Apple Updates Air, Pro Laptops, Kills Off the MacBook | Hacker News Reader

Apple Updates Air, Pro Laptops, Kills Off the MacBook

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147 pointsmrzool196 comments

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Discussion from a similar post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20393236

Macbook Pro "improvements" over the last 3-7 years:

* No more matte display

* RAM soldered to the board

* SSD soldered in

* remove all ports except USB-C

* make keyboard worse

* remove function keys, replace with touch surface that's redundant at best

But it's very thin!

And even thinner was the recent Macbook, and if the law of "diminishing returns" matters as little as the usual defenses of all the above tradeoffs in pursuit of light/thin imply, you'd think that that'd be worth keeping.

Maybe there is a limit, and Apple's actually reflected on that?

Or... maybe it's just a recognition that the Air and Macbook had come to a place where there was little distinguishing them. And that really, the MBP is less and less designed/deployed with actual professionals in mind and more and more meant for a prosumer subsegment. In which case reducing focus to two models (general purpose consumer laptop, light netbook) makes sense.

I like my 2013 MBP because the newer thin laptops I just feel like I'm going to break them.

I like my 2019 MBP because it's thin, has a better display, has a great trackpad, decent keyboard, and a touchbar that I use fairly frequently for auto-complete.

Displays and trackpads are still something Apple does very well, maybe better than anyone else.

I can't stand the current MBP trackpad. It's too big and too easy to accidentally touch.

This thread is a perfect example as to why Apple will never please everyone.

I mean, I'd live with it if the keyboard weren't utter shit and if there weren't reliability issues (keyboard and displays failing, unregulated power through the USB ports). I don't like the soldered RAM and storage, the glued on battery, but I still bought a (refurb) 2015 MBP last year. But as long as each revision of the MBP continues to have additional flaws with little benefit, I'll continue to consider alternatives. With this trend my next laptop will not be an Apple one.

And, for the record, I don't like the flashygizmotouchbarthing, but if they had kept a hard power and escape button it wouldn't have been a deal breaker. I don't use vi all that much, but I do use the escape key to navigate dialog boxes and web sites.

I also hate that MacBook Pro touchpads are oversized and easy to touch with your thumbs by accident. I had one issued for a job and had annoying, error-inducing swipes about three times a day.

You complained about the best part of the Macbook, the trackpad! I wish I could get that Mac trackpad on my thinkpad x1

Maybe if they centered the damm thing with regard to where your hands rest, vs the center of the laptop.

As it is now, the trackpad is shifted significantly to the right - so much so that my right Palm is constantly triggering it.

I’m basically forced to use a mouse and disable the trackpad while the mouse is connected.

Yet another aesthetic choice that screws up functionality..

It absolutely boggles my mind that people can't keep in mind that everyone has different preferences.

It's not the best part of the Macbook, it's your favourite part of the Macbook.

There very rarely is an objective best in anything. There is only what you like and need.

Right, but they were already making that point themselves. The comment they responded to literally hated the feature. They pointed out, okay, but it's my favorite feature.

But they were perfect until 2015, making them bigger is a downgrade IMO as well. What’s the point of huge trackpad on a 13–15 inch screen?

As a user of both the Macbook Pro and the X1 Carbon, I have to agree. The MBP touchpad handles gestures and palm rejection really well. On the other hand I get accidental swipes every hour with the X1 Carbon that I can only bear using its keyboard in an emergency. FWIW I have oversized hands.

However, I do overshoot and tap the MBP touchbar now and then, which can be annoying.

Unless you are really good at keeping your hands off the trackpad when you rest your hands, the previous generation trackpad was overall better in day to day use, and anything bigger is better as an external peripheral.

The problem is, Apple’s palm rejection tech just isn’t good enough, and if you have to write fancy software to cover a deficiency in the size of a piece of hardware, then you’re better off going with the smaller size. I’m assuming without the palm rejection, it would be an even bigger issue, and I wouldn’t trust any OEMs to get that right.

That said, it is only comparatively worse than the previous generation of Apple’s laptop trackpads which was already enormous, and arguably enormous enough. Compared to other laptops from other vendors, I could definitely see the appeal.

The palm rejection tech is so good that I can't recall a single time I ever accidentally triggered it. In fact, it was so good I didn't even consider that it had palm rejection tech until I read about it, I just never considered that it was a problem.

Ditto. Every time I use someone else’s laptop, or my Dell XPS, I feel like either I turned into some giant, or the trackpad got zapped by a shrink ray. The giant trackpad is probably the best thing about the recent MBPs.

YMMV. People have different palms. Sometimes when it's cold or my hands are a little clammy not even my index finger registers on the track pad or my phone.

>The problem is, Apple’s palm rejection tech just isn’t good enough, and if you have to write fancy software to cover a deficiency in the size of a piece of hardware, then you’re better off going with the smaller size.

Subtle jab at the Boeing 737 MAX?

(Just noticed I have a similar username.)

> Apple’s palm rejection tech just isn’t good enough

Must be something wrong with your palms ;) I have never thought about this issue, but reading these comments I tried it out. I can't move the mouse cursor with my palms, it is virtually impossible. The "Apple palm rejection tech" is really good. Data point from a Mac Book Pro, 2017.

I can’t stand using Any trackpad, but the huge Mac one literally deters me from buying a Macbook. I am very much sold on Trackpoint, which I find to be all of conveniently positioned, not nearly as accident prone, and quite precise. Some also don’t realize this, but if you hold the middle button while pointing the trackpoint, it scrolls, which is super useful; I hardly have to move my hands to operate the pointer. A lot of people with aversion to trackpoint can be seen doing odd things, like scrubbing across it like its a mouse or trackpad. Once you get past these issues, which unfortunately does represent a learning curve, it’s quite good in my opinion.

My take: I think the touchbar and giant touchpad are both symptoms of Apple’s aversion to put a touchscreen on the Mac. With many Thinkpads and other PC laptops, you may not get quite as good of a touchpad experience (though Microsoft Precision Touchpad is a pretty good experience I would argue,) but my touchscreen experience with even Linux has been pretty good in recent years, and it has ended up being a useful, if not quite killer, feature to have.

Touchbar makes little sense to me. Power users don’t look down at their keyboards. I think the same reason Valve dropped the screen on the Steam controller applies to keyboards, and is probably part of the reason why similar visual keyboard utilities have largely not sold well. Interestingly, ones that have, like the Streamdeck, are often designed to be positioned on a much more convenient angle. On top of all of this, it didn’t seem worth getting rid of the useful fixed-position keys for a programmable bar.

And on top of everything... I don’t even think Apple has made the most compelling innovative designs in this space anyways. PC laptop manufacturers have been trying arguably more interesting and possibly even more useful concepts for a while to varying degrees of success. For example, MSI has a keyboard where the number pad is a programmable touchscreen. I believe ASUS has a laptop where instead of a touchbar, you get 3 small desktops that you can pin things to. Granted, none of these things are likely to stick in the long term, but I also believe the touchbar won’t either.

I think I get why Apple does not want to put a touchscreen on Mac: the interface isn’t really designed for it. But as much as I have a strong dislike of Windows 10s propensity to install Candy Crush without my consent, I will also concede and say it does a seriously excellent job handling a touchscreen on a desktop. It’s a shame that it will take so long to clean up decades of UI cruft, but even with it, Windows turns out to be a good experience with a touchscreen so as long as you have another precise pointing method simultaneously.

So after all is said and done, and contrary to probably many people’s sensibilities, I actually think the PC laptop market is doing peripherals better, even if the touchpad drivers can be a bummer.

Apple's trackpads are in a class of their own and their large size is a feature given how good they are.

I also liked the trackpoint when I had a thinkpad, but I think Apple's trackpads are better. The trackpoint is nice, but can hurt your knuckle after a while (and I'd argue it's not quite as fast).

Actually, it’s simpler than that: I really mean I can’t handle trackpads. Something about the angle causes me weird issues, especially with multitouch gestures; it’s a weird kind of hypersensitivity. This is even despite that Apple trackpads are glass.

I don’t have any issue with trackpoint hurting my knuckle, though I will concede it may not be as fast. I still have a surprisingly good time hitting precise targets with it, though.

Does this happen while typing? Do you touch-type?

It used to happen constantly to me whilst touch typing on a 2016, yet is extremely rare to never on the 2015 MBP I replaced it with. So annoying to keep having something trigger whilst just typing something.

It was 2 broken keyboards in 6 or 7 months that had me sell and replace it though, but damn that massive touchpad was awful.

Yes and yes.

So, I use Dell XPS 13 personally, and when I got MacBook Pro 15 2018 model, I was super unhappy with size of trackpad. It took a while, but I got used to it and now prefer over my XPS-13 trackpad.

The trackpad was always amazing (force touch, sensitivity, palm detection and all), but I think the extra size makes doing gestures super smooth. As in, my fingers don't feel constrained.

That's probably the one common mbp gripe you can actually fix yourself. Tape up the perimeter and enjoy your brand new regularly sized trackpad.

The sticking keys on the new macbook pro is a serious problem. Always get Apple Care. I have had a problem with the last 3 mac purchases.

I knew about the keyboards when I bought mine, but didn't opt for Apple Care because they're offering a 4 year warranty on the keyboards whether you bought Apple Care or not.

Of all the complaints about the keyboard, the reliability issue with them are real, but also they're the one thing Apple owns up to. When I get the keyboard swapped they often also swap out a new battery for me.

I really (really!) appreciate how thin they are. The new 15in is as heavy as the old 13in. Really nice when you have to carry it around all the time. The biggest pain point is the lack of ports (4 ports including power) is not enough. The older models had around 5+ ports and still required dongles. Everything else aside from the keyboard is a minor issue (e.g. getting more ram today versus in the future is just a question of deferring costs).

> getting more ram today versus in the future is just a question of deferring costs

Not really. I had a 2011 MacBook. In 2015 I was able to upgrade the RAM to chips that didn't exist in 2011. Technically they weren't supported, but they worked just fine. I couldn't have done that if the chips were soldered to the board.

I also upgraded the drive from spinning disk to a much larger SSD. Again an upgrade I couldn't have done otherwise.

It allowed me to keep using the machine until 2017.

I’m still using my 2011 due to the ability to update the RAM and SSD. I’m moving to a Windows 10/iPad/server setup, but I still use my laptop on occasion.

We're in the same boat. I'm using the last 2012 pre-retina unibody 15". With maxed out RAM and SSD it's adequate for nearly everything I've thrown at it.

It's also had an admirable run, so I'd be happy to buy again at some point... but a matte screen matters to me. As does a good keyboard. And being able to swap out the drive. All more than any spec or form factor improvements that have happened subsequently.

So while I'd be happy to have replaced this laptop by now, maybe even more than once... Apple simply does not sell replacements for this laptop. They sell laptops which have a mix of regressions and somewhat improved performance (and they're thinner!). And past a point of meeting certain demands, the regressions matter more than performance gains or ounces lost.

Maybe when it finally dies, I'll see if I can find a serviceable 2015 model. Or maybe by then WSL will be an acceptable alternative and this will be the last of half a dozen Apple machines I bought.

And they'll be as happy about it as I will, because as many pundits, product managers, and fans like to say: maybe people like me just aren't part of their target market anymore.

It absolutely is. I honestly can’t imagine a component upgrade that hasn’t strongly suggest a new chipset/mobo as well over the past decade.

I meant that were the chips upgradeable, you would still spend the money, only you would do it later. With the components soldered on, you have to spend the money today, not 4 years later.

I'm also of the opinion that hardware today is going to improve rather little in the coming years. For instance, with the option of having 16/32gb of ram, I don't see the need to upgrade the laptop on account of the memory for a good 5 years, at least. Even the new SSDs have 2gb throughput, _much_ higher than the SSD you installed into your 2011 MacBook.

Finally, Macs have always had amazing resale value. You can always sell a 5 year model for a few hundred dollars and invest in something that will be much better.

> I meant that were the chips upgradeable, you would still spend the money, only you would do it later.

Yes, but my point was that I couldn't spend the money up front even if I wanted to, because the thing I upgraded to didn't exist. It's not "deferred cost" if you get something better later. It's only deferred cost if you get the same thing but later.

> I really (really!) appreciate how thin they are. The new 15in is as heavy as the old 13in.

Are these the same thing? Thickness and weight?

How much more material is required to make a laptop a couple millimetres thicker?

I would have assumed most of the weight reduction would be from making the battery smaller?

It's also more efficient processors and hardware in general. You get more power for a smaller battery, which results in a thinner frame and lighter laptop

> getting more ram today versus in the future is just a question of deferring costs

I see as giving you more flexibility, because you don't always know how much you'll need. Without this flexibility, you choose low, and are stuck with a slow computer, or you choose high, and you may end up paying a ton for a computer you may not need.

But thickness != heaviness.

My Thinkpad X1 is lighter than the Macbook Pro and has more ports.

Yeah, the Thinkpads seem like the best Windows laptops. If I used Windows, it would be an X1. Don't much care for the carbon fibre body (love the aluminum of the MacBooks) but the weight is excellent on those.

>getting more ram today versus in the future is just a question of deferring costs

What scenario did you have in mind? RAM in macbooks is soldered. Getting more ram in the future means finding a new computer.

The 8gb ram/256gb config is insulting. It's like a base model car without power windows or locks or a radio. Pure lemon.

While I agree with you I have to say there is real improvement Apple has made: eGPU.

Wonderful concept, I really hope that apple starts supporting nvidia gpus, I can’t work without cuda...

This. What’s the point in an external GPU you can’t even use for deep learning. Why do apple get nVidia so much anyway?

... everything else people use GPUs for?

There are other use cases :).

Most scientific use cases need CUDA, not just DL ;) Also it is arguable that nvidia high-end GPUs is the best in terms of gaming performance.

There are other reasons to pick AMD. Better Linux drivers. Business practices that I'm more comfortable supporting (they tend to be more open, e.g. non-proprietary, free to use FreeSync vs proprietary G-Sync). Stuff like that.

I'll take a small performance hit for that.

Most users don't buy high-end GPUs, and it's not like the high-end AMD GPUs are potatoes either.

Plus don't forget about price.

If only the enclosure didn't cost almost as much as the card.

>So what are we to make of the four-year-old MacBook’s demise? ... The laptop got mixed reactions from the get-go. Its high portability and lovely Retina screen were welcomed compared to the bulky, non-Retina MacBook Air of the time.

Pure insanity. We're now referring to the original MacBook Air as bulky!?

It's not even that thin, there are thinner PC laptops with better specs, and ports, and great (and reliable) keyboards.

That's Courage. For real this time, one of the first things Steve Jobs did when he came back to Apple was that he slashed the product line and killed off a ton of things so that the company could focus on what truly mattered; building great computing devices.

I am positively encouraged that Apple has grown to the point where they took feedback critically and have returned to a more Jobs-ian way of operating. As they should have been all this time. They've renewed their emphasis on general computing, created new devices, and are iteratively getting out of the hole they'd dug themselves into. This is a turnaround that's taking place before a drastic turnaround needed to take place. And that takes Courage™

Not sure if the whole post or only part is /s, but IMO they need to have the courage to drop the Touch Bar. Everything else I can live with, but now there’s literally no MacBook Pro I will buy. I have the 2016 Function Key model, and maybe my next upgrade will be to a 2015 Pro... or to a non-Apple laptop (sigh).

I'm certain people who are OK with the touch bar don't care about it as much as the people who hate it, but I for one prefer that they are iteratively innovating on the keyboard for macs. I'd rather they do that than make a thick brick of a laptop with a row of mostly useless function keys that a vocal minority has been harping for.

That's fine. I myself will continue to purchase from Lenovo, who tried something similar to the Touch Bar and removed it after listening to customer feedback.

Lenovo actively lost my trust (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfish), as opposed to Apple which doesn't care about my opinion but is upfront about it.

Never installed on the ThinkPad line, so not my problem :)

I think "the company that makes my laptop has only installed spyware on other laptops" is a pretty weak security guarantee.

my 2015 Pro is so much better than mycompany 2017 Pro w/ touchbar

like people are saying, most people just don't care about the touchbar. It does get annoying at times (as a vim user). Why WHY do they hide the esc key and have it take two inputs to increase the volume/brightness by more than 1 tick (sliding is terrible).

Other than that, I totally agree, the real focus should be the keyboard. Because it's shit. Here aresome of the awesome problems I go through on a daily basis at work.

- space bar double spaces all the time. Turned off key repeat and also whatever other suggestions I could find on Stack

- backspace deletes too many characters

- keys double type or are just not responsive (space, left shift, fucking / for some reason)

yeah, real fun using it especially while I'm on call right now and working on prod servers!! WORK ON THE KEYBOARD APPLE

You can just put your finger on the volume or brightness icon and slide it. You don’t have to pick it up or wait for the slider to appear.

You can also set the esc key to stay visible.

yeah I downloaded Dock to display my dock and esc key at all times.

Thank you for the tip. Knew you could use the slider but thought you actually had to be on dot, feel so dumb. Never tried sliding in place!

For your keyboard problems, just get it repaired. It's free under a four-year warranty, and it usually only takes one day: Just drop it off at an Apple store, and pick it back up the next day.

(Also, if you're a vim user, you should really remap Caps Lock to Esc. There's a pane in System Preferences for it, and it should be done whether or not you have a touch bar.)

Pretty sure that having a work laptop gone for a day is not an ideal situation for most people.

Caps Lock is better remapped to CTRL in my opinion. However, with Vim I always use CTRL+] instead of ESC because I think it’s easier to reach.

I'd also like to add that there's a chance they also swap out your battery during the keyboard repair.

Except now we have only one MacBook Pro choice: one with a more expensive part that uses more battery and is another possible failure point. It’s a net negative for anyone who is even neutral to it, never mind someone who uses say the physical escape key on a regular basis.

The keys that the touchbar replaced were definitely not useless - they were media control, sound control, screen/keyboard brightness and expose/mission control/launchpad (and of course, ESC.)

Those are all extremely common keys to use. And yes, you could also use them as "F#" keys I guess. Now, those keys are non tactile and much, MUCH less pleasant to use. Also, if you're watching a movie in the dark and you turn off your keyboard backlight the stupid touchbar stays lit up for 45 seconds.

I think Apple will eventually kill the touchbar or at least offer a version without it.

I think the corner they've painted themselves into is they know they can't charge more for a non touchbar version and if they offer it for less that's cutting profit margin as well as a tacit admission that it isn't a beloved feature.

But their choices over the last few months along with the revelation that they're finally ditching their butterfly keyboards leads me to believe it's coming.

They are ditching butterfly keyboards due to the reliability issues (dust causing keys to malfunction), not because of they've abandoned the quest for thinner, lighter laptops.

The keyboard was previously awesome. Just put the old version back. Why iterate on something that sucks. The form sucks, the switches suck, the arrow key layout sucks. Go back to the good times of the <= 2015 boards.

I use my function keys constantly as text editor shortcuts

Most people don't, and the touchbar just makes it more versatile for more users at the cost of tactility.

Yeah, the touch bar is quite a turn off for me too. That and the crappy keyboard made me always use the laptop in clamshell mode, which ironically I ended up liking quite a bit.

What's clamshell mode?

clamshell mode = with the lid closed

So that you can SSH into it from your server?

Or with external display, keyboard, and mouse.

Why wouldn’t you just get a Mac mini and save $1000s?

Because some people like moving?

Yeah, that's the main reason. I can still use it as a laptop and I bring it with myself when I travel somewhere, but when I'm home, it's pretty much a desktop

Sometimes I wonder how many people use Macs mainly in clamshell mode. I’ve been doing this for the last 10 years or so because working on a laptop is a huge ergonomy antipattern and Apples keyboards are famous for giving RSI.

I would do this but the fan runs much more when closed. As is, I use my 2017 MBP exclusively with the wireless keyboard from my 2008 iMac.

Generally putting something a few mm thick between the two halves, to give an air gap, helps.

Sometimes means the screen won't turn off, so it needs to be manually disabled/turned off instead.

There is hope that they are clearing up inventory of the old chassis & touch bars before they ditch them all together for a redesign with scissor keyboard at the end of this year though. A redesign is certain at this point, we just don't know when.

Despite the outspoken geeks that hate the Touch Bar, Mac revenue are their highest ever. The majority of people don’t care.

I think you're right. In Europe macs are not used as tools for professionals, but as toys for rich kids. You never see macbooks in any company unless they are an Apple shop but if you go in the old town center, in the most hipster cafes, you only see youths with macs.

Yeah most people use it for browsing the web, syncing their iPhones and not much else; for most is a luxury item used as another success symbol, like driving a BMW or wearing Gucci belts.

That is utter nonsense. The university research group that I worked in replaced Dell Linux-based laptops for Macbooks. Hardly toys for rich kids.

I’ve seen homeless people in Copenhagen using Macs. It literally blew my mind.

Denmark is a different world, people just throw away something as soon as they get a better version or starts malfunctioning in the slightest way.

A significant number of the academics I know and work with have a MacBook of some description. They’re incredibly popular in Universities. I can run PowerPoint for teaching as well as all the *nix stuff I need for research.

Just sell it as a dongle. Lord knows they've done that with enough other things. For those who actually use it, it doesn't need to positioned just above the numbers.

Could easily be placed at the top of a magic trackpad, even if it's two rows or something. IMO it's a much more natural fit that way and could be easily added onto any machine for the, I want to say 10, people who find it useful. Or, get this, above the row of function keys on a magic keyboard.

I love my touchbar :)

I like the touch bar. Sure it's a few tweaks to get it how I want but I like it.

If you want to enjoy the touchbar you have to have https://pock.dev which is free

Nice that there’s a free version. $ -> BetterTouchTool https://folivora.ai/

Or the courage to make the Touch Bar...retina?

I love the touchbar and use the auto-complete function fairly frequently with it.

The touchbar is awful, but the show stopper is the keyboard. Had mine replaced once, and now some other keys are failing. Even if they all worked the feel is atrocious. They are selling $2000 laptop computers that you literally cannot use without an external keyboard. That's brand loyalty for you.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the Touch Bar turns in to the entire keyboard. Surprise, no more stuck keys!

The 12” MacBook is the only laptop model I’ve purchased twice. Very disappointed to see it get the axe. I bought one in 2015 despite only reading negative reviews, stuck key issue was there for a few days on and off in the beginning and then never an issue again.

If you travel a lot, the extra weight of the MacBook and the charger along with the tiny dimensions makes it almost unnoticeable thrown in a backpack.

> Surprise, no more stuck keys!

And the ultimate in low travel!

Well, I don't know … auto-correct does a sufficiently good job that I'm actually more accurate typing on my iPad Pro's soft keyboard than on my MBP's real keyboard. (And the Smart Cover's keyboard is definitely better than the MBP's; no skipped or doubled keys, and comparable travel, or at least it feels like it.)

I don't care that the Touch Bar is there. (It was distracting to me at first in that it lights up and changes icons when I switch applications and it is usually sitting off to the side as I prefer to type on a real keyboard. I disabled most of the distractions.) But why can't we have both the Touch Bar and a set of real function keys and an escape key?

>That's Courage. For real this time, one of the first things Steve Jobs did when he came back to Apple was that he slashed the product line and killed off a ton of things so that the company could focus on what truly mattered; building great computing devices.

It's absurd that people keep suggesting this when it was a tactical move by a company near bankruptcy, had problems with too much inventory, and lots of models of computers that weren't differentiated.

We see it as an obvious move in retrospect but this goes completely counter to the way most consumer electronics businesses are run then and now. It takes courage because various internal stakeholders, shareholders, and clients demand feature lists and cling to the hope that various markets will explode. Just take a look at the Dell or HP websites and browse for a minute or two.

To prevent having to price match and to make it hard for consumers to compare products, a lot of companies have different models for different retailers - Apple did this before SJ came back.

You still see this with products like mattresses.

“Focusing is about saying no.” -Steve Jobs, WWDC ‘97

https://medium.com/@donhopkins/focusing-is-about-saying-no-s...

I wish they would keep Macbook, Macbook Pro, Mac, Mac Pro, iMac, iMac Pro and so on. Pro is for Professionals (beefest CPUs, ECC memory, workstation-grade GPU, abundance of ports, big battery), ordinary model for ordinary people (desktop-grade hardware, design, etc).

That's because the new Macbook Pros are actually MacBooks. No I/O, no upgradability, gimmicky and useless touchbars, etc

But finally quad core with a screen that actually fits on a lecture desk.

Why the fuck is Apple getting rid of the option to not have a touch bar on Macbook Pros? They already made it so high-performance macbooks require them but at least you had the option to pick a worse performing model with the actual keys.

Does the touchbar really do that well in focus groups? It is pretty universally reviled among all the techie people I know. It breaks one of the most basic principals of a keyboard interface which is that you don't need to look at it to know which button you're pressing. That would be fine if it was just settings like brightness/volume you don't change very often but putting the escape key there was just such an idiotic move

I used to consider myself a big macbook pro fan. I would probably continue buying reskins of the 2013 model forever as long as they kept updating the hardware. I would rather the product stagnate than have apple repeatedly make it worse

I'm starting to think Apple is being subverted by high level employees who are carrying out directives from someone else, possibly a competing company.

They sure do have a knack to keep tumbling down the stairs every single product release since Jobs passed on.

Maybe they are trying to get rid of their touch bar stocks :)

RIP Macbook. You have been my favourite machine for a long time.

The 11” Air was one of my all time favorite laptops and the 12” rMB was such a great replacement.

The 2015 11" Air was the best performance / value macbook Apple has ever made.

Still using mine. It's great. I'm gonna be really sad when it falls out of the supported lineup.

Mine was a 2010 base model, but by 2015 I had grown weary of it's limitations.

The form factor was just amazing, and even though the Core2Duo CPU wasn't anything special, with the SSD (at the time, they weren't very common) it was still a very usable machine. The battery life was my biggest complaint, only about 4 hours, and they didn't fix that until 2014.

100%. Macbook has been my daily machine for 3 years now, love this little thing. Quite disappointed there's no option under 2 lbs anymore.

Same, to me the only feature I missed was TouchID.

I can't imagine being on an airplane with anything but my trusty MacBook. Thinking of picking up a refurb one now to replace my 2 year old version.

I also have a 13 MacBook Pro which I haven't touched in over a year.

My work machine is a 2018 13" Pro. Its not that I don't like it - it simply isn't a joy to use like my 12".

In a twisted way I welcome these news.

If they had released a model without touchbar and with improved keyboard I would be really tempted to buy it to replace my XPS.

Given their insistence on the touchbar is good way for me to accept that: a) the last good MacBook for me will remain the 2015 model and b) I will have to make do with Linux and XPS.

For all the devs wondering how to replace their MacBook Pros: I highly recommend running Linux on a Lenovo X1 Carbon. I've also heard good things about System76.

Contrary view: https://medium.com/@hkdb/ubuntu-18-04-on-lenovo-x1-carbon-6g...

That's not a contrary view, that's someone who seems quite pleased with his laptop. Yes it's a lot of tweaking to get the system to work optimally, but that is the nature of open source: you trade convenience for power.

I'm pretty happy with the battery life on my X1 Carbon, but I might try some some of the settings from that article.

The writer would of had an easier time if he read the Ubuntu docs. 16.04 works flawlessly on the 6th gen X1 Carbon. I've been using it for work for the past 4 months without issue. https://certification.ubuntu.com/hardware/201712-26045/

How is that a contrary view. That guy seems very happy with the Ubuntu and X1 combo. Though he does spend a long time obsessing about the battery, after his initial take was "yup, it's good enough for me".

The guy initially declares “everything works out of box.” But then he spends a long time “obsessing about the battery” because without good battery life, a laptop is useless as a laptop. As Apple understands, alleviating battery anxiety is key to selling laptops.

I'm a hard +1 on this. Currently running Linux on an X1 carbon 6th gen and it is fantastic.

Did Lenovo fix the suspend issue yet, or did you apply the BIOS patch manually?

It’s fixed since about 7 months ago. It fully supports S3 sleep state.

My current recommendations are a bit lesser known:

- Purism https://puri.sm/products/

- Vaio https://us.vaio.com/vaio-sx14/

- Dell Latitude 7390/7490 (not the "New 7300/7400" which look to be a downgrade, sadly)

And if you're in Japan and have money and are really stylish:

- Panasonic Let's Note https://panasonic.jp/cns/pc/products/lv8k/

“...and are really stylish...” classic! That thing is hideous in my humble opinion

Fair enough. I'm in love, which perhaps blinds me.

Their Premium site gives a better gallery: https://ec-club.panasonic.jp/pc/premium/

And their colour/aesthetic customizations exceed anything I can find in the west: https://ec-club.panasonic.jp/pc/sp/customize_letsnote/

Panasonic has even had partnerships with e.g. Star Wars to have unique laptop-backing options, which is a bit wild for a business-series laptop.

But sadly they seem to have discontinued their best-looking and most interesting option: the MX. It was a 12.5" laptop with a rectangular touchpad (that had real buttons). It was a Yoga-style touchscreen (with stylus), and had all the ports you could want (e.g. vga, ethernet, SDcard). Just ~3lbs but also certified as semi-tough, and with good keyboard travel.

But then the killer feature: two batteries. One internal, but another one removable (yet still fits flush on the bottom when connected). When you remove that battery, you can charge it from the wall / by USB. That means you can hotswap your batteries and keep charging them -- infinite battery life!!

It's just so interesting to me. Such a creative engineering marvel, not even mentioning the circular touchpads they have on their other models. We don't see anything close to this in the west -- instead we are constantly complaining that our laptops keep losing features that we want. Why!?

How do you buy those Panasonics in US/Europe? eBay not showing anything relevant

Thank you for showing that different options still exist for laptops.

I remember using a Toshiba Libretto, and a weird Japanese Sharp 10-12 inch laptop in late 90s both of which seemed amazingly small.

Now the XPS13 and Lenovo P1 that I use are nice but feel so.. normal.

You'll have to find a third-party cross-border sales shop with a presence in Japan. The company I was using for this before (Dynamism) doesn't do laptops anymore and only does 3d-printing hardware. So you'll have to find another. It sucks, and in such a connected world it's amazing how hard it is to buy some product series from different places.

I do miss the Libretto!

My concerns with switching to a Lenovo X1 Carbon:

1. I won't use Windows. Will my battery life and WiFi performance be as good on Ubuntu? How much worse will it be?

2. Lenovo injected malware into the BIOS before. It was a different laptop division but it's still the same company. I am just finding it impossible to trust ever again.

I find the WiFi and battery fine (though I'm on a slightly older model). You can always mess with cpupower & other settings to improve battery life--Linux gives you a lot more power than Windows.

I don't know about the BIOS though.

(PS. Don't use wayland. It seems to have issues with HiDPI apps, at least on my laptop.)

Yes for devs switching to Linux is a good option. My home laptop is a Dell XPS 13 9380 running Linux (arch). I use it for browsing, doing some light development and occasionally video/photo editing. So far I am very happy with it except some few annoying software related issues but I can live with them: * pulse audio does not always auto-switch to the latest connected bluetooth audio device or it does but not use the right A2DP sink. I have to switch manually. * fractional scaling of the display under Wayland and Gnome. * battery life is still not as good as on Windows but it is not that far. * the fingerprint reader is not supported.

The keyboard is excellent, it is lightweight 1.2 kg. I opted for a 16Gb of Ram, 512 Gb SSD, i7 8556u, FHD model. The one with the QHD screen was 200 Euros more expensive but still 700Euros less expensive than an equivalent Macbook pro.

So far I don't see why I would change to a Macbook. Linux/Gnome are good enough for me.

Why does choosing an Apple product always require a degree in Apple marketing and design? I generally like their products but you need to do so much research about everything from the weird ass product names (does Air even mean anything anymore?), to where exactly in the product cycle each product is. Am I about to buy something that will be upgraded in a week?

Have you been on any PC makers websites lately?

Seriously. I wonder which consumer electronics/computing product sectors are supposedly easier to shop for. Other than smartphones, which generally just have a couple of size and storage capacity options, and much simpler/cheaper electronics like USB batteries, I can't think of any brand offering a simpler product line.

Check out Dell's home computer landing page. It's a horizontal carousel with literally 29 different laptops with different model names/numbers/screen sizes. And that's just the laptops. Before any actual customization of RAM, storage capacity, etc.

Even a pretty well-known sub-brand of laptops, ThinkPad, now presents you with four top-level choices (Laptops, Yoga, Tablets, Desktops), each of which has between 2 and 5 (apparently) completely different model lines. How do I buy the high-end "ultrabook" ThinkPad that I've heard is nice? I remembered it having "Carbon" in the name, so I searched the page for that and deduced that it's under the "X Series" of laptops. Then I click "Compare X Series Laptops." Then the fun begins. There are literally 14 different models of ThinkPad X1 Carbon, including "Yogas" (I guess it never remembered that I started the process by selecting Laptops).

I think you are exaggerating how confusing the apple product stack is. I'm no apple fan and I know roughly what to expect from each model.

the air is the low end model (for apple at least); you get this if you want the cheapest possible apple laptop. if you want to spend more money, you pick between the ultraportable macbook or a more powerful macbook pro.

I couldn't tell you the difference between all the iphones and ipads off the top of my head, but if you're having a hard time deciding what you want, it's probably because you're not thinking about it the way apple wants you to. it's actually a pretty simple process. 1) look at and touch the different models and pick the form factor you want. 2) increase the specs until it costs as much as you're willing to pay. if the base model of your chosen form factor is too expensive, go back to 1) and pick a different one.

if you care about the fact that macs tend to lag the latest processor skus by one or two generations, "you're holding it wrong."

> the air is the low end model (for apple at least); you get this if you want the cheapest possible apple laptop. if you want to spend more money, you pick between the ultraportable macbook or a more powerful macbook pro.

That's how it was before this announcement. Now the MacBook is gone, leaving the updated MacBook Air as the most portable option. This makes a lot more sense, since the "Air" name was meant to denote portability, and the original Air was the most portable option when it was introduced.

The Air is only slightly thinner and 0.25 lb lighter than the 13” Pro. I’ve had an Air since 2012 and just compared the two, and got the Pro. There’s essentially no difference in portability. But there are significant differences in capability and price.

I think Apple killed the 12” MacBook because for most people, an iPad is a better ultraportable than a laptop. The folks who are really adamant about laptops with Mac OS are developers, and the MacBook had a bad ratio of cost to power for most devs.

oddly enough, the 12" macbook is the only apple device I was ever interested in. it seemed like a great alternative to an xps 13 if I ever wanted to get into the mac world. lots of devs these days only need a computer capable of running an ssh client. if that's you and you also have a workstation, why not get the thinnest, lightest laptop out there that runs your favorite OS?

If all you need is an SSH client, then an iPad with a keyboard cover might work just fine.

iPad would be overkill. You could get by with an OG iPhone.

the weird ass product names

IME, Apple's product names make more sense than virtually any other computer maker, or auto maker.

Currently computers from Lenovo are:

ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 6

Yoga C930

ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 5

ThinkPad X1 Extreme

Legion Y740

MacBook (RIP), MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro make complete sense comparatively.

Why do names of tools need to make sense? I don't go around calling my screwdriver with cute names. It has a job to do. It needs a unique identifier to distinguish from other screw drivers.

> I don't go around calling my screwdriver with cute names. It has a job to do. It needs a unique identifier to distinguish from other screw drivers.

Screw drivers also aren't regularly re-designed to hop on current design trends and bump specs (or, rather, if manufacturers try it then people ignore it). Car models are probably a more apt comparison.

That is because it is a company for business/professional users. Other than you skipping over most of their product line, gen 5 is just generation 5, gen 6 is generation 6 and the extreme is the more powerful version.

You might as well mention the t series the p series and the x series (if they still make them) all of which comes with a bunch of numbers after them.

Anyway apple is a porche and thinkpads were russian tanks, lately some have gotten a cosmetic update. When you look at it like that it makes a lot more sense.

Written from my iPad

I have a Mac that I use daily and I have no idea what model it is or what the specs are. I'm also a technology professional.

>where exactly in the product cycle each product is. Am I about to buy something that will be upgraded in a week?

You've answered your own question. That is precisely why everything is fuzzy. So that people don't get caught up worrying about specs or versions. PC market doesn't iterate that fast any more.

> where exactly in the product cycle each product is

See https://buyersguide.macrumors.com/

After having the Touch Bar model I almost wish they kept the “Touchbar Escape” model. At least the choice is easier now - Apple NoChoice.

Considering a 128Gb SSD costs $47 and a 500Gb SSD costs $78 Apples's $400 "upgrade" to 500Gb over the base model's 128Gb disk represents a 6-fold price hike on its market value. Why do we put up with this? Now it's soldered on so we don't even have the freedom to upgrade our own machines.

The SSDs used in Macs outclass most other offerings. It's not fair to compare them with random SSDs on price alone, you need to compare with the best the market has to offer. The gap used to be an order of magnitude even against the 'best' SSDs commercially available. This is why they initially used their proprietary interface, then NVMe. The gap is getting smaller but it is still significant. And that's against SSDs you can buy - not the SSDs other companies will stuff on their laptops.

What rubs me the wrong way is that Apple outfits all their cheapest devices with unpractical storage sizes, so you are essentially forced to upgrade.

I hope they release a fanless version of the Air to make up for the lack of the Macbook. Are there any other fanless laptops on the market?

Surface Book 2 13" has no fan on the CPU. The GPU has one, and the larger 15" has a CPU fan as well, but the 13" is dead silent otherwise. Although the charger can exhibit some coil whine at times which is annoying.

The current Air might as well be fanless. The fan is nowhere near the heatsink on the CPU, once it finally kicks in it only pushes the air through the case, its impact on the CPU temperatures is minimal.

"It has a fan, but the fan is useless" is worse than merely having a useful fan :/.

Also worse than no fan, since you could fill that space with battery if there wasn't a fan there.

Yep. The only saving grace is that it takes a loong time for the fan to finally kick in, it's pretty much impossible to make it run with anything less than 100% CPU load, and even then it takes a few minutes to kick in.

Yes, but nothing without compromises. (e.g. AFAIK there doesn't exist a <2lb, >= 12" screen device with an Amber Lake CPU)

There's no point to aim on fanless laptop. There are plenty of laptops which won't turn on fan unless absolutely necessary, you should aim for those laptops, because if you need that extra performance, you'll have it and if you don't need it, you will have silent device.

On the bright side, as Apple continues to pervert the formerly most used *nix laptop, we may see a surge of interest in Linux.

Elementary OS is based on Ubuntu and has an OSX-like aesthetic and simplicity that might appeal to newcomers wanting to switch.

Still has the unreliable keyboard

Still has the annoying Touch Bar

Still doesn't have a physical ESC key

Still has an annoying port situation requiring a half dozen dongles

Still is no user serviceable RAM / SSD / battery

= Still not a "Pro" laptop

I feel like they are making way for the 16” MacBook(Pro).

Is there some credible info about this somewhere, or is this just speculation?

Was expecting this. I imagine the Air will also be the first to make the switch to their in-house ARM processors.

Once they move all products to the ARM (is it even possible? I mean Apple is Apple but they can’t put as much effort into CPUs as Intel or AMD - take a look at the latest Ryzens for example :o) will it kill Hackintoshes?

This is the final "fuck you and fuck off" to professional developers from Apple. I expect the next generation of MBPros (and MBAirs) that are rumored for later this year to continue in this direction giving us developers the middle finger and likely it will continue into next year and beyond. Apple doesn't care. The laptops look great from the outside and most people don't know any better. Everything that makes this machine a laptop is indeed garbage (keyboard, touchpad, screen, cooling) as far as computing is concerned, but when you're a fashion company, computing is almost an afterthought. On the bright side, I'm looking forward to "smart" socks and underwear coming out in a few years from Apple. /s

If Apple was working on a complete redesign of the MBP with a new keyboard, how long do you think it would take them to release it?

And if Apple were indeed working on that wouldn't it make sense to ditch the 12'' MB since it could not accommodate a thicker keyboard?

I'm bitter too about what has been happening on the Mac front for the last 5 or so years, but I think Apple is correcting course albeit slowly.

Rumors are a new mbpro is coming this fall. Or next year. So I guess about four to five years or so. It makes sense that they ditched the regular mb because it was garbage. You may be right, and I hope you are, but I doubt it. If they were correcting course why not ditch the touch bar for function keys instead of the other way around? They have both. Their software choices also point to the same thing with sip, their slow phasing out of apps not signed by Apple, and the increasing difficulty in installing and running any other OSes on their hardware, especially new hardware. Even if the new mbpro comes out this year or next with a new redesign, I wouldn't hold my breath that it would be better. It's likely to be worse given so many years of bad design and ideas not only in laptops but in all their products. They are literally making computers for computer illiterate people these days. That's great for the masses who can afford them. It's great for a phone that has very limited functionality and use cases as smart phones tend to have. It's terrible for an alleged general purpose computer.

Prev gen mbp was 2013-2015. The one before that was 2009-2012. This one is 2016-2019. I'd say we are due for a redesign any day now. Hopefully we drop this butterfly experiment and return to good old fashioned scissor keys and ports for pros.

Nitpick: the first 15'' retina was introduced in 2012 on which the 2015 model is based on.

Anyway I agree, a new MBP has to be in the works. Hopefully it will be released this year without the butterfly keyboard and the touch bar.

Now, there’s no macbook without screaming fan noise.

I'd take screaming fan over throttling

I started using "Turbo Boost Switcher" recently. You can enable/disable turbo boost from the system bar which keeps the MacBook quiet. Love it.

The price is not even that outrageous. When specified similar to the top-of-the-line ThinkPad X1 Carbon it's only $200 more, and you're getting a better display.

But a much worse keyboard.

The X1C6 is pretty expensive unless you’re doing some Lenovo EPP swindle.

The X1C7 just came out so the price will be dropping like a stone on the 6th gen pretty soon.

Using similar specs, (i7, 16GB ram, 512GB SSD, UHD screen) the MBP is $600 more than the XPS 13. And the XPS gives you the option for a 1080p screen, saving money and increasing But price aside, the real deal breaker for me is the soldered in SSD on the MBP. Being able to upgrade or recover data by removing the SSD is a huge benefit in my opinion.

Ha, I was waiting for them to update it so I could buy a new one. It has been over 500 days since an update, which was unusual.

Anybody run XCode on the Air? How is it? It’s pretty tempting as a MBP no TB replacement.

I’m almost ready to stop hating on the donglebook now that all my devices use wireless connectivity

Even my hardware wallet is bluetooth and I’ll tolerate that

Inconclusive on my DSLR-form factor cameras, but I plan to axe them for the iphone’s camera in a year or two as well, for how I use them

So when Apple releases their new Apple Display Air with 60GHz wireless Thunderbolt4, and the new MacBooks finally get wireless charging, we’ll reach the nirvana of a totally port-less device.

With some more work on the keyboard, it could even end up being totally coffee-proof!

Eye-FI failed. which annoyed me. There are others. I often read "oh how quaint: you have a camera with no wifi" but I do like my fuji X-20, and it is pre-wifi, and so I need a WiFi enabled SD card solution.

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