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>It's time to face the fact that Apple doesn't care about professionals and never has. and yet despite this, professionals around the world use the Macbook Pro

>It's time to face the fact that Apple doesn't care about professionals and never has. and yet despite this, professionals around the world use the Macbook Pro. The user base that apple doesn't care about, and never has cared about, is "power users" - the people who have strong opinions about how their tools should look and behave. There's tons of professionals out there, in many different industries, who simply want a computer that works reliably and that they don't have to think or worry about, and that has always been the segment apple has served. They've never catered to the die-hard macbook pro fans. Function over form has never been the goal. They build laptops with broad appeal that make the compromises that work for a large number of people, and they balance form against function. And yes, sometimes that means form wins out over function. Apple is just continuing to do what they've always done. They haven't lost their way, people have just been expecting stuff from them that was never realistic.

72deluxe 10y ago
"compromises that work for a large number of people" I'm not sure how removing all of the ports that my existing devices plug into is a compromise that works for me, let alone my mum or anyone else I know. Carrying a bag of dongles is not my idea of the future. Is it yours? I can no longer plug my SD card in from my Sony camera. How exactly do you think this is a good compromise? It isn't a compromise at all - it's dictation or an ultimatum, really.
- renaudg 10y ago
  This is not the future, it's the temporary present. This is a uncomfortable transition period, but it won't be too long until USB-C is ubiquitous and you're not carrying dongles anywhere.
  - 72deluxe 10y ago
    At the current situation it isn't a transition period - the available hardware now dictates that USB C should be used. So there is no transition; transition would imply that the two port sets existed side by side (unfeasible I know). Let's hope that this jump to USB C encourages the rest of the industry to move along. Given that fuzzy VGA is still on many PCs and displays, I can only imagine how long this period will be.
slantyyz 10y ago
>> It's time to face the fact that Apple doesn't care about professionals and never has. > and yet despite this, professionals around the world use the Macbook Pro. The problem is that everyone including people on HN have different ideas as to who these "professionals" that Apple serves are. Creatives? Programmers? Salespeople? Accountants? Architects? All of these users are power users in different areas. As a general purpose computer, Macbook Pros are good for most "professionals". If you're talking about more specific professions, then yeah, there's going to be a lot of debate.
- freehunter 10y ago
  100% agree. All the time I hear "it's not a pro machine if it doesn't have 16GB of RAM" or "a pro machine needs firewire and HDMI out and a headphone jack and real function keys" and I think... am I just not a professional? Because I rarely use an external monitor, rarely use the function keys as actual function keys, and I'm fine with 8GB of RAM and a core i5. But my MacBook is 100% my work laptop, and I get paid a heck of a lot of money, so...? I mean, professionals are the most likely to use dongles and attachments. We sometimes have esoteric needs (I very frequently require a serial port, but I'm not crying that Apple doesn't include one), we can commonly get our work to pay for them, and we generally have a desk to put things on and a bag to carry them with. Consumers wouldn't put up with that nonsense, they just want to use Facebook and Netflix. We've already established that I am not a professional because I don't need HDMI or function keys, so all I can say from the outside looking in is... man professionals are seriously whiny. Also can we start a campaign to get Apple to put a full-size serial port back on their laptops? That's something a real professional would use.
  - slantyyz 10y ago
    As a professional myself, I don't like dongles, especially if I'm travelling. I don't want to worry about forgetting or losing a critical dongle if I need to connect to a wired network, projector or whatnot. I also don't want to have a USB dongle if I know a client is going to be giving me a USB key to exchange some files. Having the right built in ports means you have less to worry about when you're on the road, and visiting a client in the middle of nowhere. The last thing a professional needs to happen is to get into an embarrassing situation because of their hardware situation. No thanks. Having said that, I'm not really dependent on any particular OS any more, so it doesn't matter to me if Apple, Dell, or Lenovo make a design decision I don't like. There's a pretty good chance that someone out there makes something that satisfies the majority of my needs. If I was dependent on macOS and ready for a hardware upgrade, however, I think I'd be pretty grumpy about yesterday's announcements and non-announcements. Because of that, I can sympathize with the uproar.

72deluxe 10y ago

"compromises that work for a large number of people" I'm not sure how removing all of the ports that my existing devices plug into is a compromise that works for me, let alone my mum or anyone else I know. Carrying a bag of dongles is not my idea of the future. Is it yours? I can no longer plug my SD card in from my Sony camera. How exactly do you think this is a good compromise? It isn't a compromise at all - it's dictation or an ultimatum, really.

renaudg 10y ago
This is not the future, it's the temporary present. This is a uncomfortable transition period, but it won't be too long until USB-C is ubiquitous and you're not carrying dongles anywhere.
- 72deluxe 10y ago
  At the current situation it isn't a transition period - the available hardware now dictates that USB C should be used. So there is no transition; transition would imply that the two port sets existed side by side (unfeasible I know). Let's hope that this jump to USB C encourages the rest of the industry to move along. Given that fuzzy VGA is still on many PCs and displays, I can only imagine how long this period will be.

slantyyz 10y ago

>> It's time to face the fact that Apple doesn't care about professionals and never has. > and yet despite this, professionals around the world use the Macbook Pro. The problem is that everyone including people on HN have different ideas as to who these "professionals" that Apple serves are. Creatives? Programmers? Salespeople? Accountants? Architects? All of these users are power users in different areas. As a general purpose computer, Macbook Pros are good for most "professionals". If you're talking about more specific professions, then yeah, there's going to be a lot of debate.

freehunter 10y ago
100% agree. All the time I hear "it's not a pro machine if it doesn't have 16GB of RAM" or "a pro machine needs firewire and HDMI out and a headphone jack and real function keys" and I think... am I just not a professional? Because I rarely use an external monitor, rarely use the function keys as actual function keys, and I'm fine with 8GB of RAM and a core i5. But my MacBook is 100% my work laptop, and I get paid a heck of a lot of money, so...? I mean, professionals are the most likely to use dongles and attachments. We sometimes have esoteric needs (I very frequently require a serial port, but I'm not crying that Apple doesn't include one), we can commonly get our work to pay for them, and we generally have a desk to put things on and a bag to carry them with. Consumers wouldn't put up with that nonsense, they just want to use Facebook and Netflix. We've already established that I am not a professional because I don't need HDMI or function keys, so all I can say from the outside looking in is... man professionals are seriously whiny. Also can we start a campaign to get Apple to put a full-size serial port back on their laptops? That's something a real professional would use.
- slantyyz 10y ago
  As a professional myself, I don't like dongles, especially if I'm travelling. I don't want to worry about forgetting or losing a critical dongle if I need to connect to a wired network, projector or whatnot. I also don't want to have a USB dongle if I know a client is going to be giving me a USB key to exchange some files. Having the right built in ports means you have less to worry about when you're on the road, and visiting a client in the middle of nowhere. The last thing a professional needs to happen is to get into an embarrassing situation because of their hardware situation. No thanks. Having said that, I'm not really dependent on any particular OS any more, so it doesn't matter to me if Apple, Dell, or Lenovo make a design decision I don't like. There's a pretty good chance that someone out there makes something that satisfies the majority of my needs. If I was dependent on macOS and ready for a hardware upgrade, however, I think I'd be pretty grumpy about yesterday's announcements and non-announcements. Because of that, I can sympathize with the uproar.