There is no question in my mind that the reaction to last years MBP refresh is what finally caused Apple's Mac announcement last week. Also not surprising the announcement came around the time of Windows Creators update launching. I was listening to iMore's Apple Talk podcast this morning. One of the guys on the podcast - Michael Gartenberg - recently worked at Apple in Phil Schiller's org. The impressions I got from him were that Apple was definitely taken aback by the MBP criticism and that Microsoft taking share from Apple in the pro market is something Apple needs to be worrie about. The popular iOS software djay Pro was just ported to Windows and it's being shown off using the new Surface Studio. Whether Microsoft really has momentum or not it's clear they're going after creative pros and the perception out there is they're the one doing cool, innovative things and Apple is being conservative and predictable (thinner, lighter, more appliance like products). Surface Studio might be a completely niche product but it looks cool and no doubt got graphic designers and other artists excited.
Honestly I wonder if Apple's functional org design sometimes hurts them. If the Mac and iPad were stand alone business units and not sharing engineering resources with iPhone might these products get more attention and thus more innovation (on both hardware and software)? Oh and going back to iMore for a second, Rene Ritchie needs to stop with the resources excuse. Apple doesn't have that many product lines. If they don't have the resources to keep iPhone, iPad and Mac current then there's clearly something wrong organizationally or from an executive level priority standpoint.
Apparently bundling an insecure back door with your product still scores you a top 10 spot. While imagined costs are more important than actual costs, as supported by numerous studies, including those independently conducted by IBM.
One should use their needs and wants to define their laptop purchase and not a top 10 chart based on arbitrary metrics and zero $ transparency.
LaptopMag Staff 1: "We need to shake things up this year, it's getting boring with Apple Mac always at number one." LaptopMag Staff 2: "Sure, let's drop it to number six and put Lenovo, Asus, HP, Dell all of them above Apple." LaptopMag Staff 1: "Oh yes, good idea! That will bring more traffic to our site!"
Into the 4th year on my MacBook Pro. Never made it past 2.5 years on any windows laptop. Thinking I will get 6 years or more out of this one.
Just about to start year 6 with my retina MBP - still runs brilliantly & the trackpad is a joy to use (unlike the Lenovo 750s work provided me with last year).
Me too! I love it. i7 8 920GB drive installed. Runs like a bitch. Only issue? I've literally worn the keyboard out.
Another perspective here. Take a look at this: https://www.statista.com/statistics/263444/sales-of-apple-mac-computers-since-first-quarter-2006/
Kind of consistent, eh? Someone pointed out that Apple's sales numbers for the last 2 quarters are rather high. True ... but largely because Apple released (long delayed) new models in October. So while it is great that Apple is no longer selling 1-2 million Macs per quarter as it was during the pre-iPhone era, they never reached 6 million per quarter at any time, and moreover sales have peaked.
A few years ago, it was fashionable to claim that the declining Windows PC sales numbers and increasing Mac sales numbers were related phenomena that would continue until Mac became the dominant figure in the computing landscape and Windows was reduced to a few barely surviving makers of very cheap devices. Didn't happen. Windows PC device sales stabilized and have even started to rebound some while Mac sales remain between 4 to 5.5 million per quarter.
So, I suppose that perhaps the commenter whose Windows laptop only lasted 2.5 years had a bad experience ... but that is not the experience of most people and enterprises. And the first, vehement comment left to this article was from someone who simply exists in his own separate reality, totally disconnected from the incontrovertible fact that the professionals, gamers, small businesses, large enterprises, universities etc. that buy everything from midrange Windows laptops to high performance Windows servers are extremely satisfied with them, and that Apple has failed to offer them a product that is compelling enough to induce them to switch.
Yes, Apple has huge profits. But 70%-80% of those are from the iPhone, iPad and iTunes. And yes, the vast majority of iPhone and iPad owners connect them to iTunes running on Windows laptops! So please do not make the mistake of thinking that Apple would be as huge, profitable, influential etc. based on their Macs alone. And when you consider that a huge chunk of the people who do buy 5 million (or fewer) Macs per quarter do so only because they bought iPhones first and then switched - again see my link above - and then you will really understand how the first reply to this article and a great many of the subsequent replies inhabit their own universes.
I say this not as a Apple hater. Between work, school and personal use, I have been using Apple products for nearly 25 years, and have bought no small number of them myself in the process. I am still kicking myself over buying an HP desktop instead of a Mac Mini for my kids' educational purposes 3 years ago. (Although it was not a total loss ... I converted that sucker into a Linux server for my own tinkering projects ... and my kids mostly use their iPads anyway.) I just want to remind you folks that like 85% of the marketplace disagrees with you ... and for reasons that are not always necessarily either superficial or wrong. And if that wasn't the case, there wouldn't have been this huge freakout over the Mac Pro. Why did that failure exist? Because people were comparing the limitations of the Mac Pro to - gasp! - Windows systems that were better. Absent that comparison, the Mac Pro would have been received just fine. Just like had it not been for the Samsung Galaxy, the iPhone would still be a lot smaller ...
I have the new MBP and I do think it's overpriced, but it's priced high largely due to the cost of SSD's. You cannot compare the costs of two machines when one has SSDs and one has traditional hard disks. I do think Apple is probably ripping us off on them, but the prices will eventually come down and at some point in the future, Apple will either lower the price or keep it about the same price, but provide much higher capacities.
The USB-C dongle issue is almost a non-issue. Adapters are available for around $9 each now and if you consider the dongle to be part of one's existing cable, then it really shouldn't bother anyone. And this will eventually take care of itself anyway as people replace their accessories.
One thing I do notice is that I have a USB Harmon-Kardon speaker system. If I plug in the cable with the dongle, attached, it doesn't automatically switch from the internal to the external speakers. But if I unplug the USB-A from the dongle and then plug it back in, it does switch. That's a slight annoyance.
One other issue with the machine is that the touchpad is too large. My palms hit it when I'm typing and it moves the cursor out of position. That drives me nuts.
I used to have a late-2008 MBP. That machine enabled end-users to upgrade/replace memory, hard drive and battery. IMO, that's the way the machine should be designed - I think the current design is irresponsible. If it makes the machine a little thicker, I'd gladly pay that price. I bought a 1TB SSD on my new Mac, but I've already consumed 2/3rd of it - mostly photos and video that I've shot. It would have been nice to have been able to eventually upgrade to a 2TB or larger drive, but now I'm going to have to compromise with an external drive or buy another new machine. That does piss me off.
I had the money to buy the new MBP, but if I were on a tighter budget, I certainly would have bought some Wintel machine instead.
Apple should make all Macs with upgradable (not soldered) components like microprocessor and GPU, and mostly for RAM and SSD. Never using proprietary connectors but standard ones.
Why? Because they would be more profitable and successful as a company? Or do you actually mean "Personally, I would prefer if Apple made..."?
I would personally prefer it so that if I wanted to upgrade my RAM or HD I don't need to buy a whole new laptop. Until they started soldering them in, we would routinely update ram and HD's in our company laptops.
Actually, I personally prefer this myself as well. But this is just because coming from my historic experience. Starting with overclocking by moving some SMDs around OTOH I would never think about doing the same for my washing machine (even though for sure you could upgrade it, hardware and software wise), my other appliances, or my car. No one claims that the manufacture "should make the fridge/car engine/etc upgradable". And I would suppose that for the majority of customers the computer falls into the same category for them. Therefore, economically it wouldn't make sense for Apple to offer a feature only a few, well informed people would care about.
Washing machines and the like are totally irrelevant to the discussion because computers always enabled end users to replace batteries, memory and storage. It was done before and it could be done now and it should be done now. I refuse to believe this would substantially raise the price of the computer - in fact the opposite might be true because there'd be less gluing and soldering. I have to believe that this was done either because of Apple's obsession with controlling everything or a cynical attempt by Apple to get users to upgrade their computers more often. For a company that claims to be environmentally friendly, this will send more computers to the landfill sooner.
Would you buy a camera or a portable radio where you couldn't replace the battery? Would you buy a car where you couldn't replace the headlight bulbs yourself?
It's amazing what people put up with just because it's Apple.
Apple should make all Macs with upgradable (not soldered) components like microprocessor and GPU, and mostly for RAM and SSD. Never using proprietary connectors but standard ones. Besides not charging 2 to 3 times more for the very same upgrade than resellers like Amazon (RAM, SSD, etc). That is really shocking for the richest company on planet Earth.
I am not really sure why we need to make Macs last longer via upgrades. I am currently using a 10 year old iMac that I use all the the time it's got the 24" screen and I still love it. Macs don't lose their speed like Win/PCs. I have a 5 year old MBPro Retina and still very fast. So there is no need to make the product anymore upgradeable. Seriously a 10 year old computer that is still usable is great but not for Apple.
Another perspective here. Take a look at this: https://www.statista.com/statistics/263444/sales-of-apple-mac-computers-since-first-quarter-2006/
Kind of consistent, eh? Someone pointed out that Apple's sales numbers for the last 2 quarters are rather high. True ... but largely because Apple released (long delayed) new models in October. So while it is great that Apple is no longer selling 1-2 million Macs per quarter as it was during the pre-iPhone era, they never reached 6 million per quarter at any time, and moreover sales have peaked.
A few years ago, it was fashionable to claim that the declining Windows PC sales numbers and increasing Mac sales numbers were related phenomena that would continue until Mac became the dominant figure in the computing landscape and Windows was reduced to a few barely surviving makers of very cheap devices. Didn't happen. Windows PC device sales stabilized and have even started to rebound some while Mac sales remain between 4 to 5.5 million per quarter.
So, I suppose that perhaps the commenter whose Windows laptop only lasted 2.5 years had a bad experience ... but that is not the experience of most people and enterprises. And the first, vehement comment left to this article was from someone who simply exists in his own separate reality, totally disconnected from the incontrovertible fact that the professionals, gamers, small businesses, large enterprises, universities etc. that buy everything from midrange Windows laptops to high performance Windows servers are extremely satisfied with them, and that Apple has failed to offer them a product that is compelling enough to induce them to switch.
Yes, Apple has huge profits. But 70%-80% of those are from the iPhone, iPad and iTunes. And yes, the vast majority of iPhone and iPad owners connect them to iTunes running on Windows laptops! So please do not make the mistake of thinking that Apple would be as huge, profitable, influential etc. based on their Macs alone. And when you consider that a huge chunk of the people who do buy 5 million (or fewer) Macs per quarter do so only because they bought iPhones first and then switched - again see my link above - and then you will really understand how the first reply to this article and a great many of the subsequent replies inhabit their own universes.
I say this not as a Apple hater. Between work, school and personal use, I have been using Apple products for nearly 25 years, and have bought no small number of them myself in the process. I am still kicking myself over buying an HP desktop instead of a Mac Mini for my kids' educational purposes 3 years ago. (Although it was not a total loss ... I converted that sucker into a Linux server for my own tinkering projects ... and my kids mostly use their iPads anyway.) I just want to remind you folks that like 85% of the marketplace disagrees with you ... and for reasons that are not always necessarily either superficial or wrong. And if that wasn't the case, there wouldn't have been this huge freakout over the Mac Pro. Why did that failure exist? Because people were comparing the limitations of the Mac Pro to - gasp! - Windows systems that were better. Absent that comparison, the Mac Pro would have been received just fine. Just like had it not been for the Samsung Galaxy, the iPhone would still be a lot smaller ...
You conveniently and completely neglect the fact that, like Andriod, Windows owns the vast majority of the PC market because it's the OS that's been available for a long time to a vast array of vendors that produce PCs at every price point, a large majority of which are produced and sold at price points (low) that Apple simply is not interesting in addressing with its Mac line. Part of that is because Apple doesn't want to pile up cheap crap in landfills around the world (a thing called social responsibility) and part is because Apple wants to provide a superior overall user experience and value proposition than can typically be provided at the lower end price points. So, yes, after decades of building out a huge swamp of mediocre, virus-susceptible, performance eroding, junk PCs, the replacement cycle alone will imply that far more PCs will be moved each quarter than Macs. But you speak nothing to this.
Fact is, just as Tim Cook has characterized Andriod as a positive for iPhone/iOS, in that Android is often the first smartphone experience most people have (because it can be had on a very affordable range of phones globally), it acts as a smartphone training ground, with a certain segment destined to find their way to the more stable, more secure, more privacy respecting iPhone. I have to think the same exists in the PC/Mac universe. And so there still exists a greater potential for iOS/MacOS to grow into the lowground turf currently occupied/dominated by Andriod/Windows than any potential for those latter two to make incursions into the high ground staked out by Apple. And, of course, this is exactly what we've seen with the emergence of the Apple ecosystem since about 2009.
Along the way, in terms of consumer willingness to part with dollars, Apple has made fools of a lot of its competitors, and seen no small number erase themselves from the markets Apple has entered. All driven by the consumer calculus that occurs hundreds of millions of times per year. What is the initial cost? Ah, but what is my lifetime total cost of ownership? And what will be my daily satisfaction level between the choice of products available to me? And a few other calculuses that run through each consumer's head. The profits show the score, and are a better determinant of brand ranking than some arbitrary aspects selected by Laptop Mag.
Apple should lower the price of the MacBook to $1,000 from $1,299 when they go to Kaby Lake. I think that's where that specific product needs to be. Put the MacBook Air out to pasture. Finally.
As far as the MacBook Pros go...a little trickier.
The 13-inch model with function keys should ditch the MacBook Air processors it's using now & use the beefier Intel dual-core i5s that are in the touch bar model. This will allow it to have 4 USB Type C ports. This model could go for $1,399 with 256 GB of SSD storage. That would be a reasonable compromise.
The 13-inch Pro with touch bar should have 16GB of RAM & 512 GB SSD standard at $1,699.
A 15-inch model without touchbar and using integrated graphics could sell for $1,799. Apple needs a 15-inch Pro sub $2,000. There used to a model at this price point.
The entry 15-inch model that has touch bar & discreet graphics should be $2,299, also with 512GB SSD standard. From there users could customize better processors, graphics, and storage.
This would be more competitive and simpler in my opinion.
it is claimed there is not as much "value and variety" as other vendors, offering "only a handful of laptops, and most start at $1,299."
And that somehow damages the brand?
"If you're looking for an affordable laptop, don't look at Apple,”
Just ignore that every study done in the last 20 years shows that they’re more affordable than PCs for what they offer (as a platform as a whole).
The report goes on to note that the MacBook Air hasn't received a refresh in "over two years," and that it "wouldn't be surprised if the company phased it out soon.”
Which… hurts the brand?
Apple is also criticized for not offering a 2-in-1 notebook or one with a touchscreen
No, no. You don’t get to downrank a company for what it doesn’t offer. If you do that, you have to downrank all PCs for lacking security, ease of use, and platform integration.
Editor in chief Mark Spoonauer suggests the decision to discontinue the 11-inch MacBook Air as the smallest notebook was poor
So buy a netbook from 2009, dipshit. Do you want a pocketable laptop or something?
"There's no touchpad on this machine's optional keyboard,"
No shit; it’s a tablet, dumbass. You whine about not having a touchscreen laptop and then whine when you CAN touch the screen that there’s no touchpad? Fuck yourself.
On the subject of USB Type-C, it is suggested on the scorecard that users need a “bagful of dongles” to use the newer MacBooks in the summary.
Oh, so just like the idiots whining in 1996, then.
For the 13 out of 15 score for design, Apple has been declared the “rose-gold standard,” due to the 12-inch MacBook's rose gold variant's existence, though the lack of other color options is noted.
Was Apple voted down when they only offered one color? If not, they need to be fucking sued.
Apple's support is also praised as the standard bearer for the industry, with easy-to-navigate support pages and helpful support agents, though with a lack of support via FaceBook.
This is a joke post, right? It’s just 9 days late, right? FUCKING RIGHT?!
Another perspective here. Take a look at this: https://www.statista.com/statistics/263444/sales-of-apple-mac-computers-since-first-quarter-2006/
Kind of consistent, eh? Someone pointed out that Apple's sales numbers for the last 2 quarters are rather high. True ... but largely because Apple released (long delayed) new models in October. So while it is great that Apple is no longer selling 1-2 million Macs per quarter as it was during the pre-iPhone era, they never reached 6 million per quarter at any time, and moreover sales have peaked.
A few years ago, it was fashionable to claim that the declining Windows PC sales numbers and increasing Mac sales numbers were related phenomena that would continue until Mac became the dominant figure in the computing landscape and Windows was reduced to a few barely surviving makers of very cheap devices. Didn't happen. Windows PC device sales stabilized and have even started to rebound some while Mac sales remain between 4 to 5.5 million per quarter.
So, I suppose that perhaps the commenter whose Windows laptop only lasted 2.5 years had a bad experience ... but that is not the experience of most people and enterprises. And the first, vehement comment left to this article was from someone who simply exists in his own separate reality, totally disconnected from the incontrovertible fact that the professionals, gamers, small businesses, large enterprises, universities etc. that buy everything from midrange Windows laptops to high performance Windows servers are extremely satisfied with them, and that Apple has failed to offer them a product that is compelling enough to induce them to switch.
Yes, Apple has huge profits. But 70%-80% of those are from the iPhone, iPad and iTunes. And yes, the vast majority of iPhone and iPad owners connect them to iTunes running on Windows laptops! So please do not make the mistake of thinking that Apple would be as huge, profitable, influential etc. based on their Macs alone. And when you consider that a huge chunk of the people who do buy 5 million (or fewer) Macs per quarter do so only because they bought iPhones first and then switched - again see my link above - and then you will really understand how the first reply to this article and a great many of the subsequent replies inhabit their own universes.
I say this not as a Apple hater. Between work, school and personal use, I have been using Apple products for nearly 25 years, and have bought no small number of them myself in the process. I am still kicking myself over buying an HP desktop instead of a Mac Mini for my kids' educational purposes 3 years ago. (Although it was not a total loss ... I converted that sucker into a Linux server for my own tinkering projects ... and my kids mostly use their iPads anyway.) I just want to remind you folks that like 85% of the marketplace disagrees with you ... and for reasons that are not always necessarily either superficial or wrong. And if that wasn't the case, there wouldn't have been this huge freakout over the Mac Pro. Why did that failure exist? Because people were comparing the limitations of the Mac Pro to - gasp! - Windows systems that were better. Absent that comparison, the Mac Pro would have been received just fine. Just like had it not been for the Samsung Galaxy, the iPhone would still be a lot smaller ...
Apple's laptop is ahead of its time - in a few years all laptops will only have USB-C ports. The tech community should applaud Apple for moving the masses off of slow, clunky legacy & analog ports. Windows and monitor manufacturers please, please abolish the VGA port! Ironically if Apple added the slower & older USB3 port on the new laptops, they could have avoided most of the 'outrage'. Also, for those in the market for a laptop - go to your local electronics store that sells both Windows & Macs (Best Buy, etc.) and compare firsthand the typical awful & cheap plastic build quality and poor displays on 98% of the Windows offerings. The other 2% that aren't garbage are priced like Apple's offerings.
I have and both Dell, Lenovo, and HP make some quality slim notebooks.
Apple managed to move 5.4 million units of their "overpriced" "dongleriffic" Macs last quarter. That's on the historically high end for Mac sales. People keep buying what Apple is making.
Apple rules in PC profits and the upper end of the retail pyramid. Industry analysts and various metrics can punish them all they want, but CONSUMERS are ground zero for tech viabillty.
Looks like the only thing you can trust these days are Apple's quarterly reports, along with knowing how to read them correctly.
There are no released statistics on the number and of 2015 vs 2016 Mac book pros -that I know. So we don't know if the new MBP is a hit and how big. Or how popular the TouchBar is. DED said asp was $78 higher,but the premium for TouchBar is $300. I would say non Touch bar outsold Touch bars 2 to 1. Thats a big design fail on Apples part.
Comments
Honestly I wonder if Apple's functional org design sometimes hurts them. If the Mac and iPad were stand alone business units and not sharing engineering resources with iPhone might these products get more attention and thus more innovation (on both hardware and software)? Oh and going back to iMore for a second, Rene Ritchie needs to stop with the resources excuse. Apple doesn't have that many product lines. If they don't have the resources to keep iPhone, iPad and Mac current then there's clearly something wrong organizationally or from an executive level priority standpoint.
LaptopMag Staff 2: "Sure, let's drop it to number six and put Lenovo, Asus, HP, Dell all of them above Apple."
LaptopMag Staff 1: "Oh yes, good idea! That will bring more traffic to our site!"
Basically it's just a clickbait.
The USB-C dongle issue is almost a non-issue. Adapters are available for around $9 each now and if you consider the dongle to be part of one's existing cable, then it really shouldn't bother anyone. And this will eventually take care of itself anyway as people replace their accessories.
One thing I do notice is that I have a USB Harmon-Kardon speaker system. If I plug in the cable with the dongle, attached, it doesn't automatically switch from the internal to the external speakers. But if I unplug the USB-A from the dongle and then plug it back in, it does switch. That's a slight annoyance.
One other issue with the machine is that the touchpad is too large. My palms hit it when I'm typing and it moves the cursor out of position. That drives me nuts.
I used to have a late-2008 MBP. That machine enabled end-users to upgrade/replace memory, hard drive and battery. IMO, that's the way the machine should be designed - I think the current design is irresponsible. If it makes the machine a little thicker, I'd gladly pay that price. I bought a 1TB SSD on my new Mac, but I've already consumed 2/3rd of it - mostly photos and video that I've shot. It would have been nice to have been able to eventually upgrade to a 2TB or larger drive, but now I'm going to have to compromise with an external drive or buy another new machine. That does piss me off.
I had the money to buy the new MBP, but if I were on a tighter budget, I certainly would have bought some Wintel machine instead.
Washing machines and the like are totally irrelevant to the discussion because computers always enabled end users to replace batteries, memory and storage. It was done before and it could be done now and it should be done now. I refuse to believe this would substantially raise the price of the computer - in fact the opposite might be true because there'd be less gluing and soldering. I have to believe that this was done either because of Apple's obsession with controlling everything or a cynical attempt by Apple to get users to upgrade their computers more often. For a company that claims to be environmentally friendly, this will send more computers to the landfill sooner.
Would you buy a camera or a portable radio where you couldn't replace the battery? Would you buy a car where you couldn't replace the headlight bulbs yourself?
It's amazing what people put up with just because it's Apple.
Fact is, just as Tim Cook has characterized Andriod as a positive for iPhone/iOS, in that Android is often the first smartphone experience
most people have (because it can be had on a very affordable range of phones globally), it acts as a smartphone training ground, with a certain segment destined to find their way to the more stable, more secure, more privacy respecting iPhone. I have to think the same exists in the PC/Mac universe. And so there still exists a greater potential for iOS/MacOS to grow into the lowground turf currently occupied/dominated by Andriod/Windows than any potential for those latter two to make incursions into the high ground staked out by Apple. And, of course, this is exactly what we've seen with the emergence of the Apple ecosystem since about 2009.
Along the way, in terms of consumer willingness to part with dollars, Apple has made fools of a lot of its competitors, and seen no small number erase themselves from the markets Apple has entered. All driven by the consumer calculus that occurs hundreds of millions of times per year. What is the initial cost? Ah, but what is my lifetime total cost of ownership? And what will be my daily satisfaction level between the choice of products available to me? And a few other calculuses that run through each consumer's head. The profits show the score, and are a better determinant of brand ranking than some arbitrary aspects selected by Laptop Mag.
As far as the MacBook Pros go...a little trickier.
The 13-inch model with function keys should ditch the MacBook Air processors it's using now & use the beefier Intel dual-core i5s that are in the touch bar model. This will allow it to have 4 USB Type C ports. This model could go for $1,399 with 256 GB of SSD storage. That would be a reasonable compromise.
The 13-inch Pro with touch bar should have 16GB of RAM & 512 GB SSD standard at $1,699.
A 15-inch model without touchbar and using integrated graphics could sell for $1,799. Apple needs a 15-inch Pro sub $2,000. There used to a model at this price point.
The entry 15-inch model that has touch bar & discreet graphics should be $2,299, also with 512GB SSD standard. From there users could customize better processors, graphics, and storage.
This would be more competitive and simpler in my opinion.
Won't go that route again.
Still, waiting to see if/what the new iMac will be. If it isn't a decent upgrade I will be looking at something non Apple.
So we don't know if the new MBP is a hit and how big. Or how popular the TouchBar is.
DED said asp was $78 higher,but the premium for TouchBar is $300. I would say non Touch bar outsold Touch bars 2 to 1.
Thats a big design fail on Apples part.