anonymouse

lkrupp said:

bobolicious said:

Does a decent speaker need front firing mid and high drivers... ?
How does this rate for industrial design ?
Might this actually be a case study for a touch bar ?
Is it time for Mr. Cook to retire, or hire the next Steve Jobs as his boss ?

Well, obviously you took the kludged photo as representative of the actual product. Nothing could be further from the truth. If such a product were to be released it wouldn’t look like the classic HomePod at all.

Yes, the pic that that other rumor site (rhymes with MacHumors) used is likely much closer to what something like this might look like. 

mike1 said:

Stabitha_Christie said:

mike1 said:

sflagel said:

kiowawa said:

foregoneconclusion said:

sflagel said:

Did the old one have this:

Yes, the original HomePod had Bluetooth 5.0. 

I had the impression the Mini version did not have Bluetooth, which made it hard to use for me as I travel a lot and wanted to bring it along without hooking to Hoel wifi.  

Although apparently the large HomePod did have Bluetooth 5.0, you could not use it to play music…. So if someone came to your house with a phone that is not from Apple, they could not share their music. The biggest reason not to get one.

Why would that matter? If they wanted me to hear something, they could just tell the HomePod to play it.

Not really concerned with how my home interacts with visitor's devices.

At some point Apple will stop supporting software updates for HomePods just like they do for every product they make. Once that happens they will become large bricks. Having Bluetooth support for streaming from other devices would allow them to continue being useful. 

Not a concern. By the time Apple stops supporting, I will have moved on to something newer, better more capable anyway. I have BT speakers that are 'bricks" because of old batteries. It's a speaker, not a lifetime commitment.

Well, also, like other Apple products, they don't stop working the instant Apple stops software updates, so it's typically quite a while before they become "bricks".

Grade 2 Ti is very soft and will scratch very easily, so this bracelet will look "worn" pretty quickly.

I'm sure Apple is thinking that the Ultra bands they are offering are much better suited to the activities they are targeting with the Ultra than a bracelet (and they are) but they should probably produce a matching Grade 5 bracelet for those who want to wear the watch in a casual, less active setting. It would probably be expensive, but they'd probably sell a lot of them.

rorschachai said:

hammeroftruth said:

rorschachai said:

JMaille said:

Without that revenue Apple will have to change it's business models.  Which means developer tools and interface access will be financed like on other platforms. 

Before the App Store, the annual fee for the developer program started at $499 and went up to, I believe, $1,499. Mac OS X upgrades also cost $129. People really believe they’re going to be able to have their cake and eat it too. 

Is it that much? I thought it was $99 and $299 for the two different developer programs. 

It used to be, before the App Store. There were multiple tiers. I forgot about the $3,499 tier, but a chunk of that was due to the WWDC ticket included.

https://web.archive.org/web/20070630060844/developer.apple.com/products/

Actually, since Apple made the switch to NeXTSTEP/OS X, I believe the developer tools (Xcode) have always been available for free. Initially, one may have needed a free developer account that really gave you nothing but access to Xcode, but I don't think there was ever a time when one couldn't get Xcode for free. (I think there was also a brief period when it wasn't yet called Xcode but may have still used the old names, but I can't clearly recall the chronology of that, whether that was only with the OS X developer releases, or also after.)

entropys said:

anonymouse said:

csimmons said:

I honestly don’t believe that Apple is all that concerned about desktop PC market share anymore ...

Sure, that's why they just invested in a multi-year effort with Apple Silicon and all these new Macs using it, because they aren't all that concerned about it. 🙄

The same chips go in laptops, the vast majority of Mac sales.  

There are no laptops with M1 Ultra, and whatever goes into the Mac Pro they told us is coming, and likely won't be. Sorry, the comment is still worthy of an eye roll.