Apple planning 11″ iPad Pro, Mac mini, 1.57″ and 1.78″ Apple Watch, AirPower
9to5mac.com
9to5mac.com
Hopefully they sort things out before we commit to a switch in early 2019. We aren't the only ones either we've had friends leave already and some are either waiting on us to blaze a path forward or are already planning to leave the platform.
I think Apple needs to seriously consider the long-term impact to their business of losing their major platform advocates; from artists, to developers, to technology savvy people that have a dramatic affect on the spending habits of others. Myself alone have easily and directly impacted about $50k worth of consumer spending, not a lot I know, but I'm also confident I'm not alone and this is a trend that is going the wrong direction.
Just thought I'd share where I'm at and those in my circle.
Also of you are imminently switching or have switched I'd love to know what you switched too and why.
What kind of "resolution"? It's a product. They sell it. At some point the wont sell it anymore. That's about it.
As a product it has been superseded by the Macbook Pro on the higher end, and the Macbook on the more lightweight front.
It exists to sell inventory at a cheaper price range. End of story.
As a regular user off the Air and those around me; all of whom use Airs except for like 2 people who need the Pro's big GPU haven't upgraded for four big reasons.
1. The screen resolution and quality. 2. Removal of the magnetic locking port and other port related issues that are well noted 3. Not enough RAM 4. Price 4b. If they use the Butterfly keyboard on the Air then that would become an issue as well.
Magnetic power port: This is huge and how ironic that MS launched a magnetic 'super' port for their Surface equipment and Mac moved away. I haven't had a Mac hit the floor in 10 years for the very reason this port exists
Mac Airs were more expensive when they initially launched, but afterwards they moderated for much of their time int he $1200-$1500 USD range. This is way way less than what's on offer from a Macbook.
Lastly, regarding the Macbook itself, the screen size is too small. This is a toy for a more niche use case. The Air is a mobile warriors tool box; it's got ports, longevity and it's just about impossible to break. What people don't often even realize is that the the triangular shape of the Air is a critical structural feature that makes typing easier than most others and also makes it impervious to nearly any reasonable drop. I've got so many dings, gouges and scars from it's heavy usage that I'm always amazed.
I genuinely would buy a brand new Air if it was 13", Retina which is so standard now, under $1500 and had 8GB of RAM. This is a completely reasonable expectation. What I would ask for is different. If I could ask I'd want a 14" screen, Retina, option of 8-16GB of RAM and a magnetic port. Two of those things you are know aren't going to happen, but I dream of day when the magnetic port comes back to me; life was much less stressful never having to worry about a $1000 devices safety.
It doesn't replace it as in "is the same thing, just upgraded".
It's supersedes it. In the future, it will Macbook and Macbook pro -- the Air in its last legs, and it's just still sold for the profit, not as the direction going forwards (like e.g. the Mini is).
>Mac Airs were more expensive when they initially launched, but afterwards they moderated for much of their time int he $1200-$1500 USD range. This is way way less than what's on offer from a Macbook.
Doesn't matter. New product line is just more expensive. A product doesn't have to be in the same price range to replace something else. Just to cover the same niche ("lightweight machine for less-cpu-hungry-users").
The MBP with touch strip also replace the old MBPs (even though some old MBP models are still sold) and they are also higher in price than the machines they replace.
>Lastly, regarding the Macbook itself, the screen size is too small. This is a toy for a more niche use case.
The "big screen" was never the MBAirs point. The "lightweight, very thin" was. In fact, there were 11" MBAir models as well. Compared to them, the Macbook with 12" screen sits right in the middle.
The possibility of using Windows has kept me from switching so far but I can put up with it for a user replaceable battery and a decent keyboard I think.
Just curious, what's the problem and resolution? (I'm not familiar with recent Apple hardware.)
My wife is considering switching from Win8 to OSX for various reasons and the Air looks like the best bet. The show-stopper against buying a Pro was the lack of normal USB and HDMI, and at least the Air has full-sized USB3.
There don't seem to be any good options for us. She wants to switch away from Windows but Apple seems to oppose that idea. We might instead get a refurbished laptop and throw Ubuntu on it. (Gotta keep the existing Windows laptop for specific software needed when working from home.)
However if you aren't in a rush you should obviously wait for the actual product announcements we're discussing here.
Aside from the screen though I'd read some of the others below. There is a great long-form from another user and I followed up on my initial comment with further detail; I don't mind repeating myself, but others may not take kindly to me adding in blocks of largely replicated answers.
if anything, apple has gone completely mainstream. you can get all of your computing done in gold now. in GOLD!
I'm aware that some things have improved but you don't buy a CPU, or a screen, you buy a package. And for every improvement Apple also bundled in some sort of failure. Some in usability, some in reliability, and the overall value proposition is going down.
From this conversation one thought has occurred to me; what would a new Air in the current context look like and it gave me chills.
Can you imagine a single port Air? Or the removal of it's triangular shape that makes typing long hours on it totally doable versus other chassis designs? I'm just horrified when I imagine the loss of the magnetic power port; which has literally saved me thousands of dollars due to it not being an effective trip wire.
I look forward to not having that feeling anymore of waiting for Apple. Every apple owner is just sitting there now, waiting... Because you lost your power to pick something else! That should worry you. You become just a passive consumer waiting for a tit to suck on.
In 2016, I refused to buy a MacBook Pro with the Touch Bar and butterfly keyboard. I bought a Lenovo Thinkpad P50 instead, the first time in 25 years my "next computer" hadn't been a Mac.
I'm a developer whose work ends up running mostly on Linux servers. So I tried various ways of replicating my Unixy macOS development environment on the Thinkpad: running VMWare VMs on top of Windows, using WSL, booting Linux natively, using Docker for Windows. You name it, I've tried it. And in truth, my development environment has never felt as effortless as when I was using macOS. Two years in, it just hasn't been a very satisfying experience. There are too many sharp edges at multiple levels (hardware and software).
However, there is a counterpoint to this. In January, against my better judgement, I bought a 2017 15" MacBook Pro, with the idea of being more compatible with a client. Unfortunately, I hated that machine even more than I thought I would. I never got used to the keyboard, I got tired of needing a dongle to plug anything in, the battery life was worse than two generations of MacBook Pro before it, etc. And frankly, in so many ways, macOS no longer "just works" the way it used to. So, two weeks ago I sold that machine at a big loss. The most expensive Apple laptop I ever bought was also the worst.
So where does that leave me? Pretty unhappy, to be honest. Apple no longer makes any computers that meet my needs or that I want to buy, and I question their commitment to professional macOS users who aren't iOS developers.
On the other hand, IMO, Windows still isn't there for professional developers who mostly work in the Linux world. WSL still has a lot of sharp edges, missing features, and lackluster I/O performance, and I've never been able to get my Thinkpad P50 to work acceptably well booting Ubuntu natively. But even if I had gotten it to work acceptably, there are other downsides, like needing Photoshop, Word, and Excel on a pretty regular basis. So I've been running Linux inside VMWare Workstation on Windows 10, which isn't exactly frictionless, either, especially now that VMWare has abandoned Unity Mode for Linux.
TLDR: Two years ago, I switched from macOS to Windows/Linux after being an Apple user for more than 25 years. I've not been very happy with the switch, but I also can't see returning to Apple under the circumstances. In hindsight, the Snow Leopard era was the height of my experience as a computer user. It's been pretty much downhill since then.
i recently bought the system76 galago pro:
https://system76.com/laptops/galago
unfortunately I can't drive power and data over the USB-C port, so I'm going to return it
otherwise it is great
keyboard is obviously far better than the macbook, and the screen is matte
you can get 32GB of memory
it's a great rig, i am just unreasonable about wanting a single cable for lappy (which apple introduced two decades ago, btw: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Display_Connector)
I also had two macOS Servers running on mac minis and they announced that they're discontinuing it, leaving Apple with no server offering. I also removed the discontinued Apple Airports from my network.
I plan to stay on iOS and Watch for now, though I only use my iPad Pro for music synthesizers and basic chat/browsing.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm being absolutely harrassed typing in my iCloud password on all my i-devices. In contrast, I think I've typed my Microsoft password less than 10 times in the last year.
Sure, if your keyboard jams, you can get it replaced for free. But you're still without your $2000 laptop for a week while it gets replaced, and it's only good for four years. Plenty of people (my Mac is a 2012 15" retina MBP) are still using laptops that old or older.
iPod with Photo, iPod with Video, iPod with color displays, Minis and Nanos with radically different hardware form factors with each iteration. Upon revisiting, it appears that the photo-color-video iPods were all variations of the original, and released in successive years, but it still felt like a dizzying array of different device types, at least to me at the time.
It feels like all the emerging new form factors are doing the same to iPhones and iPads, to some extent. Both the iPhone SE and 5C feel like one-offs, evolutionary dead ends. The inconsistency in size between the first and second gen smaller iPad Pro's. The product lines, when looking at the changes from year to year, feel like a jumble. Not as much of a mess as from other companies, of course, but still a little reminiscent of the iPod years. Doubt it will affect the quality of the products or the bottom line, but still messier than it used to be.
For example something like the SE or 5C took relatively little development to make but filled in a gap in the small-ish phone segment. They can't really go anywhere with people demanding larger and larger screens but if they came at the right time they don't really need to evolve. They do the job and exit the stage.
With any relatively new or dynamic market there's a need to experiment and then to fine tune. Especially true with smart watches that didn't really find a comfy home with most consumers.
It’s only a sample size of a couple dozen, but 100% of them have had keyboard problems within 6 months.
The iPad pro 11 inch could be interesting though. It doesn't have a keyboard so Apple shouldn't be able to mess it up.
Or do they not provide a control key on the keyboard?