Not me: I wanted Apple’s software division to innovate like its hardware division. Extra power with nothing to use it on except more and more docker containers isn’t compelling to me. I’ve not upgraded my M1 Macbook Pro and don’t plan to
[I get your point; I just refuse to consider to a ridiculous reskin no one asked for to be a “feature.”]
Worth noting Snow Leopard also had new features, most notably the App Store. But it was marketed as a performance upgrade. v26 / Tahoe’s new features (excluding the UI reskin) are comparably small. But instead it is a massive slowdown & bloat release :(
When Snow Leopard came out it was very buggy, and many apps simply did not run on it. I've been a Mac user since 1993, and I think it's the only version of macOS I ever downgraded from. Don't get me wrong, it eventually became rock solid, the apps I needed were eventually upgraded, and it became a great OS.
But let's not mistake MacOS 10.6.8 for MacOS 10.6.0. And maybe let's not compare macOS 26.0 to MacOS 10.6.8 either, it's not quite fair. Ever since Snow Leopard I've been waiting at least 6 months before upgrading macOS. I don't intend to change that rule anytime soon...
Side note, rossmann has stopped talking about Apple because he is not longer focused on Apple repair and is turning his attention to other causes not because of apple's "repairability" changes which are still a token gesture.
Sprinkle with crashes and bugs that are never fixed and charge a premium.
Go to Spotlight -> Type “Settings” -> Locate the settings -> In settings, go to Accessibility -> Wait no, it’s Mouse -> Gestures -> Activate the right-click.
^ That’s the experience for beginners. That screen should be in the installation wizard if Apple wants to make it optional. “Customize your mouse gestures”.
I'm already salavating at the thought of a fordable tablet in any form. But not at the thought of paying $3000 for one with current pricing.
There's definitely an adjustment off of using a new keyboard after a decade.
I can run local LLM's fine on my M1 Pro from 2021. I play games on it too. Why would I spend multiple thousands on a M(N) Macbook if there's no real reason to? It's not like when I upgraded from a 386DX to a Pentium.
I have a similar argument for phones right now. There are some AI-related reasons to upgrade, but there's not really a clear killer app yet besides frontier model chat apps. Why should I spend thousands of euros on an upgrade when I don't get anything significantly different for it?
You shouldn't and nobody is asking you to. Apple can sell their new computers to billions of prospective customers who wish to upgrade from x86 or buy their first computer.
- builds are noticeably faster on later chips as multicore performance has increased a lot. When I replaced my M1 MBP with an M4, builds in both Xcode, cargo and LaTeX (I'll switch to Typst one of these days, but haven't yet) took about 60% of the time they had previously. That adds up to real productivity gains
- when running e.g. qwen3 on LM Studio, I was getting 3-5 tok/s on the M1 and 10-15 on the M4, which to me at least crosses the fuzzy barrier between "interesting toy to tinker with sometimes" and "can actually use for real work"
They tend to add lag in major OS releases. Gets people to consider refreshing their hardware. Just by sheer coincidence, they have a new model out this year! :-)
There is significant improvement from the M4 to the M5, but how much of it is comes from TSMC and how much from Apple ? They have exclusivity on the latest processes, so it's harder to compare with what Qualcomm or AMD is doing for instance, but right now Strix Halo is basically on par with the M3~4 developped on the same node density.
On the other hardware parts, form factor has mostly stagnated, and the last big jump was the Vision Pro...
If it was by design excellence and truly providing a better proposition it would sweeten the pill, but as of now it would be only because the way better products are from a company everyone hates.
In a weird way, Meta has been good at balancing hardware lockdown, and I'd see a better future with them leading the pack and allowing for better alternatives to come up along the way. Basically the same way the Quest allowed for exploration, and extended the PCVR market enough for it to survive up to this point. That wouldn't happen with Apple domining the field.
I own an AVP, and I agree. Now I bought it secondhand for half the price, so I acknowledge that necessarily means there is at least one counterparty out there who disagrees.
Using the AVP for one work day, once I got the right fit and optical inserts, was such an eye opener. It’s like using an ultraportable laptop after living an entire life with large CRT monitors & desktop rigs tied to an actual desk. An experience, btw, which also lived through. It just radially opened my eyes to fresh new possibilities and interaction mechanisms I never before thought possible.
But at $3.5k? No sane company exec could have been serious in thinking that would take off.
Zoom calls with mandatory camera on were already barbaric, asking employees to strap a headset for team meeting sounds like a generally cruel idea to me.
Most of the people actually using it for daily work are using the Mac Virtual Display. I work on my couch or bed, touch typing on my MacBook while my entire vision is filled with a projected, wraparound virtual display.
Immensely productive. But I'm basically coding on my MacBook while using a $3.5k external monitor, just in an unusual form factor.
They also made that new wireless chip recently, the chips for the headphones, and some for the Vision Pro. The camera in the iPhone also gets a lot of attention, which takes a lot of hardware engineering. In the iPhone more generally we saw fairly big changes just a month or so ago with the new Pro phone and the Air. The Pro models on the MacBook and iPad are almost as thin, if not more thin than the Air line, which I’m sure took a considerable amount of work, to the point of making the Air branding a little silly.
These decisions IMHO fall on the hardware team, and they're not doing a good job IMHO. Meta's hardware team is arguably pulling more weight, as much as we can hate Meta for being Meta.
> headphones
Here again, the reception wasn't that great. The most recent airPod Pro was a mixed bag, the airPod max had most of the flaws of the Vision Pro and they didn't learn anything from it.
> camera
The best smartphone cameras aren't the iPhone by far now, they're losing to the Chinese makers, but don't have to compete as the market is segmented.
> MacBook and iPad are almost as thin
I wouldn't put the relentless focus on thinness as a net positive though.
All in all I'm not saying they're slacking, I'm arguing they lost the plot on many fronts and their product design is lagging behind in many ways. Apple will stay the top dog by sheer money (even just keeping TSMC in their pocket) and inertia, but I wouldn't be praising their teams as much as you do.
- 5G connectivity - WiFi 7 - Tandem OLED Screen - Better webcam - FaceID - Cheaper RAM (RAM is more important to me these days than CPU speed) - More ports - Better/cheaper monitors - Make a proper tablet OS - Maybe a touchscreen but I really don't want one
just to get started
With a phone with a fingerprint scanner, I can have it unlocked as I pull it out of my pocket, and I don't have to bury my face in my phone, e.g. to pay. I can unlock it while it's sitting on a desk.
Similarly with the fingerprint scanner on the Macbooks, I don't need to have my face squarely in the center in front of the screen. It's a very bad experience unlocking an iPad Pro with FaceID, but I have no problems experience unlocking an iPad Air with TouchID.
But I think I'm a minority here, so at least I can save some money when the long-rumored FaceID Macbook comes to fruition :D
But as a regular guy who just has a lot of files and tends to keep tons of browser tabs open... it really sucks that I'm in the situation of getting extorted for $3k of pure profit for Apple, or have to settle for subpar hardware from other companies (but at a reasonable price). Wasn't an issue when the RAM & SSD weren't soldered on, but now you can't upgrade them yourself.
I have no idea what the hip PC laptop is these days, is it still the Lenovo Carbon X1? I went to their website and picked the pre-configured laptop with the most RAM (32GB), best CPU, and 1TB SSD. This was $3k: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx1/t...
Roughly the same size and specs as the most expensive pre-configured MacBook Pro of the same screen size (the MBP has 36GB RAM, +4GB over the Lenovo, and a much better processor & GPU for $3.2k).
It's all market segmentation. Apple is just being upfront about it and giving you a clean, simple purchase page that shows the tradeoffs. Whereas Lenovo is using car salesman techniques to disorient you with a bewildering array of options and models all of which have decision paralysis-inducing tradeoffs not entirely in your favor.
I’m rather happy I don’t have to upgrade from my M1. More performance is nice, but making it the baseline to run an OS would just be silly.
I can’t imagine leaving Resolve to go back even though I still wayyyy prefer the FCPX UI.
Maybe you need AI, but maybe you just need some AI agent app that uses AppleScript under the hood.
I'd rather buttery smooth, secure, fast, no bugs, let me do my work.
1) Sign Nvidia's drivers again, at least for compute (there's no excuse)
2) Implement Vulkan 1.2 compliance (even Asahi did it, c'mon)
3) Stop using notifications to send me advertisements
3.1) Stop using native apps to display advertisement modals
4) Do not install subscription services on my machine by-default
5) Give macOS a "developer mode" that's at-least as good as WSL2 (if they won't ship GNU utils)
6) Document the APFS filesystem so the primary volume isn't inscrutable, akin to what M$ did for NTFS
If they're trying to get me to switch off Linux, those would be a nice start. I don't think any of that is too much to ask from a premium platform, but maybe my expectations are maligned.
The de facto answer is Homebrew — even internally at Apple. They just can’t publicly say it without liability issues.
> If they're trying to get me to switch off Linux
It’s important to know that Apple is not trying to get you to switch from Linux. Converting “UNIX workstation” people was an effort of theirs circa 2001 but that marketing campaign is long over with.
Their targets are consumer, prosumers, and media/influencer people. They give app developers just enough attention to keep their App Store revenue healthy.
Plan your long-term computing needs accordingly. You’ll see what I mean in the next 12-24 months.
You're better off using MacOS built native unix binaries and a VM or docker.
I never noticed ads in notifications, unlike with Windows which is ads infested everywhere now.
I agree that better GPU support would be nice, but also better Metal support in common open source would be nice, since I'm a laptop user.
They shipped something similar in macOS 26 - native Linux container support.
I also can’t snap windows, and Cmd-tab still can’t tab between different windows of the same application.
There’s lots more usability that can be improved IMO
The backtick thing is just a constant annoyance. My workflow is to open windows doing the things I want some, and I want to quickly switch to the window with my next work item. Instead, I need to keep track of extra mental state and figure out if backtick is the right keystroke or if tab and then backtick is the right thing to do.
It's...fine. I'm thankful I have better options at home, but it's tolerable at work with a few third-party apps.
If you want the OS with all the shit you do (and don't) need, then maybe Windows is for you. ;-)
What things are you finding that aren’t that way?
Apologies that my memory fails me here! This was a few years ago, I only have my zsh history (and the name of a now-deleted script) to go by.
But what's "marketable"... well, I guess we need to drizzle whatever we come up with in AI. or douse it.
I still have to install a third party terminal like Kitty or Ghostty for basic, modern rendering.
Rectangle is great, Ghostty is great, I too install something to tweak the mouse speed/acceleration curve (don't remember which one).
Do we need all these bundled in? Generally a dedicated developer can make those much better than whatever they'd do in-house.
I'd say where it would be an issue is if you cannot make an app that gives you the behavior you want because the OS is missing the necessary APIs and configuration toggles needed too.
Every other OS I use does all of this built in, so yes.
Obviously, it’s fine to prefer another terminal app. I’ve personally been quite disappointed by the much-hyped alternatives to the default.
Infinite, just like in any complex UI. All the basic interaction primitives built into the OS are somewhat broken, from app/window management and text editing to keybindings and mouse gestures