The Apple Thread

[Sprite]

I got a chance to see the 7 at Apple and I have to say the new home button is really putting me off. The way the bottom of the phone vibrates is very weird to say the least.

That's funny, I eventually got to have a play with a 7+ at the Leeds store last week and really liked the home button. I always felt the button was the weakest link and now it's a solid slab it feels like a small step in the right direction.

 

[Grayfox]

I dont use apple devices but when I tried it felt weird as their was no tactile response when I was thinking their will be one.

 

[Robin]

So is it basically a capacitive recessed area then? I guess after doing a physical button for so long it must be kind of weird for seasoned Apple users.

 

[Sprite]

So is it basically a capacitive recessed area then? I guess after doing a physical button for so long it must be kind of weird for seasoned Apple users.

Spot on. The feel is just like the button now but when you press your mind says "What the fudge was that?!" As it's used to the small depression moving down ever so slightly.

Then no click either also adds to weird feeling and to top it off the phone does a slight buzz in your hand. I'm not sure why Apple felt the need for this haptic feedback as it doesn't feel like a button click.

Despite all the weird and oddness I quite liked it. I'm also happy to not have the risk of a broken home button due to some fool pressing it too hard. However I'm going to wait for iPhone 8 or what ever the 10th anniversary version will be called.

 

[Robin]

There might be some network data problems with the iPhone 7 Plus. Intel's modem is apparently performing worse than the Qualcomm modem and the components are sourced from both suppliers.

 

[Sprite]

There might be some network data problems with the iPhone 7 Plus. Intel's modem is apparently performing worse than the Qualcomm modem and the components are sourced from both suppliers.

That doesn't sound good. I would have though the chipsets would have been thoroughly tested.

 

[Techy]

So a campaign by DAPTR is crowd-funding a case with dual lightning/3.5mm jack for the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/daptr-iphone-7-cases-dual-lightning-3-5mm-audio-headphones--2#/

There's also a choice of a 3000mAh battery case along with the dual ports.

 

[FoRiZon]

http://mjtsai.com/blog/2016/10/27/new-macbook-pros-and-the-state-of-the-mac/

 

[GranTurismo guy]

1700 pounds/euros/dollars for a 13 inch pro. On what planet is that reasonable money?

 

[TS050]

1700 pounds/euros/dollars for a 13 inch pro. On what planet is that reasonable money?

Yeah, the pricing strategy for the new MacBook Pros is a mess.

I was hoping to buy one for when I went off to uni.

Not anymore.

 

[GranTurismo guy]

Yeah, the pricing strategy for the new MacBook Pros is a mess.

I was hoping to buy one for when I went off to uni.

Not anymore.

Even the old ones have jumped by 250. I can't fathom it.

 

[FoRiZon]

Yeah, the pricing strategy for the new MacBook Pros is a mess.

I was hoping to buy one for when I went off to uni.

Not anymore.

You're better off paying for a full gaming laptop/PC for that amount.

 

[TS050]

Even the old ones have jumped by 250. I can't fathom it.

Ridiculous.

 

[GranTurismo guy]

Ridiculous.

If you look away from Apple's site you should be able to find a previous gen for 900 or less as I did, it's a great laptop.

The sad thing is I bet the news ones are too.

 

[TS050]

If you look away from Apple's site you should be able to find a previous gen for 900 or less as I did, it's a great laptop.

The sad thing is I bet the news ones are too.

I'll definitely have a look. I've also been considering the previous gen MacBook too. They don't look too bad. and I'm sure as hell not spending £1,249 on a new one

 

[Korza]

I'll definitely have a look. I've also been considering the previous gen MacBook too. They don't look too bad. and I'm sure as hell not spending £1,249 on a new one

Stay away from the MacBook, huge waste of money. Retailers should still have the old MBPs at the old price (the store I work at does) that'll be trying to get rid of so you should be able to get a decent deal on one.

 

[TS050]

Stay away from the MacBook, huge waste of money. Retailers should still have the old MBPs at the old price (the store I work at does) that'll be trying to get rid of so you should be able to get a decent deal on one.

Ah, ok. Guess I'll be getting an MBP.

Thanks for letting me know. 👍

 

[ECGadget]

1700 pounds/euros/dollars for a 13 inch pro. On what planet is that reasonable money?

This is where I massively dislike Apple. My own laptop was £1500 to have custom built just over a year ago. In every sense it blows that 13" out of the water (and it's a 15"). Sure, it's not an 'Apple' product. But is that what you're paying an extra £700 or so for? The name? Where does that new macbook beat my laptop? Admittedly, I don't have an SSD. But for an extra £200 (making it up to the £1700 mark) I could have fit in a 512gb SSD, to add to my HDD.
Oh, and you can get that touch bar, which I will admit is rather fancy! I tried to get a spec setup similar to my laptop. A 15" Macbook Pro with a 512SSD 16Gb of 2133mhz memory, a 4Gb Radeon Pro 460 GPU and a 2.9GHz i7 Quad core was the closest I could get really. (750Gb HDD 7200rpm, 32Gb 2133MHz RAM, 8Gb GTX 880M GPU, 3.0Ghz i7 Quad Core is mine).

The macbook pro would cost me almost DOUBLE what my laptop cost me, at just shy of £3000. That's actually really poor. That blog futher up the page has it right. I think Apple have completely lost their way, and really don't care about their customers at all (not that I thought they did too much anyway, but that's neither here nor there)

 

[GranTurismo guy]

Ah, ok. Guess I'll be getting an MBP.

Thanks for letting me know. 👍

I have the bog standard 13 inch retina and it's fantastic. As nice as the standard MacBook is, it costing more than the pro is nuts. Bear in mind it actually has less power than an iPad Pro.

And it's not like the MBP is a fatty or something, it's slimmer than my 11 inch Chromebook.

 

[Aki Ko]

I'll definitely have a look. I've also been considering the previous gen MacBook too. They don't look too bad. and I'm sure as hell not spending £1,249 on a new one

As some of my college professors have said, you don't have to get the newest one. A used, older one is just as fine. Even a few of them have admit that Apple have lost their ways, and I'm in the arts department known for using Apple computers.

 

[Azuremen]

@ECGadget - but what about the fit and finish, the resolution and color rendition of the screen, the weight of the device, and the battery life? These are all things Apple excels at. And a lot of us can't stand large laptops either, so 13 inches is preferable to 15.

Of course, I'm not suggesting people buy Apple products, but there are some reasons to the higher price beyond the name. The keyboard is quite nice, with only the old ThinkPads and now Surface Book really being comparable.

Honestly, I suggest people look into the Surface Pro or Surface Book when talking about doing creative work.

 

[GranTurismo guy]

@ECGadget - but what about the fit and finish, the resolution and color rendition of the screen, the weight of the device, and the battery life?

Really not worth 1700 dollars, let alone pounds.

 

[Azuremen]

Really not worth 1700 dollars, let alone pounds.

That really depends on what you value, doesn't it? A lot of people would argue that $150 for a slightly custom mechanical keyboard isn't worth it when you can buy an okay membrane keyboard $15. Or opting for the M3 over the 335i, let alone some boring sedan, isn't worth it. I can ask this question in regard to clothes, phones, food, drinks, homes, paper, and damn near anything else. Value is, in almost any situation, somewhat subjective.

Is the new price because of the useless TouchBar worth it? Not in my opinion but I can see why people would value it. Is the premium (of a prior MBP) over some custom made laptop, which will typically feel like cheap plastics and be heavy, worth it? I'd argue yes.

As for the dollars/pounds thing, I feel that point is somewhat mute because virtually anything imported into the UK seems to cost more.

 

[F1GTR]

Meh, the price will come down in the next year or so. Apple did the same kind of thing with the first MacBook Air and retina MacBook Pros.

Also I can't wait for everyone to move to Type-C, the dongle situation is a bit of mess at the moment but we are in need of a change really. Hate having to spend 5 mins plugging in my mouse/display/wacom tablet/keyboard/film scanner every time I want to work from my MBP, a single Thunderbolt 3 cable would be so much quicker.

 

[Saidur_Ali]

Hopefully Apple release iPhone 7 successor soon given it is a legacy device and go with 10nm SoC and USB Type-C port. Should help quicken adoption of it. I think Apple prices are reasonable, they get rich quick while offering consumers products they may want often with good aftercare which usually maintain good resale value.

I'll leave this video here:

 

[ECGadget]

@ECGadget - but what about the fit and finish, the resolution and color rendition of the screen, the weight of the device, and the battery life? These are all things Apple excels at. And a lot of us can't stand large laptops either, so 13 inches is preferable to 15.

Of course, I'm not suggesting people buy Apple products, but there are some reasons to the higher price beyond the name. The keyboard is quite nice, with only the old ThinkPads and now Surface Book really being comparable.

Honestly, I suggest people look into the Surface Pro or Surface Book when talking about doing creative work.

I have a fantastic fit and finish, smooth rubberised casing, copper heatshield, mechanical style keyboard, backlit too. Matte screen, with really good (though not the best) colour. Resolution is 1920x1080, but there was a 4k option available too. Weight, I will say it is heavy, no doubt. Battery life is a lovely 3 and a half hours. And a 13 inch variant would have been even cheaper than mine.

I will give Apple build quality, for sure they have been good at that, at least on the outside. Inside... Not so good. But the same can be said for various brands on bad internal builds! I've repaired some pretty shoddily built laptops before!

 

[Aki Ko]

I have a fantastic fit and finish, smooth rubberised casing, copper heatshield, mechanical style keyboard, backlit too. Matte screen, with really good (though not the best) colour. Resolution is 1920x1080, but there was a 4k option available too. Weight, I will say it is heavy, no doubt. Battery life is a lovely 3 and a half hours. And a 13 inch variant would have been even cheaper than mine.

I can say the same for my laptop, but the difference is that my screen has the most accurate color with 4k resolution with a 17.3" screen. As said before, large computers aren't for everyone, but it makes me wonder what Apple is thinking when pricing their computers?

I paid $1,432 (at the time. Try it now and it's $1900) for my laptop. To get similar power from a MacBook Pro now in the largest screen is over $3k at the least. It's ludicrous.

 

[F1GTR]

I have a fantastic fit and finish, smooth rubberised casing, copper heatshield, mechanical style keyboard, backlit too. Matte screen, with really good (though not the best) colour. Resolution is 1920x1080, but there was a 4k option available too. Weight, I will say it is heavy, no doubt. Battery life is a lovely 3 and a half hours. And a 13 inch variant would have been even cheaper than mine.

I will give Apple build quality, for sure they have been good at that, at least on the outside. Inside... Not so good. But the same can be said for various brands on bad internal builds! I've repaired some pretty shoddily built laptops before!

Your laptop is aimed at a completely different market though. I did a lot of research before buying my 15" MacBook Pro and if I tried to go like-for-like with a Windows equivalent (an aluminium case, thin design, high density IPS display, reasonable power, 7+ hour battery life) I'd end up in the same ballpark as a Mac, except I'd end up sacrificing great customer support, a really, really great trackpad and a bunch of other features that don't get listed on the spec list but make computing a lot easier/pleasurable. Just had a look at Dell XPS/Lenovo/HP Spectres and they're all in the same ballpark.

Now Apple's current price increases baffle me, but I honestly expect them to drop it in the next year or so.

 

[Robin]

So apparently Apple Watch sales have tanked by 71%, they only sold 1.1 million units in Q3 2016 compared to 3.9 million in Q3 2015. Whereas Fitbits and Mi Bands are selling like hotcakes.

It's starting to look like full blown smartwatches might have been a fad whereas fitness trackers have had reasonable sticking power. I have a Microsoft Band which actually was a good idea by MS because it was a smartwatch in a fitness band form factor. Unfortunately they have now discontinued the line I guess due to Windows Mobile not taking off.

 

[Grayfox]

So apparently Apple Watch sales have tanked by 71%, they only sold 1.1 million units in Q3 2016 compared to 3.9 million in Q3 2015. Whereas Fitbits and Mi Bands are selling like hotcakes.

It's starting to look like full blown smartwatches might have been a fad whereas fitness trackers have had reasonable sticking power. I have a Microsoft Band which actually was a good idea by MS because it was a smartwatch in a fitness band form factor. Unfortunately they have now discontinued the line I guess due to Windows Mobile not taking off.

Apple smart watches are a fad.
Most apple products are not selling like they use to.
Apple in general is a Status Symbol Brand and people are realizing it.

Apple rushed into the smart watch scene because it was popular on android and it was rushed and it suffered.
Plus the needless tech in it made it stupidly expensive and a battery hog.

Why would a smart watch which has to be paired to an iphone need a GPS receiver on it, android and tizen based smartwatches use the GPS receiver on the phone