On the Sad State of Macintosh Hardware
weblog.rogueamoeba.com
weblog.rogueamoeba.com
When I bought my 2011MBP, I slowly upgraded the parts as prices came down.
My advice to people buying Mac laptops today is to max everything out if you can afford to, because you're generally going to be stuck with the RAM and storage for as long as you keep the computer. (Yes, I know you can upgrade the SSDs, but it's a little more complicated than running to your local computer store to buy commodity parts).
Right now, I'm holding onto my 2015 13" MBP with both hands (also maxed it on the same principle) until Apple releases a halfway decent MBP again. I use a 2016 15" for work, and still can't type well on the damned thing after having it for a year and a half.
Not sure what the hell is wrong at Apple. My work machine is the 2017 MB Pro and its awful, I hate it.
Which of these events do you think is more likely for the typical user?
This is actually why the fragile keyboard on the latest MacBook Pros is such a problem. It compromises durability in a part of the laptop that is actually very important.
Give me maintainable laptops, not throwaway ones, for the love of...
I spilled soda pop on my 2008 Macbook's keyboard and fried it. Fortunately, the computer still worked (I ended up carrying a USB keyboard in my bag as I was consulting on site, which was awkward, but at least I could do that without being stuck without a computer for a few days). I ordered a second hand replacement from OWC, and after watching a video, I had the keyboard replaced in less than an hour.
On a laptop I don't really think so. An extended warranty runs about 3 years and most Macs I've had have lasted about 5. At that point I would just rather get a new computer anyway than bother sprucing up an old one.
I did have one computer fry in about 3 years because of a logic board issue, which pissed me off royally. But in the grand scheme of things, the money I would have saved by having a user replaceable GPU vs. just upgrading the thing 2 years before I was ready to doesn't amount to very much. If I was very money constrained it would definitely be more of an issue, but that's never really been Apple's target market.
That depends on whether you got a laptop with a real processor or a low power processor. A 2011 15" MBP with a quad core i7 holds up pretty well even today in terms of CPU performance.
Isn’t the point here that it’s no longer so good to replace a 5-year-old Mac?
My MacBook Air is about 5 years old now, and yes, the USB ports and some keys on the keyboard are becoming unreliable, and the power cable has frayed despite a protector, but none of the current models are tempting enough to make me want to upgrade the way I used to.
There's a comic and I can't find it right now where a person is lamenting the fact that they have no backups while their computer is not booting.
Then the computer works and they exclaim that "thank god I don't need to do any of that", it's funny because it's quite relatable to a lot of people.
That's like saying that you're not sure consumers dislike the idea of falling victims to price gauging schemes or even being forced to scrap perfectly good hardware due to a minor issue with an otherwise perfectly modular component or the inability to upgrade low-performing hardware.
Anecdotally I'm aware of more than a few folks who replaced their bottom end PC/Windows laptop with a brand new machine because it was supplied with far too little memory, but hit a £399 or £499 price point, and they installed one too many bits of crap. So they spend another £499 on another too lightly specced laptop when £40 doubling memory would have fixed all their issues. PC makers have always been happy to sell machines with barely enough RAM to reach the desktop let alone run or install anything.
A lot of consumers don't know what they're buying, how much memory Windows needs, how to upgrade even when possible, or how to uninstall things they no longer need (eg iTunes after they switched to Android, Massive HP drivers remaining when now running an Epson printer and vice versa). Helpful in-store sales people don't help with this.
Most of us on HN however would prefer to buy the least standard memory/SSD possible and immediately bump it at Crucial or some such for a quarter of Dell, Lenovo or Apple's price.
Make a thin MacBook, sure. Then make a proper MacBook pro and make it about the hardware and not beauty. I believe there is actually a market for it.
As for storage, I'd be crazy not to keep all important files on a backed-up RAID array. It's a professional tool, after all.
(and I keep my music on an off-site-backed-up RAID array)
"Apple REFUSED to fix our iMac pro" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-NU7yOSElE
"The Apple Store Genius Bar broke my $5000 iMac pro" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MG_NRcy5mxU
I side with Apple in the Linux Tech Tips issue, though. They're under no obligation to fix it after he broke it by intentionally violating the terms and conditions.
I really like the mil-spec ruggedized laptops. I look down a row of those, and it really strikes me how they're all the same size, they're covered in ports (behind little gasket-protected doors), and they are so unapologetic about size and weight that they have sturdy carry handles attached.
So what I really want most is a standardized form factor. Then my concern is for the closely related concepts of power, cooling, and heat dissipation. My Third choice would be 1920x1080 display resolution or better. After that, battery life. If you're designing your laptop to be too thin and light to accommodate a standard TRS audio mini-jack, you're not designing for me.
The other thing lappie makers are doing is touch screens, which are just awkward on a laptop, and usually unusable in a docking station anyway. Never mind about turning the function key row into a touchscreen.
I care about weight. A lot. Because I travel.
People on HN like to say a particular laptop is "light enough." Sure, if that's all your carrying. But if you have a bag or briefcase full of other things like documents, every ounce counts.
Even classified documents can be shipped. There's really no reason I can imagine for anyone to be hand-carrying paper documents in the passenger compartment of an airplane in 2018, outside of a diplomatic pouch. And in that case, the laptop probably has to be disposable anyway.
Um, some of us still use (gasp) paper notebooks and pens. Imagine that! (I'll stop using them when you give me something with comparable power consumption and handwriting latency).
Besides that, in my bag you'll find a Fuji X100 camera, a Polaroid Snap, a (yes, paper) passport, a wallet, a couple of chargers, a cell phone, some pens, allergy pills, etc.
All of that has weight.
As for shipping - one point of bringing something on a plane is that you can use it on the plane.
Anyway, the point is - weight matters. There are things other than the laptop that a lot of people carry when traveling - be it personal or business travel.
1. Things like the new MBP keyboard are objectively worse than the old keyboard in terms of user experience. This might have saved half a millimeter in height of a closed laptop. What's more, repair costs are _insane_. Even after a year of using this I still prefer the old keyboard.
2. They've added features that serve little more purpose than raising the ASP of MBPs. Top of that list is the touch bar. I consider the 2011-14 Macbook Air to be the pinnacle of Macbook hardware. Decent ports, good form factor, decent CPU (by comparison the 12" Macbook IMHO makes too much sacrifices to the altar of thinness) and, best of all, a great price. The fact that you could buy such a great machine for <$1500 was amazing to the point that I didn't really care what happened to it. I'd just buy another one if it died or I lost it. That made me more comfortable buying it and using it wherever.
The problem is that consumers won't see the downside of this until they've been around long enough to start failing outside of warranty and then outside of AppleCare. At that point paying $500+ (or whatever it is; I don't know the specific number) just to repair a keyboard is going to be pretty hard to swallow.
Alternatively we may try to get another mid-2012 MBP, as having a Mac around is good when I have to build and test macOS and iOS ports of my software. I can't see us buying any newer MBP, it doesn't make any sense economically.
Out of curiosity, does your gf actually need a unix based OS? If she uses Photoshop daily and otherwise doesn't do any work that benefits from Linux - why not just use Windows?
Also, if I can avoid having Windows running on our home network that's a bonus point for me ;)
Basically, for a consumer (non-business, non-gamer) who just needs a laptop that works, running software they are familiar with, I don't see a reason to avoid new Macs.
I understand that the anti-consumer builds are annoying. But, for a non-tech-geek who will likely never upgrade internals, what does it matter?
I don't see how upgradability is a geek-only matter. Sure, most people don't do it themselves - they go to the service point and have the replacement done for them. They absolutely do upgrade though - sometimes you get to the point where everything is sluggish, and money don't grow on trees. Plus of course there's a whole environmental impact to consider.
It's actually geeks that have to have the latest and greatest, from what I can see. Most people I know don't replace their phones until it's broken, while Apple geeks always sell their iPhones whenever a new one comes out.
Hilarious since it is a giant chunk of aluminium, more than eight times the size of a typical 35W NUC-type machine, and has a fan.
Unfortunately, there’s no such thing
And by fully support do the mean clone stamp overlays, smooth zoom, basically anything that requires graphic acceleration?
The last piece of Apple hardware I bought was a new mid-2012 Macbook Pro. After seeing where Apple was going in 2013 / 2014, I have had zero desire to replace it. I upgraded everything in it, and replaced the optical drive with another SSD. I'll be sad the day that thing finally dies. I'm not sure if I'll go with another Apple machine or XPS with linux. I really don't want it to die lol.
Fun fact: the MBA apple symbol light shows a noticeable light ring on the display after this amount of time.
I am amazed that sales staff still want MacBooks, but I put it down to the brushed metal finish.
I just sold a 2011 13" MBP I got from an office clearance on eBay. Despite being 7 years old, I got the equivalent of a couple of Chromebooks for it, with the new owner extremely eager to get their hands on it. I upped the disk to an SSD before I sold it and installed High Sierra, and it ran great.
From the same clearance, I got myself a 2014 Retina. Can't deny, the screen is gorgeous, the trackpad is great and the keyboard is very usable. It was already maxxed out with RAM, but despite having an upgradeable SSD, my upgrade options are limited because Apple use a proprietary form factor. I absolutely loved my old Discrete MBP, which I used daily for 5 years and took around the world with me, but I hold the Retina at arm's length. My other laptop is a custom-built gaming machine where I can push the RAM up to 64GB if I want to, as well as fitting SATA and NVMe SSDs. The lack of upgradeability is a real limit to the range.
We also have XPS 13's, which despite copying Apple on soldering in the RAM, have standard m.2 SSDs. I got an enclosure to drop the disks into if necessary.
As best I can tell with everything in Apple's current lineup, if it breaks or is outclassed, even within months of its release, you just throw it away and buy a new one.
I can't help but remember Tim Cook commenting how he noticed Windows users switching to Mac were coming from hardware that was 5 or more years old. His comment was how 'sad' this was. This was startling because it shows how long non-Apple hardware lasts, and how fundamentally Apple does not understand this. They would much rather you renewed your computer as often as you renewed your iPhone.
Not sure if this is your issue, but (at least) the new MBP has two levels of "clicking" on the touch pad. If you just press with a little force, so that no tangible "click" occurs, you get one behavior. If you push hard enough to feel a "click", you get different behavior.
Mentioning this because it drove me a little nuts until I figured it out.
I am a cs-student with 3 1/2 year old a machbook pro, which I bought when I started my studies. I must say that I am still very, very satisfied, it's holding up great. Great display, suprsingly good battery life etc.
If something happens to my macbook, i would probalby spend a serious percentage of my savings saving on a new laptop. It's a very imporant part of my life, i do most of my work with it and I highly value the flexibility.
In this hypthetical scenario, i would really like to buy a new macbook and would probably go through a lot of financial pain if they took their line-up seriously. But it's really getting ridiculus.
I really don't understand why they fail so hard to update their hardware.
Looking at a business of this magnitude, I don't see how it matters what percentage of the total revenue this is. There's so much money to be had here and, unlike an individual, a company's attention shouldn't be so limited as to essentially make them forget to collect this additional revenue.
For a publicly-traded company all that matters is stock price. One would assume that collecting revenues has a direct impact on that price, but we are not in so rational a world. Today it is all about growth potential rather than current revenues. Apple could be turning huge profits on laptops, but if they see that as a mature market then they will and must ignore it.
Given Apple's grip on users, they may even see laptops as a competitor to their iPhone business. Time on the macbook is time not on the iPhone. The intent may be to transition all macbook devotees away from lap/desktops altogether.
Really? You don't want to qualify that at all, maybe?
If not, please explain the first 10 years of AMZN.
We find percentages useful precisely so that we can see through deceptively high dollars to the truth that they don't really play a big part in total dollars brought in.
The fact that it's 25B (if it is, again, no idea) only serves to illustrate the heart-stopping scale at which Apple does business. We're talking about a company for whom even such a sum is a bottom 10% priority from a pure revenue standpoint.
The only reasons I can think of are that they have taken designers completely off the mac line and put them all on the iPhone and other lines or else that they have put alot of designers on some kind of secret project, like moving to a different architecture and it's taking longer than expected to get it right. And even these don't seem to match up with how the company of 10-15 years ago would run things.
As to the actual matter at hand, I hope the output we're seeing now is the result of a de-prioritization, because I don't like to think of these results as best efforts.
I think it's wrong to analogize a large corporation to an individual like that. An individual only has a limited capacity to divide its productive capacity, but a corporation almost has an infinite amount.
One of Apple's problems is that they often take what are probably good ideas too far. Some focus is good, but too much can be bad. Back when Steve Jobs took over, it was probably right for them to hyperfocus on a small number of models and software products, but the situation is different now. There's no good reason for a company as successful as they are now to not give the Mac division the resources and leadership it needs to be successful. Unfortunately, they seem to be neglecting it instead.
At one time Apple had a lot of passion for desktop and laptop computers. Today, they just seem to be nonchalantly kicking the metaphorical can down the road. You can't blame consumers for not going crazy for products that Apple isn't crazy about themselves.
I'm on Linux though, so given recent fails and the general trend towards non-repairability and non-upgradeability, there's very little incentive for me to consider Apple hardware when I eventually upgrade.
I think if I had a 2012 model I would have been able to wait longer for new laptops. Currently, I'm very likely dumping the MBP as soon as new ones come out with a better keyboard.
When I did my shopping last year I was prepared to get a Linux laptop if things looked comparable and the price was significantly cheaper (assuming the risk of unknown problems like battery or hardware longevity) and the prices were roughly the same with other compromises I wasn't prepared to make.
I remember seeing a lot of this take when people were buying up iPads, but I think there are real limitations -- tablets are just not really good for doing work.
I don’t like where Apple is going, but I can easily see a Macbook a generation or two out whose software is more iOS than macOS, and whose character is pretty locked-down / appified.
If Apple would just add support for pointing devices and if they would allow access to arbitrary files stored on USB devices via the Files app, the iPad could serve the needs of most people.
Nobody uses all of the esoteric features of Office, but most people use at least a few.
I rarely see the people who bought in on the iPad revolution almost a decade ago use their iPad beyond light browsing and sending emails.
To me, it seems to have replaced the morning paper more than it has laptops.
To sum it up; looking around you don't see people in coffee shops using iPads (or any tablets)--it's all laptops. Even though iPads have outsold laptops by a significant margin for years now.
As a bit of a tangent (also mentioned by him); anyone who is productive on an iPad Pro uses a keyboard. Apple has refused to add touchscreens to laptops, but iPads with keyboard suffer this exact problem. So something still needs to evolve.
I see iPads/phones replacing the entertainment needs a general purpose computer used to fill and maybe Apple gets out of general purpose computing. This is also happening for "light" computing needs in business; like POS and inventory. But I don't see any sign that a PC going away at all for workhorse tasks just yet.
[1] https://daringfireball.net/linked/2018/06/13/ipad-trackpad-i...
Actually they barely ever did, and the peak is past. For example in 2017 there were about 164 million laptops sold versus 161 million tablets of all types.
In 2007 it was 109 million laptops and zero tablets.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/276308/global-apple-mac-...
[2] https://www.macrumors.com/2018/02/05/4q17-ipad-vs-other-tabl...
Maybe it's more accurate to say that iOS is the (present and) future of Apple. All arrows seem to point in this direction. It's a mobile, run-anywhere world that Apple sees as the future.
In that vision, MacOS machines are a cash cow business. And the corporate playbook for those is min-investment, max harvesting.
Someone has to write all the software, and they're not going to be writing it on an iPad. Even with an external mouse and keyboard.
> I really don't understand why they fail so hard to update their hardware.
It's not because of their monopoly-like status, it's because they make so little money on Macs compared to the vast sums of money they make on iPhones. They probably look at their developers, and ask "how much is it worth to us to have this developer work on a Mac? How much is it worth to us to have this developer work on an iPhone?" and the iPhone wins out every time.
Which... well, sucks, for the rest of us, but it's not laziness—it's opportunity costs.
If they want to sell hardware, they need to convince me to recommend them to the person who asks my advice. (rhetorical "me")
Despite people's claim, the new macbook pros do have big innovations. You might not like them, but here they are: - Thin -> substantially thinner than my older mac book pro. It's nice! - Keyboard is part of making it thinner - Touchid built in - oled/dynamic keyboard/touch strip
These are consumer oriented innovations, even if you do not like them (personally I don't like the keyboard or the touch-strip.
So the question is why should Apple update their hardware more frequently? The HN reader, the software developer, or the content creator are simply not big enough audiences to motivate Apple anymore. A MacBook with 2-3 year old hardware does everything that your average Mac user would want.
One of the deprecated pieces of hardware in Mohave is the 2011 27" iMac which ought to be more than capable of handling Mohave. Sure it doesn't support handoff, night shift, or some other minor features but I can accept that. It's frustrating to buy a piece of hardware and having it deprecated by the software less than a decade later when the chipset is more than capable of handling said software. Mohave will presumably run on the 2016 12" MacBook which is far, far less powerful than my iMac.
Let me choose to live without minor features but continue to be able to use contemporary software if it can run on the hardware.
But a Rasberry Pi should allow me to run the Python based PlexConnect server.
I really could do with a laptop with 32GB of RAM.
Thankfully, Firefox somewhat manages to work despite that. Chromium dies very quickly.
A four-year-old laptop (2014) doesn't feel wildly different from a current one. An eight-year-old laptop (2010) is a somewhat different proposition: you're 64-bit if you're lucky, but even with a decent CPU you'll have a low-resolution screen and relatively little RAM. A twelve-year-old laptop (2006) will be painfully slow now.
The part I do find problematic is that the latest macOS is dropping support for machines that are otherwise very usable by this scale. Support back to mid-2012 sounds pretty good, except that mid-2012 Macs are still fine hardware.
It's still my daily driver for dev work, email & browsing, but El Capitan is the furthest I can take the OS, and I'm already running into some software that requires the newer OSes.
I've just been hanging onto the hope that a suitable MBP replacement with proper ports will be available by the time I need to upgrade, which will be 1st quarter 2019.
I'd be happy if Apple could just get back to more-or-less annual hardware upgrades, really. While I agreed with Rogue Amoeba in a previous comment, it's worth noting that nearly everything we're kvetching about -- iMacs, MacBook Pros, even the weirdo one-port MacBook -- tends to go, well, about a year between updates. It's possible that this is really kind of overblown, and people are (still) feeling salty over the current generation of the MBP. (Which, for the record, I own one of and have used two others at two different jobs, and which I really don't think is at all the trash fire it's made out to be -- which isn't to say I wouldn't have preferred one using higher-travel key switches or that I have any particular use for the Touch Bar. But that new MBP is also a pretty clear signal that Apple isn't just ignoring the Mac: there is a whole lot of new engineering work here. That it's new engineering work a lot of people apparently hate doesn't make it not new engineering work.)
One of the disappointing things personally, and why I complain instead of switching to PC hardware, is that on the PC side the laptops just aren't as good, either.
Mac's new laptop offerings cap at 16 gigs. There's a rumor about a 32 gig version, but even that is inadequate. Everyone on the design side of the office is still drinking the kool-aid and using their overpriced hardware because that is workable for their job, but on the video and animation side it's just not tenable. At all. All of us started on macs and switched to upgradeable hardware running windows or linux when it was revealed that apple just wasn't taking care of that demographic. There's a hard division down the middle of the room; macs on that side for photoshop and illustrator, PCs on this side for video editing, tracking, 3d effects, and rendering.
There's one exception: a mac pro "wastebasket" gathering dust in the corner of that office. That was a fucking slap in the face of a computer. All form and no function. Instantly obsolete. Not even remotely upgradeable. No resale value. And my god was it expensive. Jesus christ, you just can't rationalize that expense in good faith and of sound mind.
And I swear I'm not a mac hater. I grew up on them, have some great memories. But the math just doesn't add up anymore. They've become computer sculpture, not usable workstations.
I really don't think hardware will plateau. People have claimed since the eighties that new, vastly powerful computers are as much as the average user will ever need. Well, new uses are suddenly made possible which inevitably put that new potential to work, and gradually those applications become mainstream. If a new computer has fulfilled everyone's needs and more, it's only a matter of time before somebody finds a way to use that extra power for the average person.
It's happened before and it will happen again. In the coming years we're going to marvel at all the useful things we can do with terabytes of cheap RAM on a consumer PC, and we are going to wonder how people in the olden days got by with only gigabytes. Just like we do with the days of megabyte-scale RAM. It will happen.
It's by no means a proper laptop, but people in video build very strange workstations. I think it's definitely a niche market which is ripe for exploitation. Somebody please, fill this hole!
A lot of these big changes have v1 compromises (higher failure rate in keyboards, fewer USB-C ports, etc). The expectation is that these are fixed in v2. Years later USB-C is still quite hard to find, way more expensive, and many of their laptops only have 1 port that has to be used for charging (and wireless tech hasn't reduced the need enough). The keyboards still have problems and a high failure rate. Apple seems to either be dragging out v2 for too many years or just skipping it and coming out with a new v1 (like the Mac Pro).
If I've plugged in my drawing tablet and have AutoDesk Sketchbook open...all bets are off. The lag is 3 to 4 seconds behind the pen. Even with no monitor, any typical 3D game from the past 5 years would struggle to have a good framerate.
My 2015 MBP had a discrete graphics card and doesn't have any problems with the monitor or drawing tablet.
Who on earth is paying just under $3k for a laptop to use web browsers and "simple programs"?
I presume that people have linux running on modern macbooks -- would that fit your needs?
New macbooks are not universally supported by Linux.
It's super easy to get a great phone touchscreen, maybe just grab the glass and touch matrix or whatever, but that would surely be better than the sorry state of affairs of current touchpads.
I guess Apple simply got their driver nicely fine-tuned to their own hardware, and that's it.
Furthermore, Apple's touchpad is infinitely superior in terms of hardware and that was a huge factor for me. I can't count the number of crappy Dell touchpads that have broken and stopped because they seem to be made of cheap matte plastic. They don't feel good to use physically and no amount of software tuning will fix that. My touchpad on my 2015 MBP is solid glass and should never break from regular use because it isn't actually a button.
You mean like you depend on Apple to maintain their drivers? What difference does it make if your OS auto-installs the latest driver via MacOS update or if the Lenovo Updater auto-installs a new driver through their own updater? Driver conflicts are a pain in the ass, I'll grant you that, but those are pretty rare these days. At least in the windows world.
Everything works great out of the box on Manjaro including the trackpad.
Size isn't exactly up to Apples though, if you're using later models.
Last Macbook I used was a 2012 15 inch MBP.
Yeah. I'd always thought this was a Steve Jobs quirk, but Tim Cook has been in charge for years now and very little has changed in regard to Mac hardware updates.
The Mac Mini is a particularly egregious case. They won't update it, but they won't discontinue it either, so they continue to sell ancient hardware as if it's new. It's baffling, and certainly not indicative that there's some coherent plan being successfully followed.
In the absence of strategy, inertia rules.
In case of FCA the speculation is that they will sunset the brand in the USA to focus on SUVs (Jeep) and trucks (RAM). Looks like focusing on what's generating the maximum profit. Just like Apple with consumer electronics.
I bet they could easily sell 1,000,000+ units of 2015 Macbook Pro laptops with 32GiG RAM and an updated processor/chipset/graphics.
I don't think it is a coincidence that 2015 was their peak unit sales for Mac [1]. 2017 was down from 2015 by 1.3 million units.
1: https://www.statista.com/statistics/276308/global-apple-mac-...
Upgrading is now something you do to avoid disaster, not to achieve delight/happiness.
My immediate thought was that Apple values control of its ecosystem and Mac hardware figures into this. So, it seems unlikely that they would sell it off.
That got me thinking "what business has Apple actually sold off in its modern era?" I can't think of one.
It also means they only do one thing at a time.
One year they update the iOS App Store, this year they update the Mac App Store, maybe next year they finally get to update the iTunes Store on the Mac.
Once they do release something, they move on to the next thing. If you're not happy with one of the major releases, you'll have to wait five years until the next time they come back to this.
Don't like the new Mac Pro? Maybe the next one in 5 years will be for you.
Did the redesign of the Mac App Store not fulfill your hopes? Maybe the next one in 5 years will be better.
In my opinion, they are failing to scale their vertical integration as the number of products they are selling grows.
In the mean time, other companies that have embraced gradual improvements are running circles around them. The collaboration features of iWork are a joke compared to Google Docs. While Apple is struggling to add proper CSV import to Numbers, Google Sheets offers Pivot Table.
Within short time, Amazon Prime has become so much better than the iTunes Movie Store. Apple has completely lost the lead there. It's crazy that Amazon has a better UI here than Apple.
If you want to get an 8k Display, you need to get a Windows PC, since macOS doesn't support it. If you want to get a 28" Screen with a stylus, you need to get a Windows PC.
At least reduce the prices and be honest instead of following this dirty and unethical practice.
What was even the point of talking about changes to the Mac App Store during WWDC with this poor state of affairs?!
Apple alienated the creatives and it seems like they've started alienating the developers, too.
If the Mac platform becomes nothing more than part of a development kit for iOS apps (sort of like developer version of a video game console [1]), it will be a sad day.
Because if Android/Linux someday becomes they best developer platform (however unlikely), Apple will have real trouble. When the good developers loose interest in a platform it becomes very difficult for it to survive.
And good developers results in not just good apps. It's also recommendations to friends, support when something doesn't work or needs to be explained, and it's advertising that's much more powerful than the advertising you can buy.
All the money and ads Microsoft put into MS Phone did nothing because it didn't bring developers. Same with Blackberry and Nokia because those platforms were never developer friendly.
I think they've lost many of them already aside from those who need to stay on MacOS because that or iOS is what they're writing for. Hence the tone of so many of these articles.
How long are the rest going to wait on disappointing refreshes that move in the wrong (or no) direction? It's too hard to be enthusiastic about the platform in the way you could around the time of 17" Macbooks.
The only reasons there's an occasional older-generation video editor working on a mac is because of a. inertia and b. proRes. That video format is finally workable on PC thanks to FFmpeg, but it uses terminal tools (or a couple very terrible GUIs written by the community) and it's going to finally nail that coffin shut.
That and the fact that proRes is technically already obsolete. There are already better options that are cross-platform, but "best practices" is often a code-word for tradition. It will change in time.
The whole purpose of a video codec is to share video across platforms. That's what a codec is. ProRes being locked into mac hardware was a real dick move, and a lot of video people back in the day didn't recognize it and got all smug about how capable their mac was. Yeah, it runs anything except proRes because other developers understand that codecs need to be widely compatible. Apple was the only one who didn't get that memo.
Google should release a Chromebook optimized for best Android development experience.
And best web development experience.
Is this really a thing? I recently started dabbling in digital comic book art, using Krita and a Wacom-clone drawing tablet on a Windows PC. As I interact with others in the community on Discord and web boards and so forth, I get the "filthy casual" vibe for not using Adobe on a MacBook even as an absolute beginner.
I think Adobe has a deal with Apple (and possibly Microsoft) which entices them away from delivering Photoshop for Linux, but I hear it runs well in Wine!
Adobe’s purchase of Macromedia has proven to be the thorn that any concerned spectator would have expected it to be. I think I was in high school at the time (loose guess). I used Adobe products for a good 10 years professionally after college and can attest that the Adobe software has essentially not changed beyond file format support and lock-in features. EDIT: Media Encoder is nice (now) but a good decade later than it should have been. The very recent improvements to After Effects sound useful but again too little too late. They appear to only be responding when competition appears.
Surely you're joking, right? The deal they have is that approximately 0% of people use Linux.
Your reasoning is convincing enough as it stands, and falls in line with their approach of only adding new features when competition appears.
Once you have to crunch some 4k video or run a dynamics simulation, you switch to PC. The price difference between a mac pro workstation and a similar homebuilt is just completely insane, and four years later the homebuilt will be upgraded with new stuff and the mac pro will be literally worth more as metal recycling. There are practically no apple users in mograph anymore, even though just about all mograph artists started on mac.
Keep in mind that the people on discord and web boards or whatever are amateur hobbyists. I don't say that as a slur, it's a stage we all go through and I remember that stage fondly. In some ways it's the best stage. But they have not had to deal with economics yet. That will make them re-think their hardware elitism.
Since when? Every person I know in these industries still use Macs.
I agree for 3D, but for video, photography, graphic design, audio, etc, the Mac is still going strong from what I've seen.
Give it a massive spec bump and drive the price down like they do (sort of) with the iPad and it'd be a great device to pick up.
Such a small form factor with good specs - it's like a NUC but with MacOS. It'd be great.
But Apple can't be bothered to do even that.
---
In comparison, Intel basically made a "Mac Mini Pro" called the Hades Canyon NUC. Which is roughly the same price as a high-end Mac Mini, but has 2x-6x the compute power (depending on how you'd like to measure it). https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/boards-kits...
Where Apple excels is at system design, the Mini has a good balance between cooling capacity and noise. One of the reasons I bought the Mini was it's near-silence during typical desktop loads. Even when it's doing a build, the fan noise is lower-frequency and less annoying than the whine of the tiny fans in most of these NUCs.
Only thing I could think is driver support for the Vega M graphics hasn't landed yet so I only have a basic graphics driver - I guess I'll see when kernel 4.18 comes out.
The super high end NUC, the "Mac Mini Pro" comparable model mentioned above is a specialty unit with its 100W draw.
Isn't that just the case?
Intel sell the NUC in a couple of variants, the "kit", with an 'ugly' case or the "board".
With the latter they could design a beautiful Apple-looking case around it.
Excellent computer though, can also be VESA mounted to the back of a monitor, something that you would never be able to do with an Apple product. Also very easy to open the box to put your RAM + M2 + SSD in, again something Apple would never make easy for you.
Apart from the special Mac OS I don't see how Apple could really improve on this type of product in a functionally useful way. Making it fiddly to upgrade and slapping an Apple logo on it would please the devoted but isn't really improving it.
Now I think is better wait for the next generation.
I'm really thinking in buying an mac for home use, and remote compiling with xamarin in the next year or so.
But it will depend of this next generation.
There's something too ironic about Intel being the value for money option. A refresh of Mini will no doubt have soldered RAM and SSD making it even less appealing.
So for now I stick with my '15 Mac Book Pro, not giving Apple money I'd otherwise be happy to spend.
I believe the latest revisions of the mac mini are not as serviceable though.
And all those enthusiasts who got them there are now left out in the dark like wet dogs.
Hardware just doesn't come out every WWDC. I agree with Rogue Amoeba that Apple needs to be willing to do minor hardware updates more frequently than they have been, but I would be surprised if most or all of their laptops don't get an update in the next three months, probably along with the (non-Pro) iMac and the iPad Pro.
https://bgr.com/2016/12/09/airpods-release-delay-technical-i...
(Technically, they only announced AirPower as coming in 2018, but it sure seems unlikely that "nine months and counting" was the original plan.)
- The revenues and market share of Apple's Mac unit has been stable for years[1]. No big gain, declines or spikes, regardless of how frequently they update, or how close their hardware is to the bleeding edge. Therefore, it makes sense to reduce their expenditure on the Mac until they see a drop in either revenue, market share or profit share, or some other genuine sign of danger beyond the griping of some professionals.
- The personal computer market overall is declining. Spending more for a slightly bigger slice of a shrinking pie isn't worth it, because there's no real opportunity for long-term growth that will please shareholders and analysts.
- Reducing the cadence of Mac hardware updates gradually closes the gap between the performance profiles of the iOS and macOS hardware, which moves them closer to the eventual goal of unifying the mobile and desktop software market.
- More frequent and more regular updates give more power to Apple's suppliers, as they become dependent on them for the components necessary to provide the updates expected by the market. Supply change management is Cook's area of expertise, and by delaying Mac hardware updates, and doing them on an irregular schedule, Apple can reduce supplier leverage, and walk away from deals it considers to be too expensive.
The most important supplier is, of course, Intel, and I think Apple would love to break the industry out of the idea that the supplier tail wags the dog in terms of CPU adoption. E.g. Intel can't just produce a new microarchitecture on their own schedule and assume all manufacturers will rush to adopt it, but instead have to accept a somewhat more subordinate role, whereby the big vendors like Apple can say "this is what we want, this is when we want it, and this is what we'll pay for it."
The problem is these changes are all highly problematic. The keyboards are unreliable and a lot of pro users and developers hate the touch bar. Those are fair and reasonable criticisms.
Everything I said was related the original article's complaint that Apple have reduced the cadence and regularity of spec-bumps and component upgrades. Their occasional revamp of individual product lines with attempts at competitor-differentiating features is entirely different, and is in fact exactly what you'd expect from a company thinking along the lines I suggested: Trying to reduce supplier power, and optimise their efforts in a market that has not rewarded them in terms of share for being concerned with specs.
But really I suspect you just wanted to moan about the touch bar and keyboards and latched onto a random comment to do so. Great job.
* the top 5% of the screen is nothing but horizontal flickering lines
* there's a similar vertical line down the middle of the screen, but much smaller
* when the machine heats up, the T and U keys sound like a static discharge
* my left speaker basically doesn't work and just makes popping sounds
But the entire MacBook line is completely unappealing at thier current prices and with the unreliable keyboard.
My workaround has been to use a 34-inch widescreen as my primary monitor, with the iMac's built-in screen acting as a second monitor, and then I can just toggle between whichever computer I want to use. It's an okay solution, but it means my primary display isn't 5K
I wish the same could be the said about the rest of the Mac lineup which is in terrible shape.
The iMac Pro is awesome, but the lack of target display mode makes it use a lot of space that can't be used with anything else. Older 27in iMacs were awesome for that - personal Mac for home, use as an external screen for work when working from home, or as an external display for a gaming PC.
Where are we supposed to place the sacrifices to the gods who will keep all of our 5-7 year old Macs alive until the new ones come out?
Why?
I think it's still a pretty good value (albeit a better value with an up-to-date cpu), and it is great for people who want to keep their displays separate from their computing hardware. Prior to my most recent monitor upgrade, I ran my monitors for close to 15 years. I expect to get a good 10 years out of my most recent monitors.
Software (including websites) is designed around the limits of “normal” hardware. Right now, that means phones and tablets. That hardware is less powerful than ‘proper’ computers, so any software designed for the average user’s hardware runs so easily on proper computers that there is almost no demand for significant CPU improvement. (GPU is another matter, and will remain so until “photorealistic graphics” stops being an exaggeration).
Yes, there is still the point that the same specs on paper can be bought much more cheaply without the Apple logo. This used to be a regular thing which flipped the other way around for a couple of months whenever Apple released new hardware.
That said, my hypothesis leads to a testable prediction: conventional computers will not improve until tablets and phones are as powerful as them.
Obviously, the Macbook Air and Mini are extreme (and genuinely embarrassing) examples, but generally speaking a ~1yr update cycle (everything else on that page) seems entirely reasonable, especially given Intel's more, uh, deliberate pace in recent years.
And with no announcement at WWDC, odds are we won't see updates til 1st Q 2019. The next big hardware announcement will be the iPhone in the Fall. They won't mix iPhone with Mac.
It's also important to look at the averages for the upgrades. It's not consistent at all, except the MBP. All the other Macs, it's on a whimsical schedule.
And the updates, when they've happened have been poorly thought out. Castrating the mac mini, foolishly recreating the Cube as the new Mac Pro. Adding the touchbar, while removing ports. The list goes on.
Apple has lost their way with the Mac. Clear as day. They're doing great with the iPhone/iOS, but they're only paying lip service to the Mac and macOS.
I think we're kind of the dinosaurs clinging to X86 not them and that's the most annoying part.
I believe it is a combination of failed milestones by Intel and a change in direction at Apple regarding use of ARM processors. It was a disappointment to have no HW announcements at WWDC, but I imagine there are folks at Apple who are more disappointed than rogue amoeba.
I run a fully loaded 2015 11' MBA I picked up after returning a well appointed 13" MBP. The battery life was way to weak to justify the high price.
The 2015 11" is showing its age a bit, primarily in rendering on a large 27" with higher resolutions than the apple cinema.
There is no good upgrade path for me right now, in mobility / price / performance.
The current multi-year lull in hardware then launching the new thing that won't be feasible for a few years makes sense from a development/resource allocation standpoint, but is a nightmare from a business perspective. You have to do double-duty so customers don't abandon you during the transition.
1. Apple thinks there is no where to go, substitution is low likelihood.
2. Apple confidence in first gen. They are “betting the company” on the upgrade they have planned.
3. Apple doesn’t care about the transition, the best one is a hard and fast one.
4. Apple is saving pent up demand for these new Macs to increase penetration.
I currently use a late 2011 MBP as my primary machine, but it's getting a bit long in the tooth.
I'm seriously considering getting a Linux laptop to replace it. I ran linux as my primary from 1998 to 2000, so it's not entirely foreign to me, but it will still be a bit of a switch.
The main thing holding me back is that I make income giving Keynote presentations, and I'm not sure how I'd do that with a Linux laptop without having to carry a second device.
It seems like Windows has several options for doing Unix development, which was another historical advantage of OS X.
For personal use, all I really want is a 2011-era MBP form factor with modern internals and a modern display (ideally matte). My mid-2010 still has no replacement in sight. I'm not sure the exact PC laptop of my dreams exists, but there are certainly way more options.
Can anyone recommend a laptop that supports 32gb of RAM, would run MacOS (or Ubuntu, I could get used to) and made of something besides metal? I have allergies to nickel, cobalt and gold. You would be doing me a solid!
Apple is starting to disappoint in the hardware offerings.
Apple, do you know how much money I have spent on your hardware and software over the last 20 years? At least 10 laptops, iMacs, a Mac Pro. iPhones, iPads (always times 2 as my wife upgrades too). Are you seriously going to make me move to another platform?
I echo the sadness here. I have so much sweat, money, and love invested in the Apple platform but when I have to replace my first gen retina MBP I’ll probably just go Windows.
Simple example: I start a Mosh session to support a customer inside iTerm 2 on a Mac, and a couple hours later my train return home is arriving in about 30 minutes, I slide the session over to my tablet, continue seamlessly on the train. Thankfully the troubleshooting points to a different team, but I want to monitor the screen share on my phone while I'm at the pub down the street from my home, so I slide the session over to the phone.
Completely friction-less form-factor changes, with even the possibility to fork between devices instead of exec'ing. Then you could fork to your watch, which buzzes you when someone mentions your name in a Slack window on your Mac/tablet/phone. Fully cooperative applications between devices also possible, with much reduced smokestacks.
I think (hope) we will start to see nice results in 2019.
especially as the thermal properties of intel turboboost is really horrible nowadays on macbook/laptop for dev usage.. (imagine maybe due to the meltdown/spectre slowdown..)
Sadly the alternatives on Windows are simply terrible. Wox, Launchy, etc.
The messaging could not be more clear, the real question is why are we all still in denial?
Macbook Pro -
Keyboard failure. Forget about the type feeling or depth of key press and the loud sound of it trying to trick your brain as if you have pressed it. It fails, constantly, and consistently. And Apple charges you $400 to $650 for replacing the Keyboard. And BTW if you have Keyboard problem you should convince Apple to replace your battery, which you actually get a Keyboard for free. ( I cant find the post where an Apple employees's rub of telling customer they should have buy AppleCare in the first place. I mean like.... most, if not All big brand Laptop manufacture provides more then one year warranty on their top of the line Pro Laptop. Not Apple )
Trackpad - So large that even with their false positive detection software it is still 1% to 2% error. Some might not be bothered with it. Many do, and hated it.
USB PD - It is basically frying what ever it is plugged in [2], silently. It it wasn't some geeks discover it I bet 99% of the consumer has absolutely no idea what went wrong.
Reliability - So far any Retina MacBook Pro seems to have a higher failure then the old ones in 2012. It is happening a lot more often around me. And I am not sure if this is pure bad luck or what. Old 2012 MBP are solid. Newer 2015 onwards MBP suffer from sudden death, non chargeable battery, screen quality problems etc.
They made MBP more expensive, more prone to failure, also more expensive to repair.
Mac Mini - Is selling this to customer in 2018, morally OK? For this price?
Mac Pro - It took them 3 years to admit they messed up, and 2 more years to come up with a redesign.
Macbook Air - Non Retina TN Screen for $999?
Just went Router hacking got to new level, Apple decide to discontinue their AirPort line. Great.
To add insult to injury, they continue to say they "care" about Mac. When none of their action has proved or showed they do. This is a company that act and execute way faster on the same products when they were a $10B company, now they are close to $1000B.
My friend's MBP just suddenly dead today. Came back, didn't turn on, Magsafe was always on Amber. And he now has to decide what to do, he doesn't want Touchbar, nor the keyboard of newer MBP. The MacBook is way too small screen size. He may be forced to buy refurbished older MBP. Or may be leaving the Mac all together. It really is a sad state.
[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2018/05/28/snazzy-labs-imac-pro-ve...
https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/6/13/17458712/l...
I'd take a MacBook Pro a pound heavier and several mm thicker in order to have more RAM.
I'd also gladly accept 5 hours of battery instead of 10 (or 2 instead of 4) when 95% of the reason I want a laptop instead of a desktop is not to unplug entirely but to shuttle it between home, work, the coffee shop, my desk, the couch, etc.
It used to be that enough of Apple's customers were using their computers for workstation-class workloads (photo and video editing, software compilation, data processing) that there was good reason to provide us a workstation-class portable, not just a notebook-class ultra-light (which even the MBP counts as by my standards).
You'd think that now that Apple is making such inroads in enterprise and needs developers on their platform to support the iOS App Store that they'd see the value in continuing to make such a machine available.
So basically, an old unibody Macbook Pro could achieve that. Even though I left Mac, that unibody design is probably my favorite laptop form factor ever. It balanced size and functionality (and end user expandability) perfectly. The only time you needed a dongle was if you were going to hook it up to an HDMI/DVI/VGA monitor. Otherwise everything was self contained.
Also, the latest generation of MBPs is thinner and lighter than the original retina display versions. You might be able to get passable battery life with the higher-energy-consumption chipset that apparently is necessary for >16GB if they just went back up to the old retina form factor.
"Pro" on the laptop line no longer has the same meaning as "Pro" on the desktop line.
It used to mean "workstation class" on both lines. "Workstation class" meant that you had more upgradeability and performance options. "Pro" as it relates to Macbooks simply means "premium". There's nothing wrong with premium, the Macbook Pros are still very performant, but you're going to lose the people who put high value on what "Pro" used to mean for Apple laptops.
If you look at Dell, Lenovo and others, they offer "workstation" class laptops for their "pro" markets. They're not the highest volume sellers, but they don't alienate any of those users by forcing them to switch to their "premium" business laptops.
Coming from a Mac, stuff that just works there is a constant struggle on the Dell XPS 13. It is pretty though.
IMO both Dell and Lenovo make machines that are either as good or better visually than current gen macbooks, and they absolutely stomp Apple on performance.
Worth noting, I consider ASUS to be a second tier PC brand, generally a notch below the likes of a Lenovo, Dell or HP business laptop.
I don't understand the fanboy defence of everything apple does, even the obviously stupid stuff. Upgrade the hardware is such a no brainer every hardware manufacturer does it nearly yearly. Except apple.
They are also more or less equally as good as PC's at certain types of content creation. Word documents, PDF markup, email, that sort of thing.
There are certain types of content creation that they are bad at (programming, spreadsheets), but we can't say that they aren't for content creation based on that small, developer focused subset of content creation.
Not really; on iOS there is a posix-like kernel but none of the userland.
As I said, the kernel is Unix-like, but you can’t run ls, cat, grep, vi, and so on.
Also, what do you mean by “Darwin” ? iOS shares a kernel with Darwin, but is it based on it in any other way?
And? None of that makes it not a Unix-like.
(Plus you can run those, just not through the provided UI)
> iOS shares a kernel with Darwin, but is it based on it in any other way?
Darwin is literally the base of iOS and macOS.
This isn't even a debate, iOS is widely recognized as being a Unix-like in the BSD family with Darwin (its base) and macOS (which it is essentially a stripped down version of) both being Unixes.
I have already said what makes it not Unix-like -- it is missing the normal Unix user interface which is part of every Unix-like OS and defined in various standards such as Posix. For example, here is the definition of `ls` according to the Posix standard: https://www.unix.com/man-page/posix/1posix/ls
I am not disputing that the kernel API is Unix-like, however the syscall API is only one pretty small part of the complete OS.
The Posix standard is basically the definition in my mind of what it means for an operating system to be "Unix-like". Which is why I am asking what your definition is, since it seems to be fundamentally different.
Do you realize how ridiculous that sounds?
Do you also think Android is not a Unix-like because it's sandboxed?
Besides all that, since I have to spell it out: those utilities _are_ present seeing as they're present in its base system, just not publicly exposed via Apple's official iOS SDK, and are trivially executable via `system` or `NSTask` (if you drop in the header file) on e.g. a jailbroken device. I mean, you do realize that iOS looks pretty much exactly like macOS under all the sanboxing?
"I think if you're looking at a PC, why would you buy a PC anymore? No really, why would you buy one?"
"Yes, the iPad Pro is a replacement for a notebook or a desktop for many, many people. They will start using it and conclude they no longer need to use anything else, other than their phones."
https://www.businessinsider.de/apple-ceo-tim-cook-why-would-...
So it's hardly a surprise, that there is not much happening on the Mac side of things.
Then macbook is dead, because of iOS, we have new macbooks.
Then mac pro is dead, because of iOS we have iMac Pro.
Is shouting "dead" the new password for upgrade request ?
I see an average of 1 update in less than a year with the only exception of mac mini. Why we need more often? I fail spectacularly to see the problem here.
Mac users buy computers that keep for years. My first iMac I kept for 7 year my second one is already on its 4 th year and still feel nowhere close to the need to upgrade and I do 3d graphics + coding.
I even live mostly in Windows 10 nowdays , mainly for coding reasons. Flies with no issues. I kinda like Win 10 actually.
Sad is exactly the opposite thing that I feel using my iMac. I feel sad with most pc monitors that I see around though.
Hell, the new OS brings native support for eGPUs , so I can even upgrade my iMac without forking money for an iMac Pro.
The new Metal which was already 10 times faster than the crap... sorry I meant.. OpenGL is reported to be 2 times as fast as the previous version.
Waiter... yes please may I have another plate of sadness soup... I really like it.