
How Apple could have avoided much of the controversy - Philipp__
https://chuqui.com/2016/10/how-apple-could-have-avoided-much-of-the-controversy/
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mturmon
This was a really smart article.

It seems to me that a lot of the exaggerated angst around HN about this
announcement (visible nearby) is due to the fact that the professed desires of
high-capacity hardware users (diverse ports, lots of RAM, expansion) have been
ignored by Apple's new product.

Some of this is real (i.e., SW developers are not Apple's main audience for
this machine). But much of it is people who have never used the product
extrapolating what they feel they need, and finding the machine wanting.
People appear to be forgetting that Apple clearly does a lot of research into
what is possible, and usage patterns with new hardware.

~~~
twblalock
> SW developers are not Apple's main audience for this machine

I'm not too sure about that. Almost every startup software developer I know
uses a company-issued Macbook Pro. I'm not sure what it's like in some of the
older, larger companies, but that's definitely the case at most startups.

~~~
mturmon
I just mean Apple is not prioritizing devs with their hardware. They are
aiming at a larger target that happens to include devs.

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mjsweet
Here is an interesting statement from the article that rings true for me:

"A lot of it boils down to this concept: We demand Apple innovate, but we
insist they don’t change anything."

~~~
charlesism
That's the part I thought was completely out to lunch.

The people who really drone endlessly about "innovation" are the finance
section people.

The pro and dev customers who are complaining now - ie: the ones who cheered
for "no new features" back when 10.6 was announced - generally want _better_
computers, and they generally focus on speed and stability.

~~~
basch
There are two pretty simple ways this could have been avoided.

1) A 12 and 14in macbook ( / air) instead of what they released.

2) A 13 and 15in macbook pro that put power ahead of battery and thinness.

2b) Pros having the option to get 32GB RAM, which I am sure will be part of
next years model. Apple generally leaves out a feature they could have easily
shipped, soas to make next years look like a bigger step.

2 Macbook/Airs and 2 pros, and eliminating all other SKUs would make more
people happy, and make things simpler. Instead they taint the Pro name, and
leave the old Macbook in the lineup.

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tracker1
There's plenty of people that _do_ want a portable office machine, they're
docked/pluged in at their desk or home most of the day, and may have it in a
meeting for an hour or so...

Beyond this, I don't have too much issue with limited ports, I think that 2-3
is probably ideal. I do think that a regular headphone+mic port is important,
as you're talking plenty of no-power devices that a lot of us use.

The apple core desktop market these days seems to include a _lot_ of
developers. Partly through need (ios app development) and partly by choice
(friendly unix environment).

I'm still upset at a missing mid-range option that doesn't have a built in
monitor... and a better solution to the pro line that is expressly upgradable.

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Gigablah
Yet another article denigrating detractors as "nerds". I switched right off
when I got to that part.

~~~
dimgl
Offended? The article is right. We expect Apple to innovate but the power
users get mad that they're not keeping things the same. It's like when they
switched to Thunderbolt. There was a huge outroar because it wasn't USB 2.0,
and then everyone just kind of forgot.

~~~
twblalock
> It's like when they switched to Thunderbolt. There was a huge outroar
> because it wasn't USB 2.0, and then everyone just kind of forgot.

It's also like the time they got rid of floppy drives, firewire, optical
drives in laptops, removable batteries in laptops, the headphone jack on the
iPhone 7...

Apple keeps increasing its revenue every time it does one of these things,
which suggests that the complainers represent a small percentage of consumers.

~~~
Gigablah
Game companies also make a truckload of money when they add more
microtransactions to their mobile games. Does that mean it's good for
consumers?

I'm an Apple customer, not their cheerleader.

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meric
Dongles are fine, but I wish they gave the iPhone and Macbook two ports each.
Charging the iPhone while listening to music and charging Macbook while
connected to iPhone are very common scenarios.

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gigatexal
Healthy for the ecosystem? Haha when was the last time Apple listened to the
customers. Before with Jobs it was my way or the highway and that was fine
since it was his firm and his vision we all got behind. But this new Apple is
fighting to stay relevant in an environment with newcomers like MS and Google
so I think we might have seen peak Apple actually.

~~~
mattkevan
Newcomers like _Microsoft?_

~~~
gigatexal
Yeah since when have they been a credible threat to Apple when it came to
hardware?

