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The new Apple begins to emerge
- LoganDark 8mo agoI really hope Ternus gets the next CEO spot. I haven't seen much of him, but I watched part of an interview with him and he seems very reminiscent of Jobs, in the good way. Reportedly Tim Cook is preparing runner-ups from all the top-level divisions, not just engineering: > But Mr. Cook is also preparing several other internal candidates to be his potential successor, two of the people said. They could include Craig Federighi, Apple’s head of software; Eddy Cue, its head of services; Greg Joswiak, its head of worldwide marketing; and Deirdre O’Brien, its head of retail and human resources. Personally I wouldn't like to see any of these. Especially services needs to calm the fuck down and stop giving into the temptation to milk their captive audience; that's absolutely not what Apple is supposed to stand for.
- simianwords 8mo agoI look up to apple as a company that has good taste as opposed to Samsung that immediately appears as bloated. But the Touch Bar, butterfly keyboard and Face ID have been so laughably bad that I wonder what the hell was going on. Or was I the only one who hated them. Face ID in particular is probably one of the most annoying things about the iPhone. Constantly misses.
- microtonal 8mo agoInteresting, I have a lot of criticisms for Apple, but Face ID is not one of them, it is absolutely flawless for me. I wonder if you wear glasses or have facial hair?
- simianwords 8mo agoNo I don’t. I can’t open it during the night when I’m under the blanket for example
- tonyedgecombe 8mo agoThat comment is so Hacker News.
- latexr 8mo agoWhat does that even mean? I know people not on HN who have the same complaint. I also dislike Face ID, it often fails in very dark or very bright situations, it’s never a feature I don’t need to think about. Touch ID on my previous iPhone, however, never failed.
- halapro 8mo agoI'm honestly suddenly having issues unlocking my iPhone 17 Pro in broad daylight. Feels like it doesn't work in the sun anymore. No hair, just eyeglasses.
- amazingman 8mo agoI've found you can do one of two things to some door this: 1. Turn around and face the other way. 2. Make a visor with your other hand on your forehead.
- alivenotions 8mo agoI think I’m in the opposite camp. Loved the butterfly keyboard and Face ID works almost always, so much so that I regret getting a Touch ID iPad. And this is with me having facial hair and glasses. Touch Bar was a miss for me too though
- microtonal 8mo agoI thought the Touch Bar with Esc was kinda ok, but by that time its reputation was already destroyed.
- dd8601fn 8mo agoI loved the touch bar. Unfortunately it was a cool thing that died a slow death when nobody made meaningful use of it. At that point it made sense to axe it.
- amazingman 8mo agoThe experience of using the butterfly keyboard was fantastic, I agree, but it was definitely polarizing. Some people hated it. At the end of the day, however, the reliability issues were unacceptable.
- luckman212 8mo agoIf you think FaceID is hit or miss, I guess you haven't tried the keyboard lately?
- simianwords 8mo agoI would prefer Touch ID
- luckman212 8mo agoI meant: the keyboard is highly unreliable.
- simianwords 8mo agofair yeah that too
- microtonal 8mo agoMy wife and I always make a grocery list at the end of the work day. About 1/3rd gets autocorrected in something that is wrong, was not the case a few years ago. Also, selecting text is an absolute pain now (also used to be ok). At this point I'm wondering if program managers at Apple even use it, but then what else would they use?
- heavyset_go 8mo agoIt's insane to me that they didn't let Face ID be an alternative to Touch ID
- NetMageSCW 8mo agoWhy? TouchID is less secure, has more friction, and brought up more biometric concerns.
- heavyset_go 8mo agoConvenience, it's easier to put your thumb on the phone, it's already in your hand
- wpm 8mo agoAnd I'm already looking at my phone
- kaladin-jasnah 8mo ago> I care about Apple holistically, as a living breathing entity not just their products. Out of curiosity, why?
- simianwords 8mo agoI think it’s like caring for your favourite football team. Which I find much much stranger
- amelius 8mo agoI suppose because it is silly to think of Apple as some kind of divine entity.
- asplake 8mo agoBecause you buy not just a device but into an ecosystem. Because you have expectations of future development. Because, as far as a changing political landscape will allow, you hope you can trust their judgement. Because you want support. Because you want to be able to walk into a store. Lots of reasons…
- GuinansEyebrows 8mo ago> Because, as far as a changing political landscape will allow, you hope you can trust their judgement funny to bring this one up as an example among the others (but i suppose it's evidence that things can go the other way). i was waiting to buy a new M5 MBP this year until they got so cozy with the current administration. now i'm just making do with my current machine until i can get a decent price on a used M5 machine in a couple of years. i'm in the process of cancelling all of my recurring apple subscriptions as well. i'll probably use macs for as long as i use computers, but i think i'm done giving apple any money directly.
- dangus 8mo agoLike it or not, they’re a Silicon Valley institution. They’ve affected technology more and stuck around longer than most everyone else. It’s like caring about Bell Labs if it still existed, or Kodak at its peak. Sure, they were part of big monopolistic companies, but the other side of that is a unique entity with a resume of accomplishments that make them worthy of national pride.
- microtonal 8mo agoLemay has been at Apple for 27 years and has a track record that implies the future of Apple software under his leadership is extraordinarily bright. I don't share the optimism. I mean, he was there when Liquid Glass was designed and presumably in a good position if he became an executive leader now. Sure, Alan Dye may be the face, but Liquid Glass was made by a very large department. And it is not like Apple's design rot started with liquid glass, this recent post shows that it is regression after regression after regression (which is also my impression after having used Macs since 2007): https://pxlnv.com/blog/window-chrome-of-our-discontent/ https://pxlnv.com/blog/window-chrome-of-our-discontent/ It is sad that Apple is still extremely good at hardware (I have the iPhone 17 Pro and the design is stellar), but software has become worse and worse over the years. They can only get away with it because almost all of the rest of the industry is even worse (macOS is still a glass of ice water if you are in the hellscape that is Windows).
- throwaway27448 8mo ago> Sure, Alan Dye may be the face, but Liquid Glass was made by a very large department And the board is ultimately the culpable party here. The executives are just useful idiots. The board has clearly lost whatever direction they ever had of why the company they're running has value—and they can't just hire Steve Jobs back anymore.
- thenobsta 8mo agoThis spurred me look at the board of Apple. Not a lot of builders/software/hardware/product people one there.
- twodave 8mo agoAs a heavy user of both operating systems, I really don’t feel that either has changed much in the last decade. Visually, sure, things go through cycles, but from a “how do I use it?” perspective my work flows on neither OS have changed.
- layer8 8mo ago
- troupo 8mo agoStop giving Alan Dye the Package Designer God-like powers. As if he was alone reaponsible for any design changes. Federighi answers only to Cook and God (not sure about God though), and he and his minions have been happily implementing every single bullshit under the sun, and praising it on stage. They spent probably millions of man-hours on Liquid Glass. And shipped it in the state it is in. For the new Apple to "begin to emerge" you need more than meaningless web page updates. You need a leadership that cares. When is the last time you've seen any of Apple's senior leadership care?
- mrkstu 8mo agoHopefully Apple is humble enough to course correct, while being wildly successful. It’s easy to ignore criticism when your books are overflowing with cash, but the cracks are spreading and the foundation will eventually crumble if they don’t start taking their problems seriously.
- fennecbutt 8mo ago"You're holding it wrong"
- amazingman 8mo agoPeople were in fact holding it wrong to get the signal to attenuate. The way you had to grip the phone to affect signal was not practical in any way. That controversy was entirely bullshit and only Apple would have ever been dragged for it.
- hu3 8mo agoPhones should be made to be held in any way. Different people, different grips. It should just work. Other brands manage to do better so why can't Apple with their $1k phone? It's laughable they still get people to defend that. And it's not like people are faraday cages. This is basic physics.
- amazingman 8mo agoIIRC Other brands at the time did not actually do better. They all had similar issues and made similar or different tradeoffs.
- rrgok 8mo agoUnless I'm missing something, I hate fanboys > The MacBook Neo is a new kind of product for Apple It's just a laptop with a dumbed down CPU. It is not a NEW KIND of product. Apple already sells laptop with different CPUs..
- geerlingguy 8mo agoI think "value laptop" is the new product—for Apple. The closest they ever came to something similar was the far too expensive 12" MacBook, and the far-too-compromised PowerBook Duo (IMHO).
- ayewo 8mo agoAnd to zoom out a bit, Apple has lots of experience selling budget devices e.g. iPhone SE.
- rjrjrjrj 8mo ago12" MacBook, PowerBook Duo, PowerBook 2400, and first-gen MacBook Air were attempts at making the smallest possible Mac notebook. The Neo is their only attempt to date at making the least expensive possible Mac notebook.
- Kwpolska 8mo agoIt's new and revolutionary, because it's the first sub-$1000 laptop from Apple.
- zsoltkacsandi 8mo agoTo Apple it is a new kind of product.
- dangus 8mo agoThat’s a very spec-focused way to think about something that has nothing to do with specs. This is a laptop being sold at half the price of the cheapest laptop Apple has ever sold save for some oddities like the eMate. Apple has never threatened the “I just need a working cheap laptop for $500” market in this way before.
- 8mo ago
- lateforwork 8mo agoLemay has been at Apple for 27 years and has a track record that implies the future of Apple software under his leadership is extraordinarily bright. That Macbook Neo wallpaper [1] does not give me confidence. [1] https://9to5mac.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2026/03/MacBook-Neo-Yellow.jpg https://9to5mac.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2026/03/MacBo...
- arvid-lind 8mo agoDid someone at Apple discover some cool shader tricks and just can't stop?
- jitl 8mo agoyeah at some point around 1999 with Mac OS 9, they started making abstract desktop backgrounds like this, and there’ve been a few like it in every OS released since then https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipNNQyeVrqxBdNmBkq9ILswizuj-RYJFNt5GlxJZ90Y6hx0okrVSLKSnmFFbX7j5Mg?key=RV8tSXVJVGdfS1RIQUI0Q3RZZVhlTmw0WmhFZ2V3 https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipNNQyeVrqxBdNmBkq9ILswi...
- lateforwork 8mo agoThanks for sharing, I find those backgrounds beautiful. The Neo background, on the other hand, is ugly, at least to my taste.
- layer8 8mo agoIt definitely has a bit of a 1990s gradient 3D buttons vibe.
- cmckn 8mo agoReminds me of bacteria under a microscope.
- Avicebron 8mo agoDo people like the Macbook Neo? When I saw it was announced I groaned thinking this was Apple's chromebook, cheap, representative of a disposable mindset. Underpowered and even more locked into the ecosystem.. I'd love to be proven wrong. But to me it feels regressive. I guess the only positive spin on it I can think of is that this is designed for kids in schools.
- Mistletoe 8mo agoI like how cheap it is. But I’m not a typical Apple user. My laptop is a MacBook Air 11” that does everything I need it to do that I bought on eBay for about $75 in 2022.
- tonyedgecombe 8mo agoI was hoping they might have brought back the 11" Air. I never do much serious work on the run so a small device like that would be ideal for me.
- windowsrookie 8mo agoI replied to somebody else earlier, but the 11" air and the new neo are very close in physical size. The 11" MacBook Air was 11.8" x 7.56" the neo is 11.71" x 8.12".
- programd 8mo agoIt's partly the weight that made the 11" MacBook Air great: MacBook Air: 1.08 kg (2.38 lbs) MacBook Neo: 1.23 kg (2.70 lbs)
- tonyedgecombe 8mo agoI'd assume the bezels would shrink in a modern version.
- windowsrookie 8mo agoDefinitely not typical, the 11" MacBooks had terrible screens by modern standards and have no hardware acceleration for modern video codecs. It really is too bad they never upgraded that 1366x768 LCD in the 11" MacBooks otherwise I think they could be great linux devices today.
- JKCalhoun 8mo agoI think Steve Lemay is a good guy. I kind of fought with him when I was an engineer, he was a young, new designer (at Apple). But I always respected his point of view—even when we argued. When Jobs came back to Apple in the latter 1990's "Design" slowly came to have an outsized role. I was one half of the engineering team that owned Preview (the application) when Steve Lemay became a seemingly regular presence in the hallway. As the new "Aqua" UI elements arrived in the OS like the "drawer" and toolbar, Steve and his boss (forgetting his name right now—Greg Somebody?) were often making calls about our UI implementation. The bigger argument I remember with Steve revolved around the drawer UI element. With regard to PDF's, (the half of Preview that I worked on, another engineer handled images), the drawer was to display thumbnails for each page. If the PDF had a TOC (table of contents) the drawer is where we would display that as well. So when you opened a PDF in Preview, the PDF content of course would appear in the large window—thumbnails, TOC (later search) would be relegated to a vertical strip of drawer real estate alongside the window—the user could open/close the drawer if they liked to focus perhaps on the content. Steve Lemay insisted the drawer live on the right side of the window [1]. This was inexplicable to me. I saw the layout of Preview as hierarchical: the left side of the content driving the right side. You click a thumbnail on the left (in the drawer) the window content on the right changes to reflect the thumbnail clicked on. Steve said, no, drawer on the right. "Why? Why the hell would we do that?" Steve was quick: "The Preview app is about the content. The content is king." I admit that I still disagreed with him after the exchange, but I had a new respect for him as a designer because he was able to articulate a rationale for his decision. I suppose I was prejudiced to expect hand-waving from designers. (Coda: some years later after I had left the Preview team, an engineer still on the app let me know that the thumbnails, etc, were at last moving to the left side of the app. The "drawer" as as a UI element had by this time gone away: resizable split-views were the replacement.) (Addendum: Steve also invented the early Safari URL text field that also doubled as a progress bar. Instant hate from me when I saw it: it was as if the text of the URL you entered was being selected as the page loaded. So I'm old-school and Steve had some new ideas…) [1] Localization was such that in countries where right-to-left was dominant, the drawer would of course follow suit.
- Someone 8mo ago> Steve Lemay insisted the drawer live on the right side of the window [1]. This was inexplicable to me. Makes some sense to me if, as I suspect, people tend to place their windows aligned to the left of the screen. If that’s the case, opening the drawer to the left of its container (the window) would require not sliding the drawer out, but sliding the window to the right to make room for the drawer. I think that that’s a reason the drawer analogy doesn’t really make sense. Another is that the question “what do you store in a drawer?” certainly isn’t “page thumbnails and table of contents”. “Rarely used tools” or “spare paper” are better answers.
- BirAdam 8mo agoSo, the biggest signal here is Apple caring enough about the low-end of the market to make a laptop for it, and they didn’t just continue making the M1 (as has been the case up to now at Walmart). Apple instead chose to bring back color, to provide better cooling to a newer and more power efficient chip, and thereby deliver better performance than M1. They didn’t skimp on materials. They didn’t skimp on the screen. The Neo is a premium device, it’s just low on RAM and GPU cores. For a student who just needs Pages, Numbers, Keynote, and Safari, that’s fine. For the average HN reader, it’s not fine, but the Neo isn’t intended for HN readers. My biggest complaint is actually the positioning of the USB-C ports. The USB2 port should have been the one in the corner where most people will connect a charger, and the one in front should have been USB3 where most people would be plugging anything else. For the current layout, it seems like they’re counting on the buyer to get a dock of some kind… but this is meant to be budget?
- NetMageSCW 8mo agoDepends - for an external monitor connection, the back corner is probably better.
- glimshe 8mo agoHey New Apple, can you guys fix the nearly weekly prompt I get to reject local network access for the browser? I don't have that on my windows or Linux machines so it's fixable!
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- ValentineC 8mo agoI really hope Steve Lemay fixes liquid glAss in macOS and iOS 27. I've held off upgrading past Sequoia because of it, or wanting to buy M4/M5 Macs. I've tried and absolutely love the iPhone 17 Pro hardware, but the camera app is an unusable monstrosity.
- IndySun 8mo agoI too am holding back on ios18. One of the weekly calls I get from a non tech friend (actually that's unfair, they're just scared to change settings in case something breaks) wanted to know how I made the timelapse video I'd just sent. I dutifully explained what to tap and how to get to it but to no avail - such is said abomination of the ios26 camera app.
- pupppet 8mo agoI found Tahoe so bad that I rolled back. That was after a good few months of using it.
- jbverschoor 8mo agoLink screen kernel panics during Time Machine Asus rog 128gb sends like a really good deal at this point
- mmooss 8mo ago> the marketing is radically different. Apple’s advertising materials for the Neo are a radical departure from their typical work. It’s drawing exactly the kind of attention that they need to. It’s fun, it’s different, and it’s most importantly current. Not just following trends, but taking what makes Apple, Apple and meshing it together with what’s expected of brands in 2026. Could someone explain what the OP means here?
- krackers 8mo agoSee https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47301241 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47301241 particularly the tiktok shorts.
- mmooss 8mo agoI feel almost ill. How sad. They even discarded the cubist element of the Finder icon, which would have been interesting in 3-D. The idea that the Mac community has lost its artistic sense and enjoys it says a lot. Maybe I'm making too much of this derivative work, and Apple's own material isn't like it? Time moves on, I suppose.
- vjulian 8mo agoHardly what I would label as ‘longform’, though the author did.
- deafpolygon 8mo agoThe MacBook Neo is there to redefine the floor for the product line-up. There’s a reason why it didn’t take the “MacBook” moniker: they’re going to phase the Air out, introduce a more expensive “MacBook” and eventually shuffle the Pro line around so it’s MacBook Neo -> MacBook (???) -> MacBook Ultra The 599 price point is just there to justify recycling the A18 chip (8GB limit is due to the chip). It will pivot and the price will climb back up (699, 799 probably) after a cycle or two. There is no ‘new’ Apple.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- thenthenthen 8mo agoThe ‘new materials’ at the end of the post is a bit weird, arent they using ‘old’ A type chips?