“Everything that Apple did, and didn’t do, with its Mac lineup this year tells me the company would rather be selling more iPads and iPhones,” Vlad Savov writes for The Verge.
“he departures from the 2016 MacBook Pro — MagSafe charger, USB and memory card slots, and a keyboard with more than 0.55mm of travel — are all things the iPad lacks. The improvements to the same machine — thinner, lighter, all-metal chassis, a display with wider color gamut, and a sliver of a touchscreen called the Touch Bar — are all things the iPad has,” Savov writes. “If it’s not perfectly obvious, Apple’s efforts with its new Macs are to wean its old users off their desktop and laptop habits and familiarize them with the new world of touchscreen PCs. ”
“What that means for macOS is that it’s fast turning into legacy software: an afterthought on its way to becoming abandonware,” Savov writes. “This may all sound very dramatic, but yesterday’s report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, someone with impeccable connections within Apple’s ranks, agrees with my assessment: ‘In another sign that the company has prioritized the iPhone, Apple re-organized its software engineering department so there’s no longer a dedicated Mac operating system team. There is now just one team, and most of the engineers are iOS first, giving the people working on the iPhone and iPad more power.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we’ve long been saying, iOS devices and OS X Macs inevitably are going to grow closer over time, not just in hardware, but in software, too.
As we wrote two years ago:
Think code convergence (more so than today) with UI modifications per device. A unified underlying codebase for Intel, Apple A-series, and, in Apple’s labs, likely other chips, too (just in case). This would allow for a single App Store for Mac, iPhone, and iPad users that features a mix of apps: Some that are touch-only, some that are Mac-only, and some that are universal (can run on both traditional notebooks and desktops as well as on multi-touch computers like iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and – pretty please, Apple – Apple TV). Don’t be surprised to see Apple A-series-powered Macs, either. — MacDailyNews Take, January 9, 2014
Furthermore:
There is no reason why Apple could not offer both A-series-powered Macs and Intel-based Macs. The two are not mutually exclusive… — MacDailyNews, January 14, 2015
Don’t worry. Jonny Ive put some cheese grater Mac Pros in India. All is well. LMFAO.
My company had been 100% Apple products on the mobile front for the last 4 years. In the last month I’m seeing MS surfaces being deployed to the execs (by their request).
Apple has apparently squandered its lead.
I’ve seen the same thing happening at my job.
I went to sign some paperwork at my attorney’s office the other day and he had a new surface. He had an iPad when I visited the time before that.
This is what I’ve been saying for a while now. Apple has gone the wrong direction and Microsoft got it right with the Surface products. Apple needs to correct itself ASAP. Touchscreen macOS that is the right direction.
I would not buy a Surface. What an ungainly, Windows- stinking mess. We’ll see how that works out long- term. People are idiots. And suckers. Carpal- tunnel inducing fingerprinted Microsoftian nightmare. Ugh.
That might have been the case years ago, but you obviously have not tried it lately. Have fun with your behind the curve legacy crap. iOS = idiot operating system.
The point is you cannot do REAL work on iOS. Great for quick emails or web browsing or some media apps. But people who actually need powerful features are realizing Apple doesn’t care about them. How times have changed. Apple used to be about doing powerful things with easy, intuitive interfaces. Now if you don’t know the right way to swipe you can’t figure out how to do all sorts of things. Completely unintuitive and NOT powerful. I still can’t jump to the top of a web page on iOS if I have navigation running!!!
Maybe you shouldn’t be surfing the web while driving?
Maybe HS is walking?
And windows does this better? Does the surface even have built in navigation, let alone single tap snap to the top of the window?
Same thing as the people who think food somehow magically appears into the grocery store.
No, someone grew it and hauled it. Same for iOS apps, just different job types.
“Carpal- tunnel inducing fingerprinted Microsoftian nightmare.”
This attitude is exactly what I think is wrong with Apple these days.
Do I want to ALWAYS use a touchscreen on my laptop? No. But I would love to SOMETIMES use a touchscreen.
But no, we can’t have the option at all. That is simply stupid.
Person I work with has a surface. I have an iPad Pro. When we are in meetings, I’m doing all the planning on my pro. He’s sitting next to me, and when asked to pull something up, he RDPs into his desktop from the surface, lol.
So your friend pulls up data from his secure workstation while you get your file from where — Apples iCloud? Do you two ever actually share files frim the same server?
Apple is no longer about making the best products. Apple is about making the most profitable products. Those products are mobile appliances, with only those features necessary to be competitive.
And why shouldn’t they do this? Those are the products that sell the best by far. Mobile appliances are what the broad majority of device buyers demonstrate interest in. Even in the general purpose conventional computer category, the interest is almost all in MacBooks.
Probably the only reason the MacPro is still on the market is that they have so many left to get rid of.
They demonstrate on almost a monthly basis MORE DAMN INTEREST IN EMOJIS than the Macintosh category.
And yet Tim Cook, bless his good heart, comes out and says “We are committed to the Mac!”
Committed to making it go away it would seem.
Committed to diminishing its relevance.
Committed to the Mac in the way that Obama was committed to America. He totally had plans, good for some, not for the country.
If Apple were any more “committed” the Mac would already be gone.
Cook haters, you don’t get it, but he’s really doing a fantastic job of keeping the good ship Apple on the course Steve Jobs laid out years ago.
The big worry is that they just don’t seem to be able to ramp up iOS in professional features quickly enough.
Death to Emojis!
Sooner or later “profitable products” become has-beens of the past.
The iPhone as we see now will eventually see pricing and profit declines and Apple had better be ready to address it.
Stop doing buybacks.
The real TMac? Or an impersonator?
More whining, more supposition, little substance. You people are worrying yourselves into an early grave. Everything will be OK in the long term. You guys are making a mountain out of a molehill. Call me whatever you want, but I don’t think the grasshopper small that green on the Microsoft side of the fence. The fourth generation of the Surface is finally adequate. The Xboxes are not melting down anymore. Windows phones have practically disappeared from existence. Time will tell regarding the Studio. And Microsoft now has another big ass screen that costs lots of money and reputedly solves problems that should not even exist (hint, Microsoft created the problems and now wants you to pay extra to work around them).
If you seriously think that Microsoft is superior to Aple and have a better future because of the Surface and Studio, then switch and have fun. Good luck with that. No one is stopping you. Don’t threaten. Leave.
Consumer fashion is profitable in the short term but fashion is fickle. Without a stable Mac platform supported by stable business users, any iPhone misstep would be dramatic. As we have seen before, Apple can decline rapidly if it stops delivering consistent good value across all its products.
The Mac platform is not dead because there is no other Apple os that can do half as much.
What is dead is the brains of the leaders at Apple who are still trying to hock trashcans as pro computers and neutered minis that cost twice what the identical windoze pc costs. Except the windoze pc would have twice the power and a full array of ports and user customization options.
Apple needs a user base more rhan it needs huge margin products right now. Otherwise, the party hangover won’t be pretty in cupertino
The thing that astounds me is that people develop iOS apps on Macs, it’s going to be a long time before 100% of development is going to be possible and then done on iOS so if only to support iOS Apple should be making sure Macs and MacOS give their developers the tools they need/want. That’s forgetting people who just use Macs for personal/business use.
Yes, but for every App that’s bought on the store, it likely required less than a few hundred MacOS devices to make, but could be on over a million iOS devices overnight. MacOS is important as a way to create content for iOS. So, if they sell only a few million a year, that’s still supplying iOS developers with the tools they need.
IF the rumor is true that the macOS team has been disbanded then Macs in general have at the very most five more years. The system software known as macOS is way too complex to be a secondary scope of knowledge for the macOS developers. The reality is macOS is much more complex than iOS, watchOS, or tvOS. Without a dedicated macOS team the operating system goes into a maintenance mode with new features added only as necessary to support new hardware — nothing more.
IF we are still buying Macs in 2021, those will likely be the last ones (even portables) — again, IF the rumor of the macOS team being disbanded is true. So the Mac’s run will have been 1984 – 2022. A long run for sure, but its latter days could have been brighter and could have been longer.
So all development on a Microsoft PC? That would be the end and Microsoft love it.
I doubt they’ve fired all the people who worked on macOS, they’ll just be under the same banner. That’s to to say it’s a good decision, but it’s not going to be iOS people doing macOS in their spare time.
It’s a matter of priorities. If it is just one big happy team, then the way to get ahead on the team is to be the most proficient on the biggest selling software the team supports. You get the most promotions and bonuses if you’re a star attached to a rising product. It’s just the way it is.
Therefore, by that fact, Apple’s internal software developers will focus on learning — and keeping up to date on — iOS and watchOS and maybe tvOS. Why become one of the few that is the most proficient in macOS IF they just dissolved that group?
The important thing to remember is that this is just a rumor at this point. It is consistent with everything I’m reading and even hearing whispered behind closed doors, but it is still a rumor at this point.
Years from now it will be revealed that Tim Cook was a Samsung mole.
The dumbing down of Apple?
A shame their only competition is an operating system I abandoned a decade ago.
We need to give this maybe another year to see how Apple moves forward. If this is true, perhaps the pipeline that Tim Cook keeps talking about includes a much more powerful iOS “pro” including a file system and tools for true pro users. Maybe the pipeline is about convergence. That would be a plausible explanation for what is happening right now in terms of seeming neglect of the Mac side.
The fact they are all working together is a positive, be more worried if they were kept separate at this stage. Would be worried if the other comments about macOS being marginalised within that team mind. But I’m not sure there is anything beyond circumstantial evidence for that. MacOS is rather good at present, one of the better strings to the bow, it’s what it’s used for that’s a bit disappointing for the most part.
If the OS is convergent, why can’t the hardware? Give us a surface like touch screen Mac please. MS is marketing the heck out of this point of difference, and they are right to do so.
Apple abandons the Mac, then I abandon Apple. IOS watchos tvos and whatever the next iCloud fashion accessory os apple releases aren’t cutting it.
Dear Apple: just open MacOS to third party hardware makers of your choice. You can control their quality as much as you want but let them give us the Macs you can’t deliver.
Thanks.
YES!!
iOS is macOS with touch screen UI.
watchOS is macos with small touch screen UI
and so on.
macOS is what everything is based on and it is not going anywhere.
It is incorrect to state that iOS = macOS with touch screen UI, etc.
It IS correct to state that iOS and watchOS are based on macOS. All of them run on the same kernel, despite using different processor architectures:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XNU
Derek, a bit of a correction…
iOS and watchOS are based upon variations of the macOS kernel. The kernals are not the same. Both iOS and watchOS kernels have smaller footprints than the macOS kernel as well as having less functionality.
Total agreement. But only we techies care about the finer points.
Much as I fully agree that it’s time to be upset at Apple about their lethargy in updating the Mac and macOS…
This statement is absurd:
What that means for macOS is that it’s fast turning into legacy software: an afterthought on its way to becoming abandonware
NO. ‘Legacy’/’Abandonware’ specifically refers to software that is no longer developed or supported. There is zero evidence that this has happened or is going to happen. Tim Cook has instead stated this past week:
Some folks in the media have raised the question about whether we’re committed to desktops. If there’s any doubt about that with our teams, let me be very clear: we have great desktops in our roadmap. Nobody should worry about that.
Meanwhile: Is Apple providing sufficient focus on the Mac platform? Obviously NOT!
Derek, I disagree. Abandoning the macOS team and folding those internal developers into a generic “OS” team (IF it is really happening) **IS** the first step to turning macOS into a legacy piece of software. (Though some might argue that the first hint was the renaming of Mac OS X to macOS to conform to iOS, watchOS and tvOS was the first step.)
Something is ‘legacy’ when it’s dumped and becomes something from the past. Even with the stupid (quoting myself) degradation of Apple’s focus on Macs, nothing-at-all indicates any process of (being creative->) legacification. (I broke my spell checker).
IOW: This amount so sensationalism by way for induced paranoia. Let’s walk on the ground, not in someone’s cloud of purple haze regarding this subject. If legacification 🙂 looks to be the case, we’ll all join in bombing Apple with valid F-Bombs.
IOW: Let’s get off the FAKE NEWS cycle and get back to worrying about FACTS.
[I am as ever astounded at our ability as humans to skip off into the abstract while real things are happening IRL. What is our problem? Yup, I do it too.]
I was neutral on Cook, now I think he wrecking Apple. Dropping the Airports turned me. I was waiting for a new one and I see him killing MacOS in the future. F Him. He sucks. They are just treading water and taking in some water while breathing here and there. Tim Cook is a slow cancer.