Things like iCloud photo syncing, universal control, and airdrop feel boring to us, but they make the computing experience feel pretty much like living in the future for them.
The original iMac was released in 1998. What's happening today has nothing to do with 1998 other than it was the iMac that is credited with saving Apple.
Professionals certainly do use Macs in all kinds of industries [1]:
[1]: "Here’s why Twitter, Uber, and more are giving fully loaded M1 Max MacBook Pros to engineers"--https://9to5mac.com/2021/11/08/heres-why-twitter-uber-and-mo....
Case in point: my 70 year old aunt and 8 year old neighbour can change the RAM and storage on their computers, that doesn't make them power users.
An Academy-winning Hollywood director I know bought his Windows-based computer pre-made, doesn't modify anything on it, just uses Da Vinci Resolve, but requires the absolute pinnacle of performance. He's a power user.
Software-wise, now both Logic and Final Cut are a bad joke, especially by modern standards. That's just one of dozens upon dozens of reasons why Apple aren't the go-to anymore.
I don't know how this maps to using a computer but I think I wouldn't have appreciated a GUI that slowed me down.
Cubase/Nuendo and Pro Tools likewise dominates as a combo for composers and sound designers.
Now it seems that the power user stuff takes a much further backseat to the toy stuff.
Now both of these are irrelevant because of virtualization, wsl, and better windows support. But it was once a really big deal. Mac was a Unix environment that also had word and PowerPoint.
C++ on the Mac was already a great development experience with Toolbox and Metrowerks PowerPlant.
Copland was going to be fully based on C++.
If you look close enough to NeXT's history and how Steve Jobs thought about UNIX beards, NeXT only supported UNIX as means to compete against Sun on the workstation market.
His reluctant appearance at USENIX is well documented.
Everything was supposed to be coded with Objective-C frameworks, down to the device drivers.
If anything those "developers" are now finding out that they should have been giving money to Linux OEMs instead.
While Microsoft discovered that that group doesn't really care about Linux per se, only having POSIX toys around, and given that Linux compatibility nowadays matters more than POSIX (even other UNIXes have Linux compatibility layers), they decided to reboot SUA with WSL.
As for numerical software, Mathematica and Matlab always had a place on the Mac.
What is about all that craziness to equate "developer" with UNIX?
Makes you wonder who is then buying these expensive MacBook Pros, Mac Studios and Mac Pros.
I guess it's those grandmas needing 28 cores for their recipes.
I also don't think a $2000 laptop is making anybody look "sharp" in 2022 when financing is readily available for anything Apple. What car you drive or what watch you have says more, but there's so many counterfeit watches out there that it's also fairly meaningless. Even cars, easily financed or leased these days.
Ableton works fantastically on my Mac, and for that matter so does Da Vinci. Anecdotal but nevertheless.
I guess that was 2019 and things have changed?
Anyways, I’m not really in disagreement with you, I think, just writing some thoughts out.
They always mention how much nicer the Mac is than their old Windows laptop but never mention that they bought a bargain-bin Windows laptop and a modern flagship Mac.
Even if I try to advise them to to just get a Windows laptop in the $800 range or so, they pretty much always go with a Mac because it feels like the safe purchase.
After all, is the base model of the 13in MBP actually a 'pro' device? $1300 gets you a paltry 256GB of storage and 8GB of RAM - now they've upgraded from more than 2 ports though.
Likewise, if you need to take it to an Apple Store and wait 1-2 weeks for parts to come in, again, it isn't fit for purpose versus repairing it in-house, or RMAing it fast.
Has the same energy as "everybody I've ever met in my entire life both use SUSE Linux".
If you had everything on one screen it would be much easier to pick this (and their many other tricks) out.
And I thought I was going crazy! And seems like it does work, at least on me. From the frontpage, the Netflix catalog always feels like twice its actual size — and it only occurred to me now how they do it.
But I'd also be happy with just a file directory.
I've been reading these 'Apple has lost its mojo' opinion pieces for decades but I'm really not seeing it. Sure there are specific issues but compared to the competition it's still night and day.