6 ms·

Wow. I hate to say it, but I thought the products in Microsoft's event yesterday were way more exciting than anything from Apple lately. This plus macOS Sierra

by nkw 10y ago

Wow. I hate to say it, but I thought the products in Microsoft's event yesterday were way more exciting than anything from Apple lately. This plus macOS Sierra seems like a whole lot of "meh". This coming from a guy whose first computer was an Apple IIe, who owned a Mac Cube, and whose daily driver is a trashcan MacPro.

usaphp 10y ago
While I agree that Apple event was unimpressive today, I wonder what exactly was so "exciting" from the Microsoft? That $4200 desktop with an outdated unupgradable hardware and a touch screen for the OS which is know for being horrible at scaling things?
josho 10y ago
Sadly I have to agree. I wonder if Jobs really was that much of a visionary that the company is lost for ways to innovate without him.
- gm-conspiracy 10y ago
  It seems pretty obvious to me. At least they didn't release any 2nd gen Newtons.
  - maxxxxx 10y ago
    I would love a new Newton :-)
- taytus 10y ago
  I believe he was. Besides being a great salesperson. Today's speakers were terrible.
- tedajax 10y ago
  I try not to buy too much into the Jobs hype because it falls into the same line of thinking that leads to the "Great Man" theory which I don't put much stock in. That said he did seem to have a way of understanding the whole ecosystem that Apple was trying to sell. In the post Jobs era the number of products and configurations available is getting pretty unruly and you now have an issue where you can't plug an iphone 7 out of the box into a new MBP without a dongle. That's pretty disjointed and strange. The TouchBar also seems to be misplaced on the MBP which every time I've had one for work is pretty much immediately folded up and put under a thunderbolt display (now requiring another dongle) and making the TouchBar worthless. So yeah I don't know if you need Jobs specifically but you certainly need someone looking over the entire product range and making sure it makes some amount of sense.
  - josu 10y ago
    >you can't plug an iphone 7 out of the box into a new MBP without a dongle Amazing
    - ythl 10y ago
      > Amazing ly poor foresight on Apple's part
  - swlkr 10y ago
    You could say they're counting on iCloud instead of people directly plugging their devices into one another.
  - DontGiveTwoFlux 10y ago
    I think it's been two or three years since I've plugged my iPhone into my computer to do something besides charge it. Good riddance! iTunes in the later years felt awkward and hard to use.
    - whywhywhywhy 10y ago
      This is the same logic as "iPhone users only ever use the bundled headphones anyway so why need a jack?" (which also can't be used with the new MBP)
      - andai 10y ago
        Wait.. what? I thought it has a headphone jack?
- ryanSrich 10y ago
  As much as the hacker crowd loves to hate Jobs, he really was the visionary for the entire company. Apple has a very far lead, but if these events continue to go the way they are going I don't see that lasting another 10 years.
- simplexion 10y ago
  Apple under Steve Jobs didn't innovate... they advertised.
  - mittsh 10y ago
    They released the first mass market all-in-one personal computer with mouse input + pixel based text rendering, multiple fonts & cursive. They pushed for USB-A standard 19 years ago. They killed parallel & serial ports. They started the trend of making beautiful devices that don't feel like minified mainframes. They made UNIX truly mass market. They made the first music player that could handle more than 8 songs. They revolutionized smartphones + introduced touch based keyboards. They created WebKit. They also advertised. And I love most of their ads (at least those during Steve Jobs' time).
    - simplexion 10y ago
      Most of these "facts" you have posted aren't true.
      - grzm 10y ago
        I can see taking issue with a couple of them. "They pushed for USB-A standard 19 years ago. They killed parallel & serial ports." Apple wasn't part of the initial group of companies that were involved in the USB standard. The iMac did greatly lead to its adoption. I think "killing parallel and serial ports" is a little over the top, but one could argue that the adoption of USB greatly reduced the use of serial and parallel ports. http://www.macworld.com/article/1135017/imacanniversary.html http://www.macworld.com/article/1135017/imacanniversary.html "They started the trend of making beautiful devices that don't feel like minified mainframes." Subjective. Though Apple's designs have been very influential, sometimes outright copied. "They made the first music player that could handle more than 8 songs." I don't know what the capacities of other offerings at the time. "They revolutionized smartphones + introduced touch based keyboards." The influence of the iPhone was pretty significant. Was there an earlier phone that was widely known that had a touch-based keyboard? "They created WebKit." This one's pretty clearly not true. WebKit's lineage goes back to KHTML and KJS. Which ones do you take particular issue with? Edit to add portion on Webkit.
sccxy 10y ago
Even Paint 3D was more exciting than this keynote.
Sgt_Apone 10y ago
Completely agreed. Speaking of Microsoft, I wonder how the touch bar will operate in Boot Camp. I would hope that they'll at least leave the default F keys on there.
- astockwell 10y ago
  Or VMWare for that matter.
lrc 10y ago
+1. Writing this on a trashcan 'pro. I love it; I'm happy with it, 32G and a little La Cie RAID, but I know I paid too much for it. Last year's MS rollout opened my eyes. I ordered a Surface Pro 4 the next day. Was skeptical about the keyboard, but it's good enough to code with. Install Git, Atom or VS Code, IntelliJ and I'm off. It's now my go to device when I want to do a little light coding on vacation. The kids love to draw with the pen. It's a lot of fun.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
kkylin 10y ago
I've found Sierra to be very disappointing. A few new features I'll never use, and things I do use everyday are now broken, e.g., the new PDFKit broke Skim annotations. Sigh. The new machine actually looks ok to me, though I agree the advance over the previous model seems very incremental.

by nkw 10y ago

usaphp 10y ago

While I agree that Apple event was unimpressive today, I wonder what exactly was so "exciting" from the Microsoft? That $4200 desktop with an outdated unupgradable hardware and a touch screen for the OS which is know for being horrible at scaling things?

josho 10y ago

Sadly I have to agree. I wonder if Jobs really was that much of a visionary that the company is lost for ways to innovate without him.

gm-conspiracy 10y ago
It seems pretty obvious to me. At least they didn't release any 2nd gen Newtons.
- maxxxxx 10y ago
  I would love a new Newton :-)
taytus 10y ago
I believe he was. Besides being a great salesperson. Today's speakers were terrible.
tedajax 10y ago
I try not to buy too much into the Jobs hype because it falls into the same line of thinking that leads to the "Great Man" theory which I don't put much stock in. That said he did seem to have a way of understanding the whole ecosystem that Apple was trying to sell. In the post Jobs era the number of products and configurations available is getting pretty unruly and you now have an issue where you can't plug an iphone 7 out of the box into a new MBP without a dongle. That's pretty disjointed and strange. The TouchBar also seems to be misplaced on the MBP which every time I've had one for work is pretty much immediately folded up and put under a thunderbolt display (now requiring another dongle) and making the TouchBar worthless. So yeah I don't know if you need Jobs specifically but you certainly need someone looking over the entire product range and making sure it makes some amount of sense.
- josu 10y ago
  >you can't plug an iphone 7 out of the box into a new MBP without a dongle Amazing
  - ythl 10y ago
    > Amazing ly poor foresight on Apple's part
- swlkr 10y ago
  You could say they're counting on iCloud instead of people directly plugging their devices into one another.
- DontGiveTwoFlux 10y ago
  I think it's been two or three years since I've plugged my iPhone into my computer to do something besides charge it. Good riddance! iTunes in the later years felt awkward and hard to use.
  - whywhywhywhy 10y ago
    This is the same logic as "iPhone users only ever use the bundled headphones anyway so why need a jack?" (which also can't be used with the new MBP)
    - andai 10y ago
      Wait.. what? I thought it has a headphone jack?
ryanSrich 10y ago
As much as the hacker crowd loves to hate Jobs, he really was the visionary for the entire company. Apple has a very far lead, but if these events continue to go the way they are going I don't see that lasting another 10 years.
simplexion 10y ago
Apple under Steve Jobs didn't innovate... they advertised.
- mittsh 10y ago
  They released the first mass market all-in-one personal computer with mouse input + pixel based text rendering, multiple fonts & cursive. They pushed for USB-A standard 19 years ago. They killed parallel & serial ports. They started the trend of making beautiful devices that don't feel like minified mainframes. They made UNIX truly mass market. They made the first music player that could handle more than 8 songs. They revolutionized smartphones + introduced touch based keyboards. They created WebKit. They also advertised. And I love most of their ads (at least those during Steve Jobs' time).
  - simplexion 10y ago
    Most of these "facts" you have posted aren't true.
    - grzm 10y ago
      I can see taking issue with a couple of them. "They pushed for USB-A standard 19 years ago. They killed parallel & serial ports." Apple wasn't part of the initial group of companies that were involved in the USB standard. The iMac did greatly lead to its adoption. I think "killing parallel and serial ports" is a little over the top, but one could argue that the adoption of USB greatly reduced the use of serial and parallel ports. http://www.macworld.com/article/1135017/imacanniversary.html http://www.macworld.com/article/1135017/imacanniversary.html "They started the trend of making beautiful devices that don't feel like minified mainframes." Subjective. Though Apple's designs have been very influential, sometimes outright copied. "They made the first music player that could handle more than 8 songs." I don't know what the capacities of other offerings at the time. "They revolutionized smartphones + introduced touch based keyboards." The influence of the iPhone was pretty significant. Was there an earlier phone that was widely known that had a touch-based keyboard? "They created WebKit." This one's pretty clearly not true. WebKit's lineage goes back to KHTML and KJS. Which ones do you take particular issue with? Edit to add portion on Webkit.

sccxy 10y ago

Even Paint 3D was more exciting than this keynote.

Sgt_Apone 10y ago

Completely agreed. Speaking of Microsoft, I wonder how the touch bar will operate in Boot Camp. I would hope that they'll at least leave the default F keys on there.

astockwell 10y ago
Or VMWare for that matter.

lrc 10y ago

+1. Writing this on a trashcan 'pro. I love it; I'm happy with it, 32G and a little La Cie RAID, but I know I paid too much for it. Last year's MS rollout opened my eyes. I ordered a Surface Pro 4 the next day. Was skeptical about the keyboard, but it's good enough to code with. Install Git, Atom or VS Code, IntelliJ and I'm off. It's now my go to device when I want to do a little light coding on vacation. The kids love to draw with the pen. It's a lot of fun.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

kkylin 10y ago

I've found Sierra to be very disappointing. A few new features I'll never use, and things I do use everyday are now broken, e.g., the new PDFKit broke Skim annotations. Sigh. The new machine actually looks ok to me, though I agree the advance over the previous model seems very incremental.