tht

Nunnyobizz said:

9secondkox2 said:

Nunnyobizz said:

The reality is that the 12.9 inch iPad Pro is excessively heavy and unwieldy.  Many people bought it because of its outstanding screen, but regret the move due to limited portability.  Raising the size to 14 inches would be suicide for a product.   

Incorrect. I have the 12.9” pro. Often times I wish it had a 15” screen. I hate moving and zooming artboards ad naseam around just to work in detail on a deadline. 

If you don’t need the pro, get the air or the base model. Let the pros have useful features. 

I guess you didn’t realize I’m speaking from experience as well.   I also have the 12.9 inch pro and as far as I am concerned, it is very heavy and cumbersome.  And I’ve seen many people online say the same thing, so I’m not alone.

 Funny I don’t see people in this thread clamoring for a 14 inch iPad either, so I think it’s safe to say you’re in the minority.  At 1.5 lbs, it’s the 12.9 inch iPad is the heaviest one they’ve ever made by at least a half pound.

You miss the point of the iPad Pro.  It’s supposed to be portable AND useful. While it is useful, the size and weight put off many people, and that includes pros.

Well, perhaps you forgot? The original 2010 iPad 9.7" inch was 1.5 lbs. The fondly remembered iPad 2 was 1.3 lbs, but the iPad 3 with 2048x1536 display pushed it back to 1.44 lbs. It is only with the iPad Air 9.7" where Apple settled on 1 lb as the weight target for their 10" to 11" iPads. The iPad Pro 12.9" basically took the 1.5 lb weight target after that.

I agree with you that 1.5 lb is too heavy for a handheld, but being handheld doesn't have to define what an iPad has to be. iPad tablets can encompass a wide product range serving a variety of customers, and Apple should offer more options. I'd like to see a 7" class iPad, basically an iPhone 14 Plus without the cellular modem and with lower performance SoC, offered. There is room for a 15" iPad. When the folding iPads come, those will serve as 20" external displays, AIO, laptop, and tablet computers, basically all of the above. It doesn't mean that there aren't 9" to 11" sized iPads that would be the bulk of sales. There should be a model for as many niches as possible.

The more worrying thing, which is repeated ad infinitum, is Apple is curiously uncertain on where they want to take touch computing. They have the handheld phone touch tablet well in hand. Bigger touch tablets? Curiously only want to serve a certain niche. There is probably a strange resource competition between Macs and iPads inside Apple.

9secondkox2 said:

Just give the MacBooks a touchscreen already. 

They can I suppose. To encourage Mac apps to be more touch accessible and therefore have more transportable UIs across their platforms. 

alandail said:

davidw said:

entropys said:

I can’t figure out why there is a middleman here. Just go with starlink directly and reduce the endless fiddling around with making sure the iPhone antenna is placed correctly. Emergency service for free as part of the phone purchase,  but perhaps an actual Apple global cellular service might be tempting. It could be very disruptive for the existing services.

In my country, and no doubt many others, the carriers are setting up starlink deals for cell phone coverage outside 5G/4G areas. Voice and broadband. Within a year I will be able to ditch my iridium phone and just use my iPhone.

I can't figure out who the "middleman" is, that you are referring to here. (Unless you're not using the term "middleman" correctly.)  It sounds like Globalstar have their own satellites and is only paying Space X to launch their satellites into orbit. Globalstar services do not use or are connected to Space X own Starlink satellites. If Apple wanted to use Starlink for their iPhone satellite features, I'm sure they would have made a competitive deal with Space X.

But it sounds like Apple is getting their foot in the door with services offered by satellites, by basically financing all the cost of building and launching satellites for Globalstar. I'm sure when it comes time for Apple to enter the services offered by satellite market, Apple will be in position to buy-out (or partner with) Globalstar on the cheap and will be competing with Starlink, instead of having to rely on them.  

Starlink can provide full cell service. KDDI in Japan is going to use Starlink for cell service in locations where cell signal isn't available using existing phones. Apple is paying someone to use SpaceX to launch satellites to provide a service (SOS) not as functional as what SpaceX themselves is building (full cell service).

As with other statements regarding what people are getting with sat comm service, you will need to describe what “full cell service” means. 

Apple is stuck in a box, waiting on Thunderbolt 5. They really need to have TB5 to do 5K/6K at 120 Hz or 7K/8K at 60 Hz. They can use HDMI, but that is not the single cable feature they want.

So, an update for any of their external monitors is perhaps simply waiting for TB5. Not having 90 Hz or 120 Hz for their next monitor is going to be a bit of a feature miss. They need to have at least 10 Gbit/s USBC ports. With TB5, they could daisy chain two 5K 60 Hz monitors, and have bandwidth left over for the 6 USBC ports between the two, at 10 to 20 Gbit/s.

CheeseFreeze said:

It’s frustrating to purchase a Mac at a premium price and not being able to use it for gaming the way Windows is used. I miss an entire category of content (with my primary usage being productivity & content creation).

I agree with most points in this article although I don’t think opening up the Mac with GPU support makes sense. 

Apple could consider a new product: an M3 Max powered “Apple TV” under a different brand name, e.g “Apple HomeCenter” or whatever (hopefully with a better name ;-).
It could compete with Xbox and PlayStation, but the Apple way. For this it would need to have strong 1st party content, and subsidize developers porting their work to this device (+ with compatibility with macOS, potentially supporting separate online instances for players on controllers using HomeCenter and desktop/mouse users).
It could offer a more compelling subscription like Xbox and PlayStation.
Apple would need to consider selling the device with no profit margin to compete; < $499 and consider it being a vending machine of services.

Yup. When a buyer is considering getting a computer, not being able to play the vast bulk of games or have a lot of native games on a Mac is a rather big negative. Another big negative is that there are a lot of engineering and business software that are not native. Those are walls for Apple devices to penetrate consumer and enterprise markets. As long as Apple doesn't have these types of applications, the market penetration of Macs is going to be limited to what, 15%? Maybe 20% for a good quarter?

The web has driven a lot of the Mac renaissance. Apple is perhaps looking long term at server-side gaming (cloud gaming) solving the lack of gaming on Macs, and even on iOS. And server-side business, engineering apps will be a thing too. If cloud driven apps become a thing, the main way apps are run, where the apps is actually running on a server and the UI/display is just blitted over the network, perhaps they see there being no reason to invest in either, and just waiting.

This leaves major features and apps out of their control though. The value in a cloud driven app ecosystem will then reside in the IP and content. Much like they saw the need to have Apple TV+, they really should see the need for game and app content too. Leaving content to 3rd parties is dangerous, not dependable. So, it seems inevitable that they have to do it.

They don't really need to sell a Mac at a loss. They don't need to have the most powerful computing hardware. They just need content, apps, and games that people are willing to pay for.