If that’s true, then it’s time to say: “Goodbye Apple. It’s been a great 40 years, but it’s time I take my leave for greener pastures with more ports and expandability”.
Alright, I haven’t actually been buying Macs for 40 years. I’ve actually only bought one Mac, my current one, back in 2011. But I’m tired of Apple removing functionality these past 4+ years. I want to be able to add storage and RAM. I also want to be able to plug something in without always needing an adapter.
Goodbye Mac OS X, and hello Linux!
It's a tempting thought. I like Linux. The kernel is the best thing in CIS these days. If you want to spin up Debian and CentOS, they're great. But that's backroom stuff.
Sadly I've been down that road of trying to make Linux a substitute daily host OS. There are definitely good PC alternatives to run Linux if you don't want to get a Mac. Personally I think the XPS has knocked it out of the park as a Linux development machine.
But the gamechanger Linux desktop UX remains vaporware. Partially it's the philosophy of GNU. Every person who is intent on getting Gnome and Wayland to work in a modern, efficient way, has the same vote as the numerous people how don't intend to use anything fancier than Openbox and Midnight Commander. And also the same group of people who want to split off with their own money and time and rather than get Gnome up to date, they'll take those libraries and work on their own buggy implementation of Gnome in the latest ripoff off MacOS UX in numerous crashy, inefficient implementations. (They know who they are…)
I run Mint Cinnamon on an old laptop, and may need to boot a PC into it, soon, to make use of various Linux usabilities. It's not at all my favorite UX, but it's the one that works the most consistently with what I need to have it do. That's what Linux life is like, unfortunately.
The bottom line is that there are Mac people who have used Macs for 40 years. Apple has jerked their customers around quite a bit. But if you're one person who has happily been doing word processing, email, and Photoshop on a Mac since the 90s, Apple has, however inconsistently, still managed to provide you with a path to upgrade your system every few years.
I'm typing this on a 13" MBP with a touchbar right now. There's nothing wrong with this keyboard. I find it is actually easier to type on without typos as you get used to it. There has been UX research into this layout, and while not everyone will like it, arguably it is objectively an improvement on the previous keyboards. Yes, there are some people who will never want anything more than Midnight Commander. For the rest of us, things move on.
This machine I'm holding now costs at least $200-300 more retail than an equivalent XPS or X1 Carbon. And "equivalent" being a fudge factor since it's not the newest generation chip in here. All things being equivalent, that's not
that much money for a professional level machine. Yes, the dongle factor also adds to it, but it's not the end of the world. All machines will be USB-C soon, so it's inevitable.
I'd like to see Apple have newer generations of chips. But there is other engineering under the hood here. I have pushed this machine, and it really stays peppy without getting too hot or the fan roaring, which is more than I can say for the PC laptops I've worked with, lately, even if they are i7 chips and this is a wee i5 of a previous generation. There is more engineering here than pure model numbers and specs. This is the finesse of an F1 race care to take curves and go for the long run, it's not a drag race on a flat track.
I'm wholeheartedly with the people who want more from Apple. Especially more desktop/power solutions, especially in a world in which production of 3-D content is going matter quite a bit. i want to see more bang for the buck and more respect to the
creatives and not just the
consumers of content. It's the creatives who were the base who gave Apple its reputation and kept it afloat through the middling Quadra years.
That being said, Apple isn't being clueless or thoughtless in what they're doing here. Not by a long shot. There is serious quality in these machines.
