They could have done 2 if the SSD was user replaceable.
You have to carefully planned your MBP configuration, unfortunately SSD upgrade are terribly expensive. An extra 25% of the price to go from 256GB to 1TB.
Actually that's probably fine for a professional machine, as you will be alright with a smaller disk until you replace the MBP anyway. For a power-user machine that you plan to keep several (5+) years, that's another story.
The fact that you have to plan your disk and RAM configuration years ahead is really annoying. Especially for a laptop that's on the high end of the price range.
That's always a bit double. At one point I appreciate they try to improve the sound (and maybe succeed? didn't hear the last model yet), on the other hand I loathe the marketing 'best sound ever'-like phrases and hope not too many people fall for it, as it is in fact physically impossible to get anywhere near proper source reproduction whith such small speakers placed behind a cover. Then again, as you say target audience might not care about that.
I can only speak for myself, but I use my laptop speakers daily. I have a MBP and bought Boom 2 to make it a little louder when listening to people speaking. I'd certainly rather have them natively play that loudly. For me, the battery life tradeoff is worth it as six hours is about how much battery life I tend to use. That said, I recognize that having ten or twelve hours would change my behavior and expectations.
I would have preferred an iphone dock where the touchpad resides, just replace the supplied touch pad with your iphone and you get and additional screen.
Apple finally decided with this round of macbooks to shift from producing laptops into content consumption appliances like iPhone. Next step of this internal plan involves processors.
Is 40Gbps Thunderbolt 3 for content consumption? Is 3.1/2.1Gbps SSD for content consumption? Edit: Is a super accurate and wide color gamut screen for content consumption?
"Next step of this internal plan involves processors."
What exactly are you alluding to here? Apple designing its own processor? x86 or ARM? Do you think Apple will go through another architecture switch on macOS?
Laptops are going to become even more integrated. That's just physics. Long, wide traces are not good for either power consumption or bandwidth.
But how that will manifest in future MacBooks is hard to say. They could still go for off-the-shelf components and packages (probably Intel will start to deliver processors with stacked or silicon interposer bonded RAM). But it would make some sense for them to design their own processors. Though Intel is still really far ahead in semiconductor process and processor architecture. I'm not sure they can come close enough to justify it.
See, why do you have to use the "it's for consumers" argument when it doesn't apply?
If it's a laptop which includes features which is WAY beyond the requirements of your average consumer, and with the price to boot, it's not a consumer laptop.
Maybe the specs don't quite match certain specific professional users requirements. Maybe certain features are broken. Maybe there are flaws in the product.
Those issues can be addressed on their own.
You don't have to tie it to some misguided idea that Apple is making it with the intent of content consumption.
That people have to attach their critique to some far-fetched speculation about Apples motivations signals that they may not think the critique can stand on its own. Which is a shame, because often it can.
> decided with this round of macbooks to shift from producing laptops into content consumption appliances like iPhone
I wouldn't go that far, but I would say for a company that likes to shout so loudly about environmental waste they sure like to make disposable unmaintainable devices these days.
> I told you SSD will be permanently soldered to the PCB, received downvotes in return
Just because your prediction/information turned out to be correct does not mean that your comment was useful at the time. Why would anybody trust information left in a random HN comment by somebody that isn't even going to attempt to explain their source or reasoning?
Except that you only get 10 hours browsing the internet, so unless your work consists of reddit and hacker news you can't really meet that target and I think most professionals would prefer more.
I use a 2014 rMBP. I need to keep Virtual desktop client running all through the day, Outlook for corporate email, and Safari for everything web-based. I can go though 70% of my day without needing to plug in. I really really really wish Apple add little more capacity so I don't need to be anxious about spending a work day on the move.
I hate to admit this but I'll bite. Apple is being steered by fifty shades of Steve Ballmer now. Colored and extra-large iPhones, death to magSafe, stupid mini-iPads that have no reason to exist other than being a marketing offer.
I agree on all points except re: the mini iPad. I have no use for a full-size iPad, but I have the 9.7" Pro and Mini 4, which are perfectly sized, in my humble opinion.
Steve Jobs revolutionized many industries -- music, mobile, laptops, animation and so on… he wanted to revolutionize education as well. That aim was best served with the original 9" tablet iPad. It stoked the way kids and kids-in-adults would consume content -- learn / read / watch videos before going to bed/sleep or in the classroom.
A slate-like form functionally draws a better parallel to the stone slates we used to have in schools back in the day! iPad Mini on the other hand makes people lose their focus from the original intent of the product i.e. revolution of education. It does fit the palm but doesn't help the cause at all.
iPad proper is easy to tap/touch, carry, flip pages on: more or less like an evolved form of Kindle but a lot more (also the reason why iPad Air still does better than the rest). We already know to whom this product appeals the most. Another reason why Jobs was dead against letting in the porn usecase on the iPad was because he wanted to start with children on board -- again to push for revolutionizing education. Child-safe and all that.
This CEO has failed that goal objectively.
Tim (and his team) don't even know what they want -- their launches signal that they have nothing on their minds except making more money in the name of some marketing revolution. And when something will do well they will surely hide behind that success (like the touchbar MBP) because really deep within they are running blind. Apple will continue to introduce more product lines to open up additional revenue streams and that is all there is to it.
My 2 cents/opinion: Tim Cook, with all due respect, is just a salesman. He thinks revolutionary products are about tech, design, form and function whereas those are merely a few vectors that lead to a revolution but not the revolution itself. I don't think their heart or mind is in the right place.
> Colored and extra-large iPhones, <...> being a marketing offer.
I do not understand how they are stepping on the same thing like 20+ years ago - they have too many versions for the same type of device.
They have different names for it: Pro, SE, S, Plus, Air, mini. And it's inconsistent, e.g. ipad Air is not the smallest ipad, where does SE stack in current Apple naming?
They add colors to mix all this (not to mention gazillion bands for watches).
They do not transition their mobile tech to usb-c which creates miserable dongle-gate within their own hardware ecosystem. Maybe can someone give a reason why they are still sticking with lightning? Even using it for their pencil, new mouse, new trackpad and new keyboard.
Apple has much better name and consistency than most hardware manufacturers, but it's getting so confusing than it used to be[0]. I understand there are more products today, but I guess all of them can be delivered in Pro and consumer versions with consistent peripherals so when people spend couple of thousand bucks on your products they do not need to go back to the store and spend another hundred to dongle up.
The not moving iPhone to USB-C is the real killer. It makes NO sense from a technical standpoint, and makes every self-indulgent speech about moving technology forward just drip with marketing bullshit.
It even makes other decisions, like USB-C on the new macbook line look stupid because now you can't defend that by saying they're just trying to move everything to one standard because Apple themselves are fragmenting the standards.
I have constantly had problems with the MagSafe adapter and am glad to see it go. If you're working on a table at a coffee shop and have papers next to your 15" rMBP, the cord hangs over the edge and doesn't stay on after a few months of adapter use. A new adapter fixes the problem.
I've had laptops, Thinkpads from 1999 to 2011, and I have never had a problem that the MagSafe tries to prevent.
I have used 1 Apple device in the last 15 years, an iPod shuffle I got as a gift (I shorted it out by sweating near it).
Are other manufacturers doing much better? On my older laptop, the HDD is 2 screws to access. On the laptop my mom used previously, you had to take the CPU fan assembly out after removing the keyboard to get at the HDD.
well let us all be honest here, laptops have always been difficult to repair if at all regardless of manufacturer due to custom parts required just to meet the form factor. Desktops only if your not an all in one design are repairable if that is describable but costs of new hardware being so low its usually for many to just replace the whole machine.
I don't even worry about tablet/phone repair. On my iPhone4 I did replace the back glass a bunch of times and was more happy when they changed to anything but glass backs
I know Kyle from iFixit, and while he does care a lot about the ability of end users to make repairs themselves, he truly also believes in the inherent waste of equipment not being able to be repaired by anyone, and those even slightly-older Apple laptops are absolutely still repairable by Apple as Apple simply stocks those "custom parts required just to meet the form factor" (hence 7/10 dropping to 1/10).
I bought a Mid-2012 in late 2015 partly for this reason. If the hard drive dies, I should be able to swap it out myself. Apple's maximum storage was 1TB when I bought it, but I'll be able to upgrade this machine to a 2TB SSD if I want.
I still miss the 2006 MacBook design though. That made replacing the hard drive, RAM & battery extremely easy to do yourself.
Or just get a Thinkpad or Inspiron where the hdd, DVD drive, wifi card, battery, and ram all just snap into place. Apple has never been good at that, but in return you get a bit more solid (physically) piece of kit.
That's probably the direction I'm going in future. At the moment I need macOS because it's a platform I develop for, but if the Mac market tanks enough that I can drop my Mac lineup, then I'll move back to a Windows / Linux laptop. A large part of my Mac use is in Windows VMs anyway.
This is really an iPad running MacOS, with everything soldered on, zero upgradeability and near-zero repairability. That's the antithesis of a "professional" machine.
I wonder if we'll see a similar trend with the mac pro if Apple doesn't decide to scrap it completely.
We run quite a few mac pros and macbook pros at work, so this has us thinking hard.
At least in the iPad, the "Pro" actually means something. The iPad Pro is more powerful than any laptop by any manufacturer made before 3 years ago. For the same size and weight, you can get a non-Pro iPad Air 2, which is cheaper but lacking in that ridiculous processor and graphics power
The "Pro" iPad, in addition to these considerable spec improvements, also supports their proprietary stylus for graphics professionals.
I think the "Pro" word is not as clear in the Mac line now as it is in the iPad line.
I imagine the majority of professionals that use computers as part of their professional work don't even know what an SSD is or has given any thought to its upgradability.
As long as they can coerce people into buying machines with higher spec than they need right now "just in case", it's good business. I think it's the same thinking that makes them not having an SD card slot.
I think you're vastly overestimating the knowledge of end users. Been working on the IT side of things for the better part of fifteen years. Majority of people clueless, including our entire engineering department. That's why IT exists.
Interesting. At work we get our machines from corporate IT but I know plenty of people who have replaced disks, memory or replaced DVD drives with a second disk. Now that I think of it, I helped all those people, so maybe it's just me.
The user base here, much like many niche places on the internet, is a very unique sampling of individuals. Most people have absolutely no clue about what is going on inside a computer.
I'm not a computer hardware guy, but even I figured out how to add more RAM and a new hard disk to my old Macbook Pro.
That said, I added it last year to my late-2008 Macbook Pro so that I could keep using it for simple stuff at home like browsing HN and watching YouTube.
At work, my professional machines get replaced every few years, so I've never had to monkey with the insides. They're capital assets, and once the depreciation is fully taken, there's no point in holding onto them. We sell them and get new ones.
So the question is, what does it mean to be a "professional" developer?
If you bought it with 1TB already in it, you wouldn't have to upgrade anything. ;)
It would be nice to be able to upgrade, but really, it's not a dealbreaker for me. I really enjoy developing on Mac and I needed to upgrade for my AIr, so I bought a new one of these.
Windows is still lacking on the dev side (though I'm hoping it gets there soon), and Linux isn't quite where I need it to be for my personal stuff.
>If you bought it with 1TB already in it, you wouldn't have to upgrade anything. ;)
You're right; it would just cost an absurd amount of money considering what a 1TB SSD actually goes for. The procedure takes all of ten minutes, well worth it.
I actually can't stand doing real work in OSX, I use Windows. I just like the hardware.
I work at one of the largest game developers in the world, and we regularly update our desktop workstations - with better GPUs, more ram, I've recently had yet another 1TB SSD installed. The 6 core/12 threaded Xeons are good enough and they don't need upgrades, but everything else is a fair game.
Upgradability also includes repairability. If you have a fleet of Dell Latitudes or ThinkPads, for example, you give users a "new" one for a broken one, and you can often repair it by swapping in parts from other broken ones.
SSD upgrades are simple, and you can also upgrade laptops that come with 4GB up to 8, 12, 16 or sometimes 32GB depending on what the user needs.
I do not believe Apple will ever release another expandable/upgradable computer - mobile, laptop, or desktop.
We've accepted that Apple will never have expandable storage on an iOS device, but are still mourning the loss of it in Macs.
The desire for upgradability is driven by cost - either to get around Apple's cost-gate to get a larger RAM/SSD for lower cost, or to avoid Apple's cost-gate to upgrade later rather than buying a new device.
Apple has had great success with the luxury goods model: premium price for the base item, additional premium price tiers for incremental improvements.
There is a lot to be annoyed with on the new MBP, but upgradability has not been a feature for Apple across almost all product types (including "Pro" models), for many years. This is not news. It's not the antithesis of a professional machine just because you say it is.
Personally I have no problems with upgradeability as I tend to use my electronics until their last breath and I have no need and I am too cheap to upgrade. Without any upgradeability it means if something breaks - toss it to the bin. It is not ecological, nor sustainable.
I loath Apple's power bricks - cable torn even though you cared it like a baby? Toss it to the bin. I really hope that they try to fix cables for bricks sent under warranty and sell as refurbished, otherwise it's incredibly wastefull.
They do also say in the article about the Touch ID button: "That button also doubles as the power button, so fixing a power button may be a more costly affair than it once was."
92 comments
[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 165 ms ] threadYou have to carefully planned your MBP configuration, unfortunately SSD upgrade are terribly expensive. An extra 25% of the price to go from 256GB to 1TB.
Actually that's probably fine for a professional machine, as you will be alright with a smaller disk until you replace the MBP anyway. For a power-user machine that you plan to keep several (5+) years, that's another story.
- Battery takes less space, than I thought, just eyeballing it but it seems that in (classic)rMBP battery takes more volume percent-wise.
- Battery is smaller by ~10% than non touch bar model (49.2 Wh vs 54.5 Wh) and significantly smaller than the classic rmbps.
- Two fans, classics had 1.
- Touchbar has speakers speakers under palm rest, and not under grills, thus it has slits on the bottom whereas the non-touchbar has not.
- Visually speakers are bigger in the non touch bar version
- Touchbar has ssd soldered and non-touch bar - removable ssd
- Touchbar has more gaps and unused volume - mainly in battery area.
Maybe there will be major reconstruction inside rMBP13 next year? Just like 2012 vs 2013 rMBP13? 2012 model was a mess (by Apple standards) inside.
Like the comment in iFixit, maybe rMBP13 was not designed for touchbar in the first place? It was decided later to make it?
Of course, the crux is that if the video does not get popular you'll just be yet another fool who wasted a bunch of money doing something stupid.
That would be quite the battery. Really, it's 49.2 Wh and 54.5 Wh, not kWh.
but they gave us this useless touch screen.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12826005
Apple finally decided with this round of macbooks to shift from producing laptops into content consumption appliances like iPhone. Next step of this internal plan involves processors.
That's still quite a hyperbole isn't it?
Is 40Gbps Thunderbolt 3 for content consumption? Is 3.1/2.1Gbps SSD for content consumption? Edit: Is a super accurate and wide color gamut screen for content consumption?
"Next step of this internal plan involves processors."
What exactly are you alluding to here? Apple designing its own processor? x86 or ARM? Do you think Apple will go through another architecture switch on macOS?
Laptops are going to become even more integrated. That's just physics. Long, wide traces are not good for either power consumption or bandwidth.
But how that will manifest in future MacBooks is hard to say. They could still go for off-the-shelf components and packages (probably Intel will start to deliver processors with stacked or silicon interposer bonded RAM). But it would make some sense for them to design their own processors. Though Intel is still really far ahead in semiconductor process and processor architecture. I'm not sure they can come close enough to justify it.
Considering that using USB3 bandwidth disables WiFi[1], yes.
[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYVjIjBMx6o
Have you considered that there could be a hardware- or software issue causing this that could be fixed later on?
If it's a laptop which includes features which is WAY beyond the requirements of your average consumer, and with the price to boot, it's not a consumer laptop.
Maybe the specs don't quite match certain specific professional users requirements. Maybe certain features are broken. Maybe there are flaws in the product.
Those issues can be addressed on their own.
You don't have to tie it to some misguided idea that Apple is making it with the intent of content consumption.
That people have to attach their critique to some far-fetched speculation about Apples motivations signals that they may not think the critique can stand on its own. Which is a shame, because often it can.
I wouldn't go that far, but I would say for a company that likes to shout so loudly about environmental waste they sure like to make disposable unmaintainable devices these days.
http://www.apple.com/uk/recycling/
Just because your prediction/information turned out to be correct does not mean that your comment was useful at the time. Why would anybody trust information left in a random HN comment by somebody that isn't even going to attempt to explain their source or reasoning?
https://9to5mac.com/2016/11/15/2016-macbook-pro-non-removabl...
if this is really a compromise to hit some weight target I will have to join the "Apple don't care about the Pros anymore" camp...
https://www.cnet.com/uk/news/macbook-pro-october-2016-batter...
Decisions for the sake of making decisions.
Steve Jobs revolutionized many industries -- music, mobile, laptops, animation and so on… he wanted to revolutionize education as well. That aim was best served with the original 9" tablet iPad. It stoked the way kids and kids-in-adults would consume content -- learn / read / watch videos before going to bed/sleep or in the classroom.
A slate-like form functionally draws a better parallel to the stone slates we used to have in schools back in the day! iPad Mini on the other hand makes people lose their focus from the original intent of the product i.e. revolution of education. It does fit the palm but doesn't help the cause at all.
iPad proper is easy to tap/touch, carry, flip pages on: more or less like an evolved form of Kindle but a lot more (also the reason why iPad Air still does better than the rest). We already know to whom this product appeals the most. Another reason why Jobs was dead against letting in the porn usecase on the iPad was because he wanted to start with children on board -- again to push for revolutionizing education. Child-safe and all that.
This CEO has failed that goal objectively.
Tim (and his team) don't even know what they want -- their launches signal that they have nothing on their minds except making more money in the name of some marketing revolution. And when something will do well they will surely hide behind that success (like the touchbar MBP) because really deep within they are running blind. Apple will continue to introduce more product lines to open up additional revenue streams and that is all there is to it.
My 2 cents/opinion: Tim Cook, with all due respect, is just a salesman. He thinks revolutionary products are about tech, design, form and function whereas those are merely a few vectors that lead to a revolution but not the revolution itself. I don't think their heart or mind is in the right place.
I do not understand how they are stepping on the same thing like 20+ years ago - they have too many versions for the same type of device.
They have different names for it: Pro, SE, S, Plus, Air, mini. And it's inconsistent, e.g. ipad Air is not the smallest ipad, where does SE stack in current Apple naming?
They add colors to mix all this (not to mention gazillion bands for watches).
They do not transition their mobile tech to usb-c which creates miserable dongle-gate within their own hardware ecosystem. Maybe can someone give a reason why they are still sticking with lightning? Even using it for their pencil, new mouse, new trackpad and new keyboard.
Apple has much better name and consistency than most hardware manufacturers, but it's getting so confusing than it used to be[0]. I understand there are more products today, but I guess all of them can be delivered in Pro and consumer versions with consistent peripherals so when people spend couple of thousand bucks on your products they do not need to go back to the store and spend another hundred to dongle up.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iTNWZF2m3o
It even makes other decisions, like USB-C on the new macbook line look stupid because now you can't defend that by saying they're just trying to move everything to one standard because Apple themselves are fragmenting the standards.
I have constantly had problems with the MagSafe adapter and am glad to see it go. If you're working on a table at a coffee shop and have papers next to your 15" rMBP, the cord hangs over the edge and doesn't stay on after a few months of adapter use. A new adapter fixes the problem.
I've had laptops, Thinkpads from 1999 to 2011, and I have never had a problem that the MagSafe tries to prevent.
This is my main reason to stop buying Apple hardware, not so much the lack of an Esc key. The Mid 2012 model still scored 7 / 10.
Are other manufacturers doing much better? On my older laptop, the HDD is 2 screws to access. On the laptop my mom used previously, you had to take the CPU fan assembly out after removing the keyboard to get at the HDD.
I don't even worry about tablet/phone repair. On my iPhone4 I did replace the back glass a bunch of times and was more happy when they changed to anything but glass backs
I still miss the 2006 MacBook design though. That made replacing the hard drive, RAM & battery extremely easy to do yourself.
I wonder if we'll see a similar trend with the mac pro if Apple doesn't decide to scrap it completely.
We run quite a few mac pros and macbook pros at work, so this has us thinking hard.
The "Pro" iPad, in addition to these considerable spec improvements, also supports their proprietary stylus for graphics professionals.
I think the "Pro" word is not as clear in the Mac line now as it is in the iPad line.
That said, I added it last year to my late-2008 Macbook Pro so that I could keep using it for simple stuff at home like browsing HN and watching YouTube.
At work, my professional machines get replaced every few years, so I've never had to monkey with the insides. They're capital assets, and once the depreciation is fully taken, there's no point in holding onto them. We sell them and get new ones.
So the question is, what does it mean to be a "professional" developer?
It would be nice to be able to upgrade, but really, it's not a dealbreaker for me. I really enjoy developing on Mac and I needed to upgrade for my AIr, so I bought a new one of these.
Windows is still lacking on the dev side (though I'm hoping it gets there soon), and Linux isn't quite where I need it to be for my personal stuff.
You're right; it would just cost an absurd amount of money considering what a 1TB SSD actually goes for. The procedure takes all of ten minutes, well worth it.
I actually can't stand doing real work in OSX, I use Windows. I just like the hardware.
Upgradability also includes repairability. If you have a fleet of Dell Latitudes or ThinkPads, for example, you give users a "new" one for a broken one, and you can often repair it by swapping in parts from other broken ones.
SSD upgrades are simple, and you can also upgrade laptops that come with 4GB up to 8, 12, 16 or sometimes 32GB depending on what the user needs.
We've accepted that Apple will never have expandable storage on an iOS device, but are still mourning the loss of it in Macs.
The desire for upgradability is driven by cost - either to get around Apple's cost-gate to get a larger RAM/SSD for lower cost, or to avoid Apple's cost-gate to upgrade later rather than buying a new device.
Apple has had great success with the luxury goods model: premium price for the base item, additional premium price tiers for incremental improvements.
I loath Apple's power bricks - cable torn even though you cared it like a baby? Toss it to the bin. I really hope that they try to fix cables for bricks sent under warranty and sell as refurbished, otherwise it's incredibly wastefull.
> How do you do a power rest if the machine hangs? Before you held down the power button for a few seconds. Would that work with a touch ID button?
Any ideas?
And the power button on the laptops has been part of the keyboard for years now.
https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Pro+15-Inch+Unibody+...