The article's inclusion of this quote from Tim Cook comes pretty close to summing up the whole situation:
“I think if you’re looking at a PC, why would you buy a PC anymore? No really, why would you buy one?”
– Tim Cook, talking about the iPad Pro
It's time to face the fact that Apple doesn't care about professionals and never has. With the release of the original Intel MacBook Pro in 2006 they created a near perfect computer that would come to dominate the market amongst developers for the next ten years. What we don't acknowledge though is that this was purely an accident. While Apple had intended to build nice hardware and a stable OS, the Unix-y nature of the OS that that helped capture the hearts of developers was never exposed in an intentional way.
What we're seeing with the new MBP is a regression back to the core Apple value that are already so prominent on the iPhone and iPad: form over function. Why have a headphone jack when you can make the bottom of the phone more symmetrical and shave 0.2 mm off the case depth? Why do you need a physical keyboard when the iPad's virtual one is just fine for writing emails? Expect more of the same on future changes to the lineup.
“I think if you’re looking at a PC, why would you buy a PC anymore? No really, why would you buy one?”
– Tim Cook, talking about the iPad Pro
It's time to face the fact that Apple doesn't care about professionals and never has. With the release of the original Intel MacBook Pro in 2006 they created a near perfect computer that would come to dominate the market amongst developers for the next ten years. What we don't acknowledge though is that this was purely an accident. While Apple had intended to build nice hardware and a stable OS, the Unix-y nature of the OS that that helped capture the hearts of developers was never exposed in an intentional way.
What we're seeing with the new MBP is a regression back to the core Apple value that are already so prominent on the iPhone and iPad: form over function. Why have a headphone jack when you can make the bottom of the phone more symmetrical and shave 0.2 mm off the case depth? Why do you need a physical keyboard when the iPad's virtual one is just fine for writing emails? Expect more of the same on future changes to the lineup.