Apple y la debacle del Mac
Creo que jamás había visto y leído tantas críticas unificadas a un producto de Apple. De repente los fanboys parecen haberse despertado de su largo letargo y han empezado a hacer algo insólito: criticar a la empresa a la que durante años era imposible criticar.
Los MacBook Pro han tenido la culpa, por supuesto. Los nuevos portátiles de Apple se han convertido en protagonistas de un debate que hace que el legendario halo de invulnerabilidad de Apple se tambalee.
Que no hayan incluido los nuevos Kaby Lake es lógico (no hay micros adecuados aún, lo explicaban en Gizmodo), pero las razones para abandonar otros muchos puertos son un misterio. Como también lo es la decisión de incluir esa famosa Touch Bar que no parece convencer a muchos de momento y que es el claro alegato de Apple contra las pantallas táctiles que para ellos no tienen sentido en sus Macs.
Es irónico que presuman de Touch Bar, cuando en esencia todo convertible tiene su propia Touch Bar: la pantalla lo es. Puede que con menos opciones en esa personalización, cierto, pero muchas de esas opciones están accesibles en esos convertibles de forma directa y otras probablemente lo estén si cuajan en esos equipos (que no estoy seguro de que lo hagan).
Y luego están los prohibitivos precios, y todo lo que Apple nos ha quitado con los nuevos MacBook Pro. Cuando se me estropeó el Dell XPS 13 y creí que no tenía salvación esperaba que de este evento pudiera salir mi próximo portátil. Finalmente el Dell volvió a la vida, pero aún estaba realmente ansioso por saber qué tenía Apple preparado. Qué decepción. Qué enorme decepción. Por algún lado leí a alguien decir que cuando empezó a estudiar en la facultad en EE.UU. el 80% de los equipos que veía eran MacBooks. Eso ya no era cierto, y la proporción se había invertido. Apple no está mimando a sus usuarios en este sector —sea o no un nicho—, y eso es una tragedia.
Bienvenidos a la debacle de los Mac contada no por mí, sino por otros:
The Mac Platform Decline (Milen Dzhumerov):
I don't want the professional Mac platform to die a slow death of neglect but that's where things seem to be going. The scary part is that the Mac community is unanimous in their characterisation of the situation. The trust in the ecosystem, its longevity, continued support and innovation seems to have been lost. Even if Apple were to release updated desktop hardware tomorrow, a big if, it will still not be enough to completely eliminate the mistrust.
Hello Again (Owensd):
To me, Thursday’s event signaled one thing for me, and maybe I’m completely wrong, but the Mac is officially over.
Requiem for desktop Macs (Slanted Viewpoint):
Apple’s desktop Mac lineup is headed for the graveyard. Dead. Done. Over.
Nick Lockwood (Twitter):
Here is what I imagine Apple's decline will look like: It won't be poor sales, or loss of revenue. It won't be a shiny new iPhone killer… It will be a switch from iOS developers using Macs at home to them using PCs at home and having a "work Mac" for commercial development. [...] And that's all. Apple will still be profitable, and consumers will still view it as the premium brand, but devs will favour other platforms.
New MacBook Pros and the State of the Mac (Michael Tsai):
It seems like Apple has either lost its way, that it has lost touch with what (some of) its customers want, or that it simply doesn’t care about those customers. Developers are a captive audience, and creative professionals can switch to Windows, I guess. Apple no longer considers them core.
Does the Mac still matter? (CNET):
So does the Mac still matter? It depends on your read of the MacBook Pro story. Apple insists it’s the best laptop they’ve ever made. Now we’ll have to see if the rest of the world agrees.
My biggest fear for Apple’s future is that Cook doesn’t understand the Mac.
I still greatly prefer macOS, but it’s nearly sitting still, while Windows (and Google?) rapidly improve. Apple’s resting on their laurels.
Apple will be fine. These machines will sell well. But every one of the cuts and cons loses a few more customers. That eventually adds up.
Canceled my MacBook Escape order for now. Early impressions are so mixed that I’ll wait for full reviews and comparisons with the others.
John Gruber (Daring Fireball):
The Touch Bar is not the answer to “How do we bring touchscreens to the Mac?”, because that question is not actually a problem. The Touch Bar is the answer to “These keyboard F-keys are cryptic and inflexible — what can we replace them with that’s better?” That’s an actual problem.
Mathew Panzarino (TechCrunch):
People love a Greek tragedy. Icarus has flown too close to the sun and tumbled to Earth. Apple has forgotten its core users and been eclipsed by Microsoft. The Touch Bar is a compromise between adding a touch screen on a MacBook and ignoring touch entirely. The MacBook Pro’s Touch Bar is the right thing to do because people don’t use touch screen laptops like they do tablets.
Some more hands-on experience with the new MacBook Pros (Jason Snell):
If you like the MacBook’s keyboard, good news! You’re gonna get it. If you don’t like it—well, I don’t know what to tell you. It seems like this is the keyboard style Apple’s going to give us on laptops until the day comes when it does away with physical keys altogether.
Apple’s computer vision looks backward, as others look forward (CDM):
Understanding history is important – to a point. But Apple’s obsessive naval gazing in the Mac event today speaks volumes. This is a company with no real vision for what its most creative users actually do with their most advanced machines. So, instead, they look into the past.
AMD reveals Radeon Pro 400 series GPU specs, as used in new MacBook Pro (Ars Technica):
Don't expect to do much gaming on your shiny new MacBook Pro
Apple just told the world it has no idea who the Mac is for (Owen Williams):
It wants the market that sits in coffee shops with its brand and only buys Apple, but doesn’t mind so much if the core demographic disappears.
Thoughts on the Hello Again Event (Joe Cieplinkski):
The days of the sub $1,000 Mac are done. I thought the Air would stick around for another generation because of this price tier, but then I thought about it more carefully. Low-cost PCs make almost no sense anymore.
The Forgotten (Movq):
I can't help but feel Apple has decided the core audience of their Unix-based powerhouse OS is the latte-sipping children in campus coffee shops and anything at all about their systems that appeals to anyone else is just something to be removed in the path to a sheet of paper with nothing but content. Frankly, it's that total disconnect between what computer users want and what mobile users want that has me worried about the Mac.
New MacBook Pro is not a Laptop for Developers Anymore (Alexey Semeney):
The lack of physical Escape and Function keys is a disaster for one major set of Apple’s customers?—?Developers.
The future of PCs and Macs is expensive (The Verge):
Instead of thinking of such preposterous concepts as a post-PC world we simply have to make ourselves comfortable with the notion that larger computers are returning to being a niche category. There's a compelling argument to be made that the average person's home computing needs are well met by their phone or a tablet.
Developers and creative pros are blasting Apple’s new MacBook Pro (BGR):
There are also no shortage of longtime Mac users now wondering if their next notebook will, in fact, be a Mac. And adding insult to injury, some now argue that Microsoft is now has become more creative-friendly than Apple.
The Future of the Mac, or, What The Hell Just Happened? (Chuk Dude):
As a long-time Mac user, today’s event left me with more questions than answers about the Mac’s future.
The MacBook Pro: out of touch (The Tao of Mac):
As far as I’m concerned, Apple is completely out of touch with my segment (call it UNIX-centric pros, if you will), so I’m going to seriously rethink my options over the next couple of weeks.
The New MacBook Pros (PixelEnvy):
I’m not complaining about the new MacBook Pros. They look incredibly powerful, ridiculously thin, and have amazing displays. But they are very spendy right now, and that’s an especially hard pill to swallow when the Mac seems to receive less attention than it used to.
A step forward, in some direction (Morrick):
Despite the enthusiastic remarks about the Mac made by Apple’s executives, Apple still feels somewhat unfocused and indecisive to me. Things weren’t always perfect when Steve Jobs was at the helm, and there was the occasional blunder for sure, but the feeling I had as a Mac user was to not worry because, no matter how things might have looked at first, there was a ‘man with a plan’ in the building. Now I feel trepidation more than sheer excitement before every Apple event.
Port Confusion (Cannonball):
I no longer believe the design team at Apple is innovating to make the best product experience, rather they’re deep in “pure math” territory, exploring the boundaries of innovation itself. I feel like this can go one of two ways. One of these is a future where Apple is a pillar of the desktop and laptop community, one of these is a future where the Mac is both expensive and underperforms.
Apple sucks now, here's a Thinkpad Buyer's Guide (HackADay):
In the past, I have defended people who choose MacBooks as their laptop of choice. A MacBook is a business-class laptop, and of course carries a higher price tag. However, Apple’s latest hardware release was underwhelming and overpriced. If you’re looking for a new laptop, you would do well to consider other brands. To that end, here’s a buyer’s guide to ThinkPads, currently the second most popular laptop I’ve seen with the dev/hacker/code cracker crowd.
The Bizarre Role Reversal of Apple and Microsoft (Backchannel):
In the wake of these events, a meme emerged: Microsoft is now more innovative than Apple!
Dave Pell (Twitter):
Touch Bar: What used to take you one click in Photoshop now takes you 15.
Admit it: Microsoft is now a braver, more innovative company than Apple (Mashable):
I'm not saying I'm going to dump my iMac and pick up a Surface any time soon. There's too much in the way of legacy software — and when it comes to functionality, Mac OS X Sierra beats Windows 10. But for the first time in two decades, I'm giving it some serious thought.
Convergence Is Inevitable (An Open Letter To Apple) (Anandabits):
Everywhere I turn creative people are excited about Microsoft's announcements and mostly disappointed about Apple's. This is not good news for Apple. It remains to be seen whether this is a brief anomaly or marks the beginning of a trend. Either way, it is a significant warning sign for Apple's future.
Thoughts on the new MacBook Pros and Apple’s announcements (Chug von Raspach):
And then there’s that bigger, difficult question: is the Mac product line itself a niche, and has Apple started losing interest in it? And so when I look at people who’ve been faithful to Apple who are now considering jumping ship, all I can say is “I understand, I don’t blame you”, because Apple’s done nothing to resolve the worries we have about where this is all headed, and I can’t blame people for choosing to not wait for Apple to actually do something about it any more.
And that’s a problem I don’t see Apple as having really seen, much less come to grips with. But if they’re paying attention to the reaction to these announcements, they should, and I hope they do something to settle the ruffled feathers out in the user community. But this is Apple, and so I don’t expect to hear anything until they make the next announcements. Hopefully it won’t be too late for many of you.
Mac Apple Event Thoughts (Colin Cornaby):
If Apple really wants to pro user market to return, they just need to keep it simple. Stuff the fastest possible components into well priced, reliable macOS boxes that help people get work done. They don’t need to art pieces, and they don’t even need to be razor thin. Apple needs to build workhorses again. It may not be exciting, but pros don’t want excitement in their computer purchasing, they want reliability. And throwing the fastest components into a few computers every year is a cheap way to keep a reliable income stream from happy users going.
The Apple of Your Eye (The Brooks Review):
Apple didn’t launch a crappy product — they launched devices which still are the best option on the market. Which still have top notch industrial design. Which still have the best operating system. Which still have the best third party apps on any desktop platform. Which are still the best option for most people in the world. And frankly, if you can’t see that, then you need to go buy a non-Mac laptop and see for yourself how bad it truly is.
Shields Down (Sean Sperte):
Why am I still using Apple products?
After Mac? (TBray):
My best bet is to buy a future Mac that’s aimed at people like me. Which requires that Apple wants to build one; they don’t at the moment, but maybe they will again before this box I’m typing on runs out of gas.
Be angry with yourself, not Apple (Germano.io)
It is quite useless to get mad and criticize Apple the first time you don't like their decisions, when throughout the years you always loved and supported them. When you realize that you are no more a customer but the product, since the cost to switch to something else became so high you have to accept their every decision. When you have no voice and your complaints are useless.
Apple’s new MacBook Pro kills off most of the ports you probably need (TechCrunch):
Apple has always been accused of being arrogant with their decisions to abandon legacy technology or embrace new standards. They’ve grown to distort this criticism into a declaration of courage.
WTF Is Apple Thinking With the New MacBook Pro and Touch Bar? (Trent Lapinski):
Touch Bar: What Problem Does It Solve? [...] seems more like a gimmick targeting average consumers.
Apple Losing USB Is a Loss For Music (Pitchfork):
In this light, the more worrying aspect of Apple's move is what it might signal about the dominant philosophy among tech companies. Over and over, we're seeing companies move away from open formats and into walled gardens where users must play by the company's rules.
dsa