“Not to totally discount the Retina iMac (2014 and 2015) and the new MacBook (2015), but the rate of [Mac] change has obviously slowed. Apple isn’t even giving us ‘boring’ workaday component refreshes to keep up with new CPUs and GPUs as they’re released,” Andrew Cunningham and Lee Hutchinson write for Ars Technica.
“You could argue that year-over-year improvements in PC CPUs and GPUs have become so minor that it doesn’t make a huge practical difference, but that’s no excuse not to give Mac buyers the newest and best their money can buy,” Cunningham and Hutchinson write. “Especially not when that’s exactly the brand reputation that Apple has been cultivating over most of the last two decades.”
“Sierra is fine software, but after a couple years of parity, it again feels as though it’s taking a backseat to iOS, primarily because of its half-hearted implementations of major new iOS features like Messages and Siri,” Cunningham and Hutchinson write. “The Mac is still a fundamentally stable, solid, usable platform, but its hardware is no longer running circles around the rest of the PC industry. Apple could be doing more — let’s hope some of these long-rumored refreshes arrive sooner rather than later.”
Reams more in the very comprehensive in the full review – recommended, as usual – here.
MacDailyNews Take: More is coming. This year. Stay tuned.