Apple’s incremental 2013—and what to expect in 2014

Not every year can be like 2007.

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[teknik]

Thunderbolt to PCIe for the win.

 

[Deleted member 192806]

Well TV and watches, because all the rest are kind of getting saturated. Besides the former is a hard nut to crack with the whole entertainment complex behind it. The latter because one now has to get people back into the habit of wearing the things.

 

[DOOManiac]

I'm hoping for a completely re-vamped Apple TV that can run apps and has a better UI than "throw everything on the home screen". Also making it visually match iOS 7 would be a nice touch.

I'd love to have native VLC/XBMC/Infuse apps w/o any jailbreaking on such a box...

 

[Zoolook]

Apple TV continued to improve in 2013. Additional channels are not much to yell about, but it sold well and Apple seem to be taking it more seriously - I cut the cable cord in 2009 and used to use my Xbox as my way of getting Netflix and rented movies to my TV. But for the last couple of years, it's been Apple TV. Apple is doing a great job at sucking people deeper into their eco system - I just checked and I spent $1600 at iTunes in 2013... [gulp]

 

[DOOManiac]

arachnae[/url]":36j5obxj]I'm sure a lot of people did upgrade for siri, and for the fingerprint scanner too for that matter. But I'm certain that within 6 months of owning them it'll be a feature relegated to a party trick rather than daily use.

To each his own. I use Siri multiple times every single day.

I have a bluetooth speaker/handsfree set in the car, so I keep my phone in my pocket while driving. (Also this is safer as it takes away temptation to look at the screen). "Call my wife", "Remind me to pick up the milk in 10 minutes", etc. are all common, every-day requests that Siri handles... well okay, spotty at best. But it's better than nothing!

For setting timers/reminders, it's just simply faster. The only time I don't use Siri for these activities is when I'm around other people and don't want to be the dufus talking to his phone...

 

[Zoolook]

DOOManiac[/url]":37ly0i9v]

arachnae[/url]":37ly0i9v]I'm sure a lot of people did upgrade for siri, and for the fingerprint scanner too for that matter. But I'm certain that within 6 months of owning them it'll be a feature relegated to a party trick rather than daily use.

To each his own. I use Siri multiple times every single day.

Me too - occasionally when driving, usually when running. If a play list ends or podcast ends, I can hold down the 'speak' button on the headphones and just say "play songs by whoever" and it works great.

 

[beestrofowler]

DOOManiac[/url]":1lmtf7eq]

arachnae[/url]":1lmtf7eq]I'm sure a lot of people did upgrade for siri, and for the fingerprint scanner too for that matter. But I'm certain that within 6 months of owning them it'll be a feature relegated to a party trick rather than daily use.

To each his own. I use Siri multiple times every single day.

I have a bluetooth speaker/handsfree set in the car, so I keep my phone in my pocket while driving. (Also this is safer as it takes away temptation to look at the screen). "Call my wife", "Remind me to pick up the milk in 10 minutes", etc. are all common, every-day requests that Siri handles... well okay, spotty at best. But it's better than nothing!

For setting timers/reminders, it's just simply faster. The only time I don't use Siri for these activities is when I'm around other people and don't want to be the dufus talking to his phone...

I use Siri all day, but generally just to set reminders for work.

 

[killing_time]

Zoolook[/url]":2qagype6]
Me too - occasionally when driving, usually when running. If a play list ends or podcast ends, I can hold down the 'speak' button on the headphones and just say "play songs by whoever" and it works great.

Me three. I almost always use Siri for my text messages.

 

[motytrah]

I think some of what Apple will do with the iPad will depends on the Fire HDX sales. Amazon came out swinging at Apple this holiday season. Something has to give there either on price or features.

 

[helel ben shachar]

DOOManiac[/url]":2iha8fvb]

arachnae[/url]":2iha8fvb]I'm sure a lot of people did upgrade for siri, and for the fingerprint scanner too for that matter. But I'm certain that within 6 months of owning them it'll be a feature relegated to a party trick rather than daily use.

To each his own. I use Siri multiple times every single day.

I have a bluetooth speaker/handsfree set in the car, so I keep my phone in my pocket while driving. (Also this is safer as it takes away temptation to look at the screen). "Call my wife", "Remind me to pick up the milk in 10 minutes", etc. are all common, every-day requests that Siri handles... well okay, spotty at best. But it's better than nothing!

For setting timers/reminders, it's just simply faster. The only time I don't use Siri for these activities is when I'm around other people and don't want to be the dufus talking to his phone...

Maybe that's a kernel for a new article (or perhaps I completely missed something in the forums). My work upgraded my phone and opted to go with the 5S. I have Siri and all that but I fail to see how useful it is in a business sense, or for that matter, useful in general. If I recall correctly I used it to make some verbal reminders but the phone doesn't alarm them to go off before hand so I gave up. I've heard a few other people say that as well. It syncs up fairly well with Lotus Notes so seems like a reasonable upgrade from my old blackberry, but other than that it's pretty much like any other smartphone out there in the market.

 

[SavedByTechnology]

There was a six year gap between the introduction of the iPod and iPhone. I really wish analysts and investors would stop worrying about when the next great device comes from Cupertino. SJ said it himself: most companies are lucky to have one great product; Apple has had FOUR.

 

[MMcCraryNJ]

I just don't get exactly what audience the new Mac Pro is supposed to entice.

Consumers and even pro-sumers will likely shy away from the price.

Audio professionals (myself being one of them) won't buy them because of the lack of PCIe expansion and internal storage options. Not to mention the fact that it's very GPU-focused, which audio professionals do not need and can sometimes lead to issues running DAW software and hardware.

It's clear that the intended market is professional video production. And the new machine is certainly decked out for that, but their workspace is going to look like a disaster when they need 3 or 4 large external hard drives for storage, plus an external Thunderbolt PCIe chassis or two with everything that goes in there, plus all of the equipment they already use in additional to the computer tower itself, etc. Fully decked out, this thing would be an absolute mess of wires and hardware boxes, just to give it the expandability that the previous model had.

Don't get me wrong, the computer itself has massive amounts of power and capability, but it seems as if Apple is getting into this habit of visual design over functionality. Appealing to the eye, but throwing standard usability out of the window in order to achieve it. As an audio professional, I don't know one other person in my field who really cares what their tower looks like, as long as it's clean, functional, and accessible. I never looked at a Mac Pro tower pre-2013 and said, "Gee, I wish this looked more futuristic". The less wires and plugs and connections I have to worry about (meaning, less points of failure in a signal chain), the easier my workflow becomes. I have to imagine for video professionals, it's much the same.

Consumers do care what their machines look like, but again, this isn't a product aimed at consumers, as the professional-level graphics aren't really geared or optimized for gaming/multimedia consumption, but rather creation, editing, and production. So, I don't really get it.

 

[Oelph]

Hopefully refinement to iOS 7, correcting many poor design choices that do not befit Apple (such as the ugly transparency which can make text or buttons hard to read).

 

[antd00d]

I wished iPod Nanos could be used as a PDA. It doesn't come with calendars/scheduler, calculator, etc. I don't want to buy a smartwatch that requires subscriptions and mobile phones. iPod Touches are too big and heavy for my disabled body.

 

[fenris_uy]

Zoolook[/url]":26p1s0fy]Apple TV continued to improve in 2013. Additional channels are not much to yell about, but it sold well and Apple seem to be taking it more seriously - I cut the cable cord in 2009 and used to use my Xbox as my way of getting Netflix and rented movies to my TV. But for the last couple of years, it's been Apple TV. Apple is doing a great job at sucking people deeper into their eco system - I just checked and I spent $1600 at iTunes in 2013... [gulp]

Do Apple TV has facetime? They need to add that to the newer model, and apps. Since they bought the people that created the first Kinetic, they could add a lot of that into the new Apple TV. What they don't need to do is having a real TV, let's us buy ur dumb screens and connect them to something smart and cheap that we can change without having to buy a whole new screen.

 

[voline]

Reminds me of what Thomas Kuhn described in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Almost always science rolls along within a field's current dominant paradigm, incrementally adding knowledge. Only rarely is the current paradigm, creaking under the stress of evidence that does not fit, upended. After this scientific revolution a the new paradigm takes it's place and "normal" science begins again under it.

 

[emag]

Are we forgetting Apple's A7 -- a monumental leap forward in processor technology? A CPU that beats anything Intel, Qualcomm, nvidia, etc. can offer in the mobile space by a huge margin in both performance and power usage, 64-bits aside?

Honestly, when was the last time we saw a chipmaker leapfrog over the state of the art by such a margin? Voodoo with the 3Dfx? Intel with the Pentium 4-Mobile to Pentium-M? Nvidia's 8800?

 

[ewelch]

teknik[/url]":ybv5d1ef]Thunderbolt to PCIe for the win.

It IS PCIe already. I just received a Thunderbolt 2 Sonnet Tempo Express II SE. It has two PCIe slots, and it will have Thunderbolt 2 when the free upgrade is sent to me by Sonnet. (It's a card in the box's third slot.) I'm going to have an ATTO 10GB NIC in one slot and I'm racking my brain to figure out what should be in the other one. I was thinking an SATA card with four ports. But I'm done with SATA as a persistent storage option. I have a Promise 18TB Thunderbolt2 RAID already filling up on my desk as I await the arrival of my six core Mac Pro.

So I agree with you that PCIe is great, and I'm taking advantage of what's available on the cutting edge of speedy hardware. I just wanted to point out that Thunderbolt at its heart is actually PCIe with DisplayPort I/O protocols attached.

 

[ewelch]

motytrah[/url]":nb44q3k6]I think some of what Apple will do with the iPad will depends on the Fire HDX sales. Amazon came out swinging at Apple this holiday season. Something has to give there either on price or features.

Well, except for the fact that they're not even close to competitive products. And Amazon does not release sales numbers. So it could sell more or less than the iPad. We'll never know. That's not much pressure when the online numbers show the iPad blows away Kindles (and everything else) for tablet usage of bandwidth.

 

[Zoolook]

fenris_uy[/url]":23cs722m]

Zoolook[/url]":23cs722m]Apple TV continued to improve in 2013. Additional channels are not much to yell about, but it sold well and Apple seem to be taking it more seriously - I cut the cable cord in 2009 and used to use my Xbox as my way of getting Netflix and rented movies to my TV. But for the last couple of years, it's been Apple TV. Apple is doing a great job at sucking people deeper into their eco system - I just checked and I spent $1600 at iTunes in 2013... [gulp]

Do Apple TV has facetime? They need to add that to the newer model, and apps. Since they bought the people that created the first Kinetic, they could add a lot of that into the new Apple TV. What they don't need to do is having a real TV, let's us buy ur dumb screens and connect them to something smart and cheap that we can change without having to buy a whole new screen.

ATV does not have face-time, it seems like a good idea but I'm not sure Apple would want to encumber it with an add-on camera right now, given every other device has it - you can always mirror your iPad though for that big-screen view of the other person.

I think the cheaper standalone device is the right approach for Apple. If Apple TV relied on spending money on a whole new screen, many people wouldn't do it. Apple prefers to limit the number of models, and lets face it, everyone has their own taste when it comes to screen size.

 

[thomsirveaux]

eMagius[/url]":13csnczi]Are we forgetting Apple's A7 -- a monumental leap forward in processor technology? A CPU that beats anything Intel, Qualcomm, nvidia, etc. can offer in the mobile space by a huge margin in both performance and power usage, 64-bits aside?

Honestly, when was the last time we saw a chipmaker leapfrog over the state of the art by such a margin? Voodoo with the 3Dfx? Intel with the Pentium 4-Mobile to Pentium-M? Nvidia's 8800?

I agree that the A7 is really, really good, and the fact that Apple can use it in the iPhone and the iPad is really impressive. Apple's chips are one of the few things that can still truly surprise, in an age where part leaks and rumors tell us everything we need to know about the actual consumer products months ahead of time.

I think you might be overstating its performance advantage, though - it's usually 1.5-2 times faster than the A6 if you're running 64-bit code, and the last time we saw a chipmaker best its previous chip by that margin was... last year, in the move from the A5 to the A6.

 

[Plasdom]

In all I thought 2013 was a little disappointing when it comes to apple. Most likely because I have come to expect a lot from them. Hopefully it is because they are working on great products for 2014. I was disappointed in iOS7 though. Feels too unpolished and unfinished in a number of areas.

 

[ws3]

Nice fingernails Andrew.

 

[abj]

I would be surprised if the Pro got an update so soon, the Haswell-E Xeons are going to require a new socket.

 

[superdx]

Another year of incremental updates will have all the analysts pounding the stock down, but it's mostly for their own benefit since they can do volume trades. By depressing it and waiting for the great big reveal, they are going to profit.

I think 2014 or 2015 Apple is going introduce a new category, it's just a matter of time. But whether or not that new category totally changes the industry it targets, we'll have to see. Both iPhone and iPad totally rocked the status quo, hopefully Tim Cook and the rest of the gang are able to do something similar.

That being said, another incremental year of updates would be great. Would love to update to a 15" MacBook Air...

 

[vypergts]

I think the article really undersold the services opportunity for 2014. The profit margins on televisions and wearables are terrible and Apple tends to look for products where they can get 40% easy. Services are where it's at. Microsoft is heading that direction too. Apple's next service offering will need to "skate where the puck is heading" and solve some problem better than anyone else for a price they can make good money at. People may have seen the incremental updates in 2013 as disappointing but the next big thing probably isn't even going to be a device at all.

 

[r3loaded]

ewelch[/url]":1xm8t483]

teknik[/url]":1xm8t483]Thunderbolt to PCIe for the win.

It IS PCIe already. I just received a Thunderbolt 2 Sonnet Tempo Express II SE. It has two PCIe slots, and it will have Thunderbolt 2 when the free upgrade is sent to me by Sonnet. (It's a card in the box's third slot.) I'm going to have an ATTO 10GB NIC in one slot and I'm racking my brain to figure out what should be in the other one. I was thinking an SATA card with four ports. But I'm done with SATA as a persistent storage option. I have a Promise 18TB Thunderbolt2 RAID already filling up on my desk as I await the arrival of my six core Mac Pro.

So I agree with you that PCIe is great, and I'm taking advantage of what's available on the cutting edge of speedy hardware. I just wanted to point out that Thunderbolt at its heart is actually PCIe with DisplayPort I/O protocols attached.

Quibble point: Thunderbolt is NOT PCIe. It's its own protocol, which can multiplex any protocol you through it. The most common signals that are multiplexed over Thunderbolt just happen to be PCIe and DisplayPort, so it appears to the user as simply carrying these two together as these are high-bandwidth protocols that benefit from Thunderbolt's speed. However, there's nothing stopping you sending something like USB 3.0 signals over Thunderbolt though I've not seen any implementation that does that.

 

[ScifiGeek]

DOOManiac[/url]":3m608vqj]I'm hoping for a completely re-vamped Apple TV that can run apps ...

This seems like a sure winner at some point. If they could keep the price down while adding something like an A7 chip in it, it could be a very compelling light-console once the App floodgates open.

 

[dogbert0125]

17" MacBook Pro, please.

 

[DOOManiac]

ScifiGeek[/url]":21shg4lc]

DOOManiac[/url]":21shg4lc]I'm hoping for a completely re-vamped Apple TV that can run apps ...

This seems like a sure winner at some point. If they could keep the price down while adding something like an A7 chip in it, it could be a very compelling light-console once the App floodgates open.

Hmm... iOS7 gamepad support + A7 = OUYA killer?

 

[Deleted member 192806]

DOOManiac[/url]":3oit4ji8]

ScifiGeek[/url]":3oit4ji8]

DOOManiac[/url]":3oit4ji8]I'm hoping for a completely re-vamped Apple TV that can run apps ...

This seems like a sure winner at some point. If they could keep the price down while adding something like an A7 chip in it, it could be a very compelling light-console once the App floodgates open.

Hmm... iOS7 gamepad support + A7 = OUYA killer?

Kind of a low bar don't you think?

 

[metamatic]

ewelch[/url]":2w0ftpno]That's not much pressure when the online numbers show the iPad blows away Kindles (and everything else) for tablet usage of bandwidth.

Apple doesn't make money from iPad users chewing up bandwidth. It needs to sell hardware or media, and its tablet hardware market share is dropping.

 

[achbed]

ScifiGeek[/url]":3me5hb79]

DOOManiac[/url]":3me5hb79]I'm hoping for a completely re-vamped Apple TV that can run apps ...

This seems like a sure winner at some point. If they could keep the price down while adding something like an A7 chip in it, it could be a very compelling light-console once the App floodgates open.

The interface for moving a touch UI to a non-touch screen is a hard thing to solve. By definition, it's a major shift in how to design apps.

More likely is a re-imagining of the iPod Touch as the main control device (especially with Siri, Display Mirroring like iPhone 4S and higher), and the Game Controller API, with a low-power AppleTV being a "dumb" display unit/video streaming device. If they can get settings to mirror between the AppleTV and the iPod, and can offload video streaming (where applicable - ie, NetFlix app sends a remote command to start playing a TV show, and the Apple TV handles the rest), then I think they might have it. Add in a few apps from places like XFinity and Time Warner, and you now have live cable TV without the cable box, and all integrated into the package.

 

[Tension]

Zoolook[/url]":3i2h3kjp]Apple TV continued to improve in 2013. Additional channels are not much to yell about, but it sold well and Apple seem to be taking it more seriously - I cut the cable cord in 2009 and used to use my Xbox as my way of getting Netflix and rented movies to my TV. But for the last couple of years, it's been Apple TV. Apple is doing a great job at sucking people deeper into their eco system - I just checked and I spent $1600 at iTunes in 2013... [gulp]

Until Apple TV supports most common formats, it is unlikely to succeed in the tech circles I deal with. Players like WDTV play just about everything, Apple TV is far less tolerant. Until Apple play ball in this area, I would reccomend alternatives ahead of Apple TV, despite the Apple advantages.
While this violates DMCA, I prefer to rip my own BluRays. This means I'm not locked into an ECO-system and can watch those movies on a any device or in any ECO-system I choose. This is a big barrier for me and iTunes movies and Apple TV.

 

[ReddyKilowatt]

I think that along with people giving up on cable TV and the highly inflated cost we'll see an opening for video podcasting to take off. Apple's been working on getting the production costs down to a level where it's fairly cheap for a producer to create programming. Now if they can leverage iTunes and Apple TV they might be able to get something started on the consumption side.

 

[Zoolook]

Tension[/url]":11twe3ry]

Zoolook[/url]":11twe3ry]Apple TV continued to improve in 2013. Additional channels are not much to yell about, but it sold well and Apple seem to be taking it more seriously - I cut the cable cord in 2009 and used to use my Xbox as my way of getting Netflix and rented movies to my TV. But for the last couple of years, it's been Apple TV. Apple is doing a great job at sucking people deeper into their eco system - I just checked and I spent $1600 at iTunes in 2013... [gulp]

Until Apple TV supports most common formats, it is unlikely to succeed in the tech circles I deal with. Players like WDTV play just about everything, Apple TV is far less tolerant. Until Apple play ball in this area, I would reccomend alternatives ahead of Apple TV, despite the Apple advantages.
While this violates DMCA, I prefer to rip my own BluRays. This means I'm not locked into an ECO-system and can watch those movies on a any device or in any ECO-system I choose. This is a big barrier for me and iTunes movies and Apple TV.

I completely agree - some people hack and rip their own content because they once had to, and it's still habitual. Others because it's easier, cheaper or they're just hardcore tech-nerds (in the most positive way possible!) and will never want to use something like an Apple TV.

I'm in the former camp. I used Handbrake for years to rip, and of course one huge advantage of Handbrake was you could stay within Apple's limitations - not sure if that was pure luck or a premonition. ATV streams from a computer very nicely, and I have some legacy 1080p content I ripped years ago - and a load of 540p/480p that it also handles.

In some sense, I regret not staying DRM-free with movies, because I now have about 60 movies and more than 500 TV shows that can ONLY be played on an iTunes-compatible device. You've probably made the right choice in the long run, even if it's of questionable legality.

 

[ws3]

Tension[/url]":14ip1azz]

Zoolook[/url]":14ip1azz]Apple TV continued to improve in 2013. Additional channels are not much to yell about, but it sold well and Apple seem to be taking it more seriously - I cut the cable cord in 2009 and used to use my Xbox as my way of getting Netflix and rented movies to my TV. But for the last couple of years, it's been Apple TV. Apple is doing a great job at sucking people deeper into their eco system - I just checked and I spent $1600 at iTunes in 2013... [gulp]

Until Apple TV supports most common formats, it is unlikely to succeed in the tech circles I deal with. Players like WDTV play just about everything, Apple TV is far less tolerant. Until Apple play ball in this area, I would reccomend alternatives ahead of Apple TV, despite the Apple advantages.
While this violates DMCA, I prefer to rip my own BluRays. This means I'm not locked into an ECO-system and can watch those movies on a any device or in any ECO-system I choose. This is a big barrier for me and iTunes movies and Apple TV.

That's an entirely reasonable explanation of why an Apple TV isn't right for you, but for most people interested in an Apple TV kind of product, your reasons are irrelevant. Most of my friends and acquaintances are not computer-technically minded people and have no interest in lots of different media formats or ripping their DVDs and BluRays, so your reasoning simply doesn't apply to them. For most of them, an Apple TV is an ideal media appliance, especially if they are already invested in iTunes.