alt Hacker NewsYes, macOS/iOS aesthetics reached their peak around 2013-14. Hardware-wise, the story is similar; the 2012 MacBook Pro was the most marvelous piece of hardware I've ever bought.
I miss that feeling. No part of me would agree that Apple is a more impressive company today than it was 13 years ago, despite its market cap.
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Hardware-wise the peak is obviously the M-series. Ditching x86 while simultaneously nearly flawlessly emulating x86 apps via Rosetta - making the transition to ARM64 completely painless - was a landmark achievement.
Perhaps it’s just nostalgia on my part, but I really don’t understand imposing the constraint of making every Mac app look like the rounded iPhone app buttons. To me, it makes it harder at a glance to distinguish one app from another compared to the older designs.
If you think right now is not the peak of the MacBook Pro, you should consider buying a MacBook Pro. (Typing this from a 14" MacBook Pro M4 Pro with Nano-texture.)
What do you dislike about modern Macbooks compared to 2012?
I started using MacBooks in 2007. The generations from around that time until 2012 or so we're marvelous.
- With some models you could open the battery with a simple handle.
- Some models had a small LED bar that you could check the battery status with, without opening the lid.
- Replaceable RAM and disk. In one Pro I replaced the hard drive with an SSD (almost nobody had an SSD yet) and it would fly. I could open all Creative Suite apps (which were still optimized for spinning rust) in three seconds.
After that started the dark ages. Soldered RAM, soldered SSD, no more MagSafe, only USB-C ports, keyboards that could be destroyed with specs of dust. And the overheating Intel CPUs.
In 2019-2021 there was a rebound. First the scissor keyboard returned, then Apple Silicon, and good amounts of ports again.
It was really hard to be a Mac user ~2016-2020.