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This is one of the more broadly normal HN-reaction threads to large public news event I've seen in a while. A lot of love for Apple, respect for the decision, a

• mentalgear 6mo ago
  Hopefully the Neo is the beginning of Apple making useful and affordable products for all users, instead of walling their garden to squeeze out every last penny via Cook's 'premium'-upwards-screwdriver tactics ... the history of market-dynamics suggests otherwise, but let's hope and wait there's a mindset change as well.
  • dash2 6mo ago
    I think it might be the opposite. You make cheap products for everybody because you are going to make money off subscriptions. Personally, I think it's a reasonable strategy, but it might mean they lose their focus on high-end craftsmanship.
    • ezst 6mo ago
      > craftsmanship What marketing does to people
      • sumedh 6mo ago
        Have you used Windows?
        • kombine 6mo ago
          what does Windows have to do with this? It sucks as much as MacOS
      • dahcryn 6mo ago
        the M line of macbook pro's are beautiful, well crafted, long lasting machines. MacOS might not be your preferred way of working, and you might prefer cheaper options or USB-A ports, but there is really nothing you could arguably call bad craftmanship in those machines.
        • diegolas 6mo ago
          they're very well designed and built products, craftmanship is something else.
          • deleted 6mo ago
            [deleted]
          • choudharism 6mo ago
            What is it?
            • carlosjobim 6mo ago
              They are mass produced in factories, not made by craftsmen.
        • hansvm 6mo ago
          I mean, they're not bad, but they have spicy chargers, the corners are uncomfortably sharp, the keyboard often doesn't register, the LCD is prone to vertical bars and other issues even without physical damage and is extremely sensitive to bumps and other minor damage elsewhere on the laptop (not even the display itself), and so on.
          • pxc 6mo ago
            Some of these are consequences of what makes them feel "premium" or even "solid". Aluminum is a terrible material for bumps and drops because it dents, and that often damages the internal components.
        • inatreecrown2 6mo ago
      • doodledoodahs 6mo ago
        Have you actually looked at apple products and compared them to the competition? The different in quality of finish is really stark in my experience. Some other manufacturers have some products which have some nice features. Whatever you think of the software or ecosystem, almost Apple hardware is just nicely made.
      • alsetmusic 6mo ago
        >> craftsmanship > What marketing does to people I'm sorry, are my MacBooks Pro, Air, and (my spouse's) Neo not some of the best built laptops you can buy? Maybe there's something better, but these are inarguably some of the best. Absolute top of the line. See the Verge (I think) reviewing similarly priced laptops priced around the Neo. They were plastic crap, even if they had better specs elsewhere.
      • deleted 6mo ago
        [deleted]
      • ecshafer 6mo ago
        I've never bought a Mac, I have used them for work. They are the best built laptops on the market, bar none. Too bad their OS is awful. Its not just marketing.
  • linhns 6mo ago
    Neo is a good product, but they're making their better products (Macs) more out of reach for a whole class of customers.
    • JoshTko 6mo ago
      Mac Mini is a stellar product...
    • pwthornton 6mo ago
      Is that really true? The price of Macs today is far lower than it used to be when adjusted for inflation. I know this is true of all computers, but you can get a really good Mac computer without spending a lot of money, historically speaking. The Macbook Air, the best computer for most people, starts at $1099. I paid something like $2,700 for my computer, which I brought to college in 2002. That's about $5,000 in today's money.
  • netdevphoenix 6mo ago
    > making useful and affordable products for all users, Affordable, ethical. You can only choose one.
    • mentalgear 6mo ago
      Interesting, but is Apple as ethical yet as its premium price point could suggest? Fairphone (material sourcing) and Framework (repairability) would suggest otherwise.
  • keepamovin 6mo ago
    Honestly i think it will bifurcate. More Neo more high end
• user_7832 6mo ago
  I don't intend to be a contrairian purely to be one, but Apple is the same company that (to paraphrase) wanted to "see Saurik cry". This being hackernews, I hope to be excused for siding with a white hat code-hacker over a trillion dollar corporate. (And that's not getting into all the other morally questionable stuff they've done.)
  • Ygg2 6mo ago
    How dare you insult the forty gazillion company! Stand back ma'am I'll protect you from this handsome hacker ruffian! Jokes aside, I have started to see Microslop as the lesser of two evils (two evils being MSFT and AAPL, Google being its own parallel universe abomination). Their commitment to backward compatibility really paved the way to cheap PCs for the masses. That said, every day Macroslop is working diligently to prove me wrong.
    • pcblues 6mo ago
      4 kings. Wipe if you think you can do better :) It can and has been done.
      • snypher 6mo ago
        4 horseman, you're welcome.
    • DeathArrow 6mo ago
      Microsoft doesn't give 2 cents now on desktops and desktop software. They care about selling cloud and cloud products. Since they can't charge a subscription for Windows (like Adobe does for its products), they don't care about it anymore.
      • radiator 6mo ago
        Why can't they charge a subscription for windows? It could be only a small yearly fee.
• eats_indigo 6mo ago
  I think they're the exact same age at time of appointment?
  • az226 6mo ago
    But Tim Apple had gray hair
• DarkNova6 6mo ago
  > This is one of the more broadly normal HN-reaction threads to large public news event I've seen in a while. A lot of love for Apple, respect for the decision, and respectfully stated nuance. Surprising and good. In other words, nothing insightful or worth talking about. I don't want to read news for feelgood vibes.
  • cimi_ 6mo ago
    This is relevant information for this forum, for good or bad Apple has a lot of impact. I find your reaction strange, do you read news to be angry and/or afraid? :)
    • card_zero 6mo ago
      For critical thought. This overlaps with negativity, because criticism is disagreeable.
      • phlakaton 6mo ago
        Mostly when presented disagreeably. You might reflect upon that.
        • card_zero 6mo ago
          Exactly! Good demonstration.
      • Eisenstein 6mo ago
        Critical thought is not about negativity, it is about evaluation. You take a statement and evaluate it based on its merits using an epistemic system which prioritizes consistently, evidence, and logical coherence. Saying it is disagreeable is like saying that honestly is disagreeable. Sure, it can be, but it is not an inherent feature, and a lot depends on how it is delivered.
        • card_zero 6mo ago
• tcfhgj 6mo ago
  A lot of love for a company which doesn't even let you chose the apps you want to use.
  • hk__2 6mo ago
    This is not a bad thing.
    • AussieWog93 6mo ago
      Please explain?
  • zapzupnz 6mo ago
    A wonderfully out-of-date sentiment.
    • tcfhgj 6mo ago
      oh I just love the replies
    • card_zero 6mo ago
      What do you mean? Something like "freedom is so last year, it's all about obedience now"?
      • zapzupnz 6mo ago
        I mean that you can now change default apps. Nice jump to a strawman rather than waiting for a reply.
  • keepamovin 6mo ago
    Unless you choose your hardware first…
• DeathArrow 6mo ago
  > A lot of love for Apple That makes me wonder why people love Apple but hate all other big companies.
  • AussieWog93 6mo ago
    There are plenty of other big companies that people love too. Off the top of my head: Nintendo, AMD, Disney. In the case of all of them, they may make some questionably ethical business decisions but at the same time do genuinely care about the craft they're in, pushing boundaries and making quality products.
  • dspillett 6mo ago
    To a large extent: the product, the gloss, the luxury-item impression. People generally aren't looking beyond that deeper into the company behind. You can see a similar thing in the 3D printing world with Bambu Lab - people love the product (my A1 has been excellent value, very reliable, and I despite preferring my fancy more expensive toy for most tasks I would still recommend it to those starting out without specific needs that such a design can't provide), and any concern about the company behind it (slowly closing off the ecosystem, initially trying to make out that their obviously-inspired-by-the-fullspectrum-scorca-fork colour mixing option was their own original stroke of genius) doesn't matter to them. With both Bambu and Apple part of why they get this attention is the end-to-end polish that people feel in the product experience (to be fair is a valid reason to choose those products) and a certain amount of luck in them bringing their show to market at the right time, where other companies are seen as producing more interchangeable commodity items. Without that distinction giving people a higher view of the product range, the other companies struggle to get away from the fact that we don't naturally, for good reason, trust nor love commercial entities. The other thing working in favour of some companies is momentum: some were worthy of some adoration for higher quality products and/or greater customer care than the competition, but are no longer and it takes a while for everyone to realise how much things have changed. Disney is definitely a company that I would add to this pile, and there are others. Another big company that seems to get a lot more adoration than any of their competition is Nintendo, though I'm not in the gaming market any more so I don't know how much of that they still earn and how much of it is just that at least they aren't Sony or Microsoft!
• card_zero 6mo ago
  There's a BBC article on this, with a quote: > With a new boss, Apple may be showing its strategic interest in deeper integration of AI into its hardware, said Hubbard. "The very strengths that made Apple dominant - their discipline, polish, and control - could become constraints if the next era rewards openness and faster iteration," he said. The opposite of the basic human interface quality and consistency improvements that several commenters here hope for. (Admittedly "Hubbard" here is just the first pundit they could grab, an Assistant Professor of Management and Organization, so this isn't the best informed prognostication.)
  • keepamovin 6mo ago
    I honestly think they are just transitioning to a new format for user interfaces. What I mean is I think there’s some hardware coming that is going to make all of the previous user interface is redundant in someway at least in Apple’s thesis and so there’s less focus on making those traditional screens great because we’re gonna have new surfaces.
• layer8 6mo ago
  > This guy seems much younger than Tim was when he ascended. Ternus just looks a bit younger. He’ll be 51, and half a year older than Cook was when he became CEO in 2011.
  • calgoo 6mo ago
    All the C-suits in Apple that normally does the presentations look completely LA style artificial. Nothing looks human about them, they always give off the same feel of un-personal, robotic, snake oil sales people; not someone that you actually would like to lead a company, as in someone who actually understands what it means to be human.
  • keepamovin 6mo ago
    I suppose saying he looks better at that age would be inappropriate? Haha
• garganzol 6mo ago
  Your statement implies that positivity equals to normality. This is the same kind of statement that would imply that negativity or evil is normal. All those statements are psychological manipulation. Being too positive or too negative makes people blind and mendable by silently suppressing their will to be themselves.
  • deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
  • keepamovin 6mo ago
    I think you can do better
• tonyl 6mo ago
  Love for hackernews community
• throwaway2037 6mo ago
  > This guy seems much younger than Tim was when he ascended. I just checked. Tim Cook is 65 now, which makes him about 50 when he became CEO. John Ternus is 50 now.
  • MetaWhirledPeas 6mo ago
    I'd say a bigger difference is that Jobs casts a much larger shadow than Cook. Maybe Ternus will find it easier to move the company forward.
• FpUser 6mo ago
  To me Apple is the company that had started the war against personal computing.
• TwoNineFive 6mo ago
  That's some really gross toxic-positivity begging.
  • deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
  • keepamovin 6mo ago
    You can do better
• crimshawz 6mo ago
  [dead]
• tcp_handshaker 6mo ago
  This reads like a good example of how prestige brands flatten people critical faculties. :-) "A lot of love for Apple" is not evidence of wisdom or merit. It is evidence that Apple has been extraordinarily successful at converting ordinary consumer electronics into a moral aesthetic identity for its customers... Once that happens, public praise stops being about products and starts being about selfregard. That is why Apple gets discussed in a register normally reserved for institutions that have actually earned public affection. In reality, it is a company that charges luxury prices for tightly controlled products, then persuades customers that the control is sophistication and the markup is virtue. :-) This is mostly a case study in prestige bias. People are not just evaluating a company but protecting a status hierarchy in which buying Apple signifies discernment. And the something amazing must be in the skunkworks line is the usual theology that means when the present is overpriced iteration, redemption is always scheduled for a few years from now.
  • tcp_handshaker 6mo ago
    [flagged]
  • deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
  • keepamovin 6mo ago
    You can do better than that
    • tcp_handshaker 6mo ago
      Oh yes, I can... I remember the iPhone launch queues...as in the strangest ritual in consumer tech. People camping overnight for a device that will be sitting on shelves in unlimited quantities the following week. Like queueing up for a vacuum cleaner and pretending it's the moon landing.:-) Oh the love for a company, with the battery gate ($500M settlement for throttling phones customers already owned), the CSAM on-device scanning proposal, a decade of Irish tax routing, active lobbying against right to repair, repeated supply chain findings on child and forced labor... and a CEO who hands Trump gold while going quiet on the causes Apple used to grandstand about. So much much to love on this company. Its poised with assholery of Steve Jobs to its core, and has no salvation. If I want luxury, I buy a laptop from Cartier... The worst is the tell that an all Apple setup is a the near perfect filter for not a hacker. The ecosystem is engineered against the instincts that define hacking, no sideloading without ceremony, no real repair, no low level access without fighting the OS, no running what you want without Apple permission, no swapping parts that haven't been blessed with the right serial number. Its computing for consumers, not tinkerers. Which is fine, except the culture around it borrows the prestige of technical sophistication while actively opting out of it. :-) The Mac in the coffee shop is a lifestyle object. The ThinkPad running Linux next to it is a tool.