flaneur

GeorgeBMac said:

This would not be unprecedented....

IBM, the mainframe company (and before that the typewriter company), has always focused on its service to the customer.   The saying went:  "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM equipment".   The truth is that IBM equipment was NOT the reason for that truism.  Rather, IBM made sure that the customer's needs were met -- which is service oriented rather than hardware oriented.  

Does it matter whether the company (whether it is IBM or Apple) deliver that service via hardware or software...

As Steve Jobs knew:   The IPod was great for what it did and what it represented -- not because it was an innovative chunk of hardware.
... Jobs knew that hardware and software were both merely a means to the end.

Yes, but the end was making the user's life better, which depended on the enjoyment of using the product. And the design of the product was crucial to the joy or even love of using it.

This is something that IBM never explored deeply for consumers, and certainly Microsoft never did as a primary goal on the software side. Apple has always tried to do the joy of usability in software too.

In any case, with Jobs and Ive and crew, the primary goal was to start with hardware and software that worked as beautifully as possible given the available technology at the time. The iPod was not an Apple-worthy product until Toshiba came up with that little hard drive, which Apple siezed on as if they were waiting for just that. It made 1000 songs in your pocket possible as the product, which in turn made the first massive investment in services, iTunes, necessary.

All this is to say that Apple's next phase will also be hardware-driven first. Augmented reality won't be the next (and biggest of all) service until Apple — Ive and crew — have a new way of getting visual data right in front of your eyes, or your car's eyes, whether in glasses or on windshields or in the brain of the vehicle. Thus all their investment in 3D sensing over recent years — can't use all that without beautiful, working hardware for us to interface with.

StrangeDays said:

flaneur said:

mac_128 said:

macxpress said:

Oh good...now people can stop bitching about these. You all better damn well buy them too if all you did was complain about them not being available for the past month and a half. 

Let's see how fast ship dates start to slip, and whether they make it under the tree by Christmas Day, without any operational defects or issues. Never underestimate how much people love to bitch.

Yeah, I remember very well all the shit you in particular stirred up about the Apple Watch at launch.

Glad I'm not the only one who was scratching his head. "Wait a minute, but weren't you..."

Yup, he was the one who complained loudest about how the launch was handled. Turns out he was not interested in the Watch at all, and only bought some by standing in line at the high-end retailer in LA, and then resold them at a profit online. Or so he bragged.

What one hand complains about,the other hand profits by.

rune66 said:

It's kind of absurd that all the work Apple has put into creating a completely silent laptop is chrushed by this terrible and extremely noisy keyboard. 

First, the sound is not that loud. The video exaggerates it in the recording process itself.

Second, it's there for a reason, as part of a tactile-auditory feedback "mechanism" to improve accuracy and, unconsciously, satisfaction. Go to the store and try it.

tommis said:

The real reason the Macbook Pro costs so much has nothing to do with tech!! https://medium.com/@tommismeli/why-does-the-new-macbook-pro-costs-so-much-3a26fc005190#.553t6a9v0

The real reason is fashion? Brand value? You're full of shit. Sorry I followed your link, but others don't need to unless they want to see the old Apple-snob tropes in full monte.

Back to reality:

The real reason for the higher price is the R&D, the retooling for the aluminum, the Touch Bar and its development, the fastest SSD in the industry, and above all, and most obvious to anyone with a brain, the oxide-backed display, which is the key to the heat and power management for the new form factor, and whose development Apple has been bankrolling for several years with display makers.