Apple, Transitional

That Apple event was weird. New Macbook Pros, but the tech specs, the ports, the price points…

Like I think I get it? Between that and the iPhone event, it seems like they’re putting their future in wireless. No cords, all cloud.

And I think I’m fine with it? At this point, I hooked up my first NAS for backup. I keep an USB (old USB at this point) external drive, but only plug it in once a week for backup…backups. I keep both Apple iCloud and Google Photos (and real talk, also Facebook.) My music is on the cloud. 

When was the last time I plugged in my iPhone? 

So sure, I’ll trust that Apple did their user research, and that I happen to fall within their personas. But what I’m confused about is transitions. Apple is in the absolute control of their world. They have the luxury of setting the pace. They were “slow”/”late” to the MP3 world, and the tablet world, and the digital watch world. (And they’ll probably take their time on cars.)

What’s weird though is given that I can’t figure out their port deprecation plan. With all the USB-C ports on the laptops, Lightning feels like a mis-step. The non-mention of losing the mag-safe power plug feels weird. The drop of the SD card would be fine too if it wasn’t in this mess of transitions. 

I’ve always trusted their long-range plans would justify short-term side effects. But what I didn’t expect is that despite that Apple would mess up the mid-term execution. Looking back at the few years, it seems like that process could have been cleaner, neater, and…more thought-out.