacting with a computer from across the room. [1] I can see them demanding some better interface for general software, before they put an app store on the Apple TV. At which point they're free to only barely support gaming (via the gamepad APIs) as is their tradition.
[1]
A remote control is a terrible way to interact with arbitrary software. It's not even that good for modern video services that do little more than adding queue-management, search and account information management.
Gamepads are effective, but they're very gaming-specific and Apple is only accidentally a force in gaming; it's not in their DNA to release hardware that requires a gamepad.
Maybe it's something like Kinect. Maybe it's Siri. I don't have any good guesses there. I hope to hell it isn't AirPlay.
I just think the evidence is pretty clear that Apple simply doesn't value gaming enough to do a gaming-first product. They'd demand it do something more and how you'd do something more is a problem large enough to explain the delays (particularly given Jobs' autobiography, wherein he claimed that he'd finally cracked TV).
> Let us continue to believe that these are relevant industry events rather than giant commercials!
Why? Oh, why is it so hard to confront the reality that is right in front of their eyes? IT IS A GIANT COMMERCIAL, FOR FUCK'S SAKE!
This is the point where it becomes impossible to avoid comparisons to religion. You have a basic admission of someone who wants to keep believing in an illusion rather than exercising any kind of critical thinking.
Is every form of communication from a company about its products a "giant commercial"? While an Apple keynote is no doubt a marketing event, I think it's also pretty clear that Apple gives a crap about its products and their effect on the world at large. That's why people get so excited about these things. It's a rare opportunity to peek inside Willy Wonka's factory.
Compare to a company like Samsung, whose events tend to be gaudy, sleazy, and very clearly aimed at selling the product.
> This is the point where it becomes impossible to avoid comparisons to religion.
No, and by doing so, you lower the level of discourse on this website.
The lines were so tightly scripted that the presenters often stumbled off-script slightly,
and rather than rolling with it naturally, they’d just jump back and awkwardly retry the line.
The "I'm a a big fan of The Black Knight" (instead of Dark Knight) part was especially painful :/
I loved Craig's Hair Force One joke, but those two guys teasing each other during iWork demo were just annoying, that was too much.
Also, I think it was one of them going something like "it's just gor- beautiful." He probably realized he used "gorgeous" in previous sentence so he changed it to "beautiful"... Well, I didn't believe him.
That was Eddy Cue. He seemed to be uncomfortable in this situation because he was looking down at the teleprompter the whole time (hence the correction you noticed, and the flat jokes). Even though he's prominent in the company, I don't think he's been on stage much.
The other jokester was Roger Rosner (on the left in the "revise the record cover" demo, at 50 minutes into the keynote), who co-founded a startup called Lighthouse Design (http://www.langreiter.com/space/Lighthouse+Design), which, in dinosaur times, developed the presentation program Concurrence for NextStep. That's Roger at the top of the stairs in the photo above.
Concurrence eventually was rewritten at Jobs's request, and became Keynote. Roger also hasn't been on stage much, but he's a good guy, and a real developer, so cut him some slack. (Incidentally, the guy at the very bottom of the stairs is Jonathan Schwartz, who eventually became CEO of Sun, but was not really a developer.)
It seems like they realised that Craig's jokes went down well at WWDC/iPhone events so another presenter should try it too.
The whole presentation seemed too scripted. Most of the presenters are usually good but they were saying the wrong words and backtracking (your gor -beautiful example) all over the place.
It feels to me like they highlighted the minimum amount of stuff they needed to get out the door before the holidays. Lets be fair - there was a _ton_ of stuff announced. Maybe too much which lead to the lack of flair and detail.
I do think they've announced major refreshes - it seems to me that many products brought in features that have been years in development (e.g. Touch ID, 0.5 lb off the Air, Mac Pro, etc). I'm not saying these things were huge - it's just that any kind of getting any kind of multi year effort to line up while still keeping the normal plane flying is really hard work.
I personally think the current lineup is really good. Sure there's a few bits missing (notably there are apps in Mavericks which missed polish and touch id needs to be everywhere), but it feels to me like each of their hardware lines are now at a really rock solid iteration.
Software wise, the lineup feels even more integrated if you're an all apple customer.
TL;DR - it feels like they're getting their lineup up to a solid level baseline before using that as the base for the next set of awesome stuff, but hey - I could be wrong :)
Yes and no. Yes, it was obvious that the presenters didn't have that "natural burning feel" of Jobs. But that was obvious since Jobs is gone.
No, the product changes are still the right ones:
I have iPad 3, but I've bought iPad 2 for my parents. Whenever I go to them and use it I am impressed by the slightly lighter and thinner feel of it.
Now the iPad Air is significantly lighter and thinner than iPad 2. If you have any other iPad, wait to try the iPad Air, then tell me if you still think it's not a big improvement.
Ditto for iPad mini. If you have the present one, wait until you can try the new, then tell me it's not significant. I'm quite certain I'm going to by it, just to take it with me to the places for which I consider "full" iPad too big. Now it's retina, I'm sure it's the best device of that size. Is it too little? I'm considering best as "best that money can buy" not "best when I want to give as little money as I can." And if you're not using Apple tablets then this won't change your mind: others make cheaper stuff and it's still so.
Apple is in a tough spot, and these rollouts really reflect it.
Jobs was such a perfectionist in message delivery that anyone else doing that on behalf of the same company just is not going to measure up. The expectations are so high, and nobody carries that persona. I'd rather personally see the voice of Apple change to something I can identify with, and that voice just isn't there. If anyone at Apple is listening, just so you know...the company has no voice at the moment.
The rock-and-hard-place is the product offering. Frankly, the products haven't really advanced all that much in the past few years. There have been some improvements, but improvements are to be expected, and everyone tends to deliver incremental improvements. Those improvements certainly don't measure up as a premium. The days of massive lines for product releases, the waiting all night for the next iThing...I just have a hard time expecting that those are going to be on the order-of-magnitude to what we've seen in the past.
They are still doing Steve Notes. Give them a bit of a chance to learn to do it another way. If anything, it shows how good Steve Jobs was at these things.
I know there is a "CEO must do these" thing, but I would prefer if they left the keynotes to Phil Schiller and Craig Federighi. The rest can appear in the videos.
I think all we know what we're witnessing here, even if some people are afraid to say what it is.
This isn't the first event since Jobs' death, but I think 2 years is about right for the momentum that he left behind to start running down.
Even if Jobs was pushing Apple to build shiny consumer-oriented gadgets, he was still pushing. Nobody can replace what he brought to the company.
P.S. I'm not saying it's the end of Apple. I'm sure they can keep making good stuff for a long time. I'm saying that this is an inflection point, where Apple is now moving away from Jobs' vision and towards someone else's. Anything that started under Jobs is wrapped up now, and what we're seeing today is wholly the product of this next phase of Apple.
> “‘I’d like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use,’ he told me. ‘It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud.’ No longer would users have to fiddle with complex remotes for DVD players and cable channels. ‘It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it.’”
I think the more accurate part is jobs had the social clout to push things in Apple. Because of the typical CYA culture corprations create, most people couldn't afford to be as brazen as steve jobs politically, which gave him and apple the ability to be more innovative and have higher standards.
I generally agree with the post. It was so dull that I didn't even finish watching. And I couldn't believe how much Cook was stumbling over his lines. I always though they did tons of rehearsals. And they do have teleprompters, right? (maybe that's the problem).
I realize Apple/Steve nailed the presentation format and many are trying to copying (and some, like Samsung, are trying to stray from it). But maybe it's time to shake it up a bit. Every event feels exactly the same, even the general structure and collection of stats and retail store openings. Apple is creative and smart. It should figure out the next format/style.
Apple has never treated games much of a priority and it's always felt to me that the success of games on the iPhone/iPad has been a happy accident and they have no idea what to do about it, other than to continue to build great hardware and improve graphics tech.
If Apple was more of a games oriented company and concerned itself with the market I think we would have seen the controller API years earlier, actual gamepad hardware from Apple and a more powerful Apple TV with a games oriented App Store.
One of the biggest things Apple will have to manage going forward is the issue of backwards compatibility. The Windows ecosystem has had to deal with this for a long time. Windows XP was released twelve years ago and the installed base is huge. For the most part you can still use any current Windows software with XP and anything in between.
Apple is somewhat famous for summarily killing off whole product lines in the interest of technological innovation. I get it. No issues there.
However, as their installed base expands it will be increasingly hard for the average person to stomach the idea of their expensive computers or iOS devices becoming obsolete. Not everyone lives on the bleeding edge. In fact, most people don't.
It'll be interesting to watch what happens. It sure feels like the rate of innovation might have slowed down a bit. Thinner and lighter only go so far.
There are a few surprising things here and there. For example, I can't understand why Apple didn't acquire Bump [0] and and tightly integrate that capability both iOS and OSX. Google grabbed them instead. We'll see what happens.
>Part of it was the lack of surprises, which isn’t Apple’s fault.
For the iPhone announcement, I would have agreed. That was unsurprising due to supplier leaks.
For this event, it was completely Apple's fault, because there was nothing really that surprising. A lot of "that is some very nice engineering" but nothing to really make competitors go "uh oh, we gotta go back to work and catch up."
Jobs always seemed to express a genuine sense of wonder about what he presented on stage. And, given his personal history in technology, he could kind of pull it off in a sort of "who knew we could ever get here from two guys in a garage with a soldering iron?" sort of way. While I respect the current team, I'm not sure they can pull of that tone as well, and so I think these product presentations suffer a bit.
Otherwise, I didn't watch live, but I wasn't particularly disappointed or anything. Despite the hype, Apple events are always kind mostly dry affairs you can catch up on later with just a few minutes of reading. With the exception of new product line launches, which obviously can't happen three times a year.
As the post mentions, Federighi did a great job. The rest, well...it all feels a bit try-hard. Tim Cook in particular seems to be attempting to replicate Steve's enthusiasm but not actually feeling it.
The Mini with Retina is just the new mini. It's better than last year's model, but that's always the case. The iPad didn't become more expensive when it got Retina, nor did the iPhone.
With neither of those devices did Apple have to warn the markets upfront of a significant reduction in margins, though (there _was_ some fall, but it was smallish); they did with the original Mini.
Apple has a very nice product line. No one can deny that. That said, after looking for a new machine for my wife and checking out the Apple lineup, I went with a Dell. For full disclosure I work for Dell Software, but this was a home computer for my wife and I wanted something that would make her happy. You pay a LARGE premium for the name. You get much more hardware for the buck with Dell. You may like the OS better on the Mac side, but honestly - is the Mac OS more stable than Windows 7? In my experience no. Is it easier to use? [hint - try to uninstall a program], in my experience no. Windows, while not as trendy, is a good workhorse that does its job well. My wife needed to do video editing, web surfing and word processing. I got her an 4th gen Intel i7 with 12GB of RAM and a larger display than the iMac for a much better price. If you honestly separate the hype from reality, you'll realize you're paying a significant 'Apple tax'. Of course, if you need to use XCode to develop for iOS or some other reason where only a Mac will do, by all means, buy one. it is great. But if you want to have value for your money and don't use Xcode, I think there is nothing wrong with using a powerful PC.
I think what Marco is missing is Mavericks. Sure developers have known about it for a while as have the tech press but to the average consumer Apple announced a brand new operating system version yesterday, released it the same day AND made it completely free. That's a pretty huge announcement. Especially when it was alongside lots of updated and now free software, new iPad's and new Mac's.
We're in sort of a weird place with mobile computing. We're in the part of the technology/market growth curve where it's easy, for some, to make a killing with comparatively little effort and innovation. The iPad mini is a perfect example, it's mostly just iPad 2 guts with a smaller screen and battery, but they sold like crazy and made an even crazier amount of profit for Apple. And to some degree rightly so, they put a device in people's hands that they wanted.
Nevertheless, when the rewards for laziness are so high what incentive is there to take on risk? There are negative incentives, in fact, because any amount of effort or resources spent pursuing something risky will likely come at the cost of working on something safer. If the safe and lazy thing is sure to bring in billions in profit then even if the risky things succeeds it might end up being a short-term loss due to opportunity cost.
It's obvious that things like the iPad are the harbingers of the future. But at the same time it's just as obvious that the iPad does not represent anywhere near the final evolution along those lines. It's clear to me that consumer OSes will increasingly be like modern mobile OSes, with managed apps, streamlined UI, and even more streamlined administration. But the idea of there being such a gulf between a desktop with a keyboard and mouse on the one hand and a touch-only tablet on the other is mostly an accident of history. As well, the idea, from Windows 8, that there should be a single UI model that spans both portable (touch only) and stationary (keyboard and mouse) realms is ridiculous.
There should be a lot more innovation, a lot more development, and a lot more trial and error out in the market today. But until the market dynamics change we'll likely be stuck with a lot of lazy designs for a while.
"[...] iPad 2 sticking around for another year, shamelessly at the same price as last year."
I also found that a bit jarring. A 4-to-5 price ratio relative to latest model, which has much better processor, screen and weight ... it's hard to justify.
Perhaps it's because of the cheapest Mini price acting as some sort of backstop.
A 4-to-5 price ratio relative to latest model...it's hard to justify.
If that's what the market will bear, then it's justified.
Let's say you have $10k to spend on 10" iPads for a school district, and either model will run the educational software you want to run. Do you choose to provide for 20 students or 25 students?
I got the exact opposite impression. This event seemed refreshing, presenters were funny, and there were some suprises (new and free iWork, free Mavericks). It was also well paced, they didn't use as much "amazing" and "magical" as they did in Stevenotes. Overall I liked the event a lot.
Couldn't agree more. Not launching the game controller or talking up some big new release, like Oceanhorn, whilst teasing the Apple TV gaming could have really put a dent in the somewhat-weak line-ups of gaming systems that are going big this holiday.
Regarding Marco's footnote #1, I'm not entirely sure if I agree. At WWDC, I thought the 'Designed by Apple in California' [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGXFGjponC0] video added an air of magic (excuse the metaphor) to the whole charade. Considering these events go on for quite a while, surely a bit of overly-produced footage can't go down too badly?
I'm glad that this was only a minor point, and that the main issue, that the speakers currently seem to lack vivacity (exception of Federighi), was highlighted as a major issue.
What comes next? We are seeing the same trend with smartphones where each new device is more powerful then the one before. At some point they will pack so much CPU, memory, storage and gadgets (bluetooth, wifi, sensors of all kinds, etc) that it will be unlikely our apps will need more powerful devices. The industry will move to something else (which I have absolutely no idea what's going to be) and the smartphones makers will be the PC makers of the future.
These are the consequences of tying your company's brand up in the RDF of a Dear Leader. No matter what Apple does, they're going to be criticized of missing an intangible quality of innovation or genius, because Apple's visionary is dead.
Tim Cook's number one priority should be untangling the Jobs cult of personality and Apple Inc. And I definitely don't envy him.
I realized a few months ago hacker news has become boring. I don't really care much for the incremental updates, which is the entire hardware industry. Even the internet has become pretty boring.
We're all excited for the promises of the future, and as usual they're taking a lot longer than we want them to.
If you're excited for the future, work on breaking up the culture that keeps technology a monolith. For instance, Oculus VR exists only because of Kickstarter. What else could we do to get innovators the resources they need?
This is a situation where changing the original title would've been useful, and you don't even have to come up with your own title, just use the original article's first line:
Something felt a bit off about this week’s Apple event. [Was: Off] (marco.org)
Or maybe it's that they were over-excited at the previous presentation and showed a bunch of stuff too early. The previous one was overloaded with stuff. This one was a little light.
it is happening again. Apple (aka macintosh) is trying to squeeze blood from a rock. Three rocks actually. They didn't learn the first time. Innovation has died yet again at Apple. This time though they have an cash cow (iTunes) on hand to keep them going while they pump out junk for the next x decades. Microshaft 2.0 has hit the shelves.
The Mac Pro ships with enough bandwidth to drive three 4K desktop monitors, yet Apple's most recent monitor -- the 27" Thunderbolt Display -- dates to 2011 and has the same resolution as the current 15" Macbook Pro. Bluntly, this is disgraceful. Serious video folks are going to be buying Mac Pros and then paying ASUS three times as much for the monitors! Where's the Apple 4K Thunderbolt Display?
A keyboard cover -- like the Logitech Ultra-thin Keyboard Cover, or Microsoft's Surface keyboards -- would be nice. (I suppose Apple are relying on the after-market, as witness the startlingly fast announcements by Belkin et al.)
Finally, the "software is free" announcement ... yes, they're taking aim at Microsoft, but iWork 5 on OSX turns out to be a mixed blessing; there are regressions all over, especially in scripting (they've virtually dropped AppleScript from their office apps). What is this, an attempt to build market share for MS Office? (The mind boggles.) What other power user features have they planed away in the pursuit of a clean and consistent user interface across all platforms? (Which in practice seems to mean dumbing down the apps on the Pro platform -- OSX -- for compatibility with the mass market platform -- iOS.)