
Expected arrival times for Apple products - anti-pattern
http://arrival.io
======
ricardobeat
Is this just scraping <http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/> ?

~~~
anti-pattern
I've looked at their data, but I believe I've dropped some things that they
consider releases. The whole thing is kind of subjective as to what
constitutes a release or not. But no, I didn't just scrape their site. I
compiled my own data from a variety of different freely available sources.

~~~
badgar
Might I ask why you built your own, knowing there was an almost identical
offering in place for years? For example, did your different choice of
releases cause a statistically significant shift in arrival times? I imagine
you've done analysis comparing your approach to theirs.

~~~
anti-pattern
I built my own because their design, and I mean literally the way they
visualize the data, isn't very good. Or rather, it's not as good as it could
be. They even updated the design a year or two ago and all they did was give
it a coat of paint, rather than rethinking how to best visualize the data.

~~~
badgar
That's a great reason! I agree their design sucks and yours is orders of
magnitude more usable.

It's just too bad that you have to re-collect the same data. N historically
up-to-date data sources for N designs is just unscalable.

~~~
anti-pattern
Indeed. Maybe I'll post the data on GitHub or something.

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ghshephard
This site is a rip off of the work that macrumors has been doing for several
years.

See: <http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/>

At the very least they should provide a credits link somewhere on their page.

~~~
anti-pattern
Actually, the entire reason I made this site was because I thought the way
MacRumors visualized the data wasn't very good. If they had done a better job,
I wouldn't have needed to make this.

As for credit... what should I be crediting them for? I'm just collecting a
list of dates and then visualizing the data.

~~~
ghshephard
A simple link at the bottom saying, "inspired by macrumors.com buyers guide"
would go a long way towards giving credit to the original concept. You can
even even embed the url, so it's just a small font, "inspired _by_ " to keep
the page clean.

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neonfunk
<http://buyersguide.macrumors.com> is helpful, too.

~~~
anti-pattern
Yep, I've used that for a little while, but I wasn't a fan of the design, and
I didn't think they visualized the information as well as they could have, so
I made a new one :)

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simonsarris
This is a great idea, and is especially pertinent to Mac fans who care about
the hardware they are using.

Since Apple does not discount old hardware (even with 2-3 year old video
cards, they charge the same amount as a brand new updated mac the very next
week[1]), people buying a Macbook pro at the wrong end of the timeline can get
totally shafted on equipment, especially from a price-per-performance view.

That feels a little dishonest to me, but most people don't seem to mind, and
its not as if the hardware they are selling is ever _bad_ , it will just be
twice as good next week, and sold for the exact same price.

So it seems that it is one again one of the worst times to buy a Macbook pro.

[1] I wrote two articles in 2010, one in Feb and one in April, which detailed
the times as the worst and best to buy an MBP, comparing prices and hardware.
Only really interesting for posterity: <http://simonsarris.com/blog/19-mac-
envy> <http://simonsarris.com/blog/22-mac-envy-2>

~~~
revelation
They just discounted the rMBP (and updated the processors mildly). I don't
understand what they could possibly update it with further, given that Haswell
will not be released for many more months.

~~~
twoodfin
Exactly. The sample size here is way too small to make good predictions for
most products. Even if you thought you could rely on the yearly cadence for i*
devices, bam, Apple releases a fairly substantial iPad upgrade 6 months after
the first Retina model.

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michaelhoffman
Those are rather specific predictions to have without any measure of variance.
About 57 days ± 30 days would be more useful information to have (if that fits
the previous distribution).

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javajosh
Eventually Apple will sell hardware subscriptions, where you just turn in your
old gear and get new stuff every year. (Maybe they can give your old ipods to
starving kids or something).

~~~
javajosh
Fine! Perhaps I deserved a down-vote. Or two. But there is something to what
I'm saying: all businesses seem to want to reach for the "annuity" business.
MS did it. Apple does it. Adobe does it. Adobe is becoming explicit about it,
too.

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faramarz
Are you sure the Macbook Pro release is correct? The Retina was an update.

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shn
Macbook Pro (15") was updated couple of weeks ago, why this one says 263 days?
Yes the retina one, isn't retina ones are successors of a previous model? Why
keep them separate, I think Macbook Pro without retina will be obsolete and
won't be updated.

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gstar
Reminds me of something I built years ago:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20080616021707/http://www.mactact...](http://web.archive.org/web/20080616021707/http://www.mactactic.com/)

~~~
anti-pattern
Oh I remember seeing that when it came out. Did you take it down?

~~~
gstar
Yeah, someone from Apple emailed me and asked me to - so I did.

~~~
anti-pattern
Oh, interesting. Did they give a reason? Was it legal? MacRumors has been
doing this for some time, I can't imagine that there's anything illegal about
it.

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manaskarekar
It would be helpful to turn the bar red if something becomes overdue.

Perhaps take it one step further and start filling the bar again with the
overdue number of days but with red.

~~~
anti-pattern
Yeah that's something I'll probably do in the next few days. I just wanted to
get something out there. Ship ship ship :)

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dantiberian
The Retina Macbook Pro should be it's own category as it's update cycle is
quite different to the Macbook Pro at the moment.

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gojomo
My own personal expected arrival times:

• Apple iEyes, stylish head-worn computer: 2016

• Apple MagicMindPad, implantable universal 3D/multitouch pointer device: 2021

• Apple nuRetina, permanent replacement for your biological retina: 2028

(Impulse purchases at the fancy Apple surgical centers are going to be big
business in the 2020's.)

~~~
bcoates
* Apple iEyes, stylish head-worn computer: 2016

Surely it would be the iPatch: <http://www.weylonsmith.com/blog/tag/ipatch>

~~~
fara
Or the Eye Pad

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desireco42
I am interested if there are any news when Google will refresh Nexus 7, I want
to get it, but would prefer to wait for newer version.

There were already places that track release times, this page is not
neccesary, <http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/> comes to mind.

I see others pointed that as well... well I can't remove this post so you will
have to endure it presence.

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sachingulaya
You should separate MBP and rMBP.

~~~
PeterisP
It's not so clear if MBP will even be a product line in the future - I'd bet
that in the future Apple will want to have just two laptop lines, Air and Pro,
both with Retina displays.

~~~
sachingulaya
Right, but they have two lines right now and changing the site to reflect
product consolidation in the future is trivial.

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nikolakirev
About two weeks ago, Apple did an update on the Retina MBP and some price
changes the the MacBook Air. I know it is a rather small change, but I think
it counts for "release", so the calculation for the Macbooks is wrong.

~~~
clauretano
Yeah, Apple counts it as a release. The updated retina MBP 13" describes
itself as an "Early 2013".

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rdl
What I would find useful is seeing the things blocking each update. E.g. Mac
Pro waiting on new Xeon CPUs from Intel, new iPad basically not enough time
since last release, EOL for iPod classic, etc.

~~~
nathan_long
The languishing of iPod Classic is the saddest thing on there to me. I really
think the scroll wheel is better than a touch interface. Tactile feedback
makes it easier to use without looking.

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colinyoung
I'd love it if you could convert times in days to months, or something like
'early september' if you don't want to seem to over-promise by giving a real
date. I could divide by 30, but I'm lazy.

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nwh
The Mac Pro bar isn't quite correct. The last update was only due to Intel not
producing the old processors any more. Apple didn't even flag it as "new" on
their store.

~~~
anti-pattern
You might be right, let me look into that. There's a bit of gray area as to
what technically constitutes a "release".

~~~
zaphoyd
Seconding this. The 2012 "update" was no more than a slight rearranging of CPU
and RAM within that same generation of parts. The thing still uses all 2010
era parts (radeon 5xxx graphics, westmere xeons, 3gbit SATA, PCI-E 2, no
thunderbolt). It has been "due" for an update since sandy bridge xeons were
released in early 2012.

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afxjzs
Wow...the Mac rumors buying guide but prettier with less info. Is there any
real insight or innovation here above and beyond that?

~~~
anti-pattern
I guess it depends on how you quantify usefulness. There's less info, but I
think I visualized the information that I do show much better than MacRumors.

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bcks
Lovely execution.

Only one nit -- the MacBook Pro was updated two weeks ago:
[https://www.apple.com/pr/library/2013/02/13Apple-Updates-
Pro...](https://www.apple.com/pr/library/2013/02/13Apple-Updates-Processors-
Prices-of-MacBook-Pro-with-Retina-Display.html)

~~~
ktsmith
It was but only because Apple had no choice.
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5307169>

~~~
bdcravens
No, you're linking to a thread about the Mac Pro, not the MacBook Pro. :-)

~~~
ktsmith
Whoops, you are correct. The updates to the MacBook Pro are still trivial and
no site is considering it to be an major upgrade/update. The Mac Rumors
tracking site separates the MacBook Pro and the MacBook Pro Retina for this
reason.

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stroebjo
Nice, really like it! Think it would be cool if you could see the expected
lenght for overdue products too. Something like that maybe:
<http://codepen.io/stroebjo/pen/aiLtd>

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Sujan
Nice work.

Some feedback:

\- Bug: The site breaks the back button of Firefox somehow.

\- Suggestion: A timeline view of the previous releases on the detail page
could help to make the patterns more clear.

\- Suggestion: Maybe change the color of the bar when an update is overdue.

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melvinmt
Waiting for the iPad Mini w/ Retina display (wait, where's the iPad mini?).

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latterd
This looks great and I can see this being useful, but if I just land'ed on the
site I would struggle to know what it is about....but you probably have this
covered anyway :)

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signed0
The text is cut off on <http://arrival.io/macbook-pro>.

<http://imgur.com/sBWlJ09>

~~~
anti-pattern
Hmm, what OS, browser, and version are you on?

~~~
signed0
Mountain Lion + Chrome on a retina MBP.

On FireFox the text is also cut off and the blue bars do not show up:
<http://imgur.com/CfHWnzJ>

Update: Upgrading from Firefox 17 to 19 fixed the issue with the blue bars.

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cmsmith
From a statistical point of view, it seems kind of inappropriate to report
something with a 100+ day standard deviation (iPhone release rate) down to the
nearest day.

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Domenic_S
Firefox 19/mac, progress bars don't display.

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rohern
I love Firefox, but I am encountering problems like this more and more often.
It's a disaster to use with Coursera or Netflix.

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whatshisface
"This page is best viewed with Google Explorer"

It looks like the page is doing something funny with javascript to render the
bars, why not just use good old css?

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jgraham
The problem is that the site is using SVG paint servers to provide a gradient
for the progress rect. The gradient is specified in a SVG def element with id
barGradient in the HTML file. So far so good. The problem arises because the
fill rule is written as "fill: url(#barGradient)" and is placed in an
_external_ CSS file. In this case the fragment should be resolved against the
_stylesheet_ URL, not the HTML document URL [1]. It appears that Gecko and
Opera get this right and WebKit doesn't. However the page relies on the
incorrect behaviour here. (I also note that Gecko and Presto do different
things after they fail to resolve the paint server; Gecko falls back to
"none", Presto to the default fill colour. My reading of SVG 1.2T is that
Gecko is correct in this case [2]).

tldr; The page relies on a WebKit bug. The Gecko rendering is correct.

[1] <http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-values/#urls> [2]
<http://www.w3.org/TR/SVGTiny12/painting.html#SpecifyingPaint>

~~~
anti-pattern
Ah, that makes sense. Thanks for explaining it! This was my first time using
SVG. So, what is the best solution? Defining SVG styles in a style tag?

~~~
jgraham
That would work, yes.

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ante_annum
It'd be a nice touch to note discontinuation based on overdueness. The classic
isn't way overdue, it's discontinued.

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niggler
just bought retina macbook pro 15 inch yesterday (ME665LL/A) which says "Early
2013". Isn't that an update?

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justin0
Yes, it is.

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JimEngland
Only 106 days until a new Thunderbolt Display! I really hope that it turns
into an "Apple TV" announcement.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
A successor to Apple's current desktop display is more likely at least 7
months out. Look at the historical data: ignoring the outlier, Apple releases
a new screen every 25 months - we're 18 months in. The last update was timed
so because Apple switched from Mini DisplayPort to Thunderbolt.

<http://arrival.io/apple-thunderbolt-display>

As for Apple releasing a TV screen, I don't see it happening for at least a
couple of years, if ever. There are too many things that need to be in place
for Apple to be able to really change how people watch TV. For it to really
shake things up, we need fast broadband everywhere, more (live) content in
iTunes, a better input method (hand gestures? voice? touch?) to control the
screen, and a more reliable wireless technology than (the current) WiFi.

~~~
potatolicious
Not to mention the state of the art hasn't moved very much - that 27" IPS LCD
panel is still the very same that's being used by Dell, HP, et al.

There's been a lot of development on both smaller and larger screen sizes, but
the 27" form factor seems to be at a relative standstill.

I don't expect to see an update unless there is a major change to either the
panel tech or the interface tech. I really do hope that Apple reopens the >=
30-inch space though.

~~~
robryan
A price drop would be enough. Surely they could sell them a lot cheaper at the
high volume they would get cutting the price.

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derpenxyne
Clean and simple, I like it. I think an about page for new visitors would be
good though.

~~~
anti-pattern
Yeah I was trying to decide whether it needed one or not. So far people seem
to be getting it, but I might still add one.

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arasmussen
Where do you get your data from?

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anti-pattern
It's all online, but there's an awesome app called Mactracker
(<http://www.mactracker.ca>) that I got a lot of information from. MacRumors
also has a buyers guide (<http://buyersguide.macrumors.com>), but I think mine
is better :)

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oatmealsnap
Doesn't work in Firefox on Mac.

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anti-pattern
Whoops, it looks like Firefox doesn't like SVG gradients. I'll look into that.
Thanks!

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dsyph3r
I hope that's not right, just ordered a MBA a few days ago

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enraged_camel
This is pretty nice. Where's the iPad Mini though?

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thiagoperes
Awesome! Thank you

~~~
anti-pattern
You're very welcome :)

