Craig Federighi on iPad's Long-Awaited External Drive Support: 'We're Willing to Acknowledge the 1990s'

[Baymowe335]

What about iPhone, Mac, Apple TV, Homepod? None of those seem to be in a "market leading position" as you put it. Sure, iPad might be the leading tablet and Apple Watch the leading smart watch but that doesn't mean they aren't losing sales because of their elitist attitude.

I work around a mixed bag of people from IT to complete luddites and what surprised me was that people's perception on Apple's hubris and lack of a touch on reality is wider spread than I thought. How can that not translate to fewer sales?

(And for what it's worth, Craig is my fav Apple exec)

The phone is in a leading position in the US and iPhone doesn’t compete for market share by giving away hardware.

The iPad is so good, it can dominate the tablet space even with premium pricing. The iPhone does it in developed markets and would other places with a $199 phone.

My point is, you have to prove people are shying away from Apple products because they lack features with facts. You can’t just say it. It’s more likely price that keeps Apple’s market share modest and many just can’t afford it.

 

[ElectricPotato]

...one by one his drives will fail and he will lose his content.

A friend asked about drive recovery services for a third party who had his family photos on a single drive on a single machine. The drive died, he sent the machine in for repair, it came back with a new drive with a fresh OS install. I tried to explain that recovery services are not magic, the original drive was gone and there was nothing left to recover.

The friend thought I was just being difficult even though he uses a Windows machine daily for work. He countered that the third party was willing to pay. ?!?

 

[Brainjax44]

“I'm an AirDrop fan myself, but I understand there are other uses...“

Yah, like sharing with/from a non-Apple device!

 

[code-m]

Ah, the good ol 90’s, before companies really started ripping us off with ridiculous storage tier pricing.

Don’t you mean 2000’s? Cloud Storage has yet to reach mass acceptance and most companies started talking about the cloud in 2010’s.

I believe Craig is exaggerating with the 90’s comment and it is in poor taste considering Apple has a poor history with any web services and iCloud is nowhere near its competition. Case in point it taken Apple this long for “Sign In With”. Let’s not forget the slow adoption of USB-C, OLED, etc.

Craig should just mention that Apple has finally acknowledged that built-in storage is not user upgradable on iPhone and iPad’s

I like Craig, but this is just a lame excuse
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“I'm an AirDrop fan myself, but I understand there are other uses...“

Yah, like sharing with/from a non-Apple device!

I wonder how Craig AirDrops to a digital camera or other 3rd party devices.

AirDrop was released in 2011, Craig must be a time traveller

 

[JGIGS]

Sadly, I think he is too arrogant to understand why people wanted it... AirDrop? LOL...That's not the point!

Also hey there are people that own iPads but don’t own any other Apple products. How’s AirDrop a solution for them?

 

[Jim Lahey]

So many feelings in this thread over an obvious joke.

It’s 2019. People enjoy being offended so that they can have their voice heard. Just you wait for 2020!

 

[jonnysods]

I know people are getting upset, the guy is just using hyperbole to have a bit of fun. Relax....!

 

[dogslobber]

I think he is funny. Much better presenter than Fill or Tim. Fill is just a speck lister, and Tim tries to be all hip and cool, when he is really not. But this guy is just natural. He really reminds me of Scott Forstall from back in the day. Both are funny, both are a little arrogant, but both are still likable

Agree totally. Craig F. is the most natural and relaxed presenter that Apple has had in recent years. The only one who comes or came close was Angela. You know, you're right about Cook being too manufactured and I bet he puts in a lot of practice to try to be as stiff as he is.

 

[deadoctopi]

This arrogant attitude is what turns off so many people to the point that they don't even want to touch such many great Apple products.

Yeah the whole “I’m an airdrop man myself.” YoU DoN’t SaY?!?

But literally any other creative professional has been foaming at the mouth for this “dated” addition for years on these things now (me included). Happy it’s coming, but the hubris at brushing it aside as unnecessary on something they keep advertising as a PC replacement is just...

well, it’s very Apple these days, to be fair. Thanks I guess? Little late to the professional workflow party, but here I am clapping anyway at the announcement.

 

[Duophonic]

What a pompous ass.

 

[Ramchi]

Next iPads and iPhones to have SD Card slots or like Huawei, proprietary Memory Card slot(they can sell 32 GB Card for $32) good opportunity to monetize expansion slots and increase the shareholders value in the process!!

 

[Pbrutto]

I like Craig but this was such a tone deaf joke. You know why an iPad IS NOT a computer? Because you can’t transfer a larger file to a thumb drive and you can’t work off a file server (till now). Not every person has an iPad....he made the comment “I prefer Airdrop” .....dude.....you ****ing work at Apple headquarters, everyone around you has airdrop....I work with a team of 9 other people. 4 of them have an iPhone and of them only 1 has an iPad and they all have PCs at home not Macs. So I’m just supposed to **** on all of them because they don’t have an iPad or iPhone? How about when my boss needs a large file? He uses (you guessed it) a windows machine like the majority of all business do. How the hell am I supposed to get that file to him?

I love my iPad, I want it to be my main computer, and it’s getting closer with iOS 13 but pretending that adding external storage is some throwback shows how out of touch he and the people making these decisions really are. Lost a bit of confidence in him today.

 

[simonmet]

That’s a seriously misguided and out-of-touch comment. Complete arrogance even. I thought he was supposed to be one of the good guys at Apple.

In what way is external storage from the 1990s? Is that not what Apple wanted you to do for the Trash Can Mac Pro and even to a similar extent the recently announced Cheese Grater?

Why do people who are paid so much make such stupid comments?

 

[xdhd350]

It’s not very 1990’s to drop a file onto a microSD card that will do a firmware update on some of my other electronic devices. Without an internet connected computer, I’m SOL. So I’ll be happy that my iPad Pro will finally have that ability.

 

[Christoffee]

What a prick.

 

[cult hero]

This arrogant attitude is what turns off so many people to the point that they don't even want to touch such many great Apple products.

Yeah, it's been wrecking their market cap for years.

 

[Leo90]

This kind of statement is plain dumb and comes across as stupidly arrogant. Now I understand why Macs are in such a decline with software stagnation and hardware failure. It is a shame because I love Apple products, iOS and macOS. But I won’t be buying a product which no longer is designed to suit customer’s needs but rather to appease the eyes only. Apple is increasingly shifting to form over function and that really makes me sad as a long time Apple customer.

 

[Greymacuser]

Out of touch arrogance, thy name is Federighi.

 

[rolandvg99]

Dumbass, photography/video professionals work from external hard drives.

As do musicians that use apps like Cubasis and Auria PRO. Airdropping a 139GB, 3 hour 24-track 24bit/96kHz live recording set is not an option.
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The ability to load, and unload data, while travelling or offline is something I’ve been wanting for a long time. It’s less of an issue now that we have bigger iOS storage, but I’d still use this on a longer trip.

An 1TB iPad is filled after a week of 3 hours a night 24 track 24bit/96khz recordings. So, as you said, this is crucial when on the road.

 

[iPadified]

Learn to laugh, people. It's a joke that actually has a hard edge towards the state of wireless communication speed and standardisation as well as their own iCloud service.

 

[Lone Deranger]

External drives. We're willing to acknowledge the 1990s and go all the way back. You know, people still use them sometimes. I'm an AirDrop fan myself, but I understand there are other uses... we know with photographers, the ability to import their photos directly into an app like Lightroom is so important.

Wow. How arrogant.
What's more likely is that Apple (under Tim Cook) removes or refrains from adding features and functionalities to drive customers to buy additional Apple products and services.
Removing ports to sell dongles. Remove the headphone jack to buy wireless Beats products/Airpods. Keep on-device storage purposely low (and BTO upgrade prices unfairly steep), or prevent USB support on iOS to increase iCloud storage. So gimme a break Craig, how stupid do you think we are.

And if you want AirDrop to catch on, how about you fix it so that it actually is reliable. 70-80% of the time it just doesn't work for me. iPhone to iPhone or iPhone to MBP. Terrible.

 

[rolandvg99]

Learn to laugh, people. It's a joke that actually has a hard edge towards the state of wireless communication speed and standardisation as well as their own iCloud service.

It might be a joke, but external USB drives in the late 90's were just as flakey as wireless is today. The fact that Apple have clinged to wireless for 10 years, and still that tech is not up to scratch when transfering huge files, says it all. Even their iTunes sync solution was/is embarrassingly slow.

 

[Marshall73]

Looking forward to trying out different drive formats on my dual usb a/c flash drives.

 

[ROGmaster]

My friend says the same thing as you. He has 12 TB of hard drives. I asked him is your stuff also backed up and what happens when a drive breaks? I have had many drives fail especially in tropical places. So over the years one by one his drives will fail and he will lose his content.

I think I saw an SSD external drive that was claiming to be resilient to moisture, mechanical shocks and dust.
Not every external drive is super sensitive and breaks easily.
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I just searched (not exhaustively) but could not find any USB-C drives at that price. Have they come down that low already? Plus don't compare local to cloud just based on data size. Cloud serves a different function in storage solutions.

You don't need a USB C external drive when you can just use one of these:

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A friend asked about drive recovery services for a third party who had his family photos on a single drive on a single machine. The drive died, he sent the machine in for repair, it came back with a new drive with a fresh OS install. I tried to explain that recovery services are not magic, the original drive was gone and there was nothing left to recover.

The friend thought I was just being difficult even though he uses a Windows machine daily for work. He countered that the third party was willing to pay. ?!?

If the disk itself is not physically affected you can recover the data from it. Most mechanical hard drives fail in such a way that data can be recovered.
I had 2 hard drives fail on me but with enough time to transfer the data from them. They didn't suddenly stop working, it happened gradually.

 

[Winni]

Data to support that?

Or is a market leading position for iPad not good enough for you?

You're talking about that saturated gadget/toy market niche that failed to replace notebooks and that nobody is really interested in anymore?