5 ms·

Usually I root for the underdog, but in this case, it was almost inevitable. I have both Astropad and a iPad Pro, and I have to say that they priced themselves

Usually I root for the underdog, but in this case, it was almost inevitable. I have both Astropad and a iPad Pro, and I have to say that they priced themselves out of the market straight out of the gate by using a high cost subscription (~$20/mo) plus ~$20 for the hardware dongle. At these prices, professionally it's actually cheaper to just go buy an Intuos because it will perform better in every way and doesn't cost you over time. TBH, I'm actually surprised this didn't happen sooner -- it's the obvious solution to a lagging Adobe Photoshop and pro tools that immediately give the iPad strong value and staying power.

dahart 7y ago
Maybe this is also the obvious outcome of Apple refusing to put a touchscreen on the laptops, fearing cross-cutting of iPad sales. It’s a surprise though that Apple is making some moves that appear to cater to pro users, since the overwhelming sentiment seems to be that Apple has completely abandoned the pro market. I loved my mac laptop, but it’s becoming very clear I can’t stay on the platform. I work with a lot of CG film companies and everyone I know feels the same way, that Apple no longer has any interest in customers doing high end design. I suddenly don’t know anybody who’s not migrating away from macOS.
- pram 7y ago
  You believe this, despite them just announcing a tower Mac Pro. I'd say the very fact that they are even producing it precludes that they have 'abandoned' the pro market and customers doing high end design. If they had truly abandoned the segment they wouldn't bother.
  - sfgweilr4f 7y ago
    I've talked to multiple audio / graphics studios and they are actively planning/executing their Apple exit strategy. Phasing out over several years. Started about 2-3 years go for most of them. Apple don't care about them because they can't even see them on their bottom line.
    - ghaff 7y ago
      I'd also give pretty good odds that we're seeing the beginnings of a convergence between Apple's tablets and laptops/desktops which is probably (mostly) not good for pro users given--probably including a shift away from x86.
      - sfgweilr4f 7y ago
        Likely. Macs running only ARM is a definite possibility. I doubt anyone would doubt Apple could make 100% ARM based Mac Pro given a reasonable timeframe. Just a matter of time. Only need higher performance ARM cores. And this isn't in the "impossible" or "silly pie-in-the-sky" bucket either.
    - arvinsim 7y ago
      I am someone who dabbles in audio and video production. I was set on buying Logic Pro X and Final Cut Pro for my use. But in the current environment we are in, I am seriously considering using cross-platform software like Ableton Live and DaVinci Resolve. This is due to the fear of being locked-in hardware wise.
  - dahart 7y ago
    Having a computer named “pro” is marketing, that doesn’t mean they cater to actual pro users. Go ahead and Google “has apple abandoned pro market” and see for yourself whether anyone else thinks so, and why. The hardware isn’t the main problem, the software is, as @mondoshawan pointed out up-thread. Apple’s made lots of moves that frustrate pro users in recent years. Canceling Shake was a big one in the pro film industry. Apple preventing use of nvidia GPUs is an ongoing issue a lot of people I know care about. Personally, as a programmer who moved to macOS for it’s unix environment and needs some ability to maintain cross-platform compatibility, I am not able to continue because Apple has moved strongly toward Apple-only development, and the unix environment is frozen with decade-old licenses that will never resolve.
    - briandear 7y ago
      > Having a computer named “pro” is marketing, that doesn’t mean they cater to actual pro users. The new Mac Pro caters almost exclusively to pro users. Normal people (at this time) have little use for a computer and monitor that cost 5 figures with the specs on offer. The “pros” I know that benefit from this level of power are chomping at the bit to get the new Mac Pros and the monitors. Just the capabilities of Logic and Final Cut with the Mac Pro are astounding.
      - dahart 7y ago
        Totally fair point. Apple is catering to some pro users.
- ghaff 7y ago
  Does anyone actually use touchscreens on laptops? They've always seemed pretty awkward to me. OTOH, being able to use a tablet as an extension to a desktop seems as if it would let you have effectively a couple different interaction mechanisms. I'm looking forward to checking it out.
  - Stratoscope 7y ago
    My GF and I both have ThinkPad X1 Yogas. I rarely use the touchscreen, but I do like the digitizer pen for sketching out design ideas and such. OTOH, she uses the touchscreen all the time. Even when something would be easier with the keyboard, like filling in a form field and just hitting Enter, she finishes typing and reaches up to touch the button on the screen. If anything can be done by touching the screen, that's how she does it. It seems a bit strange to me, but she loves the touchscreen!
    - ghaff 7y ago
      I can definitely see the digitizer pen. That's mostly why I like the idea of being able to use an iPad Pro as a secondary display. Sketching something with a mouse or trackpad makes my barely legible chicken scratch that much worse. I usually end up doing it on paper and taking a picture. But different folks, different strokes. I have a ChromeBook with a touch screen that I never use. But I have a friend who, if I hand over the ChromeBook to look at something, their natural reaction is to swipe the screen to scroll, which is something I almost never do.
  - jen729w 7y ago
    The boss likes his Surface Pro as much as it’s possible for a Unix guy to like Windows. Flipping to touch mode on the plane and churning through emails — mostly read & delete — is a favourite. I’m in the ‘get your fingers off my screen’ camp but there are undeniable benefits.
    - ghaff 7y ago
      My issue is mostly with using tablets as laptop replacements. Not so much because of capabilities (I often travel with a ChromeBook) but because nothing out there is great for just grabbing and typing on my lap--which I admit I do a lot even at home or in the office. IMO, there needs to be a detachable keyboard with trackpad that really locks to a tablet so the screen doesn't need to be propped up in some manner. Some things out there get close but not quite.
- im3w1l 7y ago
  I'm not adjacent to that at all, so I'm completely in the dark. What are the migrating to?
  - sfgweilr4f 7y ago
    Windows and Linux. Mac is becoming less attractive.
leoh 7y ago
Their pricing model is besides the point. Apple extended interest and kindness towards them and then copied their products. It's just kind of cruel. These are the types of rotten actions that make people more generally cynical and disappointed about large corporations and the valley.
- otterley 7y ago
  What would have been a better outcome? Continuing to make customers pay for the feature? Buying the company? If so, what about the competing companies that offer this functionality? Apple obviously felt it would be easier/cheaper to build than buy.
  - toyg 7y ago
    Buying the company (or a competitor) would have been fair: it would have felt like “the market has spoken” and a winner was picked. Building anew after playing it cool feels very “Pirates of Silicon Valley”. This said, single-platform feature apps like this are always at risk from this sort of thing.
    - kalleboo 7y ago
      And before Steve Jobs came back, Apple would buy third-party utilities to incorporate into MacOS (System 7.5 WindowShade, MenuClock, Hierarchical Apple Menu were all third-party acquisitions)
      - otterley 7y ago
        Apple still buys companies all the time. Perhaps not always well-known app developers, but certainly a lot of them. (Shazam is one from recent memory, as was Siri.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Apple https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio... Note that nearly all of these occurred after Steve Jobs’ return and continued apace after his death. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Apple https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio... This makes me believe that if Apple is building their own rather than buying, perhaps there’s not a whole lot of innovation that the app developer created that wasn’t trivially replaceable.
dkersten 7y ago
I evaluated Astropad for my iPad Pro some time ago and I couldn't rationalise paying the subscription fee since I would only use it every now and again to play around. I'm not an artist, I just like to dabble a bit. I would have happily paid a $50 one time fee for that, but not a recurring subscription.

dahart 7y ago

Maybe this is also the obvious outcome of Apple refusing to put a touchscreen on the laptops, fearing cross-cutting of iPad sales. It’s a surprise though that Apple is making some moves that appear to cater to pro users, since the overwhelming sentiment seems to be that Apple has completely abandoned the pro market. I loved my mac laptop, but it’s becoming very clear I can’t stay on the platform. I work with a lot of CG film companies and everyone I know feels the same way, that Apple no longer has any interest in customers doing high end design. I suddenly don’t know anybody who’s not migrating away from macOS.

pram 7y ago
You believe this, despite them just announcing a tower Mac Pro. I'd say the very fact that they are even producing it precludes that they have 'abandoned' the pro market and customers doing high end design. If they had truly abandoned the segment they wouldn't bother.
- sfgweilr4f 7y ago
  I've talked to multiple audio / graphics studios and they are actively planning/executing their Apple exit strategy. Phasing out over several years. Started about 2-3 years go for most of them. Apple don't care about them because they can't even see them on their bottom line.
  - ghaff 7y ago
    I'd also give pretty good odds that we're seeing the beginnings of a convergence between Apple's tablets and laptops/desktops which is probably (mostly) not good for pro users given--probably including a shift away from x86.
    - sfgweilr4f 7y ago
      Likely. Macs running only ARM is a definite possibility. I doubt anyone would doubt Apple could make 100% ARM based Mac Pro given a reasonable timeframe. Just a matter of time. Only need higher performance ARM cores. And this isn't in the "impossible" or "silly pie-in-the-sky" bucket either.
  - arvinsim 7y ago
    I am someone who dabbles in audio and video production. I was set on buying Logic Pro X and Final Cut Pro for my use. But in the current environment we are in, I am seriously considering using cross-platform software like Ableton Live and DaVinci Resolve. This is due to the fear of being locked-in hardware wise.
- dahart 7y ago
  Having a computer named “pro” is marketing, that doesn’t mean they cater to actual pro users. Go ahead and Google “has apple abandoned pro market” and see for yourself whether anyone else thinks so, and why. The hardware isn’t the main problem, the software is, as @mondoshawan pointed out up-thread. Apple’s made lots of moves that frustrate pro users in recent years. Canceling Shake was a big one in the pro film industry. Apple preventing use of nvidia GPUs is an ongoing issue a lot of people I know care about. Personally, as a programmer who moved to macOS for it’s unix environment and needs some ability to maintain cross-platform compatibility, I am not able to continue because Apple has moved strongly toward Apple-only development, and the unix environment is frozen with decade-old licenses that will never resolve.
  - briandear 7y ago
    > Having a computer named “pro” is marketing, that doesn’t mean they cater to actual pro users. The new Mac Pro caters almost exclusively to pro users. Normal people (at this time) have little use for a computer and monitor that cost 5 figures with the specs on offer. The “pros” I know that benefit from this level of power are chomping at the bit to get the new Mac Pros and the monitors. Just the capabilities of Logic and Final Cut with the Mac Pro are astounding.
    - dahart 7y ago
      Totally fair point. Apple is catering to some pro users.
ghaff 7y ago
Does anyone actually use touchscreens on laptops? They've always seemed pretty awkward to me. OTOH, being able to use a tablet as an extension to a desktop seems as if it would let you have effectively a couple different interaction mechanisms. I'm looking forward to checking it out.
- Stratoscope 7y ago
  My GF and I both have ThinkPad X1 Yogas. I rarely use the touchscreen, but I do like the digitizer pen for sketching out design ideas and such. OTOH, she uses the touchscreen all the time. Even when something would be easier with the keyboard, like filling in a form field and just hitting Enter, she finishes typing and reaches up to touch the button on the screen. If anything can be done by touching the screen, that's how she does it. It seems a bit strange to me, but she loves the touchscreen!
  - ghaff 7y ago
    I can definitely see the digitizer pen. That's mostly why I like the idea of being able to use an iPad Pro as a secondary display. Sketching something with a mouse or trackpad makes my barely legible chicken scratch that much worse. I usually end up doing it on paper and taking a picture. But different folks, different strokes. I have a ChromeBook with a touch screen that I never use. But I have a friend who, if I hand over the ChromeBook to look at something, their natural reaction is to swipe the screen to scroll, which is something I almost never do.
- jen729w 7y ago
  The boss likes his Surface Pro as much as it’s possible for a Unix guy to like Windows. Flipping to touch mode on the plane and churning through emails — mostly read & delete — is a favourite. I’m in the ‘get your fingers off my screen’ camp but there are undeniable benefits.
  - ghaff 7y ago
    My issue is mostly with using tablets as laptop replacements. Not so much because of capabilities (I often travel with a ChromeBook) but because nothing out there is great for just grabbing and typing on my lap--which I admit I do a lot even at home or in the office. IMO, there needs to be a detachable keyboard with trackpad that really locks to a tablet so the screen doesn't need to be propped up in some manner. Some things out there get close but not quite.
im3w1l 7y ago
I'm not adjacent to that at all, so I'm completely in the dark. What are the migrating to?
- sfgweilr4f 7y ago
  Windows and Linux. Mac is becoming less attractive.

leoh 7y ago

Their pricing model is besides the point. Apple extended interest and kindness towards them and then copied their products. It's just kind of cruel. These are the types of rotten actions that make people more generally cynical and disappointed about large corporations and the valley.

otterley 7y ago
What would have been a better outcome? Continuing to make customers pay for the feature? Buying the company? If so, what about the competing companies that offer this functionality? Apple obviously felt it would be easier/cheaper to build than buy.
- toyg 7y ago
  Buying the company (or a competitor) would have been fair: it would have felt like “the market has spoken” and a winner was picked. Building anew after playing it cool feels very “Pirates of Silicon Valley”. This said, single-platform feature apps like this are always at risk from this sort of thing.
  - kalleboo 7y ago
    And before Steve Jobs came back, Apple would buy third-party utilities to incorporate into MacOS (System 7.5 WindowShade, MenuClock, Hierarchical Apple Menu were all third-party acquisitions)
    - otterley 7y ago
      Apple still buys companies all the time. Perhaps not always well-known app developers, but certainly a lot of them. (Shazam is one from recent memory, as was Siri.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Apple https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio... Note that nearly all of these occurred after Steve Jobs’ return and continued apace after his death. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Apple https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio... This makes me believe that if Apple is building their own rather than buying, perhaps there’s not a whole lot of innovation that the app developer created that wasn’t trivially replaceable.

dkersten 7y ago

I evaluated Astropad for my iPad Pro some time ago and I couldn't rationalise paying the subscription fee since I would only use it every now and again to play around. I'm not an artist, I just like to dabble a bit. I would have happily paid a $50 one time fee for that, but not a recurring subscription.