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

[AbhiAchShan]

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!

Very True, I feel sad nowadays that Everyone hates Jony Ive without knowing his importance in making Apple what it is today. Sometimes I feel we are not much far away from a day where we may see RGB Keyboards in Mac, Punch Hole Displays and other Bad Designs in Apple

 

[Lounge vibes 05]

The iMac should have been in silver or space gray and all screen with no bezels (27" at least.)

Uggh I would hate that.
The entire idea of the iMac, from its infancy with the colorful translucent plastic, to the one with the arm that the computer floated off of, to the white one, and now with the bright, colorful, thin and fun one is that The computer is friendly. It’s something that anyone would want to use and put into their home.
A basic gray slab isn’t fun, isn’t friendly, isn’t unique at all.
There are plenty of other computers and displays that look like what you just described, including the new Studio Display. What’s wrong with them introducing something fun?
Turning the iMac into another gray bezelless slab would basically be the equivalent of Apple introducing a beige box in the late 90s.

 

[AF_APPLETALK]

Uggh I would hate that.
The entire idea of the iMac, from its infancy with the colorful translucent plastic, to the one with the arm that the computer floated off of, to the white one, and now with the bright, colorful, thin and fun one is that The computer is friendly. It’s something that anyone would want to use and put into their home.
A basic gray slab isn’t fun, isn’t friendly, isn’t unique at all.
There are plenty of other computers and displays that look like what you just described, including the new Studio Display. What’s wrong with them introducing something fun?
Turning the iMac into another gray bezelless slab would basically be the equivalent of Apple introducing a beige box in the late 90s.

Agreed.

They really just brought the iMac home to what it was always supposed to be, and stopped pushing the idea that the 27” iMac should take place of the Mac Pro. These new iMacs are friendly, fun, accessible and perfect for home users, just as you say.

I fall under more of a Mac Studio target audience so I won’t be buying for myself, but I’m a fan of these machines.

 

[ouimetnick]

The real question is why did they let Mac Pro and the rest of their Mac lineup go stale and rot? A trillion dollar company and they can't chew gum and walk at the same time.

They seem to be neglecting iPadOS, Siri and HomeKit. Hopefully they have more than 12 software engineers to work on those.

 

[AbhiAchShan]

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.

With rumours of incoming Punch Hole Displays, they would look more like Androids, than Apple Products

 

[Yebubbleman]

I find it sad/ironic that the one Mac product line that wasn't doing too badly at this time was the iMac. It did shift to an every-other-year schedule, but it's not like we really missed anything in terms of either Intel processor bumps or graphics. And now, it's just a single model in the current lineup with the higher-end version having transformed into an entirely different and new product.

 

[groove-agent]

That indeed was a very dark time for Mac and I had one foot out the door for Apple. I had actually bought two PCs and hackintoshed them. One was a Dell XPS which I really liked with the antiglare infinity edge display, but the cooling fan drove me nuts when it turned on. I turned off turbo boost in the BIOS to keep it quiet.

When Apple said they were still committed to the Mac I bought a refurbished 2015 MBP as I wouldn't touch the 2016 - 2017 given their horrible keyboard issues. When the 2019s came out with the older style keyboards I bought one of those and gave my 2015 to my wife.

I started doing screen captures while recording voice and my 2019 I9's fan would make too much noise. This was a huge problem. When Apple silicon came out, they were dead quiet, so now I have a 2021 M1 Pro.

 

[Ddregs]

Bought last year a new laptop (MBP 16” with an i9) and skipped the M1 because I still work for customers in a mixed environment (Win 10, developing apps with Visual Studio 2019 + Sql Server 2019, HCL Notes/Domino, MS Access, products where no native client for development for Mac exists).
So far, my desktop machine is still a good old iMac 27” from 2016 with an i7 processor.
Migration to a Mac Studio for these tasks is not possible. Way too many problems today for emulation on an M1. Sql server 2019 does not install on Parallels (no arm support in sight). It will need me to keep a separate machine alive.
My main grief with Apple is that their concept of a “professional” guy is mainly a guy who works with video/music and only then, with a few development technologies (at the beginning of this new shift towards arm, no web tech is optimized yet to perform on an M1).
So we are left on that special island of the “wait and see “ if anyone is coming to the rescue. Will it be Microsoft offering support to this platform after their deal with Qualcomm / arm is over? Will it be Parallels with more compatibility? Will there be no one and should I migrate to a separate Win machine for these tasks losing all the benefits of working on a Mac? I surely hope not.

 

[Naraxus]

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

Dancing Eddy Cue would like a word with you

 

[profcutter]

The Mac may be in a better state than it was 5 years ago, but there is still nothing that looks attractive to me in their lineup. The Studio in particular is so disappointing: not expandable (modular, my ass!), not service-friendly, way overpriced. MacBook Pro is the only remaining Mac worth buying, but again it's too expensive and not expandable.

Then there's macOS. It's in a truly sad state. More and more walled garden. No real improvement in the last 5 years (yeah, dark mode isn't an improvement). My next computer is going to run Linux.

The studio display is the biggest disappointment for me. So much hardware, so much money, and equivalent performance to the iMac 27 they should have just released in the first place.

 

[Solomani]

It's also getting buggier. And would something suck balls more than ever or suck more balls than ever?

It would be Ouroboros.

 

[ThunderSkunk]

It's been an interesting ride.

 

[Xand&Roby]

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!

Haters gonna hate.
Engineers don’t like designers and every time they made crap they involved designers in them crap. People who love them are so funny, they are the Microsoft best product ever! 🤣

 

[Manzanito]

For consumers the Mac lineup is in a very bad state right now. The current iMac is too small and aesthetically a absolute no go. That leaves only the very lacklustre Mac Mini and MacBook Air.

Lacklustre why exactly?

 

[SlipSlidinAwa]

Yep, it was exactly right around this time. When skylake launched in 2016 to be exact.

Former Intel Engineer Claims Buggy Skylake Chips Hastened Apple's Switch to Custom Silicon

At this week's WWDC, Apple confirmed its plan to switch from Intel to custom processors for its Macs over a two-year transition period. Apple...

www.macrumors.com

Likely to have been several years earlier when Apple decided Intel was no more due to decision/development time they could not done the M1 later. Turns out to be their best decision since deciding to use Intel. Soone the entire lineup of products will be ARM. Let’s hope ARM gets properly repatriated to the Cambridge.

 

[rp2011]

I love my new M1 14" MacBook Pro, but I was holding off buying a new desktop computer for Blender and Maya until I saw what the new Mac Studio had to offer, and sadly I still need a windows machine with an RTX for that type of work. I bought a renewed i7 with an RTX3060 Ti at a bargain to tide me over until I see what the Mac Pro has to offer later this year.

 

[TheOldChevy]

I was (and still am) very happy with what resulted from that meeting: M1, new MacBook pro, new Mac pro. But I am disappointed with the soldered RAM and non-standard SSD of the Studio. Nothing really blocking, but it's like a move back in the "wrong" direction.

 

[Tozovac]

And that was when Jony Ive started packing up his desk...

In all seriousness it's incredible how good the state of the Mac is currently. Every single computer is just incredible - even the mini is a powerhouse right now.

Amen.

Now if only Apple would apologize for using flat design and announce a commitment to removing anything leftover resembling iOS 7’s vague, white-out, space-wasting nature.

 

[JosephAW]

If the Mac Pro 6,1 was such a piece of junk why are they so hard to buy at a discount? Most are $899 and up for an empty model and used 5,1 models are even still pricy.

 

[brofkand]

Interesting that every recent review of MacBook Pro and Mac Studio I have read comments on the "welcome return" of multiple ports. Yet, at the time of the ill-fated transition away from the legacy ports years ago, the Apple cheerleading crowd (both in these forums and professional reviewers) celebrated the loss of the ports and, in fact, ridiculed those of us who lamented their loss. We were told that "this is the future," "no serious Mac user needs/wants those ports," etc. Now that Apple has deemed it prudent to return them, these same people are saying "Finally! All the ports we want have returned!"
I told you so, I guess 🤔

Apple reviewers are all the same. The worst any apple products will get is “mixed” reviews. If a reviewer actually tells the truth, they’re off the reservation.

 

[Tozovac]

I think it’s important to remember that, while he every once in a while took his designs way passed the (form over function) mark, he also had an amazing eye for getting both.

At one time, yes he did. What changed?

Was it the absence of Steve’s checks and balances?

Or did the hardware/software form & function balance become so refined that there was little room for surprise and delight innovation such that Jony Ive became blind to the true cause and fell victim to too much change for the sake of change?

 

[Tozovac]

Apple reviewers are all the same. The worst any apple products will get is “mixed” reviews. If a reviewer actually tells the truth, they’re off the reservation.

I think there were two crowds.

In 2015 crowd A loudly cheered, crowd B cried.

In 2021 crowd B’s cheers rang loud!

 

[cupcakes2000]

I was (and still am) very happy with what resulted from that meeting: M1, new MacBook pro, new Mac pro. But I am disappointed with the soldered RAM and non-standard SSD of the Studio. Nothing really blocking, but it's like a move back in the "wrong" direction.

I agree about the ssd, I wish that was upgradable using a standard part on the studio - but i’m not sure they would be able to achieve their vision of unified memory with standard ram sticks. Correct me if I’m wrong though, because I don’t really know that.

 

[polystorm]

I've owned 5 macs and my trashcan has lasted the longest out of all of them, and I still use it as my secondary computer. It's not powerful enough for the creative apps I use for work but it paid for itself after the first freelance project I worked on. It just won't die!

 

[TheMacDaddy1]

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 own a Mac Mini M1 with 16gig and 1 TB. While it is nice, I pretty much do not notice much difference in the Mac Mini with an Intel CPU that it replaced.

I don’t do video or photo work so I am not using the built in encoders. They were both really quiet and maybe I occasionally heard the fans on the Intel Mac Mini. The Intel version was warmer to the touch but I do not touch them all that often.

If anything my BT issues when I first got the M1 mini were way worse than the Intel Mini. That was eventually fixed.