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Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by hashberry on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @03:07PM (#10193513)
And so it begins... the once innovative company is now playing catch up, losing a little bit of its sex appeal as it copies the bland competition.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by austenallred on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @03:38PM (#10193858)
I really don't give a shit who is copying who. It's technology; we're all building on the backs of inventions created by other people. The important thing to me is who does it the best, not who does it first.

The iPod was nowhere near the first mp3 player, it was just the best one. The iPad wasn't close to the first tablet. Will it be the best tablet? I don't know, but whether or not the Surface had a keyboard first won't be the deciding factor.

Every company is incorporating an absurd number of innovations pioneered by other people. When it comes to hardware, I just want to love using the device.

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by bjacobel on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @05:48PM (#10194859)
The really galling part is the total refusal to admit they're not doing anything innovative. "There has never been another product like the iPad Pro before" was a real quote from today's presentation, and is a complete falsehood.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by IkmoIkmo on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @06:10PM (#10194982)
It's not a complete falsehood but it's a totally empty statement.

Virtually any device you put out that's not exactly, spec-by-spec the same, you can say 'never been a product like this before'. It's true and empty.

They do a lot of those, they're true, hyperbolic, and totally devoid of any significance.

For example they'll say 'the iPhone 6 was the most popular iPhone ... EVER'. As if it's significant. But that's completely unexpected and it's not news, either. I'll happily take a 10 trillion dollar bet that the iPhone 7 will sell even better. And that the new Galaxy S 6 sells better than the 5, and the 7 will sell better than the 6, too.

Or they'll say the iPhone 6S is the most advanced iPhone ... EVER. As if, again, that's news. As if we think they built a 6S that's worse than the 6.

It's a truthful, hyperbolic, totally insignificant statement. It's different from a falsehood.

Calling a 3 second video, a photo, in the sense that it's a bunch of photo frames, that's more of a direct falsehood to me. We use the word photo to denote a still image, and video for multiple frames of photos. But that's a marketing gimmick that's more ridiculous than it is disingenuous.

As for innovation, I mostly agree. The ability to execute extremely well and polish your work isn't innovation. It can be driven by innovations of course but it's not the kind of innovation we talk about when we refer to Apple's history. Since the iPhone 4 I've mostly felt a ton of polish but no real breakthroughs on the phone department for example, tablet wise... mostly just solid iterations like everyone else, nothing fundamentally innovative about the iPad 4 or Air or mini, really. Pro feels like more of the same, split screen we've seen before, styluses we've seen before. Again, executed well and polished.

I mean of course there's innovation, but it's not what sets them apart. Look at Force Touch for example, now 3D touch. People probably missed the fact Huawei demo'd force touch last week on their android phone. And that's a feature we'd think of as their innovation. Others, like a large tablet, split screen, type covers, wireless charging, a stylus, 3-second videos (called live photos) etc are all seen before.

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by rdancer on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @07:40PM (#10195363)
Their ability to churn out better and better devices, year after year, is what's remarkable. That we come to expect it, and don't consider it news, is a testament to their achievement. This is not normal; the industry -- both hardware & software -- is plagued with regressions, with many older models or releases that are preferred by the users to newer ones. Apple are truly unique in their ability to deliver improvements, introduce new technologies, and implement existing technologies in ways that are actually usable, while keeping regressions and serious problems low, much lower than the competition.

What's the best Microsoft desktop OS? Which is the best Dell screen? Which is the best keyboard? Motorola phone? The current year's Apple lineup has always been better than the last year's, and that's what the "best ever" statements mean to me, and I believe that's what they mean to the target audience: "This is new, and it works at least as well as the old stuff."

Which other company, which other product line of comparable complexity, introduces features without compromising usability?

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by ux-app on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @09:43PM (#10195747)
> Apple are truly unique in their ability to deliver improvements, introduce new technologies, and implement existing technologies in ways that are actually usable, while keeping regressions and serious problems low, much lower than the competition.

I like Apple products as much as the next guy, but cmon, this is some serious kool-aid drinking here.

Apple doesn't produce software that is any less issue prone than any other vendor. In fact the chorus complaining about software regressions has been getting louder and louder, even from Apple fans.

Yosemite was a particularly low point with regard to Apple software.

http://fieldguide.gizmodo.com/the-worst-bugs-in-os-x-yosemit...

http://www.tekrevue.com/yosemite-bugs-time-for-another-snow-...

Software is hard. Apple aren't special, their software has just as many issues as any other vendor's, which is actually kind of disappointing given they have full control of the hardware, MS actually does a lot better with regard to software quality given the varied HW landscape Windows is deployed to.

Edit: Software quality isn't just a Yosemite issue with Apple, it's a long running joke that you should never install a X.0 OSX release due to bugs.

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by ams6110 on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @08:31PM (#10195533)
Well cars get better every year, so do appliances, so does just about every consumer product if you're not talking about Walmart-type "price is all that matters" stuff.

I don't think it's remarkable at all. It would be remarkable if they weren't getting better year after year.

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by coldtea on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @06:23PM (#10195056)
>For example they'll say 'the iPhone 6 was the most popular iPhone ... EVER'. As if it's significant. But that's completely unexpected and it's not news, either. I'll happily take a 10 trillion dollar bet that the iPhone 7 will sell even better. And that the new Galaxy S 6 sells better than the 5, and the 7 will sell better than the 6, too.

You understand that sales growth can't last forever right?

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by hkmurakami on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @06:46PM (#10195162)
It's limited by global macroeconomics, which is still raising its ceilings.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by coldtea on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @08:15PM (#10195482)
Actually it's also limited by tons of factors: competition, fashion, etc. People have been announcing the "end" of the iPhone and iPhone killers ever since 2008 (that was BS of course, but it still can happen that some revision, e.g. 6s sells less than the previous).

iPad for example has had that happening to it (later revision sold less well).

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by developer1 on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @11:24PM (#10196012)
iPad is much more niche compared to iPhone. Not everyone wants/needs a consumer device to lounge around with for the price point. Everyone wants a phone. And to people like me, the iPad keyboard is simply unusable in landscape mode. Has this changed? No idea why they insist(ed) on stretching the keyboard across the entire screen instead of leaving half of the keyboard accessible to either side with thumbs. Even if the keyboard has been updated, the larger form factors are just too large and clunky for 2-handed use.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by realityking on Thursday September 10, 2015 @07:48AM (#10197458)
You can tear apart the keyboard in two halves you can use with either thumb. Admittedly a well hidden feature.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by developer1 on Tuesday September 15, 2015 @09:44PM (#10224222)
Hrm, I'll have to try one out with that setting. I have both a MacBook Pro and an iPhone, but being able to watch video on a tablet while lounging around would admittedly be nice. I suspect the device will still be too bulky and heavy to comfortably type on for longer than a minute at a time, even if the keyboard allows for it. I'm always puzzled when I see a photo of someone typing with 2 hands on a tablet while lying down. I can't imagine physically arranging myself in such a way that this is even possible.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by bostonpete on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @07:42PM (#10195369)
Well, at some point it's limited by population...
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by conception on Thursday September 10, 2015 @01:27AM (#10196259)
Not really unless we hit zero population growth world-wide. Otherwise, there will always be more people to buy.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by lotu on Thursday September 10, 2015 @04:43AM (#10196838)
We are likely to hit zero global population grown sometime between 2040 and 2070. It's not around the corner but I hoping to still be alive at that point. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_grow...
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by TallGuyShort on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @06:44PM (#10195157)
But as long as it lasts, they can make statements like that while ignoring any other trends that explain the popularity and make their marketing pitch sound more impressive.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by austenallred on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @07:08PM (#10195258)
I mean, the fact that they continue to sell more iPhones than they ever have of each new model says something. A lot of companies' popularity only lasts one or two product cycles.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by jedrek on Thursday September 10, 2015 @02:54AM (#10196460)
What is this obsession with thinking that Apple (or any business) should present new products by going... "well, shucks, this is kinda crap, but we had a production plan to meet. Sorry, it's not very good..."

Of course they're selling the hell out of it, that's what companies that take in billions of dollars do: make a decent product and then promote it. At least the stuff Apple makes usually works and the features they add into their products are actually useful - yeah, I'm looking at you, Samsung, and your list of Samsung XXX functions that were obviously designed and implemented over a weekend.

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by mbreese on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @05:59PM (#10194927)
There has never been a product like it before. No one else has ever made an iOS tablet like it. :)

It's an admittedly nuanced statement, but not an outright falsehood.

I don't think anyone in that room took it for anything else - they've all seen the Samsung and Microsoft tablets that inspired the Pro. Just like they were inspired by the original iPad, which was inspired by... which was inspired by... etc...

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by chmike on Thursday September 10, 2015 @04:21AM (#10196761)
This is an inductive statement very close to the doubly linked assertion presented by [Dr Milton Erickson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Erickson) from witch the academic example is "Save money, buy now". Here the induced assertion is "There has never been a product like it before" which is obviously false. This is beyond marketing. It is manipulative talk.

In my opinion, this should be made illegal. We have seen in Germany during the years 1935 to 1945, and more recently with ISIS, what manipulative talk could lead people to do.

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by jedmeyers on Thursday September 10, 2015 @12:47PM (#10199135)
Who will separate 'manipulative talk' from 'marketing' or other types of speech?
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by chmike on Thursday September 17, 2015 @04:52AM (#10232271)
False advertising is a misdemeanor crime. You can be fined up to $5,000 for it and spend six months in jail, or more if it’s your second offense.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by infinite8s on Thursday September 10, 2015 @06:11PM (#10200890)
The Department of Truth.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by tyrust on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @06:09PM (#10194974)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie#Lying_by_omission

>I don't think anyone in that room took it for anything else - they've all seen the Samsung and Microsoft tablets that inspired the Pro.

Perhaps that's true for a room of tech experts and media. As for the thousands of common consumers watching at home, they may not draw the same conclusions.

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by gress on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @10:10PM (#10195831)
You do realize that the iPad was the first mass market multi-touch tablet, and that the Samsung and Microsoft tablets were introduced as a response to its success?
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by coldtea on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @06:22PM (#10195048)
It's marketing. And when it comes to marketing its far more true than that Lynx will get you laid (lol), or that some new detergent will revolutionaze how clean your clothes are, or that some GAP clothes will make you part of the "in" crowd.

It's also depends on the level we're talking. If we just take "product like the iPad pro" to mean "a large tablet" then yes it's a "complete falsehood".

But it obviously means "a large tablet with this attention to detail, with the supporting OS and app ecosystem finely tuned to work along with it". Which is true -- as all Surface tablets I've seen are if not subpar, different in several ways.

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by rdancer on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @07:58PM (#10195426)
> Lynx will get you laid

Oh yes, it will. Getting teen-agers to start applying basic precepts of personal hygiene is like trying to drill an oil well with a toothbrush. Those commercials get it exactly right: (1) you stink (2) only men who don't stink get laid (3) use a bloody deodorant, you testosterone-laden pig!

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by jann on Thursday September 10, 2015 @05:07AM (#10196918)
Note: Lynx is called Axe in other countries.

I was just thinking how a terminal web browser gets you laid :)

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by TeMPOraL on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @07:15PM (#10195287)
> It's marketing. And when it comes to marketing its far more true than that Lynx will get you laid (lol), or that some new detergent will revolutionaze how clean your clothes are, or that some GAP clothes will make you part of the "in" crowd.

Yes. It's marketing - the magic context in which we suspend our disbelief and let people lie to our faces, and we then applaud and pay them.

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by stouset on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @07:45PM (#10195375)
You confuse advertising and marketing.

Marketing is the process of figuring out who a product is for and how to get them to want to buy it (through channels like engineering, design, and yes, advertising). Apple being an excellent marketing company isn't a slur — it's an incredible complement. They absolutely excel at understanding who their target audience is, building devices that appeal to that audience, and advertising to ensure that audience is aware of how those devices address needs they may not have even known they had.

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by Spivak on Thursday September 10, 2015 @11:21AM (#10198592)
Eight, let's not try to twist words here. Apple is great at marketing but I don't think that was person's intended meaning. He means that Apple is good at manipulating people.

They make okay products (in absolute terms, not implying that anything is better) and would not have their completely rabid following did they not manipulate people into buying into their status, lifestyle, and that they're more valuable than their worth.

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by coldtea on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @08:18PM (#10195488)
Do we really "suspend our disbelief"? I don't think we're naive 50s tv viewers in this day and age.

If anything gets us is not us believing the ad, but just getting pumped with the nice visuals and subtle suggestions (so more subsconscius manipulation than convincing us).

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by TeMPOraL on Thursday September 10, 2015 @07:53AM (#10197490)
The question is, why do we allow it? If you took the behaviour that is standard-pracitce for marketers and journalists and tried that with a friend, you'd get punched in the face. Somehow we shielded a few areas of our lives (like advertising, journalism, politics) and decided that it's ok to be deceitful in those areas.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by 72deluxe on Thursday September 10, 2015 @05:31AM (#10197002)
I used Lynx but preferred elinks or curl when in desperate need.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by Fiahil on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @09:39PM (#10195731)
I prefer to think of this as mermaid marketing. It's nice to hear them sing, but don't fall for it or they will eat you.

Watching theses events is like this famous passage of the Odyssey. Once you are tightly attached, and don't risk to go overboard (and start buying stuff you don't really need), then enjoy the show. I've been told their exciting song is the most detailed and beautiful thing you've ever heard :)

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by kbenson on Thursday September 10, 2015 @12:07PM (#10198840)
The considerate seafarer might consider warning others, rather than sitting back with popcorn. All these arguments really center around two points, will the mermaids eat you, and even if they will eat you, should we care that the singing tricks people or just accept it?
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by yangkaisun on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @07:24PM (#10195322)
Yeah, isn't Microsoft Surface Pro marketed precisely to be an enterprise-ready tablet?
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by IBM on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @05:55PM (#10194902)
I literally laughed out loud at this comment. HN is always predictable.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by kailuowang on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @04:56PM (#10194525)
It's not the copying that worries people, it's the lack of not-coping, i.e. innovations. iPod is not the first mp3 player, iPhone is not the first smart phone, but they were packed with innovative ideas that stood them out. We see less and less such ideas from Apple.

Their execution/quality control is still top notch though, but other companies are catching up.

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by dasil003 on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @06:02PM (#10194945)
The problem is that after a string of successes like iMac, iPod, iTunes, iPhone, there is no way to out-do that. There is no market so ripe for disruption that plays to Apple's strengths the way that the iPhone setup. That's why the iPad is so disappointing to analysts and why nothing Apple does is that impressive now. There is no opportunity for the next iPhone-level success in the market today. It's out there somewhere in the future, but everyone carrying around a $700 pocket computer is a game changer of a magnitude that can only be approximated by physical implants. It certainly is not approached by any imaginable Watch or Google Glass type of device.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by threeseed on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @09:59PM (#10195805)
> There is no opportunity for the next iPhone-level success in the market today.

Oh yes there is. The car.

Very high margin. Plenty of opportunity to do something radically different.

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by tallanvor on Thursday September 10, 2015 @04:09AM (#10196716)
Tesla is already there. I mean, Apple could still try, but they're not likely to come up with anything that people will consider "revolutionary".
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by 72deluxe on Thursday September 10, 2015 @05:34AM (#10197008)
Touch-screen steering wheel? What could possibly go wrong?

As an aside, I find the obsession with touchscreen interfaces in cars to be irritating because obviously the testers test these things whilst sat perfectly still in a stationary vehicle or in a car with hydrogas suspension (just kidding), and not on a typical road that has bumps. They're impossible to use whilst in motion as your arm bounces around.

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by anjc on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @06:48PM (#10195170)
If Apple had made the Surface Pro (which hasn't existed for very long) before Microsoft then it would have been the next in that line of major innovations. They didn't, because of a lack of foresight, but the opportunity to create it was readily available.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by gress on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @10:13PM (#10195842)
The surface pro is a failure. Apple didn't make a pro tablet earlier because they understood the correct time to introduce such a product.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by anjc on Thursday September 10, 2015 @06:04AM (#10197104)
By what metrics is it a failure? Because when I last looked at Microsoft's financial statements, their revenue was up due to the Surface (Profit was down for unrelated reasons).

I'm assuming you haven't used a Surface Pro but you can mark my words now, Apple will release a direct copy of the Surface within 3 years. The iPad Pro is a glorified iPad and will be utterly unusable for doing anything professional, so it's not a copy at this stage.

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by gress on Thursday September 10, 2015 @10:29AM (#10198221)
This is already demonstrably false. The iPad is already in use for professional purposes, and if you'd watched it, you have seen the stage demo prove you wrong.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by anjc on Thursday September 10, 2015 @10:39AM (#10198286)
What professional purposes?
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by gress on Thursday September 10, 2015 @11:52AM (#10198753)
Medicine, CAD, Commercial Aviation, Finance, Retail, Graphic Design & Illustration...

Pretty much everything serious.

https://www.apple.com/business/mobile-enterprise-apps/health...

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by com2kid on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @09:52PM (#10195782)
The main innovations that the iPod and iPhone launched with was in regards to their business models.

iPod had iTunes, true flat rate pricing for all music. Giant articles (if not books) have been written describing the huge challenge that was.

The iPhone was a completely new relationship between the phone manufacturer and the cellular carrier that allowed Apple to rake in unheard of profits. Their other main innovation with the iPhone was making a touch screen UI that was good. To be fair, that took a lot of engineering and UX work (early gen cap touch was terrible).

Apple was then able to pivot and make an app store built on existing infrastructure, another innovation that none of the other phone manufactures made. Yes "app stores" existed before the App Store, but they where not the one stop shop with guaranteed assurances that Apple offered. Executing on the App Store idea perfectly involved innovation for sure.

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by bduerst on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @05:23PM (#10194708)
I dunno - Apple kind of killed NFC adoption by waiting so long to finally include it. They should have had it back in 2012.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by giovannibajo1 on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @06:14PM (#10195005)
That's because they are not a OEM that throws hardware together trying to differentiate, no matter what the software using it will be like. Apple added NFC the day they had the software and the service ready, with all the intricacies in making a secure and private payment system, that works offline, is as fast or faster than swiping a card with no passwords to type, and that makes them make money but without charging more neither the users neither the merchant, and is interoperable with existing credit cards and banks (including the per-bank customized provisioning process).

Putting everything together is several order of magnitude harder than adding a part number to a BOM years before the ecosystem is ready to use it appropriately. They had to get there feature by feature, one at a time. Touch ID was a stepping stone for instance, and that's a whole engineering and design task by itself. It's a multi-year evolution to get to the point of adding a service that incidentally happens to use NFC as one of the many involved technologies. So, no, they did not "add NFC" without Apple Pay.

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by sigmar on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @06:53PM (#10195191)
>Apple added NFC the day they had the software and the service ready, with all the intricacies in making a secure and private payment system, that works offline, is as fast or faster than swiping a card with no passwords to type...

What specific changes have made it possible for NFC to work in this way? All those things you listed seem possible in 2012.

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by npunt on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @07:47PM (#10195386)
Market changes - POS credit card machines were scheduled to be phased out in favor of chips and NFC by EOY2015 [1].

Apple Pay didn't come out of the blue. The impending POS infrastructure change created the opportunity to launch a better payments user experience in the 2014-2015 timeframe. Apple knew this, and developed/acquired/refined a better security method (touchID + tokenization) and corresponding user experience to negotiate on favorable terms with banks and merchants, which sealed the deal for many and created momentum toward getting stragglers onboard and reaching broad market penetration.

Just adding an NFC chip and calling it a day changes nothing. Few markets are penetrated by hardware - or even hardware and software - alone.

[1] http://blogs.wsj.com/corporate-intelligence/2014/02/06/octob...

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by bduerst on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @08:12PM (#10195470)
That's not quite right. That article is about chip & pin only, and not about NFC. Apple made the business decision to build their own payments system and lock merchants in using Passbook, rather than use NFC, which is more open.

When it comes to market adoption of hardware, typically the market leader gets picked up for adoption. By forcing their own version of mobile payments (passbook) and not allowing NFC, the market was split and NFC adoption stymied.

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by spiralpolitik on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @08:59PM (#10195607)
That's not quite right either.

Apple Pay does not require Apple-specific contactless payment terminals and will work with Visa's PayWave, MasterCard's PayPass, and American Express's ExpressPay terminals.

So merchants are not "locked in" to passbook.

The reason for Apple Pay success is that they worked with the companies in question so that the infrastructure was already in place when the phone was launched. I was in the UK the week of the Apple Pay launch there and the same terminals that 3 months prior were accepting my contactless card were now accepting my iPhone.

In other words it just worked.

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by bduerst on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @11:58PM (#10196080)
None of that was true in 2012 when Apple released Passbook. [1]

The only reason Apple has support for those now in 2015 is because merchants weren't falling for the walled-garden ploy. Apple has finally caught up with other forms of payment, which is why Apple was a major staller for NFC technology adoption.

[1] http://gizmodo.com/5944863/apple-reveals-full-line-up-of-pas...

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by npunt on Thursday September 10, 2015 @12:18AM (#10196124)
Um... your link doesn't refute parent. Passbook in 2012 was just an endpoint for things like boarding passes, tickets, and gift cards you bought elsewhere.

From related link [1]:

> There's no NFC in the new iPhone, but you'll be able to use your screen as a scannable gift card/plane ticket/voucher/etc. with Passbook, which creates a virtual bundle of all those annoying cards you cram into your wallet. Here's an ideal little scenario for you: a free cup of coffee at Starbucks, because you've got a $25 credit built right into your phone. Hand it to the cashier, beep, coffee, slurp, bye.

If you think this somehow stymied NFC... thats an incredible stretch. Before Apple was it the gift card mafia stopping NFC? Were merchants going to just throw away their perfectly usable POS machines... because technology?

[1] http://gizmodo.com/5944514/all-the-best-new-features-of-ios-...

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by bduerst on Thursday September 10, 2015 @12:28AM (#10196150)
Yes it does and you're splitting hairs. Passbook was Apple's mobile payment response to NFC, and why they didn't adopt NFC in iPhones. They were trying to build an app ecosystem using credits for their mobile payments, and it didn't work so years later we see them catch up with Pay.

The entire context of this discussion was how Apple killed NFC adoption in 2012 by not supporting NFC and splitting the market with their own walled-garden solution. Even your quote shows the surprise on Gizmodo's part that they released some gift card substitute...

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by npunt on Thursday September 10, 2015 @02:37AM (#10196405)
It only seems like I'm splitting hairs because you're making huge leaps that aren't supported by logic or evidence and sound vaguely conspiratorial.

Lets say Apple had stuck NFC in an iPhone 4S. What then? Mobile payments is not a faucet you just turn on. They'd have to convince the entire market - retailers, banks, and credit card companies alike - that they needed to incur tens of million dollars of infrastructure changes and possibly more with fraud in order to... well, what exactly do they get? They'd move from something that people were used to (credit/debit cards) that had clear risk profiles to something unknown with little evidence of consumers willingness to adopt and no added benefit to retailers or banks.

You might respond - its a better user experience! Banks don't give a shit about user experience, thats why they close at 4pm. Retailers don't either, thats why they'd buy POS machines with crap UIs and never replace them even when the digitizer could barely create a signature.

Banks and credit card companies care about risk, and retailers care about keeping costs down and seeing clear benefit in the form of evidence of consumer interest before adopting. Banks and credit card companies are also powerful, quite conservative, and are middle-men that do not necessarily have users interests at heart. Nobody in this industry turns on a dime (heh). Knowing this, Apple chose to wait for the steady trickle of POS machine replacements in the coming POS transition that would follow from Visa's EMV migration announced in 2011 [1], focus on risk-reduction and gaining leverage with credit card companies and banks through TouchID, and launch Passbook as a proof of concept both to train users and show retailers that people want to use their phones. Passbook wasn't an mobile payments competitor, it was a progenitor. It sidestepped major gaps in infrastructure, and it was placed in the second or third tier of iOS features due to its limited usefulness.

Passbook seems to be what you're hung up on. Here's a question - if Apple is so amazeballs that it could have moved the market in 2012, why then are there still retailers and banks that are slow on the Apple Pay uptake? Is it because Google and the coalition of second tier nobodys is missing? No, its because banks and retailers generally don't give a shit about user experience, manage their infrastructure at their own pace, and have all sorts of issues and internal politics that affect their decision making about _anything_.

You keep saying the same thing and haven't provided nearly enough evidence to support the leaps you're making that Apple somehow killed the beautiful 'open' fairyland that would have been NFC in 2012. There was no NFC market in 2012 to split, just bumbling attempts that misread how to make headway in the market, and a handful of Android phones with the hardware just so they could say 'first!' I'd love to see evidence to the contrary.

[1] http://www.emv-connection.com/emv-migration-driven-by-paymen...

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by bduerst on Wednesday September 16, 2015 @12:03AM (#10224605)
You've created a string of hypotheticals and argued them down like they're straw men. I kind of like the one you created about where I would say something about "user experience", because it's fluffy and mocking (on your part) at the same time. Bravo.

I had said that Apple stalled NFC development by not releasing it in 2014. Are you saying that NFC market adoption would have been the same, if Apple had released NFC in 2012?

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by thrownaway2424 on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @07:41PM (#10195365)
They were _possible_ in 2012 but getting everyone on board is difficult. Google included NFC on the Nexus S in 2010. The Nexus S was an atrocious piece of junk compared to its contemporary, the iPhone 4. NFC did nothing to make using the Nexus S more pleasurable. Android beam? Nobody used that. Google did not release the NFC-capable Wallet app until 2011, and at that time the integration between the app, the phone (still the Nexus S) and the payment terminals was ghastly. Nobody used it because it was much slower than paying by any other way and half the time it didn't work. The 2011 Galaxy Nexus didn't make things any better. The NFC antenna was attached to the flexible battery cover and the spring-loaded contacts didn't really work. Google was still pushing Wallet but the merchants didn't care because they weren't getting a better price on transaction clearance and close to nobody had the hardware.

NFC was a complete basket case, and still remains that way except for Apple.

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by bduerst on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @07:51PM (#10195402)
What you just described is exactly how Apple killed NFC adoption.

The lack of NFC, or even announcing plans for NFC, from Apple made it very difficult to develop anything useful for NFC. Without universal market share and with an uncertain future, NFC was avoided by many hardware developers who would have built anything useful.

June 2012 was the hinging point because it was when NFC payments were just picking up steam, but Apple elected to try to build their own walled-garden payments system using Passbook and bar codes.

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by etchalon on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @09:46PM (#10195759)
What are you talking about? Passbook was never a payment system, it just had gift cards. Passbook isn't a payment system NOW. Apple Pay is, Passbook is just the app that shows users their credit cards.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by bduerst on Thursday September 10, 2015 @12:04AM (#10196086)
Right, Passbook was Apple's first play at mobile payments. They were trying to build an app ecosystem that used credits to to make mobile payments. It was Apple's response to NFC which wasn't very good.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by etchalon on Thursday September 10, 2015 @01:15AM (#10196236)
It wasn't a mobile payments play, though. It was a solution to storing things like movie tickets, airline tickets, gift card vouchers, etc. "Payment" was never in its vocabulary.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by ptomato on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @07:39PM (#10195357)
TrustZone/"Secure Enclave" as apple is calling it.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by evanmoran on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @07:37PM (#10195355)
They wouldn't have had fingerprint readers and the deals with credit card companies to make it then. In my view they didn't kill it they saved it by waiting until they could do it well.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by madeofpalk on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @07:32PM (#10195346)
> I dunno - Apple kind of killed NFC adoption by waiting so long to finally include it. They should have had it back in 2012.

Well, they did Apple Pay. NFC is just an implementation detail, and NFC payments is far from dead

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by 72deluxe on Thursday September 10, 2015 @05:36AM (#10197020)
Google added NFC years ago and few added it to their phones - manufacturers have started adding it but then Google doesn't offer Wallet here in the UK and then chucked Wallet in the bin I think, so they REALLY didn't help NFC in my opinion.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by johansch on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @06:01PM (#10194942)
They still haven't included it...
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by IkmoIkmo on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @06:15PM (#10195011)
Well it's there for apple things like Apple Pay. There's no real incentive for them to open it up to developers unless they're controlling the space. i.e. for Apple Pay it's nice, or say to unlock your car, or unlock your home's door with Home Kit, but random NFC thingies? They're not really interested.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by npunt on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @09:49PM (#10195773)
> We see less and less such ideas from Apple.

Disagree. This is a really commonly held viewpoint that I think is the product of our fast news cycles, and I don't think it approaches truth for another several years.

You are totally right that iPod and iPhone were not the first. While these were cool products when they came out, I think what's often lost is that it was only in the years of incremental improvements that defined how important these products were.

Tons of use cases are being unlocked in health, education, home automation, transportation, payments, enterprise, etc that these markets have been waiting for and wanting and are truly transformative. They're just not talked about as much, or hit that level of 'omg' for people who aren't dealing with those use cases, but they're real. The less sexy incremental stuff is amazing, and in fact, way more interesting because so few companies get the details right.

Just like you're saying about not being first, most blow-your-mind ideas that will come out in the next 10 years are probably already thought of, prototyped, or launched in some highly crippled form to an extremely limited audience. Two amazing things we can assume are in the pipeline are:

1. Driverless car, which will fundamentally change our transportation infrastructure.

2. Eye tracking and face tracking, which unlock new interaction paradigms that are even more natural and seamless. See the recent Faceshift acquisition [1] for evidence.

These are going to be awesome! But they'll take time to perfect.

I'm not sure what qualifies as innovations for you. I'll admit I'm not blown away by today's stuff, it is S-cycle after all, but I am impressed by the way they've implemented 3D touch. Its the first force touch implementation (vs watch and macbook) that I really like because it looks incredibly intuitive and everyday useful - like something that I'll wonder how I lived without.

Well anyway, I think we'd probably agree about a lot things, but I'd be curious as to what big innovation you've got in mind that's missing. Cheers.

[1] http://www.macrumors.com/2015/09/04/faceshift-motion-capture...

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by beedogs on Thursday September 10, 2015 @02:09AM (#10196329)
Apple's not going to release a driverless car. Where are people coming up with this crap?
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by npunt on Thursday September 10, 2015 @03:12AM (#10196508)
I guess that test track for driverless cars that they've been in talks with [1], and all those auto executives and autonomous vehicle engineers they're hiring are going to work on something else?

Just because they've been a computer company thus far doesn't mean it'll always be that way. They're the largest company on earth with over $100B in the bank and incredible consumer goodwill looking for any space with large profit margin potential where they can differentiate with good user experience.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/aug/14/apple-self...

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by rdancer on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @08:00PM (#10195432)
oh come on, apple watch?!
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by craigvn on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @05:49PM (#10194862)
But the iPod, iPhone & iPad were much better than the incumbents. iPad Pro is not.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by m_mueller on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @06:37PM (#10195122)
Display size, resolution and performance in a passively cooled device are things that seem to differentiate it from competitors. IMO these are significant.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by acqq on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @07:48PM (#10195394)
Yes, to compare, Surface Pro 3 still has the fan(!) but even so twice as little pixels.

Surface 3 Pro:

12.0 inches (30 cm) 2160x1440 (216 ppi) = 3 M pixels and the noisy fan

iPad Pro:

12.9-inch 2732-by-2048 resolution at 264 pixels per inch (ppi) = 5.5 M pixels (!) and no fan

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by m_mueller on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @08:18PM (#10195491)
Also let's not forget the better aspect ratio of the iPad - this has always been my biggest gripe with the Surface besides the IMO terrible UX of Win8. Win10 could become a much better deal if they can pull off Desktop / Touch UI integration properly, so far there are still many edge cases to fix from what I hear.

On the other hand, as long as we don't know how good the Apple pencil is for writing (e.g. palm recognition), it's quite unclear how well suited the iPad Pro really is. A year from now the Pro tablet market will look very competitive I think, but for now it's still too much of a toy for my taste.

[deleted]
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by m_mueller on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @09:13PM (#10195645)
iPad has always had 4:3. And it's still quite a difference between the two, 3:2 still feels very strange when you hold it in portrait. Holding A4 paper in portrait makes this even more obvious.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by acqq on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @09:46PM (#10195765)
You are right, iPads had always 4:3, mea culpa.

"The aspect ratio of A4, 1:1.414 is near the average of 1.5 for 2:3 and 1.333 for 3:4. US Letter is 1.294.

Still Surface Pro 3 aspect is better than 16:9 (1.78) at least.

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by m_mueller on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @10:27PM (#10195872)
Yep. Now add some buttons while viewing an A4 paper. On an iPad they fit nicely next to where you're holding it, on a Surface you either have to put them in an awkward position, shrink the content or have them it popup in some generally non discoverable gesture.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by acqq on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @06:18PM (#10195028)
To you. It looks better to me. It depends what you expect and need. But I'll have to try it to claim something explicitly.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by coldtea on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @06:25PM (#10195068)
Have tried it?
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by notNow on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @03:58PM (#10194088)
So what's with all this silly frivolous litigation by Apple over "swipe to unlock" and "rounded corners" if it's OK to copy or steal from each other?
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by austenallred on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @03:59PM (#10194099)
I don't speak for Apple. I think those are bullshit.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by comex on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @05:35PM (#10194786)
They are also mostly over.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by mikeyouse on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @05:07PM (#10194605)
When the litigation attorney for Samsung can't tell the difference between the two devices in open court, they might have gone a little too far in copying the iPad's design..

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/14/us-apple-samsung-l...

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by spacehome on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @06:02PM (#10194946)
From that article:

> Koh frequently remarked on the similarity between each company's tablets. At one point during the hearing, she held one black glass tablet in each hand above her head, and asked Sullivan if she could identify which company produced which.

> "Not at this distance your honor," said Sullivan, who stood at a podium roughly ten feet away.

I get what you're saying, but they were asked to tell the difference over an unspecified distance.

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by notNow on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @06:19PM (#10195037)
Since the companies adopted the slab form factor for the devices. all smartphone and tablets look the same esp. from the front.

I don't see this argument holding water and it seems to me that my interlocutor is comfortable with Apple stealing/copying other people's work but when they do to Apple it's all hell breaks loose, double standards maybe?

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by BinaryIdiot on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @03:25PM (#10193699)
In all fairness I know many people who love to draw on the Surface and really wanted a more precise pen type of input on the iPad; I think this was a long time coming and really necessary.

The keyboard cover thing? Sure I could agree with you on that. I actually think Surface did a better job with it especially with the adjustable kickstand but we'll see when I can actually touch and play with the iPad Pro one.

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by fluidcruft on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @05:58PM (#10194922)
I'm a dinosaur still waiting for something to replace paper.

Maybe this is it, maybe not. What I want to do: read things, highlight, scribble notes, diagrams, outlines, sync, search, etc. Basically I want something that completely replaces paper coming out of a printer. It seems like the younger people maybe are more adapted to digital documents, but I have very strong spatial memory for paper and can find things I've written or read in paper very quickly.

Surface Pro has this, but is overkill frankly. iPad, kindle, other tablets have not been sufficiently usable to actually replace a printed or blank sheet of paper. This device may fit that use case, but it inhabits a priced point that's worse than Surface Pro. For some reason I'm waiting for something in the $200-300 price range to show up--things that are more expensive I feel like I have to protect and coddle. So, yes something like iOS definitely could work there. There are even some interesting eink devices that go after the paper replacement route. But they are also too expensive compared to Surface Pro.

Maybe this will be a big enough kick in the butt for Google to start supporting pen input in ChromeOS or Android (there are Android tablets that have pen input, but IIRC that support is plastered on top by manufacturers increasing support and integration costs significantly, so software updates don't happen).

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by lewisl9029 on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @07:08PM (#10195259)
> Maybe this will be a big enough kick in the butt for Google to start supporting pen input in ChromeOS or Android (there are Android tablets that have pen input, but IIRC that support is plastered on top by manufacturers increasing support and integration costs significantly, so software updates don't happen).

This is what I'm hoping for as well. I'd love to use a phone with pen support, but as long as it's not built into the core OS, pen support is going to come at the cost of timely OS updates. And that's a trade-off I'm not willing to make since I generally buy unlocked and tend to skip quite a few generations before upgrading.

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by mhomde on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @05:28PM (#10194751)
Yeah, the Mac book is really huge within certain tech/creative circles and not in a million years would they get a windows machine (well,a few do albeit very reluctantly).

Every mac illustrator worth his salt is going to throw money at the screen to get this and I'm sure many many apps for the pen aren't far behind. Smart move by Apple

The enterprise market is more tricky... I can see some fancy plastic surgery office having iPad Pro's but when it comes to "less sexy" enterprise uses I still think Surface and Windows might be ahead

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by egypturnash on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @05:40PM (#10194815)
I wonder how long it'll take AstroPad (http://astropad.com) to support the Apple Pencil.

I'm an illustrator and this is definitely on my list. I am not a big fan of drawing where I'm looking any more, but Astropad + an ipad Pro will let me work in Illustrator in a cramped environment.

And maybe in a couple of years we'll finally get an Air/iPad Pro hybrid. Like the Surface, except running OSX.

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by 72deluxe on Thursday September 10, 2015 @05:40AM (#10197037)
throwing money at the screen

haha that makes me laugh. Either a big wad of cash notes, or bags of metal change, or flicking a credit card at it like ninja stars. Even funnier would be the attempt to pay contactless by waving their NFC phone repeatedly over the screen like we used to do with magnets on CRTs before we realised the damage it did...

I have a MacBook and every time I use a Windows laptop I find the touchpad to be a complete joke and clicky clicky clicky. Even booting to Windows on my MacBook is painful as the touchpad suddenly becomes very dumb.

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by jcl on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @09:11PM (#10195639)
The stylus is interesting in that it's a total about-face for Apple. So far as I can tell, no Apple store has ever stocked an iPhone- or iPad-compatible stylus -- not the cheap capacitive ones nor even the iPad-exclusive pressure-sensitive Wacom stylus for artists, despite stocking Wacom tablets.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YY3MSaUqMg

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by MengerSponge on Thursday September 10, 2015 @03:24AM (#10196553)
Ahem: http://www.apple.com/shop/product/HHVE2ZM/A/pencil-by-fiftyt...

It's more than a year old now.

And you're deliberately misinterpreting that keynote. Unlike the devices that basically were on the market, you don't need a stylus to navigate the OS or use the device at all.

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by jcl on Thursday September 10, 2015 @12:31PM (#10199022)
Ah, I wasn't aware of this. Looks like it was first stocked in Apple stores in January (despite it and other styluses being available well before):

http://www.macrumors.com/2015/01/21/pencil-available-apple-s...

I guess I hadn't asked in a store since then. :)

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by 2muchcoffeeman on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @10:40PM (#10195902)
Didn't Jobs publicly bash flash-based music players and then they released the iPod Nano?
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by aflinik on Thursday September 10, 2015 @03:42AM (#10196609)
That's far from true, I bought my FiftyThree Pencil at Apple Store.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by jamra on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @06:38PM (#10195127)
Apple strives with the nuances of its hardware. It's not necessarily how innovative and unique the product is, but the strength at which Apple secures the most unique hardware that sets them apart from the competition. Their touch sensors are different than everyone else's in supporting multi strength touches. They have good battery life with larger than HD displays. The device weights 1.5 lbs, which is much lighter than the surface. This is no trivial feat. The blanket statements on the device's general purpose and how it has been done before is a huge generalization and a refusal to grasp the power of Apple as a company. It hasn't been done before in the way Apple does it.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by dmoy on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @08:40PM (#10195555)
It is about 14% lighter.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by gress on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @10:18PM (#10195855)
And has a dramatically better display, and all day battery, and no noisy fan.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by jamra on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @09:58PM (#10195802)
According to google, the Surface 2 is ~1.5 lbs. It's lighter than I remembered it being.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by coldtea on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @06:16PM (#10195019)
>the once innovative company is now playing catch up

Apple never did the VERY first products of a category. There was Xerox before Lisa, PDAs before Newton, mp3 players before the iPod, smartphones before the iPhone, tablets before the iPad, smartwatches before the Apple Watch, etc.

The only did the first products of a category that were where at least half-thought out (instead of rushed crap), and people actually wanted to buy in droves.

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by 72deluxe on Thursday September 10, 2015 @05:44AM (#10197050)
Apple HiFi ? (giant wooly sounding box for iPod)

Apple PowerCD? (odd vertical CD player)

Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh? (oddly, the Cisco E20 appears to be identical in appearance)

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by coldtea on Thursday September 10, 2015 @07:38AM (#10197413)
And several of other flops (iPod socks anyone?).

But I didn't said they don't make flops.

Just that their "signature thing" is not coming up first with something, but coming with something that's somewhat thought out and people actually want to by. People remember them for these things: the iPod, iPhone, iPad, MacBook Air, iMac, etc (and IIRC Apple Watch too, did better than all competitor smartwatches combined).

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by rbanffy on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @10:16PM (#10195851)
To be fair, both Lisa and Newton failed.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by coldtea on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @11:10PM (#10195980)
Lisa yes, but Mac the v2 version of the same idea, carried the company for the next 15 years.

Newton is a more clear cut failure -- but was too ahead of its time as most things one would want just werent there (internet would be a biggie).

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by melling on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @03:15PM (#10193605)
Well, it did take them about a decade to catch up with Microsoft when they introduced the iPad. Bill Gates announced tablets 15 years ago:

http://youtu.be/T5Va8XfuN9s

What really is happening is the usual trolling that happens after every Apple event.

Apple has different priorities. They'll make tablets more functional as CPU and battery improve. There will be a conversion with the desktop, or at least low-end laptops, at some point. When they put a fan in the iPad then you can question if they've lost their way.

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by ctdonath on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @03:44PM (#10193925)
And Apple beat that by 8 years with the Newton.

(And Wang beat that by several years with a 3" thick monstrosity that, IIRC, went nowhere.)

Yes, the trolling reoccurs. Key is how excited the marketplace is for which product, naysayers aside. As others note: the iPod wasn't new, but it was subjectively better than anything else out there.

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by selestify on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @05:59PM (#10194926)
> (And Wang beat that by several years with a 3" thick monstrosity that, IIRC, went nowhere.)

What was this and where can I read more about it?

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by ctdonath on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @07:01PM (#10195218)
It was about a foot square (or more), at least 3 inches thick, had a large handle to grip, a wired stylus, and a painfully low-res B/W LCD display. I got to handle it a few times, but saw no compelling use (the concept was great, but technology was far from there). IIRC, 3 came with a Wang minicomputer at the time, late 1980's or early 1990's.

I've tried to find a picture of it several times since, but nothing yet.

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by 72deluxe on Thursday September 10, 2015 @05:45AM (#10197054)
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by neuronic on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @07:46PM (#10195381)
Apple didn't invent tablets, it made tablets usable.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by zerohm on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @04:18PM (#10194254)
Agreed. Apple and MS have completely different strategies. Apple chose to go the multiple OS route. MS is going with one OS to rule them all. (Also Apple ultimately wants to sell complete gadgets, whereas MS wants to sell software and services)
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by sremani on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @04:38PM (#10194405)
Microsoft did go multi-OS route but the Windows branding did not allow the flexibility and led to demise of Windows RT.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by zerohm on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @03:47PM (#10193965)
Yes, they are playing catch up in the cover keyboard and stylus categories. However, they are still dominating mobile, revamping their TV line, and growing in a shrinking PC market. Oh and also they just released a pretty successful watch.

Just saying, I think Apple is still a pretty innovative company.

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by nawitus on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @04:47PM (#10194466)
How do you define dominating mobile? There are far more Android smartphones.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by rdancer on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @08:28PM (#10195523)
Person-hours of actual use; app purchase & use; web use; user satisfaction.

For example, if you're developing a business website, iOS dominates the market, because optimizing for Android is nigh impossible, and iOS users have more money, and spend more money (on average, your market segment may differ, mine does).

Or, if you're considering making an app, iOS dominates the market, because Android users don't like using apps, much less paying for them.

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by dendory on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @08:52PM (#10195592)
Apple sells more phones than any company in the world, with Samsung close behind.

Apple makes more profit than any phone company in the world, by a very large margin.

That == Dominating mobile.

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by sigmar on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @11:39PM (#10196044)
>Apple sells more phones than any company in the world, with Samsung close behind.

what?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_mobile_ph...

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by zerohm on Thursday September 10, 2015 @09:43AM (#10197941)
Apple is dominating the high end mobile market, where profits and the most desired customers are. (People who pay for apps and spend money within apps)

http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/14/revenue-gap-between-ios-and...

The "free with contract" or sub $400 market is a cut throat race to the bottom between Samsung and Xiaomi. Apple chooses not to enter that race (despite several journalists claiming they NEED a cheap phone to survive).

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by MaysonL on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @07:23PM (#10195315)
Are any of them profitable? For sure, none as profitable as the iPhone.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by erispoe on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @05:02PM (#10194578)
iOS has a 14% market share
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by r00fus on Thursday September 10, 2015 @07:24PM (#10201161)
Apple has near complete profit share: http://www.wsj.com/articles/apples-share-of-smartphone-indus...

Yes,92% of industry profits is domination in my book. Without sustainable profits, marketshare is meaningless. Only profitable players are Samsung and Apple.

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by metamet on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @06:15PM (#10195007)
DOMINATION.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by coldtea on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @06:31PM (#10195093)
They dominate the profits -- and the people that actuall do anything "smart" (most web use in the US for example, is from iOS devices, despite Android devices being far more percentage-wise).

Androids huge sales are mostly low end of the market -- people who don't care about smartphones or computers, and just get whats cheaper with a 2 year contract.

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by sbov on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @08:00PM (#10195431)
> most web use in the US for example, is from iOS devices

Any proof?

Our US-only ecommerce site has 33% more visitors using Android than iOS. Our other US-only site has 2x more Android visitors than iOS.

I realize that sites vary by demographics, so I'm curious if you're just making this statement up, using your own site's stats, or found something that actually backs this up on the wider web.

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by coldtea on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @08:09PM (#10195460)
>Any proof?

http://fortune.com/2015/09/04/apple-tv-everywhere-share/ http://www.cnet.com/news/apple-outshines-android-in-us-mobil...

Or:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2014/08/03/ios-users-...

Or even this, which spins the issue:

http://www.businessinsider.com/android-is-beating-ios-in-web...

The latter is about Android "beating" iOs in web usage for the first time -- but in fact usage/users ratio is much higher in iOS, so you get more web usage from far fewer users.

>Our US-only ecommerce site has 33% more visitors using Android than iOS. Our other US-only site has 2x more Android visitors than iOS.

Depends if it attracts the demographic who would opt for cheaper Android phones.

My numbers are from several generic articles (by ad companies, sites etc) on the respective platforms web use.

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by yohui on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @07:56PM (#10195419)
But most mobile web browsing worldwide is from Android devices, and iOS's share of the mobile device market in the US is much larger than in most other countries (not quite parity, but Android's lead is much smaller).

Apple does reap the lion's share of profit from smartphone sales, but they don't dominate smartphone use.

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by coldtea on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @08:12PM (#10195473)
>But most mobile web browsing worldwide is from Android devices

Of course it is -- there are way more of those Android units.

But I wanted to point which users are more active, not mere volume. Even in the US Android could have more volume, but iOS users still generate far more traffic (not as total: as traffic per head).

If the 10% or 5% iOS users in a country generate the 20% or 30% of web traffic, then they are much more heavier tech/web users than the others.

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by incepted on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @05:07PM (#10194614)
The only reason why they are growing is because they have a much smaller market share. Which is why Tim Cook only revealed relative numbers: Apple is falling behind a bit more every year in absolute numbers.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by jrochkind1 on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @05:44PM (#10194833)
That doesn't even make sense; the only way they could be growing in relative market share but shrinking in absolute numbers is if the market is shrinking, and I'm pretty sure it's not.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by incepted on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @06:05PM (#10194966)
If you have 1% market share and you grow to 2%, you have doubled your market share. That's the angle that Cook used.

If the market leader has 90% market share and they grow to 95%, they have grown a lot less than you relatively (so the minor player can claim they have grown the most) but they now own a bigger piece of the pie than they used to.

This is why you should always be skeptical of anyone who uses relative numbers (growth) instead of absolute ones: the reality is probably that they have lost market share.

Which is what we have seen Apple do compared to Android these past three years.

You will notice that the early keynotes right after the iPhone and iPad came out were showing absolute numbers in shipments and dollars, and now, they just stick to percents and vague claims ("We're growing the fastest").

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by brwnll on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @06:09PM (#10194975)
I think they simply worded that poorly. Apple could be growing at higher Y/y %, but still be loosing ground in terms of actual units being sold depending on overall market growth.

For example, below appears to be the report Cook used for his "+14% vs -0.4%" slide, which at best, is very misleading.

"In the worldwide mobile phone market (inclusive of smartphones), vendors shipped 464.6 million units, down -0.4% from the 466.3 million units shipped 2Q14.[1]"

Truth is, the smartphone market actually GREW by 11.6% (Q2 2014:302.1m => Q2 2015:337.2m).

1. http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS25804315

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by thaumasiotes on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @06:13PM (#10195000)
Depends on your interpretation of "behind in absolute numbers". A toy example:

1980: Apple has 10% of a 100,000,000-phone market. We could call this a gap of 90,000,000.

1981: Apple has 15% of a 200,000,000-phone market. We could call this a gap of 170,000,000. What happened was that while Apple's market share grew, it grew much slower than the market itself.

I guess you might want to look at the world that way; for example, if you wanted to know how difficult it would be to convince the entire market to switch to your product. But I tend to agree that market share would seem to be more useful for most purposes.

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by saturdaysaint on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @03:29PM (#10193749)
And so it continues, I point out that this has been said of every Apple announcement since Jobs' return.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by epmatsw on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @04:20PM (#10194270)
"No wifi, less space than a Nomad. Lame."
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by lotharbot on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @06:52PM (#10195184)
in 2001, it was.

Check out the sales figures [0]. Consumers didn't begin to adopt the iPod in detectable numbers until the third generation (when it got USB syncing), and it didn't really take off until the fourth (full USB connectivity, various other improvements.)

[0] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/28/ipod-sales_n_468000...

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by etchalon on Thursday September 10, 2015 @01:19AM (#10196246)
It look off when they added Windows. Other improvements aside, that was the thing that cracked open the market for them.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by MagnumOpus on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @06:07PM (#10194968)
Yup. It was. And no USB either, also not usable with Windows, not usable without Firewire. It was utterly useless for 99% of people out there - Rob Malda was right, despite all the retconning. It took years and several hardware generations to actually fix all these problems...
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by wmeredith on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @03:41PM (#10193886)
Apple's stock and trade has always been to do what the competition is doing, but do it better.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by wnoise on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @04:12PM (#10194211)
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by wmeredith on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @09:28PM (#10195694)
How embarrassing! Thanks.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by incepted on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @05:08PM (#10194621)
I hope they start doing that soon.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by caskance on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @06:17PM (#10195021)
If innovation were what mattered, everyone would be browsing with Opera.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by 72deluxe on Thursday September 10, 2015 @05:51AM (#10197069)
Only up to Opera 12, when they suddenly decided to become a theme creator for Chromium and chucked all their decent code and features in the bin, sadly.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by caskance on Thursday September 10, 2015 @02:09PM (#10199573)
That's the entire relevant history of Opera. They learned that innovation is a bad investment.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by 0x4a42 on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @07:15PM (#10195290)
WorldWideWeb was the most inovative Web browser. Opera just copied it.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by coldtea on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @06:29PM (#10195078)
Yeah, but fortunately delivery also matters...
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by qyv on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @07:24PM (#10195320)
It began a while ago, it is just now more apparent because the level of innovation in each successive generation has become so small. I wonder if we will look back at the last 8 years as Apple's golden years, because it is really feeling like their best is now behind them. The level of innovation that has created their most loyal of fans and zealots no longer exists, and there is so much less to indoctrinate the next generation. Newcomers no longer think that Apple is a head and shoulders above the rest innovator and Apple is built on the loyalty created by being different.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by kelseydh on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @10:01PM (#10195808)
Given it's one of the largest companies in the world, they deserve some slack.

Their story against Microsoft over the last decade has been nothing short but astonishing. No one could have predicted the dominance they have now in year 2000 or even 2005.

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by starky on Thursday September 10, 2015 @01:43AM (#10196289)
In what way is the Surface Pro 3 (which is really the only currently available competition) boring? I'd say it is the most innovative product in the tablet space in the last 4 years. Really they are trying to catch up to the only real competition they have in the space.

Plus, Apple has been playing catch up for a while now. I can't remember precisely which iOS release it was (I believe iOS 7) but the release was pretty much catching up with essential features already present in Android.

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by 72deluxe on Thursday September 10, 2015 @05:50AM (#10197068)
Didn't you see Samsung Note as a competitor?

I have the 2014 one (brand new!) and it is disappointing. Less battery life than my old iPad 3. Worse performance too.

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by simonh on Friday September 11, 2015 @06:53AM (#10202986)
Oh please. There were keyboard covers and pen input devices available for the iPad long before Microsoft released the first Surface.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by seiji on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @03:35PM (#10193814)
Apple always prefers to release late and do it better rather than play race-to-the-bottom games in perfect competition markets.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by incepted on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @05:09PM (#10194627)
They nailed the "release late" part, now they still need to do the "better" part.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by tjogin on Friday September 11, 2015 @07:40AM (#10203098)
Which competition's tablets is the iPad playing catch-up to?
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by WorldWideWayne on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @03:32PM (#10193774)
Speak for yourself - the Surface Pro line is sexy as hell and the fact that it's not a walled garden is a huge plus.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by CamperBob2 on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @04:05PM (#10194150)
Walled garden, Panopticon, what's the difference.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by thaumasiotes on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @06:04PM (#10194958)
I don't think it's particularly hard to see the distinction between "do whatever you feel like, but someone will write down that you did" and "no, you can't do that. You'll do what we tell you to do".
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by yellowapple on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @07:06PM (#10195247)
And if "do whatever you feel like, but someone will write down that you did" is too much, one can readily install a GNU/Linux distro on a Surface. You very likely won't be able to do the same on any iOS device, even the iPad "Pro".
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by cma on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @08:46PM (#10195573)
The set of things the MS records is much broader than the set of things Apple bans.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by draw_down on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @03:41PM (#10193889)
They're doomed!
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by chinathrow on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @03:11PM (#10193546)
They sure copy, but so did others too all the time.

Apples move with the pencil is more targeted at businesses, hospitals and such. Win the users at home first, convert them easily at work later, at a higher price with a better margin.

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by Tloewald on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @03:16PM (#10193609)
Looks like their target is creatives to me. At least based on the video. But I'm itching to use one for both sketches and meeting notes.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by evook on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @04:04PM (#10194140)
With 10 bit colour support?
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by Tloewald on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @05:08PM (#10194617)
Do you mean 10 bits per channel? (i.e. 30-bit RGB.) The 10" retina iPads have routinely scored very well as 24-bit displays (not the best there are, but certainly they seem acceptable to a lot of professional photographers).
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by amyjess on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @03:37PM (#10193840)
Honestly, I'm more than happy with my Surface Pro 3, and the iPad Pro doesn't interest me at all.

Not only are they playing catch up, but they failed to adequately catch up.

Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by coldtea on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @06:32PM (#10195096)
Are you also rocking that brown Zune?
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by 72deluxe on Thursday September 10, 2015 @05:51AM (#10197073)
One day they'll be collector's items, I am sure of it.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by cookiecaper on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @03:24PM (#10193680)
It is so crazy how this is the PC wars all over again. Apple comes out of the gate with huge marketshare, begins to lose it due to their insufferable snobbery, panics and tries to copy everyone without alienating their base of insufferable snobs and with frilly copies that only the kool-aid drinkers fall for, and continues its descent into irrelevance. Will Samsung have to save Apple from extinction in 10 years in order to keep the DOJ off its back? Stay tuned.
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by 72deluxe on Thursday September 10, 2015 @05:52AM (#10197077)
I know what you mean, my MacBook is so irrelevant I want to throw it in the bin. I mean, it literally has ZERO use at all......................... right?
Re:Apple Unveils the iPad Pro by hellofunk on Wednesday September 09, 2015 @04:41PM (#10194425)
If this comment isn't the pot calling the kettle black.