techaccident

While some users of iPad 2 are hanging on, it's the battery that will kick them off in the end. If you rely upon the device for casual consuming, then decent battery life is part of the package - and a 4-year-old machine is probably getting funky in that regard. These people are mainly using wifi-only models with the minimum 16GB of storage. That means that they can get a massive upgrade for only $329, a whole lot less than they paid for the original. Not bad, and clearly aimed at this crowd. This product really helps to distinguish the Pro line with a sharp delineation between consumption & productivity. I expect all the marketing around this new iPad to be about fun fun fun and content consumption, and the Pro marketing to be all about making stuff. Case closed (if I'm correct).

Office 365 makes it clear that Microsoft wants you to create lots of OneNote notebooks. Every time you create a group, project or Sharepoint site, separate OneNote notebooks come along for the ride.

Unlike Evernote, Apple Notes or a folder full of text docs, OneNote lets you get lost. Determining where to put something and where to find something is time consuming and irritating, especially if you find yourself using multiple notebooks. One can, of course, restrict use to a single notebook with a lot of tabs each with a lot of notes, but that is not what the product encourages.

OneNote is curiously disconnected from the rest of Office. There is no way to export notes to Word, and even copy/pasting text results in formatting hell. There is no way to send anything from Outlook to OneNote, unlike the Windows version. And the "type anywhere" visual approach of OneNote means that notes have no clean representation in any other application - they are left in a sort of formatting limbo.

My company has standardized on Office 365, and that is the only reason I use OneNote at all. Apple Notes is better for most people and most applications. 

The rest of Office 2016 is only remarkable for its lack of integration with the macOS ecosystem, which make the applications feel oddly out of sync with everything else. Otherwise it's the familiar feature bloated beast it's always been, and the only reason to use it at all is to exchange files with Windows users. If you don't do that a lot, save your money and avoid Office.

Jdmr1701 said:

...I really don't see the Macbook getting 16GB of memory right now unless there is a beefier CPU in that thing to handle more load. I haven't any experience with that laptop but have heard it is pretty slow and noticeably so. I don't think that will every or ever has been used as a professional laptop...

Don't underestimate those little MacBooks. My wife has the base model - m3 CPU, 8GB RAM - and it is a very useful machine that she uses to run her business. She runs MS Office all day, writes extensively, sends out invoices, creates presentation materials, organizes large bodies of images, etc. - in other words, a lot of real typical work. And it's just fine. She loves that it's so small and light, and how clear and bright the screen is. She takes it everywhere. In other words, I lot of people - perhaps a majority - could use the little MacBook and never notice that it's significantly slower than a Pro, because it does everything they actually need. There are of course people who genuinely need more, and this machine is not for them.

wiggin said:

AppleInsider said:

While the exact purpose of the IC remains unknown, iFixit surmises that it's likely a digital-to-analog converter accompanied by an an amplifier and an analog-to-digital converter. Those are necessary to convert digital audio from the Lightning jack to analog sound that can be heard by human ears --?and also to convert input sources, such as sound through the EarPods microphone, into digital audio that the iPhone can use.

Interestingly regarding an analog-to-digital converter, per this article Apple's adapter does not support the mic and controls on 3rd party headsets, rending them useless for phone calls, volume adjustments, etc. I think a lot of people are going to get their new iPhone 7s and be surprised their existing headsets don't work even with the adapter as this limitation is not spelled out in Apple's description of the adapter. Is the method 3rd party headsets use so different from what Apple's own headsets use that it couldn't have support both?

http://www.macworld.com/article/3127211/iphone-ipad/7-solutions-for-the-iphone-7s-lack-of-headphone-jack.html

If this is true, bad form on Apple's part to not be more clear about the limitation.

I'll echo what jonyo said. I've used the adapter with several headphones from Apple and others, and the inline controls and microphones all work 100%. Apple did a fine job.

I'm in the upgrade program. I'm resigned to wait and let that first batch float on by before I go fishing, no matter what. I'll suffer, yea suffer with my outmodadated 6S just a little longer. O the humanity.