Apple's Renewed Focus on iPad Left the Mac Behind This Year

[robeddie]

Well said.
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Hmmmm.... last I checked if you got paid for something you were a "professional". When you get paid that means you are employed by the person that paid you. So "Professional" and "Employment" do go hand in hand. Playing with fonts, fixing flaws in your photos with photoshop and editing video as hobby is not pro, we call that "Amateur". Maybe you should look for the MacBook Amateur

There is a wide range of what constitutes 'professional'. So what you're saying is, if the current macs can at least satisfy the BOTTOM RUNG of what a 'professional' might do with a computer ... why then ... it's perfectly fine for everybody!!!

With logic like that, we don't need any other meat in the world other than chicken!

 

[kwikdeth]

Nope, it's still easy if you choose from the recommended hardware and can manage to follow a simple, and not very long, set of instructions. Of course if you can't then a hack isn't for you. The laptop side's more difficult but always has been. Clover disables SIP.

my point being, the list of "recommended hardware" is getting more limited as time goes on. how much longer you think you'll be able to buy 9xx series nVidia GPUs? There's no support for 10x0 hardware there, wont be until Apple builds one that has one in it. Which isnt happening any time soon. Hackintosh AMD support has been haphazard at best and certainly not "simple and not very long set of instructions" since the 7000 series. that's not gonna get any better either.

 

[TigerWoodsIV]

I don't grasp your response - Apple has many, many engineers - vast resources. They can only work on a few things at a time??????????

Not what I said. They should be able to upgrade the iPad and the MBP at the same time certainly, but if the MBP did indeed take a back seat to the iPad, then hopefully now they'll give some more love to the Mac going forward. They have to stop playing catch up at some point. If they were behind in the tablet market, ok. But now they're behind in the traditional computer market. No excuse for that with such a huge company.

 

[shaunymac]

Well said.
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Hmmmm.... last I checked if you got paid for something you were a "professional". When you get paid that means you are employed by the person that paid you. So "Professional" and "Employment" do go hand in hand. Playing with fonts, fixing flaws in your photos with photoshop and editing video as hobby is not pro, we call that "Amateur". Maybe you should look for the MacBook Amateur

While I agree about the being paid bit that doesn't necessarily mean you are a "professional". Lots of people out there are tools, lack common courtesy and just simply un-professional but they still get paid. That to me is "amateur" and there are a lot of those people working and running businesses.

The whole thing is, Macs that had the "Pro" designation meant that someone that needed the extra power for Photoshop, Final Cut, etc. knew they could pick up one of those machines and didn't have to stare at specs. If it was a "Pro" it should be up to the task. If you are an avid user of spreadsheets, pages, keynote, etc. the base is probably good but a "Pro" won't help.

To me, it's like being in the kitchen cooking complains about your tools and then a real chef comes in and delivers an amazing meal. Or, the latest sports car that is the fastest and you drive it at the track and then in capable hands it shatters your time.

The lines are so blurred now on what is a regular Mac and what a Pro truly is. At this point, it just seems watered down and being used to create excitement.

 

[adww12321]

Sorry, but this deserves to be on every thread about the current state of macs:

I can see why more casual users - or users who don't stress their machines - don't get what the fuss is about with Apple's current hardware lineup.

But this video probably resonates with anyone with a foot in both PC and Mac camps (for those who didn't watch, the PC is 1/2 the cost and 2-3x as fast.)

Real world example -- I shoot, process, and produce live video streams with Wirecast (which is cross-platform.)

The fully-loaded 5k iMac on my desk has its CPU nearly pegged in order to keep up with the encoding and streaming; to the point that it throttles after a few minutes. AND its fans have to run in full-tilt helicopter mode, to the point where I can't really use the machine any more for this purpose b/c the sound is easily picked up by mics in the room.

Contrast this to the PC under the desk -- about 50% of the cost, but the CPU never crosses 30%, it never throttles, and -- critically -- it is able to keep itself cool without making the room sound like an airport (the guy in the video noticed the same thing about his trashcan mac pro vs the PC -- it sounded like the mac was going to destroy itself running the same benchmark software.)

I like OS X, and don't want to go to Windows, but Apple is leaving users like me little choice. I suspect it doesn't matter to them.

 

[jonnysods]

Not really! Even bad tech CEOs do annual spec bumps...

Haha you got me there. 2013 isn't that long ago is it? Maybe the Mac Pro team were busy hanging wallpaper at the spaceship campus?

 

[Juicy Box]

Well said.
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Hmmmm.... last I checked if you got paid for something you were a "professional". When you get paid that means you are employed by the person that paid you. So "Professional" and "Employment" do go hand in hand. Playing with fonts, fixing flaws in your photos with photoshop and editing video as hobby is not pro, we call that "Amateur". Maybe you should look for the MacBook Amateur

It depends on how you define "Pro".

For computers, it was always creative professionals, photos, video, music, and stuff like that. It is a "Pro" in those fields. Like Final Cut Pro.

You can't just say "Pro" means any professional. Like the Pro desk at Home Depot, it is for contractors, and not the average guy replacing light bulb, or buying African Violets because it accents their sheer window treatments.

I am not sure when people starting considering "Pro" as anyone that is employed and uses a computer. This is a basic user, like a MacBook, of MacBook Air user.

 

[Pootmatoot]

Hmmmm.... last I checked if you got paid for something you were a "professional". When you get paid that means you are employed by the person that paid you. So "Professional" and "Employment" do go hand in hand. Playing with fonts, fixing flaws in your photos with photoshop and editing video as hobby is not pro, we call that "Amateur". Maybe you should look for the MacBook Amateur

Professional in this context means professional in relation to computing needs, ie rendering needs or similar.

It does not mean professional ballerina, no matter how professional that may be.

 

[ventricle]

Splitting hairs? I don’t want/get payment for what I do. But I do run a 3D modelling app; 2D graphics apps; a text app with maybe 16 not-small files open; Excel; a browser with perhaps half a dozen tabs open and maybe a video; definitely music — all concurrently and might be on an X-Plane flight as well (for which all Macs are underpowered).

I’ve been buying Pro’s since the G4-5, and big screens are an essential productivity tool. I won’t buy a laptop or a tablet but travel with a data drive to where I have stashed a couple of high end iMacs. Pro, prosumer, consumer. . . who cares? I’ve never used Windows but I’m not hearing complaints from those who abandoned the Apple ecosystem. What I see is that when they do switch they eventually do so across the whole ecosystem. Even my architect, who develops on an iMac and travels with a Samsung tablet, laughed when I asked him about the tablet.

Press cmd-F on my OS and pull down the ‘kind’ menu. What you see is Music instead of Audio, Movie instead of Video. I can’t make it default to Extension, a more useful filter. It makes me think those ‘OS X’ books ‘for Dummies’ are missing an ‘is’.

 

[inkswamp]

5. Has made a loyal Apple customer not find any interest in any product in the Apple store

Nailed it.

I've been a Mac user since 1994 and the current desktop offerings are quite possibly the least inspired I've seen in that whole time. My 7-year-old iMac died last year and there is literally nothing in their desktop line-up that makes any sense to buy so I've been holding off. The Minis are beautiful machines but underpowered (why is there no graphics card option?!) The iMac is a great machine but just too expensive for what it is, and all-in-ones are an outdated concept. Displays are cheap nowadays and brain-dead easy to set up. I don't need my hand held with an iMac.

I'd love to buy a powerful Mac and have my choice of displays without having to spend a bundle on a Mac Pro. Apple has a huge market in the mid-range desktop machines that it's simply not serving.

 

[amegicfox]

Shame on you Apple. You are destroying your own Mac computers from the to bottom. Mac Pro 2013 is the worst computer and they still didn't even think about updating it at all. Apple will fall apart because of what they had done to themselves.

there is only one person to blame: Timmy the idiot. Who knows how many super smart engineers at Apple want to release amazing computers but Timmy tells them "make more emojis for the iPad, thats your job"

 

[ayvittu]

The problem isn't that the market is changing based on Microsoft changing the market, it's that the Surface isn't great at being a 2 in 1, a lot of people have said that it's rubbish at being a tablet (compared to the iPad) but it's good at being a full desktop. I think this is the reason why Apple won't do a hybrid of a full OS X in a tablet. They have said previously that it's not a good user experience, they have tested it themselves, so it's an area they have looked into, but the experience isn't as good as they want for us as the user.

I think the Surface Pro 4 is great and at the moment it looks like it's gonna replace my macbook. Furthermore, I don't know what these "testers" are doing all day, but it's certainly not taking some real-world users experiences into account.

 

[amegicfox]

• Failing GPUs
• shorter battery life
• lack of USB-A
• buggy/gimmicky touchbar
• need for dongles
• soldered everything which means it's a disposable laptop
• cherry on top: it's also ludicrously expensive.

I'm surprised it's selling at all. The thing is straight garbage.

you forgot to mention the wooden keyboard that comes with each new MacBook. It's like typing on a wooden board.

 

[Bacillus]

Why would I buy a PC anymore? I write books, and you can't write books the way I write books without cutting and pasting large, multipage (sometimes twenty or more) tracts of text with precisely-defined beginning- and end-points. This is amazingly inconvenient absent a mouse or other pointing device. Try it sometime, just for kicks.

So, my question to Mr. Cook is, why in the name of everything holy would anyone anywhere produce and sell an otherwise-wonderful, highly-portable computing device that's otherwise a dream to write novels on mouse-incompatible? I mean... Would it cost that much more, when you already have bluetooth? What can Apple possibly gain by this omission; I mean, certainly there must be many other negatively-affected would-be users? Again and again I find myself shopping Android or Windows tablets, and coming closer to pressing the button with each repetition over this issue and this issue alone.

My guess is that you first should explain him what a book is (he lives in a spaceship that doesn't fly...)

 

[amegicfox]

I am not exactly sure where this argument is going as far as the tablets and the Macs running the same OS. Just about anything I can do on my Mac I can do on my iPad Pro 9.7 or iPad mini 4. They both run software that I use all the time, I can pick off on one where I left on the other etc. I think they have pretty much merged iOS and MacOS together pretty well. Is it because they don't have the same name? I'm not understanding what the issue is. I can work on an Excel file on my iMac. get on the bus and work on the same file using my iPad, and then open up my MacBook Pro and work on the same file. I can even work on it on my iPhone. So I don't see where the problem is. 5-10 years ago this was virtually impossible. I used Excel as an example, but the same could be said for Word, PowerPoint, Pages, Keynote, Numbers, Informant, Outlook, OneNote, Day One, Fantastical, BusyCal, OmniFocus, AnyList, Quicken, Mail, ToDo, etc. For me the integration of Mac and iOS is very well done.

As far as Hardware goes, I just upgraded to the 13" 2016 MacBook Pro with the touchbar to replace my early 2011 MacBook Pro. I am extremely happy with the computer. A lot has changed in the almost 6 years. Yes, they are both 13" MacBooks, but when you compare everything from the specs , screen, the thickness it all better. Battery Life, I don't see an issue, my new MacBook Pro gets anywhere from 9-11 hours per charge, yet I read horror stories of 2-3 hours on these forums. The new Mac is almost as thin as my iPad Pro with the case and Keyboard cover. I love it. Instead of upgrading hardware every year, maybe you should do so every 4-6 years and you'd appreciate the changes more.

For me, my Macs, iPads and iPhone have made my life a lot easier. I can do whatever I want on any of the devices and it all stays synced thanks to iCloud or OneDrive. Hell I can even do somethings on my Apple Watch.

do you like the keyboard on your new mac book ?

 

[albusseverus]

This is a test to see just how far you are into the Apple echo chamber. If anything, the opposite is true, MacBook Pro stalled every other product at Apple this year!!

In what way did Apple focus on iPad this year? 9.7" Pro in March? No wonder they couldn't update Macs for years, that must have burst their brains. 12.9" iPad Pro didn't even get an update this year! iPhone got half an update and that's their biggest selling product!! And Watch? well, it got a speed bump and GPS, which is something I guess - a year later than it should have been. It seems a year late doesn't even register on Apple's radar.

If anything, rolling out pre-touch 10 year old technology (developed before iOS and probably before iPhone) in MacBook Pro stalled every other product in Apple's line! And caused cancellation of at least Airport and Displays (the most necessary companion to MacBook Pro!!)

This has not been Apple's year. And it tests the concept of a loyal Apple customer… as much as the 90s… maybe the company isn't on the rocks, but its products are as inspiring as the 1990s. Apple might have been a smaller company by 2 orders of magnitude before iPhone, but it managed reasonable product updates. There is nothing to brag about this year at Apple… managing Thunderbolt 3 on 1/3 of their computers… send grandma a Christmas card. God bless Tiny Tim!

 

[Abazigal]

there is only one person to blame: Timmy the idiot. Who knows how many super smart engineers at Apple want to release amazing computers but Timmy tells them "make more emojis for the iPad, thats your job"

Except that Apple runs off a functional organisation, not a product-oriented one. There is no iMac department or MacBook department each looking out for their own hides. There is only a hardware division and a software division and they work together on whatever Apple's needs are at that particular moment.

This means that if Apple decides that an updated Mac Pro isn't a top priority right now, there is no "Mac Pro" department who is particularly married to that idea who will fight tooth and nail to get it updated.

The advantage is that if Apple wants to completely jettison Macs tomorrow and focus entirely on iPhones and iPads, there is no relevant division who will stop them out of their own selfish self-interests (e.g.: they don't want to see their own department sidelined) at the expense of the company.

Of course, the drawback is that if they decide to do this very thing, there is no division to offer a dissenting voice and stop them either.

What this means if that Tim Cook cannot be blamed. As a team, they decide what Apple's future ought to be and if they feel a certain product is no longer an integral part of that future, then it goes. No hesitation. No second thoughts. Nothing personal, it's just business.

 

[dilbert99]

Whats wrong with any of the current Macs?

Most companies discount old hardware
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• Failing GPUs
• shorter battery life
• lack of USB-A
• buggy/gimmicky touchbar
• need for dongles
• soldered everything which means it's a disposable laptop
• cherry on top: it's also ludicrously expensive.

I'm surprised it's selling at all. The thing is straight garbage.

The sad thing is its a gorgeous looking machine.

 

[JosephAW]

I'm glad I got my Mac Mini late 2014 now. The next one will only have four usb3.1 ports so I would have to buy several dongles instead of plugging in my USB keyboard, hdmi monitor, USB DVD, use the sd card slot and headphone jack for speakers as I do now.

 

[dilbert99]

Don't they realize Xcode doesn't run on iOS? Let Mac die and iPad/iPhone app magic stops.

Ha ha, just a matter of time, they have swift playgrounds on the iPad already and I guess the pro iPad should be powerful enough to run it.
BUT, as a developer, I can think of nothing worse than trying to write code on an iPad.

 

[alexgowers]

This is an absolutely ridiculous conclusion!

MS had not changed the computer market with 2 in 1. Apple adding a pen to the ipad did nothing to make it more a computer at all or even compete with MS or laptops.

This is looking at numbers and drawing incorrect conclusions.

 

[Appleaker]

Well, Dell actually released their new XPS laptops with Kaby Lake in October 2016 - you can order the new XPS 13 with an i5-72000U or i7-7500U. Seems like Apple either missed the boat, or had strong doubts that Intel would deliver mobile Kaby Lake CPUs in time for the 2016 Christmas season...

Yeas but it was only a Core M3 and 15W dual cores that were released. They could have put Kaby Lake in the base MBP but that would cause a marketing mess. The rest of the Kaby Lake lineup are being released in Q1 2017.

 

[maflynn]

Well, Dell actually released their new XPS laptops with Kaby Lake in October 2016 - you can order the new XPS 13 with an i5-72000U or i7-7500U. Seems like Apple either missed the boat, or had strong doubts that Intel would deliver mobile Kaby Lake CPUs in time for the 2016 Christmas season...

Those are less powerful then what Apple is using as noted. They wanted a specific TDP and cores for their laptops.

Just because it says Kaby Lake doesn't mean its going to be a faster computer in 2016.

 

[Abazigal]

This is a test to see just how far you are into the Apple echo chamber. If anything, the opposite is true, MacBook Pro stalled every other product at Apple this year!!

In what way did Apple focus on iPad this year? 9.7" Pro in March? No wonder they couldn't update Macs for years, that must have burst their brains. 12.9" iPad Pro didn't even get an update this year! iPhone got half an update and that's their biggest selling product!! And Watch? well, it got a speed bump and GPS, which is something I guess - a year later than it should have been. It seems a year late doesn't even register on Apple's radar.

If anything, rolling out pre-touch 10 year old technology (developed before iOS and probably before iPhone) in MacBook Pro stalled every other product in Apple's line! And caused cancellation of at least Airport and Displays (the most necessary companion to MacBook Pro!!)

This has not been Apple's year. And it tests the concept of a loyal Apple customer… as much as the 90s… maybe the company isn't on the rocks, but its products are as inspiring as the 1990s. Apple might have been a smaller company by 2 orders of magnitude before iPhone, but it managed reasonable product updates. There is nothing to brag about this year at Apple… managing Thunderbolt 3 on 1/3 of their computers… send grandma a Christmas card. God bless Tiny Tim!

The Apple ecosystem has never been stronger, and as such, there has never been a better time to be an Apple customer.

Apple is now managing 4 software platforms simultaneously (iOS, watchOS, tvOS, macOS), plus their numerous services (Siri, iCloud, iMessage, Apple Music, app stores, amongst others), not to mention working on god-knows-what products are still in their pipeline (we know they are already in AI, home automation, health and self-driving car tech).

Not to excuse Apple's shortcomings, but I think it needs to be viewed in perspective. Seems they have quite a lot on their plate, and I guess some products simply fell through the cracks.

 

[DanTheAppleMan]

I remember when I first bought in to the Mac ecosystem, many a year ago.
Models with 'Pro' in the name were made for professionals and marketed so, not for the general consumer.
That was what sold me in the end, the dedication to produce a truly great machine for professional use.
How far we've come.
Now, the 'Pro' designation is nothing more than a marketing word, like "Military Grade". It's meaningless.
What a shame.
- A pro, just about forced to jump ship.