This is a very clever analysis. Thanks for that, it makes a lot of sense.
It also explains why it's shifted from being a computer company that makes gadgets (Jobs) is now becoming a gadget company that happens to make some computers as well (Cook).
In all this, the gates are wide open for Microsoft to score some good points here towards devs.
Has others have pointed out - becoming a widget company was Jobs plan all along.
The true value of Steve Jobs is the reality distortion field. That's really was is missing here with the new Mac.
All the discutable decisions about the Mac that people complain about are just similar to the trends set under Jobs, the difference is that he would make the people believe that Apple was 100% behind the Mac. There would no need for Jobs to write twice in a month to employee and the press to say that Apple was committed to it.
I'm not sure what is missing exactly, but the MBP failed at delivery rather than feature. For example, did Apple really need to can all their Mac related accessories at the same time, building up a negative climate. They could have rebranded the LG monitor. Somehow give the people a hint that Apple is behind the USB-C, not just picking up and leave it up to the third party to sort out. (which is BTW what Apple has always really done, it just seemed handled better)
Apple strategy is to keep everything secret until they do a big delivery event. They are utterly bad at delivery since Jobs is gone, and the lengthy secrecy they keep around everything is now not building hype, just building apprehension.
> Has others have pointed out - becoming a widget company was Jobs plan all along.
That's not the case: back in 2001 post-PC thinking was popular too, and Jobs stood out against it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmvmtmqqbeI . That's evidently why Jobs was so reluctant to make the iPod work with Windows PCs: his whole plan for the iPod was to have it sell his intended Digital Hub, the Mac. He did eventually come around to post-PC thinking of course, but only quite late: even in the D 2007 interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85PMSYAguZ8 he and Gates were quite resistant to it.
The shift is the pure neglect towards the dev community. Something that most likely would not have happened so blatant and fast under Jobs. It is also completely not necessary that making great phones excludes a company from making at least decent upgrade cycles in their computer hardware.
> It is also completely not necessary that making great phones excludes a company from making at least decent upgrade cycles in their computer hardware.
You bet! all those billions sitting in their coffers and they still couldn't pull their asses to achieve progress. It is like Microsoft of the XP era.
I was pulling my hairs in 2003 cursing at Bill Gates, then switched to Mac until now. But I think the Mac era is over as well and Bill Gates is cool again. He's really great in his humanitarian work.
How do you figure "pure neglect"? What are the features you're missing in the current Mac lineup? Which products from other manufacturers make a meaningful improvement on Apple's offering for "devs"?
Well a computer with enough GPU performance to work with VR would be a nice start. Apple don't currently have anything available other than hacking an eGPU set up together.
The "current" Mac Pro is over 3 (4?) years old now. Users can't upgrade it because of the proprietary GPU cards and Apple don't seem able to keep it relevant themselves.
It's difficult to have a professional relationship with a supplier where the best options for macOS are either a dodgy Hackintosh or a used 2012 Mac Pro with a new GPU.
GPU nowadays is almost a misnomer. They are more like supercharged versions of the old "floating-point calculation" chips. As such, they have plenty of applications beyond VR - bitcoin, data analysis, encryption etc etc etc.
Here's one piece of anecdata, not for a "dev" but for another high-end use case: professional photography.
My wife is a professional photographer. Her current photo-editing computer is a Windows 7 desktop with 16 GB of RAM.
We know Windows 7's days are numbered, so we're starting to think about her next editing computer. The two most obvious options are (a) some Apple product, or (b) a computer running Windows 10.
Here are the major criteria for the replacement, which need to remain true for 3+ years after the computer's purchase:
(1) It must legally run current Adobe products.
(2) Can support > 16 GB RAM during its lifetime.
(3) There must be minimal unplanned downtime.
(4) The price can't be exorbitant, relative to a medium-high end PC. TCO should also be reasonable.
(5) It must be convenient to transfer photos from her camera's SD card.
(6) We'd like to minimize the time and attention we put into initial setup and maintenance.
So the most obvious options (currently) are:
* Apple: MacPro, iMac, or MacBook Pro
* PC: Windows 8 or Windows 10
Here's how I score the options, although perhaps someone will correct me:
(1) Easily satisfied by all options listed.
(2) No MacBook Pro satisfies this. Fast SSD for swap is helpful but sub-optimal.
(3) Windows 10 (non-enterprise) fails this, because of unavoidable updates. MacPro and iMac fail this because (AFAIK) Apple doesn't offer loaners for these during warranty work.
(4) For initial purchase cost, the MacPro is a fail, and the MacBook Pro is nearly a fail. However, all current Apple products are potential TCO fail given the lack of user-replaceable components.
(5) AFAIK the desktop Macs fail this, although connecting an external USB reader should be easy enough. I suspect the MacBook Pro would be more hassle, given its ports/dongles mess.
(6) All of the options should satisfy this criterion well-enough.
As far as I can tell, the winner is a Windows 8 PC.
Why is no Apple product a viable winner, given our criteria?
- Nothing in the current lineup meets all our criteria.
- We don't know if/when something will be added that meets our criteria.
- We're not sure what Apple's longer-term plans are, so we don't want to invest time/money into a PC-to-Apple transition, just to need to reverse it in a few years.
The three issues listed immediately above strike me as a pointless fail in Apple's strategy, at least relative to my wife's business's needs.
Looks like the only blocker for Windows 10 is the "minimal unplanned downtime." Although Windows 10 does have mandatory updates, I have yet to see one that requires immediate and sudden reboots. Yes, if you get prompted for an update reboot and delay it a few times, the system will eventually force the update, but a simple workflow change of rebooting the system every night when you're done working with it and are going to bed would eliminate the unexpected updates and the associated downtime.
I'm not particularly concerned about unplanned reboots. The real issue is some Windows 10 updates have caused problems which made the computers unusable until remediated.
There are some points in the business calendar where 1-2 days of downtime is catastrophic. For example, shortly before the deadline for submitting highschool senior photographs to the yearbook publisher.
If we could purchase a version of Windows 10 which allowed her to delay installing updates for 1-2 months until a crunch time is over, that would probably be acceptable.
AFAIK only Windows 10 Enterprise allows that, and I'm not aware of any legal way we can get that.
If we do have to go the Windows 10 route, my contingency plan is to look into setting up a firewall (external to the Windows 10 box) that blocks all relevant Microsoft IP addresses.
The "immediate forced reboots" on Windows 10 are vastly overhyped and received much more negative press than they should have. I am yet to experience a reboot when I didn't want it. Anecdotal for sure but I've set my inactive hours inside Win10's settings and never had a problem.
Windows 10 is your best answer. It's gonna be supported very long and it's a 99.9% painless upgrade from Windows 7.
Definitely invest in a mid-to-high range PC would be my advice. I have 5-year old i7 3770 CPU and I am yet to find something that makes it choke. Only refreshment I did to my now 5-year old PC was to increase RAM from 16 to 32GB and to get GTX 980 (was 650 before). The PC is flying whatever I do -- and I'm a programmer, trust me I do a lot.
I mentioned this in another post, but the issue with updates isn't that they're immediate, it's they they're forced.
My wife needs her system to be stable during certain points in the yearly business calendar, and an unavoidable, potentially-breaking update is a serious concern.
But why Windows 10 rather than Windows 8? Both will receive security updates for a long time, and (AFAIK) Windows 8 doesn't have the issue of unavoidable pushed updates.
The only real downside I know of to Windows 8 is its bad UI, but I'm told there are 3rd-party shell replacements which approximate the Windows 7 interface.
I don't have extensive experience with Win8 first-hand, but I've heard from many people that Win10 has a much better backwards compatibility. Practically almost nothing ever broke for people, while conversely Win8 had a lot of complaints.
I can't argue either way though. I as a programmer took the plunge one afternoon around 8 months ago and never looked back. Win10 is superior to Win7 -- my girlfriend's graphical processing software (and part of her games) even started working faster after her upgrade.
All of that is anecdotal of course but strategically speaking, Win10 will be around for much longer.
For (3) check local independent repair shops. I know of several Apple-authorized repair shops that rent inexpensive loaners while they're working on your computer.
Jobs was a salesman. He said a lot of stuff - and not all of it stood up to scrutiny.
He said no one would use phablets and called them the 'Hummers' of phones - this was back when a 5-inch phones were considered huge. He also denigrated 7-inch tablets by saying users would need to file-down their fingers to use them (and yet iPhone users could comfortably use 3.5-inch screens). Apple proceeded to profitably venture into both product categories with the iPhone 6+ and the iPad mini.
We are now in a post-'Post-PC' world: iPad sales have plateaued/slumped over the last couple of years. If there is money to be made selling computers, Apple will sell them regardless of what they said in the past.
Precisely. Continuing Steve's vision as best they can imagine it (not well). Don't forget when he used the post-PC phrase he was very clear PCs are still going to be needed and valued. It wasn't supposed to be either-or.
Pretty sure in 6 years Jobs would have picked up some new trends, details and directions. Pretty sure we'd not be stuck in some infinte repeat loop. Thinner. Groundhog Day. Repeat.
It also explains why it's shifted from being a computer company that makes gadgets (Jobs) is now becoming a gadget company that happens to make some computers as well (Cook).
In all this, the gates are wide open for Microsoft to score some good points here towards devs.