Apple has always been a company about pressing forward, creating the all in one Mac, changing the music industry with the iPod series, followed by the iPhone which disrupted the phone industry. To Apple it was always about creating innovation but not so much nowadays. Nowadays Apple’s marketing and design convey a sense of confusion and mixed reactions compared to other companies.

The MacBook Pro was always the staple for creative people. It was what designers and video editors went to; the refresh however for me is mixed. Apple has removed a USB C port and added in HDMI and MagSafe while adding back the SD card reader as well as the headphone jack. Now while this to me seems like a good idea, it does create confusion when it comes to the adoption of ports.

The iPhones still uses the old thunderbolt which might change to USB C due to European wanting all phones to adopt 1 port but that’s a whole other story. But on the ports, a month ago, apple showed off the new iPad which still contains the same design with the finger print reader and uses the same port as the iPhone while in that same conference they showed off the new iPad mini which uses a USB C port. Why don’t they adopt USB C instead of sticking with the same old port and mixing and matching between devices?

Now another thing that left me confused was the new M1 chips, the Pro and the Max. I know apple will sunset some tech after 5 years, but outdoing your own chipset in the same 20 minute timeframe? Apple’s Marketing team and flashy videos can’t deter from the fact that creativity from them has become a little subpar this year. The new chip sets are currently only in the MacBook Pro line up, and there are three different tiers now instead of two. The 13 inch with the base M1 chip, the 14 inch with the pro, but also some of the new 16 inch comes with the pro chip and top tier 16 inch comes with the Max M1. If your confused it’s ok so am I. I am confused about why Apple didn’t also include the bigger iMac and the Mac Pro to use these chips, especially since currently on their website they are still selling them with intel in them, even with the new update coming out which won’t allow intel based macs access to all of the new features. It just kind of boggles my mind they wouldn’t refresh everything at once to show how important the new chipsets are.

What I think could of saved Apple was introducing the Pro chip as the enterprise level user and put that into the bigger iMac and introduce the Max chip into the Mac Pro for the creative user, giving people options instead of keeping the barrier to entry as a laptop, especially since a lot of people work from home now which if you remember in their last conference they pushed the work from home with the iMac a lot. My laptop hasn’t left the doc since January 2020 and I think at this point I would just buy a Mac mini. Also the reason why I hit on the laptop is when apple showed off the refreshed iMac for home use, I thought that was a great idea and Apple missing out on capitalizing on that all in one work from home computer.

Also why are they still trying to make the HomePod happen with a very confusing Apple Subscription.

I really don’t know what Apple was thinking by showing so little and what little they showed didn’t make me go wow but more of a “ehhh”alongside with confusion. The MacBook Pro design is good with the ports but with the fact I have a Mac with a touch bar and dongles out the wazoo that makes me wonder why they would go back now after saying for years they were moving forward and USB C was the future. Also I don’t have a need for AirPods, so my thought on that is meh. Overall I felt more wow come out of the Microsoft event with the new surface line up due to the fact that the devices they created cater to the individual and who and what they do by trying new form factors and not just sticking to the same.