I bought the first MBP with a Touch Bar shortly after it was released. I assumed that Apple had a cunning plan for the Touch Bar that would more than compensate for its disadvantages - turned out that they didn't. Touch ID, on the other hand, is really valuable.
Unfortunately as of late it seems buying Apple gear in anticipation of the cool software things they could do with the various new hardware features is not a good plan. Force touch had such a bad software implementation apparently no one used it, the UWB chip is only used if you lose something, the LiDAR sensor only really makes the measure app a bit more reliable (granted it allows third party apps to 3D scan things, but I can't imagine that's too popular a feature?), the touch bar wasn't used for anything much past the original concept and the HomePod ended up gaining very little over time. Obviously Apple has no obligation whatsoever to add more software features than what the device comes with, but for me at least, the anticipation of significant future software updates is a fairly big factor in the value of the device - and helps make the high price easier to swallow.
Completely agree with you on the dongle front too - needing to take a bagful of dongles along with your ultra thin Mac reduces the appeal somewhat. Forcing people to use USB-C won't speed up the rest of the market's transition by a measurable amount. Contrary to Apple's belief, many people do need to interact with the majority of the world's non-Apple computers and devices that are not 100% designed for Macs.
Apple has also tested versions of the new models that return the SD card slot and HDMI port, which were inexplicably removed in 2016. As part of its discussions on reversing the prior shift, I’m told that Apple even weighed bringing back an old-school USB-A port to the MacBook Pro, but it doesn’t appear the company will ultimately do so.
The last bit seems to apply only to the USB-A port.
“ARM can’t do real work.” “You can’t compare Geekbench between iOS devices and Intel/AMD.” “Just because you make phone processors doesn’t mean you can make desktop class processors.”
Last year the M1 already proved the idiots wrong, but many still cling to the belief Apple can’t go any further. That they can’t scale up.
The M1X (or whatever they call it) is going to show how much further Apple Silicon can go. The M1 was the teaser. Now comes the main event. I suspect these new MacBook Pros are going to be the fastest Apple has ever made and will trounce the competition.
And if that wasn’t enough to piss the naysayers off, on Tuesday the Pixel 6 with Google’s new SoC is going to debut, and still lag waaaaay behind the A15. Despite GG implying they might surprise us. They won’t. Just recycled ARM reference cores with a few trivial add-ons. Google is nowhere near Apple when it comes to designing processors.
The only thing that was ever bad about it, was the first iteration without a dedicated ESC-key; the second version fixed that, and from then on, the Touch Bar was a clear winner.
The only other issue, which with Apple Silicon isn’t an issue anyway anymore, is that the Touch Bar wasn’t initialized during EFI booting, thus, if one did a Boot Camp boot into windows, and one needed to hit F1 to do a recovery boot before windows was fully up and the Touch Bar was configured by drivers, one was SOL, unless one had an external USB keyboard handy. But that’s really an edge case, and any crap keyboard for $10 would fix this, if really it ever was an issue. Apple Silicon won’t support Boot Camp anyway, so now even this issue is gone.
In short, Apple is rumored to abandon a great feature at the very moment when actually all issues with it would finally have been resolved. How dumb is that? 🤦🏻♂️
Having used the touch bar for a year now on a work laptop for software development, I’ll say I won’t miss it. I’d actually like to see individual function keys each with a screen that can be configured per app.
Clamourers for USB-A ports on the new MacBook Pros have appeared with depressing predictability. It seems contradictory to want old tech on new products: the official USB organisation has dropped the USB-A connector from the current standard: USB 4 is achieved only via USB-C connectors.
All this clamour for USB-A ports is ironic seeing how 20 years ago Apple introduced the iMac with just USB[-A] ports, and there was lots of whining back then as to why Apple couldn’t also add the SCSI and Serial ports of the day.
The USB-C connector is superior both in ease of use and the features it can offer; if Apple kept on catering to the technology luddites we’d all still be using ”laptops” the size and weight of the Macintosh Portable with ADB and SCSI ports.
It’s difficult to believe that those incapable of adapting to a $20-50 USB-C/Bluetooth mouse, or a $20 dollar USB-C to HDMI cable/adaptor, are serious, or should be taken seriously, in their consideration of several thousand dollar MacBook Pros for professional revenue earning work.
I bought the first MBP with a Touch Bar shortly after it was released. I assumed that Apple had a cunning plan for the Touch Bar that would more than compensate for its disadvantages - turned out that they didn't. Touch ID, on the other hand, is really valuable.
Unfortunately as of late it seems buying Apple gear in anticipation of the cool software things they could do with the various new hardware features is not a good plan.
It is the reason I’ve decided to not get a new iPad Pro this fall, I’ll wait to see what next spring’s models look like. IPadOS wasn’t the big update to take advantage of the M1 power that I was hoping for and that a lot of people predicted. The new iPP is amazing and all but really my old unit from 2017 will do what I need. The new silicon is great but the OS hobbles it so there wouldn’t be any advantage for my use. I might as well wait for the M2 iPP and see what happens. Of course the first time I got burned by this was when I bought an LC III Macintosh. It had a PDS slot and there were all sorts of rumours of what Apple was going to do with it. But neither they or anyone else ever did. I’ve learned to buy on released features, not promises and speculation.
For those that want all the legacy ports and complaining about dongles, get one of those satechi hubs that fit along the edge of the MacBook and just leave it on all the time. USB A, sd, micro sd, hdmi, Ethernet. And it doesn’t make the MacBook any greater volume than it would have to be if all those ports were integrated.
The only thing that was ever bad about it, was the first iteration without a dedicated ESC-key; the second version fixed that, and from then on, the Touch Bar was a clear winner.
The only other issue, which with Apple Silicon isn’t an issue anyway anymore, is that the Touch Bar wasn’t initialized during EFI booting, thus, if one did a Boot Camp boot into windows, and one needed to hit F1 to do a recovery boot before windows was fully up and the Touch Bar was configured by drivers, one was SOL, unless one had an external USB keyboard handy. But that’s really an edge case, and any crap keyboard for $10 would fix this, if really it ever was an issue. Apple Silicon won’t support Boot Camp anyway, so now even this issue is gone.
In short, Apple is rumored to abandon a great feature at the very moment when actually all issues with it would finally have been resolved. How dumb is that? 🤦🏻♂️
I'm actually perfectly happy with the touch bar. I mainly use it for continuous adjustment of sound level and brightness, but then that's about all I ever used those top keys for anyways. And continuous adjustment is much better than click-click-click discrete adjustment.
Gurman fetishising his personal wishlist as statements of fact again …
PS. I laugh at the people who lie about how often they used function keys pre-touch at. You’re a bunch of hypocrites and you know it.
Function keys were so useless shortly after Windows arrived and DOS receded that Apple — not Microsoft — reinvented them as media-control keys, a move MS and every Windows hardware maker quickly adopted …
“You can’t compare Geekbench between iOS devices and Intel/AMD.”
This is one of my favorite facepalms moments. It's like saying you can't compare the speed of doing 2+2=4 using the English language versus doing 2+2=4 using the Spanish language. There are so many of these crazy statements from people every single moment of our lives, and the Internet is here to bring it right in front of our eyeballs.
I am super excited for the new M series processor. May it be the performance beast we’ve been waiting for.
Hoping for 64 GB RAM. Sure, the M series handles RAM better than the x86 setup, but working memory is working memory and working with photoshop, illustrator, after effects, and premiere together to get project done on on right deadlines is a near impossibility right now. After effects snd photoshop in particular use ALL of my RAM currently. Granted, we left the HD era behind at the start of 2020 and everything we do is 4K at the lowest end. Caching to SSDs mitigates somewhat, but let’s be real. RAM is where it’s at.16 in my MBP is a joke. And even my 64GB iMac gets congested. 128 GB would be a dream.
Can totally deal with the notch if it means a tiny bezel.
Would like for the design to look similar to current MBP (and nothing at all like the recent low end iMac). It’s just about perfect looking since 2016. Still the nicest looking notebook out there. Refine. Don’t change just to change.
Wanting space grey and silver to remain.
Personally wishing the Touch Bar would remain. I dig it.
Looking forward to vastly improved screen resolution and hoping it’s ridiculously bright.
A new 30+” iMac would be amazing, but Apple can only move so fast with many working from home.
Clamourers for USB-A ports on the new MacBook Pros have appeared with depressing predictability. It seems contradictory to want old tech on new products: the official USB organisation has dropped the USB-A connector from the current standard: USB 4 is achieved only via USB-C connectors.
All this clamour for USB-A ports is ironic seeing how 20 years ago Apple introduced the iMac with just USB[-A] ports, and there was lots of whining back then as to why Apple couldn’t also add the SCSI and Serial ports of the day.
The USB-C connector is superior both in ease of use and the features it can offer; if Apple kept on catering to the technology luddites we’d all still be using ”laptops” the size and weight of the Macintosh Portable with ADB and SCSI ports.
It’s difficult to believe that those incapable of adapting to a $20-50 USB-C/Bluetooth mouse, or a $20 dollar USB-C to HDMI cable/adaptor, are serious, or should be taken seriously, in their consideration of several thousand dollar MacBook Pros for professional revenue earning work.
Both 20 years ago and in 2016 Apple made the same mistake: a 'transition' that wasn't a transition. It was wholesale change. Terrible for users and completely unnecessary.
People complain because they have equipment that doesn't have the new connectors and, unlike many competitors, Apple never includes docks or dongles in the box.
In the case of the first iMac it was a true nightmare as there was basically only one USB printer on the market and in a SCSI/Firewire world, it shipped with neither.
In 2016, people immediately declared all the previous ports to be 'legacy' (absolute nonsense) only to see the next iMac ship with every single one of them. They are STILL around on Macs.
Apple didn't really give a hoot about users.
And on top of that the whole machine was an interconnected ('glueified') repair/upgrade nightmare with a butterfly keyboard to top things off.
A true transition would be to include previous port offerings as well as the new ones and include a hub in the box. It isn't wholesale change to the new port and thinking 'you have last years machine if you don't like it.
It is estimated that the TouchBar added around $300 to the cost of the machine. If it were optional on some models, then fine, but Apple quickly made it a 'you're getting it, whether you like it or not' situation.
For most users it was simply not necessary. Apple was fixing something that wasn't even broke. Just like it 'fixed' thinness.
I hope that now Ive is gone, someone starts to Think Different at the company.
Clamourers for USB-A ports on the new MacBook Pros have appeared with depressing predictability. It seems contradictory to want old tech on new products: the official USB organisation has dropped the USB-A connector from the current standard: USB 4 is achieved only via USB-C connectors.
All this clamour for USB-A ports is ironic seeing how 20 years ago Apple introduced the iMac with just USB[-A] ports, and there was lots of whining back then as to why Apple couldn’t also add the SCSI and Serial ports of the day.
The USB-C connector is superior both in ease of use and the features it can offer; if Apple kept on catering to the technology luddites we’d all still be using ”laptops” the size and weight of the Macintosh Portable with ADB and SCSI ports.
It’s difficult to believe that those incapable of adapting to a $20-50 USB-C/Bluetooth mouse, or a $20 dollar USB-C to HDMI cable/adaptor, are serious, or should be taken seriously, in their consideration of several thousand dollar MacBook Pros for professional revenue earning work.
The USB-C connector is inferior in one crucial way: it doesn't work with the millions of USB-A devices already out there, at least not without an additional adaptor.
People who want USB-A are not luddites, we're perfectly happy for USB-C ports to be on our devices, and will use them as we acquire USB-C devices. But we don't want to have our existing experience with USB-A accessories to be compromised for some corporate crusade for technological progress and simplicity that we haven't bought into. Many of those USB-A devices are far in excess of the $20-50 that you pluck out of the air, and it wouldn't even matter if they weren't; Apple demanding any additional purchases of a MacBook upgrader is obnoxious and turns people off Apple. The exact same was true with the original iMac; Apple should have had legacy ports.
There will be a day when USB-A is small beans, where the number of accessories has dwindled to the insignificant, and that is the appropriate time to drop the port. Apple dropped it for some of the notebookswhen they were still selling iPhone with USB-A cables, so quit the apologist claptrap.
Clamourers for USB-A ports on the new MacBook Pros have appeared with depressing predictability. It seems contradictory to want old tech on new products: the official USB organisation has dropped the USB-A connector from the current standard: USB 4 is achieved only via USB-C connectors.
All this clamour for USB-A ports is ironic seeing how 20 years ago Apple introduced the iMac with just USB[-A] ports, and there was lots of whining back then as to why Apple couldn’t also add the SCSI and Serial ports of the day.
The USB-C connector is superior both in ease of use and the features it can offer; if Apple kept on catering to the technology luddites we’d all still be using ”laptops” the size and weight of the Macintosh Portable with ADB and SCSI ports.
It’s difficult to believe that those incapable of adapting to a $20-50 USB-C/Bluetooth mouse, or a $20 dollar USB-C to HDMI cable/adaptor, are serious, or should be taken seriously, in their consideration of several thousand dollar MacBook Pros for professional revenue earning work.
For me this is about design balance, Apple has been good at this in the past. The 'best' connected notebook is the one that can connect to everything (likely to be) required without extra devices (eg dongles); that's not the 'optimum' notebook because it's obviously going to be bigger/heavier than desired - it lacks design balance.
The trend in connectors is towards smaller and more versatile, USB-A was a good example when it was introduced. The trick now is to identify the future (I doubt anyone would argue about that being USB-C) and balance it with some subset of current (not legacy) connectors that are commonly encountered and may be inconvenient to adapt (ie a dongle might not be available at the point of need for whatever reason) or cannot be met by USB-C (don't forget that the USB-C MBP came with an analogue audio connector too - how ancient is a 3.5mm jack!).
Those decisions are trade-offs and they're not easy. Just deciding to do nothing (as Apple did in 2016) is an extreme design and, IMHO, history shows that it was a bad one. In 2021 there are still many situations where USB-C connectors on other equipment are entirely absent. For me, the pace of USB-C adoption, which Apple thought would quickly make the 2016 MBP able to ditch its dongles, is still sufficiently slow to justify some other connectivity.
Good arguments can be made for an SD Card reader, HDMI (or mini-HDMI), Ethernet and (yes) USB-A, all based upon their ubiquity in the real world. All would make the notebook fit better into many real users' real use cases. As I said, these decisions are difficult.
I bought the first MBP with a Touch Bar shortly after it was released. I assumed that Apple had a cunning plan for the Touch Bar that would more than compensate for its disadvantages - turned out that they didn't. Touch ID, on the other hand, is really valuable.
Unfortunately as of late it seems buying Apple gear in anticipation of the cool software things they could do with the various new hardware features is not a good plan.
It is the reason I’ve decided to not get a new iPad Pro this fall, I’ll wait to see what next spring’s models look like. IPadOS wasn’t the big update to take advantage of the M1 power that I was hoping for and that a lot of people predicted. The new iPP is amazing and all but really my old unit from 2017 will do what I need. The new silicon is great but the OS hobbles it so there wouldn’t be any advantage for my use. I might as well wait for the M2 iPP and see what happens. Of course the first time I got burned by this was when I bought an LC III Macintosh. It had a PDS slot and there were all sorts of rumours of what Apple was going to do with it. But neither they or anyone else ever did. I’ve learned to buy on released features, not promises and speculation.
I'm perpetually disappointed with iPad OS. If it had a real OS I'd get one in a heartbeat, I'd love to be able to fix software bugs on-the-go, compile software and flash devices, fault-find wireless networks, and use UNIX tools with a handheld device that rivals my desktop i9 iMac for power, but that's just not possible. Right now doing anything more than media consumption, video editing or basic office work on them is impossible, and it's all because Apple won't relinquish its control over the device you own. If you don't fit into the very narrow mould for an iPad customer, you're screwed. I'd imagine that's also why early on the iPad showed such promise and sales rapidly overtook the Mac, but they've gradually waned as people realised they need to do more than write the odd Pages document, and the iPad's not evolved into the PC replacement it looked poised to be - all because of Apple's obsessive control. The most powerful CPU in the world is no use when it's running an OS for a toy.
Clamourers for USB-A ports on the new MacBook Pros have appeared with depressing predictability. It seems contradictory to want old tech on new products: the official USB organisation has dropped the USB-A connector from the current standard: USB 4 is achieved only via USB-C connectors.
Best tell Apple to hurry up and update OpenGL from the ancient 4.1 circa 2010 to 4.6 then, if you think Apple's dropping USB-A because it's "old tech".
After having used the Macbook Pro with touch bar for 4 years, I can tell you that it's been basically useless for me. Even a hindrance. And I think most people feel the same. Otherwise why would Apple remove it?
The only thing I will miss about the touch bar is the spelling suggestions which were handy.
USB-A port is still very useful and important, yet apple still removed It years ago.
They are not the same thing. Usb-a was a legacy tech (with USB-C replacing it). Touch bar was supposed to be the new "standard". So it's a quite different situation.
I don’t believe the notch rumor. The iPhone notch doesn’t really bother me too much, although at first I hated the idea. But if the iPad Pro doesn’t have a notch, then why would the MacBook Pro have a notch? It just doesn’t make sense.
I don't believe it either, but I don't think the lack of notch inn the iPad Pro works as a reason. The iPads all have larger bezels, ostensibly for holding the device with two hands without touching the screen.
iPad Pro hasn't had larger bezels than MBP since 2018.
I don’t believe the notch rumor. The iPhone notch doesn’t really bother me too much, although at first I hated the idea. But if the iPad Pro doesn’t have a notch, then why would the MacBook Pro have a notch? It just doesn’t make sense.
I don't believe it either, but I don't think the lack of notch inn the iPad Pro works as a reason. The iPads all have larger bezels, ostensibly for holding the device with two hands without touching the screen.
iPad Pro hasn't had larger bezels than MBP since 2018.
Sorry, I misspoke; the iPad needs larger bezels for holding the device etc. That need has a nice side effect in giving space for the FaceId sensors without need for a notch. But there's no reason the MacBook can't have close to edge bezels, since it's just a display, no need to have your digits on the side of it.
So bigger bezels with no notch, or edge to edge display with a notch. I think an edge to edge display might be worth an inch-wide notch, it is on the iPhone.
Comments
Completely agree with you on the dongle front too - needing to take a bagful of dongles along with your ultra thin Mac reduces the appeal somewhat. Forcing people to use USB-C won't speed up the rest of the market's transition by a measurable amount. Contrary to Apple's belief, many people do need to interact with the majority of the world's non-Apple computers and devices that are not 100% designed for Macs.
“ARM can’t do real work.”
“You can’t compare Geekbench between iOS devices and Intel/AMD.”
“Just because you make phone processors doesn’t mean you can make desktop class processors.”
Last year the M1 already proved the idiots wrong, but many still cling to the belief Apple can’t go any further. That they can’t scale up.
The M1X (or whatever they call it) is going to show how much further Apple Silicon can go. The M1 was the teaser. Now comes the main event. I suspect these new MacBook Pros are going to be the fastest Apple has ever made and will trounce the competition.
And if that wasn’t enough to piss the naysayers off, on Tuesday the Pixel 6 with Google’s new SoC is going to debut, and still lag waaaaay behind the A15. Despite GG implying they might surprise us. They won’t. Just recycled ARM reference cores with a few trivial add-ons. Google is nowhere near Apple when it comes to designing processors.
All this clamour for USB-A ports is ironic seeing how 20 years ago Apple introduced the iMac with just USB[-A] ports, and there was lots of whining back then as to why Apple couldn’t also add the SCSI and Serial ports of the day.
The USB-C connector is superior both in ease of use and the features it can offer; if Apple kept on catering to the technology luddites we’d all still be using ”laptops” the size and weight of the Macintosh Portable with ADB and SCSI ports.
It’s difficult to believe that those incapable of adapting to a $20-50 USB-C/Bluetooth mouse, or a $20 dollar USB-C to HDMI cable/adaptor, are serious, or should be taken seriously, in their consideration of several thousand dollar MacBook Pros for professional revenue earning work.
PS. I laugh at the people who lie about how often they used function keys pre-touch at. You’re a bunch of hypocrites and you know it.
Function keys were so useless shortly after Windows arrived and DOS receded that Apple — not Microsoft — reinvented them as media-control keys, a move MS and every Windows hardware maker quickly adopted …
Can totally deal with the notch if it means a tiny bezel.
People complain because they have equipment that doesn't have the new connectors and, unlike many competitors, Apple never includes docks or dongles in the box.
In the case of the first iMac it was a true nightmare as there was basically only one USB printer on the market and in a SCSI/Firewire world, it shipped with neither.
In 2016, people immediately declared all the previous ports to be 'legacy' (absolute nonsense) only to see the next iMac ship with every single one of them. They are STILL around on Macs.
Apple didn't really give a hoot about users.
And on top of that the whole machine was an interconnected ('glueified') repair/upgrade nightmare with a butterfly keyboard to top things off.
A true transition would be to include previous port offerings as well as the new ones and include a hub in the box. It isn't wholesale change to the new port and thinking 'you have last years machine if you don't like it.
It is estimated that the TouchBar added around $300 to the cost of the machine. If it were optional on some models, then fine, but Apple quickly made it a 'you're getting it, whether you like it or not' situation.
For most users it was simply not necessary. Apple was fixing something that wasn't even broke. Just like it 'fixed' thinness.
I hope that now Ive is gone, someone starts to Think Different at the company.
People who want USB-A are not luddites, we're perfectly happy for USB-C ports to be on our devices, and will use them as we acquire USB-C devices. But we don't want to have our existing experience with USB-A accessories to be compromised for some corporate crusade for technological progress and simplicity that we haven't bought into. Many of those USB-A devices are far in excess of the $20-50 that you pluck out of the air, and it wouldn't even matter if they weren't; Apple demanding any additional purchases of a MacBook upgrader is obnoxious and turns people off Apple. The exact same was true with the original iMac; Apple should have had legacy ports.
There will be a day when USB-A is small beans, where the number of accessories has dwindled to the insignificant, and that is the appropriate time to drop the port. Apple dropped it for some of the notebookswhen they were still selling iPhone with USB-A cables, so quit the apologist claptrap.
The trend in connectors is towards smaller and more versatile, USB-A was a good example when it was introduced. The trick now is to identify the future (I doubt anyone would argue about that being USB-C) and balance it with some subset of current (not legacy) connectors that are commonly encountered and may be inconvenient to adapt (ie a dongle might not be available at the point of need for whatever reason) or cannot be met by USB-C (don't forget that the USB-C MBP came with an analogue audio connector too - how ancient is a 3.5mm jack!).
Those decisions are trade-offs and they're not easy. Just deciding to do nothing (as Apple did in 2016) is an extreme design and, IMHO, history shows that it was a bad one. In 2021 there are still many situations where USB-C connectors on other equipment are entirely absent. For me, the pace of USB-C adoption, which Apple thought would quickly make the 2016 MBP able to ditch its dongles, is still sufficiently slow to justify some other connectivity.
Good arguments can be made for an SD Card reader, HDMI (or mini-HDMI), Ethernet and (yes) USB-A, all based upon their ubiquity in the real world. All would make the notebook fit better into many real users' real use cases. As I said, these decisions are difficult.
So bigger bezels with no notch, or edge to edge display with a notch. I think an edge to edge display might be worth an inch-wide notch, it is on the iPhone.