wigby

saarek said:

Amazon is getting to the "good enough" sweet spot before Apple is even out of the door and that is a serious problem.

At this rate Amazon will be the entrenched standard with Apple acting like Windows Mobile, too little too late.

JDP81 said:

williamlondon said:

boredumb said:

I still can't see relying on Amazon for hardware OR software.
They still can't make a Kindle work reliably or smoothly, or do much of anything well,
and they've been "developing" those for ten years...
Even the midrange ones cost more than their HD Fire "tablets",
so I find their other products easy to avoid.
It'd be like buying rocket engines from a company that hadn't quite yet mastered matches.

The problem I have with Amazon is that all their products are profitable to them post-sale, they're all nothing more than store-fronts so Amazon can sell you more shit through their (cheaply designed, cheaply produced, cheaply sold) products, which is why they're all so much cheaper than Apple products (up front only). I find any discussion of price comparison between business models like Amazon's and Apple's to be wholly disingenuous because they never take into account the sinister ways Amazon's business model discretely and without your full understanding reaches around you, grabs your wallet and extracts money from it over time for every product of theirs you buy. You think it's cheaper because you only think about the initial price, but that's not Amazon's business model, they profit off you over time (as does Google). As for the functionality of their devices, well, they're all geared to optimising what I've just described about their business model - the question you need ask yourself is: "is this how I want a product designed for me?" Personally, I don't.

And that's fine, but Amazon isn't a non-profit organization, so criticizing them for trying to profit is ridiculous lol

seanismorris said:

Apple can certainly complete... take the $329 IPad, remove the battery, and add a better speaker and mike.  

The biggest problem is Siri sucks.

It's interesting the Amazon had crap for an App Store just a few years ago, but now they have developer support.  We'll see if game developers also jump on board.

----
I'll stick with an IPad. I have wireless earbuds, and have Siri disabled.  But, Amazon has become interning enough with Alexa that many people might take another look at their tablets.  I'd consider an Amazon phone at the right price point...

pentae said:

I wonder how many buyers of the ARKit just wanted a faster GPU after being denied one for the last decade from Apple.

avon b7 said:

For me, everything starts with price. It doesn't matter how great something is if I can't afford it. One of the most absurd comments I've heard on the subject is to save for longer. Sigh.

Next problem is what you get for the price. Again, it doesn't matter how great something is if you don't really need it. Some people love retina screens but I could get by easily with non retina. Same for soldered RAM/SSD. Once again, I could get by without the fastest options if flexibility were factored into the offer. The option to upgrade down the line is something I have always taken advantage of.

Thinness? This is probably a Jony Ive obsession which I can easily live without if accessibility and longer battery life are the end result. The previous line was already thin. Having the battery glued to the upper casing is something I could also do without and after repeated use in different stores I still dislike the keyboard.

Touch Bar and Touch ID? For the added cost that comes with it, I could easily do without both. At the end of the day they are convenience items. Nothing more.

So what we have is an expensive (no other word for it) base system that could easily cost far less and which you have to BTO at current Apple pricing pushing the price even higher.

I haven't bought a laptop for a few years now and my current upgraded Macs have new blood in them. I will not be buying into this line until prices come down and/or ugradeability is looked at with a new corporate perspective.

People will say something stupid like 'Apple doesn't cater to me'. That is irrelevant. Apple caters to sales. It seems clear that new MBP sales didn't fly off the charts. There was pent up demand and that was quenched. We will see what Apple does in the future if sales flatten out. After many people claiming the MBA was eol, that wasn't the case. Just as it wasn't the case that anything not USB-C was 'legacy'. 

Apple put itself into a pigeon hole. If people are willing to buy into the sealed up, glued in, BTO at purchase, short warranty, expensive laptop, that's their decision. Mine is to pass.

The question is how many others pass or not.