A roundup of the mostly negative reactions to the new MacBook Pros and the current state of the Mac by creative professionals and developers
I was really disappointed with today's Apple event. It seems like Apple has either lost its way, that it has lost touch with what (some of) …
Context & Ripple Effects
This roundup lands at the end of a two-year slide for Apple's pro line. The 2016 MacBook Pro event follows the one-port, performance-stepped-back 12-inch MacBook and a day after Charged Tech's argument that the new Pros turn Apple's back on its core customers. The complaint set is consistent: the Touch Bar replaces keys professionals use, ports pros depend on are gone, and specs lag what creative workloads demand.
What makes it worth watching rather than just venting is the developer angle: as the critique of Apple's disinterest in compute- and memory-intensive applications argues, neglecting pro hardware risks alienating the people who build for all of Apple's platforms — and Marco.org had already diagnosed aggressive minimalism as the failure mode of the 2013 Mac Pro.
First-order effects
- Creative professionals buying a pro laptop today get fewer ports, no MagSafe-era conveniences, and a Touch Bar instead of function keys — pushing some toward Windows workstations or delaying upgrades.
- Developers building compute- and memory-intensive apps see Apple signaling that their hardware needs are not a priority, which colors how much they invest in Mac-targeted software.
Second-order effects
- The backlash forces Apple's next pro-hardware decisions into damage control: the Mac Pro redesign now carries explicit demands for versatility over minimalism, per the Marco.org post-mortem.
- Rival workstation makers and Windows OEMs get a rare opening to court defections among video editors, audio engineers, and developers who previously defaulted to MacBooks.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Apple's pro line oscillates between design-led reinvention and walked-back correction — a cycle confirmed when the 2021 MacBook Pros restored HDMI, SD, and MagSafe, killed the Touch Bar, and were framed explicitly as Apple listening to users (the M1 Pro/Max 14- and 16-inch models).
- Sustained neglect of the pro base carries a systemic cost beyond hardware sales: the developers and creative toolmakers who define each platform's software gravity drift toward whichever vendor treats their workloads as first-class.
The trend: Apple's pro hardware keeps cycling between minimalist reinvention and user-driven rollback, with professional backlash acting as the correction mechanism across the 2016-to-2021 MacBook Pro arc.