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Another Designer Leaves Apple

turbineseaplane said:
Very bold of you to admit!
As an iPhone Mini user, I can tell you that you'll surely get told that "your own opinion is actually wrong"

😂
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Me when someone tells me the iPhone air is loud enough:


WHAT.gif
 
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dannys1 said:
Couldn't disagree more - losing a Thunderbolt 4/5 port for a single use HDMI port that most users will never touch is a step backwards.
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Working in corporate environments, with hotel desking setups, it's a given that you're going to find slightly older Dell monitors, which either have HDMI or full-size DisplayPort or both, and that's it. Only a handful of desks have TB docking stations hooked up.

That "single use" HDMI port is the only way for many corporate Mac users to connect to office monitors, I'd wager, without bringing their own dongles / docking stations.

If and when the lease is up on this set of equipment, I'd hope they'd spec monitors with TB / USB-C with power delivery, but nothing moves quickly in organization-land. :)
 
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Happy_John said:
Amazon has physical infrastructure to sell physical goods and hosting.

AI burns a significant amount of investment on compute costs. That’s just burning money, not capital expenditure.

For AI companies to be profitable, the charges they would have to put on the consumer would be astronomical.

AI is where designers and engineers go to make a quick buck before it bursts.
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You obviously missed the point entirely.
 
dannys1 said:
Couldn't disagree more - losing a Thunderbolt 4/5 port for a single use HDMI port that most users will never touch is a step backwards. I now can't charge from the right side of my MacBook Pro and use a USB port on that side at the same time. Ironically for all the moaning about dongles when we had 4 USB-C ports for my life setup I now NEED a dongle and USB adapter because there's not enough USB ports!

I like design first, I like something that is brutally different. If I just wanted a device that did a bit of everything badly there's any other tech company in the world for that.
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Since it looks like you weren't using a hub/dock before, note that there is no net loss of USB-C/TB ports with the change. One port would be occupied for power, but now there is a MagSafe power port so power isn't using an USB-C port
 
Abazigal said:
I dunno, I kinda liked the idea of MacBooks having 4 usb-c ports, and in an ideal world, Apple would have been able to pull everyone over to adopt usb-c peripherals. Classic case of short-term pain for long-term gain?
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Current leadership doesn't have the courage to do things like that
 
H.E. Pennypacker said:
Honestly, this is exactly what happens when a company stops pushing real innovation and just keeps recycling the same product year after year. Apple’s been playing it safe for the better part of a decade, and I’d bet good money the design team has been boxed in by leadership with almost zero room to take risks.

Top-tier designers don’t want to spend their careers making the same thing, but slightly thinner. They want to create, experiment, and push boundaries.
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  1. What is "real" innovation, and what does that look like from Apple?
  2. Their history has never really been about inventing things so much as coming out with better versions of things that already existed.
  3. They didn't invent the personal computer, the laptop, or the cell phone, or the smart watch, but rather focused on providing better design, ecosystems and integrated experiences.
  4. They rarely try to create entirely new markets or product categories from scratch; the few times they did, the tech was too early to deliver on the vision, or it was too expensive. See: Pippin, Ping, the Newton.
  5. If you want to see what happens when Apple designers were "set free" to create something new without boundaries or management oversight, watch the documentary General Magic. It's a painful view into a team that couldn't work together, couldn't hit deadlines, and created their own scope creep problems. Big to-do bug tickets falling to the wayside while people pursued pet projects. They ultimately delivered a bulky, clunky, underwhelming and underpowered product that nobody asked for, burning through nearly $100M in capital in the process. They created a lot of innovative underlying patents, but that's about all.
  6. Top-tier product designers focus on making better versions of that product, which involves setting or working within physical and regulatory boundaries - size, weight, price, bill of materials, CPU power, battery size, FCC constraints, ADA compliance. And in a market economy, that means understanding the competitive field.
  7. And product design is not art. No product designer wants to work on a blank canvas or "push the boundaries of creativity." That's not their job.
 
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Happy_John said:
The bubble is a financial bubble. It’s not that the concept of AI is a complete and utter scam, but currently it a case of edging towards a decade of massive amounts of investment going in, a large proportion of which is being burning up in daily running costs, not infrastrustrure, and without any path towards a point of generating appropriate revenuor profitability.

The current iteration of large model AI costs far more just to keep running that it can ever make.

And the market won’t bear the subscription charge needed from end-users in order to make AI as a service sustainable. Very few people will indivually pay OpenAI 500$ - 1000$+ a month to use ChatGPT. An even if big comoanies are the main spencera, those companies will pass the charge onto their customers and client. The money to keep it running has to come from somewhere.

The reason these large AI models are being sold as „essential” is that they are not profitable. And why make life harder by increasing the cost of living just to fund something that is not essential?
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https://twitter.com/x/status/1990631777782923292
 
JayKay514 said:
  1. What is "real" innovation, and what does that look like from Apple?
  2. Their history has never really been about inventing things so much as coming out with better versions of things that already existed.
  3. They didn't invent the personal computer, the laptop, or the cell phone, or the smart watch, but rather focused on providing better design, ecosystems and integrated experiences.
  4. They rarely try to create entirely new markets or product categories from scratch; the few times they did, the tech was too early to deliver on the vision, or it was too expensive. See: Pippin, Ping, the Newton.
  5. If you want to see what happens when Apple designers were "set free" to create something new without boundaries or management oversight, watch the documentary General Magic. It's a painful view into a team that couldn't work together, couldn't hit deadlines, and created their own scope creep problems. Big to-do bug tickets falling to the wayside while people pursued pet projects. They ultimately delivered a bulky, clunky, underwhelming and underpowered product that nobody asked for, burning through nearly $100M in capital in the process. They created a lot of innovative underlying patents, but that's about all.
  6. Top-tier product designers focus on making better versions of that product, which involves setting or working within physical and regulatory boundaries - size, weight, price, bill of materials, CPU power, battery size, FCC constraints, ADA compliance. And in a market economy, that means understanding the competitive field.
  7. And product design is not art. No product designer wants to work on a blank canvas or "push the boundaries of creativity." That's not their job.
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This all sounds sensible (and boring). But once upon a time Apple DID innovate and "product design" was not simply incremental. Take the iPod as an example. There were 4/5 very different implementations -- the Shuffle, Mini/Nano, Touch and Classic -- with different features and very different price points. This is all lost when it come to the phone, every model is essentially "the same", with little tweaks here and there. There is no imagination, no variation, just a dull sameness ... all in the name of preserving Apple's 40% margins.
 
They leave because Apple isn't a company that loves design anymore. I don't go in with the idea that Apple is terrible at design or anything, but it hasn't been inspiring for many years, and part of that comes from having an operations guy at the helm.
 
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sunapple said:
I owned a Lisa II for a while as a curiosity but didn't have software for it. I think a Mac-like computer that's also user expandable is better in some ways than even their modern machines.

I would argue that Apple has always been anti user since the 128k due to their closed designs and limited compatibility with the rest of the world, that hasn't changed much and will always remain their Achilles heel.

That aside, I prefer their lineup of the 2009 Snow Leopard days due to software.
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I expect we would agree more than disagree on most points, most likely. I didn't buy any further Macs between 2012 and 2020, because I hated the newer models losing the user ability to upgrade internals, so I just kept upgrading my old models. And, if you specifically separate out the MacOS software, I cannot say I would disagree with you, either.

But the Apple Silicon transition was enough of a jump that it got me buying again, with the integrated RAM at least giving some reason for the lack of ability to swap that. I would be happier if they made the SSD user upgradable again, but the Apple Silicon versions have at least made the bottom of the line models more than sufficient for my needs, so I now just buy base bottom end and upgrade to newer units more frequently, rather than buy mid level and upgrade parts as long as possible.
 
loby said:
Agree with everything said, but..MacBook Pro is better due to no more Intel and the M-Series Apple Silicone. I personally liked my 15" MacBook Pro (thin) 2018 and "Yes" with the butterfly keyboard. If that had a M1 in it....

Again...just my opinion so don't throw tomatoes at me.
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The thing I enjoy about the current design of MacBook Pros is overall package and the ports. It's a Pro machine, so it should have more than just a couple of USB-C ports. I do not mind its thickness at all and it isn't heavy, at least to me. But I do see why others may find it chunky compared to the previous series. I just think this is how a Pro machine should feel. Air covers the lighter/thinner aspect.
 
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bgillander said:
I expect we would agree more than disagree on most points, most likely. I didn't buy any further Macs between 2012 and 2020, because I hated the newer models losing the user ability to upgrade internals, so I just kept upgrading my old models. And, if you specifically separate out the MacOS software, I cannot say I would disagree with you, either.

But the Apple Silicon transition was enough of a jump that it got me buying again, with the integrated RAM at least giving some reason for the lack of ability to swap that. I would be happier if they made the SSD user upgradable again, but the Apple Silicon versions have at least made the bottom of the line models more than sufficient for my needs, so I now just buy base bottom end and upgrade to newer units more frequently, rather than buy mid level and upgrade parts as long as possible.
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This was also me, except I just bought the M2 MBA and upgraded it just enough to last me 10 years (barring breakdowns). 24GB RAM, 1 TB drive, and I'm good to go.

Also, super efficient video encoders and cheap (and tiny) external SSD storage helped take me down to just the MBA (and an iPad Pro I just love to use) from a 27" iMac and TONS of spinning rust and peripherals.

I think that us older Apple users have that bit of nostalgia still in there that causes a bit of tunnel vision, perhaps.
 
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turbineseaplane said:
Yeah, I'm glad it seems to work ok for many folks, but I definitely trust the likes of Dave2D on this. It was his one main drawback and one I know I would really hate, as I do use the speaker on my iPhone a lot.
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I saw his review. it's the reason why I went to get one in my hands in person. It was disappointing. I am constantly fighting against my decaying body.

Don't age, folks. Or at least age better than me.
 
I'm not blaming anyone! However, scroll back and watch the Steve Jobs Pixar interview and see how he viewed hiring and retaining talent.
 
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