4 ms·

I think part of the recent sentiment towards Apple is due to the expectations game. If it had been a different company, like Asus, to introduce a very thin, ver

I think part of the recent sentiment towards Apple is due to the expectations game. If it had been a different company, like Asus, to introduce a very thin, very lightweight computer with excellent graphics and a touch strip, I think a lot of people would be thinking, "wow! Asus is really innovating! what a useful little machine!". But because it is Apple, the expectations go far beyond that of any other company, so the probability of disappointment is very high.

Eridrus 10y ago
It's not just the expectations, Apple's price tags demand innovation. If they're not doing anything special you can get much cheaper hardware.
- hellofunk 10y ago
  I'm curious if, beyond innovative features, the actual build quality and battery life of a machine should command higher prices. I had a couple Windows laptops (one by Dell) with quite poor battery life. My MacBook Pro from 2011 goes all day with serious activity without a charge, sometimes 2 days. I don't discredit the disappointment in the recent Apple laptop announcements, but I do think that paying a premium price for a genuinely solid machine is reasonable, even if that machine doesn't have a rapid change in features. I've never had any other laptop last over 5 years without any major problems. And it is also hard for me to deny that after lugging around a heavier laptop for awhile, having a light Macbook Pro definitely is easier when on the go.
  - jerf 10y ago
    "... should command higher prices. I had a couple Windows laptops (one by Dell) with quite poor battery life." You don't say, but, were they higher-end Dell laptops or not? I've got an 6-year-old Dell Studio 17 still going strong, which cost about $1,000 when I bought it. I recently replaced it solely because I've learned that waiting until a machine is completely dead to replace it produces stress, when you end up having to go to Best Buy or equivalent and just buy whatever they may happen to have lying around, which is not what I'm looking for. The battery lasts about 10 minutes tops right now but I never bought it for its battery life anyhow. It's in pretty good shape for 6 years old. The screen's doing something weird with diagonal streaks developing in the top and bottom, but it's still perfectly usable at the moment. On the other hand, the bottom-of-the-line Dell stuff is crap I'd hardly expect to last two years. It depends on what you buy.
  - solvedit 10y ago
    > My MacBook Pro from 2011 goes all day with serious activity without a charge As an owner of a 2011 MacBook Pro with a recently replaced battery, I don't believe you. We either don't share the same understanding of "all day", "serious activity", "without a charge", or "goes".
    - hellofunk 10y ago
      Well by serious activity I mean writing C++ all day in emacs and compiling it maybe a hundred times or more. And the usual web browsing, email throughout the day. I can easily make it through a full work day doing this without plugging in the machine.
      - TheCoelacanth 10y ago
        Running emacs practically counts as letting the machine idle these days. I know it used to be considered super bloated, but even fart apps use more resources now.
  - tw04 10y ago
    You're failing to mention 99% of those Dell laptops have REMOVABLE batteries which is why they're smaller. If the battery runs out you could have multiple charged ones in your bag, which is what we all did when we knew we'd be stuck in a datacenter for a full day. If your battery runs out on the macbook, you're just done.
- acdha 10y ago
  You can get much cheaper but worse quality hardware. Since the switch to Intel it's generally been the case that you start getting into equivalent quality the price gap narrows considerably – note how the latest Microsoft Surface Book pricing is basically the same as the MacBook Pro – and it comes down to how much you care about particular features.
no_wave 10y ago
The touch strip would be even more of a joke on any other machine because you'd guarantee 0% buy-in from software developers. The only reason it's getting any positive feedback from anyone is because it's Apple and people are charitably imagining that software developers are going to dedicate resources to support a doodad that doesn't even exist on 90% of apple machines (and only ~5% of notebooks/desktops are Apple in the first place!).
drzaiusapelord 10y ago
Strange I find the opposite. There seems to be a "well, these guys seem to be doing okay, but they're nowhere near the polish and design of Apple" for pretty much any competitor. I don't think I've ever heard a compliment toward Asus, yet have heard Apple compliments all my life. I also think Apple expectations are kinda low. I think everyone is used to Apple and just deal with their oddities and questionable decisions. The same way Windows guys just shrug and upgrade to Win10 without question. People don't want to learn new platforms and just want something similar to what they had, so they'll make a lot of excuses to avoid the pain of migrating platforms.
tetraodonpuffer 10y ago
I don't think if anybody else in 2016 had created a 'pro' laptop with no usb2/3 and no hdmi and no sd and max 16gb of ram they would've gotten a pass either. Not to mention the oversight of not being able to connect/charge the iphone without adapters, which is also very hard to see as anything but an oversight. If this had been a macbook update I don't think there would have been as much a backlash, but a macbook pro is not the same thing as a macbook in terms of expectations for ports or power
snowwrestler 10y ago
Apple is simply willing to be wrong in the short term, to be right in the long term. And because their laptop cases are so hard to engineer, they have to think long-term when they design a new one. This is one reason that, while I like Apple's computers, I never buy rev 1 of a new design. And this is hardly the first Apple release that has been met with complaints, even within the pro notebook category.
hellofunk 10y ago
And here is one reason to (perhaps partially) justify the premium price: https://9to5mac.com/2016/11/01/2016-macbook-pro-ssd/ https://9to5mac.com/2016/11/01/2016-macbook-pro-ssd/

Eridrus 10y ago

It's not just the expectations, Apple's price tags demand innovation. If they're not doing anything special you can get much cheaper hardware.

hellofunk 10y ago
I'm curious if, beyond innovative features, the actual build quality and battery life of a machine should command higher prices. I had a couple Windows laptops (one by Dell) with quite poor battery life. My MacBook Pro from 2011 goes all day with serious activity without a charge, sometimes 2 days. I don't discredit the disappointment in the recent Apple laptop announcements, but I do think that paying a premium price for a genuinely solid machine is reasonable, even if that machine doesn't have a rapid change in features. I've never had any other laptop last over 5 years without any major problems. And it is also hard for me to deny that after lugging around a heavier laptop for awhile, having a light Macbook Pro definitely is easier when on the go.
- jerf 10y ago
  "... should command higher prices. I had a couple Windows laptops (one by Dell) with quite poor battery life." You don't say, but, were they higher-end Dell laptops or not? I've got an 6-year-old Dell Studio 17 still going strong, which cost about $1,000 when I bought it. I recently replaced it solely because I've learned that waiting until a machine is completely dead to replace it produces stress, when you end up having to go to Best Buy or equivalent and just buy whatever they may happen to have lying around, which is not what I'm looking for. The battery lasts about 10 minutes tops right now but I never bought it for its battery life anyhow. It's in pretty good shape for 6 years old. The screen's doing something weird with diagonal streaks developing in the top and bottom, but it's still perfectly usable at the moment. On the other hand, the bottom-of-the-line Dell stuff is crap I'd hardly expect to last two years. It depends on what you buy.
- solvedit 10y ago
  > My MacBook Pro from 2011 goes all day with serious activity without a charge As an owner of a 2011 MacBook Pro with a recently replaced battery, I don't believe you. We either don't share the same understanding of "all day", "serious activity", "without a charge", or "goes".
  - hellofunk 10y ago
    Well by serious activity I mean writing C++ all day in emacs and compiling it maybe a hundred times or more. And the usual web browsing, email throughout the day. I can easily make it through a full work day doing this without plugging in the machine.
    - TheCoelacanth 10y ago
      Running emacs practically counts as letting the machine idle these days. I know it used to be considered super bloated, but even fart apps use more resources now.
- tw04 10y ago
  You're failing to mention 99% of those Dell laptops have REMOVABLE batteries which is why they're smaller. If the battery runs out you could have multiple charged ones in your bag, which is what we all did when we knew we'd be stuck in a datacenter for a full day. If your battery runs out on the macbook, you're just done.
acdha 10y ago
You can get much cheaper but worse quality hardware. Since the switch to Intel it's generally been the case that you start getting into equivalent quality the price gap narrows considerably – note how the latest Microsoft Surface Book pricing is basically the same as the MacBook Pro – and it comes down to how much you care about particular features.

no_wave 10y ago

The touch strip would be even more of a joke on any other machine because you'd guarantee 0% buy-in from software developers. The only reason it's getting any positive feedback from anyone is because it's Apple and people are charitably imagining that software developers are going to dedicate resources to support a doodad that doesn't even exist on 90% of apple machines (and only ~5% of notebooks/desktops are Apple in the first place!).

drzaiusapelord 10y ago

Strange I find the opposite. There seems to be a "well, these guys seem to be doing okay, but they're nowhere near the polish and design of Apple" for pretty much any competitor. I don't think I've ever heard a compliment toward Asus, yet have heard Apple compliments all my life. I also think Apple expectations are kinda low. I think everyone is used to Apple and just deal with their oddities and questionable decisions. The same way Windows guys just shrug and upgrade to Win10 without question. People don't want to learn new platforms and just want something similar to what they had, so they'll make a lot of excuses to avoid the pain of migrating platforms.

tetraodonpuffer 10y ago

I don't think if anybody else in 2016 had created a 'pro' laptop with no usb2/3 and no hdmi and no sd and max 16gb of ram they would've gotten a pass either. Not to mention the oversight of not being able to connect/charge the iphone without adapters, which is also very hard to see as anything but an oversight. If this had been a macbook update I don't think there would have been as much a backlash, but a macbook pro is not the same thing as a macbook in terms of expectations for ports or power

snowwrestler 10y ago

Apple is simply willing to be wrong in the short term, to be right in the long term. And because their laptop cases are so hard to engineer, they have to think long-term when they design a new one. This is one reason that, while I like Apple's computers, I never buy rev 1 of a new design. And this is hardly the first Apple release that has been met with complaints, even within the pro notebook category.

hellofunk 10y ago

And here is one reason to (perhaps partially) justify the premium price: https://9to5mac.com/2016/11/01/2016-macbook-pro-ssd/ https://9to5mac.com/2016/11/01/2016-macbook-pro-ssd/