It's almost as if Apple aren't even basing their hardware strategy on what developers are complaining about on Hacker News.
I’m imagining someone who went into a fallout shelter about 10 years ago, somehow only had HN as a source of news, and suddenly re-entered the world. What would such a person be suprised to learn?
I suspect Apple still being a successful company would come as a huge shock to such a person. So would the success of SystemD and Docker and Kubernetes and Dropbox and microservices, the complete takeover of widescreens in the display market, and the continued survival of Tesla.
I bet a stock picking strategy that invests in companies and ideas that HN users hate, and shorts the ones that HN users love, would be right far more often than it is wrong and would make tons of money.
Once the iPhone 3G came it out was clear the device was a phenomenon and not a rich people toy, but initially the market was pretty confused, from what I remember.
Back then, you could get a Treo or a Blackberry for less than half as much, as they were subsidized by the carriers.
And because paying that much for a phone at that time impeded sales, Apple discontinued the 4 Gb model and dropped the price of the 8 Gb model to $399 two months after it was released. They also "gave in" to the subsidy model, since that was the standard practice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_(1st_generation)#Releas...
The 3G had 3G, but otherwise same hardware specs as the original.
What sold me was that Apple got the UI right (“smooth as butter”), the webbrowser and email actually worked, and jailbroken it was almost Unix in your pocket! It really felt like a phone with so much potential and a far ahead of anything I had seen. The things you mention were just a matter of software updates. Btw. 3G and App Store both came out in 2008.
I am not an apple fanboy, but I had a couple generations of Danger products (by far the most modern at the time) prior to the release of the iPhone and owned a few generations of iPhone from the start. The 1st generation iPhone was revolutionary and deserves every last bit of credit it gets. The 3G was a yawner, like adding leather seats to a flying car. Yeah 3G is nice... but seriously, the car is freaking flying how did you not notice that??
It was with the second generation (2011) that they knocked it out of the park, where they added fast Core i5/i7 CPUs, SSD, greatly improved battery life, two (!) USB ports, choice between 11' and 13' models.
And most of all they sold it at an entry level price (for Apple standards). Considered that the competition at the time were bulky Sony Vaio, HP and Dell "bricks", it was like a laptop from the future.
A lightweight PC small enough to slip in a folder was what they wanted.
The Macbook Pro was generally for more of the processing-intensive work and development side. Recently I've been seeing/hearing more and more dissatisfaction from that crowd.
In an era of remote servers and web scripting languages, not every developer needs a full-blown workstation.
I agree it wasn't indended for developers, but it ended up being adopted by many of them.
Doing front end development, it was more than powerful enough for anything I had to throw at it.
I haven't really found that to be the case, especially these days with "modern" frontend tooling, like Babel/Webpack/etc, static analyzers like ESLint/Flow/Typescript, and the various types of frontend testing. Every bit of performance helps.
You can debate whether all of that is necessary, but the reality is many companies use them.
Except making impossible claims about delivery deadlines, they weren't mentioned in any especial sins worth mentioning. And Tesla Roadster looked definitely like the big future in 2008.
It's hard to tell if they're a success. With enough time and money you can make almost everything work. It does not mean that there weren't better alternatives available.
You can via an adapter[1] or hub. FWIW, even today this is fairly rare (once so far this year for me) since Dropbox tends to be the new "USB stick".
It shouldn't work "pretty well" when you're using a $2000+ machine. It should work perfectly every single time. This is what built apple into the company it is. "pretty well" wasn't good enough.
This sounds like the type of concession I would have made in 2005 on my gentoo laptop. "Yeah, USB doesn't work, but there is a workaround that sends that data over wifi! It even usually works!"
The wifi thing is just convenient for many people. If it's not good enough or "pro enough" for you, there is still a cable that you can use.
I don't really see the problem here. Assuming I buy the base model MacBook Pro and the cheapest iPhone 8, I've just spent $2000 dollars and I don't see how I can justify complaining that I need to spend an extra 1% on a cable to connect them.
Before they added this feature, a USB cable was the only way to do this, and it still works, and works reliably. If you have a USB-A connector on your Lightning cable, you'll need an adapter, if you have a USB-C connector, you won't.
From the OP's complaint, he didn't like having to do this with USB, so I suggested the WiFi option to avoid cables. Maybe you read that as "the USB option does not work", which is not the case.
WiFi depends on the quality of your WiFi network. Mine is rock solid, so "pretty well" is my engineer answer to cover the cases when AP is flakey, range is crap, etc.
I also mostly use my MBP plugged in and yet still want my laptop to be as light and thin as possible for when I'm carrying it around during the day/commuting. An extra pound of weight makes a huge difference to me walking home.
That's hard to believe. Are you walking 50 miles? How would you notice an extra pound? What about the rest of the stuff you carry, your clothes, your shoes? Is everything else already optimized?
Why does the (likely) most expensive full-size computing device need to lose weight vs everything else, especially when it's infringing on the actual user experience of working with it?
Still has a great keyboard and milspec dust resistant design.
Not everyone is particularly fit. Some are old, some don't have time to exercise, some choose not to, some don't have the choice and some others are and just prefer the convenience.
> Why does the (likely) most expensive full-size computing device need to lose weight vs everything else, especially when it's infringing on the actual user experience of working with it?
I think is largely a generational issue. I bet there's a large swath of young professionals right now who grew up with ultraportables like the macbook air but are looking for just a bit more performance right now. These people are also likely to be more accustomed to typing on shallower and lighter keyboards (including virtual and mechanical) so the change won't be as big a change for them than people who grew up with typewriters and Model Ms.
Mobility is functionality.
Apple's prices and hardware designs made the 15" MacBook Pro a popular desktop replacement. For the same price as a 13" MBP and a 21.5" iMac, you could get a 15" MBP that would outperform the iMac in some cases.
Mobility is functionality, which is why things like battery life and working keys matter.
I have optimised my bag heavily but already have a few non-negotiable medical items I must carry to stay alive and so I like to get that weight back from my laptop.
I understand that weight isn’t a big deal for everyone however it is for me. If my company offered smaller machines I would switch instantly.
(They're much more likely to optimise them for being carried in artisan faux-vintage messenger bags by people riding share-scooters between home and the FAANG shuttlebus...)
I seriously saw someone claiming that the addition of a really fast $2700 SSD makes it Pro, not the missing connectivity.
> which is cool because I have an HDMI port right there on the side of my [2014, may-it-last-forever] macbook pro
I would point out that modern non-Apple PCs don't tend to have HDMI ports, either. They either have mini-HDMI ports, or OTG ports. The dongle requirement is nearly-universal for connecting modern devices to projectors, to the point that you may as well just buy a set of dongles for each projector, rather than for each laptop.
> It's next to the SD card slot where I can put in the SD cards from my rather nice digital camera
Is there a reason you can't plug the camera into the computer (using a USB cable) to transfer the photos instead? That's what I see the photographers at my own office doing.
(I asked one just now, and they said: if you're trying to transfer photos outdoors, moving an SD card also has the chance of pushing dust into the SD card slot on the camera. They say they've had SD card slots wear out/break before. And for cameras that take micro-SD, when moving the card they're always a little paranoid they might drop the thing on the floor and lose it. All in all, cables are just easier if it's your own camera and your own computer. SD cards are just for passing off to other people.)
SD cards - I've never had an SLR or a high end mirrorless camera (but i haven't bought either for maybe 18 months) that's been able to transfer through itself at anything like the speed of a fast SD card in the slot. Makes a big difference when you want to dump 64GB of pics. As for dust, my favourite camera has been to Syria, the desert southwest of the USA several times, morocco, antarctica on a sailing ship (so being sprayed a lot), and not to mention my local beach. Aswell as just being the camera i throw into my shoulder bag when going out. Unless the photographers in your own office are war photographers or dirt-bike specialists, I've probably given my kit a harder life than they have. I've never had an issue with pushing dust into the SD slot of my camera or laptop. I did however dent the ISO knob on my camera when trying to tether it to my laptop when sailing across drake's passage, and a wave tipped the boat and I instinctively grabbed the macbook and let the camera hit the deck. I learnt my lesson. Fair point on micro SD though, but I have never used them for photography. I would probably be concerned too about fumbling, especially if wearing gloves.
The new Sony full frame cameras all have USB-C charging and very fast transfer speeds.
I would and did for a long time, and I am very glad for the lightening trend. Try considering for just a moment that there are many people in the world who aren't as ablebodied as you. Small changes can make big differences.
Nobody's asking Apple to make all of their laptops heavier. And I don't think anybody's asking for 9lb / 4kg monstrosities from Apple, either.
What I see is a lot of people wishing for pro laptops from Apple that eschew their "lightness at all costs" philosophy in favor of a more balanced approach that offers some extra functionality in exchange for, say, an extra pound of weight or something.
That wouldn't preclude Apple from selling smaller, easier-to-carry models.
That's a reasonable ask, yes?
For many things in life, it’s not about whether or not you suffer, it’s about what’s more or less pleasant. And for many, that even trumps an occasional inconvenience.
It sucks when you have to attach and detach a whole bunch of dongles each time you sit down at your desk, as with my current role.
I could buy the dock thing myself I suppose, but then it's personal property I have to worry about and could disappear, etc.
If the intention is to use it as a desktop then why keep sacrificing function for fractions of a mm?
Everything is wireless these days. Input devices, audio devices, networking.
You basically only need a cable to charge the thing (with your USB-C charger), for mass storage (where most new mass-storage devices are USB-C devices as well, and if you have a well-used old one you can keep a dongle stuck to it), and for displays (at which point you are in a "docked" use-case, and so you can just use a USB-C dock or Thunderbolt-display-with-dock.)
All other use-cases are so rare or esoteric that you can just put them off until you get home and to your desk.
Or are you constantly balancing your laptop and a USB-only printer on your lap or something?
Do you feel this is a standard setup that more than 10% of the market have?
No, I'm very lucky to be provided with good resources where I work.
While I haven't missed classic USB (thanks to a dongle with old USB slots) I have however wished I still had a magsafe power cord.
It also doesn't help that the dongle I bought is a multi port one (ethernet, USB-A, HDMI and others) and for whatever reason, using it on battery noticably reduces battery life.
Real person here! I love the USB-C only approach. I love being able to charge from either side of my laptop, and I love having single cable to plug in at my desk for RAID/monitor/ethernet/charging/etc. I want my laptop minimal; if I want it to do more, I can add more.
Apple is design driven.
I also hate the new keyboard but couldn’t care less about using dongles if I get a thinner laptop.
At this point, what are the benefits of a thinner laptop? Lighter I can understand, but what does a thinner laptop enable you to do?
How would you feel if your laptop suddenly doubled in thickness but didn’t gain any weight? Most people would be unhappy about that.
What does a thinner laptop enable you to do? What a question. Might as well ask why compact cars are more popular in the city than pickup trucks.
But, I wrote "at this point".
Does 3mm, at about the same weight, really make much difference?
I suppose incremental improvements(?) in "thinness" accumulate, and in 2028 we'll all be complaining that the new MacBook Pro at 2.8mm thick is easily bent and has no ports.
Way too often people on here see something and think "that doesn't help my use case, therefore it's a stupid decision" and never stop to think "hey maybe someone has a use case I don't have, and maybe this helps them". To you, 3mm doesn't sound like a lot. To me, a few hundred Mhz or another few GB of RAM doesn't sound like a lot. But you don't see me screaming in the comments thread "how dare Apple put a faster processor in their Macbooks instead of shaving off another few MM of thickness!" because that's just ridiculous. Someone out there is happy that the machine is faster, even if that person isn't me. I have the ability to put myself in someone else's shoes and be happy on their behalf.
Some people's laptops sit on a desk all day and that's fine. Mine doesn't, and every MM shaved off is another pair of socks I can pack into my luggage.
I remember about old single slot pcmcia cards which had a push mechanism that would show a RJ-11 so you could connect a modem.
Check the "XJACK connector" for pictures. It was technically possible. It still is.
Horrible to deal with.
In college I inherited a Dell Inspiron 1100 from my Dad. Total pile of junk.
I upgraded the CPU, Ram, and disk drive. It was still terrible.
When the discrete graphics chip is being used, plus a retina display, and or several dongles plugged in for ethernet, usb-a or whatever, battery life on my 2017 MBP while doing development work is maybe 3-4 hours.
It was quite a shock to go to that from the 8-9 hours I used to get from my older MacBook air. Whereas previously I would leave certain apps (notably image editing apps or VMs) open while developing, I now find myself opening them, doing a task and then closing them so as not to activate the discrete graphics chip and drain the battery.
I now find myself opening them, doing a task and
then closing them so as not to activate the discrete
graphics chip and drain the battery.
Is there no way to do that? It's been a while since I used a MBP with discrete graphics. There used to be a menubar app for that, but I always felt it should have been an option baked into MacOS itself.
There is an app for that (https://gfx.io/), but it doesn't switch automatically when battery is in use so you have to enable it manually (and you have to close any apps that are using the discrete chip first).
Mostly though I just use that app to know when the discrete chip is enabled, and then quit whatever program enabled it when I've finished with it.
Weren’t we having this discussion when they dropped the floppy drive? Should they keep USB-A forever? When is it ok that they drop USB-A? The original move to USB-A was met with resistance to people then that were angry that suddenly their ADP or other older devices wouldn’t connect — but then device markers saw the advantages of USB and quickly moved to embrace it. They are starting to see the advantages of Thunderbolt 3 and eventually, USB-A will go the way of the serial port — but not without the requisite hang-wringing and “get off my lawn” first. In 3 years, nothing but dollar-store junk will still use USB-A.
Good. Then I'll give up my laptop with USB-A and buy one with USB-C only. In the now, where I live, many things still use USB-A. This is the main reason I didn't even consider a new MacBook Pro for replacing my 2015 one.
I don't think I've used, or seen anyone else use, a USB stick in about a decade. We can't just keep these legacy ports around forever, cluttering up our devices.
What do you use it for, is it something dropbox or others cannot do?
And yes, I could use USB-C.
Aside from a few high-end audio interfaces, most music hardware - including licensing dongles - is USB-A.
Of course you can buy the inevitable wart-on-a-cable adaptor from Apple. But it's both fragile and ugly, and when you have an iLok with thousands of dollars of software on it, you really don't want fragile.
Edit: to be fair, some of these licensing schemes are moving to cloud licensing. But that has issues of its own - and not all are.
As for high end audio interfaces, replacing the included USB-A cable with a USB-C cable seems a trivial matter. And sooner or later they'll be included in the box.
That is like saying everyone is using floppy disks, why did Apple remove floppy disk drive. You will need to use dongle for a while but everyone moving to USB C/wireless is a good thing.
I am sure Apple must have thought of that before pulling the plug on USB A. The point is this is classic Apple move to let go old tech and embrace new.
Ok. I don't work in pro audio. So that doesn't mean much to me.
Sure, sometimes they need to plug in a dongle and will need an adapter until USB C dongles become commonplace but that is hardly an issue at all.
I started noticing people in meetings with their new MacBook Pros and six inch cords sticking out the side, and on closer inspection, there was a YubiKey Nano plugged in at the end of the cord.
Meanwhile, the folks with ThinkPads or older MacBooks just had a Nano tucked into one of their USB-A ports like it was no big deal.
I know which I would pick.
The difference is that if they bump into somebody or something, that dongle is likely to get broken, and it could even damage the USB-C port in the MacBook. That's not going to happen with a Nano plugged directly into a USB-A port.
That said, the problem you described is a temporary one — while not as neat as the USB-A variant, there is a USB-C Yubikey Nano. https://www.yubico.com/product/yubikey-4-series/#yubikey-4c-...
Thanks for the pointer to the USB-C YubiKey Nano - it looks like a fine solution for the dongle problem.
You could purchase your own, I suppose.
I'm surprised nobody's hacked the YubiKey app into making use of the touch-bar as the YubiKey "device."
The reason yubikey doesn’t do this is that it will kill their business and product.
Tellingly, Nikon did what HN seems to want: they had a very conservative approach to "pro" model cameras, emphasizing backwards compatibility and respecting what their "pro" users asked for. Canon, on the other hand, experimented a lot and, despite not actually inventing many of the new ideas, was willing to try them out on "pro" cameras.
This difference of approach cost Nikon its leading market share among "pro" users. There may be a lesson there.
Right now I have power, 1 USB, and 2 monitors (1 HDMI, 1 TB2) on my 2015. I can’t do that at all without an extra dock on a non-touchbar.
You mean a USB-A stick. There are USB-C sticks!
That is a heck of a lot less than purchasing for storage space when buying this laptop.
Nobody asked for USB ports when they had serial/parallel ports, or for the floppy drive to disappear, or to lose the VGA connector.
I don't know if Apple have made the right calls here (on either the USB-C ports or the keyboard), but they do have some history in making eventually-winning calls on at least some of these things. (That _also_ built the Newton, so I'm not gonna claim they _always_ get it right.)
It'll be interesting to see how these design decisions fare over then next 3-5 years...
I don't recall being annoyed by those changes. In particular, the VGA->DVI transition was handled really well. Just about everything was DVI-I and would accept a VGA signal over a DVI cable, so you just bought a VGA->DVI cable and continued using VGA.
My school was mostly iMac G3s and I vaguely recall the lack of a floppy drive being annoying once or twice, but the Windows machines had floppy drives and you could easily share files on the network, so it was never a big deal.
On the other hand, I think the most impressive and smoothest transitions I've ever seen in the entire personal computer space were Apple's transition from 68K to PowerPC processors, and almost as smooth their transition from PowerPC to X86. I'm still incredibly impressed with the attention to detail they showed getting those major changes to work so smoothly for users.
Just about everything was USB-C and would accept a USB-A signal over a USB-C cable, so you just bought a USB-C->USB-A cable and continued using USB-A.
I don't see a difference. Except the part where you say the transition was handled well. I didn't feel good applying that to USB-C...
VGA devices always connected via a cable, so you weren't adding bulk. Even adapters for devices with integrated cables (grrr...) were pretty minor compared to the sheer heft of the VGA cable itself.
I remember all of these technologies, and they all had major pain points. Serial and parallel ports were slow and needed tuning to work with IRQ/DMA (don't quote me on this), floppies were slow and unreliable and VGA was blurry on LCD monitors.
There's no current replacement for USB that does the job better. Nothing for HDMI. Same for SD cards. Nobody was asking to get rid of these ports so that they could use the next big thing. Apple had Thunderbolt 2 co-existing with USB on their older laptops, they could do the same with the newer ones. In fact, USB-C charging is limited to 100W, so 15" MacBook Pros run at their limit could power-throttle or lose charge when running intensive workloads.
So you can't even plug a brand new iPhone 8 directly into a brand new Macbook Pro without buying a cable as a separate purchase.
I'm with Apple on this having been the right choice.
Generally except if you commute/travel via long distance by train or bus and there is only one power outlet per passenger, and you need your phone as a modem for your laptop. Or at an airport with limited outlet availability. Or at a coffee shop with limited outlet availability. Or if you prefer to back up to your laptop locally via iTunes.
>"Unless you are the .025% of iPhone owners that do development, your complaint really doesn’t matter."
Telling people their view doesn't really matter on account of a statistic you completely made up? Dismissing others people's views because their use case differs from your own? Brilliant.
Both the iPhone 8 and iPhone X shipped after the introduction of the USB-C only Macbooks. And both phones have shipped with only a lightning to USB-3 cable.
So instead of telling me to "remember my words" you might instead try to remember the facts.
I actually really like their push towards USB-C everywhere. The only major device I own that doesn't use USB-C is actually my old iPad. If they killed their proprietary adapter in favor of USB-C I'd be very happy.
My wife, the professor, is finally going to replace her 2011 Macbook Air. She was excited to check out the new 13" MBP. Then she saw the touch bar (without a real escape), hated the keyboard after typing on it in the Apple Store, and realized she'd have to replace the dongles she uses to present to her classes (VGA and HDMI). What really killed it was when she realized she'd have to have yet another dongle to plug in her mouse.
She already has a Linux desktop both at home and at work, and asked me if I'd help her put Linux on a laptop for her. We're looking at the latest X1 Carbon..
This may have changed since but the 5th gen is probably a safer choice for the less adventurous
Look at the older 2012-2015 models - arguably the entry point for many modern developers, the devices that were so good and so reliable it cemented their love for the brand.
There's a difference between pivoting your target demographic, and just making a bad device and hoping professionals won't notice.
Ctrl -> ESC
Force Quit key combination now has better physical locality.
Profit!
Caps -> Control
Control -> Command
Perfect config for TMUX + VIM.
I want a new one so bad, but I will not buy a TouchBar ever.
Also, the reason for thumbprint readers on phones is that passcodes are difficult to quickly type on phones. On a notebook keyboard it’s easy. I don’t want a thumbprint reader on my notebook.
Have you used a thumbprint reader on a notebook. It so convenient that its hard going back to a notebook without one.
So the hardware looks very good (maybe the best looking laptops in the world?). The screen looks very good (high res + great color). The keyboard looks great and some may even say that a hockey puck as mouse looks great.
This is what sells.
I also think that Apple never intended to serve the pro market. They tried some times but brands like Microsoft, HP, Dell and Siemens are still too strong.
Apple's market cap is over $900 billion on it's way to $1 trillion; so apparently the strategy of not reacting to every complaint on the internet about their products, including Hacker News, seems to be working for them.
If Hacker News had a built-in prediction market (a la https://www.predictit.org), I would have made a fortune betting against what developers are complaining about on Hacker News.