David Gewirtz, writing for ZDNet, made this point about Apple, the Mac, and the emergence of Microsoft’s Surface line:
Think about the Apple of the past, the one fully-focused on the Mac. Would it have allowed Microsoft to gain such innovation ground with the Surface Studio and Surface Book products? Would it have gone years without even processor-bumping its models?
John Gruber, in this post, responded:
I’ve seen this argument made multiple times recently — that Microsoft’s innovative and deservedly well-regarded Surface lineup was only enabled by Apple taking its collective eye off the ball in the PC space. I don’t buy that at all.
There are two Macs that have languished in recent years: the Mac Pro and Mac Mini. Microsoft’s Surface lineup doesn’t have an entry in either of those categories. The Surface lineup is composed of laptops and the iMac-esque Surface Studio.
This is an interesting discussion. For all its fits and starts, the Surface lineup has matured. Microsoft has poured resources into it, both technically and in marketing.
Take a moment to head over to the official Apple YouTube page. Scroll, then scroll some more. The most recent Mac-specific commercial I see is from six months ago, when the iMac Pro was announced.
Look through the mix of commercials, draw your own conclusion.
your headline is confusing — it’s titled “When was the last time you saw a Mac commercial?” but links to Daringfireball where that headline is not used. Who’s headline is it?
Apple thought that the computer market would slow down and let them coast. They were wrong.
They are also wrong to suggest that the only thing worth mass marketing is the iPhone.
The headline link should be deleted. You must have caught the post when it first went up. As to the conclusion, it’s about whether Apple is letting the Mac line languish, which is the point the first post made, and to which John disagreed.
Op-eds are tough to write.
— Dave
Gone are the days of ” Hi I am a PC……”
I own a Surface Pro 4, and I’ve been a Mac guy for … (god, I’m old) 25 years now.
The lack of a touchscreen is why my current laptop isn’t made by Apple, sexy and otherwise compelling as the MBP is, and despite the Surface’s infuriatingly unfixed sleep issues*.
(* My fiancee, after seeing mine, got herself the current un-numbered-version Surface Pro, and I think the problem’s still there even now!)
(Gruber’s always been dead on that the iMac shouldn’t have a touchscreen because it’s an ergonomic nightmare.
But even before the Surface, when I had an MBA, I always wanted to touch the screen to dismiss dialogs.
I think the disconnect Gruber has had – and that I see here sometimes, I think – about touchscreens is that he has the idea that “touchscreen means a touch-focused UI”.
I want a touchscreen so I can use it for things a touchscreen is good for; some kinds of gaming, some parts of UI, and maybe drawing.
Apple could trivially add world-class touch capability to the MacBook line, not alter a single bit of the OSX UI experience, and I’d buy one tomorrow*.
They don’t have to go down the Windows 8 Mistake Hole and try to make a UI that does neither touch nor touchpad interaction well, or is a hodgepodge!
[Hell, even Microsoft learned that lesson rapidly; Win 10 is fine on both.]
Adding a touchscreen as an “option” for input navigation is completely opposite to how Apple designs systems. Thats been true of Apple since the VERY BEGINNING. Example, single button mice, or even the very first Macintosh not having directional keys.
Apple designed a system focused entirely on on-screen menus and mouse navigation, therefore that is the direction Apple steered user interaction. They removed options for alternative navigation, to reinforce this design philosophy.
Of course Apple did eventually add arrow keys to Mac. And I do get the desire for touch on Macbooks. But if Apple is ever going to add a touchscreen to Macs, then macOS is going to be redesigned for touch-based input across the ENTIRE system. Thats just not even up for debate. Giving the user an option that could be non-optimal for certain tasks is antithetical to Apples entire design philosophy.
Apple already has a macOS based system thats designed entirely around touch input. Its called iPad. I’m betting Apple will continue to enhance the iPad to make it more powerful and capable, rather than try to reimagine the Mac with touch. And of course further expand the idea of Touch Bar, and implement touch to Mac in a novel way.
Unless of course Mac sales begin to suffer from lack of touch 😉
Ok. between the headline link to DF and the reference to looking at the commercials for Mac ones, this was hard to tell.
i still dont even know whether the number of Mac commercials is even remotely relevant to a discussion on whether Macs have languished or not. how many commercials have i seen for my cordless power tool company lately? none at all. do they still make cordless tools? yes. are they still useful tools? you bet.
such fine opinions you have. can you link to where Apple stated either of these things you present as fact?
its not needed any longer. that was when Apple was the underdog and needed to convince people otherwise. now people know apple and desire its products, including macs…hilariously MBs were the most-seen notebook even at MS press events. also see all the new corporate IT changes to allow you to bring your mac or even choose a mac. cafes, etc. while not at the market share level of the PC clones, Apple and Mac aren’t underdogs anymore.
This issue lost me at “David Gewirtz” and “ZDNet.” I believe he was on the often-missed Angry Mac Bastards’ “frequent object of ridicule” list. With good reason.
I had a look at a Surface Studio at a local Best Buy a few months ago. It looked impressive, and I suppose it’d make a useful workstation for someone.
Not me. It’s still running Windows.
“There are two Macs that have languished in recent years: the Mac Pro and Mac Mini”
Not really true. The iMac and MBP also both went a long time without updates.
It feels like Apple has started to turn the corner, but the last few years have not been great for the Mac. More bad design decisions than usual, and slow (to nonexistent) product refreshes.
I think both quoted sources are right in their way. Gewirtz is correct that Apple has let models languish without even spec bumping them which does seem like disinterest. You can make the argument that the chip generations from Intel aren’t much of a bump from one to the next but come on, three years for the Mini? FIVE for the Pro? That’s pretty close to neglect. If Apple feels those models aren’t worth investing in anymore fine – discontinue them.
Gruber’s correct, though, that touchscreen laptops are, in the general case, not a good model to follow. Consider all of the Surface commercials. Every single one is focused on a user who does visually focused work. EVERY. ONE. They all claim ‘my Mac can’t do that’ which is correct but the Apple rejoinder would be “no, but the iPad Pro can, and better.’ The Microsoft comeback to that would be – yes, but your iPad isn’t as good for traditional laptop things. And that’s a good point.
The Surface seems to be for people who mostly want a tablet but need traditional laptop stuff a sizable percentage of the time and who don’t want to deal with two devices. Before anyone says “the iPad Pro is a decent laptop!” – try selecting text with precision. It’s a pain in the ass. I can’t imagine doing a spreadsheet, etc on it. I know you CAN but those and other cases are where you want the precision pointing of a mouse/trackpad.
Really, all Apple has to do for the iPad Pro is to add pointer support and enable a trackpad on the keyboard accessory and they have a Surface-killer.
Where does that leave the Mac? Where it’s always been – a highly capable, traditional computer that works well in a multi window, multi app environment with an ecosystem that is also open (in the sense that you can install a Mac app from anywhere vs the iOS App Store limitation on iPads)
Right? I’ve got a fast Windows laptop that came with a shitty drive. After replacing the drive with an SSD, I still can’t believe how often it takes little 5 second timeouts. The Mac does the same, honestly, but it keeps the UI responsive throughout so it feels like it’s running at full-tilt all the time.
I can’t believe Microsoft still hasn’t figured out yet that keeping the illusion going is important.
” But if Apple is ever going to add a touchscreen to Macs, then macOS is going to be redesigned for touch-based input across the ENTIRE system.”
Correct. And what the person you’re replying to misses is that they’re projecting how they think to a market. None of us represent the market though and Apple, Microsoft et al need to design for a wide variety of uses.
If you can only use touch to do some things (say, dismissing a dialog) then you have a problem because people will try to use touch for other things and find it doesnt work. DO NOT say, anyone, “well I wouldn’t do that” that’s fallacious as per the above argument.
So they’d need to make everything available for touch. Which gets back to the fact that fingers are not precision devices yet desktop OSes and desktop apps are designed to assume that the pointer is precise. The bolded part is crucial – Apple can’t change just the OS and be done, developers have to change their apps. But what if the app is being run on a MacBook that doesn’t have touch? Then that user upgrades to one that has it? Are there two versions of the app? One version with both interfaces? And so on….
The point, of course, is that this is not a trivial thing at all.
The MacBook Pro has been updated yearly since 2008, I believe.
Yes, but it was about a 20 month gap between the last 13″ retina model (March 2015) and the touchbar (announced late Oct 2016, but didn’t ship until Dec). That’s a long time for the most important product in the lineup.
Still designed for engineers, by engineers.
Was your laptop purchased clean (without adware), or did you have to hose it down yourself?
This guy gets it. Exactly how I think about it, but I can’t write that well.
A commercial? What’s that?
It wasn’t as bad as in past years, but yes, I had to clean it.
Haha. I can’t remember seeing an ad for a printer the last few years, though I do occasionally hear a radio ad for subscription ink services.
Competition is sort of a prerequisite to innovation. When every other company on the planet is copying your shit and you’re still selling it by the ton, what’s the point of making anything beyond incremental changes — very similar to the way you currently innovate on the best selling consumer electronics device in history?
“But if Apple is ever going to add a touchscreen to Macs, then macOS is going to be redesigned for touch-based input across the ENTIRE system.”
Or just port the CocoaTouch APIs to Intel hardware. Bam, done. The reason Apple hasn’t done it is because there’s no need to do it. If you want to dismiss dialogues with touch, then you want an iOS device. Why go through the added R&D and expense of adding touch to the Mac line when it would be superfluous?
Because you’re one of those doctrinaire nerds who also insists carrying a ten-pound Swiss Army knife that’s a foot thick and contains every tool you might ever need.
I love those guys, because consumer computing needs more comedy relief.
When was the last time I saw a commercial?
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my client-issued Dell laptop has an SSD, but still its fans are constantly revving up for no particular reason, even when idle. thermal engineering is hard, and apple is pretty good at it.
This conversation got really complicated really fast. Reducing it to advertising, I’ve asked Apple (via its feedback page) to maintain a consistent Macintosh campaign practically forever.
Despite declining overall PC sales, ads are still worthwhile given the fact that the Mac has outperformed PCs nearly every quarter for years.
When the “I’m a Mac” campaign was active I asked for ads with an instructional perspective. I wish I had a dollar for every person I convinced to switch who said, “If I knew how easy it was to do X on a Mac I would have switched a long time ago”.
… didja read the thing I actually said?
I don’t want a touchscreen mainly “for input navigation” at least in the OS, though “being able to close a dialog with a touch” sure is handy, and requires exactly zero OS changes at all.
They are super handy for things like a wide variety of games, and for the sort of artistic tasks that have long been an Apple strong point.
(Imagine “if Apple’s ever going to add a touchbar to the MBP, it’ll redesign the entire OS to concentrate on it”.
That’s laughable, right?
But a touchscreen is Obviously Different?
I assert that the implication that there’s Just No Point To A Touchscreen You Don’t Make The Core UX Focus is not a fact either about reality or about How Apple Must Work.)
Touch works for anything a mouse does … just not necessarily as well, if the target is small.
“You have to redesign everything for a touchscreen if you have one” is pure assertion and frankly doesn’t jibe with reality as observed … in Windows, or in the aftermarket touchscreen conversions for MacBooks.
Seriously, it’s like nobody read what I said and thinks the idea is “make touch the primary UX focus!” rather than “it sure would be nice for a few things, most especially gaming and art”.
Nobody seems to argue against those points … perhaps because it’s farkin’ nonsense to try given how art types buy Cintiq screeens or Surfaces.
It’s okay to have a touchscreen that isn’t the primary UX system, just like it’s okay to have a touchbar on some MBPs and not every Mac.
(“What if I write software to use the touchbar but someone runs it on an iMac how can anyone do this we can’t have hardware on only some machines?” said nobody farkin’ ever.)
20 months is zip compared to the Mini and Mac Pro, though.
Really, all Apple has to do for the iPad Pro is to add pointer support
and enable a trackpad on the keyboard accessory and they have a
Surface-killer.
Or put a touchscreen on the MBP.
(Because, again, contra people above, the “artistic types” don’t care that the core OS isn’t Purely Touch Oriented And God Just Use iOS Because It Has Touch And The Two Cannot Ever Mix Ever, and aren’t demanding it, and honestly, aren’t even using Windows in “tablet mode” – my Surface is in “act like a damned laptop even if the keyboard DOES detach” mode, and they ship that way by default, IIRC.
[I’m sure of this because I got a tiny 7″ HP Windows tablet on a lark, and Tablet Mode really does kinda suck, so I’ve seen ’em both.]
They just want their nice pen support in their drawing software, and that needs a touchscreen.
See how easy that is?
Especially compared to “add pointer support to a UI that was designed specifically to not have a cursor at all”.)
You have no idea what you’re talking about. First off adding the cost of a touchscreen to every Mac is idiotic If it only works in graphics programs. I’m not a graphics person – why should I incur that cost? Second is the issue of having it not work consistently in various places which is poor product design. Third is the problem of apps that aren’t designed for touch.Fourth, Any person who spends significant time in a graphics program is using the wrong tool if they are drawing on a laptop. Fifth, It’s hard to add pointer support to iOS because it wasn’t designed to have a cursor but it’s easy to add touch support to macOS which wasn’t designed for it?
But then you just want your tool and don’t want to hear any reasons why it’s a bad idea so I’m not wasting more time on you. Apple should design products like MICROSOFT? That’s so daft that there’s no reply that is even needed.
No we read what you said. It’s just nonsense that makes it obvious you don’t understand good product design.
TV has kind of been set to a second screen as far as the younger generations go. Now with streaming and cord cutters, TV advertising is not what it used to be 10 years ago.
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