“If you’ve been feeling as though Apple’s heart isn’t in moving the Mac forward these days, you’re not alone,” Adam C. Engst writes for TidBITS. ” The new MacBook Pro models have taken widespread criticism, Apple has provided no roadmap for the future of its desktop Macs, and most recently, the company eliminated the position of Product Manager of Automation Technologies, presumably seeing it as unnecessary.”
“High-end creatives have despaired about Apple’s lack of attention to their needs, and the mood among many of the consultants and support professionals at last week’s MacTech Conference was downbeat,” Engst writes. “So what could explain Apple’s increasing marginalization of the Mac, particularly in the pro market? The culprit is clearly the iOS platform, and the iPhone in particular. But the reason why it’s happening has more to do with a structural fact about the company that Apple will have to change if the Mac is to get the attention it needs to thrive.”
“Here’s the problem: Despite the fact that it now employs 115,000 people and is the most valuable company in the world, Apple still thinks like a one-platform company. Now it’s all about iOS, and everything Apple does is designed to serve the single goal of selling more iPhones and iPads,” Engst writes. “Focus is good, but it can be taken too far, and that’s what I’d argue is happening at Apple right now.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: One more time: 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.
As we wrote a year ago:
Sometimes Apple, the world’s most profitable and most valuable company, still operates as if they only have five guys from NeXT working around the clock trying to do all the work on a shoestring budget.
Can’t manage to have a compatible Remote app or Apple Music-capable Siri for the Apple TV launch… Can’t have enough Pencils and Keyboards for the iPad Pro launch. Seriously? Can’t have any stock on hand for two months after the so-called the Apple Watch launch date. Can’t update their professional Mac for nearly two years and counting?
Why are these amateurish mistakes and lapses happening with startling regularity? You know, besides mismanagement?
Oh, you say, but Apple is making tons of money! Why, yes, they certainly are!
Listen, let’s be honest, Steve Ballmer could’ve generated the same kind of money “running” Apple Inc. given the massive momentum Steve Jobs handed over at his death. Sometimes, in fact, it looks like Steve Ballmer is running Apple. Although, no, it doesn’t really, because even Ballmer would have updated the Mac Pro by now, made sure he had enough Apple Watches ready so as not to pretty much totally kill launch momentum, and also had enough Pencils and Keyboards on hand for the iPad Pro launch. Of course, Ballmer would have never had the handle on the big picture that Tim Cook has – our issues with launches under Cook have to do solely with launch supplies and software polish.
We’re coming up on two years now (this December 19th) since the Mac Pro debuted with no updates which, along with the rest of the string of snafus (going back to John Browett, Apple Maps, no iMacs for Christmas 2012, no iPad 2 units for launch, etc.), is what understandably prompts this sort of “joke” and “failure” talk and the feeling that Apple is a bit sloppy in recent years.
We hold Apple to a high standard and we expect the company to execute better than they have of late. (read more) — MacDailyNews, November 27, 2015
If you’re not going to produce pro models, then open up a third party to do do under your strict OS requirements. No, that’s not what I want, I’ll take this option over not getting any pro model at all from apple.
Everybody is finally waking up to the fact that Tim Cook is a complete incompetent… even though this has been clearly evident for over 5-years.
Now that annoying c*cks*cker peterblood is even crying. Sorry if I have no sympathy but I’ve been telling you all this from the very beginning. This all ends one of two ways, get rid of that rainbow colored asswipe now or suffer more consequences.
Yeah I really don’t want to build a Hackintosh, but I’m certainly seriously considering it…and I don’t want to go Windows. It’s beyond frustrating that Apple can’t communicate some sort of roadmap for their Mac lineup. They are pissing off people at this point and no one is gonna be magically surprised when they do update Macs. At this point how about a simple update that “hey new Mac Pro and iMac coming in 1H2017.” I sort of believe they will release something new…but WHEN is the big question. I need to replace HW very soon.
Reminds me if Apple lately …lol
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rQjN_bZEKNQ
Apple will not be the most valuable company in the world next year and likely will never reclaim the title. The executive team has no vision and has missed the on music, movies,tv, AI, and very likely VR. Aplle simply feels like a complete mess. I hope the board of directors sees this and begins to cut th dead weight.
Looking forward to seeing the very creepy looking Eddy Cue at the Recode conference in Feb.
With fewer and fewer “trucks” being produced/needed, has the time come for there to be only one “truck” company? In other words, a “truck” producing company that makes powerful “trucks” that run of PC or Mac fuel.
Apple shows no interest in making “trucks” anymore. They only want to make little sport cars.
Apple doesn’t even make sportscars. Apple makes motor scooters while the rest of the industry makes everything from bicycles to earth movers. It didn’t have to be this way. Apple is losing touch with every passing day. Jobs brought us personal computing to free us from big brother. Now apple and the rest of the media owners are big brother and they only want you to have gadgets that tie you to their servers. Electronic tethers Monthly subscriptions. Every keystroke monitored. Everything cheap because you are the product.
Apple is just as bad as any other company because instead of offering solid alternatives, Apple sells disposable consumer grade toys and lets its formerly great Mac OS X wither, tying it to weak hardware that of course pushes siri and icloud at every turn. No performance edge at all. Dearth of 3rd party programs that have the power users need to stay competitive. What a joke apple has become under the mismanagement of cook and ive.
There are FAR fewer Macs sold than iOS devices. So, delighting users of iOS delights a WHOLE HECKUVALOTTA more customers than macOS.
Further, macs will never ever sell more than iOS, so there’s not even a future in which that could ever be a thing. I have no doubt they’ll make them as long as people buy them… but they are not on a track of ever being of financial importance to Apple.
That may be true, but what set Apple apart in the past is that EVERY product they made, regardless of relative market size, was designed with the greatest attention to detail and to meet the users needs. The last past is what seems to be missing now, and that is what people are upset about. The Mac side is not meeting professional users needs.
While it is a relatively small market for Apple, it still matters and has outsize influence in setting market perception.
My other point is that Apple iS suiting their users needs. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be selling. There are, to be sure, a LOT of users that aren’t happy with the new MBP’s but that’s because they aren’t the target market.
Apple has never suited ALL users needs, they usually go for a profitable sub segment and that doesn’t look to have changed. What pains many is that they are no longer being targeted.
With out the trucks to write the code for the insanely great apps that run on the cars… iOS will eventually falter
If I didn’t despise Windows and even the Surface so much, I’d switch and spare myself the continuing aggravation. If Apple doesn’t keep the trucks, the lure of the ecosystem will erode. STILL- waiting for my iMac. I’m tempted to get an old one. Like I said, I’d get a Surface if it tempted me. I understand that Apple does not announce new products. How about at least a little reassurance?…
Though I’m not there yet myself, I sympathize.
With Windows, we *expect* a mediocre experience, so it’s never going to disappoint much.
With Apple, for years it was excellence, delight and usually cutting-edge was the norm. To not experience those anymore with new products, or at least when the good (Touchbar) is offset by the bad (16GB RAM limit, soldered SSD, no new Mac Pros), never mind learning that existing Mac features keep getting axed in order to accommodate iCloud sync with the less-capable iOS (Photos and iMovie feature loss; Applescript and Automator possibly deprecated, etc), is leading to an on-going and growing level of disappointment with Apple.
I’m sufficiently jaded now that I expect half the Black Friday discounts Apple offers will be for watch straps, since they’re hardly going to match the discounts 3rd party retailers can offer.
Almost my situation. Hate the current pro Mac situation, hate even more what a shifting to Windows would bring. I still encounter Windows use often to remind why I despise that OS. Why we continue to be tortured by confused Cupertino I’ll never know.
@gaypenisblood69
I’m glad you’re tortured, you Tim Cook teabagging douchebag!
Don’t pretend like you’re not still carrying Cook’s jack in your hand. Do us all a favor and leave MDN for good.
I think “leaving for good” is pretty much a unanimous request everyone here has for the troll (which is you). So kindly shove off.
Macs are a part of the ecosystem, but they are not critical. You don’t even need a computer to own an iPad or iPhone. If you want to use Final Cut Pro, you don’t have an option, you need a Mac, but how many end users have a need for it?
Macs could decrease to 1% market share and that would not impact the consumption side of the ecosystem. As far as the producing side, as long as there’s a few hundred thousand to go around to the developers, you’ve got that covered. 🙂
“You don’t even need a computer to own an iPad or iPhone.”
ACTUAL WORKERS AT APPLE DISAGREE WITH YOU.
weird that Jony Ive’s studio and the New Apple Research Centre in India are filled with Macs. Don’t see any work done with iPads or iPhones.
Take away Macs Apple can Close down as there WILL BE NO APPLE HARDWARE OR SOFTWARE DONE unless of course they work on Wintel or Linux machines (do people want that?)
No, if you ask anyone at Apple “Do you need a Mac to use an iPhone or an iPad?” they would all say “No”… because it’s the truth. It adds to the experience, but with over the air updates and iCloud back ups you no longer are required to own a Mac to fully utilize an iPad or an iPhone.
If you ask them, “Do you need a Mac to do your job?”, they’d say “DUH! That’s why there’s one on my desk!”
You shouldn’t confuse the two.
MY MISTAKE!
I cut the wrong part of your statement and with no re edit feature at MDN.. so my bad :”
“Macs are a part of the ecosystem, but they are not critical. You don’t even need a computer to own an iPad or iPhone”
they are “NOT CRITICAL ” is the part i wanted.
So is it not critical to apple workers?
as for
” As far as the producing side, as long as there’s a few hundred thousand to go around to the developers”
they are going to make just a few hundred thousand computers of various types, that’s practical when they actually sell MILLIONS every quarter?
As a long time Mac user (since the mid-90’s) I have to sadly agree with MDN’s take. What the heck is going on, Apple? This amateurishness reminds me of `Apple just before Job returned. Not able to produce what buyers wanted, and in sufficient quantities… isn’t that Cook’s forte?
Sigh. So far, I’m still managing on my 2012 MBP (upgraded to an SSD and 16GB RAM)… but for how long? No complaints about iOS hardware, but the Mac…? Oy….
“Not able to produce what buyers wanted, and in sufficient quantities…”
But they ARE producing what buyers want, I think it’s just that the mass purchasing public wants something different from the people who frequent sites like this one. Buyers want music, movies, tablet iOS devices and iOS phones WAY more than they want any kind of Mac.
Even with the large number of sales of the new MBP, when the numbers are run, I imagine that number will be dwarfed by just one configuration of one model of an iOS device.
In spite of neglect and no advertising Macs made more money than iPads the last 3 quarters
Such a specific statistic immediately makes me think that it wasn’t the case FOUR months ago 🙂
Care to provide the source?
a quarter is 3 months. Last 3 quarters is the time I watched the stat. How much longer before that I don’t know.
Regardless with the iPad Pro etc and no significant new Macs , Macs made more money for at least a year or so.
Macworld:
“Apple financial report Q4 2016
IPad : “Revenue, again based on reported ASP (of $459, which Apple pointed out was $26 up on a year ago), was $4.255bn, ”
“pple sold 4.886 million Macs in Q4 2016 and revenue of $5.739bn”
LOOK at shrinking iPad revenues 2012 -2016:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/382260/segments-share-revenue-of-apple/
in spite of new iPad Pro etc and plenty of advertising compared to Macs.
MACS ALSO MAKE MORE THAN TWICE ‘OTHER PRODUCTS CATEGORY’ which includes WATCH and iPod and a host of other stuff.
——
Macs of course earn way less than iPhones,
but as i’ve often said comparing stuff to iPhone is crazy because iPhone is the most profitable product in the world. It makes more than all the cars of Ford combined, so should Ford stop making cars?
Besides the consumer point of view of a healthy eco system
have many products is good for the stock.
Aapl is so low (if it had the PE of Google it would be 300) is because investors think it’s a dangerous ONE PRODUCT iPhone company.
link above paywall protected I think so maybe this will work:
here: iPad revenue from 2012 -16
Macs in Grey, iPad in Black.
iPhone blue, other products (Watch, iPod etc) Green
What’s the scarlet part? Services?
yeah
—–
I’ll like to note that service rev although growing depends on Apple hardware a lot. If hardware sales go down so will services.
So we’re looking at a comparison of proportion of revenue generated from each ‘segment’ and not a comparison of the actual revenue of each segment compared across quarters. Not sure if that shows actual growth or decline in revenue except in relation to the other segments.
you are probably right about reading the chart.
still a quick check shows as a rough indication:
Q3 2012 iPad revenues as 9.2 billion (I paste from Apple : 9,171 million )
Q3 2016 as 4.8 billion ( I paste from Apple : 4,876 m)
Jason Snell of Macworld in feb 2016
“Apple sold 80 million iPads in a year are gone, and won’t be coming back for quite a while. But as sales continue to decline, it’s worth asking when it will all stop.
At this point, Apple’s selling iPads at a rate of approximately 48 million iPads per year—roughly the rate it was selling them in 2011,”
——–
Note friends as an aapl investor I take NO JOY in this iPad decline. But because of this I’m begging Apple honchos to take the Mac seriously. Msft has moved 300 m copies of Win 10 and are boasting their target is 1 bilion. The future might be iOS but it’s long ways before PC type machines are obsolete.
An ecosystem without Mac/OSX is a phone not an ecosystem.
This article is wrong.
Apple isn’t focusing on iOS and leaving the Mac to wither. Apple is ALL OVER THE PLACE.
-Apple Watch.
-Gold watches.
-New Apple TV.
-iPad Pro with stylus.
-MacBook Pro with TouchBar.
-Political crusades from Tim Cook.
The problem for Apple is that it’s not doing any of these very well. The Apple TV is a deluded mess. The Apple Watch is an unnecessary product hampered by a tiny screen and grabage battery life. And the whole $10,000 plus gold watch move failed. The iPad Pro with stylus is a me too product, copying Microsuck. The Touch Bar on the MacBook Pro is deluded meanwhile the prices of the new MacBook Pros have increased.
Apple has no vision. No winning strategy. They are milking what Jobs created years ago and they’re running out of steam.
An example of another failed strategy: buying Beats and thinking you could make a special chip in your devices that lock things down to only Beats. So no other headphone maker will have access to this proprietary nonesense. This is horrible: people want headphone choice. Thus, a hopelessly misguided strategy.
Apple has a big problem outside of this stuff, and that’s about them having 2 operating systems. It’s broken. They need a brand new singular OS where Apps are responsive. They would then redesign their hardware for this new software with multiple input modes.
Something like the MS Studio PC is what the near future of computing is about and it’s excellent, save for their software. Microsoft has the right strategy. but as always, they fail to execute.
We saw this with tablets: MS was way early to the game but their software and hardware wasn’t executed well. Apple came along and did it right with the iPad.
The problem is Apple won’t be able to pull this industry defining stuff off anymore because they lack the leadership needed to do it.
The big question is WHY is the Apple executive team seemingly intentionally gutting this once great company?
Money. Yeah, that doesn’t even sound right, right? Don’t know. I mean there is no reason why apple isn’t tell intel what it expects from there chips. Man, I hope AMD is more than just competitive with their new chips.
It happened with Sony, it can happen with Apple. They become complacent, forgetting their core values, looking for the phoenix.
This is what happens when a company gets its ‘god mode’ complex and that is usually caused by its superiority complex due to its riches and it just knows what is right for people without really listening to the people that support it. Apple has started sliding down this slippery slope and I am fearful it will never crawl back up. So we are left with surface studio.
The “Spaceship” campus project is a fitting symbol of this, as if Apple assumes it’ll be around for a 1000 years. All the money on the planet can’t by visionary leadership. They’re lucky that Steve Jobs’ fumes that they’ve been running off of are worth $100s of billions, but there’s no guarantee they won’t become another stagnant Microsoft.
While the new campus was still in the approval stage, people were noting the “edifice complex” where many successful companies blow a wad of money on a shiny new architectural marvel as their headquarters, and that company goes to crap soon after its completion.
A half decade ago (June 2011), that didn’t seem likely. But then, Steve Jobs was still alive then.
“But, as with many things under Tim Cook, there’s too much that seems to be a bit too little and way too late.”
So now, MDS, you ARE coming around to what we have been saying all along. Tim Cook is a disgrace.
We all know how even “we”, i.e. those with a passion for computing and engineering and art and great products, could have done better than this moron Cook. But you kept defending this idiot until today. What took you?
Tim Cook needs to go back to his old position where he is the best of the best and someone else needs to be CEO and visionary.
Ive is good at design, to a point. Steve was there to reign him in on designs that went to far I believe. Now that there is no one higher than Ive, his designs are not getting a good sounding board and the occasional “No”.
Tim is very involved in advancing the homosexual and transexual lifestyle into the American mainstream. That is more important than the Mac and the Apple TV and promoting Apple Pay and developing an Apple TV bundle and ending the colossal waste of money on the car project and figuring out what Angela Ahrendts has done to deserve several hundred million dollars.
I wish you guys would get off the “political crusades” and gay agenda Tim Cook bullshit. I have seen zero signs that that is a distraction for Cook, or that he devotes much time to it at all – his free time. Are you privy to his diary & social calendar or something? Or are you just speciously guessing because it’s part of your mean-spirited convenient agenda? What do you do with your free time that we can incinerate you over? Cook is entitled to do whatever he likes in his down time without getting disingenuously criticized for it.
This recent Apple meeting at HQ suggests otherwise.
Uhh yeah. Don’t think so.
@petethedicksucker70
Spoken like the last cocksucking, Tim Cook male cheerleader, lmao.
Get a life away from MDN please, dickblood!
Same anonymous multiple-identity troll moron who needs to get a life PERIOD. Funny how you fail to realize how you look – like a total imbecile – here.
Peterbulge I KNOW you are voting up your own comments (and downvoting everybody else’s) and I know how you’re doing it.
It matters that much to you doesn’t it?
That’s pretty sad.
I don’t particularly care what you think but it’s safe to say that people have had it with Cook, his homocrusading and his limp wristsed treatment of loyal Apple customers.
I’m buying used Apple gear or making my own HackIntosh from this point on.
Steve really should’ve left a man in charge.
Hardly. Not by the large numbers of down voting going on for you in your various disguises troll. Can’t stand the fact people don’t like you or what you’re saying can you? Those who mention votes are the ones most wanting to see them jacked up to get their trolly jollies.
No one here gives a flying fuck what morons like you think troll. Maintain a consistent identity you truly sad & pathetic little homophobic coward. Cheap juvenile shots at someone’s sexuality have no place here troll and have nothing to do with Apple. You have ZERO credibility at MDN. We KNOW who you are and your blatant 10 year old level of maturity writing ability.
I’m one person you stupid twat.
Others are here along with me, calling you what you are: An asshole.
Check your infantile language when you post as opposed to my posts. YOU are the verifiable asshole, asshat and troll nut on MDN.
Hahaha. Nearing 200 downvotes on kent’s comment.
What a pathetic loser you are plodbogle7.
Refresh, click one star, repeat.
Hahahahahahaha.
What was that you said troll?
“I KNOW you are voting up your own comments (and downvoting everybody else’s) and I know how you’re doing it.”
Pretty much an indictment you are trolling and live for the inflammatory posts and upvote in your assholic and vitriolic troll world. A truly sad, fucked up and pathetic loser. The laughter and chuckles are all mine junior.
It’s obvious Tim Cook wants Apple to suck as much as he does.
Kent – Clearly, you are one of those people whose own repressed homosexuality makes you lash out at others who are more comfortable with themselves. It’s pretty clear you either need counseling, or you need to get out of mommy’s basement more often.
For the first time in many, many years, I have not bought a new Apple product. I was really hoping to see an updated iMac but no such luck. I have iPads that do all I need. My MacBook Pro was nicely upgraded with SSD and more memory last year and does what I need it to do quite adequately. My latest gen Apple TV is fine as is my first gen Apple Watch. My iPhone 6 is tooting along with no complaints. But damn. I really did want a new iMac as my three year old unit while fine is not 5K. Oh well.
“I have iPads that do all I need”
This is the point many don’t get. Not just you, but millions now and millions more in the future have an iOS device that does all they need. Apple could put in 64 G memory, 40 hours of battery life in a 16 core, graphics beast of a tower, and that’s not going to do what everyday people need to do any more than an iPad.
As a result, they don’t HAVE to compete against the rest of the industry… just provide an update for those that want it even though they KNOW whatever profits they make will be lost in the couch cushions when you consider how much they make from services and iOS sales.
For those that don’t want it, Apple is offering another subtle hint that the future is iOS and the longer you yearn for some Intel based Pro device, the more it’s gonna hurt when it doesn’t materialize.
Had some thoughts on this. I honestly don’t know what to believe. Apple tells us again and again that they love the Mac, but it’s been a rough few years.
https://perryfjellman.wordpress.com/2016/11/21/does-apple-care-about-mac/
If I told my wife I loved her but ignored her for three years you would rightly call me a liar.
Same principle applies here with Apple and the Mac.
Ah but Cook wouldn’t know anything about that now would he?
Apple is doing to itself what its competitors could never do – drive away loyal customers.
I own a new iPhone7. I am wondering if it will be the last Apple product I ever buy. I was going to update my Airport Extreme as soon as Apple came out with a new one, FOOLISH ME!! I had been in the market to replace my 5+ year old iMac with a new one, but the new ones are simply not competitive. Geeze Apple, can we at least have some BIG SSD drives at a reasonable price like the other makes provide?
I feel like I am dating a woman who says she ‘loves’ me, but gives me a peck on the cheek and then spends the rest of the evening petting her cat.
I should have said the ‘current’ iMacs are not competitive. There are no really new ones out there. Or did I miss an important announcement?
Fact is, they don’t want people to buy anymore Macs. That’s why there has been very little to no support. Look at the Mac Pro as an example.
Once they pass the tipping point of slow sales, they can then say, “See, there isn’t enough of a customer base to make Macs anymore so we’ve decided to stop making Macs.”
All their profit is in the iPhone now. Macs mean nothing to Cook. Don’t believe me? Look at the Macs.
I disagree with all the off-the-charts negativity here. I don’t think you guys realize the incredible engineering achievements these new MacBook Pros represent. Nobody but Apple could put these on the market. Nothing else our there even comes close to the high performance of the SYSTEMS that are these laptops. You pick apart one attribute or another of the system but completely miss the point – the SYSTEM is optimized and what you get is outstanding performance as a whole. From software to hardware Apple is head and shoulders above every other SYSTEM out there. Sure, you may find a faster or better subcomponent in a competitive product elsewhere, but no other SYSTEM comes close. I’m trained as a scientist and engineer and I work in business strategy now. Maybe it gives me a unique perspective, i don’t know. But honestly, people, you are dead wrong with all the wining and complaining. These MacBook Pros are technological marvels with which you can be extremely productive.
Sounds a bit like how the Betamax was promoted by Sony way back when in competition with VHS. The quality was better, the cartridge more compact and storing as much or more in that smaller space. The engineering that went into that was impressive also. Connected to Sony’s other products it was touted that you would have a superior experience. Look where Betamax and Sony are now. Pray Apple learns from Sony’s failures.
“I don’t think you guys realize the incredible engineering achievements these new MacBook Pros represent”
I stopped reading after that, sorry. I’ve said similar things to people over the years about Apple’s products, but although it still kind of holds true… it’s irrelevant when form takes too much precedent over function, and the new MBPs and “current” iMacs are exactly that. Too thin (who cares about thin on a *desktop*??), too expensive to buy RAM and drive space and discrete graphics, can’t add RAM/storage later.
Desktop/notebook computers are NOT mobile devices, and Apple is well advised to remember that. If they don’t care, if they only look at Mac revenue as a percentage of the whole instead of a self-contained unit, then the beancounters have taken over and bad things will be happening soon.
And you should have kept reading. The point is the SYSTEM is far and away superior to anything else out there. The analogy you made to a relatively simple analog technology standard is misplaced. Simply put, there’s no better computer gear than Apple’s. Period.
Well.. despite all the good things that can be said about these macs, they are not the product people were wanting, which is touch screen macs. They are hot now, but I predict some market share slip over 2017 because of this blunder.
The product line is becoming commoditized. The only MBP that can be upgraded at all is the 13″MBP without Touch Bar.
The ‘Pro’ being targeted is apparently the Corporate professional, and the Prosumer. The main motivating force seems to be profit margins; the accountants are in charge.The ecosystem is evolving, macOS is dying. 🖖😀⌚️
MDM, you’re holding Apple to a higher standard, but Apple is demonstrably uninterested in living up to the standards of old Apple. Apple isn’t a computer company any more. They are not a conventional IT company. They are an information appliance company with products in 3 basic spaces. Desktop, mobile, and services. In this new world, the iMac, the Mac Pro, and the Mac mini make no sense.
Apple is building appliances for executives, knowledge workers, power users, and home users. In this world the Mac is just another client for services, not the hub anymore. ICloud is the hub. Don’t hold your breath waiting for tha MacPro. Apple doesn’t want to quell the misgivings of so called “Pro” creatives. At this point it appears they have very strong focus and direction. If they turned around and produced a new MacPro, it would make them look fickle. The top of the line $4300 MacBook Pro is the new MacPro / iMac. Just add a 3rd party monitor. That’s the new desktop. IPad and iPhone make up the new mobile information appliance space.
Just as with USB-C and no other ports, Apple is far out on the bleeding edge of information technology, once again providing us with what they think we need as opposed to what we want. Consider that your desktop already lives in the cloud. That seemingly benign change to macOS Sierra is really huge. If Apple would just give me ICloud Enterprise, with manageable enterprise Apple IDs, an enterprise App Store, shared enterprise storage, and maybe an affordable FileMaker iCloud, I could pretty much dump the computer room in most small to medium sized businesses.
Everyone would walk around with tablets, like on Westworld. Except for a select few high end engineering and creative types.
The old days are gone. It’s time to change the name of this grand old publication to Apple Daily News.
I wonder if they plan to sell the Mac/Mac Pro LoB to IBM?
And then have IBM turn around and sell it to Lenovo like they did with their PCs?
Ho hum, here we go again, the children want a new toy and are going to have a floor stomping temper tantrum if they don’t get it. I include you, Mr. MacDailyNews in this also. For any of this to be more than slightly legitimate, I would like to read:
1) What new CCU developments are available right now that Apple isn’t using in a MacPro that is going to give a substantial improvement to the Mac Pro? I have not seen any reports on this site or others recently only speculation on Intel chips that don’t exist commercially yet.
2) What is not in the current MacPro that more than a few hundred people need, and I mean need, not spec hogs who want speed and bandwidth but never use it? And don’t start with the PCI expansion slots, that is available.
3) Why should Apple go thru an entire design process just to change the packaging when technology hasn’t advanced yet? So you people can then complain that the updates aren’t enough which is what just happened with the MacBookPro?
4) The Surface Touch screen computers some of you are jabbering about are a terrible way to work for most applications and it’s expensive and has the same tech limitations as the new MacBooks. Why are you here insulting Tim Cook? What for? Go get a Surface and bother big heterosexual Microsoft when it doesn’t work the way you want.
I think the sentiment is that the Mac Pro is nice and all (for the general consumer) but having the ‘Pro’ moniker should connote the option of customizing the HW (e.g. CPU, Memory, GPU, internal storage) for the ones that wish to push the envelope and or keep the computer relevant over many years. Slimness should not override utility for ‘Pro’ systems.
Giant Salamander
“Ho hum, here we go again, the children want a new toy…”
But the children pay for the new toy. Also smart children don’t want the toys they used in 2013 for today’s top price.
And at least a great part in the Pro toy is 3X faster. That is the GPU. The Mac Pro has 2 of those and they are boring, slow and overpriced. Children learns. Thunderbolt 3 is 50% faster and today even the MBP is as fast as the entry level Mac Pro. Total Apple fault.
Then you say Mac Pro users are just a few. That is also Apple’s only fault because today the demand and need for even better industry creations of all kinds is higher than ever, it is growing and it will grow even more in 2017. Workstation sales has nothing to do with smartphones or tablet sales. High end PC demand is growing, contrary to the rest of the PC computer industry. Did you knew that? No you didn’t.
Should a leader surrender. Why? even other players in the industry re not giving up, why Apple.
Steve Jobs also said “stay hungry” but Apple is so satisfied they don’t ask anymore. We could cheery pick all the arguments we want to justify what we think…
And at least on the hardware side others are creating competitive products using today’s top parts. But should Apple conform others may be over Apple soon enough.
All those you want to call children are those who know their toys and their game better than you do, and apparently more than Apple too.
Sorry TB 3 is 2X faster.
Apple is following the path of many companies after the founder dies or steps back- it drifts and stagnates because of the lack of vision. Instead of being lean, hungry and driven they are fat, lazy and entitled.
Look at this article from a couple of months back:
“That means by the end of 2017, in theory, Apple could have had more than half a trillion dollars in net cash on the balance sheet with no debt. Apple’s entire market cap right now is $530 billion. Not many publicly traded companies are in a position to equal their entire market cap with their net cash balance in the next two years. None, in fact, not even Apple.”
The article is titled “What If Apple Had Followed Steve Jobs Model”
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/what-if-apple-had-followed-steve-jobs-model-2016-06-16
You’re right. This is similar to what happened when Walt Disney died. The entire company sputtered wondering “what would Walt do?”
It wasn’t until more than a decade later, when Michael Eisner (from Paramount) and Frank Wells (from Warner Bros) came in and shook out the cobwebs. Disney took off like a rocket. I just hope it doesn’t take a decade for the same to happen to Apple.
I manage a Creative Services team of six, and we’re all using three, four and five year old iMacs because there’s nothing terribly compelling out there for desktop users. Too bad, too.
Yes, i Agree this is ridiculus. I bought millions of dollars in Apple products in The past. And now i am looking into Lenovo workstations because Apple as not upgrade their workstation in 4 years. 4 years ! No Words about it ! 4 years ! Grow The F***** up Apple .
What Apple sees as a small group of professional users is what we used to call just Mac Users.
Who didn’t buy a Mac to do WORK? Who buys an IOS device to do work that involves saving files, importing into various specialized programs and then SAVING locally?
Turn off your internet and see how much work you can do on your iPad.
Ditto what MDN said. I still use a loaded 5k 27″ iMac that was made in 2014 and I’m pissed about the delays. It affects my business, because I won’t buy old stuff when new Macs should be available and they consistently are NOT. My MBPro won’t support 4k larger screens and it’s just upsetting.
Ok Tim I get it, iPads are the future. At some point we will all move to a touch based OS and leave the mouse behind.
But the iPad isn’t ready to replace the Mac.
It may be at some point, but until you update the OS to handle file systems, true pro apps, and increase the screen size so we can get some work done, it’s not going to happen.
All you will do is force the users that need to get work done over to another platform.
Unfortunately you need to release something that is as groundbreaking as Microsoft surface studio.
I totally agree, there are too many parts of the Apple ecosystem which are abandoned because they are not the latest sexy thing. Some of these parts are even part of IOS! Apple needs to get it in their head that they are only great when the whole experience is great, and that total experience is slipping when they don’t fund development of all the parts.