MacBook Pro, Apple Watch and Shipping Times – October 2021 in Review

In the month that Facebook changed its name and had absolutely nothing to fix a single one of its issues, Apple finally released what no one asked for. Now you can say, “Hey, Siri, play a playlist while I’m waiting for my new MacBook Pro and UPS is adding weeks to shipping.”

Apple Music Voice is the new, cheaper service that gives you a surprising array of background music playlists, accompanied by a frustrating amount of Siri misunderstanding.

No matter what level of Apple Music you’re paying for, you get these countless new playlists, and officially, they’re only accessible by asking Siri for them.

As great as Siri is overall, Apple Music Voice may not be the ramp Apple hopes to increase its music subscriber base.

The company might actually have better luck with the multi-color HomePod mini. No doubt the HomePod mini is excellent and the new colors are very cool.

HomePod mini is now available in multiple colors

You could never say that Apple is not at home with Mr Hyperbole, but this time it was particularly strange as the HomePod mini colors were followed by the MacBook Pro. And it’s a launch that would at least shake the industry a bit, while surprising us with two new processors.

The new 14-inch MacBook Pro and revised 16-inch MacBook Pro have become instant classics, if you were a tech critic. And will become classics for you in December when most orders arrive.

All new Apple devices are proving a little hard to get a first, almost as if the company is intentionally making a little too few for them to sell. This time around, however, component shortages and global shipping issues meant that the MacBook Pro saw its delivery dates roll back immediately.

Yeah, no, good luck with that track “next week”

Things have actually gotten a lot better for the MacBook Pro, at least if you want one of Apple’s preconfigured options. Base units quickly became faster to get if you ordered online, then even immediately if you bought from an Apple Store.

The same can’t be said for the new Apple Watch Series 7, which finally went on sale in October 2021 after being released as “coming in the fall.” Shipping estimates slipped off the watch pretty much instantly, so quickly you’d think Apple hadn’t actually made some of the different models.

But then, there was more to pre-ordering Apple Watch than swiping shipping. On several occasions, it is because two people commanding at the same time obtained different results.

If you wanted the titanium Apple Watch, for example, you weren’t lucky, unless you weren’t.

Likewise, if you saw a watch strap that you liked and didn’t buy it right away, there was a chance it wasn’t there when you went back to it. Part of this was because bands were selling well, but those same global issues also meant different bands were available in different countries in different quantities.

In addition to different countries, different Apple Stores were integrating the Apple Watch Series 7, but in unpredictable ways. Stores that Appleinsider asked said they got deliveries every day, but never knew what was going to happen, or how many.

At the risk of sounding like an Apple ad, if you want an Apple Watch Series 7 you need to order now

Therefore, the best way to get an Apple Watch for Christmas was to order it online immediately. And keep checking the watch sales page to see if pickup was suddenly available at your local store.

If it did, the best option was to buy it and cancel the pre-order.

Or you could have just bought the AirPods 3 whenever you wanted. Finally launched in October, after what seemed like a year of waiting, the AirPods 3 have been released and don’t appear to be affected by shipping issues.

AirPods 3 are very nice, Apple Watch Series 7 ranges from good looking to great depending on which watch series you are upgrading from. But the real star of the “Unleashed” event, the real star of October, and probably the real star of next year or more, was the MacBook Pro.

It’s just the best MacBook Pro ever.

Intel, however, tried to save us from ourselves. He’s tried to keep us from being as dumb as buying a MacBook Pro that has been doing everything we want for years and has M1 Pro and M1 Max processors drastically changing performance.

No, Intel knows best, and in October it launched another slightly squeaky marketing campaign telling us so. Maybe you should just watch it, as it has proven surprisingly difficult to determine what its message is.

It’s about how, with Windows PCs, you can customize something or whatever. If you thought that was Windows’ main advantage over Apple, you could have bought Intel’s next thing as well.

It is not fair. It wasn’t Intel, no. No. A complete stranger has leaked a PowerPoint presentation showing how Intel’s upcoming Alder Lake processor would be way better than the M1 Pro or M1 Max.

It is actually quite difficult to make a PowerPoint slide. Much more difficult than making 5nm processors with 57 billion transistors.

However, while Intel was basically inventing some reasons for preferring PCs, at the same time its CEO was trying to catch up with Apple. Both Intel and Samsung would like to make the M1 Pro and M1 Max processors for Apple, please.

The 1991 PowerBook 100

Also at the time of the PowerBook launch, Apple had approximately 11,000 employees. (Three years later, on September 30, 1994, there were 11,287 regular employees and 3,305 contract workers and temporary or part-time employees.)

For September 25, 2021, even Apple must estimate its workforce. Its financial records indicate that the company has “approximately 154,000 full-time equivalent employees.”

Unfortunately, for October 2021, you could remove 1 more from this list. As in September 2021, Apple controversially fired an employee, allegedly for obstructing an internal investigation.

Apple Maps program manager Janneke Parrish has been accused of deleting crucial files, including the crucial Pokemon GO app, from her work phone. It was quite a coincidence that Parrish organized the #AppleToo group which surfaced on the accounts of equal pay and staff harassment within Apple.

One example of harassment is too many. #AppleToo received over 500 such accounts in its first days of operation.

It is a good thing and necessary that the issues be raised, even if it taints Apple and makes you wonder what kind of business it is.

Note that during the month of October 2021, even Apple seemed to have changed its mind about what type of business it is.

A report earlier this month concluded that Apple is earning more from gaming than Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft and Activision combined.

Apple must have read this report because at the very end of October, its filing of regulatory results had a potentially significant change. Previously, documents said its competition was Android and Windows, but now it’s Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo.

So Apple says it’s a games company. You can’t dispute this because 70% of the App Store’s revenue comes from games, and there’s also this Apple Arcade service https://appleinsider.com/inside/Apple-Arcade that you always want to check out.

Still, if there’s one flaw Intel should have pointed out about the MacBook Pro, it’s that even newer models are weaker on gaming. We’ll just have to figure it out one way or another.