“There’s been lots of talk since Apple’s event last week about the reception to the new MacBook Pros, especially among the Apple commentariat,” Jan Dawson writes for Tech.pinions. “It’s fair to say the backlash against these new devices is stronger than for any MacBook announcement I can remember and yet it’s mostly coming from two particular sets of people – those who use heavy-duty creative applications such as Photoshop and those who develop for Apple platforms.”
“This is easily Apple’s most vocal audience and so such a response must be at least a little disheartening. But it’s also worth remembering that Apple – and even the Mac in isolation – has long since gone mainstream and is bigger than these groups,” Dawson writes. “Apple’s challenge now isn’t serving this hardcore base but pleasing the much larger mainstream Mac user base without alienating the power users.”
“Apple now has to please many groups in a much less homogeneous base than in the past. The problem is the public image of Apple among many in the media and beyond continues to be of a company that serves mostly creative professionals,” Dawson writes. “This perception has led to a lot of misguided commentary over the past week…”
Much more in the full article – recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: A new Mac Pro would do wonders for mollifying the professional Mac community.
If such a thing had appeared alongside the new MacBook Pro, many of the negative reactions currently littering the Mac web would have never happened.
But, as with many things under Tim Cook, there’s too much that seems to be a bit too little and way too late.
The Mac Pro is revolutionary, but Apple could really stand to, you know, update the thing once and awhile. Not doing so makes it look like Apple regards professional Mac users as an afterthought. Sometimes Apple, the world’s most profitable and most valuable company, still operates as if they have five guys from NeXT working around the clock trying to do all the work on a shoestring budget… (here. — read more) here. — MacDailyNews, November 27, 2015
SEE ALSO:
Complainers are focused the wrong things with Apple’s new MacBook Pro – November 3, 2016
Hands on with Apple new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar: Huge trackpad offers great palm rejection – November 2, 2016
Phil Schiller: Apple has more orders for MacBook Pro with Touch Bar than for any other professional Mac notebook ever – November 2, 2016
The debate is over: IBM confirms that Apple Macs are $535 less expensive than Windows PCs – October 20, 2016
The key mission of Apple’s new MacBook Pros – October 28, 2016
TIME Magazine: Apple’s new MacBook Pro Touch Bar is an inventive new way to get work done more quickly – October 28, 2016
Apple does touch right and, as usual, Microsoft does it wrong – October 28, 2016
IBT: Apple’s MacBook Pro Touch Bar is the coolest thing ever; will change the way we use laptops – October 28, 2016
Wired hands on with Apple’s New MacBook Pro: It’s a whole new kind of laptop – October 27, 2016
CNET on the new MacBook Pro: Apple’s amazing strip show reinvents the notebook – October 27, 2016
Hands on with Apple’s new MacBook Pro: Looks and feels so good it’s unreal – October 27, 2016
Apple debuts three new TV ads for all-new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar – October 27, 2016
Apple unveils groundbreaking new MacBook Pro with revolutionary Touch Bar and huge Force Touch trackpad – October 27, 2016
What does “gone mainstream” have to do with producing a late, over-priced, inferior product?
Botvy, you can KEEP your netbook.
We won’t force you to buy a MBPro.
Keep your cheap POS.
The word mainstreaming means moving a person or product from the haves (elites) to the have nots (masses).
What Tim Cook is doing is deceitful, disrespectful to consumers, and bordering on being criminal. He’s strategically locking down each new Apple product by intentionally removing ports, just so he can turn around and double charge consumers for using ports and product features you that you once utilized by default in earlier product iterations.
This unethical and immoral business practice allows Apple to increase revenue by selling expensive adapters that wouldn’t normally be necessary if Tim Cook didn’t plan it that way… all at the added expense and insult to once loyal Apple consumers.
The jig is up.
As a result of this, I expect Tim Cook to be resigning very soon people.
He only learned from the master in this regard, a long Apple tradition of obselescing peripherals, and no, he won’t be taken out for this……
Mainstream at these prices? Not a chance!
My coworkers and I were terribly excited about the new Macs announcement. Not now! My coworkers are ANGRY! They believe Apple is taking their loyalty for granted.
Now we are going to have to buy new adapters on top the much higher prices.
Price is BIGGEST ISSUE with the new MacBooks.
That is it. The biggest issue is the price.
Perhaps Apple Execs are so happy swimming in their jacuzzis of cash that they have forgotten how the rest of us live. Those of us who use machines for our work or buy computers for our children and who are running pretty damn hard to stand in order to stand still in our economy are being left behind.
I have only ever bought Apple computers, from having used them at school. I would not know what type of Windows computer to buy – I have never bought one. However, I have needed to replace a Mac Mini for nearly two years and also wanted to replace a MacBook Air.
The cost of doing so is now extortionate. Perhaps – as some posters here have said – I am too poor to buy a new Apple computer. Well, they’re right. I have always been able to buy reasonably priced (although not cheap) Apple computers in the past for work and home. But I now get the impression that Apple is no longer interested in me. Unless it wants to flog me a reconditioned or old-hat MacBook Air with a out-of-date screen.
I have seen a $10,000 Apple watch and expensive Hermes versions. Apple iPhones have become progressively more expensive. Sir Jonathan Ive has appeared in magazine features where he has designed high-end furniture or gifts for the super-rich. The overall impression is that Apple is no longer for the aspirational – it is for the rich. Those who have made it. Those who have no problem dropping $2,000 – $2,500 for a laptop with sufficient memory and hard-drive space.
Perhaps I am too poor for Apple – but that is particularly sad given that Apple has moved away from me rather than me from it.
Josh, I agree with your comment 100%. I think it really speaks to the way many long-time Apple customers who have spent tens of thousands on Apple devices over the past few decades are feeling. I’ve purchased only Macs for 21 years. To Apple, loyal customers aren’t important. 40 to 60% gross margins are all that matters.
Josh, just my personal opinion here, but I have NEVER bought Apple because of initial price.
I have always bought because I was far more productive & it far outweighed any issue of first price.
I use both Mac & Windows (Dell), but I know where I am more productive.
I agree upfront price is not the only factor, but upfront price does matter.
And also important, for those of us doing higher end computing work having high performance options is not just nice, its absolutely necessary.
I can’t do the work of one high end GPU on multiple low-end/mid-range GPU Macs. That kind of workflow doesn’t work at any price.
Nice Mac does not equal Nice Pro Mac. Pro Macs need high end spec options. There are literally no Nice Pro Macs now.
I am in the market for a desktop. Apple offers old hardware specs in this market. So I keep on waiting. I had to get a laptop last year because I could not wait any more. I have to say that I am pleased with my 2015 Macbook Pro. Now if Apple would release a iMacPro at the very least. I would be buying that.
One “pro” design for all pro, power users and upper mainstream needs. It doesn’t work. Apple has now a larger user base. And going for style with a price increase when we could use that money to add more memory, better graphics or a bigger HD.
Huh??
The Mac users are the core Apple customers. Retailing antiquated computers at high prices, that others, (Dell anyone) are able to keep current doesn’t cut it.
If I was a college student this fall I wouldn’t have touched a Mac offering. Just too old, too lame, too expensive.
Apple, you need to pick up your game here, and not in a small way, in a very big way.
Umm, Apple has always been this way! Name the last time Apple released a computer that blew away what was available from other OEMs? Apple has never had an Intel based system that ran the latest and greatest from Intel. It has always been a point of criticism about Apple’s computers; a feeling of form over function when it came to their computers and devices. They have always made sacrifices in order to offer the computer they want when they want. The latest MacBook Pros are NO different.
That isn’t true. The Mac Pro boxes after Apple went Intel were great.
And relatively speaking, top specs in MacBook Pros are falling behind the rest of the industry. Graphics work used to be better on a Mac for it, not handicapped.
Contrast this with the iPhone and iPad which are best in class for actual performance, along side all the usability innovations.
The Mac will never again be mainstream until Apple makes the consistent, concerted effort to offer a full range of models that year after year represent the best value and/or performance in PERSONAL computing.
The problem is that Cook views the Mac platform as just another way to hook you into the iCloud, and he has absolutely no rapport with Mac developers.
Mike, with the advent of Apple working with IBM and other mega-corporations, I suspect we will see a new era emerge!
What could it be?
Well, let’s look at what happens as a person becomes more competent in PC use. They need more CPU/RAM. They need more hard drives/backups. They need more graphics power.
I suspect Apple is looking at how to meet this need. Apple is not ignorant of its existing or future user base.
If Apple is not ignorant of their existing Mac user base, then they must know they are chasing it away. Their perplexing strategy from desktop to laptop is a complete mess. They raise prices dramatically on their only decent product, MacBook Pro, and let the rest of them languish. It’s very disconcerting. I think they are trying to kill the Mac.
I had the impression that the work with IBM focused on iOS products and getting them into the hands of Enterprise users. If you have any info about Macs being mentioned please inform us.
Get out the pitchforks because this is going to be unpopular with the Mac Pro crowd. Regarding the MDN statement:
“A new Mac Pro would do wonders for mollifying the professional Mac community.”
This is true and is probably the main reason Apple would do this. However, IMHO, Apple doesn’t do things to mollify segments of its consumers and IMHO shouldn’t.
The harsh truth is that, at some point, the market for a Mac Pro will be so small it will not make business sense for Apple to continue making them. Maybe that time is now.
Abandoning the most lucrative end of the computing market is bollocks.
Should your prediction come to pass, Apple’s choice to turn its back on Mac users like myself who need the best performance will not go unforgotten.
If Apple stays loyal to its users, then its users will remain loyal to it. It really is that simple. Lately, Apple hasn’t offered any indication that it even cares about Mac hardware buyers. Apple takes them for granted.
Regarding: “Should your prediction come to pass, Apple’s choice to turn its back on Mac users like myself who need the best performance will not go unforgotten.”
Apple is not turning its back on the users. Rather, as the other Macs become more and more powerful with greater capacities, many power users will find that these non Mac Pro computers are more than capable enough to satisfy their needs. Therefore the number of power users who need a Mac Pro will become fewer and fewer.
Todays Macbook Pro is more powerful than many mainframe computers of the past. The evolution I talk about has been going on for decades and is IMHO inevitable.
That isn’t how the computing world works.
As computers become faster, pro users needs – whose aim is productivity – go up with them.
Even consumers notice that over time, they have more data, are doing more processor intensive things. This is why iPhone and iPad best-in-class performance is a big deal even for consumers.
But it is also a big deal with many developers, engineers, scientists, business people, etc.
You can’t standardize on Macs for a team when Apple makes it impossible for pro users to use Macs. Five low-power GPU Macs cannot do the work of one high-end GPU device at any price. The work flow is impossible.
Power users don’t just need to be able to hook up multiple large monitors, as was shown in the big reveal. They need the RAM and GPU power to do the work spread out on those monitors.
Regarding: “That isn’t how the computing world works.”
Next year will mark the 50th year that I have made my living successfully developing and selling software starting with IBM in 1967. Thanks for the insight on how the computing world works.
Regarding (from a previous post): “Abandoning the most lucrative end of the computing market is bollocks.”
Sorry but the Mac Pro represents a very small portion of the Mac lineup and the Mac lineup represents about 12% of Apple’s revenues. Hardly the “most lucrative end of the computing market”.
I see the Apple ‘tree’ with iOS devices being the branches and leaves making food and keeping the tree fruitful and the Mac being the trunk that supports that. If Apple continues to erode the ‘trunk’ of their business those ‘branches’ and ‘leaves’ won’t continue to flourish.
Maybe they should have left the ‘Pro’ off if it isn’t for that market though price would suggest it mostly was.
I do agree with MDN’s take though. If this had been 6 months ago and this time in the Oct launch we had the Pos marginally bumped but along side of a launch of new iMacs and Mac Pro and Mac mini or a combination thereof preferably with some forward thinking on the desktops most would have been more than pleased I think. Everything feels so damn late and then when it comes it feels like a disappointment as a result. The AppleTV started this feeling big time so Apple had to make up for that and instead its more of the same underwhelmingness and feeling what the hell have all those people been doing with their time. Made even worse when the much presumed 4K AppleTV even a year later is no where to be seen but hey you can organise your average res stuff better people. Does no one at Apple actually look in the mirror and think rather than work out how they are going to tell u the consumer, how we are wrong, that this time just perhaps we just maybe right on certain things. Sadly no damn sign of that happening any time soon and scarily I can’t see it being more focused in the galaxy like corridors of the Spaceship Campus when it opens next year.
Yep thinking about it, thats running late too. I hope they have a Foundation-esque Steve Jobs Hologram in that theatre when it is finished so he can lecture them about pulling their lardy fingers out.
Fed up. At the end of that show the other day, I could almost feel, sense that Cook does not care about Mac Pro. Jerk.
But he *loves* emojis!
Didn’t Apple have a patent on a modular pro tower that stacked like Legos with Lightning port connector jacks to interlock each module as they stacked to make a tower? Each module ( Power & CPU & RAM mod / GPU card bus mod / HDs mod / Optical, card reader, misc drives mod ) was spec’d & purchased as a CTO by pro user.
One super fast bus for hooking up an external box of high end GPUs externally to MacBook Pro’s would solve a lot of problems for me.
It would finally let me upgrade.
I didn’t hear about that patent, but I’ve wondered whether they’ve got something like that coming soon. Or, at least, eventually. Using USB-c connectors instead of lightning. Trouble is: they need it yesterday!
All they had to do was use a different main shot of the TouchBar than the one with emoji’s and no one would be questioning anything.
If it had shots of it with play, fast forward, rewind, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now.
The little birdie. Fried or grilled?