Magic 8 Ball to Apple: Outlook Not So Good (...or is it?)

[brinary001]

There seems to be a lot of doom and gloom these days surrounding Apple. Don't get me wrong there's always been the doubters, haters and prophets thinking they've got it all figured out and the company will be dead in no time, only to turn around and see them completely flip the industry on its head with a lucrative idea. But I will say that this year, well, I don't think they're necessarily wrong.

The MacBook "Pro" pissed off a lot of actual pros--photographers, video producers, recording artists--due to the shift to exclusively using USB-C, 16 gig cap on RAM, and the battery issues. What do you guys think? Is Apple really making fatal decisions, or are their customers just in a heavy disagreement with them and it's caused them to hit a bit of a slump? I'd be lying if I said the Surface wasn't starting to look good to me now... A personal computer with great pen support, battery life and portability? AND it's a powerhouse that can replace my current 13" MacBook Pro and iPad Pro in one fell swoop? I like the sound of that. I'll probably never leave the iPhone though, and I could always do a Hackintosh on Surface to get most of my Apple ecosystem back.

 

[maflynn]

The MacBook "Pro" pissed off a lot of actual pros--photographers, video producers, recording artists--due to the shift to exclusively using USB-C, 16 gig cap on RAM, and the battery issues.

But yet they seem to be selling a lot of MBPs, so I'd say they're focusing on a customer demographic that is more profitable and larger (the typical consumer as opposed to photographers).

Is Apple really making fatal decisions

No, its always smart to cater to their largest customer base.

if I said the Surface wasn't starting to look good to me now..

AND it's a powerhouse that can replace my current 13" MacBook Pro

I own a SurfaceBook and its a great computer as it fits my needs, but what are you getting in the Surface Book that you're not getting in the MBP? The SB runs a slower lower powered CPU then then the TB based 13" MBP. Getting the dGPU equipped SurfaceBook will push the cost of the computer to over 2k, and for that price you can get the 15" MBP which provides a better dGPU, quadcore cpu

I'm all for finding the best tool that fits your needs, and I do enjoy my SurfaceBook but I think you need to look coldly and logically of what you get for the price in the SurfaceBook vs. the MacBook Pro, and see if that fits your needs.

For me, I opted for the low end unit, and I got a great fast light computer for my mobility needs. Its a secondary computer as most of my heavy work is done on an iMac.

 

[aristobrat]

IMO, the 2012 MBP redesign (when Apple dropped Ethernet, DVI, and the SuperDrive, made the RAM not user-upgrade able for the first time, and raised the price) spawned more pissed off posts on MacRumors than this years redesign did.

Interesting to me how like last time, once the units started truly getting into the hands of folks, the complaining significantly decreases.

 

[Phil A.]

There seems to be a lot of doom and gloom these days surrounding Apple. Don't get me wrong there's always been the doubters, haters and prophets thinking they've got it all figured out and the company will be dead in no time, only to turn around and see them completely flip the industry on its head with a lucrative idea. But I will say that this year, well, I don't think they're necessarily wrong.

The MacBook "Pro" pissed off a lot of actual pros--photographers, video producers, recording artists--due to the shift to exclusively using USB-C, 16 gig cap on RAM, and the battery issues. What do you guys think? Is Apple really making fatal decisions, or are their customers just in a heavy disagreement with them and it's caused them to hit a bit of a slump? I'd be lying if I said the Surface wasn't starting to look good to me now... A personal computer with great pen support, battery life and portability? AND it's a powerhouse that can replace my current 13" MacBook Pro and iPad Pro in one fell swoop? I like the sound of that. I'll probably never leave the iPhone though, and I could always do a Hackintosh on Surface to get most of my Apple ecosystem back.

The surface book only goes up to 16GB too, and is just as impossible to upgrade "after the fact". I also think it's only dual core, not quad core like the 15" rMBP (at least it was only available in dual core when I got mine)

I've got a surface book (16GB Ram / 512GB SSD / i7 and discrete graphics) and it was horrendously unreliable for the first 6 months of its life (sleep issues, power issues, graphics card issues) - it's a decent machine now but I'm not sure I'd buy another one and its been relegated to note taking use most of the time now (which, I have to say, it is brilliant for!). I virtually never use it without the keyboard though because the battery life is really, really poor in tablet mode

The grass really isn't always greener on the other side of the fence

 

[maflynn]

I also think it's only dual core, not quad core like the 15" rMBP (at least it was only available in dual core when I got mine)

It is, dual core only.
[doublepost=1483113948][/doublepost]

I've got a surface book (16GB Ram / 512GB SSD / i7 and discrete graphics) and it was horrendously unreliable for the first 6 months of its life (sleep issues, power issues, graphics card issues)

MS definitely had some "teething" problems and it took them too long to resolve those problems. I held off until the fall, and for me its been a pleasant experience.

 

[Tech198]

There seems to be a lot of doom and gloom these days surrounding Apple. Don't get me wrong there's always been the doubters, haters and prophets thinking they've got it all figured out and the company will be dead in no time, only to turn around and see them completely flip the industry on its head with a lucrative idea. But I will say that this year, well, I don't think they're necessarily wrong.

The MacBook "Pro" pissed off a lot of actual pros--photographers, video producers, recording artists--due to the shift to exclusively using USB-C, 16 gig cap on RAM, and the battery issues. What do you guys think? Is Apple really making fatal decisions, or are their customers just in a heavy disagreement with them and it's caused them to hit a bit of a slump? I'd be lying if I said the Surface wasn't starting to look good to me now... A personal computer with great pen support, battery life and portability? AND it's a powerhouse that can replace my current 13" MacBook Pro and iPad Pro in one fell swoop? I like the sound of that. I'll probably never leave the iPhone though, and I could always do a Hackintosh on Surface to get most of my Apple ecosystem back.

I think the 8-ball is busted...

Apple's trying all sorts of things, what works, what doesn't.. I don't think 'Pro users' have anytime to worry about, as if Apple cleanly not showing anything more, they'll move to PC's where there is still a 'Pro' market for photographer, video editors etc.

Glad we have choices And there is always alternatives.

Microsoft seems to always just have more problems than Apple because they need to make sure third party drivers all work together as well..

Less of a problem with Apple doing everything, but these days,, I really don't think Apple needs any help with that, just look at the watch dying with updates bricking, or the display issues of the new Mac's.

 

[theluggage]

Interesting to me how like last time, once the units started truly getting into the hands of folks, the complaining significantly decreases.

...not sure that anybody has forgiven Apple for the soldered-in RAM, the proprietary SSD blade or the need to carry an ethernet dongle, but apart from that the 2012 rMBP was also a significant step forward in terms of introducing the retina display and all-SSD. As "compensation" for the loss of Ethernet and FireWire, it added a second Thunderbolt/MiniDP port and a HDMI port. All of the old MiniDP-to-VGA/DVI/whatever adapters still worked and there was a $10 MacSafe 2 adapter for your TB/Cinema display and spare Magsafe 1 chargers. The optical drive was also (with hindsight) good riddance: in my experience those slimline drives had a life expectancy of about six months.

Oh, plus (little remembered fact) Apple released a spec-bumped Classic Macbook Pro alongside the rMBP, so if you weren't ready for Retina you had an up-to-date alternative.

This time round, if the 2016 MBP doesn't float your boat, your only choice is a limited range of 2015 models. Time to switch to a desktop? The Mac Pro and the Mac Mini look like abandonware, the 21.5" iMac is a desk ornament - only the 5k iMac is reasonably up-to-date & powerful - and that's really waiting for a GPU bump and TB3.

The grass really isn't always greener on the other side of the fence

True, there's no one PC that stands out as a iMac or MBP-killer on a like-for-like basis. However, once you start looking beyond "Mac equivalents", there's a far, far wider choice: up to and including building your own custom desktop or choosing a thick-as-a-brick "mobile workstation" or "gaming laptop" - nothing as "beautiful" as Apple, but perfectly practical and far more bangs-per-buck. What I'm considering at the moment (fortunately, I'm in no rush) is a choice between "stop worrying and buy a MBP" or, for about the same money, build myself a killer PC tower plus a cheap'n'cheerful notebook.

Microsoft is free to experiment with "flagship" products like the Surface Book and Surface Studio at Apple-compatible prices - but if you balk at the price and go for a boring commodity product from Dell or Lenovo, you stay on their Windows platform. Apple's problem is that the MacBook Pro has to be the Swiss Army Knife of laptops - every time they remove a blade, a bunch of users are going to leave the platform for Windows or Linux.

Currently reserving judgement until my trusty 2011 MBP blows its second GPU or Apple announce their desktop range...

 

[Tech198]

...not sure that anybody has forgiven Apple for the soldered-in RAM, the proprietary SSD blade or the need to carry an ethernet dongle

of course, *I* have.... I'm not the one to hold a grudge against Apple...

I'll worry about that during the time, but it's now ancient history. Time to move on.

 

[brinary001]

I'm pretty comfortable with my 2015 rMBP 13" which is good because it's definitely seen some love. The only thing I've noticed degrade a little bit is that the battery got something like 10-12 hours right out of the box, and now that's reduced by about a third on average. Plus it still has the most common classic ports like hdmi and USB, unlike the current generation which is all usb-c. I use my Macbook for school, work, home, you name it, and in the case of work and school those environments are hesitant to abandon Windows 7, let alone traditional USB ports...

I think the industry is just undergoing a huge period of experimentation--what ports to use, torn between tablets and laptops, trying to figure out who the biggest/best demographic is to target, etc.--which I'm completely fine with if it results in the most universally accepted and positive user experience possible.

 

[lowendlinux]

I'm pretty comfortable with my 2015 rMBP 13" which is good because it's definitely seen some love. The only thing I've noticed degrade a little bit is that the battery got something like 10-12 hours right out of the box, and now that's reduced by about a third on average. Plus it still has the most common classic ports like hdmi and USB, unlike the current generation which is all usb-c. I use my Macbook for school, work, home, you name it, and in the case of work and school those environments are hesitant to abandon Windows 7, let alone traditional USB ports...

I think the industry is just undergoing a huge period of experimentation--what ports to use, torn between tablets and laptops, trying to figure out who the biggest/best demographic is to target, etc.--which I'm completely fine with if it results in the most universally accepted and positive user experience possible.

The industry is moving to services so we'll likely see more ports removed since big tech wants us on their servers.

 

[brinary001]

The industry is moving to services so we'll likely see more ports removed since big tech wants us on their servers.

Ah that is true. If the future of tech really is wireless, then things like flash drives, external hard drives and basically anything else that needs a USB port will become a relic of the past in no time.

 

[AidenShaw]

Ah that is true. If the future of tech really is wireless, then things like flash drives, external hard drives and basically anything else that needs a USB port will become a relic of the past in no time.

Tech has many futures.

The future for your phone and tablet is probably portless appliances connected to the cloud (at least when the cloud is online and you haven't blown your bandwidth budget for the month).

The "semi-pros" doing web content creation and wedding videos - and let's get real and recognize that the people creating YouTube videos need better systems than the people watching them. With all of its constraints, the MP6,1 is a pretty good match for the semi-pros making cat videos.

There are a lot of people who need more expandable systems. I bought 404 TB of local storage for my researchers in December. (One 96TB array was used for data modeling catastrophic failures - of course I put it on the mount point /catvideos.)

People here need to look beyond the ends of their noses and think about what other people may need. Apple doesn't, so you get laptops with disks and RAM soldered to the motherboard.

And, by the way, wireless completely sucks. Why choose to connect a system via a convenient limited bandwidth shared bus instead of a full duplex wire speed copper connection? (But then, I could buy 20 Emoji-barPro laptops for what I spent for my latest update to my 10GbE switch.)

Wireless may useful for the people using hand-held iToys to watch cat videos, but the people making and serving those videos will be on copper.