Tim Cook was in the news recently. At last week’s shareholder meeting in Cupertino, Cook responded to questions about Apple’s commitment to professional users by saying: “You will see us do more in the pro area,” Cook said. “The pro area is very important to us. The creative area is very important to us in particular.”
Then, he got to the crux of it: “Don’t think something we’ve done or something that we’re doing that isn’t visible yet is a signal that our priorities are elsewhere.” In other words, just because you don’t see anything happening, doesn’t mean that nothing is, in fact, happening.
Sigh… This is becoming an increasingly big leap of faith.
With significant updates to iMacs stretching past 500 days, and updates to the Mac Pro closing in on 1,200 days, it is easy to be skeptical. Since Tim’s comments, news articles appeared with quotes from users who no longer believe Apple knows how to live up to Tim’s promises. (For example: CIO)
I have zero doubt that Apple has the necessary technical skills to create world-class gear. What I am concerned about is whether Apple has the interest and the will to create them; along with recognizing that pros need more than thin; they need power, expandability, and upgradability over time. I also suspect that Apple is wrestling with significant internal struggles over allocation of resources, return-on-investment, and office politics; any one of which can derail any project – no matter how worthy.
I can understand the need for surprise in the consumer market. We all like birthday presents. But, for pro’s who are forced to make “bet-the-business” decisions on hardware purchases, it would be really helpful if Apple were more forthcoming on what we are betting the business on. Not for everything, perhaps, just the high-end professional gear we need to run a creative business in a highly-challenging economic environment. (Oh, and not every creative professional can afford a $10,000 computer; the margins on most projects today are just not there to support it.)
Focusing on professionals implies that we are on the same side, listening to each other. Talk is cheap. A roadmap is better. And the best is actually shipping products.
As always, let me know what you think… and feel free to share this with your friends.
26 Responses to It Wouldn’t Hurt Apple to Give Us a Clue
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Al Bergstein says:
March 20, 2017 at 4:34 pm
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Al B. says:
March 21, 2017 at 7:36 am
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Jim McQuaid says:
March 27, 2017 at 1:50 pm
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Clayton Moore says:
March 29, 2017 at 6:04 am
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Shameer Mulji says:
April 5, 2017 at 3:46 pm
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Larry says:
April 5, 2017 at 4:05 pm
← Older CommentsThanks Brian…very much. As someone with extensive experience with Microsoft and Apple products, let me state that it’s worth noting that while the Windows franchise paid much of MSFT’s bills, the division with server, databases and other *professional* software actually outperformed it. It is now very much in the drivers seat in the company, and Apple should look at it’s business division development and take heed. The OS is increasingly becoming irrelevant, and the *ecosystem* matters. The more that Adobe drives the ecosystem the less I care about Apple. There are many reasons I still use Apple, but I’m very close to not caring about them anymore. They have very little time left before, as a business “partner” company, they become irrelevant. Their silence looks more and more like inability to communicate, rather than waiting to deliver some spectacular new technical achievement that they needed to hide from their competitors.
Yes, Jim, we hope that Apple heeds Larry’s words. While Windows is still “problematic” it’s very much less so than it was. I recently bought a Windows laptop (to replace my ancient Macbook Air) and about the only reason I didn’t stick with it was an overly delicate trackpad that no matter what I did I couldn’t tune to the degree that the Apple trackpad can be. This was more Lenovo’s fault than MSFTs. Anyway, I think that many Mac users would be surprised at how much better Windows is these days. It’s still not the integrated beauty of Apple’s OS, but at some point, being told that my choices from Apple for laptops are 16 GBs of RAM or less with no upgrade path because they solder the chips on the board, is going to make me leave.
I don’t have much hope for Apple and the “professional / creative” user at this point, despite being an Apple user since 1982. The bungled FCPX intro pretty much said to (video) business users: don’t count on us, don’t bet your business on what we may do tomorrow.”
In my high tech travels, the thing business customers wanted was a roadmap. Apple has a culture that prevents that from happening. I’m happy with FCPX now and cylinder Mac Pro is a fine, if dated, machine. But my business needs are very small and simple compared to the bulk of this marketplace.
The very idea of 16 GBs of RAM “soldered” on the board for a computer thats targeted for professional use reeks of a kind of presumptuousness thats hard to look beyond. The even thinner design has made the NEW MBPs impossible to repair outside of an Apple service center. You had better get the “Hard drive” flash storage you want at purchase, because storage is also now part of the logic board. The iFixit team to gave the new laptop ( 2016 MacBook Pro ) a one out of 10 repairability score, the lowest possible score.
Looks like you got it
http://daringfireball.net/2017/04/the_mac_pro_lives
Shameeer:
Yup, I am very, very impressed with Apple for doing this.
Larry