Hacker News Reader

Comment by cmyr | Hacker News Reader

This new trend of Apple "communicating" their "plans" is really... unsettling? It has the same sort of un-appleness to it as the announcement at WWDC of a product with no release-date: just sort of not something we've seen much of, previously.

This sort of communication seems more unambiguously good, though. Not sure if this counts as backtracking, but it's certainly a new degree of 'transparency' (or 'not complete opacity') and I think it's refreshing.

I guess there's actually a bit of previous from apple for this sort of thing, such as their open letter about the iPhone 4 antennas, or about Foxconn etcetera. Still this feels a bit different.

View on HN

Don't forget Final Cut Pro (http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/06/29/apple-fcpx).

It seems to me as if Tim Cook basically believes that Apple's secrecy about products is a good idea, but is also pragmatic and is willing to be open about screwups/future plans when he thinks it will pay off.

> open about screwups/future plans when he thinks it will pay off.

I'd talk about "ongoing" plans here, considering history (iMovie and FCPX) it's likely the plan was "rebuild from a cleaner slate" all along, but it's good seeing it actually spelled out for once.

Might have been better if they'd spelled out a bit earlier, but at least users are not left completely in the dark and praying for salvation as they were with iMovie '08.

>> "the announcement at WWDC of a product with no release-date"

If you're referencing the Mac Pro, that one made sense to me. People have been complaining about the lack of an update for a long time and Apple was probably losing people to Hackintosh/other platforms. An announcement helps slow that loss. Also developers are likely one of the main groups the Mac Pro is relevant to so it makes sense to announce that they are working on it at WWDC. Also didn't they say 'later this year'? That's not too different that what they do every year with iOS (coming this fall).

I thought the also did it with the iPad Mini Retina? I'm probably wrong though

They said "Later in November". More of a general time frame than a release date.

Yup, timeframe. The first iPad was announced as coming "next month", which turned out to be 5:00pm on the last business day (a Friday) of April.

It's also no different to what they've done in the past when they are launching a brand new product; the first iPhone was announced about five months before its release.

That was because of FCC regulations: they had to apply for licenses that the public would find out about. It hasn't happened with any subsequent iPhones, which have all been announced with < 1 month lead time (I think 1-2 weeks was normal).

Also the Mac Pro ceased being sold in the EU from the 1 March (it didn't comply with some EU regulation that came into force — with years of warning — that it trivially could have been made compatible with), so given they had ceased selling it in one major market it would've seemed reasonable to conclude they didn't care about it (and arguably they don't — if they can go without selling any Mac Pros in one of the largest markets in the world for almost a year).

Wow they really can't win can they.

"Unsettling" if they communicate. "Intransigent" if they don't.

Are we seeing the first shoots of Tim's Apple? A little less guarded about software roadmaps is a welcome change.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com