I've been visiting Mac Rumours for what seems like forever now, but this is the first time I've ever felt compelled to bitch about something in the forums. Actually, this is the first time I've ever really felt compelled to bitch at Apple, period.
I've been using Macs for about 8 years, after having to lean Shake for a job. As soon as the Intel Macbooks came out, back in the summer of 2006, I shelled out about 1200 bucks and bought a shiny, white, Core Duo Macbook (and then I upgraded the ram and hard drive to 2 gigs/100gigs).
Cutting the long story to a very short one, now it's 2010, Apple has discontinued Shake, seems to be discontinuing Final Cut Pro, and has effectively urinated on it's costumers looking for a serious upgrade to replace their half-working computers (in this case: me). I can't believe that in 4 years, all they can offer is nothing short of a minor spec update... basically doubling the processor speed, ram and hard drive of my machine, adding a graphics card but removing the firewire port in the process.
I don't want to rant on too much about this, because everyone here has heard a variation of this before but this is, in a word: ********. At this rate, it'll be 16 years before they put a terabyte drive in their cheapest laptop, and all of their proprietary software will exist in their App store for their mobile devices, and they won't even bother making anything for their computer line. Photoshop works just as well on a PC, Nuke is cross-platform, Avid has retaken the world, and Aperture just isn't that great.
It's really depressing to watch the company leverage down costs for their iPads, while refusing to do the same for their Macbooks. I have no idea at what point Apple abandoned it's commitment (maybe it never had one?) to "creative professionals" - dumb as that term is - but after years of using Macs, I can't think of one decent reason not to switch back to PCs.
