I know of a ton of people asking for a MacBook Pro with a keyboard that doesn't suck, but I genuinely haven't heard many people asking for a "lower end Mac Pro." The trashcan Mac Pro, love it or hate it, clearly positioned the line as the intended spiritual successor to old SGI workstations -- the ones that started around $10K in 1999 money -- and the new Mac Pro is doubling down on that.
"Lower end Mac Pro" sounds an awful lot like the "xMac," a Mac that would be more like an iMac but a box that takes cards, which is something that some folks have wanted for literally two decades at this point. It's clearly not what Apple wants to bring to market. The low-end headless desktop Mac is the Mac mini -- and I suspect it would be a great machine for a lot of developers. That doesn't mean it's what you want, and I'm not saying you're wrong to want something else! I am saying, though, that "Apple won't make my dream Mac" isn't a sign of sadism.
I agree. Their decisions seem almost intentionally against what their vocal user base is asking for.
From removing the non-touch bar MacBook Pro model, to the ghastly price of the new Mac Pro, to their refusal to create an upgraded iPhone SE-sized model - Apple has started to shove things down the user base's throat now more than ever.
Apple has always been guilty of this to some extent, but for me, it's offerings worked with me, my workflow, and their direction grew with me - I embraced the move to Intel, because, as a developer, being able to dual-boot, and eventually even virtualize the dual-boot with parallels, was excellent for me. (Waiting for Office 2008 and the Universal Adobe CS3 package, however...)
The point is - Apple has always at least provided options in the past that were, well, options. At this point, there is no option in Apple's lineup I would keep for free - I'd simply rather sell a new MBP and create a hackintoshed Lenovo ThinkPad in a heartbeat than actually use any of their offerings on the daily, which I can say from experience, as I happen to have to use both on the daily.
Completely agree. I've been saying this since 2012 when the Retina machines came out, and skeptical since 2009 when they moved to non-user-replaceable batteries in the MacBook Pros.
I don't think I've actually ever had a non-Apple main notebook, and that goes back to the 1990s!
That said, I only tolerate the 2013-2015 rMBPs, use one for my main personal and work laptops, but the soldered RAM pisses me off (a lot, because my personal machine only has 8GB and my god is it hard to find a 16GB model for a reasonable price in the used market), and the proprietary storage irks me. Thankfully 10.13 supports NVMe with an adaptor, which to me basically confirms that there was zero reason for Apple to use the proprietary stupid thing in the first place.
As for any machine they've built after 2016, well, I don't want them. I don't want a butterfly keyboard with no travel that breaks with a skin flake. I don't want screens that stop working because they use a flex cable connector that's too short. I don't want a touchbar if it means no function row. I don't want to give up MagSafe. I don't want to give up my SD card slot. I don't want to give up USB Type A. I don't want a massive trackpad, and I don't want the fscking T2 chip.
In fact, the only things on the >2016 machines I do want are the faster CPUs and GPUs, the better quality displays, and Touch ID!
... As for Lenovo though, they're slowly into Apple 2.0. Have you seen the T/X x90 and X1 series? Soldered RAM. At least they still make the X1 Extreme and P series.
It’s easy to dismiss since it was obsolete for so long, but the new Mac Mini is actually a pretty capable machine - 6 reasonably fast cores, 32 gigs of ram, fast storage, and 10 GbE onboard. I’ve been extremely happy with it.
"Lower end Mac Pro" sounds an awful lot like the "xMac," a Mac that would be more like an iMac but a box that takes cards, which is something that some folks have wanted for literally two decades at this point. It's clearly not what Apple wants to bring to market. The low-end headless desktop Mac is the Mac mini -- and I suspect it would be a great machine for a lot of developers. That doesn't mean it's what you want, and I'm not saying you're wrong to want something else! I am saying, though, that "Apple won't make my dream Mac" isn't a sign of sadism.