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helpinghanikan · 4 years

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More then a Tool

Charles Xavier x (Daughter) Reader

Sum: There will always be that something which breaks the camel’s back. Sometimes, this is more obvious then others.

an: This was a request for A Charles Xavier with a child reader. I tried to keep with the request but my finger slipped and now the reader is mutated, an empath and it’s full of angst. I am not sorry.

Your childhood memory could be whittled down to a series of chairs. Plastic chairs that stick to your bare legs in the summer. Metal seats that scrape and drag across the tile. Sometimes you’d get nice, soft chairs, or a couch to hang out on. Those typically turned into naps.

It was during one of these memories in a spinning chair that you started to feel. The secretary you’ve been plopped next took one glance and went back to her computer. Her annoyance was coming off from her like a horrible smell. Every click on the keyboard was like a gunshot right to your temple. Just made worse by watching her; click click click she’s banging into your head. Something had to be said…

“There’s magazines by the couch, why don’t you go read them?” She suddenly orders with a quick spin of her chair.

The verbal slap took you from the chair and onto the couch. Your feet hit the ground maybe twice, practically jumping onto the couch. This sending another hit of annoyance right to your head; eyes closing against it until the secretary looked away.

Those magazines did little to help with all the new feelings. Being further away from her helped with annoyance but now frustration was rearing its ugly head. Frustration and a lie bursting through your system with colors that’d make a sunset jealous. No amount of staring at articles and pictures of people way richer than you could get rid the emotions.

With both hands on either side of your head it was only a matter of seconds before Mama Moira appears kneeling in front of you. Snapping at the secretary to reschedule everything and that they are not done just yet.

“I’m sorry,” you had muttered in the car.

“It’s okay, they weren’t going to give me anything. Lawsuit threats will do that.” She says, a gentle hand rubbing your back.

“They’re threatening you?” You ask.

“It’s more like an,” she pauses to think how to best explain. Her hand pausing in it’s movements as she things. “it’s an aggressive suggestion. Nothing to worry about, Sweetie.”

“I think they were lying, though.” This idea was coming out of your mouth before you stop it. The soft hand of comfort has that power. “They’re lying about law suiting you.”

“You try calling that bluff with a lawyer next to you,” She says, pulling her hand away. “Oh, Sweetie, could you hear through the door? I’m so sorry.”

“No, I mean-I couldn’t hear. I just know they’re lying, mom.”

“How could know that?”

“I just do, okay.”

Moira was one of those rare mothers who wasn’t going to dig and dig for info you couldn’t give. Instead she focused on the road ahead of her, both physically and metaphorically. Mentally listing off all the people she could pay or guilt trip into watching you.

Whether you looked like her or not Moira was your mother, you just happened to be the question baby. Someone she loved more than anything but also an ironic reminder of her memory loss. In the interest of saving time she didn’t dwell on it too long, now just living with the new nickname of ‘Mama Moira.’

Moira never outright said what happened after following your advice. Only that your babysitter lasted for a single night, then you were back in a chair. This time sitting in the room just a few feet behind your mother. Staring at magazines while trying to feel something you didn’t really understand.

0-0-0

The closest Charles got to looking through a hospital window at his child was cerebro. The first was just to check up: How were you doing? Healthy? Happy? Back then you were just a baby staring at space. Sometimes into Moira’s face who would either coo or talk to you like a colleague. Asking for a baby’s opinion on whether there were any typos in her report.

He never really learned whether she did fix those typos. Over the years you became just another one of his children. A blue bundle of stars in cerebro that grew every time he searched for the others. Teachers and students came and became part of the school as your chairs were moved inside the meetings.

Once or twice he sat in on those meetings with you. Setting just on the edge of your mind without intruding on any secrets. Just enough to taste your empathy, and see your legs swinging while on sitting on those chairs. The unexpected consequence of his check ins came from the emotions connected to his brain.

A warmer, cool blue of pride that’s felt in your head without seeing who it was coming from. Typically, these stupid emotions came off strongest from the person closest to you. The closest was a woman whispering into another woman’s ear. She was like you, someone sitting just behind the action. Briefly mentioned as the translator, she wrote and spoke quietly.

Focusing solely on her and the blue faded in exchange for a mix of orange from fear and green from focus. Green was so overbearing only the slightest hint of anything else showed, and only when she was listening and writing. No hint of blue to be found.

Focusing on the others and the color could be found there sometimes. But those gave off a darker color blue then the cooler one. These were cocky, proud of themselves. They’d bleed into red when Mama Moira a certain thing, and then into fear. Sometimes into a silver lie, and those were the ones you had to remember. The rest you just had to try your best to not completely forget.

The cool blue color was easy to forget about over the years. It was just one of a rainbow of colors you were forced to learn about through your short life. From chair to chair they ranged and changed; little books filled with charts that became meaningless as more colors were added.

More chairs, more colors. One even being a helicopter, where you were supposed to be ease dropping on the emotions of your guide. Instead you were distracted by the many controls and buttons that somehow made sense to the woman behind the controls.

Although that woman was beaming a blue pride (probably from having a curious child audience) the cool blue wasn’t seen anywhere. By that point you had all but forgot about it. The curiosity only lasted as long as that first meeting had.

It was completely opposite on Charles’s end. It’s harder to forget someone when you actually know who they are. He was a father by nature; a figure to every student who has ever come into the school. They were just as much his children as you were. Seeing a bit of you, of your potential, in every one of them.

That bit hope lasted through finally being able to use his status to teach. It lasted through the adjustment to life in the chair and the care of students. It stretched into the draft when the first of the teachers began to meekly come into his office with sincere apologies. Men being called in and woman called home to help with the absents. He saw you in them too, less happily this time.

Hope began to starve after they were gone. When somewhere in the background Hank McCoy fiddles with a vial but doesn’t offer it just yet. When the school’s doors closed, and cerebro’s opened. Not searching for the children he has already lost, but the one he never forgot.

0-0-0

It’s hard to say what exactly broke the camel’s back. You’ve gotten used to keeping your sensitivity a secret. Mama Moira was open about there being others like you out there. She was open that they could be dangerous, and that you just weren’t ready yet.

Actually, it’s not that hard to find the trigger. Someone left out the wrong file and there it was: Charles Xavier’s school for gifted youngsters. Just a name and a few mentions of ‘mutant’ underlined. The poor, dumb, assistant who left it out ripping it from your hands before anything else could be read. Even with that little amount of information things started to bend.

They completely broke when Mama Moira went away. A mission where her little lie detector would be in too much danger. Instead letting one of the younger researchers play babysitter. A nice woman who saw nothing wrong with answering the questions of the curious office child. Not noticing that among the questions of what books you’re allowed there was another questions about files.

Maybe with the files you should have grabbed something about helicopters.

That nice pilot woman had become one of your favorite sitters. Letting you sit next to her during rides, showing the pedals and how to work the joystick.

The lift off was the hard part. This was the mantra working through your head over and over while trying to remember the steps. Hold the joystick, play with the peddles. Oh, snap, was it actually lifting off the ground?

Riding a helicopters as it leaves the ground is one thing. Leaving the ground, knowing that whether you fly, or crash was all up to you, was an entirely different feeling. One that turned your mantra to ‘oh no, oh no, oh no’.

“Lower the throttle, get back on the ground,” orange yellow of fear suddenly slapped the sense from you. It was coming from a voice that certainly wasn’t there a few seconds ago. “It’s okay, I’m a friend. Just go slow.”

Although he is in your peripheral vision it’s impressive that you didn’t whip around to look. Your own shock and his calmed voice making landing the only thing important. Although his voice is right next to your ear there is no change in the air at his presence. Half expecting a guiding hand to be placed on your shoulder while trying to land.

The helicopter is heavy when landing. Worse then when you lifted off the ground. An equally heavy thunk announced you’re landing safely. As safely as can be given the situation.

“Why would you try this?” The man asks.

Completely turning in the pilot’s chair you can finally look at the man. White male, average height. Long brown hair and serious scruff this side of a beard. Everything about him can be described down into a file. A file that Mama Moira has more then once left out in kid’s reach.

“Are you Professor Charles Xavier?” You ask.

“You’re not answering my question.”

“And you’re not answering mine,”

He takes a second to swallow. “Yes, I’m Charles Xavier.”

“Professor Charles-?”

“Just-I’m just Charles Xavier.” He corrects before you’re able to finish. Yellow of annoyance is mixing with the orange of fear. More yellow then orange is coming out. “Why would you try something like this? Why are you putting yourself in danger?”

Being scolded like this was keeping you in, yet another, chair.

“I’m different. Like you, like the others kinda different. She says I can’t talk about it to anyone.” Charles did not need to be a mind reader to know you were referring to Moira. “I don’t belong here; I belong with you guys.”

“Why a helicopter? Why not a car?” He asks.

“I don’t know how to drive.”

It’s like watching a computer boot up. He starts by pressing his lips together and then laughing softly. Putting his head down into his hands, his body shaking a little as he softly. If it weren’t for the blue you’ve only seen a handful of times you’d assume he was crying.

It takes a second to collect himself enough to speak again. “You can’t-you can’t fly a helicopter, either.” He sputters out, laughing back into his hands.

“It was flying, I was flying it.” You didn’t really know this man, not really. His emotions were familiar, and his face was in the file. But now he was just some guy laughing at you.

“Yes, you’re right. I’m sorry,” He says. Coughing away one last laugh. “I just can’t understand your thought process about leaving.”

At some point you were going to have to explain yourself to somebody. In the event that you were caught before take off you’d stay quiet until Mama Moira came back. If you had been injured by hitting the wrong button and crashed the helicopter, you’d play the part of the poor curious child. Now, if the plan had completely succeeded and you made it to the mansion? That was a plan you had yet to make. Probably try and wing it.

Now that you were expected to explain everything in a manner of seconds everything was coming up blank. You have already the gist out, but where were the details?

“I’ve seen what you’ve already done for your mother; how you’ve helped her and this entire base. You don’t need to leave.” He says when you don’t respond.

“I don’t belong here,” It’s a reiteration of your most important point.

He’s two different shades of blue listening to you. The first blue of pride that was slapped back into the forefront of your memory and a second one. The second was pale, almost clear, a kind of sadness that you wouldn’t be able to understand enough to describe until you’re older. This blue hurt to pay too much attention to, tears peaking at your eyes from being too close. It’s better to stay by the first blue.

This color was a representation of an A plus report card brought home after nights at the kitchen table. It was what made the slight curve in his mouth nearing towards a smile. It reflected back onto you, bringing a smile that Charles saw and made his own expression drop.

“You don’t belong at the school, either. There’s no one there, it’s closed.” He confesses.

“What?” You asked.

“Everything is gone. There’s no one in the mansion anymore, it’s abandoned. Everyone has left.” He says this as the pale blue of sadness takes over the pride.

Your plan to land and become part of the mansion took an odd turn after hearing this. Instead thinking about what might have happened if your plan had completed. Landing at the mansion just to find no one there. It would have been heartbreaking to find the mansion without anyone there. How long would you have stayed before giving up?

When you don’t say anything he walks forward, talking calmly. “Your mother is a good woman. The best thing for you is to stay here. There is nothing for you with me.”

“Why are you here then?” You say this as a demand instead of a plea. Standing up to stare him in the eyes.

The pale blue has officially overtaken the pride. Tears on both your eyes are enough to end the conversation. The man who has suddenly appeared behind you disappears just as quickly. Leaving you alone as the base finally notices that a children just tried to steal a helicopter.

#reader insert #Dad!Charles Xavier #Charles Xavier #daughter reader #mutant reader #requested #empath reader #How do you write children?#What is a child?#Accidental angst

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roonil-wazlib-at-221b · 4 years

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Inferno: Part 5 (final)

Pairing: Peter Parker x Reader

Your father drops what he’s holding when you literally rip the front door of the compound off its hinges and toss it a few feet away. “Were you ever going to tell me?” you yell, stomping into the room. You know your face is too hot and so are your hands but you can’t be bothered.

To his credit, Tony doesn’t pretend to not know what you’re talking about. He sighs and crosses his arms. “Y/N, calm down—”

“Don’t tell me to calm down!” you bellow, your eyes stinging with anger. “Don’t you dare tell me to calm down!”

“I was worried about you—”

“So you sent the one person I hate most to spy on me? To completely invade my privacy? The one person I knew I could trust—”

“Okay,” Tony admits, “so it wasn’t the best idea. And I realized that soon after. But Y/N, what was I supposed to tell you? How was I supposed to tell you?”

“Um, by telling me?” You scoff angrily. “Instead of me going through my former best friend’s texts and figuring it out for myself?”

“Wait,” Tony interrupts. “Peter didn’t tell you himself?”

“Why the hell would he? He’s too busy making fun of me with you!”

“No, Y/N, you don’t understand—” Tony shakes his head. “Peter was supposed to tell you in person. I told him to. We figured you’d at least take it better, but no wonder you’re so upset—”

“It wouldn’t matter if he told me in person, in text, or over a goddamn email!” you yell. “You still spied on me—”

“Can we please talk about this?” he pleads. “Y/N, you’re traumatized. You were imprisoned for a crime you didn’t commit. You wouldn’t talk to me and I knew that you and Peter would get along, but after the first meeting it was obvious he needed to wear the mask!”

“I don’t want to talk to you about anything,” you say, disgusted, shaking your head. “I don’t want your excuses. What you did sucked, okay?”

“I know, baby, and I’m sorry—”

“I don’t want to hear it!” you bark. “I don’t want to hear anything from you for a while. Just leave me the hell alone!”

You stomp away in the direction of your room and the fire alarm starts to beep.

“Miss Y/N, please cool yourself,” FRIDAY says calmly. “You are reaching dangerous temperatures.”

You scoff. “I can’t hurt myself with fire.”

“No, but you could hurt those around you,” the AI responds. “Including myself.”

“Did you know what they did?” you demand up to the ceiling.

There is a pregnant pause before the AI confirms it.

“Wow.” You shake your head. “Just wow.”

“I was under strict orders not to inform you—”

“Whatever, FRIDAY. I don’t want to hear from you either.” Scowling, you slam your door shut but stop short at the sight of a figure upside-down outside your window.

Spider-man—Peter Parker—taps frantically on the glass, waving to get your attention. You close your blinds and turn your back on the window, but a buzzing in your pocket catches your attention. It’s the boy outside your window. You decline the call. He’s already tried to call fifteen times and sent you 13 text messages.

For good measure, you block his number. Not a second later is he messaging you on Instagram, so you take the next logical step in your mind. You throw your phone out the window so hard it shatters the glass and hopefully hits that lying bastard, too.

You’re out of the room before Spider-man can stick his head out the window, locking the door from the outside using a special program you’d installed in FRIDAY, and decide to sleep in a guest room.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thankfully your new phone has a new number that Parker doesn’t know, and you’re pretty sure Tony knows better than to give it to him. You blocked him on every social media platform you have for good measure, although that hasn’t stopped you from noticing him. In fact, you’re probably noticing him more than usual because your two fanbases have come together in a major panic over why Inferno and Spider-man aren’t hanging out, following each other, or even talking anymore.

All your mentions in the past two weeks have looked exactly like this:

just-a-dumbass: @Y/N_Stark plz respond!!!! why are you and Spider-man fighting? he won’t talk about it at all when we asked on his livestream he hung up and hasn’t done another since!!!!

that-one-asian: @Y/N_Stark and @The-Official-Spiderman you guys really need to make up you were my #1 celebrity ship and i dont understand why you broke up

spideyismydaddy: guys you can tell @The-Official-Spiderman is really cut up about this, he hasn’t livestreamed in days or even uploaded a story. @Y/N_Stark you’re a real bitch for breaking his heart

newyorkhoe: guys we don’t even know if @Y/N_Stark and @The-Official_Spiderman were dating. maybe they’re just really good friends that are fighting. either way, you can tell that both are having a rough time. lay off the negativity!!!

wyoming_isnt_real: @Y/N_Stark why are you and spidey fighting? if he hurt you i’ll beat him up :(

spideyinferno: @Y/N_Stark @The-Official-Spiderman

That tweet has a link attached. You click on it out of curiosity only to realize that actual news websites are writing articles about the ‘Feud Between New York’s Hottest Heroes’. You scroll down to the bottom where there are previews of other articles written about this. Is this really the biggest deal ever? Are people really freaking out over the fact that you’re not hanging out with a spying liar anymore?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You should have known. Even at night, civilians are still out and about, and they love to do nothing other than gossip. You’re in Brooklyn, for God’s sake, and they’re still chasing after you with cameras, screaming and asking questions about your relationship with Spider-man. These people have probably never even seen him before. He operates in Queens!

It’s no use. You have to change out of your suit. You’re too noticeable.

You duck into a tourist shop and melt the door handle so the screaming hordes can’t follow you in. “I’m so sorry,” you say breathlessly to the shopkeeper and dig around in your pockets for an empty check. You’ve learned to always keep one on hand. You have one, but you don’t know exactly how much replacing a door costs. “Do you have a pen?” Just to be safe, you write down $15,000 and grab a hoodie and sweatpants while the shopkeeper stares at the check you’d shoved into his hands. You can hear people pounding on the back entrance of the store, too, and you look around wildly for an escape.

Unwelcome, a thought pops into your head: What would Spidey do? How would he get out of this situation?

You look up and smile. You may not have webs but you can jump pretty high.

“Sorry about this,” you say to the shopkeeper again. He gapes as you leap straight up into his ceiling. You take a running leap off the roof and land on the sidewalk a couple hundred feet away. Some New Yorkers spare you glances as they step around and over you, but you don’t mind them as you pull your hood up and start walking.

A familiar thwip, though, has you stop. People start to yell Spider-man’s name and you look up, one hand keeping your hood in place. You duck behind a taller man and peek at your former friend from behind the stranger’s arm.

“Where is she?” he yells, wheezing a little bit. He must have sprinted over. A little part of your chest warms at the thought of him being frantic to see you, but then you realize that his voice really doesn’t change at all when he’s got the mask on. You were just too stupid to notice it.

The civilians start to all shout different things, mostly pointing to the store, but Spider-man waves his hands to get everyone to be quiet. “One at a time!”

“She went into that store but got out through the roof and now we don’t know where she is!” someone shouts.

“What happened between you two?”

You lean forward, holding your breath. Surely Spider-man will say that you overreacted and were the bitch most people on the internet seem to think you are. It’ll cement your belief that he’s a giant jerk and you’ll be able to go about your day feeling a little better about this whole situation.

“I messed up,” Spider-man explains, sounding sadder than he has a right to. “And I don’t blame her for being mad at me. I’d be pretty mad at me, too.”

“What did you do?” someone else shouts.

For a moment, you think Spider-man meets your eyes and you jerk back, accidentally falling into somebody else. It cuts off Spider-man, who was saying, “It doesn’t really matter what I did. I’m just really sorry and I want her to know, even if she doesn’t forgive me—”

“Watch it!” the person snaps, yanking your sweatshirt in anger. The hood slips off your head and their eyes widen. “Oh, shit, I’m sorry—”

“She’s right here!” another person who’d watched the commotion shouts. “Look, Spider-man, you can apologize to her—”

The crowd starts to scream, looking for you, and you shove your hood back up and keep up with the commotion.

“Y/N!” Spider-man shouts, his voice cracking. “Please just talk to me?”

Pull yourself together, you think viciously. You’re acting like a total idiot in public.

And you don’t look back.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“No. Absolutely not.”

“Y/N, come on.”

“I’m not doing it. You can’t make me.”

“We need you.”

“You have him.”

“Yeah, but we also need you.”

“I have plans for today.”

“Really?” your dad crosses his arms and raises his eyebrows. “And what are those?”

You cross your arms right back and don’t respond. You both know you don’t have any plans for today, but you’d rather do nothing than go on a mission with half of the team including Spider-man.

“I’m sure he asked you to include me?”

Tony scuffs his foot on the ground.

“Not a chance.” You shake your head.

“Look, is now really the best time to be arguing about this?” Natasha puts in, tapping her foot impatiently. “Parker and Cap are handling this mutant fine at the moment but his friend is coming. They can’t handle two of them.”

You roll your eyes. “You two can go. You’re highly skilled and experienced—”

“And one of them is a lava monster,” your dad interrupts.

“Exactly, so my powers will be useless on it.” You shrug.

“But you also won’t get hurt if you draw its fire. Plus, Nat doesn’t have powers at all. Dealing with human criminals is one thing but mutants are a bit much for even her to handle. No offense, Nat.”

The assassin in question raises one eyebrow and doesn’t agree or disagree with your father’s statement. Privately, you think that Nat really could handle at least one of the monsters on her own, depending on the tools she has to work with. But you digress.

“I hate you,” you try.

“Love you too, honey.” Your dad kisses your forehead for the first time in a month. “Your suit is in the jet. Can we get going, please?”

Okay, you will admit that maybe you underestimated these two mutants. One has heat-based powers, just like you, and flickers between a human form and a human-shaped pile of lava. The other seems merely to have super strength and is trading blows with Captain America like it’s a friendly sparring session.

You narrow your eyes and assess the battlefield from your perch in the jet. “Okay, so we obviously need to get the civilians out of here. Nat, you can handle that, right?”

The red-haired assassin nods her head.

“And I can distract the fire thing,” you decide. Anticipation curdles your stomach though it’s less at the fight and more at the thought of seeing Spider-man again—he is the one fighting that monster, after all, and dodging its streams of fire quite spectacularly, though you’d never tell him so. “We just need to knock it out when it’s in its human form. Dad, you can help Steve, right?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he salutes you and you roll your eyes. “Everybody ready?”

Butterflies flutter in your stomach as the jet lowers just enough for you to leap out of it, Tony in his suit with Nat clinging onto his back just behind you.

You slam into the lava monster, knocking it off its feet and tumbling a few feet away, your teeth clanking at the impact. Through your earpiece, you hear Cap greeting Nat and Tony, before a significantly higher male voice pierces your eardrums.

“Y/N?”

You wince and look up. Peter’s staring at you, and though his mask is on, you can tell that his mouth is open with shock. Though his exclamation was loud, it was also comforting. You’d missed him more than you care to admit.

“Underoos, pay attention!” your father barks and Peter looks at the lava monster and shrieks (you make a mental note to tease him about that later) before leaping into the air and avoiding a stream of lava that would have melted him instantly.

“Inferno,” the lava mutant hisses, eyes flickering between gaping black rock pits and dark human eyes. Both appearances convey her hatred for you clearly. “You can’t hurt me.”

“Yeah, well, ditto,” you respond. “And, for your information, fire isn’t my only power, thank you very much.”

The mutant holds up her hand and a stream of lava flies toward you, hitting your skin and sliding to the ground before it hardens instantly. “You’re a mutant against your will just like me,” the lava mutant hisses. “Join us. Help us take revenge against those who wronged us.”

Peter shoots a web that disintegrates a foot in front of the mutant. The air around her is so hot it’s wavering like a mirage. Powerless against the mutant, he looks at you.

“Look, I get getting revenge,” you say. You press a hand to your ear and mutter, “Shock web when she’s human.” You continue louder, “I got my own revenge. But I didn’t do it by hurting innocent civilians. In fact, my father did it so Killian wouldn’t hurt anybody else.”

“They don’t understand our pain,” the mutant hisses. She flickers and Spider-man twitches but he was too slow and continues to creep out of the mutant’s line of vision. With her eyes fixed on you, she doesn’t seem to care. “Only we do.”

“I know,” you say soothingly. You hold your palm up to the sky and let a little flame dance over your palm. “I know it hurts. I was in pain for days straight when Killian gave me the serum. But this isn’t the way to get your revenge.”

This time, when the mutant flickers, she remains in her human form for a second longer. You smile smugly.

“We’re the same,” you say soothingly. “I know just how it feels.”

“I can’t stop now,” the mutant hisses. “They’ll lock me up.”

“They locked me up too, and I didn’t even do anything,” you point out. “But when you get out, I can help you.”

She drops the lava monster guise and looks at you wondrously.

You wince when Peter’s shock web hits her in the back. She makes a sort of choked noise before keeling over. Something fragile inside you fractures as you see what you could have been. There’s a little too much of you inside that mutant.

The other mutant roars with anger and you turn, ready to burn it. But its anger is aimed at Spider-man, who landed the final blow, and he sweeps Cap and Tony away, throwing them into nearby rubble.

You dart in front of the monster and ready your fists, even if his biceps are bigger than your waist. He shoves you away and the breath leaves your lungs but you still manage to cling onto his arm like a koala and summon the anger to the surface. Your body goes white-hot in seconds and the second mutant roars with pain and slams his arm into the ground.

You feel your spine crack in multiple places as well as your tailbone—and your neck.

“Y/N!” Peter bellows when you don’t move. “NO!”

Something wet trickles down your neck as the bones arrange themselves back into place and you sit up, tears slipping from your eyes as you do so. Now you’re pissed off.

The mutant’s arm, you can see, has a nasty-looking burn on it in the shape of your body. You relish the sight of it as you take a running start at the mutant, plowing into his back and sending him flying, landing on the ground and skidding a few feet. Since you’re half his height, it must have been a comical sight.

Peter lands in front of you and holds out his hand, which you notice is shaking. “Are you okay?”

You don’t nod your head. You’re scared that just moving it will break your back again. You might have broken your arm and ankle before, but never your neck and back. You’re going to have nightmares about it for weeks to come, you already know.

“You can cool down now,” he says softly. You realize you’re still glowing white-hot.

With a strangled sob, you let go of the anger-heat and fall into his arms, squeezing him so hard you’re sure he would have a few broken ribs if he wasn’t enhanced.

“How bad did he hurt you?” Peter asks, one hand rubbing up and down your back.

“It would have killed anyone except me,” you whisper back. And that’s all you have to say on the subject. You move to step back from him and gasp. The mutant is up and angrier than ever. He’s picking up a chunk of plaster with a few copper wires protruding from its multiple sides. He’s hoisting it above his head. And he’s throwing it at you two.

You hear multiple screams as you shove Peter out of the way, but the ginormous rock hits you in the stomach. As if in slow motion, you flip backwards, the plaster rolling with you, and hit the ground, skidding a bit. The plaster still sits on your stomach, making it nearly impossible to breathe, which means you don’t have the strength to push it off of you.

Oh God. Asphyxiation is one thing the serum can’t help you with. For the first time in your life, you might actually die from an injury.

You weakly wiggle, trying to get the plaster to tip off of you, but that causes a stinging sensation in your sternum that’s almost unbearable. Your back is getting wet. One of the copper wires must have entered your stomach.

You try to suck in a breath but barely get more than a gasp. The effort makes you cough, your throat tasting metallic.

The serum can’t work if I can’t breathe, you distantly realize. It’s a part of my bodily functions now, but my body can’t function at all without oxygen.

So you’re going to die. It’s as simple as that.

This time, when you suck in a breath, you cough on a liquid in your throat, choking as you can’t get any air in and becoming more panicked as your vision becomes more blurry. You try to blow the liquid out of your throat but you don’t have enough strength to blow hard, so all that happens is that you’re completely out of air now. You thrash on the ground but the plaster refuses to move.

Your vision goes dark. Your stomach drops. Is this it? Are you going to die now? You never even got to make up with Peter, which you now realize you’d wanted to do all along.

Then the weight on your stomach lifts and you suck in a shuddering breath that just makes you cough and choke more. The darkness lifts from your vision, making you squint and realize that someone had been standing over you and lifted the plaster from your stomach.

The person turns you over onto your side and you spit blood out of your mouth as the pain in your stomach begins to abate. When you finally suck in a shuddering breath that clears your vision, hands cradle your face and you look up into Peter’s face. It’s a bit screwed up because he’s crying.

You blink slowly at him.

“Oh, my God,” he says as though from a long way away. “I thought you were going to die. Are you still bleeding? Can you breathe? Are you all right? Do you have brain damage? Wait, are you dead? Y/N, can you hear me?” He shakes you. His voice gets higher. “Y/N, you gotta respond to me or I’m gonna think you’re dead! Are you dead?”

You cough, splattering his face with more blood and mucus, and his lips thin as he wipes it off.

“Are you still mad at me?”

“Your mask,” you croak weakly. Your eyes widen with realization. “Oh, God, your mask, Peter, people are gonna see you—”

“Thank God you’re all right,” he breathes, gathering you into a tight hug that has you gasping for air. His splayed hands on your back move up and down, probing for holes. “I think you’re okay.” He begins to rock back and forth, still holding you in his arms. “I thought you were going to die.”

Weakly, you wrap your arms around him and squeeze as hard as you can. You’re already feeling better. “Peter Parker, did you just save my life?”

“Does that mean you forgive me?” He pulls back, beaming at you even though he’s still crying.

“I guess,” you say mock-reluctantly.

“Thank God,” he breathes. “Y/N, I like you.”

“What?” You blink.

“It’s all right if you don’t say it back,” he says, rushed. “Or if you don’t feel the same way at all. I just thought you should know.”

“No, I—”

“Y/N!”

Tony sweeps you off your feet, twirling you in a circle. “Oh my God, baby, are you all right?”

“I’m fine, Dad,” you reply but don’t push him away. “Peter saved me.”

Tony picks up Peter’s discarded mask and shoves it into his favorite intern’s hands before sweeping him into the group hug too. “Does this mean you don’t hate him anymore?” he asks, beaming.

Peter pulls his mask on and turns away. You glance after him, frowning.

“What?” Tony asks, deflating. “Do you really still hate him?”

You tap Spider-man on the shoulder. Peter shrugs and says without looking back, “It’s fine, Y/N. I shouldn’t have expected anything else, considering what I did to you—”

You spin him around, lift his mask up to his nose, and fit your mouth against his.

When you pull back, his mouth stays open as he gapes at you.

“I never said I didn’t feel the same way,” you say, feeling shy all of a sudden.

“Seriously?” he squeals. Then he coughs and lowers his voice. “I mean, uh—seriously?”

You shake your head and smile before planting your lips on his again. And that’s how the media finds you two. And the internet kind of explodes for the next two hours. It turns out a lot of people have been shipping you two for a while now.

Inferno Taglist:

@paullrud @eridanuswave @loveissupernatural @moistpotatobear @oh-annaa

Peter Parker x Reader Taglist:

@iconicbabesss

Forever Taglist:

@lemirabitur @annymcervantes @queenmissfit @quiet-because-it-is-a-secret @iksey @thehyperactiveteen @luxmoonlight

23 notes · View notes

judeblenews-blog · 6 years

Text

An ode to Apple’s awful MacBook keyboard

Yes I am very late to this. But I am also very annoyed so I am adding my voice to the now sustained chorus of complaints about Apple’s redesigned Mac keyboard: How very much it sucks. Truly, madly, deeply. This is the keyboard that Apple “completely redesigned” in 2015, in its quest for size zero hardware, switching from a scissor mechanism for the keys to what it described then as the “new Apple-designed butterfly mechanism” — touting this as 40% thinner and 4x more stable. Reader, there is nothing remotely beautiful and butterfly-esque about the experience of depressing these keys. Scattershot staccato clattering, as your fingers are simultaneously sucked in and involuntarily hammer out a grapeshot of key strikes, is what actually happens. It’s brutalist and unforgiving. Most egregiously it’s not reliably functional. The redesigned mechanism has resulted in keys that not only feel different when pressed vs the prior MacBook keyboard — which was more spongey for sure but that meant keys were at reduced risk of generating accidental strikes vs their barely-there trigger-sensitive replacements (which feel like they have a 40% smaller margin for keystrike error) — but have also turned out to be fail prone, as particles of dust can find their way in between the keys, as dust is wont to do, and mess with the smooth functioning of key presses — requiring an official Apple repair. Yes, just a bit of dust! Move over ‘the princess and the pea’: Apple and the dust mote is here! ‘Just use it in a vacuum’ shouldn’t be an acceptable usability requirement for a very expensive laptop. Apple has also had to make these keyboards quieter. Because, as I say, the act of using the keyboard results in audible clackclackery. It’s like mobile phone keyclicks suddenly got dizzingly back in fashion. (Or, well, Apple designers got to overindulge their blue-sky thinking around the idea that ‘in space no one can hear you type’.) Several colleagues have garnered dagger glances and been told to dial it down at conferences on account of all the key clattering as they worked. Yet a keyboard is made for working. It’s a writing tool. Or it should be. Instead, Apple has made a keyboard for making audible typos. It’s shockingly bad. As design snafus go, this is up there with antenna-gate. Except actually it’s much worst. You can’t not ‘hold it in that way’. You can’t press keys on a keyboard radically differently. I guess you could type really slowly to try to avoid making all these high speed typos. But that would have an obvious impact on your ability to work by slowing down your ability to write. So, again, an abject mess. I’ve only had this Oath-issued 2017 MacBook Pro (in long-held-off exchange for my trusty MacBook Air, whose admittedly grimy and paint-worn keys were nonetheless 100% functional after years of writerly service) for about a month but the keys appear to have a will of their own, whipping themselves into a possessive frenzy almost every time they’re pressed, and spewing out all manner of odd typos, mis-strikes and mistakes. This demonic keyboard has summoned Siri unasked. (Thanks stupidly pointless Touch Bar!) It has also somehow nearly delivered an ‘I’m not interested’ auto-response to a stranger who wrote me at length on LinkedIn to thoughtfully thank me for an earlier article. (Fortunately I didn’t have auto-send enabled so I could catch that unintended slapdown in the act before it was delivered. No thanks to the technologies involved.) At the same time Caps Lock routinely fails to engage when pressed, as if it’s practising for when it’ll be broken. It equally countlessly fails to disengage when re-pressed. ‘Craps Out Lock’ more like. I fear it’s beset by dust motes already. Which is hard to avoid because, y’know, everything in the world is made of dust. The keyboard also frustrates because of the jarring juxtaposition of having individual keys that depress too willingly, seeming to suck the typos from your fingers as letters get snatched out of sequence (and even whole words coaxed out of line), coupled with a backspace key that refuses to perform quickly enough (I’ve had to crank it right up to the very fastest setting) so it can’t gobble up the multiple erroneous strikes quickly enough to edit out all the BS the keyboard is continually spewing. The result? A laptop that’s lightning quick at creating a typo-ridden mess, and slow as hell to clean it up. In short, it’s a mess. A horrible mess that makes a mockery of the Apple catchphrase of yore (‘it just works’) by actively degrading the productivity of writing — interrupting your work with pointless sound and an alphabetic soup of fury. The redesigned keyboard has been denounced by Apple loyalists such as John Gruber — who in April called it “one of the biggest design screwups in Apple history“. He precision-hammered his point home with this second economical sentence: “Everyone who buys a MacBook depends upon the keyboard and this keyboard is undependable.” Though it was Casey Johnson, writing for The Outline, who raised the profile of the problem last year, kicking up a major stink over her MacBook keys acting up (or dead) after a brush with invisible dust. Since then keyboard-related problems have garnered Apple at least one class action lawsuit. Meanwhile, the company has responded to this hardware headache of its own design like the proverbial thief in the night, quietly fiddling with the internals when no one was looking. Most notably it slotted in a repair earlier this year, when it added a sort of silicon gum shield to wrap the offending butterfly mechanism, which is presumably supposed to prevent dust from wreaking its terribly quotidian havoc. (Though it’s no use to me, right here, right now, with my corporate provisioned 2017 MBP.) We know this thanks to the excellent work done by iFixit this summer, when it took apart one of Apple’s redesigned redesigned keyboards and found a thin rubberized film had been added under the keycaps. (Looking at this translucent addition, I am reminded of Alien designer HR Giger’s biomechanical concoctions. And of Ash’s robotic hard-on for poking around inside the disemboweled facehugger. But I digress.) Shamelessly Apple tried to sell this tweak to journalists as solely a fix for those noisy key clicks. iFixit was not at all convinced. “This flexible enclosure is quite obviously an ingress-proofing measure to cover up the mechanism from the daily onslaught of microscopic dust. Not — to our eyes — a silencing measure,” it wrote in July. “In fact, Apple has a patent for this exact tech designed to “prevent and/or alleviate contaminant ingress.” And the date on Apple’s ingress-proofing key-cap condom patent? September 8, 2016. Read that and weep, MacBook Pro second-half 2016, 2017 and first half 2018 owners. So if, like me, you’re saddled with a 2017 (or earlier) MBP there’s sweet F.A. you can do about this fatal design flaw in the core interfacing mechanism you must daily touch. Abstention is not an option. We must typo and wait for the inexorable, dust-based doom to strike the space bar or the ‘E’ key — which will then make the typing experience even more miserable (and require a trip to an Apple store to swaddle the misbehaving keys in rubber — leaving us computerless, most probably, in the meanwhile). There is an entire novel written without the letter E. I propose that Apple’s failed keyboard redesign be christened the ‘Gadsby‘ in its honor — because, ye gads, it’s awful. This is especially, especially frustrating because the MacBook Air keyboard was so very, very good. Not good — it was great. It was as close to typing perfection I’ve come across in a computer. And I’ve been typing on keyboards for a very long time. Why mess with such a good thing?! Marginally thinner than what was already exceptionally thin hardware is hardly something consumers clamour for. People are far more interested in having the thing they bought and/or use actually doing the job they need it for. And definitely not letting them down. (Or “defienmtely nort letting them down” as the keyboard just reworked the line. I really should have saved every typo and posted a mutant mirror text beneath this one, containing all the thousands of organic instances of ‘found poetry’ churned out by the keyboard’s inner life/poet/drunk.) If shaving 40% off the profile of the key mechanism transforms an incredible reliable keyboard into a dust-prone, typo-spewing monster that’s not progress; it’s folly of the highest order. Offering free repairs to affected users, as Apple finally did in June, doesn’t even begin to fix this fuck up. Not least because that’s only a fix for dust-based death; There isn’t a rubber film in the universe that could make typing on these keys a pleasing experience. What does it tell us when a company starts making the quality of its premium products worse? Especially a company famed for high-end design and high quality hardware? (Moreover, a company now worth a staggering $1tr+ in market capitalization?) It smacks of complacency, misaligned priorities and worrying blindspots — at the very least, if not a wider lack of perspective outside the donut-shaped mothership. (Perhaps there’s been a little too much gathering around indoors in Cupertino lately, and not enough looking out critically at a flaking user experience… ) Or else, well, it smacks of cynical profiteering. Clearly it’s not a good look. Apple’s reputation rests in large part on its hardware being perceived as reliable. On the famous Steve Jobs’ sales pitch that ‘it just works’. So Apple designing a keyboard that’s great at breaking for no reason at all and lighting fast at churning out typos is a truly epic fail. Of course consumer electronic designs won’t always work out. Some failure is to be expected — and will be understood. But what makes the keyboard situation so much worse is Apple’s failure to recognise and accept the problem so that it could promptly clean up the mess. Its apparent inability (for so long) to acknowledge there even was a problem is a particularly worrying sign. Having to sneak in a late fix because you didn’t have the courage to publicly admit you screwed up is not a good look for any company — let alone a company with such a long, rich and storied history as Apple. More cynical folks out there might whisper it’s design flaw by design; A strategic fault-line intended to push users towards an upgrade faster than they might have otherwise have unzipped their wallets. Though Apple offering free keyboard repairs (also, albeit, tardily) contradicts that conspiracy theory. Yet the notion of ‘built in obsolescence’ persists where consumer computing hardware is concerned, given how corporate profits do tend to be locked to upgrade cycles. In Apple’s case it’s an easy charge to level at the company given its business model is still, in very large part, driven by hardware sales. So Apple doing anything that risks encouraging consumers to feel it’s intentionally making its products worse is also folly of the highest order. Apple does have some active accusations to deal with on that front too. For example, a consumer group filed a complaint of planned obsolescence in France late last year — on account of Apple performance throttling older iPhones — something the company has faced multiple complaints over and some regulatory scrutiny. So again, it really needs to tread carefully. Tim Cook’s Apple cannot afford to be slipshod in its designs nor its communication. Jobs got more latitude on the latter front because he was such a charismatic persona. Cook is lots of good things but he’s not that; he’s closer to ‘safe pair of hands’ — so company comms should really reflect that. Apple may be richer than Croesus and king of the premium heap but it can’t risk tarnishing the brand. The mobile space is littered with the toppled monuments of past giants. And the markets where Apple plays are increasingly fiercely fought. Chinese device makers especially are building momentum with lower priced and highly capable consumer hardware. (Huawei displaced Apple in second place in the global smartphone rankings in Q2, for example). Apple’s rivals have mercilessly cloned its slender laptop designs and copypasted the look and feel of the iPhone. Reliability and usability are the bedrock of the price premium its brand commands, with privacy a more recent bolt-on. So failing on those fundamentals would be beyond foolish, with so many rivals now pushing cheaper priced yet very similarly packaged (and shiny) alternatives at consumers — which also often offer equal or even greater feature utility for less money (assuming you’re willing to compromise on privacy). When it comes to the Mac specifically, it clearly has not been Apple’s priority for a long time. The iPhone has been its star performer of the past decade, while growing its services business is the fresh focus for Cook. Yet when Cook’s Apple has paid a little attention to the Mac category it’s often been to fiddle unnecessarily — such as by clumsily reworking a great keyboard for purely cosmetic reasons, or to add a silly strip of touchscreen that’s at best distracting and (in my experience) just serves up even more unwanted keystrikes. So thrice blighted and the opposite of useful: A fiddly gimmick. This is worrying. Apple is a company founded with the word ‘Computer’ in its name. Computing is its DNA. And, even now, while smartphones and tablets are great for lots of things they are not great for sustained writing. For writing — and indeed working — at any length a laptop remains the perfect tool. There’s no touchscreen in the world that can beat a well-designed keyboard for speed, comfort and typing convenience. To a writer, using a great keyboard almost feels like flying. You wouldn’t have had to explain that to Jobs. He honed his Mac sales pitch to the point of poetry — famously dubbing the Mac a ‘bicycle for the mind’. Now, sadly, saddled with this flatfooted and frustratingly flawed mechanic, it’s like Apple shipped a bicycle with a pair of needles where the pedals should be. Not so much thinking different as failing to understand what the machine is for. Via: TechCrunch Read the full article

#Gadgets

0 notes

theinvinciblenoob · 6 years

Link

This is the keyboard that Apple “completely redesigned” in 2015, in its quest for size zero hardware, switching from a scissor mechanism for the keys to what it described then as the “new Apple-designed butterfly mechanism” — touting this as 40% thinner and 4x more stable.

Reader, there is nothing remotely beautiful and butterfly-esque about the experience of depressing these keys. Scattershot staccato clattering, as your fingers are simultaneously sucked in and involuntarily hammer out a grapeshot of key strikes, is what actually happens. It’s brutalist and unforgiving. Most egregiously it’s not reliably functional.

The redesigned mechanism has resulted in keys that not only feel different when pressed vs the prior MacBook keyboard — which was more spongey for sure but that meant keys were at reduced risk of generating accidental strikes vs their barely-there trigger-sensitive replacements (which feel like they have a 40% smaller margin for keystrike error) — but have also turned out to be fail prone, as particles of dust can find their way in between the keys, as dust is wont to do, and mess with the smooth functioning of key presses — requiring an official Apple repair.

Yes, just a bit of dust! Move over ‘the princess and the pea’: Apple and the dust mote is here! ‘Just use it in a vacuum’ shouldn’t be an acceptable usability requirement for a very expensive laptop.

Apple has also had to make these keyboards quieter. Because, as I say, the act of using the keyboard results in audible clackclackery. It’s like mobile phone keyclicks suddenly got dizzingly back in fashion. (Or, well, Apple designers got to overindulge their blue-sky thinking around the idea that ‘in space no one can hear you type’.)

Several colleagues have garnered dagger glances and been told to dial it down at conferences on account of all the key clattering as they worked. Yet a keyboard is made for working. It’s a writing tool. Or it should be. Instead, Apple has made a keyboard for making audible typos. It’s shockingly bad.

As design snafus go, this is up there with antenna-gate. Except actually it’s much worst. You can’t not ‘hold it in that way’. You can’t press keys on a keyboard radically differently. I guess you could type really slowly to try to avoid making all these high speed typos. But that would have an obvious impact on your ability to work by slowing down your ability to write. So, again, an abject mess.

I’ve only had this Oath-issued 2017 MacBook Pro (in long-held-off exchange for my trusty MacBook Air, whose admittedly grimy and paint-worn keys were nonetheless 100% functional after years of writerly service) for about a month but the keys appear to have a will of their own, whipping themselves into a possessive frenzy almost every time they’re pressed, and spewing out all manner of odd typos, mis-strikes and mistakes.

This demonic keyboard has summoned Siri unasked. (Thanks stupidly pointless Touch Bar!) It has also somehow nearly delivered an ‘I’m not interested’ auto-response to a stranger who wrote me at length on LinkedIn to thoughtfully thank me for an earlier article. (Fortunately I didn’t have auto-send enabled so I could catch that unintended slapdown in the act before it was delivered. No thanks to the technologies involved.)

At the same time Caps Lock routinely fails to engage when pressed, as if it’s practising for when it’ll be broken. It equally countlessly fails to disengage when re-pressed. ‘Craps Out Lock’ more like. I fear it’s beset by dust motes already. Which is hard to avoid because, y’know, everything in the world is made of dust.

The keyboard also frustrates because of the jarring juxtaposition of having individual keys that depress too willingly, seeming to suck the typos from your fingers as letters get snatched out of sequence (and even whole words coaxed out of line), coupled with a backspace key that refuses to perform quickly enough (I’ve had to crank it right up to the very fastest setting) so it can’t gobble up the multiple erroneous strikes quickly enough to edit out all the BS the keyboard is continually spewing.

The result? A laptop that’s lightning quick at creating a typo-ridden mess, and slow as hell to clean it up.

In short, it’s a mess. A horrible mess that makes a mockery of the Apple catchphrase of yore (‘it just works’) by actively degrading the productivity of writing — interrupting your work with pointless sound and an alphabetic soup of fury.

The redesigned keyboard has been denounced by Apple loyalists such as John Gruber — who in April called it “one of the biggest design screwups in Apple history“.

He precision-hammered his point home with this second economical sentence: “Everyone who buys a MacBook depends upon the keyboard and this keyboard is undependable.”

Though it was Casey Johnson, writing for The Outline, who raised the profile of the problem last year, kicking up a major stink over her MacBook keys acting up (or dead) after a brush with invisible dust.

Since then keyboard-related problems have garnered Apple at least one class action lawsuit.

Meanwhile, the company has responded to this hardware headache of its own design like the proverbial thief in the night, quietly fiddling with the internals when no one was looking. Most notably it slotted in a repair earlier this year, when it added a sort of silicon gum shield to wrap the offending butterfly mechanism, which is presumably supposed to prevent dust from wreaking its terribly quotidian havoc. (Though it’s no use to me, right here, right now, with my corporate provisioned 2017 MBP.)

We know this thanks to the excellent work done by iFixit this summer, when it took apart one of Apple’s redesigned redesigned keyboards and found a thin rubberized film had been added under the keycaps. (Looking at this translucent addition, I am reminded of Alien designer HR Giger’s biomechanical concoctions. And of Ash’s robotic hard-on for poking around inside the disemboweled facehugger. But I digress.)

Shamelessly Apple tried to sell this tweak to journalists as solely a fix for those noisy key clicks. iFixit was not at all convinced.

“This flexible enclosure is quite obviously an ingress-proofing measure to cover up the mechanism from the daily onslaught of microscopic dust. Not — to our eyes — a silencing measure,” it wrote in July. “In fact, Apple has a patent for this exact tech designed to “prevent and/or alleviate contaminant ingress.”

And the date on Apple’s ingress-proofing key-cap condom patent? September 8, 2016. Read that and weep, MacBook Pro second-half 2016, 2017 and first half 2018 owners.

So if, like me, you’re saddled with a 2017 (or earlier) MBP there’s sweet F.A. you can do about this fatal design flaw in the core interfacing mechanism you must daily touch. Abstention is not an option. We must typo and wait for the inexorable, dust-based doom to strike the space bar or the ‘E’ key — which will then make the typing experience even more miserable (and require a trip to an Apple store to swaddle the misbehaving keys in rubber — leaving us computerless, most probably, in the meanwhile).

There is an entire novel written without the letter E. I propose that Apple’s failed keyboard redesign be christened the ‘Gadsby‘ in its honor — because, ye gads, it’s awful.

This is especially, especially frustrating because the MacBook Air keyboard was so very, very good.

Not good — it was great. It was as close to typing perfection I’ve come across in a computer. And I’ve been typing on keyboards for a very long time.

Why mess with such a good thing?! Marginally thinner than what was already exceptionally thin hardware is hardly something consumers clamour for.

People are far more interested in having the thing they bought and/or use actually doing the job they need it for. And definitely not letting them down.

(Or “defienmtely nort letting them down” as the keyboard just reworked the line. I really should have saved every typo and posted a mutant mirror text beneath this one, containing all the thousands of organic instances of ‘found poetry’ churned out by the keyboard’s inner life/poet/drunk.)

If shaving 40% off the profile of the key mechanism transforms an incredible reliable keyboard into a dust-prone, typo-spewing monster that’s not progress; it’s folly of the highest order.

Offering free repairs to affected users, as Apple finally did in June, doesn’t even begin to fix this fuck up.

Not least because that’s only a fix for dust-based death; There isn’t a rubber film in the universe that could make typing on these keys a pleasing experience.

What does it tell us when a company starts making the quality of its premium products worse? Especially a company famed for high-end design and high quality hardware? (Moreover, a company now worth a staggering $1tr+ in market capitalization?)

It smacks of complacency, misaligned priorities and worrying blindspots — at the very least, if not a wider lack of perspective outside the donut-shaped mothership. (Perhaps there’s been a little too much gathering around indoors in Cupertino lately, and not enough looking out critically at a flaking user experience… )

Or else, well, it smacks of cynical profiteering.

Clearly it’s not a good look. Apple’s reputation rests in large part on its hardware being perceived as reliable. On the famous Steve Jobs’ sales pitch that ‘it just works’. So Apple designing a keyboard that’s great at breaking for no reason at all and lighting fast at churning out typos is a truly epic fail.

Of course consumer electronic designs won’t always work out. Some failure is to be expected — and will be understood. But what makes the keyboard situation so much worse is Apple’s failure to recognise and accept the problem so that it could promptly clean up the mess.

Its apparent inability (for so long) to acknowledge there even was a problem is a particularly worrying sign. Having to sneak in a late fix because you didn’t have the courage to publicly admit you screwed up is not a good look for any company — let alone a company with such a long, rich and storied history as Apple.

More cynical folks out there might whisper it’s design flaw by design; A strategic fault-line intended to push users towards an upgrade faster than they might have otherwise have unzipped their wallets. Though Apple offering free keyboard repairs (also, albeit, tardily) contradicts that conspiracy theory.

Yet the notion of ‘built in obsolescence’ persists where consumer computing hardware is concerned, given how corporate profits do tend to be locked to upgrade cycles.

In Apple’s case it’s an easy charge to level at the company given its business model is still, in very large part, driven by hardware sales. So Apple doing anything that risks encouraging consumers to feel it’s intentionally making its products worse is also folly of the highest order.

Apple does have some active accusations to deal with on that front too. For example, a consumer group filed a complaint of planned obsolescence in France late last year — on account of Apple performance throttling older iPhones — something the company has faced multiple complaints over and some regulatory scrutiny. So again, it really needs to tread carefully.

Tim Cook’s Apple cannot afford to be slipshod in its designs nor its communication. Jobs got more latitude on the latter front because he was such a charismatic persona. Cook is lots of good things but he’s not that; he’s closer to ‘safe pair of hands’ — so company comms should really reflect that.

Apple may be richer than Croesus and king of the premium heap but it can’t risk tarnishing the brand. The mobile space is littered with the toppled monuments of past giants. And the markets where Apple plays are increasingly fiercely fought. Chinese device makers especially are building momentum with lower priced and highly capable consumer hardware. (Huawei displaced Apple in second place in the global smartphone rankings in Q2, for example).

Apple’s rivals have mercilessly cloned its slender laptop designs and copypasted the look and feel of the iPhone. Reliability and usability are the bedrock of the price premium its brand commands, with privacy a more recent bolt-on. So failing on those fundamentals would be beyond foolish, with so many rivals now pushing cheaper priced yet very similarly packaged (and shiny) alternatives at consumers — which also often offer equal or even greater feature utility for less money (assuming you’re willing to compromise on privacy).

When it comes to the Mac specifically, it clearly has not been Apple’s priority for a long time. The iPhone has been its star performer of the past decade, while growing its services business is the fresh focus for Cook. Yet when Cook’s Apple has paid a little attention to the Mac category it’s often been to fiddle unnecessarily — such as by clumsily reworking a great keyboard for purely cosmetic reasons, or to add a silly strip of touchscreen that’s at best distracting and (in my experience) just serves up even more unwanted keystrikes. So thrice blighted and the opposite of useful: A fiddly gimmick.

This is worrying.

Apple is a company founded with the word ‘Computer’ in its name. Computing is its DNA. And, even now, while smartphones and tablets are great for lots of things they are not great for sustained writing. For writing — and indeed working — at any length a laptop remains the perfect tool.

There’s no touchscreen in the world that can beat a well-designed keyboard for speed, comfort and typing convenience. To a writer, using a great keyboard almost feels like flying.

You wouldn’t have had to explain that to Jobs. He honed his Mac sales pitch to the point of poetry — famously dubbing the Mac a ‘bicycle for the mind’.

Now, sadly, saddled with this flatfooted and frustratingly flawed mechanic, it’s like Apple shipped a bicycle with a pair of needles where the pedals should be.

Not so much thinking different as failing to understand what the machine is for.

via TechCrunch

#IFTTT #TechCrunch

0 notes

fmservers · 6 years