Does this sound familiar for anyone else?
Give me the 32GB memory and an extra few mm of thickness. I'll just keep it plugged in and not notice the difference.
Portable and powerful is PERFECT for digital nomads and business travellers. A portable powerhouse that can be thrown in a day bag and taken to cafe’s, coworking spaces, lugged through airports and around new cities.
But that’s not the “Pro Market"
Apple should have released this iteration as the new Macbook Air or dropped the Air and called it a “Macbook”. Nobody would have complained.
Then, released a new lineup of Macbook Pros around the same size as the previous generation and dropped quad core processor in the 13” model. Maybe even squeeze in a discrete GPU like the new GTX 1060 or GTX 1080. Nobody would have complained then.
Apple could also have brought out a new expandable, upgradeable cheesegrater tower for the many pros who need real power.
The Mac Pro has proven to be a bit of a disaster, because it hasn't been upgraded for more than three years and users can't usefully upgrade it themselves. A rational Apple would just go back to doing towers. (Even with a tower, you can still handle external as well as internal upgrades.)
You're right that this is hackintosh territory. However, I've seen a lot of people switch to PC towers runing Windows instead. If they spend most of their time in Adobe programs, they are still using Adobe's UI. And users can boot/dual-boot into Linux if that meets their needs.
I can't see many reasons for "creative professionals" to stick with MacOS at the moment, no matter how much they like it. Even Final Cut Pro users recognize that Adobe is the industry standard, and there are several other decent video editors for Windows.
It's absolutely a game of semantics with the current naming scheme, but you are completely right. And releasing an actual full powered thicker and heavier Pro line would keep their brand kudos amongst the vocal developer/media creator crowd.
Every time I come into a thread about the new MacBook Pro, I'm always being told that I'm apparently not a professional. And it kinda hurts a little bit.
Maybe it doesn't meet your particular needs, but insulting everyone who doesn't use 32GB+ of RAM on a day to day basis isn't very nice. Yes, saying "you're not a professional" is an insult to people who are very much professionals.
If you guys want a machine with multiple processors and 128GB of RAM and 5TB disk storage with terribly battery life, you should pressure Apple for a new desktop. The MacBook Pro is not and never has been a mobile workstation. It's a notebook first and foremost.
Second of all, This isn’t about you. nobody is saying you’re not a professional because this new Macbook suits your needs. It’s about the branding.
The whole “Heres our affordable, portable consumer laptops” and “Here’s our more powerful pro laptops” defined the brands. The “macbook/air” and “macbook pro” were branded for two different groups of users.
Now what’s happened is Apple combined them into the one machine and our preconceptions of those brands have been shattered.
Many including myself have been holding out for years for a portable Apple computer (13”) that can be a workhorse (Quad core) and by making the pro thin and light it’s meant that’s no longer possible. It should have just been a Macbook. Hence my previous post about keeping them segregated into two machines.
Let's start with "they've combined them into one machine". Then why do the 12" and the Air exist? Those are the "consumer" devices. If what you're saying is true, the MacBook Pro and the 12" MacBook are the same machine. That's not true at all, there is a substantial difference.
And then let's tackle "the MacBook Pro has always been a mobile workstation". Which again, is completely not true. It's always been exactly the opposite of that. What I have sitting on my desk behind me is a mobile workstation. It's a Thinkpad W530. Go ahead and look up the specs, you'll see what I mean. 32GB of RAM, a quad core i7, a massive screen, and it weighs about three hundred pounds. It also gets 4 hours of battery life, and that's with the extended battery sticking out of the back. A MacBook has never been a mobile workstation. It's always been a notebook that's been as portable and battery-efficient as technology has allowed, while also being able to easily run the tools that most professionals require. Not once has Apple ever said "Pixar ditched their rendering farm for a single 13" MacBook Pro!"
I'm sorry if your preconceptions of the brand have been shattered. I'm also sorry to say that your preconceptions have always been wrong. You're upset because Apple didn't make a device that you were waiting for, but they've never made that device. So maybe instead of complaining that "the new MacBook Pro isn't made for professionals!" you can understand that your definition of professional doesn't necessarily line up with Apple's. It never has.
That said - I would gladly take the 32GB and extra thickness. I'm running off a MBP mid-2012 as it is (bought in 2015), so I'm used to extra thickness & about 2kg weight. And even the 2012 gets a solid 7 hours battery life, whereas reviews say the TouchBar MBP model is struggling to manage 6 hours.
On the other hand, I also have a 13" 2015 MBP[1]. It is only ever plugged in when it needs charging. I bought it specifically for it's size and battery life, because, as ludicrous as this might sound, I want my laptop to be as portable as possible. I don't _want_ it to be plugged in and I don't want to feel like I've been working out when I've been carrying it.
I know, this is crazy talk, but might I suggest that many of the people complaining are doing so simply because they bought the wrong tool for the job? It sounds to me like an awful lot of the complainers would have been better served by an actual desktop computer.
[1] I had never even used OSX before, and own no other Apple products, but I bought a MBP based entirely on battery life and size, because it was the best option out there.
There are now external GPU chassis you can get. What would it take to have an external set of CPUs or massive block of RAM? Make the macbook a reasonably powered thing you can carry about but have a tower you can plug into that extends your processing ability massively.
Or something more radical, make a neat system for moving storage around. Make the vast majority of the hardware entirely interchangeable, so you can move to a new desk, go home, go wherever and just plug in your 10 gram chip. M2 drives are pretty tiny, that seems like a tech that's arrived. Allow me to use a lightweight, low power device while travelling then go and plug myself into a monster of a machine at home.