mainyehc

All in the name of jihad, but not just any kind of jihad; whether they are from Al Qaeda, from Daesh or just lone wolves, these guys are an offshoot of wahhabism, an extremist doctrine that originated in and is supported by Saudi Arabia (at best, the Saudis don't do anything about it, but they probably suppory it actively, yes)… And guess who's been selling weapons to and buying oil from those pricks? Yeah, the US, the UK et al. This has got to stop, and making the necessary changes for that to happen is in our hands.

radarthekat said:

I received one of the first Apple Watches, a 38mm sport in silver aluminum, arrived at 5pm on the 24th, or was it the 25th, of April 2015, having ordered it in the first hour of pre-orders.  Serial # XXXXXXXXXXXX.  Slightly worse for wear, but still my favorite piece of technology and on my wrist all day everyday.  If the last seven months of heat and humidity here in the Philippines hasn't swelled the battery, I expect nothing will. 

Damn. It seems that your watch is suffering from sweat-induced corrosion just like the one seen on other products like the Magic Mouse (I know mine is full of little holes, but I've had it since 2009) and MacBook Pro palm rests. And here I was thinking that the whiz-bang 7000 series alumin[i]um was impervious to sweat…

It really must depend on how acidic your sweat is, too… Mine isn't that much newer (I got it on Dec. 2015), I've worn it almost every day as well, and it looks much, much better; do check it out:


But it does give me pause, because my Magic Mouse didn't start exhibiting corrosion until after some four or five years of (arguably less) continuous use. If my watch ends up looking like yours, I see no other option than getting the stainless steel version the next time round… I should start saving for one, I guess.

maestro64 said:

On a another note, this actually looks like a real 3D CAD drawing (not a schematics) I am personally use to seeing. verse everything we have been seeing to date. This does look like something that would come from Apple verses some guy in mom's basement playing Google Stetchup.

^^^ This. I may not be a product designer myself (I am actually a graphic and type designer by trade) but I studied at a Fine Arts faculty and had some manual technical drawing training (and, much later on, had to take an optional subject on my MFA that revolved a lot around 3D printing), know a lot of product designers personally and have been to enough “fab labs” (both the one in our faculty and another funded by the city council) to know what a CAD drawing looks like.

And this definitely looks legit. Sure, it may be one of the 9-10 rumoured prototypes, but it does lend bigger credence to the earlier drawings (which now, in hindsight, appear to be just simplified schematics based on these, only with less visible layers, instead of mock-ups) and puts it on par, if not way above the other sketchy 3D render with the TouchID cutout.

Also, while on the subject of cutouts, it seems that said cutout really was for TouchID and not wireless charging; have you all seen the size of both the charging pad depicted in this drawing and, duh, even the diameter of the pad already found on the currently shipping Apple Watch? They are huge by comparison, and if the pad has to be encased in any material other than metal, there's no way Apple would not revert to the iPhone 4-esque glass-and-metal sandwich concept or some variation thereof and instead put an unseeming cutout on the back. Nope. That would be ugly af.

Also, for all of those who think that Apple would either wait to have a truly wireless charging solution instead of going with a traditional electromagnetic induction pad solution so they could get rid of connectors altogether: nope. I'm thinking that they will still keep the Lightning connector, as well as the Lightning-to-USB cable, Lightning earbuds and Lightning-to-Audio Jack adaptor pack-ins. The charging pads (maybe in battery case, desk/nightstand- and dashboard-mounting varieties) will be nice-to-have accessories but optional purchases, in typical Apple fashion (just like the expensive and stock-constrained AirPods are). Mark my words.

Technology preview? Only in Photoshop? Coming from a major company that must've had early access to the Touch Bar API portion of Apple's SDK, otherwise it wouldn't have been featured in a keynote? You have got to be kidding me…

Meanwhile, Serif already delivered two entire apps (Affinity Designer 1.5.4 and Affinity Photo 1.5.1) with full Touch Bar support in the MAS, under a perpetual license.

Tell me again how Adobe's decision of killing perpetual licenses and forcing subscriptions down their users' throats made their development cycle quicker… Tell me that with a straight face. You can't. This is the reason why I sometimes don't like John Gruber (even though I am usually a fan of his work) et al.; there are many a pundit who we think are supposedly honest and unbiased, but then ignore entire chunks of the market and especially rising stars, even though they covered Apple, the then-quintessential underdog, during its darkest years.

That Apple may give Adobe more airtime than Serif right now, I can understand completely; Adobe is a household name, it sells. But just watch Serif eat their lunch with their cross-platform apps and, one day, Apple may finally rid itself of one of its worst frenemies and start promoting some better alternatives to the most well-known CC component in earnest.

sirozha said:

daekwan said:

rob53 said:

Do you like your Mac? Would you like one of the latest MBPs? If so, then quit complaining and buy one and use it. If not, then go find a Windows PC and see it that satisfies your urge to waste your time fixing things instead of being productive.

Oh burn!!!

I've never seen it stated it better.  While I dont agree with many of the changes to the new MBP.  I realize this is what Apple has always done.  They have always been expensive.  They have always been controversial in dropping legacy ports/devices.  They have always had proprietary dongles, cables and devices.  

But you know what else Apple has always done?  Always delivered the most stable desktop OS and rock solid software.  Always built robust, quality products that outlast, outperform and hold their value much better than their competitors.  Always provided an unmatched user experience.  

So this 2016 MBP w/TouchBar presents potential buyers with a choice that so many previous Apple products have done.  Do you more money for the product from the company who has built a reputation of "just working"?  Or do you save some bucks, choose a competitor.. and probably end up seriously regretting a few months later.. as you find out exactly the competition costs less and creates more headaches.  

Mini display port and/or HDMI will
be back in the next generation unless they cannot fit the ports on the side of the body because of how thin the body is. I suspect the MagSafe will be back too. They tried to kill FireWire a few years ago but due to an outcry they brought it back for a few more years. 

… Seriously? I'm royally pissed at Apple because of their dumbheaded decision to solder in the SSD and will not be recommending the Touch Bar to my colleagues/customers, or not without issuing severe caveats (many of them didn't indeed know that their Unibody MacBooks were upgradeable at all when they bought them, but after spending years putting Fusion Drives and extra RAM on the latter and seeing how happy they are with the results, I know for a fact – it's just human nature at work – they will buy their next Mac under the assumption that it, too, will be upgradeable; I had already started warning them that RAM wasn't upgradeable anymore with the advent of the first Retina models – and advising them to upgrade it by default and buy BTO machines only, because the price difference isn't that obscene –, and it is now my moral duty to warn them about how storage upgrades work in the same way and just how expensive they are, sosumi… And AI should at least help me/us out a bit; shame on you writers and on you fellow forum-goers for excusing them, as the after-market upgrade path – or, sadly in this case, its lack thereof – is indeed a materially relevant information for all the buyers that may not follow all of AI's posts on the subject, which will quickly get buried under newer articles), but not even I think that the decision to axe all ports in favor of 2/4 Thunderbolt 3/USB-C ports was as stupid as many people like to teasingly tell me, nor do I think Apple will ever reverse it. Not in a million years…

In fact, since I/O ports are a user-facing feature and one about which Apple seems to be very proud and smug, I'd venture to say that it's actually more likely they will redesign both Touch Bar models' internals over the next iterations so that they may feature a discret SSD (hey, I know this “prediction” of sorts is mostly wishful thinking on my part and should be taken with a big grain of salt, but I do believe Apple designers will keep the current design for a little while and maybe the engineers may put slots on it again if they manage to miniaturize the logic board further with newer, more efficient chipsets, CPUs and GPUs) than they would reintroduce any specialized connector. The only different connectors you may ever see on Macs (if they do last that long as a platform) will be a newer, more powerful replacement for USB-C in 10-20 years' time and, since those headphone jacks' days are numbered anyway (Phil's PR “truths” notwithstanding), a Lightning connector for newer wired AirPods and Beats products once the market is saturated enough with iPhone 7 (and newer) units.