stevenoz

Presumably there are ports on the back... but why would they post a photo with no ports evident?    Pass.

I'm really upset Apple seems to be dropping the Edition Watch. 

I thought the Apple v1 gold Edition Watch was pretty silly. All electronics are basically for 3-5 years use, until technology makes them obsolete... Then what? Melt it down?

Presumably there are people who want you to think they have money to burn. I just think of gold Apple Watch wearers as not-getting-it.

As for Apple's drop in Global RepTrak 100's list... It's obvious... 'Apple is doomed.'

Karl Lagerfeld's gold Apple Watch.

 

   

As an AirPods owner, I agree with this review. Luckily they stay in my ears just fine. And I'm glad to be rid of the cord, whose control would catch on my shirt collar or other things. Too often a cord-tug would even stop the music playing on my iPhone 7 Plus and then I would need to do a reseat of the cord into the iPhone.

I also have an Apple Watch and it's great to quickly control music playback with it... and when I see and accept an incoming call on my watch, the audio automatically goes to my AirPods. I seldom have to pull out my large phone to do basic things.

There have been people that I've talked to with AirPods that say my voice isn't as clear as with tethered earbuds... but I'm often in a noisy environment too... and that may make matters worse.

Overall, I give them a thumbs-up too!

To quote Adam Engst: 

• For power users, Apple should optimize the theoretical MacBook Pro for performance and connectivity, worrying about size, weight, and battery life secondarily. A 13-inch model might have similar performance specs to a tricked-out version of the proposed MacBook Air but with an industrial design that offers more ports: MagSafe, Thunderbolt 3, Thunderbolt 2 port, USB-A, HDMI, Ethernet, and an SD card slot. Its price might start around $1500 and go up with additional CPU and storage. For those who need the ultimate power, the 15-inch model could support amounts of RAM above what laptop chipsets can generally handle, along with a plethora of build-to-order options that could push its price from a starting point of maybe $1800 into the stratosphere. Such specs would reduce battery life and increase weight but would enable mobile professionals to rely on a single machine.

The core problem is that Apple no longer seems to understand how Mac users choose their machines. Right now, it’s nearly impossible to figure out what Mac laptop to buy, because the three key differentiators of price, size, and performance are difficult to tease out, with all the models converging on the MacBook Air’s focus on size at the expense of price and performance.

Plus, as Andy Ihnatko also pointed out, Apple has become a design and manufacturing company, not an engineering company. Unsurprisingly, the only Mac for which design and manufacturing matter more than anything else is the canonical MacBook Air, which needs to be magically small and light and is willing to compromise on price and performance.

The prime directive of an engineering company is to provide products that solve users’ problems. It’s all about helping users achieve their goals with the least amount of wasted time and effort. That used to describe Apple to a T.

Nowadays, Apple is ignoring the desires of many Mac users and focusing on making gorgeous objects that are possible purely because of the company’s leadership in advanced manufacturing techniques. That has a place with an iPhone or iPad, but who cares if an iMac is thin? You look at the front, not the edge! We don’t mind if our Macs are carved from single blocks of aluminum and feature chamfered edges, but that design won’t make us more productive. 

When it comes to Macs, form should follow function, not force us into uncomfortable compromises.

boltsfan17 said:

cmaus said:

Why does Tim Cook always make such a "grumpy grandma" face?

Tim was looking at Larry Page and Eric Schmidt when that photo was taken. 

No, that is the face any sane person would make in the presence of Donald.