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Apple's Blue Ocean

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Re: Apple's Blue Ocean

#51

Post by smoldesu »

EPWN3D wrote: post #33
threeseed wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple makes an original, user-hostile decision You make it sound like the decision comes with no benefits. All of the hardware to support removable battery means less space for the battery. And especially in the early days the iPhone was struggling to reach a normal working day.

R2R enthusiasts are incapable of seeing any decision from a perspective that isn't their own personal fetish for tinkering. So any and all advantages of sealing the battery into the chassis are just waved away and not acknowledged at all. Lighter devices? That's irrelevant, no one cares about device weight. Cheaper to manufacture? That's just a ploy to gasp make more money! How dare they?! Waterproofing? Well I don't…

There are reasonable levels of supply chain integration, and then there is user-hostility. With Apple we've seen both sides of the coin, so you'll have to excuse the people who accuse them out the gate.

It stands to reason that a company as large as Apple is capable of making decisions that impact large amounts of people. It's not just Right to Repair enthusiasts that care about that impact, it's extended to regulatory bodies that are tired of meaningless standards competition and arbitrary market separation. Apple can excuse these base truths with whatever feature or novelty they choose, but it doesn't overwrite the insidious functionality of their choices.

You're basically describing the situation in reverse, from the perspective of foreign markets and regulatory watchdogs:

"Another special, licensed connector for data and power? Why do consumers need that!"

"An App Store? Why give Apple complete control over a feature as basic as installing software?"

"Only one browser engine? How are new technologies intended to compete on a platform that doesn't acknowledge newcomers?"

So on and so forth.

Re: Apple's Blue Ocean

#52

Post by matwood »

ace2358 wrote: post #16
LaSombra wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have huge respect for John Siracusa. His articles at Ars Technica, pragmatic opinions on the world of computing always spoke to me, but this article sounds like something written by John Gruber. Apple indeed innovated in multiple ways and markets, but un-removable batteries wasn’t one.

I also have massive respect for Siracusa and I find I have a few similar opinions that made it really enjoyable listening to him and reading his articles. But over the years, as John has gotten older (and as the other members of ATP) I find that my values are starting to diverge. It feels much more of a news show than a tech show and I find I’m not gaining much insight from their discussions or opinions. Even their t…

Marco was always disconnected because he's well off and could do whatever he wanted (good for him). When Casey and John had jobs, they were able to keep Marco grounded and the trio really worked. Now that Casey and John both only really do the podcast now, they all are a bit disconnected. I'm happy for all them to make money doing what they love, but the show definitely changed once they all became essentially full time podcasters.

Re: Apple's Blue Ocean

#53

Post by TapamN »

EPWN3D wrote: post #33
threeseed wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple makes an original, user-hostile decision You make it sound like the decision comes with no benefits. All of the hardware to support removable battery means less space for the battery. And especially in the early days the iPhone was struggling to reach a normal working day.

R2R enthusiasts are incapable of seeing any decision from a perspective that isn't their own personal fetish for tinkering. So any and all advantages of sealing the battery into the chassis are just waved away and not acknowledged at all. Lighter devices? That's irrelevant, no one cares about device weight. Cheaper to manufacture? That's just a ploy to gasp make more money! How dare they?! Waterproofing? Well I don't…

These "advantages" to sealing the battery are incredibly weak/false.

The weight difference from sealing the battery is negligible. If it saved several hundred of grams, it would one thing, but a replaceable battery adds at most tens of grams.

Even if the sticker price of device is cheaper, I would still have to pay more to replace the entire device once the battery is worn. This is the primary reason for most companies sealing the battery, to force buying an entire phone. Having a replaceable battery would save me money.

Sealing the battery was not responsible for waterproof phones. There were already waterproof phones with replaceable batteries.

Re: Apple's Blue Ocean

#54

Post by buildbot »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #24

The short version is: "Wouldn't it be disruptive if Apple went back to replaceable batteries?" but the author stopped short of where that leads. One of the things that doable "now" that wasn't doable "then" is wireless charging. I love that I can put my phone on a pad next to the bed at night and it charges, pick it up and there is no trailing wire to unplug, put it down and there is no wire to find and plug in. This…

> One of the things that doable "now" that wasn't doable "then" is wireless charging. I love that I can put my phone on a pad next to the bed at night and it charges, pick it up and there is no trailing wire to unplug, put it down and there is no wire to find and plug in. This is a big improvement in my user experience.

The palm pre and several early android phones had both removable batteries and wireless charging. The back panel just had pogo pins for the coil to transfer power.

Re: Apple's Blue Ocean

#55

Post by Cupprum »

makeitdouble wrote: post #39

> [fewer product sales per unit time] is a problem that can be solved using one of Apple’s favorite financial tools: higher product margins. It's weird people forget the main message Apple has been touting for years now: services revenue. Even without removeable batteries, with right to repair device longevity will increase, and they've seen the writing on the wall for a long time. Apple will continue increasing serv…

I do not understand why you are being downvoted.

Re: Apple's Blue Ocean

#56

Post by Cupprum »

lapcat wrote: post #17

My favorite MacBook Pro ever was my 17-inch 2006 model. Replaceable battery and matte display! I hate that these features were eliminated.

I prefer these glossy displays, i think its actually quite sad that the external display market does not offer many nice monitors with glossy screen.

Re: Apple's Blue Ocean

#57

Post by PaulKeeble »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #37
Animats wrote: post #3

The future is batteries with more charge cycles, not replaceable batteries. The solid state battery people are claiming 10,000 charge/discharge cycles. If they can achieve that, it's 27 years of battery life. The case will wear out first.

Lithium ion batteries that can handle a thousand to several thousand charge cycles and only see 80% reduction in capacity have been available for ten years. My 2013 Macbook Pro has just such a battery, rated for 80% capacity after 1000 cycles, and it lasted over 6 years before the battery's internal resistance rose enough that heavy load would cause a brownout and the machine to force sleep. Yet they are not in wides…

Its a bit of a myth for ever lasting bulbs, its more complicated than that. The life time was a trade off of colour and brightness. If you made them very red shifted and quite dim then there are bulbs that are very old still around, but they don't produce much light and never did. The harder you drive the filament the better the light properties but the quicker it died. The industry choose a point for trade offs as a standard. You can watch about the history of it on Technology connections. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb7Bs98KmnY

Saying that the Dubai Philips LED bulbs really do last a lot longer since they have twice the filaments and run the filaments a lot less hard as a result (as well as being more efficient). It is possible nowadays to make an LED that wont fail anytime soon although LEDs are already much better than incandescents in that regard but there are ones that will likely survive your lifetime available at a higher price but only in Dubai. Most LED bulbs are designed to fail sooner, but they are also cheaper.

Those 10k recharge batteries are absolutely coming and we will have them in a few years time, li-ion as it stands today will simply be obsolete.

Re: Apple's Blue Ocean

#58

Post by makeitdouble »

Grustaf wrote: post #47

Of all the things I've ever wanted to be different on my macbook, removable batteries have never been one of them. Now when battery life exceeds a (long) working day, why on earth would anyone want this? The very few times you will be away from a wall socket for more than 12 hours, you can just bring a power bank.

At some point Apple refuses to replace the batteries of your macbook as they stop supporting the model. At that point you could be down to a few hours of battery life, with no third party repair shop willing to work on your laptop at a reasonable price. That's where you'd be with a 2017 macbook Air for instance.

Replaceable batteries gives an out to that situation, as one battery maker somewhere in the world could be enough to keep the remaining laptops alive, with no need for invasive serviceing.

Of course that brings Apple close to nothing in revenue, but would boost good will from users and let them tout sustainability?

Also won't resonate if you're cycling through devices every 2 years anyway.

Re: Apple's Blue Ocean

#59

Post by emadabdulrahim »

The first half of the article was great. But regarding going back to replaceable batteries, I couldn't disagree more. If you know anything about Apple's design philosophy, you'd know the last thing Apple wants is for users to even consider opening up their device to replace/swap a battery.

Re: Apple's Blue Ocean

#60

Post by amelius »

bradgessler wrote: post #44
albertgoeswoof wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wireless power is too inefficient for this to make sense. You’d be throwing 30% of the battery capacity to the wind

You could have low profile metal contacts between the battery case and the phone to achieve full efficiency.

How do you keep them clean?
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