Apple today announced the all-new MacBook Pro, confirming that the new computer will come in 13-inch and 15-inch sizes, in both Silver and Space Gray color options. The MacBooks are thinner and lighter than their previous generations, come with a Trackpad that’s larger than the ones on the previous MacBooks, and have a redesigned keyboard for better typing.
Apple calls it “the most powerful MacBook Pro ever,” and the 13-inch model features a 2.9 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.3 GHz, 8GB of memory and 256GB of flash storage. The 15-inch version has a 2.6 GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.5 GHz, 16GB of memory and 256GB of flash storage. Both computers reach “up to 2.3 times the graphics performance” of the previous generation.
No new iMacs (more than one year since last update), no new Mac Mini (two years since last update), no new Mac Pro (three years since last update). Apple totally cares about the Mac, folks.
Nobody seems happy at the pricing. More for less it seems. Much more. Fewer ports on the base ‘Pro’ model compared with the outgoing MacBook Air.
Apple has lost its mojo and found its emojis.
Dutch pricing is even worse.
Probably not. The price of the Mac Pro just went up £500 thanks to Brexit. For something that came out in 2013 and had not a single update since.
€ 1449,– for the MacBook Pro Touch. That’s insane:-(
€1999 for the Macbook Pro touch version
That really sounds like an English slur against the Dutch. But I guess there really isn’t any other way to say that in English. Stupid language with its biases against the Netherlands.
That might well be the best summary of this whole event.
I was surprised to see, still, dual cores.
I understand that more doesn’t always mean better performance, but come on.. why not quad cores at least?
At least the dualcores are quad-thread, so there’s that.
I blame Intel, while they might just be reacting to market demand, I suspect more they are responding to lack of market pressure from AMD to just suck (money out of your pockets).
There simply aren’t that many 4 core chips out there, most of the mobile chips now are 2 core chips sold in various stages of bodily mutilation in order to make them run slower, and compete less with the now over priced uncrippled normal ships.
Who has ever been happy about Apple’s prices, outside of the C-level suite?
It’s kind of who they work. High initial prices that fall over time.
Like others may have already said, that’s the least of the problems. It’s pricing vs features. The new Surface Book from microsoft is about the same price but it includes a touch screen and all models have premium graphics.
These are a joke… not even the 32 GB RAM option, and they still use DDR3. To add insult to injury, only the top of the line have a discrete video card.
It seems like less for more, regardless of the security trade in with the touch ID. Considering that it has PRO in the name, it’s very weak in pro options.
The Macbook pro is a great laptop. I had a 13″ one for a couple years at work. The new touchbar might actually be useful, but it’s one of those things that you would have to try to really evaluate, and it certainly won’t be a huge impact.
Apple’s problem isn’t that they don’t make great machines, they do, but they aren’t pushing the envelope anymore. On both the Mac and the iPhone side they are just tweaking and tweaking instead of really changing things. They are trying to squeeze out that last 3% of improvement of a design that is already 97% optimized given the form factor. Instead they should be exploring new things. Surface studio is an example of that even if it is useless to me personally.
The only way this Mac event would have impressed is if they would have updated every single mac they have for sale.
Apple does have an answer to both the Surface Studio (in all ways but one) and the Surface book. Both answers involve having multiple devices – your non-touch desktop/laptop screen, and a second screen in the form of iPad pro. This duo makes sense, except in one important aspect. iOS. iOS is the weak spot in the whole endeavor, and it’s really sad, because OSX on it (or at least something with the document metaphor, and seamless integration with the desktop sitting right next to it – and file swapping) would be fantastic (without friggin iCloud, bleh), if a bit more expensive (which is fine if it’s sexy enough).
That’s not the case right now. Apple is blowing it with iCloud’s limits, and with the insistence that iOS is the right OS (or paradigm) for tablets. It really isn’t.
I suppose they could fix it up simply enough – make second screen support on iPad a first party feature. It would be so great to be able to move things to the iPad from desktop and draw on them, etc. or dock the iPad, and use it as an extended screen. I know there are solutions to do that now, but they are all horrendous in various ways.
Come to think of it, they could just tout first party app support for doing such things – really using the iPad Pro as a part of the professional workflow. I haven’t seen anything like that from Apple – it’s like iOS and macOS are two different worlds – a real missed opportunity for Apple.
Apple could bend reality to sell this multi-device vision of computing, but the loss of Steve Jobs has made that task impossible for them (I’m not even sure they see it).
The Surface Studio is quite a large touch/drawing surface – that’s the one thing Apple doesn’t have an answer to.
Hey, remember when BlackBerry released a tablet that required a BlackBerry phone to be useful? Remember how well that went over?
People hate needing two devices to do one thing.
I don’t remember anything similar.
Are you talking about the Palm Folio?
BlackBerry Playbook shipped without the ability to do email; you needed to pair it with a BB phone for that, which let you use the Playbook basically as a remote display/input device.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackBerry_PlayBook
Thank you! I had totally forgotten about this – or it had slipped under my radar back then.
Anyway it looks like they soon realized how stupid this was and removed that limitation.
Edited 2016-10-31 10:21 UTC
That’s how it works with a mature product and an evolutionary design process. Once things have matured the gains are smaller.
People went through the same process with Ubuntu a few years ago. Ubuntu matured, the releases got less spectacular, and people when through an existential crisis about it.
MS has a tendency to beta test stuff out in the open and see what sticks. Apple is much more secret about their stuff, and they only release stuff they feel is done.
Wait wait wait, what!? The 15-inch pro has a Radeon GPU and an Intel CPU?
That’s not very common anymore.
They’ve been using AMD GPUs for a while now.
I believe OpenCL support is the reason.
Not on the MBP. Or at least, my late 2013 MBP has Intel and NVidia only. I thought only Apple desktops used AMD graphics.
…I’m a diehard Apple user. I’m supposed to feel an irresistible urge to throw money at them right about now, but its just not there. Instead I want to throw money at Microsoft for a Surface Studio – and I don’t even know what I would use it for.
WTF? I feel weird…
I wouldn’t.. Microsoft have really turned a corner (i think).. don’t fight it. 😉
Microsoft’s turned a corner, Apple’s gone round the bend.
I own a Macbook Pro 15″ – the old 2.2Ghz i7, 16Gb RAM version. I’ve been considering upgrading for a while (largely because its battery life is down to about 1.5 hours typical use), but this really isn’t tempting me like it should.
Probably the biggest bottleneck with my existing Macbook is the limited RAM – having 64Gb on my desktop makes a big difference. I’ve seen Windows laptops with 32Gb, but this is still limited to 16Gb only.
Even the base model is over £2500 once the SSD is upgraded to 512Gb (256Gb? Seriously? That’s the size of the memory card in my camera). There are a lot of high-end Windows laptop options in that £2500-£3000 price range. As much as I like my MacBook, not all Windows alternatives are junk.
The touch bar is pretty neat I suppose – it’ll be interesting to see what people actually get it to do. But for me, at the moment at least, the annoyance of having to carry around a bunch of adapters and dongles would probably outweigh anything it adds.
I can see myself going on a photographic trip with my camera and Macbook and external drives, only to find that I’ve left my USB adapters and card reader in my other laptop bag. People will roll their eyes at this trivial issue, but having things like an SD card reader built in can be a really useful convenience. I can see why Apple are dropping those ‘old fashioned’ ports, but I don’t have to like it.
Why don’t you replace the battery in your current MBP and sit it out longer? I bet that’s the biggest issue you have right now.
Haha, was that an intentional joke? Good one, if so.
Well, no, actually. Is replacing the battery (even in a recent MBP) really such a silly idea? Mind you, I’m not familiar with how easy or not it is to replace something in the innards of a MBP ever since they switched to a unibody shell.
Depends on how recent. Sorry that you didn’t get your unintended joke, but in the more recent MBP’s (and every other Mac for that matter) the batteries are soldered on to the logic board. Replacing them is dicey at best, assuming you can even find the right battery. It can be done, but being a pita doesn’t begin to describe the procedure. Macs and iPhones have been in the same boat as far as battery replacement for a few years now. Even Apple doesn’t bother replacing them most of the time and will rather give you a new unit.
Edited 2016-10-28 13:24 UTC
darknexus,
Yea, planned obsolescence is wrong on so many levels, and making batteries non-replaceable with glue and solder is an effective way to do it. Does apple take credit for that innovation? Either way, it’s become an accepted practice.
I’m writing this on a MacBookPro, the original retina. I still love the machine, and I loved apple, but I’m really starting to believe there’s something wrong in the company. As someone said already, they’re not pushing the envelope anymore, but it’s not only it. New MacBookPro? weird design choices.
1) No Magsafe. One of the simplest yet most useful features of a laptop. A power connector that snaps in place automatically, and detaches if something goes wrong. Especially when you use your mac in the dark, be it at home or at work, it saves you quite some time. Gone. But now you can use any of the usb-c ports! How convenient is that? not much.
2) no SD card slot. Not everyone has a wifi enabled camera. And even if you do, you might still want to just slap in the card. Tough luck.
3) The TouchBar. There’s a reason to put the least used keys on top of your keyboard, and the spacebar at the bottom. Possibly because of the distance from you? what would have been innovative and really useful? Replace the touchpad with a screen that you can use with your thumb and it’s closer to you (but someone already did that).
Every time you’ll try to access the touchBar you literally need to move your hands away from the touchpad or keyboard, and reach the THIN strip. THIN. THIN strip. Why? Picture me not impressed.
4) bezels? really? And no touch screen?
5) Thinner and lighter. If thinner means compromise, hell the thinner! How thin the laptop needs to be anyway? the Old retina was already as thick as a magazine and was already pretty comfortable to use. If I want a thin, less powerful machine, I can get the iPad.
Quite sad.
No SD card doesn’t really matter at all to me. I have only one real camera, which lets me just USB to it anyway. Most people don’t have cameras at all anymore, they just their phones anyway, so supporting cameras is pretty outdated :/
And plus, a card reader is like two dollars anyway.
Most people aren’t going to buy an expensive laptop like a 15″ MacBook Pro. I suspect its potential buyers are disproportionately likely to be photography enthusiasts/professionals, who do still have cameras that aren’t also their phones.
USB transfer is much slower than taking out the card and sticking it in a reader. Transferring also drains the battery life of both the laptop and the connected camera.
The price of a card reader is trivial. My concern is that the reader (and the USB adapter that’d go with it) are another thing to have to remember. Not having it built in makes it more likely that I won’t have it when I need it.
It’s an inconvenience not a deal breaker. But of course it’s an inconvenience I can avoid if my next laptop runs Windows rather than Mac OS…
That’s probably fair. A big problem with newer Macs is that there is this disconnect between who they are targetted at and who really uses them–for instance, there are lots of developers who use them (both for iOS and for general Unix use), but there hasn’t been a numeric keypad in some time :/
That said, I’m sure many of the developers are glad there is no touch screen. Actually, most people I know don’t like them, myself included, so I consider that a plus.
I’m a happy user of a Dell XPS 13. I’ve got the early 2015 version (so I’m a bit annoyed at *two* refreshes since then), but it’s a verra nice laptop.
And the Developer Edition comes with Ubuntu 16.04.
“USB transfer is much slower than taking out the card and sticking it in a reader. Transferring also drains the battery life of both the laptop and the connected camera. ”
That’s not true with any of my cards (I have an Early 2013 rMB Pro). An external USB card reader is almost always faster. Additionally, many of my cards are micro-usb, so I don’t save any time by using the internal slot, since I have to find an adapter anyway.
More importantly, my built in slot is far less reliable than any of my external card readers. Half the time it can’t see the card I put in there.
Most of the time I just hook my DSLR up to the computer using USB. It’s just easier that way.
To me the card slot is a thing people think they need more than something most people actually use.
I’m not saying it’s a useful feature for everyone, but I think you’re underestimating the number of people who do use it. For me it’s the most frequently used port on my MacBook (aside from the power connection), used more often than USB even.
CaptainN-,
That’s odd, my brother’s MBP had the same issue. It could be a coincidence, or maybe apple used cheap parts. Many will laugh at my acer, but for what it’s worth it never had this problem and we use sd cards a lot.
In any case, it’s “fixed” in the latest generation MBP, right? Haha. Personally, I don’t see the point in getting rid of ports if it means having to carry more cords and dongles.
Take a look at the picture
http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/6/21/11991302/iphone-no…
Edited 2016-10-28 20:39 UTC
Bang on. The trackpad is so great on the Macbook this is totally unnecessary and possibly a step backwards through loss of function keys. None of the examples they showed wouldn’t have been easier to access via the on-screen controls or keyboard shortcuts.
How about $40?
https://griffintechnology.com/us/breaksafe-magnetic-usb-c-power-cabl…
There are a number of other ones too
It is not much consolation but there are third party Magsafe type USB-C cables, so it is not out of the question that Apple may have something similar in the box. However, that does mean leaving the detachable jack in one of the ports more or less permanently or risk losing it.
https://griffintechnology.com/us/breaksafe-magnetic-usb-c-power-cabl…
But actual feeling is that They’re Ghetto-ing themselves.
[Oops! Not talking politics…]
I’m not an user of Apple PC (linux and windows on different PCs). I like parts of OSX, and it’s not admisible to deny the quality of MBP PC if you don’t consider the keyboards
I suspect that Apple doesn’t care very much about their PCs anymore. The design is plainly old-fashioned, the innovations are less than scarce, and the other PC vendor are risking and innovating much more. But that’s my view as a hard-core PC hardware enthusiast.
However, I thought that some Apple users would be defending the new product in this thread…
Parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus.(c)Horace
Well, I would never have thought it 5 years ago, but Microsoft totally trumped Apple here. This is the dumbest iteration of Apple laptops there’s been. Outside of the OS, there’s no reason to go out and spend that kind of money on a MacBook Pro when high-end Lenovo / Dell / HP laptops are giving you a better deal, more ports and a fecking physical ESC key.
edit: The only way Apple could make this worse is to make the whole keyboard TapTic; but that’s for next year when the Apple bloggers have ‘learnt to love the touch bar’ and a decrying the need for antiquated physical keys.
Edited 2016-10-27 20:54 UTC
Yeah, five years ago Microsoft seemed direction-less and Apple seemed like they knew what they were doing.
These days, Apple is a phone and tablet company. They sold something like 8.5 times as many iPhones as Macs last quarter. While I’m guessing a Mac might on average cost 2-3 times as much as an iPhone, the iPhone is something that is going to be replaced every 2-3 years. The money is in the mobile space.
It’s concerning because there’s a chance that, as Apple starts to lose desktop and laptop users, they might inadvertently lose iPhone and iPad users as well, since iTunes is kind of mandatory for syncing with a computer and iTunes kind of sucks on Windows. It’s a similar effect to when Red Hat decided that there was no money in desktop Linux, so they gave up on that market segment. Now there’s a whole generation of people who never knew Red Hat on the desktop, who grew up on Ubuntu, so can anyone guess what OS I’m starting to see all over the server room replacing RHEL/CentOS?
One good thing though, I think that new Macbook keyboard is pretty boss. I have the fanless Rose Gold 2016 Macbook and coming from a mechanical keyboard, I thought it would be terrible…but it’s actually a nice thing. There’s a hollow sound behind each keystroke, I don’t know to describe it, but it’s satisfying and easy to type on. No comment on the Touch Bar until I see it used for more than emoji, except to say I think it should have been placed in that dead space above the Fn keys.
Apple seems schizophrenic right now. Wanna listen to music on your iPhone 7? Get Thunderbolt head phones. Wanna listen to music on any Macbook made in 2016? Use a traditional jack. I thought if anything, this Mac event would clarify where they were going with USB-C vs Thunderbolt.
I think Tim Cook needs to go.
** edited — looks like they do have Thunderbolt **
Edited 2016-10-27 23:48 UTC
Steve Jobs died October 5, 2011.
Sure they do. The problem is, your iPhone headphones use Lightning, not Thunderbolt. So the problem still stands. I suppose they’ll sell us yet another adapter for that?
Apple is in a weird spot, and the entire industry is. We’re transitioning to better tech, but we’re about 20% there. When USB and Thunderbolt become one thing, things will be better.
Could you expand on why?
So now everything they sell needs a mothaf–kin dongle of some sort to get any use out of. f–kin hell, it’s like they’re insulting their own loyalists.
Oh yay, I got a new iPhone! Headphone jack? Screw that! I got dongles. What’s more, I got Bluetooth!! Courage man…. Oooh, shiny new MacBook Pro and svelte little MacBook. Oh wait? Both my iPhone and my Bluetooth headphones need a USB Type A port to charge em? Oh nevermind. Lets buy a dongle!! Yay dongle! Dongly doo~!!
I’m pretty sure come this quarter next year, dongles would have eclipsed services as their second biggest money maker. They should just change their name to Dongle Inc.?
Edited 2016-10-27 20:56 UTC
Nobody able to see it, gan17. But Flying Phones need of slim profile. That’s the future. Everyone will follow
Miserables ‘Me Too’.
I find that for my needs as a power user, the previous Macbook Pro from 2015 (13″, 16 GB, 256 GB, ~3 Ghz CPU) was right on my alley at around $1800. I should have bought it months ago, I made a mistake by waiting.
But the new models are more expensive, while they get rid of all the ports (and the SDXC port, which is important for ppl into photo/video like myself).
However, as much as this saddens me, it’s also where the future goes, and where it should be in fact. You see, the problem here is that all of us are thinking of the laptop as a standalone device. That’s why we need all these ports.
What Apple is doing (and others will surely follow), is to use the laptop as the “brain”, and when additional peripherals are needed, they can be connected via usb-c. This is why the picture they showed with the two LG monitors look like a high end workstation of a film editor’s office. Because they position their new laptops as workstations as well.
And this is why there isn’t any new iMac or Mac Pro (and they will never be any new ones either). Desktop computers are dead as far as Apple is concerned. What Apple is doing is trying to make the Macbook become the new desktop AND laptop.
Today’s CPU power on laptops rivals that of most desktops, so it’s not an issue anymore to have the laptop play that role too. In the past, that would have been a problem, but today, it’s not so much. Consider smartphone CPUs too: smartphones in 2010 were 10-12 years behind average desktop computers in terms of CPU power. Today’s smartphones are only 3 years behind. So that plays well for laptops too, so it makes sense to repurpose the laptop also as the “brain” of your desktop too.
The RED cameras do the same too. The RED comes with a brain by default, which is very rudimentary, and to build functionality, you need to buy a lot of other things around it — if desired. Apple is doing the same here.
Honestly, I can see the logic behind it all. The only problem is that the brain needs to be cheap in order for that market strategy to work. And the new Macbook Pros aren’t cheap. That’s the actual misstep of Apple here.
Finally, I will make a prediction here regarding the Touch Bar: the future of laptops is that this touchbar will take over the whole bottom side of the laptop. There won’t be a physical keyboard and a touchpad. Instead, it will just be one touchscreen (with tactile feedback), that changes depending on what’s needed to be done. The Touch Bar is just the first step.
You don’t think there’ll be new iMacs? I’d find that very surprising. Surely if they were killing the iMac they’d release an Apple branded monitor in its place. I’ll bet new iMacs and Mac Pro will come in 2017 (although it’s really a failure on Apple’s part that they haven’t managed to update these lines this year).
One word. Yuck.
I don’t like the idea of a company deciding what MY definition of a power user is. This product is too self-centered with no flexibility.
Apple’s entire MO is telling people how to be power users…
You don’t need to predict, it’s already here! And no it was not Apple who did it.
Lenovo has implemented that on their new http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/tablets/lenovo/yoga-book/yoga-book-win…
Close, but no cigar. What Lenovo did there was simply having an artist’s tablet with a keyboard light underneath. It’s not the same thing as the Touch Bar would be at full size. The full Touchbar would be a real screen with a real touchscreen, not just a pressure sensitive area. Sure, the ideas are similar, but implementation matters, and what Lenovo did there, is as half-baked as the current Apple touch bar.
I think the real issue here is that haptic feedback technology is still insufficient to replace a physical keyboard, but the ever-decreasing travel of Apple’s laptop keyboards (and the ever increasing size of their touch pads) is clearly pointing at the direction they are heading.
The Acer Iconia had something similar as far back as 2011. It flopped.
https://www.cnet.com/products/acer-6120-dual-screen-touchbook/review…
Pues….
I like a lot mechanical keyboards (my DasKeyboard is amazing). I need to feel the keys I am typing while looking into the screen… I do not need to see the virtual keyboard I am pressing and then look into the screen to see if I made a mistake. That is not “pro”.
Ok, this keynote just means one thing to me: My next computer will be a Windows box.
Well, now that the new model is out, I am sure most stores will be selling the old MBP at a discount, or you can choose to wait longer get more discounts on a refurbished one.
Physical keyboards aren’t going away until the tech nerds figure out how to build touchpads that can change shape to mimic the mechanical switches of regular keyboards. The feedback of a common keyboard is too important even for the most simplest of home users, even if they nowadays mostly use their phones and not necessary full size computers.
Tablets are a long time on the market now am i right? 🙂
This.
Most people buy a laptop rather then a desktop these days because it’s more portable, and an Internet connection is readily available these days.
USB is merging into Thunderbolt, so in an year, or so, we’ll have one cable that can do everything. The monitor will be the dock, and power, peripherals, and Ethernet will flow through that. One cable between a monitor and laptop to do everything.
This is happening in the other OEMs as well. Dell has replaced their snap in docks with USB3 or Thundebolt dongles on their newer ultra portable laptops. Plug everything into an external box, and two cables from the laptop.
Ubuntu is trying to make this happen with smartphones, but it remains to be seen if they will run out of money before releasing a product to the masses.
There were rumors of Apple embedding an external GPU into their monitors, and that makes sense when you realize it lets a Macbook run a 5K monitors with out the need to embed a high power GPU into the laptop itself.
In other rumors, Apple is supposed to be working on a keyboard with eInk screens on the keys, which would be awesome for keyboard shortcuts and alternate characters.
Embedding a GPU in the monitor – interesting idea. That would require “thunderbolt” (pci-express over the wire), which would tie them irrevocably to Intel forever, since AMD can’t implement that (both IP and technical issues afaik). That would squash any idea that Apple would ever use AMD chips, though I suppose they are pretty far down the never-AMD road already.
I think you may well be right about Apples direction. The problem they may face is those of us who view the laptop as a portable device that needs to standalone with all our needs built in.For that very reason these new MBPs simply will mean I will be going back to a windows laptop after a decade with Apple.
It’s really impossible to judge. Everyone’s comparing it to what was announced by Microsoft, having never used either company’s latest offerings. Without trying out the Touch Bar it’s not possible to know if it’s great, terrible, or something in between. It certainly looks interesting, and should be handy in professional apps such as Xcode, but we’ll see. I don’t want a touch screen on my laptop, so Microsoft’s laptops don’t offer anything else over these MacBooks other than bad font rendering.
The Surface Studio does look cool, but it really seems like a gimmick for the average customer. Great for artists, though.
It’s not for the average customer. Take that into consideration and it solves all your issues.
That’s what I said in my comment.
Edited 2016-10-27 21:39 UTC
The question is not the Surface Studio or the MacBooks target audience but it is the companies attitude towards their consumers, and in this scenario, Microsoft wins by several orders of magnitude.
Edited 2016-10-28 00:14 UTC
Apple is getting rather blatant advertising copied features lately, eg, dual camera for bokeh simulation on phones (htc), touch bar (lenovo)
Edited 2016-10-28 02:27 UTC
The main difference between the touch bar and the Lenovo epaper function row is that the former can be used for sliders, swatches and combo boxes, allowing people to play switch between options with no clicks. Of course, haptic feedback would have made it more compelling.
I expected an ARM based mac.
The timing would have been perfect: the lack of high performance Intel CPUs in existing line up would have made a many core ARM not look too ridiculously slow.
Found this guy posting a receipt of his 2012 MacBook Air:
https://twitter.com/OrkAA/status/791772715564826624
2012 MBA:
13″
2.0 GHz dual core Intel i7, 3.2 GHz turbo boost
8 GB RAM
256 GB SSD
$1699
2016 MBP base model:
13″
2.9 GHz dual core Intel i5, 3.3 GHz turbo boost
8 GB RAM
256 GB SSD
$1499
Obviously the CPU, RAM, GPU etc. will be newer generation and far faster than in the older computer. The screen is higher resolution. Sure. But still: this is what four years of progress get you?
Edited 2016-10-28 09:33 UTC
Yes, this isn’t the 90s or early 2000s. Consumer computing power and requirements has kind of plateaued, and most people won’t come close to stressing that machine. Some people will, like people who buy Dell Precision equipment, but that is not a pond Apple swims in.
Then there is everything hitting a brick wall. We’re having to optimize everything to get more performance out of hardware, and we’re running into problems with silicon and electricity that can’t be solved because they are fundamental laws of physics.
No, they are newer, but not that much faster except for the GPU. A 2012 model will likely have SandyBridge or IvyBridge and that was the last big bump, they is still within spitting distance (25-33%) of the newest top models in CPU power, especially at the same frequencies. RAM speed similarly doesn’t improve that fast, a 4 core 2012 model would likely have faster RAM than 2 core 2016 model, simply by having twice the memory bitwidth.
The Surface Pro 4 squeezes an i7, 16GB RAM, and a ITB SSD and a touchscreen into a 12″ form factor.
Anyone else think that there will suddenly be a market for different docking stations for those of us who need the ports… and that they won’t work unless they’re “made for Mac” certified?
Apple monitor is the docking station, and there already is a market for third-party docks. They generally run about $200-$300 dollars for the Thunderbolt versions, and about $200 for the really good USB3 docks.
I’m not sure is a Thunderbolt dock could be used with a Windows or Linux based PC that has a Thunderbolt port, but I’m guessing the drivers aren’t there since those are rare beasts.
https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Thunderbolt/Dock/OWC/Thunderbolt2-Do…
http://www.caldigit.com/thunderbolt-2-dock-TS2/index.asp
Most USB docks are based on Displaylink technology, and they have MacOS drivers… As well as Windows, Android, ChromeOS, and Ubuntu. http://www.displaylink.com/
They stopped making the Thunderbolt diplays. I wonder if they are going to make an adapter to convert the MagSafe cable on it for those of us who have it to work with the new ports on the new MacBooks Pros.
They just don’t care about the people who use it.
There was supposedly a 5-10 year product plan after the Jobsian Regime. The plan has probably run it’s course, allowing for way more freedom and I’m guessing that their business partners have made them change product plans to keep a traditional model for the time being.
I would like to preface the following that I am a Windows, Linux, and macOS user plus use an iPhone. This is also probably going to be a rant.
The new MacBook is where the electronic market is going. This is model year is the “Courage” that Apple should have tried to market instead of the proprietary lightning only port for the iPhone. If they go USB-C for the next iPhone, then I’ll say they’re courageous.
We all know that Macs are just an extra entry point into app development and media creation. Some of media creation has moved to iOS but app development is still desktop only. This can be moved to a platform as a service very easily. Hell, apple could host it themselves.
Mobile was the way of the marketing future, still can be. I, and probably several others, would love a single device to do everything. The flagship phones are capable of doing everything in our lives if we, and vendors, allow them to be. If Apple allowed the iPhone to cannibalize the other product lines and make accessorizes that emulate the desktop experience, I would whole-heartedly buy into that experience.
1) USB-C support- I’d buy that model instantly
2) Docking station with usb-c, usb-a and video out – already do that with windows stations at work. Anker probably already gets too much of our money.
3) Magic touchpad support in iOS – I’d buy two.
4) Magic external touchscreen that integrates with iOS?-I’d buy at least two of those too.
Hell, all my family plus extended is iPhone. We’d all probably buy into this setup. We’d probably even buy the top tier of this shit if it all worked “magically”.
We’re all business professionals with decent internet access too. Remote desktop for everyone!
I’m gonna finish with this:
Just pull the fucking trigger Apple already. You want to be Courageous? Fucking prove it.
And what would be the point of this frickin’ nightmare except pleasing AAPL shareholders?
“[…] remote desktop for everyone”. *ugh*
So you basically want an HP Elite x3 from Apple to be their only computing platform for the future.
I wouldn’t have been able to envision something worse (for customers, of course) than Apple is already doing, but kudos, you managed to.
Edited 2016-10-30 21:19 UTC
Please tell me I did something wrong. I can’t configure any new MBP to above 16 Gb memory. This old MBP2012 I have has the same amount! Did Apple limit a new, over 3000 € Macbook, to just that?
Nope, I just read on ArsTechnica that they are using Skylake LDDDR3 chips. The max configuration for that is 16GB.
Apple, you failed miserably here. I hope you know that.
I hate this new design. Removing the ports and card reader, gimping the keyboard (though I’ll be a bit flexible with that)… I hate it. But, you know what? I’ll deal with it, because I hate Windows 10 even more and I just had this driven home to me five minutes ago. Warning, rant follows and is based entirely on personal experience with multiple machines:
I’ve seen them all, or at least I thought I had. The “something happened” error, the “we’re sorry, but something went wrong. We’re not sure what…” error, and the utterly hated (and still damned if I know what it is) “The stub received bad data” error. Reinstalls don’t fix that last one. But, my work machine just crapped out big time and needed system restore to get back in. What did it do? Hell if I know! All I know is that I did a small update on a program I regularly use (an official update mind you, no malware) and the machine needed a restart. When I restarted, I got the apparently well-known error about c:\windows\system32\config\systemprofile\desktop could not be found. WHAT?!?! In looking into this, I did indeed discover that this folder had been removed, so I put it back. BIG mistake! Suddenly I got Microsoft Visual C++ redistributable runtime errors out the arse, along with my start menu developing a case of the slow. System restore was the only thing that fixed it, and I’m not comfortable with that. I still don’t know what the hell happened! I did the update again (after making sure I had a restore point) and it worked just frigging fine, from the same exact file mind you!
This is not beta quality software! This is not even alpha quality! This is a high school freshman’s attempt at coding, and it sucks!
Wow, that felt good. Give me Windows 7 (not really an option now) or else MacOS, even if that means I hate some of the design. Adapters I can deal with, even though I don’t want to. I refuse to deal with an unstable system such as Windows 10 outside of work. My stress level already goes through the roof with each crazy gremlin that pops up.
So, I’ll take the USB adapters if I must. Docking stations if I must. As long as MacOS remains stable, I really don’t care in comparison to this… thing… Microsoft calls stable! MacOS is beta quality in some ways, but that’s better than…
** Rant off.
darknexus,
You know what, this is what skewed markets do. It becomes less about what you want, and more about avoiding what you don’t want – just like the US presidency! Sure you can choose to go independent, but realistically you don’t even know if they’ll be around next year.
Wait! Wasn’t Democracy about… “choice”?
As long as You keep ambition low, you can select along a big number of options. But people always asks for 3 wishes.
To me it’s quite obvious that Apple is being conservative with their Macs, using a mostly incrementalist approach to them and just making them a little better without changing them too much.
iOS-devices is where Apple is concentrating on bringing innovation.
I think both Microsoft and Apple are moving towards a future of huge touch screen computers, with Microsoft making desktops more and more touch-friendly and with Apple making larger and larger touch devices.
Call me strange, but I think in some ways the iPad Pro is a closer competitor to the Surface Studio than Macs are. So if you want to critique Apple in comparison I think the right critique is that iOS is not growing up fast enough, not that macOS is not going full touch fast enough.
I don’t think we can say that one approach is wrong or right, they both have their merits.
In a strange set of circumstance, it seems that in some ways Microsoft are ahead in hardware with Surface Studio, and Apple ahead in software with iOS. Flawed as iOS might be I still think it’s much further along as a touch-first computer than Microsoft is. I would love to see Google to make some bigger more “pro†oriented touch-first devices a well.
Anyway, I kinda don’t understand why people are complaining so much these days. All these tech companies are pushing out really interesting stuff. It’s a fun time to watch the tech space.
I wouldn’t call it an incremental approach. More like decremental with the removal of usefulness on different products they sell.
Surface products are ultra-niche technology showcases. I doubt whether they are even profitable for MS.
In the world of Wintel you can buy or build custom hardware for any particular use. You can have a workstation with quad 22-core Xeons, 6 TB of RAM and a SSD RAID array if you wish.
iOS is actually not that far from having good enough document handling. File coordination + Document Provider extension already paved most of the road. They just need to port over OS X’s versions and make APFS happen. Once they slap on a smooth UI to make app switching (carrying the document the User is currently working on along if necessary) and multitasking painless, we will have a winner.
The 16G max memory is the first real deal killer. A lot of devs like to run mac books, and anyone who has used Xcode recently knows it like to eat RAM, and Apple historically has not been very memory friendly, always hungry for more.
The mag safe thing is a real shame. You can bumble in the dark drunk and get your power plugged in with mag safe, but not any more. There is marginal benefit that you can plug it in on either side, but it’s really marginal.
The laptop will look much like my Mac Pro. An elegant, clean design wedged in to a rats nets of dongles, cables, hubs, and drives.
It would be different if Apple themselves came with a docking station. Not quite Ye Olde Duo elegant, but something where you easily slide the device in, that looked nice, let you use the screen, add it on to a stand, etc.
Instead, you’ll be spinning the laptop left and right as you fiddle and jam in the cables and what not.
The dynamic toolbar is actually pretty nice, but the fact that it’s currently limited to a select few devices will limit the utility on applications. Applications will still have to be designed as if it does not exist, and to work well that way, meaning that the new toolbar will simply continue to offer marginal utility. In the end, seems like an expensive gizmo for such limited utility. We’ll see if in a couple of years they create an external keyboard with the same functionality.
It’s clear Jobs’s pipeline of products finally ran dry about a couple years ago, and the current management team really have nothing left to extract from it.
Increased price for previous gen tech, alright then… You know Cook et al have lost the plot when even the die hard apple fanboy sites are starting to bitch about how underwhelming this keynote was.
Firewire 800, Flash card, two USB ports, power port, headphone port, thunderbolt port. My old Macbook pro 2011 model had 7 ports. The new one has 3. A headphone port and two USB type C ports. Apple has f–ked this up. The 13″ model should have had 4x USB type C ports and the headphone port. I don’t mind that they assume you’ll use adapters, but making a laptop that literally only has room for one expansion connector while being charged is just insanity. They didn’t even launch an apple dock connector. It’s pretty clear they’re expecting third party manufacturers to build the other half of the laptop for them. So you buy a Macbook Pro, you plug in your power adapter, and your computer screen… ah shit, can’t have a keyboard or mouse, or a usb drive, or a NIC, or a compact card reader etc. No expansion without going through a type-C hub or breakout box.
Edited 2016-10-31 00:31 UTC