> it’s a company that I feel has lost its alignment with me and other long-time Apple users and customers.
When OS X debuted there was a daytime radio talk show in my area called “The Computer Guys.” They capably covered all sorts of computing topics, but were clearly long-time Apple dudes. And they spent weeks complaining about what a disaster OS X was. The Dock was useless and violated Apple’s HIG. The Finder made all the same mistakes as Windows did. And a text terminal? Like DOS?? Who the hell is ever going to want to use that on a Mac?
Going even farther back, it was long-time dedicated Apple users who booed when Jobs announced the deal with Microsoft.
Being a long-time dedicated Apple user is a shitty job. You don’t get paid, have no input, and are constantly disappointed. And Apple does not care about you.
I strongly suggest people should throw this notion away. It does not matter how long you’ve bought from a big company, they owe you nothing. If the latest product seems good, buy it. If not, don’t. Any more emotional investment than that is going to cause pointless unhappiness.
Save your customer loyalty energy for businesses where you can actually establish a connection, like a restaurant you like, or a local handyman.
Don’t forget the waves of rage when Apple removed the CD-ROM drive from laptops.
Or when USB Type A ports disappeared in favor of USB-C ports.
Or when the iPhone dropped the headphone jack. People still seethe about this decision even though Apple sells an excellent DAC for $9.99 that rates extremely well when tested by the audiophile obsessives and is easy to leave permanently attached to your headphones.
There are two types of long-term Apple users: Those who can go with the flow and shrug off the changes, and those who are deeply pained whenever anything changes. The latter group mostly comes around after a couple years and the issues are forgotten.
>> it’s a company that I feel has lost its alignment with me and other long-time Apple users and customers.
> When OS X debuted there was a daytime radio talk show in my area called “The Computer Guys.” They capably covered all sorts of computing topics, but were clearly long-time Apple dudes. And they spent weeks complaining about what a disaster OS X was. The Dock was useless and violated Apple’s HIG. The Finder made all the same mistakes as Windows did. And a text terminal? Like DOS?? Who the hell is ever going to want to use that on a Mac?
I kind of see it differently. That is, Apple did in fact lose the alignment with the Classic MacOS fans but Apple did it on purpose. Objectively, by 2001 standards MacOS sucked and you wouldn't want to align with people who think otherwise. As the result Apple broke out of a small stagnating niche and won a big market.
This is different from today's situation where it feels like Apple breaks the alignment not on purpose and not by innovation but rather just slowly drifts out.
There's a theory in the comments that they want to align with "people who want the best camera array and have money to burn". This could be true but even then it doesn't look like a good strategy to win a big market long-term. More like a retreat back into a small niche that may stagnate in the future, like "people who want the best publishing software and have money to burn".
Pre MacOS X was a 90s style OS and had major limitations that were a problem for every user, starting with no real multi-threading, and I think no protected memory.
Where it was great was in the simplicity to the user. If you wanted to install or uninstall a driver or functionality, all you had to do is move an extension file in or out of the extension folder and reboot. That simplicity was lost in MacOS X. That made simple users dumber. (and iOS went back to the simplicity)
By 2001 the Classic MacOS wasn't really "different", it was largely the same as the System 7 release from 10 years ago.
The NeXTSTEP on the other hand was quite different. Different from MacOS, from DOS/Windows and from proprietary UNIXes. I would argue that switching to NeXTSTEP was more aligned with the original spirit of "think different" than getting stuck in the old ways.
Like another post says, "The Mac was a philosophy". I bought a series of them but stopped around the year 2000 because they threw away the philosophy in favor of innovation. I think things were going south already around 1998. Remember Sherlock? On system 8.5 it would regularly interrupt the user (sending games from full screen to windowed) to display a dialog to say that it was indexing files. This couldn't be turned off except by disabling the Sherlock extension altogether.
That says that Sherlock's mission wasn't to help the user do user activities, but to get the user out of the way of Sherlock's activities, while keeping the user informed about the magnificence of Sherlock. This attitude became really popular with every OS that was competing to be innovative, and we're still stuck with it today. Shut up user, pay attention, look at my features!
> There's a theory in the comments that they want to align with "people who want the best camera array and have money to burn".
I agree with you and this theory sounds like moving goalposts.
First people claimed that the free market will always give the consumer what they want.
Then this turned out to be not true (we even have a term, enshittification), and now people come up with a more "refined" theory. Why would it be true this time?
> First people claimed that the free market will always give the consumer what they want.
Enshittification does give consumers what they want: free stuff. People will deny it up and down and claim they would pay for non-enshittified Facebook, for example. But how many people actually would pay a subscription to use a Facebook style service? Enough to build sustain a company of Meta's size? Probably not. How many people pay for Kagi?
I had been fairly anti apple my entire life. Believing they were massively over priced, and lacked support for many of the things I did personally.
In my younger years I was pretty big on graphic design, still big on video editing. People used to always say "Mac is better for design". I would ask, where did you get this from? Adobe runs on both platforms and updates often come out for Windows before they are ported to Apple (Adobe updates). And my Windows machines had powerful graphics cards, unlike macs.
However. A couple years ago I built myself an insanely expensive computer build with the best parts I've ever put into a machine. It died 2 years later.
I decided I just couldn't go through that anymore. I'm done building computers. I'm done with the little problems they always get. I'm done fixing my machine more than using it.
Since the $500 Mac mini, Apple has started looking interesting. Finally I bought the Mac Studio M3 Ultra.
So far so good. I wish I could play more games, but I could be looking into things like Crossover. There are a few old bespoke programs for old versions of Windows I also wish I could run once in a while but nothing too major.
And best of all, Apple Care +. I'm not dealing with a broken machine again. I'll be buying warranties for it until I'm done with it. Bought 2 years for I think about $200, and my understanding is I should be able to renew that service/warranty at the end of the two years. After that, we'll see.
I was in a similar boat with desktop Linux and Android. What got me to switch:
1. Build quality of Apple laptops was higher than anything else available at the time. Having a metal laptop meant you got a MacBook or a Toughbook. I got tired of plastic breaking, hinges loosening, etc. Their introduction of retina screens really sealed the deal.
2. The iPhone was first to solve seamless cloud backups.
3. AppleCare. I was traveling and had my phone on a restaurant table when a waiter dropped a salt shaker on it. He was horrified that he shattered my screen. I got it replaced when I got back to the states for like $10. Android phones at the time did not have this option.
4. Apple sold devices directly to you. Most other phones you had to buy through the wireless carrier with annoying fee structures and deceptive pricing.
5. I could use a decent photo editor ok macOS vs GIMP in Linux. I love what GIMP is trying to be but it is a mess UI-wise. Same with Lightroom vs Darktable.
6. iPhone more or less solved offloading files to the cloud. It is still bad and broken but it was at the time I switched workable vs what Android had.
7. Apple devices mostly got out of my way whereas with Android I had to tinker. I would still use desktop Linux if macOS wasn’t needed for my work, but at this point the difference is minimal.
8. They are not an advertising company. Google phones feel like devices designed to spy on you. “Personal data please!” Apple is not ideal here but at least their primary point isn’t to sell you car insurance.
This isn’t to say that Apple stuff doesn’t have warts. They cram way too much stuff in their systems. Their hardware is expensive. They often are behind the curve on performance. Their cloud offloading just does not work right for iMessage. Their protocols are closed and that is annoying. But at this point their stuff works well enough for me that I don’t see a reason to switch.
> The Finder made all the same mistakes as Windows did.
Tbf, the Finder is still crap (if only it would be nearly as good as Windows Explorer was in its heyday I would probably use it more), and the UNIX terminal is pretty much needed to make a Mac usable in the first place - which is fine though, because the UNIX-ness was exactly why I switched to Mac ;)
> Tbf, the Finder is still crap (if only it would be nearly as good as Windows Explorer was in its heyday I would probably use it more)
I have the exact opposite opinion. I loathe Windows Explorer, and relatively simply stuff like presenting a tree view is apparently some weird magic trick that only Apple has figured out how to do.
Browsing SMB shares (or any other networked storage) is one shortcut away (cmd+k), and I don't need to visit control panel to enable weird subsystems that expose services on my machine to connect to other machines.
I use the terminal a lot, also for simple file operations, but that is because of proficiency, not out of need.
Yeah I don’t know how they made it so bad. On Windows & Linux, using an SMB share basically gives you the same experience as using a USB hard drive connected directly to the machine. On Mac, you have to wait 30 seconds every time you open a directory. Then when you’re finally at the directory you want and start copying files, the speed slows down to a crawl as the copy progresses. I find it especially confusing because Apple offers 10 Gbit networking for their desktops at an additional fee. What’s the point of having that option when their shitty SMB implementation makes doing anything on your LAN far slower than 1 Gbit anyway?
on my Mac, the finder systematically fails to display the most recent downloaded files, or files synchronized through Nextcloud, under "recent files". For some reason, it always displays some random selection of recently used files. It's completely useless. In fact, I look for recent files using "find" in the terminal. At least this work.
On my Linux laptop, Nautilus (Gnome) displays exactly the last files in the right order, and it's incredibly useful.
There are countless annoyances like this on MacOS; window focus and placement always surprises and annoys me, even if Rectangle helps somewhat. I find it so much less usable and useful than Gnome.
Of course, it's all about what you're used to. But after 6 years on Windows as my daily driver I still prefer Finder.
It's tree/table view is superior to the Details view in Explorer. Explorer regularly hangs when opening folders with more than a couple videos in it. QuickLook (spacebar to preview an item) is so useful.
Until the day when I can right-click on a folder and create a folder inside that folder, I'll consider the Finder inferior to the Windows 98 explorer. Come on, that's an absolute basic feature!
The right-click context menu of a folder has 15 items! Most of them I've never used! Colors, tags, quick actions, compress, make alias? But no "New Folder"?
But I moved to the mac, in 2005, because of the unix terminal. I had been using Cygwin for years, but an OS that had it included, natively? On good hardware? Yes, please.
I'm never moving back to Windows (ads in the OS??). To switch to linux it would take great hardware with 100% support. Not holding my breath, but it might happen one day.
Windows Explorer was never good. The only file manager app type (on Windows/Linux, never used a Mac) that makes sense to me is one of the "Commander" ones. Like Total Commander, but rather than a specific app the point here is the two-pane style that greatly expands what is easily possible to do with a few clicks.
For me, the keyboard (in)accessibility is the biggest issue. On Windows I got used to navigating Explorer completely with the keyboard — this was a LONG time ago, I have no idea of the current state. On macOS, it's just impossible (or, at the very least (but I doubt), impractical).
Other issues:
- the fact that you cannot cut and paste files
- dragging files from one folder to another can be unreliable/error-prone, particularly in tree view
Most of the time when someone on HN complains about Finder, it's not a Finder problem. It's that the user doesn't know how to do what they want, and other people respond with the answer.
Finder has its problems. But the overarching problem is that Apple has done a poor job of discoverability and letting people know how to do things.
It's counterintuitive, because in most of Apple's macOS programs there are multiple ways to do the same thing.
For example, there are close to a dozen ways to eject/unmount a disk/volume, but I still run into people who say they can't figure out how to do it.
> If the latest product seems good, buy it. If not, don’t.
There is another aspect to this though. As a user of an ecosystem, you're committed in many ways. As Apple or Microsoft or Google releases a new version of their operating system you're going to run that on hardware you already own. You're going to run software that you already own on that the OS. And you're doing to use skills and knowledge of that software to accomplish something useful.
In some ways it doesn't matter if the product is good or bad -- you're pretty committed. You're going to be willing to suffer some pain because the alternative is too difficult and too expensive. The only thing you really can do is complain.
I’m a long time Apple user. But I never do anything that locks me into Apple in a way that makes me dependent on Apple. I could move to Linux tomorrow and everything I depend on would be fine. There’s no Apple service I actually need.
I think Google and Android is worse in this way. The backup Android I had years ago forced me to login with my Gmail or I couldn’t use it. My old iPhone happily runs without being logged in. I just lose the cloud features. Whatever.
That may be true for you but it's not true for many people, like me.
I have twenty years of iPhone data, eg messages, apps, etc. I can't easily move to some other phone.
A desktop, maybe, but I'd still have to repurchase or find alternates to a bunch of software. It is far, far better if the existing system _stays useful_.
>It is far, far better if the existing system _stays useful_
I doubt anyone is arguing the opposite. The point of the parent is that the system staying useful and not turning hostile on your usecase is not under your control or something you can personally prevent, and until that magically changes it's best to structure your use case to be least affected by things not in your control.
I've used my past several Android phones without signing into a Google account or using gapps. I pick something with LineageOS support (usually OnePlus stuff) and get it from eBay, update to latest stock firmware (gets newer baseband and such) then flash LineageOS over it and get my apps from F-Droid.
Both Android and iphones require an account to download apps I believe. Am I mistaken here? Other than that they can be used in the same way without accounts. In fact, with Android an email account suffices and giving your phone number is "opt-in". Apple forces you to give your phone number to create an account last time I checked. Also no F-droid on iphones? But the iphone is the better "phone" experience because there is less bloat and UI nagging.
The other aspect with setting up third party firmware as a general "don't like the stock OS? then do this" option for many is besides the big headline limitations like safetynet/attestation, it also either involves a benevolent third party setting up and maintaining builds for your device (hope you bought a popular model) and any changes match what you want, or individuals doing so themselves
What? I can and have accessed everything I need on Linux. If you make sure none of your data is locked in, the hardware is just a computer. Absolute worst case, get a new computer.
... That's theft protection, and iphones have similar mechanisms. You do not need to sign in, even to a pixel, to use it. Granted you won't get the app store, but you don't get that on iphone either.
To be honest I sometimes feel that my aversion to getting looked into an ecosystem is actually a detriment in some ways. I have a horrible mishmash of apps and programs and nothing integrates really well long term (story of life on a Linux desktop, really). Maybe life would really be better if I just hand over control and become a true believer!
I used to go through phases where I would try this. I gave Windows + WSL a shot. I gave embracing the Apple ecosystem a shot. I gave GNOME a shot. I gave KDE a shot. I was even crazy enough to give ChromeOS as my daily driver a shot. And so on and so forth.
I found every single time that it just wasn't worth it. There was always some critical failure that was either completely underlooked or a 20 year old bug/shortcoming that had every patch to fix it rejected. I genuinely don't understand how people tolerate the dogshit being forcefed to you on all of these controlled platforms. People say that everything is getting worse, and it's true, but it's also true that you're actively choosing to use the things that are getting worse.
I've eventually settled on NixOS and XFCE so I can tweak things to my particular needs while also benefiting from an army of unpaid labor continually improving nixpkgs and other flakes. This setup isn't perfect, but I've optimized for maximal comfort & utility while exerting minimal effort & time. Things really only break when they're self-updating under the hood, which thankfully is rather rare in nixpkgs.
> a horrible mishmash of apps and programs and nothing integrates really well long term (story of life on a Linux desktop, really)
I'm confused. What is so bad about GNU/Linux/(KDE or GNOME)? I am a long time KDE user, but I have no ill will towards GNOME. Once a while, I need to use an app from the GNOME ecosystem, or use a GNOME desktop. It is never hard to navigate. GNOME vs KDE feels a bit like English from US vs UK -- black cat/white cat... they are still cats.
I used to use i3. Even now I've mostly moved to Cinnamon via KDE (which I abandoned as Plasma made my laptop fans spin too much, maybe user error? I never solved it) I haven't "settled" on anywhere. Especially as a lot of GNOME apps seem somewhat lacking so I often end up using, say, Okular or XReader rather than Evince, or CuteCom rather than whatever the GNOME serial terminal is. And I also gave up on vim as an editor so I don't really even have a "home" editor other than VS Code which is just kind of default. Plus a bunch of Windows only industrial and East Asian software the only works via a VM which is pretty clunky.
I used to use Macs at work and while I never really loved the experience (and certainly not that of fiddling with kernel drivers) and write keenly felt the metaphorical guards watching from the towers, it really did feel like a thought-through experience for a normal computer user.
I've tried this on various platforms (Microsoft, Linux, Apple)... the only one that does it the least worst is Apple. And you get a bunch of other stuff with it, too. Linux is nigh impossible, and the feeling I get with Microsoft is I'm being exploited.
This isn't true when literally everywhere else outside of Apple, and only a problem if you are deep in their ecosystem. Why? Open standards, nothing proprietary and closed and fuck you all.
I have phone that's from Samsung, earplugs from Sennheiser, thinking about buying watch from Garmin (Fenix 8 pro), have chargers and powerbanks from Anker, laptop from Dell.
Bluetooth, USBC and other standards. Its beyond good enough for me, and I can switch each component for a better one from another company if I want (apart from those Sennheisers, no company makes better sounding earplugs and they integrate flawlessly for my needs).
> Save your customer loyalty energy for businesses where you can actually establish a connection, like a restaurant you like, or a local handyman.
Couldn't agree more. But I'd add that some (smaller?) businesses, where you still can't really establish a connection, can be worth your loyalty if they have a mission that resonates with you, and they are actually true to that mission. Of course, be prepared for the day when they get too successful and start acting in ways against the principles they were founded upon.
But yeah... I think the best place to use our energy is by evangelizing people first and foremost, not businesses. Send people to your favorite restaurant because the owner is always there, chats with customers, and seems to love what they do. Recommend the person who regularly cuts your hair and cares enough to remember you and ask about your life. Refer that great handyman to others, who you trust to be a straight-shooter, pride themselves on the quality of their work, and not gouge you on cost.
Oh, the atrocities of "simplification" made during Ive's later years of leadership are so numerous that they beggar belief. Many aspects of iOS and macOS no longer conform to even the basic principles of UI affordances.
Save your customer loyalty energy for businesses where you can actually establish a connection
To be fair, I find despite the various foibles, Apple has always looked out for me when it comes to accessibility -- where none of the competitors bother. Maybe I shouldn't act out of loyalty, but they will keep getting my business as they keep it up (despite Liquid Arse stuffing up accessibility quite a bit).
The biggest reason for me using Android is simply because of how much competition there is in the space. If I use Apple products and don't like something they do then I'm stuck on an older version at best and need to migrate everything from their walled garden (at great cost) at worst.
With Android, I can use Samsung one generation, switch to Pixel the next, and give Motorola/some other smaller company a chance later. I can choose a phone that has the exact features I want - better battery life? great camera? best performance? great display? cheap price? smaller display? larger display? There's a phone for each of those.
What would be the “great cost” of moving from an iPhone to an Android phone? I’m struggling to think of what would cost money at all, aside from the phone itself.
There's no straightforward way to migrate between an iPhone and Android so you'd spend a lot of time. Also I'm not sure if it's even possible to fully move over - for example would you be able to export your iMessages? Also, if you're fully bought into the ecosystem with Airpods and a Watch, you'd be better off replacing those (at least the watch which turns into a paperweight without an iPhone).
I've migrated back and forth. Most things are backup to cloud now. Only thing missing was Signal messages last time and I think they now fixed that. Do people still use plain SMS now?
A year ago someone on HN said “I can confirm that iMessage is extremely common in Australia. WhatsApp is very uncommon, outside of people with European (and maybe South American?) friends or family to keep in touch with.”
I can also confirmed that iMessage is basically unused in France. (And that was a core argument in the EU of Apple against the DMA for iMessage, so even Apple admits its low usage in the EU)
The issue with iMessage outside the US is the branding, it's branded as an SMS app and SMS being dead (outside of ads and delivery drivers) doesn't help for adoption.
iMessage is popular in the US because everyone has an iPhone because everyone has iMessage and everyone connects it to social status - network effects. The same reason (besides the social status) everyone uses WhatsApp in Europe.
This has more to do with the way the iPhone was launched, and the American desire to own the most expensive product, than any technical merits.
I don't know how to take pictures out of Google photo, but it's very easy to move outside photos into Apple Photos. I do this quite often since I'm a Sunday photographer and wrangle my images in Lightroom Classic on a Windows box.
If you have an iCloud subscription, you can do this directly with a browser, just click upload and wait for it to happen. There's also a Windows client for iCloud, but I've never tried it.
Use third party, cross platform software like ente and you have no problem moving to or from any platform. Use platform dependent services and you get locked in. It is very simple, actually.
That’s only if you are deep into one ecosystem or the other, or you don’t want to start with a clean state. Taking the time to move some basic apps and install the rest in time as you need them does not take much.
> need to migrate everything from their walled garden (at great cost)
It's not just about migrating the phone, if you own an Apple Watch, AirPods, one of their laptops, their online services, etc. all that stuff works best within the Apple ecosystem. If you move they don't work as well (if at all) and you may need to replace them. If you are deeply bought in to Apple products, it really isn't that easy to move.
Time and existing apps I already paid for. Even upgrading to a new Android phone costs me a few hours of setup. Moving to iPhone (or the other way) would be seriously painful.
The worst Apple era for me was the butterfly keyboard / touchbar era of Macs. They went too far in the pursuit of thin and light - removing ports, going with a keyboard design that felt bad to type on and was prone malfunction, and the touchbar, which I actually thought sounded cool at first, ended up being much less useful than a row of function keys.
I didn't feel betrayed by Apple, I just decided not to buy a new MacBook until they fixed their keyboard issues. I switched to Linux for a couple of years, and switched back once they released the M1 MacBook Pro. I'm perfectly happy with my Macs (I have 3) now.
I actually really like the current era of Apple where their motto seems to be give people what they want. MacBook Pros with HDMI ports and SD card readers. iPads finally getting viable multi-tasking support and a real mouse cursor (although iPadOS still sucks IMO). The iPhone 17 Pro is slightly thicker than the 16 Pro to allow for a bigger battery. Their storage and memory upgrade prices are still ridiculous, but at least Macs come with a usable 16 GB memory minimum now, and iPhones start with an honestly better-than-I-expected 256 GB storage.
It's not all perfect - especially on the software side. The settings menu on iOS is kind of a cluster. Apple Music has a terrible UX, as does the recent update to Photos. And I haven't tried Tahoe and Liquid Glass yet - but I'm definitely a little concerned.
> Any more emotional investment than that is going to cause pointless unhappiness.
Agreed 100%. If you're writing 2,000+ word blog posts out of anger and exasperation, you should take it as a moment of self reflection that just maybe you're too invested in a corporation.
I mean if we were talking about
Cheetos or Coca, I’d agree with you, but we live in a Duopoly on both Mobile, Desktop and the web. If you’re an adult, you’ve been living in their ecosystem for years. It’s kind if hard to not be emotionally invested in something you use all day for your work and/or personal life.
Also aligns in spirit with "company is not your family" idea.
The original post reads like an aggregation of complaints. I have some too! In particular stating that the Apple Watch is too complicated to use resonates. I have/use regularly but I am never pleased w/the interface.
AirPods on the other hand - a gem. They just work. Sure, they sometimes awkwardly disconnect/connect to other devices (when I have more than 1 vying for attention) but they're rock solid for me thus far.
> It does not matter how long you’ve bought from a big company, they owe you nothing
The same can be said of employers. The company does not care about you no matter how many years you’ve been there. If you’re not c-suite, you're just a cog.
> Save your customer loyalty energy for businesses where you can actually establish a connection
I feel like modernity has brought about an identity for people as consumers. Much like a pro sports team who you have no relationship with beyond proximity, brands have slowly gained the same kind of consumptive identity associations. I see it by for the most in golf, where people literally wear caps repping their favorite club and ball manufacturers, rather than athletes.
For me, I’m prefer to associate with brands that have some kind of editorial voice that align with my own. Like media outlets, university, or individuals.
Thing is, the Human Interface Guidelines were a sort of contract with the user, and the same goes for the ethos or culture or principles a big company has, if any. So in a sense they do have a connection with customers, via "community", if they choose to do so (and choose to be sincere about it instead of faking). I mean a business can be bigger than a local handyman and still go down the friendly path, for years potentially, until it decides that the friendly strategy was wasteful and streamlines it away.
> And a text terminal? Like DOS?? Who the hell is ever going to want to use that on a Mac?
Why complain about something you don't need to use if you don't want to?
What's great about the commandline? Scriptability, automation, configurability, composability, the easy re-running of complex commands with a small tweak, access Unix commandline tools that have been fined tuned over decades.
And to compare the terminal to DOS is not to understand the gulf in quality between them.
> Who the hell is ever going to want to use that on a Mac?
Arguably, they were wrong on all these points. Unix roots (text terminal) gave the one of the strongest boosts to Macbook sales in terms of newly minted developers. Deal with Microsoft brought not only much needed liquidity, but also Office, which was "the killer app(r)" for that era. Let me add one more - people complained about PowerPC->Intel switch, and then same people complained about Intel->Arm switch (both brave and visionary decisions which has been years in the making. The naysayers may complain about everything and nothing but Apple continues to prevail - I am saying that as no Apple fanboy - viva la Amiga!
I found this article quite weird. It would be one thing if it were (yet another) "Company X has lost its way..." kind of article. But this post seemed more along the lines of "Apple built these things that I don't care about."
Umm, so??? Obviously some people do, and this article struck me as someone complaining that Apple isn't building exactly what he wants. Furthermore, his analysis seems way off base to me: "Relying on legacy and unquestioning fanpeople, for whom everything Apple does is good and awesome and there’s nothing wrong with it, can only go so far." Apple stopped relying on "legacy and unquestioning fan people" a long time ago, ever since they basically became "the iPhone company" to a majority of their userbase.
No, it's not a parasocial relationship. Those are one-sided and usually a passive consumer of media believing they have a real relationship with those who appear within said media.
If you are a customer you most assuredly have an actual relationship with the company. Your options when dissatisfied with that relationship is to end it, send your complaints to the company, or decide the dissatisfaction is overcome by the value you receive.
FWIW, I use macOS everyday since more than 15 years (I also have a PC running various distros) and it’s true that the dock is absolutely dogshit. It’s unclear what will happen wen you click on anything, it’s useless if you have multiple windows of the same application, it’s even more of a mess if you have multiple windows but some are minimized.
And of course in 2025, all applications icons are some variant of the same red green blue yellow colors so nothing stands out of the dock because it doesn’t show anything else than the icon.
I’ve also come to this realization as a longtime Mac user. Granted, I’m not old enough to have used the classic Mac OS as a professional, though I did use it in my childhood. However, I was in high school and college during the Jobs era of Mac OS X, and that’s when I started using Macs as my daily drivers from 2006 until 2022 when I retired my 2013 Mac Pro and 2013 MacBook Air and switched back to PCs running Windows.
Before Apple’s success with the iPhone, Apple was essentially the Macintosh company. Its fortunes were tied to the Mac, and Apple seemed to be attuned to the needs of Mac users. In return, there was quite a strong Mac fandom. The Mac was more than just a tool or just a platform. The Mac was a philosophy, and what attracted people to the Mac was the philosophy of the Mac and its ecosystem.
Ever since the iPhone became a major hit, and especially since the passing of Jobs, it became apparent to me that my best interests as a computer user and Apple’s interests as a company no longer align. Apple no longer needed to cater to “the Mac faithful” to survive. In fact, Apple is one of the biggest companies in the world thanks to the iPhone. It also seems that macOS is losing its distinctiveness.
The unfortunate thing, and I think this is where some Mac users get emotional and disappointed, is that there’s nothing else out there in the personal computing landscape that is like the glory days of the Mac. Windows is an inconsistent mess filled with annoyances, and the bazaar of the Linux ecosystem is nothing like the polished cathedral of the Mac. Everything is a step down from older Macs, even modern Macs.
However, while thankfully we can enjoy retrocomputing for hobbyist use, many of us still need to use up-to-date platforms to browse the Web and to get our work done, and so clinging on to, say, Snow Leopard is not an option outside of hobbyist activities. Hence, why I use Windows. It’s not Snow Leopard but it gets the job done for now.
The beauty about software, though, is that we don’t have to resign ourselves to accepting whatever Apple, Microsoft, and Google releases. Many of us reading this forum have the ability to write our own software. FOSS projects such as Linux have shown that it’s possible for user communities to write their own software that fit their needs without needing to be concerned about business matters such as market dominance.
So, yes, this is a hard lesson for many longtime Mac users about being loyal to a company; companies change. But this lesson also creates opportunities. I think if enough disaffected longtime Mac users got together and pooled their resources together, we could create a FOSS alternative that is community-driven, one where the evolution of Mac-like personal computing is driven by the community, not by Apple or any other corporation.
> I’ve also come to this realization as a longtime Mac user. Granted, I’m not old enough to have used the classic Mac OS as a professional, though I did use it in my childhood. However, I was in high school and college during the Jobs era of Mac OS X, and that’s when I started using Macs as my daily drivers from 2006 until 2022 when I retired my 2013 Mac Pro and 2013 MacBook Air and switched back to PCs running Windows.
Me too. I liked opinionated software when my opinions aligned with Apple's. But I found i hated it when they didn't. Around mavericks or Sierra or so I started getting more and more annoyed with all the things being changed for the worse (in my opinion). Then during the pandemic I had plenty of free time to dig deep into my computing future and I moved to KDE. Heavily customised just the way I love it. It's a breath of fresh air not having someone else make choices on how I should use my computer. Haven't looked back since.
I had already left iOS because it's so locked down and the hardware too expensive for the specs. That already broke a ton of the "just works" of course.
Prior to the iPhone (but within the years Jobs was in charge), Apple was a company whose target demographic was the professional/semi-professional creative market. Once iPod and iPhone demonstrated a huge sales potential the company abandoned the creatives market and became a consumer-oriented company that provided means of media consumption.
The day XCode runs on the iPadOS, the classical Mac is gone.
They already got rid of servers and the workstation market, apparently losing those customers to Windows/Linux wasn't seen as something to worry about.
It's not just about emotion or loyalty. It's about built-up knowledge and the difficulty of switching.
When you're a long time user, you know how to do everything with what you're using - whether that's an operating system, a programming language, or something else.
The latest product isn't good and your suggestion is "don't buy it." OK, what do I do instead? Buy a Windows or Linux laptop where I have to re-learn a decade's worth of knowing-how-everything-works? Build up my natural flow in a new OS? Find whatever are the Windows alternatives for all the little things that I do on my Mac?
I'm not saying that companies owe things to their customers, but I think it's really simplistic to say that it's just an emotional investment and misplaced loyalty. People have a tool and then a company makes that tool worse. There are other tools, but it takes time to learn them, figure out their differences and how to get everything done with them, etc. Pretending that there's zero cost to switching is disingenuous.
For example: if you're a software engineer and someone made your main programming language bad, there's a high cost to switching to a new language. Even if you're excellent at learning new languages, you don't know which libraries are good, you don't know what various functions are named, you don't know what warts are in the build system (and how to avoid them), etc.
It's not just some emotional response or misplaced loyalty. It's that you've built up skills over many years that are tied to that thing.
Companies owe their livelihoods to their customers. If they do stupid shit and annoy those customers they lose money and potentially kill the business.
There is a long list of companies which have done themselves serious financial harm, or even slit their own throats by failing to understand how Customer World works.
No one is too big to fail. Especially in computing. There's also a long list of companies which looked like permanent fixtures for a while and were dead a few years later.
As for Apple - I have a busy lock screen, and I can no longer read the time because the big numbers are too thin and the refraction effect makes them impossible to read.
"If the latest product seems good, buy it. If not, don’t."
Well, they have done a good job with lock in. If you've bought a bunch on Apple Music, you need an apple device laying around to get it. Maybe some people just keep there old phone around just for this. But it can be a hard transition.
Really, 'lock in', is the key to a lot of technology these days, so be aware.
This is such a unfair interpretation, it's a false equivalence argument. "OS X added Terminal and throwing out HIG for a UNIX-y UI" is a moot point.
It's not about loyalty, it's about Apple's own coherence and vision as a creative-technology company, and a bunch of sophisticated users offering a critique of it over time. Read it that way and it makes a lot more sense.
Beneath the Apple "fandom" or any fandom there are valid reasons why they came to be (the quality of the product), and we ought to elevate that than call customers naive for not adopting the very corporate cynicism that is a result of anticompetitive economics.
> And a text terminal? Like DOS?? Who the hell is ever going to want to use that on a Mac?
Me. I have to use a Mac at work, and I use the text terminal more than anything else on the computer. It doesn't help that Mac's don't have a good UI, everything is hidden behind extra key-presses, and switching between windows is a PAIN.
On a mac every window for an app is considered the same, so there's no concept of switching between windows (except with special hidden key presses).
When a window is in the background it doesn't receive clicks, so you have to click on it twice.
The menubar of a non-active window doesn't exist, so you need an extra click, first to activate the window, then to go find its menubar and do an action.
> When a window is in the background it doesn't receive clicks, so you have to click on it twice.
This is sort of true but the full truth is less straight forward.
On unfocused apps you can still send through scrolling and (mostly) perform single clicks with command + click... you can also without focus send single clicks to certain controls the developer has ad hoc allowed 'click through' on...
For mouse oriented users I'd recommend trying a focus follows mouse experience like AutoRaise [1]. But I mean, it's not like this solution existing absolves Apple of the broader criticism here about what they prioritize and deprioritize for the default user interface experience.
Of all the things you can dislike you pointed out a few features which actually make some sense. Cmd+` works well, even better than alt-tab most of the time, though it’s a major pain in the ass if you want multiple windows laid out from multiple apps on a single screen, and god forbid you have more windows of any in the background. The click to focus stops accidental clicks and gives a way out when the only visible piece of an app is a button.
I’d rather focus on Apple refusal to support standard dpi displays (hat tip betterdisplay), basically broken .0 releases, gimped docker implementation, useless window management and broken multi screen windows.
> When a window is in the background it doesn't receive clicks, so you have to click on it twice
I get hit by this all the time. I have multiple monitors and I can scroll in a window without the window having focus. The scrolling leads you believe it has focus so when you hit cmd-w to close the window the window with actual focus closes instead.
> On a mac every window for an app is considered the same, so there's no concept of switching between windows (except with special hidden key presses).
Is Cmd+` the hidden key press? Alternatively you can go to "Window" at the menubar if you prefer to click
We're in a state of decline in a number of areas. I agree with you with regard to macOS, but Windows has degraded far worse than even the most cynical among us would have guessed just 5-10 years ago. Linux is great in my opinion, but there's no reason to think it's immune. What happens if corporate interests get even more invested in Linux? Just look at Android. Or, when Linus Torvalds passes, will there be good stewardship? Will the government require ID verification that simply won't run in Linux? The modern computing situation is quite fragile, and many options are receding on a yearly basis.
> People who have no use for all these pro video recording features shouldn’t waste their money on it. Unless they want a big chunky iPhone with the best camera array and/or have money to burn.
I feel like people who “want the best camera array and have money to burn” probably describes a significant percentage of HN readers.
I’m honestly pretty excited that they’ve finally put the larger, high res sensor in all three iPhone cameras - which should result in pretty decent image quality across the entire 13 - 200 mm equivalent range. It’s a nice upgrade from my current iPhone which uses smaller 12 MP sensors for the ultra-wide and telephoto cameras - resulting in images that are noticeably soft and noisy.
I personally don’t consider the iPhone 17 Pro to be too big or chunky. I’m generally happy to sacrifice an extra millimeter of thickness for better battery life, and enjoy the usability of larger screen sizes. I know that a lot of people really want smaller phones, though, and I think it’s unfortunate that Apple cancelled the mini (and the smaller SE design). I guess it just wasn’t selling that well.
And finally, I’m at a point in my life where spending $1100 on a new iPhone every few years isn’t going to break the bank. And I also am able to give my current iPhone to family members, who should be able to enjoy it for many more years to come.
>Sent from my iPhone 13 mini, which is also Too Damn Big.
As someone with small hands, I kind of regret my iPhone 13 mini. I really want something smaller, but if I have to have a phone I can't hold well in one hand, I might as well have a bigger screen.
I, too, am still rocking the 13 mini, which they made good enough that nothing they've made since has made me wish to upgrade, though the fact that every phone since is Too Damn Big has made me happy I haven't yet.
We've got about three years left before these things are unsupported. Three years of hope for them to release _something_ a little smaller than "uncomfortably large."
Also on 13 mini. But my next phone needs a better camera, and the cellular radio reception needs to be better (my 13 mini loses network connection in weak areas faster than my wifes 15 or sons 16 pro does - they stay online, I’m out). I love smaller phones though (hence the 13 mini).
The problem is there aren't enough people buying mini phones to make it worthwhile to Apple. But that's only if they keep a mini around permanently.
However if Apple released a new iPhone mini model every fourth year, I'd wager these would be like a McRib-style smash hit sales event, compressing the comparatively small mini-enthusiast audience into a time-limited buying window. It would also trigger FOMO at a time when many people are increasingly willing to delay upgrades for 5+ years.
This is a brilliant idea, I really hope somebody on the iPhone 18 design team reads it. I think there’s a huge pent up demand for a mini model, many of us would pay more for it than the large versions.
On an iPhone 12 mini, wishing I hadn’t upgraded to iOS 26 because now my phone is notably laggy. Word to the wise. I use swiping for input and would consider it now unusable due to extreme lag.
The physical aspect I can’t give up is I can hold the phone with my thumb on the bottom and my middle finger on the top and scroll with my index finger to read. Wish I could buy that capability on a new iPhone, maybe one even slightly smaller.
Time to go find out if there’s even a way to downgrade, oof this is slow.
I still have a 12 mini as a work phone and that thing is great. My personal phone is a 16 pro and the only real advantage it has (for me) is the 120hz screen and the way better battery. I actively hate it's weight, especially combined with a case.
In my hands the 16 pro max looks small. I only care about battery life really and it is really not great so I wouldn't mind a double thickness: larger dimensions all over in favor of battery and screen. Huawei used to have one (in 2016 or so?) that was perfect: massive slab, super battery. But then we needed all slimmer and smaller (after the asia phablet hype?). Battery life on iphones is not good if you use it a lot. I am in a coworking space and literally all iphone users have to plug in somewhere during the day as most use it all day and it conks out: I am on my chinese android all day and end of the day it's 60%+. I guess my hands are an exception, but I cannot stand dragging all kinds of crap with me because everyone wants the thinnest, smallest devices.
> In my hands the 16 pro max looks small. I only care about battery life really and it is really not great
The Max version may have room for a bigger battery, but it needs to drive a bigger screen so it’s a double-edged sword. I’m not sure if you end up ahead or not.
If battery life is an issue you can turn off some the more gimmicky «pro» features like the always on screen.
I have a «regular» 15 pro and I think battery life is good. I haven’t had a single day where overrun out of battery so far.
I'm with you. My phone is my primary computer. I want it to have the most computing power, battery life, storage, and camera performance possible. I don't really care for its looks as long as it meets a certain baseline.
This pretty much sums up my feeling on the new generation. I too don't understand what's "awe dropping" about it, and have finally switched from an iPhone 15 Pro to the Android ecosystem, where a flip phone is somewhat "awe dropping". I'm not fully convinced about it, but it's different, it's fun, it's clever, and I'm thoroughly enjoying it.
The only thing I disagree with here is about the Air. I think Apple's strategy with the Air is to split the Pro line. Previously the Pro phones were for people who wanted a premium feeling and who wanted premium features, but those are often in tension, and might hold each other back. Now the Air is for those who want premium feel (you might call it flashy, looks great, feels great, but has trade-offs), and now the Pro is an uncompromising set of features, at the expense of being bigger and having a comical camera ~bump~ ~plateau~ continent. This is the same as the Watch, where you have the stainless steel models for the premium feel, and the Ultra for the premium features.
I suspect many on HN may not differentiate between the premium features and feel as much – I know it's not what I jump to – because "design is how it works" and many here aren't as fashion conscious, but a lot of folks buy new phones based on the colour, or how thin it feels, or other details that are easily written off when you know more about the hardware. I think the Air might be a big hit, while getting very little of the enthusiast market.
I don't know how widespread this is but in my little circle the orange Pro was the biggest draw, it's the first in the Pro line (or at least as far as I can remember) with real color to it. Most of them are grayscale or very muted colors. It's another "feel" thing but got more attention than the Air's thin body.
Ever since Apple dropped out of Product (RED), we haven't had a lot of bold colour choices. They feel steadily more muted (including the set of non-Pro colours this time around)
I am one of those buying orange. Never went for colors, always deep blue or grey, but both my son and I went for orange. And not even politically connected. Just liked the color.
Go for it! I had a bright red case for my phone for some time. Looked great, a nice little splash of color, also worked well with the company I was working for at that time (brand color was red, too).
I've changed phones since then and at some time found red "too much", so I went with a black case because I thought I needed to look more serious. Should revisit that thought, especially when talking about phone cases... :-D
Depends who you are. If you want to take pro video on the phone they dropped some great improvements. The Air is impressive even if not the phone I'd pick. But realistically, if your current phone works really well for you which it probably does, nothing they could possibly announce would be interesting to you.
> nothing they could possibly announce would be interesting to you.
Apple is a hardware company that makes lifestyle products. Why isn't their hardware appealing to me? Why can't it be?
In a competitive economy, phrases like this should a last resort, used to describe only the most decrepit and unjustifiable businesses. If nothing they can announce will interest me, then what are they even selling? A religion? A service? Certainly not a commodity, apparently nothing I need.
You couldn't really always phones outside until they switched to OLED because you couldn't see the screens in sunlight. They were still popular though.
These are my thoughts exactly. I've seen a bunch of people who don't value thinness or lightness in a phone getting dismissive or outright angry at the existence of the Air, and I want to grab them and shake them until they get it. I don't want the Air at all, and that's exactly why I'm thrilled it exists: it will split the Pro buyers into form-valuers and function-valuers, so the function-valuers like me can get an iPhone with a huge battery and a vapor chamber in it.
If you're one of those people who goes "why can't they make the phone thicker and heavier with more battery life", you should be overjoyed at the Air, because now that those buyers are peeled off to a different SKU, the product line for you doesn't need to find a happy medium with them.
The title is appropriate, in that it feels to me that most of the awe has gone out of these products/keynotes. This is maybe down more to the maturity of the category(/ies) than any fault of Apple's though. Perhaps they can be blamed for failing to introduce exciting products in new categories.
I do find that wireless earbuds actually last much longer than the wired variety, despite the non-replaceable batteries. Back in the day I went through one or two sets of earbuds a year because the wire failed internally, whereas I've only had two TWS pairs in ~six years (admittedly, it was the battery that became a problem in the first set). There's undoubtedly a lot more e-waste gubbins in each though.
> A modular iphone that has an easy to replace battery, easy to replace screen and is maybe 2mm thicker to account for it? That would be a sellout.
The number of people who might actually like this is very tiny. Most of them do product reviews. But their audience is not going to care. Think about your older uncle. Your niece in her 20s who loves to paint and read but doesn't want to replace hardware. That's what most people are like.
Those are the people who Jobs focused on impressing and enabling to do things they wouldn't do otherwise. That is the focus that has been lost without Jobs, IMHO, and it's the focus that makes the products better for people who want to get the most out of their products per unit of time invested in learning how to use it.
I am thinking about my older uncle and my niece in her 20s. They're smart-enough people, and they're quite aware that a modern phone can be very expensive to fix.
In particular, I'm thinking that I (a person of reasonable technical skill) would love to help them out by changing the designed-to-be-swapped screen on the phone they dropped instead of them paying someone else to conduct surgery on it.
How many people do you know who want to change their own oil in their car? This is a frequent, required maintenance. Yet I can't think of a single car that advertises its ability to be maintained by somebody without special tools. The only people who change their own oil would have the skills to change an iPhone screen.
I have changed the battery on two iPhones on my own, and replaced one screen on my own. I've also once had one of those little shops do it, quickly and cheaply. I only did it on my own because I wanted to see how difficult it was. The savings in money and extra time was completely wasted other than for the entertainment value of changing it.
The slice of people who get entertainment value out of changing their screens, yet does not have the skills to do it on a current iPhone, must be quite small. Surely less than 10% of the population, for a "feature" that has easy alternatives of paying somebody $20-$30.
> How many people do you know who want to change their own oil in their car? This is a frequent, required maintenance. Yet I can't think of a single car that advertises its ability to be maintained by somebody without special tools.
Those are two very different topics. Sure, cars don't advertise their ability to be maintained without special tools. But I also know a lot of people who do in fact want to change the oil in their own car (because it's not hard, and much cheaper once you have the tools).
The price of replacing the screen is mostly the part itself. It’s extremely easy for any random shopping center phone store to replace in like 5 minutes. But the part itself costs more than an old phone is even worth.
Every time a family member has had a cracked iPhone screen replaced it has never really worked properly again. It may be easy but it’s apparently not easy to do it well.
My mom got her battery replaced at an Apple Store and the process broke the phones ability to connect to the internet or the cellular network. They ended up replacing the phone.
Something to last a couple of hours became a change of phone with a mandatory round trip to Apple. Apple themselves are sometimes not able to properly repair their own allegedly repairable phone.
Unclear – I assume many in their audience also break their phones somewhat regularly, they'd probably appreciate not having to drop $99 or even more abroad for a battery replacement.
And this is why you shouldn’t listen to the “less space than Nomad. No Wireless. Lame” tech crowd [1].
A TV is bulky, race to the bottom commodity that is only replaced every 5-8 years.
> Neckband-style airpods with all-day battery life? Might not sell out, but would be popular.
I don’t think Apple has any issue selling AirPods. But honestly, I do like my $70 Beat Flex for traveling. I don’t have to worry about them falling out of my ears and between the seats on flights and the double flange ear tips block noise better than AirPods Pro.
I’ve had touch screen convertible Dells. I never used the touch screen. They are bulky, the screen ratio is off either way compared to an iPad. On the other hand, my wife now uses an iPad Air 13 inch with a regular old cheap Bluetooth keyboard and mouse and she loves it. Her x86 MacBook Air was getting long in the tooth.
This is before the newest OS with real windows.
[1] or more relevant to the HN crowd “For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software.”
> A TV is bulky, race to the bottom commodity that is only replaced every 5-8 years.
True but, can't you kind of say the same about phones? My sister buys Moto-G's. They cost her $120. Apple charges more. They make their own market. I don't know how much I'd be willing the pay but I feel like I'd pay for an 65" Apple TV. Sony, LG, Samsung, Roku, TCL, all make crap TVs that want to spy on you. They are almost universally underpowered for their apps and OS and are all jank AF. i have an AppleTV plugged into my Sony and a few times a month I bump the bad remote and it switched to Google TV and tries to get me to sign in so it can serve ads at me.
The market for an apple branded TV might not be the same size as phones but I suspect it's big enough to become 5% of their profit.
Who would have guess headphones would do so well before they did so well?
> True but, can't you kind of say the same about phones?
No, at least not at the flagship $1k+ market Apple competes in. Maybe for $120 motos, but apple is competing in an entirely different market segment. They're absolutely not commodities - apple charges a premium with strong margins and a differentiated product. They have regulars who upgrade (bi-)yearly, regardless of the features and price and necessity. They literally have a subscription program for iPhones.
> The market for an apple branded TV...
They already have the most profitable part of the TV market. They sell an expensive add-on to TVs that offer over-the-top subscriptions and software services. The remaining panel is sold nearly at-cost on the assumption that the underpowered processor inside will serve you ads instead. They're expensive to ship, tough to stock, and high-end ones worth selling are a niche market.
Apple sells computer monitors, which are pretty close to TVs in terms of "commodity" status, and the products are like 2x the cost of their closest competitor spec wise. That should be a clear indicator on the potential and costs for even bigger screens.
> Who would have guess headphones would do so well before they did so well?
Well, they bought beats who certainly helped prove the market for headphones expensive headphones from a recognizable brand (to say nothing of Bose, Sony, etc who had sold headphones for a generation prior).
I get your other examples, but a best-in-class TV seems like it'd be pretty good for Apple. It's an Apple TV device that's jammed into a television and doesn't come out, plus a premium price. Seems like it'd work out great. And everybody else buys the 'Apple TV 4K' standalone doohickey and plugs it into their regular TV.
1. All these devices would sell out, because these are all of Apple's best sellers. I'm willing to bet a replacable battery iPhone will sell as much as the iPhone 6e. Replacable batteries aren't a strong feature.
2. "Current Apple Product" + "My own personal tweak" isn't a product strategy. "A convertible Macbook Air with a touch screen?" wouldn't move the needle sales wise, and would just be a headache for developers. If, for some strange reason, you need a 19inch touch screen, the iPad pro already exists and has better developer support.
Most Apple products are locally maximized. The last great new Apple product was the AirPods in 2016. Neither the Apple Watch or Apple Vision Pro seems like they will define a new product space.
> modular iphone that has an easy to replace battery, easy to replace screen and is maybe 2mm thicker to account for it? That would be a sellout.
Go the other way. Hermetically sealed, no connectors, inductive charging, rugged, with a solid state battery that will outlive the rest of the phone. Solid state batteries are more expensive, but that's a cost issue for car-sized batteries, not phone-sized batteries for US$1000 phones.
Samsung expects to have 20-year battery life in 2026.
This is a perfectly HN style misunderstanding of what Apple actually is and does.
An iPhone doesn't need replaceable battery or an easier to replace screen, there are other phones that have these features and anyone is very welcome to buy them. Moreover, the screen is really not that hard to replace and you can charge any phone off a powerbank, you can even have a special magsafe powerbank that you carry in a bag. A 3rd gen SE (relatively crappy for an iPhone) can charge up to 50% in half an hour if your wall block outputs more than 20w. The point of an iPhone is that it's powerful enough to do pretty much anything that anyone needs and has software that's good enough to the point that it doesn't need some shitty skin over it. It's also supposed to be consistent with your other apple devices and supported for absurd amounts of time in comparison to the competition.
Touchscreen on laptops is shit, I'm not interested in fatiguing my shoulders while I work for a 0.01% usability benefit in some niche scenarios. It's a gimmick, nobody actually needs it. My current gen MBAir lasts literally days on battery. If you want a touchscreen Apple product with a keyboard then iPads are right there. They exist. The trackpad on any macbook virtually eliminates the need for a touchscreen and that's why they're the best trackpads on any laptop.
Airpods are the breakthrough product that they are because they aren't neckband style, they're literally the seashells that Ray Bradbury describes in Farenheit 451. For better or worse. They've been around for a long time now and we've forgotten that nothing like them existed in. the mainstream before they did. All the initial criticisms about them have evaporated, they have become normal as has their form factor. No neckbands or wires, the charge case juices them up and the battery on them definitely lasts all day, I've tried. If they had wires or a neckband then they simply wouldn't be what they are. If you want neckband style earbuds like you've descriibed there are plenty of options out there that existed before AirPods did.
Why would Apple make a TV when Samsung has that market fully cornered? In every way. What would be the point of competing with the company that makes the actual display panels that literally everyone uses? Apple can offer it's excellent software and they've done that, you can plug an Apple TV into any TV or, if your TV is 'smart' like all TVs nowadays, you can use the Apple TV app on your best in class TV. As well as the Youtube App, or the Netflix app, or the Prime app, or pretty much any service you want has a smart TV app really. What would anyone gain from Apple making a best in class TV?
None of these devices would cannibalize sales of any of Apple's products because they're all a terrible idea. If you want non-apple products then just buy them. They exist. All that stuff exists, just not made by Apple because those are inherently non-Apple ideas. Apple makes their devices for people who want their devices and everything that comes with their devices.
> A modular iphone that has an easy to replace battery, easy to replace screen and is maybe 2mm thicker to account for it? That would be a sellout.
And probably a regression on the waterproofing efforts they've made over the last decade. If you're gonna make it thicker, just put a bigger battery in.
> This is maybe down more to the maturity of the category(/ies) than any fault of Apple's though.
LiDAR was cool.
They could buy Oura and let you write apps with programmable micro LEDs, and that would’ve been cool.
If iPhones had Star Wars style holographic projector, that’d be cool.
They could just be content with keeping the lights on without unnecessary UX changes that literally no one asked for, and that would be cool.
I’m still happy with Apple, but the problem is that they now perceive staying relevant is wasting battery on visuals and making the phone thinner. Those are recycled old-ass ideas. They need to find the new Jony Ives.
Agree. Revolutionary tech happens, perhaps, once a decade. Apple's though is their own biggest enemy because there is so much gravity for these big roll-outs they have a couple times a year (typically Macs and then Phones+).
That's a lot of hyped, flashy events between anything really Earth shattering.
Maybe we miss when Apple was boring and new machines just rolled out with little more than a press release and a spread in MacWorld magazine.
Look up "bullet MMCX IEMs". Plenty of options out there for cables too, some far less microphonic than others, and you can wear them over-ear to reduce that effect even more.
Apple has been notoriously crappy with cords. On my old 2012 macbook I went through 5 magsafes that just ablated themselves at the end to the point I'd get an electric shock or it would stop working entirely. Meanwhile the cables on my 30 year old game consoles are still fine while probably seeing more abuse. I'm really curious how this new magsafe cable is going to hold up. It is braided which seems promising, but no strain relief on the cable ends. At least you don't have to throw away the brick anymore when the cable goes.
Yeah, honestly, smartphones are a very mature category now. Only so much you can do with them. Same with laptops and desktops. Plenty of improvements to be made, but those yearly wow factors are just not coming back.
Cheap and generous flash storage would make me wow and come back immediately and forget all sins. Somehow they never dangle that though. Blame iCloud drive subscription for perverting incentives I guess. Headphone jack coming back would have me camping outside the store for midnight release.
If you find yourself concerned about whether a company aligns with the philosophy of a previous CEO, while not being an employee or investor of that company, then you might not realize the extent to which your mind has already been captured by their marketing efforts.
You don't need to care about Apple's (or Google's, or Samsung's) "philosophy" about literally anything.
I do feel like there is some man shaking fist at cloud here.
The post dismisses airpods, yet they are one of the most popular products in the US, with like 75% of young people owning a pair, great quality, features, and battery life. I dont think a swappable battery is even a good feature, the parts would be tiny and break easily given their size not to mention how often they could get lost
Hot swappable batteries kind of became not so important after battery banks and fast charging became a thing. Makes more sense to carry one battery bank that can charge anything than to have 2-3 phone batteries in your bag (which would be exposed to puncture too).
I still think the price of battery replacements is way too high from apple. It's $150 AUD here which feels far and beyond the cost of the part cost itself.
I realize we're talking about Airpods, but hot swappable batteries don't make sense to me either anymore. I seem to have power almost everywhere.
My phone spends a surprising amount of time on a charger. Most of the day while I'm at home, it's on a charger. I used to keep one at the office on my desk. The car has a charger too, and CarPlay so you might as well plug it in.
I'm not sure if it's a coping mechanism for poor battery life or just convenience.
For long days outdoors, I've also got a booster pack in the car with USB ports and an inverter (120V) that gets some use.
Everything humans do is carbon negative. Breathing, eating, driving, pooping (Westerners: toilet paper, All: waste management) and building. Getting every human to be carbon neutral would be an amazing thing!
From searched / online numbers, Apple has shipped 150 million AirPods since 2016. The AirPods 3 weigh 5.5g. The gross weight of a basic Tesla model 3 is 1760Kg. I picked a Tesla because it has plastic, metals, magnets, copper, lithium - similar materials.
In the ~10 years Apple has been making AirPods the materials used (by weight) is ~ 470 Tesla cars. So, per year (avg, not really good for this), resources consumed is about 47 Teslas (by weight).
Apple claims 40% of AirPods 3 are from recycled materials, so ~ 290 crashed / discarded Teslas could provide part of these materials - on average 29 per year.
I did the above because it perceptually relates to "real things". Teslas are NOT carbon neutral, very much carbon negative.
The reality / HORROR of waste is far, far worse. Any single plastic bag used to dispose of weekly waste likely weighs more than a pair of AirPods. Any can, made of steel or aluminum, could likely could make a lot of AirPods. The toy or product you bought that had a flap that you could lift up - there was likely a magnet under there. Any disposed single use battery might have zinc, if it was a CR2032 or "watch" battery, lithium (or silver).
Yes, AirPods might be disposable. Do they improve the qualify of life of the humans that purchase them? What is the real cost in perspective - with everything else taken into consideration? If the AirPods are used to listen to music or entertainment, then the positive mental health aspects are likely significant in a positive value direction.
- Your model neglects the charging case with its own battery and microcontroller.
- A Trsla is more likely to be recycled properly than the same amount of earbuds. Itbis also more recycleable because ofnthe high amount of steel and other bulk materials in it.
- The ratio of semiconductor electronics to total weight is extremely different between the two products. And semiconductor manufacturing is extremely resource intensive. All we typically see is squeaky clean neon lit clean rooms, which belie the use of high amounts of aggressive and toxic chemicals that have to be produced somewhere and generate waste that is never talked about.
Many of these are all excellent points. I did exclude the case.
The car recycling v.s. electronics recycling question is interesting. I once had a very interesting conversation with an electronics recycler on a plane trip - phones could not be recycled like other electronics because of some of the metals content - in particular beryllium copper content (used in spring contacts). He described it as a lot of electronics is ground up and a chemical processes used to extract the valuable elements. With phones the grinding up was the toxic / dangerous prohibited part.
I think the semiconductor numbers are more subtle though. It is sq. mm in the product and yield that are factors. A single power switching element in a Tesla will likely exceed the total silicon sq. mm usage in an AirPod. There is a lot of electronics in a Tesla. Some of the Tesla circuitry is more exotic, Silicon Carbide or GaN. I need to look into how much recovery / reprocessing silicon mfg is using for the reagents. The waste produced isn't as bad as it was in the Silicon Valley heyday where every original mfg site is now a superfund site with very large plumes of toxic waste in the subsoil.
I’m fairly sure that battery replacements for the AirPods and Apple Watch involve giving you a new one and sending yours to be recycled. And the service only exists to avoid controversy about non reparable products.
I used to hate Airpods in videochats since they made the person wearing them sound bad because of dropouts, had heinous latency, and frequently disconnected causing meeting interruptions. But people think they're "better" than [wired] Earpods, which have none of those problems.
Sometimes it takes an event to change your view. I bought my first noise canceling sennheiser about a dozen years back. Hated it. Tried the noise canceling on my airpods. Hated it. Kept Airpods on transparency since most of my usage was during walking and I wanted to hear ambient sound, and never drown that out.
Then never tried noise canceling this week while on the plane. I was like ... what happened? Now I am actively looking forward to it.
I also used to hate airpods for their disconnects but they have become more reliable, especially if you tell them to remain connected to the last device you manually connected to.
Meetings / video chats are an anti-pattern for sure. There is so much communication loss because of other factors - someone forgot to mute, someone forgot to mute, plus what not. You want your side of the communication to be pristine, and even if airpods flake out 1/20 times, it is not good. I agree with you on that.
I still use my earpods. Great for zoom or phone calls. Terrible for music but everything in that form factor is compared to my studio monitor over ears. I tasted the forbidden fruit already.
Airpods are very, very expensive compared to competitors with 90% of the same features. I've been using a $30 set for several years and the main drawback is it's difficult to switch devices—because apple doesn't allow third parties to use access the proprietary comms that allows this for airpods.
Also, I think the white is ugly. But kids seem to love it.
I'll happily pay the premium for "it just works", especially device switching iPhone to iPad to MacBook to Apple TV, it works first time, every time. I have a pair of Sony XM5s, and even at that price point, pairing and device switching can be a crapshoot some of the time.
Bluetooth honestly feels like a non-deterministic stack sometimes, it even took Apple 4 years to support it on the iPhone, how they have the AirPods working is close to magic.
> how they have the AirPods working is close to magic
They control the entire ecosystem and keep the variants and with it, the testing complexity, down as far as possible. That's how Apple stuff works so damn seamlessly.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world has to contend with dozens if not hundreds of Bluetooth chipsets, driver combinations, OS stacks... and each of these has their own quirks, and even if a bug gets fixed in a Bluetooth driver or controller firmware, good luck getting that distributed to users...
It should be stated that noise cancellation is not hearing protection, if you were using it for that while mowing.
An old groundskeepers trick for having music and ear protection is to get those big over ear protectors and put your buds on with that over them, just being mindful of volume of course.
well to be fair, some people simply don’t tolerate ANC well. Likely due to a more sensitive vestibular system. I believe this group often (not always) also struggles with motion sickness.
I doubt very seriously your $30 headphones sound as good as AirPods Pro or have the ANC.
But you can buy much cheaper headphones with the H1 chip for fast switching between devices by buying one of the Beats headphones. I love my $60 Beats Fiex with the double flange ear tips for traveling.
I have proper over-ear headphones for when I want to listen to music. I'm not sure what ANC is or why it's worth hundreds of dollars—hence why I said 90%.
I don't know what the h1 chip has to do with the fast switching—surely this is a bluetooth protocol detail, yea?
> I do feel like there is some man shaking fist at cloud here.
The poster himself admits that after a meandering 2000 words...
> I found a lot of reactions to these products to be weirdly optimistic. Either I’m becoming more cynical with age and general tech fatigue, or certain people are easily impressed.
I rarely see any earbuds except AirPods in the US, they are the overwhelming majority. Several other countries I’ve worked in also have pretty ubiquitous AirPods penetration, though not quite at the level of the US.
I have a few friends that bought every inexpensive alternative to AirPods, had a poor experience with all of them, finally relented and bought AirPods. Now they won’t use anything else. They spent more money avoiding AirPods than buying them.
I'm suprised, might just have been lucky I got a pair of Jlab pro whatever for 30$ at Canadian Tire and have been getting other ones when I lose them for years now - never thought of shopping for something else.
It was like that in the wired earpod era too. It just carried over when they dumped the headphone jack and sold you the airpod you didn't need before. I still remember those early ipod commercials with the silhouettes dancing with the white cord.
A lot of those nondescript earbuds are indistinguishable from AirPods at a distance. Every electronics store around here sells $30 AirPod knock-offs that one has to look pretty closely at to tell they are not the genuine article.
A casual search showed several studies over several years estimating 70-80% of young people owning airpods, which matched my irl expirence. In the past random earbuds and headphones were common but apple has taken the market by storm.
I think Apple is going the wrong way by not allowing you to easily remove all of the bloatware iOS apps from newer versions of macOS. They could easily use their App Store to redistribute these apps if pro users want to install them later on. With each new macOS version my Applications folder gets more and more junk from apple that I don't ever need to use.
Would this make me go back to windows? Hell No
Needing to use Adobe CS keeps me from switching to Linux. Makes me wonder if MS or Apple is paying Adobe to keep them from releasing a Linux version of CS.
To some extent Apple is now a "lifestyle brand", like Rolex.
Rolex was originally a rugged, waterproof watch for people who needed such a watch. Pilots, divers, mariners, and military officers wore the things. Rolex had the accuracy of a marine chronometer in a small package. The Rolex Submariner was introduced in 1953 at $150. That would be $1,820 today. But the base price for a Rolex Submariner today, the same watch, is around $9,200, plus a few thousand dollars of "additional dealer profit".
As the CEO of Rolex once said, "We are not in the watch business. We are in the luxury business." The people who need a rugged, accurate watch today get a G-Shock.
That may be Apple's path - to fashion themselves as a niche luxury brand.
Apple Employees are "lifestyle employees". They can't imagine why someone wouldn't just buy the $5,000 spec of a laptop if they want a modest quantity of storage or memory, and then get another one in a few months time when that one gets old. They are too rich, too comfortable and too out of touch with the common person - and in many cases what people actually use their products for.
At the same time they try and squeeze every drop of money out of developers the can, Apple is owed for making their market available to others.
> Apple Employees are "lifestyle employees". They can't imagine why someone wouldn't just buy the $5,000 spec of a laptop if they want a modest quantity of storage or memory, and then get another one in a few months time when that one gets old.
Holy hyperbole. I am willing to bet the laptop capabilities that 80% of the population’s needs are available in a $1,000 to $1,500 Macbook Air, and 95% of the population’s needs are available in a $2,000 to $2,500 Macbook Pro. And they will not need a new laptop for at least 5 years.
I don’t think Apple continues trying to be a “lifestyle brand” after their attempts with iPhone X, Apple Watch Edition. Apple products are not cheap but also not too far away from customers electronics.
If anyone feels this way and wants to try an alpha I have 1,000+ hours in.. I've implemented a Windows 10-like UI for MacOS. Similar to uBar (ubarapp.com).
The key distinction is it's built to be extended with third-party plugins (think Obsidian). I stopped using uBar because it had features I needed, but it's not actively adding features anymore last I checked. And of course, this will be fully open source.
It's in active alpha development but has all the core features you'd expect: taskbar works great, but only a basic system tray and start menu. And it'd be very much an alpha that needs feedback :-)
> these [AirPods and Apple Watch] are the Apple products I care the least, together with HomePods and Apple TV.
I won’t defend HomePods much, but skipping the other three misses a lot of the ecosystem value less technical consumers are getting. Turn your lights off with your TV remote. Go to a run with just your watch and headphones and take a call at mile 3. Approve a payment (or a sudo!) by double tapping your watch. Start a channel on your TV from Siri. And so on.
I’m not sure if Liquid Glass (that iOS 26 just insisted on capitalizing) is going to be worth anything, and definitely doesn’t merit the marquee. But the some of the design thinking is still there, beneath the surface, in the delightful interactions between parts of their ecosystem.
This reminded me of a friend's Apple reaction in recent years, which went from fawning in decades past to more resentful and bitter. And I know nothing about this author's position and attitude, but my half-bakery guess at the friend's change follows:
It was that they had gone from feeling like they were the professional catered for at the top of the Apple consumer offering (MacBook Pro, a nice phone, the big iPad) to being unable to justify the iPhone upgrade cycle, the Pro/Max line, or the top laptop or the best of the iPads. I supposed that going from a special segment of the cool gang to somewhere in the middle of the pack just didn't feel special.
I wonder if some of this is a consequence of Apple executives having to spend time navigating the tariff and supply-chain waters thus distracting them from actual innovation.
In the old days Apple were super expensive and hardly present in Iberian Penisula, Portugal only had Interlog in Lisbon, we saw adds on magazines, no one bought them.
First time I actually managed to see some LC in person, I was already attending the university, and there were only used in two places, a single room on the computer lab building, and the administrative assistants on the IT department, no one else across the whole campus had them.
I got to use and learn NeXTSTEP, because my thesis was to port a visualization software away from it into Windows, as my supervisor was the only owner of one, and they were getting rid of it, as NeXT wasn't having a great future on those years, already having pivoted to software only.
So the turn around with OS X felt interesting, and kind of revigorating, given how close Apple and NeXT were to be gone.
> the dimensions of the iPhone 5/5S/SE make this iPhone more ‘Air’ than the iPhone Air. If you want a slightly more recent example, the iPhone 12 mini and 13 mini have the real lightness that could make sense in a phone.
I strongly agree. Many tech people who I know personally strongly agree. I feel like St Steve Jobs would have strongly agreed. I really, really want a new iPhone with iPhone 5 dimensions.
I had one. Loved it. So did many tech people who I know and respect. I believe that this is firmly within the design ethos of Jobs/Ive-era apple, and so it surprises me that they don't continue to offer this in order to keep their brand strong even if the grasping masses don't actually want it.
> Unless someone comes up with a type of earbuds that have easily replaceable batteries, I’m not interested in buying something that’s bound to become e‑waste in a relatively short period of time.
Well, to be fair, my Airpods Pro show no noticeable signs of battery degradation after 3 years of use. If they get to 5 years, that will be longer than most headphones last, not because of batteries, but because of overall wear and abuse. I think the above is a knee-jerk reaction.
Apple still issues software updates for many years beyond the competition. I have a 9.7" iPad Pro from 2016 (mostly a youtube and music device now) and I received a security update today. That is dedication to long time customers.
The products have matured. Comparing to last year's product makes no sense because most people don't buy new products every year
A lot of people buying the 17 are coming from the 12 or earlier, and it is a significant upgrade.
All such criticisms would be much more defendable if the authors' view of the past weren't so rosy with a strong liquid blur of the Job's myth.
> that are, once again, intuitive, discoverable, easy to use, and that both look and work well.
Never was this the case! All these past OSes had a lot of the same fundamental flaws along all of those dimensions, from basic search ("discoverable/easy") fails in both iOS and macOS.
Otherwise maybe it's indeed closer to
> I’m becoming more cynical with age and general tech fatigue
Apple is the only company that controls both the hardware and the software. It's absolutely impossible to compete with them on UX for regular users. A completely new paradigm of computing would have to be created and popularized.
You can't compare macOS with Windows or Linux. These are entirely different games they are playing.
I'm a power user, I would say. I have a Windows workstation at home just because I need to use 2 apps for 3D printing that only exist on Windows.
I have a Raspberry Pi 5 with 2 displays plugged in for monitoring my systems.
I have a Ubuntu server at OVH.
And 2 MacBooks that I use for everything else (running my business). My primary reason is that there are about 10 apps crucial to my business, and they do not exist on other platforms, such as Vellum for book publishing. Yes, there are alternatives on other platforms, but nothing comes close to the simplicity and speed of work we can achieve using that app. And this is, unfortunately, consistent among many niche apps.
> I found a lot of reactions to these products to be weirdly optimistic. Either I’m becoming more cynical with age and general tech fatigue, or certain people are easily impressed.
I think it's both. There's a loud cadre of Apple fans who will always fawn over whatever comes out of Cupertino, no matter what. That group shifts its membership over time, but they're always there, and they're, well, always loud. Maybe some of us have been a part of that group in the past, or at least perhaps looking at things with less of a critical eye than we do now. But it's normal to shift your attitudes on things, and normal for those rose-colored glasses to fog up after a while.
> As for the AirPods, and true wireless earbuds in general, I find this product category to be the most wasteful. Unless someone comes up with a type of earbuds that have easily replaceable batteries, I’m not interested in buying something that’s bound to become e‑waste in a relatively short period of time.
Aren't the batteries the most wasteful, least recyclable/reusable part of the airpods? They're so small I can't imagine that still throwing the battery away and putting in a new one nets to much gain.
I would guess that the old wired airbuds was responsible for more waste than airpods. So much more disposable and less durable.
I’ve had the same thoughts about this. I checked, and a MacBook Pro battery is about 30 times larger than the batteries in AirPods Pro. The environmental costs probably don’t scale perfectly with mass, but still, you’d need a lot of pairs of AirPods to leave the same mark as a single laptop.
There isn’t any way that you could have replaceable batteries and still make them as lightweight and comfortable in your ear without other tradeoffs. We can argue about the case - maybe.
The AppleTV is by far the most responsive set top box and the least slimy as far as privacy and invasive ads [1].
If you like classical watches, the Apple Watch isn’t for you. But there are enough people that disagree that they sell like crazy.
The iPhone Air is probably going to sell like crazy in places with low iPhone adoption where it’s only affordable by the wealthy minority like China where it will be seen as a status symbol. Ben Thompson of Stratechery has been documenting for a decade about the biggest driver of iPhone sells is models that look new.
But if you already have an iPhone 16, Apple doesn’t expect many to upgrade. The replacement cycle has been around 3 years for awhile now.
[1] yes I realize the default Home Screen of the AppleTV has Apple’s apps in the top navigation bar and when you are on the icons it is advertising for Apple services. But you can put any apps up there and those apps control the hero image when you on them. They usually show what you have been watching
> As for the AirPods, and true wireless earbuds in general, I find this product category to be the most wasteful. Unless someone comes up with a type of earbuds that have easily replaceable batteries, I’m not interested in buying something that’s bound to become e‑waste in a relatively short period of time.
I'm not a apple fan (been windows most of my life till moving to a new company that is Mac only, and have been on android for about 13 years at this point) but the airpods pro are maybe apples greatest product in a while (other then the M1 macbooks).
The audio quality+noise cancellation+transparency quality made them a super easy buy and I would buy the app3 as soon as my app2 die that's how much I love them as a android user. This is coming from someone who owns multiple iems and very expensive over the ears.
From everything reported so far, the app3 look like a solid spec bump at the same price, there isn't many products that keep that formula.
Edit: I am disappointed that the OP didn't talk about how all the iPhones now have "pro-motion" aka high refresh rate screens.
This is (personally) one of the biggest step up in quality, I would never buy a baseline iPhone because 60 Hz just looks gross to me now, it's immediately noticeable.
I think the only way you can consider iOS “amateurish” is according to a ridiculously high standard for phone software that Apple itself is responsible for normalizing.
Unfortunately, the only real comparison for iOS is past versions of iOS; until that changes I don’t see things getting better in any stable way.
iOS 26 actually has a lot of great features and convergence with the rest of the ecosystem (e.g. preview is awesome). But it lacks the polish that Apple has a reputation for; unfortunately 50% worse polish for Apple is still significantly better than Android and Windows. There just aren’t greener pastures to move to.
This is it, the grass is not greener on the other side unless you're moving over here. I don't understand why people who live on those less green pastures continuously wish for the greener pasture to be more like what they have now.
I read the article but feel I dont walk away with whats actually (supposed to be) wrong with ios 26 or tahoe, besides the apple watch has too many in your face features.
As well
-Steve jobs died almost 15 years ago now, yet everyone seems to know a reason why Apple has since disgraced what his vision was for Apple the next 15 years after he died? Like anyone really knows what Jobs would say today.
- The new iphone iphone this year sucks it's not "revolutionary" this year. This complaint is standard every year.
The only thing I agree with is the disappointment they won't make an macbook air smaller than 13"
I feel like these posts started popping up with increasing frequency over the last 10 years. At this point its almost a rite of passage to realize that Apple---though good in many ways---is far less than it's cracked up to be.
I started using Linux in the 1990s, and I flirted with Apple through out the 2010s. I finally switched full time to a Mac Studio this year despite the UI, despite the read-only root and kexts no longer being a thing and inconsistencies and stupid settings app and everything else.
For one, M4 Max is awesome. For two, every other OS is now more annoying to me. Linux is more inconsistent, and the changes being made by major distros make little sense. Windows is a dumpster fire. The BSDs don’t work on anything I own, and the M4 is better anyway. Finally… pricing. For the price of my M4 Mac, there is no PC with as good a spec considering the price of GPUs. RAM and SSD? Yeah, Apple is nearly criminal… but the price of an NVIDIA GPU? Actually kinda criminal.
Some of it is that the market has matured - going from not being connected to only connected on a desktop to everywhere on a phone with a real browser was a lot of changes you notice all day.
A child born on the day the
first iPhone launched is old enough to vote now.
Many of those posts are being written by people who have been along for that ride, too, so it’s going to be hard to recapture that excitement after experiencing past hot products not changing your life. It’s like a middle aged American buying a new car - yeah, it’s nice but fundamentally nothing changes in your life and you’re never reclaiming the excitement of being 18 and going from marooned in a boring suburb to being able to travel, which is a transformative change even if it was in a clunky old hand-me-down.
I personally do not buy an iPhone, but this is more of an ideological choice than a technical one. Yes, the phones are boring, but aside from a few exceptions, all smartphones are. I am right now on a 4 year old iPhone and it served me well, but this is going to be my last iPhone for a while
Honest question from someone with no hardware knowledge:
How technically possible and commercially feasible would it be to make these huge lenses and camera components removable? For example, imagine if Apple made a phone with no built-in camera, where the camera is instead a separate magnetic component that you attach to the phone only when you want to use it.
We have had modular phones already, and I wish I bought one for posterity. Time travel back to 2016 and get yourself an LG G5. There was also Google's 'Project Ara'.
Whilst you are in your time machine, pick up one of Amazon's smartphones with a 3D display and stereo cameras (or did they have four?).
It all made sense in theory, but we went the other way, to make it so that not even the battery could be swapped out.
I am no Apple fan boy, however, my hunch is that they know their customers and that the iPhone Air is perfect for people that want to show how high status they are primarily by taking photos that are exclusively of themselves. Programmers in basements are not the customer for these gadgets.
A particularly genius move of the new iPhones is the square image sensor, which is what you want if your life has to be documented on Instagram.
Image, and status, is never about practicality, it is all about peacocking, and there is nothing wrong with taking money from those that want to peacock.
Huh. It’s been a while since Apple has “one more thing” awed me. So… “the awe tapers” sentiment, I can agree with.
The rest of the article I found full of non-sequitur, for me personally.
I think the Apple Silicon laptops are just about right. About the only thing that would fill an itch: I angsted for years after the discontinuation of the 17” models. Since what was 15 can now be 16, I’d put cash down for an 18” model.
I’m not much of a power photographer, but I really like the orange of the pro, and the trickle of feature improvements between my 14 and this one are enough to get enthused about.
My Pro ‘Pods (2) are going strong after a few washes, and I look forward to replacing them with 3s when they give out.
Here’s the thing for me I guess. I develop/maintain native apps on both platforms for my employer. I test with a couple of Samsung devices (why Samsung? Because 85% of our Android customers in ang tech are using Samsungs). And I just hate the experience. The hardware is ok, at times. We use them for testing (so not much daily driving) , and the failure rate is worse than the iOS devices. But the Ux is the worst. Apple will have to turn liquid glass into muddied frosted glass in a storm before the hodgepodge that is material, ui one, and the weirdest apps, make me want to switch.
Apple transforms product categories from time to time, and the rest of the time improvements are incremental (though usually good). In the last 5 years or so Apple Silicon has transformed expectations, not just for Apple products but for the whole industry, starting with the M1 MacBook Air, then with the M1 MacBook Pro, and more recently with the M4 Mac mini.
(Meanwhile Mac Studio refactored Apple's desktop lineup, perhaps echoing the G4 Cube, and the iPad Pro M4 was a milestone product that leapfrogged Mac laptop hardware by including an OLED display and next-gen SoC. We may see something similar with an iPad Pro M5.)
I think AirTags also transformed their category. Vision Pro was a new product line for Apple but has not been a success so far.
Vision Pro's only problem is the price. At $1k I think we would see a lot more adoption. I say this as a former skeptic and who gets VR sickness from other AR/VR devices, and hates the idea of strapping a device to my face and being isolated from my surroundings.
I got an AVP for work (long story), and was blown away. No VR sickness. I can work from anywhere with my laptop while enjoying a massive, wrap-around high resolution (virtual) display. I can relive vacation photos in full 3D. I can watch For All Mankind projected on a drive-in movie theatre screen in a lunar crater, while laying in my bed.
I think I'd have to go back to the original iPhone to think of a product that is so innovative and visionary that you just KNOW from first use that it will completely transform the way we interact with computers.
But at $3,500? Nobody can afford that, and only a small subset of the 1% would even consider buying one.
From what I have heard, it weighs on you. Maybe you can tolerate for an hour, and maybe you can do more than me, but I think the weight is the second parameter which puts off people.
Reduce weight by 1/3 and same thing for the price, and I will likely buy it.
Getting a correctly sized light shield helps a lot as it balances the weight over your whole face. Also helpful is having the strap ride a lot higher on the back than you would think is right -- it always feels way too high, but is held in place better when I do this, and feels lighter (as some of the strain is taken off the face).
Or using the alternative over-head strap. This is one case where I think Apple went too far with form over function. There are much better strap designs, but they just aren't aesthetically pleasing I guess?
Finally, I generally use it laying down in bed or on a couch, which makes the weight less of an issue.
I agree in principle that a lighter device would be vastly better. I don't know how they will get there without drastic improvements in the underlying technology though.
The C1, while slower, was a little more energy efficient. Signal Reception seems to be ok too. I am expecting the C1X to be even better.
Combined with A19 Pro, C1X, N1. I would expect Air to be more efficient than 16 Pro. So with that in mind,
The Air ~3100 mah, the 16 Pro ~3600 mach should have similar battery life, or may be just slightly less than 16 Pro, a little bit better than iPhone 15 Pro with 3274mah.
If that is the case I say Air is actually not bad. And we can look forward into the future for even more energy efficiency OLED, SoC and newer Battery Tech. That would make Air perfect.
Not to mention iPhone Air is a required training for foldable iPhone. Their competitors are already making foldable phone with one side at less than 5mm. And is currently being held back by USB-C port. Apple needs at least one or two generation of learning to move in that direction. And iPhone Air is exactly that.
I am really looking forward to al the iPhone review this year. It has been a long long time since the iPhone produce range was exciting.
Reading the criticism, I just came to a completely opposite conclusion regarding the magsafe battery: is the iPhone Air the answer to the people complaining about no removable battery? Make the body thinner, still waterproof, and you can have multiple “external” batteries to clip on. Boom, battery life is “infinite”.
This blog post evokes feelings of deja vu. It's the same blog post every year by some guy with a pixel-perfect blog that's used macOS since the nineties.
The author, like lots of people in this thread are really triggered by the headline "awe dropping", and sure, whatever, but what did you expect? If they launched a foldable phone, the blog post would be all about how foldable phones don't make sense or that another brand already did it.
Then the author just skips over the new AirPods, a huge part of Apple's profits (but it's the products he "cares about the least", so nevermind, I guess) which are probably the best Apple has ever created with cutting edge improvements to sound and noise canceling, who cares about that, right?
Then he whines about the Apple Watch doing too much. He just wants it to be a heart rate monitor. Turn everything else off, dammit! Too many features! Yeah, this is the guy complaining about the lack of awe.
Then he goes on to say that it's tacky that Apple includes a segment about it saving lives (oh the horror). That's why I bought one for my parents! It's a primary use case for many. Why wouldn't you advertise that? Because sans-serif font blog guy says it's tacky? No, I'd say that's awesome – technology is saving the lives of my family.
Then he goes on to having some difficulty understanding why people would want a thinner, lighter iPhone. Yes, and where's the damn serial port, am I right? Yes, sure, the Mini was great, but apparently people want the Air, but the blog guy doesn't so I guess Apple is doomed?
Then there's some paragraphs about the declining software quality, and, yes, again, sure, while there's plenty of annoyances... have you tried using Windows? Android? If you like the Apple experience – and yes, it's its own thing, it's not for everyone – you'd be hard pressed to enjoy the alternatives in their current state.
So, summing up: Apple lacks awe but there's too many features. I don't understand why they create new products, but they're not innovative. They're doomed because there's some bugs in the software.
AirPods being a "huge part of Apple's profits" because people keep losing them, and they keep breaking, so you always need to buy a new pair every several months. Hardly a product worth praising.
I get that some people don't like using them for whatever reason, but this is just a completely insane thing to say. AirPods are a technology marvel, there's a reason why they're so popular.
Almost no features from last 2 years in available here. Not even Genmoji toys (because iPhone language has to be set to English). Siri still doesn't support Polish and it cannot even discern between Polish and English - it cannot read text messages at all, even though it's possible if done manually, still worthless in CarPlay/airpods.
And come on, this is low hanging branch. Local models can do speech to text easily and most of the voice fronts can keep fluid conversation.
Lately I've been considering Linux laptop for work (since I live in Emacs anyway and I still yearn for the trackpoint) and just skip over generations iPhone/iPad generations until I'm ready to migrate my family's photo library elsewhere.
I can understand lack of novelty (outside of revolting, in my opinion, new look), but I'm really starting to feel like a completely neglected customer.
I don't think the Air is merely a precursor to the foldable, however. It's rather that the technological evolution that allowed for the 5mm thin iPad Pro last year allows for the Air this year and helps with the foldable next year (and thinner MacBooks are rumored as well). But the Air is probably there to stay as a separate form factor, assuming that it doesn't flop in terms of sales. The foldable will be much heavier and bulkier, more resembling a Pro Max.
I want that speculation to be true, but I also don't think that the Air is a stepping stone towards that. The risky parts on a folding phone are the bending screen and the hinge and the software features.
It tests their assembly lines and supply chain by producing 100 million titanium cases.
They did something similar when they transitioned the product line to aluminum.
(As a product, it’s the opposite of what I’d want — worse battery, bigger screen, worse camera, but they’ll certainly sell enough to debug the assembly lines.)
I've also seen speculation that it's an engineering experiment to see if they can squeeze all the essential components of a high-powered computer into a space the size of the camera plateau. Which may eventually lead to viable AR Glasses (or a cheaper Vision).
Phones in general just feel like theyve topped out. All the specs inch upwards sure but if I swop my 14 for a 17 there doesn’t really seem to be some big new feature/use case that would enable. Browse hn 40% harder?
Some small carriers in Australia don't support eSIMs, even though they're required for Apple Watches and other devices, and also second phone numbers in phones without dual SIM card trays.
I'm hoping that the iPhone Air will make them prioritise eSIM support!
Australia has like 100 reseller phone networks. There are only 3 real network providers and these as well as the majority of the resellers support esim, but when every single retail brand and supermarket has it's own mobile network offering, there's always going to be a couple that haven't put in even the smallest amount of work to support it until it's absolutely forced.
Seriously? Which ones don't support it, I actually have found more that are "esim only" these days (but I am someone who churns through ozbargain deals)
I'm kind of an Apple outsider (I've used Mac a little bit, never owned or wanted an iPhone). Honestly, I think their new stuff looks pretty cool. I thought Liquid Glass looked cool. I thought the iPhone Air looked cool too.
When I read articles like this, it's hard for me to get what the actual problem is. Apparently "the very introduction of the iPhone Air proves that Jobs’s words are falling on deaf ears on the hardware front ..". So I guess it's bad in some way? There's been months of criticism about Liquid Glass too it seems. I don't really follow any Apple-focused media, so I've never heard them at all (battery life concerns make sense, sure).
Even the Brownlee quote seems to answer its own doubt about iPhone Air: "it is surrounded by other iPhones that are better than it in basically every way, other than being super thin and light". What is wrong with making a new class of phone that prioritizes thinness and lightness?
To me, Apple is just as despicable as they've always been. Their "developer program" is as draconian as always. And lately is seems they're possibly more hypocritical than usual (e.g. super tight notification restrictions on app devs, then using notifications for their own marketing). Every time someone joins a Google Meet and can't talk, I know they're a Mac user because it seems they have to restart the entire browser (Chrome) to allow mic access.
Anyway, per the above paragraph, I have plenty of complaints about Apple myself. But it seems my complaints and the author's complaints are completely non-overlapping, which I found a bit surprising. It seems there's some emotional thing going on with long-time Mac users. In general I kinda get it. Most great things seem to teeter off after awhile of greatness.
He makes the point that the thinness and lightness have no effect because it's not really pocket friendly because of the size, so you won't get the advantage where it matters most, in your pocket.
My big frustration with Apple particularly iOS is many of the most annoying UI design issues seem trivial to fix.
It’s like anyone here with good taste and some experience leading teams could step into the product owner role for iOS at Apple and get them fixed in a couple of weeks.
Siri may take longer but doesn’t look like it would be too difficult to fix either.
Most of the issues are not constrained by anything but poor taste and dumb design.
Give me a copy/paste functionality that works. How can this be so hard to do?
When I go for a run and listen to a podcast, if I accidentally close the podcast view why do I enter the podcast app? And why do I need to go back to my apps, find my workout app, open it just to find again my podcast view then I need to swipe to go back to my workout view.
With Apple, the bloom is off the rose, and as with a lot of big business lately, the prose misses the mark.
Its copy was once great. Now we get "Awe-dropping", the latest example of marketing professionals coming up with the most basic rhyming wordplay that fits in a three word sentence. Smack a big period on it so it looks like a fact, then head to the bar.
they're just a mature company doing mature company things ... still there's a lot of really strong inertia:
the MacBook line of hardware is the best it's ever been
the phones continue to improve year over year incrementally sure but they're solid -- I'm very keen to see what the rumored folding iphone gets us
AirPods I can't live without
idk -- macOS26's spotlight just stole a lot of good things from things like Alfred and other launchers -- it continues to become a more useful OS
nothing I need to do for my day to day as a data engineer is hindered by being on a Mac -- linux and containers are useful and solved now (hello Colima)
maybe I am just a lost fanboy but im very happy currently
>the MacBook line of hardware is the best it's ever been
Only after 5 years of the worst it's ever been, something triggered a complete change of course and it's easy to forget how utterly awful the butterfly era was.
A lot of the rest of Apple feels like butterfly era thinking.
Case in point, iPads don't have headphone jacks. While these devices are very capable of audio production, that's a joke while using Bluetooth.
But that's not Apple's concern. Airpods sell billions of dollars worth every year.
Every other phone manufacturer said ooh, cool and instead of getting pro level audio in my 1000$ Android phone I have to settle for Bluetooth which still hasn't caught up.
Airpods, and there cheaper friends are , as the article mentions, e-waste. Maybe you get 2 years out of them.
My analog headphones, with some light maintenance ( and a detachable cable) may last decades.
At this point Apple could come out with a 2000$ Audiophile line of phones with the jack and I'd buy one. But they won't.
The iPhone X had Apple’s best camera. Every version since has over processed its photos. Like an E30 BMW, I wish Apple would have never stopped making that device.
I'm just getting back into Apple after having the first iPhone, but then Android/Linux since then. Now I'm all in on Apple silicon... For the next decade at least.
1- that Jobs would somehow be the hero of a mythical arab/syrian culture and diversity politics who would
have behaved differently than Cook towards Trump.
If anything, Jobs cherished the white working suburban middle class of the west coast that has been destroyed in the last generations. He _never_ behaved as a white knight and nobody knows what he would have done (and nobody knows how hard Cook's political equation is)
2- that Apple is due for perfect, idealized products that fill 100% of people's void. This guy explains that iPhones make too many compromise and the OS is just "good enough".
Would be curious to hear of _one single_ previous or current OS platform or hardware at that scale that matches Apple's 2026 line up.
Jobs seemed mostly apolitical, but a joke could be that he would've bankrolled RFK Jr. to victory in 2024, while forcing him to stick to the moderate position where he was in 2008 when Obama considered making him head of the EPA.
That's one is first point: "don't buy anything Apple" based on the linked Anil Dash's post, itself based on Arab Steve Jobs fantasy and Cook's supposed betrayal.
You’ll have to come up with a better counter factual than “I would have sent a notification to all Apple customers to gain political support.”
You would alienate so many customers by being political.
Jobs’ Apple was not political except in narrow issues. It sold a product for everybody, not just one party.
Cook leaned into the least political possible way to handle this very delicate situation: made in the USA is positive for everyone (in the US) without alienating any group directly.
And if he really screwed the pooch and got worse tariff outcomes, I definitely think his job could be on the line. You know their stock lost $300b in value when tariffs were announced right? That was the entire market cap of Apple when jobs died.
I agree it looks very pathetic, but honestly it’s a tough situation too
The rant feels more like "old man yelling at cloud" than an actual valid complaint.
The "issue" is probably more like smartphones are yesterday's technology. They're no longer the shiny new toys they were a decade ago, and the amount of innovation you can realistically do with them, as a physical device, is more or less limited.
That doesn't mean Apple isn't innovating, but most innovation right now is happening behind the scenes.
New chips for connectivity. I remember a time before the H1 chip (AirPods). I remember keeping my phone in my left front pocket, and for some reason most wireless headphones at the time had the receiver in the right side, and I remember sound clipping every time I moved. Enter AirPods and the H1 chip, and I could suddenly leave my phone at my desk and go get coffee, and I would still have perfect sound. Before the H1 chip, having Class 1 bluetooth in a wireless headset was thought of as if not impossible, then at least impractical due to the power requirements, and then Apple proved everybody wrong.
They're currently doing the same with chips for mobile and desktop usage, where their CPU power to Watt ratio continues to be the benchmark to beat.
While things right now feels like a "standstill" I have no doubt we're in for an interesting ride in 3-5 years. All signs point to mobile and desktops converging, meaning in a relatively short time your phone could become your desktop also.
Apple has been working on unifying apps across platforms, with iPadOS being the latest development. iPadOS 26 apps have menus, and window controls (traffic lights) like desktop apps, and yet can still run as legacy iPad apps, and most of them will also run on iPhones.
The major hurdle to making a "single device for mobile/desktop" is not technology. We have the technology, and the A19 Pro processor has as much power as an Apple M2 chip, which is certainly no slouch. The major hurdle is that nobody wants to use "desktop apps" on their phone, and nobody wants to use "mobile apps" on their desktop.
So, Apple may not innovate in a way that "you" like it, but it doesn't mean they're not innovating. As always, nobody is forcing anybody to buy products, so vote with your wallet. Apple is still a "for profit" company, and they will go where the money is.
> As for the AirPods, and true wireless earbuds in general, I find this product category to be the most wasteful. Unless someone comes up with a type of earbuds that have easily replaceable batteries, I’m not interested in buying something that’s bound to become e‑waste in a relatively short period of time.
My AirPods Pro that I bought five years ago are still going strong, the only issue I have is that the right AirPod got some water ingress and now every time I insert it, I'm greeted with about 5 seconds worth of white noise.
As a counterpoint: Apples has gotten so big that its user and customer base is not techies, they have moved into supporting our mainstream society as it operates today. They don't care about techies (at least primarily)
Apple machines ended when Steve Jobs re-joined Apple. After he did that, he rebranded NeXT as Apple. Jobs took the policy, target audience, configurability, whole company culture from NeXT.
If it wasn't for this, Apple would probably go bankrupt, so it's not like there was some other choice.
It's often said that Apple gives you features that you didn't know you wanted, but at the same time, Apple forces features on people who absolutely do not come did not, and did not ask for them. And there's nothing you can do about it. Why bother updating an Apple device if it's just going to make the experience worse.
Apple may have decided that the user of yesterday is not their future market, focusing more on users coming of age now. They don't have to really care what older people think and how they use phones, because those people will eventually go away, and they need to be prepared for this future customer.
Not a huge believer in belittling an author's points, but the author makes absolutely not one objective point in this entire article. Genuinely every single thing he describes is an opinion, nothing more, nothing less. And those opinions, at that, aren't even very accurate.
AirPods becoming e-waste? Seriously? Pick a better idea to make your point, because pretty much everyone I know has had their AirPods for 2-3+ years, and even if that was _when_ they decided to move onto another, that's an _incredibly_ long amount of time to have wireless earbuds of those quality at that price point.
And as for disabling features on the Apple Watch - again, seriously? Most techie, HN'y complaint ever. There's a reason the Apple Watch and AirPods sell as well as they do - people love them.
As for awe at new features - AirPods live translation, standard iPhones being ProMotion, one of the thinnest phones ever created?
I'm always surprised to see people on here talk about refresh rate. I can't see it with my eyes. I even just tested based on your comment with this m3 pro. Power settings are such where on power its pro motion and on battery its 60hz. I tried scrolling this thread really fast while plugging it in and unplugging it and I could not discern a difference. I'm not saying you can't, I'm just surprised I can't, given all I hear about it.
I agree. It's objectively nonsense with regards to AirPods and Apple Watches in particular. Both are extremely dominant in their respective categories for many years at this point. Objectively, Apple is not alienating its "long-time customers". Someone raging about his perceived wastefulness of AirPods is out of touch with the vast majority of people.
But people love to rage and be enraged on the internet. So anyone pointing the vacuity of the enraged is downvoted and cast aside.
I swear we get these articles every single year. I tried to read this but it lost me pretty quickly. Apparently the 'sob stories' where Apple Watch is shown to have literally saved peoples lives are just a 'marketing tactic'. And AirPods, arguable the most widely popular and innovative product in Apple's recent history is 'wasteful'. Given the popularity of the Watch and AirPods it seems like it's the author that has lost alignment with society and now Apple losing it's alignment with him.
I agree with a lot of what this author says but they’re so wrong about AirPods.
The AirPods Pro 3 or really any of the recent AirPods are magical products. They’re the rare modern Apple product that Steve Jobs is smiling down upon.
Not only are they great for music but they are absolutely killer conferencing and phone call earbuds.
From early reviews it sounds like the Pro 3 has astounding microphone quality on top of the wide versatility and portability that the product already has.
The e-waste stuff, honestly, is nonsense. Maybe they’re a waste of money to need to be replaced somewhat frequently, but when you throw out AirPods you’re throwing out mere grams of total material. A replaceable battery would barely help that impact, it would mostly save you money to not buy the product all over again. And if you’re like me spending hours a day in meetings, AirPods are downright cheap for the utility they provide.
The average person is throwing out a pair of AirPods’ worth of fuel weight and carbon emissions every time they drive 10 minutes down the road or buy one hamburger with all that packaging from McDonald’s. Throwing out a pair of headphones smaller than a deck of cards every 4 years is basically nothing compared to typical consumer waste. Much lower hanging fruit to pick.
They're worth trillions already, but the truth is Apple knows the market will collapse long before they lose their leadership, so they don't really give a fuck. Notice how their most important event ever has been mostly pre-recorded corporate slop for the same phone for the last maybe 10 years?
>The more Apple talks and moves like other big tech companies
I don't get the rant. Apple is just a random big tech company. It doesn't care about users more than any other company does and it optimizes for profit like most businesses do. It doesn't have anything magic, and I don't get why people get sentimental when they talk about Apple.
Apple doesn't owe users more than they are required by laws and users don't owe Apple anything. It's a business relationship, not a romantic one.
If you like the products and find them useful, buy them. If you don't, you have alternatives.
wonderfully written article -- my thanks to the author. there's a heavy amt of cynicism, but i enjoyed the argument, and i believe it's well reasoned. i do think that modern tech companies have lost all sight and attachment to the products that customers actually experience. it feels dissociative & much like another step of our broader culture shifting towards "bend-the-knee-ism", thanks to our current cabinet of clowns.
companies like Valve & Panic! remind me that focusing on producing high quality, enjoyable software/hardware experiences is not only still doable, but highly desired.
it's a beautiful art form - the exploration of human computer interaction. we're only really touching the surface, even still. it's exciting.
i thought tech companies were exciting? that they cared about this future? when did Apple & co start becoming IBM? when did the shareholders that Jobs despised win?
> it’s a company that I feel has lost its alignment with me and other long-time Apple users and customers.
I have been forced, for professional reasons, to use Apple laptops for close to 10 years of my professional career, about half of which was actually spent being a full time employee of Apple itself (and absolutely not by choice, M&A + golden handcuffs type situation).
They never, ever, did care about their customers other than ensuring that all of their products had an inescapable vendor lock-in built-in (and that is both and insider view and that of someone who had no choice but to be a user because my next employer after Apple was an effing osx-only shop)
They are most excellent at pretending that they care though, I'll give them that.
Despite living in an age of supposedly transformative brainstorming and creative technologies, we’re also paradoxically inhabiting in a time with less creativity and vision than ever.
> What really got on my nerves during the Apple Watch segment of the event, though, is this: Apple always, always inserts a montage of sob stories about how the Apple Watch has saved lives, and what an indispensable life-saving device it is. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad those lives were saved. But this kind of ‘showcase’ every year is made in such poor taste. It’s clear to me that it’s all marketing above everything else, that they just want to sell the product, and these people’s stories end up being used as a marketing tactic. It’s depressing.
Yeah, the trauma porn in Apple events has become quite annoying. We get it - if you don't have an Apple watch you're going to die.
This, plus one important addition: How many people actually got killed or injured _because_ of iPhone or Watch? Think about it: using screens in traffic or in other situations where your attention to the world is critical.
All the best to the folks who where saved by any device, but given the large volume of devices sold - one has to assume there is a flip side to this coin, too.
Sure, but how many other products have a feature like that? I live in a very remote area. I NEED Starlink because it's my only choice for internet. I NEED a big 4x4 because if there's some particularly bad rain I'd be trapped in my home. If a tree falls in the nearby forest and nobody is there to hear it our power still goes out because it fell on a powerline and we NEED solar panels with battery backup or we can't flush the crapper because the water pump doesn't work without power. If my wife has a breakdown of her car or, god forbid, an accident on her way home from grocery shopping there is no cell service. No way to call me or the breakdown company or the police or an ambulance. I'm also not the only person who lives here. There are a few hundred people spread out across the general area and they all have these issues too. Apple's atellite communication could literally save my life as I go about normal, non-adventurous humdrum day-to-day tasks. Informing consumers of an actually useful standout feature unique to your products is good marketing and they're doing it at a marketing event they host to market their products. This guy's whole article was just the same tired applebashing that has actually become quite annoying. We get it - you don't think Apple products are good value for money in your use case and you don't understand the people who buy them.
A few days ago I tried to express a similar opinion here - regarding design and taking in account the liquid glass thing and the iphone air, it feels they are doing "innovation" for the sake of "innovation", and got downvoted. They're doing (arguably) huge improvements in processing and computing yet they want to disrupt user experience just because.
I kind of agree but I also can think of a counter argument. They don’t want to seem stale. The current macOS look is more than a decade old, so Tahoe shakes it up a little.
I’m kind of indifferent to it so far but I can see what someone might have been thinking.
You are experiencing the negative side of the apple reality distortion field.
I too have experienced this. I expect that i have been too direct in my dislike of apple in this post.
You have to come at the problem sideways. To allow for any real hope of not being down voted the crowd.
I dont know what the root cause is.. if Cupertino corp has a really expensive pr team or apple devices are laced with some kind of mind altering drug.. the effect is the same.
you would think a trillion dollar company would be able to innovate, but as it turns out. It really just goes into fancy marketing, C-level executive pockets, and shareholders.
Got to think of the shareholders, bro! Disgusting.
> it’s a company that I feel has lost its alignment with me and other long-time Apple users and customers.
When OS X debuted there was a daytime radio talk show in my area called “The Computer Guys.” They capably covered all sorts of computing topics, but were clearly long-time Apple dudes. And they spent weeks complaining about what a disaster OS X was. The Dock was useless and violated Apple’s HIG. The Finder made all the same mistakes as Windows did. And a text terminal? Like DOS?? Who the hell is ever going to want to use that on a Mac?
Going even farther back, it was long-time dedicated Apple users who booed when Jobs announced the deal with Microsoft.
Being a long-time dedicated Apple user is a shitty job. You don’t get paid, have no input, and are constantly disappointed. And Apple does not care about you.
I strongly suggest people should throw this notion away. It does not matter how long you’ve bought from a big company, they owe you nothing. If the latest product seems good, buy it. If not, don’t. Any more emotional investment than that is going to cause pointless unhappiness.
Save your customer loyalty energy for businesses where you can actually establish a connection, like a restaurant you like, or a local handyman.
Don’t forget the waves of rage when Apple removed the CD-ROM drive from laptops.
Or when USB Type A ports disappeared in favor of USB-C ports.
Or when the iPhone dropped the headphone jack. People still seethe about this decision even though Apple sells an excellent DAC for $9.99 that rates extremely well when tested by the audiophile obsessives and is easy to leave permanently attached to your headphones.
There are two types of long-term Apple users: Those who can go with the flow and shrug off the changes, and those who are deeply pained whenever anything changes. The latter group mostly comes around after a couple years and the issues are forgotten.
>> it’s a company that I feel has lost its alignment with me and other long-time Apple users and customers.
> When OS X debuted there was a daytime radio talk show in my area called “The Computer Guys.” They capably covered all sorts of computing topics, but were clearly long-time Apple dudes. And they spent weeks complaining about what a disaster OS X was. The Dock was useless and violated Apple’s HIG. The Finder made all the same mistakes as Windows did. And a text terminal? Like DOS?? Who the hell is ever going to want to use that on a Mac?
I kind of see it differently. That is, Apple did in fact lose the alignment with the Classic MacOS fans but Apple did it on purpose. Objectively, by 2001 standards MacOS sucked and you wouldn't want to align with people who think otherwise. As the result Apple broke out of a small stagnating niche and won a big market.
This is different from today's situation where it feels like Apple breaks the alignment not on purpose and not by innovation but rather just slowly drifts out.
There's a theory in the comments that they want to align with "people who want the best camera array and have money to burn". This could be true but even then it doesn't look like a good strategy to win a big market long-term. More like a retreat back into a small niche that may stagnate in the future, like "people who want the best publishing software and have money to burn".
Pre MacOS X was a 90s style OS and had major limitations that were a problem for every user, starting with no real multi-threading, and I think no protected memory.
Where it was great was in the simplicity to the user. If you wanted to install or uninstall a driver or functionality, all you had to do is move an extension file in or out of the extension folder and reboot. That simplicity was lost in MacOS X. That made simple users dumber. (and iOS went back to the simplicity)
Locking down the OS so you can't install or uninstall functionality at all is not simplicity.
It kinda is, though.
It is if Grandma keeps downloading scams and installing them.
> Objectively, by 2001 standards MacOS sucked and you wouldn't want to align with people who think otherwise.
I see, so like "Don't think different"?
By 2001 the Classic MacOS wasn't really "different", it was largely the same as the System 7 release from 10 years ago.
The NeXTSTEP on the other hand was quite different. Different from MacOS, from DOS/Windows and from proprietary UNIXes. I would argue that switching to NeXTSTEP was more aligned with the original spirit of "think different" than getting stuck in the old ways.
Like another post says, "The Mac was a philosophy". I bought a series of them but stopped around the year 2000 because they threw away the philosophy in favor of innovation. I think things were going south already around 1998. Remember Sherlock? On system 8.5 it would regularly interrupt the user (sending games from full screen to windowed) to display a dialog to say that it was indexing files. This couldn't be turned off except by disabling the Sherlock extension altogether.
That says that Sherlock's mission wasn't to help the user do user activities, but to get the user out of the way of Sherlock's activities, while keeping the user informed about the magnificence of Sherlock. This attitude became really popular with every OS that was competing to be innovative, and we're still stuck with it today. Shut up user, pay attention, look at my features!
That was because MacOS classic couldn’t multitask
Sure it could, it had cooperative multitasking. Inside Macintosh instructed programmers on the importance of politely giving way to other processes.
https://archive.org/details/inside-macintosh-1992-1994/1992-...
WaitNextEvent (hmm, a Windows call has the same name, but functions differently I think).
> There's a theory in the comments that they want to align with "people who want the best camera array and have money to burn".
I agree with you and this theory sounds like moving goalposts.
First people claimed that the free market will always give the consumer what they want.
Then this turned out to be not true (we even have a term, enshittification), and now people come up with a more "refined" theory. Why would it be true this time?
> First people claimed that the free market will always give the consumer what they want.
Enshittification does give consumers what they want: free stuff. People will deny it up and down and claim they would pay for non-enshittified Facebook, for example. But how many people actually would pay a subscription to use a Facebook style service? Enough to build sustain a company of Meta's size? Probably not. How many people pay for Kagi?
Could it be that "people" that say that are different groups of people?
I had been fairly anti apple my entire life. Believing they were massively over priced, and lacked support for many of the things I did personally.
In my younger years I was pretty big on graphic design, still big on video editing. People used to always say "Mac is better for design". I would ask, where did you get this from? Adobe runs on both platforms and updates often come out for Windows before they are ported to Apple (Adobe updates). And my Windows machines had powerful graphics cards, unlike macs.
However. A couple years ago I built myself an insanely expensive computer build with the best parts I've ever put into a machine. It died 2 years later.
I decided I just couldn't go through that anymore. I'm done building computers. I'm done with the little problems they always get. I'm done fixing my machine more than using it.
Since the $500 Mac mini, Apple has started looking interesting. Finally I bought the Mac Studio M3 Ultra.
So far so good. I wish I could play more games, but I could be looking into things like Crossover. There are a few old bespoke programs for old versions of Windows I also wish I could run once in a while but nothing too major.
And best of all, Apple Care +. I'm not dealing with a broken machine again. I'll be buying warranties for it until I'm done with it. Bought 2 years for I think about $200, and my understanding is I should be able to renew that service/warranty at the end of the two years. After that, we'll see.
I was in a similar boat with desktop Linux and Android. What got me to switch:
1. Build quality of Apple laptops was higher than anything else available at the time. Having a metal laptop meant you got a MacBook or a Toughbook. I got tired of plastic breaking, hinges loosening, etc. Their introduction of retina screens really sealed the deal.
2. The iPhone was first to solve seamless cloud backups.
3. AppleCare. I was traveling and had my phone on a restaurant table when a waiter dropped a salt shaker on it. He was horrified that he shattered my screen. I got it replaced when I got back to the states for like $10. Android phones at the time did not have this option.
4. Apple sold devices directly to you. Most other phones you had to buy through the wireless carrier with annoying fee structures and deceptive pricing.
5. I could use a decent photo editor ok macOS vs GIMP in Linux. I love what GIMP is trying to be but it is a mess UI-wise. Same with Lightroom vs Darktable.
6. iPhone more or less solved offloading files to the cloud. It is still bad and broken but it was at the time I switched workable vs what Android had.
7. Apple devices mostly got out of my way whereas with Android I had to tinker. I would still use desktop Linux if macOS wasn’t needed for my work, but at this point the difference is minimal.
8. They are not an advertising company. Google phones feel like devices designed to spy on you. “Personal data please!” Apple is not ideal here but at least their primary point isn’t to sell you car insurance.
This isn’t to say that Apple stuff doesn’t have warts. They cram way too much stuff in their systems. Their hardware is expensive. They often are behind the curve on performance. Their cloud offloading just does not work right for iMessage. Their protocols are closed and that is annoying. But at this point their stuff works well enough for me that I don’t see a reason to switch.
> The Finder made all the same mistakes as Windows did.
Tbf, the Finder is still crap (if only it would be nearly as good as Windows Explorer was in its heyday I would probably use it more), and the UNIX terminal is pretty much needed to make a Mac usable in the first place - which is fine though, because the UNIX-ness was exactly why I switched to Mac ;)
> Tbf, the Finder is still crap (if only it would be nearly as good as Windows Explorer was in its heyday I would probably use it more)
I have the exact opposite opinion. I loathe Windows Explorer, and relatively simply stuff like presenting a tree view is apparently some weird magic trick that only Apple has figured out how to do.
Browsing SMB shares (or any other networked storage) is one shortcut away (cmd+k), and I don't need to visit control panel to enable weird subsystems that expose services on my machine to connect to other machines.
I use the terminal a lot, also for simple file operations, but that is because of proficiency, not out of need.
...but the SMB implementation on macOS is shit.
Try to browse any network directory with a non-trivial amount of files and see the whole Finder window just beach-ball or freeze.
I can browse my NAS faster via a browser and copyparty[0] than with Finder and SMB or NFS...
[0] https://github.com/9001/copyparty
Yeah I don’t know how they made it so bad. On Windows & Linux, using an SMB share basically gives you the same experience as using a USB hard drive connected directly to the machine. On Mac, you have to wait 30 seconds every time you open a directory. Then when you’re finally at the directory you want and start copying files, the speed slows down to a crawl as the copy progresses. I find it especially confusing because Apple offers 10 Gbit networking for their desktops at an additional fee. What’s the point of having that option when their shitty SMB implementation makes doing anything on your LAN far slower than 1 Gbit anyway?
on my Mac, the finder systematically fails to display the most recent downloaded files, or files synchronized through Nextcloud, under "recent files". For some reason, it always displays some random selection of recently used files. It's completely useless. In fact, I look for recent files using "find" in the terminal. At least this work.
On my Linux laptop, Nautilus (Gnome) displays exactly the last files in the right order, and it's incredibly useful.
There are countless annoyances like this on MacOS; window focus and placement always surprises and annoys me, even if Rectangle helps somewhat. I find it so much less usable and useful than Gnome.
How is \\server\share any harder than finder?
You have to type it.
Finder shows them in the sidebar and you just click on it.
Apple OS (both classic and NeXTStep) are not keyboard driven but mouse driven.
Same for Explorer, really. The SMB hosts that announce themselves show up in the sidebar.
Of course, it's all about what you're used to. But after 6 years on Windows as my daily driver I still prefer Finder.
It's tree/table view is superior to the Details view in Explorer. Explorer regularly hangs when opening folders with more than a couple videos in it. QuickLook (spacebar to preview an item) is so useful.
Until the day when I can right-click on a folder and create a folder inside that folder, I'll consider the Finder inferior to the Windows 98 explorer. Come on, that's an absolute basic feature!
The right-click context menu of a folder has 15 items! Most of them I've never used! Colors, tags, quick actions, compress, make alias? But no "New Folder"?
But I moved to the mac, in 2005, because of the unix terminal. I had been using Cygwin for years, but an OS that had it included, natively? On good hardware? Yes, please.
I'm never moving back to Windows (ads in the OS??). To switch to linux it would take great hardware with 100% support. Not holding my breath, but it might happen one day.
> Tbf, the Finder is still crap (if only it would be nearly as good as Windows Explorer was in its heyday I would probably use it more)
Try Alfred :)
Or Marta. Finder is an absolute piece of sh*t.
Windows Explorer was never good. The only file manager app type (on Windows/Linux, never used a Mac) that makes sense to me is one of the "Commander" ones. Like Total Commander, but rather than a specific app the point here is the two-pane style that greatly expands what is easily possible to do with a few clicks.
What's crap about Finder?
Every time I need to browse to a specific path I have to google it, because there is no path input anywhere.
(It's Shift+Cmd+G of course)
If you use the terminal at all just cd to your directory of choose and then do open .
It's in the menu bar under "Go…" or something similar.
(I'm not on a desktop right now, so I can't be precise.)
For me, the keyboard (in)accessibility is the biggest issue. On Windows I got used to navigating Explorer completely with the keyboard — this was a LONG time ago, I have no idea of the current state. On macOS, it's just impossible (or, at the very least (but I doubt), impractical).
Other issues:
- the fact that you cannot cut and paste files
- dragging files from one folder to another can be unreliable/error-prone, particularly in tree view
> - the fact that you cannot cut and paste files
Back in time I also complained about this, but do you know that if you copy (CMD+C) then do CMD+ALT+V, then copy&paste becomes cut&paste ?
Also cmd-up arrow and cmd-down arrow to go up and down folders.
You can also click on the title to get a list view of the current folder and its parents.
Thanks for the tip. It's not as convenient as CMD+X, CMD+V, but I might see if I can commit it to memory.
I have a hard time remembering this. But there’s also right-click, then Option to show secondary options (Copy becomes Move)
I lost track of how many times ive lost data to cut.
Most of the time when someone on HN complains about Finder, it's not a Finder problem. It's that the user doesn't know how to do what they want, and other people respond with the answer.
Finder has its problems. But the overarching problem is that Apple has done a poor job of discoverability and letting people know how to do things.
It's counterintuitive, because in most of Apple's macOS programs there are multiple ways to do the same thing.
For example, there are close to a dozen ways to eject/unmount a disk/volume, but I still run into people who say they can't figure out how to do it.
It's slow and doesn't... find stuff.
> If the latest product seems good, buy it. If not, don’t.
There is another aspect to this though. As a user of an ecosystem, you're committed in many ways. As Apple or Microsoft or Google releases a new version of their operating system you're going to run that on hardware you already own. You're going to run software that you already own on that the OS. And you're doing to use skills and knowledge of that software to accomplish something useful.
In some ways it doesn't matter if the product is good or bad -- you're pretty committed. You're going to be willing to suffer some pain because the alternative is too difficult and too expensive. The only thing you really can do is complain.
I’m a long time Apple user. But I never do anything that locks me into Apple in a way that makes me dependent on Apple. I could move to Linux tomorrow and everything I depend on would be fine. There’s no Apple service I actually need.
I think Google and Android is worse in this way. The backup Android I had years ago forced me to login with my Gmail or I couldn’t use it. My old iPhone happily runs without being logged in. I just lose the cloud features. Whatever.
That may be true for you but it's not true for many people, like me.
I have twenty years of iPhone data, eg messages, apps, etc. I can't easily move to some other phone.
A desktop, maybe, but I'd still have to repurchase or find alternates to a bunch of software. It is far, far better if the existing system _stays useful_.
>It is far, far better if the existing system _stays useful_
I doubt anyone is arguing the opposite. The point of the parent is that the system staying useful and not turning hostile on your usecase is not under your control or something you can personally prevent, and until that magically changes it's best to structure your use case to be least affected by things not in your control.
"twenty years"? Wasn't the iPhone released in 2007?
I think rounding over 18 years up to 20 is reasonable.
I've used my past several Android phones without signing into a Google account or using gapps. I pick something with LineageOS support (usually OnePlus stuff) and get it from eBay, update to latest stock firmware (gets newer baseband and such) then flash LineageOS over it and get my apps from F-Droid.
These, “just change the firmware” comments are silly. I should get basic phone functionality from my phone out of the box with exactly ZERO effort.
I can use an iPhone without an Apple account. I cannot use an Android phone without a Google account unless they changed that in the last few years.
Both Android and iphones require an account to download apps I believe. Am I mistaken here? Other than that they can be used in the same way without accounts. In fact, with Android an email account suffices and giving your phone number is "opt-in". Apple forces you to give your phone number to create an account last time I checked. Also no F-droid on iphones? But the iphone is the better "phone" experience because there is less bloat and UI nagging.
The other aspect with setting up third party firmware as a general "don't like the stock OS? then do this" option for many is besides the big headline limitations like safetynet/attestation, it also either involves a benevolent third party setting up and maintaining builds for your device (hope you bought a popular model) and any changes match what you want, or individuals doing so themselves
You can, but you don't get access to the app store.
What are you going to do with all your Mac hardware?
Throw it in the bin?
Doesn’t your hardware lock you in?
No. You can always export your files and your passwords etc.
What? I can and have accessed everything I need on Linux. If you make sure none of your data is locked in, the hardware is just a computer. Absolute worst case, get a new computer.
... That's theft protection, and iphones have similar mechanisms. You do not need to sign in, even to a pixel, to use it. Granted you won't get the app store, but you don't get that on iphone either.
To be honest I sometimes feel that my aversion to getting looked into an ecosystem is actually a detriment in some ways. I have a horrible mishmash of apps and programs and nothing integrates really well long term (story of life on a Linux desktop, really). Maybe life would really be better if I just hand over control and become a true believer!
I used to go through phases where I would try this. I gave Windows + WSL a shot. I gave embracing the Apple ecosystem a shot. I gave GNOME a shot. I gave KDE a shot. I was even crazy enough to give ChromeOS as my daily driver a shot. And so on and so forth.
I found every single time that it just wasn't worth it. There was always some critical failure that was either completely underlooked or a 20 year old bug/shortcoming that had every patch to fix it rejected. I genuinely don't understand how people tolerate the dogshit being forcefed to you on all of these controlled platforms. People say that everything is getting worse, and it's true, but it's also true that you're actively choosing to use the things that are getting worse.
I've eventually settled on NixOS and XFCE so I can tweak things to my particular needs while also benefiting from an army of unpaid labor continually improving nixpkgs and other flakes. This setup isn't perfect, but I've optimized for maximal comfort & utility while exerting minimal effort & time. Things really only break when they're self-updating under the hood, which thankfully is rather rare in nixpkgs.
I used to use i3. Even now I've mostly moved to Cinnamon via KDE (which I abandoned as Plasma made my laptop fans spin too much, maybe user error? I never solved it) I haven't "settled" on anywhere. Especially as a lot of GNOME apps seem somewhat lacking so I often end up using, say, Okular or XReader rather than Evince, or CuteCom rather than whatever the GNOME serial terminal is. And I also gave up on vim as an editor so I don't really even have a "home" editor other than VS Code which is just kind of default. Plus a bunch of Windows only industrial and East Asian software the only works via a VM which is pretty clunky.
I used to use Macs at work and while I never really loved the experience (and certainly not that of fiddling with kernel drivers) and write keenly felt the metaphorical guards watching from the towers, it really did feel like a thought-through experience for a normal computer user.
I've tried this on various platforms (Microsoft, Linux, Apple)... the only one that does it the least worst is Apple. And you get a bunch of other stuff with it, too. Linux is nigh impossible, and the feeling I get with Microsoft is I'm being exploited.
You don't have to update the OS. And no, you won't have any security issues as a personal computer user.
This isn't true when literally everywhere else outside of Apple, and only a problem if you are deep in their ecosystem. Why? Open standards, nothing proprietary and closed and fuck you all.
I have phone that's from Samsung, earplugs from Sennheiser, thinking about buying watch from Garmin (Fenix 8 pro), have chargers and powerbanks from Anker, laptop from Dell.
Bluetooth, USBC and other standards. Its beyond good enough for me, and I can switch each component for a better one from another company if I want (apart from those Sennheisers, no company makes better sounding earplugs and they integrate flawlessly for my needs).
> Save your customer loyalty energy for businesses where you can actually establish a connection, like a restaurant you like, or a local handyman.
Couldn't agree more. But I'd add that some (smaller?) businesses, where you still can't really establish a connection, can be worth your loyalty if they have a mission that resonates with you, and they are actually true to that mission. Of course, be prepared for the day when they get too successful and start acting in ways against the principles they were founded upon.
But yeah... I think the best place to use our energy is by evangelizing people first and foremost, not businesses. Send people to your favorite restaurant because the owner is always there, chats with customers, and seems to love what they do. Recommend the person who regularly cuts your hair and cares enough to remember you and ask about your life. Refer that great handyman to others, who you trust to be a straight-shooter, pride themselves on the quality of their work, and not gouge you on cost.
>> The Dock was useless and violated Apple’s HIG.
Oh, the atrocities of "simplification" made during Ive's later years of leadership are so numerous that they beggar belief. Many aspects of iOS and macOS no longer conform to even the basic principles of UI affordances.
Save your customer loyalty energy for businesses where you can actually establish a connection
To be fair, I find despite the various foibles, Apple has always looked out for me when it comes to accessibility -- where none of the competitors bother. Maybe I shouldn't act out of loyalty, but they will keep getting my business as they keep it up (despite Liquid Arse stuffing up accessibility quite a bit).
The biggest reason for me using Android is simply because of how much competition there is in the space. If I use Apple products and don't like something they do then I'm stuck on an older version at best and need to migrate everything from their walled garden (at great cost) at worst.
With Android, I can use Samsung one generation, switch to Pixel the next, and give Motorola/some other smaller company a chance later. I can choose a phone that has the exact features I want - better battery life? great camera? best performance? great display? cheap price? smaller display? larger display? There's a phone for each of those.
What would be the “great cost” of moving from an iPhone to an Android phone? I’m struggling to think of what would cost money at all, aside from the phone itself.
There's no straightforward way to migrate between an iPhone and Android so you'd spend a lot of time. Also I'm not sure if it's even possible to fully move over - for example would you be able to export your iMessages? Also, if you're fully bought into the ecosystem with Airpods and a Watch, you'd be better off replacing those (at least the watch which turns into a paperweight without an iPhone).
I've migrated back and forth. Most things are backup to cloud now. Only thing missing was Signal messages last time and I think they now fixed that. Do people still use plain SMS now?
iMessage is extraordinarily popular in the US. Its userbase dwarfs Signal by over an order of magnitude
Ah fair enough. Not as many use it here in Australia
Is there data behind that or is it just anecdata?
A year ago someone on HN said “I can confirm that iMessage is extremely common in Australia. WhatsApp is very uncommon, outside of people with European (and maybe South American?) friends or family to keep in touch with.”
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39365562
My guess is you’re both expressing truths of your individual social circles but making unjustified extrapolations to an entire nation.
That's true . The only stats I could find are unreliable SMS marketing company ones.
iMessage is very popular in the US but 90% of users just think they are "texting". There's no other way to send an SMS for them.
I can also confirmed that iMessage is basically unused in France. (And that was a core argument in the EU of Apple against the DMA for iMessage, so even Apple admits its low usage in the EU)
The issue with iMessage outside the US is the branding, it's branded as an SMS app and SMS being dead (outside of ads and delivery drivers) doesn't help for adoption.
iMessage is popular in the US because everyone has an iPhone because everyone has iMessage and everyone connects it to social status - network effects. The same reason (besides the social status) everyone uses WhatsApp in Europe.
This has more to do with the way the iPhone was launched, and the American desire to own the most expensive product, than any technical merits.
How about photos? Moving from android's Google photo integration to apples icloud photos integration seems.. complicated
I don't know how to take pictures out of Google photo, but it's very easy to move outside photos into Apple Photos. I do this quite often since I'm a Sunday photographer and wrangle my images in Lightroom Classic on a Windows box.
If you have an iCloud subscription, you can do this directly with a browser, just click upload and wait for it to happen. There's also a Windows client for iCloud, but I've never tried it.
Use third party, cross platform software like ente and you have no problem moving to or from any platform. Use platform dependent services and you get locked in. It is very simple, actually.
I’m on iOS and backup my photos to both iCloud and google photos
I've always been on Google only so that helps a bit. It works to backup on iPhone as well
That’s only if you are deep into one ecosystem or the other, or you don’t want to start with a clean state. Taking the time to move some basic apps and install the rest in time as you need them does not take much.
> need to migrate everything from their walled garden (at great cost)
It's not just about migrating the phone, if you own an Apple Watch, AirPods, one of their laptops, their online services, etc. all that stuff works best within the Apple ecosystem. If you move they don't work as well (if at all) and you may need to replace them. If you are deeply bought in to Apple products, it really isn't that easy to move.
Time and existing apps I already paid for. Even upgrading to a new Android phone costs me a few hours of setup. Moving to iPhone (or the other way) would be seriously painful.
The worst Apple era for me was the butterfly keyboard / touchbar era of Macs. They went too far in the pursuit of thin and light - removing ports, going with a keyboard design that felt bad to type on and was prone malfunction, and the touchbar, which I actually thought sounded cool at first, ended up being much less useful than a row of function keys.
I didn't feel betrayed by Apple, I just decided not to buy a new MacBook until they fixed their keyboard issues. I switched to Linux for a couple of years, and switched back once they released the M1 MacBook Pro. I'm perfectly happy with my Macs (I have 3) now.
I actually really like the current era of Apple where their motto seems to be give people what they want. MacBook Pros with HDMI ports and SD card readers. iPads finally getting viable multi-tasking support and a real mouse cursor (although iPadOS still sucks IMO). The iPhone 17 Pro is slightly thicker than the 16 Pro to allow for a bigger battery. Their storage and memory upgrade prices are still ridiculous, but at least Macs come with a usable 16 GB memory minimum now, and iPhones start with an honestly better-than-I-expected 256 GB storage.
It's not all perfect - especially on the software side. The settings menu on iOS is kind of a cluster. Apple Music has a terrible UX, as does the recent update to Photos. And I haven't tried Tahoe and Liquid Glass yet - but I'm definitely a little concerned.
> Any more emotional investment than that is going to cause pointless unhappiness.
Agreed 100%. If you're writing 2,000+ word blog posts out of anger and exasperation, you should take it as a moment of self reflection that just maybe you're too invested in a corporation.
I mean if we were talking about Cheetos or Coca, I’d agree with you, but we live in a Duopoly on both Mobile, Desktop and the web. If you’re an adult, you’ve been living in their ecosystem for years. It’s kind if hard to not be emotionally invested in something you use all day for your work and/or personal life.
> It’s kind if hard to not be emotionally invested in something you use all day for your work and/or personal life.
I think the vast majority of people manage not to care at all, so that emotional investment isn't as essential as you may believe.
Agree, completely.
Also aligns in spirit with "company is not your family" idea.
The original post reads like an aggregation of complaints. I have some too! In particular stating that the Apple Watch is too complicated to use resonates. I have/use regularly but I am never pleased w/the interface.
AirPods on the other hand - a gem. They just work. Sure, they sometimes awkwardly disconnect/connect to other devices (when I have more than 1 vying for attention) but they're rock solid for me thus far.
> It does not matter how long you’ve bought from a big company, they owe you nothing
The same can be said of employers. The company does not care about you no matter how many years you’ve been there. If you’re not c-suite, you're just a cog.
At my employer even c-suite get fired all the time. If anything it's safer being rank and file
They probably walk away with ten million dollars each time.
And the company makes more than that back by getting rid of them.
> Save your customer loyalty energy for businesses where you can actually establish a connection
I feel like modernity has brought about an identity for people as consumers. Much like a pro sports team who you have no relationship with beyond proximity, brands have slowly gained the same kind of consumptive identity associations. I see it by for the most in golf, where people literally wear caps repping their favorite club and ball manufacturers, rather than athletes.
For me, I’m prefer to associate with brands that have some kind of editorial voice that align with my own. Like media outlets, university, or individuals.
> HIG
Thing is, the Human Interface Guidelines were a sort of contract with the user, and the same goes for the ethos or culture or principles a big company has, if any. So in a sense they do have a connection with customers, via "community", if they choose to do so (and choose to be sincere about it instead of faking). I mean a business can be bigger than a local handyman and still go down the friendly path, for years potentially, until it decides that the friendly strategy was wasteful and streamlines it away.
> And a text terminal? Like DOS?? Who the hell is ever going to want to use that on a Mac?
Why complain about something you don't need to use if you don't want to?
What's great about the commandline? Scriptability, automation, configurability, composability, the easy re-running of complex commands with a small tweak, access Unix commandline tools that have been fined tuned over decades.
And to compare the terminal to DOS is not to understand the gulf in quality between them.
> Who the hell is ever going to want to use that on a Mac?
Developers & scientists. They are people too :-)
> Save your customer loyalty energy for businesses where you can actually establish a connection, like a restaurant you like, or a local handyman
Thank you for saying this
Arguably, they were wrong on all these points. Unix roots (text terminal) gave the one of the strongest boosts to Macbook sales in terms of newly minted developers. Deal with Microsoft brought not only much needed liquidity, but also Office, which was "the killer app(r)" for that era. Let me add one more - people complained about PowerPC->Intel switch, and then same people complained about Intel->Arm switch (both brave and visionary decisions which has been years in the making. The naysayers may complain about everything and nothing but Apple continues to prevail - I am saying that as no Apple fanboy - viva la Amiga!
I believe the term is "parasocial relationship".
I found this article quite weird. It would be one thing if it were (yet another) "Company X has lost its way..." kind of article. But this post seemed more along the lines of "Apple built these things that I don't care about."
Umm, so??? Obviously some people do, and this article struck me as someone complaining that Apple isn't building exactly what he wants. Furthermore, his analysis seems way off base to me: "Relying on legacy and unquestioning fanpeople, for whom everything Apple does is good and awesome and there’s nothing wrong with it, can only go so far." Apple stopped relying on "legacy and unquestioning fan people" a long time ago, ever since they basically became "the iPhone company" to a majority of their userbase.
No, it's not a parasocial relationship. Those are one-sided and usually a passive consumer of media believing they have a real relationship with those who appear within said media.
If you are a customer you most assuredly have an actual relationship with the company. Your options when dissatisfied with that relationship is to end it, send your complaints to the company, or decide the dissatisfaction is overcome by the value you receive.
FWIW, I use macOS everyday since more than 15 years (I also have a PC running various distros) and it’s true that the dock is absolutely dogshit. It’s unclear what will happen wen you click on anything, it’s useless if you have multiple windows of the same application, it’s even more of a mess if you have multiple windows but some are minimized.
And of course in 2025, all applications icons are some variant of the same red green blue yellow colors so nothing stands out of the dock because it doesn’t show anything else than the icon.
Yup, I hate the dock :)
I’ve also come to this realization as a longtime Mac user. Granted, I’m not old enough to have used the classic Mac OS as a professional, though I did use it in my childhood. However, I was in high school and college during the Jobs era of Mac OS X, and that’s when I started using Macs as my daily drivers from 2006 until 2022 when I retired my 2013 Mac Pro and 2013 MacBook Air and switched back to PCs running Windows.
Before Apple’s success with the iPhone, Apple was essentially the Macintosh company. Its fortunes were tied to the Mac, and Apple seemed to be attuned to the needs of Mac users. In return, there was quite a strong Mac fandom. The Mac was more than just a tool or just a platform. The Mac was a philosophy, and what attracted people to the Mac was the philosophy of the Mac and its ecosystem.
Ever since the iPhone became a major hit, and especially since the passing of Jobs, it became apparent to me that my best interests as a computer user and Apple’s interests as a company no longer align. Apple no longer needed to cater to “the Mac faithful” to survive. In fact, Apple is one of the biggest companies in the world thanks to the iPhone. It also seems that macOS is losing its distinctiveness.
The unfortunate thing, and I think this is where some Mac users get emotional and disappointed, is that there’s nothing else out there in the personal computing landscape that is like the glory days of the Mac. Windows is an inconsistent mess filled with annoyances, and the bazaar of the Linux ecosystem is nothing like the polished cathedral of the Mac. Everything is a step down from older Macs, even modern Macs.
However, while thankfully we can enjoy retrocomputing for hobbyist use, many of us still need to use up-to-date platforms to browse the Web and to get our work done, and so clinging on to, say, Snow Leopard is not an option outside of hobbyist activities. Hence, why I use Windows. It’s not Snow Leopard but it gets the job done for now.
The beauty about software, though, is that we don’t have to resign ourselves to accepting whatever Apple, Microsoft, and Google releases. Many of us reading this forum have the ability to write our own software. FOSS projects such as Linux have shown that it’s possible for user communities to write their own software that fit their needs without needing to be concerned about business matters such as market dominance.
So, yes, this is a hard lesson for many longtime Mac users about being loyal to a company; companies change. But this lesson also creates opportunities. I think if enough disaffected longtime Mac users got together and pooled their resources together, we could create a FOSS alternative that is community-driven, one where the evolution of Mac-like personal computing is driven by the community, not by Apple or any other corporation.
> I’ve also come to this realization as a longtime Mac user. Granted, I’m not old enough to have used the classic Mac OS as a professional, though I did use it in my childhood. However, I was in high school and college during the Jobs era of Mac OS X, and that’s when I started using Macs as my daily drivers from 2006 until 2022 when I retired my 2013 Mac Pro and 2013 MacBook Air and switched back to PCs running Windows.
Me too. I liked opinionated software when my opinions aligned with Apple's. But I found i hated it when they didn't. Around mavericks or Sierra or so I started getting more and more annoyed with all the things being changed for the worse (in my opinion). Then during the pandemic I had plenty of free time to dig deep into my computing future and I moved to KDE. Heavily customised just the way I love it. It's a breath of fresh air not having someone else make choices on how I should use my computer. Haven't looked back since.
I had already left iOS because it's so locked down and the hardware too expensive for the specs. That already broke a ton of the "just works" of course.
Prior to the iPhone (but within the years Jobs was in charge), Apple was a company whose target demographic was the professional/semi-professional creative market. Once iPod and iPhone demonstrated a huge sales potential the company abandoned the creatives market and became a consumer-oriented company that provided means of media consumption.
> bazaar of the Linux ecosystem is nothing like the polished cathedral of the Mac
Just stick with the KDE no matter what distro, and you will have basically no major day to day usability problems on Linux.
The day XCode runs on the iPadOS, the classical Mac is gone.
They already got rid of servers and the workstation market, apparently losing those customers to Windows/Linux wasn't seen as something to worry about.
Why do you favor Windows over Linux then?
There are proprietary software packages that I rely on that are unavailable for Linux, though I regularly use WSL for development.
It's not just about emotion or loyalty. It's about built-up knowledge and the difficulty of switching.
When you're a long time user, you know how to do everything with what you're using - whether that's an operating system, a programming language, or something else.
The latest product isn't good and your suggestion is "don't buy it." OK, what do I do instead? Buy a Windows or Linux laptop where I have to re-learn a decade's worth of knowing-how-everything-works? Build up my natural flow in a new OS? Find whatever are the Windows alternatives for all the little things that I do on my Mac?
I'm not saying that companies owe things to their customers, but I think it's really simplistic to say that it's just an emotional investment and misplaced loyalty. People have a tool and then a company makes that tool worse. There are other tools, but it takes time to learn them, figure out their differences and how to get everything done with them, etc. Pretending that there's zero cost to switching is disingenuous.
For example: if you're a software engineer and someone made your main programming language bad, there's a high cost to switching to a new language. Even if you're excellent at learning new languages, you don't know which libraries are good, you don't know what various functions are named, you don't know what warts are in the build system (and how to avoid them), etc.
It's not just some emotional response or misplaced loyalty. It's that you've built up skills over many years that are tied to that thing.
Companies owe their livelihoods to their customers. If they do stupid shit and annoy those customers they lose money and potentially kill the business.
There is a long list of companies which have done themselves serious financial harm, or even slit their own throats by failing to understand how Customer World works.
No one is too big to fail. Especially in computing. There's also a long list of companies which looked like permanent fixtures for a while and were dead a few years later.
As for Apple - I have a busy lock screen, and I can no longer read the time because the big numbers are too thin and the refraction effect makes them impossible to read.
Rookie, stupid error. Just embarrassing.
> And a text terminal? Like DOS?? Who the hell is ever going to want to use that on a Mac?
Had they never used MPW?
I wish it was possible. I bought an iPhone 13 mini that was running well.
now if I want to stay secured I got to regularly update the phone and eventually get iOS 26, which will make the phone horrendous.
What choice do I have ?
"If the latest product seems good, buy it. If not, don’t."
Well, they have done a good job with lock in. If you've bought a bunch on Apple Music, you need an apple device laying around to get it. Maybe some people just keep there old phone around just for this. But it can be a hard transition.
Really, 'lock in', is the key to a lot of technology these days, so be aware.
but "a half-baked shitshow" that got better with each version.
Currently OSX/iOS gets worse with each version.
maybe, but I think not as bad as MacOS "classic" 8.1 and 9 that came before it!
Ok but who do I buy from? I agree Apple isn’t good but who is better?
Literally anyone else?
This is such a unfair interpretation, it's a false equivalence argument. "OS X added Terminal and throwing out HIG for a UNIX-y UI" is a moot point.
It's not about loyalty, it's about Apple's own coherence and vision as a creative-technology company, and a bunch of sophisticated users offering a critique of it over time. Read it that way and it makes a lot more sense.
Beneath the Apple "fandom" or any fandom there are valid reasons why they came to be (the quality of the product), and we ought to elevate that than call customers naive for not adopting the very corporate cynicism that is a result of anticompetitive economics.
> And a text terminal? Like DOS?? Who the hell is ever going to want to use that on a Mac?
Me. I have to use a Mac at work, and I use the text terminal more than anything else on the computer. It doesn't help that Mac's don't have a good UI, everything is hidden behind extra key-presses, and switching between windows is a PAIN.
On a mac every window for an app is considered the same, so there's no concept of switching between windows (except with special hidden key presses).
When a window is in the background it doesn't receive clicks, so you have to click on it twice.
The menubar of a non-active window doesn't exist, so you need an extra click, first to activate the window, then to go find its menubar and do an action.
It's just a bad UI.
> When a window is in the background it doesn't receive clicks, so you have to click on it twice.
This is sort of true but the full truth is less straight forward.
On unfocused apps you can still send through scrolling and (mostly) perform single clicks with command + click... you can also without focus send single clicks to certain controls the developer has ad hoc allowed 'click through' on...
For mouse oriented users I'd recommend trying a focus follows mouse experience like AutoRaise [1]. But I mean, it's not like this solution existing absolves Apple of the broader criticism here about what they prioritize and deprioritize for the default user interface experience.
[1] https://github.com/sbmpost/AutoRaise
Of all the things you can dislike you pointed out a few features which actually make some sense. Cmd+` works well, even better than alt-tab most of the time, though it’s a major pain in the ass if you want multiple windows laid out from multiple apps on a single screen, and god forbid you have more windows of any in the background. The click to focus stops accidental clicks and gives a way out when the only visible piece of an app is a button.
I’d rather focus on Apple refusal to support standard dpi displays (hat tip betterdisplay), basically broken .0 releases, gimped docker implementation, useless window management and broken multi screen windows.
> When a window is in the background it doesn't receive clicks, so you have to click on it twice
I get hit by this all the time. I have multiple monitors and I can scroll in a window without the window having focus. The scrolling leads you believe it has focus so when you hit cmd-w to close the window the window with actual focus closes instead.
> On a mac every window for an app is considered the same, so there's no concept of switching between windows (except with special hidden key presses).
Is Cmd+` the hidden key press? Alternatively you can go to "Window" at the menubar if you prefer to click
We're in a state of decline in a number of areas. I agree with you with regard to macOS, but Windows has degraded far worse than even the most cynical among us would have guessed just 5-10 years ago. Linux is great in my opinion, but there's no reason to think it's immune. What happens if corporate interests get even more invested in Linux? Just look at Android. Or, when Linus Torvalds passes, will there be good stewardship? Will the government require ID verification that simply won't run in Linux? The modern computing situation is quite fragile, and many options are receding on a yearly basis.
Regarding the iPhone 17 Pro:
> People who have no use for all these pro video recording features shouldn’t waste their money on it. Unless they want a big chunky iPhone with the best camera array and/or have money to burn.
I feel like people who “want the best camera array and have money to burn” probably describes a significant percentage of HN readers.
I’m honestly pretty excited that they’ve finally put the larger, high res sensor in all three iPhone cameras - which should result in pretty decent image quality across the entire 13 - 200 mm equivalent range. It’s a nice upgrade from my current iPhone which uses smaller 12 MP sensors for the ultra-wide and telephoto cameras - resulting in images that are noticeably soft and noisy.
I personally don’t consider the iPhone 17 Pro to be too big or chunky. I’m generally happy to sacrifice an extra millimeter of thickness for better battery life, and enjoy the usability of larger screen sizes. I know that a lot of people really want smaller phones, though, and I think it’s unfortunate that Apple cancelled the mini (and the smaller SE design). I guess it just wasn’t selling that well.
And finally, I’m at a point in my life where spending $1100 on a new iPhone every few years isn’t going to break the bank. And I also am able to give my current iPhone to family members, who should be able to enjoy it for many more years to come.
The air is too big and clunky from me.
Sent from my iPhone 13 mini, which is also Too Damn Big.
I’m got above average size human hands, which are too small even for the mini.
>Sent from my iPhone 13 mini, which is also Too Damn Big.
As someone with small hands, I kind of regret my iPhone 13 mini. I really want something smaller, but if I have to have a phone I can't hold well in one hand, I might as well have a bigger screen.
I, too, am still rocking the 13 mini, which they made good enough that nothing they've made since has made me wish to upgrade, though the fact that every phone since is Too Damn Big has made me happy I haven't yet.
We've got about three years left before these things are unsupported. Three years of hope for them to release _something_ a little smaller than "uncomfortably large."
Also on 13 mini. But my next phone needs a better camera, and the cellular radio reception needs to be better (my 13 mini loses network connection in weak areas faster than my wifes 15 or sons 16 pro does - they stay online, I’m out). I love smaller phones though (hence the 13 mini).
The problem is there aren't enough people buying mini phones to make it worthwhile to Apple. But that's only if they keep a mini around permanently.
However if Apple released a new iPhone mini model every fourth year, I'd wager these would be like a McRib-style smash hit sales event, compressing the comparatively small mini-enthusiast audience into a time-limited buying window. It would also trigger FOMO at a time when many people are increasingly willing to delay upgrades for 5+ years.
This is what I'm banking on. I really want a new mini next year.
This is a brilliant idea, I really hope somebody on the iPhone 18 design team reads it. I think there’s a huge pent up demand for a mini model, many of us would pay more for it than the large versions.
On an iPhone 12 mini, wishing I hadn’t upgraded to iOS 26 because now my phone is notably laggy. Word to the wise. I use swiping for input and would consider it now unusable due to extreme lag.
The physical aspect I can’t give up is I can hold the phone with my thumb on the bottom and my middle finger on the top and scroll with my index finger to read. Wish I could buy that capability on a new iPhone, maybe one even slightly smaller.
Time to go find out if there’s even a way to downgrade, oof this is slow.
I still have a 12 mini as a work phone and that thing is great. My personal phone is a 16 pro and the only real advantage it has (for me) is the 120hz screen and the way better battery. I actively hate it's weight, especially combined with a case.
In my hands the 16 pro max looks small. I only care about battery life really and it is really not great so I wouldn't mind a double thickness: larger dimensions all over in favor of battery and screen. Huawei used to have one (in 2016 or so?) that was perfect: massive slab, super battery. But then we needed all slimmer and smaller (after the asia phablet hype?). Battery life on iphones is not good if you use it a lot. I am in a coworking space and literally all iphone users have to plug in somewhere during the day as most use it all day and it conks out: I am on my chinese android all day and end of the day it's 60%+. I guess my hands are an exception, but I cannot stand dragging all kinds of crap with me because everyone wants the thinnest, smallest devices.
> In my hands the 16 pro max looks small. I only care about battery life really and it is really not great
The Max version may have room for a bigger battery, but it needs to drive a bigger screen so it’s a double-edged sword. I’m not sure if you end up ahead or not.
If battery life is an issue you can turn off some the more gimmicky «pro» features like the always on screen.
I have a «regular» 15 pro and I think battery life is good. I haven’t had a single day where overrun out of battery so far.
The Max phones always have better battery life
I'm with you. My phone is my primary computer. I want it to have the most computing power, battery life, storage, and camera performance possible. I don't really care for its looks as long as it meets a certain baseline.
This pretty much sums up my feeling on the new generation. I too don't understand what's "awe dropping" about it, and have finally switched from an iPhone 15 Pro to the Android ecosystem, where a flip phone is somewhat "awe dropping". I'm not fully convinced about it, but it's different, it's fun, it's clever, and I'm thoroughly enjoying it.
The only thing I disagree with here is about the Air. I think Apple's strategy with the Air is to split the Pro line. Previously the Pro phones were for people who wanted a premium feeling and who wanted premium features, but those are often in tension, and might hold each other back. Now the Air is for those who want premium feel (you might call it flashy, looks great, feels great, but has trade-offs), and now the Pro is an uncompromising set of features, at the expense of being bigger and having a comical camera ~bump~ ~plateau~ continent. This is the same as the Watch, where you have the stainless steel models for the premium feel, and the Ultra for the premium features.
I suspect many on HN may not differentiate between the premium features and feel as much – I know it's not what I jump to – because "design is how it works" and many here aren't as fashion conscious, but a lot of folks buy new phones based on the colour, or how thin it feels, or other details that are easily written off when you know more about the hardware. I think the Air might be a big hit, while getting very little of the enthusiast market.
I don't know how widespread this is but in my little circle the orange Pro was the biggest draw, it's the first in the Pro line (or at least as far as I can remember) with real color to it. Most of them are grayscale or very muted colors. It's another "feel" thing but got more attention than the Air's thin body.
Ever since Apple dropped out of Product (RED), we haven't had a lot of bold colour choices. They feel steadily more muted (including the set of non-Pro colours this time around)
The people that I know laughed heartily at the orange.
I am one of those buying orange. Never went for colors, always deep blue or grey, but both my son and I went for orange. And not even politically connected. Just liked the color.
Go for it! I had a bright red case for my phone for some time. Looked great, a nice little splash of color, also worked well with the company I was working for at that time (brand color was red, too).
I've changed phones since then and at some time found red "too much", so I went with a black case because I thought I needed to look more serious. Should revisit that thought, especially when talking about phone cases... :-D
What would it have to do with politics?
Showing support for the revolution against the Spanish Habsburgs.
It's about the Hacker News party, it's orange on voting results maps.
Some people live in Northern Ireland
Several more live in India. I guess the political significance of the color is less strong than in Norn Ireland but it seems Modi's BJP is orange.
Depends who you are. If you want to take pro video on the phone they dropped some great improvements. The Air is impressive even if not the phone I'd pick. But realistically, if your current phone works really well for you which it probably does, nothing they could possibly announce would be interesting to you.
> nothing they could possibly announce would be interesting to you.
Apple is a hardware company that makes lifestyle products. Why isn't their hardware appealing to me? Why can't it be?
In a competitive economy, phrases like this should a last resort, used to describe only the most decrepit and unjustifiable businesses. If nothing they can announce will interest me, then what are they even selling? A religion? A service? Certainly not a commodity, apparently nothing I need.
Yes. They are selling a religion. "Lifestyle product" is another word for "consumerist religion". Otherwise it would just be "product".
https://chainsawsuit.krisstraub.com/20161028.shtml
When "you can't use it outside anyhow" expands to phones, which are only useful because you can take them outside.
You couldn't really always phones outside until they switched to OLED because you couldn't see the screens in sunlight. They were still popular though.
I wish transflective LCDs were a thing on phones.
These are my thoughts exactly. I've seen a bunch of people who don't value thinness or lightness in a phone getting dismissive or outright angry at the existence of the Air, and I want to grab them and shake them until they get it. I don't want the Air at all, and that's exactly why I'm thrilled it exists: it will split the Pro buyers into form-valuers and function-valuers, so the function-valuers like me can get an iPhone with a huge battery and a vapor chamber in it.
If you're one of those people who goes "why can't they make the phone thicker and heavier with more battery life", you should be overjoyed at the Air, because now that those buyers are peeled off to a different SKU, the product line for you doesn't need to find a happy medium with them.
I appreciate that idea, but in this case the thinness is half-fake and it's still not all that light.
The title is appropriate, in that it feels to me that most of the awe has gone out of these products/keynotes. This is maybe down more to the maturity of the category(/ies) than any fault of Apple's though. Perhaps they can be blamed for failing to introduce exciting products in new categories.
I do find that wireless earbuds actually last much longer than the wired variety, despite the non-replaceable batteries. Back in the day I went through one or two sets of earbuds a year because the wire failed internally, whereas I've only had two TWS pairs in ~six years (admittedly, it was the battery that became a problem in the first set). There's undoubtedly a lot more e-waste gubbins in each though.
Apple is a hostage of its own marketing.
A modular iphone that has an easy to replace battery, easy to replace screen and is maybe 2mm thicker to account for it? That would be a sellout.
A convertible Macbook Air with a touch screen? It would be sold out.
Neckband-style airpods with all-day battery life? Might not sell out, but would be popular.
A best-in-class TV powered by Apple TV? Would probably sell well.
But all of these products would cannibalize sales of some other expensive iDevice.
> A modular iphone that has an easy to replace battery, easy to replace screen and is maybe 2mm thicker to account for it? That would be a sellout.
The number of people who might actually like this is very tiny. Most of them do product reviews. But their audience is not going to care. Think about your older uncle. Your niece in her 20s who loves to paint and read but doesn't want to replace hardware. That's what most people are like.
Those are the people who Jobs focused on impressing and enabling to do things they wouldn't do otherwise. That is the focus that has been lost without Jobs, IMHO, and it's the focus that makes the products better for people who want to get the most out of their products per unit of time invested in learning how to use it.
I am thinking about my older uncle and my niece in her 20s. They're smart-enough people, and they're quite aware that a modern phone can be very expensive to fix.
In particular, I'm thinking that I (a person of reasonable technical skill) would love to help them out by changing the designed-to-be-swapped screen on the phone they dropped instead of them paying someone else to conduct surgery on it.
How many people do you know who want to change their own oil in their car? This is a frequent, required maintenance. Yet I can't think of a single car that advertises its ability to be maintained by somebody without special tools. The only people who change their own oil would have the skills to change an iPhone screen.
I have changed the battery on two iPhones on my own, and replaced one screen on my own. I've also once had one of those little shops do it, quickly and cheaply. I only did it on my own because I wanted to see how difficult it was. The savings in money and extra time was completely wasted other than for the entertainment value of changing it.
The slice of people who get entertainment value out of changing their screens, yet does not have the skills to do it on a current iPhone, must be quite small. Surely less than 10% of the population, for a "feature" that has easy alternatives of paying somebody $20-$30.
> How many people do you know who want to change their own oil in their car? This is a frequent, required maintenance. Yet I can't think of a single car that advertises its ability to be maintained by somebody without special tools.
Those are two very different topics. Sure, cars don't advertise their ability to be maintained without special tools. But I also know a lot of people who do in fact want to change the oil in their own car (because it's not hard, and much cheaper once you have the tools).
Yeah most people will get it done but if it's actually built to be repairable those little shops can do it better and cheaper.
Big bonus points for making spare parts available without all the BS strings attached that apple currently has.
Of course they don't advertise it: Most cars are dead-nuts simple to change the oil on.
If changing the screen of a phone were as simple as changing the oil in a Honda is, then none of this conversation would have to happen.
Changing the windscreen|windshield might be a better comparison.
The price of replacing the screen is mostly the part itself. It’s extremely easy for any random shopping center phone store to replace in like 5 minutes. But the part itself costs more than an old phone is even worth.
Every time a family member has had a cracked iPhone screen replaced it has never really worked properly again. It may be easy but it’s apparently not easy to do it well.
That's because most of the screens on the market are fake and significantly lower quality than the genuine ones.
Did they get it replaced by Apple, or some guy in a mall kiosk?
My mom got her battery replaced at an Apple Store and the process broke the phones ability to connect to the internet or the cellular network. They ended up replacing the phone.
I fail to see the issue. Apple broke the phone during a repair and replaced it I assume for free.
Something to last a couple of hours became a change of phone with a mandatory round trip to Apple. Apple themselves are sometimes not able to properly repair their own allegedly repairable phone.
I see a lot of issues here personally.
Unclear – I assume many in their audience also break their phones somewhat regularly, they'd probably appreciate not having to drop $99 or even more abroad for a battery replacement.
Users who break their phone regularly are not breaking the battery.
spot on
And this is why you shouldn’t listen to the “less space than Nomad. No Wireless. Lame” tech crowd [1].
A TV is bulky, race to the bottom commodity that is only replaced every 5-8 years.
> Neckband-style airpods with all-day battery life? Might not sell out, but would be popular.
I don’t think Apple has any issue selling AirPods. But honestly, I do like my $70 Beat Flex for traveling. I don’t have to worry about them falling out of my ears and between the seats on flights and the double flange ear tips block noise better than AirPods Pro.
I’ve had touch screen convertible Dells. I never used the touch screen. They are bulky, the screen ratio is off either way compared to an iPad. On the other hand, my wife now uses an iPad Air 13 inch with a regular old cheap Bluetooth keyboard and mouse and she loves it. Her x86 MacBook Air was getting long in the tooth.
This is before the newest OS with real windows.
[1] or more relevant to the HN crowd “For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software.”
> A TV is bulky, race to the bottom commodity that is only replaced every 5-8 years.
True but, can't you kind of say the same about phones? My sister buys Moto-G's. They cost her $120. Apple charges more. They make their own market. I don't know how much I'd be willing the pay but I feel like I'd pay for an 65" Apple TV. Sony, LG, Samsung, Roku, TCL, all make crap TVs that want to spy on you. They are almost universally underpowered for their apps and OS and are all jank AF. i have an AppleTV plugged into my Sony and a few times a month I bump the bad remote and it switched to Google TV and tries to get me to sign in so it can serve ads at me.
The market for an apple branded TV might not be the same size as phones but I suspect it's big enough to become 5% of their profit.
Who would have guess headphones would do so well before they did so well?
> True but, can't you kind of say the same about phones?
No, at least not at the flagship $1k+ market Apple competes in. Maybe for $120 motos, but apple is competing in an entirely different market segment. They're absolutely not commodities - apple charges a premium with strong margins and a differentiated product. They have regulars who upgrade (bi-)yearly, regardless of the features and price and necessity. They literally have a subscription program for iPhones.
> The market for an apple branded TV...
They already have the most profitable part of the TV market. They sell an expensive add-on to TVs that offer over-the-top subscriptions and software services. The remaining panel is sold nearly at-cost on the assumption that the underpowered processor inside will serve you ads instead. They're expensive to ship, tough to stock, and high-end ones worth selling are a niche market.
Apple sells computer monitors, which are pretty close to TVs in terms of "commodity" status, and the products are like 2x the cost of their closest competitor spec wise. That should be a clear indicator on the potential and costs for even bigger screens.
> Who would have guess headphones would do so well before they did so well?
Well, they bought beats who certainly helped prove the market for headphones expensive headphones from a recognizable brand (to say nothing of Bose, Sony, etc who had sold headphones for a generation prior).
No, a TV is replaced when it dies, regardless of the years, all of my are older than 10 years.
Same applies to everything else electronic that I own.
I get your other examples, but a best-in-class TV seems like it'd be pretty good for Apple. It's an Apple TV device that's jammed into a television and doesn't come out, plus a premium price. Seems like it'd work out great. And everybody else buys the 'Apple TV 4K' standalone doohickey and plugs it into their regular TV.
Would would buy an Apple Cinema Display if you could buy a color-accurate TV?
Different markets. An Apple Cinema Display is a 32" screen, which is a big monitor but a small television.
1. All these devices would sell out, because these are all of Apple's best sellers. I'm willing to bet a replacable battery iPhone will sell as much as the iPhone 6e. Replacable batteries aren't a strong feature.
2. "Current Apple Product" + "My own personal tweak" isn't a product strategy. "A convertible Macbook Air with a touch screen?" wouldn't move the needle sales wise, and would just be a headache for developers. If, for some strange reason, you need a 19inch touch screen, the iPad pro already exists and has better developer support.
Most Apple products are locally maximized. The last great new Apple product was the AirPods in 2016. Neither the Apple Watch or Apple Vision Pro seems like they will define a new product space.
> modular iphone that has an easy to replace battery, easy to replace screen and is maybe 2mm thicker to account for it? That would be a sellout.
Go the other way. Hermetically sealed, no connectors, inductive charging, rugged, with a solid state battery that will outlive the rest of the phone. Solid state batteries are more expensive, but that's a cost issue for car-sized batteries, not phone-sized batteries for US$1000 phones.
Samsung expects to have 20-year battery life in 2026.
> A modular iphone that has an easy to replace battery, easy to replace screen and is maybe 2mm thicker to account for it? That would be a sellout.
The same was said about a smaller iPhone. They made it and sales were lacklustre. I know a few people that lament it, but sale's don't lie...
A thicker phone with more battery life would be amazing tbh. The whole industry is focusing on thinness too much.
Apple doesn't care about self-cannibalization. That's how you stay alive and avoid innovator's dilemma.
All of your solutions are bulky and difficult to manufacture compared to current products though.
“A modular iphone that has an easy to replace battery, easy to replace screen and is maybe 2mm thicker to account for it?”
Definitely not! This would be an inferior product in almost every respect for 95% of customers.
> A modular iphone that has an easy to replace battery, easy to replace screen and is maybe 2mm thicker to account for it
This is a false choice. There are thinner phones that have replacable batteries already.
100% disagree - they all sound like terrible products for various reasons. Apple will probably try and make some of them at some point.
They product they won't make ... the $400 iPhone.
> $400 iPhone.
A $600 plastic MacBook air with 4x usb-c.
A $300 cross between the Mac Mini and an Apple TV
A fairly priced computer monitor.
> Neckband-style airpods with all-day battery life? Might not sell out, but would be popular.
I didn’t know that it was exactly what I needed.
This is a perfectly HN style misunderstanding of what Apple actually is and does.
An iPhone doesn't need replaceable battery or an easier to replace screen, there are other phones that have these features and anyone is very welcome to buy them. Moreover, the screen is really not that hard to replace and you can charge any phone off a powerbank, you can even have a special magsafe powerbank that you carry in a bag. A 3rd gen SE (relatively crappy for an iPhone) can charge up to 50% in half an hour if your wall block outputs more than 20w. The point of an iPhone is that it's powerful enough to do pretty much anything that anyone needs and has software that's good enough to the point that it doesn't need some shitty skin over it. It's also supposed to be consistent with your other apple devices and supported for absurd amounts of time in comparison to the competition.
Touchscreen on laptops is shit, I'm not interested in fatiguing my shoulders while I work for a 0.01% usability benefit in some niche scenarios. It's a gimmick, nobody actually needs it. My current gen MBAir lasts literally days on battery. If you want a touchscreen Apple product with a keyboard then iPads are right there. They exist. The trackpad on any macbook virtually eliminates the need for a touchscreen and that's why they're the best trackpads on any laptop.
Airpods are the breakthrough product that they are because they aren't neckband style, they're literally the seashells that Ray Bradbury describes in Farenheit 451. For better or worse. They've been around for a long time now and we've forgotten that nothing like them existed in. the mainstream before they did. All the initial criticisms about them have evaporated, they have become normal as has their form factor. No neckbands or wires, the charge case juices them up and the battery on them definitely lasts all day, I've tried. If they had wires or a neckband then they simply wouldn't be what they are. If you want neckband style earbuds like you've descriibed there are plenty of options out there that existed before AirPods did.
Why would Apple make a TV when Samsung has that market fully cornered? In every way. What would be the point of competing with the company that makes the actual display panels that literally everyone uses? Apple can offer it's excellent software and they've done that, you can plug an Apple TV into any TV or, if your TV is 'smart' like all TVs nowadays, you can use the Apple TV app on your best in class TV. As well as the Youtube App, or the Netflix app, or the Prime app, or pretty much any service you want has a smart TV app really. What would anyone gain from Apple making a best in class TV?
None of these devices would cannibalize sales of any of Apple's products because they're all a terrible idea. If you want non-apple products then just buy them. They exist. All that stuff exists, just not made by Apple because those are inherently non-Apple ideas. Apple makes their devices for people who want their devices and everything that comes with their devices.
> A modular iphone that has an easy to replace battery, easy to replace screen and is maybe 2mm thicker to account for it? That would be a sellout.
And probably a regression on the waterproofing efforts they've made over the last decade. If you're gonna make it thicker, just put a bigger battery in.
> This is maybe down more to the maturity of the category(/ies) than any fault of Apple's though.
LiDAR was cool.
They could buy Oura and let you write apps with programmable micro LEDs, and that would’ve been cool.
If iPhones had Star Wars style holographic projector, that’d be cool.
They could just be content with keeping the lights on without unnecessary UX changes that literally no one asked for, and that would be cool.
I’m still happy with Apple, but the problem is that they now perceive staying relevant is wasting battery on visuals and making the phone thinner. Those are recycled old-ass ideas. They need to find the new Jony Ives.
Agree. Revolutionary tech happens, perhaps, once a decade. Apple's though is their own biggest enemy because there is so much gravity for these big roll-outs they have a couple times a year (typically Macs and then Phones+).
That's a lot of hyped, flashy events between anything really Earth shattering.
Maybe we miss when Apple was boring and new machines just rolled out with little more than a press release and a spread in MacWorld magazine.
Any decent earbuds have replaceable cables with standard two-pin connectors
Not good for exercise, it's heavy and has telephonic effects (walking/running sound transmit through the cable). Also ties you to the audio source.
Does anyone actually make wired headphones with ANC?
Look up "bullet MMCX IEMs". Plenty of options out there for cables too, some far less microphonic than others, and you can wear them over-ear to reduce that effect even more.
No ANC but they already isolate sound very well.
Apple has been notoriously crappy with cords. On my old 2012 macbook I went through 5 magsafes that just ablated themselves at the end to the point I'd get an electric shock or it would stop working entirely. Meanwhile the cables on my 30 year old game consoles are still fine while probably seeing more abuse. I'm really curious how this new magsafe cable is going to hold up. It is braided which seems promising, but no strain relief on the cable ends. At least you don't have to throw away the brick anymore when the cable goes.
Yeah, honestly, smartphones are a very mature category now. Only so much you can do with them. Same with laptops and desktops. Plenty of improvements to be made, but those yearly wow factors are just not coming back.
Cheap and generous flash storage would make me wow and come back immediately and forget all sins. Somehow they never dangle that though. Blame iCloud drive subscription for perverting incentives I guess. Headphone jack coming back would have me camping outside the store for midnight release.
If you find yourself concerned about whether a company aligns with the philosophy of a previous CEO, while not being an employee or investor of that company, then you might not realize the extent to which your mind has already been captured by their marketing efforts.
You don't need to care about Apple's (or Google's, or Samsung's) "philosophy" about literally anything.
I do feel like there is some man shaking fist at cloud here.
The post dismisses airpods, yet they are one of the most popular products in the US, with like 75% of young people owning a pair, great quality, features, and battery life. I dont think a swappable battery is even a good feature, the parts would be tiny and break easily given their size not to mention how often they could get lost
Hot swappable batteries kind of became not so important after battery banks and fast charging became a thing. Makes more sense to carry one battery bank that can charge anything than to have 2-3 phone batteries in your bag (which would be exposed to puncture too).
I still think the price of battery replacements is way too high from apple. It's $150 AUD here which feels far and beyond the cost of the part cost itself.
I realize we're talking about Airpods, but hot swappable batteries don't make sense to me either anymore. I seem to have power almost everywhere.
My phone spends a surprising amount of time on a charger. Most of the day while I'm at home, it's on a charger. I used to keep one at the office on my desk. The car has a charger too, and CarPlay so you might as well plug it in.
I'm not sure if it's a coping mechanism for poor battery life or just convenience.
For long days outdoors, I've also got a booster pack in the car with USB ports and an inverter (120V) that gets some use.
I have an iPhone 16 Pro Max and an older version of this battery I use and when I travel:
https://a.co/d/3g3F4eC
It can charge my MacBook Aur M2 once or my iPhone 16 Pro Max 3-4x. The iPhone itself can easily last flying and layovers all day.
https://a.co/d/igikGeL
I'm not sure how many times it would charge our phones. One day I think we did 4 different ones without issue.
When you're standing around at a BMX track, the functionality here actually made a lot of sense. It's not travel friendly in the same sense.
We have named ours "the cube".
Phone dead? Grab the cube. Tires soft? Grab the cube. Left the lights on in the car? You got it, the cube.
Because the "replacement" is "get two new AirPods". Even Apple can't take AirPods apart non-destructively. They are disposable.
So much for their carbon neutrality.
Everything humans do is carbon negative. Breathing, eating, driving, pooping (Westerners: toilet paper, All: waste management) and building. Getting every human to be carbon neutral would be an amazing thing!
From searched / online numbers, Apple has shipped 150 million AirPods since 2016. The AirPods 3 weigh 5.5g. The gross weight of a basic Tesla model 3 is 1760Kg. I picked a Tesla because it has plastic, metals, magnets, copper, lithium - similar materials.
In the ~10 years Apple has been making AirPods the materials used (by weight) is ~ 470 Tesla cars. So, per year (avg, not really good for this), resources consumed is about 47 Teslas (by weight).
Apple claims 40% of AirPods 3 are from recycled materials, so ~ 290 crashed / discarded Teslas could provide part of these materials - on average 29 per year.
I did the above because it perceptually relates to "real things". Teslas are NOT carbon neutral, very much carbon negative.
The reality / HORROR of waste is far, far worse. Any single plastic bag used to dispose of weekly waste likely weighs more than a pair of AirPods. Any can, made of steel or aluminum, could likely could make a lot of AirPods. The toy or product you bought that had a flap that you could lift up - there was likely a magnet under there. Any disposed single use battery might have zinc, if it was a CR2032 or "watch" battery, lithium (or silver).
Yes, AirPods might be disposable. Do they improve the qualify of life of the humans that purchase them? What is the real cost in perspective - with everything else taken into consideration? If the AirPods are used to listen to music or entertainment, then the positive mental health aspects are likely significant in a positive value direction.
A few random notes:
- Your model neglects the charging case with its own battery and microcontroller.
- A Trsla is more likely to be recycled properly than the same amount of earbuds. Itbis also more recycleable because ofnthe high amount of steel and other bulk materials in it.
- The ratio of semiconductor electronics to total weight is extremely different between the two products. And semiconductor manufacturing is extremely resource intensive. All we typically see is squeaky clean neon lit clean rooms, which belie the use of high amounts of aggressive and toxic chemicals that have to be produced somewhere and generate waste that is never talked about.
Many of these are all excellent points. I did exclude the case.
The car recycling v.s. electronics recycling question is interesting. I once had a very interesting conversation with an electronics recycler on a plane trip - phones could not be recycled like other electronics because of some of the metals content - in particular beryllium copper content (used in spring contacts). He described it as a lot of electronics is ground up and a chemical processes used to extract the valuable elements. With phones the grinding up was the toxic / dangerous prohibited part.
I think the semiconductor numbers are more subtle though. It is sq. mm in the product and yield that are factors. A single power switching element in a Tesla will likely exceed the total silicon sq. mm usage in an AirPod. There is a lot of electronics in a Tesla. Some of the Tesla circuitry is more exotic, Silicon Carbide or GaN. I need to look into how much recovery / reprocessing silicon mfg is using for the reagents. The waste produced isn't as bad as it was in the Silicon Valley heyday where every original mfg site is now a superfund site with very large plumes of toxic waste in the subsoil.
Are you sure? They say they can replace a battery online
http://www.ibtimes.com/apple-airpods-repair-recycling-imposs...
I’m fairly sure that battery replacements for the AirPods and Apple Watch involve giving you a new one and sending yours to be recycled. And the service only exists to avoid controversy about non reparable products.
I used to hate Airpods in videochats since they made the person wearing them sound bad because of dropouts, had heinous latency, and frequently disconnected causing meeting interruptions. But people think they're "better" than [wired] Earpods, which have none of those problems.
/me shakes fist at cloud
Sometimes it takes an event to change your view. I bought my first noise canceling sennheiser about a dozen years back. Hated it. Tried the noise canceling on my airpods. Hated it. Kept Airpods on transparency since most of my usage was during walking and I wanted to hear ambient sound, and never drown that out.
Then never tried noise canceling this week while on the plane. I was like ... what happened? Now I am actively looking forward to it.
I also used to hate airpods for their disconnects but they have become more reliable, especially if you tell them to remain connected to the last device you manually connected to.
Meetings / video chats are an anti-pattern for sure. There is so much communication loss because of other factors - someone forgot to mute, someone forgot to mute, plus what not. You want your side of the communication to be pristine, and even if airpods flake out 1/20 times, it is not good. I agree with you on that.
If I could do so, I would mandate that everyone at my workplace must use a wired headset with a boom mic for every Teams call.
You're fucking disgusting. You'd force people to use Teams?
I still use my earpods. Great for zoom or phone calls. Terrible for music but everything in that form factor is compared to my studio monitor over ears. I tasted the forbidden fruit already.
AirPods are one of Apple’s best products in forever and their size forgives them battery complaints, to me.
Even phones and laptops I’m willing to give a pass on, ever since USB-C got “good enough” and the battery life long enough.
If I had one complaint it’d be that they should sell one fat phone with no camera hump (because it has more battery).
Edit: I should have clarified as AirPods Pro are the ones I have experience with; no idea how the original AirPods are. But the Pros are phenomenal.
Airpods are very, very expensive compared to competitors with 90% of the same features. I've been using a $30 set for several years and the main drawback is it's difficult to switch devices—because apple doesn't allow third parties to use access the proprietary comms that allows this for airpods.
Also, I think the white is ugly. But kids seem to love it.
I'll happily pay the premium for "it just works", especially device switching iPhone to iPad to MacBook to Apple TV, it works first time, every time. I have a pair of Sony XM5s, and even at that price point, pairing and device switching can be a crapshoot some of the time.
Bluetooth honestly feels like a non-deterministic stack sometimes, it even took Apple 4 years to support it on the iPhone, how they have the AirPods working is close to magic.
> how they have the AirPods working is close to magic
They control the entire ecosystem and keep the variants and with it, the testing complexity, down as far as possible. That's how Apple stuff works so damn seamlessly.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world has to contend with dozens if not hundreds of Bluetooth chipsets, driver combinations, OS stacks... and each of these has their own quirks, and even if a bug gets fixed in a Bluetooth driver or controller firmware, good luck getting that distributed to users...
AirPods (and Bose QuietComfort) make me dizzy/nauseous.
Also, they don’t have decent passive noise cancellation, so they’re not appropriate for mowing the lawn, etc.
My Sennheiser ear buds solve all these problems for a much lower price, and their sound quality is much better than the last pair of AirPods I tried.
To each their own, I guess.
It should be stated that noise cancellation is not hearing protection, if you were using it for that while mowing.
An old groundskeepers trick for having music and ear protection is to get those big over ear protectors and put your buds on with that over them, just being mindful of volume of course.
well to be fair, some people simply don’t tolerate ANC well. Likely due to a more sensitive vestibular system. I believe this group often (not always) also struggles with motion sickness.
You absolutely know they have tanks and tanks of colored plastic ready to hit those molds the moment sales slow down a tiny bit ...
I doubt very seriously your $30 headphones sound as good as AirPods Pro or have the ANC.
But you can buy much cheaper headphones with the H1 chip for fast switching between devices by buying one of the Beats headphones. I love my $60 Beats Fiex with the double flange ear tips for traveling.
I have proper over-ear headphones for when I want to listen to music. I'm not sure what ANC is or why it's worth hundreds of dollars—hence why I said 90%.
I don't know what the h1 chip has to do with the fast switching—surely this is a bluetooth protocol detail, yea?
> I do feel like there is some man shaking fist at cloud here.
The poster himself admits that after a meandering 2000 words...
> I found a lot of reactions to these products to be weirdly optimistic. Either I’m becoming more cynical with age and general tech fatigue, or certain people are easily impressed.
Don't most people use nondescript earbuds?
I rarely see any earbuds except AirPods in the US, they are the overwhelming majority. Several other countries I’ve worked in also have pretty ubiquitous AirPods penetration, though not quite at the level of the US.
I have a few friends that bought every inexpensive alternative to AirPods, had a poor experience with all of them, finally relented and bought AirPods. Now they won’t use anything else. They spent more money avoiding AirPods than buying them.
Apple did a really good job with the AirPods.
I'm suprised, might just have been lucky I got a pair of Jlab pro whatever for 30$ at Canadian Tire and have been getting other ones when I lose them for years now - never thought of shopping for something else.
Especially if you're in the ecosystem. I can use them with all my devices, and they switch seamlessly.
It was like that in the wired earpod era too. It just carried over when they dumped the headphone jack and sold you the airpod you didn't need before. I still remember those early ipod commercials with the silhouettes dancing with the white cord.
A lot of those nondescript earbuds are indistinguishable from AirPods at a distance. Every electronics store around here sells $30 AirPod knock-offs that one has to look pretty closely at to tell they are not the genuine article.
A casual search showed several studies over several years estimating 70-80% of young people owning airpods, which matched my irl expirence. In the past random earbuds and headphones were common but apple has taken the market by storm.
I think Apple is going the wrong way by not allowing you to easily remove all of the bloatware iOS apps from newer versions of macOS. They could easily use their App Store to redistribute these apps if pro users want to install them later on. With each new macOS version my Applications folder gets more and more junk from apple that I don't ever need to use.
Would this make me go back to windows? Hell No
Needing to use Adobe CS keeps me from switching to Linux. Makes me wonder if MS or Apple is paying Adobe to keep them from releasing a Linux version of CS.
The OS might be getting worse, but I can't think of a laptop that holds up to Macbook Air at ita price point.
To some extent Apple is now a "lifestyle brand", like Rolex.
Rolex was originally a rugged, waterproof watch for people who needed such a watch. Pilots, divers, mariners, and military officers wore the things. Rolex had the accuracy of a marine chronometer in a small package. The Rolex Submariner was introduced in 1953 at $150. That would be $1,820 today. But the base price for a Rolex Submariner today, the same watch, is around $9,200, plus a few thousand dollars of "additional dealer profit". As the CEO of Rolex once said, "We are not in the watch business. We are in the luxury business." The people who need a rugged, accurate watch today get a G-Shock.
That may be Apple's path - to fashion themselves as a niche luxury brand.
I think the problem is deeper than that.
Apple Employees are "lifestyle employees". They can't imagine why someone wouldn't just buy the $5,000 spec of a laptop if they want a modest quantity of storage or memory, and then get another one in a few months time when that one gets old. They are too rich, too comfortable and too out of touch with the common person - and in many cases what people actually use their products for.
At the same time they try and squeeze every drop of money out of developers the can, Apple is owed for making their market available to others.
> Apple Employees are "lifestyle employees". They can't imagine why someone wouldn't just buy the $5,000 spec of a laptop if they want a modest quantity of storage or memory, and then get another one in a few months time when that one gets old.
Holy hyperbole. I am willing to bet the laptop capabilities that 80% of the population’s needs are available in a $1,000 to $1,500 Macbook Air, and 95% of the population’s needs are available in a $2,000 to $2,500 Macbook Pro. And they will not need a new laptop for at least 5 years.
I don’t think Apple continues trying to be a “lifestyle brand” after their attempts with iPhone X, Apple Watch Edition. Apple products are not cheap but also not too far away from customers electronics.
>That may be Apple's path - to fashion themselves as a niche luxury brand.
You can't have a niche product when you have 55% market share (iPhone in US).
See also: Porsche.
Being a "lifestyle brand" works great, right up until it doesn't.
If anyone feels this way and wants to try an alpha I have 1,000+ hours in.. I've implemented a Windows 10-like UI for MacOS. Similar to uBar (ubarapp.com).
The key distinction is it's built to be extended with third-party plugins (think Obsidian). I stopped using uBar because it had features I needed, but it's not actively adding features anymore last I checked. And of course, this will be fully open source.
This solves a lot of problems I have feeling productive in any not-MATE UI. More here: https://progress.compose.sh/about
It's in active alpha development but has all the core features you'd expect: taskbar works great, but only a basic system tray and start menu. And it'd be very much an alpha that needs feedback :-)
I don't understand how one would come to the conclusion that this is new behavior from Apple.
The first MacBook Airs were wildly impractical and expensive.
The first iPad suffered from the same issues.
Various iterations of the iPod nano were functionally kneecapped.
I see a lot of cherrypicking and not a lot of reasoning in this essay.
> these [AirPods and Apple Watch] are the Apple products I care the least, together with HomePods and Apple TV.
I won’t defend HomePods much, but skipping the other three misses a lot of the ecosystem value less technical consumers are getting. Turn your lights off with your TV remote. Go to a run with just your watch and headphones and take a call at mile 3. Approve a payment (or a sudo!) by double tapping your watch. Start a channel on your TV from Siri. And so on.
I’m not sure if Liquid Glass (that iOS 26 just insisted on capitalizing) is going to be worth anything, and definitely doesn’t merit the marquee. But the some of the design thinking is still there, beneath the surface, in the delightful interactions between parts of their ecosystem.
This reminded me of a friend's Apple reaction in recent years, which went from fawning in decades past to more resentful and bitter. And I know nothing about this author's position and attitude, but my half-bakery guess at the friend's change follows:
It was that they had gone from feeling like they were the professional catered for at the top of the Apple consumer offering (MacBook Pro, a nice phone, the big iPad) to being unable to justify the iPhone upgrade cycle, the Pro/Max line, or the top laptop or the best of the iPads. I supposed that going from a special segment of the cool gang to somewhere in the middle of the pack just didn't feel special.
Re: “Sob stories” it’s easy to cynically dismiss this as just another marketing ploy, but I see two other ways to see it.
1. It’s primarily for the people at Apple and their partner manufacturers to realize and be reminded of the value of the work that they do.
2. It’s a message to the broader tech community that if you’re going to copy most of what we do, here’s a few that actually save lives.
Now will it sell more watches… probably. Is it a net positive? I think so.
OpenAI did the same thing in the GPT-5 launch. https://youtu.be/0Uu_VJeVVfo?t=2079
I wonder if some of this is a consequence of Apple executives having to spend time navigating the tariff and supply-chain waters thus distracting them from actual innovation.
In the old days Apple were super expensive and hardly present in Iberian Penisula, Portugal only had Interlog in Lisbon, we saw adds on magazines, no one bought them.
First time I actually managed to see some LC in person, I was already attending the university, and there were only used in two places, a single room on the computer lab building, and the administrative assistants on the IT department, no one else across the whole campus had them.
I got to use and learn NeXTSTEP, because my thesis was to port a visualization software away from it into Windows, as my supervisor was the only owner of one, and they were getting rid of it, as NeXT wasn't having a great future on those years, already having pivoted to software only.
So the turn around with OS X felt interesting, and kind of revigorating, given how close Apple and NeXT were to be gone.
That Apple is long gone.
> the dimensions of the iPhone 5/5S/SE make this iPhone more ‘Air’ than the iPhone Air. If you want a slightly more recent example, the iPhone 12 mini and 13 mini have the real lightness that could make sense in a phone.
I strongly agree. Many tech people who I know personally strongly agree. I feel like St Steve Jobs would have strongly agreed. I really, really want a new iPhone with iPhone 5 dimensions.
They made the mini phones and it turns out nobody bought them because the people who cry out for them are very loud but very few.
I had one. Loved it. So did many tech people who I know and respect. I believe that this is firmly within the design ethos of Jobs/Ive-era apple, and so it surprises me that they don't continue to offer this in order to keep their brand strong even if the grasping masses don't actually want it.
I would guess that Apple sold more mini phones than other android manufacturers sold of their phones.
Apple's problem is it's own success. Unless each product brings in sales rivalling the GDP of countries, it gets cut.
The actual problem is that the sort of people who buy them aren't the sort of people who upgrade every year.
Most people don't upgrade their non-Mini iPhones every year either. The average seems to be between 2 and 3 years.
Why do people develop relationship with companies? :)
These entities do what needs to be done to make money.
Psychology tries to answer this.
To most, criticizing a company or product implies in criticizing their buying decision and by consequence, their intellect.
> Unless someone comes up with a type of earbuds that have easily replaceable batteries, I’m not interested in buying something that’s bound to become e‑waste in a relatively short period of time.
Well, to be fair, my Airpods Pro show no noticeable signs of battery degradation after 3 years of use. If they get to 5 years, that will be longer than most headphones last, not because of batteries, but because of overall wear and abuse. I think the above is a knee-jerk reaction.
Apple still issues software updates for many years beyond the competition. I have a 9.7" iPad Pro from 2016 (mostly a youtube and music device now) and I received a security update today. That is dedication to long time customers.
The products have matured. Comparing to last year's product makes no sense because most people don't buy new products every year
A lot of people buying the 17 are coming from the 12 or earlier, and it is a significant upgrade.
All such criticisms would be much more defendable if the authors' view of the past weren't so rosy with a strong liquid blur of the Job's myth.
> that are, once again, intuitive, discoverable, easy to use, and that both look and work well.
Never was this the case! All these past OSes had a lot of the same fundamental flaws along all of those dimensions, from basic search ("discoverable/easy") fails in both iOS and macOS.
Otherwise maybe it's indeed closer to
> I’m becoming more cynical with age and general tech fatigue
The issue is that the barrier of entry for a new company taking Apple's space is too big.
Apple is the only company that controls both the hardware and the software. It's absolutely impossible to compete with them on UX for regular users. A completely new paradigm of computing would have to be created and popularized.
You can't compare macOS with Windows or Linux. These are entirely different games they are playing.
I'm a power user, I would say. I have a Windows workstation at home just because I need to use 2 apps for 3D printing that only exist on Windows.
I have a Raspberry Pi 5 with 2 displays plugged in for monitoring my systems.
I have a Ubuntu server at OVH.
And 2 MacBooks that I use for everything else (running my business). My primary reason is that there are about 10 apps crucial to my business, and they do not exist on other platforms, such as Vellum for book publishing. Yes, there are alternatives on other platforms, but nothing comes close to the simplicity and speed of work we can achieve using that app. And this is, unfortunately, consistent among many niche apps.
> I found a lot of reactions to these products to be weirdly optimistic. Either I’m becoming more cynical with age and general tech fatigue, or certain people are easily impressed.
I think it's both. There's a loud cadre of Apple fans who will always fawn over whatever comes out of Cupertino, no matter what. That group shifts its membership over time, but they're always there, and they're, well, always loud. Maybe some of us have been a part of that group in the past, or at least perhaps looking at things with less of a critical eye than we do now. But it's normal to shift your attitudes on things, and normal for those rose-colored glasses to fog up after a while.
Of course Apple has lost its alignment with you. It’s gained alignment with 2 billion customers around the world!
Liquid design is for Apple vision. That doesn't mean it's a logical choice.
What I'd really like from Apple is another iPhone mini.
It could even be a bit thicker for TWO DAY battery life.
> As for the AirPods, and true wireless earbuds in general, I find this product category to be the most wasteful. Unless someone comes up with a type of earbuds that have easily replaceable batteries, I’m not interested in buying something that’s bound to become e‑waste in a relatively short period of time.
Aren't the batteries the most wasteful, least recyclable/reusable part of the airpods? They're so small I can't imagine that still throwing the battery away and putting in a new one nets to much gain.
I would guess that the old wired airbuds was responsible for more waste than airpods. So much more disposable and less durable.
I’ve had the same thoughts about this. I checked, and a MacBook Pro battery is about 30 times larger than the batteries in AirPods Pro. The environmental costs probably don’t scale perfectly with mass, but still, you’d need a lot of pairs of AirPods to leave the same mark as a single laptop.
The part about AirPods is just…dumb. If you have seen the teardown of how AirPods are made…
https://nebula.tv/videos/realengineering-the-hidden-design-o...
There isn’t any way that you could have replaceable batteries and still make them as lightweight and comfortable in your ear without other tradeoffs. We can argue about the case - maybe.
The AppleTV is by far the most responsive set top box and the least slimy as far as privacy and invasive ads [1].
If you like classical watches, the Apple Watch isn’t for you. But there are enough people that disagree that they sell like crazy.
The iPhone Air is probably going to sell like crazy in places with low iPhone adoption where it’s only affordable by the wealthy minority like China where it will be seen as a status symbol. Ben Thompson of Stratechery has been documenting for a decade about the biggest driver of iPhone sells is models that look new.
But if you already have an iPhone 16, Apple doesn’t expect many to upgrade. The replacement cycle has been around 3 years for awhile now.
[1] yes I realize the default Home Screen of the AppleTV has Apple’s apps in the top navigation bar and when you are on the icons it is advertising for Apple services. But you can put any apps up there and those apps control the hero image when you on them. They usually show what you have been watching
> As for the AirPods, and true wireless earbuds in general, I find this product category to be the most wasteful. Unless someone comes up with a type of earbuds that have easily replaceable batteries, I’m not interested in buying something that’s bound to become e‑waste in a relatively short period of time.
I'm not a apple fan (been windows most of my life till moving to a new company that is Mac only, and have been on android for about 13 years at this point) but the airpods pro are maybe apples greatest product in a while (other then the M1 macbooks).
The audio quality+noise cancellation+transparency quality made them a super easy buy and I would buy the app3 as soon as my app2 die that's how much I love them as a android user. This is coming from someone who owns multiple iems and very expensive over the ears.
From everything reported so far, the app3 look like a solid spec bump at the same price, there isn't many products that keep that formula.
Edit: I am disappointed that the OP didn't talk about how all the iPhones now have "pro-motion" aka high refresh rate screens.
This is (personally) one of the biggest step up in quality, I would never buy a baseline iPhone because 60 Hz just looks gross to me now, it's immediately noticeable.
I think the only way you can consider iOS “amateurish” is according to a ridiculously high standard for phone software that Apple itself is responsible for normalizing.
The transparencies and slightly laggy animations (at least on iPhone 15: this overall hurts usability for me) do bring Windows Vista memories though
Unfortunately, the only real comparison for iOS is past versions of iOS; until that changes I don’t see things getting better in any stable way.
iOS 26 actually has a lot of great features and convergence with the rest of the ecosystem (e.g. preview is awesome). But it lacks the polish that Apple has a reputation for; unfortunately 50% worse polish for Apple is still significantly better than Android and Windows. There just aren’t greener pastures to move to.
This is it, the grass is not greener on the other side unless you're moving over here. I don't understand why people who live on those less green pastures continuously wish for the greener pasture to be more like what they have now.
I read the article but feel I dont walk away with whats actually (supposed to be) wrong with ios 26 or tahoe, besides the apple watch has too many in your face features. As well -Steve jobs died almost 15 years ago now, yet everyone seems to know a reason why Apple has since disgraced what his vision was for Apple the next 15 years after he died? Like anyone really knows what Jobs would say today. - The new iphone iphone this year sucks it's not "revolutionary" this year. This complaint is standard every year.
The only thing I agree with is the disappointment they won't make an macbook air smaller than 13"
I really liked the tactile keyboard on the BlackBerry. Would be nice to have an iPhone with a keyboard and a weeklong battery life.
Corporations have no interest in making things that no one will buy.
To change Apple's behavior, consumers need to change theirs.
Given the lines out the door at China at Apple stores today, I don't see Apple changing their behavior anytime soon.
I feel like these posts started popping up with increasing frequency over the last 10 years. At this point its almost a rite of passage to realize that Apple---though good in many ways---is far less than it's cracked up to be.
At least in tech circles.
Tech circles have never particularly liked Apple. Sometimes they're right; sometimes they're just grumpy that non-techies like things that they don't.
I've been hearing that since before Slashdot dubbed the iPod lame. So I just kinda tune it out and wait to see whether people buy it or not.
I started using Linux in the 1990s, and I flirted with Apple through out the 2010s. I finally switched full time to a Mac Studio this year despite the UI, despite the read-only root and kexts no longer being a thing and inconsistencies and stupid settings app and everything else.
For one, M4 Max is awesome. For two, every other OS is now more annoying to me. Linux is more inconsistent, and the changes being made by major distros make little sense. Windows is a dumpster fire. The BSDs don’t work on anything I own, and the M4 is better anyway. Finally… pricing. For the price of my M4 Mac, there is no PC with as good a spec considering the price of GPUs. RAM and SSD? Yeah, Apple is nearly criminal… but the price of an NVIDIA GPU? Actually kinda criminal.
Some of it is that the market has matured - going from not being connected to only connected on a desktop to everywhere on a phone with a real browser was a lot of changes you notice all day.
A child born on the day the first iPhone launched is old enough to vote now.
Many of those posts are being written by people who have been along for that ride, too, so it’s going to be hard to recapture that excitement after experiencing past hot products not changing your life. It’s like a middle aged American buying a new car - yeah, it’s nice but fundamentally nothing changes in your life and you’re never reclaiming the excitement of being 18 and going from marooned in a boring suburb to being able to travel, which is a transformative change even if it was in a clunky old hand-me-down.
Tech circles have been complaining about Apple's mediocrity all the way back to when they were actually mediocre.
I personally do not buy an iPhone, but this is more of an ideological choice than a technical one. Yes, the phones are boring, but aside from a few exceptions, all smartphones are. I am right now on a 4 year old iPhone and it served me well, but this is going to be my last iPhone for a while
Honest question from someone with no hardware knowledge:
How technically possible and commercially feasible would it be to make these huge lenses and camera components removable? For example, imagine if Apple made a phone with no built-in camera, where the camera is instead a separate magnetic component that you attach to the phone only when you want to use it.
These days the camera bar holds much more than just the camera-related components.
I mean just look at the repairable phones with hot-swappable components. It's massive and not very.
You must be young!
We have had modular phones already, and I wish I bought one for posterity. Time travel back to 2016 and get yourself an LG G5. There was also Google's 'Project Ara'.
Whilst you are in your time machine, pick up one of Amazon's smartphones with a 3D display and stereo cameras (or did they have four?).
It all made sense in theory, but we went the other way, to make it so that not even the battery could be swapped out.
I am no Apple fan boy, however, my hunch is that they know their customers and that the iPhone Air is perfect for people that want to show how high status they are primarily by taking photos that are exclusively of themselves. Programmers in basements are not the customer for these gadgets.
A particularly genius move of the new iPhones is the square image sensor, which is what you want if your life has to be documented on Instagram.
Image, and status, is never about practicality, it is all about peacocking, and there is nothing wrong with taking money from those that want to peacock.
> there is nothing wrong with taking money from those that want to peacock.
There is something wrong with using that money to buy up supply chains and thereby undermining the viability of alternatives for more sensical people.
Huh. It’s been a while since Apple has “one more thing” awed me. So… “the awe tapers” sentiment, I can agree with.
The rest of the article I found full of non-sequitur, for me personally.
I think the Apple Silicon laptops are just about right. About the only thing that would fill an itch: I angsted for years after the discontinuation of the 17” models. Since what was 15 can now be 16, I’d put cash down for an 18” model.
I’m not much of a power photographer, but I really like the orange of the pro, and the trickle of feature improvements between my 14 and this one are enough to get enthused about.
My Pro ‘Pods (2) are going strong after a few washes, and I look forward to replacing them with 3s when they give out.
Here’s the thing for me I guess. I develop/maintain native apps on both platforms for my employer. I test with a couple of Samsung devices (why Samsung? Because 85% of our Android customers in ang tech are using Samsungs). And I just hate the experience. The hardware is ok, at times. We use them for testing (so not much daily driving) , and the failure rate is worse than the iOS devices. But the Ux is the worst. Apple will have to turn liquid glass into muddied frosted glass in a storm before the hodgepodge that is material, ui one, and the weirdest apps, make me want to switch.
Apple transforms product categories from time to time, and the rest of the time improvements are incremental (though usually good). In the last 5 years or so Apple Silicon has transformed expectations, not just for Apple products but for the whole industry, starting with the M1 MacBook Air, then with the M1 MacBook Pro, and more recently with the M4 Mac mini.
(Meanwhile Mac Studio refactored Apple's desktop lineup, perhaps echoing the G4 Cube, and the iPad Pro M4 was a milestone product that leapfrogged Mac laptop hardware by including an OLED display and next-gen SoC. We may see something similar with an iPad Pro M5.)
I think AirTags also transformed their category. Vision Pro was a new product line for Apple but has not been a success so far.
Vision Pro's only problem is the price. At $1k I think we would see a lot more adoption. I say this as a former skeptic and who gets VR sickness from other AR/VR devices, and hates the idea of strapping a device to my face and being isolated from my surroundings.
I got an AVP for work (long story), and was blown away. No VR sickness. I can work from anywhere with my laptop while enjoying a massive, wrap-around high resolution (virtual) display. I can relive vacation photos in full 3D. I can watch For All Mankind projected on a drive-in movie theatre screen in a lunar crater, while laying in my bed.
I think I'd have to go back to the original iPhone to think of a product that is so innovative and visionary that you just KNOW from first use that it will completely transform the way we interact with computers.
But at $3,500? Nobody can afford that, and only a small subset of the 1% would even consider buying one.
From what I have heard, it weighs on you. Maybe you can tolerate for an hour, and maybe you can do more than me, but I think the weight is the second parameter which puts off people.
Reduce weight by 1/3 and same thing for the price, and I will likely buy it.
Fair.
Getting a correctly sized light shield helps a lot as it balances the weight over your whole face. Also helpful is having the strap ride a lot higher on the back than you would think is right -- it always feels way too high, but is held in place better when I do this, and feels lighter (as some of the strain is taken off the face).
Or using the alternative over-head strap. This is one case where I think Apple went too far with form over function. There are much better strap designs, but they just aren't aesthetically pleasing I guess?
Finally, I generally use it laying down in bed or on a couch, which makes the weight less of an issue.
I agree in principle that a lighter device would be vastly better. I don't know how they will get there without drastic improvements in the underlying technology though.
On iPhone Air
The C1, while slower, was a little more energy efficient. Signal Reception seems to be ok too. I am expecting the C1X to be even better.
Combined with A19 Pro, C1X, N1. I would expect Air to be more efficient than 16 Pro. So with that in mind,
The Air ~3100 mah, the 16 Pro ~3600 mach should have similar battery life, or may be just slightly less than 16 Pro, a little bit better than iPhone 15 Pro with 3274mah.
If that is the case I say Air is actually not bad. And we can look forward into the future for even more energy efficiency OLED, SoC and newer Battery Tech. That would make Air perfect.
Not to mention iPhone Air is a required training for foldable iPhone. Their competitors are already making foldable phone with one side at less than 5mm. And is currently being held back by USB-C port. Apple needs at least one or two generation of learning to move in that direction. And iPhone Air is exactly that.
I am really looking forward to al the iPhone review this year. It has been a long long time since the iPhone produce range was exciting.
List of iPhone Battery Capacity.
Model/Battery Life Battery Capacity (mAh)
iPhone 17 Pro Max: 5088 mAh (100%)
iPhone 16 Plus: 4,674 mAh
iPhone 15 Plus: 4,383 mAh
iPhone 17 Pro: 4252 mAh (84%)
iPhone 17: 3692 mAh (73%)
iPhone 16e: 4,005 mAh
iPhone 16 Pro: 3,582 mAh
iPhone 16: 3,561 mAh
iPhone 15 Pro: 3,274 mAh
iPhone 15: 3,349 mAh
iPhone 14 Pro: 3,200 mAh
iPhone Air: 3149 mAh (62%)
Reading the criticism, I just came to a completely opposite conclusion regarding the magsafe battery: is the iPhone Air the answer to the people complaining about no removable battery? Make the body thinner, still waterproof, and you can have multiple “external” batteries to clip on. Boom, battery life is “infinite”.
This blog post evokes feelings of deja vu. It's the same blog post every year by some guy with a pixel-perfect blog that's used macOS since the nineties.
The author, like lots of people in this thread are really triggered by the headline "awe dropping", and sure, whatever, but what did you expect? If they launched a foldable phone, the blog post would be all about how foldable phones don't make sense or that another brand already did it.
Then the author just skips over the new AirPods, a huge part of Apple's profits (but it's the products he "cares about the least", so nevermind, I guess) which are probably the best Apple has ever created with cutting edge improvements to sound and noise canceling, who cares about that, right?
Then he whines about the Apple Watch doing too much. He just wants it to be a heart rate monitor. Turn everything else off, dammit! Too many features! Yeah, this is the guy complaining about the lack of awe.
Then he goes on to say that it's tacky that Apple includes a segment about it saving lives (oh the horror). That's why I bought one for my parents! It's a primary use case for many. Why wouldn't you advertise that? Because sans-serif font blog guy says it's tacky? No, I'd say that's awesome – technology is saving the lives of my family.
Then he goes on to having some difficulty understanding why people would want a thinner, lighter iPhone. Yes, and where's the damn serial port, am I right? Yes, sure, the Mini was great, but apparently people want the Air, but the blog guy doesn't so I guess Apple is doomed?
Then there's some paragraphs about the declining software quality, and, yes, again, sure, while there's plenty of annoyances... have you tried using Windows? Android? If you like the Apple experience – and yes, it's its own thing, it's not for everyone – you'd be hard pressed to enjoy the alternatives in their current state.
So, summing up: Apple lacks awe but there's too many features. I don't understand why they create new products, but they're not innovative. They're doomed because there's some bugs in the software.
AirPods being a "huge part of Apple's profits" because people keep losing them, and they keep breaking, so you always need to buy a new pair every several months. Hardly a product worth praising.
> Hardly a product worth praising.
I get that some people don't like using them for whatever reason, but this is just a completely insane thing to say. AirPods are a technology marvel, there's a reason why they're so popular.
Living in Poland I cannot agree more.
Almost no features from last 2 years in available here. Not even Genmoji toys (because iPhone language has to be set to English). Siri still doesn't support Polish and it cannot even discern between Polish and English - it cannot read text messages at all, even though it's possible if done manually, still worthless in CarPlay/airpods.
And come on, this is low hanging branch. Local models can do speech to text easily and most of the voice fronts can keep fluid conversation.
Lately I've been considering Linux laptop for work (since I live in Emacs anyway and I still yearn for the trackpoint) and just skip over generations iPhone/iPad generations until I'm ready to migrate my family's photo library elsewhere.
I can understand lack of novelty (outside of revolting, in my opinion, new look), but I'm really starting to feel like a completely neglected customer.
Talk is cheap. Action is what matters.
In the original announcement thread there was some speculation that the air is a precursor to folding models down the line. I hope that’s true.
A foldable iPhone has been pretty firmly rumored for fall 2026 for a while now, I think you can take it as virtually certain: https://www.macrumors.com/guide/foldable-iphone/
I don't think the Air is merely a precursor to the foldable, however. It's rather that the technological evolution that allowed for the 5mm thin iPad Pro last year allows for the Air this year and helps with the foldable next year (and thinner MacBooks are rumored as well). But the Air is probably there to stay as a separate form factor, assuming that it doesn't flop in terms of sales. The foldable will be much heavier and bulkier, more resembling a Pro Max.
I want that speculation to be true, but I also don't think that the Air is a stepping stone towards that. The risky parts on a folding phone are the bending screen and the hinge and the software features.
The iPhone Air tests none of those things.
It tests their assembly lines and supply chain by producing 100 million titanium cases.
They did something similar when they transitioned the product line to aluminum.
(As a product, it’s the opposite of what I’d want — worse battery, bigger screen, worse camera, but they’ll certainly sell enough to debug the assembly lines.)
That doesn’t make sense, the 15pro and 16pro were already titanium, and they moved AWAY from titanium for those phones in the 17pro.
I don’t disagree that it has something to do with supply chain, but it’s not the titanium cases.
Seems a possibility for the medium term.
I've also seen speculation that it's an engineering experiment to see if they can squeeze all the essential components of a high-powered computer into a space the size of the camera plateau. Which may eventually lead to viable AR Glasses (or a cheaper Vision).
At least they still drive towards accessibility, while Google wanders aimlessly in circles.
Can we get text to speech better than twenty year old dragon naturally speaking please?
People can tell when I’m texting by voice because it reads like I’m drunk.
Siri is neither awe inspiring nor delightful.
Phones in general just feel like theyve topped out. All the specs inch upwards sure but if I swop my 14 for a 17 there doesn’t really seem to be some big new feature/use case that would enable. Browse hn 40% harder?
Some small carriers in Australia don't support eSIMs, even though they're required for Apple Watches and other devices, and also second phone numbers in phones without dual SIM card trays.
I'm hoping that the iPhone Air will make them prioritise eSIM support!
Some carriers in the UK have been on the brink of providing eSIM support for several years, maybe Apple as often is the case can drive this forward.
I’m not sure what the issue is though, could it be a standards issue? Government tracking phone users? Someone being cut out of the money?
Answers please on a postcard.
Australia has like 100 reseller phone networks. There are only 3 real network providers and these as well as the majority of the resellers support esim, but when every single retail brand and supermarket has it's own mobile network offering, there's always going to be a couple that haven't put in even the smallest amount of work to support it until it's absolutely forced.
Seriously? Which ones don't support it, I actually have found more that are "esim only" these days (but I am someone who churns through ozbargain deals)
I'm kind of an Apple outsider (I've used Mac a little bit, never owned or wanted an iPhone). Honestly, I think their new stuff looks pretty cool. I thought Liquid Glass looked cool. I thought the iPhone Air looked cool too.
When I read articles like this, it's hard for me to get what the actual problem is. Apparently "the very introduction of the iPhone Air proves that Jobs’s words are falling on deaf ears on the hardware front ..". So I guess it's bad in some way? There's been months of criticism about Liquid Glass too it seems. I don't really follow any Apple-focused media, so I've never heard them at all (battery life concerns make sense, sure).
Even the Brownlee quote seems to answer its own doubt about iPhone Air: "it is surrounded by other iPhones that are better than it in basically every way, other than being super thin and light". What is wrong with making a new class of phone that prioritizes thinness and lightness?
To me, Apple is just as despicable as they've always been. Their "developer program" is as draconian as always. And lately is seems they're possibly more hypocritical than usual (e.g. super tight notification restrictions on app devs, then using notifications for their own marketing). Every time someone joins a Google Meet and can't talk, I know they're a Mac user because it seems they have to restart the entire browser (Chrome) to allow mic access.
Anyway, per the above paragraph, I have plenty of complaints about Apple myself. But it seems my complaints and the author's complaints are completely non-overlapping, which I found a bit surprising. It seems there's some emotional thing going on with long-time Mac users. In general I kinda get it. Most great things seem to teeter off after awhile of greatness.
He makes the point that the thinness and lightness have no effect because it's not really pocket friendly because of the size, so you won't get the advantage where it matters most, in your pocket.
My big frustration with Apple particularly iOS is many of the most annoying UI design issues seem trivial to fix.
It’s like anyone here with good taste and some experience leading teams could step into the product owner role for iOS at Apple and get them fixed in a couple of weeks.
Siri may take longer but doesn’t look like it would be too difficult to fix either.
Most of the issues are not constrained by anything but poor taste and dumb design.
Give me a copy/paste functionality that works. How can this be so hard to do?
When I go for a run and listen to a podcast, if I accidentally close the podcast view why do I enter the podcast app? And why do I need to go back to my apps, find my workout app, open it just to find again my podcast view then I need to swipe to go back to my workout view.
Uh, huh?
The thing is, Apple only has to be better than the competition.
So they can shit on their 38 years of UI guidelines because what are the alternatives?
At least so far. I'm sure they can iOS ify Mac OS enough to piss off developers completely if they try.
With Apple, the bloom is off the rose, and as with a lot of big business lately, the prose misses the mark.
Its copy was once great. Now we get "Awe-dropping", the latest example of marketing professionals coming up with the most basic rhyming wordplay that fits in a three word sentence. Smack a big period on it so it looks like a fact, then head to the bar.
I’m gonna be honest, after having used Liquid Glass for the whole time of the beta, I like it a lot actually.
I’m curious if the people downvoting me actually tried the damn thing or just downvoted because they read articles that explained why it’s bad…
they're just a mature company doing mature company things ... still there's a lot of really strong inertia:
the MacBook line of hardware is the best it's ever been
the phones continue to improve year over year incrementally sure but they're solid -- I'm very keen to see what the rumored folding iphone gets us
AirPods I can't live without
idk -- macOS26's spotlight just stole a lot of good things from things like Alfred and other launchers -- it continues to become a more useful OS
nothing I need to do for my day to day as a data engineer is hindered by being on a Mac -- linux and containers are useful and solved now (hello Colima)
maybe I am just a lost fanboy but im very happy currently
>the MacBook line of hardware is the best it's ever been
Only after 5 years of the worst it's ever been, something triggered a complete change of course and it's easy to forget how utterly awful the butterfly era was.
A lot of the rest of Apple feels like butterfly era thinking.
Or course.
Case in point, iPads don't have headphone jacks. While these devices are very capable of audio production, that's a joke while using Bluetooth.
But that's not Apple's concern. Airpods sell billions of dollars worth every year.
Every other phone manufacturer said ooh, cool and instead of getting pro level audio in my 1000$ Android phone I have to settle for Bluetooth which still hasn't caught up.
Airpods, and there cheaper friends are , as the article mentions, e-waste. Maybe you get 2 years out of them.
My analog headphones, with some light maintenance ( and a detachable cable) may last decades.
At this point Apple could come out with a 2000$ Audiophile line of phones with the jack and I'd buy one. But they won't.
If you're doing "audio production" you're going to have a USB audio interface.
You can use any USB C device that supports the industry standard USB c audio profiles.
It's just annoying to have to carry a USB Dongle for something that should be built in.
Could you use something like this direct USB-C to 3.5mm Audio Cable, eliminating the need for a dongle?
https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MDV84AM/A/usb-c-to-35-mm-...
Ohh cool.
I didn't know about that, I'll think about it
Couldn’t you use a dongle?
Yea, I literally just bought an OEM dongle 20 minutes ago for this exact purpose.
I'm sure the USB-C port is more than sufficient.
They make USB-C EarPods.
The iPhone X had Apple’s best camera. Every version since has over processed its photos. Like an E30 BMW, I wish Apple would have never stopped making that device.
I'm just getting back into Apple after having the first iPhone, but then Android/Linux since then. Now I'm all in on Apple silicon... For the next decade at least.
Clickbait built on 2 fantasy notions:
1- that Jobs would somehow be the hero of a mythical arab/syrian culture and diversity politics who would have behaved differently than Cook towards Trump.
If anything, Jobs cherished the white working suburban middle class of the west coast that has been destroyed in the last generations. He _never_ behaved as a white knight and nobody knows what he would have done (and nobody knows how hard Cook's political equation is)
2- that Apple is due for perfect, idealized products that fill 100% of people's void. This guy explains that iPhones make too many compromise and the OS is just "good enough".
Would be curious to hear of _one single_ previous or current OS platform or hardware at that scale that matches Apple's 2026 line up.
Jobs seemed mostly apolitical, but a joke could be that he would've bankrolled RFK Jr. to victory in 2024, while forcing him to stick to the moderate position where he was in 2008 when Obama considered making him head of the EPA.
uhmm... wat?
where was there any mention in the OP of Jobs about diversity or his Syrian background?
That's one is first point: "don't buy anything Apple" based on the linked Anil Dash's post, itself based on Arab Steve Jobs fantasy and Cook's supposed betrayal.
You’ll have to come up with a better counter factual than “I would have sent a notification to all Apple customers to gain political support.”
You would alienate so many customers by being political.
Jobs’ Apple was not political except in narrow issues. It sold a product for everybody, not just one party.
Cook leaned into the least political possible way to handle this very delicate situation: made in the USA is positive for everyone (in the US) without alienating any group directly.
And if he really screwed the pooch and got worse tariff outcomes, I definitely think his job could be on the line. You know their stock lost $300b in value when tariffs were announced right? That was the entire market cap of Apple when jobs died.
I agree it looks very pathetic, but honestly it’s a tough situation too
The rant feels more like "old man yelling at cloud" than an actual valid complaint.
The "issue" is probably more like smartphones are yesterday's technology. They're no longer the shiny new toys they were a decade ago, and the amount of innovation you can realistically do with them, as a physical device, is more or less limited.
That doesn't mean Apple isn't innovating, but most innovation right now is happening behind the scenes.
New chips for connectivity. I remember a time before the H1 chip (AirPods). I remember keeping my phone in my left front pocket, and for some reason most wireless headphones at the time had the receiver in the right side, and I remember sound clipping every time I moved. Enter AirPods and the H1 chip, and I could suddenly leave my phone at my desk and go get coffee, and I would still have perfect sound. Before the H1 chip, having Class 1 bluetooth in a wireless headset was thought of as if not impossible, then at least impractical due to the power requirements, and then Apple proved everybody wrong. They're currently doing the same with chips for mobile and desktop usage, where their CPU power to Watt ratio continues to be the benchmark to beat.
While things right now feels like a "standstill" I have no doubt we're in for an interesting ride in 3-5 years. All signs point to mobile and desktops converging, meaning in a relatively short time your phone could become your desktop also.
Apple has been working on unifying apps across platforms, with iPadOS being the latest development. iPadOS 26 apps have menus, and window controls (traffic lights) like desktop apps, and yet can still run as legacy iPad apps, and most of them will also run on iPhones.
The major hurdle to making a "single device for mobile/desktop" is not technology. We have the technology, and the A19 Pro processor has as much power as an Apple M2 chip, which is certainly no slouch. The major hurdle is that nobody wants to use "desktop apps" on their phone, and nobody wants to use "mobile apps" on their desktop.
So, Apple may not innovate in a way that "you" like it, but it doesn't mean they're not innovating. As always, nobody is forcing anybody to buy products, so vote with your wallet. Apple is still a "for profit" company, and they will go where the money is.
I think that the awe actually dropped when Apple stopped doing in person live events instead of recorded ones.
You lost me at "traditional horology"
> As for the AirPods, and true wireless earbuds in general, I find this product category to be the most wasteful. Unless someone comes up with a type of earbuds that have easily replaceable batteries, I’m not interested in buying something that’s bound to become e‑waste in a relatively short period of time.
My AirPods Pro that I bought five years ago are still going strong, the only issue I have is that the right AirPod got some water ingress and now every time I insert it, I'm greeted with about 5 seconds worth of white noise.
As a counterpoint: Apples has gotten so big that its user and customer base is not techies, they have moved into supporting our mainstream society as it operates today. They don't care about techies (at least primarily)
Apple has never cared about techies. They have always been consumer-focused, at least since the original candy-colored iMac days.
Apple is not Apple since a long time.
What you're using is NeXT.
NeXTStep, NeXTSTATION, etc.
Apple machines ended when Steve Jobs re-joined Apple. After he did that, he rebranded NeXT as Apple. Jobs took the policy, target audience, configurability, whole company culture from NeXT.
If it wasn't for this, Apple would probably go bankrupt, so it's not like there was some other choice.
It is what it is.
Turns out that the RDF was really more an enshittification deodorant.
It's often said that Apple gives you features that you didn't know you wanted, but at the same time, Apple forces features on people who absolutely do not come did not, and did not ask for them. And there's nothing you can do about it. Why bother updating an Apple device if it's just going to make the experience worse.
Apple may have decided that the user of yesterday is not their future market, focusing more on users coming of age now. They don't have to really care what older people think and how they use phones, because those people will eventually go away, and they need to be prepared for this future customer.
Not a huge believer in belittling an author's points, but the author makes absolutely not one objective point in this entire article. Genuinely every single thing he describes is an opinion, nothing more, nothing less. And those opinions, at that, aren't even very accurate.
AirPods becoming e-waste? Seriously? Pick a better idea to make your point, because pretty much everyone I know has had their AirPods for 2-3+ years, and even if that was _when_ they decided to move onto another, that's an _incredibly_ long amount of time to have wireless earbuds of those quality at that price point.
And as for disabling features on the Apple Watch - again, seriously? Most techie, HN'y complaint ever. There's a reason the Apple Watch and AirPods sell as well as they do - people love them.
As for awe at new features - AirPods live translation, standard iPhones being ProMotion, one of the thinnest phones ever created?
This is just a terrible opinion piece.
I'm always surprised to see people on here talk about refresh rate. I can't see it with my eyes. I even just tested based on your comment with this m3 pro. Power settings are such where on power its pro motion and on battery its 60hz. I tried scrolling this thread really fast while plugging it in and unplugging it and I could not discern a difference. I'm not saying you can't, I'm just surprised I can't, given all I hear about it.
I agree. It's objectively nonsense with regards to AirPods and Apple Watches in particular. Both are extremely dominant in their respective categories for many years at this point. Objectively, Apple is not alienating its "long-time customers". Someone raging about his perceived wastefulness of AirPods is out of touch with the vast majority of people.
But people love to rage and be enraged on the internet. So anyone pointing the vacuity of the enraged is downvoted and cast aside.
I swear we get these articles every single year. I tried to read this but it lost me pretty quickly. Apparently the 'sob stories' where Apple Watch is shown to have literally saved peoples lives are just a 'marketing tactic'. And AirPods, arguable the most widely popular and innovative product in Apple's recent history is 'wasteful'. Given the popularity of the Watch and AirPods it seems like it's the author that has lost alignment with society and now Apple losing it's alignment with him.
I agree with a lot of what this author says but they’re so wrong about AirPods.
The AirPods Pro 3 or really any of the recent AirPods are magical products. They’re the rare modern Apple product that Steve Jobs is smiling down upon.
Not only are they great for music but they are absolutely killer conferencing and phone call earbuds.
From early reviews it sounds like the Pro 3 has astounding microphone quality on top of the wide versatility and portability that the product already has.
The e-waste stuff, honestly, is nonsense. Maybe they’re a waste of money to need to be replaced somewhat frequently, but when you throw out AirPods you’re throwing out mere grams of total material. A replaceable battery would barely help that impact, it would mostly save you money to not buy the product all over again. And if you’re like me spending hours a day in meetings, AirPods are downright cheap for the utility they provide.
The average person is throwing out a pair of AirPods’ worth of fuel weight and carbon emissions every time they drive 10 minutes down the road or buy one hamburger with all that packaging from McDonald’s. Throwing out a pair of headphones smaller than a deck of cards every 4 years is basically nothing compared to typical consumer waste. Much lower hanging fruit to pick.
They're worth trillions already, but the truth is Apple knows the market will collapse long before they lose their leadership, so they don't really give a fuck. Notice how their most important event ever has been mostly pre-recorded corporate slop for the same phone for the last maybe 10 years?
>The more Apple talks and moves like other big tech companies
I don't get the rant. Apple is just a random big tech company. It doesn't care about users more than any other company does and it optimizes for profit like most businesses do. It doesn't have anything magic, and I don't get why people get sentimental when they talk about Apple.
Apple doesn't owe users more than they are required by laws and users don't owe Apple anything. It's a business relationship, not a romantic one.
If you like the products and find them useful, buy them. If you don't, you have alternatives.
Note that OP is in Spain, where the iPhones are quite more expensive than in the US, and where the wages are quite lower.
iPhone 17 is $799 in US, but 950e in Spain (=$1130) ie 40% more expensive.
average wage is 80k in US and 35k in Spain.
So clearly it's not the same investment...
wonderfully written article -- my thanks to the author. there's a heavy amt of cynicism, but i enjoyed the argument, and i believe it's well reasoned. i do think that modern tech companies have lost all sight and attachment to the products that customers actually experience. it feels dissociative & much like another step of our broader culture shifting towards "bend-the-knee-ism", thanks to our current cabinet of clowns.
companies like Valve & Panic! remind me that focusing on producing high quality, enjoyable software/hardware experiences is not only still doable, but highly desired.
it's a beautiful art form - the exploration of human computer interaction. we're only really touching the surface, even still. it's exciting.
i thought tech companies were exciting? that they cared about this future? when did Apple & co start becoming IBM? when did the shareholders that Jobs despised win?
> it’s a company that I feel has lost its alignment with me and other long-time Apple users and customers.
I have been forced, for professional reasons, to use Apple laptops for close to 10 years of my professional career, about half of which was actually spent being a full time employee of Apple itself (and absolutely not by choice, M&A + golden handcuffs type situation).
They never, ever, did care about their customers other than ensuring that all of their products had an inescapable vendor lock-in built-in (and that is both and insider view and that of someone who had no choice but to be a user because my next employer after Apple was an effing osx-only shop)
They are most excellent at pretending that they care though, I'll give them that.
Despite living in an age of supposedly transformative brainstorming and creative technologies, we’re also paradoxically inhabiting in a time with less creativity and vision than ever.
I find it weird how often these takes act like the AirPods are some kind of terrible failure rather than one of the most successful Apple products
> What really got on my nerves during the Apple Watch segment of the event, though, is this: Apple always, always inserts a montage of sob stories about how the Apple Watch has saved lives, and what an indispensable life-saving device it is. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad those lives were saved. But this kind of ‘showcase’ every year is made in such poor taste. It’s clear to me that it’s all marketing above everything else, that they just want to sell the product, and these people’s stories end up being used as a marketing tactic. It’s depressing.
Yeah, the trauma porn in Apple events has become quite annoying. We get it - if you don't have an Apple watch you're going to die.
This, plus one important addition: How many people actually got killed or injured _because_ of iPhone or Watch? Think about it: using screens in traffic or in other situations where your attention to the world is critical.
All the best to the folks who where saved by any device, but given the large volume of devices sold - one has to assume there is a flip side to this coin, too.
Sure, but how many other products have a feature like that? I live in a very remote area. I NEED Starlink because it's my only choice for internet. I NEED a big 4x4 because if there's some particularly bad rain I'd be trapped in my home. If a tree falls in the nearby forest and nobody is there to hear it our power still goes out because it fell on a powerline and we NEED solar panels with battery backup or we can't flush the crapper because the water pump doesn't work without power. If my wife has a breakdown of her car or, god forbid, an accident on her way home from grocery shopping there is no cell service. No way to call me or the breakdown company or the police or an ambulance. I'm also not the only person who lives here. There are a few hundred people spread out across the general area and they all have these issues too. Apple's atellite communication could literally save my life as I go about normal, non-adventurous humdrum day-to-day tasks. Informing consumers of an actually useful standout feature unique to your products is good marketing and they're doing it at a marketing event they host to market their products. This guy's whole article was just the same tired applebashing that has actually become quite annoying. We get it - you don't think Apple products are good value for money in your use case and you don't understand the people who buy them.
I understand authors sentiment. It's hard to be fascinated by another revolutionary thinning of a device once more.
A few days ago I tried to express a similar opinion here - regarding design and taking in account the liquid glass thing and the iphone air, it feels they are doing "innovation" for the sake of "innovation", and got downvoted. They're doing (arguably) huge improvements in processing and computing yet they want to disrupt user experience just because.
I wouldn’t mind them innovating if Liquid Glass wasn’t so bad. It’s a clear step back in usability with all the things you can’t properly read.
The updated applications which Just clearly copy Android are nice however.
I kind of agree but I also can think of a counter argument. They don’t want to seem stale. The current macOS look is more than a decade old, so Tahoe shakes it up a little.
I’m kind of indifferent to it so far but I can see what someone might have been thinking.
You are experiencing the negative side of the apple reality distortion field.
I too have experienced this. I expect that i have been too direct in my dislike of apple in this post.
You have to come at the problem sideways. To allow for any real hope of not being down voted the crowd.
I dont know what the root cause is.. if Cupertino corp has a really expensive pr team or apple devices are laced with some kind of mind altering drug.. the effect is the same.
I'd like to say HI to the apple PR team! looks like you made it.
Well, they're also desperate for anyone not to think of the absolute mess they've made of AI.
im glad you don't worship a corporation anymore bro
you would think a trillion dollar company would be able to innovate, but as it turns out. It really just goes into fancy marketing, C-level executive pockets, and shareholders.
Got to think of the shareholders, bro! Disgusting.
Awe?
Come on. These are all minor improvements on existing products. Yawn.