Wow looks like Apple has abandoned every bad decision on the MBP for the past 5 years in one swoop. No touchbar, increased key travel, added back hdmi/sd/headphone/power jacks.
Plus bumped up RAM limit, M1, new displays, 120Hz... Wow.
Plus bumped up RAM limit, M1, new displays, 120Hz... Wow.
ps… 6 years for a laptop that… works very well to this day is why I have no qualms about the price of this thing.
Really the only thing that doesn't work well on it to this day is the dreaded Microsoft Teams, which brings the thing to a screeching halt.
Well, plus trying to do more than minimal VM/container use, to be honest.
One thing I strongly dislike about the i7 is how hot it can get with long compiles and such. So I think it's time to upgrade to the M1 Pro or Max.
Unless you're saying even a new M1 mac has just as much trouble running it!
Didn't bother to look into the cost of replacement as my initial research indicated that they'd want/need to replace the keyboard and upper chassis as well, so probably a $600+ repair. So I opted for a company laptop instead.
It's been a long wait to upgrade
I guess when you take a stand and refuse to hand over your money for anti-features, you do get rewarded sometimes.
Since I had no AppleCare as I chose to "self-insure" (it's a 6-year old laptop), and the Apple Genius helpfully informed me the repair costs were the same as the price of a brand new Apple laptop (what a coincidence!), a 3rd party handled my repairs, and it was still pricey. I'm comfortable with DIY repairs, so I see Framework laptop when I decide my Mac bites the dust, or needs more costly repairs.
My least-favorite thing about the older MacBook Pro I migrated from was that (even when it was covered by AppleCare+) both times its battery failed I needed to wipe its SSD, hand it over to Apple for a week, and then restore it from a backup when it was returned.
If my Framework's battery ever fails I can order a replacement for $59 and replace it myself in minutes.
I see a lot to salivate over in the new MBP. But as long as I can avoid it, or until batteries become radically more reliable, I'll never again rely on a main laptop without a user-replaceable battery.
My one complaint about the trackpad, in comparison to the MacBook Pro's, is that while both support using two fingers to right-click, I have to be a bit more conscious about spacing my fingers slightly apart on the Framework laptop's trackpad (in Windows, if that matters) to register the right click, compared to on the MacBook Pro.
The build quality of the Framework isn't totally on par with the solid aluminum chassis of the MBP, but it's totally fine for me. The Framework's fan sounds less annoying, probably on account of the wide airflow through the bottom of the case.
The Framework is much faster than my old Intel MBP, but not quite as fast as an M1 MBP would be. The battery life is middling (but fine for my purposes). Overall I'm very happy with my choice after a few weeks.
Now the laptop is out of warranty. If it were to fail now, I could in theory buy a battery replacement kit from iFixit, and muck around with adhesive removers and many delicate parts and hope I don't break anything else in the hours-long process: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Function+Ke...
That's a fairly user-hostile situation, though. There's a reason Apple doesn't advertise the battery as user-serviceable, in contrast to some other manufacturers.
If the laptop is from Apple's garbage era of 2016-2019 who would pay good money for it? Macs don't unconditionally have excellent resale value, the resale value depends on the quality of the item.
https://support.apple.com/keyboard-service-program-for-mac-n...
For me personally, I installed Big Sur for the ability to use Stereo HomePods as an AirPlay output (previously you could only choose one, but not both in stereo).
It made my movie/tv/video watching experience so much better that it's worth the downside of slightly lowered performance.
That said, because macOS is not a fully sandboxed system like iOS, it's probably worth doing an erase install every 3-4 years, especially if performance has dropped noticeably. I did this with the 11.4 mid-cycle update earlier this year and it was helpful on my 2014 machine.
I think that Apple's biggest mistake is not making it more obvious that the bar is editable in all programs. It becomes pretty useful when you can keep only the functions that you use the most.
What's sad is by killing it on the new MBP, they essentially kill it on my laptop as less and less developers will care to implement it. I wonder how long Apple software like Xcode will support the Touch Bar.
Edit: times it's superior to buttons: scrubbing videos, changing Safari tabs
If they had added the Touch Bar in addition to physical function keys then there would have been less resistance to it.
Changing volume is definitely one of those use cases where the physical function keys were much better IMO - It's one physical button press rather than touch the button, look down at the slider, and try to drag it into the right position.
I also use my laptop in a dock about 50% of the time, so end up just using the on-screen volume adjustment and keyboard shortcuts anyway... If Apple really believed in the concept they would have put the touchbar into their keyboards too.
As of now, it's 0.5 additional bars. The whole row after ESC is pretty much useless.
Honestly, I'm on the side of "the touchbar is inoffensive". Never bothered me one bit, but I don't use it anyway so I don't care that they're removing it*. I'm sympathetic, though. I always liked the butterfly keyboard, and the general opinion on that has been made patently obvious.
* I wonder if this has to do with the fact that I never look at the keyboard, so it just doesn't occur to me to use the touchbar, same as I never saw the point of keyboard backlighting.
Not too worried about my laptop being killed though, they screwed the keyboard up so hard it's essentially dead anyway. Have to take it to the Apple Care center to have it revived again sometime soon because I've got 3 sticky keys that won't unstick.
Second gripe is precisely its main selling point - that it can change based on context. I don't want my keyboard changing. I don't want to have to look down to operate my laptop, it breaks the flow and slows me down. I had 2 laptops with the Touch Bar. I tried every software for customising it. BTT, MTBMR (or whatever it's called), and at least one other. I always eventually fix them with the few buttons I use (no sliders): volume/mute, screen brightness, keyboard backlight.
Then, there's also the fact that you can't adjust its brightness or turn it off, and it's always emitting the full spectrum of light, which I find uncomfortable in the dark or late in the day. Granted, this is a smaller thing which is why it's at the bottom but it builds up the list of annoyances.
Edit: just remembered another one - it can freeze. Most of the time it can be fixed by killing a process. Other times, you need to reboot the computer.
FYI, command-<number> will let you switch between browser tabs. So command-2 will bring you to the second tab (starting from the left), etc. I tend to only navigate between the first five tabs or so in this manner (basically, what I can reach with my left hand), and I drag tabs I'm likely to navigate to like this to the left.
What this looks like in practice is:
<tab1> some admin console </tab1> <tab2> email </tab2> ... <tab10> documentation about the admin console </tab10> (drag documentation in tab10 to occupy tab2)
Now I can use command-2/1 to go between the console documentation and the console itself. IMO, the cost of dragging a tab to the left is much cheaper than having to break your visual connection with the screen in order to hunt through the touchbar.
(Make it inherently safe - physical keys, so less chances of programmers ruining it).
If Apple had released computers with the touch bar above the existing physical function keys, everyone would love it and other companies would provide a similar feature, the same way that they have all converged on the same industrial design as what Apple pioneered 20 years ago.
Instead, Jony Ive insisted on the touch bar replacing the function keys, and here we are. At least the butterfly switches are finally dead. (It only took years of worldwide embarrassment and Ive's departure to make it happen!)
* Top row of physical buttons wasn't a big deal since I map Caps Lock to Esc.
* Changing volume and brightness is better in the touchbar: the buttons are large enough to get them by touch, and sliding the finger is faster and more granular than repeatly pressing buttons.
* Here's a tip: you don't have to move your finger from the button to the slider. You can just slide from the volume button.
* BetterTouchTool allowed me to have any shortcut in the touchbar.
- Instead of cmd-ctrl-opt-D in Safari, I’d hit the touch bar button that looked like an iPhone.
- instead of hunting and pecking for XScope screen calipers, I would touch the bar button that looked like calipers.
Etc. I had several dozen per-app automations and shortcuts mapped to easily visible and understandable buttons, now I’m back to wondering if it was F3 or F4 that meant “hide the sidebar” in XCode.
This is a huge step backward. The Mac community has decided that it wants to stay in the past; Apple is saying, “fine, you dinosaurs want the ultimate 2015 MacBook Pro? Here it is. We will leave our engineers who think about the future to the iPad.”
I think they gave way too few APIs to devs for it to be truly functional.
The only time I was missing it was some emulators that didn’t display function keys even though the keys were needed for them.
I use an external keyboard and a pair of 4K screens with it, so it runs closed at the back of my desk. :)
Yep, that's the downside of a quasi-monopolist. Limited choice.
The Intel MacBook Pro 16 supports DisplayPort 1.4 over USB-C, which can do 4K 98Hz HDR, and doesn't take up dedicated single-purpose ports.
Edit: but I wonder how many Hz the M1 Pro can drive a pair of 4K displays at...
[0] https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81FV+91am5L._AC_SL1500_....
I also think that with FaceID my phone is generally unlocked when I pick it up as well.
I am using a $200 Oppo with screen fingerprint reader, never had any issues.
Of course it's not a bad decision. It's idiotic decision. They literally added something to spoil what was needed. They could just fix their previous idiocy but no .. they had to add another one. Even the fact of it presence is annoying enough to avoid buying such model.
It is "uuugly" (with S.Jobs intonation) and that should be enough.
It's also invitation for more SW bugs and unnecessary complications. My Menubar is set to autohide and even that is not working properly because some windows from time to time stuck in a mode when they fail to extend themselves to occupy space where MenuBar was. They stuck in size FullScreenSize.Height-MenuBar.Height and you cannot change it unless you reboot the machine. It's obviously a bug. They cannot fix it for many OS versions already. Imagine adding to this bug another complication with notch ... Goodness.
Let's not forget that other idiots are going to copy it everywhere without too much thinking too.
"Ugly" argument should be enough. But there are more: How about mouse pointer. Should it be stuck once you reach this notch or it should pass through? Both ways it is idiotic. How about full screenshot - it will be with notch now? How about those apps that would fail to hide it? I am pretty sure you'll stuck with this status bar spoiling the whole picture here and there. How about multiple screens and complications with moving windows from one screen to another with keeping their size or complications with screeenshots when multiple screens are connected? What if you have a lot of menu items in your app? Some of them will be after the notch?
And all of this for what? To solve something that was already solved long time ago by "autohiding" MenuBar?
For my taste adding this absolutely useless "notch" is really idiotic decision . The very presence of this ugly notch is spoiling the feeling.
Even knowing that this device was made by people who find this idiotic notch aesthetically pleasing spoils everything because you know it's not the first idiocy and not the last idiocy you'll find there when you dig deeper. At least this is my expectation now. I was correct about ports, I was correct about keyboard, I was correct about idiocy of touch bar, lack of magsafe and I think I am not mistaken here too. They could've ask me, would save them a lot of redundant efforts in production. I use laptop to it's maximum and described my usage in details somewhere in comments. I really use laptop as laptop and I use each and every feature of it.
https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...
You'd complain about that booger, right?
Personally I think everyone will forget the notch in a few weeks. We got over it for phones, which have much less screen real estate to spare. If the extra space enables a permanently visible status bar in OSX, even when full screen with apps, then I personally will be thrilled with this change.
People also stop complaining simply because they've complained enough. It's definitely not always the case that they "get over it". People that need a Mac will certainly rationalize since they have no choice.
But given a choice, people would absolutely not buy a laptop with a turd like this notch front and center.
As usual though - Apple gives you no choice.
Of course if price is the reason, then that makes more sense. Apple seems to be returning to a wider (and more reasonable imho) price and performance gap between the pro and the air. If I was in the market for a laptop, and I’m not because I think laptops are silly in general[0], I’d go for an air. The pro is very much in the “work will buy one for me” price, and it offers performance I don’t really need out of a personal machine.
0 - As I’ve said before, laptops generally compromise too much for my tastes. Like many others I work entirely from a desk, so my personal mac is and always will be a mini. But since work will inevitably give me one of these, I’m thrilled that they’ve made it so much better, even if I wouldn’t buy one myself.
I'd get one but I need it to look premium if I'm dropping 4k and right now it looks like it's from 2008
The point of the MBP is that it’s for professionals. It’s a tool, not a fashion statement. The idea that it’s not worth the money because it looks outdated is utterly baffling to me; it’s worth the money because they’ve stuffed it full of the most performant components apple has ever put into a laptop ever. I want it to be a function over form machine, and worrying about its looks as part of the buying decision genuinely never crossed my mind.
If you want a fashion statement laptop and don’t need the performance, then don’t get a MBP. Again, your money; I don’t get it, but you do you. But the issue here isn’t that the laptop is bad per se, the issue is that that laptop wasn’t made for your use case.
Pffft, as if Apple didn't market every. single. one. of their products as a fashion statement.
Apple clearly has always chosen form over function and being different over function. That's the only reason why the ridiculously useless Dock exists at all - marketing loved it since it embodies both of those traits.
Nonsense. The Mac Pro is clearly marketed as a professional took for professional use, always has been. Ditto with their high end displays. I don’t even think they had these objects in the last Apple Store I went into, actually.
Furthermore, every single ad I’ve ever seen for the MBP has been about artists, creatives, and programmers using it to make things. They have always presented it as the professional’s tool for creating stuff, even if at times that’s been a bit of a farce.
Now compare how they presented the MacBook, a laptop that they sold in gold color. That is a laptop they presented as a fashion choice, and interestingly it’s also the laptop they abandoned first.
> Apple clearly has always chosen form over function and being different over function
It’s only “always” been this way if you’re relatively young. In fact Apple’s turn towards form over function sometime after Job’s death caused quite a bit of angst here, both in terms of their hardware and software design. I’m old enough to remember when the MBP was unquestionably the best laptop a developer could buy, and I was very sad to watch it slowly lose ground to other laptops as Apple pursued thinness over user experience, hardware specs, upgradability, or durability.
If anything else, what I’m seeing today seems like a return to Apple from earlier in my career, when they made professional grade laptops that lead the pack. There are still some changes I’d love to see, such as more upgrade ability, but an Apple that’s willing to make its devices thicker if it improves user experience is very much a “function over form” move.
I personally find notches to be very distracting visually, and I just don't like them from a design standpoint.
I think Apple recognizes this even. Looking at their marketing material. You have to scroll pretty far down to ever be shown the notch, as it seems they're intentionally hiding it with apps in full screen mode.
I think apple made the right trade-off. Thin bezels and a good camera at the top of the display. Sadly you cannot have both in a laptop without a notched design.
https://www.dell.com/community/XPS/XPS13-9300-2020-version-w...
The Apple camera solution here, while it doesn't make you happy, may make others happy.
My guess - looking good on a zoom call for your work or your soririty or your dating videos is going to matter a TON more to folks than whether or not something is integrated into a fat bezel, or is in a notch.
This debate has already occured BTW with the phones, and despite various claims that the notch would destroy iphone sales it did not.
That said, I build my own PCs (talk about driver issues long term) and do purchasing of Lenovo and Dell for business (and a dell "server" costs a mint even though what is inside is also not THAT amazing) and don't use a mac personally, but my family does, and so I'm not totally blind to the value offering they have.
It's not like Apple can't do the same as Dell.
I would, if only along the bottom!
tl;dr: a thicker bottom bezel allows the necessary space for a better keyboard layout without shrinking the touchpad, and makes the laptop more usable when your eyes are at heights closer to that of the screen rather than looking down on it from above
Because I have poor eyesight but I like to keep a lot of text on my screen, I often work partially or fully reclined with my laptop lying on my chest or my stomach. When I do this, the height of my fingers as they rest on the keyboard tends to obscure the bottom part of the screen on 'modern' laptops with super-thin bezels all around, so I have to reduce the height of my full-screen terminal.
On older laptops, where the bottom bezel may be a full inch or more tall, I don't need this. Additionally, I prefer a full, standard, IBM style keyboard layout: a dedicated row of F keys, spaced out in the standard way, and with full-sized arrow keys. One problem with such keyboards is that they compromise the size of the trackpad, because of th space they take up on the bottom of the laptop. On keyboards without trackpoints, or with designs centered on large, excellent trackpads like MacBooks, this cannot work well.
So for me, an ideal hardware setup for input on a laptop might well be something like a MBP, but with a 3:2 display and a bottom bezel 1-2 inches tall, which would allow for a full-size keyboard alongside a spacious, Mac-like trackpad.
So yeah. They could have a thin bezel. They deliberately chose not to, even if it eats into the precious little space of the top menu bar.
I believe they could've quite easily reduced the bezel width.
I would rather take a bezel and reduce the amount of e-waste this custom garbage has on the world. Add to that this will most likely make screen replacements significantly harder and more expensive.
Can you explain why you like a larger bezel? It seems like a hands-down negative to me.
Is it though? I was able to replace a broken Macbook screen a couple of generations ago. It was hard and took a while, but I managed. I'm very sure I would not be able to do this given this kind of screen.
I guess we'll see when the first tear-down comes out. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the only way to fix the screen is to replace it together with the webcam.
Add a few apps that add ions to the menu bar, and suddenly you already have no space even without the notch.
To go from optical back to electrical just seemed wrong from a tech evolution standpoint. Not hearing a lot of call to rip out multimode fiber in backbone networks and replace it with a shinier coax. But HDMI seems to be meeting the need, and there is always the aftermarket for fully annealed 99.999% oxygen-free HDMI cables to consider.
For legacy equipment you can get a box that takes hdmi in and spits out spdif.
Yes, that's what I wrote was dropped in G4.
This is just great for headphone nerds, audiophiles.
(The Google equivalent dongle is also good.)
You certainly shouldn't be able to hear DAC differences through earbuds, but they shouldn't have issues being driven either unless they're really exotic. If I had to guess, I'd say the plug wasn't seated properly, or there was an issue with the in-line microphone.
They couldn't use LPDDR5 RAM with Intel chips. They wanted to bump up the RAM years ago, but couldn't do it until now.
I hope that is true. But they only state and quote
>For the first time, Magic Keyboard brings a full‑height function key row to MacBook Pro — with the tactile feel of mechanical keys that pros love.
Nothing really concrete about Key travel.
the whole value proposition of the apple ecosystem is that it is all beautifully designed, integrated and pleasing such that it inspires you to go forth and design beautiful things.
but now they've gone and stuck a webcam in the middle of the menu bar. jobs is probably rolling over in his grave.
i suppose the only way to know if it's annoying is to try it.
It's taken two years to fully undo Jonathan Ive's obsessions.
Did they remove it? I checked my wifes Macbook Air (the one with 2 USB-C ports) and it has headphone jack, did they remove it only in MacBooks Pro?
> increased key travel
Is that good? I prefer smaller key travel, makes typing faster.
I'm not paying $2k for a laptop below what I need as a developer, when <$2k from literally anyone else will get what I need.
Apple is ridiculous. Inflation is murder right now, and they JACK the prices without delivering more value.
Surface Laptop Studio with similar specs at $2100. Costs +$600 to go to 32GB and 1TB (which == $400 + $200 upgrade you mentioned).
Dell XPS 15" is $2400.
If you were even dimly aware of current prices for high-end laptops you'd know the Mac is priced in the same expensive range. If you prefer $1K plastic crap that's fine. Some people like Velveeta and Canned Spam too.
That XPS 15" is probably running a comet lake chip.
https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/microarchitectures/comet_...
Ie, 14mm, launched in 2019
That node size (less the ++'s) goes back to Skylake (when it was amazing actually) which is from 2015.
Acer sells MUCH cheaper machines all day:
$1.6K for a Predator here:
https://www.walmart.com/ip/2021-Flagship-Acer-Predator-Trito...
Apple has been told that their products (watch, airpods, iphones etc) have been too costly for decades now. And still makes money selling them.
What I don't get - Apple's stuff seems to last forever. My dell's just crap out (battery, drivers, updates etc). My wife on a mac -> she just goes and goes. I'd love to see the support histories on old ACER's and Dell's vs Apple.
What they don't value is that apple, in the midst of chip shortage, is going to be doing delivery within ONE WEEK of announcement of an absolutely bleeding edge node solution.
I get it, your Dell Intel whatever is better and/or cheaper. I used to be on dell and now am on lenovo. But there is a reason apple charges what they do, a totally integrated solution, that just works, battery life for miles, not too hot on the lap etc etc. and available in seemingly insane quantities.
Seriously, ford parks cash cow F-150's and apple is turning out millions and millions of phones (100 million phones alone per year)?
And you’re right: I don’t appreciate that Apple can deliver a week later. That’s not valuable when my machines still work. Not paying a premium for that.
I’ve been chafing at the upgrade cost of Apple laptops for more than a decade of using their products. The reason customers keep paying is for the reputation, and because of their short memories. The keyboard debacle, the screen issues, MacBook Air early gen laptops burning people’s laps… and those are just the laptop issues.
I’m upset because this is just another instance where Apple’s profit margin goes up substantially. Their markup is basically 4x higher than MSRP off the aftermarket RAM/SSD.
No one is using Dell or Acer here. We're just holding on to our old MBPs.
I wouldn't care about the notch for a 2k laptop but I do care for a 3500 laptop. Ontop of that I'll absolutely need more storage and ram so it's 4k laptop. But the notch. So ugly. Welp guess no 2021 MBP for me.
It has:
* dead SSD, replaced on warranty
* dead battery
* dead keyboard
* dead audio
* some hardware issues, I think related to GPU (it panics sometimes)
* replaced charger, second charger is in bad condition, probably time to think about replacing it as well
It's the most terrible laptop I've ever owned. I owned plenty of laptops and I never had any issue with any of them. Macbook really set the bar.
That said, it kind of works... I use USB keyboard, USB headset, always plugged in, don't push it too far, as it starts to throttle very fast. But it loads some ancient macOS version, constantly nags me about updating it.
I'll buy new Macbook. Because of macOS. Reliability-wise I don't have any expectations from Apple. I bought plenty of Apple devices and I had plenty of issues with many of those devices. They definitely don't last forever. Apple software - that's what hooked me.
I have 2013 MBP, but have removed OSX and use it solely as a Windows machine. Nothing ever broke on it, and I use it solely for build quality and reliability.
I’m interested in the disparity between Apple and others with enterprise support programs. Virtually any other company will send you a loaner or replacement laptop under warranty and repair yours. Apple seems to just say “That sucks” and might fix your laptop.
Especially the keyboards, and the speakers in recent years.
If you don't mind Windows, lots and lots of cheaper options. But you already knew that.
Ultimately, though, my beef with their pricing is not really about this specific release which obviously uses cutting-edge components, but about Apple's general approach to pricing these upgrades. They'll happily sell you old tech with the same crazy markups. You can still buy a new 27" Intel iMac with 8GB of RAM and the option to upgrade to 16 for $200. That's just a normal 8GB DDR4 SODIMM, which you could instead order for $29, and it installs in about 15 seconds.
I get that businesses need margins to survive, but Apple's stinginess and customer unfriendly price structure with storage and memory has been going on for a long time and just really bothers me.
I like their products! Just let me spec it such that it deserves the "Pro" label without feeling like a chump.
That's perfectly fine, you don't have to use a MacBook if the value isn't there for you.
I'm never going to buy a Bugatti Chiron, but you won't find me going to their forums and bleating on about how the gas mileage isn't as good as my Ford Focus...
Or at least they did. This loss in value is what I’m complaining about.
And this isn’t Apple’s forums, now is it?
The touchpad alone is probably worth it.
If you look at a feature comparison, sure, macs have always looked like a bad deal, but that evaporates when you bring a time calculation into it. The surveys I have seen all seem to place macs at about half the failure rate of other devices, and they seem to last twice as long. everyone seems to have a shocking story from Lenovo/Dell et. al. about shoddy hardware and incompetent support for anyone without a $10mil+ PO. If you pay more up front, you can make it back by using the same device for longer.
Not unless they disabled all of the spying in MacOS. Doesn't matter if you bought it, it still isn't yours. Hard pass.