“When Apple launched its new, super-thin MacBook laptop in April, much of the initial criticism focused on its having only one port, a new type of USB called USB-C,” Dan Frommer reports for Quartz.
“In a rare live interview, long-time Apple executive Phil Schiller — who heads product marketing and is one of the few executives who appears in the company’s product keynote presentations — explained the thinking behind the new MacBook,” Frommer reports. “Schiller spoke to Daring Fireball author John Gruber at a taping of Gruber’s podcast, ‘The Talk Show,’ following Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference keynote last week in San Francisco.”
Phil Schiller: This is all the same mentality as—I remember when we took out the floppy. I’m sure many of you all do, too. It’s the exact same thinking! I sat in the room with friends of mine who worked at other companies in Texas and other places, and they literally said, “Oh my god I’m so jealous! We can’t do that! We can’t take the risk. Because if the world is going to be risk-averse and doesn’t want us to take away anything — you know, if Dell doesn’t have a floppy but Toshiba does, they’ll just buy the Toshiba. They’re all the same except if you’re missing one thing, no one will buy your stuff.”
They said, “You’re so lucky, you make something where your customers give you the opportunity to try something in a completely different way. And they listen to you and they try it. And if you have to adjust and make an external drive for a couple years, great, you’ll do it. But you get to make that change and move on.”
That’s the embodiment of this new MacBook, which is: Take a bold risk. Maybe some people will think it’s not perfect for them yet. But for a surprising number of people, it’s already their future laptop.
Much more, including the video, in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: It’s already ours, too – unless the “iPad Pro” appears in time to displace it as our next on-the-go Apple computing device.
MacDailyNews Note: Apple’s new MacBook actually has two physical ports: USB-C and the Headphone port (which also supports Apple’s iPhone headset with remote and microphone).