timmillea

I won't be 'upgrading' my M1 MacBook Air ('the last of the wedges'). I welcome the Center Stage addition but I already have Center Stage with the Studio Display that my MBA drives. I still regard the M1 MBA as the pinnacle of Apple design. After Jony Ive was ejected by Tim Cook, the design aesthetic has taken backseat and Apple is all the worse for it. It would take a truly generational change to make me buy a new Mac and I think those days are over. Even MacOS is going downhill - witness the new Calculator app, an affront to anyone who has ever used a calculator. Without extreme design-focus, rather than merely technology updates, peak-Apple has passed. 

The article is full of comments and opinions that will be out of date extremely soon. 

Apple subsidised the CD-ROM optical drive market before PC users knew of their existence and discontinued them just as PC users expected them as standard. Thunderbolt 5 is another forward-thinking but transitory spec. 

The Mac Studio has always been a hideous monstrosity and the kindest thing would be to end it. The new Mac mini, finally relieved in terms of historic size requirements to accommodate an optical drive is the way to go. The Mac Studio was half marketing and half a cover-up over the lack of a new Mac Pro. Apple have made plenty of missteps with Mac over the last five or so years. They make their money from iPhone and 'services' now and appear to have betrayed their core DNA. 

For the price, Apple could have included a code to download their 'Best 100 Albums' rather than just read about them. 

"While both Apple and Android smartphones can take pretty impressive pictures and video, they are by no means a worthy substitute for DSLRs, Superzooms, action cams and other types of cameras."

There are a dwindling number of use-cases for when an iPhone Pro cannot do an excellent job and for which no gimbal is required due to its stunning image stabilisation (a combination of hardware and software). One is extreme telephoto - 500mm+ (35mm equivalent) - and another is looking like you know what you are doing by using a large camera. One would expect a full-frame DSLR to have better low-light capabilities with a bright (and very expensive) lens but Apple's computational photography approach competes. Shallow depth of field can be achieved computationally too - almost science fiction! 

The fact is most DSLRs and mirrorless cameras are used with their kit lenses or other lenses of questionable use relative to the iPhones'. They are like the over-the-shoulder video cameras that Americans carried on using on their holidays for many years after the World had moved on. 

I have a full-frame Nikon DSLR but would only use it now with a super-telephoto (Nikkor 500mm) and that kit needs a sturdy tripod, not a gimbal. 99.9% of my use cases are covered by my iPhone 15 Pro Max.

The Mac Mini acquired its original dimensions due to the need to incorporate an optical drive. It was perverse that it retained its dimensions after the optical drive was removed - Apple's usual inertia when it comes to updating the Mini.

The Mac Studio was a monstrous carbuncle that could easily have fitted in the size of the Mini but had to be made larger for marketing purposes.

The new Mini is welcome. A 'Mac Minimum' without the ethernet port and fewer USB-C ports would be even more so. It must be over 20 years since I last saw a wired ethernet port in use. Perhaps it is a U.S. thing like cars? Apple used to be always ahead of the curve, now they feel to be lagging.