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kscherer
Which way is up?
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Boyzeee
 
2015-12-03, 17:42

Quote:
Originally Posted by Brave Ulysses View Post
1. Apple Watch (I truly think Apple missed the mark on this.... still has a lot of potential... but I think they have spent the last year going back to the drawing board instead of hammering home on improvements.... the WatchOS app store is barren of useful apps... I love my Apple Watch but I do not use a single third party app on a daily or even weekly basis)
I don't own one of these, nor do I have any plans to. Thing is, there's nothing compelling about it. Apple gave me absolutely no reason to own one. Since I don't wear a watch at all, it's going to be very difficult for Apple to convince me to get one of these fat, thick, heavy wrist anchors. They've tried to shoehorn in too many features, IMO, and I have no use for any of them.

Plus, "you need an iPhone" is an absolute deal killer. As long as iPhone tethering is required, it's just plain dumb!

Quote:
Originally Posted by Brave Ulysses View Post
2. Mac Mini
This little beast is due for an upgrade, no doubt about it. I've been waiting patiently for the all solid-state Mini for at least a year. Still nothing.

We used to sell a ton to businesses to use as servers. Now, almost none. The removal of the Quad i7 and that second drive bay were deal-killers. Bad decision on Apple's part. We'd really like to see an all solid-state model with an option for two flash modules and a quad i7.

Appears to be nothing more than wishful thinking.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Brave Ulysses View Post
3. Displays... the thunderbolt display is a great display... but no improvements and no price cut?
I wonder what it would cost for Apple to take the Retina displays from the 21" and 27" iMacs and make standalone displays from them? A 4k 21" at $699 and a 5k 27" at $999 would fly out of here faster than we could get them. But, no.

Apple is missing a huge market here, and doesn't seem to care. I cannot figure out why.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Brave Ulysses View Post
4. iPod (understandable)
Yeah, understandable. However, I still think there is a market here. It's just not with the iPod Touch. Dead animal, right there. Apple needs a 32GB and 64GB Nano with a 3" screen. It's just a music player, and nothing else. Eliminate all the "it also does" crap and just make the best portable music player and pedometer on Earth. Give it Lightning, headphone jack and Bluetooth. Nothing else.

Seriously. Just a music player. People put pictures on these things? Why? No need for that, or movies. For giggles, build in a Watch app and let the damn thing communicate with Apple Watch. Sell it for $149-$199 and discontinue the Touch and the Shuffle. Nobody cares about those anymore.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Brave Ulysses View Post
5. Pro software
Pro software is done in Apple's little world. They went and got themselves all knotted up with the iPhone and forgot about Pro software. Fortunately, Adobe is more than happy to rake you over the coals in Apple's absence.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Brave Ulysses View Post
6. Photos.... iCloud Photo Library works great... but the Photos app is still worse than iPhoto and Aperture were at each of their primes.
Photos sucks. Period.

iCloud sucks. Period.

Both are very poorly implemented. Both are a step backwards (or several) and both show Apple's true direction is to make everything feature-equal with iPad. I used to think this was a good idea. After messing with the new Pages, I no longer think that's the case.

Apple talks about keeping the Mac true to itself, and the iPad true to itself, but their software decisions show that isn't the case. The OS is true to itself, but the supporting apps are all reaching too hard for iOS and it shows in a complete lack of feature rich software on the Mac.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Brave Ulysses View Post
7. Apple TV App Store (shockingly bad on day 1, still very bad 2 months in.)
The killer app hasn't arrived. I'm surprised Apple had so little to offer up front. Aside from a few games, the new Apple TV hasn't led me to upgrade. I have two of the older models and there's nothing (yet) in the new one that makes me go "wow".

Anyone who read my posts leading up to the new one knows I had great confidence in it, but now I don't. I know it takes time, but me thinks media contracts are nailed down so tight that the TV revolution is at least five years away.

Oh, well.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Brave Ulysses View Post
8. iPad... do bean counters really run Apple now? It seems that once the iPad hit growth problems, Apple retracted resources from it.... the iPad Pro is a great product and a possible sign that isn't the case but the commitment to iPad has definitely been lacking... inconsistent updates to the line, and a real lack of promotion and development of incredible software and uses for the iPad. The iOS home screen still looking like an iPhone on a 12.9 inch iPad Pro is just not a sign of Apple pushing new ideas and thinking outside the box.
The iPad Pro is dead in the water until Apple gets its act together with Pencil. Until they are shipping in quantity, people don't care. Since release, we have sold 3. Yep, three. And all 128GB models. No one wants the 32, and almost no one wants cellular. Cellular and 32GB models are available in quantity, but 128 WiFi are few and far between. And Pencil? We've been told January+.

Talk about missing the boat.

This will get fixed next year. It has to. My guess is next year's Air and Mini will support Pencil. Apple better be able to make the damn things by the million by then.

Apple, if you have snoopers reading, listen closely: PEOPLE WANT TO SEE THE PENCIL!!!

Until it arrives in quantity, I recommend you hold off on the Pro. Crazy thing is too big for anything else.

Also, I would add the wireless Magic Keyboard Extended, with number pad. By itself, this is the single greatest complaint we get about iMacs. "Where's the number pad?" Is Apple actually listening? I think not.

And a model with built-in trackpad would be the bomb!

Mac App Store: Until there are trials and upgrade paths in the Mac App Store, it's a dead animal. Talk about a screwup.

iWork: Don't even get me started. Pages '09 was awesome. This new thing is dirt. Don't get me wrong, I like the new interface oodles more than the old. However, the tools that were conveniently removed for the sake of feature parity and promised to return are long gone, me thinks. You see, the iPad sucks for long document editing. Don't care what Jon Gruber and others say. I'm a writer, and the iPad sucks for writing. I don't care how many little keyboards and other doodads I can click on or add or wire up. The software sucks, especially for editing, organizing, etc. So how did Apple deal with this? By letting the Mac "be true to itself?" Hell no. Instead, they stripped all the useful, distinguishing desktop-class features from Pages for Mac and let it "be true to itself" by turning traitor and trying to emulate the iPad version. Ugh!

Yes, Apple is going in all sorts of directions. They seem to have lost focus in some key areas and don't even remember their own tag-lines.

The hardware is still good (mostly) and the software is still good (mostly), but I'm not sure Apple as a company knows where it is any more. This isn't a Steve Jobs or not Steve Jobs problem. I think the would still be wandering about right now no matter what. Too many cooks in the kitchen, and no that's not a pun.

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