Do I want too much from Apple?

[stratokaster]

I'm a long-time Apple user. I started on Windows, but in 2004 I was given an iBook G4 and have never looked back.

However, I'm very disappointed in Apple right now. I find the company's current laptop lineup extremely annoying and frankly speaking, I don't see any single model that I personally would like to buy.

Right now I'm typing this post on a 2016 13-inch MBP (no TouchBar). I love USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 (yay to 1-cable docking and USB-C charging), I love the gorgeous screen and I actually like typing on the butterfly keyboard — I just wish it was more reliable, because my laptop is already on its third keyboard. I tried TouchBar models in the past and found this rudimentary touchscreen pretty useless, however, I was OK with it as long as there were non-TouchBar models in the lineup.

Fast forward to 2018. Every single PC company in the world is now selling compact laptops with Intel's 15W quad-core CPUs. The only exception is Apple. They only sell quad-core laptops with relatively power-hungry 28W CPUs, and if I opt for one of them, I'd also have the TouchBar (which I don't need or even want) inflicted upon me.

I would like Apple to produce a laptop with the following specs:
- high quality HiDPI 13-inch screen
- 8th gen quad-core CPU and 16GB RAM option
- 2 or more Thunderbolt 3 ports
- improved butterfly-switch keyboard with silicone condoms under the keys (or any other predictably reliable keyboard) without the goddamn TouchBar

The funny thing is: there are such laptops in the PC world, but there is nothing like it in the Mac world. I'm pretty confident that if Apple produced such a laptop, they would sell boatloads of them to users like me, especially if its price was a bit more sane than that of their current offerings.

(And let's not get started on the state of the rest of Mac lineup, which is another sore spot for me.)

In the meanwhile, I'm using Windows 10 at work every day and it's kinda growing on me. It's not as pretty or well-polished as macOS, but I can be productive on Windows, which is what matters in the end. I like macOS because it's basically "Unix with MS Office and Photoshop". Well, Windows 10 now has an awesome new feature called Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) which basically puts the whole UNIX toolchain at your fingertips. This, combined with PC hardware diversity, is really tempting me - for the first time in many, many years.

I wonder if other Mac users here feel the same...

[Hypersphere]

My computing endeavors started with a DOS-era PC and and Apple II. Throughout the evolution of personal computers, I vacillated between the Microsoft and Apple worlds. At some point, I left Windows for Mac, and I was happy with this for a while. Then, two things happened. First, it became apparent that Apple was not putting its major effort into desktops but catering to small devices such as watches, tablets, and to some extent, laptops. Second, software developers were putting most of their effort into software for Windows. I was finding that software that I needed was Windows-only or the Windows versions were more complete than the Mac versions.

A few years ago, I made the switch back to Windows (and Linux). My Mac Pro computers and my Macbook Air are now running Windows 10. My PCs are running either Linux or Windows 10. However, my Mac Pros, especially my most recent one -- the "trashcan", is woefully underpowered, largely because of a poor choice that Apple made for the GPUS. For what I paid for the trashcan, I could have purchased two PCs that would be much more capable, especially with respect to GPU computing.

So, yes, I share some of your disappointment with Apple. I have also been reluctant to move to Windows and PCs, but my software needs made this transition necessary. If it were not for some critical software needs, I would gladly use nothing but Linux, but I depend on some Windows-only software, so I am now using a mixed Windows and Linux environment. The good news is that these two operating systems will run on the same hardware.

[vometia]

So, yes, I share some of your disappointment with Apple. I have also been reluctant to move to Windows and PCs, but my software needs made this transition necessary. If it were not for some critical software needs, I would gladly use nothing but Linux, but I depend on some Windows-only software, so I am now using a mixed Windows and Linux environment. The good news is that these two operating systems will run on the same hardware.

Same, broadly speaking, with some FreeBSD thrown in (er I mean as my server OS, not "OS/X has some FreeBSD thrown in"). I reluctantly use Windows for access to video games, which is the only reason it's there. I know some people insist everything I want to play can be done on Linux, but life's too short...

I've gone through phases of being somewhat interested in what Apple have on offer but have usually been too skint, going all the way back to the Apple II: I remember seeing one in ~1982-ish with a price tag of £650 for a basic unit and thinking, hmm, a much better specced BBC Micro model B is "only" £400 and that's still way too expensive for me!

[chuckdee]

I tried Apple for a while- bought into its whole ecosystem a while back with MBP, iPad(s), iPhone(s). I was tired of the direction that Windows was going. I realized that I liked even less where Apple was going. They're all tools, as are the people that make them. Tools that is. You pick your poison and what offends you the least, is my experience.

[LeslieAnn]

The trashcan is not as bad as you think, MacOs doesn’t respond well to hardware upgrades compared to Linux and Windows. More ram and cores will let you do more at the same time, but speeds will not improve much at all.

Are you expecting too much? yes.
Apple is now a traditional company, they would rather legislate than innovate and they will chase every nickle and dime they can while chopping everything they can to save costs. It used to be the laptops were their primary product and it drove sales of their other other products, that job now belongs to the Iphone and the laptop division only accounts for 10% of their revenue.

[Darkshado]

The trashcan is not as bad as you think, MacOs doesn’t respond well to hardware upgrades compared to Linux and Windows. More ram and cores will let you do more at the same time, but speeds will not improve much at all.

Macos doesn't respond well to hardware upgrades because Apple is slow to make them. The Mac Pro market has a sizeable chunk of people who'll take *all* the computing power you give them because it equates to productivity, time savings and ultimately, money. Yet for mysterious reasons Apple lags behind in this department.

Heck, all these years they could have kept the same "trashcan" form factor, slapped in Intel's latest tick or tock, call it "revolutionary" and rake in the cash.

[stratokaster]

As a matter of fact, macOS responds very well to hardware upgrades. For example, for “normal” day-to-day tasks, going from 8GB to 16GB RAM is almost imperceptible in Windows, but it makes tremendous difference in macOS, because the latter is more memory hungry in the first place.

[stratokaster]

Macos doesn't respond well to hardware upgrades because Apple is slow to make them. The Mac Pro market has a sizeable chunk of people who'll take *all* the computing power you give them because it equates to productivity, time savings and ultimately, money. Yet for mysterious reasons Apple lags behind in this department.

Heck, all these years they could have kept the same "trashcan" form factor, slapped in Intel's latest tick or tock, call it "revolutionary" and rake in the cash.

I have no reasons to doubt that Apple could make the best computers in the world - if it wanted to. However, the company appears to let Mac slowly languish because it’s not as profitable as iDevices.

Another factor is that Apple appears to succumb to its perfectionism and forget Steve Jobs’ famous quote: “Real artists ship”. The upcoming Mac Pro, which has been teased endlessly for the last 2 years, could very well be the best desktop ever made, but in real world people can’t afford to wait for Apple to get its shit together. It would be much better if they were working on something revolutionary behind the scenes while regularly updating their current hardware. I mean, what’s up with Mac mini (not updated since 2014), MacBook Air (not updated since 2015), Mac Pro (not updated since 2013), iMac (still shipping with outdated CPUs despite being priced higher than virtually any other desktop on the market)? Is it so difficult to refresh hardware at least once a year?

[Muirium]

Yup. I really do despair at Apple these days. They're off the target, and slowly but surely losing their way deep into the shit.

They have three big problems, the way I see it.

1. The iPhone's truly monumental success—literally the most profitable product in human history—has stolen all their attention away from the Mac, the iPad, and indeed what the hell comes next. The Mac was getting overshadowed back in Steve's day—thanks to his most talented and monomaniacal deputy, Scott Forstall—as anyone who ever used Lion can say. But of course it continues apace. It's hard to always choose the golden child over the rest of the family, but ultimately that path is one to ruin. Hand held screens won't reign supreme forever. The iPhone is already older today than Mac OS X was when the iPhone was released. Where's the next thing going to come from?
2. Complacency in the industrial design group. Walk into a big Apple Store and you'll see a fancy pants design book for sale. I leafed through a copy in Santa Monica. The price is excruciating! But even worse was the myopic sense of self-congratulatory nostalgia over deeds past. Steve had the right attitude on this. Your past work is done. You're either making the future or you're dead. Jony Ive himself was in charge of making that book. And Jony Ive is the choke point for all of Apple's designs including the Mac lines they're letting die on the vine. What's the matter with him? He needs to stand aside and let another design lead take on the projects he can't bear to give any attention nowadays. If the Mac is dead for him, give it to someone else.
3. Pre-announcements anyone? Stop doing that shit, Tim! They even had to "disappear" AirPower like it was one of Stalin's former friends! This hubris is a worrying sign in its own right, like top management doesn't have its act together and things are being hidden from them below. Sure, Tim Cook may just be a tone deaf bozo but even if he is, isn't hard nosed management meant to be his thing? Unforced errors like this are baffling, and yet they keep on coming.

Or, put another way:

1. Focus
2. Focus
3. Focus

They still need Steve.

[chuckdee]

for “normal” day-to-day tasks, going from 8GB to 16GB RAM is almost imperceptible in Windows,

That hasn't been my experience.

[stratokaster]

Jony Ive himself was in charge of making that book. And Jony Ive is the choke point for all of Apple's designs including the Mac lines they're letting die on the vine. What's the matter with him? He needs to stand aside and let another design lead take on the projects he can't bear to give any attention nowadays. If the Mac is dead for him, give it to someone else.

My theory is that the guy actually lost his mind but nobody has noticed, that’s why people at Apple still take him seriously

[stratokaster]

for “normal” day-to-day tasks, going from 8GB to 16GB RAM is almost imperceptible in Windows,

That hasn't been my experience.

I don’t know, I usually have a dozen of Chrome tabs open + Excel with some pretty heavy spreadsheets (tens of thousands of rows) + PS4 SDK. When our IT dept gave me a new PC with 16 GB of RAM, I hardly noticed the difference.

[chuckdee]

for “normal” day-to-day tasks, going from 8GB to 16GB RAM is almost imperceptible in Windows,

That hasn't been my experience.

I don’t know, I usually have a dozen of Chrome tabs open + Excel with some pretty heavy spreadsheets (tens of thousands of rows) + PS4 SDK. When our IT dept gave me a new PC with 16 GB of RAM, I hardly noticed the difference.

Again, anecdotal. There are other factors that affect performance besides RAM. In every case that I've upgraded, I've seen a noticeable difference. At a minimum you shouldn't see it swap to disk as much, therefore you won't see as many hiccups due to your drive speed.

[Hypersphere]

Yes, computing performance depends on many factors, and RAM usage varies a great deal depending upon the application. You can check CPU, RAM, and disk usage with task manager and/or other utilities in Windows, Mac, or Linux.

My most compute-intensive applications are molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. The main program I rely upon for this uses CPU-GPU computing, accelerating the computations via OpenCL. The dual AMD FirePro D700 GPUs in my Mac Pro trashcan are too slow for my MD program to use them, so it limps along on CPU-only computations. In contrast, my linux PCs have Nvidia GTX 1080Ti video cards, giving me about 3.3 times the performance on MD simulations that I get from the Mac Pro trashcan.

[abrahamstechnology]

The trashcan is not as bad as you think

The Trashcan's GPU commits suicide due to terrible thermal design.

In fact, Apple is terrible about thermal design.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUaJ8pDlxi8

[abrahamstechnology]

For my desktop, I'm using a Core2Quad with 8gb RAM and Windows 7. I expect it to serve me for at least 5 years. Possibly a GPU upgrade in the future (Currently just has a GT210 I had lying around)

If I ever need more power, I can use one of the many SFF Dells I have with 3rd and 4th generation i-series CPUs I saved from scrap.

[vometia]

I was using an old i7/920 on my gaming rig but the main problem is that I only had 6GB of its weird tri-channel memory: tried adding more to the second slots on each channel but it wasn't having it. Never did figure out what was the problem, though one suggestion is that bent pins in the CPU enclosure causing poor contact was a thing from that era. Anyway; as someone who likes to do game modding, having the game plus several modding tools all open at once was too much for it. Or rather too much for me as I had to repeatedly wait for Windows' glacial paging system to catch up.

I can't say my much more newfangled (by which I mean eight years or so) 6700 actually has much more raw performance, but the trouble-free 32GB has made a huge difference. I doubt I've really effectively used more than half that amount but it's a good place to be.

What is somewhat perplexing to me is the obsession with millions of cores: they don't translate into extra processing power, just extra power usage. It's hard to keep even a quad busy with multiple applications running unless using really specialist stuff but I guess it's just a marketing thing. A bit sad that so many people are being conned into believing that six or eight or a dozen cores are worth having. :/

[stratokaster]

The trashcan is not as bad as you think

The Trashcan's GPU commits suicide due to terrible thermal design.

In fact, Apple is terrible about thermal design.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUaJ8pDlxi8

I don’t doubt Louis Rossman is an excellent repairman, but I think he makes these videos because bashing Apple is popular. I’m pretty sure he could have made hundreds of videos about horrible failures of cheap laptops from Dell, Asus etc, but he doesn’t because nobody gives a damn about Asus or Dell

[stratokaster]

What is somewhat perplexing to me is the obsession with millions of cores: they don't translate into extra processing power, just extra power usage. It's hard to keep even a quad busy with multiple applications running unless using really specialist stuff but I guess it's just a marketing thing. A bit sad that so many people are being conned into believing that six or eight or a dozen cores are worth having. :/

Current-gen video game consoles have 8-core CPUs, and most cross-platform AAA video games today really make use of multiple CPU cores. I’m not really a “power user”, but I occasionally run VMs / docker containers, batch process photos in Lightroom, edit videos and compile things from source, and I really appreciate speed improvements that multi-core CPUs bring to the table. In fact, after replacing a dual-core i3 in my desktop PC with a quad-core i5, Lightroom export became literally twice as fast as it was before. The time between opening a photo and seeing it fully rendered also became quite a bit shorter. I suspect 8 cores would double performance in this scenario once again.

Now, I’m not a professional photographer so my total gains are probably very small, but Lightroom on a dual-core CPU is just annoying. The same is true for a lot of other things I do.

[abrahamstechnology]

...nobody gives a damn about Asus or Dell

Well, they all just make cheap plastic Macbook knockoffs anyway.

[stratokaster]

...nobody gives a damn about Asus or Dell

Well, they all just make cheap plastic Macbook knockoffs anyway.

That’s not really true, and I really like some of the Windows PC form-factors these days (such as MS Surface Pro or ThinkPad X1 Tablet), but I agree that the industry as a whole looks to Apple for guidance.

[LeslieAnn]

I don’t doubt Louis Rossman is an excellent repairman, but I think he makes these videos because bashing Apple is popular. I’m pretty sure he could have made hundreds of videos about horrible failures of cheap laptops from Dell, Asus etc, but he doesn’t because nobody gives a damn about Asus or Dell

You are correct, no one cares how terrible a cheap Dell or Asus is, but at the same time you expect more when you spend as much as you do on Apple. Please stop trying to equate low end computers with Apple, it's not a fair comparison and will actually make Apple will look bad if you make a fair comparison.

As for Louis, if you watch enough you will see he does bash others as well as praise Apple, and that he actually doesn't hate Apple as much as you might think, or at least for the reasons you probably think.

Well, they all just make cheap plastic Macbook knockoffs anyway.

Almost every ultrabook is aluminum, as above, stop comparing low end stuff to high end stuff.

By the way,
I have an aluminum body Mac and frankly it sucks, every teeny little nick on the body becomes a metal sliver waiting slice you open next time you pick it up, three times now in the last year I've had to take a file to grind off some sharp edge on it thanks to Apple using square corners, something I never had to do with other laptops.

There is nothing special about aluminum, it's cold when it 's cool, freezing when it's cold and burning up when it's hot, it doesn't give or absorb shock, it transfers heat out to you instead of insulating you from the heat.l Worse still, it's conductive, electricity can flow both directions, not just one way, so obviously it's a perfect material for something carrying ultra sensitive electronics that get hot and prone to being dropped. It's also one of the most plentiful metals on the planet, so remind me again, what makes it so special.

[stratokaster]

Actually, if I compare hi-end Windows laptops to MacBook Pros, Apple’s prices don’t look too bad. Except in Europe, Apple’s prices in Europe are just inexcusable.

I have owned both plastic and aluminium laptops in the past, and to be honest, I’d take aluminium any day of the week. In late 2000s I used a work-issued ThinkPad and I still have great respect for this series of laptops, but they don’t age as well as Apple’s aluminium MBPs. My old 2009 13” MBP is still used by my mother, and when she visited me this summer I was surprised to see that it still looks essentially new aside from minor pitting on the right side of the palm rest. Even the hinge is still as smooth as back in 2009.

That said, their most recent laptops are plagued with issues and I’m really disappointed in Apple right now. I’m even considering going back in time and “upgrading” to 2015 MBP which is still the best laptop they ever made.

[vometia]

Current-gen video game consoles have 8-core CPUs, and most cross-platform AAA video games today really make use of multiple CPU cores. I’m not really a “power user”, but I occasionally run VMs / docker containers, batch process photos in Lightroom, edit videos and compile things from source, and I really appreciate speed improvements that multi-core CPUs bring to the table. In fact, after replacing a dual-core i3 in my desktop PC with a quad-core i5, Lightroom export became literally twice as fast as it was before. The time between opening a photo and seeing it fully rendered also became quite a bit shorter. I suspect 8 cores would double performance in this scenario once again.

Now, I’m not a professional photographer so my total gains are probably very small, but Lightroom on a dual-core CPU is just annoying. The same is true for a lot of other things I do.

Although I haven't seen much evidence of games working particularly well from a multi-threaded perspective (though it may depend which games and the coding methodology used; some studios are certainly better than others...) I admit I hadn't thought about graphics manipulation which often does lend itself quite well to being chopped into chunks that work effectively with lots of threads. So actually that's a fair point and I stand corrected there. My perspective is that of a sysadmin and on back-end stuff it's historically been quite difficult even on large systems to keep lots of cores busy, but it seems I've had a slight case of tunnel vision there.

[abrahamstechnology]

Almost every ultrabook is aluminum, as above, stop comparing low end stuff to high end stuff.

Well, then that just makes them aluminum Macbook knockoffs. They all have the awful chiclet keyboards, the massive, buttonless touchpad from Hell, lack of adequate I/O ports, impractically thin chassis designed to look "cool" or "hip" or whatever, no screen latches, so the screen hinges have to be super-stiff (which causes the bottom of the laptop to slam against the desk when you try to pry it open), complete lack of upgradability, you name it.

[III]

I've literally not had a problem with any of those other than the chiclet keyboards (but what laptop doesn't have "awful chiclet keyboards").

[LeslieAnn]

Well, then that just makes them aluminum Macbook knockoffs. They all have the awful chiclet keyboards, the massive, buttonless touchpad from Hell, lack of adequate I/O ports, impractically thin chassis designed to look "cool" or "hip" or whatever, no screen latches, so the screen hinges have to be super-stiff (which causes the bottom of the laptop to slam against the desk when you try to pry it open), complete lack of upgradability, you name it.

Sorry, but the Sony 505 and 600 series were super slim, metal bodied, fewer ports, dongles... And they predated the unibodies by a full decade. Sony beat Apple to the punch on a lot of these things, including the super high price tag and limited upgrades. Think that Macbook is expensive, go look what a Z series with all the options used to cost.

Apple may have set the trend, that doesn't necessarily mean they actually invented it.

[vometia]

Sorry, but the Sony 505 and 600 series were super slim, metal bodied, fewer ports, dongles... And they predated the unibodies by a full decade. Sony beat Apple to the punch on a lot of these things, including the super high price tag and limited upgrades. Think that Macbook is expensive, go look what a Z series with all the options used to cost.

Apple may have set the trend, that doesn't necessarily mean they actually invented it.

Curious, I'd never thought about Apple and Sony having so many parallels, but now you've pointed it out I can't really unsee it.

[Muirium]

If only Sony had an OS with significant adoption and user facing apps.

The trouble with Apple losing their mojo is there is no alternative for their users who care and really use their software. The web is no replacement for me. ChromeOS is as shallow a prospect as Android on the desktop. And yes, Windows is still Windows. Shame.

Apple’s too big to fail, of course. They’ll outlive us all. But Apple isn’t what I care about. I care about iOS and, sniff, the Mac.

[vometia]

Apple’s too big to fail, of course. They’ll outlive us all. But Apple isn’t what I care about. I care about iOS and, sniff, the Mac.

I'm not sure any company's too big to fail: at one point DEC looked unassailable, yet a lot of people nowadays have no idea who they were; its shattered remains being bought by Compaq was pretty ignominious and they in turn being bought by HP who have their own problems has all but erased them, especially since neither HP, Compaq nor DEC's post-Olsen management really had any idea where they were headed or what to do with their products other than sell off vast swathes of the company that looked to have an immediate market value.

IBM almost bit the dust in a similar way (and indeed some of the same people were reputedly involved: they survived by getting rid of a lot of senior managers who rematerialised at DEC where they continued to do their thing, apparently). Then there's Facebook which is probably teetering on the edge of doing a Myspace.

I'm surprised Apple has continued unscathed in the After Jobbies era and I'm not sure if it's down to Tim's nous or if it's just been carried by its momentum, but it just needs someone else to come along and compete with the latest highly desirable shiny and they could become yesterday's news. I think they have enough long-term fans to stop them completely sinking at least for the foreseeable future but nothing is assured.