Apple's Streaming Event

[Anderton]

Well...it certainly wasn't like what they used to do, but it does seem like it's time to trade in my iPhone 7 (which still works, battery life is good, etc.) for an iPhone 13 Pro. I could use more memory and a better camera.

 

I'm also intrigued by the Apple Watch. It seems like they're finally tying down the loose ends and making it actually useful. I probably won't get one any time soon, but I've gone from "no way" to "maybe someday."

 

What puzzles me was...no mention of computers! Basically all they announced was product refreshes. Seems like this would have been the time to send a message about how Apple sees the future of their computers, regardless of whether they had "new" computer introductions or not...or at least a summary of what their computers had accomplished in the last year. Seems like a major missed opportunity.

[Joe Muscara]

Nope, they do different events for different product lines and such. This was expected to be the products they announced, more or less. You probably already know they talk upcoming OS upgrades at WWDC to ready developers (and interested customers) for their release in the fall. Talking about too many things distracts from what they want people talking about right now. Heck, they hardly talked about the iOS/iPadOS features that are coming with these new devices.

 

It's all about marketing and focus.

 

They'll talk about Macs and how great the new M-series chips have done at some point probably soon. According to MacRumors.com (I hope that link works, if not, go to the Macs tab), some of those products are due for a refresh and I'm sure they'll do what you're talking about then. Maybe when it's closer for Monterey to ship.

[KenElevenShadows]

They certainly have a lot of things coming around the corner, including the M1x stuff.

 

"Here's What Not to Expect at Tomorrow's Apple Event"

 

https://www.macrumors.com/2021/09/13/what-not-to-expect-at-apple-event/

[RABid]

Early in the year I upgraded my iPhone 6 to a 12 Pro Max, mostly for the camera upgrades. I hope to update again with the iPhone 16 comes out. Love my Apple Watch 3. Would consider upgrading to a 7 if it was a bit cheaper. Honestly I did not see much of interest this time. I do Apple One so the bit on games and Apple TV was a little interesting, but not much else. I'm not in the market for a $500 iPad Mini.

[Anderton]

Nope, they do different events for different product lines and such.

 

I realize that, but when you're pushing an ecosystem, it seems like it would at least make sense to devote a minute to that aspect. Since iPad refreshes were a big deal, then even just a picture of an iPad next to a MacBook Pro, acting as a sidecar, would make a statement. Or a picture of an iMac picking up messages from an iPhone.

 

I get that you have to dumb things down even more than you did just a few years ago, but marketing is also about telling a story. I think the Apple ecosystem is more of a story than "we have new iPhones." Although maybe these days, the story IS the iPhone.

[spokenward]

...

I'm also intrigued by the Apple Watch. It seems like they're finally tying down the loose ends and making it actually useful. I probably won't get one any time soon, but I've gone from "no way" to "maybe someday."

 

Craig, wouldn't MIDI-able applications like lighting and show control suggest that somebody should get you into a wearable sooner rather than later?

 

Stuff like this, and I suspect others:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/luminair/id920440588

[analogika]

This was an iPhone and Watch event. iPad mini was a surprise, but not enough to steal the attention. The overlap with iPad is big enough that they decided to include the mini, but the Mac is a whole different subject â especially with the ARM switch â and they really tend to focus the attention on iPhone when they do these events. It's a delicate balance of maximising attention and not being too "techy".

 

You can bet that this event gets mainstream coverage, while the Mac event later next month won't.

[Anderton]

Craig, wouldn't MIDI-able applications like lighting and show control suggest that somebody should get you into a wearable sooner rather than later?

 

Stuff like this, and I suspect others:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/luminair/id920440588

 

Well for some reason I'm always way before the leading edge, or way after In the case of the watch, it looks like way after. At the moment, that kind of $$$ makes it not a priority. But as soon as I can figure out a way to amortize the investment, I'll probably get one.

[Anderton]

This was an iPhone and Watch event. iPad mini was a surprise, but not enough to steal the attention. The overlap with iPad is big enough that they decided to include the mini, but the Mac is a whole different subject â especially with the ARM switch â and they really tend to focus the attention on iPhone when they do these events. It's a delicate balance of maximising attention and not being too "techy".

 

You can bet that this event gets mainstream coverage, while the Mac event later next month won't.

 

Right on both counts, but still...I've always felt marketing was about the story first, and the products that implement that story second. In the case of the M1, the story wasn't "we refreshed our computers," instead Apple focused on the story of overcoming the main objection people had about laptops: Battery life and speed. Once they told the story of "your battery will last and the thing is lightning-fast," I was interested.

 

I really do think Apple's overarching story is about the ecosystem, and how all the parts work together. That doesn't mean you have to go into a detailed presentation to consumers in this Age of Idiocracy, but I think it merits at least a passing mention.

[Dave Bryce]

Been waiting for this, becuase I'm due for a new phone. I'm trading in my 2nd gen iPhone SE for a 13.

 

dB

[analogika]

This was an iPhone and Watch event. iPad mini was a surprise, but not enough to steal the attention. The overlap with iPad is big enough that they decided to include the mini, but the Mac is a whole different subject â especially with the ARM switch â and they really tend to focus the attention on iPhone when they do these events. It's a delicate balance of maximising attention and not being too "techy".

 

You can bet that this event gets mainstream coverage, while the Mac event later next month won't.

 

Right on both counts, but still...I've always felt marketing was about the story first, and the products that implement that story second. In the case of the M1, the story wasn't "we refreshed our computers," instead Apple focused on the story of overcoming the main objection people had about laptops: Battery life and speed. Once they told the story of "your battery will last and the thing is lightning-fast," I was interested.

Yeah, YOU were. So was I. We're geeks who talk about this stuff on internet forums, fer cryin' out loud.

 

That's not how "people" buy computers. They buy computers because their old one stops working, or can't do something they need it to do.

My late 2016 machine is written off, and if Covid hadn't ruined these years, I'd probably be looking at a new one, knowing that the M1X machines are on the way.

But my ex just replaced her 2006 (!) iMac last year because it started getting erratic, refusing to sleep, and just generally getting slow and increasingly unable to deal with modern internet. She asked me, and I suggested waiting a few weeks for what turned out to be the M1 Macbook Air. She couldn't be happier with battery life (usually several weeks by her usage), but if I hadn't suggested she wait, she probably would have just bought whatever was available and been happy with an Intel as well, without direct comparison.

 

What's the story gonna be vs. the initial shock of "wait, a $1000 laptop with ten-hour battery life that outruns virtually every other laptop on the market?" Faster this or that? Sensational new extra power for some pro video conversion tools?

Nobody "normal" cares about tech specs.

The new books will be enormously useful tools for us geeks and pros, but they won't meaningfully impact an ordinary person's life the way, say Cinematic Mode with automatic focus tracking on the new iPhone camera will. Because, you know *everybody* shoots video of their families, their kids, etc.

 

iPad is the "computer" that fits that focus.

[KenElevenShadows]

Consumers are always excited about battery life and speed. Those are basic things that can enhance or impede anyone's work flow, whether it's a laptop or a phone.

 

By the way, I use a Mac Pro 1,1 from 2006 to run Pro Tools. I increased the RAM and put in an SSD and it runs great, super quick, super fast, super reliable. 15 year old computer and still going strong.

 

I do have a modern iMac with SSD and 40G RAM for processing photos, so that 2006 Mac Pro is basically a dedicated DAW now. Love it!

[Anderton]

Consumers are always excited about battery life and speed. Those are basic things that can enhance or impede anyone's work flow, whether it's a laptop or a phone.

 

I mentioned those things because they are the public-facing aspects of technology. People don't care about ARM, where the chips are coming from, memory cache, etc. They care about "I can now watch until the of the movie" and "I can have 15 web pages open while streaming Spotify and printing."

[KenElevenShadows]

Consumers are always excited about battery life and speed. Those are basic things that can enhance or impede anyone's work flow, whether it's a laptop or a phone.

 

I mentioned those things because they are the public-facing aspects of technology. People don't care about ARM, where the chips are coming from, memory cache, etc. They care about "I can now watch until the of the movie" and "I can have 15 web pages open while streaming Spotify and printing."

 

That's it. And to be fair, I care about that too. If something cannot do simple tasks, what chance do they have of rendering video or recording ten tracks of audio simultaneously?

 

I want ease of use, speed, and yes, if using a phone, tablet or laptop, battery life, so in that way, I'm not all that different from anyone else.

 

I get into the minutiae only because I want things to work. If I know that I stuff something with 40G of RAM so Photoshop operates better, great. Or an SSD makes everything snappier. Or that a USB-C connection makes it so I don't have to wait a long time for things to save or transfer. Or I get a really great graphics card because everything works better and quicker. Or whatever.

[RABid]

I've been watching a lot of new stories about the huge amount of companies that are leaving California. The Californiacentric opening to the live stream made me wonder if that was Apple's statement that they are never leaving. Of course, they cannot just pack up the big new Apple Campus and take it somewhere else.

[Groove On]

What puzzles me was...no mention of computers!

I'm not surprised, the bulk of Apple's sales/customers now come from the iPhone world; and Apple's trying to capitalize on that. It's an easy upsell to an iPad, Watch or Services and Apple wants to make sure those people get the "message". When you add up the revenue for iOS related products they make up 75+% of Apple's revenue. To me, it makes sense to separate the consumer device crowd from the computer crowd - those crowds geek out about very different things.

 

Some breakdowns of Apples revenue:

 

- https://www.investopedia.com/apple-s-5-most-profitable-lines-of-business-4684130

 

- https://www.businessofapps.com/data/apple-statistics/

[Anderton]

What puzzles me was...no mention of computers!

I'm not surprised, the bulk of Apple's sales/customers now come from the iPhone world; and Apple's trying to capitalize on that. It's an easy upsell to an iPad, Watch or Services and Apple wants to make sure those people get the "message". When you add up the revenue for iOS related products they make up 75+% of Apple's revenue. To me, it makes sense to separate the consumer device crowd from the computer crowd - those crowds geek out about very different things.

 

But to quote from one of your links: "From a strategic perspective, Apple"s personal computer business is very important for the company because it's part of a broad, interlinked product family running on the iOS operating system." That's exactly what I'm saying - they have an ecosystem. Ignoring that message makes no sense to me. With iPhone sales slowing, and demand for computers slowing, Apple is pushing "services" - app store, Apple TV, music, etc. But all these need to play back on something.

 

Macs are a $25,000,000,000 business, but lagging behind in market share. True, Apple will probably have a hard time convincing businesses that are entrenched in Windows to switch. But new people are coming into the market all the time. Saying to that market "You can buy a phone, a tablet, and a watch" is not as compelling, at least to me, as "You can become part of an ecosystem that serves you at play, at home, on the road, and at work."

[RABid]

Apple will have a hard time breaking into the corporate world with their current upgrade policies. Say what you want about Microsoft, but the company works hard to make sure upgrades do not break software from vendors. As a CIO of a medical facility with 600 users there is no way that I could ever put the electronic medical records system on a platform that so frequently breaks software with a "change as we change or get left behind" attitude. The corporate world will not put up with that. The first time that even 10 percent of the users are without because their computer updated and broke the software you start looking for a different system.

[Anderton]

Apple will have a hard time breaking into the corporate world with their current upgrade policies. Say what you want about Microsoft, but the company works hard to make sure upgrades do not break software from vendors. As a CIO of a medical facility with 600 users there is no way that I could ever put the electronic medical records system on a platform that so frequently breaks software with a "change as we change or get left behind" attitude. The corporate world will not put up with that. The first time that even 10 percent of the users are without because their computer updated and broke the software you start looking for a different system.

 

True that, but with more people working from home, more self-employment, and more "creatives," Macs are okay for them. They're not okay for me for the obvious reason that PC Audio Labs is in Nashville, and if I ever run into a mission-critical problem, they'll have me up and running in under 24 hours. And, I can still open projects from the 90s, which I need to do with a surprising degree of regularity. Also, let's face it, Apple didn't really have a desktop for a while, and I need a desktop. But I can easily see ad agencies and such running iMacs all day long.