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I've been reading (and editing and publishing) the same "When will Apple once again start caring about high-end creative professionals who put serious demands o

I've been reading (and editing and publishing) the same "When will Apple once again start caring about high-end creative professionals who put serious demands on their machines?" article for over a decade, now. I mean, I agree with a lot of what's in this piece. But this idea of the Mac as cutting-edge creative powerhouse with tons of horsepower under the hood is a fantasy that dates back to the PPC/RISC days. Every now and then Apple comes out with a new Mac Pro design, or the XServe, or another new Mac Pro design, or manages to cram a leading-edge CPU or GPU into one of their computers. But those rare moments of genuine high-end leadership are the exception, rather than the rule. All of Apple's innovation eggs are in the iOS basket now. All of them. And before that they were in the "creatives who work out of Starbucks" basket. They haven't been in the "I need to crunch serious numbers to make cool things" basket since before the Cold War ended. Apple has been a lifestyle brand for creative types and creative type wannabes, and not the heir to, say, SGI, for a very very very long time.

symfoniq 10y ago
I think this an accurate summation of the state of things. It just took some of us longer to realize it than others. Apple and I simply don't agree on what matters in a computer anymore. My current MacBook Pro will be my last. I've purchased a ThinkPad and am beginning to transition my work over to it. My ThinkPad isn't the sort of machine that most people need or want, and certainly not the sort that Apple is interested in building these days, but I think it will meet my needs perfectly. It already feels nice not needing a dongle just to plug in an Ethernet cable.
- 72deluxe 10y ago
  I think you're right, although I would say 2012 was still a good year for devs, given Snow Leopard and the Macs they released then (my 2012 is the last with all the ports and a DVD drive, for example). It was before the iOS features were heavily pushed to OSX. I think it is very sad but I too am considering migration of my life to a ThinkPad after this MacBook dies. That'll be a really sad time for me because I don't fully understand Microsoft's vision for the future, and certainly don't want to go back to Linux (I grew tired of everything breaking all the time and incessant change for no reason). Out of interest, what ThinkPad are you looking at?
  - symfoniq 10y ago
    I went with the P50, as connectivity options were more important to me than weight or thickness. Agreed that the Snow Leopard era was a high point.
  - slantyyz 10y ago
    >> (my 2012 is the last with all the ports and a DVD drive, for example) Don't forget that you can replace the RAM and HDD with commodity parts. And you can also remove the DVD drive, drop in a cage and stick another sata drive in there too.
    - 72deluxe 10y ago
      I did indeed upgrade the RAM to 16GB. It is the top i7 model, so has the Intel and nvidia GPU for graphics switching.d I am looking to upgrade the 750GB to a 1TB SSD as the only thing holding it back is the very slow disk bottleneck. Having said that, it is a very capable machine and covers all my needs (I record my band's gigs using the FireWire interface and an external audio interface, and can burn the recordings to CD for my computer-shy drummer, who is in his 50s), and it makes a good dev machine with OSX and Windows 10 on bootcamp (and in parallels when under OSX). Although the only sore point about it is the resolution, I cannot see an equivalent or replacement machine in Apple's current offerings, which says an awful lot I feel.
  - jonstokes 10y ago
    Agreed. Snow Leopard was the pinnacle of OS X for me. I grow less and less interested in each subsequent version.
- renaudg 10y ago
  "It already feels nice not needing an external device just to use a goddamn 3.5in disk" (iMac, 1998) "It already feels nice not needing an external superdrive just to use a DVD" (Macbook Pro, 2012)
pinaceae 10y ago
a metric shit-ton of execs all over the globe are now using MacBooks of all sorts. and iPads. see for yourself - sit down in any airport lounge in big hubs and observe. i have seen so many presentations go haywire because windows machines started updates, etc - execs got seriously tired of that shit. the touchbar, if paired with the Ribbon interface in MS Office, is going after exactly that user group. and they have the money. see also IBM's press release this week how Macs have far better TCO than windows machines within IBM (50k Macs in an environment of 400k employees).

symfoniq 10y ago

I think this an accurate summation of the state of things. It just took some of us longer to realize it than others. Apple and I simply don't agree on what matters in a computer anymore. My current MacBook Pro will be my last. I've purchased a ThinkPad and am beginning to transition my work over to it. My ThinkPad isn't the sort of machine that most people need or want, and certainly not the sort that Apple is interested in building these days, but I think it will meet my needs perfectly. It already feels nice not needing a dongle just to plug in an Ethernet cable.

72deluxe 10y ago
I think you're right, although I would say 2012 was still a good year for devs, given Snow Leopard and the Macs they released then (my 2012 is the last with all the ports and a DVD drive, for example). It was before the iOS features were heavily pushed to OSX. I think it is very sad but I too am considering migration of my life to a ThinkPad after this MacBook dies. That'll be a really sad time for me because I don't fully understand Microsoft's vision for the future, and certainly don't want to go back to Linux (I grew tired of everything breaking all the time and incessant change for no reason). Out of interest, what ThinkPad are you looking at?
- symfoniq 10y ago
  I went with the P50, as connectivity options were more important to me than weight or thickness. Agreed that the Snow Leopard era was a high point.
- slantyyz 10y ago
  >> (my 2012 is the last with all the ports and a DVD drive, for example) Don't forget that you can replace the RAM and HDD with commodity parts. And you can also remove the DVD drive, drop in a cage and stick another sata drive in there too.
  - 72deluxe 10y ago
    I did indeed upgrade the RAM to 16GB. It is the top i7 model, so has the Intel and nvidia GPU for graphics switching.d I am looking to upgrade the 750GB to a 1TB SSD as the only thing holding it back is the very slow disk bottleneck. Having said that, it is a very capable machine and covers all my needs (I record my band's gigs using the FireWire interface and an external audio interface, and can burn the recordings to CD for my computer-shy drummer, who is in his 50s), and it makes a good dev machine with OSX and Windows 10 on bootcamp (and in parallels when under OSX). Although the only sore point about it is the resolution, I cannot see an equivalent or replacement machine in Apple's current offerings, which says an awful lot I feel.
- jonstokes 10y ago
  Agreed. Snow Leopard was the pinnacle of OS X for me. I grow less and less interested in each subsequent version.
renaudg 10y ago
"It already feels nice not needing an external device just to use a goddamn 3.5in disk" (iMac, 1998) "It already feels nice not needing an external superdrive just to use a DVD" (Macbook Pro, 2012)

pinaceae 10y ago

a metric shit-ton of execs all over the globe are now using MacBooks of all sorts. and iPads. see for yourself - sit down in any airport lounge in big hubs and observe. i have seen so many presentations go haywire because windows machines started updates, etc - execs got seriously tired of that shit. the touchbar, if paired with the Ribbon interface in MS Office, is going after exactly that user group. and they have the money. see also IBM's press release this week how Macs have far better TCO than windows machines within IBM (50k Macs in an environment of 400k employees).