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Comment by barelysapient | Hacker News Reader

I'm guessing this has to do with Johnny Ive's departure. He was notorious for design over function.

i'm guessing it has to do with the new M1 chips and their great power efficiency. back with the intel chips, an SD card slot or HDMI port consumed valuable internal real estate that could have been filled with battery instead, and filling it with battery was a better trade-off for most people.

with the new chips, they can comfortably sacrifice some battery size.

Pretty sure the batteries are bigger in the new ones vs the Intel ones, at least in capacity (6000mAh vs 5000mAh). I imagine they are the same physical size; if not bigger.

Disagree. 2016 15" MBP was 4.0 pounds. 2019 16" MBP was 4.3 pounds. New 16" MBP is 4.5 pounds. Apple simply decided in 2016 to shrink the size and weight by removing ports and other things, and then to increase the size and weight by bringing them back.

Personally I'm surprised they didn't decide to keep the same weight by shrinking the battery. Not that many people absolutely need a 21 hour battery life, though it is nice.

Apple isn't sacrificing any battery size on the 16" at least. 100-watt-hour is the standard max size for TSA.

Him and Steve were a great combo keeping each in check. Ive should have left a long time ago.

He is now designing at Ferrari: https://www.wsj.com/articles/ferrari-hires-former-apple-desi...

The new and improved Ferrari design rumored to include:

- Removal of the brake pedal since you should only need one input to control things

- The gas inlet port relocated to a more aesthetically pleasing location in the very center of the undercarriage

- Total width of the car down to a svelte and sexy 3.5 feet because the thinner it looks the better it is

There is no steering wheel, simply a flat panel where you swipe to steer.

There is 3D Touch where a long press on the steering screen lets you set cruise control

Steering wheels are available but sold separately.

You have to attach them via dongle, but the only input port is in the trunk.

You joke but the new Ferrari Roma has touch buttons on the steering wheel and the UX has been widely panned.

> The gas inlet port relocated to a more aesthetically pleasing location in the very center of the undercarriage

Why is this a problem? You shouldn't be trying to drive it while it's fueling anyway

> - The gas inlet port relocated to a more aesthetically pleasing location in the very center of the undercarriage

It also requires the car to be on the front wheels, with the back awkwardly suspended by the fuel hose.

You joke but the new Ferrari has capacitive buttons everywhere. Even the rear view mirror adjustment buttons are capacitive. Whether this is Ive's doing, I don't know.

https://dealerimages.dealereprocess.com/image/upload/v157591...

As far as I understand, he was absent from about 2015 on. There was an article, which I can't find right now, that discussed the mess this left the design team in. He basically retired to his home, and he would require the design team to come present to him at some local place (he wouldn't go to Apple). Then he'd give zero feedback. (This is from my recollection of the article.)

Pretty telling since that was sort of the heyday of Apple's devices having all sorts of conflicting designs.

Edit: I think this is the article: https://www.wsj.com/articles/jony-ive-is-departing-apple-but...

With a summary at: https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/07/01/jony-ives-departu...

Furthermore, it's hard to imagine Ive and Ferrari gelling. Ive's style is about as diametrically opposed from Italian design as I can think of. I characterize his design as character-less, something Italian designers don't go for.

He may have been hired to sit in his home and not design anything - for the name only.

I get the feeling that it's part ego from Ive and part Cook actually not caring about design as Ive mentioned.

Johnny Ive wanted USB-C to be 'The One Port to Rule Them All'. That didn't work out for a number of reasons.

As someone that didn't like originally giving up my ports and thought Jony Ive was a bit too overzealous with thinness, I actually don't think he was wrong.

USB-C is pretty great, and the sooner we shift things over the better. When I bough a MBP with only USB-C ports I just bought a little dongle thing that slots in to my two ports on the side and gives me USB-A, HDMI, SD and MicroSD. I've used the thing around 20 times and its never been a burden because I carry it with me in my laptops case.

At this point I actually see adding the other ports back as a step backwards. HDMI is old and aggressively large in 2021. My 3 devices that use an SD card actually use a microSD card so I need to carry around an adapter anyway.

I have never understood this push for light, and thin.

Even twenty years ago I wanted just the best features in a laptop.

Give me a quality machine, at a reasonable price; and I would drag around a boat anchor.

I also wanted repairability, and room for future upgrades inside the laptop, but gave up on that one.

It almost has, it's just playing the long long game. People don't replace their monitors, tvs and projectors constantly but eventually they will all be bundled in with usb-c cables. Last time I was in an office, every cable had a usb-c dongle stuck to it permanently.

I totally loved USB-C being the only port(s) on the device and thoroughly miss it on my Thinkpads.

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