“This week, Apple resurrected both the MacBook Air and the Mac mini at its event, proving that death is sometimes only a temporary state of affairs — at least where tech products are concerned,” Dan Moren writes for Macworld. “But just as this week’s Apple event giveth, there’s also the suggestion that it might taketh away; some Apple products and technologies find themselves in limbo after the announcements of the week, meaning that the writing may perhaps be on the wall for them.”
“Of course, not all of these products and technologies will die immediately—some may linger on for a while yet, and a few of them may not stay dead. (As the Air and mini showed us, sometimes they’re just hibernating),” Moren writes. “But Apple has a habit of being brutal when it comes to cutting the dead weight from its lineup, even when it comes to killing those things that it once considered its darlings.”
Moren readies the noose for this quartet:
• Touch Bar
• 12-inch MacBook
• Lightning
• AirPower
Read why in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We can see the cases for knifing the Touch Bar and the 12-inch MacBook (unless substantial performance gains over the Air can be introduced).
Moving from Lightning to USB-C everywhere would be a massive undertaking, but Apple’s done such things before and repeatedly.
AirPower can’t be killed because it never really existed. Vaporware never dies, it just fades away.
I never understood the value of “wireless” chargers. The only thing you gain is not plugging in. You still have to put it in a specific place to charge. The downside is that it quits charging when you pick the iPhone up. I think Apple is getting close to contactless charging. Where you only need to be near the charger for the iPhone to charge. When that is ready you’ll get truly wireless charging. That’s my hope anyway.
No argument with everything you said. However, the current inductive charging does eliminate the failure point of the lightning port of the phone repeatedly filling up with pocket lint and having to be cleaned out.
Apple is killing the Touch Bar because . . . they already updated the MacBook Pro and didn’t include it this week?!?!?
Moren does know that the Air is a cheeper version of the Pro, right?
Perhaps time is running out for the i9 because it also wasn’t included in the Air.
Agreed. These were all post-Jobs attempts at I don’t know what. They served no one and were useful for very little. ‘Gratuitous’ would be perfectly apt in describing them.
The TouchBar was Dead On Arrival.
It Looks good and it stops there .
Predictabilty is key to efficiency and productivity….A notion the touch bar has absolutely neglected.
Grrrr, correction
Predictability is key to efficiency and productivity….A notion the touch bar has absolutely neglected.
I certainly hope they don’t get rid of the touch bar. I certainly enjoy using it on my wife’s computer and I enjoyed it on my work computer. It certainly hasn’t realized its full potential yet.
I miss matte screens.