It's posts like these that make me wonder why we put Gruber at such a high pedestal at HN and in the techno blogosphere in general.
On Sean Hollister's lament at the death of the keyboard:
I’d say it’s not strange at all, for all of the reasons
Steve Jobs explained, in detail, on stage in January 2007
when Apple introduced the iPhone. Software keyboards are a
superior general purpose design. But that’s neither here
nor there.
So, because Steve says so, must it be right? Jobs took issue more with the fixed buttons than the keyboards, and just took mainly issue that the keyboard were "there if you ended them or not." Slider keyboards are there only when you need them and offer a significantly upgraded tactile experience over their touch-only counterparts.
The whole “planned obsolescence” thing — started by New
York Times economics columnist Catherine Rampell, but
promulgated by Mims himself after the ball got rolling –
was a pile of horseshit. No company in the computer/mobile
industry makes products that hold their value longer than
Apple’s.
Value isn't just about resale value – it's about how long you can go with having the same product officially supported by a company. Right now, you can install Windows 8 on a top-spec PC from 2005, but the last OS that a 2006 MacBook Pro can run is from 2011. Tough, isn't it? I wouldn't say that the 2005 PC's experience would be better with W8 than it would with 7 or even Linux. Nor am I saying that it would be a good experience for the 2006 Pro to use a 2013 operating system. Still, the fact that Microsoft is going out of their way to support such older systems speaks of their commitment to value.
Today we have mobile phones and tablets running on a 64-bit
desktop-caliber CPU architecture. Four months ago, we did
not. If you’re not excited by the performance of the A7 SoC
or, say, the quality of the iPhone 5S camera, why even
bother writing about technology?
64-bit ARM is a large step, yes. But, to call it a major breakthrough is laughable. It's a natural evolution, the fact that Apple did it first does not make it more significant if Samsung or Qualcomm created their own ARM64 SoC. The iPhone 5s' camera quality is nothing significant either – the Lumia 1020 has a far better camera and is really true innovation – Zeiss optics, an enormous sensor... how is that less significant than a simple sensor upgrade? I didn't see anyone scoffing at the quality of the GS4 either.
No one could argue that iOS 7 wasn’t a major update, so
instead Mims takes to disparaging it. Is iOS 7 an
improvement in every single regard? Certainly not. But on
the whole, it’s quite good, introduces some well-needed
conceptual cohesion, and best of all, it shows that the
company is not afraid to boldly move forward from the
Steve Jobs era.
iOS 7 is certainly... bold, if you could call it that, but what core improvements does it hold that make it so much better than 6? On the surface, it's a pretty UI makeover with an ugly icon makeover, and few user-facing features such as AirDrop and Control Center. Yawn. Shiny new APIs? Nice, but, again, there's little in the way of "bold" innovation as Gruber claims.
It's incredible how somebody with such obvious blindness and bias towards a company he loves is heralded as a neutral reviewer. Gruber makes some important points, such as Android's lack of support time, but he insists that Apple is better at everything that Mims criticizes Apple about than everybody else – which is ridiculous.
Just a disclaimer – I am not an MS lover. Neither do I hate Apple. But I have become more friendly with Microsoft, and less with Apple, just because of my own personal experiences.
I had been a die-hard Apple lover for years. Since I saw my first modern Macintosh in 2006, I've lusted after one. I finally got my wish granted in 2011 when I bought my MacBook Air.
For about a year, I was ecstatic. I bought an iPhone and bought completely into the Apple ecosystem. It was a big mistake, for several reasons. Let's start from the top:
1. Apple now makes no effort to ensure that its users have a good long-term experience with their product. It used to be that once you bought Apple, you could expect a lengthy time of ownership and support, partly because of the machines' ease of access, repair, and maintainability. In the fall of 2012, I became unhappy with my Air's performance. My needs had changed, and running several Windows and Linux VMs quickly bogged down my system with its paltry four gigabytes of RAM. Initially, I thought I wouldn't need any upgrades to this system, because Apple's software optimizations and the SSD would make swapping faster and more seamless (how stupid of me). No problem, I thought. I bought a 15" MacBook Pro and didn't look back.
Initially, when the Retina Display MacBook came around, I saw it as a middle-of-the-road product for Apple – not an Air, not a Pro, more of a premium flagship "halo." I had no idea at the time of initial release that everything including the battery, was soldered/glued to the main board/case and what little was replaceable was all proprietary. When I came upon this information, I was shocked. Didn't think much of it, but my past experiences with the Air made me leery of it, so I stayed away from the rMBP.
Come 2013. The classic unibody Pros are all but dead, and the MacBook Pros have become more proprietary. People will defend this in the name of thinness, but I call bullshit, because the Dell XPS 15 is nearly as thin but contains DIMM slots. It's just a ploy to move more units, and I'm not pleased in the slightest.
2. Apple provides no more useful features in their products that would interest anyone beyond the average consumer. Whaaaaat?! How dare somebody speaketh this heathenous, trite, vile, garbage! BURN HIM!!1
In all seriousness, this is now true. When I look at Mavericks' feature list, it's pretty weak. Multiple display support is something that should have been addressed in a point release. Timer Coalescing is something Windows and Linux have had for ages[1], and compressed memory is something we saw years ago.[2] There has been no new replacement for the aging and outdated HFS+ filesystem. There has been no integration for UNIX protocols like X11, and Applescript has been left out to rot.
Apple is now squarely focused on the iOS segment of their business. I don't mind it for them, but I can't help but miss my pre-2011 Macs.
3. This is probably the most important: they pride aesthetics over true usability. This philosophy of Apple's has always been somewhat prevalent, but it's been irking me more than ever post-2011. Thin aluminum bezels that cut into my hand. Sharp laptop edges that are hazardous to health. Keyboards that feel like you're banging your fingers against a packet of Dentyne. This ties into complaint #1 as well: the fact that form-over-function results in a loss of self-maintainability is no secret either. No Ethernet on a professional machine? I can understand getting rid of it on the ultraportable, but if you want something to be used as a heavy-duty appliance, it needs to have the necessary connectivity options out of box. If you're going to make users depend on an inconvenient dongle, at least include the damn thing inside the package.
This is going to be anecdotal and completely unrelated to what I'm talking about, but I was in Atlanta last weekend and decided to check out the Apple and Microsoft stores. The Apple store left me with a cold, decoherent vibe. Nothing seemed interesting. iOS 7 was underwhelming, and the iPads were just iPads. They didn't have anything new. Everything was whitewashed and covered in super-thin Myriad. Shades of grey prevailed throughout, and the staff, while helpful, didn't seem to have much interest in the user so much as heralding the merits of the product. Enter the MS store. Everything felt... so new. Inviting. There was a real sense of warmth in the store. I hadn't tried a Surface before, so I picked it up and started using it. Boy, was I blown away – the entire experience was incredibly different from what I had used. I had dismissed touch screens with a desktop OS as simply gimmickry, but the Surface integrated the two exceptionally well, especially with the Type Cover adding significant functionality. I perused through the other paraphernalia and I really felt a sense of innovation and creation that I never did in the Apple store. Unlike the iPad, the Surface was productive! It ran a real operating system! It came with a ton of memory and could be used as a full replacement for a laptop! The ultrabooks I saw had neat form factors, and although I couldn't find myself using the other modes much, the addition of touch screens made Windows 8.1 make a whole lot more sense. I came through to the Windows Phones, and the live tile approach to a home screen is just perfect: it affords a significant degree of customizability while retaining user interface consistency across devices, something neither iOS nor Android have managed to nail.
I sold my 4s and bought a Lumia, and while I'm typing this on that Air I talked about earlier, I can't see myself using it for much longer, and neither do I my MacBook Pro. Because when it dies in another several years...
64-bit ARM is a large step, yes. But, to call it a major breakthrough is laughable. It's a natural evolution, the fact that Apple did it first does not make it more significant if Samsung or Qualcomm created their own ARM64 SoC. The iPhone 5s' camera quality is nothing significant either – the Lumia 1020 has a far better camera and is really true innovation – Zeiss optics, an enormous sensor... how is that less significant than a simple sensor upgrade? I didn't see anyone scoffing at the quality of the GS4 either.
I see Apple's A7 as a breakthrough. They went from having nothing to having the best mobile SoC design and implementation in the industry in three years.
I really don't get your statement about the Lumia 1020. Who is arguing that it is "less significant" than the sensor upgrade in the 5S? Why can't people respect both technologies? You come across as incredibly defensive when no one is attacking your favourite product or making any claims like the ones you are defending against.
People will defend this in the name of thinness, but I call bullshit, because the Dell XPS 15 is nearly as thin but contains DIMM slots. It's just a ploy to move more units, and I'm not pleased in the slightest.
It's not a "ploy". It is very obviously the computer that Apple wants to make. They tend to build for themselves, not for their customers (which seems to make a lot of people angry). I have no idea how you can begin to think this is a ploy to "move more units." If Apple were into money-making ploys they would have put stickers all over their laptops, bundled them with bloatware and other anti-consumer additions.
In all seriousness, this is now true. When I look at Mavericks' feature list, it's pretty weak. Multiple display support is something that should have been addressed in a point release. Timer Coalescing is something Windows and Linux have had for ages[1], and compressed memory is something we saw years ago.[2] There has been no new replacement for the aging and outdated HFS+ filesystem. There has been no integration for UNIX protocols like X11, and Applescript has been left out to rot.
So it's a problem when Apple adds a software feature that is already present in another operating system? What a weird thing to write. It's good that they improved OS X and provided it as a free update. You are trying to spin this as a negative for some reason.
There are genuine improvements in Mavericks, the energy usage improvements alone have extended the time I can use my laptop without power by a significant amount. The scroll view content area caching is also very nice in practice, and the new frameworks like SpriteKit have been great fun to play with.
On a side note, multiple display support was never an issue under OS X and I fail to understand how Mavericks "fixed" anything in this regard — multiple displays have always worked better under OS X than under Windows.
No Ethernet on a professional machine? I can understand getting rid of it on the ultraportable, but if you want something to be used as a heavy-duty appliance, it needs to have the necessary connectivity options out of box.
I use my retina MBP professionally every single day and have not once needed ethernet. It is simply not an issue for me, if it is an issue for you then that is why the adapter is available.
iOS 7 is certainly... bold, if you could call it that, but what core improvements does it hold that make it so much better than 6? On the surface, it's a pretty UI makeover with an ugly icon makeover, and few user-facing features such as AirDrop and Control Center. Yawn. Shiny new APIs? Nice, but, again, there's little in the way of "bold" innovation as Gruber claims.
Gruber didn't claim it was "bold innovation," he claimed it was a "bold move," and it's hard to argue with that. It was a move that caused a lot of friction and controversy because many people did not like the change. This is a suitably bold move, especially relative to past updates.
You simply write a list of some of the changes and then "Yawn" at the end. It's easy to be dismissive and to play down the improvements, but the improvements were on par with most other major software releases. The frameworks have always been the best part of iOS updates, and that continues to be the case with iOS 7.
The Apple store left me with a cold, decoherent vibe. Nothing seemed interesting. iOS 7 was underwhelming, and the iPads were just iPads. They didn't have anything new. Everything was whitewashed and covered in super-thin Myriad. Shades of grey prevailed throughout, and the staff, while helpful, didn't seem to have much interest in the user so much as heralding the merits of the product. Enter the MS store. Everything felt... so new. Inviting.
It sounds like you're simply bored with the Apple aesthetic and want to try something new. That's great, you should do that.
If Apple were into money-making ploys they would have put stickers all over their laptops, bundled them with bloatware and other anti-consumer additions.
Huh? Most bloatware / crapware seems to be added by the manufacturers as a way to differentiate from each other. It usually has the effect of lowering the overall experience, but it doesn´t cost anything and it´s hardly anti-consumer.
And stickers? Makes it look a bit cheaper, but pull them off. It serves as a way of seeing which chipsets the computer comes with when siting on a store shelf. Hardly anti-consumer or money making ploy. q
My understanding of some bloatware is that manufacturers are paid to ship certain product with their computers. The same way the "Ask Jeeves" toolbar might pay to be bundled with the Adobe Flash installer. For example, trial-versions of Anti-Virus software are likely paid for by the software developer.
Same thing with the stickers, for example AMD runs a "sticker program" where they pay manufacturers to include their marketing stickers on new laptops [1]. Back in 2010 AMD changed this program so that they paid manufacturers regardless of whether they wanted to use the stickers (a good move).
Edit: Intel also runs an "Intel Inside" sticker program. I found many articles implying that they pay manufacturers to feature their stickers. The Intel Inside partner program website also suggests this [2]
The Intel Inside Program is a cutting-edge ingredient branding program that works hand-in-hand with your own branding efforts. The Intel Inside Program's key objectives are to:
Reimburse you for advertisements that feature qualified products and Intel Inside Logos.
So yes, these are short term money making ploys that manufacturers have commonly engaged in.
I don't buy it. None of your gripes are problems that real users of Apple products would claim to be an actual problem. Your submission history seems to back this up.
Your list of complaints reads like something you've read about on the internet and does not at all seem like something an actual customer would list as a problem.
I had no idea at the time of initial release that everything including the battery, was soldered/glued to the main board/case and what little was replaceable was all proprietary. When I came upon this information, I was shocked.
I'm puzzled as to why you think I'm trolling. I have over 3000 karma on HN, while you have... a tenth of that?
I'm not interested in a flame war. http://i.imgur.com/H3py0lR.jpg Besides, it is true – until the customary iFixit teardown, I was highly anticipating the release of the rMBP.
Still, the fact that Microsoft is going out of their way to support such older systems speaks of their commitment to value.
Here's another explanation: MS has a very, very large enterprise customer base. Maybe they're just keeping them happy, so that these customers redirect their capex to Windows 8 and Office 201X?
Here's a counterpoint: if MS really cared about value, would their phones receive all Windows Phone updates? Because right now they don't. The choice is up to the carrier.
Anyway, I can't find your thesis in #1. You bought a unibody MBP but the existence of rMBPs indicate that Apple doesn't care about your laptop anymore? There are many anecdotes that contradict your point, you can find them at /r/apple on Reddit.
#2 is subjective. I find Windows 8 to be a significant step backwards for MS in terms of usability. YMMV.
#3 is...yeah. It's what you get with Apple. They're bad at ergonomics. I won't defend this; the Magic Mouse is a usability disaster. Then again Win8 isn't exactly a pinnacle of usability.
Comments
It's posts like these that make me wonder why we put Gruber at such a high pedestal at HN and in the techno blogosphere in general.
On Sean Hollister's lament at the death of the keyboard:
So, because Steve says so, must it be right? Jobs took issue more with the fixed buttons than the keyboards, and just took mainly issue that the keyboard were "there if you ended them or not." Slider keyboards are there only when you need them and offer a significantly upgraded tactile experience over their touch-only counterparts. Value isn't just about resale value – it's about how long you can go with having the same product officially supported by a company. Right now, you can install Windows 8 on a top-spec PC from 2005, but the last OS that a 2006 MacBook Pro can run is from 2011. Tough, isn't it? I wouldn't say that the 2005 PC's experience would be better with W8 than it would with 7 or even Linux. Nor am I saying that it would be a good experience for the 2006 Pro to use a 2013 operating system. Still, the fact that Microsoft is going out of their way to support such older systems speaks of their commitment to value. 64-bit ARM is a large step, yes. But, to call it a major breakthrough is laughable. It's a natural evolution, the fact that Apple did it first does not make it more significant if Samsung or Qualcomm created their own ARM64 SoC. The iPhone 5s' camera quality is nothing significant either – the Lumia 1020 has a far better camera and is really true innovation – Zeiss optics, an enormous sensor... how is that less significant than a simple sensor upgrade? I didn't see anyone scoffing at the quality of the GS4 either. iOS 7 is certainly... bold, if you could call it that, but what core improvements does it hold that make it so much better than 6? On the surface, it's a pretty UI makeover with an ugly icon makeover, and few user-facing features such as AirDrop and Control Center. Yawn. Shiny new APIs? Nice, but, again, there's little in the way of "bold" innovation as Gruber claims.It's incredible how somebody with such obvious blindness and bias towards a company he loves is heralded as a neutral reviewer. Gruber makes some important points, such as Android's lack of support time, but he insists that Apple is better at everything that Mims criticizes Apple about than everybody else – which is ridiculous.
Just a disclaimer – I am not an MS lover. Neither do I hate Apple. But I have become more friendly with Microsoft, and less with Apple, just because of my own personal experiences.
I had been a die-hard Apple lover for years. Since I saw my first modern Macintosh in 2006, I've lusted after one. I finally got my wish granted in 2011 when I bought my MacBook Air.
For about a year, I was ecstatic. I bought an iPhone and bought completely into the Apple ecosystem. It was a big mistake, for several reasons. Let's start from the top:
1. Apple now makes no effort to ensure that its users have a good long-term experience with their product. It used to be that once you bought Apple, you could expect a lengthy time of ownership and support, partly because of the machines' ease of access, repair, and maintainability. In the fall of 2012, I became unhappy with my Air's performance. My needs had changed, and running several Windows and Linux VMs quickly bogged down my system with its paltry four gigabytes of RAM. Initially, I thought I wouldn't need any upgrades to this system, because Apple's software optimizations and the SSD would make swapping faster and more seamless (how stupid of me). No problem, I thought. I bought a 15" MacBook Pro and didn't look back.
Initially, when the Retina Display MacBook came around, I saw it as a middle-of-the-road product for Apple – not an Air, not a Pro, more of a premium flagship "halo." I had no idea at the time of initial release that everything including the battery, was soldered/glued to the main board/case and what little was replaceable was all proprietary. When I came upon this information, I was shocked. Didn't think much of it, but my past experiences with the Air made me leery of it, so I stayed away from the rMBP.
Come 2013. The classic unibody Pros are all but dead, and the MacBook Pros have become more proprietary. People will defend this in the name of thinness, but I call bullshit, because the Dell XPS 15 is nearly as thin but contains DIMM slots. It's just a ploy to move more units, and I'm not pleased in the slightest.
2. Apple provides no more useful features in their products that would interest anyone beyond the average consumer. Whaaaaat?! How dare somebody speaketh this heathenous, trite, vile, garbage! BURN HIM!!1
In all seriousness, this is now true. When I look at Mavericks' feature list, it's pretty weak. Multiple display support is something that should have been addressed in a point release. Timer Coalescing is something Windows and Linux have had for ages[1], and compressed memory is something we saw years ago.[2] There has been no new replacement for the aging and outdated HFS+ filesystem. There has been no integration for UNIX protocols like X11, and Applescript has been left out to rot.
Apple is now squarely focused on the iOS segment of their business. I don't mind it for them, but I can't help but miss my pre-2011 Macs.
3. This is probably the most important: they pride aesthetics over true usability. This philosophy of Apple's has always been somewhat prevalent, but it's been irking me more than ever post-2011. Thin aluminum bezels that cut into my hand. Sharp laptop edges that are hazardous to health. Keyboards that feel like you're banging your fingers against a packet of Dentyne. This ties into complaint #1 as well: the fact that form-over-function results in a loss of self-maintainability is no secret either. No Ethernet on a professional machine? I can understand getting rid of it on the ultraportable, but if you want something to be used as a heavy-duty appliance, it needs to have the necessary connectivity options out of box. If you're going to make users depend on an inconvenient dongle, at least include the damn thing inside the package.
This is going to be anecdotal and completely unrelated to what I'm talking about, but I was in Atlanta last weekend and decided to check out the Apple and Microsoft stores. The Apple store left me with a cold, decoherent vibe. Nothing seemed interesting. iOS 7 was underwhelming, and the iPads were just iPads. They didn't have anything new. Everything was whitewashed and covered in super-thin Myriad. Shades of grey prevailed throughout, and the staff, while helpful, didn't seem to have much interest in the user so much as heralding the merits of the product. Enter the MS store. Everything felt... so new. Inviting. There was a real sense of warmth in the store. I hadn't tried a Surface before, so I picked it up and started using it. Boy, was I blown away – the entire experience was incredibly different from what I had used. I had dismissed touch screens with a desktop OS as simply gimmickry, but the Surface integrated the two exceptionally well, especially with the Type Cover adding significant functionality. I perused through the other paraphernalia and I really felt a sense of innovation and creation that I never did in the Apple store. Unlike the iPad, the Surface was productive! It ran a real operating system! It came with a ton of memory and could be used as a full replacement for a laptop! The ultrabooks I saw had neat form factors, and although I couldn't find myself using the other modes much, the addition of touch screens made Windows 8.1 make a whole lot more sense. I came through to the Windows Phones, and the live tile approach to a home screen is just perfect: it affords a significant degree of customizability while retaining user interface consistency across devices, something neither iOS nor Android have managed to nail.
I sold my 4s and bought a Lumia, and while I'm typing this on that Air I talked about earlier, I can't see myself using it for much longer, and neither do I my MacBook Pro. Because when it dies in another several years...
...I won't be buying a new one.
–––––––––––––––––––––
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timer_coalescing
[2] https://code.google.com/p/compcache/w/list
I see Apple's A7 as a breakthrough. They went from having nothing to having the best mobile SoC design and implementation in the industry in three years.
I really don't get your statement about the Lumia 1020. Who is arguing that it is "less significant" than the sensor upgrade in the 5S? Why can't people respect both technologies? You come across as incredibly defensive when no one is attacking your favourite product or making any claims like the ones you are defending against.
It's not a "ploy". It is very obviously the computer that Apple wants to make. They tend to build for themselves, not for their customers (which seems to make a lot of people angry). I have no idea how you can begin to think this is a ploy to "move more units." If Apple were into money-making ploys they would have put stickers all over their laptops, bundled them with bloatware and other anti-consumer additions.
So it's a problem when Apple adds a software feature that is already present in another operating system? What a weird thing to write. It's good that they improved OS X and provided it as a free update. You are trying to spin this as a negative for some reason.
There are genuine improvements in Mavericks, the energy usage improvements alone have extended the time I can use my laptop without power by a significant amount. The scroll view content area caching is also very nice in practice, and the new frameworks like SpriteKit have been great fun to play with.
On a side note, multiple display support was never an issue under OS X and I fail to understand how Mavericks "fixed" anything in this regard — multiple displays have always worked better under OS X than under Windows.
I use my retina MBP professionally every single day and have not once needed ethernet. It is simply not an issue for me, if it is an issue for you then that is why the adapter is available.
Gruber didn't claim it was "bold innovation," he claimed it was a "bold move," and it's hard to argue with that. It was a move that caused a lot of friction and controversy because many people did not like the change. This is a suitably bold move, especially relative to past updates.
You simply write a list of some of the changes and then "Yawn" at the end. It's easy to be dismissive and to play down the improvements, but the improvements were on par with most other major software releases. The frameworks have always been the best part of iOS updates, and that continues to be the case with iOS 7.
It sounds like you're simply bored with the Apple aesthetic and want to try something new. That's great, you should do that.
Huh? Most bloatware / crapware seems to be added by the manufacturers as a way to differentiate from each other. It usually has the effect of lowering the overall experience, but it doesn´t cost anything and it´s hardly anti-consumer.
And stickers? Makes it look a bit cheaper, but pull them off. It serves as a way of seeing which chipsets the computer comes with when siting on a store shelf. Hardly anti-consumer or money making ploy. q
My understanding of some bloatware is that manufacturers are paid to ship certain product with their computers. The same way the "Ask Jeeves" toolbar might pay to be bundled with the Adobe Flash installer. For example, trial-versions of Anti-Virus software are likely paid for by the software developer.
Same thing with the stickers, for example AMD runs a "sticker program" where they pay manufacturers to include their marketing stickers on new laptops [1]. Back in 2010 AMD changed this program so that they paid manufacturers regardless of whether they wanted to use the stickers (a good move).
Edit: Intel also runs an "Intel Inside" sticker program. I found many articles implying that they pay manufacturers to feature their stickers. The Intel Inside partner program website also suggests this [2]
So yes, these are short term money making ploys that manufacturers have commonly engaged in.
[1]: http://blog.chron.com/techblog/2010/09/notebook-stickers-phy...
[2]: https://intelinside.intel.com/content/dam/iip/us/en/shared/m...
I don't buy it. None of your gripes are problems that real users of Apple products would claim to be an actual problem. Your submission history seems to back this up.
Key words: "had been"
Merriam-Webster:
been |bin| past participle of be.
Your list of complaints reads like something you've read about on the internet and does not at all seem like something an actual customer would list as a problem.
Lmao. Good troll.
I'm puzzled as to why you think I'm trolling. I have over 3000 karma on HN, while you have... a tenth of that?
I'm not interested in a flame war. http://i.imgur.com/H3py0lR.jpg Besides, it is true – until the customary iFixit teardown, I was highly anticipating the release of the rMBP.
Still, the fact that Microsoft is going out of their way to support such older systems speaks of their commitment to value.
Here's another explanation: MS has a very, very large enterprise customer base. Maybe they're just keeping them happy, so that these customers redirect their capex to Windows 8 and Office 201X?
Here's a counterpoint: if MS really cared about value, would their phones receive all Windows Phone updates? Because right now they don't. The choice is up to the carrier.
Anyway, I can't find your thesis in #1. You bought a unibody MBP but the existence of rMBPs indicate that Apple doesn't care about your laptop anymore? There are many anecdotes that contradict your point, you can find them at /r/apple on Reddit.
#2 is subjective. I find Windows 8 to be a significant step backwards for MS in terms of usability. YMMV.
#3 is...yeah. It's what you get with Apple. They're bad at ergonomics. I won't defend this; the Magic Mouse is a usability disaster. Then again Win8 isn't exactly a pinnacle of usability.