4 ms·

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

by bmitc 9mo ago

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.
      - dwaite 9mo ago
        There is not a single port on the Apple Silicon MBP that I wouldn't trade for another thunderbolt (USB-C) port. Closest would be the SD card slot... if it was SD Express. If they had released the M1 MBP in the old chassis I would have a real challenge upgrading to the current models.
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

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

by 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.
    - dwaite 9mo ago
      There is not a single port on the Apple Silicon MBP that I wouldn't trade for another thunderbolt (USB-C) port. Closest would be the SD card slot... if it was SD Express. If they had released the M1 MBP in the old chassis I would have a real challenge upgrading to the current models.

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