I am a computer professional. I never even considered using the low end MacBook. I imagine all other professionals also disregarded it. So, I don't think this is a reasonable argument. Now that the second generation is being used on a computer for professionals, professionals will start noticing the flaws and voicing their complaints.
It's incredible to me that MacBooks are considered professional-grade hardware in the silicon valley hivemind, between crippled functionality thanks to the form-over-function design and outright defectivity as described in this article.
People assume that everyone who uses a Mac is running Photoshop or developing advanced AI but they're not. There are a lot of professionals using Apple products but they avoid the low end like the plague. Apple is a lifestyle brand these days and much of the user base has no demand for anything beyond the core Apple Apps.
The Macbook Core i3 is barely enough to run Safari or iTunes and Apple could probably replace the CPU without many of those users ever noticing.
Can you explain a bit further? MacBooks have always been premium laptops. Are you saying low end laptops are able to serve basic needs better than a few years ago? I agree with that, and take it to be a sign of a mature market, not a failing of Apple's.
The claim that the new macbook will have issues with day to day performance is insane.
I run a browser with 20 tabs, linux VM in the background, and webpack and gulp in the background. I do all this on 8GB ram on a macbook from 2012 and it runs fast and smoothly, even with up to 4 hours of battery life. I can't imagine the new one would be less performant in any way.
It's completely understandable that now they can optimize for other things, since performance is generally a nonissue now.
Apple is not blaming anything. They've designed a computer for a purpose instead of pumping specs and numbers to gratify a bunch of vocal geeks. I'd rather much trust in Apple's design than a collaboratively designed PC by technical dilettantes with maximum performance everything. It's not just a about specs, especially in a laptop. Versatility, weight, battery, ease of use. These all come into play aside from raw technical component power.
I didn't state that other laptops beat the shit out of a specced MacBook (though I am sure they exist). If I need performance, I will use a workstation or a server, they pack Xeon CPUs, CUDA-capable GPUs, etc. Moreover, their CPUs don't throttle under high load. For me, using a Mac for high-performance computing is a long-passed station.
My criticism was that MacBooks have become bad laptops for their price. They have a limited number of ports with USB-C, which is not well-supported yet. They keyboard has serious problems, which I don't assume to be a fluke, since I know multiple persons with stuck keys. They are not expandable. And macOS has regressed quite a bit in the last few years. Some of these problems are acceptable in isolation, but regressions are piling up.
Then there is crap like that the first generation of Apple's USB-C multi port adapters didn't actually support USB-3.0 transfer speeds, but contain a USB 2.0 hub. Back then I dropped 160 Euro on two adapters (this was before the MBP 2016-related price drop) to use my MacBook with existing screens, projectors, and USB devices. They give you a whole lot of crap about the transfer speeds, but sell you USB 2.0 adapters (!).
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Again, I have been a Mac user for 10 years. In that time I probably bought 5 or 6 Macs, since for some time I used both a Mac Mini and a MacBook. For may years, they were so far ahead of the competition, it was not even funny (excellent suspend support in 2007, MagSafe, battery indicator LEDs, OS X was simply better). I was a strongly advocating Macs among friends and family. Unfortunately, I just can't do that anymore. The risk is too big that they get a flawed keyboard or that they are too frustrated with the 1/2/4 USB-C ports.
I still find it interesting that IT professionals are such "i-Sheeps". I mean Apple software is awesome, macOS, useful functions of Preview like adding a signature or notes to pdf, many other apps are polished and feel nice - but does it really give you an actual production improvements? I doubt it.
And HW is sooo bad in contrast. It looks like a toy. Overheating, it's either too hot (so some had to drill holes at the bottom), or cold to touch if powered off, pain to use due to bad ergonomics, hard corners, stupid ideas like touchbar, too tiny key travel, no upgradabity (RAM soldered), battery glued. Many decisions made just for the "keynote marketing show", to make it thinner again, one or two ports because wireless revution (like XDR monitors over WiFi?!). Overpriced slow and throttling CPU, every model looks almost the same, aluminium casing easy to bend, scratch, make dents.
Are you really purchasing those overpriced SSDs direct from Apple? Do you know you can easily buy and replace SSD? I even replaced the screen on my HP Elitebook G6 easily to get better sRGB coverage.
And then I see people saying "you can get used to it". Get used to dongles and lack of ports. Really, why would I need to get used to some bad design decisions on such an expensive machine, doesn't make sense to me.
Maybe they like CMD+C shortcut in the terminal. Ok... But something like that is possible on Linux too with Autokey and two lines of Python code to detect a terminal window (I use it myself). And I guess similar hotkey app can be set up on Windows.
I am sorry but I can't help myself. I see Macbooks more like a fashion item for not very technical people than the professional hardware.
> I don't get the people who go buy a MB knowing that they need more ports and better performance
The problem is that Apple are selling MBs as the evolution of MBAs (which will never get a Retina upgrade etc etc), when they are clearly in a different category. The MB is overall less powerful and flexible than the MBA was, so a large segment of people "upgrading" is naturally disappointed.
> it's a perfect machine for browsing Internet and Word work on the go
It's a very expensive machine for browsing and Word. The market is literally full of alternatives "for browsing and Word" with same or better specs and better price points. Where the MBA was indisputably the best "thin all-use laptop", the MB is basically an expensive Chromebook with an Apple logo.
What people tend to not realize is that Apple has flagship models (iMac, MacBook, MacBook Pro) and secondary models (MacBook Air, Mac mini, Mac Pro).
The flagship models used to be upgraded as technology came available, but are now typically upgraded yearly. There's a suspicion that Apple held back the hardware refresh from WWDC partially because they weren't ready w.r.t. the keyboard repair program announced today.
MacBook Air is a zombie. I believe they want to kill it, but the retina MacBook is too expensive to replace it, and it sells extremely well (at high margins).
The Mac mini is a zombie, or perhaps a bit of a square peg. It was meant as the desktop switcher computer, where you plug in your old PC K/V/M and go. Then it kinda sorta rebranded to be upgradable as a server circa 2012 (with products like xServe discontinued), before actually losing those higher end upgrade options in 2013. I think most people don't expect it to be usable as a pro desktop, but Apple has a huge gap there since their desktop focus is on the All-in-One iMac. So like the MacBook Air, the focus is on low cost and good margins, not technology.
The Mac Pro they simply didn't predict the market well enough on. The GPU-heavy design they were going for and external peripherals might actually fly if it was coming out today, but general purpose computing didn't embrace using multithreading or OpenCL for getting better performance. So, the ability to use the power of the machine was a bit hit-or-miss depending on the application you were using. Worse, the thermal profile both had a max amount of power and required an even distribution of heat. GPU processing power and power consumption has scaled up due to the highly parallel nature, while Intel's power consumption has stayed relatively the same. The design didn't allow for them to swap out components for the newer ones that hit the market after release.
iMac Pro is relatively new and likely a specialty product, although I imagine Apple to take it seriously. So probably not a predictable once-per-year release schedule, but I don't see a reason for that design to get silently shelved and the line to stagnate.
I don't understand what you are "disagreeing" on. What OP is saying: The new Macbooks are very expensive, and it has quality issues (keyboard). Neither is it user serviceable. Most of the product line is also out of date.
It's not about performance, which in the terms of Apple's latest hardware (that is, only part of their product line) is perfectly fine. Yes, a specced Macbook is fast, but that does not relate to anything by OP.
They aren't really usable in any meaningful way. Those low-end models get bought by people that mostly use them as Netflix/Facebook machines. I'm really not kidding about this; I have seen it with my own eyes. I have a friend who has a MacBook for the 2015 era, and I have only ever seen him use it to watch movies, the most tabs I have seen him use are maybe 5 and the most apps he ever used at once is probably 5 too, and just because he forgot to quit the torrent video player client I put there or something like that. It's all about prestige for social status. This is precisely why Apple can get away from selling hardware so compromised.
I told him many times that he could have gotten a computer at one third the price that would have done essentially the same thing just as well, but he doesn't believe it. He thinks Apple is obviously better and obviously longer. Even though I'm tech geek using Apple hardware before he even knew Apple existed. He also has a fetish for Apple cables and chargers, because somehow, they are the only ones who know how to build those things (not that they are bad per se, but there are better options at half the price...).
It's really a lot like a religion or some sort of cult at this point. Unsurprisingly this guy has a lot of beliefs about many things; true Apple fanboys are very often like that.
As far as I'm concerned, Apple stuff is pretty good but the pricing just doesn't make sense, especially nowadays considering of the locked everything down...
None of the complainers seem to be able to say exactly WHY the new MacBooks are bad.
• They complain about performance when they're the fastest MacBooks ever, surpassing many competitors and with a very good battery charge-to-perforamce ratio, not to mention the best display ever on a MacBook.
• They complain about needing "5 dongles" when you need at most 1 USB/USB-C adapter + sometimes a multiport hub or dock, for almost any use case.
• That one guy keeps calling it an emoji keyboard, when there aren't any emoji on the keyboard.
• They complain of not being able to touch-type when the physical keyboard is still there.
• They complain about noise when these are the quietest MacBook Pros ever, and without willing to show what they're comparing it with.
• They say Apple is losing favor with customers when the new MacBooks have outsold everything and Apple has continued to top rankings and stock prices.
So yeah. I have the thing in my hands, and I use it daily, and there really hasn't been a better MacBook before. I DO concede that they may be priced a bit too steeply.
Meanwhile I only see complaints from people who have clearly never even used the things! It's pretty obvious with their "emoji keyboard" and "dongles everywhere" hyperbole, like going back to the old "Micro$oft" and "Windoze" days.
So of course I have to wonder and ask: By WHAT metric are they bad? I can only chalk it down to a concentrated anti-PR effort, or some desperate brand envy (e.g. adamantly putting the blame for LG's monitors — that have now been fixed, by the way — on Apple.)
I’d be willing to bet a big part of the base that buy the MacBook pros are the creatives. Most consumer consumers are happy with iPhones and iPads.
As someone who was a massive fan of Apple MacBooks and recommended them to other people, I don’t do that now. I highly unrecommend them nowadays. I’ve personally in fact bought older second MacBooks since they last longer and work better than the new ones.
So it slowly adds up. Microsoft surface is already making a good dent in what was a loyal Mac Pro market.
If a company doesn’t care about a product, they put minimum effort into it. They don’t spend time and effort on new features and redesigns. They don’t come out with a completely new body, new super low profile keyboard, new cutting edge interfaces and a completely new unique customisable touchscreen key strip using an embedded processor. All of these required the dedication of considerable design and engineering resources.
I’m not even saying these were all good ideas. The keyboard has serious reliability issues, a lot of people dislike the touchscreen key strip and there are frequent complaints about the limited number and type of ports.
You can make an argument that Apple isn’t making laptops suitable for real pro users, that the effort they are putting in is misdirected, but IMHO arguing that any of this is due to a lack of interest seems to me to be ridiculous. Apple put a ton of work into these laptops, but they missed the mark.
One possible reason for this is that the composition of their customer is changing, its broadening beyond their traditional loyal fan base. The evidence for this is that MacBook Pro sales are through the roof. These much maligned devices ‘unsuitable for pro use’ are selling like hot cakes. So maybe Apple is hitting the mark, it’s just not the mark their critics think it should be.
I think what this kind of articles are missing out is Apple usually sacrifices something for something else.
For example, the MacBook Air sacrifices performance for extreme portability and decent battery life. The first retina MacBook Pro bets heavily on high-DPI screen for the first time ever in computers, but less connectors and no DVD. It was risky bets, but a vision was behind. This generation of MacBook Pro asks for a lot as sacrifices (CPU almost already a generation behind, no legacy ports, no SD card, limited RAM, no battery life improvement, ifixit scores lowered, no magsafe, no Nvidia GPU, no screen DPI improvement, etc.) for nothing substantial or exciting. I think that's the reason people are complaining loudly, and I think for the first time in the past 10-year MacBook history, it's fair.
Apple doesn’t make a mobile workstation. They make a Pro version of the MacBook.
Take a MacBook, give it some more power, and you mostly have a MacBook Pro.
If the complaint is why doesn’t Apple make a high-end mobile workstation I'm guessing because the market isn’t there for it? At least not at the scale for Apple to touch it?
A lot of professionals end up being serviced just fine by a “Pro MacBook”. I don’t get this obsession with acting like Apple is doing something wrong by making the MacBook Pro a pro version of the MacBook instead of something like a Dell Precision, they’re two very different things with two very different markets.
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