{"id":21835,"date":"2018-06-15T16:20:43","date_gmt":"2018-06-15T20:20:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=21835"},"modified":"2018-06-20T06:43:48","modified_gmt":"2018-06-20T10:43:48","slug":"on-the-sad-state-of-macintosh-hardware","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/15\/on-the-sad-state-of-macintosh-hardware\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Sad State of Macintosh Hardware"},"content":{"rendered":"

Quentin Carnicelli<\/a> (tweet<\/a>, Hacker News<\/a>, John Siracusa<\/a>, MacRumors<\/a>):<\/p>\n

The inevitable march of technology means Mojave won’t install on all of our older hardware. There’s no shock there, but the situation is rather distressing when it comes to spending money to purchase new equipment. Here is the situation, as reported by the wonderful MacRumor’s Buyers Guide<\/a>[…]<\/p>\n

At the time of the writing, with the exception of the $5,000 iMac Pro, no Macintosh has been updated at all in the past year.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

It’s very difficult to recommend much from the current crop of Macs to customers, and that’s deeply worrisome to us, as a Mac-based software company. For our own internal needs, we’ve wound up purchasing used hardware for testing, rather than opting to compromise heavily on a new machine. That isn’t good for Apple, nor is it what we want.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Rogue Amoeba<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

We really didn’t think of it as especially gutsy or brave, because a stagnant Mac lineup is an existential threat to our company. We only hope this penetrates Apple’s bubble.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Sebastiaan de With<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

I wrote this<\/a> a year ago, hopeful that Apple would truly put more effort into the Mac.<\/p>\n

It didn’t happen. I’m so stupefied as to why a company so big, ambitious and wealthy can’t maintain the Mac. Heartbreaking seeing so many creatives leave the platform.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

John Gruber<\/a> (tweet<\/a>):<\/p>\n

I’d really love to see Apple get Mac hardware on a roughly annual schedule, even if most years they’re just speed bumps, like they were a decade ago.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Nick Heer<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

What is the acceptable shelf life of a Mac? How old can a model be before it becomes uncouth to sell it as new? I remember when Macs used to get regular, approximately-annual spec bumps. It wasn’t that long ago — maybe five years or so. Has something changed since 2013 that seemingly makes difficult for the Mac to be updated more frequently?<\/p>\n

When Apple launched the 2016 MacBook Pro models — the first models with the Touch Bar — members of their executive team spoke with Shara Tibken and Connie Guglielmo<\/a> of CNet<\/em>. Schiller mentioned that the new models took a while to be launched because they “didn’t want to just create a speed bump on the MacBook Pro”. I hope that’s not their attitude across the product line. People love spec bumps; it helps customers know that they’re getting the newest model they can, and reassures them that it will last longer.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Michael Rockwell<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

It feels like the folks at Apple believe that they need to introduce brand new features and top-down redesigns every time they update a Mac. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. Minor updates to the internal components every 6-12 months is all we really need — just enough to keep us from feeling like we’re getting ripped off when we go to buy something in the lineup.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Nick Heer<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

At what point does it become disingenuous to mark a product as “new”? The iMac was last updated over a year ago, as far as I can tell.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

John Gruber<\/a> (tweet<\/a>, Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n

But the striking thing to me is just how much smaller<\/em> the Intel NUC is. It’s only a little<\/em> bit bigger than an Apple TV<\/a>. Calling the Mac Mini “mini” is absurd in 2018.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Previously: New Mac Pro Won’t Arrive Until 2019<\/a>, Mac mini Turning 3.5 Years Old<\/a>, How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists<\/a>, Understanding Apple’s Marginalization of the Mac<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

Update (2018-06-16): Bob Burrough<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Phil Schiller says using a 5 year old computer is sad, while other Apple executives look on and laugh.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Update (2018-06-18): Tony Arnold<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

The fact I (a die hard Apple fan since the Apple II) even considered a Hackintosh, let alone spent money to build one should give Apple’s management some idea of how bad their maintenance and stewardship of the Mac hardware platform really is.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Quentin Carnicelli (tweet, Hacker News, John Siracusa, MacRumors): The inevitable march of technology means Mojave won’t install on all of our older hardware. There’s no shock there, but the situation is rather distressing when it comes to spending money to purchase new equipment. Here is the situation, as reported by the wonderful MacRumor’s Buyers Guide[…] […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2018-06-20T10:43:51Z","apple_news_api_id":"f8da7b08-274a-4634-b538-b63ca3703e33","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2018-06-20T10:43:51Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABA==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/A-Np7CCdKRjS1OLY8o3A-Mw","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[38,1402,452,1297,30,557,652,1155,100,1609],"class_list":["post-21835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-apple","tag-hackintosh","tag-hardware","tag-imac","tag-mac","tag-macmini","tag-mac-pro","tag-macbook","tag-macbookpro","tag-macos-10-14"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21835"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21835\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21845,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21835\/revisions\/21845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}