Riccardo Mori really nailed it with his latest post, Raw power alone is not enough where he talks about how Apple has left its software to wither, while it has been busy beefing up its hardware offering. The article is full of juicy content, but I’ve pulled out the parts that resonated with me:

Without innovation in software, all we’re doing with these new powerful machines is essentially the same we were doing 20 years ago on PowerPC G4 and G5 computers, but faster and more conveniently.

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So, again, we have absurdly powerful machines like the Mac Studio and soon we’ll have the even more mind-boggling Apple silicon Mac Pro, and what kind of software will they run? A handful of professional apps which hopefully will take advantage of these machines’ capabilities to make the same things professional Macs did twenty years ago, ten years ago, but better and faster.

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This is the personal beef I have with tech innovation today, which I feel still revolving around the concept of ‘reinventing the wheel and making it spin faster’.

I’ve had a number of generations of Apple hardware pass through my hands, but I essentially work in the same way, with a few small workflow changes around the edges. I don’t do video, but I would love some revolutionary ways to leverage all the power of the M-series chips.

Software today still comes with much more friction than it should have, given the context of general technological advancement that has happened for the past 40 years or so.

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Without innovation in software, all we’re doing with these new powerful machines is essentially the same we were doing 20 years ago on PowerPC G4 and G5 computers, but faster and more conveniently.

None of Apple’s software (or much software across the industry) has become easier. Actually, much of it has become harder as a result of either feature-bloat leading to design complexity, or fashionable UI changes making things less discernible, HIG be damned.

I would love for their to be some great workflow/project-management software that was integral with macOS. I don’t want to have to jump out to some third-party web service, or use a mishmash of Hook, OmniFocus, Finder and Devonthink to manage project files. Finder is too small-minded with the combination of apps and services and files. But Apple doesn’t seem to care about innovating in any of the hard spaces, or creating new interaction models for existing hardware.

I don’t make video, but I’m a professional user of a Mac. I’d like some thought given to my workflows too.