Slashdot Mirror
At Apple, Mac Is Getting Far Less Attention - How It Handled the New MacBook Pro Is a Living Proof (bloomberg.com)
Apple CEO Tim Cook may have assured employees that the company is committed to Mac computers, but people working in the Mac team say the company now pays far less attention to the computer lineup, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, who has been right just about every time with Apple scoops. From his report: Interviews with people familiar with Apple's inner workings reveal that the Mac is getting far less attention than it once did. They say the Mac team has lost clout with the famed industrial design group led by Jony Ive and the company's software team. They also describe a lack of clear direction from senior management, departures of key people working on Mac hardware and technical challenges that have delayed the roll-out of new computers. While the Mac generates about 10 percent of Apple sales, the company can't afford to alienate professional designers and other business customers. After all, they helped fuel Apple's revival in the late 1990s. In a stinging critique, Peter Kirn, founder of a website for music and video creators, wrote: "This is a company with no real vision for what its most creative users actually do with their most advanced machines." If more Mac users switch, the Apple ecosystem will become less sticky -- opening the door to people abandoning higher-value products like the iPhone and iPad. The report also sheds light on battery issues in the new MacBook Pro lineup that many have complained about. From the report: In the run-up to the MacBook Pro's planned debut this year, the new battery failed a key test, according to a person familiar with the situation. Rather than delay the launch and risk missing the crucial holiday shopping season, Apple decided to revert to an older design. The change required roping in engineers from other teams to finish the job, meaning work on other Macs languished, the person said. The new laptop didn't represent a game-changing leap in battery performance, and a software bug misrepresented hours of power remaining. Apple has since removed the meter from the top right-hand corner of the screen.
Apple is definitely losing it's rep among people that actually use computers for things other than surfing the web and checking email.
I would be a lot less annoyed by the lack of Mac attention at Apple if OS X would run on non-Apple hardware.
.
The Mac lineup looks to be on life-support, if not completely abandoned, at this point.
Anyone looking at a move to the Mac should really examine their decision process to assure it takes into account long-term viability of the product line.
For this past year, it has appeared that Apple is only interested in doing the bare minimum to string along current Mac customers. Innovation costs money, and Apple is clearly not looking as if it wants to commit innovation money to the Mac line anymore.
been like that for years now. Apple would be dumb to delay a MBP launch to work on a product a lot less people are going to buy.
And in case you haven't noticed, Apple also seems to be doing all it can to kill off their laptops as well. Reduced ports, non-upgradeable, crummy keyboards. And that's not even to start on the touch bar which removes physical keys from the keyboards of high end users - the one most likely to want to use physical keys.
And as other people have pointed out, the Mac Mini seems absent from Tim's prognostications.
All in all Apple is going downhill fast*
* Says me with a MacBook Pro, iMac, iPad, Mac Mini, iPod x2
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Open up OSX to non blessed hardware. Then you can stop worrying about those annoying people that want a Professional workstation class laptop when you want to deliver a netbook.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It may have taken 30 years, but finally the Mac team now knows what it felt like to be on the Apple ][ team.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
You have to have a Mac to make iOS apps.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Apple just needs to move it or milk it. Put some effort into getting new Macs out or spin off Macs to another company (like how Claris/FileMaker was done.) Keep iOS and macOS source trees open between both ventures.
Ideally, Apple should jettison Macs to a subsidiary that can focus some real attention onto them. Not just consumer level, "shinies", but after other markets, such as schools, colleges, and even the enterprise. With this, the subsidary could offer NDAs and roadmaps to customers, so timing of mass purchases can be synced with model refreshes.
This split will let Apple do what it wants to, but give customers the feeling of stability that is needed when buying bread and butter computing needs.
I know something is wrong when a Dell XPS 13 actually is better than Apple's offerings. In fact, it actually is a better MacBook Pro than what Apple has, because it has two USB ports in addition to a USB-C port, a high res screen, and a recent (as of this year) CPU/chipset. Of course, Windows 10 may not be as nice as OS X to some, but it gets the job done.
I dunno... it certainly seems that way, especially when you consider that Macs (or rather, OSX-running stuff) represent what, 10-20% of their revenue nowadays, when compared to iPads and etc?
But then, if you look at the population at large, we're seeing a somewhat similar trend.
You and I (and anyone who loves to tinker with stuff) are decrying the lack of ports, lack of upgradeability, etc... meanwhile, Joe Sixpack never bothers to do much more than occasionally up the RAM on his laptop, his wife dumped her laptop for an iPad/tablet years ago, and a *huge* percentage of folks do nearly everything on their smartphones nowadays.
Port usage is different too among most consumers - most folks have long ago begun switching to bluetooth and wifi to connect stuff. Printers nowadays are wifi-connected, so what's the point of having a dedicated printer cable port? Geek sticks? Okay, we'll still need a USB port.. but that's about it. Camera/SD cards? USB adapter, as always, or just use the USB cable, or...
Makes perfect sense to the average consumer, who doesn't have a lot of use for the holes in their laptop, and isn't going to bother with upgrades beyond maybe a bigger hard drive a couple of years down the road - when it comes time to buy a new laptop. I don't blame them, either - there haven't been any real advances in performance over the past, what, decade? At least when it comes to the trinity (CPU, RAM, Disk), it's been incremental at best.
This presents a problem for the tinkering crowd. I can't just buy a baseline MBP and bump the disk and RAM when I get home. I can't plug in all my old shit like I used to. Unlike most consumers, I actually use the built-in Ethernet port once in awhile on my 2012-era MBP (occasionally troubleshooting the home router/sat-link ISP). Stuff like that. But then, I see my own home rigs changing: the laptop I sit in front of connects to boxes I've rigged as servers: media, storage, what-have-you. Given this, I don't mind so much if I can't do as much with the laptop nowadays. If I want to do gaming or some real demanding thing, I can turn to my fire-breathing dual-boot (Hackintosh/Linux) desktop - either by sitting in front of it, or by using RDP, or...
I think it's part and parcel of Apple's response to usage patterns among the general public (not the geeks, but the general public), which makes more sense to them, at least financially.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I don't think I'm a typical tech consumer, but I think consumers like me are pretty important to Apple's success in the last decade.
I've had pretty much Apple everything for a little over a decade. My Macs are always bought infrequently. I've had four iPhones, three Apple TVs, and two iPads in the time I'm on one Cinema Display. I've had three iPhones in the time I've had my current MacBook Pro. Ten percent of sales, sure.
But here's the deal: I'm about to buy a laptop that isn't a Mac. When I do, I'll probably stop updating all my other Apple products too. I had a Mac first, and even today, I buy all those other things because of how nicely they integrate with a Mac. The Mac anchors all my other Apple products, and frankly, I anchor the tech purchasing decisions of a lot of my friends and family.
The Mac Pro using the 12 core Xeon is based on Ivy bridge, that is quiet old. There has been Haswell, Broadwell, and now Skylake since it came out. The Wifi doesnt support N just AC. Only 1 Xeon CPU. Only 64 gigs of memory when you can buy 64 gigs for a desktop now cheap. And they still use the AMD FirePro D700 for the gfx card is bad. Its about the speed of a 980, when nvidia 1080's are out.
They gave up on power users, they gave up on power laptops. If you are an adobe photoshop user and you need speed, you migrated to windows awhile ago.
I'm writing this on a 13" mid-2011 macbook pro and I'm ready for a new purchase. For the first time since, well let's see, 1989, I will not buy an Apple computer. I'll probably purchase a Razor Blade Stealth. I will still need an Apple desktop for the time being, as my work demands the use of Pro Tools on an also aging 21 inch iMac. When you think about it, that's a pretty damn, damning statement on the current state of Mac development. The current lineup of MacBook(s) is overpriced, completely un-upgradable and just does not suit my needs. I will miss OS X, it's served me well, but it's development in recent years towards Mac iOS features just doesn't interest me. I'd rather purchase something like the Stealth, keep Windows on it and run Linux in a virtual machine for daily email, web browsing etc... When you start to lose loyal 25 year customers, something is really, really wrong. So Apple, it's been a nice ride. No longer will I extol your virtues to other users, no longer will I purchase your products or support your developers (I'm also an Android user). I stuck with you all those years, bought your stock at around 12 bucks a share when things were really dim for Cupertino in the '90s. It's been nice, but it's time to move on.
This is what marketing does, they look at history and pat themselves on the back. Then they get slaughtered when the future arrives.
it does work just that the license says no to running in a VM on non apple hardware.