“Apple has incensed some of its best customers with product changes that were meant to be innovative, most recently killing headphone jacks on its iPhones and ditching most of the ports on its new MacBook Pro,” Erin Fuchs writes for Yahoo Finance. “Horace Dediu, a bullish Apple observer, recently suggested the tech giant needs to incite a little hate from its best customers in order to improve its products. ‘We’re going to get to a point where there will be no more ports in any of their products because everything will be wireless charging and communication,’ Dediu said at a recent talk.”
“He added: ‘They are orphaning people. But firing their customer is essential to the brand. It’s not nice to have. It’s essential to have. You have to fire customers. You have to anger the people who are your best customers,'” Fuchs writes. “Steve Jobs acknowledged that Apple’s changes often displease its own customers. At the D8 Conference in 2010, the late Apple founder said that people called Apple ‘crazy’ for getting rid of features like the floppy disk drive. ‘We’re trying to make great products for people. We at least have the courage of our convictions to say, ‘We don’t think this is part of what makes a great product. We’re going to leave it out,” Jobs said. ‘Some people are not going to like that. They’re going to call us names… We’re going to take the heat because we want to make the best product in the world for customers.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We’ve found that those who complain the loudest about the lack of a floppy drive, a parallel port, a serial port, a 30-pin connector or a 3.5mm headphone jack are those who lack the most imagination.
We are Mac users and Mac users embrace change. Apple leads. The rest of the world follows, as usual. — MacDailyNews, March 11, 2015
As for enraging its best customers by being lazy and not updating products for years that should be up-to-date at all times (some current examples: Mac Pro, iMac, iPad Pro, Mac mini, Apple TV), that is simply unacceptable mismanagement. Apple definitely should not be enraging its best customers in that fashion. The fact of the matter is that a team of summer interns with petty cash could have done a better job with the Mac Pro than Apple’s current collection of exorbitantly paid C-Suite executives.
It’s not innovation to make Pro models un-upgradable.
This. A Pro product shouldn’t mean just having slightly higher specs and not being able to upgrade it.
It’s also not innovation to make your product incapable of being used on a commercial airline flight.
wtf does this mean?
1. You’re on an airplane
2. Your iPhone battery is at 9%
3. You have an external battery to charge it
4. You want to listen to music
5. Pick one
Yes, pretty much. It’s been an FAA violation for years to operate wireless devices below 10K, which means you can’t listen to music, or wirelessly charge, etc. bottom line means you can’t use the device when its only choice is wireless for providing a certain capability.
I honestly rarely used any of my ports on my old MacBook except the TB2 port. I hate TB2 cables and feel they’re very fragile. I actually prefer having no other useless ports and having 4 of the one I actually use. TB3 is far superior just in quality and reliability and durability too.
Bullshit. Delight your best customers.
I couldn’t agree more!
This. The new Macbook Pros sacrifice battery life for Apple’s thinness obsession. I understand that they’re pushing the boundaries with all USB-C ports, but this seems like an excuse rather than a good reason for making “Pro” machines last 10-hours max, while 4-year-old Macbook Airs can go 12+. Battery life is far more important to pros (not to mention everyone) than half a pound of weight. Why not push the envelope in this aspect of portability? Who would criticize a Macbook Pro with 12-hour battery life that weighed 100 grams more?
It’s a trade off.
Many of us remember the original “Apple Macintosh Portable”. It had 12+ hours of battery life. It also weighed almost 16 pounds. It weighed about as much as the original thin man Mac with keyboard & mouse. Both could be put into specially made cases and LUGGED from one site to another.
Apple has definitely gone too far the other way, opting for thinness and light weight.
I’m one of those that would prefer to go with a bit more thickness and weight and get more life on battery. For my uses I rarely get over two hours on battery with a maxed out 2015 model Pro. If I could get even four hours out of a maxed out, state-of-the-art 2017 Pro, I’d jump at buying one in half a heart beat.
Rechargeable batter technology has come a long way. The Macintosh Portable used lead-acid batteries. Lithium-Ion batteries are a big improvement over lead-acid. 100 grams really isn’t much of a difference. It would also be nice to be able to replace the battery without having to use alcohol or Goo-Gone to dissolve the glue which secures the battery to the case. The non-Retina MacBook Pro design was superior because many of the parts could be replaced independently – RAM, hard drive, wireless card, trackpad, keyboard, I/O board, and optical drive. You could even replace the optical drive with a hard drive if you wanted extra storage without the hassle of an external hard drive.
I’m fine with *adding* USB-C ports. I encourage it.
But I still want a mag-safe power supply because I have literally been saved by breakage dozens of times by that. All I see with USB-C power feeds are really expensive accidents.
And I still want one standard USB port because those cables are ubiquitous. And not every piece of office equipment that I may plug into supports WiFi.
And I’d rather have an HDMI port so I can plug into any TV or projector rather than having to carry a dongle when I need to give a presentation.
As for the headphone jack, this is actually a deal breaker for me. I want to be able to listen to and charge my phone at the same time. And my wired headphones draw very little power. And because I lost break them so often $12 headphones are efficient to replace every 3-4 months, Now I see a future when wireless headphones will be better, that’s when power can be delivered wirelessly and efficiently to multiple devices (and replacement wireless headphones can be sold for under $20). But Apple is stupidly obsessing over thinness, a quality I find f—ing ridiculous, instead of delivering a usable implementation of a technology Tesla demonstrated over a century ago.
So I’ll keep using my late 2013 MacBook Pro and my iPhone 5SE and not upgrade either because Apple obviously doesn’t care what I think or I actually want.
Amen Scooter; So you are still using a 2012 MBPro, right?
Late 2013.
Removing ports? OK, just don’t do it while they are still actively being used by peripheral manufactures.
Put both new and old side by side for a couple of generations. Tell everybody and the other perf manufactures when the old ports will no longer exist on future models.
On a side note, I still boot into Target Disk mode older boxes with FW400 so I can do reinstalls on them or disk repairs. I have FW400 external drives I still need to access. Should Apple keep FW400, no. But just because Apple stops putting them on computers it doesn’t mean I still don’t need to use them for a while longer.
So, remove them after they are not being used by peripheral manufacturers? I get your point and I agree, but waiting for a 3rd party to dictate what goes and does not go into your product is not how Apple operates.
“I get your point and I agree,…”
I disagree. There are still companies making peripherals with PS/2 connectors! There really are companies making peripherals with RS232/422 interfaces.
If Apple were to have stopped shipping computers with ADB ports only after companies stopped shipping things to plug into it, we’d still have ADB ports.
This is not a “chicken and egg” thing. It’s embracing the future at the appropriate time. Apple supporting USB Type-C connectors as its primary connector for Macs (both portable and desktop) is the way to go — but only if Apple supports the FULL suite of protocols that can be done over that port. Apple needs to step up and say that from now on (Summer 2017) all new Macs will have only USB Type-C connectors (other than desktop power cables) *and* those connections will carry the full suite of main and alternate modes of USB Type-C.
While I hate dongles with a passion few people have, I can live with dongles for a year or two while the rest of the world catches up. There really is no reason for any worthwhile peripheral manufacturer not to move to USB Type-C connectors. None. (Yes, I’ll probably forever have to carry around an Ethernet dongle and maybe a HDMI dongle for the foreseeable future, but eventually the vast majority of things will go to the USB Type-C connector.)
Now, producers of ultra cheap peripherals are not going to want to spend the engineering and design dollars and efforts to redesign around USB Type-C connectors. I get that. But, I believe the vast majority of Mac users are not into buying super cheap peripherals. The move to USB Type-C connectors may, in some way, eliminate some of those bottom feeders.
It’s a matter of timing. Predictable phase out of old connectors is welcome when the time is right. Problem is Apple uses every major hardware release as an opportunity to rape its customers with ridiculously overpriced adapters.
There is absolutely no reason in the world Apple couldn’t offer USB3 A type connectors right next to USB-C connectors for one product cycle. That product cycle needs to be no more than 2 years for chip & price updates and 4 years for major chassis redesign by the way. 2-4 years isn’t too much of an imposition on Apple as a reasonable transition period, is it?
I understand company economics on making products simpler and less “modular.”
But there are consequences which are very expensive in time & $s for customers.
When a non-upgradable product either fails or must be repositioned it is a bitch. Not being able to physically replace a hard drive is the worst. International travel with a MacBookPro is getting more intrusive. It is not possible to simply put in a new SSD with a bare OS install to get by border inspections
Used Mac Books are not worth much at all if a soldered SSD fails or simply runs out of space. The user can’t simply pop in a new SSD, though he can plug in an external SSD.
MacBooks now routinely last for a decade, except you can’t easily service any internal parts without going to Apple or 3rd party repair facility. Time is money. Apple saves money and causes the user to lose time and money.
You don’t have to be an addict to hate change. Most people hate change. Those people are usually the first to die, or get old.
“Hope I die before I get old.”- Pete Townsend.
“Be Like Water.”- Bruce Lee
I had a hardware issue that necessitated an upgrade from an older MBP to a new one. I don’t like needing a dongle to replace the USB and SD card ports, but I can live with it. What I find to be a clear step backwards is that I can no longer use my iMac as an extended screen. It is not simply a connectivity issue, as I have all of the needed adapters. That functionality has been removed from the current model.
Already pissed nothing changed
I am an optimist that things will start changing for the better for Apple customers.
Let’s have Apple restart the innovation with something intimately tied to our security which Apple spends a lot of time on; Airport WiFis!
The problem with the new MBP is that the bean counters tried to save costs by making a HYBRID of a high end Macbook Air and a true MBP. They new MBP is a great ‘executive’ laptop but misses the mark for ‘big haul Truckers’.
They should ALSO have built a heavier, more expansion, 32 GB, power GPU (like a GTX 1080) true MBP and called the current MBP something like a ‘lux Air’ (rumours say Apple originally wanted to give the new MBP a ‘GOLD’ option ! (note tests show the 1080 has 4 times the power of the GPU in the MBP)
——–
In the end Apple mantras like ‘we need to improve even knowing that some customers would be enraged’ shouldn’t become an ‘excuse’ for sloppy thinking (like the Cylinder MP as well , the neutered Mac Mini, Apple TV remote) which seems to be happening too often.
People will only take so much, before they say F It. The rest of them can wait and hope and wait and hope and wait and hope and keep hopeing, and smart people just move on. Snowflakes.
“We’ve found that those who complain the loudest about the lack of a floppy drive, a parallel port, a serial port, a 30-pin connector or a 3.5mm headphone jack are those who lack the most imagination.”
Quite possibly the stupidest thing I’ve ever read on this site.
When the 30-pin port went away, so did the iPod mode on the car radios of countless vehicles already on the road. Buy a new phone with Lightning, that feature no longer existed. The Lightning connector didn’t carry the necessary signal format for that mode.
“Imagination” would be adding new features or parts while still allowing older standards to work.
There are some things that Apple does that are mind blowing stupid. IPhone 6 and on, putting the power button directly opposite the volume buttons. Still not fixed. Nobody likes that design flaw.
Mac Cube and Trashcan Pro: both designed by artists rather than user-focused engineers. Sales proved what a disaster both were.
But hell has a special place for the decades of assholes in Cupertino who intentionally dicked over Mac owers with a bad selection of overpriced connectors. Rhis is nothing new. It’s in Apples DNA as Clueless Tim would sat tritely.
Every laptop owner in 2017 deserves at a minimum:
– one dedicated magsafe connection
– at least 2 USB connections (preferably A and C both)
– at least one Thunderbolt
– one or more dedicated non-thunderbolt display connections (like Minidisplayport or HDMI)
– one dual analog/digital audio port as on prior MacBook models
Anything less is a netbook.
Higher end MacBook Pro models can double the usb and thunderbolts and add SDCard reader.
But does Apple listen to user issues? Not at all. Well Timmy held a sale on adapters. But after the faux discount, Monoprix still offered better pricing than Apple ever did on cables & adapters.
Recurring connector annoyance is just getting too expensive. Just like with prior Thunderbolt releases, the real joy occurrs when you try to mesh legacy peripherals that (were parallel in older macs) into Apple’s new daisy chain plan. One old peripheral pulls down the speed of the whole chain. So Mac users had to do was wait another year for Thunderbolt docks to arrive so they could pay up to $300 or more to regain the ports they lost. Then some time after that they can pay premium prices for 3rd party Thunderbolt enclosures for RAID arrays. All of which smokes the useless icloud but which should never cost so much frustration to a Mac owner.
It Just Works is something I just can’t say about Macs anymore.
If wireless charging requires a charging pad the portaable suddenly becomes a lot less portable.
Nobody goes away for a weekend without a power brick – if you then have to carry a power charging plate, as well as all the new dongles for missing ports, the weight continues to rise not fall.
This article is a bit naff.
• Wires are going to remain an efficient method of data transference.
• Moving everything to EM waves means interference.
• Double purposing a single port (I’m talking about the Lightning port on the iPhone 7 series) causes device confusion and user frustration. (I’m talking about the stupid little dance required to use the Lightning port for both charging and headphones at the same time. Not to mention that all the splitter cables are crap quality).
Steve Jobs disrupted for the sake of function and future. The point was NOT about upsetting the customer but enabling the customer, at least eventually.
In the article, Henry Ford is quoted for the thousandth time – as a defence of aloof inventors who purport to see the future – and who pretend a stoical indifference to collateral damage – but who are self-blinkered dray animals themselves, propelled forward by forces they imagine they control, but don’t.
With Apple’s iron emphasis on privacy – and with cyber-crime and cyber-warfare screaming in the news headlines – it seems ironic that the contained EM fields of physically-shielded wiring are being myopically discarded in favour of software-reliant wireless signals. To me this is the ultimate hubris, as history pivots toward anarchy in the form of indistinct hacker collectives and roving brigands. Well, as they say, ya can’t stop progress.
Incredibly insightful, as ever.
I have been enraged with apple for quite sometime. They already lost me as a customer. I knew a few other people that bought hardware, not just from apple. Not anymore.