Apple's Mac Sales Down in Q3 2018 Amid a Lack of Updates

[lcseds]

It's amazing how people here can speak with such authority on Apple's user base.

Seriously? You have no idea what you're talking about. Apple's customer base are the people actually buying these machines, and there are plenty of those people, which is why Apple's Mac business alone is still bigger than most other companies.

Yes, people are indeed actually paying these "outrageous" prices for these "crappy" machines with all these features that "no one wants".

Tinkerers want to f*** with the internals of their machines, but Apple has never wanted to cater to those people. Normal people just want to buy the thing and use it. And that's Apple's customer base.

Well, guess you misunderstood my post and missed my point. It wasn't about upgrading, it's about repair. Reading comprehension would help you debate better. But at least you got some misaligned info tossed in there. And speaking of "someone who speaks with such authority", you did well yourself.....Nice job.

 

[Detnator]

That's wonderful for the 13 people to whom that makes a material difference.

/s

Ok, that's just naive. Although I'm not sure if the /s is directed at me or the guy I was replying to (who was comparing his "commodity gaming tower" to a MacBook Pro.

If your /s is directed at him, then I think that means you're agreeing with me that his comparison is ridiculous.

If your /s is directed at me, and you really think the market for NVMe drives is that small, then like I said: naive.

Apple has never made commodity machines. They have always made premium machines. NVMe drives DO make a material difference to Apple's target market. Except for the base consumer end of the scale for which Fusion drives do the job fantastically.

Apple has never cared to attract the kind of people who want a "commodity gaming tower".
[doublepost=1539287278][/doublepost]

1.4MB Floppies were becoming useless in 1998. If you could fit it on a floppy, you could send it as an email attachment. - The trouble is, no single technology had emerged to replace them. Should the iMac have included a Zip drive? A Syquest drive? One of (at least 2) optically-tracked 3.5" super-floppy standards? 3.5" Magneto-optical? CD-R/RW (1998 was pretty much the year that affordable/usable CD-R appeared - I got my first CD-R drive then). To please everybody, Apple would have needed to put 2-3 different drives.

Also, the iMac was specifically aimed at people who were using internet, email and local networking - it was a new line that didn't really replace an existing model. Plus, it was a desktop, so hanging an external floppy off the USB port wasn't the end of the world c.f. having to lug a drive around with a laptop (the Powerbook G3 had that neat internal bay that could take a CD, floppy, zip drive or extra battery, and that wasn't dropped until 2001).

This is a great point. And mimics today as well.

People complaining about no USB-A for their flash drives, keyboards, mice, and no SD for their cameras don't get it.

In 1998 Apple was pushing an internet focussed machine to push people to use the internet and networking for transferring the small amounts of data previously handled by floppies. And they succeeded. And the world became a better place.

In the same way Apple is trying to push slower peripherals (keyboards, mice, cameras) towards wireless (especially in mobile machines), and faster peripherals towards one new standard: USB-C (with Thunderbolt 3 where appropriate). And they will succeed here, and the world will become a better place again.

It's no different. And as it was then, it's the right decision now too.

 

[bobmepp]

...that include all the ports they need out of the box.

so when your data is deleted during an update you have all the ports you need to desperately try and restore what you lost.

 

[Detnator]

To be fair, HDMI is very, very useful for a lot of people who work in an office that has breakout rooms, since you can plug into the TV that's pretty much guaranteed to be on the wall. My office also has mac minis on the TVs, so you can use AirPlay, but that's not all that common really, and occasionally flakes out, so you still need to be able to plug in sometimes. Our solution as far as the HDMI cables go is to just toss a USB-C adapter in each breakout room, but I do understand why some people find that kludgy.

Another common use of HDMI is presentations, the same reason why VGA persisted for so long on laptops. It's nice to know it's likely you wont need an adapter to plug in at a conference or a client to give a presentation.

So yeah, personally I'm fine with not having an HDMI port, a dongle that I can toss in my bag once in a while doesnt bother me, but I do get why some people want it.

Right. All that is true and valid. And exactly the way it should be. Really, those use cases are a pretty small minority in the grand scheme of things. That doesn't justify the volume of all the people here complaining about missing HDMI.

Everywhere I've been that involves this presentation style scenario (with a projector or large TV with a cable hanging off it to connect a computer to) has dongles included for those who don't have HDMI built in, or whatever else -- except for USB-C to HDMI dongles, and that's only because the world is taking a while to catch up. This will change, just as it did eventually after the original 1998 iMac.

So if someone works in one of those offices, is it really that big a deal to ask the boss to provide a dongle more or less permanently attached to that TV or projector in the conference room, unless that person is the ONLY person in the office with a MacBook Pro in which case, is it really the right machine for him/her?

For the traveling presenter type person then ok. That person needs HDMI. But here's the thing: that's a pretty small minority percentage of Apple's market really. For Apple to ask those few people to carry an HDMI adapter around to save the rest of us having to compromise something else in order to have HDMI built in, is the right choice.

The thing is, it has to be this way. There's three options:

1. We just stay where we are, and these places all keep relying on HDMI and VGA, and Apple keeps HDMI (and restores VGA?) on their machines, and the world never moves forward.

2. Apple jumps up and down and tries to get all those places to update their HDMI input cables to USB-C and then removes HDMI from their machines after the world does so, and the world can move forward. I'm pretty sure we can all agree that'll never happen so that's really option 1 again.

Or 3. Apple pushes the industry forward just as they have in the past. Apple removes HDMI from their machines and eventually all those places with presentation rooms etc start to figure out that enough people have USB-C only machines, and enough of those people complain to those presentation rooms (or even better: to the manufacturers of the TVs and projectors), and then they'll all start providing USB-C as a standard option.

That's the only way it's going to happen and that's why Apple chooses option 3 this time, and every other time -- just as they did in 1998 which is a large part of why today we're all using better technologies than the 25 year old VGA now.

 

[bobmepp]

Good.

There is no excuse for the current line-up. It's a pile of crap.

Mac Mini hasn't been updated since 2014, and the 2014 version was weaker than the 2012 version.
iMac hasn't been updated in a while and doesn't have powerful graphics to power its 5K display and doesn't use the latest generation Intel chips.
The iMac Pro is $5000. Although it is fairly priced for what it is, it's obviously not going to move a lot of units.
The Mac Pro hasn't been updated since early 2014, and it's a literal trash can.

Speak for yourself. My "trash can" is the quietest and best desktop computer I've ever owned. A whole lot of other people must think so as well, because a little research shows that they are selling at prices that best the prices of circa 2014 Windows workstations by a factors of 5 up to 10. The upshot? I like my $2000 "trash can", that a whole lot of people seem to want.

 

[Blaze4G]

HDMI? Why? Why is everyone here (and nowhere else) so obsessed with HDMI? What does HDMI do that USB-C doesn't other than plug into your TV (and why do you want to do that anyway, when TV color is terrible for computers)? And then HDMI doesn't even come close to what TB3 can do. Why on earth does a COMPUTER need HDMI??!!

The two devices on Apple's lineup that have HDMI make sense: The Apple TV (it's a TV device, duh), and the Mac Mini (a low end budget computer (comparatively in Apple's lineup) that is designed such that it makes some sense to use your TV as your monitor instead of buying a separate monitor when you don't really care about color accuracy. But Pros?

Every decent monitor on the market that has HDMI also has DisplayPort and you don't need a dongle for that because there are UCB-C to DP cables everywhere for peanuts.

Needless to say, HDMI in a desktop doesn't lose anything, but I'm so tired of everyone wanting HDMI in a laptop. No. Everything you do put in a laptop takes space for something else you can't put in it. Don't clog my laptop up with legacy crap ports (or HDMI, which maybe isn't legacy, but it's not supposed to drive a TV. It's a COMPUTER!)

But back to the question... Why do we need HDMI in a computer??
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...which they're obviously doing in droves, so Apple must be really screwing everything up.

Yes, that's sarcasm.
[doublepost=1539269506][/doublepost]

Really? What exactly do you need USB-A for that isn't catered to by USB-C? And if the answer is all your old peripherals then maybe you need to bring those into this decade too or you can just replace your USB-A to USB-B cables with USB-C to USB-B cables for peanuts.

It's a serious question. No one's ever given me a straight answer to it. Maybe you can?

What bubble do you live in? Lol

So I guess my workplace should throw away their 6 70 inch touch screen monitors used for presentions that cost 7,200 a piece? Throw away all our projectors? Throw away our conference tables with HDMI built in?

Many workplaces that do lots of presentations require HDMI.

 

[Detnator]

Just an FYI:

• The 2018 13" and 15" MacBook Pros use the newest 45w mobile CPUs that Intel currently ships...they are not years old, they are 6 months old - https://www.tomshardware.co.uk/intel-eighth-gen-coffee-lake-notebook,news-58180.html - complain all you want about the Mac mini and Mac Pro, because those are years old, but you are incorrect about the MacBook Pros.
• The keyboard mechanism works well for most and while the issues that were present seem to be fixed for 2018, this was not Apple's shining moment.
• The T2 issue is real, but I am not sure just how widespread it really is for the majority of users. Those that it is affecting, it is very serious and as far as I can tell Apple has been taking it seriously. I wish there was a way to know if the last update to High Sierra and/or Mojave have fixed this issue. Apple needs to get a handle on this before introducing the T2 into any other products.

The Mac Pro 6,1 was innovative, just in a completely unwanted direction by its target market. I truly believe Apple would have been successful with the 6,1, but it would have been better off with using either the most current Core i5 and i7s of the day (i5-4670 and i7-4771) and calling it simply a Mac. Without going into minutiae, Apple bet on the wrong horse, lost and then doubled down again, because they simply saw no reason to allocate time and resources to a single digit % of their user base, when the iPhone and iPad were their profit drivers and mindshare makers and still are.

I believe we ended up with the Trash Can for two reasons:

1. Cost: The Mac Pro 1,1-5,1 were expensive to make, used a considerable amount of raw materials to construct (aluminum) and required more space and fuel to transport to their destination of sale. At that point, with the need for more raw materials and assembly lines to be allocated to iOS devices and better selling Mac models, Tim Cook may have said, "Make it smaller, cheaper to assemble and ship or I am going to kill it altogether."
2. Thunderbolt: Thunderbolt was/is a Pro technology and it had to be incorporated into any revision of the Mac Pro Apple was going to release. Remember, it took almost three full years for Apple to release a Mac Pro with TB, after they debuted it on the Early 2011 MacBook Pro and pros were getting antsy to get it integrated into their workflows with a revised Mac Pro. After no update in 2011 at all, and then a lukewarm update in 2012, the Pro market began wondering what Apple was up to and when TB would arrive on the Mac Pro. The problem was that Apple had no real answer because the nature of the Mac Pro was to have a GPU sitting in a PCIe slot that could be removed and updated over time, which meant that if Apple integrated TB on the motherboard, how were they going to route video from the GPU through the motherboard and out of the TB slot for a Thunderbolt display when the user is going to naturally plug in their monitor to the GPU? Conversely, how would they route TB over the GPU because then the TB controller would have had to have been on the GPU card making it non-removable for users, which would make it a non-starter for most Pro users as that is a huge selling point. Telling Pro users that they could only plug in certain devices to the motherboard, which most certainly would have routed Thunderbolt through the PCH chipset, ate up those PCIe lanes and then sent it over the QPI bus to the CPU or having a custom GPU card that you were stuck with because only Apple would be able to make it (no other GPU company is going to make a third party card for Apple, the market was too small) presented Apple with a no-win situation. Maybe they could have engineered it route the video signals out the Thunderbolt bus, but I suspect that it created such a complex hack that the motherboard would have been a nightmare to engineer. I am not an EE, so I will defer to one who can either verify or refute my theory.

Anyways, I get where people are coming from with regards to wanting their old tower back, but back 6-7 years ago, I do not think the answers were all that easy. So, while you and may others do not think the Mac Pro 6,1 is innovative, it really is, just not in the way the Pro market wanted.

Overall PC sales are up something like 0.1%, I think. I do not see that changing and that is part of Apple's justification/excuse for not updating their lineup when they need engineers creating products that are selling and growing. Like it or not, that is what it is.

This is a very insightful post. Makes a lot of sense. And hopefully the direction they're going with the new one due out next year addresses all these issues. I want a pro machine and I don't want another huge cheese grater. It's unnecessary. The trash can was a step in the right direction, generally, but also a few steps in the wrong directions too. Hopefully they're going to figure out the best of both worlds with the new one.

One question: What is this T2 issue we're speaking of?

 

[Spectrum]

Apple can charge whatever they like for their stuff, and if people buy it then the price is right. If these machines really sucked as much as everyone on here says they do no one would buy them. But normal people are buying them without being forced to, and not because they're the cheapest option. So they must be what people want.

You are wrong. They do suck. But we buy them anyway. I have had to purchase three 2017-2018 MBPros for academic lab members. I didn't enjoy the purchase of any one of them - compare that to the enjoyment of furnishing the lab with mac minis and previous MBPros (2008-2011 era).

I hate:
Lack of upgradeable RAM, SSD
Lack of Magsafe
Lack of HDMI out
Lack of USB-A ports
Touchbar (we run them tethered with external keyboard 90% of time, so it is a completely waste of space)

But I buy them, not because I like them or want my team to have these models, but because we have no choice if we stay with Apple. And that makes me a bitter customer.

I am nursing a 2011 quad core mac mini. I WANT to upgrade it. But Apple don't sell anything. I don't want to have to buy another $3000 laptop just to run it permanently tethered all the time. The lack of updates is utterly frustrating.

---

And I can now also say agree with others that the new keyboards suck too. A Macbook in the lab (2016) has started to fail (the spacebar). That is the first mac that I've ever had with a problematic keyboard - going back 20 years and a portfolio of >20 computers/laptops.

 

[Zdigital2015]

This is a very insightful post. Makes a lot of sense. And hopefully the direction they're going with the new one due out next year addresses all these issues. I want a pro machine and I don't want another huge cheese grater. It's unnecessary. The trash can was a step in the right direction, generally, but also a few steps in the wrong directions too. Hopefully they're going to figure out the best of both worlds with the new one.

One question: What is this T2 issue we're speaking of?

The bane of some user's existence, unfortunately - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208862

 

[inkswamp]

The Mini was developed to economically lure Windows users to the Apple camp; with customers already owning a display/keyboard/mouse/printer. Hard to say if that case ever panned out in a major way. Only Apple knows the answer to that.

But even in that effort, Apple missed the mark and never made a real effort to figure it out. Apple never seemed to fully understand the Windows user as a potential customer, assuming they would just fall into line with what they offered. Thus, the Mini was not taken seriously, the sales drop off, etc. The vicious cycle again.

When the Mini was announced, a lot of my Windows-using friends who were power users were looking at the Mac and asking me questions. The questions usually went along the lines of "Are there any other desktops besides the Mini and the Power Mac without a screen built-in?" Lots of Windows users just wanted a reasonably expandable, headless Mac with a decent amount of power for under or around $1k but that hasn't existed in ages. You would think the explosion of interest in running Mac OS on PC hardware that occurred about 10 years ago would have been a bit of a tip-off to Apple but no product has ever filled that need.

 

[Zdigital2015]

What bubble do you live in? Lol

So I guess my workplace should throw away their 6 70 inch touch screen monitors used for presentions that cost 7,200 a piece? Throw away all our projectors? Throw away our conference tables with HDMI built in?

Many workplaces that do lots of presentations require HDMI.

HDMI is important and widespread. Personally, I think Apple looked what would be required to support HDMI and had to decided if they wanted to be bothered with adding an LSPCON to the motherboard to support HDMI 2.0 and decided they wanted no part of it. Or they had no room to add it...something like that. I think they added HDMI to the Retina MacBook Pros because there was really not that much of an engineering cost. But for this generation, it meant adding the LSPCON to support HDMI 2.0 (UltraHD@60Hz) because Intel does not natively support HDMI 2.0 (HDMI 1.4 is the max) and users would have dinged them for not adding it in the year 2016.

The point is that those who need HDMI and find themselves with a 2016-2018 MacBook Pro need to make sure they have a USB-C to HDMI cable with them. It is a bit inconvenient, but it will pass over time.

 

[Greymacuser]

All valid points...but at this point point Android, Windows and iOS are the top 3 operating systems by market share. Source: http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share

Windows already does all of the things that you mentioned in your reply. Android may have marketshare, but because of its fragmentation in versions, none of those above really matter.

Which leaves us iOS as the sole contender to be able to start taking over a portion of those thing you have listed above.

As for desktop operating systems, we have Windows and macOS...that is it. No single version of Linux has enough popular support, ease of use, breadth of applications or PC OEM support to ever be a viable third competitor as the OP suggested. I also do not think anyone is crazy enough to believe the desktop computer market could use one more operating system.

The picture for iOS may become clearer once Apple releases the next iPad Pro. If equipped with USB-C instead of Lightning, then at least two of the four items you listed get much closer to reality (External drives, Wacom tablets and a real monitor). You may not get the entire Adobe Master Collection, but Photoshop may be good enough that most people who only need that app are satisfied. How much longer after that will it be before a serious 3-D rendering tool makes an appearance? No, it will not challenge Maya, Blender, RenderMan, et al. tools that are used, but it may become an important part of the toolchain for some, obviously not all. Xcode becomes a real possibilty for an iPad Pro equipped with USB-C that can connect to an external monitor.

Of the challengers to iOS - Android and ChromeOS - iOS has the best chance of expanding, changing and growing into a competent desktop OS challenger.

The times, they are a changin'!

Very true. However, no one would ever attempt heavy load work on an iOS device due to the lack of thermal management the iGadgets lack. You won't ever see any professional rendering software on an iOS device. Not unless Apple wanted to design a gadget that melts in your hands into hot slag.
The total lack of upgradability or customizability with iWidgets kneecaps them as far as real work goes.
I'd liken iOS machines to a palm sized spiral notepad, while desktops are the actual typewriters. Only one is going to be used to make the final version of a job.

I'd love it if Apple (or someone else) made a portable device that had a fully functioning OS (seriously, just put the full OS on it. Why the iOS puttering around?) that could hammer away work anywhere. Sadly that's not what Apple is looking to do. Tim is catering to the people that want to check their facebook page and tweet lunch picts. All of us that carried the company throughout the 90's and 2000's with our pro desktop purchases can go scratch as far as he's concerned.

 

[doitdada]

One question: What is this T2 issue we're speaking of?

Kernel panics with BridgeOS. I got a new computer and installed Mojave, no longer a problem.

 

[Frank Dalton]

Really, those use cases are a pretty small minority in the grand scheme of things. That doesn't justify the volume of all the people here complaining about missing HDMI.

A substantial volume of people complaining would seem to indicate the opposite of what you keep claiming.

 

[EdT]

That's interesting. On the one hand everyone wants new machines with the new technology, but on the other hand everyone wants to stick to the legacy ports.

At no point have I mentioned legacy ports. I do think that there should be more ports especially on desktops but I don’t need them to be 10 year old or older technology. Even if a legacy port is thrown in most should be as recent as possible. Graphic cards should be as modern and powerful as is available. Memory should be fast and plentiful. Ditto processors.

I have an early 2016 5k iMac, purchased in February of that year. In June at WWDC of 2016 Apple announced their new file system for Apple computers, APFS. And it was backwards compatible with older computers.
Provided that they had solid state hard drives. iMacs had, and may still be limited to today, Fusion drives which are a combo solid state/magnetic platter hard drive. So a 3 month old computer with soldered in place components, including hard drives can’t use Apples going forward file system.

And it’s jerk your customer around decisions like this along with not telling people what is going on that has me upset.

 

[Feenician]

At no point have I mentioned legacy ports. I do think that there should be more ports especially on desktops but I don’t need them to be 10 year old or older technology. Even if a legacy port is thrown in most should be as recent as possible. Graphic cards should be as modern and powerful as is available. Memory should be fast and plentiful. Ditto processors.

I have an early 2016 5k iMac, purchased in February of that year. In June at WWDC of 2016 Apple announced their new file system for Apple computers, APFS. And it was backwards compatible with older computers.
Provided that they had solid state hard drives. iMacs had, and may still be limited to today, Fusion drives which are a combo solid state/magnetic platter hard drive. So a 3 month old computer with soldered in place components, including hard drives can’t use Apples going forward file system.

And it’s jerk your customer around decisions like this along with not telling people what is going on that has me upset.

Mojave has support for Fusion Drives and APFS

 

[theluggage]

It's no different. And as it was then, it's the right decision now too.

Not quite.

...in 1998, the CD drive could store over 400x more data than a floppy disc. Major software packages and operating systems came on whole boxes of floppy discs - or a single CD. The floppy was really only still around because all PCs needed them for booting, installing firmware etc (it was baked in - even PCs that supported booting DOS/Windows from CD-ROM involved a virtual floppy image on the CD). A file sent via the internet could get to the other side of the world in minutes vs. several days in a jiffy bag for a disc. The other ports dumped at the time of the iMac included things like ADB (completely proprietary) and RS423 serial (technically a standard but everything else used RS232 and different connectors). In short, the stuff dropped was well and truly obsolete and the new alternatives were night and day better.

C.f. 2016: USB-C is less annoying than USB A because it has a reversible connector. Wow! For USB devices, it offers no more bandwidth than a regular USB3 A/B connector (USB 3.1g2 works on A-connectors on PCs where the controller supports it, BTW - and while USB 3.2 will double the bandwidth, no current computers can support it) - oh and it supports DisplayPort... but the intel controllers used by Apple only supported DP version 1.2 which was already old in 2016, can't drive 5k over a single cable, (in USB/DP alt mode) and can't do 4k@60Hz without using up all the data lines on USB-C and blocking all USB 3.1 data. (I think the 2018 MBPs finally support DP 1.4 but I haven't heard of any USB-C displays that do). In 2016 there were pretty much zero USB-C devices, and even today there aren't that many that don't work just as well on a USB A port (and if they're not sold by Apple the USB-A adapter is usually in the box).

Now, Thunderbolt 3 is better than Thunderbolt 1/2 - maybe twice as fast, can support 5k (still a MST kludge though because DP1.2) - but its still hardly floppy vs. CD. Bluetooth keyboards are no better than wireless-dongle ones - of which there is a far greater choice, especially the latest BT versions that don't eat batteries...

I could probably live without a SD card slot in my Mac (I still need one but maybe not built in) - but I'm sure others don't agree, and they can also be used to boost storage on a laptop.

That's the problem - Apple's post 1998 brave new world was driven by revolutionary improvements in technology. The post-2016 "vision" is, at best, evolutionary, and that's being polite. For many, its just the industry trying to force us to upgrade, or buy extra stuff, without offering any major strides in performance. Which, of course, is the real point - technology development is slowing and computers don't naturally become obsolete after 18 months any more, so it has to be forced.
[doublepost=1539294021][/doublepost]

At no point have I mentioned legacy ports.

You didn't get the memo - USB 3 A, Mini DisplayPort and Mag Safe (as featured in Apple's currently-selling MacBook Air, Mini and Mac Pro models, along with every peripheral some of us own, including stuff bought new this year...) are now "legacy" according to the First Church of the One True Connector. Actually, the USB-C/TB3 ports in the 2016/2017 MBPs and iMacs and any TB3 peripherals you have are also "legacy" because the new TB controllers released early this year added significant new features like DP1.4 support and USB device mode...

 

[curtvaughan]

Michael Dell would be a better Steve II for that computer business than Tim can ever be.

I have said before, and I still think, Bill Gates would make a great "Steve Jobs II" for Apple. He and Jobs were mostly friendly competitors for most of their careers, and Gates had a similar entrepreneur persona. They both came to realize their similarities toward the end of Jobs' life. If Gates would come out of retirement for a few years and resurrect the old spirit of Apple - that would be a real bookend sort of phenomenon. Dell is really just a hardware guy. Jobs and Gates were both in hardware and software.

 

[cwkoller5]

where is the mac pro where is the mac pro where is the mac pro where is the mac pro where is the mac pro...

 

[curtvaughan]

This exactly. Someone here said soldering makes it more prone to failure. That’s a ridiculous claim. Soldering makes it less prone because there are less moving parts. No wires to come disconnected or sockets for things to shake loose in. It’s that simple.

These machines are a terrible design for people who want to tinker but Apple has never catered to that market and rightly so. In this respect of soldering everything in, these machines are perfect for the people they are designed for: people who don’t want to f*** around with the tool and just use the tool to get their job done.

I'm not sure that your characterization fits with folks who miss the old "cheese grater" Mac Pros. They wanted to be able to "tinker" with the machine and perform easy upgrades when needed "to get their job done." They were willing to spend a lot of money for top-of-the-line headless machine that would last for many years with periodic upgrades. Soldering and/or gluing makes repair/replacement a horrible risky chore, and expensive to hire someone to perform if you, the owner, can't / won't take the risk.

 

[happy-raccoon]

The touch bar was a good idea, but the volume controls make it not worth using (3 taps to change the volume is idiotic), so I've set it to act like function keys, except now I still have no escape key.

It’s only one tap dude! Tap on the volume control and then slide your finger up or down to change volume. One quick gesture including only one tap. Same with brightness! Love it. I don’t get all the hate, really like the touchbar and have no problems hitting the keys (although I would appreciate Taptic Engine).

Contrary to all the hate in this forum, I love my mbp 2018. from 2016 to mid 2018 i replaced my MacBook Pro from 2011 with several windows pcs, none of them made me happy. I thought hey, windows laptops are so cheap in comparison, let’s give them a try. I had a Surface Pro, a Dell XPS and a Spectre x360 from hp and all these premium devices had so much problems... only to name a few: horrible battery life on the surface pro (only got 3 to 4 hours... plus horrible battery drain in standby, it was the pro 4) and a miserable Tablet experience, extreme coil whine and rattling Touch Pad on the XPs and completely ****ed up wifi, coil whine, an uneven and rattling track pad, an unevenly hinged display on the spectre x360 (2017).

After a month of usage, the mbp 2018 makes working fun again ... and after getting used to it, I am really missing the touchbar and the new keyboard when using other machines. YMMV

Edit: the same with android. I went from an iPhone 5 to a mate 9, sold it, bought an galaxy s8, got frustrated, sold it and am now happy again with an iPhone 8, looks oldschool but a joy to use (at least to me)

 

[curtvaughan]

1.4MB Floppies were becoming useless in 1998. If you could fit it on a floppy, you could send it as an email attachment. - The trouble is, no single technology had emerged to replace them. Should the iMac have included a Zip drive? A Syquest drive? One of (at least 2) optically-tracked 3.5" super-floppy standards? 3.5" Magneto-optical? CD-R/RW (1998 was pretty much the year that affordable/usable CD-R appeared - I got my first CD-R drive then). To please everybody, Apple would have needed to put 2-3 different drives.

Also, the iMac was specifically aimed at people who were using internet, email and local networking - it was a new line that didn't really replace an existing model. Plus, it was a desktop, so hanging an external floppy off the USB port wasn't the end of the world c.f. having to lug a drive around with a laptop (the Powerbook G3 had that neat internal bay that could take a CD, floppy, zip drive or extra battery, and that wasn't dropped until 2001).

Great synopsis of the late 90's era. With the demise of the decades old floppy, there were many intermediate improvements that enjoyed brief stardom, like Zip drives, DECtape (for Vax/Alphas of the day). With the arrival of the CD-RW, especially as a bootable medium, brief stability was achieved for capacity and function in portable digital media. That function was relatively brief as internet connectivity and streaming improved by orders of magnitude in the 2000's, along with relatively cheap mass storage options.

 

[Detnator]

Apple dont make any product I want to buy or need to have right now. I have been a loyal customer since the mid 90s, and bought computers, phones, ipads, apple tvs and accessory for private, work and family since then. I am a happy mac pro mid 12 user, and dont want a imac or laptop replacement. I guess my next computer would be an hackintosh, since I cant stand windows. I really miss the days apple focused on computers. The iphone realy changed apple to something else, and its not good.

Ok... I'm curious. What is the product you want to buy or need to have? Could you preferably not describe features and specs rather describe usage needs and requirements...?

 

[Ursadorable]

BEst solution is get a hackingtosh. YOu get the great Mac OS with affordable hardware.

Sure, if you're into crossing your fingers every time you boot up after an update hoping that it doesn't crash.
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The mac is dead.

Tim Cook killed it.

It certainly seems that way.. but until iOS development can be done on Windows, there's hope.

 

[Detnator]

I live in a country where tech shops havent moved fully over to usb-c or usb-c peripherals. So i cant buy a replacement cable for it. This is at least one straight answer. Also, i need an sd card slot and there’s no wire to simply change that. And i dont want a dongle because my previous macs didnt need a dongle. I do love the thunderbolt 3 ports, but not at the loss of at least some backwards compatibility.

I work on destination weddings and i would prefer a device that already has all the connectors i need. Its really inconvenient for me to have a dongle break down and i dont have any place nearby (i usually work in destination beaches so there aren’t big cities with tech shops) to buy a replacement.

I loved the apple that gave me stuff that just worked.

So there you go. And again, i LOVE usb-c and thunderbolt and what it can do. I just wish i had some stop gap in between so i can still use the old peripherals. Does that clarify things?

But what do you use SD for? Cameras presumably? The replacement for SD is wireless. The problem is you're updating your computer to the latest and greatest but not your peripherals and so no it's not compatible. Tech changes.

But if your country is limiting that's a genuine issue, although I can understand if it's not one Apple wants to cater to.

But still... I'm not sure you told me what you're actually using HDMI for exactly? What are you trying to connect to that requires HDMI and can't accommodate anything else?