Yes I do want to be part of the Apple family. I regard the MacRumors community an extension of our Apple family. It is unfortunate a few too many anti-Apple trolls have been tolerated for too long, but overall this is a good community of people who demand the very best products that only Apple can make.
...
I'm glad you feel that way about Apple at least. They are indeed still making great products, the best products, and driving forward on innovation like no other company can do. That said, I don't expect everyone to fully buy into the Apple experience. But I am definitely not ashamed of going all in on Apple wherever possible.
...
The iPhone SE and Apple Watch is also a great combination for an incredible price. I still couldn't believe how affordable Apple made the SE when they originally launched it. It's starting to look a bit long in the tooth now, and iOS 11 is far from great on that smaller display, but overall I can easily imagine why you are so satisfied with the combination and the total price.
When I've been using my Apple Watch to track exercise, I hated carrying around the larger iPhone Plus. I often lusted after an SE in this situation but thankfully it no longer necessary with the latest models of Apple Watch.
If you really believe that "only Apple can make great products", that their products are "the best products", and that they are "driving forward with innovation like no other company can do", you are living a bubble of fiction. It was closer to true in years past, but never was true. If you want to close your mind to reality, and limit your choices for everything to only what Apple makes, that's certainly your choice. But its not reality.
What has Apple made, that even attempts to do any of the things that the Surface Pro, Surface Book, and Surface Studio do? Nothing. Many, many folks on this forum have called out for Apple to do something in these spaces. Products like the Mac Mini and Mac Pro have gone years without an update. My signature used to be all Apple. Its not because what Apple saw as important took a left turn from what I care about. Hip hop stars, Carpool Karaoke, Animated poop emojis, removal of useful ports in the name of courage and thinness.... not of interest to me.
Where has Apple declined?
Networking - I have used Airport Extremes, Expresses, and Time Capsules for my networking needs. They were always rated the highest, even though they were over priced and had minimal configuration. Things started to decline and my iOS devices would not switch and I was always getting crappy bandwidth. After much frustration, I bought a Netgear Orbi and finally I have good network performance anywhere in my house or outside.
Mac - I had a MacBook Air and Thunderbolt display. Outstanding setup when I bought it. Fast forward to today. Apple abandoned the display market. Mine need a $900 new LCD panel once under AC, but then developed additional problems and so I was stuck with something Apple wouldn't work on, that didn't work, that was very expensive. The MacBook Air, one of my favorite products, was abandoned and left in kind of product limbo. I moved to a Mac Mini on the desktop and gave the MacBook Air to my daughter. That was in 2012. Its been 3 years since I the Mini has been updated.
Portability - I'm a traveling IT professional and want to minimize what I have to haul around. With Apple, I have to buy a Macbook Pro, an iPad Pro, and an iPhone, to do what I can do with a Surface Pro and a smartphone. I am not the only one that has this need. Apple has decided for me that I can't get a tablet from them that runs a fully capable OS. They are going to spend years and years enhancing a smartphone OS until it can do desktop work. In the mean time, I'll be retired by then. I have a fully functional tablet for note taking by pen, and a full function laptop, in one device... in either the Surface Pro or Surface Book. With Apple I got their great innovation... the Touch Bar. No thank you.
Phones - This is really their main product now. And yet the latest "shipping" product, the iPhone 8, is really an iPhone 6sss. I already have a 6s+... no thank you. The X... seems like a half backed attempt to catch up with everyone else. Where's the plus? Tired of waiting for innovation that matters to me in their smartphones. And what I've found is the Apple ecosystem advantage gap has diminished quite a bit. Thanks to competition, most of the ecosystem advantage can easily be accomplished by other means, and then I'm not trapped in a closed ecosystem.
Watch - You just said you liked the iPhone SE so you didn't have to carry your larger iPhone to the gym. I have used an Apple Watch at the gym for 2 years. I thought it was "the best" smartwatch because I'd not looked at anything else. Now I realize that in the gym, the Gear S3 is so much more intuitive and functional in the gym... and oh yeh, it looks a real watch and can use normal watch bands. What's better, the UI makes sense, and a rotating dial is much easier to deal with when running with sweaty hands, vs. a crown and swiping screens. And Apple hasn't updated the look of their watch in multiple versions.
[doublepost=1508521541][/doublepost]
The problem I will have in the next couple of years or regarding Apple products its my kids as they mature. The Mac Mini and the MacBook Pro nice enough now for their homework and school. But I will not buy them an MacBook Pro at their prices, not even a older model.
Apple needs to complete the iPad Pro vision as a laptop replacement in the next version as the price is right for genera productivity for me. As it is, for me still does not do that. I think they reached a touch maturity to a point where supporting an mouse or trackpad will not hurt app innovation in that field and actually improves the interaction language in cases were the iPad needs to be close to parallel to ones eyes on a desk. Putting on top of the table its just bad for ones back in long periods of time.
So either they show something convincing or Ill be forced to go either Chromebook or Windows for my kids were homework is concerned. Its unfortunate as they like their Macs and the iPad.
Cheers.
The Chomebook for kids would seem to be a great way to go. It would be pretty hard for them to mess that up. Depends on the age of the kids though, because I doubt there are any parental controls on it... not sure, but imagine that's the case.
You would get my excitement jag every week or so from MS and Co. Than Google ... got fed up.
