Why Apple doesn’t care about professional Mac users anymore (2016)
jasonlefkowitz.net
jasonlefkowitz.net
Really? You really think Apple “doesn’t care about professional Mac users”?
Not only does this exaggeration/absurdity denigrate the author, it also makes it really, really hard for reasonably-minded people to pay attention to possibly valid arguments. The best authors tend to be candid and precise.
I think there's a pretty solid reason people believe they're ignoring/don't care about professional Mac users.
And many professionals have scheduled upgrade cycles. At home my personal computer is a 2008 MacBook Pro that I've upgraded with more RAM and an SSD. But at work my budget includes funds for a new machine every 3-5 years.
Nonsense.
If you see a Mac Pro in a recording studio or an edit suite or a VFX house, it's invariably bolted into a Sonnet chassis. Creative professionals need drive bays, rack ears and PCIe slots. They need DSP accelerators, fibre channel interfaces and SPI capture cards.
Apple say that the Mac Pro is "built for creativity on an epic scale". They don't mention that most creative professionals need a $1,500 chassis to replace the functionality that the old cheesegrater Mac Pro had.
https://www.sonnetstore.com/collections/thunderbolt-expansio...
The scheduled upgrade cycle for some creative professionals is extremely short, because their time is valuable and their workflow is bottlenecked by hardware. Many users considered the Mac Pro to be underpowered at launch, because it has a single CPU socket and only four RAM slots. After five years without an update, many users have either switched to PC or are seriously considering it.
The 2019 Mac Pro is make-or-break for Apple in the creative industries. Apple have completely exhausted their goodwill.
I understand where you're coming from, but for some people upgrading the machine they have is a preferred option than outright buying something new.
The new MBP is basically an ultrabook like the X1 carbon or the Dell XPS - which is fine, but that's also Apple's entire notebook product line for "pro" customers. They completely lack equivalents for any of the higher end workhorse machines that the PC manufacturers offer.
- Make a product sooooo good that your PRO users have not much to wish to... (aka a maxed out machine)
- Make a product flexible enough so PRO users can tweak it to solve their problems (aka a configurable macpro).
And more importantly:
- Make it reliable. Not macbook pro-last keyboard reliable :)
Sounds like a lot to me.
And market share is a bad determiner for influence. Apple has always been the mindshare leader in the desktop/laptop world dating back decades. They had a brief spell in the 90's when they were losing their mojo. It could be happening again now that Steve is gone. We'll see.
The most extensive option is an 18 core, 36 thread Xeon W 2195... Impressive, but not 64 core.
I'll grant that Apple probably does care about "professional Mac users," so long as they are professional iOS developers.
Outside this narrow group of professional users, it's hard for me to see how the article is wrong.
https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/imac-pro
Certainly not IOS developers.
Even enterprises are moving everything to the cloud.
Its absolutely unacceptable that we have to wait a full year after Intel's mobile chip releases before we see them trickle to the MBP. I understand that Apple operates on a scale other manufacturers don't match, but we saw 8750H laptops release to the public months before WWDC, but Apple will sit on their 7th gen laptops for another 6-8 months before releasing. Because "release cycles".
But even when they do come out: Apple doesn't understand professional grade thermal management. They put fans (or, fan) (or, no fans) in the machine that can spin up pretty high, but you'll never see the machine do it on its own. Instead, they prefer to thermal throttle the CPUs under any sustained workload, while the fans just spin at a whisper quiet whrr and the underside heats up to an uncomfortably hot level (because the machine itself is a heatsink, which conversely makes your lap part of the heatsink, thanks Apple [1])
I don't believe them for a second when they say that they still care about the Mac, as an organization and at their leadership levels. Its immensely frustrating. But the biggest frustration is that they (and Microsoft) are the only companies still making laptops with screens other than 16:9, which is a major component to professional sales. So even if you can get over not having MacOS (which is pretty darn easy to leave with how lackluster the latest releases have been), you're still left with a subpar hardware experience.
- Developers
- Adobe Suite users
- Video Editors
- C-Suite Professionals
I think they abandoned video editors when they dropped Final Cut. So they didn’t care about those professionals.
Adobe Suite users is a large group of professionals. Photographers for one; Apple ditched the SD card port - seems like they don’t care about photographers. Illustrators; Wacom/tables all use standard USB style ports; and several other ports at the same time; like external hard drives or now, external video cards I guess. Less ports seems to mean they don’t care about people who use additional hardware. Musicians, Video editors, I’m sure I’m missing a few other “pros” who require external hardware.
The iPad Pro has that pencil thing; and maybe the adobe software for the iPad is good enough to do professional illustration and photo editing. Although i don’t know any photographer editing 1Gb files on an iPad Pro. They’re hard enough to edit on a MacBook Pro.
Who does the touch bar serve? Maybe it’s just because I’m in that demographic who doesn’t understand Snapchat - but I just don’t nderstand the touch bar. It doesn’t feel “pro” to me.
You can’t charge the Apple mouse while you use it. Somebody needs to explain that logic to me.
So all the Mac pros are really good at - is jobs for professional typists. Programmers, writers, emailers; but the new keyboards seem to be pretty poor at their core function. Typing.
It’s clear in my opinion that Apple doesn’t care about today’s professionals. Maybe they care about tomorrow’s. I guess I have to ask what problems is Apple helping to solve for tomorrow’s professionals - today? Wire problems?
Edit: added the iPad Pro, and Apple mouse
That would trash the brand. You can't be selling cutting edge out of one side of the company while milking legacy products out the other. Perhaps more fatally, it spoils Apple's incredibly effective "make your product obsolete before someone else does" philosophy.
Except that's exactly what's happening with the MacBook Air, Mac mini, Mac Pro...
Apple are making a big mistake.
Same design. Same TouchBar. Same display. Same keyboard but with covers on the key to prevent dust (refer to recent patent). Upgrade to 6-core for 15inch, 4-core for 13-inch. Possibly 32GB maximum on 15inch.
Tim Cook has himself said it takes years for Apple to switch directions in their product line. And so since the current MacBook Pro is only a couple of years old it isn't likely we will see a dramatically different product.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/382260/segments-share-re...
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/263401/global-apple-ipho...
Really ?
200+ billion apps sold, which on average are more expensive than Android. iMessage/Facetime which are iOS only and are likely top 3 messaging platforms. Apple Watch which is the leading wearable and is iOS only. HomePod and AirPods which are iOS only. Apps like Notes, Photos etc which are iOS/OSX only.
If you spend ANY time using the functionality of iOS you are slowly but surely cementing your feet in the ground.
This argument is like saying that Tesla doesn't care about petrolhead and horse carriage enthusiasts. The only people that I know who care about Mac hardware are the same people who waste powerful machines on web browsing and like to boast about how fast their computer is. Just toxic.
no, as a pro user i don't need a touch bar on my laptop. i use my keyboard and mouse. i don't need to reduce all my usb connectors to one. i don't need a crappy implemented ai called siri. i don't need something accessible, easier to use, because i know how to use my computer already, thanks apple. apple just needs to upgrade the hardware more often 'cause software is demanding more ram and cpu power. it's very simple.