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Where the hell are the new MacBooks?
- morley 10y agoThis article, in my opinion, didn't raise above the level of a petty rant. For a more nuanced look at Apple's Mac pipeline (which also predicted that WWDC wouldn't have hardware announcements), there's this from MacRumors: http://www.macrumors.com/2016/06/08/new-macbook-air-pro-june-unveiling-rumor/ http://www.macrumors.com/2016/06/08/new-macbook-air-pro-june...
- masukomi 10y ago> by omission it’s made something startlingly clear: your next laptop won’t be an Apple one. not if you're an attendee of WWDC or anyone else developing for iOS or macOS.... I agree with @morley... it's just a lame rant.
- wwweston 10y agoIf the primary reason someone's next laptop is going to be an Apple one is that they're developing for iOS (or OS X for that matter), that reinforces the article's point rather than counters it.
- cmaggard 10y agoThey'll hold off on hardware announcements until they can ship them with macOS 12 already on them. Why would they announce new hardware that you'd have to do a full OS upgrade on in a few months?
- MBCook 10y agoThey've done that numerous times in the past. The truth is they had plenty to announce, so it's not too surprising that they didn't include hardware. I imagine there will be an update later, perhaps at the usual Back to Mac event.
- Artemis2 10y agoI've bought my 2014 rMBP with Mavericks and immediately upgraded it to the beta of Yosemite.
- overcast 10y agoThe real question is where the hell are the new Mac Pro towers? There are people outside of Mom and Dad that require something more than a laptop integrated into a monitor.
- jonknee 10y agoI feel you, but iMacs are certainly more than a laptop integrated into a monitor (and a 5k monitor at that!).
- overcast 10y agoNo, they are exactly a laptop integrated into the monitor. Can I add a video card, or full size RAM, or internal disks?
- awinder 10y agoYou can't do video cards or an internal disk on the Mac Pro so not sure this argument makes sense
- overcast 10y agoYes I can, my 2008/09 MacPro has had just about every part besides the motherboard upgrading since, and it's still running strong. That's my point about the new "trashcan" ones, and no new MacPro TOWERS replacing them.
- jonknee 10y agoNo, but the iMac is significantly more powerful than a laptop. I cede you the video card, but there isn't a real advantage to full size RAM or internal drives.
- nsxwolf 10y agoIt's crazy that they undertook such a radical redesign effort and then appeared to drop it. I'm typing this reply on one right now. I do love the machine, but the fact that there still isn't an official source for SSD upgrades is baffling. Apple has a helpful page on how to swap the SSD, but won't sell you one at any price. You can get OEM parts that "fell off a truck" on eBay, or you can get expensive OWC parts that lack TRIM support. It seemed like the video cards would be upgradeable too, but nope. And no Crossfire support in macOS is really sad. Under Windows, these are actually fairly capable gaming machines.
- danpalmer 10y agoThe fact that journalists still expect Apple to announce hardware at a software engineering conference amazes me.
- notatoad 10y agoThat expectation might have something to do with the fact that apple almost always announces new hardware at their WWDC keynote. For both google and apple's developer conferences, the developer conference part of it happens in the sessions after the keynote, and the keynote is mostly just a press event.
- giarc 10y agoNo hardware announcements at 2014 or 2015. Perhaps a new trend.
- Longhanks 10y agoJust adding: This website publicly lied A LOT about the Jake Appelbaum, probably destroying his public image for ever. http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sop8ps http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sop8ps So, however much I wished for new MacBooks, I will Not Click that link. Gawker is trash.
- heavymark 10y agoLol. Yesterday's event was a software event, a jam packed incredibly long one at that. It was so packed they didn't even have time to talk about all the changes to the app store, which is why Apple disclosed that info ahead of time. Not sure when you would expect them to all also announce new hardware. Just download iOS10 and open the new Breathe app, and Breathe. New Macbooks, iPhones, Macbook Pros, and Apple Watches will all come in time in future events.
- rayiner 10y agoIt was also incredibly boring as a software event. Extended discussion of emoji, but nothing about Apple's brand-new copy-on-write file system. At a "developers" conference!
- tptacek 10y agoBeing able to link apps into iMessage is probably a lot more interesting to most developers than APFS is. Very few developers will make a dollar off APFS.
- ryantuck 10y agokind of wild there was no mention in the article of the new macbook, which IMO is an objectively better overall machine than either the air or the pro.
- rhinoceraptor 10y agoSeems perfectly reasonable, they just updated it two months ago.
- JonathonW 10y agoObjectively better in what respect? It's thinner and lighter, yes, but it's also slower, has extremely limited connectivity to external devices (only one USB-C port and no Thunderbolt), and has a nontraditional low-travel keyboard design that would be most politely described as "polarizing". Better for some use cases, yes-- it's a great machine if you need something small and light for travel and don't need to do particularly intensive computing on the road. But it (intentionally) makes enough compromises that you can't make a blanket statement that it's "objectively better" for everyone.
- nsxwolf 10y agoTo meet the "objectively better overall" bar, they're going to need a LOT more horsepower. I love the form factor but they're almost unusable for any kind of real work, and after an entire year they got a tiny speed bump that just takes some of the edge off the performance problems.
- brightball 10y agoI'm still breathing life into my 17" MBP from 2010 holding out for Apple to finally make another one.
- pbhowmic 10y agosame here. Mine is 2012 and if they don't offer something decent this fall, I will just add in an SSD to replace the HDD. That ought to hold the perf for a while longer.
- brightball 10y agoI've done that twice (a 500GB then a 1TB). The 8GB of RAM wasn't getting it done without it.
- Overtonwindow 10y agoI don't just want new MacBooks. I want new MacBooks that I can fix myself, and have someone other than Apple to fix it. I'm hanging on to my 2012 Pro model as best I can, and see no reason to spend the money on a product that isn't really mine.
- grandalf 10y agoIf you buy a laptop based only on raw specs, you are in a different market than the vast majority of laptop users. Most people want their laptop to be reasonably fast, get solid battery life, and have a nice display and ergonomics. Also important is power saving technology (sleep, hibernate, etc.) and storage size/speed. Most commodity laptops that are competing in the raw specs wars have major deficiencies in one or more of the above areas. If you are a Windows user, you have taken on the task of dealing with a broken, polluted driver ecosystem and lots of malware, as well as an OS that shows you ads on the desktop. If you are a Linux user you take on the task of making sure your bleeding edge hardware works with linux. This is no small task and in many cases it's over a year after release that linux support for new technology becomes anything approaching reliable. A Macbook, on the other hand, just works, and works extremely well. It is a reliable work horse that does its job without complaining. The hardware and ergonomics fade into the background and you just focus on your work. I suppose if you are a gamer there is a case to be made for running Windows on bleeding edge hardware, but such gamers are a very small percentage of laptop users.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- wwweston 10y ago> If you buy a laptop based only on raw specs, you are in a different market than the vast majority of laptop users. This argument works reasonably well for the "MacBook" side of the equation, but it doesn't fare so finely on the "Pro" side.
- bryanlarsen 10y agoLogically, you're right. However, when people spend a lot of money, they want to feel that they're getting a good deal, and they want to feel that they it will be useful for long enough to get their "money's worth". It's these two mostly psychological factors that are coming into play here.
- trurl 10y ago> If you buy a laptop based only on raw specs, you are in a different market than the vast majority of laptop users. Yeah, I think they call those people developers. > A Macbook, on the other hand, just works, and works extremely well. It is a reliable work horse that does its job without complaining. The hardware and ergonomics fade into the background and you just focus on your work. Except MacBooks max out at 8GB of memory. At this point 16GB doesn't cut it anymore for my development, so MacBook Pros and iMacs are out too. I have entertained the idea of getting a Mac Pro, except they are even more woefully out of date at this point.
- creshal 10y agoIf you look at just how painful the Skylake launch was on Windows and Linux, I figure they're waiting on hardware/drivers that actually work as intended.
- mr_tristan 10y agoI just wonder if we're seeing Apple try to slowly move away from being a "devices" company and identify itself in terms of "general computing", so including software and services. So yeah, everyone has this super-strong connotation of "Apple = awesome devices", and they still wait in anticipation for new, beautiful hardware. But it sure seems like Apple is trying to drive a different identity. I'll truly believe this is happening when iMessage hits Android, which I didn't hear any mention of, despite the rumors.
- inputjoker 10y agoMacbook air is somewhat in apple terms an old technology(it's the best value for money imo). So there is a great chance that we won't see a refresh for macbook air. Pro 13 gets thinner and lighter taking over the air.
- jlarocco 10y agoWhat a whiny article. My 2013 MBP is still working great, and I'm in no hurry for new ones to come out. I use mine mostly for my photography (RAW editing, catalog management, etc.) and it handles the 36 megapixel images from my camera just fine - I drag sliders and the changes show up in real time. I keep all of my RAW files on an external HD, so if I really needed things faster my first step would be to buy a faster one (SSD). I also occasionally use it for development, and I don't have any problems there, either. The most true statement in the article is that my next laptop may not be an Apple, but that has a lot more to do with Apple's crappy software quality lately, and the fact the photo software I use also works on Windows.
- mieses 10y agoI stopped holding my breath after hearing that the function keys in a "Pro" laptop might be replaced by a touch sensitive strip like Lenovo tried on the X1 Carbon.