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Reactions to the New MacBook and Apple Watch
As the dust settles from Apple's press conference yesterday, there have been a broad variety of reactions around the web. Robinson Meyer at The Atlantic says Apple's $10,000 watch demonstrates the company has lost its soul. "The prices grate. And they grate not because they’re so expensive, but because they’re gratuitously expensive. ... To many commentators, this is unsurprising. It’s good business sense, really. Apple has made its world-devouring profits by ratcheting up profit margins on iPhones. There is no better target for these massive margins than the super-rich. But high margins do not a luxury brand make." Others suspect the high-end watches are targeted more at rich people in China.
As for the less expensive watches, perhaps they're around not so much to become a new major sales category for Apple, but rather to drive more iPhone sales. Meanwhile, the redesigned MacBook may signify a bigger change for the laptop industry than people realize: "We don’t need all those other ports, Apple says. We are living in a wireless world now, where we can connect most of our peripherals without cords." The new MacBook has also fueled speculation that Apple could be working on a more powerful tablet, something that could compete with Microsoft's Surface Pro line.
As for the less expensive watches, perhaps they're around not so much to become a new major sales category for Apple, but rather to drive more iPhone sales. Meanwhile, the redesigned MacBook may signify a bigger change for the laptop industry than people realize: "We don’t need all those other ports, Apple says. We are living in a wireless world now, where we can connect most of our peripherals without cords." The new MacBook has also fueled speculation that Apple could be working on a more powerful tablet, something that could compete with Microsoft's Surface Pro line.
Look, my inherent dislike of AAPL (and the people who love it) died some time ago. The problem I have with them now is not the fault of the Company - it's the idiots who keep buying this stuff. Seriously, gold colored iPhones, solid gold tchotckes that are designed to be obsolete within 2 years - madness.
Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
If you need more ports you can buy the USB-C port adapter for only $79 duh
To me, if Apple wants to price a watch at $10,000 because it is gold colored while there is an offering with the same exact functionality for a few C-notes, that's just fine. Let people who want to spend that much for a watch help finance Apple's R&D so "the rest of us" can get new and cool things. Same if Apple decided to buy Vertu and make diamond-encrusted iPhone 7s. If people want them, so much the better.
iPhones are not that expensive either relatively. I still remember when one of HTC's phones ran $1200, and that was with a two year contract.
More ports is not universally better.
Nobody is making THAT claim.
But the ability to plug in a mouse and keyboard, an external display, and a wired network, and still having at least one USB port for an external hard drive or a flash drive or to charge your phone or whatever IS universally better than not being able to do that.
This is why nearly all laptops from all other companies have 2-4 USB ports, a display out, a network jack, and a headphone jack.
Apple may have gone too far in that direction
Apple's always had its head up its ass. From the day it released the original imac and single handedly created a market for usb floppy drives and adb to usb adapters. PCs may have kept PS/2 and floppy drives around longer than anyone needed them, but at not needing a port and having it is far less annoying than needing it an not having it.
I can forgive it somewhat on the macbook air line; that's all about cutting off everything to make it small and light and that's fine. ... but taking away the ethernet port on the pro was idiotic. Sure I can buy an over priced thunderbolt adapter and carry it around everywhere... but I shouldn't have to. A pro laptop should be able to connect to a wired network out of the box. If that makes the unit 1mm thicker so be it... fill the space with battery and/or improve ventilation so it stays cool.
What's the point of a Rolex? They're absolutely obsolete, unless you're going for some strange fashion statement involving sporadic announcements of "it's a Rolex". If you are rich, then it'll be impressive as a pair of blue jeans for the rest of us. But, if you want a modern smart watch that you can dress up with, where the Rolex used to go, then you're choices are limited to exactly one. There's an absolute gaping void in the market that they're putting *something* into. What's the problem with that? Why does that involve a "soul"?
Not sure, I'd never spend 10k for any jewelry. (Even supposing I had the money in the first place.) But at least a Rolex will hold it's value consistently, versus any kind of gadget (minus a few very rare collector type bits.)
Until the medium of any available wired connection produces a slower and less reliable connection than a wireless one, I will always want a wired connection.
Meanwhile, to be portable for meetings, you need to bundle in your bag additional adapters (eg. plugging into a projector). A slightly thicker laptop with no dongles will actually be more portable.
Yup.
It amazes me how people splooge themselves over how thin and light their laptop is, yet end up carrying it, the power brick, a mouse, a USB to ethernet adapter, a mini dsplayport to something sane adapter, etc. in an overstuffed travel bag. Whereas a larger, cheaper laptop gets you a bigger screen, a larger trackpad (fuck all trackpads, though), a real ethernet port, real video outputs, and a larger battery, meaning you don't need anything but the laptop for a presentation, or the laptop and the charger for a full day of work.
Remember when Apple made "Computers For The Rest Of Us" instead of luxury products for the wealthy?
You are welcome on my lawn.
The Swiss watch will still perform its function in 10 years time. It will still perform its function in 100 years time.
Can you say that about the Apple Watch?
In Soviet Russia the insensitive clod is YOU!
What's the point of a Rolex? They're absolutely obsolete, unless you're going for some strange fashion statement involving sporadic announcements of "it's a Rolex". If you are rich, then it'll be impressive as a pair of blue jeans for the rest of us. But, if you want a modern smart watch that you can dress up with, where the Rolex used to go, then you're choices are limited to exactly one. There's an absolute gaping void in the market that they're putting *something* into. What's the problem with that? Why does that involve a "soul"?
Since the Swiss watch industry abandoned quartz technology they have convinced the world over the last 3 decades that the apex of watch technology is mechanical. Which is bullshit 'cause mechanical watches even those in the several thousand dollar category let alone those that cost tens, hundreds of thousands of dollars are less precise in timekeeping than a thermo-compensated quartz watch (like those made by Seiko or Citizen) and lets' not even go into those watches that synchronize with an atomic watch. People buying Swiss watches are not buying them for the fact they're watches, they buy them because it's a status symbol completely disconnected from its primary function. That's why you hear people talking about mechanical souls, 'cause it's the only "rational" way in which you can friggin' jutsify spending thousands of dollars on a non-gold watch that keeps time in a mediocre fashion and less precise than middle of the road watches from the seventies and eighties. Power of marketing. Apple is not the first with its Reality Distortion Field. The Swiss watching industry got there decades before the Cupertino Corp.
Improvement in watch technology comes from 3 sources : Seiko and Citizen in their high end watches (not the 200-300 dollar variety). They innovate in electronics and mechanics. The only other brand (Swiss) that has innovated is Omega with an new escapement mechanism in over 300 years. That tells you just how retarded the Swiss watch industry really is.
The Apple watch has 3 demerits :
- one it requires a friggin apple smartphone to function.
- mediocre battery life.
- the gold variant is for all intents and purposes a disposable jewelry item. Not the message that Apple should be communicating to the eventual buyers.
Fix the first 2 and you have a contender to the middle range swiss watches. The precision battle is already won, unless the swiss want to go back to XXst century technology instead of 3 century old mechanical gears and swiss escapement mechanisms.
My 3 year old MBP has one. Never been used. All it does is catch dust.
Ok. That's you.
WiFi is not the bottleneck, so why would I tie myself to a wire?
Wifi isn't always available. I typically configure wifi access points and other network gear using wired connections; because wired is working long before wireless is even turned on and configured.
I've been in hotel rooms that don't have wifi, but have wired as recently as last year.
I've been in client sites that don't have wifi but have wired as recently as this year.
Other times its absolutely the bottleneck:
I've needed to transfer 10s of GB of data between client and server in both home and office environments and waiting 20x as long for wifi to do it would be ridiculous.
I've used my laptop on occasion as an impromptu ISO storage to get citrix xen virtual machines installed ... glad i had gigabit for that too.
WiFi is not the bottleneck, so why would I tie myself to a wire?
If its available, and not a bottleneck, you wouldn't. But if you find you do need it... what then? You've got it. It added a nickel to the price of your laptop.
How can you be for Apple to make another nickel of profit (because its not like they pass that savings on to you)? What do you get in return for that? You get to carry an adapter around with you everywhere just in case. You get to shell out an absurd amount of money for said adapter. And murphy's law dictates that you probably won't have it with you when you need it anyway... wasting your time and money to source another one.
This is why nearly all laptops from all other companies have 2-4 USB ports, a display out, a network jack, and a headphone jack.
Ugh. I hate those legacy laptops with a hundred different connectors you have to manage every time you sit down to your desk or leave it, with one invariably falling behind the desk so that you have to go fishing. My favorite work environment was with a MacBook Air and a Thunderbolt Display. The display has one cable with two split ends that you plug into the laptop: one for power, and one for combined video / USB / Ethernet / audio. All of the permanent wiring like USB drives, Ethernet, etc. plugs into the monitor which acts like a hub for everything else.
I'd stake money that the next iteration will combine all of that into a single USB C cable. Get to work, unpack my laptop, plug in a single reversible jack, and sit down to all my wired accessories? Yes please.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
In ten years and in 100 years, Apple Watch will still tell time, exactly like the Rolex, except with much greater accuracy.
Assuming it's battery lasts that long.
In 10 years time, the Apple Watch will be a non-functioning piece of trash. You will be lucky if an Apple Watch outlasts a Timex. Never mind a Rolex.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
So unlike Apple? Has everyone forgotten the 20th anniversary Mac? Underpowered at its release, three times the price of a comparable Mac? C'mon people, I'm an unrepentant Apple user and I remember this - Apple making a really expensive version of something they have and selling to the rich is old hat.
What might be interesting with these is the opportunity to use them as trendsetters - Jay-Z wears one for a month, a thousand lesser celebs wear them for the next couple years, then the $500 version hits the streets - with two years of data to improve the user experience and make it more integrated and useful.
Packet loss. SNR level of the 2.4Ghz band is real shitty in major US cities. Even Comcast modems and el-cheapo printers are pumping out WiFi; thus flooding the spectrum. Trying to establish a terminal session (RDP, Citrix, etc) gets spotty, and certain databases can become corrupted (fuck you Quickbooks) upon a dropped connection.
At home, I use 5Ghz for several reasons, lack of range is more than made up for a lower SNR level. This is a huge win for streaming Netflix via AppleTV device as my home isn't wired for ethernet (most aren't).
Back at work, I will always use an ethernet connection when available. I will even seek out cubical space, vacant office or conference room that's wired when staying at a client office for several hours. WiFi is for phones and tablets, not everyday computing that involves slinging data over the network rather than general web browsing and e-mail checking.
Life is not for the lazy.
The new laptop:
They tossed a port they really needed to keep: ethernet. To get (a slower, less capable, CPU-eating version of) it back, you must re-dongle the USB port (and you'd better hope you have some kind of mega-wire-spider so you can feed it power at the same time... and connect your USB stuff... and connect an external HDMI monitor...)
Then they failed to make wireless the thing they really needed to make wireless: charging. And why is this so needful? Because they REMOVED one of the best features of macbooks, the magsafe power cord, so now, instead of your macbook reliably staying on the table when you or your kid or your dog trips over the power cord, it's now considerably more likely to hit the floor instead. Also, of course, wireless charging is awesome, and wired charging is... not.
Apparently, this thing was designed by the same clever folks who made the new Mac Pro into a rats-nest generator, took away the expandable memory option for the mini, and broke both the hosts file LAN functionality. Bravo. Braaaaaavo. They are doing an excellent job of keeping me looking out for earlier model used Mac Pros. It appears that they feel they have enough money.
I agree that Apple has successfully identified something I clearly don't need: the new macbook.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
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