Apple has created some amazing products and incited great change in the tech industry over the years, but their narrow focused has more recently resulted in anorexic, crippled products that favor simplicity over possibility. This behavior demonstrates their unpleasant vision for their future, and I don’t think I want to be a part of it anymore.
A Look at Apple’s Technological Anorexia
Apple always opted for thin and light. They’ve chosen user experience over power for many products, to the point that it’s practically a philosophy. In some cases, these decisions were sound and brought us excellent products. In others, they created devices that just make life more difficult than their predecessors.
MacBook Air: The Right Kind of Compromise
Mid-2012 MacBook Air
The MacBook Air is one of the few positive outcomes of Apple’s current principles. Although they got it wrong on the first try, the wonderfully compact laptop eventually evolved into a machine that favored battery life and portability over power—not simply thinness over all else. That compromise worked because low-end mobile processors became fast and efficient enough to handle even more complex work tasks without obliterating the battery.
But that harmonious balance was the result of a perfect confluence of technology, not because Apple waited until they could deliver such a sensible machine. The MacBook Air’s positive evolution, in retrospect, feels more like luck and a lot less like intention. Some might argue Apple’s other products might follow suit, but if we’re comparing the MacBook Air’s timeline that doesn’t match up.
The MacBook Air was released in 2008 and became the laptop we know and love in late 2010. The best version with amazing battery life was born in 2013, of course, but Apple got enough right in the second iteration. If you’re like me and demand a lot out of your machines, that battery life upgrade didn’t make much of a difference anyway. It was a huge improvement for casual users but barely noticeable for heavier ones. Still, the MacBook Air was and is a great, wonderfully balanced laptop. It’s just now a little overpriced due to its age.
Mac Pro: Apple’s Enormous Misunderstanding of What Professionals Want
The new Mac Pro
If you follow a similar timeline for the Mac Pro, we should’ve seen a new version with fewer limitations by now. Unfortunately, when Apple abandoned their perfectly upgradable and even somewhat modular professional desktop in favor of a highly limited and deceptively heavy intergalactic trash can, they felt that was good enough nearly three years.
Not only has Apple neglected to alter their design to allow for better upgradability or even provide a peripheral to help resolve this issue, but they haven’t even updated the machine in the first place. What they incorrectly assumed professionals would want in 2013 is what they’re still trying to sell professionals three years later.
And what are their customers doing about it? If not migrating to Windows, they’re buying up old Mac Pros in their old form. While still stuck in the past, they cost less and were designed for upgrades, so you can bring them out of the past and into the future with a bit of work. Furthermore, if you ignore the inexpensive model, the retina 5K iMac offers a far greater value in every category. Apple turned the Mac Pro into a product without purpose, and have ignored even incremental upgrades to the product line.
Phil Schiller, introducing the new Mac Pro (2013).
When Phil Schiller got up on stage to introduce the evolution of their high-end workstation, he seemed more prideful than ever, insisting Apple hadn’t lost its ability to innovate. But Apple has always made the error of confusing innovation with a reduction in size. Sometimes shaving off weight and girth does qualify as an innovative step in a product, but more often than not it results in a machine crippled by its own design.
While Apple hasn’t gone so far as to abandon the professional in favor of the consumer, it has severely limited the definition of professional work through its hardware and software designs. The Mac Pro offers a very clear look at this reality, but it’s not alone. This narrow focus won’t just affect the enterprise, but eventually all consumers as well.
The New MacBook and iPhone 7: Functionality Be Damned
The new MacBook in “gold”
If Apple released the new MacBook—the one with a single USB Type-C port and a processor slower than the iPhone 6S—for $500, they would’ve made a great product. It’s far easier to accept limitations in processing power, ports, and general usability (the fancy new keyboard isn’t the most comfortable to type on, which I personally found does not change after months of use) when you’re not paying much. In fact, if this machine undercut the MacBook Air in any way it would’ve been a more acceptable release. Instead, it’s an inferior machine that compromises everything for style and slightly greater portability with proudly wearing a bloated price tag.
There are so many little changes that could make the new MacBook justifiable. The simplest? Add a second USB Type-C port. Most of us don’t plug much into our laptops nowadays, but we do sometimes and we shouldn’t have to run on battery power or through an adapter just for the privilege. The future may change that, but that future is a ways off. Adding a second port is trivial, inexpensive, and would make a world of difference. We’ve seen one update to the new MacBook, and all we got was a specification bump. Whether or not Apple will realize one port won’t be enough for several years remains to be seen. If the iPhone 7 design rumors are to be believed, however, I have little hope anything will change.
A concept rendering of the upcoming iPhone 7 by Sahanan Yogarasa.
If you haven’t heard, Apple supposedly plans to remove the headphone port from the iPhone 7 in favor of a similar, unified port in the form of their proprietary Lightning connector. If you want to listen to your phone’s audio via headphones, you’ll either need an adapter, an M-Fi certified headset that utilizes the Lightning port, or a wireless Bluetooth set.
The argument for removing the 3.5mm audio port is that it’s outdated and degrades audio quality (as well as plenty of other, more stupid justifications), but Apple already figured out an alternative in the form of a hybrid optical audio port—one you’ll find in many of their computers already. Forcing people to use the Lightning port for audio is just greedy. If you want a wired headset, you need one that only works with Apple mobile products or need to purchase an adapter from Apple. If you want to manufacture one of these Apple-specific headsets, you’ll have to pay Apple for M-Fi certification or consumers will get an “unsupported product” warning every time their plug yours in.
Sucking extra cash out of consumers through port changes and reductions isn’t a new strategy from Apple, but it’s one that many now evolve to the point of absurdity. Apple already has a product line notably more expensive than the competition. Instead of offering more for your dollar, they take away basic features and ask you to pay more for the privilege. And that’s not just in the form of the overall cost, but in the cost of adapters or proprietary gear you’ll require to do usual things.
Sometimes you can convince the world you’re an innovator when you create a product that will push us into a better future, however uncomfortably, but that’s what Apple used to do. When we got the first MacBook Air it was a feat of engineering that cost too much and did too little, but we still had plenty of other Mac laptops that got the job done until the MacBook Air found its balance. Now Apple replaces more than it adds. The new Mac Pro is the only Mac Pro. The single-ported iPhone 7 will be the only iPhone in its class. The new MacBook hasn’t yet replaced the MacBook Air, but it will the moment Apple can justify it financially.
Why Apple’s Future Doesn’t Include Innovation
Razer’s Blade Stealth impressively powerful ultrabook
Apple has always done well with design because it put in the effort. Other companies have since taken note, and often produce better products as a result. The Razer Blade Stealth and Asus ZenBook 3 knock the new MacBook out of the water. Dell’s already aging XPS 13 is a fantastic MacBook Air alternative that does more and costs less.
You don’t even need to try to find an example of a desktop workstation that makes more sense than a Mac Pro because you can buy or build a better and more suitable machine for under $3,000—and still even run OS X if you want to. As for smartphones and tablets, Apple has an undeniably better app ecosystem and sometimes better internal hardware. But as they continue to remove functionality from their devices and keep them locked down, competitors continue to grow.
Tim Cook with his favorite productivity tool
Tim Cook once said he uses his iPad for the majority of his work and feels others should as well. A conductor does most of his or her work with a baton, but that doesn’t mean the orchestra can do the same. An overly-simplified, well-designed product will always have a market, but that doesn’t make it good. When consumers choose the competition over your products, that’s not a good sign when you’re charging more and offering less.
Apple, of course, likes to argue that web usage statistics and revenue point to greater success than the number of devices sold, but those statistics are next to meaningless. Just because a non-Apple user doesn’t browse the web as much as someone with an iPhone doesn’t mean they like using their device less. Perhaps they’ve found more efficient ways of getting the same functionality through apps rather than the browser, or perhaps they’d just rather interact with people more often than their phones. Just like Apple and everyone else, I can’t definitively conclude what those statistics mean. Sure, you can call high usage and profits success, but it’s a disconcerting thought when you understand those metrics matter more to Apple than loyalty to their user’s needs.
This isn’t to say Apple’s doing everything wrong. They’ve accomplished plenty of incredible things and more than I’m sure I’ll manage in my lifetime. They deserve some respect and admiration for their accomplishments and how they’ve shaped the tech industry for the better. Nevertheless, that doesn’t disqualify them from admonishment. They’ve already walked a good ways down the road leading towards a future of purposefully limited technology. While it was never a plan without benefits, as their products have reached people who had previously found computers too complex for their needs, they’re now going too far.
You can lose a lot of weight with an anorexic diet, but you’d trade many of life’s joys and necessities for what you consider beauty. Rather than finding a compromise between aesthetics, power, and functionality, Apple opted for a metaphorical eating disorder as a basis for their product line. This isn’t something we should applaud or support. It’s something we should be concerned about. Not only does it result in a high-priced, lower quality good, but it also causes needless spending and has some frightening implications for security.
Apple claims to care about security, but their track record doesn’t lend much credibility
Although Apple has never had a great security track record, exempting the safety provided by general hacker apathy, there’s a danger in providing consumers with powerful technology they don’t understand. As these systems become more complex and that complexity is continuously abstracted by software, most of us will end up using smartphones, tablets, and perhaps even laptops with little transparency. That can result in data collection and theft we’re not even aware of.
We’re entering an age where our devices understand spatial depth, listen to us, and pay attention to what we do. If you own a device that knows more about you, what you like, and where you go than most (if not all) people, you can’t protect that information if you don’t understand what’s happening. By choosing simplicity over knowledge, you abdicate your own power and right to privacy without explicitly choosing to do so.
When we purchase Apple’s products, we support them in creating a more dangerous future with crippled technology. While they’re certainly not the only company making questionable decisions, we hail them as the premiere manufacturer of artistic gadgetry. Perhaps, as a society, we ought to spend less time craving their next “innovation” and consider the implications of what our support means.
I’ve been a loyal Apple user for my entire life, but in recent years that has felt like an increasingly bad decision.