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I think its pent up frustration, the issue we're facing isn't new. I think for years many apple enthusiasts felt that the Apple was treating the Mac like the red headed step child. The issue with the Mac Pro is not new, nor is the Mini. Apple skipped upgrading the MBP for a couple of years, i.e., stayed on the Haswell chipset far too long. In a sense why should they change when people were buying them. I think that's changing now as apple is charging almost 3k for a laptop, that has a keyboard with a reputation of being poorly designed. A touch bar that is a solution in search of a problem and now a generation behind in the chipset.

I'm not down on apple, but I'm bummed out. My 2012 rMBP is the best laptop I've ever owned, yet, its the last MBP I've owned and my next laptop will not be a Mac. I wanted to buy a Mac but so far Apple has not provided a suitable machine, where as Apple's competitors have a wide variety of machines that I can choose from.

I completely agree with this post. I purchased a 2014 Macbook Pro 15" with the 750 GT 2GB and the 512 SSD for around $1200 about nine months ago. I probably will not buy another mac. I will instead build a hackintosh with an AMD video card and use that for gaming in Win10 and occasionally use it for mac if I even need to. I will use a iPad Pro when I am out and about (for what I need it will work fine--Scrivener, Aeon Timeline, Procreate, Blogging, Remote Desktop for the rest). I really, really want another laptop, but I could imagine a future where I don't bother with the hackintosh long before I get another piece of mac hardware.

CHANGE MY MIND, APPLE!!!! WE HAVE BEEN WAITING SO LONG!
 
Have tried to stay current using Hackintoshs but to be honest, Mac OS is starting to get full of bugs and the possible switch to proprietary ARM will be a deal breaker.

I’ve heard some other complaints about bugs in Mac OS here. Am I the only one who doesn’t run into bugs? I have High Sierra running on five Macs that have daily use and honestly I rarely, if ever, encounter any problems. All of these machines are much more stable than the Windows 7 machines at work. What are all these bugs everyone seems to be running into? There must be others out there like me for whom Mac OS runs fine.
 
I guess I can throw my 'complaints' in, too.

I bought my Macbook Pro 3 years ago. I did so only because of my anger over Windows 10. There is much about Win10 that I don't like. My MBP is fine, and I expect to get at least 2 more years of use out of it.

However, since that purchase, my needs have changed drastically. Now that I'm retired, I have no work-related needs. I have one desk, which has to hold my 4K monitor, the PS4 (which I got recently now that I have time to game), the Roku box I stream video on, and the MBP used in clamshell mode with the monitor. I have absolutely no need to use the MBP as an actual notebook anymore. (There's an old Win7 box that sits on the floor as well, that I hardly use.)

When the MBP goes, if there isn't a non-notebook Mac that I can hook up to my monitor, I'm going back to Windows. The current Mac Mini would work, but can't drive a 4K monitor. I can't hook the other devices up to an iMac, after all (the devices I've seen that supposedly let you hook the PS4 up to an iMac have horrible reviews). I don't have room for more than one monitor.

But my iPhone 6 is starting to show it's battery wear. It'll probably last until the end of the year. If there's been an announcement of a new Mac Mini, or some other type of Mac I can hook up to my existing monitor, by then I might replace it with an iPhone SE (or whatever the equivalent might be by then). If not, then I will get an Android phone (for half the price of an SE) and begin my transition away from all Apple products. Not out of hate, but just because they don't offer products that fit my current needs.

If I'm not in their target market demographics anymore, oh well. Apple will probably do just fine without me, and I know I will do just fine without them.

Exactly, I am just hoping they are being extremely patient for some reason. But I am more worried that I don't fit their demographic anymore.
 
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what's so ironic is that the biggest sites to cover apple news all have mac in their name! this site, 9to5 and macworld. Yet, it's the iPhone that gets all the attention year after year!.. I couldn't give a rats ass about some me-moji AR rubbish that only works with a $1000 phone. Get back to the core of Apple, the whole reason the company was founded in the first place and make some god damn modern computers already!

I can't believe that apple are on the verge of becoming the most valuable company in the world, the first trillion dollar company, and even with all that wealth they still have the nerve to release an AIO desktop with 1 inch thick bezels in 2018. Where is the R&D money going!?!?! The iMac shares the same design going way back to 2012, a desktop with the same chassis for SIX YEARS!! But that's not all, the most valuable computer company in the world have the nerve to put a 5.4k spinning disk in the 4K iMac priced at $1299. Great value! I could go on the same war path but it's all been said before.

Apple, don't humor us with gimmicky ads. Just make some computers that are worth the THOUSANDS of dollars you charge for them. It's that simple.


I doubt anyone is advocating an upgrade every year. But when you've purchased a Mac Mini in 2014 and you want to replace it today what is available? Why a 2014 Mac Mini! That's four years without a replacement. Same can be said about the Mac Pro. Upgrades aren't solely about CPU. GPUs, memory, disk, I/O are also considerations.



Few are asking for completely new and life changing redesigns. Many would be happy with incremental upgrades as the components become available. Apple used to do this. Other companies do do this. In fact many people would love for Apple to go back to the cMP chassis with updated internals. Same with the Mini. Many would love Apple to go back to the pre-current MBP form factor. No one is asking for anything earth shattering. Apple, at least when it comes to the Mac Pro, is the one insisting on that.


I can understand this developers frustration. Apologies for the "wall of text" length but it's the only way to articulate what I want to say. My last Apple desktop purchase was the mid-2010 Mac Pro (6 core). My last Apple purchase was when the iPhone 6 Plus was released. I've been an Apple customer and Mac user since the Mac IIcx. Before that, I used PC compatibles (running DOS and towards the tail end, OS/2) but ultimately moved to the Mac when I got into the early days of multimedia. Three products were pretty much plug-n-play for the Mac; the 24-bit color Radius graphics card, HP ScanJet IIc (including Mac scanning software and Photoshop plug-in), and the Philips CDR 522 (this was during a time when CD burners weren't consumer products yet and I acquired a new 2x speed one that was being discounted by $2K along with a copy of Astarte Toast CD-ROM Pro which by itself, cost several hundreds when it was still a version 1.x product).

I retired my last PC (an OS/2 2.1 box) in 1994 when I purchased my Quadra 800. After that, my upgrades was at a fairly consistent pace: Quadra 840AV, Power Mac 8100, Power Mac 8500, Power Mac G3 (B&W), PowerBook G3 400MHz (Bronze Keyboard), Power Mac G4 500MHz (AGP Graphics), Power Mac G4 Cube (as a collectors item), iMac 700MHz (Summer 2001), Power Mac G4 Dual 1GHz (Quicksilver 2002). The G5 was the first redesign in awhile that I didn't jump into since folks who will remember how long in the tooth the PPC was during that period. My Dual GHz G4 was already a nice heat generator and the G5's ran hotter (plus there was the power supply noise and liquid cooling issues on some systems). So I held off a bit. Everything became academic with the 2005 announcement to shift to Intel; for the first time in 4 years, I purchased a new Mac; the 2006 Mac Pro (2.66GHz). The acquisition of products resumed at slightly longer intervals though; 13" MacBook (mid-2007) and Mac mini 2GHz (mid-2007) which I
still use with OS X Server.

One can do the math as far as the amount of money spent with Apple (the only system I sold was the 2006 Mac Pro; everything else, I still have since I am a collector of sorts). This also doesn't include the Apple displays purchased (I still use my 30" Cinema Display as well as a 20" one) or other peripherals like Laserwriters and Airport base stations. For myself, they've been the best tools to get the job done (majority being non-all-in-one systems). I also realized they weren't always on the cutting edge tech wise but it was offset by industrial design and with a few exceptions, very reliable. I do realize recent manufacturing processes taken together with design decisions (which include some form over function ones) have led to some flaws in various products.

Which leads to the present. Mid-2010 was when I purchased my current Mac Pro (3.33GHz hexacore), 13" MacBook Pro 2.4GHz, Mac mini 2.4GHz, and then 11" MacBook Air 1.6GHz Core i5 (mid-2011), 11" MacBook Air 1.3GHz Core i5 (mid-2013). All of these "recent" systems besides the mini are still in use (the mini ended up overheating when the air vent was blocked up and the entire thing overheated where even the hard drive failed). My 2010 MacBook Pro has a bloated battery that I need to replace (though the case is already warped), and I already replaced the bloated battery in my 2013 Air (fortunately, it only pushed up on the keyboard and didn't warp the bottom casing). This is one of the side effects of trying to make everything thin as possible, packing in everything into tight tolerances, and heat doing what it does when the engineering that sounded great on paper, doesn't always work the way it is supposed to in real life.

The "cheese grater" form factor Mac Pro was really built to last though and has been reliable to the present. Also love its internal storage (I have 5 SATA drives in it with capacities between 3-6TB plus a PCIe SSD (Accelsior E2). The 2013 Mac Pro was a non-starter because I really did not want to go back to a system design with very limited internal expansion which leads to a whole mess of power bricks and external enclosures. It did also begin to concern me around the 2016 timeframe as to whether or not Apple was moving on from headless desktops.

Late 2016 was the first time since the early 90's that I purchased a non-Apple computer; a small form factor gaming system from ASUS. I liked it so much that I purchased the updated model last year with a Core i7 3.2GHz quad core (turbo boost to 3.9GHz), an Nvidia 1070 GTX, 512GB SSD, 1TB SATA, and ASUS 4K IPS panel gaming display for $1500. I love the monitor (fully articulating as well). While it's a SFF gaming rig, it handles graphics and 4k video editing/encoding fine. And I do realize I could've built my own system for much less (but I really just wanted a SFF turnkey system). Paying the Apple tax all these years makes it easy to swallow the prices of even what is considered the higher end on the PC (non-Apple) side. Windows 10 (I took part early on in the Windows Insider program to give a lot of feedback and it turned out to be refreshing experiencing even though there is still a lot that can be improved) hasn't been that bad (once you disable auto update and lock out feature update installs so that you can set rollback points to test) but I still prefer OS X (macOS).

I never did desire to return to a dual platform setup but that is where things are today. I am also not what you would call very sticky with Apple's ecosystem (a conscious decision to not be tied to any single cloud service) and am more or less an edge case when it comes to using Apple's pro products. On the iOS side, I only purchased two iPad's (the original and the 2nd generation mini). I also purchased a 2nd generation Apple TV as an experiment and wasn't too impressed (it still crashes and resets even when I stream to it using AirPlay). I am still undecided about going with an Apple TV 4K versus something like a Roku. And as I mentioned at the start, the iPhone 6 Plus was the last Apple product I've purchased (my favorite iPhone form factor is my 5s that I still use for media and photos).

After the April 2017 Mac Pro roundtable discussion and then the update in April 2018 about the modular Mac Pro being a 2019 product, it became apparent that Apple executives lost the plot with this niche segment. The "pro" moniker has a very diverse group with a wide array of needs so its not like I am tone deaf when it comes to trying to design a product that meets the varying needs of these customers. I actually come from an IT background so the whole convergence of classic Mac user interface with the underpinnings of BSD unix appealed to me after the acquisition of NeXT in 1996. And while it hasn't been perfect (often times annoying having gone through several hardware and software transitions), the platform has served me well being the best tool for the job.

But I am also realistic in terms of the amount of time left on my 2010 Mac Pro where there is going to be a point that it will be dropped from the supported list where it will eventually be several iterations out of date for macOS. After the Mojave announcement, I purchased a flashed Nvidia GT740 so that I can eventually run the later beta on it. I'm also not going to be surprised if Mojave ends up being the last version that will officially support this particular form factor but at least I know there will be a few more years left on it when it comes to security patches and ability to run the latest software.

Because I have no idea how Apple is going to define "modular" (like if they end up overthinking it) when it comes to their actual design and form factor of this new Mac Pro, I've already made plans to transition to HP's Generation 4 workstations (specifically the Z6 since it has the right amount of expandability and internal storage capabilities for my needs). It will also serve double duty as a gaming rig with an Nvidia 1080 GTX in one of the 16x slots. I'm impressed with the HP division (located in Colorado) that designs these workstations as they put them through a lot of rigorous testing. For myself, Windows 10 Pro is serviceable but lacks "personality" and still doesn't have the pervasive refinement in various functions (one small example is drag-n-drop where it works so much better on the Mac). But it's not like the Mac has been slowly losing the special touches that gave them some soul (like the startup chime, the Happy Mac bootup logo, the cloud poof derived from the Newton when removing an icon from the dock, the pulsing light, the backlit logo on laptops, etc).

I'm not looking for Mac updates every single year. The situation with the Mac mini and Mac Pro (yes, they've roundtable discussed this but it is still a vapor product at this point) is beyond reproach though when you consider those are being sold at their same price points with tech that is not reasonably current relative to the competition (there is a point where it is insulting). I would love to continue spending my money with Apple if they designed a non all-in-one desktop that isn't internally restrictive like it was with the 2013 model. I guess time will tell.

P.S. I feel I should disclose that I am also a long time AAPL shareholder. The ROI from the growth in mobile is something I cannot complain about BUT it doesn't mean that I agree that all decisions should be about squeezing every single penny at the expense of the companies core pillars and crown jewels. The Mac (hardware and software) are an important cornerstone of the entire Apple ecosystem even though it may represent a smaller portion of the revenue and marketshare pie. They are still high margin products (and more so the niche Mac Pro line) which at one time, used to be where I spent a lot of my own disposable income on. The executive team do hear about this stuff and have given lip service like "we love the Mac" or "the Mac mini is an important product in our lineup". Actions speak louder than words though. All I can say is that Apple has been losing me as a customer with the neglect of some Mac products for most of this decade and I know I am not the only one.

I am using an early 2011 MBP 13", and looking at Apple's lineup, I have no need at all to replace this machine. It is the single best laptop I ever owned, even beter than a ridicules expense IBM Thinkpad I used to own. 7 years of use, replaced only the fan for about 8 dollar and upgraded the harddik to SSD and went from 4 to 8 gigs of RAM. Even the battery is not dead yet, not great but still good for an hour or so.

Apple simply fails to atrack me as a new buyer, because the old hardware was that good (thank you Steve) while the new doesn't offer anything worthwhile (damn you Tim). Hope this happens to the iPhone soon, so Apple might realize where the actual core of the company is.
 
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While I’m on the same train as everyone on how Apple is failing in the computer part I don’t get how they make so much profit, probably from iPhones but I wonder if it’s a good strategy to bank on iOS only now? Does it still have a future ?
 
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While I’m on the same train as everyone on how Apple is failing in the computer part I don’t get how they make so much profit, probably from iPhones but I wonder if it’s a good strategy to bank on iOS only now? Does it still have a future ?

Apple only has a solid future when all the products work awesome together. The halo effect, as Steve Jobs described is the way to go. Although, I have to admit, I would probably buy a new iPhone, and a new iPad Pro 12.9", I would build a hackintosh rather than buy a new Mac of any kind.
 
The blog post by Quentin is a perfect example of how out-of-touch developers (and Mac power users) are with the vast majority of Mac and PC buyers, who typically pick up a new computer maybe every six-to-10-years.

...so? This year the people who last bought a Mac in 2012 will want to upgrade, next year the people who bought a Mac in 2013 will want to upgrade... and when they do upgrade, they'll be looking for something to last them another 6 years so they won't want to buy a $2000+ machine that is already between 12 months and 4 years behind the curve.

The iMac 5K is still the best desktop PC you can buy, bar none. The MacBook Pro is still the best power-user laptop, and the MBA and MB are the best portable devices with keyboards attached for casual/typical-user use.

You've really never looked at or used anything that isn't a Mac, have you....?

The 2017 5k iMac (I have one) is a really, really nice all-round machine if you're looking for a moderately powerful all-in-one with middle-of-the-road graphics and a 27" semi-glossy screen. If you want 5k above all else then its about the only game in town, and great value... but 4k is actually pretty good, cheaper, and available in a massive range of screen sizes, finishes, formats, colour gamuts etc. If you don't want a 5k display then the iMac suddenly looks rather expensive (...a $900 value display that you don't want and can't sell on because its embedded in your computer isn't worth a penny)

The new intel CPUs (not yet in the iMac) come with 6 cores as standard, and there is a vast choice of more powerful graphics cards available for full-size PC desktops. It took me about 5 minutes to run out of USB ports - I could really use a mini-tower with an extra USB card in it and a couple of front-mounted ports too.

So, yeah, the iMac 5k is a solid machine if it fits your needs, and the iMac Pro is great if you need the power but are happy with Hobsons Choice over what screen and GPU you get... and that's it from Apple if you want a desktop (ignoring 4-year-old Mini and Pro options that weren't particularly special when they were new).

There seems to be circular reasoning at Apple - the power-user market is to small to justify the level of R&D that goes into producing smaller, thinner, lighter machines with pro-level power... but maybe the power users don't want ever smaller, thinner, lighter machines that cost a fortune to develop - maybe they'd be happy with slightly boring boxes with up-to-the-minute standard components in them that could run Mac OS without hacking... which would really not cost that much to develop? But, no, its pretty clear that they're trying to make the new Mac Pro something exotic - then they'll probably leave it to wither for 5 years because the level of sales don't justify the R&D.

Jobs said, years ago, that desktop PCs will become like trucks.
Guess what: some people still want trucks.
Why not make some trucks?
 
I can’t run Xcode on a Mac ad. I am willing to spend more for macOS, but Mac is so far behind wintel PCs that it has become ridiculous. I understand that desktops and even laptops are a shrinking, unprofitable market but it is a crucial market. Blowing off the professional desktop users is like a movie theater owner observing that all his profit comes from selling popcorn, soda pop, and candy and taking the smart business decision to stop selling movie tickets.
 
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I can’t run Xcode on an Mac ad. I am willing to spend more for macOS, but Mac is so far behind wintel PCs that it has become ridiculous. I understand that desktops and even laptops are a shrinking, unprofitable market but it is a crucial market. Blowing off the professional desktop users is like a movie theater owner observing that all his profit comes from selling popcorn, soda pop, and candy and taking the smart business decision to stop selling movie tickets.

THAT IS A BRILLIANT ANALOGY! It is spot on. If I give up on the mac hardware, do I have to buy other apple hardware? Maybe not.
 
People may not buy a computer each year, but when the time comes to buy one, nobody wants to pay Apples premium prices for tech that's years behind.

By your logic, why update anything? Most people replace their phone every 2 years, why does Apple release a new model every year? Most people keep a new car over 4 years, why update the cars each year.
Totally agree with you. I was answering someone who said you need to buy a PC every year.
 
I can’t run Xcode on an Mac ad. I am willing to spend more for macOS, but Mac is so far behind wintel PCs that it has become ridiculous. I understand that desktops and even laptops are a shrinking, unprofitable market but it is a crucial market. Blowing off the professional desktop users is like a movie theater owner observing that all his profit comes from selling popcorn, soda pop, and candy and taking the smart business decision to stop selling movie tickets.

A very long time ago Apple *almost* agreed to let third party hardware manufacturers run OS X on their Intel hardware. After all, OS X is based on an open source kernel. But alas, Apple pulled out of this at the very last moment. I presume because out of loss of control. (The horrendous Windows scenario).
 
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And to think it could be so easy for Apple to make his customers happy:

- a slightly thicker MacBook Pro with the old keyboard design and a bigger battery.
Maybe offer a cheaper 15” non touch bar version

- bring back the old Mac Pro tower design, just with updated components.

- update the Mac mini, Intel’s hades canyon is the proof you can squeeze some powerful hardware in a small form factor

Everyone happy
That's exactly it. We're not asking for the world, we're just asking that Apple recognize they've gone down the wrong road and need to rethink things.
 
Except for the MBP keyboard, I agree its not bad. The issue as I see it is, that its outdated and Apple has shown a tendancy to not update it very often. That's the frustrating part.

Apple updates the MBP roughly once a year. How often do you expect them to update it?
 
Sounds like grandma needs to avoid porn sites. 20yrs windows user and never been infected. Since win10, windows defender has replaced the need for a separate security.
Any working antivirus oughtta flag Win10 itself as spyware.
She mainly had a ton of Yahoo! and Conduit stuff, probably from all those installers that bundle crap in.
 
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I’ve heard some other complaints about bugs in Mac OS here. Am I the only one who doesn’t run into bugs? I have High Sierra running on five Macs that have daily use and honestly I rarely, if ever, encounter any problems. All of these machines are much more stable than the Windows 7 machines at work. What are all these bugs everyone seems to be running into? There must be others out there like me for whom Mac OS runs fine.
I feel the same way about Windows stability. Rarely have had any issues with it.
 
A year and a half ago, my dad purchased a Mini without my knowledge. I told him to bring it back right away as Apple was surely going to have an update soon, since the current model was out for so long and even when it came out, it was a downgrade from the previous model. He still has the store credit for getting a new one when(if) it comes out, but every time I see him and he asks me about a new Mini, I feel terrible for him having waited so damn long. I just hope Apple knows this kind of stuff is going on and they understand they're at fault for it.

Dude!!!!!!! When the last mini came out I told myself eh... wait til next year it’ll be better. I’ll just wait one more cycle. I don’t know if they’ll ever make another mini.
But if they chalk it up to poor sales based on the last model then that’s their fault. The last model was barely an upgrade.
But yeah I can’t believe it. Sucks. Same thing happen with my iPhone. Told myself I’ll ugrade my launch day iPhone 6 once the new iPhone SE 2 comes out. The iPhone SE is essentially an iPhone 6S so it didn’t seem much of an upgrade.
But I’m starting to doubt they’ll upgrade that ether.
 
Well everyone is different. Your circle of friends might be more well versed in tech than the average person. Not everyone knows how to build a PC either and many probably wouldn't do it even after watching hours of Youtube how-tos. The younger generation is more literate but my experience goes back to the mid-'90s. In those days only tech enthusiasts really knew what they were doing.
Agreed but even at my age of 51 and a late starter, I didnt but my first computer til I was 40 Lol. My first smartphone in 2009
Any working antivirus oughtta flag Win10 itself as spyware.
She mainly had a ton of Yahoo! and Conduit stuff, probably from all those installers that bundle crap in.
I was just being sarcastic. Ahaha. Actually I don't think yahoo is bundled into win10. Truthfully you can opt out of anything you feel is spying on you.
 
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