Apple Watch: Wait a minute! This puny wrist-puter costs 17 GRAND?! Apple boss Tim Cook appeared at an art center in San Francisco on Monday to confirm when the much-hyped and super-expensive Apple Watch will go on sale. In short, you can order one from April 10, and it'll hit store shelves on April 24. Cook also revealed other bits and pieces, such as a new slim MacBook going on sale soon. …
You can get as angry as you want about content exclusives, but content distributors want it that way because it maximizes their market power. If House of Cards was available on Amazon and iTunes, there's less incentive to subscribe to Netflix.
An exclusive with Apple for three months benefits both Apple and HBO. HBO benefits from the publicity Apple gets around the Apple TV price cut and the event where it was announced, Apple TV gets increased stature compared to the competition for being the first to carry HBO's long awaited online offering.
My problem with it is the potential for a ballooned version of the console wars where I have to have many different devices just to get the content I want. The different services (Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, et al.) is a little annoying but palatable as long as I can access them all from one device.
Imagine if you had to buy a different tuner for every TV channel you wanted to watch. That's the road exclusives like this lead us down. This one will expire in 3 months. What about the next one?
Hopefully, the market will prevent this from happening in the extreme, but I think that depends on how willing we are to swallow our displeasure and just be sheep.
I can pretty much guarantee it is going that way. People think cord cutting and dropping cable/satellite subscriptions will save them money and they can still watch the shows they want. Content producers are not going to sit still and let their incomes be reduced.
House of Cards is the tip of the iceberg, Amazon is reportedly developing exclusive content and I wouldn't be surprised if Apple does something like that for iTunes someday, and Google as well. Maybe Sony will put some Sony exclusive content on the PS4. Having content limited to a particular device may not be a big deal - if you had to have a Apple TV, Roku, Chromecast and maybe one or two other things that adds up to a few hundred dollars at most and no monthly fees for the hardware. If there is content that requires a PS4 or a Samsung smart TV then it'll be too bad for a lot of people who won't get to see it, but if Sony or Samsung produced the content they would be able to do that if they wanted.
What's going to kill you is if in order to watch the programming you want, you need a subscription to HBO's online offering, Sling TV to get AMC and ESPN, Hulu Plus for network programming, Netflix for House of Cards and movies, Amazon for their exclusives and the movies they have to rights that to Netflix and HBO do not, iTunes to get Apple's exclusives. That's the "ala carte" offering everyone thought they wanted to free them from cable bundles, but they'll end up paying the same. If you want to save money you're going to have to give up some stuff, and not know what people are talking about when they discuss Game of Thrones or House of Cards or whatever.
"legally from Oz"
Will it be available outside the US then?
I kinda zoned out during that part of the keynote as i assumed it was going to be a US only thing.
If it is available worldwide then i'm definitely signing up - there's years and years worth of great tv watching on HBO (and that's just from watching The Wire over and over and over again)
The new laptops are a showstopper and answers the question about the 12" iPad, why have a iPad when you can get a laptop which is much better. Yes the iPad is great but most power users buy a keyboard for it and that will make thicker, I must admit I have never seen a good matching keyboard. Touch screen, na. However out goes the non-retina book, the only mac which you could upgrade. Welcome to the throw away laptops.
Can only speak from my experience with Wintel laptops in the ecosystems I work in, they do get upgraded, more RAM, larger HDDs or even retrofitted with SSDs.
It's not a 'small' ecosystem but is rather narrow so it may be untypical.
Weren't Apple the ones who soldered in an SSD?
"Weren't Apple the ones who soldered in an SSD?"
Yep. I had to buy a Mac about two weeks ago so I could continue developing iOS apps. Up until then I had a 2006 MacBook which I had upgraded the RAM and HD of to be able to run Mountain Lion (10.8). I couldn't get Mavericks to run on it, so I had to bite the bullet and purchase a new system.
I ended up with a MacMini, the mid range one, and I feel absolutely used. I have, willingly, bought a machine that I can upgrade the HD on. That's it. I can't upgrade the RAM, it's soldered on. I can't upgrade the CPU, it's soldered on. And, although I don't believe it, I am stuck with this configuration for the rest of time. I can't give it back to Apple and ask for more RAM. This is what the bloke in the shop told me, but again I doubt this.
During this time I looked at the MacBook Air's, and he told me they were the same. No user serviceable parts, everything soldered.
F**k you Apple.
But they are cheap. Cheaper to produce that is. So profit margins are hiked twice over: once, given the high price and again, by saving production costs.
Soldering things straight to the board also increases reliability and makes them thinner and lighter, which apparently is what everybody wants.
I don't have to cart a laptop around anywhere so it's not much of a selling point for me, although having said that I would rather sit around with that thing on my lap than our old Dell!
I have often changed or upgraded the following on laptops -
Ram
HDD
CPU
Wi-Fi
DVD
Bluetooth
Screen
Keyboard
Battery
Not that difficult. If a customer brings in an older laptop for a clean up and I have a better part laying around that I can swap in two minutes I'll do it free of charge. It delights them and they pass my name on and come back as a return customer. A bit of old junk to me means a decent upgrade for them.
On my laptop I've upgraded:
WiFi
Optical Drive
Graphics Card
RAM
HDD (used partition Magic on desktop to copy existing content /OS)
Replaced keyboard, battery pack case fans due to age.
Original
1600 x 1200 ultra sharp totally matt finish zero reflection 15" screen (other screens were possible)
1.8 GHz P4 CPU (other CPUs can be fitted).
OK, perhaps it's a little large and heavy. The Mac Air is indeed an x86-64 tablet with built in keyboard. It's expensive though unless you want OS X.
I wonder how long before Apple drop OS X and only have iOS though.
It's a choice between expandability/upgradability and packing all those components in to the smallest form factor possible. They didn't solder in anything that looks like an SSD, they took the chips that would normally go in to a separate component and attached them to the motherboard. It needs no cabling, is less boxy, and so it fits in a smaller form factor. The fella who changed every component in his laptop*; let's face it, its not going to be svelte is it?
You pays your money, you takes your choice. Other laptop manufacturers are available.
* surely buddy, at some point it was cheaper to get a new laptop than a new keyboard, gpu, ram, odd, hdd...
Why would it need "a whole desk full of cables"? It's not the right MacBook for me, but my wife would love it, and without any cables she can connect to the internet, print, make backups automatically, sync with her iPhone and iPad, and display thing on the TV in the living room.
Until she needs to charge it and get data off a usb drive at the same time.... Oh, you can't actually plug in the USB drive anyway without an adaptor...
Seriously I could understand one or two ports and nothing else but ALWAYS a separate charger port...
Guess this also means that they will have a 19v 3a usb c cable ready to mistakenly be plugged into some poor device expecting to receive/supply 5v .5a
>Guess this also means that they will have a 19v 3a usb c cable ready to mistakenly be plugged into some poor device expecting to receive/supply 5v .5a
That's not how USB 3 works. Devices will negotiate with each other as to which supplies what power to which. The horse's mouth:
http://www.usb.org/developers/powerdelivery/
>Until she needs to charge it and get data off a usb drive at the same time.... Oh, you can't actually plug in the USB drive anyway without an adaptor...
Some people don't use USB drives very much these days, especially people used to tablets, wireless printers, Dropbox, and 'good enough' phone cameras that don't require an SD card. Those who do can buy the Macbook Air or Pro.
Yeah, the pros of omitting a second USB might seem very small (weight and volume savings) but many users would be fine with it.
"Some people don't use USB drives very much these days, especially people used to tablets, wireless printers, Dropbox, and 'good enough' phone cameras that don't require an SD card. Those who do can buy the Macbook Air or Pro."
Ah so it's just a $1200 iPad with a keyboard attached. How innovative.
"How innovative."
To be fair, it is innovative since nobody else has designed such a thin light laptop yet, and everyone else is reducing the price of their laptops. The expense of a device isn't always linked to spec, sometimes it's the fact that the device fulfils a requirement which people are willing to pay for. Anyone who carries a laptop around the city will be glad of thin and light, allowing a smaller bag. The fact that it lasts a full working day on one charge is nice too so you can leave the charger at the office or at home - I never take my rMBP charger to work with me and that has similar battery life. As for ports, they've been right most other times they ditched things. Floppy drive, CD drive, serial ports, the list goes on and they were usually the first to jump with very few users missing the old stuff. Even the processor is fine for most work done by most people. My 800MHz Duron with 512MB memory will still run Office just fine and display the Internet, photos and videos and that covers most non techies just fine.
To be fair, it is innovative since nobody else has designed such a thin light laptop yet
Since when dd 'innovation' mean do the same thing again?
People have for years created thinner laptops as the technology becomes available. Using the latest version of someone else's technology is not innovation. The innovation is at Intel, creating a processor efficient enough to avoid the need for active cooling - therefore thinner. No doubt the Surface 4 will use the Broadwell chipset and might be thinner and lighter still - that doesn't mean Microsoft are innovative!
Innovation for innovation's sake does not aid the user experience. Innovation is not a goal in itself, and really it's a bit of a strange criterion to judge something by. User experience and fitness for task are how stuff should be judged.
It would seem that Apple have made a Macbook that will suit some users very well, just as the Panasonic Toughbook (again, niche and pricey) suits a very different set of users.
Me? I wanted the monstrous ThinkPad W700ds with the two screens and Wacom digitiser (huge, powerful, expensive) but in truth 95% of the time I'd be better served by a more mobile laptop.
To be fair, it is innovative since nobody else has designed such a thin light laptop yet
This shows a shocking lack of knowledge of what the industry outside of Apple is doing.
Microsoft's like-priced Surface Pro3 is thinner, uses a more powerful CPU (Core M is optimised for low-power consumption), includes touch and is lighter if you attach a touch cover. Screen density is comparable, and personally I prefer the 1.5:1 ratio to 16:10 (Ideally, I'd prefer 4:3 for a work device, but nobody does that) If Apple are supposed to be the greatest hardware designers of our age, then why are they being outdone in "innovation" by what Microsoft did last year?
MS does stiff you for a keyboard accessory, but you do get a full-sized USB 3 port, and you can charge the thing, drive a display and use a peripheral at the same time without another easy-lose dongle. (If you think that's not important, you've never given a presentation - a major use-case for MacBook Airs, by what I see)
ASUS will do you a traditional laptop with a 1920x1080 screen display (not as sharp as the MacBook or Surface's 1440-line display), at the same thickness as the MacBook. ASUS mustn't have got the memo from Cupertino about what's possible on small metal enclosures either, because they also include multiple USB ports shave another millimetre off the thickness (12.3 vs 13.2 for Apple), and the whole thing comes in a US$699, or just a shade over half of the Apple product's price. [ Zenbook UX305 ]
I'm not telling you that you shouldn't be buying Apple - it is your money to spend, but do so knowing that what you're getting is not any better than anyone else's offering, just more expensive and less capable.
I currently use a MacBook Air for my laptop. I won't be considering this thing as a replacement for it. Had it offered three USB-C connectors, I could live with its other problems, but as shipped, this is nothing more than a $1200 Facebook receiver.
Using just a heart rate monitor and accelerometer? Sounds like crap to me.
Measure my gait using one set of sensors, that can be placed in different locations around the body, but, the device has no idea where it is in relation to my legs? Really? Today the phone is in my coat pocket, and I'm walking on a flat pavement, tomorrow my jeans pocket as I walk through the woods. Any meaningful comparison in those two sets of data?
Sounds more like some medical institutions are counting large, unrelated, donations to some research projects made by some anonymous Californian technology company. Allegedly.
Heart rate monitor with accelerometer has been around for a while. Garmin watches for starters - accelerometer is in the transmitter of the HR band so unless your heart moves then will tend to be in same place. Can tell me my running cadence, how high off the ground I'm running (efficiency) etc. not sure you could call it medical research but useful for runners at least
The array of sensors on the likes of the Microsoft Band would prove far more valuable to medical researchers, however said boffins tend to be a bit magpie like and love shiny things. I can also see the offer of a Fruity Watch to wear during the trial and keep after being used to entice participants into studies.
Nah, most really rich are very stingy unless they are getting serious value for money. This watch will have vey little value once the new, thinner, version arrives.
This watch is for the only just rich enough that want to show off, unless (as the article says) it gets a killer app.
Nah, most really rich are very stingy unless they are getting serious value for money. This watch will have vey little value once the new, thinner, version arrives.
Super tight, but the key thing with this demographic is that they value cost. Don't know what to get Wifey #4? Solid gold iWatch, shopping is done. She knows its fucking expensive, I know it's fucking expensive, everyone is suitably reassured as to their own value that they have given/received it as a gift.
Same with Swiss watches, they're anniversary or 18th birthday presents (now you're a Man, here's a £20k Patek to hang on your wrist. No, I don't get it either.)
Well I know some super rich people and they're the exact opposite of what you said. If they really want something price is not a problem. People have to get over themselves. 10,000 for a watch is not your demographic. You or they are not the people who will be buying it.
I know guys that watches are their thing and they're not rich, but they've forked over almost 5000 for a high-end watch. There obviously is a market for these things, or there wouldn't be so many super expensive cars, clothing, merchandise being made.
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