schlack

my first MBP in 2007 had really terrible sound, much worse than the dell laptop I was replacing. my 2010 MBP and my 2014 MBP were also pretty poor compared to the much cheaper competition. Finally my 2016 MBP has very good sounds for its size, as does my 2017 iPad Pro and my 2016 iPhone 7. Looking forward to Apple continuing their very late to the game push into high quality audio. It's a primary selling point for me.

I've had my latest gen MBP for a few days now in real world use. Overall the design is very nice. Touch bar is neat but it's pretty annoying not to have hard function keys for brightness/volume/etc. control. My biggest grip is that battery life is disappointing. Not meeting my expectations for Apple. 4-5 hours max for non-intense work seems to be the norm. Other than that, the value proposition really isn't there. Hard to imagine anyone with a 2012 or later MBP (mine was 2010) justifying the upgrade.

Good. This solves one of the worst issues with the current gen iPad. The protruding camera. Honestly, one of the major reasons I hadn't upgraded since the iPad Air.

The move from $30 to $33 last year felt steep but acceptable given the inflationary environment.

Now it's $38 and it just seems too high to be worthwhile. 

Apple Cloud and Music are the main services we use. Apple Arcade and Apple TV are nice-to-haves. Apple News and Fitness don't get used.

Might be cheaper and easier to go to Spotify Family and 2TB iCloud for $28.

tipoo said:

Woah. Apple would be wise to retain him no matter what it takes. Reportedly their salaries aren't particularly high for a company like them, and if that's what's driving top talent to move on, it's a no brainer of an investment. Though some men like Jim Keller just prefer a bigger challenge turning things around, rather than projects that are already going well.

He was paid $24.2M in 2017. Probably more in 2018. Higher than the vast majority of Fortune 500 CEO pay.
https://www1.salary.com/Johny-Srouji-Salary-Bonus-Stock-Options-for-APPLE-INC.html

That's about $3M more than the CEO of Intel made.
https://www1.salary.com/Brian-M-Krzanich-Salary-Bonus-Stock-Options-for-INTEL-CORP.html

ivanh said:

We want a “durable” product. Not something “aged” in just a year.

Hear ye hear ye, all forward progress should stop the moment I make a purchase, so as to not hurt my sensibilities.

Maybe Apple should wait until Oculus makes a good VR headset. I have the latest dev set and it's uncomfortable, buggy, and has poor resolution. Can't see it going mainstream for awhile. 

Bad experimental design, swapping phones and cables without being double blind, does not reduce placebo effect. Why not just say, AppleInsider guy thinks lightning headphones sound better.

I guess minor is relative. If they keep the price the same but replace the A9 era processor with an A11, more RAM, and more storage, that would be a pretty major upgrade to the phone.

Perhaps design and cost cutting over function, but I’d wager that the vast majority of people rarely ever touch the power button on a Mac desktop. Even on my MacBook Pro, I might hit the power button a few times a year.