Benjamin Button Reviews the New MacBook Pro
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Let's be honest for a moment. Apple has never in the history been the one to wait for market to adapt to some new technology. They have been the one who immediately puts it on their products and gets rid of the old standards. Everybody has known this for years so this really shouldn't surprise anyone.
Generally speaking whether you like it or not, no one really cares if the ESC button is on the touchbar instead of being traditional physical button. Even fewer people care if there are ridiculous 32GB models available when most devs dont even need 16GB. Not to mention average consumers.
If Apple would give you guys 32GB option then people would cry why they can't get 64GB option. If the new MacBook wouldn't have touchbar then people would complain why Apple isn't innovating anymore etc.
What Apple is doing with their new MacBook is what Apple has been doing with their products for decades. If you don't like it feel free to switch to other laptops and run Win10 or Linux. But we all know you won't. You'll buy this MacBook sooner or later, then in 2018 when Apple releases new models you'll be here complaining about something again and you'll still buy that one as well.
Do you really think the "average user" would spend $1500-2500 for a laptop? The Macbook Pro is for Pro users. Let them work as pros.
It seems the definition is "anyone for whom this product is unsuitable", as in "well this laptop may be OK for [x] but for a real professional like me it is a joke".
Seems to me that the new features appeal more to the casual user who uses its laptop for leisure (your [x]) than the professional.
It is also a massive pain when someone wants to give you something on a usb stick. Same goes for people in publishing and other content creation industries. People who want to plug an external monitor in to give a ppt without needing a special dongle.
Not two days ago I presented at a conference where I had to plug an HDMI cable into my laptop, and in the middle of setting that up, I transferred over a backup copy of my presentation to the house laptop on a USB stick.
Now maybe I am not a professional in your eyes. But I was wearing a suit!
I'm fairly certain that a USB-c to standard USB port will also be a dongle that every Macbook Pro owner will need to carry. Apple should bundle 2 with every Macbook Pro, but the whiners would still complain...
Yes, you need either a new cable, a new flash drive, or an adapter. But don't pretend that makes this laptop totally unsuitable for your use.
The common themes to wanting a Macbook Pro is that you want more grunt and more I/O, and you have the money to pay for it. A common need among this group is exchanging large data sets, and not being willing to use iCloud/Dropbox/Google Drive to do it for a variety of reasons, like speed, convenience, confidentiality. These are also people who often want to do this in a variety of locations.
And if even cheap Chromebook provides better experience, than it is time to move on. MacBook Pro today actually has some competition, Dell XPS is very nice machine.
I want to not have to buy a new computer because I tripped over a power cable.
I want to be able to type for more than a few minutes without my hands hurting.
I believe I share these dreams with a lot of people who aren't developers.
But the thing is, it would be really cool to enjoy the technical improvements without giving up the basics. I played with a MacBook a few weeks ago, and the picture and built-in speakers were sensational. It was an amazing piece of engineering. And I had to return it because in their obsession with thinness, Apple had made it impossible for my gorilla hands to type on.
It would be nice to get a work laptop that had those strict improvements in it too, without having to sacrifice so much usability. That used to be the MBP upgrade experience. Once in a while you had to mourn something useful—the loss of an ethernet jack, for example. But mostly you got a lighter, faster machine with a better screen and battery life.
This upgrade is far more drastic and the first time the trade-off doesn't seem worthwhile. It's like design puritans took over the company.
http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/precision-m5510-workstatio...
Sure, and developers should stop buying a brand that don't care about them too. That way everybody is happy. Apple can sell luxury goods and developers can shop elsewhere. Nothing of value will be lost.
Except for loss in revenue for Apple. Most tech companies right now prefer to buy Macs for devs because of the costs[1] and devs like it because of the versatility. If devs wont prefer Macs, it seems unlikely that the companies will also keep buying them in bulk
[1] - http://www.businessinsider.in/Macs-cost-one-third-as-much-as...
So many of your 'typical' mac users need a proper keyboard. People writing long articles or novels, developers, obviously, even people working on writing reports or theses they all need a good keyboard. Typing is fundamental, and key travel makes a huge difference in the feel of it. Every review I've read of the single-port macbook suggests that while you can get sort of used to it, it's never as good as the older macbooks.
Which also has the same Butterfly keyboard, or rather the previous version of it; and according to Apple, a less "better" version of it.
Note that the keyboard on the MacBook is even worse than the one on the new MBP.
And it's a sad state of affairs in HN when I get downvoted for that, felt like I'm on Reddit now.
If we are free to use anecdotes I will base my evaluation on two friends who are copywriters and another one who's a tech writer. All of them using an Air or a normal MacBook for the work they do.
I'm curious on what your usage is as a writer for paying a premium on the Pro, care to elaborate?
P.S.: English is not my native language and I'm really trying to not sound condescending, I'm genuinely curious.
But for people who are writers and nothing else, I think the retina display was a big draw when the machine first came out.
The point I was trying to make above is that people who code, or use a pro laptop for editing or whatnot, still have to do a lot of writing as part of their job. So the keyboard on these machines matters a lot. And pro-users tend to be on their laptops all the time, which makes the ergonomic issues more important.
- The screen is better than the Air. That matters when you're staring at it for 8 hours a day.
- However over-priced the MacBook Pro is, that goes double for the small MacBook. It's just too expensive for what you get.
- I want to be able to run photoshop and have it deal with the RAW files from my Sony A6000, My current machine — a 2012 MBA — can't manage it without becoming a noisy radiator.
- If I'm paying top dollar for a laptop, I want it to last for at least four years, and I don't see the small MacBook satisfying me for that length of time with its current resource limitations.
- The extra screen real estate might not seem like much, but when I want my work and a browser next to each other, it makes a difference.
Unusually for writers, I use Vim, and the lack of a hardware Escape is a small concern, but I've remapped it anyway, so I don't think it will pose much of a problem.
The keyboard also worries me, but I've played with the smaller MacBook and It's OK, not awesome but I can deal with it.
Edit: Of course, I could just buy a Windows laptop, but I haven't used Windows regularly for about fifteen years. I used Linux for about a decade, and then OS X. I won't move to Windows, and I'm too busy for the sort of fiddling Linux generally requires. Plus, I'm not a of fan of any current Linux UI — none have the polish of MacOS. So, in addition to everything else, MacOS is a big factor in my sticking with Apple.
You're absolutely right that Macbooks aren't specifically for developers, but releasing a laptop that developers generally don't feel is appealing to them could be really damaging to Apple's ecosystem.
I wonder. I've been running OSX in a KVM guest and it's been surprisingly trouble free and smooth via ARD (remote desktop).
So no, it is no longer the case. It is still prohibited by the EULA though.
[1] https://github.com/kholia/OSX-KVM/blob/master/create_install...
Well actually you can, when using something like Xamarin which has worked pretty well for our company. Sure, somewhere you need a Mac build machine, but that can be an older generation mac mini or similar. The development can be done on Windows using Visual Studio and C# which overall is a pretty great experience with the added benefit of sharing a large percentage of the codebase with the native android version of your app.
Even UNIX developers are locked to their OSes APIs, unless they constrain themselves to command line POSIX tools.
IF.
News flash. Developers are the ones that make a platform worth investing into. Where there's a thriving community of devs, there are interesting useful apps, new ideas, investments and research.
Try me.
The problem is not that Apple makes hardware for non-developers (for which it may actually be a great fit and value).
The problem is that Apple stopped making hardware for developers. A group of users which were quite happy with the previous offerings of Apple. There even was a time when the MacBooks were the best value a developer could get for reasonable money. Quite a few key users will make the switch to Windows&Linux based Laptops because Apple does not deliver anymore (not even at a high price point).
I'll be traveling for 6 weeks soon, and if my camera and kindle used USB C, I'd be very happy.
And yet, I also cannot wait until everything is USB-C. It makes me hope that after that we can also tackle wall plugs and make them universal!
https://griffintechnology.com/us/breaksafe-magnetic-usb-c-po...
It's a cable maker problem. Buy the one that supports the super-set from a brand that doesn't try to fool customers.
Using a USB-C adapter for Video output seems acceptable to me since VGA ain't coming back and there are quite a range of replacement connectors which are all semi-incompatible to each other. An adapter for wired Ethernet is also acceptable since you're connecting to other wires anyways. Not optimal but acceptable.
Not acceptable, though, is having to carry an adapter to connect a common USB-Stick or SD-Card. These things won't go away in the next 4 years.
I wish there was a slim Linux compatible laptop out there with decent battery life, display and trackpad.
Too bad they have ditched the Intel wifi card and has the same Killer one the normal XPS
oh, and it's incredibly linux friendly.
The keyboard on the X1 Yoga is sort of meh, though.
Overall, I'm happy - great keyboard, decent HiDPI screen and all in a very light machine. 16GB RAM and longer battery life would be nice, but I'm happy with the weight tradeoff.
A surface maybe? A intel UltraBook? How about a Ultrabook-Hackintosh? I'm sure there must be something.
I currently use my company device for everything. As long as I have that I'm good, but if I were short on time, I'd probably buy it again if I know myself correctly.
https://hackaday.com/2016/10/28/apple-sucks-now-heres-a-thin...
[0] http://www.razerzone.com/eu-en/gaming-systems/razer-blade-pr...
http://www.razerzone.com/eu-en/gaming-systems/razer-blade-20...
Both Linux and Windows are inferior in some of these aspects, so I have been sucking it up for the past couple of years. Coming the next time I have to change my machine, I am not sure what I will get.
Does bash on windows solve this issue for you or do you want the entire terminal to be nix like (instead of the command prompt)
Perhaps it has been replaced by a newer model with more RAM (mine only has 8GB) which would be good for VMs, but I don't keep up with the Jones' so I'm not sure. The thing works great for me at a fraction of the cost - it was $499 on one of the bit online shops when I got it.
I think laptops are quite a personal choice, and finding the 'perfect' one is very difficult. I couldn't quite justify spending as much as a Carbon X1/X3, or the top MBP, and a year down the track I'm very glad I didn't. YMMV etc : )
My current MacBook works well enough. There's no overwhelming, compelling reason to get a new one.
And yet, it's three years old, so I figured that maybe if Apple comes out with a 32GB version, I'll get it in the coming months.
They didn't, and so I'll be holding onto my machine for a while longer.
Apple has always done this. Always. In the end people adapt and things progress.
Last year I bought a Broadwell rMBP and relegated the Gaming PC to just gaming.
Imho, too much work to mantain it updated and properly working. If I was still in high school, I could live with all the cons, but as a working freelancer, I won't.
If it's just an ugly margin around the Esc key then I still think it's poor UX work.
However this is coming from a UK user on which the key in question has the symbols "§" and "±". Which I never type. I understand the US layout has some more useful symbols there.
CAPS-LOCK ⬅ CONTROL ⬅ ESCAPE ⬅ CAPS-LOCK
Will I buy a new Apple product--probally not, but will buy used.
I look at the shiny, miniminslistic Apple Stores. I look at their products, and I just get this picture in my mind.
The picture is Steve Jobs throwing phones/computers/watches right against his glass office windows. (He know the windows are shatterproof). His blood pressure is off the charts. He knows he needs to calm down, and make a bunch of changes at his company.
He is so upset with the hardware; he isn't even yelling about the software bugs, or the weird direction the company is going in. I picture him yelling, "We are not a democracy here--you listen to me. We are not Google. We are not a company with too many chiefs. I'm the chief! We do it this way! Oh, yea--we do listen to some of our customers. We are not in the 90's. People have changed. Let's not irritate our better customers?"
I picture employees tip-toeing around that office--until they produce a produce a product that is up to Apple standards. They know they need to produce the perfect product. A device, even Job's, won't find fault in. They know Apple bugs are just expected to be fixed quickly. They know Apple only produces the best devices. And then, and only then can Apple put a huge price on the package.