I've been reading (and editing and publishing) the same "When will Apple once again start caring about high-end creative professionals who put serious demands on their machines?" article for over a decade, now.

I mean, I agree with a lot of what's in this piece. But this idea of the Mac as cutting-edge creative powerhouse with tons of horsepower under the hood is a fantasy that dates back to the PPC/RISC days.

Every now and then Apple comes out with a new Mac Pro design, or the XServe, or another new Mac Pro design, or manages to cram a leading-edge CPU or GPU into one of their computers. But those rare moments of genuine high-end leadership are the exception, rather than the rule.

All of Apple's innovation eggs are in the iOS basket now. All of them. And before that they were in the "creatives who work out of Starbucks" basket. They haven't been in the "I need to crunch serious numbers to make cool things" basket since before the Cold War ended.

Apple has been a lifestyle brand for creative types and creative type wannabes, and not the heir to, say, SGI, for a very very very long time.