Maybe they really really don't want professionals to buy the 1st gen M1 Macs, because we have the toughest use cases and will shit on it the hardest if something goes wrong. Lack of 32GB seems like a pretty clear signal.
The Mac has turned into a very nice luxury-consumer business. It is a status signal even if its just used to check email and watch YouTube. It's a pretty smart idea to let these users be the gen 1 guinea pigs.
As Apple makes their chips faster and more efficient and as phone batteries get bigger and bigger, app developers rise to meet the challenge by producing increasingly sloppy software that can afford to be incredibly wasteful because raw speed of the hardware is masking its cracks.
Try to run Instagram today on an iPhone 6, you won't be able to even scroll a feed of static images smoothly without hitching. Imagine what it is doing to the battery.
I am operating on an underlying principle that others may not share, but this could help elucidate why I disagree with many fellow liberals on this front:
I'm trying to solve for how decision making power is allocated without making assumptions about which side is right or wrong. In other words, the argument that "The company must do XYZ because this political cause is simply on the RIGHT side of history!" is not acceptable to me, even though I often personally agree that the cause really _is_ right.
I certainly agree that the mission of a company can (and preferably) be more than just for profit. However, "to be political" is still a pretty wide range of possible missions. Who calls the shots about what you're going to be political about, and which side you take? And when a group of employees disagree with the shots being called, what kinds of reactions are appropriate or not?
I'll take a shot:
- I think compelled activism is inappropriate. You know, the "silence is violence" stuff.
- I think expecting to have power to set a company's political agenda and expressing anger when you don't get your way is inappropriate. That power belongs to the board. Employment and stock-options are not "fractions of board seats".
When a group of employees demand that their employers engage in political activism, what they are asking for is the ability to commandeer the resources of the company, whether it be its reputation, money, or labor to advance their political objective. They want to amplify their impact beyond what they can accomplish with their personal resources. I wonder how these same people feel about the political contributions of companies from the opposing end of the spectrum. Would they say "Get corporate power out of politics!"?
I would love this. I have the touch bar set to show my dock at all times which just clicks for me. I'd love to still have function keys for IDE shortcuts in this configuration.
"We know what's best for the user" is assuming you are even designing for the user in the first place.
The user is often not the customer, and design changes are ultimately here to serve the company, not the user:
- How can we increase number of ads users will tolerate?
- How do we increase the amount of content users share?
- How do we increase the number of likes/hearts they send?
I wouldn't be surprised if the lionshare of user backlash comes from decisions that weren't meant to serve the user in the first place.
What a mess…