5 ms·

I think the "16GB limit" thing is a red herring. That's more than enough for plenty of people, including many developers. What I'm still annoyed about is, wher

I think the "16GB limit" thing is a red herring. That's more than enough for plenty of people, including many developers. What I'm still annoyed about is, where are the low-end laptops? Where are the new desktops? The MBP still looks like a very good laptop, but it's worrying that Apple seem to want to push everyone to use basically a single model. They have a wider range of up-to-date iPads than Macs at this point.

digi_owl 10y ago
Has that not always been the Apple MO? Very few models that gets iterated on at intervals?
- iainmerrick 10y ago
  Not really, although they're far more disciplined than most of their competitors. Besides the MBP they have the Mac Mini, Mac Pro, iMac and MacBook Air. They're just choosing to let them languish without updates right now. They also have three sizes of iPad and three sizes of iPhone (although it's not clear whether the smallest iPhone will survive). I would have thought four macOS form factors (laptop/desktop, cheap/pro) and four iOS form factors (tablet/phone, big/small) would make sense. They don't seem to care about either "desktop" or "cheap" for macOS, but they have big/medium/small for iOS. I'm not running one of the most successful businesses of all time, though, so my opinion doesn't count for much. I suppose you have to give them the benefit of the doubt for knowing what their customers actually need.
  - nicky0 10y ago
    You missed one: the MacBook.
    - iainmerrick 10y ago
      Yes! It's weird that they don't more clearly distinguish it from the MacBook Pro. The Air was clearly their light and (relatively) cheap model, after that first expensive prototype, but it's really not clear what the MacBook is for.
      - nicky0 10y ago
        I have one, it is incredibly thin and light, even an Air seems chunky in comparison. It's a very nice, general purpose, highly portable computer.
neolefty 10y ago
Here are my guesses: Cheap low-end laptops = not profitable Expensive low-end laptop = MacBook / iPad Desktops = not popular enough to update frequently (desktops have become a small sliver of the laptop market which is itself a small piece of the computer market) Based on profitability alone, I would not be surprised to see Apple exit the computer market entirely and sell only iOS devices. Macs may only be around anymore to run XCode, from the perspective of strict business necessity. Port that to another platform and Apple can narrow its focus to iOS. Can you imagine the internals of XCode for Windows? It would make the iTunes Windows compatibility layers look small.
- iainmerrick 10y ago
  I totally agree. I think it's short-sighted of them. I'm not even sure whether I want to be right or wrong! Their approach pisses me off, but it's fairly likely I'll just grumble and make the best of it like Mac users always have. They do have a history of massive success with "disappointing" products.
- cpr 10y ago
  There are tens of thousands of people at Apple who will only ever use Macs. That alone is enough for them keep making them forever.
  - iainmerrick 10y ago
    No it's not. If they can unceremoniously dump CD drives, headphone jacks and the MagSafe connector, they can tell all their employees that if they want a desktop computer they can expense something from Dell. I don't get the impression that rank-and-file Apple employees are valued and empowered, quite the reverse.
    - cpr 10y ago
      I can't imagine there's a single Dell machine inside Apple being used by the rank-and-file (not for specific OS-related or server-related development).
- 10y ago
Gravityloss 10y ago
But if 16 GB is more than enough, and you already have that, why upgrade in the first place?
- iainmerrick 10y ago
  Right now I only have 8GB. :) The current MBP lineup seems overpriced and underspecced, so I'm not going to upgrade yet. I plan to get one of those terabyte SSD upgrades (see http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/04/owcs-aura-ssds-are-a-good-way-to-add-storage-to-newer-macbooks-with-caveats/ http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/04/owcs-aura-ssds-are-a-go...) to keep my old MBP ticking over as long as possible.

digi_owl 10y ago

Has that not always been the Apple MO? Very few models that gets iterated on at intervals?

iainmerrick 10y ago
Not really, although they're far more disciplined than most of their competitors. Besides the MBP they have the Mac Mini, Mac Pro, iMac and MacBook Air. They're just choosing to let them languish without updates right now. They also have three sizes of iPad and three sizes of iPhone (although it's not clear whether the smallest iPhone will survive). I would have thought four macOS form factors (laptop/desktop, cheap/pro) and four iOS form factors (tablet/phone, big/small) would make sense. They don't seem to care about either "desktop" or "cheap" for macOS, but they have big/medium/small for iOS. I'm not running one of the most successful businesses of all time, though, so my opinion doesn't count for much. I suppose you have to give them the benefit of the doubt for knowing what their customers actually need.
- nicky0 10y ago
  You missed one: the MacBook.
  - iainmerrick 10y ago
    Yes! It's weird that they don't more clearly distinguish it from the MacBook Pro. The Air was clearly their light and (relatively) cheap model, after that first expensive prototype, but it's really not clear what the MacBook is for.
    - nicky0 10y ago
      I have one, it is incredibly thin and light, even an Air seems chunky in comparison. It's a very nice, general purpose, highly portable computer.

neolefty 10y ago

Here are my guesses: Cheap low-end laptops = not profitable Expensive low-end laptop = MacBook / iPad Desktops = not popular enough to update frequently (desktops have become a small sliver of the laptop market which is itself a small piece of the computer market) Based on profitability alone, I would not be surprised to see Apple exit the computer market entirely and sell only iOS devices. Macs may only be around anymore to run XCode, from the perspective of strict business necessity. Port that to another platform and Apple can narrow its focus to iOS. Can you imagine the internals of XCode for Windows? It would make the iTunes Windows compatibility layers look small.

iainmerrick 10y ago
I totally agree. I think it's short-sighted of them. I'm not even sure whether I want to be right or wrong! Their approach pisses me off, but it's fairly likely I'll just grumble and make the best of it like Mac users always have. They do have a history of massive success with "disappointing" products.
cpr 10y ago
There are tens of thousands of people at Apple who will only ever use Macs. That alone is enough for them keep making them forever.
- iainmerrick 10y ago
  No it's not. If they can unceremoniously dump CD drives, headphone jacks and the MagSafe connector, they can tell all their employees that if they want a desktop computer they can expense something from Dell. I don't get the impression that rank-and-file Apple employees are valued and empowered, quite the reverse.
  - cpr 10y ago
    I can't imagine there's a single Dell machine inside Apple being used by the rank-and-file (not for specific OS-related or server-related development).
10y ago

Gravityloss 10y ago

But if 16 GB is more than enough, and you already have that, why upgrade in the first place?

iainmerrick 10y ago
Right now I only have 8GB. :) The current MBP lineup seems overpriced and underspecced, so I'm not going to upgrade yet. I plan to get one of those terabyte SSD upgrades (see http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/04/owcs-aura-ssds-are-a-good-way-to-add-storage-to-newer-macbooks-with-caveats/ http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/04/owcs-aura-ssds-are-a-go...) to keep my old MBP ticking over as long as possible.