New 13" MacBook Pro w/o Touch Bar keeps pace with higher clocked 2015 Retina model

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Comments

  • Reply 21 of 43
    metrixmetrix Posts: 256member
    sirozha said:
    sirozha said:
    As it stands now, not a single MacBook Pro released today is priced within reason for the majority of Apple customers.
    How do you know that?
    Because I have been one for many years. I can easily afford any of the new MacBook Pro, but I'm in the upper 5% of earners in the US. Even though none of the newly released MacBook Pros would make a noticeable dent in my budget, I will not be buying any model released today if they stay at the current price points. Apple has insulted their consumer base with these prices and the asinine design decisions that prevent the newly released iPhone 7 from being able to connect to the newly released MacBook Pro without an additional dongle, which Apple was too cheap to include with the MacBook pros.

    I'm extremely upset about what Apple did today as a shareholder with a very sizeable AAPL portfolio (very sizable indeed). They will lose the notebook market share by a large percentage because of the bad decisions that they made with this MacBook Pro release. 
    A couple of thoughts... Maybe Apple is readying the consumer for manufacturing/assemble of laptops to be done in the US similar to the Mac Pro. If Apple would make this move I am all for paying more to move any production back to US. I typically buy the baseline 15" MBPr and spend about $2,000 but see no reason to update mine after 4.5 years, still absolutely screams. I travel thru airports constantly on West Coast and I am estimating that I see 40-50% of travelers using Macs so I don't think that is going change anytime soon. I know of one large international education company that currently issues MBPrs to designers instead of Mac Pros, allowing them to work at home. I think this design should be a big boost back to the creative types.
  • Reply 22 of 43
    The dream people still have of a company that is the cleverest front runner, innovative in the core and aiming first at making something they themselves like most, is over. Alas no company can stay innovative forever, at a certain point it will start aiming for continuity. This is what we see happening at Apple. To make people coming back to its products it's not the frontrunner, I-am-different-from-the-rest feeling, but it is the locked into the ecosystem thing. I know, because I stepped over to a Windows phone, trying to get a feel of an other ecosystem. It's difficult. You feel lost, you feel you're not part of something big anymore. A strange feeling I didn't think would happen to me as I see myself to be flexible and not locked in.

    So people still hoping that Apple will turn on its heels and will start aiming at its former users should really leave. Disappointment is their only future.
  • Reply 23 of 43
    I'd keep a couple things in mind regarding the price.

    In theory, it's good for everyone to drive adoption of the new technology, so pricing the old-style computer aggressively would be counterproductive.

    Keeping the price for the new technology a bit stiff will enable the people who really want it to get it first. The people who value it will use it more and garner it a good reputation. They will develop software for it and submit bug reports to the people who already have.

    I think today's presentation did a good job at moving the perception from "that's silly" to "that's amazingly useful" but it will still be a long road. How many months or years before each of us begins to use it? That's the number these prices are trying to minimize.
  • Reply 24 of 43
    hattighattig Posts: 860member
    The price is too high, although at least the components - CPU aside - are good. And at least you are guaranteed a real GPU on the 15" now.

    I can't see Apple wanting to stay beholden to Intel's crappy expensive line of mobile processors for much longer. They are restricted by software compatibility requirements right now. I'm sure they are working on it.

    Because let's admit it, the reason we think the 13" MacBook is poor is because it is still a dual-core 2GHz CPU. In the time that mobile chips running at 5W have gone from single core at 1GHz to many-cores at over 2GHz, Intel have gone from two cores at around 2GHz and 25W to two cores at around 2GHz with a slightly higher boost and 10-17W.

    OTOH these Macs, if looked after, now seemingly last forever and ever and ever.

    I have a 2011 MBP. Apart from the lack of Retina and USB3, and using SATA (aftermarket SSD), it's still pretty good in comparison to the new releases. Still solid because of the unibody. Quad-core for a start. The Radeon GPU is around 50% of the low-end Radeon Pro 450 (both are worthless for high-end gaming). So if you buy a new MBP today, it's still $500 a year over time, $10/wk. That's not so harsh, and Apple offer 0% finance to spread the payments out too. So if you are using the laptop to earn money, the cost shouldn't put you off.
    mike1
  • Reply 25 of 43
    wood1208wood1208 Posts: 2,905member
    I was waiting for this new MBP to upgrade my 2012 MBP but at this point I am confused with what new MBP offers vs their pricing. Honestly, I expected new MBPs pricing to be in line with the current offering when they were released.. Comparison wise when iphone 7 came out, it is better than iphone 6s but the price for example iphone 7 32gb ($649) is same as 16gb iphone 6/6s(when it came out). Lowest price of new 13" MBP(without OLED strip) should be $1199 and one with strip should be $1399.
    May be Apple interested selling iphone than MBP..

    edited October 2016
  • Reply 26 of 43
    irnchrizirnchriz Posts: 1,616member
    Bit disappointed with the new UK pricing for the new MacBook Pro's.  I could have swallowed a couple of hundred of an increase but to get a 15" with 512GB SSD is now a 700 quid price hike.  

    Think I will be sticking with the 2012 pro rocking 16GB and 2 x 1TB SSD's until is breaks or until this brexit pish is sorted out.
    mainyehc
  • Reply 27 of 43
    To address the "ridiculous price" claim that some are making, I think it may be wise to also consider what is the "value added" to a device like this when Apple introduces an entirely new input technology - the Touch Bar.  The jury is out on this because we won't really know until more and more people start using this as a 3rd method of input  alongside the best-in-class, multi-touch trackpad and the classic keyboard. If, however, use of this new input method enhances productivity by better enabling human-machine interaction in an ergonomic manner, then the extra several hundreds will be money well-spent when you consider the multi-year lifetime of a solidly designed product like this. Do not underestimate the engineers at Apple and the care and thought that has likely gone on for several years in order to bring a possible game-changer technology to market. 
    You do realise that sirozha was also talking about the Touch bar-less model, right? Losing that, TouchID *and* especially two Thunderbolt 3 ports (the latter for no good reason, other than perhaps to slightly offset the cost of having to machine the function key holes on the case; but that would be extremely petty from Apple) is an exceptionally high penalty, for a stupid price difference that our fellow poster and AAPL shareholder so eloquently scrutinized.

    I went from being a bregudging Mac OS X advocate who had to defend the OS in a context where Apple hardware was severely overpriced (think the last throes of the PowerPC era), to a giddy Apple platform (as a whole) advocate (because prices finally became sensible enough that you could buy a flexible, modular, relatively cheap 13'' MacBook Pro), and now back to square one.

    But this time Windows is not as crappy as it used to be in 2003-06. The whole jumbled mess that are settings is still a testament to their old ways (if anything, having them in two different places makes them even more convoluted than the old Control Panel, which still lives on), but if Microsoft finally gets their act together and moves away from all that remaining complexity (and from the Registry; that would be a wise move, too) and Apple does not react (and that includes bringing at least one touchscreen [i]Mac – or an Apple-branded standalone touchscreen, that would be good enough for most pros – to the market, I don't care what the overly conservative Apple execs say to cover their asses), they *WILL BE* screwed, mark my words. It would be a case of Apple pulling a Microsoft, yes. The irony!

    My nickname is “João dos Macs” (João being my first name and “dos” meaning “of the”) and even I am mulling a possible switch back to Windows, depending on what both companies do in the very short future. Let that sink in, will you?
    edited October 2016
  • Reply 28 of 43
    sirozha said:
    sirozha said:
    As it stands now, not a single MacBook Pro released today is priced within reason for the majority of Apple customers.
    How do you know that?
    Apple has insulted their consumer base with these prices and the asinine design decisions that prevent the newly released iPhone 7 from being able to connect to the newly released MacBook Pro without an additional dongle,
    I also stop reading right here.
    mike1pscooter63
  • Reply 29 of 43
    To address the "ridiculous price" claim that some are making, I think it may be wise to also consider what is the "value added" to a device like this when Apple introduces an entirely new input technology - the Touch Bar.  The jury is out on this because we won't really know until more and more people start using this as a 3rd method of input  alongside the best-in-class, multi-touch trackpad and the classic keyboard. If, however, use of this new input method enhances productivity by better enabling human-machine interaction in an ergonomic manner, then the extra several hundreds will be money well-spent when you consider the multi-year lifetime of a solidly designed product like this. Do not underestimate the engineers at Apple and the care and thought that has likely gone on for several years in order to bring a possible game-changer technology to market. 
    I agree that the Touch Bar puts these MacBook Pros in the completely new category, and that there's nothing out there to compare them to from Apple's competitors. However, my beef is with the fact that there are no reasonably priced MacBook Pros released this time. Even the only hardware version of the Late 2016 MacBook Pro without the Touch Bar and Touch ID sensor is priced too high. When equipped with higher capacity SSD, higher amount of RAM, and higher speed CPU, its price goes well above $2000. Keep in mind it's a 13" laptop with a dual core CPU, which requires a bunch of dongles (costing another couple hundred dollars collectively) to connect any non-USB-C device to it.

    i don't see Apple luring any new users with these prices. As for the existing users, it seems a significant percentage will sit out this cycle of MacBooks by continuing to use their older Macs or buying the previous generation Macs. Some long-term Apple users are so mad that they are saying their next laptop will be a Windows one. Is it worth it to cause such a commotion in the user base by trying to please Wall Street and raise profit margins? Apple thinks so. I disagree. 
    edited October 2016 mainyehc
  • Reply 30 of 43
    mainyehc said:
    To address the "ridiculous price" claim that some are making, I think it may be wise to also consider what is the "value added" to a device like this when Apple introduces an entirely new input technology - the Touch Bar.  The jury is out on this because we won't really know until more and more people start using this as a 3rd method of input  alongside the best-in-class, multi-touch trackpad and the classic keyboard. If, however, use of this new input method enhances productivity by better enabling human-machine interaction in an ergonomic manner, then the extra several hundreds will be money well-spent when you consider the multi-year lifetime of a solidly designed product like this. Do not underestimate the engineers at Apple and the care and thought that has likely gone on for several years in order to bring a possible game-changer technology to market. 
    and that includes bringing at least one touchscreen [i]Mac – or an Apple-branded standalone touchscreen, that would be good enough for most pros – to the market, 

    I think you should plan your switching NOW if you want touch screen iMac. But if what you want is 28" iBoard (so to speak) I'm sure there're some prototypes Apple experimenting right now.
  • Reply 31 of 43
    jkichlinejkichline Posts: 1,369member
    I'm pretty excited about the new MacBook Pros. Everyone complaining about price has never bought an MBP evidently. This is the standard pricing model for machines that have great performance and running the latest Sky Lake chips which also demand a premium from Intel.

    I'm looking to upgrade from my Late 2013 MBPr but it's still a workhorse. The thing I'm mostly interested in is more processing power for compiling in Xcode and processing videos. Otherwise it's mostly working great with the latest updates.

    That's also why the price of these machines doesn't phase me much since I know they will last. Here I am rocking a three year old machine that is working so well I probably don't need to upgrade but would like to. I spent around $2500 last time so it had cost me less than $80 per month to have use of that machine and didn't have to worry about stupid issues with Windows or to call my "system administrator". As a professional, I'd gladly take that any day.

    My real hope is that Apple will be able to move away from Intel who is crawling at a snails pace with their processors lately. That's mostly because the money is now in mobile chips. I think Apple should just come out with the MacBook running an A11 processor next year and drop the price. Keep Intel in the pro line and start eroding Intel at the other end. It would be a great time to come out with OS 11 too ;)
  • Reply 32 of 43
    mike1mike1 Posts: 3,275member
    sirozha said:
    It makes no sense that the Magicless 13" MacBook Pro released today - when upgraded to the 2.4 GHz CPU - costs the same as the Magicful 13" MacBook Pro, which comes with the 2.9 GHz CPU, Touch Bar, and Touch ID sensor. It looks as though Apple had made a mistake and priced the Magicless 13" MacBook Pro a few hundred dollars too high. 

    Because the Magicless 13" MacBook Pro comes with a much slower CPU than the Magicful 13" MacBook Pro, and the Magicless MacBook Pro lacks the Touch bar as well as the Touch ID sensor, it should have been priced at $1099 (or $1199 at the most). This could have been the machine that - when upgraded to a higher CPU speed, to 512 GB of SSD and to 16 GB of RAM - could still be had for under $1899. This would still be very expensive for a dual-core laptop but somewhat manageable. As it stands now, not a single MacBook Pro released today is priced within reason for the majority of Apple customers. Perhaps, the Apple executives make way too much money that they have lost all remaining sense of reality at this point. 
    Yet they are all now back ordered.
  • Reply 33 of 43
    uraharaurahara Posts: 733member
    sirozha said:
    sirozha said:
    As it stands now, not a single MacBook Pro released today is priced within reason for the majority of Apple customers.
    How do you know that?
    Because I have been one for many years. I can easily afford any of the new MacBook Pro, but I'm in the upper 5% of earners in the US. Even though none of the newly released MacBook Pros would make a noticeable dent in my budget, I will not be buying any model released today if they stay at the current price points. Apple has insulted their consumer base with these prices and the asinine design decisions that prevent the newly released iPhone 7 from being able to connect to the newly released MacBook Pro without an additional dongle, which Apple was too cheap to include with the MacBook pros.

    I'm extremely upset about what Apple did today as a shareholder with a very sizeable AAPL portfolio (very sizable indeed). They will lose the notebook market share by a large percentage because of the bad decisions that they made with this MacBook Pro release. 
    I find the prices very reasonable. And which alternatives do we have on the market (even not taking that touch bar into account).
    The touchpad alone was my best experience on Apple's machines by far compared to any other producer. I love the resistance of the keyboard. I love that there are no stickers on the computer with "nvidia", "intel", etc. I love that I don't need to uninstall anything to get the machine faster. There are some thinks with I am not that found of in Macs, and where I find MS has a better product (I like e.g. I like the explorer more than finder).

    But hardwarewise - I have never yet seen a better machine. Did you?

    For the best you pay a premium. 

    You might have started thinking like this, though:

    "Haha, $500 for the phone???" - S. Balmer
    jahaja
  • Reply 34 of 43
    flaneurflaneur Posts: 4,526member
    To address the "ridiculous price" claim that some are making, I think it may be wise to also consider what is the "value added" to a device like this when Apple introduces an entirely new input technology - the Touch Bar.  The jury is out on this because we won't really know until more and more people start using this as a 3rd method of input  alongside the best-in-class, multi-touch trackpad and the classic keyboard. If, however, use of this new input method enhances productivity by better enabling human-machine interaction in an ergonomic manner, then the extra several hundreds will be money well-spent when you consider the multi-year lifetime of a solidly designed product like this. Do not underestimate the engineers at Apple and the care and thought that has likely gone on for several years in order to bring a possible game-changer technology to market. 
    Finally, some actual, honest-to-god rational reasoning! There are a few others here  but this is a welcome addition to the forum.
    pscooter63jahajawatto_cobra
  • Reply 35 of 43
    flaneurflaneur Posts: 4,526member
    I'd keep a couple things in mind regarding the price.

    In theory, it's good for everyone to drive adoption of the new technology, so pricing the old-style computer aggressively would be counterproductive.

    Keeping the price for the new technology a bit stiff will enable the people who really want it to get it first. The people who value it will use it more and garner it a good reputation. They will develop software for it and submit bug reports to the people who already have.

    I think today's presentation did a good job at moving the perception from "that's silly" to "that's amazingly useful" but it will still be a long road. How many months or years before each of us begins to use it? That's the number these prices are trying to minimize.
    More reasoning! Things are improving here from yesterday.

    As francophile99 says above, Apple spent a lot of engineering on completely redesigning the MacPro line, adding a new interface technology that alone shows massive investment in hardware and software. Of course the initial price has to reflect the investment that went into these machines.
    jahaja
  • Reply 36 of 43
    flaneurflaneur Posts: 4,526member

    sirozha said:
    To address the "ridiculous price" claim that some are making, I think it may be wise to also consider what is the "value added" to a device like this when Apple introduces an entirely new input technology - the Touch Bar.  The jury is out on this because we won't really know until more and more people start using this as a 3rd method of input  alongside the best-in-class, multi-touch trackpad and the classic keyboard. If, however, use of this new input method enhances productivity by better enabling human-machine interaction in an ergonomic manner, then the extra several hundreds will be money well-spent when you consider the multi-year lifetime of a solidly designed product like this. Do not underestimate the engineers at Apple and the care and thought that has likely gone on for several years in order to bring a possible game-changer technology to market. 
    I agree that the Touch Bar puts these MacBook Pros in the completely new category, and that there's nothing out there to compare them to from Apple's competitors. However, my beef is with the fact that there are no reasonably priced MacBook Pros released this time. Even the only hardware version of the Late 2016 MacBook Pro without the Touch Bar and Touch ID sensor is priced too high. When equipped with higher capacity SSD, higher amount of RAM, and higher speed CPU, its price goes well above $2000. Keep in mind it's a 13" laptop with a dual core CPU, which requires a bunch of dongles (costing another couple hundred dollars collectively) to connect any non-USB-C device to it.

    i don't see Apple luring any new users with these prices. As for the existing users, it seems a significant percentage will sit out this cycle of MacBooks by continuing to use their older Macs or buying the previous generation Macs. Some long-term Apple users are so mad that they are saying their next laptop will be a Windows one. Is it worth it to cause such a commotion in the user base by trying to please Wall Street and raise profit margins? Apple thinks so. I disagree. 
    I think you'd better watch the presentation and meditate real hard on how powerful this new touch interface is and will be as developers adapt their software to use it. 

    They put a huge amount of engineering into these new machines. A total redesign of the laptop, from the ground up. The higher prices are justified. 
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 37 of 43
    From the pricing, specs and strategy standpoint I can see that Angela has been attending plenty of meetings (and her facial expression during the event had a hint she's been in product planning)... it's clear Apple is moving to a luxury, lifestyle brand... their power users have shifted from digital creatives/developers to Kardashians and Chinese fashionistas... hence the focus on emjoi touch bars and being the coolest at the party, showing of your MacStatus via touch bar DJ controls (FYI that dude sucked and didn't do well to promote the touch bar for that use case). Another data point for the new "power user"... in 4 years the max memory I can get is STILL 16gb??? And I'm locked with that for maybe 5 years??? And given Apple RAM upgrade pricing they're losing some high margin upgrades.. I'd (not) happily pay $500 for a 16-32gb upgrade as my work case typically has me using 30GB on my MP. You may say they didn't have room for it, but that depends on the part they're using (where it could be a drop-in).... competitors are doing it w/o a problem. Too much glamour and celeb thinking at the top of Apple these days vs. making awesome digital power tools in the most beautiful packages.
  • Reply 38 of 43
    We just gone one into our shop and I had a chance to try it out. The keyboard, although not as bad as the one on the MacBook, still has some problems. The "o" key on the MacBook Pro only works sporadically. If I pressed the key down on the left or right edge then it would usually work, but pressing it in the center, top, or bottom would not work. We ended up having to attach an external keyboard via an adaptor.
  • Reply 39 of 43
    nhtnht Posts: 4,522member
    mike1 said:
    sirozha said:
    It makes no sense that the Magicless 13" MacBook Pro released today - when upgraded to the 2.4 GHz CPU - costs the same as the Magicful 13" MacBook Pro, which comes with the 2.9 GHz CPU, Touch Bar, and Touch ID sensor. It looks as though Apple had made a mistake and priced the Magicless 13" MacBook Pro a few hundred dollars too high. 

    Because the Magicless 13" MacBook Pro comes with a much slower CPU than the Magicful 13" MacBook Pro, and the Magicless MacBook Pro lacks the Touch bar as well as the Touch ID sensor, it should have been priced at $1099 (or $1199 at the most). This could have been the machine that - when upgraded to a higher CPU speed, to 512 GB of SSD and to 16 GB of RAM - could still be had for under $1899. This would still be very expensive for a dual-core laptop but somewhat manageable. As it stands now, not a single MacBook Pro released today is priced within reason for the majority of Apple customers. Perhaps, the Apple executives make way too much money that they have lost all remaining sense of reality at this point. 
    Yet they are all now back ordered.
    Y'all are getting trolled.

    For the lower end there is the 13" MBA at $999 with 1.6Ghz Core i5 (5th gen) 8GB RAM and 128GB SSD.

    The Dell XPS 13 costs $1049 for a faster @ 2.5Ghz but also 8GB RAM and 128GB SSD.

    The XPS specs better for the money but the disparity is not large and for me MacOS is enough better not to care.

    For the 13 MBP without the touch bar the rough equivalent is the $1,149 XPS 13 build with the 2.5Ghz i5-7200U, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD and a 1920x1080 display.

    For $1499 (aka $350 more) you get the 2.0Ghz Core i5, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD but with Iris Graphics 540 instead of the HD 520 and a slight brighter (500 nits vs 400 nits) 2560x1600 display.  Whether that's worth $350 more is up to you but for me MacOS is worth the delta.

    What Apple doesn't have anymore with the removal of the 11" MBA is an equivalent to the $799 Core i3 XPS 13.

    The whole concern trolling/unrighteous anger thing with the "I'm an Apple stockholder" and "I'm so rich money doesn't matter to me but I'm outraged for the less fortunate" is just humorously predictable.

    Especially since many of these new MBP are destined for business and IBM has stated that the TCO for Macs are up $273-$535 less than PCs. For for $350 more the 13" MBP is cheaper and more powerful than the lower priced XPS 13.
  • Reply 40 of 43
    nhtnht Posts: 4,522member

    luvappl said:

    I'd (not) happily pay $500 for a 16-32gb upgrade as my work case typically has me using 30GB on my MP. You may say they didn't have room for it, but that depends on the part they're using (where it could be a drop-in).... competitors are doing it w/o a problem. Too much glamour and celeb thinking at the top of Apple these days vs. making awesome digital power tools in the most beautiful packages.
    For whatever reason Apple doesn't want to make desktop replacements.  It's a shame but it is what it is.
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