The entire 2016 has been quite devoid of major Mac announcements and updates about the new products, making everyone anxious about what’s the real future that Apple devised for this line of goods. Even the new MacBook Pro is long overdue, clearly showing how Apple is neglecting its high-end PCs instead of using these products as a spearhead to drive off competition. While iMac, Mac Pro, or Mac mini weren’t so fortunate and never saw any update, even the MacBook Pro seems to be quite limited with its just 16GB of RAM and Intel’s Core i5 and i7 chip, compared to the forthcoming Microsoft Surface Studio and its innovative touchscreen technology. Apple did not even care about waiting a few more months for the next-generation quad-core Kaby Lake processor to become available before releasing the current model, worrying Mac users with what seemed to be a “we couldn’t care less” attitude.
One of the most widely advertised features of Macs is their alleged superior security that led many users into thinking that their computers were completely free from all kind of vulnerabilities. Expert users could prevent unauthorized access without any third-party program with a powerful built-in feature to encrypt the various Mac folders, and many new tools like Little Flocker and BlockBlock added further layers of security to an environment that is universally thought of as one the safest around. However, Mac OS X is all but invulnerable to outside attacks, as showed by the recent Russian “Fancy Bear” hacker group hit. Their “Komplex” Trojan did not exploit a software vulnerability: instead, the cyber espionage group simply used a phishing email to unload their payload in the form of an executable code disguised as a PDF. Today’s users need to use their own Mac OS X VPNs to protect their browsing much like PC users, losing more and more ground against the simpler and more appealing Windows operating systems.
Apple keeps putting Mac products in a declining category of run-of-the-mill classic “keyboard and mouse” devices that, although far from being obsolete yet, is not cutting-edge or avant-garde either. The new MacBook Pro seems to be more optimized for lightness and thinness rather than power and high-end computing features, a strategy that, although viable, yet again sounds much more like 2014 than 2016. Mac users always have been more interested in computer specs rather than design, and even this choice seemed to be at least questionable. If Apple will not renew its entire line of Mac products within a few months, including the largely overlooked iMac and Mac Pro, there’s a distinct possibility that the whole line will fail to get through 2017.
