I agree the increasing focus on amateur creatives is problematic, but when I really think about it…

I agree the increasing focus on amateur creatives is problematic, but when I really think about it buying a Surface vs plunking down for one of these, the Mac value proposition for professionals still goes pretty deep. I’m a professional developer and writer, a semi-pro DJ and I take the occasional picture. I was skeptical about the touch bar initially but, while I fully admit I might be a fuddy duddy and I will look back at this statement five years from now and laugh, for the vast majority of what I sit in front of a computer for, I don’t *like* touching the main screen. I have to look at it all the time, and I don’t like smudges. DJing is the only exception and the toolbar could be a fairly elegant solution; it seems like it might at least have a shot at replacing the old iPad I drag to gigs to use as my multi-touch DJ controller. But the main thing is, when I think about switching to the Microsoft developer world, it gives me a sad. I really love having unix under the hood and it makes my life as a web developer vastly easier. I can see how for someone who has upgraded recently, this is a bit of a limp noodle. I’m not in that category: I’m running a 2009 15" MBP that I recently stuck an SSD in. It’s delightfully fast now, but I imagine the age of that machine puts me in the three-sigma part of the curve of Mac cheapskates. But between the folks like me and the vastly larger group of people who just buy the latest whatever, because oo shiny, I bet they’re going to sell a pile of these things. Seems to me even with Apple clearly focusing less on it, the value proposition is still there for a lot of professionals whether they like it or not.