What can Apple do to make you happy?

[MacFan23]

Appologies if this has been posted to death around here. I only really visit macrumours to read the news stories and haven't spend much time in the forums.

My question is, in 2017, what could Apple realistically release that would make everyone happy?
iPhone, iPad, Macs, Software, everything. What would a perfect 2017 product line up actually look like?

 

[keysofanxiety]

No spinning drives in any damn product. Flash no matter what product you buy. That's the main rcomplaint I personally get. A lot of consumers don't care about what CPU/GPU there is. What they see is they bought a brand-new £1000 iMac and it's running slower than their 4 year old MacBook Air. It's difficult to explain that it's because of the hard-drive.

Of course, update Mac Pro... yadda yadda.

And purely personally speaking, if they could pull it off, I'd love to see them drop Intel too. Maybe Microsoft will look to fit some of Apple's A-series chips in their Surfaces. ARM running on Windows 10 is coming and Apple have the most powerful ARM chips at the moment, by some margin. So that would be a really interesting turn of events.

That would be the culmination of Jobs' vision and the height of Apple's achievement. The entire hardware and software pipeline controlled by Apple. No relying on third parties. Mind you, that's more based on a wistfulness rather than what I feel would be required, as such a move wouldn't be easy, or even necessary.

 

[imanidiot]

They could try releasing a damn computer for a change, rather than phones and watches and watchbands. I know that is asking for a lot, but, remember computers? Remember when Apple used to make them? Tim Cook doesn't.

 

[Mousse]

Power Mac with healthy INTERNAL expansion slots and bays (8 RAM slots, 5 HD bays, 6 PCIe/PCIx slots). And keep it under $2K. One more thing, at least 2 USB-C and 4 USB 3.x, 10Gbit Ethernet and a Thunderbolt port. Did I mention, keep it under $2K.

And no more glue. Seriously, no glue.

 

[eviljack]

At this point the only thing that Apple could release that would bring me back into the fold would be an xMac. Preferably something like a mini-itx based Mac Mini with space for a 2 slot gpu, standard M2 drive slots and upgradable ram. For all I care they can solder in the CPU as long as there is an option for a desktop Kaby lake K series i7 when you purchase and not the laptop version.


This will never happen so it's most likely Apple has lost me as a customer for good. I would like to see Apple pick up the new AMD Ryzen chips too they are looking promising.

 

[sers]

Just update the bloody macs already.

 

[SoggyCheese]

Release a firmware update for my 2015 non-Retina iMac that brings back Target Display Mode.

 

[maflynn]

For me its not sacrificing functionality in the name of thinness. I think the use of the new butterfly keyboard on the MBP is a good example. I'm not sure saving a millimeter or two is worth getting an inferior keyboard.

 

[AidenShaw]

No spinning drives in any damn product. Flash no matter what product you buy.

A lot of people on the Mac Pro forum would probably want a Mac Pro with four to six spinning drives.

Why?

• $1500 - Samsung 850 Evo 4TB
• $120 - Seagate Barracuda 4TB
• $400 - Seagate IronWolf 10TB

Put a bunch of trayless hot plug 2.5" NVMe slots as well, but include some affordable space inside.

 

[MacFan23]

Thanks for the input guys! It's good to get some other opinions on this.

 

[wyz]

Realize that the industry standard for GPUs is Nvidia/CUDA even if we don't like it, that they are way ahead of AMD, that every major developer is writing for it and not for openCL and that Vulkan will be too late to make a difference, almost everyone will switch before Vulkan arrives. Don't be stubborn on this bring Nvidia back, give us the option to choose it.

 

[satchmo]

Personally, I'd like to see Apple lower prices.
I know, I know, they're a premium brand.

A drop of 10% would just make it easier to pull the trigger. A $2K MBP becomes $1800.

Or how about introducing discounted bundled packages.
Why isn't there an iPad Pro w/Pencil and Smart Keyboard?
Or iPhone w/AirPods, or MBP w/5K display.

 

[Tech198]

Give me more flexibility without a need for third apps..

IOS 10 is brached out ore with third party support for Touch ID (something that was limited to just Apple apps in the past), so its clearly possible to do.... so they can do the same thing on the Mac.

Probably because Mac's do more, but still ..If Apple can see the way of iOS, surly they can do the same for Mac as they have already locked folders down..... isn't that enough ? I would of thought that would have opened them up to allowing all sorts of access... "because we have folders no one can access, but root users" but, nope.

 

[Bart Kela]

My question is, in 2017, what could Apple realistically release that would make everyone happy?

Nobody can please everyone all the time.

Sure, Apple could release $100 iPhones but I think AAPL shareholders would be pretty upset by the profit loss.

Or making a 1 lb. MacBook with 2 hours of battery life. Or a 10 lb. MacBook Ultra with 20 hours of battery life.

Stuff like that.

 

[nnoble]

Incorporate a 'Zapper App' to accompany a hardware Zapper built into future Apple Mobile devices. The purpose of the Zapper App and accompanying Zapper functionality in devices is to neutralise extreme versions of the Apple Fanboi. For example, I had the misfortune to encounter and Extreme Fanboi in an Apple store in China last Friday (dressed like S. Jobs and posing with products and staff). The App and Zapper would effectively neutralise the Fanboi when 3 or more irritated observers illuminated the offending Fanboi target. Not a Tazer, no physical harm, it would simply locate SJ cult activity in the brain and pause the activity long enough to give innocent bystanders a breather. If this could be ready by iPhone 7s and new iPads then great, no later than iPhone 8. This would make many staff and customers in and around Apple stores very happy. Imagine the fun outside of Apple stores on future product launch days, Pokemon eat your heart out.

 

[ApfelKuchen]

To the person who wished (paraphrasing), "I want a return of the Cheesegrater for under $2,000, with no glue." You'd have about as much luck on that as I would have wishing for the US to have free, universal, single-payer healthcare.

Practically speaking, I can't see an all-Flash Mac product line for another couple of years - there are plenty of people who expect more than 500 GB in a desktop, but the cost of doing that is still prohibitive. The logical progression is to make Fusion the entry-level configuration for iMacs and Minis - that narrows the performance gap between laptops and desktops to the point where the perceived difference would be negligible.

Otherwise? Sure, proper upgrades/refreshes to the nMP, Mini, etc. I'm tired of all the "Refresh the Mac lineup!" threads. Not that I'd be buying a laptop, but I think the MBA finally deserves a Retina display (though I think that'll be done by product line re-alignment - MacBooks replacing MBA altogether, rather than building a Retina MBA).

Personal wish list is quite modest, since I don't need to buy major hardware this year (my iPhone 6 is still going strong, though I could still be tempted...). I'd like to see a Magic Keyboard 2 with Touch Bar (including Touch ID).

 

[blasto2236]

Honestly? I have zero complaints with their current product lineup. As a professional who uses my Apple products to do literally everything, I'm happy just being along for the ride. I'm not sure where much of the griping comes from. I never find myself limited rather than empowered by my setup, which is listed below in my signature. I own pretty much everything they currently flog, and it all works great together, better than it did 10 years ago even.

 

[kazmac]

As they royally kissed my behind and made things right for me Thursday evening when I purchased this iPhone 7+, I would hope they pay more attention to hardware and software quality going forward.

Macwise: I would love to see keyboards with more travel again, SSDs standard, better graphics cards. Some love to the MAC Mini and Mac Pro. A little more bang for the buck. And a dedicated team back on macOS please.

I can happily put their elitist hype machine attitudes on mute.

 

[ChrisBe2]

Well fix the things that:
a) Makes me mad at Apple
b) Makes me NOT buy a new iPhone despite wanting to.
c) Makes me determined to ditch my current iPhone when it stops working

I am currently voluntarily stuck in refusing to upgrade and trying to circumvent Apples attempts at forced obsolescence. I have a Mac with Snow Leopard (Mac OS 10.6) and an iPhone with iOS 8. If I upgrade the Mac, many of my old programs stop working. If I buy a new iPhone, my Mac wont talk to it. I have been in the same situation before with the advent of MacOS 10. It took me a long time to make the jump and it was a hassle, I had to upgrade everything and spent days if not weeks trying to get stuff working as good as I had it with MacOS 8/9. When I wrote similar posts in forums about this, people were unsympathetic and pretty much said "just buy a new Mac". Well, then I had no money. Now I have no time to spend installing a new OS even if I could get my old programs running using MacOS X server or something.
I will make the jump when I must and when I have time.
But I would be a lot more happy if I could just buy an iPhone with a headphone jack that would sync with my current Mac. An iPhone that did not nag me all the time that I should upgrade.

Therefore
a) Sign all versions of iOs when people wants to install. People should always be able to downgrade, or even just install an old iOS to temporarily run an old program. Personally I don't know if I can do a full restore of my iPhone with it's "old" iOS, and because of the cryptic messages in iTunes I have not dared to try.
b) Stop nagging about new os upgrades, a gentle reminder works nicely, getting a message roughly every day is just obnoxious.
c) Absolutely stop downloading 1 GB iOS upgrades into my iPhone without my permission. There is no excuse for this.
d) Give us back the headphone jack on some iPhones. Check who would be willing to pay for this. If you can prove sales are bad fine, but when I commute, I see those white headphone cables everywhere. Wonder what would happen if everyone switched to Bluetooth.
e) Better backward compatibility.
For instance allow old versions of iTunes to sync with newer iPhones. I don't expect any new functionality, but Apple has just blanket stopped the functionality, when they could keep the same functionality on older product. With that I mean that iTunes could sync the same data, plus a requested amount of data with unknown content. That people who upgraded to iOS 9 on the iPhone could still synch with iTunes 11.4, while people who upgraded with their iPhones connected to iTunes could not synch proves that this was a choice on Apple's part.
f) Improve your products. Theres a joke video that the 2016 Macbook Pro is just an 2015 MacBook Pro with ports and function-keys ripped out.
g) Think "What would our customers want?" and "What would they be willing to pay for?", not "How can we force our customer base to buy new products.". If you chase away loyal customers, they are not coming back.