Should professionals keep banking on the Mac? Watch Now Boy, are some folks pissed. You would think that Apple finally giving some very expensive love to its MacBook Pro line-up would give some relief to power-hungry professionals, but no. Here's a quick bit of background if you don't obsessively scan the tech blogs: Apple updated its MacBook Pro line yesterday. They did it quietly, without a big event. CNET: 2018 MacBook Pro packs way more power into its 15-inch frame Has Apple abandoned professional Mac users? ZDNet's David Gewirtz, Jason Perlow, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, and Mac developer Oliver Breidenbach discuss whether there's a future for pro Mac users. Read More And, they did it -- in the opinion of this columnist at least -- in a tone-deaf, we-don't-really-care-about-pro-users-needs kind of way. You see, there's a cadence for this kind of thing. Mostly. Generally. Apple holds a big event in the fall where it updates its iPhones and some other stuff. Sometimes, Apple holds a big event in the spring, where it updates some other stuff. Then, in the early summer, Apple holds WWDC, its big developer conference, where product intros are a complete wild card. Once in a while, during the off season, away from events, Apple does update products. It might be a processor bump here, or...well...it's mostly just a processor bump. Apple rarely makes a vast improvement to a product shortly after a product event. This is important especially for Macs. For buyers of professional-level Macs, which are insanely expensive, this cadence is critical. The last thing anyone wants to do is settle for a vomit-inducingly high-priced Mac and then discover there's a new one, one that you really would have preferred, that's been introduced just a little while later. WWDC 2018 ended on June 8. On July 12, exactly 35 days later, Apple introduced an updated MacBook Pro, a MacBook Pro capable of supporting 32GB of RAM, instead of the paltry 16GB most Macs max out at. Many pros have been waiting for this, literally for years. Developer Tony Pitman expresses it well: "I specifically waited until after the developer conference [to buy a new Mac] because that is usually when they announce a new Mac, right? I even waited a week after that just to be sure." Because Apple doesn't pre-announce products, pro developers like Tony (and me) have to rely on experience to predict when it will be a good time to buy the new equipment we need. Right after a hardware dud of a developer conference, when it's disappointingly clear there will be a long cold desert of new pro level products, is the time when we break down and settle for what's on offer. Apple's clearly not updating the Macs this round, right? If they were going to, especially with something like doubling the max capacity of RAM, opening up i9 processors and going up to 6-cores, they would have announced that to their developers, all of whom would have cheered that particular development. But no. No announcement. Instead, 35 days later -- after smart buyers waited long enough to be sure, really, really sure that the new Mac well was dry, Apple dropped a major update. Tony asks, "Apple knew they were going to do this. Why couldn't they announce it at the developer conference?" Also: Everything you need to know about buying Apple's 2018 MacBook Pro I can't give you an official answer, but I have a pretty good idea. I'm guessing these machines were ready for WWDC, but the supply chain wasn't. I'm guessing that they weren't sure they could ship them in volume, so they held off on the announcement. Tony (and others who must plan their purchases based on Apple's cadence pattern) is upset. In his case, he would have definitely preferred the more powerful i9 with 32GB RAM, but Apple won't let him return his 28-day old MacBook Pro. Here's what sucks. Apple allows 14 days to return products. Tony has been to his Apple Store, has called Apple, and has pleaded his case. Because Apple announced new products two weeks after his 14-day return window, he's stuck with his brand new, out-of-date MacBook Pro. I think Apple's approach is wrong here Introducing the Mac mini Pro What would it take for Apple to update the Mac mini to a modern, professional-level machine? According to David Gewirtz, not much. Read More The new high-end MacBook Pro is specifically a developer and pro machine. Granted, professionals are no longer Apple's primary market (neither is the Mac, for that matter). But, professionals are the key influencers, the app builders, and the people who truly showcase what Apple products can do. They've been feeling abandoned and generally unloved by Apple since the iPhone became Apple's primary cash cow. Now, obviously, any company has a right to introduce products at any time. But Apple isn't any company. It's one of the world's richest, and it has achieved that popularity not just by virtue of its products, but by virtue of what professional developers and media pros have produced using those products. So what should Apple have done? What should Apple do? Ideally, Apple would have previewed these new machines at WWDC. It's possible they just weren't sure the supply chain would be successful, but, then again, they were comfortable pre-announcing some sort of a new Mac Pro years before it is going to be available. Perhaps, for some reason, that just wasn't doable. As a former product manager, I know that you never really, truly know if your product is going to launch until it actually does. What Apple could, and should, do is honor returns of MacBook Pros for anyone who bought them from June 4 (the first day of WWDC on). Heck, it'd even be okay if Apple required a visit to the Apple Store and provided customers the opportunity to return only if they buy a newer, beefier model. We estimate Apple sells about 1.2 million laptop Macs a month. Of all those Macs, only about 15 percent use pro-level applications at least once a week. In terms of Mac sales, Apple probably sold roughly 180,000 MacBook Pros to pros since WWDC. On one hand, you might say that it would be far too costly for Apple to eat returns on 180,000 machines, but think about it. First, only a very small percentage would be like Tony, having spent a bunch of money, but wanting even more capability. Those buyers actually want to spend more money with Apple. Tony is calling all over, trying to get Apple to let him return his 28-day old Mac, so he can give them yet more money. While Apple has had some difficulty moving the volume needle, there's little doubt that if they took in one-month old returns, they'd recoup their investment on either the refurb market or in used sales. There is absolutely no doubt they'd make pro users feel respected and well-treated. Occasionally, Apple will say it cares about professional users and developers. It will give lip service to this critically influential audience. But the company's actions belie those words. The company's actions indicate something else, perhaps a deep disrespect for the needs of pros, or at the very least a lackadaisical focus on professional needs overall. There are reasons to stick with Macs at the pro level. Some software that can increase workflow productivity is only available on Macs. But if Apple continues to take purchasing patronage of professionals for granted, there will be a time when it gets to be too much: too much hassle, too much cost, too much chain yanking and, yes, too much disrespect. When I talk with Apple execs, they don't show disrespect for professionals. They regularly speak, with pride, of the amazing projects their professional users produce. But they also don't seem to (or even want to) understand just how stressful the relationship with Apple has become for pros. Also: Why the Mac you know has no future In a sense, there's nothing new about this. In our ZDNet roundtable, Has Apple abandoned professional Mac users?, developer Oliver Breidenbach talked about how Apple's odd relationship with its power customer has been strained for decades. Yet Apple continues to be successful, and yes, most pros continue to be successful as well. It's just not a healthy relationship. And that's just sad. It doesn't need to be this way. Oh, heck. Who am I kidding? Those pros who need these things are going to suck it up and buy them up, no matter what. I guess Apple must know that. Me? I'm still thinking about a hackintosh. Stay tuned. You can follow my day-to-day project updates on social media. Be sure to follow me on Twitter at @DavidGewirtz, on Facebook at Facebook.com/DavidGewirtz, on Instagram at Instagram.com/DavidGewirtz, and on YouTube at YouTube.com/DavidGewirtzTV.<doc-sep>Update: It’s now been confirmed that the change made to the keyboard design appears primarily intended to improve reliability, with quieter typing a side-effect. An Apple internal document provides definitive confirmation. One of the things Apple mentioned almost in passing in yesterday’s 2018 MacBook Pro announcement is that it had an improved keyboard. Apple had only seven words to say about it: improved third-generation keyboard for quieter typing But two things seem obvious … First, that Apple has quietly done something to improve the reliability of the keyboard. While Apple may claim that reliability issues with earlier butterfly keyboards affected only ‘a small percentage’ of machines, that likely understates the extent of the issue. In the absence of hard data, we have only anecdotal evidence to go on, but a lot of MacBook Pro owners are reporting the sticky keys issue. I think Apple’s careful phrasing effectively admits this. It doesn’t say the percentage is ‘microscopic,’ ‘tiny’ or any other adjective that would suggest something in the 1-2% range; it says ‘small,’ which could arguably be anywhere in the high single-digits to low double-digits. Additionally, the compressed air solution is now relatively well-known, so it’s likely that there are a fair number of people like me who fixed it themselves using this method. Apple would have no way of knowing how many people have done this – it only knows about the number of machines people have brought back into stores or sent in for repair. The problem is obviously big enough to need a solution, and Apple has clearly known about it for a long time, so it’s inconceivable that they wouldn’t have addressed this as part of the redesign. Second, as John Gruber said earlier, Apple isn’t going to admit to a fix. If the company says that it’s improved the reliability of the keyboard, that’s an admission that there’s a problem with earlier generations – and that would open the floodgates to returns and lawsuits. Indeed, it’s entirely possible that Apple wasn’t concerned about the noise in the first place, and that the redesign was all about fixing the sticking keys problem. It would then need a plausible reason for updating the design, and noise would be a convenient excuse. I don’t think any of this is a massive deal now. Most sticking keys are fixed in seconds with a can of compressed air, and Apple has now offered four years of free coverage for the issue – and there’s precedent to suggest that it may either extend this period later, or quietly continue to offer free fixes after that time expires. But yes, if you buy this year’s model, you can almost certainly expect the keyboard to be more reliable as well as quieter. Check out 9to5Mac on YouTube for more Apple news: FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More. Check out 9to5Mac on YouTube for more Apple news:<doc-sep>
Surprise! Apple released new MacBooks on Thursday. Maybe you were expecting something affordable, something with Face ID, something with a more reliable keyboard. Dare we even dream of the long-rumored Retina Display MacBook Air? No. Instead, there are new MacBook Pro models with bumped-up processors. OK, that's not exactly fair. Apple has added a nice array of pro-centric improvements: More storage options (up to 4TB), more RAM options (up to 32GB), a True Tone display, always-on Siri. And the keyboard is now… quieter. (What everyone wanted was something that wasn't disabled by a single crumb or speck of dust, though.) And the addition of an optional external GPU box will no doubt be welcomed by graphics professionals -- but I'm not rendering video, so all of that is far beyond my needs. Meanwhile, the only iPad Apple has unveiled this year was an update to its entry-level model, adding Pencil stylus support. It's a great baseline product, but it doesn't take the iPad further. So... here we are again. I've been looking for that Next Big Step in Apple computers and tablets, and so far, it just isn't happening. Or, I'd settle for a great new mid-range product. Apple's latest updates do neither, leaving me wondering when something for the rest of us is arriving, and how much things will really change when it gets here. For Apple, lately, computer progress feels mighty slow indeed. CNET The missing tweener Microsoft's just-announced Surface Go is little more than a smaller, more affordable, less powerful Microsoft Surface. It is, to be clear, not in the same computing universe as the MacBook Pro: It's more of a Microsoft Chromebook. But at least its heart is in the right place: One machine that handles all your needs. Apple's increasingly large gallery of options seems to keep skirting that mission over and over again. The iPad and iPad Pro are powerful and have great apps, but don't have computer-like web browsers and helpful things I need to work, like trackpads for editing as I write. The MacBook lineup is frozen in time: Nicely constructed, but running system software that isn't pushing boundaries. And, no touchscreens at all. I'd love to just carry one Apple computer around. Preferably, an iPad. But I can't get all my work done on it... hence, I use a MacBook. But mine's an older Pro. I'd love something as light as the 12-inch MacBook, but I want that thing to have the touchscreen flexibility of the iPad Pro. Basically, again, the Surface, but with an Apple OS. An iPad with a better browser and touchpad/mouse support. Is Apple working on a future solution to fuse these worlds? The company is on record, again and again and again -- as saying no: No touchscreen Macs. No combining of iOS and MacOS. And yet, Apple has now committed to making it much easier for developers to move iOS apps to the Mac. That literally implies that a best-of-both-worlds device, maybe a whole new evolution, could still be somewhere out there, someday, on the horizon. I've nearly given up on such a device appearing. Anyway, that thing will end up being expensive as hell if/when it arrives. My favorite MacBook is three years old I use a 13-inch MacBook Pro from 2015, a model that Apple just discontinued the 15-inch version of. It has lots of ports like HDMI and regular USB, and an SD card slot. It has a great keyboard. It has solid battery life. It's big and thick. It's fine. I'm typing on it now. I haven't seen any reason to upgrade, and these newest MacBook Pro models don't move me much at all. If you can live with Apple's flattened butterfly keyboards, these new tweaks on the Pro may well be music to the ears of the Mac power user, the other everyday requests don't seem to be there. No Face ID (something that could be actually useful on a laptop). No old-school USB ports. And, most importantly, where's the totally redesigned keyboard? Now playing: Watch this: Apple's new six-core Core i9 MacBook Pro Bigger things to come in the fall, maybe? Apple is still missing refreshes to half its iPad lineup, and the vast majority of its Mac lineup, which is likely to arrive this fall sometime. Reports point to a Face ID-enabled iPad Pro with smaller bezels, and maybe a more affordable 13-inch MacBook that just might be the "Retina Air" requested for years.