hmurchison

The Mac is BACK.   

The veneer of the iPad came off a few years ago and frankly Apple went a little crazy jacking up the price.  A $2000 iPad Pro...seriously Apple? 

It's good that they're revamping iPadOS and aligning it with more of the Mac OS features but the reality is the iPad has seen its time in the spotlight.  

The fact that apps went largely subscription didn't help either.  iOS in total is becoming somewhat constrained by software limitations, cost and availability. 

The prices for Intel based Macs on eBay are about to PLUNGE. 

Apple and Tim Cook are correct on this one.   It's the old "Think of the children" canard for collecting widescale data on citizens.  Parents should have the right to protect their children in the ways "they" deem important without some Government telling everyone to "show me your papers".  These same institutions were all gung ho about breaking into people's phones so it's not a leap to suggest that companies that have to comply with age verification could have pressure exerted upon them to "provide the data they've collected" to the government office with jurisdiction. 

Liberty is not about the Government going into nanny mode.   We already have offices setup (Child Protective Services) that are a layer of protection when it appears that parents may not be doing an acceptable job. 

Thunderbolt Hubs tend to be pretty boring. 

8k Displays.  We can barely find affordable 4-5k displays 

2.5gbe ...lowest networking upgrade possible.  

Very niche. 

No 3rd Party software please.   For a HomeOS you need a very comfortable UI that belies the underlaying  sophistication.    You don't want your end users to end up bouncing into other interfaces.   Most Home Assistant user interfaces look excessively tweaky.   Even Apple's Home app to me is rather bland experience.  

Right now the UI are so heavily focused on device control they quickly become unwieldy after a certain accumulation of devices.    Apple needs to start to move people towards looking at their home from a Scene based workflow.  You Automate the stuff that you just don't want to think about (like my closets, laundry, pantry, garage all have motion sensors for the lights).  Next the complementary items in a home need to be paired together in scenes.   They say the hardest thing is to name things.  If you've 50 devices simply naming them and recalling them all via the app user interface or voice because exponentially more difficult.    If you can boil things down to a dozen scenes you have an easier target to find or even call out via Siri. 

Apple's put a lot of work into App Intents and I expect another large functional leap coming at WWDC.  Home OS is likely only partially delayed by Siri but the real grunt is going to come from the maturation of App Intents as the driving force.