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I'm not one to complain about paying for quality, but their pricing across the board is just getting ridiculous. There's no major innovation here to justify such price hikes. 16GB RAM limits on a $3200 laptop is bewildering to me. If the strategy here is to kill off the Mac brand, while focusing only on the iPhone, then I think they are well on their way.

If it wasn't for the Mac OS, I wouldn't even bother considering their lineup anymore.

Edit: Additional thoughts. That OLED touch bar is going to be the equivalent of force touch on the iPhone. Neat idea, that will be forgotten. Also, whose idea was it to make that track pad ENORMOUS? When has anyone ever wished they had a track pad that took up 2/3 of the palm area? I hope their palm sensing is 100% perfect.

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their pricing across the board is just getting ridiculous

This is not really about Apple pricing, since the prices went up by up to 20% for many existing Apple products. This is the result of the post-Brexit vote and its effect on the exchange rate of the pound sterling. I guess the UK will see such price raises across the board.

Of course, it's all good for the UK's export as long as they are still in the single market.

By across the board, I meant in all countries. You're paying A LOT more for a Mac Book Pro now, for essentially nothing more than an incremental hardware update, a light bar, and less ports.

The MacBook Pro 13" without Touch Bar is still the same price as the MacBook Pro 13" was when it was introduced in 2012. Still, it is much lighter, flatter, and has a modern CPU, GPU, SSD, a better screen, etc.

Anyway, my point was that it is weird to complain about Apple prices as a reaction to an article that points out that prices for tech is increasing in the UK as a result of the Brexit.

In the past two months I've been seeing a lot more articles about the outrage about price increases in the U.K due to new FX reality post Brexit.

I'm always surprised when people in the U.K pretend like this came as a surprise and they are outraged. Like... am... guys... you did it to yourselves. Cheers.

Surprised? No.

Pissed off? Yes.

Did it to myself? Not so much. 48% of us didn't, in fact.

(And it's reasonable to assume that some of the remaining 52% didn't specifically vote for "hardest Brexit reasonably possible, please, we don't care about the economy." )

I've not met anyone who voted to leave the EU complaining. We were all aware there would be short term pain for long term gain.

Most of the moaning comes from people who wanted to remain.

The £ was overvalued, this will bring a huge boost to our export industry.

That's a very outdated view. I'm an exporter, selling products manufactured in the UK, and this is nothing but bad news. Leaving the single market will massively increase the pain of exporting to Europe. Also, like most exporters, I sell products that include lots of parts imported from outside the UK. The cost of these inputs has gone up by 20%, and cannot be replaced by alternatives in the UK. It's outdated to think that devaluing the currency automatically makes exports cheaper.

The UK's biggest goods export sector is cars, mostly to the EU. They would be subject to tariffs that far exceed their profit margin. However that pales into insignificance in comparison to trade in services. Financial services are one of the UK's biggest exports, and the biggest contributor to corporation tax receipts. The industry is heavily reliant on access to the EU markets, particularly "passporting" rules. It looks likely they will lose this access, which would be disastrous for the industry, and will cost this country billions.

As for the pound being over-valued: right now it is, aside from a few months in 1985, at its lowest level against the dollar in history.

Exactly. Mostly these days the UK imports, adds value, and exports.

While I was over in the UK enjoying an extremely cheap vacation, some Brexit friends were complaining about the price of a recent holiday in Greece, which they blamed on the EU.

They completely missed the pound is weak connection.

> Most of the moaning comes from people who wanted to remain.

...and this is surprising why? Would UKIP have been all smiles and cheers if the UK and voted to stay in the EU?

"Remoaners" is one of the stupidest political memes to emerge in recent years. People have justified grievances, reducing that to "moaning" helps no-one.

I was under the impression that the UK didn't have almost any manufacturing industry left, only services. I googled and found that I was wrong http://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profile/country/gbr/

However the trade balance is negative. A weak pound won't help the industries that import raw material. I won't bet that it's going to be good.

Yes the trade balance at the moment is negative, which is why we need the £ to fall in value, so we can export more and reduce the trade deficit.

Germany loves the Euro for the same reason, it artificially lowers its exchange rate helping it's exports. With the Deutschmark they would be at a significant disadvantage. Remember they were the "sick man of Europe" prior to joining the Euro.

This is at the expense of countries on the periphery of the EU, Greece, Italy etc. They cannot devalue and complete with Germany. Despite this look how Germany treated Greece when it needed help.

The "Sick man of Europe" in 1970s --and most famously-- was the UK, not Germany (which didn't happen until the 1990s and was attributed to re-unification, not any particular issues with manufacturing)

The original "sick man" was the Ottoman Empire, but pretty everyone has been hit with the title at one point.

I sincerely hope that it will work like that for you. There is a long history of currency devaluations. It can help in the short run but the reasons a country was worse off than the others don't go away. Your hypothesis is that the cause is an artificially inflated pound. Some Euro countries have an artificially inflated currency, or Germany and others an artificially deflated one. Those weaker countries are paying for it with higher interest rates on their bonds. We could argue forever if they are masochistic or strong armed into the Euro or if this is really in their best interest. In the case of the UK, what I see from outside is that many people wanted to buy into the UK. See the trajectory of the prices of the houses in London or the number of startups. That naturally inflates a currency. Now the UK is less attractive and the pound lost value. I think that pre Brexit and post Brexit levels of the pound did reflect the actual value of the country in those two moments in time. Don't you?

Germany was a large exporter with a strong currency and it is a strong exporter with a weaker currency. Germnay actuelly prefers a stronger currency. You can see that from DM times. Germany never tried to devalue the DM, just the opposite.

Germany was 'sick' because it had huge problems after the reunification with 1/4 of its people now living in a formerly communist country, whose economy collapsed. This cost a trillion Euro over the years and the east is still behind.

If your idea to be competitive is just to devalue your currency, then you are lost anyway.

Greece wanted to be in the Eurozone. They need to adjust their policy as a member.

>We were all aware there would be short term pain for long term gain

I'm curious as to what you consider "short term" though. I think it will be at least a decade before the UK is likely to see any positive effects of Brexit, if then.

> post Brexit

This should say post Brexit vote, as the UK leaving the EU hasn't been actioned yet.

Am I surprised that prices has increased? Yes and no. Yes in that we haven't actually triggered anything that makes a change to the way we in the UK will trade outside of the EU. No in that currency variance was to be expected.

> we haven't actually triggered anything that makes a change to the way we in the UK will trade outside of the EU

This is actually the scariest proposition. We hope that markets are pricing the current confusion in the same way they will price when things actually change, i.e. they are pessimistic enough. But what if they are actually just middle-of-the-road, or even slightly optimistic? In that case we're in for a world of hurt.

hmm. Some of us didn't ask for it.

Not strange at all, the Apple presentation was yesterday. Everyone is still discussing the new lineup as a whole, and it is directly related to this.

All your points here are simply false. You can buy a better MacBook today than 4 years ago but for the same price in US Dollars as four years ago.

> You can buy a better MacBook today than 4 years ago

Only slightly better (or even worse, at the low end, because of the low-power CPU probably getting throttled more)... but really the point is that 4 years ago there was nothing like the MBPR on the market, similar to when they launched the Air. Today, there actually are alternatives with better specs in similar dimensions, and they are much more reasonably priced.

Clearly there is some merit to this discussion, as it's reached the top of this thread, and every single news outlet is saying the same thing. People are upset about this "update". The Mac Pro desktop is dead, the laptops take years to get any meaningful upgrades, and Apple only cares about their mobile offerings at this point.

The laptop from four years ago was a better value, than what you get comparatively today.

You are responding to one point about price, which I have addressed, with another point entirely. You are not making any coherent sense.

If by modern you mean last gen...

Yup. Microsoft just increased them by 22%. I guess pretty much all tech companies will do that in the UK soon - or just leave altogether.

https://www.engadget.com/2016/10/24/microsoft-price-increase...

"This is the result of the post-Brexit vote"

This is nonsense; the pricing of the Macbook Pro rose in every country. Not everything has to be shoehorned into your personal politic viewframe.

> This is nonsense; the pricing of the Macbook Pro rose in every country.

You have said this in 9 different comments in this thread without providing a source.

This news isn't about the MBP anyway. Existing models have increased in price by 20% since last week.

This is not the result of the post-Brexit vote. It is just convenient event to excuse greed.

It's a little of both. It's a simple fact that the pound has plummeted against the dollar. You can claim that has nothing to do with Brexit, but it would be quite a coincidence.

Not that I'm complaining really. I'm a UK citizen but I work remotely for an American company and get paid in dollars. My income has actually increased by a nice amount because of Brexit. I get more pounds for my dollars than I used to.

That's not going to help me buy a new Macbook though, because Apple have raised prices to compensate.

> It's a simple fact that the pound has plummeted against the dollar.

Again, that's market makers want to make money using event as an excuse

Yeah, it's a well know fact that currency traders like to sell currencies they think will rise in value, and buy currencies that won't. Thereby creating the current situation where the pound, which would otherwise have rocketed in value post-Brexit vote, in fact goes down the crapper.

> If it wasn't for the Mac OS, I wouldn't even bother considering their lineup anymore.

Years ago, when I exclusively used Linux even on my local machines, I used to buy Apple computers and replace the OS with Linux. Because they used to build the best damn computers (specially laptops) out there. They were way ahead of the competition.

It’s sad that now we just have to put up with Apple hardware because of software integration, etc. . If I wanted to run Linux or Windows, I wouldn’t hesitate for a second to look somewhere else.

The price is roughly the same (inflation adjusted) as the original 2006 Macbook Pro. Things have certainly improved since the original Powerbook, which was around $12k in today's dollars.

My background is in music, where folks routinely pay 10x for an instrument that is 20% better (arbitrary numbers, but I think the point holds). If you're a developer, your laptop is your "axe" that you make money with day in and day out. Does it really matter if it costs $1k or $3k? If it makes an employee half a percent more productive, what is that worth to a business?

Your point on the inflatino-adjusted price is a good one.

I'm less convinced about the other. The difference between a musical instrument and a laptop is that the musical instrument may last 50 years or more. The laptop will be lucky to make five (for professional use).

So yeah... it's worth it to pay for quality tooling to do your job, but depreciation has to be factored in, which is much higher for IT technology than almost anything else.

I really don't think Apple is targeting corporate customers with emoji touch bars. Of course, if you NEED it, you need it. I'm not arguing that. For everyone else, the cost for what you get is not reasonable.

Also, after spending the last fifteen years on the IT side of a large enterprise. No manager on this earth would approve upgrading $3000+ laptops, for a half a percent in theoretical productivity. Business is, and has always been, making the most money, by spending the absolute least money.

Regarding your inflation comment. Yes the price is similar. But the value for what you got in earlier years was MUCH greater, than what you get now. Sure, a 2016 laptop is better than a 2006 laptop. But at the time, the 2006 laptop was amazing, and the 2016 model is nothing special with its dated components.

I have an employer provided top of the line Macbook, as do most (all?) of my developer friends. Random devs at tech meetups mostly have 15" Macbooks. It's typical for recruiter spam emails to mention any computer + monitor you want as part of the standard hiring package.

On a similar note, plenty of tech companies provide Herman Miller chairs, and other perks that don't cost the "absolute least money."

Are you disputing that managers on earth have approved these expenses?

Read what I was responding to. Managers aren't going to spend $3000 on AN UPGRADE machine, to gain .5% productivity. What you're describing is essentially is a sign on bonus, where the company allows you to choose your work environment. Your employer isn't going to refresh your laptop every six months on incremental upgrades. That's just asinine. We have a five year depreciation on all laptops/desktops, and we sure as shit don't upgrade someone because we think it's going to increase their productivity by a half a percent.

Regarding Herman Miller chairs, those last 10-15 years easy. I'm sitting on one just as old right now. I can easily argue the cost/value for proper seating, on employee productivity and well being.

You were responding to me, and I never said anything about six month upgrade cycles. My point in this thread has only been that the price point is nothing new, and lots of companies and individuals can afford it/justify it with no problems.

There's nothing ridiculous going on here.

"My background is in music, where folks routinely pay 10x for an instrument that is 20% better (arbitrary numbers, but I think the point holds). If you're a developer, your laptop is your "axe" that you make money with day in and day out. Does it really matter if it costs $1k or $3k? If it makes an employee half a percent more productive, what is that worth to a business?"

You didn't say six month upgrades, but you're definitely referring to upgrading for minimal gains. This is not how things work in the enterprise, at all. There are typically long life cycles, especially in end user machines, as hardware is depreciated.

I said nothing about what people can afford. I responded to you justifying a .5% productivity increase, for spending $3000 on a new laptop. That DOES NOT happen.

Just the cost of getting some one setup on a new machine, washes out any .5% productivity, as it's wasted getting things configured.

Thank you for explaining to me what I was referring to. Glad to know.

> after spending the last fifteen years on the IT side of a large enterprise. No manager on this earth would approve upgrading $3000+ laptops,

These new MacBooks will probably be available for refreshes in a few months time in a large enterprise. Anywhere offering MacBooks already will be offering these.

Sounds like SV-based white boy. Engineers don't make $100k+ everywhere in the world...

You should move to seattle then. Good bachelors in CS in their first job make $100k+. Interns make 75k.

16 GB RAM limit was already annoying on my 2011-era 12" notebook. And that's flagship now? Wow.

That's quite strange limitation. Is there some technical reason for this? Is the memory soldered in to save space? Do they only have one dimm?

The memory is soldered in to save space, yes. That also means it is not aftermarket upgradeable.

But still, they could have soldered 32 gb on.

It's a CPU limitation when used with LPDDR3 modules. See http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/core/7th-g... (See section 2.1.1.3, "LPDDR3 supported memory devices")

Memory is soldered, but they could have had a 32gb option regardless -- they still have the 8gb option after all.

The real limitation IMHO is power: to chase thinness, they reduced the battery volume and went for all the low-power options they could find. 32gb would likely not be low-power.

As far as I know, yes the memory is soldered in.

Why is it annoying? I'm genuinely curious: what are you doing that takes that much RAM?

I routinely run: - a virtual box instance set to 8GB ram to run docker containers that comprise our backend services - a VMWare Fusion instance configured with 4GB ram running Windows to run our client apps - an IntelliJ instance that easily hits 2GB ram usage - a smattering of standalone JVMs and other miscellaneous dev things, plus the regular mac os stuff, browsers, skype, slack, mail, etc etc

I can do that easily on my 24GB imac. If that starts to get cramped, I can upgrade it up to 64GB. But I would be SOL on a 16GB macbook pro

You need a machine designed for professional use not a consumer machine. If you look outside the Apple garden, you can have pretty much whatever you want, even 64GB of RAM.

For most people it's running a lot of virtual machines, or compiling large projects.

VM's, development environments, editing photos/video. There are people who do actual work on computers, and yet Apple seems to not acknowledge the ones filling their App Store.

As I read your comment, I have something like 7 JVM's running (mostly in Docker containers) on an 8GB MBA that's not remotely close to hitting swap. You talk about people that 'do actual work on computers'. I get this, but where I start to wonder is that even 8GB represents a _lot_ of capacity for useful work.

(Some of this probably comes from the fact I cut my teeth on machines with 64K RAM... but once machines got past half a gig, the availability of RAM seems to have outpaced the need, at least for me.)

Compiling WebKit takes more than 8 GiB RAM, and even with modern SSDs, you don't really want to swap out. And I'd like to do other things in the mean time (e.g., run 2-3 VMs with 4+ GiB RAM each – no, I can't move Windows 7 in a docker container, yes, I need to test on it).

Moving things in the cloud isn't an option, thanks to internet being too slow and unreliable, and I don't want to be tied to a desktop.

I'm having a hard time seeing photo editing requiring 16GB of ram. For video editing it seems to me most use cases aren't going to have more than a few GB worth of frames at a time required in memory, but I can see the potential for 16GB being a bottleneck in certain applications.

For "actual [computational] work", use a different computer suited for the purpose, not toys marketed to graphics professionals and hipsters.

Right? That's such crap.

> 16GB RAM limits on a $3200 laptop is bewildering to me.

...

> If it wasn't for the Mac OS, I wouldn't even bother considering their lineup anymore.

Exactly! The only thing that makes me go for them is the macOS. The software seems good for now. But, how long before Microsoft seeps in the general market via their corporate tie ups strategy?

I don't understand the love for OSX/macOS at all anymore. I feel like the last time a release really felt like an improvement was 10.5, with 10.6 being mostly the same, and downhill each release afterward. Earlier this year, after not having used OSX since 10.7 (which I wound up downgrading back to 10.6 after a short time), I bought a Mac Mini running "El Capitan" (whatever version number that is, I don't care anymore).

Compared to my old late-2008 13" Macbook with a Core 2 Duo and 2GB of RAM, this Mini with an i7 and 16 GB of RAM takes longer to boot, feels more sluggish during regular usage, and is noticeably less stable. Launchpad is new and dumb and drives me nuts, but other than that, I don't really see what, if anything, has been added to "justify" such a downgrade in usability. There was a time when OSX was a dream, but today it's akin to Solaris (i.e., Slowlaris) in how it feels slow, buggy, and even outdated to me now.

Nowadays, my primary machine is a Lenovo Ideapad Y410P with an i7 (Haswell) and 8GB of RAM running Slackware. Even with GRUB2 set to wait for 3 seconds and using sysvinit (with the huge kernel, no less, rather than the generic kernel), it takes less time to boot into a functioning desktop. It's far more stable, and feels far snappier. Virtualization works much better. I don't miss OSX at all, and, now that I've gotten the hang of tiling window management, I don't think I'd go back even if Apple managed to restore that Leopard-era quality (awesomewm is practically a killer app for me now, as it's boosted my productivity in a way that nothing else has since I picked up Vim 10 years ago). It's also nice having choice and Freedom again, especially compared to Apple's "walled garden" which has been leaking out of the iPhone and into their PCs in the name of "security"...

tl;dr: Linux rulez, macOS droolz :p

macOS has become a consumption device than a productive workplace. Look at Apple Pay. Really, are people so lazy to be not able to keep their credit card next to them. Imagine apple as a bank. Horror! Horror!

I remember an opening dialog from Woody Allen's comedy movie Whatever Works. He says human civilization has downgraded themselves to the level that they cannot be trusted to flush their toilets once they are done. Apple is being a big catalyst in dumbing down powerful machines. If these high end machines aren't for powerful users than who is the real consumer of it.

Did anyone notice what they done with port? You cannot plugin your USB drive in there anymore. There is no SD card slot for a Photographer. Buying all these dongles will add up to $200. Wow, it has mp3 jack that means I need two separate headphones.

Really?

I'm mostly sticking with them for the OS as well.

Why isn't someone grabbing the chance to take a linux distro and polish it to get that audience? I would happily pay for that OS so I can use it with any PC/laptop I want.

Because the moment someone does that, like we have seen before, the voices will rise "why not distribution X?".

Right now I only bother with Ubuntu, because regardless how many in GNU/Linux love to hate them, they are the only ones that seem to bother with a full stack experience.

Still it is quite short of what I enjoy when using either macOS or Windows.

For me being a developer isn't a synonym of UNIX.

Cognitive dissonance is the great problem of UNIX developers. They want a PDP-11 yet don't want a PDP-11.

That's pretty much what ElementaryOS[1] is. It's a polished, simplified fork of Ubuntu complete with a dock and buttons for mix/max/close on the left. But as others have said, UI/polish isn't why linux isn't always a perfect replacement for windows/macos, it's unavailability of major, industry-standard programs.

[1] - https://elementary.io/

Why isn't someone grabbing the chance to take a linux distro and polish it to get that audience? I would happily pay for that OS so I can use it with any PC/laptop I want.

So who is going to ensure a smooth experience when it should support any PC or laptop? Either you have the marketshare of Microsoft and have device vendors care (somewhat) or you can only guarantee a good experience for a relatively small set of hardware (as Apple does).

One thing I thought about an year ago (but I'll never do it myself) is: polishing a distro tailored to 2 or 3 very good PC laptops, the ones people normally praise as good work machines (back in the days before Lenovo screwed up those would be the Thinkpad line or something alike).

People would still have some choice but at least the OS would be almost tailored to those machines, not as good as macOS yet but much easier than trying to make it work for the whole spectrum of shit hardware there's in the PC laptop market.

I agree that driver support is one of the main problems. But someone that will sell the OS can make money to solve that, right?

I'm fine with a small set of HW as well.

Why the OS though? How often do you interact with the operating system compared to the applications? More than half the applications i use most have no alternative on linux. Someone polishing linux is not the bottleneck (for me).

Exactly! The (already quite old) Ubuntu 14.04 that I use is reasonably well polished for me. However some of the apps I use/want are missing.

I don't think I use any macOS specific apps. Browsers, text editors, terminal, email clients, docker etc, all of them exist on Linux.

If that's the case, then Linux is an alternative to you. However a lot of apps people use are Mac OS specific. I know for damn sure I couldn't live without UniBox for email at this point.

what's so greate about it? Can't tell looking at the home page.

Agree. Linux users tend to be more technical though so they are often the most vocal on the internet.

For me its the OS and the apps. I used Linux for years on the desktop, and I loved it, but back then I had time to fiddle with PulseAudio and Nvidia drivers and this and that. Now I'm too busy and when I'm not I really can't be arsed with that sort of thing.

MacOS gets me an environment that requires very little fiddling plus a Unix-y command line environment. I like the hardware too.

I haven't regularly used Windows for a decade and I don't see myself ever going back — so it's the Mac for me.

The new Windows 10 linux-subsystem is really good and getting better with every release.

> Why isn't someone grabbing the chance to take a linux distro and polish it to get that audience?

Isn't that what the elementaryOS [1] [2] developers are trying to do?

[1] https://elementary.io/

[2] https://plus.google.com/communities/104613975513761463450

I wish Adobe would port Lightroom to Linux. I'd jump immediately, at that point.

Side note, I switched to Capture One, love it! Much more intuitive interface over Lightroom, and I think the RAW processing is superior.

I only see Windows and Mac versions on their website. Am I missing something?

Darktable is not there yet but its honestly not bad.

Exactly. Where's Photoshop or Excel for Linux?

LibreOffice is a pretty good competitor to Excel. Photoshop on the other hand, not really (GIMP can do some stuff but nowhere near)

For casual users, maybe. I deal with documents from legal and accounting departments, and it just doesn't cut it. I have to use MS Office.

What about DarkTable instead?

We've been forever waiting for Linux on the desktop! In as much as a very polished desktop distro. Never seems to come along. Even Ubuntu haven't managed it. Given fixed hardware I'm sure it would still be a challenge. Iterations of desktops and window managers pass by, start out glitchy, get polished in time, then are made obsolete. I have seen so many regressions in popular Linux desktops - even core components like panels, and file managers. I'm currently running an older version of Foo, because newer Foo has too many annoying warts. But what I have, just about works. That being said, Windows doesn't seem to progress that much either. Perhaps UI is the hard part. As a dev, I always think that the icing on the cake should be the easy bit. But of course it isn't.

I have two problems with the touch bar, first its so damn small and secondly, its at the top of the keyboard away from the touch pad.

I can almost forgive its location but the size is such you have to focus on it to use it

As for pricing, what about reducing prices on models that are clearly obsolete (Mac Pro)

For me the whole point of having a keyboard with physical keys is that I do not have to look down from the screen!

Placing contextual controls down there seems at odds with the whole idea of the keyboard and trackpad being usable without the need to take my attention away from the screen.

> If it wasn't for the Mac OS, I wouldn't even bother considering their lineup anymore.

It's remarkable that no PC manufacturers over the past 10 to 15 years really embarked on creating their own product line specific Linux distribution to try and counter MS/Apple (besides of course any agreements they had with MS over Windows).

Sure they would have had to take a risk on building software in-house, but they could have at least tried to copy the MacOS model, and use Linux, Mach or whatever as a base, and build something on top that wouldn't necessarily need to be compatible with other Linux distros or OS. That is, build a graphics stack, GUI api, and whatever they wanted to. Target only 2 or 3 proprietary product lines, so testing would be manageable. Sure, Wayland/Mir are already here or on the way, but I'm pointing at a cohesive design of hardware/software balanced balanced with clever choices in off-the-shelf components to keep costs down.

If their OS was good enough and they undercut Apple at least a bit on the pricing side, developers would've showed up and delivered apps on that new "proprietary" platform. Those manufacturers wouldn't have to die off slowly the way a lot of them are now, and they'd at least have a chance at glory in 2016+.

Back in the ~2007 Dell tried to sell Ubuntu PCs to consumers. It was an interesting experiment, but they seemed unable to figure out how to market it (even at a slightly cheaper cost) and discontinued it after a few years.

> If it wasn't for the Mac OS, I wouldn't even bother considering their lineup anymore.

macOS does have costs to develop, too, though--and they only recoup that investment when people buy Macs. There's also these things:

* Unibody case

* Thinness, lightness, aesthetics

* Better keyboard

* Dramatically better trackpad

* Hardware / software integration

* Internet Recovery / Target Disk Mode / Time Machine

* Environmental friendliness

* Resale value

* Lasting 5+ years for even normal consumers

* Apple's Support vs. Dell's or Microsoft's

I'm OK with it. It's fairly common industry knowledge that companies like Dell and Acer barely turn a profit on consumer PCs. It's unreasonable to expect Apple to make such a better computer at the same price.

> It's fairly common industry knowledge that companies like Dell and Acer barely turn a profit on consumer PCs. It's unreasonable to expect Apple to make such a better computer at the same price.

The razor-thin margins in PC space force PC manufacturers into making bizarre compromises. I've been looking for a rMBP 15" replacement for about a year now and every alternative seems to have some sort of deal breaker driven by cost cutting. Coil whine on the XPS 15, low-contrast IPS displays on much of HP's lineup, PWM backlights on the T560, 50-60 watt-hour batteries on laptops that aren't any smaller than the rMBP, which packs 100 watt-hours (or used to, grr).

I think the new rMBP 15" is a less good machine than the 2013-2015 model. But there still may be nothing comparable at any price-point.

> the new rMBP 15" is a less good machine than the 2013-2015 model

That's what drives me nuts. It would have taken very little to keep being the best: more ram, refreshed chipsets, refreshed ports. Instead, they went backwards "because 10% thinner", then tacked on the touchbar to distract you from that fact, and increased prices.

Btw, if you are looking for alternatives, there's also the Razer Stealth - especially if you're in the US, where they actually sell the eGPU enclosure. I'm really tempted by the XPS 15 as well, the price is really good and it might get a newer GPU soon.

> I think the new rMBP 15" is a less good machine than the 2013-2015 model.

Could you elaborate on that? I'm debating getting a 2015 refurb, but is there a reason I should get an even older one?

The 2013-2015 models are basically the same machine, except the 2015 has the Force Trackpad. I think the 2016 model is a regression from the previous one.

You forgot 50-60% margins.

> Better keyboard

Apple's keyboard quality has decreased significantly across all products. For example, compare the keyboard on a 2016 12" MacBook to the 2010 17" MBP. Or a 2010 15" MBP to a 2016 15" MBP. Key travel is shallower and there's less physical feedback.

> Key travel is shallower and there's less physical feedback.

I really just can't fathom this. As long as you know you've pressed the key and when you haven't, what's the point of more key travel and feedback? The MB keyboard's trigger mechanism is very precise--you're never wondering whether a key press actually registered.

Half of the typing control system is fixed: proprioception, reflexes for stopping finger extensions when you hit something. Keyboards designed to work well with that system---the hand and brain---let a user type more rapidly and more surely.

What about extra key travel is "designed to work well" with "the hand and brain?" If anything, it's unnecessary work to push the keys any further than you need to after your brain registers the key press.

The company's margins are irrelevant to my purchasing decision.

Kudos to them for putting in the R&D to come up with substantial features that commodity laptop manufacturers (and Microsoft) have failed to replicate for years. That doesn't make any of the things in my list less valuable relative to alternatives.

> Apple's keyboard quality has decreased significantly across all products. For example, compare the keyboard on a 2016 12" MacBook to the 2010 17" MBP. Or a 2010 15" MBP to a 2016 15" MBP. Key travel is shallower and there's less physical feedback.

OK--that one's a little subjective. How about the other dozen or so things in the list? Can you see how they (perhaps) might justify a higher price to some people?

I respect your opinion, however I think you're placing way too much value on features that haven't changed in many generations of this. If you want to argue that they are still recovering R&D costs on unibody cases, a keyboard, and the near abandonment of their desktop hardware AND OS lineup. Then I'm going to bow out gracefully :)

What they're recouping costs on and whether or not the features have changed is irrelevant. What's relevant is whether it's worth buying a Windows laptop instead (or sticking with an existing Mac).

They don't have some moral obligation to have their price in-line with the cheapest thing Dell or Acer can come up with at similar specs. They sell a premium product and those features matter.

No one is arguing that Apple should price their products competitively to commodity Dell and Acer laptops.

Plenty of people are, but your argument is unclear. Prices for things aren't set based on the amount of innovation since the previous release of that thing.

I didn't say pricing was based on the amount of innovation. What's being discussed here is whether the price makes sense to the consumer from a value standpoint.

iPhone sales are down 5% from the previous quarter, and I suspect a lot of it is due to people seeing no value in the upgrade compared to previous iterations. Adding one silly feature, and screwing people over on cheap parts like RAM and storage space, is dissuading consumers from running out and grabbing these "upgrades".

Just look at Apple's revenue reports, down 8%, largely due to less iPhone sales. I suspect they'll see even greater losses in their desktop that received no mention, as well as in the laptop line.

Also, they've always had the best display, and now it's even better. I'm so happy that it turned out that computers aren't as expensive as cars to build because I always feel like I'm getting this super luxury for what is an expensive, but affordable price. Like, Kanye West uses the same computer as me, how cool is that?

Better keyboard? You need to pay less attention to the marketing. The latest MBP keyboard has almost no travel, it's evolving into an iPad.

When has anyone ever wished they had a track pad that took up 2/3 of the palm area? I hope their palm sensing is 100% perfect.

Not to rehash the "PCs have terrible trackpads" thread from a few days ago, but... yes, palm sensing on Apple trackpads is close to perfect.

And I guess I could live with a smaller trackpad, but a nice big one is nicer (when it works well).

I couldn't remember the last time a Mac trackpad had erroneously moved my mouse or clicked in response to my palm.

So I just spent a couple minutes attempting to get it to detect my palms as valid touches and couldn't get it to happen. So at least for my hands, yeah, it seems 100% perfect.

First, $3200 laptop? Where did you get that figure from?

At any rate, the 16GB RAM limit is a limitation of the CPU when used with LPDDR3 memory. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12817515 for an explanation.

I've been thinking about this lately. Microsoft is doing the same thing if you look at it's enterprise products. Low innovation, high cost seems to be the business model of late. I wonder if it has to do with the founders of the company leaving and the reins being placed in the hands of MBA types. It seems like Bill and Steve weren't as afraid of a bad quarter as the current leadership is and took more risks as such.

Since I swithced to Surface earlier this year I haven't looked back. True, Surface is not as good as Macbook but it does the job and is much lighter to carry around as a full laptop (iPad is not a full laptop). Now with Surface Studio coming out soon it's a real challenger to the iMac. The iPhone is the only remaining reason I want to stay within the Apple ecosystem.

I personally don't buy high end products like the iPhone or Surface. I have used them for work, and pound for pound, I still prefer my Cyanogenmod OnePlus 2 and Chromebook running Debian. I get easily 8+ hours of heavy use out of each (12+ for my chromebook) and I have a far greater level of control over my data. If you look at some of the things coming out of Shenzhen lately they are hitting price points that allow almost everyone to own a relatively high end phone or computer (Remember this is what Microsoft used to be all about, they cut the cost of a PC to a third of what it was before them). That's what innovation looks like to me. Not some feature you will forget about a week after you have the device.

Out of curiosity which Chromebook?

Surface series and the hololens are non-innovative?

I liked the surface better when it was called the iPad. That said I was speaking about software products mainly, what was originally Microsoft's bread and butter. Windows 10 is just Windows 8 that spies on you more and includes advertising. I'll believe hololens when I see it, but that seems to be more of a Xbox product than something I'm going to see in someone's office any time soon.

Are you actually comparing a tablet with a limited and locked OS to a device that can run any consumer OS/Application?

Windows Tablets have existed for a decade. They just did not have the build quality of an iPad. Now they do. I don't call that some major innovation.

Again windows tablets before the iPad weren't tablets, they were Table PC's they were effectively a laptop and so the build quality was what was possible with the hardware limitation of the day. I honestly didn't find the build quality of the iPad's until the Air/Air 2 to be that appealing as far as tablets go, always felt to bulky and heavy for what they were.

I also find it pretty disappointing where people talk about the build quality of Apple devices, it looks great, and feels good, but it doesn't mean it's built great, have you ever tried to take an MBP or an Iphone apart? I love my MBP15 and Iphone but if I need to take one device with me and have my life depend on it it wouldn't be either of those since I would not take a device I cannot disassemble and repair myself without having access to an electronics lab.

The Surface was innovative the pen worked great, the formfactor was pretty amazing for the power in it and the OS was pretty good, the Surface Book was also pretty innovative even tho it wasn't the first detachable screen they really worked on the mechanics, electronics and software to make it as good as it can get, the Surface Studio is also not the first but it looks to be near perfection for content creators of nearly all types and every content creator I know was pretty excited about it.

The sad part is that for some reason I have a strong suspicion that if there was an Apple logo on the back of the Surface Studio instead of 4 squares some types of people would be drooling all over it even if 99% of what it offers would be utterly useless to them.

>The Surface was innovative the pen worked great

Thank Wacom, not Microsoft. They invented and perfected the tech for that years ago.

>the formfactor was pretty amazing for the power in it

Thank Apple for pushing the envelope on the form factor and Intel for creating the hardware. There isn't anything there that hasn't been done before.

>the OS was pretty good,

I disagree, it is ad supported and spies on users.

>he Surface Book was also pretty innovative even tho it wasn't the first detachable screen they really worked on the mechanics, electronics and software to make it as good as it can get, the Surface Studio is also not the first but it looks to be near perfection for content creators of nearly all types and every content creator I know was pretty excited about it.

That doesn't sound at all innovative. To be honest that sounds like regurgitated marking speak.

>The sad part is that for some reason I have a strong suspicion that if there was an Apple logo on the back of the Surface Studio instead of 4 squares some types of people would be drooling all over it even if 99% of what it offers would be utterly useless to them.

I don't buy either so it doesn't influence me. Innovation looks like what Tesla is doing. Make something great then drive the price down as low as it can go. Microsoft and Apple products seem to cost more and more year on year. Teslas keep getting cheaper.

>Teslas keep getting cheaper.

The Model S costs more with every new model/improvement, the in march this year there was a price hike, and there is another one expected now with the newer hardware platform being ready to ship, the price of the AutoPilot upgrade alone have been increased by over 20% this year.

Sure you can put the Model 3 here and claim victory but this is like saying that because Apple released the iPhone 5C the iPhone 5S overall price was somehow cheaper.

>The Model S costs more with every new model/improvement

The model S is a luxury vehicle. That's how he had to start and that is what a luxury consumer expects. The people buying those want to spend more. That is an entirely different product.

>Sure you can put the Model 3 here and claim victory but this is like saying that because Apple released the iPhone 5C the iPhone 5S overall price was somehow cheaper.

Does the iPhone get cheaper each model that is released? Nope, more expensive. Does Apple try to reach out to the working class consumer? Nope. What's so innovative about that? Rose gold? Fuck outta here.

Plausible. So if that's their intention, open up the OS to be put on ANY hardware, and stop fucking around with your loyal user base. I hate to break it to Apple, but the people making all of those silly apps for their iPhone, aren't developing them on the iPhone!

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