Design flaw behind MacBook Pro’s “stage light” effect

Then again people say "Apple is a design company" in air quotes.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8DOzr7G82U

But, it's not impossible for a thicker device to look aesthetically pleasing. To choose a random example, I've always loved Nokia's Lumia line of phones, which were quite thick but had these lovely rounded edges that made it seem natural.

It goes further than that. Apple products are status symbols and owners of Apple products are seen as more sexually attractive.

The lesson is, if you don't want something to be the focus of everyone's attention, don't go around repeating it over and over again. Apple has the power to ignore you precisely because you're effectively parroting their brand identity, even if only to criticize it. Propaganda 102.

They have decided that form over function is the way to go. I was considering purchasing a Macbook - not any more!

I think it really comes down to software -- MacOS -- which is still significantly better for certain kind of work than Windows or even Linux. Until that changes, people are going to continue to tolerate these hardware problems with Apple computers. I'm definitely one of them.

Just for the record, I have two Touchbar laptops. One from 2016 and one from 2017. The 2016 one, when I first bought it, had the busted keyboard on day one, right from the Apple Store. I went back and swapped it for another one and that had the same issue but with different keys. The third one worked but it started having issues about a year into use. I had that one repaired and now it's having issues again, not even a year after (the symptoms show once the laptop has heated up a bit). It's comical how atrociously bad these laptops are in the reliability department.

My 2017 one was slightly better, in that it worked when I bought it, but it also started having keyboard issues about a year after. Several of my friends who bought the same laptop around the same time also had to take theirs in for service for keyboard issues.

What I feel is a stronger and more measurable critique is that the quality of Apple has gone down (i.e. I might be wrong, but there are numbers to decide).

Apple prioritized thinness while Jobs was CEO, and Apple continues to prioritize thinness. Jobs is gone but many of the same product executives remain—Cook, Ive, Schiller, etc and many of their deputies. Is it really that surprising that the product goals are also unchanged?

Complaints about thinness are not a new phenomenon—look back at how the first MacBook Air was greeted for an example. (intro’d by Jobs)

I worked in electronics OEMs since 2007, and I tell you that such things are way more widespread than you think.

When Amazon was making its first forays into electronics in 2007 with Kindle, the agent who was working for them was squeezing my first employer very, very hard. We were one of companies in the chain for sourcing accessories.

They were literally asking us to shave single microns from plastic parts, and deliberately guiding us into using underrated components. The phrase "planned obsolescence" was never said out loud, but it was 100% clear that they wanted it.

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As somebody in engineering, I can add that even cheapest Chinese mechanical sliprings have no problems at all transporting the EDP signal.

We're good enough. We don't need to go thinner. Similar to battery life. After 10-12 hours, there's no point in it, except for a small few.

One of the most "egregious" omissions was either a floppy or an Iomega Zip drive. But a few short years later USB thumb drives became ubiquitous.

USB-C is the future, we're already seeing a plethora of displays launching with them, and they obviate the need for another power supply. Yes, right at this moment it's a bit of a pain (not massively though, I have a dock at work and plug a single cable in and my dual monitors, keyboard and mouse just start working - with my 2015 MBP I had lots of ports, but had to plug and unplug 3 cables each time I wanted to move my laptop).

I'd argue that maybe they went a couple of years too early, but they saw what the next big thing would be and jumped.

Still I'd love that port to be there, event if I used if only couple of times a year.

It's almost as if they should've kept USB-A connector but improved the interface for future...

Apple makes their devices as thin as possible to meet within their design specs; they don't sacrifice their design for thinness. Thats different from Apple not accounting for any one person's needs/desires as part of their design.

I'll give keyboards as an example, since people are notorious for saying that apple put a "lousy" keyboard in all their modern laptops solely for thinness.

I'm sure there are a few people who would love a modern laptop that used Cherry MX switches in its keyboard, but that's not a demographic Apple is going to leap up and target.

From Apple's product page, describing the third generation butterfly keyboard in the MacBook Pro:

"The MacBook Pro keyboard features a butterfly mechanism — providing four times more key stability than a traditional scissor mechanism, along with greater comfort. The 13- and 15‑inch MacBook Pro models with Touch Bar now feature a keyboard with a quieter typing experience."

Note that the description does not mention thinness at all as a "primary" design goal - it mentions greater comfort, improved stability, and the newer model being quieter.

Was reducing keyboard depth part of the design goals for what became the butterfly keyboard? Of course! But I guarantee Apple's philosophy for the project was not "thinness at all costs" - the keyboard would not be released until they felt it was a better overall experience as well.

Now does everyone feel it is a better overall experience? Obviously not. I personally suspect Apple launched the keyboard originally on the Retina MacBook partially to gauge reaction, then was surprised at how much more negative the reaction was once it was added to the Pro line.

To me, a "me too" post by someone accusing Apple executives for purposely sacrificing quality for thinness is not something that encourages communication - it just encourages more ranting. A post talking about say, whether the keyboard issues that people have with the new design are related more around just the change compared to previous keyboard technology, or if it is an impact of say key travel distance, the force curve or key bounce, would be a really interesting discussion to participate in.

Maybe it's you and I who's out on the edge of the curve?

I also usually get a whole day of battery out of my iPhone without difficulty, but I know many people who don't, none of whom fit the HN-dwelling power-user stereotype. Also, any time I do things outside my usual routine, my battery takes a pummelling too — be it because I'm out and about on my own for longer than usual and all the spare battery goes towards Spotify, or I'm somewhere I don't know, and it's Google Maps/GPS that eats it up, there's many ways in which that "always lasts me the whole day" thing can go out the window.

> And if you aren’t going to get like a week or a month then what good is a little more battery?

Battery that lasts a whole weekend if, say, you miss the last train and need to stay somewhere overnight would be quite useful. Or, as above, battery that lasts the whole day for more intensive use.

with price competition, you go for cheap components, processes, marketing and distribution. when you compete on difference, you not only need new and unique qualities to market but a sustainable advantage.

one part of this advantage for apple is on the design and manufacturing side. apple maintains leads in these areas by being on the leading edge of what the technology can do (their products are never on the bleeding edge because their customers also demand quality and reliabilty). the other part is supply chain; not just the ability to source parts and get the best pricing, but the ability to create a cascade of innovation where components and design permeate the whole ecosystem (this lets them fully amortize fixed costs like r&d and manufacturing costs).

this is why apple captures the majority of profits in the markets it competes in. thinness is an attribute of that advantage.

It seems they're butting up against the limit of what they are capable of reliably manufacturing, which certainly won't end well. I'm looking forward to seeing what direction they take for the next Macbook Pro, should be interesting.

Is it osx only that makes you say this? I've seen hackintoshes in the past, would that be viable?

That might be true, at least for some subset of MacBook Pro users, but it is also possible to have a slightly more optimistic view. Instead of being in a 'dark age' you could also see the current models as 'transitional', in the sense that the long-term goal is to have a MBP that is very powerful and thin and caters to all target audiences.

Look at the very first MacBook Air for example, that was a pretty shitty laptop in almost every way, except for thinness. In fact, I don't think it improved on earlier Apple laptops in any other way. And it was ridiculously expensive to boot. But it did set a precedent: in terms of size, Apple laptops would from that point on be measured against the MBA, and technology just had to catch up, eventually resulting in the later MBA's. Which I actually think are one of the best laptop series Apple ever made.

I don't disagree that for some people the current MBP line-up is a regression, even though I absolutely love mine and have no problems with it except its cost. And I consider myself relatively far towards the power-user demographic, using my laptop primarily for development and heavy compute loads. But my feeling is that the MBP we will see one or two generations from now will be much better and thin, and everyone will have forgotten about USB-A ports and keyboard design flaws.

It's not really portable, but if you're a Pro, and need all those ports, chances are that you work at a desk and don't actually need a portable Mac.

Instead the MacBook Pro is essentially "the laptop with a larger screen".

Serious question: what hardware are you using that requires dongles? I spent about $30 replacing the cables on all my devices with USB-C. I have never used a dongle. Is there pro hardware out there with USB-A cable permanently attached?

The most obvious subtraction to preserve device size and simplify internals to allow for other features was the headphone jack. Thus the "courage" remark - the teams (all the way up to the executives) were willing to have a device change that may people would be upset about because they felt it was the right tradeoff to make long-term.

We've reached incredibly thin and light tech, but there's a point where making it thinner vastly reduces usability and reliability without really producing any worthwhile benefits. And I hate the "not the target market" excuse. I hear that all the time, and it always seems like such a cop-out. Is there a demographic for broken displays and keyboards which apple desperately needs to pander to? What about professionals and power users? It's a Macbook Pro, after all. This should be exactly the target market. I think most pro users would rather have that millimeter back to make the keyboard and display work, it didn't make it bulky by any means. It was still incredibly svelte and light and thin.

devices are generally thin enough, so the tradeoff in my mind is between weight and battery life. i'd love true all-day battery life--not the 10-minutes-for-email-20-minutes-of-web-surfing type of "all-day" battery life--where i could have the device on for 8-12 hours doing real work. at the same time i'd love a laptop that weighs a pound and a phone that weighs 2 ounces, with lightning fast processors, huge, bright, high resolution screens, and honkin' graphics power. most folks would easily accept 30%, or even 50%, thicker devices for that.

obviously, that would require like 5X the battery and 3X the weight (made-up numbers). apple knows this already, but the technology just isn't there, so we're where we are with their best compromise. and they're trying to make this better for idevices by switching to wireless power, with the idea being that any time you put down your idevice, you'll be charging it.

It also has 2 full size USB ports + 2 USB C + headphone + a card reader.

The laptop is more expensive than a mac book air but it's more an example that you don't have to sacrifice ports for weight.

Are people "stupid" or are the alternatives even worse? Broken LCD cabling is not great, but you can take it into an Apple Store and they'll fix it or swap out your laptop. Never had a problem with it.

But I recently bought a non-Apple laptop for the first time in a decade, and it's been a disaster. Spent $1,500+ on a Lenovo X1 Carbon. The LTE has never worked reliably. The screen just developed either a patch of dead pixels, or somehow some dust got under the glass. Neither has ever happened to me on an Apple product. And even when it works, it's just "meh." Windows is surprisingly slow on what should be a very fast processor (i7-8650U). The trackpad is just okay. Battery life is just okay.

My wife just tried to replace her aging Retina Macbook Pro 2012. After trying a couple of Surface machines at the Microsoft Store, and my Thinkpad, she's decided to wait to see what Apple does in October.

“If I were running Apple, I would milk the Macintosh for all it's worth — and get busy on the next great thing.” — Steve Jobs, in 1996.

I own a TRS-80 Model 100 "laptop" - it came with a "sleeve" you could put it in. It fits perfectly inside a briefcase or backpack.

It runs for days on a set of AA batteries...

...instead of consistently asking suppliers for 1-3% wholesale discount per year, Apple is asking engineers for 0.3mm-1mm thinness reduction per year.

My largest complaint with laptops is their performance just cannot match that of a low end desktop, and you're certainly not helping your customers by releasing a machine that (let's face it) is designed to not run at its fullest potential. It's the equivalent of buying a v8, but after you get past 35mph a couple of the cylinders shut off.

Service cost would deter their credibility.

There was a design fault here, and that happens. I'm sure they'll replace any affected displays free of charge, and roll a fix for the assembly into production in the next couple of weeks. But in general, if you've ever compared a teardown of an Apple product with something from other manufacturers, there is often a pretty clear difference between them. I'm always very impressed (as somebody who only gets to design very low volume, high margin products).

Norway tax is 25%. You should compare the net value.

> I'd rather have the choice to decide myself if and how much I want to spend for warranty

True, but the problem is the final price doesn't include the cost of recycling and environmental impact (extremely hard to price it correctly).

What EU should do it to force 5 year warranty for most of the equipment with an option to opt-out to 3 years mandatory warranty.

We are one of the countries where people have the most disposable income in the world, so that makes it bearable for those cases where the prices are notably higher.

What they are suggesting is that the same laptop would work for 5 years, even if it’s performance was not equivalent to its contemporaries. However, they would continue to be good at receiving email, browsing the web, etc.

This isn’t even that remarkable. Apple used to update their OSes every few years, and their newest OS would run on laptops that ran at least a couple of generations older OSes. IOW, at least 4-6 year old laptops.

This was pretty much the expectation people held.

https://www.apple.com/macbook-air/?afid=p238%7Cs4WPpCdN2-dt_...

https://everymac.com/ultimate-mac-comparison-chart/?compare=...

The 3DS actually has four cables running through its hinge: the LCD ribbon, the camera ribbon, the speaker ribbon, and the wifi antenna cable.

The problem is you need to make the hinge physically larger, which apparently Apple is unwilling to do.

They may not be indestructible but the replacement flex cables can be bought for next to nothing and replacing them is trivial for anyone with basic electronics skills.

Things have moved on, it's been 5 years, but not that much. And my MBP still works. I only intended on having it for 2-3 years before upgrading - it's paid for by my business and is critical to my work.

And yet what's putting me off a new purchase is that the new models are vastly less attractive propositions than they would have been had they just followed pace without touchbars, butterfly keyboards, T2 chips and thin wires you can't replace.

Apple today seem lost with respect to Macbooks and I can't see things improving. I fear I'm going Linux on a Dell XPS at some point this year and I hated the last Dell I had.

I used to think there should be a law requiring a three year warranty standard. It probably would alter the calculus. But at this point I'm so burned by Apple I don't care.

I have a TB Mac, but the late 2013 machine I have still works great. (It does have the screen coating issues that plagued that generation have, and I missed the window to get it fixed ... I may try throwing a tantrum at a local Apple store however and see it that works)

Absolutely no regrets. I replaced the battery myself last week.

Crazy that we're now 7 years later and nobody has been able to come close to this kind of laptop perfection.

You should be able to put 16GB in it. Apple doesn't say so, but I ran that much with 0 issues for years in machines from that time.

Honestly, there’s an opportunity here for some companies like Microsoft and Google to catch up in terms of innovation by designing products that Apple would never.

I did find it annoying however (in a precursor to Apple becoming a company who make dongles) how I had to buy a tiny magnetic block to use my v1 charger with my next laptop.

My 2012 still works great. If I could expect that kind of life, 7k for that makes it seem like a bargain over the current lot.

It really seems like Apple could stop over engineering their hardware, add some ports, maybe make it a mm or two thicker, add up to a pound in weight, and still have a 5 pound 15" professional work horse?

I guess I should just bite the bullet and upgrade OSX to the latest?

Pretty sure my next laptop won’t be from Apple unless the prices for upgrades come way down, or drives/memory can be replaced. Paying 3-4000 euro for a new laptop with limited lifetime is not an option.

The machine is nigh unupgradable, being soldered and glued at the seams. If the mainboard is fried (usb3 cables?), the SSD is not recoverable.

There's also other various "failures if you look inside" like this issue. One only needs to do a cursory search. One recent major issue is that a speck of dust destroys keys on their keyboards.

Another issue pertaining to the laptop is that they are forcing with each update the APP-ification with continual hurdles to make it harder to install nonstore software.

Now sure, if you want to build for iOS, you need something running OSX. And the only corporate solution is an apple. I get that dependency well, stinks. But I don't make bones that their superficial beauty is only skin deep.