I think the issue stems from too many people making their living off reviews that require something exciting to get views. When updates are more evolution than revolution, it makes for a more boring article/video. I always worry that these types of responses will lead Apple to do silly things, like leaving old chips out there too long, or adding pointless features just so there is something new to talk about.
Also: incremental updates add up.
A (e.g.) 7% increase from one year to the next isn't a big deal, but +7%, +7%, +7%, …, adds up when you finally come up for a tech refresh after 3-5 years.
I have 64GBs of RAM in my Macbook Pro. I load a 48GB DuckDB to RAM and run real-time, split-second, complex, unique analysis using Polars and Superset. Nothing like this was possible before unless I had a supercomputer.
after 3 years
and 40% after 5 years.
Meanwhile back in the pre-M1 days I remember stalking Mac rumors for moths trying to make sure I wasn’t going to buy right before their once-in-blue-moon product refresh. You could buy a Mac and get most of its useful life before they upgrade the chip, if you timed it right, so an upgrade right after you bought was a real kick in the pants.
I don't think they appreciate the cost of redesigning and retooling. Echo your thoughts and hope Apple doesn't listen to this feedback. Imagine more expensive laptops because some people want more frequent design changes!
Perhaps it’s just a language slip, how are people forced to upgrade every year? My experience is the opposite: ios 15 is still supported[0] and my 2016 iPhone let me access the World Wide Web.
The force your talking about comes instead from developers (like me) that implements features and systems always more CPU/GPU hungry.
0 security patched last month https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45270108
While also not getting that they're NOT the target market.
For the person whose iPhone finally (after half a decade or more) falls out of major version support a 5-6 generation jump on hardware is amazing.
They are the target market.
People who upgrade every year don't do it for technical needs. We're long past the times when phones were inadequate and yearly improvements were big leaps that made them less unusable.
Yearly phone upgrades are just to sport the latest model, symbolizes status. Or if there's some deal where you can do it for close to no cost, better than long upgrade cycles, but I don't think "free upgrades" are common.
The capitalist class truly are leaches.
The chips they did release in that time period were mostly minor revisions of the same architecture.
Apple was pretty clearly building chassis designs for the CPUs that Intel was promising to release, and those struggled with thermal management of the chips that Intel actually had on the market. And Apple got tired of waiting for Intel and having their hardware designs out of sync with the available chips.
An ironic mirror of the PowerPC era when every version of the G5 was struggling with high power consumption and heat generation when operated at any competitive frequency/performance level. The top end models like the 2.5GHz quad-G5 needed water cooling, consumed 250W when idle, and needed a 1kW PSU.
Intel's offering at the time was as revolutionary as the M-series chips.
I’m sure Intel had some releases each year, but did they have the right ones to make it possible for Apple to release an update?
And then Skylake's successors, which were broadly the same as Skylake for about four years.
The problem is that our hardware as we know it, has lost a lot of its stretch. Used to be that we got 100% performance gains on a generation to generation update. Then it became 50%, 30% ... Like in the GPU market, the last generation that actually got me exited was the 1000 series (1070 specific).
Now its "boring" 10 a 15% upgrades for the same generation (if we do not count naming / pricing rearrangements).
When was the last time any of use was "hey, i am exited to potentially buy this tech, really". Apple M1 comes to mind, and that is 5 years ago.
Nvidia tried to push the whole ray tracing (a bit too early), but again, its just a incremental update to graphics (as we had a lot of tricks to simulate lighting effects that had good performance). So again, kind of a boring gain if we look back.
Mobile gaming handhelds was trilling, steam deck... Then we got competitors but with high price tags = excitement became less. And now, nobody blinks with a new generation gets released because the CPU/iGPU gains are the same boring 15 a 20%... So who wants to put down 700, 900 Euro for a 15% gain.
What has really gotten you exited? Where your just willing to throw money at something? AI? And we see the same issue with LLMs ... what used to be big step/gain, in barely a years has gone from massive gains, to incremental gains. 10% better on this benchmark, 5% better there, ... So it becomes boring (GPT5 launch and reaction, Sora 2 launch and reaction).
> When updates are more evolution than revolution, it makes for a more boring article/video.
If you think about it, there is a reason why tech channels have issues and are even more clickbait then ever. Those people live on views, so when the tech they follow/review is boring to the audience, they start pushing more and more clickbait. But that eventually burning the channels.
Unfortunately, we have a entire industry that is designed around making parts smaller and smaller every generation, to make those gains. As we lost the ability to make large gains on making those smaller making parts ...
Its ironic, as we knew this was coming and yet, it seems nobody made any breakthrough at all. Quantum computing was a field that everybody knew had no road to general computing at home (materials issues).
So what is left is the same old, lets may the die a bit smaller, gain a bit, do some optimizing left and right, and call it a new product. But for customers, getting product 2.1, being named "this is our product 3.0!!!! Buy buy" ... when customers see its just 2.1, 2.2, 2.3 ...
We are in a boring time because companies sat too darn long on their behinds, milking their exiting products but never really figured how to make new products. I think the only one that took a risk was Intel years ago, and it blew up in their face.
So yes, unless some smart cookie makes a new invention, that can revolutionize how we make chips (and that can be mass produced), boring is the standard now. No matter how companies try to repackage it.
The review ecosystem is really toxic in that regard, as makers will court to it.
We had the silly unboxing videos fade, and it meant gorgeous packaging flying in the face of recyclability and cost reduction.
I wonder if the glass backs and utterly shiny but heavy and PITA to repair design is also part from there. A reviewer doesn't care that much if it costs half the phone to repair the back panel.
Maker has a specific connotation, but technically still fits on the GP.
Examples include Apple, Samsung, Lenovo, etc etc.
it makes for a more boring article/video. I always worry that these types of responses will lead Apple to do silly things
Every car company in the world realized that yearly product updates was the way to go, and no one whines that this year's model isn't good enough to justify upgrading from the previous year.
[I get your point; I just refuse to consider to a ridiculous reskin no one asked for to be a “feature.”]
When Snow Leopard came out it was very buggy, and many apps simply did not run on it. I've been a Mac user since 1993, and I think it's the only version of macOS I ever downgraded from. Don't get me wrong, it eventually became rock solid, the apps I needed were eventually upgraded, and it became a great OS.
But let's not mistake MacOS 10.6.8 for MacOS 10.6.0. And maybe let's not compare macOS 26.0 to MacOS 10.6.8 either, it's not quite fair. Ever since Snow Leopard I've been waiting at least 6 months before upgrading macOS. I don't intend to change that rule anytime soon...
Sprinkle with crashes and bugs that are never fixed and charge a premium.
Go to Spotlight -> Type “Settings” -> Locate the settings -> In settings, go to Accessibility -> Wait no, it’s Mouse -> Gestures -> Activate the right-click.
^ That’s the experience for beginners. That screen should be in the installation wizard if Apple wants to make it optional. “Customize your mouse gestures”.
Side note, rossmann has stopped talking about Apple because he is not longer focused on Apple repair and is turning his attention to other causes not because of apple's "repairability" changes which are still a token gesture.
I'm already salavating at the thought of a fordable tablet in any form. But not at the thought of paying $3000 for one with current pricing.
There is significant improvement from the M4 to the M5, but how much of it is comes from TSMC and how much from Apple ? They have exclusivity on the latest processes, so it's harder to compare with what Qualcomm or AMD is doing for instance, but right now Strix Halo is basically on par with the M3~4 developped on the same node density.
On the other hardware parts, form factor has mostly stagnated, and the last big jump was the Vision Pro...
They also made that new wireless chip recently, the chips for the headphones, and some for the Vision Pro. The camera in the iPhone also gets a lot of attention, which takes a lot of hardware engineering. In the iPhone more generally we saw fairly big changes just a month or so ago with the new Pro phone and the Air. The Pro models on the MacBook and iPad are almost as thin, if not more thin than the Air line, which I’m sure took a considerable amount of work, to the point of making the Air branding a little silly.
These decisions IMHO fall on the hardware team, and they're not doing a good job IMHO. Meta's hardware team is arguably pulling more weight, as much as we can hate Meta for being Meta.
> headphones
Here again, the reception wasn't that great. The most recent airPod Pro was a mixed bag, the airPod max had most of the flaws of the Vision Pro and they didn't learn anything from it.
> camera
The best smartphone cameras aren't the iPhone by far now, they're losing to the Chinese makers, but don't have to compete as the market is segmented.
> MacBook and iPad are almost as thin
I wouldn't put the relentless focus on thinness as a net positive though.
All in all I'm not saying they're slacking, I'm arguing they lost the plot on many fronts and their product design is lagging behind in many ways. Apple will stay the top dog by sheer money (even just keeping TSMC in their pocket) and inertia, but I wouldn't be praising their teams as much as you do.
I own an AVP, and I agree. Now I bought it secondhand for half the price, so I acknowledge that necessarily means there is at least one counterparty out there who disagrees.
Using the AVP for one work day, once I got the right fit and optical inserts, was such an eye opener. It’s like using an ultraportable laptop after living an entire life with large CRT monitors & desktop rigs tied to an actual desk. An experience, btw, which also lived through. It just radially opened my eyes to fresh new possibilities and interaction mechanisms I never before thought possible.
But at $3.5k? No sane company exec could have been serious in thinking that would take off.
Zoom calls with mandatory camera on were already barbaric, asking employees to strap a headset for team meeting sounds like a generally cruel idea to me.
If it was by design excellence and truly providing a better proposition it would sweeten the pill, but as of now it would be only because the way better products are from a company everyone hates.
In a weird way, Meta has been good at balancing hardware lockdown, and I'd see a better future with them leading the pack and allowing for better alternatives to come up along the way. Basically the same way the Quest allowed for exploration, and extended the PCVR market enough for it to survive up to this point. That wouldn't happen with Apple domining the field.
Maybe you need AI, but maybe you just need some AI agent app that uses AppleScript under the hood.
I'd rather buttery smooth, secure, fast, no bugs, let me do my work.
I still have to install a third party terminal like Kitty or Ghostty for basic, modern rendering.
But what's "marketable"... well, I guess we need to drizzle whatever we come up with in AI. or douse it.
Infinite, just like in any complex UI. All the basic interaction primitives built into the OS are somewhat broken, from app/window management and text editing to keybindings and mouse gestures
I also can’t snap windows, and Cmd-tab still can’t tab between different windows of the same application.
There’s lots more usability that can be improved IMO
If you want the OS with all the shit you do (and don't) need, then maybe Windows is for you. ;-)
The backtick thing is just a constant annoyance. My workflow is to open windows doing the things I want some, and I want to quickly switch to the window with my next work item. Instead, I need to keep track of extra mental state and figure out if backtick is the right keystroke or if tab and then backtick is the right thing to do.
It's...fine. I'm thankful I have better options at home, but it's tolerable at work with a few third-party apps.
What things are you finding that aren’t that way?
Apologies that my memory fails me here! This was a few years ago, I only have my zsh history (and the name of a now-deleted script) to go by.
1) Sign Nvidia's drivers again, at least for compute (there's no excuse)
2) Implement Vulkan 1.2 compliance (even Asahi did it, c'mon)
3) Stop using notifications to send me advertisements
3.1) Stop using native apps to display advertisement modals
4) Do not install subscription services on my machine by-default
5) Give macOS a "developer mode" that's at-least as good as WSL2 (if they won't ship GNU utils)
6) Document the APFS filesystem so the primary volume isn't inscrutable, akin to what M$ did for NTFS
If they're trying to get me to switch off Linux, those would be a nice start. I don't think any of that is too much to ask from a premium platform, but maybe my expectations are maligned.
The de facto answer is Homebrew — even internally at Apple. They just can’t publicly say it without liability issues.
> If they're trying to get me to switch off Linux
It’s important to know that Apple is not trying to get you to switch from Linux. Converting “UNIX workstation” people was an effort of theirs circa 2001 but that marketing campaign is long over with.
Their targets are consumer, prosumers, and media/influencer people. They give app developers just enough attention to keep their App Store revenue healthy.
Plan your long-term computing needs accordingly. You’ll see what I mean in the next 12-24 months.
You're better off using MacOS built native unix binaries and a VM or docker.
I never noticed ads in notifications, unlike with Windows which is ads infested everywhere now.
I agree that better GPU support would be nice, but also better Metal support in common open source would be nice, since I'm a laptop user.
They shipped something similar in macOS 26 - native Linux container support.
I’m rather happy I don’t have to upgrade from my M1. More performance is nice, but making it the baseline to run an OS would just be silly.
I can’t imagine leaving Resolve to go back even though I still wayyyy prefer the FCPX UI.
- builds are noticeably faster on later chips as multicore performance has increased a lot. When I replaced my M1 MBP with an M4, builds in both Xcode, cargo and LaTeX (I'll switch to Typst one of these days, but haven't yet) took about 60% of the time they had previously. That adds up to real productivity gains
- when running e.g. qwen3 on LM Studio, I was getting 3-5 tok/s on the M1 and 10-15 on the M4, which to me at least crosses the fuzzy barrier between "interesting toy to tinker with sometimes" and "can actually use for real work"
- 5G connectivity - WiFi 7 - Tandem OLED Screen - Better webcam - FaceID - Cheaper RAM (RAM is more important to me these days than CPU speed) - More ports - Better/cheaper monitors - Make a proper tablet OS - Maybe a touchscreen but I really don't want one
just to get started
But as a regular guy who just has a lot of files and tends to keep tons of browser tabs open... it really sucks that I'm in the situation of getting extorted for $3k of pure profit for Apple, or have to settle for subpar hardware from other companies (but at a reasonable price). Wasn't an issue when the RAM & SSD weren't soldered on, but now you can't upgrade them yourself.
I have no idea what the hip PC laptop is these days, is it still the Lenovo Carbon X1? I went to their website and picked the pre-configured laptop with the most RAM (32GB), best CPU, and 1TB SSD. This was $3k: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx1/t...
Roughly the same size and specs as the most expensive pre-configured MacBook Pro of the same screen size (the MBP has 36GB RAM, +4GB over the Lenovo, and a much better processor & GPU for $3.2k).
It's all market segmentation. Apple is just being upfront about it and giving you a clean, simple purchase page that shows the tradeoffs. Whereas Lenovo is using car salesman techniques to disorient you with a bewildering array of options and models all of which have decision paralysis-inducing tradeoffs not entirely in your favor.
Yes and no. Sometimes Intel did not move as fast as Apple wanted, and sometimes Apple didnt feel like it. Especially the MacPro (trash can and old cheese-grate) and the MacMini (2012-2018) were neglected.
Today, the MacPro ships with M2 Ultra, the MacStudio ships with M3 Ultra, and its not certain that the MacMini and the iMac will get the M5 or will continue shipping with the M4 for the foreseeable future.
More performance (especially for local AI models) is always great, but I'm trying to imagine what I'd want out of a design change!
I think slightly thinner would be nice, but not if it runs hotter or throttles.
Smaller bezels on the screen maybe?
I'm one of those who liked the touchbar (because I think that applications which labelled its shortcuts in the touchbar are awesome) so I think some innovation around things like that would be nice. But not if it compromises the perfect keyboard.
I do think MacOS would be improved with touchscreen support.
On the contrary, I appreciate the Mac UI not being forced into touch friendliness. The whitespace increase in Big Sur is already bad enough, at least to me.
It's funny that my ipad has a more current CPU than my two laptops.