34 replies to this topic

[G_Player]

I really miss the old "Power On/Off" button that used to be on Apple's keyboard.

With the bigger screen displays, you have to push em' back to take in the whole image. That means the computer sits farther back, which means you gotta get up and turn the computer and feel around for the Power button.

Wouldn't it be nice if Apple revived a discontinued but still useful feature?

What discontinued feature do you miss?

[Matt Diamond]

iMac target display mode, which allowed you to use some iMacs as an external monitor.

If I could get a shiny new iMac AND use it as an external monitor for those days when I have to work from home, I'd probably ditch my Mac Pro 2008. As it is I'm waiting to see what the next Mac Pro looks like.

[Spike]

PCI expansion in the desktop computers.

[Cougar]

Reliable keyboards on MacBook Pros.

[Camper-Hunter]

G_Player, on 10 January 2018 - 08:48 PM, said:

I really miss the old "Power On/Off" button that used to be on Apple's keyboard.

With the bigger screen displays, you have to push em' back to take in the whole image. That means the computer sits farther back, which means you gotta get up and turn the computer and feel around for the Power button.

Apple expects you to seldom shut down the Mac, and instead put it to sleep. This way hitting any key on the keyboard wakes it up.

I miss:
- affordable Mac Pro
- modular Mac Pro
- matte displays on iMac and portables
- screws instead of glue everywhere
- non soldered RAM and SSDs
- non bug ridden macOS

No wonder I no longer own Macs...

[Thain Esh Kelch]

• Affordable expansive Mac for gaming.
• macOS without bugs.
• The startup chime.
• A macOS that is being taken serious, and not just an afterthought.

If the graphic card on my 2011 iMac fails, and a reflow doesn't work the second time, I may consider going Windows.

[mattw]

Lack of an affordable, expandable desktop is why I am approaching a full decade since I purchased a new Mac (unlike iOS devices).

Thankfully because the last one was both with the help of affordable third party upgrades it still does what I really need it too (always nice to do more/new things or get more speed though).

With sleep and less rebooting I have got used to no power button on the keyboard now, and still have a boot chime:) ..just no boot screen with latest GPU which takes a bit of getting used to.

How about hardware you always wished existed? For me total silent afordable fast mass storage (i.e. 10TB SSD drives for a couple of hundred), a usb Hub with on/off switches for each port (so controllers etc. can all be left attached and no crawling about unplugging cables).

[DirtyHarry50]

mattw, on 11 January 2018 - 06:59 AM, said:

Lack of an affordable, expandable desktop is why I am approaching a full decade since I purchased a new Mac (unlike iOS devices).

This is why I gave up on Mac desktops. I can’t afford the computer I would have liked along with a Windows PC to complete the functionality I wanted. Continued improvements to iOS have caused me to be fine with an iPad Pro for consumptive use and very basic productivity use. I sold the HP laptop I was wasting time with and I just use this for everything now. I even enjoy some very good games on it from time to time. I limit these to real games without micro transactions and I am happy I can still give my business to Feral and Aspyr on iOS along with a handful of other noteworthy games.

This became not only a painless move but a really great one given the discovery of how much fun I can have with my PS4 Slim and Xbox One S that together cost me under a grand loaded with every accessory I wanted for them. A 4K UHD television is the next planned upgrade around here and I’ll consider the console options to go with it then. I am already very happy with and grateful for what I have so there’s no rush. If anything, I’d love to get a Nintendo Switch before a new television so I could play Zelda, Mario Kart, Metroid Prime 4 and more. I don’t need a new tv for that.

Next refresh I think I’ll move up to the largest iPad Pro but I don’t care about pens or keyboards for it. A larger display would be sweet though for the way I use mine.

[DirtyHarry50]

By the way, I am not looking to sell my subjective preferences to anyone aside of sometimes joking about my views being the only correct and best options possible. This just works really great for me for a lot of reasons.

[Frost]

I miss the switch on the side of iPads for locking/unlocking portrait rotation. I used that constantly when I had my iPad mini 2 a couple years ago. Now have an iPad Pro 9.7 and I hate having to use the control center all the time for that instead of a nice easy switch.

[mattw]

Frost, on 11 January 2018 - 01:33 PM, said:

I miss the switch on the side of iPads for locking/unlocking portrait rotation. I used that constantly when I had my iPad mini 2 a couple years ago. Now have an iPad Pro 9.7 and I hate having to use the control center all the time for that instead of a nice easy switch.

Hadn't realised they got rid of that on the latest ones. With my refurb Air 2 very occasionally I have to restart it because it gets stuck in a rotation - some kind of software bug I think.

[G_Player]

I'm kinda surprised no one has mentioned the removal of the headphone jack from the latest iPhones. That was all the rage last year.

@Camper-Hunter,

I always shut down my Mac Mini everyday, sometimes multiple times a day. Clears out memory, saves energy, never had a problem.

[Janichsan]

G_Player, on 12 January 2018 - 12:44 PM, said:

I'm kinda surprised no one has mentioned the removal of the headphone jack from the latest iPhones. That was all the rage last year.

I have an iPhone SE, amongst others because it still has a headphone jack.

Other features I miss:

• battery charge indicator LEDs on Macbooks
  
• user replaceable RAM and HDDs/SSDs
  
• SD card slot

mattw, on 12 January 2018 - 12:09 PM, said:

Hadn't realised they got rid of that on the latest ones. With my refurb Air 2 very occasionally I have to restart it because it gets stuck in a rotation - some kind of software bug I think.

My iPad mini 2 does that from time to time, too, since the iOS 11 upgrade. Definitely a software bug.

[macdude22]

There's some sort of rotation bug in iOS 11 I have seen iPads and iPhones of all manner exhibit this behavior. I can never replicate consistently or I would open a radar on it.

[mattw]

DirtyHarry50, on 11 January 2018 - 11:40 AM, said:

This is why I gave up on Mac desktops. I can't afford the computer I would have liked along with a Windows PC to complete the functionality I wanted. Continued improvements to iOS have caused me to be fine with an iPad Pro for consumptive use and very basic productivity use. I sold the HP laptop I was wasting time with and I just use this for everything now. I even enjoy some very good games on it from time to time. I limit these to real games without micro transactions and I am happy I can still give my business to Feral and Aspyr on iOS along with a handful of other noteworthy games.

This became not only a painless move but a really great one given the discovery of how much fun I can have with my PS4 Slim and Xbox One S that together cost me under a grand loaded with every accessory I wanted for them. A 4K UHD television is the next planned upgrade around here and I'll consider the console options to go with it then. I am already very happy with and grateful for what I have so there's no rush. If anything, I'd love to get a Nintendo Switch before a new television so I could play Zelda, Mario Kart, Metroid Prime 4 and more. I don't need a new tv for that.

Next refresh I think I'll move up to the largest iPad Pro but I don't care about pens or keyboards for it. A larger display would be sweet though for the way I use mine.

DirtyHarry50, on 11 January 2018 - 11:46 AM, said:

By the way, I am not looking to sell my subjective preferences to anyone aside of sometimes joking about my views being the only correct and best options possible. This just works really great for me for a lot of reasons.

Getting something else more focused on gaming is always something I do come back to but, the problem is there are several compromises for my needs going that route too.

The main comprise in having a Mac for everything all these years has been with gaming as some games that sound interesting never make it across, or stop working before I get round to them!, and now the MacOS hardware upgrade path is very unclear.

I've tried some games on iOS and using a game pad with my Mac but find I still prefer a mouse and keyboard for my gaming in general (except for driving games where I want a wheel).
Even with computer versions of games it is often clear that a game pad was assumed but it just doesn't feel the same some how after all these years.

I wouldn't want to use Windows for anything much other than gaming as I'm pretty happy with the iTunes/Apple eco-system and familiar with the interfaces which rules out a straight platform move but, If I had a gaming PC in theory I wouldn't need that powerful a Mac, except:

I'd need to find space somewhere to put the extra hardware.
There would be more time required in maintaining another system as well.
Having 12-cores now whilst overkill much of time does make short work of both H264 video encoding and handling audio work in Logic X and, it would be difficult to accept a new machine that was slower at anything even if faster for most regular tasks.
I still like having lots of storage that is fast and takes up no extra space being internal - every time I look at other options like a NAS I think about just how long to would take to copy and backup multiple TBs over Ethernet compared to now - which still takes hours so isn't fast enough...

I have thought that maybe Steam home streaming (if it can manage 1440p over a gigabit network) might be one possibility should Apple sill not offer an upgrade path. The one issue I guess would be racing games and I'd guess not being able to use a wheel remotely.

I did eventually sign up for the Mac Geforce NOW beta but it just said it was already at capacity in my region and to join a wait list. I figured at the very least I'd get to try out Mafia 3 which I picked up in a Steam sale but the Mac port refuses to run (I have tried it with GTX680, R9 280X and now RX 580 but it just crashes on launch so seems it might not like the maybe number of CPUs or base clock speed as I heard a 6-core 3.33GHz owner had it working). Thankfully every other modern Mac title from F1 2017, to Hitman, to Deus Ex Mankind Divided runs nicely so far...

[mattw]

Janichsan, on 12 January 2018 - 12:54 PM, said:

I have an iPhone SE, amongst others because it still has a headphone jack.

• user replaceable RAM and HDDs/SSDs

I'm not by any means a heavy phone user but I do love my SE and find the bigger iPhones all too slippy and difficult to hold and use with one hand, not to mention a problem for fitting in tight pockets. It will be interesting to see if a smaller iPhone X type design does arrives one day but the SE performance is still decent for my uses mostly.

I really don't understand the need or choice off soldering in RAM or storage, surely it can only add to the cost when these things are normally designed to be modular anyway...

[Camper-Hunter]

mattw, on 12 January 2018 - 01:26 PM, said:

I really don't understand the need or choice off soldering in RAM or storage, surely it can only add to the cost when these things are normally designed to be modular anyway...

Apple doesn't do it for the money: if it's more expensive it's not a problem, Apple simply raises the product price! Apple customers are used to pay more than the average PC price anyways.
They do it because it permits slimer products, and that's currently all the rage in their design department. Some would say an added benefit for Apple is one is forced to buy a new product instead of just upgrading it (the danger is if the customer is pissed and switches to a PC instead, but overall that doesn't happen often I believe).

[Frost]

Janichsan, on 12 January 2018 - 12:54 PM, said:

Other features I miss:

• battery charge indicator LEDs on Macbooks
  
• user replaceable RAM and HDDs/SSDs
  
• SD card slot

I suppose I will upgrade my 2012 MacBook Pro at some time, but I can't see it happening for this reason. I've had a 2TB 850 Pro in it for ages. It shipped with 8GB and I bumped it up to 16GB of RAM. If I feel pressed for space, there are 4TB options on the market and 98% of my time will just be spent moving my data over to it. The actual hardware upgrade is about a 90-120 second job. I can also read SD cards from my DSLR without a dongle. I can connect to ethernet at a work site without a dongle. When my battery starts to suffer, replacement with a fresh one is a simple 2 minute job needing nothing but a screwdriver.

I'm still of the opinion if Apple wants a super-slim portable Mac at the expense of broad spectrum capability, knock themselves out on the MacBook. But for the MacBook PRO, the machine being geared toward professional use rather than just being slim should rule the day. I WOULD upgrade to a new MacBook Pro right now if it would increase the convenience level of doing what I do with it instead of decreasing it. So, Apple is actually denying themselves a sale there.

Besides keeping Macs going well past their expiration date is also cool. I just did what will probably be the final upgrade on my 2001 PowerBook G4 Titanium (and in fact I'm typing this on it) this week. Swapped the 512GB Crucial M550 mSATA SSD with cheap Chinese mSATA to PATA adapter card to a cooler, faster, less power-hungry Micron M600 512GB mSATA SSD on a high end, high-quality Taiwanese mSATA to PATA adapter. Just finished booting into MacOS 9.2.2 to make sure it's working fine off the M600. It is. As is Classilla.

 Classilla.jpg   120.95K   8 downloads

[Thain Esh Kelch]

G_Player, on 12 January 2018 - 12:44 PM, said:

I'm kinda surprised no one has mentioned the removal of the headphone jack from the latest iPhones. That was all the rage last year.

I've never understood that one, and see it as being similar to the outcry when they removed the floppy drive, ADB, SCSI, DVD drive, whatever thing thing people couldn't live without but actually could when they just tried.

Sure, you bought a pair of 1000$ headphones, then use the adapter and it will work as before. You have a collections of headphones? Well, stay in the past dude. You think the sound is better? Stick to LPs.

[Matt Diamond]

Quote

Sure, you bought a pair of 1000$ headphones, then use the adapter and it will work as before.

In my car I sometimes need to charge the phone and have it plugged in to the sound system at the same time. Dongle doesn't solve that problem. Very happy with my iPhone SE, not looking forward to getting one without a jack one day. I'll deal with it one way or another, but I can understand the outcry.