dysamoria

This is like how the 2013 Mac Pro never got a retina screen, yet every other Apple product did...

foregoneconclusion said:

Anyone who's actually used VESA arms for a monitor knows that: A. They have a tendency to slowly succumb to gravity and move out of the exact position you wanted B. Changing the position of the monitor can require a fair amount of fiddling around with loosening and tightening the tension in the arm That means that if Apple has created something that can change positions effortlessly AND hold that position without eventually drooping, it really could be worth $999 to someone.

I’m not in disagreement with the existing junk being junk, and also that it costs too much for junk. I’m just not convinced the price of Apple’s stand is worthy of the results. Time will tell.

Also, I wonder if the engineering done here, being sold at that price, might have been a bit over-engineered for the purpose.

neilm said:

I don't know that there was any need to reopen and reargue the whole Pro Stand issue, much less in 1,955 words. But this article is nonetheless completely on point: the stand is an elaborately engineered product, built in low volume for the professional market. (That Sony 4K rig shopping list provides a telling comparison.) Don't like it? Then don't buy it. 

As usual with such things, the loudest voices of internet outrage are from people who aren't even remotely part of the target market.

Many of us USED TO BE part of the target market. We were used to considering ourselves part of that target market, and we were waiting for Apple to resume selling effective product to us. We don’t know why Apple have decided we don’t matter to them any more. All we know is that Apple have placed their ONLY heavy-duty machine WAY out of our price range.

Yay. Yet Another [overlong] free propaganda piece for Apple.

I’m not even going to try to read the whole thing. These are so tiresome. They’re more annoying than all the advertising “articles”.

What exactly is DED’s investment in Apple that he’s constantly making these long, defensive, rambling editorials to protect (actually, shape) Apple’s image? Is it just emotional, or does it go deeper?

My investment in Apple is in how I’ve converted all my computer productivity to Apple’s platform. It’s a legit consumer investment in hardware and workflow (time and money), where Apple doing right with their products is more important to me than their wealth and public image, by far.

The only suffering I’m seeing of Apple’s public image is a very subtle and slow (and still far behind the full reality) degradation of image. Only someone who is emotionally invested in Apple’s image, and who is extremely insecure about that investment, should be bothered by the actual media output, because Apple should be getting worse publicity than it gets.

The actual and very small (and slow to grow) PR injury being sustained is entirely self-inflicted. Apple have been doing worse with their software stability/reliability, availability of consistent raw power (and thermal design), and even their much talked about ease of use, since around 2013. “The media”, like most tech people and most users, is convinced that bugs are inevitable and ever present in software. “The media”, again, like most people, doesn’t know enough about user interface design or how users OUGHT to be treated to comment in an informed manner about Apple’s failures since 2013 (at best, there was a tiny flare up of reports of GUI expert designers explaining why they thought iOS 7 was a horrible redesign, and this had a net zero effect on Apple’s image in 99% of the minds who care about Apple in some form or other).

I’m NOT getting my impression of Apple from some “problematic media”; I’m getting it first hand from experience with the product in place as my primary (and CHOSEN) platform (as well as witnessing Apple’s prior unwillingness to maintain its foothold in the professional market, which they’ve suddenly made extremely unbalanced efforts in with the bulk-potential-customer-dumping new target price for Mac Pro machines).

If you think that anything is going wrong with some mass perception of Apple, you need only look to Apple (and these pro-Apple forums) to explain it. There’s only a tiny segment of Apple users who are consciously aware of the actual problems, and they’re not being poisoned by any rogue media efforts. Apple are doing it all on their own.

The reviews weren’t representative of products... because Apple censored them at will. I reviewed my iPad Pro Smart Keyboard to share the fact that the lettering was wearing off already after only three to four months of usage. I didn’t return it because I knew every unit would be the same (just like my iPhone 6s’ half-yellowed screen, which was actually pretty much the same as the ones on display at the Apple store).

Apple hid my review.

There was nothing abusive in my review. It wasn’t just deleted, because trying to post a new one gave me the message that I’d already reviewed the product. They just didn’t want me posting undesirable info.

It’s becoming more and more useless to have reviews on websites. Not because customers  don’t make useful contributions, and not just because of garbage content (which IS an issue, but let’s be honest: that’s not why review features are really going away). It’s because of the owners of the sites, not their users.

A company either wants meaningless “engagement” or nothing at all. Amazon won’t let us downvote unhelpful reviews anymore; that’s stopping users from moderating bad reviews, but there’s “engagement”. YouTube does NOTHING with downvotes of videos or comments, because a downvoted is still “engagement”.

The  there’s just the editing of impressions: Apple hides reviews they don’t like (and now removed the whole system). AI (and other sites) removed the downvoting of comments and articles, and won’t allow comments on certain articles at all (political articles and the increasingly prevalent advertising “articles”). This keeps the community from having any real impact on whatever the site owners really want. It’s not freedom; we are on their turf and they are going to treat it that way.

Then there’s the antisocial business model: eBay will happily screw sellers just to keep eBay buyers coming. This proves that it’s a business-to-customer site, not a consumer-to-consumer auction site.

Countless more examples are out there.

This is the inevitable reversal of an early web trend that has seemingly not worked out for the bottom line of increasingly expense-averse, (and consumer-to-consumer advice-averse) companies.

Customer feedback and review voting seemed exciting - an attractor to websites, promoting “community” and “social networking” - until companies realized that there was a need for moderation (expense) and that the unvarnished truth was visible to potential buyers (seen as a potential loss of sales to upper management who don’t actually care about the sincerity of any social effort). “Social networking” has degraded into corporatist manipulation and whatever best suits the companies pretending to promote community.

This was inevitable. This is your so-called “free market”, where the corporations control image and impressions as much as possible. Consumer choice is unwelcome and averted as much as possible.