Hey guys it’s Angelika from Max Tech, and happy end of 2020! This disappointing year is finally
coming to a close! And to honor that, I want to talk about the most disappointing Apple
FAILS of the year. Some of these you guys instantly can name, some you may not know,
and others you might not even agree with; and yes, this video does include M1 Macs.
The first fail is the Smart Case. Apple’s Airpods Max was their final product of 2020, and in our
honest opinion, they killed it on the headphones but the case is their worst product of the year.
First off it looks like a bra, which has spawned many memes but more than that usability sucks
since its required to put the headphones into low power mode quickly and it has slits along
the edges and an exposed headband which makes scuffs and scratches a concern.
The next disappointment is Apple still sticking to lightning ports.
We know they will soon be switching over to portless iPhones and USB-C everywhere else,
So why wouldn’t they just switch over now? Especially on the Airpods Max.
If you bought these headphones, you’re gonna be keeping these headphones for a LONG time,
so why would Apple stick to lightning when In a year or two everything will be usb-c or protless,
and you’re gonna be stuck needing to keep a lightning cable just to charge your headphones.
The next failure is a big one. Earlier this year Apple released
new Intel Macbook Airs with much faster graphics and powerful quad core CPUs.
They had both a heatsink and a fan, but they did not connect the fan to the heatsink.
This was absolutely ridiculous and made for very hot and loud running
machines that throttles so much the quad cores weren’t really worth it.
Now, we do have a theory. We think Apple really wanted to make the MacBook Air fanless,
and counted on Intel's 10th gen cpus running cool, but they didn't so
instead of redesigning everything they threw in a fan to draw more air in.
But of course, that wasn’t enough and it led to massive throttling issues
and super annoying fans, even when browsing the web and doing a simple zoom call.
Now the next disappointment involves the M1 Macs. First, the M1 Macbook only natively
supports 1 external display which hasn’t been a limitation with Macs for close to 10 years now.
This alone has caused people to go for Intel-based MacBooks instead,
or wait for future Apple Silicon models.
Second, the new M1 Mac Mini, for some reason, only has 2 thunderbolt ports where previous
Intel Mini came with 4 ports. And guess what? The M1 Mini ACTUALLY SUPPORTS 4 ports. Let me explain.
OWC dug deep into figuring out the reason behind the lack of the extra ports,
and they discovered that Apple is actually using 2 separate thunderbolt controllers
just like the old mini which had 4 ports, and M1 actually supports thunderbolt 4,
but Apple couldn’t call them because they only support 1 display through them.
Apple could’ve technically given the M1 mini 4 thunderbolt ports but
they decided to limit it which is a huge fail since we no longer get 10Gbe as well
meaning Max can’t connect to our server and those two ports are full from his display and our qnap.
Moving onto the next one, Let's talk about the iPhone 12 Pro Max.
When Apple first announced the best cameras only coming on the Pro Max, quite a few people
including Max bought it just for that, but it turned out to be a bit of a disappointment.
The Main camera is only slightly better but the 2.5x
lens looks worse than the 2x on the Pro more often than not.
That's because the aperture went from F2.0 to F2.2 in order to achieve the 2.5x zoom,
and that means that it takes in less light.Because of that,
photos in lower light look worse, with more noise and more motion blur as well.
Portrait mode photos suffer even more since they require more light,
so in many cases, Max and Vadim have been using the main camera way more than before.
It seems like Apple caved into pressure from competing smartphone companies having more zoom,
even though quality wise it didn’t really help them.
Another fail this year is Apple no longer including charging bricks. This was a big
deal when everyone first found out, because the iPhone 12 includes a lighting to USB-C cable, so
if you don’t already have a USB-C power adapter, you need to buy one separately from Apple for $19.
Now this actually a huge fail by itself, since other companies have been either raising their 5G
phone prices which Apple didn’t, and with that they are now following suit and no
longer including charging bricks with their upcoming phones even after making fun of them.
Where it gets worse is Magsafe charging requiring this new brick as well for full speeds, but not
including it. At $39 it's a bummer but not a huge deal, but when spending $130 for the Magsafe Duo,
not getting the $19 brick that's required is a huge fail.
Speaking of charging, Apple’s new Magsafe charger itself is the next disappointment on this list. At
first we were really excited for it because Apple advertised it as having 15W wireless charging
which was long awaited, but that was a massive exaggeration.
In reality, Magsafe only charges at 15W for the first 10%
of battery, after that it slows way down to less than half the speed at about 6W. And even worse,
if you have an older iPhone or android it maxes out at 3W, less than half the speed of
than typical wireless qi chargers that can be bought for $15 which is really disappointing.
On the topic of Magsafe, the new Magsafe wallet was also a fail. When we first heard about it we
were pretty excited. It seemed like a great product for people that only need to carry
around a few cards, and you could even use it in place of a phone case if you wanted to.
But it was a big let down for most because the magnets in the wallet are very weak, so it
constantly slips off when you’re putting it into your pocket for instance, especially if you’re
using it with a Pro Max. And that’s honestly pretty scary always having to risk it falling off
somewhere and losing your cards. The 12 Mini is the only phone we could recommend it for because
it fits perfectly and doesn’t slip off. But Apple could have fixed this by using stronger magnets.
The next fail of the year, is the iconic $1000 stand for the Mac Pro. Now the fail actually
isn’t the pricing of the stand itself, since it’s machined out of a solid block of aluminum,
and you can easily adjust the display with just one finger, but the way Apple announced it.
Just watch for yourself. ** Everyone was shocked by the pricing which is completely understandable,
but that wouldn't have happened if Apple said the display is $6000,
and if you don’t want the stand, then you get $1000 off.
The last failure of the year is the Mac Pro, and not because it's a bad product but because
of how fast it's aged and not in the way most expected like older PCI slots or cpu socket,
but because of Apple’s own M1 processors making the beast seem antiquated.
Now sure a Mac Mini won’t replace the crazy high end configs or expandability of the Mac Pro,
but we’re already seen many people say they are going to wait for an M1 Mac Pro instead,
and Max himself is having trouble selling his Mac Pro at a good discount,
with 2 buyers backing out because of how powerful Apples M1 Macs are.
Once Apple releases the new Apple Silicon Mac Pro, the prices of these will drop dramatically.
If you want to know more about what it will offer check out vadim detailed video right
over there and click above to subscribe to see more videos. Thank you guys for watching
and helping us reach 500K subscribers, happy new year and we’ll see you, in the next one.