I believe Apple is innovating faster than their partners. The weakest links are the chip and 3rd party manufacturers.
This is why I can't wait for Apples A series to catch up to Intel. I don't mind if they have to change the whole infrastructure if it means being years beyond the competition and yearly updates. I would have saved the macOS name for that.
Intel are obviously trying to delay Apple, look at the 2015 MBP that was forced to use a 2 year old CPU. Then Intel launched the new chip 2 weeks after Apple launched the that MBP, obviously they were held to ransom. And now its happened again with the 2016 MBP using 13 month old CPUs with inferior graphics because Intel failed to launch the quad cores with decent pro graphics until later. There has been nothing reported on this but I reckon Intel's relationship with Apple is on the rocks.
I find it amusing that no one has actually used the touch bar (aside from journalists who got 5 minutes with it in a demo room) but yet are already declaring it a gimmick.
I'll make a prediction right now: more people will own the new MBP and it's so-called gimmicky touch bar than will ever own a Microsoft Surface Studio. Btw, I've seen tweets from people who have tried out the Surface Studio at Microsoft stores say the latency is pretty bad and it's no where close to Apple Pencil and iPad Pro. Of course everyone in the tech press got the memo (Microsoft is more innovative than Apple right now) so they're all singing from the same song book. But we all know which device the hipsters at The Verge will actually own and it's not the $3K Surface Studio.
I'll top that.
I'll bet that Apple makes more money in a year of sales of AirPods than MS does off of its entire Surface product line in the same year.
By the way a few posters on MacRumors purchased the non-touch bar 13" rMBP and say hands down it's the best Mac laptop they've ever owned. People are forming opinions on products they haven't spent 2 seconds with.
Look at Surface Look at Macbook Make sure Macbook does not look like a copy of Surface
It blows my mind why Apple has not made these products yet:
1. A true 2 in 1 Mac/iPad. The tech is there to do it already. 2. An iPhone with smaller bezel. Come on. Even POS china companies can do this 3. New MacPro
No idea why Apple is slow now days
I agree with the Mac Pro, but the holdup there may be Intel processors. Or maybe they are spending their three years doing a whole new design to counter some of the complains with the initial model. Who knows.
For a 2-in-1 Mac/iPad, how do you see that working? iOS apps running within macOS? That would be cool, but would require a full touch-screen system, and Apple refused to go down that road. Instead, they are researching alternative touch-based interfaces. Or do you want macOS running on a tablet? Bleh!
As for a smaller bezel.. why is that so important to you? For the coolness factor? Is the bezel somehow limiting you, or do you want the largest possible screen on the smallest possible device? The bezel does serve a useful purpose -- holding the device. I'm sure Apple is doing plenty of testing with edge-to-edge screens and waiting until they have everything working perfectly, which requires touch-rejection built into iOS and the touch sensors.
I have to say, I've never really understood bezel-hate.
Look at Surface Look at Macbook Make sure Macbook does not look like a copy of Surface
It blows my mind why Apple has not made these products yet:
1. A true 2 in 1 Mac/iPad. The tech is there to do it already.
2. An iPhone with smaller bezel. Come on. Even POS china companies can do this
3. New MacPro
No idea why Apple is slow now days
Will you stop? YOU look at Surface. It's a mess, unusable as a tablet.
You have no ability to think rationally about hardware. You've demonstrated over and over that you're ignorant and distracted by the cheapest and tawdriest of visual gimmicks, like Samsung's Edge and Microsoft's tricks. Read the interview — assuming you can read for comprehension.
Get back to us when you understand why alloy matters when you're machining aluminum, and why PC makers are all trying to make their high-end laptops look MacBook Pros and Airs. If Apple is so slow, why are they being copied time after time? Stop polluting these threads with your idiocy,
Most of these PC Mac wannabes are more aesthetic than anything else. They might look nice but build quality wise they don't hold a candle to a Mac. Go to Best Buy and hold a Mac laptop and then pick up a similar PC laptop. There's no comparison. One feels like a solid piece of carefully machined aluminum the other feels like a mish mash of materials thrown together, or plastic made to look like metal.
Apple hasn't always been first to market with any technology or product line, that is not to say they don't research, test and refine until they feel they've nailed the user experience before they bring any of it to market. Even then have they made mistakes? of course but overall they tend to get it right.
Here's an example from John Kheit over at MacObserver who after vilifying Apple on a point by point basis beyond everything discussed here had this to say about the microsoft surface studio.
"Microsoft’s Surface Studio is cool in theory and in hardware, but after playing with one, I think Apple dodged a bullet. First, outside the apps made/updated for the 28″ touch screen, Surface Studio with Windows 10 still has the wrong interface ‘recipe.’ This is much like Microsoft’s original Tablet PCwas the right idea with the wrong implementation, and which was subsequently usurped by the iPad’s right recipe. I found it cumbersome to deal with tiny widgets (e.g., checkboxes, popup menus, window grab areas, etc.) with my fingers. It was worse when trying to deal with touch UI elements using a mouse. Surface Studio doesn’t detect and ‘get’ your context well enough, yet. For example, even within the creative paint/draw apps tailored for the 28″ touch screen, the Surface Studio would often get confused when I’m pinching/zooming/rotating. It would instead draw at my fingertips. Also, using the Surface Dial is not intuitive in switching through its modes. For instance, it might be left in a cool time-scrub undo/redo mode, then you click out to use a mode, say, that lets you choose colors. You have to click up and out to different rings of colors in a non-intuitive clunky way to actually select a color–think Watch UI 1.0 but worse. Then the apps will lose track of the Dial completely, and the advice of the Microsoft employees is to restart the app, and if it still doesn’t find the Dial, restart the machine! However, what is completely clear is, Microsoft nailed the hardware."
I would like more analysis of the product along these lines for verification but if true, this could be why Apple has not "released" a similar product yet. I have no doubt they have prototypes in this and many other form factors but they haven't found that "recipe" that translates into a polished user experience. Could you imagine the vitriol thrown at apple were it to release a product similar to this right now if the touch interface got confused about what the user was trying to do consistently? or if one of its main accessories got "lost" and the only recourse is a reboot?...they would be crucified.
Has it happened before, usability issues/bugs/etc. Of course. Would it happen again. No doubt. But it seems Apple isn't happy with large screen application of the touch interface yet. Time will tell if the touch bar is a useful tool or a gimmick, but would you rather have a MacBook Pro that still performs as a laptop even if it becomes a gimmick or a 28" touch screen workstation that ultimately you're abandoning touch features because they simply don't work or force reboots regularly?
Maybe Microsoft will fix and refine the problems with the next OS update, maybe the one after that, or the next...who knows. But it seems they rushed a beta product to market for a splash and will fix usability problems going forward, this is something Apple rarely does intentionally.
So the form factor and concept is a home run, just the interface and implementation sounds like it will be frustrating for the end user. Here is a apple patent from 4 yrs ago on a touch screen iMac so it's not like Apple has been ignorant or unaware of this hardware/software combo possibility. They just IMO haven't found the right "recipe" to launch the product yet.
I believe Apple is innovating faster than their partners. The weakest links are the chip and 3rd party manufacturers.
This is why I can't wait for Apples A series to catch up to Intel. I don't mind if they have to change the whole infrastructure if it means being years beyond the competition and yearly updates. I would have saved the macOS name for that.
Intel are obviously trying to delay Apple, look at the 2015 MBP that was forced to use a 2 year old CPU. Then Intel launched the new chip 2 weeks after Apple launched the that MBP, obviously they were held to ransom. And now its happened again with the 2016 MBP using 13 month old CPUs with inferior graphics because Intel failed to launch the quad cores with decent pro graphics until later. There has been nothing reported on this but I reckon Intel's relationship with Apple is on the rocks.
I'm rather inclined to believe that Intel still survives thanks to Apple's support and Apple may have significant impact, directly or indirectly on how Intel designs its latest processors.
By the way a few posters on MacRumors purchased the non-touch bar 13" rMBP and say hands down it's the best Mac laptop they've ever owned. People are forming opinions on products they haven't spent 2 seconds with.
The MBP isn't for me. But what it seems to be saying about Apple's plans for the Mac are a tad disturbing. Apple likes annual refresh of iPhones; people are willing to buy a new one every year (and they even built a upgrade program for just that.) It churns revenue and profits. But desktops...not so much My 2009 iMac works just fine, and fits all my needs. And to Apple, that sucks. There's no profit in a machine that lasts 7 years.
Look at Surface Look at Macbook Make sure Macbook does not look like a copy of Surface
It blows my mind why Apple has not made these products yet:
1. A true 2 in 1 Mac/iPad. The tech is there to do it already.
2. An iPhone with smaller bezel. Come on. Even POS china companies can do this
3. New MacPro
No idea why Apple is slow now days
You are the reason Google and Samsung have customers. Just because technology can accomplish something doesn't mean it should be done. In fact it rarely means it should be done. Apple's focus and ability to say "no" is still their greatest strength. It's easy to say "yes" to everything that demos well or looks cool.
That being said, Apple is slower these days because they're 10x larger than they were just a few years ago. All companies slow down when they are that big and especially when they are the market leader in the most profitable technology (mobile hardware) in the world.
Yes to your first paragraph, disagree with your second.
Much more important than the company's size is the stage of the technology they are working on. The form factors of the laptop or the phone are pretty much settled on. Now the evolution that can happen is only on the very narrowed and deeper cutting edge. As Jony says in the interview, for example, they're focused on materials on the molecular level — their own aluminum alloys — and presumably other new materials — like Liquid Metal?
In the case of the new MacBook Pros, the three-year gap in new editions may primarily be the result of the long struggle to get oxide backplanes into mass production, which we've known Apple to be R&Ding for several years. That one dramatic improvement in electron motility in the oxide material for the backplane for the pixel matrix is what allowed the dramatic shrinkage of the laptop package — that, and the availability of the USB C port, which along with the butterfly swich mechanism, allow for a flatter body.
Not to mention the two years it took in back-and-forth prototyping that a new UI interface refinement like the touch bar requires.
If there's inertia in the system, it's in the complexity of what's on the bleeding edge.
When I watched the presentation and the woman from Adobe was presenting what Photoshop would be able to do, I sensed that she really felt that the touch bar is going to take that product to a whole new level. Somehow I think it will take many products to whole new levels of usability.
When I watched the presentation and the woman from Adobe was presenting what Photoshop would be able to do, I sensed that she really felt that the touch bar is going to take that product to a whole new level. Somehow I think it will take many products to whole new levels of usability.
The woman from Adobe was the high point of the whole show.
The MBP isn't for me. But what it seems to be saying about Apple's plans for the Mac are a tad disturbing. Apple likes annual refresh of iPhones; people are willing to buy a new one every year (and they even built a upgrade program for just that.) It churns revenue and profits. But desktops...not so much My 2009 iMac works just fine, and fits all my needs. And to Apple, that sucks. There's no profit in a machine that lasts 7 years.
Not so sure about that...(I have a 2006 intel iMac & 2009 MBP). Currently, if the Mac business was a stand alone business it would be 128th on the Fortune 500 list (Ref. Today's WSJ). They must be doing something right. No?
Apple hasn't always been first to market with any technology or product line, that is not to say they don't research, test and refine until they feel they've nailed the user experience before they bring any of it to market. Even then have they made mistakes? of course but overall they tend to get it right.
Here's an example from John Kheit over at MacObserver who after vilifying Apple on a point by point basis beyond everything discussed here had this to say about the microsoft surface studio.
"Microsoft’s Surface Studio is cool in theory and in hardware, but after playing with one, I think Apple dodged a bullet. First, outside the apps made/updated for the 28″ touch screen, Surface Studio with Windows 10 still has the wrong interface ‘recipe.’ This is much like Microsoft’s original Tablet PCwas the right idea with the wrong implementation, and which was subsequently usurped by the iPad’s right recipe. I found it cumbersome to deal with tiny widgets (e.g., checkboxes, popup menus, window grab areas, etc.) with my fingers. It was worse when trying to deal with touch UI elements using a mouse. Surface Studio doesn’t detect and ‘get’ your context well enough, yet. For example, even within the creative paint/draw apps tailored for the 28″ touch screen, the Surface Studio would often get confused when I’m pinching/zooming/rotating. It would instead draw at my fingertips. Also, using the Surface Dial is not intuitive in switching through its modes. For instance, it might be left in a cool time-scrub undo/redo mode, then you click out to use a mode, say, that lets you choose colors. You have to click up and out to different rings of colors in a non-intuitive clunky way to actually select a color–think Watch UI 1.0 but worse. Then the apps will lose track of the Dial completely, and the advice of the Microsoft employees is to restart the app, and if it still doesn’t find the Dial, restart the machine! However, what is completely clear is, Microsoft nailed the hardware."
I would like more analysis of the product along these lines for verification but if true, this could be why Apple has not "released" a similar product yet. I have no doubt they have prototypes in this and many other form factors but they haven't found that "recipe" that translates into a polished user experience. Could you imagine the vitriol thrown at apple were it to release a product similar to this right now if the touch interface got confused about what the user was trying to do consistently? or if one of its main accessories got "lost" and the only recourse is a reboot?...they would be crucified.
Has it happened before, usability issues/bugs/etc. Of course. Would it happen again. No doubt. But it seems Apple isn't happy with large screen application of the touch interface yet. Time will tell if the touch bar is a useful tool or a gimmick, but would you rather have a MacBook Pro that still performs as a laptop even if it becomes a gimmick or a 28" touch screen workstation that ultimately you're abandoning touch features because they simply don't work or force reboots regularly?
Maybe Microsoft will fix and refine the problems with the next OS update, maybe the one after that, or the next...who knows. But it seems they rushed a beta product to market for a splash and will fix usability problems going forward, this is something Apple rarely does intentionally.
So the form factor and concept is a home run, just the interface and implementation sounds like it will be frustrating for the end user. Here is a apple patent from 4 yrs ago on a touch screen iMac so it's not like Apple has been ignorant or unaware of this hardware/software combo possibility. They just IMO haven't found the right "recipe" to launch the product yet.
Xlnt post. Formatting in this forum software is a bear on an iPad, eh? You take your life in your hands, blood-pressure-wise, when you try to get in and out of italics.
I'm not keen on Ive. I think his taste is bad and no one is keeping him in line. Whether him or someone else, Apple better give us at least a hint of a roadmap for Mac Pro computers soon. Right now, there's a lot of claims of investing in research and each time a product comes out, it's not all that useful to content-creators with great GPU/CPU and RAM demands.
Comments
The Frankenmac
And you want to get rid of Tim Cook because you don't think he's doing the right thing...
Here's an example from John Kheit over at MacObserver who after vilifying Apple on a point by point basis beyond everything discussed here had this to say about the microsoft surface studio.
I would like more analysis of the product along these lines for verification but if true, this could be why Apple has not "released" a similar product yet. I have no doubt they have prototypes in this and many other form factors but they haven't found that "recipe" that translates into a polished user experience. Could you imagine the vitriol thrown at apple were it to release a product similar to this right now if the touch interface got confused about what the user was trying to do consistently? or if one of its main accessories got "lost" and the only recourse is a reboot?...they would be crucified.
Has it happened before, usability issues/bugs/etc. Of course. Would it happen again. No doubt. But it seems Apple isn't happy with large screen application of the touch interface yet. Time will tell if the touch bar is a useful tool or a gimmick, but would you rather have a MacBook Pro that still performs as a laptop even if it becomes a gimmick or a 28" touch screen workstation that ultimately you're abandoning touch features because they simply don't work or force reboots regularly?
Maybe Microsoft will fix and refine the problems with the next OS update, maybe the one after that, or the next...who knows. But it seems they rushed a beta product to market for a splash and will fix usability problems going forward, this is something Apple rarely does intentionally.
So the form factor and concept is a home run, just the interface and implementation sounds like it will be frustrating for the end user. Here is a apple patent from 4 yrs ago on a touch screen iMac so it's not like Apple has been ignorant or unaware of this hardware/software combo possibility. They just IMO haven't found the right "recipe" to launch the product yet.
The MBP isn't for me. But what it seems to be saying about Apple's plans for the Mac are a tad disturbing. Apple likes annual refresh of iPhones; people are willing to buy a new one every year (and they even built a upgrade program for just that.) It churns revenue and profits. But desktops...not so much My 2009 iMac works just fine, and fits all my needs. And to Apple, that sucks. There's no profit in a machine that lasts 7 years.
Much more important than the company's size is the stage of the technology they are working on. The form factors of the laptop or the phone are pretty much settled on. Now the evolution that can happen is only on the very narrowed and deeper cutting edge. As Jony says in the interview, for example, they're focused on materials on the molecular level — their own aluminum alloys — and presumably other new materials — like Liquid Metal?
In the case of the new MacBook Pros, the three-year gap in new editions may primarily be the result of the long struggle to get oxide backplanes into mass production, which we've known Apple to be R&Ding for several years. That one dramatic improvement in electron motility in the oxide material for the backplane for the pixel matrix is what allowed the dramatic shrinkage of the laptop package — that, and the availability of the USB C port, which along with the butterfly swich mechanism, allow for a flatter body.
Not to mention the two years it took in back-and-forth prototyping that a new UI interface refinement like the touch bar requires.
If there's inertia in the system, it's in the complexity of what's on the bleeding edge.