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.

> 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 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.

Special and distinctive to whom?

Apple is a mass market consumer brand. They are half of the mobile phone duopoly.

Most consumers buy "oh shiny", they buy status symbols. They do not read HN. They do not think about UI. They do not really care about technological or design innovation. They stick with brands (especially in technology) rather than compare alternatives when they make a new purchase.

Apple is well aligned with them, that is why Apple is successful

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

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.

I usually try and sit out those initial waves of time where all the emotioning happens.. but I have to admit, I'm pretty unhappy with Liquid Glass. Too many "daily use" features are now hidden beyond secondary UI elements (iOS Safari tabs). I don't really care that watch faces are now hidden beyond a link in the Watch iOS app, because I only use them occasionally. But I use Safari tabs all day long.

Same thing when they got rid of the swipe for watch faces. There was enough of an outcry that they returned it as an option.

Apple isn't following their own HIG. They seem to have relied on telemetry that tells them a lot of users don't use browser tabs so they decided they can make it an additional tap away.

My Ubuntu Gnome machine has a more consistent, simple, and pleasing interface than my updated Macbook Pro (though why does Linux still have copy-and-paste issues in 2025..? I'm losing focus here..)

Makes me consider dumping my Apple Watch for Coros, dumping me Windows desktop for Linux, and dumping my iPhone for a Pixel (well, not really, I can't warm up to the Android issues). I don't know what laptop hardware I'd switch to, though. I don't really want to have one company disappointing me across my major platforms again and again. They're sinking the platform advantage -- they need new software leadersip.

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.

You don't need to care about Apple's (or Google's, or Samsung's) "philosophy" about literally anything.

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 :-)

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.

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.

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.

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.

“This widening gap between their hardware and software … is going to be really damaging if the course isn’t corrected. The tight integration between hardware and software has always been what made Apple platforms stand out.”

This alignment with the user, offering a well integrated experience as "the product", is the very thing Apple's competitors are funding lobbyists to get regulator help to tear down, and Apple is indeed having to make compromises to accommodate.

Living in Spain, the author should write to EU governance if the author cares about this.

It's okay not to like something. To go "hey, I don't think this is useful or good." But the chicken little attitude of "Apple has lost its way" or "Apple has abandoned its long term customers" grabs headlines and will be forgotten in 3-4 months when most people either embrace the current market or reject it and go somewhere else.

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.

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.

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.

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.

These entities do what needs to be done to make money.

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.

At least in tech circles.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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%)

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.

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.

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.

The only thing I agree with is the disappointment they won't make an macbook air smaller than 13"

> 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

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.

I'm hoping that the iPhone Air will make them prioritise eSIM support!

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

People can tell when I’m texting by voice because it reads like I’m drunk.

Siri is neither awe inspiring nor delightful.

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.

My brother Apple is a $3.5 trillion dollar company, and has been in this league for multiple decades now. I don't know why so many communities of people online have convinced themselves to buy into them like they are a scrappy group of hackers/tinkerers fighting "the man" or even some religious movement.

Apple's target audience is rich people buying the latest iPhones and Macs every year.

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.

Whatever you think of him he was clearly an strong leader who was able to make a bunch of otherwise unruly geniuses cooperate towards a common goal. He also overruled any other ego in the hierarchy so the goals that were worked on actually shipped.

This is rare, and made Apple different from other corporations, for a while.

Without a person like that at the top, corporations are money-making machines that will gravitate towards bland and predictable. Egos will battle for resources for no purpose other than being the boss of the most resources, geniuses will be increasingly bored and disillusioned and whatever special sauce there was will go stale.

Corporations can exist in that state for a long time and sometimes still make nice products of course.

it is hard for them of course, Steve is gone, but machine is whirring and wants to eat every day

not very inspiring that's for sure

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.

I have near perfect vision, btw.

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.

It could even be a bit thicker for TWO DAY battery life.

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.

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?

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.

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 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 "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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

Then when OSX (-> Mac OS) started becoming really great in the 2000s I think they complained about stuff changing but then felt recognized when developers started flocking over to the Mac. But then you've got all these average people jumping on buying iPhones and iPads and Watches and AirPods and now they don't feel special.

It is pretty hard for me to get worked up about it. Some of the glory days were nowhere near as great as they remember, it's just they were a special club back in the day and now they're not really. The rest of us will just keep getting our jobs done using Macs.

One other aspect is a lot of these people were not particularly technical and as such were pretty inflexible in their thinking. They often seem to have built up extremely rigid and complicated ways of wanting to organize everything on their system because they are the kind of people who are used to following an exact set of steps to do everything on the computer, and they perhaps learned that at great pain. So they become extremely sensitive to UI changes as they perceive any change they have to get used to as wrecking their perfectly tuned productivity.

As an example they get super upset about the finder. They seem to have frequently built up some really complicated way of using the finder and then will get really upset, whereas an even more technical user will just go update their script/macros/whatever in 5 minutes if something changes and not get up particularly bent out of shape. The guy (and I've only ever met guys in this camp) who gets upset is probably not building a script that would have saved 100x more time over the years.

... ok. I can stop reading.

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.

Got to think of the shareholders, bro! Disgusting.

Come on. These are all minor improvements on existing products. Yawn.