fairwweather

The upgrade prompts certainly annoy the heck out of me. What really gets me is how they also try to trick you into upgrading by randomly throwing up the number pad prompt; making you think that this is the regular fingerprint prompt. That is devious. And then Tim brags about the percentage of adopters, as if this was driven by the mass appeal of the upgrade. It is dishonest. But this is standard Apple procedure these days. 

I am always cautious about upgrades. Besides my preference to have early adopters get slammed with the bugs and waiting for a fix, I have found it to be extremely rare that an upgrade from Apple hasn't wrecked something useful (sometimes many things all in one shot), so I prefer to stay with what works instead of trusting Apple's pig in a poke.

Mikeymike said: Performas of the mid '90s had more "firsts" in them than anything Apple has ever done since. Same with the PowerBooks.

"Junk"??  ...Please.

The Performas were budget-orientd versions of Apple's more serious machines and were intended to compete more directly with the mainstream PCs of they day. They weren't junk, but they weren't as desirable as their more pro-oriented look-alikes. Thanks to Apple's idiotic emphasis on sales without the marketing to back it up created quite a mess. I remember seeing boxes of Performas stacked eight high, five wide and three deep against the front wall of a Computer City (120 of them, going nowhere). Nobody was buying them, but Apple's sales guys had been forcing them into the channel so that they could meet their quotas and earn their bonuses. Embarrassing.

One can see in the third illustration, the abortive Apple "themes" that they had been playing with; the idea being that people could change the look of their UI to all sorts of Apple and third-party looks (including the Sponge Bob / Tinkertoy look seen in the menu bar, but Apple only demoed them, then offered just two: blue and graphite, ditching the wilder options before they hit the streets. Apple decided that the Mac OS must have a look that clearly identified the Mac as being different than a PC and not some random user-selectable look. This was also in the day of the Copland disaster. Apple really was in serious disarray. 

As for the flashy clashing colors and overt techy look, innovative art back then was largely related to the advancement of Photoshop (along with KPT) and 3-D apps, with designers tending to go over the top. TechTool Pro (which is still around) had an interface featuring a metallic-sounding robot voice speaking prompts and with all sorts of visual depth to the UI. It would be laughable by today's standards, but people thought it was pretty cool in the day.

Somebody please tell me that the reason there was no iPhone 9 was not because X was afraid of 7...

DavidAlGregory said:

Exactly how is a glued shut, skinny iMac with soldered in memory and on board Vampire Video GPUs going to serve a Pro Market or have any shelf life?

The very all in one concept of the iMac or a laptop serves the constant churn that may be profitable for Apple, but not what more than a few want or need.

Most professionals - at least those in the creative fields - do not need monster machines. The majority of these professionals are not cranking out high-end video or 3-D animations, but literature, packaging, websites, photoshop tweaks, and the like. This applies to service bureaus, agencies, corporate in-house, and freelance. For those of who do need the big iron, we definitely want the expandability, the speed, the graphics power and the high-speed storage, but at best I doubt that we represent more than 10% of the market of people who use Macs professionally.

I've read the stories, but pretending that I haven't, I'm guessing that Apple's "new and improved" stores... • ...will have something attention-getting and flashy (as in an enormous video surface). • They will also take ten percent of whatever it is that millions of people love and use regularly, and throw it away because it is not new enough. (In addition, they will limit face time with tech support people - what no Genius Bar?) • They will also limit options (as in reducing the SKU count of non-Apple branded products and reducing the range of peripheral services, such as free training). • The new stuff they introduce will be extremely appealing to 10% of customers and annoying to at least 30% of customers. • In five years they will totally rework everything all over again (which will be around a year after they fire the chief of brick-and-mortar retail). • Each store will have one employee in a red shirt with an extra 10% charity surcharge.