It's Just Me, Huh?

[Highway61]

I think that my sense that "the whole Apple thing" is no longer the exciting journey it once was aligns fairly closely to when the 24"iMac and/or the Mini became the thing. Or maybe it was with the passing of the Steve Jobs era.
To me, though, it's no longer exciting. It's all about phones and watches mostly with a side order of laptops. None of those things excite me, personally, especially phones and watches, but I understand that I might be all alone in that (I'm not trying to convince anybody that I'm right). The front page of MacRumors, as an example...well, I'm not seeing any exciting Mac rumors.
I'm still an Apple/MacOS person. To me, like it to all or most of you, it will always be the superior ecosystem.
But it all used to be quite thrilling, and, for me, it no longer is; and I do miss how it used to be.
Is there anyone that feels the same--at all?

 

[floral]

I've been through a lot of the Apple lifetime but not all of it. The way I see it, they've been mostly focusing on tweaking their already 'perfect' designs for most of the products rather than innovating and trying new things out (like that one random base Macbook from 2017, or the iphone mini series or even the ipados change). To put it simply I think they're focusing on software instead of hardware changes now.

 

[M4th]

10:03

I think we've all been there, in some way or another. There are probably just as many pages of rants as there are of raves for things Apple. Starting from the beginning and lasting long after we're gone... as with everything else in this world, it is what it is.

Hang in there?

 

[cjsuk]

The Mac is done. That's why. And that's how I like it!

 

[BB1970]

During those "exciting" times, it was also a time of burgeoning growth. So anything that was new was sort of exciting... industry wide. As a society, we've settled into our proverbial "groove". Rectangle pocket computers. If apple had their sh*t together, something like that failed AI pin woulds have been kind of awesome. Or a less expensive, but still fully featured, Apple Vision Pro. As it is, as humans, we still only have ten fingers and five senses. There's only so much you can do without repeating yourself.

 

[Apple_Robert]

I don’t care about being excited. What matters to me is that Apple continues to make quality hardware and software that integrates and meets my needs.

 

[russell_314]

I think that my sense that "the whole Apple thing" is no longer the exciting journey it once was aligns fairly closely to when the 24"iMac and/or the Mini became the thing. Or maybe it was with the passing of the Steve Jobs era.

To computer hardware isn’t exciting. It’s pieces of metal, plastic and electrical circuits. It’s stuff that will end up in a landfill within a decade. It’s what you do with the hardware that’s exciting. Whether that is take pictures of your family with your iPhone, figure out some work project with your Mac, or watch a movie on your iPad. Those are generally, the things that are associated with positive emotions. The hardware sitting in the box is just cold metal and plastic.

The front page of MacRumors, as an example...well, I'm not seeing any exciting Mac rumors.

That’s a seasonal thing. Also, Apple is getting better at catching leakers. I think there’s nothing more or less exciting coming out today then there was ten years ago.

I'm still an Apple/MacOS person. To me, like it to all or most of you, it will always be the superior ecosystem.
But it all used to be quite thrilling, and, for me, it no longer is; and I do miss how it used to be.
Is there anyone that feels the same--at all?

I think it’s what you do with the hardware. You can have a Corvette and never take it out of your garage. It’s not going to be exciting. You can’t even show it to your friends.

 

[Mr_Brightside_@]

This again?

 

[Starfia]

I doubt it's just you – I'd say this kind of sentiment seems to deserve its own category this decade.

I think what was thrilling during Apple's post-2000 rise, really, was Jobs and the team availing themselves of the time of opportunity: so much was realistically achievable and few others were seeing that or trying to achieve it.

What's now realistically achievable and unachieved has evolved, and I'd say Apple's still chasing it, and I remain excited.

But with respect to the Mac? Our present, no longer our then-future, is where Macs are thoroughly developed and utterly formidable. Machines which in 2000 were toward the blurred edge of futuristic fantasy. It's not so "thrilling" because it's long been real. Instead, it's merely wonderful pretty much every day.

 

[imanidiot]

As I have suggested elsewhere, Apple should just rebrand itself iPhonesRUs and be done with it.

 

[TgeekB]

Apple has a full lineup of products that act as tools. That’s what we need. Tools aren’t always going to be exciting. Even the iPhone has peaked out but that’s fine with me. It still works for what I want it to be

 

[Lounge vibes 05]

it’s the “grass is always greener” mindset.
To tons of people, things will never be better than they were 20 years ago. And I don’t mean 20 years ago from today, I just mean 20 years ago in general, at any time.
The 80s were fixated on the 60s, the 2010s were filled with 80s and 90s nostalgia, now the same thing is happening with the 2000s.

20 years from now, people will be complaining, assuming Apple still exists, that “Letting go of Tim Cook was the worst mistake Apple ever made” and complaining about how the “M24 glasses just aren’t as fun to use as an M4 MacBook Air was back in my day”.

 

[Lounge vibes 05]

I think that my sense that "the whole Apple thing" is no longer the exciting journey it once was aligns fairly closely to when the 24"iMac and/or the Mini became the thing. Or maybe it was with the passing of the Steve Jobs era.

This also I don’t understand.
The mini became a thing in 2005.
Steve Jobs passed away in 2011.
The M1 iMac was released in 2021.
That’s a 16 year time period.
Even assuming you’re just talking about the modern Mac mini, I’m not sure how you could argue that the excitement of Apple ended… when the M1 came out. The M1 was the biggest change to the Mac in 15 years, and pretty much overnight turned their lineup from computers that were pretty much instantly dated on release, to computers that you literally can recommend to anyone.

 

[Siliconguy]

"the whole Apple thing" is no longer the exciting journey it once was

Half the company is the phone, a device that in no way fits my needs. Therefore the Ecosystem is of little use. Services are a quarter of the company, and also of no use.

If you are into video editing the desktops (or at least the CPUs) are great, if you are not they are not. They are not upgradable and except the Studio port starved. The graphics are so-so, the real gamers laugh at them. They would meet my needs, but so does a Ryzen APU. (Intel integrated graphics are still gutless.)

MacOS is Ok, but not outstanding. Linux has caught up as far as getting work done. And the lock in is getting annoying. For instance Sidecar doesn't work unless both devices are on iCloud even when they are connected by a cable. Why? The iPad and laptop are connected by a cable, why do they need to be on wi-fi?. What are they expecting, more security? It's a screen, there is nothing to secure unless Apple is sniffing where they shouldn't be.

Apple's short support life is also well known so I won't belabor that except to add that they have not released the hardware spec for the M1 series yet so the Linux people are having to reverse engineer how the details work. Hopefully Linux on M1/M2 will be done by the time Apple drops support.

I do like the iPad but not for getting work done. Answering a short email is about it. The MacBook Air is really nice, but the competition has caught up. My desktop is Linux with 11 USB ports, 16 GB RAM upgradable to 64, 1.5 TB storage and room for two more drives plus larger versions of the two I have.

My server is a 2014 Mac mini running Linux too. The "whole Apple thing" is fading out of my life bit by bit not because they are no longer useful but there are better options. And Cook's three bungles in a row (Apple Car, Vision visor, Augmented Idiocy) are not helping the image. (maybe we should add a fourth bungle, sticking with 8 GB of RAM until last fall. The 2014 came with 8 GB standard even if it was soldered down.)

 

[iHorseHead]

In my opinion a computer is just a tool. It doesn't have to be exciting.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

I think that my sense that "the whole Apple thing" is no longer the exciting journey it once was aligns fairly closely to when the 24"iMac and/or the Mini became the thing. Or maybe it was with the passing of the Steve Jobs era.
To me, though, it's no longer exciting. It's all about phones and watches mostly with a side order of laptops. None of those things excite me, personally, especially phones and watches, but I understand that I might be all alone in that (I'm not trying to convince anybody that I'm right). The front page of MacRumors, as an example...well, I'm not seeing any exciting Mac rumors.
I'm still an Apple/MacOS person. To me, like it to all or most of you, it will always be the superior ecosystem.
But it all used to be quite thrilling, and, for me, it no longer is; and I do miss how it used to be.
Is there anyone that feels the same--at all?

Yes, it is just you. Think Apple Watch Ultra, Apple Vision Pro; look at the extraordinary image captures the iPhone Pro facilitates; review the foldable iPhone MR posts. [Edit: and like Lounge vibes already said, the whole M-series Apple SoC is huge.]

And IMO the "side order of laptops" that you reference is in a reality a couple of excellent main courses. A MBP loaded with RAM and SSD is a true beast, capable of almost any computing task whilst still mobile with superb display and speakers. The MBA makes cheap, light and powerful mobile computing available to anyone.

 

[ignatius345]

I think that my sense that "the whole Apple thing" is no longer the exciting journey it once was aligns fairly closely to when the 24"iMac and/or the Mini became the thing. Or maybe it was with the passing of the Steve Jobs era.
To me, though, it's no longer exciting. It's all about phones and watches mostly with a side order of laptops. None of those things excite me, personally, especially phones and watches, but I understand that I might be all alone in that (I'm not trying to convince anybody that I'm right). The front page of MacRumors, as an example...well, I'm not seeing any exciting Mac rumors.
I'm still an Apple/MacOS person. To me, like it to all or most of you, it will always be the superior ecosystem.
But it all used to be quite thrilling, and, for me, it no longer is; and I do miss how it used to be.
Is there anyone that feels the same--at all?

I too remember when Macs and Apple products had a lot more "magic" to them. I think in a lot of ways the rest of the tech world has caught up. One little example: AirPods. When they came out, the standard for bluetooth earbuds was very rough. Apple was the one who stepped up and started offering truly wireless earbuds with a sleek little case that charged them back up as soon as you put them away, and immediate pairing to your iPhone. Cut to a decade later, and everyone else has caught up. You can buy truly wireless earbuds with approximate feature parity from a number of manufacturers.

I don't think it's so much that Apple has stopped offering great products, it's that they've been so successful that they've inspired their competitors to step up their game (or, fire up their Xerox machines, depending on your perspective).

 

[waziazi]

imagine being one of these braindead apple fanboys these days

 

[Newbie67]

I hear ya! Take it from me I have been along for the ride since the first Macintosh came home in the 80’s. I was in high school and I was amazing my teachers with my dot matrix printed graphic homework. It was a great time to grow up and ride the adventure of tech like that. Then transition to mobile tech. Now it’s a ubiquitous part of everyday life. End of an era with only iterative improvements. Onward and upward now

 

[eyoungren]

I hear ya! Take it from me I have been along for the ride since the first Macintosh came home in the 80’s. I was in high school and I was amazing my teachers with my dot matrix printed graphic homework. It was a great time to grow up and ride the adventure of tech like that. Then transition to mobile tech. Now it’s a ubiquitous part of everyday life. End of an era with only iterative improvements. Onward and upward now

You didn't need a Mac for that. In the late 1980s I was in high school and turning in dot matrix printed term papers and homework - done on a Commodore 64 and printed on a Star Micronics SG-10. And from 1987 to 1993 I was running a full color BBS (AABBS (All American BBS) software) on that Commodore 64 and a Commodore 128.

My friend had a Mac, with a dinky little B&W screen while I had a full color 15" monitor. I won't even get into the Commodore Amiga and its graphics capability, but I had an Amiga 1000 by 1992.

I'm not trying to rain on your parade, just pointing out that there were other 'rides' out there in the 80s.

 

[Newbie67]

You didn't need a Mac for that. In the late 1980s I was in high school and turning in dot matrix printed term papers and homework - done on a Commodore 64 and printed on a Star Micronics SG-10. And from 1987 to 1993 I was running a full color BBS (AABBS (All American BBS software)) on that Commodore 64 and a Commodore 128.

My friend had a Mac, with a dinky little B&W screen while I had a full color 15" monitor. I won't even get into the Commodore Amiga and its graphics capability, but I had an Amiga 1000 by 1992.

I'm not trying to rain on your parade, just pointing out that there were other 'rides' out there in the 80s.

Thanks for sharing!!

 

[eyoungren]

Thanks for sharing!! View attachment 2509727

Oh sure! Glad to help!

A lot of Mac users that got started in that era were/are passionate about the Mac and Apple. Often they didn't realize that other computer manufacturers besides Apple and IBM existed at that time.

But I must say that your grateful response is better than what I usually get when pointing this out.

 

[fatTribble]

Bracing for grief…

When I put on my Vision Pro and watch Spatial Videos from my last trip I feel like Apple is doing some impressive engineering. I’m like a kid on Christmas wondering what’s coming in visionOS 3.

I started with my still working TRS-80 in 1978. Today’s technology to me is borderline magic (just without the pretty sparkles).

 

[eyoungren]

Bracing for grief…

When I put on my Vision Pro and watch Spatial Videos from my last trip I feel like Apple is doing some impressive engineering. I’m like a kid on Christmas wondering what’s coming in visionOS 3.

I started with my still working TRS-80 in 1978. Today’s technology to me is borderline magic (just without the pretty sparkles).

My dad brought home a TRS-80 in late 1980. My Commodore didn't show up until the summer of 1984 and in-between there was an Apple II for a couple weeks until my mom took it back to school (she was a teacher). We had lots of computer models going and going during the 80s, but no Mac until around 1993. That one was my mom's.

 

[TokyoKiller]

We can complain about how Apple doesn't have the magic it used to have, but let's be honest, no one in the consumer electronics segment has been able to meet Apple's level of coordinated software, hardware and services approach even when they are slacking.

This just shows how rare a company like Apple is and if it weren't for a few people who were hell bent in their ways in the early days of the company, it wouldn't have set the high benchmark we expect most things to be at today.