I'm not sure if you are being serious.
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Just "cure" is fine.
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Popular Mac Developer Slams Apple for 'Sad State of Macintosh Hardware'
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JL Gassée (veteran Apple exec and now VC) wrote a great Monday Note a few months after the MBP 2016 was released explaining why these computers were designed as they were.
In essence, he believed that Apple had predicted that the PC industry was declining, so for the moment (until the iPad could replace it) their strategy was in make a new product that had a higher average selling price than before.
This would then compensate for an expected lower number of units being sold.
So they made it as ‘sexy’ (new design that was light and thin) as possible (to appeal to high earners/business execs etc) and as cheap to build as possible ie soldering as much parts into the motherboard - instead of a more complex design that would allow parts to be easily replaced.
And in a move that can only be described as ‘nickel and diming’ (my words - not JLG’s) they put the TB on the highest spec computers, forcing anyone who absolutely needed that power & mobility to get a TB MBP whether they wanted to or not.
I think JLG’s insight helps to explain why this argument is wromg: ‘look at each quarter’s result for the Mac in the past year, it’s doing great therefore the MBP is a success!’
(As a side note, I’d describe a ‘pro’ as anyone whose job is made massively easier/depends on having access to powerful hardware and software).
Anyway. I think that this strategy has turned out to be wrong & then some.
I think that Apple saw the MBP as ‘good enough’ for devs to create iOS apps until they could move to the iPad to do this in a few years time & for creative pros to do a spot adjustments on the go.
I mean what else would pros want the MBP for?
Yes PC shipments are declining but what probably wasn’t apparent in 2014-15 (when Apple must’ve made the MBP strategy decision) is that the applications of machine learning, AI, AVR and VR etc all need the ‘truck’ of the PC in order to do the heavy lifting right now.
And shipping some pretty ultrabooks and trying to pretend that they’re pro machines wasn’t going to help here...
Before I sound too negative on this I really do believe that Apple has realised how stupid they’ve been and we are going to get some great machines this fall.
I also think that the (likely staged) move to ARM is going to be great too.
Let’s just call this the darkest part of the night before the dawn. Or let’s hope.
This is how I feel about T.C. again, this is my subjective opinion. many of this isn't based necessarily on facts but of observation:
I feel like when Steve Jobs was around (yeah yeah, that comparison), Steve had a very driven goal of making the best products he possibly could. He said numerous times that profit will come if you do the job right and you make the products excellent. He absolutely put product quality first and foremost in all his decision making. However, he did have hubris. When things didn't go the way he expected, he took it personally. It was a personal attack when the iPhone 4 antenna had a problem. After all, we were pointing out a flaw in his baby.
This explained the "holding it wrong" and much of the protestation by Steve. There were numerous occasions where this occured during his tenures at Apple.
Tim COok was Steve's right hand man. He saw that this passion and drive was insanely profitable. But Cook as a supply chain guy, and not a product guy, saw different motivation. He saw the insane profit that these products were capable of bringing and that I believe became his primary motivation when he took over the reigns.
So when prodblems happen, either a flaw in design, or not as quiet support for something he thought would have better market support, he doesn't look at it as an attack on his products personally, but he looks at it from a money perspective.
SO while Tim and Steve say the same things and end up behaving similarly when confronted with problems, Steve seemed genuine. Tim Cook feels like he's just affronted because of the financials. And this bothers me. Add in the scripted stuff and he seems completely and utterly fake when he's pushing the products. He doesn't actually seem to care about the quality. He doesn't seem to legitimately care about accurate, timely delivery. Lots of delays, lots of min/maxing of margins, But, repeating the same rhetoric that Jobs used to do from a place of passion.
I don't think Cook is a bad person. I actually think he's much better than Steve was at several things. ets not forget, that Jobs was an *******. let nobody forget that to most people outside of his closed bubble, he wasn't seen as a very caring / nice guy. Tim Cook is different. I think from a person to person perspective, I would have a lot more personal respect for COok. Especially with his social progressive stances. Environmental drive and a lot more transparency that Jobs ever had. I just think that he's a bean counter and he's trying to pretend for the company sake he's a products guy, and it just comes across as entirely fake. And often out of touch.
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Yeah, I'm a touch typist. in fact, I can type entirely with my eyes closed, and fairly accurate at over 100wpm.
the MacBook (pro) keyboard is one of the worst keyboards I have ever used, even if for a short period of time. And I've used some pretty crappy keyboards over the years.
The fact that 
have the balls to charge more (to make up for the declining market) and then release products with such obvious hardware and software issues is an insult.
I do not understand with all their money why they cannot hire more software and hardware engineers and test the OS for all of their products and their hardware. Given my "luck" with iDevices over the last four years (including my iPad Pro now), it looks like I will have to swallow humble pie and learn Windows troubleshooting unless the engineers at Apple get their stuff together and fast. Either that or I will buy another older model iMac which shoots me in the foot (as buying this 2013 did due to the low powered GPU and spinner).
I'm tired of handing money over for products that no longer work and force me to think about them instead of creating and getting work done.
seriously need to get on the ball with the software and hardware. If they maintained this while they try oh so hard to be something else entirely, I would not complain.
have the balls to charge more (to make up for the declining market) and then release products with such obvious hardware and software issues is an insult.I do not understand with all their money why they cannot hire more software and hardware engineers and test the OS for all of their products and their hardware. Given my "luck" with iDevices over the last four years (including my iPad Pro now), it looks like I will have to swallow humble pie and learn Windows troubleshooting unless the engineers at Apple get their stuff together and fast. Either that or I will buy another older model iMac which shoots me in the foot (as buying this 2013 did due to the low powered GPU and spinner).
I'm tired of handing money over for products that no longer work and force me to think about them instead of creating and getting work done.
seriously need to get on the ball with the software and hardware. If they maintained this while they try oh so hard to be something else entirely, I would not complain.
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Local network Old Time Capsule over WiFi. Works great and restore speeds are very acceptable. If and when it does enter end of life (soon I am guessing), will add either a NAS drive or an updated router with drive for WiFi backups using time machine software. May look into other backup options when the time comes. All will be over WiFi. The vision, cutting the cords, integrated networks are the future. Especially when 5G hits the streets. Seemless network from house to car to office, maybe even the beech, no cords.
That's a fantastic analysis of the difference between SJ and TC - thanks!
I think that you've hit the nail on the head about the worrying lack of product leadership at Apple and why it might be happening i.e. it's (too much) about the numbers.
I don't think that companies necessarily need to have a 'strong man/woman' to drive product strategy. I'm aware that Apple sees its exec team as a little like the Pixar 'Brains Trust' and is collectively driving product strategy.
However...
Under Cook, we're seeing product strategy seemingly been driven either by:
- An excessive use of numbers over everything else
- 'Because Jony Ive wants to do it'
- MPBP 2016-17
- The numbers tell Apple that the PC industry is in decline
- So this means that they need to milk the Mac business until the iPad can catch up
- Therefore they needed to pimp the MBP up and find a good reason to sell it for more - hence the TB
- Seemingly absent to this strategy is any consideration as to what pros were using their Macs for
- And how and what was going to happen to them until the iPad could serve as their main workhorse
- It seems as if Apple's attitude was that Pros weren't a big enough number to consider, given that tens of millions of iPhones alone were being shipped each quarter and they'd probably buy the new MBP anyway if the marketing was good enough
- However, we all know that the marketing reality distortion gap generator failed...
- So a hole crept into the MBP product strategy and I think that you can only explain this by an excessive user of numbers alone to drive strategy
- iPhone X
- Apple expected to sell less smartphones in 2017-18
- Therefore they needed to increase the average selling price of their flagship phone
- And they needed to evolve the platform
- Hence OLED and Face ID
The products being driven by the 'Because Jony Ive wants to do it' strategy are pretty easy to pick out:
- The Watch
- I have one, I really like it.
- However when it was first launched it was all over the place
- It's a personal communication device!'
- 'It sort of does some health things but not as good as Fitbit because it's really a personal communications device'
- 'it has mini versions of apps from your iPhone so that you don't need to use it as much. Oh hang on, we don't really mean that. Please keep on buying a new iPhone every year. We won't mention that one again!'
- Then by Watch OS 3 it was:
- 'OK, it's a health device' that does a few other useful things and we've decided to kickstart a health strategy now'.
- It felt like it was a product that Apple wanted to do and that they then had to work out a strategy for why they would be doing this i.e. the wrong way round!
- Everything having to be as thin and as light as possible (and evolved to new forms if possible, because he's bored of doing the same thing again and again) even at the expense of durability and functionality
- 'Nuff said!
Yes, provided you live in an area with fast and reliable internet access. You do know that physically that’s probably 10-15% of the US? I’m not talking about the percentage of the population that has access to fast internet, I’m talking about geographical areas where such access is or is not available.
or you also deal with highly sensitive data that is also extremely tightly regulated to protect the security, integrity and data of people.
I'm IT in a Canadian Financial Institution. We will never touch cloud services for our data transfer and storage. that would be suicidal to our business. USB memory sticks are fully encrypted before use by any employee and must have approval before we even turn their USB ports on on their computers.
the idea that "just use the cloud" for computing is the efault answer shows a complete lack of actual enterprise, and large scale financial institution data privacy and security methodology and procedures. Cloud services might be perfectly fine for the average consumer, or even some peoples jobs. But it is NOT a suitable solution for a vast, and I means vast, amount of use cases
Having to connect hubs and dongles to get the ports you need because they've been removed from the computer to save space isn't "transparent and unobtrusive".
Having to type on a keyboard which is, at best, "love it or loathe it" and at worst just plain unreliable because its been made thin to save space isn't "transparent and unobtrusive".
Needing an eGPU (and hence, an external display) to get the type of GPU you need even on a desktop system isn't "transparent and unobtrusive".
Having to reach round the back of a 27" iMac to plug in a SD card or USB stick is certainly neither transparent nor unobtrusive.
"powerful" isn't just about how many cores the CPU has. Versatility plays a role, too. The big problem with the iMac Pro is that it comes with Hobson's Choice of a 27" 5k glossy display with a particular colour gamut optimised for video editing (oh, and, lousy ergonomics unless you buy a VESA stand and a $80 VESA adapter with screws apparently made of cheese). That display is great value if it is exactly what you want but worthless if (say) you prefer a matte display, an ultrawide display, a 40" 4k display, a matching pair of 21" displays, a different colour gamut, a display with a hood and builtin colorimeter or the really expensive display that you bought 3 years ago and is good for another 5-10 years...
...and see note above about eGPUs, while also bearing in mind that (for example) some people need NVIDIA GPUs because they run software that works best with NVIDIA.
Some of us don't even need Xeon-class CPUs but still want flexibility in terms of GPU choice, external storage and connectivity... the top-spec regular i7 iMac is powerful enough for many.... except, as soon as you start taking advantage of the i7 power you're hit with the noise that comes from pumping large quantities of cooling air through a thin'n'crispy case.
E.g: music. I'm only messing about with this for my own satisfaction but its one area where Macs are still widely used professionally (and MacOS is regarded as better than Windows). A lot of music hardware - even brand new products just released - comes with a USB 2 interface for MIDI and config/firmware... not USB C, not USB 3 not Thunderbolt (apart from some high-end stuff with a gazillion 192kHz audio inputs) - it doesn't need the bandwidth, but nor does it want the extra latency, instability and sleep problems that you get with a hub.... nope, you want half a dozen extra USB2 ports straight off the motherboard (which you'll get with many desktop PCs) or from extra USB controllers on PCIe cards (I don't currently see any Thunderbolt-to-shedload-of-USB adapters, and they'd still be an extra box and wall-wart).
...also a case of where the i7 in the iMac would be fine for most purposes if it had space for a silent cooling system.
...so you don't want to have to rummage in your bag for a dongle every time someone hands you a USB stick, or carry around a portable hard drive holding the videos you want to show (or take out a second mortgage to pay for more than 512GB of internal, mostly non-upgradeable SSD). Plus, while we'd already resigned ourself to not having space for a VGA socket in our MBPs (still the most common requirement for hooking up to a data projector) we were just getting to the point where meeting rooms were starting to sprout HDMI connections (or even a MiniDP adapter) when that connection was whisked away from the MBP. Clearly, some people live in a world where their flunkeys have scouted the location and installed hot and cold running Apple TVs before they step up on stage.
If you think that they were filming Prince William when Lady Gaga just happened to FaceTime him and he just reacted naturally, then I have a bridge in London for sale that you might be interested in. (Seriously, even if it did happen spontaneously, they'd probably re-enact it to get the correct camera angles anyway, and a half-decent video editor can drop in a swift cut-away over any hunting, stabbbing and cussing so slickly that you'd never notice). Rule 1: the camera always lies. If its TV, its not reality.
That said, I really must get a TouchBar, because Lady Gaga never returns my calls.
Seriously, though, (a) that's one scenario that a touch screen (something that most of the MacBook's competitors are now offering alongside a keyboard and trackpad) would be useful (I've been interrupted, a pop-up has grabbed my attention and I want to press the 'accept call' button on it without having to think how to navigate to it)
(b) Even if the touchbar has its uses, is it a good differentiating feature for a pro laptop? On the one hand, there's been no apparent rush to implement it on the 12" MacBook, where you'd expect the target users to be more worried about missing FaceTimes from minor celebrities than "how am I going to hit the escape key when I'm using vim" nor to implement it on an external keyboard for the iMac Pro (I can see the challenges of doing it on an external device, but I dinnae think it breaks the laws o' physics and Apple is supposed to be where the magic happens).
There's a problem with introducing a user interface convention that isn't going to be rolled out across the range to make it worth developers' while to support it (see also: force touch and Pencil support on iOS).
Touchbar strikes me as a great iPhone/iPad app that - if implemented well - would help distinguish the whole Mac/iOS ecosystem from the competition... that's certainly not incompatible with what we've heard about Apple's pro workflow team, but where's the App? That report was talking about things like Logic Remote which are really cool (walk around the room tweaking the EQ on Logic depending on what you hear...) but that's been around for years.
I work for a machine builder and within the last day or so we were notified that a controller we use has a vulnerability that can be used for DDOS attacks with a side consequence of completely locking the controller up making the machine it runs unusable. These controllers are used a lot in industrial plants for automated assembly lines. Auto plants will have people on staff who can do the required upgrades but small companies don’t typically have people on staff who know how to install these types of upgrades. They also are typically located in small rural towns without decent internet speeds, so even if it’s possible to remotely install the fix it’s really not because of very slow (3 mbs) download speeds and even slower upload. At these speeds and with the reliability in those areas you can remotely monitor a system but if you try to upgrade programs and firmware and it fails you have just bricked the customers production line until someone physically goes there and clears the system then updates it.
This is a physical reality in a lot of the US and you don’t have to travel very far from a major city to run into these conditions. Big companies pay to make sure that the infrastructure is adequate. Small and medium companies who moved decades ago to where cheaper labor was located don’t have the money to install the infrastructure themselves and the cities -towns actually, most are sub 2000 population and many are 500 or less- don’t have the money either.
This isn’t hypothetical this is what my company has been faced with on an increasing scale for 20 years.
Consumers in urban areas may be ready for Apple’s wireless world but a lot of the products that they buy are produced or assembled in areas that aren’t, and have no immediate prospect of being upgraded.
not even for me, it is the scary part for me icloud.
You want to delete it or you cannot access or paid $$$ . Why i does i need to paid to get my data back ? Why does folder in icloud empty.. I'm maybe old style geek developer whom only trust folder backup not GIT, not SVN not CVS or anything else..
For you , maybe security is the number one concern. So Good luck.
Oh right I'm aware of this - I'm currently helping a friend spec out a Ryzen build. It's just sad that if you want to get a COMPUTER that actually is ticking all the boxes these days you HAVE to go to Windows. Apple should just sell the OS on a disc or download or flash drive and be done with it if they're not going to make new worthy hardware. The abandoning of OpenGL is another mistake but they don't see it that way. But gaming is hardly the concern of Apple. I'm using the Mac these days mostly for audio recording and music composition and to a lesser extent video production.
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The fact that 10 year old Macs still have a value is symptomatic of the malaise surrounding the current line up as is the fact that people are keeping their Macs for longer and longer.
Nobody is suggesting that the product line up needs to be refreshed every year but it certainly needs to feel "up to date" which is not currently the case. Apple's Mac customers should be salivating and resisting the temptation to upgrade and renew, instead they're depressed and putting off the decision for as long as possible in the hope that next year's machines will be desirable.
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Hopefully one of the side effects of the Mac (gradually) moving to ARM is that we'll see annual updates, as whatever goes into an ARM Macs will be part of the same tech stack as used in iOS - and it's fair to assume that we'll see annual updates for iOS devices for at least the next decade.
Change the EULA to allow for installing on 3rd party software...problem solved. Apple can concentrate on its mobile lineup and allow entrepreneurs to satisfy the pro users. Win-win. But Apple will never allow that the same way the federal government will never allow mass legality of marijuana. It's a sad, sad state of affairs in the world today...
I still cannot fathom how an ipad can replace, theoretically, a laptop without any mouse support...
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You base your comment on the fact that pros users are only the developers...which is not the case...
The 2015 MacBook Pro that everyone points to as the bee knees of connectivity only had two USB 3.0 ports and two Thunderbolt 2 ports, which means the only ports anyone has given up on the 2016/2017 MacBook Pro is the HDMI port and the SD Card slot.
If you use an SD Card reader day in and day out, then why would you rely on the one in the 2015 MacBook Pro? Because it was "free" and somehow Apple has robbed you? The one Apple included is not horrible, but can be easily replaced by a dedicated SD Card reader and a USB-C to USB 3.0 Micro-B cable, although some vendors are beginning to ship USB-C versions as the market slowly begins it's shift away from Type-A. Some are big, some are small, so it depends on whether or not you travel. If you didn't use the SD Card reader, but instead you need C-Fast or XQD, you're already going to need to buy an external card reader, and the one Apple stuck in the 2015 MacBook Pro is useless.
If you need to connect to an HDMI display or more likely, a Projector, then there are high quality USB-C to HDMI cables on the market now. Chances are you carried an HDMI cable with you in your bag anyways, especially if you travel, when you had a 2015 MacBook Pro. If you need VGA, well, you probably need a dongle whether or not you were connecting to a 2015 or a 2016 MacBook Pro.
An eGPU allows you to speed up certain workflows, especially for mobile users, who now won't have to make the choice between a tower computer or a laptop. In fact, I can have two or three or take one with me in a pinch, something I can't do with a tower computer, where two (PCIe x8/x8) is usually the limit, depending on the CPU, the motherboard or how big the PSU in the computer is.
The iMac Pro is curious beast. If you don't need the display, well, Apple does not offer you anything except a neglected, over-priced Mac mini or a neglected, over-priced MacPro. If you don't want to deal with wires and such, reaching down to the floor, or worrying about dust bunnies invading your tower, the iMac Pro might just be your cup of tea. Or not.
If you don't need a Xeon, then a regular iMac should work just fine. The built-in GPU limits choice, but you can expand it to 64GB of DRAM, add an eGPU, fast external storage (TB3 or USB 3.0) and it has plenty of connectivity.
Regarding music, I use a FocusRite Scarlet 18i8 and connect it to my 2016 MacBook Pro via a Cable Creations USB-C to USB 2.0 B Male (printer/scanner) cable that cost me $6 USD on Amazon. I also connect my zoom H6 with a USB-C to USB Mini-B cable I got for $5 USD on Amazon. Both work like a charm...no dongles, no adapters, no hubs. You wrote an awful lot of words about a problem that doesn't actually exist.
If you still need a VGA port, you do have some options. However, if you still lament not having a VGA port on your MacBook Pro, 2002 just called and they have an iBook waiting for you.
Time will tell if the TouchBar lasts and becomes more useful, or dies on the vine. I like mine and use it quite a lot. YMMV.
Steve didn't ship bad products for the purpose of profit margins or the stock price.
Steve would actually say that in as many words to the analysts on the earnings call.
They would snivel about the share price going down and he would literally tell them that he didn't worry about the share price.
That's the difference.
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No they don't.
They only make a small selection of high-priced exotic ultrabooks that don't serve most users well.
Dedicated enthusiasts can find ways to get by on them, but this is the first time since 1999 that the Mac lineup could be described in such unfortunate terms.
For 17 years in a row Apple made a matrix of products that could meet the needs of most pros and most consumers.
In 2016 they pivoted to thin-and-light, inherently-compromised ultrabooks ONLY. (Which they then stopped updating apparently.)
Old product matrices for reference:
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Presumably Apple had a plan to add some sort of indirect pointing support to the iPad as well as multiple tabs (windows) for apps etc. but that this hasn't happened as quickly as they've liked.
And presumably multiple user support is being worked on as well.
At least I presume this is the case - else I can't see how an iPad could possibly replace a computer.
Regarding pros. No, I think that a 'pro' is anyone who has a job/task where the use of powerful hardware and software is crucial/essential to getting their job done.
People like this are designers, video editors, musicians and audio editors etc. - and yes, developers.
For example, I mostly make Gantt charts and use online scrum/kanban boards, write reports in Word, manage resources & budgets in Excel and presentations in PowerPoint etc.
I'd say that that more makes me a knowledge worker than a 'pro', as I could probably do my job on a 5-6 year old Windows PC and I'd be OK (sadly for me!).
...and a magsafe port, remember.
So, without external hubs or multiport dongles, a 2015 iMac can support a charger, a second display (HDMI), a fast hard drive (TB 2), an external mouse/keyboard (lets assume they share a USB dongle) and still leave you with a slot for a USB memory stick and a SD card (...there's a nice range of SD cards that fit flush and can be left in semi-permanently, ideal for e.g. shunting your media library or other big, static files off the expensive, fast SSD) and a spare TB2 port for a high-speed device or display - maybe an ethernet dongle if (like me) your workplace's wifi is unreliable and totally outside your control.
On a post-2016 MacBook Pro:
- Charger - scratch one USB-C port
NB: 12" MacBook owners stop reading now - even the MB Air did better than this...
- Keyboard/mouse (scratch USB Port #2 - oh, and your kb/mouse's USB-2 mini-dongle that used to only stick out 1/4" and could be left in place is now sticking out on a USB-C-to-USB-2 dongle)
NB: non-TB 2016 MBP owners, stop reading now and buy a dock. Make that two if you want to commute from home to work.
- External display (scratch USB-C port #3 - oh, and read up on some of the troubles people have had with USB-C to HDMI/DisplayPort adapter cables esp. with the 2017 models)
- External HD (scratch USB-C port #4, unless you pay a hefty premium for a HD with TB3 through)
End of the world? No - but where a TB dock at home and work for single-port docking was a luxury solution to the first-worls problem of having to plug in a handful of cables every morning, now its a must-have... and, yes, using a laptop to shuttle from home to work, with a large display, keyboard and mouse on each desk is a not uncommon way of working.
So a computer that costs substantially more than its predecessor is (a) only incrementally faster - if at all thanks to extra thermal throttling and (b) worse as a "desktop replacement".
Of course, if you want to connect 4 Thunderbolt 3 devices you're in bandwidth heaven.... assuming your thermally-throttled i7 and ~meh mobile-class GPU can do anything with that much data...
Why wouldn't you? OK, if its mission-critical then maybe you've got a spare in the drawer along with the floppy drive, optical drive and other stuff that you no longer carry around daily...
...an eGPU which immediately obsoletes the sealed-in, no external input display in your iMac (oh and we're assuming that GPUs don't actually need the 16 lanes of direct-to-CPU bandwidth that the internal ones enjoy... now that may be true...)
Right, now add an external synth or two, a keyboard (plus any non-music stuff you have connected), and wham, you're out of USB ports and if you use a hub you've got logic moaning about changing midi devices every time you sleep. OK, so no laptop will have that many ports, but a desktop PC will typically have have 2 on the front, 6 on the back and be able to accept a cheap PCIe card with even more.
C/f iMac - 4 USB 3, 2xUSB-C but scratch one of both of the latter if you want an external display, TB3 hard drive etc. Again - first world problems but we're paying a hefty premium for these systems.
Steve Jobs was widely quoted in 1996, from a Fortune magazine interview as saying, "If I were running Apple, I would milk the Macintosh for all it's worth — and get busy on the next great thing. The PC wars are over. Done. Microsoft won a long time ago."Steve didn't ship bad products for the purpose of profit margins or the stock price.
Steve would actually say that in as many words to the analysts on the earnings call.
They would snivel about the share price going down and he would literally tell them that he didn't worry about the share price.
That's the difference.
[doublepost=1529689475][/doublepost]No they don't.
They only make a small selection of high-priced exotic ultrabooks that don't serve most users well.
Dedicated enthusiasts can find ways to get by on them, but this is the first time since 1999 that the Mac lineup could be described in such unfortunate terms.
For 17 years in a row Apple made a matrix of products that could meet the needs of most pros and most consumers.
In 2016 they pivoted to thin-and-light, inherently-compromised ultrabooks ONLY. (Which they then stopped updating apparently.)
Old product matrices for reference:
When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, he imposed a very strict matrix of products to save Apple, because their computer lineup at the end of 1996 consisted of 40 separate models across the Power Macintosh, Macintosh, PowerBook and Performa lineup. Not to mention printers and displays. Cost cutting was the order of the day, in order to save the day. Why such drastic cuts? Because Steve knew he needed product to sell, which meant he couldn't get rid of the Mac completely then and there. He kept just enough computers around to still call Apple, Apple Computer, Inc. He knew it was just a matter of time, though before something superseded the Mac. TWENTY TWO YEARS AGO!
Had he stuck strictly to that 17-year old matrix of 4 computer models you're touting, Apple would be much a smaller company or completely out of business by now. The PC market has been declining since 2001. You're pining for a moment in time that has been gone for almost 20 years. That moment in time ended the day Steve (and Apple) introduced the iMac, with it all-in-one form, two (2) USB 1.1 ports, 10/100 Ethernet and 56K modem. It was derided from the moment it was launched, yet still proved the naysayers wrong and helped propel Apple back from the brink.
That next great thing Steve was talking about was the iPod, which replaced the words "MP3 player" in the common vernacular all around the world. Steve knew 22 years ago that fighting a battle you had already lost was useless. The tremendous success of the iPod cemented his place as CEO of Apple.
Apple innovated in the Mac product space during Steve's tenure, some were hits (the iMac, the Titanium PowerBook G4, the MacBook Air), some were duds (PowerMac G4 Cube), but the last really big thing that happened to the Mac was in 2006 when Apple switched to Intel CPUs. Everything else has been iteration since then.
The next great thing after the iPod was the iPhone. Apple sold 216.8 million iPhones in 2017.
The next big thing after the iPhone was the iPad. Apple sold 43.7 millions iPads in 2017.
Whether there is a next great thing waiting to be discovered, remains to be seen. It wasn't the WATCH, even though I love mine. However, I sincerely doubt its the second coming of the Mac.
Sorry - not sure how true that is: Apple chose a LQ Chip in the end for the 2016MBP. Everybody was arguing that Apple was waiting for that "HQ chip" and it was there but Apple chose not to use it.
No. This is Apple. Interesting enough: after selling me a notebook (MBP 15" late 2016) with meeh hardware (processor, touchbar, keyboard, battery) they decided to upgrade it less than half a year later - obviously because they had made a mistake.
That wasn't Intels mistake.
I did not advocate for a return to the 4-product matrix.
Just a return to a time when they didn't ship objectively bad, out-of-date products that failed to serve even their normal markets: Creative pros, power users, and enthusiasts.
Read this thread and tell me that Steve wouldn't be horrified.
He did a lot of things but one thing he never did was mail it in.
Steve was purposeful and deliberate. The current matrix feels like a bad idea that was half-executed and then abandoned...in 2016.
Return to really great products. I can't believe I'm being piled on for advocating that.
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I’m really ok with the iPad Pro replacing much of what a Mac can do.
In fact I think the future of computing in the next few years is going to be a Venn diagram with both the pc form factor and the tablet form factor sharing a good deal of functionality.
However, the iPad is just not there yet.
It needs:
- multi user support
- indirect input (try working on a medium complex document or spreadsheet on the iPad right now - it’s painful and slow)
- multiple ‘windows’ (tabs) in the same apps and in the split screen
- different workspaces ie combinations of split screens
- to be able to drive an external monitor
The iPad is just not there yet as a productivity device.
And until it is, Apple does need to offer proper productivity solutions for people who are going to create and make the apps that the rest of us use (and I’m in the rest of us!). And yes, that means people pro class Macs.