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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.
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"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."
In other words, the author of this article can't afford it, and is upset that someone else can.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
In which way is less ports better in a laptop better than more ports? (Other than aesthetics)
> Apple could be working on a more powerful tablet, something that could compete with Microsoft's Surface Pro line.
What, really? Apple is designing a table that is only ever seen on Hawaii Five-0?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
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!
"Apple could be working on a more powerful tablet, something that could compete with Microsoft's Surface Pro line.
Perhaps because Microsoft sells tens of millions of tablets every quarter while nobody even knows Apple's tablets exist. Oh wait...
another great comic from .
Conspicuous consumption provides a perverse incentive to make products with outrageous margins on the off chance you can get a thousand rich people to buy them instead of the several hundred thousand poor people you'd have to convince otherwise.
Normally, if you are a person who is inclined to blow $10k on a piece of jewellery, you would expect that you "investment" *won't* be obsolete in one year.
Almost all the people I've met with Macbooks have been musicians, despite the advent of diigital distribution being able to burn a CD or music is still something a lot of them do. Also having enough connectivity for Midi controllers and other peripherals is a must.
I get the Mac Book Air, it's effectively Chrome Book's worth of connectivity for people with more money than sense.
But isn't the Mac Book meant to be a production machine, that what people are always trying to convince me they are, and to be fair audio editing software as good as what comes free with a Macbook does make the price more seem more reasonable for the spec.
It's a symbol, "Apple feeds on me".
I am guessing they're thanking apple for the immense of feel-good dopamine and endorphins released whenever they're using Apple products.
The Air is still a toy compared to my Surface. Great for people that want to pay 5x as much as they need to so they can read Facebook and do some emails looking like a boss who will need to throw it out and buy a new one in 2 years as Apple's forced obsolescence kicks in.
...when they made the memory in the new Mac Minis impossible to upgrade and reduced their performance. The late 2012 quad-core model is still the fastest, best one they ever made.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
If estimates on costs for the materials alone on the Apple Watch Edition are at least near the mark, the 18k gold used costs over $8,000. Plus you add the cost for electronics and the sapphire on top of that, this should mean that a $10,000 Apple Watch Edition has the lowest profit margin of the entire line, well under 20%, while the average profit margin on many Apple products are northwards of 30% - 40%.
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
As the geek in the family I don't really see a use case strong enough to want one. My nurse wife has already declared I am buying her one.
Back in the day Apple was about bringing computers to the masses, and simplifying them to make them accessible.
Selling a $10K watch just proves Apple only cares about profits now.
Apple has become the ultimate iHipster.
$10,000? Surely an onion article.
Personally, I am not into an iWatch or Apple Watch. Not really my thing. I like watches and I own and wear a watch so I am not in the anti-watch club. Perhaps once I see an iWatch and hear some feed back my tune will change and I would consider springing for a sport model which is priced about $200.00 more than a decent CASIO (which I happen to own and find extremely functional and which keeps great time even without the radio sync available in my country.
The bottom line is that a gold watch is going to cost no matter how you slice it and more importantly the price point of the higher end apple watches / iWatch is competing with those high end watches. What I fail to understand is why you would want a watch made out of gold which is very malleable. Maybe Apple are doing something to it to make it stronger? Maybe the people they are selling to like the idea of having more gold on their body or as a statement of affluenceor just sit around and do nothing that would scuff the edges of the watch during day to day wear. Or perhaps they buy a new one each hour of each day to ensure it always looks good.
It just seems like something made of gold which you were day to day is not going to were well. Maybe it is more of a time to time idea? I suspect that Google would not want to make a watch which you only were from time to time. Google would want you to be wearing the watch all the time and sharing your pulse with them to target adverts more effectively.
Well thats the rant. Seems like they are pricing the watches closely with other manufactures of watches to see how it plays out. Be interesting to see if other manufactures drop price points to compete or go higher to differentiate?
Given the millions of other blogged words on this topic in the past 48hours, Slashdot now needs clickbait too?
A solid gold casing would be too soft to be practical.
"There are people who do not love their fellow human being, and I _hate_ people like that!" - Tom Lehrer
I don't know who said this, but I heard one commentator claim that the apple watch was not a smart watch, but a wearable computer. I thought this was apt because when I think of the apple watch as a 'watch' it isn't particularly compelling to me (and this is from someone who still wears a watch, and uses it to tell time). However, when I open up my vision to 'sky is the limit', yet-to-be-invented applications of a wearable computer, I'm more interested to see where this will go. As with the iPhone, the 'included with the first edition' features aren't as interesting as the 'invented by third parties and forced upon a reluctant Apple' (remember, native apps sold through an app store was not in Apple's original vision).
Is the new MacBook for you?
Are you posting on Slashdot?
If yes => NO!!
If no => maybe
About technology? Get real, wsj has been a blunder driven bus for decades. Their coverage of anything related to our world is horrid. The best news is they might well be the anti-news. If the wsj says it, bet against that.
I had always thought that Apple price gouged on most of its products. This is just an example of trying to optimize the Apple tax.
"We donâ(TM)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."
That statement alone should give some clue as to how out of touch Apple are with reality.
I'm reminded of that every time I have to haul around an external optical drive for another enlightened Mac user.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
I thought those went out of style last century.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The corporations want you to be enclosed in their very pretty but very watched and regulated gardens, so that they can tend to your needs and harvest your wallets at their pleasure. Their garden is on their servers, they want you to only use their tills. Having the masses on un-modifiable thin clients is their wet dream of making sure you stay in their garden for as long as possible.
I just want a watch that has a cool face layout; if that means it has customizable TFT or e-ink, so be it.
However, a smartwatch that is tied to the manufacturer's phone devices is crippled by definition. Apple, Samsung, Sony, whoever... I don't want any of their smartwatches.
And we all know that when the next iOS comes out, it won't support these first gen iWatches.
What a visionary innovation for Apple. A wrist watch that talks to your smartphone. It's amazing that no one has thought of it before.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
There's only one reason to buy an expensive watch. They last a long, long time if you take care of it. You can pass it on, it becomes a sentimental heirloom.
I have my grandfather's gold pocket watch. No one uses pocket watches anymore. I have it because it's something he carried around every day.
10k on an Apple watch is ridiculous. What are you going to do? Pass on a non-functional lump of gold to your progeny? At least my grandpa's watch can tell time. Doesn't even need batteries.
The system has failed you, don't fail yourself. --Billy Bragg
If you don't wear a watch today there is a good reason for that as watches have no real benefit.
If you feel that strapping something onto your wrist then fine. But I won't ever go back to wearing something that truly serves no purpose onto my body.
Because I don't think anyone should own something that expensive. And for some reason that sparks outrage.
You see, I am the arbiter of utility. I decide what other people should and shouldn't buy, and what they should pay for it.
Because I know more than them. I understand their needs and wants better than they do.
If I can't afford something, nobody else should be able to buy it.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
"ratcheting up profit margins on iPhones."
Then foxconn is outfitting their factories with robots and reducing manufacturing costs while maintaining scale and quality.
In the end, more profit for Apple.
"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."
Try calling your ISP about your poor Internet speeds with your wireless-only laptop and see how far you get.
I'd been waiting for this laptop for a year. All I wanted was a display-port and a USB or two couples to a nice screen in an "Air" type package.
It's got the weight, the battery life, the screen, but no ports..... 1 or 2 more would have been much more practical... baring a better adapter (the current ones suck) the Dell XPS it is!
The watch is a joke.
The Macbook is worse than a joke, and the gold color is just plain stupid.
Tim Cook needs to step down for the welfare of Apple shareholders.
I'm dumping my Apple stock until Cook is gone. In the mean time I am going to go
out and get a good steak and drink some whiskey, and hope Tim Cook gets AIDs.
- W. Buffet
If you need lots of ports, something between the 11" MBA and the 15" MBP will surely fit the requirements.
Dell's XPS seems to be an OK-alternative, but you've got to run either Windows or Linux.
If this is supposed to be your bring-your-own-device laptop that you actually do work on and need to connect to a LAN directly, then it might not be the best thing.
But that's not the fault of the laptop or Apple.
How many people in Starbucks do you see who use a mouse with their laptops?
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
The value of anything isn't dictated by a formula e.g. (cost to build) + (reasonable margin) + (shipping/sales/etc)
Value, or price, is what someone is prepared to pay for it.
Apple obviously believes, guided by the likes of Angela Ahrendts, that $10k is a good starting price for a limited "edition" watch.
This is Slashdot -"News for nerds" right?
They aren't selling that watch to us, so quit the sniping and moaning.
You could probably make your own 24ct gold watch out of the guts of a $349 entry level for less than an extra $1000.
I'm certain there's foundries firing up right now rubbing heir hands at the prospect of scalping.
As for the laptop.
It's not for us either who are probably more advance IT users than the fashion followers who will love that gold 12" in their handbag or execs wanting the latest desktop bling.
Horses for courses.
I think I was a bit shocked at the optic drive being dropped from the original air but to be fair it was the right move in hindsight.
This is history repeating itself so it shouldn't be as much of a shock.
My only concern with that laptop is the loss of the mag-safe.
Who remembers the broken MB's before mag-safe from folks tripping over them?
We're more or less at the convergence point of laptop & tablet as of yesterday.
Same number of ports and not much in screen size difference.
How fast technology does change...
If Apple had released a gold version of their original, and now iconic iPod, in gold with a price tag of 4 figures or more - how much would it be worth today?
Take a guess at a) still in it's original packaging b) used and worn by someone famous
Remind me. How much did that original Apple I sell for recently?
iMacs without a floppy drive.
They were right, then.
They were right about optical drives.
They're right about wired networks. I hate that, but frankly, I have no desire to go cord-humping whenever I want to use a local network on my laptop, phone, 3DS, video streaming device, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
that the wearer is a pretentious douche, then yes.
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.
You seem to know nothing about work habits except your own. I know absolutely zero people in the workplace that use their Laptop or Desktop to only check email. Sales and Marketing people are in presentations and spreadsheets all day, Technical writers are constantly editing documents and images, coders are pushing and pulling code all day, Managers are pulling and formatting reports, Ops is pulling patches and data while writing scripts, HR is on every resume web site thereis and creating docs all day, everyone has to use some type of social media, chat program, accessing corporate web sites for their daily work.
Sure, everyone is using email "too" but very few people today have a job where they "only need to check email".
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Smart watches have been around for years. Another product for Apple to copy, and then claim to have invented.
Nothing really new, and useful, about the new mac book either.
And we all know that when the next iOS comes out, it won't support these first gen iWatches.
That's ridiculous, since everything Apple has done points to whatever the latest iOS is supporting at least two, probably more Apple Watches....
After all, iTunes can still connect and work with ANY Apple device (including the oldest iPods).
Plus even after iOS moves on a bit, there's no reason to think the AppleWatch will not work as it is with whatever apps are loaded... I know personally I would try to keep the companion app working for as many variants as possible.
People are thinking of the Apple Watch as being more like an iPhone - but why not think of it more like the AppleTV? That has not been updated much in a LONG time. So that means supporting two generations of the Apple Watch could mean supporting a four year old watch...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I don't see why people are getting in such a lather about this.
The simple fact is the cheapest Apple Watch is every bit as functional as the most expensive one.
If Apple had given greater function to a watch priced unreachably high to most everyone, I'd be right up there complaining. But I see nothing wrong with making limited versions of anything that is far cooler and costs more... geeks do this all the time with stuff like limited edition boxed sets of movies, special Star Wars figures, etc. A really expensive Apple Watch lives in that same realm of reason - it may not be for you, but if it makes someone happy what is the harm?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
the workers are all being paid slave wages
A) Apple pays their workers in China far more than the people who had the misfortune to make whatever you are typing on, so be careful where you throw those stones. You are literally murdering people through the choices you are making. But then you don't actually care about anyone in China; you just hate Apple. Otherwise you'd support companies trying to make things better there.
B) The people making the Edition watches are not making a low salary; read the description, it includes specially trained people to hand-polish the finished body.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That apple proves you wrong again and again. It is why they make money and why you dont.
While you are bussy saying it will never work how bad it is they make another billion and will soon be a wall street trillion.
I know which of you are actually wrong.
Apple made a pretty laptop at the cost of basic efficiency.
Even wireless-N has a top throughout of 300 megabits per second. Although that's *if* you're on a wireless-N router. And even then you may not achieve that for numerous secondary reasons.
USB-3 has a top throughput of 5 GIGABITS per second.
There's no comparison. If you need to regularly transfer (of backup) large quantities of data, wifi is not the optimal choice.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
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.
Oh, I think DeathElk got it all right... he's just in pain, as well he should be. Give his some credit, at least until he confirms for you his post was the work of an illiterate, rather than obviously the opposite.
No watt eye mien? Aye mite halve two right moor, THAN wear wood yew bee?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Um. Apple is likely to obsolete that watch as soon as they possibly can, as well as completely drop support for it, and stop manufacturing / providing the custom battery inside, similar to what they have done for every other bit of hardware and software (except iTunes) they've manufactured that's older than my next-to-last tax return plus one or two.
But they will be right there offering you a new watch, much better than the "old" one. Cool, eh?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
There are plenty who can afford $10K and that investment may be considered a contribution to Apple research. It will be invested as wisely as Apple is able, to help understand the next step in the evolution of intelligent assistance to a wide variety of user needs: the disabled, the economically disadvantaged, and others who count on Apple to provide the services they need for day-to-day living.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if others were investing in such research?
...omphaloskepsis often...
Not really. It does not work unless you have an iPhone. The iPhone is the real computer.
It does work without an iPhone, there are a number of built in apps that work OK without a phone present. It is limited, and third party apps will not work without a phone - but Apple has already said that will change, probably this year.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I worked as a network admin inside a Jewellery store last year. I can tell you the iWatch is going to fail as a jewellery piece. Jewellery is about exclusivity, crazy engineering, and status. The iWatch fails too many of these points to matter. Another problem is it's a square faced watch. It falls under the traditional Women's timepiece category. They might sell a few, but it's not going to be the giant smash they are assuming it's going to be. Most jewellery store staff I showed it to thought the moto 360 looked much more like a men's watch. However even then they thought that their core client base would choose the traditional watches over the electronic ones. At the end of the day, Apple just isn't trying to compete with a hand cut $20,000 Grand Seiko watch. They are going to be laser cutting these things on a fabrication line. Works great for cheap electronics, not so much for exclusive high end luxury items.
The real competition (in features, that is, not price) for an Apple tablet would be the Panasonic Toughpad 4k, a monster 20-inch tablet with 3840x2560 resolution (that is, 4:3 aspect ratio). It's a beautiful piece of kit but hugely expensive. Apple could put the same panel in a 20 inch "iPad Pro" or "MacPad" and if priced more keenly it could sell well among those doing graphics work who want something more portable than a desktop.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
On the Canadian Apple website, it looks like the top tier gold Apple watch actually costs $13,000-$22,000 depending on the model. Just sayin', since I keep hearing the $10,000 figure tossed out.
I could afford the most expensive model, but over £10k for something that could be obsolete in a year in a total waste of money. I like Omegas, Rolex's etc and I believe they’re worth it cause I would expect my Omega Seamaster to last me a life-time...not to expect to replace it in a year with a newer model. I've been going off Apple stuff for a while now. Apart from their phones, and a lesser extent, their tablets, their hardware has been declining in quality for years. Shame really but it does feel Apple is turning into Vertu.
IMHO, Apple got great because they went to the UNIX-y core with OSX and Darwin. They started to fall from grace almost immediately when they closed off the core. My wife's Apples used to work great connecting to network shares with Samba, until they gibbled that with their proprietary version. It was easy enough to fix at the time by switching to NFS, but have you tried to use NFS in a recent version of OSX? It's like gone.
What kind of a UNIX sucks at networking?
Apple doesn't care if anyone buys their $10k smartwatch. They've made a few of them, for the purposes of it being a real thing, and if some idiot buys them great.
The reason the $10k Apple Watch exists is to make the rest of us think we're buying the cheap version of the premium product. It's to position our minds into thinking we're wearing something that's already a high-class brand.
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.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Even more anemic specs and what essentially amounts to a hefty price hike! OTOH I guess that Google is selling some Pixels which amounts to about the same thing... but me, I think that I'll stick with Sager and the like where I have choices of components and configurations that meet realworld needs...
I guess that Timmy didn't get the memo that the reality distortion field died with St. Stevey...
It strikes me that Apple is continuously trying to find the balance between minimalism and functionality.
What's unfortunate is that they generally err on the side of minimalism. This would be fine (great even!) if they restricted that philosophy to products intended to be small like the iPad and MacBook Air, but it becomes a problem for the user when they start applying it to their Pro product lines and even their mainline models.
Some can learn to live with a hardwired battery and hard drive, even though it goes against most techies' core philosophies. But when you start taking out ports, it gets really fucking annoying if you don't have the requisite dongle RIGHT NOW when you need a connection to work.
And what is the ultimate limit to this philosophy? Sure, you can make the laptop a lot smaller and prettier if you take out the physical keyboard, and the hard drive, and the RAM, and the keyboard. But, at some point, the laptops become so small they they are actually annoying for average-sized people to use for real work. Also, it doesn't look as pretty or feel as convenient in use when there are 50 cables, port extenders, and dongles attached to it just to restore the device to some level of base functionality.
Jobs always had a hard time with that point as he got older. It's unfortunate that Cook seems to have inherited it as well.
"The prices grate, not because they're so expensive, but because they're gratuitously expensive."
Newsflash: they always have been. Ever since Woz got sidelined and Steve Jobs took over the company, Apple has basically been in the business of marketing overpriced and underpowered products at people with more money than sense. At least these days they're not underpowered, with is an improvement. And I'd argue that being more upfront about their business model is also a good thing. Apple hasn't lost its soul, it's just lost some of its hypocrisy. Maybe some people don't like that because it makes it harder for them to lie to themselves.
Less ports b/c use everything wirelessly? Wireless technologies are fine at home... terrible in the office. More terrible in remote offices. We are a windows shop, but I would allow a Mac here or there as a pet device for people who think they can support it on their own. So far, iphones and ipads are all that has worked well enough. Seems like that will contiue.
This is not the market you were looking for. It is clear no one here is going to spend $399 -- $10,000 on a smart watch. There are plenty of people who will... just to make a statement. In this day and age of smart phones that do more than a Cray XMP-48 could on its best day... including being a convenient pocket-watch, the wrist-watch is obsolete. Apple re-invents the watch. I won't buy one. I think it will be a hit in the market of glam.