Five Years Ago Today, Apple's Uncharacteristic Apology Set the Stage for the Mac's Renaissance

[MBAir2010]

things were bad and discomforting then.

In 2018, we Macrumors had a popular thread about "jumping the  ship"
were members with decades of  dedication jumped ship and purchased Windows products.
I was one by purchasing a Dell XPS 13" instead of an MBP or air that year.

Since I always stuck with my MacBook air from 2010 i was okay to still use an  product.

 

[rgwebb]

And yet, the MBP cannot be upgraded by consumers. Remember when you could buy cheaper RAM and SSD and upgrade them yourself? Remember those beautiful matte displays that helped Photographers, Editors, Graphic Designers and others edit their work without reflections? Yes, the new offerings look great but as a freelancer, I cannot afford to upgrade every couple of years.

Well it has been about a decade now since Apple sold a new macbook pro that had modest to good field replaceability.

It ain't coming back, hell most of the Wintel OEMs have moved that direction on their consumer lines.

 

[brofkand]

I'd say that Apple still needs work here. Their current Macs are unquestionably powerful, but are utterly unrepairable and are more expensive.

 

[44267547]

The M1 categorically put Apple on a totally different roadmap from other manufacturers. To me, that was the true separator moving forward.

 

[fstoprm]

I remember the day of this disclosure (news conference). The day after is when I started building my Hackintosh (with absolutely zero previous experience in building a computer) because I knew if they were serious about getting it right it would be at least 2020/2021 before we would see something other than an iMac (not how I roll). The Mini and Mac Studio are awesome, exactly what we needed as a boutique media company to do our work. The Hackintosh is now retired as well it should be. I did not "cheapout" on the build. Only the best components would do, and it saved our butts many times, because it just kicked ass and worked. I can say the same about the Mini M1 and the Mac Studio 32/24 - they rock.

 

[currocj]

Lovin' my Mac Studio...its fast.

Would love a slight bump in the Mac mini ... 512GB ssd minimum with 2 external TB monitor support + 1 HDMI.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

Sure, it's a small market, but it's a prestigious one. Will they trot out their executives again in a few years and apologize again?

Nah, part of that discussion indicated that they were inviting folks to their campus (those folks they thought of as their future Mac Pro market) to discuss their workflows, indicating that they were no longer looking to make a wide ranging “system for everyone”. Their new focus was (and still is) on specifically filling a niche that was willing to pay for the prestige. It also gave a head’s up to those waiting. If someone wasn’t invited to their campus OR their use case didn’t closely match one of those that WERE invited, the upcoming Mac Pro wouldn’t be for them. A lot of folks still hanging on gave up and switched.

They are now focused on a VERY small number of users for those systems. Low volume will equal high price.

 

[wyarp]

That’s not really an opinion that many agree with.
The consensus is that the MacBook Air and Mac mini are overkill for the majority of customers, and the new iMac is great for its target market.

I'm actually 50/50 on this. The M1 chips are amazing, and in that respect the Mac line-up is VERY strong. BUT, for consumers they really are missing out that mid-level desktop... ie a larger or more specced iMac. You have the low spec iMac 24" or Mac mini... then a big jump to the Mac studio. There needs to be some middle ground for a comprehensive line-up across the board for consumers.

 

[Hyperchaotic]

With that in mind, let's see how "expandability, more upgradability" looks like for the next Mac Pro. It's a little bit muddly to me in that statement whether they meant upgradability by the user or they meant the ability of the basic design to handle successive generations with newer more demanding components.

 

[alpi123]

I think everything Apple is today owes so, so much to Jony Ive. He was still designing away in a forgotten corner of Apple when Steve Jobs came back and Jobs recognised Ive's sheer talent. But yes, a whole generation of amazing category-busting products under Ive's team was giving way to a generation of iterative products (largely) and making things thinner or with fewer ports (those things go together) that were indeed driving Apple into a corner where perfectionism was trumping practicality.

It was right to break out of that to some extent.

However, what Ive helped to push is Apple's incredible ability to fit so much into amazing compact designs and to ingeniously engineer solutions such as fitting a power brick and high-quality audio inside the new Mac Studio Display's thin frame. Look at the Mac Studio itself, for example, and the power of that in such a small footprint. That design didn't just land randomly one day on Apple Campus: it came out of a culture and a skillset and an ambition set by people working on the first iMacs and iPods way back when. No company has yet to catch up with the design language and verve developed by Jobs and Ive.

I think a huge amount of Apple's capability and its inventiveness and its ambition is down to Ive and his department, spurred on by his greatest "customer" and critic: Steve Jobs himself. We cannot criticise Ive for giving Apple such an incredible platform to build on. And I can't wait to fire up my new Mac Studio!

For better or worse, now without Jony Ive, Apple is prioritizing function over form.

I do miss him though, he'd give Apple products a unique and iconic look, now all their products become more and more generalized and it's obvious they can't design them at the level Jony Ive could.

 

[TechZeke]

Good for them for apologizing, macs are in a way better state now than in the 2016-2020 era, even if it’s still not perfect

When looking back through older YouTube videos, the change in tone between the release of previous the generation MacBook Pros and the Intel Retina MacBook Air was night and day compared to the new batch of Apple Silicon Macs.

The reliability of the butterfly keyboards were widely seen as the biggest misstep of the 2016+ MacBook Pros in particular, but everything from the ports, chassis cooling, and touch bar were all pain points in early reviews even when they were first released.

I’d go as far to say that Mac is now in the best state it has ever been in a long time. I’ve always felt that Macs generally had a justified premium, but with Apple Silicon it’s hard to even consider a Windows Machine unless your workflow just needs Windows. The fact that even traditional PC fans can’t complain about Apple Silicon Macs should really tell you something.

 

[Boil]

Lovin' my Mac Studio...its fast.

Would love a slight bump in the Mac mini ... 512GB ssd minimum with 2 external TB monitor support + 1 HDMI.

More display connectivity from a base Mn-series SoC might require waiting for the M2...?

What the Mac mini needs is M1 Pro options...!

APPLE, FILL THE GAP...!!! ;^p

 

[cupcakes2000]

the thing is is that we’re (tech people) looking always at the highest spec = the best. With Intel, that always been the case. But with AS, the very base machines are capable of so so much more than any Intel based mac has ever offered. That’s the difference for a mac user. Now the base m1 is pretty comparable to a magnitude of levels above a generic base Intel machine. That’s the real difference. Sure. You can always compare to higher specc’d stuff - but the fact of the matter is that for most workloads a base model offers none of the prior bottlenecks. Compare a base MacBook air m1 with any of the prior base MacBooks air specs. They blow them away. What we have now has never existed in recent Mac history. That’s where they’re heading. Sure - for some it’s a backtread, but for most they now have a machine that for the same price give or take a bit, can compete with almost anything at the same level or even above.

 

[blairh]

Schiller’s quote at the trash can Mac Pro keynote is the all-time cringe Apple moment.

 

[pacalis]

They started to make computers their customers wanted, rather than what Jonny wanted.

They started to make computers their most demanding customers wanted.

The 2012 Retina Macbook pro was and still is amazing. The 12" Macbook was probably the most useful travel computer I've ever owned, perhaps replaced by the iPad pro. For the vast majority of customers, these are insanely great products.

The performance of the new pro machines is amazing, but the bulkiness and style is not to my taste and I rarely do anything that's regularly computationally intensive.

The current MBA and Mac Mini are not up to the current design standard of the ipad pros. For me, and I suspect the vast majority of consumers, the performance challenges across all lines have been solved, and we need more design attention to the non-pro lines (which I hope is coming/ no white bezels).

 

[NeekonMike]

I believe there is a place for practical, affordable modular/upgradable systems. $6k+ Mac Pro with all its bling and $400 wheel option almost feels like an insult... oh, you don't want a pair of XDR displays to go with it? With $1000 stands, of course... Macs are supposed to be insanely great, not insane!

 

[St3wbie]

The apology didn't give many of us much hope

 

[marinersaptcomplex]

They still really jobbed Pro users... After their mea culpa they coughed up the one Intel Mac Pro, which is a technological dead-end given the migration to Mx processors... Even if they just slapped an Mx CPU into the same chassis, it doesn't change the fact that once again they released a very expensive Pro machine that doesn't have a credible future. There won't a current MacOS in 3-5 years time, and I'm sure there are lots of use cases where people might want to plug in dedicated and specialized hardware through PCIe and not a limited TB4 (same as Trashcan, but it only had TB2). Sure, it's a small market, but it's a prestigious one. Will they trot out their executives again in a few years and apologize again?

"Oh, we thought everyone just kind of wanted disposable computers that were both very expensive and not upgradeable over time. Our bad."

If between the release of the iMac Pro and the release of a M1 Mac Studio/Pro, you bought the iMac Pro and didn't make money off of it, it was never meant for you. Even as just a computer to "tide you over", Pro workloads should've saved tons of money using the machine; making an upgrade to an Apple Silicon pro computer in ~3-5 years economically sound.

 

[cupcakes2000]

I believe there is a place for practical, affordable modular/upgradable systems. $6k+ Mac Pro with all its bling and $400 wheel option almost feels like an insult... oh, you don't want a pair of XDR displays to go with it? With $1000 stands, of course... Macs are supposed to be insanely great, not insane!

Plenty of pro machines or peripherals like monitors offer what normal consumers get irate about when talking about Apple. Go check out the competitive space for monitor stands on professional grade monitors before casting your aspersions. Not sure Apple are aiming at you with these particular offerings.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

The true test of how much Apple listened will be the Mac Pro and what Apple considers "modular" vs. what the entire rest of the world considers modular.

It really doesn’t matter what the entire rest of the world considers modular, Apple will be designing for a very few number of people at a price very few will want to pay and very few will be happy with.

 

[ghanwani]

Who is this "we" that you presume to speak for? The 16" MBP is absolutely the machine that I've always wanted. And I get the impression that a lot of other people are quite happy with various other models of the new Mac lineup.

Me and the Tesla design chief.

Tesla Design Chief on Apple Products: 'There's Nothing to Look Forward To'

Tesla design chief Franz von Holzhausen recently commented on Apple's design principles and product launches, lamenting that Apple doesn't...

www.macrumors.com

 

[dontpokebearz]

I think it's important to separate out the Apple Silicon stuff from the analysis

For all but us "dual booters", the ASi stuff is a major win

But -- for iMac 27 fans and anyone hoping to have even a prayer of some expandability and modularity (beyond the AS silly description as "modular")...and the new MBPs being pretty "tubby" -- and still no sign of next gen MacBook Air or MacPro and what those tradeoffs might be..

One can make a more "mixed" argument.

Important to be balanced here and look from many perspectives.
Too many focus on the ASi stuff and just infer that Apple is "killing it all over".

The devil is in the details for each product/offering

It's why I'm still holding on to my 2010 Mac Pro (with many upgrades) and considering a 2019 16" MacBook Pro/ 2019 Mac Pro (or just going to a custom built PC/FrameWork laptop).

I can still comfortable use a 2010 Machine because of it's upgrades and standard components. I really enjoy that aspect of the machine and it's hard knowing that a simple SSD swap is impossible going forward. Let alone the ability to natively run Windows or other Linux distributions. The 'other OS' side of things will adapt and change in the coming years, but being able to use Bootcamp and run Windows natively was a large selling feature for a lot of folks.

For the enthusiast who cares about upgrades, Apple doesn't have a product for me. I'll either adapt to the Apple way, or move on.

 

[jezbd1997]

This really was a moment for many people ”am i going to buy another mac, or apple product?”
I remember feeling so sad with the endless worsening macbook pro updates from 2016 to 2019.
Relief was found slowly as the late 2019 and keyboard fixes rolled out.
And now, as others have said the current mac lineup is absolutely smoking

 

[dontpokebearz]

Such a great point
We all focus on the positives of the hardware..

But the software -- oof

Man does Apple need to have major major reinvestment and re-commitment on so much of their software.

Yep. I've come to the realization that I prefer to *work* in Windows. Window management is superior, keyboard shortcuts are more natural, and File Explorer has useful features.

Monterey has improved on some of these - the 'Go To Folder' window now has a great autocomplete feature that I like a lot. Just give us more of that!

 

[freedomlinux]

Would users be able to add more [...] RAM and graphics cards? Or would they be stuck with what they have?

My heart says yes, but my mind says no.

The 2019 Mac Pro comes in 8 different RAM options from 32GB - 1.5TB. That upgrade is 25 THOUSAND dollars, and Apple surely wants you not to buy your own RAM.

But - if all these options are built into the same board, how many different combinations would they have to manufacture? 8 RAM options x 3? 4? CPU options x however many GPU options... for a low volume product that could be a very difficult inventory to manage.