Few things - not updating hardware for years, pretty much no innovation on the desktop (both, hardware and software), getting rid of ports on recent laptops, not having touch screens, horrible cables [1], etc...
I an still using a 2010 11” MacBook Air because there is no equivalent in the modern product range. I just want something light and portable for capturing photos from my cameras, culling the obviously crap ones, and transferring the remainder to storage.
The 12” MacBook provides most of the functionality I want at three times the price. I can’t (for example) plug it in to power and storage at the same time without spending even more money on USB-C infrastructure.
"I an still using a 2010 11” MacBook Air because there is no equivalent in the modern product range."
So basically, you're agreeing with me: you're continuing to use an old product because it still meets your needs. You'd prefer that it had better specs, but not so much that you're willing to switch to anything else.
There was a time (not so long ago) that using an 8-year-old laptop would be unthinkable. Now it's maybe kind of an annoyance. That's my point.
It’s more than an annoyance: macOS barely fits onto the 11” MBA SSD. There’s no room for a camera load of raw images. All my operations now require me having external storage in addition to my camera or SD card reader.
I have resorted to carrying a wallet full of SD cards, swapping those out, then doing a bulk import when I get back to hotel/home/camp. The use case for the MBA (photo culling while having a coffee break or while travelling) is no longer possible for me.
I would love an incremental update to the MBA which just gave me more SSD, more RAM, a faster processor without tripling the price.
It is not that the old product still meets my needs, so much as there is no equivalent product in the new range.
Apple doesn't make horrible cables, iffy anecdotal gif-evidence notwithstanding. Apple's reputation is quite decidedly for making high-quality cables.
"No innovation on the desktop" doesn't really mean anything. Who else is "innovating on the desktop" right now?
"Getting rid of ports" can also be interpreted as "moving to new and superior ports". Apple has always been brutal in weeding out obsolete interfaces and introducing new ones.
Every single Apple wire I've ever had up until the past couple years have all been trash. Whatever that white coating was only ever intended to look good in commercials. I never had a single wire ever fray on me besides theirs. It seems like they may have finally fixed the problem they've had for a decade since my latest replacement power brick seems to be going stronger than all the other wires, but I am probably just lucky so far
I don't know what high quality cables you're talking about. Apple's cables are the only cables in my life which decay themselves without any interaction. I never saw this phenomenon nor before nor after. And I'm talking about video iPod, iPhone 4S, iPad 3, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro. I owned all those devices and all cables broke after 1-2 years of use. Thankfully, cheap Chinese cables work flawlessly, so it wasn't a problem for old iDevices (didn't have to find lightning cable replacements yet). But it was a big problem for macbooks with their terribly overpriced PSUs.
seen both sides of this. have had years of mostly ... mid-to-bad cable experiences. had some friends who seemingly never had issues with their stuff tell me i must be 'doing something' with mine ('using too much' or 'being abusive'?). Then... a few years ago, they started having their cables break/fail/burn. They 'get it' now. And... I've known other people who've never or rarely had issues. The impression is that Apple is one company and everything goes through the same level of QA. My experiences seem to indicate that's not true, at least with cabling.
I'd like to see steady updates too, but perhaps we should all admit that updates aren't as essential as they used to be.