[HN Gopher] The new Apple begins to emerge
___________________________________________________________________
The new Apple begins to emerge
Author : atombender
Score : 67 points
Date : 2026-03-08 13:08 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (parkerortolani.blog)
(TXT) w3m dump (parkerortolani.blog)
| LoganDark wrote:
| I really hope Ternus gets the next CEO spot. I haven't seen much
| of him, but I watched part of an interview with him and he seems
| very reminiscent of Jobs, in the good way. Reportedly Tim Cook is
| preparing runner-ups from all the top-level divisions, not just
| engineering:
|
| > But Mr. Cook is also preparing several other internal
| candidates to be his potential successor, two of the people said.
| They could include Craig Federighi, Apple's head of software;
| Eddy Cue, its head of services; Greg Joswiak, its head of
| worldwide marketing; and Deirdre O'Brien, its head of retail and
| human resources.
|
| Personally I wouldn't like to see any of these. Especially
| services needs to calm the fuck down and stop giving into the
| temptation to milk their captive audience; that's absolutely not
| what Apple is supposed to stand for.
| simianwords wrote:
| I look up to apple as a company that has good taste as opposed to
| Samsung that immediately appears as bloated.
|
| But the Touch Bar, butterfly keyboard and Face ID have been so
| laughably bad that I wonder what the hell was going on. Or was I
| the only one who hated them.
|
| Face ID in particular is probably one of the most annoying things
| about the iPhone. Constantly misses.
| microtonal wrote:
| Interesting, I have a lot of criticisms for Apple, but Face ID
| is not one of them, it is absolutely flawless for me. I wonder
| if you wear glasses or have facial hair?
| simianwords wrote:
| No I don't. I can't open it during the night when I'm under
| the blanket for example
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| That comment is so Hacker News.
| halapro wrote:
| I'm honestly suddenly having issues unlocking my iPhone 17
| Pro in broad daylight. Feels like it doesn't work in the sun
| anymore. No hair, just eyeglasses.
| alivenotions wrote:
| I think I'm in the opposite camp. Loved the butterfly keyboard
| and Face ID works almost always, so much so that I regret
| getting a Touch ID iPad. And this is with me having facial hair
| and glasses. Touch Bar was a miss for me too though
| microtonal wrote:
| I thought the Touch Bar with Esc was kinda ok, but by that
| time its reputation was already destroyed.
| dd8601fn wrote:
| I loved the touch bar.
|
| Unfortunately it was a cool thing that died a slow death when
| nobody made meaningful use of it. At that point it made sense
| to axe it.
| luckman212 wrote:
| If you think FaceID is hit or miss, I guess you haven't tried
| the keyboard lately?
| simianwords wrote:
| I would prefer Touch ID
| luckman212 wrote:
| I meant: the keyboard is highly unreliable.
| simianwords wrote:
| fair yeah that too
| microtonal wrote:
| My wife and I always make a grocery list at the end of the
| work day. About 1/3rd gets autocorrected in something that is
| wrong, was not the case a few years ago. Also, selecting text
| is an absolute pain now (also used to be ok).
|
| At this point I'm wondering if program managers at Apple even
| use it, but then what else would they use?
| heavyset_go wrote:
| It's insane to me that they didn't let Face ID be an
| alternative to Touch ID
| kaladin-jasnah wrote:
| > I care about Apple holistically, as a living breathing entity
| not just their products.
|
| Out of curiosity, why?
| simianwords wrote:
| I think it's like caring for your favourite football team.
| Which I find much much stranger
| amelius wrote:
| I suppose because it is silly to think of Apple as some kind of
| divine entity.
| asplake wrote:
| Because you buy not just a device but into an ecosystem.
| Because you have expectations of future development. Because,
| as far as a changing political landscape will allow, you hope
| you can trust their judgement. Because you want support.
| Because you want to be able to walk into a store. Lots of
| reasons...
| dangus wrote:
| Like it or not, they're a Silicon Valley institution. They've
| affected technology more and stuck around longer than most
| everyone else.
|
| It's like caring about Bell Labs if it still existed, or Kodak
| at its peak. Sure, they were part of big monopolistic
| companies, but the other side of that is a unique entity with a
| resume of accomplishments that make them worthy of national
| pride.
| amelius wrote:
| Those accomplishments were only possible by making shitloads
| of money by exploiting monopolistic advantages. It is very
| strange to find pride in that.
| bombcar wrote:
| If you have one company that has "done what you want" for 20+
| years and is not "not doing what you want" you will feel sad,
| and hope they go back to what you want.
|
| Of course, the argument about how much of that is "convincing
| you that you what what they do" is left to the reader - but
| marketing hype can only take you so far.
| microtonal wrote:
| _Lemay has been at Apple for 27 years and has a track record that
| implies the future of Apple software under his leadership is
| extraordinarily bright._
|
| I don't share the optimism. I mean, he was there when Liquid
| Glass was designed and presumably in a good position if he became
| an executive leader now. Sure, Alan Dye may be the face, but
| Liquid Glass was made by a very large department. And it is not
| like Apple's design rot started with liquid glass, this recent
| post shows that it is regression after regression after
| regression (which is also my impression after having used Macs
| since 2007):
|
| https://pxlnv.com/blog/window-chrome-of-our-discontent/
|
| It is sad that Apple is still extremely good at hardware (I have
| the iPhone 17 Pro and the design is stellar), but software has
| become worse and worse over the years. They can only get away
| with it because almost all of the rest of the industry is even
| worse (macOS is still a glass of ice water if you are in the
| hellscape that is Windows).
| throwaway27448 wrote:
| > Sure, Alan Dye may be the face, but Liquid Glass was made by
| a very large department
|
| And the board is ultimately the culpable party here. The
| executives are just useful idiots. The board has clearly lost
| whatever direction they ever had of why the company they're
| running has value--and they can't just hire Steve Jobs back
| anymore.
| thenobsta wrote:
| This spurred me look at the board of Apple. Not a lot of
| builders/software/hardware/product people one there.
| twodave wrote:
| As a heavy user of both operating systems, I really don't feel
| that either has changed much in the last decade. Visually,
| sure, things go through cycles, but from a "how do I use it?"
| perspective my work flows on neither OS have changed.
| layer8 wrote:
| Visually, it has been an ongoing degradation over the past
| 15-ish years, in the sense of UI controls versus content
| having become progressively harder to distinguish and less
| self-explanatory. Functionally, there is less consistency
| between apps and in UI idioms than there used to be.
| wtallis wrote:
| And while UI controls have been becoming harder to
| recognize, they've also been inflating to waste more screen
| space. Liquid Glass is a big jump in that respect. Though
| the web has been afflicted much worse, because everything
| online is now designed with a touch-first UI in mind and
| information density is not a priority at all.
| coldtea wrote:
| Well, duh, they're not rethinking the UI to work differently.
|
| They just make the UX worse in tons of subtle and not so
| subtle ways. Less differentiation between controls, more
| wasted space, UI widgets that become unreadable based on what
| content scrolls under them, more samey (thus harder to find)
| icons, and 1000s of such paper cuts.
| nottorp wrote:
| All those "new" names have been at Apple for decades and
| they're as guilty as the ones who recently left or will leave.
| SR2Z wrote:
| They can get away with it because Apple fans (even the ones who
| are tech-literate) react with visceral disgust when anyone
| suggests and Android phone or a non-Mac PC.
|
| It does not hurt that Android and iOS are both kind of the same
| OS now. Yes, I get that there are a million differences between
| the two, but now that we're at almost two straight decades of
| the platforms copying features from one another, the difference
| is academic for most people.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _I mean, he was there when Liquid Glass was designed and
| presumably in a good position if he became an executive leader
| now._
|
| That position could be as the guy who argued against it, but
| didn't have the power to call the shots, which is especially
| likely "if he became an executive leader now" due to the
| backlash.
| troupo wrote:
| Stop giving Alan Dye the Package Designer God-like powers. As if
| he was alone reaponsible for any design changes.
|
| Federighi answers only to Cook and God (not sure about God
| though), and he and his minions have been happily implementing
| every single bullshit under the sun, and praising it on stage.
| They spent probably millions of man-hours on Liquid Glass. And
| shipped it in the state it is in.
|
| For the new Apple to "begin to emerge" you need more than
| meaningless web page updates. You need a leadership that _cares_.
| When is the last time you 've seen any of Apple's senior
| leadership care?
| mrkstu wrote:
| Hopefully Apple is humble enough to course correct, while being
| wildly successful. It's easy to ignore criticism when your books
| are overflowing with cash, but the cracks are spreading and the
| foundation will eventually crumble if they don't start taking
| their problems seriously.
| rrgok wrote:
| Unless I'm missing something, I hate fanboys
|
| > The MacBook Neo is a new kind of product for Apple
|
| It's just a laptop with a dumbed down CPU. It is not a NEW KIND
| of product. Apple already sells laptop with different CPUs..
| geerlingguy wrote:
| I think "value laptop" is the new product--for Apple.
|
| The closest they ever came to something similar was the far too
| expensive 12" MacBook, and the far-too-compromised PowerBook
| Duo (IMHO).
| ayewo wrote:
| And to zoom out a bit, Apple has lots of experience selling
| budget devices e.g. iPhone SE.
| Kwpolska wrote:
| It's new and revolutionary, because it's the first sub-$1000
| laptop from Apple.
| zsoltkacsandi wrote:
| To Apple it is a new kind of product.
| dangus wrote:
| That's a very spec-focused way to think about something that
| has nothing to do with specs.
|
| This is a laptop being sold at half the price of the cheapest
| laptop Apple has ever sold save for some oddities like the
| eMate.
|
| Apple has never threatened the "I just need a working cheap
| laptop for $500" market in this way before.
| Forgeties79 wrote:
| It is absolutely a distinct, new kind of product for them and I
| don't understand how it is fanboyism to say so. They have very
| few, very clear lanes of products with few variations. This is
| an entirely different fleet/price point for their laptops. It
| doesn't even use the M chip, which every other computer they
| offer does.
|
| It's a budget laptop. They didn't have a budget laptop prior.
| lateforwork wrote:
| _Lemay has been at Apple for 27 years and has a track record that
| implies the future of Apple software under his leadership is
| extraordinarily bright._
|
| That Macbook Neo wallpaper [1] does not give me confidence.
|
| [1] https://9to5mac.com/wp-
| content/uploads/sites/6/2026/03/MacBo...
| arvid-lind wrote:
| Did someone at Apple discover some cool shader tricks and just
| can't stop?
| jitl wrote:
| yeah at some point around 1999 with Mac OS 9, they started
| making abstract desktop backgrounds like this, and there've
| been a few like it in every OS released since then https://ph
| otos.google.com/share/AF1QipNNQyeVrqxBdNmBkq9ILswi...
| lateforwork wrote:
| Thanks for sharing, I find those backgrounds beautiful. The
| Neo background, on the other hand, is ugly, at least to my
| taste.
| layer8 wrote:
| It definitely has a bit of a 1990s gradient 3D buttons vibe.
| cmckn wrote:
| Reminds me of bacteria under a microscope.
| Avicebron wrote:
| Do people like the Macbook Neo? When I saw it was announced I
| groaned thinking this was Apple's chromebook, cheap,
| representative of a disposable mindset. Underpowered and even
| more locked into the ecosystem..
|
| I'd love to be proven wrong. But to me it feels regressive. I
| guess the only positive spin on it I can think of is that this is
| designed for kids in schools.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| I like how cheap it is. But I'm not a typical Apple user. My
| laptop is a MacBook Air 11" that does everything I need it to
| do that I bought on eBay for about $75 in 2022.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| I was hoping they might have brought back the 11" Air. I
| never do much serious work on the run so a small device like
| that would be ideal for me.
| windowsrookie wrote:
| I replied to somebody else earlier, but the 11" air and the
| new neo are very close in physical size.
|
| The 11" MacBook Air was 11.8" x 7.56" the neo is 11.71" x
| 8.12".
| programd wrote:
| It's partly the weight that made the 11" MacBook Air
| great: MacBook Air: 1.08 kg (2.38 lbs)
| MacBook Neo: 1.23 kg (2.70 lbs)
| windowsrookie wrote:
| Definitely not typical, the 11" MacBooks had terrible screens
| by modern standards and have no hardware acceleration for
| modern video codecs.
|
| It really is too bad they never upgraded that 1366x768 LCD in
| the 11" MacBooks otherwise I think they could be great linux
| devices today.
| grey-area wrote:
| It's a remarkably powerful computer for a decent price. I like
| this new direction from Apple and also think chromebooks were a
| great idea even if the execution on them hasn't always been
| great. I don't see how they are disposable, perhaps for you
| their price makes them so? For many it just means they are
| actually attainable unlike other Mac products.
|
| If you're looking to a corporation to save you from corporate
| lock-in I'm not sure what to say.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| I'm actually very excited for the Macbook Neo.
|
| I do all of my development on cloud servers. I just want a
| cheap laptop with a good battery life and, crucially, a
| keyboard and track pad that aren't complete trash.
|
| I'd strongly prefer to have Linux over Mac - but this seems
| like the best option (and I kind of hate Apple tbh).
|
| I don't think a better product exists at this price point,
| though I haven't tried it yet.
| zikduruqe wrote:
| > Do people like the Macbook Neo?
|
| People have been begging for MacOS on the iPad... and here it
| is, but in different clothing. The Neo is just a test bed
| before committing MacOS to the iPad.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| I don't understand this comment. In everything it does this
| is a MacBook, not an iPad. It doesnt have a touch screen. It
| has a fixed keyboard.
| WillAdams wrote:
| It has an iPad chip, and is at an iPad price --- if it
| sells well, and doesn't gut iPad sales, then maybe we'll
| get Mac OS on iPad (but I'm not holding my breath) --- a
| more interesting development would be for someone to work
| out how to transfer the Mac OS from a Neo onto an iPad w/
| the same chip.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| IPad pro exists with an M5 as well. And is prices
| basically the same as an MacBook air.
| WillAdams wrote:
| fair point --- as I noted, I'm not holding my breath, and
| I don't think it likely, but maybe the above is why some
| folks think this might happen.
| rurihoshino wrote:
| Dear lord in heaven I hope this is true. My work laptop is an
| M2 Air and I recently got them to spring for an M5 iPad Pro
| as a companion device. Whenever I'm using it as a wireless
| second screen I am acutely aware that it both has a larger
| display and significantly more powerful processor than the
| laptop it's serving as an extension of.
| mapt wrote:
| Can you even market a fully fledged desktop replacement thin
| and light in this price hemisphere in 2026? Both RAM and flash
| SSDs are now worth their weight in gold.
| Forgeties79 wrote:
| I think mainly what upsets me about it is how it can _only_
| have 8gb of ram. Everything else you can kind of work with and
| stretch if you're not a "power user," but 8gb just isn't enough
| in 2026 IMO if ewaste is a concern. Especially not in an era
| where people have ChatGPT open all the time
|
| Would be interesting to see these specs in a mini body with
| 16gb ram but I have a feeling there isn't really a market for
| that.
| iainmerrick wrote:
| _Especially not in an era where people have ChatGPT open all
| the time_
|
| People aren't generally running ChatGPT locally.
| Forgeties79 wrote:
| I didn't say they were running it locally. A single tab of
| ChatGPT eventually eats a few gb of ram if you leave it
| open and are using it constantly, which is how I see most
| "casual" people using it in my vicinity. I've seen it push
| 2-3 gigs regularly.
|
| People also tend to just leave a lot of tabs open all the
| time. Even when they are paused I just see people's
| computers slow to a crawl because of this constantly.
|
| I agree it should be enough and it even often is, but
| unless we're going to get everybody to change their habits
| and get websites to be more efficient with tam usage (like
| how at work every single HubSpot tab I have uses 300-400MB
| which is ridiculous) 8 will become an issue, especially on
| macOS and windows. The way things are going it's going to
| become a real problem in 5 years, which is relevant when
| we're talking about ewaste. I just don't see an 8gb mac neo
| lasting 8-10 years.
|
| This has been my experience. I understand why other people
| disagree with me, but this is just what I've witnessed
| around me.
| sznio wrote:
| 8GB should be enough forever.
|
| what do we need more memory for on our machines. Video files
| are already at a resolutions where any increase barely
| matters. Audio or any other multimedia as well. You won't be
| gaming on a macbook so that goes out of the window, and a lot
| of games actually work fine with 8GB. You can edit video or
| music with that much RAM.
|
| Only thing that needs more ram is running Facebook, which is
| more of a problem with the sad state of webdev, not the
| MacBook.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Your comment just bruised an Electron app developer.
| Forgeties79 wrote:
| Should be, but it isn't.
|
| I edit for a living and 8gb is not sufficient at all unless
| you're always doing proxies, doing reduced resolution
| playback, and not running any major effects. Playback
| starts dropping frames at the drop of a hat. Every video
| editor should have at least 16gb of ram - it's been that
| way for years.
|
| If you _rarely_ edit you can get away with it. If you do it
| with any regularity you end up working around the
| constraints and taking significantly longer to do your work
| and deal with slideshow playback.
| wffurr wrote:
| I think it's great to have a lower cost entry level option for
| the MacBook, especially given how resistant Apple has been to
| allowing local development tools and shared files on iPadOS. It
| seems like a worthy replacement to the M1 MacBook Air they were
| selling through Walmart this whole time. The colors are a
| really nice touch on a solid hardware offering. It doesn't seem
| especially disposable or more locked-in to any ecosystem than
| any other MacBook, and with less ecosystem lock-in than a
| Chromebook.
|
| Personally I'm still waiting for a return of the 12" MacBook or
| 11" MacBook Air with an M-series chip in it. The current
| MacBook Air model just doesn't have the same feeling of super
| portable grab-ability that my old 11" MacBook Air had.
| Unfortunately, the age of the netbook is long past and hardly
| any manufacturer makes laptops with screens less than 13"
| unless you go all the way down to some kind of weird handheld
| thing without a keyboard. I liked how the 11" MacBook Air had
| _just_ enough width and depth for the keyboard and a usable
| trackpad and no more.
| windowsrookie wrote:
| The 11" MacBook Air was 11.8" x 7.56" the neo is 11.71" x
| 8.12".
|
| It's extremely close in physical size, just with a 2" bigger
| display.
|
| https://everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook-
| air/specs/macbook...
|
| https://www.apple.com/macbook-neo/specs/
| a012 wrote:
| If they keep the quality of the Magic Keyboard for iPad then I
| have no doubt in Macbook Neo.
| Hardwired8976 wrote:
| The only negative is the 8gb ram but the processor lies in
| between M1 and M2, aluminium chassis etc
| post-it wrote:
| It's more powerful than my M2 MacBook Air, which is the most
| powerful computer I've ever owned and I'm only vaguely thinking
| about a future upgrade.
| ValentineC wrote:
| How is A18 more powerful than M2?
| sznio wrote:
| it's a cheap way to escape from microslop, for those that
| really fear linux
| microtonal wrote:
| I like it in the sense that Apple is finally willing to admit
| after about 15 years that iPads are not a replacement for
| MacBooks. I think this is one of the things that plagued Apple
| for years initially led to the neglect of macOS for years
| (always a third citizen) and then terrible stuff like Catalyst.
| Apple being able to admit that even high school students are
| better of with a MacBook than iPads is a win. But yeah, to get
| there it took the Chromebook to butcher their market and now
| they have to compete on price (which means lower specs, but
| still an insanely good CPU).
| larusso wrote:
| I waited for such a device for years. I have 3 Macs at the
| moment. My MacBook Pro (still an M2 Max) from work for work. A
| Mac Mini M4 Pro from last year and an older M1 MacBook. I
| separate my work and private usage because of all the security
| software my employer forces on the machine. I didn't want to
| buy yet another 4000Euro MacBook for my private stuff. So when
| the new Mini was announced I jumped on it. But my problem was
| that this meant that my personal computer was no longer
| portable. I was lucky because I still had the M1 in my house.
| My wife gave it to me because she stopped using it. If not for
| the M1 I would definitely have spend money for a MacBook Air or
| a used older laptop. This Neo would also fit my requirements.
| But I don't need it at the moment.
|
| The second reason is of course kids. Yes I thought multiple
| times if I should get my kids some kind of computer. But the
| issue is that I don't want a Chromebook or a windows device
| under my care. Used would be the way to go here but I love the
| fact that there is finally a good value entry level machine
| that also looks fun.
| treetalker wrote:
| > Do people like the Macbook Neo?
|
| At the time of our writing, it is a new product and was
| announced about a week ago, to be released on March 11. By
| Thursday of last week, Costco had essentially sold out of
| preorders for both models. (I think a few of the pink color
| remain.)
|
| So I think there is incredible demand -- especially when memory
| prices are skyrocketing, everyone stores most of their data in
| the cloud, most LLM inference is also on remote machines, and
| the chip can handle most if not all typical office and web
| tasks (pretty much anything except running local models and
| demanding video editing).
|
| I'm interested in one myself for law work on the couch, and I'm
| eager to read the first reviews.
| dd8601fn wrote:
| It doesn't scream "disposable" to me.
|
| It'll blow the doors off everything else in that price range,
| in a machine that feels like a macbook, which retain value
| better than anything else.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I really hope it has the effect of kicking _other ~$500
| laptop manufacturers_ in the nuts and forcing them to stop
| putting out such crappy half-assed plastic junk with terrible
| screens and touchpads, at that price tier.
| haunter wrote:
| The Walmart outlet on eBay is selling refurb M1s for $380, I
| think that's still a better deal not just because it's cheaper
| but you get Touch ID, a better screen, and dual Thunderbolt
| ports. Backlit keyboard too!
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I think Steve Lemay is a good guy. I kind of fought with him when
| I was an engineer, he was a young, new designer (at Apple). But I
| always respected his point of view--even when we argued.
|
| When Jobs came back to Apple in the latter 1990's "Design" slowly
| came to have an outsized role. I was one half of the engineering
| team that owned Preview (the application) when Steve Lemay became
| a seemingly regular presence in the hallway. As the new "Aqua" UI
| elements arrived in the OS like the "drawer" and toolbar, Steve
| and his boss (forgetting his name right now--Greg Somebody?) were
| often making calls about our UI implementation.
|
| The bigger argument I remember with Steve revolved around the
| _drawer_ UI element. With regard to PDF 's, (the half of
| _Preview_ that I worked on, another engineer handled images), the
| drawer was to display thumbnails for each page. If the PDF had a
| TOC (table of contents) the drawer is where we would display that
| as well.
|
| So when you opened a PDF in Preview, the PDF content of course
| would appear in the large window--thumbnails, TOC (later search)
| would be relegated to a vertical strip of _drawer_ real estate
| alongside the window--the user could open /close the drawer if
| they liked to focus perhaps on the content.
|
| Steve Lemay insisted the drawer live on the right side of the
| window [1]. This was inexplicable to me. I saw the layout of
| _Preview_ as hierarchical: the left side of the content driving
| the right side. You click a thumbnail on the left (in the drawer)
| the window content on the right changes to reflect the thumbnail
| clicked on.
|
| Steve said, no, drawer on the right.
|
| "Why? Why the hell would we do that?"
|
| Steve was quick: "The Preview app is about _the content_. The
| content is king. "
|
| I admit that I still disagreed with him after the exchange, but I
| had a new respect for him as a designer because he was able to
| articulate a rationale for his decision. I suppose I was
| prejudiced to expect hand-waving from designers.
|
| (Coda: some years later after I had left the Preview team, an
| engineer still on the app let me know that the thumbnails, etc,
| were at last moving to the left side of the app. The "drawer" as
| as a UI element had by this time gone away: resizable split-views
| were the replacement.)
|
| (Addendum: Steve also invented the early Safari URL text field
| that also doubled as a progress bar. Instant hate from me when I
| saw it: it was as if the text of the URL you entered was being
| _selected_ as the page loaded. So I 'm old-school and Steve had
| some new ideas...)
|
| [1] Localization was such that in countries where right-to-left
| was dominant, the drawer would of course follow suit.
| Someone wrote:
| > Steve Lemay insisted the drawer live on the right side of the
| window [1]. This was inexplicable to me.
|
| Makes some sense to me if, as I suspect, people tend to place
| their windows aligned to the left of the screen. If that's the
| case, opening the drawer to the left of its container (the
| window) would require not sliding the drawer out, but sliding
| the window to the right to make room for the drawer.
|
| I think that that's a reason the drawer analogy doesn't really
| make sense. Another is that the question "what do you store in
| a drawer?" certainly isn't "page thumbnails and table of
| contents". "Rarely used tools" or "spare paper" are better
| answers.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| "...but sliding the window to the right to make room for the
| drawer."
|
| You're right about that. (You should be a designer, ha ha.)
|
| I think the "solution" was that the drawer was open by
| default when a new document opened. Therefore the window was
| placed in a way that already allowed for the drawer width.
| coldtea wrote:
| Wouldn't help if the user closes the drawer and moves it to
| the left - which users used to having apps to the left (and
| to a left to right reading culture) would.
|
| The main problem I see is the mouse pointer has reason to
| be on the proximity of the left side: the Apple menu is
| there, the most important dock elements (on a bottom dock)
| are there - or the whole dock for a left-placed dock), the
| menubar File, Edit, etc, and the most common icons for icon
| bar operations are there.
|
| And if 'content is king', navigating the content (TOC,
| search, thumbnail) should also be king, not just the
| current viewing page.
| microtonal wrote:
| _Steve was quick: "The Preview app is about the content. The
| content is king."_
|
| Seems like this is exactly what is going wrong with design at
| Apple?
|
| https://pxlnv.com/blog/window-chrome-of-our-discontent/
| wtallis wrote:
| There is at least room to hope that Lemay may be able to take
| a more nuanced, reasonable approach. Believing that
| Preview.app needs to be designed with the "content is king"
| mindset doesn't necessarily mean believing that "content is
| king" needs to be the top priority everywhere throughout the
| OS even to the detriment of usability. After all, Preview.app
| is a pretty extreme example: displaying content is its
| primary purpose and almost the _sole_ purpose; its editing
| and annotation capabilities are minimal and far less
| frequently used than the core functionality of viewing PDFs
| and images.
|
| But even though I'm _hopeful_ , I'm definitely not holding my
| breath for a quick turnaround and big mea culpa from Apple. I
| bought a new laptop last fall specifically to avoid using
| Liquid Glass for as long as possible.
| whynotminot wrote:
| Love this kind of behind the scenes -- thanks for sharing!
|
| Personally, I think in a way you both ended up right. Content
| _is_ king. But with the iPad (my favorite PDF viewer) as an
| important part of the Preview landscape now, I view the right
| side as where content should live.
| vunderba wrote:
| It's not a perfect equivalency but putting the drawer on the
| right side seems to be a bit inconsistent with their own Finder
| display (Show Items as Columns) where you drive from left-to-
| right with the right-most being a preview of a media asset such
| as a picture for example.
|
| But I wasn't an early user of MacOS, I don't know when this
| Column layout was first introduced.
|
| _> The Preview app is about the content. The content is king._
|
| If "left-hand" is king I wonder if they would have reversed the
| drawer's position for localization in countries with RTL
| languages.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| "I wonder if they would have reversed the drawer's position
| for localization in countries with RTL languages."
|
| I believe AppKit did so.
| wtallis wrote:
| > But I wasn't an early user of MacOS, I don't know when this
| Column layout was first introduced.
|
| 1989. See the screenshot:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTSTEP
|
| Instead of the drawer on the side, NeXTSTEP had the Shelf on
| top: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelf_(computing)
| BirAdam wrote:
| So, the biggest signal here is Apple caring enough about the low-
| end of the market to make a laptop for it, and they didn't just
| continue making the M1 (as has been the case up to now at
| Walmart). Apple instead chose to bring back color, to provide
| better cooling to a newer and more power efficient chip, and
| thereby deliver better performance than M1. They didn't skimp on
| materials. They didn't skimp on the screen. The Neo is a premium
| device, it's just low on RAM and GPU cores. For a student who
| just needs Pages, Numbers, Keynote, and Safari, that's fine. For
| the average HN reader, it's not fine, but the Neo isn't intended
| for HN readers.
|
| My biggest complaint is actually the positioning of the USB-C
| ports. The USB2 port should have been the one in the corner where
| most people will connect a charger, and the one in front should
| have been USB3 where most people would be plugging anything else.
| For the current layout, it seems like they're counting on the
| buyer to get a dock of some kind... but this is meant to be
| budget?
| glimshe wrote:
| Hey New Apple, can you guys fix the nearly weekly prompt I get to
| reject local network access for the browser? I don't have that on
| my windows or Linux machines so it's fixable!
| ValentineC wrote:
| I really hope Steve Lemay fixes liquid glAss in macOS and iOS 27.
|
| I've held off upgrading past Sequoia because of it, or wanting to
| buy M4/M5 Macs.
|
| I've tried and absolutely love the iPhone 17 Pro hardware, but
| the camera app is an unusable monstrosity.
| IndySun wrote:
| I too am holding back on ios18. One of the weekly calls I get
| from a non tech friend (actually that's unfair, they're just
| scared to change settings in case something breaks) wanted to
| know how I made the timelapse video I'd just sent. I dutifully
| explained what to tap and how to get to it but to no avail -
| such is said abomination of the ios26 camera app.
| pupppet wrote:
| I found Tahoe so bad that I rolled back. That was after a good
| few months of using it.
| mmooss wrote:
| > the marketing is radically different. Apple's advertising
| materials for the Neo are a radical departure from their typical
| work. It's drawing exactly the kind of attention that they need
| to. It's fun, it's different, and it's most importantly current.
| Not just following trends, but taking what makes Apple, Apple and
| meshing it together with what's expected of brands in 2026.
|
| Could someone explain what the OP means here?
| vjulian wrote:
| Hardly what I would label as 'longform', though the author did.
| deafpolygon wrote:
| The MacBook Neo is there to redefine the floor for the product
| line-up. There's a reason why it didn't take the "MacBook"
| moniker: they're going to phase the Air out, introduce a more
| expensive "MacBook" and eventually shuffle the Pro line around so
| it's MacBook Neo -> MacBook (???) -> MacBook Ultra
|
| The 599 price point is just there to justify recycling the A18
| chip (8GB limit is due to the chip). It will pivot and the price
| will climb back up (699, 799 probably) after a cycle or two.
|
| There is no 'new' Apple.
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