"It was Apple who complicated things by pursuing its silly ‘thin at all costs’ mantra which undermined a generation of Macbooks. Now, with the new MacBook Pro, they are back on track"
There is far from universal consensus on this. I personally liked thin-and-light at all costs. It pushed technologies farther than they would have been if thick-and-fat were the go to standard. Did Apple go too far, maybe? But I remember the old days of thick, fat, and heavy laptops. No thanks. I can fit my 13" MBP into a folio designed for a notepad. That's what I want.
There pretty much is consensus about that, especially with the Pro models. It's great for you that you have another Mac, for me this would be totally impracticable. There're a lot of different needs amongst pros and Apple has pretty much failed all of them and only catered to the needs of a few photgraphers and musicians. There's a reason why there was a lot of speculation about a completely new design with true Pro genes in a larger form factor.
Making the pros as thin as possible is truly self-inflicted damage and people half rightfully scalded Apple for that; the lack of expendability, the abysmal keyboard, the thermal problems, the lack of escape key, the hard requirement to have a boatload of dongles on you, the unergonomic mirror screen.
Apple is truly lucky that other companies are sucking so much in usability department, that switching is often not a real option: a lot of people are sticking with Apple despite their crappy hardware, not because of it. It makes me sad, that my most usable laptop here is still my 2011 MBP 17"; luckily I still have it here because otherwise the 9d it took to repair the shitty keyboard on my 2017 MBP 15" would have been an even harder hit.
Where is Apple going? I forget where I read it (maybe Reuters or CNBC?) but it was solid opinion piece espousing the theory that, now with Jony Ives gone, Apple is returning to prioritizing functionality over slick design.
That sounds reasonable to me: Lighten up on their obsession with thin and light at all costs and focus a little more on making the user experience a good one.
Where is Apple going? I forget where I read it (maybe Reuters or CNBC?) but it was solid opinion piece espousing the theory that, now with Jony Ives gone, Apple is returning to prioritizing functionality over slick design.
That sounds reasonable to me: Lighten up on their obsession with thin and light at all costs and focus a little more on making the user experience a good one.
I'd say thanks to Jony we've had both during his tenure and that probably explains why my AAPL is thirty six times the value I bought at.
"It was Apple who complicated things by pursuing its silly ‘thin at all costs’ mantra which undermined a generation of Macbooks. Now, with the new MacBook Pro, they are back on track"
There is far from universal consensus on this. I personally liked thin-and-light at all costs. It pushed technologies farther than they would have been if thick-and-fat were the go to standard. Did Apple go too far, maybe? But I remember the old days of thick, fat, and heavy laptops. No thanks. I can fit my 13" MBP into a folio designed for a notepad. That's what I want.
There pretty much is consensus about that, especially with the Pro models. It's great for you that you have another Mac, for me this would be totally impracticable. There're a lot of different needs amongst pros and Apple has pretty much failed all of them and only catered to the needs of a few photgraphers and musicians. There's a reason why there was a lot of speculation about a completely new design with true Pro genes in a larger form factor.
Making the pros as thin as possible is truly self-inflicted damage and people half rightfully scalded Apple for that; the lack of expendability, the abysmal keyboard, the thermal problems, the lack of escape key, the hard requirement to have a boatload of dongles on you, the unergonomic mirror screen.
Apple is truly lucky that other companies are sucking so much in usability department, that switching is often not a real option: a lot of people are sticking with Apple despite their crappy hardware, not because of it. It makes me sad, that my most usable laptop here is still my 2011 MBP 17"; luckily I still have it here because otherwise the 9d it took to repair the shitty keyboard on my 2017 MBP 15" would have been an even harder hit.
The less cynical way of saying the same thing is that "Apple's products are simply better."
You can imagine ways you believe everything could be better--with the advantage of not having to prove your beliefs in the market. But that fact that its even easier to find fault with Apple's competitors really just means Apple is currently outperforming them. Note that everyone in the market has the same profit motive, and some are simply performing better. When you look at it that way, things are so much simpler.
Where is Apple going? I forget where I read it (maybe Reuters or CNBC?) but it was solid opinion piece espousing the theory that, now with Jony Ives gone, Apple is returning to prioritizing functionality over slick design.
That sounds reasonable to me: Lighten up on their obsession with thin and light at all costs and focus a little more on making the user experience a good one.
Beyond the obvious problem of a "solid opinion piece" ever appearing on CNBC, there are some other problems here: Jony Ives is not gone. He wasn't the sole driving force shaping hardware at Apple over the past 3 years. And Apple clearly doesn't "prioritize slick design over functionality."
The idea that Apple has an "obsession with thin and light at all costs" is just silly. If it weren't selling products, it wouldn't be a motivation.
Apple's heavy, thick 17" MBP (which I owned, and even schlepped around Europe one summer in a backpack) isn't sold because it wasn't selling. People want light and thin,
I've talked to a lot of developers, and the most common feature I hear is that they want their back to not hurt from carrying their laptop around. Workers who are actually mobile know how important mobility is. That's also a major reason why iPad is vastly more popular than any notebook brand, despite being less capable of various other things. The really weird obsession is people who think "light and thin" is a problem that should be fixed by making notebooks heavy and thick (!)
"It was Apple who complicated things by pursuing its silly ‘thin at all costs’ mantra which undermined a generation of Macbooks. Now, with the new MacBook Pro, they are back on track"
There is far from universal consensus on this. I personally liked thin-and-light at all costs. It pushed technologies farther than they would have been if thick-and-fat were the go to standard. Did Apple go too far, maybe? But I remember the old days of thick, fat, and heavy laptops. No thanks. I can fit my 13" MBP into a folio designed for a notepad. That's what I want.
There pretty much is consensus about that, especially with the Pro models. It's great for you that you have another Mac, for me this would be totally impracticable. There're a lot of different needs amongst pros and Apple has pretty much failed all of them and only catered to the needs of a few photgraphers and musicians. There's a reason why there was a lot of speculation about a completely new design with true Pro genes in a larger form factor.
Making the pros as thin as possible is truly self-inflicted damage and people half rightfully scalded Apple for that; the lack of expendability, the abysmal keyboard, the thermal problems, the lack of escape key, the hard requirement to have a boatload of dongles on you, the unergonomic mirror screen.
Apple is truly lucky that other companies are sucking so much in usability department, that switching is often not a real option: a lot of people are sticking with Apple despite their crappy hardware, not because of it. It makes me sad, that my most usable laptop here is still my 2011 MBP 17"; luckily I still have it here because otherwise the 9d it took to repair the shitty keyboard on my 2017 MBP 15" would have been an even harder hit.
The less cynical way of saying the same thing is that "Apple's products are simply better."
You can imagine ways you believe everything could be better--with the advantage of not having to prove your beliefs in the market. But that fact that its even easier to find fault with Apple's competitors really just means Apple is currently outperforming them. Note that everyone in the market has the same profit motive, and some are simply performing better. When you look at it that way, things are so much simpler.
Instead of "Apple products are simply better", it should be "There are cases where Apple products are simply better". If you compare Apple products to cheap devices, Apple will always be better. But when you raise the bar, and start to compare Apple devices to high end models from HP, Lenovo and Dell, the story is different. Which one is better is something that is different on each user. Sometimes it's Apple, while for others Windows PC's are better.
The Mac line suffered from poor management. We should be seeing new iMacs and Minis sometime early in the new year. Ideally a fat Mini with a discreet GPU! If the hardware languishes we will know that Apple has yet to recover from the neglect seen in the Mac lineup.
No doubt you won't be happy until this "fat mini" has an Nvidia GPU and USB A ports.
Better just unplug from the web and enjoy your HP laptop running Linux that you narrowly selected over a completely different product with nothing in common.
Interesting how this "fat mini" exist in the HP Z2 Mini and Lenovo P330 Tiny workstations. Both have USB-A and Quadro GPU's. I think that for the price, Apple should had offer, at least, an entry level discreet GPU.
Let's correct a bit of the Keyboard problem. The 2016 & 2017 had the most issues. The 2018 & 2919 are better for sure! They are still failing just the same. A lot of it has to do with different keys wearing out.
Depending on what your game is you can kill the Shift key, Space or a collection of letters or numbers. As an example A, E, S & R are the ones I tend to use more. I wore out two 2016 and one 2017 at which point I gave up on the newer systems, bought a second 2015 and have not worn out keys just the keycaps!
The biggest issue is the inability to service discreet key you need to replace the full keyboard. But even that is not possible! The full uppercase needs to be swapped out. So while we have four years of free coverage what happens then? A very expensive repair! Apple and all of the others need to alter their throw-away mentality! Most laptops today have no reason not to last six to eight years.
Well Dann, I can match your anecdote with my own. I've been using butterfly keyboards exclusively for the last three years, and I am notorious for banging out massive walls of text on a nearly daily basis. I make typos and mistakes, but I have yet to have a single issue with a MBP keyboard.
Of course, my experiences aren't really applicable across Apple's 100M installed base. So to really understand what's happening, we looked beyond our own personal experiences and dug through mountains of data that focused on repairs. If the butterfly keyboard were significantly more troubled than previous models, we should have seen data supporting that. It really comes down to: do you care about reality, or do you have a preconceived notion that a personal experience means that Apple is actually building defective products that generate massive repair bills, but is somehow magically unaffected by this in its financial reporting.
Sometimes data is bad, as we've seen from all the supposed estimates that imagined Apple was getting pushed out of the tablet market by cheap Androids. We could show what was wrong with that data, and predicted an outcome that turned out to be correct.
If Apple were repairing keyboards anything close to the experience of few people who experienced real problems, or who simply didn't like the feel, that wouldn't be invisible outside of blogger rage bits and video podcasts of a Wall Street Journal blogger dressing up to create infotainment bits about how butterfly is a code-word for evil.
If in the future we see some long term data that shows that mobile machines lifespans are radically shortened by their keyboard failures, that would be news. We have yet to see any evidence of that. However, Apple pretty clearly doesn't have a "throw away mentality," because the company is working to establish an installed base it can sell services/ software to. That's a far stronger interest in long term viability than the makers of Windows notebooks and Chromebooks and other devices that only make money when they are replaced on a regular cycle. Microsoft really isn't making any money from a Windows App Store servicing the installed base, and Google's service contracts are no dependent upon Chromebooks lasting for any length of time. These are cheaply designed products that don't last by design. Apple's MacBooks are not.
Now, will ultra mobile devices likely wear out faster than a tank built to deliver a 1990s experience? Perhaps, but buyers are not flocking to heavy built laptops advertising indestructibility. They want light and thin machines. This is driven by demand, not merely by Apple's design.
I’ve had very good luck with Apple hardware over the past 30+ years, but my 2016 MBP does have the extremely annoying keyboard problem. I haven’t gotten it fixed yet, because it’s so onerous to back up everything and then be without a computer while they fix it, but now the whole computer is starting to swell up—it doesn’t sit flat and I can’t fully close the top anymore—so I’m finally going to bite the bullet and take it in for repair. I guess now I will be included in the statistics of people with known faulty keyboards. I wonder how many other people have faulty keyboards but haven’t dealt with it for the same reason. Fortunately, I got AppleCare (which I don’t normally do), so it shouldn’t cost me anything I guess. AppleCare sales are up, according to Apple, and I don’t think they otherwise break out repair revenues, so it’s hard to be sure that their financial results are “magically unaffected” by design or manufacturing weaknesses as you claim.
Where is Apple going? I forget where I read it (maybe Reuters or CNBC?) but it was solid opinion piece espousing the theory that, now with Jony Ives gone, Apple is returning to prioritizing functionality over slick design.
That sounds reasonable to me: Lighten up on their obsession with thin and light at all costs and focus a little more on making the user experience a good one.
Beyond the obvious problem of a "solid opinion piece" ever appearing on CNBC, there are some other problems here: Jony Ives is not gone. He wasn't the sole driving force shaping hardware at Apple over the past 3 years. And Apple clearly doesn't "prioritize slick design over functionality."
The idea that Apple has an "obsession with thin and light at all costs" is just silly. If it weren't selling products, it wouldn't be a motivation.
Apple's heavy, thick 17" MBP (which I owned, and even schlepped around Europe one summer in a backpack) isn't sold because it wasn't selling. People want light and thin,
I've talked to a lot of developers, and the most common feature I hear is that they want their back to not hurt from carrying their laptop around. Workers who are actually mobile know how important mobility is. That's also a major reason why iPad is vastly more popular than any notebook brand, despite being less capable of various other things. The really weird obsession is people who think "light and thin" is a problem that should be fixed by making notebooks heavy and thick (!)
Just nutty.
Over 70% of people use their Macbooks in the same regular place, such as on a desk or table, on the lounge or in bed. A much smaller proportion carry them while travelling, studying or working in specialised areas.
I bet that most commentators in this forum, for example, use their Macbooks in the same few locations.
In this respect, notebook computers are a bit like 4 wheel drive SUVs, which are mostly used in built-up urban areas and rarely stray off road. They stick to the city. Similarly, while it’s nice to know you can move your computer around easily, for the majority of users their MacBook doesn’t stray to far from their house or workplace.
This is why ‘thin and light’ is an overrated quality. I, for one, would much prefer more functionality, better battery and a decent keyboard in my computer. If this means a slightly bigger computer, I am happy to make the trade off.
To blogger critics who have never done anything apart from writing their opinions on a subject, the solutions are simplistic: stop making light and thin machines, go back to using a keyboard from 2015, and add more RAM! Also, be faster with less heat and don't spin those fans up! Physics are not a problem when you ignore them.
Never has a more accurate paragraph been written. Way to go Mr. dilger!
This Thanksgiving I will be thanking Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal for Shaming Apple into fixing its Keyboard (by going back to the scissor design) and not the many Apple delusional fan boys who like to attack others who actually expect Apple to deliver product quality that matches its price.
And just like like those who asked for more than 16 GB RAM I would not be at all surprised if Apple delivers a MBP with an SD Card or HDMI slot in the next revision.
Where is Apple going? I forget where I read it (maybe Reuters or CNBC?) but it was solid opinion piece espousing the theory that, now with Jony Ives gone, Apple is returning to prioritizing functionality over slick design.
That sounds reasonable to me: Lighten up on their obsession with thin and light at all costs and focus a little more on making the user experience a good one.
Let's correct a bit of the Keyboard problem. The 2016 & 2017 had the most issues. The 2018 & 2919 are better for sure! They are still failing just the same. A lot of it has to do with different keys wearing out.
Depending on what your game is you can kill the Shift key, Space or a collection of letters or numbers. As an example A, E, S & R are the ones I tend to use more. I wore out two 2016 and one 2017 at which point I gave up on the newer systems, bought a second 2015 and have not worn out keys just the keycaps!
The biggest issue is the inability to service discreet key you need to replace the full keyboard. But even that is not possible! The full uppercase needs to be swapped out. So while we have four years of free coverage what happens then? A very expensive repair! Apple and all of the others need to alter their throw-away mentality! Most laptops today have no reason not to last six to eight years.
I give credit to Joanna Stern and her brilliant March 27, 2019, editorial. I believe that it’s shaming and ridicule of Apple is the reason why they released this fix 6 months after the prior release (when was the last time they did that with the MBP). WSJ has an impact with the corporate crowd more than AI probably. Certainly more people read Stern than DED’s excuse articles like “Reporting about the MacBook Pro is failing at a faster rate than the butterfly keyboard’ from 5/22/2019.
To blogger critics who have never done anything apart from writing their opinions on a subject, the solutions are simplistic: stop making light and thin machines, go back to using a keyboard from 2015, and add more RAM! Also, be faster with less heat and don't spin those fans up! Physics are not a problem when you ignore them.
Never has a more accurate paragraph been written. Way to go Mr. dilger!
This Thanksgiving I will be thanking Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal for Shaming Apple into fixing its Keyboard (by going back to the scissor design) and not the many Apple delusional fan boys who like to attack others who actually expect Apple to deliver product quality that matches its price.
And just like like those who asked for more than 16 GB RAM I would not be at all surprised if Apple delivers a MBP with an SD Card or HDMI slot in the next revision.
You trally think Apple whipped up this replacement keyboard only after Stern’s column?
You clearly have no idea the timelines involved with dozens of disciplines: concept and industrial design, engineering (many specialized branches of engineering , including materials, mechanical, thermal, electrical, manufacturing and reliability), subsequent prototyping, testing—then rounds and rounds of iterating these process sequences—then developing various prototypes, final candidate selection/qualification, a ton of continuing QC and other engineering, and many other steps between pilot and ultimately volume manufacturing. This thing has been in process for a minimum of two years, likely longer.
PS The chances of SD card or HDMI coming back are exactly equal to the probability of mini-DisplayPort, DVI or VGA coming back. Or EGA or CGA for that matter; exactly zero.
To blogger critics who have never done anything apart from writing their opinions on a subject, the solutions are simplistic: stop making light and thin machines, go back to using a keyboard from 2015, and add more RAM! Also, be faster with less heat and don't spin those fans up! Physics are not a problem when you ignore them.
Never has a more accurate paragraph been written. Way to go Mr. dilger!
This Thanksgiving I will be thanking Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal for Shaming Apple into fixing its Keyboard (by going back to the scissor design) and not the many Apple delusional fan boys who like to attack others who actually expect Apple to deliver product quality that matches its price.
And just like like those who asked for more than 16 GB RAM I would not be at all surprised if Apple delivers a MBP with an SD Card or HDMI slot in the next revision.
You trally think Apple whipped up this replacement keyboard only after Stern’s column?
You clearly have no idea the timelines involved with dozens of disciplines: concept and industrial design, engineering (many specialized branches of engineering , including materials, mechanical, thermal, electrical, manufacturing and reliability), subsequent prototyping, testing—then rounds and rounds of iterating these process sequences—then developing various prototypes, final candidate selection/qualification, a ton of continuing QC and other engineering, and many other steps between pilot and ultimately volume manufacturing. This thing has been in process for a minimum of two years, likely longer.
PS The chances of SD card or HDMI coming back are exactly equal to the probability of mini-DisplayPort, DVI or VGA coming back. Or EGA or CGA for that matter; exactly zero.
I give a high probably for the Stern article causing the latest model to come out this year and not be delayed till 2020.
The idea that one person could say we’re going to prioritize thin and light over everything else and the rest of the company goes ‘OK whatever you say’ is nonsense. Phil Schiller loves being able to get up on stage and say this is the thinnest and lightest X we’ve ever made. Heck the iPad Air marketing was all about all the power in a device thinner than a #2 pencil. And this goes back to the Jobs era. When the MacBook Air was first released Jobs announced it on stage by pulling it out of a manila envelope and spent a good part of his presentation talking about how much thinner it was than a Sony laptop (that was one of the thinnest around at the time). And on Apple’s website they referred to it as ‘Thinnovation’. This was under Steve Jobs.
To blogger critics who have never done anything apart from writing their opinions on a subject, the solutions are simplistic: stop making light and thin machines, go back to using a keyboard from 2015, and add more RAM! Also, be faster with less heat and don't spin those fans up! Physics are not a problem when you ignore them.
Never has a more accurate paragraph been written. Way to go Mr. dilger!
This Thanksgiving I will be thanking Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal for Shaming Apple into fixing its Keyboard (by going back to the scissor design) and not the many Apple delusional fan boys who like to attack others who actually expect Apple to deliver product quality that matches its price.
And just like like those who asked for more than 16 GB RAM I would not be at all surprised if Apple delivers a MBP with an SD Card or HDMI slot in the next revision.
You trally think Apple whipped up this replacement keyboard only after Stern’s column?
You clearly have no idea the timelines involved with dozens of disciplines: concept and industrial design, engineering (many specialized branches of engineering , including materials, mechanical, thermal, electrical, manufacturing and reliability), subsequent prototyping, testing—then rounds and rounds of iterating these process sequences—then developing various prototypes, final candidate selection/qualification, a ton of continuing QC and other engineering, and many other steps between pilot and ultimately volume manufacturing. This thing has been in process for a minimum of two years, likely longer.
PS The chances of SD card or HDMI coming back are exactly equal to the probability of mini-DisplayPort, DVI or VGA coming back. Or EGA or CGA for that matter; exactly zero.
I give a high probably for the Stern article causing the latest model to come out this year and not be delayed till 2020.
This doesn’t really happen at Apple’s scale anymore. The first iMac in 1998 and first iPod in 2001 took 8 months from idea to production, so it can be done, but I don’t think it can happen for the types of products Apple makes anymore, where everything is integrated, everything is volume constrained, everything is power constrained, and Apple has to ship so many more devices now.
The feature set for the MBP16 was likely frozen and complete about year ago, at least. What got Apple to change it (as opposed to just in-place component changes) was feedback from its big customers and the sales trajectory of the MBP15 model in 2017, and maybe out to the Summer of 2018. 2017 was a big year for Apple and Macs, where they realized or accepted they made some major mistakes up and down the product line.
The MBP should get an industrial design change in 2020 or maybe 2021 too and it will be interesting to see what they do.
To blogger critics who have never done anything apart from writing their opinions on a subject, the solutions are simplistic: stop making light and thin machines, go back to using a keyboard from 2015, and add more RAM! Also, be faster with less heat and don't spin those fans up! Physics are not a problem when you ignore them.
Never has a more accurate paragraph been written. Way to go Mr. dilger!
This Thanksgiving I will be thanking Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal for Shaming Apple into fixing its Keyboard (by going back to the scissor design) and not the many Apple delusional fan boys who like to attack others who actually expect Apple to deliver product quality that matches its price.
And just like like those who asked for more than 16 GB RAM I would not be at all surprised if Apple delivers a MBP with an SD Card or HDMI slot in the next revision.
You trally think Apple whipped up this replacement keyboard only after Stern’s column?
You clearly have no idea the timelines involved with dozens of disciplines: concept and industrial design, engineering (many specialized branches of engineering , including materials, mechanical, thermal, electrical, manufacturing and reliability), subsequent prototyping, testing—then rounds and rounds of iterating these process sequences—then developing various prototypes, final candidate selection/qualification, a ton of continuing QC and other engineering, and many other steps between pilot and ultimately volume manufacturing. This thing has been in process for a minimum of two years, likely longer.
PS The chances of SD card or HDMI coming back are exactly equal to the probability of mini-DisplayPort, DVI or VGA coming back. Or EGA or CGA for that matter; exactly zero.
I give a high probably for the Stern article causing the latest model to come out this year and not be delayed till 2020.
I would give a zero probability to that. You can’t take the last 14 months of a schedule and just lop it in half. And especially not due to an editorial written by some rando in a Murdoch rag.
Comments
Making the pros as thin as possible is truly self-inflicted damage and people half rightfully scalded Apple for that; the lack of expendability, the abysmal keyboard, the thermal problems, the lack of escape key, the hard requirement to have a boatload of dongles on you, the unergonomic mirror screen.
Apple is truly lucky that other companies are sucking so much in usability department, that switching is often not a real option: a lot of people are sticking with Apple despite their crappy hardware, not because of it. It makes me sad, that my most usable laptop here is still my 2011 MBP 17"; luckily I still have it here because otherwise the 9d it took to repair the shitty keyboard on my 2017 MBP 15" would have been an even harder hit.
You can imagine ways you believe everything could be better--with the advantage of not having to prove your beliefs in the market. But that fact that its even easier to find fault with Apple's competitors really just means Apple is currently outperforming them. Note that everyone in the market has the same profit motive, and some are simply performing better. When you look at it that way, things are so much simpler.
Beyond the obvious problem of a "solid opinion piece" ever appearing on CNBC, there are some other problems here: Jony Ives is not gone. He wasn't the sole driving force shaping hardware at Apple over the past 3 years. And Apple clearly doesn't "prioritize slick design over functionality."
The idea that Apple has an "obsession with thin and light at all costs" is just silly. If it weren't selling products, it wouldn't be a motivation.
Apple's heavy, thick 17" MBP (which I owned, and even schlepped around Europe one summer in a backpack) isn't sold because it wasn't selling. People want light and thin,
I've talked to a lot of developers, and the most common feature I hear is that they want their back to not hurt from carrying their laptop around. Workers who are actually mobile know how important mobility is. That's also a major reason why iPad is vastly more popular than any notebook brand, despite being less capable of various other things. The really weird obsession is people who think "light and thin" is a problem that should be fixed by making notebooks heavy and thick (!)
Just nutty.
And just like like those who asked for more than 16 GB RAM I would not be at all surprised if Apple delivers a MBP with an SD Card or HDMI slot in the next revision.
PS The chances of SD card or HDMI coming back are exactly equal to the probability of mini-DisplayPort, DVI or VGA coming back. Or EGA or CGA for that matter; exactly zero.
The feature set for the MBP16 was likely frozen and complete about year ago, at least. What got Apple to change it (as opposed to just in-place component changes) was feedback from its big customers and the sales trajectory of the MBP15 model in 2017, and maybe out to the Summer of 2018. 2017 was a big year for Apple and Macs, where they realized or accepted they made some major mistakes up and down the product line.
The MBP should get an industrial design change in 2020 or maybe 2021 too and it will be interesting to see what they do.