Where are all the new Macs?

I reckon the best summary I’ve heard was on a recent ATP. The Mac Pro when it was introduced, was pitched as “no long the CPU is the biggest thing - GPUs give WAY more power, and this machine is a GPU powerhouse”. Then they didn’t upgrade the GPUs for 3 years, and you can’t upgrade it yourself. Crazy.

There is more to computer upgrades than the CPU. SSD prices have fallen, but Apple is stuck on 128/256/512GB. GPUs have moved WAY on, but Apple is stuck with 3 year old units in Pro equipment. The Mac mini has less power than it used to, and no GPU option. DDR4 has been out for years, but Apple don’t use it.

The machines still work well, and are reasonably fast (as long as you don’t buy a non-ssd iMac!), but they could be better, and/or cheaper. Selling computers with 3-4 years old tech may be profitable, but it’s far more like the Apple of old. The golden era for Apple tech seems to have been just after the Intel switch. Suddenly the tech was comparable and they updated far more frequently…

Given how much better OS X is with a decent GPU, that’s the thing that bugs me the most.

2 Likes

Agreed, their discussion and summary of the situation was spot on.

What’s ATP? The Googles aren’t telling me much.

I think Apple no longer markets to enthusiasts the way they used to, they have gone more commercial which is a bigger share of the market. Upgradability comes at a price of size, looks etc. The average consumer doesn’t upgrade their ram, CPU or GPU. The average user uses a laptop for 3 years and replaces it if it needs more power or continues using a slow machine.

1 Like

Accidental Tech Podcast

1 Like

next week:

I will be super pissed if there are no USB-A ports. I might even not upgrade.

As long as there’s a Thunderbolt port (or some other method of compatibility with Thunderbolt Displays) then I’m in.

1 Like

All of this happened on Jobs watch, the MacBook went from this behemoth of upgradability with two drive slots, two battery slots and PC Card slots

http://www.powerbuch.ch/images/powerbook-g3-lombard-32-814-1.jpg

to this:

https://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/13-retina-macbook-pro-1.png?w=1279&h=727&crop=1

With none of the above. It’s not really a Cook discussion. It’s a discussion of going from a premium brand used by professionals to a brand used by consumers to make recipes for fairy bread sandwiches and having used both of these machines this is where I am extremely jaded about Apple.

As a Mac user for more than 15 years there’s just nothing really anymore that interests me in the same way as the first time I started out with Mac laptops with a PowerBook 3400. The philosophy of what they do is just not the same.

You can give me USB3 and Thunderbolt 3 and breakout boxes whatever, and you can clutter my desk with cables, more cables and hubs because I can’t do what I need with the ports you’ve given me or you can make a machine that is designed for professionals from the ground up which is what Apple used to do.

Apple stopped caring about Power users when they dropped the 17inch MacBook Pro, and canabilised all the ports on the 15inch MacBook Pro and its been getting worse ever since. It’s OK really though, most people haven’t been around long enough to remember what’s going on.

I do remember though when a PowerBook was likened to a person in an Armani suit and not a teetotaling hipster however.

1 Like

What I’m hoping for next week:

No USB ports
No headphone jack
No function keys
Four legs
Waggy tail
Lovable eyes
Wet nose

8 Likes

I loved mine and miss it very much. If they bring this back (they won’t) I would be so happy.

It was one of my favorite machines, but they seem to have resolved themselves of that issue by cramming more pixels into the screens which is great so long as you have the vision to handle such a thing.

Based on trademark application investigations of “Magic Toolbar”, “Smart Button” and “Airpods”, "The new line of Macbooks will feature the Apple Smart Button and the Magic Toolbar.”

Refer here:

Stupid names for potential cool features…

A little birdie tells me technicians will have to undergo some form of retraining about two weeks from now, which means whatever is being introduced at the keynote will be a complete revamp of machine internals and architecture, not just a hardware spec bump or change of ports.

A lot of the time with new Macs they’re available to order straight away, wondering if that will be the case this time particularly if lots of models get updates.

Interesting. Wonder if the big delay is due to an AMD transition. You’d think that sort of thing would be announced at WWDC though, not an October event.

My hunch is that this could be pretty big too and the clue is in the event promotion. “Hello again” suggests something significant given that the “Hello” theme was used for the original Mac then again for the first iMac and for not much else that I can recall. Indicates that Apple at least think they’re about to drop something big.

Or, another way it could be described is that they’ve moved from focusing on a small group of users who, let’s face it, tend to be demanding and whiny, to a larger group that are actually really happy with the strengths of the products.

I don’t like the lack of ports or that I can’t upgrade the more recent machines either but people like me are a tiny minority I suspect. It seems only prudent that Apple focus their strengths on markets where they can sell large(r) numbers of machines to people who love them, even if that means sacrificing sales to a much smaller group who are pretty hard to please at the best of times.

If I’m demanding and whiny so be it. I hate to say but my 2012 MacBook Pro might be last Mac. It just doesn’t interest me when everything is soldered on to the logic board. I’ve got this far with this machine because I can put more RAM in it. Change out the super drive for something else should I see fit and add a larger disk drive that uses a standard port.

Even if I were to buy a top of the line MacBook Retina, the way things are going with RAM standards, it would obsolete itself in around 1.5years and I’d be back to square one again. There’s not even any value in sticking with Apple any longer.

Of course the people are into Apple to be hipsters aren’t going to complain, but then it just solidifies my point that a Mac has become a fashion statement rather than a computer I’m going to keep using 5 years down the road to do continue to do my work. Thanks for clarifying that in my head though.

It’s been a long run but I think I’m just gonna sale off, pun intended, into the distance and buy myself a Linux compatible machine and run VMs if I desperately need any software I can’t get. We’re back at the days where 4mb was a lot of RAM except we’ve changed it for gig. What says I need 64GB of RAM in the future, because we all know everything is getting more RAM hungry and I’m stuck with a machine with just 8 or 16?

Really… It’s a poor mans way of forcing people into an increasingly expensive upgrade cycle they’d rather not be in. But when your senior vice president calling the shots here is Angela Ahrendts its not difficult to see where the direction change is coming from. I’m just waiting until Miuccia Prada is on the board of Apple now.

2 Likes

I know I’m going to regret this, but… why do you think the SVP of retail is behind MacOS’ insatiable need for RAM and/or RAM being soldered onto the board? It would be a neat achievement, considering those things predate her hiring by approximately 13 and six years, respectively.

I didn’t say she was behind it, I said it shows the direction the company is headed in and to clarify, going towards.

Its not directly to do with her, but Apple’s decision to hire here does tell me what they’re interested in now - being a fashion company.

I’m in the same boat. Luckily I bought my second one only last year adn hopefully Apple won’t pre-maturely pull the plug on software support. I love the non retina pro for the same reasons as you - you can upgrade it and chop and change it to suit you. When I bought it in 2012 (the first one) I was a student, now working full time in IT my needs are different, so upgrading to 16GB of ram is doable.

For me to get a machine to suit my potential future needs I would have had to spend over $3200 on a Retina pro, instead of the total of $2000 on my Non retina pro.