I've been coming to this site and reading these forums for as long as I've owned a Mac. In that time, I've often felt compelled to post, but never like I had to act. Tonight, for reasons unknown to me, that has changed. This is my first post, and may very well be my only post, so I might as well make it count.
We're all entitled to our opinions, here are some of mine. They will mostly be counterpoints to what others have said. You have been warned, I'm feeling ranty!
The iPad mini is a great product and the people are voting with their wallets. It was not a reactionary product as some seem to think. Apple has never done business that way and never will. In reality, it takes an extremely long time for a product to go from concept to design and then a customer's hands. Jony and Tim don't just wake up one morning and say, "Oh crap, they're selling a lot of these 7 inch tablets... Screw that Steve guy, let's make one anyways!" And as to what Steve actually said, "Seven inch tablets are dead on arrival because they run blown up smartphone software." He said nothing about the form factor itself and was nodding to where the overall tech and competition was at the time, and as usual a dash of classic Jobsian misdirection. Eventually the form factor gained momentum and Apple was ready to capitalize on that, because that's what they do, and they do it well. First to market has never been the Apple way. Let others take that step. Being the first to make it work however, is.
As for it being overpriced and under spec... I've been hearing that argument since PowerPC. It was old then and it's old now. Specs tell you one thing only, (and that's only us more technical folks, consumers don't give a rats bum) what a product COULD do. Apple prefers to tell you what something CAN do. That is why the screen is 1024x768, because it lets the product do many things, over 275,000 things, all with no extra work from any of the builders of those things. That's good for developers and good for consumers, and that my friends, is magic.
Taking the optical drive out of the iMac was not a big mistake. Speaking for myself, I haven't used the optical drive on any occasion in my last two MacBook Pros. Optical drives are noisy, slow, legacy and they take up a ton of space in the chassis. Why develop an entire product around something that the majority of people don't use? The logical course is to make a seldom used component an accessory, that way the minority can still have what they need, and the majority can have a better product.
And that concept flows into the dock connector. They used the thing for 10 years. Ten years! And in that time a huge accessory business flourished around it, which can and will flourish again with a new connector, making tons of money for many other folks who are not Apple. And this should set them up for another 10 years, even though wires for anything other than charging are already nearly redundant. Apple has been very clear that the dock connector had become the limiting factor on how they could build products. So when a technology truly inhibits you, you have to move past it, Apple has proven that time and time again. It will suck for a bit, when things don't work. There are always growing pains with change, as their always have been and always will be. It's a universal truth in life. Just ask anyone who's installed a Microsoft product on launch day. Maybe they should have included a 30 pin adapter in the iPhone 5 box, but I can assure you, if they shipped 30 million adapters with 30 million phones, the vast majority of them would sit in the box, unused. That's a bad thing for a lot of reasons. Most folk with an iPhone, present company excluded because we're geekier than the norm, will only ever plug it into a wall and want exactly that. When people frame this like it's some kind of grand conspiracy for Apple to sell adapters, I laugh out loud. What do you honestly think the overall revenue percentage is for the adapter division? Does Tim Cook get up everyday and check on the adapter sales? Does Peter Oppenheimer make angry phone calls asking where the adapter money is?
So, Retina MacBook Pros are just thinner and and apparently they're all broken anyways... Wow, I didn't know Apple missed the mark so badly on that one. Next time around, lets hope for some fatter, heavier notebooks. And as much as I would like to direct everyone to the 'Happy Apple Customer Who Has Never Had An Issue' forums, I can't. Instead let's take a gander at the company's customer satisfaction ratings, consistently and independently ranked number one since I can remember. All that despite being "over priced" and "under spec". Strangely enough, a funny thing happens when you're reading through technical support forums. You tend to read about people's problems. Well if some people are, that must mean that everyone is. After all, I was just reading the cancer treatment forums and now I'm certain that everyone has cancer.
As far as the Mountain Lion battery life problem is concerned, it sucked for some to be sure, but to my knowledge it's been fixed, even though I never suffered from the issue. Maybe I'm just old school, but I ALWAYS do a full clean install with a new major OS release. I know Apple doesn't come straight out and say that you should, but anyone who's been at this long enough will echo my sentiments on that. Our Mac's and OSX are very technologically complex entities and we each layer on our own set of complexities. Every now and again, you've got to start fresh and it's always worth it.
The iOS 6 maps "fiasco" was just that, a fiasco created by the media. Apple is under a microscope these days due to their success, as Microsoft once was, and as Google should be, but isn't. The media vultures are always circling, just waiting to pick the carcass of any misstep that the company makes, and they will make mistakes, because Apple is run by PEOPLE and people make mistakes sometimes. If you believed all the media hype surrounding it, the average layperson just assumed that Maps didn't even work, which is entirely false. Did it have it's problems? It certainly did. Was it anywhere near what it was reported and perceived to be, no it wasn't. Being the 'go-to' Apple guy in my circle, many people told me, "Hey, I heard the new maps is crap." To which I responded, "Well no, it isn't, it just doesn't do everything that some people want and is a little buggy. Usually the people who complain are particularly vocal about it and then then media scumbags grab it like a roll of toilet paper and cover your house in it." Tim publicly apologized, took the responsibility and used the gravity of his platform and the lustre of Apple's brand to recommend competitors alternatives. Still, people want blood. Remember when Firestone tires were actually killing folks for a bit? Their CEO publicly apologized, but certainly didn't recommend anyone go out and pick up some Goodyears. The Maps situation was handled with nobility, honour and respect for the customer, case closed.
Yes, iOS may not look much different than it did in 2007, nor does OSX since it's inception and I'm just fine with that. Look how well it worked out for Microsoft to radically change their layout with each major release. Change for the sake of change is a waste of time and energy. Apple has earned their reputation for quality because they revolutionize with their first iteration and slowly introduce change with precision, gradual increments and incredible consideration for retaining the user experience that their customers already love.
As far as the Pro User stuff is concerned, I'm a pro user in recovery, used to be what I did, now just isn't. I had been editing professionally in FCP since version 2ish and was editing on PC with Premiere before that, so I am fairly well informed on this, albeit a little outdated. All that being said, stating that a company has to bow down to a minority of users is complete nonsense. You talk like they're just sitting on an awesome Mac Pro and holding it back just to upset people. I'm not terribly savvy with these things anymore, but as far as I know, it's a wait on the next generation of Xeon's that integrate Thunderbolt and all that new jazz from Intel. Would I like to see a new Mac Pro, sure I would, would I buy one? No, I just don't need it, very few people do. The enterprise hardware roadmap has never moved as fast as consumer for good and very real reasons. The market is very small and getting smaller all the time. Yes it should be a priority, but it shouldn't be, and isn't priority one, for any company.
As far as FCPX is concerned, I'm not a fan, but I also admittedly haven't tried to shift my thinking to editing in that fashion and given it a fair shake. Avid always was the industry standard and still is, and Apple nailed the prosumer market square on the head in the past and that leaked to either side of the line, both pros and consumers. With the way the market is changing, the prosumer line continues to blur more and more, and the true pro market is as rigid as it ever was. Pro users are set in their ways like any other pro of any profession. Pro's hate change, it's part of the nature of being a professional. I don't blame them at all for feeling a bit left out, but they didn't leave you naked and beaten in the desert like some would cry.
As for anyone who wastes a moment of precious life on the phrase, "Steve wouldn't have let this happen!" Steve is gone now, and that saddened me more than I'm comfortable admitting to myself. But the gift he left behind isn't the Mac, or an iPhone, iPod or iPad. The gift he left behind is Apple itself, a company only he could have created. Everything under it guided by one vision, to make the best products in the world.
Steve left his successors with one guiding principal. Don't let Apple become another Disney, always asking what Walt would have done... Never ask yourselves what I would do, just do what's right.
Is Apple losing their magic? No my friends, there's much more to come. I promise.
