Apple was in serious financial trouble, and pivoted to manufacturing premium products instead. Apparently this shift in strategy worked, since the company is still here. It was a very different company back then, so looking at the old stuff really doesn’t tell you much about the current state.
And unfortunately, that shift affected all other manufacturers through copying.
A lot if entry-level or mid-range product are now trying to emulate the look and feel of high-end products at best, and outright disappeared at worst and replaced with other “lifestyle” products. My bluetooth keyboard has silver-painted plastic to make it look like it was made out of aluminium, and ironically is more durable than Apple’s own offerings at the fraction of the price.
A lot of entry-level and mid-range home audio stuff was mostly replaced with Bluetooth speakers, or with soundbars. I’ve never heard a Bluetooth speaker sound as good as non-wireless offerings, all of them sounded horribly artificial, with an EQ that couldn’t be turned off, but would be enough for convincing regular people into it “having bass”. Soundbars, while being way above your average TV speakers, cannot really replace discrete speaker setups, but are better at not upsetting housewives with severe cablephobia.
Apple was in serious financial trouble, and pivoted to manufacturing premium products instead. Apparently this shift in strategy worked, since the company is still here. It was a very different company back then, so looking at the old stuff really doesn’t tell you much about the current state.
And unfortunately, that shift affected all other manufacturers through copying.
A lot if entry-level or mid-range product are now trying to emulate the look and feel of high-end products at best, and outright disappeared at worst and replaced with other “lifestyle” products. My bluetooth keyboard has silver-painted plastic to make it look like it was made out of aluminium, and ironically is more durable than Apple’s own offerings at the fraction of the price.
A lot of entry-level and mid-range home audio stuff was mostly replaced with Bluetooth speakers, or with soundbars. I’ve never heard a Bluetooth speaker sound as good as non-wireless offerings, all of them sounded horribly artificial, with an EQ that couldn’t be turned off, but would be enough for convincing regular people into it “having bass”. Soundbars, while being way above your average TV speakers, cannot really replace discrete speaker setups, but are better at not upsetting housewives with severe cablephobia.
Speaking is copying, soon after the iMac became popular, everyone was making iThis and iThat products. That was just hilarious!
$3,000,000,000,000 understatement.