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Everyone derides Apple for not listening to the demands of users and then, when Apple finally does give in they... continue to deride them. I'm just happy with

Everyone derides Apple for not listening to the demands of users and then, when Apple finally does give in they... continue to deride them. I'm just happy with +magsafe -touchbar. Even if the price is Apple saving face and pretending this was their idea the whole time, so be it.

smoldesu 5y ago
That strikes me as less of a compliment to the new devices and as more of a testament to how terrible Macbooks got towards the end of the 2010s.
Stevvo 5y ago
Who is this "everyone"? Taking a look at the announcement thread here on HN, the response to these machines has been extremely positive. I can't really find any criticism of the machines themselves. Negative comments are directed at Apple for pre-existing customer-hostile behavior like their repair policies.
jzb 5y ago
It’s probably because Apple ignored them the first time, and then pretends re-adding things people never wanted removed is “innovation.”
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  Nah, this absolutely looks like the result of Jony Ive leaving. Head of design quits and suddenly a long term trend under his leadership suddenly reverses? Makes more sense than any sinister explanation.
  - manquer 5y ago
    Both are not mutually exclusive. His leaving may be why they changed track. However that is not why they are harping these reverts as new features/innovation.
    - TillE 5y ago
      No one is talking about "innovation" with a straight face in regard to these features returning. It's just snark from detractors. The pitch in the event was basically "we're giving pros what they want".
      - ashtonkem 5y ago
        Marketing releases talking about “innovation” are equivalent to protestations of innocence before a criminal court; you should ignore it because everyone is motivated to claim the same thing regardless of whether it’s true or not. Doesn’t mean it’s always true or always false, sometimes real innovation occurs, but taken alone it provides no useful information.
  - laurent92 5y ago
    Let’s put tabs on the new names of the design: > Evans Hankey, vice president of Industrial Design, and Alan Dye, vice president of Human Interface Design, will report to Jeff Williams, Apple’s chief operating officer (From Apple’s website about Jony Ive).
  - CalChris 5y ago
    Yeah, I think Jony Ive jumped the shark with the touchbar and eliminating ports. I dunno why they ditched MagSafe. The Worse parody of latter day Ive [1] was pretty spot on. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgBDdDdSqNE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgBDdDdSqNE I really like this MacBook Pro but at $2000 I may wait for the next Air. I really don't need the Pro features, HDMI, SD card, that many GPUs, ..., and my 2017 Air is just fine for now.
    - s17n 5y ago
      I can only speculate, but my guess is they reasoned that all-day battery life would make MagSafe obsolete.
      - dbt00 5y ago
        The intel series MBPs do not have all day battery life, though, they last 3-5 hours when being used for software development.
        s17n 5y ago
        Yup. Ironically they're bringing back mag safe at the same time as moving to processors that might make the battery life dream real.
      - ashtonkem 5y ago
        I think the reason is dumber than that; removing MagSafe allowed the laptop to be more symmetrical and sleek. Ditto with SD readers and HDMI ports.
kempbellt 5y ago
Makes sense that some people are annoyed. Apple wanted to be "bold" and forced a lot of their users into a pipeline that didn't last. And now they are listening to the demands of their users and backtracking. Users that stuck with them are now being punished for their brand loyalty. Apple: "If you want to connect to HDMI, you have to buy a dongle now. Also TOUCHBAR! Woot." User: "Ugh...fine" Apple: "So... now that you own that dongle that you didn't need, but we decided to make you need. Well, we decided not to make you need it anymore! It's built in. Also, no more touchbar! See! We listen!" User: "Ugh......." I'm not here to harp on Apple, but I understand why some people are a little put off by their decisions.
- cactus2093 5y ago
  100% this. I think it's a good lesson that sometimes there are multiple decisions/outcomes which are good enough, and there is no one perfect choice. Some people will be happy if you go one way and others prefer the other way. But waffling back and forth between them instead of sticking to one coherent strategy can be worse than committing to either of the options.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  I really don’t understand the anger over usb c, even now. I got a single cable dock that handles all my peripherals. It’s not like they made that useless; it would still work and it’s still nice to have a single cable that drives everything. Even if I got a new MBP I’d continue to use USB-C, because it’s a better UX. Hell, you can now buy monitors that work only with USB-C. It’s clearly the way everything is going, Apple just moved a bit too fast.
  - laurent92 5y ago
    That dongle is $69, but you can try buying the off-brand, where you’re not sure whether it works, not sure it’s doesn’t upload your data to China, and not sure it doesn’t have malware. If you’re hit, good luck explaining your choice of brand to your insurance. So basically, it’s $69.
    - 5y ago
vlunkr 5y ago
I think it's good for people to not think in such absolute terms. People are happy this product exists, but it's also annoying that it took so long. I'd rather have that type of response than the standard "fanboys" vs "haters"
gowld 5y ago
Well they never gave us our money back for our keyboards where the keys fell off or the dGPU that overheats and throttles the CPU, when the CPU isn't even doing any useful work
SavantIdiot 5y ago
When is the last time you saw Apple make everyone happy? If you think this is bad, you should have been around after Jobs left in the 90's and the icky product line after Mac IIfx. No one liked the PowerMacs and PCs were so incredibly cheap that only art departments had macs. But even when Jobs returned, remember when everyone lost their shit when Jobs removed the disk drive from the iMac? Maybe the iPhone 3 was the last universally rejoiced Apple product. (But that notch tho. It really tweaks my obsessive nature. I'm still on an iPhone 6 so I haven't encountered the notch anywhere yet.)
KennyBlanken 5y ago
They switched whole-hog to USB-C on their computers to push industry adoption and were derided for it, with people bitching and moaning about how they needed dongles for "everything." What was left out of the conversation: they dropped the proprietary magsafe connector, opened the door to charging their laptops off third party chargers, 12v/airline adapters, etc. They also opened the door to having one cable connecting your laptop to power, display, input devices, storage, and networking by means of a dock. But the teenage masses on reddit screamed "DONGLEEEEESSSS" and spewed shitty memes. People who evoke Nazi language to describe their smug choice in computer hardware, that's a crowd we should listen to... Apple stopped including USB power bricks because everyone on the planet is drowning in them by now, and there are many choices like multi-port AC adapters, ones with different combinations of USB A and C meaning you probably want to pick the adapter you want anyway. But people screamed blue-bloody-murder. And then not long after Apple does it, Samsung quietly follows suit and nobody says a fucking word. Apple dropped floppy drives and the world screamed about how stupid they were. At the time software had long since stopped coming on floppy, USB thumb drives were out, ethernet was everywhere and wifi was going mainstream. Apple helped put the nail in the coffin, pushing many people to USB thumb drives, network file shares, wifi, etc. Apple dropped optical drives, same thing. Software was coming digitally; I worked for a company that offered a digital download in 1999 and we were a dinky little niche company. By the time Apple stopped including optical drives on their laptops, CDs were largely dead for software, everyone was using MP3s, etc. That room freed up space for stuff like bigger batteries. Apple pushed hard on digital display interconnects when much of the PC world was still chugging along on VGA which worked poorly with actual raster displays that were rapidly becoming the norm and PC hardware companies just couldn't seem to figure out how the fuck to communicate "here are the resolutions and refresh rates I can do", something Macs had been doing for a decade. Kids these days don't remember the pains of having to do geometric adjustments on a digital display for a supposedly raster signal. Dropping headphone connectors on their phones, people screamed blue bloody murder. A pair of pretty decent wireless headphones with 8 hours of battery life were not hard to find for $30ish, now they're commonplace for cheaper, and damn near every car comes with a bluetooth audio function in its stereo, even work vans. And if you want hardwired headphones, a dongle is a $5-20 affair, with Apple's audio adapter scoring very good marks in audio DAC tests...
spiffytech 5y ago
> Everyone derides Apple for not listening to the demands of users and then, when Apple finally does give in they... continue to deride them. I explain such behavior to myself by keeping in mind that the internet is many people with many opinions. If one sees an inconsistent response to a topic, one is likely seeing disjoint groups of people that separately have consistent opinions, rather than a cohesive group that can't make up its mind. I find it easy to miss that when I'm not paying attention to who said what.

smoldesu 5y ago

That strikes me as less of a compliment to the new devices and as more of a testament to how terrible Macbooks got towards the end of the 2010s.

Stevvo 5y ago

Who is this "everyone"? Taking a look at the announcement thread here on HN, the response to these machines has been extremely positive. I can't really find any criticism of the machines themselves. Negative comments are directed at Apple for pre-existing customer-hostile behavior like their repair policies.

jzb 5y ago

It’s probably because Apple ignored them the first time, and then pretends re-adding things people never wanted removed is “innovation.”

ashtonkem 5y ago
Nah, this absolutely looks like the result of Jony Ive leaving. Head of design quits and suddenly a long term trend under his leadership suddenly reverses? Makes more sense than any sinister explanation.
- manquer 5y ago
  Both are not mutually exclusive. His leaving may be why they changed track. However that is not why they are harping these reverts as new features/innovation.
  - TillE 5y ago
    No one is talking about "innovation" with a straight face in regard to these features returning. It's just snark from detractors. The pitch in the event was basically "we're giving pros what they want".
    - ashtonkem 5y ago
      Marketing releases talking about “innovation” are equivalent to protestations of innocence before a criminal court; you should ignore it because everyone is motivated to claim the same thing regardless of whether it’s true or not. Doesn’t mean it’s always true or always false, sometimes real innovation occurs, but taken alone it provides no useful information.
- laurent92 5y ago
  Let’s put tabs on the new names of the design: > Evans Hankey, vice president of Industrial Design, and Alan Dye, vice president of Human Interface Design, will report to Jeff Williams, Apple’s chief operating officer (From Apple’s website about Jony Ive).
- CalChris 5y ago
  Yeah, I think Jony Ive jumped the shark with the touchbar and eliminating ports. I dunno why they ditched MagSafe. The Worse parody of latter day Ive [1] was pretty spot on. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgBDdDdSqNE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgBDdDdSqNE I really like this MacBook Pro but at $2000 I may wait for the next Air. I really don't need the Pro features, HDMI, SD card, that many GPUs, ..., and my 2017 Air is just fine for now.
  - s17n 5y ago
    I can only speculate, but my guess is they reasoned that all-day battery life would make MagSafe obsolete.
    - dbt00 5y ago
      The intel series MBPs do not have all day battery life, though, they last 3-5 hours when being used for software development.
      - s17n 5y ago
        Yup. Ironically they're bringing back mag safe at the same time as moving to processors that might make the battery life dream real.
    - ashtonkem 5y ago
      I think the reason is dumber than that; removing MagSafe allowed the laptop to be more symmetrical and sleek. Ditto with SD readers and HDMI ports.

kempbellt 5y ago

Makes sense that some people are annoyed. Apple wanted to be "bold" and forced a lot of their users into a pipeline that didn't last. And now they are listening to the demands of their users and backtracking. Users that stuck with them are now being punished for their brand loyalty. Apple: "If you want to connect to HDMI, you have to buy a dongle now. Also TOUCHBAR! Woot." User: "Ugh...fine" Apple: "So... now that you own that dongle that you didn't need, but we decided to make you need. Well, we decided not to make you need it anymore! It's built in. Also, no more touchbar! See! We listen!" User: "Ugh......." I'm not here to harp on Apple, but I understand why some people are a little put off by their decisions.

cactus2093 5y ago
100% this. I think it's a good lesson that sometimes there are multiple decisions/outcomes which are good enough, and there is no one perfect choice. Some people will be happy if you go one way and others prefer the other way. But waffling back and forth between them instead of sticking to one coherent strategy can be worse than committing to either of the options.
ashtonkem 5y ago
I really don’t understand the anger over usb c, even now. I got a single cable dock that handles all my peripherals. It’s not like they made that useless; it would still work and it’s still nice to have a single cable that drives everything. Even if I got a new MBP I’d continue to use USB-C, because it’s a better UX. Hell, you can now buy monitors that work only with USB-C. It’s clearly the way everything is going, Apple just moved a bit too fast.
- laurent92 5y ago
  That dongle is $69, but you can try buying the off-brand, where you’re not sure whether it works, not sure it’s doesn’t upload your data to China, and not sure it doesn’t have malware. If you’re hit, good luck explaining your choice of brand to your insurance. So basically, it’s $69.
  - 5y ago

vlunkr 5y ago

I think it's good for people to not think in such absolute terms. People are happy this product exists, but it's also annoying that it took so long. I'd rather have that type of response than the standard "fanboys" vs "haters"

gowld 5y ago

Well they never gave us our money back for our keyboards where the keys fell off or the dGPU that overheats and throttles the CPU, when the CPU isn't even doing any useful work

SavantIdiot 5y ago

When is the last time you saw Apple make everyone happy? If you think this is bad, you should have been around after Jobs left in the 90's and the icky product line after Mac IIfx. No one liked the PowerMacs and PCs were so incredibly cheap that only art departments had macs. But even when Jobs returned, remember when everyone lost their shit when Jobs removed the disk drive from the iMac? Maybe the iPhone 3 was the last universally rejoiced Apple product. (But that notch tho. It really tweaks my obsessive nature. I'm still on an iPhone 6 so I haven't encountered the notch anywhere yet.)

KennyBlanken 5y ago

They switched whole-hog to USB-C on their computers to push industry adoption and were derided for it, with people bitching and moaning about how they needed dongles for "everything." What was left out of the conversation: they dropped the proprietary magsafe connector, opened the door to charging their laptops off third party chargers, 12v/airline adapters, etc. They also opened the door to having one cable connecting your laptop to power, display, input devices, storage, and networking by means of a dock. But the teenage masses on reddit screamed "DONGLEEEEESSSS" and spewed shitty memes. People who evoke Nazi language to describe their smug choice in computer hardware, that's a crowd we should listen to... Apple stopped including USB power bricks because everyone on the planet is drowning in them by now, and there are many choices like multi-port AC adapters, ones with different combinations of USB A and C meaning you probably want to pick the adapter you want anyway. But people screamed blue-bloody-murder. And then not long after Apple does it, Samsung quietly follows suit and nobody says a fucking word. Apple dropped floppy drives and the world screamed about how stupid they were. At the time software had long since stopped coming on floppy, USB thumb drives were out, ethernet was everywhere and wifi was going mainstream. Apple helped put the nail in the coffin, pushing many people to USB thumb drives, network file shares, wifi, etc. Apple dropped optical drives, same thing. Software was coming digitally; I worked for a company that offered a digital download in 1999 and we were a dinky little niche company. By the time Apple stopped including optical drives on their laptops, CDs were largely dead for software, everyone was using MP3s, etc. That room freed up space for stuff like bigger batteries. Apple pushed hard on digital display interconnects when much of the PC world was still chugging along on VGA which worked poorly with actual raster displays that were rapidly becoming the norm and PC hardware companies just couldn't seem to figure out how the fuck to communicate "here are the resolutions and refresh rates I can do", something Macs had been doing for a decade. Kids these days don't remember the pains of having to do geometric adjustments on a digital display for a supposedly raster signal. Dropping headphone connectors on their phones, people screamed blue bloody murder. A pair of pretty decent wireless headphones with 8 hours of battery life were not hard to find for $30ish, now they're commonplace for cheaper, and damn near every car comes with a bluetooth audio function in its stereo, even work vans. And if you want hardwired headphones, a dongle is a $5-20 affair, with Apple's audio adapter scoring very good marks in audio DAC tests...

spiffytech 5y ago

> Everyone derides Apple for not listening to the demands of users and then, when Apple finally does give in they... continue to deride them. I explain such behavior to myself by keeping in mind that the internet is many people with many opinions. If one sees an inconsistent response to a topic, one is likely seeing disjoint groups of people that separately have consistent opinions, rather than a cohesive group that can't make up its mind. I find it easy to miss that when I'm not paying attention to who said what.