everyone keeps saying it's only HN commenters, r/apple techies that are complaining about Apple's new changes. calling us/these people "fringe" users.
let's talk about what a "normal" user needs: web browsing and watching netflix. of course those users are happy. a macbook pro is an excellent $3000 netflix movie watcher and web browser.
but my sister is an actual professional that uses macs because she works in video editing. her needs are above what a normal user needs in terms of everything: cpu/gpu power, memory, hard drive space, etc. how have her needs been met by apple?
no mac pro. she had the old (g5?) tower and just had to straight up move to the imac because the trashcan darth vader mac pro was way out of her budget for what it offered.
okay, so maybe the macbook pro is closer to what she needs right? except she has a whole bunch of legacy usb devices she needs to connect to and her idea of having to buy dongles or docks on top of the $$$ price tag does not appeal to her at all. what does she even get for spending this much money? prev generation cpu with a centimeter-high secondary touchscreen device that costs $200 more to get (vs last year's non-touchbar model).
she does not use fcpx so she is not heavily attached to apple. she would rather stick with apple but at this point she is literally being offered zero options for doing her work.
apple has left her and many other professionals in the dust. tim cook says they're working on mac pro / desktop models but if they don't come out soon they're asking for their lunch to be eaten up slowly just like what happened to microsoft.
microsoft started losing customers in small amounts and they said, "WHERE ELSE WILL YOU GO?" and apple, and google answered. apple is now playing the same game. one more user using a google pixel smartphone, one more user using a microsoft surface studio, one more person using alexa instead of siri and it eats away at apple's ecosphere. we'll see if apple has the "courage" to change course.