Some people have written to me asking what are my thoughts about the rumoured Macs Apple is planning to release this year. These people obviously refer to the articles published by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman last week:
Relevant quotes from Apple Plans First iMac Desktop Redesign in Nearly a Decade:
The new [iMac] models will slim down the thick black borders around the screen and do away with the sizable metal chin area in favor of a design similar to Apple’s Pro Display XDR monitor. These iMacs will have a flat back, moving away from the curved rear of the current iMac. Apple is planning to launch two versions — codenamed J456 and J457 — to replace the existing 21.5‑inch and 27-inch models later this year
[…]
Apple is also working on a pair of new Mac Pro desktop computers. […] One version is a direct update to the current Mac Pro and will continue to use the same design as the version launched in 2019. Apple has discussed continuing to use Intel processors for that model rather than moving to its own chips.
[…]
The second version, however, will use Apple’s own processors and be less than half the size of the current Mac Pro. The design will feature a mostly aluminum exterior and could invoke nostalgia for the Power Mac G4 Cube, a short-lived smaller version of the Power Mac, an earlier iteration of the Mac Pro.
As part of its revived Mac desktop efforts, Apple has started early development of a lower-priced external monitor to sell alongside the Pro Display XDR.
Relevant quotes from Apple Plans Upgraded MacBook Pros With Return of Magnetic Charging:
The new laptops are planned to come in two screen sizes, a 14-inch model codenamed J314 and a 16-inch version internally dubbed J316. Both will use next-generation versions of Apple’s in-house Mac processors, upgraded with more cores and enhanced graphics
[…]
A major change to the new computers will be how they charge. Over the past five years, Apple has relied on USB‑C ports for both power and data transfer on its laptops, making them compatible with other manufacturers’ chargers. But the company is now bringing back MagSafe, the magnetic power adapter that means any accidental yanking of the power cable would simply detach it from the laptop rather than pull down the entire computer.
[…]
In developing its next set of Mac laptops, Apple has also tested versions that remove the Touch Bar from its laptop keyboards. […] Some professional users have said they found that control scheme less convenient than physical keys.
In the more recent article, Apple Plans Thinner MacBook Air With Magnetic Charger in Mac Lineup Reboot, Gurman also adds this about the next MacBook Pros:
The company is planning to bring back an SD card slot for the next MacBook Pros so users can insert memory cards from digital cameras. That feature was removed in 2016, to the consternation of professional photographers and video creators, key segments of the MacBook Pro user base. The heavily criticized Touch Bar, the current model’s touchscreen function row, is also going.
Gurman has a fairly good track record when it comes to these things and, more importantly, all these rumours sound quite believable. At the same time, I’ve always been hesitant to discuss rumours on my blog, because one always runs the risk of getting carried away following certain lines of criticism (or praise), which may be disproved when the final product is released, and one ends up making an ass of himself.
Anyway, if we cautiously take all the aforementioned rumours at face value, I’d say they all look good to me. That is, these are all things I — as a long-time Mac power user — would be quite happy to see materialised. A G4 Cube-sized Apple Silicon Mac Pro is something I’d be very interested in, for example. And I think bringing MagSafe back to the MacBook line is a very sensible decision.
The tangent I want to take with this piece is about Mac design.
If you were hypothetically completely oblivious to what’s happened at Apple over the past decade, by looking at current Macs you would think that Steve Jobs is still with us and that Jonathan Ive never left the company. When I look at my good old 2009 MacBook Pro, the only details betraying its age are its relative thickness, the presence of legacy ports, and the lack of a retina display if I turn the machine on. If I look at the front of my 2017 21.5‑inch 4K Retina iMac and compare it with the front of a mid-2010 21.5‑inch iMac, they’re essentially the same.
I’m the last person to advocate redesigning things for the sake of redesigning. I’m more interesting in computers and devices that get better and more capable over time, rather than cosmetic changes that are periodically applied to make a product ‘look fresh’ while changing very little inside.
On the other hand Apple — especially in the past 25 years or so — has often introduced new design paradigms and solutions that have been both innovative and trendsetting. And even when a new design idea seemed just a merely æsthetic implementation, it often had a positive impact on how the machine worked as well. I’m thinking about the first iBooks, the colourful clamshell iBook G3 line. They were rather bulky laptops, even by 1999 standards, but also extremely rugged. I witnessed one tumbling down a flight of stairs, and the only damage were a few scuffs on the polycarbonate exterior, and the cover of the CD-ROM drive tray got partially detached (an easy thing to fix). They’re also one of Apple’s most comfortable laptops to type on: the curved palmrest area around the trackpad invites you to put your hands right there and type away.
When talking about the stagnant design of the Macs of the past decade, some ascribe it to architectural constraints tied to the use of Intel chips, but I don’t really buy this. Plenty of other PC manufacturers have produced many different laptops over the years, with the most varying and distinctive designs (whether they’re good designs it’s another story and not the point I’m trying to make).
What I’ve noticed instead is this: since Steve Jobs’s passing, Mac design has sort of frozen in its 2011 state. From then on, most of what Apple added or changed in Macs has been met with some level of controversy.
- The 2013 Mac Pro was stunning, but flawed from a thermal design standpoint and for the lack of internal expandability.
- The MacBook’s new keyboard design introduced in 2015 turned out to be the worst fiasco in possibly all Apple history.
- The Touch Bar, introduced in late 2016 with the new MacBook Pros, is one of the most polarising hardware features I’ve seen on a Mac in a long time. I personally think it’s an interesting idea but poorly developed and executed, whose terrible usability and lack of tactile feedback dampen all the theoretical flexibility it should gain over the physical keys it replaces.
- The internal redesign of the 2014 Mac mini made it a far less upgradable machine than its 2012 predecessor.
- The last iMac models to be user-accessible were the ones introduced in 2011. From 2012 on, their reduced thickness has demanded for fewer moving parts, so to speak, and today the only accessible part are the RAM slots on the back, but only on 27-inch models. It’ll be interesting to see if Apple Silicon iMacs keep having user-expandable memory, or if it’s all going to be integrated in the same chip, like on the M1 machines.
- Removing MagSafe from post-2016 laptops in favour of USB‑C charging has been another controversial change. USB‑C is a more open, compatible solution, and one proprietary port less, but design-wise MagSafe is a more practical and innovative solution.
There are probably only three things Apple has introduced on Macs in their post-Jobs era that I really like: retina displays, the Force Touch trackpad, and TouchID (the latter being the least innovative, considering that IBM/Lenovo ThinkPads have had a fingerprint reader since 2004). All three are obvious improvements. And, bonus, the design of the 2019 Mac Pro and Pro Display XDR monitor is quite stunning, that’s for sure.
As for the overall stagnancy of Mac design, I’ve always said that perhaps the answer is a very ‘Occam’s razor’ one — i.e. the main reason is just lack of better ideas. This, at least, is what an external observer like myself sees. Maybe behind the scenes it’s much more complicated than that, and on the surface these are all coincidences. Still, if you go back and read Gurman’s rumours about the upcoming Macs, every mention of design changes is about small details, or bringing back old ideas and form factors. Design-wise, Apple today seems to be better at iterating and rehashing, rather than coming up with something really new or markedly better than what it replaces.
I’m not saying that the Jobs-Ive combination nailed everything when it comes to design, but both their absence is painfully clear at every Mac iteration. There was an element of whimsical in Jobs’s taste that made machines like the first colourful iMacs and iBooks possible, not to mention the Power Mac G4 Cube or peripherals like the first AirPort basestation. As for Ive, some may have disliked certain design ideas and decisions he developed, but his constant curiosity and research (especially when it comes to construction materials) produced tremendous improvements over the years. Instead, the last period of his tenure saw a progressive reduction of his freedom of experimenting and general agency (the main reasons that led to his leaving Apple, or so I’ve read), and that’s a pity. Apparently, today’s Apple prefers good lieutenants over good generals.
Anyway, I really prefer discussing new Macs and not rumours about new Macs, so take my tangent on Mac design with a grain of salt. Perhaps the new Macs we’re going to see from now on will prove me wrong in a way or another, and then I’ll be happy to parrot Phil Schiller’s infamous line, Can’t innovate anymore, my ass!