
Apple March 2016 Keynote – 10am PDT - gvinter
http://www.apple.com/apple-events/march-2016/
======
sabertoothed
I found that keynote terribly disappointing and uninspired. I had really hoped
for Apple that they show something new and innovative - instead of two smaller
versions of existing products.

EDIT: I did not mean that in an Apple-bashing way. But I wonder what Elon Musk
would come up with if he had time and - let's say - 100 billion USD at his
disposal.

~~~
beachwood23
I agree. There was little sign of the old Apple Arrogance that paved new
product lines and pushed tech forward. Instead, the presentation explicitly
mentioned several times that they only released these products because
"customers asked for them."

As Steve Jobs famously said, "customers don't know what they want." This
change of motivation in their product development is a significant one.

~~~
parasubvert
Steve Jobs never said that, or at least it's easily to misinterpret. Here's
what he said:

"But in the end, for something this complicated, it's really hard to design
products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want
until you show it to them." (Businessweek, 1998)

The point is that Apple is VERY concerned about what customers want, and
listen to customers, and usually achieves that through an engine of
incremental improvement once the product is out there. They just don't believe
in a focus-group approach to new products.

Secondly, the current internet meme is that Apple needs to slow down and make
their products more stable. Yet we still want our innovation "drug hit" from
their announcements. This is hard to balance.

------
nabaraz
Edit - doesn't work on Chrome 49

\---------------------------------

Non safari users, you can change your user agent to Safari for live stream.

Chrome extension- [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/user-agent-
switche...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/user-agent-switcher-
for-c/djflhoibgkdhkhhcedjiklpkjnoahfmg/related?hl=en-US)

Firefox extension- [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/user-agent-
sw...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/user-agent-switcher/)

~~~
azefiel
Works on Edge...

------
JonCox
No updated MacBook Pro? That's annoying.

I was rather hoping for a small refresh to include the new Skylake processors,
it's certainly due one:
[http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#Mac](http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#Mac)

~~~
twoodfin
I think one of two things is true:

\- There's no big redesign planned this year, and the Macbook and Macbook Pro
will see press-release releases with updated guts (most notably Skylake)
before too long.

\- There is a significant redesign of the Macbook Pro coming up, and it'll be
announced at WWDC.

~~~
phaser
I hope number 2 ends up to be true, but most likely number one. Phil Schiller
described the ipad pro as "The ultimate replacement for the PC", and that
means Apple is all-in for replacing the laptop in the mass market, while also
very convenient for profits since their closed hardware will only run an OS
and Apps signed by Apple, with only one store to buy Software.

They don't have an incentive to support open computing, and for the first time
in years IBM and Microsoft have better products (Carbon X1, Surface book)
while OSX haven't seen a major update and MacBook Pros that once were the best
professional laptops are really past generation hardware and software.

------
netinstructions
I'm curious why my modern browser "doesn’t support live streaming of the
event" according to Apple.

It was the same issue last year. I need an Apple product (or a Windows 10 PC
with Microsoft Edge) to watch a livestream on the internet. Odd for 2016.

Is this really a technical barrier or a marketing/strategic barrier?

~~~
nabaraz
Interesting that Edge is allowed to stream.

PS: Wiki [1] says Apples's HTTP live streaming is supported on Chrome 30 and
onwards.

[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Live_Streaming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Live_Streaming)

~~~
jayflux
Isn't it more to do with safari doesn't run on Windows? So Apple need to
officially support a Windows browser as to not exclude all those windows users

------
t_fatus
Your browser doesn’t support live streaming of the event.

Seriously Apple ...

'Apple refuses to stream on your browser' would be a better message

~~~
benjaminl
Apple uses a live streaming variant of HLS to stream their events. Since HLS
is basically an Apple proprietary protocol it isn't well supported on other
platforms.

Apple in one of their previous press events enabled support for the Microsoft
Edge browser.

------
riscy
I cringed every time they kept trying to emphasize the night hue mode as if it
is innovative... they explicitly removed two apps from the store that added
the feature in the past just to try and profit from an old idea.

~~~
jonpaine
A big part of Apple's product appeal is the ecosystem, and a big part of the
ecosystem is that amazing features simply work, and work well. They don't have
to be configured or hunted for. Taken a step further, the problems some of
these new features solve don't even have to be fully apparent to the user.

To that end, Apple improves their ecosystem by making good features standard.
Tim Cook mentioned that there were 1 billion Apple devices in circulation. How
many of those do you think have users that were even aware of the existence of
those two apps? Or even the problem that they address?

I'm not a fan of any bigCo squashing innovative software (and I'm certainly
not defending it), but there's no question that in cases like this bringing
that feature into the fold leads to a better user experience across the board.
To those of us who knew the circumstances it might be cringeworthy, but for
the other 98% of users it's just another advance in a progression of features
that keeps the ecosystem's user-experience better than any other.

~~~
riscy
> Apple improves their ecosystem by making good features standard.

Only if you buy their latest devices. Case in point: I just updated to iOS 9.3
for the hue feature and I come to find out (by the fine print on their
website) that it's not available for iPhone 5 users for no reason other than
to force upgrades.

If they handled the Flux app situation fairly I wouldn't need to buy a new
phone for such a simple but important feature.

~~~
jonpaine
I don't disagree with you. I'm not being an Apple apologist, just commenting
why from their viewpoint it makes sense to bring the very best features into
the fold of standard, native, functionality.

------
ubercow
For those who aren't in a position to watch the video, Ars Technica is doing
their usual live blog

[http://live.arstechnica.com/apples-
march-2016-event/](http://live.arstechnica.com/apples-march-2016-event/)

~~~
andreis_
The Verge: [https://live.theverge.com/apple-iphone-se-ipad-pro-event-
liv...](https://live.theverge.com/apple-iphone-se-ipad-pro-event-live-blog/)

MacRumors: [http://www.macrumors.com/2016/03/21/live-coverage-iphone-
se-...](http://www.macrumors.com/2016/03/21/live-coverage-iphone-se-ipad-pro-
event/)

TechCrunch: [http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/21/liveblog-apple-event-
keynot...](http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/21/liveblog-apple-event-keynote-
iphone-se-ipad-pro-spring-2016/)

------
rayiner
Big reveal: robots will now do the dirty work of recycling iPhones, instead of
Bangladeshi children.

~~~
inspector-g
I think this is showing another benefit of focusing on a smaller number of
products and controlling their development from (virtually) top-to-bottom.

Apple has such a limited number of products that they can build robots to
disassemble said products piece-by-piece, which is arguably a more efficient
manner to recycle individual parts. Other companies that have a zillion
products would likely find it difficult to achieve the same level of
efficiency, because they basically have to "shred" their products and sort the
bits out later.

EDIT: Do you have a source on Apple using "Bangladeshi children" for
disassembly before today?

~~~
masklinn
OTOH a great way to reduce waste is to make products repairable and
upgradable, which is something Apple keeps moving away from, especially on
popular products.

~~~
emdowling
Not really. The products aren't upgradable or repairable by the end user, but
as they demonstrated today, they are upgradeable (to brand new things like
solar panels) and repairable by Apple themselves. I for one hate the idea of
an end-user upgradeable smart phone. That sounds like a minefield of driver
issues and the like that I just don't want. Its why I moved away from Windows
in the first place.

I think it makes a great deal of sense to consolidate the upgrades and repairs
- they can do it far more efficiently at scale.

~~~
masklinn
> Not really.

Yes really.

> The products aren't upgradable or repairable by the end user

See? Yes really indeed.

> as they demonstrated today, they are upgradeable (to brand new things like
> solar panels) and repairable by Apple themselves.

Recycling is neither upgrading nor repairing.

> I for one hate the idea of an end-user upgradeable smart phone. That sounds
> like a minefield of driver issues and the like that I just don't want. Its
> why I moved away from Windows in the first place.

I'm not talking changing GPU (which doesn't really make sense on a laptop let
alone a cell phone), I'm talking about soldered RAM and non-standard SSD
connectors on laptops, and heavily glued batteries behind tons of odd screws
on both phones and laptops. No drivers involved, and the ability to increase
device lifespan by years.

> I think it makes a great deal of sense to consolidate the upgrades and
> repairs

Again, recycling is not upgrading or repairing, it's taking waste and re-
making into product, that requires more materials and energy than not having
to do that and being able to keep using the product in the first place.

> they can do it far more efficiently at scale.

That makes literally no sense. Recycling, even at scale, can't be more
efficient than not making product into waste in the first place. You can't
recover as much matter and energy as was put into building the product to
start with unless you've found a way around everything we know of
thermodynamics, and if you have what are you commenting on internet forums
for? You've basically solved all the world's problem!

------
Wintamute
༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ Give Skylake MBP

------
berberous
Anybody have a tip on how to watch on Windows 7?

~~~
bthrn
Open this network stream with VLC:

[http://p.events-
delivery.apple.com.edgesuite.net/1603kjbnadc...](http://p.events-
delivery.apple.com.edgesuite.net/1603kjbnadcpjhbasdvpjbasdvpjb/m3u8/hls_mvp.m3u8)

~~~
tux1968
Thank you. Why wouldn't they just put this on their website? Crazy that they
make it so uninviting for so many people.

~~~
mtgx
As with anything Apple, it's like that _by design_.

------
amiadsoto
Most boring apple keynote ever. Seriously.

------
romanovcode
What a horrible keynote. There was literally nothing new, just the same
products, only smaller.

------
mcintyre1994
On Safari on OSX and I'm just getting the "starting at 10am PDT" message,
anybody else?

