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Under Jobs' leadership, the Power Mac Cube developed cracks in the housing, Apple delivered a completely circular mouse, Apple around the millennium missed the demand for CD burners, the iPod Nano's screen scratched easily, the iPod Shuffle ended up with no buttons at all until the next revision, Mobile Me happened or maybe didn't happen, iPhone 4 suffered an antenna problem, Apple took forever to figure out how to make a white iPhone and iPod Socks. Not to mention several other big and little flubs.

Should he have been fired, too?
Remember the 3GHz G5 "within a year" that never happened? PowerBooks stalling out at G4 because they couldn't handle the heat of the G5? The puddles of liquid coolant under your tower because eventually the desktops couldn't handle the heat either and had to go exotic?
 
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This is a product I am super interested in. I really want these to hit the stores so I can see/try/play with them. Apple's continued journey into custom silicon is really cool and I don't care what anyone says, these are neat. They might not be for you, but other than the price tag, I'm a fan.

Remember the 3GHz G5 "within a year" that never happened? PowerBooks stalling out at G4 because they couldn't handle the heat of the G5? The puddles of liquid coolant under your tower because eventually the desktops couldn't handle the heat either and had to go exotic?

I think most of the Jobs nostalgia around here is from people who didn't spend a long time with Apple or their products. This is not to say that he wasn't a once-in-a-generation individual, but the guy was flawed as flawed can be and had no shortage of missteps himself. People always seem to become more infallible after death—especially when death visits early.
 
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People's memories seem to skew over time. It's not like Apple got rid of floppy drives when there was no other alternative at the time, or when floppy drives were at peak use. They got rid of floppy drives when nobody was really using them anymore anyway. The only reason PCs continued to ship with floppy drives was because the drives were so cheap it was a negligible cost to include them.

Apple first released a computer without a floppy drive in 1998. By then, CD-ROM had taken off fully, almost no software came on floppy drives anymore, and even USB thumb drives were starting to hit the market.

In 1998, floppy drives had only a few uses: (1) they contained drivers when you bought some hardware, though that was being replaced by CD in many things; (2) boot disks for PC, though irrelevant to Macs and not even needed as CD-ROM booting was already around then; and (3) sharing small files, though floppies were pretty bad at this as files sizes grew so much that 1.44MB was not enough to share many files.

Great point!!!
 
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I can, however, see the advantage to removing legacy hardware and making compromises like Lightning headphones.

Hey your electric wiring in your house is "legacy"! I can see some advantage to you losing your power at home. Wireless power is the way of the future. Start ripping out those wires so that it forces the manufactures to innovate faster! It won't harm me a bit!</sarc>
 
Remember the 3GHz G5 "within a year" that never happened?

Yeah, I do. I also remember Steve publicly calling IBM out for their failure (that had nothing whatsoever to do with Apple, beyond believing IBM's lies) and switching to Intel in recognition of that failure.

Missteps are far more forgivable when the steps to remediate the error are swift, public, and effective. All Tim can muster is gutless apologies.

Apple has said AirPod earpieces each receive independent signals from an iPhone, Mac or other Apple device. But Apple must ensure that both earpieces receive audio at the same time to avoid distortion, the person familiar with their development said.

This isn't some last-minute bug. This is a fundamental defect in their entire design and architecture. This is a problem they should have solved by last March. They don't even have a product.
 
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B.S. excuse.

Its a known issue with bluetooth audio interfaces, especially bad on iOS devices.

Bluetooth has always had a bit of a delay. It's why watching movies or playing games via bluetooth headsets has always been a subpar experience. Just adding the W1 chip for easy paring does nothing to alleviate this known bottleneck.

iOS in particular also has even larger delay for some reason over bluetooth than many other devices I have also tested. My iPad AIR with a couple different brands of bluetooth headset is unusable for anything but music. Games and video have 3-5 second delay of audio.

Hopefully Bluetooth 5 will resolve this, but these headbuds aren't BT5, so they're already stuck on the current tech.



And yet, more evidence that the world is NOT ready to drop physical ports in favour of a wireless only world. But you know, Lets not let fact stand in the way of marketting ********
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This isn't some last-minute bug. This is a fundamental defect in their entire design and architecture. This is a problem they should have solved by last March. They don't even have a product.
yeah.. starting to feel like the wireless earpods are starting to sound like a "me too" reaction to the Samsung earpods that were released several months ago, and the hype around the kickstarter of those earbuds.
 
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We're talking about overall impact. Yes, Windows and Office and other software behemoths were much easier to install. But what about the person with years of records saved on floppy disks? When that person bought a new computer without a floppy drive, did Apple give them an external drive (like they give a Lightning to headphone adapter)? No. That person had to buy one. And they had to invest in a CD burner or external hard drive and migrate their files. And what about the person who was more than happy to use their older computer that only had a floppy and now couldn't get new software because it required a CD-ROM drive? That person had to go shell out a few hundred dollars. All of this was a much more expensive and inconvenient than removing the headphone jack and providing a free adapter.

When it comes to BT headphones, other than no wires to snag on machines at the gym, I don't see any pluses. They are expensive and need to be charged. I can, however, see the advantage to removing legacy hardware and making compromises like Lightning headphones. How often do you see a brand of headphone other than Apple used with an iPhone out in the wild? I rarely do, other than the gym, and those headphones all tend to be Bluetooth. In terms of overall inconvenience and cost to the consumer, removing the headphone jack pales in comparison to removing the floppy.

Again, I agree that the impact for many people was huge. But there was really no viable alternative. Software was increasingly big, media was becoming big, videogames were big (Doom II was 8 disks I believe), and the first real interactive media was becoming popular (Wing Commander III from 1994 was 4 CD's). Apple ditched the floppy in 1998 (https://www.engadget.com/2010/04/28/the-floppy-disk-is-dead-and-apple-helped-kill-it/ ). The whole world was going towards huge storage, and it never stopped since. There was no other way: adapt or die. If in 1998 you weren't ready for the advent of CD-Roms (I think that in 1996 I had my first Blueray, which was Mars Attacks!) you were way behind the times. By then the actual raison d'etre of a floppy disk had became obsolete.

As for headphones, the raison d'etre is audio. I read conflicting arguments, but one thing is certain: there is no way that a good bluetooth audio device will surpass in audio quality an equally good wired device. At most, they will be identical. Therefore, the raison d'etre of wired headphones is not obsolete and won't be for a while. Now, we can find in the lack of wires a good reason for BT headphones. Again, I give you that not having wires for most people is a nice comfort and something with some value. But it's definitely not courage and not a reason for removing headphone jacks, until at least the BT solution is ready for prime time and at an affordable price. It's a much different story than Floppy drives.
 
It's business.
Promise a date.
Keep the promise.
That's how it works.

Unless it's something of a global scale, the reasons are not my concern. He's paid by customers and government to deliver a final product with a given quality, all while keeping a certain level of trust between his company and the external world.
If he fails, I don't care about his excuses, the same way he doesn't care about other people's excuses when something goes wrong.
And everyone knows that missing Holiday season is a cardinal sin; the board will eat him alive.

$500 says he will be just fine with the board after Christmas. Clearly you have never dealt with mass production of ANYTHING on a first hand basis.
 
the good news is these are dumb as hell anyways. You lose nothing and actually gain things by searching for a better product.
 
Yeah, I do. I also remember Steve publicly calling IBM out for their failure (that had nothing whatsoever to do with Apple, beyond believing IBM's lies) and switching to Intel in recognition of that failure.

Missteps are far more forgivable when the steps to remediate the error are swift, public, and effective. All Tim can muster is gutless apologies.



This isn't some last-minute bug. This is a fundamental defect in their entire design and architecture. This is a problem they should have solved by last March. They don't even have a product.
More swift and effective under Jobs? He never apologized for anything I can remember other than MobileMe. Have you not seen the relentless "you're holding it wrong" comments that are such a favorite of trolls?

Can you post a link to Jobs' public comments on not meeting the 3GHz mark? I seem to remember him flushing it down the memory hole.

As to the delay on AirPods, we still don't know what the cause is-- WSJ doesn't have a reliable source. A person familiar with the development says it appears to be....

A lot of stuff gets out the door with flaws-- the fact this was caught it before shipment and the endless "Apple refuses to acknowledge" threads that are sure to follow is a good thing.
 
Again, I agree that the impact for many people was huge. But there was really no viable alternative. Software was increasingly big, media was becoming big, videogames were big (Doom II was 8 disks I believe), and the first real interactive media was becoming popular (Wing Commander III from 1994 was 4 CD's). Apple ditched the floppy in 1998 (https://www.engadget.com/2010/04/28/the-floppy-disk-is-dead-and-apple-helped-kill-it/ ). The whole world was going towards huge storage, and it never stopped since. There was no other way: adapt or die. If in 1998 you weren't ready for the advent of CD-Roms (I think that in 1996 I had my first Blueray, which was Mars Attacks!) you were way behind the times. By then the actual raison d'etre of a floppy disk had became obsolete.

As for headphones, the raison d'etre is audio. I read conflicting arguments, but one thing is certain: there is no way that a good bluetooth audio device will surpass in audio quality an equally good wired device. At most, they will be identical. Therefore, the raison d'etre of wired headphones is not obsolete and won't be for a while. Now, we can find in the lack of wires a good reason for BT headphones. Again, I give you that not having wires for most people is a nice comfort and something with some value. But it's definitely not courage and not a reason for removing headphone jacks, until at least the BT solution is ready for prime time and at an affordable price. It's a much different story than Floppy drives.
Excellent points. For those of us who value very high quality audio (The iphone is capable of reproducing beyond CD quality audio), BT is a non-starter when you just want to chill with a drink and a new album. I do use BT in my Jeep Wrangler when driving to work. It isn't the greatest, but since I drive with the windows down most of the year I don't notice the crap signal quality.

If one cannot hear the difference between BT and wired audio with a high bit-rate file, I would wager that they have untrained ears, they have poor hearing, or they just don't care. None of those reasons justify me having to lose access to the best sound I can get from a very mobile device. (The flimsy dongle sounds worse than the audio from the jack in the iphone6s).
 
You don't seem to understand the point that many are attempting to make.

The issue is NOT that there is a (significant) delay in availability over what was announced. The issue is that any problem of the apparent magnitude of the AirPod delay should have been dealt with, or at least the possibility recognized, prior to a big PR splash raising expectations of a potential huge customer base.

And BTW, before you blast me for not knowing what I'm talking about, I spent my entire adult life (I'm 70 now) in the software development field, so I am intimately aware of last minute bugs and glitches.

But since you don't know what that particular delay is please continue to speculate. And your expertise (?) is software and this could be a HARDWARE problem.

I don't know thing one about programming but I'll **** all over everything you've ever coded because I can. Sound fair?
 
Seems they are working on the most fundamental design of any Bluetooth earphones. 'We got all the parts from China... now how can we make this bluetooth design work?' Its Announce it first and work on the product later approach. Rushing and pushing things out courageously. We might see thousands of early adopters becoming beta testers.
 
As for headphones, the raison d'etre is audio. I read conflicting arguments, but one thing is certain: there is no way that a good bluetooth audio device will surpass in audio quality an equally good wired device.

People listen to compressed audio on portable devices. Third-party Bluetooth devices on Android already let you directly stream AAC to the device, eliminating the transcode step. The audio quality will be the identical in all practical cases. To build on that, the ultra low-power DACs and amplifiers in a cell phone require compromises. For quality, you wouldn't listen on a phone to begin with.

Compressed audio enabled digital distribution and mobile devices. Can you even find a portable CD player now?

I guess we will be waiting until Apple solves the Two Generals Problem...

Different problem. Apple already solved this in Airplay, notice how the sound and video always are in sync. They run NTP.
 
But since you don't know what that particular delay is please continue to speculate. And your expertise (?) is software and this could be a HARDWARE problem.

I don't know thing one about programming but I'll **** all over everything you've ever coded because I can. Sound fair?

Clever response.

There is no point in discussing this with you further. You simply don't understand.

Sound fair?
 
But since you don't know what that particular delay is please continue to speculate. And your expertise (?) is software and this could be a HARDWARE problem.

I don't know thing one about programming but I'll **** all over everything you've ever coded because I can. Sound fair?

Dude, you can be aggressive as you want, and you could've won the Nobel prize for whatever.
If you don't understand that missing a release date, then missing Christmas season, then not giving a second release date and/or an update, and not having solved hw/sw/production/delivery/whateverIdon'tGiveACrapWhy issues is BAD, and extremely BAD for an high mark, high-reputation, high-driven company which pride itself every six months, while competitors are increasingly seen as innovative (be it true or not) well... that's on you.
 
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B.S. excuse.

Its a known issue with bluetooth audio interfaces, especially bad on iOS devices.

Bluetooth has always had a bit of a delay. It's why watching movies or playing games via bluetooth headsets has always been a subpar experience. Just adding the W1 chip for easy paring does nothing to alleviate this known bottleneck.

iOS in particular also has even larger delay for some reason over bluetooth than many other devices I have also tested. My iPad AIR with a couple different brands of bluetooth headset is unusable for anything but music. Games and video have 3-5 second delay of audio.

Hopefully Bluetooth 5 will resolve this, but these headbuds aren't BT5, so they're already stuck on the current tech.



And yet, more evidence that the world is NOT ready to drop physical ports in favour of a wireless only world. But you know, Lets not let fact stand in the way of marketting ********
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yeah.. starting to feel like the wireless earpods are starting to sound like a "me too" reaction to the Samsung earpods that were released several months ago, and the hype around the kickstarter of those earbuds.
Besides there are no Apple devices that do BT 5 so what difference does it make?
 
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