Wrong- every single conference room does support USB-C- you can even get a dongle to convert to HDMI.
Who here still have headphone with actual jack?
When is last time you use a memory card?
Don’t make up things. This isn’t 2012.
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Apple's Product Design Team Reportedly Focused More on Costs in Recent Years
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Wrong- every single conference room does support USB-C- you can even get a dongle to convert to HDMI.
Who here still have headphone with actual jack?
When is last time you use a memory card?
Don’t make up things. This isn’t 2012.
Only blind people could not see this. The whole design team can go home. They’re only switching to old form factors with zero innovation in design. The devices are getting heavier and thicker also. The only innovation at Apple is now in chips and some technologies. Overall the devices are nothing mind blowing but they are very well made and reliable. But the software sucks (in terms of innovations, imagination and fun factor) and we’re now using form factors that we considered new in 2010 or earlier. And if you don’t agree with this, then you’re blind or a first class fanboy. Sorry not kinda sorry...
Design is how it works not how it looks
Actually it's both.
Zero idea why I am being targeted with such a diatribe.
You are entitled to your opinion and I appreciate your passion on the subject but I also respectfully disagree.
I understand and agree with what you're saying. The truth is companies maximize value to their shareholders by providing the best value to their customers. If they do this their customer base / market share grows thereby increasing investor profits. So you're right, companies should not prioritize investor returns over satisfying their customers.
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SDXC: 3-10 times a week
HDMI: Every now and then
Headphone jack: Several hours a day (and it sounds better than ever)
SD cards are used all the time in photo, film and audio.
Wireless headphones only have one benefit, and that's convenience when you're on the go. Other than that they are inferior to wired headphones in every other way.
You are probably in minority. Even SLR support wireless transfer. Majority of people probably haven’t used SDXC for years
HDMI on MacBook? I can’t even recall using it in last 2 years. USB-C is everywhere now.
You must be minority on headphone Jack.
Sorry, but you are way off with your assumptions. Both SD-card readers and wired headphones is very common in the content creation world, which is a huge target group for these laptops.
The fact that these ports returned and that they upgraded the headphone amp shows that they are actually listening to their customers needs.
The last iMac in the entire lineup: the ugliest one. It looks only good on behind. Honestly I wish I could have an iMac with M1 and previous design.
I think you have the food chain backwards. Profits come from revenue. Revenue comes from people who buy Apple products and services. Unhappy customers lead to poor sales instead of record breaking quarters, which indicates customers are buying. Additionaly, Tim may view his compensation as a by-product of Apples financial success and not necessarily act like Scrooge in Charles Dickens. He obviously does have concern for who is buying Apple products, because what Apple produces people buy.
Which people. A few MacRumors posters?
And this means what? Can you tell me how this managed to effect a recent record breaking quarter? People come and people go and that is life in the big city.
I think that all of us can see that the new designs are throwbacks. We might not all feel the same way as you do about it though. Personally I’m very happy about it.
The MBPs got a bit thicker because they needed to be. They are still extremely portable though so I’m not sure what the problem is.
What kind of innovations are you looking for?
Companies follow the same pattern every time. They make a great product and they grow and then they get greedy and start pinching pennies. Next thing you know their products are more expensive then what they are worth. And then they lose customers and continue to cheapen their products and raise their prices to compensate. Next thing you know the company is going out of business. Unfortunately Apple has hit its peak and it’s been going down hill for years. The one shining star is the creation of the M1 processor. Unfortunately Apple is going to continue going down hill unless someone is put in charge who understands how to balance profit with customer service.
Apple is trying to maximize profits. Will be nice if Apple does not keep on increasing the price of its devices.
Aside from subjective tastes, let’s take a hard look at current Apple design. Contrary to popular belief, there ARE objective criteria design and art are judged by.
First, the current designs do not hold up to the innovative designs of yesteryears. They will not be celebrated at MoMA or studied by design students. What were the innovative designs you ask? For one, the initial use of aluminum for laptops and computers while the whole PC industry was still using plastics.
Further, Apple continued their innovation with aluminum by crafting a laptop out of a singular block of metal. This is genius and a serious industrial design choice in furthering the structural resiliency of MacBooks and MacBook Pros. Not only does this further the “sleekness” of the MacBooks but decreased the incompatibility of casing components. By sculpting the MacBooks out of a singular block of aluminum, it basically eliminates the likelihood of casing parts “not fitting each other”. Any mistakes can easily be melted back down, likely decreasing manufacturing time and production issues.
It is one thing to reference designs from years gone by. But the rainbow iMacs have no reason to exist. They look like someone puked out a bag of skittles.
Yes. Yes, they are in reference to the rainbow Apple logo back in the 80s. But think back to the initial batch of iMacs. The old translucent ones named blueberry and such. They were innovative. They were colorful and lively computers in a world of beige desktops. They stood out.
Now computers come in all shapes, colors, kawaii characters and LED lights. The rainbow iMacs are not innovative. They come off as a design choice made in a boardroom. It’s like someone asked, what can we do to liven up the iMac line aside from making them thinner. How can we entice people to buy them? Let’s color them!
Not only that, the inconsistency of iMac, MacBook, iPad and iPhone colors are horrific in every possible way.
It shows a lack of leadership and oversight on the industrial designs Apple had under Ive and Jobs.
It’s becoming another Samsung or Sony. It’s JUST another tech company.
What do you expect when a bean counter runs the company? I'm by no means a fanboy of Ive because he designed some atrocious hardware (especially without Jobs to polish it) but at least things ebbed and flowed through evolution/devolution. Currently we're just meandering through mediocrity under Cook.
Apple's efforts to replace its former design chief Jony Ive have been hindered by increased turnover within the company's product design team over the past few years, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. The report claims that Apple has lost the majority of senior designers who worked under Ive, with many of them jumping ship to his new design firm LoveFrom, which he started after leaving Apple in 2019.
At least 15 senior Apple designers have left the company since Ive moved to a part-time role in 2015, whereas turnover was rare between 2000 and 2015, according to the report. Only a "small handful" of senior designers from the Ive era are said to remain.
Last month, Apple confirmed that its vice president of industrial design Evans Hankey plans to leave the company next year, although the report claims that she currently has no plans to join LoveFrom. Hankey has served as Apple's de-facto design chief since Ive's departure, reporting to Apple's operations chief Jeff Williams.
Even before Ive left, the report claims that Apple's operations department had started to gain more influence over the design team, resulting in an increased "focus on costs" rather than "purely on look and features."
"The strength of the team was that we were a nucleus bound together by the incredible environment that there was and the things we could do in a fairly unconventional way for a large company," a longtime Apple designer told Bloomberg, on condition of anonymity. "It was a special team. It wasn't easy after Steve passed — things started to become a lot more complicated. There were more pressures and outside distractions."
The report goes on to examine potential successors to lead Apple's design team, ranging from veteran industrial designer Richard Howarth to software design chief Alan Dye to an outside hire. Apple said Hankey plans to stay on during the transition.
"Apple's design team brings together expert creatives from around the world and across many disciplines to imagine products that are undeniably Apple," an Apple spokesperson said last month, in response to Hankey's planned departure. "The senior design team has strong leaders with decades of experience. Evans plans to stay on as we work through the transition, and we'd like to thank her for her leadership and contributions."
Article Link: Apple's Product Design Team Reportedly Focused More on Costs in Recent Years
This is Tim’s Apple. This “focus on costs” is ridiculous, outside of chip making, assembly supply chain costs and manufacturing and shipments.
Limiting the design team, beyond practically design expressions (ahem not donut shaped laptops and desktops lol) is literary limiting the “soul” of Apple!
Someone in another thread stated Apple seems to be returning to the grey PCs of the 80’s and mid-90’s is seemingly very close to the truth.
Functional does NOT have to limit beautiful design Tim; take care what you do to the lifeblood of Apple. software design beauty is only half of Apple’s heart and soul!
Apple should be using the huge cash trove to increase dividends, not just to buy back stock to pay for executives payouts!! The higher the dividend the longer ppl will hold and purchase the stock - means more cash for between products etc.
The issue with dividends is that you have to pay taxes on them. The problem also comes when a company ends up paying differing amounts of dividends each quarter depending on how well (or poorly) it does.
Share buyback should raise the share price, while also allowing shareholders the flexibility of selling them only when they want to cash out, which also means they can choose to defer the income taxed if they don’t think that they need the money right away.
As such, I view share buybacks as being more favourable than dividends in that regard.
True, but
”Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like,” says Steve Jobs, Apple’s C.E.O. ”People think it’s this veneer — that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”
People always think of look first.
Since I‘ve been to hotels and conference rooms this year that didn‘t (but did have HDMI and VGA), you obviously haven’t seen „every single“ one. I‘ve seen the dongles and they aren’t that great a solution.
Not too many have USB-C headphones either.
And contrary to what Apple’s ecosystem may see, it’s not all wireless either.
Look, the connectivity of Apple’s M1 chip in PCIe / thunderbolt seems limited (as being a souped-up smartphone/tablet SOC, and evidenced by the Mac Mini‘s device support) and that may be part of the reason they brought back these legacy parts. That doesn’t mean that they aren’t commonly used though.
Regardless if it’s lack of design ingenuity or Apple holding back on spending money for better iPhones , the issues should be resolved as Apple customers are willing to pay for ingenuity and innovation
Looking at all the patents Apple has and the handful that have made it into the iPhone in the last few years there’s plenty of great features that could be added
Looking at all the patents Apple has and the handful that have made it into the iPhone in the last few years there’s plenty of great features that could be added