Surprising (concerning?) that Mac sales didn't go up, given the release of the Mac Pro and the MBP 16", both of which were poised to inject new life into the line.
The 16" MBP is also the top tier in the notebooks, and despite complaints, the previous gen TouchBars are working decently for most people. Not surprised the 16" didn't have a huge impact.
Updating the 13" line would have a bigger impact. iMac/iMac Pro also haven't seen notable updates in a while.
That's fair
> it starts at $6000
The pricing/features can be (have been) debated ad infinitum, but no matter which way you slice it, it represents a huge new direction for the Mac line and at least at the high-end, industry professionals are excited about it. It's a big deal, and it's not a flop, so it should have an impact (next quarter, it seems).
> and despite complaints, the previous gen TouchBars are working decently for most people
Most people probably won't be trading in their 2018 MBPs for the new 16-inch, but given the strong feelings out there about the keyboard and airflow I'd bet some people will.
And more importantly there are people like me, who were holding off on a long-coming upgrade for a moment exactly like this, when Apple's solved the biggest issues with the design. It should've registered as some kind of sales bump, even if not a massive one.
Now I am just guessing while the new 16" made people more willing to buy a new MBP it wasn't getting them to rush and buy one. That is my case, I will likely buy this year, without the new 16" I think it was under 50% chance I bought a MBP (and a bit more likely I got some laptop I could run Ubuntu on).
I suspect both of these new models came in too late to appreciably affect the Mac quarter results, though, as the OP mentioned -- and I also suspect that the number of people who were holding off on upgrades, like you, has been steadily rising. And I know I'm not alone in looking at the 16" one and thinking it was neat but just too big. So maybe the acid test is going to be seeing what happens to sales when they update the smaller models with the new keyboard.
I pointed out in another comment that the 16" is actually slightly smaller on every dimension than the 15" 2015 MBP, even with the extra diagonal-inch of screen space:
358.9 mm × 247.1 mm × 18.0 mm
357.9 mm x 245.9 mm x 16.2 mm
You can't produce crap products for 5 years and expect people to use that as a reason to rush to upgrade to the latest and greatest.
I'm not paying $4k for skylake refreshes refresh.
I would also love if they started shipping optane in their high end models (or at least have the option).
I might just end up buying an old 2015 one. Retina display is the only thing I really want.
I narrowly preferred the feel of the butterfly keys, and I like clicky keyboards in general. But I was one of the many who had keypress failures, which was infuriating.
I've beaten the crap out of this style of keyboard, from Apple, without problems, so I'm optimistic that they've fixed the problem. This is my eighth Apple keyboard, and of them all, I've had keypress failures only on the seventh.
And yes, to answer your question, it's considerably quieter. And has an escape key. And t-shaped arrow keys. I'm pleased.
What keeps me from going back to the 2015 is that everything at home is now set up for USB-C and I would prefer to not have two separate cabling setups for the shared desk.
The battery percentage hops up/down by a few percent when it is low, eg. 7%, 10%, 9%, 7%, 4% ALERT ALERT ALERT. I would replace the battery in it, but I can't......
I do not have this problem on my 2012. Also, on my 2012 I know how much battery life I left without having to turn the thing on. Nor do I need dongles.
Plus I am not deafened by the keyboard on the 2012.
Speakers on the touchbar MBP are good though! That's the only thing I can say about it.
Me neither BUT I noticed both my Dad and a friend try to touch my laptop screen when I was showing them something. They did so in a way that clearly they weren't even thinking about it and they just expected it to work, especially for scrolling.
People's constant use of phones, tablets and newer windows portables that support touch are changing people's expectations. People who primarily use the keyboard + touchpad/mouse are soon to be a minority (if the are not already when the wide world is considered).
Thankfully, Lenovo and Huawei have good offers.
I'm looking forward to getting a 2nd gen 16". It's likely to line up with my upgrade cycle.
Clearly you've been living under a rock. I see 15"/16" all over the place.
> The Mac Pro is just too expensive
For hobbyists. Not for its target market.
The mac pro is somewhere between "too expensive" and "too little, too late".
The standard line is that if you make $$$ using the Mac Pro - e.g. production companies - the cost is peanuts. However, they took so long to upgrade the Pro lineup that some of those would-be-buyers have already moved on to non-Apple products because working on old hardware for so long was more expensive than jumping off Apple's ship.
Certainly many stayed. But I have several friends that work in production in LA and more than one of them left Apple's ecosystem during that dry spell. They aren't coming back for an overpriced machine.
That being said, I agree with you. It's too large.
There's also still a lot of stuff I don't care for (bezel size, massive trackpad, still has an underwhelming keyboard, lack of port diversity, touchbar), but it's decent enough for me to pull the trigger if it were in a smaller package.
They gave us the esc key back, and moved away from the butterfly mechanism, etc. If it was just in a form factor similar to that of comparable dell/lenovos (<= 14"), I'd buy one and I feel like I'm not the only one.
That being said, I also echo the price concerns. You can easily spec out a 16" to over $3k - that's a lot for a laptop.
For what it's worth, it's actually slightly smaller on every dimension than the 15" 2015 MBP, even with the extra diagonal-inch of screen space:
358.9 mm × 247.1 mm × 18.0 mm
357.9 mm x 245.9 mm x 16.2 mm