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What to Expect From Apple in 2017: iPhone 8, 10-Inch iPad Pro, Refreshed iMacs, and More

Time was when Nokia was top dog in the mobile phone market. If you didn't have a Nokia your phone was second best. Nokia made the first smart phones, which had lots of buttons, slide-out keyboards, etc.

The iPhone came out and they almost immediately started to suffer. They'd grown so comfortable they couldn't react quickly enough. Soon they were floundering and eventually fell into an ill-advised Windows phone tie-in. Mighty Nokia is now a completely different animal.

Apple very recently had the best phones, the only tablet worth having, unequivocally the best laptops, strong iMacs and a beautifully-engineered professional tower. Now they have none of these things (although the iPhone is still very strong) and, worse, some of the products are true stinkers (new MBP, the trashcan) or just too old and tired.

Their cloud offerings are anaemic. Watch has taken up too much time. How much money and effort did hare-brained car projects waste?

Apple had a great Christmas for iPhone sales. They are still harvesting money with ease. But as Nokia shows that could all change in five minutes. The tech industry can be brutal.
 
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tripmusic said:
In a way, I think it's become calculated on their part and this might be a good idea. I'd rather have them not release something until they are ready, rather than just bust out stupid revisions. As long as they're at the drawing board trying to make something better...
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That's definitely true. And believe me, I hope that you're right. I think it is the long wait that has gotten folks asking "is apple planning something big or are they asleep at the wheel?" I certainly hope it's the former. We'll all know soon enough.

Edit - @Macist's point regarding Nokia, if strongly worded, gives us something to think about. "Nokia could never be #2, or #3. Right?" the fans said. Look at them now. Nobody can stay #1 forever.
 
Relentless Power said:
I'm not entirely sure we see the Mac Pro updated. Perhaps, but it seems lost in translation to me.
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Apple have 'partnered' with LG to make a monitor that looks nothing like an Apple product. If they can't be bothered with making a proper tower, can't they just 'partner' with any workstation maker and sell that as a professional machine? They could slap it in an 'Apple aluminium' case and call it job done. It need not be any more than an officially-supported hackintosh. Near-zero r&d. Professional users happy.
 
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tubular said:
He's been great for Apple. He's been a disaster for the Mac.
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Love this comment.

Oddly enough, it's kind of like an old Mac in a way - simplistically perfect, entirely true and purposeful with no fat to trim.

I'll admit it, I hate Apple. I hate them down to their Apple Core and it's the same seething hatred you feel for a girlfriend who's cheated on you. So deeply rooted in love that it becomes unbridled, passionate hatred. I feel cheated on, and yeah, I hate them for it. I've been devoted and grateful for decades, this company was 50% responsible for my love of graphic design. It felt like a privilege to work on Macs all day. Today... I want to jump ship but my devotion has gotten me into a bind, I'm all Mac since 1986. I don't want a different OS, I've invested so much into Mac OS, OS X, and now macOS that I just keep sticking it out even though emotionally I'm long gone. I can't fathom learning a new OS from scratch to the extent I know the Mac OSs. It's classic behavior: underdog makes it to the "big time", turns their back on their friends and family that supported them unconditionally for decades. That's how it feels to me anyway.
 
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Abazigal said:
See my point below with regards to most people not bothering to crack their laptops open to upgrade the internals. The points you raised are a benefit, but it's a benefit which will apply to only a very small demographic of users.
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I don't work on the internals of my car, doesn't mean I don't want them to be repairable or upgradeable at a reasonable cost. I'd be mighty pissed if I had to buy a new car if my battery packed up and the battery was only available for 5 years.

Same applies to PC's in my eyes. If someones computer is running slow, they have options to get a repair man to upgrade the ram, if they need storage, they can put in a larger SSD. They can also get a family member to do it for them, every family has a tech guy.

If you look at the typical megapixels of a camera now adays or the amount of space video takes up or the amount of ram you need while processing it and a decent SSD to hold it, especially if you are on holiday taking serveral cards worth of shots. Even my mum was complaining that her iPad kept filling up. I had to sort her out with google photos (still not sorted, she's a technophobe and not nearby so I have to do everything remotely)
My mum uses far more disk space that I do.
 
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1024724 said:
Love this comment.

Oddly enough, it's kind of like an old Mac in a way - simplistically perfect, entirely true and purposeful with no fat to trim.

I'll admit it, I hate Apple. I hate them down to their Apple Core and it's the same seething hatred you feel for a girlfriend who's cheated on you. So deeply rooted in love that it becomes unbridled, passionate hatred. I feel cheated on, and yeah, I hate them for it. I've been devoted and grateful for decades, this company was 50% responsible for my love of graphic design. It felt like a privilege to work on Macs all day. Today... I want to jump ship but my devotion has gotten me into a bind, I'm all Mac since 1986. I don't want a different OS, I've invested so much into Mac OS, OS X, and now macOS that I just keep sticking it out even though emotionally I'm long gone. I can't fathom learning a new OS from scratch to the extent I know the Mac OSs. It's classic behavior: underdog makes it to the "big time", turns their back on their friends and family that supported them unconditionally for decades. That's how it feels to me anyway.
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Summed up very well and exactly the way I feel about this.
 
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Porco said:
I expect disappointment still hope for pleasant surprises.

I think the Mac Pro will get a spec bump but no redesign or price drop, both of which I think it needs.

I'm not excited about the iPhone rumours at all, but the SE is the best thing Apple did in the last year IMHO so I'm ok with that for now.

Might buy a Watch if they update them, but I can still wait.
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Yea most likely last years cpu and gpu in my opinion given latest trends from apple
 
All-in-one (AIO) computers like iMac are a huge aggression to planet Earth. Computers may last for seven years or less, whereas displays may last for more than 20 years.

Apple should bring brand new Mac Pro and Mac mini with latest Intel Kaby Lake microprocessors, Thunderbolt 3 (40 Gbps) and USB 3.1 Type-C (reversible) Generation 2 (10 Gbps).

Do not forget brand new Apple Thunderbolt Display and Apple Keyboard with Numeric Keypad (wired) with built-in hub (2 ports) of USB 3.1 Type-C (reversible) Generation 2.

And last but not least, Macs should not be built for programmed obsolescence (see AIO above), but upgradable with easy to replace and upgradable (read, not soldered) RAM, SSD (not proprietary!) and even microprocessor.
 
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Regarding the new iPhone, who really, REALLY thinks the new buttonless home button is an improvement? It feels horrible to use compared to a real button and really gives nothing useful other than more places for bugs to really brick your phone. I'm not really looking forward to a phone that's probably even thinner and has battery life that works for anyone who spends all their time connected to power. Wireless my donkey. At that point I may be willing to survive without the headphone jack, who knows. All I know is by next fall I need to upgrade my phone because Apple will keep making it slower and slower. My 6+ worked just fine until 7 was released - and after that the fingerprint detection started slowing down and failing more and more and everything else is just swimming in frozen tar. Strangely enough Lastpass, my banking app and anything else using touchID works just perfectly still. The only thing that doesn't is unlocking the phone. It's the usual Apple's way of forcing us to upgrade, but looking at 6S and 7, thanks but no thanks.

If they don't do something about the battery life in the new one I'll just jump ship to Android. I've tried a few of the current ones and they aren't half as bad as they used to be. I'd prefer an iPhone but if they can't come up with a phone that survives even half a day they've got nothing to offer to me.

Pretty much the same with the computers. The current Macbook Pro is so lackluster in so many ways I'm not even considering it. My only hope is they'll come up with a model with an actual battery and a working keyboard. Possibly by that time usbc-only may be possible. Probably not, but as long as those two issues aren't addressed it doesn't matter even if they put back all the ports they took out. If there aren't any external changes they won't be able to stick the 99,5Wh (min) battery in there and that means I won't even consider buying it.

The rest of their selection doesn't matter as long as these two aren't in order. I was considering the iMac 5k but the "magic keyboard" made sure I won't be buying one. Still waiting for the upgraded version of that one can use. Then again, if I move away from Macbook Pro I won't have any use for iMac either - it'll be moving away from Apple completely. 2017 will show me what I will have to live with. I'm not too happy with Windows and OS X is by far my favorite OS but apparently the only option may be to run it in VirtualBox or something on top of windows. :/ None of the hardware they have put out meets my standards, not even close. I might consider upgrading this late-2013 rMBP15 to a 2015 model but that wouldn't really make much of a difference. Might still do it if I get a cheap enough model. Otherwise I'll just keep using this until it breaks down and move to Windows, hoping there's something usable. Possibly XPS15?
 
Unfortunally, theres nothing on the list I am interrested in, except for a new mac pro. However if a new mac pro is released and i would need to buy all new outboard stuff to go with it, the mac would only be a third of the total investment.. so i will propably just stay on el cap on my mac pro 2012 untill it dies, long long time from now (i hope)
 
Abazigal said:
It's not as though Macs are entirely unusable. The 2015 MacBooks Pros remain very useable products for such a purpose, and if you ignore the bad battery life, the new 2016 MacBook Pros should get the job done very well too, especially with the new 5k monitors on the horizon.

I mean, do you really need 32gb of ram for this? (Not an insult, just genuinely curious).

I guess we could go back to the whole "trucks vs cars" analogy. Macs will still be around, but they will be used for increasingly fewer, more specialised tasks like high-end video editing and app development. And the people who make a living off developing apps for iOS will still continue to do so even if their Macs aren't the latest and greatest.


For the record, just this year alone, I purchased the 9.7" iPad Pro, Apple Pencil, Series 2 Apple Watch and AirPods. Plus another 3rd-gen Apple TV for my classroom (so I have 1 4th-gen Apple TV at home and 2 3rd-gen ones in school).

So I suppose my opinion could be coloured by the fact that my usage habits tend to favour iOS over macOS, and so I have actually benefited from Apple's increased focus on the iOS side of things. As a teacher, I find myself using my iPad increasing more for work and leisure. I still turn on my Macs (I have a 27' iMac and 11" MBA) for work but I definitely spend way more time on my iOS devices compared to my Macs. So I am not really bothered by the lack of new Macs because I am not in a rush to upgrade them anytime soon.


I do understand (not being patronising here), and I think that is what makes Apple so polarising - their penchant for marching to their own beat and not caring two hoots about what everyone else thinks (or at least give off that vibe).

I don't think Apple removes ports and solders stuff in to profit from the sales of adaptors and to force product obsolescence. Apple just wants to make great products, and to Apple, a thinner and lighter product is a better one and soldering parts in is simply a means to an end (to enable thinner and lighter devices).
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Do me a favor: Listen to Accidental Tech Podcast 202 - http://atp.fm/episodes/202

In it, well known - and highly respected - Apple and Mac enthusiasts Marco Armant, Casey Liss, and John Siracusa discuss the topic of how Apple is handling the Mac. It's very well thought out and yes, you'll hear a lot of what you continually try to argue against on this forum. But these are three very smart people, and they all agree that whatever Apple is doing with the mac, that "SOMETHING HAS GONE WRONG" - the title of the podcast.

So I ask you to please give it an open-minded listen before trying to dismiss another person on here who's angry with Apple about the state of the Mac :). Please?
 
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robeddie said:
Do me a favor: Listen to Accidental Tech Podcast 202 - http://atp.fm/episodes/202

In it, well known - and highly respected - Apple and Mac enthusiasts Marco Armant, Casey Liss, and John Siracusa discuss the topic of how Apple is handling the Mac. It's very well thought out and yes, you'll hear a lot of what you continually try to argue against on this forum. But these are three very smart people, and they all agree that whatever Apple is doing with the mac, that "SOMETHING HAS GONE WRONG" - the title of the podcast.

So I ask you to please give it an open-minded listen before trying to dismiss another person on here who's angry with Apple about the state of the Mac :). Please?
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I will try. No promises though. The reason why I unsubscribed from their podcast in the first place was that it was way too long and draggy for my tastes.

Will get back to you when (if) I do.
 
Abazigal said:
I will try. No promises though. The reason why I unsubscribed from their podcast in the first place was that it was way too long and draggy for my tastes.

Will get back to you when (if) I do.
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Well, you should certainly consider listening to experts like them before trying to dismiss us simpletons here on this forum.

You say you're a teacher, you're busy. We all are, and their podcasts are long ... but how much time have you spent on this forum arguing against us, (and by proxy) against them? Probably more than the 45 minutes it would take to listen to the section where they discuss the state of apple and the mac.
 
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