MacBook Pro
apple.com
apple.com
- Mildly funny jokes and comparison with 90's technology.
- 90% of the talk was about the touch bar.
- Awful demos of Photoshop & some cringy DJ.
I was hoping we would see:
- A new MacBook with all day battery life and touch bar, even thinner design. Ok, I understand that they are trying to consolidate their product line but the category of a web-browsing machine that is 12", super small design and an adequate processor is left without any update.
- A MacBook pro with some real innovation. They could just copy Microsoft with a detachable screen (oh but they would cannibalize iPad market), pen input, touch screen. But, instead we get this touchbar thing which is great but I am just disappointed that it is the only thing they have innovated here.
- Killed Macbook Air.
- No iMac update (!!!).
- No monitor announcement.
Microsoft really hit it out of the park yesterday. Apple's entire presentation felt like they are trying to fill the 1.5 hours of time with bullshit.
Also, Panos Panay sounds like a genuine, authentic, passionate and knowledgeable whereas Jony Ive sounds like an Evangelical designer who feels "fake". I don't know how to explain it.
No iMac update.
No Mac Pro update.
Buyer's Guide on MacRumors now:
"iMac: Might as well buy. Nothing on the horizon."
"Mac Pro: Buy. If you like paying 2013 prices for 2013 hardware."
Edit: for comparison, Lenovo T460p can be configured with quad-core i7, Nvidia GPU, 32GB RAM, 1 SSD + 1 HD/SSD, replaceable battery, 1.9mm key travel, base starts at $800 with many components user-replaceable, http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/t-series/t460p...
Spinning up a basic devstack instance (for example) take a minimum of 6GB and that's before you even deploy any test vms inside that infrastructure. Another example, if you're doing config management development you may need several VMs running which in turn may have (say) large java apps with heavy memory requirements even when fairly unladen. So, I guess the answer is, it depends on what you're doing and what the memory requirements of the thing you're running on VMs is.
My one year old MBP (which is really a "2013 MBP") has half the memory and storage of the ThinkPad. In fact, pretty much the only noticeable difference between it and the "new" one is the touch strip. :/
Maybe it's not super common for games programming, but it's definitely common to not use ref counted pointers or anything that could help you here.
ml work commonly uses data that is 8g+ -- and regularly 32g+ -- just for the data itself. Yes you can work on remote servers but it's convenient to be able to work and develop locally.
Not everybody wants to have the weight on their back of a clock-ticking cost of doing their R&D online in the cloud. Many of us, including me, want a highly capable machine with an upfront, quantifiable cost, but that is professionally credible.
Somebody reply with a link so I can be more upset, please.
The in-OS memory compression helps, but when I still had a 16GB Macbook Pro, the system always found a way to use up all of the RAM to the point that the compression would kick in to handle the overage over my physical memory.
My habits aren't any different in terms of extraneous windows/apps open on Windows, and I rarely hit 100% RAM utilization on my 16GB Windows machine.
Edit: even to the point of compressing pages, since it's faster to uncompress them than fetch from disk.
As for the RAM in the rMBP. I'm only half disappointed compared to what I would have been 1 year ago. My workflow is pushing more and more stuff in the cloud, so instead of running a bunch of small VM locally I can have VM sized properly to the task at hand rather than limited to my laptop configuration.
I was (against all odds), hoping for 64! If this is true, consider me disgusted. I had 16GB in my (long lost, loved) 17-inch Macbook Pro, in 2009! I really cannot fathom what this company is thinking. I'm bewildered, disappointed, angry, in equal measure. I've been waiting for a killer Macbook Pro for literally 18 months! Sorry. I'm going Lenovo/Dell or why not, Surface Studio. For the first time in 20 years. I'm going Windows. I will not support a company which insults me with this. If this is Jony Ive's work, if they are so self-confident in their "design" that they cannot put a decent hardware spec together, then these people need to be retired.
Or maybe I just haven't cottoned on? They just don't care about high end users? Or are they completely out of touch? I don't understand.
1. probably more likely to be in Apple's target demographic, 2. buy the machines with the highest margins.
Macbook PROs are for PROfessionals. Multiple VMs. Big fast SSDs. Many cores. Better displays.
Haha, not anymore. For some time now, the PRO in Apple products is for PROsumers, or its possibly just a meaningless vestigial acronym now. See also: Final Cut X "Pro" which was obviously not targeted at professionals.
My girlfriend is a nursing student, not a programmer and has 8 gigs of ram on her laptop. She's constantly asking me to look at her laptop when it beachballs and slows to a crawl when she's doing homework and her memory is maxed. She only has chrome, Word, Excel and some online courses open.
I don't buy that figure one bit.
Unfortunately Chrome is absolutely terrible not just for power usage but also for RAM usage. For some reason Chrome loves memory, it gobbles it up. Safari is much better about it.
I switched from Chrome back to Safari recently and while it took some time adjusting, I have been seeing almost 2 - 3 hours longer battery life, and I have had way less issues with "beachballing".
"Don't do it then."
I can't believe I have to repeat this, in 2016: software workload naturally expands to use all available resources. Period. Nobody likes doing "memory optimization" work when developing.
Safari is leaking memory. Unless you reboot your machine daily, Safari is terrible option.
I use both constantly. Chrome crashes are non-existant, where Safari crashes at least weekly.
Of the approximately 100 million or so Macintosh Laptop users, it's entirely possible that a million of them are High End video editing or Developers/3D modeling and require more than 8GB, but I"m pretty confident that the vast majority of Macintosh Laptop Users will require less out of their system than I do - and, for better or worse, a lot of the high end scientific workstation/CAD-CAM/Servers/etc... have departed from the Macintosh Laptop Platform, and are now running on the MacPro, or, or, more likely, Linux/Windows.
And yes, I realize I've just argued myself into a corner, that those people have had to leave the Macintosh Laptop world because they need the horsepower/memory that they can only get on other platforms - but that's who is left on the MacLaptop community, and that's who Apple is targeting.
This seems very shortsighted. It is not like they are strapped for cash, and the prices still went up a few hundred dollars.
It just seems like something Apple would do.
Glad right now I timed my last Macbook pro purchase to have a year of applecare left on it, and it could easily last me another 2 years thanks to being maxed out when I bought it.
Apple is a company looking to maximize it profit as well as build good products. A lot of laptop manufacturers are starting to catch up on the hardware side (the new Zenbook).. it's just the MacOS experience that someone has left to create an equivalent to.
Apple dropped the ball, big time. I'll ride out my 2012 MBPr (which still works great), but at these conditions, my next laptop will not be from Cupertino.
Even the new Lenovo T460p's are sliding by. Asus Zenbook is slick too.
I am more of a 13" guy, although i've used the 15" MBP and windows laptop at one time.
I'm hoping by the time my applecare is up they will throw a massive parade for doing the obvious hardware upgrades.
One possible reason they haven't is getting performance and heat managed in the new slim form factor.
Had a few macbooks that ran hot in the past, so I hope it's just that and not much else. It sucked having 15" macbook pros that had faulty video cards due to poor heat management and died prematurely.
The first example I came across, they did it after 8 months in 2011. Maybe you're right, maybe the Macbook Pro is just a beefier Macbook now. They didn't even splurge on the most up to date Intel chips, but the price went up?
This is so disappointing, after a long wait too.
Now that ssds in macbooks are not user replaceable -- you have to buy as much disk as you want for 3 years all up front -- it's nearly $3k for the cheapest 15 inch macbook not even including applecare for 3 years. Ouch.
I was going to say you were wrong because it was stated "starts at 16GB" near the end of the event. Checked the store and sure enough, I see no way to increase the RAM.
That's just stupid.
Also no where does it says the speed and bandwidth they'll support, overall there isn't much performance difference between LPDDR3 or 4, or between DDR3 and 4 when the frequencies are off by only a few 100's of mhz.
That said I'm actually disappointed that the memory on the MBP especially the 15" is LPDDR, no reason to degrade memory performance on a machine which already has a pretty big battery, DDR4 is pretty darn power efficient as it is.
This to me looks more like another cost cutting decision set by Apple to simplify board design and the supply chain.
No 7th gen CPU's, low power memory for no reason, dumping of ports, and a pretty steep price hike.
I'm glad I bought my mid 2015 pretty fully upgraded MBP 15 with a dedicated GPU for 1480 GBP on sale last holiday season, this one is not even meh, it's a full on pass, the only feature I like is the touch ID, I still don't understand why Apple doesn't allow you to unlock your Mac with your phone, but now I know why.
As for the 7th gen CPU--there are no available quad cores. I don't think Apple wanted to release redesigned MBPs with the 15" flagship model having a CPU one-generation behind the 13" model.
I am ok with the LPDDR3 being used for the 13" one, but on the 15" they should've went with DDR4 tbh.
As for the chips yes no quad cores for KB yet, but then again I don't understand why they didn't just staggered the release like usual, MBP13 can come out with Kabby Lake Dual Cores and the 15 can come out later when the QC's are out which is December this year.
FWIW it looks like the only available option for 15" rMBP is 16GB. Personally it's more than I need, but it's still interesting that there's no room to adjust.
Like I did myself back in the days, when I built my own PCs. But then in mass production?
It just feels lazy from Apple.
Adding expensive hardware (or as you call it, more powerful hardware) to your BOM will cut into your margins.
It's even worse than that, if you're in the UK: the price of the 2013 Mac Pro has gone up by £500. Yes yes, Brexit and currency adjustment, and if it were new hardware I'd clench my teeth and bear it. But a £500 increase for hardware that's almost three years old is highway robbery.
The newest Mac Pro used a Bloomfield CPU (2008) or a Westmere one (2010) and a circa 2009 GPU.
edit: the key to a good experience seemed to be finding a working configuration then leaving it alone. If you want to update the OS regularly, you'll probably be unhappy.
Installing OS X took only a little longer than on my native Macs. I just had to tick a few checkmarks in the Hackintosh post-install software to customize for my setup.
OS X 10.11 updates I could install as soon as they were available from Apple. No problems at all. (I of course checked the appropriate forums for compatibility notes but there never were any problems reported). Haven't installed 10.12 yet (as I'm not too thrilled by the OS on my MBP anyways) but I heard it works just fine on Hackintoshes.
Now the caveats: I disabled the onboard audio and attached external USB speakers instead. Because onboard audio seems to be more broken than not and USB audio "just works". I'm also connecting the machine via ethernet and don't have a WiFi adapter attached. Oh, and I got lucky in the first place by choosing OS X compatible hardware (Intel CPU, ASRock mainboard, AMD GPU).
Things that doen't work: Browser DRM with Safari. I can't watch Netflix on the machine. iMessage support is cumbersome. And I can't submit binaries to the app store from the machine.
But otherwise for work it's a beast (compile times are great compared to my MBP) :)
As long as you use Intel CPU/AMD GPU you're golden. Intel's HD GPUs work, too. Nvidia GPUs need 3rd party drivers from Nvidia.
It's entirely Brexit.
This day last year, £1 was worth $1.527.
Today, £1 is worth $1.223.
(1.223-1.527)/1.527 = -20% almost exactly, and the Mac Pro has increased in price by 20%.
Since GBP is fluctuating a lot, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple's prices include some extra leeway in case of further swings.
(And aren't I glad I emigrated from the UK last year...)
You can have 16 GB ram on a 2011 ThinkPad X220.
Just saying.
Did we watch the same event? Microsoft introduced a $3,000 desktop PC in an era when nobody uses desktops anymore. It introduced a minor update to the Surface Book that starts at $2,300 with dual-core CPU, only 8GB of RAM, and last-gen graphics hardware.
For the same price as the new Surface Book i7, I can get an MBP 15" with bigger screen, twice the RAM, and a quad-core CPU, and it's Microsoft that hit it out of the park?!
This is why every single company has giant marketing departments and this perception informs so many of our decisions both consciously and unconsciously.
This is the real danger that apple is in - that how it's perceived is changing even if its products continue to be superior.
A lot of people have desktops, myself included. I'm not really sure where you got such an impression.
Not just that... If nobody uses desktops, why would Apple waste so much engineering and design resources on something like the iMac if there's no market?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/269044/worldwide-desktop...
Most people don't buy pickup trucks, but 1) people who buy them need them, and 2) it's a profitable market segment.
No. Microsoft introduced an entirely new kind of tool for digital artists. I'm not one myself, but the Surface Studio makes me wish I were. And the people I know who are, are over the moon about it. They can't wait to get their hands on one.
Yes, it's Microsoft that hit it out of the park, and made Apple look amazingly weak by comparison. Today's event wouldn't have been particularly impressive even on its own. By comparison with yesterday's, it's just embarrassing.
The Surface Studio may seem impressive, but as far as workflow goes, the Mac with tablet setup really is perfection.
I've never had the desire to look down on the tablet to draw, as the pointer always moves synchronously on screen.
In fact, I feel my hand would get in the way of drawing..
Right now it seems like the Apple products are refined perfection, while Microsoft is still trying to figure out its place.
"The enjoyment of one's tools is an essential ingredient of successful work." --Donald Knuth
It is worth spending the money, if you have it, to buy the tools you will enjoy working with.
Both have their place - pen on screen or pen off. Working with your pen on a screen, especially a smaller screen, means you lose a good chunk of your visible space. Overall opinion -- it is great for artists that two major companies have made a significant effort on getting the pen on display right.
Why would anyone need a desktop in this day and age? Moore's law means the things that desktops used to do 5 years ago, laptops do now.
The compute requirements for photo editing, for example, haven't changed in 5 years. But the processors and systems (IO, displays, etc..) keep getting faster. It's only natural that laptops would cannibalize desktops. And phones/tablets will cannibalize laptops in a few years.
This is what I was responding to.
So we have Blizzard and Source engine, who am I missing?
http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197998185123/games/?...
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition: Win
Team Fortress 2: Win/Mac/Lin
Factorio: Win/Mac/Lin
Rocket League: Win/Mac/Lin
Particle Fleet: Emergence: Win/Mac/Lin
SHENZHEN I/O: Win/Mac/Linux
Oil Rush: Win/Mac/Linux
Castle Crashers: Win/Mac
Tropico 5: Win/Mac/Linux
Literally every game I've played recently except ONE supports Mac
Obviously I'm not a "serious" gamer :)
I don't think you'd argue that a mac is a good gaming rig from a performance / $ perspective (or any other perspective really).
Photo editing can be hugely resource intensive. Camera RAW files have been getting larger over time, and all but the simplest edits demand an SSD, a fast processor, and at least 32GB of memory. 128GB isn't unusual for commercial work.
You can get by with less, but sooner or later - usually sooner - you run out of RAM and your machine starts thrashing.
Many Photoshop features are hardware-accelerated, so having a good graphics card makes a significant difference to editing speed.
3D animation definitely needs a good graphics card. So does video editing.
Audio doesn't, but it needs as much raw processor power as possible. I know DJs/producers who are running dual 12-core Xeon systems for their mixes, and adding PCI DSP cards on top.
Surface Studio looks very nice, but it fails to tick most of these boxes. The reality is there's a significant market for creative power users willing to pay good money for multicore server-grade towers for their work.
Neither Apple nor MS are paying attention to this market. The Mac Pro is an underpowered curiosity now, and Surface Studio has - sadly - been hobbled by greed and penny pinching.
Camera raw files haven't been increasing in size faster than Moore's law.
They can get by fine with a laptop. The Mac Pro is overpowered for them.
Moore's law has slowed down btw and is predicted to end in 4-6 years (2020 - 2022) as it would be physically impossible to shrink transistors any further /unless/ there is a change from the current silicon CMOS technology.
In fact, manufacturers are no longer even targeting the doubling of transistors anymore! Instead they are focusing speeding them up.
It can't be an effective interaction device and a server-level resource at the same time. Anyone who is enough of an enthusiast to require a dual Xeon workstation is clearly not who MS is targeting with a single product. Leave the multicore server-grade towers to HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc. because there's nothing to innovate there - you just throw hardware, bought at market price, into a box. What is MS supposed to innovate on there if all you care about is specs/$ and ignore the design and use-case?
I love to have just as much power I can. I'd love to have a multi-CPU POWER9 loaded with a couple terabytes of RAM and a couple flash cards attached to a fast bus, but I wouldn't know what to do with it.
"Overwatch was fast and fun on medium settings. Civ VI is what I’ve played the most on the Studio and it looks and runs fantastic."
"When I first saw the device months ago in that secret room at MS, they asked me what I thought. I said, “Well I have no idea if anyone else will want it, but you have made my dream computer.”
Nothing about that is, I went out and paid my own money to buy this.
People spreading Viral Videos are often unpaid paid, even if they are a critical part of a marketing campaign. Hand someone some free hardware and they don't think is this worth X, just is X cool.
So, it's not surprising or questionable that his reviews are positive.
Also, pay is not limited to just cash.
Based on the article (he's been lent this device for the last week or so), I imagine the same thing may well happen if he's happy with it - which it sounds like he may be.
* I think you can reasonably make a case that Windows 95/98/NT were better than MacOS 7/8/9. (You could probably make a reasonable case for the opposite; I certainly wouldn't argue the point).
* The Zune was better than the iPod. Unfortunately for MS not better than the iPhone a few months later. The "Metro" design language it introduced was quite a bit better than Apple's at the time (and started the "flat design" trend that even Apple would end up aping, years later).
* Various areas where MS beat Apple by default, at least circa the 90s-00s, owing to Apple making no or a half-hearted effort. Office suites, gaming consoles, web browsers, the server, 3D graphics, yadda yadda.
* C# is a far better language than Objective-C, and Visual Studio is a far better IDE than Xcode.
* Edge is arguably a better browser than Safari. MS have also made some great tooling for webdev recently, VSCode and Typescript, while we haven't heard much from Apple.
* The Surface tablets have been arguably better than recent iPads, by virtue of running a full OS.
After that I've got nothing.
C# is a nicer language, and VS a better IDE when it comes to language integration but.. the platform APIs are far more productive on OS X than they are on Windows and the GUI toolkit was good from the get go, whereas MS never commits to a toolkit fully (MFC, WinForms, WPF, now UWP which is like a restricted, not fully compatible WPF). Why do you think there's so many great, lightweight alternatives to Photoshop with non destructive image editing on Mac OS X, like Affinity Photo, Acorn, Pixelmator, and none on Windows ? why is it that Apple can dogfood and write everything in their modern platform APIs, even rewrote their file browser Finder, in it, but Windows out of the box comes with exactly zero .net apps? Recently Windows 10 brought some .net stuff out of the box on the desktop, but they're all toy apps no one would want to use, and certainly no equivalent to Apple Mail, Photos, iMovie, Garageband etc. The UWP mail client is pitiful. C#/.net platform in general, on the desktop, as far as commercial, desktop apps sold to consumers come, is a dead wasteland. Whatever few .net apps I've seen as an enduser that made use of .net, I tend to associate with "slow, heavy, not featureful" particularly WPF apps. .net greatest success is the same as Java: on servers, or on the desktop for in-house business software where the well being of the enduser is not a priority and no one cares if the app feels sluggish or has terrible UI.
The lack of dogfooding has been a common complaint among windows developers for a long time, for example :
http://functionalflow.co.uk/blog/2011/09/27/microsoft-please...
> I understand deadlines and priorities, and I know that probably Microsoft just had to ship something at some point, but it really seems that there was a big lack of dogfooding in the WPF case.
> There’s a striking example of this: what was the number one complaint that developers had about WPF since 2006?… Blurry text and images. And when did Microsoft fix it?… Only in 2010, when they started using WPF for Visual Studio.
> Another issue that has been bugging me since I started using WPF was the airspace limitation. It seems that it’s finally going to be fixed in 4.5. Why do I think it’s being solved now? Because they probably needed some native WinRT component to play nice with WPF…
Microsoft still doesn't really use .net outside of dev tools and server apps. UWP apps are just toy apps. UWP OneNote isn't even close to the desktop OneNote. And so on. MS themselves don't really produce high quality desktop apps with C#. If they won't, then who will? Compare to Apple and how everything they make, makes heavy use of their platform APIs such as Cocoa, Core Image, Core Animation etc. How could .net not be a barren wasteland for desktop apps?
Apple always had the better developer platform, dogfooded and thus battletested, and now they're also getting a nicer programming language to work with, with Swift. Their IDE is still no visual studio, but AppCode from IntelliJ fixes that.
Hence why I made no mention of APIs.
They haven't replaced my laptop with anything new. They just released a newer model. Similar to every yearly company announcement ever. Nobody cares about version 7 with nothing new, they care about version 1 of something innovative.
Microsoft just blew Wacom out of the water in a niche product market. Great. What does that have to do with new MBPs?
Does Wacom have an entire suite of comparable products, or do they cater specifically to a niche market? Was their announcement yesterday? Life has context.
> What does that have to do with new MBPs?
I'll go ahead and quote the original comment you originally responded to: "This event was by far the most disappointing Mac event in the history". Apple had an event where they announced not much more than that we are now in late 2016. Nobody is saying MBP itself is bad, the event is comparatively lacking.
Hahahahahahahahaha
Wacom hasn't released an innovative product in 10 years, and much like Texas Instruments and their $130 monopoly on school calculators, everyone is still paying the same $2500 to Wacom that they did decades ago for Cintiq.
The lack of competition for Wacom is criminal and has allowed them to coast on last-decades product line for a very long time.
Hell, the most innovative thing Wacom has done in 10 years is rebrand Graphire into Bamboo. Ooooooh!
I imagine the day the Apple Pencil was announced was a very grim day in what ever is left of the Wacom R&D department.
Have you used Surface before? Asking because when I picked one up about a month ago, I had an awful time with it. Makes me think their announcement won't really do anything but look interesting. I could be missing something, though.
Did you get to play with it at a store or friends house, or actually take it home and use it for some time. Everyone i've met that has a surface (book, 3, 4, etc) loves it.
First, this is a business for me. And I suspect it's a business for anyone that Apple or Microsoft expects to sell this stuff to. And having to pay $3000 for outdated hardware is a tough pill to swallow. The hardware in the Macbook "Pro" is simply inexcusable. (REALLY???? 16GB RAM MAX!?!?!?) But the hardware in the Surface Studio is equally galling. They give you an NVidia what? 965 for $3000??? And the BEST I could even POSSIBLY get would be a 980??? And for that magnanimous gesture on their part I would be obliged to pay a MINIMUM of $4100??? For LAST GENERATION graphics cards???? On a machine purportedly about graphics???? (A 1080 would run both faster AND cooler using LESS power Microsoft. And at this point in time, for a business investment 64GB of RAM should really be offered by anyone NOT trying to screw you. What's the deal Microsoft???)
I think to objective observers who were waiting for these presentations... both proved SEVERELY underwhelming considering the pent up expectations. I mean... OK... if you put a gun to my head, I'll probably buy the Surface Studio. But don't expect me to pretend that I don't know that both Microsoft and Apple are robbing me.
Sorry for the rant.
Edit: afaik the only moving part in the Surface Studio are the fans. Replacing a fan is an annoyance but at least it won't lead to data loss!
As for having "outdated" cards, that is more a function of the production timeline. I am sure the Studio has been in the works for a while and those were probably the best in class cards around the time.
And the video is outdated, period, no air-quotes. There is simply no argument there. Making an excuse for it is nice and all, but it simply is a case of charging a premium for old tech.
Using the Surface as a tablet for drawing has been a huge use-case for visual artists from day 1. Just see this positive review of the original Surface Pro by Gabe from Penny Arcade: https://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2013/02/22/the-ms-sur...
Most of those artists ended up buying iPad Pros to replace them with.
This is a weird complaint to me. So what if the display hardware is dated if it is perfectly up to the task it's presented with? Maxing out the specs on a machine for no other reason than to max out the specs seems to me to be nothing but a waist.
And even if it is perfectly suited the the rest of the hardware and any additional RAM/performance would be wasted[1], that's not a good excuse to overcharge for old commodity hardware.
[1] I would be extremely surprised if the rest of the system were designed around the video card. Actually, designed twice, since there are two video card options.
I wonder why ms didn't stick with AMD (like the xbox one) if they weren't going to use a 1080 (or 1070, might make more sense).
As someone that used to enjoy drawing/doodling but never made the leap from mouse to a digital pen - sketching and doodling on the surface 4 was eye-opening. Any number of programs paired with the pen/screen feels a lot like ink drawing without the mess and with multi-level undo.
The combination of a decent pen and great screen makes for a very satisfying and immediate drawing experience.
980M - 100W / 1060 ~ 80W / 1070 ~ 120W / 1080 ~ 150W
If they started out with the max TDP of 100W for the cooling system - upgrading it to 150W in that small space it sounds like too much of a change to meet their DL?
Clearly this does not excuse the reengineering but it might explain why they went this route.
The other was that they have already crossed over the "luxury" threshold from "just another PC" to "special hotness" sort of territory. So unless Nvidia is giving them a smoking deal on "old" GPU's it seems that from a marketing perspective you would want to check off all the boxes. Its reported that it would use less power and generate less heat, and Nvidia says it is 20% faster. That seems like it would be a "no brainer". But I clearly don't know.
That is why it surprised me when I read the high end Studio only had the GTX980 in it.
Really? First thing I thought when I saw it was how cool it would be for 3D sculpting. There are more uses for high end GPUs than gaming.
Not even just that, it's the last gen mobile cards, which means you have to spend 4.2k just to have 4GB of VRAM on something that, at the end of the day, is really a desktop. the 980 desktop version is ~$600 with 6GB VRAM.
you are paying for a digital drafting table.
As mentioned in another thread, purchasing the lcd panel itself ala-carte would cost more than the entire unit.
Maybe the thing you want to pay for is the screen, but there's no avoiding the outdated GPU tax that you have to pay to get it.
What counts is the time it takes to perform an operation like a Camera RAW import or a blur. If that goes down by a significant percentage, productivity goes up by a significant amount.
For drawing, good acceleration is the difference between a distracting experience that's laggy and unusable, and a smooth experience that gets out of the way of the work.
Besides, there are people with an interest in art and machine learning. Good luck with a 980M if that's your area of interest.
70% faster, they could just as well write "new recipe".
Let's call high-end graphics cards for what they really are: gaming console graphics hardware stuffed into PCs. Apart from a relatively small number of professionals who work with 3D rendering, high-end graphics cards are an even greater waste of money (unless of course you're buying the machine for gaming, which doesn't really fit the "digital artist" target of these machines).
Microsoft and Apple may still be pricing these products too high ("robbing you" as you say), but that's a separate discussion.
I think you're right that artists largely don't need what high end gaming PCs might require to play the newest steam titles at full graphics settings, but for what Microsoft is asking here, they do at least need enough GPU/CPU strength to have a very responsive UI when editing very large and complex graphical projects at 2560 x 1600 and beyond.
My worry about the Surface is simply that the minority report-style advertisement isn't really possible with a real-world PSD or 3dsmax scene.
I can't help but notice that you are equating that 99% of "digital art" that can be handled by mobile graphics cards, to the 1% of "digital art" that anyone's going to actually PAY someone to produce. As I said, this is a business. If I could make the living I currently make retouching photos, then I'd gladly pay $3000 for an underpowered machine...
but I can't.
because no one is going to pay us that kind of money to retouch photos are they?
Look, these machines, to a business, are INVESTMENTS. You invest for the FUTURE, not to take advantage of the past. A 1070 or 1080 is not too much to ask considering Pascal's MANIFEST superiority in efficiency. Additionally, I was being kind, I think MS should OFFER 64GB in the Surface Studio, but a 128GB option would really be necessary to future proof this thing.
I'll tell you what MS and Apple are going for here... it's a money grab. And they are setting themselves up to come back to guys like me every 18 to 24 months for another mandatory money grab instead of just giving us a 60 month machine from the outset.
Offer me a 60 month Surface Studio at the $3000 price point and I'd update every workstation here. But that's not what they're offering is it?
Up until this year, I have never owned a machine with more than 8GB of RAM, and never a video card with more than 1GB of RAM until now either.
Are you perhaps talking about video editing or CGI rendering?
I think people are imagining that a better computer will improve its performance, but it won't. There's a sleep statement in there or something. (Their blog post says something like "a cloud industry-leading innovation in picking-your-camera-out-of-a-list user experience story flow." Really? Just suck the files off my memory card in the background as soon as you detect one.)
Yes. Video editing and CGI. The workflow normally requires the use of MASSIVE memory mapped files. Additionally, a given artist may do several "lo res" renders before shipping off to the farm. ("Lo res" being a relative word. Because in most cases we're talking about 2560x1440 or 1080p minimum.) I really don't see how your tech guys are able to get that to work for you on cards that have 1GB memory. But if they can, then you'd better NEVER let those guys go because they are worth their weight in gold. (Unless you don't do any CGI or video editing???)
Source: I was a system engineer for VFX and animation for a number of years.
Then again, with Chrome taking up >4GB of RAM, they probably could have gotten half that performance just by closing their browser or using Safari.
Can confirm. Got up to 15GB RAM usage today, before closing 30+ tabs to get back down to 7GB. Maybe it's ridiculous, but based on the information I'm needing from those tabs--100% text--it's infuriating.
Oh, and also sitting awfully comfortably in that 7GB area is Dropbox, which is doing who knows what with all of its RAM...I do like the Linux command line tool though.
I'm probably an outlier though so can understand why it doesnt exist.
That's completely realistic for pro and semi-pro users.
The cost of making a laptop that could take 32GB or even 64GB of RAM must be tiny. No one would care if Apple only supplied 16GB but left a couple of slots free, or even if the stock overpriced 16GB could be swapped for 32GB.
Why cut corners and make "pro" machines that can't be used for professional work?
It's counterproductive. It may increase margins in the short term, but over time it alienates users and erodes the appeal of the brand.
It seems "Think Different" has become "Don't Expect Much."
I don't know if you saw this posted elsewhere in the thread but this is a pretty solid endorsement: https://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2016/10/26/the-surfac...
Look, I'm sorry - I'm with you for most of it, but you have this stick held by completely the wrong end. Gaming consoles are closer to APUs than discrete high-end GPUs.
High end graphics cards are usually much better than a gaming console, in that they offer much better frame-rates, and a lot more resolution, and at the same time even a single card can be more expensive than a complete gaming console.
So, yes, they are for gaming 99.9% of the time. But please don't compare them with consoles.
Not only that- it's a mobile processor, 980M, so it would lag some distance behind a 980. That is cutting serious corners for a desktop at that price point.
The machine is not "purportedly about graphics", it's about 2D artists, and they made that clear in pretty much every presentation I've seen on the device.
I'd bet that one could make a revolutionary stats program with the new form factor/interface possibility.
SURE! Except, of course, you're not going to be allowed to code it in Python, R, or Octave. Instead, it will be Microsoft(TM) Visual(TM) R#(TM) with the new NetDNA/DCOM/.NET/CloudyMcCloudface Framework (TM)!! (now, with 40% more Cortana!(TM))
1: https://github.com/Microsoft/PTVS
2: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-de...
Actually I believe they introduced a competitor to the Wacom Cintiq that comes in a variety of sizes and does not require you to use a desktop or Windows 10.
Calling it 'an entirely new kind of tool' is really over stating it.
if they are serious about art creation, they should only use wacom technology and nobody else.
Not really, you could buy a Wacom Cintiq since about forever. I'm glad they're giving wacom some competition though.
It isn't an entirely new tool, it is an HDR, higher res, larger version of a Cintiq, with a built in slow PC with last-generation mobile graphics. The hinge and stuff was definitely an improved industrial design.
Those screen improvements alone are probably enough for lots of professionals to switch from cintiq, even if they lose support for professional-tier desktop hardware, but what about the pen? As far as I can tell the pen doesn't even have tilt detection and from videos you have to use the dial/puck to simulate rotating or tilting the pen.
In spite of that, it was definitely more innovative than anything Apple showed.
Still cheaper than macbook pro btw, which I have that too but mostly use it for ios stuff only.
Mind you, if you totalled up all the staff hours wasted this year with people wandering around searching and asking others for various dongles, we probably could have afforded another couple of MBPs.
The fraction of desktops vs. laptops shipped (~40%-~60%) has been holding steady for years. https://www.statista.com/statistics/272595/global-shipments-...
The target market for this is people who buy a $1,800 wacom cintiq and pair it with a $1,000 computer.
The price is reasonable for the people it targets.
So for 1,100 you are getting half as much ram, half as much storage, and a lesser gpu.
I'm sure you could spec out something similar to the internals for a few hundred less with a little bit of work.
[1]https://us-store.wacom.com/Catalog/Pen-Displays/Cintiq/Cinti...
> Tycho asked me to compare it to my Cintiq, and I told him that drawing on the Cintiq now felt like drawing on a piece of dirty plexiglass hovering over a CRT monitor from 1997.
A bit hyperbolic, but you get the idea. https://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2016/10/26/the-surfac...
I would lose HOURS of productivity per week if I were not on a dual screen set up. It's just better for what I do.
That being said, if I need to go mobile, which I normally don't I use my macbook. I think I've disconnected my macbook from my monitors probably 2 times in the last 2 years.
> I would lose HOURS of productivity per week if I were
> not on a dual screen set up.
You're kind of proving his point... even the people who doesn't need a portable computer do get a portable computer instead of a desktop one nowadays. (By the way, I don't agree on desktop computers not being used anymore: I spent most of my day using a desktop computer. And a desktop telephone, another supossedly dissapearing technology.)
For the desktop, if you think people don't use desktops you're out of touch with reality. Microsoft introduced the Surface Studio primarily targeting what Apple has started to abandon, creatives & creative professionals.
A 27" Cintiq tablet costs $2800 on Amazon, and that's without the stand, which is an additional $600. This is what video editors, audio engineers and graphic artists use in their studios. The Surface Studio replaces all of that -and- it replaces the computer itself. What are you missing here?
Which means Microsoft has introduced a dual-core low-voltage part significantly less powerful than the one in the MBP. Let's not kid ourselves here, Apple was not going to use 15W LV KL in either MBP, and the 45W parts are will 4~6 months from release.
True. I wasn't talking about the red-headed step-child but you've got a point here. The hold-up there might have been that there's no Iris KL (incidentally I'm pissed that they've apparently gone with the non-iris pro on the 15", what the fuck)
Gee, I guess that confirms I'm nobody.
While they are alike in many respects, the Surface Book is an orange in comparison the the Macbook Pro in three important ways:
1 - It's a convertible
2 - It's got a touch screen
3 - It's got a pen digitizer
"a 28" desktop PC" is a bit of an understatement. It's a huge low-latency touch display which works like a drafting table.
> nobody uses desktops anymore
There's a desktop on most desks in our office. A Macbook is certainly an alternative option but not if you're looking for a large touchscreen display.
> For the same price as the new Surface Book i7, I can get an MBP 15" with bigger screen and quad-core CPU
If there was really a performance problem I think a lot more people would be upset with what was announced. Last gen means more stability and likely cooler temperature hardware. Also, does the 15" MBP have a detachable/touch screen? Does it come with Windows? These are real considerations for potential Surface adopters.
The Macbook is simply a laptop. There's no problem with that, but Surface is selling more than that, so a direct comparison on cost and performance isn't really fair. Or are you suggesting Apple is the only company capable of putting newer hardware into a computer?
The laptop is fine for fooling around, or "working" from home on the couch, but I'd lose my mind trying to do anything that small a screen, that few pixels, and a cramped, irregular keyboard with no travel. Plus trackpads. Fuck trackpads.
That people get anything done at all on these little midget laptops is, quite frankly, amazing to me.
Simply lacking screen real estate reduces available working memory that would be used to focus on a coding task.
Given how this empirically impacts work quality, I'm pretty amazed how younger tech companies have pushed employees in this direction.
It's not all that different from the open office trend.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/251521/when_two_monitors_aren...
>"People dramatically overestimate their ability to manage their environment," Meyer says, adding that in some ways, using multiple monitors to keep all sorts of data visible is analogous to using a cell phone while driving.
I've got 6880x1440 worth of curved display on my desk, and obviously, watching Netflix, browsing Facebook, or otherwise distracting myself with one of them would be a net productivity loss.
Perhaps your employees aren't perfectly rational actors whose incentive is to maximize the utility of their tools while at the office?
For example, there seems to be correlation between 1) wanting to keep git work local to a workstation and not push anywhere with public visibility, and 2) wanting to use a laptop so you can bring that local repository state with you.
Neither desires are necessarily aligned with what benefits the company (or the quality of work), but they do drive a laptop preference.
Even just having a physically larger display that fills your FOV appears to improve spatial task and memory performance: http://research-srv.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/desney/pub...
From another study (http://pro.sagepub.com/content/56/1/1506.abstract) on actual satisfaction (not open access, so quoting some key bits):
First, they provide a good summary of previous findings:
"Previous research has demonstrated productivity increases for users performing tasks on larger or multiple screens. For instance, a 9% productivity increase was noted while using wider screens (15” flat panel vs. 46.5” curved screen) (Czerwinski, et al., 2003)."
"Similarly, a 3.1% increase was noted using dual screens over a single screen (Poder, Godbout, & Bellemare, 2007). Task success has been found to increase for tasks performed on 4 – 17” monitors vs. a single 17” monitor (Truemper, et al., 2008). Likewise, tasks were performed faster and with less workload while using 2 – 17” monitors over a single 17” monitor (Kang & Stasko, 2007)."
"Other studies have noted increased window interaction and open windows while using multi-monitor configurations (Hutchings, Smith, Meyers, Czerwinski, & Robertson, 2004)."
"Issues with single monitor use have been well documented. Generally, higher mental workload, more window switching, repositioning, resizing, inadvertent opening, and closing of files have been associated with single small monitor usage (Czerwinski, et al., 2003). Users generally perceive small single monitors as requiring more workload (Grudin, 2001; Hashizume, Kurosu, Kaneko, 2007)."
Second, their own findings:
"Participants felt more rushed, that they worked harder, and were more frustrated [with a single monitor configuration]."
"Participants spent more active time in the PDF reference document while completing tasks on the single monitor configurations"
"Participants were observed to leave the PDF reference document open and viewable (but not in focus) while working with other source documents when in the dual monitor configurations."
"Participants clicked less during tasks on the dual 22” monitors than the dual 17” monitors and single 17” and 22” monitors."
"Participants switched between windows more frequently during tasks on a single 17” and 22” monitors than the dual 22” monitors."
Given that they're using glossy-screened laptops — maybe they care more about looks and hipness than about getting the job done?
Why the hate against glossy screens? The colors pop more and unless you're sitting in a spot that's prone to glare, you're just as productive as anyone else. I've never had an issue with a Macbook's glossy screen affecting my ability to work.
Sure, that's valid. But everyone's eyes are different, which is why I don't get why there are a lot of glossy screen haters out there. I never had that problem sitting in front of my glossy screened MBP for 8+ hours a day for 3+ years (it died but not because it had a glossy screen).
>> If it is about having something pretty as a status symbol, then yeah glossy makes sense.
Aren't glossy haters mocking/judging people basically using matte screens as status symbols? i.e., you must be a hipster or shallow and not a real programmer/{insert other profession here}?
I'm seriously considering getting a PC instead, even though I've written http://taoofmac.com for 14 years.
(I do happen to work for Microsoft, by the way, but would very much prefer to keep my home setup on a separate tech stack for the sake of keeping an open view. I'm now ogling the Skullcandy NUC and wondering how well it will run Elementary OS)
As long as you have no plans to play games, it's a wonderful machine for development. It's really fast for its small size, noticeably faster than the Macs I'd been using before. I spend most of my time with the NUC doing Ruby development in Fedora, with some Clojure and Node.js on the side. I've done some office type stuff with LibreOffice. I've dabbled in OpenSCAD while working on a 3D print. The NUC is more than enough power for all of that. I haven't played with Windows 10 too much, but it's also snappy when I need to boot into it.
It's a very quiet machine. On full blast, you might get a blowing sound similar to a stressed MBP. But usually in normal usage it's no more than a low hum; I can't even hear it unless I listen for it. You can throttle down the processors in the BIOS to make it nearly (totally?) silent if you like.
The most annoying thing about the NUC was installing the BIOS updates before getting started. The NUC6i5SYH had a lot of problems at launch that needed to be patched. Once I got beyond that, everything was smooth. The NUC is basically a laptop board shoved into a small box instead. If the things you want to do are possible on a laptop, they'll be possible on the NUC no problem.
I mostly access the NUC via SSH (and rsync my codebase between the two computers). The NUC is also connected to a monitor and I use the MacBook keyboard and mouse to drive both computers with Symless Synergy.
I would guess that just here on HN there are tens of thousands of us who could describe ourselves as "Unix-centric pros", who want powerful unixy client machines that match our unixy servers and who also want all the client-side stuff everyone needs (excellent video, audio, wifi, battery mgt., etc., drivers perfectly matched to hardware and working out of the box) plus a full range of apps. We can get the unixy client from Linux, BSD, or Mac. We can get the reliable, everything works consumer client stuff from Windows or Mac. The only overlap is Mac.
Unfortunately for us, this power user unix workstation stuff is just a historical accident for Apple, not a corporate objective. They're trying to get out of the computer business so they can focus on fashionable, high-margin, designer "lifestyle" products and services for the hip ones who consume stuff, not the old drudges in the back room who make stuff.
Microsoft holds their Windows legacy so dear that they'll slap more layers on the papier-mache balloon that is Windows but never put unix at its core, and all the nifty client-side Linux systems out there seem to have the motto "before you complain, realize that how much of it ends up working depends on how smart you are".
I would wish for Google to develop a line of powerful Linux-based workstations, but they would just spy on me until Google canceled the project altogether.
I wish Apple would create a wholly-owned subsidiary called "Apple Computer, Inc." that would have access to Apple's manufacturing expertise but would build a line of computers for power users who produce stuff--computers that weren't "thinner".
Look into it, Microsoft released it earlier this year specifically for unix developers.
But they just did, with Bash on Windows.
I do appreciate that they are trying to do as much as they think they can without throwing away the thing that they believe is the most valuable corporate asset they have: the mountain of stuff built over the years for Windows. They have carefully preserved this asset by making huge efforts to ensure than anything that worked on Windows in the past will keep working forever.
The thing is, what I wish they would do for me (which might not be what they need to do for themselves) is to take the equivalent of my Linux server and wrap a Windows API around it, the way a Mac is like a Linux server inside with a Mac API wrapped around it for client software usefulness. I'd be just as happy with a Windows GUI/API as a Mac GUI/API, but what I want is for it to resemble my servers under the GUI, so I can leverage whatever unixy skills and tools I may have.
Having a simulation of a unix shell on top of an NT core makes Windows more useful than it would otherwise be, but it's not the same as a Windows shell on a Linux kernel.
No, Darwin is Mach with BSD welded to it; it is not a pure Unix design. Likewise, WSL is the NT kernel with the Linux syscall interface on top, via the Pico Process interface. The NT kernel was designed for portability; in fact, POSIX compatibility was a design goal from the early days, in contrast to Mach where the idea of mashing together Mach and BSD was never considered.
In many ways, WSL is a much cleaner design than Darwin is.
Many that went Apple when they showed OS X to the world, never really understood Apple, or for that matter, NeXT culture.
The POSIX layer never mattered, what mattered were the Objective-C frameworks on top and a workflow based on Xerox PARC ideas, that Steve Jobs brought to Apple and NeXT.
The UNIX compatibility was there, because NeXT was competing against Sun and Irix workstations, so it needed to be compatible to a certain extent.
Later Apple trying to promote the same compatibility because after the Copland failure, they needed to sell computers or close shop, so the UNIX with nice GUI was a way of doing it.
For those of us that develop native applications, it never really mattered.
If they just push the specs up, increase battery life..."Apple isn't innovating anymore", "So what's new?", "It looks just like my old MBP" etc.
Now that they actually bring something innovative you'll get this kind of complains.
Now no matter if people liked this event or not I find it hard to believe anyone seriously though yesterdays MS event was any better. Overpriced useless last gen crap for insane price.
That perfectly fits my opinion of Apple. ;)
I jumped off the Apple band wagon years ago, but an important point here is: Apple events used to be exciting. They would announce something interesting and worthy at every event, which is why so many even started watching life streams.
The iPhone is still a really great phone, but iOS has been playing catchup with Android for years. And apart from mobile Apple hasn't done much that's innovative or interesting for quite some time.
That's why opinions are so harsh. People have come to expect more.
Apple products usually have top notch latest specs and are most powerful products out there. Both in laptops and in smartphones. So definitely not last gen crap.
Overpriced? Expensive maybe, but probably one of the least overpriced actually. Unlike most manufacturers who just throw in Windows or Android on top of their generic hardware, Apple design a lot of HW and SW and their integrations in-house and they actually have costs to cover. (I heard Silicon Valley engineers aren't exactly free)
I don't know what is "much that's innovative". I guess it's subjective. If we look at the last few years: 3D Touch, TouchID. That's not so bad.
If we look at the whole history of Android...eh...well...hmmm...Samsung Edge...maybe?
I agree that Apple isn't innovating as well as they used to back in the days of Jobs, but nobody else really didn't innovate back then and they sure as hell don't innovate now unless you see putting unnecessarily high specs on a smartphone as an innovation.
You mean low-spec RAM? Slow SSD's? Obviously soldered in, lel...
A GPU that is apparently is on par with last, severely slower (compared to 1000 series nVidias), generation of GPU's? 2GB of VRAM, lel again
A CPU that is nothing to gawk at? (2.6~2.8 GHz nominal)
Crappy sound, crappy cooling, zero moisture resistance, all for ~2800 bucks
Meanwhile Lenovo I've got in order to work with Autodesk Inventor has the same CPU, 1TB 7200rpm HDD + 128GB SSD (replaceable), up to 32GB RAM (I've got 16GB in 2 slots out of 4), 960M with 4GB VRAM, SD card reader that is amazing to have, bitching sound that kinda surprised me, full size keyboard, all for a whopping ~1000$. (And I'm fairly certain it will not die to humid air - I'm guilty of sometimes using it with water dripping off my fingers even)
Sure, it only has a 1080 screen and I don't care about battery life (since I use it as a mobile workstation that is plugged 99% of the time) and it obviously comes with Windows 10 (THE HORROR)
The point is: stop spreading bullshit about how amazing Apple hardware is. For the price you are paying it is a joke.
Then you are not in Apple's market, period. For a lot of mobile users, wicked specs are pointless if you are tied to an outlet.
I used to be Thinkpad hardcore too. I switched to Mac when my x200/x201 hybrid that I built died (fell off the top of a server rack) and work bought me an MBPr. I'm pretty firm in the Apple camp now. I used to be a hater and holy shit was I wrong.
Now that my workflow is mostly photography and 4k video editing I couldn't imagine being back on a Thinkpad with Arch/CentOS. Windows is dead to me and has been for years, I'd go back to Linux FAR before Windows, but the workflow on OSX is just so damn sweet that I'm not even thinking about it.
There's really no company that comes even close to Apple for my use case. That being said I wouldn't pay $2800 either. Let the suckers buy it and I buy lightly used for half the price. The new screen is really, really, tempting though.
That Apple products have BIG margins can clearly be seen in their profits.
People are willing to pay the addition for the ego boost and great design (MacBook is still the nicest looking Laptop imo, iPhones always look great).
But it's not because they use the best, super expensive hardware.
If they replaced function keys with the touch bar and left everything else alone (save for faster components), I don't think half as many people would be complaining.
Loads of people still use desktops. If you were to say not many people/companies need that kind of machine then you would be right.
Speak for yourself.
You cannot seriously expect anyone edit a 4k video on a laptop with 16 GB or RAM, no matter how hard Apple is pushing their ridiculous onstage demos.
You cannot seriously expect serious developers run multiple VMs, for example, on 16 GB RAM on a laptop.
The list goes on and on.
http://penguindreams.org/blog/msi-ws60-running-linux/
Scala development, and some devs ops stuff that required spinning up VMs. I mean not a lot; like 6 ~ 8.
At work, I use a 16GB ram laptop, Scala development an no VMs (we do everything in Docker and deploy to Mesos/Marathon).
I do have a desktop at home now with 32GB of ram, but it honestly feels like overkill and I may scale down. There is a lot of dev work that does require a pretty beefy workstation, but I've been doing HD video editing, Photoshop/Lightroom and Scala/Java work on laptops for years.
Studies are consistent here.
Time you spend waiting? Distracts you from your tasks, overall focus drops -- you're dumber.
Less screen real-estate? More working memory dedicated to what's not on screen -- you're dumber.
I don't think that the Surface Studio is where computers should go. It's not relevant for 95% of users.
The sentiment on Designer News was positive, and most of the people over there are UI designers and front-end engineers. https://www.designernews.co/stories/75964-microsoft-surface-...
And honestly, MBP is not the best purchase for specs. You can get a cheaper Dell XPS 15.
Overpriced Microsoft devices, although impressive. I am more worried about the silence from MS on MFC given the world's investment in it. We can't all just rewrite our apps in UWP overnight. The foundation classes were just that - a foundation, and we can't move the giant building built on top.
For the Mac, goodbye MagSafe and SD cards and optical audio in (or any audio line in, actually). What's the point of a super thin device if you have to carry it in a thick bag due to the bulkiness of the 24 adapters to make the device useful or connect it to anything? It beggars belief.
"We've made the thinnest car ever! Steering wheel is an optional extra".
I think we are reaching the pinnacle of computer hardware and software development. We may have even passed it.
In short, I'll stick with my current MacBook Pro for as long as I can. That new giant touchpad looks to make typing tricky.
It is in maintenance mode, only bug fixes are planned or little improvements like they did on VS 2015.
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt270148.aspx
For C++ on WIndows the future is XAML, for legacy MFC applications there is Project Centennial.
Thanks in advance.
What I have bookmarked is for Windows Forms ones, where they state exactly that.
https://www.infoq.com/news/2014/04/WPF-QA
Maybe this is already worthy read for you, it also mentions C++.
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/vcblog/2013/08/20/atl-and-m...
"MFC can't be used for for Windows Store apps because it uses too many APIs that are banned for store usage. In order to allow MFC usage in your scenario we would probably have to break MFC into multiple DLLs, which would be a prohibitive amount of work."
?? What profession doesn't use -- doesn't absolutely rely on desktop PCs??
> nobody uses desktops anymore
That's just not true. Maybe you only use computers for social media and youtube but other people need things that can actually run resource intense programs.
For general computing (e.g. web browsing), yes. But that doesn't cover all the possible uses of a computing device. Gamers, designers, scientists, video/media professionals are some of the people who use primarily desktops.
Lots of people use desktops. And this is more than a desktop PC, the "studio" functionality makes that clear.
And last-gen/overpriced current hardware is what Apple has been doing for a long time, yet it's easy to see by their success that it's not pure specs but rather the actual experience that matters.
This is microsoft making a product that designers love.
The behemoth which everyone considered dead is finding ways to make inroads into apple's old stronghold, with design innovations.
Yeah its going to have to deal with Windows, but this is a huge turn for a creature with that kind of momentum to overcome.
With the internal stack re-orgnization (rationalization), and having to build their own reference PCs, and buying their own pen tech, they are doing what a good firm should do - work hard on improving.
They have far to go but theres lots of signs of them moving in the right direction.
Whereas in sharp contrast you have
the Ipad pro which still runs ios, and the touch bar. And lets not forget their moment of courage, where they decided that they will obsolete the entire world of headphones.
Any data to support this?
Sent from my desktop PC.
I'd argue that this isn't true, especially for high-end artists, developers, gamers, and... well, my anec-data (gathered in only the finest biased areas) shows that this is blatantly false.
I was hoping to get one that supported multiple 4k displays. With the title of "Mac Event" I was anticipating at least 2 Macs updated, not just the MBP.
That the first 25 minutes of the event were non-Mac preamble adds salt to that wound.
I don't recall either of them then going on to build on that with any product/feature announcements...
Yup, I remember seeing a blind guy on the subway using voiceover on an iPhone 3g (that would be the second iPhone ever) - totally blew my mind at how adeptly he was able to use the thing.
He wasn't just legally blind, he had absolutely no vision what so ever... but with the voiceover technology and the accessibility built in to OS X 10.4 at the time it was already amazing to him. Apple has worked very hard to make iOS and OS X accessible to not just those with perfect vision or perfect control, but also those with various disabilities.
https://gist.github.com/icopp/29f225279a39ba9e3ea0d1f596e97c...
I'm getting serious shades of "IBM clone vendor throwing darts at a board to try to appeal to every possible price point" instead of coherent product lines here.
I think Apple would like to drop the MacBook Air in favour of a cheaper MacBook at some point, but they can't right now.
"Apple throwing darts at a board to try to appeal to every possible price point just before Steve Jobs returned"
They announced a 5k monitor that they developed with LG which charges the MBP. You can attach devices to that and it's like a "hub".
i think it's pretty obvious the macbooks aren't the big money makers at apple. that lil apple pay button is there to subsidize and justify continued development of the mac.
apple probably wants to kill the mac. but some guy at apple's like what if we put a lil thumb scanner on it and apple pay then can we keep it pls and then the cfo was like sure okay fine the mac can stay only if you add an apply pay button.
also pretty sure all-day battery life isn't innovation and thus probably not what they're working on. how about eternal battery life wherein a solar panel so efficient is able to pull light even in the darkest of situations. how about remote charging.
i'm sick of charging shit. that's what's next, no charging.
iMacs were refreshed in late 2015. It's typically ~3 years between new generations, often with a hardware refresh somewhere in between. Nothing new here.
> - No monitor announcement.
They partnered with LG (I think?) on a 5k monitor. Sounds like a reasonable replacement for the Thunderbolt Display.
http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#Mac shows the days between releases in the past:
147 May 2015
215 Oct 2014
387 Sep 2013
298 Nov 2012
577 May 2011
280 Jul 2010
The solid industrial design, long service life, etc. are worth something but probably not 3-4 hardware generations, especially for the premium market Apple wants to be in. The PC market hasn't been completely stagnant and while nobody is buying a Mac for super hard-core gaming they really don't want to be in a position where someone drops a fair amount of cash and their new computer struggles with a game which came out a year or two back, 4K video playback, etc.
It's called "bias"
He was definitely the best part of the production. They should use him for a lot more in the future.
Hmmm, you make it sound as if the Microsoft event was a home run - it wasn't. The Surface Studio was interesting, but it's clearly aimed for graphic professionals and its stratospheric pricing put it out of reach for a lot of people. As for the Surface Book, well, considering all of the issues they've had with the previous version I'm not sure people will be so inclined to even upgrade. And let's not even get into the ridiculous pricing for the Surface Book.
>Also, Panos Panay sounds like a genuine, authentic, passionate
You're right about that one. I've never seen anyone so passionate about creating documents and highlighting them.
Look I'm not exactly a fan of MS but $3000 isn't stratospheric in an era where 'budget' gaming builds are $1000 for just the tower and people are regularly spending $1500 - $2000 for a laptop. The equivalent artist setup with a MacBook Pro, a high end external 4k monitor, and a Wacom drawing tablet will easily set you back $3k.
I very rarely respond with such a glib comment, but: really? Isn't that slightly hyperbolic?
This is very emotive language to describe a completely reasonable and innovative update to a laptop. It was never going to satisfy everyone's needs or wants, especially when some of those wants are not currently physically realistic ("all day battery life" and "even thinner design"?).
For myself, as a 2012 rMBP owner, this is a really solid upgrade that I would be delighted to use.
As for the Esc-button, they've added an option to macOS Sierra where you can map the modifier keys to Escape. Very useful to have Caps Lock mapped to Escape.
I, personally, have been feeling like it's upgrade time for my 2013 Air for a year or two, but there hasn't been anything beyond tiny little CPU bumps that they didn't bother making any noise about. This was going to be NEW! MACBOOK! PROS! for the first time in ages.
Yeah, it was pretty disappointing. Especially when Microsoft sat down in front of every digital artist on the planet yesterday and looked them straight in the eyes with an expression Mac users haven't seen since like 1994 or something.
And I want a 700hp car that does 80mpg.
Pick one.
Which is 1.6x increase ion battery life, that would be a 2x increase if you just kept the thickness as it was. That's. the. point.
Jesus, when people want to be dense...
A better announcement would have been "we've consolidated the Mac line and now all models will get their specs bumped regularly".
That's all I really want the same laptop or desktop but faster.
However, watching the presentation at times the touch bar felt like an elaborate workaround for a full-blown touchscreen. Especially during the dj demo.
And with the Microsoft Puck for the Surface Studio still in the back of your head, the touch bar for Photoshop or video editing looked a bit outdated.
I love that even in 2016-- with all the new companies and platforms and wars, and desktops arguably being the least important battleground-- we can still have an old-fashioned bitter Mac-vs-PC argument thread once in a while, with all the swearing and name-calling, just like when I was on Slashdot in 2003. I love it.
Today, the mainstream in tech circles is a mob of disgruntled Apple buyers that Cupertino spent decades courting and accumulating with bold moves (like the MBA and the MBPR), who now don't see a reason to stick around. It's a bad trend for Apple.
There is something about this topic that really gets the comments going, and I wonder what it is.
It's not just Apple vs. Microsoft. It is also Apple vs. what Apple should have done, or Microsoft vs. what its competitors are doing.
I propose that a simple A vs. B discussion isn't enough to provoke all this. Today's Apple announcement is being taken as a kind of indirect referendum on the future of nerd-friendly high-end computing hardware as a whole. As you point out, the waning significance of this question (with the rise of phones and tablets) has caused a lot of anxiety out there!
You know, laptops with a pen input have been around for a long while. Even the convertible kind. I don't think that form factor is fully baked yet. In fact, I have a couple of HP tc1100s from the year 2000. You can still get good use out of them. But as a mass consumer device, they were not a runaway hit.
I suspect that Apple has a roadmap for conservatively rolling out more digitally configurable/reactive/touch interfaces on their laptop form factor. They will do this while working off the of strengths of each input device. My bet is that they will come out with e-ink keyboards and some kind of display built into the touchpad, perhaps with a stylus.
I would concur with you that this was a disappointing Mac event, however.
Any suggestions on fixing it? I feel like it might be a hairline crack in the board.
Apple said on Tuesday it saw a nearly 30 percent decline in its China revenue in the quarter ending September, the highest fall among all regions, due to tepid demand for its iconic iPhones.
With phones it's a little less clear cut because phones getting faster is still worth paying for, but that will slow down at some point.
It seems to me that Apple has finally hit their post-Jobs point where the radical innovation is outpaced by the comfort of not changing much and just printing money. Of course it's quite possible that iPhone 7S will in fact hover and make coffee, and they are just having an off year, but somehow I am pessimistic about it.
- Killed Macbook Air.
LG makes a 2 lbs 15 inch. (Not saying I'd buy the LG. Only pointing out Apple has room to do better)
I agree it was a very disappointing announcement . Basically more of the same. Nothing new or innovative.
I still cannot understand in this day and age why they cannot offer more memory than this.
I was hoping it would be lighter weight and longer battery life.
Instead we have the discrete GPUs that undoubtedly will need more battery life than the Intel internal GPU.
It has been written about many times (about Apple's TV business and a rumored Apple TV with an actual screen) that screens, whether monitor or TV are actually very dumb, it makes no sense whatsoever for today's Apple to be in the business of making dumb screens, while their main business is value-added products.
So, they passed on the opportunity to make the 'Apple monitor' to their main supplier of LCD screens, LG. Fair enough.
There are no^H^H only useless ports.
I haven't had a non-bluetooth input device since 2009.
And they're welcome to do so, but they're pushing consumers like me away from their products.
(Edited to be less personal)
I'm very happy to adapt to new things, when they offer a demonstrable benefit to me. What benefit does a USB-C keyboard give me, exactly? I don't need the extra bandwidth to transmit keypresses. Why not include one or two traditional USB3 ports alongside the USB-C ports to ease people over to a new standard?
That you can connect it to phones with USB-C without any dongles. Almost all new phones have USB-C. Except one from Apple.
It takes time before you can see the demonstrable benefit. For starter
- USB-C solves the which side to plug in issue
- It's a unified charging port besides data transfer (one charging cable for all devices in the future)
- It's also a unified display port (one display cable for all devices in the future)
Compare these images:
15" new: http://images.apple.com/v/macbook-pro/j/images/overview/thun...
15" old: http://www5.pcmag.com/media/images/483214-apple-macbook-pro-...
I don't really need a laptop to be so thin, but it's a defining feature for Apple's "premium" feel.
For coming up with that sentence, everyone here owes you a beer.
Which, apparently, is only an acceptable response if you're criticizing the decision to remove ports. I have literally no need for a 3 1/2 floppy these days, but I'm sure not everyone "is me". Should that be a standard adapter as well?
Not that I'm seriously suggesting it, but it occurs to me that you should be able to make something with an Arduino to make any kb bluetooth.
I've used a BT keyboard for years and am the fastest typist out of every developer I've met so clearly something is wrong with your statement.
* Apple Wireless Keyboard
* Logitech K 300
* Microsoft -god-knows-what-it-was-called- from back in the day.
In all cases, I experienced stuttering or dropouts of my input at high speeds. This did not happen all the time, but it was frequent enough where I felt the need to go back to a wired keyboard (currently Filco Majestouch). Maybe I had a bad batch, or something was interfering with the signals in my homes. Either way, I don't plan on recommending wireless alternatives for quite some time.
Now, I do stick with wireless keyboards in general, but that's because the proprietary Logitech dongle has never failed me in years.
If Apple can ever make a Bluetooth keyboard that "just works" in the sort of way they're advertising their upcoming AirPods will, including working properly during the boot menu and every time I restart into Windows, then I might reconsider it.
If a notebook has got a HDMI port would you say it has a DVI port, because all you need is an adapter?
> eventually likely out of the box
Nope, only power cable and charger in the box.
Having to re-buy all of them is a drag, I am totally not saying that doesn't suck, but I'm not worried about having a bag full of them.
No need to tell me that your use case is slightly different. You can't please everybody.
Edit: I just discovered that the LG screen Apple is selling as a proposed match for their new laptops does NOT have legacy ports on the back, but just more USB-C ports. This seems very dumb. I don't want three $39 dongles on the back of my screen.
> It also doesn't have a floppy drive or an IBM serial port.
So how long do you think until cameras stop requiring a SD card? How long until most peripherals go to USB-C? Any way you slice it, for the next 3-5 years people are going to need to carry around a dongle (or dongles) with their Macbook. Not the worst thing in the world, but certainly doesn't make the user's life appreciably better.
Not saying the ports is a dealbreaker, just that it makes things more inconvenient for probably the majority of users, with little offsetting benefit.
Insert USB connector
Ooops, must be wrong orientation
Insert USB connector upside down
Nope, that was right the first time
Insert USB connector correctly
Imagine they added a couple USB-C ports in place of the little used Thunderbolt ports and then waited a year to see the usage frequency... I bet the HDMI and USB-A ports would be used a ton more than USB-C.
Apple knows you'll use the standard ports if they give them to you. And that's exactly why they've taken them away. Because it forces users to actually make the switch to something (they think is) better.
MacBook laptops have headphone jacks and USB-c connections but no lightning input ports. If I wanted to use my EarPods with the lightning end on my Macbook I'm screwed. Nor can I use the headphone jack or the USB-C ports on the Macbook with my iPhone.
The lack of integration here between Apple's own products is alarming and indicates that a high level someone is asleep at the wheel.
What a mess.
This would please everyone, but it'd be expensive.
Just like I don't want a Leatherman® with just a knife blade on it, even if it is slightly larger I want my laptop to have all of the connectors I'm likely to run into over the next N years so that I don't need to carry a separate bag just for the dongles.
Oh wait, they had to make this thing thinner. Because thinner is more useful, right.
But now you get the silly extra-low-travel keyboard as well, like typing on a table.
All these choices, they don't make any sense.
Mac laptops haven't had Ethernet for many, many years, except via the Thunderbolt or USB adapters, both of which will still be possible on this machine, too.
Yes, the SD card reader was left out.
Wrong on USB ports; it's absurd to suggest that "100 out of 100" keyboards and mice plug into USB-A. Most such products these days are, in fact, wireless, and those which aren't can simply use a very very cheap USB-A to USB-C adapter.
That's true, but only if by "many years" you really meant "yesterday".
The following laptop was still available for order from Apple's website until yesterday's announcements: http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/specs/macb...
Connectivity includes AirPort Extreme (802.11a/b/g/n), Bluetooth 4.0, Gigabit Ethernet, a Firewire "800" port, two USB 3.0 ports, a "Thunderbolt" port, audio in/out, and an SDXC card slot.
"Pro" doesn't mean "more". Sometimes it means less. Like fleet cars that don't have cruise control. You don't need cruise when your job is driving around the city and you shouldn't need a SD card slot for any job that's not photography.
My professional radio guy will be mightily pissed off at losing HDMI. Or rather would be, if he were still bound to the Apple ecosystem - he left it several years ago, never to return, because the price/performance ratio on their desktops went down the toilet when they stopped making user-upgradeable "cheesegraters".
Apple has gradually abandoned the Pro market. I thought they were simply trying to move everyone to laptops, but now I can see that they really have no use for non-iDevices.
That's some balls, Apple.
>That's some balls, Apple.
No, that's courage. /s
Although I'm surprised they left the headphone jack if removing it is supposed to be "the future".
There seems to be some discontinuity between the Macbook and iPhone lines.
I'm amused that I'll be able to charge my Nexus 6P with my Macbook Pro charger (unless Apple really screws something up), but my colleague won't be able to charge his iPhone.
The issue is that Apple is making you a third party customer while they rake in cash from selling a non-standard connector.
Reminds me of Firewire, it should die quickly.
Given there is now no way[0] to connect one to the other, I'd say you're correct.
[0] Without spending even more money.
I wonder when the first iPhone will ship with a USB-C connector. Next year? Never?
Here are the alternatives that I see:
a. Don't switch to USB-C.
This isn't realistic. The change was going to happen sometime, to USB-C or some other improvement. USB-C is a better port, if only that it's smaller and are reversible.
b. Include both USB-A and USB-C ports with the new MacBooks.
I think a lot of people would like to see this. Drawbacks for Apple is that USB-A is larger (impacting design considerations), and removing USB-A entirely puts more pressure on manufacturers to support USB-C.
c. Start shipping the iPhone with both USB-A and USB-C cables prior to the MacBook announcement.
This isn't consistent with Apple's typical secrecy. It's also arguably wasteful.
d. Ship the iPhone with Lightning->USB C cables prior to announcing the new MacBooks.
iPhones wouldn't be able to connect to existing machines without an adapter. Also telegraphs the upcoming change prior to the announcement.
e. After announcing MacBooks with USB-C connectors, provide USB-C connectors for free, or some kind of exchange/buyback program.
While I'm sure this would be popular, it's not very typical of the industry as a whole, not just Apple.
Am I missing any options? Given these, I think the disconnect is inevitable. And given the machines people currently have, I don't think Apple will immediately switch to shipping Lightning->USB-C with iPhones (and iPads). I expect that transition will happen sometime over the next year.
I wouldn't say that, the use case is different. I think wireless makes significantly more sense on mobile.
Laptops are "mobile" but in a different way. they are not meant to be used while on the subway or working out, you sit down pull out your laptop, and if you want to listen to music you can plug in headphones. having to walk away from the laptop while listening to music isn't as important
https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?SearchText=USB-C+Lightn...
* boot from USB (bootable CarbonCopyCloner backup)
* Yubikey (government issued, so I can't easily get an updated key)
* Kensington R800 presenter (supposedly, it's "just a USB keyboard", but I've had it not work via Bluetooth dongle or with the USB to Lightning dongle for the iPad, even though regular USB keyboards work)
No innovative features? What do you call a ribbon display that no one has ever done before?
No expansion - nothing new to the MBP line.
A gimmick.
If I'm not mistaken. I went o_O … Seems steep. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
>A gimmick.
pwn'd
so true.
I have an Optimus mini 3 and an Optimus keyboard.
The former I never really got along with as the oled drivers made a loud 18khz whine. The latter, however, I still use for photoshop, gaming, coding, etc. - ain't got no poxy touch strip, my entire keyboard is a technicolor discotechque.
I think it's a fair complaint if it requires using dongles for all of your legacy devices, especially USB keys.
2.5k laptop and 1k phone and you still need $30 adapter.
Well they are incompatible with almost everything Apple makes. You can't even plug in an iPhone out of the box. You'll need a special adapter for every device you have (monitor, storage, phone, SD reader, etc).
More replacements than adapters. Also you don't need Apple adapters, you can get a type C — type A cable for $6.
This keyboard with remappable OLED keys was released almost 10 years ago: https://store.artlebedev.com/electronics/optimus/#51709
The only part that's similar is the key faces can change. They're still physical keys that press individually. It's not multi touch, a key can't suddenly become a slider.
Also, if that is true, perhaps what's truly new is that its actually usable. That's pretty much Apple's thing - making things more usable/useful.
That could be a jet plane from Lockheed Martin or a Thinkpad...
The jury is still out on that one.
http://img.artlebedev.ru/everything_files/images/2857/optimu...
http://cdn.toptenreviews.com/rev/prod/ce/48731-barnes-noble-...
(Just kidding!)
A hindrance, to power users and touch typists.
It's nice that these aren't proprietary cables, but I'll have to spend over $100 on adaptors, or wait two years until there are cheaper alternatives.
Lastly, there may be 4 ports in total, but since 1 is used for charging, there are effectively 3. Not a deal-breaker going from 4 to 3, but definitely a problem going from 2 to 1 on the low-end MBP.
Only if you're using it exclusively for charging. They literally showed using it with a display that gets video out over the same cord it powers the laptop with.
Available December.
It doesn't need to be a 5K 27" display to provide power over USB-C.
which one of those ports can I use to plug in my lighting headphones?
It's called a touchscreen.
http://www.lenovo.com/images/gallery/1060x596/lenovo-laptop-...
Oh you mean like Windows VISTA's (yes, that one) "SideShow?"
https://www.google.com/search?q=windows+vista+sideshow&biw=2...
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=windows+vista+sideshow&...
They have had big partners do this, like Logitech, on keyboards like the G15 and G19. It was also on laptops positions above the keyboard.
A definite step back for the sake of introducing a gimmick, whose consequences have not been given enough thought.
They could have tried buying a Lenovo Carbon Gen.2 and using it for half a day, and realized what a stupid idea it is.
I actually had one of those laptops for a little while - issued by my workplace. It came with the same concept - a touch-sensitive strip, with (limited) display capabilities and which could change its function depending on the context.
Even if the touchstrip hadn't been an utter piece of junk (which it was - hello lack of feedback and failing to detect extremely deliberate touches), I wouldn't have hated it any less. I don't want to have to constantly look away from the screen when I'm working. I'll avoid mentioning all the other problems of the Lenovo touchstrip (or the rest of the keyboard, which was an utter abomination) because hopefully Apple gets those right - but it doesn't really matter. Give me my ESC key back, and stop breaking usability.
In their boneheaded move, actually Lenovo _at least_ had the presence of mind to realize that ESC is really off limits, so they moved it to the row below. At the expense of the ` key, which isn't really an optimal solution, but it shows some modicum of reasoning about the usability impact of that gimmick. Apple doesn't seem to care.
I gave that mostruosity back shortly after, am now a happy user of a T450s which even has an ethernet port!!!, very happy with it. Lenovo shortly after retired the gen2, replaced it with a gen3 which has an absolutely normal keyboard, issued an apology, probably fired the idiot who suggested that horrible usability compromised. I'm afraid Apple may have hired that idiot.
I now may need to have the Courage to spend my own money on a non-Apple laptop after so many years.
So yes, changing the ports isn't ideal and only having one to use to plug in peripherals which will most likely mean a hub is required is a bit of a pain, but the low end doesn't even include the touch bar so I'm not sure what you're getting upset about?
Plus, the current generation of Macbook Pros weren't expandible as far as I'm aware? I've got the 15" rMBP and I can't upgrade anything within it, so I doubt Apple is too concerned anymore about allowing expansion in their laptops and I could see that trend spreading across the rest of the industry as well.
> So we designed a unique butterfly mechanism, which is wider than the scissor mechanism and has a single assembly made from a stiffer material — allowing for a more stable, responsive key that takes up less vertical space.
Not sure how that v2 would compare to the current MacBook Pro keyboards.
On the same side, not good.
The problem, to me, of the port selection is that it means pretty much every user is going to have to carry a selection of adapters for years to come given the installed base of USB peripherals + things like projectors that do not have a USB-C port. Other laptops seem to do a better job of phasing things in gradually introducing USB-C ports whilst not immediately dropping the older ones to give people time to adapt.
A lot of desktop mainboards already have one USB C port.
http://www.gigabyte.com/fileupload/product/2/5521/2015082615...
But that sounds too much like an easy solution for Vim users, and what would they have to piss and moan about then?
Vim has contextual physical button remapping, and it's a positive thing.
Apple adds a hardware + software feature to provide a context-sensitive multi-touch region allowing for multiple types of physical input & visual feedback in any application, and it's a gimmick?
Gotcha.
I'm also not only talking about vim here. Nearly any PC game in the past two decades or more allows key rebinding. Many even allow macros. Most GUI IDEs offer the same. This isn't new.
Lastly, you seem to want to characterize me as "pissing and moaning". Personal attacks won't get you anywhere with me.
> Nearly any PC game in the past two decades or more allows key rebinding.
Right, I forgot that mapping X to Up is the same as showing a colour picker slider when you need to choose a colour.
You seem to be far too hostile for a conversation about a piece of glass on a computer. You should take a break.
"That's an interesting question, Jake."
For a good laugh.
Well, you could map control to escape then :-)
Surface Pros: Beautiful hardware, touchscreen works decently, Windows 10 is generally a decent operating system. Keyboard is pretty neat.
Cons: Tremendously buggy software and hardware integration. The Surface Pro 4/Book dock was effectively useless until several firmware updates. Tons and tons of issues -- I had to warranty repair the Surface Pro 4 three times before giving up and selling it. Still plenty of hardware bugs. Scaling on Windows 10 isn't very good outside of most MS developed apps. Battery life is pretty terrible for what it should be. (Do not get an i7 version -- sucks down battery. i5 is better) Hard to do productivity work on the Pro 4 as I really prefer a standard 13 inch notebook minimum. The Book does solve this issue, but I never felt the need to pay the huge price premium for tablet mode. Video drivers for the Pro 4/Book were crashing when browsing for several months after launch. At the end of the day, taking notes in a notebook isn't quite as convenient but just works better than using the pen.
I love the potential the Surface line has, but that's just it, potential. Microsoft needs to focus 10x more on QA. If they control the hardware and software, the result needs to be as seamless as it usually is (or was) on Apple devices. I'd love to see a lower priced Surface Laptop without the screen gimmick for professionals.
Recently I had a chance to use one for a week and ended up buying it. My big issues were all fixed and it has been a great daily driver for the last month or so. The linux susbsystem has been very useful if you play within it s boundaries and I'm happy with it as a development machine.
The Air has the pre-shallow keyboard, and standard port array (USB 3 x2, SD, MagSafe, and TB). Minus the non-retina screen, the 13" Air is a very capable dev machine with great battery life in a light and compact form factor.
I gotta say the Surface Book has been really great. Especially as it supports the new MSVR and Hololens out of the box for the DGPU version.
And that's comparing to the 15" rMBP, the 13" is $2200 (16/512) / $2600 (16/1TB), though in that case the SB adds a dGPU. And battery life in both cases of course.
And the SB doesn't have a single type-C port let alone TB3.
My big concern is how much they had to shrink the battery to shave off the half-pound.
ECC and Xeons aren't fringe exotic technology. Intel obviously has some kind of hang-up with their market segmentation though.
The thing is that it is considered that ECC in RAM is not needed for consumer electronics, but that's utterly insane.
Here's the thing... there's really not much of a point in ECC memory for most desktops and laptops. In servers, sure... in mission critical applications even a tiny memory error could have devastating consequences. But for someone browsing facebook? Nah.
The general march of progress in computing has been about better technology iteratively trickling down to everybody.
I don't "need" my phone to have a 64bit CPU, but I'll take it. Glad it does. No doubt a few years ago someone was saying...
"64bit should be a PC thing. Phones? Nah."
...like it was some kind of law, rather than just the point-in-time market situation.
I switched to a Dell M5510 running Linux and haven't looked back. Battery life isn't as good, but otherwise it's been great. Touch screen works fine, trackpad clicks a little heavy but works fine, all the standard ports and an included network dongle, Libre Office gets the job done, Netflix still works on Chrome, no random crashes or freezes, and no proprietary lock-in, privacy concerns, or cloud nonsense. Best of all it's basically the same size & weight as a MBP, not your average clunky PC monstrosity.
Don't like tap to click? Libinput supports it, I thought it was the default on all distros even.
Edit: Added "in startups"
Honestly I'd guess the main people keeping the Mac line afloat at Apple are probably their own engineering staff. Imagine having to develop Apple products on another OS, how frustrating that would be
That future seems to almost be here.
Or the ecosystem will be abandoned.
It used to be video professionals and graphic designers. Now it's developers and web designers. Developers don't need SD slots or a screaming GPU (although you can never go wrong with a better GPU). I worked off of a 2012 MBA with an external display for years, and it still fits the bill! Light enough to carry around between work, home, and coffee shops, powerful enough to run a local web server and all the apps I used for development and 2-3 screens, and enough battery life to get a day's worth of work done.
Apple will never drop MacOS or their Pro level computers because their Pro line is what makes their iOS App Store revenue. Their definition of "pro" is just going to be less video-centric, and more developer-centric.
Their recent slate of choices makes me wonder how they are being developer-centric. Or if they understand developers at all. They sure don't make a point of showing off developer-centric features, innovations, and upgrades.
They spend a week doing that every year at WWDC with thousands of people in attendance.
Even today, at a consumer-focused event, they made a point of telling people that developers could hook into the Touch Bar for their own applications.
They'll probably have an IDE on the iPad Pro, AKA the future of personal computers according to Cook, before we even see a hardware refresh with Kaby Lake.
The weird screen thing looks terrible on this MBP. It will require me to look at my keyboard, not my screen.
Meanwhile, the Surface Book gives me a touch screen (which is important to me because I create web software that is used on touch screens), the pen is great, the dial looks interesting, so I will probably buy that too.
The Surface Book should work great on my desk with an additional monitor and keyboard / mouse / dial. Whereas the MBP completely loses the utility of that weird touch bar thing in that same setup.
Also, I use virtualization on my Mac to develop a .NET app. So, now I don't have function keys for the guest OS?
It was developers who led the way to Apple's dominance in the notebook space, and I suspect it will be developers who lead the migration in the opposite way.
The question for me is, will I end up ditching the iPhone too?
You must've read the discussions earlier but I really think it's worth giving the Google Pixels a shot.
Whereas the MBP completely loses the utility of that weird touch bar thing in that same setup.
The majority of professionals seem to use the MPB with an external display and keyboard, so the new MBP keyboard will not be touched at all.
Maybe they will update the bluetooth keyboard with a display?
Have you ever tried using touch screen on windows as a developer? I just don't understand how people can list it as a benefit, windows interface especially in any apps for developers is horrible for touch use, and don't forget that in order for you to touch the screen you have to raise your hand , how many times a day can you do that without your shoulders being sore?
The thing I applaud Apple for is standing (at least here) the ground and not going with a touch screen for laptops, I think having a touchscreen in a laptop is a horrendous and useless idea, touch screens should only be on the object where you already lay your arms on, like keyboard in this case with Apple, having a touch screen 5 feet away from your hands will make you not want to use it, and that's not even considering OS your which is not meant for that
You really miss it when you're switching between touch and non-touchscreens. You can't help but pointing at the screen only to realize: "Damn, this is not a touchscreen".
It's like that saying: Once you go touch, you never go back.
I still think the surface book is cool, but the weight factor is probably my biggest concern for the tablet mode.
I don't think any serious developer wants to use Windows, but … maybe this will actually be the impetus for more folks to start using — and more importantly, start demanding — Linux.
Honestly, it makes life easier. No more dealing with the bits where GNU & BSD are gratuitously different. No more straitjacket: a good Linux WM lets you customise your workspace exactly for the way you work. No more throwing money down a hole in licensing fees.
It's pretty awesome.
Honestly I'd rather write Common Lisp in emacs talking to PostgreSQL and fronted by NGINX than C++ in Visual Studio talking to SQLServer and fronted by IIS.
I have a MSDN subscription, so will I have access to this preview as well?
Is it good enough to do Ruby development on Windows directly? I had been thinking that would be in a VM, but maybe not. Maybe Atom (or even Visual Studio) will do the trick.
The other shift that makes the transition to Windows easier for a developer like me is that more and more of my development ends up in the cloud anyway. Push to git and the CI runs the tests. I could probably make the last jump to using containers and local testing would not only be easy, but also more accurate representation of the production system.
I am actually getting kind of excited to ditch my MBP.
Could you elaborate on that?
Limited RAM, no Fn keys, no ports used in enterprises all over the world... I'm not carrying the lightest laptop money can buy if it has to be accompanied by the largest bag of adaptors.
At the same time, I fear how finicky Linux is on modern laptops. I especially hate touchpad-related sensitivity issues. I tried running Linux on my MBP and wasted days trying to get the touchpad sensitivity settings to something remotely close to the MBP and couldn't figure it out. I imagine the situation is probably worse on platforms like the Surface because I expect Linux driver authors are doing more work on inexpensive commodity laptops. Is that true or do you think Surface Book will have decent Linux support?
I don't like feeling like a prisoner of a platform that's drifting into stupidity. If I had a lot of spare income I could splurge on a couple of possibilities and see what works but I just don't have that much spare capital.
Now, how many packages are available, I don't know. But I am hoping I can just open up a terminal window and cd / grep / cat / vi / git / etc
There are two different designs that I've encountered, with one of them being massively inferior (noticeably mushier feel, and a weak point on the arrow key clips that gets worse over time, until the clip starts 'expanding' under pressure, causing it to get stuck or pop off of the board).
EDIT: Jesus, it's a full 1/3 heavier than the 2015 rMBP, with a smaller battery.
I doubt weight is much of a factor for most people considering one of these things, but yeah they are a bit heavy (they can take a lot of abuse, though).
Or not. I didn't change my default settings and I'm not running Linux Mint or Ubuntu or some other newbie friendly distro. It's just all taken care of. At least games run fine, though it must be said that the games I play are either from '99 or not graphics-heavy. Factorio is the heaviest one.
For someone who spends the day in Terminal (bash with readline in Vim editing mode) and Vim, missing physical ESC key is going to be a huge pain in the ass.
So, after a decade of Apple hardware I am yet again on the cross roads looking for decent hardware and OS to go with it. As it stands now, Linux with PC hardware is going to be the only real option. At least there are good mechanical keyboard for PCs.
Wait, what? Holy crap, that's amazingly stupid.
I stopped looking at the keyboard every 10 seconds when I learned how to touch type.
The presenter spent most of his time looking at the keyboard and not the screen.
This gimmick will disappear when Apple decides a touch screen is needed to complete the slow merge with iOS.
All of the toolbar buttons and more were already on the main screen. If they had offered a touch screen instead, the user wouldn't have to take his/her eyes off the screen to perform the same functions. And that feature is already available on Windows machines with touch screens.
If they had "offered a touch screen instead", the users would have to hold their hand horizontally which would get tiring in about 5 minutes and unbearable after 10.
Not to mention that the on-screen tools were and will still be there anyway if one wants to use them with the traditional, and not challenging to the muscles, mouse and touchpad technology...
Why do so many Mac users think the presence of a touch screen all of a sudden means using it full time?
I got a Surface Pro when I was still a predominantly Mac user and I only used the touch screen when appropriate, which was for a fraction of a second every now and then. And it worked great.
Using a touchscreen is definitely better than a touchpad in a lot of scenarios because of the ability to directly manipulate content instead of having to navigate to it.
Who said full time? Full time it would be unbearable in 1 minute. I said unbearable in 10 minutes with casual use in mind: raising your hand now and then to click this or that button.
And it's not as though you can't continue to use the keyboard, touchpad and/or mouse.
I'll admit, when the Surface Pro first came out, I mocked the touchscreen too. I thought it would create Gorilla Arm. Then I actually got one and used it for an extended period of time. You don't even notice that you're touching the screen.
It's about the orientation, not the touch screen itself. A tablet you normally hold horizontally or at an angle when you use it.
Now, if it was a detachable screen, like the Surface, that could work, but a laptop screen you have vertical to the keyboard.
I get that it might not be for everyone, but a LOT of keyboard cases have been sold to iPad and iPad Pro users (and many of these cases prop up the iPad screen vertically). And keep in mind that iOS pretty much necessitates use of the touch screen more than Windows 8/10 does. So there must be a LOT of people who would be OK with that mode of use.
With respect to the Surface, I use it with the keyboard attached 99% of the time so it's pretty much vertical all the time. It's not even remotely uncomfortable or tiring in normal use.
Yes, but those are for writing -- ie. using the iPad laptop style. Not for doing work e.g. graphics, etc with the iPad vertically held.
You aren't really suggesting that writing is not work, are you?
And why would Schiller make a point of mentioning the touch bar integration with Office and iWork?
No, I wrote "E.g. graphics" as a parenthetical expression to give an example of the kind of work they dont use those cases for. That is, what I wrote amounts to:
"Yes, but those [cases] are for writing -- ie. using the iPad laptop style. [They are not using the cases] for doing work [like graphics] with the iPad vertically held".
>And why would Schiller make a point of mentioning the touch bar integration with Office and iWork?
Because Schiller made this point about a laptop, and even more so a laptop with a flat horizontal strip.
Whereas what I said is that it's tedious for people to do that (touch interaction) on a vertical screen. In Schiller's example there's Office and iWork but no vertical touch screen -- just the strip, and the regular screen you handle with the mouse/trackpad (that is, without having your hands in the air to touch the screen).
There's something to be said about being able to use two fingers to directly manipulate a window's contents to zoom an image or vector diagram in an app to get to the precise size versus futzing around with control + or control - using the app's preset increments.
One of the important things for me with something like the surface is when you finally dock it to use a full setup you don't lose any capability. What happens when you do this with the new mbp? Is a new apple keyboard in the works?
I was considering getting the new mbp this time around thinking this was going to be an enhanced media button bar. But now I'm definitely back on the sidelines
Just like the bigger screen iPhone, which was supposedly a usability disaster because you couldn't reach the whole screen with a single finger.
Some of that is the price, but there's clearly a significant contingent of users who prefer smaller screens.
There's this idea that people will buy everything Apple does, or that people put down things until Apple does them.
First, Apple started from nearly bankrupt in 1997 and so. People clearly didn't just buy what Apple put out. What build Apple's fortune was not some hundreds of millions of "sheep" who magically bought everything Apple put out, but a steady stream of products that increasingly more people bought.
People didn't just buy everything Apple put out. People had to be convinced, from the first post-jobs stuff (Cube, iMac) to start buying them -- increasingly over time. The iPod took years to really take off, for example.
Along with this idea, there's this other idea that Apple 'fans' will put down a feature until Apple releases something that has it.
Those saying that seem to forget that the internet is full of people, and the people who said "the iPhone doesn't need a bigger screen" are not necessarily the ones who bought one after Apple released it.
Apple still sells tens of millions of non-plus iPhones, to people who don't really like the large screen, and even put out the old 4" model again (iPhone SE).
I got a Plus and it's still a usability disaster on that regard. One hand use (which is what I mostly used to do on the smaller models) is pretty much out. But I coped mostly because I appreciate the extra ~50mm camera lens, and for reading stuff while commuting etc (with two hands).
Part of the problem is that Apple / Steve Jobs sometimes helped perpetuate this idea.
Some examples:
* Steve Jobs saying video on an iPod type of device was pointless
* Steve Jobs saying that apps were pointless on the iPhone and that the web apps were good enough
* Apple putting out a TV ad emphasizing that the iPhone had the perfect screen size because your finger could go from end to end
Apple dislikers predictably misinterpret this as Apple taking an ideological position when all Apple is really doing is just trying to control the marketing message on what they think really matters with the current release of a particular product.
I just shift the phone around in my palm. Even with an oversized Otterbox like case I put it in from time to time I'm able to reach 80% of the screen with my thumb, and I reach around with my other 4 fingers to reach the rest of it.
Pretty similar to how I use/used my Nexus 6 one handed, and it was a little bigger than the Plus
You would do well to try one out for a few minutes with a typical workflow of...well, whatever you do on a computer. I thought it was stupid at first and now I miss it when I use my MacBook.
That's my point exactly. A laptop with a touch screen is not convenient, unless it can be somehow turned into a tabled (Surface does it IIRC).
>You would do well to try one out for a few minutes with a typical workflow of...well, whatever you do on a computer.
Tried a few times to get a sense of how it would be during this thread. It doesn't work for me at all (at least when sitting on the desk with the laptop). I don't want to raise my heads and hold them to the screen, and I'm not that hot into touching the screen with my fingers either.
On a real touchscreen laptop or simulating on a non-touchscreen laptop?
I think it makes a real difference to sit down with an open mind and go through some real use cases on a laptop with a working touchscreen (and the software you'd actually use). You'll realize that you're only using when it is appropriate for only a few seconds at a time, if that. And there will probably be huge time gaps (hours, days even) where you might not use it. But in the odd time when you need it, you're often glad that it's there.
This is complete nonsense. I used to think this when I used a MacBook full time. I still do but buying a touchscreen PC has worked wonderfully and I never hover my hand long enough to do anything tiring. It's great for doing quick touches or scrolling / zooming in with precision. You wouldn't want to use it for everything because that's not its use case (this isn't a dedicated tablet this is a computer with a touch screen).
I never hover my hand period, so that's one better. Not that hot about touching the screen either...
>It's great for doing quick touches or scrolling / zooming in with precision.
With my hands on the keyboard and my thumbs close to the touchpad, I don't see the appeal of suddenly raising my hands to the screen, especially for general things like zooming, scrolling. It could make sense to manipulate something like an object directly, but to raise hands just for zooming or scrolling?
I think I figured it out. You're spoiled by the quality of the Apple touchpads. A few minutes with a crappy Windows touchpad and you'll be wishing you could touch the screen.
FWIW, I hate all touchpads. I just hate Apple touchpads the least.
Hmm, you might be on to something here. I'm so used to the Mac trackpads, than I almost never use a mouse with them (except for heavy illustrator/photoshop stuff), whereas with my Windows laptops I always use a mouse.
>FWIW, I hate all touchpads. I just hate Apple touchpads the least.
I hate the IBM's/Lenovo's red-nipple thing with the same passion!
Works fine for iPad users on the sofa.
I've been holding off on updating my macbook pro, but I think I'm going to skip this generation and buy used. The lack of an nvidia gpu is a giant pita. You never get good cuda performance on a laptop, but it's nice to be able to test code on one.
If they expand up to 32g ram though I'm buying one the second they go live on the site.
That's the wrong way to think of it.
It's not a keyboard, it's an adaptive toolbar. And it's close to what professionals in several industries pay handsomely for -- control surfaces, only this one is also adaptive.
>I stopped looking at the keyboard every 10 seconds when I learned how to touch type.
It's obviously NOT meant for typing heavy workloads. Secretaries and programmers coding will not use it when doing their thing.
For what use? Keyboard shortcuts? That's not even half of what this is about.
F9, F10 and F11 can't replace a slider, or a color picker, or dialing in e.g. audio filter resonance, or sliding through frames.
>I can use those blindly while looking at the code
It's NOT for typing/coding. Think pro apps instead (and also lots of non pro, but not text-based apps).
Why? When were coders big on the function keys? Aren't you supposed to not take your hands from the home row, even with Vim/Emacs?
Every single shortcut shown in the cringe-worthy demos today is already mapped to a well-known keyboard shortcut in the app. And pro users can use those shortcuts without ever having to look down at the keyboard.
Final Cut demo claimed that "some of these shortcuts are hard to find in the menus of an advanced app" whereas: 1. the touchbar was displaying the simplest of shortcuts, many of which are already mapped to keyboard shortcuts that professionals use 2. menus in MacOS have a built in search which touchbar lacks, obviously 3. the very next demo of Photoshop showed touchbar shortcuts nested two layers deep and are basically undiscoverable.
What the hell is touchbar if not a totally useless gimmick for actual pro users of pro apps?
I'm a pro user (of NLEs) and I don't "use those shortcuts without having to look down at the keyboard". Only a few of them.
And it's not because I don't do shortcuts in general (I've used Vim for over 20 years in all its glory).
Profesionals use external interfaces all the time, e.g. for color correction, editing etc. While this doesn't fully replace this, it's more than adequate for a lot of what those do, and perfect for editing on the field.
It's also not about those "keyboard shortcuts". Flipping through movie frames with variable speed is not a shortcut. Applying filter resonance on a DAW is not done with a shortcut. Heck, this can even change several items together at the same time (e.g. 2 virtual sliders etc). There are literally tons of other things we now use sliders, dials, etc for in Pro programs, and which arbitrary speed and "jump to place" (not just "one click at a time" as shortcuts offer) will be great.
>What the hell is touchbar if not a totally useless gimmick for actual pro users of pro apps?
It also has no wifi and less space than a Nomad from what I heard. Lame.
Anyway, let's give it a year and we'll see how many pro's swear by it.
Hence the need for the touchbar is further greatly reduced
> It's also not about those "keyboard shortcuts"... There are literally tons of other things we now use sliders, dials, etc for in Pro programs, and which arbitrary speed and "jump to place"
Which are delegated to a tiny strip in an awkward location (notice how carefully everyone is holding their fingers at ~90 degrees to the keyboard) controlled by very imprecise finger movements
> Anyway, let's give it a year and we'll see how many pro's swear by it.
I can agree on that :) We need more actual field experience
Yeah, it seems like it might have been more useful to put it on the side of the keyboard. And they wouldn't have even needed to get rid of escape and the F-keys then.
As an occasional debugging user it would be a great addition to have this on the keyboard.
This is one feature on my Windows laptop I don't like and not excited for a new Mac with one.
Some templates came pre-printed for specific packages, some were blanks for pencil-your-own. Rarely used, but at least those thingies were cheap and did not remove real keys.
Things are not the same just because they are instances of the same concept.
Lenovo's implementation was black and white, did not have controls such as slide, sweep, multitouch gestures, etc, and was just a novelty from a single Wintel vendor with not much third-party app support or OS support.
Apple's implementation adds deep OS support, will have software vendors onboard (judging from the adoption of older features Apple puts into its hardware/OS, it wont be more than a year when most apps people use will support this, from Photoshop which does already, to the Apple Pro/iLife apps (of course), to Pixelmator, Premiere, and tons of others. It also has color, multitouch/gestures, etc, which increase the utility much more, along with higher definition (for thumbnails and such which it also does).
Also Lenovo's other than that didn't sell much to the creatives market, where such a feature would be appreciated more (if it was done properly of course). Macbook Pro's already sell very well to creatives.
It's the same old story really: more thought out, more integrated, and more supported implementation beats "first to market this general idea" every time.
Not exactly. Jazz and classically trained musicians, yes. Rock, pop, electronica, etc gigging keyboardists play non-weighted keyboards all the time.
>Even non weighted keys are despised by any musician. Your mind and body have lots of subtle cue sensors to perceive and react accordingly. Anything that contradicts this will fail for refined/industry use.
We have already been over this when the smartphones came out without actual keys.
True, but every time I've seen linear keys used, it was for "parody" accompaniment.
> We have already been over this when the smartphones came out without actual keys.
And I miss it every day.
Then you can't have been paying much attention.
- That's exactly what I understood as well.
I can see the touch bar being a boon for people who produce music through their macbooks to have a control surface.
All the keys will be virtual, and they will have haptic feedback. The shallow key travel now is to prepare people, similar to the coke <> new coke conspiracy.
Then they will make the keyboard half of the laptop an ipad. Then they will release two ipads that hinge together. Then they will figure out that ios/macos dichotomy is causing problems and finally go through with some hybridization.
You can hit a touch bar item faster than you can position a mouse cursor on a screen toolbar.
To echo other complaints: this is supposed to be a professional machine. I don't care about it being several mm thinner, especially when it comes at the cost of useful ports and a great keyboard. Give me a device that I can use, day in day out. Don't take away the damn escape key to trial out a new "touch bar" that inputs emojis, and don't bump the price up by this much when you know I'm going to have to go out and buy a host of $20 dongles when I buy the thing.
At the office - this now means that the conference room adapters, power cords, etc will have to be swapped out as soon as a new employee starts.
1. Stop making new power connector standards.
2. Stop making power adapters that fray after a year.
3. Increase battery life.
4. *Add* at least one standard USB port.
5. Decrease display bezel.
6. Increase RAM and HDD to 32G and 10TB.2. They have, new Apple laptops now use a USB-C charger that has a separate cable, rather than a fixed attachment point.
3. The 15" has increased by an hour.
4. USB-C is a standard, and is backwards compatible via cheap adapters/cables. USB-A ports are not forwards compatible, and cannot be used for charging, thunderbolt, display port, etc.
5. They have. Both 13" and 15" are smaller externally with the same screen size.
6. RAM, I agree with. My 2011 17" MBP has 16GB RAM so I don't know why they aren't up to 32GB yet, at least in the 15". I doubt 10TB is feasible as SSD in a portable device this size.
I don't think you understood the question.
But what is the alternative you'd prefer? They still ship with that massive DVI connector?
Frankly, one they stopped using an apple-proprietary connector (ADC, which was basically DVI + USB + Power in a single cable, 14 years before USB-C) in 2004, there's not much to complain about.
Since they dropped ADC, they've used combinations of DVI, Mini DisplayPort, HDMI, Thunderbolt1 & 2, USB-C, and now Thunderbolt 3.
Those are all industry standard ports. Some are influenced by Apple, but none are limited to Apple.
Are you high? Samsung just announced the 2TB 960 Pro for >$1200, their 4TB SSD the year before was like $4000. 10TB is enterprise-class 2.5" $10000 a pop land (or cheaper in bulk, Seagate announced a 60TB SSD for $40000 in 3.5" format)
I very much hope that you meant "1TB."
Thunderbolt 3 and USB-C are not the same, right?
Similar to the dual-mode mini-DP/Thunderbolt ports of the past.
The ports introduced today absolutely are USB-C.
Thunderbolt 3 is basically an extension which builds on top of USB-C. As such it's fully backwards compatible.
* TB3 is an alternate mode of USB, if you have TB3 you have USB[0]
* The reverse is not true, you can have non-TB3 USB-only ports
[0] well technically not necessarily, the USB-C and USB-3.1 standards are completely separated but that'd be really stupid
In the interim, I don't see the big deal with throwing an HDMI adapter in your bag unless you carry your laptop around in your hand.
These are laptops with built-in keyboards and trackpads. People who opt for external input devices do so via Bluetooth. I've never seen a USB keyboard plugged into a MacBook; and even if you have a fancy gaming keyboard, USB-C replacements will be out in a matter of months. Or again, the dongle.
This series of laptops is a perfect progression. It needed to have 4 USB-C ports, and it does. No complaints.
Well, other than the lack of a hard escape key. Turning shift+F6 into shift+fn+F6 is annoying, but I'll get over it. The only applications that I use fn keys with have key remapping, so if I really can't stand it I'll change my shortcuts. The escape key though... not looking forward to the day I upgrade my hardware and find myself having to enable the "caps-lock is now the escape key" preference.
If you own a projector, you're used to keeping adapters around for different computers. If you give presentations frequently, you're used to keeping adapters in your travel bag for different projectors.
I can't believe they are trying to sell this toy bar, ehm excuse me, touch bar, in a device that's supposed to be "professional". It's unreal. It reminds me of one of those "IoT hotels" that are replacing every light switch and toilet flush with a touch screen. Same kind of useful.
I suspect folks are still going to buy it because Apple. But I sincerely hope that the competition use this opportunity to execute on some real work machines.
So in that sense, Apple's positioning of the new MacBook Pro is spot-on and probably has been this way for years. Most of us just thought that a good notebook with a "pro" label is meant for IT professionals. It probably never has been, it's just this year that the distinction is this striking.
I'm a developer, and the only key I routinely use from the top row is escape, for vim. (And Ctrl-Alt-F1 to drop out of X11 on a Unix system... but that's not applicable here.)
Anyway, it looks like you can still put a virtual escape key on the touchpad when Terminal is active. Or if you want a physical key, you can also remap one of the other modifier keys to act as escape.
* F5 - Refresh(Works in many applications.)
* F6 - Cycle through input box focus in Firefox.
* F9 - Expose, All Windows
* F10 - Expose, Current Application
* F11 - Expose, Desktop
* F12 - Dashboard
Plus many other function keys that are application dependent. I started with function keys in MS-DOS and Word Perfect since it came with a keyboard overlay.
I think the touch bar design is fine, but I doubt I would get enough value out it to make it useful enough to me while not making me regret losing physical function keys. They kept a 13" model with function keys, which is the size I prefer, so it will be fine into the future for me.
F5 - CMD+R is standard in MAC. I haven't used F5 in years, and I just tried it (didn't work).
F6 - Like TAB?
F9 - Well there is something like this on F3 but I never used it. I can do this with hot corners in mac, way easier.
F10 - Same like above
F11 - Same like above
F12 - Not sure, never used dashboard in osx.
This being said, I am sad for the removal because I use the top row a lot for volume/playback/brightness/esc.
F5 does not work in Chrome or Safari, but works in nearly everything else I use.
F6 - It is a tabbing functionality for application input boxes, but related Firefox and other applications with similar design.
I actually have the top left corner set to do Expose all windows as well.
In IntelliJ, Visual Studio (through Parallels) and Chrome, the Function keys allow me to step through the debugger. It's pretty standard in my day to day workflow, and they all pretty much use the same keys.
Esc is pretty useful in vim and it's used frequently in Windows. I could remap a key, I just don't like being dependent on custom layouts since I sometimes have to switch between machines and I'd rather it be as consistent as possible.
I'm not sure that this time it will work out for them, that's not what I'm saying at all. Personally, I think HDMI is useful still. And I'm hugely sad to see the MagSafe go. I guess all I'm saying is it's not totally uncharted territory, or even that uncharacteristic of Apple.
There's no real advantage right now in using TB3/USB-C, because pretty much nothing else uses it. And I'd bet that, in 2020, USB-A, HDMI, DP, and even VGA will still be in common use, so I'll probably be using dongles forever.
At least they didn't release any 2nd gen Newtons.
That said he did seem to have a way of understanding the whole ecosystem that Apple was trying to sell. In the post Jobs era the number of products and configurations available is getting pretty unruly and you now have an issue where you can't plug an iphone 7 out of the box into a new MBP without a dongle. That's pretty disjointed and strange. The TouchBar also seems to be misplaced on the MBP which every time I've had one for work is pretty much immediately folded up and put under a thunderbolt display (now requiring another dongle) and making the TouchBar worthless.
So yeah I don't know if you need Jobs specifically but you certainly need someone looking over the entire product range and making sure it makes some amount of sense.
Amazing
ly poor foresight on Apple's part
They also advertised. And I love most of their ads (at least those during Steve Jobs' time).
"They pushed for USB-A standard 19 years ago. They killed parallel & serial ports."
Apple wasn't part of the initial group of companies that were involved in the USB standard. The iMac did greatly lead to its adoption. I think "killing parallel and serial ports" is a little over the top, but one could argue that the adoption of USB greatly reduced the use of serial and parallel ports.
http://www.macworld.com/article/1135017/imacanniversary.html
"They started the trend of making beautiful devices that don't feel like minified mainframes."
Subjective. Though Apple's designs have been very influential, sometimes outright copied.
"They made the first music player that could handle more than 8 songs."
I don't know what the capacities of other offerings at the time.
"They revolutionized smartphones + introduced touch based keyboards."
The influence of the iPhone was pretty significant. Was there an earlier phone that was widely known that had a touch-based keyboard?
"They created WebKit."
This one's pretty clearly not true. WebKit's lineage goes back to KHTML and KJS.
Which ones do you take particular issue with?
Edit to add portion on Webkit.
Last year's MS rollout opened my eyes. I ordered a Surface Pro 4 the next day. Was skeptical about the keyboard, but it's good enough to code with. Install Git, Atom or VS Code, IntelliJ and I'm off. It's now my go to device when I want to do a little light coding on vacation. The kids love to draw with the pen. It's a lot of fun.
The new machine actually looks ok to me, though I agree the advance over the previous model seems very incremental.
Nothing I saw today makes me happy to upgrade as a developer. Sure it's lighter and thinner and HUUGE trackpad that's a nice to have when I'm traveling. But the TouchBar requires me to look down at my keyboard which slows me down. And they can't even leave the keyboard itself alone with the terrible butterfly implementation coming over from the 12" MacBook. And I am sure all the Mac developers will enjoy developing apps that both have and do not have TouchBar. Just wait 5-7 years for all the non-TouchBar based MacBooks to not be as common.
Then the ports. Apple seems to think that it can force upgrades to technology like they did with (arguably) floppy drives and cd-rom/dvd drives. But USB (non-C) is not a dying standard, neither is an SD-card slot. People still use SD-cards Apple! I don't want to buy dongles all the time. I am shocked they even bothered to include a headphone jack. Where's your courage now Apple?
All of this has been very off-putting as a developer. And where are the iMac and Mac Pro updates?
edit: also they got rid of magsafe. i guess thats a split since their magsafe 2 cables were way too loose.
Sometimes little bits of magnetic debris can get stuck in the computer side, e.g. iron filings, staples, etc. You can try to get these out with Blu-Tack or similar if the q-tip doesn’t cut it.
One time I noticed the connector was wobbly, and I found a very, very small piece of metal in there. I had hoped was the source of all my problems, but I think I caught it right when it happened because it didn't fix the problem.
Getting that metal out of there took a good half hour of trial and error. That magnet is powerful!
But maybe that's just the placebo effect.
Clean your connectors and the problem will be solved. Do you know what will be extremely finicky in a permanent way? Your Thunderbolt 3 port after it's had the power cable unceremoniously ripped out from it.
At least there are 4 of them, so when one breaks you'll be able to use one of the others.
Was thinking about buying new Macbook Pro, but after seeing the release I'm definitely going to stay with my current one.
You missed the part where Tim mentioned that the butterfly mechanism is a second-generation upgrade with more travel time on the keys. It remains to be seen just how large of an improvement it is.
>> People still use SD-cards Apple!
I'm fine with the SD slot being gone. Just another space-wasting component most of us haven't used in a decade.
This is a portable series of laptops. If you're in a position that you are lugging around a DSLR camera and 5+ lenses (that's why you need SD reader, right?), and a host of other devices you seem to need USB for, you have enough space in your bag for a larger adapter[1] - it even has the SD card reader!
The kind of people who need so much aren't lugging around a laptop to a cafe. They're sitting in professional studios with million dollar hardware, and rendering their IMAX videos on external server clusters. Or at least at home/office with a proper desktop machine that better matches their profession.
Next I'll be hearing about how terrible it is that the Apple Watch can't edit 4k video.
[1] http://www.satechi.net/index.php/computer/connectivity/card-...
No I read about it. If the prev gen product was great I'd give them the benefit of the doubt. But as it stands their butterfly style keyboards are terrible for me.
> I'm fine with the SD slot being gone. Just another space-wasting component most of us haven't used in a decade.
> This is a portable series of laptops. Versus the large non-portable laptops that Apple previously made.
> If you're in a position that you are lugging around a DSLR camera and 5+ lenses (that's why you need SD reader, right?), and a host of other devices you seem to need USB for, you have enough space in your bag for a larger adapter[1] - it even has the SD card reader!
No I need it like any other normal person who backs up their photos to their laptop. I don't lug around 5 lenses and I sure as hell don't want to lug around additional dongles that cost me $50 just to buy. Maybe USB-C becomes ubiquitous in 2-3 years time. Great, I'll consider my options then. Loss of MagSafe just to get this USB-C ubiquity is (again) not worth it for me.
Not really even sure why you're stating your opinion as some refutation of my opinion... My post was talking about why I won't be buying one. If you don't use an SD slot. Great, maybe this MacBook Pro is for you. If you want "the future in cabling and connection ports", this MacBook may be for you. If you want a "Touch Bar", this MacBook may be for you.
> The kind of people who need so much aren't lugging around a laptop to a cafe. They're sitting in professional studios with million dollar hardware, and rendering their IMAX videos on external server clusters. Or at least at home/office with a proper desktop machine that better matches their profession.
I am not sure what this has to do with me, a developer and photographer who is interested in upgrading his MacBook Pro and literally needs the exact opposite of this.
> Next I'll be hearing about how terrible it is that the Apple Watch can't edit 4k video. Okay buddy. Never knew the current gen watches could edit 4K video.
- 7th generation Intel chips. Skylake (6th generation) is from August 2015.
- A move to Nvidia GPUs
- Retain the magsafe power adapter
- At least one dedicated display-out port, preferably HDMI
- 32GB RAM for the 15 inch base model
- Support for the airpods using their new W1 chip
What I'm mad they included:
- Price increase for low value
- Touch Bar does away with physical keys I use daily (most importantly escape), while providing very little functionality I see using in my daily workflows (auto-complete on a desktop? I type faster than that.)
What they could have surprised me with:
- A full touch screen
- Support for the Apple Pencil on the new larger trackpad
- Any mention of their desktop lineup
Nonsense, 45W Skylake are from April-May, 45W Kaby is not expected until February-March.
edit: oh I just remembered they didn't use Iris Pro parts in the 15" so you are correct that these are 2015 parts. The corresponding KL parts still aren't out though.
Sources: http://ark.intel.com/products/95443/Intel-Core-i5-7200U-Proc... http://ark.intel.com/products/91164/Intel-Core-i5-6287U-Proc...
Here is to hoping the last gen will experience a price drop by non-apple retailers. Keeping the same price is just shameless. I feel like they could decrease the price without any problem but also know that many people prefer the old version and want to milk their money.
Now, in my daily workflow it's unlikely that I reach up and tap my screen very often (I'm usually in a text editor), but I'll bet you dollars to donuts that if you ask anyone with a full touch-screen laptop if they'd trade their touch screen for the touch bar, they'd laugh in your face.
AirPods work over Bluetooth 4.0 so of course they work. The iCloud pairing is software, included in Sierra.
1. https://9to5mac.com/2016/09/12/apple-w1-chip-how-it-works/
My late 2013 was Nvidia.
I'm not sure "tick tock" is the right word. The MBP used AMD in 2006, NVidia from 2007 to 2010, AMD in 2011, NVidia from 2012 to 2014, and 2015 is AMD. It's actually a break in the pattern for them to use AMD chips two years in a row.
And the laptops tended to die because of that (mine is, from 2010)
Everybody asking for more RAM, what do you use it for? I have 8GB and they never seem to become a bottleneck.
I never hit 16 GB on my laptop (I even disabled swap) but I got close once with three browsers open (I segregate some web apps into different browsers), a few VMs, some other random application running. It made me think if it was time to buy the extra 16 GB I can fit into my laptop. I just checked, it's about $100.
You are also up against a loosing battle of programs using more RAM to do the same job. You get a better experience now, but you can also expect normal PC usage to result in big RAM usage.
My real complaint here, though, is that besides the GPU and CPU, this is essentially the same specs as my 2013 MBP. I'm not going to drop $3.6k for an incremental upgrade.
I don't need some stupid touch strip on my Mac, I need a touch screen.
I haven't been this let down by product announcements ever as I have been this year with everything Apple's done.
Now we get all our standard USB ports removed, very little by way of actual hardware improvements, are we even going to get an upgraded Mac Pro that might meet the minimum 4GB gfx card requirement for Oculus, etc?
I've sworn by Apple products for a decade and a half. I'm done.
Furthermore, the lack of a Mac Pro update is just frickin' pathetic.
The distance between this Touch Bar and the monitor is minimal. With a bit of experience with a particular app, I imagine I'd be able to use my peripheral vision and muscle memory more often than not to achieve any particular function.
It's not like the distance between my desktop monitor and keyboard. That would be incredibly annoying as I'd actually have to take my eyes completely off the monitor to see the Touch Bar in that situation.
It feels weird as hell, though. Not getting any sort of finger travel as I press the keys.
EDIT: As well, on my phone (switched to a Nexus, not as familiar with it yet so still feeling it out), I can type pretty quickly without looking directly at the onscreen keyboard. My eyes see it, but my focus is on the text area itself. I imagine this touch bar will be like that for me, it's not so far out of my focal point that it'll totally disappear for me, and glancing at it won't require significant head or eye movement.
What you are seeing is pure change resistance. It has no useful predictive power when evaluating whether the change will be good or bad overall, especially since the set of touch-bar use cases and the set of touch-type-heavy workloads does not seem to overlap much.
Telling people not to think about a skill they have probably used every day since they were near anything with a keyboard is a weird piece of advice
But at any rate, yes, I would be telling people this if it weren't Apple, and had some fun with it:
I bought and still heavily use the most recent MBP model. I don't think I'll be upgrading for a long time. Retina + Force Touch + pretty good specs is more than enough for me.
I think conceptually this is really neat, but it could potentially suffer from one major flaw: I hardly ever look down at my keyboard. A flat, digital screen containing changing buttons does not cater well to touch typists, of which you can reasonably assume most are who use a macbook pro. Touch ID is sweet though.
Which is weird it's a feature exclusively on their "Pro" line of laptops.
Designers, photographers or people working with audio/video production don't really need touch-typing.
And those are arguably the kind of "Pro" users Apple is targeting, not coders.
I can't believe they put a radio in my car since 95% of the time I just leave it in my driveway and take the bus.
The touch strip is cool, but it suddenly means looking down at the keyboard to use it, and the loss of the tactile sensation of the keys. Maybe it's a net gain for some people. For me, it's at best 2 steps forward, 1 step back. It's a mixed blessing.
They're making a product that I don't like, and that's not a new phenomenon. Categorically, I dislike things that seem like change for the sake of change, and I dislike things that feel like a company herding my behavior in the direction they want me to go.
On the other hand, I like progress. In my opinion, features like this are certainly change, but I doubt that they're progress. That is, I think that it both adds and removes features. Fear of change isn't a bad thing, in and of itself. I think the point that we disagree on the strongest is whether Apple's new hardware represents actual progress, or merely change.
I don't know a single person who can actually type on a smart phone without looking and nearly zero mistakes.
You're typing this on a keyboard layout designed to avoid jams on typewriters.
Let's take multiple monitor support as an example - something that vacillates between barely working and a dumpster fire, depending on the release of OSX. Aren't there people within apple that need three screens ? Aren't there power users within apple that demand this functionality ? We are left to conclude that zero, or almost zero, people inside of apple are using this kind of configuration[1] - otherwise there is no way it would be allowed this kind of dysfunction.
Some other things that we are forced to conclude nobody at apple does:
- use USB cellular modems/dongles
- tile windows to hide unnecessary desktop
- primarily mouse-free usage
- move files in the finder with 'cut'
- use the god damned escape key, for the love of christ
We all knew this was coming - the day that Apple "mac pro'd" the rest of the lineup. We got a sneak peak with the 12" macbook. Now the other shoe drops.
[1] For instance, this relatively boring use-case: three primary screens on a desktop and a large flat panel connected as a secondary display. Kind of sort of works in snow leopard. Various, random dysfunction in each release of OSX thereafter.
Also: (1) USB tethering to an iPhone is just about the easiest cellular solution there is; (2) Google "Divvy"; (3) a big draw of the touchpad is that mousing doesn't take your hands that far off the keyboard; (4) real men and women use Terminal for file management.
One thing immediately comes to mind: configure a multiple (3 or 4) monitor setup (again, not exactly exotic) and then full screen a video in one of the monitors ... now change focus to a different window in a different physical screen. Fun ensues. Different fun, depending on OSX release.
USB or bluetooth tethering is great - I'd prefer to use that always - but some use-cases demand a physical thing stuck into the laptop and the plain old USB A-type is flexibility I don't like to see deprecated. I'll gladly take 1mm additional laptop thickness in order to retain those and I think the 11" macbook air, with one type-A on each side, is a pretty powerful swiss army knife.
Wait'll you see what happens when you rotate them!
We are living in a bubble, our use case is not even remotely close to the average or above average use case. Looking at the data broadly, this barely registers as a 'thing'.
Spoken as a multi monitor user too.
2 external monitors: even worse. I quit trying.
btw, I love divvy [1] (best $13 I've spent in years). For those who don't know, it allows keyboard chords to move windows. Unfortunately, it doesn't have good multi-monitor support -- it moves windows only within they monitor they are on. That said, it's crucial for good typists. A typical use case: code in one window, docs in another. Use the keyboard to increase the size of the docs window so you can read it better, then shrink it back and put it back into the lower right corner of your monitor. It's awesome.
I pointed my room air conditioner's vent directly against the bottom of my Mac laptop, and it happily drives my external monitors. Enclosure Bottomside temperature reads 18-20 degrees C, and CPU A Temperature Diode reads 60 degrees C while I'm cooling my laptop like this.
I agree with the great-grandparent's sentiment that the product polish for high-end Apple laptop products is definitely gone. It isn't that no one within Apple is unaware of these issues, it is too few are in a position to take actionable measures about these issues. The margin between picking a MacBook Pro and a high-end Dell/HP/Lenovo/System76 is as slim to me as back during the latter stages of the PowerBook days, the last time I switched back to non-Apple laptops for a few years.
Product marketing-wise, Cook is in a tough position that I don't envy. Apple is so big right now that every product revision has to support that "big", "successful" narrative, and he's getting painted into a corner to not jeopardize that story. This pushes severe compromises into product design decisions to go after the bulk of that bigness, and niches like influencer demographics get squashed in the process.
You can actually do this. Cmd + C to copy the file, then Cmd + Option + V to paste it and delete the original.
Apple's abstraction is more honest to what is actually happening.
In truth, I don't think many people are accidentally hitting that shortcut that often. And, if they are, so long as there's an action analogous to undo'ing a textual cut/copy/paste, it shouldn't be a problem.
sent from my macbook
Previous all-aluminum macbook airs have lasted me 6 years, so I have a long ways to go before needing to switch ...
Also, remap that fat caps lock key to control.
For some I suppose. Many of us like using escape :)
This. Earlier this month, I tweeted that "I threw out my hardware RNG, since #macOS's window placement behavior turned out to produce better randomness."
You are making the assumption that your workloads are what define "sophisticated users".
I don't think a professional videographer or a photographer (both of which I do, and am very excited about extra on-demand functionality that the strip brings, for which many fork $300 and $1000 for dedicated external control strips and surfaces) is less "sophisticated" than some code churner that has a typing-heavy workload and doesn't have a use for taking his hands off the home row.
That said, I wont be using it much when programming either. But for Photoshop, Cubase and such? Shut up and take my money!
I am a keyboard junky. I have long used LaunchBar (since OS X Beta), Keyboard Maestro and other utilities to do almost everything on my computer and while keeping my hands on the home keys. And I mapped the CAPS LOCK to ESC many years ago.
For me the current Function Keys are mostly wasted space. I am not sure how useful the Touch Bar will be for me, but I feel it will be more useful than the current setup.
(corrected: keeping hands "on" home)
I have esc remapped to capslock on my laptop, but how easy is it to remap keys in OSX?
My biggest complaint is since macOS Sierra, it is now so hard to create a Hyper-key.
http://brettterpstra.com/2016/09/29/a-better-hyper-key-hack-...
(And I can always pull out my Happy Hacker Keyboard)
Long ago, when I was using apps that made heavy use of the function keys, I mapped ctrl-alt plus a number for to the function keys. I use to love the Happy Hacker Keyboards for have this built in.
I understand Apple's rationale: touch bar = dynamic function keys but, why not keep the physical function and esc keys and add the touch bar on top of that?
So there is gradient even in non-casual users. I would have cried with you if my OS was Windows.
Well, it's obviously NOT meant for touch typing workloads! This is not something to compete with Ctr-A-Alt-J-K-B of Emacs, or ^{"4j of Vim, or for writers to use.
It's for professional apps with lots of special dials, sliders, etc -- stuff useful from the creative industry (DAWs, NLEs, etc) to use cases such as medical equipment controls, etc (another industry that uses some special control surfaces and stuff).
I was thinking the same - If i need extra controls for my app then the app provides them and use my trackpad with my eyes fixed on my screen, like this isn't hard. Seems gadgetry for gadgets sake, disappointing.
If I'm paying hundreds of dollars extra for this to, which seems to be the case, then I think I'll pass unfortunately.
It seems kind of early/hard to comment on this thing without having used it yet..
I do more than just code. I love working with photography and audio/video editing and this new touch bar looks amazing.
I also travel a lot, so this trend of making smaller, lighter machines is a huge plus.
Maybe I don't qualify as a 'Pro', but I work in IT, I regularly have more things open than comfortably fit across the Cmd-Tab HUD, I reboot about once a month, I open close sleep move charge monitor on, off, edit podcasts, blaaaah blah, and I do all of that today on my mid-2011 MBA.
And it's fine. So fine I almost don't need to update, really, I just want to. Oh, and that screen. I want the screen. Oh and the battery life! Ten hours. Yo mamma!
So this thing, this is going to be a screaming powerhorse compared to what I'm using. The ports? I'll get used to it. I'd prefer someone push us towards The Future. Can I run six hundred VMs on it while I'm rendering the next Toy Story movie from seat 4A on my flight to Caracas? Nope! But I wonder, who is doing that?
This is a fine update that should last me until whatever they release in 2021. Which is ridiculous, when you think about it.
There's nothing I'd pay extra for in this new machine: touchbar is a meh, biometric authentication has been around since ~2005, the hardware specs are finally catching up with what everyone else has been shipping for a couple years, the new keyboard is horrible, Siri is the new ubiquitous feature nobody wants, USB C... meh.
I wonder if 2017 will finally be the year software developers go back to Linux machines? If only the story for mixed DPI displays was solid, I think it might finally be The Year of Desktop Linux :P.
Is anyone actually selling a decent preinstalled Linux laptop? If I really wanted to use Linux I would rather buy a Windows laptop and run Linux in a VM.
The only thing that might prompt me to replace it someday is the 4 GB of RAM, which is frequently a problem with larger Minecraft modpacks.
Other than that Gnome3 finally behaves nicely across the board. Still a lot of inconsistencies between applications (QT-based programs look like crap on Gnome and vice-versa, and TK programs look like crap everywhere) but all in all the experience was way better than in 2011 which was the last year I used Linux as my base OS.
> the instant you slap Linux onto a Windows machine,
> battery life plummets
I'm perfectly happy to configure things - it's why I don't really want to be on macOS, and oh boy do I miss i3wm - but as soon as I was looking up recommendations for configuring my CPU fan and power management on obscure blog posts, I gave up on it.
I think there's definitely a market for a Linux developer laptop that's a single awesome machine, that then makes a great single target for the kind of app support seen on macOS.
I have heard good things about the Ubuntu line of Dell: http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/555/campaigns/xps-linux-lapt... The Precision 5510 with a Quadro GPU and 32 Gb of RAM seems gorgeous.
So admittedly the last time I did this was in 2003, but back then, slapping linux on my Thinkpad tripled the battery life.
Has Windows power management gotten so good and Linux so bad that it's swapped now?
In linux I could do things like turn off disk syncing so the hard drive didn't spin up. I know with SSD that's not a thing now, but I always assumed there were things you could control with Linux that you couldn't control with Windows.
For what it's worth, as a perennial keyboard layout fiddler, in my experience you should expect it take about 5 minutes to adjust the first day, then about 3 the next, then about 1 the next, then you'll have an equally hard (or easy, if you prefer) time going back if you need to.
Moving one key is very easy, as long as you make sure that the original key doesn't work somehow. "The original key physically doesn't exist anymore" definitely meets that criterion.
(I theorize one could learn a new layout without having to drop one's productivity to the floor by switching all at once by switching one key at a time, about one per day, until you've entirely switched. I've never tried to learn it as I'm happy with my layout and nobody else has wanted to try it yet.)
Also, mixed DPI on Linux is at least getting better. I ended up with a 4K 15" screen, and I'm using XMonad with a whatever-I-feel-like mix of Gnome and KDE apps, which is probably just about the worst case you can get, and it was not anywhere near as bad as I had feared. It is certainly not perfect, don't get me wrong, but it's not disastrous.
As productive as Vim is for some, I think there'd be very few people in Apple asking the question "How can we make Vim more productive", there probably hasn't been for the last 20 years
Perhaps they could have placed a TouchID button on the SIDE of the laptop (usable when open or closed). And hopefully the ENTIRE Touch Bar display is also available as a global window ON the screen so that it is still able to display/activate things when you are lid-closed connected to an external display.
The real shock though is that a lot of these changes show a lack of usability testing. Like, “10 minutes in the hallway” level of testing. How much serious work can actually be accomplished with such tiny touch keys that require you to look down at them, constantly changing and mostly unpredictable? Before ever creating new hardware for this, they should have enhanced macOS to provide an on-screen version of this ever-changing toolbar to encourage more universal support from developers and work out the usability kinks. Instead, now they’re stuck: this thing is in your laptop, with all its flaws.
"And hopefully the ENTIRE Touch Bar display is also available as a global window ON the screen so that it is still able to display/activate things when you are lid-closed connected to an external display."
You make a good point. I can imagine adding a Touch Bar to keyboards. That doesn't address the TouchID button, but I believe that might addressed with tech like the Apple Watch or iPhone.
Register your fingerprints into TouchID, they are stored securely on the keyboard, with some secure communication between keyboard/computer... now you can easily log in and or do Apple pay.
The naive implementation also would move the mouse whenever you touch the screen. I think that is loss of usefulness; now, one can select with the mouse, click a function, select with the mouse, etc. I expect there will be cases where this will be convenient (but, unfortunately, only when repeating the same function on each object. Also, power users currently can already do that by assigning a key combination to the function)
Also, I'm not claiming they did any, but what do you base "a lot of these changes show a lack of usability testing." on? My gut feeling also tells me this mostly is a gimmick, but I don't dare claim it is correct.
They should have started in pure software, and then they would have figured out just how many possibilities there really are. Some examples:
- What if I want my “system-wide ever-changing functions pad” to be a 4x5 grid of icons located in a window at the bottom-left of my screen?
- What if not every action/status item is ideally laid out in a bar? Maybe some items are vertically rectangular, some are horizontal, or some are shaped like triangles. Maybe I want lots of space between things. Maybe I want 4 different contextual areas, all over my screen, instead of being confined to one region. (This is a PRO laptop...)
- What if I want complete control over the show/hide mechanism? Examples: Floating, non-floating (can layer documents on top), sliding in from the side of the screen, popping up only while a certain key is pressed, attaching to Dock...
- What if I want my ENTIRE laptop screen to become a contextual display while doing working primarily on an external monitor?
Any one of these scenarios could come up when doing real work on a laptop and none of these can be handled by an expensive Touch Bar control. Conversely, we already have context-sensitive commands mapped to the keyboard and status mechanisms (menu bar, window toolbars, other application functions) and the Keyboard preferences pane lets you map commands any way you want.
Again: what do you base the implicit claim that they didn't do that and/or the implicit claim that this solution isn't worth the extra hardware costs on?
And again: I think it mostly is a gimmick, but I withhold my conclusion until I have used it and/or I've heard from many people who have had lots of experience with it.
I’ve occasionally used both at once (e.g. E-mail in the small laptop window, everything else on the big screen) but that is generally for when I don’t plan to move for quite awhile. If I am constantly grabbing my machine, coming back, etc. then closed-lid is less of an interruption.
Are Apple going to sell the Touch bar and Touch ID as a separate peripheral? The price differential between the 13" non-Touch and 13" Touch is $300 USD. The other differences are 2.0GHz versus 2.9GHz Core i5 and Iris Graphics 540 versus 550. Let's call those other differences $50 for argument's sake. Is Apple going to sell this hypothetical Touch peripheral for $249 for instance? Or would they incorporate it into an external keyboard. What connector would it use? Regular old USB or Bluetooth?
Would you pay $249 to upgrade existing non-Touch kit? Would you pay $249 so that you could log on to your Mac (or PC) at a finger press? Would you pay $249 so that your apps have a contextual button bar? Would you pay $249 for a programmable touch strip plus fingerprint scanner?
For comparison: Original Xiaomi Redmi 3S, Snapdragon 430 Octa Core, Android Smartphone, 4100mAh Battery, Fingerprint Sensor, 2GB RAM, 16GB ROM, 5.0" Touchscreen.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Redmi-3S-Snapdragon-Smartphone-Fing...
£149 (translates to ~$189)
Imagine if you could run a cable from the phone so that you could use its fingerprint sensor to log on to your Mac. Plus you could have an app called Context that acted like the Touch Bar. And on top of that you'd have a smartphone.
My point is. Touch Bar plus Touch ID might be the greatest thing since we started slicing bread into, uh, slices. But it's too frigging expensive by half. That's some premium you're paying for the privilege of a publicly untested hardware feature.
Why don't Apple also sell it as a peripheral that both Macs and PCs could use if they are so confident in it? Sell it with software drivers and a configuration tool and smart defaults. And price it at … $99? I bet they could hit that price point. And it might sell like hotcakes. And make the price differential between the 13" non-Touch and 13" Touch $100 while they're at it -- $1,499 versus $1,599.
I think anyone who forks over wedge for the Touch Bar and Touch ID Macbook Pros as it stands is being royally screwed. To be blunt about.
All they needed to make was an iOS app to display arbitrary “keyboard” keys, some Bluetooth/wireless connection to interface with the Mac (as Handoff and Air Drop practically do already), and a way to make the iPhone/iPad enter a special “display always on” mode when in close proximity to a Mac. This would have been way more flexible.
I doubt that is going to happen. What percentage of macOS users are going to have the touch bar? 10% at the most?
"They finally mac pro'd the macbook pros."
If you feel that Apple isn't designing with you in mind it's probably because you've outgrown them. Time to look at alternatives.
apple makes money from selling phones and computers. If you want to sell a $1,799 notebook (or even $2,399 for the 15 inch version), they need to think on power users.
Microsoft's Surface presentation yesterday was VERY tempting.
I personally tired of stuff that "breaks" or becomes "obsolete" in a year or so.
Our environment is doomed if we continue to have lifestyles like this: buying new shit in a year.
I won't pretend that I ever press 'install updates' without a few hours to spare and db backups ready.
Updates were a headache and the inability to install pre-release software.
But with Xcode and Swift being so slow I'm thinking about going back there and just getting the 4ghz i7...
Another option is a Mac Pro, but I really don't have 3000+ money to spend on a computer...
The price of raw commodity hardware is suuuuper cheap compared to off the shelf macs. There are even nice mini-itx cases if you want a powerful, slightly-larger-than-mac-mini machine.
https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/apple_laptop/batteries/MacBo...
Maybe taking one of msfts new models for a spin might be opportune for you.
The 13 inch now starts at $1,499 (but no touch bar at all unless you spend at least $1,799), up from $1,299.
The 15 inch now starts at $2,399, up from $1,999.
If you want to compare the copy, you can see the old version cached here: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:z7BWPC9...
As a developer, I don't want to see "emojis" on my keyboard, but I do want to be able to plug in any device I need in that exact moment, without looking for a right dongle.
Apple needs to stop sacrificing usability for "looks".
Yes. Today's the day that Apple became irrelevant.
However, watching the photoshop demo I could see the value. Honestly though, I think an add on accessory the size of a trackpad would be better. Unfortunately, that would sell in numbers so small that software support would be non-existent. So, this is a compromise solution that doesn't have Apple's usual boldness to it, rather a lacklustre add on that will deliver lacklustre results (to both sales and usefulness).
I hate it.
Edit: I mean GitHub the company, not the product. Atom is maintained by GitHub.
I don't often use emoji unironically in my personal life, but in computing tools it should be anathema.
Or just make the Magic Trackpad into a Touch Pad with the OLED display and such.
USB / dongles: In two years, almost all peripherals will be USB-C and C-to-A adapters will be tiny and cheap. USB-C will be the new Thunderbolt and it'll end up being more convenient. I'm looking forward to sharing displays with ultraportable Windows machines and chromebooks using USB-C.
Besides, the old peripherals won't disappear within the next few year and most of the world can't easily switch to type-C anyways - since they literally have no money to buy modern technology.
USB 2/3 is "good enough" for too many things to fade away. Any notebook should have 1 type-A port for convenience.
Like 59 € cheap? For a thunderbolt 3 to thunderbolt 2 adapter. (I live in Europe, hence price in euros).
source: apple store europe
Even if you just used the touchbar to allow for context-sensitive buttons, I'd lose the real tactical feedback of a keyboard and need to build new muscle memory for each application.
Worse is when you start putting GUIs on the touch bar—now I'm really expected to look down and scroll through a library of photos or find my favorite website on this tiny strip which isn't on my screen? Why?
Edit: Ah found it, the Lenovo Yoga Book.
While I want more RAM and better GPU to be able to connect more and bigger screens, I don't want any gimmicks. If they could get the keyboard to feel crisp longer, or make it cheaper to replace would also be great. But instead they add a bar that will probably make keyboard replacement even more expensive, and then they remove the magsafe which has saved my computer on several occasions, what's up with that ? Stupidly hunting for a mm thinner profile ?
I never really like Jobs, but to me he always appeared to want to build beautiful tools, and while I have not always agreed with the aesthetics and the hows, they were still tools, and I respected both him and Apple for that.
In contrast to that, Apple today appears to think they are selling a innovative fashion statement, or maybe a lifestyle ? Completely foregoing the tools aspect, and now it has reached the MBP line which have been mostly spared until now.
It's a pity.
I went through two or three MBAs, have a MB, and am excited to be moving to a new 15" MBP. I am not sure if I'll be keeping the MB.
I am pretty sure my main use case for the ESC key is to close out full screen windows, which thankfully is still possible with the Touch Bar. I am a touchtypist - the only time I ever look at the keyboard is to figure out which function key will adjust the volume/brightness/skip track/pause music. I don't use the Mission Control function keys and I seldom adjust key brightness or use the power button.
I have wireless headphones and the only thing I ever plug in to my computer is my phone to charge it, and even then I usually just plug it in to my little travel USB/AC surge protector that the MB charges from. I bought a dongle for the MB and don't mind the negligible amount of space/weight it takes up. I can't wait for the day when everything (Lightning included) is finally replaced by USB-C.
Yea, it cost me nearly $4k out the door. Maybe I could save a couple bucks on another platform, or maybe they could've included newer/faster components. I stopped giving a shit about which model CPU was in my box around the same time I stopped building Windows desktops (hint: I was installing XP on them). I look back fondly on those days but very much enjoy the simplicity of today's computer, at least in terms of hardware.
Long story short: I consider myself a Pro user, am excited about the MBP, and really don't mind any of the growing pains that everyone seems so enraged about. If as many people do jump ship to Msft as are saying it, that's great - they need the users, and Apple needs the competition.
- No regular USB ports
- No HDMI port
- No F keys
- No option for more than 16GB RAM
- No mag-safe
- More expensive
Why not bump the specs, allow for more RAM, and just add an extra USB-C to start the adoption slowly?
I'm actually kinda surprised that they didn't remove the headphone jack. That would actually be a really effective way to push the adoption of USB-C :)
No USB-A ports (and no Ethernet) really sucks for a lot of people. Apple will continue to be a profitable company. These things are not contradictory.
Or how the iPhone was the perfect ergonomic size and all anyone should need or want... and then they embiggened it?
Also, there are function keys if you hold down the function button, just like the default behavior of the function buttons on the current macbooks
EDIT: This is how I feel about the "ESC" key thing as an Emacs user: https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/59dp9u/apple_f....
I much rather have slightly lower specs but when the day comes and my ram is corrupted or i need ssd replacement I could order one online and get delivered the next day, rather than drive 200km to drop it for repairs, wait god knows how long and drive those damn 200km to pick it up.
Hispter glue sandwiches is not something I'm planing to buy as my next computer, I just really hope Apple will get their sh*t together and release another laptop for old school guys like me...
With that said, I'm leaving it on El Capitan. Nothing in Sierra tempts me to upgrade and pay the price of configuring everything again and being left with worse performance. It's sad, I truly believe this is the last Apple laptop that I will purchase as they continue down a path of adding things I don't care about.
The leap ahead on ports is premature at best.
I'm sure Apple will hold most of their fan base, but there are going to be quite a few defections me thinks.
Hopefully it's more appealing when actually using it.
The Microsoft approach with the dial on the screen at least is on the screen. Why do I want to keep looking down to be sure the TouchBar has the keys I expect?
I'll take a look at them and see, but it seems like something that will be used very little and almost annoying.
The locked 16GB memory is a deal breaker for developers, can't even run OSX and Bootcamp for Windows 10 on it. 8GB per VM is not enough and really we need 32GB/64GB to have 16GB/32GB each. Same with their current iMacs, next update better have 64GB+ options or they are making themselves irrelevant to developers and designers without having to spend $6k on an Mac Pro.
How far are you looking down? I have to make more of an effort to look up to the menu bar than to look down at the function keys.
The touch bar looks great and makes a lot of sense. Far more than having to lift your hands up to touch a screen. I'm just not a fan of the price increases.
- Picking a color with your fat finger having to look over your fingers and down to see it, why not just a color selector on the screen next to your work? Usually droppers are used as well, messes up flow.
- Browser tabs on the navbar, cmon, just use the tabs on the browser or hotkeys.
- Video editing on the navbar, not going to happen. Anything with sliders, precision will not be fun on that. Buttons will probably be fine.
- Placement changes, people know app dialogs/panels more than they will when having to look down at the changing buttons. If it sits there constantly changing while you do actions on the screen, it could be quite annoying almost like a flashy ad on a site forcing you to look down more than you want.
Customizing your keyboard a bit and the keys available is pretty nice, and it is probably cooler in person. But I feel like this won't be used much and will just be an annoyance.
I could be wrong, sometimes you get an Apple feature and it just works.
>Anything with sliders, precision will not be fun on that.
Why wouldn't it offer precision? People do the same with trackpads right now. And multitouch on this thing looks far more useful than with a trackpad.
>Placement changes, people know app dialogs/panels more than they will when having to look down at the changing buttons
Why wouldn't people learn positions of buttons? Hell I can type faster on my iPhone without looking than most people can type with a physical keyboard.
I'd have expected people here to be far more accepting of this feature. This thing looks far more useful on a laptop than a touch screen, particularly for people like us who make heavy use of the keyboard.
Apple doesn't tend to make gimmicky features of this level, especially not at a $4-500 premium. It's a defining feature of the new MBP and I trust it has had a lot of thought put into it.
There's incredible potential here, it's sad a lot of people here don't see that.
Keyboard shortcuts are precise and are unchanging.
Trackpad is precise because your fat finger isn't covering the result, same issue on tablets/pads if they don't offset selection from your finger, hard to get exact placement.
The touchbar demos they conveniently remove the persons fat finger. Larger sliders are fine like the Premiere timeline movement but trackpad and arrow keys work for that as well quite nicely.
From a button perspective it could be nice, I like customizing my keyboard.
I just wonder about the other things, I don't see myself changing browser tabs or sliders much on it.
I agree though that Apple doesn't usually throw in a gimmick that isn't well thought out but on the fence until I try it.
You don't have to look at the color picker, and you shouldn't. It is wide enough and will stand out in your peripheral vision, you can't miss it. Just shove your finger on it at random and slide while looking the text or element you are changing the color of. When you get to the desired color, you stop. Sounds nice to me.
> Browser tabs on the navbar, cmon, just use the tabs on the browser or hotkeys.
Depends on the implementation. Admittedly I don't keep an obscene number of tabs, but I usually navigate through them with ctrl-(shift)-tab. If the bar would let me slide my finger back and forth to go to the next or previous tabs, I might like it better than these keys. And of course, I wouldn't actually look at the bar: I would just shove my finger on it and slide.
I can think of a few other neat uses for this bar (albeit untested):
- A slider when you watch a video or listen to music that lets you rewind or go forward precisely (relative to the position of first touch). You would not look at it, you'd just reach and slide.
- Moving the cursor left or right to correct something: reach for the bar (without looking -- I don't know why everyone thinks they'll have to look at sliders to use them), slide in either direction. This could be faster than arrows in some situations.
- I think that using it to zoom or rotate might feel nicer than pinch/twist on the touchpad. I've never liked these gestures much.
- Subtitles when watching a video. I find them useful sometimes, but super distracting. Having them on the bar would be neat, you'd only look down once in a while.
The technology might get used badly, but it certainly has potential.
Can anyone recommend a good Linux laptop that will offer up to 32gb of RAM and have decent battery life?
There are few quirks, webcam light stays on after use, SD card slot not working but the whole Hackintosh community is great at solving problems.
I have an earlier version of the precision. You can easily extend the RAM in the precision line, but I am not entirely sure about the XPS.
That said, two things I wish I could have known earlier:
- Get the 1080p version. The intel GPU can not handle 4K (or atleast the one on mine did not).
- The default battery is not enough. Go for the 90WHr battery. I chose the 2 hard disks option, but the good thing is that the battery is replaceable. So I am hoping to get the higher capacity battery soon.
If you need 32GB of RAM, then the ThinkPad T460 would qualify. And Lenovo claims it has 18 hours of battery life, which seems more than decent to me.
I switched from MacBook Pros to the ThinkPad T Series running GNU/Linux a few years ago and I have not been disappointed. My only caveat is that I like to run Debian stable, and that seems to work better on older ThinkPads, especially for things like video chats. In my experience, the newer ThinkPads work better with distros that use newer kernels (at least I think that is why), such as Ubuntu or Fedora.
I would have suggested the T460s, which is lighter, but that only goes up to 20GB of RAM.
1. Dell precision 15 +IGZO screen, preloaded with ubuntu
2. Thinkpad T460p
I'm even more surprised by the lack of a physical escape key. I'm concerned that it could break some applications (Vim, Emacs, all kinds of command-line stuff), even if <Esc> isn't as big a deal with Apple's non-developer user base.
... At least they kept the 3.5mm jack.
My point is, it shouldn't be necessary. Most people don't remap keys if they're using editors on a server because many people might use those, so setting up a personal configuration could be counterproductive and interfere with other users. If the soft <Esc> key conflicts with the editors in any way, this could cause a lot of annoyance.
I do a similar thing with my shift keys. Single press of left/right shift places the appropriate parentheses. Holding acts like shift.
Then, I use Karabiner like so: https://cl.ly/3W2X1A2j3y3l (screenshot of my settings).
I don't go too crazy with things. But I have the caps > ctrl+esc, shifts > parens when pressed alone, and I have my backtick/underscore key swapped so a single backtick press gives me an underscore, and I do shift+hyphen to get a backtick (which I need far less frequently than I need underscores). Sometimes, when I feel like going really crazy, I swap my numbers and symbols so I get symbols as unshifted keypresses and numbers with shifted keypresses. But that sometimes gets confusing to years of muscle memory.
EDIT: You can find Karabiner here: https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/
EDIT2: I also have my pipe symbol & backslash swapped (mostly for Elixir, where pipes are more common than in, say, Python). You can setup your own private.xml with Karabiner to do that like so: https://gist.github.com/bobwaycott/d3a52718927519f3a11fbff8b...
The 12" MacBook drives it at full resolution at an unusable 15 Hz. It drives the screen at 1080P resolution at 60Hz. The laptop charges from the monitor's power supply while plugged in, so I think it is a pretty good setup if only the refresh rate was better at native resolution. The monitor has just two USB 3.0 type A ports so it can be used as a dock. It's no refresh of the thunderbolt display, but it'll do.
Thunderbolt 3.0 runs on USB-C so you can consider this a 4-port thunderbolt machine. USB-C should start catching on now that Apple finally made a decent machine with the port. I was really bummed when the iPhone 7 did not feature USB-C instead of lightning.
I'm optimistic about the new MacBook Pro driving a 4K display at 60Hz. Luckily I will get to order through work and test it out before considering it personally.
One display with 5120-by-2880 resolution at 60Hz at over a billion colors
Up to two displays with 4096-by-2304 resolution at 60Hz at over a billion colors
15" Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display at millions of colors and:
Up to two displays with 5120-by-2880 resolution at 60Hz at over a billion colors
Up to four displays with 4096-by-2304 resolution at 60Hz at over a billion colors
i upgraded to sierra on monday. vim wasn't working. just thought it was some new vim setting that came over from sierra.
then the following day i tried hitting escape to exit out of the search interface in sublime. didn't work. figured out that my esc key was broken. the fix was to kill siri which gave me back access to the ESC key.
i was wondering why QA, developers, product never ran into this problem when they were building out sierra.
then i saw those leaked version of the MacBook Pro, and then it made a lot more sense.
Edit: thank you. Does that mean the female lightning connector would only be used for headphones? Yeah, talk about vendor lockin and connector deprecation.
Personally, I don't need application aware function keys (sure, emojis are cool in messages...) and would love an option for the 15" MBP to have physical keys, similar to the 13" option...
In fact, extrapolating further, perhaps in 10 years, the entire keyboard (and touchpad) will eventually become one giant touch screen, with location specific haptic feedback. By then, the younger generation of programmers who grew up in the age of touch screen phones and ipads will not miss the real keyboards (like we don't miss the blackberries). And that one giant touchscreen will be infinitely more customizable.
1) what if i'm docked to an external monitor + keyboard? becomes completely useless.
2) going forward and back in safari? "quick type" autosuggestions when typing? really is that the innovation? i'm pretty sure i can type and/or correct myself faster than it takes to look down and touch an autocorrected version of what word i just typed. why not build that ui into you know.. the on screen software. this is just a terrible ui decision that was brought over from a phone... which makes 100% sense there given the small real estate.
anybody who uses pro apps already knows all the primary shortcuts or remaps them so they are easy to access by feel. now you require me to stare at my keyboard and manage two touch surfaces that aren't close to each other.
3) and thanks for removing my esc key and replacing it with a one that changes context every time i switch apps (or even within an app). i'm sure that goes well with all the developers out there.
that pretty much leaves being able to... quickly select emojis in messages and touch id (which admittedly was very cool). seriously debating this (given the bumped specs) or a previous gen macbook pro or new macbook. if i could move out of apple ecosystem i'm seriously considering it this time around.
And even the other 1% don't spend all their time within a set of applications small enough to memorize all shortcuts.
This is interesting. I don't really have an opinion about the feature either way, but the touch-type issue didn't even cross my mind while reading about it. I never learned to do it and can't think of anyone I know who does. Although I'm sure more than enough people here have very different experiences. I wonder what percentages of computer users actually do touch-type regularly...
And I'm pretty sure 90%+ of people here touch type when within the 0-9a-Z range. I just doubt that many people press, without looking, F5 to `continue` in the chrome developer tools. Because (a) you don't remember shortcuts for any app you use less than an hour a day and (b) f5 is a bt too far out of reach (at least for me) to get their using the usual landmarks.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3566079
▲ The Right Way
318 points
▲ Sloppily, without using home keys
210 points
▲ No
45 pointsI need to experience it in order to make a final decision but even though it's "there" the position looks awkward.
Since I use a real keyboard 85% of the time, the 15% I use on the mac is bound to be painful.
Even my Samsung tablet has a default keyboard with both backspace and delete.
If not, why do you assume that an application won't consistently present its contextual touch buttons in the same locations each time it presents them? Because the only case in which you couldn't develop muscle memory for those buttons is one in which they are not in the same location each time the application presents them.
(and if your retort will be that you use different applications which will make different choices for their contextual buttons, well, they probably already used different keyboard shortcuts for application-specific tasks, and you developed muscle memory for those, so...)
Sarcasm aside, I wonder how well this will work if you use Boot Camp. Does the TouchBar revert to a normal function bar when OS isn't in control of it? Let's say I don't use VMware, and I want to boot into Linux or Windows, what happens to the TouchBar? Installing Linux or non-OS X operating system could be made more difficult without function keys. And yes, VIM and other modal editors are going to be less fun with the loss of tactile ESC.
I'm hoping the TouchBar will have some failsafe firmware mode that allows normal use of Func keys when OS doesn't have control over it.
The worst possible case in my mind is buying a small, tiny external keyboard (dongle) with just the Func keys if Boot Camp doesn't have a good solution.
b.t.w on Happy Hacking keyboard that button is CONTROL by default.
Re-read your comment, how do you do this at OS level? I can imagine doing this in Vim or Tmux, but OS level for any application?
Also, wow, I'm glad I don't maintain any popular open source projects on GitHub: https://github.com/tekezo/Karabiner/issues/660. I can't believe the number of people who think "+1", "me too", and "donated" messages are at all helpful.
Also, looks like Karabiner Elements exists as a rewrite for Sierra. https://github.com/tekezo/Karabiner-Elements Haven't yet checked if it supports the same dual behavior, though.
Sadly I really wanted something better since I'm on an old 2012 MBP that badly needs an upgrade but I'm not dropping $1500+ for something that doesn't support 32GB and 5k displays.
One 4K display (4096 x 2160) 30-bit @ 120 Hz
One 5K display (5120 x 2880) 30-bit @ 60 Hz
Two 4K displays each (4096 x 2160) 30-bit @ 60 Hz
If you can use two 5k displays at the same time, you can probably use just one...
https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs/
> One display with 5120-by-2880 resolution at 60Hz [...] > Up to two displays with 4096-by-2304 resolution at 60Hz [...]
-- Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display at millions of colors and:
Up to two displays with 5120-by-2880 resolution at 60Hz at over a billion colors Up to four displays with 4096-by-2304 resolution at 60Hz at over a billion colors --
Last year, I took the decision of waiting another year to upgrade, betting that the 2016 MBPs were probably going to introduce a significant upgrade to the line up, perhaps something of the same magnitude as the aluminum casing in 08. And I'm very disappointed that I was proven wrong...
The entire presentation was absolutely cringeworthy. The touch bar is a stupid gimmick being sold for a $300 price bump. Any serious developer, video editor or audio engineer knows all his shortcuts already and simply does not want to look down on his keyboard. The entire idea is flawed to begin with.
I really would not care if they put this on their toy-macs (the 12" "Macbook" or the "Air). Go ahead. But for the love of god, just leave one machine for people that use their Macs as a serious, professional everyday work tool
Between this and Surface with Bash built in, it's the first time since Windows 98 that I can see myself using a Windows computer.
This machine is not pro, as in not for professionals. No self-respecting Musician, Artist, Writer, Programmer, Photographer, Sportsman, etc. can make their living on this. This is what you take to a coffee shop to check e-mail. Anything else requires a dongle. It doesn't "just work" if you need to plug in a series of cables first. That's how Windows laptops were handled. They needed drivers for anything meaningful, this needs dongles.
I need a laptop to create. I don't need a laptop that competes with a notepad on thickness and usefulness. It was all Steve Jobs. All of it.
When is 4mm thicker laptop less elegant than thinner laptop with 5 dongles? Only on paper.
So apple won me with software. For now. The hardware is a step back though that I'm disappointed in. I'm strongly considering simply purchasing the latest rMBP release and use it for another couple years to see if anything meets my requirements then. That's a bad sign if you're Apple with a willing customer wanting to give you money whose primary driver is not cost.
I'm actually all for the move to USB-C, but that was enough. A HDMI port at a minimum is a requirement for a pro series laptop in today's business world. It's either resign myself to carrying a dongle around, or buy the older generation of hardware. Sounds trivial but it's the overhead of a mental tax that simply doesn't need to be there.
I run Windows 10 at home and it's getting pretty stellar as far as UI and features like high DPI. It sounds like they are rapidly making inroads on battery life (if not already surpassing Apple - the reason I switched to OSX in 2012 to begin with) on the same hardware, and as soon as they get some competent software like a terminal emulator that doesn't suck (assuming the linux subsystem development push continues) Apple really loses it's moat for this market segment. As far as I can tell though in the past couple years - they just don't care.
At this point the largest missing piece for me switching back to Windows is lack of a stellar terminal emulator. Everything I've tried so far on the desktop (@4k) still either annoys me for closed source reasons, or just does not look as good as iterm2 on the retina. It's a silly thing, but something I don't want to have to worry about. It's also an incredibly shallow moat.
But I don't think it will be a just-buy-another-mac type of purchase when I'm out for my next machine.
I currently have 2012 rMBP and love the form factor, love the material. Why would I want something different from what I really like already? I am sure the display will be a lot better, but here, nobody talks about it.
I totally agree that functional keys take too much time and there are some I never ever use. Can't wait to jump on the new MacBook. I'll be more than happy if it lasts me nearly 5 years again.
I don't understand all the negativity recently here on HN. Do you try to look cool guys? Go get MSFT book and leave the rest of us to use what we already love, but better one.
- no 32gb RAM. Name one laptop (a laptop, not a battleship) that has 32gb. Dell and Lenovo have a couple monstrosities with trackpads from the 90s with that amount of RAM.
- no ESC key. C'mon, obviously the toolbar has it when running macvim or iTerm (or some other terminal) with vim.
- no Intel something, no Nvidia this and that. So? With regards to GPU and CPU this is probably the best laptop in the market that is this thin and light.
- 10h battery life. MBP already has the biggest battery that is allowed in airplanes. Nobody can do better with same amount of computing power.
- USB-C. In a way this is valid, however, the world is better off with less connectors (it's Apple, everyone's gonna follow suit). For MagSafe, look at something like ZapTip.
To people saying they are abandoning Apple after a decade of use: why?
- still the best keyboard and trackpad BY FAR in the market
- still the best build quality, design and dimensions in the market
- excellent display
- excellent software
- an actual laptop that you want to carry around instead of a Dell/Lenovo plastic monster battleship
I think other people already did the comparison against Microsoft. Surface Books are much more expensive ($/performance) with only the touch screen going for them.
I beg to differ. Last time I was at a BestBuy, I find every single Macbook there featuring a keyboard floppier than the type cover on my Surface Pro 4, let alone pre-chiclet ThinkPads which I have been using for 9 years until I switched to SP4.
Full disclosure: I work for M$ now.
This seems pretty unfair. "Name a laptop with 32GB of RAM, except the ones I don't like don't count."
> C'mon, obviously the toolbar has it when running macvim or iTerm (or some other terminal) with vim.
I don't see how that's a foregone conclusion. Moreover I like using the terminal app that comes with the actual machine.
> still the best keyboard and trackpad BY FAR in the market
Trackpad maybe, but Apple's keyboards have gotten tremendously terrible.
Apple Executive: Engineering team, make the new MacBook Pro 20% lighter and thinner!
Apple Engineering: OK!
(Many months later)
Apple Engineering: We're done! We had to make massive improvements in energy efficiency, thermal issues, etc. but we did it.
Apple Executive: Now give all that 20% weight/width back to the battery. Pro users probably care more about battery life than weight/width at this point which are more than good enough.
Edit: at least there is an option to get actual function keys in the 13" model if they are required to use Voice Over and they cannot be reliable found on the touch bar... and the user won't really care about the screen size (I'm joking, I can think of many reasons why a blind person might want/need to use the 15" model).
Here is what I think Apple got right (from a personal perspective):
1- Lighter and thiner. When I'm out, I care only about how light it is; and how thin it is. I have a bluetooth mouse, and I don't really need an HDMI and SD card slot.
2- I can see myself using the TouchBar for Chrome and Mail. I usually browse/mail when I'm out.
3- The cheapest version has a good Graphic Card that supports 4 HD screens. My current retina does support only two HD screens and I have been thinking of building a 3or4 screen setup.
4- Larger Trackpad. I can see myself using this too.
Here is where I got disappointed:
1- Limited CPU upgrade. Would have loved if we got a real killer CPU here (xeon mobile or something like that)
2- Possibility of a 32GB RAM Upgrade.
3- Higher resolution screen, but this is low on my list as the current one is fairly high-res.
4- Better front-camera. 720p? Come on, it's 2017. At least a 5MP camera. It'd not add much to the cost and make my skype calls less miserable.
5- nano-SIM Slot for 4G internet. Seriously, I tether most of the time. This function has been in my 10" LG 6 years ago.
Are they actively trying to piss people off by removing key features?
What is the advantage of this?
I do like the magnetic grasp though.
I find it amusing Apple makes such a big deal of adding a fingerprint reader to a laptop, I have had that for about a decade on all my Windows machines. Hardly anything special these days.
So it is thinner, yay!(?), but it was pretty damn thin anyway, would have been nice to have a 20 hour battery (estimating on size differences if same battery life as previous).
God I hope they improved the butterfly switches from v1. Those things were like using a Blackberry keyboard on a laptop. Disgusting IMHO.
Does anyone know if their "wide" colour display beats the OLED in the new Lenovo?
Edit: Also 4 USB-C, how long until they kill the Lightning port on the iPhone/iPad do you think? Seems idiotic to have a phone and tablet with one connector and a laptop (and desktops I assume in the future) with a totally different port. They should have switched to USB-C on the iPhone 7 when they killed off the 3.5mm jack IMHO.
I think it's more than just the the fingerprint reader though, right? The secure enclave and integration with a payment system is pretty compelling as well, isn't it?
Granted, I'm not familiar with the fingerprint readers you've been using. Are they integrated into the machine? Do they have the equivalent of these secure enclave hardware?
Interesting point about limiting biometric payment through a particular account. Would it make a difference that Apple Pay serves as a gateway to existing payment services?
I honestly don't know if how Apple Pay works is the same as how MS plans to do things. They had Microsoft Wallet before but it didn't go anywhere. I expect to see something from MS over the next year or two but as they failed so hard in mobile and clearly don't care much about trying to fix that at the moment I am not sure how much of a priority it is to them.
And you know, perhaps they're right. But may take me a while to accept.
If a (desktop) eGPU over thunderbolt 3 can deliver the performance it would probably be my preferred solution long term.
Old millenials gesture wildly and swipe back and forth on VR forums saying how amazing it is to actually use senses of touch.
So in other words it's using Skylake, not Kaby Lake (7th-generation).
No mention of display resolution either, which leads me to believe the 15" model won't feature a 4K display. It's using an unspecified AMD Polaris GPU.
There's also a 13" MBP sans Touch Bar, featuring normal function keys.
(Audience claps)
Intel Iris Graphics 540 (13" sans Touch Bar)
Intel Iris Graphics 550 (13" with Touch Bar)
Radeon Pro 450 with 2GB memory (15")
Radeon Pro 455 with 2GB memory (15" top-end)
[1] http://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro?product=MLH42L...
Did you hear about emojis? I guess they mentioned it five times in the keynote.
it's probably not bad on a touchscreen.
As the owner of a 16gig, 13" MBP, i7 processor, MacBook Pro, explain to me why I upgrade?
Utili-bar is stupid.
Old processor, no chance for more memory, OS going to shit by trying to be as constrained as iOS.
Upgrade why?
/win
Hopefully, this will disrupt the rest of the industry. The XPS 13 is a brilliant machine (IMHO better than the Mac) but why did they not use the USB-C for charging is beyond me.
Having only USB-C ports means that pretty much every user will have to have a set of dongles for things like USB2/3, HDMI, Display port etc, which doesn't seem like it's an ideal approach.
And in case of type-c, most new products (and charging cables) are moving towards a single standard. Its well worth the temporary pain I'd say ;)
So all the users of the product get years of inconvenience and expense for "courage" ... that's a word you could use, probably not the one I'd go for.
I believe it is able to be charged through usb-c but they provided the normal power adapter also.
The keyboard was broken right out of the box. They replace it, reluctantly. I always had problems with the touchpad after that.
The CPU fan went out after a year. Then I had lots of trouble with replacements after that.
Ugh. Much happier with my Macbook Pro.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1b/Norton_Comman...
There isn't that much to innovate on the laptop.
If you want real innovation, you need new form factors: voice recognition, VR, intelligent devices and so on.
The laptop is excellent at what it does and the only thing you can really do is make it faster and lighter.
Just imagine they would make the thing 5 mm thicker and fill all the space with battery. Instant 2-3 day non-stop runtime. That's what I'd like to see.
We WANT better battery life, not a slightly thinner laptop.
We WANT our USB ports and MagSafe.
We WANT a touchscreen MacBook.
We WANT significantly upgraded specs, and expandability.
We WANT to have the same physical keyboard layout we've had forever.
We WANT Apple to stop f•••ing us around by increasing the price while actively removing features.
THIS laptop is not 'excellent at what it does' if I can't:
• use any of my existing peripherals with it without paying an exorbitant $35 PER ADAPTER to get it to do so.
• provide me with a significant performance increase to a laptop I bought 4 years ago.
• provide me with the same features the previous laptop had (built-in HDMI, built-in SD card slot)
This is head-shakingly, miserably sad and would've been a punch in the balls already for any serious pro user if it wasn't an additional punch in the balls for Apple considering Microsoft showed yesterday it's actually willing to innovate.
It's nothing you _have_ to have, but for lazy computer usage it's a nice feature.
Talk for yourself, all-type-C is one of the things I was seriously looking for.
I, for one, don't. At least wrt older USB ports. Yeah, I'm going to be annoyed over the next couple years having to have a USB-C to A adaptor around until everything gets converted over (USB->lightning, external hard drive) or an HDMI adaptor. But, fuck, I was sick of standard PC laptops still having a serial port years ago. And PS/2 connectors.
At some point, we have to move on. If USB-C is the future (and the industry seems tobe indicating it is), I'd rather us rip off the bandaid and be done with the move so I don't have a laptop 5 years from now (current one is 4, will probably be replaced now or this time next year) with outdated and useless ports from 15 years ago.
Although I'm unhappy at the loss of MagSafe, I really like all adapters being USB C. I think it'll ultimately be worth it, and I don't personally consider having to buy a few adapters to be a big deal.
I don't want a touchscreen. In fact, I'd say that I'm actively against a touchscreen. Adding a touchscreen would probably mean updating the UI to match iOS more closely. I want my UIs to be tailored for high precision mouse / trackpad and keyboard.
Quite a fraction of the HN community really seems to enjoy complaining about what possibly could have been, rather than just beeing happy about the stuff Apple delivered today. And if you just can't stand the new MacBooks? Who cares! There are tons of other manufacturers to choose from and a different machine may just fit your taste perfectly.
It's naive of the commenters to think that Apple is suddenly going to appeal to them, sorry, but you're not the target demographic. Go buy some decades-old Thinkpads and install Linux on them since that's what you were going to do anyway.
Unless they have significantly improved their software, this is a net-negative change for me.
That's a joke. Wow.
http://www.apple.com/uk/shop/product/MGRL2B/A/apple-5w-usb-p...
Sorry figure adapter is more accurate word not brick.
[1]: http://www.apple.com/shop/browse/home/specialdeals/mac
[2]: http://www.apple.com/shop/browse/home/specialdeals/clearance...
Is it really that much to ask if one wants to use only official apple tech? One dedicated magsafe and this would have been a non issue. It can't have made the macbook thicker seeing as how small the magsafe is. They could have even mentioned in the keynote "and if you don't want to use the magsafe, charge your macbook from any of the usb-c devices" And simply put both charging options in the store so people could get a non magsafe usb-c is they wanted.
edit: Jeez. For 15" with 1TB UK buyers will be paying £3,059.00
I used to buy macbooks to put linux on them. I'm happy with my switch to Lenovo (20g ram, 6th gen Intel, 512g nvme). Oh, and ports.
[1] https://9to5mac.com/2016/10/25/remap-escape-key-action-macbo...
It looks nice, the last model looks nice too. The touch bar looks like it could be nice, 95% of my time I use an external keyboard. The new display looks really nice, 95% of my time I use two large external monitors. The USB-C ports will in the long run be more convenient, right now I'm looking at > $100 in adapters.
I'll check them out at the store but I may just look for a good price on the last model.
I wonder if, as the concept further evolves, the bar might become larger or migrate locations. The comparisons they made to the original PowerBook were interesting, in that it really showed how constant incremental changes really add up in the long term.
Edit: Another possibility is to integrate an OLED display into the trackpad too, so then you have haptics as well, and could interact with both mouse and touch bar with one hand.
[Reposted my comment from the other thread.]
I spent a huge chunk of my savings to get a Powerbook 170 in the early 90s to get the active matrix grayscale screen. I still miss that trackball. It was --awesome--.
I wish they would have put it above the normal esc/f-key row and left it.
Apple is using last year's Skylake processors (6th-generation), not Kaby Lake (7th-generation), even though some OEMs are starting to ship hardware with Kaby Lake right now.
>Retina display
>15.4-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit display with IPS technology; 2880-by-1800 native resolution at 220 pixels per inch with support for millions of colors
No 4K display on the 15" models.
The GPU configurations are as follows based on the order page:
Intel Iris Graphics 540 (13" sans Touch Bar)
Intel Iris Graphics 550 (13" with Touch Bar)
Radeon Pro 450 with 2GB memory (15")
Radeon Pro 455 with 2GB memory (15" top-end)
Radeon Pro 460 with 4GB memory (both 15" models, optional)
As a WebGL developer, I'm really happy to see the Intel HD Graphics 4600 chipset die. It's basically been the performance target for consumer-oriented web applications for years now. Unfortunately, that target will still linger until older models finally reach obsolescence.
I mean really. They are trying to innovate but this thing still has a giant Caps Lock key, yet no Esc key? And who wants to use those tiny up and down arrows? I think the touch bar is a fine idea, it is actually way over due, but why make is so thin? And honestly I hate touch pads, force or no force. How about Leap Motion instead -- that would be innovative.
And then there's the price. I guess people in San Fran can afford it. But it's certainly not a computer for the rest of us.
The first thing that came to mind is any time now that I walk into a coffee shop, if I see someone passing themselves off as a programmer on a new Macbook, I'll know they are just screwing around or otherwise extremely angry (and should not approach). I guess carrying around your own keyboard is going to be more of a thing for people who like to work outside the home/office. As an Emacs user and someone who spent at least some time in Vim and Vi over the years, wow, I can't imagine the inner rage of some people I know if they tried to use this.
The other thing I thought of is hasn't this quite often been a problem for other people who tried similar approaches? For example, we tried the UI with not looking at the main screen with things like the WiiU, did we not? Obviously gaming is different than productivity, but still, the screen is the primary focus. Could we also not just throw dynamic UI like this on in other ways?
A few I've seen/heard of or could be a future tech:
* Remapping an icon or otherwise minimal custom glyphs/text per key.
* Remote style. Ex: Second display like they had with Vista or other things, but via iPhone or other devices - put it next to you, in front, whatever, boom - extra contextual touch screen. Apple even does this for many apps like Logic Pro X.
* Perfecting tactile response better and using a full dynamic keyboard like on some laptops out there right now (but with more mechanical response). Obviously easier said than done.
The problem with all this is I wonder who is looking down so much or wanting to look down. If you have time to look down, is it really such a problem then to use the OS UI to get the same thing done?
Probably the only time most people I know that can actually type decently tend to look down at a keyboard is to orient themselves again in some way. I know sometimes when I switch languages/locales on my machine to type in some other languages, it takes me a second depending on the language. But this tech doesn't help at all with that except giving me a button to flip, that is already a keyboard chord anyway.
Lenovo quickly learned their lesson with their (imho, as a touch typer, brilliant) X1 Carbon, when they went fancy with the function row in Gen2. Suffice to say, the near perfect keyboard layout of Gen1 was back in Gen3.
The new MacBook Pro are said to be using 6th generation of Intel CPU (Skylake) when you have already on the market the 7th generation on Intel CPU (Kaby Lake). You are even competitive laptops using them already: http://www.gsmarena.com/new_dell_xps_13_laptop_comes_in_rose...
As a web developer, I think something like this laptop with Windows 10 is becoming more and more interesting. With Ubuntu native integration in Windows, you can even run the Ubuntu versions of the full stack including Node.js, Mongodb and Rails. 100% matching your deployment environment.
There was no mention of battery life, which is hugely important to me as a notebook user and which I guess I will have to find out from the Apple website once it refreshes.
I just found the whole thing to be kind of weird and underwhelming. Maybe the TouchBar is mind blowing in person. We'll see.
I'd have less of a problem with Fn if Apple put it to the right of Ctrl like Dell does/did. But noooooo, they had to copy those usability whizkids at IBM.
Is it just for the convenience of swapping sides or is there another use case I'm missing?
Mine just died and I was really looking forward to this event because I have wanted to switch to Mac for a while now (I really don't like the "new" Windows interface and I've only had trouble with my previous Windows Laptops) but I don't see a reason to pay what would amount to about 2 months pay for one of the just announced MBp.
I want to be able to do all kinds of hardware intensive things (photo and video editing, data science/statistics, maybe software development) because I don't know what exactly I will need my laptop for yet and want it to last for at least 4-5 years. I'd also love my machine to be designed with some care, I just can't stand the look of the Thinkpad series.
Any ideas?
The new touchbar is optional.
The new MBP comes in two models and one still has your typical function row. I do agree that the announcement was disappointing, leaving me questioning if I'd get a new macbook anytime soon. I would have liked some more ram but its not work flow changing for those of us who are already accustomed to mac laptops.
I'm an apple household...
Apple 2016 is Nokia 2007.
No innovation, no inspiration.
A strong rival could bury them -- though it will take $$. I'm not seeing how Apple buys them self out of this hole.
The Pro stands for Emoji.
Also, why would anybody buy an air now? It is worse in every possible category.
Me neither.
Maybe we expect too much. Maybe Apple has consistently failed to deliver for a long, long time.
I love gimmicks and thought the TouchBar was cool. Then I thought about it how I would usually use it, and the answer was "close to never because I touchtype". Then I realized that the ESC key that I use for so many things blindly is now more awkward to reach. Then I realized that the TouchBar doesn't have haptic feedback which makes precision work more difficult. Then I realized the coming version might actually have haptic feedback and force touch.
Then I realized that the MBP is still limited to 16GB RAM max. If I buy this machine I want to use it for 6 years to come. 6 years with 16GB RAM doesn't seem realistic.
I am not a negative person and absolutely love my Mac. I love the apps that I own and I can't wait to get my hands on the new Final Cut Pro. But I don't know if I want to buy another Mac. Remember when everyone told you the 15" MacBook is effectively a desktop replacement? That's what I want. A desktop replacement for work that I can also put in my pocket and carry somewhere else.
I absolutely don't mind buying 2 Macs. One portable one (12") and one semi/non-portable one for the heavy lifting. But right now that doesn't seem to be the option.
For example: The new FCPX is amazing! But it requires a lot of specs to deal with the ever increasing resolution. It's highly possible that phones can soon record 6k footage in <6 years that need to get edited somewhere.
"... they don't make poles long enough for me want to touch Microsoft products, and I don't want any mass-marketed game-playing device or Windows appliance _near_ my desk or on my network. this is my _workbench_, dammit, it's not a pretty box to impress people with graphics and sounds. when I work at this system up to 12 hours a day, I'm profoundly uninterested in what user interface a novice user would prefer. ..."
You can just plug in Apple here instead of Microsoft and the truth still reigns. Now obviously Apple is not targeting professional developers with their products, no matter how much you try to pretend that they do, just stop, stop accepting inferior tools for doing stuff that puts food on your table, no other field is as bad at it as ours.
[0] http://www.xach.com/naggum/articles/3065048088243385@naggum....
My biggest worry is the new regular MacBook-style keyboard (which is complete rubbish), even if they claim it's improved. That's definitely something you'll want to try in person if you have a current MacBook Pro, at these prices.
- gimmigck touch bar
- no USB-A ports
- no SD card reader
- no magsafe
- super expensive for what you get
Ultimately, neither one of these product launches could line up their supply chain with Intel's newest processors and nVidia's newest mobile chips. They just weren't ready yet.
I think it looks great, and the design touches are top notch, but it doesn't seem to be an improved product than what it is replacing. I miss Steve Jobs keen insights into the way I used things or imagined I might use them. I always felt he was speaking to the issue of "what every you are trying to do, using this tool will make it easier/faster/more intuitive Etc." what I got from this Macbook event was "look how beautiful it is."
Not to say that my needs are homogenous or anything. I guess my point is, from my perspective, this update isn't some catistrophic failure on apple's part, and it actually fits my needs as a professional quite well. That being said, I will definitely not buy the new MBP. My late 2011 MBP still runs flawlessly and does everything I need on the go. All I'd really want out of a new laptop is for it to be as small and light as possible. For me, the point of a laptop is to be portable, not some do-it-all machine that can hold all of Wikipedia in RAM at once
This thing solves approximately zero problems I had, but creates a bunch more.
I was expecting that the update would make me wish I'd have waited but nope. Would buy the same one I currently have again, if given the option.
The upgraded internals and lightness would be welcome.
I am not sure what I'll do when my current Macbook breaks down.
I've been a Mac user for roughly about ten years now, but I think it's time to switch back to Windows.
https://twitter.com/OrkAA/status/791772715564826624
Isn't this just a tad sad? :)
Lenovo ruinning the thinkpad, Apple turning pros into toys. it's been a harsh few years. - i think there's slowly a good hole to fill in terms of proper workstation laptops that are modular and robust.
are people still hanging on to their 2012 pros? last i checked they still are.
From expensive tool to expensive toy.
I might grab one if apple doesn't bring something out next year that has proper builtin hardware. A Z book can take 64Gb Ecc ram and has a xeon inside I think and it's very modular. Sadly not very compact tho.
What I saw from the presentation made my actually go back home and check what Windows announced yesterday, since I was quite disappointed (I actually found the presentation of the surface book more close to what I was hoping the next macbook pro should be).
I believe the only thing that continues to save Apple for consumers like most of the ppl around here is that it is Unix based.
I would pay handsomely. If Microsoft had included a single Type-C port in the surface book, I would be at least in office bliss.
We could all have just bought Type-C dock monitors and had instant flexdesks with one cablee... But no... I have to wait at least half a year more for that to happen :(
If MS would just sell me a Surface Studio Display that works as a TB3 Dock for both Mac & Win Devices, offering Surface Pen & Dial support Windows only, or heck even Surface only, we would buy so many of them MS would have to become actually good at supply chains...
When I buy it, how am I supposed to power it up?
I feel stupid and old just for asking this question :-(
Ironically this is the only thing that impressed me from the announcement, yet it wasn't discussed.
Is the Touch ID sensor the new power button?
The idea of only needing one type of port is very appealing. No longer need to worry about ThunderBolt, DisplayPort, Mini DisplayPort, VGA, HDMI, USB, Firewire 400, Firewire 800, Ethernet. ("What? We don't have all of those any more!" I hear you say. Yup! Isn't it grand?)
I'm ambivalent about losing MagSafe, but that's it.
"if you want to use an SD card from your camera you must get an adapter"
I can see how the SD card port is useful. That said, I remember the days when I had a camera with CompactFlash. Never had a computer than had a built in reader for that, and it wasn't that bad.
As for adapters for other accessories, now all of the adapters will be X to USB2/TB3. The piles of adapters from this to that that I've collected over the years amazes me, in particular for displays and old FW drives. I'll be able to get rid of a lot of old adapters going forward.
A tweet I saw today made me smile:
"If someone isn’t raging about a hardware port, it’s not really a successful Apple event."
https://twitter.com/rands/status/791733073972908032
Edit to add: Yup. Gonna be buying adapters. Won't be the first time, but going forward it's looking like that's going to be much more sane going forward.
I feel like I'd dislike Apple less if there was cable and adapter buyback program.
For example:
Data: a couple different types of SCSI, FW400, FW800, USB, serial
Network: coaxial, RJ-45, RJ-11
Display: VGA, a couple types of DVI, HDMI.
Audio: 3.5mm out, mic in
This article from the Verge
And I know it's not including some of the variants of these.
http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/29/12054410/apple-tech-death-...
Now having a common input to the laptop simplifies this a lot. Yeah, if the type of input changes again and we want to continue to use existing peripherals, we'll have to get new adapters. And I fully expect to. Until we no longer need to physically connect devices together, ports are going to change. I do think it's going to be easier to keep track of going forward.
I agree it looks like Apple has more port turnover than other manufacturers, and I wouldn't be surprised if that's actually the case. I don't expect everyone to agree with me when I say it's not a deal killer for me.
Also 2 not 4 USB-C ports and a Headphone Jack ports on the lower end model (still $1500), are you freaking kidding me?
The 2015 MBP has: 1x MagSafe, 2x USB3, 2x Thunderbolt/DisplayPort, 1x HDMI, SD Card Reader, Headphone Jack.
The USB-C charging option is fine, but why not also include MagSafe? I tripped over the charger cable plenty of times, it just unplugs, now that's actually a great feature.
I have a camera and plenty of SD cards so I use the SD card reader all the time, I actually think I wouldn't want a laptop without it anymore.
My Monitor supports DP, HDMI and DVI, I can pretty much plug it straight into any current laptop on this planet except for the MBP 2016 and MacBook 12".
This is a bit underwhelming.
Also judging by se size difference of the ports, USB-A to C adapters are going to be pretty clunky.
That being said I wouldn't buy a new laptop without a quad core.
* Touchbar with haptic feedback to make the buttons feel more concrete * Physical escape key * RGB keyboard with good travel * Regular-size clickpad
Of course, this configuration doesn't exist anywhere.
The new MacBook Pro is intriguing, but I have concerns: * Max 16GB RAM * Oversized trackpad is going to be a palm-click nightmare * Not sure if I'd like the new keyboard * GPU performance is unclear---they didn't give enough details to assess it
Based on the level of detail in the video on Apple's website, I'm clearly not the target audience of this product. They hardly touched on the actual specs at all, except in a very handwavy, marketeering way.
I had been waiting to see what Apple would offer before replacing my ancient laptop. I just might go with the Dell XPS 15 but have been worried about build quality issues. I'd like something that can play games decently but I'm willing to sacrifice some performance in exchange for reasonable thermals and weight. 5.5 lbs is probably my max weight---I use it on my lap a lot.
How about my "Wristband Carpal Tunnel Keyboard" concept for all your devices?
https://medium.com/@6StringMerc/why-i-keep-secrets-as-a-wann...
$1,499.00 -> 1 699,00 € for the first model
By the time you purchased all the adapters you need you have dropped another $100
I really do not understand what Apple is thinking here... Steve is turning in his grave.
2. It protrudes more than 1cm from the edge of the case, so we're right back to where we started in terms of things unintentionally dragging the laptop around.
3. MagSafe is patented by Apple, and not licensed to anybody. To get around the patent, other manufacturers had to make an inferior product. In particular, the polarity of the magnets in MagSafe is optimized to make the connection as strong as possible, and that's written right into the patent (https://www.google.com/patents/US7311526). The knockoffs are wimpier.
4. Dropping $2500 on a laptop and then having to spring for a $40 part than came from free with your $1700, last-generation laptop is just annoying.
Arguing with myself, I'd say hardware quality is probably going to be better from Apple -- but damn that's a hefty Apple tax to pay (and it doesn't stop when you buy the machine).
I can also say, working in a mixed shop, that most people who got Surface Pros in the last couple of years are generally happy with them, but they have all kinds of weird bugs and can be kind of flaky. A few folks with Surface books report similar issues. So there's that.
But really, this was honestly kind of a disappointing showing a day after Microsoft pretty much reinvented creative computing.
Guess I'll be hanging onto my 2011 Macbook Pro a little longer.
Overall, I'm less and less impressed with Apple. I am considering getting a mac mini for iOS development and calling it quits and moving over to the Windows world.
Thunderbolt 3. Seems nice to have for future docking stations and monitors. Don't care if only used as a notebook
And lots of disadvantages:
No Magsafe connector, no HDMI (which most current-gen monitors have), no SD Card, probably a worse keyboard if they adapted the 12" Macbook key style and 300€ more expensive.
The touchbar might be a nice gimmick for some casual users which never used the function keys anyway. But I guess for most folks here that use their notebook for programming it will cause more trouble than help. It's not like most IDEs will support for the touchbar anytime soon if at all. And without special support it can be only worse then physical keys. They should have probably offered at least the 15" version without a touchbar too.
I do agree that the rest of the updates are pretty underwhelming.
I can see it being more annoying than useful. They could have set themselves apart by doing something grandiose like having small oled screens for each key that are changing dynamically according to apps and keyboards. But, I guess this time of true risks are gone.
Thinking ethernet, charge iPhone, external HD, and connect to external monitor HDMI/DisplayPort?
I think it's to reinforce that it's multi-touch capable.
I better consider recently updated HP Spectre x360 with newest Kaby Lake CPU and usual fn keys row, plus it's convertible if someone needs that.
As for Linux... I guess somebody will need to reverse engineer and write a driver for it.
That Spectre x360 laptop in my opinion does look like a real Macbook competitor, even a better device in some aspects.
With a touch screen, it's all on one surface. Using a mouse / trackpad it's all on one surface.
Sure, when using the keyboard, you have an additional surface, but then there are two things to offset it - touch-typing and keyboard shortcuts.
If you really want to help 'non-tech' users who can't manage shortcuts or mouse/trackpad.... just give them a standard touch screen.
Oh right. It's Apple.
Even using the phone would probably be more 'convenient' for most users in this category.
(Seriously the 2013 Macbook Pro 13" feels so perfect)
P.S.: It's weird how they never mentioned programmers in the keynote but I'm sure they are far more programmers than video editors on Macs
One would thing so, yes, but by reading these HN comments it seems that the only "professionals" worthy of the "pro" name are photographers and video-editors. There are even a couple of comments dismissing vim users (?!) for daring to touch-type, or something similar.
Wait 'til it's out to get people's actual feedback. ;)
This also allows Apple to avoid making the primary screen a touchscreen since they ergonomics don't make sense with the current form factors. Also, by not making the entire keyboard surface touch it ensures the primary typing experience with haptic feedback stays intact.
Seems like everybody forgot about it, but was a great machine back in the day. And you could even buy a matte version of the screen.
The new Base model rMBP may be the next one for me for that reason for now. Keep finding it worth to always wait until the 2nd generation of a Mac laptop before diving in.
It seems the entry level rMBP with touchpad can't upgrade it's SSD.
Yep, I expect a lot of freezes, crashes, and general craziness with the touch bar until the next go around. It's just Apple's style.
I really really hope there's proper sRGB emulation for those of us who want to make content for the 99.99% of users out there.
Edit: not every app is color managed
[1]: https://fman.io
or just press cmd+c, easier than reaching to the touch bar.
https://twitter.com/NickPoorman/status/791715570718769153
Not to mention I use my esc key all day to switch Vim modes in Atom. Disappointed.
Wat.
It's at the far right edge of the touch strip.
Zoom in on this: http://images.apple.com/v/macbook-pro/j/images/overview/intr...
I appreciate that Apple kills off older tech to push the market forward. But, Thunderbolt, USB3, SD cards, nor HDMI strike me as legacy plugs needing a swift transition. I've yet to encounter a USB-C plug in the wild, so this port killing is a misstep.
Almost, because it made me laugh when I heard someone saying "incredible" again and app called "TV" :)
Is there really a GPU-4gb guideline on Oculus or is it mostly to do with the power of the cards. If so, is there any speculation about how these "Radeon Pro" 450/455/460 cards map to the prevailing laptop GPUs?
Seriously, who did Apple talk to (besides their navels) in designing this? No more dongles, Apple. Not on a pro-level device.
Lenovo quickly learned their lesson about that with the Gen2 of the X1C, and reverted to Gen1-style layout in the third generation. I could see myself upgrading then, if my 1st gen still didn't work so well (i7/8/256).
Yeah... I wonder how well it can really do that. The thing that always makes me hesitant to jump back to a MB Pro is their terrible GPU performance. I hate spending that much on a machine which can barely run WoW.
I'll stick with the EliteBook I just bought for 10% of this price, and damn-near every port ever made. It doesn't really bother me that it's about 3" thick and doesn't have an emoji bar.
I just bought a brand new Dell Latitude Ultrabook with i7 and SSD for $600 from the outlet store. I added ram for $40 and it has a three year warranty.
An i5 MBP at 2x-3x the cost is no longer worth the OSX premium, especially for those users who need only a browser and MS Office.
- The Thunderbolt Display live on with the iMac, the new iMac having
a new Thunderbolt target mode, allowing USB-C Macbooks to use all
its peripherals/ports, including the GPU.
- This new iMac will also be released with a touchbar keyboard
accessory
- e-ink keys keyboard will either be released with the new iMac or at
a later stage, also triggering an update on Macbooks, which, as a
side effect, will allow Apple to reduce its number of SKUs
- no new Mac Mini, the iPhone has now enough power to take over that
role with a new accessory or target mode and code updates on OS X
allowing everyone with an iPhone to try or use OS X
- Mac Pro will be updated
(1) the thunderbolt display will merge with the iMac
(2) the Mac Mini will merge with the iPhoneI know I can do docker/VM but I like the native coding experience.
The slight bump in processor speed doesn't make up for the loss in connectivity to me. I don't think I could live without magsafe power and an integrated SD card reader.
What people don't understand is that the reason Apple stays so far ahead of the rest of the industry year after year is their ability to integrate software and hardware, which as Jony Ive says in the video, is unique to Apple.
Bravo.
On a side note, I cannot believe in 2016 Jony Ive actually mentioned integrating software and hardware in a product video. This is a shockingly disappointing product launch, if only for how lost in the wheat they are.
I'm starting to wonder if there's a very real possibility that Apple's marketing is so good that they've come to believe it themselves.
I personally found the suggestion that taking my fingers away from my keyboard to tap on the touchbar for autocomplete suggestions would let me "type faster" to be beyond ridiculous and even borderline insulting. Obviously Apple couldn't say - in a room full of developers - "When is the last time you used a function key?," and instead had to go with an awkward joke about no one using IBM mainframes any more...
And power users sharing MacBooks? That automatic profile switching belongs on the new iMac, which is actually a PC meant to be shared with family... oh wait, there is no new iMac, is there?
Craig also deftly avoided mention of the fact that as soon as you let go of the function key, the F1-12 buttons disappear once more - at a time when laptop developers have given up on forcing the alternate Fn behavior over the standard F1-12 buttons by default.
I'm also concerned Apple won't give a damn about making the UI of applications accessible and intuitive and simply assume everyone wants to use the touchbar instead. It seems they've given up on innovating when it comes to desktops and workstations and have decided to simply shoehorn any mobile innovations they have into their notebooks rather than come up with something -actually- useful.
I posted this part yesterday, and I'll post it again:
I just gave up on Apple ever shipping you are MacBooks and received my custom order HP two days before they announced the October 27th event. My (magnesium unibody) ZBook is as slim as my retina MBP, has a higher-PPI display, also comes with a glass trackpad, has user-replaceable battery, 2x M.2 PCIe SSDs, and upgradeable ram. I was able to pay a bit extra and get it with a mobile Xeon CPU (E3-1545m with Intel's top-of-the-line Iris Pro 580 integrated GPU) which is the equivalent of the i7 6920HQ only with more cache and better graphics, meaning I was able to buy 32 GB of ECC RAM for only $130. It has a 4GB nVidia Quadro and still manages to weigh less than my rMBP.
The only thing that sucks is the noise. It's fairly quiet even with the fan running at its highest RPM, but the frequency of the resulting noise is very distinguishable and it has a tendency to rev up and down quite suddenly (and often). It doesn't help that there are two fans, one on each side, which turn on and off independently - meaning you can suddenly feel like you've lost hearing in one of your ears until you realize the noise level is imbalanced.
I don't know if Apple will introduce Xeon workstations (update: they didn't. The crowd clapped at "6th generation Intel" because they didn't realize it meant two year old tech), but even if they did, I'm not sure I'm ready to give up my three USB 3.1 (non-C), three thunderbolt 3 (/USB-C), hdmi, gigabit ethernet, 3.5mm audio/mic, and power ports along with my function keys, home/end/page up/page down buttons, Kensington lock slot, and a proper typing keyboard that celebrates instead of denounces key travel in exchange for a more-pleasant acoustic profile.
While I might be willing to give up the ECC memory I use with my Xeon 1545m for the standard DDR4 Apple's new maxed-out MBP configured with an i7 6920HQ supports (which is otherwise more-or-less identical to the Xeon 1545m, except with less cache), I'm definitely, over-my-dead-body not willing to trade my 32GB of RAM for the paltry 16GB the new MBP offers [0].
Did I mention I've been a faithful Mac user for over a decade?
0: https://neosmart.net/blog/2016/apples-best-newest-macbook-pr...
http://theunshut.com/2016/10/27/will-the-touch-bar-save-the-...
Enjoy that ZBook, by the way.
I was watching the video on my MBPr, while literally writing a C# program on my work Dell M6800 to automate running programs and fetching the resulting data... from a mainframe... by embedding a 3270 emulator.
:-/
The reason that I will ( probably ) buy Apple MacBooks was narrowed to software compatibility. So sad.
(no, not just kidding.. jk is my ESC shortcut)
Next up: removing the screen, that's 70-year-old tech we don't need anymore either. Let's be brave!
A few thoughts of mine:
Pros: - Beautiful, thin, lighter design - Great screen (could of course have been even better) - Fast enough processor for most pro tasks - Judging by Apple's history, very good build quality - Up to 10 hours of battery life - A great OS mixing UNIX and support for professional programs
Neutral: - Touch Bar: might be amazing, might just be an irritation. We don't know yet. I for one think it could be nice for music production and DJing, but likely not for programming. A few people actually use the function keys a lot. As before, they will be available while pressing the fn key. But people might want real keys. Since I use vim a lot, it's irritating that the Esc key won't necessarily always be where I expect it to. Sure, it will be available in the terminal, but in IntelliJ with the vim plugin? I might have to remap Esc to Caps Lock. An irritation but not a major deal breaker for most people. - Only thunderbolt ports. I think this is the right move and in line with expected Apple behavior, but I guess some people want to be able to simply connect old/current generation USB peripherals without any adapters - No more MagSafe. - Faster AMD graphics. This is of course nice, except for CUDA people and people who want to install Linux on their MacBooks (but seriously, why would you want to do that?) Also, positive: good support for external screens. But only for certain ones? I'm not sure about this, has anyone figured out exactly what screens can be used? - New keyboard, which some people will like and some won't.
Negative: - Maximum of 16 GB of RAM, wtf? This is the only major deal breaker I see that applies to many people. - Hefty price. But we're talking about Apple here, folks. Pay to play
To conclude, a great but expensive premium notebook with the major flaw of being limited to 16 GB of RAM. If you really need CUDA support, real function keys or have to be able to plug in various peripherals without adapters, this might not be the right computer for you.
I love Apple products but I had to buy a Surface Book due to the lack of updated hardware... guess what: it's a pretty decent laptop and the touch screen + pen is great.
I expected a little more from Apple. Sorry the lcd Fn keys just don't cut it for me I hope I'll be proven wrong but right now I think it's quite a poor gimmick.
Gen 2 wishlist:
- Something more than 16GB RAM
- Nvidia GPU (always had issues with ATI)
- Cheaper option with no Touch Bar
- MagSafe power
If I were using additional peripherals, I think I'd most likely be using those when I'm also connected to a display, so I can use the ports on the display for those as well. That said, for the target market, I don't think it's unreasonable to think they likely need only two ports the vast majority of the time.
I'm not saying you don't have a use for more than two ports. Just that "two ports only is a joke" sounds quite dismissive without any additional details.
I was looking forward to this event as I was considering getting a new machine. However the new machines are full of compromises I would need to do (usual things I hear a lot are "oh you can remap Escape, you can buy a dongle, you dont need that much ports etc.")
I am a touch-typist (and I use the F keys), so the machine with Touchbar is no-go for me. What's left? The non-touchbar machine, with two ports. I will omit the thing I would need a bunch of adapters from USB-C to anything.
If I look on my current setup right now, that would be a charger (1st port), a monitor (2nd port), a mouse (3rd), a mobile device for development (4th). Ocasinally I use an external disk too (5th). So if I am doing the math correctly, I am missing 2-3 ports. I guess that would mean some extra adapters to be able to connect all of this. All of them on one side of the laptop (including headphones). That's just mess.
- attributed to Bob Pariseau, at the introduction of the Amiga
(fortune of the day)
You can still find them for $800 on EBay (brand new), but it doesn't look like it is still available on Apple's site.
There is a 4th 13th inch on the site, instead, but it is not the same as it has 128 SSD and newer graphics. It would be great if this had upgradeable ram and HD.
I have one and it's great. Of course I ordered it with SSD, since the default spinning rust would have made it behave like a slug. But it is 1 pound heavier than more modern 13" models, and 1.5 pounds heavier than the newest ones just announced.
Normally I'm OK with the extra weight, but it makes a big difference for the occasional time that I'm a "road warrior".
Edit: someone linked to a story about it being discontinued. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12811050
If I had just a fraction of a penny for all the times in my life I've heard this phrase, I could buy a majority ownership in Apple, Inc.
What is the best linux notebook that close the gap with macbook pro?
Ever since upgrading to Ubuntu 16.04 things have been pretty smooth. I believe any distro with a 4.4 series kernel or higher will behave pretty well.
Before this I had a thinkpad T series (I miss the keyboard, and the abundance of ports. It was really good), and I never had any problem with running any distribution of Linux.
In Summary: I think you cannot go wrong with either a Thinkpad or the Dell Developer edition. They are well made machines with good support for linux.
http://images.apple.com/v/home/cy/images/gallery/macbookpro_...
Just kidding.
You can still have one but we moved it.
I think there are 2, because if you're a hacker or a designer or a home user, you quite likely have a Mac hooked up to the power and the 2nd screen :)
Oh, like trackpad gestures?
>from showing typing suggestions to displaying tools for various apps – all based on the context of what the user is doing at the time.
Oh, like a toolbar?
Quo vadis Apple?
* model with physical keys is shit (2x less USB-C, way worser CPU etc)
* no physical keys for 15"
* http://i.imgur.com/1Y0Elul.png :)
* jack 3.5 in all models - not brave enough
I rather liked that one :(
(I'm speaking as an Apple user, not claiming Apple came up with all these first)
1. Touch
First they made Apple users get used to, in laptops, working with a trackpad for more functionality than just moving the mouse and clicking. Then they reduced the profile of the keys. Now they've introduced a touchscreen in our keyboard area.
Wouldn't be surprised if we see a move towards a full touch keyboard. How? Not sure. Today "me" would think of some kind of glass like material that could display any layout and image while molding its surface to it (or at least something like the Optimus keyboard done properly). Tomorrow "me" will probably thinking of completely getting rid of it and using the future AirPods as wireless brain interfaces (you can ridicule me for this if you want, I know I would).
Nevertheless, we got physical keys replaced by something more flexible and that will give us a more meaningful interface for what you can do depending on the context we are working in. Alpha-numeric shortcuts will always have a steeper learning curve than an good icon or descriptive button (some real estate issues there for the number of combinations, one for UX to solve).
Know that this doesn't seem much, but it is once you start thinking of the possibilities and that it's only the beginning of what's to come.
Will talk about Microsoft later in this comment...
2. "Standard" ports
Finally! Thunderbolt 3/USB-C.
Dongle fest? Maybe in the first year or two. Then it means every single peripheral (power, external SSD, network, screens) will only use one physical interface to connect to your Apple laptop (others have also started doing this, so the wheels are in motion already).
What about your old peripherals? I'm a hoarder when it comes to tech, so still have PS/2 keyboards and mice at my parents'... Remember then? What about Serial? Sure, it was over a longer period of time, but things evolve quite faster now, especially when you are trying to simplify and make things smaller, lighter. Different physical interfaces are the enemy in these cases.
As I've previously said, was surprised that the iPhone 7 didn't come with Thunderbolt 3/USB-C. Imagine it was either some control issue they wanted to maintain or didn't want to rebuild/refactor that part of the device just yet. Would expect the next iPhone to make the jump and join the USB-C family.
Have addressed the issue of SD Cards and such in comments in the iPhone 7 thread. The future is wireless, which is also valid for cameras. Pain in the short term, bliss in the medium-long. My 2 year old Panasonic compact camera has Wi-Fi, others have Bluetooth (and I'm not saying it's the best experience as it is, mostly due to poor attention to the software, since cards are still the preferred way).
3. Apple TV
They now seem to be a bit more serious about Apple TV. Why? Remember when they used to go silent for years?
Sure, nothing groundbreaking or that it hasn't been done by others, but it is becoming a more enticing device now that they are at least catching up to the rest of the devices. Still think that using it for socialize during sports is grasping at straws. You know you want full screen for the transmission and just use your smartphone/tablet to comment... Maybe work on a better integration there?
4. What about computing (CPU, memory, graphics) power?
Need more than 16GB of RAM at this stage? Better graphics card? Mac Pro. Want a laptop? Not Apple at this point.
Wait for the next iteration. This wasn't one of those, as you only change so much between them to minimise complications.
5. What about the Air?
Look at the Macbook and the new Macbook Pro? The Air was the spearhead, the prototype that made both possible and prepared the audience, it will potentially die, which kind of makes sense (the amount of choice was becoming overwhelming and probably not that efficient from a production POV: more lines to manage and maintain, less focus on each one).
6. Microsoft
Yes, their new computer looks nice, for people in graphic design and audio/video editing maybe.
Going to be polemic, but I think the dial is a gimmick and will be the source of a lot of frustration. You can already do a lot with touch and I reckon physical device feedback is still better than bland plain touch. However apart for a niche application, I don't see the general public using it.
Big touch screen? Unless they revolutionise the way we do touch and interact with the OS, and I hope they do, it will get boring and a pain to use for most people that simply browse, watch videos, listen to music, send emails and play some games. Kids? You probably go for an iPad Pro or equivalent, something you can carry around easily.
Final thoughts
My take on Apple at the moment is that, despite what people say, that they've lost their way and are doomed, I think that's not going to happen, they do have a vision for their ecosystem and they are focusing on it, both on the hardware as well as well as the services side and experience.
They are slowly introducing changes which minimises the risk (of going down the wrong path) and allows them to learn more from users as they go. Think that 5 years from now when you look back, the evolution and experience will be quite clear (and again, the mostly mocked AirPods are going to be pivotal in this, not because of the sound or current function but because of what, as a device to be developed, they'll enable).
We cannot expect big bang innovation every year or even every few years and when it does happen, you then take a while to refine it and make it better.
Well, Apple did buy FingerWorks[1] who used to make the multitouch "zero force" TouchStream keyboards[2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FingerWorks [2] http://ergocanada.com/products/keyboards/fingerworks_lp.html
Too sad, the MacBook Air is dead.
I'm sad that i waited this long only to be disappointed.
It was a COO's view of being innovative.
Buying a mini is a no brainer. Buying an iMac is a bit iffy compared to PCs on price. But, a MacBook + display is a no go for most homes.
I suppose Apple feels their iPads will target the home market.
(Not necessarily happy with this logic, but I think it's the direction they're headed...)
It's ok, but with only 16gb of ram and no nvidia chips it's not exactly a good workstation. Professionals are now forced to have a second computer with a lot of ram and GPUs for computing. Very much not ideal.