5 ms·

You're reading way too much into it. These are just failed attempts at commercializing something. - People hated the touchbar. Only years after it became liked

by jorvi 5mo ago

You're reading way too much into it. These are just failed attempts at commercializing something. - People hated the touchbar. Only years after it became liked, and only under tech enthusiasts that hacked and tweaked it to have much deeper functionality. - Making the ejector out of an expensive alloy made no sense. - Realitykit (and the Vision, which is also crashing and burning) is a solution looking for a problem. - 3D touch had both discoverability and usability problems. - etc etc.

taeric 5mo ago
Vision is hilarious as it is more than just a solution looking for a problem. It was also desperately avoiding the current market that exists for it. Anything but games, it seemed.
- socalgal2 5mo ago
  Even more strange given 60-70% of all app store revenue for Apple is games - see Epic vs Apple trial for data
  - Danox 5mo ago
    The Apple store doesn’t do geek games casual games don’t count…
    - djhn 5mo ago
      Casual games ≈ IAP gambling addiction abuse
JeremyHerrman 5mo ago
You're underestimating Apple's meticulous planning, which has only become more intense in the Cook era. Bad feature/UX or not, each one of those decisions was calculated. Read this ars quote from 2010 [0]: >Apple used the small part—one that is not integral to the device’s functionality—to see if the company was capable or producing a custom design to Apple’s specifications. Typically, manufacturers prefer to have at least two sources for parts, so that a supply problem from one supplier won’t halt manufacturing. Since Liquidmetal is only available from one source, Apple needed to make sure the company could deliver. For Apple Silicon, there was no way they'd make the switch in one go, so they had to figure out a way to hedge that bet. That's what the TouchBar really was, with all its warts and solutions for problems nobody had. And as someone else in this thread pointed out, the first custom cellular chip wasn't released with a flagship model - they exclusively paired it with the budget iPhone 16e. Apple is always calculating and hedging. [0]: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2010/08/apple-tested-liquidmetal-alloy-for-iphone-3g-sim-pin/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2010/08/apple-tested-liquidm...
- wetpaws 5mo ago
  [dead]
- troupo 5mo ago
  > You're underestimating Apple's meticulous planning, which has only become more intense in the Cook era "Meticulous planning" and then: butterfly keyboard, wireless charging, Mac Pro, Liquid Glass. And those are just off the top of my head.
  - gsquaredxc 5mo ago
    I think you confuse long-term planning with long-term success. Just because something is meticulously planned doesn’t guarantee the plan wasn’t flawed fundamentally. Additionally, wireless charging is viewed as a flop? MagSafe (wireless) is a really strong product option. Lightning vs USB-C doesn’t matter, no need to fiddle with anything in the dark, etc. MagSafe for mounting in a car is also a strong offering. Most Android phones use Qi as well.
    - troupo 5mo ago
      > I think you confuse long-term planning with long-term success. No. Long-term planning presupposes actual planning and execution, including failure modes, usage patterns etc. There's markedly less and less of that under Cook's leadership. Oh, by the way. You can't really have long-term meticulous planning when everything is on an artificially enforced yearly cycle. The hardware division has mostly emerged unscathed, but that's a miracle in Cook's Apple. > wireless charging is viewed as a flop? I was referring to AirPower. Announced, never shipped. I should've looked up the name for it. Otherwise yes, wireless charging has been used everywhere, and Apple was just one of very last holdouts to implement it.
      - moralestapia 5mo ago
        4 trillion dollars disagree, though.
Fr0styMatt88 5mo ago
Even at the time I remember it was widely cited that the SIM eject tool was a test for their new manufacturing process.
MBCook 5mo ago
I liked the TouchBar. There were two problems with it: 1. It replaced the F keys. I suspect pros wouldn’t have complained so loudly if it didn’t. And it was too expensive for the cheaper computers where it may have been more popular. 2. They never changed it. Ok the first version wasn’t a big hit. Other than bringing back the escape key they never did anything. They sent it out to be a hit or to die and gave up there.
- sysworld 5mo ago
  no2 is what annoyed me the most. I liked it for the most part, but it was never updated, even on the software side we had very few changes. It could've been great.
  - shagie 5mo ago
    Even though it's showing its age (and support is being phased out in recent builds), I still liked IntelliJ with the Touch Bar laptop. https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/touch-bar-support.html https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/touch-bar-support.html Having the Touch Bar screen show up the relevant buttons for the context I was in was really nice compared to trying to remember which F key was which debug option. A "I wish..." would have been a $200 usb bar and hub that could sit right behind my keyboard for a desktop.
    - MBCook 5mo ago
      That was one of my two primary uses! The other was I made some Shortcuts that were very handy for me and set them up as buttons. It’s been over a year, I still miss them. One would pop up a dialog I could type a Jira ticket number into and it would open it. I tried to do that with Salesforce but they’re insane so you can’t. My favorite would open my next meeting. Know I have a meeting in 5 minutes? Hit the button and my browser would open the right Google Meet or Zoom and come to the front. So useful. The desktop problem is a real one too. It was great… as long as you only use your laptop as a laptop or your keyboard. Use anything else and you list it. iMac? No. Mac Pro? No. Mac Mini? Don’t be stupid. No. MBP only.
- 5mo ago
bdamm 5mo ago
You're misunderstanding how difficult it is to make major architectural changes to products the way Apple can. One of the ways to do it is to hide the architectural change as something else, something niche, and only when it has survived the fire of deployment there try to scale it up to the full market. It's actually quite genious, and you can expect more of it now that Apple's hardware guru is the chief. I can't help but wonder if this agentic-via-accessibility angle is the result of this new leadership. If it is, it's a very good sign for Apple, because software and especially the AI gap is Apple's achillies right now.
- dwaite 5mo ago
  ML-related improvements to accessibility has been the trend for a couple of years now. Changes which might not meet the quality bar to be a default user experience have a different calculus when they can be packaged up to be opt-in, and life-changing for certain people. Global Accessibility Awareness Day also leads WWDC by a few weeks, so it serves as a taste of what Apple has been working on for the last year. In terms of changes being led by a smaller feature, my favorite was night shift (which adjusted blue lighting at night) - which provided API months leading the first device with adaptive color adjustments from ambient light sensors.
Danox 5mo ago
Vociferous tech people hated the touchbar same with the butterfly keyboard or Neo laptop. And it makes perfect sense to test out new chips in small ways before you release them in a major product that is Apples edge today with Apple Silicon in comparison to most of their competition.
darkwater 5mo ago
I mean, they literally said that the touchbar was the first iteration and production deployment of Apple Silicone. Didn't judge the usefulness at all. You are making a textbook straw man argument.
theshrike79 5mo ago
> - People hated the touchbar. Only years after it became liked, and only under tech enthusiasts that hacked and tweaked it to have much deeper functionality. We hated the touchbar because it took away esc + f-keys. If it had been on top of the F-key row, everyone would've loved it.

by jorvi 5mo ago

taeric 5mo ago

Vision is hilarious as it is more than just a solution looking for a problem. It was also desperately avoiding the current market that exists for it. Anything but games, it seemed.

socalgal2 5mo ago
Even more strange given 60-70% of all app store revenue for Apple is games - see Epic vs Apple trial for data
- Danox 5mo ago
  The Apple store doesn’t do geek games casual games don’t count…
  - djhn 5mo ago
    Casual games ≈ IAP gambling addiction abuse

JeremyHerrman 5mo ago

You're underestimating Apple's meticulous planning, which has only become more intense in the Cook era. Bad feature/UX or not, each one of those decisions was calculated. Read this ars quote from 2010 [0]: >Apple used the small part—one that is not integral to the device’s functionality—to see if the company was capable or producing a custom design to Apple’s specifications. Typically, manufacturers prefer to have at least two sources for parts, so that a supply problem from one supplier won’t halt manufacturing. Since Liquidmetal is only available from one source, Apple needed to make sure the company could deliver. For Apple Silicon, there was no way they'd make the switch in one go, so they had to figure out a way to hedge that bet. That's what the TouchBar really was, with all its warts and solutions for problems nobody had. And as someone else in this thread pointed out, the first custom cellular chip wasn't released with a flagship model - they exclusively paired it with the budget iPhone 16e. Apple is always calculating and hedging. [0]: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2010/08/apple-tested-liquidmetal-alloy-for-iphone-3g-sim-pin/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2010/08/apple-tested-liquidm...

wetpaws 5mo ago
[dead]
troupo 5mo ago
> You're underestimating Apple's meticulous planning, which has only become more intense in the Cook era "Meticulous planning" and then: butterfly keyboard, wireless charging, Mac Pro, Liquid Glass. And those are just off the top of my head.
- gsquaredxc 5mo ago
  I think you confuse long-term planning with long-term success. Just because something is meticulously planned doesn’t guarantee the plan wasn’t flawed fundamentally. Additionally, wireless charging is viewed as a flop? MagSafe (wireless) is a really strong product option. Lightning vs USB-C doesn’t matter, no need to fiddle with anything in the dark, etc. MagSafe for mounting in a car is also a strong offering. Most Android phones use Qi as well.
  - troupo 5mo ago
    > I think you confuse long-term planning with long-term success. No. Long-term planning presupposes actual planning and execution, including failure modes, usage patterns etc. There's markedly less and less of that under Cook's leadership. Oh, by the way. You can't really have long-term meticulous planning when everything is on an artificially enforced yearly cycle. The hardware division has mostly emerged unscathed, but that's a miracle in Cook's Apple. > wireless charging is viewed as a flop? I was referring to AirPower. Announced, never shipped. I should've looked up the name for it. Otherwise yes, wireless charging has been used everywhere, and Apple was just one of very last holdouts to implement it.
    - moralestapia 5mo ago
      4 trillion dollars disagree, though.

Fr0styMatt88 5mo ago

Even at the time I remember it was widely cited that the SIM eject tool was a test for their new manufacturing process.

MBCook 5mo ago

I liked the TouchBar. There were two problems with it: 1. It replaced the F keys. I suspect pros wouldn’t have complained so loudly if it didn’t. And it was too expensive for the cheaper computers where it may have been more popular. 2. They never changed it. Ok the first version wasn’t a big hit. Other than bringing back the escape key they never did anything. They sent it out to be a hit or to die and gave up there.

sysworld 5mo ago
no2 is what annoyed me the most. I liked it for the most part, but it was never updated, even on the software side we had very few changes. It could've been great.
- shagie 5mo ago
  Even though it's showing its age (and support is being phased out in recent builds), I still liked IntelliJ with the Touch Bar laptop. https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/touch-bar-support.html https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/touch-bar-support.html Having the Touch Bar screen show up the relevant buttons for the context I was in was really nice compared to trying to remember which F key was which debug option. A "I wish..." would have been a $200 usb bar and hub that could sit right behind my keyboard for a desktop.
  - MBCook 5mo ago
    That was one of my two primary uses! The other was I made some Shortcuts that were very handy for me and set them up as buttons. It’s been over a year, I still miss them. One would pop up a dialog I could type a Jira ticket number into and it would open it. I tried to do that with Salesforce but they’re insane so you can’t. My favorite would open my next meeting. Know I have a meeting in 5 minutes? Hit the button and my browser would open the right Google Meet or Zoom and come to the front. So useful. The desktop problem is a real one too. It was great… as long as you only use your laptop as a laptop or your keyboard. Use anything else and you list it. iMac? No. Mac Pro? No. Mac Mini? Don’t be stupid. No. MBP only.
5mo ago

bdamm 5mo ago

You're misunderstanding how difficult it is to make major architectural changes to products the way Apple can. One of the ways to do it is to hide the architectural change as something else, something niche, and only when it has survived the fire of deployment there try to scale it up to the full market. It's actually quite genious, and you can expect more of it now that Apple's hardware guru is the chief. I can't help but wonder if this agentic-via-accessibility angle is the result of this new leadership. If it is, it's a very good sign for Apple, because software and especially the AI gap is Apple's achillies right now.

dwaite 5mo ago
ML-related improvements to accessibility has been the trend for a couple of years now. Changes which might not meet the quality bar to be a default user experience have a different calculus when they can be packaged up to be opt-in, and life-changing for certain people. Global Accessibility Awareness Day also leads WWDC by a few weeks, so it serves as a taste of what Apple has been working on for the last year. In terms of changes being led by a smaller feature, my favorite was night shift (which adjusted blue lighting at night) - which provided API months leading the first device with adaptive color adjustments from ambient light sensors.

Danox 5mo ago

Vociferous tech people hated the touchbar same with the butterfly keyboard or Neo laptop. And it makes perfect sense to test out new chips in small ways before you release them in a major product that is Apples edge today with Apple Silicon in comparison to most of their competition.

darkwater 5mo ago

I mean, they literally said that the touchbar was the first iteration and production deployment of Apple Silicone. Didn't judge the usefulness at all. You are making a textbook straw man argument.

theshrike79 5mo ago

> - People hated the touchbar. Only years after it became liked, and only under tech enthusiasts that hacked and tweaked it to have much deeper functionality. We hated the touchbar because it took away esc + f-keys. If it had been on top of the F-key row, everyone would've loved it.