What is Apple doing? (new Macbook Pro released)

In My Humble Opinion
1

For once it seems like my Apple friends are the loudest complainers here, since the ones deep in the ecosystem are most affected.

In case you missed it, Apple announced the new line of Macbook Pros yesterday, and as always the talk is about ports. Namely, they’ve included 4 thunderbolt ports and… a 3.5mm audio jack. That’s it. No more magsafe connector, you change via any of the thunderbolt ports. This simplicity leaves iPhone 7 users in a bit of a lurch, though. To wit, the lightning cable that comes with the iPhone 7 is USB-A, so you can’t plug it into the Macbook. Likewise the headphones that come with it use a lightning port, so you can’t plug them in either.

To make it worse, the Airpods have been delayed.

2

The ports were expected, as they love making you buy and carry around huge stacks of adaptors, it’s their thing at the moment as evidenced by the 12" MacBook and the iPhone 7.

The price is the other talking point and holy cow, £1750 for the one with the touch bar or £1450 for just the basic model! Utterly insane. I mean, I just switched back to PC laptops but was still open minded. Not any more though, looks like the deal is sealed and my Mac days are over.

3

I plan on keeping my Macbook Pro 9,2 (the last one you could actually open up and tinker with) running as long as possible and then when it dies I’m probably done with them. Tiny, overpriced SSDs, non-upgradeable RAM, now this shit with the ports, it’s all been a steady slide toward total “No you can’t do that.”

I will take the same $2,500 I would have to spend to get a decent Macbook Pro these days and get an amazing 17" custom laptop with better discrete graphics than anything Apple offers and all the bells and whistles I want. I suppose I should thank Apple for making that decision for me.

4

Not really a surprise to me, Apple has always been in the business of removing ports and features and calling their products “premium” because of it. Until recently, their fans have gobbled it up and begged for more. How is “no headphone jack” or “no dedicated charging port” any worse than “one button mouse” and “no optical drives”?

5

I’m not a heavy Apple consumer but I have always applauded their insistence on pushing the market forward in the face of loud complaints, especially since the loudest complaints seemed to come from people who had no intention of buying their stuff in the first place. Competitors tout that they still have X port on their crappy product and then the next generation of crappy products X port is gone and nobody cares, because it ends up Apple was right about the timing.

But this is a bit different, no? Apple isn’t saying, “The USB-A port is dead,” because if you buy their brand new iPhone you get a lightning cable with a USB-A plug on one end. They’re not saying, “Lightning is the future, stop using 3.5mm audio plugs” because they’re giving you a 3.5mm audio plug and no lightning port on their Macbook. It just seems that left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing.

6

They were right about the floppy. Everything else they’ve dropped since has been on the assumption that because they were right about the floppy they must be right about everything else (especially if it means they can sell more adapters, or in the case of optical discs it means you get your movie on iTunes and not bring your own Blu-ray)

7

Then this is really just teleological marketing, (which they can do because their designs are proprietary), because if you have to wait for something to become practical then it really isn’t that practical, is it? They can do it because their users just don’t care and are willing to pay more. You can get a non-crappy product from just about any label, if you’re willing to pay more.

8

That’s a fair point. Early adopters always bear the financial brunt of pushing technology forward, and Apple basically forces their users to be the early adopters. I guess that has less to do with prescient timing than it does the size and scope of their walled garden and the people who have bought into it.

9

Inconveniencing some large part of the market with each release because a couple of years in the future use for that feature will have dropped off is not “genius.” Apple is simply maintaining a air of genius design, foresight, insight, whatever by switching to new technologies (mostly in connectors) well ahead of the curve - even if it means adopters of the new units are screwed with their current lineup of peripherals.

And, as someone above said, the customers just eat it up and beg for more. “Please, please, drag me another large step into the future so that I have to buy all new cables, connectors, adapters and peripherals and be as advanced and S-mart as I can possibly be!”

10

I don’t know if it’s because of Apple, but many PC notebook systems have the same limitations; small SSDs, no optical drive, no VGA port, internal batteries. This is often the case on the computers sold as “ultrabooks” and some of those limitations is due to the thin profile of these systems.

11

I had no idea that many people charged their cell phones via their laptops.

Is a thunderbolt port the same thing as a USB C, or is that something different?

It’s not only Apple that’s doing this. Google Nexus is using USB C. I was annoyed up until I realized I can spend $2.50 on a little plug-in adapter to convert it to standard USB, and now I don’t care. But they have just released their Pixel phone which I understand to be even more proprietary. We are stuck with Google phones because we use Project Fi (which is great.)

It would take a lot for me to give up Macbook. A LOT. Because my beloved writing software is native to Mac and I’m not a fan of the Windows version. Mac applications just seem superior to me on every level. The last time I bought a laptop I tried to switch back to Windows, got the top of the line Lenovo laptop/notebook convertible thing, and I hated it. I returned the Lenovo and switched to Macbook air. Yeah, I’ll pay the Apple tax.

12

No, it and its variants are pretty much Apple-specific, although the “big brother” version, DisplayPort, has become common on monitors.

USB C is a worthwhile move forward. Smaller plugs THAT ARE FINALLY EFFING UNPOLARIZED, higher speeds, industry standard and not maker specific. And as you found, backward compatible with cheap converter dongles or cables.

13

Genius is your word, not mine. I don’t recall Apple previously removing a feature without a replacement in place – optical storage in place of floppies, flash drives in place of optical, USB in place of serial, digital ports instead of VGA, etc. I think a lot of people, myself included, like to focus on the edge cases – that one time I was able to get some obscure peripheral to work and save the day thanks to my trusty Fujitsu laptop with a serial port, for instance. Apple’s approach, which I might summarize as “You don’t actually use this old technology as much as you think you do” has proven to be correct more often than not. Sure, some people maybe really needed a floppy drive, but there were external drives that worked just fine and the rest of us didn’t have to pay for something we don’t really use.

But the point of this thread is that this time it feels different, in that Apple will now sell you two same-generation flagship products that simply don’t work well together.

14

Apple still hasn’t completely cut the cord between iTunes and iDevices for backups and syncing. But yes, this may be a case of “you don’t use it as much as you think.”

Thunderbolt is an Intel standard that uses the USB-C plug format but can transmit data (at higher speeds than USB-C) and DisplayPort as well. The important bit here is that a USB-C cable will plug into it, but a USB-A cable (“conventional” USB) like the one they give you with an iPhone will not. So you can charge your Nexus with the stock cable but not your iPhone.

The easy move would have been to make the lightning cable that they give you with the iPhone have a USB-C plug on one end, and then give you a USB-C charger as well. No clue why they didn’t do that.

15

This is not only shitty, but I don’t even see how it makes sense. A major sticking point of this proprietary business is that you’re more screwed if you don’t have all of their products. How will Apple incentivize owning an iPhone if there’s no real advantage?

(FWIW, I did not love my iPhone… but that was back in the day, iPhone 4.)

16

Took my iPhone 1 back in two hours, but that’s another story.

iPhone sales are significantly declining, even the 7. Apple’s going to have to find a new pillar to hold their genius.

17

I dunno, but things like Google’s Pixel, the first phone “made by Google” and Microsoft’s Surface and new Surface Studio are ready, willing and able to start eating Apple’s lunch and dinner if they stumble.

18

When I’m traveling I do. Why bring an extra charger if I’m already bringing my laptop? It also lets me use my laptop as an (inefficient) spare battery brick for my phone.

Thunderbolt 3 is, I believe, a superset of USB C that is backwards compatible. So, a Thunderbolt 3 port is the same shape as USB C, and can take any USB C cable, but some USB C ports are not Thunderbolt 3, and presumably if you plug something into them that needs that, the peripheral will not work.

I have no problem with the USB C change. It looks like it’s a legitimately better port, and I expect that the next iPhones will switch to them as well, giving us a grand unified port that’s good for charging anything and plugging anything in. Sure, there’s an awkward transition period, but there’s always going to be an awkward transition period when changing things. I don’t buy the idea that we should put off change indefinitely because it’s annoying to have dongles for a few years.

I think Apple was right about the floppy, the optical drive, and the Ethernet port removal. In every case, the majority of people didn’t need them any more.

I do value weight and size in my laptops, since I carry them around, and use them on my lap.

I’m pretty disappointed in this update, though, since it appears the Macbook Air, which has been my favorite computer ever, is dying, and there’s no good replacement.

For over a decade, I have bought the cheapest Apple laptop, maxed out the memory, and used it for about two years, then upgraded. It’s been great. The laptop usually costs about $1000-1200, and after I sell it the capital cost is less than $200 a year. But I’ve been on a 2013 Macbook Air now for 3.5 years because the 2015 ones were barely an upgrade, and apparently there are going to be no more. I really like Mac OS, and I think Mac applications are generally better, but the low-end Macbook Pro is now $1500.

My theory is that the Macbook Airs were victims of their own success. I see them everywhere. And I have to imagine that the profit margin on the $1000 computer is much lower than the margin on the $1500 and $2000 computer. So I guess Apple has priced itself out of my market.

Anyone know of an alternate laptop that is approximately the size of the 13" Air with battery life and a trackpad that doesn’t suck, for around $1000?

19

I really like Project Fi (and can find nothing cheaper) and the Nexus 5x. I doubt I will hate the Pixel, though I don’t fully understand how it is different from the Nexus and a standard Android OS.

But I also need to have Macbook in my life.

My big question is whether it will become increasingly more inconvenient to maintain this dual loyalty and all these companies end up breaking themselves by making it impossible to use their technology with anyone else’s.

[QUOTE=iamthewalrus]
I’m pretty disappointed in this update, though, since it appears the Macbook Air, which has been my favorite computer ever, is dying, and there’s no good replacement.
[/QUOTE]

Okay, that’s bad. Macbook Air is my thing.

20

This is incorrect.

USB-C is only a connector standard. Thunderbolt 3 uses a USB-C connector, and is compatible with USB. Also, Thunderbolt 3 is available on several makes of computers, not just Apple. See the list here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Thunderbolt-compatible_devices

In fact, Thunderbolt 3 can provide power, video (VGA, HDMi, DVI and DisplayPort), USB (1.0, 2.0, 3.0 and 3.1), and PICe. Heck, you can even add an external GPU, if you want.

https://thunderbolttechnology.net/blog/thunderbolt-3-usb-c-does-it-all