After a fairly lacklustre iPhone upgrade to the 7 (and it's less than stellar reception), I don't think I could feel more underwhelmed by the new MacBook Pro.

Only time will tell if the Touch Bar is a success, but my initial impressions make me think gimmick — the early reviews on the Verge suggest that the Touch Bar is ace because, well y'know, you can quickly press a button on the Touch Bar to reply to your email, or even reply-all. Lord knows that would shave a good 0.3 of a second off holding cmd-R, or cmd-shift-R.

And don't even get me started on the removal of the Pause/Play and Volume keys, possibly my most used function keys.

The overall impression I am left with is of an inconsistent ecosystem. Apple have been famed for their incredible vision with an almost unbelievable track record, and tying all their products together in a coherent manner which made everything effortless.

And now?

We have dongles, and more dongles. We have a Touch Bar which realistically won't change your work-life. We have headphones without a jack, which don't actually connect to a MacBook Pro released a month later (this in itself is totally mind blowing to me). We have an iPhone/iPad, MacBooks, MacBook Pros and a Watch that all feel like they were made by teams in silos. They have different cables, different ways of interacting, different approaches to software design and all include "features" which feel like they were added for adding-sake.

Now look over at Microsoft. Look at their Surface range. Inspired by Apple, but crucially, pushing boundaries whilst following a single vision.

I adore Apple, but it's becoming impossible to ignore that their direction is muddled.