Granted Apple's desktop's and laptops have top notch design, the internals are lacking vs high end non apple HW. What truly sets apple apart is the OS.
Certainly appears that the professional Mac is going the way of the dodo at Apple. Which to seems self defeating to me considering the only way to develop iOS apps is to use a Mac. (Yes, I know about PC Hackintosh, but it's not approved). You need a reasonably beefy Mac to do decent development.
Isn't neglecting the tools that support your bread and butter platform suicide? I hope we're not going back to the dark days of Metrowerks CodeWarrior!
FYI, I'm a pro software developer, and I have two machines -- a 2011 iMac with loaded SSD and RAM, and a rMBP. My 2014 rMBP is faster, but even my 2011 iMac can drive two displays and run virtual machines quite well. So I find it hard to believe that today's machines aren't sufficiently beefy to do development on.
Considering the new MBP and Cook's comments, I don't see how one could claim serious Macs are going the way of the dodo.
Look, as a long time Apple fanboy, former employee, and 72 year old skeptic, even I can't deny the obvious. I have no insider information, but no one can deny that the refresh and update cycle of Mac products have substantially slowed over time while those of others have been rapid and sustained. Yes, there are perfectly good reasons for this, but the fact remains. Those of us who still want exciting desktops are frustrated. If it walks like a duck . . .
And yet Microsoft's new Surface uses older intel chips too. Guess both MS and Apple are ducks...
I'm really curious what Apple thinks desktops are for, and how they serve those functions. Steve positioned the mac as an all-in-one office tool many decades ago. Now there are a plethora of creative functions that didn't exist in 1984.
What I find a little frustrating with macOS is how disjointed it seems to be. There are many functions that I simply don't need (and their function appears to be of dubious, ir not duplicative value); the OS has gotten to the point where I don't understand all it can do. In many cases, I'd like to simply turn the function off. (can't remember the last time I scrolled over to open the dashboard.)
Many people need computing horsepower for a design function (music, art, photos, movies.) I'm not one of those people. Maybe it makes sense to really differentiate (further) between "pro" and "consumer" and tune the software OS to work specifically for each.
Ouch. I personally don't understand how Apple as the largest company in the world with no concerns about cash flow can't have multiple successful product teams going. How hard is it for them to put out a decent looking updated monitor for example? The culture there sounds brutal too...?
My hypothesis has been that there is a senior management bottleneck for the Mac. More specifically, I have guessed that Jony Ive needs to sign off on products before they move forward and that he just doesn't give a crap about the Mac, so teams cannot move forward.
There have also been articles speculating that Apple's functional organization contribute to this problem.
I certainly don't want Apple to end up with independent, competing product divisions. They need to keep a unified structure in order to produce a unified ecosystem. But the current structure clearly needs refinement. Adding a bit more parallelism to the organization, so that multiple products can move forward simultaneously without running into a senior management bottleneck, does not require separate profit/loss statements for every product. It just requires a decision from Tim Cook that maybe we don't need Jony Ive to sign off on everything.
It's almost as if Apple is structured as a single core CPU that is now running up against the limits of clock speed scaling. They need to figure out a way to add parallelism. They need to go multi-core, but still with a single OS.
Well, except for the fact that that's all entirely conjecture, and not rooted in any sort of facts. You don't know that's the problem. Nor do I nor anyone here.
So here's my thought... it probably doesn't take three years to design the enclosure of the new MacBook Pro and the other components that encompass the design. Chances are really good that they had the design already finished long ahead of time, but that other engineering teams were working on it. I think you need to look at the things that were designed in the new laptop.
First, it's very thin. The screen is remarkably thin. I can't imagine the sort of engineering it would take to do that while still maintaining rigidity and add a much better and brighter display. In addition, the new hinge is all metal and again, works flawlessly. I'm not saying these are huge, mind-blowing improvements, but it did take design and patents to make it work the way it does.
You have a device that much thinner, and yet made of metal and perfectly solid feeling. You have a completely redesigned keyboard that many reviewers are now saying is better that the original MacBook Pro keyboard. You have a huge touchpad (OK that probably didn't take a lot of work) and then the TouchBar. That took a lot of engineering whether you think of it as a gimmick or not. You still have basically a self-contained computer running the TouchBar and TouchID and an OLED display. Again, that stuff doesn't just "happen".
So I sincerely doubt that the Apple industrial team has left the proverbial building. Instead, they probably had a lot of these components already designed and had to wait for a number of technological "stars" to align, specifically Intel. In the meantime, they would be best suited working on other projects instead of designing the next design of laptop expected in 2020. Maybe, just maybe Apple is working on other things that are pushing technology and design forward. Things that you don't even see coming. Maybe Apple already knows that laptops are "here to stay" but they are not on the forefront of where technology is headed. Apple wants to skate the puck where it will be in the future.
This is the correct point of view, mostly, seems to me. There is fully three years of engineering in the new MBPs, but I have to restate (for maybe the fifth time) that the key foundation of the new design is the oxide-backplane LCD display, which I'd wager that LG has been struggling to produce in the needed quantity for two of those past three years.
It's only the space and energy savings of the IGZO backplane that allowed the new radically shrunk yet solidly integral form factor. Of course new battery shapes are going to be pursued in parallel, along with the asymmetric fans, the heat management, the speakers and enclosures, and so on, not to mention the parallel keyboard development.
The uneven success of the various component-engineering teams is likely to confuse a young and still two-dimensional reporter like Mark Gurman.
The new MacBook Pros are astounding engineering and design accomplishments is almost every detail, and better processors and batteries are undoubtedly going to take the new smaller platform through a few generations in the future, including maybe OLED screens with oxide backplanes. The MBPs are undeniable evidence that Apple hasn't lost interest in the Mac and Mac OS for anyone with the depth to respect the engineering.
That depth is in short supply these days in tech journalism; even veterans like Marco Arment/John Gruber/Joanna Stern tend to be too keyboard and software-oriented.
Finally, with articles like these, I always want to start out by observing that there is a reason Apple is building a new headquarters. They long ago outgrew their own form factor as a company, and they won't be fully staffed and broadened in their design multitasking until they move in and start hiring and training. Obvious!
Seems about right. Can't even do a spec bump for the Mac Pro.
I needed a desktop (haven't had one is 10 years), went with a PC, faster, much faster, and saved 1000$ (counting dual 4K monitors). Win10 is pretty good so far, just have to disable a bunch of junk.
I still think I will buy Apple Macbooks though.
I'm curious to hear a Mac user's perspective on Win10. I haven't used Windows since XP.
Some things that I particularly like about the Mac relative to XP are:
1. Spaces (or whatever you want to call it these days) 2. Very smooth multitasking (I found that I had to fiddle with processor affinity and process priorities to get a windows PC to run smoothly when all logical cores were maxed out) 3. The accessibility Zoom feature 4. Awesome multi-touch trackpads 5. Single menu bar at the top plus general efficient use of window space (I guess that will probably never change in Windows) 6. Windows was always just ugly; macOS just looks more elegant to my eye
How does a high-end Windows 10 PC stack up on these things?
I'ma Windows 10 user by day and Mac by night. My opinions (not looking to start a flamewar):
1. Windows 10 has multiple desktop too. I'll call a draw on this 2. The mouse and keyboard can lock up sometimes on Windows 10. OS X's GUI continues to work even if app is not responding. +1 to Mac. 3. "Windows + Plus" does the same trick 4. This depend a lot on what vendor you choose. The Dell XPS 13 and Surface touchpads are up there with Apple's 5. Almost Windows apps are deigned to run fullscreen, which annoys the heck out of me. Mac apps are designed from the ground up to run with varying window sizes. 6. Very much a personal taste. Windows 10 does feel too "flat" and I sometimes get lost on what's clickable and what's not. If anything, Macs are also going down this treacherous road.
You don't need a report to tell you this - it is obvious. They are too busy choosing the shade of gold on the next iPhone to worry about real computing. Sometimes I think they are losing the plot.
What notebook is better than the new MBP? Or even the old MBP? What makes it better? Because my MBP seems like a pretty serious real computer.
Another thing that slows Mac development is Apple's reliance on Intel for an application processor. Apple doesn't face that delay and uncertainty for iPhone and iPad. Apple's work with TSMC on 7nm and 5nm processors for later in the decade puts a lot of pressure on Intel to step up its game. In recent years, Intel's biggest strategy in PC's has been partnering with Chinese makers of laptops based on the MacBook Air design. Moore's Law, it turns out, was a corporate strategy that Intel has since abandoned.
Folks keep repeating this mantra as if repetition makes reality.
The reality is that Intel has vastly improved performance per watt and has enabled extremely mobile laptops favored by Apple. As nice as the A10 may be it can't do what the high end Core i7 does for the Mac and Intel has being going in the direction that Apple has wanted with the 4.5W TDP CoreM7.
Intel hasn't been holding Apple back. Intel has been catering to Apple's desires. This holds true in 2016 as much as it did in 2005.
I guess Intel is a convenient scapegoat for every Mac delay. The Mac Pro still has 2013 CPU and GPU which are Intel's and AMD's faults? The oh-so-thin, dongle-toting MBP 2016 is Intel's fault too? Or the un-upgradable 2014 Mac Mini, slower than its 2012 predecessor was due to Intel as well?
Everyone looks at Apple's income statement and see iPhones and iPads make up 75% of revenue and Macs only 10%. It's all wrong. iPhones and iPads won't sell if there are no apps for them. And the only way to make iOS apps are with Macs (Hackintoshes are frankly not worth the headaches). Every developers I've met at Apple, Google, Twitter, Facebook, etc. all use Macs. About 70% of photographers I met use Macs. Video editors like me prefer Macs. All Jony care about these days are thinness. Sure there's a big segment of users (most students) who use an MBP as nothing more than a screen to watch cat videos. Give them a thin and light notebook. For us professionals who make a living of the computer, we don't mind a bit of thickness to trade for utilities.
Sorry, but I'm a developer and I don't want all the useless legacy ports like firewire, ethernet, SD, etc -- I work with data and wireless, so I want powerful and lightweight machine. A thinner MBP is by nature lighter. 10 hours battery is more than enough and I plug in if seated for the day. The only dongle I'll need is a USBA for the rare times I need to plug somebody else's thumb drive into my machine.
And I get insane use out of my machines -- my desktop is a 2011 iMac. So I'd definitely prefer to have the cutting-edge ports on it today and have them last me well into the future after everybody else catches up.
Seems about right. Can't even do a spec bump for the Mac Pro.
I needed a desktop (haven't had one is 10 years), went with a PC, faster, much faster, and saved 1000$ (counting dual 4K monitors). Win10 is pretty good so far, just have to disable a bunch of junk.
I still think I will buy Apple Macbooks though.
I'm curious to hear a Mac user's perspective on Win10. I haven't used Windows since XP.
Some things that I particularly like about the Mac relative to XP are:
1. Spaces (or whatever you want to call it these days) 2. Very smooth multitasking (I found that I had to fiddle with processor affinity and process priorities to get a windows PC to run smoothly when all logical cores were maxed out) 3. The accessibility Zoom feature 4. Awesome multi-touch trackpads 5. Single menu bar at the top plus general efficient use of window space (I guess that will probably never change in Windows) 6. Windows was always just ugly; macOS just looks more elegant to my eye
How does a high-end Windows 10 PC stack up on these things?
I'ma Windows 10 user by day and Mac by night. My opinions (not looking to start a flamewar):
1. Windows 10 has multiple desktop too. I'll call a draw on this 2. The mouse and keyboard can lock up sometimes on Windows 10. OS X's GUI continues to work even if app is not responding. +1 to Mac. 3. "Windows + Plus" does the same trick 4. This depend a lot on what vendor you choose. The Dell XPS 13 and Surface touchpads are up there with Apple's 5. Almost Windows apps are deigned to run fullscreen, which annoys the heck out of me. Mac apps are designed from the ground up to run with varying window sizes. 6. Very much a personal taste. Windows 10 does feel too "flat" and I sometimes get lost on what's clickable and what's not. If anything, Macs are also going down this treacherous road.
4. The Mac is definitely better with multitouch, in my opinion. 5. On Windows 10 you can give any app a section of your screen (including Photoshop) on the Mac you can't.
I'm really curious what Apple thinks desktops are for, and how they serve those functions. Steve positioned the mac as an all-in-one office tool many decades ago. Now there are a plethora of creative functions that didn't exist in 1984.
What I find a little frustrating with macOS is how disjointed it seems to be. There are many functions that I simply don't need (and their function appears to be of dubious, ir not duplicative value); the OS has gotten to the point where I don't understand all it can do. In many cases, I'd like to simply turn the function off. (can't remember the last time I scrolled over to open the dashboard.)
Which features in macOS do you not understand and/or want to disable?
I scroll over to my Dashboard every single day. And other spaces and fullscreen apps. Everybody's different...
For power users, Apple should optimize the theoretical MacBook Pro for performance and connectivity, worrying about size, weight, and battery life secondarily. A 13-inch model might have similar performance specs to a tricked-out version of the proposed MacBook Air but with an industrial design that offers more ports: MagSafe, Thunderbolt 3, Thunderbolt 2 port, USB-A, HDMI, Ethernet, and an SD card slot. Its price might start around $1500 and go up with additional CPU and storage. For those who need the ultimate power, the 15-inch model could support amounts of RAM above what laptop chipsets can generally handle, along with a plethora of build-to-order options that could push its price from a starting point of maybe $1800 into the stratosphere. Such specs would reduce battery life and increase weight but would enable mobile professionals to rely on a single machine.
The core problem is that Apple no longer seems to understand how Mac users choose their machines. Right now, it’s nearly impossible to figure out what Mac laptop to buy, because the three key differentiators of price, size, and performance are difficult to tease out, with all the models converging on the MacBook Air’s focus on size at the expense of price and performance.
Plus, as Andy Ihnatko also pointed out, Apple has become a design and manufacturing company, not an engineering company. Unsurprisingly, the only Mac for which design and manufacturing matter more than anything else is the canonical MacBook Air, which needs to be magically small and light and is willing to compromise on price and performance.
The prime directive of an engineering company is to provide products that solve users’ problems. It’s all about helping users achieve their goals with the least amount of wasted time and effort. That used to describe Apple to a T.
Nowadays, Apple is ignoring the desires of many Mac users and focusing on making gorgeous objects that are possible purely because of the company’s leadership in advanced manufacturing techniques. That has a place with an iPhone or iPad, but who cares if an iMac is thin? You look at the front, not the edge! We don’t mind if our Macs are carved from single blocks of aluminum and feature chamfered edges, but that design won’t make us more productive.
When it comes to Macs, form should follow function, not force us into uncomfortable compromises.
"Plus, as Andy Ihnatko also pointed out, Apple has become a design and manufacturing company"
If Andy Ihnatko understood Apple as well as he thinks then he would know that when Steve came back to Apple 20 years ago, he re-organized into Apple a design-led culture, not an engineering-led culture. That's not to say engineering is unimportant; just that product strategy begins (and probably ends) with the industrial design team. This Bloomberg article goes hand-in-hand with this article I read:
I laugh when people say Apple used to be an engineering company. When? In the 90s? People bitched during Steve's reign too. Check out the MacRumors thread after the unibody MBPs were released in 2008. And the original MBA was a worse machine in nearly every way than anything Apple has given us the past 4 years or so. The only difference with Apple now is they don't have PT Barnum to get up on stage and make you lust after everything.
Time to send a couple security 'professionals' to visit these clowns.
Look, as a long time Apple fanboy, former employee, and 72 year old skeptic, even I can't deny the obvious. I have no insider information, but no one can deny that the refresh and update cycle of Mac products have substantially slowed over time while those of others have been rapid and sustained. Yes, there are perfectly good reasons for this, but the fact remains. Those of us who still want exciting desktops are frustrated. If it walks like a duck . . .
the refresh has been slow because there is nothing to refresh. No new chips from intel and no new technology to push.
Exactly. What is worst is that the new chips Intel does have dont do a lot for performance. Some of the new MBP threads highlight thisas in some case people are seeing zero improvement in application performance. Much of Intels so called new hardware sucks pretty bad.
Certainly appears that the professional Mac is going the way of the dodo at Apple. Which to seems self defeating to me considering the only way to develop iOS apps is to use a Mac. (Yes, I know about PC Hackintosh, but it's not approved). You need a reasonably beefy Mac to do decent development.
Isn't neglecting the tools that support your bread and butter platform suicide? I hope we're not going back to the dark days of Metrowerks CodeWarrior!
Apple's commitment to Swift is (IMO) an indicator that they are still committed to the desktop, but the desktop is usually a laptop.
Also, I'm guessing that the Mac Pro may finally disappear and in its place the iMac may be supplemented with an iMac Pro.
That could spell the end of their use in our plant. Not only is the attached monitor superfluous and unnecessary in our system, it would actually get in the way.
Well, it's just a theory. Presumably there will still be room for the Mac mini, but I really don't know.
I'm really curious what Apple thinks desktops are for, and how they serve those functions. Steve positioned the mac as an all-in-one office tool many decades ago. Now there are a plethora of creative functions that didn't exist in 1984.
What I find a little frustrating with macOS is how disjointed it seems to be. There are many functions that I simply don't need (and their function appears to be of dubious, ir not duplicative value); the OS has gotten to the point where I don't understand all it can do. In many cases, I'd like to simply turn the function off. (can't remember the last time I scrolled over to open the dashboard.)
Which features in macOS do you not understand and/or want to disable?
I scroll over to my Dashboard every single day. And other spaces and fullscreen apps. Everybody's different...
This is fair, and I concur that it is specious to assert that just because I don't like or use, it must be bad. I don't advocate removal or dropping; I'd just like it to be a bit more intuitive. Indeed, you are correct: everybody is different. (Or as Steve said, "think[s] different") My comment is meant to ask that we all are allowed to customize things a bit more personally.
One example is the airport setup. Like many (practically all?) users, I have a home wifi network. The little fan thingy on the menubar is great, but that app to set up the wifi network and base stations is full of options and functionality that isn't exactly intuitive. I get there...but it sure isn't fun.
iTunes is its own special blend of features. There's an app store, but that's for iOS apps. I have to go to the mac app store for apps for a mac. And once I have data on my mac, how do it get it into a iOS app? Oh, right, back to iTunes. I think. Or maybe not.
How cool would it be if an emulator of your iOS device appeared on a mac screen? Kinda like remote login.
Can't tell you how many bad words I said last time I had to set up an airprint printer. Now fairly, that is the fault of the printer manufacturer.
How about an option to use a personal cloud server rather than iCloud? (yes, I get that AAPL makes money from the latter.)
In fairness, I can go back to about the last 3-4 Federeghi live demos of macOS and as he's going through the features say to most of them "hey. that's kinda cool...for some one that actually uses xxx on their mac." (e.g. calendar? maps? etc.)
But I also think Apple wants to get off the "cra-cra train" of the yearly cycle of hardware updates...
...
The iMacs need an update, maybe edge-to-edge screen.
...
Software is second to none. I remember when Pages came out, I love the simple design and it has only got better as it has matured. I prefer the Apple apps b/c of the seamless integration between devices.
...
Anyway, I'm probably stating the obvious.
Yeah, but you're stating the obviously wrong.
All Apple management cares about is share prices and "growth". That's why the "cra cra" rapid product release (rapidly releasing the same thing every few months, never getting the bugs fixed). Apple WANTS that stupid and irrationally short cycle so they can keep promoting fiscal growth to major shareholders. They have no loyalty to customers or product. Only to shareholders and Wall Street.
Why is it when people suggest changes for new Mac hardware, they almost invariably suggest cosmetic changes like "edge to edge screens"? How about hardware that has good thermal design and doesn't self-destruct under heavy workload, and more functionality via ports & RAM...??
Apple's software is second (or third) to almost all, at this point. Especially the iWork suite. Pages was absolutely brutalized when Apple ditched the desktop version for the weak iOS port. Didn't you ever use iWork prior to the iOS port? The original versions had far more feature parity with the big names in productivity suites. iWork was actually an MS Office replacement for many people. Now we have a suite that's an embarrassing joke, with bare minimum functionality (and hidden controls on iOS for things like "replace all"). If all you do is use iOS devices, of course you don't know the difference, but plenty of other people do know the difference.
Seamless integration was accomplished by screwing up the Mac platform, rather than making the iOS platform catch up to it. We've been seeing this for years now. Since 2013, really. These claims of Apple nearly abandoning the Mac internally are not at all a surprise to the Mac users who've been paying attention to Apple's treatment of the platform. Things like the iWork lobotomy were early and striking signs.
That this company, with all its money, cannot manage to maintain focus on multiple products, cannot manage to maintain expertise, cannot manage its own managers... It's incredible mismanagement and should really be an incredible embarrassment to the leadership. But the leadership has lost sight of any real goal aside from Wall Street demands. There's not really any leadership, in fact. Just following where the shareholders want Apple to go: low investment in existing product, wasteful fad developments, too rapid a development cycle...
Look, as a long time Apple fanboy, former employee, and 72 year old skeptic, even I can't deny the obvious. I have no insider information, but no one can deny that the refresh and update cycle of Mac products have substantially slowed over time while those of others have been rapid and sustained. Yes, there are perfectly good reasons for this, but the fact remains. Those of us who still want exciting desktops are frustrated. If it walks like a duck . . .
And yet Microsoft's new Surface uses older intel chips too. Guess both MS and Apple are ducks...
Not the best comparison as the Surface is truly new. Would that Apple would do the same.
Comments
Considering the new MBP and Cook's comments, I don't see how one could claim serious Macs are going the way of the dodo.
What I find a little frustrating with macOS is how disjointed it seems to be. There are many functions that I simply don't need (and their function appears to be of dubious, ir not duplicative value); the OS has gotten to the point where I don't understand all it can do. In many cases, I'd like to simply turn the function off. (can't remember the last time I scrolled over to open the dashboard.)
Many people need computing horsepower for a design function (music, art, photos, movies.) I'm not one of those people. Maybe it makes sense to really differentiate (further) between "pro" and "consumer" and tune the software OS to work specifically for each.
It's only the space and energy savings of the IGZO backplane that allowed the new radically shrunk yet solidly integral form factor. Of course new battery shapes are going to be pursued in parallel, along with the asymmetric fans, the heat management, the speakers and enclosures, and so on, not to mention the parallel keyboard development.
The uneven success of the various component-engineering teams is likely to confuse a young and still two-dimensional reporter like Mark Gurman.
The new MacBook Pros are astounding engineering and design accomplishments is almost every detail, and better processors and batteries are undoubtedly going to take the new smaller platform through a few generations in the future, including maybe OLED screens with oxide backplanes. The MBPs are undeniable evidence that Apple hasn't lost interest in the Mac and Mac OS for anyone with the depth to respect the engineering.
That depth is in short supply these days in tech journalism; even veterans like Marco Arment/John Gruber/Joanna Stern tend to be too keyboard and software-oriented.
Finally, with articles like these, I always want to start out by observing that there is a reason Apple is building a new headquarters. They long ago outgrew their own form factor as a company, and they won't be fully staffed and broadened in their design multitasking until they move in and start hiring and training. Obvious!
1. Windows 10 has multiple desktop too. I'll call a draw on this
2. The mouse and keyboard can lock up sometimes on Windows 10. OS X's GUI continues to work even if app is not responding. +1 to Mac.
3. "Windows + Plus" does the same trick
4. This depend a lot on what vendor you choose. The Dell XPS 13 and Surface touchpads are up there with Apple's
5. Almost Windows apps are deigned to run fullscreen, which annoys the heck out of me. Mac apps are designed from the ground up to run with varying window sizes.
6. Very much a personal taste. Windows 10 does feel too "flat" and I sometimes get lost on what's clickable and what's not. If anything, Macs are also going down this treacherous road.
And I get insane use out of my machines -- my desktop is a 2011 iMac. So I'd definitely prefer to have the cutting-edge ports on it today and have them last me well into the future after everybody else catches up.
5. On Windows 10 you can give any app a section of your screen (including Photoshop) on the Mac you can't.
I scroll over to my Dashboard every single day. And other spaces and fullscreen apps. Everybody's different...
If Andy Ihnatko understood Apple as well as he thinks then he would know that when Steve came back to Apple 20 years ago, he re-organized into Apple a design-led culture, not an engineering-led culture. That's not to say engineering is unimportant; just that product strategy begins (and probably ends) with the industrial design team. This Bloomberg article goes hand-in-hand with this article I read:
https://www.aboveavalon.com/notes/2016/8/25/jony-ive-is-making-people-uneasy
One example is the airport setup. Like many (practically all?) users, I have a home wifi network. The little fan thingy on the menubar is great, but that app to set up the wifi network and base stations is full of options and functionality that isn't exactly intuitive. I get there...but it sure isn't fun.
iTunes is its own special blend of features. There's an app store, but that's for iOS apps. I have to go to the mac app store for apps for a mac. And once I have data on my mac, how do it get it into a iOS app? Oh, right, back to iTunes. I think. Or maybe not.
How cool would it be if an emulator of your iOS device appeared on a mac screen? Kinda like remote login.
Can't tell you how many bad words I said last time I had to set up an airprint printer. Now fairly, that is the fault of the printer manufacturer.
How about an option to use a personal cloud server rather than iCloud? (yes, I get that AAPL makes money from the latter.)
In fairness, I can go back to about the last 3-4 Federeghi live demos of macOS and as he's going through the features say to most of them "hey. that's kinda cool...for some one that actually uses xxx on their mac." (e.g. calendar? maps? etc.)
All Apple management cares about is share prices and "growth". That's why the "cra cra" rapid product release (rapidly releasing the same thing every few months, never getting the bugs fixed). Apple WANTS that stupid and irrationally short cycle so they can keep promoting fiscal growth to major shareholders. They have no loyalty to customers or product. Only to shareholders and Wall Street.
Why is it when people suggest changes for new Mac hardware, they almost invariably suggest cosmetic changes like "edge to edge screens"? How about hardware that has good thermal design and doesn't self-destruct under heavy workload, and more functionality via ports & RAM...??
Apple's software is second (or third) to almost all, at this point. Especially the iWork suite. Pages was absolutely brutalized when Apple ditched the desktop version for the weak iOS port. Didn't you ever use iWork prior to the iOS port? The original versions had far more feature parity with the big names in productivity suites. iWork was actually an MS Office replacement for many people. Now we have a suite that's an embarrassing joke, with bare minimum functionality (and hidden controls on iOS for things like "replace all"). If all you do is use iOS devices, of course you don't know the difference, but plenty of other people do know the difference.
Seamless integration was accomplished by screwing up the Mac platform, rather than making the iOS platform catch up to it. We've been seeing this for years now. Since 2013, really. These claims of Apple nearly abandoning the Mac internally are not at all a surprise to the Mac users who've been paying attention to Apple's treatment of the platform. Things like the iWork lobotomy were early and striking signs.
That this company, with all its money, cannot manage to maintain focus on multiple products, cannot manage to maintain expertise, cannot manage its own managers... It's incredible mismanagement and should really be an incredible embarrassment to the leadership. But the leadership has lost sight of any real goal aside from Wall Street demands. There's not really any leadership, in fact. Just following where the shareholders want Apple to go: low investment in existing product, wasteful fad developments, too rapid a development cycle...
Because bullshit like this gets plenty of attention. The fact that it's got "Apple" in the title is an additional carrot.