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This overall slowdown could be the reason why Apple made a gimmick for newcomers, i.e. the touch bar. They needed to try to boost sales.

by zzzcpan 10y ago

coldtea 10y ago
They don't think like that. "Let's make a gimmick for newcomers". They just legitimately thought it was great and will it enough to impress people and shut them up about the late revamp of the MBP line. And it could be good, with certain provisions, but not will all the other BS coming with it. The main issue is it seems nobody at the top could see this -- and I mean see this when they said ok initially, because surely they did know the issues before launching the machine, when it got to wider testing (before that it was only small teams that had seen the whole new laptop plus strip, as it their usual modus operandi).
- Patrick_Devine 10y ago
  If the touchbar is so amazing, why didn't Apple have the courage to just replace the entire keyboard with one big OLED display? You can easily see how the touchbar comes across as being gimmicky. Lenovo already ditched their touch bar on the X1 Carbon (2nd generation) because it was a terrible idea. Buttons are useful, particularly for people who touch type.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >If the touchbar is so amazing, why didn't Apple have the courage to just replace the entire keyboard with one big OLED display? Obviously this is no argument. It basically is: If cake is so amazing why don't we eat cake or day? Cake is indeed amazing to have in moderation, but it's also not the best thing to solely eat. We could thrive on just greens and meet maybe, but we'd do worse with just cake. Standard alphanumeric keys are used far more often, and people rely on them far more than they do on function keys (common people, the 95% of users, don't use debuggers or vim). Without a great haptic feedback story that actually gives the sense of clicking it would be disaster. Plus, it would be way costlier, and just give diminishing returns (since most of the time we just want the alphanumeric keys to be just that, whereas function keys already had a double life as controller keys for sound, etc). Third, even if it was ergonomically perfect and likable, it will obviously be even more power hungry and expensive at this point.
    - Patrick_Devine 10y ago
      To make it cheaper, maybe they could just do half the keyboard. Say split it between 5-6, t-y, g-h, and b-n and just make the left half with an OLED screen. The best part is they could then sell you a new MBP in two years which has a full OLED keyboard when the prices have come down. Back to reality, the problem is that more than 5% of common people use those function key buttons on a daily basis, and they need that haptic feedback. I want my computer's volume, playback and brightness controls to be easily accessible. I also want to be able to use my escape key. I don't want to have to switch to some other application in order to turn the volume down or pause my music when I'm interrupted by someone, and it's nice to be able to control the screen brightness without having to switch applications in order to do so.
  - bostand 10y ago
    Funny enough, Lenovo Yoga Book is just that: http://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2016/12/lenovo-yoga-book-review/ http://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2016/12/lenovo-yoga-book-re...
- zzzcpan 10y ago
  > They just legitimately thought it was great No, they seem to have actual UX professionals working for them, so obviously they understood pretty well who's experience they are hurting and for what reasons. This time it looks like the reasons came from marketing and this is nothing new, it often happens this way. I encourage people unfamiliar with UX design to listen to Andrew Price's podcast with Duncan Macneil or his talk after that about Blender redesign, where he explained many things he got wrong in his first redesign idea and why.
- K0SM0S 10y ago
  I've personally experienced working on the inside of a "culture of secrecy" in political organizations, in business and as everyone in personal groups / family. My personal opinion is that this model does not work by default, it's not a modus operandi that is conducive to 'progress' (whatever the metric, be it innovation, profit, or even just the will to do things adequately). I'm pretty sure there are other key points but my observation is that you need a strong leader, usually at the origin of that culture, who's able to mesh all subgroups together at a high-level (since they don't work together on a normal basis). What you observe is that leader's dream team (trusted advisors and insiders to the 'secret') taking various roles at various places in the structure to glue it all and maintain the secret while furthering core goals. You also want a non-negociable acceptance of the culture by the people working there, meaning that you just can't tolerate any internal politics/wars and everyone has to flock in line. It's only ever possible to jail teams like that if there's trust in management (because eventually this is your career...) and nobody questions the 'why' or 'how'. You just do your job as best you can and forget about your high-level vision: big boss will decide (pray he thinks better than thousands of field engineers, few men on earth should be trusted with such decision power). Often people won't even know why X or Y got fired. It's part of the fear necessary to such a culture. Divergence is like random cancer in a culture of secrecy because nobody knows the big picture. I'm more and more of the opinion that the kind of Apple built by Steve Jobs was 100% in line with his own way of managing (culture of secrecy, dividing or even gut open too-powerful groups to maintain his absolute might/vision, etc.) If you look at Apple's execs they're great soldiers, but not much of campaign-waging generals in and out of themselves (more beta than alpha, so to speak, perfect for a Jobs but maybe not a Cook). And I think it's painfully obvious, from the outside at least, that Cook just isn't the man to rule this Apple: he either must change it or give the reigns to someone more like Jobs (clearly only the former is a realistic goal, even for the next CEO and the ones after that). Obviously this is all speculation and I might be wrong, but there are so many blatant red signs that I have little doubt that there's this culture/management fit problem within Apple.

This overall slowdown could be the reason why Apple made a gimmick for newcomers, i.e. the touch bar. They needed to try to boost sales.

by zzzcpan 10y ago

This overall slowdown could be the reason why Apple made a gimmick for newcomers, i.e. the touch bar. They needed to try to boost sales.

coldtea 10y ago

They don't think like that. "Let's make a gimmick for newcomers". They just legitimately thought it was great and will it enough to impress people and shut them up about the late revamp of the MBP line. And it could be good, with certain provisions, but not will all the other BS coming with it. The main issue is it seems nobody at the top could see this -- and I mean see this when they said ok initially, because surely they did know the issues before launching the machine, when it got to wider testing (before that it was only small teams that had seen the whole new laptop plus strip, as it their usual modus operandi).

Patrick_Devine 10y ago
If the touchbar is so amazing, why didn't Apple have the courage to just replace the entire keyboard with one big OLED display? You can easily see how the touchbar comes across as being gimmicky. Lenovo already ditched their touch bar on the X1 Carbon (2nd generation) because it was a terrible idea. Buttons are useful, particularly for people who touch type.
- coldtea 10y ago
  >If the touchbar is so amazing, why didn't Apple have the courage to just replace the entire keyboard with one big OLED display? Obviously this is no argument. It basically is: If cake is so amazing why don't we eat cake or day? Cake is indeed amazing to have in moderation, but it's also not the best thing to solely eat. We could thrive on just greens and meet maybe, but we'd do worse with just cake. Standard alphanumeric keys are used far more often, and people rely on them far more than they do on function keys (common people, the 95% of users, don't use debuggers or vim). Without a great haptic feedback story that actually gives the sense of clicking it would be disaster. Plus, it would be way costlier, and just give diminishing returns (since most of the time we just want the alphanumeric keys to be just that, whereas function keys already had a double life as controller keys for sound, etc). Third, even if it was ergonomically perfect and likable, it will obviously be even more power hungry and expensive at this point.
  - Patrick_Devine 10y ago
    To make it cheaper, maybe they could just do half the keyboard. Say split it between 5-6, t-y, g-h, and b-n and just make the left half with an OLED screen. The best part is they could then sell you a new MBP in two years which has a full OLED keyboard when the prices have come down. Back to reality, the problem is that more than 5% of common people use those function key buttons on a daily basis, and they need that haptic feedback. I want my computer's volume, playback and brightness controls to be easily accessible. I also want to be able to use my escape key. I don't want to have to switch to some other application in order to turn the volume down or pause my music when I'm interrupted by someone, and it's nice to be able to control the screen brightness without having to switch applications in order to do so.
- bostand 10y ago
  Funny enough, Lenovo Yoga Book is just that: http://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2016/12/lenovo-yoga-book-review/ http://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2016/12/lenovo-yoga-book-re...
zzzcpan 10y ago
> They just legitimately thought it was great No, they seem to have actual UX professionals working for them, so obviously they understood pretty well who's experience they are hurting and for what reasons. This time it looks like the reasons came from marketing and this is nothing new, it often happens this way. I encourage people unfamiliar with UX design to listen to Andrew Price's podcast with Duncan Macneil or his talk after that about Blender redesign, where he explained many things he got wrong in his first redesign idea and why.
K0SM0S 10y ago
I've personally experienced working on the inside of a "culture of secrecy" in political organizations, in business and as everyone in personal groups / family. My personal opinion is that this model does not work by default, it's not a modus operandi that is conducive to 'progress' (whatever the metric, be it innovation, profit, or even just the will to do things adequately). I'm pretty sure there are other key points but my observation is that you need a strong leader, usually at the origin of that culture, who's able to mesh all subgroups together at a high-level (since they don't work together on a normal basis). What you observe is that leader's dream team (trusted advisors and insiders to the 'secret') taking various roles at various places in the structure to glue it all and maintain the secret while furthering core goals. You also want a non-negociable acceptance of the culture by the people working there, meaning that you just can't tolerate any internal politics/wars and everyone has to flock in line. It's only ever possible to jail teams like that if there's trust in management (because eventually this is your career...) and nobody questions the 'why' or 'how'. You just do your job as best you can and forget about your high-level vision: big boss will decide (pray he thinks better than thousands of field engineers, few men on earth should be trusted with such decision power). Often people won't even know why X or Y got fired. It's part of the fear necessary to such a culture. Divergence is like random cancer in a culture of secrecy because nobody knows the big picture. I'm more and more of the opinion that the kind of Apple built by Steve Jobs was 100% in line with his own way of managing (culture of secrecy, dividing or even gut open too-powerful groups to maintain his absolute might/vision, etc.) If you look at Apple's execs they're great soldiers, but not much of campaign-waging generals in and out of themselves (more beta than alpha, so to speak, perfect for a Jobs but maybe not a Cook). And I think it's painfully obvious, from the outside at least, that Cook just isn't the man to rule this Apple: he either must change it or give the reigns to someone more like Jobs (clearly only the former is a realistic goal, even for the next CEO and the ones after that). Obviously this is all speculation and I might be wrong, but there are so many blatant red signs that I have little doubt that there's this culture/management fit problem within Apple.