Silicon Valley Veteran On Apple: Company Has Become Sloppy, Missed Updates, Delayed Refreshes (chuqui.com)

Silicon Valley veteran Chuq Von Rospach's blog post, in which he has criticized Apple for the things it did last year, has received quite a few nods from developers, analysts and users alike. Von Rospach, who has previously worked at Apple, has lambasted at the company for, among other things, how it has handled the Mac Pro, a lineup that hasn't seen any refresh in ages, and the AirPort routers, which too have been reportedly abandoned. From the post:Back when I was running most of Apple's e-mail systems for the marketing teams, I went to them and suggested that we should consider dumping the text-only part of the emails we were building, because only about 4% of users used them and it added a significant amount of work to the process of creation and testing each e-mail. Their response? That it was a small group of people, but a strategic one, since it was highly biased towards developers and power users. So the two-part emails stayed -- and they were right. It made no sense from a business standpoint to continue to develop these emails as both HTML [and] text, but it made significant strategic sense. It was an investment in keeping this key user base happy with Apple. Apple, from all indications I've seen over the last year and with the configurations they've shipped with these new laptops, has forgotten this, and the product configurations seem designed by what will fit the biggest part of the user base with the fewest configuration options. They've chopped off the edges of the bell curve -- and big chunks of their key users with them. The most daunting sentence from his post, according to Nitin Ganatra, who worked at Apple for 18 years and headed engineering of iOS, is, "If you just look at the numbers, things are okay."

Comments

since when has it been a business decision

[nimbius]

It made no sense from a business standpoint to continue to develop these emails as both HTML [and] text, but it made significant strategic sense.

the fact that this rose to the level of a marketing decision shows that as far back as Chuq's tenure, Apple has been on a steady decline. As an email admin, let me spell this out for you. You supply email in text and HTML format because people who do real and meaningful work on desktops and laptops want to see the text, not HTML. these are the same people who still use real F keys, a real escape key, and consider removing the headphones from a cellphone a form of jackassery, not bravery.

Re:since when has it been a business decision

[JaredOfEuropa]

The question here is: are "people who do real and meaningful work and can't or won't ead emails in HTML" a key demographic for Apple? Chuq seems to know how large this group is (4%). That's not a lot, but how important are they as a group and can Apple risk pissing them off? That's a business decision.

Re:since when has it been a business decision

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup

> Top-posting is evil.

Re:since when has it been a business decision

[asdfman2000]

> Sure, plain text has a place, but with HTML I can reply to a colleagues email and highlight my comments or point out issues in various colors in the body of the email* rather than breaking things bit by bit as I would have to do in a plaintext email.

> * See what I did here? I used HTML to emphasize the point I was making. How would you easily do that in plain text?

You're right. There is *absolutely* NO way to _emphasize_ a point in regular text.

Re:how often are Mac Pro's upgraded?

[slashdice]

Right, because all companies everywhere colluded and agreed to only buy Mac Pros on the same day. And no companies anywhere are allowed to grow and need more computers. And no new companies will be allowed, ever.

Stark Contrast

[American AC in Paris]

"Silicon Valley Veteran On Apple: Company Has Become Sloppy, Missed Updates, Delayed Refreshes By Long"

By contrast, if the company you work for has always been sloppy and slipshod, people simply lower their expectations and it's no big deal.

While I don't totally disagree

[RogueWarrior65]

E-mails? Really? THAT's Apple's problem? And spouting off about HTML in e-mails? HTML is total inconsistent crap. What looks fine to one user on one platform and one browser looks totally different to another. That said, this post reminds me of the time that Steve Jobs came into a meeting as asked what some particular software product was supposed to do. After receiving an answer he said, "Can anyone tell me why the f*ck it doesn't do that?" Apple has indeed lost its way. They have all but abandoned the power users and power developers (there are plenty of things that Android developers have access to that iOS developers don't). Why the hell did Apple buy Beats? Seems like they're focusing on trying to make the next big thing and that's sucking all the resources away from other product lines.

Re:While I don't totally disagree

[Anonymous Coward]

He's not saying that emails are the problem. The email story is one illustration how Apple used to consider "power users and power developers" instead of just the mass-market consumer. Apple used to say "only 4% of people use this, but they are still important;" while Apple now says "only 4% of people use this, f*ck them."

Re:While I don't totally disagree

[UnknowingFool]

Why the hell did Apple buy Beats?

I would guess the licensing agreements that Beats had with the music companies to stream music. I would also guess that when Apple approached the same music companies for licensing rights, the music companies wanted a great deal of money as Apple has it. So they bought out another company that already had the agreements. They really didn't buy Beats for their hardware. That's my best guess.

I do agree with you that Apple seems to lost their way with power users and developers.

Re:While I don't totally disagree

[fortfive]

In the early aughts, around os 10.2, Apple was all about designing and supporting hardware and software for high end producers. G4 and G5 Mac desktops were unbelievably awesome machines, OS X was super stable with all the functionality of Unix available, final cut pro, logic and aperture were state of the art and fun to use.

And the tiBook, while not the fastest, was surely the awesomest laptop a person could own.

Later, the 12" powerbook.

The fail seemed to set in about five years ago. It's a good example of what happens when you don't have good competition, cf Windows Vista.

Re:While I don't totally disagree

[TJ_Phazerhacki]

Many moons ago, OS X was extremely attractive to people who needed a computer to do work, but who didn't want to take the time to learn Windows and deal with bugs. The G4/G5 era was great for Creatives, and that naturally meant that the people who made all the dongles and the software treated OSX as their primary platforn. I supported IT at a music studio and an architecture firm, and the apple logo was EVERYWHERE. The problem wasn't that XP or 7 was 'bad', it was that the tools that people used were developed for Mac. We had desks that had 2 computers at them - a Mac for whatever the job function was, and a Dell laptop for everything else (Outlook being the primary culprit.) The problem is that Macs have been overwhelmingly shitty computers for years now, but because of the inbreeding, it takes major product shifts to drive brand-loyal users away; so here we are - lowest-common denominator consumer machines with a price premium for the brand, and professionals ripped away because they physically cannot do work anymore.

Re:MS Surface has been on my mind lately...

[hcs_$reboot]

the MBP is not in the running. The Surface is looking pretty good. I already started to migrate out of the Apple ecosystem. Just a few last ties left then I'm free.

Apple --> Microsoft, is that really the path to freedom?

See auto manufacturers and racing

[jasenj1]

Porsche, Audi, Mercedes, BMW, etc. don't make race cars and compete in things like 24 Hours of LeMans, WRC, etc. because those cars and those events make them money. They do it because 1) It provides a venue to show off cool new technology 2) It provides them marketing cachet, name recognition, and bragging rights.

Apple has lost sight of this. Apple is happily making Corollas & Caravans - which sell large volumes and make a profit. But it has forgotten the high-performance end of the bell curve where the bragging rights are earned and new tech is shown off.

Re:See auto manufacturers and racing

[SScorpio]

I see it more as Apple makes Corollas and Caravans that they market and price as a BMW.

Re:how often are Mac Pro's upgraded?

[UnknowingFool]

It's been more than 3 years. Mac Pros are not for your average consumer. It's for the professionals. While most computers don't get monumental improvement gains anymore like they did in the 90s, incremental gains are most likely wanted by the top end, the professionals. Also previous Mac Pros could be upgraded internally with better GPUs, expansion cards, etc so a few years between upgrades wasn't as big a deal. The new Mac Pro has very little that can be upgraded. I have to say that ignoring the pros is something Apple shouldn't do. Under Tim Cook, the focus has shifted from making great products to making lots of money.

Apple seems stuck in profit trap

[swb]

Any potential innovation costs money and fails to produce the same levels of profit as existing products will be seen as a failure, so Apple is stuck doing nothing because its the most profitable thing in the short term.

The problem seems to be by the time the highly profitable products stop producing huge levels of profit they won't have any new products available because no innovation is likely to produce the same profits, so they don't do any innovation as it will be only a cost or cut in overall profitability.

What I'm curious is whether investors will be happy with innovation-less profit or whether they will respond to public criticism of lack of innovation and put pressure on Cook to pursue more meaningful innovation even if it hurts short term profitability. And more meaningful innovation means real stuff, not grinding users for headphone dongles or new wireless headphones.

Re:Apple seems stuck in profit trap

[Jason Levine]

If Apple falls into the no innovation trap, they could eventually join Blackberry in market oblivion. Blackberry was on the top once. If you wanted a mobile phone with all the latest features, you got a Blackberry. Their fans were just as rabid as Apple fans are (for better or worse - not saying that being a rabid fan is always a bad thing). But as other companies (notably, Apple) innovated into their space, Blackberry insisted that they didn't need to keep up. They were on top which (to them) meant that they were doing what the users wanted which meant they didn't need to change. Even as they slid down, they still insisted that they didn't need to change. By the time they realized change was needed, they were too far gone.

If Apple's not careful, they can wind up as another Blackberry. Short term profits are nice, but can blind you to long term trends.

Re:Apple seems stuck in profit trap

[DickBreath]

Apple was once a great company. Back in the day Apple was ahead of the industry in just about every way. BYTE magazine wrote that the history of the microcomputer industry was an effort to keep up with Apple. In the 1980's and 90's I was a card carrying Apple fanboy. Then I got hooked on Linux in 1999.

I parted ways with Apple when OS X would not run on the several $5000+ computers in my household. I had fond feeling towards Apple, but was no longer interested in their products.

When the iPhone came out, I realized that in five years everyone would have such a phone, but with a dozen different brand names other than Apple. Just like the Mac vs PC when Apple would not license it's OS.

When Apple became a litigation factory, I realized that the end was near. Slide to unlock, really? Rectangles with rounded corners? Apple argued in a foreign court patent suit that Samsung could have made their tables thicker and heaver, as if thin and light were some exclusive Apple right. Here we are ten years later from 2007 to 2017 and the headlines in industry trade rags are beginning to paint the fall of Apple. Hey, it happened to IBM. Then eventually to Microsoft who is trying to grasp at relevance and embrace the open source world. Why can't Apple fall? Unthinkable? Think different! It could happen. (And some of us would say good riddance after enduring the snobbish fanboys.)

Today's Apple fanboys are little more than ditto heads. They protested that Apple's was not a patent troll. Yet Apple and Microsoft together formed Rockstar, one of the biggest patent trolls around, in order to shield their good brand names while patent trolling.

It may just be what happens to big corporations when they grow past a certain point. Hey Google are you paying attention? They become too conservative. They can't rock the boat that generates today's huge profits. They can't invest too many resources into the future. They don't have vision. They can hire people with vision, but then they won't believe what those visionary people tell them. It seems to be a common story of successful tech companies.

If Apple does go away, it won't be overnight. Not quickly. And maybe not even completely. Just a gradual slide into irrelevance. But Apple was once great, and had a good long run. And from my once fanboy days, I'll point out a saying of the early 1990's: people have been predicting the demise of Apple every year since 1981.

Re:Apple seems stuck in profit trap

[UnknowingFool]

I would agree with you on the effect but the iPhone was a game changer. RIM did rest on its laurels, and outwardly they tried to reassure users that every was fine. Internally they were panicked over the iPhone.

RIM's technology was slowly getting out of date; their software model left a lot to be desired. The problem that RIM and other smart phone makers didn't see was that while their smart phones were for power users and corporate types, consumers wanted a smart phone designed for them. Blackberry consumer models were just stripped down versions of their corporate models. Not much thought went into the fact that consumers wanted better UI as opposed to tech features. Apple could never move into the corporate market which was their stronghold was the thinking.

RIM did try to compete with Apple with models like the Storm on the consumer end; however, it was rushed and buggy. Apple had spent years developing the iPhone while RIM had less than a year and missed deadlines.

Re:Apple seems stuck in profit trap

[DickBreath]

As a once Apple fanboy during the 80's and 90's I'll point out that Steve Jobs was just plain wrong about some things.

It was right for Sculley to strip Jobs of power. Steve left on his own. He could have continued to be the visionary.

But Steve Jobs would not allow reasonable amounts of memory. Nor expandability. Definitely no slots ever! No color, ever. Just his vision of a single configuration appliance computer with a small number of expansion items like floppy drives, a hard drive and printer.

The appliance computer vision is great. But was not practical at the time. The Late 1990's iMac was a good realization of that vision. The high speed USB made his vision of external expansion more practical. And today, most computers never see any internal expansion other than possibly memory. (I said most, not all.)

The 1987 Macintosh II with color, card slots, external monitors and other great features was a huge expansion of the Macintosh vision that never would have happened with Jobs. The real irony was that Jobs' NeXT computer did all the things he wouldn't let Apple do.

Re:Apple seems stuck in profit trap

[Erbo]

My opinion of Apple is that it's become kind of like the Soviet/Russian space program: both of them produce some really impressive hardware, but you can still see the dead hand of their chief innovator (Steve Jobs for Apple, Sergei Korolev for the Russians) in all of it, and you can also see that they don't have another innovator of that same caliber to carry them forward. Chuq's describing what appears to be a symptom of that, in that they've lost the person who's capable of thinking strategically instead of just focusing on the business numbers.

Which customers?

[sjbe]

They won't for long if they keep pissing off their highest revenue-generating customers.

I'm curious who you think those "highest revenue-generating customers" actually are. I'm willing to be it isn't who you think it is. Just because you buy a Mac Pro every few years doesn't make you a "highest revenue customer". Well over 50% of Apples revenues come from the iPhone and you can tell that Apple's focus is more on that product than any other. Also the customers generating the most revenue are very likely to be a different group than the most profitable customers. At the end of the day it's profits, not revenues that matter.

Re:Which customers?

[ArhcAngel]

Then you missed the example already given. Apple kept outdated tech in their email system to accommodate a very small but crucial market segment. Now Apple is removing features large swaths of their consumer base still use. Anecdotal as it may be I know of several people who were waiting to upgrade their iPhone when 7 came out and decided to get a Samsung device because of the headphone jack. It may not hurt Apple in the short term but it will if they continue to alienate their customer base.

Re:Which customers?

[powerlord]

All true, but the real question is also if they are losing the "Decision Makers".

These are probably not either the "highest revenue-generating customers" OR the "most profitable customers", but are the ones that influence others in their purchasing decisions.

Personally, I buy computers infrequently. My home computer is ~4-5 years old, my phone is 3 years old. I am not the "Ooo shiny! Must have!" buyer who is going to make Apple money every year with a new phone purchase. However I also have been responsible for collectively having 5 people get iPhones, and 4 MacOS purchases based primarily on my recommendation. Will I still be recommending Apple products? Probably, but it will be much more qualified. Windows 10 is pretty good also for most users, and Apple's treatment of hardware is pretty abysmal from my perspective making it harder to recommend them.

End result, I may only be two sales, but if I don't see them as serving my needs, they may lose 11 sales total (mostly from people who fit their bell curve) because the decision maker is now outside the curve.

On the scale of Decision Makers, I'm peanuts compared to real Influence Peddlers such as reviewers, or other vocal critics that Apple is now hearing from. I would also disagree with TFA. While I agree Apple isn't a car with its engine on fire, I disagree that it is merely an engine that needs some tuning. It is an engine with the timing belt failing. It needs to be properly replaced/fixed soon, or the whole engine is likely to come to a crashing halt when you least expect it and in a way that will be very difficult to repair after the fact.

Re: They have six hundred billion dollars

[Anonymous Coward]

True, they've been successful for ROI. Their business approach focused on visual design and appeal to consumer ego has ultimately paid off.

Most economic theories I'm familiar with assume consumers make informed, rationale purchasing choices and understand trade offs. When you erode that assumption away and instead manipulate the consumer psychologically through marketing, Apple is basically what you get. It works. It's sad, but it works.

I view it all as part of the 'post fact' Era where as a society, we seem to care less about good choices and just want to feel warm and gooey inside, even for a short time, chasing high-to-high.

Re:how often are Mac Pro's upgraded?

[aaarrrgggh]

In a rational market this would mean that the price drops between cycles.

I get how it is hard for Apple to justify a sku that brings in less than $50MM a year (or some random number), but the problem is Apple is built on mindshare. Pithy example, but my company switched to iPhones (back in the day) because of me, our sole Mac user; Apple no longer makes a computer well suited for my personal needs. This leads to erosion in core markets over time, and is hard to recover from.

So, sure... there is no profit to be had in a better Mac Pro, or a laptop that has built in Ethernet, or whatever. Worse, the designers run things now, and other functional items are eliminated for better visual appearance.

Tail wags the dog...

[rockmuelle]

As a developer/power user who sits at the far end of the bell curve, here's what I see as the folly of Apple's ways.

I switched to Macs after working on a beta version of OS X in the late 90s. Unix + sensible desktop was enough to keep me off the Linux train for daily use. That the hardware was also well designed with a good level of performance was also important. For the next 10 years or so, that held true.

But, in the last 5 years:

- the hardware has stagnated (e.g., I'd really like to buy a MacMini for my kids, but there's no way I'm shelling out Apple prices for 3 year old processors)
- new hardware decisions make it difficult to use existing peripherals (music is a hobby - no way am I dropping a few grand on new audio interfaces just b/c I upgraded my Mac and need to support new ports)
- Apple has ignored sensible design decisions made on the non-Apple side of the world (specifically, touch screens on laptops - my wife as an HP for work and the touch screen is useful, those old studies that claim otherwise are just that, old and dated).
- The OS continues to have a slew of undocumented features that may or may not be useful, but definitely affect performance (the real dig here: just document the features Apple, I hate discovering things OS X has done for years on random blog posts)
- The iPhone and OS X still don't work well together

Why does this matter from the perspective of the bell curve and my place on it? Simple: I switched not only my family, but also my company over to Macs. The middle part of that curve was filled by people following people like me into the Mac universe. I'm seriously considering dropping Macs for computer use and (horror of horrors) going back to Windows + Linux. If I go that way, it's just a matter of an upgrade cycle or two before those in my sphere of influence abandon Macs as well.

Apple seems to have forgotten that it's us geeks that couldn't wait for Linux on the Desktop that helped drive adoption 15 years ago. Kinda like the Democrats forgetting that the working class matters.

-Chris

Re:MS Surface has been on my mind lately...

[powerlord]

*nix is the path to the Dark Side.

Linux leads to Apple. Apple leads to MicroSoft. MicroSoft leads to the Suffering. --The Penguin

I jest, Windows 10 has been remarkably stable and good on the 5 year old work computer I;m using ... enough that, based on how shitty MacOS hardware has been looking, I'm considering going back to windows for my next home computer ... for the first time in 15 years.

My iPhone is about 3 years old ... I expect I'll start looking at replacing it shortly and I'm open to looking at alternatives. ... Apple's moves may costing them more future revue than their calculations are predicting.

Re:MS Surface has been on my mind lately...

[Aaden42]

If you want a laptop as opposed to a tablet you can stick a keyboard onto, I've found the Surface (both 2 Pro & 4 Pro) to be disappointing. The folding keyboard and touch pad are miserable to use. The feeling of the keyboard is really .. I dunno.. sloppy.. Tough to describe in words, but no fun to do any amount of typing on. The touch pad has both a right/left mouse button, but there's no visual or tactile delineation where the mouse "button" stops and the normal pad starts nor where the border between left & right buttons are. I'm constantly getting right when I want left, or tapping too high for right & getting the default left on the main body of the touch pad. The pen input is nice-ish to take hand written notes, but the Apple Pencil on an iPad is much more accurate. Looking at MS OneNote where I've taken notes on both devices, the Surface looks like I'm writing in crayon compared to the sharpness of the Apple Pencil notes.

I still get more use out of my five+ year old MacBook Pro than I do the Surface. The Surface does a lot of the functionality of both a laptop & a tablet, but it doesn't do any of it nearly as well as the separate devices do. If you're looking to travel light & small and don't mind dealing with daily annoyance on a lot of the functionality, maybe the Surface is good enough. I just find it annoying to use. I'll grab it when I'm going out for an evening and *might* need to answer a call for work, but if I'm actually planning to get any real work done, the Surface collects dust & I grab a real laptop.

There's an opportunity here for Google

[timholman]

Right now I'm using a mid-2012 MacBook Pro that I've just upgraded with a Samsung SSD. The reason I chose to upgrade the storage instead of buying a new MacBook Pro was that I couldn't justify spending $3000+ for a laptop that was unrepairable and unexpandable, and would have to be sent to the recycle bin if it broke after the AppleCare warranty expired. I'm hoping this upgrade will get me through the next couple of years, but what happens after that?

At some point I will need to buy a new laptop. So what are my choices, if not another MacBook? A Windows 10 machine? Absolutely no way in hell. Put Linux on a PC laptop? Maybe, but avoiding the time and effort of supporting a Linux installation is the entire reason I use a Mac.

But what if (for example) Google decided to take a page from Apple's playbook? What if Google were to develop its own laptop with a real Linux / UNIX / BSD OS with a nice GUI, and support it the way Apple does? Not just a Chromebook, but a laptop with a new OS to complete with MacOS? And what if that laptop had a sane upgradeable / repairable premium design, without Apple's obsession for thinness and appearance over functionality?

If such a laptop existed, I would buy it in a heartbeat. And when I did, I would almost certainly switch from an iPhone to a Pixel, and from the Apple to the Google ecosystem. Everyone says "Google is the new Apple", so why shouldn't that be true? Google has the culture and the resources to play the game by Apple's rules, and take a huge chunk of mindshare away from Apple. Not to mention the fact that Google apps like Assistant and Maps already leave Siri and Apple Maps in the dust.

There needs to be a new option for laptop and desktop machines. Apple and Microsoft have both gone off the deep end, pursuing development paths that are leaving power users in the cold. Google could step in and become the new king of the mountain in very short order - if it has the will to do so.

Re:There's an opportunity here for Google

[NG Resonance]

Google will never do as you hope. It's already "pursuing development paths that are leaving power users in the cold," and its wake is littered with projects that have withered on the vine or been left to rot on the ground.

Re:There's an opportunity here for Google

[hey!]

What if Google were to develop its own laptop with a real Linux / UNIX / BSD OS with a nice GUI, and support it the way Apple does? Not just a Chromebook, but a laptop with a new OS to complete with MacOS?

I can take that one. They'd do a pretty good job. The new OS would get a power users excited. Then just as it seemed to be gaining traction, Google would suddenly kill it, leaving the project's fans to wonder (a) why pull the plug now and (b) why even do this in the first place?

This is the conclusion I've come to: Google is a company with a fascination with shiny new tech, and plenty of cash to indulge that fascination even when they don't have any clear business rationale.

Re:how often are Mac Pro's upgraded?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Isn't this exactly the strategic short-sightedness the article was talking about? Sure, on the spreadsheet, you can do this sort of calculation. However, then you neglect the real people who need, or simply want, to be more up to date. While there aren't necessarily a lot of those people compared to, say, iPhone users, they probably include people who write the apps that make products like iPhones and iPads viable, or who use Apple gear to its full potential and then champion it when discussing tech with others. These people are a strategically valuable part of the market, and if you lose them, you risk damaging other, possibly much larger, parts of your business indirectly as well.

Re:how often are Mac Pro's upgraded?

[Anonymous Coward]

The people who generally purchase Mac Pro's as the same that think nothing of dropping $2000 on a new lens because it has .0001% less chroma aberration. These are not the 'good enough' folks. These are the folks that develop the techniques that others write books about. And, the folks that Apple used to cater to.

As much as Microsoft was rightfully maligned under Bull-Headed Balmer, the new leadership is starting to make some very interesting inroads into Apple's turf with the Surface line. Specifically the Surface Studio. That should be the next iMac. While I wouldn't call it revolutionary, it is definitely innovative - and specifically targeted at the pro market.

It is going to be very hard to justify Apple's anal-cranial extraction so long as they are profitable. Which means we will be on this course for a long time to come.

FredInIT

Re:how often are Mac Pro's upgraded?

[timholman]

Pithy example, but my company switched to iPhones (back in the day) because of me, our sole Mac user; Apple no longer makes a computer well suited for my personal needs. This leads to erosion in core markets over time, and is hard to recover from.

Exactly. I switched my entire family, and all my in-laws, from PCs to Macs years ago. There are thousands of stories like yours, where one or two people on the upper end of the user bell curve led an entire community or company to switch by proselytizing the Apple experience. If Apple stops manufacturing laptops and desktops that those power users want to buy, the drop in Apple's marketshare will be increased by orders of magnitude.

Software quality is my biggest disappointment

[Tangential]

I've been an OS X user since 2006 when Intel Macs arrived. I was strictly a linux user for the prior 7 years having abandoned Windows in the late 90s.

The reason I went to OS X was that its *nix under the covers (and gave me all of the programming/scripting power I needed) and also was incredibly stable. I would literally go for months without rebooting and without native (X86, not PPC emulated) apps crashing...at all...ever.

I feel that from a stability POV OS X peaked around 10.6. Ever since then, a pattern of increasing crashes and decreasing reliability has followed every release. The amount of instability is still very small, but when as a user you are used to 0 problems, it is very frustrating. (iOS seems to have followed a similar trajectory lately as well.)

I don't know what's happened to the QA process at Apple and I also don't see the point in rushing out a new OS every year. I would love for them to go back to the simpler, more stable approach that they have 5-6 years ago.

Next Generation

[Roger W Moore]

All true, but the real question is also if they are losing the "Decision Makers".

It's not just the decision makers of today they seem to have lost but also those of the next generation. A few years ago when I looked at my students many would have mac laptops open with the rest a mix of different PCs. Now there are far fewer macs and it seems that many of the students who had deep enough pockets for a mac have Surface Books and Surface Pros. Since this was last term it also means that MS was beating Apple BEFORE the latest MacBook Pro disaster so I expect the trend will be even stronger next year.

Re:GPU Improvements

[pjrc]

GPU increases can be measured multiple ways. Indeed performance has increased dramatically when you measure by frame rates in AAA games running on Windows.

But what matters greatly for Apple is OpenCL performance. No matter how much you may love certain GPUs for Windows gaming, the reality is Apple build Final Cut Pro on OpenCL.

Re:GPU Improvements

[UnknowingFool]

I thought the GPUs in the Mac Pro ARE Upgradeable. Well, the Graphics Cards ARE replaceable (theoretically); but no one has produced an Upgrade.

True. Ifixit's teardown suggests that the video cards could be quite easy to replace. Also it is possible to replace the whole MB and CPU as well.

Obligatory Cixin Liu

[Applehu Akbar]

The article didn't mention a frequent user complaint: Apple's obsession with trumping the competition by making the whole universe two-dimensional. The newest release of every product is thinner than the last, even though users in every single online forum keep wanting to trade some thinness off for more battery life. In the face of all that reaction the next release will be thinner still, even to the point of compromising structural integrity (iPhone Plus, iPad) and ports (MacBook Pro) and hardware features (iMac).

Re:MS Surface has been on my mind lately...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget the new Linux subsystem for Windows 10. This erodes much of OS X's "but it's runs Unix" advantage over Wintel PCs.

Re:how often are Mac Pro's upgraded?

[TheFakeTimCook]

So, sure... there is no profit to be had in a better Mac Pro, or a laptop that has built in Ethernet, or whatever.

The only thing that they can do right now with the Mac Pro is make it join the USB-C/TB 3 crowd (which I expect they will do this year), and possibly upgrade the GPU and SSD. From what I understand, there really ISN'T a better Xeon CPU than it already has, which of course isn't Apple's fault; but yet the blame gets laid at Apple's feet.

As for the MacBook Pro, in Apple's "mind", they did upgrade it, quite significantly, even over the 2015 model, to wit:

1. Much better thermal management, meaning that the CPU can run faster for far longer than in the 2015 model.

2. Fastest SSD in the industry. Benchmarks show faster than any other SSD.

3. Unique 5k Internal Display, with the Unique ability to drive TWO additional 5k, or FOUR additional 4k, External Displays. No other laptop comes close.

4. 80 Gbps of Raw I/O bandwidth in four identical, interchangeable, multifunction USB-C/TB 3 Ports. No other laptop comes close.

5. Unique-in-the-industry multitouch input device. No other laptop has it.

6. Touch ID.

Say what you will about these changes, they are decidedly not "fluff". They are hard-core, engineering improvements over the previous model.

Google may do it just for their developers

[presidenteloco]

As far as I know the vast majority of Google's developers use a MacBook Pro (previous generation).

A good half of those at least will shudder at the thought of no proper Esc key and gratuitous omission of at least one regular old USB 3 port, and 16GB RAM is looking small for a development box these days. Oh, and the sheer horrible design thinking exhibited by omitting the amazing magsafe connector will be enough to sway some of those.

So confronted by grumbling developers threatening to order Surface Pros, Google may just make a super-souped-up chromebook+ for developers by freeing up user access to more of the Linux OS underneath, adding a giant SSD, etc.

Please.

Re:Money money money

[unixisc]

NEXT completely changed what passed for Unix. They took Mach 2.5, put BSD on top of it, and then put Display Postscript on top, and they got a great system that could make Unix very transparent yet visible to the user - particularly by going through the finder. Apple changed that and made it look different but weird. I loved NEXTSTEP, but could never really get comfortable w/ OS X

Re: GPU Improvements

[thesupraman]

Sigh.

Uncompressed 4k video takes about 720mbits of bandwidth even to move..
That's in one direction. So double it for real-time processing (in and out).

Care to price up both ends of a low latency 1.5gbit network just to get to your remote 'cloud computing' server?

And then of course you don't need the Mac pro in the first place.. Since a low end machine will do the job as it's just a display server.

So. No. You going have a clue.

The only reason for such workstation machines is heavy local work, and the Mac pro has been so far behind the pack for about 2 years that is lost most of the medium market share it once had.

No one doing serious workstation work uses apple any more.. They threw away a market as they used to be quite heavily used in video especially.

Re: GPU Improvements

[ruir]

If the AC would be so kind to explain how it magically gets there...