Apple has fallen way behind in innovation for the Mac and other products

In My Humble Opinion
1

Note: I own a MacBook Pro and plan to get an iPhone as my next phone. I am an Apple customer, just not a fanboy.

My latest frustration with Apple came about a month ago when I spilled a small amount of Scotch on my MacBook Pro keyboard (laptop purchased in 2012). I thought the amount was nothing, and I wiped it up, expecting no issues. Within about 10 minutes, however, the 8, i, comma, and left and right direction keys were dead. Now here’s the funny thing in advance: I assumed that they were gone forever, but after several weeks they are all back. Just FYI in case that happens to you; knowing this might save you a costly repair.

I took the laptop to the Genius Bar, and the guy was cool and good at his job, but he told me it would be $310 to send the laptop out and put in a new keyboard. Plus, since it was a spill, it could cost up to $1,250 or so if other components were damaged. I would have been happy to get a new keyboard and still would: simply from wear and tear over time, the “t” key is not as sensitive as it once was.

Anyhow, I didn’t send the laptop out because the dude said it would take about 5 days to put in a new keyboard (:rolleyes:), and I didn’t want to try to live without it for that long. I bought a USB keyboard and planned to use a Mac my mom had. Then the spontaneous healing occurred.

But you know what? This whole problem wouldn’t have been a problem with some type of modular keyboard, such as the MS Surface has. Spill something on your keyboard? BFD, buy a new one. For a Mac laptop, shouldn’t the keyboard be something that you can click in and out of the top of the machine? That isn’t a brilliant idea; that’s just effing obvious IMHO.

The Surface is what a MacBook should be: a touch-screen unit with a detachable keyboard. Now we can get into issues of what the guts should be, but it’s undebatable IMO that that is the basic form that should exist in MacLand by now. Or, you know, something even better.

But I’m far from the only one grousing about this:
Apple’s Failure to Scale (May 3, 2016)

And this:

Apple’s Core Problem Is That It Can No Longer Innovate (September 15, 2015)

He goes through product by product and says why they’re disappointing. We’ve recently learned that the iPhone 7 won’t have the cool new dual-lens camera we had hoped it would. What is exciting on the horizon?

Not much, it seems. But it would be nice if Apple could at least keep their Macs at the cutting edge, but they don’t seem to have the will. Which is really quite sad.

2

So is the Surface a real actual laptop? Despite the commercials heavily implying such, I always got the impression that it was just a tablet with a keyboard attached that I could “duplicate” with an iPad and an attachable keyboard.

3

No, it’s a full laptop running the Windows operating system. There is functionally no difference between it and a Windows laptop or desktop. I bought one for my daughter last Christmas, and it’s pretty awesome tech.

4

I would say that they’ve lost me as a customer because their “innovations” are the exact opposite of what I want. I would happily buy a new MacBook Pro, except I want the following:

RAM that isn’t soldered to the motherboard and thus un-upgradeable
Storage that isn’t soldered to the motherboard and thus un-upgradeable
An optical drive
A matte display
Actual ports that do one job and don’t require a bunch of adapters
A removable battery

Basically, I want an upgraded version of my late 2011 MacBook Pro. Apparently I’m the one who’s wrong, at least according to Apple.

Same with an iPod. I’d happily buy a new iPod Classic, or even an more expensive one with solid-state memory as long as it had the big display and a clickwheel. But nope, has to be tiny, has to be touchscreen, has to have no storage. My phone doesn’t have the sheer capacity to hold what a classic can, I don’t want to try to stream all the time, and the clickwheel was great for easy navigation in a pocket. And bluetooth headphones can be as much a pain as they can be a convenience, depending on the use. But again, apparently I’m the one who is wrong.

5

The Surface 1 and 2 really are just a crappy tablet with a keyboard. The confusingly named Surface PRO 1 and Surface PRO 2 and all Surface 3 and later “tablets” are really just a laptop with the guts moved behind the screen.

6

Like others said, it’s a full laptop. I use the Surface Pro 3 for grad school and I love it. I do research, write papers, coding, video games, etc. During the school year it’s my main computer.

7

There’s your misconception. With the exception of coming up with the first useful OS/touchscreen phone, most of what they do is NOT particularly innovative. In fact, most of what they do has already been in place on other phones for a good long while.

What Apple does do well is integrate their devices with their cloud, and keep their apps in line with their vision. This is (IMO) a consequence of their fairly restrictive “walled garden” approach of app development and absolute control of their OS and hardware. They also have top-notch industrial design, so their products look and feel great, and are often very well executed. Finally, Apple has a certain trendy reputation- Apple is “cool”, while everything else is not. It’s basically those dumb old Dustin Long PC vs. Mac commercials writ large across their enterprise.

Don’t mistake that for technical innovation though; it’s nothing of the sort.

8

This is pretty much where I’m at, at least as far as laptops go. I doubt I’ll ever buy another one from Apple again. SSDs are great, but 256GB is pathetically tiny, and an extra $200 for another 8GB of RAM is outrageous, even for Apple.

9

The easily replaceable keyboard is actually a feature they took away from us. With the iBook a replacement keyboard cost about $17 and took less than 5 minutes to replace. You didn’t even have to open the case.

10

The original “Surface” and “Surface 2” were convertible tablets with ARM processors. Microsoft has since stopped development on the ARM version of Windows. Surface 3 is a convertible tablet with an Atom processor and standard version of Windows-10. It runs any Windows software, but not a great choice for CPU-intensive applications.

The Surface Pro series are full-featured high-end computers. My Surface Pro 4 has a core-i7 processor with Iris graphics, 256GB SSD and 16GB memory. I use it as my main home PC, including photo management using Adobe Lightroom. The keyboard cover is good enough that I use it all the time, even when I’m using it at the desk with an external monitor.

11

Several years ago, on my IBM Thinkpad, say 2005ish, a key went out and they sent me a new keyboard and walked me through installing it myself. . . it was really easy, just sayin’.

12

Different strokes and all.

I have a smart phone for communication and quick checks on weather, email and such. Or reading on the kindle app. Works great.

I don’t really see the point of a tablet. Oh, they are great in some specific environments (data collection in the field comes to mind).

I had an odd discussion with a coworker after I bought my Dell xps13. He said that he hates small laptops (oddly, he owns one and uses it a lot). He was going on about his new iPad. OK, says I, I prefer a real keyboard. He went on to say that he bought a keybord for is iPad. :smack:

Congratulations, you just built a netbook.

13

Is it time for the quarterly “Apple is doomed” thread already?

Not really. A tablet is a really different thing than a netbook. Adding a keyboard expands its range of usefulness, but doesn’t change its ability to do what tablets do best.

I though the iPad was the dumbest thing I’d ever heard of. I already have a phone so why would I need a bigger one. I was wrong. Indeed, I rarely use my MacBook anymore. The iPad is just so much more convenient to use.

14

:shrug: Whatever works best for you.

I’ve got my Kindle and love it. For reading. It consumes data. Just the way I see a tablet. I have a new Dell xps13 that is just great. I don’t need something else that is ‘in-between’.

What is it that tablets do best? Not a snark, genuinely curious?

15

Tablets are good for when you want to access things quickly (most apps involve little launch time), you have kids (my kid could navigate it before her first birthday), you move around the house a lot or use it in odd places (in a day I’ll use my tablet in bed, on the kitchen table, on the deck, on the couch), you travel (or just visit other people’s houses) and don’t want to pack a full laptop, or you benefit from the single focus (I preferred to take grad school notes on my tablet because it was less distracting).

16

You retemplated the OP. I didn’t say Apple is doomed. I don’t think Apple is doomed. They have enough cash to fail for the next 20 years if they want to.

I am saying… well, read the OP again.

17

I’m not convinced I buy the OP’s case. I can see why you’d rather have easily replaceable parts, but there are tradeoffs to that.

I don’t want a laptop with a detachable keyboard because then it suffers at the thing I actually use it for most: having it on my lap and typing. All other things being equal, a laptop with a detachable keyboard is thicker and heavier than one without. It’s more limited in screen placement because the screen part weighs more than the keyboard, requiring a little stand like the Surface has. Or maybe it has less battery life because there’s less room for battery.

And if you do want a computer with a detachable keyboard, they have that, it just doesn’t run the same OS. But you can do most of the same stuff with it.

Similarly, there are tradeoffs to allowing easy memory upgrades/swappable batteries (and they’re usually the same. Heavier, thicker, etc.)

The Mac solution to upgrading your laptop is to buy a new one, move all your data over, and sell the old one. Since there’s a strong second hand market, this is really only slightly harder than cracking the case open and putting in new DIMMS anyway.

18

What bothers me most is that Apple seems to have largely given up on their desktop line. Yeah, I know fewer and fewer people are buying desktops in favor of portables and cloud-based software. But Apple has always had a dominant position in industries where a solid, fast machine with a dozen cores or so and tons of storage and expandability is a real benefit, and there will always be a core group of users who need the power that a true desktop can offer. I still have my Mac Pro from 2011 and the thing is a beast. It’s the best-designed and most robust desktop platform ever built. The thing is a tank, yet upgrading any component can be done in five minutes, usually without even needing a screwdriver.

The new “garbage can” design for the Pro (in addition to being ugly as shit) has essentially zero upgradeability and relies on people connecting hardware via USB for nearly all expansion. Unsurprisingly they haven’t sold well. And it hasn’t had a single design refresh since 2013.

My Mac Pro will probably last another five or six years easily. I’m hoping by that time they actually have the desire to build real computers again, or everything has moved to brain implants.

19

I hear this narrative about Apple, and I don’t totally object to it. But Apple is certainly capable of creating products that:

  1. Inspire extreme loyalty. Being a “Mac” used to mean something. Yes, you were paying a premium, but that got you into the club with the benefits of a much better OS, higher-quality hardware, and none of that pesky virus stuff those Windows users had to deal with. I still remember being blown away by the Mac a girl in my apartment building had in 1994. I still remember how cool my first Mac laptop (my first Mac anything) was in 2004. Back then, the computer was the flagship; that was what Apple was all about. I was proud to be on board.

  2. Make products that people line up around the block to buy. iPod, iPhone, iPad–all mega-hits. I got an iPhone within the first week of its going on sale in 2007, and it was an amazing experience.

Say what you will about innovation, but Apple showed us magic in the past, a different way. They seem to have lost that very special mojo at this point, and that bums me out.

20

Yes, I’m saying that at least you should be able to pop the keyboard off from the base and put in a new one. A poster above said the old iBooks had this feature.

Even if it is like the Surface and has that thin, light keyboard attached to the main unit, it should be pretty easy to design and accessory that would make the whole thing feel balanced and easy to type on like a traditional laptop.