I’ve noted before how much I love new technology.  I’m always on the lookout for new products and love reading reviews of the same.

Not everything out there is worth buying, of course.  I can’t quite see the need to have, for example, this…

Don’t get me wrong, the “Family Hub” refrigerator may be a great product and all but…seriously, neither my wife nor I -together or separately- spend the sort of time in the kitchen area one would need to to actually use something like this.

For many years, Apple has been the golden child of technology.  Their iPhone, let’s face it, is THE phone to have for many, even though the Samsung models -and the big black eye they received with the Galaxy Note 7- are nonetheless is doing quite alright in terms of sales and market share, thankyouverymuch.

As I’ve also noted before, I’ve been around long enough to know that just because your company is big/huge now doesn’t mean you’ll stay there.

When I was very young, Atari was THE video game system.  Everyone had it.  Everyone loved it.  And for a while there it seemed Atari could do no wrong.

Until, that is, competitors came and stole Atari’s thunder with better products and games.  Atari, that dominant behemoth of the video game world, fell into disarray and, while the name still exists on certain products, the original company is long gone.

When smartphones started to come along, there was plenty of competition until one name rose above them all: Blackberry.

These phones were so popular that people dubbed them “Crackberrys” because one could not be without them.

Well, the Apple iPhone came along and Blackberry had no answer.  Eventually, the company folded and no more Blackberrys are being made

But as big a company as Apple has become, I’ve noted there are troubles brewing.  The death of Steve Jobs, the company’s co-founder and guiding light, certainly had to affect the company’s direction.  Yet the iPhones were still doing well and the iPads were/are pretty damn great products and even their computers were doing well–

–Until:

Apple’s newest MacBook Pro is the first MacBook not recommended by Consumer Reports

When the reports of the newest MacBooks were released, I was, as I always am with new products, interested in reading what was new and interesting in them.  Turned out there was one thing, it seemed, worth mentioning: The newest MacBook Pro laptop had a…touchbar?!

This graphic shows you what the touchbar does.  It effectively offers you a touchable bar (duh) where you can put shortcut keys or emojis or whatever you want to aid in whatever you’re doing.

Frankly, I was bewildered.

It just seems so…minor…a thing to add.  What about making the entire screen touchable?  It’s not like that doesn’t exist already in so many models of computers like, say, the Surface…

I genuinely thought the new MacBooks would go the Surface route.  I mean, the iPad effectively is an intermediary already.  Why not go the full route with the MacBooks?

Yet this was not done.

But according to the above article, Consumer Reports was particularly bothered by inconsistent battery charge in these MacBooks.  Consumer Reports wrote (this is quoted in the article):

The MacBook Pro battery life results were highly inconsistent from one trial to the next.

For instance, in a series of three consecutive tests, the 13-inch model with the Touch Bar ran for 16 hours in the first trial, 12.75 hours in the second, and just 3.75 hours in the third. The 13-inch model without the Touch Bar worked for 19.5 hours in one trial but only 4.5 hours in the next. And the numbers for the 15-inch laptop ranged from 18.5 down to 8 hours. 

Yikes.

I mean, if you need your laptop for work and you can’t charge it and are expecting to get at least six hours of work in…its understandable if you’re very frustrated if 4 hours into whatever you’re doing the battery in your MacBook is down to nothing.  Especially if previously its given you 10 plus hours.

Apple remains a very big, influential, and admired company and there isn’t a reason (yet anyway) to think they’re about to go down like Atari or Blackberry did.  However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t danger.

They need to focus on improving their products and, frankly, making sure these types of glitches don’t occur again.

Otherwise, they may well join the ranks of the once mighty.