Apple unveiled its vision for the future of Mac computing this week and, in spite of myself and despite the fact that I ought to know better, I was secretly hoping for something new. Of course, I was disappointed.

Purely in terms of bringing the available machines up to date, the announcements at the Worldwide Developer's Conference were a total success. You can now get iMacs with new processors and dedicated graphics across a range of specs. The MacBook Pro line has had its second update in eight months, bringing the much-appreciated Kaby Lake processors.

The 12-inch MacBook has been beefed up. There's finally a legitimate desktop Pro successor on the horizon.

But I can't help feeling that Apple is moving its Macs further and further away from where regular consumers are. Enthusiasts and users with very specific needs will be satisfied, but if you weren't a Mac person before there's absolutely nothing here that will entice you in.

The industry as a whole seems to be emphasising flexibility and functionality, with hardware lines blurring between desktop, laptop and mobile, and software becoming less visible and more intuitive. Apple meanwhile is remaining rigid, with features split between iOS and MacOS, and even further between iPhone, iPad, iMac and MacBook. There are increasingly arbitrary barriers keeping the platforms from bleeding into each and, while this allows for some highly specialised functionality, users typically will need to buy more than one device to get everything they need.

That Macs and MacOS haven't embraced the touchscreen yet, for example, is truly strange — with effort instead going towards the iMac's overkill 5K screen and the MacBook Pro's weird Touch Bar — and efforts to make the computing ecosystem seem as effortlessly powerful as the iPhone have fallen flat. For a long time I thought a partial convergence between MacOS and iOS was a forgone conclusion and would allow for a MacBook to be the one device I needed for everything, but Apple doesn't seem interested.

Efforts to boost iOS devices up in the other direction, to become more productivity-minded, come off a bit wonky as well. The iPad Pro is a fantastic device and can do a lot of what a Mac can do in a more elegant way. But no amount of fabric keyboards and desktop-style file managing apps will give it the flexibility it needs to be a daily driver. It's simply that some bare minimum laptop features — like the ability to type on the go and not have it be a total disaster — are intentionally missing.

The argument could be made that Apple's in exactly the spot it wants to be. Mac lovers will keep buying its Macs, iPhone lovers will keep buying its iPhones, and if you want something in between you can choose between an iPad or a MacBook and make do. Or you can buy both. 

All aspects of the Apple ecosystem certainly encourage users to have as few non-Apple products as possible, with each discrete device smartly integrated to unlock potential in the others.

But it works the other way as well, and as soon as a user gives up one of their Apple devices for something a bit more flexible, their other Apple devices only start to look less useful.

I don't mean to say that Apple's current direction will hurt the company anytime soon, as a glance at its stock price and iPhone sales shows it's doing just fine. But considering a future where a personal computer can be one flexible device we use for work and play, at home and on the go, Apple's insistence on division between its products risks making its Macs (and iPads) an anachronism.