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Apple continues to confuse

C

cj31016

macrumors member
Original poster
Sep 14, 2016
33
89
Denver, CO
In 2016, Apple releases new Macbooks with TouchID and USB-C, yet in 2017 Apple introduces 'the iPhone of the future' without TouchID or any trace of USB-C. The new iMacs and iMac Pro has keyboards without TouchID, but their recently released iPad Pros have TouchID and no USB-C.

What I'm trying to say is...what the heck is the strategy here? Or are they just winging it? I'm guessing that eventually FaceID will come to MacBooks, and maybe they'll do away with the 'amazing' /s TouchBar with TouchID? Am I the only one confused by their direction?

Also for what it's worth, I'm not bashing Apple. I'm anxiously awaiting Oct 27, I'm just a bit perplexed.
 
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Let me spell this out for you:

Bacteria -> Monkeys -> You -> Steve Jobs

Passcode -> Touch ID -> Face ID

Face ID is the new evolution and it's the future. Some day soon all MacBooks will have it, but that day is not today.
 
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Apple is now all over the place.
If they cannot put their Bs together and swing the hammer around, they will probably be stretched thin and lose focus in the following years.
This transition to face id is the proof.
 
This homage given to the tenth anniversary of the original iPhone was unnecessary. Classic case of groupthink within the Apple campus. Led to this 8/8+/X cunfusion with their (assumingly) skipping the 9.

Down deep, I'm hoping this X thing is a one-off wild itch and they stop trying to worry about bezels and disappearing home buttons.
 
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cj31016 said:
In 2016, Apple releases new Macbooks with TouchID and USB-C, yet in 2017 Apple introduces 'the iPhone of the future' without TouchID or any trace of USB-C. The new iMacs and iMac Pro has keyboards without TouchID, but their recently released iPad Pros have TouchID and no USB-C.

What I'm trying to say is...what the heck is the strategy here? Or are they just winging it? I'm guessing that eventually FaceID will come to MacBooks, and maybe they'll do away with the 'amazing' /s TouchBar with TouchID? Am I the only one confused by their direction?

Also for what it's worth, I'm not bashing Apple. I'm anxiously awaiting Oct 27, I'm just a bit perplexed.
Click to expand...

they needed a new killer feature for the new Early 2018 Macbik Pros
 
cj31016 said:
In 2016, Apple releases new Macbooks with TouchID and USB-C, yet in 2017 Apple introduces 'the iPhone of the future' without TouchID or any trace of USB-C. The new iMacs and iMac Pro has keyboards without TouchID, but their recently released iPad Pros have TouchID and no USB-C.

What I'm trying to say is...what the heck is the strategy here? Or are they just winging it? I'm guessing that eventually FaceID will come to MacBooks, and maybe they'll do away with the 'amazing' /s TouchBar with TouchID? Am I the only one confused by their direction?

Also for what it's worth, I'm not bashing Apple. I'm anxiously awaiting Oct 27, I'm just a bit perplexed.
Click to expand...
No way Face ID was going to come to Macs before iPhone. All this says to me is there isn’t the supply to put this tech in Macs too right now so Touch ID is an intermediary step.
 
I expect most of their decisions are now driven by margin constraints, every extra $ they spend on a product, both in terms of components/ manufacturing and R&D, has to be clawed back through an increased price, or else it eats into their profits and damages the share price. That's why they've not created more uniformity across devices, it costs money to add in extra bits and pieces like true tone across the line immediately rather than phasing it in, or using a mix of USB C and A ports rather than a simplified lineup of 4 Cs. If nothing else it's going to be interesting to see how long they get away with "winging it" for each product rather than building a cohesive, complimentary set of products around a set core of technologies/ standards.
 
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PhoneI said:
Yeah, he just runs one of the most successful companies in world history. But let's get rid of him.
Click to expand...

Cableguy84's 30 somethings years of life & professional experience in the telecom industry must surly make him more experienced and capable of running Apple.
 
The iPhone usually is the first to get things. Other products follow suit with the features.

If rumors were true, Apple couldn’t implement Touch ID into the screen (or at least have it work in time for release) and putting it on the back just was not an option since people just don’t rest their dominant fingers comfortably at the center back of the phone. We just have to deal with the fact the the Tech was just not there yet.
Also iPhones are sold 1000:1 compared to MacBooks. The general population mostly have older computers without USB-C so they can’t really push that just to please the 1%
 
cableguy84 said:
There is no direction at Apple. Cook needs to walk away simple as that
Click to expand...

The Reason you're saying something like this, if you just don't agree with Apples current path, it's not that you don't like Tim Cook, you don't like his leadership style. But that doesn't mean Tim Cook should abandon his position as the CEO because of what one person thinks. It's because your views is not aligning with Apples.
 
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"the phone of the future" comes with an old usb cable that wont fit into my new macbook
"the phone of the future" has the time in the top left while my mac has it top right
 
FaceID was not the original plan. They could not perfect TouchID under the glass, and they had a deadline to meet with the X launch for this fall. We even saw dummy units where they tested TouchID on the back of phones.

Somewhere along the line, Apple decided to scrap TouchID altogether, and embrace FaceID. They were already developing a lot of camera mapping technology for AR, so they just applied this to face recognition and went along with it.

The rest is just marketing and puffery. Currently, in this iteration of the technology, FaceID will be slower than TouchID. In the future, who knows.

For people that don't work in Tech, there are a lot of sacrifices that have to be made to meet deadlines (relatively arbitrary ones) set by management/executives. There's no real reason we must update the phone on a yearly schedule, except to stay consistent and launch an update to compete with other phone makers. But the development cycle certainly isn't organic. Sometimes this leads to triage: "We must deliver by November 3, 2017. Sometime in the summer, the engineers told management that feature X will NOT be ready by then. So they ask, what can you deliver by then? And you get feature Y."

And sometimes feature Y is half baked.
 
NovemberWhiskey said:
FaceID was not the original plan. They could not perfect TouchID under the glass, and they had a deadline to meet with the X launch for this fall. We even saw dummy units where they tested TouchID on the back of phones.

Somewhere along the line, Apple decided to scrap TouchID altogether, and embrace FaceID. They were already developing a lot of camera mapping technology for AR, so they just applied this to face recognition and went along with it.

The rest is just marketing and puffery. Currently, in this iteration of the technology, FaceID will be slower than TouchID. In the future, who knows.

For people that don't work in Tech, there are a lot of sacrifices that have to be made to meet deadlines (relatively arbitrary ones) set by management/executives. There's no real reason we must update the phone on a yearly schedule, except to stay consistent and launch an update to compete with other phone makers. But the development cycle certainly isn't organic. Sometimes this leads to triage: "We must deliver by November 3, 2017. Sometime in the summer, the engineers told management that feature X will NOT be ready by then. So they ask, what can you deliver by then? And you get feature Y."

And sometimes feature Y is half baked.
Click to expand...
According to John Gruber this is not the case. Touch ID embedded in the display was plan B, not Face ID.

https://daringfireball.net/2017/09/iphone_x_event_thoughts_and_observations
FACE ID AS THE REPLACEMENT FOR TOUCH ID
Apple made this decision well over a year ago. Perhaps the fundamental goal of iPhone X was to get as close as they could to an edge-to-edge display. No chin whatsoever. There were, of course, early attempts to embed a Touch ID sensor under the display as a Plan B. But Apple became convinced that Face ID was the way to go over a year ago. I heard this yesterday from multiple people at Apple, including engineers who’ve been working on the iPhone X project for a very long time. They stopped pursuing Touch ID under the display not because they couldn’t do it, but because they decided they didn’t need it. I do believe it’s true that they never got Touch ID working, but that’s because they abandoned it in favor of Face ID early
Click to expand...
 
TMRJIJ said:
The iPhone usually is the first to get things. Other products follow suit with the features.
Click to expand...

I keep forgetting that apple was the first to have a fingerprint scanner, facial recognition to unlock, wireless charging, LTE, edge to edge screens and large screens.
 
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ItnStln said:
I keep forgetting that apple was the first to have a fingerprint scanner, facial recognition to unlock, wireless charging, LTE, edge to edge screens and large screens.
Click to expand...
What other Apple Products have edge to edge screens, facial recognition to unlock, etc?
Perhaps you should read into what the OP is talking about before posting.
 
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cj31016 said:
In 2016, Apple releases new Macbooks with TouchID and USB-C, yet in 2017 Apple introduces 'the iPhone of the future' without TouchID or any trace of USB-C. The new iMacs and iMac Pro has keyboards without TouchID, but their recently released iPad Pros have TouchID and no USB-C.

What I'm trying to say is...what the heck is the strategy here? Or are they just winging it? I'm guessing that eventually FaceID will come to MacBooks, and maybe they'll do away with the 'amazing' /s TouchBar with TouchID? Am I the only one confused by their direction?

Also for what it's worth, I'm not bashing Apple. I'm anxiously awaiting Oct 27, I'm just a bit perplexed.
Click to expand...

There’s nothing confusing. It all fits under the umbrella of fast, accurate, and private biometric security.

That’s it.
 
The only thing that's uncohesive really is the USB situation. I'd prefer them ditching lightning yesterday for USB c all across devices. Then again, as long as you stay within your own Apple ecosystem it doesn't make such a big difference actually, I just bring a bunch of lightning cables for example when I go in vacation and can charge the IPhone, iPad, AirPods all at the same time with the same cables. It was just too much to kill lightning so soon after the headphone jack. I still remember the outcry when they ditched the original iPod connector for lightning.and right now there's too many accessories out there with lightning and USB spreads too slowly, thanks to pc makers refusal to adopt it quicker.

It would be really welcome to see it on the iPhone though and ESPECIALLY on othe 3rd Party devices like for example camera battery chargers. Just about EVERY new USB device that ships should have usbc on board. But nooo, the confusion persists.
 
I just wish they at least included a USB-A to USB-C adapter, that way you still have to shell out $25 or w/e for their ****** USB-C/Lightning connector but at least you can use your regular cable with your MacBook Pro
 
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