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Comment by davidf18 | Hacker News Reader

Admittedly, for my needs the 15" models are not great. Writing and some computer programming/big data. I prefer longer battery life and a lighter/smaller 15" unit. The new unit claims to have about 2 hours more battery life than the 2015 model (see tables of battery life near end) [1].

Also important to me is nearby Apple stores to get my Mac problems looked into if I need it.

Could somebody please be specific as to what the new 15" rMBP is not doing for them?

[1] http://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Pro-15-Late-2016-...

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The actual problem for me (audio engineer/music production) isn't so much the new machine itself, it's that after /years/ of stagnation, at a much-hyped keynote titled "Hello Again", referencing the original Mac launch, it's the only machine we got, and it's not much better than the machine that came before it.

Essentially what this signaled to me, and a lot of other people, is that Apple has lost sight of the distinction between its Pro models and its consumer stuff. The touchbar is an interesting innovation, sure, but it's better served, at least at first, as a gimmick for their consumer devices. There were a lot of design decisions that add a lot of cost for people in a lot of Creative Professional segments, including Audio and Video production, without really adding that much functionality. Sure you can use the touchbar as a scrub-wheel in ProTools-- if Avid gets around to coding it in. But even that isn't worth the $400 price bump, when most Audio guys have their own DAW controllers already. That now need adaptors.

Furthermore, if you want a dedicated OS X desktop machine for your studio, what are your options? You can pay through the nose for a Mac Pro that has a couple thousand dollars worth of (now outdated) graphics cards that you don't need, along with an extra grand for a rackmounting solution that will convert your thunderbolt ports to PCI for your HDX/Dante/whatever setup, or you can buy a Mac Mini (which is itself direly in need of a refresh) and be severely limited by your RAM. And spend an extra grand to install your HDX card.

So I suppose to answer your question, the rage is less about what the new rMBP isn't doing for people, and more about what wasn't released alongside it.

Thank you for your reply, but I'm still a bit confused. I would have liked an NVidea dGPU instead of the AMD for GPU processing with CUDA so that is a disappointment, but from my understanding, the AMD 14nm node GPUs consume much less power than the NVidea GPUs.

The new 15" unit is smaller and somewhat lighter with a longer battery life so for those that value portability, this is really helpful.

I see value in having to lug around less weight, to better able to use it on an airplane because of smaller size, to have the extra battery life.

For my needs, the TB seems gimmicky and yet another possible point of failure so a negative.

As for the USB-C and the dongles, I think that is a transitional issue.

So, from my perspective, I see lighter, smaller, 2 hours longer battery life, a much faster SSD interface, more colors in the display panel and can do what I want functionally. That is why I was trying to figure out what it doesn't do for some people that makes them so unhappy or what they would do to improve it without making it larger and heavier and have a shortened battery life?

For those doing graphics, doesn't the better display panel help them to do their job.

> and more about what wasn't released alongside it.

Can you be specific on what this means regarding the 15" rMBP 2016?

Generally, the cost of the laptop, this tool, is little compared with salary and benefits and it really makes sense to do frequent upgrades.

I think your confusion is stemming from your perspective. To you, smaller and lighter is unequivocally a Good Thing- However my 2013 MBP 15" is already light enough that I can one hand it comfortably, and can carry it everywhere without noticing. If they'd allowed the new machine to stay at the same thickness, they could have gotten more battery life out of it, which would be something that I would consider a priority- They could also have conceivably crammed a newer, faster graphics card in to it, which in a time when the entire world is starting to look towards AR development, would be a welcome addition. There are a lot of creative professionals, like writers and some developers, for whom the new machine is fine, but there are plenty who have a massive investment in outboard peripherals (that now need a couple hundred dollars worth of adaptors), as well as requirements for power that's now being offered in PC portables but not Macs, and for us the new machine with its compromises and price inflation was a slap in the face.

As for what wasn't released alongside it, I'm talking about desktop machines. Apple's desktop machines are direly out of date. Speaking only as an audio engineer, I need a machine that I can rack in a machine room and slot my dante card in to. There are many more who have multi-card HDX setups who are even more screwed by the current Mac desktop situation. For apple to use "Hello Again" in their teaser for the event and then /not/ release a new Mac desktop was another slap in the face to people who have been waiting /years/ now to upgrade.

So again, to answer your question in the context of the 2016 rMBP, The machine itself was slightly disappointing. The fact that it was the only machine that we got at that event compounded the disappointment exponentially- and the combination of the two is indicative of a thought pattern at Apple that's out of touch with what their long term userbase has always used their Macs for.

Thank you. So for the laptop (as opposed to the desktop) if I understand you, a more powerful dGPU isn't important, but longer battery life would be.

As for me and people like me at the university (e.g. students, researchers, etc), we complain that the 15" 2015 laptop is too heavy because on its own (I'm in NYC so we walk, take subways which are faster than Uber or Taxi by far during busy times of the day which are frequent). The weight of the laptop case, a charge often, and books and papers that I use adds up to a lot.

Again, it's a matter of perspective. Strictly speaking, I don't need a faster dGPU for audio. But I also work in VR, and right now I need a separate computer for that, even with a brand new "pro" laptop with a pay-through-the-nose dGPU option, which is yet another disappointment.

As for the weight, again it's a matter of perspective. If it's too heavy for you, that's a valid complaint. But I carry my machine, and a charger, at minimum, everywhere I go, and I frequently have to check to make sure I remembered to put it in my bag because I can barely feel it. At that point, for me, remembering what carrying a 10lb machine everywhere felt like, making it some fraction of a pound lighter just does not take priority over better battery or more power.

The new model is not improving CPU performance (https://browser.primatelabs.com/mac-benchmarks). Also, losing the escape key is painful, and I still frequently use devices that don't have USB-C connectors.

I did an all-around comparison and chose to buy last year's model instead. I can't think of a previous occasion when a new Apple product was worse for me than the one that it replaces.

I own the 2015 basic 15" model and it is a great machine.

The 2016 model consumes much less energy for the same performance (see link in my post above) and the SSD speed (esp. in >= 512 GB models) is much faster. It also has built-in hardware X.265 decode (IIRC) so watching those movies will require less energy than the 2015 as well.

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