While on winter holidays my fiance pointed out to me:

- She just got a new Macbook Pro from her new job, which has only USB C ports

- She just got a new iPhone 7 from her new job, which is only a Lightning port

She cannot connect her phone to her computer to charge without a dongle. EDIT: a Lightning to USB C cable does exist now. That is still equivalent to a dongle in my opinion, as the consumer still has to buy it and it is a cable that won't be used for anything else.

She has to carry two sets of headphones, one for her computer, and one for her phone.

The unified vision at Apple is gone.

Now Microsoft has dedicated products for high-end creatives (Surface studio won't sell but still shows interest in pros), Linux Bash shell in windows 10. Meanwhile Apple wants pros to use a 9" tablet instead of a laptop.

Every single professional who uses the Surface Studio practically has an orgasm.

If Microsoft keeps support up for it long enough that the CAD program developers are willing to take the plunge on the new features and integrate them into their programs, it will completely displace Apple with the high-end professionals.

The question is whether Microsoft will keep pumping money into the line long enough to get the application developers on board. They've been burned several times.

I see a fundamental shift has taken place at Microsoft under Satya's direction. Open-sourcing the core technologies that act as the foundation for Microsoft is a huge deal. Surface Studio uncompromisingly for pros (a big problem for MS hardware in the past is that they try to hedge their bets- try to jam stuff in there for everyone).

When you think about how quickly this has changed, it looks like Satya has a clear vision for MS, and pros are part of that vision. When's the last time you've seen a 'visionary' Microsoft (that didn't involved delusional thinking)?

Hard pass.

The difference is now Microsoft is providing the crapware, the crapware isn't malicious (like say, Superfish was), and it's not that difficult for power users to disable it or tuck it out of the way.

I love Windows 10 (at least, as much as my love for Windows goes), yes MS made some moves towards treating it a bit like Google and Apple treat their mobile OSes, but not horridly large steps.

I haven't seen it yet, but it's still early days.

You cite some examples, examples that are real, eye-catching, but for me not substantive. The fundamental shift I'm looking for is a true shift in customer focus. Microsoft's big customer is enterprise I/T, who is not the end user for much of the tech. Azure seems designed to help State Farm (to pick an F500 at random) add some of that new cloud stuff to their Windows ecosystem. A good business decision, but in the age of AWS and even google services, it's simply incremental.

I could be unfair in saying "not substantive" to the open source initiatives, simply because it's such a huge philosophical shift (to a small part of their business, at least so far). Otherwise, I'm not seeing it yet.

But it takes a very long time to steer a big ship like Microsoft or Apple.

I do agree though the Surface Studio gets my interest in a way that iMacs haven't since the iMac G4. It seemed like after the G4 they just kept phoning it in with yet another pizza box iMac.

I think it has huge potential outside of CAD. Anything that deals with complex flows of data/material would benefit from such an interface.

VR needs a couple of things, and they aren't going to happen in less than a year. First and most importantly, cheaper and better hardware. Daydream is nice, but at most it is good for 360 video and some cheap games. Get some head tracking in there somehow and then it becomes interesting. Also, it needs something like the oculus touch controllers or vive controllers so you can actually use your hands for things.

Secondly, an actual killer app. Some kind of game that only works in VR. Something that you want to keep coming back to.

Lastly - simplicity. Daydream is simple but too limited. The vive has all the features but setting up lighthouses is a pain unless you can permanently mount them. Also being tethered to your computer sucks (A solution for that is on the way, but it will only add to the cost.) Headsets are still bulky and uncomfortable to wear for long periods.

My point I guess is that Apple's typical timing with things would put them entering the market in 2018 at the earliest. This is like the early Windows Phone/PalmOS days before the iPhone (But I doubt Apple will be the one releasing the "iPhone" of VR.)

As for myself, even without a killer app, VR has gotten me saving memories as photo spheres, in addition to pictures and videos.

Costs will come down, but 2017 won't be the year. I expect VR to grow, but only in the gaming market.

I'm more interested in AR, personally. But it's hard for me to articulate why exactly because honestly I don't have much experience with it yet. It just seems more interesting to me. I'd really like to get a Hololens to start experimenting with, but can't really justify the cost of it right now.

(disclosure: I work for Microsoft, which makes Hololens. Not meaning to promote it, these are my personal opinions)

I work at an AEC firm. We give money and some privilege to 2-3 people at work to experiment with VR. It's interesting to some degree but, beyond being a marketing tool, I don't really see it being useful as a professional tool any time soon.

These things are hard to call though, like anything in future tech (or the future in general). They consider it revolutionary new tech whereas I'm on the side of "shiny new toy" and "wait and see" but the powers that be have no issue spending the money on it while I see some of core competencies and actual training for the future being ignored (transitions to BIM and training in better 3D modeling programs).

Not my company or money though.

I, and I think enough other people, already have a $1k+ PC for the huge amount of non-VR games it gives access to.

But the big catch for me is that there just doesn't seem to be enough content that will work with and (more importantly) be enhanced by a VR experience. I simply don't have the cash-on-hand to justify spending ~$800 to make Elite Dangerous slightly more immersive. But if a good VR headset was more in the $200 range (like the very similarly limited hotas I bought for the same reason) I would probably jump.

It does seem like this year may bring the cost of the devices down low enough that more devs and more audience can get on board and bring it in to the main stream because it is very nearly there already.

* Headset Pricing: Major OEMs will be releasing headsets starting at $300 [0]

* Lowering system specs for VR [1]

* Not just a gaming focus: Windows 10 creators update puts an emphasis on 3D and Mixed-Reality, including a 'holographic' interface [2]

[0] http://1reddrop.com/2017/01/06/microsoft-announces-299-windo... [1] http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2016/12/08/microsoft-unveils... [2] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/upcoming-features

It honestly feels like only minor improvements in size/speed/usability will make it massively useful in normal life very soon.

Take theaters for example. They have been looking for a market for years but since people have screens and streaming at home they don't tend to go as much. However they could find a new life by purchasing VR headsets in bulk and selling livestreams of plays/musicals/operas, and possibly sports games as well. These will always be experiences better seen live, but VR would be a significant step above television.

That way someone could enjoy VR at a very low cost, and possibly spur them to buy a headset themselves, when the price is right.

GTX 970 = $155: http://ebay.com/itm/371833128329

GTX 980 = $235: http://ebay.com/itm/291993305929

Gaming PC with GTX 970 = $540: http://ebay.com/itm/112250177638

Gaming PC with GTX 1070 = $690: http://ebay.com/itm/222369412011

And my thoughts are that Apple cannot bring the same Stevie vision of simplicity and use to VR, which is why they will never care about it.

They'll have to stick better graphics cards in their computers, but that's doable.

Probably their biggest challenge would be coming up with a headset that is "Apple-y", given that the design issues involved in creating them right now still create something fundamentally klunky. (VR is starting to take off not because anyone's figured out how to make it not klunky, but because it transitioned from intolerably klunky to tolerably klunky. Along with the latency improvements.)

I'm not saying they're going to do it. But they could.

Cheaper, lower-quality VR headsets will leave a bad impression on consumers. I don't think that's the direction we should be going. I'd rather see HTC and Oculus release higher-res, faster refresh rate HMDs, but I doubt they'd do that with no single GPU able to run those today.

You can further reduce the computational costs by using foveated rendering(http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/johnsny/papers...). You can use low-latency eye-tracking to spend more time rendering the portions of the frame that the user is actively looking at.

I think the combo of falling gpu prices, and clever hardware design means we will probably see headsets with effectively higher and higher resolutions sooner rather than later.

Wonder if that will help or hinder VR. Personally I think the Vive is just about the bare minimum needed for VR to barely be acceptable. If peoples first impression of VR is something less than that I doubt they'll be impressed enough to actually use VR for more than 15 minutes over the first 2 weeks after purchase.

Despite their "this is all about the developer" statements, making Windows Subsystem for Linux unable to co-exist with VMware and other virtualization tools was a deal-breaker for me.

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/wsl/2016/04/22/windows-subs...

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/wsl/2016/04/22/windows-subs...

Specifically, it's enabling Hyper-V which makes Windows incompatible with VMware. The incompatibility results in more issues than just those with the bash shell. The big one for me is Docker for Windows:

https://forums.docker.com/t/docker-for-windows-w-vmware-inst...

I think I will just try it out and revert back if there's an issue, since I can't find clear documentation about it being incompatible. So I assume I'm wrong.

I can let you know if you like.

But, I only have one USB-C port. I also want to charge my laptop. So I have a ludicrous dongle from Apple that lets me plug HDMI, USB, and power (over USB-C) at one time.

But, the USB port on the dongle is USB-A, and I need to use the USB-C port to charge, so I would have to use a USB-A cable to connect my iPhone if I am using that dongle.

Yes: I could always use the dongle and the USB-A cable. But that dongle is so annoying to bother with that I actually carry around all three: two cables and the dongle.

Maybe the understanding gap here is that you don't really use your laptop very much? I use my laptop constantly. I am a developer (as are probably most people on this website), and I own a fancy laptop so I can be mobile: not thinking about the use case of a mobile developer is very strange in the context of a conversation about mobile computers in a large group of developers.

(To be clear, to avoid even more miscommunication: despite the relatively small warts in this setup which seem to violate the standard design process of Apple, I like this computer and purposefully chose it with complete knowledge of what cables it would require. I wish it had a second USB-C port instead of the headphone jack, even though that would cause me to carry around another adapter, as the adapter usage would be less, but I appreciate this was essentialy their beta of USB-C and was not where and when they wanted to start the headphone war.)

Sorry i actually did not reread your original comment when replying and was assuming this was about the Macbook Pro... If you only have one port there is indeed only the usb-c hub solution which can be annoying.

So far as I can tell the idea is Lightning ports for devices which require charging, and USB ports for devices which require data transfer.

All cables designed to provide power utilize a USB A connector - this is the majority of Lightning cables. In their current lineup this can be used to charge an iPad, iPhone, Apple Watch, and Air Pods case.

I recognize a lot of users still use the Lightning cable to transfer data to/from the phone to/from a computer. I'm betting Apple views these users as the current edge case.

Given that - it seems only a matter of time until an iPhone which has no ports, similar to the Apple Watch.

I imagine they'd rather not deal with USB-C on their devices at all - given the madness behind the different power capabilities of cables that seem to plague the specification. But they also recognize that is the future of general-use cables and are embracing it accordingly.

Given the lack of ability to charge any Apple peripheral directly from the newest Macbook (12" or Pro) models I suspect the internal rule is that devices with batteries aren't considered charging sources.

I'm personally excited to see the directions Apple keeps moving towards. I think it'll end up a more unified future than we've had yet. But I'm also ready to be wrong. I'll try to look back on this in a few years and see how we are.

Unless we invent seriously good wireless charging, I just can't see that happening. There's too many cases where having your phone "docked" just doesn't work.

Personally, I usually fall asleep with my phone laying on the bed next to me playing YouTube/Netflix/etc. No way to do that if it has to be resting on a pad like the Watch.

And what about cars and navigation? Can't throw your phone in your cup holder and pull up Maps anymore. You either need a new car with wireless charging or need to strap some sort of wireless charging pad to the back, which defeats the entire purpose of wireless charging.

Given that general design I imagine sleeping with the phone next to you in bed or in a cup holder shouldn't be much different than it is now - if anything the rotational flexibility provided by the magnetic puck charger would be advantageous in both situations.

Jony Ive has a thing for reducing devices to their core-most functionality. It's a design trait picked up from the likes of Deiter Rams. One of the easiest ways to reduce a device is to reduce or eliminate points of ingress. An iPhone which has no port for charging and the updated speakers from the Series 2 Apple Watch designed for waterproofing would be more ideal.

* Firm enough that you can pick up and move the watch about using only the puck as leverage.

Ive likes to associate himself with Rams, and people like to throw around the "as little design as possible" meme, but Ive and Rams are really very different in their execution of that idea, which counts for a lot. Ive is much more willing to challenge convention in his reductions, which sometimes pays off, but sometimes it means his products are a pain in the ass for the user to figure out when they ship. This can't be said of Rams.

Except the new macbooks use USB C for charging, and one of the things Apple emphasized when they switched from 30-pin to lightning was the increased data rate. There's no consistency. This is just another case of everyone moving toward a standard (micro-usb and now usb-c) and Apple ignoring it, except this time Apple doesn't have any excuse.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but we never been able to connect iPhone's to computers without a special cable.

It's baffling, but not new.

I disagree, their unified vision is a wireless one. But you could say they rushed it at the expense of the consumer.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/100-Original-QI-Wireless-Cha...

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Qi-Wireless-Charger-Receiver...

But how many dollars worth of experience, education, and attentiveness?

That MacBookPro 13" without touchbar comes with just two USB-C and an old-school audio port (gone in iPhone7) is just stupid, as one USB-C port is used to charge the notebook.

Steve Jobs vision and his personal testing of products is missing. He would have prevented such things leaving the factory.

Beside that little ports and touchbar fiasco, the MacBookPro is a good notebook. (though I wished Intel would get their act together and finally release a chipset for 32GB RAM)

My theory is that something happened and Apple felt it was forced to release the new MBP 6 months or maybe 1 year before the whole line was ready.

An iPhone 7 buyer is far more likely to find a USB-A port to plug into. Your idea would be to make the masses buy a dongle, instead of the minority who own brand new laptops.

The AirPort has never come with an Ethernet cable

The iPod never shipped with both FireWire and USB to 30 pin cables

The ThunderBolt Display was incompatible with Macs without ThunderBolt ports

The 30" Cinema display was only compatible with the Mac Pro when it launched and later required adapters (not included) to be used on other Macs

The original iPhone's recessed headphone jack required an adapter to use older iPod headphones

The first generation of Apple USB mice/keyboards did not come with an ADB adapter

* Buy adapter. * Buy extension cord. * Buy USB-C cable.

Those aren't packaged together anymore so now you get 3 separate boxes full of packaging just for a power adaptor. It feels wasteful... not to mention annoying if the apple sales person forgets to tell you you need to buy USB-C separately! And the correct one at that.

Utterly frustrating.

Unless the latest macbook and the latest phone are released at exactly the same time, this was always going to happen.

They could have added 2 cables, which is a huge waste since most people only need one.

Or they could have kept a shitty USB-A port on the macbook, which is not progressive enough for Apple.

Is it still a valid point once USB-C to Lightning Cable is out?

http://www.apple.com/us/shop/product/MK0X2AM/A/usb-c-to-ligh...

At least i can't remember the last time I did.

Especially the Pro model consumers. It's fine for reduced ports on an Air or MacBook, you're going to make sacrifices for portability. For a flagship laptop consumers expect options.

It seem some friction to be inevitable when new physical connector is introduced.

I have a cable that never moves from my bedside, it plugs my Pixel C-to-C into the brick. I have C-to-A cables at my desk at work and at home, neither moves. Your car's C-to-A cable (presumably) doesn't leave your car.

The move to C on the host end is something that hasn't happened recently (not since A took off >10 years ago), but the move to C on the device-end is comparable to the move to the original 30-pin i-device cable, Mini/Micro-USB, or Lightning. It's obnoxious but inevitable.

Far more people own laptops with USB-A ports, and far more people never even plug their phones into anything besides their wall charger.

The iPhone isn't just for Mac users.

USB type-c to type-a doesn't require an active dongle.

And why does your girlfriend need two sets of headphones when there is an included 3.5mm adapter with the iPhone ?

So many questions. Because literally nothing you wrote seems to make much sense.

It feels like all the protests about Vista back then. When in reality this was trivial compared to the fact there was virtually nothing exciting coming out from them and they misstepped on huge new markets.

I honestly get the impression they are shocked that people don't love all the new stuff as much as they expected.

I live in London. Apple maps is a disaster. Businesses which have moved shop years ago are in the wrong place. Traffic routes which are congested every day are recommended. It's literally a waste of my life to use this software.

Despite this flaw (and the fact that the head unit is actually useless until your plug in your iPhone), Apple maps is the only navigation software permitted to run on these head units; even though, it is permissible to use Google Maps or Waze when I am walking on the pavement; even though, it is permissible to mount my phone to my car and use an alternative navigation software.

Additionally, on the subject of "wireless grand unification," you can only connect your phone via USB.

Are people submitting corrections? It's amazing how quickly they respond here in the US, at least where I am. I submit corrections and usually see a notification within a week that it's been addressed.

No defense for the maps restriction, however.

Thankfully that doesn't bug me so much, because I tend to want to charge my phone when I drive anyway.

Imagine if, instead of Apple Watch, they had put those folks into building the AppleTV into a home hub based on Siri. I feel like Apple Watch was to be their "always available assistant" but I just don't see it succeeding in that market for most people.

(Siri isn't as good as Alexa or Google's thing but that's a separate issue...)

The problem was they each always try to just extend their corporate wall around your home. Rather than giving an inviting place to encourage innovation in your home. Apple has the same "our way, on our time" mentality that stifles innovation by third parties. For a time, this was offset by the awesome innovations they were providing. That time seems to be ending.

The XBox has Cortana, I think, but does the PS4 have a "smart assistant"?

That's why I unhooked the Kinect that was forced upon me when I bought a launch day box, and put it in the garage. That pile of garbage worked just often enough to trick me into trying to rely on it. But 80% isn't anywhere near good enough, IMO.

    - Apple had Siri out and was in the lead with voice control, then they wasted it.
    - Home automation was supposed to get better with HomeKit but arrived basically stalled.
    - Apple's cloud offering is confusing and hard to manage
    - AppleTv is a great product but Apple can't seem to really work with partners

I think this statement can be generalized to almost every single product Apple sells or has sold. They've seriously excelled at innovation in the past (tons of great historic computers, the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, Siri, etc.) but then it's like the whole company eventually gets bored with Product X and moves on because "Innovation is Out There!"

So did iOS, well before Android. They just didn't have a cutesy name for it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_command_device#Voice_com...

But otherwise, it was the future. Just think if you were supposed to control your device with voice only. Blind people could use it. Car drivers could use it. Lazy people could use it.

Siri took a long time to integrate into apps. Siri took a while to get some intelligence. Siri took a while to integrate more into the OS. Siri became just another app but with a hardware shortcut. Nothing more. Future spoiled.

That's rather subjective. My experiences with Siri have been way better than with Google.

> You had to buy newer versions that had some proprietary Apple chip in it.

Not accurate at all.

> Apple can't seem to really work with partners to make it actually innovative.

Neither can Google or Roku. Content providers are stubborn.

> they've been wondering aimlessly and dropping half products out there then never iterating and finishing them

You just described Google, actually.

(side note: in my experience Alexa is much worse at understanding what I'm asking)

edit: to quote the article: "Shrinking iPhone sales last year caused Apple to suffer its first annual revenue decline in 15 years." Apple is incredibly successful, all of this declaring them dead because they had a bad quarter is kind of dumb.

A few sources disagree:

http://www.ibtimes.com/apple-homekit-devices-wont-include-go...

> "Apple’s MFi guidelines require manufacturers to use only Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, and also include a specialized chip for authentication"

http://www.digitaltrends.com/home/everything-that-works-with...

> "The certification ensures that these smart home devices have an authentication chip and have undergone rigorous testing to get Apple’s official seal of approval"

http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1327267

> "Apple Inc. requires anyone making a device compatible with its HomeKit environment to buy and use a special identity chip."

Now, I don't have access to the official docs for MFi - so maybe these sources are all wrong. But I'm pretty confident a special chip is required.

Homebridge is presumably making use of some debug mode that you wouldn't use in a shipping product - and if you did, Apple wouldn't let you advertise it as officially compatible with HomeKit.

Still neat - but hardly the sort of thing that implies you can ship a product utilizing Homekit without following the MFi spec.

These devices all have active developer communities and good API/interaction. I plugged my Amazon Echo in and it immediately detected all three and allowed me to control them seamlessly. I don't know what the specific issue is but it sure seems like Apple is the problem.

[1]: http://www.belkin.com/us/support-article?articleNum=187953

Edit: Typos

Considering the rise in IoT based DDoS attacks and the ftc going after companies like D-Link for poor security practices, aren't security standards like Apple is requiring something we want to commend?

You can also install a general homekit proxy with a general nodejs server called homebridge. That homekit proxy can control anything with any kind of security.

So at this point it's just another proprietary standard unfortunately :( Might as well call it another MFi program.

What would you like Apple to do?

> Where many companies fail to secure their products at all or use simple 128-bit encryption, all HomeKit certified hardware includes a dedicated security co-processor paired with 3072-bit keys and the very secure Curve25519 key exchange system

http://www.howtogeek.com/232235/htg-explains-why-does-apples...

No clue where you're getting this from. HomeKit is bigger/better than ever. There are tons of new HomeKit compatible devices being shown at CES this year. You can goto major hardware stores like Home Depot and Lowes and buy HomeKit lights, outlets, switches, door locks, etc. Apple made some nice improvements to HomeKit in iOS 10 by adding the 'Home' app and including control of HomeKit accessories in Control Center. They also added a bunch of new features to the HomeKit APIs to support new types of devices. I've never heard anything about incompatible HomeKit devices. It's possible but I'm using all first-gen devices and they work fine so I doubt it.

Just ask "Who's the next President of the United States of America." OK Google gets it. Siri shows you a list of web/wiki articles.