The new MacBook is just a faster horse.

[thefriendshipmachine]

Sure the new macbooks are nice and Apple is giving us lots of things we asked for. SD card reader, HDMI, magsafe.

But literally none of these things are the future whatsoever.

This product doesn't move the industry forward in any way at all with the exception of the aarch64 processor which we already had anyway.

“Some people say, "Give the customers what they want." But that's not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they're going to want before they do. I think Henry Ford once said, "If I'd asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, 'A faster horse!'" People don't know what they want until you show it to them. That's why I never rely on market research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.”
- Steve Jobs

Pretty sure this new beautiful very nice macbook is yes, very very nice, but not future thinking or industry pushing and is just a faster horse.

 

[Flabasha]

What did you have in mind?

 

[smirking]

Pretty sure this new beautiful very nice macbook is yes, very very nice, but not future thinking or industry pushing and is just a faster horse.

It's a faster horse that doesn't need to eat as much food or take as many breaks to empty it's bladder, but yeah otherwise it's just like every other horse.

It's what's inside that's moving the needle. You can't get to other form factors without first solving the issue of performance for power.

 

[thefriendshipmachine]

What did you have in mind?

Killing the macbook, macos, and making the ipad and ipados more useful instead.

Right now Apple has an iPad and MacBook and the existence of each makes the other a worse product.

 

[smirking]

Right now Apple has an iPad and MacBook and the existence of each makes the other a worse product.

Making a better laptop doesn't actually move us away from this eventuality. I think cross-use devices are still terrible and confusing for lots of users. As a former physical therapist, I can also say that these type of cross platform devices are a nightmare of ergnonomics. When you offer touch as an option, most people end up using it as a tablet with a keyboard and they'll get into some terrible ergo habits as a result.

 

[alee]

Killing the macbook, macos, and making the ipad and ipados more useful instead.

Right now Apple has an iPad and MacBook and the existence of each makes the other a worse product.

That doesn't happen overnight. You're seeing them bring them together carefully, but the M1 is a stepping stone. Remember the sunset plan for Intel was years in the making.

Next few steps (maybe the next 5-7 yrs) would probably be...

Mac Pro goes the new M1 architecture triggering the end of Intel devices for Apple (next year)
90% of all software in Mac/iOS app store now runs off common build framework (next 3-4 yrs)
M2 and M3 architectures with greater efficiency (over the next 5 yrs)
iPadOS and MacOS further convergence (over the next 5 yrs)

That would be the minimum that needs to be done before both get replaced with 1 common platform and just different form factors.

 

[smirking]

That would be the minimum that needs to be done before both get replaced with 1 common platform and just different form factors.

Exactly. Don't just throw a phone and a laptop in a blender and expect to end up with good results.