[...] yet I never really find any specific points that I disagree with him on.
I have, in the past. There have been times when I thought his defence of an Apple decision was really a stretch -- like an extension of Mr. Jobs' Reality Distortion Field. Note that I've never felt that Mr. Dilger has been disingenuous, I'm sure that he's honest in his portrayal of his positions, I've just sometimes felt like he is able to see certain aspects of a product's design in a MUCH more positive light than can I, if you know what I mean.
Anyway, I didn't feel that way at all while reading this review, so either I'm succumbing to Fanboiitus, he's becoming more objective, or the compromises Apple made this time just happen to line up with my preferences (with the law of averages working the way it does, it was bound to happen sooner or later, even to a chronic critic like me).
Thanks for the review, that is one exhausting reading but I already knew most of it and had been in love with contextual input for a long time. Unfortunately I am not in MBP market at the moment having just bought one recently, but I am looking forward for next year iMac. Hopefully they expand the "contextual futuristic hot swap touch bar" into iMac input as well. This is the technology I could see go far into the future.
Legacy? You realise that the overwhelming majority of the Mac line still uses ALL of those 'legacy' ports. The current lineup. Late 2016 AND 2017 has all of them.
No sir. They are not legacy at all and that's by definition. Or perhaps we should say Apple is flogging premium priced 'old' equipment as modern?
Yep legacy by definition (top google hit which is from wikipedia):
"A legacy port is a computer port or connector that is considered by some to be fully or partially superseded. The replacement ports usually provide most of the functionality of the legacy ports with higher speeds, more compact design, or plug and play and hot swap capabilities for greater ease of use."
Higher speed? Check - USB-C Ports support both TB3 and USB 3.1. USB-A only supports USB 3.1. 40Gbps > 10GBps. TB2 ports only support TB2. More compact Design? Check. USB-C is more compact than USB-A USB-C fully or partially supersedes USB 3.1 and TB2? Check.
The first mac to use USB-C had no USB-A. The second mac to use USB-C has no USB-A.
For Apple USB-A is certainly legacy and replaces both TB and USB-A. USB-C is a vast improvement because of versatility and reduced cost for the average Mac user.
The next iMac might keep a USB-A port but I doubt it.
Exactly. Replacement port. would you like me to find the definition of that for you? The iMac, the Mini and the Mac Pro don't have them. Apple is still shipping NEW machines with the existing ports and will continue to do so into 2017. They will be legacy ports on those machines when they get phased out. Right now that isn't the case at all and won't be until some unknown moment in 2017.
Once again, that legacy left brain of yours is holding you back. If you take a holistic, bigger-picture right-brain view, the way Apple designer/engineers think, you'd be able to resolve the seeming contradiction. You're nit-picking, in other words, using chop-logic.
Apple is not going to change the metal or the I/O architecture on their designs until there's a complete new edition of the form factor, built around new processors or displays. It's so obvious.
To put it another way, from the point of view of the designer of the new, flatter MBP form factor, USB A is indeed a legacy and obsolete port.
People also forget that the current (Late 2015) iMac is already a transitional machine. It has Skylake architecture, but with legacy ports.
Next year's iMac won't have those ports. Only Ethernet, which isn't actually legacy. Otherwise, all USB-C. Could still be Skylake.
iMacs use desktop CPUs. Even though many other components are mobile.
So so they won't be skylake.
Theyll also be full USB C.
The current Mac lineup uses an entry level Broadwell i5, the rest are Skylake (6G Core i5 CPUs), albeit desktop versions vs the mobile chips used in the latest MBPs.
Hopefully iMacs will get refreshed with full TB3/USB-C. That could also enable the return of Target Display Mode, so you could use your new 4k/5k iMac screen as an external display for your MBP via a single TB3 cable. TB2/DisplayPort can't do that, and USB-A can't do anything fun.
this wasn't a review, but more or less a biased overview. Which is fine, but don't call it a 'review'.
I actually thought Mr. Dilger did a pretty good job of laying out the pros/cons, give/take compromises one has to make when designing such a product. I don't have a problem with a reviewer expressing preferences as long as they're presented as such and are contrasted against any arguments that may run contrary to the individual's opinion.
Geekbench 4 benchmarking returned a single core score of 4295 and a multiple core score of 13296. Note that unlike iOS mobile devices, the architecture and interface of macOS makes it easier to benefit from multiple threads on multiple cores, more of the time.
Has anyone found a graphics benchmarking for the 460 yet? 2@5k + 4@4k sounds pretty compelling, especially if quiet AND fast...
Note that if you log out of your account, you'll need to supply a password to log back in; Touch ID only works if your account is active.
Now that is terribly disappointing. The real joy of TouchID is to eliminate silly passwords to begin with. I'd much rather implement a super-strong 19 digit password that I will only need to use as a backup, being able to use TouchID most of the time. But if I still must type in a password to even access my Mac or login, the present implementation becomes a real kill-joy.
Education pricing will cut the prices by $400 or so and even better if you can pick it up in a tax-free state. Mine came to $3450 or so with everything but the 2TB option.
My VAT (err... Tax) was €600 - oh the pain... I am going through therapy to get past it
At least your therapy is free. We have to pay hundreds of dollars for each session of therapy.
I went to the Apple store to check out the 13 inch MPB (without touch bar). I was really impressed by the thinness and quality. If I didn't know it was an Apple product, I would have dinged it for the screen. It's so incredibly thin that when I opened it, it felt like it was plastic or some low quality material. Way too thin to feel substantial.
I know it's Apple and therefore high quality but it's just mind-boggling how thin the screen side of the laptop is. Oh and what a screen!
So now it's just a matter of which kid I'm going to sell on eBay to buy this thing.......
So much for "objectivity." Who wrote this crap review... Phil the Shill? Taken in context of other platforms, this review wreaks of ad copy. This coming from a 20-plus-year mac user who doesn't don rose colored shades.
Your comment reeks of the MacRumors mentality. Or better, emotionality.
I went to the Apple store to check out the 13 inch MPB (without touch bar). I was really impressed by the thinness and quality. If I didn't know it was an Apple product, I would have dinged it for the screen. It's so incredibly thin that when I opened it, it felt like it was plastic or some low quality material. Way too thin to feel substantial.
I know it's Apple and therefore high quality but it's just mind-boggling how thin the screen side of the laptop is. Oh and what a screen!
So now it's just a matter of which kid I'm going to sell on eBay to buy this thing.......
See, and this is what the whiners overlook. The IGZO IPS wide-pixel, wide-gamut ultrathin screen is a revolutionary accomplishment that Apple has been working on and financing for several years now. It's probably going to be rated the best non-OLED display ever, disregarding the fact that there are no OLED laptops at any reasonable price and quantity yet, as far as I know.
It amazes me that the long saga of Apple's gamble on this technology has not been covered by any tech writers, at least prominently enough to catch my attention. Thanks for contributing this observation. I think Apple deserves some justice on this issue, and it pisses me off that they're not getting it from the tech press.
Note that if you log out of your account, you'll need to supply a password to log back in; Touch ID only works if your account is active.
Now that is terribly disappointing. The real joy of TouchID is to eliminate silly passwords to begin with. I'd much rather implement a super-strong 19 digit password that I will only need to use as a backup, being able to use TouchID most of the time. But if I still must type in a password to even access my Mac or login, the present implementation becomes a real kill-joy.
I thought this was odd as well. Perhaps Apple was able to concoct some freaky series of screwups on the part of a user, that would end up with them being utterly locked out of the system with no hope of beaking in if they had used the fingerprint as the method of logging in.
Well, I for one did read the article in its entirety, and anyone can see that I even quoted from the article in my previous post. And while I do appreciate the article, I did find one thing curious. The article was a glowing review of the 15" MBP. Every "negative" decried by other media sources was answered or excused. Virtually nothing was criticized, although the article author did admit he noticed that the new keyboard was loud (something I first heard with my own ears in a recent YouTube video by Louis Rossmann). But the author did not expound on that, indicating he didn't mind the louder sound so much. And yet, when we arrive at the end of the article, having read what seemed to have been a 5 star review, we see it was only given 4 stars. I wonder what knocked off the 5th star in the mind of the author.
Good review - lots of nice details on the Touch Bar. I know this is a pointless complaint, but it REALLY cheeses me off that they could not come up with a MagSafe derivative for the new connector. MagSafe has saved my computer numerous times. I hear from friends the same stories about dogs and toddlers and wives with big feet and husbands with gorilla arms nearly killing their laptop save for MagSafe. It truly was a useful and valuable contrivance. Yes, I know I can get the Griffin fugly Break Safe and I surely will. But I don't have to like it.
I wrote Schiller a quick note asking why we didn't get MagSafe. No reply.
you'll need to supply a password to log back in; Touch ID only works if your account is active.
Now that is terribly disappointing. The real joy of TouchID is to eliminate silly passwords to begin with. I'd much rather implement a super-strong 19 digit password that I will only need to use as a backup, being able to use TouchID most of the time. But if I still must type in a password to even access my Mac or login, the present implementation becomes a real kill-joy.
At any case I don't think this is going to annoy people much seeing that you could log in to your account automatically now with AppleWatch. No entering password required. Wake up your Mac, and tada, it's login in by itself once it's detected your Watch nearby.
you'll need to supply a password to log back in; Touch ID only works if your account is active.
Now that is terribly disappointing. The real joy of TouchID is to eliminate silly passwords to begin with. I'd much rather implement a super-strong 19 digit password that I will only need to use as a backup, being able to use TouchID most of the time. But if I still must type in a password to even access my Mac or login, the present implementation becomes a real kill-joy.
At any case I don't think this is going to annoy people much seeing that you could log in to your account automatically now with AppleWatch. No entering password required. Wake up your Mac, and tada, it's login in by itself once it's detected your Watch nearby.
It's not as fast as I'd like. I have a complex password since it unlocks my disk and I'm sure I could type it in less than half the time it takes to unlock it. I look forward to Touch ID.
Comments
Anyway, I didn't feel that way at all while reading this review, so either I'm succumbing to Fanboiitus, he's becoming more objective, or the compromises Apple made this time just happen to line up with my preferences (with the law of averages working the way it does, it was bound to happen sooner or later, even to a chronic critic like me).
Apple is not going to change the metal or the I/O architecture on their designs until there's a complete new edition of the form factor, built around new processors or displays. It's so obvious.
To put it another way, from the point of view of the designer of the new, flatter MBP form factor, USB A is indeed a legacy and obsolete port.
If you used your position as an AI contributor to jump the queue I'm gonna be pissed off. Pissed off that *I* didn't think of that!
Geekbench 4 benchmarking returned a single core score of 4295 and a multiple core score of 13296. Note that unlike iOS mobile devices, the architecture and interface of macOS makes it easier to benefit from multiple threads on multiple cores, more of the time.
Has anyone found a graphics benchmarking for the 460 yet?
2@5k + 4@4k sounds pretty compelling, especially if quiet AND fast...
As noted prior this comparison may be interesting:
http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-systems/razer-blade-pro
GeForce GTX 1080 @ 137,034 (yikes)
http://browser.primatelabs.com/opencl-benchmarks
hefty for sure, it may also heat the house, but 17.3" @ 4k
hmmm...
I know it's Apple and therefore high quality but it's just mind-boggling how thin the screen side of the laptop is. Oh and what a screen!
So now it's just a matter of which kid I'm going to sell on eBay to buy this thing.......
It amazes me that the long saga of Apple's gamble on this technology has not been covered by any tech writers, at least prominently enough to catch my attention. Thanks for contributing this observation. I think Apple deserves some justice on this issue, and it pisses me off that they're not getting it from the tech press.
I wrote Schiller a quick note asking why we didn't get MagSafe. No reply.