It's just frustrating, I switched the household over to Apple devices when OSX came out, and now there really aren't any systems from Apple that look interesting to me.
I've been programming since before the (Unix) dawn of time, and Apple devices have been good development machines for me since OSX was released 18 years ago. I'm comfortable on Linux, but the Apple iOS devices and computers are all over my home and integrate well with my development machines. Furthermore, the family does well with MacOS, and they don't need IT help with their email, iPhone, music, homework, printing, etc. like they used to under Windows.
I'd love to see Apple make a system that supported upgradeable memory, SSDs, High capacity hard drives, graphics, and separate larger monitors, but that doesn't look like that will ever happen. By locking down the hardware to just certain configurations, the very successful stores can handle problems (hardware, software, and user related) at locations all over the world.
Even if Apple can't make the machines more upgradeable because of customer support issues, the new machines don't seem to be well designed for me. They have become too thin and too sleek and overpriced because of features I don't want (over sharp display, touchbar) and issues caused by the pursuit of sleekness and style (crap keyboards, thermal limits).
Lenovo (Thinkpads) offers thin, light, somewhat upgradeable, good looking laptops that are light to carry and easier to grip with great keyboards. I wish Apple could start with something like one of those and equip it with an Apple touchpad and MacOS.
I've been waiting and waiting for Apple to improve its line up (I'm writing this on a Mac Pro from 2013 with a nice 34 inch ultra-wide monitor). It looks like I'll never replace it. I know there are alternatives, my home/office are littered with computers, Thinkpads running Linux, Microsoft laptops, Dell Servers running FreeBSD, and homemade PCs running Windows (for gaming); but I'm going to miss using MacOS as my daily-driver.
> I'd love to see Apple make a system that supported upgradeable memory, SSDs, High capacity hard drives, graphics, and separate larger monitors, but that doesn't look like that will ever happen.
You may want to keep your eyes out for the new Mac Pro that's meant to release this year.
Even if the Mac Pro is the computer of all our dreams, I doubt it will meet the poster’s needs. Seems like they want a fairly bare-bones, minimalist and simple computer. I doubt a Mac Pro is going to come in at under $3.5k at the entry level.
$3.5k entry would be very disappointing since the Mac Mini doesn’t have a graphics card so it struggles with even 3-5 year old video games or hobbyist video editing. I really hope they make a high end mini or low end pro in the $1.5-2k range that can meet the needs of a lot of monitor owning folks who used to be Apple Computer’s core demographic.
That would suck because you're paying the consequences (money and thermal) of that mac form factor but you're still gonna have a big ugly mess on your desk.
It's not that I think the Mac's are too expensive, I paid more that $3.5k for my current gen Mac Book Pro laptop. I wish it had a good keyboard and I wish it was as easy to handle as one of my ThinkPads.
My current development machine is a Mac Pro, the little cylinder from 2013, and I had a couple of the aluminum box ones and my first was in a plastic case. I just couldn't see upgrading to a current Mac Pro ($5k to $13k). It's thin and looks cool, but I thought that I would want to use a different (wider) monitor and didn't think the cooling offered by the case was a good idea. Maybe the new Mac Pro that is supposed to be offered later this year will be just right.
> As times goes on I find Mac loyalists more and more absurd
What purposes does your comment serve? It's not that hard to understand that he found the rest of the laptop valuable enough to spend 3.5k on it (despite the keyboard, which isn't that bad anyways).
His viewpoint isn't that uncommon either, plenty of businesses buy fully loaded MacBook Pros in bulk because it increases productivity. If you're using the laptop for work, you'll be connected to an external monitor and keyboard 90% of the time.
The only case I ever saw of a company buying Apple hardware in bulk, the decision had zero to do with specs or productivity, and all to do with wanting to project an image of success.
The iMac Pro starts at $4,999 and was (probably) intended to be Apple's only "pro" desktop but the desire for an upgradable system was too much so Apple caved and a new Mac Pro is on the horizon. Apple is going to charge a premium for that upgradability that the iMac Pro doesn't have, I'll bet the base price for the Mac Pro is going to be at least $5,999.
> was (probably) intended to be Apple's only "pro" desktop
Apple specifically said in 2017 (before the release of the iMac Pro) that they messed up the 2013 Mac Pro, that they would make a new modular Mac Pro but it would take a long time to finish, and that the iMac Pro would be a stopgap.
I bought a 48-core rig (Dual socket ASUS Z10PE-D8 WS w/ 2x Xeon E7-8890V4's) w/ a 10TB RAID5 array of 10800 RPM disks, 128GB DDR4 ECC, and a 1TB SSD for $5k...
Granted it was from some dude's homelab after he got laid off at Cray but still.
When you get up to that dollar amount I feel like there's just much sweeter shit out there.
One gripe is the thing is fucking massive and kinda unwieldy stuffed into a Coolermaster Cosmos II case...
I'm curious why you think that. I mostly write code for a living and apart from the notebook line catastrophe (I'm stuck on a 2014 model of a MacBook Pro and waiting for something to come out with a reasonable keyboard and perhaps more than one port that I can use), the desktop line is improving quickly. I've been really tempted by the Mac Mini, I would buy the iMac Pro if I could afford it, and now I intend to get the iMac: as it turns out, it's pretty much the only way to get a 5K 27" monitor. I do need 5K to get three columns of code in a full-screen Emacs (4K is fine for two columns, but three is squeezing it).
So my conclusion is exactly the opposite: while I am frustrated that I have to depend on Apple, because seemingly nobody else can get their act together and produce integrated hardware+software ecosystems that work, I am quite happy with the recent direction they've taken.
To the parent's point... I'd recommend a hackintosh Intel NUC. I got blisters stuffing RAM SIMMs into daughter cards. I've agonized over IRQ choices for peripherals. I'm so over fiddling with my daily driver. I've got Audrinos and RPi projects for scratching that itch.
Uncertainty over the keyboards is precisely why I postponed replacing my laptop.
I'd probably use my iMac more if I could find a keyboard & trackpad combo in the same form factor as my laptop's. I want the trackpad flush and centered below the keyboard. I've used cardboard wedges to fake the arrangement, but it's not the same. And since Teleport has stopped working, I haven't figured out how to use my laptop's inputs across devices. (First world problems, I know.)
I've been using Synergy in place of teleport. Not as good but gets the job done. There's a top shelf paid version but an older free version does the job for me.
If you build a newer version from source you can get the best of both worlds: Free, while also not blasting your passwords across the network in plaintext
I think Synergy does what you needed with Teleport. I used it at work a while back when I had Apple devices and it worked great as long as I had the MacBook set up as the host.
What models work with minimal fuss? What about updates? How do I know that an update won't replace/delete some kext that I need and brick it or break some required functionality?
I really wanted to do this a year ago - except there wasn't any hardware that seemed to answer those questions satisfactorily. In the end, the stability of knowing I can turn on the computer and start work every day without worrying about having to drop into a recovery console because an update f'd is worth more to me than a few grand.
The effective DPI may be higher on 5K at 27" than 4K at 27" but at a reasonable distance I fail to see any difference (approx 220ppi vs 170ppi at 3 feet).
Interesting, you must have excellent eyesight 170ppi at arm's length and I can see a pixel or any jaggedness.
I agree with you about size though running two 27" (on VESA mount arms) is the max I'd want for comfort as it was I had to get a 80cm deep desk to sit slight further back.
5K at 27" enables you to use 2x scaling which is much lighter on your hardware. Scaling 4K at 2x leads to a sizing which looks like 1080p (just much sharper), which may be too large depending on your distance from the screen. Using anything but 2x scaling will tax your hardware, slow down the computer and blur the image.
I'm on Linux and I just use fractional font scaling (1.5 usually) and everything works fine and it has no performance impact I can discern across AMD RX at work, intel hd or rtx2080.
While it's true that fractional scaling works differently on Linux and Windows, it's my understanding that many apps don't handle scaling well, or at all, over there.
Meanwhile on macOS basically any app scales properly - I think I have never seen one that doesn't. You can use fractional scaling on a mac, but in that case your whole output will be rendered in 5K and scaled down to the target resolution, which is of course an intensive task - I wouldn't recommend it and instead always use true 2x scaling.
Since you're using a desktop, what's wrong with the 2018 Mac Mini? Upgradable RAM, storage and GPU can be added externally. Dual 4k support out of the box or a single 5k should be enough for your single monitor?
Came here to say exactly that. Replaced my big 2008 MacPro with a mini and couldn't be happier. I do wish the storage were upgradable internally, but so far it hasn't really been a problem.
I want single pretty case, not some mess of wires. I want good Nvidia gaming GPU like 2060 for reasonable price, not some overpriced professional underpowered card. I want very fast CPU that will reach boost frequencies and keep operating there with quiet cooler and PSU, not laptop CPU which throttles on any prolonged load. Mac mini is tiny, but I don't need that tiny form-factor, I want huge case.
Because the cost of all that external junk adds up and you create what is essentially a dongle town on your desktop. It defeats the whole purpose of a Mini.
I know because I tried to do this with a 2018 Mac Mini. Aside from the very lackluster GPU performance, it's a pretty speedy machine.
I had a fairly generous budget for a new computer. 32GB of RAM was about $200 from Crucial. The external SSD storage options were pretty crappy. Any sort of TB3 option was a few hundred dollars to start. I ended up settling with a USB3 2TB HDD. I then had to copy my Photo and iTunes libraries over to it and re-point the apps to the right spots.
For the external GPU, you're looking at about $500 at a minimum. And then you have to find a place for that to sit, and it's essentially the size of a small ITX PC case.
I ended up returning the Mini and just breaking down and building a vanilla hackintosh. A 8700K/32GB/1TB SSD/RX 580 ITX box with quality parts that's all in one small case (Fractal Design Define Nano S) in the same desk footprint as just the external GPU enclosure, and it's not a thermally-constrained dongletown.
Would I recommend it to anyone? No. But after an initially scary couple of hours, I have for all intents and purposes a normally-functioning macOS box that is noticeably quicker than the Mini for the cost of just the base Mini -- sans all the other junk I had to buy. The macOS install is vanilla, with SIP enabled, and no janky kexts in the OS install - NOTHING custom in the OS install. The bare minimum shoved in the EFI partition.
Everything works (sleep, audio, iMessage, etc). It was marginally more trouble than getting Windows 10 installed. Less trouble than getting Ubuntu installed.
As of today, the prices are higher than what I paid. If you're going to buy, monitor /r/buildapcsales on Reddit and buy your parts when they go on sale. I bought my stuff over a period of a couple weeks and saved substantial money.
Samsung SSD prices fluctuate by 10s of dollars. Other SSD manufacturers such as Intel and WD offer steep discounts at times. The RX 580 GPUs go on significant sales pretty often.
At some point, I need to finish my guide and publish to Github. I largely followed corpnewt's Vanilla Guide for Mojave [1], and followed the Coffee Lake train. It's important to follow each step closely.
Again, I do not recommend a hackintosh, but for me it worked out really well.
I'm tempted but after fiddling with Linux laptops for about 3 years I'm a kind of tired of having to deal with all sorts of minor annoyances, especially bugs/freezes/usability issues (e.g. HiDPI) introduced by hardware incompatibilities (the Linux system itself, especially Arch, is actually surprisingly stable). They do add up, especially past the initial excitement. With a Hackintosh you do get the OS but you don't really have guarantee that things will keep working in the future, nor easy warranty when things fail.
I don't really get the resistance about adding some external cables/cases to your desk. The desk has always been full of cables anyways (monitors, speakers, consoles, even my mechanical keyboard etc.) and I don't see any harm in adding a couple more for an external SSD and an eGPU. As mentioned by some other commentators, I'm pretty much past the days of having to constantly fight my main setup and just want to have everything working flawlessly most of the time.
I plan to get a Mac Mini soon and try it out. I think the performance should suffice for most of my use cases. If it seriously stutters I'll consider building a Hackintosh, or simply do those demanding tasks on another dedicated box.
I wonder if there's a product or market for those who want a Mini core but don't want the dongles visible (ie, make a breathable ITX/DTX box but you put the Mac Mini, dongles and peripherals inside).
This would be my choice over a hackintosh for parents or other family.
Interesting idea. There are countless companies manufacturing quite beautiful accessoires for Apple hardware. I'm sure soemone like Grovemade [1] could design a premium looking wooden enclosure for a Mac Mini with cable management as well as ample room and several compartments for external hardware.
If someone could figure out a legal way to offer recommended-hardware Hackintosh builds as a service†, that'd be pretty ideal for what you're talking about, in the sense of "you could buy one for your mom", and it would "just work" (and hopefully continue to "just work" through updates, if they do it right.)
† I guess, if you were to operate a "Hackintosh OEM", you could sell the hardware build itself without actually doing the step of installing macOS onto it. You'd have a team that would continuously figure out what drivers + config would work best for each given macOS update (with a perfected DSDT, etc.), and then that team would package those patches up and hand them off to e.g. the UniBeast team, such that the regular Hackintoshing process that everyone uses would detect your build by the CMOS vendor+model ID, and just plop that OEM package in instead of requiring any config. And would also install an updater that would update your patch-package, and also delay macOS's own OS updates until a tested patch-package is available.
I feel like anyone becoming too successful in this space would find the ol' Eye of Sauron pointed at them pretty quickly..
Whether through technical or legal means, I doubt Apple would sit around and let this openly thrive or grow into a viable option for the average consumer.
I do not think they would bother with technical, that has consequences (ie technical debt), legal is more than enough. Even if someone finds a loophole currently, it's pretty much guaranteed they will change the T&C of MacOS immediately to close it the moment they feel threatened.
You feel it when you try and use iCloud on a hackintosh. As you progressively lose access to your services, you begin to question the choose you have made. And that’s just a glancing blow. Never again.
I've been using iCloud on my hackintosh successfully for years now. You just need to get the SMBIOS stuff right (i.e. use a device serial number that comes from a valid production run, but which doesn't belong to any actual machine.) It's set-and-forget once it's correct. iMessage works for me. Handoff and Airdrop would too (I stuck a wi-fi card in my workstation and verified that it works, but I don't need wi-fi and it was hogging the PCIe slot.)
I think, these days, Clover does all the calculations and checks needed by itself. It used to be harder, but not any more.
Now, here's a real complaint: there's no Hackintosh driver to get the OS to treat an IBM-compatible PC speaker (you know, the one driven by an Intel PCH's onboard 8253 logic) as a sound device, so that I can configure the OS to play "System Sounds" through it, and thus have an extremely-tinny Apple "bwah" on start-up. What kind of loser OS is this? ;)
> If someone could figure out a legal way to offer recommended-hardware Hackintosh builds as a service†, that'd be pretty ideal for what you're talking about, in the sense of "you could buy one for your mom", and it would "just work" (and hopefully continue to "just work" through updates, if they do it right.)
Is this not what tonymacx86.com provides via the buying guide / golden builds forum?
You still have to buy the parts and put them together yourself; and then you have it follow the scene to figure out what to do for each macOS update (e.g. whether you should wait before installing it, whether you need to tweak some setting in Clover, etc.)
I’m willing to do that for one workstation that will live on my desk; I’m not willing to do it for a computer that’s going to be used by a relative who lives thousands of miles away, who I only see for a few days a year (and don’t want to waste those days building a computer.) Let alone several such computers, one per relative.
Whereas in the hypothetical I’m talking about, you order the computer pre-built from a website shipped to your relative, and burn macOS to a USB; and then, when you visit them, unpack the box, install the OS on the computer, and then forget about it.
I don’t know how that’s ever going to be viable though.. for that scenario you would already have a Mac mini there because there is no need for hardware to run like Crysis. And then it can have service, comes with keyboard and mouse, as well as manuals. Then I am not sure how cheap you want to have that hypothetical alternative to make it worthwhile.
I run macOS on HP Z420s. Despite not really promoting this post, I've had a few people find it and ask various questions (sometimes about hackintosh). I always reply!
Having used Hackintosh builds for several years, it's not something I want to do anymore. The whole point of using Mac hardware is to get Mac software along with it and be able to concentrate on actual work instead of endless fiddling with the system to get it to work. The Hackintosh experience is cool, but not for people whose goal is to get work done.
Well, sure. My point was that an OEM could do the "endless fiddling" for you, and then a Hackintosh would be just like an Apple-purchased computer (except with some OS update latency—a lot like the latency of Android-device OEM OS updates.)
> The whole point of using Mac hardware is to get Mac software along with it and be able to concentrate on actual work instead of endless fiddling with the system to get it to work.
To some, the point of using a Mac is to be able to develop and test software for Mac hardware using Apple's frameworks, and having to spend 3x the price tag just to get the hardware is something that makes little to no sense.
I mean, where on earth does it make sense to spend over 2k€ for a desktop computer just because you want to have more than 8GB of RAM?
>cheaper than the value of your time spent building a Hackintosh and keeping it functional
I don't bother with hackintosh any more as I don't have any use for MacOS, but my experience was pretty seamless. I used hardware that was sitting around unused and after installing a couple of custom kexts everything just worked (^). I never had anything break even when upgrading from one major version to the next.
^ networking, sound, XCode etc. Not sure about apple services like iCloud or some of the iphone features since I never used them. Good enough for a cheap build machine when I was tinkering with some iOS dev.
I'm in a similar position. I visited Apple ecosystem with Macbook Pro, but that laptop was terrible and I switched to Windows PC despite loving macOS, I just don't want to pay Apple tax for things I don't need. But you should wait for their new Mac Pro announce. I don't have huge hopes for it, but who knows.
> I'd love to see Apple make a system that supported upgradeable memory, SSDs, High capacity hard drives, graphics, and separate larger monitors
Apple does a pretty good job supporting the needs of most people, in a slim clean form factor, with the iMac. It supports memory upgrades, and external monitors. There is a small group that needs nearly every component to be upgradeable or swappable, and they offer the Mac Pro for that use case. I don't see a scenario where the cost/benefit of adding removable graphics cards to an iMac would make sense. I would like to see the hard drive accessible like the memory is.
I'm not sure I buy this as an argument until the new Mac Pro is released.
Having said that, the Mac Pro is prohibitively expensive for a lot of people. I think a lot of people want something between a Mac Mini and a Mac Pro. Something that could be called Mac "Midi" that would allow for some commodity parts (ram, storage, gpu) to be used.
>> I don't see a scenario where the cost/benefit of adding removable graphics cards to an iMac would make sense.
In any case, this is probably a non-issue with TB3 and eGPUs.
I have one of the recent Mac Mini's and upgraded the RAM and hooked up an external eGPU that's working flawlessly. (But for an easy experience you're limited to AMD cards and apple approved enclosures...) For an apple product, it was quite user upgradable.
(Technically Apple says the RAM isn't user upgradable, but it's still relatively easy.)
If it were doing a good job of supporting the needs of most people one would question why 90% of people are using something else.
Upgradable/fixable everything is a feature of the $299 desktop machine you find at walmart or the $40 machine from goodwill. It doesn't start at $5000 that only 0.05% of planet earth can afford.
Edit: Holy shit it is much worse than I thought. The actual desktop option is basically a $700-$900 pc that starts out at 3-4K. It looks like they have ignored the mac pro for years but kept the humongous price.
If you actually want a capable machine you have to buy the imac pro option and if you actually select a fast processor its more like 8k for a machine wherein you could probably build an equivalent pc for 2.
The primary feature of a $299 desktop is the $299 price. That it is fixable and upgradeable is largely incidental. You are right though, I should have said Apple is supporting the needs of most people who value what Apple offers in a computer (OSX, physical form, etc). They aren’t going to boost their market share by adding swappanle graphics cards to the iMac or a j-mouse nub to the MacBook.
> You are right though, I should have said Apple is supporting the needs of most people who value what Apple offers in a computer (OSX, physical form, etc).
Veblen goods is more like it.
> They aren’t going to boost their market share by adding swappanle graphics cards to the iMac or a j-mouse nub to the MacBook.
Wanting to add/replace DIMMs or SSD HDs isn't asking much.
I'm in your boat. My history with Apple goes back even longer, to the Apple II and Mac SE. I've lost track of how much Apple gear I've purchased in the last three+ decades. The only non-upgradeable part that cheeses me is the storage. And the battery should be user swappable. Aside from reliability issues like the keyboard/display which Apple obviously has to fix, those are the only two parts which I almost always need to upgrade or replace later. Storage just keeps getting denser and cheaper over time. Batteries wear out. But CPUs and memory, these days I can figure out what I want at purchase time and those will be good for years.
I recently purchase a 13" air, despite the ancient design and shitty screen, because I refuse to buy something that I couldn't swap the SSD and battery. (And I couldn't find a suitable used 2015 mbp.)
I was just lamenting to my wife as I was browsing Apple's web site and the mess that is the Apple lineup: there's no way Steve Jobs would have put up with this shit. Yes, I know he was responsible for the G4 Cube, and some other silly things... but today's Apple lineup, shipping a brand new iPad with only Pencil 1 support? Cook would go to Jobs and say, "but look at the process efficiency" and Jobs would just say, GTFO! I'm sure of it.
Look I get that most consumers aren't opening their devices. But throw the pros a bone already. All Apple is making these days are Lamborghinis. That's not what pros want: just give us a really fast pickup truck! Please Apple?
For me, I think something like an sd express slot and their 1000MB/s performance profile, where cards would be flush with the laptop case, would be a good solution.
I do understand most of their trade-offs. But these little m2 nvme sticks should be just as easy to expose as ram is. That'd make a huge difference for me. Being locked in to a purchase-time decision doesn't sit well with how quickly SSD capacities and prices evolve.
I had in mind the 27” imac which technically has replaceable storage, but you need to be comfortable taking a pizza cutter to the glass. While I’m glad for the trapdoor RAM slot, it does feel like a shame there apparently wasn’t any spare space on the 7 square miles of aluminium on the rear of the machine, to put an M2 slot behind a similar trapdoor.
"there's no way Steve Jobs would have put up with this shit."
The first thing Jobs did upon returning to Apple is reduce the product line to exactly four products. Consumer and pro laptop, consumer and pro desktop.
> It's just frustrating, I switched the household over to Apple devices when OSX came out, and now there really aren't any systems from Apple that look interesting to me.
It feels like these products are just an afterthought for the company.
Aren't the only people buying Macs those who have no choice because of the monopoly they have for iOS development? I mean really - crappy hardware (form over function), expensive, dated UI.
No; pretty much everybody I know in tech uses one and almost nobody I know in tech develops for iOS.
They're standard issue at most companies in the valley, at least, with "open" x86 laptops being a distant second (maybe 10% of the population) split between Windows and Linux.
People typically see MacOs as "Unix-family OS that doesn't suck". The day Linux delivers a decent desktop environment will be the day people ditch Apple. Unfortunately, that day is somewhere between "20 years from now" and "never"
> Even if Apple can't make the machines more upgradeable because of customer support issues,
As I understand it, it isn't a customer support issue but a physical limitation issue for what processing power these machines get. They are built with soldered components which means no upgradeability with the flip side being that the performance is 5 years ahead of the direct competition. In other words...you can't upgrade but you won't need to like you used to. It's a paradigm shift.
>They are built with soldered components which means no upgradeability with the flip side being that the performance is 5 years ahead of the direct competition
Who are they five years ahead of exactly? And who told them to make the enclosure out of a garbage can?
Their base model comes in at 3k. They are well behind anything I would build for 3k, sans the garbage can case.
For me the incredibly obvious flaws are (a) not having a monitor line anymore despite pushing USB-C stuff, (b) the really awful keyboards on the laptops now, (c) the Touch Bar being completely pointless†, and (d) the price tags on prepackaged spec upgrades being absurd.
† The weirdest part of this is that there's an obvious high-value use case using exactly the same hardware: use that strip as a Dock replacement with app icons, so everyone can reclaim the bottom half-inch of their main screen.
I like Apple's current lineup but I do think they have lost a certain segment of users: people who don't care about appearance or thinness and just want a modestly priced, upgradeable box.
That's an overgeneralization. With Apple's move from a niche to a more mainstream platform in recent decades of course their customers choose Apple for all kinds of and increasingly varying reasons.
Personally, I use Apple for their software. Having that software in an affordable, customizable, upgradable package would be very welcome. I can get beautiful hardware from most manufacturersand brands these days, so that isn't a unique selling point any longer.
I've been programming since before the (Unix) dawn of time, and Apple devices have been good development machines for me since OSX was released 18 years ago. I'm comfortable on Linux, but the Apple iOS devices and computers are all over my home and integrate well with my development machines. Furthermore, the family does well with MacOS, and they don't need IT help with their email, iPhone, music, homework, printing, etc. like they used to under Windows.
I'd love to see Apple make a system that supported upgradeable memory, SSDs, High capacity hard drives, graphics, and separate larger monitors, but that doesn't look like that will ever happen. By locking down the hardware to just certain configurations, the very successful stores can handle problems (hardware, software, and user related) at locations all over the world.
Even if Apple can't make the machines more upgradeable because of customer support issues, the new machines don't seem to be well designed for me. They have become too thin and too sleek and overpriced because of features I don't want (over sharp display, touchbar) and issues caused by the pursuit of sleekness and style (crap keyboards, thermal limits).
Lenovo (Thinkpads) offers thin, light, somewhat upgradeable, good looking laptops that are light to carry and easier to grip with great keyboards. I wish Apple could start with something like one of those and equip it with an Apple touchpad and MacOS.
I've been waiting and waiting for Apple to improve its line up (I'm writing this on a Mac Pro from 2013 with a nice 34 inch ultra-wide monitor). It looks like I'll never replace it. I know there are alternatives, my home/office are littered with computers, Thinkpads running Linux, Microsoft laptops, Dell Servers running FreeBSD, and homemade PCs running Windows (for gaming); but I'm going to miss using MacOS as my daily-driver.
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