
How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists - Lio
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-20/how-apple-alienated-mac-loyalists
======
beat
My main computer is a five year old 17" MBP. I've upgraded it to the max and
done repairs to maintain it. I need the computational power - I use it for
programming, photo editing at scale, and recording/mixing music.

It would cost me $3000 to replace it with a computer that is not significantly
more powerful, has a smaller screen and less I/O functionality, and would be
incompatible with my audio interface unless I daisy-chain multiple adapters to
get Firewire. Fuck that, as long as possible.

This week, my mother's crappy Windows computer died, and I bought her a
Chromebook. It was great! I'm now seriously considering getting a Chromebook
for myself for day-to-day web browsing and such, and retiring the MBP to music
and photos only. If I can figure out how to run Vagrant on one, I'll probably
switch for development, too (or maybe I'll just start paying for a cloud-based
dev environment).

Meanwhile, I keep having computer envy for a friend's MS Surface Pro. It's the
first time I've _ever_ looked longingly from a MacBook to a Windows machine!
But frankly, it does things my Mac doesn't do, and the build quality is on
par.

Someone please tell Apple than when you need to hold a press conference to
convince people you're committed to your product, you're not committed to your
product.

~~~
electic
I did take a close look at the Surface Pro. Sorry, the build quality is
nowhere near a MacBook Pro. Secondly, I found the touch screen very gimmicky.
I tried using it for a week and found that my hand just hurt lifting it up
repeatedly and also hated switching context from the keyboard to the screen.
Not to mention, the screen was full of smudge marks after awhile.

To be honest, I really found myself using the keyboard and touchpad the most
on the Surface and when you think about it, the MacBook Pro has the best touch
pad. I think Apple needs to do some minor things to get the MacBook Pro back
on track:

\- Fix the battery issue. They really need to fix that from a hardware
perspective. Also, the OS needs to be optimized to preserve battery. The
burden can't be fully on hardware.

\- Put magsafe back or some sort of USB-C magsafe solution.

\- Bump the specs. The whole point of the Pro is it is leap years ahead of
everyone on processor, HD, and RAM.

\- The keyboard is getting better, but I still think it needs more travel
time.

\- The screen could be further to the edges a bit for a more modern look.

\- The ports. Look, I get it, you want to embrace the future but then please
include free cables to help in the transition. A power extension cable was not
even included in this MacBook pro release, that is just sad.

~~~
kruipen
The touch screen on the Surface has one killer application: scrolling while
reading. It's very natural to scroll content with a thumb on the edge of the
screen.

~~~
electic
Yes, but you have to lift your arm up. It is far far faster to scroll through
a web page with the touchpad.

~~~
snoman
You're starting to sound like one of those funny infomercials where everything
is black and white and the actor fumbles with some overtly awkward action,
that is otherwise mundane... Holding their outstretched arm up over their head
with their other arm, a grimace of strain on their face, trying to scroll with
their pinky finger. All the while the voice-over is asking why you'd subject
yourself to this.

It's a, very natural, quarter inch movement of your thumb while your arm rests
comfortably on the table. Not unlike having your hand on your coffee mug.

~~~
dkonofalski
I think the point, though, is that your hand wouldn't naturally rest on the
table near the screen like that. The main reason you're comfortable doing that
is because you know you can scroll with your hand in that position. The
natural resting position would be to relax your hands off the keyboard after
typing and that puts it squarely in the area of the (comically) huge trackpad.

~~~
snoman
The hundreds of millions of people that have used a mouse can attest to how
'natural' it is.

~~~
dkonofalski
Except that the mouse is an example of being completely unnatural... The whole
point of the positioning on the trackpad is that it's right there when you
relax your hands from the keyboard. Otherwise, you'd see computers with
trackpads above the keyboard. The positioning of a mouse may be a reflex from
usage, but it's the exact opposite of natural.

~~~
c22
I wish the trackpad was above the keyboard. I am constantly accidentally
switching focus or selecting things while I am typing.

------
_ph_
More than a single event, it is the string of events which create the
disappointment. While Apple is indeed bound by Intels schedule for CPU
upgrades, this would not prevent Apple from regular other components in their
devices.

A computer like the Mini should get yearly updates - and there is no good
reason to solder in the memory. While it kept the very same design, it went
from a quad-core i7 to a dual-core, with fixed memory. Which then stopped to
be upgraded.

The versatile Mac Pro got replaced with the current can-like design, limiting
the choices and then never got upgraded. If you make a machine which cannot be
user-upgraded, please upgrade it every year. There is no good reason, there is
no option for the current NVidia or AMD cards available.

The iMac is still one of the better offerings - I got the 5k after the last
refresh. However, while this gives you the fastest CPU, it only offers mobile
graphics performance. There is no good reason why its internals, especially
the drive bay are not user-accessible. While having a gorgeous display, why
for all its expensiveness does it not offer any kind of video-in? If it had
the ability to accept HDMI or DisplayPort input and display them in a special
application window, that would be just great.

Especially, if Apple does not focus on the desktop, why are they so reluctant
to sell a more traditional desktop machine? Where the user can change the
hardware, if Apple cannot be bothered to do it?

All of this just adds up - and while power users in the pre-can age had at
least an expensive but powerful alternative, this does not longer exist. And
the other choices also get more and more limited. So it should not come as a
surprise, when even the most faithful supporters get frustrated.

~~~
weaksauce
The lack of affordable storage in the retina and up laptops and even desktops
has been a deal breaker for me. I am on a five year old mbp and am seriously
considering a hackintosh to be a daily driver. That's a whole big can of worms
though.

~~~
cookiecaper
Can you identify specifically the critical features of OS X that aren't
replicable with a reasonable amount of effort on other systems? I've spent
considerable time using all 3 major OSes as daily drivers and while each
platform has perks, I've never felt a strong commitment to OS X for daily use.
I'm curious what many people feel is so crucial about it that they'd consider
switching to the massively unstable Hackintosh over a customized Windows or
Linux installation (or some hybrid of the two, which is what I run).

~~~
kristofferR
macOS is great because it combines a flawless UNIX system (with homebrew, the
only package manager I've been satisfied with) and a nice GUI with apps that
work/look great by default.

Linux has a massive lack of good apps. Simple things like a decent calendar
app on Linux doesn't seem to exist.

~~~
uabstraction
Homebrew is a children's toy compared to APT or Portage. There's no argument
about general polish or calendar apps in particular though.

It's a trade off. You can have rough edges but community control and 100+
backup plans, or you can have sleek, polished, but at the mercy of next year's
soldered RAM and SSD pricing guidelines. I personally love breaking things to
figure out how they work, but some people have a job to do and can't deal with
distractions.

~~~
kristofferR
Homebrew works way better than APT for me at least (I've never tried Portage).
APT is definitely a way better option for servers, but at a high cost by
sacrificing usability.

------
matthewmacleod
I've started to wonder if I'm the only one who isn't understanding the problem
in general.

The MacBook is fine – the new models are quite expensive, and I'm sure having
to carry some dongles could be annoying, but it's a lovely machine and there
are obvious reasons and long-term benefits for those choices. I'll definitely
consider purchasing one when the next refresh allows the processor and memory
options to be bumped a bit. It's a bit disappointing the the Mac Pro or Mac
Mini haven't seen updates, though I expect that's just down to insufficient
sales to justify it.

The software stack is fine too – I've had minimal problems through multiple
machines and macOS versions, and everything seems to be incrementally
improving. Meanwhile, I get a pretty good UNIX environment and a pretty good
GUI. Cloud services (calendars, reminders, keychains etc.) seem to work pretty
reliably, and there are lots of little features that generally work well.

I just can't help but feel it's all a little overblown. Sure, look at the
alternatives – a nice Dell running Linux, or a Surface or whatever – and if
they suit your requirements better, cool! But I just _can 't_ see the abrupt,
precipitous nosedive that seems to be the current narrative around Apple.

~~~
rdw
I think a lot of Mac users are forgetting how awful the Windows ecosystem
still is. One gets used to everything mostly working and think that that's how
it is on the other side, too.

Meanwhile, one guy I know bought a new Windows laptop to replace his flaky
older one. On the new computer, audio doesn't work. Programs load slowly (~10
minutes to start up software that takes 10 seconds for me). It turned out the
flakiness of the old laptop wasn't its age or power, it was the software. Lots
of folks have stories like this. There's still a huge amount of uncertainty in
that world.

~~~
sydd
1\. Some Windows PCs are shitty because there are so many choices. You can't
expect a Mac pro speed and build quality from a $300 laptop. But you can get
Mac pro level build quality and better specs for less from some manufacturers
(Microsoft, Dell,..)

2\. Windows and any other OS gets laggy is you load it full with crap. On
Windows this is easier, since everyone targets you on the web.

~~~
slededit
I generally prefer my windows machines, but you absolutely cannot get an
equivalent quality screen. I've looked very hard for such a thing. Sure you
can get a high DPI monitor, but it won't have a proper finish and will appear
textured.

Even after all this if you happen to get a perfect monitor, Windows software
performs very poorly in a high DPI environment. Even the OS itself was very
poor in this regard until a year ago.

------
delegate
Hardware is not the only problem Apple has right now vis-a-vis developers.

Apple's flagship IDE, XCode, is also lagging behind, at least when talking
about C++ development, but even Swift doesn't get too much love it seems.

Having used it since at least version 5, XCode 8 has been a frustrating
experience for me starting from day one, when it defaulted to Swift version
3.0 and so broke all of the existing Swift projects and dependencies from
CocoaPods / Carthage.

Me and thousands of devs had to waste hours if not days just to build our
projects - with no way to downgrade to previous XCode version.

After that, I constantly struggle with syntax highlighting, unusable code
completion, broken navigation and so on.

And that's for Swift ! Ok, my project also has Objective-C++ and C++ code, but
all of them are broken beyond frustrating.

Sometimes the "comment/uncomment block" feature just stops working and the
only fix is to run a magical sudo command and then _restart_ your mac.

I've revived an older Windows 7 machine just so I could compile my C++ lib on
Windows. Visual Studio 2015 + Visual Assist, which I haven't used in years,
was a revelation.

I ended up refactoring most of my C++ code on that 7-year old machine and
frankly it felt very good that I didn't have to fight the development
environment, like I do on my $2500 MacBook pro.

Until then, I didn't even realise how unproductive XCode made me in C++.

So yeah, I'm already thinking about a 32GB of RAM, nVidia 1070 GPU, 17"
monitor laptop. It costs like a Macbook pro, but punches a stronger punch at
the expense of portability.

I can justify all the gaming and VR that I'll do on it with the fact that it
runs Visual Studio well...

I wrote this to vent but also with the hope that someone at Apple is reading
these comments and hopefully something will change soon.

~~~
protomyth
Xcode was the buggy "single program" replacement for Project Builder and
Interface Builder. It really never got over the bugs. I wish they had gone the
other way an embraced the parts and components so we could at least add stuff
beyond the current model.

Thinking about it, this whole must be in xcode to read the documentation is
still a pain in the butt. I miss printing the pdfs (much easier on my eyes or
I could use an e-ink based reader) and wonder why the heck they at least don't
have an official documentation viewing app on iOS.

~~~
sosborn
> why the heck they at least don't have an official documentation viewing app
> on iOS.

[https://developer.apple.com/reference/](https://developer.apple.com/reference/)

~~~
protomyth
That doesn't quite work if I'm not on the internet and its a pretty poor
experience.

------
deedubaya
I still think macOS/OSX provides the best user experience for personal
computing. It's the lack of substantial hardware updates which is driving
users away.

If creatives are going to pay a premium for a Mac, there should be something
to differentiate it between the competition besides the privilege to run
macOS. Heck, it should have something to differentiate it from the last model!

I'll still recommend Macs for my friends and family, but will likely look
towards something which is cheaper, has better hardware, and has a fucking
escape key for my next purchase.

Since I'll be departing from macOS and Messenger.app, I'll be opening the door
to Android for my mobile when I make this switch too.

~~~
Recurecur
Not just lack of hardware updates, but the lack of complete system categories.
It's the height of hypocrisy to tout a green approach to things, while not
even offering an upgradable machine, e.g. a tower. All-in-ones like the iMac
are usually discarded if either the motherboard or the display goes south,
whereas a tower is easily fixed.

Also, power users are left out in the cold, with the Mac Pro the only system
fitting that category - and it's dated and deficient in many ways.

Apple should bite the bullet and license macOS for third-party hardware. The
Hackintosh community has things working pretty well today, and Apple could
charge substantial money per license (notionally at least $200). Pretty good
for just selling bits. That move would completely revitalize the Mac
landscape, and would be a giant boost to iDevice adoption. Think Different!

Sadly, I don't think current Apple management has the vision to do the right
thing. Apple will likely continue a slow decline unless that changes.

(BTW, "ctrl-[" is an excellent alternative to the regular Escape
key...personally I prefer it.)

~~~
jen729w
> Apple should bite the bullet and license macOS for third-party hardware

Please, please, no. Presumably you've never gone through this particular form
of hell:

1\. You have a [Toshiba|Dell|HP] laptop. You've upgraded something. You need
[graphics|sound|network] drivers.

2\. You go to [Toshiba|Dell|HP].com to get those drivers. You navigate to the
"Support" page for your laptop model.

3\. You - _you, the user_ \- are presented with options. Do you want the AMD
network drivers, or the Intel? Err. What? Why should I know? I typed in the
_model number_ of my machine. You, the vendor, should know what's in it! But
you don't.

This is infuriating madness. It's one of the many things I hate about the
Wintel ecosystem. Opening up the Mac leads us down that path. Please no.

~~~
Recurecur
In the case of Hackintosh, the easiest builds use already supported hardware.
The reference builds on tonymacx86.com need very little if any tweaking.

There are also high quality third party drivers, for instance Creative Labs,
Logitech and NVIDIA Web Drivers.

If things move more to using USB C and Thunderbolt, that situation will only
get better and better.

In short, it's already a non-issue.

------
autoreleasepool
After being an Apple "Loyalist" for over 15 years, I recently sold my rMBP and
built a desktop (i7 4790k, GTX 1080, 16Gb DDR3 @ 2933Mhz). It was by far the
best hardware decision I have ever made. Building the system was an absolute
blast. Plus, I now have an extremely powerful PC with first class Linux
support, tons of I/O ports, and no vendor lock in. The best part is it cost me
about 1/3 of the price of a (maxed-out) Mac.

As for portability, I bought a ARM Chromebook and installed Xubuntu. I also
have an iPad and iPhone. The three get the job done.

The toughest part of leaving OS X was knowing I was also leaving hobby OS X
and iOS development. And homebrew. Man, I will miss homebrew.

~~~
fooker
I am puzzled about missing homebrew.. You said you are installing Xubuntu,
which comes with an excellent package manager with less issued than a brew
user is likely to run into.

~~~
sirn
I think it's probably because Homebrew has all the obscure packages one might
ever need, and packages in Homebrew are quite up-to-date even though it may
not be extensively tested. For example, I use cocot quite often (for dealing
with SJIS systems), and while cocot is in Homebrew, it's not in the Ubuntu's
official repository.

~~~
fooker
It is in AUR though, and for *ubuntu distros you can always find a PPA.

~~~
sirn
I'm pretty sure AUR has everything :) But the OP was talking about ARM, which
I'm not sure about the state of ARM port for Arch Linux. It's also true that
one can also find PPA, but there's big convenient when it's installable right
away without needing to search for PPAs.

~~~
fooker
Homebrew for ARM on macos ?

------
vintageseltzer
After 15 years of doing so, I can no longer tell people that the quality of
Apple's products are worth the cost.

I waited three years to upgrade from my late-2013 MBP and I see no
improvements of value in the new version.

The new MBPs have seemingly worse battery life, the RAM is the same, ports I
use every day are gone, and now their "portable" laptop requires you to carry
around a bunch of adapters and wires. The touch bar is a naked marketing ploy.
Might as well be straight out of the mid-2000s Microsoft playbook.

I work at a "unicorn" and I can tell you that the majority of developers
eligible for new machines are delaying upgrades or getting a Surface. I'd do
the same if not for homebrew.

I feel the same about their phone line. I've been praying my iPhone 5
continues to last because I have no interest in paying more money for their
flimsier successors and then paying a tax to buy new headphones.

I am also a shareholder and am quite concerned. The Apple Watch is a joke.
Their desktop machines, monitors and routers are stale, obsolete and
overpriced.

Usually I like to give them the benefit of the doubt, but it's clear they have
lost their way and the marketers have won. What is their leadership thinking?
How long until talent starts to migrate out?

~~~
dkonofalski
How is the Apple Watch a joke? It was the best selling wearable device for
both series and it has the highest customer satisfaction rating of any
wearable. Something like 96% of Apple Watch owners said that they would buy
another one.

~~~
theuly
I think it's the overall market for smart watches? For sure, it's not the next
iPhone or iPad in terms of revenue.

Even in the smartwatch category, Apple isn't doing too well. Going from 70% in
market share from last year to 41% this year. They're still the market leader,
though.

source: [http://money.cnn.com/2016/10/26/technology/smartwatch-
sales-...](http://money.cnn.com/2016/10/26/technology/smartwatch-sales-apple/)

~~~
npunt
Same thing happened with iPhone after android devices started appearing, and
iPads with android tablets. Market share has never been the metric that
matters, because there will always be cheap high volume crap electronics that
are disposed of and replaced frequently. Profit share is what matters, and
Apple Watch is doing well there, just like iPhone and iPad.

------
anon1253
I'm in the same boat. I've used and loved Apple products for the better part
of a decade. Used to tune in to Steve Jobs doing his keynotes. Got excited
about everything they launched. Maybe that fades with age, I'm almost in my
30s now. But, I just don't care anymore. In fact, almost every new Apple
product does the opposite of what I want. In my day job I do consulting on
Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning. And sometimes that involves
CUDA. There are no Apple solutions with Nvidia cards. I'm an avid hobby
photographer, the lack of storage space on these devices make me cringe. A
single RAW from my dSLR easily takes 20 megabytes, do a day of shooting and I
ramp up gigabytes of data. At night, I'm a hobby astronomer and play with
astrophotography, this requires a lot of IO. Often I have 7 to 8 USB devices
attached via various hubs. This works fine on my 3 year old Macbook Pro … the
reports from flaky IO, even if you use their branded adapters, make me really
reluctant to upgrade. That stuff is hard enough without having to deal with
dodgy transfers or incompatible hubs. For some of this I've started using the
cloud and bare metal servers in a rack … but it's not a proper substitute for
doing it in a train with flaky wifi. And it drastically adds to the latency of
my iterations. I realize I'm a minority, but I once honestly believed that
Apple catered to my needs, that it would provide me with the best possible
hardware to achieve my hobbies and professional goals. No longer so, not by a
long shot.

------
scrrr
For me, there's still no alternative. And I also will not recommend anything
but a Mac to friends and family. They just have the best personal computer on
the market, period.

~~~
ythn
Out of all the devices I've ever owned, my Apple devices have had the most
hardware failures. My iPhone 4S's headphone jack stopped working. I bought a
replacement and installed it myself (which was a nightmare) but it was still
broken. Turns out the logic board had an issue and replacing _that_ is
hundreds of dollars. My Macbook Pro 2010's hard drive cable failed. New one
was $50.

I've never had any hardware issues with my PCs or Android phones. Sure, they
arguably have more software issues, but those are "free" for me to fix.

Apple may be a good fit for some people, but it's too expensive for my blood.
I'm not paying $1500 for a laptop only to shell out another $50 a year later
for a hard drive cable. That's bullcrap considering my $150 chromebook has
been running for 4 years now with 0 issues.

~~~
WaltPurvis
This has been my experience also. It _seems_ like Apple is delivering premium
hardware and build quality -- they're certainly charging premium prices -- but
in my family I can think of at least five show-stopping hardware failures with
Apple products in the past few years, and zero such failures with a comparable
number of Windows/Android devices. In addition, Apple's hardware specs no
longer justify premium prices, in most cases.

With Apple these days (and especially for Macs) the simple fact is you're
paying a high price for underwhelming hardware that's not especially reliable.

I still strongly prefer the Mac OS, so I can't see myself buying a Windows PC
anytime soon, but I'm _not_ a happy customer.

~~~
TheOneTrueKyle
Hackintosh it up. Youy won't regret it

~~~
WaltPurvis
I do use a Hackintosh for my desktop, but that's not really a viable option
for the general public, and even for myself I'd prefer to just have Apple
start selling decent desktops again.

~~~
TheOneTrueKyle
Yeah I agree. My 2010 MBP isn't going to last much longer and have no idea
where to go after it dies.

------
anexprogrammer
I find it remarkable that a company the size and profitability of Apple seems
unable to do more than one thing at a time. Simply not enough engineers?

~~~
supergeek133
I work for a $40B company, albeit smaller than Apple.. it even seems like we
can't do more than one thing.

~~~
mcherm
At least you can manage more than zero things...

------
optimuspaul
As a Mac Loyalist I don't feel at all alienated. I am not merely a consumer
and my life is more than the computer I use. I don't need or want constant
attention. I think what they've been doing it great. Frankly I'm more annoying
with the bloggers and media with their constant bullying of Apple. The iPhone
7 had just been announced and they were already speculating what the iPhone 8
was going to be. WTF? How about we give it some time before we start down that
road.

~~~
elliotec
It appears you are in the minority. Apple has disenfranchised a lot of
loyalists for a lot of reasons.

Think of how absurd it is that you can't even plug in your new iPhone 7 into
your new Macbook Pro.

~~~
dkonofalski
What, really? What happens when you plug it in? Does it tell you that you
can't use it? Does it lock you out? Does it brick the phone?

Ohhhh...you meant that you have to get an adapter. Of course you can plug the
phone into the new MacBook. The only thing that might be absurd is that you
might need an adapter to plug it in but, in reality, there's nothing that
you'd really need to plug it in for anyways except to charge it and you get a
power brick with every phone.

~~~
sixstringtheory
To build and deploy an app from Xcode to a phone, it must be plugged in.

For how much money the app ecosystem brings Apple, they sure don't throw the
developers many bones.

~~~
dkonofalski
While I agree with your sentiment, developers are a very, very small subset of
the population that uses Apple products.

------
FLGMwt
> For a 2016 MacBook update, some Apple engineers wanted to add a Touch ID
> fingerprint scanner and a second USB-C port (which would have made some
> power users happy)

"power users" is humorous here, considering an additional port would allow a
literal power cable and a peripheral.

------
zachd1_618
Honestly I think the communal upset at the new MBP (personified by
sensationalist headlines like the one here) are just blown way out of
proportion. Am I floored by the new tech and software that Apple is pouring
into their computer hardware? Nope (still 16 GB of RAM???). It is still the
best option out there? Absolutely. Not trashing everything else out there,
there is plenty to love. But the MBP still takes the cake. Here's the biggest
reason why: workflow.

I have honestly never once seen a professional Windows or Linux (please gods
don't think I am ragging on either) run so many programs as the professional
Mac user. By 'professional' I mean people working in a professional, tech-
oriented profession. I am used to keeping a dozen programs running, all the
time. No matter what. Because why not? Photo editing software, Docker
machines, 8 terminals/interactive programming environments, prototype ML
training pipelines, local servers, MS products, various text editors and IDEs,
Matlab, Mathematica, 100 Chrome tabs, some dev Safari pages, mail programs,
Remote Desktop sessions, virtual machines, and whatever else I might need.
Seriously. Who does that? My Windows coworkers all still have 1 to 2 things
open at once, and routinely shut down their computers overnight. The startup
to any task is about 100x longer than me and my always-ready MBP running
coworkers. I can't remember the last time I actually turned my computer off. I
also notice that my coworkers with MBPs get about 2 years more usable time out
of them. Plus, my virtual machines run Windows specific software (STK, SDT,
etc) faster and with less fuss than any of my coworkers' laptops.

The MBP hardware and software _could_ be better, but the combo seems to make
second nature the levels of productivity and multitasking that other users
don't even know to dream of. My point isn't that the maximum capability is
necessarily higher on the MBP, but that the median is leagues higher than on
other machines. For that reason I don't see myself switching anytime soon.

Background: I am an Aerospace Engineer (becoming a full-on software
developer), professional photographer, and generally demanding computer user.

------
makecheck
Apple clearly did make major investments in the Mac, it’s just that their
investments were not even relevant to most Mac users, and not even _apparent_
to everyone else.

For instance, there is clearly extensive support for Touch Bar in _many_
built-in Mac Apps, and the API that was created just for this one device is
impressive. And yet, to _see_ this extensive support for Touch Bar, you often
have to select a “Customize Touch Bar…” command! The defaults expose very
little, making the Touch Bar appear far less helpful than it could be. Also,
it is really questionable to distract _so many_ software teams to support this
one feature, which probably kept all of those teams from implementing more
obvious improvements that people actually asked for.

If I were managing this and I could _see_ that hardware was going to be
delayed, I would consider shifting more resources into the macOS to develop a
series of “awesome” new features (heck, make this the year that you develop a
real Finder). That way, although you’re announcing modest improvements to
hardware, you can still say “look at all this great new stuff!” and boost the
platform. Instead, they developed extensive software that a tiny fraction of
their Macs can even _use_ , while simultaneously putting it in a product that
few people want to buy, further limiting its usefulness.

------
spott
What is going on with Apple and management? It seems like they are struggling
to put enough manpower behind their many different hardware (MacBook, iPhone,
iPad, Mac Pro, etc) and software (iOS, MacOS, tvOS, pro software, etc) to make
sure they stay up to date, but I'm not sure why they aren't just throwing more
manpower at it.

Honestly, a team that did nothing but update the MacPro every few months with
the latest hardware can't cost _that_ much, especially compared to Apple's
coffers. Unless they are so blinded by the need to have huge margins. They
don't need to change the industrial design for every iteration.

I'm just confused as to why they aren't committing more of their resources
towards making their products better, instead, they seem to be hamstrung by a
lack of manpower and engineers.

~~~
riprowan
> Honestly, a team that did nothing but update the MacPro every few months
> with the latest hardware can't cost that much, especially compared to
> Apple's coffers. Unless they are so blinded by the need to have huge
> margins. They don't need to change the industrial design for every
> iteration.

I think you hit the nail on the head there.

I bet everyone on this thread would have been happy if Apple had just revved
the Macbook Air and Macbook Pro lines instead of rolling out a whole new
product concept in the MB and MBP:

MBA 11" & 13" \- rev the guts, upgrade to Retina display w/thinner bezels,
upgrade Thunderbolt port to USB-C / Lightning

MBP 13" & 15" \- rev the guts, upgrade Thunderbolt to USB-C / Lightning

No new MB or MBP redesigns needed. Tons of money saved. Happy customers.

------
concinds
Here's what the John Gruber-types seem to be missing:

True, the Apple-lost-their-way criticism used to be mostly reserved to junk
media outlets.

But that changed. The new Mac Pro and Final Cut 10 marked the beginning of
that. Apple has changed, and so did their target audience.

------
rubyn00bie
The big problem with Apples professional lineup is it's lack of GPU upgrades
and power. Along with supporting the GPU manufactures by adopting standards
and improving them.

I'm tired of them and others blaming intel. x86 is no longer where huge
increases in computing power will really come from-- we all clearly see this
due to the laws of physics. Parallelizing computation for all its problems, is
the future, and GPUs are dominating in this area. From video rendering,
machine learning... and I'm sure most of us would drool over a web server that
could use a GPU to speed up requests or a compiler that would use it to speed
up compilation.

But GPUs are "not apple," because GPUs are not thin and need to be
replaceable. This is antithetical to their whole desktop division.

This glaring blind spot is one of the many reasons I'm a depressed mac user
these days. If I want to do cutting edge things, I cannot do them on a mac.
Imagine how good the new MBP would be with a GTX 1080 in it? Or a Mac Pro with
two Titan X Pascal cards? A Mac mini that supported even one full size
graphics card. The iMac? Well that's a relic (in my humble opinion) but the
all-in-one does still have a niche it serves.

Also, the fact Apple continuously and blatantly ignores gaming on the Mac this
will likely be true. Because gamers also upgrade more aggressively than most
desktop users and they help drive innovation as a result. Gaming on the Mac is
still a joke. Ports are often late, poorly done, and underperform compared to
their PC brethren. I'd rather game on Linux than Mac (no offense to my Linux
using brothers and sisters) but I think that's crazy.

I said this once before. What Apple needs to do is make the mac lineup based
modular components. E.g. "Here is a box you can slide a video card into ('made
for mac if course' with approval to make sure driver hell doesn't happen like
Windoes) it then can fit into a Mac mini, iMac, or multiple of them into the
Mac Pro. Same for PCI cards in general. This then makes things more user
friendly, power users then can upgrade again, and the 3rd party industry can
start making for mac.

There are plenty of other ways to innovate-- I'd love a dual socket Mac Pro
like the old G4 towers. M2 support. Not looking like a trash can (okay I'm
just being cheeky now so I'll stop)...

It's not that innovation can't happen on the desktop it's that Apple isn't, to
use their own words, "brave enough to."

... What happened to the crazy ones?

~~~
ndesaulniers
> What Apple needs to do is make the mac lineup based modular components. E.g.
> "Here is a box you can slide a video card into

Like Razer has?

~~~
rubyn00bie
Yes but for all the components: ram, CPU, ssd/m2... hell being able to slide a
new box in that contains a new mobo would be amazing.

~~~
elcct
You mean like a PC?

------
intopieces
The new MacBook Pros outsold competing laptops five days after release.

[https://9to5mac.com/2016/11/09/2016-macbook-pro-
sales/](https://9to5mac.com/2016/11/09/2016-macbook-pro-sales/)

The article linked here doesn't name any sources, just vague "people familiar
withs" and "inside sources."

~~~
pfranz
I think that's expected when the gap between releases was about twice what
previous updates have been[1]. Even if people are underwhelmed with some of
the decisions there is pent up demand. People that pay attention have been
waiting two years for this update "any minute now."

[1]
[http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#Retina_MacBook_Pro](http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#Retina_MacBook_Pro)

~~~
intopieces
There is pent up demand among the loyalist the Apple alienated? Sounds like an
excellent position to be in. Apple ought to alienate them some more, it seems
tk be working well for them.

~~~
pfranz
Oh, come on. Apple outsold competing laptops five days after release. They
should release new laptops every five days!

The 9to5mac article (and the cnet article it references) uses a chart from
Slice Intelligence...which looks like it gathers information from its coupon
and package tracking app (which I've never heard of).

------
sandGorgon
I went and looked at the 13 inch MacBook pro and I was glad I bought my XPS
13.

It is of the size of a 12 inch laptop (because of the thin bezel design), can
charge off a battery pack, can play DOTA 2 , has a QHD touchscreen, and has
upgradable nvme SSD . The XPS 15 has upgradable ram as well. Both these
laptops are much cheaper than the MacBook.

I truly fail to see why you would pay more for the MacBook pro. Yes osx is
brilliant - but so is Fedora 25 or Windows 10. Choose your poison.

------
neotek
My new MacBook Pro finally arrived yesterday and I'm feeling pretty
underwhelmed to be honest. Don't get me wrong, it's a genuinely beautiful
piece of art; every line, every curve is beautiful, the screen is utterly
mindblowing, it's blazing fast and responsive, only having USB-C ports hasn't
been any sort of impediment whatsoever, and Sierra is a great OS.

But overall, it just feels like it's going to be a complete chore to get
accustomed to the horrific keyboard and the ridiculously large trackpad, the
Touch Bar is actually pretty useless as far as my workflow is concerned, and
not having a physical escape key is a lot more disorienting than I expected it
to be.

My day-to-day processes rely on me being fast and proficient with the way I
interact with my machine and every time I have to look down at the keyboard
just to figure out where the fuck my fingers are or adjust my hands because my
palms keep drifting over the touchpad or fumble around for the escape key, I
lose focus for a millisecond and my flow gets ruined.

Fortunately I've got two weeks to figure out if I can adjust before it becomes
too late to return the machine to Apple for a refund, so we'll see.

Right now, though, I paid well over $4,000 AUD for this thing and I'm not
entirely sure why.

------
systemtest
Sacrificing the keyboard and battery for a thinner housing was a mistake.

I upgraded my Macbook Pro 13" with 16GB of memory, a 250GB SSD, a 1TB HDD and
a Bluetooth 4.0 internal card. I'll keep this for a few years.

~~~
72deluxe
I agree. I am keeping my 2012 i7 MBP for a few more years. Upgraded to 16GB
RAM, 1TB SSD, still got a useful DVD writer and plethora of incredibly useful
ports all without dongles!

And MagSafe.

~~~
elliotec
How do you upgrade like that? I have one of the same models.

~~~
72deluxe
The RAM involves taking the bottom off and shoving in some more sticks.
Officially this can only support a maximum of 8GB but I have had no problem
with 16GB.

For the hard disk, it is fairly trivial too. Follow iFixit's guide:

[https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+15-Inch+Unibody+Mid...](https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+15-Inch+Unibody+Mid+2012+Hard+Drive+Replacement/10761)

I went with a Samsung 850 EVO 1TB.

------
dcposch
Just a counterpoint: the 12" Macbook is really excellent.

Build quality is impeccble. It feels amazing to travel with-- light enough to
put into a small drawstring bag. On planes I keep it in the seat pocket in
front of me. It feels like a sheet of paper.

It has two ports total: one USB C and one headphone jack. If you want you can
have a single cable to a 4K monitor that carries the image, powers the laptop,
and connects USB slots on the side of the monitor. Minimalism!

Some people complain about the keyboard travel being too low, but I found it
comfortable after one day.

I develop WebTorrent Desktop and WebGL apps with it. I know that if a WebGL
game does 60fps here, it will run smoothly just about everywhere.

"To build fast software, use a slow computer."

It has a tiny mobile CPU. The flash storage is fast and the wifi hardware is
solid, so for many uses it feels faster than the brick-like Core i7 based
Linux laptop I had before.

\--

I think if people stopped geeking out about stats and used a 12" Macbook for
one week, a LOT of people would switch.

~~~
_ph_
Yes, for all the complaining about Apple, I do intend to buy the 12" after the
next refresh, which I hope for in spring. As my mobile compute needs are
modest, I am intrigued by this tiny and most of all, fanless laptop.

------
HillaryBriss
> _To be fair, Apple depends on Intel Corp., which still makes key chips for
> Macs. Like the rest of the PC industry, Apple 's innovation and product
> cycles are sometimes constrained by when Intel produces new chips—a process
> that's getting more difficult._

So, given that constraint, maybe Apple should make it _easy_ for the end user
to upgrade _everything else_ (e.g. RAM and flash storage) instead of really
hard or impossible.

But, it's more like "You're stuck with this new Intel processor which is
basically similar to the previous one, so we'll just bind it as permanently as
possible to all of the other components so that, when you want a larger drive,
you'll have to replace the processor too."

Maybe Intel is dictating this "permanent glue and solder" strategy to Apple...

------
rch
Has anyone taken the Novena laptop designs and tried to produce an updated
version? Seems like fairly obvious Kickstarter material there.

[https://www.kosagi.com/w/index.php?title=Novena_Main_Page](https://www.kosagi.com/w/index.php?title=Novena_Main_Page)

~~~
anexprogrammer
[https://puri.sm/](https://puri.sm/) seem to have picked up that baton.
Looking at their machines, pretty successfully too. If they can survive and
get past teething issues and a couple of silly choices they could have a great
future.

~~~
rch
The 15"/i7 looks really nice. Thanks!

I'd still be interested in a true Novena successor too though. The integrated
FPGA for instance...

------
HillaryBriss
> The affordable and flexible Mac mini was last upgraded in 2014.

They made the Mac Mini a lot less flexible in 2014 than it had been.

~~~
protomyth
Yeah, the 2012 models could be beefed up pretty nicely, not so with the 2014.

------
bryanrasmussen
Well I've migrated back to Windows for my latest computer, but part of that
was also because I already had a reasonably functioning mac ( although
starting to stumble) and ubuntu installation. I plan on buying another mac
later next year - however that is because my wife is a mac loyalist.

to say that losing developers is losing mac loyalists is pretty weird
actually, traditionally developers have not been the core mac loyalist
profile.

~~~
HillaryBriss
look at all of the official android SDK developers who work at Google. it's
Macintosh all the way down.

~~~
bryanrasmussen
one thing I've found at the place I'm at now where it's bring your own device
because of all the consultants is that bringing your own device really screws
up running any sorts of automated ui differencing tests. so that might explain
Mac all the way down even if you have a choice.

------
colept
This is where the Hackintosh market has thrived.

For desktop users, size of the machine is not nearly as important as raw.
computational. power. The iMac was good in its time but that time was half a
decade ago. The Mac Pro was supposed to be the revolution for Mac desktops,
but they neglected it for too long. And since you can't upgrade it yourself
that shiny new Mac depreciates exponentially and even more so when software
updates bog down resources further.

Support for specific combinations of hardware is near the flawless breaking
point where just about anyone could follow the guides to put together a
machine that will run MacOS using near top of the line hardware. Being able to
dual boot Mac and Windows, so that I can be productive and game on a high end
graphics card - and not locked down in expandability is unparalleled.

~~~
_delirium
A maxed out current iMac is a pretty competitive workstation machine imo. Not
especially _cheap_ , but not prohibitive for a company. The top of the line is
currently a 4.0 GHz quad-core i7 w/ 32 GB RAM (27" model w/ the memory and CPU
upgrades). I have that on my desk at work and am quite happy with it.

~~~
colept
A maxed out iMac would depreciate within 5 years, and any particular part
would render your entire system unusable for week(s). Three years later and
Apple adds a new feature that for the slightest reason requires an entire
hardware upgrade because you can't upgrade components individually. Then
factor in that the thin iMacs have terrible heat dissipation which means the
CPU can't run at full speed without overheating.

That top of the line iMac costs four grand while a Hackintosh costs half that
and gets you a top of the line graphics card and the ability to keep on par
with the top of the line.

~~~
_delirium
I'm not going to claim they're really cost-competitive with PC equivalents,
just that they're fast enough machines to make good workstations, and the
price is within the range of what our IT considers a reasonable office
workstation purchase price.

At least where I work, desktop machines aren't kept for five years anyway, so
I don't think this distinguishes it from any other supplier. Our standard
depreciation/replacement cycle for workstations is 3 years, whether it's
coming from Apple or Dell. Obviously for home use the economics are different,
but then a lot of things are different there, e.g. I build PCs from parts, and
there's no way work wants people to be DIY building their own office
workstations. And yeah, you can spec out a comparable Dell that's cheaper
(though don't forget to add in a high-quality 27" monitor!), but not by enough
to really make a dent in the IT budget one way or the other.

~~~
colept
> just that they're fast enough machines to make good workstations

Except they're not. The heat dissipation in the thin iMacs is terrible in that
it prevents the CPU from working at full capacity 100% of the time.

------
davidf18
Admittedly, for my needs the 15" models are not great. Writing and some
computer programming/big data. I prefer longer battery life and a
lighter/smaller 15" unit. The new unit claims to have about 2 hours more
battery life than the 2015 model (see tables of battery life near end) [1].

Also important to me is nearby Apple stores to get my Mac problems looked into
if I need it.

Could somebody please be specific as to what the new 15" rMBP is not doing for
them?

[1] [http://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-
Pro-15-Late-2016-...](http://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-
Pro-15-Late-2016-2-6-GHz-i7-Notebook-Review.185254.0.html)

~~~
Miredly
The actual problem for me (audio engineer/music production) isn't so much the
new machine itself, it's that after /years/ of stagnation, at a much-hyped
keynote titled "Hello Again", referencing the original Mac launch, it's the
only machine we got, and it's not much better than the machine that came
before it.

Essentially what this signaled to me, and a lot of other people, is that Apple
has lost sight of the distinction between its Pro models and its consumer
stuff. The touchbar is an interesting innovation, sure, but it's better
served, at least at first, as a gimmick for their consumer devices. There were
a lot of design decisions that add a lot of cost for people in a lot of
Creative Professional segments, including Audio and Video production, without
really adding that much functionality. Sure you can use the touchbar as a
scrub-wheel in ProTools-- if Avid gets around to coding it in. But even that
isn't worth the $400 price bump, when most Audio guys have their own DAW
controllers already. That now need adaptors.

Furthermore, if you want a dedicated OS X desktop machine for your studio,
what are your options? You can pay through the nose for a Mac Pro that has a
couple thousand dollars worth of (now outdated) graphics cards that you don't
need, along with an extra grand for a rackmounting solution that will convert
your thunderbolt ports to PCI for your HDX/Dante/whatever setup, or you can
buy a Mac Mini (which is itself direly in need of a refresh) and be severely
limited by your RAM. And spend an extra grand to install your HDX card.

So I suppose to answer your question, the rage is less about what the new rMBP
isn't doing for people, and more about what wasn't released alongside it.

~~~
davidf18
Thank you for your reply, but I'm still a bit confused. I would have liked an
NVidea dGPU instead of the AMD for GPU processing with CUDA so that is a
disappointment, but from my understanding, the AMD 14nm node GPUs consume much
less power than the NVidea GPUs.

The new 15" unit is smaller and somewhat lighter with a longer battery life so
for those that value portability, this is really helpful.

I see value in having to lug around less weight, to better able to use it on
an airplane because of smaller size, to have the extra battery life.

For my needs, the TB seems gimmicky and yet another possible point of failure
so a negative.

As for the USB-C and the dongles, I think that is a transitional issue.

So, from my perspective, I see lighter, smaller, 2 hours longer battery life,
a much faster SSD interface, more colors in the display panel and can do what
I want functionally. That is why I was trying to figure out what it doesn't do
for some people that makes them so unhappy or what they would do to improve it
without making it larger and heavier and have a shortened battery life?

For those doing graphics, doesn't the better display panel help them to do
their job.

> and more about what wasn't released alongside it.

Can you be specific on what this means regarding the 15" rMBP 2016?

Generally, the cost of the laptop, this tool, is little compared with salary
and benefits and it really makes sense to do frequent upgrades.

~~~
Miredly
I think your confusion is stemming from your perspective. To you, smaller and
lighter is unequivocally a Good Thing- However my 2013 MBP 15" is already
light enough that I can one hand it comfortably, and can carry it everywhere
without noticing. If they'd allowed the new machine to stay at the same
thickness, they could have gotten more battery life out of it, which would be
something that I would consider a priority- They could also have conceivably
crammed a newer, faster graphics card in to it, which in a time when the
entire world is starting to look towards AR development, would be a welcome
addition. There are a lot of creative professionals, like writers and some
developers, for whom the new machine is fine, but there are plenty who have a
massive investment in outboard peripherals (that now need a couple hundred
dollars worth of adaptors), as well as requirements for power that's now being
offered in PC portables but not Macs, and for us the new machine with its
compromises and price inflation was a slap in the face.

As for what wasn't released alongside it, I'm talking about desktop machines.
Apple's desktop machines are direly out of date. Speaking only as an audio
engineer, I need a machine that I can rack in a machine room and slot my dante
card in to. There are many more who have multi-card HDX setups who are even
more screwed by the current Mac desktop situation. For apple to use "Hello
Again" in their teaser for the event and then /not/ release a new Mac desktop
was another slap in the face to people who have been waiting /years/ now to
upgrade.

So again, to answer your question in the context of the 2016 rMBP, The machine
itself was slightly disappointing. The fact that it was the only machine that
we got at that event compounded the disappointment exponentially- and the
combination of the two is indicative of a thought pattern at Apple that's out
of touch with what their long term userbase has always used their Macs for.

~~~
davidf18
Thank you. So for the laptop (as opposed to the desktop) if I understand you,
a more powerful dGPU isn't important, but longer battery life would be.

As for me and people like me at the university (e.g. students, researchers,
etc), we complain that the 15" 2015 laptop is too heavy because on its own
(I'm in NYC so we walk, take subways which are faster than Uber or Taxi by far
during busy times of the day which are frequent). The weight of the laptop
case, a charge often, and books and papers that I use adds up to a lot.

~~~
Miredly
Again, it's a matter of perspective. Strictly speaking, I don't need a faster
dGPU for audio. But I also work in VR, and right now I need a separate
computer for that, even with a brand new "pro" laptop with a pay-through-the-
nose dGPU option, which is yet another disappointment.

As for the weight, again it's a matter of perspective. If it's too heavy for
you, that's a valid complaint. But I carry my machine, and a charger, at
minimum, everywhere I go, and I frequently have to check to make sure I
remembered to put it in my bag because I can barely feel it. At that point,
for me, remembering what carrying a 10lb machine everywhere felt like, making
it some fraction of a pound lighter just does not take priority over better
battery or more power.

------
msangi
I'd add that they had a questionable choice of the Mac and MacBook models they
released macOS Sierra for.

They left out hardware perfectly capable of running it as if they're trying to
force upgrades on people who don't use their computer for computational
intensive tasks.

I know that these computers are still going to work with El Capitan, but what
happens when its security updates will stop? Also, some applications already
require Sierra and that's not going to get better.

------
stanislavb
And that could be the beginning of the end. Yes, it might be slow; however,
once devs start migrating to other platforms, it could become a serious hit on
Apple.

~~~
equalarrow
Most of the people I work with use Python, Swift/Obj-C, Sketch, and Ruby.
Every single one has a Mac laptop. I don't see any of these people switching
soon.

I've played around with Linux (Elementary and Fedora) and it's usable for most
of the Ruby and Python guys, but it's just not the same. Not the same
attention to detail (even with macOS shortcomings) and not the same apps.

Windows 10, similar thing. It's getting better, but it still feels overly
complicated and kludgy.

macOS isn't the be all end all - it still has its issues, but I don't see
anyone but the hardcore crowd defecting anytime soon. I think a lot would have
to change at Apple in order for this to happen. Like, several cpu series
behind or just blatant massive missteps. (Some would argue these have
happened, but I don't think so yet.)

~~~
rikkus
I am a developer(-ish) who used a Macbook for a while because Windows used to
be awful and 'PC' laptops used to be dreadful.

Thanks must go to Apple for taking the lead and showing how laptops could be
really good.

\- They work hard on optimising for power use, so you can leave the power
adapter behind (sometimes)

\- They showed that it's possible for your machine to be ready to use the
second you open the lid

\- They proved touchpads can be a joy to use

\- They saw that high res screens were something people actually want

\- They popularised a new style of keyboard which seems to be generally well-
liked (writing this on a ThinkPad T450s... with a chiclet-ish keyboard, and
liking it!)

I fear that if they turn away from their 'Pro' laptops, the industry will
stagnate again and we'll all be cursing the cheap creaking plastic and
terrible pointing devices on our Toshibas or Fujitsus. Just as we notice
there's no battery left.

I'm liking Windows 10 on a ThinkPad, but I'm using the TrackPoint / a mouse,
because, while the trackpad is improved, if it's not 99% as good as a
Macbook's, they might as well not bother (I've switched it off).

Also, 3.5 hours remaining after 30 minutes of use, most of it typing this
comment. I carry a power adapter.

------
27182818284
Alienated is too strong a word. Do I feel as an Apple customer a little
forgotten about because I like MacBook Pros? Absolutely. Was my family members
with tech surprised by the new Surface products? Absolutely. Did a long-term,
self-described "Apple fan boy" complain about the releases while wearing a
first generation Apple Watch? Absolutely. Alienated? Eh, I don't think any of
us think badly of the Apple brand or wouldn't consider their next product.

(The Surface Pro demo set to a version of Pure Imagination was more of an
Apple presentation than Apple has done in the last couple of years. It is a
constant horse race and the clear lead Apple had narrowed quite a bit. I was
stunned by how bad their demo of the new Macbook was while the same week that
had the Surface Pro. Watching them awkwardly DJ on the space of a row of keys
was cringe-worthy. I'm not sure how that got green-lit)

------
wineisfine
It surprises me how many others here have 17" Macbook Pro's.

I thought I was the last man standing.

But it's true, changing the HD with SDD, and it even runs Sierra fine.

But also: it shows that under Jobs, they were making working horse-machines
for developers. This is in big contrast to what Cook is up to. He could also
be running Pepsi, Coca Cola or Exxon.

------
dkonofalski
Something that really bothers me about the sentiment expressed in this article
is that computer manufacturers are looking to fit people's specific use cases.
I see it all the time, especially on tech sites, where people want to complain
that Apple (or whatever tech company is being questioned) has abandoned them
because of X, Y, or Z since they no longer offer some kind of functionality
that was useful to a person. People seem to have this idea that Apple needs to
continue to offer certain features because they did offer them in the past and
people created workflows around those features. In reality, Apple is going to
keep the features that people buy their products for.

Just look at the number of people in these comments complaining that Apple
axed the 17" MBP. While I agree that there may be a use case and a segment of
the population that could make use of a 17" laptop, they obviously didn't sell
enough of them to make it worthwhile. The response to this is usually "well,
they just lost me as a customer completely now" as if that's supposed to sway
Apple into saying "You're right! We should keep building and sourcing
components for a computer that less and less people are using". I'm sure Apple
loses some money and some customers from the lack of a 17" laptop, but that
obviously doesn't outweigh the number of people that are willing to switch to
another one of their computers.

Vote with your wallets. Look at what the computers can do and buy them if they
work for you. If not, go somewhere else and buy a competing product. If enough
people do that, companies like Apple will notice. If not enough people do it,
then you're in a small demographic that it doesn't make sense to cater for.
Yes, they may lose a long time "loyalist", but it doesn't really make sense
for people to be loyal to a specific product. You can be loyal to a company
that continues to make products that you find value in, but to base your
livelihood and your loyalty on a product seems misguided.

~~~
linguae
The problem for some Mac users is that there is nothing else that compares to
the status quo ante, when Apple used to make Macs that fit our needs. Us Mac
users looking to upgrade are stuck between a rock and a hard place. We either
have to choose between Mac OS X (and use underpowered and/or non-upgradeable
hardware since that's all Apple sells these days) or good hardware (and use
operating systems that we feel are inferior to Mac OS X in terms of quality
and usability). That's why we're venting right now; our platform is gone and
the alternatives are all less than ideal. Maybe an alternative will
materialize in the next few years or maybe we'll all learn to cope with
Windows and the Linux desktop, but until then, we're in the mourning phase
right now.

~~~
dkonofalski
This is the part that I don't understand, though. If you were using a Mac
before for your work, then how is a newer, faster Mac unable to do the job? I
get that you may be annoyed that you have to buy dongles and adapters or that
being able to upgrade was a big thing for you, but Apple has not swept the rug
out from under you and made your previous tools obsolete nor have they
prevented their new hardware from doing the job your old hardware did. And I'm
not complaining about the venting or annoyance that you're describing, I'm
talking about the hyperbole like "being in mourning" and crap like "Apple
Alienated Mac Loyalists". They didn't alienate anyone, they did research and
looked into how people use computers and a small subsection of the population
uses them slightly differently. You can still do what you need to do with
their computers. You're not alienated at all. You just don't like that their
computers don't fit your use case 100% and that's a completely different
thing.

~~~
linguae
Many Mac users, including myself, feel that the new MacBook Pro is inferior to
the MacBook Pro it replaced. And for Mac desktop users, the situation is the
Mac Mini hasn't been upgraded in two years, and the Mac Pro hasn't been
upgraded in three years. And, once again, the current Mac Mini is a downgrade
from its predecessor (and some may even argue that about the current Mac Pro
over its tower predecessor). Sure, we can keep chugging on with our old
hardware, but eventually our hardware will fail, and our options will either
be to replace it with overpriced, deliberately crippled hardware if we want to
stay in the OS X ecosystem or to switch away from OS X and deal with the
inconveniences of Windows and/or desktop Linux. We can work with and deal with
either option; heck I could get my work done with an old Pentium II laptop
running Windows ME if I had to, but it's just not the same and is worse than
what we had before. That's what we're lamenting.

~~~
dkonofalski
How is the hardware deliberately crippled, though? You keep saying things like
that as if they're objective facts. The new Macbooks can run exactly the same
software and hardware as the old ones. The only difference is that you may
need an adapter unless you have newer devices that can use USB-C. There's no
way you could say that any of these are a downgrade from their predecessors
when they have faster processors, more storage space, and better displays than
any of the old machines. Again, you're bemoaning something that is entirely
your decision. You expect the one of the biggest computer manufacturers in the
world to cater to your specific workflow rather than verifying that your
workflow is adaptable and extensible. That seems backwards to me and your
lament seems completely misplaced.

~~~
linguae
Let's agree to disagree regarding the value proposition of today's Macs. I
personally and strongly feel that soldering RAM and storage to the motherboard
is crippling the machine, but you feel differently about it, and I'm not going
to argue further.

Honestly, the USB-C situation is the least of my problems with the MacBook Pro
and Apple these days. It's the entire philosophy of Apple and their
stewardship of the Mac since Steve Jobs passed away that I take strong issue
with. The problem is there is absolutely no manufacturer on the planet who has
a philosophy toward personal computing that is aligned with the pre-2012
Apple, before Apple started soldering RAM to their motherboards and before
Apple started dramatically lengthening the frequency of updating their Macs.
We had a great run of no-compromise personal computers from 2001-2013ish or
so, and it's over, not because it got supplanted by superior technology, but
because Apple can't make as much money off the 5-10% of power users rather
than the masses. Maybe it's just a "c'est la vie" type of thing, but it's a
shame that nobody seems to care about the personal computing needs of power
users anymore.

------
caycep
I suspect this is validation of Ben Thompson's analysis of Apple's Unitary
Form organization - it is great at a single focus (iOS) but has trouble
walking and chewing gum. I hope this is just a sign of things in flux at Apple
and they eventually arrive at a design hierarchy that privileges both desktop
and mobile...

Then again, playing devil's advocate, why shouldn't it be that way? The
purest, Apple-like form of computing is a computer that is seamlessly with you
and adapts to everything you need. Perhaps the end-point is a single iOS
device in your pocket, and when you need the desktop/bigscreen/keyboard rubric
of the Mac, it would seamlessly connect wirelessly to those things, but
without having to burden you with those things otherwise. In a way, having two
platforms, in the long-long run, is inelegant and therefore un-Apple-like.

------
mzw_mzw
It wasn't hard to do. Endless coy secrecy on platform refreshes, deciding what
tech to use based on form factor and coolness instead of utility, and an
operating system that got more bloated and unstable with each version were
more than enough to drive me off.

~~~
72deluxe
Did you consider the bloatedness related to the iCloud stuff being forced onto
it or something else?

~~~
mzw_mzw
It wasn't iCloud specific, although that didn't help. More just a general
sense that with every iteration of OSX, the operating system got just a little
bit slower, just a little bit more unstable, the human interface standards
just a little more inconsistent and unclear, and you'd have to wrestle with
more built-in systems like the Mac App Store that locked things down for
Apple's convenience.

------
bjarneh
The lack of attention could perhaps be caused by the death of the man who
brought the attention?

~~~
protomyth
I'm also starting to suspect that Scott Forstall wasn't really the problem,
and that the firing of Sal Soghoian is just another symptom of not getting the
Mac.

------
amiga-workbench
I've been saying this for years now, the last few refreshes on their Mac lines
have been a swift kick in the balls for professional users.

The 2014 Mac Mini is an utter joke, go buy late 2012 model for better
performance and user serviceability.

------
Tistel
Does anyone have any more insight into what went wrong with the non
rectangular (presumably higher volume) battery that they wanted? Just hard to
manufacture the shape? The bad battery life on the new ones is a big challenge
for their marketing group.

------
bla2
I wonder how much of this is new. Having multiple competing prototypes is
something Apple also did in the Jobs area. Attrition of "more than a dozen"
doesn't sound extremely high for a year and a half. Every shipping product in
this world has some of its features cut for launch, with the features often
making it into v2 if the product is successful. I mean, it's an interesting
article, but the same article could probably have been written 4 years ago
when everyone was happier with the Mac.

------
taude
I'd happily have a 15" MBPro that weights a little more and has a better
transitory-period port selection (USB-C along with the ports my prior MBPro
has), and upgradable RAM and SSD storage. The difference between a 4 or 5
pound desktop replacement laptop isn't important to me, even in the situation
where I'm always using it on the road. Apple is optimizing the wrong things
here. These optimizations could probably be done on the AIR line, though,
without much negativity, though.

------
Fomite
I'll likely keep buying Apple laptops, because it's the environment I prefer
for scientific computing and general productivity rolled into one.

But for a long time, I was also a Mac Pro loyalist. They were my workhorse
workstations, and there was every reason to suspect my lab would keep buying
them in the future. But the new ones are overly expensive, have no CUDA-
capable GPU option, a pain to upgrade and generally weird to target.

When a recent grant got funded, I ended up going with Boxx.

------
MR4D
I feel that Apple made a mistake with the MBP. For instance, why aren't
MacBooks 11" and 13", and the Pros should have been 14" and 16". At least with
that, there would be a feeling of differentiation (assuming everything else
stayed as delivered this fall).

It seems as though Apple fell down where they are historically the strongest -
managing perception. And that has me frustrated because I'm wondering what's
next to fall (like many others on HN).

------
ScottBurson
> In another sign that the company has prioritized the iPhone, Apple re-
> organized its software engineering department so _there 's no longer a
> dedicated Mac operating system team_. [emphasis added]

Wow, am I the only one who finds this terrifying? MacOS has already been
getting less stable by the release. It's also unfathomable -- how can you not
have a dedicated team for such a massive software product??

I don't think that's going to work at all.

------
dirkg
All the technical stuff aside, the simple fact is Apple enjoys a level of
brand loyalty and market hype unlike anyone else, which is why they can afford
to do practically whatever whatever they want and get away with it.

Their every decision now is weighed much more towards profitability and
upsell/obsolescence than user satisfaction/usability/advancing tech.

The fact that the new MacBook is the fastest selling ever, despite all its
negative press, is proof.

------
orionblastar
Look up a Kickstarter project called Modbook.
[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/modbook/modbook-
pro-x-1...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/modbook/modbook-
pro-x-154-retina-quad-core-mac-os-x-tablet)

They take a MacBook and covert it into a tablet. This is what Apple should
have done. Instead they let Microsoft out innovate them with the Surface.

------
al2o3cr
Alternate title: "How Tech Journalists Alienated Anybody Who Remembers They've
Been Saying the Same Thing For Ten Years"

------
dragonbonheur
Maybe the time is right for SGI to get back into making workstations again now
that Apple doesn't seem to care as much as before.

~~~
DigitalJack
Why? Just buy something from newegg and call it "workstation."

Apple has two things going for them: top notch physical quality laptops and
macOs. That's really it.

Who cares how shiny a desktop workstation is... ideally you don't even see it.
the only reason to buy a desktop from Apple is macOs. And if that doesn't
matter to you, why by from apple at all?

And for that matter why buy a desktop from anyone when you can put them
together yourself like legos.

~~~
TylerE
There are more useful attributes to a well-made desktop system than "shiny".

"Quiet" is a big one.

~~~
imagetic
Not really.

The Mac Pro, while insanely quiet for what's inside of it, can't handle high
resolution video production and graphics work. The fans peg and heat blasts
out the top but the GPUs overheat at 130+ degrees and introduce artifacts into
the finished media.

So in the end, the design is flawed. Which is a huge problem now that almost
every production camera is 4k or higher now.

Liquid cooling in a PC case is near silent. And the GPU options are more
powerful and have the right tools to stay cool. Only you have to put up with
Windows which means locking driver versions, scheduling maintenance windows to
upgrade edit bays and render machines and working closely with vendors for SAN
and 10GbE options so everything keeps working.

------
hyperliner
I have the same feeling about iPhone in general as I do for my Mac, as I do
for my (gathering dust) Apple Watch. Maybe we are experiencing the beginning
of the decline of this system class. The question could be: what could Apple
do to re-energize this ecosystem and take it to its next level? Or to invent
the next class of systems?

~~~
criddell
> The question could be: what could Apple do to re-energize this ecosystem and
> take it to its next level?

Maybe you are asking the wrong question. Apple Computer is gone (2007). Maybe
they don't want to re-energize their computer company roots. That would be
looking backwards and Apple as a company doesn't look backwards very often
(their recent book was a strange departure).

Maybe Apple's future is entirely in the consumer products realm - watch,
iPhone, and iPad. Doesn't Cook use an iPad Pro as his primary computer?

~~~
yourapostasy
> Doesn't Cook use an iPad Pro as his primary computer?

If he does, then he has a silent, unseen team of people who smooth over the
rough edges for him. As a multinational megacorporation CEO who travels the
world, I'm surprised he hasn't encountered the following oversights unless
someone else is hitting these and silently behind the scenes working around
them for him, instead of getting them fixed. In my mind's eye, he primarily
interacts with his main device via voice to an assistant team and he uses the
device mostly on a consumption as opposed to a content producing role (with
the exception of email), and they run into these annoyances; those times that
he directly interacts with the device to key in data, in my imagination he
relies on that team to fix up inconsistencies or partial workarounds.

1\. Key in a phone number, select a label; all the labels are in the order
entered, not alphabetically sorted (or better, sorted by a user-customized
sort).

2\. Key in a calendar appointment, set a timezone; the timezone search never
remembers previous timezones you selected, only displays the results of the
search default, wasting the user's time to key in the timezone over and over
again, and wasting all the screen space on whitespace. Breaks consistency with
Calendar's Recents display of locations.

3\. Contact information is based upon incorrect first-last name model; search
on "Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names" for all the incorrect
assumptions Contacts embeds, for which users devise time-wasting workarounds.

4\. In Calendar, setting Travel Time based upon Location still (on flagship
iOS 10.2, iPhone 7, unlocked model) takes a very long time (sometimes as long
as about a minute) instead of caching the previous 10-20 results, immediately
displaying the travel time for them if any of the Location pairs' have a side
that matches the currently selected Location, and filling in from the
background as the search unobtrusively continues. Used to lock up Calendar and
crash it about half of the time, but under 10.2 seems to return "Cannot
Provide Directions: Network lost." error now with the same frequency. This
happens because the feature depends upon a reliable network connection to
function, and any disruption, poor latency, or just plain slow bandwidth seems
to knock it off its feet instead of gracefully degrading to a best guess that
is refined in the background with suitable visual cues and notifications.

5\. No way to cut/copy and paste Calendar events.

6\. Developers aren't invited in to build on top of Contacts and Calendar
datastores to enhance with company-specific extensions. Instead, they must
build the entire Contacts and Calendar user experience from scratch and try to
replace it, or let users waste their time keying in that information into the
Comments field.

There are lots of odd little omissions and oversights like these accreting
over the years. Internal promotions at big organizations like this are not
built on top of fixing these, so they are allowed to fester and gradually
pollute the user experience until they become hygiene issues with the
platform. A way to address this is a CEO-sponsored group who is charged with
fixing these, and the members of the group are granted fast-track promotion
status in exchange for addressing these issues. For Apple, this should be
treated as an ongoing critical area to address, because it pierces their "Just
Works" veil; the only way to keep up that customer stickiness for that
sobriquet is superb attention to detail.

------
Animats
Mac loyalists are becoming a nuisance for Apple. They keep wanting Apple to
change things, instead of passively accepting what Apple chooses to give them,
like good little consumers. They want features needed by tiny fractions of the
user base, a headache for a mass-market manufacturer.

------
shripadk
Just open source macOS and let us build our own machines. Or at least do what
Microsoft is doing and sell macOS independent of Mac. Apple doesn't seem to
care about the Macs anymore anyways. Wish Steve was still alive and running
the show.

------
chmaynard
I remember someone at Apple saying that Steve Jobs believed the company (as
constituted when he was alive) should not try to support more than two
operating systems concurrently. Last time I counted, they were supporting
four.

------
type0
I'm, for one, am still waiting for MacBook Wheel.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA)

------
m3kw9
Last time I checked a week ago 3 of my friends brought a MacBook Pro as long
time of users. So you got new users and so called "loyalist" leaves

------
philfrasty
Been an Apple customer for the last 20+ years. Never have been so happy as a
PRO user. (Really don't get all the „beginning of the end“ blabla)

~~~
rev12
There are many different types of professionals. The fact that the current
lineup fills your needs puts you in a good position.

Unfortunately, the current lineup falls short for a good deal of many other
professionals in ways that you likely can't understand as you've stated in
your comment.

------
DoodleBuggy
This is such a damning article.

------
Animats
Apple needs a new slogan to breathe some life into the Mac line. Since some of
them are made in America, how about:

Make America Insanely Great Again

------
zeusk
[http://i.imgur.com/QIOptY7.png](http://i.imgur.com/QIOptY7.png)

The world is not centered around you and your country.

~~~
Keyframe
If I'm buying, yes it is.

