I wonder if these "people" he's talking about are Tim Cook? It seems like the thing he'd be excited about.
The Mac users I know, and like myself, want stability and not gimmicks, and a new file system is the most exciting thing Apple has announced with relevance to the Mac in many years' time.
Good... lord.
Apple is not one of the most valuable companies on the planet right now because it doesn't know its current audience. I get it that a lot of you are very sad that computer professionals of some sort are no longer their core audience. That ship sailed long before Tim Cook became CEO.
The average Apple user (and basically, average technology user—which is basically everyone these days) doesn't even know what a filesystem is. The keynote itself is streamed live to an audience much wider than developers. So these "people" are those people. In addition, you know what's most important to most of us developers? Code that turns a profit. People love that emoji stuff. The features displayed during the entire keynote were mostly customer-facing or obviously customer-facing. Why? It gets future customers excited and shows developers what customers as a whole want. That's how to turn profitable code.
I am astounded at how a bunch of forum dwellers think that Tim Cook is some kind of childish fool that doesn't know how to operate a company and pine for Steve Jobs, despite the fact that Jobs picked Cook.
People keep talking about wanting to be "wowed" again as they look at Apple's past with some kind of rose-colored glasses. The iPhone was not a smash hit out the door. (Heck, go check out the forums here from that time.) The markets have matured.
The filesystem was the most exciting announcement for me, but I'm not exactly the bulk of Apple's consumers and if you or your friends are also the types that are most excited about a filesystem... neither are they.
There's plenty to be cynical about, like the seemingly arbitrary line drawn regarding Macs that won't be supported by Sierra—especially from a company that keeps making a big deal about its commitment to the environment. Forced obsolescence is pretty antithetical to a solid environmental policy. I get it. But this constant characterization of Tim Cook is just silly. The vast majority of users want gimmicks. They love gimmicks. Go browse the App Store and look at the top sellers.
As much as us Macrumorites hate HDDs, the average joe would choose 500GB HDD over the 128GB SSD every time. They don't really know or care, they just want more storage.
I don't know how true that is. Maybe if no one is assisting them in the purchase, but I have never installed an SSD for a non-technical client where they weren't blown away by the speed. On top of that, the vast majority of the people whose computers I work on rarely exceed 150GB, and it's generally MUCH lower than that.
The only two groups I see that regularly use a lot of space are professionals in graphic arts, video, or heavy music and people who do a ton of torrenting. There are other outliers, but your "average" user doesn't even know how to fill up 500GB. It's not like they're storing their photos in RAW or something.
My mom is currently scanning old pictures and is worried she's going to fill the computer up. "Mom, you've used up like 10 gigs." "Is that a lot." "You have another 200 left. You're good."
