macwhiz

I suspect the Apple Pencil 2 and the landscape camera are mutually exclusive. 

The Pencil 2 charges when it snaps to the "top" of the iPad (when used in landscape orientation). There's a window on the side of the iPad Pro for the inductive charger, right where the camera module would need to sit. With a camera in that spot, there's probably no room for the charger, meaning there'd be no way for users to charge their Pencil 2.

But what about an adapter? After all, you need an adapter to charge a Pencil 1 on the new iPad, because it doesn't have a Lightning port. Well, the Pencil 1 adapter is passive—two jacks with some wires between them. It's cheap to manufacture. A Pencil 2 adapter would need a charging coil, active circuitry to drive it... and some solution for how the Pencil 2 uses the inductive charger to pair to the iPad. It'd cost a lot more than $9.

Can't snap the pencil to the left of the iPad; that's where the power button and microphones are. Can't snap to the right; that's the USB-C port and speakers. The bottom? It'd block the hinge of the keyboard case.

Put the camera on the bottom? Dell tried that, and got pilloried in reviews for making a laptop with an up-your-nose camera view.

Plus, on the Pro, you've got Face ID. A landscape camera can be covered when you hold it in portrait mode, blocking Face ID from working. On the base iPad, you've still got Touch ID, so it doesn't matter... unless you try a handheld FaceTime call in portrait mode...

Metriacanthosaurus said:

It really doesn’t make any sense that anyone should have this problem to begin with. If you have wall switches, you have no business using Philips Hue. There are several far more appropriate ways to achieve smart home lighting without nuking a useful wall switch. 

Unless you can't change the wall switch, because you live in an apartment. Change the wiring, no; change the cover plate, yes.

Or you want the wall switch to control more than just the lights it's hardwired to.

Or you want smart lights that do more than just dim, which is what you get with a smart hardwired wall switch like Lutron Casetá. And you'd rather not have a blank plate over the spot where your wall switch used to be, plus a Philips remote stuck to the wall next to it...

This is a brilliant product. It's not for everyone, but it definitely serves a need and fulfills a hole in Philips' lineup.

Last year, the Smart Keyboard of my iPad Pro 10.5" stopped working, likely due to a broken wire in the hinge. It was under warranty. I made the mistake of opting for an in-store replacement.

After the 45-minute drive to the nearest store, it was the game of "find the greeter," akin to Where's Waldo?, the one person who does checkins who is in a random location at the front of the store... wearing the same uniform as every other employee (not to mention ten percent of the patrons—a blue T-shirt). Check in, get told to sit under a random poster on the wall among a throng of other people and wait. Eventually another employee comes to "check me in," and then after another wait a third employee comes to diagnose the problem. (So much for efficiency.)

Half an hour of waiting around... to be told I'll have to come back a week later to get the replacement part as they're out of repair stock.

Could they ship it to me? Nope, because I came into the store, I'll have to come back to pick it up.

But wait... there's one sitting right there, on the shelf. Surely they can give me that one?

Nope. It's "retail stock," not "repair stock." So I have to make a second two-hour round trip to the store to pick up a lightweight part, because the one they have is in the wrong box with the wrong barcode on it.

That was when I realized that the Apple I loved, and recommended to others, was dead. And that Apple Support is now no better than any other manufacturer.

I hope that they go back to what Apple Stores used to be, with a customer-support focus. I'd love to see them go back to having easily identifiable support and checkout areas. The stores are form over function now, much like MacBooks.

I’m about as rabid an Apple fan as one can find, but at this point, even I have to say that Apple has lost their mojo under Cook.

Yeah, Apple had misfires under Jobs, but not of the same magnitude or frequency. And the products were generally better designed and tested.

The Power Mac G3/G4 design was the most elegant tower case I’ve ever seen. It was incredibly easy to work on the internals. It understood that people buying a top-end computer with pro power and features value the ability to customize, expand, and even repair their system. Today, we have the cylindrical Mac Pro, which not only can’t be expanded internally and can’t easily be repaired by the user, but its “elegant design” backed it into a corner meaning it hasn’t seen an update in years.

The iMac G5 was stylish and compact, but also user-serviceable. Not only could you upgrade the RAM, you could replace the hard drive, power supply, and other components. Apple even offered do-it-yourself repairs, where they’d ship you the replacement part. Today’s iMacs can’t be upgraded and are inexplicably difficult to repair even for a trained service provider. But they’re thin and stylish.

The iPhone X series, for most people, doesn’t offer much in the way of real, everyday functional improvement over the much cheaper iPhone 8. The CPU in the 8 is fast enough for virtually any normal person. The AR features in the newer processors seem to be a solution in search of a problem, so far. Yes, there’s a better camera, but for most people the more basic camera is more than good enough. It’s difficult to find a compelling reason to push someone from an 8 to an Xs or Xr other than “but it’s newer and will be declared obsolete later!”

It used to be that I could argue Apple’s operating systems were head and shoulders above the competition. They just worked. They were intuitive. They were secure. They were compatible. They were simple for beginners but offered incredible depth for advanced users. That’s not true any longer. Apple’s software is now frequently unusable on release due to bugs. Features are removed as often as they’re added, particularly advanced features. Serious vulnerabilities are increasingly common. And too often, Design (with a capital D and a patronizing British accent) trumps usability and intuitive operation.

Never mind bugs like updates bricking Apple Watches... or major features slipping from OS releases... or outright vaporware like AirPower.

Frankly, Microsoft has caught up, and Apple has slacked off.

It used to be I couldn’t imagine using Windows every day by choice. Today, although Windows 10 has plenty of annoyances—especially around privacy—it’s stable, it’s usable, it’s flexible, and it generally works about as well as macOS. Microsoft is stepping up its integration game, too: the integration between Windows 10 and the Xbox shows just how little effort Apple has put into the Apple TV.

Meanwhile, Apple can’t even design a laptop without an overdesigned, overwrought keyboard that has Elegant Design but breaks when presented with a cookie crumb, requiring a $500 repair that may take weeks to process. Not because the keyboard works better; not because the keyboard is more joyful to type on; not because the design solved a fundamental problem with the concept of typing. No, because it shaved a millimeter off the thickness of the laptop.

Apple no longer designs computers that are the best they can possibly be. They no longer make software that can be used by anyone—rank beginner or serious professional. They no longer make devices that are designed to be the best they can be at what they do.

Apple designs anorexic computers for casual users with high disposable income. Some of those computers are phones, tablets, and watches.

Apple is teetering under the weight of its own hubris lately, which is ironic given Apple’s thin fetish under Jony Ives.