This is a bit of a long post, too multi-faceted to do it justice with a few call outs. But this one paragraph resonates big time:
To me, an iPad in notebook mode — connected to a keyboard cover — is so much less nice than a real notebook. And the difference is more stark when compared to a great notebook, like these MacBook Pros. There are advantages to the tablet form factor, but no tablet will ever be as nice as a notebook as these MacBook Pros. I also prefer MacOS over iOS for, well, “doing work”. I think I’m more productive on a Mac than I am on an iPad. I can’t prove it, but even if I’m wrong, the fact that I feel like it’s true matters. I always feel slightly hamstrung working on an iPad. I never do on a Mac (at least once I’ve got it configured with all the apps and little shortcuts, scripts, and utilities I use).
I love the idea of the Touch Bar, happy to have more functionality on my Mac. But the key element that keeps me on my Mac is the idea of a pointer I can leave in place. I move my mouse cursor to a spot and it stays there, marking time, at that exact same location, until I move it. Selecting and manipulating, copying and pasting text is another element I find superior in macOS.
I love my iPhone and iPad, use both every day, but for creating content, nothing compares to sitting down at my Mac.
Apple clearly believes in a Surface Studio type future. But it’s not run out of a computer built into that big screen. It’s all run from your phone and streamed to whatever large touch screen is nearby.
Apple believes the future is your phone, Microsoft believes it’s going to be Windows, running on whatever devices you have. Google, of course, believes the future is the cloud.
The problem for both Apple and Microsoft is that the software that most people rely on is geared towards laptops and normal computers. Microsoft is trying to get around this problem by providing a mouse and a stylus on their multi-touch hardware so you can continue to run the same old crap side-by-side with new stuff.
Apple, on the other hand, is keeping the separation between MacOS and iOS. The idea I think, is to force developers to rethink their apps for multitouch (and stylus) and to make a complete break with what they used to build for MacOS.
If you think multitouch and stylus are the future, Apple has a good chance of getting there first since they will a whole world of apps custom-bespoke for multi-touch by the time the hardware allows the kinds of streaming that their vision will require. You cannot approach the iPad or the iPhone without rethinking the way your software works. And with the iPad Pro, Apple has a screen big enough to begin taking over some content creation if those apps are properly re-designed.
Microsoft’s problem is that they have allowed the old stuff to leak into the new world through their use of Windows. The requirement for developers to rethink their apps to get to multi-touch devices is not there on the Microsoft side. But their Surface Studio will require new software or it’s just a tilt-able PC that does not compel people to work in this new way. If developers just add some multi-touch to existing apps, the Surface Studio will fail.
Apple on the other hand has to push the phone and the iPad really hard, while subtly taking the foot off the gas in their development of new MacOS machines. If they create laptops and desktops that are too compelling, they may starve their preferred platform for the future. On the other hand, if they create devices that are not compelling enough, they risk losing customers long before they can put their future vision in place.
It will be interesting to see which vision (if either) wins. I like the idea of the Surface Studio. It remains to see if Microsoft can nurture it or whether they’ve just built a really large Zune.
I think your first sentence is a shaky foundation to build an entire house upon.
John wrote: “I miss MagSafe. I think what it gets down to is that Apple sees the future as being battery-only while using it. Charge it like your phone — overnight — and then just go all day.”
But the design of the new MBP tells the opposite story, that it’s more important to be thin and light than last all day on battery power alone. The new MBP could have offered longer battery life (making MacSafe irrelevant for all but the most demanding users), but instead Apple made it thinner and lighter, two characteristics that I think lost their relevancy years ago when the 15″ MBP dropped below 5 pounds.
The complaint with MacBook Pro is that it is made for tech bloggers, not for artists and musicians and other creative people. So it is not really surprising that another tech blogger likes it.
Tech bloggers have dramatically different computing needs and routines and technology around them than the average user. or the typical creative user. Tech bloggers are keyboard-based, they love to get new kinds of ports, they love change for the sake of change.
And tech bloggers have no idea how musicians, audio engineers, DJ’s, graphic artists, animators, and video editors spend their computing days. A key thing we all have in common is we don’t keep our hands on the typewriter keyboard while we work. Our hands are on other kinds of technology like pianos, pens, DJ surfaces, audio mixer controllers, and lots of iPads and iPhones and more and more Surfaces. So improvements to the typewriter keyboard don’t really impact us. The Touch Bar makes the MacBook Pro keyboard into a $500 device. I don’t have enough need for a keyboard to want to pay that. And the MacBook Pro without the Touch Bar is not a very good product lineup choice for someone who has been buying MacBook Pro (and PowerBook) the whole time they have been making them.
So there is either a missing MacPad Pro in Apple’s lineup or a missing MacBook Pro touch that has a full touchscreen in place of the keyboard, with space for apps to do interesting things like mixers and drawing surfaces. Obviously that has to come because otherwise the Mac just becomes a typewriter for tech bloggers and rich people.
So many categorical generalizations, so little time.