
Thoughts and Observations Regarding This Week’s Apple Event - gms
http://daringfireball.net/2013/10/this_weeks_ipad_event
======
nl
_I don’t think anyone at Apple took these functional regressions in the Mac
version of the iWork apps lightly, but they are no mistake, either.

The bottom line as I see it: you need to have clear priorities, and Apple’s
highest priority here was clearly cross-platform parity for iPhone, iPad, web,
and Mac. No other office platform in the world has that — complete parity
between native apps for phone, tablet, desktop, and a web app_

Does anyone think this is actually the right thing to do? If feature parity
really is the goal, then I'm much more concerned about the future of the Mac
now than I was yesterday.

~~~
IBM
Sure it's the right thing to do. Apple is designing iWork for the 99%. Some of
those features may be added back when they can implement them properly across
all versions of iWork, but I wouldn't be surprised if they don't. I think
Apple is taking steps to make inroads in enterprise and I think they'll be
successful. Numbers is never going to replace Excel for an investment banker,
but it's not intended to. Most people in Corporate America don't actually need
Word or Excel to perform their job, it's just what IT departments bought and
that's the standard.

For 99% of enterprise users, there really isn't a barrier to switching to
another productivity suite. It's mainly just institutional inertia from the IT
departments. Their concerns will be alleviated as well when Apple keeps
building out tools to make their lives easier, like the recent volume app
purchasing made available. And most importantly, the total cost of ownership
is going to look different now that OS upgrades and iWork upgrades will be
free going forward, making iOS devices and Macs more enticing a choice.

edit: Matthew Panzarino discusses what Apple is going for with the iWork
changes.

[http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/26/stop-freaking-out-about-
iwo...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/26/stop-freaking-out-about-iwork/)

~~~
graeme
It's still a huge slap in the face to those who's been using Pages for
anything even slightly complicated.

I'm an author. I wrote my books in Pages, loved it, and recommended it to
everyone. I'm now very glad I didn't upgrade, because Pages 5 would make it
impossible to format my books.

I'm the sort of guy who tells everyone he knows "buy a Mac!". I'm now
hesitant, for the first time in a long while. I'm very concerned about iOS-
ification. I bought this machine because I use it to do things.

This happened in 2011 with Final Cut Pro. Apple lost a lot of video editors,
and my understanding is that their mindshare didn't bounce back.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
Apple would rather you write a book in iBooks Author than anything else.

Pages and MS Word have never really been products for the professional author:
they are consumer-class apps for the mass-market. Apple recognises this to a
greater extent than Microsoft, and by cutting functionality, they can vastly
improve usability for the core market. Whether they will bother to fill the
void left with their own professional writing software or not is up for
debate; they will, IMO, just leave that to Adobe.

I think you should still tell everyone you know to buy a Mac. Just tell those
who are professional-class writers that the latest version of Pages might not
fulfil their needs and point out the alternatives.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
Also, if he wants to make his publisher happy, he should write in Adobe
InCopy.

[http://www.adobe.com/products/incopy.html](http://www.adobe.com/products/incopy.html)

------
Touche
> There just aren’t that many people — yet? — using Kindle Fires, Galaxy Tabs,
> Nexuses, or Surfaces as alternatives to the iPad. Thus the massive
> discrepancies between the iPad’s market share and usage share numbers.

2 years ago you wrote[1]:

> The iPad’s role in the tablet market much more closely resembles the iPod’s
> role in the digital music player market a decade ago than it does the
> iPhone’s role in the 2008 phone market.

Need any help moving that goalpost?

[1][http://daringfireball.net/2011/07/ipad_dominance](http://daringfireball.net/2011/07/ipad_dominance)

~~~
interpol_p
> Need any help moving that goalpost?

Is it really moving the goalposts when things have changed in two years?

In 2011 the iPad absolutely dominated the tablet market. It was the tablet
market. Not the case today, reporting both of those things is not moving the
goalposts.

~~~
vhumina
> reporting both of those things is not moving the goalposts.

He made a prediction:

 _You don’t have to look hard to find many other observers with the same
belief — that Android will succeed in the tablet market similarly to how it
has succeeded in the phone market. Why the certainty, though? It’s certainly
possible, I agree. A 20-1 unit sale lead over all Android tablets combined
seems preposterous. But I don’t think it’s certain. It reminds me of the
certainty that many observers had, circa 2002-2005, that the iPod could not
maintain a 70 percent share of the music player market._

 _The fundamental difference I see between smartphones and tablets is that
mobile phones were an existing and long-standing market prior to the iPhone.
Apple’s stated goal in 2007 was to get 1 percent of the total mobile phone
market by the end of 2008. Most people today still buy phones the same way
they did in 2006: they go to their local mobile carrier store and buy whatever
the sales staff there convinces them to buy. Over 100 million times, that’s
been an Android phone. I see no sign, though, that phone carriers are having
any more success selling tablets than they ever were selling anything other
than phones. Remember carrier-subsidized netbooks?_

 _I’m not trying to cherry-pick data. I’m simply observing, based on Apple’s
sales data and Google’s activation data, that the tablet market doesn’t today
look anything like the smartphone market ever did. The iPad didn’t enter the
tablet market. It created the tablet market. The iPad’s role in the tablet
market much more closely resembles the iPod’s role in the digital music player
market a decade ago than it does the iPhone’s role in the 2008 phone market._

 _Or as Marco Arment wrote almost seven months ago, there still really is no
“tablet” market — just an iPad market._

~~~
ghshephard
"It’s certainly possible, I agree." \- seems pretty reasonable assessment to
me.

Also - iPod was a music player. It's competitors were...Music Players. If
Apple had only released the Touch, they would have been wiped out by
competitors on the music player front - but they stepped up and released the
Nano/Shuffle.

It is interesting that Apple doesn't seem to have any interest in releasing
any lower end tablets (akin to the Nano/Shuffle) to compete in the
TV/WebConsumption market. Their decision not to enter that market has left
themselves pretty vulnerable to disruption from below.

The real measure will be if people are actually those tablets in the market
that Apple is competing in. We won't know for a couple years - my guess is
that Apple is going to regret leaving that opening up for competitors -
Tablets can migrate upwards a lot more effectively than underpowered netbooks
could impact the Laptop market...

------
brian_cloutier
> the goal was always to get to free. Remember all the stuff from a few years
> ago, when the iPhone first came out, and Apple used “subscription-based
> accounting” for iPhone sales, because it was the only way it saw to comply
> with U.S. accounting regulations and also provide free software updates?

> Apple’s not trying to milk money from those customers ineligible for the
> free versions of these apps (although, of course, they will happily keep the
> money). It’s simply the fallout from Apple’s accounting guidelines that they
> cannot simply offer these apps free of charge to everyone.

Can anyone who knows more about accounting than myself confirm this? I find it
_very_ hard to believe that accountants dictate your pricing strategy.
Accountants are there to manage your money and keep the books straight. They
might advise you that offering free updates foregoes a large source of
revenue, but there is no way that the way they define your products ties your
hands, and stops you from legally giving away certain products.

But, I only say this because I know nothing about accounting.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
It has to do with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) financial
measures. Because the way Apple was reporting its revenues, it was forced to
charge for iPod touch software upgrades while it didn’t have to do so for
iPhones software upgrades. That situation has since changed[1][2] and
apparently, Apple has now found a way to make OS X upgrades free while
adhering to accountancy rules.

[1] [http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2009/09/14/accounting-rule-
chang...](http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2009/09/14/accounting-rule-change-in-
apples-favor/)

[2] [http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/apple-earnings-a-heads-up-
on-a...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/apple-earnings-a-heads-up-on-
accounting-change-would-have-been-nice/29947)

------
jcutrell
_In the meantime, make no mistake, Apple continues to sweat the details on
these events. This year they customized the entrance to the gallery building
at Yerba Buena Center, ripping out the doors in the back — just for this event
— to create a sunlit open-air entrance to the post-event hands-on area._

This is cool and all, but not many of us got to see these polishings. This
sitcom of a presentation was, indeed, predictable in most senses. There is
little delight to be had, and I don't necessarily blame Apple, but I sort of
do. They know it's predictable; they read the unbelievable amount of
prediction blogs that exist out there. And yet, they rely largely on video and
proverbially screaming things we already know (like iPad selling better than
every other tablet) to present their new products. I'd rather see them play 10
very well-made games and demo 10 very well-made everyday applications. Maybe
show us more about how beautiful and powerful the Mac Pro is. I don't want to
see them tout how awesome Apple is, and then introduce incremental products,
even if incremental products is the right thing to do. For the record, I do
think incremental is the right choice for this refresh anyway - there's a
better way to present it.

 _This is the iPad Mini I expected to see in October 2014, not 2013._

Really? I have a hard time believing that Gruber actually believed this. This
was obviously the next step for the iPad Mini. Better performance, retina
screen.

 _Last year’s Mini was a triumph of design; this year’s update is a triumph of
operational efficiency._

This is why it makes the event so boring. A great summary. This is another way
of saying, "while it's not exciting or visually stunning, it's a big business
win for Apple, and subsequently will sort of drive prices down for millions of
consumers." This doesn't really combat against the primary criticisms. While I
understand that public speaking isn't really his gig, Cook sounds a lot like
he has a thesaurus for buzz words that he brushes up on while looking at
pictures of Apple and big 3d pie charts of how much of a piece of shit the
Microsoft tablets are.

I understand the updates - but the presentation is largely underwhelming. This
could have been spun better. Oh yeah - did anyone catch that there's a new
MacBook Pro? Does anyone know the differences introduced? What an understated
rollout.

 _The big disappointment for me is that Apple did not announce 4K Cinema
Displays to go along with it. Why make a machine capable of driving three 4K
displays but not make the displays?_

My thoughts exactly. This should have been the one more thing.

[formatting edit]

~~~
panacea
I too, was expecting a matching glossy black rounded corner 4K Thunderbolt
Display to go with the Pro can. Maybe they won't have it ready for December,
but I'm sure it's in the works.

~~~
bennyg
Exactly. I'm sure it's because they won't have one ready for the holiday
season, less because they aren't working on one. It would be foolish not to at
least have their hands in the 4k display game with their vertical integration
strategy.

------
aufreak3
This is likely the meta-est thing Gruber has written - except perhaps writing
the Markdown manual in Markdown.

Apple event happens, random sites write various things about the
announcements, Gruber waits for the noise to settle and writes a piece mostly
in favour of Apple.

And you know what? It works! (No sarcasm)

~~~
bane
Well, he needs to see which way the wind is blowing before he can offer
"insightful" apologia.

Ack, I'm being too hard. It's a decent summary piece just like the 20 or 30
others I've seen on the event, just a little more cheerleadery.

------
innino
I like what Apple is doing, but I hope Microsoft can build a viable competitor
ecosystem. I do think Apple is good at beautiful, approachable products, but I
think they make so many sacrifices in terms of power and usability to achieve
it that we need a strong alternative from Microsoft.

The iPad Air looks amazing for example, but compared to the OS-level features
offered by tablet Windows 8.1, I think it's lacking.

------
beloch
If Apple offered software that was free to platforms that run on non-Apple
hardware, that would actually be free. However, is it free if they

a) found a way to shave $X off the cost of their average machine sold

b) figured out that they would save $Y on support costs if more users had the
same OS version and work suite installed

and then found that $X + $Y is greater than the income they receive from
selling Mavericks and iWork? Mavericks and iWork are not free. Apple just
found a smarter way to make their customers pay for them. If you would have
bought and used them all, you just won. If you would have installed Linux, you
just got hosed.

~~~
mikeash
That's just a complicated way of saying, "It's not free, just rolled into the
cost of the hardware." Which should be blindingly obvious to just about
anyone.

------
ChuckMcM
Not a lot of additional insight here. I wonder if, at the next iPad event,
they will introduce the iPad Pro. I'm not going to buy an iPad Air but I would
buy an iPad with the A7 and the same display as the Google Pixel laptop.
Probably not going to happen though, older eyes are not the 'fashionable'
eyes.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
Like John Gruber, I think that calling the new 10" model ‘iPad Air’ hints at a
future ‘iPad Pro’. Ever since the release of the original iPad, I’ve been
hoping for a larger iPad. However, the reason I want such an iPad is so that
apps can be built that use more screen real estate, apps more like on desktop
OSes. I would love a full Photoshop experience made for touch (I use Photoshop
Touch on iPad, but it’s definitely not the full Photoshop).

How I envision such an iPad Pro: 13.3" diagonal @ 3072 by 2048 pixels (1536 by
1024 ‘real’ pixels). That way, it could fit two current portrait mode iPad
apps next to each other, and app developers can make new apps to take
advantage of the 2x horizontal space. It would be great if, by then, iOS would
support ICC profiles and accurate display of color spaces besides sRGB (Adobe
RGB, CMYK, Lab, etc).

