Apple’s 2016 in review | Hacker News Reader

Apple’s 2016 in review

chuqui.com

396 pointsmef385 comments

How do they fix this? They need to do more talking — and even more listening — with their users. Engage with the influencers. Sit down and find out what their developers need that the current products don’t offer. Find out what is making their users unhappy.

Asking people what they want will give you predictable results: complaints about any kind of change and positive feedback about shiny-looking features that demo well. You'll end up pulled in a million directions as you try to account for everyone's feedback.

The traditional Apple solution was to give a single idealized user — Steve Jobs — the power to improve his own experience. Nobody can replace Steve, but I think someone (or some group) inside Apple needs to fill this role before their products can become really great again.

Henry Ford: "If I asked people what they want, they'd say 'faster horses'"

Exactly, I find myself needing to use this quote all too often but it is a wonderfully well considered statement on product engineering.

Really? I have a lot of hay, and it grows in my field for free. Horse manure goes well on my roses. I don't have petrol. I really did want a faster horse.

You're in luck: Maximum-speed horses are indeed still available.

Indeed, if you have the money - you can buy racing speed horses and in many countries it's still legal to ride them on the road while abiding standard road rules and avoiding highways. (The term 'Enterprise Horse' came to mind and I had a giggle)

Enterprise Horse you say?

You want a Suffolk Punch boiy[sic][1]!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffolk_Punch

[1] boiy, or some spelling there of, is how old fellas round these parts (Suffolk, England) like to refer to each other. :)

There is of course the concept of a "Young" old Boy

A very good point.

For anyone wondering what a proper young old boy sounds like I would suggest the following factual and totally legit documentary on the storm of 1987 ...as described by one "Brian from Melton":-

https://vimeo.com/130537730

So what? The key take out here is "faster", so asking questions is not necessarily irrelevant, instead of focusing on making one's horses shinier or more economical. You need to find out what problem to fix.

These days all apple will give you is a thinner horse with less features.

A thinner, slightly faster, slightly blacker horse that will needs to stop for water a little sooner.

I like the 2016 MacBook Pro. The disappointment I felt was that after such a long wait for the update, I was expecting/hoping for a best of breed laptop, with no real flaws. In day to day use I don't actually think about its various (and widely discussed) flaws so much, and I just get on with using it as a tool to do my work.

The Touchbar is useless, though.

> The key take out here is "faster"

Even that part is mostly wrong. A fast horse can run more than 40MPH which about all you can expect from a car in a city. The main reason most people don't own a horse isn't that a car is faster.

Users ask for things that are obvious. No kidding faster is better. Can we have it cheaper and more reliable too?

If you ask most people in 1870 how to improve those aspects of a horse they'll tell you all about horse breeding but that doesn't get you a car.

Your ignoring the massive additional logistic costs that horse drawn transport has vs mechanised.

> Even that part is mostly wrong. A fast horse can run more than 40MPH which about all you can expect from a car in a city. The main reason most people don't own a horse isn't that a car is faster.

Only on flat ground. Make a horse go uphill for a while and he will soon stop if carrying anything. A car, even an ancient one, not so much.

Add to that that cars can maintain a sustained speed as long as they have fuel, and of course cars are much faster than horses all things considered, and of course this is one of the reasons of their adoption - you can get much farther with a car than with a horse in the same amount of time, and it needs less maintenance as well.

> Make a horse go uphill for a while and he will soon stop if carrying anything. A car, even an ancient one, not so much.

> you can get much farther with a car than with a horse in the same amount of time, and it needs less maintenance as well.

But that's not faster. That's endurance, reliability, economy. You're arguing that the tortoise is faster than the hare, but "being faster" isn't how the tortoise won the race.

> A fast horse can run more than 40MPH which about all you can expect from a car in a city

A slow car can go much more than 40 mph. Both cars and horses may be practically limited by traffic most of the time in crowded urban environments, but cars are still faster, even in most cities, on both peak and practically-attained-average speeds.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Model_T

"The Model T had a front-mounted 177-cubic-inch (2.9 L) inline four-cylinder engine, producing 20 hp (15 kW), for a top speed of 40–45 mph (64–72 km/h)."

Being faster than horses isn't why cars won. Given the choice between a modern car and a hypothetical horse with the same or higher top speed, most people are still not going to choose the horse.

Actually, churning out better horses is what Apple does best. We are at a point where every other company has figured out how to make a good/great horse, and hence the Apple advantage is diminished.

It is unlikely, although possible, that this quote is correctly attributed.

http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/07/28/ford-faster-horse/

And Ford could have asked: "Do you prefer it faster or that it's a horse?" - "I already have a horse." - "OK, I'll make something that goes faster."

I'd like an early 2015 MBP with 32 gig, faster processor and SSD and no fancy light bar....

Oh wait, that's a fancier horse...

I'd like an early 2015 MBP with 32 gig, faster processor and SSD and no fancy light bar....

Oh wait, that's a fancier horse...

> Henry Ford: "If I asked people what they want, they'd say 'faster horses'"

From the OP:

>>> Once they do that, they then need to go off and be Apple, but from a base of knowledge instead of a set of assumptions — assumptions that seem to be flawed and incorrect. But what Apple doesn’t want to do is start building products the way other companies do, because we don’t need “faster horses”, we need Apple to look beyond what users are asking for and figure out what they really need. That’s been Apple’s innovation strength in the past, and right now, it increasingly seems missing from the products they give us.

I'd rather have a faster horse than a skinny, old horse with a touch bar.

This pseudo-intellectual quote makes no sense when what was actually delivered was a slower horse with 3 legs.

The typical way of addressing the 'users don't know what they want' sort of issue is to build some really high quality ideas or concepts and then talk with some of your users about them. See what they like see what they don't. This can be done poorly too, I attended a Lenovo tablet investigation which was sad from the perspective that the people who were putting it on for Lenovo were trying to insure that everyone said only good things about their design decisions and the designers were trying very hard to get actual opinions from people. The user experience agency was clearly a wasted expense for Lenovo, and their lead tablet designer reached out directly to some of us with counter opinions to solicit more feedback.

I feel like it's less about coming up with good ideas/questions and more about having the "idealized user." A user with extremely good taste that can guide development. And put that user in charge of everything.

How does the current Apple identify the correct idealised user when they don't seem to share the required taste?

They need to relearn and engage in user discovery and questioning until they realise what niches they occupy and their use cases and needs.

I doubt Apple's former lead would ever have put out a Mac that needs a dongle to connect to iPhone but not Android. I doubt he'd have killed Apple monitors as an iMac sat next to a black LG is just so damn ugly. iOS, MacOS and current hardware shows, oh so clearly, that once notorious sense of detail and overall direction is long gone.

As is, their idealised user is envisioning all the wrong gimmicky things and missing most of the details. They're trying to play "what would Steve do?" but not being him they can't play that game well.

>> I doubt Apple's former lead would ever have put out a Mac that needs a dongle to connect to iPhone but not Android

That just says it all really, doesn't it? Macs simply don't "just work" anymore. I feel like they're making almost random hardware changes

> needs a dongle to connect to iPhone

What's wrong with the USB-C to Lightning cable?

http://www.apple.com/uk/shop/product/MK0X2ZM/A/usb-c-to-ligh...

Does it come in the box? No. So you just bought a $900 phone, and a couple months later you bought a $2.5k+ computer, and oh, HAHAHAHAHA, the fucking cable you need isn't included.

What type of user experience is that?

As a side note: there's nothing wrong with usb-c. I can see why it's an improvement! But the reason apple are pricks is they didn't also throw in a single usb-a port so we can keep using the dozen devices and 30 cables I already own.

> What type of user experience is that?

It's one for people who pick up the new cable and get on with their lives.

People have issues with Apple's hardware decisions with their laptops, minis and Mac Pros that aren't addressed by a cable.

One paper cut issue is solved by buying a cable and they can t get by with their lives on the new or lack their of new hardware.

I don't get this argument. How long does a manufacturer keep supporting an old port because users have older devices?

The current phone does not come with a usb-c cable because it is older than the MacBook Pros and the Laptops don't come with a lightning cable because not everyone that has the laptop has an iPhone. I'm sure the next iPhone will come with a usb-c cable and then people will complain that they can't charge it with their old laptops.

> I doubt Apple's former lead would ever have put out a Mac that needs a dongle to connect to iPhone

The original iPod was incompatible with many Macs still in use at the time that lacked FireWire ports.

Clayton Christensen (guy who wrote Innovator's Dilemma) has a pretty good debunking of the "target user" approach, telling us to instead focus on what job users intend to do with your product. Tells it through the story of trying to figure out the idealized milkshake buyer: https://youtu.be/f84LymEs67Y?t=27s

This whole idea goes by the name Jobs to be Done. Intercom has a sick PDF book on applying the concepts to product development: https://www.intercom.com/books/jobs-to-be-done

Interesting read, thanks!

>> Find out what is making their users unhappy.

> Asking people what they want will give you predictable results...

Asking someone about what's making them unhappy is very different from asking them what they want. In my experience, the value in talking to users is in understanding common pain points, not finding solutions.

Also the case in game development. Players make great patients, but bad doctors.

Notice that the author doesn't say "do what your users tell you to do", but "find out what they need and what they experience as problematic".

Any user research will involve interacting with users, but it's not to gather their opinions, which is almost always irrelevant, but to document their behavior, needs and drives.

Users will offer solutions, because that comes naturally, but these need to be turned back into problems before being used. For example,

User: "I want a big button in the middle of the screen that says 'print' and then prints my stuff immediately!"

Researcher:"So you print a lot during your day?"

User: "Yeah, and each time I have to go down a long list of menus, and then I have to reselect the printer each time."

Apple has apparently been able to get by with user studies done on a target group of one (Jobs). However, he's not there any more, and the more time that passes, the more it seems that they haven't been able to fill his shoes.

Steve was a notoriously hard person to work with. Realistically, anyone who Steve was likely to name as his successor would be a follower, someone who went along with whatever Steve said and told him what he wanted to hear. What Apple needed was another person like Steve, but unfortunately, by letting Steve select that person, they ended up with someone completely unlike Steve.

True, but of course the choice was up to Steve Jobs, not Apple. Also, how the hell would you hire "person like Steve" anyway?

As Paul Graham said, "So if Apple's not going to make the next iPad, who is? None of the existing players. None of them are run by product visionaries, and empirically you can't seem to get those by hiring them. Empirically the way you get a product visionary as CEO is for him to found the company and not get fired. So the company that creates the next wave of hardware is probably going to have to be a startup." – http://www.paulgraham.com/ambitious.html

This is a very clever analysis. Thanks for that, it makes a lot of sense.

It also explains why it's shifted from being a computer company that makes gadgets (Jobs) is now becoming a gadget company that happens to make some computers as well (Cook).

In all this, the gates are wide open for Microsoft to score some good points here towards devs.

How do you figure there has been a "shift" like you said?

In 2007 Jobs was using the phrase "post-PC", and by the time he died in 2011, more than half of Apple's revenue was iPhone/iPad/etc.

To me it seems that Cook is just continuing the trend.

Precisely. Continuing Steve's vision as best they can imagine it (not well). Don't forget when he used the post-PC phrase he was very clear PCs are still going to be needed and valued. It wasn't supposed to be either-or.

Pretty sure in 6 years Jobs would have picked up some new trends, details and directions. Pretty sure we'd not be stuck in some infinte repeat loop. Thinner. Groundhog Day. Repeat.

The shift is the pure neglect towards the dev community. Something that most likely would not have happened so blatant and fast under Jobs. It is also completely not necessary that making great phones excludes a company from making at least decent upgrade cycles in their computer hardware.

Why should one exclude the other?

How do you figure "pure neglect"? What are the features you're missing in the current Mac lineup? Which products from other manufacturers make a meaningful improvement on Apple's offering for "devs"?

Well a computer with enough GPU performance to work with VR would be a nice start. Apple don't currently have anything available other than hacking an eGPU set up together.

The "current" Mac Pro is over 3 (4?) years old now. Users can't upgrade it because of the proprietary GPU cards and Apple don't seem able to keep it relevant themselves.

It's difficult to have a professional relationship with a supplier where the best options for macOS are either a dodgy Hackintosh or a used 2012 Mac Pro with a new GPU.

VR is a subset of PC gaming right now, and Apple has never offered hardware sufficient for high-end PC gaming.

GPUs are for more than VR. All 3D rendering is moving to GPUs, All machine learning development needs GPUs.

GPU is the future of professional computing in many emerging sectors. Apple currently ships no hardware compatible with any of this.

GPU nowadays is almost a misnomer. They are more like supercharged versions of the old "floating-point calculation" chips. As such, they have plenty of applications beyond VR - bitcoin, data analysis, encryption etc etc etc.

Here's one piece of anecdata, not for a "dev" but for another high-end use case: professional photography.

My wife is a professional photographer. Her current photo-editing computer is a Windows 7 desktop with 16 GB of RAM.

We know Windows 7's days are numbered, so we're starting to think about her next editing computer. The two most obvious options are (a) some Apple product, or (b) a computer running Windows 10.

Here are the major criteria for the replacement, which need to remain true for 3+ years after the computer's purchase:

(1) It must legally run current Adobe products. (2) Can support > 16 GB RAM during its lifetime. (3) There must be minimal unplanned downtime. (4) The price can't be exorbitant, relative to a medium-high end PC. TCO should also be reasonable. (5) It must be convenient to transfer photos from her camera's SD card. (6) We'd like to minimize the time and attention we put into initial setup and maintenance.

So the most obvious options (currently) are:

* Apple: MacPro, iMac, or MacBook Pro

* PC: Windows 8 or Windows 10

Here's how I score the options, although perhaps someone will correct me:

(1) Easily satisfied by all options listed.

(2) No MacBook Pro satisfies this. Fast SSD for swap is helpful but sub-optimal.

(3) Windows 10 (non-enterprise) fails this, because of unavoidable updates. MacPro and iMac fail this because (AFAIK) Apple doesn't offer loaners for these during warranty work.

(4) For initial purchase cost, the MacPro is a fail, and the MacBook Pro is nearly a fail. However, all current Apple products are potential TCO fail given the lack of user-replaceable components.

(5) AFAIK the desktop Macs fail this, although connecting an external USB reader should be easy enough. I suspect the MacBook Pro would be more hassle, given its ports/dongles mess.

(6) All of the options should satisfy this criterion well-enough.

As far as I can tell, the winner is a Windows 8 PC.

Why is no Apple product a viable winner, given our criteria?

- Nothing in the current lineup meets all our criteria.

- We don't know if/when something will be added that meets our criteria.

- We're not sure what Apple's longer-term plans are, so we don't want to invest time/money into a PC-to-Apple transition, just to need to reverse it in a few years.

The three issues listed immediately above strike me as a pointless fail in Apple's strategy, at least relative to my wife's business's needs.

Looks like the only blocker for Windows 10 is the "minimal unplanned downtime." Although Windows 10 does have mandatory updates, I have yet to see one that requires immediate and sudden reboots. Yes, if you get prompted for an update reboot and delay it a few times, the system will eventually force the update, but a simple workflow change of rebooting the system every night when you're done working with it and are going to bed would eliminate the unexpected updates and the associated downtime.

I'm not particularly concerned about unplanned reboots. The real issue is some Windows 10 updates have caused problems which made the computers unusable until remediated.

There are some points in the business calendar where 1-2 days of downtime is catastrophic. For example, shortly before the deadline for submitting highschool senior photographs to the yearbook publisher.

If we could purchase a version of Windows 10 which allowed her to delay installing updates for 1-2 months until a crunch time is over, that would probably be acceptable.

AFAIK only Windows 10 Enterprise allows that, and I'm not aware of any legal way we can get that.

If we do have to go the Windows 10 route, my contingency plan is to look into setting up a firewall (external to the Windows 10 box) that blocks all relevant Microsoft IP addresses.

The "immediate forced reboots" on Windows 10 are vastly overhyped and received much more negative press than they should have. I am yet to experience a reboot when I didn't want it. Anecdotal for sure but I've set my inactive hours inside Win10's settings and never had a problem.

Windows 10 is your best answer. It's gonna be supported very long and it's a 99.9% painless upgrade from Windows 7.

Definitely invest in a mid-to-high range PC would be my advice. I have 5-year old i7 3770 CPU and I am yet to find something that makes it choke. Only refreshment I did to my now 5-year old PC was to increase RAM from 16 to 32GB and to get GTX 980 (was 650 before). The PC is flying whatever I do -- and I'm a programmer, trust me I do a lot.

I mentioned this in another post, but the issue with updates isn't that they're immediate, it's they they're forced.

My wife needs her system to be stable during certain points in the yearly business calendar, and an unavoidable, potentially-breaking update is a serious concern.

But why Windows 10 rather than Windows 8? Both will receive security updates for a long time, and (AFAIK) Windows 8 doesn't have the issue of unavoidable pushed updates.

The only real downside I know of to Windows 8 is its bad UI, but I'm told there are 3rd-party shell replacements which approximate the Windows 7 interface.

I don't have extensive experience with Win8 first-hand, but I've heard from many people that Win10 has a much better backwards compatibility. Practically almost nothing ever broke for people, while conversely Win8 had a lot of complaints.

I can't argue either way though. I as a programmer took the plunge one afternoon around 8 months ago and never looked back. Win10 is superior to Win7 -- my girlfriend's graphical processing software (and part of her games) even started working faster after her upgrade.

All of that is anecdotal of course but strategically speaking, Win10 will be around for much longer.

For (3) check local independent repair shops. I know of several Apple-authorized repair shops that rent inexpensive loaners while they're working on your computer.

Thanks for the tip!

> It is also completely not necessary that making great phones excludes a company from making at least decent upgrade cycles in their computer hardware.

You bet! all those billions sitting in their coffers and they still couldn't pull their asses to achieve progress. It is like Microsoft of the XP era.

I was pulling my hairs in 2003 cursing at Bill Gates, then switched to Mac until now. But I think the Mac era is over as well and Bill Gates is cool again. He's really great in his humanitarian work.

> He's really great in his humanitarian work.

I'm sure a lot of what Gates is currently doing is praiseworthy.

But to be even-handed, we should also remember the means by which he obtained a lot of the money he's giving away.

Indeed Jobs himself described computers as like trucks (large ute/pickup), whereas most people only need a regular car.[0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfJ3QxJYsw8

Jobs was a salesman. He said a lot of stuff - and not all of it stood up to scrutiny.

He said no one would use phablets and called them the 'Hummers' of phones - this was back when a 5-inch phones were considered huge. He also denigrated 7-inch tablets by saying users would need to file-down their fingers to use them (and yet iPhone users could comfortably use 3.5-inch screens). Apple proceeded to profitably venture into both product categories with the iPhone 6+ and the iPad mini.

We are now in a post-'Post-PC' world: iPad sales have plateaued/slumped over the last couple of years. If there is money to be made selling computers, Apple will sell them regardless of what they said in the past.

Looks more like post-MBP

Has others have pointed out - becoming a widget company was Jobs plan all along.

The true value of Steve Jobs is the reality distortion field. That's really was is missing here with the new Mac.

All the discutable decisions about the Mac that people complain about are just similar to the trends set under Jobs, the difference is that he would make the people believe that Apple was 100% behind the Mac. There would no need for Jobs to write twice in a month to employee and the press to say that Apple was committed to it.

I'm not sure what is missing exactly, but the MBP failed at delivery rather than feature. For example, did Apple really need to can all their Mac related accessories at the same time, building up a negative climate. They could have rebranded the LG monitor. Somehow give the people a hint that Apple is behind the USB-C, not just picking up and leave it up to the third party to sort out. (which is BTW what Apple has always really done, it just seemed handled better)

Apple strategy is to keep everything secret until they do a big delivery event. They are utterly bad at delivery since Jobs is gone, and the lengthy secrecy they keep around everything is now not building hype, just building apprehension.

> Has others have pointed out - becoming a widget company was Jobs plan all along.

That's not the case: back in 2001 post-PC thinking was popular too, and Jobs stood out against it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmvmtmqqbeI . That's evidently why Jobs was so reluctant to make the iPod work with Windows PCs: his whole plan for the iPod was to have it sell his intended Digital Hub, the Mac. He did eventually come around to post-PC thinking of course, but only quite late: even in the D 2007 interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85PMSYAguZ8 he and Gates were quite resistant to it.

> What Apple needed was another person like Steve

I know--so obvious, right? All they needed was another Steve Jobs. Why didn't they think of that, and just go out and get one? I hear they grow on trees.

> What Apple needed was another person like Steve...

They had one. Tim fired him.

What makes Forstall so great? If he's truly worthy of that comparison, perhaps Apple should buy him along with Snap; it would be hilarious if Snapchat turned out to be the NeXTSTEP of this generation.

Wouldn't Fadell be just as good?

Scott Forstall combined Steve Jobs's sensibilities and obsessive attention to detail with a deep, working background in software engineering. He championed UI usability and responsiveness, spearheaded accessibility initiatives out of care rather than for PR, and led the OS X, iOS, and Safari teams through arguably their best and most reliable years.

Scott Forstall is why the iPhone was the iPhone. Tony Fadell was almost why the iPhone was an iPod.

Scott didn't manage the "macOS" team sorry. Bertrand, Craig & Andreas, not Scott.

Yes, but Forstall was responsible for skeumorphism across all of iOS, so I'm not certain he really was as visionary as Jobs.

Not to mention, the Maps fiasco happened under his watch.

Whilst this was a big blunder, the Apple Maps project was an absolutely enormous undertaking. The Google Maps app itself had an almost 10 years head start, beginning life in 2003 at a startup which Google purchased. I think it's impressive what Apple managed to put out even though it fell far short of Google's work.

To be fair Jobs seemed to be a big fan of skeumorphism too - the leather stitching on the Calendar.app was supposedly modelled on Jobs's Learjet so it can't all be attributed to Forstall.

Perhaps they should rehire Jean-Louis Gassée. Buy up the remnants of BeOS from Access, just for good measure.

Then you'd expect all the executive team at Spple to be Steve's hand selected Yes Men, a bunch of followers unable to do their own thing. Yet what we hear from people who actually worked for Steve that this isn't how he operated or selected talent at all. He ruthlessly weeded out Yes Men. What you're representing is the caricature of Steve Jobs, but a one dimensional personality like that could never have achieved what he did.

I've thought about this a lot. Wouldn't Steve have realized this inherent contradiction? Is this an understood reality at the top levels at Apple?

That is, does Tim see his role now as maximizing revenue from the current position, with the goal being to hand off a healthier company to a "visionary" successor?

My personal answer fluctuates depending on my daily gut feeling about human nature. And how many times sourcekit crashes.

I think about this a lot too, and the question I have is – has there ever been a visionary who made his way to the top of the corporate ladder of ANY company, however enlightened? Would love to hear about it.

I think Satya Nadella, his vision has turned Microsoft around completely from a dull company to a company with vision for the future.

This makes me think of a sort of pendulum. Maybe what Apple needs now is to just be boring for a decade.

I think you give Satya Nadella too much credit. Steve Ballmer laid much of the ground work. Ballmer granted an interview to Bloomberg where he gave some candid answers [1].

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-04/steve-bal...

> What Apple needed was another person like Steve, but unfortunately, by letting Steve select that person, they ended up with someone completely unlike Steve.

Paul Graham wrote about this back in 2012:

"I was talking recently to someone who knew Apple well, and I asked him if the people now running the company would be able to keep creating new things the way Apple had under Steve Jobs. His answer was simply "no." I already feared that would be the answer. I asked more to see how he'd qualify it. But he didn't qualify it at all. No, there will be no more great new stuff beyond whatever's currently in the pipeline. Apple's revenues may continue to rise for a long time, but as Microsoft shows, revenue is a lagging indicator in the technology business.

So if Apple's not going to make the next iPad, who is? None of the existing players. None of them are run by product visionaries, and empirically you can't seem to get those by hiring them. Empirically the way you get a product visionary as CEO is for him to found the company and not get fired. So the company that creates the next wave of hardware is probably going to have to be a startup.

I realize it sounds preposterously ambitious for a startup to try to become as big as Apple. But no more ambitious than it was for Apple to become as big as Apple, and they did it. Plus a startup taking on this problem now has an advantage the original Apple didn't: the example of Apple. Steve Jobs has shown us what's possible. That helps would-be successors both directly, as Roger Bannister did, by showing how much better you can do than people did before, and indirectly, as Augustus did, by lodging the idea in users' minds that a single person could unroll the future for them.

Now Steve is gone there's a vacuum we can all feel. If a new company led boldly into the future of hardware, users would follow. The CEO of that company, the "next Steve Jobs," might not measure up to Steve Jobs. But he wouldn't have to. He'd just have to do a better job than Samsung and HP and Nokia, and that seems pretty doable."

– http://www.paulgraham.com/ambitious.html

> if Apple's not going to make the next iPad, who is? None of the existing players

This is a great pitch for an early-stage fund. Sort of like the kind pg peddles :).

(I mostly agree with the analysis, but the bias is worth noting.)

As a customer, I wouldn't buy such a device from a new entrant out of fear of the dreaded "Our amazing journey" blog post when the start up is inevitably shuttered or acquired. The existing players are likely to still exist for the 4+ year device lifetime, which is handy for security updates, warranty and service and replacement purposes.

Although it would be helpful to remember that:

1. The big companies also shutter projects. Minus the "amazing journey" blog post. Their announcements usually have the tone of "Thanks for being part of the gigantic data collection experiment although you wouldn't quite know that yet. Here, take this gratuitous 6 month window to take your data out and then go f yourselves."

2. The security updates, warranty and service and replacement etc also involves occasionally bricking perfectly running systems (ala Windows 10), so it is hardly a comforting thought.

The point is shuttering a product is rarely the end goal for a larger companies product.

It is the end goal for almost every startup in the current climate.

Yes that's the difference between early adopters and the mainstream market. The early adopters will take a risk but companies typically need to change strategies to go beyond that. For details see the classic business book "Crossing the Chasm" by Geoffrey A. Moore.

https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062292988/crossing-the-cha...

That means your needs are being met by current devices. That means you are not the target audience for a new disruptive technology. The initial users for this new company are desperate.

True, Graham offers a naive reading about when hardware startups can win. Yes, a start-up came up with the smartwatch(pebble), and another came up with the wireless earphones. And those were pretty good products .

Did they ever had a chance against Apple ?

No, because "pretty good" isn't good enough when your competition is Apple.

If we're honest is the Apple Watch even better than "pretty good"?

The watch2 is, watch1 no I wouldn't say it is.

It's hard. Also, there wouldn't have been Steve Jobs without that crazy and convoluted history. Getting fired from the company, then founding a new one then getting brought back?

People focus too much on the 'nasty' side of jobs, but it's easy to be nasty, and a lot of people do that, what's hard is having the other aspects that might be more subtle

in his biography (or most likely I read it somewhere else), the group that worked with him had a whole way of presenting things to him, that "made" him go for the best solution. It was a ruse, which he might have been aware or not, but it worked. And of course people were on their feet to present the best products

Jobs had a very finicky way of thinking about products, but I guess that created a dynamic in which other people that worked with him also stood for things that they believed in and that resulted in a balance of qualities that is lacking

Also Apple is not thinking about experience. When they took the floppy disks from the Macs I assume people were more than happy to see they go. Heck even display port has some advantages (you need one tiny interface to plug whatever kind of monitor you want).

Now we get a crapfest of different very similar cables with USB-C with different ports that look the same (charging/display/etc) and we killed an existing interface that for the most part works

And guess what Apple, your Keyboard and Mouse may be wireless and bluetooth but they still need an USB cable to be charged! Which cable comes with it? USB-A

I'm assume Steve would be testing the aerodynamic properties of the latest MB line, if you know what I mean

> When they took the floppy disks from the Macs I assume people were more than happy to see they go.

There were a lot of complaints, even more than you're seeing now.[1][2] At the time it was still the main way people transferred files.

[1]http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB901747560996300000 [2]http://articles.latimes.com/1998/may/11/business/fi-48540

Apple is not into the next wave. If it were, it would be a powerhouse of deep learning hardware and software. The next wave is going to be robotics and conversational agents. You can't make a new Apple with slightly better laptops and phones any more. If, at least, they developed and opened up Siri in the last few years... but it's dead in the water.

Do you know any good resources on the future of conversational agents? In terms of what need they fulfil - I don't use Ok Google/Siri/Cortana, and rarely use my Echo but for music, and find it hard to understand where they fit in. Home automation is the only thing that comes to mind ("only").

Check out X.ai and Clara labs. Some of their blog posts highlight what needs they fulfil. These are not messaging agents but conversational nonetheless.

Has anyone stopped to think, "do people actually want to talk to a computer?" I think we are more simply interested in commanding them to get our tasks done easier, but this "conversational" nonsense and making it more human like is, well, nonsense.

>but this "conversational" nonsense and making it more human like is, well, nonsense.

Can't say I've ever been impressed when one of these systems fails to understand me and replies with a human-like response. Feels disingenuous.

The term they should be able to fulfill is natural interaction with a humans.

You should be able to crawl into your car and sputter "take me cough to the hospital" to which the car vocally responds "Right away" then drives itself to the hospital.

edit: Meaning, this interaction should play out exactly the same as if you had a full time driver/butler whos only job is to sit in the driver seat of your car and wait for your commands.

The next wave of what, though? Apple didn't get into search engines, or drones, or netbooks. They're a consumer products company. They make things they can sell. Let Google be Google, Amazon be Amazon and Apple be Apple.

Honestly I wouldn't be concerned if Apple never make a new category defining product in the rest of their existence. Jobs didn't spend his whole life dedicated to discovering new product categories, that's not how things like the iPod and iPhone happened.

Jobs biggest successes were matters of pure opportunism. Take the iphone. He couldn't have created that product in 2004, the hardware technology wasn't up to it. He was presented with a unique opportunity. A high quality OS core, world class developer and design talent, and mobile hardware that was just becoming powerful enough to run a version of that OS core. It doesn't matter how talented or how visionary he was, without those things all coming together at the right time the iPhone wouldn't have been possible.

People expecting Apple to come up with new products like that on some kind of schedule aren't taking into account how contingent these things are. Without the conditions for a new product category to emerge. Without the many different pre-requisite technologies coming together and without Apple having the right resources available to take advantage of them, these things simply won't happen. They couldn't happen, even with Steve Jobs around.

The received wisdom seem to be that SJ simply willed new products into existence and that somehow Apple should still be doing the same thing. That's magical thinking. But what they should be doing is developing their technologies and assets and applying them to new products and new problems. If that leads them into new product categories, all the better.

Bezos isn't following the example of Walton, Sears, or Montgomery Ward. Jobs didn't follow the example of Hewlett. Musk isn't following the example of Henry Ford. It would be a huge mistake for any startup to try to become the next Apple by following the example of Jobs. The Jobs worship has got to stop. He was a unique man in a unique historical circumstance. That time is over. Whether the next big thing comes from Apple or from someone else, it's not going to come from someone who is worshipping and trying to follow Jobs.

There's a difference between "following an example" and "learning from an example."

> Apple's revenues may continue to rise for a long time, but as Microsoft shows, revenue is a lagging indicator in the technology business.

Well, revenue is already falling [1].

If you look at the first graph (revenue) you'll see that revenue is declining. Click "Trailing 12 months" to remove the seasonal trends.

[1] https://fairlyvalued.com/company/AAPL

Disclaimer: Fairlyvalued is new tool build by alch- and me.

That doesn't really seem to be so: Scott Forstall was only fired after Jobs had left, while Cook and Ive are not really shrinking violets either. And in fact it seems that some of the missteps of the post-Jobs era, such as the too-early Apple Watch, were the result of Ive's assertiveness. The central problem seems to be two-headed: Jobs' succession plan seems to have been to put in place a Forstall/Ive/Cook trumvirate, but that arrangement went the way of most triumvirates; and to the extent that one person is in charge at Apple, that person (Cook) wasn't a "product guy" in the Jobs era and seems unable or unwilling to take on SJ's role as hands-on product monarch. Add to that Ive's apparent (and fairly understandable) increasing boredom with having to iterate away on the same old core Apple products for another large chunk of his life, combined with his increased political untameability in the post-Jobs era (what will the stock do if he announces his departure?)

Yep. I imagine this is (at least in part) why Blackberry and Palm didn't invent the iPhone. Prior to Apple's entry, how many people were saying what they wanted in a smartphone was to remove all those buttons?

A lot? At least looking at the evolution of the smartphones in those years.

As crappy as they were, all the windows phones I owned before the iPhone came along were using soft keyboards. Wasn't like something "new". Albeit, iPhone keyboard was a definite advance in terms of usability which it's primary stylus being your finger. The crappy stylus driven keyboard is probably what made Blackberry so popular and the iPhone was a natural evolution of people wanting to just use their hands with such a device without compromising screen real estate.

> Prior to Apple's entry, how many people were saying what they wanted in a smartphone was to remove all those buttons?

Except

1) Apple weren't the first innovating in that regard. I don't know who was, I just do know Nokia was experimenting with Nokia 770 and Nokia N800 in 2005-2006. True, they weren't smartphones, but they were going in the right direction. Without many buttons. The Nokia N810 had a keyboard, and that was less well received than its N800 keyboardless counterpart.

2) Apple didn't remove all buttons from the iPhone (power, volume keys were still there). The two important changes were:

A) Removal of the physical keyboard, replaced by a (by then) well working OSD. Working with a capacitive screen.

B) They made 1 main button.

He is correct. Blackberry was the leader of the smartphone and the keyboard was his best loved feature.

Sure there were other smartphone, Apple wasn't the first, etc But thinking that people would just go 180 was just extraordinary. Apparently people were ready to sacrifice quite a lot for the huge screen of the iPhone.

> Blackberry was the leader of the smartphone

Leader where? Blackberry was never the marketleader world-wide. That was Nokia, and OS-wise it was Symbian until ~2010 when iOS and Android took off. Nokia was never very popular in US though.

> and the keyboard was his best loved feature.

Sure.

Because on screen keyboards were still using resistive touchscreen with pens. Which is a terrible user experience. Apple used capacitive touchscreen instead, and even though the resolution was low, it worked.

Nokia didn't invest enough in Maemo, and didn't want to adopt Android either. When they finally did go with Maemo, Elop came with plan A. Look at the user experience of Sailfish. That could've easily been Nokia in ~2014...

This sort of analysis just screams post hoc fallacy.

>Asking people what they want will give you...complaints. ..You'll end up pulled in a million directions

This sounds dismissive. I get what you're saying but user information is invaluable. I assume you mean, make sure you get information from your customers in a productive way. For example I've never known a dev who wasn't surprised watching a usability study.

> complaints about any kind of change and positive feedback about shiny-looking features that demo well

"The internet" wanted a better cheese-grater Mac Pro, Apple delivered a shiny, un-upgradable computer.

"The internet" wanted incremental Mac upgrades, Apple added the gimmicky TouchBar to the one Mac model that was still popular.

3D touch, Mavericks' Finder tags, Siri on the Mac, using the watch to unlock your laptop... I feel that Apple's updates are 90% gimmick and 10% substance at this point. I agree that Apple needs to find a new Steve Jobs, but in the meantime, asking customers for feedback doesn't look like it could make matters worse.

Bottom line is Apple has forgotten they are a computer company first and a lifestyle company second. This year they tried to be a lifestyle company first and it was a huge mistake. They'll fix it, I give Tim Cook 3.5 years to right the ship or he'll be gone and they'll try to get someone who can.

No, bottom line is Apple have forgotten they're a company that sells awesome - or at least tries to - and have become a company that sells branded stuff, just like every other company selling branded stuff.

That (IMO) was the Jobs difference. He wanted game-changing awesome in everything - the PR, the advertising, the packaging, the launches, the personal story, the ecosystem, the design, and the product internals.

Sometimes he got that very wrong. Mostly he didn't. But I always felt that Jobs was absolutely consistent about the goal, even when his idea of awesome was as much of a miss than a hit. (As at NeXT.)

Cook doesn't understand awesome in the same way. He understands useful, more or less, and he understands incrementally better. But he's not obsessively and addictively dedicated to making things that are unexpectedly cool and insanely great - or at least as insanely great as they can be, given what's possible. Mostly he seems to want to make money by cutting production costs to raise margins - which is fine for a company, but not very exciting for anyone else.

The problem for Apple is that Jobs was one of a kind. Not only is there no one at Apple who can replace him, I'd be surprised if there's anyone in the entire industry. The only two people who are similarly obsessive, effective and obnoxious are Bezos and Musk, and they both have other plans.

And I'm not saying that as a fanboi, because Jobs was clearly an obnoxious asshole for far too much of his life. But credit where it's due - he was uniquely smart and talented.

Apple's best hope might be to keep a very close eye on the AI startup scene and see if they can talent-spot the next major player before he/she gets to billionaire status.

I went from almost never needing to restart my mac (with Snow Leopard) to having to restart it a couple of times a week with Sierra. The UI just becomes totally unresponsive (the cursor stops moving, the time in the menu bar stops ticking and the spinning wheel stops spinning) and needs a restart. And I don't even have things like SIMBL installed (I used to with snow leopard, not anymore). I just have Karabiner elements and Little snitch running (oh and coconut battery since Apple in it's great wisdom decided to hide the remaining time estimate).

The new versions of macOs provide no added advantage and have a lot of regressions. I used to use Exposé all the time, now I don't because everything slows to a crawl when I activate it.

And I run into severe bugs. For example, when I installed Yosemite and activated Filevault, it managed to corrupt my partition and all my data (luckily I had a backup).

I really wish Apple starts actually hiring good software engineers or at least manage them to work on their OS because right now it's embarrassing. It reminds me of when Windows ME was a thing. If Apple ran the I'm a Mac, I'm a PC ad nowadays they wouldn't have much of a leg to stand on.

And then don't even get me started on their pro apps. Aperture used to be a great app (much better than lightroom), they stopped its development.

This. The thing that made the MacOS ecosystem worth the pain and sacrifice was the quality and things "just working". What I don't understand is Apple has more than 10 times the developer resources they had 10 years ago yet quality has gone backwards. Do you really need to be a Stalin to ensure your company makes quality software?

They're stuck conforming to an artificial schedule of once a year major releases. They won't let themselves take the time they need to get things right anymore. It's no surprise quality has gone down.

Quality usually don't go up when releasing less frequently, quite the opposite. The more you change things, the more likely you are to have severe bugs. When Apple was releasing major OS upgrades less frequently, you usually had to wait until a .4 or .5 point upgrade to have something usable.

The first release of macOS Sierra (10.12.0) was vastly more usable than the first release of MacOS X Snow Leopard (10.6.0). I should know: I transitioned to Snow Leopard on release and practically nothing was running on it. I think it's the only time in my life I reverted to the previous version of macOS... It didn't prevent Snow Leopard to become one of the best OS, in the end.

The problem is that Apple is shipping things that aren't right/ready, but this should be independent from the release schedule.

At least they had time to reach that .4 or .5 version. Now they pop out a new one before the old one is fixed, and we're stuck in a never-ending cycle of suck.

I think their scale is actually a part of the problem. They try to act like a small company but they aren't anymore, and it's working against them.

I grew up with Windows, switched to to OSX and got an iphone 6 years ago, it was amazing. Apple made me love my job, programming on my MBP was awesome. Now it's exactly that, no added advantage, but regressions. Same on iOS in my opinion. Time to move on.

Move on to what though? Windows 10 is never up to date for me. Linux decides to reinvent the UI paradigm every couple of years or are still running X for maximum battery usage

There haven't been any significant UI paradigm changes in Linux desktops for quite a few years. They've become boring technology, for the better.

That's good to hear. I used to enjoy the GNOME2 and KDE2 and 3.5 days but after that I switched to Mac OSX (as it was then). I am now running macOS and Windows 10 but with a Linux console box (WindowMaker on VNC, classic eh) but don't feel a strong desire to switch back after my attempts with Unity and GNOME3. XFCE is still there I suppose.

I'm glad they're settling into boredom - I just want to get stuff done without faffing around. Gone are my days of ndiswrapper for fun and XFree86Config for kicks. Actually, they're probably long-gone for a lot of people....

Does sleep/resume work?

I tried Windows 10 for a couple of weeks and while it was better than I expected it's still a mess.

The short version is that the Windows ecosystem is plagued by legacy software (even Windows itself).

As a daily windows user I'd say the main problem is hidpi support. It can't do mixed dpi environments properly, which is the typical experience when you use a (hidpi) laptop combined with an external monitor. Microsoft blames this on legacy software, but even office doesn't work properly.

A secondary issue are forced updates breaking things, which i've had on two of my 4 windows laptops so far. Finally, the mess of legacy and new settings screens is annoying, but once setup it doesn't matter much, so it only affects the first-run experience.

Aside from those i think w10 is nice. I wouldn't mind replacing my mini with a windows machine, and if apple doesn't update it soon i probably will.

It's a challenge. Given that most of my work is operations for Linux systems, containers, Kubernetes - either to bare metal in my garage, AWS or GCE, it could be (reasonably) argued that maybe I should be running that on my local system.

I just got the Kaby Lake XPS 13 Developer Edition. If you want to be cutting edge and "refined", you'll have issues. By cutting edge I mean things like:

XPS13DE ships with Ubuntu 16.04, kernel 4.4. Switching to an external DP/TB3 monitor kernel panics. Switching to 16.10, kernel 4.8 makes Network Manager unhappy.

Using the Kensington SD4600P dock I bought (because the Dell docks are, to all reviews, horrible, and buggy), you can't run multiple displays except through Windows - OS X, Linux, ChromeOS can only drive one.

Not major issues, to be sure - but they do challenge where I want to be, a 'just works' experience (that I -used- to have with Apple, but less and less so recently), neat and polished (it is so nice to just put my laptop in a vertical dock at my desk, plug in a single USB C and get:

- power to my laptop

- 4K DP

- external keyboard, mouse, speakers, etc

all from that one little cable.

I used to get this as well. Disabling Spotlight seemed to fix it.

Yeah but then I wouldn't be able to search my emails with Apple Mail so it's not really a solution either...

Indeed, it wasn't completely pain free, but it was a better alternative to rebooting several times a day.

> I used to use Exposé all the time, now I don't because everything slows to a crawl when I activate it.

Too true. I just tried opening Mission Control on a maxed-out MacBook Pro with Sierra and it took 7 seconds. It's a shame that Snow Leopard isn't compatible with most toolchains now.

Really? what are you running? Base 13" MBP here running ubuntu vm in virtual box, slack, Xcode, iPhone sim, safari, iTunes, messages, calendar, 1password and vs code, plugged into an external 4k display along with the internal one (Both at scaled resolutions) and it opens in less than a second. It definitely drops frames but that is more on the intel gpu trying to push so many pixels.

I will say Snow Leopard was by far the peak of OS X stability (And with that, probably the best OS I have ever used) but Sierra is far from being bad or unusable for me.

That's roughly what I'm running + some Adobe CC apps and a half-dozen Chrome windows. I believe the difference is the cached v. uncached performance of Mission Control; after the initial (really really long) loading time it's fine, but once enough windows need to be re-rendered it freezes up.

That's at least 6 seconds slower than a 2010 MacBook Air running Sierra. It might be worth watching Activity Monitor when you open it to see whether you have something like swapping or simply I/O issues loading all of the icons – high latency is a common indicator that a storage device is about to fail.

Both of the problems you mentioned sound like previously undetected hardware issues or possibly an issue with a kernel extension. Sierra, like its predecessors back to 10.0, does not need to be restarted except for updates in normal usage – but the symptoms you describe are characteristic examples of a hardware failure (halting animations suggests it's not I/O but something like the CPU/GPU or a kernel extension). Similarly, enabling FileVault is a reliable process which doesn't cause disk corruption but since it accesses the entire disk it sometimes exposes pre-existing corruption.

I would start by checking the logs to see whether there's anything obviously failing, running the hardware diagnostics (reboot while holding down the D key – https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201257), and then uninstalling all of the apps which you mentioned that require privileged access since at least Karabiner and Little Snitch are kernel extensions and third-party kexts are notorious sources of bugs for months after a new OS X release.

I've experienced these UI hangs. It's the OS reacting poorly to memory pressure.

Seen this on a family member's Mac. It ground to a halt in exactly the same way computers have for ages when too much virtual memory is being used.

I think what's happened is that every single developer at Apple has SSDs on their work and home computers so they get wasteful with memory. When iPhoto needs 150% memory to update an index you're not even going to notice that with an SSD, but with an HDD the system can freeze up.

This will eventually resolve itself once every computer has a SSD, but in the meantime the existing Macs with HDDs will be a mess.

I see memory pressure cause even SSD-equipped Macs grind to a halt in this way.

Parts of the UI hanging can be memory pressure (or, at least in the past, things like network issues with e.g. LDAP or network home directories) but I've never seen that halt animations, mouse motion, or stop the clock from updating.

I do agree that Apple needs to get better at I/O scheduling – even with an SSD the experience is less responsive than BeOS was on 90s PC hardware — but the animation loop has typically been a reliable diagnostic cue in my experience for distinguishing between swapping / disk failure and other issues.

> I've never seen that [memory pressure] halt animations, mouse motion, or stop the clock from updating.

This is exactly what I've seen. If I catch it early enough and can get the UI to respond to me tabbing to the terminal, I can kill Safari's web content processes or whatever it is that's leaking memory and it goes away.

The only thing I've seen stop the clock (besides SystemUIServer itself hanging) is a forkbomb. But even that didn't stop the cursor. If the cursor is stopping, that indicates something more serious is going on.

Downgrade to El Capitan

Most of my Sierra pain comes from plugging/unplugging my 27" Cinema Display on a 2013 MBP. Have to reboot to get them to sync again. In frustration I told my wife, "It's like XP all over again." (Not really but it's indeed a major pain to have a workflow that worked flawlessly for a decade to suddenly stop working.)

Same here. Even worse, the issue happened so frequently that I had to reinstall a fresh copy of Sierra. Frustrating!

I am not sure what you're doing different, but the exact opposite is true for me. I don't reboot my computer unless some update from work forces me to. I run a bunch of programs all the time. Here is my laptop currently and this isn't even the highest, I've gone much longer than this on both my work and personal laptops. Both are regularly connected/disconnected to big displays too.

$ uptime 13:41 up 38 days, 17:01, 6 users, load averages: 2.21 2.01 2.01

And the “modern” incarnation of Exposé is an example of the lack of polish that many people now see from Apple. Since the beginning of the Mac, the menu bar was the “safe spot” for dragging (if you started a drag by mistake, you could always throw the mouse at the top of the screen and drop safely — nothing would happen). The modified Mission Control breaks this now; if you drag just a bit further than you intended, the whole desktop goes away and now you have an even bigger problem: not only is there no “safe” spot to drop, your accidental drag can now create even more chaos by moving objects onto entirely different screens!

Smart user interfaces are practically invisible, created by dozens of tiny accommodations for each situation. The Mac is starting to lose that fit and finish.

I would look for hardware errors - I haven't had to reboot my MBP outside of system updates since back when Mavericks had buggy graphics drivers. And I have all kinds of crap running.

If you're browsing this and say "Great, another developer article shitting on Apple after the Pro release who thinks they have figured out everything about the company", please do read this. I was truly surprised at the depth, fairness, and considerations in this article.

I'm very curious to see how Apple plays out in the next few years and will likely look back at this article to compare, if I remember to.

As a developer, I wonder if making a Mac Developer model could be an interesting path, and if it would make financial sense in any way given the idea of "power users".

But the Macbook Pro was meant to be for Power Users?

The "Pro" moniker has simply meant "more expensive" for years now.

Pretty sure the Pro stands for Profitable, Problematic or Prohibiting; could be all three

The MacBookPro now seems like a sideline for Apple. They put a lot of design and development into the iPhone because they sell so many of them. It makes sense from a business standpoint, but it's disappointing if you're a developer or power user.

If so, why did they bother designing and engineering in an entirely new touch-based interface in the form of the touch bar, using a watch-OS based subsystem, and update all the integrated apps to support it? That seems like a lot of trouble to go to for a sideline product. If that were the case surely they'd just have upped the specs on the existing designs.

But the Touch Bar feels like a bolt-on "innovation", i.e. something Apple did to prove that they are still innovating and driving sales, rather than refinements to the MBP experience (the "P" in MBP) and more power.

My point is that Apple knows that laptops are a declining market. Still, the professionals who use MBPs drive adoption of other Apple products.

I have no idea what these self-annoited "professionals" do, but it's actually quite difficult to get the MacBook Pro to its limits. Doing webdev or using Xcode it's hard to ever notice any delay.

But maybe I'm just a noob who isn't professional enough to suddenly discover that life just isn't worth it without 32GB of RAM.

Virtual Machines. If you use VM's, 16gb is likely going to be a problem. I, quite easily, hit it all the time. It has nothing to do with being 'professional enough'. The nature of a dev's daily work can vary greatly with what kind of dev they are doing.

Bollocks, I have a 16GB ram MBP from 2014, running a VM all the time and compiling on both the VM and the host OS. No problems there. The 32GB might be more comfortable for some, but I have hard time figuring out how something so exclusive has now become a necessity.

> The nature of a dev's daily work can vary greatly with what kind of dev they are doing.

This was a very important part of your comment. It's good that 16gb isn't an issue for you, but for some of us, it is.

One thing I would like to know is how we got here - that some NEED 32GB of RAM in a laptop. Scouring the web for some time shows me that in 2015 it was quite hard to get a non-gaming laptop with 32GB of ram. Now, there are quite a lot of voices that cry that it is some bare minimum.

To me it seems that more people now prefer laptops to desktops and it is annoying to sacrifice performance for portability. The lack of a truly powerful desktop Mac definitely is not helping in this regard either.

I don't really disagree with you. I'm not a big fan of laptops at all, but they have become necessary in my life. I would prefer a desktop.

That said, I use a 2014 MBP and feel it's already as portable as I need. If the 2016 kept the same thickness but offered 32gb, I would have been happy.

Actually replying to lsadam0 but can't for some reason

> If the 2016 kept the same thickness but offered 32gb, I would have been happy.

That's not possible with the current chip offerings from Intel though. The Intel CPUs that fit the MBP form factor and other features APple needs only go up to 16 GB RAM. If you doubt this is a pain point for Apple, note that Apple standardized on 16GB RAM out of the box. I'm sure thy'd love to be able to offer 32GB as an up-sell.

Sure they could inflate the MBP form factor an re-design around the chipsets that do offer 32GB RAM, but the chipsets that suit the current form factor and support 32 GB are supposedly due out next year.

Thanks, I did not know that.

"That's not possible with the current chip offerings from Intel though. The Intel CPUs that fit the MBP form factor and other features APple needs only go up to 16 GB RAM."

That's entirely reversed. Your statement should read:

"That's entirely possible with the current chip offerings from Intel. However, it's not possible with Apple's requirements for form factor and power."

> One thing I would like to know is how we got here - that some NEED 32GB of RAM in a laptop

Inefficient programs with shiny GUIs.

OSX + GPU + Chrome + Hipchat alone consume over half of the available memory on my machine right now. And that's just the software which supports my development, no editors, compilers or VMs.

Start to throw in modern editors, VMs (software which behaves very poorly when swapped out), compilers that trade memory space to reduce CPU usage, or a JavaScript heavy website, and you're one errant command away from your machine becoming unusable as it starts swapping like mad.

I run a virtual machine (to which I allocate 8GB), Qt Creator, chrome, safari, slack, iTunes, Skype, Sourcetree (all of the apps that are deemed to be memory hogs) and some more support tools, and I still have memory to spare. I have the impression that macOS has got really efficient with memory management. On windows, I never keep so many applications open (mostly due to non-existing window management)

I generally expect to use a Mac for 4-5 years after I've purchased it. I've added memory to every Mac I've owned so far at some point in its lifecycle. I have a hard time believing that in 2021 16GB of RAM will still be sufficient.

That is a valid concern. I'd like to believe that at some point we will shift back to developing for performance. At home I have been using a 2009 mbp with 4GB of ram and only upgraded it to 8 last year. I have still managed to put an app to the store with it (before the upgrade).

Maybe you're simply hitting the limitations of trying to use a laptop for everything? If you're often maxing out 16GB then upgrading to 32GB isn't going to offer you much additional headroom. For laptops 64GB and beyond currently require some pretty major tradeoffs.

You're right. I would prefer to have a desktop, but then I'm paying for two computers.

For me, it is not just what the MacBook Pro can do now, but what it will be able to do in three or four years. When I buy my computers, I am looking for something that will last several years. That means having the memory and storage capacity for the future, not just what I need today. Apple is making these things like iPhones, and probably hoping that we will buy a new one every two years.

I have older MacBook Pros that I upgraded the RAM, and upgraded the storage (both capacity and speed), and they still work strong. When I am done with them, I pass them down to my kids.

As an artist/illustrator, I'm often working with multiple, large (1GB+) files when preparing stuff for print. Photoshop eats up 8GB of ram doing just about nothing, so when you try to bulk apply some rendering action, export files, or hell, even use their brush engine with something besides the default tool presets, the current gen macs don't cut it. And this doesn't into account running a Cintiq and another display, or their awful integrated graphics setup, etc, etc

I'm currently looking at gaming Desktops to replace my current setup because those are the only things with enough horsepower anymore. It sucks because I feel like I'm going to have to divide up a lot of the scripted tasks I have to make my workflow more efficient, given the lack of a real Unix environment on Windows.

It's a non-starter for CUDA development, which is important to anyone doing serious GPU programming.

You got your answer in your question: "webdev". If you use After Effects it's recommended to allow it 8GB of ram so you have 8 left, your browser takes 3 to 5GB, you now have 3 to 5 left but usually you have photoshop that needs to be running too so remove 2GB and now you are really tight on memory.

In 2009 I bought my first Apple product: an 8GB 13" MacBook Pro that cost $3000 ($1000 for the extra 4gb, like a dumbass). Quite soon after I got an iPhone 3GS. Now every computer in the house (family of four) is an Apple. Every phone is an Apple. Even AirPlay was an influencing factor in selecting a hi-fi receiver (HTR7065). Apple TVs sit next to actual TVs.

Yesterday I replaced our fleet of TimeCapsules and Airports with Lumas. Despite their problems they are still better than the Apple product. Rumor has it Apple isn't working on Airports any more.

Today, I began looking for a replacement for the 2009 MBP, which my 11yo son now uses. I started by looking at Microsoft Surface.

In the present, Apple doesn't meet my needs and as I look to the future, when I will need a new machine, the MacBook "Pro" is more like a MacBook "Bling".

Apple used to be an ecosystem. Now its just incremental phone updates.

If you think MBPs have problems, it's nothing compared to the issues I've had with Surface. Microsoft really needs to execute much better in addition to creating innovative experiences, firmware and driver meltdowns aren't fun.

Heck, Apple has become the "conservative" choice for a computer that is boring but will work with fewer problems. How we got here I have no idea.

> If you think MBPs have problems, it's nothing compared to the issues I've had with Surface. Microsoft really needs to execute much better in addition to creating innovative experiences, firmware and driver meltdowns aren't fun.

See, I've had the exact opposite experience with my Surface. Most of the people I know much prefer MacBooks but are exploring the possibility of switching to something in the surface line. I know some of my friends had initial issues with the Surface Book but now they love it after much needed updates.

I think sometimes Microsoft pushes hardware out a little too early but, at least in my experience, they always make it a great experience even if it comes after several updates. But like Apple products it's usually best to wait until after the initial kinks work themselves out anyway.

Has the Surface Book stabilized yet? I really want to buy one but I keep hearing about their issues. My S3 is probably an abandoned puppy now but works really well... when it is working at all.

MBPs are still the best computer one can get for a rock solid Windows experience; even the surface book trackpad (supposedly precision?) seems to not really compare to what comes on a MBP, and touch doesn't often fill in the gap. Over the last years, I've always regretted my PC purchases (4), but have never regretted my MBP purchases (3). It is really hard to come up with the courage to try again.

That is my feeling as well. I walk past the Microsoft store and look at the slick surface hardware and daydream about it being a good device and me using it, then I remember the many years of windows pain that I suffered. I keep walking.

Just to be clear, I have no problem with windows, just that it seems to run best on Apple hardware via bootcamp.

This might answer your question. Written by a Mac user attempting this switch.

https://medium.com/@searls/warm-takes-on-microsofts-surface-...

Personally, my experience with my Surface Book has been nothing but pleasure. I have the latest SB, and it's the best laptop I've had in a long time. It's well crafted, feels good working on it, and quick. And the battery life is awesome. I cannot express how impressed I've been with the battery life. And this isn't browsing the web. This is with Unity and Visual Studio open and actively working with it.

Going back to my rMBP for work feels limiting and slow.

There are workflow changes and difference I'm having to work through. They are different systems, after all. But it's been a good experience so far.

Nice to see you had a good experience. For what it's worth, I'm not considering the new MBPs and I'm still dreaming of getting a surfacebook. As a previously long time Microsoft employee, I'm already quite used to windows. I just hope it doesn't come with a lot of heartache.

So I don't own a Surface Book but most of the folks I know who have one felt like it had stabilized a while ago. It still look like 4-6 months depending on the issues you faced but most of them love it now.

I currently own a Surface Pro 4. I love it. I had some issues up front and Windows is still Windows but it's gotten better and so far I love it. I'll admit it's impossible to beat a MBP's trackpad.

But as with everything I've seen folks with basically every opinion on the Surface line. So your mileage may vary.

The SP3 I had was a nightmare. Backlight bleed on the screen, unpredictable battery life, random freezes and even just windows deciding to install updates randomly during the day if I left it alone for half an hour.

The SP4 I have is better but still has issues with sleep/hibernation, at least compared to every Mac I have used. With my Macs I can leave them for a week and they will wake up immediately, and still have decent charge. I leave the SP4 for two days and it is dead. Leave it for a few hours and it takes 10 seconds to wake.

It's not a rumour -- Apple has dissolved their internal router/networking group.

I mean they never made any sort of official announcement and they still sell them, right? So wouldn't it technically still be a rumor or did I miss something?

I agree with your assessment though. Seems dead.

No announcement, but an anonymous "source close to the company" according to e.g. The Guardian [1].

I think that's a bit more solid than a rumour, though Apple is secretive enough that it could also mean that they're planning a replacement product similar to Alexa, for example.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/22/apple-sto...

Some have pointed out that Apple may be moving from the Airport to some sort of all in one Alexa/Google Home type device that also is your wireless router... Has anyone debunked that rumor?

Do not know about the all in one. But do have the Google Mesh three pack and really like it. It is pretty cool how it moves around connections and you do not even know.

Network is faster but the app is what I really like. Now just roll over grab my tablet and see if the proper kids are at home. Also allows you see if who they said went home actually went home. How long until they figure how I know?

> Now its just incremental phone updates.

And the software side of those updates is bad.

Apple hardware is probably better than ever. The mechanical engineering and precision involved blows away anyone else in consumer electronics. The new MacBooks and iPhones are truly works of art compared to the cheap injection-molded stuff everyone else is pumping out.

But the software just keeps getting worse and worse.

My iPhone (and those belonging to my friend and family with iPhones) regularly has strange graphics glitches and Springboard crashes. MacOS is a clusterf*ck with tons of poorly-implemented useless "features" and UI glitches.

My suspicion is that Apple is hitting a level of software complexity where the development and maintenance costs of correct code are too high. I believe writing correct software has a super-linear cost; if you have N components in your code, you can expect something like O(N^2) cross-component interactions in your code, because any given piece of existing code is likely to interact with some portion of new code. I suspect Apple will have to change their software engineering practices if they hope to go back to a good level of quality and usability with a reasonable temporal and financial engineering budget.

> My suspicion is that Apple is hitting a level of software complexity where the development and maintenance costs of correct code are too high.

Nope, just a lack of solid engineers. Anyone worth anything bailed years ago, and they're left with a used car salesman running the show (Craig Federighi). Holy Jesus is that guy a tool.

How is he a tool? I didn't get that impression based on his demos and interviews I've heard

Even if Apple hardware is a feat of mechanical engineering and precision, I don't want to upgrade my Macbook Air or iPhone 6 with an Apple product right now because nothing fits my needs.

I want a phone with a flat back that won't rock on a desk without a case. I want a desktop with modern specs. I want a laptop with great battery life.

> My iPhone … regularly has strange graphics glitches and Springboard crashes

Sounds like a hardware fault. You should take it to an Apple Store and have them run a complete diagnostic. Heck, the next time you see the graphics glitches, take a picture of the screen, and depending on the nature of the glitch, that alone might warrant replacing the device regardless of what the hardware test comes up with.

Only started happening after an iOS 10 update. The graphics glitches are resolution-related, not bad VRAM or anything. I'm also well out of warranty.

What do you mean by "resolution-related"? And it's not unusual for major OS updates to trigger hardware faults, either because they do something a bit differently, or because the older OS was simply masking the hardware fault somehow.

And FWIW, I've never heard of anyone else complaining of graphical glitches after upgrading to iOS 10. And if I search for "ios 10 graphics glitches", the only relevant hits are some complaints about minor glitches with the new UI for notifications (I assume that's not what you're talking about, and I also assume these minor glitches have been fixed).

Your issues really sound like they're hardware-related. It's not surprisingly that hardware problems would occur in a few instances, given that Apple is pumping out millions of these. Fortunately, Apple is pretty good at replacing defective specimens.

Counter-anecdotally, I've owned a sequence iPhones starting with the 3G, and I've never experienced any serious glitches, ever. I remember Safari used to crash a few times a week on iOS 8, but that's ages ago.

It started happening immmediately after updating to iOS 10, and not just on my phone. And that's just the start of it; iOS 10 has tons of other inconsistencies and annoyances. I used my several-year-old iPhone 4 the other day and it was a way better experience.

> Now its just incremental phone updates.

Don't forget the watch, and the advances in dongle technology.

  > Now its just incremental phone updates.

Feel free to move to another manufacturer which makes revolutionary upgrades with each release. If you find one. Or one which matches Apple's phone CPU.

Forgive my ignorance but what is a Luma? I tried googling it but seems to be a common term.

A device like Eero, https://lumahome.com

I guess is this one: https://lumahome.com

>> ($1000 for the extra 4gb, like a dumbass)

I looked back at a review of the 2009 MacBook because I didn't believe RAM was that expensive back then, but I was wrong:

* To upgrade the RAM in the 2.26GHz model, which comes with just 2GB of RAM in its standard configuration, Apple charges an extra $100 for 4GB (a pair of 2GB modules) and $1,100 for 8GB (a pair of 4GB modules). The 2.53GHz model, which ships with 4GB of RAM can be purchased with the optional 8GB of memory for an additional $1,000. *

The last unibody MacBook Pros that I owned, I upgraded to 8GB and 16GB for $35 and $79, respectively.

> But here’s the problem: sitting in this niche of excluded users are some of Apple’s strongest supporters, the influencers that create word of mouth...

I see this point made a lot, especially on Hacker News whenever this general topic comes up. I'm just curious: what evidence is there to support this point of view?

I'm as frustrated as the next software engineer that the new Macbook Pros aren't targeted at me or users like me (and that there hasn't been a new Mac Pro in a long time), and my next primary machine may well not be an Apple product when my current Macbook Pro ages out. But I don't really see an argument that draws a line between that fact and a future perception issue for Apple - and that seems to be accepted as gospel whenever the topic of Apple comes up in developer circles. Who are these "influencers" whose opinions purportedly closely align with software engineers' and why do consumers care about them?

I don't even want to know how much revenue I brought Apple by "word of mouth" alone as I've been one of the gazillion fevered and outspoken Unix converts (Darwin fan since 2004). Friends, family and random people in every potential "evangelizable" context – don't even get me started on how many fellow netizens, students, sysadmins and developers I actively tipped over as well (these often were the hardest actually).

Macs or later iPhone, it didn't matter we had to tell everyone that those nice and shiny devices were the real deal and we kept showing and telling until the last potential convert saw the light as well.

I have been buying a new Mac and iPhone almost annually for about ten years now – even (or especially) after 2011 and 2013. I honestly was thrilled by iOS7, I loved it from the moment of its introduction and only saw potential.

All that said, no "OSX" release has made me happier than Snow Leopard unfortunately and I am still convinced that "Losing the Functional High-Ground" by Marco Arment channeled an important message about a pattern most of us likely still see across the whole product line-up even though many things got better since.

Why else have we slowly but steadily stopped recommending Macs over the last two years?

When will that happen to iPhones or iPads? I'm still recommending them left and right but it somehow also is getting harder in a way, especially when people keep losing their safe-in-the-cloud data (in some cases even those precious moments with iPhone – photos).

Unfortunately Apple does seem to need a (kool-aid sober) benevolent dictator with taste and wholistic understanding of their core product/business (what is that going to be btw?).

I can definitely believe that you, as an individual, have driven tens of thousands of dollars in sales Apple's way over the last decade. But even if we assume that there are tens of thousands of people doing the same thing as you (as effectively as you) for the same reasons, that adds up to hundreds of millions of dollars, which is three orders of magnitude below Apple's sales per year, and your impact is stretched out over a decade. Hard to see that loss as more than a rounding error on any Apple projection.

What I'm asking after, I suppose, is evidence that there are "gazillions" of former "Unix converts" driving significantly more money than I'm estimating here. I still continue to feel like this whole "software developers are influencers" line of argumentation when it comes to Apple products is just wishful thinking crossed with extrapolating from very limited personal anecdotes.

I'm sure we each overestimate our importance. Plenty of my non tech friends went out and bought tech without asking me, heck they probably know i'd tell them not to buy that windows phone on a plan but they did anyway because it came with free spotify.

I think the better insight is that our needs, for practicality and occasional updates, are quite common. Its nice to add more memory or disk without needing a new machine. It would be nice to have a replaceable battery in my laptop. Apple is screwing up all these simple things.

For the past couple of decades, Apple computers have been over-represented in movies, TV shows, magazines photos and DJ booths. Sure, some of them were paid product placements,but I bet it was mostly free because the creatives (photogs, prop wranglers/set designers) genuinely liked Apple and/or had an Apple computer conveniently on hand. This was instrumental in making Apple 'cool'. That free advertising alone is worth billions (including home DVDs and reruns)

Probably the people Apple relies on to make the software that encourages the "buy-in" of the ecosystem in the first place.

People are not buying iPhones to spend the majority of the the time using the built-in native apps of iOS.

The day Apple makes a power cord that doesn't have a cable sheath with the consistency and durability of silly putty is the day I will recognize them as back on track.

It's a small detail, but the power cord is the one part of the computer that users have no choice but to interact with every day and they've been ignoring the problems with them for the better part of half a decade.

Every Mac at work either has detached and frayed around the power connector strain relief, or looks like an extremely precise samurai has made tens of small cuts in the jacket of the cable.

I hear this a lot, but I still use a 2009 MacBook Air with the original "magsafe" power cord and it's fine.

Me too, but I had to learn the "right way" to wind up the cable (make a little strain release loop before you start winding the rest around the clips). I shouldn't have had to learn that though, since it should have been designed to be durable enough to work the obvious/intuitive way.

See, I have two cables that I've never wound up, one is on the verge of tearing and the othaerntore years ago. I didn't handle them roughly as far as I know and all of my PCs have never had such an issue.

Even if every user was using it wrong I would still call it an Apple issue as their solution is obviously not meeting the needs of their users.

I have Apple cables that old that still have nothing wrong with them. I think it was maybe about 4-5 years ago that they switched the materials, every cable I have had since then has started to disintegrate after a few months. In my office cupboard we have 5 mighty mice that have all worn through after 6 months use and we have stopped buying official Apple lightning cables.

Of all the MacBooks, MacBook Pros and idevices I've had over the years (including my still running perfectly Jan 2011 MBP) I've never had a single issue with any power cord tearing / breaking or power supply even fail as far as I can remember. I always assume when I hear of people with this problem that they're disrespecting their hardware by jamming it in doors / desks or perhaps have pets that chew on them.

I'm onto charger 4 now I think? Usually have to replace it every ~12 months due to either cable sheath detatching from the inner cable and then splitting as I wind it up. Atleast two of them have also shorted out or only charged my macbook <1/2 the times it was connected.

tl;dr they're pretty trash, but maybe so are other chargers.

My solution was to get one for work and another for home, and the only time I ever wrapped up the cable is when I am traveling.

Out of interest are you the standard 240V or in the USA with the 110V chargers? Also, again just out of interest - are you in an especially humid or hot climate? I'm just trying to think of any 'extremes' that may cause consistent failures like this if the user isn't mistreating the product.

Why not just patch the cable with some electrical tape? Buying an entire charger just because the cable is fraying seems excessive.

You really expect a mac user to value function over form?

Hello, please try to keep comments constructive. The guidelines for commenting are available here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

So, someone like Linus Torvalds?

I’m have to admit being a bit baffled by how nobody else seems to have done what Apple did with the Macbook Air – even several years after the first release, the other notebook vendors continue to push those ugly and clunky* things. Yes, there are vendors that have tried to emulate it, but usually pretty badly. I don’t think I’m unusual in preferring my laptop to be thin and light. (...) I want my office to be quiet. The loudest thing in the room – by far – should be the occasional purring of the cat. And when I travel, I want to travel light. A notebook that weighs more than a kilo is simply not a good thing (yeah, I’m using the smaller 11″ macbook air, and I think weight could still be improved on, but at least it’s very close to the magical 1kg limit)*

People forget that thin, quiet, light, etc are also "function", and more important to some people than function they'll never exhaust in their use cases, like a bleeding fast GPU.

It's not about function over form. It's more about whether you want to risk damaging a $3000 piece of equipment, because you're too cheap to replace a $100 charger.

I've tried this and not long after doing it, the cable started fraying at the end of the taped section (and this despite the fact that I took some time to make sure the tape was properly placed, and tapered towards the cable). This is besides having a separate charger for home and work, and never coiling the work cable (that goes in the bag) around the power adapter.

There really is something wrong with the stupid cable. It's unthinkable that any of my other non-apple cables would do this.

I've destroyed the adapter by carrying it twice a day in my backpack. Who could have guessed Macbook Pro users are on the go. It's not a door, it's not jamming it between tables, but it's an inevitable place where it ends up being.

I can definitely see if it was jammed into a bag or wound tightly (got to be a pretty fine line there!) how it could happen, similar to how if I jam my IEM earbuds into my bag all the time I'd break one in no time I'm sure. But at least the larger chargers have those neat L shaped hooks that are supposed to encourage the correct diameter twist - I would have thought that'd be the saviour? Usually when I've heard of it or seen it it's at the MagSafe end and it's clear that the cord has been pulled backwards away from the laptop regularly - which to me is still a design flaw if that's how users are using them they should be altered. Having said all that - the amount of HP and co laptops I've seen with bent charger pins or squealing caps in their power packs is unreal and they're often more expensive than an Apple charger depending on the wattage.

At this point, absolutely no one who uses a MBP on a daily basis will believe this propaganda.

Just stop already.

It's not propaganda, it's my experience (and actually the guy sitting next to me at work as well, although he said his girlfriend has gone through a MacBook charger and her current one although working is looking tired but not broken yet).

It moves past being just your experience when you add in the bit about "I always assume when I hear of people with this problem that they're disrespecting their hardware by jamming it in doors / desks or perhaps have pets that chew on them."

It's fine to say you don't have issues, but if six other people are saying they have issues, and know people with issues, it's rude to write them all off like that.

-----

EDIT: replacing the paraphrased quote to try to avoid unfairly representing the original statement and remove my read of its intent. I had paraphrased it down to ""I assume the people having issues are responsible for those issues" which dropped the bit about perhaps having pets or similar and so put everything on the disrespecting the hardware part.

That's not a direct quote of that I said, the sentence I wrote is phrased in the past tense with the intent (and you'll just have to take my word for it) of surprise and / or previous thoughts on the matter up until the time of writing it. When you quoted me there you actually changed the construct of the comment to become an argument or judgement which was not the intent.

Fair edit and comment on my own, thanks for the clarification.

Blaming the user isn't helpful.

I've had more problems with Apple cables than any other brand - and Apple tends to make their cables sleeker looking. Coincidence? I doubt it.

At least they've improved from the Wallstreet-era Powerbook G3 chargers, though. I think I went through 3 of those circa 1998. Of course, those machines, and the early G4 Powerbooks, had bigger issues than just that. Dark times in Macland.

(As an aside, how people talk about their device history is a good litmus test of the length of their experience with Apple hardware, thanks to the Intel switch laptop name change.)

In some circumstances you can certainly blame the user. Any remotely feasible charger cable can easy be broken by repeated abuse. The real question is what percentage of users break their cables. If that percentage is very low, then I think you can blame the user (or, rather than blame, sugggest they just be a little more careful). I have no idea what the percentage is in this case.

>I've had more problems with Apple cables than any other brand - and Apple tends to make their cables sleeker looking. Coincidence? I doubt it.

Perhaps you had more Apple cables (an obvious branding) compared to any other brand? And your apple cables get more use than others (e.g. on your main laptop, compared to some cable left for years connected to a printer at the office, etc).

Except if you had e.g. an equal number of Dell and Apple machines, etc, or buy branded cables from a single brand.

I also have never had this problem. I hypothesise that it has to do with being taught how to coil cables in Music Tech A level. (The method I was taught involves ensuring the cable isn't twisted, and securing it with insultating tape.)

If you leave out the tape, and you put a bunch of them in a box, this is the ritual for summoning an elder god. (the elder god is always gone by the time you re-open the box, but the non-euclidean tangle they've left the cables in is quite apparent.) Unless you're the kind of person who will happily and patiently sit uncluttering the cables without yanking them for a few hours, you'll damage your stuff extracting them from this class of mess.

For reference: I am actually still using the charging cable that came with my 2009 MBP (via a magsafe2 adapter) with my latest work-issued MBP as the spare adapter in the home office. The cable is a bit grubby, but undamaged and entirely functional.

As I write this my MBP is plugged in to a power cord with about two inches of bare wire just below the connector. This cord is only ~4 years old and it has had exposed wires for several years now. I can't see how my use is unusually hard on it. Definitely no doors, desks, or pets. It pretty much just sat in my room and I used it.

Honestly: be really careful with that charger / cord - that could likely easily start a fire or spark and ignight something nearby. If you haven't the funds to replace it - may I suggest at least insulating it with either some non-conductive heatshrink or electrical tape to keep you going?

In any case, perhaps replace it? Or you don't much care for electric shock, fire damage, fried electronics, etc?

Find an excuse to take your MBP to the Apple Store and let them see the power adapter. There's a good chance they'll replace it for you.

Same here, and I used to think people were being careless... until I started working remotely from places like coffee shops where I had to bring my charger every day. Turns out the thinner MagSafe cable will fray after a while if you unpack and pack it on a daily basis. I bet it's due to winding the cord around the brick. I use the little legs you can flip out (they've been removed on the new charger). The last few months the cable has frayed in two places. Easy fixable with electrical tape, although I wish there was a way to pack the thing without straining it.

I have never had an entire Apple charger stop working, though.

Yeah, interesting - that's certainly not and never has been my use case (ultra / daily portable), there must be some sort of rating for number of insertions / connections similar to the varying USB standards over the years - I wonder if that's published somewhere, if so we could probably do the math and come up with a - moves per week rating for a charger?

I can't find the document but Apple's official instructions for their chargers include winding around the pop-up plastic legs. I've never had a frayed cord since the days of the TiBook, but I have managed to break a leg on the adapter and crunch the connector when the laptop fell while connected. MagSafe, while a little pricier, has been more cost-effective for users compared to the truly unacceptable design that existed before.

Apple got rid of both MagSafe and those pop up winding legs on the new MBP.

I guess my wad-up-roughly-and-throw-in-the-bag method is gentler somehow than using the built-in pegs. Laziness wins yet again?

My main computer is a 15 inch retina macbook pro from 2013. I use it a lot (roughly 10-12 hours/day) so it's plugged often. It always gets quite hot next to the magsafe connector so what happens every time I buy a new charger is this: - the part of the cable next to the magsafe connector becomes yellow from the heat - the yellow part of the cable starts to become less resistant and kind of flakes - Eventually the wires are exposed.

This takes about 1 year, 1 year and an half. I never jam it in doors or desks. I do not have pets. I sometimes put it in my bag but I do not wind up the cable to avoid having additional tear on it. I do live part of the year in hot and humid climate (like Japan in summer or South East Asia) which might accelerate the issue.

But honestly, this is a problem, no matter how careful I am, I have to buy new chargers.

I don't have the problem with the chargers - but my 27" Apple Cinema Display is starting to have problems with the mini-displayport cable that is built the same way. It's also built in to the monitor so you can't just replace it when it goes bad...

I think the real issue is the old cable wrap design that comes with no visual instruction on how to use it. Most people with frayed cables I've seen pull the cable tight from out of the adapter and start wrapping, when it should stick out a bit then slightly bend with a relatively loose wrapping. That isn't just apple cables, every audio cable (live performance cables, xlr and quarters) I've used will break if you wrap it too tightly. That said I have also never had fraying issues with my apple PSU's and I've had a MacBook as my primary computer since 2006.

Now it doesn't really matter as they just use a standard USB-C cable so you can use whatever brand cable you want.

Apple themselves have a support article specifically addressing how to handle their power cords gingerly... ;)

https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT201600

99% of users won't see this though.

Seriously? You don't think even 2% users are going to lift the brick using its own cord, or (accidentally) pull the cable past its safe bend radius, or wrap it tightly around the Apple-provided cable-wrapping arms?

There's a reason why everyone else uses thicker cables and strain relief.

And it's not because of end-user negligence: it's because of engineering pragmatism.

To be able to ignore the instructions you have to be able to read them first. ;)

Although all this is irrelevant since Apple phased out mag safe, the "ears" that hold the cable, and added a removable cable.

Fair point about the ears and user replacability.

Still, Apple's Lightning cables are also extremely vulnerable to bending and abrasion. What makes you think their USB-C cables will be much better?

Non-technical customers who can't afford to buy new cables, or don't know to use better aftermarket cables, are already known to resort to using springs from pens as ad-hoc strain relief: https://www.google.ca/search?q=iphone+charger+spring

> What makes you think their USB-C cables will be much better?

Nothing, but at least those can be replaced without having to upgrade the whole power brick.

I'm careful with the power brick and cables now since I've had this happen on a few Macbooks.

I'd say half of the Macbook users around me have suffered problems with power brick cables. Specially where the mag safe cable connects to the power brick.

I wouldn't blame it on users though. I've never seen other power bricks so plagued with these problems.

The only cords I've ever had an issue with have been Apple cords. I've literally never had a cord from a different company break or fray unless it was a freak accident e.g. having my foot on a dangling headphone cord and yanking my head up.

I had the same complaint until this year: I am actually impressed with the new USB-C (and even USB-A<->Lightning) cables coming from Apple this past year.

The day Apple makes a power cord that doesn't have a cable sheath with the consistency and durability of silly putty is the day I will recognize them as back on track.

That's a really strange thing, because it's such a well-understood problem and the solution is known. I don't know why Apple makes such lousy power cables, even if they messed up a decade ago, you'd think they'd have fixed it by now.

I can think of $89 reasons each!

Jony Ive considers standard strain relief cones to be unattractive and prohibits Apple from shipping them.

This seems to be a trend with apple, completely breaking the form follows function principle everywhere anyone can see.

Well figure out a way to make them attractive! That's kind of the job of a designer, you don't get to redesign the appearance of an airplane to remove the wings because you don't like how they look.

I read somewhere that the problem is two-fold: the design department's hesitation to use any sort of strain relief and the softer type of coating that is supposedly more eco-friendly.

It might be simpler than even that. Most cables are black because black ones are more durable for many reasons(UV resist and more choice of composition/processing)

Apple likes their bright colors too much to do that :)

Eco-friendly becomes something of a joke if you need to buy a significant extra number of them...

The power cord -- by which I mean the USB 2.0 cable for using with the power brick -- that comes with the MBP 2016 is actually surprisingly thick and rigid. It also feels weirdly unpleasant; the rigidity is not good for a cable intended to be slung over the edge of a table. But it probably lasts longer than the old MagSafe cables. (I wouldn't know; I returned mine and went back to my old 2015 model.)

There's a rumor that they're working on a wireless charging technology for iPhones where it charges completely wirelessly without using one of those clumsy power mats.

So your dream will likely come true in a different--yet much better--format.

I've come to the conclusion that the problems with the power cord are mosty due to its design rather than any abuse or user action.

The second layer of wiring that twists around the core wire is going only in one direction (a simple helix as opposed to a double criss-crossing helix like coax cable). Hence, if you twist the cable in the opposite direction, the helix becomes undone. I suspect that causes pressure on the white plastic insulation, and also leads to some electrical issues that increase resistance, produce heat, and causes the white plastic insulation to become yellow/burnt and to start disintegrating.

The funny thing is that you can abuse the cable in any way or you can be extra careful, but the only thing that will matter is in what direction you coil it. If you don't travel a lot and don't touch it, you're unlikely to notice any problems for years.

Apple is the world's most profitable business - twice the profits of #2 (JP Morgan Chase) and almost a 4x magnitude over Google.(1)

I agree with the author's final assessment - "meets expectations with some areas that need improvement" - and I think this is the key.

They are stoking the fire, keeping it burning, but clearly their focus seems to be diminished on their core business.

And even companies of this scale need hyper focus to drive what seem like small but obvious improvements, usually executives are faced with two choices:

(a) Focus on today's business and unlock maximum value in your product line / distribution.

(b) Innovate to turn a corner and plan for tomorrow.

I am surprised at how few people attribute the current challenges at Apple to what I suspect is an internal focus on planning for tomorrow.

How much more profitable is the iPhone going to get? The smartphone market is approaching saturation (2)

So what does the leadership do?

Are laptops, imacs, and apple pro's the future?

No, they barely represent 9% of Apples sales and have been FLAT for years (3)

What about Apple TV & Apple Watch (the "other" category) - those have already grown to 6% of sales - and moving in the right direction.

But is that it?

My suspicion is that Apple / Tim Cook knows something BIG that we don't that they are going to get PERFECT while they still have the cash fire hose of the iPhone to drive the engine.

(1) http://fortune.com/2016/06/08/fortune-500-most-profitable-co...

(2) https://www.cnet.com/news/smartphone-markets-glory-days-are-...

(3) http://www.macrumors.com/2016/01/26/q1-2016-results/

> My suspicion is that Apple / Tim Cook knows something BIG

That's what everyone has been hoping for years. That's why I was hung up to the last keynote, up to the last second, hoping for Tim Cook to say "One more thing", and launch a new product line. And the one more thing was, no kidding, Lady Gaga. And everyone is now despairing that there is anything to wait for.

At least we have the emoji bar on the keyboard now.

Isn't one of the theories that the "something BIG" is Apple becoming a payment processor/bank/whatever financial entity, supported by the presence of a fingerprint reader & secure enclave in all their mobile devices (including laptops courtesy of the Touch Bar)?

That won't work very well if nobody is buying those devices due to the lack of real updates.

Apple should absolutely be investing big into future product categories, as they have done in the past.

However, with revenue and profit levels where they are, it's baffling to see them seem to devote less resources in an absolute sense (not just a proportional one) to existing money-makers. Mac laptops are big sellers. iPhones are big sellers. Yet the refreshes get more and more basic, and the software quality seems to be sliding downward. Could they really not fix this without sacrificing future investment? They did it in the past when they had less money to play with, after all...

They have invested in future product categories, the Apple Watch being the most recent - and not very successful - example.

I'm afraid what Apple is doing is purely looking at figures - if it doesn't sell at least X or account for Y% of revenue, it's discarded. AirPort, gone, displays, gone, 17 inch MBP, long gone.

And yet their R&D budget is still going up (http://cdn.macrumors.com/article-new/2016/05/Apple-RD-Spendi...), estimated to become $12 billion in 2017. IDK where it all goes though.

It's going to the car.

AR is still a category without an elegant 'Apple' solution, to its detriment. As they did with smartphones when the technology was at a place to support such a game changing device I could see them defining/kickstarting the AR category when mobile processors can handle it.

> My suspicion is that Apple / Tim Cook knows something BIG that we don't that they are going to get PERFECT while they still have the cash fire hose of the iPhone to drive the engine.

Possible --- but it seems to me much more likely that Apple is just another big company suffering from the classic combination of innovator's dilemma and big company internal politics. What special immunity would Apple have to the problems that bring down every big tech company in its old age?

Tech companies are like people. They get old. If they don't die suddenly, they eventually succumb to general systems frailty and self-aggrandizing cancers. Sure, Apple might be one of those rare 80 year old marathon runners, but why would you expect it to be?

As everybody knows, Apple's major innovations happened on well known product categories that other companies had not properly looked at. Apple took the existing ideas, figured out the most important features and executed extremely well.

Maybe the world has changed and such opportunities no longer exist. There's more VC money available and more large IT companies pursuing various opportunities. It might be that we simply don't have such overlooked categories any more. Even if they do exist, everybody is watching Apple so closely that it is not likely they could build something major in secret.

Apple is a company that is following the process they learned when Steve ran the show, without any clear understanding of why that process exists. As a result, they are unable to adapt to adapt that process to the external world while remaining true to the underlying principles.

What you see is the predictable result: ossified thinking couple with a rigid adherence to "what makes them great". all criticism falls on deaf ears and they'll just continue like this until Tim Cook is gone and they get a product guy back in the heal who can give Apple direction and heart.

Apple is a company that is following the process they learned when Steve ran the show, without any clear understanding of why that process exists

Apple created Apple University years before Steve died, to understand clearly why they became so successful. They even hired a top professor from an Ivy League university to run it.

Whatever ails Apple these days is not caused by them not understanding how they became great. It's caused by the lessons of the past not being applicable to the reality of today.

You cannot teach taste and vision. Apple giving up monitors is the clearest sign of that: it's the face of the computer, so much that novices confused it for the computer itself.

The Jobs-style answer was the all-in-one iMacs and the monitor-as-a-dock, a computer that wants to be seen. The Cook-style answer is to put somebody else's logo right on their product's display case. Madness.

For someone that was waiting for this hardware refresh to get a Macbook Pro and a new Cinema Display, I was surprised that the keyboard became less utilitarian and the display more-so.

Nope you don't get to pass the buck to "the world has changed". Nothing has changed. Power users are still there needing the best machines they can get. Apple is the one that has changed to cater to the lowest common denominator, this is a lack of understanding.

Please. Apple not catering to power users is not in any significant way what ails Apple today.

And Apple catering to what you describe as the lowest common denominator is what made them the largest company in the world. If that is a sickness, I wish I could be afflicted by it.

What changed was not so much the world (although it did), but Apple itself. Apple is now a huge company, but it still run as a small one, because that is what allowed them to different and let them to success. But there are reasons why no other large company is run like that, and the bigger Apple gets, the more those reasons begin to compound.

Couldn't agree more.

It's not about courage or innovation for innovation's sake, but about making the right decisions. Sometimes that means being boring.

The 2013 Mac Pro is a perfect example of Apple badly solving a problem that wasn't there to begin with. What did Apple smoke? Circular GPUs that can't be upgraded? No PCIe slots or storage space that forces you to use expensive TB noisy boxes with cable all over your desk?

Apple also fired the closest thing they had to a second Jobs, Scott Forstall — the man largely responsible for iOS — apparently for being difficult to work with (!).

> Defining products by the spreadsheet: A big percentage of complaints over the new MacBook Pro devices is that they ignore the needs of the “power” user. The problem? This group is fairly small and have needs living well towards the end of the bell curve.

The problem with ignoring this niche is because these users are either developers or big influencers. They help with the ongoing success of the App Store as well as with free marketing.

This is also a big reason why Apple needs to release either an iMac without a screen or a more affordable Mac Pro. The Mac Mini has never really cut it for anything but personal use.

For the 1st time in years, I'm thinking of switching back to Windows since Docker makes development easier now. I'll still get a cheap Mac for personal stuff like Photos, but it'll just be relegated for that.

Developers, yes. Big influencers to other developers? Yes.

But big influencers to Joe Q Common Public? No. They will buy what meets their (generally meagre) needs from someone they trust.

Yep. They probably don't realize how big of a part "Word of Mouth" marketing plays in their sales.

At every small business I've ever worked at, everyone praised the MBP highly, and if you didn't have one, you felt like you wanted and needed one.

Especially because it Just Worked™, it was kind of this sleek and powerful tool that only people who know the value of their time had, because they weren't going to waste their time on anything lesser. It was almost a status symbol.

Word of mouth is a powerful thing. It can make and later break a product. I bet that'll happen now.

That said, how can I buy stock in Apple? I'm betting they'll look at dropping sales, realize the above, and make a huge come back with a significantly better MBP and Mac Pro in a year or two.

EDIT: The above question is not rhetorical: how can a simple developer like me with no idea about stocks, throw $100 or $200 at Apple stock in hopes it grows a good amount in the next few years?

> Yep. They probably don't realize how big of a part "Word of Mouth" marketing plays in their sales.

I'm not sure who would know better: Apple's marketing team, or a group of developers chatting on Hacker News.

Depending on the level of sophistication in Apple's marketing department, they might have a very clear, well-researched, quantitative model regarding just how much impact our word-of-mouth carries.

I wonder if some of our angst comes from the nagging fear that we (professional developers and photo/video editors) hold less clout than we thought, and that as a result, our tools in upcoming years will be more expensive and less useful.

There are plenty of online trading platforms. Just look for one with cheap ($5?) commissions and you can probably get your first trades for free.

There are some brokers that are free with some stipulations: https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/investing/free-stock-trading

My household has been Mac-only for about 20 years, but I finally gave up waiting for a decent Mac Pro or a powerful Mac Mini. Last year I put together a PC for about $1500 [1] which looks great and completely demolishes any Mac for GPU-heavy tasks, thanks to its Nvidia GTX 1070. The build was super-easy (my 10 year-old daughter did half of it) and the machine worked perfectly the first time I powered it on. And, much to my surprise, Windows 10 really isn't bad.

I still use a MacBook Pro for most of my development work, but all gaming and video stuff is now PC, and I can't see myself going back. The ability to easily upgrade individual parts on an as-needed basis is just too appealing.

I still prefer MacOS to Windows, but if MacOS is the only thing a $2500+ Mac Pro brings to the table in 2017--compared to 2017 PC hardware--it really isn't enough anymore.

[1]: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/joshcarter/saved/Dq2kLk

Even when I was happy with Apple, OSX was never a good platform for games.

I'm torn on that. I spent years playing games exclusively on a Mac and didn't feel like I was missing that much. Given how bad the Mac gaming scene was in the 2000's, in the 2010's we've seen an explosion in the number of excellent games coming to Mac from both AAA and indie publishers. Seems like ever since Steam came to macOS, the games have followed.

If gaming is a secondary use of your computer, a Mac isn't quite as bad as people make it out to be. Especially if you enjoy indie games, it seems like all of them run on Mac, and most of them have modest hardware requirements. Example: I play a ton of Rimworld, and it runs exactly the same on my modest Mac and my killer PC. It's mostly AAA titles where you miss out.

I finally got to where I wanted a machine whose primary use would be games, and for that case you're correct, a half-decent PC crushes any Mac on any gaming metric.

I built my first gaming PC (GTX 1070 as well) not that long ago, and you're right, it wasn't too hard (though my wife did most of the work). And I use that for gaming all the time.

However, I would never dream of using it for development. One of the games I play is World of Warcraft, and I maintain a few addons, and even just trying to edit Lua files on Windows is a PITA. Atom kind of sucks, and the CLI isn't very good. I installed Windows Subsystem For Linux in order to get bash and git, but it turns out there's no way to open GUI apps from that system, so I have to independently navigate to my projects in both Explorer and the shell. Oh, and Windows doesn't implement enough of Linux so tmux can't actually remember my paths, so every time I reboot, I have to find all of my projects again. And of course Linux symlinks don't work in Windows, and Windows aliases don't work in Linux, so I have a shell script that copies a bunch of the addons into place that I have to run each time because I can't symlink it. Ultimately, it's all just very annoying.

Agreed, macOS is a far superior blend of Unix underpinnings and a graphical front-end. I love that I can have my terminal and Emacs run seamlessly on the same platform as Sketch and Photoshop. Fortunately, my MacBook Pro is still a plenty capable machine for the programming I do in my day job.

But I have to say, PC hardware has come a long way, not just in terms of performance, but also in build quality and ease of use. The aluminum case I bought looks as good as any Mac Pro tower Apple has made, it has fantastic cable routing so everything's clean and tidy, and tons of options for thermal management--I can run games on ultra quality and my PC is still silent!

It's really too bad we can't have the best of both worlds. But I don't see Apple going towards PC-standard hardware, Windows will probably never be a great Unix, and Linux never quite gets the software adoption it needs to become my desktop OS. I'd love to be proven wrong on any of those, however!

Actually it can be done and works well after ironing down some stuff: https://www.reddit.com/r/hackintosh/search?q=flair%3A"succes...!

Thanks for the pointer, I may stick an extra disk in there and give Hackintosh a shot. Can you imagine how fast Apple Motion or Final Cut Pro would run with a GTX 1070 GPU behind it?

It's not just developers and big influencer. Calling them power users is a better term. These are the people other people ask for advice.

I feel like Apple are one of the few large SV companies that are producing products for their users.

For everyone else the user is a resource that they're selling to advertisers.

They've shown they're willing to stand up for user rights. For this reason alone I hope they continue to be successful.

I totally agree with this but at the same time I'm annoyed with the current state of macOS and the Mac product line.

The Mac (and maybe the AirPort Extreme) are the only Apple products I really care about or depend on.

I'm holding on to my iPhone because Apple have a great strategy with regard to privacy and user rights but I'm not upgrading it because I'm pissed off about the Mac. Pathetic as that is, as a Mac user it's about the only small leverage available.

Sadly, I think Tim knows more about business than me. For every disgruntled, Unix loving, Mac user they loose they'll probably add 10 more iOS users for whom emoji are culturally interesting. :(

As a UNIX-like system loving dev... I always found macs (running MacOS) a bit frustrating for dev work.

It's nice that you have a familiar command structure to work with, but installing software from homebrew/whatever else was always a nightmare. They were nice laptops... but it seems inefficient.

So I maintain 2 laptop. A macbook which I basically use for Skype and office work (and use about twice a month), and a cheap Thinkpad running Linux for dev work. When I need more power, I can pull the drive out of the Thinkpad and throw it in a desktop and it just works.

So... I think it's kind of hard to make a good case for macbooks as ideal general purpose dev machines. And they were really never meant to be general purpose dev machines. They probably work great for Mac/iOS dev and general purpose applications though.

Each to their own I suppose. I personally don't find homebrew to be a nightmare at all but that is of course anecdotal.

You are mistaken if you think that Apple never intended the Mac to be used for general purpose Unix development though, they used to advertise it for that purpose on the science section of their website, before it was removed.

https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/apple-drops-science-...

Apple used to prominently promote its Unix heritage. For example, here's an article from MacWorld in 2001.

http://www.macworld.com/article/1001970/21osx-unix.html

And an advertisement:

"Sends other UNIX boxes to /dev/null"

http://www.mackungfu.org/vintage-os-x-ad-emphasises-unix-pow...

The trouble at Apple is one of culture and timing. The ideals of Apple and the timing of their thinking is in many ways out of sync with the rest of the world.

This was the same that happened to Microsoft when their lets just create machines with a million different providers and slap our OS on top were surpassed by Apple when Steve Jobs came back. The advantages of Apples vertical integration allowed them to push for radical new hardware design aesthetics when that was craved the most. On top of that a completely different way of pushing product in sync with the OS which allowed them to avoid the issues of backwards compatibility which MS struggled with. Today though in many ways the Apple aesthetic have been commoditized and were it haven't Apple just haven't spent enough time improving (looking at you OSX and Mac)

I frankly don't think there is much to do about it for the simple reason that it would require Apple to change it's culture from being a secretive one to being more open. This is where Google have many advantages as it's much more in sync with where the world and technology is heading (Cloud, Deep Learning, web). I don't think Steve would have been able to save Apple either although I think he would have done things a little better.

I am a big fan of apples products and own only that but I can see a future, if things doesn't change were I would easily use ex. Android phone.

I remember feeling the same way about Apple back in late 2012/early 2013. I was ready to replace my iPhone 4, and Apple was only making phones with small screens, while the market trend was for larger screens. Then Apple Maps came out, and it was the worst release I can remember Apple ever doing. Android seemed to be pulling ahead in a lot of ways. A lot of people were saying that Tim Cook wasn't capable of running the company, and that the magic died with Steve Jobs. The stock price started to slide.

As we all know, Apple recovered from its bad release of Maps and revamped iOS, the stock price recovered, and there was much rejoicing. So, it's important to have a sense of perspective about these things.

Apple certainly seems like it has slowed down lately, but they have more resources available to improve the situation than any other company in the world. I suspect the current issues are caused by internal organizational problems rather than a lack of product vision.

>> I suspect the current issues are caused by internal organizational problems rather than a lack of product vision.

Absolutely. If they'd figure out how to scale up such that they're able to fix the most annoying bugs filed via their bug radar, macOS would be a much better product.

The sad thing is that at some point there were more and more bugs and UX problems which I didn't even bother reporting since they were so obvious that everyone using the OS should notice.

So apparently they're not able to scale in that regard. Even completely isolated apps like Preview.app are affected.

This was when I stepped away from Apple equipment and, for the first time, bought new phones and laptops that were non-Apple brands and I haven't gone back.

I find the recent turn of public opinion against Apple to be interesting. Two years ago people were writing about brilliant Tim Cook was, largely because of the release of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. Which was Apple simply scaling up to product sizes that they had previously resisted in joining, but were common to the rest of the market.

So was praise then wrong and overblown? Or is the current wave of discontent wrong and overblown? Or is two years enough time for Apple to underperform and cause a loss in faith?

I think it's a bit of all three, but also a lot because this current unhappiness is driven by developers, who had expected Apple to treat the MBP- much less the Mac Pro- with greater care and respect. 2014 saw the introduction of Swift, and developers were happy.

Even 2 years ago, people were grumpy how long the "can" style Mac Pro had not been refreshed and its obvious limitations, and that the Mac Mini had not been refreshed in a long time. But this does get overshadowed in perception (both public and of the critics) by a great launch like the iPhone 6. The introduction of Swift was certainly a surprise move by Apple and a sign that they cared about developers. But people were not unconditionally "happy", there was some valid criticism of it back then.

> and that the Mac Mini had not been refreshed in a long time

Worth keeping in mind the last refresh of the Mini performed way worse than the model that existed before it and had all upgradability locked down when the previous model actually championed the fact it could be opened and upgraded.

These Mac updates are not only slow but it's a recurring theme they're performing worse than what came before.

>Or is the current wave of discontent wrong and overblown?

Obviously the latter. Let's see the quarterly results...

Revenue is a lagging indicator in the technology business.

Lets see if they are still the most profitable company 5 years down the line.

Who will replace them for which the same (and worse) criticism (regarding their PC offerings) doesn't apply? Lenovo? HP? Dell?

Microsoft.

You've tapped into why value investing will always work.

The people who are discontent are all the professionals needing professional machines, and it just so happens they are the also the group who writes all the software, all the blogs, and have loudspeakers to reach millions of followers with their disconent.

Joe blow down the street is not going to be buying a machine all the pros hate.

Joe Blow down the street doesn't give two figs for "pros" and their blogs. They buy machines that look nice and do the bare minimum they want from a retailer they trust.

> I think it's a bit of all three, but also a lot because this current unhappiness is driven by developers, who had expected Apple to treat the MBP- much less the Mac Pro- with greater care and respect. 2014 saw the introduction of Swift, and developers were happy.

Developer happiness relative to these parts is probably the most right. There was a lot going on for Apple the last few years for developers, and they were happy. The Mac Pro refresh cycle is something that always confuses me, like why would we expect faster refreshes with the new trash can Pro than the cheese grater? The point of that machine is that it's expensive and needs to last a long time. Annual cycles don't support that model. Yes, that means it gets outdated faster, but it's not like Xcode or Final Cut or ProTools or Adobe anything stop supporting the Pro a year after it's released. I have a MacBook Pro for work that has a four year refresh cycle. It sucks to see new, shiny ones coming out that I won't be eligible to get for a few more years (excuse me - next year, it's 2017 now), but that's corporate life.

One thing Apple needs to fix ASAP is online (iCloud) and offline storage (iPhone).

Almost all my family members are having issues with running out of space on their iPhone. Some even bought additional iCloud to improve storage space only to be completely shocked and pissed to find that iCloud isn't really add additional storage (it is just for synchronization).

On top of this Google is taking serious advantage of Apple's bad execution with a fairly effective marketing campaign.

In some regards the most important thing about your phone these days is the memories you have collected and not so much what operating system or form factor is being used.

I think this is a fair article and it echoes a lot of my sentiments. Something is going wrong over at Apple. No, they're not going to go out of business soon, but I think the sheer volume of criticism they've been receiving (not just from users, but also from noted Apple advocates) is troubling, and they need to do something about it.

My standout is the battery case they released a few years ago. The design of that case is just unspeakably hideous. They need somebody with a Jobsian level of ruthlessness, attention to detail and unified vision to steer the ship back in the right direction. Another example here would be the fact (mentioned in this article) that they effectively copied the rest of the market by providing a larger phone. The Apple of old didn't do this. They didn't really follow market trends, they started them. And then to be flummoxed by demand when people responded so positively to smaller phones is baffling to me.

I wouldn't be surprised if we see some C level leadership changes some time this year.

> They need somebody with a Jobsian level of ruthlessness, attention to detail and unified vision to steer the ship back in the right direction.

This. I buy Apple products not because I'm looking for the latest tech gadget. I want something that feels like a work of art. There are too many products, too many sizes, too many options. Jobs would have told whoever suggested an iPhone Plus that he's a shithead moron. Why am I using Fantastical instead of the default Calendar app? I never did this on iOS 6. Go on their website and you see all sorts of crap acquisition products (Beats) they're selling. I don't want Beats I want Apple! I want premium, exclusive, luxury, high-end, polished tech products that work as simple as toasters.

Mirror: http://archive.is/aVNM3

What's the reasoning for trying to disable right click on your website? I simple wanted to google for the WiFi company mentioned - I had to find an add-on to copy the thing. For someone really into Apple you're good at obnoxious design.

Yeah, I came here to post this very thing. Right-click -> open in new tab is a fairly normal thing to allow for blog posts that have links in them.

It might be just a firefox thing, but shift+right click bypasses it. Also Ctrl+C for copying text (or Cmd + C on Mac, I believe).

No it's the same on Chrome and shift+right click isn't working.

I've seen very little discussion here of the battery issues with the new MBP, which in my opinion is the most offensive example of Apple's decline in quality. Lucky users are reporting 9 hour battery life, while others are getting 4-5. Nobody is getting the promised 10 hour battery life from their $1,500+ laptops.

In regards to the battery life, I was excited to see "9 hours remaining" the first time I turned the new MBP on. Realistically, I get about 3-5 depending on what I'm doing.

A great write up. I wonder, whether Apple just has gotten a bit to large for their current organizational structure. It worked, when Apple had no iOS devices to care for and the attention was divided across much less products. Especially the signs of "sloppiness" point in that direction. At minimum, Apple should create senior positions overlooking individual product categories. Even the rather forgotten iPod business could be larger, if there was a small team focussed on the question: what can we do to make new products people want to buy? A friend was just missing a small (waterproof) iPod which works seamlessly with Apple Music for example

The same with the Mac. It is understandable from the view of the company, that iOS is the bigger thing. But, as the article mentions, the Mac is a vital part of the Apple eco system. And the Mac Pro is a vital part of the Mac eco system. You need to support the professional developers to have all the applications for your "non-professional" customers. The best sign, that Apple was surprised by the public reaction to the new MacBook Pro was, that they reacted by reducing the dongle prices. It didn't seem to have thought that people would object at buying a collection of them at full prices. When I bought my G3 iBook, it came with the necessary dongles included.

Besides the obvious conceptual issues with the current Mac Pro, the biggest sin was not to update its hardware regularly. Same for the Mac Mini. So there needs to be two things done:

- set up senior people for each product to make sure that issues/development for that product/category gets the necessary attention, e.g. people who only care about the mac.

- these people need to make sure that each product is updated in set cycles. The iOS devices as well as the operating systems are updated in a yearly cycle. Maybe not as strict as with the iPhone, this should be applied to all products. The releases might shift a bit on parts availability, but the Mac Pro and the Mini have missed several updates of CPUs/GPUs/other hardware.

One more thing: while it is understandable that the retina MacBook only has soldered on parts, this is less understandable for the MacBook Pro, and not at all for the Mini, iMac or the Mac Pro. How can you design desktop machines like the iMac, where you have to unglue the screen to get to its internals? I still have my G5 iMac, and that was a nicely designed machine. A mac czar could tell upper management, where clever and efficient production methods stop and making a bad product starts...

the brand new Macbook Pro has last-generation Intel CPUs. I remember when Jobs announced one of the first Intel Macbook Pros with chips that no other manufacturer had even been given the chance to ship yet.

This is a really interesting point. Apple seems to have stopped pushing suppliers as much as they used to.

It's not an interesting point, because if you do your research, there is no gain to using a Kaby Lake (7th generation) CPU over a "Skylake-U" (6th gen) CPU:

Current/2016 13" max-spec i7 MBP uses i7-6567U which scores slightly higher (average single/multi-core geekbench results) than the best dual-core Kaby Lake CPU, being the i7-7500U.

https://twitter.com/mattkocaj/status/814090388986175488

Kaby Lake quad-core CPUs aren't a thing yet, so Apple is still shipping the most advanced quad-core CPUs available even today.

Admittedly, "Switching a whole product lineup from IBM to Intel" is the sort of multi-billion dollar deal that will give you lots of pull, pre-release goodies, and bulk discounts with a provider.

But it's a one-time trick. We can't expect them to do it all the time.

You won't, and shouldn't, get preferential treatment for "upgpraded an existing laptop to use the newest model of the same CPU".

(Switching to ARM right now could potentially allow for a nice repeat, though)

> Want us to think you’re still serious about the Mac, Apple? Show us parity of capabilities between the two platforms, at least on your core product sets...

Be careful what you wish for.

  The primary problem with Sierra with respect to PDFs is that Apple chose to 
  rewrite the PDFKit framework in macOS 10.12 and it broke a number of things 
  that PDF-related developers relied upon...

  Apple wants to use a common foundation for both iOS and macOS. However, it was 
  released way too early, and for the first time (at least in my experience) 
  Apple deprecated several features without caring about compatibility. And to 
  make things worse, lots of former features are now broken or not implemented at 
  all, meaning that we had to add lots of workarounds or implement stuff on our 
  own. And there’s still work left to be done.
  
  10.12.2 introduces new issues (it seems that Apple wants to fix at least the 
  broken compatibility now) and of course fixed almost none of the other issues.

http://tidbits.com/article/16966

Apple has forgotten how to compete in the computer industry. In the old days there was a ruthless and relentless refresh cycle with manufacturers working hard and fast to trump each other with more advanced products.

Apple appears to simply no longer have that cycle as part of its business DNA, and no longer seems to even understand that is what the computer industry is (or was) about.

I am looking ever more favorably at Windows again.

The new MacBooks outsold all their competitors, so I glean that they still know how to compete:

https://intelligence.slice.com/apples-macbook-pro-launch/

Maybe there was record sales because there was a record number of years since the hardware was last updated.

Latent demand = sales.

It's certainly not due to the effusive praise of the press.

Conversely, this could also mean that the "press" and the vocal majority on a few online forums have no bearing on what people out there really want.

In almost every discussion about this, you will see some people who have actually purchased — unlike the detractors — these machines and are happy with them.

I personally don't see anything bad about the new MacBooks either, except the lack of out-of-the-box compatibility with the new iPhones/EarPods, and their price point in relation to my budget at this current point in time. I will definitely be buying one as soon as I can afford it.

Going all USB3/Thunderbolt only is very good, exciting even, and harkens back to 2 decades ago when the very first iMac came out as the first every USB-only computer. The wide color displays have to be seen in person to be appreciated. The battery problems and GPU glitches have been found to be on the software side, iirc, and some of those issues have already been patched.

It is all great if you do not have existing hardware you want to use.

I have a Logitech mouse I love, it has a USB connector receiver that sticks 3 mm out of my laptop so I keep it plugged in all the time. The idea of it hanging of some cable adapter is just silly, not even mentioning the fact that you have to buy it.

Or my fancy 27" Apple Thunderbolt display. I had no issue paying the Apple tax because I loved the display and it doubles as a docking station (integrated power adapter). Guess what, it doesn't work with the new laptop. The new display they are selling is made by LG and was not available for purchase until few weeks ago.

There's an adapter for your Thunderbolt Display. You will however miss out on the power provided by the display.

You started talking about hardware, but somehow switched to OSes. PC hardware is not tied to Windows and MacOS.

Isn't the real problem that Macbooks consist of less and less of their business year over year? The iPhone is where Apple really puts all the pressure to innovate.

Yup. A lot of people are complaining about a lack of exciting updates, but I'd rather start by seeing hardware updates that keep up with the industry. Whereas Apple were once releasing products based on Intel chips before they were even widely available, we're now looking at products which are generations behind. Low-power Kaby Lake chips have been available for six months; why is there no Kaby Lake Macbook yet?

This may be rather ignorant of how the motivational structure of a large company works, but is it possible that some of these issues, like missed ship dates, is caused by a lessening of the amount of fear that trickles down the hierarchy?

Wasn't Jobs the kind of person you were terrified of letting down and doesn't that kind of thing trickle downward?

Even customer service seems to be befuddled by Apple's policies at times. The current battery issue with the iphone 6s took months until Apple made it 'claimable'. Then people are told to send their iphones in and are expected to wait for 6 weeks (without a temporary replacement). But what's better: they get the same phone back (because the system check apple performs won't test for cold temperature based battery issues, so the device always passes).

I don't know if the Apple before Cook and Icahn was different in that, but this is soooo ... dare I say "heyday Microsoft"?

Apple doesn't seem to have anything new. Just minor upgrades of the old stuff. The car project, whatever that was, seems to have been canceled. The watch is something of a dud. Amazon and Google are fighting it out in the voice operated home control space, while Nest doesn't have an entry.

Apple is still making tons of money. Boring but profitable isn't that bad a place to be. It's possible to be boring, profitable, and still be a prestige brand. Look at Rolex.

Your comment sounds like Nest is a division of Apple. That's not the case, it's a subsidiary of Google-parten Alphabet.

I have a 2013 13" MBP and have started to look for a specifically non-Apple machine to replace it with. What got me to give up on Apple is not really the high price or infrequent updates but rather the state of macOS and bundled apps. It just sucks. Each upgrade seems to introduce more eye candy, more complications, more bugs, and is also slower. To me it feels like planned obsolescence.

Yep it's like Aperture. If they neglect it long enough people will just move the approved Apple alternative. In the case of Aperture it's Photos, for macOS I think they want us to move to iOS.

It didn't work for Aperture, pros generally moved to Lightroom or something else. For macOS either Linux or Windows seems more likely than iOS.

Just an idle thought: could the construction of, and move to, the new Apple campus be partly to blame for the company becoming distracted?

I don't think that developers were involved in the move or planning. It probably took some resources on the top level of management, but I don't think that products weren't developed because the CEO spent some time planning a new office.

I highly recommend firing up Google Earth and checking out the new campus. Someone has painstakingly modeled the construction site in 3D. Make sure you have 3D buildings enabled in Google Earth, and give it a chance to load the details. Tiny details like vehicles and machinery, mounds of dirt, even porta-loos have been rendered, You can zoom down inside and between the buildings to get a good feel of the space.

I wouldn't mind knowing who did that, and what their workflow is to model all that stuff.

I think once Apples moves in, they will be inspired to pick things up. It really is an amazing building.

With regards to shipping dates. It used to be a source of pride of Apple to say "shipping now" when they demonstrated a new product but somewhere along the line they fell into the trap of announcing well before they could deliver. They need to pull back.

having owned an airport router I no longer see the need as other routers have become just as easy to use. my 1g service from AT&T was a breeze to setup for home use and heavily customize, all from my Mac.

the only bone I have to pick with Apple is the disgraceful product cycle associated with the mini and Pro. If they are going to drop these products then drop them. if they aren't going to do yearly updates then either drop the product or guarantee refreshes so people don't feel like they are buying into a dead end.

finally, damn please get all your products to one connector again and fast and in the mean time adapters should be included when your own products don't interconnect

I just got a Google Home speaker and for me it feels like how the iPhone felt in 2007; a revolution in computing!

But Apple is so far behind with the horrid Siri it's laughable. I've used Siri almost daily since 2011 and after using Google Now I cant stand to use Siri as her accuracy is 90 percent if lucky vs. her competitors 100 percent.

I am really interested to see in 2017 Apple's product releases. Is iPhone 8 going to make me staying in iPhone? I already switched from Mac to Dell XPS and I am quite happy with it. I guess this year there will be many old Mac users that will be leaving Apple. Unless they do something drastic? But what could they do?

Apple has a large enough hardware footprint.

They now need to compete on AI. I imagine a lot of their resources are being put in the catch-up-to-Google bucket.

There have been a lot of blog posts saying Apple doesn't know who their customers are. But their products are already accepted by everyone (every group). Their customers are everyone.

I'd second that. They're on their way of losing the battle for AI. From my experience (and those around me), Siri is way behind Alexa and the Google Assistant, in both voice recognition and features. It was once the selling point of iPhones, now no one really talks about it anymore.

I don't understand why their development in that area slowed down so much, when Amazon started much later and was still able to produce the first home assistant. An Apple version of Amazon Echo (Siri for Home) would've been the perfect product to integrate users further in their environment.

> it makes sense for Apple to stop making WIFI devices

Only if Apple is looking not to innovate. Mesh networking has great potential to take off, especially if the software was integrated into iOS. One missing element from mesh is AAA, which Apple could definitely mediate.

2 things really concern me about Apple's direction under Tim Cook: his statements that he doesn't see why someone would need a computer in addition to an iPad and iPhone, and the fact that he has reportedly combined the iOS and MacOS teams.

My MBP is only 1 year old, waiting to see what comes out of Cupertino later this year before deciding if I'll move away from Apple products for my dev machine.

I see a lot of articles suggest that Apple may no longer support developers, building only consumer devices. But what are Apple developers using internally? Would Apple maintain some hackintosh build for their developers? This seems unlikely to me. I would instead expect that we will soon see some new hardware suitable for developers. But maybe I'm wrong. They got rid of Xserve, which means they either are building server hardware they don't sell or they are using Linux or Windows for their own servers.

Somehow despite leading the charge Apple has missed the boat on voice.

Unlikely. Volume of voice input for Siri probably is still orders of magnitude larger than those Alexa or Google Home handle. It also does so internationally and multilanguage. Once you start looking closely advantage is not really that big. Google, Alexa and Cortana also mishandle queries and they might excel at some tasks but fall short in others. Still a lot of room to improve for everyone, Apple included, but I would argue they are all in a very similar situation.

> They need to do more talking — and even more listening — with their users. Engage with the influencers

Some influencers who are not either professional bloggers or iOS devs too please.

At this point my expectations for Apple are set so low that I'd be thrilled if 2017 brought us options for a physical escape key and 32GB RAM on a spec-bumped MacBook Pro. But I suspect even that is too much to ask.

Apple should spin off the Mac division to be its own company so theoretically the management might give sh*t about competing.

After brainstorming what they would call this subset company, it dawned on me that the Mac, as in the Mcintosh (fruit) is an apple. I'm embarrassed to admit I never put the two together. I am not a smart man.

They were correct in not naming the iPhone the Granny Smith.

Quite a manifesto about a single company...

I switched from Mac Pro to PC a few months ago. We needed NVIDIA and running some hack over thunderbolt isn't a real option, despite what the Apple Zealots say.

Recently made the same decision myself to use CUDA too. After months of considering hacked open thunderbolt enclosures that nearly cost the same as a PC anyway I just switched.

I now measure my 3D render times in seconds not double digit minutes.

There is no doubt in my mind that if the trashcan mac had Nvidia GPUs I would have just saved up and spent over double I spent on this PC even if it had worse performance. I've been a mac user for 17 years and didn't make this decision lightly.

Can I ask what sort of rendering you're doing? Do you mean animation or still images... what software? I find that between different software you can get vastly differing render times. Also, for really serious and large work aren't people using render farms now anyway?

Doing animation and still (admittedly haven't produced anything yet as I've only had this setup running for a week) mostly motion graphics and advertising focused.

I'm working in Cinema 4D and Octane render (render engine built from the ground up for GPU) with a single GTX 1080, coming from a 2.7 i5 MBP with no dedicated GPU the difference isn't even comparable.

Good idea of what you can expect from a single 1080+Octane is in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGXmsUnbPCM

The industry is at a bit of a crossroads from what I can see, of course huge studios have investments in render farms and CPU based tech but for individuals and <10 person studios it's all moving towards GPU rendering.

Being able to run a renderer on your desktop machine that can show the end result in near real time completely changes your workflow. It's no longer just using experience to make guesses with lighting and materials then waiting minutes to see if your hypothesis was correct.

Thanks for info. Yes the live render previewing is getting quite nice.

seriously, if you have a problem with apple, don't use it. There are thousands of other vendors. Instead of posting dribble on the web...

Not really. There's one other major phone OS out there (Android), with the majority of phones made by less than a dozen companies. Linux and Windows are the only other choices when it comes to operating systems for computers, and few companies manufacture high-end laptops with acceptable quality.

The only company selling everything is probably Microsoft, where you can buy a laptop from the manufacturer of the OS. But Windows Phones aren't nearly as well supported when it comes to third party apps, so you'll have to go with Google there.

So there's not really any company (except perhaps Microsoft) that can offer a similar experience as Apple used to.

hp elitebooks, thinkpads, toshiba's notebooks are all well designed. You can throw anything on it.. linux, bsd unix or windows. You have a variety of distributions or bsd os'es. i don't know what you're talking about phones: there are plenty of phone vendors out there, too. Instead of whining about a company, it would be better to move on and decide what you need and buy that.

Yes, but you'll still have a Microsoft OS, HP laptop, Google phone, etc. What many people (including me) like about Apple that you have/had a well designed ecosystem for all your devices, where hardware and software are made to work well with each other. No one else can really provide that.

Your nice blanket statement can easily apply to anything without even trying.

If you have a problem with apple hate, don't comment on it. There are thousands of other threads to reply to instead of adding to the existing dribble.

My last 3 jobs, I've been issued an MBP. I'm not really given a choice, it's just considered standard issue at this point. Should we all just accept things we'd don't necessarily like, or is it alright with you if we have a collective conversation?

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