Windows on New Macbook Pro Permanently Damages Speaker Due to Poor Drivers

I'm also worried. At first, I rationalized weakness on the Mac front as a side-effect of a strategic prioritization of the mobile & cloud ecosystem. But then I got the new iPhone, and I've been surprised by my emotional reaction to it feeling buggy.

It's all relatively minor in isolation; voicemail consistently fails to load messages multiple times before it succeeds, voicemail occasionally crashes, apps get stuck halfway down the screen after I swipe to check the notification screen, texts and iMessages sometimes show up hours or days late, notifications appear on the lock screen but are missing when I unlock the phone, the weather app sometimes displays a blank temperature, web sites have broken behavior with auto-playing, the state of the device when using volume controls changes unpredictably, and so on.

Most of these are undoubtedly caused by my service provider, or a 3rd party app, or me fat-thumbing an interface, or my complete misperception of a UI paradigm, or are otherwise not Apple's fault. But that's entirely besides the point, because we're talking about my emotional reaction, not reality, and we're talking about something Apple used to bend over backwards to control.

If the common narrative about Apple's modern successes being rooted in design sensibilities is correct, I don't see them being able to sustain leadership in the areas where they've been leading. The good news for Apple is that there still aren't better alternatives for customers who are heavily invested in the Apple ecosystem. The bad news is that there eventually will be, and also that there is material economic harm in keeping customers but losing their enthusiasm.

Do you feel those are issues with the hardware or iOS?

For me the hardware feels solid. But I see the rough edges on iOS.

> cloud ecosystem.

Apart from promoting the the App Store, has Apple done anything to promote or enhance it's cloud offerings? I don't recall hearing anything about iCloud in a very long time.

> voicemail consistently fails to load messages

AT&T? I've noticed this to be the case for AT&T users regardless of whether it's iOS or Android. Their visual voicemail is unreliable.

> or me fat-thumbing an interface

I routinely run into issues trying to use iOS on iPhone 5/SE test devices for work. The touch targets are so small I have cock my fingers at weird angles to be able to hit buttons. The App Store purchase buttons are some of the worst offenders. It's almost like Apple stopped testing their UI on small screens after the iPhone 6 came out.

>I'm also worried.

No worries here. I'm happy the landscape is getting more competitive.

There certainly is regression at all corners:

1. Try finding a close-up of the keyboard of the function key model on the MacBook Pro website. It seems it is just not there or I'm failing to find it. Previously Apple used to have a design section where you could see the products from all angles.

http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/

2. The online shop is just horrible. Even finding the store takes a while and the icons look like clip-art. Complete mess.

http://www.apple.com/shop/accessories/all-accessories

3. This is how the Apple Pencil and the Mighty Mouse are supposed to be charged:

https://i.imgur.com/CvcaGze.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/P8M8pqO.jpg

The Mighty Mouse is also an ergonomic disaster.

4. The iPhone case with battery pack has an aweful design. Who would ever let this pass?

https://i.imgur.com/DyvTE3w.jpg

5. It also feels like the "Designed by Apple in California" book was published 20 years early. It's just like the new Star Wars movie, all those recent sequels of the n-th iteration and Marvel comic adaptations. Nobody innovates anymore and people just replicate what worked well before or only improve it incrementally.

> cloud ecosystem

I only meant in the strategic sense. If the future of personal computing is to be lightweight terminals and hardware requirements pushed into the cloud, Mac hardware and macOS might provide less growth opportunity than other business units. This is completely debatable, but is at least plausible.

> voicemail

Verizon for me.

> fat-thumbing an interface

I should also mention I have it set to the largest interface settings, and I'm a 32 year old with 20/20 vision.

I think you're right that it's iOS rather than hardware, but Apple already has no competitive advantage in the mobile space when it comes to industrial design. Others caught up on the hardware and physical product design in the last couple years; it's now the software and service ecosystem which keep Apple customers buying iPhones.

I guess the grass really is always greener on the other side. Android and W10 people always complain about buggyness. I think we've reached the point where larger software has become too complex for today's development and testing methods.

Some phones are cheap, some have big screens, some as fast, some have extra battery or memory.

Apple's differential has always been the UX. If they lose that, they'll need to be the best in something else.

Point 3 is incredible. It's like a selfie stick gone wrong (or perhaps, gone more wrong).

The Mighty Mouse charge port is indeed a WTF, but what's wrong with the Apple Pencil? The charging setup looks ugly, but it allows the Pencil to be charged on the go without needing an extra cable that people would lose or leave behind. And it's fast enough (15 seconds of charging for 30 minutes of usage) that the awkwardness hardly matters.

Just wondering, have you been keeping these in a list waiting for this opportunity, or did all that just come out of your head?

The Mighty Mouse is the same. You get 9 hours of use from 2 minutes of charge time, and macOS warns you ahead of time, enough time for you to go and get a cup of coffee and by the time you're done, you'll probably end up with a full day's worth of charge. Or on the day that macOS warns you, just leave it to charge overnight. You get over a month of charge (I get close to 2), of usage.

The charging port on the back of the mouse is done to stop people from using it with it plugged in, which ruins the overall design, and since most people are lazy, they'll leave it plugged in all the time. Apple designs its products by thinking of an ideal use case first. Then they will try their hardest to make people use it in that ideal scenario.

I don't quite see the WTF here. I understand Apple's design decision and think it's actually quite clever, despite what it looks like at first glance.

Actually there's an adaptor with the pencil that allows you to charge with it a standard lightning cable.

You can plug it into an iPad, but you really don't have to.