Everything about the state of the Mac
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The personal computer market is now in the "sustaining innovation" phase. There will be minor changes (USB-C. Touch bar thing. etc) but there is no point doing major changes.
Basically if you - like me - need more RAM, or faster graphics, or more CPU in your MPB then you aren't going to get it, except as gradual changes that are easy for Apple to drop in.
My maxed out MPB is currently using 97.5% CPU, 14.7GB RAM (out of 16BM) and I had to delete stuff this morning because my SSD filled up.
The thing is - I know perfectly well that fixing this isn't just more CPU and more memory. It's a completely different way of working.
I should be working on a mobile terminal device (like a Chromebook.. or an iPad Pro) and using my 400 core cluster with 1.5TB of RAM. Sometime I do things that way, but it isn't as convenient.
This "isn't as convenient" things are the things that Apple are trying to fix, NOT "my MBP doesn't have enough RAM".
[1] https://soundcloud.com/a16z/pc-devices-architectures-ecosyst...
This focus may also be the reason they're so 'brave' to provide a small set of ports which is completely disjoint from the previous model? Thinness is probably also the reason they're not offering 32GB of ram?
In a way, Apple doesn't seem to agree with you that innovation has plateaued. I'd like them to improve the specs, maybe make the laptop fanless, reduce the reflectivity -- i.e., evolve the platform to make it better and remove issues. Instead they are trying so hard to revolutionize (touch bar...) that they don't bother improving the laptop.
Really the touch bar is a UI element (a toolbar) made available elsewhere. I like it, but..
This is kind of the point: sustaining innovation over radical change. Incremental improvements will continue.
Well...
>there have been plenty of (barely working) implementations before.
...but that's the key point, isn't it? That the existing implementations don't really work. Just like there were plenty of "non-lame" MP3 players and plenty of smart phones and plenty of tablets...that all didn't really do the job.
Making something work great that already kinda exists, that people have tried and failed to really make great, isn't that exactly Apple's MO?
I certainly have an immediate application for the TouchBar for interactions that (a) have the potential to be really valuable but (b) have so far been too fiddly to do well. And that was only the immediately obvious one, my guess there are a lot more.
So while I had the same immediate reaction (yawn, gimmicky, ...), I have revised that opinion. I think it has the potential of being more useful than a full touch screen would be, in a laptop setting, and that's despite the fact that I think a touch screen might be useful in addition, for example swipe for "casual" scrolling.
In terms of hardware being not that amazingly more powerful (a point made elsewhere). Yes. That's what the end of Moore's Law looks like. What faster Intel CPUs was Apple to have used? Kaby Lake? Apparently not available yet in the configurations/quantities required, and also not really all that much faster And yes, the geek in me is always m/sad about the 13" not having a nice high-perf GPU to play with, but the actual user in me has never really needed it.
Instead of seeking to be saved by faster hardware, we now have a lot more to gain from optimising the software side, and we're currently leaving that on the table. Hmm..."leaving on the table" is not really strong enough, more like pushing away with maximum force.
As a small example the Swift compiler is tremendously slower than the clang based Objective-C/C compiler is. And that in turn is a lot slower than it should be, with a big part being LLVM (see Jonathan Blow's video on Jai compiler performance[1]).
His goal is to compile a medium sized program in well under a second, and a larger one in a couple of seconds. Sound ridiculous? Really the only thing that's ridiculous is that we don't have that level of performance generally available, our machines are fast enough for it. For example, I tried tcc[2], and it compiled a (synthetic) 300KLOC C program in 0.269 seconds. Swift took 96.6 seconds, for a factor 359 difference. And that was purposely avoiding the various constructs that make the Swift compiler run into the weeds.
In my upcoming book [3] I talk about various simple examples that get order(s) of magnitude difference from a bit of tuning love. One example went from 20 minutes using the "standard" accepted techniques to slightly under 1 second...all without any heroic optimisations, just straightforward tuning.
So coming back to the MacBook Pros: yes, they're probably not going to get appreciably faster, that's the new reality. But maybe they don't really need to get appreciably faster, we just have to get off our collective derrieres.
Making something work great that already kinda exists, that people have tried and failed to really make great, isn't that exactly Apple's MO?
I think we agree entirely. Incremental innovation - fixing things that are broken.
The performance of Swift doesn't matter much to Apple. Swift is a demand-pull thing: Developers care about iOS, and will pay the horrible performance tax. The developer experience for iOS developers has always been horrible but it has one thing that matters more than that: users.
Yes and no. Yes in that it is incremental in a way. No in that all of Apple's "revolutionary innovations" have been of this sort, not that I am saying the Touch Bar is necessarily of that scope.
> The developer experience for iOS developers has always been horrible
Do you think there might be a point in making it less horrible?
We're moving into the era of data led computing and software. More ram and cuda support is a necessity for any ambitious dev
Development ten years from now will be all about training ML/AI systems and chaining them together in interesting ways.
That's going to need lots and lots of cycles and RAM. If Apple can't see that and wants to carry on selling jewellery with a keyboard and screen, Apple is going to be steamrollered by competitors who can.
But Apple claims it is
Damned if you do and damned if you don't.
I can't imagine the market of people needings 64gb RAM being significant enough to warrant its own product category.
The only way to offer this would be the f1 racing / supercar comparison made in a different article's comments on HN today. I think the new Mac Pro was an attempt at that and apparently failed.
But they should at least offer the option of 64GB RAM. Or 32GB as a minimum.
Basic specs are going to convince a lot more people than a mm or two of thinness. 16GB means a lot of work literally can't be done on that machine.
As for the Mac Pro - Apple made the usual mistake of building a form-over-function machine.
Mac Pro users actually need a tower with PCI slots, so that it's possible to swap in specialised hardware for DSP, graphics, machine learning, and so on. The only way to do this on the Black Bin Pro is to buy a PCI expansion cage that costs more than some of the Mac Pro models do.
The Mac Pro format would have been brilliant as a new Mac Mini, but it doesn't fit the needs of a significant number of pro users at all.
In the race towards ultimate and unnecessary thinness, the elimination of sockets for RAM and SSD dictate separate SKUs for every configuration they want to sell.
Thinness is part of it, but only due to energy use and chipset support.
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/09/skylake-for-laptops-f...
If its lpddr3, all we'll ever get is 16gb. I think the kaby lake mobiles will do lpddr4 which will allow for 32.
Presumably Apple means that lpddr is the only choice they care about for a laptop. Which while I would love more ram, understand. And that explains why if you see laptops with more than 16g of ram they generally have giant batteries and are using desktop ram.
By the time USB C is widely used they will move on to a different standard which means the hassle of dealing with adapters has been for nothing. USB D will probably out by then. I look forward to the day I can power a kettle with a laptop. Since the MBP only supports USB 3.1 Gen 2 and Thunderbolt 3 users will be fed up with being constrained to only 8 4k displays. Heck, even if they keep USB C for the next MPB and support display port 1.4 it can only drive a 8k display at 60hz per port. But what about the power users with their 16k display? Sure, they could get away with using all 4 ports but that is a hacky solution. Apple is clearly not thinking ahead.
I don't see the problem with dealing with adapters. In the current status quo you already have to deal with adapters. The only way is to add a native port which is going to make the device larger and it still may have the wrong port. There are only three choices. Support all ports (DVI, VGA, HDM, DP) or support only port X with an active adapter to the other ports. The former is clearly not desirable and the latter is what is already happening anyway. USB C with Thunderbolt 3 and DP 1.4 is probably going to be the last physical port we will ever need unless we suddenly have a need to go beyond 8k.
Unless you cheat physics, I don't see that happening ever. Your average kettle(in EU) is 2500-3000W. Even at 220V, that's about 10-15Amps, which requires a seriously thick cable. Now I don't know about you, but I can't imagine portable devices having ports that can support 10 or more amps, purely because such ports would be very heavy and completely unnecessary. Not to mention having a power supply that could provide that much power, or a battery which can discharge that quickly without overheating and/or damaging itself.
This appears to be an argument for never adopting any new connector, ever. You think we should have stuck with RS232?
I strongly disagree with any suggestion that there is no point currently in building a more powerful Mac. Gamers are the best illustration of the phenomenon I'm referring to. Serious gaming is a large market of people who are poorly served by the Mac market and well served by the Windows market, and the difference is NOT that Windows (OS) is inherently better for gaming than Mac (OS) but entirely due to the fact that Apple won't build hardware configured to meet the needs of serious gamers and, worse, refuses to allow anyone else to build good gaming Macs, either. You can get bulky Windows laptops that are much better for gamers (yet no more expensive) than fashionably anorexic Mac laptops, and you can get even better gaming machines for no more money if you buy even bulkier (less-compact) desktops instead of laptops. Relaxing the tight size constraints allows you to provide much more power for the same price. Some people would rather pay for the power than the thinness.
Many developers are in an analogous situation: MacOS itself meets our needs better than alternatives, and Apple can clearly deliver high-end hardware build quality worth paying extra for, but they build hardware optimized for things that don't matter as much to many of us (thinness, elimination of unsightly "lines", minimal connectors, etc.) at the expense of things that matter a lot more. If they doubled the thickness, for example, they could give us more battery life and would have more room for less-compact, cheaper, previous-generation components, giving us more RAM and SSD for the same price.
I believe that thinness is extremely important for some products, such as a tablet (should be large enough for easy reading yet light enough to hand hold for long reading sessions), and a type of laptop for working on the go with a laptop always at your fingertips (frequent business travelers, college students). A MacBook (with more connectors!) would be great for that.
BUT, thinness above all else does not have to be the design ethos for EVERY product line. The MacBook PRO line could use the same OS, high-quality screens, battery mgt., wifi, etc., but be optimized for how much screen (offer a 17" again), battery (replaceable), RAM and SSD (large and upgradeable), and so on, while still being "thin enough". Although various business objectives (ex: wanting to be associated with wealthy, fashionable partiers, not workaday drudges) may make it not useful for Apple, the general idea that there is "no point" in machines optimized for power instead of thinness is wrong.
If they chose, improving gaming on iOS/AppleTV could be a big win for them. But there is no evidence that Apple cares about gaming at all.
The toner-head argument is basically that decisions are being made by sales and financial teams who don't understand what they are selling.
I'm making multiple arguments here, but none are the toner-head argument:
Argument 1: iOS is a better platform to move into gaming on.
Argument 2: The compromises needed to make Macs good gaming machines are completely different to the direction Apple thinks is good for the Mac.
Argument 3: Apple has never cared about gaming.
Really, this is a very long and complex discussion, but I just wanted to point out that Argument 3 was not really accurate.
Other than Prince of Persian, I don't remember a single one.
Then again, in Portugal outside the university campus there were no Macs to be seen.
Yet we had Amigas, Ataris and PC everywhere.
Therefore, there IS a point in building more powerful Macs: serving markets that are only unserved because the hardware isn't powerful enough.
Gaming isn't the point. My interest is in developer machines, but illustrating that more powerful hardware is NOT pointless is more easily done with the gaming market example.
Apple doesn't want to serve these markets. There will always be some people who can find a use for more power, but they aren't Apple's market. For one thing they usually care about price/performance, and Apple refuses to play that game.
For those developers that only care about WWDC, and their main income is programming macOS, iOS, tvOS, watchOS applications, the only requirement is being fast enough to handle XCode.
For those scenarios most Macs are already quite good and these are the developers Apple wants to keep happy, not those that buy Macs as an UNIX with a pretty GUI.
Just because Apple choose not release a version with gen 7cpu /32GB/1TB at this time?
Will you "know perfectly well" otherwise if such a machine does become available in say six months? What if it turns out (just a thought experiment here) that you can upgrade the memory and ssd yourself?
The cloud just isn't all that useful for pro users because it's in a datacenter far, far away and shared with an unknown number of other simultaneous users.
What good is 1.5TB of working memory when my data is local, for example video? At typical network speeds, it would take me months just to upload that 1.5TB of data.
Professional use is all about sharing stuff. Cloud video editing is a better model than local.
Yes, latency and bandwidth both suck, but downsampling video for scrubbing works, and caching small amounts of high-res locally works too.
It's not here for everyone yet, but it's clearly coming. Non-pro tools already work that way, and thing like the Avid Cloud Composer show pro tools are moving that way too.
And sometimes your internet connection is not under your control - if you travel a lot, you're contracting in an office without good internet, etc. Even frequent uploads of small files make for a painful experience when internet is bad.
Work is clearly moving towards a place where files are kept online by default, and where software is optimized for working with them there, instead of moving them up and down.
The data is best left in the datacenter, moving it even within the datacenter require careful consideration.
There is "that kind" of professional too. My need for memory and speed actually went down over the years since the cloud become more and more practical. As a professional machine the MBP is actually ok, except USB-C is a bit annoying, but just a bit since the world is full of dongle already.
As a personal machine I'm a bit nervous to be stuck for 5-6 years (at least) with only 16GB. However, USB-C each with TB3 is actually quite a future proof move.
Which is why I'm a bit disappointed that Apple yet again didn't announce an update to the Mac Pro. They could do a lot more with that. Volumes are probably way too low for it to be viable though.
I've asked my boss if I could get a Mac Pro or iMac instead, but, no dice. I'd like the 17 inch Macbook to make a return too, but also not likely to happen. Alas.
- 15" or close
- In the general "thin and light" category (ideally at least as thin as my 2012 rMBP at 1.8 cm; latest is 1.55cm)
- Higher than 1080p screen resolution (old and new MBP are both 2880x1800)
- At least 7 hours of battery life (advertised battery life of my 2012 rMBP; latest advertises 10 hours)
It seemed to generally come down to 1080p and good battery life, or high resolution (usually higher than the MBP) and crappy battery life. I think the Surface Book was most tempting, but it has a significantly smaller screen.
If anyone has suggestions, I'd love to hear them. But for now my plan is to suck up the reduced key travel and buy a new MacBook Pro...
To be fair, I probably should have got a Macbook as my last laptop upgrade.
The laptop before that was the Lenovo X1 Carbon - slow, memory constrained and expensive to repair.
I've got a Dell XPS 9350 at the moment, and it was more expensive than the top end Macbook at the time (!). It's quite good, but I can't recommend it against the last gen MacBook - there's still a coil whine issue that Dell refuse to really fix (or can't), there's issues with Broadcom wifi cards, and then there's this fun issue: https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/3v6tvp/dell_xps_15_ra...
It gets ~6 hours of battery life in power saving mode, but closer to 4 if I'm doing dev work.
It could be so good, but it's just not there yet. For $3000AUD I expect utter perfection.
Macbooks have significantly better thermal zone than the dell alternatives(e.g. the 7370 is significantly slower than the macbook 12" even though it has the same specs + 16gb) and don't get me started on the touchpad. There's so many threads on reddit about who seemingly fixed the touchpad issue.
Bash on windows by the way is nice, but it's no way near production usable.They use a custom file system that resides in your AppData. Until recent insider builds you could neither use inotify(which means most node apps would have some sort of issue) nor would it keep your Ubuntu when during an update. Now the system is somewhat usable, but I've spent so much time whitelisting different folders so that random windows tools don't eat up CPU and I/O that make this 2016 device feel like something from 2011 that I wonder what the hell microsoft is thinking. The recent windows insider build also fixed an issue with windows defender eating up all CPU.
You can forget about the surfacebook if you want a decent terminal running on it. WsL isn't there yet and linux support is flakey.
So yeah the only contender if you care about both battery AND performance AND a proper terminal right now is the dell xps. The thinkpad x260 is nice, but they don't have nvme, only supports sata express(and i'm not sure i wanna gamble on the intel dc 3500 drives to get me the performance).
XCode and Visual Studio are pretty happy "just" with 8GB.
In fact, I've been looking into NixOS partly because in theory I should be able to wipe the entire system partition whenever I haven't used it for a while, then regenerate it from a handful of config files. Neat - but NixOS partly "compensates" for this by being rather disk hungry when it is in use.
I suppose I should be more diligent about cleaning out junk in general. But these days at least, half the time I have more free RAM than free disk. My next laptop will have 1TB, even with Apple's ransom-level pricing for disk upgrades.
"I suppose I should be more diligent about cleaning out junk in general."*
You and me both. I generally "reclaim" space when I do a clean install during OS upgrades. Looking at mine, the three biggest chunks are music, videos, and email, most of which I could get away without if I were satisfied with relying on an internet connection.
What do you find takes up the most space on your system?
80GB - Boot Camp partition I almost never use but is too useful to get rid of
48GB - /usr/src (hmm, I can probably cut this down, but it includes >700 source trees and I don't remember which of them I care about); biggest individual offenders are:
-> 2.5GB - linux source tree
-> 15GB - chromium source tree
25GB - /Applications
20GB - ~/Music
20GB - anime
20GB - Windows VM (XP!)
9GB - /usr/local, mostly Homebrew
8GB - ~/Pictures, and that's with the Photos app's option to only store thumbnails and stick the rest in iCloud. (Though the preference says: "Originals will also be stored on this Mac if you have enough storage space." Annoying that this isn't more customizable.)
Were you getting this on the Anniversary build? It's driving me insane - between that and Windows Search Indexing my machine becomes unusable.
1. Asus Zenbook Pro UX501VW
2. HP Spectre x360
3. Dell XPS (but I really really don't like the webcam position)
- touchpad requires a third party driver, has really bad recognition and the driver needs to be reset from time to time because it stops recognizing multitouch gestures (there's even a button for reseting the driver in the control panel), this is on Windows10
- keyboard is really mushy and when typing fast, keys sometimes register twice or not at all (first laptop where I ever had such a problem)
- the WIFI didn't connect out of the box with my router, I had to revert to a one year old driver (Windows 10)
I have now a Zenbook UX330 which doesn't have most of these problems (it also needs a third-party touchpad driver though), but has an Optimus NVIDIA/Intel GPU setup which at least on Linux is basically useless.
Can't comment on the Dell XPS :)
[edit: typos]
thank you for once again reminding me why I've never looked back after switching to Mac hardware back in 2006. I'd much rather "cope" with hardware that isn't absolutely top-of-the-line spec-wise than dealing with buttons to reset a f'ing input device driver.
I think our perception of the Mac slowly losing its "it just works" status is somewhat shifted as we're forgetting how bad the alternatives were and obviously still are.
-Slightly thicker at 22.4mm
-With the largest battery you should get 16-20hrs of real world battery life
-Available with a 2880 x 1620 screen
[1]http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/t-series/t560/
At the time I bought it they were for sale in Microsoft stores, so you could try it out in person too.
I haven't really seen this before. But this looks like a decent MacBook Pro alternative. Except maybe battery-life. And not sure about longevity / overall quality.
Maybe if the price is right then making sacrifices is fine, but that's up to the individual buyer. Speaking for myself, a boring computer that's quietly excellent is exactly what I want. My biggest problem with the new MBPs is that i think the Touch Bar is a gimmick and losing the physical escape key is a real bummer.
That's it. I could live without most of what Apple laptops offer, but the touchpads are the selling point for me. I just love them. They actually WORK. I haven't found a single Windows laptop that have an equally great touchpad. The Dell touchpads certainly don't, they are very sensitive to "palm" presses. Are there any good ones out there?
I just tested palm rejection (I don't need it 99.99% of the time) and out of 2 tries it failed once and produced zooms commands.
So yeah, it's probably worse than a mac, but stays usable enough for me.
(Warning: I'm more specifically talking about a T530, some Thinkpad like T440/T540 have extremely terrible touchpads, and I don't now much about the very last models)
For the recent laptops maybe precision touchpads are good, but IIRC sadly not every vendor are shipping in that mode.
On my side I'm extremely annoyed by the current tendency of most 15.6" to have a keyboard with a numeric keypad. That shifts your default position to the left, which is not ok for my taste on a 15.6" (would be ok on a 17"). When looking at powerful recent laptops around 15", I only found the MBP (but I don't like the last one for various reasons), the XPS15 / Precision 5510 and the HP ZBook Studio G3. But the last one seems to have heat problems, and XPS15 have had QC issues. OTOH at least with PC you still sometimes have the option for matte screens.
So yeah choosing a laptop is kind of difficult, especially if you have criteria on lots of point. I doubt I'll ever get the one I really want (ex: I found 16:9 aspect ratio idiotic, but I don't like glossy screens...). I can live with my T530 for a few more years, given it has 16GB of RAM and a SSD.
That said, if you have a good one, I do agree Apple touchpads are great.
A laptop is a tool. Does a carpenter want the newest saw even though his works fine? Does an auto mechanic want a new wrench just because?
And while metaphors are nice, you can't really compare a laptop to a piece of metal attached to a handle.
Also, you do know that you are limited to 1200p scaling on the 15" MBP, don't you?
Maybe I shouldn't worry about this too much, because as a developer I tend to feed a lot of battery to the CPU anyway, draining it much faster: the increased battery drain from a higher resolution screen stays constant, so it becomes less significant as a fraction of a larger overall drain. On the other hand, for the same reason, I'd like all the battery life I can get.
And yes, I'm aware of how the Mac resolution scaling works.
[1] http://www.anandtech.com/show/10116/the-dell-xps-15-9550-rev...
The only thing I found that let me configure it online, and met the requirements (would have preferred more than 16GB of RAM though), was the HP Omen.
Edit: It comes with a 4k screen, which I downgraded to 1080p (Mostly used on monitor), but also wish it had a 2k downgrade option. Mac's Retina resolution is just about perfect, and not really a fan of 4k yet, also on a 15 inch screen it seems a waste.
So what more does everyone (not just HN) think Apple should be offering?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AMD_graphics_processin...
while this is butterfly-v2, not v1, reviewers seems to agree that it's still a "butterfly" keyboard with extremely little travel space.
also, nice to have: sd reader, hdmi, esc-button.
I do have an iMac as well, but I've been traveling a lot in recent months, so the MacBook has become my main computer. It's simultaneously brilliant and incredibly frustrating...
The CPU is a Core m7 that does "TurboBoost" up to 3.1 GHz, but the base frequency is only 1.3 GHz. Because the computer doesn't have a fan, it throttles very rapidly. Encoding video is hopeless, as it can keep up the max speed for maybe half a second and then performance just collapses. Most other tasks are fine -- that burst of 3.1 GHz performance goes surprisingly far in practice.
The portability is incredible, and the dongles suck. The HDMI+USB adapter is ridiculously expensive and absolutely necessary; it's an ugly piece of plastic; worse, after just 4 months the HDMI port is already flaking out.
I'm probably going to get a new MacBook Pro to replace this pink little weirdo, but it has been an interesting experiment.
I'm typing this on a "butterfly-v1" right now. I (subjectively, I know) prefer it to the old MBP/Air keyboard. The travel is less but it has a very crisp and positive feel. It's not bad at all.
"Typing on an iPad" is an accurate description of how that keyboard felt to me.
Clearly some people like this keyboard design, while others do not. It's not helpful to dismiss opinions about it out of hand.
We have a general problem right now of an echochamber of loud and uninformed opinions on something almost nobody has actually even seen or touched.
Also, the inverted-T arrow keys are gone. I used the feeling of aluminum as a hint to position my right hand over the arrow keys. No more aluminum space, so I can't tell between right-Alt and left-arrow by touch anymore, so now I mix between them.
These two were the reasons why I hated the new Magic Keyboard and threw it away after a month of non-stop cursing.
Having said that, I don't care about the amount of travel.
AMD GPU. Inefficient / power-hungry. This means that battery life will be destroyed. Also, have fun with those endless driver issues.
Also, the configuration you quote costs around £2,500+, which is a total rip-off. You could get a laptop with better components from basically any company that exists (even Razer!), and still have enough money left over to buy a second-hand car or a medium/top-of-the-range desktop.
They've shot themselves in the foot.
Razer are one of the best companies out there for well designed high end Windows laptops.
Apple though...they bring poor value to a new level. A new dimension. A new universe not thought possible in the realm for expensive polished turds.
# Thinner and lighter
# Good specs
# Able to drive 5K monitors (QHD retina)
# Touch ID
# I love a large track-pad
# I don't realistically use more than 16GB RAM in daily work
# I don't use function keys
# I don't use VI :). I do use ESC for modals though.
I think the conversation about this model being flawed would be entirely changed if the iPhone 8 had dropped Lightning for a USB C connector. USB C/Thunderbolt ports on the new MacBook Pro are a huge step in the goal of getting away from the endless collection of adapters with an unpleasant transition. For example I haven't had a laptop charger in the car for 10 years, but now the USB phone charger will give it at least a slow charge.
I care about performance because that actually impacts my day-to-day.
One of the most frustrating things about discussions like this, especially wrt Apple, is the amount of projection and handwaving about concerns beyond "Apple makes it; you choose to buy it or not". It's taken almost five days for someone to make the obvious point in the linked article, that the new MBP will be more than sufficient for most developers and so it'll continue to be a strong seller to that segment, especially in light of the comment elsewhere in the thread where someone asks for a drop-in alternative and no one can offer one--every one fails on some major test of either weight, cost, or battery life.
When the 12" MacBook came out I went to the local Apple Store and tried it. Hate the keyboard. Performance is too much of a compromise. You can charge it or use peripherals (or carry a dongle everywhere) and of course I knew th Air was now doomed (Apple tends to limit their SKUs).
The new Macs have now lost me completely.
- 2/4 C ports is shocking. 1/2 of these should be As. It's way too soon for all Cs. I read a comment the other day: it used to be that if it fit it worked. Now everything fits and nothing works. Apple might be imagining a universal port but they're ignoring the cables. There are still active/passive cables, USB 2 vs 3 A-to-C cables and so on. Apple used to only adopt technologies once they were mature.
- loved the old keyboard. Hate the new. Saving 0.5mm for a shitty keyboard is too much compromise.
- I use the escape key and function keys Asia like IDEs in particular. It was already jarring having different key bindings in OSX vs Windows/Linux (the latter two being relatively consistent within Jetbrains IDEs at least).
- Loss of MagSafe.
Recently I bought a refurb Dell XPS 15 with minimal specs for $900that I spent $450 upgrading to 32GB of RAM and a Samsung 950 Pro 512GB SSD. It has a respectable GPU (960M). It's trackpad isn't as good as a Mac's but where PC trackpads were once woefully bad (embarrassingly so), it's not bad. The gap is livable.
Come December there'll be an update and likely you can upgrade one to 32GB with a Samsung Pro 512GB/1TB/2TB which. With a GTX 1060 will be a pretty versatile machine.
Will we be waiting another 2 years for the next Mac update? Will some lines flounder without updates after much fanfare like the Mac Pro?
See this is the real problem: I no longer have faith that this is a sector Apple gives a shit about. I realize laptops and desktops are "trucks" (to quote Steve Jobs) but he understood you still need tucks. Post-Jobs Apple seems to not understand and/or care about this.
There isn't much more CPU performance to be had. Intel doesn't really sell anything faster. A peek at current Thinkpads tells me you can drop $3,000-$4,000 on a 7.5lb luggable with a Xeon-branded CPU, which would have been cool to see in a Mac, but.... yeah.
Aside from the 16GB RAM limitation, Apple's not really holding out on us here. We've hit Moore's Law pretty hard.
Not sure what the battery is like, but that thing is huge.
Proof that either the Macbook Pro isn't bad enough, either it won't hurt their bottom line at all. Proof that the MBP is here to stay. Proof that 2017 could be the year of Linux on the desktop ;)
I would say for these people that sleek design, high battery life and low weight are the three somewhat superficial attributes that stand out the most - or are the most important in making a purchasing choice.
I understand all the dissapointment. However, I think if you analyse Apple's decisions, it probably does make sense from a marketing perspective. They seem to be aiming at the premium aesthetic market that has emerged in the last 5 years within the Mac fanbase. Only thing I dont understand and seems kind of cheeky to me is the price hike.
btw - I am a developer, I use a Macbook Pro at work and a Dell XPS 15 at home - so I am somewhat aware of the price/spec/value differences.
That was also my impression. The funny thing is that this is not the first time in their history, and they used this "our laptops of the past" thing to showcase some of the horrible examples of the 90s, which were just adding bloat and uglyness rather than innovating. Then they present the new model with a bloaty new feature.
Looks like the trend continues.
I've been wondering the same thing about Apple's server infrastructure ever since they quit selling the Xserve.