Comment by dcole2929 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dcole2929 | Hacker News Reader

I think the simplest explanation here is that where previously the MacBookPro was a device for professionals with Mass Market appeal, it is now a device for mass market that hasn't quite lost the professional price. When your company has catered so heavily to one demographic over the years it's more than a bit disingenuous to use the same product name to sale vastly under suited machines to those individuals. The new MacbookPros are clearly not going to work in a lot of pro use style environments. It's fair to argue that most people don't plug anything in but power, and that 16gb of memory is already overkill but I'd argue that's what the Air and non pro lineup are for. The pro moniker has meant something for the past 15+ years, and these machines do not honor that. If Apple isn't in the business of making machines for developer and serious creatives that's fine but they need to do a better job communicating that.

Also as a side note the new iPhone not coming with a cable is just bad. Directly connecting the phone to the computer remains the easiest way to transfer content and the only real way to reset the device in certain situations. Just complete failure to not have that included.

People keep saying this "for professionals" thing, but what about the previous generation of Pros was so different compared to this new one? The 13" still only had integrated graphics and a dual core cpu. The 15" still only had the option for a kind of bad discrete graphics cards, and the more-or-less top of the line intel laptop chip. Other than 32gb ram, I'm not sure what they could have done here to satisfy "professionals" on the specs.

To me the reason these are Pro devices is they use top of the line materials and manufacturing techniques to make a powerful and portable device that basically lasts forever in computer years. Nothing so far has led me to believe the new MBPs will fail at this. And very little suggests PCs are competitive on this dimension yet.

Better GPU? I wonder how the 13" will fare when hooked up to the LG 5K screen coming out in December.

I wondered about this as well, since I have an (I think) early 2015 13" and notice some slowness when using the display scaling feature or connecting it to an external 4k monitor.

Ars mentions this:

> It’s also much more feasible to use the scaling modes with current GPUs than it was with 2012’s GPUs, which were prone to dropping frames even at lower resolutions. I noticed no slowdown or jerkiness whatsoever in 1440×900 or 1680×1050 mode on the new Pro—you don’t need to worry about performance, so just pick the mode that treats your eyeballs the best.

Doesn't address 5K, but at least seems promising in terms of the ability of the new Iris chips to drive the display at higher resolutions. Hopefully 5k won't be an issue, and Apple is specifically advertising it as supported.

My gut, however, says that if you want to run 5k without any noticeable slowness, you'll need the 15.

Almost certainly better than the early 2016 13" which had a Broadwell Iris chip, which was better than all the previous 13" rMBP chips before it.

I think it's because professionals need consistency and reliability in their products. They invest a lot in their ecosystem and repurchasing new adapters and peripherals now have to get tested and purchased in addition to new hardware. If something breaks or you need to grow your business, it's nice to buy something identical or mostly the same (but beefier).

To me this felt like too much, too quick. Each time Apple changed the MBP I cringe a little wondering if it's personally a net win or a net loss; non-removable battery (when each of the laptops had batteries die prematurely after 1 or 2 years), ditching ethernet, ditching the CDROM, non-upgradable RAM and HDD, dropping video connector of the week. Those all mostly happened one or two at a time over the years. Personally, I still have a 6yo MBP before most of that happened. These new changes make it a much harder pill to swallow and make me want to look at other options more closely.

The MBP line was long in the tooth before this. Everyone was expecting a spec bump last year, then in spring, and now we finally get it. Dropping all of the connectors and charging ports without even allowing for a significant boost in specs hit some people hard.

It seems like the transition away from professional users has been happening for quite some time on both the hardware and software fronts. Most new OSX features seem heavily tilted towards the home user, not the power user, and especially not developers. The question does become, who are these 'pro' machines really intended for now? The cynic in me says that Apple intends MBP's to be used to mainly create apps and content for iOS devices...

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