Popular Mac Developer Slams Apple for 'Sad State of Macintosh Hardware'

[baryon]

1 year warranty on computers (and electronics) is standard. If you use an AMEX card you automatically get 2x the warranty and you can also buy an extended warranty (applecare) if you're worried.

It's not standard in Europe. Most things you buy, electronic or not, will come with 3 years or more of warranty, and some cheaper brands will come with just 2 years. Apple is definitely not a "cheaper" brand yet comes with only 1 year as standard. Apple care is not warranty (warranty is free), it's insurance.

The point of warranty is not just to get you a free repair, it's also to create a feedback loop to companies, actually making it their interest to create durable products, because they have to bear the consequences of their own mistakes (makes sense).

While the EU has forced Apple to comply with a compulsory 3 year warranty, they will do everything in their power to prevent you from knowing about it and to avoid having to honor it, by checking every little scratch on the computer and voiding the warranty if they find any. Should you ever have to claim their 3 year warranty through EU standards, you're in for quite a ride (shouting, calling the manager, putting up with months of wait time, having to bring legal documentation, them pretending they've never heard of this thing called "the law", threatening to sue, etc).

 

[maflynn]

Maybe the wait is because there is a major, every-product, sweeping hardware update coming.

Maybe but that doesn't excuse apple for letting the Mac Mini, the MacBook Air, and the Mac Pro to whither on the vines for years and years.
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It's not standard in Europe.

I can't comment in the EU, as I'm unfamiliar with standard practices, but here in the U.S. as I stated, 1 year is standard.

 

[notabadname]

I really hope Apple follows this thread. It clearly has stirred their consumer base in a passionate way.

 

[SBlue1]

What people don't understand is that Mac computers are so mature, after decades of improvement, that actually they do not require regular updates anymore. I'm posting this on a three year old MacBook Air that is still incredibly fast. Buy a worthless HP or Lenovo laptops and we'll talk as well in three years...

My 2012 MacBook Pro works just fine, correct, until the next OS wont install on it. I am in the Apple ecosystem but when my Mac and my iPhone are not both on the latest OS i cant use the latest features. I am considering a switch since Apple also killed new AirPorts and Extremes I need new ones already. I give Apple one year, two at a maximum to show up with a decent MacBook Real Pro.

 

[manu chao]

One could also argue:
MacBook Pro hasn‘t missed a cpu circle yet, it hast not gotten 8th gen until now.

But thats exactly 9 months too late.
Update when it’s hot!

You really expect Apple to align its release cycles with Intel's? And the list of 8th gen mobile processors is somewhat of a hotchpotch (with for example no 4.5-W TDP model for the MB):

• Kaby Lake R: U-series, TDP 15-W (4 models)
• Kaby Lake R: G-series, TDP 65 & 100-W (5 models)
• Coffee Lake: U-series, TDP 28 & 45-W (9 models)
• Cannon Lake: U-series, Core i3, TDP 15-W (1 model)

By the way: i don’t think we will see A11 in iPad Pro.

That is quite possible, there's a first for everything. Though we had A-series device releases in July (iPod touch).

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

It's not standard in Europe. Most things you buy, electronic or not, will come with 3 years or more of warranty, and some cheaper brands will come with just 2 years. Apple is definitely not a "cheaper" brand yet comes with only 1 year as standard. Apple care is not warranty (warranty is free), it's insurance.

The point of warranty is not just to get you a free repair, it's also to create a feedback loop to companies, actually making it their interest to create durable products, because they have to bear the consequences of their own mistakes (makes sense).

While the EU has forced Apple to comply with a compulsory 3 year warranty, they will do everything in their power to prevent you from knowing about it and to avoid having to honor it, by checking every little scratch on the computer and voiding the warranty if they find any. Should you ever have to claim their 3 year warranty through EU standards, you're in for quite a ride (shouting, calling the manager, putting up with months of wait time, having to bring legal documentation, them pretending they've never heard of this thing called "the law", threatening to sue, etc).

That is not correct, the EU forces a 2 year guarantee on product bought with the EU (This periode may be longer due to national laws). Everything past those 2 years, is something extra you get from the seller or manufacturer. Also, this guarantee is not the same as warranty! A commercial guarantee (warranty) is something that can be provided, or be forced by national laws (For instance, my countrys warranty is 6 months from the time of purchase, and is better than the EU guarantee), and is similar but not the same.

Apple provides 1 year of warranty world wide, but have to comply with the EU guarantee, which is then still active 12 months after Apples warranty runs out.

 

[erigas]

Before Apple turned into a phone company there was at least an attempt to luring professionals with an imaginary perceived speed advantage....
Nowadays they just tell us we don’t need the speed, even though we propelled them by buying their MacBook “Pro”.
Buck stops here at least for me.
If a machine does not come with a Vega GPU to run Solidworks with out slowing to a crawl , I will not be replacing my 2015 MacBook Pro ...

 

[Manzanito]

Maybe but that doesn't excuse apple for letting the Mac Mini, the MacBook Air, and the Mac Pro to whither on the vines for years and years.
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I can't comment in the EU, as I'm unfamiliar with standard practices, but here in the U.S. as I stated, 1 year is standard.

If you don’t mind me asking, as a staff member of macrumors, why does the buying guide reflect the age of the price cut the mac pro got, instead of the actual age of the thing?

 

[SBlue1]

What comes to my mind everytime I read some thread about Apple forgetting about Mac is a company called Porsche. Yeah, that Porsche.

Porsche used to be a sportscar company until 2002 when they started producing the Cayenne which is an SUV. Because most of Porsche sportscars were / are not that expensive like Lamborgini or Ferrari they were selling more cars than those two companies, yet the company was not as huge as BMW for example, so until 2002 they made a niche products. Since 2002 they started producing the SUV which turned out into a huge success and the company profits started raising. After several years the Cayenne became the most profitable car they have been making. It was no longer a niche product. After another few years they started producing a Panamera which IMO is also not such a niche product as 911. So let's get to the point – did Porsche started ditching their niche products because they were not making that much money? Hell no! Since then they produced a lot of expensive-to-develop cars like the Carrera GT/918 or GT3/GT2 which had to be really expensive to produce without a vision to became a huge profit, but they love their heritige and loyal customers. And that is my friends a nice example how to do the business when you produce a consumer focused products and also a niche products. You use the money earned by the consumer products to build those amazing niche products that made your company different at the beginning.

Its those expensive to make sportscars that generate the image of Porsche so that then people buy those high margin SUVs.

 

[CaseyGV]

Yeah, okay. And the second Tuesday of every month you will see the massive slew of security updates due to Windows. Reason enough to stick with Apple.

No, it really isn't.

 

[maflynn]

If you don’t mind me asking, as a staff member of macrumors, why does the buying guide reflect the age of the price cut the mac pro got, instead of the actual age of the thing?

I'm just a moderator, I have no input in the buying guide

 

[Dukat]

The new Mac Pro desktop is due in 2019.

Many rumors that Apple is switching to their own processor for the Mac line in 2020.

Perhaps the long delay for the desktop isn’t because it’s taking them forever to design a new desktop and instead is a wait for their own processor to be ready?

It doesn’t make sense to release a new desktop after 7 years running Intel and year after switch to their own CPU so perhaps the first release of the new Mac Pro will be running their own possessor?

I like Intel and having an option to dual boot to Windows, but if they switch to their own CPU how long will they support 2 versions of OSX? If they are ditching Intel I’d prefer to be on their new hardware from the start to avoid this potential issue.

 

[tubular]

Mac user since 1986.

Writing this using a 2012-era Mac Mini quad core I bought right before the Great Mac Mini Lobotomization. I'd another one of these tomorrow if Apple made them. I can upgrade my own memory, swap in my own hard drive if I want. Right now I'm booting it off an external SSD and it's just a sweet machine.

Make more of these, Apple. Stop with the soldering iron. Stop with the "we know better than you do what you want."

I'm a developer, and no, nothing in the iWorld is ever going to replace the computer for that. I split my time at work between Mac and Windows. I don't *want* to go Windows full time, use it as my main development platform. But Apple may force that on me. Apple seemed to have recognized just how precarious the state of the Mac is for professional users by giving their "mea kinda culpa" a year ago, but given the truly terrible decisions Apple has made lately, it's still entirely possible that their design for the still-unveiled WSVSMP ("We're So Very Sorry Mac Pro") will be overpriced, inflexible, unrepairable, and aimed narrowly at audio/video production.

They say it will be "modular." What do they mean by "modular"? We have no idea. It could mean that you can snap off the outer shell and put on one of another color, like the Skull Canyon NUC.

The frustration, really, is that Apple really doesn't seem to realize how throughly they've put themselves behind the eight-ball. That April 2017 should be semi-annual: here's where we're going, here is our plan to repair our relationship with professional users, and here is our recognition that it was our own misunderstandings of that user base that jeopardized the relationship in the first place.

 

[geromi912]

Before Apple turned into a phone company there was at least an attempt to luring professionals with an imaginary perceived speed advantage....
Nowadays they just tell us we don’t need the speed, even though we propelled them by buying their MacBook “Pro”.
Buck stops here at least for me.
If a machine does not come with a Vega GPU to run Solidworks with out slowing to a crawl , I will not be replacing my 2015 MacBook Pro ...

volta is better

 

[Kabeyun]

I really hope Apple follows this thread. It clearly has stirred their consumer base in a passionate way.

These forums represent the hypercritical fringe more than the average consumer. Having said that, I’m all in favor of Apple hearing it from as many sources as possible. They should either upgrade their hardware or definitively kill their macOS-running hardware division. Most of us would prefer the former, but even those who only care about their iOS-running products don’t want their cousins to rot from neglect.

 

[DesertNomad]

I think this is the future indeed, but unless the ipad starts supporting mouse, I highly doubt it will ever be used as a main computer. It’s a major restriction!

Exactly. Have you ever tried using a complex spreadsheet on an iPad? It just doesn't work. The spreadsheet I am currently working on (on my MacBook Pro) has 20 tabs and each tab has cells covering roughly 80 rows and 40 columns. An iPad can't realistically do that.

 

[Simplifier]

For people watching youtube and browsing email old technology works just fine, we can agree on that. Also, they might as well use their phone. But even then it’s not decent to charge the same price the did on release date.

The MacBook Air costed like more than 2k when it was originally released. It was super expensive. Today, you can find a MacBook Air for $999. So, it all depends on how you look at things.
What I find not decent is all the other companies selling cranky hardware for less money, but with a life expectancy of about twelve months. I'm exaggerating of course but how many of us physically hate our Windows PC from work and use a Mac at home? That says something.
Also, Apple is a luxury brand. Do you rant at Porsche for not putting the latest whatever motor on their car? Or not diminishing their price on the latest Cayman? Of course not.
And I'll go a step further. Even if the newest MacBook Air was 10% or 20% or 40% cheaper, I would still not buy it.

 

[DesertNomad]

Hmmm no. People who have iphones/ipads, don’t need macs anymore...

Then they are not doing real work on them... and by real work I mean creating content: writing technical manuals, using spreadsheets, creating artwork in something like Adobe Illustrator, etc.

iPads are great for email, web browsing, social media, etc. but there are many things they are not good at too.

 

[winstars]

I got a 2010 13" MBP a few months back for a road trip, works great and cost me about $130AU or less than 10% the new cost for the cheapest Apple Laptop. Why buy new?

Six months ago I bought a new 13" MBP with all the bells and whistles, 16 GB, TB SSD, Touchbar etc to replace my 2012 13" MBP.

I HATED it. The keyboard, no MagSafe, lack of ports (but I had a bag of dongles!!!) convinced me within a week to return it to the Apple store for a full refund.

I am now seriously thinking of buying a used 2015 MBP, possibly even on Ebay. Each week there are about a dozen or so for sale that interest me: 16 GB RAM, i7, 512-1TB SSD, low battery cycle etc at about $1000-$1500... Apple refurbs, which I would rather do, seem few and far between.

So thanks Tim Cook, because somehow, I am now thinking about buying a USED COMPUTER ON EBAY because it has the features I want, features that Apple used to SELL to me!!!

Crazy.

 

[Simplifier]

My 2012 MacBook Pro works just fine, correct, until the next OS wont install on it. I am in the Apple ecosystem but when my Mac and my iPhone are not both on the latest OS i cant use the latest features. I am considering a switch since Apple also killed new AirPorts and Extremes I need new ones already. I give Apple one year, two at a maximum to show up with a decent MacBook Real Pro.

So you are saying you are not able to do your work on the latest MacBook Pro? How many pixels will be enough? Do you need 1 billion pixels for your wallpaper? Opening Photoshop takes 5 seconds on my 2015 MacBook Air with only 4 GB of RAM. I imagine it's faster on the new MacBook Pro. Is five seconds too much? Producing music, creating Websites, filling out spreadsheets, what is so fancy that you physically cannot do on the latest brilliant MacBook Pro?
This always comes down to this. What is the such brilliant task that cannot be performed greatly on the latest models? Who cares about the family of the processor. It could be called Celeron or i12, at the end it is about the interaction with the computer. That's why we never change our television sets. Because it performs as advertised. I press a button and I can watch tv. I don't care about anything else. That's also why we don't exchange our speakers every year. I press a button and then I can listen to my music on the same big and beautiful speakers that I have since I am a child. Do we need to change our couch and bed and glasses every year? Should I exchange my guitar each year?
We are so used to have our components changing all the time that we don't understand that computers are mature now. This is not 1995. And one day, it will be the exact same thing with the iPhone, you'll see. And people will complain, because that's what they do. On my side, I deeply love Apple, as the best company on Earth and by a wide margin.

 

[litmag01]

Quentin Carnicelli, in their missive, cites no concrete evidence of a need for refreshes other than the numbers of MacRumors. Although it likely isn't, this comes off as a ham-handed promotional stunt by MacRumors.

Also, if Carnicelli had done their research, Apple device release times are only marginally related to business health or pundit pontifications. This, if anything, is an expression the industry wide impact of Intel Tick-Tock marketing bleeding into hardware lifecycles.

 

[DesertNomad]

The thing is called warranty and for some reason Apple gets away with providing just 1 year of it

Are you old enough to remember when Apple was providing just 90 days while everyone else was providing a year?

 

[tubular]

BUT... Apple have their OWN INTERNAL road map, work schedules, design and prototyping/development/design/testing/proving processed, vision of products they have planned for release many many years down the road... to which ONLY THEY are privy.

The Mac Pro fiasco demonstrated that this isn't true. They dithered for years, just as they've dithered in the mac mini for years.

 

[AxiomaticRubric]

The new Mac Pro desktop is due in 2019.

Many rumors that Apple is switching to their own processor for the Mac line in 2020.

Perhaps the long delay for the desktop isn’t because it’s taking them forever to design a new desktop and instead is a wait for their own processor to be ready?

That’s exactly what is happening per an internal memo I heard about from an Apple hardware beta tester. This is the end of the line for the Mac as we know it because they will be completely resetting the Mac product line using A-* chips and new designs. No more reliance on Intel === Back to the old product upgrade cycle we’ve all been craving.

 

[Flight Plan]

Apple was never a computer company...

...Apple is a design company who is focused on making technology more personal for its users...

Fine, then open the OS, let us build our own hackintosh machines, and let us build 'em to our own specs.

If Apple would just get out of the way, and even if we have to pay for the OS, there would be a HUGE onslaught of new hardware and software development for the Mac. Let the people breathe new life into Mac. I'd build a new dual i7 or i9, 128 GB workstation with multiple Nvidia GTX 1080 TI rendering GPUs and at least three IPS monitors. And then I'd turn around and put it on an i7, 64GB laptop.

Just because I can.