Apple's WWDC 2017 Keynote

[iacas]

 

$349, again meh, we'll see. $299 would have been nice. December.

Echo is $179. The speaker sucks, but… again… how many people really play that much music throughout their homes?

[mvmac]

38 minutes ago, iacas said:

how many people really play that much music throughout their homes?

Hardly ever. My wife occasionally does when she's cooking. 

[NCGolfer]

1 hour ago, iacas said:

I don't know people who constantly play music in their homes. Not people who live with other people.

*Quietly raises hand*

My wife and I do...all the time.  We stream music through our Airport Express to a dedicated whole-house amp and speakers.  When we built the house I had it in mind.  We love it...and we live with each other (and two kids).  

[nevets88]

While the entry level MBP is priced lower, pricing out my machine future proofed with bumped up memory and storage space it's the same price - so would get a processor/graphics bump if I returned and bought the new one. They didn't say anything about battery life, did they? Probably the same maybe a little better? Don't do much with graphics anyway, so rationalizing to keep the current MBP. Now if the price dropped significantly for a machine w/my specs, then that's a different story, but pretty sure that wasn't going to happen and it didn't.

1 hour ago, NCGolfer said:

*Quietly raises hand*

My wife and I do...all the time.  We stream music through our Airport Express to a dedicated whole-house amp and speakers.  When we built the house I had it in mind.  We love it...and we live with each other (and two kids).  

Me three. A lot of people I know do so too (techs/creatives and such), they listen to a lot of podcasts in addition music as well. Spotify me baby. 

Amazon Echos and similar have an option to delete whatever it records, it's nested down many levels in the website, but it's there, I've done it. Who knows it they're really deleting it though.

[chspeed]

2 hours ago, iacas said:

 

$349, again meh, we'll see. $299 would have been nice. December.

Echo is $179. The speaker sucks, but… again… how many people really play that much music throughout their homes?

Yeah - not exciting speaker announcement.

I play music in kitchen, bedroom, & living room sometimes. But I use Sonos, which I love. The Echo has promised to have strong integration with Sonos by year end. Can't wait!

[iacas]

23 minutes ago, nevets88 said:

Me three. A lot of people I know and work with do so too (techs/creatives and such), they listen to a lot of podcasts in addition music as well. Spotify me baby.

I listen to podcasts all the time in my car. That's not the same thing as a normal family with people coming and going and having different tastes in what they want to listen to.

It just feels like pitching it as a music thing justifies a higher price for the better speakers, but I don't know about the actual need - I'd rather have a $249 device that just does smart assistant stuff well - knows the difference between me, my wife, and my daughter for our calendars, knows the weather and where we'll be that day, knows my favorite sports teams, whatever… that sort of thing. The music feels like an add-on that bumps the price but that most people won't care for.

Dave, you won't care about the music, because you already built a better solution using your whole home - this is one speaker in one room. You have a better solution already, so it doesn't even fit a need for you.

[NCGolfer]

4 hours ago, iacas said:

Dave, you won't care about the music, because you already built a better solution using your whole home - this is one speaker in one room. You have a better solution already, so it doesn't even fit a need for you.

Yeah...exactly.  I don't look at this or the Amazon or Google products for Music solutions.  The assistant-type functions intrigue me but I don't find them necessary as of yet.  I think AI still has a ways to go until it becomes mainstream.  Maybe another 5-10 years.

VR/AR? Another 10 years past that before it, again, is mainstream in our lives beyond VR gear-headsets with localized apps.  VR will have a LOT of data and streaming that data to thousands or millions of people is a significant challenge...in addition to other challenges.

It will happen, I'm just waiting to understand what killer app/enabler drives it in the future.