On 2016 Apple: What do “Pro” users want?
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For example, the MacBook Air sacrifices performance for extreme portability and decent battery life. The first retina MacBook Pro bets heavily on high-DPI screen for the first time ever in computers, but less connectors and no DVD. It was risky bets, but a vision was behind. This generation of MacBook Pro asks for a lot as sacrifices (CPU almost already a generation behind, no legacy ports, no SD card, limited RAM, no battery life improvement, ifixit scores lowered, no magsafe, no Nvidia GPU, no screen DPI improvement, etc.) for nothing substantial or exciting. I think that's the reason people are complaining loudly, and I think for the first time in the past 10-year MacBook history, it's fair.
The ifixit teardown makes the machine look like a real mess inside, but I think drastically simplifying the connections to all external add-ons and the continued focus on the bottleneck of storage speed give reason to be optimistic about what the future holds.
Macbooks have had available SSD's for awhile.
When it comes down to it, a bunch of sacrifices were made to make this Macbook thinner, which simply is of very little benefit to professional users. It's nice, but not when it comes at the expense of performance and usability.
While ridiculous that Apple doesn't ease the transition with more included cables, my house is full of different types of monitor cables, hard drive cables, and iOS device cables that seemed to change every two years. At least now I might get a decade out of the next generation of them.
The problem is that Apple did not simplify the connections. They unified them. The focus on a single hardware port is all well and good, but in this case it's just glossing over the fact that there are a wide array of different protocols that talk over this hardware and not all of the hardware supports them.
With SSD speeds in macbooks being over one GB/s for years I also do not really see where storage throughput is a bottleneck.
Microsoft is a famously developer-friendly company (sorry, "developers, developers, developers," comes to mind). However during Ballmer-era years, user experience was jumpy, and developers had free reign to build their products even if it was disconnected from the OS look and feel. The transition to Windows UAC, for example, was a result of Microsoft being too lax on developers for many years before (writing to anywhere on C drive), until Microsoft said they couldn't just write to anywhere.
Apple has been restrictive to developers, and that has been the way with Steve Jobs. They've locked down many APIs (even abruptly deprecated them) and punished apps that don't conform to Apple's consistent look and feel. So in that sense, Apple may not be the friendliest to developers, but it has pushed a more consistent product. Perhaps these restrictions are why Apple's products give all users a good experience despite more annoyances to the developer.
Python? Preinstalled. Git? Got you covered. Ruby? Sits right there. Java? Check. Ant, Maven? You bet!
There is no other OS offering the same level of convenience to developers, no matter what stack they used.
I believe that is a consequence of macOS being built with BSD foundations. They're there. But let's not pretend macOS *nix/POSIX stuff is great; there's a reason that MacPorts exists.
I'd argue that Ubuntu does offer greater. Let's not pretend Xcode is a good IDE, either. I can't even recall the number of times I had my project crash on me.
And no, e.g. Ubuntu doesn't include Ruby or Git in default installation, nor FreeBSD.
Actually, I believe you can install Ruby/Git on Ubuntu install if you toggle Development tools. But anyone doing serious Ruby development will use rvm/docker.
Even when Ruby was included in Lion, nobody developing Ruby apps could use the vendor-supplied stuff. I remember this from back in 2008. There were countless blog articles telling you to download Ruby and compile. The situation from a decade ago caused a ton of pain in bootstrapping a developer setup.
Convenience to development should be measured by how easy it is to install/access development tools when you need them -- such as how well the package manager work, not how much stuff the base system come with.
In my personal experience Mac are the closes platforms to this stability; it's probably because the HW and the SW are designed together. Using the same software on other HW would be a terrible experience that would break the only real benefits of the Macs. I have used linux for many (many, really many) years, with many different distributions; I love it; it's my first choice for servers. But not as a developer, because it never gave me the feeling that I can trust it whatever it happens.
What I really need is a computer that can be updated without worries (I'm currently writing on a mid 2009 MBP 13" which got updated multiple times without one single formatting), great screen, fantastic keyboard and wonderful touchpad, because these are the things I touch and see everyday. I wouldn't trade Mac's touchpad for more RAM, neither the great keyboard for longer battery.
Of course these are my key points, while others might have different needs.
Color me surprised if we ever see this, as this kind of approach almost killed Apple in the early 90s.
1) Drivers already exist for a huge list of hardware, that can run macOS ( Hackintosh project did a lot of work on that part ). Maybe there will be some unofficial list of supported CPU / Motherboards, etc, for which list Apple will not care anyway ( NO WARRANTY part of the TOS ).
2) Apple nowadays earns millions from phones & tables. MacBooks / iMacs are not as big as they were a couple of years ago.
Pretty sure you'll be waiting a long time for that, despite how awesome it may sound.
Don't forget a good, centered, trackpad (apple is fine on this front, but many competitors are not) and keyboard with the common keys but no numpad.
Couple these two things with a clean-looking, sturdy build in a 13,3 inch laptop and my money is yours to take. I can atand the weight/thickness of pre-retina macbooks no problem.
If you compare the iPhone with what existed at the time, doing your own custom very integrated and very compact logic board, allowed a massive screen and a massive battery. That was a game changer.
They are just trying the same trick, only I'm not sure (to be polite) that it brings any real competitive advantage. Sure a thin, ultralight and still powerful laptop would be appealing. But the MBP is just not that smaller or light compared to the competition or even the previous generation. Especially not the 15in version.
It is just a lot of sacrifice for a perceived marginal improvement over the competition. Nobody would be complaining if the 15in MBP weighted 1.5 pound and still lasted 10 hour with a quadcore i7.
I tried to use a coworker's Lenovo the other day and the offset keyboard drove me batty. I couldn't imagine trying to use that one on a lap-pad.
[1] http://www.toptenreviews.com/computers/gaming/best-gaming-la...
> Experiment, but not on my lawn
That's the real crux of it, isn't it? Everyone wants Apple to innovate and change and stuff, up until it affects the pieces of the Mac they like. Apple just managed to step on a lot of toes simultaneously by wiping the exterior of nearly all connectors and slots.
Right, but if Apple seriously wants to continue targeting Developers, then they need to produce a product that will actually target them properly.
It's like music equipment. If you look at home music equipment, the marketing and user-friendliness is completely different from the pro music market, despite the fact that they essentially just play music.
32GB and 64GB RAM options
A replaceable SSD because they can and do fail
Options for good GPU
A few standardized ports like USB, HDMI, audio in/out, not requiring 3000 different dongles to connect to every peripheral and accessory currently in existence
An Escape key that is hardware, and in a regular location
Decent battery life
Note the prior generation MacBook Pro lines largely met those requirements, except for more RAM.
What I want from a Pro machine, is standard, expandable memory and storage. I would have been an amazing cheerleader if I could put in more RAM[3] and a bigger M.2 drive.
If that means that its not quite as thin, then all good. Thin isn't my first Pro item.
1) I'm not as fine on the iPhone since obsoleting my headphones was really not acceptable for a proprietary connector (Lightning) instead of a standard (USB-C). Finding a dongle that allows listening and charging is not cool.
2) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA0Y44N600...
3) I understand ECC RAM is out the windows with Intel.
Remember Ruby on Rails and the initial hype? DHH, the author of Rails, is a marketing genius. He was probably one of the first people who introduced a development platform with screencasts. Those screencasts featured beautiful pixel-perfect TextMate editor, available only on Mac OS X.
Everybody said "wow!" and started buying Macs and coding Rails. After sluggishly slow IDEs of the day and geeky vim/emacs stuff with dangling corners and UI flickering, TextMate was pure visual Nirvana. Thankfully, Ruby came preinstalled with Macs.
And thus, the market was created. Apple probably didn't intend to make Macs a solid developer's machine, but it happened, and it was supported until recently.
Now, the support has been withdrawn, and it left many people in Limbo. I have moved to Ubuntu, but I will miss my happy days with OS X.
Now, Windows has free dev tools, and Linux has a much nicer desktop.
I think the earliest versions of macOS/OS X since the Intel transition (that's when I joined) were great. UI was intuitive and minimalist, and OS did an adequate amount of functionality, and Spotlight was great. Now Finder lags and caches wrong items all over, and occasionally crashes.
Timely updates so we don't see particular lines rot for more than a year. With regards to ports, its fine if you want to move to the new "port" that will be the future. However when doing so please consider providing an inexpensive solution to support older ports required just to connect to other products you released just this year.
I know some are tired of the port argument, but something is broke in Apple when the various product lines require adapters to connect.
As for other products, more flexibility in configuration. having to buy the top model to get a gpu choice isn't consumer friendly. plus your ssd prices still make me flinch. and if you aren't going to update then a price reduction is owed
His main thesis was "play with the Macbook Air, iMac, Macbook lines, but if you're going to use the 'Pro' branding, be capable of supporting professional use cases."
The other interesting thought nugget from the article was buried up at the top: (paraphrasing) "perhaps too many consumers have been buying Macbook Pros because it's a sturdy, dependable machine. This consumer support and use product may be producing marketing and usage metrics drowning out the ACTUAL use cases of the professionals that need a more powerful machine."
If this new generation MBP is really just a slightly enhanced Macbook Air because that's how several million people choose to use their MBP, it ignores the tens of thousands of people that need "pro" level hardware (or even just modifyability) in order to create content (iOS apps, music, video, software) that actually drives Apple's Walled Garden ecosystem.
Accountants can happily use a random sub-500$ laptop and make money.
If your job is to poke people with a stick, is your stick a pro stick?
Pro is more likely to be defined as something particular/peculiar that you do not find on other usual/consumer/widespread brands and accomodates very particular use-cases.
Let me exemplify:
- you are a professional video editor. you do not only enjoy, you need fast storage, a lot of fast storage.
- you do CAD. you do need a fast video card and cpus.
- you are a researcher who needs computing power. not enough power to justify a fancy coud solution or stuff like that, but enough that a regular core i5 is not enough.
If your very rare use-case can be met by a laptop, then said laptop is a pro-level laptop. Otherwise, without any more fuss, it's not.
Sidenote: according to what i have said until now, ThinkPads have always been and currently are pro-level laptops (xeon cpus, multiple hard disks, removable bays, ports, docking stations, nvidia quadro cards, hi-res displays, intergated colorimeters, fingerprint readers, you name it).
Stop complaining and wasting your money, join the pro side.
I was a long-time ThinkPad user before switching to Macs. Macbook Pros were more reliable and developer-friendlier. Until recently.
FWIW, Dell, HP and other vendors use the term "workstation" to cover what you're talking about.
IIRC, Schiller did use "workstation" in the keynote when he talked about connecting the MBP to two external 5K monitors, but in general, the meaning of "Pro" is so diluted (esp compared to "workstation") that it means different things to different people.
Yes, indeed. And as with many other things, Apple being Apple, decided to name their workstation differently.
Except for the offset trackpad and keyboard to support the 10-key numpad. It's not just ugly, it's not comfortable or usable. I know I'm not alone on this.
I agree.
I wouldn't say the demand for iOS apps is as elastic as the author thinks. The big push towards building for iOS isn't 'mostly people just playing around with xcode', but people actively pursuing profit off the market of users the iOS env has.
Even if fewer MBP users led to a significant ramp-down in the number of unique quality-app devs in the app store (I doubt it), the big players and their apps would still be around, as would many more hopefuls trying for a slice of the pie.
16G RAM maximum: what is it, 2013? I am a Scala software engineer, and 16G is the minimum to feel comfortable. OK, I could live with it, if only...
Dual core mobile CPU: dual-core?! in 2016? These days, _mobile phones_ spot 8 cores. Apple's own iPhone has 4-core CPU. This is a joke, right?
GPU: Intel Iris Graphics 510, with no discrete graphics option. OK, right, this _is_ a joke.
tl;dr A computer with a dual core CPU and integrated graphics is not a developer's machine, no way. Goodbye, Apple. I have spent tens of thousands dollars buying your stuff, but enough is enough.
For the moment, for the same price I've assembled the ultimate desktop: Core i7 6700K, 32G RAM, nVidia GTX 1080, 2x512 SSD, 4K display. I don't know what else to wish for. OK, I'll have to live with Ubuntu, but the hardware is worth it.
I am keeping my thin Macbook'2015 for travel-related stuff: 80% of tasks I can do with that, and for remaining 20%, I can do remote desktop connection to my home machine.
This is just a slew of poor decisions that would've never happened under Jobs, who was really always future proofing and 2 steps ahead. Ive checked out mentally and Cook's interpretation of Jobs vision is obviously just below par.
But I also like to play video games in Bootcamp, so a ~2x faster GPU than the Radeon 460 would be nice, like the Geforce 1060 in the Razer Blade.
That has always been the best feature for me: snappy, fast, fluid window/workspace navigation with the 3-finger swipe. Great for going back and forth between docs and the IDE (split-screen makes texts too small for my 13").
I'm not sure this is as important than what the "Pro" suffix has implicitly meant to a significant group of users in the past. From Apple's perspective, the meaning seems to have changed a little ("premium model" vs "powerful + flexible"), and that's irked a lot of people.
fta>> "This Macbook Pro is a great machine and, with USB-C ports, is future proof."
It is a great machine, and it is future proof, but it's also "present-unfriendly". IMO, Apple should have treated 2016 as a "bridge" year and left a legacy port or two, and then done away with legacy ports a year later, but that's just me.
UPD: how could I forget about a hardware camera/mic switch?))
Not all monitors have that capability though.
If you've been using computers long enough, you'll have survived this before. If you haven't, you're lucky because it's not out of question that the next step is wireless everything — no ports at all! (Then you'll just need a little dongle for all of old equipment that doesn't support wireless.)
This comes across more like Apple refusing to make a mouse with two buttons.
That hasn't worked out so badly for them. Their trackpads don't have two buttons, either. And in line with the analogy, Apple doesn't prevent you from using a mouse with two buttons: you can buy other input devices and use them with a Mac if it has the appropriate drivers. In this case, you just need to buy an adapter.
Edited to add: By the way, please don't read me as saying you're wrong, or naïve. If it's coming across that way, it's poor writing on my part. I don't realistically see a way for Apple to handle this in a way that's going to push the industry in the direction it wants it to go and please everyone at the same time. There's an element of truth to a tweet I saw the other day: I paraphrase "It's not a MacBook release without someone complaining about ports."
The USB + wifi cutting out issue raised by Louis Rossman is pretty indicative that it's really bleeding edge (still!) to be USB-C only.
If the Intel chip isn't available yet, what can Apple do? The latest chip they use only supports 16gb.