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300 points by mh_ 13y ago

Jormundir 13y ago
This is the whole tech industry... I realized a few months ago hacker news has become boring. I don't really care much for the incremental updates, which is the entire hardware industry. Even the internet has become pretty boring. We're all excited for the promises of the future, and as usual they're taking a lot longer than we want them to.
- zallo-zallon 13y ago
  If you're excited for the future, work on breaking up the culture that keeps technology a monolith. For instance, Oculus VR exists only because of Kickstarter. What else could we do to get innovators the resources they need?
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
hamburglar 13y ago
Oh jeez. It's almost like there's a certain ... legendary source of charisma and showmanship missing. Give the hand-wringing a break. Steve Jobs could have changed his wardrobe and people would say it would have had an impact on the feel of the presentations. Now the guy's dead. Of course they're different.
- AsymetricCom 13y ago
  That's not it at all, this is not the first post-Jobs press release. The presentation lacked modern salesmanship. Perhaps, they don't really want to sell a lot of these products. Why would they want that? I bet the mini iPad is being sold below cost, thus Woz's comment that the 128GB iPad isn't a big enough premium price for his tastes, he's trying to pull the market away from the low-end offerings by popularized consumer fads, preserving some of the value of his AAPL holdings.
  - manmal 13y ago
    That's sarcasm, right?
    - AsymetricCom 13y ago
      Do you have something to say or is this just a modification of the "really?" rhetorical device?
  - josso 13y ago
    > The presentation lacked modern salesmanship. And even then, it's still light years better than most companies in the tech/gaming-industry. It's an incredible standard we rate them against.
    - jasonlotito 13y ago
      Actually, I felt like it was like what most other companies do. I couldn't put words to it, but Marco did. > It's an incredible standard we rate them against. I think that's fair. It's the standard they've set for themselves.
- iamdann 13y ago
  If this was the first event after Jobs' death, your point would be more valid.
  - jcromartie 13y ago
    It's a trajectory. Look at Apple before Jobs' return and the time it took to turn the company around. Now, that trajectory has changed, and this moment may well be the inflection point.
- achompas 13y ago
  Marco has never been one to wonder "if only Steve were still alive..." That's not the point at all, he's never made these comments about previous post-Jobs presentations.
  - roc 13y ago
    Further to this point: the iPhone 5S event last month also had nothing but already known and completely predictable updates. There was no "one more thing". It even featured pretty much the entire same cast of presenters. It even had the more difficult task of selling prices that were much higher than the media and the market had expected. But no-one seemed to think it was odd. Plenty of people griped about the lack of the wondrous "one more thing"s they'd invented in their own fevered imaginations -- but it didn't leave people mumbling to one another, "did that seem weird to you?"
rbritton 13y ago
For me the most notable parts of the whole event were the software-related announcements. Nothing about any of the hardware was in the least bit surprising. My notes: - The Mac Pro is still not available. I don't believe it's ever been like Apple to pre-announce something this far out. - The iPad update was the first not to make me want the new one. I'm perfectly happy with my iPad 4 and see no reason to update yet. - An iPad Mini with a Retina display is nice, but I've never been attracted to that screen size so it doesn't do much for me. - There was no "One more thing..." or anything more surprising than them making all of their consumer software free. - There were brief mentions of new versions of both Aperture and FCPX, but that was it. I only found out later that the Aperture update is just a small dot update and now requires Mavericks.
- lowmagnet 13y ago
  My main complaint with the 4 is that it was too thick/heavy, and I'm glad that the iPad air (wtf, we're still going to call it iPad 5) is thinner/lighter. I'm still using a 2, because it's Good Enough.
- corresation 13y ago
  There was no "One more thing..." or anything more surprising than them making all of their consumer software free. But that was a huge one more thing, yet somehow they managed to deflate giving an enormous quantity of top quality software away for free. I completely agree that in the end it was very ho hum, but I still can't even place why that is. Similarly, the Mini announcement had a real potential of being huge...everyone expected a new screen, but few expected the new processor. To have pinnacle gear in a minuscule, big-pocketable, relatively inexpensive device...killer....or ho hum blah. The MBP updates are fantastic. Maybe expected, but geez that's a killer bit of kit in an amazing form factor at a remarkable price. They really did have amazing things to announce. Somehow the presentation (and perhaps the endless leaks) managed to suck the life out of it. As Marco mentioned the scripted commentary (and complete inability to adlib on a mistake, making it just painful to watch) and the already-seen videos were just really bad decisions. This could have been a soft web release. And they've played the Mac Pro for too long already. They've spent too much time on it. And really, of all of Apple's recent products that one is by far the most dubious of them all. The value proposition isn't there, and the potential base is tiny compared to the other products.
nwh 13y ago
He's not wrong. The presenters kept saying slightly the wrong words and having to go back and correct themselves. The constant untucked-shirt comments were painful, and completely out of their usual presentation style. The Mac Pro is absolutely hilarious in it's pricing. When converted back to USD, it's almost 30% more expensive in Australia for absolutely no understandable reason. The fact that it wasn't released is very strange too, along with it's very vague "December" date. Makes me feel like they expected to be releasing it but ran into problems with their process.
- relix 13y ago
  Everything in the history of Apple has been "30%" more expensive or more outside the US than inside. This is completely no surprise and in line with every other pricing strategy of Apple before.
  - nwh 13y ago
    I wouldn't say that, usually it's $100 or so, literally 30% is an incredibly markup for a $3000 USD device. Throw a 4K screen in, and it'll be cheaper to fly to the US and buy a setup there.
    - MrGando 13y ago
      You are wrong. Check the prices of Apple stuff in Argentina or even France. Hell, in Chile it's 20% more (and it was 100% more in the past, has gotten better now). Cheers.
      - nwh 13y ago
        I'd post some comparisons, but it doesn't even exist on the Chile store. Crazy.
      - iaskwhy 13y ago
        Isn't this the before-tax and after-tax incorrect comparison?
      - 13y ago
cstross 13y ago
Stuff I expected, under "one more thing ..." (or earlier): The Mac Pro ships with enough bandwidth to drive three 4K desktop monitors, yet Apple's most recent monitor -- the 27" Thunderbolt Display -- dates to 2011 and has the same resolution as the current 15" Macbook Pro. Bluntly, this is disgraceful. Serious video folks are going to be buying Mac Pros and then paying ASUS three times as much for the monitors! Where's the Apple 4K Thunderbolt Display? A keyboard cover -- like the Logitech Ultra-thin Keyboard Cover, or Microsoft's Surface keyboards -- would be nice. (I suppose Apple are relying on the after-market, as witness the startlingly fast announcements by Belkin et al.) Finally, the "software is free" announcement ... yes, they're taking aim at Microsoft, but iWork 5 on OSX turns out to be a mixed blessing; there are regressions all over, especially in scripting (they've virtually dropped AppleScript from their office apps). What is this, an attempt to build market share for MS Office? (The mind boggles.) What other power user features have they planed away in the pursuit of a clean and consistent user interface across all platforms? (Which in practice seems to mean dumbing down the apps on the Pro platform -- OSX -- for compatibility with the mass market platform -- iOS.)
- nwh 13y ago
  > Where's the Apple 4K Thunderbolt Display? In their documentation they talk a lot about using 4K TVs. I imagine they're going to release a new display to match it.
  - bennyg 13y ago
    Exactly my guess too. There's no way they make a Mac Pro that can make a 4k display look good without making one themselves. My guess is after Christmas though, maybe a Spring event of some sort.
    - pbhjpbhj 13y ago
      >without making one themselves // Why not "having Samsung make one for them" as it's been in recent years?
      - 13y ago
M4v3R 13y ago
I got the exact opposite impression. This event seemed refreshing, presenters were funny, and there were some suprises (new and free iWork, free Mavericks). It was also well paced, they didn't use as much "amazing" and "magical" as they did in Stevenotes. Overall I liked the event a lot.
nostromo 13y ago
There's another story on HN that says, "The PC is not dead, we just don't need new ones." That's actually my exact situation with Apple right now. My iPad Mini, iPhone 5, Mac Pro, Apple TV and MBP are all more than adequate. Making them gold or shaving off a few ounces isn't very exciting. The iPad was released less than 3 years after the iPhone. Now we're three years past the release of the iPad with nothing new to talk about. I'm sure there are exciting things happening under the hood at Apple, but the event was a bit boring. Apple should also rethink their television ads. The style they popularized has become trite and they ooze with self-importance. The iPad mini video with the pencil reminded me of Facebook's terrible Chair ad. I miss the lightness and humor of watching a John Hodgman riff with what's-his-name.
- Samuel_Michon 13y ago
  Change is often incremental. No one is suggesting you should replace your <1 year old iPad mini with the new model. To see how much tablets have improved, compare an original iPad with its original software to the new retina iPad mini running the current OS and apps. NB: ‘What’s-his-name’ is Justin Long.
  - bratsche 13y ago
    Exactly this. I didn't buy an iPad since the first generation one, and it's been getting really long in the tooth. I was really looking forward to the new series of iPads because I would like a new one, and also one which uses the same charger connection as my iPhone 5. :) Now I expect the iPad Air to last me for quite awhile.
- hrktb 13y ago
  Is three years a long time ? There is a theory that Apple products are priced at more or less 1$ a day for their expected life span, and it matches m y experience pretty well. A MBP easily goes 3000$, you could be expected to be satisfied with it for 3 years at least. Apple shouldn't need to convince people having bought an iPad 2 years ago to absolutely buy one now, same goes for the iPhone 4S or 5 (the 5 is from last year, yeah you might not _need_ a new one) Looking at the software support charts, 2 or 3+ years devices are all still fully supported. For comparison, I bought a 2010 MBA, it's plenty usable, but I'm having a hard look at the new generation MBP because it's actually a very very nice upgrade with featuers that really make a difference in everyday use. Same thing for the ipad, looking at the first ipad, I can't imagine anyone saying "that's good enough for me, why go retina, have 4x the RAM, 4x the speed all of these for half the weight ?"
roc 13y ago
If you ask me, the entire "games" black hole looks for all the world like they're on the cusp of something that isn't quite ready. They introduced official gamepad support coming to iOS7 at WWDC, both standalone gamepads and iphone/ipod-wrapping cases. A couple MFI partners even teased things to come. And then... nothing. It became actually real in the release of iOS7. The iPhone event even dedicated some serious stage time to gaming and a few higher-profile apps were updated to support it. But, still, nothing. The iPad event came and went and they didn't even mention the iPod Touch, let alone gaming. I don't think they've ever talked about the iPad without talking about gaming. So I wonder if the event was "off" because a tent pole feature, something that encompassed phones, tablets, ipods and maybe even the appleTV, just wasn't ready to go.
- frankcaron 13y ago
  That's an interesting thought. I think the missing piece is really the Apple TV playing games, and for whatever reason (maybe storage?), they just can't or don't want to make it happen.
  - roc 13y ago
    As to storage, they've got the fusion drive. It doesn't sacrifice speed. It can (economically) be large enough to avoid feeling cramped. And it's been real-world tested for a couple years now. Personally, I think the hold-up is that Apple is working on some new method of interacting with a computer from across the room. [1] I can see them demanding some better interface for general software, before they put an app store on the Apple TV. At which point they're free to only barely support gaming (via the gamepad APIs) as is their tradition. [1] A remote control is a terrible way to interact with arbitrary software. It's not even that good for modern video services that do little more than adding queue-management, search and account information management. Gamepads are effective, but they're very gaming-specific and Apple is only accidentally a force in gaming; it's not in their DNA to release hardware that requires a gamepad. Maybe it's something like Kinect. Maybe it's Siri. I don't have any good guesses there. I hope to hell it isn't AirPlay. I just think the evidence is pretty clear that Apple simply doesn't value gaming enough to do a gaming-first product. They'd demand it do something more and how you'd do something more is a problem large enough to explain the delays (particularly given Jobs' autobiography, wherein he claimed that he'd finally cracked TV).
jcromartie 13y ago
I think all we know what we're witnessing here, even if some people are afraid to say what it is. This isn't the first event since Jobs' death, but I think 2 years is about right for the momentum that he left behind to start running down. Even if Jobs was pushing Apple to build shiny consumer-oriented gadgets, he was still pushing. Nobody can replace what he brought to the company. P.S. I'm not saying it's the end of Apple. I'm sure they can keep making good stuff for a long time. I'm saying that this is an inflection point, where Apple is now moving away from Jobs' vision and towards someone else's. Anything that started under Jobs is wrapped up now, and what we're seeing today is wholly the product of this next phase of Apple.
- slouch 13y ago
  Except the television set he worked on? > “‘I’d like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use,’ he told me. ‘It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud.’ No longer would users have to fiddle with complex remotes for DVD players and cable channels. ‘It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it.’”
- mahyarm 13y ago
  I think the more accurate part is jobs had the social clout to push things in Apple. Because of the typical CYA culture corprations create, most people couldn't afford to be as brazen as steve jobs politically, which gave him and apple the ability to be more innovative and have higher standards.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
Void_ 13y ago
I loved Craig's Hair Force One joke, but those two guys teasing each other during iWork demo were just annoying, that was too much. Also, I think it was one of them going something like "it's just gor- beautiful." He probably realized he used "gorgeous" in previous sentence so he changed it to "beautiful"... Well, I didn't believe him.
- k-mcgrady 13y ago
  It seems like they realised that Craig's jokes went down well at WWDC/iPhone events so another presenter should try it too. The whole presentation seemed too scripted. Most of the presenters are usually good but they were saying the wrong words and backtracking (your gor -beautiful example) all over the place.
- mturmon 13y ago
  That was Eddy Cue. He seemed to be uncomfortable in this situation because he was looking down at the teleprompter the whole time (hence the correction you noticed, and the flat jokes). Even though he's prominent in the company, I don't think he's been on stage much. The other jokester was Roger Rosner (on the left in the "revise the record cover" demo, at 50 minutes into the keynote), who co-founded a startup called Lighthouse Design (http://www.langreiter.com/space/Lighthouse+Design http://www.langreiter.com/space/Lighthouse+Design), which, in dinosaur times, developed the presentation program Concurrence for NextStep. That's Roger at the top of the stairs in the photo above. Concurrence eventually was rewritten at Jobs's request, and became Keynote. Roger also hasn't been on stage much, but he's a good guy, and a real developer, so cut him some slack. (Incidentally, the guy at the very bottom of the stairs is Jonathan Schwartz, who eventually became CEO of Sun, but was not really a developer.)
  - Void_ 13y ago
    Yeah, I mean all of these guys are undoubtedly very smart, but why force them to do something they're obviously not comfortable with..
uptown 13y ago
Correlates to this Ask HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6601148 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6601148
cocoflunchy 13y ago
The lines were so tightly scripted that the presenters often stumbled off-script slightly, and rather than rolling with it naturally, they’d just jump back and awkwardly retry the line. The "I'm a a big fan of The Black Knight" (instead of Dark Knight) part was especially painful :/
- Macsenour 13y ago
  I cringed at that.
- derleth 13y ago
  > I'm a a big fan of The Black Knight "It's only a flesh wound!"
- kunai 13y ago
  'tis but a scratch
frankcaron 13y ago
Couldn't agree more. Not launching the game controller or talking up some big new release, like Oceanhorn, whilst teasing the Apple TV gaming could have really put a dent in the somewhat-weak line-ups of gaming systems that are going big this holiday. What a waste, Apple.
georgebarnett 13y ago
It feels to me like they highlighted the minimum amount of stuff they needed to get out the door before the holidays. Lets be fair - there was a _ton_ of stuff announced. Maybe too much which lead to the lack of flair and detail. I do think they've announced major refreshes - it seems to me that many products brought in features that have been years in development (e.g. Touch ID, 0.5 lb off the Air, Mac Pro, etc). I'm not saying these things were huge - it's just that any kind of getting any kind of multi year effort to line up while still keeping the normal plane flying is really hard work. I personally think the current lineup is really good. Sure there's a few bits missing (notably there are apps in Mavericks which missed polish and touch id needs to be everywhere), but it feels to me like each of their hardware lines are now at a really rock solid iteration. Software wise, the lineup feels even more integrated if you're an all apple customer. TL;DR - it feels like they're getting their lineup up to a solid level baseline before using that as the base for the next set of awesome stuff, but hey - I could be wrong :)
Aloha 13y ago
I think there is something else coming still yet, maybe Q1 2014, maybe it was supposed to be ready now, but wasnt.
protomyth 13y ago
They are still doing Steve Notes. Give them a bit of a chance to learn to do it another way. If anything, it shows how good Steve Jobs was at these things. I know there is a "CEO must do these" thing, but I would prefer if they left the keynotes to Phil Schiller and Craig Federighi. The rest can appear in the videos.
brador 13y ago
The speech slips really stood out for me at this event, kinda like they all had a quick beer before the show started.
dorong 13y ago
Apple has a very nice product line. No one can deny that. That said, after looking for a new machine for my wife and checking out the Apple lineup, I went with a Dell. For full disclosure I work for Dell Software, but this was a home computer for my wife and I wanted something that would make her happy. You pay a LARGE premium for the name. You get much more hardware for the buck with Dell. You may like the OS better on the Mac side, but honestly - is the Mac OS more stable than Windows 7? In my experience no. Is it easier to use? [hint - try to uninstall a program], in my experience no. Windows, while not as trendy, is a good workhorse that does its job well. My wife needed to do video editing, web surfing and word processing. I got her an 4th gen Intel i7 with 12GB of RAM and a larger display than the iMac for a much better price. If you honestly separate the hype from reality, you'll realize you're paying a significant 'Apple tax'. Of course, if you need to use XCode to develop for iOS or some other reason where only a Mac will do, by all means, buy one. it is great. But if you want to have value for your money and don't use Xcode, I think there is nothing wrong with using a powerful PC.
k-mcgrady 13y ago
I think what Marco is missing is Mavericks. Sure developers have known about it for a while as have the tech press but to the average consumer Apple announced a brand new operating system version yesterday, released it the same day AND made it completely free. That's a pretty huge announcement. Especially when it was alongside lots of updated and now free software, new iPad's and new Mac's.
hadem 13y ago
"We know that effectively nobody browses the web on their Android tablets full of stretched-out phone apps." Really? I use my Android tablet all the time and love it. So much so, I'm switching from an iPhone to and Android phone. In turn, this also makes using a Mac computer far less important for me.
- Touche 13y ago
  I wouldn't read too much into those paragraphs. Marco famously wrote "there is no tablet market, only an iPad market" so this is just goal post moving.
- teleclimber 13y ago
  On one hand he is definitely not being fair to Android and its eco-system... but that's expected from this blogger. Having said that there are a lot of apps out there that should really have a decent tablet interface but don't for no good reason. It's not as bad as any Apple fanboy thinks it is, but it could be a lot better. Thankfully it is getting better, slowly. It looks like Trello is about to release their tablet interface. Like, 1 year late... but better than never.
Touche 13y ago
> None of the pricing was a surprise. I personally was very surprised that the raised the price of the iPad mini.
- slouch 13y ago
  I keep hearing this, but the 329$ mini is now 299$. The mini with retina is 399$, and it didn't exist previously.
  - smackfu 13y ago
    Last year's mini should have been $299, and it's woeful to sell it at that price now.
  - Touche 13y ago
    The Mini with Retina is just the new mini. It's better than last year's model, but that's always the case. The iPad didn't become more expensive when it got Retina, nor did the iPhone.
    - slouch 13y ago
      Oh, I see your point. Those other devices didn't skip a generation of processors, though, so it's not the usual case.
    - rsynnott 13y ago
      With neither of those devices did Apple have to warn the markets upfront of a significant reduction in margins, though (there _was_ some fall, but it was smallish); they did with the original Mini.
chasing 13y ago
Jobs always seemed to express a genuine sense of wonder about what he presented on stage. And, given his personal history in technology, he could kind of pull it off in a sort of "who knew we could ever get here from two guys in a garage with a soldering iron?" sort of way. While I respect the current team, I'm not sure they can pull of that tone as well, and so I think these product presentations suffer a bit. Otherwise, I didn't watch live, but I wasn't particularly disappointed or anything. Despite the hype, Apple events are always kind mostly dry affairs you can catch up on later with just a few minutes of reading. With the exception of new product line launches, which obviously can't happen three times a year.
- TillE 13y ago
  As the post mentions, Federighi did a great job. The rest, well...it all feels a bit try-hard. Tim Cook in particular seems to be attempting to replicate Steve's enthusiasm but not actually feeling it.
spot 13y ago
"We know that effectively nobody browses the web on their Android tablets full of stretched-out phone apps." this is false. android tablet browsing is substantial and growing fast. Looks like 25% in july 2013 in this graph, up from 15% in july 2012. http://www.tech-thoughts.net/2013/08/reality-android-tablet-usage-browsing-share-region.html http://www.tech-thoughts.net/2013/08/reality-android-tablet-...
- YooLi 13y ago
  That's Marcos hyperbole based on the fact that Android has, according to IDC, a 63% tablet marketshare in 2013 (iOS has 33%), yet, as you stated, only 25% browsing share. So, Android has double the market share, but only a quarter the browsing share. Hence, the comment generalizing that people with Android tablets aren't browsing the web with them.
  - zmmmmm 13y ago
    The whole thing is silly because browsing is clearly a reflection of installed base while "market share" is (usually) talking about the current rate of sales, which are fluctuating year by year on an exponential scale.
    - Samuel_Michon 13y ago
      Android phones came a year after the release of the iPhone. 5 years later, the iPhone still dominates web usage share. I see a similar trend when comparing web usage share between Android tablets and iPads.
      - zmmmmm 13y ago
        > Android phones came a year after the release of the iPhone In 2010, 3 years after iPhone release, Android had around 8% market share. It grew something like 1200% that year. These things aren't linear with time.
        13y ago
Tiktaalik 13y ago
Apple has never treated games much of a priority and it's always felt to me that the success of games on the iPhone/iPad has been a happy accident and they have no idea what to do about it, other than to continue to build great hardware and improve graphics tech. If Apple was more of a games oriented company and concerned itself with the market I think we would have seen the controller API years earlier, actual gamepad hardware from Apple and a more powerful Apple TV with a games oriented App Store.
ableal 13y ago
"[...] iPad 2 sticking around for another year, shamelessly at the same price as last year." I also found that a bit jarring. A 4-to-5 price ratio relative to latest model, which has much better processor, screen and weight ... it's hard to justify. Perhaps it's because of the cheapest Mini price acting as some sort of backstop.
- pohl 13y ago
  A 4-to-5 price ratio relative to latest model...it's hard to justify. If that's what the market will bear, then it's justified. Let's say you have $10k to spend on 10" iPads for a school district, and either model will run the educational software you want to run. Do you choose to provide for 20 students or 25 students?
staunch 13y ago
If you slow a car crash down to 1/1000th speed it may at first just look like the car's steering is a little "off".
edwintorok 13y ago
This is a situation where changing the original title would've been useful, and you don't even have to come up with your own title, just use the original article's first line: Something felt a bit off about this week’s Apple event. [Was: Off] (marco.org)
fusiongyro 13y ago
Or maybe it's that they were over-excited at the previous presentation and showed a bunch of stuff too early. The previous one was overloaded with stuff. This one was a little light.
MikeTLive 13y ago
when they announced iPad-Air I squealed. then i saw it is still not a clamshell Air with dual touch screens. come on guys.
akmiller 13y ago
"We know Microsoft’s tablets suck" This irritates the hell out of me. Who is this "we"? Fine if Marco wants to suggest that they suck, but I'll take a shot in the dark and say he hasn't even tried to give one a fair shake...would love to hear from him if he actually has. I have never found a use for a tablet, but I have several around my house including iPad Mini, iPad 3, Nexus 7 (1st gen), and now a Surface. The Surface is the best of those devices and the only one I can see myself continuing to use going forward. I would challenge anyone to just open their minds if they haven't tried one and jump in completely for a week or so then make up your mind. Definitely not saying the device is perfect, there are some things (both hardware and software) I'd like to see added but it's a damn nice device!
- chrisct 13y ago
  I second.
- kingnight 13y ago
  You will love this article... http://www.marco.org/2012/10/26/an-alternate-universe http://www.marco.org/2012/10/26/an-alternate-universe
  - kunai 13y ago
    Wow. That was more than enough to prove to me that this guy is an idiot. I don't know why this is on HN.
    - CamperBob2 13y ago
      I'm missing the part that proves that the guy is an idiot. Help?
    - zmmmmm 13y ago
      > I don't know why this is on HN. Because despite the fact that he is a wild-eyed Apple fan with hugely distorted opinions and is horrifically wrong much of the time, he has connections and insights into the Apple ecosystem that nobody else does. Just hold your nose and scan for the actual information in between lines of rubbish.
jroseattle 13y ago
Apple is in a tough spot, and these rollouts really reflect it. Jobs was such a perfectionist in message delivery that anyone else doing that on behalf of the same company just is not going to measure up. The expectations are so high, and nobody carries that persona. I'd rather personally see the voice of Apple change to something I can identify with, and that voice just isn't there. If anyone at Apple is listening, just so you know...the company has no voice at the moment. The rock-and-hard-place is the product offering. Frankly, the products haven't really advanced all that much in the past few years. There have been some improvements, but improvements are to be expected, and everyone tends to deliver incremental improvements. Those improvements certainly don't measure up as a premium. The days of massive lines for product releases, the waiting all night for the next iThing...I just have a hard time expecting that those are going to be on the order-of-magnitude to what we've seen in the past.
Lagged2Death 13y ago
So we're way past criticizing a thing somebody makes. Instead we're criticizing the "product messaging" that goes along with the thing. The complaint seems to be that this event, despite all the time spent on the usual "The things you fans bought have indeed turned out to be very popular, yay for you" message, didn't deliver the same sense of materialist cult excitement that some people had become accustomed to. And that apparently is generally viewed as a criticism worth making, worth discussing. It's considered important. Hm. Well what do you know.
- smackfu 13y ago
  Live by the sword, die by the sword. Apple has been lauded for their product messaging for years.
sarreph 13y ago
Regarding Marco's footnote #1, I'm not entirely sure if I agree. At WWDC, I thought the 'Designed by Apple in California' [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGXFGjponC0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGXFGjponC0] video added an air of magic (excuse the metaphor) to the whole charade. Considering these events go on for quite a while, surely a bit of overly-produced footage can't go down too badly? I'm glad that this was only a minor point, and that the main issue, that the speakers currently seem to lack vivacity (exception of Federighi), was highlighted as a major issue.
rglullis 13y ago
From the footnotes: > Let us continue to believe that these are relevant industry events rather than giant commercials! Why? Oh, why is it so hard to confront the reality that is right in front of their eyes? IT IS A GIANT COMMERCIAL, FOR FUCK'S SAKE! This is the point where it becomes impossible to avoid comparisons to religion. You have a basic admission of someone who wants to keep believing in an illusion rather than exercising any kind of critical thinking.
- archagon 13y ago
  > IT IS A GIANT COMMERCIAL, FOR FUCK'S SAKE! Is every form of communication from a company about its products a "giant commercial"? While an Apple keynote is no doubt a marketing event, I think it's also pretty clear that Apple gives a crap about its products and their effect on the world at large. That's why people get so excited about these things. It's a rare opportunity to peek inside Willy Wonka's factory. Compare to a company like Samsung, whose events tend to be gaudy, sleazy, and very clearly aimed at selling the product. > This is the point where it becomes impossible to avoid comparisons to religion. No, and by doing so, you lower the level of discourse on this website.
izietto 13y ago
Steve Jobs is dead. Nothing will come him back to life.
pbreit 13y ago
I generally agree with the post. It was so dull that I didn't even finish watching. And I couldn't believe how much Cook was stumbling over his lines. I always though they did tons of rehearsals. And they do have teleprompters, right? (maybe that's the problem). I realize Apple/Steve nailed the presentation format and many are trying to copying (and some, like Samsung, are trying to stray from it). But maybe it's time to shake it up a bit. Every event feels exactly the same, even the general structure and collection of stats and retail store openings. Apple is creative and smart. It should figure out the next format/style.
ja27 13y ago
"...the iPad Mini probably somewhat reduced the demand for the Touch" The $229 / $299 price reduced the demand for the Touch. I'm surprised they haven't found a way to get a sub-$200 Touch.
zeroecco 13y ago
it is happening again. Apple (aka macintosh) is trying to squeeze blood from a rock. Three rocks actually. They didn't learn the first time. Innovation has died yet again at Apple. This time though they have an cash cow (iTunes) on hand to keep them going while they pump out junk for the next x decades. Microshaft 2.0 has hit the shelves.
smackfu 13y ago
>Part of it was the lack of surprises, which isn’t Apple’s fault. For the iPhone announcement, I would have agreed. That was unsurprising due to supplier leaks. For this event, it was completely Apple's fault, because there was nothing really that surprising. A lot of "that is some very nice engineering" but nothing to really make competitors go "uh oh, we gotta go back to work and catch up."
zallo-zallon 13y ago
These are the consequences of tying your company's brand up in the RDF of a Dear Leader. No matter what Apple does, they're going to be criticized of missing an intangible quality of innovation or genius, because Apple's visionary is dead. Tim Cook's number one priority should be untangling the Jobs cult of personality and Apple Inc. And I definitely don't envy him.
untilHellbanned 13y ago
apple fanboy blogging is "off" too, probably needs to retire
robomartin 13y ago
One of the biggest things Apple will have to manage going forward is the issue of backwards compatibility. The Windows ecosystem has had to deal with this for a long time. Windows XP was released twelve years ago and the installed base is huge. For the most part you can still use any current Windows software with XP and anything in between. Apple is somewhat famous for summarily killing off whole product lines in the interest of technological innovation. I get it. No issues there. However, as their installed base expands it will be increasingly hard for the average person to stomach the idea of their expensive computers or iOS devices becoming obsolete. Not everyone lives on the bleeding edge. In fact, most people don't. It'll be interesting to watch what happens. It sure feels like the rate of innovation might have slowed down a bit. Thinner and lighter only go so far. There are a few surprising things here and there. For example, I can't understand why Apple didn't acquire Bump [0] and and tightly integrate that capability both iOS and OSX. Google grabbed them instead. We'll see what happens.
aarontait 13y ago
Well mercury is in retrograde...
InclinedPlane 13y ago
We're in sort of a weird place with mobile computing. We're in the part of the technology/market growth curve where it's easy, for some, to make a killing with comparatively little effort and innovation. The iPad mini is a perfect example, it's mostly just iPad 2 guts with a smaller screen and battery, but they sold like crazy and made an even crazier amount of profit for Apple. And to some degree rightly so, they put a device in people's hands that they wanted. Nevertheless, when the rewards for laziness are so high what incentive is there to take on risk? There are negative incentives, in fact, because any amount of effort or resources spent pursuing something risky will likely come at the cost of working on something safer. If the safe and lazy thing is sure to bring in billions in profit then even if the risky things succeeds it might end up being a short-term loss due to opportunity cost. It's obvious that things like the iPad are the harbingers of the future. But at the same time it's just as obvious that the iPad does not represent anywhere near the final evolution along those lines. It's clear to me that consumer OSes will increasingly be like modern mobile OSes, with managed apps, streamlined UI, and even more streamlined administration. But the idea of there being such a gulf between a desktop with a keyboard and mouse on the one hand and a touch-only tablet on the other is mostly an accident of history. As well, the idea, from Windows 8, that there should be a single UI model that spans both portable (touch only) and stationary (keyboard and mouse) realms is ridiculous. There should be a lot more innovation, a lot more development, and a lot more trial and error out in the market today. But until the market dynamics change we'll likely be stuck with a lot of lazy designs for a while.
acqq 13y ago
Yes and no. Yes, it was obvious that the presenters didn't have that "natural burning feel" of Jobs. But that was obvious since Jobs is gone. No, the product changes are still the right ones: I have iPad 3, but I've bought iPad 2 for my parents. Whenever I go to them and use it I am impressed by the slightly lighter and thinner feel of it. Now the iPad Air is significantly lighter and thinner than iPad 2. If you have any other iPad, wait to try the iPad Air, then tell me if you still think it's not a big improvement. Ditto for iPad mini. If you have the present one, wait until you can try the new, then tell me it's not significant. I'm quite certain I'm going to by it, just to take it with me to the places for which I consider "full" iPad too big. Now it's retina, I'm sure it's the best device of that size. Is it too little? I'm considering best as "best that money can buy" not "best when I want to give as little money as I can." And if you're not using Apple tablets then this won't change your mind: others make cheaper stuff and it's still so.
gtirloni 13y ago
What comes next? We are seeing the same trend with smartphones where each new device is more powerful then the one before. At some point they will pack so much CPU, memory, storage and gadgets (bluetooth, wifi, sensors of all kinds, etc) that it will be unlikely our apps will need more powerful devices. The industry will move to something else (which I have absolutely no idea what's going to be) and the smartphones makers will be the PC makers of the future.

300 points by mh_ 13y ago

This is the whole tech industry... I realized a few months ago hacker news has become boring. I don't really care much for the incremental updates, which is the entire hardware industry. Even the internet has become pretty boring. We're all excited for the promises of the future, and as usual they're taking a lot longer than we want them to.

zallo-zallon 13y ago
If you're excited for the future, work on breaking up the culture that keeps technology a monolith. For instance, Oculus VR exists only because of Kickstarter. What else could we do to get innovators the resources they need?

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

hamburglar 13y ago

Oh jeez. It's almost like there's a certain ... legendary source of charisma and showmanship missing. Give the hand-wringing a break. Steve Jobs could have changed his wardrobe and people would say it would have had an impact on the feel of the presentations. Now the guy's dead. Of course they're different.

AsymetricCom 13y ago
That's not it at all, this is not the first post-Jobs press release. The presentation lacked modern salesmanship. Perhaps, they don't really want to sell a lot of these products. Why would they want that? I bet the mini iPad is being sold below cost, thus Woz's comment that the 128GB iPad isn't a big enough premium price for his tastes, he's trying to pull the market away from the low-end offerings by popularized consumer fads, preserving some of the value of his AAPL holdings.
- manmal 13y ago
  That's sarcasm, right?
  - AsymetricCom 13y ago
    Do you have something to say or is this just a modification of the "really?" rhetorical device?
- josso 13y ago
  > The presentation lacked modern salesmanship. And even then, it's still light years better than most companies in the tech/gaming-industry. It's an incredible standard we rate them against.
  - jasonlotito 13y ago
    Actually, I felt like it was like what most other companies do. I couldn't put words to it, but Marco did. > It's an incredible standard we rate them against. I think that's fair. It's the standard they've set for themselves.
iamdann 13y ago
If this was the first event after Jobs' death, your point would be more valid.
- jcromartie 13y ago
  It's a trajectory. Look at Apple before Jobs' return and the time it took to turn the company around. Now, that trajectory has changed, and this moment may well be the inflection point.
achompas 13y ago
Marco has never been one to wonder "if only Steve were still alive..." That's not the point at all, he's never made these comments about previous post-Jobs presentations.
- roc 13y ago
  Further to this point: the iPhone 5S event last month also had nothing but already known and completely predictable updates. There was no "one more thing". It even featured pretty much the entire same cast of presenters. It even had the more difficult task of selling prices that were much higher than the media and the market had expected. But no-one seemed to think it was odd. Plenty of people griped about the lack of the wondrous "one more thing"s they'd invented in their own fevered imaginations -- but it didn't leave people mumbling to one another, "did that seem weird to you?"

rbritton 13y ago

For me the most notable parts of the whole event were the software-related announcements. Nothing about any of the hardware was in the least bit surprising. My notes: - The Mac Pro is still not available. I don't believe it's ever been like Apple to pre-announce something this far out. - The iPad update was the first not to make me want the new one. I'm perfectly happy with my iPad 4 and see no reason to update yet. - An iPad Mini with a Retina display is nice, but I've never been attracted to that screen size so it doesn't do much for me. - There was no "One more thing..." or anything more surprising than them making all of their consumer software free. - There were brief mentions of new versions of both Aperture and FCPX, but that was it. I only found out later that the Aperture update is just a small dot update and now requires Mavericks.

lowmagnet 13y ago
My main complaint with the 4 is that it was too thick/heavy, and I'm glad that the iPad air (wtf, we're still going to call it iPad 5) is thinner/lighter. I'm still using a 2, because it's Good Enough.
corresation 13y ago
There was no "One more thing..." or anything more surprising than them making all of their consumer software free. But that was a huge one more thing, yet somehow they managed to deflate giving an enormous quantity of top quality software away for free. I completely agree that in the end it was very ho hum, but I still can't even place why that is. Similarly, the Mini announcement had a real potential of being huge...everyone expected a new screen, but few expected the new processor. To have pinnacle gear in a minuscule, big-pocketable, relatively inexpensive device...killer....or ho hum blah. The MBP updates are fantastic. Maybe expected, but geez that's a killer bit of kit in an amazing form factor at a remarkable price. They really did have amazing things to announce. Somehow the presentation (and perhaps the endless leaks) managed to suck the life out of it. As Marco mentioned the scripted commentary (and complete inability to adlib on a mistake, making it just painful to watch) and the already-seen videos were just really bad decisions. This could have been a soft web release. And they've played the Mac Pro for too long already. They've spent too much time on it. And really, of all of Apple's recent products that one is by far the most dubious of them all. The value proposition isn't there, and the potential base is tiny compared to the other products.

nwh 13y ago

He's not wrong. The presenters kept saying slightly the wrong words and having to go back and correct themselves. The constant untucked-shirt comments were painful, and completely out of their usual presentation style. The Mac Pro is absolutely hilarious in it's pricing. When converted back to USD, it's almost 30% more expensive in Australia for absolutely no understandable reason. The fact that it wasn't released is very strange too, along with it's very vague "December" date. Makes me feel like they expected to be releasing it but ran into problems with their process.

relix 13y ago
Everything in the history of Apple has been "30%" more expensive or more outside the US than inside. This is completely no surprise and in line with every other pricing strategy of Apple before.
- nwh 13y ago
  I wouldn't say that, usually it's $100 or so, literally 30% is an incredibly markup for a $3000 USD device. Throw a 4K screen in, and it'll be cheaper to fly to the US and buy a setup there.
  - MrGando 13y ago
    You are wrong. Check the prices of Apple stuff in Argentina or even France. Hell, in Chile it's 20% more (and it was 100% more in the past, has gotten better now). Cheers.
    - nwh 13y ago
      I'd post some comparisons, but it doesn't even exist on the Chile store. Crazy.
    - iaskwhy 13y ago
      Isn't this the before-tax and after-tax incorrect comparison?
    - 13y ago

cstross 13y ago

Stuff I expected, under "one more thing ..." (or earlier): The Mac Pro ships with enough bandwidth to drive three 4K desktop monitors, yet Apple's most recent monitor -- the 27" Thunderbolt Display -- dates to 2011 and has the same resolution as the current 15" Macbook Pro. Bluntly, this is disgraceful. Serious video folks are going to be buying Mac Pros and then paying ASUS three times as much for the monitors! Where's the Apple 4K Thunderbolt Display? A keyboard cover -- like the Logitech Ultra-thin Keyboard Cover, or Microsoft's Surface keyboards -- would be nice. (I suppose Apple are relying on the after-market, as witness the startlingly fast announcements by Belkin et al.) Finally, the "software is free" announcement ... yes, they're taking aim at Microsoft, but iWork 5 on OSX turns out to be a mixed blessing; there are regressions all over, especially in scripting (they've virtually dropped AppleScript from their office apps). What is this, an attempt to build market share for MS Office? (The mind boggles.) What other power user features have they planed away in the pursuit of a clean and consistent user interface across all platforms? (Which in practice seems to mean dumbing down the apps on the Pro platform -- OSX -- for compatibility with the mass market platform -- iOS.)

nwh 13y ago
> Where's the Apple 4K Thunderbolt Display? In their documentation they talk a lot about using 4K TVs. I imagine they're going to release a new display to match it.
- bennyg 13y ago
  Exactly my guess too. There's no way they make a Mac Pro that can make a 4k display look good without making one themselves. My guess is after Christmas though, maybe a Spring event of some sort.
  - pbhjpbhj 13y ago
    >without making one themselves // Why not "having Samsung make one for them" as it's been in recent years?
    - 13y ago

M4v3R 13y ago

I got the exact opposite impression. This event seemed refreshing, presenters were funny, and there were some suprises (new and free iWork, free Mavericks). It was also well paced, they didn't use as much "amazing" and "magical" as they did in Stevenotes. Overall I liked the event a lot.

nostromo 13y ago

There's another story on HN that says, "The PC is not dead, we just don't need new ones." That's actually my exact situation with Apple right now. My iPad Mini, iPhone 5, Mac Pro, Apple TV and MBP are all more than adequate. Making them gold or shaving off a few ounces isn't very exciting. The iPad was released less than 3 years after the iPhone. Now we're three years past the release of the iPad with nothing new to talk about. I'm sure there are exciting things happening under the hood at Apple, but the event was a bit boring. Apple should also rethink their television ads. The style they popularized has become trite and they ooze with self-importance. The iPad mini video with the pencil reminded me of Facebook's terrible Chair ad. I miss the lightness and humor of watching a John Hodgman riff with what's-his-name.

Samuel_Michon 13y ago
Change is often incremental. No one is suggesting you should replace your <1 year old iPad mini with the new model. To see how much tablets have improved, compare an original iPad with its original software to the new retina iPad mini running the current OS and apps. NB: ‘What’s-his-name’ is Justin Long.
- bratsche 13y ago
  Exactly this. I didn't buy an iPad since the first generation one, and it's been getting really long in the tooth. I was really looking forward to the new series of iPads because I would like a new one, and also one which uses the same charger connection as my iPhone 5. :) Now I expect the iPad Air to last me for quite awhile.
hrktb 13y ago
Is three years a long time ? There is a theory that Apple products are priced at more or less 1$ a day for their expected life span, and it matches m y experience pretty well. A MBP easily goes 3000$, you could be expected to be satisfied with it for 3 years at least. Apple shouldn't need to convince people having bought an iPad 2 years ago to absolutely buy one now, same goes for the iPhone 4S or 5 (the 5 is from last year, yeah you might not _need_ a new one) Looking at the software support charts, 2 or 3+ years devices are all still fully supported. For comparison, I bought a 2010 MBA, it's plenty usable, but I'm having a hard look at the new generation MBP because it's actually a very very nice upgrade with featuers that really make a difference in everyday use. Same thing for the ipad, looking at the first ipad, I can't imagine anyone saying "that's good enough for me, why go retina, have 4x the RAM, 4x the speed all of these for half the weight ?"

roc 13y ago

If you ask me, the entire "games" black hole looks for all the world like they're on the cusp of something that isn't quite ready. They introduced official gamepad support coming to iOS7 at WWDC, both standalone gamepads and iphone/ipod-wrapping cases. A couple MFI partners even teased things to come. And then... nothing. It became actually real in the release of iOS7. The iPhone event even dedicated some serious stage time to gaming and a few higher-profile apps were updated to support it. But, still, nothing. The iPad event came and went and they didn't even mention the iPod Touch, let alone gaming. I don't think they've ever talked about the iPad without talking about gaming. So I wonder if the event was "off" because a tent pole feature, something that encompassed phones, tablets, ipods and maybe even the appleTV, just wasn't ready to go.

frankcaron 13y ago
That's an interesting thought. I think the missing piece is really the Apple TV playing games, and for whatever reason (maybe storage?), they just can't or don't want to make it happen.
- roc 13y ago
  As to storage, they've got the fusion drive. It doesn't sacrifice speed. It can (economically) be large enough to avoid feeling cramped. And it's been real-world tested for a couple years now. Personally, I think the hold-up is that Apple is working on some new method of interacting with a computer from across the room. [1] I can see them demanding some better interface for general software, before they put an app store on the Apple TV. At which point they're free to only barely support gaming (via the gamepad APIs) as is their tradition. [1] A remote control is a terrible way to interact with arbitrary software. It's not even that good for modern video services that do little more than adding queue-management, search and account information management. Gamepads are effective, but they're very gaming-specific and Apple is only accidentally a force in gaming; it's not in their DNA to release hardware that requires a gamepad. Maybe it's something like Kinect. Maybe it's Siri. I don't have any good guesses there. I hope to hell it isn't AirPlay. I just think the evidence is pretty clear that Apple simply doesn't value gaming enough to do a gaming-first product. They'd demand it do something more and how you'd do something more is a problem large enough to explain the delays (particularly given Jobs' autobiography, wherein he claimed that he'd finally cracked TV).

jcromartie 13y ago

I think all we know what we're witnessing here, even if some people are afraid to say what it is. This isn't the first event since Jobs' death, but I think 2 years is about right for the momentum that he left behind to start running down. Even if Jobs was pushing Apple to build shiny consumer-oriented gadgets, he was still pushing. Nobody can replace what he brought to the company. P.S. I'm not saying it's the end of Apple. I'm sure they can keep making good stuff for a long time. I'm saying that this is an inflection point, where Apple is now moving away from Jobs' vision and towards someone else's. Anything that started under Jobs is wrapped up now, and what we're seeing today is wholly the product of this next phase of Apple.

slouch 13y ago
Except the television set he worked on? > “‘I’d like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use,’ he told me. ‘It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud.’ No longer would users have to fiddle with complex remotes for DVD players and cable channels. ‘It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it.’”
mahyarm 13y ago
I think the more accurate part is jobs had the social clout to push things in Apple. Because of the typical CYA culture corprations create, most people couldn't afford to be as brazen as steve jobs politically, which gave him and apple the ability to be more innovative and have higher standards.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

Void_ 13y ago

I loved Craig's Hair Force One joke, but those two guys teasing each other during iWork demo were just annoying, that was too much. Also, I think it was one of them going something like "it's just gor- beautiful." He probably realized he used "gorgeous" in previous sentence so he changed it to "beautiful"... Well, I didn't believe him.

k-mcgrady 13y ago
It seems like they realised that Craig's jokes went down well at WWDC/iPhone events so another presenter should try it too. The whole presentation seemed too scripted. Most of the presenters are usually good but they were saying the wrong words and backtracking (your gor -beautiful example) all over the place.
mturmon 13y ago
That was Eddy Cue. He seemed to be uncomfortable in this situation because he was looking down at the teleprompter the whole time (hence the correction you noticed, and the flat jokes). Even though he's prominent in the company, I don't think he's been on stage much. The other jokester was Roger Rosner (on the left in the "revise the record cover" demo, at 50 minutes into the keynote), who co-founded a startup called Lighthouse Design (http://www.langreiter.com/space/Lighthouse+Design http://www.langreiter.com/space/Lighthouse+Design), which, in dinosaur times, developed the presentation program Concurrence for NextStep. That's Roger at the top of the stairs in the photo above. Concurrence eventually was rewritten at Jobs's request, and became Keynote. Roger also hasn't been on stage much, but he's a good guy, and a real developer, so cut him some slack. (Incidentally, the guy at the very bottom of the stairs is Jonathan Schwartz, who eventually became CEO of Sun, but was not really a developer.)
- Void_ 13y ago
  Yeah, I mean all of these guys are undoubtedly very smart, but why force them to do something they're obviously not comfortable with..

uptown 13y ago

Correlates to this Ask HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6601148 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6601148

cocoflunchy 13y ago

The lines were so tightly scripted that the presenters often stumbled off-script slightly, and rather than rolling with it naturally, they’d just jump back and awkwardly retry the line. The "I'm a a big fan of The Black Knight" (instead of Dark Knight) part was especially painful :/

Macsenour 13y ago
I cringed at that.
derleth 13y ago
> I'm a a big fan of The Black Knight "It's only a flesh wound!"
kunai 13y ago
'tis but a scratch

frankcaron 13y ago

Couldn't agree more. Not launching the game controller or talking up some big new release, like Oceanhorn, whilst teasing the Apple TV gaming could have really put a dent in the somewhat-weak line-ups of gaming systems that are going big this holiday. What a waste, Apple.

georgebarnett 13y ago

It feels to me like they highlighted the minimum amount of stuff they needed to get out the door before the holidays. Lets be fair - there was a _ton_ of stuff announced. Maybe too much which lead to the lack of flair and detail. I do think they've announced major refreshes - it seems to me that many products brought in features that have been years in development (e.g. Touch ID, 0.5 lb off the Air, Mac Pro, etc). I'm not saying these things were huge - it's just that any kind of getting any kind of multi year effort to line up while still keeping the normal plane flying is really hard work. I personally think the current lineup is really good. Sure there's a few bits missing (notably there are apps in Mavericks which missed polish and touch id needs to be everywhere), but it feels to me like each of their hardware lines are now at a really rock solid iteration. Software wise, the lineup feels even more integrated if you're an all apple customer. TL;DR - it feels like they're getting their lineup up to a solid level baseline before using that as the base for the next set of awesome stuff, but hey - I could be wrong :)

Aloha 13y ago

I think there is something else coming still yet, maybe Q1 2014, maybe it was supposed to be ready now, but wasnt.

protomyth 13y ago

They are still doing Steve Notes. Give them a bit of a chance to learn to do it another way. If anything, it shows how good Steve Jobs was at these things. I know there is a "CEO must do these" thing, but I would prefer if they left the keynotes to Phil Schiller and Craig Federighi. The rest can appear in the videos.

brador 13y ago

The speech slips really stood out for me at this event, kinda like they all had a quick beer before the show started.

dorong 13y ago

Apple has a very nice product line. No one can deny that. That said, after looking for a new machine for my wife and checking out the Apple lineup, I went with a Dell. For full disclosure I work for Dell Software, but this was a home computer for my wife and I wanted something that would make her happy. You pay a LARGE premium for the name. You get much more hardware for the buck with Dell. You may like the OS better on the Mac side, but honestly - is the Mac OS more stable than Windows 7? In my experience no. Is it easier to use? [hint - try to uninstall a program], in my experience no. Windows, while not as trendy, is a good workhorse that does its job well. My wife needed to do video editing, web surfing and word processing. I got her an 4th gen Intel i7 with 12GB of RAM and a larger display than the iMac for a much better price. If you honestly separate the hype from reality, you'll realize you're paying a significant 'Apple tax'. Of course, if you need to use XCode to develop for iOS or some other reason where only a Mac will do, by all means, buy one. it is great. But if you want to have value for your money and don't use Xcode, I think there is nothing wrong with using a powerful PC.

k-mcgrady 13y ago

I think what Marco is missing is Mavericks. Sure developers have known about it for a while as have the tech press but to the average consumer Apple announced a brand new operating system version yesterday, released it the same day AND made it completely free. That's a pretty huge announcement. Especially when it was alongside lots of updated and now free software, new iPad's and new Mac's.

hadem 13y ago

"We know that effectively nobody browses the web on their Android tablets full of stretched-out phone apps." Really? I use my Android tablet all the time and love it. So much so, I'm switching from an iPhone to and Android phone. In turn, this also makes using a Mac computer far less important for me.

Touche 13y ago
I wouldn't read too much into those paragraphs. Marco famously wrote "there is no tablet market, only an iPad market" so this is just goal post moving.
teleclimber 13y ago
On one hand he is definitely not being fair to Android and its eco-system... but that's expected from this blogger. Having said that there are a lot of apps out there that should really have a decent tablet interface but don't for no good reason. It's not as bad as any Apple fanboy thinks it is, but it could be a lot better. Thankfully it is getting better, slowly. It looks like Trello is about to release their tablet interface. Like, 1 year late... but better than never.

Touche 13y ago

> None of the pricing was a surprise. I personally was very surprised that the raised the price of the iPad mini.

slouch 13y ago
I keep hearing this, but the 329$ mini is now 299$. The mini with retina is 399$, and it didn't exist previously.
- smackfu 13y ago
  Last year's mini should have been $299, and it's woeful to sell it at that price now.
- Touche 13y ago
  The Mini with Retina is just the new mini. It's better than last year's model, but that's always the case. The iPad didn't become more expensive when it got Retina, nor did the iPhone.
  - slouch 13y ago
    Oh, I see your point. Those other devices didn't skip a generation of processors, though, so it's not the usual case.
  - rsynnott 13y ago
    With neither of those devices did Apple have to warn the markets upfront of a significant reduction in margins, though (there _was_ some fall, but it was smallish); they did with the original Mini.

chasing 13y ago

Jobs always seemed to express a genuine sense of wonder about what he presented on stage. And, given his personal history in technology, he could kind of pull it off in a sort of "who knew we could ever get here from two guys in a garage with a soldering iron?" sort of way. While I respect the current team, I'm not sure they can pull of that tone as well, and so I think these product presentations suffer a bit. Otherwise, I didn't watch live, but I wasn't particularly disappointed or anything. Despite the hype, Apple events are always kind mostly dry affairs you can catch up on later with just a few minutes of reading. With the exception of new product line launches, which obviously can't happen three times a year.

TillE 13y ago
As the post mentions, Federighi did a great job. The rest, well...it all feels a bit try-hard. Tim Cook in particular seems to be attempting to replicate Steve's enthusiasm but not actually feeling it.

spot 13y ago

"We know that effectively nobody browses the web on their Android tablets full of stretched-out phone apps." this is false. android tablet browsing is substantial and growing fast. Looks like 25% in july 2013 in this graph, up from 15% in july 2012. http://www.tech-thoughts.net/2013/08/reality-android-tablet-usage-browsing-share-region.html http://www.tech-thoughts.net/2013/08/reality-android-tablet-...

YooLi 13y ago
That's Marcos hyperbole based on the fact that Android has, according to IDC, a 63% tablet marketshare in 2013 (iOS has 33%), yet, as you stated, only 25% browsing share. So, Android has double the market share, but only a quarter the browsing share. Hence, the comment generalizing that people with Android tablets aren't browsing the web with them.
- zmmmmm 13y ago
  The whole thing is silly because browsing is clearly a reflection of installed base while "market share" is (usually) talking about the current rate of sales, which are fluctuating year by year on an exponential scale.
  - Samuel_Michon 13y ago
    Android phones came a year after the release of the iPhone. 5 years later, the iPhone still dominates web usage share. I see a similar trend when comparing web usage share between Android tablets and iPads.
    - zmmmmm 13y ago
      > Android phones came a year after the release of the iPhone In 2010, 3 years after iPhone release, Android had around 8% market share. It grew something like 1200% that year. These things aren't linear with time.
      - 13y ago

Tiktaalik 13y ago

Apple has never treated games much of a priority and it's always felt to me that the success of games on the iPhone/iPad has been a happy accident and they have no idea what to do about it, other than to continue to build great hardware and improve graphics tech. If Apple was more of a games oriented company and concerned itself with the market I think we would have seen the controller API years earlier, actual gamepad hardware from Apple and a more powerful Apple TV with a games oriented App Store.

ableal 13y ago

"[...] iPad 2 sticking around for another year, shamelessly at the same price as last year." I also found that a bit jarring. A 4-to-5 price ratio relative to latest model, which has much better processor, screen and weight ... it's hard to justify. Perhaps it's because of the cheapest Mini price acting as some sort of backstop.

pohl 13y ago
A 4-to-5 price ratio relative to latest model...it's hard to justify. If that's what the market will bear, then it's justified. Let's say you have $10k to spend on 10" iPads for a school district, and either model will run the educational software you want to run. Do you choose to provide for 20 students or 25 students?

staunch 13y ago

If you slow a car crash down to 1/1000th speed it may at first just look like the car's steering is a little "off".

edwintorok 13y ago

This is a situation where changing the original title would've been useful, and you don't even have to come up with your own title, just use the original article's first line: Something felt a bit off about this week’s Apple event. [Was: Off] (marco.org)

fusiongyro 13y ago

Or maybe it's that they were over-excited at the previous presentation and showed a bunch of stuff too early. The previous one was overloaded with stuff. This one was a little light.

MikeTLive 13y ago

when they announced iPad-Air I squealed. then i saw it is still not a clamshell Air with dual touch screens. come on guys.

akmiller 13y ago

"We know Microsoft’s tablets suck" This irritates the hell out of me. Who is this "we"? Fine if Marco wants to suggest that they suck, but I'll take a shot in the dark and say he hasn't even tried to give one a fair shake...would love to hear from him if he actually has. I have never found a use for a tablet, but I have several around my house including iPad Mini, iPad 3, Nexus 7 (1st gen), and now a Surface. The Surface is the best of those devices and the only one I can see myself continuing to use going forward. I would challenge anyone to just open their minds if they haven't tried one and jump in completely for a week or so then make up your mind. Definitely not saying the device is perfect, there are some things (both hardware and software) I'd like to see added but it's a damn nice device!

chrisct 13y ago
I second.
kingnight 13y ago
You will love this article... http://www.marco.org/2012/10/26/an-alternate-universe http://www.marco.org/2012/10/26/an-alternate-universe
- kunai 13y ago
  Wow. That was more than enough to prove to me that this guy is an idiot. I don't know why this is on HN.
  - CamperBob2 13y ago
    I'm missing the part that proves that the guy is an idiot. Help?
  - zmmmmm 13y ago
    > I don't know why this is on HN. Because despite the fact that he is a wild-eyed Apple fan with hugely distorted opinions and is horrifically wrong much of the time, he has connections and insights into the Apple ecosystem that nobody else does. Just hold your nose and scan for the actual information in between lines of rubbish.

jroseattle 13y ago

Apple is in a tough spot, and these rollouts really reflect it. Jobs was such a perfectionist in message delivery that anyone else doing that on behalf of the same company just is not going to measure up. The expectations are so high, and nobody carries that persona. I'd rather personally see the voice of Apple change to something I can identify with, and that voice just isn't there. If anyone at Apple is listening, just so you know...the company has no voice at the moment. The rock-and-hard-place is the product offering. Frankly, the products haven't really advanced all that much in the past few years. There have been some improvements, but improvements are to be expected, and everyone tends to deliver incremental improvements. Those improvements certainly don't measure up as a premium. The days of massive lines for product releases, the waiting all night for the next iThing...I just have a hard time expecting that those are going to be on the order-of-magnitude to what we've seen in the past.

Lagged2Death 13y ago

So we're way past criticizing a thing somebody makes. Instead we're criticizing the "product messaging" that goes along with the thing. The complaint seems to be that this event, despite all the time spent on the usual "The things you fans bought have indeed turned out to be very popular, yay for you" message, didn't deliver the same sense of materialist cult excitement that some people had become accustomed to. And that apparently is generally viewed as a criticism worth making, worth discussing. It's considered important. Hm. Well what do you know.

smackfu 13y ago
Live by the sword, die by the sword. Apple has been lauded for their product messaging for years.

sarreph 13y ago

Regarding Marco's footnote #1, I'm not entirely sure if I agree. At WWDC, I thought the 'Designed by Apple in California' [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGXFGjponC0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGXFGjponC0] video added an air of magic (excuse the metaphor) to the whole charade. Considering these events go on for quite a while, surely a bit of overly-produced footage can't go down too badly? I'm glad that this was only a minor point, and that the main issue, that the speakers currently seem to lack vivacity (exception of Federighi), was highlighted as a major issue.

rglullis 13y ago

From the footnotes: > Let us continue to believe that these are relevant industry events rather than giant commercials! Why? Oh, why is it so hard to confront the reality that is right in front of their eyes? IT IS A GIANT COMMERCIAL, FOR FUCK'S SAKE! This is the point where it becomes impossible to avoid comparisons to religion. You have a basic admission of someone who wants to keep believing in an illusion rather than exercising any kind of critical thinking.

archagon 13y ago
> IT IS A GIANT COMMERCIAL, FOR FUCK'S SAKE! Is every form of communication from a company about its products a "giant commercial"? While an Apple keynote is no doubt a marketing event, I think it's also pretty clear that Apple gives a crap about its products and their effect on the world at large. That's why people get so excited about these things. It's a rare opportunity to peek inside Willy Wonka's factory. Compare to a company like Samsung, whose events tend to be gaudy, sleazy, and very clearly aimed at selling the product. > This is the point where it becomes impossible to avoid comparisons to religion. No, and by doing so, you lower the level of discourse on this website.

izietto 13y ago

Steve Jobs is dead. Nothing will come him back to life.

pbreit 13y ago

I generally agree with the post. It was so dull that I didn't even finish watching. And I couldn't believe how much Cook was stumbling over his lines. I always though they did tons of rehearsals. And they do have teleprompters, right? (maybe that's the problem). I realize Apple/Steve nailed the presentation format and many are trying to copying (and some, like Samsung, are trying to stray from it). But maybe it's time to shake it up a bit. Every event feels exactly the same, even the general structure and collection of stats and retail store openings. Apple is creative and smart. It should figure out the next format/style.

ja27 13y ago

"...the iPad Mini probably somewhat reduced the demand for the Touch" The $229 / $299 price reduced the demand for the Touch. I'm surprised they haven't found a way to get a sub-$200 Touch.

zeroecco 13y ago

it is happening again. Apple (aka macintosh) is trying to squeeze blood from a rock. Three rocks actually. They didn't learn the first time. Innovation has died yet again at Apple. This time though they have an cash cow (iTunes) on hand to keep them going while they pump out junk for the next x decades. Microshaft 2.0 has hit the shelves.

smackfu 13y ago

>Part of it was the lack of surprises, which isn’t Apple’s fault. For the iPhone announcement, I would have agreed. That was unsurprising due to supplier leaks. For this event, it was completely Apple's fault, because there was nothing really that surprising. A lot of "that is some very nice engineering" but nothing to really make competitors go "uh oh, we gotta go back to work and catch up."

zallo-zallon 13y ago

These are the consequences of tying your company's brand up in the RDF of a Dear Leader. No matter what Apple does, they're going to be criticized of missing an intangible quality of innovation or genius, because Apple's visionary is dead. Tim Cook's number one priority should be untangling the Jobs cult of personality and Apple Inc. And I definitely don't envy him.

untilHellbanned 13y ago

apple fanboy blogging is "off" too, probably needs to retire

robomartin 13y ago

One of the biggest things Apple will have to manage going forward is the issue of backwards compatibility. The Windows ecosystem has had to deal with this for a long time. Windows XP was released twelve years ago and the installed base is huge. For the most part you can still use any current Windows software with XP and anything in between. Apple is somewhat famous for summarily killing off whole product lines in the interest of technological innovation. I get it. No issues there. However, as their installed base expands it will be increasingly hard for the average person to stomach the idea of their expensive computers or iOS devices becoming obsolete. Not everyone lives on the bleeding edge. In fact, most people don't. It'll be interesting to watch what happens. It sure feels like the rate of innovation might have slowed down a bit. Thinner and lighter only go so far. There are a few surprising things here and there. For example, I can't understand why Apple didn't acquire Bump [0] and and tightly integrate that capability both iOS and OSX. Google grabbed them instead. We'll see what happens.

aarontait 13y ago

Well mercury is in retrograde...

InclinedPlane 13y ago

We're in sort of a weird place with mobile computing. We're in the part of the technology/market growth curve where it's easy, for some, to make a killing with comparatively little effort and innovation. The iPad mini is a perfect example, it's mostly just iPad 2 guts with a smaller screen and battery, but they sold like crazy and made an even crazier amount of profit for Apple. And to some degree rightly so, they put a device in people's hands that they wanted. Nevertheless, when the rewards for laziness are so high what incentive is there to take on risk? There are negative incentives, in fact, because any amount of effort or resources spent pursuing something risky will likely come at the cost of working on something safer. If the safe and lazy thing is sure to bring in billions in profit then even if the risky things succeeds it might end up being a short-term loss due to opportunity cost. It's obvious that things like the iPad are the harbingers of the future. But at the same time it's just as obvious that the iPad does not represent anywhere near the final evolution along those lines. It's clear to me that consumer OSes will increasingly be like modern mobile OSes, with managed apps, streamlined UI, and even more streamlined administration. But the idea of there being such a gulf between a desktop with a keyboard and mouse on the one hand and a touch-only tablet on the other is mostly an accident of history. As well, the idea, from Windows 8, that there should be a single UI model that spans both portable (touch only) and stationary (keyboard and mouse) realms is ridiculous. There should be a lot more innovation, a lot more development, and a lot more trial and error out in the market today. But until the market dynamics change we'll likely be stuck with a lot of lazy designs for a while.

acqq 13y ago

Yes and no. Yes, it was obvious that the presenters didn't have that "natural burning feel" of Jobs. But that was obvious since Jobs is gone. No, the product changes are still the right ones: I have iPad 3, but I've bought iPad 2 for my parents. Whenever I go to them and use it I am impressed by the slightly lighter and thinner feel of it. Now the iPad Air is significantly lighter and thinner than iPad 2. If you have any other iPad, wait to try the iPad Air, then tell me if you still think it's not a big improvement. Ditto for iPad mini. If you have the present one, wait until you can try the new, then tell me it's not significant. I'm quite certain I'm going to by it, just to take it with me to the places for which I consider "full" iPad too big. Now it's retina, I'm sure it's the best device of that size. Is it too little? I'm considering best as "best that money can buy" not "best when I want to give as little money as I can." And if you're not using Apple tablets then this won't change your mind: others make cheaper stuff and it's still so.

gtirloni 13y ago

What comes next? We are seeing the same trend with smartphones where each new device is more powerful then the one before. At some point they will pack so much CPU, memory, storage and gadgets (bluetooth, wifi, sensors of all kinds, etc) that it will be unlikely our apps will need more powerful devices. The industry will move to something else (which I have absolutely no idea what's going to be) and the smartphones makers will be the PC makers of the future.