timmillea

Wrong product, wrong timing. Private cars have their expiry date fast approaching. The whole World, including the US will have to move to walking, cycling, home deliveries, public transport and occasional private-hire vehicles or shared mini-busses on demand. The challenge is to reduce the need to travel at all. Travel in the future will be restricted to a few key worker sectors and pleasure. Apple is blind-sided by its US car-culture. I cannot see Apple going head to head with Uber and their like and if they do, to what avail?

The 'one-port' premium MacBook 12" was extremely controversial at its 2015 release but was hailed as the future of laptops. Five years on, USB-C has a far higher market penetration and acceptance and the original fan-free, low-power Mac is the ideal initial beneficiary for Apple Silicon. It was discontinued July 2019, prematurely, but clearly for a reason. Apple roadmaps tend to extend for manny years into the future. The moment the decision was made to make the MB12 the first to receive Apple Silicon, I would expect its Intel days were planned to end even before the release of the 2017 incarnation. 

We can expect dramatically improved performance and battery life, Thunderbolt over USB-C plus a retake on that troublesome keyboard. It will remain a premium laptop and certainly not a cheap 'student laptop' but rather the laptop of choice for travelling creatives - use it for a full day's travel then plug it in to two 4k HDR monitors and edit movies. I think Apple are planning a 'wow' moment, this autumn ('fall' in US English). 

Steve Jobs over-rated Ive and made him unassailable within Apple. The consequences of that have hit Apple - the disastrous 'Trash Can' Mac Pro, the iMacs and MacBooks which became essentially 'disposable' and all in the name of aesthetics. His reach went too far and unchallenged. His influence will live on but hopefully in a more measured dose.

Apple could not make a bigger mistake. It is because Apple is a U.S. company and the U.S. is car crazy that they have such a blind spot. Apple should be focussing on ways to reduce the need to travel and on the efficiency of the residual need. Car travel is not it. Within 20 years private vehicles will be all-electric but only as a stepping stone to no private vehicles. Apple should be exploiting VR and AR to make travelling redundant and on AI to optimise public transport. 

What a way to test sound quality - heavily compressed studio mush! Live-recorded orchestral or jazz would have been a better testing candidate.