Mac sales declined nearly 10% last year as Lenovo, Dell and others gained ground

Has anyone here used the MBP touchbar on a daily basis? Does it improve productivity or is it just a gimmick?

Yeah, discontinuing the Air is crazy. The "entry level" laptop from Apple now (excluding their late-year models they kept around) is now $1299 and features a Core M3 processor. For people with a 2014+ Air that is a downgrade in performance for more money than they paid initially.

I read on another thread a user that does a lot of podcasting/audio editing say he absolutely loves the touchbar. He can annotate in Word and pause/play/scrub his video on the touchbar without ever changing app focus. This is a somewhat niche purpose, but I could see a handful of similar applications where you need to have simultaneous control of multiple apps.

As far as AIO's go they are great, especially with the 5k display, but the main issue is that Apple doesn't spec bump them. It has been 472 days since the last iMac update and it will likely be at least until spring before we hear about an update.

The main issue for me is that my laptop can now use Thunderbolt 3 accessories, but if I bought an iMac today I'd be stuck with thunderbolt 2 and no usb-c ports for the next 3 or so years that I would be using the machine.

The biggest problem that Apple is creating for itself is not one that is being discussed directly in most of these threads: it's not about the loss in Mac sales, which they clearly don't give a damn about. It's the exodus of producers from their platform.

Think about it. For those of you that were Mac fans before the iPhone and before it was cool to be so, who else do you know that used a Mac? Forget why, just who? The answer is: content creators. Video creators. Film editors. Photographers. Music artists. Photoshop experts. And developers.

These people create the content that the rest of the "herd" consume. The herd doesn't follow Apple (even though it seems that way); they follow the content, wherever that content is. People didn't switch from Windows to Mac primarily because $x wasn't available on Mac. But soon enough, $x, $y, and $z were on Mac and the switch became easier. Think back to when the iPhone was fighting against BlackBerry and Motorola. It was stupid things like Plants and Zombies and Angry Birds that drove adoption. It was the music industry's alliance with Apple (aka content) that helped the iPhone gain an edge just as much as its technical merit.

5 years ago, I wouldn't have been able to say goodbye to my Mac and go back to Windows. This year, I did (just weeks before the joke of an MBP was announced, thank God). My favorite Mac apps are on Windows. WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) gives me native Linux on Windows with decent integration. I have my posix and I have an OS I can use. MS was trash, but they listened to their power users (thank god for Nadella and good riddance to Ballmer) and ditched Metro everything and went back to a useable, dev-friendly desktop with Windows 10. They're embracing 3D printing, they're bringing back the content producers, and this is going to hurt Apple way more than I think they realize right now.

Every company makes its money at the bottom, but there's a reason these companies continue to make losing investments at the top: to keep the content creators, the prosumers, the reviewers, the influencers happy. It's not just computers. Look at car companies. Look at what Toyota spent on the LFA. They were _never_ going to recoup those costs, no matter what. The goal was to entrench themselves in the minds of auto enthusiasts, to say that Toyota has the ability, the technical knowhow, and the spirit it takes to make a real super car. Now buy and recommend our normal cars, please.

Apple discontinuing first its servers, then its 17" MacBooks (and I've never owned a 17" laptop in my life), its Mac Pros (seriously!?!??), and now, the MacBook Pro (there's a reason there used to be a MacBook and a MacBook Pro. Now "Pro" is marketing and they're all MacBook Pros while none of them are), is the problem. It's clear some pinhead that doesn't get the market is looking at the numbers and thinking "hmmmm, $x, $y, and $z have a $devcost/$saleprice ratio that is poorer than our other mainstream products, kill them," not realizing what that means for 10 years down the line.

I'm not saying we're going to see this impact _today_, but we're going to see it at some point. Apple's prosumer focus is what kept it alive when it was bankrupt and desperate and allowed it an opportunity to make a comeback. Ignoring them now isn't just shortsighted and stupid, it's also ungrateful and traitorous. But whatever. I'm happy with my thin & lightweight Xeon ZBook with 32GB of ECC RAM and a 4K display running Windows 10 and Linux. I don't care. But I do think it's a damn shame.