Back in 2016 the narrative around Apple was that they don’t care about professional users anymore. They had become a consumer-only company and their message to professional users felt at times to be “deal with it, we’re Apple.” I don’t think things were as dire as some in the industry, but it was hard to ignore the frustration bubbling to the surface.

But as we start 2018 it seems like the conversation has completely changed. In early 2017 we got confirmation from Apple that they were indeed working on a new Mac Pro that would be expandable, offer the high end specs some pros need, and would address the concerns people had with the old trash can design.

We recently got the iMac Pro as well, a machine that is a professional machine for almost everyone. No, it can’t be upgraded, but the specs it has are truly impressive and seems to have lead to a lot of smiles from people who bought one.

On the software side we have also seen movement. They released Final Cut Pro X 10.4 back in December 2017 and it was met with glee by most people. The changes that were in this free update made the whole app feel new and added some long time requests, most notably top notch color correction tools. And that wasn’t it for FCPX updates in 2017! 10.3 came out just in October and came with a new look and feel and another slew of major updates to functionality.

While devs will always have issues with Xcode, it too received some long requested features in 2017, not least of which was being able to build to external devices over-the-air. There were also major improvements to build times, refactoring, and the editor’s performance in general.

And most recently we have Logic Pro X, which has received similarly glowing reviews from users. And yes, Logic also got a major update in January 2017 to improve the user interface and add features.

Even just looking at Mac hardware and software, 2017 and early 2018 have been very good for professional users on the Mac. I hope the rest of this year continues the trend, and I am ever hopeful that this is the year we see Apple bring some of their professional apps to iOS. I’m personally looking for Final Cut Pro, but I’ll take any move into this space. Let’s make the iPad a more capable machine once again in 2018!