MacBooks are outdated, underpowered and overpriced
digitaltrends.com
digitaltrends.com
The lack of GPU power for the price is ludicrous. I love the OS and the design of the hardware, but it's such a trade off for graphics power. The CPUs don't seem to be all that bad, but probably could be better as well for the price.
They are too focused on thinness/lightness. I'd rather have a slightly thicker iMac or Macbook and higher-end parts.
Integrated GPUs (while much better than they used to be) have really overtaken Apple's lineup and it's disappointing, not to mention the inability to easily upgrade anything (not just an Apple problem, though)
And more USB ports. I would like more than two, especially in the 15".
Yeah, not really. They are still among the thinnest/lightest on the market (and doubly so if one counts thinness AND durability, due to the unibody construction).
Of course Apple WILL make them thinner/lighter in future revisions, but I for one, and many others, wish they didn't -- and instead just used the space for moar battery and such.
>But six years is a very long time. The current Air is behind its competitors in every category. It’s more expensive than an entry-level Asus Zenbook UX305CA or Dell XPS 13, yet behind in looks, size, weight, keyboard quality, and display resolution.
And then it lists the MAIN category that counts in a notebook: battery life as a pro for the Air. Not to mention that it being behind in "looks" and "keyboard quality" is BS. For display resolution it's true -- it should have been Retinized or dropped by now.
>The Pro is almost as disappointing. It has a competitive display, and the massive battery Apple stuffs inside both the 13-inch and 15-inch models gives the Pro an edge in battery life. But both systems are larger and heavier than competitors. The 13-inch Pro feels like a brick next to a Dell XPS 13.
The XPS weight less and is smaller (less bevel), but quite bulkier in height. Moreover, worse touchpad (no multi-touch/pressure either), no magsafe, plasticky and cheap looking (complete with "intel inside" sticker, as if we care), no thunderbolt (for video/audio/graphics pros or quick storage and other expansions), etc.
But most importantly, one was released just last month, the other is an older model, and all signs say that the MacBook/Pro line is pending update (it's slightly past the usual update cycle, the inventory is low in retail channels, which usually signals an update, and Intel is having new processors out).
I went out and bought a $900 11" Macbook Air a few months later, and it was an absolute pleasure to use in comparison.
Now, I rarely use the Sony laptop -- the keys have started falling off (I gave up reattaching the 'z' key), the screen is "floppy," and I dread trying to right-click on things with the trackpad, but it's now a dedicated dev environment for my job, on days that I work from home. In comparison, my Macbook Air has gotten far more abuse. I toss it around, carry it in my purse, I've lost it under couch cushions -- it has a dent on the bottom from who-knows-where, but it still feels as nice to use as it did on Day 1.
The only time I've run into performance problems is when I'm running Eclipse + Tomcat + heavy MySQL load + some random Python scripts chugging away + ten billion tabs in Chrome. The baseline model 11" air is a little sluggish then :-p But really, I'd rather upgrade to a more expensive model, or pause execution on some things, or clean up my processes, and/or just offload processing to an EC2 instance than ever have to buy another crappy-feeling plastic laptop. It just makes an unbelievable amount of difference in day-to-day use that I don't think people give enough consideration to.
[1] The native Apple hardware has failed exactly once in the MacBook's lifetime (SATA cable)
That... pretty much runs the damage gamut, knock on wood. Also I have to admit the numeric keypad is pretty dusty. None of the keycaps are even rubbed off. All the ports work. (Or so I assume. I've never tested the firewire or eSATA port.)
(Of course, a true Apple fan wouldn't be caught dead with this brick, but, I'm a pretty big guy. In relative terms it is to me like a 15" is for most people.)
Yes, you can't get quality without paying for it, but... Apple prices have come in above that.
Also just let me point out that I'm on a 6-year-old laptop and while I periodically pop open some shopping websites and browse, I'm almost shocked at how little improvement spending $1000 again would buy me. "A much nicer graphics card" is pretty big, yeah, but that's about it. (I already put an SSD in this thing.) I remember when I could do things like jump from a 486 to a Pentium Pro with 8 times the RAM and 20 times the hard drive etc etc in the same time frame.
I still don't get this. Underpowered compared to what? The lastest CPU model? Well, that's to be expected every 6 mounths or so. But from a user's point of view? No so much to be honest.
I can see how latest CPU might give some advantages to those who are dependent on computations, but other than this... no. RAM is the the only thing I've updated in the last 2 year (need all these VMs, IDEs, browser etc). Never saw CPU usage going >80%
Since more people are more motivated by "shiny new" than are limited by the GPU throughput, I'm not surprised at the author's approach or convinced that from a business standpoint GPU performance is critical for Mac marketing. My only point is that there tends to be a technical difference in regard to GPU computational power at similar price points. I'm not saying that this is necessarily important.
As a user, I care less about having the most recent hardware (which will be outdated in 6 months anyway); my focus is on purchasing something reliable, and as many others have mentioned, these days most laptops are "fast enough."
The way to differentiate yourself is to get your users to stop thinking about their laptops at all. Make it work the right way. Make using it intuitive and easy. Make it reliable and secure.
The less people notice it the happier they will be.
The retina macbook pros on the other hand are literally glued together and aren't user serviceable.
About a month ago, I was buying a new ultrabook, and MacBook Air was an obvious choice. Obvious, until I saw it's price. It's way too overpriced for what it offers. The battery life is fine, but other than that, nothing. I mean, c'mon, 4gb of RAM and an Intel Core i5 processor is sufficient for a modern day laptop? MacBook Pro is not better in any aspect, as well.
Finally, I ended up with a Dell Latitude (E7250) with 16gb of RAM and a lot better i7 processor, for about twice less money. And guess what, the battery also holds roughly 9 hours, but RAM processing power difference is huge, especially in my line of work. I could even install a Hackintosh on my machine and get all of the OSX goodness for half the price.
That's why many people use external monitor, keyboard and mouse.
My wife uses her touchscreen laptop for web browsing at the couch. Using laptop at your lap is quite bad, but touch screen makes it a lot of better.
The 5K iMac is recent, a good value, and includes cutting-edge hardware from the time it was introduced. I expect Apple will continue to invest in new Mac development, as Macs are both profitable and important halo products.
I use 2013 MacBook Air and want to upgrade to MacBook Pro, but at the moment I can't justify buying new Mac. All new Macs are outdated at the moment.
Now if you're talking about detachable screens, that could be the case. But there are tablets for that, that are even more convenient and specialized to long term use in that way.
I'm writing this comment on my 8-month-old MacBookPro11,5 with 16 gigs of ram and 1TB SSD drive. I've had 3 brand new MacBook Pros from 2011, 2013, and 2015. The lack of continued innovation on this platform is really starting to show its age.
Yeah, but on a Mac laptop you can do it more conveniently, from the multi-touch trackpad too.
Someone did once say I wasn't a real programmer because I use the mouse too much (and the argument's sort of the same: It's hard to move your hands from the keyboard to the mouse! Why would you do that?), so, since then, I try not to judge people or machines for their preferred methods of user input. There's a market for everyone and to each their own!
'nobody' is your opinion. Reality is different.
Of course some do.
A lot of people also loved Apple's "hockey puck" mouse or the Dell Ditty -- but I'd still called them "nobody".