22 ms·

The 2016 wasn't leadership, it was Johnny Ive without Steve Jobs bringing him back to reality. Touch Bar? This was nothing more than adding expense to raise th

by cletus 5y ago

The 2016 wasn't leadership, it was Johnny Ive without Steve Jobs bringing him back to reality. Touch Bar? This was nothing more than adding expense to raise the ASP (Average Selling Price) of Macbooks, that had fallen precipitously low from a shareholder perspective because of the superb value-for-money proposition that was the 13" Macbook Air. The butterfly keyboard was Ive shaving off 0.5mm of the width for a worse user experience with a higher production cost and less reliability. USB-C only was a philosophical move rather than a practical one that forced people everywhere to carry dongles. The USB-C cable situation was and continues to be a nightmare as different cables support different subsets of data, power and video and, worse yet, different versions of each of those. Worst of all, it was the loss of the much-beloved MagSafe. Also, the ports weren't all the same. You were better off charging from the right (IIRC) rather than the left. Replaceable RAM and SSD being lost is still painful. Personally I don't believe this was about forcing users to pay for upgrades primarily. It was about shaving off a small amount of volume. Ive is gone and every one of those decisions has been reversed or at least significantly amended. This is no accident.

shoto_io 5y ago
How do you know all this? We’re you at apple at the time?
tobyjsullivan 5y ago
I don't think apple decided to "undo Ive" immediately, though. The 2019 models attempted an incremental fix approach - fix the keyboard layout, add a physical escape key - while trying to preserve the 2016 features (usb-c only, thinness, touchbar). It seems clear that it wasn't until 2021 that apple has decided to throw all the crap out entirely.
- cletus 5y ago
  Yeah I agree this wasn't a binary switch. Pure speculation: the forcing function for the big changes in the latest models was the M1. That forced a redesign of probably the entire unit anyway (eg different thermals, chipsets, power requirements, etc). Prior to that the path of least resistance was incremental changes and fixes.
  - Toutouxc 5y ago
    > forced a redesign of probably the entire unit Both laptops (Air and 13" Pro) that the M1 launched in kept their previous designs. So the switch from Intel to Apple Silicon itself wasn't the cause. The switch from M1 to M1 Pro and Max, maybe. But even the previous Intel machines had some serious TDP (and thermal issues), and even that wasn't enough to justify a redesign.
  - fragmede 5y ago
    Where do the 2021 Macbok Pro Intel models fit in?
    - danaris 5y ago
      What 2021 MacBook Pro Intel models? As far as I'm aware, the last Intel MBPs were released in 2020, and simply continued the 2019 design language.
      - Toutouxc 5y ago
        The 13" Pro was updated to M1 together with the Air.
        danaris 5y ago
        Sorry, still confused. That happened in Nov 2020 (so it's not a 2021 model), and it's an M1 (so not an Intel model)...so what 2021 Intel MBP is being referred to?
- clairity 5y ago
  i have the 2019 mbp, bought reluctantly earlier this year after my 2015 went wonky. based on what i’d heard, i wasn’t expecting much, but it was clearly an improvement, even if it was incremental (touch id, bigger/brighter screen, better sound). the biggest obvious lack in the upgrade was the performance-battery life tradeoff, which is entirely on intel stagnating for over a decade. apple addressed these most glaring issues via the combo of m1 and more battery in the 2021. usb-c or touch bar were minor issues in comparison (that notch tho…).
- dylan604 5y ago
  It's the 2021 model. They were working on this in 2020 maybe even 2019, but it takes time to deploy. Not that they didn't think about it until 2021. </pedantic_mode>
dec0dedab0de 5y ago
Worst of all, it was the loss of the much-beloved MagSafe. I wish all of my cables were magnetic, The amount of things I have broken in my life by tripping is downright embarrassing. I do like being able to charge my mac book from my external monitor, and keeping my apple power supply in my bag in-case I need to go somewhere. It would just be nice if I didn't have to label my cables.
- slantyyz 5y ago
  I use magnetic tear away cables for a lot of my gear. They have magnetic tips for lightning, USB-micro and USB-C. For stuff like charging headphones, LED lights and other random gadgets with mixed plug types, I use charge-only cables for that stuff, and it's been super convenient. There are also magnetic cables that support limited fast charging and data, but only at USB 2.0 speeds, so that could still be a deal breaker for some people.
  - Scramblejams 5y ago
    I'm often tempted by magnetic adapters but when I look on Amazon at the options, it seems like I always see reviews from people who said it nearly caught their stuff on fire. You have any recommendations for high quality magnetic gear?
    - slantyyz 5y ago
      I've used A.S., TopK and Melonboy without any issues.
    - kitsunesoba 5y ago
      > it seems like I always see reviews from people who said it nearly caught their stuff on fire. This is part of a larger problem with a lack of regulations on high-current accessories. In the US, the FTC should probably be doing stringent inspections of imported cables, chargers, etc similar to how the FCC currently inspects communication devices so the substandard/dangerous ones get turned away at the border.
    - 5y ago
jacobolus 5y ago
This is pure speculation, ungrounded from any evidence. The touch bar is a very flexible (effectively) analog input + rich display device. If adequately supported by software it can be an amazing input, affording a range of useful functions not replicable with discrete buttons. In general, I really wish modern computers had more analog inputs available. Analog knobs, jog wheels, sliders, trackballs, etc. are tragically missing. I have seen no evidence that Jony Ive was its patron, and no evidence that including it had anything to with making laptops expensive as a goal. The problem with the touch bar is that (a) it only shipped on a limited subset of devices so software authors could not depend on it, (b) after its initial functions, Apple made limited effort to adopt it in all of their own software, improve its integration into the system, or push boundaries of what it could do as an input device. > The butterfly keyboard was Ive shaving off 0.5mm of the width for a worse user experience with a higher production cost and less reliability. No, this was some Apple-internal mechanical engineering group trying to design the best extremely thin keyboard they could, but getting bitten hard by a mismatch between reliability in a prototype vs. full-scale factory production + poor estimation of reliability in a wide variety of contexts over a longer period of time. Nobody ever set out to make a “worse experience” or higher cost. There are many suboptimal features of the common rubber dome + scissor stabilizer laptop keyboards, and I wish more companies were brave enough to experiment with alternative designs in search of improvements. (Disclaimer: my favorite "laptop" keyboards are https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PS/2_portable_computers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PS/2_portable_computers and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Portable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Portable)
- stack_framer 5y ago
  > This is pure speculation, ungrounded from any evidence. It's not ungrounded from the anecdotal evidence that these changes are coming after Ive's departure. > I have seen no evidence that Jony Ive was its patron, and no evidence that including it had anything to with making laptops expensive as a goal. Holy, evidence Batman! Leadership 101: When your title is "Chief Design Officer", the design buck stops with you. When your company releases an updated design to an existing product, you had some kind of say in that design. Period. Even if your "say" was just that you were aware of it, and didn't veto it.
thedougd 5y ago
Sometimes I wonder if folks use rose colored glasses when thinking about MagSafe. I don't miss MagSafe and I enjoy the interchangeability of chargers. I could not keep my 13" MacBook plugged in while using it on my lap. The MagSafe cord repeatedly fell off when my leg, or a pillow bumped into it. My MacBook MagSafe port had black marks on it from arcing. At least three times I couldn't get it to charge because a metal fragment (once a folded paper staple) became magnetically stuck to the receiving side. On one of those occasions I couldn't fix it till I got home and grabbed some tweezers. It was a smart solution, but IMO to a tripping problem that wasn't widespread.
- 1123581321 5y ago
  I know what you mean, although I thought the disconnection ease was calibrated correctly. The good thing is the modern battery life means an accidental disconnection is less of a problem.
- antifa 5y ago
  > The MagSafe cord repeatedly fell off when my leg, or a pillow bumped into it. This sounds better than having your laptop's power connector internally damaged rendering your laptop unchargable just because your charging outlet was on the wrong side or your dog wanted to step on the cable.
- zemvpferreira 5y ago
  No, it's universally loved because it has universally saved macbooks from nasty falls. I upgraded to a sans-MagSafe 2020 16" MBP when my 2015 MBP had a $600 screen failure. I broke the 2020's screen in the first week. Sold it, repaired my 2015 and have been happy ever since. Through all it's faults and problems, I can't shake how good my 2015 MacBook Pro has been: great keyboard, MagSafe, good enough everything, great keyboard. Did I mention how great the keyboard is? It's on my lap right now, purring and tethered to power as usual.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    Yes, I have none of the experiences that thedougd has had, but have had multiple instances of the wire being yanked on.
GoofballJones 5y ago
Ive was probably cursing at the announcement: "WTF are you doing! You're giving people what they want? That's not the Apple I left, mate. By this time, in 2021, there should be NO ports on the Macbooks, and it should be so thin you could shave with it. What the hell is all this?"
- dylan604 5y ago
  "What the hell is all this?" It's okay Ive. It's called "something useable" or even, if I might be so bold, "something the users want".
- tomxor 5y ago
  If Ive had stayed for one more year they probably would have been selling 1mm thick rectangles of anodized aluminium. There's probably an Onion report for that. It's ironic the extremes Apple design has ended up at, because there was a point in time (when both Ive and Jobs were working together) when Dieter Rams claimed Apple was the only company that really followed his ethos, minimalism with a critical qualification of honesty, where form follows function... but for the last decade it's been more like the aesthetic of minimalism at all cost... it's funny because that sounds quite a lot like skeuomorphism, it's pretentious.
  - eloisant 5y ago
    Behold, the Macbook Wheel! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA
jdminhbg 5y ago
> Touch Bar? This was nothing more than adding expense to raise the ASP (Average Selling Price) of Macbooks, that had fallen precipitously low from a shareholder perspective because of the superb value-for-money proposition that was the 13" Macbook Air. If customers don't like the Touch Bar, how does this make any sense? If pro users will pay (made-up number) $2000 for a MacBook Pro regardless of whether or not it has a Touch Bar because it comes with the CPU/GPU they want, adding a Touch Bar just decreases the margin. If the MacBook Air is a better value-for-money proposition than the MacBook Pro to begin with, and customers do not actually like the Touch Bar, then why would they start switching to the MacBook Pro?
- JustSomeNobody 5y ago
  > If the MacBook Air is a better value-for-money proposition than the MacBook Pro to begin with, and customers do not actually like the Touch Bar, then why would they start switching to the MacBook Pro? The psychological effects of the word "Pro".
  - jdminhbg 5y ago
    Right, but the word "Pro" existed before the Touch Bar, and as far as we can tell customers did not actually like the Touch Bar.
jollybean 5y ago
Touch Bar I think was a legit attempt at modernization. Every time I 'see' a touchbar, I want one. They look cool and useful. The only reason I don't have one, is because everyone seems to indicate they are useless. It's also possibly a platform issue - maybe they just didn't get enough participation etc.. Also - 'thinner' is a rational and generally positive thing, it's just that we've reached a threshold where the diminishing marginal returns are starting to weigh on other things. Even ports - it's not an aesthetic issue only - they're trying to get everyone onto a standard. Frankly, I support the notion - I'd love it if everyone just used the same dam connector. The reason I don't like my 'USB C only Mac' is only because the ecosystem isn't there yet. If the ecosystem were there, I'd be fine with it.
- Spivak 5y ago
  I'm kinda sad to see the Touch Bar go so fast because I have one and actually like it a lot. The variant where it has a physical escape key is perfect.
- rudedogg 5y ago
  > Touch Bar I think was a legit attempt at modernization. I agree, I think they're really interesting. The way we interact with computers hasn't changed much, and having a set of buttons you can configure sounds amazing. I wish they would have just put it above the physical function keys, and deployed it to all MacBooks and wireless keyboards. Being limited to just some MacBook Pros probably hurt the number of apps that adopted it.
- st-keller 5y ago
  Not everyone says the touchbar is useless. I absolutely love it! I will miss it. And the new Macbook may be a beast but it looks terribly old - like a yesterday-machine. For the first time Apple released a product i will buy because it will be more capable - but not because i want it!
- wiredfool 5y ago
  I think that the touchbar could have been fine if it had been spaced one row above a full sized set of function keys. As it is, when I use the keyboard on my work MBP, my fingers will brush the touchbar and do things. I have turned off the functionality in most apps so that I don't get that. (terminal especially) For my actual usage, it's a step backwards from the pre-2016 function keys, an always available pause/play/stop, volume and brightness. I can't be doing something in emacs and then hit pause or louder, it's switch to music and then I can pause. The lack of a physical escape key also dooms it in my usage. (no, escape is not going on caps-lock, that's where control goes) So the work MBP is 99% used with an external keyboard/monitor. The personal 2015 MBP is generally used on the lap. USB-c is ok, and the real magic is when you've got a Thunderbolt/USB-c power delivery monitor with a built in usb3 hub. One wire to the laptop and you're done. (and even better when the monitor has a built-in kvm so that the other computer is just a switch away, without mucking with cables).
dlivingston 5y ago
> Touch Bar? This was nothing more than adding expense to raise the ASP I thought it was a great idea, and I still do, but am so glad they removed it. It sounds great on paper, but practically, I used it for nothing other than adjusting brightness and volume. > The butterfly keyboard was Ive shaving off 0.5mm of the width for a worse user experience with a higher production cost and less reliability. Agreed. It really wasn't great. From a design perspective, it's quite clever, but from a usability perspective it was horrible. > USB-C only was a philosophical move rather than a practical one that forced people everywhere to carry dongles. Apple has a long, long history of doing this. Headphone jack? Gone. Ethernet port? Gone. VGA port? Gone. Floppy disk drive? Gone. I'm fine with it in moderation, frankly. USB-C is so clearly the future that where I take offense is that the rest of Apple's lineup doesn't work with it (iPhones, AirPods, some iPads, etc.). > Replaceable RAM and SSD being lost is still painful. Perhaps, but now that RAM is not only part of the SoC but a significant reason that the SoC is so good (high bandwidth shared memory between CPU and GPU), it's a change I'm more than fine with. > Ive is gone and every one of those decisions has been reversed or at least significantly amended. This is no accident. Agreed. This finally, truly, feels like a Pro machine: "design first" is an approach for consumer products and, to Apple's credit, works very nicely on the iPad and iPhone and consumer MacBooks (generally). "Design first" for pro machines is great for the 3 minutes after opening the box, but when trying to do real work, you'd sacrifice all the bezels in the world to shave 30% off compile times.
- npongratz 5y ago
  > Apple has a long, long history of doing this. Headphone jack? Gone. Ethernet port? Gone. VGA port? Gone. Floppy disk drive? Gone. The MBP designers still bravely include the 3.5mm headphone jack [0], though it is certainly true that the iPhone designers courageously jettisoned the jack. [0] https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro-14-and-16/specs/ https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro-14-and-16/specs/
  - vmception 5y ago
    I’ve never had any consequence from this except now my headphones also dont have the option of being a wired headphone, which means I have to ask the flight attendant for headphones to watch a movie on their screens. Everyone else is in the same situation though so its commonplace. Dont know if you’ve flown anywhere in the last year but a lot of people have.
SkyPuncher 5y ago
> Also, the ports weren't all the same. This was the most shocking to me. I learned that the left and right side ports run through different buses, but each side does not have enough capacity to supply both ports at full speed. This mean I had to buy long USB cable to run to the other side of my Macbook in order to supply 3 monitors. I have a port just sitting unused. Also, there seems to be a problem with left-side USB ports when charging. They cause the system to overheat (or at least think it's overheating). https://www.forbes.com/sites/barrycollins/2020/04/24/why-you-shouldnt-charge-your-macbook-pro-from-the-left-hand-side/?sh=de5366878ff7 https://www.forbes.com/sites/barrycollins/2020/04/24/why-you...
onion2k 5y ago
Apple products are excellent, well built, and they last. If they didn't add new things regularly far fewer people would buy. I think a lot of the new features on Apple products have simply been attempts to make things look different enough to be worth buying. This includes removing the things they've added...
wnissen 5y ago
What I always wondered is why they didn't start with a $999 base model (like the original iBook) that was cheap, but big and slow. if you wanted premium performance/expandability/ports/screen, you could pay $2K for the Pro model in the same form factor. If you wanted portability, you could pay $2K for the Air in a smaller form factor with the same performance as the iBook. The cheapest model being the most portable is bizarre. Then again, the iPad Mini is more expensive than the larger iPad, so obviously there is something going on I don't understand. Perhaps the cost of engineering the motherboard and battery in an integrated package are so high that they can't afford to split the line any further. The 2021 14" Pro is the first truly pro model in a while. I hope they keep it up. The keyboard is actually usable for extended periods, it has ports, the screen is great (to be fair, all Apple retina screens are great to varying degrees). Did I need it? No. But I wanted it. The last Mac laptop I bought for myself was the 2015 13" MacBook "Pro", so they're getting more money out of me this time around.
- trevyn 5y ago
  >the iPad Mini [$499+] is more expensive than the larger iPad Sort of. The $329+ "iPad" has internals that are a few generations old, kind of like the iPhone SE. The iPad Air ($599+) and iPad Pro ($799+) are the "real" current larger iPads.
nebula8804 5y ago
>Replaceable RAM and SSD being lost is still painful. Personally I don't believe this was about forcing users to pay for upgrades primarily. It was about shaving off a small amount of volume. Louis Rossman gets a lot of things wrong because he does not have a computer engineering background. For example, he does not understand why Apple used SPI on the Macbook Air instead of USB despite it having USB capability. I had to correct him to explain that when your design goal is extreme power saving, you have to cut everything including running your data over SPI instead of a more power hungry USB bus. Furthermore one reason they ship soldered on Ram is technical. It has been explained here from time to time that they are achieving much higher memory bandwidth with the memory modules they are using and it necessitates being soldered on. If the design goal is to build the most responsive laptop while maintaining excellent power savings, then this is the right approach to take.
- grishka 5y ago
  I can understand the soldred RAM on M1 — yes, speed of light and other laws of physics get in the way. But why solder the SSD? What's the technical benefit of that over putting an M.2 slot in there or something? How do you recover your data if you spill coffee on your laptop? What involved simply yoinking the SSD out of the slot now requires a fully working motherboard.
  - mixmastamyk 5y ago
    I don't. If on chip, yes. But in the same place with the same speed interface it should not matter once the wires are connected.
    - marcan_42 5y ago
      You can't take on-package RAM and stick it on a separate module through a connector (what connector? You need a 512-bit interface for the M1 Max...) without causing a problem or massively increasing your power consumption, for the same reason you can't string together 30 meters of USB3 extension cables and expect it to work. This is why USB 3.2 chipsets are little bare chips and run at 10Gbps, while 10Gb Ethernet chipsets need a big heatsink. More distance means a higher power consumption for the interface. Interfaces are designed for specific characteristics like maximum capacitance and signal loss, and going beyond the design parameters means you need to change something. In this case, it would involve significantly increasing the power consumption of the interface.
cmelbye 5y ago
Innovative design doesn't work without an internal champion who can rally the company around unconventional ideas. Jobs played that role, but now Apple is led by the operations team. The word "design" does not appear anywhere on their executive leadership page. Unconventional ideas are inherently risky. They're just not worth pursuing if buy-in can't be secured and leadership is more focused on compromising to increase profit margins, etc. For that reason, it's great (in the short term!) that Apple is rehashing known-good designs from a decade ago. However, I don't see that strategy working in the long term.
andrei_says_ 5y ago
> The USB-C cable situation was and continues to be a nightmare as different cables support different subsets of data, power and video and, worse yet, different versions of each of those. I’m about to upgrade from a 2015 MBP and am wondering - is there a usb-c cable I can buy which works with everything guaranteed?
blablabla123 5y ago
I'm quite happy about the move to USB-C and changed all my stuff to it as soon as possible. 5 years ago I had several micro usb and mini usb chargers, some of them broken. On a regular base I had to buy new chargers and cables. The MagSafe power supply cables broke easily (but yes, the port was nice). Now there's just one cable for everything, I still have 2 phone fast chargers but both actually work. Also I can just charge my phone without searching for the charger and the laptop can be connected to screen/keyboard with just 1 USB-C cable. After all, Apple were also the first to sell Desktops without Floppy or Optical drive.
threeseed 5y ago
> it was Johnny Again with this rubbish. I have worked at Apple and Ive does not unilaterally make the product decisions in the company. It is a combination of Product Marketing, Hardware Engineering, Design, Procurement etc and they are all discussed and signed off by the Senior Leadership Team. When you building products at the scale Apple does decisions are years in the making. And so they need to make them based on what they think the future will be. Mostly they are right and sometimes they are wrong e.g. USB-C being the standard connector for everything.
- sumedh 5y ago
  > they are all discussed and signed off by the Senior Leadership Team. I dont know how Apple works but sometimes if there is guy at the top who has to be kept happy you sign off on only those things which you know will make the guy at the top happy.
nothis 5y ago
I want this to be true but to be honest, I care less about the Ive angle than them simply doing it! It seems like someone with power said, "hey, what are these letters P, R and O standing for, again?".
diskzero 5y ago
People are commenting this post and saying it is speculation, and until someone who directly was involved in these discussions shows up to comment, I suppose it is. I have been in design meetings with Jony, and Scott Forstall, and many others whose decisions were micromanaged by Steve at every step. You can argue that a lot of Steve's design decisions were questionable; rich Corinthian leather skeumorphism, lickable Aqua widgets, brushed aluminum window title bars, but he owned them. Steve and Jony would sit for hours outside of Caffe Macs going over designs. Steve would spend even more time inside the industrial design area going over prototypes. He would spend a couple of hours every week meeting with every software team that had user facing features. He had input on almost every pixel on the screen and every button/port/display/etc on hardware. Once he was gone, the drift began. It was inevitable that focus would shift. Scott no longer had protection by Steve. Jony fixated on the new campus and things like watch bands. No one had Steve to rein in whatever impulse they had. Sure, people would ask "What would Steve do?" but we also had Tim Cook pushing to optimize production, lower cost of goods and increase margins. Apple still has Steve DNA, but it continues to be diluted. You may disagree with Steve's vision and opinions, but it was strongly held and enforced. I feel almost everything about the last generation of MacBook Pros went against what Steve would have wanted and I am glad I wasn't there when those decisions were made.
- justicezyx 5y ago
  Well Steve's is being martyred into a figure head for people who disagree with Apple's direction. Often used in contradictory situations. For example, one can claim too thin being against with Steve, and someone else opposite. Come-on, that guy has died for 10 years. His opinion on anything one cited for is *UNKNOWABLE*. Stop saying he will approve or disapprove some ideas... That's literally meaningless statement...
  - diskzero 5y ago
    Of course you are right. I have a snapshot of Steve in my head that I apply, but his opinion changed frequently, as evidenced by the various permutations of the OSX interface designs. That being said, I just can't believe he would have been happy about the various issues with the old MacBooks. So many things feel so wrong.
timeon 5y ago
You are probably right but if we are talking about Touch Bar there are (at least few) people (like me) that prefer it to functional keys.
woah 5y ago
All the new ports are pretty useless to me. I think that adding them back in shows a lack of vision and just caters to the lowest common denominator of complaints instead of making a better product from first principles. HDMI: I guess it's good if you have an old monitor? My monitor from like 2015 has USB C and charges my computer while I use it. MagSafe: I've never had a computer fall off a table. Seems like a weird overoptimization for an unlikely scenario. If you use it you've got to carry a different cable that you can't use for anything else, unlike the USB C power cable that i also use to connect peripherals if needed. SD card: I've never used one of these. I guess it's good for professional photographers? Why don't expensive cameras just have 256gb of onboard storage and connect over thunderbolt?
- cletus 5y ago
  MagSafe isn't just about the convenience of it. It may not help you or have helped you but it's helped many people (including me) and even if it didn't, it provided peace of mind. But the key reason for it is that it's a dedicated power port. That means that port is designed for that. You don't waste money allowing your laptop to be charged from any of the four USB-C ports. Like, who needs that? Worse, those ports weren't identical leading to the advice to always charge from one side to avoid overheating. I do find HDMI to be a bit of a strange choice however. I don't mind USB-C to HDMI/DP cables for this. Like you say, more monitors support DP passthrough over USB-C if not full TB. The HDMI port is also 2.0 not 2.1. The difference? 2.0 can run 4K @ 60Hz. 2.1 can run 4K @ 120Hz. 120Hz continues to have poor support under OSX but it's clearly the future. As for the SD card, I don't really use this either but this is aimed at photo and video professionals. Why not just connect the camera? Easy. Because you need to keep using the camera so it's far quicker just to swap out the cards and start copying. A modern digital photo or video setup will have a camera with 2 SD card slots. The camera will write the same to both cards. When swapped out, one will be kept separately as backup. The other will be copied onto another device, which then may also copy that offsite. This way you immediately get 3-4 backups in 2-3 locations, which is a lot of redundancy.
  - rconti 5y ago
    I tripped on the magsafe cord on my 2011 macbook air and rather than disconnect it just chucked the whole laptop off the table and onto the floor. Granted, it just bounced and flipped and sustained no damage, but I wouldn't guarantee you'd have the same luck.
amluto 5y ago
I suspect M1X’s excellent memory bandwidth is related to the lack of replaceable memory. x86 CPUs can, as far as I know, max out the bandwidth of their DIMMs, and they don’t get anywhere near the bandwidth of M1X. And integrated design can do better. Complaining about the price of Apple’s RAM seems reasonable, but complaining that they didn’t choose DDR5 DIMMs when they appear to have chosen something better seems silly.
agumonkey 5y ago
> Steve Jobs bringing him back to reality I find it funny to appeal to Steve Jobs for a reality check :) btw my pet theory about the touch bar is: let's use the apple tech skills synergy again, we made tactile swiped device since the ipod, we made that into phones, now let's blend it into our laptops.
kushan2020 5y ago
Each year apple has been shipping thicker and heavier products. I get that some people are happy but boy do I feel the heft when holding an iPhone 13 pro especially coming from a slim iPhone 6s Plus. If Steve Jobs was alive he would never let such products ever released. You can feel he left his mark in MacBook 12 and iPhone 6 as those products were lightweight and thin - read pushing boundaries.
skohan 5y ago
Yeah it was a bit of a head-scratch moment when those 2016 machines came out. Until then it seemed like you could just trust a macbook pro to be a great machine that could do everything you need, and that each edition would get better than the last. Around that period it felt like Apple made a pivot away from trying to increase market share through having the best product, and toward maximizing their revenue by leveraging their amazing brand image. One of the early things was the change from the L-shaped mag-safe back to the T-shaped one. The L-shaped one was such an improvement - those things would last forever. But the T ones would fray in a matter of months. It almost felt like someone at Apple looked at the money they were losing from selling less chargers and decided they had to go back. And I liked mag-safe but honestly I don't miss it. USB-C charging is fine and having one standard charger you can get anywhere work for everything more than makes up for any relative drawbacks.
holoduke 5y ago
I don't agree with the USB c story. To me it's extremely handy to have just usb c. All (most) devices work, can use the same cable for charging my phone. super convenient for me.
skocznymroczny 5y ago
I'm in the minority, but I really enjoy the butterfly keyboard on my Macbook. I'd love to have a fullsized butterfly style keyboard for my PC. Unfortunately the high-end market for keyboards is dominated by mechanical keyboards which aren't my kind of thing at all.
- jbjbjbjb 5y ago
  Just plug in the Apple external keyboard and remap some keys. Unpopular opinion but I find the Apple keyboards feel “better” than most mechanical switches (certainly mx brown and clear), they have good tactile bump better than most and a nice lightness to them so they’re not fatiguing.
  - skocznymroczny 5y ago
    Apple external keyboard feels like a scissor switch keyboard. It's not too bad, but it's not as flat as butterfly keyboards are. Personally, the only mechanical switch I could stand was Kailh Choc Blue - low profile blue switch.
jpswade 5y ago
Surely the change to USB-C was a compatibility thing, as the chipset is Intel based, it’s probably easier to supply. Now it’s their own chip, it makes sense that they have now switched to their own proprietary solutions.

by cletus 5y ago

shoto_io 5y ago

How do you know all this? We’re you at apple at the time?

tobyjsullivan 5y ago

I don't think apple decided to "undo Ive" immediately, though. The 2019 models attempted an incremental fix approach - fix the keyboard layout, add a physical escape key - while trying to preserve the 2016 features (usb-c only, thinness, touchbar). It seems clear that it wasn't until 2021 that apple has decided to throw all the crap out entirely.

cletus 5y ago
Yeah I agree this wasn't a binary switch. Pure speculation: the forcing function for the big changes in the latest models was the M1. That forced a redesign of probably the entire unit anyway (eg different thermals, chipsets, power requirements, etc). Prior to that the path of least resistance was incremental changes and fixes.
- Toutouxc 5y ago
  > forced a redesign of probably the entire unit Both laptops (Air and 13" Pro) that the M1 launched in kept their previous designs. So the switch from Intel to Apple Silicon itself wasn't the cause. The switch from M1 to M1 Pro and Max, maybe. But even the previous Intel machines had some serious TDP (and thermal issues), and even that wasn't enough to justify a redesign.
- fragmede 5y ago
  Where do the 2021 Macbok Pro Intel models fit in?
  - danaris 5y ago
    What 2021 MacBook Pro Intel models? As far as I'm aware, the last Intel MBPs were released in 2020, and simply continued the 2019 design language.
    - Toutouxc 5y ago
      The 13" Pro was updated to M1 together with the Air.
      - danaris 5y ago
        Sorry, still confused. That happened in Nov 2020 (so it's not a 2021 model), and it's an M1 (so not an Intel model)...so what 2021 Intel MBP is being referred to?
clairity 5y ago
i have the 2019 mbp, bought reluctantly earlier this year after my 2015 went wonky. based on what i’d heard, i wasn’t expecting much, but it was clearly an improvement, even if it was incremental (touch id, bigger/brighter screen, better sound). the biggest obvious lack in the upgrade was the performance-battery life tradeoff, which is entirely on intel stagnating for over a decade. apple addressed these most glaring issues via the combo of m1 and more battery in the 2021. usb-c or touch bar were minor issues in comparison (that notch tho…).
dylan604 5y ago
It's the 2021 model. They were working on this in 2020 maybe even 2019, but it takes time to deploy. Not that they didn't think about it until 2021. </pedantic_mode>

dec0dedab0de 5y ago

Worst of all, it was the loss of the much-beloved MagSafe. I wish all of my cables were magnetic, The amount of things I have broken in my life by tripping is downright embarrassing. I do like being able to charge my mac book from my external monitor, and keeping my apple power supply in my bag in-case I need to go somewhere. It would just be nice if I didn't have to label my cables.

slantyyz 5y ago
I use magnetic tear away cables for a lot of my gear. They have magnetic tips for lightning, USB-micro and USB-C. For stuff like charging headphones, LED lights and other random gadgets with mixed plug types, I use charge-only cables for that stuff, and it's been super convenient. There are also magnetic cables that support limited fast charging and data, but only at USB 2.0 speeds, so that could still be a deal breaker for some people.
- Scramblejams 5y ago
  I'm often tempted by magnetic adapters but when I look on Amazon at the options, it seems like I always see reviews from people who said it nearly caught their stuff on fire. You have any recommendations for high quality magnetic gear?
  - slantyyz 5y ago
    I've used A.S., TopK and Melonboy without any issues.
  - kitsunesoba 5y ago
    > it seems like I always see reviews from people who said it nearly caught their stuff on fire. This is part of a larger problem with a lack of regulations on high-current accessories. In the US, the FTC should probably be doing stringent inspections of imported cables, chargers, etc similar to how the FCC currently inspects communication devices so the substandard/dangerous ones get turned away at the border.
  - 5y ago

jacobolus 5y ago

This is pure speculation, ungrounded from any evidence. The touch bar is a very flexible (effectively) analog input + rich display device. If adequately supported by software it can be an amazing input, affording a range of useful functions not replicable with discrete buttons. In general, I really wish modern computers had more analog inputs available. Analog knobs, jog wheels, sliders, trackballs, etc. are tragically missing. I have seen no evidence that Jony Ive was its patron, and no evidence that including it had anything to with making laptops expensive as a goal. The problem with the touch bar is that (a) it only shipped on a limited subset of devices so software authors could not depend on it, (b) after its initial functions, Apple made limited effort to adopt it in all of their own software, improve its integration into the system, or push boundaries of what it could do as an input device. > The butterfly keyboard was Ive shaving off 0.5mm of the width for a worse user experience with a higher production cost and less reliability. No, this was some Apple-internal mechanical engineering group trying to design the best extremely thin keyboard they could, but getting bitten hard by a mismatch between reliability in a prototype vs. full-scale factory production + poor estimation of reliability in a wide variety of contexts over a longer period of time. Nobody ever set out to make a “worse experience” or higher cost. There are many suboptimal features of the common rubber dome + scissor stabilizer laptop keyboards, and I wish more companies were brave enough to experiment with alternative designs in search of improvements. (Disclaimer: my favorite "laptop" keyboards are https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PS/2_portable_computers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PS/2_portable_computers and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Portable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Portable)

stack_framer 5y ago
> This is pure speculation, ungrounded from any evidence. It's not ungrounded from the anecdotal evidence that these changes are coming after Ive's departure. > I have seen no evidence that Jony Ive was its patron, and no evidence that including it had anything to with making laptops expensive as a goal. Holy, evidence Batman! Leadership 101: When your title is "Chief Design Officer", the design buck stops with you. When your company releases an updated design to an existing product, you had some kind of say in that design. Period. Even if your "say" was just that you were aware of it, and didn't veto it.

thedougd 5y ago

Sometimes I wonder if folks use rose colored glasses when thinking about MagSafe. I don't miss MagSafe and I enjoy the interchangeability of chargers. I could not keep my 13" MacBook plugged in while using it on my lap. The MagSafe cord repeatedly fell off when my leg, or a pillow bumped into it. My MacBook MagSafe port had black marks on it from arcing. At least three times I couldn't get it to charge because a metal fragment (once a folded paper staple) became magnetically stuck to the receiving side. On one of those occasions I couldn't fix it till I got home and grabbed some tweezers. It was a smart solution, but IMO to a tripping problem that wasn't widespread.

1123581321 5y ago
I know what you mean, although I thought the disconnection ease was calibrated correctly. The good thing is the modern battery life means an accidental disconnection is less of a problem.
antifa 5y ago
> The MagSafe cord repeatedly fell off when my leg, or a pillow bumped into it. This sounds better than having your laptop's power connector internally damaged rendering your laptop unchargable just because your charging outlet was on the wrong side or your dog wanted to step on the cable.
zemvpferreira 5y ago
No, it's universally loved because it has universally saved macbooks from nasty falls. I upgraded to a sans-MagSafe 2020 16" MBP when my 2015 MBP had a $600 screen failure. I broke the 2020's screen in the first week. Sold it, repaired my 2015 and have been happy ever since. Through all it's faults and problems, I can't shake how good my 2015 MacBook Pro has been: great keyboard, MagSafe, good enough everything, great keyboard. Did I mention how great the keyboard is? It's on my lap right now, purring and tethered to power as usual.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  Yes, I have none of the experiences that thedougd has had, but have had multiple instances of the wire being yanked on.

GoofballJones 5y ago

Ive was probably cursing at the announcement: "WTF are you doing! You're giving people what they want? That's not the Apple I left, mate. By this time, in 2021, there should be NO ports on the Macbooks, and it should be so thin you could shave with it. What the hell is all this?"

dylan604 5y ago
"What the hell is all this?" It's okay Ive. It's called "something useable" or even, if I might be so bold, "something the users want".
tomxor 5y ago
If Ive had stayed for one more year they probably would have been selling 1mm thick rectangles of anodized aluminium. There's probably an Onion report for that. It's ironic the extremes Apple design has ended up at, because there was a point in time (when both Ive and Jobs were working together) when Dieter Rams claimed Apple was the only company that really followed his ethos, minimalism with a critical qualification of honesty, where form follows function... but for the last decade it's been more like the aesthetic of minimalism at all cost... it's funny because that sounds quite a lot like skeuomorphism, it's pretentious.
- eloisant 5y ago
  Behold, the Macbook Wheel! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA

jdminhbg 5y ago

> Touch Bar? This was nothing more than adding expense to raise the ASP (Average Selling Price) of Macbooks, that had fallen precipitously low from a shareholder perspective because of the superb value-for-money proposition that was the 13" Macbook Air. If customers don't like the Touch Bar, how does this make any sense? If pro users will pay (made-up number) $2000 for a MacBook Pro regardless of whether or not it has a Touch Bar because it comes with the CPU/GPU they want, adding a Touch Bar just decreases the margin. If the MacBook Air is a better value-for-money proposition than the MacBook Pro to begin with, and customers do not actually like the Touch Bar, then why would they start switching to the MacBook Pro?

JustSomeNobody 5y ago
> If the MacBook Air is a better value-for-money proposition than the MacBook Pro to begin with, and customers do not actually like the Touch Bar, then why would they start switching to the MacBook Pro? The psychological effects of the word "Pro".
- jdminhbg 5y ago
  Right, but the word "Pro" existed before the Touch Bar, and as far as we can tell customers did not actually like the Touch Bar.

jollybean 5y ago

Touch Bar I think was a legit attempt at modernization. Every time I 'see' a touchbar, I want one. They look cool and useful. The only reason I don't have one, is because everyone seems to indicate they are useless. It's also possibly a platform issue - maybe they just didn't get enough participation etc.. Also - 'thinner' is a rational and generally positive thing, it's just that we've reached a threshold where the diminishing marginal returns are starting to weigh on other things. Even ports - it's not an aesthetic issue only - they're trying to get everyone onto a standard. Frankly, I support the notion - I'd love it if everyone just used the same dam connector. The reason I don't like my 'USB C only Mac' is only because the ecosystem isn't there yet. If the ecosystem were there, I'd be fine with it.

Spivak 5y ago
I'm kinda sad to see the Touch Bar go so fast because I have one and actually like it a lot. The variant where it has a physical escape key is perfect.
rudedogg 5y ago
> Touch Bar I think was a legit attempt at modernization. I agree, I think they're really interesting. The way we interact with computers hasn't changed much, and having a set of buttons you can configure sounds amazing. I wish they would have just put it above the physical function keys, and deployed it to all MacBooks and wireless keyboards. Being limited to just some MacBook Pros probably hurt the number of apps that adopted it.
st-keller 5y ago
Not everyone says the touchbar is useless. I absolutely love it! I will miss it. And the new Macbook may be a beast but it looks terribly old - like a yesterday-machine. For the first time Apple released a product i will buy because it will be more capable - but not because i want it!
wiredfool 5y ago
I think that the touchbar could have been fine if it had been spaced one row above a full sized set of function keys. As it is, when I use the keyboard on my work MBP, my fingers will brush the touchbar and do things. I have turned off the functionality in most apps so that I don't get that. (terminal especially) For my actual usage, it's a step backwards from the pre-2016 function keys, an always available pause/play/stop, volume and brightness. I can't be doing something in emacs and then hit pause or louder, it's switch to music and then I can pause. The lack of a physical escape key also dooms it in my usage. (no, escape is not going on caps-lock, that's where control goes) So the work MBP is 99% used with an external keyboard/monitor. The personal 2015 MBP is generally used on the lap. USB-c is ok, and the real magic is when you've got a Thunderbolt/USB-c power delivery monitor with a built in usb3 hub. One wire to the laptop and you're done. (and even better when the monitor has a built-in kvm so that the other computer is just a switch away, without mucking with cables).

dlivingston 5y ago

> Touch Bar? This was nothing more than adding expense to raise the ASP I thought it was a great idea, and I still do, but am so glad they removed it. It sounds great on paper, but practically, I used it for nothing other than adjusting brightness and volume. > The butterfly keyboard was Ive shaving off 0.5mm of the width for a worse user experience with a higher production cost and less reliability. Agreed. It really wasn't great. From a design perspective, it's quite clever, but from a usability perspective it was horrible. > USB-C only was a philosophical move rather than a practical one that forced people everywhere to carry dongles. Apple has a long, long history of doing this. Headphone jack? Gone. Ethernet port? Gone. VGA port? Gone. Floppy disk drive? Gone. I'm fine with it in moderation, frankly. USB-C is so clearly the future that where I take offense is that the rest of Apple's lineup doesn't work with it (iPhones, AirPods, some iPads, etc.). > Replaceable RAM and SSD being lost is still painful. Perhaps, but now that RAM is not only part of the SoC but a significant reason that the SoC is so good (high bandwidth shared memory between CPU and GPU), it's a change I'm more than fine with. > Ive is gone and every one of those decisions has been reversed or at least significantly amended. This is no accident. Agreed. This finally, truly, feels like a Pro machine: "design first" is an approach for consumer products and, to Apple's credit, works very nicely on the iPad and iPhone and consumer MacBooks (generally). "Design first" for pro machines is great for the 3 minutes after opening the box, but when trying to do real work, you'd sacrifice all the bezels in the world to shave 30% off compile times.

npongratz 5y ago
> Apple has a long, long history of doing this. Headphone jack? Gone. Ethernet port? Gone. VGA port? Gone. Floppy disk drive? Gone. The MBP designers still bravely include the 3.5mm headphone jack [0], though it is certainly true that the iPhone designers courageously jettisoned the jack. [0] https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro-14-and-16/specs/ https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro-14-and-16/specs/
- vmception 5y ago
  I’ve never had any consequence from this except now my headphones also dont have the option of being a wired headphone, which means I have to ask the flight attendant for headphones to watch a movie on their screens. Everyone else is in the same situation though so its commonplace. Dont know if you’ve flown anywhere in the last year but a lot of people have.

SkyPuncher 5y ago

> Also, the ports weren't all the same. This was the most shocking to me. I learned that the left and right side ports run through different buses, but each side does not have enough capacity to supply both ports at full speed. This mean I had to buy long USB cable to run to the other side of my Macbook in order to supply 3 monitors. I have a port just sitting unused. Also, there seems to be a problem with left-side USB ports when charging. They cause the system to overheat (or at least think it's overheating). https://www.forbes.com/sites/barrycollins/2020/04/24/why-you-shouldnt-charge-your-macbook-pro-from-the-left-hand-side/?sh=de5366878ff7 https://www.forbes.com/sites/barrycollins/2020/04/24/why-you...

onion2k 5y ago

Apple products are excellent, well built, and they last. If they didn't add new things regularly far fewer people would buy. I think a lot of the new features on Apple products have simply been attempts to make things look different enough to be worth buying. This includes removing the things they've added...

wnissen 5y ago

What I always wondered is why they didn't start with a $999 base model (like the original iBook) that was cheap, but big and slow. if you wanted premium performance/expandability/ports/screen, you could pay $2K for the Pro model in the same form factor. If you wanted portability, you could pay $2K for the Air in a smaller form factor with the same performance as the iBook. The cheapest model being the most portable is bizarre. Then again, the iPad Mini is more expensive than the larger iPad, so obviously there is something going on I don't understand. Perhaps the cost of engineering the motherboard and battery in an integrated package are so high that they can't afford to split the line any further. The 2021 14" Pro is the first truly pro model in a while. I hope they keep it up. The keyboard is actually usable for extended periods, it has ports, the screen is great (to be fair, all Apple retina screens are great to varying degrees). Did I need it? No. But I wanted it. The last Mac laptop I bought for myself was the 2015 13" MacBook "Pro", so they're getting more money out of me this time around.

trevyn 5y ago
>the iPad Mini [$499+] is more expensive than the larger iPad Sort of. The $329+ "iPad" has internals that are a few generations old, kind of like the iPhone SE. The iPad Air ($599+) and iPad Pro ($799+) are the "real" current larger iPads.

nebula8804 5y ago

>Replaceable RAM and SSD being lost is still painful. Personally I don't believe this was about forcing users to pay for upgrades primarily. It was about shaving off a small amount of volume. Louis Rossman gets a lot of things wrong because he does not have a computer engineering background. For example, he does not understand why Apple used SPI on the Macbook Air instead of USB despite it having USB capability. I had to correct him to explain that when your design goal is extreme power saving, you have to cut everything including running your data over SPI instead of a more power hungry USB bus. Furthermore one reason they ship soldered on Ram is technical. It has been explained here from time to time that they are achieving much higher memory bandwidth with the memory modules they are using and it necessitates being soldered on. If the design goal is to build the most responsive laptop while maintaining excellent power savings, then this is the right approach to take.

grishka 5y ago
I can understand the soldred RAM on M1 — yes, speed of light and other laws of physics get in the way. But why solder the SSD? What's the technical benefit of that over putting an M.2 slot in there or something? How do you recover your data if you spill coffee on your laptop? What involved simply yoinking the SSD out of the slot now requires a fully working motherboard.
- mixmastamyk 5y ago
  I don't. If on chip, yes. But in the same place with the same speed interface it should not matter once the wires are connected.
  - marcan_42 5y ago
    You can't take on-package RAM and stick it on a separate module through a connector (what connector? You need a 512-bit interface for the M1 Max...) without causing a problem or massively increasing your power consumption, for the same reason you can't string together 30 meters of USB3 extension cables and expect it to work. This is why USB 3.2 chipsets are little bare chips and run at 10Gbps, while 10Gb Ethernet chipsets need a big heatsink. More distance means a higher power consumption for the interface. Interfaces are designed for specific characteristics like maximum capacitance and signal loss, and going beyond the design parameters means you need to change something. In this case, it would involve significantly increasing the power consumption of the interface.

cmelbye 5y ago

Innovative design doesn't work without an internal champion who can rally the company around unconventional ideas. Jobs played that role, but now Apple is led by the operations team. The word "design" does not appear anywhere on their executive leadership page. Unconventional ideas are inherently risky. They're just not worth pursuing if buy-in can't be secured and leadership is more focused on compromising to increase profit margins, etc. For that reason, it's great (in the short term!) that Apple is rehashing known-good designs from a decade ago. However, I don't see that strategy working in the long term.

andrei_says_ 5y ago

> The USB-C cable situation was and continues to be a nightmare as different cables support different subsets of data, power and video and, worse yet, different versions of each of those. I’m about to upgrade from a 2015 MBP and am wondering - is there a usb-c cable I can buy which works with everything guaranteed?

blablabla123 5y ago

I'm quite happy about the move to USB-C and changed all my stuff to it as soon as possible. 5 years ago I had several micro usb and mini usb chargers, some of them broken. On a regular base I had to buy new chargers and cables. The MagSafe power supply cables broke easily (but yes, the port was nice). Now there's just one cable for everything, I still have 2 phone fast chargers but both actually work. Also I can just charge my phone without searching for the charger and the laptop can be connected to screen/keyboard with just 1 USB-C cable. After all, Apple were also the first to sell Desktops without Floppy or Optical drive.

threeseed 5y ago

> it was Johnny Again with this rubbish. I have worked at Apple and Ive does not unilaterally make the product decisions in the company. It is a combination of Product Marketing, Hardware Engineering, Design, Procurement etc and they are all discussed and signed off by the Senior Leadership Team. When you building products at the scale Apple does decisions are years in the making. And so they need to make them based on what they think the future will be. Mostly they are right and sometimes they are wrong e.g. USB-C being the standard connector for everything.

sumedh 5y ago
> they are all discussed and signed off by the Senior Leadership Team. I dont know how Apple works but sometimes if there is guy at the top who has to be kept happy you sign off on only those things which you know will make the guy at the top happy.

nothis 5y ago

I want this to be true but to be honest, I care less about the Ive angle than them simply doing it! It seems like someone with power said, "hey, what are these letters P, R and O standing for, again?".

diskzero 5y ago

People are commenting this post and saying it is speculation, and until someone who directly was involved in these discussions shows up to comment, I suppose it is. I have been in design meetings with Jony, and Scott Forstall, and many others whose decisions were micromanaged by Steve at every step. You can argue that a lot of Steve's design decisions were questionable; rich Corinthian leather skeumorphism, lickable Aqua widgets, brushed aluminum window title bars, but he owned them. Steve and Jony would sit for hours outside of Caffe Macs going over designs. Steve would spend even more time inside the industrial design area going over prototypes. He would spend a couple of hours every week meeting with every software team that had user facing features. He had input on almost every pixel on the screen and every button/port/display/etc on hardware. Once he was gone, the drift began. It was inevitable that focus would shift. Scott no longer had protection by Steve. Jony fixated on the new campus and things like watch bands. No one had Steve to rein in whatever impulse they had. Sure, people would ask "What would Steve do?" but we also had Tim Cook pushing to optimize production, lower cost of goods and increase margins. Apple still has Steve DNA, but it continues to be diluted. You may disagree with Steve's vision and opinions, but it was strongly held and enforced. I feel almost everything about the last generation of MacBook Pros went against what Steve would have wanted and I am glad I wasn't there when those decisions were made.

justicezyx 5y ago
Well Steve's is being martyred into a figure head for people who disagree with Apple's direction. Often used in contradictory situations. For example, one can claim too thin being against with Steve, and someone else opposite. Come-on, that guy has died for 10 years. His opinion on anything one cited for is *UNKNOWABLE*. Stop saying he will approve or disapprove some ideas... That's literally meaningless statement...
- diskzero 5y ago
  Of course you are right. I have a snapshot of Steve in my head that I apply, but his opinion changed frequently, as evidenced by the various permutations of the OSX interface designs. That being said, I just can't believe he would have been happy about the various issues with the old MacBooks. So many things feel so wrong.

timeon 5y ago

You are probably right but if we are talking about Touch Bar there are (at least few) people (like me) that prefer it to functional keys.

woah 5y ago

All the new ports are pretty useless to me. I think that adding them back in shows a lack of vision and just caters to the lowest common denominator of complaints instead of making a better product from first principles. HDMI: I guess it's good if you have an old monitor? My monitor from like 2015 has USB C and charges my computer while I use it. MagSafe: I've never had a computer fall off a table. Seems like a weird overoptimization for an unlikely scenario. If you use it you've got to carry a different cable that you can't use for anything else, unlike the USB C power cable that i also use to connect peripherals if needed. SD card: I've never used one of these. I guess it's good for professional photographers? Why don't expensive cameras just have 256gb of onboard storage and connect over thunderbolt?

cletus 5y ago
MagSafe isn't just about the convenience of it. It may not help you or have helped you but it's helped many people (including me) and even if it didn't, it provided peace of mind. But the key reason for it is that it's a dedicated power port. That means that port is designed for that. You don't waste money allowing your laptop to be charged from any of the four USB-C ports. Like, who needs that? Worse, those ports weren't identical leading to the advice to always charge from one side to avoid overheating. I do find HDMI to be a bit of a strange choice however. I don't mind USB-C to HDMI/DP cables for this. Like you say, more monitors support DP passthrough over USB-C if not full TB. The HDMI port is also 2.0 not 2.1. The difference? 2.0 can run 4K @ 60Hz. 2.1 can run 4K @ 120Hz. 120Hz continues to have poor support under OSX but it's clearly the future. As for the SD card, I don't really use this either but this is aimed at photo and video professionals. Why not just connect the camera? Easy. Because you need to keep using the camera so it's far quicker just to swap out the cards and start copying. A modern digital photo or video setup will have a camera with 2 SD card slots. The camera will write the same to both cards. When swapped out, one will be kept separately as backup. The other will be copied onto another device, which then may also copy that offsite. This way you immediately get 3-4 backups in 2-3 locations, which is a lot of redundancy.
- rconti 5y ago
  I tripped on the magsafe cord on my 2011 macbook air and rather than disconnect it just chucked the whole laptop off the table and onto the floor. Granted, it just bounced and flipped and sustained no damage, but I wouldn't guarantee you'd have the same luck.

amluto 5y ago

I suspect M1X’s excellent memory bandwidth is related to the lack of replaceable memory. x86 CPUs can, as far as I know, max out the bandwidth of their DIMMs, and they don’t get anywhere near the bandwidth of M1X. And integrated design can do better. Complaining about the price of Apple’s RAM seems reasonable, but complaining that they didn’t choose DDR5 DIMMs when they appear to have chosen something better seems silly.

agumonkey 5y ago

> Steve Jobs bringing him back to reality I find it funny to appeal to Steve Jobs for a reality check :) btw my pet theory about the touch bar is: let's use the apple tech skills synergy again, we made tactile swiped device since the ipod, we made that into phones, now let's blend it into our laptops.

kushan2020 5y ago

Each year apple has been shipping thicker and heavier products. I get that some people are happy but boy do I feel the heft when holding an iPhone 13 pro especially coming from a slim iPhone 6s Plus. If Steve Jobs was alive he would never let such products ever released. You can feel he left his mark in MacBook 12 and iPhone 6 as those products were lightweight and thin - read pushing boundaries.

skohan 5y ago

Yeah it was a bit of a head-scratch moment when those 2016 machines came out. Until then it seemed like you could just trust a macbook pro to be a great machine that could do everything you need, and that each edition would get better than the last. Around that period it felt like Apple made a pivot away from trying to increase market share through having the best product, and toward maximizing their revenue by leveraging their amazing brand image. One of the early things was the change from the L-shaped mag-safe back to the T-shaped one. The L-shaped one was such an improvement - those things would last forever. But the T ones would fray in a matter of months. It almost felt like someone at Apple looked at the money they were losing from selling less chargers and decided they had to go back. And I liked mag-safe but honestly I don't miss it. USB-C charging is fine and having one standard charger you can get anywhere work for everything more than makes up for any relative drawbacks.

holoduke 5y ago

I don't agree with the USB c story. To me it's extremely handy to have just usb c. All (most) devices work, can use the same cable for charging my phone. super convenient for me.

skocznymroczny 5y ago

I'm in the minority, but I really enjoy the butterfly keyboard on my Macbook. I'd love to have a fullsized butterfly style keyboard for my PC. Unfortunately the high-end market for keyboards is dominated by mechanical keyboards which aren't my kind of thing at all.

jbjbjbjb 5y ago
Just plug in the Apple external keyboard and remap some keys. Unpopular opinion but I find the Apple keyboards feel “better” than most mechanical switches (certainly mx brown and clear), they have good tactile bump better than most and a nice lightness to them so they’re not fatiguing.
- skocznymroczny 5y ago
  Apple external keyboard feels like a scissor switch keyboard. It's not too bad, but it's not as flat as butterfly keyboards are. Personally, the only mechanical switch I could stand was Kailh Choc Blue - low profile blue switch.

jpswade 5y ago

Surely the change to USB-C was a compatibility thing, as the chipset is Intel based, it’s probably easier to supply. Now it’s their own chip, it makes sense that they have now switched to their own proprietary solutions.