Phil Schiller Inital Response to MBP Criticism | Hacker News Reader

Phil Schiller Inital Response to MBP Criticism

independent.co.uk

37 pointsdcgoss24 comments

It doesn't seem like there is even an understanding of the criticism based on his response in the article.

Let me spell it out explicitly:

The criticism is that this is a Pro machine. Pro people care about performance and features.

The decision to optimize for thinner and lighter at the expense of other useful features is the criticism. The weight and size were fine before. I don't care. I'd be fine with bigger and heavier too. All I care is that it fits in a normal size backpack / travel case.

As a photographer I would need have an SD card reader now and the vast majority don't come in USB-C. If I already had a reader I would now need a dongle to convert it. That's more hassle and more things to lug around. I already need to carry several bags worth of studio gear, the less I need to carry the better.

In terms of video, there really isn't any compelling reason to upgrade until Kaby Lake is out. The increased 4K encoding and decoding is quite significant. It would have been nice to have the MBP come out earlier, that way another MBP could be released shortly after the Kaby Lake release. If it takes another 1.5 years before another MBP then it would be really far behind the best possible hardware.

In short, people who buy the MBP want a Pro laptop, not the Air.

Honestly, based on what I'm seeing right now, professional software developers, photographers, and videographers seem to be ignored.

I switched to Mac when Apple started using Intel. Based on what I'm seeing now, I'm exploring switching back to Windows.

If I'm not your target market anymore, so be it. I can appreciate the business reasons to concentrate on making money. But don't delude yourself into thinking you're serving Pro or creative users anymore.

> The criticism is that this is a Pro machine. Pro people care about performance and features. > The decision to optimize for thinner and lighter at the expense of other useful features is the criticism. The weight and size were fine before. I don't care. I'd be fine with bigger and heavier too.

I mean, that's a bit of a weird criticism to level at Apple, isn't it? Making things thinner and lighter has been Apple's MO even in the Pro Line for more than a decade. I remember when the 12" PowerBook G4 came out. It was hailed as breakthrough product for road warriors. It fit a 12" screen into a 4.6 pound frame. Today, the 15" is even lighter than that. Do we miss stuff like the optical drive enough to want to go back to 4.6 pound laptops that only fit a 12" screen?

Obviously, even Pro users care about size/weight. If they didn't there would be no point making the 13" model.

> All I care is that it fits in a normal size backpack / travel case.

So you don't care about the size/weight of the laptop, but the size/weight of the dongles is a deal-breaker? And you'd rather have everyone pay for ports only a few people need than to pack some dongles in one of your several bags?

> In terms of video, there really isn't any compelling reason to upgrade until Kaby Lake is out.

People would've flipped their shit if Apple had skipped both Broadwell and Skylake.

>So you don't care about the size/weight of the laptop, but the size/weight of the dongles is a deal-breaker? And you'd rather have everyone pay for ports only a few people need than to pack some dongles in one of your several bags?

I'm not the OP, and for the most part I agree with your take, but here, I get it. Things like dongles are easily lost or broken when you most need them out in the field. When you're busy trying to do something, you don't want to be scrambling trying to find a dongle while you're missing shots -and then fifteen minutes into a search for an adapter you remember you might have left it in the car...

I mean, at the airport, I can have my ticket right in my pocket, but damnit if I can't find which pocket it's in.

Things are thin and light enough now - both in laptops and phones (and maybe tablets) - that other features like battery life from bigger thicker batteries provide more marginal utility and value than slightly thinner and lighter do. Witness the Google Nexus 5 -> Nexus 5X, whereas the latter is thicker than its predecessor and with better battery life as a result. Huge usability improvement. Time for manufacturers to realize they've solved the thin and light problem, and now other problems need to take precedence.

> Do we miss stuff like the optical drive enough to want to go back to 4.6 pound

The optical drive was removed long after it was obsolete. With the recent MBPs, the gripe isn't about removing obsolete technology in the name of weight.

i've been trying to think of a list of types of pros that use Macbooks ("pro" being anyone who can use their work to justify spending at least twice as much on their computer, or who works for someone who will spend it for them)

as mentioned, there are photographers, video editors, software developers/computer engineers

also, audio engineers, illustrators and graphic designers

my anecdotal evidence says architects and engineers don't use Macs professionally, and neither do accountants. Lawyers who use Macs don't—or at least don't need to—use high end ones. Same with professors, doctors, accountants.

So was in mind during design?

Your criticisms boil down to needing a dongle and the unavailability of Kaby Lake. Personally, I have no issues with the MBP and find the whole "echo chamber" outrage a little silly. It is still an improvement on many fronts over the previous MBP. If you need 16GB+ RAM and more disk space or want to spend less, you buy a desktop or you don't use OSX. As an AAPL shareholder, I'm happy to see Apple shifting its focus toward consumers. As an iOS developer, I just want a portable that runs XCode well. As a web developer, I just want a nice UNIX OS and a good text editor. As a Mac user since 1984, I always have gripes about the OS but they're mostly hair splitting compared to the hair-pulling experience of Windows or Linux. My Macs have always been less than bleeding edge hardware in terms of capacity, performance, etc. but it's a trade off for a solid OS and lower TCO. And yes, I am a "Pro" user by any sensible definition of the word.

As an AAPL shareholder, I'm happy to see Apple shifting its focus toward consumers.

My prediction is there won't be all that many "consumers" buying 13" laptops starting at $1799 (for the version with the touch bar).

My kids both already had the 2015 model. I don't know if I would have bought them the new models, considering the higher prices, roughly 40% more expensive. Maybe I would have bought them Macbook Airs. BTW the 13" air is currently being discounted by $100 down to $899. So it also might not be long for this world.

I just put my money where my mouth ... err keyboard ... is. Yesterday I bought myself a 2015 model 13" retina (discounted by $100, probably about to be discontinued). So $1199 compared to $1499 (no touch bar) or $1799. The extra features aren't worth it for me. The missing features, like magsafe, are worth paying for. But YMMV.

Laptops are a declining race to zero. Apple knows this. In five to ten years, they'll seem downright quaint.

Edit: For the record, my mid-2014 MBP is nowhere near EOL. I'd rather spend ¥400,000 on AAPL shares.

I think Apple design has an anorexia thing going on. They are making things thin for thinness sake.

If Apple made dedicated "pro" cameras I think they would make them so small you couldn't hold them without your finger getting in the way of the lens and ditch the memory card in favor of wifi "because it's the future".

(Please resist the urge to point out that pro photographers sometimes use iPhones cameras.)

Apple design has an anorexia thing going on

SNL nailed this a decade ago. Presenting the iPod Invisa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plx69SIvgWI

"Is it inconsistent to keep the 3.5mm headphone jack as it’s no longer on the latest iPhone?

Not at all. These are pro machines.

The new Pros have no SD card slot for a camera memory card. Why not?

you can use a physical adaptor if you want"

I mean most audio pros were using external soundcards since like forever, however imaging pros are now f'd in the a with their SD cards and USB-A cables. Sure this can be addressed with adaptors easily, but they are the ones who travel the most, and need the least number of dongles.

Schiller's (Apple's) argument is super weak.

They have made the best "pretend-a-pro at Starbucks" machine.

Now with emoji bar!

"It’s part of our thinking about where to take the notebook next. Others are trying to turn the notebook into the tablet. The new MacBook Pro is a product that celebrates that it is a notebook, this shape that has been with us for the last 25 years is probably going to be with us for another 25 years because there’s something eternal about the basic notebook form factor."

This is interesting. I would hope that sometime before 25yrs from now we have reliable enough voice recognition to get rid of the physical keyboard, good enough VR/AR to make a 3D UI (along with a popup VR keyboard for the occasional word that needs to be manually typed out or for when working in libraries). House it all in a pair of AR glasses attached to a battery/CPU/RAM/SDD in a backpack (replacing the laptop in the backpack of today). Seems something like that should be the holy grail of personal computing, achievable within 10-20yrs, and really Apple's wheelhouse more than any other.

Duplicate: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12855252

Actual title: Apple’s Philip Schiller talks computers, touchscreens and voice on the new MacBook Pro

(shortened to "Phil Schiller Discusses the new MacBook Pro" in first post)

"But many users have setups with studio monitors, amps, and other pro audio gear that do not have wireless solutions and need the 3.5mm jack."

Any user with "studio monitors, amps, and other pro audio gear" is not using the 3.5mm jack. I dabble in music production (i.e. I'm very much a beginner) and I use an USB audio interface. The built-in DAC, while better than most PC's, is not very good.

How does Schiller even pretend that this is a valid justification for the 3.5mm audio jack on the Mac but not on the iPhone?

I thought thinner and lighter is for the MacBook Air. I would much prefer a slightly thicker device with more power. The 16 GB restriction makes no sense either.

That has already been explained so it does make sense:

https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/59yrxg/the_true_reas...

Since I'd like 32GB in my next mbp, I'll be waiting for the next rev

It makes "sense", until I see that a company like Lenovo sells a laptop with up to 64GB RAM [1]. The difference is that Lenovo uses Intel Xeon chips in the higher end models. Apple could make a laptop with that much RAM (and all the ports everyone wants, and a proper keyboard), they're just choosing not to. Presumably because then they couldn't say it was thinner & lighter.

[1] http://www3.lenovo.com/au/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-p-ser...

I don't get that explanation:

> Many mite make the argument that apple could have used the LPDDR3 version, but how would they look if they did that for the 15 inch MBP only?

I don't know... compromising, reasonable, and responding to what customers expect?

I made a note of the minijack thing.

Are there any wireless music protocols that allows for delay-less playing of audio? My bluetooth speaker has about half a second, maybe one second delay. Airplay has a delay as well. I don't know about the new airpots though.

I think Apple might see their notebooks and iPads as devices people will watch movies on somewhat seriously, and therefore will need a delay-less way of listening.

Quote from the article:

And we are proud to tell you that so far our online store has had more orders for the new MacBook Pro than any other pro notebook before.

Could it be that it was 527 days since the previous update which is, by a wide margin, the longest delay between MBP updates ever?

http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#Mac

I think it's even more likely due to the fact that 4 out of 5 laptops they sell are labeled "MacBook Pro" - including the MacBook Air replacement.

If Chevy named the majority of their cars Malibu (1/2 ton truck), Malibu (3/4 ton truck), Malibu (2 door sports car), Malibu (4 door electric sedan), Malibu (4 door full-size sedan) then they would have the largest amount of Malibu's sold ever too.

Well spotted. No doubt in some secret Gattaca-esque white room at infinite loop there are a bunch of carefully dressed project executives in damage control mode.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com