Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac
It&#x27;s actually kind of amazing to see the discourse shift against Apple and the new MacBook Pro to the point where it seems almost self-reinforcing. Like someone turned the reality distortion field on backwards or something.<p>I&#x27;ve been wanting a mac laptop the size and weight of a MacBook Air 13&quot; but with a retina display for years, and the ability to connect usb, power and external display with just a single cable is just icing on the cake. The TouchBar - meh, but using TouchID to unlock 1Password is handy if not revolutionary. But the point is, by most standards the new MBPs are great laptops for most professionals, especially software developers - solid build quality, fast, great screens, long battery life and lightweight. Sure, there are undoubtedly some people who really need to plug a ton of USB-A devices every day or need more than 16gb to run a ton of VMs or something, and for those it must be an unwelcome regression. But honestly, I have a hard time believing that can make up more than 5-10% of the market of the previous models.<p>I can&#x27;t really see how that can explain the public opinion turning against them to quite the extent that it has. I&#x27;m guessing it&#x27;s a combination of several other factors: 1) Apple hasn&#x27;t made a really revolutionary product since Jobs died. (Apple Watch was an honest try, but the product category was as dead a fish as the nay-sayers predicted). We expect these people to produce magic every x years, and they are long over-due with their next miracle. They put out an evolutionary product but it gets judged against the revolution that we were longing for. 2) Microsoft&#x27;s entry into the laptop market has been with some surprisingly solid, and even innovative products (e.g. the Surface Book). They might not quite be revolutionary, but they are at least more so than the new MBP is. And their willingness on taking on niche markets (e.g. a Cintiq-killer for graphic designers) is contrasting with Apple&#x27;s &#x27;regression to the mean&#x27; where niche audiences are increasingly being neglected in favor of the less demanding mainstream consumer. Those 5-10% Apple just pissed off might not make a big difference on the bottomline themselves, but they are part of the hip trendsetters that used to be the poster child for the mac platform.