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

[Glockworkorange]

Part of the issue is the state of the industry. People aren’t buying home computers at the rate they previously did. It’s now possible to live entirely with your mobile devices. In some ways the Mac (and PC) are relics in the consumer world. The situation will look more dire in 10 years. Only dinosaurs like me will probably be buying another Mac.

This is probably true. There are a lot of people who happily use their iPhone or android device or iPad when they need to go online or communicate, or read or whatever. This isn't the early or mid 00's where you needed a true computer to use the web.

There's another smaller segment that needs non-demanding hardware for work, like laptops for office work or whatever.

Then there's an even smaller segment made up of enthusiasts and professionals who need high end gear.

Apple heavily caters to group one, moderately caters to group two and gives lip service and and long wait times for new products to group three.

This is not going to change no matter how many times one of them gets on stage and says "now, we love the Mac."

In fact, it will probably get worse once macOS moves to ARM. Personally, I don't think I'll buy another Mac--ever.

 

[Doomtomb]

Every time we hear about software updates instead of desperately needed hardware updates to the Mac

 

[MBAir2010]

Anyone realize today’s coding is not sturdy anymore?

My mba 2010 looks beautiful with the shiny beveled edges and nice green light next to the Apple iPod from 2008 that had 2 drops and survived. These products I purchased did not include relentless sales pitches of Apple care as my iPad did I had to buy last year.

I miss using the iMac g4 igloo I never had a spinning ball or had to run any malwarebytes or 3rd party
What? My safari is convulsing........
Meahwhile while typing this, the Mac mini 2012 stopping streaming the mlb game is was watching. For 2 minutes I had to stop the spinning ball, clear cache, reload safari, click bookmarks, select mlb favorite, tap the game I was watching, and think of getting rid of high Sierra, maybe tomorrow.

I will never by a new Mac product again!

 

[DesertNomad]

I learned to write software on an Apple IIe in about 1985 and later bought an Apple IIgs.

I moved to the Mac platform in 1989 on a Mac IIcx with System 6.0.3, MPW Pascal with loose-leaf documentation, 5 volumes of Inside Macintosh and Scott Knaster's "How to Write Macintosh Software". In those days the only online resource for developers was the Apple section on CompuServe, reached via a 1200bps modem.

Later, I migrated to a Mac IIfx, Quadra 800 and countless more. I've been through the days of ResEdit, Resourcerer, THINK C, Symantec compilers, CodeWarrior, the 24 to 32 bit transition, the transition to System 7, PowerPC, Intel, OS X, Carbon, Cocoa and probably more transitions I can't remember.

Almost 30 years later I am using a 2014 MacBook Pro as my main development machine. This machine is by far the oldest Mac I have ever used on a day-to-day basis. I fear that Apple has lost its direction, having been so focused on iOS, they seem to have forgotten that every iOS app was developed on a Mac.

Unfortunately, I don't see this changing anytime soon. In a few more years, I'll be able to retire and then my life will not be bound to an increasingly aimless Apple. I have spent my whole professional career writing Mac software and Apple used to have focus. I never expected it to turn out this way.

Very sad indeed.

Trygve Inda
President
Xeric Design, Ltd.

 

[Lioness~]

Almost nothing have happened on Mac area since Steve died.
They just put in some more stuff in an iMac and made it pro.

Well, it’s in a period when, we are supposed to think anyway, it isn’t happening that much. Sure not at Apple anyway.

They’ve been spinning on the iPhone all the way.

Glad my 2013 iMac is still ok on Sierra, but no use of buying anything else of what they got though.
Waiting...as so many else

 

[steve333]

Cook, get off your butt and tell your team to update the Mini. NOW, and it had better be good.
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Rip mac mini

No Mac Mini, no me. I will go eslewhere and I know a lot of others who feel the same way.
Hopefully Cook can take some time off of sucking up to politicians to get it done

 

[femike]

Apple's level of interest in macs and respect for the customer is reflected in their headless macs, the mac mini and mac pro.

mac mini - 4yrs! same price! the last update in 2014 was a downgrade! so its been 6yrs!
mac pro - 5yrs! the last 'update was pathetic'

It's total BS. An almost trillion dollar company, it's inexcusable. Its absolute proof of the level of respect they have for the customer.... none.

But they have the energy to speed tens of millions to get Oprah. Tim Cook has lost his marbles!

I will not get any all-in-one iMac as they all have a thermal design issue, and I consider it a waste of resources, its non-user-upgradable, the screen has to be ditched with the whole unit, and other reasons.

Even to get a 15in mac with i7, 16gb ram, 512gb, its $4100! (not in the US). That s almost 3 times the price of a Dell 17in ! (Dell has many discounts thru the year, 2 times without discount). I'm sure Apple can make a well designed plastic mac that is thicker with user replaceable ram, storage, battery, and it will sell plenty. Anyway they don't care.

 

[Xowi]

Painfully true, I own two companies that are powerd by Apple computers and to be honest are aging gracefully - if we treat the computers like senior citizens.

It’s time for a new models to be released across the board that make sense.

 

[Pakaku]

Macs are neglected because it's all about iPhones. But wait, you need a Mac to write iPhone apps. I mean sure, you could write one on a pseudo-vintage Mac, but the irony there is so funny it's painful and soul-crushing.

 

[M.PaulCezanne]

Part of the issue is the state of the industry. People aren’t buying home computers at the rate they previously did. It’s now possible to live entirely with your mobile devices. In some ways the Mac (and PC) are relics in the consumer world. The situation will look more dire in 10 years. Only dinosaurs like me will probably be buying another Mac.

And literally all Mac OS and iOS developers, since I don’t think you can run Xcode on anything but a Mac.

 

[iZac]

Their plan is to let it languish long enough that an ARM based mac is all the more enticing.

 

[MBAir2010]

I take three (3) things away from this...



c. Consumers are Apple's future--period.

They want Customers who buy iPhones every year, who meet at clubs, lounges and can’t even fix a burnt out light bulb and will commit to $xx.xx per month for music streaming services, not someone like me who has a pentalobe screw driver and a external DVD player.

 

[compete12]

What it means to me, personally:

I really like my new 2017 MPB 13. I just replaced my 2008 MB Unibody with it. I really liked the MagSafe, Glowing Apple, Blinking "Sleep Indicator" Light-thing, and Boot-up Chime on the old one. Getting rid of that stuff on the new one is fine....streamlining the process, whatever...understandable. But...you know, lower the price then.

I originally had a 2002 G4 iMac, then a 2006 Intel iMac, then my now current 2009 iMac 27 that I still use.

IF they want to innovate and change things, they'd see me upgrade every few years like I used to. If they want to keep the same Black/Aluminum design like they've had for the past decade, then I guess I'll see them every 10 years.

Don't even really care anymore. Anything they make does the job. Sad thing is, (my) passion (for Apple products) is gone. I'm just buying a computer to do the job these days.

I'll never understand how they had plenty of (financial) resources to keep the computers up to date 10-15 years ago, and now that they're overflowing with iPhone-money, they just neglect the whole computer line.

Whatever. I'm not running the company. See you in 10 years for another laptop. Probably not replacing my iMac when it stops working.

 

[0007776]

I hope they come out with some updates soon. I think that computers are to a point where the average user doesn't see much benefit from year to year changes, but they should still try to do a speed bump every year. I'm still on a 2012 MBA and other than the fact that I've outgrown the SSD size I haven't seen anything to compel me to upgrade. Apple should try to fix that.

 

[darkelipse04]

Sad but true...who else wants to forward this article to Mr. Cook?

 

[zerologic]

I'm running Mojave on a 2012 MacBook Pro Retina with 16GB RAM, and a 500GB SSD. The system takes 186GB, and the rest is offloaded to iCloud Drive (the 2TB plan) when necessary. I have 135GB free space.

I have since built a screaming PC for VR (Windows Mixed Reality is an amazing thing). I have a copy of my debugging environment on it as well, and have installed Ubuntu 18 though the Microsoft Store (WSL).

I also have an iPad Pro 12.9" with a nice keyboard that does most of what I need to (including writing code, thanks to Working Copy, Termius, Textastic, and Navicat).

The iPhone X has all of the same software, so I can (if needed) write code on it.

I'm spending loads of time in the Oculus Go these days too. You can do most every consumer oriented thing you want in a virtual space, for $199 total. It's essentially a VR chromebook. Even iCloud works in the Go's browser in desktop mode.

My point here is that computing platforms aren't what they used to be. You can do most anything on any platform as long as your data is in the cloud somewhere.

The Apple TV s a unique thing still. It's the only device of its kind that can stream iTunes content directly to a display.

I hope Apple does something though... nothing is killing the loyalty.

 

[MBAir2010]

Sad but true...who else wants to forward this article to Mr. Cook?

Forward this article to every Mac store employee instead, they have become soulless

 

[Lioness~]

Sad but true...who else wants to forward this article to Mr. Cook?

Please go ahead. tcook@apple.com

Bring the Oprah thread with it, while you’re on it

 

[nvmls]

Sad but true...who else wants to forward this article to Mr. Cook?

Vote with your wallet instead, emails don't impact stocks.

 

[Lioness~]

Forward this article to every Mac store employee instead, they have become soulless

Haha, don’t forget the lazy engineers that don’t even want to work anymore.
But want everybody who gets problems with their buggy software, to work for free and sending in lots of bug reports constantly. For one of the worlds richest company

 

[watakoola]

I'm no longer a 'power user' or 'Pro' by any definition, but do not want any all-in-one device that restricts me to a take-it-or-leave-it configuration. I've had quite a few iMacs and they mostly died with a single component rendering them rather useless without expensive repairs (i.e. the screen). With a modular Mac you can at least replace a failed component and quickly get back to work.

I waited and waited for a new Mac Pro to replace my (still running!) Mac Pro 1.1, and then Apple finally released the 'Trash Can' Mac Pro which would have required me to spend thousands of dollars on enclosures and upgrades on top of the unproven 'Trash Can'. I finally opted to purchase a second-hand Mid 2012 Mac Pro that is my daily drive - and it runs perfectly. I have upgraded various components and run four hard drives. It’s a perfect machine!

Surely, I'm not alone in being a user who wants and needs a modular Mac, so I can add more/bigger hard drives, add memory, add cards when/as needed etc. etc. etc.?

 

[zorinlynx]

To be fair, Macs (and PCs in general) don't become obsolete as quickly as they used to. I'm using a 2015 iMac 27" and it still feels fast as hell and is not lacking for anything. And I use the hell out of it, for hours a day. Macs don't need to be updated every single year! The 2017 iMacs and iMac Pro can't really be improved upon that much this year based on the hardware that's out there. There's just not much of a point in updating them.

That said, the Macbooks could certainly use improvement; Apple has acknowledged this and I'm hoping that they greatly improve their notebook line soon. I'm hoping they've learned their lessons and give us new Macbooks soon with great keyboards and reliability.
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I'm no longer a 'power user' or 'Pro' by any definition, but do not want any all-in-one device that restricts me to a take-it-or-leave-it configuration. I've had quite a few iMacs and they mostly died with a single component rendering them rather useless without expensive repairs (i.e. the screen). With a modular Mac you can at least replace a failed component and quickly get back to work.

One thing I definitely noticed is that there was a HUGE jump in reliability when the "slim" iMacs came out. The "fat" iMacs prior to that were often having problems where I work, but we've had exactly zero failures out of many dozens of the "slim" iMacs we've been buying since.

I definitely don't want to defend the lack of a modular Mac, but component failures in iMacs are definitely not anywhere near as big a problem as they used to be. In fact the iMacs are the one computer line Apple makes that I'm completely happy with right now; I really want to see them improve the Macbooks (crap keyboard), Pro systems (like you said, we need something truly modular) and a new Mac Mini.

 

[ignatius345]

Rogue Amoeba makes great software. I've been using Audio Hijack Pro for years now, and am using the latest version to set up a podcast recording. Fission is awesome too. I just can't recommend their stuff highly enough.

 

[macgeek01]

While I would like to see upgrades more often I don’t see anything being “deeply worrysome”. Macs continue to sell well while other PCs sales fall. I do IT support at a university and Macs are very popular with students, staff, and faculty. Hopefully we’ll see the new modular Mac Pro soon along with Mac Minis updates although not many people are looking for them. I believe the latest iMacs and MacBooks/MacBook Pros are pretty awesome which is why they continue to sell well and are very popular. Apple’s real money maker is the iPhone but I don’t see that they are abondoning Macs at all.

 

[SoN1NjA]

I think the MacRumors buyer's guide speaks for itself. Any average person clicking through that guide would assume that Apple has abandoned computer development. Heck, I as a tech geek think they've abandoned computer development. We're all sitting here waiting for a speed bump. Most would expect more after more than a year.

It’s sad because all of the other guys are innovating and really putting work and love into their products, while us Apple fans beg for a spec bump