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Apple’s 2016 in review

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Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#131

Post by ricardobeat »

rcthompson wrote: post #77
tajen wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My suspicion is that Apple / Tim Cook knows something BIG That's what everyone has been hoping for years. That's why I was hung up to the last keynote, up to the last second, hoping for Tim Cook to say "One more thing", and launch a new product line. And the one more thing was, no kidding, Lady Gaga. And everyone is now despairing that there is anything to wait for. At least we have the emoji bar on the keyboard no…

Isn't one of the theories that the "something BIG" is Apple becoming a payment processor/bank/whatever financial entity, supported by the presence of a fingerprint reader & secure enclave in all their mobile devices (including laptops courtesy of the Touch Bar)?

That won't work very well if nobody is buying those devices due to the lack of real updates.

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#132

Post by coldtea »

majormajor wrote: post #47
mrmondo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of all the MacBooks, MacBook Pros and idevices I've had over the years (including my still running perfectly Jan 2011 MBP) I've never had a single issue with any power cord tearing / breaking or power supply even fail as far as I can remember. I always assume when I hear of people with this problem that they're disrespecting their hardware by jamming it in doors / desks or perhaps have pets that chew on them.

Blaming the user isn't helpful. I've had more problems with Apple cables than any other brand - and Apple tends to make their cables sleeker looking. Coincidence? I doubt it. At least they've improved from the Wallstreet-era Powerbook G3 chargers, though. I think I went through 3 of those circa 1998. Of course, those machines, and the early G4 Powerbooks, had bigger issues than just that. Dark times in Macland. (As a…

>I've had more problems with Apple cables than any other brand - and Apple tends to make their cables sleeker looking. Coincidence? I doubt it.

Perhaps you had more Apple cables (an obvious branding) compared to any other brand? And your apple cables get more use than others (e.g. on your main laptop, compared to some cable left for years connected to a printer at the office, etc).

Except if you had e.g. an equal number of Dell and Apple machines, etc, or buy branded cables from a single brand.

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#133

Post by danieltillett »

nicolas_t wrote: post #114

I went from almost never needing to restart my mac (with Snow Leopard) to having to restart it a couple of times a week with Sierra. The UI just becomes totally unresponsive (the cursor stops moving, the time in the menu bar stops ticking and the spinning wheel stops spinning) and needs a restart. And I don't even have things like SIMBL installed (I used to with snow leopard, not anymore). I just have Karabiner eleme…

This. The thing that made the MacOS ecosystem worth the pain and sacrifice was the quality and things "just working". What I don't understand is Apple has more than 10 times the developer resources they had 10 years ago yet quality has gone backwards. Do you really need to be a Stalin to ensure your company makes quality software?

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#134

Post by visakanv »

loosescrews wrote: post #27
panic wrote: post #5

How do they fix this? They need to do more talking — and even more listening — with their users. Engage with the influencers. Sit down and find out what their developers need that the current products don’t offer. Find out what is making their users unhappy. Asking people what they want will give you predictable results: complaints about any kind of change and positive feedback about shiny-looking features that demo…

Steve was a notoriously hard person to work with. Realistically, anyone who Steve was likely to name as his successor would be a follower, someone who went along with whatever Steve said and told him what he wanted to hear. What Apple needed was another person like Steve, but unfortunately, by letting Steve select that person, they ended up with someone completely unlike Steve.

> What Apple needed was another person like Steve, but unfortunately, by letting Steve select that person, they ended up with someone completely unlike Steve.

Paul Graham wrote about this back in 2012:

"I was talking recently to someone who knew Apple well, and I asked him if the people now running the company would be able to keep creating new things the way Apple had under Steve Jobs. His answer was simply "no." I already feared that would be the answer. I asked more to see how he'd qualify it. But he didn't qualify it at all. No, there will be no more great new stuff beyond whatever's currently in the pipeline. Apple's revenues may continue to rise for a long time, but as Microsoft shows, revenue is a lagging indicator in the technology business.

So if Apple's not going to make the next iPad, who is? None of the existing players. None of them are run by product visionaries, and empirically you can't seem to get those by hiring them. Empirically the way you get a product visionary as CEO is for him to found the company and not get fired. So the company that creates the next wave of hardware is probably going to have to be a startup.

I realize it sounds preposterously ambitious for a startup to try to become as big as Apple. But no more ambitious than it was for Apple to become as big as Apple, and they did it. Plus a startup taking on this problem now has an advantage the original Apple didn't: the example of Apple. Steve Jobs has shown us what's possible. That helps would-be successors both directly, as Roger Bannister did, by showing how much better you can do than people did before, and indirectly, as Augustus did, by lodging the idea in users' minds that a single person could unroll the future for them.

Now Steve is gone there's a vacuum we can all feel. If a new company led boldly into the future of hardware, users would follow. The CEO of that company, the "next Steve Jobs," might not measure up to Steve Jobs. But he wouldn't have to. He'd just have to do a better job than Samsung and HP and Nokia, and that seems pretty doable."

– http://www.paulgraham.com/ambitious.html

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#135

Post by Animats »

Apple doesn't seem to have anything new. Just minor upgrades of the old stuff. The car project, whatever that was, seems to have been canceled. The watch is something of a dud. Amazon and Google are fighting it out in the voice operated home control space, while Nest doesn't have an entry.

Apple is still making tons of money. Boring but profitable isn't that bad a place to be. It's possible to be boring, profitable, and still be a prestige brand. Look at Rolex.

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#136

Post by coldtea »

flukus wrote: post #76
lobster_johnson wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just patch the cable with some electrical tape? Buying an entire charger just because the cable is fraying seems excessive.

You really expect a mac user to value function over form?

So, someone like Linus Torvalds?

I’m have to admit being a bit baffled by how nobody else seems to have done what Apple did with the Macbook Air – even several years after the first release, the other notebook vendors continue to push those ugly and clunky* things. Yes, there are vendors that have tried to emulate it, but usually pretty badly. I don’t think I’m unusual in preferring my laptop to be thin and light. (...) I want my office to be quiet. The loudest thing in the room – by far – should be the occasional purring of the cat. And when I travel, I want to travel light. A notebook that weighs more than a kilo is simply not a good thing (yeah, I’m using the smaller 11″ macbook air, and I think weight could still be improved on, but at least it’s very close to the magical 1kg limit)*

People forget that thin, quiet, light, etc are also "function", and more important to some people than function they'll never exhaust in their use cases, like a bleeding fast GPU.

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#137

Post by visakanv »

bamurphymac1 wrote: post #127
loosescrews wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steve was a notoriously hard person to work with. Realistically, anyone who Steve was likely to name as his successor would be a follower, someone who went along with whatever Steve said and told him what he wanted to hear. What Apple needed was another person like Steve, but unfortunately, by letting Steve select that person, they ended up with someone completely unlike Steve.

I've thought about this a lot. Wouldn't Steve have realized this inherent contradiction? Is this an understood reality at the top levels at Apple? That is, does Tim see his role now as maximizing revenue from the current position, with the goal being to hand off a healthier company to a "visionary" successor? My personal answer fluctuates depending on my daily gut feeling about human nature. And how many times source…

I think about this a lot too, and the question I have is – has there ever been a visionary who made his way to the top of the corporate ladder of ANY company, however enlightened? Would love to hear about it.

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#138

Post by coldtea »

mightybyte wrote: post #53
mrmondo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of all the MacBooks, MacBook Pros and idevices I've had over the years (including my still running perfectly Jan 2011 MBP) I've never had a single issue with any power cord tearing / breaking or power supply even fail as far as I can remember. I always assume when I hear of people with this problem that they're disrespecting their hardware by jamming it in doors / desks or perhaps have pets that chew on them.

As I write this my MBP is plugged in to a power cord with about two inches of bare wire just below the connector. This cord is only ~4 years old and it has had exposed wires for several years now. I can't see how my use is unusually hard on it. Definitely no doors, desks, or pets. It pretty much just sat in my room and I used it.

In any case, perhaps replace it? Or you don't much care for electric shock, fire damage, fried electronics, etc?

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#139

Post by visakanv »

Uhhrrr wrote: post #44
loosescrews wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steve was a notoriously hard person to work with. Realistically, anyone who Steve was likely to name as his successor would be a follower, someone who went along with whatever Steve said and told him what he wanted to hear. What Apple needed was another person like Steve, but unfortunately, by letting Steve select that person, they ended up with someone completely unlike Steve.

True, but of course the choice was up to Steve Jobs, not Apple. Also, how the hell would you hire "person like Steve" anyway?

As Paul Graham said, "So if Apple's not going to make the next iPad, who is? None of the existing players. None of them are run by product visionaries, and empirically you can't seem to get those by hiring them. Empirically the way you get a product visionary as CEO is for him to found the company and not get fired. So the company that creates the next wave of hardware is probably going to have to be a startup." – http://www.paulgraham.com/ambitious.html

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#140

Post by origami777 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #113
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you think MBPs have problems, it's nothing compared to the issues I've had with Surface. Microsoft really needs to execute much better in addition to creating innovative experiences, firmware and driver meltdowns aren't fun. See, I've had the exact opposite experience with my Surface. Most of the people I know much prefer MacBooks but are exploring the possibility of switching to something in the surface line. I…

Has the Surface Book stabilized yet? I really want to buy one but I keep hearing about their issues. My S3 is probably an abandoned puppy now but works really well... when it is working at all. MBPs are still the best computer one can get for a rock solid Windows experience; even the surface book trackpad (supposedly precision?) seems to not really compare to what comes on a MBP, and touch doesn't often fill in the g…

That is my feeling as well. I walk past the Microsoft store and look at the slick surface hardware and daydream about it being a good device and me using it, then I remember the many years of windows pain that I suffered. I keep walking.
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