Since I’m sure some of you are already angrily typing comments about my claim that the new MacBook Pros aren’t designed for professionals at all – on purpose! – but for affluent regular consumers, here’s Mac developer Michael Tsai’s summary of the community’s responses to the new MacBook Pros.
I was really disappointed with today’s Apple event. It seems like Apple has either lost its way, that it has lost touch with what (some of) its customers want, or that it simply doesn’t care about those customers. Developers are a captive audience, and creative professionals can switch to Windows, I guess. Apple no longer considers them core.
There’s nothing particularly wrong with what Apple announced. I like Thunderbolt 3. The display looks good. I’m not crazy about Touch Bar, but it does seem potentially useful. The problem is that the MacBook Pro is not a true Pro notebook.
I really think this line is the core reason why the Mac is being neglected:
It has seemed clear for a while that the CEO doesn’t really understand the Mac, or simply doesn’t like it that much, and that’s a problem for those of us who do.
Ding, ding, ding.
I genuinely don’t see the problem. I’m an iOS developer. The new macs support 5k displays, they’re faster, the touch bar will put common commands literally at my fingertips. That all sounds amazing to me. What’s the alternative? Switch to Windows? Having a touch screen won’t help my work. Prior to working as an iOS developer I worked as a Java developer on both PCs (Windows and Linux) and Macs. The compilation time was 2x on Windows, with Linux slightly faster than OS X. I’m not going to switch to Linux and have to look at the ugly graphics, and have my heart in my mouth every time I have to upgrade the software.
So if by “pro” people mean “artists”, then who cares other than artists themselves? Maybe I’m missing something, but I really can’t see any level-headed genuine criticism apart from about the price. The price is very high, but that doesn’t make the machine worse, it just makes it expensive.
These will be fantastic machines for developers, writers, editors, musicians, etc.
Might be. But here’s a creative musician’s (and severe fanboy) view on it:
http://cdm.link/2016/10/apples-computer-vision-looks-backward-other…
Maybe this person is right, but it reads to me like another article where someone dismisses the Touch Bar without ever trying it. I’m not sure how it’s possible to do that. I’m optimistic about it, but recognise that when I try it I might hate it and find it not to be at all useful.
To be fair, that’s very different to you describing it as “amazing” without, er, having tried it.
I said that having common commands at my fingertips will be amazing, not that the Touch Bar would be amazing. There’s a difference between a single feature of a piece of hardware, and the overall usefulness of it.
But common commands are already at your fingertips.
They are called keyboard shortcuts and they have been there since forever and programs have supported them since forever and they are mostly standardized or intuitive and can be executed without looking away from the screen to an ever changing mini-touchscreen that is not where the real screen and your eyes are
…..breaths
True – but I, for one, can’t remember them all, and some of them require finger contortion that I’m not too good at. Some people are physically unable to put their hands in those positions, too. And I’m sure there are many users who don’t know a single keyboard shortcut. It’s surprising how many people don’t even know how to copy and paste text using keyboard shortcuts.
If this was a problem, people would be asking for a solution.
I for one can’t see the usefulness in having to bend my head and look at my keyboard for whatever the touchbar may be displaying right now, because you certainly can’t memorize neither the content, nor the location of software buttons anyway.
Especially, if my Macbook Pro is attached to an external screen.
That is a deep usability flaw, so why not just have those controls in, say, the window toolbar, where they’re relevant or as floating tool-bars on full-screen applications, so you don’t have to move the eyes away from the screen?
…and that is exactly why Microsoft invented the Office Ribbon about 10 years ago. To surface relevant options directly in plain sight instead of hidden in infinite submenu’s or behind unknown keystrokes.
Just like the touchbar it requires programmers to surface these relevant icons onto the screen, but unlike the touchbar it doesn’t require any hardware and shows up where you expect it…right there on the screen.
The only advantage the touchbar has is touch, but without any haptic feedback that seems like a really small advantage for a very limited audience at a very high cost.
Having Touch-ID on the other hand is great and, just like every decent phone has that now, every computer should have it as soon as possible (and/or any other instant authentication like Hello)
Too bad the Ribbon is a bastard from the keyboard. Shortcuts that make no sense when direct keyboard shortcuts aren’t availale, different shortcuts for a submenu (or whatever it’s called) vs the main option… screw that thing. For that matter, screw context-sensitivity in a menu system. It wouldn’t have even been considered if Microsoft hadn’t buried options in odd places to begin with. How many programs other than Microsoft’s have adopted the ribbon, after all? And how many users have even asked to have it?
This is a great resource about the Ribbon: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dn742393(v=…).aspx. It specifically mentions “Improved keyboard accessibility” and although I mostly use Keyboard Shortcuts instead of “KeyTips” I have no problem using the Ribbon with the keyboard. It also explains why the ribbon was basically the only option for a program with as many options as the Office Tools: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/jensenh/2008/03/12/the-story-of-the…. I personally prefer the new “tell me” search option for lesser used functions though.
I do like the Ribbon in Windows Explorer, but it doesn’t make much sense in simple programs like WordPad or Paint. It does feel like Microsoft made the ribbon to solve their too-many-toolbars-in-Office problem and then went overboard trying to get others on board to use it too.
The resource for the Apple touchbar is remarkably similar to that of the Ribbon: https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/UserExperi…
Now lets see how many developers/designers will follow those guidelines
Edited 2016-11-01 16:11 UTC
avgalen,
A context sensitive UI seems nice in theory, but for me I found it more difficult to use in practice. Granted, MS allowed it’s menus to get out of control, but that’s because MS lost focus and organization rather than because menus are a bad UI. To me, the menus were easier to use because they were static and predictable. Even a dumb little interface like paint is less intuitive with the ribbon, so IMHO they did it for the sake of change rather than strictly to make it better.
The Ribbon wasn’t made as much to replace menu’s but to replace toolbars. Menu’s are still a great way to group more complicated functionality.
I got used to the Ribbon very quickly and I notice that normal users at my Office are now using more commands than before because they never went into the (sub-sub)-menu’s but they do see those commands in the ribbon.
For powerusers like myself a combination of keyboard shortcuts for the things I use often and “Tell me (Alt+Q)” for the things I rarely do works extremely well
A REAL pro doesn’t give a DAMN about how pretty the graphics are. It isn’t about “ugly” or “beautiful”, it’s about “useless” and “useful”. And I have never once worried about upgrading on linux – not once in almost two decades have I had to roll back an upgrade, whereas it’s commonplace in Windows. I haven’t used Mac in almost a decade, but it was mostly better than Windows in that respect, but not quite as good as linux.
You are a better Linux admin than most. I’ve had it blow up a couple of times. On the other hand, I had my mother in law on Linux for a few years, and since she didn’t mess with anything, it mostly upgraded gracefully (except one version where they removed the display drivers for her Radeon 8500LE – that was pretty horrible).
Yes, I’ll agree that having driver issues because of older hardware can occur, but that’s hardly the fault of the update. I made sure that I switched drivers for my living room system before the update removed support from ATI (new driver no longer supporting the older hardware).
So sometimes you do need to pay attention to what an update is about to do since it may remove support for older hardware – hardware you may be using. So I will admit that linux isn’t completely free of problems from updating, and many folks may have to roll back an update, at least until they figure out what changed that caused the update to fail.
Edited 2016-10-31 18:26 UTC
You’ve literally just read about a comment from a pro who does care. Just because you don’t care doesn’t mean others don’t.
I remember having to role back ghostscript in Arch Linux otherwise it’d only print black where it was supposed to be white!
NetworkManager as well more recently, though I blame that on the Macbook that I’m running Debian on, wifi for some reason would see everything, but never connect.
But then I usually run bleeding edge Linux, and it still is more stable than Windows is. Even more stable than my Macbook was running Mac OSX.
Neither of these are problems Windows has given me, though there have been others. Really, your attempts to talk up Linux are rather pathetic when you have to “blame” something else in the same sentence.
I wasn’t talking up Linux, I was pointing out a few things that I’ve had to roll back. But it’s not like having to roll back to XP because Vista was a completely unusable pile.
Or that Mac OSX breaks the VPN we use at work every time there is an OS update.
Or that Windows 10 will just up and reboot after it auto-installs an update (I’ve had that happen to me a few times). All the modern operating systems have their share of issues. It really comes down to what you’re willing to put up with to get what you want accomplished.
I use Windows for gaming, Linux for everything else, and just don’t see a reason to use Mac OSX, when Linux does everything (except some games and VR) that I want.
But lets face it, Mac Hardware and operating system have been going down the path of being an expensive toy, just like the iPhone is.
Is that really a fair statement coming from you, though? Especially when you’ve gone on record VERY recently stating how bad Windows have treated you on the occasion and how that led you to stay with Apple no matter what? http://www.osnews.com/permalink?636186
Dude, Windows still CRAPS OUT on people way more frequently than anything from Apple or Linux and saying that is simply stating the truth, not talking up somebody else’s shit. Honestly, it is silly to pretend otherwise…
“Pro” for the Macbook Pro has been a very wide field of users: Artists, scientists, software developers, teachers, doctors, students, film makers, IT administrators. It goes on and on. Really anyone who needed a solid machine with a solid, low-maintenance OS. It was suppose to be a reliable, trustworthy tool that cost a fairly predictable amount of money.
Therefore, it was for many a no-brainer to get a Macbook Pro, but this is no longer true, because Apple are no longer treating such customers seriously.
Apple won’t tell us what they’re doing, don’t update their products on schedule anymore and kill off perfectly functioning and well-made software products, and they haphazardly raise prices now.
This makes it very hard to stay an Apple customer, when you really don’t know if the product you buy will continue to be supported, and I suspect also that in 1-2 generations, the Macbook Pro will entirely disappear, because they want you to develop your iOS apps directly on an iPad Pro.
Apple is marching us Macbook Pro users off a cliff for the sake of “courage”.
Good luck with that optimism.
Apple product line is so simple that no one should have a hard time understanding the purpose of each product – let alone the company’s own CEO. That leaves us with the assumption that he simply does not care about Macs as much as some other products. But turning MacBook Pro into MacBook FunForKids isn’t, in my opinion, about not caring about the products either.
My guess is that Apple is one generation away from ditching the Pro-series of Macs and focusing entirely on consumer goods. This new model’s got so little to suggest even remotely that it’s made for professionals that it can’t be saved anymore.
Edited 2016-10-31 14:40 UTC
…and who will develop stuff for all those consumers, and when you find someone: on what machines will they do it?
That segment will probably be ‘satisfied’ by the lonely Mac Pro, when it will finally be upgraded in the future. Maybe Apple is suggesting pros should use something else than their fancy pancy laptops to do the job.
Edited 2016-10-31 17:50 UTC
I think they really have lost their way, at least if they want professionals to buy their product anymore. Some thoughts:
1. Why would I want or care for the touch bar/touch id thing when I spend most of my time with the laptop connected to an external monitor/keyboard/mouse?
2. If the touch bar/touch id is such a great feature why is there no external keyboard with it yet? This seems like a huge omission to me. Seems it could even work with an iMac (its just a USB device according to reports), so wtf not???
3. 16GB ram, with no upgrade possible, in 2016? I understand the power argument for LPDDR3 and all that, but it doesn’t matter – 16GB for some apps is just barely passable now – what about in 2-3 years?
4. Why artificially neuter the version without the touch bar? It only supports up to a 2.4Ghz i7… The touch bar version goes up to 3.3Ghz. Why only 2 ports? Just because I don’t want the touch bar doesn’t mean I want a slower less capale machine. Apple always tries to manipulate consumers with their configuration options, but this is the first time it really bothers me. This is malicious even.
5. Why don’t they build a full-featured docking station/hub? Everyone complains about the dongles, they know everyone complains about the dongles, but they won’t build the one thing that would alleviate most of the complaints. Hell, they would probably sell it for like $399 and still get plenty of buyers… Its like they are trying to piss off users sometimes.
6. Where is their new monitor? Giving up on the display market entirely (if that is really what they are doing) is just idiotic. Hell, let LG build the panel and electronics if they want, just put it in an Apple branded proper looking aluminum housing and charge a premium for it. I personally don’t care, but I know lots of people this bothers the shit out of…
7. Why does it cost so damn much? Seriously, the minimum spec I would accept for this thing (2.4Ghz/16GB Ram/256GB SSD) is $1999. Previously Apple more or less had close to price parity with Dell as far as the XPS 13 goes. I can’t even get an XPS 13 with that slow a processor – and one with a 2.7Ghz i7 and twice the SSD is actually cheaper. That is compared to a macBook without the damn touchbar (which pretty much adds $200 to the price). Im used to Apple hardware having a premium, but I am also used to there being a tangible benefit. I don’t see one anymore, other than it runs OSX.
I agree with all the complainers… I don’t know who this thing is for anymore. It is too underpowered and limited for professionals, and it costs too damn much for everyone else.
Apple needs to get a clue.
In inflation corrected USD, the Powerbook 170 costed over 8k dollars at launch.
So? I don’t follow. $4k-$5k was pretty much the norm for the time period as far as notebooks went (the few there were). For example, the Powerbook 170 was about the same price as the NEC UltraLite (a 286 based DOS “notebook”).
If there is something Im missing enlighten me…
Yes but the technology has gotten much cheaper to make. That was also a time when laptops where brand new and technology unproven. Computers weren’t as necesary and components were expensive. Now every is put together on robotic assembly lines with common pieces and common standards. In 1956 and IBM 350 hard drive with a whopping 3.75 MegaBytes cost $34,500. (http://www.jcmit.com/diskprice.htm). But I can pick a 3 TB hard drive $70.00
So why is apple trying to sell a laptop with the same technology as everybody else for 1990 prices. I can get a lenovo P50 laptop, faster process, bigger screen and it’s easy to fix for a lot less than than the low en macbook.
3. Next year they will move on to LPDDR4 and offer 32GB as an option
4. The 13-in MBP was aimed at MBA upgraders, and in fact uses the 15W U processors like the MBA. It’s also got a larger battery compared to the touchbar 13-in MBP, so it should have a longer battery life. The U processors can turbo boost up to 3.1GHz, while the H processors can turbo boost up to 3.3GHz, so I doubt the CPU performance will differ much. The real issue is actually their decision to stay with AMD for the discrete GPU instead of moving to nVidia, who has retained the performance crown for the past few generations.
5. I agree. In fact, they really should have embraced USB-c all the way by switching to it in iPhone 7 as well. That would have also eliminated the poor optics of getting rid of the headphone jack. Hopefully USB docks and USB-c ports will become more or less a standard feature on external displays in the next few years
6. I would have preferred Apple to make something a bit more innovative, like that rumoured display with integrated external GPU.
Next year? You mean three years from now. Or did you completely miss that they don’t do yearly updates on Macs anymore? Next year it will the Mac Pros turn as it turns four, and they will replace it with something even more laughable and useless, I am guessing a chrome asstray this time, with not even remote expansion possible and even shittier GPU and twice the price.
It’s not like Intel is making significant updates to their CPU line-up on an annual basis either, but LPDDR4 is support is coming with Cannonlake, provided it doesn’t get delayed into 2018.
Apple sees external expansion as the future, which is why they dropped internal expasion slots in the Mac Pro. That still doesn’t excuse their lack of updates (esp. on the GPU side). I am hoping they will unveil good external GPU solutions in the new year (perhaps with two TB3 links if one link fails to provide sufficient bandwidth.
According to this review of the Razer Core [1], graphics performance over TB3 is still limited indeed.
I believe Apple will refrain from offering such a solution at least until performance gains are not limited by the connection.
Even then, I strongly doubt they will offer such solutions. I don’t believe they see external expansion as the future. I rather think that the need of external expansions is just a byproduct of their aesthetic approach to computer engineering, favouring thinness over everything else.
[1] https://www.engadget.com/2016/10/22/razer-blade-stealth-core-review/
Macs (all flavors) have always been impractical. It was their “shiny-ness” and svelte that made people buy them. Didn’t matter if they felt like long sharp spikes driven into their eyeballs to use… didn’t matter. Didn’t matter if college education funds were tapped to buy one. Didn’t matter. Didn’t matter if everything cost money on them. Didn’t matter. Keyboards that were horrible… Didn’t matter. Exapansion that was horrible or very expensive. Didn’t matter. Slippery devices breaking all the time. Didn’t matter. Slim and terribly awkward. Didn’t matter. Long time between updates. Didn’t matter.
Suddenly… it seems to matter. Interesting.
(I have an MBA…that is Macbook Air, an iPad and an iMac… as a part of the work I do… oh, and I don’t do Windows)
Let all the Apple lovers hate me… (cuz I know it coming). I’m not a Mac-hater, just pointing out there is a different reason why people choose Mac. Just normally poeple line up for miles to get the new shiny Apple thing… even when it didn’t add that much feature wise… now all of the sudden that matters?
People were right to be worried when Steve Jobs died. Tim Cook is a moron who has allowed beancounters (sales and marketing people as Jobs called them) to take over.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1rXqD6M614
They’ve also removed the ability completely to replace a standard hard drive in the Macbook. Most people wouldn’t have done this of course, but from a developer perspective it was possible. Instead they’ve got an expensive SSD in there with a custom controller, which probably accounts for a lot of the cost increase, presumably just to close this avenue off. It serves no useful purpose whatsoever. When you get a company desperate to lock you in to that extent and that’s one of the only ‘new’ ideas they can come up with they are truly lost.
Apple, and Steve Jobs, have always been an acquired taste but you can’t deny that he, and his Apple, always had a clear purpose in what they were doing. When components got removed they were removed for a fairly clear purpose. The optical drive could have been taken out many years ago, but people still have CD collections to rip and creative people still use them for storage. Jobs would have probably viewed the removal of the audio jack to sell bluetooth earphones more as a failure of the product itself. Cook’s Apple is a rudderless mess which will go the way of Sculley’s Apple.
If Apple loses developers it will also lose creative people as a domino effect which then affects the iPhone and their other products. How can developers create anything for the iPhone when their Macs are shit? Apple and Cook just don’t understand how these things fit together.
Edited 2016-10-31 15:43 UTC
To be fair, user replaceable hard drives in MacBook Pros are a recent phenomenon. My Santa Rosa MacBook Pro is screwed together with no access to the internals except for battery and RAM. You can crack it open to get to the hard drive and optical drive but rarely, if ever, without leaving a permanent trace.
It wasn’t until until the unibody design when Apple relented and user upgrades became a thing.
My point here is that they have done this, across the board, for no reason whatsoever other than to hack people off and increase the cost of the machines for no benefit whatsoever.
I’m pretty sure they aren’t upgradeable even at an Apple store, so you’d have to throw your Macbook away and get a new one – and the new Macs don’t even represent the cutting edge of hardware specs. Does anyone really need a thinner Mac than what’s been available?
Strangely, the mid-2012 Macbook still sold very well years later………
https://marco.org/2016/01/04/md101ll-a
I have a mid-2012 Mac with two 500GB SSDs, one running Windows, the other running Mac OS and replaced the DVD drive to do it when I really no longer needed it. It will be my last Mac unless things change.
Microsoft must be laughing their asses off.
Edited 2016-11-01 15:28 UTC
I don’t get the “lost touch” thing. It’s not an HP workstation in a laptop. And ok, I’m a bit disappointed about that. It also isn’t a 22-inch Wacom tablet. In fact, it’s not a lot of things.
So whilst those extreme use cases are genuine needs, not everyone needs them. A lot of pro work is industry specific and there’s a lot of different industries.
I don’t see anyone complaining the Surface Studio can’t take 128GB RAM. (I have an HP workstation for that). I wouldn’t recommend a Studio to architects, as they spend all their time with a different set of needs.
So, it would be better to just make a list of the industries that this laptop better suits, and maybe that’s mostly audio, video, and anyone who wants a generally good laptop.
Also, the one extreme that Apple has built in, the Apple-watch-on-a-touchbar, to secure ApplePay, is indeed extreme and useful to everyone who wants ApplePay.
Apple are quite capable of doing extremes; the hard thing is picking the right extremes. Too many pros seem to assume that their own industry is the most important, methinks.
I think Apple has lost it’s way. I’ve been saving up for years for a new Macbook once my late 2011 Macbook pro dies.. (still works great.)
But with the price of the new macbooks out of the world and the hardware no better than a $600 lenovo, I can’t justify buying one. Even some of the apps that kept me on Mac, like aperture (Oh how I miss you. Lightroom sucks. Photos app stinks), pages and others, I can now easily move to linux or windows and be fine. Of course there are ways to run macOs on other platforms if you don’t mind a little work and living in the grey world.
Sad to see where apple is going. Microsoft and Google are cleaning their clocks. No wonder macbook sales are dropping no one can afford them!
Forget pros. This loss of focus seems to be at a more fundamental level, and it’s been going on before this new MBP with emoji-bar was released.
You get iPhones that ship with USB-A to Lightning cables, yet neither MacBook nor the Pro come with anything (either built-in or included in the box) that lets you plug them in for charging/syncing/encrypted-backup. No bloggers, you’re not weaseling your way out of this argument with iCloud bullshit.
If keeping customers within their ecosystem is so important to them, I can’t fathom how they’d release a bunch of products which require adapters to interconnect. They go on and on about the future being wireless when justifying the removal of the headphone jack on iPhones, yet when you bring the Mac into this “future”, it starts resembling some hentai anime tentacle fest with dongles and wires all over the place. Sure, Apple has always been obsessed with forcing newer stuff on customers before it’s even feasible/practical, but I can’t remember the last time that inconvenience affected connectivity between their own products and created a tablespace full of messy cables in the process.
Anyone remember the film Kung Pow? That scene where that villain dude was looking at paintings going “tiger, tiger… birdy, birdy” in that weird dubbed voice? I can imagine Tim Cook, or whoever it is running Apple from the shadows (my money’s on Dr. Dre), looking at Apple current lineup and going “dongle, dongle, dongle” in that same voice.
I’ll be keeping my late 2013 MBP till it dies.
Edited 2016-10-31 16:20 UTC
Apple lost their mojo and found emojis…
Apple sells lifestyle products. I think the mistake is that many people see them as a “technology” company, and in a sense they may have been… maybe 20ish years ago. But if you look at their financials, apple spends a ridiculously low percentage in either research or development, it’s mainly a packaging/marketing operation really.
E.g. The mac pro line has been consistently stagnant for almost a decade at this point. It’s been consistently 1 to 2 processor generations behind its competitors. The current macbook pro is already outdate processor-wise. Etc, etc.
But 99% of their consumers don’t care, because they’re not buying specs, they’re buying a lifestyle.
I keep seeing statements like this, and I’ve yet to figure out exactly what they’re supposed to mean. Do you even know what it means? What lifestyle are they buying exactly? This is an honest question, because these statements have always made less sense to me than even shoving a car analogy into every computer discussion, and they have the ring of something repeated but not understood.
It’s very simple; computing devices are now commoditized, they’re another appliance, a part of a lifestyle… apple targets the high end of that market, which is why they’re basically selling fashion statements.
The comparison with cars is very apt; most people who buy a luxury sedan know two shits about mechanics nor are they expert drivers, they don’t give two shits about what’s under the hood, in fact they won’t go anywhere near trying to fix their car (that’s what the dirty mechanics in the dealer are for). They’re purchasing a status symbol. And if you see apple, they’re pretty much modeled themselves as an auto company, down to the apple store being a kind of auto dealer showroom.
That’s why techies are constantly misreading apple, they’re not their target market. In fact, computer techies stopped being the main target of the computing market a while ago. That’s why techie “friendly” products are now the niche, not the mainstream they were 2+ decades ago.
The main problem with apple now is not that they’re technologically stagnant, as much as they’re getting lifestyle stagnant. They’re losing the fashion halo, since their designs are getting long in the tooth and look like the same thing over and over again.
Edited 2016-10-31 20:42 UTC
No, they buy them to get stuff done and have things generally work in a way that doesn’t quite happen with other machines.
I am in no rush to get a new MacBook Pro. Mine is less then 2 years old and it’s doing fine.
I didn’t see anything in the new MacBook Pro that made me want to get it right away ( the touch bar isn’t helpful since I use a big monitor, a keyboard and mouse ).
That said I don’t think there is anything wrong with the MacBook Pro. I mean it’s a laptop, what exactly should change?
For the record I also have a newish Razer Blade Stealth, which I also really like but I prefer macOS as I am a developer that works mostly with Unix tools, iOS, and Android and all these work much better on macOS then on Windows ( and although I love Linux, on servers, it’s a pain in the butt on the desktop ).
I also want to add that I REALLY thought highly of the innovations Microsoft introduced in the Surface Desktop ( is that it’s name? ). I don’t use windows and I am not a ‘creative’ so I don’t think it’s for me but it’s still a really good product.
I do think Apple has become less innovative without Steve Jobs. I also think it’s become somewhat ‘confused’ in it’s execution. There are too many products which are seemingly abandoned: MacPro, iMac, MacMini.
Then there are products that Apple is just doing a bad job with like Siri and Home.
Given Apple’s wealth this is pretty inexcusable.
Back in the day, Apple released 10.2 and was trying to make a high end UNIX (-like) RISC workstation.
Then 10.5 came along, an era had passed, they moved to intel and decided to make money from iTunes rather than good quality computers to attract nerds.
The avalanche has stared; It is no longer time for the pebbles to vote. – Kosh
Give reasons to buy power. Until then, I’m OUT.
That was the mistake that Microsoft had made. If in the long term you are developer unfriendly it will bite you back.
Early versions of OS X was a joy to do real work on. The UI was simplified so you are not fussing about trying to get it to work, and having the OS do it. But you had quick and easy access to go further and the features that let you do stuff beyond simple computing.
Later versions they started to be more media focused which got to a point where it wasn’t a good OS to use for real work. And I switched back to Linux, because I needed to do the work. Not have a bunch of full screen apps.
“high end RISC” workstations were going the way of the dodo by 2000. That was a dying market, given their financials it seems Apple was extremely correct in not pursuing that market.
Besides when 10.2 was released, Apple’s top of the line machines were running G4s that by that point were severely outclassed by competing x86 designs. The G5 kept pace for a very short while. But by the end of its run it was being outperformed by x86 chips costing way less, and using less energy to boot which was fundamental for the laptop space where most of the mac growth was happening.
In any case, RISC or CISC has been a meaningless distinction since the turn of the century. Plus, very few people work developing compilers or very low level OS work, 99.99% of the rest of developer really don’t care about ISAs.
Edited 2016-11-01 23:30 UTC
Maybe the new touch bar is great. I don’t know, I haven’t used it. But the big problem I see is a big problem I am seeing in technology everywhere, not just apple. That problem is removing highly used and useful features to make room for something they usually doesn’t do the job nearly as well as the old thing did. Mainly so the companies can give the illusion that they are innovating, to manipulate people into buying something again that they already have.
Some examples:
From my observation by watching the videos of the touch bar; the one thing I see is that they replaced the function keys. Those are still used by a lot of things. Common keyboard shortcuts are now at very least a pain to use. Also, replacing the volume buttons with some bar that may or may not have a replacement depending on what application you are using is not great. Just because a music player isn’t in the foreground, doesn’t mean you don’t want to control the volume without having to switch to that application.
Or this trend where laptops replace real buttons for some half assed functioning “the touch pad IS the button!!” thing. Yes, apple does a good job with this. But it still doesn’t work as well as real buttons. You still cant push the left and right buttons at the same time. And the non apple ones that try this.. Well, anyone who has tried to use them doesn’t need me to tell them how many times they wanted to throw their laptop through the nearest window.
But who cares if its less useful or just plain doesn’t work.. Its looks cooler, right?
Edited 2016-10-31 21:35 UTC
I currently own a MBP, and it works great for what I do. I’m a software developer and my desktop of choice is macOS as it has all the unix tooling I need, plus a hassle free desktop environment. I used to run Linux in my laptops but battery life was horrible, and suspend was hit or miss. With the MBP I simply close the lid and forget about it. Next time I need to use it I simply open the lid and get back to work.
My main concern with the magic bar is how it will be supported by the applications I use the most. Take Emacs for example: right now I have several function keys mapped to common operations. My keyboard is setup so that I have regular function keys, and if I press the fn key I get the OS controls such as volume, brightness, mission control, etc. From what I’ve read, macOS will require you to use the fn key to get regular function keys, which is exactly the opposite from what I need.
If I need an additional key to trigger my frequently used operations in Emacs, then it loses the appeal of having them mapped to function keys to begin with. Hopefully it will be configurable so that you get regular function keys by default, but using the fn key would change the magic bar display and show you the application defined controls, if any.
They mentioned during the keynote there is a specific touchbar mode for Terminal.app, so I am pretty sure you can customize it to display all of the function keys you need.
That must be why Tim Cook has an iMac on his desk as his office computer.
He still doesn’t understand it I’m afraid.
Best. Argument. Ever. Somebody give this man an award!
Edited 2016-11-01 17:42 UTC
I don’t disagree with the take that apple is moving away from separating production macs from regular user macs. I am not particularly happy about it.
It should be noted though, that most of the commenters at this site, Thom included, refused to believe that any professionals actually used macs in critical ways for the last, what, 25 years?
What you didn’t seem to understand then and perhaps also now, is that the main thing professionals worry about is reliability/uptime/support costs.
Macs have beat other platforms for support cost since the beginning of time, partly due to the software design style, party due to the combined ecosystem, partly due to smaller workgroup sizes. But it’s always something ignored by an Apple take-down.
…what? You’re gonna need a source for that.
Edited 2016-11-01 21:59 UTC
No, what you don’t seem to understand is that not all professionals think like you do.
I am a professional (done software development for a living for over 15 years now – I think it qualifies!), and I do care about lots of other things besides how likely they are to break. That kind of thing hasn’t worried me with any of the main OSes since the late 90’s.