Apple’s Latest Betrayal

Building A Data-Driven White House“Seriously, fuck them,” read the tweet by M.J. The person was speaking about Apple and the new MacBook the company recently announced. There are countless other tweets and comments with the same sentiment. Right now there’s visceral hate directed at the company. A swath of consumers feel betrayed by the stark design of the new MacBook. Our original post on the topic was shared over 25,000 times. For good reason, too.
The new MacBook thinks different. It has more in common with a tablet than most laptops. Think of it as an iPad that has a keyboard and runs OS X. And like the iPad, it only has one port, which is the cause of the outcry.
Most computers have several ports scattered around the frame. There’s usually one for charging, a couple USB ports for various tasks and some sort of port to output video. The new MacBook combines all three into a lone USB-C port. This means users will not be able to, say, charge the laptop and an iPhone at the same time. Or input data from a flash drive while outputting video to an external monitor.
This is Apple’s world and we just live in it.
To Apple’s credit the company must see a market for such a computer. The low-power Intel chipset that powers the computer likely doesn’t provide enough oomph to play computer games, but it should render GIFs just fine. This is a couch computer. It’s a Facebook and Twitter machine. It even looks like a great programming computer. Watch the Apple event yesterday. The company didn’t demonstrate any of its new software on the new MacBook including the Photos app. Simply put, the new MacBook isn’t for photo editing.
Expectations are high for Apple. Had a different company like HP or Lenovo released a watered-down computer like the new MacBook, there likely wouldn’t have been an outcry, but rather a collective chuckle. For some reason, a swath of Apple fans expects the company to build every product to meet their needs. If it doesn’t, feelings of betrayal sneak in. This happened with the original MacBook Air.
Apple released the first MacBook Air in 2008. It cost $1,799 and, like the new MacBook, was a svelte wonder of technology. But it lacked ports. The industry cried foul, pointing out that it only had a power port, a single USB port and a Micro-DVI port. There wasn’t a CD-ROM or Ethernet port. And in 2008 this was a big deal. Software was still shipped on disks and Wi-Fi was hard to find. Apple fans felt betrayed. They felt forgotten. If a customer wanted Apple’s latest and greatest machine, they would have to buy into interacting with a computer without a CD drive or wired Internet.
Eventually, Apple dropped Ethernet from its entire MacBook line and the MacBook Air is now the least expensive laptop Apple offers.
The new MacBook joins the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. It’s not a replacement for either – at least not yet. But it bears a nameplate previously retired: MacBook. It’s not an Air, it’s not a Pro. It’s just a MacBook, which was long the company’s stalwart against Microsoft.
It’s highly likely that in a generation or two, Apple will drop the price of the MacBook to under a thousand. Will the MacBook Air survive? Maybe not. Apple is steadily making the MacBook Pro smaller. It’s easy to see a future where the MacBook will be the company’s only inexpensive laptop and a slightly slimmer MacBook Pro will be the other option if you want silly things like multiple USB ports, SD card slots and a MagSafe power adapter.
Until then, a 13-inch MacBook Air is a better buy than the new MacBook. The battery lasts nearly as long, the computer is more powerful and it has plenty of ports. Plus, nobody has ever said that they wished their MacBook Air was just a bit thinner.
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SHARES0Share0Tweet0Share0000AdvertisementAdvertisementCrunchBaseAppleFounded1976  OverviewApple is a multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and markets mobile communication and media devices, personal computers, portable digital music players, and sells a variety of related software, services, peripherals, networking solutions, and third-party digital content and applications.Apple provides many products and services, including iPhone; iPad; iPod; Mac; iPod; Apple TV; a …LocationCupertino, CaliforniaCategoriesComputers, Electronics, Consumer Electronics, Hardware + Software, RetailWebsitehttp://www.apple.comFull profile for AppleiPadDescriptionThe Apple iPad, formerly referred to as the Apple Tablet, is a touch-pad tablet computer announced in January 2010, and released in April 2010. It has internet capabilities running on either WiFi or 3G, and offers an optional dock with a full size mechanical keyboard. The iPad is a line of tablet computers designed, developed and marketed by Apple Inc. primarily as a platform for audio-visual media …Websitehttp://www.apple.com/ipadFull profile for iPadMacBook AirDescriptionThe MacBook Air has an aluminum unibody design, and it's part of what allows MacBook Air to weigh only 3.0 pounds and to be nearly as thin as your index finger. The unibody also makes MacBook Air amazingly durable. So you can throw it in your bag then pull it out wherever you happen to go without a second thought. The Intel Core 2 Duo processor in MacBook Air was designed to fit within the computer's …WebsiteN/AFull profile for MacBook AirOS XDescriptionOS X is Apple's computer operating system, which is pre-loaded on all Apple computers. Mac OS X is a Unix-based operating system, built on technology developed at NeXT between the second half of the 1980s and Apple's purchase of the company in early 1996. It received UNIX 03 certification following its 10.5 version on Intel processors.OS X v 1.0 was released in 1999, with a second, desktop-oriented …WebsiteN/AFull profile for OS X

By: Unknown On 02:00

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Apple’s New MacBook’s Trackpad Does Not Move

Subscription Billing Startup ChargeBee Raises $5M Series B Led By Tiger GlobalIf you’ve been scouring the coverage of Apple’s new MacBook, you’ll probably already know this. But I did an informal poll and a lot of folks did not, so I thought I’d mention it.
The new trackpad does not move, at all.
When you ‘click’ it, it ‘clicks’, but it doesn’t actually click. There is an audible ‘click’ sound (that’s what the silly picture below is, me listening) and it does in fact feel like it clicks, but that is completely an illusion.
There is a set of vibrating motors underneath that provides ‘force feedback’, also known as haptics in some applications. This feedback fools your finger into believing that you’ve pressed down on a hinged button, the way your current trackpad works. This feedback relies on phenomenon called lateral force fields (LFFs), which can cause humans to experience vibrations as haptic ‘textures’. This can give you the feel of a ‘clickable’ surface or even depth. The Force Touch feature of the new trackpad allows you to press ‘deeper’, giving you additional levels of tapping feedback. The effect is done so well that you actually feel like you’re pressing down deeper into a trackpad that still isn’t moving at all. It’s so good it’s eerie. 
If you’re worried about using your ‘click’, don’t worry. In my opinion, it’s completely indistinguishable from a physical press. And there are accessibility benefits here because there is an adjustable sensitivity. Playing with that led to a distinct difference in the pressure needed to trigger a click. People with muscular atrophy or conditions that cause pain on certain finger movements will likely benefit.
“The trackpad sounds great for people with repetitive stress injury,” says our own Catherine Shu. “I had carpal tunnel syndrome a while back and tapping the trackpad with the side of my thumb made the rest of my fingers go tingly.”
Some of the earliest research into using LFFs to create haptic feedback was done by Margaret Minsky, and summarized in a 1995 dissertation called “Computational haptics : the Sandpaper system for synthesizing texture for a force-feedback display“. If you browse it, you could be getting a peek at the future of Apple’s screen technology — Minsky actually investigated the use of this method to create a display that could simulate textures.
A WSJ report from earlier today says that Apple is integrating its Force Touch technology into future iPhones — which would detect how hard a screen is pressed. Tap confirmation, contextual clicking, deeper interaction models and maybe even hover states await us.Color me 100% not shocked. The report doesn’t mention whether the feedback is also coming, but they seem intertwined to me, we’ll see. If this clever vibrating tech can make a stationary piece of glass on your MacBook feel like it’s actually clicking, it could do the same for your iPhone.

By: Unknown On 00:30

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On Eve Of Apple Watch Launch, History On Apple’s Side

On Eve Of Apple Watch Launch, History On Apple’s Side | TechCrunch #site-logo { background: url(http://s0.wp.com/wp-content/themes/vip/techcrunch-2013/images/logos/green.png) no-repeat !important; }Got a tip? Let us know.MenuSearchNewsChannelsStartupsMobileGadgetsEnterpriseSocialEuropeAsiaTrendingTinderNSAAndroidGoogleMicrosoftAppleTwitterFacebookAll TopicsAll GalleriesTCTVShowsTCTV NewsBuilt in BrooklynCrunchWeekFly Or DieGadgetsIncubatedInside JobsTC CribsAll ShowsAll VideosEventsTechCrunch EventsDisruptStartup BattlefieldCrunchiesMeetupsInternational City EventsHackathonIncludeNews AboutGoogle I/O 2014CESSXSWWWDC 2014All EventsSearch TechCrunchSearch TechCrunchSearchCrunchBaseFollow UsFacebookTwitterGoogle+LinkedInYoutubeRSSEmailMoreLinkedInYoutubeRSSEmailDisrupt NYC Sam Shank, CEO of HotelTonight will be speaking at Disrupt NYCGet $1000 Off Tickets NowColumnNotes From The Game Developers ConferenceOn International Women’s Day, Thoughts On Gender And STEMAn Investor’s Take On The Mobile World CongressBrowse more...Apple WatchSelling A Wearable AppleApple Watch Sounding More Independent In Latest LeakWould You Buy A ‘Smart Band’ For An Apple Watch?Browse more...On Eve Of Apple Watch Launch, History On Apple’s SidePosted 17 hours ago by Ron Miller (@ron_miller)0
SHARESNext StoryUK Readies 25% ‘Google Tax’ On Tech Giants’ Diverted Profits

Apple has a wee announcement tomorrow. Perhaps you’ve heard. It’s called The Apple Watch, and tomorrow’s the big day. Naturally in the days before the launch, as with past device debuts, we are hearing a range of predictions about how it will flop, be wildly successful and everything in between.

In fact, today feels a lot like the day before the iPad came out in 2010. There was a ton of speculation about it and many people (including myself, I might add), wondered why anyone would need a tablet, when they had an iPhone in their pocket. We were all wrong of course, because what we couldn’t predict was how this device would change computing forever.

When you took away the keyboard from a device with a larger touch screen, something happened that nobody expected. For consumers, the bigger touch screen gave them new ways to interact with content. For business, you could work with customers by touching and swiping and as you talked, the device melted away in a way that’s not possible with a laptop.

It went so far as to change expectations of how software works and ushered in the Consumerization of IT. As I wrote in a CITEworld article on the impact of the iPad in 2012:

“The elegance and ease of use of the device — and its amazing popularity, with more than 100 million sold in less than three years – has forced enterprise software architects to reevaluate how we interact with software.”

TechCrunch’s Matthew Panzarino sees a similar dynamic happening once we strap the Apple Watch to our wrists. He believes it could go so far as to change how we interact with mobile devices by keeping our phones mostly in our pockets. We will now subtly glance at our wrists instead of clumsily staring at our phones. That sounds a lot like the way the iPad changed the we work and the iPhone changed the way we think of phones.

According to NPD, Samsung has dominated the nascent smart watch market with 78 percent revenue share. Pebble is a distant second with 18 percent. SmartWatch Group reported that translated into 800,000 units sold for Samsung and 300,000 for Pebble.

As I wandered the halls of the Mobile World Congress last week, I saw lots of smart watches from phone makers and watch makers alike, but none has captured the imagination of the mass market to-date. Conventional wisdom says that if these devices haven’t made a big dent in the market, then why would Apple do better?

TechRadar went so far as to call it  a fine product that nobody needs.

That’s one way to look at it I suppose, but whether it was the MP3 player, the smart phone or the tablet, history has shown when Apple turns its attention to a device, we should probably pay attention.

It’s impossible to predict if the Apple Watch will be a hit or a miss, but it’s probably worth giving the company the benefit of the doubt. TechCrunch’s John Biggs is brave enough to predict Apple will sell a million of them in the first month

Here’s my prediction: Consider that Apple sold almost 75M iphones last quarter alone. If just 10 percent of those folks who bought iPhones last quarter buys the Apple Watch — and I don’t think that’s too bold an expectation — then Apple would sell 7.5M Watches this quarter.

Consider that over the years we have witnessed crazy, irrational loyalty from the Apple user base, lining up on sidewalks (sometimes for days) for a chance to be the first to own the latest idevice. On curiosity alone, it makes sense that there are a percentage of those customers out there who will buy this device too, and given the size of the iPhone market that would translate into millions sold.

Some will scoff of course, and will say Apple has to fail sometime and maybe the Apple Watch is where it happens. But I say Apple has too much market momentum for that to happen and even a little will go a long way. Expect another win for Apple.

Featured Image: Blake Patterson/Flickr UNDER A CC BY 2.0 LICENSE0
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By: Unknown On 04:00

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Apple’s ‘Spring Forward’ Watch Event Live Blog

News Corp Buys Indian Tech Media Company VCCircleAt 10 AM PT on Monday, March 9, Apple will be hosting an event at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco, and the Apple Watch will probably be the start of the show. The company’s first smartwatch is sure to offer up a few surprises, even though we’ve already seen a lot of official information about the Apple Watch emerge since it was unveiled last September. Bookmark this page, and join us as we bring you live updates and photos below from inside the Apple event as soon as it kicks off.

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Apple’s Activation Lock Leads To Big Drops In Smartphone Theft Worldwide

Got a tip? Let us know.MenuSearchNewsChannelsStartupsMobileGadgetsEnterpriseSocialEuropeAsiaTrendingTinderNSAAndroidGoogleMicrosoftAppleTwitterFacebookAll TopicsAll GalleriesTCTVShowsTCTV NewsBuilt in BrooklynCrunchWeekFly Or DieGadgetsIncubatedInside JobsTC CribsAll ShowsAll VideosEventsTechSupport EventsDisruptCrunchiesMeetupsInternational City EventsHackathonHardware BattlefieldIncludeNews AboutGoogle I/O 2014CESSXSWWWDC 2014

By: Unknown On 12:57

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