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Comment by reilly3000 | Hacker News Reader

Much has already been said about this, but this achievement of shipping a MBP that pro users seem to love is a triumph of user feedback over design purity. I suspect that Jony Ives’ departure may have facilitated this. I suspect it will be a breakout success and I aspire to contribute to their sales figures some day. Of all of Apple’s revenue streams I know their pro products are now merely an afterthought, but they remain an important part of the brand’s ethos and I’m delighted to see them shipping a truly superior product again.

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My guess is that Apple bet on something that did not materialise, it wasn't about Jony Ive not caring about user feedback.

What was the bet you say? I think they bet that the shift to USB-C/Thunderbolt/Wireless will happen quickly and they can help with the push and increase their margins.

IMHO It wasn't a design decision but a business one and I think the removal of mag-safe is a giveaway. Every little thing that they add makes the thing more complicated to manufacture, thus more expensive. Every non-off-the-shelf piece puts multiple teams in to work on multiple continents and this costs money. I think they aimed for the simplicity at management level and not at design level. They did some calculation based on how well people are locked in and how many will buy a new mac and went with the most profitable option up until the time for the great transition comes. Until very recently the PC industry was racing to the bottom and Apple did not have a reason to compete on features. Nice Windows laptops are a very new phenomenon, up until very recently the best trackpad on a PC laptop wasn't even on the same league with Apple's.

USB-C adoption mostly went fine, though. Or as fine as could be expected.

I think the past five years can be more easily explained with — ironically — a Steve Jobs quote:

> When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks, because that's what you needed on the farm. But as vehicles started to be used in the urban centers, cars got more popular … PCs are going to be like trucks. They're still going to be around, they're still going to have a lot of value, but they're going to be used by one out of X people.

And that's what the Mac team lost sight of; they tried to make Pro Macs that were sports cars. Maybe the Macbook Air is an affordable sports car of sorts (do they still make Mazda Miatas?), but the Macbook Pro is and should be a truck.

>(do they still make Mazda Miatas?)

They're called MX-5s here in the UK and I see them everywhere, unsurprisingly because it's in the spirit of an old British two seater but unlike the Triumph Spitfire or MG Midget it doesn't break down all the time and isn't essentially hygroscopic.

Original model was a Brit design by Lotus even, I believe.

Not quite. Mazda were inspired by the design of the Lotus Elan, but the MX-5 was never designed in any part by Lotus.

> do they still make Mazda Miatas

It's gone through some name changes in the US (sometimes MX-5 Miata, sometimes just MX-5), but they still sell it.

Really? USB-C adoption went fine? I have never seen a usb thing that I found superior to what it replaced. I see a lot of dongles though.

I don't get the dongle people. You can just buy USB-C to USB-B cords. They cost about the same as dongles. I replaced the cords on all my devices years ago and never looked back.

https://www.amazon.com/Cable-Matters-Micro-Braided-Jacket/dp...

https://www.amazon.com/JSAUX-Charger-Braided-Compatible-Exte...

https://www.amazon.com/Cable-Matters-Printer-USB-C-Black/dp/...

It would be really nice if that was the case. However when you pick up a USB C cable, you can't tell if it is suitable for a particular purpose because there are so many optional features in the spec. Data transfer speed, PD, Display Port, HDMI, Thunderbolt 3/4, and probably others that I'm not remembering.

I can understand not requiring a heavy gauge wire for a cable that is just transferring data and a bit of power, but it would be really nice if the standard required cables to label the cable ends with symbols representing that cable's capabilities.

Oh, and if you have a cable with USB C on both ends, you still can't charge an i-phone since apparently USB C isn't good enough for the phones yet. That's something I really don't understand is even after all these years Apple still hasn't fully standardized on the USB C connector across their devices.

I agree that the cases of power and displays were very badly handled, but how often does this happen in practice? Your laptop came with a power cord, and if you pick up the wrong one, most retailers are really good about returns. And who needs a collection of display cords?

For 90% of use cases any old cord will work. The edge cases sting for sure but overall the design of the plug is a huge win.

The big thing with power for me is phones and other similar devices. I have one phone that supports a quick charge capability, but I need not only their power brick but also their USB cable (something about a pull up resistor that signals the charger / phone combo to go into fast charging mode). Same thing with a tablet, it has its own fast charging standard.

I gave my Pixel C to my Mom, and the charger that came with it seemed to work well on her original Pixel phone. But after a week of using it, the phone went out and had to be replaced. And look up reviews of almost any USB C power delivery hub, they are filled with accounts of Mac's getting fried from using them.

this has been true of USB basically since its 1.0 release. I have micro and mini usb cables, some can charge phones and some cannot. Some can charge my ps3 controllers and some cannot. I bought a usb-a male to usb-a male at some point. Never got it working with anything.

Sounds like you have a problem with USB and are just noticing it now with usb-c.

Or they could have just put both on the laptop like Lenovo has been doing for years. Maybe that tech is too futuristic though, Apple's liable to leave it for the groundbreaking 2026 Macbook Pro that brings back pro ports like USB-A and good old RJ-45.

5 years after the 2016 MBP and the only device I have with USB-C is my Android phone.

All my PC peripherals still use USB-A.

> IMHO It wasn't a design decision but a business one and I think the removal of mag-safe is a giveaway. Every little thing that they add makes the thing more complicated to manufacture, thus more expensive. Every non-off-the-shelf piece puts multiple teams in to work in multiple continents and this costs money. I think they aimed for the simplicity at management level and not at design level. They did some calculation based on how well people are locked in and how many will buy a new mac and went with the most profitable option up until the time for the great transition comes.

The touch bar invalidates a lot of these assumptions.

My personal opinion is that Ive's vision for Apple's design future was of ever slimmer and slicker pieces of hardware, USB-C helped a lot this vision to simplify design lines, streamline the ports layout and so on. The simplicity take goes away when you consider that supporting 4 USB-C ports that behave differently due to limitations on power envelope and Thunderbolt chipset doesn't really simplify the design for cost-cutting.

What's amusing about the "design purity" is this is basically (from an externals point of view) an upgraded PowerBook G4. Good design isn't limited to "make it look as much like a thin sheet of metal as possible".

Personally I dislike this bit. Thinness isn't everything, but it's something. I don't know that the new models really needed to look as brick-ish as they do, and the previous design was certainly sexier.

This is why you have a full product line, right? You can make one laptop that prioritises weight and thinness, and you can make another one that prioritises power, features, etc.

The problem with the previous Macbook product line was that all products had the same compromises. Design purity, and thinness over everything else. There was no choice for a "pro" machine that had a different set of tradeoffs to achieve pro features.

I'm just asking for a tapered edge :D The new bulbous rounded edges almost seem passive-aggressive from apple. Yes, prioritize power, and with whatever remaining ability to make things pretty that you have, utilize it. When you can but don't, that's unattractive. Is there a specific reason for the brick look? I'm not sure that we know there is.

I'd say that given no teardowns have yet been released, its also true that we know there isn't a specific reason for the brick look. They crammed a lot of battery in there, big, slow, quiet fans, six speakers, and the SoC is something like 4x larger than the base M1.

I think the rounded looks nice, but it is unbalanced compared to the top - the thing should be MORE brackish in my opinion.

Speaking of backpacks, I was expecting that M1 energy effeciency would allow for less weight to carry rather than +10 hours of standalone time. A few hours of life, but 0.5 kg less weight would be a better tradeoff for me. (I'm talking weight, not thinness. A thicker body with better heat dispersion is fine, as long as extra space is taken up by air.)

21 hours when watching movies. When doing real work, I get a good five hours out of my MacBook Air, whereas I'd get maybe one hour out of my Dell. If you actually have work to do, and you're stuck in the arse end of a coffee shop or airport, then you can still do meaningful work for hours.

Yeah like I get that Apple went too far but thinness is a really important quality. People love thin, sleek objects. For the average consumer that may be a bigger factor than an SD card reader.

I agree. For me thinness is portability and that is very important. I'm willing to trade quite a bit of performance for that.

I actually like the throwback, personally. I'm guessing they did that to differentiate it in the market.

What I have trouble getting over is the flipping notch to the top. Just why. The bezel on my 2019 macbook looks the same, if not skinnier.

Do people really not watch fullscreen videos anymore or something?

You should look into the actual implementation of the notch and I think you'll be pleased! Imagine the exact same screen as your 2019 macbook pro, but instead of black bezel on the left and the right of the camera, you have the menu bar instead.

Everything beneath the notch is the same size as the screen on previous laptops, so the notch allows for extra space beyond the 16x10 that you're used to. This means when not using fullscreen apps, you gain some screen real-estate because the menu bar now has dedicated space for it. However, when you're doing something fullscreen (like watching a video) the screen on either side of the notch is blacked out so you're left with a standard sized screen for viewing your content (with no visible notch). It seems like a win-win.

I much prefer this implementation to what they did on the iPhone with the notch cutting into fullscreen images and videos. The only downside I can see is if you have a light colored menu bar or background and don't like the look of it when not fullscreen, however my menubar is always black anyways so I don't see that being an issue at all.

Aside from me thinking it's visually distracting,

I get the argument, but if I was really concerned with screen space I'd just get a model with a bigger screen.

For my own workflow, I use almost the whole top bar for tool/automation shortcuts, so this is cutting a chunk of my space for such a tiny amount of space added.

Right now it's hanging past the left side of my webcam.

If it does black out the notch for videos though, then that's a lot better, ty for that info.

Does keeping the top bar black essentially hide the bezel? Or does it just make it not stand out as much?

> For my own workflow, I use almost the whole top bar for tool/automation shortcuts, so this is cutting a chunk of my space for such a tiny amount of space added.

Yeah I can see how that would be an issue. I think I remember reading that the menu icons would be truncated when there are too many of them, but who knows how that actually works in practice (ie. are they scrollable, or is there an additional menu that you can open).

> Does keeping the top bar black essentially hide the bezel? Or does it just make it not stand out as much?

I'm not entirely sure to be honest. Based on the reviews I've seen when the top is blacked out for a video the notch is basically invisible. So I assume if you have a black menu bar it would be similar to that. That's just based on pictures on the internet though so I'm not actually sure how visible it will be in person.

I’m wondering whether the notch was supposed to be for Face ID, but they couldn’t make it work due to current supply chain constraints, and that notched displays were already ordered.

It already had a front-facing camera, of course. Does a camera for Face ID require a bigger notch/bigger area? (Real question, I don't know!)

Face ID has a separate IR camera and a 3d IR dot array, so can imagine it requires a bit more space than a regular webcam.

It could also be they planned it this way and will add it to next year’s model. That way they can advertise new “must-have” features for upgraders without redesigning the case/OS

> Do people really not watch fullscreen videos anymore or something?

In fullscreen, it puts a black bar at the top and the display becomes 16:10

I don't see the big deal. I'm looking at my 2019 16-inch MBP right now and it looks about the size of the notch from what I've seen. The camera has to go somewhere, and this solution just pushes up the menu bar to the sides of the camera instead of taking up part of the 16:10 section beneath it.

>Do people really not watch fullscreen videos anymore or something?

How many of the videos you watch are taller than 16:10? Are any of them even taller than 16:9?

... All 4:3 videos are taller than 16:9 certainly, and there's a non-trivial number of those.

Absolutely. I run into this all the time with my phone's screen (likely a different ratio, but I almost never have it not cover video.

If there's a program that will literally add black padding until the notch goes away I'd probably use it, at least when watching media.

There is. It's called macOs. The screen is 16:10 and then the menu bar, with the notch is extra space on top of that.

I can't even be frustrated with you. This is so humanity. "I hate what they did! If only they had done this instead!" They did do that. They talk about that a lot. The article talks about that. They solved the problem in a way so obvious that it's what random people on the internet come up with, but of course the same random people on the internet are so convinced of their own superiority and so sure of Apple's inferiority and also unable to read TFA.

I'm not saying apple is inferior and everyone else is wrong. I'm saying that for my own individual workflow, on my current macbook, this is a bad compromise.

I keep a large amount of tools/macros/shortcuts in my status bar, and this will cut through the middle of that.

I'd rather have thin black bars around my 16:10 video then lose that screen real estate for the status bar.

It is a bad compromise for how I use my current macbook.

I'm certainly in the minority, and that's fine, but I'm just trying to argue my side and understand other people's, not scream till I'm red in the face until I get my way.

Well, I couldn't find a setting to drop the menu into the 16:10 area, but the notch really doesn't take up much space, at least on the 16" screen. I haven't found an app that has enough menus to hit it yet. IntelliJ had the most. So if you are actually considering dropping $3k on a laptop soon, then I'd say go to an Apple store and check it out.

Reports are the OS already does this for you when watching fullscreen media.

Apparently Apple still has some design sense after all.

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of the new design. That being said, I really, really want one.

Which again is weird for someone like Ive considering that "form follows function" is one of those mantras that people like Rams and the Bauhaus folk based their entire work on.

Even if that was the basis at some point I suspect much of it is now just an argument for particular parts the designer likes, as "function" isn't necessarily completely defined.

That makes me wonder what a PowerBook G3 (my favorite one but it’s surely nostalgia) inspired design could be.

while i think ive should get a lot of criticism for "form over function", he helped push the barriers of what is possible and in a way pushed the industry forward as well.

i think without steve to temper that it ran over a bit. you want someone to push the boundaries then someone to rein it in a bit vs the other way around.

IMO, this is probably going to be a very special time for the macs as we see the pendulum swinging back and getting all the "function" we missed. i fear tho in a generation or two it will be too "function over form" and we get an apple basically producing bricks again lol. u can already see it with the iphones.

sure... increase the thickness this year, but what prevents you from taking that thought further. compromise a little here or there, whatever. this is where someone with an obsession to say, thinness/lightness, helps. this is to say nothing about the hardware. they are far ahead there.

Whilst an afterthought, the kinds of people who buy Pros are the kind of people who decide on the tech for their wider families.

You don't really even have to decide for the rest of the family. Basically all of my family migrated over to MacBooks after I bought my first MacBook Pro within like a two year span.

> I suspect that Jony Ives’ departure may have facilitated this.

I'm sure that is a very accurate statement. I thoroughly enjoy the improvements to the keyboard and adding back in the new ports. But I wonder what the future of the MacBook will be without the visionary design from Ives? Are we going to see a melding of PC and Macs or will Apple keep design innovation at the forefront?

I'm not trying to be mean spirited, but it was clear that his time was up. That's totally fine. He made some great contributions, but that doesn't mean that he can or will through his last waking moment.

Yeah this feels like a pyrrhic victory. Yes, we've gotten our ports back, but is this indicative of a trend that Apple is moving away from design? It's too soon to say but I'd argue that it's likely Apple will experience some regression to the mean. Considering that Apple's design is several orders of magnitude away from the mean, that'd be a loss.

I’d say the new iMac’s argue against that. Very ‘designed,’ very thin, to the point of compromise in some ways. It seems they are letting the designers have their way in the non-pro arena.

Haven't we already seen the post-Ives era products? I imagine Apple will continue to be design centric, just without a Jobs-esque demigod-like figure that could dictate his will above and beyond anyone else - i.e. form over function.

I’m not sure if their pro-lines were an afterthought, rather they weren’t in a good position to strongly differentiate their pro devices. “Disruption” in the pro space is going to be about performance, Apple did leverage their technologies for better performance and made some choice software acquisitions - but this involved pros switching tools and workflows to realise a moderate speed jump. A more powerful disruption is simply having much faster hardware, which at the time was unavailable - but clearly in development for quite some time. I think moving forward we should expect the pro lines to have benchmarks that are not just impressive, but custom silicon that makes changing software/workflows a huge advantage. I will definitely be moving over my video workflows for example - the performance gains make the time savings worth it. I also feel that Adobe has to really pull their finger out now, as software that has been built on Apple’s tech is seeing insane performance jumps.

>I suspect that Jony Ives’ departure may have facilitated this.

This is a popular statement but Jony didn't have any design oversight for years before he formally left.

Products also take "years" to design and develop, so I'd say the statement may still hold true.

It's just a laptop in the same old rectangular shape, in the same old colors that is actually just catching up and there's nothing at all special about this one… Try to catch some breath.

Nobody anywhere likes the notch either. Triumph? No.

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