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Apple is always behind on industry trends, but when they adopt them eventually, they become mainstream and cool. This is what will happen with the folding phone

Apple is always behind on industry trends, but when they adopt them eventually, they become mainstream and cool. This is what will happen with the folding phones this year, if rumors are true.

bmitc 9mo ago
> but when they adopt them eventually, they become mainstream and cool When was this part last true?
- muvlon 9mo ago
  USB-C I guess?
  - teekert 9mo ago
    Weeeeelllll that was mainstream a long long time before they adopted it. And I'm still annoyed that the only devices with Lightning in our house are my Airpods en iPhone mini 12 and wife's iPhone 14 Pro. Always need to attach an adapter to my Anker chargers and powerbanks.
    - _fw 9mo ago
      I think the person you’re replying to meant MacBooks. They were USB-C exclusively way before Windows machines.
      - teekert 9mo ago
        Ah ok, yeah sure, that was nice (could have added an A and HDMI port in this case, but ok, they were early with that.)
      - virgildotcodes 9mo ago
        It's funny, I was mad at them for getting rid of magsafe for years, and super excited when they brought it back with the AS macs. Used the cable for a year or two and then decided to simplify my life but just using USB C for everything. I hope they can forgive me for doubting their benevolent wisdom, I promise never to do it again.
        Affric 9mo ago
        Mag safe in the age of goof battery life
        lostlogin 9mo ago
        Fist use of a Macbook Pro and in a sleep addled state I plugged the MagSafe cable into the Mac USB-C end first. It’s very confusing if you do that and are an idiot.
        adastra22 9mo ago
        Same… I love MagSafe and would prefer to use it. I’m always worried about yanking the computer with the USB-C charger in and breaking the cable or the port. But I have a bunch of USB-C stuff and so when I go to charge my laptop it’s just easier to find that cable and use it.
        kuon 9mo ago
        There are many magnetic USB C plugs. I am not sure if they are standard compliant but they work fine.
        adastra22 9mo ago
        I might as well just use the official magsafe power cable that came with my macbook if I were to do that. The point was more convenience. I have a USB-C charger at my desk, at my bed, at the couch, etc. Anywhere I am I can just plug in without fiddling with other cables (or connectors). Ultimately I'm lazy and just want to simplify my cable management :)
        dwaite 9mo ago
        The battery life is sufficient that I never feel the need to leave it umbilical-ed to an outlet across the room. I'll leave it docked at my desk, or use it wirelessly, or charge it at a conference room table, or recharge it after the day is done in my hotel room as I sleep. Thats the real difference - it now easily lasts until I would want to take an extended break anyway.
        9mo ago
- earthnail 9mo ago
  Airpods
- stickmunch 9mo ago
  Tablets; Soldering SSD's and ram to the motherboard. Microsoft had tablets for a decade before the iPad came out. You rarely ever saw them in the wild. In fact, you still rarely see a Surface tablet. At least, I don't.
  - trelane 9mo ago
    Indeed, "iPad" is almost a generic term for "tablet," especially for kids.
    - rchaud 9mo ago
      Who's buying those Samsung and Walmart ONN tablets by the truckload then? Tablets for kids are the equivalent of portable DVD players in the 2000s - a commodified device to play Netflix and Youtube on. There is no point in paying an Apple premium for something that's likely to be easily broken and need replacing.
      - dwaite 9mo ago
        That would be what is referred to as a market for lemons. Apple tries extremely hard to be durably differentiated from products in the same category to avoid being dragged down in a price war to have cheap quality. That in turn makes it hard for others to compete with them - you don't have differentiating features that would pull existing users off a mature product like iPad, and you can't come out with a cheaper product without discriminating consumers being concerned that it is fragile, clunky, and/or incomplete.
  - stephenhuey 9mo ago
    When I was at Rice University around the turn of the century, I remember playing with a large expensive monitor running a Windows computer. It was so futuristically fantastical that you could touch the screen to do things. Extremely clunky, but cool. Just a bit too tedious to do anything more than play with it, because trying to get actual work done on it all the time would have been a chore. Many years later, I was working for a startup called kWhOURS in a little old house in East Cambridge, Massachusetts. Our target users were engineers used to paying thousands for the rugged and expensive Windows laptops we needed to deploy our Adobe AIR tablet app onto since they had a touchscreen. Still a clunky UI, but our software was usable. Then the iPad was released, and it was literally worlds apart, something people have long taken for granted. All of us, including Adobe, were taken by surprise, because all attempts at tablets prior to that were so far inferior to Apple's version, and competitors spent many years trying to catch up.
- al_borland 9mo ago
  “Cool” is subjective, so you can use that to dismiss any example, but you know exactly what is being referenced.
  - bmitc 9mo ago
    > “Cool” is subjective, so you can use that to dismiss any example You can't use cool to argue against me. It was in the comment I replied to. > but you know exactly what is being referenced No, I don't, which is why I asked. Mind explaining instead of being coy?
    - al_borland 9mo ago
      Apple is rarely first to the party. They wait until the tech is ready for prime time and until they have an implementation that makes sense and feels inevitable. Then the rest of the industry tends to uses that as the model and shifts to copy them. Apple didn’t make the first MP3 player, but once they made the iPod, everyone wanted an iPod. It was cool. Most other players pivoted to be more iPod-like. Apple didn’t make the first smart phone. Smart phones were semi-niche devices for businessmen and nerds. Once the iPhone came out, everyone wanted it and the whole market changed. Apple didn’t make the first smart watch, but once they did, their smart watch was more capable and integrated than the others and went on to outsell Rolex. Apple didn’t make the first tablet. Microsoft tried to push the idea repeatedly 10 years earlier. Apple waited and came out with the iPad once multitouch was a thing and they could build an OS around touch. 15 years after its launch, it’s still the only tablet anyone actually talks about. Steve Jobs talked about putting the customer experience first and selecting technologies that will be around for the next 10+ years, rather than chasing the latest bleeding edge tech, just to say you’re using it and trying to find a way to shoehorn it in. To know what tech is going to stick around and to find how to best implement it takes time for things to mature a little bit. This means sacrificing the bleeding edge for a more thoughtful and stable approach. Tim Cook doesn’t have the same kind of vision as Jobs, so I think some of this has been lost, but this has been their history for a long time, and one of the reasons why they’ve been so successful.
      - 9mo ago
virgil_disgr4ce 9mo ago
> Apple is always behind on industry trends Huh, I always thought it was the other way around (whether people liked it or not): ditching floppy disks, ditching cdroms, prioritizing BT over wired earphones, etc. I am glad, though, that they were forced to stick with USB-C if I'm not mistaken.
- Ntrails 9mo ago
  > prioritizing BT over wired earphones Bluetooth sucks, needing to charge headphones sucks. I'm still bitter :p > I am glad, though, that they were forced to stick with USB-C if I'm not mistaken. Now I have a boatload of apple chargers which will all be made into landfill for the good of the planet when i next upgrade my phone. Thank you so much.
  - Tagbert 9mo ago
    Oddly, Apple has gotten a lot of criticism for not including chargers be default with their phones for this specific reason.
  - DroneBetter 9mo ago
    other people have a load of USB-C charging cables and are frustrated with having to buy Lightning ones and clutter their bags with more wires than necessary. although Lightning was better-designed for being routinely used (pins on the outside of the wire end rather than inside the device, easy to clean and no protruding pieces in the device to damage/snap off), and the ideal scenario would have been making it an open standard
    - Ntrails 9mo ago
      It's short term annoyance for a long term greater good. I'm not oblivious - but of course the impact on me is simply negative (and I'm not going to leave the walled garden anyway so what were we ever achieving really)
  - dwaite 9mo ago
    Apple went USB-C on chargers starting in March 2016 (with USB-C to lightning cables on the iPad Pro). They started shipping them with phones that fall. USB-A chargers are so brutally slow, but you can use a USB-A to C cable if you really want to spend 3+ hours charging a modern phone. The switch prompted cables to go into the landfill. The USB-A chargers should have been there half a decade ago.
rchaud 9mo ago
Folding phones have been around for half a decade and sold tens of millions of units. Same with VR. Apple is in the value extraction business these days: their devices are conduits for advertising Apple services. The Vision Pro flopped because they wanted to charge and arm and a leg for a platform that was actively hostile to developers. It's not 2008 anymore.

Apple is always behind on industry trends, but when they adopt them eventually, they become mainstream and cool. This is what will happen with the folding phones this year, if rumors are true.

bmitc 9mo ago

> but when they adopt them eventually, they become mainstream and cool When was this part last true?

muvlon 9mo ago
USB-C I guess?
- teekert 9mo ago
  Weeeeelllll that was mainstream a long long time before they adopted it. And I'm still annoyed that the only devices with Lightning in our house are my Airpods en iPhone mini 12 and wife's iPhone 14 Pro. Always need to attach an adapter to my Anker chargers and powerbanks.
  - _fw 9mo ago
    I think the person you’re replying to meant MacBooks. They were USB-C exclusively way before Windows machines.
    - teekert 9mo ago
      Ah ok, yeah sure, that was nice (could have added an A and HDMI port in this case, but ok, they were early with that.)
    - virgildotcodes 9mo ago
      It's funny, I was mad at them for getting rid of magsafe for years, and super excited when they brought it back with the AS macs. Used the cable for a year or two and then decided to simplify my life but just using USB C for everything. I hope they can forgive me for doubting their benevolent wisdom, I promise never to do it again.
      - Affric 9mo ago
        Mag safe in the age of goof battery life
      - lostlogin 9mo ago
        Fist use of a Macbook Pro and in a sleep addled state I plugged the MagSafe cable into the Mac USB-C end first. It’s very confusing if you do that and are an idiot.
      - adastra22 9mo ago
        Same… I love MagSafe and would prefer to use it. I’m always worried about yanking the computer with the USB-C charger in and breaking the cable or the port. But I have a bunch of USB-C stuff and so when I go to charge my laptop it’s just easier to find that cable and use it.
        kuon 9mo ago
        There are many magnetic USB C plugs. I am not sure if they are standard compliant but they work fine.
        adastra22 9mo ago
        I might as well just use the official magsafe power cable that came with my macbook if I were to do that. The point was more convenience. I have a USB-C charger at my desk, at my bed, at the couch, etc. Anywhere I am I can just plug in without fiddling with other cables (or connectors). Ultimately I'm lazy and just want to simplify my cable management :)
        dwaite 9mo ago
        The battery life is sufficient that I never feel the need to leave it umbilical-ed to an outlet across the room. I'll leave it docked at my desk, or use it wirelessly, or charge it at a conference room table, or recharge it after the day is done in my hotel room as I sleep. Thats the real difference - it now easily lasts until I would want to take an extended break anyway.
      - 9mo ago
earthnail 9mo ago
Airpods
stickmunch 9mo ago
Tablets; Soldering SSD's and ram to the motherboard. Microsoft had tablets for a decade before the iPad came out. You rarely ever saw them in the wild. In fact, you still rarely see a Surface tablet. At least, I don't.
- trelane 9mo ago
  Indeed, "iPad" is almost a generic term for "tablet," especially for kids.
  - rchaud 9mo ago
    Who's buying those Samsung and Walmart ONN tablets by the truckload then? Tablets for kids are the equivalent of portable DVD players in the 2000s - a commodified device to play Netflix and Youtube on. There is no point in paying an Apple premium for something that's likely to be easily broken and need replacing.
    - dwaite 9mo ago
      That would be what is referred to as a market for lemons. Apple tries extremely hard to be durably differentiated from products in the same category to avoid being dragged down in a price war to have cheap quality. That in turn makes it hard for others to compete with them - you don't have differentiating features that would pull existing users off a mature product like iPad, and you can't come out with a cheaper product without discriminating consumers being concerned that it is fragile, clunky, and/or incomplete.
- stephenhuey 9mo ago
  When I was at Rice University around the turn of the century, I remember playing with a large expensive monitor running a Windows computer. It was so futuristically fantastical that you could touch the screen to do things. Extremely clunky, but cool. Just a bit too tedious to do anything more than play with it, because trying to get actual work done on it all the time would have been a chore. Many years later, I was working for a startup called kWhOURS in a little old house in East Cambridge, Massachusetts. Our target users were engineers used to paying thousands for the rugged and expensive Windows laptops we needed to deploy our Adobe AIR tablet app onto since they had a touchscreen. Still a clunky UI, but our software was usable. Then the iPad was released, and it was literally worlds apart, something people have long taken for granted. All of us, including Adobe, were taken by surprise, because all attempts at tablets prior to that were so far inferior to Apple's version, and competitors spent many years trying to catch up.
al_borland 9mo ago
“Cool” is subjective, so you can use that to dismiss any example, but you know exactly what is being referenced.
- bmitc 9mo ago
  > “Cool” is subjective, so you can use that to dismiss any example You can't use cool to argue against me. It was in the comment I replied to. > but you know exactly what is being referenced No, I don't, which is why I asked. Mind explaining instead of being coy?
  - al_borland 9mo ago
    Apple is rarely first to the party. They wait until the tech is ready for prime time and until they have an implementation that makes sense and feels inevitable. Then the rest of the industry tends to uses that as the model and shifts to copy them. Apple didn’t make the first MP3 player, but once they made the iPod, everyone wanted an iPod. It was cool. Most other players pivoted to be more iPod-like. Apple didn’t make the first smart phone. Smart phones were semi-niche devices for businessmen and nerds. Once the iPhone came out, everyone wanted it and the whole market changed. Apple didn’t make the first smart watch, but once they did, their smart watch was more capable and integrated than the others and went on to outsell Rolex. Apple didn’t make the first tablet. Microsoft tried to push the idea repeatedly 10 years earlier. Apple waited and came out with the iPad once multitouch was a thing and they could build an OS around touch. 15 years after its launch, it’s still the only tablet anyone actually talks about. Steve Jobs talked about putting the customer experience first and selecting technologies that will be around for the next 10+ years, rather than chasing the latest bleeding edge tech, just to say you’re using it and trying to find a way to shoehorn it in. To know what tech is going to stick around and to find how to best implement it takes time for things to mature a little bit. This means sacrificing the bleeding edge for a more thoughtful and stable approach. Tim Cook doesn’t have the same kind of vision as Jobs, so I think some of this has been lost, but this has been their history for a long time, and one of the reasons why they’ve been so successful.
    - 9mo ago

virgil_disgr4ce 9mo ago

> Apple is always behind on industry trends Huh, I always thought it was the other way around (whether people liked it or not): ditching floppy disks, ditching cdroms, prioritizing BT over wired earphones, etc. I am glad, though, that they were forced to stick with USB-C if I'm not mistaken.

Ntrails 9mo ago
> prioritizing BT over wired earphones Bluetooth sucks, needing to charge headphones sucks. I'm still bitter :p > I am glad, though, that they were forced to stick with USB-C if I'm not mistaken. Now I have a boatload of apple chargers which will all be made into landfill for the good of the planet when i next upgrade my phone. Thank you so much.
- Tagbert 9mo ago
  Oddly, Apple has gotten a lot of criticism for not including chargers be default with their phones for this specific reason.
- DroneBetter 9mo ago
  other people have a load of USB-C charging cables and are frustrated with having to buy Lightning ones and clutter their bags with more wires than necessary. although Lightning was better-designed for being routinely used (pins on the outside of the wire end rather than inside the device, easy to clean and no protruding pieces in the device to damage/snap off), and the ideal scenario would have been making it an open standard
  - Ntrails 9mo ago
    It's short term annoyance for a long term greater good. I'm not oblivious - but of course the impact on me is simply negative (and I'm not going to leave the walled garden anyway so what were we ever achieving really)
- dwaite 9mo ago
  Apple went USB-C on chargers starting in March 2016 (with USB-C to lightning cables on the iPad Pro). They started shipping them with phones that fall. USB-A chargers are so brutally slow, but you can use a USB-A to C cable if you really want to spend 3+ hours charging a modern phone. The switch prompted cables to go into the landfill. The USB-A chargers should have been there half a decade ago.

rchaud 9mo ago

Folding phones have been around for half a decade and sold tens of millions of units. Same with VR. Apple is in the value extraction business these days: their devices are conduits for advertising Apple services. The Vision Pro flopped because they wanted to charge and arm and a leg for a platform that was actively hostile to developers. It's not 2008 anymore.