It’s interesting, because Apple has historically been very cautious about announcing products so far in advance before they are ready. Those who have followed Apple’s product announcements...
It’s interesting, because Apple has historically been very cautious about announcing products so far in advance before they are ready. Those who have followed Apple’s product announcements closely, year over year, have probably noticed Apple offering more forward-looking insights, such as their pre-announcement of the "trash-can" Mac Pros, and then also pre-announcing the iMac Pros. Those products were highly anticipated in their categories because there was demand for workhorse Macs to rip through large compute tasks. While I’m sure there were many false starts and engineering hurdles to overcome to deliver those products, there were no showstoppers, and even if Apple had missed their internal deadlines on these, the audience here was mostly die-hard Mac users who would have taken whatever they could get. (The Mac Pro drought between the big aluminum towers and the small aluminum cylinders had probably already pushed anyone on the fence toward Hackintoshes or away from the Apple ecosystem entirely.)
AirPower is different because there doesn’t seem to be any product like what Apple envisioned and described (at least in vague terms) in their pre-announcement. And Apple has some good will within the tech community because they rarely, if ever, overpromise anything. They have garnered a reputation for actually being too secretive about upcoming products that a whole cottage industry has cropped up investigating Apple’s supply chains to determine what the next big thing might be.
Apple has some egg on their face with this, but, will they continue tossing eggs around? Or will we go back to the information-scarce presentations where all we hear about is what is imminently releasing that same day or maybe in the next few weeks? That used to be a big differentiator between Apple and other tech companies: Microsoft or Sony or whoever would make elaborate tech demos of research projects that were nowhere near ready for consumption. Apple, on the other hand, could be counted on to only announce things that you’d be able to pre-order the same day, and would arrive within the month (if you jumped on it and got you pre-order in as soon as the store refreshed). I wonder if this cancellation will lead Apple to go back to the status quo of not pre-announcing any hardware products.
The sad thing is that pre-announcing things is the definition of the post-Steve era, but we're all just waking up to it now. 2013 Mac Pro, iMac Pro, Mac Pro (announced 2017), AirPower, Apple...
The sad thing is that pre-announcing things is the definition of the post-Steve era, but we're all just waking up to it now. 2013 Mac Pro, iMac Pro, Mac Pro (announced 2017), AirPower, Apple Watch, and HomePod are all pre-announces. And that's just hardware. Almost every fucking thing+ from this services keynote are all half-baked ideas that need to be finished before ship, and will ship after WWDC, the next major apple event. Every OS announcement these past few years has also included features which shipped unstable, don't ship in betas, or don't ship until way past the first customer release of the new major OSes.
Will Apple learn from this? I sure fucking hope so. Announce and ship things only when they're ready, only when they work.
I'm surprised Apple didn't release another half baked engineering design to give the finger to their customers and get a pass from their fanboys. Causing interference with electronic devices...
I'm surprised Apple didn't release another half baked engineering design to give the finger to their customers and get a pass from their fanboys. Causing interference with electronic devices likely would actually allow them to be held accountable for a change.
I'm going to start this off by saying that I don't use any Apple products my laptop runs windows and I have an android phone. You can say what you want about their pricing philosophy but from my...
I'm going to start this off by saying that I don't use any Apple products my laptop runs windows and I have an android phone. You can say what you want about their pricing philosophy but from my perspective Apple doesn't release any "half baked" products, in fact that's why people keep buying their products despite the high price points. All early reviewers were saying that the airpods were going to be the biggest flop because of the poor audio quality to price ratio. It's been two years and they're by far the most popular bluetooth headphones, why? Because they just work and that's what people want; a well refined product. Now, they definitely should not have announced such an ambitious product so soon before they had any working prototype but if they did release some stunted version it would definitely be one of the first times they released something shoddy for the price.
I've never understood what these sorts of off-the-cuff comments achieve to be entirely frank. I will fully admit to being a fan of Apple, their products, and their identity; but I'm not the sort...
I've never understood what these sorts of off-the-cuff comments achieve to be entirely frank. I will fully admit to being a fan of Apple, their products, and their identity; but I'm not the sort of competitive "Android sucks" type of person either—both ecosystems enhance the other and I enjoy reaping the benefits as a consumer.
Can you please expand on "half-baked"? I'm not sure what you mean by this. I don't think there's been a half-baked Apple release in over a decade. "Giving the finger?" How so?
It's super easy to say stuff; it's harder to supply evidence re-affirming your point. You'll probably generate more engaging conversation if you drop the dismissive, cynical view first—which is what Tildes set out to avoid.
That seems a little bit hostile. There are a few examples of half-baked ideas from Apple. Most notable is the first generation Apple Pencil, with the extremely poorly implemented charging port....
It's super easy to say stuff; it's harder to supply evidence re-affirming your point.
That seems a little bit hostile.
There are a few examples of half-baked ideas from Apple. Most notable is the first generation Apple Pencil, with the extremely poorly implemented charging port. The way they design their products to not be repairable or upgradable is a good example of how Apple "gives the finger" to it's customers.
This all depends what your definition on "half-baked" is—a pretty severe term, and "gives the finger" is hostile in and of itself. I wouldn't qualify the Apple Pencil 1 as neither. You'll remember...
This all depends what your definition on "half-baked" is—a pretty severe term, and "gives the finger" is hostile in and of itself. I wouldn't qualify the Apple Pencil 1 as neither. You'll remember at the time the iPad itself did not have a body that supported magnetically mating the pencil to the device. Is that really half baked? Would you therefore call Windows half baked for having about ten different visual styles in its OS that have accumulated over multiple generations?
90% of consumers don't have the requisite skills to repair their devices anyway. For those people, it's a zero sum game. I could repair my own device. But my time is valuable & when I depend on a device for my income, like a laptop, I want it repaired by someone who knows what they're doing.
Everything has an equal and opposite. Saying that because Apple don't make their products repairable is "giving the finger" is a very quick 10,000ft evaluation of the situation.
I suppose you are right about that, but the key takeaway was that the poster wasn't being hostile to you. You are hearing insults given to a faceless corporation and taking them as if they were...
This all depends what your definition on "half-baked" is—a pretty severe term, and "gives the finger" is hostile in and of itself.
I suppose you are right about that, but the key takeaway was that the poster wasn't being hostile to you. You are hearing insults given to a faceless corporation and taking them as if they were given to you. But you are not Apple, and they clearly weren't trying to ruffle your feathers.
I wouldn't qualify the Apple Pencil 1 as neither. You'll remember at the time the iPad itself did not have a body that supported magnetically mating the pencil to the device. Is that really half baked?
Yes, it is half-baked. If they put a female connector one could have plugged in a cord it wouldn't be as breakable. You are also forgetting that the Apple Pencil only works with iPads specifically designed to use them, so there really isn't an excuse.
90% of consumers don't have the requisite skills to repair their devices anyway.
That's an extremely reductive argument. It doesn't matter if nobody had the skills. The issue is that Apple has taken steps to make sure that only specially certified shops can fix their products, so there are fewer options for consumers.
Everything has an equal and opposite. Saying that because Apple don't make their products repairable is "giving the finger" is a very quick 10,000ft evaluation of the situation.
Sure, it's a quick overview, but it's pretty accurate. Apple has a long history of making their hardware work only with Apple-specific parts, even when they are just slighly-customized versions of existing products. The SSDs they use in their new iMacs apparantly use a non-standard connector so you can only replace them with parts from Apple. Why would they do that if not to squeeze more money from the consumer?
But they're being hostile regardless. No corporation is faceless. There are many, many people who work at these companies who put in their time & effort to make their products work because they...
but the key takeaway was that the poster wasn't being hostile to you. You are hearing insults given to a faceless corporation and taking them as if they were given to you.
But they're being hostile regardless. No corporation is faceless. There are many, many people who work at these companies who put in their time & effort to make their products work because they believe in the vision of developing cohesive devices which just work. It is hostile to them.
Yes, it is half-baked.
I disagree.
If they put a female connector one could have plugged in a cord it wouldn't be as breakable.
So your solution to the consumer is to make them perform three plug actions instead of one? Cable to iPad, Pencil to Cable? That's the antithesis of what Apple is about; and if they'd implemented such a solution, they would've been the laughing stock of the technology press.
That's an extremely reductive argument. It doesn't matter if nobody had the skills.
Sure it does. It's an argument from pragmatism, not idealism. The vast vast majority of consumers literally don't have the tools nor the experience to properly perform a device repair, and most end up completely non-functional, and that is not user friendly.
Sure, it's a quick overview, but it's pretty accurate.
I disagree.
The SSDs they use in their new iMacs apparantly use a non-standard connector so you can only replace them with parts from Apple. Why would they do that if not to squeeze more money from the consumer?
Now that is a reductive argument. I believe you're referring to the iMac Pros, which have an onboard T2 security chip to ensure a chain of trust, one part of which is having the T2 acting as the SSD controller, which essentially required re-architecting the SSD to mainboard device topology. There's far more than one reason to perform such a change, and that is the sort of cynical worldview I take issue with.
As far as I can tell, there are no Apple employees here. Like I said before, the poster wasn't trying to pick a fight and the only one taking this personally is you. If there were an offended...
But they're being hostile regardless. No corporation is faceless. There are many, many people who work at these companies who put in their time & effort to make their products work because they believe in the vision of developing cohesive devices which just work. It is hostile to them.
As far as I can tell, there are no Apple employees here. Like I said before, the poster wasn't trying to pick a fight and the only one taking this personally is you. If there were an offended Apple employee here, I'm sure they would prefer to defend themselves from their greater experience.
Honestly, if we did have an Apple employee here, I would be amazed if they would be upset at that. You would basically have to consider yourself to be extremely important to the company and how it is run in order to be offended by that type of comment.
So your solution to the consumer is to make them perform three plug actions instead of one? Cable to iPad, Pencil to Cable? That's the antithesis of what Apple is about; and if they'd implemented such a solution, they would've been the laughing stock of the technology press.
I gave the most simple and straightforward solution for the Apple Pencil. It wasn't supposed to be the best. They could have also used replaceable batteries, used a rotating mechanism to reveal the charging port, or even licensed the Wacom's patents so they didn't have to use batteries at all.
The vast vast majority of consumers literally don't have the tools nor the experience to properly perform a device repair, and most end up completely non-functional, and that is not user friendly.
You have completely ignored the part where I said that the issue is that they are preventing repairs by professional repair shops.
Now that is a reductive argument. I believe you're referring to the iMac Pros, which have an onboard T2 security chip to ensure a chain of trust, one part of which is having the T2 acting as the SSD controller, which essentially required re-architecting the SSD to mainboard device topology. There's far more than one reason to perform such a change, and that is the sort of cynical worldview I take issue with.
This is the second time you have used post hoc ergo proctor hoc with me. Sure, it makes sense for these SSDs to have different connectors if it's not an off-the shelf SSD drive, but you forget that Apple designed the T2 chip. They could have designed it to work with inexpensive off-the-shelf SSD modules and still have hardware encryption built in, but instead chose not to. You can buy a high end 1TB Samsung EVO 970 for $299, but getting a 1TB SSD on an iMac costs you an additional $700 on top of the cost of the computer. And this doesn't provide extra value for the consumer that a less expensive implementation would have.
I disagree.
Just saying "I disagree" by itself is argumentative and is not conductive towards conversation or debate. I'm not here to fight you, I'm here to have a conversation.
It’s interesting, because Apple has historically been very cautious about announcing products so far in advance before they are ready. Those who have followed Apple’s product announcements closely, year over year, have probably noticed Apple offering more forward-looking insights, such as their pre-announcement of the "trash-can" Mac Pros, and then also pre-announcing the iMac Pros. Those products were highly anticipated in their categories because there was demand for workhorse Macs to rip through large compute tasks. While I’m sure there were many false starts and engineering hurdles to overcome to deliver those products, there were no showstoppers, and even if Apple had missed their internal deadlines on these, the audience here was mostly die-hard Mac users who would have taken whatever they could get. (The Mac Pro drought between the big aluminum towers and the small aluminum cylinders had probably already pushed anyone on the fence toward Hackintoshes or away from the Apple ecosystem entirely.)
AirPower is different because there doesn’t seem to be any product like what Apple envisioned and described (at least in vague terms) in their pre-announcement. And Apple has some good will within the tech community because they rarely, if ever, overpromise anything. They have garnered a reputation for actually being too secretive about upcoming products that a whole cottage industry has cropped up investigating Apple’s supply chains to determine what the next big thing might be.
Apple has some egg on their face with this, but, will they continue tossing eggs around? Or will we go back to the information-scarce presentations where all we hear about is what is imminently releasing that same day or maybe in the next few weeks? That used to be a big differentiator between Apple and other tech companies: Microsoft or Sony or whoever would make elaborate tech demos of research projects that were nowhere near ready for consumption. Apple, on the other hand, could be counted on to only announce things that you’d be able to pre-order the same day, and would arrive within the month (if you jumped on it and got you pre-order in as soon as the store refreshed). I wonder if this cancellation will lead Apple to go back to the status quo of not pre-announcing any hardware products.
The sad thing is that pre-announcing things is the definition of the post-Steve era, but we're all just waking up to it now. 2013 Mac Pro, iMac Pro, Mac Pro (announced 2017), AirPower, Apple Watch, and HomePod are all pre-announces. And that's just hardware. Almost every fucking thing+ from this services keynote are all half-baked ideas that need to be finished before ship, and will ship after WWDC, the next major apple event. Every OS announcement these past few years has also included features which shipped unstable, don't ship in betas, or don't ship until way past the first customer release of the new major OSes.
Will Apple learn from this? I sure fucking hope so. Announce and ship things only when they're ready, only when they work.
Title (mildly) editorialised to be more accurate: this is fundamentally an opinion piece, even if it is well informed.
I'm surprised Apple didn't release another half baked engineering design to give the finger to their customers and get a pass from their fanboys. Causing interference with electronic devices likely would actually allow them to be held accountable for a change.
Don't support Apple
I'm going to start this off by saying that I don't use any Apple products my laptop runs windows and I have an android phone. You can say what you want about their pricing philosophy but from my perspective Apple doesn't release any "half baked" products, in fact that's why people keep buying their products despite the high price points. All early reviewers were saying that the airpods were going to be the biggest flop because of the poor audio quality to price ratio. It's been two years and they're by far the most popular bluetooth headphones, why? Because they just work and that's what people want; a well refined product. Now, they definitely should not have announced such an ambitious product so soon before they had any working prototype but if they did release some stunted version it would definitely be one of the first times they released something shoddy for the price.
I've never understood what these sorts of off-the-cuff comments achieve to be entirely frank. I will fully admit to being a fan of Apple, their products, and their identity; but I'm not the sort of competitive "Android sucks" type of person either—both ecosystems enhance the other and I enjoy reaping the benefits as a consumer.
Can you please expand on "half-baked"? I'm not sure what you mean by this. I don't think there's been a half-baked Apple release in over a decade. "Giving the finger?" How so?
It's super easy to say stuff; it's harder to supply evidence re-affirming your point. You'll probably generate more engaging conversation if you drop the dismissive, cynical view first—which is what Tildes set out to avoid.
That seems a little bit hostile.
There are a few examples of half-baked ideas from Apple. Most notable is the first generation Apple Pencil, with the extremely poorly implemented charging port. The way they design their products to not be repairable or upgradable is a good example of how Apple "gives the finger" to it's customers.
This all depends what your definition on "half-baked" is—a pretty severe term, and "gives the finger" is hostile in and of itself. I wouldn't qualify the Apple Pencil 1 as neither. You'll remember at the time the iPad itself did not have a body that supported magnetically mating the pencil to the device. Is that really half baked? Would you therefore call Windows half baked for having about ten different visual styles in its OS that have accumulated over multiple generations?
90% of consumers don't have the requisite skills to repair their devices anyway. For those people, it's a zero sum game. I could repair my own device. But my time is valuable & when I depend on a device for my income, like a laptop, I want it repaired by someone who knows what they're doing.
Everything has an equal and opposite. Saying that because Apple don't make their products repairable is "giving the finger" is a very quick 10,000ft evaluation of the situation.
I suppose you are right about that, but the key takeaway was that the poster wasn't being hostile to you. You are hearing insults given to a faceless corporation and taking them as if they were given to you. But you are not Apple, and they clearly weren't trying to ruffle your feathers.
Yes, it is half-baked. If they put a female connector one could have plugged in a cord it wouldn't be as breakable. You are also forgetting that the Apple Pencil only works with iPads specifically designed to use them, so there really isn't an excuse.
That's an extremely reductive argument. It doesn't matter if nobody had the skills. The issue is that Apple has taken steps to make sure that only specially certified shops can fix their products, so there are fewer options for consumers.
Sure, it's a quick overview, but it's pretty accurate. Apple has a long history of making their hardware work only with Apple-specific parts, even when they are just slighly-customized versions of existing products. The SSDs they use in their new iMacs apparantly use a non-standard connector so you can only replace them with parts from Apple. Why would they do that if not to squeeze more money from the consumer?
But they're being hostile regardless. No corporation is faceless. There are many, many people who work at these companies who put in their time & effort to make their products work because they believe in the vision of developing cohesive devices which just work. It is hostile to them.
I disagree.
So your solution to the consumer is to make them perform three plug actions instead of one? Cable to iPad, Pencil to Cable? That's the antithesis of what Apple is about; and if they'd implemented such a solution, they would've been the laughing stock of the technology press.
Sure it does. It's an argument from pragmatism, not idealism. The vast vast majority of consumers literally don't have the tools nor the experience to properly perform a device repair, and most end up completely non-functional, and that is not user friendly.
I disagree.
Now that is a reductive argument. I believe you're referring to the iMac Pros, which have an onboard T2 security chip to ensure a chain of trust, one part of which is having the T2 acting as the SSD controller, which essentially required re-architecting the SSD to mainboard device topology. There's far more than one reason to perform such a change, and that is the sort of cynical worldview I take issue with.
As far as I can tell, there are no Apple employees here. Like I said before, the poster wasn't trying to pick a fight and the only one taking this personally is you. If there were an offended Apple employee here, I'm sure they would prefer to defend themselves from their greater experience.
Honestly, if we did have an Apple employee here, I would be amazed if they would be upset at that. You would basically have to consider yourself to be extremely important to the company and how it is run in order to be offended by that type of comment.
I gave the most simple and straightforward solution for the Apple Pencil. It wasn't supposed to be the best. They could have also used replaceable batteries, used a rotating mechanism to reveal the charging port, or even licensed the Wacom's patents so they didn't have to use batteries at all.
You have completely ignored the part where I said that the issue is that they are preventing repairs by professional repair shops.
This is the second time you have used post hoc ergo proctor hoc with me. Sure, it makes sense for these SSDs to have different connectors if it's not an off-the shelf SSD drive, but you forget that Apple designed the T2 chip. They could have designed it to work with inexpensive off-the-shelf SSD modules and still have hardware encryption built in, but instead chose not to. You can buy a high end 1TB Samsung EVO 970 for $299, but getting a 1TB SSD on an iMac costs you an additional $700 on top of the cost of the computer. And this doesn't provide extra value for the consumer that a less expensive implementation would have.
Just saying "I disagree" by itself is argumentative and is not conductive towards conversation or debate. I'm not here to fight you, I'm here to have a conversation.