I disagree. It’s nice to know for a change that products are finally coming instead of just wondering endlessly.
I think this is why they started doing it. They kept getting so much backlash about never releasing anything they had to do something to show people that they are working on things.
That being said...I do wish they'd just go back to release something when its ready. I like the element of surprise, but I guess too many people in this world are too damn impatient.
What I would really like, is you know, I don't want to know about HomePod or iMac Pro ahead of time. I don't want to know about it at all. I'd love to see Apple just be able to have a damn keynote and nobody knows why and boom, here is this new iMac Pro with these specs and boom, here is HomePod and it can do this and this and it sounds amazing, etc. I know in this day and age its pretty much impossible because people can't keep their damn mouth shut about anything.
It's got nothing to do with people keeping their mouths shut. There are two good reasons for pre-announcements.
1. It discourages potential customers from buying a competitor's product. Anyone considering a voice-controlled music streaming device last year would probably have purchased a Google, Amazon, or Sonos device. By pre-announcing the HomePod, Apple persuaded a certain number of buyers to wait and buy it instead. The charging pad announcement has probably had the same effect.
2. Business operations require advance planning. In large corporations, acquiring a new workstation may require submitting a proposal with budget many months in advance. If one doesn't know what to expect, one can't make plans. Apple being silent about whether or not the Mac Pro would ever be updated led to at least one production facility I know of switching from Mac to Windows. We now know Apple was developing a new version, but the facility had no way of knowing that. Had they known, they may have waited instead of switching.
In many corporations I have dealt with - any substantial purchase of hardware - i.e. buying replacement hardware for a department or team.... was typically budgeted a year ahead - otherwise, you would not typically get approval easily (i.e. we don't have the budget for it). It would have to be an emergency of some sort.
I don't mind so much that they pre-announce, but these days they ship so little that I get the old Microsoft 'vapour' feeling. Take the Mac Pro, originally it was suggested it would 'not arrive before 2018', and while technically a release in 2019 fulfils that statement, 'not before 2018' does suggest 2018. Not so.
And talking about the mini being an important product while not producing an upgrade for 4 years (and that release was in fact a downgrade of sorts), while not shipping anything is also extremely disappointing.
I am running a Mac mini server and I am praying it survives for as long as Apple needs to come with a new mini. That is a 2010 design which supports a two disk RAID setup so at least I have minimised the chance that I will lose my data when it dies. Buying a 'new; mini now gets me the 2014 model, potentially just before a new mini arrives. I would really hate to buy a 2014 mini only to find out two months later they finally come up with a new one. So, I wait. And of course, Apple dropping support for things like mail servers or DNS, means that any upgrade means also finding a way to keep on supporting my users with their mailboxes.
At least they could have bridged this by producing a decent modern CPU mini with thunderbolt 3. But now I just have to keep praying that my mini does not die.
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And talking about the mini being an important product while not producing an upgrade for 4 years (and that release was in fact a downgrade of sorts), while not shipping anything is also extremely disappointing.
I am running a Mac mini server and I am praying it survives for as long as Apple needs to come with a new mini. That is a 2010 design which supports a two disk RAID setup so at least I have minimised the chance that I will lose my data when it dies. Buying a 'new; mini now gets me the 2014 model, potentially just before a new mini arrives. I would really hate to buy a 2014 mini only to find out two months later they finally come up with a new one. So, I wait. And of course, Apple dropping support for things like mail servers or DNS, means that any upgrade means also finding a way to keep on supporting my users with their mailboxes.
At least they could have bridged this by producing a decent modern CPU mini with thunderbolt 3. But now I just have to keep praying that my mini does not die.