This reminds me of the parody from 20 years ago of what would happen if Microsoft would re-design the iPod packaging - including the name of the product. It seems that nothing has changed.
I admit that this design is not the most aesthetically pleasing one, but it really contains all the relevant information - which in my opinion cannot be said about the Apple packaging.
I remember how they introduced the unibody Macbooks around 2009. They milled the entire enclosure from a slab of aluminium - they had to buy thousands of mills for mass-producing. Now 3d printing seems to open up even more design possibilities. But with the time to produce a watch enclosure (20+ hours) it would take days to create a Macbook enclosure.
It looks like they are probably doing some kind of machining post processing to give a smooth surface finish. Crazy advanced manufacturing capability on show here. China is ahead of the game here compared to the west, the best comparable machine comes from Trumpf and they simple do not have the manufacturing volume to make the number of machines required.
Just wanted to point out that I started without any cad experience with Freecad this august. I watched/worked through the first third of the mango jelly tutorials on youtube. Since then I designed and 3d printed a lot of projects [1].
It is definitely not a joke. It enabled me to have a very fulfilling hobby.
[1] Examples: a Steam Deck Skadis Dock, all kind of adapters for easy connection of wood parts, magnetic modular mini shelves for everything in the bathroom, a replacement for a broken door handle, a delicate plissé mounting point that is no longer produced, accessories for the microscopes for school …
The title reminds me of the 5th installment of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams:
"Further investigation quickly established what it was that had happened. A meteorite had knocked a large hole in the ship. The ship had not previously detected this because the meteorite had neatly knocked out that part of the ship's processing equipment which was supposed to detect if the ship had been hit by a meteorite."
The book ("Mostly harmless") and especially the beginning of the first chapter is worth reading as it describes how the automated systems of the space ship try to resolve the situation.
From the article: Micro-stressors such as running late [...] represent the unavoidable pain that comes with being human.
Is running late really unavoidable? I think there are proven strategies to avoid it. (My wife and one of my sons on the other hand would agree that it is in fact unavoidable)
Not the best example they could have used because the root cause is ambiguous.
I try to be prepared and on-time, but being late some times is unavoidable if there’s a car accident on the freeway that leaves me locked in a traffic, I get a flat tire, my flight is delayed, or any number of other unpredictable things outside of my control happen. I think that’s what the article is trying to talk about.
Given the full breadth of "unavoidable", yes. As there can always be something completely out of your control that will make you late, despite your best efforts to be prepared.
But, for the majority of the habitually late, it is merely a direct result of their own actions, and so is indeed "avoidable" from that extent.
In practice? Yes it’s unavoidable. Unless you build in enough buffer to account for _every_ possible scenario out of your control, the probability of running late is non-zero.
In the long run, it is unavoidable. No matter how prepared you are, there will be something that will cause you to run late. It's just a matter of how frequently this happens.
What was your reason to use the product (to what end) and what has changed now that you now have no reason to continue to use it? What has Adobe to do with it?
I get that some have fears that Affinity is getting unusable for them in the future so maybe it's good to look for alternatives. But if you are willing to switch to Adobe you can do this when it has gotten unusable.
The promise of Affinity: a professional graphic design package without the hefty monthly subscription cost of Adobe. Now it is "free". How come?! I don't take it! It's a fundamental law of economics that there is no free lunch. I will not be paying for the product with my personal data.
Adobe's products are more professional than Affinity's, and they are de facto the norm for professional graphic design.
The main reason for me to consider non-free software for graphic design is not that Gimp, Inkscape, etc. are not good enough and lacking in features. It's about the social aspect of working and interacting with other peer designers.
"There were absolutely successful products that came before"
I think it's just a question of definition. The Apple pencil was introduced in 2016, since then about 500.000.000 iPads have been sold. If you compare that with the number of Thinkpad yogas or HP elite book 2760ps it's possible to come the conclusion that they are relatively less successful.
But of course they can be "absolutely successful" depending on your definition.
Certainly the ipad + pencil are some of the best digital art hardware ever created. I take issue with people implying that other products are irrelevant.
The total number of ipads sold doesn't seem like a good metric since many people won't use them for digital art. Market share among digital artists seems like a better metric. I found this survey: https://www.celsys.com/en/topic/20230120 which shows that 19% of digital artists use an apple pencil. This is the largest single category, but much smaller than the sum of windows PC categories.
>> A company sets prices based on what will make it the most money.
> No company does this. Prices are set based upon demand.
I read an interview a long long time ago (with Jobs, Schiller or Cook - I don't remember) where they were saying explicitly that Apple charge the amount that get them the most money not marketshare. I remember the times when analysts where obsessed with market share and that apple had to lose because they were to expensive. I don't hear that opinion that often today.
At the time, eroding marketshare was a legitimate concern. It takes money to develop products, and without continuous development they would not remain competitive. Whether they liked it or not, marketshare is a factor in making the most money since you need to spread out the cost of development. Many companies were failing at the time, including those who made high end workstations because of that. Many years ago, I read an article about how the development of Alpha processors could not keep up simply because Intel could invest far more into R&D.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUXnJraKM3k
reply