I don't want to, but Apple is making it difficult to stay in the walled garden.

I know I'll most likely never be able to afford a Mac Pro, but I can't help but be a little disappointed that Apple didn't at least give us a sneak peek at the upcoming Apple Silicon Mac Pro. We're coming to the end of the two years Apple said they would take for their transition to their own silicon, but not a peep has been heard about the most powerful Mac of all.

WWDC did bring some nice new features to its iOS, iPadOS, and watchOS systems though, which look really nice. The only disappointing part is that for most of them, you need the latest hardware for them to work. For example, one of my favourite new features is the ability to use your phone as a webcam just by selecting it as the camera in the app you want to use. But as I no longer have a Mac capable of running the latest version of macOS, I'm out of luck.

I don't want to create yet another one of my many shopping lists, but if I wanted to use all of the new features in the latest releases of each of their operating systems, I'd end up shelling out £9,927. That would be for a Mac Studio to replace my basically dead Mac mini that runs as a server, a 24-inch iMac to use as my desktop computer, a MacBook Pro for use when I'm doing events, and then, of course, a 12.9-inch iPad Pro to replace my 1st gen 12.9-inch iPad Pro.

I don't know about you, but I don't have £10,000 to drop on all of this new gear, as much as I may want it all. I've been building my desktop PC for over a year so I can buy the parts second-hand as and when I can afford them. (So far I have the case and an AIO CPU cooler). I originally designed it around building a Hackintosh, but even then, once Apple drops support for Intel CPUs from their operating systems, I'm back to running either Windows or Linux if I want the latest security updates and bug fixes.

I've said it before, and I'll probably say it again and again, but things were much simpler when Apple only released a smaller number of products: one iPhone, one iPad, two laptops, an iMac, and a Mac Pro-type device. When they did this, the pricing was reasonable. Don't get me wrong, there was still an "Apple tax," but it wasn't like it is now. I remember when I got my first Mac mini. It was £400, lasted me almost seven years, and was still getting updates. Now though, whilst my current Mac mini could technically run the last iteration of macOS, it didn't do it well and struggled just booting up. Gone are the days of endless support; instead, we seem to have returned to the 90s with an endless stream of products.

Dare I say it, but I think I'm slowly starting to transition away from Apple, and not through choice. I still think they have one of the better operating systems, and what they are doing with Apple Silicon is amazing, don't get me wrong. But I find myself using Linux more and more. If there was a decent mobile offering other than the bloat and Google-ware filled Android, I'd be very tempted to jump ship. I really like the look of Ubuntu's mobile OS, but that seems to have led nowhere, and everything else is just a version of Android with a different skin on it.

I suppose it's my own fault for jumping into the walled garden with both feet many moons ago, but to be honest, I still don't really regret it. Everything just works. When so many of the technical things I try to do elsewhere just don't work, it makes life so much simpler to know that when I get home, I can tap my phone and the lights and TV will come on without fail (well, at least the lights that are HomeKit native).

I've been very lucky to afford the Apple products I do own, but I think that time is coming to an end. Expect to see a post in the not-so-distant future where I'm looking at replacements for the Apple devices I have. I just hope I can find an ecosystem that works anywhere near as well as Apple's.