All I heard were two guys sucking up really hard. I heard more about cars and lunch boxes than even developer improvements.
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Phil Schiller Discusses WWDC 2019 on Accidental Tech Podcast
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LOL! Since when was bluetooth only possible once the headphone jack was removed?
I think that's precisely why the following statement about... stop lying and spin-doctoring. Anyone who thinks a 3.5mm jack for audio is antiquated needs to also be asked what color the sky is in their world.
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Hmm, this comment made me curious. Why? I love Thunderbolt for some things, and am glad it drives my eGPU reasonably well, etc. But, why is it the future? I just can't imagine TB will ever be equal what an internal bus can do. Maybe eventually it will be 'good enough' but it clearly isn't there yet.
This seems almost like people talking about how fast the GPU in an iPhone has become, as if there won't be a need any longer for desktop GPUs. Except, that desktop GPUs keep getting faster too. They will never be equal because... physics!
I think the same is true for bus vs external.
I rather doubt Phil et. al. are doing much reading in here. Those people just don't have the time. But, there are certainly other people at Apple who do, probably even people for whom it is part of their job description.
That doesn't mean some days Phil doesn't get curious and spend an hour reading, but they just don't have time to regularly do so, I'd bet.
Or, at least one of those in addition to whatever else Apple makes. The problem wasn't that there was anything particularly bad about the cylinder Mac Pro, it just wasn't what many pros needed.
I'm glad they finally updated the mini (as you can see from my sig). That goes part way, but now we need a more generic 'tower' machine with cooling and more 'pro' (or server grade) components. As much as the new Mac Pro is that, then good on Apple.
But, my concern is that they will come up with something wildly specialized (which might be great for some), but that won't be what so many are actually needing and asking for.
Oh, no, of course, I am not saying that Phil is sitting there whole day browsing MacRumors and reading people's complaints over the Mac and iProducts. I think he takes a glance now and then, of course.
20,000 in the org. The dev team is 1750 engineers and their leadership. The software is an entire suite of stuff with ~50 teams.
Just saying, we’re working on stuff that isn’t even scheduled for release until 2022 and that’s if it stays on track. So you can just imagine Apple.
I’m glad most reporters and journalist don’t take such a cowardly approach to their work.
What are you on about? OpenCL? That has been deprecated along with OpenGL. Apple is putting all its eggs in a Metal basket. Wonder what that could mean! Apple is going all in on ARM and professionals are not going to like it.
They don't? A lot of them don't even bother to do journalism any longer, and maybe instead of being star-struck, they'll be sure nothing they do ticks off any advertisers.
But, I guess I'm wondering what people think would be accomplished by asking Phil 'the tough questions.' He wouldn't have been able to answer them anyway, and they'd just have ruined their shot at such a guest in the future. It is really only the the big media outlets where he might have to appear anyway who would have that kind of power... and they sure wouldn't do it.
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Open CL/GO are being deprecated by Apple... not by the rest of the world. Unfortunately, I think that just means Apple is going to be the one who is deprecated in the pro markets.
Going all in on ARM might be OK, but yeah, I can't see how Metal is going to become the new standard. And, I agree, I'm not sure professionals are going to like it, depending on the industry. But, if you run by pie-charts, the professional that use OpenGL/CL are a small segment of professionals, who are as small segment of consumers.
The question is whether Apple still cares about those markets, or just moving the most units.
It is a softball interview. I also feel it started out kind of week. They did find their mojo after a few questions, though.
These interviews won’t help you nail Apple on a supply chain atrocity, price changes, or future product plans, but they do give you a reasonably candid sense of who one of the SVPs is as a person. (Hint: Phil is not in that job as a cushy retirement position.)
This user base is shrinking and shrinking, as very, very little stuff requires a tower. Do your heavy computation on a server farm somewhere and interact with it using something far more comfortable like a laptop, tablet or phone.
That’s still not good enough for real-time 3D or video preview, but the 1990s’ days where a tower was the default choice for comparative tasks are over.
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Given that it was three guys, I’m not sure you listened very closely.
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No. Instead, they don’t interview at all; because they don’t get granted a request.
This isn’t how it works. ATP got to interview Phil precisely because there was an understanding this wouldn’t be a hardball interview.
Apple also isn’t a parliament. Its executive team doesn’t owe you giving interview time to journalists.
Well, and the number of people who can work like that (and have software that supports it) is even smaller.
A lot of it depends on what we mean by professional, though. Sure, the average business person no longer needs a tower, and can easily do their work on about any machine (at least in terms of processing power).
But, take something like video production. There are a relatively large amount of professionals, especially creative professionals (and prosumers, and amateurs) who do a lot of crunching video, for which a reasonable tower machine would be much better than laptops, tablets, phones, or even Apple's current line of 'desktops.'
Maybe we could put this another way. Why is Apple so adamantly against producing something it seems a majority of users would like, if not need? If they made a reasonable 'tower' that was something like the current mini, but could contain a real GPU and cool itself well so as to be quiet... wouldn't that fly off the shelves?
More like “we” as in mac pro users.More like “I” want, rather than what “we” want....
I don’t see how a product they’ve already preannounced qualifies as one they are “adamantly against producing”. But if they were, we really aren’t talking about a majority here. Their 700 million customers do not need a high-end tower. Nor even 70 million need one. I’d be surprised if 7 million do.
Apparently the interview was arranged onthe premises of only asking questions about wwdc.
Being that the case, there’s the question of accepting such ground rules or not getting the interview. All in all, I think the episode was interesting, but I would still have liked it if the interviewers could have had the chance of asking the questions they really wanted to ask.
Being that the case, there’s the question of accepting such ground rules or not getting the interview. All in all, I think the episode was interesting, but I would still have liked it if the interviewers could have had the chance of asking the questions they really wanted to ask.
More like “I” want, rather than what “we” want....
I really hope Apple takes the modular approach seriously. The all-in-one Macs have never been attractive to me, nor the thought of "upgrading" laptops. I want small, cost-effective Mac mini's, and when I want more power, or to upgrade, simply connect another mini. I buy and attach mini's when I need an upgrade. I don't want to replace the existing computer.
Just because something is perceived as "antiquated" doesn't mean it lacks value as there are many ways one can determine value. If that was your only measure of value then lets to away with books and roads etc.
For myself, I don't use headphones enough to want the hassle of always having to concern myself with the maybes of wanting to use them. With a 3.5mm jack I can leave a pair of headphones in each bag I use, in the car, in a suitcase, wherever… without having to care about charge levels "in case". Headphone jack… don't need to do or think about anything!
The Aipods I got as a gift got left in my jacket pocket that ended up going through a washing machine cycle. After that the charging case stopped working. The choice there to get headphone back… wait however long it takes to get a replacement charging case else spend 180€ on new ones. My wired sets have all been through the wash and no one of them have stopped.
I wonder how often you're on a 12+ hour flight because I'm on them often enough that having to stop and charge AirPods means I'm having to stop and listen to those aircraft engines… that or use the supplied headphones. Talking about those supplied headphones, what is it you do when the aircraft on doesn't support in-seat BT pairing? When travelling I only need to care that my phone is charged where 10 mins here, 5 mins there, on fast charge works a treat… not a number of other things.
Then there's the environmental aspect. You can't tell me that the need of having even more batteries made in this world is a good thing. Think of the 3 batteries in a pair of AirPods (one in each earpiece and one in the case) plus all of the raw materials and manufacturing that goes into AirPods vs anything wired. Plain wasteful!
New iPhone that is physically smaller than the XS/8 size please!
Please put the Magic Keyboard in the laptops or make a switch that is reliable and has more feel and comfort when typing that the butterfly switches
Inverted T arrow key arrangement again please
Please make the TouchBar optional.
Better Apple TV remote and one that has some way to do "mute" please. Lots of us are watching streaming live TV now and mute is super nice to have.
Before the past year occurred Apple said they would be focusing on improving / optimizing the current systems rather than new features. This WWDC marks a return of the focus on new features. So basically Apple has two years of ideas to announce at the next WWDC, since it's been about two years since they've announced significant new features.
And Phil if you are reading this
I want a phone with no headphone jack
Love the current keyboard
Dont care about serviceable parts as long as you honour warranties
A modular version of the iMac pro as it is awesome.
notice no 'we' in my comments...........
Also I still firmly believe Apple is a consumer organisation and the expectations of those insisting in more non - consumer computers are going to be very disappointed in the forthcoming years. It is almost guaranteed this new Mac Pro will come out and not be updated for the next 5 years, whereas the consumer hardware gets annual updates [I count the macebookrpo a pro-sumer laptop these days and no doubt sells a vast amount more units than any desktop will].
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I think would be great if Apple could do a Q&A, but I think the problem with that is, there is _so_ much information about products and software that they can’t discuss, because a lot of the questions might be pertaining to future releases or requests . Now, Apple likely is open to feedback/suggestions, but of course they can’t guarantee anything to the user, except for saying something like ‘Thank you for your suggestion’. Apple is a very secretive company, they don’t usually respond to major inquiries, unless it’s about a product/feature that is already released that needs clarification on a certain feature or capability. (i.e Face ID for example.)
With most of the product line, I’m sure secrecy is in their best interest.
Regarding products like the mac pro, I don’t think there’s a lot to gain with their lack of transparency, and there’s a lot to be lost. The current situation is simply unacceptable. An honest Q&A would be the proper thing to do. Instead, they round their unofficial PR team and dictate them what to write about the greatest workstation that will ever exist.
As for the way they handle their mistakes, I don’t think their hermetism helps. The current keyboard situation, for instance. They tried to fix the laptops keyboards adding a silicone membrane, only to claim later they did it to make the keyboards quieter. A problem no one complained about. Is treating their clients as idiots a good thing? Maybe, what do I know.
Anyway, rant over.
I hope you’re right. It seems to me, but I might be wrong, that they say that every year. Haven’t seen any major improvements or changes in years. But if those major improvements happened to be under the hood, it’s kind of like privacy, you don’t see it with your eyes.
Except Bluetooth headphones have an audio lag that makes them useless for anything other than listening to pre-recorded music, or video soundtracks where the video can be delayed to sync with the sound. Try firing up GarageBand and playing a few notes and you'll see the problem. Maybe that's not an issue with a $300 'just a smartphone', but if you're pushing into $1500 super-smartphones and iPads that aspire to replacing full laptops, that's rather limiting.
Sure, you can use an adapter, or - if you want to charge at the same time - buy a dock or a multiport adapter - or if you want to plug into a Hifi, get a streaming box... buy this, get that, carry this around.... Meanwhile, people are acting as if having a headphone jack was somehow stopping them using Bluetooth or Lightning headphones if they preferred.
First, all they've pre-announced is that they'll be releasing a "modular" Mac Pro and display "in 2019" where "modular" and, indeed, "2019" mean whatever Apple intends them to mean. If you read the original interview from a couple of years back carefully, "modular" could simply mean that it doesn't have a built-in-display, and the only real flaw they're acknowledging with the trashcan is the specific "CPU + 2 medium-powered GPUs around a triangular thermal core" not the more fundamental form/novelty-over-function obsession that lead to that mistake.
They've known about the dissatisfaction with the trashcan since 2013 and its been two whole years since they publicly acknowledged it. Meanwhile, the technical challenges of producing a mini-tower Mac are minimal - if a Hackintosher can throw one together overnight, then Apple should be able to do the job properly in 18 months or so. The delay suggests that either its very, very low priority or they're doing something "courageous".
Their 700 million customers don't need a Xeon and ECC RAM hermetically sealed into an excitingly tiny shard of anodised aluminium (with a new "modular" way of paying $1000 for a $300 GPU) either. The Mac Pro is always going to be a minority product - all the more reason to not sink huge R&D effort into something exotic when a generic PC tower with a slightly tweaked firmware in a nicer-than-average case will fulfil the need nicely.
...except anybody who needed a modular Mac Pro and wasn't totally locked-in to MacOS (literally or mentally) is probably long gone by now. So the problem is that, when it comes to the higher-end Macs, their customer base is a slowly evaporating pond in which Apple's main competitor is Apple, and a Mac Mini Tower at a realistic (even for Apple) price might hit iMac/iMac Pro/Mini sales.
Practically speaking, the Mac Pro was probably killed in 2012/13 when the classic Mac Pro had languished without update for a couple of years (and had even been discontinued in Europe because Apple couldn't contrive to add a simple fan guard to meet new regs) so there was no up-to-date alternative for users who weren't ready to embrace the trashcan.
...now they've repeated that same mistake with the 2016 MacBook Pro, the 2018 Mac Mini and the 2019 Mythical Modular Mac Pro - we can argue the pros and cons of those new machines until the cows come home but the real problem is that Apple released radically new machines without providing a more conventional fallback option. C.f. 2012 where the radical new Retina MBPs were accompanied by new versions of the "Classic" MBP updated to USB3 and the latest processors.
...but that's the problem with the current Apple line up - disregarding "<x>gate" reliability issues (something for another thread) - their new products are great if they are exactly what you want but they are totally uncompromising if you prefer something different.
So you like the new keyboard? Good for you - question is, did you hate the old keyboard, because lots of people loved that too and I don't recall anything like the level of hate. If Apple had kept it, would it put you off buying?
Don't care about serviceable parts? If you don't care then having serviceable parts won't affect you, and nobody is suggesting taking the warranty away.
You can't please all of the people all of the time - but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try and find a compromise that pleases the most people for the longest time. The "new 10s" definition of compromise seems to be "pick one person to please then deny that other people have valid views". I've actually seen design sessions that work like that - invent a single, fictitious "model user" and design their perfect product (might work with a dozen "model users" based on interviews with actual people, but...).
I think you are confusing the "majority" of users in the world who buy Macs with the "majority" of users on this forum who want Apple to create a tower form factor. I just inherited a 3,1 Mac Pro and although I love the beast for what it is, it is ****ing enormous and just does not work in my office. If it was a 4,1 or 5,1 Mac Pro, I would be more inclined to make space for it. At this point, I am probably going to sell it and not look back.
I get that there is a small subset of users who want a Mac tower, but in reality there is a smaller subset of users who actually need one. If it was the case that demand for that form factor was high enough, I have no doubt that Apple would sell it. However, the overall trend for the past two decades has been toward smaller, more mobile devices. Mac Pros have never accounted for a significant percentage of Apple's sales.
Besides the technical issues of building a mini-tower with both Thunderbolt 3 AND a removable GPU (I have touched on this many times), there is a philosophical conviction that obviously runs deep at Apple. Apple hasn't built a tower form factor in 7 years and unless the Mac Pro 7,1 comes out of left field with a similar design, it is just not something they are going to build.
Perhaps a larger version of the Mac mini (2x taller) with a Navi GPU (once they ship) should be something that Apple considers, but I would not count on it. I think the issue becomes moot once Thunderbolt moves to PCIe 4.0 and is able to up its bandwidth to accommodate an eGPU to 90% or higher of the existing PCIe 3.0 x16 bandwidth. The issue at that point will be cabling and when will GPU AIBs come to market that support PCIe 4.0 (or 5.0) bandwidth. That does not solve the NVIDIA issue, but the reality there is that Apple is done with NVIDIA.
Hopefully, the Mac Pro will be what professionals are looking for or at least innovative enough to make them think twice about it. Only time will tell, and Apple's track record is not exactly stellar in this regard. Like many have already stated, it may already be too late.
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