“At WWDC last year, Apple introduced AirPlay 2, a new wireless protocol that allows users to beam audio to multiple rooms, control speakers through the Home app, and use the Apple TV as a hub for music streaming. Apple partnered with some 14 speaker makers including Bose, Bang & Olufsen, and Denon to bring AirPlay 2 support to a whole new crop of devices, and a developer API even promised third-party streaming apps ‘could all get in on the multi-room audio fun,'” Michael Simon writes for Macworld. “Ten months later, we’re still waiting for it.”
“The same goes for Messages on iCloud. An overdue feature that was set to finally debut in iOS 11, it too has been delayed several times, with a release now primed for iOS 11.4,” Simon writes. “AirPlay 2 and Messages on iCloud are just two of the recent major products and features Apple has been forced to delay: Apple Pay Cash didn’t arrive until the iOS 11.2, several months after iOS 11 launched; HomePod was delayed from December to February and shipped without stereo sound, one of its marquee features; AirPower has yet to get a price or shipping date despite being unveiled seven months ago; AirPods were delayed from October 2016 to December 2016 and have seen stock shortages ever since.”
Simon writes, “And now Apple tells us that the new modular Mac Pro, which it teased in an uncharacteristic press briefing a year ago, won’t be shipping for 12, possibly 18 months.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: “Apple needs to stop promising new products and start delivering them.” Gee, ya think?
At WWDC 2018, Apple CEO Cook will take the stage to announce the Apple Transporter, the world’s first teleportation machine, “coming real soon now.”
Only Apple can trumpet the importance of quality audio while shipping a speaker that's incapable of being set up as a stereo pair out of the box. https://t.co/y66UXnPt1u @tim_cook @pschiller #HomePod pic.twitter.com/OIw4KgdBUP
— MacDailyNews (@MacDailyNews) January 31, 2018
SEE ALSO:
Apple: No new Mac Pro until 2019 – April 5, 2018
Apple reiterates they’re working on an all-new modular, upgradeable Mac Pro and a high-end pro display – December 14, 2017
Why Apple’s promise of a new ‘modular’ Mac Pro matters so much – April 6, 2017
Apple’s cheese grater Mac Pro was flexible, expandable, and powerful – imagine that – April 6, 2017
More about Apple’s Mac Pro – April 6, 2017
Apple’s desperate Mac Pro damage control message hints at a confused, divided company – April 6, 2017
Who has taken over at Apple? – April 5, 2017
Apple’s embarrassing Mac Pro mea culpa – April 4, 2017
Who’s going to buy a Mac Pro now? – April 4, 2017
Mac Pro: Why did it take Apple so long to wake up? – April 4, 2017
Apple sorry for what happened with the Mac Pro over the last 3+ years – namely, nothing – April 4, 2017
Apple to unveil ‘iMac Pro’ later this year; rethought, modular Mac Pro and Apple pro displays in the pipeline – April 4, 2017
Apple’s apparent antipathy towards the Mac prompts calls for macOS licensing – March 27, 2017
Why Apple’s new Mac Pro might never arrive – March 10, 2017
Dare we hold out hope for the Mac Pro? – March 1, 2017
Apple CEO Cook pledges support to pro users, says ‘we don’t like politics’ at Apple’s annual shareholders meeting – February 28, 2017
Yes, I just bought a ‘new’ Mac Pro (released on December 19, 2013 and never updated) – January 4, 2017
Attention, Tim Cook! Apple isn’t firing on all cylinders and you need to fix it – January 4, 2017
No, Apple, do not simplify, get better – December 23, 2016
Rare video shows Steve Jobs warning Apple to focus less on profits and more on great products – December 23, 2016
Marco Arment: Apple’s Mac Pro is ‘very likely dead’ – December 20, 2016
How Tim Cook’s Apple alienated Mac loyalists – December 20, 2016
Apple’s not very good, really quite poor 2016 – December 19, 2016
Apple’s software has been anything but ‘magical’ lately – December 19, 2016
Lazy Apple. It’s not hard to imagine Steve Jobs asking, ‘What have you been doing for the last four years?’ – December 9, 2016
Rush Limbaugh: Is Apple losing their edge? – December 9, 2016
AirPods: MIA for the holidays; delayed product damages Apple’s credibility, stokes customer frustration – December 9, 2016
Apple may have finally gotten too big for its unusual corporate structure – November 28, 2016
Apple has no idea what they’re doing in the TV space, and it’s embarrassing – November 3, 2016
Apple’s disgracefully outdated, utterly mismanaged Mac lineup is killing sales – October 13, 2016
Apple takes its eye off the ball: Why users are complaining about Apple’s software – February 9, 2016
Open letter to Tim Cook: Apple needs to do better – January 5, 2015
Cook should get his supply chain and quality control in order instead of fooling around with politicians and his LGTB friends.
Cook’s Apple constantly struggles. AirPower is a good example. They go to all that work and marketing for the iPhone X’s wireless capability and announce a unique AirPower mat that can charge 3 devices at the same time… something that forms part of the whole smartphone “widget”, and the thing is still a unicorn.
Same old crap. Meanwhile Tim Cook is talking about how offended he is about DACA.
Rhe hell with Daca get to work Tim. Come here legally and all is good. It’s that simple
Agreed, there were numerous delivery issue during Steve Jobs Apple, however under Cook it is a very regular occurrence, to the point of “Normal”. Once item they dont need to upgrade every year is the software, both ios and OSX, the rush jobs are patently apparent with the bugs these software have
YEP!!!
….there’s nothing like a good delay to create anticipation (and frustration).
if you want to talk about vaporware them tall about Mucrosoft.
Apple always delivers. Now all the sissies complaint about everything. Apple product line has never been this strong and you just have to look at the competition that is doing nothing. And no the spying companies like Amazon, Google and Fazebook who gives their spying equipment fir free is not the competition what I mean.
No one is talking Microsoft right now you’re the one that brought it up enough already. The topic is about Apple stick to it
Apple always delivers? Hardly. The dumbing down or downright neglect of the Mac is epic, as I have been saying for years.
Witness the massive decline in quality, abandonment, or lack of necessary improvements of:
– iTunes
– iWork apps
– Aperture
– Airports
– Mac app store
– Mac Mini
– Mac Pro
– 17″ MBP
– eMacs
– displays
– etc.
Apple has abandoned its duty to maintain what once worked well, in order to chase after the bad companies you yourself are complaining about. Then we have money pits like cars, failed me-too experiments like Ping, and the half assed stuff like Apple TV and the Siri project which is the shining example of a laggard of the industry.
Cook has really only one accomplishment: he continued to exploit the iPhone that Jobs created. Everything else Cook and his lazy overpaid executive friends have done are buggy, late, overpriced, not versatile, and not user friendly, with legacy products in stores now looking more like museum pieces than competitive hardware. This is assuming, of course, that Apple stores actually stock Apple hardware. They look increasingly like cheap fashion accessory shops now.
Apple can’t simply deliver a powerful, highly capable, upgradeable computer.
1. The computer has to look different than everything else and somehow be completely un-stackable and impossible to fit in standard IT shelving,
2. It has to be upgradeable, but only by Apple or certified Apple technicians. None of that just putting in new parts stuff. The best upgrade is the one where people just buy a new machine.
3. Lack of expandability has to be touted as simplicity when really it’s far more complex than ever. I.e. “Look, this one port does everything! You just need dozens of wacky adapters in many situations.”
4. State of the art means about 2 years behind everyone else in processor speed, GPU, storage, etc.
5. It can’t just be a computer. It has to be a one way path into the Apple ecosphere as well masquerading as “Workflow.” They listened and people spoke of workflow. Some how “WE NEED POWERFUL COMPUTERS THAT ARE EASY TO UPGRADE, DON’T COST 3 TIMES AS MUCH AS BETTER MACHINES, AND ARE EASILY EXPANDED THAT WORKS WELL WITH EVERYTHING, NOT JUST FINAL CUT FUCKING PRO” translated in Apple’s ears to “Workflow.”
Obviously, “workflow” means how do we tie iPhones and watches and iPads into this shit?
Taking all these factors into consideration takes time for Apple.
Nailed It!
Thanks for choices Apple. And thanks for the memories when we really really liked you. Now, not so much.
The Mac Pro pro dilemma:
1.) Spend $4-5,000 to buy & outfit a very outdated 2012 or 2010 but also very upgradeable Mac Pro
2.) Spend $3,000 to $6,000 on the current Mac Pro, which is already outdated. (Also subject to short shelf life if Apple switches architectures.)
3.) Spend $5,000 to $13,000 on an iMac Pro, which has dubious user serviceability and upgradability. (Also subject to short shelf life if Apple switches architectures.)
4.) Wait another 12 to 18 months for the new Mac Pro, which may or may not fill their needs.
Wow, based on these choices I have to admit Apple really DOES care about the pros! (NOT.)
I miss the days when Apple didn’t actually have to tell people what they were gonna do. It was generally a surprise. (Except for Gizmodo with the iPhone 4 situation)
We knew about AirPods way in advanced
iMac pro
Mac Pro (coming in 2019)
Home pod
Any other products I’m missing? (I won’t count the iPhone X because I can understand why Apple had to tell people when that phone was going to be released)
Go back and read the stories of how Jobs pushed the members of the iPhone team leading up to the initial introduction and then leading up to actually shipping it. Steve inspired and pushed. Hard. What he led his teams to achieve was often viewed as impossible yet he made it happen.
That’s a leader.
Cook, I guess, is satisfied with announcing products then saying ‘we won’t ship it until it’s right’, with getting into product categories waaay late, missing the boat then delaying it anyhow. Cook simply doesn’t inspire. It’s painfully obvious in releases that are more heavy in stuff like emoji than actually new innovative features. Don’t get me wrong – I love my iPhone, iPad, Watch and iMac. What I don’t love are the exponentially increased instances of bugs, missteps and lackadaisical attitude (see Siri) towards being the best.
Stock prices don’t tell the whole story. Cook needs to go. Sorry. He may be a supply chain genius but he is a shitty leader.
The complexity and bleeding edge technology of products like the iPhone X, AirPods, Apple Watch Series 3, and HomePods make the original iPhone development look like child’s play. If you factor in the seamless integration between Apple’s hardware, software, and cloud services products, it’s quite clear that Apple innovation is very healthy. The Apple product ecosystem in utterly unmatched by anyone. Literally everything Apple makes, including: routers, computers, wearables, mobile devices, audio equipment, media devices, etc, works nearly flawlessly with everything else. This level of integration is unbelievably hard to do. Stop taking magic for granted.
I respect your opinion, but Apple is needlessly complicating things that should be made simple and reliable.
Worse, your examples of innovation aren’t even original ideas.
– iPhone X is a me-too copy of the Samsung OLED models. all the work to make FaceID function doesn’t add value, it costs more so that Apple could then claim that it too offers an OLED phone like Samsung does. Then to further reward the competition, it directly buys Samsung components. Hardware wise, the iPhone X offers no functional value above any other current model iPhone. Quite an Apple tax for something that doesn’t run an app better than phones costing hundreds less.
– Airpods, even if they do fit you, are a poor value to most users. The one-size-fits-all Apple solution is easily matched or outclassed by the wide array of alternatives. Wired phones are superior in sound quality, other wireless models offer sound canceling, sharing, or better ergonomics than Apple. It’s Apple’s attempt to reel in fools who accept the loss of a durable reliable headphone jack and don’t mind constantly recharging yet one more disposable sealed battery powered gadget. Hurray if you are satisfied, to me this looks like an accessory which distracts from the important work Apple has been avoiding ever since Cook took over.
– Apple Watch – same as above, an accessory that doesn’t add much value to most real world users. The time savings are oversold, the health functions while nice are easily acquired elsewhere at a fraction of the price. Not at all a good replacement for a phone which everyone carries around these days. You may be more infatuated with Angela’s interchangeable watch bands, and the incessant MDN propaganda, but one glance at the pathetic apps available for the Watch tells me they have a long way to go before it’s an essential item.
Finally: iCloud sucks. Always did, always will. Cook’s choice to follow all the evil companies into forced subscriptions is an affront to everything Apple used to stand for. 1984 has come, and Apple wants to be Big Brother just like every other tech firm. The only difference is Apple is slower and less nimble than the competition — unfortunately no longer offering superior quality or value to make it the consistently best choice for computing.
Apple gear does not work flawlessly and it ain’t magic.
Yet one more example of Apple quality these days: yesterday following the completion of a project using a trusty old 2010 Mac Pro, I archived the work onto a removeable hard drive (remember those?). I then chose to use Apple’s stripped down Disc Utility to erase the second internal drive with intermediate backups and working files that we no longer needed. Apple DU failed – no explanation, no guidance, just didn’t work. Fired up Techtool and securely erased the drive and also slid in a new clean internal drive, formatted that using Techtool.
If Apple can’t even get the basics correct and 3rd party software is now needed to reliably get work done, then Apple is dead to me.
Enjoy your headphones. I have more important stuff to do.
Apple is certainly not perfect, but I’m pretty happy typing this on my 2010 MacBook Pro 15″, which I upgraded with RAM and an SSD a few years back for $250. My Mac is flawlessly running the latest version of macOS High Sierra. Meanwhile, I’m wearing an Apple Watch “Series 0” with the latest version of watchOS. My iPhone X is close by and my Apple TV 4 displaying a gorgeous HD video screen saver across the room. Both are running the latest versions of iOS and tvOS respectively. I have a pair of AirPods with which I can quickly switch between all of my Apple devices. My internet connection is delivering 100Mbps wirelessly across my whole house thanks to a wired bridge setup of a 2011 Time Capsule and a 2009 Airport Extreme. All this gear ‘Just Works’ flawlessly together. I don’t have any pressing need to upgrade anything and none of my Apple devices has ever broken down. I’m patiently waiting for Apple’s next innovation, but I’ve got no serious complaints about any of the Apple gear I own, some of which is pushing 10 years old and still going strong. Try that with any mixture of tech from other companies.
Imagine if Cook was CEO, Flash would have been included on the iPhone…..
The Floppy disk with all the code for Airplay 2 was lost in the move to the new campus and they have had to start from scratch.
Wrote TheMacAdvocate for several years and it pains me to agree. Apple needs to shift its release horizon to make it less about responding to competitors’ products and more about pushing its own.
It’s because of shit articles like this that I’ve let my 20+ year subscription to MacWorld lapse.
Appointing an accountant as CEO will always destroy a company.
It happens faster if they put a designer in charge of engineering: form over function produces pretty devices which don’t work so well.
Saying you can run a billion dollar business on an iPad just proves you don’t have to type your own correspondence. I note that it is still impossible to,prepare a business report with text in portrait and landscape charts or tables in Pages. It used to be possible, but they dumbed down Pages to make it work on the web and iOS (which still can’t print to a laser printer).
And Mr Ives obviously doesn’t type either, else Apple’s notebooks would have proper keyboards.
Time to get a new CEO with better vision and execution – Please Sign This – https://www.change.org/p/apple-board-of-directors-remove-tim-cook-as-ceo-of-apple