“They say politics makes for strange bedfellows, and in 2016 it seems we’re going for figurative and literal bedfellows with one so-called October Surprise after another,” Wil Gomez writes for Mac360.
“Well, here we are, October is moving quickly into the holiday shopping season and where are the Mac surprises? ” Gomez writes. “Apple must be working on something new to the Mac, right? After all, the Mac Pro has never seen an upgrade, the Mac mini remains mini everything, including power, and the MacBook Pro has become something of a public embarrassment because even Windows PC makers have premium models with better specifications.”
“What’s going on? At this point, anything new would be a surprise so why has it taken Apple so long to ready a new line of Macs?” Gomez writes. “Time is running out on Apple’s October Surprise.”
Different ideas about what’s going on in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Tick tock. Last minute, unforeseen production issues or will some new mac simply unceremoniously appear next week via press release?
SEE ALSO:
Apple’s disgracefully outdated, utterly mismanaged Mac lineup is killing sales – October 13, 2016
For some reason, Apple’s Mac sales plunged last quarter – October 12, 2016
As new MacBook Pro models loom, Apple issues fourth beta of macOS Sierra 10.12.1 – October 11, 2016
Thoughts on Apple’s MacBook Pro OLED touch strip – August 11, 2016
Apple preps all-new MacBook Pro line with OLED touch strip and more – August 10, 2016
Apple’s new MacBook Pro expected to feature OLED touch-panel, Touch ID power button – August 8, 2016
Sales suffer as Apple neglects the Mac – July 12, 2016
Apple’s Mac sales fall, economies shudder – July 12, 2016
IDC, Gartner: Apple’s Mac no longer bucking PC industry’s sales slide – July 12, 2016
Next-gen MacBook Pro could feature Touch ID power button – June 28, 2016
Leaked photos pretty much confirm 2016 MacBook Pro’s OLED touchpad – June 1, 2016
Thinner, lighter 2016 MacBook Pro may feature OLED display touch bar and Touch ID – May 24, 2016
This “wait” is ridiculous and saddeningly disappointing.
Completely agree Kate – complete lack of leadership at Apple, too busy constantly posing for photo ops – the executive teams needs to get focused and quickly
Yet allyou fanboys keep supportig Cook. And MDN continuously contradicts itself by both supporting Tim Cook and at other times, calling him incompetent.
There is no excuse for how Apple is so slow to launch new Mac stuff and even with how long they took for Apple Watch 2. Tim Cook needs to go. He’s nothing but a schill who has ridden the coattails of Steve Jobs this entire time. He’s an imposter.
You can’t say he’s got to go without naming who you think should replace him.
BTY – Rushing out products before they were ready is exactly what got Samsung in the trouble they are in.
I remember when mdn was obsessed with Yahoo!s Marissa and how perfect she was. They always defended her on all of the attacks she came under.
…and now it appears she was actually incompetent after all…
Maybe we should start a iCal for how many time mdn is wrong and believe me, they have been wrong many times….a large screen iPhone 6 Plus comes to mind when they constantly ridiculed android large display phones and now mdn loves them the large display on the iPhone b
MDN editors are known, by know, for their constant inconsistencies and hypocrisy. They give the term fanboi a bad name.
You forgot arrogant and unprofessional.
Make great again…dump Tim Cook.®
Just the usual tantalizing torture. It’s everybody’s fault for predicting it loudly…. now they will make us wait!!
I refuse to take the blame for Apple’s mismanagement of the Mac business.
Several of us noted 6 years ago how Apple was missing the boat on opportunities to make the Mac the #1 personal computer for individuals, pros, and businesses. All Apple has done since is push iOS feature bloat into OS X / macOS that could and should be done at the application level with more user control. Performance and hardware configurations continues to lag behind the competition.
Apple: if you’re not in it to win it, WTF are you doing?
I’m not buying the hype that new Macs have to come out in October. The back-to-school season has passed. If they release them in a month it’ll still be plenty of time in advance of the (trigger warning) CHRISTMAS shopping season.
Odd that Apple has missed the school season for the last several years. Even if Apple couldn’t be bothered to offer any new hardware, it’s not that hard to come up with a promotion or ad or a new color or some accessories improvements to remind people that Macs still exist and Apple still cares about us.
Time is running short on xmas shopping season. Remember the supply chain genius couldn’t deliver the trashcan Mac Pros in time for xmas for that product introduction. What makes anyone think Apple would have a prayer of meeting pent-up demand for a real Mac if Apple chooses to introduce one this month? Unless Ive fucks up the design to make it thinner and less usable than the 2015 Macbook, there will be legions of people with worn-out Macs waiting in line for new hardware. That means lots of good boys and girls who might not be pleased on xmas morning when their package hasn’t arrived.
Forget about the Mac Pro shipping schedule as that would never be a big Christmas item. The bigger screw up was the delay in shipping the 5K retina iMacs in time for Christmas in 2014.
This is no fault of Apple’s. Yes, you heard that right, and I’m not being sarcastic.
Apple is ONE company. One company cannot do it all, but if you buy into a one company ecosystem, this is exactly what to expect.
You’re kidding, right? Apple has more resources than God and Cook squirrels it away underneath an Irish mattress. One would think that Apple could do two things at once, but instead Apple just does iPhones and iCloud now.
They have one very finite resource…time. Can’t buy that.
But if I see it your way, then there’s no excuse for them.
PS-Diversity of vision also is probably even more of a reason.
HP and Dell update their PCs and laptops constantly. What do they have that Apple doesn’t?
I can tell you what they don’t have: Tim Cook.
It’s a bit mystifying. This is a very well-funded company with thousands of workers and engineers . . . . hard to understand what the excuse could be. We didn’t get major overhauls every year with Jobs at the helm. There were some exciting ones every couple of years with revamped designs, but what I’m missing on here is the incremental updates. There should be bumps to specs every six months as the industry advances. If I need a new computer, I’d settle for last year’s design but would certainly always like to get this year’s performance. I’m struggling to find an excuse for that omission of options.
Apple has never done 6 month spec upgrade bumps. I’d happy with yearly, especially with Mac Pro’s.
Not true. The MacBook Pro used to get spec bumps every 6 months or so.
Kind of rare and minimal. I haven’t noticed it happening in years. Maybe I haven’t been looking hard enough.
It is not mystifying at all. Apple could very easily have kept pace with up to date specs on processors and graphics, but they have chosen to be greedy and just milk the stupid customers as their component costs drop quarter after quarter. Based on the results for Mac shipments, it appears that the customers have finally caught on.
And yet my 2013 MacBook Air still mysteriously works great.
And yet rather irrelevant.
Other people’s 2013 MBAs might not be working great anymore, and want a replacement. Last thing an informed and intelligent customer wants to do, is pay full price for last year’s hardware.
(Or worse, pay full price for the Mac Pro’s 3-year old hardware.)
maybe that’s the point, isn’t it?
nobody much complains about the build quality of apple computers, the rub is that performance capability has not changed much since back then,
hence your 2013 model “works great”, but competitors 2014, 15 and 16’s work better. (operating systems aside)
no excuse for that.
The surprise is that everyone thinks something is coming, but truth is, there is nothing.
So yes, there is a surprise. Not the kind of surprise you want though.
You mean the kind of surprise you yourself would have no inside knowledge of one way or another in any case, so are hardly anything remotely resembling a reliable source of information? Just more Internet noise signifying nothing?
If there is a surprise I think you should be taken off the list of those eligible to buy. That would the surprise for you I would find most satisfying.
Yep, we are waiting and waiting.
By the way, if I order a new iPhone and have it delivered will they leave it on my front porch if I am not home? Or does it have to be signed for?
I’m pretty sure it requires a signature
Nope. No signature required. They just leave it.
I always get my iPhone shipped to me and yes it requires a signature…However, if you bought it from Apple you pre sign a document and tape to your door and they will leave it on the porch….
Must require signature unless you select “Pre-sign for delivery” on Apple’s order page.
Called Apple to ask about that last night. UPS delivery, signature required, and they won’t give you the option to sign the notice slip for them to redeliver. Your only other choice is to try to stop it at the distribution center and pick it up there, if its close enough.
Tell me where you live. I’ll be there to sign for it.
When the phrase ‘post PC world’ was uttered, Apple management moved focus to the mobile platforms. Mobility is king. If Apple can continue to drive that focus successfully, the industry shift will move along with them. Unfortunately, I believe they underestimated how long it would take. Those, like myself, who rely much more on the Mac environment than a mobile environment are suffering without updated and current products.
It’s all about the iphones, folks. Mac’s apparently have been religated to the dustbin of……well, you know.
Why is it when Mr. Cook is answering questions on this or that, a store in Bejing, new fabulous watch bands, why does no one ask him about the languishing state of the Mac, the ridiculously outdated and seemingly ignored Mac Pro, the perceived lack of caring for what its Pro users want/need (trashcan Mac Pro with no internal expansion for instance)? I understand that Apple has long been run with Steve Jobs’ model of ‘often people don’t know what they want or need until we invent it’, but one would think that, after three years the generally negative response on the redesigned Mac Pro would get back to Tim’s ivory tower.
Does he get veto power over what’s brought up?
The lack of a new MacPro and Apple Display is hurting my business. I had faith in Apple, I am starting to loose that faith. To say I’m pissed off and disappointing is a HUGE understatement. What’s even worse is that they MIGHT announce something in the next few weeks, but I bet it won’t ship right away. I can tell you one thing, I bet the reason we do not know of rumors on MacPro is because they are made in the USA and it’s less likely to leak the info, unlike China, where there are so many people that are working on it, it makes it hard to police… If nothing is announced by Halloween, I am forced to overpay for old technology and that will not make me happy. I am tempted to start a movement to ask the board of directors to replace Tim as the CEO. I am a major share holder and not very happy with how he has led the company in the past few years. Not as aggressive as it needs to be. Not as focused as it needs to be. TONS of room for improvement. Maybe they should stop acquiring odd companies and focus on the one they currently have that is neglected.
I’ll wait a couple of days, then buy two.
I will be buying at least two, perhaps three new MacBook Pros when they are released. The pent up demand must be huge.
How simple is to order a new powerful Nvidia GPU for a PC? Easy, so I did it and I installed the card on my PC. It runs 3 times faster than my iMac. That is frustrating.
Do you think I don’t love my Mac? But I cant do the same with it.
Yes, I think in my group there could be 5 MBP’s being bought, if and when they get round to updating them
We’ve already had one rumor of a new Mac coming out AFTER the first quarter. I was hoping that didn’t indicate delay of the whole show. Before further throwing of fits, I want to see exactly what Apple does with the Mac lineup. Meanwhile, Apple has clearly decided they have higher priorities than the Mac. *sigh*
Maybe the October Surprise is no more Mac computers.