Marco Arment

But anyway, some of the rumors about this update before it came out were that maybe they might be making things like disabling the speaker more difficult.

I guess we'll find out, as people get these and start taking them apart and stuff, I guess we'll find out if that actually came to pass.

That would actually be a reasonable upgrade to have made.

I just don't know the physical realities of how possible that is.

Yeah, well, and to be clear, like...

in the bed they created for themselves, you can make an argument that, like, we shouldn't break accessory compatibility.

Like, that is a reasonable argument to make, and that does have, you know, a cost to it if you wanted to break it.

But, God, think of how, like, how much better the AirTag would be if it changed its shape to be a little bit more, to be at all accommodating of the physical reality of how this product was ever actually used.

Like, remember when the very, very first iPad, like, the iPad 1,

did not have any accommodations for a case.

And so the case that went around it was this huge, thick, rubber thing that had to go around all sides of the four sides of it just to hold onto it.

And it added a huge amount of bulk.

And the amazing innovation of the iPad 2

In addition to shedding a bunch of the thickness and weight and everything, the iPad 2 added magnets to the side, and they had that wonderful smart cover that gave you protection where most people needed it, the screen, without having to wrap around the entire iPad and bulk the whole thing up if you didn't want it to.

So that was a great example of Apple recognizing the physical realities of how these products need to be used in the real world and designing something to accommodate that in the product itself to make the cases and accessories better.

See also the Apple Pencil when it went from the weird, you know, excited to see you method to the magnets on the side of the iPad that hold it on there.

It's not perfect, but it was so much more accommodating of the realities of using the product that like, okay, we have a pencil.

We need to store it somewhere where we're not using it.

Instead of having to have it be loose in your bag or wherever, let's have a few magnets in the iPad that are designed to accommodate the reality of this and have the pencil stick to it when people use it.

You can say, well, the iPad should just be nothing.