Is Apple losing its way in music tech?

[avart]

I may also move back to Windows, after some 15 years with Apple. They're losing it big time.
My iphone 5s just updated to iOS 10 and it got slower. I'm not going to bother with Sierra... I stick with Mavericks.

Seriously it's so much trouble now to update on OS X. You never know what software you use won't work anymore, how buggy it will get, and if you're gonna have to fork over money to update other software that was working just perfectly fine. They're pushing it with their planned obsolesce bullshit. Unfortunately it's going to take a real long time before it hurts them where it counts so they change their ways.

This is so true.
I've been on mac since I started using computers and it feels like Apple will be back to 1997 again, but this time only for the "old" users - financially they will probably continue to be strong for long. For those of us who has used the mac since forever the overall feel has changed, I guess it's different if you just use iOS units.

It's not Apple's fault that some software doesn't work on their recent OS releases.

Of course it is! You don't n e e d to change OS each and every year... Just changing stuff isn't really innovation. It's just part of their Planned obsolescence and ecosystem stickiness. They have taken this a bit too far now.

[hyperscientist]

It's not Apple's fault that some software doesn't work on their recent OS releases.

Of course it is! You don't n e e d to change OS each and every year... Just changing stuff isn't really innovation. It's just part of their Planned obsolescence and ecosystem stickiness. They have taken this a bit too far now.

Obsolesce surely is desired side-effect but to say that it's what drives innovation is so naive that I don't believe that you really meant it. If they stopped innovating like so then in 5 years they would be out of laptop business, because they would be outinnovated.

[lowshelf]

It's easy to confuse innovation with innoworky.

[beats me]

I got a pair of these Bluetooth cans

http://www.avantree.com/category-blueto ... n-pro.html

Good enough for 99% of listeners. 40 hours battery life per charge. Lightest pair of cans I’ve owned (possibly because a cable isn’t weighing them down on one side). Auto pairs to 2 devices. In headphone voice prompts when turned on, is paired, and when you turn them off. I’ve turned them on, paired in seconds, play music from my iPad and when I stop play on my iPad and play something on my iPhone they instantly jump to my iPhone.

But man am I going to miss the cord getting snagged on something or yanking them off my head when I walk away from the device. I really wish Apple didn’t kill that experience.

[hacktheplanet]

It's REALLY easy for musicians not to upgrade your OS... Just don't hit the upgrade button. It's been like this for a decade, but only recently are software companies actively telling their users not to upgrade to the next version. They are doing this in response to strong marketing from Apple and other companies telling people to buy shit they probably don't need. Like when you see people using $2800 MBPr for email, facebook, homework, and netflix. You can do all that stuff on a much older MBP, or even on an iPad with a keyboard and an extra display! I do all my music production fine on a 2010 MBP. I plan to pick up a 2015 refurb MBPr when the next version is released, but this 2010 has kept me going for the past 2 years just fine. (In all fairness, I'm not using very processor-intensive plugs, and am conservative with effects routing). Computer hardware improvements seem to be tapering off lately. We're not seeing the major leaps like we were 15 years ago, you can still get by for most tasks on older hardware.

New iPhones are being released WAY too quickly. Wireless carriers and Apple are now trying to push this yearly upgrade cycle thing to sell more phones. This is bad because it will make people expect that they deserve a new phone every year. The $800 cost of the phone is spread out over 12 months or subsidized down to $200, so from the user's perspective the phone is relatively inexpensive. No wonder they get annoyed and indignant when they have to pay $200-$300 for screen repair at the Apple Store. It's like dude, how do you not realize that the screen is pretty high tech. Of course it's going to be an expensive fix.

The 5se is the only new phone I've been excited about in quite a while. Same size of the 5 with the internals of the 6s. And it's got a damn headphone jack and it still comes in pink. Also, the 6s will be for sale for quite a while. IMO there isn't enough cool stuff on the 7 over the 6s/5se. Nobody needs a brand new phone every year, take advantage of the early adopters and get a cheaper phone that suits your needs.

So yes, I partially agree with the article that Apple is they are releasing stuff too quickly and it affects the pro market. However at the same time, we "pro" users should be smart enough to realize that that we are using these products to do work and stability is wwwaaaaaayyyyyyyy more important than staying on the bleeding edge of technology.

[Tarekith]

That's more or less what I was going to say. I don't think Apple is losing it's way at all, there's just a LOT more people using their products now, a lot of whom don't know seem to know when and why to upgrade. There's more complaints because there's a bigger user base now I think. Their products work just fine as usual for most people who know what they're doing.

Just my $.02 though.

[avart]

Their products work just fine as usual for most people who know what they're doing.

Like abondon the "ecosystem". (don't upgrade one part of the system because another part of the ecosystem requires it)

[Tarekith]

Or realize that if you want to keep things smooth with Apple'd ecosystem you NEED to upgrade things regularly. Stick with software developers that have proven to be responsive to the usual and expected update cycle, and keep everything up to date.

[beats me]

I replace my main Mac about every 5 years and that’s not because I desperately need to. I just feel it’s the right time. Up to the global speculation based economy and subsequent recession rollercoaster people were replacing their car at about the same rate and those are a lot more expensive than a computer.

My linked ecosystem of Macs, iPads, iPods, iPhone, Apple TV, and Apple Watch are indispensable. Some occasional glitches aside, a good part of that is because I don’t have to think about or manage most of it.

[hyperscientist]

Or realize that if you want to keep things smooth with Apple'd ecosystem you NEED to upgrade things regularly. Stick with software developers that have proven to be responsive to the usual and expected update cycle, and keep everything up to date.

This.

[AAdel]

Apple has a new strategy: "Sacrificing pro for being fancy"

[puzzlefactory]

It's not just the OS, it's the attitude towards the "prosumer" market. Things like soldering the memory to chassis, removing USB ports, swapping out i7 chips for i5 and still charging the same price, making internal third party hard drives incompatible with the firmware.

They hurt seem to be spitting in the face of their "old school" user base with every release.

[Angstrom]

I think it's pretty obvious that Apple really needed the creative sector when they were in their problematic teens.
When sales dipped in the 90s and then tanked completely - they needed a rethink - some sort of niche audience to appeal to . They knew MS had office business sewn up, so what other reachable markets were there on the table? Server farms? Universities? It was all Unix.
That left the creative industries, Graphic Design, Page Layout, Movie making, Music. etc.
Selling to this niche had the benefit that people valued high quality, high cost tools. Which made it a perfect fit for a hardware / software product combo made in a 1st world country.
It was a great tactic, marketing and selling to a distinct audience is very cost effective. It's like selling clothes to goths. You know exactly what they want.

But that was then.
Now post iPod / iPhone Apple is no longer selling to the niche market, it has no real need or interest in courting this sector. At least no more than Microsoft does.

Apple revenue before iPod (2001) was $5 billion
Apple revenue in 2004, when it last relied on creatives - was $8 billion
Apple revenue in 2015 when it relied on consumers is $213 billion

if that reflects correctly their market makeup then creatives are 1/27th of their userbase.

[avart]

Removing USB-ports?!? Nah, not yet.... But soon A will become C, I guess... (the "MacBook" with only 1 USB-port can't count since it was the first of its kind with a M-cpu...)