The dearth of WWDC rumors this year is really amazing to me. Apple really is taking leaks very seriously. We're 10 days away from the keynote, and absolutely nothing is getting out.
This speculation is the best that Macworld can do? No offense to them, but I mean, the rumors are slim pickings.
I really hope that Apple fixes its laptop lineup at WWDC. It's a complete and total shitshow right now. And that's coming from a huge Apple fan.
Even before you factor in the keyboard issues, it's a mess.
The Air line maxes at 8gigs of ram, but you can configure for a better core i7 proc than the MacBooks. Of course the screen is awful.
The actual MacBook line has an anemic processor, but you can get 16gigs of ram and a decent screen. But by that time, you're paying MacBook pro money. Which at 13-inches, you can't get the top specs without the touchbar, and the midrange specs on the non-touchbar are stupidly overpriced even for someone like me who's willing to pay a premium for Apple kit. And still capped at 16gigs ram.
15-inch model suffers from the same problems as the 13-inch: You can only get the maxed specs with the touch bar and the mid-range specs are a joke for the price.
The only pro laptop worth buying right now is a 3-year-old mid-2015 MacBook pro. I was in the market for a new Mac a couple of months ago and literally could not find anything worth spending money to upgrade on from Apple. I picked up two 11-inch macbook airs for cheap on eBay because I adore that tiny form factor and use them as mostly dumb terminals for remote stuff. They are surprisingly useful and have great battery life.
Apple really needs to fix the laptops and give up the goods on the Mac Pro machine. I don't care if it's throwing a bevy of these chips in an ultra thin MacBook Pro-Air X Plus or what. But this situation is embarrassing. Reminds me of the mid-90s, when there were a ton of options if you wanted a mac, but nothing really worth buying.
My work ThinkPad is an ugly brick that gets the job fucking done. I'm about to buy one for my home if I don't just stockpile all the 11" macbook airs I can find and build a home lab cluster to remote into for doing real work instead.
You're right -- this has been a very rumorless year. Interesting given how many leaks we've seen over the last couple of years; I guess someone got serious about tightening up. Or, of course, there's nothing much coming.
You're dead right on the laptop lineup. Touchbar, whatever, I don't think that's an enormous issue one way or the other -- but the incoherency of the tech specs matters a bunch.
They did tighten up leaks. There was a big internal meeting about how Apple is actually not only firing people but also prosecuting them--which was promptly leaked.
And yeah, it's also possible that there's nothing really exciting coming that's worth leaking.
It could be a big software year. Most leaks we get tend to be supply chain, where as software may only be known about a handful of people until the day it’s unveiled.
>We're 10 days away from the keynote, and absolutely nothing is getting out.
I'm OK with this. I'm not so locked into a feedback loop that I need to know every little thing happening at Apple before it actually happens. I think the death of Think Secret did that for me.
The downside is that all of the Apple fansites (9to5Mac, MacRumors, etc...) are all full of crap "wish list", "deals" and contests disguised as articles because they have to fill their quotas.
Cannot agree more. You can get 6-core i9 Dell Precision with 4k screen, 32GB RAM, and 5x better GPU that weights 4lb for 2/3 of maxed out MacBook price.
Sure the build won't be that good but with this new keyboard I'm not so sure anymore. And I get fucking ports.
The only reason I'm with MacBook is vendor lock-in with my work environment but that isn't going to last forever.
I paid for the storage upgrade, not the RAM one and I regret it weekly :( I saved 475€ on the whole machine thanks to exchange rate, but still the bill was salty.
I emphatically agree with every point. I am in the exact same position and feel exactly the same. I bought a 2016 13” MacBook Pro and got rid of it because it just wasn’t... better. Still using a laptop and a desktop from 2013. And waiting...
> Apple really needs to fix the laptops and give up the goods on the Mac Pro machine.
Apple just needs to give up on Macs. They obviously don't care about the product much anymore. License the OS and let OEMs and regular people build machines that can deliver the value that Apple can't or won't.
It's still a blip in their bottom line compared to their mobile devices. It's been pretty clear for years where their priorities are, and I say this as someone who's been an Apple fan since grade school. They've been riding their laurels hard for the last five years when it comes to PCs.
This speculation is the best that Macworld can do? No offense to them, but I mean, the rumors are slim pickings.
I really hope that Apple fixes its laptop lineup at WWDC. It's a complete and total shitshow right now. And that's coming from a huge Apple fan.
Even before you factor in the keyboard issues, it's a mess. The Air line maxes at 8gigs of ram, but you can configure for a better core i7 proc than the MacBooks. Of course the screen is awful.
The actual MacBook line has an anemic processor, but you can get 16gigs of ram and a decent screen. But by that time, you're paying MacBook pro money. Which at 13-inches, you can't get the top specs without the touchbar, and the midrange specs on the non-touchbar are stupidly overpriced even for someone like me who's willing to pay a premium for Apple kit. And still capped at 16gigs ram.
15-inch model suffers from the same problems as the 13-inch: You can only get the maxed specs with the touch bar and the mid-range specs are a joke for the price.
The only pro laptop worth buying right now is a 3-year-old mid-2015 MacBook pro. I was in the market for a new Mac a couple of months ago and literally could not find anything worth spending money to upgrade on from Apple. I picked up two 11-inch macbook airs for cheap on eBay because I adore that tiny form factor and use them as mostly dumb terminals for remote stuff. They are surprisingly useful and have great battery life.
Apple really needs to fix the laptops and give up the goods on the Mac Pro machine. I don't care if it's throwing a bevy of these chips in an ultra thin MacBook Pro-Air X Plus or what. But this situation is embarrassing. Reminds me of the mid-90s, when there were a ton of options if you wanted a mac, but nothing really worth buying.
My work ThinkPad is an ugly brick that gets the job fucking done. I'm about to buy one for my home if I don't just stockpile all the 11" macbook airs I can find and build a home lab cluster to remote into for doing real work instead.