developers! developers! developers!
November 1, 2016 7:55 PM   Subscribe

 
Well, he collects hot takes, at least.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 8:03 PM on November 1, 2016 [6 favorites]


Apple was famous for their ecosystem integration. But out of the box you can’t plug a new iPhone into a new MacBook Pro.
What happened here?
posted by unliteral at 8:04 PM on November 1, 2016 [7 favorites]


What happened here?

The only ports the new MBP has are USB-C (aka Thunderbolt 3). Out of the box the iPhone comes with a USB A cable, which doesn't work in a USB-C port. You'd have to buy an adapter, which Apple will sell you for $20 (same as in town).
posted by jedicus at 8:11 PM on November 1, 2016 [13 favorites]


The only ports the new MBP has are USB-C (aka Thunderbolt 3).

Ahem, and a headphone jack.
posted by bonje at 8:13 PM on November 1, 2016 [18 favorites]


Dongles! Dongles! Dongles!

Can't see getting rid of the ESC key as popular with developers, FWIW.
posted by Artw at 8:13 PM on November 1, 2016 [10 favorites]


Most of the criticism I've read seems pretty straightforward (and correct): The audience for Macbook Pros are, um, "Pros" who tend to care more about things like processor speed, storage, ports, battery life and displays than things like lightness, thinness, and other innovations that don't directly help them get their jobs done. That's not to say that Apple's old school core audience of designers, musicians, visual artists, and aesthetically minded geeks haven't been huge fans of the fact that their computers are a 1/10th of what they weighed in the 90s, it's just that, well, these computers are thin enough now.
posted by gwint at 8:14 PM on November 1, 2016 [40 favorites]




Benjamin Button Reviews The New MacBook Pro

Some highlights:

Gone is the gimmicky TouchBar, gone are the four USB-C ports that forced power users to carry a suitcase full of dongles. In their place we get a cornucopia of developer-friendly ports: two USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt 2 ports, a redesigned power connector, and a long-awaited HDMI port.

Photographers will rejoice at the surprising and welcome addition of an SDXC card reader, a sign that Apple might be thinking seriously about photography.

Everything about the new machine seems designed for typists. The trackpad has been made smaller, so you’re less likely to brush against it with your palm. The keys themselves are much more comfortable to type on, with improved key travel, a softer feel, and more satisfying tactile feedback. You no longer feel like you’re tapping on the glass surface of an iPad. And not having a TouchBar means no longer having to look down at your hands all the time.

Despite the many improvements, Apple is actually dropping the price on its flagship 15" MacBook Pro by $400, another sign that they’re serious about winning over developers.

posted by piyushnz at 8:17 PM on November 1, 2016 [139 favorites]


One of the pieces linked in that collection of hot takes sums up why this isn't really a huge surprise for me:

From where I'm standing, Apple are redefining (shrinking) their target audience for the Mac platform. If you feel left out by the latest updates and the neglect on the desktop, it's simple as Apple deciding not to serve your segment's needs.

This has always felt like Apple's modus operandi to me: Apple has in mind a specific way of thinking, a specific vision of a user, a specific way for that user to interface with a piece of hardware. Apple can spend a great deal of time thinking about how best to serve those users, and when it gets it right, it has the power to completely redefine a product segment. But it also means that if you don't like the way Apple does anything, if you lie even somewhat outside its target audience, Apple barely even acknowledges your existence. Eventually, you learn to reciprocate in kind.

The only thing that's changed is who gets left out in the cold this time.
posted by chrominance at 8:18 PM on November 1, 2016 [21 favorites]


I should actually amend my snark with the fact that the headphone jack still exists on these machines was one of the big things that bothered/confused me. After framing the removal of said jack on the phone in the way they did, I just threw up my hands. These two products were not designed independently; how they could make that argument, knowing they were going to release another device with the jack, is beyond me.

NB: I am an iOS/Mac developer and lifelong Apple customer. I currently have lots of very conflicting opinions about the company that I depend on for my livelihood.
posted by bonje at 8:21 PM on November 1, 2016 [11 favorites]


Benjamin Button Reviews The New MacBook Pro

Maciej Ceglowski is a goddamned treasure.
posted by gwint at 8:23 PM on November 1, 2016 [24 favorites]


Apple has in mind a specific way of thinking, a specific vision of a user, a specific way for that user to interface with a piece of hardware.

My usual description of this is that if your hand doesn't happen to fit the tool that they make, they expect you to alter your hand rather than make a tool that fits it. I got tired years ago of battling Steve Jobs on whether I should use my computer the way I wanted to or the way he felt I should.
posted by Candleman at 8:27 PM on November 1, 2016 [11 favorites]


I like the idea of the Touch Bar. Like... a lot. I thought that was really exciting. But I'm in the market for a new laptop, and I don't know how to justify how much extra that costs. I have a 13" Air, now, purchased this summer. Is that and the reduced weight really all I'm getting for the extra money, compared to buying last year's MBP models?
posted by Sequence at 8:32 PM on November 1, 2016


Artw: "Dongles! Dongles! Dongles!

Can't see getting rid of the ESC key as popular with developers, FWIW.
"

Why does Apple hate VIM users?
posted by octothorpe at 8:35 PM on November 1, 2016 [9 favorites]


gwint: "Maciej Ceglowski is a goddamned treasure."

Mefi's own!
posted by namewithoutwords at 8:37 PM on November 1, 2016


There is nothing in the new macbook pro that necessitates me dumping my 2012 machine. I have enough dongles to carry getting my laptop/phone/ipad for presentations.
posted by jadepearl at 8:37 PM on November 1, 2016 [2 favorites]


Can't see getting rid of the ESC key as popular with developers, FWIW

It's still there, just moved to the Touch Bar as a virtual button. Not sure I'd want to use an old school text editor with a virtual button.
posted by nathan_teske at 8:38 PM on November 1, 2016 [3 favorites]


Ugh.

This seems so much like the era right before Steve Jobs came back. The touch bar looks like some sort of Microsoft/Dell idea. I'm sure it will never be seen again.

I'm in the market for a new desktop and laptop in the next year. I will be buying used ones from 2012 or so, because those are the ones I want.

I haven't upgraded to the last couple of OS's because they're not adding anything I want, and I lose access to things I like.

Apple is losing me, but I've got no where else to go. I'm going to see how long I can go on with Apple circa 2012 and hopefully they get it together. Really, computers have been good enough for quite a while so that's probably not an unrealistic plan.
posted by bongo_x at 8:44 PM on November 1, 2016 [24 favorites]


One thing that really confused me was the abandonment of the Cinema Display.

If you walk into a design agency or creative studio, odds are it is full of nothing but Apple-branded Cinema Displays or iMacs. Apple == design got baked into every place that bought their stuff.

Now they're throwing that to the breeze and say "Buy whatever the hell you want, not our problem anymore." Maybe the margins are too thin or something, but it would be like Disney shutting down EPCOT because they didn't want to maintain the groundskeeping anymore.

(In the interests of disclosure I work for research/UX firm and use a Cinema Display every day. They're really, really nice.)
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 8:46 PM on November 1, 2016 [10 favorites]


(Also, I have been a Mac user since Apple was doomed and have the coffee mug to prove it.)
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 8:47 PM on November 1, 2016 [4 favorites]


When Apple started preventing actions rather than abetting actions the equipment and OS started to decline. They have an ecosystem to support, now, rather than innovation to foster. It's a shame about that.
posted by jet_silver at 8:49 PM on November 1, 2016 [7 favorites]


Apple's been giving the middle finger to the "pro" and creative markets for a few years now.

Go talk to some film editors who bought into the Final Cut Pro ecosystem (but, like, be prepared to duck, because they're probably going to start throwing things at you).

It's utterly baffling, given how little it would take Apple to keep that market happy, particularly given that the industry has been Apple's anchor for decades.
posted by schmod at 8:53 PM on November 1, 2016 [15 favorites]


Oh. Also.

One last thing.

The new Macbook Pro does not have a startup chime.
posted by schmod at 8:54 PM on November 1, 2016 [2 favorites]


I'm in the market for a new desktop and laptop in the next year. I will be buying used ones from 2012 or so, because those are the ones I want.

The older Surface book is fucking amazing. I am not saying this sarcastically or to score points. I'm just saying the thing is really, really sweet. The new one is a slight refresh, but apparently not that different. Switching is a complete pain in the behind, that's a given, but MS under Nadella has hit bullseyes now three years running.
posted by bonehead at 9:02 PM on November 1, 2016 [5 favorites]


I'm in the market for a new desktop and laptop in the next year. I will be buying used ones from 2012 or so, because those are the ones I want... I haven't upgraded to the last couple of OS's because they're not adding anything I want, and I lose access to things I like...Apple is losing me, but I've got no where else to go. I'm going to see how long I can go on with Apple circa 2012 and hopefully they get it together. Really, computers have been good enough for quite a while so that's probably not an unrealistic plan.

Was your third grade teacher Mrs. Bunnell? Did you like warm tuna fish sandwiches when you were a kid?

Just checking to see if you're not actually me.
posted by wildblueyonder at 9:02 PM on November 1, 2016 [3 favorites]


Yeah I'm inclined to think Apple knows their business case as pissed as I am. But on the other hand maybe they're myopically shuffling off a cliff:
Here is what I imagine Apple's decline will look like: It won't be poor sales, or loss of revenue. It won't be a shiny new iPhone killer…
It will be a switch from iOS developers using Macs at home to them using PCs at home and having a "work Mac" for commercial development.
Most will still use iPhones, but they won't write apps for them except to make money. Their personal projects will be for Web or Windows.
All of the $70 indie apps that made Mac and iOS fun to develop on will dry up. The only apps will be social networking clients or F2P games.
And that's all. Apple will still be profitable, and consumers will still view it as the premium brand, but devs will favour other platforms.
posted by grobstein at 9:07 PM on November 1, 2016 [11 favorites]



Benjamin Button Reviews The New MacBook Pro


Wait till he reviews the newer version with user-changeable industry-standard generic hard drives and memory!
posted by lalochezia at 9:13 PM on November 1, 2016 [18 favorites]


PRAY.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:23 PM on November 1, 2016 [6 favorites]


I don't understand the touch bar. I want to be able to use the whole screen as a touch interface, not just an external, partial one.
posted by synthetik at 9:23 PM on November 1, 2016 [7 favorites]


As a creative pro who just buys whatever Apple puts out regardless of the cost, these laptops are pretty dissapointing. All the creatives I know who work with video/motion have already switched to PCs (they didn't really have a choice). I work in still photo and this is pretty weak, I have been waiting for a while to upgrade. 50-100 megapixel cameras are becoming common now on professional shoots. 16GB of RAM? Come on, I don't give a fuck about a TouchBar.

Are photographers the next creative market segment that doesn't matter? It would not take much to make me happy to be honest. I'm not one of these nerds who geeks out on the processor spec sheets. I just need these computers to get shit done.

I'm still going to buy it because my corner of the industry is 100% Apple and getting the new laptop is just what you do when these tools are direct sources of revenue. But I do hear some people say they have switched to PCs "at home for retouching and processing" while they rent Mac Pros for shoots.

Guess what all my video friends think is cool now? Android phones.
posted by bradbane at 9:26 PM on November 1, 2016 [10 favorites]


"How Apple could have avoided much of the controversy"

A lot of it boils down to this concept: We demand Apple innovate, but we insist they don’t change anything.
posted by DoctorFedora at 9:26 PM on November 1, 2016 [9 favorites]


It will be a switch from iOS developers using Macs at home to them using PCs at home and having a "work Mac" for commercial development.

This exactly. I develop iOS apps for a living, and I currently have a work MacBook Pro (which belongs to my office) and a personal MacBook Pro. Once that dies, my next computer purchase for personal use is probably a Windows desktop and a Chromebook. I don't even mind the touch bar, but not having USB ports on my primary machine is a deal-breaker.
posted by Itaxpica at 9:29 PM on November 1, 2016 [1 favorite]


A lot of it boils down to this concept: We demand Apple innovate, but we insist they don’t change anything.

This is something that I find to be strikingly true of most technology these days - you have to change something, even if it doesn't improve the user experience, or even in some cases if it makes it work. There has to be something "new and exciting" to unveil.
posted by AdamCSnider at 9:35 PM on November 1, 2016 [2 favorites]


"A group of Apple dongles is known as a courage".
posted by JoeZydeco at 9:35 PM on November 1, 2016 [33 favorites]


Apple's been giving the middle finger to the "pro" and creative markets for a few years now.

Yep. Apple's all about coasting on brand recognition while serving up crap to the masses now, and their hardware has started to become infected by the same "if it ain't broke, break it" mentality their software has suffered from for over a decade.

Judging from the Surface Pro, Microsoft is more than happy to scoop up all the creatives jumping ship.
posted by Sys Rq at 9:36 PM on November 1, 2016 [2 favorites]


The new Macbook Pro does not have a startup chime.

Wow. As a lifelong Mac user that hits pretty deep down, more than I expected it would. (And had I just about gotten over the removal of the optical drive!)

I'm still pretty happy with my 2010 MacBook Pro as my main device for emails and office tasks. I just installed Sierra on it last weekend and continue to be enamored with the longevity of Apple products (if you buy in the right cycle). But I'm also having fun with a beefy gaming PC that I built this year; thinking about what I'll do when the laptop dies feels weirdly similar to this election cycle - few to no actually good choices.
posted by cosmologinaut at 9:38 PM on November 1, 2016 [4 favorites]


Wait, so what does one do now if one actually wants a portable, full-function computer that can be used as an actual platform for say, sound editing, or photography, rather than a locked-down toy that's very pretty but which only does what its designers planned for it and no more? Is the preferred solution for high-end professional work now a Windows machine of some kind? I thought their main market these days was basically white-collar businesses where people are buying hundreds of machines at a time. Is Linux the way forward? The customizability is second to none, but for many fields the software has just never been quite there. What gives?
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 9:41 PM on November 1, 2016 [2 favorites]


I'm sure in a few months the reviews will pour in saying "eh.. it wasn't *that* big of a deal". Windows is still a hodgepodge of bleeding edge hardware and incompatible drivers, and Linux is completely devoid of fit and finish. There are still quite a bit of Apple-specific apps (usually not built by Apple) that people won't leave. Hardware may get all the news but people stay for software, which is the same (just slowly getting worse).

But damn Apple, people just wanted some mildly-refreshed versions of the Macbooks/iMacs they know and love, especially since you made the things non-upgradeable and unrepairable.
posted by meowzilla at 9:45 PM on November 1, 2016 [4 favorites]


Very soon I'll finally be getting some grant money at work, and I've been waiting on this Macbook announcement for months now. But now I'll have to reconsider. I mean, for what I need it for a Macbook Pro is fine, more than fine. But for the price, PC laptops are really giving Apple a run for their money. I'll have to see if there are any clear standouts in the high-end, 13" notebook group.
posted by zardoz at 9:50 PM on November 1, 2016 [1 favorite]


And where are the iMacs and the Mac Pros. I shudder to think what the mini will become.
posted by furtive at 9:50 PM on November 1, 2016 [2 favorites]


I think your mistake is in assuming that the Mac Mini will be doing any "becoming," rather than just continuing to vaguely be.
posted by DoctorFedora at 9:58 PM on November 1, 2016 [7 favorites]


Judging from the Surface Pro

Erm...Surface Studio. The big one.
posted by Sys Rq at 9:58 PM on November 1, 2016 [1 favorite]


I was glad to see a hot take compilation from someone else with a 2012 Retina 15".

I'll be honest, I spent more on the 2012 15" Retina than any other piece of computing equipment I've purchased in my life. It really hasn't let me down, I'm typing this comment on it now. It came out of nowhere, introduced a world of ultra-thin high-resolution laptops with long battery life and SSDs, and... really, it's been good.

So it's weird that the 15" Retina that Apple released last week had the same size SSD as the one I bought 4.5 years ago for the same price. The same resolution screen. A processor that was faster, but not that much faster. A smaller battery. A keyboard layout that was... less desirable. I'm sitting here with a Retina 15" MacBook Pro so well-used and so old that the A and E keys are literally worn off that I'm wondering if I should get a new one purely for wear and tear, only to look confused at what is being offered since it's not really much of an upgrade, and certainly not worth the cost of a whole new computer. I'll buy a few new keycaps, and maybe next year I'll get the battery replaced, thanks!

In 2004, I had an AlBook G4. In 2008, I had a Santa Rosa MacBook. In 2012, I had a Retina 15". Each one was a revelation, heads and tails above the last, with radical improvements. Today? I'm just not sure there's a good reason for me to get a new laptop. This is really quite shocking for me.
posted by eschatfische at 9:59 PM on November 1, 2016 [30 favorites]


One of the more interesting takes I've seen on all of this is that there's a strong case to be made that much of Apple's apparent Mac-related indifference can be at least partially attributed to being on Intel's schedule, especially as regards their ability to get mass production quantities of CPUs, and that this might wind up meaning that they'll be turning their chip design prowess to the Mac line as well in time. We'll see, of course.
posted by DoctorFedora at 10:08 PM on November 1, 2016 [6 favorites]


Erm...Surface Studio. The big one.

Wow, I had never heard of that so I just gave it a quick google. That's a very neat machine.
posted by Itaxpica at 10:08 PM on November 1, 2016 [4 favorites]


The Razer Blade feels like a Mac from the future and can do serious gaming while looking good and grown up. The Razer Blade Pro is the 15" version. I have used both and they are impressive.

The Surface Book nails functionality and portability.
posted by blahblahblah at 10:15 PM on November 1, 2016 [2 favorites]


I'm still rocking my 2009 13 inch macbook pro with the ram upgraded to 8gb and the HD replaced with a 256 GB ssd. I think I paid $1300 Canadian dollars for it originally. I'm reluctant to spend $1800 for the new base model which with an ifixit reparability score of 2 will probably only just outlast the extended apple care warranty I would almost certainly have to also purchase.
posted by piyushnz at 10:19 PM on November 1, 2016




16 gig is utterly moronic. World-class stupid, like something IBM would have done in the twilight of their PC activity (err, adjusting for memory size advances I mean)
posted by aramaic at 10:28 PM on November 1, 2016 [3 favorites]


Perhaps instead of immediately jumping ship and/or decreeing that the 101st Keyboarders know more about the limitations of system design than the "moronic" people who do it for a living, we could examine these more coolheaded articles examining why Apple might have done such an awful, terrible thing:
Why is it limited to 16GB of RAM? Supporting more RAM would just require a bigger battery, so instead of making it thinner, they could have included 32GB of RAM and kept it the same width as the previous model

Although this is technically true, there is a little-known legal obstacle to this: The Federal Aviation Administration has capped the maximum allowable size of laptop batteries on flights to 100 watt-hours. That explains why Apple’s 2015 pro model contains precisely a 99.5 watt-hour battery. Although the recent MBP release only contains a 76 watt-hour battery, due to the fact that there is no low-power RAM available in greater than 16GB capacities for Intel’s latest mobile CPU it can be argued that Apple are still working within that 100 watt-hour ceiling, and that they are using the best components that they can given that ceiling.
- Stuck between a rock and a hard place (lots of other critical examination in here aside from that single blockquote)
So, think about niches and market sizes: If only about 10% (SWAG) of MacBook Pro users are likely to have memory issues at 16Gb and then only for specific tasks like 4K video rendering, and if only 40% of those users would consider buying this memory enhanced special product (at a premium), is it worth Apple doing?
- How Apple could have avoided much of the controversy (ditto, tho this one has a bit more name-calling and is somewhat dongle-obsessed)

Me, I'm mostly frustrated that my particular niche - the 11" MacBook Air - is gone and the closest analogue (the new MacBook) is quite underpowered. Clearly, really-small-yet-reasonably-powerful is no longer a thing for Apple. Instead of raging about it, though, I realize that it probably means there simply aren't enough users in that niche with me to make it worthwhile anymore. Times change and that sucks. Guess I'll be looking at a 13" MBP next time, whenever that is.
posted by cyrusdogstar at 11:04 PM on November 1, 2016 [17 favorites]


I just wanted a 13" Macbook Air with Retina. Why. I have a mid-2012 that I was excited to upgrade for an uber Macbook Air in 5-7 years. What the hell happened?
posted by yueliang at 11:07 PM on November 1, 2016 [2 favorites]


Been using Macs since the beleaguered days of 2000. Spent this year intermittently flirting with the Surface. I'd be using it as my main machine for going out to draw if not for the fact that Illustrator and the NTrig stylus the Surface 4 Pro uses hate each other and drop the first half second of every stroke. Wacom's upcoming Mobile Studio looks like it has a good chance of filling the bill, though.

And maybe when my third and probably final Air gets too old and slow to work as my desktop machine, I'll say goodbye to OSX. Er, MacOS. Unless Apple has deigned to finally release a tablet that runs desktop apps and lets me wrangle large, multi-file projects in an actual filesystem. Not gonna hold my breath though.
posted by egypturnash at 11:09 PM on November 1, 2016 [1 favorite]


though this is technically true, there is a little-known legal obstacle to this: The Federal Aviation Administration has capped the maximum allowable size of laptop batteries on flights to 100 watt-hours.

This is a fascinating fact!
posted by DoctorFedora at 11:17 PM on November 1, 2016 [8 favorites]


More personal hot takes on the MBP thing, because why not:
  • I observed this on Twitter today but it bears repeating: the "I'm really angry because I'm no longer being explicitly catered to" sentiment I see from Mac users is a little frightening when I realize it stems from the same basic phenomenon as the extreme toxicity of GamerGate and Trumpism (anger at no longer being the focus of a market/company/culture, fueling a desire to destroy it). I hope this sort of backlash doesn't get anywhere near that awful, and I don't think it will, but even seeing that ghost of a connection is upsetting.
  • After reading the bit at the end of my 1st link above, on USB-C, I'm excited about the tech and wasn't before. Definitely read that part if you're unaware of how much more powerful USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 are vs previous tech.
  • That said, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have killed Apple to keep 1-2 of those 4 ports as USB-A. Sure, usually when they drag us kicking and screaming into some brave new world, they're right and not wrong. Still.
  • I've heard mostly negative to mixed things about the new style butterfly keyboards & wonder if anybody actually likes them [i]more[/i] than the old style. Haven't used them myself, but I'm not a fan of the previous chicklet style keyboards either, so I doubt it'd be a huge downgrade for me. (But I try not to use the laptop's own keyboard much anyways for ergonomic reasons.)
posted by cyrusdogstar at 11:19 PM on November 1, 2016 [4 favorites]


Err, no. This seems like the sort of thing it's perfectly possible to have an opinion on without being a Nazi, TBH.
posted by Artw at 11:39 PM on November 1, 2016 [40 favorites]


It wouldn't have killed them to keep a floppy drive or some ADB ports on the iMac, either, but they've pretty much always been all about going all-in on the latest and greatest technologies. "Every port does everything" is science fiction stuff from the nineties. Hell, I don't think they sell a single laptop thick enough to fit a VGA port anymore, which is… fine, really, because VGA ports really deserve to go the way of the floppy disk after all of these years.

Incidentally, I have the Bluetooth Magic Keyboard with the new butterfly mechanism, and I LOVE it. I also own one of the older USB Apple extended keyboards with the numeric keypad and a Majestouch Ninja with Cherry Blues, and I like typing on this keyboard the best of the three.
posted by DoctorFedora at 11:39 PM on November 1, 2016 [2 favorites]


And one only need look back as far as the introduction of the iPad to see people getting Really Angry about not being the target demographic of a thing that contains a GPU.
posted by DoctorFedora at 11:40 PM on November 1, 2016 [1 favorite]


Apple is proof you can get high on dollar bills alone...
posted by ennui.bz at 11:41 PM on November 1, 2016


I guess it shouldn't come as too much of a shock that a FPP consisting entirely of Hot Takes About Apple has led to a thread featuring people broadcasting, in some case, literal nonsense, in order to signal that they're Better Than Those Apple People! That'll sure show anyone who doesn't use Windows
posted by DoctorFedora at 11:46 PM on November 1, 2016 [8 favorites]


In order to signal that they're Better Than Those Apple People!

Ha! Like all the Microsoft lovin' 2012 MacBook Pro users in this thread (me included) that see very little reason to upgrade AMIRITE? Woohoo just look at my nonsense!!!
posted by eyeballkid at 11:53 PM on November 1, 2016 [8 favorites]


MetaFilter: a bit more name-calling and [...] somewhat dongle-obsessed.
posted by No-sword at 11:57 PM on November 1, 2016 [2 favorites]


Admittedly, I'm typing this on my 2013 MBP, which has been an outstanding work computer for me. Granted, that work is text-based, so for the most part the upgrades seem unnecessary for me too. I'm not talking about the folks who have no reason to upgrade, and thus won't, because it's a silly thing to complain about in the first place.

I will grant, though, that I want to be pandered to and convinced that I need a brand new computer after three years as much as anyone else, but honestly it seems like I'm just going to have to deal with continuing to be satisfied with the computer I already have? This might be the first-worldest of problems that a person could have, especially because I'm not entirely joking about having to deal with continuing to be satisfied. Novelty is a helluva drug.
posted by DoctorFedora at 11:58 PM on November 1, 2016 [4 favorites]


I'll have to see if there are any clear standouts in the high-end, 13" notebook group.

Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 Yoga and Dell's XPS-13 are both pretty sweet.
posted by flabdablet at 12:10 AM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


I observed this on Twitter today but it bears repeating: the "I'm really angry because I'm no longer being explicitly catered to" sentiment I see from Mac users is a little frightening when I realize it stems from the same basic phenomenon as the extreme toxicity of GamerGate and Trumpism (anger at no longer being the focus of a market/company/culture, fueling a desire to destroy it). I hope this sort of backlash doesn't get anywhere near that awful, and I don't think it will, but even seeing that ghost of a connection is upsetting.


What? I mean on one hand it's just a consumer product, but on the other hand it's just a company that makes consumer products so, yaknow, they don't really need you to stick up for them? Am I missing a bunch of people threatening to assassinate Tim Cook.

For me even though losing the top-row ESC is a pain the touch bar doesn't seem worth freaking out over. The function keys haven't really been there for ages and you can remap your caps lock now to cover escape - and maybe somebody will come up with something cool to do with it. The thing about Apple touch interfaces is - they actually work, usually? And for what I do 16 GB isn't a disaster either - I won't be looking to replace my current 16 GB MacBook for several years and by then it will pretty much have to be more - but for people doing serious video or even audio it's definitely a real limitation.
posted by atoxyl at 12:15 AM on November 2, 2016 [5 favorites]


MID 2012 15" 4 LIFE

Which reminds me that I need to get that battery dealt with.

"I observed this on Twitter today but it bears repeating: the "I'm really angry because I'm no longer being explicitly catered to" sentiment I see from Mac users is a little frightening when I realize it stems from the same basic phenomenon as the extreme toxicity of GamerGate and Trumpism (anger at no longer being the focus of a market/company/culture, fueling a desire to destroy it). I hope this sort of backlash doesn't get anywhere near that awful, and I don't think it will, but even seeing that ghost of a connection is upsetting."

WHY NEW MACBOOK LAUNCH PROVES TRUMP WILL WIN

I could probably get The Blaze to publish that.
posted by klangklangston at 12:18 AM on November 2, 2016 [6 favorites]


I do (mostly windows-based) software development. At both my current and previous companies developers are given a pile of money every two years to buy themselves a laptop. A few years ago 15" MBPs were far and away the main laptop people bought, even though it meant dual-booting or running Parallels. In the last year the Dell XPS15 has completely overtaken it. You can get an XPS15, with a 4K touch screen, 32Gb of RAM and 1Tb SSD for less than the cheapest 15" MBP, and it is essentially the same size and weight (I think the non-touchscreen ones are a little lighter than the new macs and the touchscreen ones a little heavier).

I held off getting my replacement laptop for six months waiting for the MBP refresh. I would have lived with the keyboard and requiring dongles, but wasn't going to get another laptop with 16Gb of RAM, so have just ordered something else.

The look like very nice laptops, and I'm sure they will be fantastic for many, or even most users, but I'll be giving it a miss. The other developers I've talked to are doing the same, except for one, who is a die-hard mac guy.
posted by markr at 12:31 AM on November 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


For the reasons I just explained I'll be on the platform for a while but if for some reason I had to switch I honestly don't know what I would do! And that feels really silly to say but:

- I'm a *nix-land software developer
- my number one non-programming hobby is making music in Ableton Live.

so can anyone really tell me there's a better OS choice than OSX? I have some interest in the new "Linux Subsystem For Windows" or whatever but Windows 10 has not endeared itself to me so - I guess maybe I'd dual boot Linux main with Windows for the apps.

And while I'm sure hardware manufacturers have inevitably caught up in many respects I just don't trust when people say "oh yeah that's basically the same" because it never has been in the past. Especially if I can recall them saying that five or ten years ago!

Things that are not the same:
- Zenbook (touchscreen is nifty I guess but WOULD NOT TRADE)

that ThinkPad looks good in some ways but it still has the eraser thingy? Am I comfortable purchasing a trackpad from a company that still uses the eraser thingy?
posted by atoxyl at 12:33 AM on November 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


Can I really buy a computer that thin from Dell and believe it won't fall apart?
posted by atoxyl at 12:34 AM on November 2, 2016 [6 favorites]


Apple had an unanswered lead in laptop hardware from 2008 to 2014ish, the unibody Macbook Pros were simply qualitatively better than other laptops, and the cost for Apple's machines was extremely competitive in the midrange.

Now? The new one isn't terrible, its just... not great... and hella expensive?

I'm more confused as to whats going on. Like, why does it have a headphone jack, but not HDMI?

Also as a former Macintosh Specialist, I guarantee that soooo many people are going to get upsold with the extra ports... "oh so you want to charge your computer and run an external monitor AND an external hard drive? Well let me show you this model, which in addition to having FOUR USB C ports instead of TWO USB C ports, also has Touch ID and costs 300 dollars more and you have to buy it, sucker, because we know you need the $0.50 worth of electronics that we left out of the cheap one"
posted by ethansr at 12:37 AM on November 2, 2016 [4 favorites]


I want those AirPods.
posted by Coda Tronca at 1:04 AM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


I suspect that the presence of a headphone jack in a laptop even after its removal from a smartphone is because a headphone jack takes up a much, much smaller amount of space, comparatively, in a laptop than in a smartphone.

But I only think that because I am foolish and silly and am only able to see the glaringly obvious surface reason for such a thing. Surely wiser folks than I can figure out why I should be outraged.
posted by DoctorFedora at 1:06 AM on November 2, 2016 [8 favorites]


you can actually look at the introduction of the unibody macbook as the beginning of the end. it showed that Apple was willing to invest unlimited resources, or at least buy up thousands of CNC mills, to create a manufacturing process that was *less* efficient, was not functionally all that different (better in some ways than standard plastic over metal, worse in others), but looked really cool.

the decision to go with the unibody construction is very revealing about the profit calculation, industrial ops people like Tim Cook are doing at Apple. combined with the $700 Google Pixel phone, you can see where the computer industry is headed and it's not faster, better, cheaper.
posted by ennui.bz at 1:47 AM on November 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


Bought a new MacBook 12". I hate the kb (butterfly). I'm returning it and going with the next older MBP (2015).
posted by persona au gratin at 1:49 AM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


I've been using Apple since the early 80s, and have owned only Macs since the early 90s. This is my first return.
posted by persona au gratin at 1:50 AM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm a film industry professional, I'm writing this on a mid-2014 15-inch MBP, and I'm definitely upgrading to this when the time comes (probably first part of 2017).

I see nothing but advantages. Pure USB-C ports? Fantastic. Yes, I'll need a few dongles for a little while, but it won't be long until everything comes with USB-C cables by default, since it's standard on PCs too now. The Thunderbolt 3 in those same ports will let me do everything with a single cable (even charging) on my desk, including connecting an external monitor and 10GbE. The speed of USB 3.1/TB3 means that if you want more ports, you can get a dock or a hub and get everything broken out from a single cable. I'll be able to use a cable (not a dongle, just a cable) with USB-C on one end and HDMI on the other to connect to a TV or projector, so no need for a HDMI port I use maybe once a month.

The touch bar seems neat, I'll be happy to try it out. For people saying you want a touch screen on your laptop instead, no, you really don't. Your arm gets tired after like 5 minutes.

The CPU is pretty top of the line for laptops (with the exception of those crazy huge Xeon luggables), 16 GB of RAM, well, I could have used more, but I rarely have a problem with RAM on the 16GB machine I have now. The 3GB/sec SSD stuff seems very attractive for video. I'm curious about GPU benchmarks, especially with the switch from NVidia to Radeon, but we'll see. I see I can get a GPU with 4GB of VRAM now, which is definitely something I'm interested in.

Touch ID and secure enclave on a laptop could have some very nice security implications.

Yeah, it's a bit pricey, but I don't see many other laptops offering these specs in this compact and light a package for any price. I upgrade about every two years, and resale value on my used laptops has been around 60% of what I paid for them new the last couple of cycles, so what I pay per year to have close to the newest model isn't bad. This is a work tool for me, not a home computer. I make money with it, it's worth it for me to pay to keep up to date.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 1:52 AM on November 2, 2016 [16 favorites]


So Apple will soon complete their new campus and move in. I suspect it will prove to be their mausoleum, a comfortable place in which to spend their afterlife. It's sad but I've been in the Valley long enough to have watched company after company do the same thing.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 1:55 AM on November 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


you can actually look at the introduction of the unibody macbook as the beginning of the end. it showed that Apple was willing to invest unlimited resources, or at least buy up thousands of CNC mills, to create a manufacturing process that was *less* efficient, was not functionally all that different (better in some ways than standard plastic over metal, worse in others), but looked really cool.

I would say the release of Final Cut X marked the beginning of the end for the "Pro" market for Apple. I was listening to a lot podcasts made by film-makers (indy film making and internet video stuff) at the time and Final Cut X was universally hated (you would think Apple killed their newborn, by the reactions I heard) among the community, so much so that some people still use Final Cut 7 to this day, but most of them jumped ship do Adobe or Avid shortly after. It only got worse in the following years with the Pro line being less and less enticing for professional video editors. A lot of em hoped for a better iMac Pro but were disappointed by the iMac "Trashcan-edition" and this seems to be the final nail in the coffin.

I am not suprised really. Apple realized that the amateur-creatives are a much bigger market that makes way more money than the Professional who wants all the new fancy stuff every couple years. Instead they will sell less power and quality at the same price to more people.
posted by Megustalations at 2:03 AM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


I just tried to configure a Dell XPS 15 with approximately the same specs as the mostly top of the line MBP 15" I'm going to buy next upgrade.

Yes, it's quite a bit cheaper (2600 dollars for the Dell vs 3300 for the MBP), but the MBP has a faster CPU (up to 3.6GHz vs. up to 3.5GHz, and for 200 dollars more, add 0.2 GHz more on the MBP), the Dell only has 2GB VRAM vs the MBP's 4GB (and the Dell runs a kind of overkill UHD display on that GPU, which means it'll use more VRAM), the Dell has a single USB 3.1/Thunderbolt 3 port plus two USB 3.0 ports with no TB vs. 4 USB3.1/TB 3 ports on the MBP, the Dell is bigger and heavier. The MBP also has a bigger trackpad, TouchID, the Touch bar, and a much faster SSD drive.

The main advantage of the Dell apart from the price seems to be that you get 32 GB of RAM for that price, and the screen is a touchscreen, if you like your arms to get really tired.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 2:07 AM on November 2, 2016 [7 favorites]


Also, people seem to be falling over each other to say how Apple "abandoned developers" because, for some reason, they think there's no way to generate an Esc key press. In fact, the very first image in the Mac section of Apple's website clearly shows an Esc key, and you can always get one (just like you can always get function keys) by pressing the fn key on the keyboard, like you've always been able to do). At the actual presentation of the thing, they mentioned how Apple's Terminal now uses the Touch Bar to give you VT terminal function keys, not just once, but twice.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 2:19 AM on November 2, 2016 [6 favorites]


I'm in atoxyl's boat:

- I'm a *nix-land software developer
(me, mainly Python and Go these days, need lots of RAM for medium-data jobs in Pandas)
- my number one non-programming hobby is making music in Ableton Live.
(me, still being annoyed about the death of Aperture)

I've gotten really used to not spending hours tweaking Linux desktop configurations to not suck. I guess my post Mac-OS plan (not this year, all my machines are still sprightly enough if out of warranty) would be either:

- try a laptop-friendly Linux on a highish-end Lenovo or Dell (oh god the pain of getting Linux on a Dell in the late 90s, i still have the nightmares...)
- get a Surface Book, learn Windows, do most of my real work in VirtualBox.

Anyone made any of these jumps off the Mac platform recently? How's photo editing (I presume GIMP?) and cataloging on Linux these days?
posted by Vetinari at 2:25 AM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


the screen is a touchscreen, if you like your arms to get really tired.

You don't use it all the time, but they're surprisingly nice to have, and will get better once productivity applications start to optimize for them.

they think there's no way to generate an Esc key press

No one thinks there's no way to generate an Esc key press, they think it's terrible for touch typists to not have the tactile response of pressing a physical key for something that's used constantly in vim. It's also shifted over just far enough from where it would be that people are going to mistarget it constantly.

How's photo editing (I presume GIMP?) and cataloging on Linux these days?

There's a couple Lightroom-alikes for Linux at this point but full blown Lightroom and Photoshop tends to be that much further ahead on the curve for things like noise reduction, automagic tools, and lens correction that most people I know grit their teeth and get the real thing for Windows or OS X.
posted by Candleman at 2:43 AM on November 2, 2016 [6 favorites]


you can actually look at the introduction of the unibody macbook as the beginning of the end. it showed that Apple was willing to invest unlimited resources, or at least buy up thousands of CNC mills, to create a manufacturing process that was *less* efficient, was not functionally all that different (better in some ways than standard plastic over metal, worse in others), but looked really cool.

I'm not sure I agree here. I've owned both unibody and non-unibody MBPs, frequently carrying them around on a daily basis, tossing them in bags not really meant to protect laptops, and otherwise subjecting them to moderate wear. The unibody machines have held up so much better (though they still like to lose their rubber feet eventually). The older ones would eventually get loose, creak a bit here or there as you pressed on them, shift their alignment a bit, and start dropping screws off the bottom cover (which I realize is still a possibility with the unibody models, but it used to happen to me semi-regularly and hasn't happened to me in years now).
posted by zachlipton at 2:49 AM on November 2, 2016 [5 favorites]


How have we not mentioned the death of MagSafe yet? MagSafe 2 releases a touch more easily than I'd personally prefer, but as someone who destroyed entirely too many of the barrel-style power adapters (and ruined a DC import board or two on the machines they were attached to in the process), MagSafe was a revolution, and I'm not pleased to see it go.

And really Apple, you can't be bothered to throw in the power extension cable anymore? It's a $2-3K pro laptop and you're sitting on hundreds of billions of reserves; don't cheap out over a $19 power cord.
posted by zachlipton at 2:57 AM on November 2, 2016 [20 favorites]


The day after the announcement I used my mid-2010 17" MBP to order the new 15” rMBP. It’s due to be delivered in about three weeks, and I can’t wait to get my hands on it.

My current MBP has been an absolute delight to use for the last six and a half years. It still runs just fine, but the battery’s close to useless and I feel like treating myself to something new and sexy.

I’m a freelance writer, and my laptop is my primary work tool. I mainly use office applications for work, and do some music and video stuff for fun. I’m not a power user by any means, so this is probably far more computer than I need, but… I want the thing I use for hours every day to be super nice.

And the new 15” looks really, really nice. It’s a comprehensive upgrade from my current machine (smaller, lighter, better screen, faster processor, double the RAM), and has lots of fun features to play with: Touch ID! Touch Bar! Force Touch trackpad! All new to me.

I’m a bit upset about the demise of MagSafe — seems like a daft thing to get rid of — but I’m not bothered about any of the other things everyone else is whining about: the new keyboard feels fine to me; I don’t want a touch screen; I won’t miss the extra ports; I've already got three power extension cables.

And thank goodness they’re finally binning the tacky startup chime. I’ve always hated it.
posted by ZipRibbons at 3:12 AM on November 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


I've got to agree about Unibody being the best thing that ever happened to Apple laptops - they look practically new after years of use, whereas the previous ones would dent and distort very quickly, and the grey plastic trim between the aluminium sections was ugly and sharp and prone to cracking. The older polycarbonate and titanium models were even worse.

I've ordered one of the new MBPs. I'm really not looking forward to needing a dongle or special cable to plug absolutely anything in. I don't think USB-C is going to have enough traction in the lifetime of this computer for this problem to go away - I own so many other devices (power banks, chargers, other computers, etc) that aren't going to get USB-C any time soon.
posted by grahamparks at 3:39 AM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


No one thinks there's no way to generate an Esc key press, they think it's terrible for touch typists to not have the tactile response of pressing a physical key for something that's used constantly in vim.

If you're using vim, it would probably take you an hour or two to get used to typing Ctrl-[ instead of ESC. Which, if you're a touch-typist, would be an improvement, since your fingers never have to leave the home row.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 3:49 AM on November 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


I feel like a big part of the problem is that existing rMBPs are already really great in many ways, so it is hard to improve them, particularly in a way that is sexy or newsworthy. I would also say that by volume, the main market for MBPs is people for whom they are basically overpowered, while people who find them lacking are probably a tiny fraction of actual buyers.
posted by snofoam at 4:17 AM on November 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


My corner of the dev world has been on MBPs for most of a decade. It's been weird this past week to see some of them kind of circling the wagons on the new machines. A lot of them don't seem to notice that the improvements they've seen in the MacBooks over the past years aren't some incredible magic that Apple has granted them but just the normal improvements that have occurred across the industry. There's enough variety that you can pick and choose the feature set that you want now.

If you're a fan of the Mac software ecosystem, great, but most of the devs I know spend all day in a terminal session anyway. We'll see if they come around.
posted by phooky at 4:44 AM on November 2, 2016 [4 favorites]


It's bizarre Apple is actively leaving money on the table by completely ignoring the desktop, and removing HDMI and SD ports from the MBP is plain suicidal. If I had to guess, they're going to axe the Mac completely in a generation or two for iDevices. Once we see X-Code for Windows, that will be that.
posted by Slap*Happy at 4:46 AM on November 2, 2016 [4 favorites]


If you're using vim, it would probably take you an hour or two to get used to typing Ctrl-[ instead of ESC. Which, if you're a touch-typist, would be an improvement, since your fingers never have to leave the home row.


Seriously? You want me to substitute an awkward two key combination for the ESC key that I hit a billion times a day? Actually a big number of my co-workers just use an external keyboard for the mac and there are lots of discussions about just the right mechanical keys and the proper maintenance of such.
posted by octothorpe at 5:00 AM on November 2, 2016 [5 favorites]


Surely the logical thing is to remap Escape to the leftmost key on the number row that no-one uses anyway?

(I'm going to do that on day one, and I'm no vim user)
posted by grahamparks at 5:11 AM on November 2, 2016



If you're using vim, it would probably take you an hour or two to get used to typing Ctrl-[ instead of ESC. Which, if you're a touch-typist, would be an improvement, since your fingers never have to leave the home row.


Seriously? You want me to substitute an awkward two key combination for the ESC key that I hit a billion times a day? Actually a big number of my co-workers just use an external keyboard for the mac and there are lots of discussions about just the right mechanical keys and the proper maintenance of such.


Yeah this is the touchbar meme that I want to destroy the most: the idea that the esc key is some kind of bad, inefficient key for vim users who aren't even real vimmers if they haven't remapped it to <leader> qrxyz or something. I've been hitting ESC to get back to normal mode since the days of token rings and it works just dandy. I'm not about to change my ways now just because the shininess has moved offscreen.

But Apple has a model without a touchbar and I'm basically wedded to macs these days, so I know what I'll be buying for my next upgrade.
posted by dis_integration at 5:33 AM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


Seriously? You want me to substitute an awkward two key combination for the ESC key that I hit a billion times a day?

Agreed. And not just for the billion - I suggest that any individual hitting as few as 100,000 ESC keys a day - really should stick with a mechanical ESC key.
posted by fairmettle at 5:34 AM on November 2, 2016 [4 favorites]


I'm happy to see them switch over to USB-C. Do people actually like having five different types of cable? I don't think the cost of buying new cables is so significant compared to the flexibility you get with Thunderbolt 3. And since many people hold on to these laptops for 3-5 years, I think they'll be happy Apple made the design as time goes on.

That said, I can see how the change is jarring, and as with all changes, it will come with some disruption. I imagine this update would have been received much better had there been less significant updates in the past couple of years.
posted by adrianhon at 5:35 AM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


Do people actually like having five different types of cable?

I do, actually, when the alternative is having five or more different types of USB-C cable, some of which will literally fry my $3000+ laptop if I screw up.
posted by fifthrider at 5:43 AM on November 2, 2016 [11 favorites]


What USB-C cable would fry your laptop?
posted by Static Vagabond at 5:44 AM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


There was a major issue with cheap cables causing over-draw and bricking Pixel Cs, for instance. Theoretically not a problem with native USB-C to USB-C connections, but let's just say that there are downsides to putting high amperage power connections in the same plugs you're using for data and display.
posted by fifthrider at 5:46 AM on November 2, 2016 [6 favorites]


Beware bad USB-C cables

Particularly it seems bad charging cables. But yeah, there is some danger from shoddy USB-C peripherals.
posted by dis_integration at 5:46 AM on November 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


I'm happy to see them switch over to USB-C. Do people actually like having five different types of cable?

It will be years before we can get rid of any of these cables; forcing USB-C doesn't eliminate cables, it just adds a new one to deal with. Even if I wanted to spend a ton of money immediately replacing my headset, external hard drive, keyboard, wireless mouse, and monitor, USB-C versions of many of these peripherals don't even exist.
posted by enn at 5:46 AM on November 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


  How's photo editing (I presume GIMP?) and cataloging on Linux these days?

Those who tend toward photo illustration are probably Krita users by now. Gimp devel (so not the one you'd get in a standard distribution) has excellent deep image mode handling, but still has that user interface that haters love to hate and hasn't done anything to add layer masks. I may be running a rough developer version, but the old (assumes 8bpp) and new (deep images, GPU enabled where possible) tools seem to be duplicated, sometimes with the same name. I don't think it does native CMYK, but that seems to be becoming less of a problem for most users. The only thing I really miss — and I'm probably the only one to think so — is script-fu, the original scronky Scheme-based scripting language for Gimp. It gets less and less support, and now many of my scripts just don't work.

My cataloguing needs are modest, so Shotwell — essentially a rough clone of iPhoto's feature set circa 2008 — does for me. Darktable is nifty for raw editing, but I haven't got it to play very well with other photo tools.
posted by scruss at 5:56 AM on November 2, 2016 [9 favorites]


Power user technology has been moving forward nicely. I bought an i7-skylake with 32GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD earlier this year. So nice. The hardware markers have finally given me something that can wrestle my software and cloud apps (e.g., big Excel sheets with thousands of Bloomberg APIs pinging) into submission. Not cheap, but cheaper than a MBP.
posted by MattD at 5:59 AM on November 2, 2016


Do people actually like having five different types of cable?

I mean, I like it more than having five different types of dongles.

(Also at this point I really only use USB-A and HDMI, anyway. Maybe the occasional SD card)
posted by Itaxpica at 6:05 AM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm typing this on a 2012 Air which I frankly love even though the magsafe plug is all janky, my right arrow key doesn't work and it has a hilariously insufficient amount of ram for Chrome in 2016. I was excited to replace it with the baby Pro but on further thought I'm not so sure anymore. I like macos but I can function in windows or ubuntu and I really don't want to pay a premium to buy into a dead platform.

I'm seriously interested in the Razer Blade Stealth MegaCool 666 Deathstroke megakill whatever. The name is dumb but if that external GPU works I can probably ditch my desktop. Still only 16G of ram which is apparently because Intel doesn't support larger dimms in low-power mode yet?

Ctrl-[ is the correct way to use vim which is the correct text editor.
posted by Skorgu at 6:07 AM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


I've got my eye on a seemingly nice little usb-c hub (three usb3 ports, hdmi out, another usb-c port, pass-through power, and an SD reader) for the 13" Pro 16GB/1TB I've ordered. So in theory, that tiny thing can just sit on my desk at work, and I can come in and plug in a single cable and I'm all hooked up and charging when I want to go full-on desktop mode. That's pretty cool (for me at least).
posted by Static Vagabond at 6:12 AM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


Apple's been giving the middle finger to the "pro" and creative markets for a few years now.

Their attitude to the pro market does seem strange. I'm currently working in Canary Wharf, which is stuffed with banks, law and insurance firms, and has more well-off developers and execs than anywhere else in London. Lots of people with lots of disposable cash who like fashionable and shiny tech.

An Apple Store here would seem to be a no-brainer: they'd have to be trucking in container-loads of kit every time there's a new release, such is the level of tech interest. But they open one in Stratford instead...

I'm up to replace my development machine (15" MBP) soon, and have been more than a little impressed by the Surface Pro. I never thought I'd look with favo(u)r on Microsoft-branded hardware, especially if they carry on with the bash shell idea.
posted by 43rdAnd9th at 6:14 AM on November 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


I'd be interested in the Blade as well, if not for their use of Killer NICs, which are infamously difficult to get working in Linux. As it stands, I'm facing the nightmare scenario of having to choose between HP (low quality construction,) Dell (the ancient evil,) and Lenovo (literally has put self-reinstalling malware in their consumer line) to replace my 17in MBP when the time comes.
posted by fifthrider at 6:14 AM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


Ctrl-[ is the correct way to use vim

If you're using vim, it would probably take you an hour or two to get used to typing Ctrl-[ instead of ESC. Which, if you're a touch-typist, would be an improvement, since your fingers never have to leave the home row.

I don't understand how hitting two keys can be more 'correct' than hitting the esc key. And in what world is Ctrl-[ in the home row? Do you have nonstandard hands?
posted by Radiophonic Oddity at 6:16 AM on November 2, 2016 [10 favorites]


My 2008 MBP died in late 2014 and I've been waiting with $3000 in hand to pick up this Skylake rev.

Nope! Apple priced themselves out of a sale. Guess I'll just stick with hackintoshing* until Apple ships something interesting in desktop space again [skylake minitower with nvidia 1060 graphics por favor], and/or locks us out.

* I spent just under $1000 for a pretty nice Haswell (i5-4690K) box last year that has been running 10.10, 10.11, and now 10.12 like a champ [except that in Sierra, Safari is locking up the machine on some sites now so I have to use Chrome as my primary browser].
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 6:19 AM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


On the plus side, my 2012 MBP probably just increased in resale value!

Once we see X-Code for Windows, that will be that.

Truly horrifying. You know, Apple has so much money in the bank (what, $160B or something?) that they could just buy the company that makes the Razor Blade, hold them at arm's distance, and let them do endless lines of cool outrageous hardware with satin black finishes and colored LEDs everywhere and the latest, most powerful hardware, install macOS on it and sell it at a premium. Why the frick not? It would let them try SkunkWork-type hardware ideas in such a way that they are not savaged for experimenting, or burying great ideas before fruition.
posted by jabah at 6:23 AM on November 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


Speaking as a fervent Apple fan and user since 2004:

Tim Cook is the new Steve Ballmer.
(Though he is a marginally better dancer. (Less energy, though.))
posted by entropicamericana at 6:23 AM on November 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


The late 2011 MBP I bought in early 2012 is still running like a champ, albeit with 3rd party RAM, SSD upgrade, and two logic board swaps. I will need a new lappy in the next 18 months for sure, so I'm interested in seeing how the latest MBPs fare in real-world use.
posted by infinitewindow at 6:27 AM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


Only your pinkies move and the distances aren't far. The rest of your hands can comfortably stay on the home row. Most people on most keyboards end up moving their entire hand to hit Esc since it's so far from the normal position or at best end up with a super long, slow reach.

If you're willing to remap keys, caps lock would be the ideal location but as soon as you move to a machine that doesn't have that mapping you're in for a few confused minutes of figuring out how to undo your all-caps vim commands. If you never do that, maybe remapping is fine. Mapping 'jk' is another easy to use one but it's not uncommon enough to be used as Esc in all languages and likewise requires a configuration.

Ctrl-[ is a tiny bit suboptimal but it works by default, everywhere, on every OS.
posted by Skorgu at 6:29 AM on November 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


- There is nothing in the new macbook pro that necessitates me dumping my 2012 machine.

- I was glad to see a hot take compilation from someone else with a 2012 Retina 15".

- MID 2012 15" 4 LIFE

Hi, friends!

As a PSA for fellow four-year-old rMBP folks -- did you know it's possible to upgrade your SSD? They said it was not possible but it turns out it totally is.

As a web developer using fancy IDEs and virtual machines and whatnot, I think the new MBP is actually totally fine for my purposes. But unfortunately that means (given a new battery and SSD) that my current laptop is also totally fine ...
posted by john hadron collider at 6:32 AM on November 2, 2016 [5 favorites]


Ctrl-] seems particularly inappropriate for a MacBook because of the size and shape of Ctrl on a MacBook. I guess Command-] might be a little better. Personally I would be good with remapping Caps Lock (which is now an standard option on the latest OS) but... it would be nice to have the choice to put other things on Caps Lock? We'll see about the touch buttons. For VI-alike stuff the other top choice would seem to be the "jj" or "fd" approach - who wants key chords in VIM, anyway? - but it's not like that's the only place I use Esc.
posted by atoxyl at 6:35 AM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


I've been waiting for a few months for this update and now I'm kind of torn. Performance-wise, my mid-2010 15" Macbook Pro is still adequate for my needs, but an OS upgrade activated the previously dormant graphics glitch that causes kernel panics unless I'm monitoring my gfxCardStatus app like a hawk. That said, it'd be nice if the machine I upgraded to would last me 6+ years like this one has, so I'm not sure if I want to dive into the new generation, warts and ports and all (luckily I don't have too many peripherals) or just get one of the 2015 versions.
posted by AndrewInDC at 6:36 AM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


Ctrl-[ is the correct way to use vim

As a touch-typing vim user with a poor motor skills for accurately hitting the escape key (not to mention any key on the top row), my solution involved remapping the escape key altogether. The new destination that I chose for escape was the semicolon key, which lies conveniently under the right hand little finger.

Of course, this meant finding a new, less convenient location for ";", a key that I used infrequently anyway. But the payoff of having escape under the little finger was enormous, because, as any seasoned vim user knows, there are few keys that are used more frequently than esc.

If I were to buy a MacBook Pro, the first line of the remapping portion of my .vimrc file would be a swap of esc to the semicolon key--or, failing that, to any part of the keyboard other than the non-tactile touchbar.
posted by Gordion Knott at 6:37 AM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


Do people actually like having five different types of cable?

This is probably the mindset of Apple, which obviously now now longer eats its own dogfood. I use a projector twice a week to give presentations. It's an HDMI cable coming out of the wall. It's been that way for years now, and will be for years more, in conference rooms around the globe.

I have a DSLR, and it uses SD cards. There are tens of millions of people with DSLRs that use SD cards, and will be for many years to come.

How in the hell does this new design make my life easier? What problems was I having that removing HDMI and SD solved or improved? What a dumb design, arrogant and unfriendly.

USB on the iMac solved SCSI, ADB and Serial, which were nightmares for users and devs alike. HDMI and SD cards aren't much of a nightmare. They work really well, are understood and supported by most vendors, and are convenient. They're essential for power users. I guess Macs are no longer for power users. They're just apple-branded development terminals for iDevices.

The industrial design is now kind of old and worn out, too.

I haven't owned a windows PC. Ever. I've worked on and with a ton of 'em tho. I've been in IT since the early 90's, and Apple's pro-level notebooks, from the PowerBook 180 on, were always a generation or two ahead of the PC in terms of design and utility. That hasn't been the case for a couple of years, now.
posted by Slap*Happy at 6:43 AM on November 2, 2016 [11 favorites]


Does anyone remember 1998 and all the whinging about how USB-A was so inconvenient because everyone would need adapters for all their legacy hardware. "What do you mean there's no SCSI interface? How do I use my old hard drive! I need an adapter?!"

That was 18 years ago. We're going through the same process again. USB-C is a better connector, but not every product has a USB-C cable yet. Give it a little time, and in the meantime, chill. Transitions suck, but it's better to rip the band-aid off all at once than to go little by little.
posted by SansPoint at 6:46 AM on November 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


because of the size and shape of Ctrl

size and position I mean
posted by atoxyl at 6:49 AM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


I observed this on Twitter today but it bears repeating: the "I'm really angry because I'm no longer being explicitly catered to" sentiment I see from Mac users is a little frightening when I realize it stems from the same basic phenomenon as the extreme toxicity of GamerGate and Trumpism (anger at no longer being the focus of a market/company/culture, fueling a desire to destroy it). I hope this sort of backlash doesn't get anywhere near that awful, and I don't think it will, but even seeing that ghost of a connection is upsetting.

Oh good, I'm glad the election-thread tactic of comparing people you disagree with misogynists and literal white nationalists is migrating to the rest of MeFi.
posted by indubitable at 6:51 AM on November 2, 2016 [22 favorites]


I can't for the life of me figure out the rationale for ditching MagSafe. Ditching old USB for new USB is a very irritating Apple-like maneuver, but at least there's an argument to be made that it's a like-for-like trade and USB-C/TB3/whatev is more versatile over the long run anyway, so, fine. I personally don't buy that argument, but fine. But straight up dropping MagSafe just seems weird to me. I've been holding out for a new laptop since forever, but instead of buying a new non-touch-bar MBP I just got a refurb Air instead (and "saved" >$500), because MagSafe. I've been a Mac guy since Ye Olden Days of the Mac SE 30, and this new MBP release is one of the bigger boondoggles I've seen Apple make, and I've seen a few.
posted by the painkiller at 6:53 AM on November 2, 2016 [9 favorites]


Apple is a finance and marketing company with a legacy hardware division totally subservient to the first two functions. ROI on non-phones is too small, and brand impact too weak to matter.

As someone who's first significant exposure to computers was an Apple ][, who played with what was probably the one of the first Macs in the UK (hand-carried from California), and got a signed Apple I circuit diagram from the hands of Woz himself, I think this is sad - but not the first time a company has evolved to so dominate a niche that it can't survive outside it and can't evolve a strategy to even try. Apple is now utterly dependant on its ability to market high-margin phones, and nothing else matters to it.

The Apple that created new niches is long gone. Those who are invested in how things used to be may not be in the healthiest position.

On the bright side, there is a great opportunity for well-designed dev/content workstations that reflect the needs of the 2016 connected tech-pro community, that marry performance, flexibility and unquenchable got-your-backness You or I or most of the people on this thread could sit down with a blank sheet of paper and have a helluva product line sketched out by the end of the day, together with a half-decent business model that marries open- and paid-for options to maximise productivity, self-learning and community involvement with a break-glass-in-emergency fix-anything tiered support service. Something that looks like it belongs in the latter half of the first quarter of the 21st century.

It will happen. It won't be Apple.
posted by Devonian at 6:57 AM on November 2, 2016 [7 favorites]


the painkiller: It's my understanding that the need for MagSafe has been reduced by laptops with long battery life. I think the idea is that if you're not using your laptop tethered to a desk/hub/giant display, you can run it completely unplugged.
posted by SansPoint at 6:58 AM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


I've been stuck using Windows machines for work for a long time, and based on that I'd be reluctant to own one at home. Things change and maybe the latest version is great, but I'd want some confidence that it would continue.

I've been using an 11" mac air at home for some years now (I think this one is a 2011 model), and it is starting to show its age. The new 13" pro seems like overkill with added cost for features I don't want or need, like the touchbar, but other models are still dragging on, no updates in sight.

I will grant, though, that I want to be pandered to and convinced that I need a brand new computer after three years as much as anyone else, but honestly it seems like I'm just going to have to deal with continuing to be satisfied with the computer I already have? This might be the first-worldest of problems that a person could have, especially because I'm not entirely joking about having to deal with continuing to be satisfied. Novelty is a helluva drug.

That is basically how I feel. At this point I will just keep my current computer until it starts developing real problems, rather than just feeling dated, or until someone releases a model that meets my needs in an exact way.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:58 AM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


I think the idea is that if you're not using your laptop tethered to a desk/hub/giant display, you can run it completely unplugged.

If this is the rationale, then it's a fairly genius planned obsolescence move on their part: get people to put more charge cycles on their batteries, which cost $$$ to replace through AppleCare and can only be user-serviced with a heatgun.
posted by fifthrider at 7:01 AM on November 2, 2016


Frankly, I'm surprised that I'm not the only one who's freaking out about the RAM thing. I've been harping about this for years, but it seems like Apple finally hit a threshold where their machines are overpriced and underpowered for no reason at all.

I've got a 13" 2011 MBP, and I'd very much like to replace it. I'd happily buy another Apple machine, as long as Apple continue their tepid-but-adequate support of MacOS, and produce really nice hardware.

But... the touch bar, ridiculously expensive storage, and limited RAM are making me think twice. Sadly, Intel are also complicit, and the PC options aren't particularly great either. It kind of sucks that, once Apple finally got some real competition, Intel lost its only competitor, and basically stopped trying.

Also, Apple-as-a-company are burning a lot of bridges. In the 2000s, they scooped up a whole lot of pro software vendors, and for a time, continued supporting and evolving those products. In recent years, Apple has quietly killed nearly all of their Pro applications, leaving several gaping holes in the market, and legitimately screwing over a lot of creative professionals. We'd have been better off if Apple had never purchased those vendors – they weren't competing with anything that Apple made – there was no good reason for Apple to completely eviscerate a segment of the software industry.

So, now we're left with one decent laptop manufacturer, one CPU manufacturer, and Adobe somehow controls an entire industry.

Great.
posted by schmod at 7:03 AM on November 2, 2016 [5 favorites]


Fairly new to the Mac ecosystem. I was an iPhone user as of iPhone 4, have had iPads since the original iPad 2, but was pretty stuck in Windows on my previous job. Then I changed jobs, everything's Mac where I'm at now, and all I do that's not on a Mac is gaming (on a Linux that I took back from my son when he upgraded).

Here's my take on Mac OS, and the latest announcements haven't done much to change my mind:

Using a Mac is like driving a german car: the workmanship feels really great and you're congratulating yourself for being such a discerning buyer until you figure out you're not getting down the road any faster; you have to climb over the stick shift to exit the vehicle, and you have to take the left front fender off to change the oil.
posted by randomkeystrike at 7:16 AM on November 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


I observed this on Twitter today but it bears repeating: the "I'm really angry because I'm no longer being explicitly catered to" sentiment I see from Mac users is a little frightening when I realize it stems from the same basic phenomenon as the extreme toxicity of GamerGate and Trumpism (anger at no longer being the focus of a market/company/culture, fueling a desire to destroy it). I hope this sort of backlash doesn't get anywhere near that awful, and I don't think it will, but even seeing that ghost of a connection is upsetting.

That's an insane comparison. People are right to be annoyed if tools they use for 40+ hours a week and are dependent upon to earn a living are randomly broken by the manufacturer because of change for the sake of change. No minorities or disadvantaged groups are being threatened. And the tone of this thread has been pretty respectful.

As for the RAM thing, those of who don't live in the USA find it bizarre that a product would be crippled worldwide to comply with one country's flight authority's arbitrary regulations.

I have a complete hodgepodge of systems - my work desktop is Windows 7 (for business type stuff like MS Office/Outlook/Lync, and SSMS) with a Linux VM (for Python/C++ development and connecting to servers and managing cloud stuff) running on a second monitor, a work Macbook Air I mostly just remote desktop to my work desktop with, and a home Windows 7 laptop with a USB audio interface for music production (it also boots to Linux and Windows XP but I haven't booted either in a long, long time). My boss has a Surface Pro that looks amazing - I think that's the ultimate solution to integrate everything, which I wouldn't have quite believed a couple of years ago.
posted by kersplunk at 7:18 AM on November 2, 2016 [14 favorites]




Apple is a finance and marketing company with a legacy hardware division totally subservient to the first two functions. ROI on non-phones is too small, and brand impact too weak to matter.

The "we get better margins elsewhere" argument would ring true to me if Apple had limited capital and had to make choices on where to best allocate it. But Apple is sitting on huge stacks of cash making very little return from the bond markets. Is non-phone hardware, even Apple hardware, running on such narrow margins that putting your cash in commercial paper is actually the better investment?
posted by indubitable at 7:20 AM on November 2, 2016


kersplunk That's an insane comparison. People are right to be annoyed if tools they use for 40+ hours a week and are dependent upon to earn a living are randomly broken by the manufacturer because of change for the sake of change.

Except that it's not for the sake of change. By any measure, USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 are better connectors---symmetrical (so you can plug your device in without rotating the plug three times), smaller, and faster. Dongles are inconvenient, yes, but they're also temporary. In a couple years, nearly every peripheral will come in a USB-C or Thunderbolt 3 version, and as you upgrade, you can put the dongles aside. We went through all of this before 18 years ago.
posted by SansPoint at 7:22 AM on November 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


That's a good point, kersplunk. Apple can make Macs with different keyboards for different regions. It couldn't be much of a stretch to make models with different battery capacities for those of us who have no intention of carrying them to the US.
posted by epo at 7:23 AM on November 2, 2016


It is possible to get USB-C to X cables (e.g. lightning, HDMI, etc); and to get USB-C cables that will not fry your peripherals. It's likely that these cables will in fact become cheaper than what they replace, not very long from now.

I mean... I get the complaints. I have a Retina Macbook myself, and it was annoying to have to buy new cables. But I love the fact that I can now charge my laptop from any USB port now, and that I don't need to carry around a custom charger.

Is the problem that Apple did this too early? Should they have put, say, two USB-A and two USB-C ports on the laptop, plus Magsafe?
posted by adrianhon at 7:24 AM on November 2, 2016


Apple is now utterly dependant on its ability to market high-margin phones, and nothing else matters to it.

While I have no doubt there will still be hordes of people going after the iPhone7 and other iterations, I've also seen the pain that my wife has gone through with their products. She had a iPhone 5 6gb for several years, a purchase she justified because her previous (free from t-mobile) android phone was too fiddly and buggy. Whereas, along with the rationale she owned her macbook air, she liked apple products because "it just worked."

In recent years, with every new OS update I saw her phone continuously crippled and made slower and worse, to a point where she had to wipe out most of her apps to the bare minimum, and was no longer able to take pictures for lack of storage space. the iCloud thing didn't work like advertised, and it wanted money on top of that. The Genius bar tech sort of shrugged and showed her new iPhone7 and advised her to get bigger storage space.

The experience is souring her on the platform, because the forced obsolescence is really naked.

Similar with me - while I stayed firmly in the android/pc sphere, I also had several iPads, but same problem - gradually became less usable, more buggy, constant app crashes, and lacked storage over time, more frustrating than needed to work ipads with my office pc environment.
posted by Karaage at 7:25 AM on November 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


This makes me sooooo glad that PyCharm works on OSX, Linux and Windows. If I ever need to make the jump back to Linux, at least I won't be completely lost.
posted by signal at 7:30 AM on November 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


At this point, one is tempted to link to the MeFi threads about the first iMac, iPod, iPhone and iWhatever. They're almost all universally angry threads complaining about Apple and its decisions, only to see those devices go on to become a standard.

Not sure what people are complaining about, Apple is known for forcing users to move forward, even when they don't really want to. To expect anything else from the company at this point is pure ignorance.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:31 AM on November 2, 2016 [8 favorites]


Also, the touch bar strikes me a brilliant. It's a small step as they users use to the idea and they can build on that. Plus it's on a horizontal surface, which is so much better than the screen for laptop.

I can imagine any video pro using a laptop for most of their major edits. Isn't that what Mac Pro is for, just use the laptop keeping the project moving while you're wanting for Producer to show up for lunch?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:38 AM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


Apple has become a consumer electronics company ever since it introduced the iPod. The customers it cares most about are device buyers...who will love the new macbooks. Pro's will adjust or go elsewhere and will dent Apple's bottom line not one bit...Full blown os's are for developers not consumers who are comfortable with a mobile os to do most everything..music, photography..social etc.
posted by judson at 7:40 AM on November 2, 2016


I think this is a "Users don't hate change, they hate designers" ( https://medium.com/@cwodtke/users-dont-hate-change-they-hate-you-461772fbcac7#.ypb2rmq4p ) hardware edition.

Any of these changes sounds okay. But the way Apple rolls out product means they have to happen all at once, and that's not okay, because there are plenty of 'features' I don't really trust until I've seen them at work.

Like pretty much everyone else, I've yet to see a new MacBook, but I can speak from experience talking with an overly aggressive Apple fanboy about the new iPhone. Who would worry about Bluetooth earbuds holding a charge?, he asked. Don't people have lives? (Me, I said: in grad school, when I was in the lab, I easily listened to podcasts for 8+ hours a day, and I would have been pissed if they died on me at 1 am.) Who could possibly apply enough pressure to bend a phone? (Apparently a lot of people? Also, huge screens aren't great for those of us without real pockets.)

And maybe none of these concerns really matter. But I don't think it's silly for people to care when they see huge changes that don't seem to have taken their circumstances into account.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 7:43 AM on November 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


I'm not sure I need "innovation" in the laptop space. I need a sturdy 2-3lb. computer that runs my software. I have a 2012 Macbook Air which I love. I would gladly buy the same thing every few years until the singularity, with incremental upgrades to the internals. (The only thing on my Air that was really a new feature when I got it was the multitouch trackpad.)

But maybe that makes me no longer an attractive customer for Apple. Since I want something relatively static, commodity PC makers can in principle gun for my business. Apple wants to sell to people who can only get it from them.

Thing is, after 14 years, I'm pretty locked in to OSX. I have software I like, I know my way around the system, I'm used to the polished UI. I was happy to imagine paying the Apple tax in perpetuity for that and for the hassle-free hardware quality and compatibility. The latest offerings are not actually terrible, but they're disappointing and they suggest the company is moving away from giving me what I want.

I can imagine switching to PC+Linux but I get a headache thinking about it.
posted by grobstein at 7:43 AM on November 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


Marco Arment: Design for the present
A pro laptop released today should definitely have USB-C ports — mostly USB-C ports, even — but it should also have at least one USB-A port. Including a port that’s still in extremely widespread use isn’t an admission of failure or holding onto the past — it’s making a pragmatic tradeoff for customers’ real-world needs. I worry when Apple falls on the wrong side of decisions like that, because it’s putting form (and profitability) over function.

Design for the future, but accommodate the reality of the present.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 7:45 AM on November 2, 2016 [12 favorites]


Isn't that what Mac Pro is for

You mean the computer they haven't updated in 3 years? The one using The one whose performance page mentions how well it performs actions in Aperture 3, a piece of software discontinued a year and a half ago?
posted by zabuni at 7:49 AM on November 2, 2016 [6 favorites]


Some of the complaints mostly boil down to matters of time:

- The 16-GB RAM limit is due to the fact that Kaby Lake wasn't available early enough in the MBP's design process, and still isn't available in sufficient quantities.
- The carping over dongles is due to the fact that Thunderbolt-3/USB-C (important to note: not the same thing) hasn't penetrated widely enough yet. Apple is ahead of the curve on this. The curve will catch up. You can already buy a tiny port-replicator to throw in your go bag.

I like having one port to rule them all. I plug my 2013-era MBP into a hub, and power, and a monitor when I'm at home, and I'll need to get a new hub if I get the new MBP (or more likely, the next revision), but that's not a big deal, and when I do, I'll have one plug, not three. I almost never bring my AC adapter with me when I leave home with my laptop (to the point where I forgot it when I took my MBP with me for a long weekend and really did need it), so the lack of Magsafe is mostly academic to me.

I am not thrilled about the short-travel keyboard (and the 4 mm reduction in thickness does not seem like a worthwhile tradeoff for that), although I use my laptop at my desk 95% of the time, where I use an external keyboard anyhow. Which makes me really wonder when/if Apple is going to release a standalone keyboard with a touch bar, or a standalone touch bar. If the touch bar concept is a good one, surely it is just as good for desktops as laptops.
posted by adamrice at 7:51 AM on November 2, 2016 [4 favorites]


Again, speaking as an Apple user since 2004, the worse part about Apple fanboys are their tendency to Defend Apple At All Costs and their belief that Any Criticism of Apple, No Matter How Valid, is Wrong, Wrong, Wrong and Will Be Proven Wrong in the End.
posted by entropicamericana at 7:51 AM on November 2, 2016 [11 favorites]


The thing for me is that I like the MacBook hardware but my opinions of Apple desktop software range from indifferent to hostile. The underpinning layer of OSX is a fine *nix platform for stability but I hate almost everything about the user interface and mostly only use 3rd party software on my laptop. Chrome, Photoshop, Lightroom, Sublime Text (with vi emulation), MS Office and Outlook all work fine but they all also work the same on Windows so if they screw up the hardware, I'll jump right back to a Lenovo laptop without blinking.
posted by octothorpe at 7:53 AM on November 2, 2016 [4 favorites]


Wow, three years is a long time since the Mac Pro update. At this point, why still Apple for video?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:58 AM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


vibratory manner of working I generally agree with Marco, but this line of thought is ridiculous. If you're always designing for the present, you'll never make progress. The moment that made USB-A devices viable wasn't gradual adoption, it was one company (hm, I forget which) choosing to go all-in on USB.

Tech transitions are hard, and they suck. I get that and acknowledge that. There's legit criticisms of the new MacBook Pros that I agree with, like the price increases and thinness versus battery life issue. (Not so much for RAM as just general battery life stuff. The RAM is as much a function of Intel's delays as pointed out upthread.) Moving to USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 is going to be annoying, and dongles are a pain, but they are a temporary pain.
posted by SansPoint at 7:58 AM on November 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


At least it has 4 of them. The current macbook has one, and that has to work as the charger port too, so you pretty much have to carry an adapter dongle everywhere.
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 8:07 AM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


It's not about the cash in the bank, it's about the company's internal perceptions of what matters. Once you get to a certain point of success, the conservative forces dominate, to maximise your best bet and actively run down the others - because they can't guarantee the numbers in the right accounting periods. Increasing amounts of executive time (the real limiting resource and where opportunity cost matters no matter how big the cash pile) become focused on managing the Success, and corporate culture follows. This intensifies over time, after various projects or moves that have been more speculative fail to ignite, because most will. All this while, your best people - the ones who have vision and ambition and a taste for thinking differently - have decided to move out of the shade and go elsewhere.

Of course, after a while the Success stops. What do you do then? You buy companies. You try to bludgeon your way into bad-fit areas with money. You cargo-cult. But you can't go back, because you're not that sort of company any more.

I've seen this happen more than once, with massively successful companies perched high atop mountains of cash, bleed dry and collapse into dismembered corpses in a handful of years because their one niche shifted and they were too far behind the curve and too fixed in their thinking to get lucky. Get your friendly local medium to ask Arnie Weinstock...

It's sad, but it's hard to avoid. But here we are, where Microsoft is out-innovating Apple in high-end productivity hardware, where if you're young and techy the most exciting thing is a $35 single-board computer from a bunch of middle-age nerds in Cambridge, and for 80%+ of the mobile phone market the only result of Apple vanishing from the planet would be fewer annoying adverts.
posted by Devonian at 8:10 AM on November 2, 2016 [4 favorites]


If you haven't read Tim Cook is the new Steve Ballmer, it provides one of the most succinct warnings to Apple's market dominance published so far:
The parallel between Gates and Ballmer and Jobs and Cook is eerie. Apple under Cook has doubled its revenues to $200 billion while doubling profit and tripling the amount of cash it has in the bank (now a quarter of trillion dollars). The iPhone continues its annual upgrades of incremental improvements. Yet in five years the only new thing that managed to get out the door is the Apple Watch. With 115,000 employees Apple can barely get annual updates out for their laptops and desktop computers.
The parallels between Balmer Microsoft and Cook Apple are eerie. For those that were in IT or investment banks at the time, watching Microsoft slow to a crawl was paradoxical. On one hand, the company possessed 90%+ of the PC marketshare and had nearly limitless resources of both money and people. However, MSFT could not deliver new products, nor update existing products.

Only by the grace of Intel, Nvidia, and the hardware manufacturers continually driving performance higher did the perceived quality of Microsoft systems improve. In a rarely-cited case, bloated software sitting inside an exploding hardware ecosystem was one of the primary reasons Microsoft missed the Internet and began losing the enterprise market. Back in the late 90s internet explosion, Microsoft's software products were woefully bloated and overpriced compared to the needs of hacker startups filled with young people. Linux began rising because 1) it was open, 2) it was flexible, and 3) it was free.

There were small celebrations whenever IBM or its ilk released updated Linux drivers for enterprise computing lines. Slowly, but surely, open source began to eat the back-end thanks to the hardware manufacturers that saw the way the world was going.

As that happened, Microsoft doubled-down on its enterprise markets and released products that were good enough for its large customers. A rising tide lifts all boats, and their market capture was strong enough to help drive the company's results – combined with a lock on client enterprise machines, Office, home computing, and the Xbox. Yet, the cracks were already there.

Gradually, Microsoft lost the backend market. First to Linux, and then to Amazon and the LAMP-stack SaaS universe. Then they started losing the home market – first to Apple and then to Google and the mobile universe.

Commensurately, one of the Mac's greatest struggles around the same time also became its greatest enabler.

We've been here before with the great Apple Architecture Stall. The first one starting in 2003, when Apple released (with much fanfare) the G4 PowerBooks, iBooks, and iMacs, and also the G5 Mac Pros and Xserves.

If Steve Job's initial move in 1998 consolidated the hardware toward the vision of OS/X, five years later in 2003, the G4/G5 series of chips put the Mac hardware on better footing than its Intel counterparts. Software + hardware + design was a winning combination and Apple not only anchored its seat in the creative professional market, but also began capturing high-end consumers.

By mid-2005 however, the PowerPC architecture had stalled. IBM was no longer emphasising low-power PowerPC chips to feed the laptop line, and the multiprocessor workstation versions were no longer flogging their Intel Xeon counterparts. In fact, due to Intel's scale and vertical integration, the rest of hardware architecture ecosystem (memory, graphics, etc) began outstripping the PowerPC architecture. Apple was left with the worst of it at both ends. Low-end processors that failed to compete in performance and high-end processors that failed to compete on price.

The shift to the Intel architecture in 2006 was premeditated – going back to Jobs' NeXTStep operating system, which was written natively for Intel processors. By that time, not only did Apple have a software stack ready to run on Intel processors, but also hardware was fast enough to run legacy code from the PowerPC in an emulation layer.

Looking at the product update cycles, the entire product line was updated in 2006 – from iMacs, to Pros, to XServes, to iBooks to MacBooks. Within 12 months, Apple transitions from one computing architecture to another – and from one operating system (OS/X PPC to OS/X x86). Backing up to 2004 and 2005, Apple's sporadic and often random machine updates make sense. Design and software development were essentially frozen, while they prepped to shift the entire architecture to Intel.

From 2006 – 2013, we saw a great run of innovation. From the Core2s, to the Unibody format, to the Retina displays – and once you go Retina, you never go back. And on the iMac series, from a computer to the screen.

And most importantly, all while launching the iPhone, the iPad, and the App Store, and coming to dominate the global mobile device market in terms of economic value. It's worth keeping in mind that there are essentially two Apples – OS/X-based and iOS-based. It's also worth noting that Apple has intentionally – for the first time with iOS devices – controlled the production of the underlying hardware, thanks to ARM.

That's extremely relevant for a number of reasons, not in the least that the company has now been through 4 major architecture transitions: 680x0 > PPC > x86 > ARM. They started experimenting with ARM in the Newton days – and while the product was an abject failure, the learning about ARM proved priceless.

The other thing that Apple has been consistently doing is abstracting development environments away from the hardware environment. While that was always present with the human interface libraries and guidelines, it has apparently become more extreme with the introduction of Objective C and Swift. (To be fair, I am out of my depth when it comes to the topic. That is what I have gleaned from what I've read. Could be entirely off-base)

One of the linked pieces basically said that "Tim Cook doesn't care about the Mac and wants everyone to use iOS devices", which from an architectural stalling point makes sense. As Apple controls the hardware cycles on iOS, the iOS products come to market on a routine schedule – nearly like clockwork. While not always the most fundamental changed devices, the update cycle is now so reliable that the company has built its own business model around it – the Apple Refresh Programme. The supply chain is so tight, that Apple achieves retailer-like product refresh periods.

Now move back to the Mac, and we see again the architecture flagging. Apple introducing seemingly random features and extremely delayed hardware updates. Let's not even talk about the cylindrical MacPros, but the general updates to the MacBookPros and iMacs are evolutionary. Nice, but not worthy of writing home about.

Which speaks to one of two possibilities:

1) Apple has lost its way and is in the weeds. Tim Cook is a B2C CEO and wants iOS to run the world, and can't really be bothered about the Mac. Despite the fact that the MacOS may well be the finest desktop computing architecture designed to date.

2) Apple is preparing for another architecture transition to ARM processors. If that's the case, we see the same lag we saw before, which is two years of stalled / half-ass updates while the company prepares the transition from one architecture to another.

If the latter is the case, it represents the greatest shift in the hardware industry since Intel came to dominate chip design – that of Intel first consolidating and monopolising global processor market, and now looking at having that lead erased. Apple moving to ARM would see Intel going from the dominate supplier to a commodity parts producer.

Perhaps that move is already coming. The tea leaves seem to indicate something is up. First, the ARM acquisition by SoftBank, with the intention of doubling R&D funding. Ostensibly ahead of a boom in the IoT market. Secondly, Intel is now set to fab ARM processors. An obvious strategic move given the rise of mobile devices and stagnation of traditional PC sales.

However, if Apple really wanted to finish off Microsoft on the consumer end of the spectrum, one of its best options would be break the Intel x86 monopoly, leaving Intel split between a x86 house and an ARM house. That would certainly slow down the development of the x86 architecture even further, at a time when its unclear if Windows supports any other architecture.

Further, the experiments with the iPhone hardware architecture – especially the dual-speed dual cores of the 7 (two fast, two slow) would represent a step-change in mobile computing architecture. Currently, Intel processors (again, I'm out of my depth here) support shutting down parts of the chip when not in use, but that's a far cry from actually integrating two completely different speeds within the same processor.

Further, the shift to a single port – while massively inconvenient – shows that actually Apple may be fully honouring Job's simplicity vision rather than discarding it. The iPhone now has a single port – Lightning – and the Mac now has a single port – combined USB-C / Thunderbolt. (And a headphone jack, which is silly, but I suppose one can't have everything. If I would have done it, I would have left one USB A port on the new MacBook Pro as it would have saved a lot of grief).

So overall, my assessment here is that Apple is planning for one of three scenarios:

1) The first (most likely) is that they are preparing to shift the desktop / laptop architecture to ARM. That would not only represent a huge leap in terms of efficiency (as Intel has never been able to compete in mobile) as well as a consolidation of the hardware design teams. Mobile devices have 4 ARM cores. Laptops have 8-12. Desktops have 12-48. One single processor design team, with speed / performance determined by the number of cores. That alone would push Apple up the hardware curve again – essentially using in-house processor design across all its platforms.

To do that, the Pro world will be heavily impacted as the high-performance applications likely use direct processor instruction sets (especially for vector processing). We saw the same thing with the PPC, which required shifting from PPC-specific vector code, to x86 vector code. For Apple to seamlessly transition the MacOS to ARM, it would have to ensure that a true RISC instruction set could handle the performance requirements of a dedicated architecture.

I would gamble that they can, given that one of the pioneering features of iPhone hardware design has been breaking out software features into custom hardware features. The A chips for general processing. The M chips for motion processing. The Secure area for encryption processing.

On the last note, combining the architectures, would immediately bring some of the more advanced features of the iPhone to the MacOS nearly instantly. Siri. Differential Privacy. It would also enable iOS apps to run natively on the Mac. No more WhatsApp web – rather supreme convergence, where the MacOS and iOS bleed completely together.

That is a vision worth betting the farm on – so to speak – because at present, Apple remains dependent on Intel's update cycles for the Mac OS/X. Meaning that while it alone controls iOS updates, it's hindered by Intel for Mac OS/X.

As we've seen before, the last time Apple was hindered, it went quiet for two years and then literally updated the entire ecosystem around a new architecture. Some of the company's other decisions make sense in that light as well – such as downsizing the car programme and providing incremental iPhone and MacOS releases. In my mind's eye, I would like to imagine that Apple had a Facebook goes mobile moment (where Zuck said, down tools and go mobile). We may have seen Tim Cook say down tools, go ARM.

2) The second option is that Apple is going to focus solely on mobile, and is consolidating efforts away from the desktop. With the advent of IoT, 'mobile device' has an entirely new meaning. Not just phones and tablets, but cars, building control systems, watches, shoes, and everything else. Given that the company's primary profit driver is mobile devices, and the phenomenal competition in the space, it may decide that it doesn't want to fight a two-front war – MacOS and iOS – but rather focus on iOS.

If that's the case, one potential option would be to spin off the Mac, either into its own company, or to another hardware manufacturer. Think IBM and Lenovo with ThinkPads. While Apple doesn't need the cash (really), consolidating around a single operating system would enable to the company to do what IBM did – effectively cut-off one highly competitive low-value segment (laptops) and focus on one less competitive high-value segment (HPC and AI/Watson).

Looking at Apple's acquisition pattern, a few years ago, it went after ARM-related companies, and now it's going after AI-related companies. There don't seem to be hardly any acquisitions related to desktop/laptop lines.

This would be the opposite of Point 1, for if Point 1 is consolidation of iOS and MacOS, then Point 2 is divesture of the lower-value segment. It has the same effect of focusing the company on one effort, expect for in Point 1 that effort is a common hardware effort, and in Point 2, that effort is a common OS effort.

3) The third possibility is that – in fact – Apple has lost its way and become Balmer-era Microsoft. Extracting value from its massive ecosystem without providing any new innovation to customers.

If that is the case, then the company will remain divided down the centre between iOS and MacOS, with the former innovating quite a bit, and the latter innovating quite a bit less. Ostensibly, that is the point that the company is at today.

If I were to be forced to decide between these three, I would not choose Point 3, because Point 3 is a location, not a direction. In fact, value extraction represents the lack of direction, which is what Steve Blank asserts. But to make an inference based on the comparison, one must first ask if Microsoft was ever innovative in the first place? If Bill Gates was actually an innovative leader.

While he was an innovator – for sure – Microsoft's rise to power came from its earliest contract, licensing code to IBM engineers to run on IBM machines, because IBM was a hardware company and didn't like software (or whatever the story was). That was Microsoft's original business model, and remained it's business model all the way through to the XBox – its first labelled hardware computing product (AFAIK).

Only now do we see Microsoft moving into Surface Tablets, Holo Lens, and all the rest. Like 50 years after the company started. So for half a century, the company focused on its original business model – writing and licensing software to run on predominantly Intel-powered hardware. First the OS. Then Office. Then Enterprise. Then Web. And only when forced by a near-collapse into irrelevance does Microsoft adopt the model that Apple adopted 50 years ago – which is complete integration of hardware and software into a single product.

Thus, I am not sure it is appropriate to compare Jobs and Cook to Ballmer and Gates, for beyond their positions in the organisation structure, Jobs was a hardware visionary while Gates was a software visionary. Ballmer may well also have been a software-licencing visionary, but he was certainly not a hardware visionary. Rather than only looking at Ballmer as Gates' successor, we also must look at Gates as Ballmer's predecessor.

It now remains to be seen if Cook is a hardware visionary. For a few reasons, I think that he is – and we will know within the next 18 months.

First and foremost is the trend of Silicon Valley companies producing their own hardware. Both Google and Facebook design their own network equipment and have it produced specifically for them – although some of that is also open-sourced now. Witness the morass of Cisco in the face of this – when the largest companies in the world produce their own networking equipment.

That speaks to the consolidation of hardware and software (Point 1 above) not the divestiture of it (Point 2 above). That we now embark on a journey where hardware and software become inseparable – the world powered by custom silicon chips, licensed from a common library.

That's a huge point, and may well sit behind the ARM acquisition as well as the rocky future fortunes of Intel. I don't need someone to design and built chips, that I then buy to use in my systems. I need someone to design a common architecture and language framework, so that there is a common group of people that can use it, and then I will adapt that architecture to my use, and have it manufactured by a commodity producer.

Secondly, is the shift toward machine learning and artificial intelligence. There will be perhaps no greater shift in computing during my lifetime than this. While the common logic of AI may be scary drones and the Terminator, the reality is that AI is showing huge benefits in far more mundane tasks. Google reduced data centre energy use by 30% in a year using machine learning. Machine learning powers predictive texting.

What happens when we apply AI and machine learning to computer design? If machine learning first and foremost is going to drive efficiency, does that mean that we can then use mobile hardware to power desktop OS applications? If I need to build a vector processor capable of managing 4K/5K video, and I want to build that from ARM chips, can machine learning help me to do that?

Given those two advances, I would gamble that Apple is lining up for it's greatest risk and opportunity, which is taking the Mac off Intel processors, and moving it onto its own in-house processors. In doing that, it will finally converge the MacOS and iOS architectures. In doing that, it will reshape Intel as a company, and may well subjugate Microsoft to a niche producer.

While the Surface computer is great, and the Holo Lens is great, and the Xbox is great, Microsoft is now assembling the same kind of niche content production ecosystem that Apple dominated in the 80s and 90s with video and music. The primary uses for the HoloLens are likely industrial / medical for some time, and lets not forget that Google is very aggressively playing in Microsoft's space already. The Tango launch looks like a more relevant AR platform than the HoloLens.

That's not to say Microsoft isn't coming back and making strong moves, but rather that it's chief competitor is not Apple, but Google.

Meanwhile, Apple fans will wait for 12-18 months to see if Apple is about to reinvent itself again, or if it has lost the plot – because they have before. While I foresee them reinventing themselves, it's also worth noting that the stakes and the risks have never been higher.

Steve Job's original vision was Apple as a brand. The company has completely changed the hardware and software systems that underpin that brand multiple times... many many times if you really think about. So the core requirement for Apple to continue its dominance as the world's most innovative hardware company seems to be 1) taking risks on moving the brand to new hardware and software architectures, and 2) managing that transition successfully.

We will now see if Tim Cook can pull that off.
posted by nickrussell at 8:11 AM on November 2, 2016 [76 favorites]


nickrussell: i want to believe
posted by entropicamericana at 8:22 AM on November 2, 2016 [5 favorites]


Re: RAM, I am typing this on a Lenovo ThinkPad w/ 32GB of RAM. It ain't thin, but it delivers the goods. And it has an Apple sticker on the back, for irony!
posted by grumpybear69 at 8:23 AM on November 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


MSG to vim users in this thread: it is very easy to remap your left caps lock key to Esc. It is relatively easy to remap your left caps lock key to Esc when you press it by itself and to Ctrl if you press it with something else (if you're into evil-mode).
posted by Riton at 8:33 AM on November 2, 2016


grumpybear69 What's the battery life on that thing, though, and how much does it weigh?

Another issue with the MacBook Pro is that it feels like a lot of people complaining about the RAM and thinness are people who use their laptops as desktops, plugged into a screen and peripherals at a desk, 98% of the time. Maybe it's projection, 'cause I do the same thing with my mid-2012 MacBook Pro (the last one without the retina display). I do this because when I got my MacBook Pro, I was living in a situation where I didn't have space for a desktop computer. If I was to replace my MacBook Pro now, I probably wouldn't get the new models because my needs are better served with a desktop machine (say a 5K iMac), and using an iPad for any computing I need to do on the go. (Your mileage may vary, no Interocitor parts can be replaced, offer void in Utah.)

If you need to carry a computer with you to and from an office, you'll appreciate pretty quickly a lighter, more portable computer. I had a job where I started by hoofing my 4.5 pound 15" MacBook Pro in, until they bought me a 13" Retina MacBook Pro. That 1.5 pound weight difference was _huge_. Apple's clearly selling laptops that are designed for portability as a feature, not necessarily as a compact desktop replacement you can lug around if you need to. If optimum portability isn't a concern, then sure, go with an inch-thick ThinkPad that weighs six pounds, lasts 3 hours on a full charge, but has all the power of a desktop machine. Laptops, by nature, have to have a compromise. Performance, battery life, or weight---choose two. Apple's optimizing their laptop lines for battery life and weight, sacrificing some performance aspects.

Now, this does open the frustration of Apple not updating their desktop line, including the three year old Mac Pro. Noted and acknowledged, and boy howdy is that frustrating. I'm not in the market for a new computer, period, but it would still be nice to know Apple cares about the desktop for when it's time for me to upgrade. And if they do, maybe they'll have a Wireless keyboard with a Touch Bar on it to sell alongside.

Riton: Also, the Touch Bar shows an Escape key when it's not being used by an app. Remapping Caps Lock to escape is cool, though, because Caps Lock sucks.
posted by SansPoint at 8:45 AM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


By any measure, USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 are better connectors---symmetrical (so you can plug your device in without rotating the plug three times), smaller, and faster. Dongles are inconvenient, yes, but they're also temporary.

The major surprise to me was the lack of a port to enable directly plugging the phone into the new Macbook Pros. It speaks to a lack of coordination between the hardware groups in Apple, the kind of smokestacking that was poison in the old IBM and Microsofts. It also speaks to leadership that isn't making the leads for those projects work together, but instead allowing two houses divided, or at least disconnected.
posted by bonehead at 8:52 AM on November 2, 2016 [11 favorites]


The Lenovo X1 Yoga is the target platform for the product that I'm working on so we have a bunch of them as test rigs and it's a nice machine. The body is still pretty plasticy but the display is as nice or nicer than the MacBook I've got sitting next to it and I get almost six hours of battery life out of it.
posted by octothorpe at 8:54 AM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


The major surprise to me was the lack of a port to enable directly plugging the phone into the new Macbook Pros.

Although, granted, they could effectively work around this by including a USB-C to Lightning cable with every MacBook and MacBook Pro sold. (Although of course they won't do that, nor will they probably switch iPhones over to USB-C.)
posted by fifthrider at 8:57 AM on November 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


bonehead Packing only a USB-C cable packed with the iPhone 7 would either inconvenience the millions of Windows and older Mac users who have USB-A computers... and everyone with USB-A chargers, of which there are a _lot_. Right now, this only inconveniences the people with the newer computers with USB-C, which is a smaller amount of people. Ideally, there would be one of each, or maybe a USB-A to USB-C adapter (reverse that depending on which cable gets packed in.) I wouldn't be surprised if the iPhone 7S or whatever they call the next one comes with a Lightning-to-USB C cable though.

And remember, an iPhone can sync over Wi-Fi.
posted by SansPoint at 9:01 AM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


iPhones are designed to work independently of Macs these days - music and photo syncing and backup can now all be done via the delights of iCloud and Apple Music - so Apple isn't expecting you to ever need to connect them together. Apple very likely considers this a non-problem.
posted by grahamparks at 9:03 AM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


nickrussell: i want to believe

Not really, because the post is greatly descriptive. But I'll fault its classic framing of hardware/software integration excluding the factors of licensing, yet subscribe to their ARM prediction. And...

...lets not forget that Google is very aggressively playing in Microsoft's space already.

The joke I heard so long ago now was Because It's Not Google followed by Jobs' last wishes to "go nuclear" for the "betrayal" of Nexus.

Has anyone noted how the wars between Google and Facebook changed image searches over the last four years? Facebook succeeded in draining the web of what I'll call "personal spaces". G+ knew it would happen. Facebook achieved, somewhat, what Gates attempted with .net.

Can anyone cite the year predictive text became a feature on cell phones? AI will extend the feature, but memory size enabled its first implementation. I do hope I live to see the first AI killer app, but tend to dismiss most predictions.

Tim Cook strikes me as the kind of person who's never memorized a poem. But I agree with the analysis of an iOS emphasis and that a powerful laptop as a kind of workstation is pretty doomed. How well it protects my analog loop hangs by a thread. This thin and light stuff as design imperatives is not poetry, it's muscle-y production design boredom.

The 4 ports will do everything to give a machine the appearance of a tethered spider or octopus.

I'll stop before I go off on Blue-tooth licensing and its chokehold versus the license wars of "casting".
posted by lazycomputerkids at 9:03 AM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


Great comment nickrussell! Cook is probably betting the farm on everything going mobile and ARM, so either we'll reach a point where everyone just plugs their phone into a hub with a monitor and larger keyboard for a desktop computer or the mobile chips will just evolve into the brains of new desktop/laptop machines.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:11 AM on November 2, 2016


Personally, I'm cautious but excited about the Touch Bar. Not least is because of Bret Victor, who used to work at Apple in the mid-2000s on UI design. Apparently Apple had working prototypes of all kinds of futuristic UIs, including VR and Minority Report-style hand-waving (which apparently makes your arms hurt).

During the Apple event, he tweeted:
"Things we prototyped years and years ago at Apple continue to trickle out."
"almost exactly eight years from concept to production"

Then, seeing the response to the Touch Bar, he tweeted:
“Pretty sure most people will find contextual controls like two-finger scrolling -- after a year, any computer without them will feel broken.
Pretty sure that moving a mouse pointer to an onscreen toolbar will soon feel as bizarre and anachronistic as manually dragging a scrollbar.”


Every time I've seen him talk about UI, he seems to really understand what the important goals should be, so I trust him. Of course, this is something he helped invent—so grain of salt and all, but dang it could be neat!
posted by Maecenas at 9:12 AM on November 2, 2016 [5 favorites]


Look, obviously we all know USB-C is the future, and at a macro sense that any peripheral connector lifespan is finite.

But don't pretend that dongles for this particular laptop are a temporary thing. USB-A has been around nearly two decades. It won't vanish in the useful life of this laptop. 99% of these new 2016 rMBPs will spend their entire lives using at least one dongle, and that's bullshit.

As Marco Arment noted, it's not the presence, or even dominance of, USB-C here that's a problem. It's the premature abandonment of the existing standard.

Likewise, the argument that "Apple always forces forward" rings hollow here, because the abandonment of prior standards (floppies, integral optical drives) came when most of the market had moved beyond them. For example, I bought a G3 without a floppy, and reflexively also bought the external floppy drive -- that I then never, ever used, because floppies were really dead by then already.

Apple of 2016 is aggressively shedding ports that are still in global, constant use. I won't buy an iPhone 7 because I refuse to take that usability step backward -- Grado and Etymotic probably won't make Lightning-native headphones, and even if they did why replace the perfectly great ones I have already that also plug into everything else I own? (And no, I'm not interested in rechargeable headphones.)

The laptop thing is even worse, because you can't even BUY a USB-C hard drive at Best Buy today (ie for Time Machine). It's bananas.
posted by uberchet at 9:17 AM on November 2, 2016 [11 favorites]


I'm going to be kind of an ass-- unless you were using a joystick as a mouse before PARC and Jobs set them loose, your UI idea is really old.

I mean I saw Ghost in the Shell too, but I'm pretty impressed a physical key and shortcut can gain a response when a point 'n' click doesn't and I'll be really impressed if the "Touch Bar"'s (really?) integration is seamless...like part of me thinks it's impossible on a first run.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 9:21 AM on November 2, 2016


uberchet No matter when you choose to abandon an older standard, it's always too soon. The longer that standard has been around, the harder it is to untrench. You can still buy a desktop computer with a 3.5" floppy drive if you want. As I said upthread, transitions are always a pain in the keister, but it's temporary pain.

And you can buy a USB-C hard drive from Best Buy.
posted by SansPoint at 9:22 AM on November 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


Packing only a USB-C cable packed with the iPhone 7 would either inconvenience the millions of Windows and older Mac users who have USB-A computers... and everyone with USB-A chargers, of which there are a _lot_.

So why not simply make the phone a USB-C connector if that's Apple's bet for the future anyway? Or make the computer compatible with the shipping lightning cable? This is exactly the sort of shit Jobs would not have allowed to happen. Either the new-generation MBPs would have had a mix of A and C or the iPhone 7s would have shipped end to end with C-compatible ports. Make your old MBP owners deal with dongles so that they are incentivized to upgrade to the new standard.

Instead, consumers that want to upgrade are facing dongles for the life of their phones, anywhere from 2-3 years. That's really kludgey. It's not a great thing when your most loyal customers are forced to deal with internal issues between groups that's can't come up with a common plan.
posted by bonehead at 9:39 AM on November 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


"No matter when you choose to abandon an older standard, it's always too soon."

As I said, that's not really the case.

An examination of real-world usage rates of floppy drives and optical drives when Apple moved off those standards will bear this out. Sure, you can still buy a floppy, but I haven't needed to use one in 16 or 17 years, so I'm not sure what that proves.

This really isn't a case of "people complain about progress and they're always wrong." This is a case of Apple forcing a transition well ahead of market needs, and in a way that makes the new options materially less compatible than their predecessors. A phone without a headphone jack is a shittier phone than one that includes one, all other things being equal. A laptop released in 2016 should include native support for the dominant bus, even if it's a single port.

It's interesting your search yielded a drive when mine didn't, but it has a price premium -- and, more to the point, the "Drive Interface" selector on BestBuy.com doesn't even have USB-C as an option. Good luck helping your friends find their new Time Machine drives.

Releasing a pro laptop with no native support for USB-A at this point is absurdly premature in a way no prior Apple move begins to approach. Releasing a new phone and a new laptop in the same year that cannot actually connect with each other without an adapter is just hilariously bad.
posted by uberchet at 9:40 AM on November 2, 2016 [7 favorites]


99% of these new 2016 rMBPs will spend their entire lives using at least one dongle, and that's bullshit.

You just need one hub plugged into one USB-C port. Someone linked a small, nice looking one above with an SD slot and everything.

I don't understand the hate for USB-C, probably the biggest problem with laptops in my pro world is inconsistent power over USB-A. As a photographer I could care less about losing the SD slot, pros mostly shoot tethered these days. Power over USB-A is currently so inconsistent I use a dongle plugged into AC/battery packs to stabilize it.

I mean I'm a little upset because I need five figures worth of new computers and these aren't that huge of an upgrade but they'll still work and I'll still buy them. It does make you worry about what the future of the Mac brand is though.
posted by bradbane at 9:46 AM on November 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


bonehead The same Steve Jobs who released a whole new line of computers in 1998 with no legacy ports at all would have released a laptop with a mix of legacy and modern ports? Whatever you say.

Someone's gonna be inconvenienced with changing the plug on Lightning cables. Do you inconvenience the millions of people with older computers and charger bricks that use USB-A, or do you inconvenience the people who can drop $1800 to $4000 on a new laptop? The latter are more likely to complain, but despite the volume, they're a much smaller group.

uberchet I remember when the first iMac dropped in 1998. There were three options for removable storage at the time: floppy disks, various high-capacity disk formats (Zip, Jaz, SuperDisc), or CD-Rs---and the original iMac didn't have a CD Burner. The first USB Thumb Drives didn't hit the market until late 2000. It was an inconvenience to be sure. My High School bought a bunch of iMacs, and then bought a whole bunch of USB SuperDisc Drives so people could use their floppy disks from home with them. It was the only way to make it through that interregnum until portable media could catch up.

Until there's a mainstream computing device with USB-C as the only option, companies aren't going to make USB-C devices en masse. We're finally getting there with Apple's USB-C transition. It'll take two to three years, and using dongles in the interim, but that's how these things go.
posted by SansPoint at 9:51 AM on November 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


Releasing a new phone and a new laptop in the same year that cannot actually connect with each other without an adapter is just hilariously bad.

Hear, hear! and Haruumph!!! The latest foreshadow (so I won't cuss for an hour about iTunes) was a "magic" mouse that required the latest osX despite doing nothing special, without a charging indicator, and recharged by a right-angle configuration. And my 2012 mbp syncs so well with my iPad pro...oooooh, you wouldn't believe.

And what's been said about Jobs is true, irt ports-- his first team fought him on ports. The last time Jobs' Apple cared about how a working computer looks was the ]['s rainbow serial cable-- a very young man.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 9:56 AM on November 2, 2016


Releasing a pro laptop with no native support for USB-A at this point is absurdly premature in a way no prior Apple move begins to approach. Releasing a new phone and a new laptop in the same year that cannot actually connect with each other without an adapter is just hilariously bad.
Not really. It's rather obvious if you think about it from a market perspective.

1) It's probably rare that someone buys both a Mac and an iPhone together, as most iPhones are rooted in contract plans. Hence, the people who would buy both a Mac and an iPhone together are likely out of plan, and therefore buying an unlocked iPhone at £700. The combination of the two will likely be over £3,000. Then adding a £25 cable becomes <1% of the price. Basically, if you're the kind of person that is spending £3,000 on a new set up, £25 more is largely irrelevant.

2) If you already have an iPhone and you're buying a new Mac, again, you're spending £2,250 on a new computer that has a different port configuration. Again, the £25 cable represents a 2% increase in cost, which isn't really a show-stopper if you're already in possession of a premium phone and are now buying a premium laptop.

3) They would already have feedback data from the MacBook, which only includes the one port. Based on the decision to not include any USB-A ports on the MacBook, likely either A) the market doesn't really care (see the next point) or B) people simply buy the cable for £25. Regardless, they didn't go into this world blind. Rather, they introduced a new product over a year ago that already started the behaviour the change and provided feedback.

4) Generally, I would surmise that fewer and fewer people actually plug their iPhone into their machines. Quite a few people I know never plug their iPhones into their machines, preferring to do everything through iCloud. I plug my iPhone into my machine, however, many people do not.

5) The other option would have been to include both a USB C cable and a USB A cable with the iPhones, which doesn't make economic sense as the vast majority of people would not have reason to use the USB C cable. Therefore, while convenient, that option doesn't really make a lot of sense. Further, the way most people use iPhone cables is to plug them into USB charges of all kinds (from Apple transformers, to 3rd party transformers, to TVs, to god-knows-what), and so therefore keeping iPhones coming with USB A cables maximises compatibility with the existing ecosystem that people actually do use.

So I don't really buy the idea that it was a complete misfire that the phone and computer use different connectors, given that the actual negative market impact:

1) People who buy a new MacBook Pro
2) and regularly hook their phone up to their machine
3) and don't want to buy a £25 cable

All three of those conditions have to be true for someone to be truly angry about this. That being said, I do think it would have been easier to include 3 USB C ports and 1 USB A port on the new MacBook Pro, but then again, that doesn't force the behaviour change as much.
posted by nickrussell at 9:58 AM on November 2, 2016 [4 favorites]


Someone's gonna be inconvenienced with changing the plug on Lightning cables. Do you inconvenience the millions of people with older computers and charger bricks that use USB-A, or do you inconvenience the people who can drop $1800 to $4000 on a new laptop?

This is the same Apple that has changed the iPhone cable once already, on the other end. I don't think swapping the USB-A for a USB-C would be even that disruptive.

You're likely right, the old Apple wouldn't have had multiple generations of ports. But I'd bet they totally would have forced a USB cable/charger upgrade with the iPhones. Apple just works, and dongles aren't part of that philosophy.
posted by bonehead at 9:59 AM on November 2, 2016


@SansPoint: People "use laptops like desktops" because they are, at this point, almost equally powerful, at least on the PC side. Plus they are portable, which is a necessity when you travel for work or, as I do, work alternately from home or at a workspace.

For what I do, which requires running a VM with 16GB of RAM (and therefore a machine with substantially more than that), the new MBP provides exactly zero value vs the previous gen MBP, at least according to all of the Mac users at my company.

I have the extended battery (because I can swap them out!) which gives me around 6 hours at full blast and plenty more if I'm just web-browsing. It weighs a lot.
posted by grumpybear69 at 10:00 AM on November 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


Was fixing to dive in after the announcements, but those insanely high prices for MacBooks with the "Touché Bar" are going to keep me hanging onto my 2010 MacBook Air.
posted by porn in the woods at 10:04 AM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


All three of those conditions have to be true for someone to be truly angry about this.

All that's true, but your cases are also all full of stupid little legacy and compatibility gotchas. None of this is insurmountable.

But is does say to me that Apple's marketing strategy here is rather incoherent. Why hadn't they thought the phone/macbook connectivity issues through better? It's like the phone people are are saying "it's ok to still use A," while the computer side is saying "no you need to be using C." They seem to be in conflict.
posted by bonehead at 10:05 AM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


bonehead The 30-pin Dock connector lasted a decade, from the 3rd generation iPod, to the iPhone 5. They sold adapters to go from 30-pin to Lightning, and still do. And people still grumble, despite Lightning being better, and the inconvenience being temporary.

grumpybear69 Right, but a lighter laptop with longer battery life is going to be more portable by definition. Problem is, you gotta sacrifice something for maximizing portability, and in this case, it's performance. It's still as powerful as (some) desktops, but not all. You have a use case that kinda precludes Apple laptop hardware.
posted by SansPoint at 10:06 AM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


Problem is, you gotta sacrifice something for maximizing portability, and in this case, it's performance.

oxymoronic pffft...it's a pro. I'm with you on ports, but defending the memory trade-off sounds like Genius Bar guff.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 10:10 AM on November 2, 2016 [6 favorites]


grumpybear69 As an addendum, if you ever needed to maximize portability, perhaps what could work is switching from a VM on your laptop to an instance of whatever you need to run on a server in the cloud, and connecting over VNC. I don't know if that's feasible for what you do, but it looks like you have the solution that works.
posted by SansPoint at 10:10 AM on November 2, 2016


They sold adapters to go from 30-pin to Lightning, and still do.

The difference being that Apple has traditionally sold dongles to keep old equipment running, as an interim measure. In this case, it's the new equipment, the MDP, that needs the dongle. That's backwards from the usual Apple philosophy of embracing the future.
posted by bonehead at 10:12 AM on November 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


lazycomputerkids There aren't pros who don't want to carry six pounds worth of computer around? And, as noted elsewhere, the mobile Intel chipset that would support 32 GB in the MBP form factor isn't available yet. Apple waited long enough to release this iteration.
posted by SansPoint at 10:13 AM on November 2, 2016


bonehead Six of one, half a dozen of the other. If you need a specific peripheral to do your job, the dongle let's you upgrade the computer and keep the peripheral around longer.
posted by SansPoint at 10:14 AM on November 2, 2016


It's not hate for the presence of USB-C. It's hate for the complete absence of USB-A.

Whatever Sanspoint's point is re: the 1998 iMac, it's important to note that the iMac wasn't the entire Mac line. Apple at this point doesn't offer a laptop that can plug into anything on anyone's desk without at least one adapter.

Again, that is bullshit.

Nickrussell:
Not really.
Yes, really. That's an INSANELY tortured line of reasoning. Nobody would take the relatively muted response to a one-port laptop for low-demand users as carte blanche to remove ALL currently used peripheral ports from the ENTIRE LINE 18 months later. I mean, that's laughable.

Travelers plug their phones into their laptops OFTEN, because it means you get to piggyback the power connection even if you're not syncing that way. You can't do that now unless you fork over for an adapter. And it's not the COST of the adapter. It's the sheer fiddly, failure-prone, incredibly inelegant and utterly unnecessary inconvenience of it that galls people who do this sort of thing for a living.

Apple, in 2016, is pretty clearly in "fuck you; you'll probably still buy it" mode. It's often been true in the past that the faithful would grumble AND still end up buying, but it's not clear to me that's true anymore. I'm a year away from migrating, but a 16GB RAM ceiling is tough (no, remoting into somewhere else isn't an answer, because bandwidth on the road is usually shitty). The price point is ridiculous vs. comparable machines from Dell. The loss of any meaningful port is insulting. Mac-like was supposed to mean elegant and highly usable, but no part of carrying a bag full of dongles is either of those things -- and every single traveler will need such a bag for the useful life of these machines.

(I really sorta wonder what, if anything, Apple could do that nickrussell or sanspoint would consider a mistake.)
posted by uberchet at 10:16 AM on November 2, 2016 [9 favorites]


Maybe there's a problem with the "MBP form factor" then.
posted by Flashman at 10:17 AM on November 2, 2016


uberchet Here's a couple recent Apple mistakes: skipping processor generations, especially for desktop Macs. Not updating the new Mac Pro... ever. Raising prices on the new MacBooks. Poor optimization of watchOS for performance. Not shipping the new Pros in gold and rose gold.
posted by SansPoint at 10:19 AM on November 2, 2016


I've felt that Apple lost the plot when they announced the watch. As a creative professional my last two Mac purchases have been agonizing. I bought the last version of the MacBook Pro but before I pulled the trigger I did something I've never done: I looked at Windows machines. I was extremely impressed with the surface tablets but I just couldn't bring myself to buy one. I really wanted a tablet and looked at the big iPads but there's no way to run Adobe's apps in a professional capacity. Sure you can run an iOS version of Photoshop but forget opening 110mb raw files and doing retouching. I'm also one of the few people who bought the newest Mac Pro. Setup of the new machine was a fiasco because it doesn't ship with a wired keyboard and I couldn't find a way to connect my Apple wireless keyboard on startup. I called AppleCare and they explained I'd need to buy a wired keyboard. I literally had to order an Amazon essentials keyboard to set up a $4500 machine.

I honestly believe Apple used creatives to sell their products for years to create street cred and then once the iPhone hit they turned their backs on us. And that's fine but it's the creatives that identify what's new and cool and covetable.
posted by photoslob at 10:20 AM on November 2, 2016 [7 favorites]


Basically, if you're the kind of person that is spending £3,000 on a new set up, £25 more is largely irrelevant exactly the kind of nickel-and-diming, doesn't-just-fucking-work bullshit that Apple's modern brand was built on explicitly avoiding.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 10:20 AM on November 2, 2016 [16 favorites]


I'm holding on to my current MBP as long as possible (I keep replacing bits as they fall off) because it's the last model with a network jack. I'm OK with having odd requirements and suffering for it, but it's been five years and apart from Retina (nice but I can live without it), they haven't dangled anything in front of me that makes me think "man, time to upgrade". That's a long time in computer years without any real forward movement.
posted by Leon at 10:27 AM on November 2, 2016


Flashman Then it's a problem with the laptop form factor in general. A laptop is limited by definition. Those limits are higher than they used to be, but not completely lifted. Would you trade a half pound of weight for 16 more GB of RAM? Maybe, but Apple isn't. You have to decide if that means switching or not.
posted by SansPoint at 10:29 AM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


Apple waited long enough to release this iteration.
Yes, yes they did. Motorola redux!

Maybe there's a problem with the "MBP form factor" then.
Thinnest/Lightest "to date/on the market" as stated at the expo was factually incorrect and I couldn't agree more citing form factor over performance is just strange. Their balance is an achievement, not justifying sacrifices.

Oh, no one can be blamed for the watches...their appeal (novel platform) and global market was just too tempting. Analog/digital watches are sold on every corner of the world. They've tanked big-time, but no one (that I read) predicted it by terms of price point and the interface of motion detection is just too new.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 10:30 AM on November 2, 2016


skipping processor generations, especially for desktop Macs

Yes, this is pretty fucked-up. I remember during Jobs' era, Apple was happy to quietly release refreshed computers that were basically just spec bumps and nothing else new.

Poor optimization of watchOS for performance.

Not sure what you mean here. The first two OSes were focused on battery life above anything else. watchOS 3.0 introduced more power and 3.1 battery optimizations. My Series 2 watch usually finishes the day with 60–70% battery life or more. So basically, this is the usual "don't buy first gen Apple products" rule, which is nothing new.
posted by entropicamericana at 10:30 AM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


entropicamericans On watchOS 3.1, I get insanely fast app performance, and end my day at 70-80% battery. On watchOS 2, I ended my day at the same battery, but apps were unusable.
posted by SansPoint at 10:33 AM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


Apple, in 2016, is pretty clearly in "fuck you; you'll probably still buy it" mode.

Uhmm...you have seen...MamaHuhu's Apple Tuhao, no?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZ5iR7v0Qg4 ?
posted by lazycomputerkids at 10:34 AM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


If you miss the ESC key, you just need to build yourself a vim clutch.
posted by octothorpe at 10:35 AM on November 2, 2016 [9 favorites]


If your gotcha use case for plugging your phone into your computer is for the time that you are on a plane and must have both devices charging at once, and that that happens so frequently that using an adapter in that case is totally unacceptable, I think Apple aren't kicking themselves too hard over this decision.
posted by Space Coyote at 10:38 AM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


Sanspoint:
You have to decide if that means switching or not.
First, that really sounds like something an Apple salesman would say.

Second, either Apple thinks they know how many folks will see these limitations and switch, and that the answer is "very few," or Apple just doesn't care because the whole Mac line is so tiny vs. mobile.

Neither option bodes well for people who need actual professional-grade equipment.
posted by uberchet at 10:41 AM on November 2, 2016


uberchet I'm saying everything comes with compromises. If staying in the Mac ecosystem is worth spending more and dealing with a lighter, but less powerful laptop than the alternatives with other operating systems, fine. Switching has a compromise. Not updating has a compromise. There is no perfect solution, so you have to choose your trade offs, and so does every computer maker.
posted by SansPoint at 10:46 AM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


If your gotcha use case...

pffft...it's not gotcha, it's a common habituation that's been eliminated. Which isn't unexpected, but lamentable. Powerful machines once sold themselves on what options they provided, but now user experiences are all about corporate channeling income streams and the frickin' cloud...it's all thin appliances for the "first" world's future and, for the remaining populations, gated portals.

I feel like I should address some "defenses" with, sonny...
posted by lazycomputerkids at 10:46 AM on November 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


I use an external keyboard and a trackpad. The new touchpad is useless to me. The underlying performance of the CPU, GPU and memory are not enough of a boost to justify the upgrade. The only thing that is compelling is the ability to run more monitors at a higher resolution.

Two reasons I'm staying with Mac and not switching to a linux environment. First iOS development is a decent portion of my income and so I'm basically stuck with Mac. Second Mac's have proven to be super durable and long lived compared to the PC's I've owned.
posted by humanfont at 10:47 AM on November 2, 2016


If your gotcha use case for plugging your phone into your computer is for the time that you are on a plane and must have both devices charging at once, and that that happens so frequently that using an adapter in that case is totally unacceptable

I travel around a week per month for work. I wouldn't even call that a really high level of travel compared to some of the folks I know (sales, field engineers to name two categories I deal with a lot). I plug my phone into my laptop all the time, to charge and to act as my internet connection. Having extra shit, just means having extra shit to lose or forget at home. It's not a deal breaker but it is a pain in the ass to have to buy stuff at the airport Best Buy vending machine. And our travel reimbursement folks don't like me claiming for adapters all the time either. I spend a significant amount of time trying to make my IT needs as streamlined and simple as possible.
posted by bonehead at 10:48 AM on November 2, 2016 [5 favorites]


octothorpe: But what will you plug that vim clutch into? It's not USB-C!
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 10:49 AM on November 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


I spend a significant amount of time trying to make my IT needs as streamlined and simple as possible.
Using a Mac used to be a slam dunk choice for that reason alone. That's clearly not the case now.
posted by uberchet at 10:51 AM on November 2, 2016


You don't need an adapter to connect the iPhone if you use a USB-C to Lightning cable. Of course if you have a separate wall charger, it would have to support USB-C as well if you wanted to use the same cable.

That said, after seeing the details of the new macs, I'm glad I bought a refurbished macbook pro a few months ago rather than wait.
posted by exogenous at 10:52 AM on November 2, 2016


The only thing that is compelling is the ability to run more monitors at a higher resolution.

Amen. And when I can "cast" what I'm surfing from a pad to two and three projected monitors around my workspace, I'll die a happy man. Can anyone talk about Apple TV's failed casting innovations and the licensing wars? Oh, you signed an NDA...never mind.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 10:53 AM on November 2, 2016


bonehead You've got three options, then.

1) Don't upgrade. Wait a year and see how it all shakes out.
2) Upgrade and buy a USB-C cable or a dongle.
3) Upgrade and buy a battery case for your phone so it lasts longer on trips.
posted by SansPoint at 10:56 AM on November 2, 2016


3) Upgrade and buy a battery case for your phone so it lasts longer on trips.

As 100% of the developing global market does.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 10:59 AM on November 2, 2016


I'm pretty sure he knows exactly what his options are, Sanspoint -- and he's got one you didn't mention, which is to just abandon the platform.

When the iPhone 7 was introduced without a headphone jack, I was pretty irritated, and for the first time I did NOT upgrade on my 2-year cycle. I felt stuck, though, because I didn't really want to deal with Android and MacOS, which would give up a bunch of the integration that makes the shared platform usable.

Now that the new laptops are here, and so fundamentally user-hostile, maybe my phone choice just got a lot easier, too.
posted by uberchet at 11:02 AM on November 2, 2016


I can't for the life of me figure out the rationale for ditching MagSafe

1) With the switch to USB-C, you can plug the power adapter into any of the 4 (or 2 in the case of the touch bar-less MBP) USB-C ports. It gets rid of some awkward situations where you have to swing the power cable around your computer to plug into the MagSafe. I guess the downside is that not only do you lose the magsafe, you're occupying one of the ports just to charge the computer.

2) With USB-C, you can plug in a supported monitor (or hub) into a USB-C port that can provide power as well as additional ports on the monitor or hub all with just a single cable. This gets rid of the slightly awkward solution of the Thunderbolt display where the display had to provide a separate magsafe adapter to power the computer.
posted by gyc at 11:02 AM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


Neither of those address the actual benefit of MagSafe, which was "keep your laptop from being jerked off the table when someone trips over your power cable."
posted by uberchet at 11:04 AM on November 2, 2016 [6 favorites]


1) Don't upgrade. Wait a year and see how it all shakes out.
2) Upgrade and buy a USB-C cable or a dongle.
3) Upgrade and buy a battery case for your phone so it lasts longer on trips.

Or - and I can't believe I'm saying this - go Plus. I've had to resort to charging my iPhones in airports when traveling, but since going 7+, that's a non-issue. Even after using GPS and FlightUpdate and TripIt and maps, I ended a travel day two timezones over at 25% battery.
posted by RedOrGreen at 11:05 AM on November 2, 2016


What's the equivalent of magsafe in the rest of the industry? Somebody must have something?
posted by Leon at 11:07 AM on November 2, 2016


Leon Nope. Nothing, but if you do have a device that charges via USB-C, Griffin sells a breakway USB-C power dongle.

(MORE DONGLES! NOOOOOO!)
posted by SansPoint at 11:09 AM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


MagSafe-- was on par with the invention of the zipper. /hyperbole, but just barely

And it's licensing...justify trade-offs all you like. A magnetically configured usb-c wasn't possible and that's a shame.

Dongles are as unwieldy as cables and the disconnect (to me) is that my working computer is tethered all to hell. All the fancy videos of an untethered mbp are just patronizing. The contradiction is clear: Huge through-puts, but compromised memory.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 11:10 AM on November 2, 2016


I dunno, my old ThinkPad has a regular old barrel plug and when someone trips over the cord (usually me) it just falls out, no biggie. The connector is beefy enough that it seems to be able to take it without a problem. I suppose if you managed to catch it at a really shitty angle there might be an issue but in practice I've had this machine for four years and it's survived probably hundreds of cord-trips without flinching.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 11:11 AM on November 2, 2016


RedOrGreen I'm genuinely torn on what to do next year with my iPhone between going up to the Plus or moving back down to a 4" model (that I assume will replace the iPhone SE).
posted by SansPoint at 11:15 AM on November 2, 2016


Hey, I'm wrong! Thanks for that Griffin job, SansPoint.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 11:16 AM on November 2, 2016


lazycomputerkids Caveat: the model I linked to is only power-rated for the single-port MacBook, not the new MacBook Pro. However, I'd be shocked if Griffin didn't release an updated model soon.
posted by SansPoint at 11:19 AM on November 2, 2016


What's the equivalent of magsafe in the rest of the industry? Somebody must have something?

ZNAPS was trying to do lightning and USB-C connectors but they seem to have plotzed as far as I can tell.

It's a shame because they seemed perfect.
posted by bonehead at 11:21 AM on November 2, 2016


Meanwhile, Phil's response to hearing of the growing disappointment from professionals was, no biggie, we've gotten more online orders for the new MBP than any previous generation, so whatevs.

If I were planning on getting the new iPhone, and if I ever used the 3.5 jack, I think I'd just get the $9 adapter and keep it permanently on the end of my headphone cord, maybe taped on or something.
posted by Huck500 at 11:22 AM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


RE: the iPhone 7 and the headphone jack, wireless headphones are outselling wired ones, and were even before the 7 came out. I have a nice pair of Bluetooth headphones that I like a lot for music. They don't sound as good as the Sony MDR-7506 can I use with my turntable, but they're good enough.
posted by SansPoint at 11:25 AM on November 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


Another neat idea for an MBP dock: the MS Display Dock.
posted by bonehead at 11:25 AM on November 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


I honestly believe Apple used creatives to sell their products for years to create street cred and then once the iPhone hit they turned their backs on us.

Don't take it personally. Jobs waited a long time for a stylus-less slab of networked glass. He owed it to Kubrick. Its design was his last and greatest (well, there is that boat) and swept the world like no technology since the transistor radio in terms of adoption and production. Within two years, consumers in developing nations earning wages a fraction of developed nations were craning their necks to the tech (tech-neck), ignoring the environment around them. Given its confluence with shopping and banking, most of the world will skip desk/lap-tops. It is the platform of social media.

Its significance will not be adequately described for many years.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 11:29 AM on November 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


> I can't for the life of me figure out the rationale for ditching MagSafe

Apple's perspective - not saying you should agree - is that you should not have to plug it in during a full work day, so there is never a cable to trip over. Charge it overnight, just like your iPhone. Wouldn't work for me when I do something computationally intensive, but that's a rare problem on the road.

(It would make Tim Cook especially happy if you stacked your Apple devices like a gleaming Tower of Hanoi to charge at night - laptop, iPad Pro, iPad, iPad mini, his iPhone Plus, her iPhone, the kids' iPods Touch, and then the Apple Watches on top.)

(Total aside to SansPoint: I hate the pocket size of the Plus - I'm not a large person, and it sucks to carry it in my front pocket - but in every other way, the Plus has been a step up.)
posted by RedOrGreen at 11:34 AM on November 2, 2016


I'm not as upset about the lack of headphone jack on the iPhone 7, at least the new phone is water-resistant. Having fewer case penetrations can only help with that. Also, wireless headphones are very common and easy to come by, and if Bluetooth is annoyingly fiddly, well, so are headphone cords. It must be irritating for people who want to just have that basic analogue audio input/output socket, though; if you were trying to actually do anything actually creative with sound, the iPhone 7 seems pretty useless as a platform. But then, if you want to do anything interesting or creative with a smartphone, Androids knock iPhones into a cocked hat. iPhones are just way too locked down for power users to have any use for them.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 11:41 AM on November 2, 2016


Anticipation You'd be surprised what you can do with an iPhone, even over the Lightning port. First off, the Lightning to Headphone Jack adapter works both ways, so you can put audio in to the iPhone through it. (Albeit, only in mono, but that's a limitation of the hardware jack on the earlier devices too.)

There's a whole assortment of various Lightning audio interfaces, like Griffin's iRig. Beyond that, you can also plug in the Lightning-to-USB adapter as part of Apple's Camera Connection Kit, and get a full-featured USB port that lets you connect almost anything and have it be supported. I use mine with a MIDI Keyboard in GarageBand. If the USB device requires additional power, there's a combined, first-party Lightning-to-USB dongle with a second Lightning port, so you can charge your iOS device and run USB hardware that requires extra power, like heavy duty microphones.
posted by SansPoint at 11:45 AM on November 2, 2016


If the USB device requires additional power, there's a combined, first-party Lightning-to-USB dongle with a second Lightning port, so you can charge your iOS device and run USB hardware that requires extra power, like heavy duty microphones.

This, indeed, is one of the few major advantages of Lightning over USB OTG. The client-server model on OTG has the odd result that you can either put power in or power out, but not both at once.
posted by fifthrider at 11:48 AM on November 2, 2016


Wireless headphones may outsell wired ones, but shitty headphones have ALWAYS outsold good ones. Apple just doesn't care.

You can't "permanently" attach the adapter to your headphones because you probably *also* use your headphones on your computer.
posted by uberchet at 11:49 AM on November 2, 2016


The headphone mismatch between the newest iPhone and the newest macbook is just annoying. No way to carry one wired pair that works with both? Now I have to charge my headphones too, or carry two pairs? Ugh. Not at all seamless.

I recently upgraded to the iPhone 7, and I wasn't that worried about the headphone thing - I was more excited about the water resistance, and I thought it would be nbd. Since then, it has been a giant pain. I often carry the lighting headphones that came with the phone, but then I want to plug headphones into my computer for a moment and I can't. Worse, I got on a plane and actually wanted to watch the in-flight entertainment for once - not something I planned for, and not something I'm willing to carry/buy a second pair of headphones for. I couldn't watch the entertainment and I couldn't listen to music or video on my phone because I wanted to charge it. So I was bored and forced to listen to lots of annoying plane noise. Sure, headphones-and-adapter would have solved the plane problem and bluetooth headphones would have solved the charging problem but really am I supposed to carry all of those things at once just to interact with my very normal environment?
posted by R a c h e l at 11:52 AM on November 2, 2016 [7 favorites]


Yeah. A phone without a proper headphone jack is astonishingly user hostile.
posted by uberchet at 11:55 AM on November 2, 2016


I'm sorry, I did a poor job of connecting my rant to the newest computer. Basically, if this is supposed to be an ecosystem that just works - there's at least one place where people using brand new up-to-date equipment are still forced to buy and carry duplicate items or dongles (standard headphone adapter or bluetooth headphone charger at the very least), which is just absurd.
posted by R a c h e l at 11:57 AM on November 2, 2016 [5 favorites]


Rachel: FWIW there are headphones out there that are bluetooth AND wired both and I love 'em for it.
posted by Cosine at 12:01 PM on November 2, 2016


The ecosystem was compromised since iOS and an aspect of Jobs' designs were always hostile. He always locked down devices, down to the screws on the first Mac. I've run Linux and consider Torvalds a saint. I about died when Ubuntu faced the same platform challenges. Between swipes and Siri/Cortana, I might witness an obsolescing keyboard...it's exciting stuff...

And these *&%^$ dongles and cables are indefensible, okay?
posted by lazycomputerkids at 12:09 PM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


I get the argument that Apple moves forward faster and is usually right. I was on the wrong side of that discussion many times. But it's not just the new MacBook Pro in this case.

The MacPro is the new Cube. It's really cool, but I don't know anyone that uses one, and it's years old already. The discussion on audio boards is how to beef up the 2012 cheese graters. Of course the same thing happened with the 9600 back in the day, which sold used for as much as a new machine, but that was fixed when they started releasing boxes people wanted again.

My worry is a combination of things, one of the biggest being iTunes. The last few versions have been ridiculous and unfathomable, and worse every time. I really feel like I'm looking at a product from another company. The fact that they can't figure out this central app is telling.

The whole thing is so baffling I'm going to have to favor the theory that they're getting ready to switch platforms entirely again. Which makes my head hurt.

I'm not going to use the cloud for all my data storage. I will live in the dark ages. Hopefully I can figure out how to retire.

And these *&%^$ dongles and cables are indefensible, okay?

Yes. There is no world in which mandatory dongle and adapter use is more convenient.
posted by bongo_x at 12:13 PM on November 2, 2016 [6 favorites]


Also, having not used it, I don't get why the new touch bar is at the top of the keyboard. Why not above the trackpad?
posted by bongo_x at 12:15 PM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


Above the track-pad, below the keyboard would be pretty bad. Most of it would be hidden by your hands when you're working on your machine. Also reaching to the 'function' area is pretty natural for most people these-days.
posted by Static Vagabond at 12:21 PM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


Above the track-pad, below the keyboard would be pretty bad.

Au contraire: Apple is already putting the really cool touch tricks, like the timeline scrubbing, toward the center of the bar. If the touchscreen was between the trackpad and the keyboard, those central UI elements would be right under the spacebar, where I could reach them with my thumbs. I grant that the sides wouldn't be as useful, though, and that's probably why they rejected it—a narrower, but taller touchscreen surface wouldn't look as cool, and present-day Apple design is form over function every time.
posted by fifthrider at 12:24 PM on November 2, 2016


My worry is a combination of things, one of the biggest being iTunes. The last few versions have been ridiculous and unfathomable, and worse every time.

iTunes will continue to get worse until it drops local music entirely and just becomes a streaming music/tv/movie client. Mark my words.
posted by entropicamericana at 12:25 PM on November 2, 2016


entropicamericana iTunes will continue to get worse until it drops local music entirely and just becomes a streaming music/tv/movie client. Mark my words.

Of all the fears people have about Apple these days, this is the one I share. I will not pay $9.99 a month for music I don't own, and I will not pay $25 a year to have Apple store my music library in the cloud with the songs "matched" to what's in the store. (I would pay up to $100 a year to have Apple store my original music files in the cloud, but that's different.)

And I'm also that weirdo who genuinely likes iTunes, for what it's worth.
posted by SansPoint at 12:30 PM on November 2, 2016


Wow...function keys were originally similar to a number-pad, to the side. I don't know what you mean by "most people these-days" because, in my experience, their use was largely confined to coders. In terms of user habits, I tend to point 'n' click in jags between touch-typing and because the "bar" is a selection process, it would be in conjunction with using a cursor...so, I don't agree.

Watching Cook describe Apple TV was embarrassing: Oh, you've decided copying NetFlix is the way to go.

I really feel like I'm looking at a product from another company. The fact that they can't figure out this central app is telling.

Those were my feelings exactly: I'm not navigating, I'm being navigated.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 12:34 PM on November 2, 2016


iTunes has worked itself into irrelevancy for us; I just use it to move music to my phone now. If I move to Android, I won't need it at all. It used to be the "digital hub" for all home music, but Sonos outpaced it so completely it's ridiculous.
posted by uberchet at 12:35 PM on November 2, 2016


uberchet: I freely admit I might be weird, but I use iTunes almost daily for... listening to music. I don't have a Sonos, just speakers plugged into my MacBook Pro (another reason for the headphone jack sticking around on the laptops). I scroll through the albums in the album view, which I have sorted by Album Artist, and then by year, and pick what album I want. It plays. It works.

You want a UI mess, the Music app on iOS is a shitshow. It's less of a shitshow on iOS 10, but still a shitshow. I use Cesium for all my music playback on the phone. It works like the iOS 6 music app, only better.
posted by SansPoint at 12:37 PM on November 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


iTunes is fine for playing music on a laptop, but that's not a use case that comes up for me very often.
posted by uberchet at 12:41 PM on November 2, 2016


lazycomputerkids: I don't know what you mean by "most people these-days" because, in my experience, their use was largely confined to coders

I mean anyone who has used an Apple computer (or most computers in general) in the last eight or so years, and are used to reaching to the volume controls, brightness, media controls etc in the 'function' area.
posted by Static Vagabond at 12:46 PM on November 2, 2016 [5 favorites]


I don't see much pushback on the touch bar. Is everyone cool with touch-typing being obsoleted? With having to look down at the keyboard to do routine tasks that one used to be able to do by feel? That seems like the worst thing about these new machines to me—much worse than the USB-C ports.
posted by enn at 12:49 PM on November 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


enn There's no evidence that Apple's planning to ditch physical keyboards all together on the Mac. You can even buy a first-party physical keyboard attachment for the iPad Pros (iPads Pro?) from Apple, so even on the touch-based platform, physical keyboards are supported as an option.

And, for what it's worth, there's evidence that the kids growing up with iPads and the like as their first exposure to computers are learning to type just fine without the physical feedback.
posted by SansPoint at 12:53 PM on November 2, 2016


I don't think the touch bar means they're hostile to touch typing.
posted by uberchet at 12:53 PM on November 2, 2016


Wow...function keys were originally similar to a number-pad, to the side.

While this was true originally I was just going to point out another thing I've realized, which is that the touch bar represents a sort of return to what function keys were for, say, DOS applications - you know, where you'd have annotations of what each one does along the bottom of the screen? Or I even recall people putting labels/overlays on their keyboard with application-specific F-key annotations.
posted by atoxyl at 12:54 PM on November 2, 2016


IPad keyboard doesn't change itself around on you and force you to look at it.
posted by Artw at 12:56 PM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


Artw And neither does the Mac keyboard, except for the Touch Bar, and then only in apps that control it. Otherwise, you just get a standard set of controls, and an Escape key. If you boot into Windows or Linux via Boot Camp, it even displays the standard set of function keys, along with Escape.
posted by SansPoint at 1:01 PM on November 2, 2016


I don't see much pushback on the touch bar. Is everyone cool with touch-typing being obsoleted? With having to look down at the keyboard to do routine tasks that one used to be able to do by feel?

I don't think I've ever touch typed any of the function keys. I've always had to look down at the keyboard when, for example, adjusting the volume or screen brightness. I don't think the touch bar is a regression in that respect. Obviously YMMV.
posted by gyc at 1:07 PM on November 2, 2016


It's time tech savvy Mac users switch back to Linux. It's true the Linux desktops like Gnome lack both finish and security, but projects like Subgraph largely address the latter. It's true those desktops won't evolve, due to ego issues among the developers, but overall the systems remain completely usable.
posted by jeffburdges at 1:18 PM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


SansPoint, is Apple paying you to defend them or something? I don't mean that literally, I know you're not a paid shill. I just don't understand why else somebody would be so vigorous in standing up for and rationalizing the design choices of the world's largest corporation. Every time someone has a criticism, you jump right in to explain why their opinion is wrong and the problem they're seeing isn't really a problem.

Does Apple really need this much defending? They aren't some infallible divine being or a persecuted minority group or something, they're just a tech megacorp. They presumably have their own PR people. Can you accept that maybe some folks just plain disagree with some of their design decisions and the implied philosophy behind them? This isn't a debate that needs winning, sometimes people just want to gripe about the decisions that our technological overlords make for us.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 1:18 PM on November 2, 2016 [9 favorites]


enn There's no evidence that Apple's planning to ditch physical keyboards all together on the Mac.

I understand that, but they're removing a bunch of keys that I use to touch-type (escape and the volume controls are used constantly, the others less frequently) and requiring me to look down to use them. Also they are presumably going to take functionality that is now accessible via menu bars (which are keyboard-accessible) and require you to look down at the touch bar for that functionality.
posted by enn at 1:19 PM on November 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


Anticipation: It's more the misinformation that bugs me. "Oh, the new MacBook doesn't have an escape key! I can't use vim anymore!" (Except it does.) It's like saying you can't right click on a Mac, when the damn OS has supported two button mice since at least MacOS 9.

Plus it's a slow day at work, and I got nothing else to do.

enn: The Human Interface Guidelines for the Touch Bar says:
Don’t expose functionality solely in the Touch Bar. Not all devices have a Touch Bar, and people can disable app controls in the Touch Bar if they choose. Always provide ways to perform tasks using the keyboard or trackpad.
These are guidelines, not rules, so you're likely gonna get an developer or two, possibly even on Apple's own internal teams, that will screw this up, but it's not something I'd worry about.
posted by SansPoint at 1:23 PM on November 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


After thinking about it over a few days, I'll be the one to predict that the touch bar will be a positive development overall. I still wish they hadn't messed with Esc because that's a pretty important key for some of us, but - a good 33% of my investment in MacBooks derives from the trackpad, specifically how much better that trackpad was than anything else for years. Therefore I'm going to trust that this new touch interface will be robust and responsive, not cheap and finicky, and once you've got that basic quality there's probably cool stuff that can be done with it. There seem to be two camps among power users when it comes to keyboard and pointer hardware - the "I'd rather be using a Model M" crowd, and those who like the shallow keys, who use tap-to-click almost exclusively. First camp obviously is all about tactile (and auditory!) feedback, and things that feel physically robust. Second camp I think does care about the physical experience of using the computer - I don't think "they" (this is me if it's not obvious) like mushy commodity keyboards or cheapo trackpads more than anybody - but is willing to go along with something new if the execution clears a certain bar. With this thing Apple is going to further alienate the first camp - which they haven't respected in a long time anyway - but presumably is banking on it being something those of us in the second camp will adjust to once again.

I understand that, but they're removing a bunch of keys that I use to touch-type (escape and the volume controls are used constantly, the others less frequently) and requiring me to look down to use them.

I mean, Esc I hope will always be in the same place...

You know what actually bugs me? The whole thing about automatically turning on when you open it. I don't even know why that bugs me because I turn off my laptops and leave them off like once a season but it just kinda does.
posted by atoxyl at 1:27 PM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


I don't see much pushback on the touch bar. Is everyone cool with touch-typing being obsoleted? With having to look down at the keyboard to do routine tasks that one used to be able to do by feel?

All of this and also now (probably?) an ESC keypress is inside some complicated software draw-update loop, which will make it less responsive than a physical key, and unresponsive some times when you really need to ESC.
posted by grobstein at 1:39 PM on November 2, 2016


uberchet: Believe you me, if I were a paid shill for Apple, I wouldn't be using a four year old computer as my main machine.
posted by SansPoint at 1:40 PM on November 2, 2016


I'd like to check out the new thermal solution though. Both my 2013-era MBP's get hot enough near the display to get quite uncomfortable to touch, and hot enough on the bottom to make you sweat if you actually put it in your lap. The fans are kinda noisy in a quiet room when they wind up.

I'll likely not consider upgrading until they get 32 GB (both my 2013's have 16 already). I'd bet on that next year. Hopefully they will come to their senses re: price then too, though I'm not betting on it.

It will take some muscle memory correction to allow for a different key for esc (I expect I'll remap ` for a couple of apps that love escape...)

On lightning: I already use a USB-C charger + lightning cable as it will fast charge a iPad Pro...Its great.

I dunno. I use a cheese grater, two MPB and a few monster dell desktops (the 64GB/twin xeon sorts), and I would sorely hate to have to go all windows. I really love OS X where I can use it. I already keep a little bag with dongles, I don't see an HDMI and a very small USB-A hub as a huge deal. I wish they had kept the SD reader though.

I'm willing to give the new models a shot, and love the general idea of the touch bar. Once they get 32 GB. And a little price nudge down.
posted by Bovine Love at 1:40 PM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


Also there are folks who run Linux on Apple hardware for various reasons, like Linux himself did once upon a time. It's plausible this drives many away resulting in even worse hardware support.
posted by jeffburdges at 2:02 PM on November 2, 2016


Looking at modern iTunes, I want SoundJam MP back.
posted by zachlipton at 2:09 PM on November 2, 2016


nickrussell's great comment is very insightful, and I think credible, but the immediate takeaway for me (mid 2012 15 rMBP) is that I should wait before upgrading, because it's unlikely that these transitional models will last for as long as the previous ones.
posted by motdiem2 at 2:09 PM on November 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


the immediate takeaway for me (mid 2012 15 rMBP) is that I should wait before upgrading, because it's unlikely that these transitional models will last for as long as the previous ones.

lol yeah, my first foray into the Mac world was a G4 Powerbook in the fall of 2004. The transition was announced the following June, though I think rumors started swirling around January. Kind of a fitting introduction to the whole Apple-gonna-do-what-Apple-gonna-do thing for me.
posted by entropicamericana at 2:15 PM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


entropicamericana: I actually bought my first Mac (a G4 mini) right _after_ the transition was announced, figuring they'd get to that one last. Six months later... One thing I did appreciate is that they did a spec bump right after I ordered, so I got the cost of my 512MB RAM upgrade refunded.
posted by SansPoint at 2:17 PM on November 2, 2016


All of this and also now (probably?) an ESC keypress is inside some complicated software draw-update loop, which will make it less responsive than a physical key, and unresponsive some times when you really need to ESC.

See if we were talking about Acer or Dell I'd be very worried about this sort of thing - with Apple less so (is one of my main points). And I suspect "ordinary" key presses already go through some significant indirection? The one thing that is concerning is the idea that control is being handed over to individual userland applications of varying quality...
posted by atoxyl at 2:20 PM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


Ugh, I really hope Apple doesn't go all-ARM. Maybe once developers have another 5 years to get their damn heads around better use of multiple cores in a single app, but not now.

I mean, folks are going to eventually have to get with the program now that single-core performance improvements on x86 are nearly stalled and have been for years, but they haven't yet for the most part. It would be a serious pain point to be using 8+ cores. Even folks who do manage to write properly multithreaded software rarely write them such that it scales well beyond 4 cores and by 8 there is pretty much zero benefit to extra threads.

Point being that going to an architecture with lower per-core performance and higher core count any time in the next few years would be a total fucking disaster, especially if the expectation is that laptops and desktops will have 16+ cores. Eventually the computer science will catch up and programmers will learn, but the basic algorithms necessary for massive parallelization don't even exist yet aside from a few specialized workloads, and the vast majority of those should be running on a GPU anyway.
posted by wierdo at 2:29 PM on November 2, 2016 [6 favorites]


It's not hate for the presence of USB-C. It's hate for the complete absence of USB-A.

Precisely. For my use, however, the additional loss of the SD card slot was a killer. I actually had a new one on order and ordered the three dongles/cables I'd need until I started to think about just how many times a day I am needing to plug in SD cards for quick removal of content, usually in situations where I am walking between cars with my macbook and it.... just didn't make sense. I already have a download cable on a converter (because they usually use ethernet, which my current 2013MBP doesn't have) and the idea of an SD card reader also flapping around was just too much.

So, sadly (because I really liked the idea of having touch id so it is less hassle to keep getting into and out of my password manager) I cancelled my order for the new gen one and instead ordered the top of the range refurb MBP - actually a faster processor than the new one, same 1Tb SSD and equivalent in every other way - and saved myself $500 before I even consider the cost of the dongles I am also going to send back.

I'm disappointed, but even just a couple of USB A ports would maybe have swayed me. But the idea of a converter for the SD card, plus a converter for the USB plus my dongle for the download cable.... It's a mess. And if I'd got one of those nice tiny dock things with USB/Ethernet/SD card slots in it, that'd only really be usable at a desk where I am mostly mobile and wandering aimlessly around. It's hard enough to not drop stuff as it is without an extra bunch of dangly cables to fall over.
posted by Brockles at 2:36 PM on November 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


OMG Brockles— I hadn't even considered touch-id with my password manager, that is going to be joyous!
posted by Static Vagabond at 3:01 PM on November 2, 2016


ARM got bought by a slightly shady company recently, so everyone is probably worrying about their dependencies on it a little these days.
posted by Artw at 3:06 PM on November 2, 2016


Come on, folks - just because Sanspoint is defending Apple doesn't mean it's fair to accuse him as being a paid flack. I'd be doing exactly the same as him if I had an equally slow work day, and I'm sure as hell not a paid flack.

It's OK to disagree. Besides, I don't think a paid flack would say Apple Music is a terrible idea.

Or would they??!?! Maybe it's a double-bluff!
posted by adrianhon at 3:37 PM on November 2, 2016 [4 favorites]


The same Steve Jobs who released a whole new line of computers in 1998 with no legacy ports at all would have released a laptop with a mix of legacy and modern ports? Whatever you say.

But we know what laptops Steve Jobs shipped - the Wall Street G3, unveiled at the same event as the iMac, was nothing but legacy ports and came with a floppy drive as standard. The Lombard G3 had both USB and SCSI. He shipped laptops with VGA or DVI and S-Video. Some models had FireWire 400 and 800, just to save a dongle. The Pro models have always been a mix for practicality's sake. The hardcore legacy-free stuff has always been the preserve of the consumer models.
posted by grahamparks at 4:11 PM on November 2, 2016 [6 favorites]


Ok, speaking only for myself here, but as a creative professional (graphic designer) windows is a non starter. I am forced to use it by my current job, but it's like death by a thousand paper cuts. I miss the ability to see previews of Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop every damn day, as well as missing Quick Look. That's just the tip of the iceberg.

I have an iPhone and iPad as well.

Combine that with all of the continuity stuff with iOS (Messages, etc) and I'm going to be in the Apple ecosystem for some time to come. If I weren't as much of a power user it probably wouldn't bother me as much.
posted by Fleebnork at 4:11 PM on November 2, 2016


Some models had FireWire 400 and 800, just to save a dongle.

This was pretty clearly done to save on controller cost, since people wanted more than one FW port. They did the same thing with network ports on the Mac Pro for a while, where only one was GbE for a generation or two.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 4:26 PM on November 2, 2016


But we know what laptops Steve Jobs shipped -

True, yet security through obscurity was still viable for Apple back then versus these days where OSX uses vanishing dialogue boxes in the upper-right corner to push its update (much like Windows always has). I might be wrong, but ports have always been a trade of versatility and security.

And unlike some, I don't give a damn about motivation: What sounds like Genius Bar guff gets called out as guff and glossing memory thresholds as "maximizing" portability is a hedged cop out when it comes to performance issues in a pro machine. The answer is more complicated and SansPoint flatly corroborated chip vendors determined this particular performance compromise. Being accurate and informational is all geniuses need to be and any hedging is squelched.

Shill? Get Thee Hence to Reddit-- We're all shills, all have a price on their head: Name Yours
posted by lazycomputerkids at 4:35 PM on November 2, 2016


Sorry SansPoint, I was being kind of a jerk. I apologize. This week has been hell, and it was a slow work day for me too. Sorry for being all crappy and stuff. You didn't deserve it.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 4:41 PM on November 2, 2016 [6 favorites]


Deserve's got nothing to do with it.
-- William Munny (Clint Eastwood), Unforgiven (1992)
posted by lazycomputerkids at 4:43 PM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


Needs more Woz.
posted by Artw at 4:44 PM on November 2, 2016


We all need more Woz, though.
posted by Grangousier at 4:45 PM on November 2, 2016


I'll applaud if Apple goes all ARM, but not enough to buy one. I'd think 8 ARM cores make the OS feel more responsive, but not most individual applications.

As an example, Mozilla's Servo is the only browser engine capable of exploiting so much parallelism when rendering a web page, meaning Apple risks a near future Mozilla browser blowing the pants off Safari. I'm dubious that Apple could build their own browser engine to catch up. Safari's WebKit was a collaboration with Google and others. I'm dubious WebKit could be parallelized like Servo is. And Servo has the advantage of being written in Rust, a language that's vastly superior for multi-threaded development than any languages Apple uses. Apple dislikes language diversity, like many large companies, so they're unlikely to adopt Servo itself.
posted by jeffburdges at 4:46 PM on November 2, 2016


Needs more Woz.

That's what I name the hard drive, every time. And you guys will start an avalanche if you're not careful; Quoting from iWoz isn't done nearly enough. BreakOut! aside, Steve and Steve attributed to another pretty well and, from the beginning, what Woz saw was as an intricate clock of adders, whereas Jobs saw a glowing wheel. They are the original sin with a price point to prove it.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 4:52 PM on November 2, 2016


Apple dislikes language diversity, like many large companies, so they're unlikely to adopt Servo itself.

Pascal will do that to ya'. (Ancient history, I know.) As for Servo and WebKit and Mozilla...that's very exciting since Yahoo's purchase price entered the Twilight Zone. I mean FireFox was the way through the wilderness on so many levels for a good long while, but so much is presently in the air while everything Chrome gains every day.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 5:21 PM on November 2, 2016


USB-A is going to be around for quite a while. It has only just recently (past couple years) gained enough momentum to begin displacing the 5-pin DIN MIDI jacks on electronic music equipment that we've been using since 1984.

... Though, you probably won't see it anywhere else in a couple years.
posted by Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick at 5:49 PM on November 2, 2016


I purchased a 2015 model MBP for my daily-user just a few months ago, because my old laptop died a terrible, expensive death. I like working on mac machines, whenever I get in front of the windows OS, I get really frustrated and confused. Part of that is that I've been operating in the OSX ecosystem for over a decade. It makes sense to me. I'm gladly willing to purchase them for my 'daily driver' as it were...but I sure am glad I got one with a few more ports than just the USB-c stuff. It's not an issue for me yet, and I'm just glad they're going to be out in the wild for a few years before I need to go "all usb-c" with things. My biggest gripe would be the lack of the magsafe cable. I know myself. If I had one of these computers, I would fuck up at least one port by tripping over the powercord.

However, we've been running our projector off a 2007 white macbook, using it as a HTPC. Aside from a busted-ass screen (non issue in this instance, which is why it got drafted for HTPC duties) and replacing the HD with a flash drive a few years ago, it hasn't really needed much. But it's starting to give up the ghost. This machine has outlasted TWO other mac laptops in our house. I had a gut feeling they weren't going to update the mac minis (which I would have very much liked to purchase).

I haven't built a computer in almost 20 years, but thanks to the internet, I went off and built myself a hackintosh. It was surprisingly easy. Really easy. Way easier than I remember it being. It took an evening to build, and another afternoon to set up the OS(s). It clocked in at under $900 bucks, even after I purchased a new copy of windows to dual boot with. It has a graphics card that blows the everloving shit out of the mac mini intel iris graphics. I can actually play current-gen games pretty well on it when I switch over to windows (which, as a longtime mac user is AWESOME).

The case I built is indeed larger and not quite as sleek as a mac mini. But it sits on a bookshelf where no one can really see it anyway. It can hold up to 6 HD's, and I made sure the motherboard and most of the important bits were pretty damn future proof, or could be replaced easily when an upgrade needs to happen. After using OSX on a hackintosh, I'm bumming pretty hard on most of apple's lineup. The laptops are great, and well built...but If someone else out there made a professional looking, laptop that was kind of 'hackintosh ready' I'm afraid that'd be my next purchase.
posted by furnace.heart at 5:59 PM on November 2, 2016 [4 favorites]


>The case I built is indeed larger and not quite as sleek as a mac mini

yeah, the mini is optimizing on something I really don't give a care about.

Give me 1 PCIe 3 16x slot, drivers for nVidia's latest, and the usual x86 crap.

It's been over 20 years since Apple last had their act together in the mini-tower space, when the PowerMac 7500 came with an upgradeable CPU (!) and PCI graphics that both 3Dfx and ATI Rage 128 worked fine on.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 6:10 PM on November 2, 2016


Sidebar I met Woz a few years ago. He gave me one of his business cards. It is laser cut titanium. Not sure what his design choices would be for the new MacBook Pro, but I'm curious.
posted by humanfont at 6:12 PM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


Interesting. Have we reached the point where, for many use cases, computers are now plenty small and light enough, thank you very much, and the novelty of ever-tinier machines is becoming less of a selling point? Could we perhaps even see a resurgence of larger designs, like we saw with the somewhat-unexpected popularity of large-screen smartphones? Might we even, maybe just maybe, be seeing the beginning of a trend toward computers for at least a subset of the market that are more durable, more functional, in the way that a high-end dSLR is heavier and larger but much more robust and configurable than a smartphone camera? Perhaps we will see the return of 17" laptops, even? A portable, configurable full-featured computer with a 17" screen would be quite a beauty.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 6:18 PM on November 2, 2016




Not sure what [Woz's] design choices would be for the new MacBook Pro, but I'm curious.

Given his side of the equation that built the original Apple, I'm thinking "sheet metal painted beige and folded into shape, and held together with screws you can remove without a screwdriver"
posted by DoctorFedora at 6:35 PM on November 2, 2016 [4 favorites]


And as many expansion ports as you can shake a stick at.
posted by Artw at 6:36 PM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


Oh goodness yes, expansion ports like you wouldn't believe
posted by DoctorFedora at 6:48 PM on November 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


Sidebar I met Woz a few years ago. He gave me one of his business cards. It is laser cut titanium. Not sure what his design choices would be for the new MacBook Pro, but I'm curious.

I owned one of the Mac Portable Backlit models, with the trackball. There wasn't a single screw on it. You did need the tiny little bladed screwdriver and the big bladed screwdriver from the cheap "electronics screwdriver kit" from the Rat Shack to pop plastic tabs... even the mobo and HDD were held down with plastic tabs. After fixing what I broke, I could troll Usenet for eight hours straight from a phonebooth in the middle of nowhere, FL, with a redbox and an acoustic coupler.

I had a nice, padded balistic nylon Kensington case it slid into, with velcro-flaps over the most essential ports.

I bought the whole magilla, Mac, case, modem, coupler... for a hundred bucks in 1993. It cost close to nine grand when it came out in '89.

Fools. That rig lasted for me. It had a beer spilled into it by a friend, and was replaced with a hot-rodded Mac IIx, which at the time, was another Grail Mac, with dual big displays, and then work gave me, to keep, an old 180c, and then I bought a G3 new.

Apple has generally been good to me. x86 gear from manufacturers other than Apple less so.

These new MacBooks smell of bullshit. I hope they're harbingers of a platform change, because FUCK INTEL. There. I said it. I'm not sorry. Monocultures must die.
posted by Slap*Happy at 7:18 PM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm just sad Blazecock Pileon isn't around for this Apple thread, like in the old days.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:23 PM on November 2, 2016 [4 favorites]


(Mac IIfx, not MacIIx, sorry.)
posted by Slap*Happy at 7:29 PM on November 2, 2016


These new MacBooks smell of bullshit.

Robert Redford in a documentary makes a distinction between bullshit and horseshit-- the former to deceive others, the latter, oneself, and more problematic.

I'm all about the sanctity of my analog loop in a medium rapidly and increasingly commercial versus informational, e.g., screen capture and command click.

I said in another thread and will again: Platform is everything. I last bought in 2012 because I was happy to see optical drives obsolete and SSDs prevail. Four frickin' years was a long time to wait for something beyond incremental changes...and this ain't it.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 7:48 PM on November 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


I guess the question is: what is it that everyone wants when they complain about the lack of major changes to what is, at its core, an incredibly mature platform that is rapidly becoming less and less mainstream anyway? At some point, it starts to feel like people complaining that they're getting tired of how every car comes with pedals and a wheel, ugh, why doesn't anyone innovate in this space anymore.

I mean, as mentioned upthread, I am as completely addicted to novelty as anyone else, but eventually it feels like the vocal critics just want to play a game of Bring Me A Rock ("No, not that rock") instead of having any notion of what they'd actually want other than "something new and exciting." Incremental changes are generally what you're going to get at this point in a platform's life, and arguably the fact that the Mac line isn't really changing much* is kind of a selling point for the sorts of people who would want them, because it's a form of stability and reliability, in theory.

*Leaving aside the fact that they haven't been doing even basic hardware bumps, though that has been at least partially attributed to Intel's missing some deadlines too. On the other hand, the fact that the Mac Pro has hit a four-digit number of days since the last update of any sort is… discouraging.
posted by DoctorFedora at 7:56 PM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


jeffburdges: "Safari's WebKit was a collaboration with Google and others. "

WebKit was a fork of KDE's KHTML engine. Google weren't involved until much later.
posted by schmod at 8:08 PM on November 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


every car comes with pedals and a wheel, ugh, why doesn't anyone innovate in this space anymore

Google!
posted by Sys Rq at 8:23 PM on November 2, 2016


WebKit was a fork of KDE's KHTML engine. Google weren't involved until much later.

That's an accuracy not to be missed, but the relationship of for-profit subsidies in search of productive/open standards is the context and fragile i.e. Verizon.

From 2004 to 2014, the foundation had a deal with Google to make Google Search the default in the Firefox browser search bar and hence send it search referrals; a Firefox themed Google search site was also made the default home page of Firefox. The original contract expired in November 2006. However, Google renewed the contract until November 2008 and again through 2011.On December 20, 2011, Mozilla announced that the contract was once again renewed for at least three years to November 2014, at three times the amount previously paid, or nearly US$300 million annually.

Approximately 90% of Mozilla’s royalties revenue for 2014 was derived from this contract. In November 2014, Mozilla signed a five-year partnership with Yahoo!, making Yahoo! Search the default search experience for Firefox in North America effective December 2014, while it will be Yandex in Russia and Baidu in China. However, it is also to be noted that Yahoo! Search is merely a front-end to Microsoft's search engine Bing, and Microsoft takes a 12% cut of all revenue from the search business per the deal. Due to Mozilla's financial release timetables, the results of the Yahoo! contract will not be public until November 2016.


If you're fortunate enough to travel internationally, you can witness what "consumers" in developing countries adopt in terms of shopping and banking that are options yet pervasive in North America. American consumers are captive in many ways.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 8:27 PM on November 2, 2016


USB-A ... has only just recently (past couple years) gained enough momentum to begin displacing the 5-pin DIN MIDI jacks on electronic music equipment that we've been using since 1984.

I spent a couple hundred thousand of work money last year on a bunch of brand new instruments (flash point testers and a vapour pressure tester if you must know) that still offer only serial 9-pin D connectors. USB-A is too newfangled for them.

Soon enough we'll have to replace the USB-A-to-serial dongles with USB-C-to-serial ones. The instruments themselves have lifetimes of more than a decade, I'm guessing. They're tough little things.
posted by bonehead at 8:31 PM on November 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


The new MacBook Pro basically is a MacBook Air -- the most impressive Air ever made.
    Let's rewind time for a moment. It's Thursday, October 27, and Apple's event is under way. Imagine that instead of introducing the new MacBook Pro, Apple unveiled a new MacBook Air. One that's 12 percent lighter, 13 percent smaller by volume and practically the same weight -- but manages to cram in a faster Intel processor, faster graphics, plus the far sharper, brighter and more colorful Retina Display the MacBook Air so desperately needed. Sure, it starts at $1,500 rather than $1,000, but you get twice the solid-state storage for the price -- and you can double the RAM, quadruple the storage and get the awesome new Touch Bar secondary screen with Touch ID fingerprint sensor if you're willing to pay even more. How long has your MacBook Air had a 1.6GHz processor? This new one is 2.0GHz or 2.9GHz; there's even a 3.3GHz option. And sure, it's got a thinner keyboard and only two (or four) general-purpose Thunderbolt 3 ports instead of handy full-size USB ports and SD card slots. But we, Apple, figured you'd rather have a more accurate keyboard and amazing single-cable Thunderbolt 3 docking options to go with your mobile MacBook Air lifestyle. Now, you can pull your MacBook Air right out of your manila envelope and plug in a single cable to charge it, dock with your peripherals and power multiple monitors all at the same time. Oh, and one more thing: we knew you'd like the MacBook Air so much, we built a 15-inch model. You won't believe how fast it is -- this Air has a quad-core CPU that's 50 percent faster than last year's MacBook Pro! The graphics are over twice as fast, and yet we've kept the same 10 hour battery life as the 13-inch version. If you've ever wanted to edit photos or home videos on a MacBook Air, this computer's for you. Oh, and it comes standard with the Touch Bar and Touch ID, too. We think you're going to love the new MacBook Air. It's the best MacBook we've ever made.
posted by fairmettle at 1:00 AM on November 3, 2016 [7 favorites]


USB-C to USB-A should be a pretty cheap and reliable adapter to make, given that it's just a passthrough.

Similarly, most "professional" and musical equipment has a USB-B port (the squareish one) on the back of it, so the USB-A vs USB-C argument is kind of irrelevant. You'll need to buy a new cable, but won't need any dongles.

The biggest pain-point will be devices that have built-in and non-replaceable USB cables/plugs (like flash drives) that will always require an awkward dongle.

Realistically, the removal of HDMI and DisplayPort is going to be the biggest source of pain and frustration with the new design.
posted by schmod at 7:35 AM on November 3, 2016


@Beschizza: already regret assigning the new Macbook Pro review to Borges

My own room-temperature take: most of the changes are at least somewhat defensible, but the lack of a 32GB RAM upgrade option is going to force me wait for the next refresh. I don't have too many problems operating in 16GB right now, but a couple years and a couple OS upgrades from now, it will likely be a major bottleneck.

If I absolutely needed an upgrade now I would be very upset that the flagship laptop in a brand new generation of hardware maxes out behind its peers on the PC side, and is equal in RAM to my three year-old MBP. For now, I'm just going to try to wait things out and hope for a minor spec refresh when the Touch Bar bump fades and Apple realizes some of the developers are walking away.
posted by tonycpsu at 7:49 AM on November 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


The new MacBook Pro basically is a MacBook Air -- the most impressive Air ever made.

That's all well and good, and I think that cnet article is right EXCEPT for the part where Apple still has nothing to show professionals. Leaving the door open for another laptop better aimed at the professional market is pointless if no such model is forthcoming; it doesn't matter if you call this one the Air or the Pro.

At some point, it starts to feel like people complaining that they're getting tired of how every car comes with pedals and a wheel, ugh, why doesn't anyone innovate in this space anymore.

I mean, there's this thing called the Surface Pro that's basically a Windows PC in tablet form with a pen and a detachable keyboard. Or the Surface Book, which is the same basic idea except now the keyboard is a docking base that also provides additional processing power. Or the Surface Studio, which basically includes a Wacom Cintiq Touch into an all-in-one computer that can bend down to desktop level to allow people to write/draw on it like they would paper. Or the Lenovo Yoga series, which lets me fold the keyboard all the way back to turn my laptop into a large slate, or part of the way back to use it as a tablet with a built-in stand.

Sure, maybe none of those things are for you. Maybe you hate every single idea listed above. But these all represent new ideas about how people might use their computers, and people have embraced them. The idea that Apple somehow has a monopoly on innovation and that if Apple isn't innovating, it means there's no improvements to be made, is ridiculous.
posted by chrominance at 7:52 AM on November 3, 2016 [4 favorites]


The new MacBook Pro basically is a MacBook Air -- the most impressive Air ever made.

This is kind of true but it exaggerates the improvement in internals. The 2GHz processor, 16GB RAM and 256GB SSD were all available as options on the 2012 Air. I got them in mine.

The new model with those same specs costs about the same as my 2012 Air cost in 2012.
posted by grobstein at 9:04 AM on November 3, 2016


Realistically, the removal of HDMI and DisplayPort is going to be the biggest source of pain and frustration with the new design.

So that's just one more adapter that any given conference room will be missing when you need to project.
posted by octothorpe at 9:38 AM on November 3, 2016 [3 favorites]


The 2GHz processor, 16GB RAM and 256GB SSD were all available as options on the 2012 Air.

I think you're mistaken - no model of MacBook Air has ever been available with 16GB of RAM. Plus they all have low quality non-Retina displays with terrible viewing angles, and a 2016 2GHz processor is a fair bit faster than a 2012 one. I think the two port MacBook is the most intriguing of the new range - I'd be buying one if they sold the same model with a Touch Bar*.

(* the four port model has a hotter processor and smaller battery, so it's not really the same thing)
posted by grahamparks at 10:35 AM on November 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


Hey, you're right! Thanks. I feel a little better about the changes then. I don't think I will get one unless something bad happens to my laptop before the next refresh, but if I have to I will feel less bad about it.
posted by grobstein at 10:41 AM on November 3, 2016


Why couldn't they just give us something like this Bonobo System76 as a MacBook pro. 64gb of ram, dual NVIDA GPU's, ample ports to plug in my shit.
posted by humanfont at 10:47 AM on November 3, 2016 [2 favorites]


2" thick and 10.5 pounds. If I had to carry that to and from work every day I'd probably lose ten pounds from the workout after a week.
posted by SansPoint at 11:28 AM on November 3, 2016 [3 favorites]


The 24-inch iMac weighs 12.5 pounds and has similar battery life.
posted by grahamparks at 11:58 AM on November 3, 2016 [6 favorites]


Why on earth are you carrying a laptop back and forth to work? Laptops at work are for carrying your work around, either on site or off on trips, mostly during work hours. Occasionally for taking work home if necessary, but that should not be that necessary (if it is you need to have a work-life-balance conversation).

Are you using it as a personal device too? I can see that if you're self-employed/your own boss, but if you work for someone else? Maybe I'm an odd ball, but there's no frikken way I'm giving our corporate IT access to my personal stuff. That's well beyond pegging my creepometer.
posted by bonehead at 12:02 PM on November 3, 2016


I take my laptop home every day in case I have to work from home or I need to send out email during the evening. I think that's pretty common these days.
posted by octothorpe at 12:11 PM on November 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


bonehead: I actually no longer carry a laptop to work, but at my last job I did. If I needed to do some working from home, yes, or send email during the evening, or if an emergency came up, I had a dedicated machine just for that.

When I started, I used my personal 15" MacBook Pro, with an optical drive, until the new computer was delivered. (a 13" Retina MacBook Pro), and man, my shoulder appreciated the weight difference a lot.
posted by SansPoint at 12:22 PM on November 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


bonehead, you appear to have a mildly naive view of how people interact with their work assets, how often people work from home or split their workday, and what the expectations of many professional laptop-having jobs entail.

The tl;dr is that probably MOST people with work laptops carry them home every day.
posted by uberchet at 2:21 PM on November 3, 2016 [3 favorites]


Why couldn't they just give us something like this Bonobo System76 as a MacBook pro. 64gb of ram, dual NVIDA GPU's, ample ports to plug in my shit.

This is by far the ugliest laptop I've ever seen.
posted by dis_integration at 2:25 PM on November 3, 2016 [2 favorites]


Ugly but... hypnotic.

Is... is that two network ports? And what are all those 3.5mm sockets for?
posted by Leon at 3:20 PM on November 3, 2016


This is by far the ugliest laptop I've ever seen.

Seconded. With bells on. Yegads. Looks like it was designed for a mid 1990's futuristic office set - "Put some funky angles on it and just add as many ports as you can think of. Double them up if they have cool blue bits in them".
posted by Brockles at 3:35 PM on November 3, 2016


Apparently, that thing has "Stereo Speakers + Woofer, Stereo Mic, Combined Headphone & S/PDIF Jack, Mic Jack, Line In, Line Out", so that's why all the 3.5mm ports. Although to be honest, if they were going for pro sound, in a package that size, they could use XLR plugs or something and get it over with.

I think that machine is hilarious, especially how it's a 17.3" display that's still just 1920x1080. How clearly do you want to see the square shape of each pixel, exactly, in 2016?
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 3:50 PM on November 3, 2016


Why couldn't they just give us something like this Bonobo System76

I love the tagline about the Bonobo's "high-end compononents." Even its words have extra ports!
posted by oulipian at 3:50 PM on November 3, 2016 [5 favorites]


I dunno, I think it needs more plexiglas and whirling blue LEDs
posted by indubitable at 3:56 PM on November 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


Absolutely needs more blue LEDs. Otherwise, how will you know it's Pro?

and put an umbrella in it! That's what makes it a "scotch on the rocks"!
posted by DoctorFedora at 4:51 PM on November 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


Why couldn't they just give us something like this Bonobo System76 as a MacBook pro. 64gb of ram, dual NVIDA GPU's, ample ports to plug in my shit.

Ruggedize the case and I'm there. I mean, it would be 15 lbs at that point, but, me likes.
posted by pan at 5:41 PM on November 3, 2016


If I had Bill Gates money I would probably buy one just for the key backlights in my favorite color. The last time I checked System76 was generally a very good company and this product is more diagnostic of the folks like you and I who are their target market than anything else. Which same can be said for Apple's products too I suppose.
posted by bukvich at 5:43 PM on November 3, 2016


That System76 is a Clevo by the look at it. They are sold under numerous names around the world. Not pretty, but very tough to beat if performance per dollar is what you need. (And that model can be specced with a 4K screen if you want).
posted by markr at 6:37 PM on November 3, 2016 [2 favorites]


uberchet: "bonehead, you appear to have a mildly naive view of how people interact with their work assets, how often people work from home or split their workday, and what the expectations of many professional laptop-having jobs entail.

The tl;dr is that probably MOST people with work laptops carry them home every day.
"

Ha ha, yes. I was a project manager until recently, and the idea that I could say to someone, "it'll have to wait until the morning," is pretty laughable.

I mean, yes, crisis of late stage capitalism, etc., etc., but it's a quite common corporate expectation, and I don't think that it's unreasonable expectation for a laptop to be light in weight.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:53 PM on November 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


Tadpole. They took an IBM Thinkpad, with its glorious magnesium case and luscious active-matrix screen and legendary keyboard, and ripped out the weak-sauce 486 and stuffed a RISC-Unix workstation inside. SPARC, PowerPC, PA-RISC... Alpha!

I had a Tadpole Sparc 3GX as my everyday rig at one sweet gig in the mid '90s. (I also had a Powerbook 180c, which was pretty much my home rig.)

It could last almost two and a half hours on the non-hot-swappable battery!

Less than the Powerbook, more than a Dell (before this gig I did on-site warranty repair for notebooks.) The all-metal case was like something out of Blade Runner.

The new Macbooks do not live up to this standard, nor to the 180c. They just don't.
posted by Slap*Happy at 7:54 PM on November 3, 2016 [2 favorites]


it's a quite common corporate expectation, and I don't think that it's unreasonable expectation for a laptop to be light in weight.

Not to mention: in grad school, I was totally lugging my laptop back and forth from home to work. I would do the same thing in college.

Laptops are supposed to be lightweight. If I wanted a desktop, I'd get a desktop.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 8:11 PM on November 3, 2016


> that model can be specced with a 4K screen if you want).

On the Dell custom configure site they say 17.3" & 3840x2160 pixels cannot be configured with Ubuntu so you may have to poke around for a driver.
posted by bukvich at 8:19 PM on November 3, 2016


I'll stick with my MacBook Pro, thanks. I find it insane that you can't upgrade the new MBP to 32GB of RAM.
posted by santaglue at 11:03 PM on November 3, 2016


I find it insane that you can't upgrade the new MBP to 32GB of RAM.

Not insane per se, just a trade-off.

The RAM interface is in the CPU these days, and Intel is still working on*low* voltage DDR4 suitable for laptops.

Now, it might have cost an hour of battery life to move to regular DDR4, or adding a pound of batteries & case, but that's not the direction Apple is moving.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 6:17 AM on November 4, 2016




Then, seeing the response to the Touch Bar, [Bret Victor] tweeted:
“Pretty sure most people will find contextual controls like two-finger scrolling -- after a year, any computer without them will feel broken.
Pretty sure that moving a mouse pointer to an onscreen toolbar will soon feel as bizarre and anachronistic as manually dragging a scrollbar.”


I like Bret Victor, and I find reading his stuff illuminating, and I think context-sensitive illustrated touch controls of some kind are a positive addition to keyboard-attached computing.

But the two-finger scrolling comment doesn't reassure me at all. In fact, it makes me worry more. It's not that there's anything wrong with two-finger scrolling itself -- I loved it in its first incarnation as the mouse wheel, and I use it on the trackpad all the time.

The problem is that this led to some kind of apparent license to screw around with the scrollbar in a lot of software. Yay, I can use a convenient gesture to scroll incrementally! However, if I'm moving through a large document, now I get the "unobtrusive" scroll bar handle, which means it's really small target to capture, now. And it's usually distant from any document content I might be interacting with -- so we're two strikes out from Fitts Law. And, wait, for strike three, it doesn't even appear until I trigger a scroll event by doing that little two-finger trackpad gesture, which I have to do just enough to make it appear but not enough to disorient myself where I am in the document. Strike four? It only sticks around for a limited time, so I have to be fast enough to get there before it disappears.

(This is merely painful on desktop/laptop machines. On touch devices as far as I can tell what's been decided is that people don't really need to jump over non-local document spaces, or if they do, they're totally fine just swiping a lot and being taken care of by some vague swipe-velocity algorithm.)

So, yeah, I love two-finger scrolling. It's really nice. It's replaced a lot of what I used to use space bar and fn-arrow for. But it's also led to some UX decisions that have actually decreased usability and increased frustration, decisions that I'm not aware of any rationale for.

I'm sure the touchbar will be great for some things (the fundamental idea is proven well-enough). I'm not really excited about the likely parallels with two-finger scrolling.
posted by wildblueyonder at 1:07 PM on November 4, 2016 [2 favorites]


By the way, Apple cut the prices on a bunch of USB-C dongles, so that should take some of the sting out if you're upgrading.
posted by SansPoint at 1:57 PM on November 4, 2016 [1 favorite]


By the way, Apple cut the prices on a bunch of USB-C dongles, so that should take some of the sting out if you're upgrading.

This is good, but if I were in charge (there are eighty billion reasons why I would never be in charge), I'd do something like "the first dongle is free!" Or even buy-one-get-one, or something.
posted by aramaic at 4:53 PM on November 4, 2016 [1 favorite]




^ the dongles thing hah-hah, but Gruber is right, you've got to force the future for it to arrive.

When the iMac came out in 1998 I went to CompUSA to get one for my mom, and since I knew the mouse was kack I tried to get a USB mouse there. THEY HAD NONE FOR SALE, only PS/2 mice, even though Microsoft had supported USB a full year earlier, with the USB Supplement to OSR2.

Hopefully TB3 over USB-C will be the end-state and we'll be on USB-C for 20 years like USB-A. That'd be great as I never liked USB all that much anyway. Typical Intel bodge.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 8:04 PM on November 5, 2016


you know it's only a matter of time before you're dealing with all kinds of wacky offshoots like USB-C micro mini v. 0.2 with a slightly different and physically incompatible plug. they can't help themselves, it's design-by-committee all the way down.
posted by indubitable at 9:26 PM on November 5, 2016 [1 favorite]


^ the dongles thing hah-hah, but Gruber is right, you've got to force the future for it to arrive.

Whether that future is one with Apple in it has yet to be determined.
posted by Sys Rq at 9:29 PM on November 5, 2016 [1 favorite]


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