6 ms·

That's probably a temporary glitch in the Apple matrix however ... this is another announcement after the earlier announcement that they do not develop monitor

by gutnor 10y ago

That's probably a temporary glitch in the Apple matrix however ... this is another announcement after the earlier announcement that they do not develop monitor anymore. They won't develop wifi anymore. They are definitively reducing the Mac line ( you may love or not the new MBP, but they are clearly settling down on a single line of laptop with 3.5 models, and at best a status quo with the rest ) So what does Apple still do ? They do iPhone, iPad and Watches with a limited cloud offering. Everything else is shrinking: Professional line of software and hardware, Mac line in general, hardware ecosystem, even the plain first party software are somewhat stable (I mean, yeah there is TV coming and the rest is same old same old) What is such a gigantic company doing with its boatload of money that they can't even ship 1 pair of headphone on time ? Even their flagship laptop recently announced has a 4 weeks waiting period, after working on it for 2 years ? (yeah this is an exaggeration, of course there are technical difficulties, but again that's Apple, an enormous, ultra-rich company focused on an extremely tiny product line)

abraae 10y ago
We have a very small, cheap, basic 19" black Dell monitor sitting in the kitchen at home. When a new iphone arrived recently, I stuck the sticker that comes with it onto the base of the monitor. When an Apple loving friend came around I witnessed first hand the value of branding. She was entranced by this cool black Apple monitor and wanted to know where I had got it from. I'm pretty sure she would have paid at least $100 over the Dell price for such a cool Apple product. She was incredibly disappointed that it was a trick when she found out. The monitor no longer had any value in her eyes even though it was exactly the same as before. Apple can charge outrageous prices for their products, and people love them despite/because of that. Can't understand why they'd stop making monitors.
- vacri 10y ago
  A colleague of mine dropped nearly $3k on a personal MacBook Pro, then cancelled his order when he found out about the new touch bar. Then he started looking at other laptops that were good quality (we were suggesting lenovo X1s or dell XPSs) and he balked at the prices just above $2k. "But these are considerably less than what you already had paid for a laptop!" -> "Yeah, but they're not Apple, and when people see Apple, they know you have a good laptop". That branding was literally worth almost $1k to my colleague...
  - nerdponx 10y ago
    That or he doesn't want a laptop made of flexy plastic.
    - vacri 10y ago
      I don't know if you read my comment or not, but a core part of it was talking to my colleague about his desires in a laptop.
  - digi_owl 10y ago
    I guess he was willing to pay the premium to not have to mentally sift Thinkpads from Ideapads and XPSs from Inspirons. With Apple its just one "brand", Apple. It is perhaps the greatest marketing asset they possess.
    - krolley 10y ago
      Also, resale values are typically very good. Even years after the initial purchase you can recoup much, much more than a Dell or Lenovo.
      - digi_owl 10y ago
        Why is this even a consideration? Apple users seems to be the only ones that even care about "resale" of their computers, almost like they are investments rather than tools.
        jacobush 10y ago
        Because I thought I saved money by buying Lenovos on paper at least as good as the Apples. Only to have a resale value of about $10 after 3 years when time came to buy a new laptop. (If the hinges etc lasted that long.) A Macbook is more expensive, but not only did it last me +3 years, I sold it for about a third of its original price, money I used to pay part of my next Macbook. That's why. TL/DR - only Apple devices HAVE a resale value.
        10y ago
- Grishnakh 10y ago
  >Apple can charge outrageous prices for their products, and people love them despite/because of that. Can't understand why they'd stop making monitors. My guess is that there's just not enough profit in it. Monitors last a really long time, and while people like your friend will ooh and ahh over them, that doesn't necessarily translate into sales, and since they don't need to be replaced every year, they won't have the built-in profit that their phones have. It's probably the same with their WiFi access points.
  - jacobush 10y ago
    With their WiFi access points I suspect it's because WiFi gear gets overheated and break down. (Probably fried capacitors.) I have given up on Apples' and other premium gear WiFi because of this. Now I just purchase 3 new cheap WiFi routes every 12 - 18 months and throw away the ones I have. I have another Linksys "premium" home router ($200-300) but the WiFi died on that too, but it lives on as an OpenWRT home router but with WiFi disabled. The Apple WiFi routers also lived on for a while with WiFi disabled but acting as TimeMachine backups. Then the disks died and I couldn't be arsed to pry open the case with a hair drier to get at the disk inside and replace it. So for my home, the setup went from Apple all-in-one combo gear with routing, WiFi and backup disk, to specialized functions for WiFi (cheapest off the shelf), routing (openwrt), and backup disks (standard NAS hardware). (For TimeMachine.) I hope my 15" Macbook lasts for a really long time, because when it's dead I don't know if Apple has any Macbook I want to have. But that's tomorrows sorrows..., no use worrying about that until the time comes. (I guess I can always fall back to Linux and some PC laptop.)
    - hvidgaard 10y ago
      What you call "premium" is in reality just overpriced consumer gear. Ciscos enterprise access points happily sustain 5 years of thorough use without an issue, but they cost more than 300$.
    - mavhc 10y ago
      My random cheap MSI wifi router is about 10 years old, been on all that time. My work expensive Cisco access points are so reliable I've never seen some of them in 10 years (they're above the dropped ceiling)
- digi_owl 10y ago
  On first glance thats hilarious, but then it reminds me of the power of marketing and i get sad and worried about the state of humanity. Shit like this makes me wonder how we as a species has gotten as far as we have.
  - infectoid 10y ago
    Bear in mind that brand equity is often earned. I feel that Apple have genuinely earned over the years. However, they now risk losing a lot of it due to the fragmentation of their ecosystem.
    - digi_owl 10y ago
      Maybe. I can't help but feel that Apple would have been long dead if iPod had not gotten USB support, and thus was usable on Windows. Before that i don't think most anyone outside of USA even knew Apple existed unless you were interested in media production in some sense. And that in turn lead to a feedback loop because certain celebrities would show up with an iPod (mostly noticed because of those white wires) because they themselves walk the media circles. Similarly Apple could get the labels and studios to agree to distribute via iTunes because of that inside track in the industry. And that in turn was what bootstrapped iPhone beyond being a fancy screened featurephone (though whoever talked Jobs down from going "nuclear" on the gray market jailbreakers was perhaps the true genius there). But that all this then produce the effect that if you slap a fruit logo on a object peoples interest and appreciation is still worrying. What comes to mind is the comedy caricature of an "art critic" that can deliver a spiel of big words that means crap all upon closer scrutiny.
      - spdionis 10y ago
        To be fair you can't just call it a "fruit logo". If you try to slightly modify it people will instantly recognize that it's not the Apple logo and it goes back to being a stupid fruit logo. So (of course) the point is not the fruit but the symbol.
        10y ago
- DavideNL 10y ago
  You mention 1 experience with 1 person in your kitchen and conclude that this is how everyone behaves... Another interpretation might be that 'people pay outrageous prices' because Apple's products are of higher quality/last longer, which makes the long term price lower than similar products of competitors; For example, i am still using an iPhone 5 (September 2012) which runs the latest iOS version smoothly...
  - michaelbuddy 10y ago
    Thing is in the case of a dell monitor, those are incredibly well built. Over built in some areas. I believe a sudden drop in interest in a product because its not a brand you expected despite clear positive qualities indicates a malformed attachment.
    - DavideNL 10y ago
      > those are incredibly well built you know that because (i assume) you have the technical knowledge. Average people don't know which products of which brand may or may not be well built. But they do now that Apple products are generally of high quality.
      - michaelbuddy 10y ago
        The problem is in the case of zero-sum thinking with quality. "Oh that's not Apple, well it's crap" is ridiculous a logical fallacy. Apple being of whatever quality has no bearing on the quality of anything else. Not only do other companies match, many of them exceed quality of apple.
madeofpalk 10y ago
Thunderbolt display was also a massive 'glitch' in the lineup. It still has the old original Magsafe power on it which hasn't shipped on Macs for years! To mitigate this they've been shipping an adapter in the box since then. Crazy! http://www.macrumors.com/2012/06/13/apple-including-free-magsafe-2-converter-with-thunderbolt-display/ http://www.macrumors.com/2012/06/13/apple-including-free-mag...
- bdcravens 10y ago
  Seems to me the easiest way to support both types of MagSafe options (many machines out there from 2009-2011)
intended 10y ago
Apple will give out dividends.
Cthulhu_ 10y ago
> That's probably a temporary glitch in the Apple matrix however ... No, it's endemic to Apple products in the past five+ years, starting with Thunderbolt so people needed to carry converters to connect DVI and VGA monitors and beamers, wired networks, etc - which are common in most workplaces still. Apple could've alleviated that by providing a universal converter with the MBP, but they decided against that. They're repeating that step with the new Macbooks using only USB-C, although this time it's a bit more standardized. They screwed up with the iPhone, again making their own proprietary connector instead of USB-C (which probably wasn't around at the time), and by removing the 3.5mm jack making it incompatible with all existing headphones / earplugs. Apple could've fixed it with the iphone 7, but they didn't, sticking to their connector in which they probably invested a lot of monies. They could've fixed it with the new MBP by adding a universal converter / docking station, or even supplying an USB-C to Lightning cable, but they didn't. It's not a glitch in the Apple matrix, because they're not making any efforts in fixing it.

by gutnor 10y ago

abraae 10y ago

We have a very small, cheap, basic 19" black Dell monitor sitting in the kitchen at home. When a new iphone arrived recently, I stuck the sticker that comes with it onto the base of the monitor. When an Apple loving friend came around I witnessed first hand the value of branding. She was entranced by this cool black Apple monitor and wanted to know where I had got it from. I'm pretty sure she would have paid at least $100 over the Dell price for such a cool Apple product. She was incredibly disappointed that it was a trick when she found out. The monitor no longer had any value in her eyes even though it was exactly the same as before. Apple can charge outrageous prices for their products, and people love them despite/because of that. Can't understand why they'd stop making monitors.

vacri 10y ago
A colleague of mine dropped nearly $3k on a personal MacBook Pro, then cancelled his order when he found out about the new touch bar. Then he started looking at other laptops that were good quality (we were suggesting lenovo X1s or dell XPSs) and he balked at the prices just above $2k. "But these are considerably less than what you already had paid for a laptop!" -> "Yeah, but they're not Apple, and when people see Apple, they know you have a good laptop". That branding was literally worth almost $1k to my colleague...
- nerdponx 10y ago
  That or he doesn't want a laptop made of flexy plastic.
  - vacri 10y ago
    I don't know if you read my comment or not, but a core part of it was talking to my colleague about his desires in a laptop.
- digi_owl 10y ago
  I guess he was willing to pay the premium to not have to mentally sift Thinkpads from Ideapads and XPSs from Inspirons. With Apple its just one "brand", Apple. It is perhaps the greatest marketing asset they possess.
  - krolley 10y ago
    Also, resale values are typically very good. Even years after the initial purchase you can recoup much, much more than a Dell or Lenovo.
    - digi_owl 10y ago
      Why is this even a consideration? Apple users seems to be the only ones that even care about "resale" of their computers, almost like they are investments rather than tools.
      - jacobush 10y ago
        Because I thought I saved money by buying Lenovos on paper at least as good as the Apples. Only to have a resale value of about $10 after 3 years when time came to buy a new laptop. (If the hinges etc lasted that long.) A Macbook is more expensive, but not only did it last me +3 years, I sold it for about a third of its original price, money I used to pay part of my next Macbook. That's why. TL/DR - only Apple devices HAVE a resale value.
      - 10y ago
Grishnakh 10y ago
>Apple can charge outrageous prices for their products, and people love them despite/because of that. Can't understand why they'd stop making monitors. My guess is that there's just not enough profit in it. Monitors last a really long time, and while people like your friend will ooh and ahh over them, that doesn't necessarily translate into sales, and since they don't need to be replaced every year, they won't have the built-in profit that their phones have. It's probably the same with their WiFi access points.
- jacobush 10y ago
  With their WiFi access points I suspect it's because WiFi gear gets overheated and break down. (Probably fried capacitors.) I have given up on Apples' and other premium gear WiFi because of this. Now I just purchase 3 new cheap WiFi routes every 12 - 18 months and throw away the ones I have. I have another Linksys "premium" home router ($200-300) but the WiFi died on that too, but it lives on as an OpenWRT home router but with WiFi disabled. The Apple WiFi routers also lived on for a while with WiFi disabled but acting as TimeMachine backups. Then the disks died and I couldn't be arsed to pry open the case with a hair drier to get at the disk inside and replace it. So for my home, the setup went from Apple all-in-one combo gear with routing, WiFi and backup disk, to specialized functions for WiFi (cheapest off the shelf), routing (openwrt), and backup disks (standard NAS hardware). (For TimeMachine.) I hope my 15" Macbook lasts for a really long time, because when it's dead I don't know if Apple has any Macbook I want to have. But that's tomorrows sorrows..., no use worrying about that until the time comes. (I guess I can always fall back to Linux and some PC laptop.)
  - hvidgaard 10y ago
    What you call "premium" is in reality just overpriced consumer gear. Ciscos enterprise access points happily sustain 5 years of thorough use without an issue, but they cost more than 300$.
  - mavhc 10y ago
    My random cheap MSI wifi router is about 10 years old, been on all that time. My work expensive Cisco access points are so reliable I've never seen some of them in 10 years (they're above the dropped ceiling)
digi_owl 10y ago
On first glance thats hilarious, but then it reminds me of the power of marketing and i get sad and worried about the state of humanity. Shit like this makes me wonder how we as a species has gotten as far as we have.
- infectoid 10y ago
  Bear in mind that brand equity is often earned. I feel that Apple have genuinely earned over the years. However, they now risk losing a lot of it due to the fragmentation of their ecosystem.
  - digi_owl 10y ago
    Maybe. I can't help but feel that Apple would have been long dead if iPod had not gotten USB support, and thus was usable on Windows. Before that i don't think most anyone outside of USA even knew Apple existed unless you were interested in media production in some sense. And that in turn lead to a feedback loop because certain celebrities would show up with an iPod (mostly noticed because of those white wires) because they themselves walk the media circles. Similarly Apple could get the labels and studios to agree to distribute via iTunes because of that inside track in the industry. And that in turn was what bootstrapped iPhone beyond being a fancy screened featurephone (though whoever talked Jobs down from going "nuclear" on the gray market jailbreakers was perhaps the true genius there). But that all this then produce the effect that if you slap a fruit logo on a object peoples interest and appreciation is still worrying. What comes to mind is the comedy caricature of an "art critic" that can deliver a spiel of big words that means crap all upon closer scrutiny.
    - spdionis 10y ago
      To be fair you can't just call it a "fruit logo". If you try to slightly modify it people will instantly recognize that it's not the Apple logo and it goes back to being a stupid fruit logo. So (of course) the point is not the fruit but the symbol.
      - 10y ago
DavideNL 10y ago
You mention 1 experience with 1 person in your kitchen and conclude that this is how everyone behaves... Another interpretation might be that 'people pay outrageous prices' because Apple's products are of higher quality/last longer, which makes the long term price lower than similar products of competitors; For example, i am still using an iPhone 5 (September 2012) which runs the latest iOS version smoothly...
- michaelbuddy 10y ago
  Thing is in the case of a dell monitor, those are incredibly well built. Over built in some areas. I believe a sudden drop in interest in a product because its not a brand you expected despite clear positive qualities indicates a malformed attachment.
  - DavideNL 10y ago
    > those are incredibly well built you know that because (i assume) you have the technical knowledge. Average people don't know which products of which brand may or may not be well built. But they do now that Apple products are generally of high quality.
    - michaelbuddy 10y ago
      The problem is in the case of zero-sum thinking with quality. "Oh that's not Apple, well it's crap" is ridiculous a logical fallacy. Apple being of whatever quality has no bearing on the quality of anything else. Not only do other companies match, many of them exceed quality of apple.

madeofpalk 10y ago

Thunderbolt display was also a massive 'glitch' in the lineup. It still has the old original Magsafe power on it which hasn't shipped on Macs for years! To mitigate this they've been shipping an adapter in the box since then. Crazy! http://www.macrumors.com/2012/06/13/apple-including-free-magsafe-2-converter-with-thunderbolt-display/ http://www.macrumors.com/2012/06/13/apple-including-free-mag...

bdcravens 10y ago
Seems to me the easiest way to support both types of MagSafe options (many machines out there from 2009-2011)

intended 10y ago

Apple will give out dividends.

Cthulhu_ 10y ago

> That's probably a temporary glitch in the Apple matrix however ... No, it's endemic to Apple products in the past five+ years, starting with Thunderbolt so people needed to carry converters to connect DVI and VGA monitors and beamers, wired networks, etc - which are common in most workplaces still. Apple could've alleviated that by providing a universal converter with the MBP, but they decided against that. They're repeating that step with the new Macbooks using only USB-C, although this time it's a bit more standardized. They screwed up with the iPhone, again making their own proprietary connector instead of USB-C (which probably wasn't around at the time), and by removing the 3.5mm jack making it incompatible with all existing headphones / earplugs. Apple could've fixed it with the iphone 7, but they didn't, sticking to their connector in which they probably invested a lot of monies. They could've fixed it with the new MBP by adding a universal converter / docking station, or even supplying an USB-C to Lightning cable, but they didn't. It's not a glitch in the Apple matrix, because they're not making any efforts in fixing it.