Yeah, that sounded off to me too. Pretty sure floppies were already on their way out when Apple discontinued them. This contrasts greatly with 3.5mm and Type A, which have never been more popular.
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Apple's Phil Schiller: 'We Don't Design for Price, We Design for the Experience'
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The dedicated fanboys will order straight away regardless, but there has to be a lot of normal people in department stores that just wants to connect their standard connector stuff without a hassle really rethinking their apple options.
I'm a dedicated fanboy myself and this announcement has me seriously questioning my future purchases. I know for a fact I will no longer buy Apple computers. As for iPhone/iPad, I haven't quite decided yet.
Again, I just can't bring myself to support such greedy business practices. Apple does not love their customers and do not seem to be interested in providing the best possible experience for them.
What were floppies on their way out with when Apple removed them from the iMac in 1998? That iMac didn't include a writeable cd drive, and there was no such thing as a usb flash drive. The first one of those didn't arrive for 2 1/2 years after the introduction of the iMac. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_flash_drive
I'm sure it was cheap too...
Yet they still sell that beer. All day, every day.
Why? Is it because people are too stupid to realize that the water and alcohol molecules contained within that glass don't cost $10 to produce?
Or, could it be, that people have done the calculation in their heads and have decided that the trade offs in convenience and their need are worth their hard earned dollars?
Price is not only set by raw goods alone. We pay more for MANY things that are more expensive than their raw materials. Just look at Starbucks.
In this particular case, I tend to purchase Apple dongles/cables because I know the quality level. I've done the head calculus... and ended up at the point where it's worth it for dongles/cables I'm going to plug into my expensive machine and use for YEARS.
As I mentioned before... there are many cheaper alternatives. Feel free to purchase them.
True but limited. I want to link my iPhone 6S+ to my rMB. Can't. Unless I buy a dongle or a side port. Same is true for an SD card, etc... This is the biggest reason I look closely at this. Is there an alternative? Not against buying it. Still, I find there are trade-offs. Question is am I will to live with it? I am finding that tougher to do.
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I'll have to look at that - thx
It has been more trial and error than success with my rMB.
Just a personal note - I have owned notebooks in the past with a "touchbar" - all Windows machines and have yet to find one that was useful as more than a gimmick. I'll watch and see what the overall opinion is.
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Until you need to. Then it's a dongle hunt or other. I tried to hook my iPhone to my rMB ... dongle My external HDD ... dongle ... My SD card from my camera ... dongle My etc ... the list goes on and I find I attach more than I thought. Thankfully my rMB is my light quick travel device, not my main. If you add port(s) to a machine that you need a dongle for to allow actual everyday use, why add multiples and make it exclusive?
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Or some of us are on expense account and we can pass off that cost. Or maybe $10 is a cheap alternative to waiting mindlessly for your next leg. Or.... Still, in the end, unless you are not concerned with cost, people in everyday situations will not buy that.
Yeah that's a lie though, first of all the cable isolation on Apple cables is worst quality in the industry, and to stop their consumers from looking outside apple branded gear they introduce MFI and similar programs where they require an official apple chip in more and more accessories for it to be allowed in the apple world.
The only place where they are truly innovating is in how to box in the people that bought into their ecosystems with ICloud, MFI, M1?etc. If you do dare to leave for Android you better be smart about it or Apple will eat the messages from every IOS device out there.
Personally I think it's creepy and it makes me feel boxed in.
I looked at my "Apple" cables this morning.
iPad Mini 4 - cables and charger are not Apple. Original cable cracked at lightning end.
iPhone 6S+- cables and charger are not Apple. Original cable internal break at lightning end. Charger stopped working.
rMB - - cables and charger are not Apple. Replaced original cables/charger. Was dissatisfied with the quality.
Guess that sums up my experience with Apple cable quality.
I can't count how many Apple "Official" cables have burnt or look burnt at the end. I tend to use Zero Lemon cables if I can.
waiting for someone to sue apple
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Let me make this clear to you. Your analogy is way wrong.
There is nothing upscale about a slower processor or lack of ports.
if you want a better example you should talk about chocolate.
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Let me make this clear to you. Your analogy is way wrong.
There is nothing upscale about a slower processor or lack of ports.
if you want a better example you should talk about chocolate.
I honestly have no idea what is going on with Apple these days, more worryingly i'm not sure Cook and co do either.
I'm at a loss as to whether they actually believe some of the garbage they spout, that they are just so out of touch that they think its real or that its just uber cynical virtue signalling as some kind of marketing ploy.
Remember all the "Every one can code" stuff that they spent god knows how long crowing about at WWDC? This is one of the biggest examples for me. They're talking about they want coding taught in schools (presumably Swift) but I just don't understand who they propose to make that work when the cost of the buy in to their ecosystem gets bigger and bigger with every year that passes. As I understand it they are having their lunch eaten by Chromebooks in US Education these days.
They should have have an asterisk on that page header "Everyone can code*" (* if they can afford the minimum $600 buy-in for an iPad and $1000 for a Mac). The buy in for aspiring developers on their platforms is huge compared to the competition.
There just isn't any congruence with the messages they put out, they talk inclusivity but then price everything exclusively, anything that remotely represents the lower end of the scale (think the Mac Mini) gets neglected or killed off and they wonder why they can't break into markets like India.
I'm at a loss as to whether they actually believe some of the garbage they spout, that they are just so out of touch that they think its real or that its just uber cynical virtue signalling as some kind of marketing ploy.
Remember all the "Every one can code" stuff that they spent god knows how long crowing about at WWDC? This is one of the biggest examples for me. They're talking about they want coding taught in schools (presumably Swift) but I just don't understand who they propose to make that work when the cost of the buy in to their ecosystem gets bigger and bigger with every year that passes. As I understand it they are having their lunch eaten by Chromebooks in US Education these days.
They should have have an asterisk on that page header "Everyone can code*" (* if they can afford the minimum $600 buy-in for an iPad and $1000 for a Mac). The buy in for aspiring developers on their platforms is huge compared to the competition.
There just isn't any congruence with the messages they put out, they talk inclusivity but then price everything exclusively, anything that remotely represents the lower end of the scale (think the Mac Mini) gets neglected or killed off and they wonder why they can't break into markets like India.
Well on the one hand Swift is open source now, so you don't really need a Mac to use Swift as a language choice. But I agree with you, they price themselves exclusively, but I don't think Apple could ever create a Mac that's priced at a level where people on low incomes could afford it.
You need access to a Mac to to be able to end to end develop an app for iOS. You could write the code in Linux for example but you would need a Mac for anything that involves changing the native code. Its not really any way to teach a beginner to develop for the iOS platform.
They could at least keep something like the Mac Mini respectable and reasonably priced but it seems the Mini is dead, I can't see why it hasnt had a least a spec bump in the last couple of years if they had any intention of keeping it around .
In four or five years time when the Mini is gone they are going to be in a situation where some $1000 mac notebook is the cheapest Mac you can possibly buy, effectively doubling the minimum buy in for any aspiring developer. Even if they plan to expand on Swift Playgrounds to bring more developer tools to the iPad it will take significant hardware and software advancements for it to be a viable development tool, by which point iPad prices are likely to be in Mac territory. They're getting that way already!
This is the complete opposite of being inclusive.
Honestly if Apple is insistent on only playing at the very premium end of the market, which seems to be increasingly the case, they need to open the developer tools up to other platforms. So full xCode and iOS SDK on Windows/Linux.
Perhaps Ive actually believes his own glib BS, but I doubt the rest do.
I think they all just got used to marketing their products like this under Jobs, who had a way of promoting things that these Jobs-wannabes can only faintly imitate.
Worse, they seem to think that Jobs' RDF still protects them from people seeing through their acknowledged methodology of locking people into Apple products, while grabbing more of their customer's money for fewer features and more dongles.
They need to hire someone with vision, who's not so set in his/her ways. The sheer fact that these guys say that they could do something different and exciting, but feel that's not a good idea, is worrisome. They've gotten rich, pudgy and safe.
Tend to buy AllReli Nylon Braided or Anker. Been good to me so far.
I got tired of taking the stock cables back to the Apple Store and getting replacements.
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Safe. A good word for that environment these days.
I call it the iPhone effect. Since Apple is absolutely amazed that they can still sell a smartphone for upwards of a $1000 with 40% margins, they have to price everything else they sell accordingly.
Well, I ordered the new MacBook Pro today and held my nose in the process. I still have this knot in my stomach, like the type you get from buyers remorse. I needed a new MacBook Pro because my 12-inch MacBook just isn't cutting it. My only hope is that it will turn out to be more impressive than it appeared in the ad hoc presentation by Apple. Damn, that was hard to watch!
Yet Apple computers were expensive long before the iPhone ever existed.
Not like this. And back then, you got something for your money. Better performance and not just gimmicks.
Fact is, Apple has never experienced margins this high in their history.
No. No you didn't. Apple computers have always been expensive and you have, with very few exceptions, always been able to build or buy something faster for less money.
I added this.
Fact is, Apple has never experienced margins this high in their history.
That's all you need to know.
Sure they were. The MBP in 2006 started at $2000.
The new MBP's are still insanely high performance. There are only a handful of other machines at any price that use the 28/47W processors of the high-end models, and no other machines that have anywhere near the connectivity bandwidth. These are still super high end machines, yet people are having a fit over a few hundred dollar price increase (over the previous price which was already reduced) and the fact they'll need some new adapters. These are the exact same complaints that occur every time Apple puts out anything more than an incremental update.
Thing the thing about facts is you kinda need to back them up.
The "Apple tax" has been a phrase forever. I don't know what world people inhabit where Apple computers were competitive on a price/spec basis. It really never existed. There was always some OEM willing to slit it's own throat to make a sale (and bundle a nice big pile of crapware to make that margin anything more than non-existent) or you could always buy the parts yourself and throw them in a big old beige box. Always. Nothing has changed.