5 ms·

> 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 sound

> 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.
  - dlivingston 5y ago
    I think most over-ear Bluetooth headphones have the ability to also act as wired headphones, via some flavor of USB -> Aux cord/adapter.
- dmitriid 5y ago
  > The MBP designers still bravely include the 3.5mm headphone jack And in Jony Ive designs they've had it on the wrong side for years. The 2021 model finally moves it back the left side.
- RHSeeger 5y ago
  > iPhone designers courageously jettisoned the jack. There are a LOT of us that still believe this was a horrible choice.
  - Miraste 5y ago
    That was probably sarcasm, Apple was widely mocked for referring to the removal as "courageous" at the time.
    - npongratz 5y ago
      Indeed, I was lampooning their terrible decision to remove the headphone jack and their gall to refer to it as "courage." I'm still salty about the whole ordeal.
      - dwaite 5y ago
        That they decided to remove it in the face of many people saying it was a terrible decision was exactly why they referred to it as "courage". A lot of phones have removed it since for most of the same reasons - the modern 3.5mm is a pretend spec.
        npongratz 5y ago
        That may well be, and everyone, I'm sure, saw it differently. I happened to perceive their use of "courage" as condescending, hubristic elitism. Anyway, I'm happy they are including a genuine, pretend-spec'ed 3.5mm audio output jack in their newest laptops.
        lukifer 5y ago
        "Pretend spec" misses the forest for the trees: amongst the vast, complex ecosystem of audio-visual ports, 1/8" audio stands out: we actually managed to converge on a connector format that is universal, omni-present, excellent quality, DRM-free, and which boasts an intuitive "no-code" UI affordance that Just Works. I love my AirPods. But the instant I have to start digging through screens to do a pairing dance with some third-party speakers, car stereo, etc, I pine for the simpler times when you could just plug in the AUX, and I mourn for what has been lost.
grishka 5y ago
> Apple has a long, long history of doing this. Headphone jack? Gone. Ethernet port? Gone. VGA port? Gone. Floppy disk drive? Gone. There's an important distinction here you're glossing over: unreliable, wireless, software-controlled Rube Goldberg-esque connections (bluetooth, wifi) can't possibly supersede reliable wired ones. Wired connections "just work" 99.999999% of the time, and when they don't, you can actually see and inspect the thing that connects your devices to troubleshoot it. Wireless works only when it feels like it. VGA, on the other hand, was fully superseded by various digital video interfaces, and floppies were fully superseded by optical media and then various forms of cheap flash memory. And I mean it. People do still miss headphone jacks, and people do still buy ethernet dongles for their laptops. People don't really miss floppies and CDs.

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.
- dlivingston 5y ago
  I think most over-ear Bluetooth headphones have the ability to also act as wired headphones, via some flavor of USB -> Aux cord/adapter.
dmitriid 5y ago
> The MBP designers still bravely include the 3.5mm headphone jack And in Jony Ive designs they've had it on the wrong side for years. The 2021 model finally moves it back the left side.
RHSeeger 5y ago
> iPhone designers courageously jettisoned the jack. There are a LOT of us that still believe this was a horrible choice.
- Miraste 5y ago
  That was probably sarcasm, Apple was widely mocked for referring to the removal as "courageous" at the time.
  - npongratz 5y ago
    Indeed, I was lampooning their terrible decision to remove the headphone jack and their gall to refer to it as "courage." I'm still salty about the whole ordeal.
    - dwaite 5y ago
      That they decided to remove it in the face of many people saying it was a terrible decision was exactly why they referred to it as "courage". A lot of phones have removed it since for most of the same reasons - the modern 3.5mm is a pretend spec.
      - npongratz 5y ago
        That may well be, and everyone, I'm sure, saw it differently. I happened to perceive their use of "courage" as condescending, hubristic elitism. Anyway, I'm happy they are including a genuine, pretend-spec'ed 3.5mm audio output jack in their newest laptops.
      - lukifer 5y ago
        "Pretend spec" misses the forest for the trees: amongst the vast, complex ecosystem of audio-visual ports, 1/8" audio stands out: we actually managed to converge on a connector format that is universal, omni-present, excellent quality, DRM-free, and which boasts an intuitive "no-code" UI affordance that Just Works. I love my AirPods. But the instant I have to start digging through screens to do a pairing dance with some third-party speakers, car stereo, etc, I pine for the simpler times when you could just plug in the AUX, and I mourn for what has been lost.

grishka 5y ago

> Apple has a long, long history of doing this. Headphone jack? Gone. Ethernet port? Gone. VGA port? Gone. Floppy disk drive? Gone. There's an important distinction here you're glossing over: unreliable, wireless, software-controlled Rube Goldberg-esque connections (bluetooth, wifi) can't possibly supersede reliable wired ones. Wired connections "just work" 99.999999% of the time, and when they don't, you can actually see and inspect the thing that connects your devices to troubleshoot it. Wireless works only when it feels like it. VGA, on the other hand, was fully superseded by various digital video interfaces, and floppies were fully superseded by optical media and then various forms of cheap flash memory. And I mean it. People do still miss headphone jacks, and people do still buy ethernet dongles for their laptops. People don't really miss floppies and CDs.