From this Macworld article by Michael Simon:
Over the past decade the Mac has comprised an increasingly smaller portion of Apple’s bottom line, and it’s hard to not see last week’s Hello Again event as the beginning of the pro Mac’s retirement party. It won’t happen overnight, but the day when Apple is only selling a single Mac desktop and notebook line is within sight.
And:
If anything, the Touch Bar probably has more mass appeal than any prior MacBook Pro feature.
The article is an interesting read, but these two quotes stood out.
First, there’s the quote about Apple winnowing the Mac line to a single desktop and notebook. I wouldn’t go that far, but I would be a fan of a simpler product line, along the lines of Steve Jobs’ famous 2 x 2 matrix: A pro and entry level MacBook, and a pro and entry level desktop.
Then add in a configurable, upgradeable Mac Pro, a machine that can take max RAM, multiple drives, swappable motherboards as new CPUs/GPUs/etc become available, with an emphasis on power and a cabinet that is easy to open, with lots of ports. [Note to Apple: We know this machine will be expensive, so be sure to give it a long lifespan – That’s what the upgradeability is for.]
The second quote points out the huge appeal of the MacBook Pro Touch Bar. I totally agree.
My 2 cents: This is no gimmick. I see the Touch Bar being the common currency that crosses the chasm between macOS and iOS, the camel’s nose in the tent, as it were. Once developers adopt the Touch Bar and users start to see the awesome things they can do with it, I suspect that Touch Bar will be standard on every Mac.
And, eventually, that path will lead to a hybrid product, a full touch-screen Mac that can run iOS apps. Sound like the Surface? Perhaps. But that’s a road I see. And I think the universal Mac will prove easier to maintain and make it easier to shift workflows between computer and tablet, easier to build and maintain apps that run in both worlds.
Interesting analogy.
I take Phil Schiller at his word, and don’t expect to ever see an iOS/OS X hybrid. There are too many fundamental differences (pointer vs touch, windows vs mostly full-screen tiles, exposed file system vs not), and the result would be far too hacky for Apple.
I do like the idea of a desktop lineup revamp. 2 machines:
– tiny, sealed mac mini-type machine to fill the “cheapest mac you can possibly buy” niche
– upgradable minitower (end user-accessible RAM, video card, and drive bays), with either i7 or Xeon processors for all the “pro” users out there
No more iMac. If its true that (broadly speaking) consumers aren’t buying desktops anymore, why would Apple continue to make a consumer desktop? The iMac is a pretty crappy pro machine, but many pros continue to buy it simply because there is no other option.
I would dispute that. It’s faster than the MacBook Pros, has a 5K display, and can be expanded to 32GB of RAM. Maybe not top-of-the-line workstation class, but still a very capable Pro machine. But I can see Apple dropping the mini before the iMac.
And with that, I could tell this was Dave. Sigh.
There’s the MacBook, the MacBook Pro, and the legacy MacBook Air (which will probably get a few speed bumps but little else). There are a few customization options beyond RAM and storage that matter to people, like Retina or Touch bar.
On the other side, there’s the Mac mini, iMac, and Mac Pro. There are a few customization options beyond RAM and storage on the iMac and Mac Pro, especially on the iMac.
Six products with some options. It’s just not all that hard, Dave. There’s no need to wring your hands in concern, sobbing quietly “Won’t someone think of the children and drop some models?”
The MacBook Air is probably going away in a few years anyway. As for the Mac mini, it needs an update to remain compelling, but who knows?
The iMac helps ensure that everyone in my office gets a very nice monitor. While monitors overall have greatly improved there is still a lot of crap out there and the pressure to buy something cheap might be too much in my office. Plus 2 fewer cables, 1 less power button, only need one plug for the whole thing. I do like your idea of a somewhat expandable headless Mac, but those would go in my server room or for a color calibrated workstation (Kodak InSite will not work with an iMac, only a very small selection of monitors).
Gah. Now that I’ve fully read the attached link, I find this story even stupider.
Just what do you want with it, beyond speedier chips and Thunderbolt 3/USB-C? Maybe flashing turn arrows? Airbags? Holy shit, Macworld has turned into a wasteland of stupidity. If the iMac gets a Touch Bar, it’ll be via BlueTooth, USB-C/Thunderbolt, and probably usable on a Mac Pro as well.
So, uh, Retina and Thunderbolt 2 is better than 5K and Thunderbolt 3? Really?
Not defending the article but a mac pro that can be easily upgraded again is what a lot of pros are calling for, especially the ability to upgrade the graphics card. While the latest version is impressive in the power they fit inside of that thing it was a step back in a lot of regards for what people buy them for. I would say an upgradeable more expansive mac pro is more important than the gripes pros have with the macbook pro
The Mac Pro is essentially three boards. I don’t really see Apple offering those boards as swappable (in the mix-and-match sense) parts.
More frequent bumps, though? Sure. It definitely needs that. I see that as contained within “speedier chips,” though. 🙂
I think most Pro users are compromised in one way or another with the iMac and its devotion to thin, and would be better served by a more conventional minitower.
The video options aren’t great (or really suck, depending on who you ask), you can’t put more internal drives in it, and there are faster i7 CPUs that don’t fit due to heat considerations. I don’t think the 4K even has user accessible RAM.
External 5K is now easy via Thunderbolt 3, which eliminates what was up until now the main advantage of the iMac 5K.
You can do power over Thunderbolt 3 (in either direction I think), although perhaps not big monitor/desktop class power. Not sure if you can power a display on/off with it or not. So some of your concerns might not apply. In any case, most pro users I know would trade a couple more cables for the flexibility of external displays.
I understand your point on the lure of cheap and crappy monitors for purchasing departments, but that seems like something that needs to be solved by enlightening the purchasing department. 😉
I’m not sure why, but they’re still selling the older Retina Macbook Pro too.
The Air is going to last exactly as long as it takes to get the price of the 12″ MB into that neighbourhood. Could be as soon as the spring, but that is probably optimistic.
The three desktop lines aren’t that confusing, although its not clear to me that they’re the still best way to serve the market. Neglecting two of them certainly isn’t.
You are right that MBA is a transient product that exists solely to occupy $1000 price point.
I think it’s possible for Apple to offer 2 desktop Mac: iMac and headless iMac. Use exactly the same components, just all-in-one monitor on one unit, one without (with just a modest discount, say, $200 cheaper than 21.5″ model).
And offer Xeon processor option as built to order to satisfy Mac Pro crowd.
“And, eventually, that path will lead to a hybrid product, a full touch-screen Mac that can run iOS apps. Sound like the Surface? Perhaps. But that’s a road I see.”
I don’t see it. I see a Touch Bar developers and merges with Trackpad and keyboard to form another screen. You fold both screens into book form, and both screens will be touch screen but.. you will touch only one screen at the time.. the screen that lay horizontally, not vertically.
You will touch both screens only when you lay it down like an open book, but in clamshell mode.. only one screen at the time.
Or by taking that decision out of their hands.
Apart from alumni writers like Dan Moren and Glenn Fleishman who still contribute good material to Macworld, I agree.
Years from now, perhaps a decade or so, iPhones and iPads will replace Macs for most consumers.
When that happens, I can see both portable and desktop Macs collapsing into just MacBook Pro, but offered at various sizes and price points.
Yeah, Retina is currently one of the options. Colour, memory, storage, size and DPI. For the moment high DPI is something you can select against. Just not independently of everything else, and probably not for long. I wonder how much extra the high DPI displays actually cost Apple now?
Great way to summarize the desktop situation, though. I’m not honestly sure what they should be doing there, though. It’s worth noting that even modest speed bump releases count as another piece of hardware to test and introduce the possibility of pissing off recent purchasers.
I’d like to think we’ll see Thunderbolt 3/USB-C across the desktop line early in 2017, though.
“Once developers adopt the Touch Bar and users start to see the awesome things they can do with it, I suspect that Touch Bar will be standard on every Mac.”
Hoping that the next iMac will have an upgraded Magic Keyboard with Touch Bar. (And illuminated black keys, but yeah that’s doubtful.)
“And, eventually, that path will lead to a hybrid product, a full touch-screen Mac that can run iOS apps.”
That’s what Apple wanted Microsoft to think.
And Microsoft fell for the head fake.
The result was, and still is, years of suffering for Windoze users.
I doubt Apple will ever release a full touch-screen Mac of any kind. It would breach the two cultures: iOS and macOS. To sum up the mentality of those two cultures:
iOS: “Innovate please, Apple! Show us the future!”
macOS: “Don’t change anything, Apple! Just CPU speeds!”
The problem with macOS and the Mac that it is being changed. Unfortunately, it is being hobbled and dumbed down. That’s not innovative in my view. And I pray to God it is not the future, before Apple loses everyone who demands the very best computing experience.
They sure do talk like they’re never going to put touch on the Mac’s screen… but I kinda hope you’re right about the touch-screen Mac.
The Touch Bar holds no interest for me until it’s available on an external keyboard. Having it at the base of the monitor is an ergonomic nightmare.
Wow how everyone forgot Dashboard! Think real hard about that!
The touch bar can bring all the menus and toolbars and buttons off screen and dedicate the screen to what your working on. That’s real progress – not having tool bars and menus in the way of your work! However, they do need to add touch support on the screen because there are some tasks where touch is more intuitive and natural when directly interacting with work or content such as zooming, scrolling or rotating. Nether-the-less the the majority of user interaction would natuarally fall on the keyboard/touch bar side and smaller amount of interaction directly onto the screen. The touch bar therefore the right direction for the hybrid to take, in the future it might grow or even replace physical keys or perhaps the physical keys will each be a dymanic screen.
You don’t need a touch screen to scroll or rotate. That’s what the touchpad gestures are for.
Billy, you are 100% correct.
I believe a Mac with a touch screen OS should never happen but I also believe that directly touching your content is more intimate and natural in some cases. Scrolling when reading is good example of this, rotating a 3D model is another example, the touch pad just isn’t as good an experience.
I believe the future Mac will have no menus and buttons on the main screen, and the vast majority of UI interaction will take place away from the main scree on a touch bar and keyboard, however, since the screen will be much more dedicated to content it should also be touch sensitive for the times when it does feel better.