Is Apple losing its lustre?

Apple General
#23

Yes - the Air was an amazing form factor when it was introduced - a game changer. It was 1.36kg - the MacBook of that time was 2.3kg - that’s a HUGE difference, not to mention the skinniness. And it absolutely fit a market, and it absolutely did exactly what a lot of us wanted. The only thing it was missing was a touch screen. (Hard to imagine this actually pre-dated the iPad.)

As @MissionMan says however, they then tried to transfer this philosophy to the rest of their products. The result stripped away functionality, and repairability.

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#24

Unfortunately, I think that the time has come where computers, TVs, DVD/Blu-ray Players (lol wut?) have become consumer electronics in that they are seen as disposable. Glue is quicker in the manufacturing process meaning more units made and more units sold therefore more profits. Don’t forget that Apple post-Jobs is just another tech company with a focus on profitability and revenue.

I haven’t seen anything in this latest round of Mac updates that makes me want to upgrade, my wife bought a 2017 non-touchbar MBP and it just feels like another computer - there’s nothing that makes me want to upgrade - that and the known issues with the keyboard really makes me hesitant.

For me at least, the Apple’s reality distortion field has well and truly worn off, I only stay out of curiosity and the fact that nearly all my devices are in the Apple Ecosystem.

TLDR; Yes, for me Apple is slowly losing its lustre. I’m only sticking around because of my investment in the Apple Ecosystem and somewhat morbid curiosity.

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#25

That is why I think I’ll stick with my 2012 15" i7 MacBook Pro, with a 480GB SSD, 16GB of RAM and a 2560x1440 external monitor I hope to get another year or two out of it.

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#26

To be clear, I haven’t upgraded because I don’t really like current macs. But I haven’t left, yet, because I have a thirty two year cultural investment in macs. So I wait, keep the old girl running, and probably won’t upgrade the three year old MBAs the kids have at Christmas, in the hope Apple will get its shit back together. Otherwise 2013 was peak Mac for me.

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#27

They admitted getting it wrong the the Mac Pro trashcan… Does this raise hope that they will similarly re-think the iMac? The iMac Pro is not a good sign toward this - there’s nothing “user” upgradable about it. (Yes, I know - the RAM can be upgraded - if you dig half a mile inside the beast)

#28

I just think they need to start being realistic about what they are doing. The one thing Steve Jobs was into, was doing one or two things and doing them very well. Also appealing to a wider customer base and not leaving out those of us who dont have 6 figure incomes. Apple is being elitist in what its doing and its going to cut its nose off. Sure, there will be those that buy the new stuff, regardless of its cost, but there will be a mass exodus of those of us who might want to, but cannot afford, to stay with Apple products. I’ll keep using mine until they either dont work anymore and I can’t fix them, or they no longer do the job I need them to. Then, I’ll be looking at an install of a different OS, dammit, or buying hardware from someplace else. I dont much relish the notion of a return to Windows, but perhaps that may be the only realistic option for me, because many of my photography related applications are dual licence for both platforms. I guess I dont need to think about it now, but my laptop is already 8 years old and theres only so much more life in it. The Mac Mini will probably last a bit longer.

/rambling

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#29

My breif thoughts:
Apple used to lead/innovate.
Now it seems more like, let’s catch up.

In recent times innovative for Apple has meant, “oops, try again”.

Al

#30

Sadly I think they made the mistake windows did. Becoming complacent and drumming out the same crap year after year

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#31

And it seems we aren’t the only ones

#32

Mac may be no longer as good as it used to be for some, but Windows isn’t the great answer either. I had a friend who simply wanted to format a drive in Windows and mistakenly formatted the wrong drive… he’d never done that in his life using macOS.

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#33

I disagree with the notion that because Macs are at a low point that Apple aren’t innovating. Like I said before, AirPods are innovation; HomePod is innovation…and AirPods have an extremely high satisfaction rating

#34

HomePod isn’t a massive innovation. Every man and his dog is bringing out intelligent speakers, it’s good quality, but it’s actually not a great smart speaker, it’s a great audio speaker. There are a couple of areas it fails, integration with Spotify is one simple one, no intelligence on messages. i.e. if you link it to your messages, someone else in the house and listen to your messages, Apple doesn’t distinguish between voices.

AirPods are also good, but not massive innovation.

The problem is they haven’t been innovating in places they should, or they have been innovating in the wrong way. The classic example is the iMac. The large 5K screen is awesome. But why the hell would you not make it upgradable when size is not an issue? I.e. no one carries around their 5K Mac so why is making the hard drive and ram non-upgradable relevant?

Nothing there really makes me stand up and say “wow”

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#35

When I look at the research and development that went into both, I respectfully disagree.

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#36

Where is the innovation for Mac?

A touch-bar?

Non-upgradeable components?

A profile that’s anorexic.

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#37

You don’t think Google or any of the other speakers went through innovation on theirs? Innovation is about doing something different, not research and development. I have no doubt that developing a HUD for a car requires research and development but if you did it now, it wouldn’t be innovative because BMW has done it already.

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#38

quite frickin’ so!

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#39

…I didn’t mention Google :man_shrugging:

Bluetooth headphones as a whole may not sound like an innovation, but developing a chip that allows them to connect instantly to an iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple TV, i.e. without having to repair them or losing prior connections, is an innovation. The W1 and W2 chips are innovations and they have already driven headphones and smart watches forward.

Small wireless speakers as a whole may not be an innovation, but making one that can play sounds in the 25Hz - 30Hz range by careful design and advanced digital processing is innovation.

If you don’t see it that way, that’s cool man, more power to you.

#40

Yeah, remember those days with the last great upgradapable laptop? A G3 Powebook with two interchangable batteries that could be filled with either another hard drive or an optical drive, all the ports you could need and PC card slots? Yeah… That was the reason why the vast majority of pros were using Macs in the creative and music industry.

Today the Pro name is meaningless, absolutely so. There is nothing that represents the pro segment and there pretty much hasn’t been since the MacBook Pro Retina was released. They killed off the 17" MacBook Pro… and they killed off the reason why I would upgrade my MacBook Pro after owning three of them including the originl 13" Unibody.

These Macs no longer exist… People used to refer to them as a work of art. Now people are looking towards companies like Dell, Asus, and Microsoft to come up with computers like these. I remember when… It was the 1990s and all I ever wanted was one of these. I would still pay good money for an upgraded version of this computer.

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#41

My Bose headset had this before the AirPods. Could connect to 2 devices simultaneous (my computer and my phone so I could switch between Skype on my computer and a phone call without touching a button) and I could switch between more devices by pushing a button on them. The voice quality wasn’t as good due to Apple’s unique chip (which they don’t give access to third party vendors) but the audio is a lot better.

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#42

Even the original unibodies were good, you could replace ram, batteries and hard drives.

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