Increasingly Familiar Apple Lust Objects for 2016 and onwards

yeah, there's probably dozens of Apple R&D projects that fizzle out before we even hear about them

Man I am curious how it would have turned out though.

I guess it would’ve turned out poorly hence the cancellation

cars are a low-margin business. with next-gen carplay it’s possible that any/every car becomes an “apple car” as far as the dash is concerned. they are doing deals to integrate the speedometer, the a/c etc into the interface. and if your phone can automatically reconnect every time you step into the car.. that’s total lock-in to the apple ecosystem without apple having to go through the frankly thankless business of actually producing automobiles

Dyson also cancelled their electric vehicle programme after 2 years - citing the huge sustained investment needed and uncertainty of commercial viability.

i rode in a waymo in SF, it was pretty impressive. i can see why it appealed to apple - presumably they have tons of data from apple maps. but man have you ever seen a waymo? no way that would fly with apple.

Apple's been slowly letting practicality win over aesthetics since Ive left. I'm glad they stopped making broken flat keyboards but supposedly the VR glasses were meant to be just cool-looking glasses instead of the gross torture helmet we got.

They should make a ring like Samsung. Would buy

I love the flat keyboards but I might just be divergent in that way

oh wait, you mean the mbp ones that were genuinely broken. never mind, carry on

the bluetooth keyboards where the AA batteries go into the knurled riser on the back are a really excellent example of where apple's obsession with braun-style bauhaus minimalism totally worked. they are just the platonic ideal imo.

three of those have broken on me for unexplained reasons. the bluetooth just goes berzerk

I have to repair mine with my MacBook most mornings

Re-pair, that is

I have one of the classic wired usb ones that I moved to work. I have the knockoff Microsoft Surface bluetooth one at home and it’s way too slow when reconnecting to my MBP but is… close enough

the bluetooth keyboards where the AA batteries go into the knurled riser on the back are a really excellent example of where apple's obsession with braun-style bauhaus minimalism totally worked. they are just the platonic ideal imo.

...and total garbage for long-term use should an AA battery expand ever so slightly from use. "How do you remove a stuck battery from an Apple wireless keyboard?" ---> About 3,910,000 results

screwdriver or just slamming it against a table surely

olive oil and a heat gun

screwdriver or just slamming it against a table surely

Nope!

When I was dealing with them semi-regularly, I'd have to take the keyboard apart as explained here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sPU3VM9128

About 50% of the patients survived.

weird, that has never happened to me in 10+ years of using rechargeable batteries

I trust Elvis's experience on this. Our sample size of two probably doesn't compare to having to address a much greater number

they should have made the little tube bigger. there fixed it somebody make me head of design at apple inc

but you'll ruin the aesthetics!

I’ve had the same thing happen with metal flashlights, especially those maglite multiple-D cell models. Any battery that decides to corrode and expand will jam it up.

Larry David uses Siri in the new Curb season… pic.twitter.com/7Cat3a8qQU

— Ryan Jones (@rjonesy) February 26, 2024

https://www.macrumors.com/2024/03/04/m3-macbook-air-two-displays-lid-closed/

hallelujah

is it good when retailers are trying to dump stock 3 months after launch and no software is being released?

https://www.zdnet.com/article/amazon-is-selling-the-apple-vision-pro-at-a-rare-200-discount-and-i-dont-expect-it-to-last/

I thought Woot sold returned / refurbished stuff

after the early starry-eyed reviews, not sure I've heard anything I would qualify as good news for the Vision Pro

is this good?

https://www.macrumors.com/2024/04/05/tim-cook-sells-nearly-200k-aapl-shares/

In 2015, Fortune reported that Cook planned to "give away all his wealth."

That’s $34 million …nbd

https://gizmodo.com/apple-vision-pro-already-forgotten-about-1851426564

no surprise. regular people aren't going to adopt AR/VR until it's the size and weight of a pair of sunglasses.

Tbf I don’t think they expected this to be a hit with regular people yet, but it’s not going to be a hit with tech nerds in the meantime if there is nothing you can do with it because they make no news apps themselves after launch, and their hostile behavior has driven away the developers they need.

At rhe stores they have these little circular seating areas for anyone who doesn’t care embarrassing themselves to sit and try it out .,, also there’s an espresso machine there to help with point of sale

xpost

After I posted that I said something similar to a friend of mine who bought one and he basically said what you did: Apple messed up the launch. The codec they use for immersive content was kept secret and they haven't released anything themselves since the day it launched.

https://www.macrumors.com/2024/04/23/apple-cuts-vision-pro-shipments/

Apple has dropped the number of Vision Pro units that it plans to ship in 2024, going from an expected 700 to 800k units to just 400k to 450k units, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.

Orders have been scaled back before the Vision Pro has launched in markets outside of the United States, which Kuo says is a sign that demand in the U.S. has "fallen sharply beyond expectations." As a result, Apple is expected to take a "conservative view" of headset demand when the Vision Pro launches in additional countries.

A swing…and a miss. Good try though

From where did they build their expectations?

Increasingly Unfamiliar Apple Cringe Objects

no surprise. regular people aren't going to adopt AR/VR until it's the size and weight of a pair of sunglasses.

I tried the demo at a store -- the eye tracking and peripheral-free gestures are mind-readingly "this changes everything" magical but yeah, it's so heavy that the thought of watching a whole movie in it immediately felt like a chore.

They'd already separated out a heavy, bulky battery pack -- why not offload the computing hardware and weight itself onto a separate portable computer? they could have made the headpiece lighter and possibly carved out a headless portable mac category for people who don't even care about VR.

If that also helped cut down on development time, they could have released this during the pandemic and likely would have definitively "won" the VR space but maybe having your signature product be emotionally tied to a global catastrophe is off-brand for Apple?

I mean they launched the iPod right after 9/11 and that was OK

Ha! I guess in retrospect U2 did more reputational damage to Apple than Al Qaeda

Philip... thank you

I dont think it’s the computing hardware that’s the weight but rather the glass and metal accents (purely aesthetic) vs thr quest’s use of plastic