The same hardcore users who dislike the new Macbook Pros?

How many of those do you ?

How many of those hardcore users actually do like the new MBP and do not bother talking about it ?

I would honestly appreciate to see a bit more fact & figures instead of anecdotal evidence.

I'd love to see that too. Sales seems to be high for the MBP so maybe there's more quiet supporters than loud detractors. However the very existence of loud detractors about a product line, which historically has had far more fervent defenders than critics, indicates the hardcore users are unhappy overall.

Apple, more than any other tech company, usually attracts the "can do no wrong" type of fans. They're still around for this product lineup but much quieter than usual. That should be worrying for Apple, assuming they still care about Macs.

At any given time, some (heavy) users were critical about new Apple products and Apple decisions, lamenting that they forget about their most valuable and vocal fans. Apple killed the floppy drive, multiple connectors, "great" products (clickwheel iPod, anyone), resetted software products (FCP, Pages), killed services and so on. Heck, they even killed the Apple ][. And some users cried foul on each of these decisions.

Just now, the internet and clickbait journalism give these voices much more weight. Apple isn't the underdog anymore and Apple bashing produces page views.

That said, of course Apple products aren't perfect. But they never were. But even 10 or 15 years ago, a lot of Apple supporters didn't buy 1.0 releases of new products, didn't install OS/X x.0 releases and so on.

How reasonable are these critics? E.g.: How many users do really need 32GB RAM on their MBP, an option not available before, but now a big failure if you read comments, blogs and articles about Apple. I bet its a tiny minority that is truly limited by this constraint. But still, everyone is complaining.

In my mind it is not even so much that I need 32gb now, but as apps get more bloated it may be useful in the future, and seeing how the RAM is pretty much impossible to upgrade it seems very short sited to not have any more RAM than I've had for the past 5 years.

I doubt that this is happening at the same pace as say last decade though.

Yes - I know a bunch of software developers who excitedly bought one of the new MacBook pros on launch day. And Apple has said that by volume it was one of their best laptop launches ever. I think regarding the new mbps the internet echo chamber doesn't mirror reality.

> by volume it was one of their best laptop launches ever

I argue: One reason is that it took Apple one and a half years to refresh the MacBook Pro, leading to pent up demand. Previous models were refreshed after max. 0.8 years, from 2015 to 2016 it took 1.7 years.

And this "it took Apple one and a half years to refresh" hasn't anything to do with Intels lackluster product cycles and product refreshes?

Why update products if the update is only marginally faster/better/newer than the current model?

Really, I can buy a new Acer or Lenovo notebook with a shiny new model number and a lot of "enhanced", "new" and "better" features every two months. It is more difficult to buy the old, trusted models of Lenovo notebooks than fresh models - that all are only better according to marketing, but somehow not faster or better and often somehow crippled in real world use. Do you want that from Apple?

> I dunno why everyone thinks they will

Probably because we constantly hear stories that they have combined their OS teams. The recent problems with PDF Kit seem to confirm that there is a convergence and quality / features of the macOS side of the house are not a priority.