Apple is not a individual . It ’s promiscuous to block sometimes , but Apple is not Tim Cook or the imprint of Steve Jobs or Phil Schiller or any other person . It ’s an entity made up of G of people and a corporate culture ( which , I ’ll grant you , was largely define by job ) that evolved over time .
That say , Apple does have a incarnate personality all its own , and I ’ve been intend lately about one of its strong trait : pride . No troupe wants to accommodate failure in its press conferences and Puerto Rico blitzes — those utterances are best said late on a Friday afternoon in a laconic affirmation to a benevolent media outlet .
But Apple is in another league . Failed lineament do n’t vanish — they’re replace by exciting fresh features . One of itsmost colossal flops , the Power Mac G4 Cube , was magnificently put “ on methamphetamine ” rather than retired , in a press release that fantasized that it might eventually return . Themistakeof the 2013 Mac Pro was only admitted to as part of a handpicked media roundtable where it was put in the larger context of a recommitment to professional Mac user .
The fifth-generation iPod was able to play video.
Considering that pride , what happens when the company decides that many of the decisions it made a few age earlier were misunderstanding , in reality ? What does it look like when Apple makes a strategic retreat ?
It feels like we ’re about to find out .
When it’s not a retreat
Now , some walking - backs are n’t walk - backs at all . Apple says a lot of things that are intend as distractions , either because the company does n’t want to steal its own boom about a outgoing product , or because it just has n’t decided how it want to approach a category .
The 5th - generation iPod was able to play video .
Most noted among these kind of distractions is Steve Jobs famously saying that nobody would want to watch video on an iPod . Not only did that financial statement understate Apple ’s loser to deliver a video iPod , it also enshroud the fact that Apple was working hard todeliver that iPod soon after . This is a classic page out of the Jobs playbook : downplay feature you do n’t have , and when you finally declare oneself them , hold that all similar features were n’t near enough — but that you ’ve gotten it right .
The fifth-generation iPod was able to play video.
hatful of hoi polloi have gotten into hassle assuming that such statements were Apple ism . job famously mocked styluses on touch equipment — his program line , which was always entail to criticise equipment that relied on styluses as their primary input method , was accept to mean that Apple would never make a stylus . The Apple Pencil finally arrived , of course .
I ’d reason that Apple ’s insistence on the Mac not having a touchscreen is in all likelihood a interchangeable sort of smokescreen . Of course , Apple presently combine a touchscreen with a keyboard and trackpad via the Magic Keyboard for iPad . It feels inevitable to me , but a Mac touch screen is kind of like a star — it will arrive preciselywhen it imply to . Expect it when it get in , and not before .
Changing Apple’s mind
While Apple has a lot of pride , it also need to listen to its customers — and it does , after a fashion . job instilled in Apple ’s finish an antipathy to using focus groups and pop consensus as a way to design intersection ; you ’ve undoubtedly hear it compare to the idea that if Henry Ford had necessitate people what they want in terms of shipping improvements , they ’d have asked for faster horses or else of cars .
But of course , Apple does do research , and scrutinizes its sales agreement trends . And , yes , it is acutely cognizant of how it is being criticized , both in the mainstream media and in various technical school - nerd circles that approximate luck of its hearing .
If Apple was a someone , we ’d say that sometimes it vary its idea . I suspect that the accuracy is this : mass inside Apple are always deliberate about what decisions to make , and feedback from the external world can give more weight unit to those on the interior who lost the public debate .
Will Apple simply ditch the Touch Bar, or reinvent it?
All the resistance in the world might have not bring home the bacon in the creation of thebuttonless iPod shuffle(probably because Steve Jobs loved it ) , but the reception it got made it crystal cleared that it was the unseasonable decision , and Apple reverted to the previous design as if the buttonless model never existed .
Walking back the MacBook
So here we are in former 2021 , with a strong opening that Apple is about toundo most of the enceinte changesit made to the MacBook . The Touch Bar is rumored to be a toast , MagSafe is reportedly returning , and Apple may be adding other I / O — HDMI ? an SD batting order slot?—to the MacBook Pro as well .
On one stratum , it ’s toilsome to believe this is true , specificallybecauseApple is so majestic and it ’s a bit embarrassing to revert to the ecumenical lot of laptop computer features it offered half a decade ago .
And yet … has n’t the avalanche already begin ? ( If so , it ’s too latefor the pebbles to vote . ) We ’ve already see Apple remove the much - dislike ( for both usability and reliableness reasons ) butterfly keyboard , across its integral line .
Perhaps it ’s informative to await back at what Apple did in belated 2019 , when it insert the16 - inch MacBook Proand rolled out the novel keyboard design : “ Featuring a new Magic Keyboard with a redesign scissor mechanism and 1 millimeter traveling for a more hearty key feel , the 16 - inch MacBook Pro deliver the good typing experience ever in a Mac notebook computer . ” Sounds like the playbook , does n’t it ? allow ’s not even mention the old keyboard — the of import matter is that the fresh keyboard is the good ever !
( This good example also supply a key perceptivity to how you revert to old features if you ’re Apple — don’t . Instead , create something new that take the old features , but with enough remainder that you could call it something else and exact that it ’s the best ever , not just the honorable since 2015 . )
We listened to our customers
With that in mind , now reckon Apple rolling out a new MacBook Pro . If there ’s a MagSafe connector on there , it patently wo n’t be one of the old change . Perhaps it ’ll support full Thunderbolt connections , so you could magnetically connect to docks and monitors . It ’ll be a young shape and size . And maybe it ’ll even connect to a stock USB - vitamin C index brick , rather than being hard - wire into the brick as was the case with old MagSafe mannikin .
Will Apple simply ditch the Touch Bar , or reinvent it ?
Getting disembarrass of the Touch Bar is the rugged one . Will Apple just acknowledge that its customers prefer strong-arm function key , or will it introduce some sort of newfangled feature that it will betray as an overture in Mac input ? ( I ’m just spin this out of whole cloth , but imagine making the display a touchscreen and offering an on - silver screen version of the feeling bar , perhaps immix with the Dock . ) Apple would always favor to make the story about its newfangled invention , rather than the death of its one-time invention .
When you intend about it , it ’s kind of funny that Apple sometimes goes through these tortuousness . in person , I do n’t think it muse badly on a company to just say , “ We hear to our customers and found that they wanted an SD card slot and physical office keys . ” listen to your customers and giving them what they want is not the sign of a bankruptcy . It is , in fact , a signaling of you doing the right thing . And if Apple were a mortal , I ’d order it that .
