misa

nubus said:

Paradroid said:

im not saying it shouldn't be upgradeable, just that it not being upgradeable doesn't make it non-pro. 

True. Even different generations of iMacs and iBooks could be upgraded. Apple even made it easy to flip-up the keyboard to insert RAM, disks, and wireless. 

What should worry is that if we can't upgrade RAM and disk or buy at non-Apple pricing. The battery is glued. All together the expected lifetime of the MacBook Pro 2016 is probably reduced from 5 to 3 years. Combined with new pricing and the TCO is then ≈ +80% higher while the environmental impact is +60% compared to previous. All of that to save 2.5 mm!

Nope. The RAM and Hard drive should be the minimally replaceable items. The GPU (MXM board) and CPU are "nice to have" upgradable but for logical reasons involving cooling, they're not likely. Up until SSD's, you wouldn't even think of integrating the hard drive onto the mainboard, because mechanical drives barely last 2 years in a laptop.  SSD's push this up to 3 years, but they are not going to last the life of the laptop. All the machines that I have access to that use SSD's haven't had a SSD last longer than 3 years, and when they die, they die terribly, forget recovering data, because the OS will typically be disabled in doing so. This IMO is what that hidden port is for, recovering the SSD data after it dies.

Laptops can be used for 10 years before they are truely useless. People generally hang on to a laptop or desktop for 7 years and get that life by replacing the hard drive after 2-3, and upgrading the ram from the installed base to the maximum.

That said, "Pro" these are not. These at best are Prosumer. They are a far cry from Professional use. They make for nice looking movie props. Functionality-wise even replacing the F-keys is something that is going to get a lot of flack for tone-deafness product designs.

Will people buy it? Of course. But let's not fool ourselves. The reason they sell at all is that Apple products have one of the best build qualities and resale value. If this were Google or Microsoft (neither whom possess any knack for industrial design, only cheap disposable products that they want you to replace every 18 months) it would cost half as much and be only a quarter as capable. I see all these people cooing over the Microsoft Surface Studio Desktop and I'm like .... It's just slightly worse than Wacom's offering, and less stylish. 

Apple 's professional products are without capable professional computers. 

AppleInsider said:

For iOS devices, USB-C offers less of an attraction, given that they can't support Thunderbolt 3 connectivity (which requires an Intel processor) and don't need DisplayPort video output to external displays.

The fact that basic USB 3.0 connectivity can be supported on existing Lightning connectors and legacy USB ports suggests that iOS devices might not make the switch as quick, requiring a longer transition period of using adapters. At the same time, there's a lot you can now do wirelessly rather than needing to plug in a cable.

WiFi sync, AirDrop photo and file transfers and iCloud based sharing are all more convenient than plugging in a cable. That leaves power charging as the biggest reason for plugging a cable into an iOS device, and that issue may be solved by induction or truly wireless charging before USB-C becomes completely and universally adopted.

Whoa there.

I want to be able to connect my iPad and iPhone to a HDMI, Thunderbolt/DisplayPort or USB-C display without any ridiculous compression artifacts. An iOS device should be able to do this.

Likewise with wireless, nothing should be done "wirelessly" if you want to retain security and conserve power. Wireless networking, charging and audio is all good when you don't leave your home, but when you go outside, you are at the whim of all the other wireless junk out there. That Wireless access point that says it's AT&T, are you sure that's AT&T?, If you are listening to a phone call on your wireless headset, how do you know someone else isn't listening? Then there is wireless charging that is just a super-bad idea since it pushes the charging efficiency below 30%. You want the induction charging only for devices that are impractical to charge any other way. The Apple Watch is a great example of a product that is half baked, because charging it doesn't give you the battery life that anyone would reasonably use it.  This also applies to the iPhone, but at least the iPhone has the ability to be plugged into a battery pack. 

Now put this all together? Are we going to start having to lug around 8lb battery pack+USB-C hubs because our consumer electronics are trying to be cute and light, and useless for all day use.

SpamSandwich said:

Probably well designed, but there's really no excuse for Nintendo to not have nearly their entire back catalog on iOS by now. They must really hate to make money.

Uh, you have never played a Nintendo game, or at least nothing since the SNES. The NES Classic Mini tells us exactly what Nintendo's plans are, as it's just a fixed-game Virtual Console implementation. For the SNES if they go down that route, it will be harder to pick just 30 games, and it's more likely that 15 games will come straight out of Nintendo's own Mario/Donkey Kong IP.

Nintendo makes a point of not porting their games to platforms that they would be poor experience on. Take for example the Shantae games by Wayforward, the games work pretty good on platforms with a controller, but playing it on a tablet is excrutiating fustrating because "on screen buttons" are not a replacement for an actual controller. 

Most of Nintendo's games require at the minimum of a two button controller, if not a 4-button controller. The 3D games (eg Super Paper Mario, Super Mario 3D World/Land, and so forth) aren't going to be very good experiences. The 2D games might be playable if a requirement that a controller be present, but I don't see Nintendo ever bringing iOS, let alone Android ports of Mario games. They just can not be played.

There is one exception. The Paper Mario games (Super Mario RPG, Paper Mario, Paper Mario 1000 year door) have turn-based mechanics that could be touch adapted, and like Final Fantasy 3/4/5/6 for iOS/Android/PC it IS possible to make turn-based RPG's work if you bend a few rules. For the Paper Mario games (and mario+luigi games,) there is a "press the button again for double damage" mechanic that would be harder to pull off because touch is not accurate.

As I already said, the platformer style games are not going to be viable. Nintendo is on the right track with this, and the next logical games to adapt would be the Mario&Donkey Kong Games (which entirely use the touch screen to play.) Another game that could probably be adapted is the Captain Toad Treasure Tracker game, as it the same idea.

apple ][ said:

rogifan_new said:

Let me take a wild guess that had Hillary Clinton won Tim Cook wouldn't have wrote this letter. 

You make a good point.

I wonder what would have happened if Hillary had won.

I probably wouldn't be surprised if there was a banner or an announcement on the front page, the main page of Apple.com, congratulating the first female president, or some complete crap like that.

He probably wouldn't have written such a letter because Hillary didn't target Apple during the campaign.

But since Trump has won, that means Silicon valley is rightfully scared because they are not producers of just hardware that can be relocated at the whim of a politician. There is a lot of software developers that Apple will never get enough H1B's to get into the US now, and if a Republican-led government starts tearing up trade agreements left and right that is going to push the price of their hardware up beyond the reach of consumers, and they know it. Likewise all the competition will ALSO have to raise their prices beyond the point of affordability. Say good bye to cheap computers, period.

Lest ye forget, a $2000 computer pre-NAFTA was not top of the line, not at all. And in todays dollars that would be over $4300 for what we currently pay about $200 for. So that threat is very real, and very dangerous.

That said, much of what Trump has run his campaign on, is impossible and will not survive constitutional challenges. He can not unilaterally tear up trade agreements, the Republicans will not have any of that since it benefits their donors the most.  The TPP might die but that comes at the US's expense, as the US would have been the biggest beneficiary to it. NAFTA is unlikely to die or be gutted because that would force all the Canadian and Mexican outsourcing to come back to the US, and I hate to break it to you all, but nobody wants to buy a Ford or GM vehicle that costs more than a Hyundai (Korean) or Toyota (Japanese) that is also assembled in the US. If the rust belt thinks that this is going to bring jobs back, sorry, no, that's not going to happen. If anything we will see a rise in Uber-like services and a huge downtick in car ownership.

AppleInsider said:

Prior to becoming president, Trump also faces two federal trials over alleged federal racketeering related to his Trump University and allegedly defrauding consumers and the elderly, as well as a New York state investigation into his Trump Foundation.

IMO...

All that's going to happen is that US companies will just move to their HQ to Canada or Ireland, and take the tax benefits of doing so. Burger King/Tim Hortons (QSR) did a tax inversion and this would benefit them. Many other companies would do this.

I don't see Apple doing this since it's such an American establishment, but that doesn't rule out moving the HQ and everything else business as usual.

If Trump tears up the TPP, NAFTA and all the other trade agreements and puts tariffs on everything, that goes against Republican party policy (which is generally pro-globalization.)

What is far more likely to happen is that Trump never makes it into office due to the criminal proceedings against him, and even if he does make it to the White house, it's extremely unlikely he will be able to get anything done. Obama had a hard time because the Senate was obstructionist, the Senate can still be obstructionist. There is not a 60-vote majority to be had. All Trump has is the ACA as the carrot for the Sentate/House to do what he says, once the ACA is repealed, there are no more carrots to use on congress. Sure there may be a few things that get through that US citizens will not be fond of, but the big one is the ACA (Obamacare) and I don't see Trump repealing that as the first thing he does in office, because that would be letting the horses out of the barn to torch the barn and not replace it.