By John Gruber
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Jim Dalrymple returns to the show for the first episode of 2017. Topics include New Year’s Eve, Siri/Alexa/Google Assistant, Apple’s aging AirPort and Mac Pro lineups, the future of desktop Macs, Apple Watch battery life, and rumors of upcoming new iPads.
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10 years ago, Yahoo was important enough to get its own on-stage segment during the iPhone announcement.
Five minute interview wherein Jason Snell very closely predicts the App Store. That whole Expo was so damn exciting. It’s an overused phrase, but that iPhone debut was an instance where it really did feel like we’d been given a very clear glimpse of the future.
Merlin’s audio for the file was hosted at Odeo (remember them?), but Jason has a copy hosted at The Incomparable.
Rob Rhyne:
While Brooks and others are arguing that iPad will eventually replace the Mac, Gruber is arguing there will always be a need for macOS — specifically a desktop operating system. Despite what my aforementioned dalliance with iPad might suggest, I’m firmly in Gruber’s camp.
Here’s the thought experiment, which I used to inform my opinion: If you could take only one device with you, which one would you take? Ben Brooks or Federico Viticci would almost certainly choose an iPad.
However, I’d take a Mac. Exactly the 11-inch MacBook Air, which I’m using to write this article.
If I could only use one device, it’d be a 13-inch MacBook Pro. I bet a lot of people would pick an iPhone, though.
Ben Thompson:
There is, though, one more lesson, and that comes from the Apple TV: none of us ultimately know anything, including the late Steve Jobs. There’s no question that Jobs knew that Apple was on to something — he said so in the keynote, when he analogized the iPhone to the Mac and iPod. And yet, had he truly known that the iPhone would be exponentially more consequential than either, the Apple TV would have not made an appearance.
The truth is that dents in the universe are only observable after they have occurred; this is why their continued creation is best induced by the establishment of conditions in which risk-taking and experimentation are rewarded. The temptation is to adopt the mistaken mindset that all there is to be invented — and, more pertinently, to be adopted — already exists.
I like Apple TV a lot, and use it for just about all my TV watching other than sports, but it’s been a very different 10 years for Apple TV than it’s been for the iPhone.
Here’s a fun bit of history. Macworld magazine used to have a stage on the Macworld Expo show floor, and in 2007 I hosted a “Daring Fireball Live” show, with Panic cofounder Cabel Sasser as my guest. We went on stage at the end of the day on Tuesday, the day of the iPhone keynote. We weren’t even sure yet whether or not there was going to be an SDK for native apps.
This was so long ago, it was six months before the first run of The Talk Show started.
Update: Photo, courtesy Patrick Gibson.
The Telegraph has assembled a fine collection of vintage original iPhone claim chowder, including this gem from John Dvorak:
Now compare that effort and overlay the mobile handset business. This is not an emerging business. In fact it’s gone so far that it’s in the process of consolidation with probably two players dominating everything, Nokia and Motorola. […]
The problem here is that while Apple can play the fashion game as well as any company, there is no evidence that it can play it fast enough. These phones go in and out of style so fast that unless Apple has half a dozen variants in the pipeline, its phone, even if immediately successful, will be passé within 3 months.
There is no likelihood that Apple can be successful in a business this competitive.
Steven Levy, interviewing Phil Schiller on the tenth anniversary of the iPhone’s introduction:
Schiller also cast light on why the iPhone shipped as a closed system. During the gestation period of the iPhone, Apple hosted a spirited internal debate. Some advocated that the device be an open system, like the Macintosh, and others advised a more closed system, like the iPod. The argument was put on hold when the engineers realized that even if the open-system adherents won the debate, it would be impossible to implement in time for the launch. Steve Jobs shut down the discussion, Schiller recalls. “He said ‘We don’t have to keep debating this because we can’t have [an open system] right now. Maybe we’ll change our mind afterwards, or maybe we won’t, but for now there isn’t one so let’s envision this world where we solve the problem with great built-in apps and a way for developers to make web apps.”
A few thoughts:
It was the Apple keynote we had always wanted: the announcement of a game-changing product that Apple had successfully kept secret until Steve Jobs took it out of his pocket. Rumors were rampant that Apple was making “a phone”, but no one outside the company had any idea what kind of phone.
Here’s video of the announcement. See you in an hour.