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How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

• bjarneh 10y ago
  The lack of attention could perhaps be caused by the death of the man who brought the attention?
  • protomyth 10y ago
    I'm also starting to suspect that Scott Forstall wasn't really the problem, and that the firing of Sal Soghoian is just another symptom of not getting the Mac.
• stanislavb 10y ago
  And that could be the beginning of the end. Yes, it might be slow; however, once devs start migrating to other platforms, it could become a serious hit on Apple.
  • equalarrow 10y ago
    Most of the people I work with use Python, Swift/Obj-C, Sketch, and Ruby. Every single one has a Mac laptop. I don't see any of these people switching soon. I've played around with Linux (Elementary and Fedora) and it's usable for most of the Ruby and Python guys, but it's just not the same. Not the same attention to detail (even with macOS shortcomings) and not the same apps. Windows 10, similar thing. It's getting better, but it still feels overly complicated and kludgy. macOS isn't the be all end all - it still has its issues, but I don't see anyone but the hardcore crowd defecting anytime soon. I think a lot would have to change at Apple in order for this to happen. Like, several cpu series behind or just blatant massive missteps. (Some would argue these have happened, but I don't think so yet.)
    • indymike 10y ago
      Most people I know in the Python universe bought Macs because for the past 5-6 years other PC makers would have hundreds of models and one or two decent ones... and those are usually special order or "business" computers you can't just run out and buy. OS wasn't the issue. Actually, MacOS is a PITA compared to Linux if you are developing for Linux... file locations are different, commands are different enough and GNU gettext makes autocomplete in the terminal work much better (i.e. tab completion for command parameters and other such magic). When you buy a Mac, it's the same thing if you get it from Apple or at any retailer. I ended up on Mac because Dell delayed an XPS-13 three times. I had to go to PyCon, so we ended up buying a MacBook Pro the day before I left. I've got two laptops since then, and both have been Macs because I can just go get one... they are all good computers.
    • rikkus 10y ago
      I am a developer(-ish) who used a Macbook for a while because Windows used to be awful and 'PC' laptops used to be dreadful. Thanks must go to Apple for taking the lead and showing how laptops could be really good. - They work hard on optimising for power use, so you can leave the power adapter behind (sometimes) - They showed that it's possible for your machine to be ready to use the second you open the lid - They proved touchpads can be a joy to use - They saw that high res screens were something people actually want - They popularised a new style of keyboard which seems to be generally well-liked (writing this on a ThinkPad T450s... with a chiclet-ish keyboard, and liking it!) I fear that if they turn away from their 'Pro' laptops, the industry will stagnate again and we'll all be cursing the cheap creaking plastic and terrible pointing devices on our Toshibas or Fujitsus. Just as we notice there's no battery left. I'm liking Windows 10 on a ThinkPad, but I'm using the TrackPoint / a mouse, because, while the trackpad is improved, if it's not 99% as good as a Macbook's, they might as well not bother (I've switched it off). Also, 3.5 hours remaining after 30 minutes of use, most of it typing this comment. I carry a power adapter.
• scrrr 10y ago
  For me, there's still no alternative. And I also will not recommend anything but a Mac to friends and family. They just have the best personal computer on the market, period.
  • kris-s 10y ago
    Not to mention the added benefit of being able to say "Take it the Apple store".
    • deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    • natch 10y ago
      Not to mention the benefit of taking your own to the Apple store when needed. And the insane degree to which they bend over backwards to fix things free, even more so if you bought direct from Apple and have AppleCare.
    • izacus 10y ago
      Well... unless the closest one is two countries away. :P
  • cupofjoakim 10y ago
    This response would've been exactly what I'd say like a year ago. The thing is that while a mac has in history delivered a better experience I'm not quite sure that's still the case. If you're buying premium hardware for a windows machine you'll still get a very stabile workstation. I think it's just a tool in a toolbox and that your personal choice should depends on what you're using it for. Actually, hadn't it been for xcode being macOS only, i'd probably be on a linux machine right now, and if I worked more with 3D modelling I'd be on a windows machine due to the better availability of hardware/software.
  • ythn 10y ago
    Out of all the devices I've ever owned, my Apple devices have had the most hardware failures. My iPhone 4S's headphone jack stopped working. I bought a replacement and installed it myself (which was a nightmare) but it was still broken. Turns out the logic board had an issue and replacing that is hundreds of dollars. My Macbook Pro 2010's hard drive cable failed. New one was $50. I've never had any hardware issues with my PCs or Android phones. Sure, they arguably have more software issues, but those are "free" for me to fix. Apple may be a good fit for some people, but it's too expensive for my blood. I'm not paying $1500 for a laptop only to shell out another $50 a year later for a hard drive cable. That's bullcrap considering my $150 chromebook has been running for 4 years now with 0 issues.
• rch 10y ago
  Has anyone taken the Novena laptop designs and tried to produce an updated version? Seems like fairly obvious Kickstarter material there. https://www.kosagi.com/w/index.php?title=Novena_Main_Page https://www.kosagi.com/w/index.php?title=Novena_Main_Page
  • anexprogrammer 10y ago
    https://puri.sm/ https://puri.sm/ seem to have picked up that baton. Looking at their machines, pretty successfully too. If they can survive and get past teething issues and a couple of silly choices they could have a great future.
    • rch 10y ago
      The 15"/i7 looks really nice. Thanks! I'd still be interested in a true Novena successor too though. The integrated FPGA for instance...
  • pjc50 10y ago
    It's only just shipped, hasn't it? The main obstacle there is finding an "updated" suitably open main processor, that's why it uses an iMX6 in the first place. It's also not really a suitable device for anyone who isn't an electronics engineer. The basic configuration doesn't even come with a case.
    • rch 10y ago
      I think the standard models went out over a year ago: https://twitter.com/novenakosagi/status/636063705399103489 https://twitter.com/novenakosagi/status/636063705399103489 As much as I like the engineer's version, improving the ergonomics would be an area of value-add for an independent iteration. An update to the original would be welcome at some point too, but it might be a while.
• dragonbonheur 10y ago
  Maybe the time is right for SGI to get back into making workstations again now that Apple doesn't seem to care as much as before.
  • rch 10y ago
    How about Cray? This was my favorite workstation: > typical tower form-factor (a little oversized) > maximum of eight modular single-width blades > active noise cancellation system built into the cooling apparatus > modules could be optimized for compute, storage, or visualization > redundant power supplies designed to support traditional office power > integrated network switches for Ethernet and/or Infiniband https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray_CX1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray_CX1 http://wwwjp.cray.com/images_jp/side-by-side-cx1-painted.jpg http://wwwjp.cray.com/images_jp/side-by-side-cx1-painted.jpg
  • DigitalJack 10y ago
    Why? Just buy something from newegg and call it "workstation." Apple has two things going for them: top notch physical quality laptops and macOs. That's really it. Who cares how shiny a desktop workstation is... ideally you don't even see it. the only reason to buy a desktop from Apple is macOs. And if that doesn't matter to you, why by from apple at all? And for that matter why buy a desktop from anyone when you can put them together yourself like legos.
    • dragonbonheur 10y ago
      Why? Because a lot of people are begging for a Mac Pro upgrade. Not a concept trashcan computer, not a thinner laptop. A serious computer for serious people who do serious work like video editing, special effects, running TV studios, high performance computing, chemical engineering, etc.
    • TylerE 10y ago
      There are more useful attributes to a well-made desktop system than "shiny". "Quiet" is a big one.
• bryanrasmussen 10y ago
  Well I've migrated back to Windows for my latest computer, but part of that was also because I already had a reasonably functioning mac ( although starting to stumble) and ubuntu installation. I plan on buying another mac later next year - however that is because my wife is a mac loyalist. to say that losing developers is losing mac loyalists is pretty weird actually, traditionally developers have not been the core mac loyalist profile.
  • jasonlotito 10y ago
    Traditionally, no. But they are the canaries in the coal mine. I remember the articles coming out about "alpha geeks" moving to Macs after Apple moved to a Unix desktop. In truth, I'm happy to see the migration. It just means competition. Apple will need to step up their game. They can't rest on their laurels.
  • HillaryBriss 10y ago
    look at all of the official android SDK developers who work at Google. it's Macintosh all the way down.
    • bryanrasmussen 10y ago
      one thing I've found at the place I'm at now where it's bring your own device because of all the consultants is that bringing your own device really screws up running any sorts of automated ui differencing tests. so that might explain Mac all the way down even if you have a choice.
• anexprogrammer 10y ago
  I find it remarkable that a company the size and profitability of Apple seems unable to do more than one thing at a time. Simply not enough engineers?
  • supergeek133 10y ago
    I work for a $40B company, albeit smaller than Apple.. it even seems like we can't do more than one thing.
    • mcherm 10y ago
      At least you can manage more than zero things...
  • tonyedgecombe 10y ago
    Sometimes size can work against you.
  • mozumder 10y ago
    A lot of it is that they think they need to create unique art projects for things that have absolutely no need for that. Bike-shedding to the max. They seriously don't need to make the Mac Pro an art product. But, I believe that there is no better personal computer experience out there right now than the Mac Book Pro.
  • visarga 10y ago
    > Simply not enough engineers? I was wondering the same thing about Windows back in 2004, when I switched to mac.
  • lobster_johnson 10y ago
    Apple does have a very different organization structure than most companies in their league, one that doesn't necessarily scale to a large number of people: http://www.vox.com/new-money/2016/11/27/13706776/apple-functional-divisional http://www.vox.com/new-money/2016/11/27/13706776/apple-funct...
• hyperliner 10y ago
  I have the same feeling about iPhone in general as I do for my Mac, as I do for my (gathering dust) Apple Watch. Maybe we are experiencing the beginning of the decline of this system class. The question could be: what could Apple do to re-energize this ecosystem and take it to its next level? Or to invent the next class of systems?
  • criddell 10y ago
    > The question could be: what could Apple do to re-energize this ecosystem and take it to its next level? Maybe you are asking the wrong question. Apple Computer is gone (2007). Maybe they don't want to re-energize their computer company roots. That would be looking backwards and Apple as a company doesn't look backwards very often (their recent book was a strange departure). Maybe Apple's future is entirely in the consumer products realm - watch, iPhone, and iPad. Doesn't Cook use an iPad Pro as his primary computer?
    • yourapostasy 10y ago
      > Doesn't Cook use an iPad Pro as his primary computer? If he does, then he has a silent, unseen team of people who smooth over the rough edges for him. As a multinational megacorporation CEO who travels the world, I'm surprised he hasn't encountered the following oversights unless someone else is hitting these and silently behind the scenes working around them for him, instead of getting them fixed. In my mind's eye, he primarily interacts with his main device via voice to an assistant team and he uses the device mostly on a consumption as opposed to a content producing role (with the exception of email), and they run into these annoyances; those times that he directly interacts with the device to key in data, in my imagination he relies on that team to fix up inconsistencies or partial workarounds. 1. Key in a phone number, select a label; all the labels are in the order entered, not alphabetically sorted (or better, sorted by a user-customized sort). 2. Key in a calendar appointment, set a timezone; the timezone search never remembers previous timezones you selected, only displays the results of the search default, wasting the user's time to key in the timezone over and over again, and wasting all the screen space on whitespace. Breaks consistency with Calendar's Recents display of locations. 3. Contact information is based upon incorrect first-last name model; search on "Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names" for all the incorrect assumptions Contacts embeds, for which users devise time-wasting workarounds. 4. In Calendar, setting Travel Time based upon Location still (on flagship iOS 10.2, iPhone 7, unlocked model) takes a very long time (sometimes as long as about a minute) instead of caching the previous 10-20 results, immediately displaying the travel time for them if any of the Location pairs' have a side that matches the currently selected Location, and filling in from the background as the search unobtrusively continues. Used to lock up Calendar and crash it about half of the time, but under 10.2 seems to return "Cannot Provide Directions: Network lost." error now with the same frequency. This happens because the feature depends upon a reliable network connection to function, and any disruption, poor latency, or just plain slow bandwidth seems to knock it off its feet instead of gracefully degrading to a best guess that is refined in the background with suitable visual cues and notifications. 5. No way to cut/copy and paste Calendar events. 6. Developers aren't invited in to build on top of Contacts and Calendar datastores to enhance with company-specific extensions. Instead, they must build the entire Contacts and Calendar user experience from scratch and try to replace it, or let users waste their time keying in that information into the Comments field. There are lots of odd little omissions and oversights like these accreting over the years. Internal promotions at big organizations like this are not built on top of fixing these, so they are allowed to fester and gradually pollute the user experience until they become hygiene issues with the platform. A way to address this is a CEO-sponsored group who is charged with fixing these, and the members of the group are granted fast-track promotion status in exchange for addressing these issues. For Apple, this should be treated as an ongoing critical area to address, because it pierces their "Just Works" veil; the only way to keep up that customer stickiness for that sobriquet is superb attention to detail.
• deedubaya 10y ago
  I still think macOS/OSX provides the best user experience for personal computing. It's the lack of substantial hardware updates which is driving users away. If creatives are going to pay a premium for a Mac, there should be something to differentiate it between the competition besides the privilege to run macOS. Heck, it should have something to differentiate it from the last model! I'll still recommend Macs for my friends and family, but will likely look towards something which is cheaper, has better hardware, and has a fucking escape key for my next purchase. Since I'll be departing from macOS and Messenger.app, I'll be opening the door to Android for my mobile when I make this switch too.
  • blankenship 10y ago
    I’ve never owned a PC. The first computer I ever used was a Macintosh II. The first desktop computer I bought was a Power Mac G3. My first laptop was that adorable little Powerbook G4. And I’ve been using an iPhone since 2007. I’m not frustrated because of the hardware — I’m frustrated because 50% of the software on my phone is made by Google, who seems to actually still care about making useable, stable software that gets how I use multiple devices. The iOS ecosystem just keeps getting worse and worse, and I keep hiding or deleting their software on their hardware.
    • kkylin 10y ago
      Ditto! My first machine was an Apple IIe, and my second a Mac SE/30. I've loved almost every Apple machine I've ever owned. The software, on the other hand, seems to get progressively worse. Not so bad to make me ditch Macs, yet, but enough to make me think about it.
    • dkonofalski 10y ago
      I don't understand how you can say that when no other ecosystem offers things like Handoff, Airdrop, and Continuity. How do you use multiple devices that Google software understands but that iCloud/iOS/macOS don't? The difference may be that you have to pay for iCloud, but you're saying that the equivalent just isn't capable.
  • Recurecur 10y ago
• systemtest 10y ago
  Sacrificing the keyboard and battery for a thinner housing was a mistake. I upgraded my Macbook Pro 13" with 16GB of memory, a 250GB SSD, a 1TB HDD and a Bluetooth 4.0 internal card. I'll keep this for a few years.
  • 72deluxe 10y ago
    I agree. I am keeping my 2012 i7 MBP for a few more years. Upgraded to 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD, still got a useful DVD writer and plethora of incredibly useful ports all without dongles! And MagSafe.
    • elliotec 10y ago
      How do you upgrade like that? I have one of the same models.
      • 72deluxe 10y ago
        The RAM involves taking the bottom off and shoving in some more sticks. Officially this can only support a maximum of 8GB but I have had no problem with 16GB. For the hard disk, it is fairly trivial too. Follow iFixit's guide: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+15-Inch+Unibody+Mid+2012+Hard+Drive+Replacement/10761 https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+15-Inch+Unibody+Mid... I went with a Samsung 850 EVO 1TB.
    • humbleMouse 10y ago
      Samsies. I love my 2012 i7 MBP. I did the same upgrades as you, super easy and it runs everything I need! To the other commenter - upgrading the hard drive to a SSD is easy, you just need a mini screwdriver and the new hard drive. Protip - I put a small piece of foam in when I replaced my HDD because the solid states are so much smaller than the spinning drives.
    • terinjokes 10y ago
      We should start a group of happy 2012 MacBook Pro users. Let's just say that I've been eligible for a work upgrade for 2, going on 3, years now. :) Unfortunately, I've lost Bluetooth at some point. I've meant to debug (and replace the card if needed).
• beat 10y ago
  My main computer is a five year old 17" MBP. I've upgraded it to the max and done repairs to maintain it. I need the computational power - I use it for programming, photo editing at scale, and recording/mixing music. It would cost me $3000 to replace it with a computer that is not significantly more powerful, has a smaller screen and less I/O functionality, and would be incompatible with my audio interface unless I daisy-chain multiple adapters to get Firewire. Fuck that, as long as possible. This week, my mother's crappy Windows computer died, and I bought her a Chromebook. It was great! I'm now seriously considering getting a Chromebook for myself for day-to-day web browsing and such, and retiring the MBP to music and photos only. If I can figure out how to run Vagrant on one, I'll probably switch for development, too (or maybe I'll just start paying for a cloud-based dev environment). Meanwhile, I keep having computer envy for a friend's MS Surface Pro. It's the first time I've ever looked longingly from a MacBook to a Windows machine! But frankly, it does things my Mac doesn't do, and the build quality is on par. Someone please tell Apple than when you need to hold a press conference to convince people you're committed to your product, you're not committed to your product.
  • superninja234 10y ago
    I honestly doubt it would cost $3000 to replace your 5 year old macbook.
    • mozumder 10y ago
      I also have the same type of maxed-out 2011 17" MacBook Pro. The replacement for that I am looking at costs $3500-$4200.
      • kobeya 10y ago
        Sorry that's just not possible. There are gamer targeted systems that are better specs than anything apple ever made (even after market upgrades) in the sun $2k range.
        • _ph_ 10y ago
• optimuspaul 10y ago
  As a Mac Loyalist I don't feel at all alienated. I am not merely a consumer and my life is more than the computer I use. I don't need or want constant attention. I think what they've been doing it great. Frankly I'm more annoying with the bloggers and media with their constant bullying of Apple. The iPhone 7 had just been announced and they were already speculating what the iPhone 8 was going to be. WTF? How about we give it some time before we start down that road.
  • elliotec 10y ago
    It appears you are in the minority. Apple has disenfranchised a lot of loyalists for a lot of reasons. Think of how absurd it is that you can't even plug in your new iPhone 7 into your new Macbook Pro.
    • dkonofalski 10y ago
      What, really? What happens when you plug it in? Does it tell you that you can't use it? Does it lock you out? Does it brick the phone? Ohhhh...you meant that you have to get an adapter. Of course you can plug the phone into the new MacBook. The only thing that might be absurd is that you might need an adapter to plug it in but, in reality, there's nothing that you'd really need to plug it in for anyways except to charge it and you get a power brick with every phone.
      • elliotec 10y ago
        It is completely absurd and user hostile that you need to buy an adapter to plug it in. I charge my phone in my laptop often.
        • dkonofalski 10y ago
          The phone comes with everything you need to charge it. It is neither absurd nor user-hostile. Inconvenient, maybe. Annoying, yes. Anything else is an exaggeration.
• al2o3cr 10y ago
  Alternate title: "How Tech Journalists Alienated Anybody Who Remembers They've Been Saying the Same Thing For Ten Years"
• _ph_ 10y ago
  More than a single event, it is the string of events which create the disappointment. While Apple is indeed bound by Intels schedule for CPU upgrades, this would not prevent Apple from regular other components in their devices. A computer like the Mini should get yearly updates - and there is no good reason to solder in the memory. While it kept the very same design, it went from a quad-core i7 to a dual-core, with fixed memory. Which then stopped to be upgraded. The versatile Mac Pro got replaced with the current can-like design, limiting the choices and then never got upgraded. If you make a machine which cannot be user-upgraded, please upgrade it every year. There is no good reason, there is no option for the current NVidia or AMD cards available. The iMac is still one of the better offerings - I got the 5k after the last refresh. However, while this gives you the fastest CPU, it only offers mobile graphics performance. There is no good reason why its internals, especially the drive bay are not user-accessible. While having a gorgeous display, why for all its expensiveness does it not offer any kind of video-in? If it had the ability to accept HDMI or DisplayPort input and display them in a special application window, that would be just great. Especially, if Apple does not focus on the desktop, why are they so reluctant to sell a more traditional desktop machine? Where the user can change the hardware, if Apple cannot be bothered to do it? All of this just adds up - and while power users in the pre-can age had at least an expensive but powerful alternative, this does not longer exist. And the other choices also get more and more limited. So it should not come as a surprise, when even the most faithful supporters get frustrated.
  • weaksauce 10y ago
    The lack of affordable storage in the retina and up laptops and even desktops has been a deal breaker for me. I am on a five year old mbp and am seriously considering a hackintosh to be a daily driver. That's a whole big can of worms though.
    • _ph_ 10y ago
      Yes, the lack of storage is really bad - the Mac Pro is the most ridiculous one, being limited to 1T of SSD in a pro machine. Fortunately for me, I was able to order the iMac with the basic HD and my Mac dealer (authorized) replaced it with a 2T Samsung SSD, though for a fee. Still, I got this for roughly the same price as the Apple 1T had cost. Otherwise I probably would not have invested into the iMac. (And what a nice machine it would be, if it had 2 bays of user accessible SSD drives...)
• HillaryBriss 10y ago
  > The affordable and flexible Mac mini was last upgraded in 2014. They made the Mac Mini a lot less flexible in 2014 than it had been.
  • DigitalJack 10y ago
    I think they probably meant "capable."
  • protomyth 10y ago
    Yeah, the 2012 models could be beefed up pretty nicely, not so with the 2014.
• FLGMwt 10y ago
  > For a 2016 MacBook update, some Apple engineers wanted to add a Touch ID fingerprint scanner and a second USB-C port (which would have made some power users happy) "power users" is humorous here, considering an additional port would allow a literal power cable and a peripheral.
• 27182818284 10y ago
  Alienated is too strong a word. Do I feel as an Apple customer a little forgotten about because I like MacBook Pros? Absolutely. Was my family members with tech surprised by the new Surface products? Absolutely. Did a long-term, self-described "Apple fan boy" complain about the releases while wearing a first generation Apple Watch? Absolutely. Alienated? Eh, I don't think any of us think badly of the Apple brand or wouldn't consider their next product. (The Surface Pro demo set to a version of Pure Imagination was more of an Apple presentation than Apple has done in the last couple of years. It is a constant horse race and the clear lead Apple had narrowed quite a bit. I was stunned by how bad their demo of the new Macbook was while the same week that had the Surface Pro. Watching them awkwardly DJ on the space of a row of keys was cringe-worthy. I'm not sure how that got green-lit)
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
• HillaryBriss 10y ago
  > To be fair, Apple depends on Intel Corp., which still makes key chips for Macs. Like the rest of the PC industry, Apple's innovation and product cycles are sometimes constrained by when Intel produces new chips—a process that's getting more difficult. So, given that constraint, maybe Apple should make it easy for the end user to upgrade everything else (e.g. RAM and flash storage) instead of really hard or impossible. But, it's more like "You're stuck with this new Intel processor which is basically similar to the previous one, so we'll just bind it as permanently as possible to all of the other components so that, when you want a larger drive, you'll have to replace the processor too." Maybe Intel is dictating this "permanent glue and solder" strategy to Apple...
• colept 10y ago
  This is where the Hackintosh market has thrived. For desktop users, size of the machine is not nearly as important as raw. computational. power. The iMac was good in its time but that time was half a decade ago. The Mac Pro was supposed to be the revolution for Mac desktops, but they neglected it for too long. And since you can't upgrade it yourself that shiny new Mac depreciates exponentially and even more so when software updates bog down resources further. Support for specific combinations of hardware is near the flawless breaking point where just about anyone could follow the guides to put together a machine that will run MacOS using near top of the line hardware. Being able to dual boot Mac and Windows, so that I can be productive and game on a high end graphics card - and not locked down in expandability is unparalleled.
  • _delirium 10y ago
    A maxed out current iMac is a pretty competitive workstation machine imo. Not especially cheap, but not prohibitive for a company. The top of the line is currently a 4.0 GHz quad-core i7 w/ 32 GB RAM (27" model w/ the memory and CPU upgrades). I have that on my desk at work and am quite happy with it.
    • colept 10y ago
      A maxed out iMac would depreciate within 5 years, and any particular part would render your entire system unusable for week(s). Three years later and Apple adds a new feature that for the slightest reason requires an entire hardware upgrade because you can't upgrade components individually. Then factor in that the thin iMacs have terrible heat dissipation which means the CPU can't run at full speed without overheating. That top of the line iMac costs four grand while a Hackintosh costs half that and gets you a top of the line graphics card and the ability to keep on par with the top of the line.
      • _delirium 10y ago
        I'm not going to claim they're really cost-competitive with PC equivalents, just that they're fast enough machines to make good workstations, and the price is within the range of what our IT considers a reasonable office workstation purchase price. At least where I work, desktop machines aren't kept for five years anyway, so I don't think this distinguishes it from any other supplier. Our standard depreciation/replacement cycle for workstations is 3 years, whether it's coming from Apple or Dell. Obviously for home use the economics are different, but then a lot of things are different there, e.g. I build PCs from parts, and there's no way work wants people to be DIY building their own office workstations. And yeah, you can spec out a comparable Dell that's cheaper (though don't forget to add in a high-quality 27" monitor!), but not by enough to really make a dent in the IT budget one way or the other.
• delegate 10y ago
  Hardware is not the only problem Apple has right now vis-a-vis developers. Apple's flagship IDE, XCode, is also lagging behind, at least when talking about C++ development, but even Swift doesn't get too much love it seems. Having used it since at least version 5, XCode 8 has been a frustrating experience for me starting from day one, when it defaulted to Swift version 3.0 and so broke all of the existing Swift projects and dependencies from CocoaPods / Carthage. Me and thousands of devs had to waste hours if not days just to build our projects - with no way to downgrade to previous XCode version. After that, I constantly struggle with syntax highlighting, unusable code completion, broken navigation and so on. And that's for Swift ! Ok, my project also has Objective-C++ and C++ code, but all of them are broken beyond frustrating. Sometimes the "comment/uncomment block" feature just stops working and the only fix is to run a magical sudo command and then restart your mac. I've revived an older Windows 7 machine just so I could compile my C++ lib on Windows. Visual Studio 2015 + Visual Assist, which I haven't used in years, was a revelation. I ended up refactoring most of my C++ code on that 7-year old machine and frankly it felt very good that I didn't have to fight the development environment, like I do on my $2500 MacBook pro. Until then, I didn't even realise how unproductive XCode made me in C++. So yeah, I'm already thinking about a 32GB of RAM, nVidia 1070 GPU, 17" monitor laptop. It costs like a Macbook pro, but punches a stronger punch at the expense of portability. I can justify all the gaming and VR that I'll do on it with the fact that it runs Visual Studio well... I wrote this to vent but also with the hope that someone at Apple is reading these comments and hopefully something will change soon.
  • bsenftner 10y ago
    XCode is the #1 reason I was never able to fully commit to a Mac. Hell, I was a Mac beta tester back in '83! (At age 17.) I've owned one, and used them as my main email machine for decades, but I never could wrap my head around the IDE poverty that is XCode. Even when I wrote Mac software, I did not use XCode, or whatever they called it back then. These days, I still have a Mac for email and it is my main system for personal web surfing, but any and all technology development takes place on some flavor of Windows or Linux. Plus, my $350 gaming desktop PC was easily upgraded to 32GB RAM and 3 4K displays - Apple can't touch that, and the entire system, counting monitors, was under $2K.
• Tistel 10y ago
  Does anyone have any more insight into what went wrong with the non rectangular (presumably higher volume) battery that they wanted? Just hard to manufacture the shape? The bad battery life on the new ones is a big challenge for their marketing group.
• mzw_mzw 10y ago
  It wasn't hard to do. Endless coy secrecy on platform refreshes, deciding what tech to use based on form factor and coolness instead of utility, and an operating system that got more bloated and unstable with each version were more than enough to drive me off.
  • 72deluxe 10y ago
    Did you consider the bloatedness related to the iCloud stuff being forced onto it or something else?
    • mzw_mzw 10y ago
      It wasn't iCloud specific, although that didn't help. More just a general sense that with every iteration of OSX, the operating system got just a little bit slower, just a little bit more unstable, the human interface standards just a little more inconsistent and unclear, and you'd have to wrestle with more built-in systems like the Mac App Store that locked things down for Apple's convenience.
• philfrasty 10y ago
  Been an Apple customer for the last 20+ years. Never have been so happy as a PRO user. (Really don't get all the „beginning of the end“ blabla)
  • rev12 10y ago
    There are many different types of professionals. The fact that the current lineup fills your needs puts you in a good position. Unfortunately, the current lineup falls short for a good deal of many other professionals in ways that you likely can't understand as you've stated in your comment.
• davidf18 10y ago
  Admittedly, for my needs the 15" models are not great. Writing and some computer programming/big data. I prefer longer battery life and a lighter/smaller 15" unit. The new unit claims to have about 2 hours more battery life than the 2015 model (see tables of battery life near end) [1]. Also important to me is nearby Apple stores to get my Mac problems looked into if I need it. Could somebody please be specific as to what the new 15" rMBP is not doing for them? [1] http://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Pro-15-Late-2016-2-6-GHz-i7-Notebook-Review.185254.0.html http://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Pro-15-Late-2016-...
  • Miredly 10y ago
    The actual problem for me (audio engineer/music production) isn't so much the new machine itself, it's that after /years/ of stagnation, at a much-hyped keynote titled "Hello Again", referencing the original Mac launch, it's the only machine we got, and it's not much better than the machine that came before it. Essentially what this signaled to me, and a lot of other people, is that Apple has lost sight of the distinction between its Pro models and its consumer stuff. The touchbar is an interesting innovation, sure, but it's better served, at least at first, as a gimmick for their consumer devices. There were a lot of design decisions that add a lot of cost for people in a lot of Creative Professional segments, including Audio and Video production, without really adding that much functionality. Sure you can use the touchbar as a scrub-wheel in ProTools-- if Avid gets around to coding it in. But even that isn't worth the $400 price bump, when most Audio guys have their own DAW controllers already. That now need adaptors. Furthermore, if you want a dedicated OS X desktop machine for your studio, what are your options? You can pay through the nose for a Mac Pro that has a couple thousand dollars worth of (now outdated) graphics cards that you don't need, along with an extra grand for a rackmounting solution that will convert your thunderbolt ports to PCI for your HDX/Dante/whatever setup, or you can buy a Mac Mini (which is itself direly in need of a refresh) and be severely limited by your RAM. And spend an extra grand to install your HDX card. So I suppose to answer your question, the rage is less about what the new rMBP isn't doing for people, and more about what wasn't released alongside it.
    • davidf18 10y ago
• bla2 10y ago
  I wonder how much of this is new. Having multiple competing prototypes is something Apple also did in the Jobs area. Attrition of "more than a dozen" doesn't sound extremely high for a year and a half. Every shipping product in this world has some of its features cut for launch, with the features often making it into v2 if the product is successful. I mean, it's an interesting article, but the same article could probably have been written 4 years ago when everyone was happier with the Mac.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• autoreleasepool 10y ago
  After being an Apple "Loyalist" for over 15 years, I recently sold my rMBP and built a desktop (i7 4790k, GTX 1080, 16Gb DDR3 @ 2933Mhz). It was by far the best hardware decision I have ever made. Building the system was an absolute blast. Plus, I now have an extremely powerful PC with first class Linux support, tons of I/O ports, and no vendor lock in. The best part is it cost me about 1/3 of the price of a (maxed-out) Mac. As for portability, I bought a ARM Chromebook and installed Xubuntu. I also have an iPad and iPhone. The three get the job done. The toughest part of leaving OS X was knowing I was also leaving hobby OS X and iOS development. And homebrew. Man, I will miss homebrew.
  • fooker 10y ago
    I am puzzled about missing homebrew.. You said you are installing Xubuntu, which comes with an excellent package manager with less issued than a brew user is likely to run into.
    • sirn 10y ago
      I think it's probably because Homebrew has all the obscure packages one might ever need, and packages in Homebrew are quite up-to-date even though it may not be extensively tested. For example, I use cocot quite often (for dealing with SJIS systems), and while cocot is in Homebrew, it's not in the Ubuntu's official repository.
      • fooker 10y ago
        It is in AUR though, and for *ubuntu distros you can always find a PPA.
        • sirn 10y ago
          I'm pretty sure AUR has everything :) But the OP was talking about ARM, which I'm not sure about the state of ARM port for Arch Linux. It's also true that one can also find PPA, but there's big convenient when it's installable right away without needing to search for PPAs.
• rubyn00bie 10y ago
  The big problem with Apples professional lineup is it's lack of GPU upgrades and power. Along with supporting the GPU manufactures by adopting standards and improving them. I'm tired of them and others blaming intel. x86 is no longer where huge increases in computing power will really come from-- we all clearly see this due to the laws of physics. Parallelizing computation for all its problems, is the future, and GPUs are dominating in this area. From video rendering, machine learning... and I'm sure most of us would drool over a web server that could use a GPU to speed up requests or a compiler that would use it to speed up compilation. But GPUs are "not apple," because GPUs are not thin and need to be replaceable. This is antithetical to their whole desktop division. This glaring blind spot is one of the many reasons I'm a depressed mac user these days. If I want to do cutting edge things, I cannot do them on a mac. Imagine how good the new MBP would be with a GTX 1080 in it? Or a Mac Pro with two Titan X Pascal cards? A Mac mini that supported even one full size graphics card. The iMac? Well that's a relic (in my humble opinion) but the all-in-one does still have a niche it serves. Also, the fact Apple continuously and blatantly ignores gaming on the Mac this will likely be true. Because gamers also upgrade more aggressively than most desktop users and they help drive innovation as a result. Gaming on the Mac is still a joke. Ports are often late, poorly done, and underperform compared to their PC brethren. I'd rather game on Linux than Mac (no offense to my Linux using brothers and sisters) but I think that's crazy. I said this once before. What Apple needs to do is make the mac lineup based modular components. E.g. "Here is a box you can slide a video card into ('made for mac if course' with approval to make sure driver hell doesn't happen like Windoes) it then can fit into a Mac mini, iMac, or multiple of them into the Mac Pro. Same for PCI cards in general. This then makes things more user friendly, power users then can upgrade again, and the 3rd party industry can start making for mac. There are plenty of other ways to innovate-- I'd love a dual socket Mac Pro like the old G4 towers. M2 support. Not looking like a trash can (okay I'm just being cheeky now so I'll stop)... It's not that innovation can't happen on the desktop it's that Apple isn't, to use their own words, "brave enough to." ... What happened to the crazy ones?
  • ndesaulniers 10y ago
    > What Apple needs to do is make the mac lineup based modular components. E.g. "Here is a box you can slide a video card into Like Razer has?
• sandGorgon 10y ago
  I went and looked at the 13 inch MacBook pro and I was glad I bought my XPS 13. It is of the size of a 12 inch laptop (because of the thin bezel design), can charge off a battery pack, can play DOTA 2 , has a QHD touchscreen, and has upgradable nvme SSD . The XPS 15 has upgradable ram as well. Both these laptops are much cheaper than the MacBook. I truly fail to see why you would pay more for the MacBook pro. Yes osx is brilliant - but so is Fedora 25 or Windows 10. Choose your poison.
• concinds 10y ago
  Here's what the John Gruber-types seem to be missing: True, the Apple-lost-their-way criticism used to be mostly reserved to junk media outlets. But that changed. The new Mac Pro and Final Cut 10 marked the beginning of that. Apple has changed, and so did their target audience.
• intopieces 10y ago
  The new MacBook Pros outsold competing laptops five days after release. https://9to5mac.com/2016/11/09/2016-macbook-pro-sales/ https://9to5mac.com/2016/11/09/2016-macbook-pro-sales/ The article linked here doesn't name any sources, just vague "people familiar withs" and "inside sources."
  • pfranz 10y ago
    I think that's expected when the gap between releases was about twice what previous updates have been[1]. Even if people are underwhelmed with some of the decisions there is pent up demand. People that pay attention have been waiting two years for this update "any minute now." [1] http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#Retina_MacBook_Pro http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#Retina_MacBook_Pro
    • intopieces 10y ago
      There is pent up demand among the loyalist the Apple alienated? Sounds like an excellent position to be in. Apple ought to alienate them some more, it seems tk be working well for them.
      • pfranz 10y ago
        Oh, come on. Apple outsold competing laptops five days after release. They should release new laptops every five days! The 9to5mac article (and the cnet article it references) uses a chart from Slice Intelligence...which looks like it gathers information from its coupon and package tracking app (which I've never heard of).
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• taude 10y ago
  I'd happily have a 15" MBPro that weights a little more and has a better transitory-period port selection (USB-C along with the ports my prior MBPro has), and upgradable RAM and SSD storage. The difference between a 4 or 5 pound desktop replacement laptop isn't important to me, even in the situation where I'm always using it on the road. Apple is optimizing the wrong things here. These optimizations could probably be done on the AIR line, though, without much negativity, though.
• makecheck 10y ago
  Apple clearly did make major investments in the Mac, it’s just that their investments were not even relevant to most Mac users, and not even apparent to everyone else. For instance, there is clearly extensive support for Touch Bar in many built-in Mac Apps, and the API that was created just for this one device is impressive. And yet, to see this extensive support for Touch Bar, you often have to select a “Customize Touch Bar…” command! The defaults expose very little, making the Touch Bar appear far less helpful than it could be. Also, it is really questionable to distract so many software teams to support this one feature, which probably kept all of those teams from implementing more obvious improvements that people actually asked for. If I were managing this and I could see that hardware was going to be delayed, I would consider shifting more resources into the macOS to develop a series of “awesome” new features (heck, make this the year that you develop a real Finder). That way, although you’re announcing modest improvements to hardware, you can still say “look at all this great new stuff!” and boost the platform. Instead, they developed extensive software that a tiny fraction of their Macs can even use, while simultaneously putting it in a product that few people want to buy, further limiting its usefulness.
• zachd1_618 10y ago
  Honestly I think the communal upset at the new MBP (personified by sensationalist headlines like the one here) are just blown way out of proportion. Am I floored by the new tech and software that Apple is pouring into their computer hardware? Nope (still 16 GB of RAM???). It is still the best option out there? Absolutely. Not trashing everything else out there, there is plenty to love. But the MBP still takes the cake. Here's the biggest reason why: workflow. I have honestly never once seen a professional Windows or Linux (please gods don't think I am ragging on either) run so many programs as the professional Mac user. By 'professional' I mean people working in a professional, tech-oriented profession. I am used to keeping a dozen programs running, all the time. No matter what. Because why not? Photo editing software, Docker machines, 8 terminals/interactive programming environments, prototype ML training pipelines, local servers, MS products, various text editors and IDEs, Matlab, Mathematica, 100 Chrome tabs, some dev Safari pages, mail programs, Remote Desktop sessions, virtual machines, and whatever else I might need. Seriously. Who does that? My Windows coworkers all still have 1 to 2 things open at once, and routinely shut down their computers overnight. The startup to any task is about 100x longer than me and my always-ready MBP running coworkers. I can't remember the last time I actually turned my computer off. I also notice that my coworkers with MBPs get about 2 years more usable time out of them. Plus, my virtual machines run Windows specific software (STK, SDT, etc) faster and with less fuss than any of my coworkers' laptops. The MBP hardware and software could be better, but the combo seems to make second nature the levels of productivity and multitasking that other users don't even know to dream of. My point isn't that the maximum capability is necessarily higher on the MBP, but that the median is leagues higher than on other machines. For that reason I don't see myself switching anytime soon. Background: I am an Aerospace Engineer (becoming a full-on software developer), professional photographer, and generally demanding computer user.
• dcposch 10y ago
  Just a counterpoint: the 12" Macbook is really excellent. Build quality is impeccble. It feels amazing to travel with-- light enough to put into a small drawstring bag. On planes I keep it in the seat pocket in front of me. It feels like a sheet of paper. It has two ports total: one USB C and one headphone jack. If you want you can have a single cable to a 4K monitor that carries the image, powers the laptop, and connects USB slots on the side of the monitor. Minimalism! Some people complain about the keyboard travel being too low, but I found it comfortable after one day. I develop WebTorrent Desktop and WebGL apps with it. I know that if a WebGL game does 60fps here, it will run smoothly just about everywhere. "To build fast software, use a slow computer." It has a tiny mobile CPU. The flash storage is fast and the wifi hardware is solid, so for many uses it feels faster than the brick-like Core i7 based Linux laptop I had before. -- I think if people stopped geeking out about stats and used a 12" Macbook for one week, a LOT of people would switch.
  • _ph_ 10y ago
    Yes, for all the complaining about Apple, I do intend to buy the 12" after the next refresh, which I hope for in spring. As my mobile compute needs are modest, I am intrigued by this tiny and most of all, fanless laptop.
• m3kw9 10y ago
  Last time I checked a week ago 3 of my friends brought a MacBook Pro as long time of users. So you got new users and so called "loyalist" leaves
• vintageseltzer 10y ago
  After 15 years of doing so, I can no longer tell people that the quality of Apple's products are worth the cost. I waited three years to upgrade from my late-2013 MBP and I see no improvements of value in the new version. The new MBPs have seemingly worse battery life, the RAM is the same, ports I use every day are gone, and now their "portable" laptop requires you to carry around a bunch of adapters and wires. The touch bar is a naked marketing ploy. Might as well be straight out of the mid-2000s Microsoft playbook. I work at a "unicorn" and I can tell you that the majority of developers eligible for new machines are delaying upgrades or getting a Surface. I'd do the same if not for homebrew. I feel the same about their phone line. I've been praying my iPhone 5 continues to last because I have no interest in paying more money for their flimsier successors and then paying a tax to buy new headphones. I am also a shareholder and am quite concerned. The Apple Watch is a joke. Their desktop machines, monitors and routers are stale, obsolete and overpriced. Usually I like to give them the benefit of the doubt, but it's clear they have lost their way and the marketers have won. What is their leadership thinking? How long until talent starts to migrate out?
  • dkonofalski 10y ago
    How is the Apple Watch a joke? It was the best selling wearable device for both series and it has the highest customer satisfaction rating of any wearable. Something like 96% of Apple Watch owners said that they would buy another one.
    • theuly 10y ago
      I think it's the overall market for smart watches? For sure, it's not the next iPhone or iPad in terms of revenue. Even in the smartwatch category, Apple isn't doing too well. Going from 70% in market share from last year to 41% this year. They're still the market leader, though. source: http://money.cnn.com/2016/10/26/technology/smartwatch-sales-apple/ http://money.cnn.com/2016/10/26/technology/smartwatch-sales-...
      • npunt 10y ago
        Same thing happened with iPhone after android devices started appearing, and iPads with android tablets. Market share has never been the metric that matters, because there will always be cheap high volume crap electronics that are disposed of and replaced frequently. Profit share is what matters, and Apple Watch is doing well there, just like iPhone and iPad.
• dkonofalski 10y ago
  Something that really bothers me about the sentiment expressed in this article is that computer manufacturers are looking to fit people's specific use cases. I see it all the time, especially on tech sites, where people want to complain that Apple (or whatever tech company is being questioned) has abandoned them because of X, Y, or Z since they no longer offer some kind of functionality that was useful to a person. People seem to have this idea that Apple needs to continue to offer certain features because they did offer them in the past and people created workflows around those features. In reality, Apple is going to keep the features that people buy their products for. Just look at the number of people in these comments complaining that Apple axed the 17" MBP. While I agree that there may be a use case and a segment of the population that could make use of a 17" laptop, they obviously didn't sell enough of them to make it worthwhile. The response to this is usually "well, they just lost me as a customer completely now" as if that's supposed to sway Apple into saying "You're right! We should keep building and sourcing components for a computer that less and less people are using". I'm sure Apple loses some money and some customers from the lack of a 17" laptop, but that obviously doesn't outweigh the number of people that are willing to switch to another one of their computers. Vote with your wallets. Look at what the computers can do and buy them if they work for you. If not, go somewhere else and buy a competing product. If enough people do that, companies like Apple will notice. If not enough people do it, then you're in a small demographic that it doesn't make sense to cater for. Yes, they may lose a long time "loyalist", but it doesn't really make sense for people to be loyal to a specific product. You can be loyal to a company that continues to make products that you find value in, but to base your livelihood and your loyalty on a product seems misguided.
  • linguae 10y ago
    The problem for some Mac users is that there is nothing else that compares to the status quo ante, when Apple used to make Macs that fit our needs. Us Mac users looking to upgrade are stuck between a rock and a hard place. We either have to choose between Mac OS X (and use underpowered and/or non-upgradeable hardware since that's all Apple sells these days) or good hardware (and use operating systems that we feel are inferior to Mac OS X in terms of quality and usability). That's why we're venting right now; our platform is gone and the alternatives are all less than ideal. Maybe an alternative will materialize in the next few years or maybe we'll all learn to cope with Windows and the Linux desktop, but until then, we're in the mourning phase right now.
• DoodleBuggy 10y ago
  This is such a damning article.
• caycep 10y ago
  I suspect this is validation of Ben Thompson's analysis of Apple's Unitary Form organization - it is great at a single focus (iOS) but has trouble walking and chewing gum. I hope this is just a sign of things in flux at Apple and they eventually arrive at a design hierarchy that privileges both desktop and mobile... Then again, playing devil's advocate, why shouldn't it be that way? The purest, Apple-like form of computing is a computer that is seamlessly with you and adapts to everything you need. Perhaps the end-point is a single iOS device in your pocket, and when you need the desktop/bigscreen/keyboard rubric of the Mac, it would seamlessly connect wirelessly to those things, but without having to burden you with those things otherwise. In a way, having two platforms, in the long-long run, is inelegant and therefore un-Apple-like.
• Animats 10y ago
  Mac loyalists are becoming a nuisance for Apple. They keep wanting Apple to change things, instead of passively accepting what Apple chooses to give them, like good little consumers. They want features needed by tiny fractions of the user base, a headache for a mass-market manufacturer.
• anon1253 10y ago
  I'm in the same boat. I've used and loved Apple products for the better part of a decade. Used to tune in to Steve Jobs doing his keynotes. Got excited about everything they launched. Maybe that fades with age, I'm almost in my 30s now. But, I just don't care anymore. In fact, almost every new Apple product does the opposite of what I want. In my day job I do consulting on Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning. And sometimes that involves CUDA. There are no Apple solutions with Nvidia cards. I'm an avid hobby photographer, the lack of storage space on these devices make me cringe. A single RAW from my dSLR easily takes 20 megabytes, do a day of shooting and I ramp up gigabytes of data. At night, I'm a hobby astronomer and play with astrophotography, this requires a lot of IO. Often I have 7 to 8 USB devices attached via various hubs. This works fine on my 3 year old Macbook Pro … the reports from flaky IO, even if you use their branded adapters, make me really reluctant to upgrade. That stuff is hard enough without having to deal with dodgy transfers or incompatible hubs. For some of this I've started using the cloud and bare metal servers in a rack … but it's not a proper substitute for doing it in a train with flaky wifi. And it drastically adds to the latency of my iterations. I realize I'm a minority, but I once honestly believed that Apple catered to my needs, that it would provide me with the best possible hardware to achieve my hobbies and professional goals. No longer so, not by a long shot.
• spott 10y ago
  What is going on with Apple and management? It seems like they are struggling to put enough manpower behind their many different hardware (MacBook, iPhone, iPad, Mac Pro, etc) and software (iOS, MacOS, tvOS, pro software, etc) to make sure they stay up to date, but I'm not sure why they aren't just throwing more manpower at it. Honestly, a team that did nothing but update the MacPro every few months with the latest hardware can't cost that much, especially compared to Apple's coffers. Unless they are so blinded by the need to have huge margins. They don't need to change the industrial design for every iteration. I'm just confused as to why they aren't committing more of their resources towards making their products better, instead, they seem to be hamstrung by a lack of manpower and engineers.
  • riprowan 10y ago
    > Honestly, a team that did nothing but update the MacPro every few months with the latest hardware can't cost that much, especially compared to Apple's coffers. Unless they are so blinded by the need to have huge margins. They don't need to change the industrial design for every iteration. I think you hit the nail on the head there. I bet everyone on this thread would have been happy if Apple had just revved the Macbook Air and Macbook Pro lines instead of rolling out a whole new product concept in the MB and MBP: MBA 11" & 13" - rev the guts, upgrade to Retina display w/thinner bezels, upgrade Thunderbolt port to USB-C / Lightning MBP 13" & 15" - rev the guts, upgrade Thunderbolt to USB-C / Lightning No new MB or MBP redesigns needed. Tons of money saved. Happy customers.
• msangi 10y ago
  I'd add that they had a questionable choice of the Mac and MacBook models they released macOS Sierra for. They left out hardware perfectly capable of running it as if they're trying to force upgrades on people who don't use their computer for computational intensive tasks. I know that these computers are still going to work with El Capitan, but what happens when its security updates will stop? Also, some applications already require Sierra and that's not going to get better.
• wineisfine 10y ago
  It surprises me how many others here have 17" Macbook Pro's. I thought I was the last man standing. But it's true, changing the HD with SDD, and it even runs Sierra fine. But also: it shows that under Jobs, they were making working horse-machines for developers. This is in big contrast to what Cook is up to. He could also be running Pepsi, Coca Cola or Exxon.
• matthewmacleod 10y ago
  I've started to wonder if I'm the only one who isn't understanding the problem in general. The MacBook is fine – the new models are quite expensive, and I'm sure having to carry some dongles could be annoying, but it's a lovely machine and there are obvious reasons and long-term benefits for those choices. I'll definitely consider purchasing one when the next refresh allows the processor and memory options to be bumped a bit. It's a bit disappointing the the Mac Pro or Mac Mini haven't seen updates, though I expect that's just down to insufficient sales to justify it. The software stack is fine too – I've had minimal problems through multiple machines and macOS versions, and everything seems to be incrementally improving. Meanwhile, I get a pretty good UNIX environment and a pretty good GUI. Cloud services (calendars, reminders, keychains etc.) seem to work pretty reliably, and there are lots of little features that generally work well. I just can't help but feel it's all a little overblown. Sure, look at the alternatives – a nice Dell running Linux, or a Surface or whatever – and if they suit your requirements better, cool! But I just can't see the abrupt, precipitous nosedive that seems to be the current narrative around Apple.
  • hyperbovine 10y ago
    You are right. Nothing else even comes close -- right now. But for the first time in a long time, there's an opening for some smart company to come in deliver the sort of user experience that only Apple (/ Steve) once could. We'll see if it happens or not.
    • matthewmacleod 10y ago
      Yeah, that's a good point. Maybe it's just the first time that we've started to see products that look like they could threaten Apple's niche – Google's Pixel, or Microsoft's Surface in particular. I guess that's good for everyone really, so long as Apple do respond appropriately.
  • will_hughes 10y ago
    I'm not a Mac user, but having listened to friends who are, their complaints fall into: - so many dongles required (ethernet, Adapters to HDMI, DVI, etc, sdcard readers, USB C to USB A, and another one to get their iPhone to connect) - some of them need to be genuine Apple to get decent performance, and those are all hideously expensive. - lack of ram (tops out at 16GB even on 15" model) - not the best battery life All of this seems to have been sacrificed in the name of thinness. Folks who wanted thin could already get that with the Air / Non-Pro variants.
• chmaynard 10y ago
  I remember someone at Apple saying that Steve Jobs believed the company (as constituted when he was alive) should not try to support more than two operating systems concurrently. Last time I counted, they were supporting four.
• shripadk 10y ago
  Just open source macOS and let us build our own machines. Or at least do what Microsoft is doing and sell macOS independent of Mac. Apple doesn't seem to care about the Macs anymore anyways. Wish Steve was still alive and running the show.
• MR4D 10y ago
  I feel that Apple made a mistake with the MBP. For instance, why aren't MacBooks 11" and 13", and the Pros should have been 14" and 16". At least with that, there would be a feeling of differentiation (assuming everything else stayed as delivered this fall). It seems as though Apple fell down where they are historically the strongest - managing perception. And that has me frustrated because I'm wondering what's next to fall (like many others on HN).
• Animats 10y ago
  Apple needs a new slogan to breathe some life into the Mac line. Since some of them are made in America, how about: Make America Insanely Great Again
• Girlang 10y ago
  For a professional workstation, Mac hardware isn't even remotely useful. No NVIDIA, only 64 GB of RAM, only a single Xeon. No real "professional" would use the Mac Pro, only a low-level designer type who doesn't care about 30-bit color.
• zeusk 10y ago
  http://i.imgur.com/QIOptY7.png http://i.imgur.com/QIOptY7.png The world is not centered around you and your country.
  • Keyframe 10y ago
    If I'm buying, yes it is.
    • zeusk 10y ago
      wow, What a douchebag.
      • dang 10y ago
        Personal attacks are not allowed on HN and will get your account banned, so please don't do this here. We'd appreciate it if you'd read the following, and post only civil and substantive comments from now on: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
        • zeusk 10y ago
          I stand by my comment. Feel free to do what you think is right.
  • dang 10y ago
    We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13224433 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13224433 and marked it off-topic.
• orionblastar 10y ago
  Look up a Kickstarter project called Modbook. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/modbook/modbook-pro-x-154-retina-quad-core-mac-os-x-tablet https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/modbook/modbook-pro-x-1... They take a MacBook and covert it into a tablet. This is what Apple should have done. Instead they let Microsoft out innovate them with the Surface.
• dirkg 10y ago
  All the technical stuff aside, the simple fact is Apple enjoys a level of brand loyalty and market hype unlike anyone else, which is why they can afford to do practically whatever whatever they want and get away with it. Their every decision now is weighed much more towards profitability and upsell/obsolescence than user satisfaction/usability/advancing tech. The fact that the new MacBook is the fastest selling ever, despite all its negative press, is proof.
• type0 10y ago
  I'm, for one, am still waiting for MacBook Wheel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA
• Fomite 10y ago
  I'll likely keep buying Apple laptops, because it's the environment I prefer for scientific computing and general productivity rolled into one. But for a long time, I was also a Mac Pro loyalist. They were my workhorse workstations, and there was every reason to suspect my lab would keep buying them in the future. But the new ones are overly expensive, have no CUDA-capable GPU option, a pain to upgrade and generally weird to target. When a recent grant got funded, I ended up going with Boxx.
• neotek 10y ago
  My new MacBook Pro finally arrived yesterday and I'm feeling pretty underwhelmed to be honest. Don't get me wrong, it's a genuinely beautiful piece of art; every line, every curve is beautiful, the screen is utterly mindblowing, it's blazing fast and responsive, only having USB-C ports hasn't been any sort of impediment whatsoever, and Sierra is a great OS. But overall, it just feels like it's going to be a complete chore to get accustomed to the horrific keyboard and the ridiculously large trackpad, the Touch Bar is actually pretty useless as far as my workflow is concerned, and not having a physical escape key is a lot more disorienting than I expected it to be. My day-to-day processes rely on me being fast and proficient with the way I interact with my machine and every time I have to look down at the keyboard just to figure out where the fuck my fingers are or adjust my hands because my palms keep drifting over the touchpad or fumble around for the escape key, I lose focus for a millisecond and my flow gets ruined. Fortunately I've got two weeks to figure out if I can adjust before it becomes too late to return the machine to Apple for a refund, so we'll see. Right now, though, I paid well over $4,000 AUD for this thing and I'm not entirely sure why.
• ScottBurson 10y ago
  > In another sign that the company has prioritized the iPhone, Apple re-organized its software engineering department so there's no longer a dedicated Mac operating system team. [emphasis added] Wow, am I the only one who finds this terrifying? MacOS has already been getting less stable by the release. It's also unfathomable -- how can you not have a dedicated team for such a massive software product?? I don't think that's going to work at all.
• amiga-workbench 10y ago
  I've been saying this for years now, the last few refreshes on their Mac lines have been a swift kick in the balls for professional users. The 2014 Mac Mini is an utter joke, go buy late 2012 model for better performance and user serviceability.