
A look at how Macintosh accessories are prototyped and tested - steven
https://medium.com/backchannel/what-i-saw-inside-apple-s-top-secret-input-lab-6637e2e5492e
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tigeba
As the owner of many Macs and accessories over the years, my presumption is
they maximize fatigue per square cm of desk space occupied.

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binaryapparatus
Magical. Tzar. Lots of nlp in that article. Is this some kind of covert
advertising offensive today? Or I am being too paranoid after reading "if
you're not paranoid..." article?

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GhotiFish
no it's got some serious red flags in it, for one, I can't even imagine a real
practical workspace being that immaculately clean and organized. Pure white on
everything. no scuffs. Something _really_ smells.

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arrrg
When you invite someone you clean up … I mean, what’s with the weird
conspiracy mongering? That just makes no sense.

This is the most ordinary thing in the world, Apple just doesn’t normally do
this, so it’s kinda surprising to see it from them.

Apple gives journalist access to their lab they don’t usually give anyone
access to. Of fucking course they don’t have to pay anyone to write about
that! Not a dime! They could probably get journalists line up for a chance of
getting this access. Or they could charge an admission fee or something and
still get people to write about it.

The assumption that Apple would have to pay anyone to write about their trip
to the Apple lab is just mind-bogglingly out of this world. It’s so weird, I
can hardly believe anyone would seriously consider holding such a view for any
amount of time.

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GhotiFish
there's clean, and there's not used.

Though, I agree. I doubt they needed to pay anyone to do this.

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niels_olson
A little over-exposure fixes all sorts of small defects in white. Also, I've
seen clean labs at NASA and elsewhere that aren't dissimilar.

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motoboi
The two other times, when new iPhones suffered from antenna issues and when
iPhones (again) seemed to bend under pants induced stress, we saw apple
(probably) sponsored content over Wired and others about how amazingly careful
they were on testing iPhone antennas and how wonderfully amazing they were on
making bend resistant iPhone bodies.

Please don't get me wrong, as I am a apple fan, but I must ask: Which Apple
product is broken this time?

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mahyarm
Maybe they can make some ergonomic input devices next? The magic mouse might
as well be called hand cramp mouse.

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odonnellryan
Well, they really do have a great rate of success when it comes to purchases
and marketing.

I thought the same thing you did. It'd be really cool if they marketed towards
the more niche crowd. I love me some mechanical keyboards and trackball mice..

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javajosh
Too bad they didn't catch the fact that most if not all of the 2014 MBPr's
have a terrible flaw in their screen coating [1]. (One of the worst things
about it is that many people think it was their fault, when it wasn't.[2])

If they had a lid closing/opening robot in the mix, maybe they would have
caught this.

[1] [http://www.staingate.org/](http://www.staingate.org/)

[2]
[https://www.facebook.com/groups/607572909386595/](https://www.facebook.com/groups/607572909386595/)

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terinjokes
I've seen that going on with other people's laptops, and was wondering what it
was all about. Thanks.

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stonogo
I am honestly amazed they allowed a Dell monitor to be photographed in the
lab.

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niels_olson
Lots of equipment makers only support Windows and the hardware may well be
spec'd also.

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jakejake
I like how un-mac-like the space looks. It's kinda messy with raw cables and
industrial machines laying about. It looks like a place where you get real
work done - ironically designing stuff for the mac.

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aikinai
I thought the exact opposite. This is insanely clean and organized for a
physical lab. Though I assume that's because they cleaned up in preparation
for the press visit.

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devopsproject
The pictures are blown out to make it seem more white\clean. The space likely
looks a lot different in real life.

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Theodores
After the VW incident I do wonder how many laboratory style tests are actually
useful. I can't help but think 'that's not how a human interacts with it!'
when I see the robot arm doing its monotony thing for 5 million or so
keypresses. Add in a reality distortion field and you can see how 'Hockey
Puck' mice get to see the light of day.

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HeyLaughingBoy
Most of them. You can't simply test in an uncontrolled environment because
then you introduce variables that distort your test results. Sometimes to the
point of rendering them meaningless.

So you end up doing both: most of the testing under controlled laboratory
conditions, and the rest in the "real world" with "real users."

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OxO4
Some nice insights but unfortunately some of the pictures are overexposed,
presumably to get a "sciencey" look.

EDIT: language.

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6stringmerc
Totally tongue in cheek, but no mention of "Can we make this just different
enough so that it works like a past product but won't be backwards
compatible?" seems a little suspicious.

