prismatics

They kind of started playing the Investor appeasement card by issuing meaningless statements just like Intel does considering its 10nm thing they keep delaying yet being somehow ‘on track’.

fastasleep said:

GeorgeBMac said:

DuhSesame said:

jdw said:

fastasleep said:

It's a dead horse that's been beaten for going on its third year now. When does it stop? Most "pros" have moved on and are adapting just fine.

Whoever clicked "Informative" on your Yawn post must be ready for bed themselves, if they aren't already fast asleep.

The only place where many of those "Pros have moved onto" is Windows.  I for one will NOT be doing that.  Seriously, Apple is taking a shotgun to the Mac faithful by incorporating extremist levels of minimalism into their designs.  I've loved Macs since 1984, not because they were the most feature rich machines relative to Windoze, but because they were PRACTICAL TO ME.  The late 2016 and newer MBP's are no longer machines that I deem practical, and it doesn't matter one teensy tiny bit to me if a few other people do enjoy the excessive minimalism.  Again, I dare Apple to give us a full featured notebook selling along side their existing line.  Let's see who's right.  My guess is that I am right.  For who in their right mind would buy a stripped down machine for $4500 when you can get more features for that amount of money, and your life is better as a result?  Apple removed key features for no sensible reason at all.  It's a crying shame.  I continue to send Apple feedback about it, and encourage like-minded Mac users to do the same.  If we pound hard enough and long enough, the company just might wise up, especially if the media joins us.

Don't some of you get tired of your fellow Mac users blindly worshipping every decision out of Cupertino as if somehow Steve Jobs is still alive and blessed it?  Steve is no longer around and it shows.  Steve was pro-minimalism too, but at least he knew where to draw the line.  Johnny Ive's line is "so little design there's no design at all."  It's like a blank piece of paper, yet without the paper.  Sorry, but that's not practical for me, and there's a lot more people out there like me too.  Not every Mac user loves what Apple has been doing to the Mac since Steve's departure from this planet.  And we let our voices be heard, both in online forums and at Apple's feedback channel. 

And before a Cupertino Worshipper comes along and bashes me for having the guts to say all this, time and time again, consider well that Apple has 3 different notebook lines! Folks, did you hear that?  THREE DIFFERENT LINES!  These "I don't need ports, and I don't care about dongles or tactile feedback" people who perpetually defend Apple need only buy a MacBook or MacBook AIR to satisfy their lusting after zero practicality.  Why must Apple also gut the MacBook Pro?  It makes NO SENSE at all.  Apple should keep the Pro model feature rich, bridging the needs of today (which includes USB-A and an SD card slot) with the needs of tomorrow, which includes USB-C/TB3.  They have the MacBook and AIR to strip down to their heart's content.  Why must they also gut the Pro?  Again, it's the dumbest business decision I've ever come across.  And don't give me the "well, they needed to be consistent across the line and really push USB-C too, which they couldn't if they included USB-A."  All speculation and wild guesses, and I don't even care if these guesses are correct.

It's time for Apple to consider THE REST OF US.  They aren't now.

I think you should be better off switching.  Ever since Apple moved to Intel, there's always a PC laptop offers more key travel, 2x more USBs with thicker, heavier and better graphics and cooling solutions, except no one is complaining back then.

All in all, Mac communities today rather panic than seeing the truth.

But switching involves giving up a great OS and ecosystem to get great hardware.  

... That's a problem for some.

I have been wondering why Apple is so stuck on that extreme minimalist design?

Is it that they're afraid to compete head to head with a "real" pro laptop?  One with a great keyboard and that is repairable and upgradable -- and that has ports people can actually use?  Maybe even, God forbid, a swapable battery?

The “ports people can actually use” trope is pure nonsense. From a single one of those ports you can do like half a dozen or more completely different things without taking up the other three. Anyone married to two decade-old 5Gbps USB-A ports is no “real pro” no matter how much the braying neckbeards mourn for it. ONE MacBook chassis ever had HDMI, yet people act like it was there forever.

GeorgeBMac said:

fastasleep said:

GeorgeBMac said:

fastasleep said:

MplsP said:

fastasleep said:

jdw said:

AppleInsider said:

MacBook, MacBook Air and MacBook Pro: which is right for you?

The answer is "NONE."

Virtually no keyboard tactile feedback, no SD card slot (yes, Cupertino worshipers, some of us really use it and want it built-in), not even one USB-A port (which is still ubiquitous today and shall be 10 years hence), no MagSafe, no LED on charging cable, no extended power cord in the box, no glowing Apple logo on back (not necessary, but even Apple showed it off those machines their latest keynote video because they look lovely to behold), and ever thinning designs that leave little room for adequate cooling on higher performance MacBook "Pro" models -- all spell a BIG "NO!" when it comes to this veteran Mac lover choosing any of Apple's notebooks today.

The mid-2015 15" MBP top end model with dGPU is the last great MacBook Pro that really is "Pro" in terms of practical usability that allows me to lead a largely dongle free life.  Performance even today isn't that bad either.  I DARE Apple to bring it back with a modern GPU and CPU and one USB-C/TB3 port added (and nothing else taken away), and see how well it sales FAR OUTSHINE any other MacBook Pro.  I DARE APPLE TO DO IT.  I dare Apple to finally THINK DIFFERENT on behalf The Rest of Us rather themselves.

YAWN.

JDW raises several valid points about design choices of the new MacBooks that were a step backwards in terms of usability. by your boredom I gather you don't care about usability?

It's a dead horse that's been beaten for going on its third year now. When does it stop? Most "pros" have moved on and are adapting just fine.

Obviously that dead horse is still kicking.   People don't like to pay premium dollars and get second best.

It's not second best if the first best is an imaginary Homer Car MacBook that doesn't exist. 

But it does exist -- it just doesn't run MacOS. 

Apple is not going to make that for you. The sooner you realize that the better off you are just adapting to reality and realizing that these machines are not less capable and maybe you are by not finding a way to adapt your workflow, and getting on board with where the technology is going, because that’s where Apple is going too, with or without you. 

Dear, you want pay 5000 bucks for a blingbling which serves no purpose for majority of its intended audience? OK, fine. Nobody else will, though. So, you're right, in your own reality.

I'm quite satisfied with Dell XPS 15" hackintosh, with memory I can swap and flash storage that is not extortion, a dream apple will never deliver.

Well the temperature ramp shows exceedingly clearly that there is a problem of thermal transfer between the heatsink and the die, considering that the Mac Mini heatsink has considerably higher thermal capacity than the insult of a cooling solution in the MacBook Pro

I'll just replace the Apple Toothpaste cooling solution with liquid metal and all throttle problem will go away. Additionally to the 32 GB Memory upgrade i did recently, maybe add a 2 TB Thunderbolt 3 SSD (aliexpress enclosure for 80 bucks and 2 TB NVMe drive) as the official upgrade may be called extortion at this point, and we're good for 5 to 10 years, i think.

sergioz said:

I don’t think 5G will be super popular with cellphones in the beginning. As we develop new experiences and tech, demand will rise, but right now I don’t see why you would need access to 1 gigabit connection in you pocket? Plus as tricky 5G as a technology, even when it becomes widely available, it’ll be like the icing on the cake to have it.

The thing is, and what will make you understand why this matters is, that the gigabit is not for every individual device, but multiples of it (e.g. 4 or 8) are shared between many, many more subscribers. As data plans become increasingly more aware of increased media consumption (e.g. basic stuff as browsing, watching videos or streaming music), so do providers noticing that the higher data allowances result in increasing traffic in the existing mobile infrastructure.

The headroom that 4G technologies gave to 3G is exhausted, mobile broadband networks now face increasing cell congestion where there was plenty of capacity 3 or 4 years ago.

Continuing in existing cell topologies is no longer feasable, as in bigger cells, the ratio of available frequency spectrum (conclusively the available data rate) against subscriber count is rapidly going against unmaintainability of services in a useful manner and we are approaching a barrier which defines the maximum information density one can achieve with given parameters of a cell in traditional 4G.

5G is taking a different approach. Rather than creating big cells that have many clients share the same frequency spectrum like 4G and older technologies did, the concept of 5G is to create much, much smaller cells which have a much smaller range.

The obvious disadvantage is, that it's necessary to create more cells and it is much harder to coordinate this big amount of cells. Clients need to switch cells much more often and always maintain multiple connections to multiple cells nearby, which is its own challenge when it comes to energy consumption and the real-time requirements for the 5G backbone as all cells must cooperate.

But, as you might have understood from the explanation, the advantage of this approach is, that every cell can use the frequency spectrum it uses to transmit data in its much reduced range much more effectively, since less subscribers are active in each cell, providing much lower latency, much, much higher data rates as well as better quality of service to each customer.

The thing is, and many will be upset about this is, that the core benefits of 5G technology only apply to use-cases (or environments) where high cell congestion is an issue (e.g. airports, universities, cities, indoor areas). In areas outside of high population people will not see much change.

I hope I could address your concerns accurately.