Mac sales declined nearly 10% last year as Lenovo, Dell and others gained ground
9to5mac.com
9to5mac.com
The 12" MacBook is there...but it is a super niche product compared to the old Air or even the old Pro. It's performance is probably enough for most people, but at that point you could just buy a cheaper windows ultrabook and get similar or better performance for a much lower price.
A huge market for Apple used to be college students. Now in 2017 what Apple laptop do they buy? an underpowered MacBook, or an overpriced pro? The best solution for most is buying an older model, but part of the appeal of buying a Mac is having the "latest" thing.
Then you get to desktops...and there isn't much to say there. Apple just doesn't do them anymore.
This is coming from someone that has used a Mac for the past 10 years and is typing on a 2016 pro. It is nice, but connectivity wise it is too far ahead of its time. In 1-2 years it will be fine, but right now it is just in early adopter territory.
The main issue for me is that my laptop can now use Thunderbolt 3 accessories, but if I bought an iMac today I'd be stuck with thunderbolt 2 and no usb-c ports for the next 3 or so years that I would be using the machine.
They aren't the dumpster fire that HP turned into on the low end for a while, but it is concerning as we have had to send machines back for recalls and fixes. It made for an interesting discussion when we decided a new lab was going to be Intel NUCs with LG 21x9 monitors over buying the outdated Macs. I am hoping for some sign Apple gets it together in 2017.
Fantastic display panel, though.
That's why people buy them. It's not for the fastest CPU, it's definitely not for the GPU.
It's because it has a fast enough CPU, a good enough GPU and goes all-in on the display.
It's not something I notice unless I'm in a really bad spot and there's tons of light coming in. Good thing civilization invented this thing called blinds.
Apple simply don't offer that price point anymore. What used to be their low-price line of laptops - the MacBook, now starts at $1.300
Inflation adds about $120 to your $1k figure since 2009, too.
Yes - it's a good piece of kit - but maybe not worth the price.
To get decent specs you have to pay a lot for Apple and I think it's becoming a problem.
While I used to fawn over their minimal interface and simple UX, they've been adding a lot of unnecessary noise (siri, itunes forcing apple music, cluttering imessage with extensions) to their products. Definitely straying away from their status quo.
Couple this with the fact they purposely force non-compatibility with anything non-apple and you have them becoming the new Microsoft.
They're changing the things that make Apple great and it isn't worth the price anymore.
I just couldn't justify buying an Apple, as much as I wanted one.
[edit] how the hell do I keep getting down voted for voicing my opinion? Lol. Nope. You're opinion is wrong, lose a point!
Or, the $750 version (which is what I have) versus a $1000 macbook that's significantly less powerful.
After 16 years of Mac use I don't regret the switch.
I recently realized that a modern 15" can be much more ergonomic yet almost as small and light as a 13" from a couple of years back.
I wouldn't care less about its beauty if it has a good keyboard, a good screen and not awful battery life...
With that said, you are the first one ive heard saying the new dell is not good looking.
I've been using the above set up for half a year now roughly and it's great. I can do all of my development work, writing, browsing, etc. without feeling like I'm giving up much for those sorts of tasks and the price is very reasonable.
Details can be found at:
https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/transform-a-toshiba-chromeboo...
Its physical profile is really small too. Perfect for putting into a backpack and doing some traveling with it.
Sure, it's a one-time "cost" and nearly insignificant over the course of the lifetime of the machine, but please be honest about the time spent.
The GalliumOS installer is also really straight forward. You pretty much run 2 commands and hit ok a few times. This part is more than 5 minutes, but it's mainly just twiddling your thumbs waiting for things to download and install.
Then you boot up and you're in.
However at this point it's not worth paying Apple for that pleasure, when I can get a Windows machine from Microsoft that gives me all that. Hell, I can even get that Developer Edition Dell XPS with Linux.
However, my workload eventually evolved to require running several docker containers (micro-services), which really killed overall performance. React-native development was similarly painful. Ultimately, I was forced to upgrade to a thinkpad, but I will always have much love for that little chromebook.
I've ran some pretty heavy work loads on the one I linked without issues (and this is comparing it to a high powered i5 desktop).
For example in the blog post, I mention running this:
- Google Chrome with 6 tabs open
- Youtube playing back a video (streaming music is important!)
- Docker daemon
- Dockerized Rails app with 28 gems
- Dockerized Sidekiq background work
- Dockerized Action Cable server
- Dockerized Postgres and Redis
- Sublime Text 3 with about 30 plugins
- 2 terminal windows, one with 2 tabs and the other with 3
- 1 PDF open with the native PDF viewer
- A 2nd workspace with another Google Chrome window and 3 more tabs
And it took it like a champ. No severe slow downs or thinking "meh, I should be on my workstation, this sucks!".
I ran Linux on everything for almost 20 years. I'm done fiddling with my computer, and glad to pay for someone else investing a lot of engineering so I don't have to.
I've always kept a Windows partition for gaming. And now that I moved to a MBP, it's a whole separate machine. It's a Dell 730x monster, from just before they bought Alienware, that originally sold for $8,500. It's about 8 years old now, but, with a nVidia 760, it's still running most games just fine.
I've tried Windows 10 TWICE, and gone back to 7, and have it "pinned" with Never 10. I came back from a vacation, and nVidia forced a new driver on my Windows machine. This version turns ShadowPlay back on (which I turned off because of lousy performance on spinning hard drives). And now I find I have to create an account just to try to find the setting to turn it off! Like Razor, I have to log in to a cloud service to adjust my settings!? No sale! I threw the Razor keyboard away. In the case of the video card, I downgraded to a driver from before they introduced ShadowPlay, and it seems to be running fine.
You can say you're happy with Windows, and I believe you. You can tell me it's a better value. But I'm about to throw this glorified Xbox away, and buy a PS4, mods be damned.
My point is that Linux still takes a lot of babysitting, and Windows is turning my machine into a something which feels like something I rent, but don't own. I'm happy to pay for the premium of macOS at this point, and will continue to find SOME acceptable hardware in their lineup to avoid the other options.
This may or may not be a popular counterpoint. I hate that, like Reddit, the voting system here isn't used the way it's supposed to be.
I expect the iMac to get a new chipset but I would like to see the Mac mini updated. Either update the Mac Pro or pull it.
Jobs knew this day was coming, that the PC would take a back seat to other devices, and brought up the analogy of Apple as BMW: The German company started out building motorcycles and while car sales soon vastly eclipsed that, they continued making really good bikes. It was a point of pride for them.
If Apple goes back to that approach, of making Really Good Computers because they can, selling them not at a loss but at a respectable price for a respectable product, they might piss off fewer in their developer slash power user camp.
I'm not sure this is their current strategy. The "Pro" monicker seems to be a little diluted in terms of meaning these days.
We're in a world where the masses don't need/want a PC (which is unfortunate, since that will arguably mean children will have less access to fully-functional computers in formative years when they may develop an interest in programming, but I digress). Apple, a company that claimed to grasp that concept just a few years ago, is completely failing on it right now. So, they make their money on phones and tablets, the devices for the "I don't need a real computer" people. Logically, that means the laptops should be targeted at the people who actually do need/want powerful and flexible computing devices...or they should drop them entirely if they don't wish to service that demographic any longer.
Instead, we have this bizarre situation where Apple is delivering underpowered and overpriced machines. They're expensive and overkill for people who want luxury Facebook/word processing machines, and they're expensive and underpowered for people who want to do real computing. It's very inconsistent and out of touch.
One thing that not enough people are bringing up: who in their right mind sells a "Pro" machine with 256GB of storage? In essence, every machine ships with half the storage they did five years ago. Yes, they're using NAND now, but the cost-per-gigabyte for raw NAND isn't that expensive. For a $2000 laptop, it should bloody well come with at least 512GB of internal storage, with a reasonably priced 1TB upgrade. I can forgive the 16GB limit on the RAM, but storage? On a machine that was marketed for video/photo/software professionals? You lose all of your mobility when you have to tote around an external drive to carry your footage/photos/VMs/builds/whatever.
They cost less than $2k. Amortized over 4+ years, they're extremely affordable for the middle class. People spend more on coffee.
Underpowered for you. Overpriced for you.
Maybe they're not being made for you. Now perhaps this is Apple's mistake, but the fact is they're chasing after a market that's not you. It's people who don't care that the notebook is $2K, that the CPU isn't the best it could possibly be. They're buying more than just specs and a low price tag.
> They're ...overkill for people...
So are they underpowered or overpowered? Make up your mind, man! Is a Ferrari a better car than a Civic because it can go faster? Is a Ford F-150 terrible because it doesn't have low-profile tires and a rear engine?
Apple is just one vendor of many, we have options as consumers, and some people like their products.
A $2K notebook is not expensive, every vendor makes one at that price point and most have astonishingly terrible trackpads. A $3K notebook carries a premium, but it's a luxury product. It's not intended to be cheap.
Apple's mistake might be not differentiating their product line properly, for actually splitting out the actual "Pro" as in professional from "Pro" as in "Pro-sumer". Having to make one model that will sell in the millions of units does impose a lot of constraints.
Dell makes a bazillion different models of laptop, they can afford to take chances, but they also churn them over quickly. Apple doesn't roll that way, not today anyway. They prefer to focus on keeping the product line lean, and really get behind a few good models.
Maybe this is going to hurt them in the long run. We'll see.
Not sure if you have bad reading comprehension or if you're just omitting text to support your argument.
They're underpowered for me. They're underpowered for people who need a "real" computer. For the people they're aiming the new portable at, they're completely overkill and completely overpriced. They're the new MacBook Air, essentially.
Consequently, macs have become overpriced, overpowered and underpowered for me.
Oh, I think many people still use a PC every day - at work. Office jobs are not going to disappear in the next decade. I wish Apple would try harder to capture this super boring market: With a better Mac Mini, by formalising its policy of supporting each OS for three years, with a focus on stability over gimmicks, etc.
Yes, that's post-PC.
Just as post-mainframe meant mainframes were no longer in charge, it didn't mean mainframes didn't exist.
Phones are the single most popular computing device and your average person spends more time on their phone than they do on their computer when excluding work.
The 12" Macbook is the best computer I've ever owned. Switched to it from a 2014 Macbook Pro, and found it very easy to adjust. The only time it struggles a little bit is when I run Windows in VMware, on occasion.
The biggest benefit of the Macbook 12" is that if software runs well on your computer, you know it's guaranteed to run extra buttery-smooth on other computers, which all have beefier CPUs and GPUs.
Sure, I can't play Doom 4. But if I need extra cycles for my development work, I spin up an ec2 instance.
The performance issues come when you're running each of those in it's own virtual machine, and all the overhead and tooling that comes with that.
I get why people are still blacksmiths making door handles and I think that's great. But I'd rather be in a giant machine shop making aircraft carriers.
I'd rather be on a mountain making sleds?
I think you're thinking of using more horsepower for strong scaling, which is a good use, but I'm more referring to weak scaling. You can work on bigger problems with more horsepower, not just solve the smaller ones faster.
Really? Apple really has a great business model.
The software I'm developing is not the compiler I'm using. It's not a mobile device emulator I'm using. It's not a web browser I'm using. It's not an email client or a photo editing app I'm using. It's not the IDE I'm using.
The 12" Macbook replaced my triple-27" Windows desktop & Surface Pros (Windows user since Win3.1 here.) The high DPI screen makes all of the difference.
Just got the new Macbook Pro before Christmas to drive the LG 5k and I am still using the 12" Macbook half of the day and 100% while traveling.
There are too many things during development that doesn't happen on consumer's computer like compile, fast intellisense, real-time syntax check, multiple instances of IDEs and so on. Developers should have best performing machines money can buy because developer time is expensive and development should happen at speed of thought. Testing should be done in VM that can emulate average consumer hardware. Just because some developers are not good t following performance hygiene, every one shouldn't be working on weak machine to produce performant software.
The mobile web would be amazing.
Except for all the other computers that don’t in the $150 price range. Use one of those for development.
I hate that I have to tell devs this, but: Yes, your data-hungry app may work well in downtown SF, but try using it in a place like nowheresville, TN, and let me know how well it works out. /me glares at google maps
However this is only productive if you're not working with (a) compiled code, on a (b) project large enough that compile times are non-negligible
In some build environments, the difference in RAM or CPU is measurable in terms of (literally) hours of wasted time per day :(
Probably the best on the market.
The problem I had was cost - they are over-priced.
Yes, I've heard the argument that if you want 'x RAM with y CPU' etc it will 'cost just as much' - but this is just no longer true. The Macs with 16G memory are crazy expensive.
My Mac has 200-ish G hard-drive which is f-ing retardedly small. They should all have 1T. But if you want those upgrades you have to pay massively more.
I fundamentally believe the issue is simply price.
If you could get a sub-$2K macbook with 16G RAM, good CPU and lots of disk-space - this conversation would never be had.
I really do think Apple has the best boxes, but they are barely worth it, and just not worth it in many cases.
What boggles my mind is how many of them max out at 8G. I couldn't care less about CPU, and I'm flexible about storage, but 8G RAM is ridiculous. I'm currently using a couple of MS office apps and a web browser on my 2015 MBP and it's using 12G. I had a 2011 (or earlier, but I think it was the 2011) MBP that was happy to accept 16G. I'd gladly settle for a 12" MB for most work if I could just get >8G in one.
8G RAM is not ridiculous. Statements like this just show how far out of touch people are. Many workloads benefit from more RAM. And for some it's a hard requirement (e.g. VMs), but web browsing and a bit of office is not one of them. This is why virtual memory/swap space is a thing - and with an SSD that's also not as horrible as it used to be.
To offer a line of laptops with 8GB of RAM as the max in 2017 is ridiculous.
Some people do actually need a lot of ram. Specifically, I work on kubernetes and docker and it's a hard requirement. I'm severely limited in my work now and have to continue using aws+gke for full blown dev environments when if I had the proper amount of ram (what I've had on my desktop for years) I could have full blown testing on my laptop which is always plugged into monitors and a keyboard.
Sure, I'm %1 of the market but I will pay the money if it's available. Next year if I can't get an OSX laptop with 32gb of ram I'm going to wind up traveling down other roads.
Besides, I don't buy it. I also use VMs. And the underlying host doesn't really matter, i.e. it doesn't really matter where the VM is run. So I don't quite understand why you'd spend $$$ on a beefy laptop instead of a nice laptop and a server. Maybe if your internet connection is really bad?
Evidently I missed that this was about the Macbook and not pro, I couldn't care less about the Macbook.
I'm on a fully loaded i7 2015 MBPr and need a new one stat, new as in more ram (limited to 16gb).
It's maybe not for everybody (e.g. photo/video editing), but pretty underrated IMO. Further advantages: RAID, easy to replace the laptop if you lose it or it gets damaged, server are easier to set up with fast, reliable connections (intra or internet) for pulling VM images. Disadvantages: More maintenance/admin?
You can't take the RAM usage reported in Activity Monitor and extrapolate performance. If you were running the same apps on a recent Mac laptop with 8GB RAM, you'd see them taking 6GB of RAM and running just as fast as they do for you.
The only way to tell when you need more RAM is to load down a machine until it swaps too hard to keep up--then you know you need more RAM. And one of the things to keep in mind about new Mac laptops is that they have very fast SSD I/O, which also helps mitigate swap slowness.
For many years, a $2000 MacBook Air was cheaper than its competition because there was no competition.
But today the PC vendors charge less than Apple once again. The universe is back in order and Apple's tech lead is confined to mobile phones.
Oddly, it's a self-inflicted wound. The totally useless expense of wedging a long, narrow Apple Watch into every keyboard is driving Apple's prices way, way up.
Not only that. Also Apple's anorexia, making a useless gigantic trackpad, providing a DCI-P3 screen which is useless for most people, etc.
I love them all to death. It doesn't really matter to me whether I could have gotten something cheaper. If I did that, I'd have a little bit more money, and I'd be significantly less happy.
Well, they're not that loud. The building H/V airflow is usually a lot louder. And my Retina MacBook doesn't even have a fan. (Though I also don't do a lot of software development on it, I have done development on slower machines, and it wasn't terribly painful. Depending on what I was doing, of course.)
I still remember the days of programming in C++ using C-front, and a compile would take 20 minutes. Being a gdb wizard was essential. These days, even with Scala, compilation is fast enough on a four-core iMac that debugging via print statements is easier than using a debugger.
I guess I'm old enough that I just haven't gotten spoiled by expecting everything to be superfast. Though what does annoy me is how slow many websites are. Grrrrrr! When programming in fancy IDEs is faster than surfing the web, you know that something is wrong with the world....
Incremental compilation makes my coworkers' gear loud enough I can hear it anywhere in the room. No HVAC over here. Maybe a MacPro would handle the load better, but that's completely overkill for our needs. The MBPr and iMac keep getting thinner, for no good reason in the iMac's case.
I also loved the hell out of my MacBook Air. I recently gave that to my girlfriend. (Hence me now having a MacBook Retina.) It's four years old and still works as well as the day I got it. It's perfectly zippy. It's only downsides are that the screen isn't nearly as good as the MacBook Retina screen, and the speakers don't go loud enough.
Re iMac fans: well, I love the fact that my MacBook Retina makes no noise at all. But the noises made by my work and home iMacs are not loud enough to bother me in any way. They certainly handle their loads just fine, as long as you don't mind a bit of extra white noise.
But then again, I kind of miss the days when you could hear the disk drive in a computer chugging away. You could often tell what the computer was working on by the rhythm of the chugging.
Most people other than professionals or gamers care about desktops. I'd just build one but those who want macOS the Mac Pro will be updated soon.
I'm not an Apple guy, only own an iPhone but people who insist Apple has fallen off (and say so every single time there's a shred of slightly negative news) are delusional. I'm aware of the market to a fair degree and the only compelling alternative to a MBP is the X1 Yoga.
Back then it was the white plastic MacBook but now it's the 11" MacBook Air that occupies that slot.
That model and its crappy TN screen is vastly inferior and more expensive than similarly-sized ultrabooks. The only redeeming feature it has is MacOS.
Instead of replacing the Air, Apple introduced the MacBook at a premium price point. It seems like a marketing failure to me that a lower spec MacBook (1080p, slower SSD) wasn't released and the Air discontinued.
The date nomenclature of Apple's products is the product release date and not its manufacturing date.
The 11″ MacBook Air was discontinued, but the 13″ is still around.
They've effectively raised the price of their entry-level computer by $200 which would explain a slowdown in sales.
I guess we saw with the different Apple Watch versions, Apple is exploring just how much utility they can capture as margin.
The only reason they have it is likely for education sales, since they have no other reasonable laptop right now.
I feel like saying it isn't a viable machine because of old specs isn't necessarily true since people will still buy it.
I mean, that's the strongest decision when evaluating a new machine for me. If someone wants to replace my machine, they also need to replace the software on the machine, and I don't think the Chromebook is even aimed in the same direction as Mac OS X. It doesn't have the breadth of software, hardware, or even file interaction necessary to get through the classes I took in college, let alone my self education.
If you know exactly what you need from your machine, the chromebook may very well be sufficient. I don't think you can depend on it as a general purpose computer quite yet.
They don't care what the exact specs are as long as they can use their browser, word processing, watch netflix, and do minor photo editing. They don't know what IPS or TN are, and don't seem to care.
Hell I have a 15" mbp all spec'ed out and most of what I do is browser, terminal, netflix.
Isn't that normal for almost every product though? You advertise the top of the line knowing that most will come in and look for something similar that fits their budget.
They don't sell that model any more. 13" is the only MBA now.
Then at one point I needed a new laptop, and the 11-inch Air was the only one that really fit the bill hardware-wise. There was the Yoga, which I almost purchased, but I didn't quite trust it despite its appeal and positive reviews.
After about about a year or so, it seemed like Apple abandoned that small laptop market, and multiple other vendors started releasing really competitive products in that space, especially HP and Dell.
If I was purchasing a new laptop, it would almost certainly be an XPS 13. This sales news isn't anything new.
These things seem to go in cycles--I suspect in 7 years or so we'll be talking about how Dell isn't keeping up with Apple again.
It cost me $600.
That all being said, I switched from MacOS to Ubuntu a couple years ago because I was finding the increasingly frequent notifications and general ugliness/usability of newer MacOS versions were becoming very Windows XP-esque.
I might very well be the only person who prefers Unity to MacOS.
I have an aluminum Macbook and sure it's nice... but when I think about Macbooks, I think about that white plastic machine. Shiny, almost see-through. It really stood out to me in a world of dull metal and chunky black plastic and laser-etched designs on laptops. My 2015 looks nice, I guess, but in my mind it doesn't look nearly as nice as that shiny, translucent white Macbook I saw years ago.
Now, I never used one and I'm sure a lot of people here have, and I'm sure there are a lot of negative stories about them cracking or discoloring or being squeaky or something. But I still remember the first time I saw one, and it stuck with me. That was the same when I saw an aluminum Macbook, it was nice. They don't look all that special these days, the design is getting stale. Everyone has a Macbook-looking laptop, from a distance I can't tell the difference between a Samsung Chromebook and an 11" Macbook Air.
I hope they can wow us with a new design again in the future.
I miss that in the new Macs -- my 2013 MBP has picked up a couple of battle scars. But incidentally, I just bought a ThinkPad, and it took a bit of a tumble the other day, and there is zero evidence of this on the case. Once I get past the couple of interface and power-management deficiencies, I could get used to this.
The 13 air however would easily be their most popular laptop. Those things are literally everywhere.
Except it's made from a block of aluminum, has excellent build quality and will easily last 5+ years of day-in-day-out use.
All I wanted was an 11" MBA with a higher res screen.
They could have reused the exact same form factor and dies and tooling, etc. I would have happily upgraded to that.
I just bought the family an iMac for Christmas and my kids use it often, but they also spend at least as much time on their iPods.
I think what Apple is seeing, and reacting to, is that the younger generation of non-developers are increasingly using their mobile devices for everything.
We as power users hate it because we want to continue to have a solid laptop and/or desktop on which to do our work. But I'm guessing that despite our complaining, we're on the whole willing to pony up the money.
Not to mention, these machines last a really long time. I'm writing this on a mid-2012 MBP that even with a battery that is going bad will still outlast my friends Window's laptops. So yeah, $2400 is a lot for a laptop by comparison. But its not so bad when you consider that you can reasonably expect to have that machine for a much longer time than a Dell or Lenovo.
If you think Lenovos don't last, it's probably because you have seen low-end Lenovos (which indeed often break after 3-5 years). But a MBP is a high-end laptop, it should be compared to high-end laptops from other brands.
And we will. I think the people who can live with only a phone today are the same group of people who were using no computer at all before 1998 or so. Businesses and power users who were using computer long before that will also keep using laptops and desktops in the future. Or do people really think that in 10-20 years all work will be done on phones and restricted tablets? I don't. The PC market might shrink, but it's not going away. If Apple doesn't want to be part of that market anymore other companies will.
Bravo!
This is it.
So many manufacturers of so many things screw this up so bad.
I call it 'Sony-itis'.
They have massive segmentation, within that, so many variations, it's crazy.
I think it's an issue of culture: unless the change comes from the top, it will never happen.
All the MBA's in the world could not convince them to change, operationally.
I worked for a 'major' handset manufacturer that just made new products willy nilly. There was hardly any rhyme or reason.
They don't exist anymore, or rather, barely do.
But regardless, it's a missed opportunity and a self-fulfilling thing.
It's not just developers that are a bit... confused by the new direction.
I also get that this is absolutely a subjective thing. Some people probably just wouldn't like the lack of travel.
Still, I consider myself a pretty discerning keyboard user, and I think the current MBP keyboard is my favorite among the laptop keyboards I have used, with the possible exception of the old Thinkpad keyboard.
* No SD reader: not ubiquitous in the age of smartphones, but I take pics with my DSLR on vacations and not having an internal card reader makes me unhappy. I could add a card reader, which leads me to my next point
* USB-C only: USB C is the future. However, that future hasn't fully arrived yet and migrating would be pricey all in one go. My external drive, external card reader, and thumb drive are all USB A. Sure I could buy the adapter but with MacBook > Adapter > External Card Reader > SD card, I lose the portability I have with my current MacBook. Same goes for my always inserted 64 GB tiny thumb drive full of movies.
* MagSafe: I'm clumsy, and MagSafe is a big deal for me. I understand the appeal of USB C and being able to replace a single cable versus the whole charger, but I'd rather have the clumsy-proof nature of MagSafe
* Keyboard: highly subjective and personal opinion, but I prefer more travel on my keyboard. I've used the new butterfly on the new MBP, but I still like my old keyboard.
* Price: on top of the aforementioned adapters and new accessories, the MBP itself has a higher base model price.
Obviously my thoughts are personal and not universal, but my reasons for not wanting the new MBP for non developer reasons.
Honestly as a developer the only thing that would bug me with software development specifically would be the lack of FN keys.
Newish MBP user chiming in. Peripheral access and costs.
- no DVD/CD player
- no Ethernet
- no SD card slot
- no RCA out
What I see is good new machines with the above peripheral access removed. The advantages are no mechanical moving parts, technically better KB, access to faster SDD, software upgradable for quite a while. The hidden advantage is the new Macs are less polluting and fewer moving parts. Is this worth the added cost, lower power supply and loss of peripheral and access though? Out of the box, I had/have zero problems in my current work use/flow as a ^glorified^ VT-100 terminal.
RCA out hasn't ever been in a MacBook to my knowledge.
The only port that made absolutely no sense to remove was the SD card slot (even if I personally never use mine).
You're right, got confused with 3.5mm jack. Removed the 3.5mm jack. What about the current USB confusion? ...and yes mid 2012. Since when is a thiner laptop ever really been a TOP priority for programmers? I would have though it would be power: processor, battery life, HD, then weight, etc.
For manufacturers shaving off millimetres/grams off each machine translates to savings. For users thiner may be lighter, a trade off with being tactile. Wonder what Braun would tackle this?
We're riding out the top end of the S-curve here. That's okay; the market is mature. I expect that Apple can continue to do their high-margin BMW/Mercedes thing for years to come. I just don't happen to need (or even particularly desire) a luxury computer.
Personally, I have an MacBook Air 13" at home and a Lenovo X1 Carbon at work. Both have their unique strengths and weaknesses but they are both great laptops. Windows has done a great leap forward as has PC hardware. If I were in the market today I would really struggle to make up my mind which one it should be.
I'm guessing the move to consolidate the ports and kill the audio jack may make total sense internally at Apple when it comes to their 10-year manufacturing operations plan and really maximizing their profitability, but to the outside world it's just bad product development.
The guy who is chauffeured to work in a car that is twice as expensive than my three bedroom house? Say it isn't so!
Ive knows exactly what people want. A $200 watch in a $10,000 gold case so the boys down at the country club won't make fun of me from behind their Omegas and Rolexes, amiright? Sigh... As a long time die hard fan of the Apple that made really interesting transformative tech, watching their decline makes me sad.
Not to nitpick too much, but Tim Cook only took over as Apple's CEO a little over 5 years ago.
* Better processors (a given, under the continuous march of Intel)
* Minor GPU improvements, with a multi-year draught where you basically couldn't get a dedicated GPU unless you bought the absolutely most expensive unit.
* Higher resolution displays.
Meanwhile:
* They keep making the damn things thinner, at the expense of functionality.
* They ship with half the storage compared to five years ago. Yes, it's NAND. But you shouldn't have to spend $600 extra on a machine that already costs $2000 just to get to the point where you were five years ago. And with the $/GB cost of NAND as comparatively low as it is in recent years...
* All the ports are gone. First they killed the ethernet, and now they're down to four USB-C ports. All of your DisplayPort-based stuff you've accumulated is now useless, and you need an adapter to plug in a USB flash drive. I get that they think it's going to drive the market down that path, but would it have killed them to go 50/50?
* Hey, let's replace a perfectly useful row of keys that can be bound to things, and the all important escape key, with a shiny touch screen. Fuck touch typists, right?
* CPUs still throttle aggressively under load (especially in warmer climates). Thermal management is hard on laptops, but Apple generally opts to sacrifice performance for cosmetics.
* RAM has been consistently lacking for such an expensive machine. Considering the OS will make full use of it for caches when extra space is available, and that we live in an era of bloated web pages/browsers and garbage Electron software, the consistent lowballing of RAM is annoying.
Just give me a state of the art Thinkpad with full I/O ports that runs OSX please.
God, this. I still have no idea what I'll replace my Hachintosh T420 with when the time comes.
It's the same with Macs today. I gave a talk at my local startup accelerator and found that they had every kind of dongle to attach a Mac to a screen, but no (full size) Displayport adapters.
The next day I added a full-size to mini Displayport adapter to my kit.
Think about it. For those of you that were Mac fans before the iPhone and before it was cool to be so, who else do you know that used a Mac? Forget why, just who? The answer is: content creators. Video creators. Film editors. Photographers. Music artists. Photoshop experts. And developers.
These people create the content that the rest of the "herd" consume. The herd doesn't follow Apple (even though it seems that way); they follow the content, wherever that content is. People didn't switch from Windows to Mac primarily because $x wasn't available on Mac. But soon enough, $x, $y, and $z were on Mac and the switch became easier. Think back to when the iPhone was fighting against BlackBerry and Motorola. It was stupid things like Plants and Zombies and Angry Birds that drove adoption. It was the music industry's alliance with Apple (aka content) that helped the iPhone gain an edge just as much as its technical merit.
5 years ago, I wouldn't have been able to say goodbye to my Mac and go back to Windows. This year, I did (just weeks before the joke of an MBP was announced, thank God). My favorite Mac apps are on Windows. WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) gives me native Linux on Windows with decent integration. I have my posix and I have an OS I can use. MS was trash, but they listened to their power users (thank god for Nadella and good riddance to Ballmer) and ditched Metro everything and went back to a useable, dev-friendly desktop with Windows 10. They're embracing 3D printing, they're bringing back the content producers, and this is going to hurt Apple way more than I think they realize right now.
Every company makes its money at the bottom, but there's a reason these companies continue to make losing investments at the top: to keep the content creators, the prosumers, the reviewers, the influencers happy. It's not just computers. Look at car companies. Look at what Toyota spent on the LFA. They were _never_ going to recoup those costs, no matter what. The goal was to entrench themselves in the minds of auto enthusiasts, to say that Toyota has the ability, the technical knowhow, and the spirit it takes to make a real super car. Now buy and recommend our normal cars, please.
Apple discontinuing first its servers, then its 17" MacBooks (and I've never owned a 17" laptop in my life), its Mac Pros (seriously!?!??), and now, the MacBook Pro (there's a reason there used to be a MacBook and a MacBook Pro. Now "Pro" is marketing and they're all MacBook Pros while none of them are), is the problem. It's clear some pinhead that doesn't get the market is looking at the numbers and thinking "hmmmm, $x, $y, and $z have a $devcost/$saleprice ratio that is poorer than our other mainstream products, kill them," not realizing what that means for 10 years down the line.
I'm not saying we're going to see this impact _today_, but we're going to see it at some point. Apple's prosumer focus is what kept it alive when it was bankrupt and desperate and allowed it an opportunity to make a comeback. Ignoring them now isn't just shortsighted and stupid, it's also ungrateful and traitorous. But whatever. I'm happy with my thin & lightweight Xeon ZBook with 32GB of ECC RAM and a 4K display running Windows 10 and Linux. I don't care. But I do think it's a damn shame.
The truth is Apple didn't give up on creatives; Microsoft just caught up.
Why not both?
Sadly, that's not true: Final Cut Pro X was not just giving up, it was a big fat middle finger to all Video professionals and their workflows.
"That's what iMovie is for!" - you
But using "Final Cut Pro X" is so much cooler! And you get to pay for it!
C# is actually kind of fun too
With that being said, I believe its only a matter of time before Microsoft brings this to UWP as all the insider and developer surveys have been focusing on asking what other languages people use and want to be able to write in within the context of UWP (Xbox/Surface/Win10)
My use case was really niche, however.
Microsoft _did_ ditch the all-metro approach they took with Windows 8. You start up your PC and you see the familiar desktop. There's a start menu, even if it's different, with live tiles and all. It feels like an improvement, not like an alien intrusion. But the biggest difference is that metro apps and native Win32 apps can and do co-exist side-by-side on the same desktop. Metro/UWP apps are no longer full screen on a 30" desktop, they just have a different "feel" but they're otherwise treated the same way as any other app you use. A dashboard with "tiles" to access your apps Xbox-style was never the right interface for PCs (touch screen is such a fad and even if it's not, it's not for everyone, everywhere and it isn't productive) and MS finally realized and embraced that with Windows 10.
As for the full screen stuff, that was fixed in 8.1..
I'm not even sure what we're debating anymore. You're just obfuscating the truth that the reality is Windows 10 is ALL about 'metro' just under the premise of UWP.
First: Your theory isn't new. It's been discussed to death here and elsewhere.
Second: There's no evidence that content creators are actually leaving the Mac. It's easy to look at the new machines and Apple's trends and conclude that, but go look on Youtube at any major content creator. FCPX is still popular. If not, Adobe on OSX is still very popular. I'm not suggesting that no one has left, but I don't think it's significant enough to move the dial.
Third: There is little evidence that their dedication to professional machines is wavering on a systemic level. Removing the 17"? Come _on_. That had to have been their worst selling model; anyone who needs a screen that large would just plug into an external monitor. Discontinuing the Mac Pro? It isn't discontinued; they've actually promised updates to desktops soon. Yes, they let it get old in the tooth for a while. But I will be willing to accept this argument only if 2017 passes us with no upgrades.
The MacBook Pro has its issues. It is, absolutely, ahead of its time with its port selection. The only port it is truly lacking that professionals should miss is the SD card slot, and I will grant you that is unfortunate and unlikely to be fixed. Weak processors? Go look at the Intel ARK and tell me what mobile processors Apple could have put in this machine but didn't. This is Intel's fault, not Apple's. Weak graphics card? Yup, I'll give it to you, a GTX 1050/1060 would have been incredible. No 32GB ram option? Unfortunate.
But the issues I am describing are not systemic. They are going to be fixed in the next gen model. The pains you're seeing today are just the "early adopter pains" we get with every brand new Apple product.
Fourth: I can literally tell you why their sales dropped 10%, right here. Ready? No MacBook Air refresh. No iMac refresh. No Mac Mini refresh. That's it.
Apple's Mac sales are not, in _any_ way, propped up by professionals. Don't flatter yourself and this industry with moving the needle at all on Apple's bottom line. They are propped up by average joe consumers, and this market segment was hurt very badly in 2016 through Apple's unwillingness to cater to them.
Apple's lack of updates to the Mac Pro has been unfortunate, but hasn't hurt their bottom line. Apple's lack of updates to the MBA (last update: March 2015), Mac Mini (last update: October 2014) and iMac (last update: October 2015) are literally what is causing this 10% drop. The machines are stale, and people know it.
Apple fixes this by refreshing their desktop lineup (which they have literally said they are going to do, and Apple _never_ tells us anything) and dropping the price of the MB/MBP (also seems likely).
Finally: I would remind you to not confuse "Apple is giving up on creatives" and "everyone else is getting better at servicing them." Microsoft has been doing a stellar job lately, and Windows and its accompanying hardware is better than it has ever been.
I don't think this is true. It's hard to say but there is a lot of noise about it.
Consider this: most 'creatives' are poor. Or kind of. My landlords wife is a 'photographer'. She doesn't make a lot of money. She - like many others - are 'money sensitive'. She uses a PC to do all her high-end work. I don't know why, or if she used Mac before, but I don't see any reason why creatives, in 2016 'need' to be on Mac.
If developers and creators can do their jobs well on a machine 1/2 the cost, that will affect outcomes.
"Apple's Mac sales are not, in _any_ way, propped up by professionals." - again this is false. Almost all consumer markets have 'category leaders' that drive the rest of consumption.
98% of Lululemon attire is worn outside of the Yoga studio - but if Lulu ever stopped making good yoga gear (and trust me, it's really good) - they'd be out of business.
Having said that, there's definitely a herd mentality. People buy what other people in the group have, and what is considered "cool/chic/whatever". The second part is really hard to track, especially with something as tool-like as laptops ultimately are. So there is a huge risk here. The question is "are techies still the 'category leaders'"? Microsoft seems to be betting they aren't, and they are following through with that.
Right now you can't buy anything close to a top performance desktop from them, at any price. You can argue the same for the laptops. It's clearly not a priority, and since you note it hasn't hurt their bottom line, I don't think a single refresh cycle is going to right the ship.
I don't know what product you are referring to, but we are decidedly not on the same page.
The MacBook Pro is not a "brand new Apple product." It was their bread and butter for a decade. There's nothing "new" about it. The touchbar as an iterative improvement, nothing more. It does not a new product make. If I were complaining about touchbar lag or resolution, you would have every right to make the comments you made and I would defer to them. But I'm not.
Are you trying to tell me that power users use laptops exclusively? Or that the Mac Pro's half-a-decade-old "latest" release is part of this cunning plan and not indicative of systemic failure? How is five years between releases not indicative of systemic abandonment of power users? Even if it's not officially abandoned, it is very much realistically abandoned by any metric that matters, whether you care to admit it or not.
> Apple's Mac sales are not, in _any_ way, propped up by professionals
They're not and I didn't say they are. But they were and I'm saying they will be once more.
> Apple's lack of updates to the Mac Pro has been unfortunate, but hasn't hurt their bottom line.
Yes. That's my point. They've taken "it's not hurting our bottom line" to mean "it won't hurt our bottom line, let's do it some more" and I argue that is the definition of systemic failure.
I laid out a clear pattern that's been developing since the Mac Pro was released in 2012, continuing with the discontinuation of the Mac Server in 2013, and ending with this mess now with the MBP. A pattern is not an isolated incident, it's not a "we goofed up with the last release," it's not a "early adopters are sure to find issues, just give it a time." It's the very definition of a company that has shifted its priorities and does not care about this particular section of the market. I don't see how you can argue about that point - it's clear and no one else is denying it. My comment was arguing the _effects_ of that decision, and whether or not they will continue to drive Apple sales downwards. I argue yes. Others argue no. But there's no point in trying to pretend that Apple still gives a damn about prosumers, because they don't.
Federighi saying during the event releasing the emoji MBP "with the touchpad, you can type faster because the autocorrect pops up right there" is, as they say, the proof in the pudding. Which prosumer types so slow on a keyboard that it would be faster to move your hands away from the keyboard, press the autocomplete, and move them back? Give me a break.
Apple is floating on the surface, and bloating like a dead whale. They have no vision what so ever, and if they do, it's process engineered out of the company. Their previously outstanding product engineering is even falling down. Unless Mr. Cook is able to find or trust a visionary the company will continue to downward spiral.
There is a fine line between a vision and a hallucination, and Apple is hallucinating right now.
I'm not sure what my next portable computer will be, but if I want it to fit into that criteria of iconic hardware, I doubt it will be an Apple computer.
A week ago I bought a MacBook Pro 15" (Mid 2014) with 512 GB SSD and dedicated graphics chip. I can drive two external 4K displays at 5120x2880 (looks like 2560x1440) and the internal display at 3840x2400 (looks like 1920x1200), all at 60 Hz. That is all I needed. Couldn’t be happier. Cost me 1325€. Latest MacBook Pro 15" with 512 GB SSD costs 2700€.
Have you looked at beefier gaming laptops?
Laptop with 25 hrs battery? Give me two please!
But let's remember that Apple still makes a majority of all the profit in the PC industry.
It is better than my wife's Macbook Air (though my machine is much much newer than hers).
Just keep away from elantech, stick to synaptics or alps.
I think you may be talking about two different things.
If Lenovo made a model with the thinkpad keyboard from 10 years ago, I'd buy one in a heartbeat.
Really nice little machine, blows the Air away and is a steal at 650 EUR (~400 USD using Apple's exchange rates).
I'm not OP, but I'm personally wanting one like this: https://senk9.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/thinkpad-x230-keyb...
I personally just use a proper mechanical keyboard if I'm typing for any kind of time. Same thing with mouse/touchpad.
I've been a hardcore Mac fan since '04. That said, it's VERY hard to argue that quality in both hardware and software haven't been declining.
I spent over $4K for the 2016 MBP w/Touchbar. Problems. Problems. Problems.
I'm 2 days in to completely switching back to Windows. I bought a Dell XPS 15" with a better CPU/GPU and more RAM than the top MBP, for a lot less money.
Dell makes a better "Macbook" in the new XPS line, than Apple's own Macbooks. It makes me sad. These days, it's hard to think that Apple cares about anything other than iOS devices.
I'm not easy on computers. I travel a lot and this think has put up with very poor treatment. I can't think of a better computer for me. After this one dies I'll definitely buy another Mac (not thinking about which one because I'm expecting this to last at least another year). I hope I'm not disappointed because this computer exceeded my expectations for a laptop.
Can't really see how they're doing "what's best for the customer" anymore. More like what's best for their bottom line.
i safe you some time and quote the BTT website on what's doable atm:
A few words about the current state of the Touch Bar integration in BTT: ''' It’s quite stable now and offers many customization options. You can specify custom Touch Bars for every app or globally You can change how the Touch Bar should appear for every app (e.g. if you want to show the BTT Touch Bar only for certain apps) You can create Touch Bar button groups There are three widgets, more to come. (Currently, Battery Time, Date/Time and an App Switcher widget are available) ''' And then its up to your creativity...the touchid also improved my life, i use it for my password keeper app etc instead of my masterpw...
The thing is, you have to ignore all the usual anti touchbar hate and find out for yourselv how YOU could use it, then make a decision if it's worth it for you.
I think it really depends on what you do though, as I have used it in final cut and that seems nice for swiping around your timeline. Anything with a slider control works well, anything with buttons isn't that great as you actually have to look at the thing to see if a button exists in the first place.
I don't think it is necessarily a hardware problem, but right now the software just isn't there. I think Apple should rethink the "default" state a bit to give it some more utility.
It's useful at times (especially as they have bigger buttons for stuff like debugging etc.)
But all in all....if he had a choice, he'd get a regular one.
* Can quickly ("analog-y") adjust brightness and volume. Similar to a volume dial in a car vs. up/down volume buttons. In 2 seconds you can dial it in.
* YouTube videos (in Safari) have the playback controls in the touchbar, not in the interface. You can watch a fullscreen video and scrub through / jump around while keeping your real estate
* TouchID is really nice with 1Password
* I can see things like Pomodoro timers, etc. being useful in the touchbar. I haven't looked at extensions yet.
* Things like the print dialog have a big, colorful button. It immediately stands out and highlights the most common action from where you are in the program. "I don't need to hunt around to adjust margins, paper handing, I just want to print."
* The escape key has a larger hit target than is shown so you can still use vim effectively.
Overall, for developer tools, I'm willing to invest in even marginal gains if it makes my life better. We use these machines hours every day, for years.
Applications in *nix and by JetBrains still utilise function keys for shortcuts. If default touch-bar preferences allowed for showing function keys at all times with control strip triggered on fn, that would be my preferred default mode.
So they switched it to a touch sensitive key instead of a physical key, but it's still there, right? It's still in exactly the same location. I honestly don't understand the outrage.
1.) It's utterly buggy. There are times when it doesn't boot after laptop comes back from sleep. Sometimes buttons don't redraw (e.g. missing ESC until you tap on that empty space). Sometimes it even hangs leaving you without brightness and volume controls. It's incredible how Apple managed to release something this buggy and how it passed QA.
2.) It gives no touch feedback at all, making pressing anything blindly on it feel terrible and inaccurate. Since each supporting app defines their own button position, it means that the buttons keep moving around making muscle memory pretty much impossible.
3.) Most of the time it's empty - pretty much none of the non-Apple software supports it. Volume control and brightness controls are now hidden behind a slider that's hard to hit blindly (as opposed to previous function keys).
4.) For most cases when it DOES work, it's still easier and quicker to press a keyboard shortcut because you can reliably press it without looking down at your fingers.
5.) It's pretty bright and sometimes distracting in the evening. This is a minor issue, but it's not synchronized with the keyboard brightness control and you can't darken it manually when working in dark environments or watching movies.
6.) TouchID is the only part I really like - it's made the OS experience way better.
If I could rip it out and replace it with proper ESC/Fx keys, I'd do it in a heartbeat. The part that most marketing materials don't show is this: the touchbar will only show shortcuts of the currently focused app (besides a few pre-set ones like volume, siri, show desktop). If the focused app doesn't support it, it'll sit there empty.
It would be significantly better if it would at least show shortcuts to dock applications, let you fully customize it with macros and shortcuts or let you control a certain app in the background while using another app. But you can't (yet I'm aware BTT exists, but even that hides macros behind another tap and slow animation).
All in all I can't fanthom how anyone at Apple thought this would be a productivity win for their most expensive 4000EUR laptops. I'd expect it to be useful for less techy people who don't use or know shortcuts... but for their high-end pro machines it's just a huge step back in usability.
I can no longer broadcast a wifi network from my computer when connected through ethernet, with no work around.
My Logitech mouse also disconnects whenever I put my computer to sleep and sometimes while I am using it now. It isn't found unless I open up the Bluetooth panel and wait a minute or so until it finally reconnects. It will not reconnect without opening the Bluetooth panel. This is with zero interaction from the mouse, by clicking the connect button, which I avoid anyway since clicking reconnect will just create a new duplicate device right under my mouse. But that is if I'm lucky and Bluetooth hasn't gotten into some weird state where Bluetooth has been turned off by the system and clicking the turn on button does nothing so I have to restart.
The Bluetooth stuff was obviously considered working if Apple products connected and nothing else was tested. My trackpad has no issue connecting to my laptop even when it gets into that weird state where Bluetooth is forced "off" until a reset
I hope Apple thinks of someone like me when deciding the specs of the next super light Macbook. Keep the low entry point for students, and offer a premium build for developers and others who can justify it.
If they don't nail it, I'm open to other OSs, but I do care about aesthetics which Apple used to have a monopoly on.
Who wants to pay premium for old hardware?
I spilled coffee on my MacBook Air and had to replace it. I bought a used early 2015 MacBook Pro for 1000EUR from a guy who bought in 2015, the same that is sold today at the Apple Store for 1,500EUR.
I did think about buying the new MacBook Pro (of course without the touch bar), but I just felt stupid spending all that money for an OK laptop.
I'm a professional developer, I'm comfortable with my web routines but damn I'd love to have a handy tool to work on the edge of that zone.
I've been waiting for that for years. Through 3 other MacBook Air purchases; always hoping the next time around they'll make what I want.
Zero regrets.
Biggest gotchas were learning that Apple mini display to DVI adapters were passive so I had to buy new active ones.
But my thinking is that if the sources of data are based purely on "units shipped" as per [2], then this relates to both consumer and commercial use. We know that HP, Lenovo and Dell basically dominate commercial sales - thus a drop in consumer PC sales alone could be highly correlated with a drop in Apple sales.
A drop in consumer sales could be due to negative shift in design and direction as many have suggested. But it could also be due to many macro-economic factors that simply do not affect the people here, and are thus hard for us to appreciate - Brexit, no. of mobile devices owned, <insert more speculation here>. As developers or designers, we're not exactly price-sensitive when it comes to buying PCs - so it's likely to be about value proposition and getting exactly what we need. But this cannot be said for everyone.
Speaking for myself, I had the opportunity to buy a Macbook Pro last year, but I chose not to due to value proposition, even though I'm willing to spend the cash. I considered the Lenovo X260, Macbook Pro 13", and Dell XPS13. I will admit a bias towards Thinkpads, and I'm indifferent towards Mac OS X (my only OS preference is "not Windows"). I went with the X260 not because of said biases, but purely because at the same price for the Macbook plus one or two upgrades, I got a maxed out X260 with an incredible battery life, plus left-over $ to buy an SSD for Linux (I've never booted the stock hard drive). Screen resolution was the only compromise. My wife then inherited my 5-year-old X220 and its docking station - still running strong.
BTW - it always gives me a smug smile inside when Apple or Dell markets a 12 hour battery life as though it's miraculous. I had that on my X220 which is now nearing 5 years old (oh - and I could buy a new battery for it as recently as November 2016). Close to 20 hours with the battery slice.
[1] http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prEMEA42255917 [2] http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3474218
Fixed it.
Most of these comments could be transported back 4 years with little difference.