I moved on, as other makers are pushing the enveloppe, but feel it's a shame Apple couldn't keep pushing during the Tim Cook area. Also having no good commercial alternative to Microsoft sucks, and that's where we're heading.
That sounds like a bit of a lazy response. Everybody is complaining about Apple, but they are still 10 years ahead of all competition on some features, and 20-30 years ahead of competition on other features.
I'll mention what I personally think they should do in sheer innovation, which has the potential to have a larger impact than their A and M chips: A device with an e-paper display. E-Ink is almost there for black and white. Maybe Apple is the only company who can pull it off? That would be an enormous difference and benefit for consumers, who could better use their devices outdoors and in well-lit environments instead of gloomy offices.
Every major maker is decades ahead of the competion in some specific niche. By that token Lenovo is 30 years ahead of Apple in customizability and Asus 20 years ahead in RGB lights. I'm not sure that that wins hearts.
On what I care the most, and as a goal Apple set for themselves, Apple still couldn't make the iPad Pro a general use computer. Microsoft is 10 year ahead of them in that regard, even Samsung's Chromebooks end up being more powerful for a "Pro".
Apple couldn't overcome their gaming aversion, and the Vision Pro is such an unattractive product in no small parts because it's at the crossing of that and the iPad "what is a computer" syndrome. I waited for its launch before renewing my headset, and honestly regretted the wait.
Valve came up last week with a set of devices that genuinely looks fresh and opens new doors. Lenovo keeps pushing the boundaries of what a mobile computer looks like, with actually interesting screen/keyboard combinations I'd buy in a heartbeat if I was still commuting. Asus keeps showing the world what a real "Pro" tablet looks like.
Innovation is happening in spades, while Apple still hasn't fulfilled its own promises.
> e-ink display
Chinese makers are already on that beat, and that's where we saw the first e-ink smartphones. Computer wise, I'd expect Lenovo to hit the mark first. Now I get that many here won't touch a laptop with Windows on it, but Linux support is also getting decently good.
> Every major maker is decades ahead of the competion in some specific niche.
Apple is ahead in every aspect which matters for consumers. Touchpad, speakers, battery, performance, operating system, display. And those are incredibly important aspects. Not gigabytes of RAM and such things which people here care about. If another manufacturer made a device which would be as good as Apple on any of those points, people would be singing their praise for years.
If any operating system was released which was half as good for general computing (not administering servers and programming), then likewise. It would be considered incredible.
As for gaming, I'll give you that one. It's not Apple's strong point. Never was. Just like enterprise office suites.
> Chinese makers are already on that beat, and that's where we saw the first e-ink smartphones. Computer wise, I'd expect Lenovo to hit the mark first. Now I get that many here won't touch a laptop with Windows on it, but Linux support is also getting decently good.
Yeah, and they are not consumer ready. The display tech is almost there, but the devices mostly suck because manufacturers seem to not be able to understand how to deliver quality in their products. I expect Apple to be the only company to be able to do that, just like with so many other technologies where others were first.
Their hardware is very good, but it's not as far ahead as you think. Intel makes SOC very comparable to M series in terms of compute and power efficiency. They're rare, but they exist.
And MacOS as an operating system is slipping in many ways to open source competitors. The UI is stagnant in a lot of ways, and actively regressing in others, while open source competitors truck forward. Mind you, the same is true for Windows and to a much larger degree, but still.
Touchpad is not subjective. And we've been waiting for at least 15 years for other manufacturers to compete. Realistically it will take 15 more years before they can be bothered.
Battery life is not subjective. Same for performance, same for display quality, same for speaker quality. I deliberately tried to focus on non-subjective aspects in my original post. If you say that Intel has chips to compete with Apple on a laptop, I believe you. But I haven't heard of any such laptop until now.
As for the operating system, MacOS is getting worse. A lot worse with Tahoe. But it is still the only tolerable operating system if you're working within a GUI. For programmers and sys admins who live in the terminal, this doesn't matter. Neither for people who only stay inside one application (Excel). But if you want to have applications and the operating system working together cohesively in a graphical user interface, MacOS is still about 20 years ahead of competition.
Not to mention sleep/hibernate mode, which is part of the OS, and probably the single most important feature of any portable computing device.
There are many annoying things about Windows but Windows/app switching is light years ahead of MacOS. MacOS is slow, has annoying animations, doesn't have properly working alt+tab.
I fully agree on all hardware points: battery, speakers, displays.
Sleep/hibernate is a big one as well. It's surprising seeing Windows dropping the ball on this one as well.
There are also things MacOS does way worse than Linux. For example Finder is pathetic.
The big problem with Cmd+Tab in MacOS is that it only works well on a US keyboard where you have the little ' key next to Tab to switch between app windows. For non-US keyboards I never figured it out.
So yes, it's a weak point in MacOS. But the discussion isn't whether Apple devices have weak points, it's whether they are innovating or not. And even if they're not perfect, they are still way ahead of the competition, IMO.
You're implying that Linux file managers are much ahead of Finder, what are the innovations they have? One innovation I still miss in Finder is z-snake menus for navigating, moving and copying files:
You are lopping "consumers" in a single basket where they are all supposed to want the exact things Apple focuses on, and even on these aspects Apple isn't guaranteed to be the top choice.
> If another manufacturer made a device which would be as good as Apple on any of those points, people would be singing their praise for years.
If Apple was really hitting perfectly all the important aspects, they would have 90% market share on the PC market. For the record they're at about 15%.
On the bias coming from sticking around nerd circles, yes "normal" customers don't long for shoving 128Gb of RAM in their space heater PC. But they're also not raving about how good the trackpad is, or how the display is such a technical marvel.
You'll see people walking from meeting to meeting with their mouse because they just don't use trackpads (though they might touch their screen if/when it's supported), others spending their days with earbuds in ear because it dual connections to the laptop audio and they never hear the speakers in the whole device's life. Some dock their macbook all day and hook it to a FHD monitor. Everyone will care about different things.
That's the part for me where the Apple laptop line is so uniform, you need to fall pretty near the middle of the target to properly get the benefits.
> Apple is ahead
They are ahead regarding the exact balance they are targeting. But you'll get better perfs if you're willing to go full desktop for instance and don't care about the size and power consumption (the mac pro going the way of the DoDo doesn't help). You'll get more/cheaper memory if you don't care about a unified architecture. Apple's GPU isn't the market leader. You also won't get anything smaller or lighter than the macbook Air. And of course no USB-A on laptops, which surprisingly still stings.
It's obvious but merits to be said: Apple targets a very specific consumer, and won't be optimal for everyone, including people who want more than what Apple offers.
> manufacturers seem to not be able to understand how to deliver quality in their products.
This is more a matter of taster I'd argue, what people see as "quality" will vary. I'm still amazed by people praising the glass backs and metal on the iPhones for instance. An eink laptop will probably be the same deal, going the pragmatic way (mostly plastic/composite) or the Apple way (glass and aluminium)
I feel that we've drifted from our original discussion about innovation. The Mac touchpad hardware/software is genuine innovation. Same for getting great sound into a small laptop, removing pixels from being a factor with high DPI retina displays, same for all-day battery, and same for the M chips. These are all things which change the way we do computing. And these examples are all things where nobody would prefer something worse.
Then some things are up to individual preference and needs. But nobody prefers having a bad touchpad, for example. As for market share, that doesn't say too much about innovation, nor quality. The cheapest beer is always going to sell more than any other beer.
Keeping USB-A or cheaper RAM per dollar aren't innovations in my book. Neither is keeping a computer plugged in. We've had plugged in computers since the beginning, but it's only in recent years that they became truly portable.
> But they're also not raving about how good the trackpad is, or how the display is such a technical marvel.
Everybody I've seen who've tried a MacBook have been ecstatic about the display and the touchpad.
I really wish that other manufacturers made good products to compete with Apple on other aspects than price. And they do, in limited niches. And they also innovate, but they never make good implementations. A plastic e-ink laptop with a next-gen e-ink display would be fantastic. But you just know that the manufacturer is going to make the computer horrible in every other way. Unfortunately.
Greatest non-Apple innovations I can think of on the top of my head: E-Ink, 120hz displays, under-display fingerprint reader, AI/LLM (which is massive), wireless laser mouse. And everything related to gaming/gpu. But nobody is complaining about nVidia not innovating, like everybody is complaining about Apple.
>> But nobody prefers having a bad touchpad, for example
I don't like Apple's touchpad because it's too big and makes their keyboard worse.
I much prefer laptops with smaller touchpad. I usually disable it anyway so most of the time it's wasted space for me which makes my main input device worse.
> I feel that we've drifted from our original discussion about innovation. The Mac touchpad hardware/software is genuine innovation. Same for getting great sound into a small laptop, removing pixels from being a factor with high DPI retina displays, same for all-day battery, and same for the M chips. These are all things which change the way we do computing. And these examples are all things where nobody would prefer something worse.
I think this difference in perception is really the crux of it. My TL;DR would be that Apple really pushed the enveloppe for decades, until it mostly stopped doing so (the M chips are the last real advancement for me)
To go point by point:
> touchapds
Apple introducing decent touchpads was an innovation, it happened in 2006. From there they refined the formula, became the absolute best at making touchpads, and decided to leap to button-less touchpads in 2018. That was 7 years ago.
> retina
It was a huge leap in display management and technology. It happened in 2015, 10 years ago.
Current macbook evolved a lot from there, but given how Apple also touted "all day battery life" for the first watches, that milestone was in reach 15 years ago.
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> [other manufacturers] do, in limited niches. And they also innovate, but they never make good implementations.
Apple's niche is also limited. It grew bigger than in the platinum macbook days, but even today I'd consider it a small part of the global market. DELL or Lenovo would be an example of an actual mainstream PC maker. Jobs would spit on their designs, but if we look at the numbers that's what a non niche maker looks like.
On whether an implementation is good or not is on the eye of the beholder, I think we can agree to disagree.
in which specific industry, for which specific product feature? Google Workspace has largely taken over my bubble, I know there's a world outside my bubble, but for me, Google docs > whatever Microsoft Word is now. O365?
I assume you're responding to the commercial alternatives to Microsoft ?
I was thinking about the OS layer. My understanding is that hardware makers want to discharge responsibility of the OS on other entities, and ideally wouldn't even want to write drivers if they could avoid it. Having a partner you can enter a contract to provide an OS and maintain it for however long is needed is IMHO a huge deal they don't get with linux.
That's why Framework is the only maker coming up with remotely innovative ideas and also supporting linux. I love them for that, but as the other side of the coin they are extremely limited in the business side, they won't even ship to most of SEA for instance.
Apple plowing forward at least brings some competition, we've seen that on the ARM side. And looking at Microsoft(!) and other makers plowing forward on the form factors, I'd wish Apple had followed.
There's a boatload of Linux contractors who will do the technical work for you and maintain it for as long as you want, at the right price. That includes fairly large names like Suse. As far as I'm aware, all of those contractors focus on the embedded Linux market because consumer OEMs simply aren't asking for those services. The major OEMs don't have either the margin or the consumer demand for it, and they're not willing to commit the resources to escape that local minimum.
