I was disappointed on Monday when the WWDC keynote made no mention at all about future Mac hardware, not even a general roadmap. I'm in need of a new laptop, one that has powerful hardware, including 32 GB RAM, and unfortunately there's no portable solution from Apple that supports more than 16 GB of RAM unless I want to lug around my Mac Pro or purchase a high-end iMac.

For the past few months I've been using Linux Mint on a spare ThinkPad T430 that I have. As a computer science researcher I use my computers for development (largely in C, C++, Java, or Python, although I've been bitten by the Lisp and Smalltalk bugs lately and I've been learning Common Lisp and Pharo, respectively), reading and writing papers, drawing the occasional diagram, and entertainment. For these purposes Linux Mint is good, and I could be productive in this environment. However, there are a lot of conveniences in macOS that I miss in Linux or even Windows, and these little conveniences make me more productive in macOS than in other operating systems. I prefer Keynote to PowerPoint and to LibreOffice Impress. I love how it is possible to print to PDF from any macOS application; it's a feature I regularly take advantage of. I love Preview.app; it can concatenate PDF files, and Preview.app also supports PDF highlighting, which is a feature I make heavy use of as a computer science researcher. Unfortunately, I had a difficult time finding a Linux-compatible PDF viewer that could highlight PDF files in a portable way. Even running Adobe Acrobat Reader under Wine wasn't sufficient due to rendering issues under Wine. Another Mac program I make full use of that has no Linux equivalent is Dictionary.app, which contains the New Oxford American Dictionary, a Japanese-English dictionary, and a Japanese-Japanese dictionary. Having an offline dictionary is a wonderful convenience, and as someone studying Japanese, having full Japanese-English and Japanese-Japanese dictionaries on my computer is amazing. I'm unaware of any Windows equivalents, and the issue in Linux is commercial dictionary support due to copyright issues. Yeah, there are some open source dictionaries like Wiktionary, and there's the 1913 version of Webster's that's in the public domain, but it's not the same as having the most recent Merriam-Webster's, Oxford, or American Heritage Dictionary available. I could also use online dictionaries, but once again an offline dictionary is more convenient.

The past few days have opened my eyes to the disadvantages of being a Mac user. I'm increasingly resenting being beholden to one hardware provider in order to use macOS legally. I made this compromise starting in 2006, back when Apple was regularly releasing new Macs that were not only excellent performers, but were also reliable and price-competitive. I have fond memories of my 2006 Core Duo MacBook, which still works, by the way. But ever since Steve Jobs passed away, I've found Mac hardware to be increasingly compromised on the performance standpoint, as well as increasingly considerably more expensive than equivalent PCs. The current iteration of MacBook Pro is also a departure from Apple's legendary reliability, and is shaping up to dethrone the infamous PowerBook 5300 as Apple's worst laptop (and I actually have a PowerBook 5300 that my friend gave me; it's not a bad computer, it was just plagued by reliability issues that Apple addressed in a seven-year recall program). I could deal with USB-C, I could deal with a touchbar, and I could even swallow soldered RAM and SSD even though I have contempt for a lack of user-serviceability, but what I could not tolerate is a faulty keyboard design that is not only considerably less reliable than any other keyboard Apple has ever made, but is very expensive to fix outside of warranty. Unfortunately the alternatives that Apple provides aren't suitable for me. I already have a Mac Pro, I don't need an iMac or a Mac Mini, the current MacBook Air lineup is just a marginal speed bump from my dead 2013 MacBook Air, and I'm not paying what Apple charges for a 2015 15" MacBook Pro ($1999 new, $1699 refurbished; it's possible to buy a Dell XPS 15 9560 with a 4k display, a quad-core Kaby Lake i7 processor, 32 GB RAM and a 1 TB M.2 SSD for $1900 right now).

macOS still remains my favorite OS, and there will be many conveniences that I will be giving up by switching away to Linux and/or Windows. Unfortunately it seems that Apple's decisions regarding its Mac hardware from 2015 onward have left me flummoxed. On one hand Apple is still investing in macOS updates, as evidenced by its work on High Sierra and now Mojave. Apple also did release the iMac Pro, and the modular Mac Pro is in the works for a 2019 release. These actions suggest that Apple is not abandoning the Mac. On the other hand, the Mac Mini hasn't been updated since October 2014 and the rest of Apple's lineup hasn't been updated in a year now (there are no Coffee Lake offerings from Apple), yet Apple remains tight-lipped about its future hardware plans.

I wish Apple were a better steward of the Mac platform, where each product in the lineup is updated on a regular, consistent basis, and where Apple has a six-quadrant matrix of products: the rows represent desktops and laptops, and the columns represent three categories of user: casual users, intermediate users, and "no compromise" users. I wholeheartedly believe that Apple should create a branch company à la Claris that focuses exclusively on the Mac.

I wish things were better with the Mac platform, but my needs can't wait on announcements from Apple. For now I'll make do with a laptop running Linux or Windows, but what I would really love to see is a new, well-polished, cross-platform OS that brings innovation back to desktop computing. Despite contrarian voices saying that smartphones and tablets will overtake personal computers, there are still many things that personal computers are more appropriate for than smartphones and tablets are. Unfortunately there are no passionate defenders of desktop computing left in the industry. Apple's priorities seem to be clearly about the iOS platform (although they're maintaining the Mac at a level high enough to keep us Mac users in suspense), Microsoft's priorities are about the cloud these days, and even in the Linux world the emphasis seems to be on technologies relevant to servers, such as all of the work that's been done on containers in recent years. I feel that desktop computing has stagnated, but it's stagnating because the companies maintaining today's desktop operating systems are not passionate about desktop computing. We need individuals and companies who are passionate about desktop computing and want to bring renewed levels of innovation and polish to personal computers again.