Apple keeps taking things away for the sake of thinness. No DVD Drive, no SD card reader, no ethernet port and no mag safe power connector. Everything is for the least expensive manufacturing cost. The customers have no flexibility in future upgrades of RAM Hard Drive or battery. I am sure the price will still be a premium despite the lack of equipment Apple used to offer. If this is the future of the Macbook Pro then I will not be getting a new MBP ever. No real innovation here just elimination of ports and devices we used to get.
You forgot: No 5.25" floppy drive, then no floppy drive at all, no PC card slot, no full-size DVI, no VGA, no serial port, and no CRT displays. There was whining, but five years down the line, nobody questioned Apple's judgement.
Oh yes Apple's judgement was questioned. They just don't listen to their customers. Why do you think their marketshare in PC sales have not soared. Apple is just too pretentious and arrogant to listen to customers.
You forgot: No 5.25" floppy drive, then no floppy drive at all, no PC card slot, no full-size DVI, no VGA, no serial port, and no CRT displays. There was whining, but five years down the line, nobody questioned Apple's judgement.
Oh yes Apple's judgement was questioned. They just don't listen to their customers. Why do you think their marketshare in PC sales have not soared. Apple is just too pretentious and arrogant to listen to customers.
You're being sarcastic, aren't you.
No, FIVE YEARS DOWN THE LINE, nobody questioned whether it was a good idea to remove the modem.
And yup, their marketshare in PC sales has steadily increased over the past 15 years. And their profit share is ludicrously high.
Obviously, while Apple doesn't listen to customers, the customers are listening to Apple.
To me, USB-C is an advantage, but ONLY USB-C is a major disadvantage... Why can't Apple give us USB-C (I know I'd buy USB-C/TB3 peripherals going forward, and I'm a likely customer for a dock or a monitor/dock), but also a legacy USB 3.0 port for other people's flash drives (I'm happy to buy the double-ended kind for my own use, but don't want to have to say "I can't read that because it isn't double-ended", or give people expensive double-ended drives with photo shoots on them), an HDMI port for projectors without a dongle and maybe an SD reader or an old-style Thunderbolt port, since the adapter for Thunderbolt is $100, active and seems to have compatibility issues).
The machine I'm interested in is the 15" - I suspect that many design decisions will be the same between the two, but some may not be (the 15" may retain a port or two that the 13" loses, and the 15" may NEED to maintain MagSafe - I'm not sure you can pump enough power to run the 15" through one USB-C port)?
My other two concerns about the renders and the leaked case are whether it means we're stuck with the MacBook keyboard and whether thinner and lighter means less powerful? I actually really like the OLED strip, and I hope our friends at Adobe support it - they are the current holders of the "most absurd keyboard shortcuts" award!
Just because the keyboard is a butterfly design doesn't mean that it's the MacBook keyboard... Some sources also list the new "magic keyboard" that comes with current iMacs as a butterfly, and that's a great keyboard (no, it's not mechanical, but it's as good as anything that will fit in a reasonably sized laptop - I don't consider MSI's or Lenovo's mechanical-keyboard behemoths "reasonable"). It would certainly be possible to design a nice-feeling butterfly keyboard with an extra millimeter or two of travel. If it IS the MacBook keyboard, that may well be a deal-breaker for me - why put a compromised keyboard from a 12" ultralight in a 15" workstation? Unfortunately, Apple's done it before - until the Unibody series, the keyboard in ALL MacBook Pros was the one from the last generation of aluminum PowerBooks, and its major design criterion was "has to fit in the 12" PowerBook". Even the 17" used that 12" keyboard (surrounded by absurdly large grilles).
If it's significantly thinner and lighter, it may move down the power curve... Could the 15" get stuck with the 28-watt dual-core processor? Could the 13" end up with 15-watt processors? Could discrete GPUs go away? I'm not interested in a dual-core machine (the old quad-core Haswell will be much faster), and it would take a lot to convince me to forego a discrete GPU...
Even to get me to accept a port-limited design (instead of buying the previous model on clearance), it would need to have a significant advantage or two, beyond Skylake and the OLED strip. A 4K or wide-gamut display would do it, as would the availability of 32 GB of RAM or a 2 TB SSD. If it was not only severely port-limited, but lacked a discrete GPU, it would probably have to have more than one of those advantages. A dual-core 15" would be a deal-breaker, no matter what its other specs were, and the MacBook keyboard Is probably in the same category.
Just because the keyboard is a butterfly design doesn't mean that it's the MacBook keyboard... Some sources also list the new "magic keyboard" that comes with current iMacs as a butterfly, and that's a great keyboard (no, it's not mechanical, but it's as good as anything that will fit in a reasonably sized laptop - I don't consider MSI's or Lenovo's mechanical-keyboard behemoths "reasonable"). It would certainly be possible to design a nice-feeling butterfly keyboard with an extra millimeter or two of travel. If it IS the MacBook keyboard, that may well be a deal-breaker for me - why put a compromised keyboard from a 12" ultralight in a 15" workstation?
"For Magic Keyboard, we reengineered the scissor mechanism to increase key stability by 33 percent and optimized key travel. Together with a new lower profile, these improvements make typing with comfort and precision a breeze."
"Spoiler alert: no butterfly keys in this net, just Apple's fancy new scissor mechanism."
The connection points for the levers for butterfly are in the middle of the keys but scissor ones are at the edges of the keys so I reckon a switch to butterfly would have to lower the height significantly. However, given that they improved the scissor mechanism on the Magic Keyboard, they can go this route for the MBP too. On the other hand, one of the reasons they lowered the key height is to stop the keyboard backlight leaking out the edges of the keys so that the keys look like this:
instead of this:
If it's significantly thinner and lighter, it may move down the power curve... Could the 15" get stuck with the 28-watt dual-core processor? Could the 13" end up with 15-watt processors? Could discrete GPUs go away? I'm not interested in a dual-core machine (the old quad-core Haswell will be much faster), and it would take a lot to convince me to forego a discrete GPU...
Even to get me to accept a port-limited design (instead of buying the previous model on clearance), it would need to have a significant advantage or two, beyond Skylake and the OLED strip. A 4K or wide-gamut display would do it, as would the availability of 32 GB of RAM or a 2 TB SSD. If it was not only severely port-limited, but lacked a discrete GPU, it would probably have to have more than one of those advantages. A dual-core 15" would be a deal-breaker, no matter what its other specs were, and the MacBook keyboard Is probably in the same category.
The 15" wouldn't be worth the price if it moved down to a 28W dual-core. I'd expect the following to be used:
It says it's already available but it doesn't seem to be used by any manufacturers yet. It supports up to 64GB DDR4. Given that the RAM is soldered, I don't expect Apple to offer over 32GB, they might even top out at 24GB. The integrated graphics this chip has is just above the dedicated Radeon R9 M370X in the latest MBP:
They could switch to integrated completely if they wanted to but Polaris/Pascal should be able to offer somewhere between 960M-970M performance in the power limits Apple uses for dedicated GPUs. Typically they'd be 50-100% faster than the integrated graphics.
Overall, I think it would be a nice update:
+ larger trackpad - possible change to Macbook keyboard so less key travel although nicer backlight and more stable keys + new hinge, no black plastic, logo change to shiny rather than illuminated + 4x TB3 USB-C ports - SD card slot could be removed - no mag-safe + faster GPUs, dedicated would be significant improvement + slightly thinner form factor + possibly extra battery life by eliminating ports and using stacked batteries + possible space grey option + touch bar, maybe touch id + DDR4, possibility of offering more than 16GB RAM
but they are bulking them out. The MBP will need an improvement to the chip density. Hopefully the SSD prices will at least drop a bit if the storage doesn't increase.
+ larger trackpad - possible change to Macbook keyboard so less key travel although nicer backlight and more stable keys + new hinge, no black plastic, logo change to shiny rather than illuminated + 4x TB3 USB-C ports - SD card slot could be removed - no mag-safe + faster GPUs, dedicated would be significant improvement + slightly thinner form factor + possibly extra battery life by eliminating ports and using stacked batteries + possible space grey option + touch bar, maybe touch id + DDR4, possibility offering than 16GB RAM
You forgot + Lightning for native headphone compatibility. ;-)
... appear to support recent predictions that Apple is planning to drastically revamp the laptop's design by adding an OLED touch bar ..
So how could Apple then add an OLED touch bar to the desktop Mac lines? I think it would need to be built into the Magic Keyboard.
So, maybe, if Apple really wanted to differentiate the iMac from the Mac Pro, there might be two keyboards: - Magic Keyboard (with standard <esc>, eject, and function keys in the top row), and - Magic Keyboard Pro (with the OLED touch bar for configurable actions and Siri waveform display etc.
But then, if the OLED touch bar includes a TouchID sensor, the iMac wouldn't have TouchID capability. Thus, I think Apple would want to ship the OLED touch bar keyboard with all Macs. Remember - Apple wants to expand TouchID and Apple Pay to OS X, so the more TouchID Macs the better.
Comments
No, FIVE YEARS DOWN THE LINE, nobody questioned whether it was a good idea to remove the modem.
And yup, their marketshare in PC sales has steadily increased over the past 15 years. And their profit share is ludicrously high.
Obviously, while Apple doesn't listen to customers, the customers are listening to Apple.
The machine I'm interested in is the 15" - I suspect that many design decisions will be the same between the two, but some may not be (the 15" may retain a port or two that the 13" loses, and the 15" may NEED to maintain MagSafe - I'm not sure you can pump enough power to run the 15" through one USB-C port)?
My other two concerns about the renders and the leaked case are whether it means we're stuck with the MacBook keyboard and whether thinner and lighter means less powerful? I actually really like the OLED strip, and I hope our friends at Adobe support it - they are the current holders of the "most absurd keyboard shortcuts" award!
Just because the keyboard is a butterfly design doesn't mean that it's the MacBook keyboard... Some sources also list the new "magic keyboard" that comes with current iMacs as a butterfly, and that's a great keyboard (no, it's not mechanical, but it's as good as anything that will fit in a reasonably sized laptop - I don't consider MSI's or Lenovo's mechanical-keyboard behemoths "reasonable"). It would certainly be possible to design a nice-feeling butterfly keyboard with an extra millimeter or two of travel. If it IS the MacBook keyboard, that may well be a deal-breaker for me - why put a compromised keyboard from a 12" ultralight in a 15" workstation? Unfortunately, Apple's done it before - until the Unibody series, the keyboard in ALL MacBook Pros was the one from the last generation of aluminum PowerBooks, and its major design criterion was "has to fit in the 12" PowerBook". Even the 17" used that 12" keyboard (surrounded by absurdly large grilles).
If it's significantly thinner and lighter, it may move down the power curve... Could the 15" get stuck with the 28-watt dual-core processor? Could the 13" end up with 15-watt processors? Could discrete GPUs go away? I'm not interested in a dual-core machine (the old quad-core Haswell will be much faster), and it would take a lot to convince me to forego a discrete GPU...
Even to get me to accept a port-limited design (instead of buying the previous model on clearance), it would need to have a significant advantage or two, beyond Skylake and the OLED strip. A 4K or wide-gamut display would do it, as would the availability of 32 GB of RAM or a 2 TB SSD. If it was not only severely port-limited, but lacked a discrete GPU, it would probably have to have more than one of those advantages. A dual-core 15" would be a deal-breaker, no matter what its other specs were, and the MacBook keyboard Is probably in the same category.
"For Magic Keyboard, we reengineered the scissor mechanism to increase key stability by 33 percent and optimized key travel. Together with a new lower profile, these improvements make typing with comfort and precision a breeze."
https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Magic+Keyboard+Teardown/50995
"Spoiler alert: no butterfly keys in this net, just Apple's fancy new scissor mechanism."
The connection points for the levers for butterfly are in the middle of the keys but scissor ones are at the edges of the keys so I reckon a switch to butterfly would have to lower the height significantly. However, given that they improved the scissor mechanism on the Magic Keyboard, they can go this route for the MBP too. On the other hand, one of the reasons they lowered the key height is to stop the keyboard backlight leaking out the edges of the keys so that the keys look like this:
instead of this:
The 15" wouldn't be worth the price if it moved down to a 28W dual-core. I'd expect the following to be used:
http://ark.intel.com/products/93340/Intel-Core-i7-6870HQ-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-3_60-GHz
It says it's already available but it doesn't seem to be used by any manufacturers yet. It supports up to 64GB DDR4. Given that the RAM is soldered, I don't expect Apple to offer over 32GB, they might even top out at 24GB. The integrated graphics this chip has is just above the dedicated Radeon R9 M370X in the latest MBP:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Iris-Pro-Graphics-580.160664.0.html
They could switch to integrated completely if they wanted to but Polaris/Pascal should be able to offer somewhere between 960M-970M performance in the power limits Apple uses for dedicated GPUs. Typically they'd be 50-100% faster than the integrated graphics.
Overall, I think it would be a nice update:
+ larger trackpad
- possible change to Macbook keyboard so less key travel although nicer backlight and more stable keys
+ new hinge, no black plastic, logo change to shiny rather than illuminated
+ 4x TB3 USB-C ports
- SD card slot could be removed
- no mag-safe
+ faster GPUs, dedicated would be significant improvement
+ slightly thinner form factor
+ possibly extra battery life by eliminating ports and using stacked batteries
+ possible space grey option
+ touch bar, maybe touch id
+ DDR4, possibility of offering more than 16GB RAM
OWC offers larger SSDs up to 4TB:
https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/Aura-for-Mac-Pro/
but they are bulking them out. The MBP will need an improvement to the chip density. Hopefully the SSD prices will at least drop a bit if the storage doesn't increase.
15" MacBooks Pro have traditionally used 80W power supplies (the 13" models only need 60W supplies, and the Airs 45W, IIRC).
power via USB-C should be fine.
I think it would need to be built into the Magic Keyboard.
So, maybe, if Apple really wanted to differentiate the iMac from the Mac Pro, there might be two keyboards:
- Magic Keyboard (with standard <esc>, eject, and function keys in the top row), and
- Magic Keyboard Pro (with the OLED touch bar for configurable actions and Siri waveform display etc.
But then, if the OLED touch bar includes a TouchID sensor, the iMac wouldn't have TouchID capability.
Thus, I think Apple would want to ship the OLED touch bar keyboard with all Macs.
Remember - Apple wants to expand TouchID and Apple Pay to OS X, so the more TouchID Macs the better.