• MST (DisplayPort daisy chaining) in MacOS. The hardware has supported it for over a decade. The OS is the weak link here. It's the difference between spending $75-$300 for a dock in addition to the cables and just connecting the monitors together along with a single cable to the first monitor.
• Non-soldered storage. Seriously. Storage is the most likely component to fail. SSDs only have so many write cycles.
• BIOS on a separate chip. To make matters worse, with the introduction of the T2 chip, the BIOS is stored on the SSD as well. This means if the SSD fails, you don't just lose your data; you have an expensive brick. You can't even boot to external drive anymore if one of the two SSD chips fails.
• Safer SSD chips. If a cheap capacitor fails on newer Macs, 13V gets shorted straight to the SSD. The SSD commonly doesn't survive this. And since the BIOS is on the SSD now… Literal ten cent part blows up your multi-thousand dollar laptop with zero warning.
I spent so long troubleshooting and trying to figure out why it didn't work before I stumbled on this article[1].
[1]: https://sebvance.medium.com/everything-you-need-to-know-abou...
We've had some SSDs fail, but it's virtually unheard of. It's so rare, I can't recall a specific instance. I submit that failure rates within a Mac's usable lifetime is so rare that it's a non-issue.
That said, I'm always going to strongly want user-replaceable, modular components everywhere I possibly can. Barring that, I want cheap repair options (buying stuff like logic boards from Apple is obscenely priced.)
I also factor AppleCare+ into device cost, because forget buying a $2,000-3,000 Apple device without it.
One thing to note is the quality of Apple’s storage is above and beyond anything else you can buy. They have teams at every level of the storage stack and have an amazing focus on quality. From individual chips all the way up to the filesystem, all of the software is customized to extend the lifespan of the device. They do wear-leveling so the larger the drive you buy with your device the longer the device will last, but honestly the drives they come with will last much longer than 99.9 of people will ever actually use a Mac.
Average good experience of other users doesn't make a guy having a failing SSD feel any better. The absence of easy repair/replacement just adds an insult to injury.
> They do wear-leveling so the larger the drive you buy with your device the longer the device will last
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like a description of an average modern SSD. Heck, I was reading similar things about wear leveling regarding USB drives, like, a decade and a half ago.
It is widely known macOS paging out a lot more than Windows. On a multiTab Safari you could easily have 100GB write or higher per day. Kernel_Task lock up are extremely common on google search.
If it were just a matter of replacing a capacitor, I'd agree with you. But the wiring decisions from their "amazing focus" defaults to a 13v short to storage chips—all your files AND the BIOS up in a puff of literal smoke.
And finally, Apple doesn't design and manufacture solid state storage devices. They contract out to other companies. Those other companies also sell NVMe storage devices with substantially similar chip designs.
Don't believe the hype. A ten cent capacitor taking out a $3K laptop isn't "above and beyond"; it's penny pinching at the expense of reliability with no concessions made to either repairability or resilience.
* Nothing to add.
* Hardware enclave is a requirement for most corporate/government computers so you're just comparing two different classes of computer. All the enterprise Windows machines also do this.
* Same as above
Not everybody has a zillion dollars to spend on expensive thunderbolt displays and they shouldn't have to when the Displayport standard (and other operating systems) support daisy chaining.
With specialized software ( multi track AV) and/or ad hoc setup ( e.g. deeply tuned Linux) the more the screens you throw at it, the better.
Got any sources for that? I find that hard to believe.
> MST (DisplayPort daisy chaining) in MacOS. The hardware has supported it for over a decade. The OS is the weak link here.
This is indeed annoying, but with USB4/Thunderbolt support becoming more common in monitors, I believe this is going to be less of an issue going forward.
So even I get puzzled whenever I see “storage is the most likely component to fail”. Maybe I just got lucky?
Also, NVIDIA cards in eGPUs and Thunderbolt (arm64) aren't supported.
The best solution is either don't use Apple, or have a machine under warranty and very good backups.
Complaints aside, the Anker 777 dock does 5K-8K DP over USB-C, 1 GbE, 100w charging, 4 USB-A and more and works with m1 and m2 MBPs. Add a quality magnetic USB-C connector, and it's "MagSafe" docking to a monitor, power, and accessories with one cable. I'm in the camp of 1 giant 49" monitor, with occasional AirPlay to a nearby Apple TV 4K on an 85" TV.
They have made mistakes. Like the battery in my current 2015 MBP is too hard to replace. And I avoided upgrading for a long time due to the known issues with the keyboards. But it seems like they generally correct when making mistakes like that.
I do agree that SSDs shouldn’t be soldered on though. Hopefully it’s one of the mistakes they’ll eventually fix. I kind of understand the motivation.. you can make it impossible to effectively steal a device, or access its contents. The device becomes very simple and robust in some ways. But they could come up with a good compromise.
Like, sure, keep the concept of not having an SSD controller on the drive, and firmware on the SSD. But sell replacement SSDs with the firmware and a recover OS preloaded. One that lets you provision the new drive with the SOC through your iCloud account. Depending on the on-chip storage and whether it’s fuse/EPROM-based or flash, the number of possible drive replacements might be limited. But that’s an OK compromise.
This doesn't match either my experience, the experience of others I know or the good resale value Apple devices continue to have.
I guess you should say include "Modern" Apple Mac. Macbook Post 2015 are pretty bad compare to older MacBook. Those who are EE or interested in Hardware should watch a few of Louis Rossmann video.
But then because the rest of the industry are so poor in reliability they still get to say they are once of the most reliable notebook. May be apart from Lenovo.
I have a 2007 iPod nano that I still use pretty regularly. It still works, and I can load new music to it from my Mac.
I would say it was engineered to last.
If you're an Apple engineer then thanks for your forward thinking. Please keep it up, people do appreciate it, even if you don't hear it that often.
This is just patently false.
One of the things that doable "now" that wasn't doable "then" is wireless charging. I love that I can put my phone on a pad next to the bed at night and it charges, pick it up and there is no trailing wire to unplug, put it down and there is no wire to find and plug in. This is a big improvement in my user experience.
Another of the things that have moved us forward is that power efficiency has gone up dramatically, as a result a smaller battery can give the same "run time" as a large battery of old without the bulk associated with the larger energy storage capacity.
Why not combine them?
Why not no battery in the device? Seal it against the elements. Then put in a pocket where a battery that is a wireless "charger" can drop into a slot on the device and provide the power. Current demands on a modern device are low enough that you just go wireless all the time for main power. Now your device takes a sealed "toaster pastry" sized unit that looks innocuous, but slide it into the slot and poof the device powers up, put it on a recharging mat and it starts charging up itself.
Now you have no exposed terminals to "short out", no worries about the battery in your device becoming a "pillow of doom"[1]. And you can carry a couple of extras if you're going to be away from power for a while.
You get all the benefits of replaceable batteries and none of the downsides with the possible exception of a "slot" in your device that looks funny when there isn't a battery in it.
I totally should have patented this :-)
[1] Just Google it :-)
The palm pre and several early android phones had both removable batteries and wireless charging. The back panel just had pogo pins for the coil to transfer power.
However wireless charging from a battery pack is not ideal because the battery will have to be bigger. I already feel my phone is too big to be comfortable in my pocket, and I know it's even more of an issue for smaller people/women's clothing with tiny pockets.
It's an interesting idea though.
My second concern would be size - is the total package going to get a lot bigger here? If we forgo the pocket and just use magnets at each corner maybe it gets slimmer, but can it be about as slim as they are today?
If we could overcome those two hurdles, I'd be a huge fan of the idea.
So before we could dismiss the idea, we would really need to run the experiment of "running" via wireless power to see how the current requirements in that state would be reflected in device heating (or not). I agree with you though that if the answer was "always smoking hot" then it is a non starter.
As for size, the "wireless" part is really really thin (a loop antenna). Battery size is a function of how much electrolyte it can carry and LiOn batteries are about 0.5g/cc and 250Wh/kg (or .25Wh/g) iPhones are around 12Wh so about 48g of battery which is 96cc of Lithium. Call it 100cc and you're looking as a "7.8 x 15 x 1" cm "battery card" (order of magnitude approximation based on that math and rough measurements of my iPhone 13SE which is a smallish phone)
I like the idea of magnets but I don't like the idea of the battery being "jostled off" my phone in my pocket and so effectively turned off when I think it should be on. So I think that would take some design work to get right.
How about a nuclear battery, aka radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG)? This would be sealed in (carefully!) and would last the lifetime of the device, with no need for charging, ever. Would need special steps/handling to ensure safe disposal at end of product life, however.
[1] Beta Voltaics a new kind of nuclear battery -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betavoltaic_device
There isn't really a theoretical limit to how small a fusion reactor can be, although clearly this would not achievable for a long time.
It’s also pretty easy to design a connector with exposed pins that are totally inoffensive until something real is exposed. In fact, modern USB charging already works like this : a charger will not send anything over 5v x 150mA before having negotiated with the device to know what it needs.
It's kind of an interesting play because apple could make a super thin phone that has 30 min battery life and then a few different size pop tarts with different capacities. You want 3 days, get the mondo brick.
Did you mean a damaged, blown up battery pack? At least that's what I expected to find.
My 2013 Macbook Pro has just such a battery, rated for 80% capacity after 1000 cycles, and it lasted over 6 years before the battery's internal resistance rose enough that heavy load would cause a brownout and the machine to force sleep.
Yet they are not in widespread use; most devices have prioritized capacity/weight/size over longevity, Apple included. My current M1 has lost 10% of its capacity after just 120 cycles and less than a year of ownership, even using a utility that allows you to set a limited maximum charge level to preserve the battery. And the battery is less accessible, less replaceable.
Battery companies and device manufacturers don't care. There's no incentive for anyone involved and consumers have gotten used to replacing devices every few years.
Solid state batteries with 10k charge/discharge cycles are never going to happen for the same reason incandescent bulbs are purposefully manufactured by every single lightbulb manufacturer to fail when they figured out a hundred years ago how to make them last forever.
We need something like a e-waste import duty, tax, fee, or 'recycling deposit' on devices with non-replaceable lithium ion batteries.
Saying that the Dubai Philips LED bulbs really do last a lot longer since they have twice the filaments and run the filaments a lot less hard as a result (as well as being more efficient). It is possible nowadays to make an LED that wont fail anytime soon although LEDs are already much better than incandescents in that regard but there are ones that will likely survive your lifetime available at a higher price but only in Dubai. Most LED bulbs are designed to fail sooner, but they are also cheaper.
Those 10k recharge batteries are absolutely coming and we will have them in a few years time, li-ion as it stands today will simply be obsolete.
A simple way to significantly extend battery longevity is to limit charge to 80% (only charging to 100% occasionally when you know you might need it, like a long day travelling).
Unfortunately Apple doesn't yet provide this option on most of it's devices, other than the iPhone 15 line. But you can use third-party apps to do it on Macs.
Please tell me what that utility is--I've long wanted something like that but have yet to find anything like it.
FWIW, I've been doing something similar with my phone, but manually. I found an unusually low current charger that charges the phone at a rate of ~5% per hour, and I almost always keep the battery level between 25% and 75%. So far the phone is 4 years old and iOS claims that the maximum capacity of the battery is still 92%.
Technology Connections has an interesting video on this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb7Bs98KmnY
If anything, I would have thought that devices are good enough know that people don't exchange them quite so often? Especially laptops.
I can still reasonably comfortably use my 2016 laptop today. In 1993 using computer from 1986 would have been a much bigger downgrade.
My first phone was NiCad Nokia. Later Nokia monochrome display phones used Li-ion well before smartphones. I use an iPhone now, but if a user-upgradeable Android phone came out with a solid-state battery, I would switch.
10k cycles (~27y) sounds absurdly good - I think 80% of original capacity by 10y would be more than adequate. Basically you never need to replace the battery throughout the useful life time of a device.
IOW - the device becomes 30-50% lighter (on its own), and the buyer determines how heavy his/her experience will be based on which Qi-pack [s]he has chosen to run their phone
Want a 10,000mAh battery? No problem!
Want only a 2,000mAh battery? Again: no problem!
This even solves a problem Apple has let other vendors 'solve' with regard to cases - want an OtterBox? CrayolaCase? SiliconSoftie? Go get your case from any of a thousand manufactures
Apple could provide a pair (or trio, etc) of Qi-packs for their devices, and let other manufacturers go banana pants coming up with other options
This modularizes the iPhone in a smart way (not like that goofy Motorola method (which was reminiscent of IBM in the 80s open-standardizing the buses for their Personal Computer) whereby the only thing you "have" to get from Motorola was the core module
Apple's "core module" with such a program would still be iPhone ... and that is still the biggest differentiator Apple has vs the 80 scadzillion Android makers out there: iPhone is only Apple. Android is whomever wants to make one.
Because Apple has had this for years a while now with the MagSafe battery pack.
I actually think it should become a standard that all companies adopt. It's far easier and quicker to use than removable batteries and doesn't remove valuable space inside the phone.
None of them turned out to matter, at all. What does matter is a solid feel and solid construction and the flash and batteries lasting the lifetime of the product. I'd rather have that than replaceable.
Most iPhones are still very useful devices by the time their batteries have deteriorated below 70% original capacity.
I could totally see getting a second laptop-footprint-shaped pod for my MBA that would click on and give me another 20-40h of run time between charges!
And lose 20% percent efficiency? A bigger battery for the same usage time and my device is constantly warmer? Sign me up! /s
But excuse me while I throw up in my mouth a little with this "Blue Ocean" nonsense. Apple makes an original, user-hostile decision for the sole purpose of increasing planned obsolescence and to make them more money, and then when the winds shift they might go back the other way - but, again, they'll likely be forced to anyway. No need for poetic blog posts.
I suppose we're owed another "Blue Ocean" missive about how Apple led the way with Lightning connectors and then found another Blue Ocean with ... USB-C. Puhleeez.
You make it sound like the decision comes with no benefits.
All of the hardware to support removable battery means less space for the battery.
And especially in the early days the iPhone was struggling to reach a normal working day.
But I agree that "Apple makes an original, user-hostile decision" is a bit too simplistic. I have long since come to the conclusion that Apple simply always chooses the cheapest option for them in cases where user-serviceability is concerned or to maybe put it another way they ignore user-serviceability semi-actively. Routing screw posts costs time and wear on tools. screwing in extra screws costs time thus just mainly gluing the battery in place is the cheapest option.
Soldering on flash and RAM saves on costs and makes the PCB design easier. At the same time it "locks" the longevity of the device neatly. This leads to not-overlong replacement cycles simply for practicability reasons - for instance modern chrome eats all the RAM.
Lighter devices? That's irrelevant, no one cares about device weight.
Cheaper to manufacture? That's just a ploy to gasp make more money! How dare they?!
Waterproofing? Well I don't go SCUBA diving with my phone, so clearly no one else does. And if they do, just put it in a ziplock bag!
And so on.
Apple indeed innovated in multiple ways and markets, but un-removable batteries wasn’t one.
But over the years, as John has gotten older (and as the other members of ATP) I find that my values are starting to diverge. It feels much more of a news show than a tech show and I find I’m not gaining much insight from their discussions or opinions. Even their tech insights are starting to feel out of touch with the rest of the world.
What?
There are still plenty of Android devices that have user serviceable batteries, but they don't sell as well because what the majority of users want is to minimize size and weight at any cost. The minority of geeks out there who think something like this is important doesn't move the needle. Apple (particularly under Tim Cook) only cares about maximizing profits. Their environmental schtick is merely dressing in front of the ruthless profit making machine at work.
Obviously Siracusa can't deal with the dissonance that his precious Apple doesn't care about the environment as much as he does. Thus typing up silly articles like this...
I think in the current market we have no idea of what the majority of users want because there's no combination of all the available options.
The majority of users might value iOS more than any specific hardware feature. Second to that, they might value price and career rebates.
That makes fringe android phones failures irrelevant and would leave us with only random guesses on what people would want outside of what Apple and Sumsung is offering right now.
Let me fix that for you.
Blue ocean is roughly the idea of inventing new markets. While it might apply to Nintendo, that's really a stretch and I view it as product differentiation in a highly entrenched market where Sony and Microsoft are clear sharks in the water.
If you look at Apple's product and marketing history, blue ocean has not applied in two decades. The iPod was hardly the first MP3 player -- Diamond Rio was already in that space. There were several smartphones in the market before apple shipped iPhone, people were speculating on when for years before it was announced. Smartwatches supported android 2 years before Apple Watch Series 0 shipped. HomePod shipped 5 years after the first Amazon echo. What Apple does is wait for other people to prove out the market, and then produce an expensive high end version. This is an effective strategy that captures a lot of high margin & affluent demand, but it's very clearly a red ocean strategy.
A blue ocean strategy doesn't have to shout "Think Different," your product uniqueness is obvious and usually confusing. A red ocean strategy means focusing on margins, inventory, and balancing product differentiation versus convention. It means keeping your product secret until the big announce and suing competitors who copy you. At one point Tim Cook was calling himself the Atilla the Hun of operations, and was quoted in articles as saying "inventory is the root of all evil."
Even the iPad, which has clear lineage decades back to the horrible Windows XP tablets, create a whole new market category out of thin air.
Apple has designed the Mac to become obsolete in approximately 10 years. That’s when you lose official OS support. And yes, you can get your battery serviced but nobody’s going to buy a $200 battery for a laptop worth $500. Adding it back wouldn’t be a blue ocean, it would just be Apple ceding profits to nobody.
Apple’s blue ocean is stacking ecosystem benefits. If you have an iPhone it makes more sense to own a Mac or an Apple Watch. If you own a Mac or Apple Watch it makes more sense to own AirPods. If you own AirPods it makes more sense to own an Apple TV.
Replaceable batteries gives an out to that situation, as one battery maker somewhere in the world could be enough to keep the remaining laptops alive, with no need for invasive serviceing.
Of course that brings Apple close to nothing in revenue, but would boost good will from users and let them tout sustainability?
Also won't resonate if you're cycling through devices every 2 years anyway.
https://www.ifixit.com/products/macbook-air-13-late-2010-201...
"with no third party repair shop willing to work on your laptop at a reasonable price."
I am not aware of any third party repair shop who would refuse to work on a 2017 MacBook Air. Unless it is a repair shop that refuses to work on Apple products in general.
I have a 2013 Macbook Pro and I'm getting the battery replaced next week by Apple.
My laptop is over 10 years old and they're still doing it at their standard battery replacement price.
But regardless, easily removable batteries are going to create more e-waste, not less. Replacing a battery is perfectly doable right now, but there is a hurdle you have to jump over - you aren’t going to do it until you really need it. Once those batteries are easy to replace, people are going to be replacing them much more frequently, they’re going to be buying spares, etc. And people are going to be throwing old batteries in the trash without even thinking about it.
To make a comparison to cameras, I don't know how many people care to buy spare batteries outside of pros and people actually going through 2 or 3 batteries on their trips. Everyone else is probably using the one coming with their camera until it dies and then replaces it.
So don't think removeable batteries of the past held together by a sliding cover - more like grab an eyeglass screwdriver and a few minutes later its out.
I think the distiction is slight but there is a difference between an object meant to attach/de-attach (like old laptop batteries) and the m2 hard drive in my laptop. Both are technically replaceable, only one was designed to be removeable.
Not saying it's a bad machine or anything, but the "half the price compared to a MacBook" meme is now more irrelevant than ever.
What are you basing this on? How do you operationalize "more tech savvy"?
1) They are no longer dependent on the loss of battery capacity to drive new device purchases — meaning this issue is effectively over. Batteries now last all day for longer than most new device users will keep a device.
2) Margins on services sold to hand-me-down family devices are a growing high-margin and young-user market and much of the market isn’t open to buying a device here — they will only use the service if they get a device for “free.”
3) The net outcome is an increase in service revenue and decrease in recycling costs for Apple.
All these trends will only accelerate from here.
The apple self service program is apples ideal of right to repair. A shitty program where you can buy board assemblies and larger parts for fairly high prices with no changes to their software approach whatsoever. A battery change through this program is ~$120 up front (if you rent the tools, which you probably should) with a $30 refund when you return your dead battery. A battery change via the apple store is $99. You can only buy parts if you give them the device serial number up front (so fuck independent shops) and you need to call apple at the end to pair the part on their end.
A pointless program with tons of waste still created. A short on your laptop motherboard? Better buy a new motherboard. An issue with the camera on your MacBook? Better buy a new lcd assembly.
They will suddenly become very against right to repair the moment it starts to actually fight for things like schematics and board diagram access, component availability and not just parts assemblies, parts pairing that’s done in a consumer friendly way, etc.
imagine legislation that says apple has to change parts pairing so that if a consumer unlocks their phone the parts have to be able to be sold as well? Or that they can no longer enter a contract with Texas Instruments to buy 100% of their stock of a usb c controller ic for a MacBook Pro so repair shops can’t buy it on digikey or mouser? Etc. they will fight that hard and then just find a way to circumvent it (like making their own usb c controller ic)
[1] yes, the trillion dollar company is better than everyone else
It's weird people forget the main message Apple has been touting for years now: services revenue.
Even without removeable batteries, with right to repair device longevity will increase, and they've seen the writing on the wall for a long time.
Apple will continue increasing services revenue. They'll fight the bitter end for the 15/30% tax on everything, iCloud tiers, Apple Music, TV, etc.
If they find a blue ocean, it will be in services. Their entry into emergency satellite calls and other "wouldn't you feel bad being dead because you didn't pay us ?" push could be that.
Replaceable battery and matte display! I hate that these features were eliminated.
The point is, Apple has had a strategy for a while now. It’s not going to win against Android in the phone wars. It’s going to win in the AR/XR space if they can manage to get a decent wearable out and provide cores within cores within cores for AI NN’s.
Apple might have an interesting angle for embracing that because unlike their competitors they profit from the whole stack, have a robust service portfolio, and retail presence near a large portion of their customers. Turning device longevity into a competitive point really puts pressure on anyone who can't easily switch from Qualcomm's blink-and-you-miss-it support period or negotiate some kind of revenue sharing agreement between themselves, Microsoft/Google, and services like Spotify or Netflix, and unlike most other attempts to make it harder to compete with them this would actually be seen as a general good by almost everyone other than their direct competitors.
Yellow Tail Wine and Nintendo’s Wii were text book examples. They both found an untapped audience, novice consumers who don’t know nor care for over the top quality. In Nintendo’s case, hard core gamers valued graphics and performance as quality. To Yellow Tail it was Wine enthusiasts and their interest in vineyards, vintages, and hints of whatever.
Apple products are novice, but they aren’t cheap. The Chromebook is a better example of Blue Ocean. It does only what an entry level consumer wants in a laptop. It browsers the web, writes documents. Google said “hey, pretty much everyone who owns a MacBook but isn’t an artist or techie could use this”. Like MacBooks it doesnt require expertise, it offers a similar user quality experience, but unlike them it’s affordable because it doesn’t have unnecessary hardware specs and Swiss watch leveled build quality.
I don’t blame the author for not reading the whole ass book. But for god sakes, at least read the wiki page about it, don’t use a gaming magazine as your source. Because he clearly took the Wii example in the magazine and ran with it. He thought he could map it onto Apple products because what, they get rid of stuff and are innovative like the Wii was?
I’m glad I’m not the only one who found the battery ramble irrelevant.
Battery technology has improved so much that removable batteries are less desirable.
> Lately, I’ve been thinking about the blue ocean strategy in the context of Apple. Like Nintendo ...
Well, Apple is certainly not differentiating on 'low price'. And I don't know that high margin is "innovative blue ocean".
- Advance encryption in iCloud/iPhone its something not present in other products and services currently.
- FindMy network to find lost keys and iphone
- Private relay for more private browsing
- AirDrop for fast file transfer
This whole paragraph is delusional. Apple users carrying and swapping out batteries? Apple supporting and allowing people to simply swap out a battery instead of going to the apple store for a certified repair? Apple??
In terms of blue oceans it’s where they see a lack of innovation because you can have many blue oceans within in anything you do if you see the problems that exist in a way that your competitors don’t and then you apply great engineering with great marketing (although sometimes it’s just marketing) to reach the numbers you need.
>Starting in 2009, Apple began to phase out removable batteries across its laptop line in favor of batteries that were sealed inside the case and were not user-accessible. >The upsides, which Apple touted, were many: lighter weight, smaller size, better reliability, longer battery life.
What are you talking about? The link provided to Apple's press release for that laptop did not include anything about why a non-removable battery was advantageous. They provided other reasons the new battery was great, but they did not say the elimination of user-serviceability allowed for any of those benefits.
>The iPhone defied so many other norms that the sealed battery was less remarked upon than it might have been, but it was still noted.
Noted by who? Remarked upon by who? It sounds like this author is generalizing his own opinions to the entire population. I'm sure this comment sounds nitpicky but I just don't like this kind of fast and loose writing.
At least, that's my assumption based on their massive spend on infrastructure related to AI. I've been waiting for their cloud hosting project to jump out of stealth mode, if it's still in progress, but maybe it was never intended for anyone other than Apple's use. If that's the case then it makes more sense that they'd sort of pull a Google and invest more heavily in the backend server side for one product that could really be a killer, which would most likely be something AI. An answer to Google's search product that isn't search.
I was going to rant. But it is pointless. These companies find ways to hold customers because of their tailored experiences and it has less to do with technology and more with targeting.
They could make slick, elegant devices which are still repairable and have replaceable batteries.
I remember the original iMac G5 had a great design which let you simply remove the backplate with 3 screws and access everything. Of course in the next iteration they changed the design entirely so that opening it up became a huge ordeal.
* Macintosh
* iPhone
* Apple Store
