I feel like the Apple we've seen since Jobs died is exactly what I would have expected if someone let the designers run the show without a strong product manager to reign them in: Gorgeous and mostly user-friendly products, but slightly too caught up in their own cleverness instead of the actual needs of real users.
I hope there's a chance to rectify that now - though I fear it won't happen until someone more visionary and less 'operations-focused' takes the helm of the company. Steve Blank did this excellent analysis and comparison between Balmer and Cook [0] - I hope there's a Satya Nadella in Apple's future too.
Apple has very skilled engineers, makes great strides in security, and I'm impressed by their hardware skills.
However, UX is their weakness. I don't know why we keep pretending that UX is Apple's strength. Have you used their window manager? Have you used their workspace implementation? Clearly they haven't used it themselves. Everything about the Mac UI is geared toward just having a pile of windows in one workspace.
Their window switcher by default requires switching between applications then switching between the windows of that application. Why?
Rearranging the contents of workspaces is a complicated dance of swipes and drags and other mouse-heavy movements. On a decent window manager, this can all be done with keyboard shortcuts.
They neglect power-users. They neglect usability for those with limited range of motion.
The way i see it is Apple provides simple defaults which work best for most/avarage users.
If you want something different/extra vs the default, you can customize some stuff within SystemPreferences (like keyboard shortcuts) or install a third party app (like BetterTouchTool, Contexts, Moom, Magnet, etc.)
Personally, i much prefer my Macbook's UX over my Windows10 UX.
I like how Window management works in macOS more than the other platforms! The touchpad gestures are great. Or, if you're using a mouse with extra buttons, one of the side buttons can get mapped to Mission Control, which works wonderfully!
I did prefer App Exposé in Snow Leopard, but ah well...
Agreed. The only thing that mitigated this is that larger screens naturally made us more prone to having a bunch of windows open on a screen. Back in the 1024x768 days, not being able to maximize a window on Mac was ridiculous. "Full screen" view is/was a terrible "solution" to this.
The fact that windows can't be "snapped" like on Windows is so frustrating. (Yes, I know there are 3rd party apps for this.)
And illustrates one of my core problems with Apple stuff: so much is hidden in gestures I'll never naturally discover unless someone tells you. Likely where Snapchat got the idea
Not a native solution but very lightweight and solves a lot of your issues.
And if you want something extremely powerful and robust, check out Hammerspoon. Much more complicated setup but basically turns the MacOS window manager into a proper tiling wm.
I really recommend Amethyst, which is an xmonad-like tiling window manager for OSX. It's still not as configurable as xmonad, but certainly nicer for me than the default WM:
I am not anymore the Macbook Pro is a huge disappointment. iCloud runs on Google Cloud because Apple thought the cloud was a feature. Apple should have bought Dropbox instead of having to rely on Google for their Cloud offering especially since they are talking about being a service company instead of a product company.
If you walk into an Apple store and buy their top of the line laptop and top of the line phone and take them home you’ll quickly realize there is no way to plug them in to each other.
Worse yet. Walk into an Apple store and buy their top of the line laptop and top of the line mouse, and take them home -- realize a few days (maybe weeks, to be fair) later that you cannot charge your mouse with your laptop without a dongle.
>If you walk into an Apple store and buy their top of the line laptop and top of the line phone and take them home you’ll quickly realize there is no way to plug them in to each other.
All these worse case assume you can actually walk into an Apple Store in the first place. They are jam packed and a complete mess.
( I haven't seen the new layout and workflow of Post Angela Ahrendts Apple Store yet, so many be they are better now. )
See, you say that, but I've actually had the situation where my network was down and I had to wait 4 minutes before I could get it back up because of the stupid mouse design.
My wife works in a small, elementary school and I help with the computers from time to time. One day, their network was misbehaving and I needed to change some settings on their iMac "server". I quickly discovered that the mouse had lost it's charge over the 2 months that they didn't use it and I had to plug it in and wait for it to get a small charge. Well, first I had to find a USB <--> Lightning cable.
Anyway, the worst possible case is not that you go read something for a while; sometimes your network is down and you have to wait 10 minutes before you can fix it. Just because some designer thought it would be ugly to put a "tail" on a mouse.
If you haven't used a mouse in months you're lucky it's still there.
More seriously if it went from misbehaving to calling you in to getting to the computer and adjusting it, it doesn't sound like the four minutes of charge time was anything but negligible. Finding a cable sounds like a bigger issue, and that could happen to any wireless mouse. (and wireless is definitely not a dumb design decision, there are clear usability advantages to wireless mice)
It's ridiculous that iPhone didn't switch to USB-C when they dropped the headphone jack. Apple used to be so good about consistency and compatibility between products.
If we're talking about consistency, how about the headphone port on the Macbook? You need a dongle to listen to music on your phone, if you want to use the same headphones for your computer.
(1) "No way with the cables included in the box" is not the same as "no way." There's a USB-C to Lightning cable in the bag right next to me. That lets me plug a top of the line Apple laptop into a top of the line Apple phone. With no dongle, even.
(2) In practice, there are zero times over the last two years that I've had to plug a phone into a laptop. I can't honestly remember why I bought this cable; I think I wanted to see whether USB tethering to the phone was better than using the mobile hotspot feature (spoiler: kind of a wash). I am sure there are people reading this, possibly including you, raising their fists to the sky and screaming BUT IT IS THE PRINCIPLE OF THE MATTER, and, sure, okay, I guess. But is it?
One can make that argument that Apple should include both cables in the boxes, or a USB-A to USB-C dongle, or something. But in practice, just how many people need the USB-C cable for their phone, even if they have a USB-C laptop? The vast majority of people are probably only using Lightning cables to charge their phone from a charger, in which case it doesn't matter, or to plug into their car, which means they need USB-A anyway. (People may also be using Lightning-to-not-USB dongles, like headphone ports and HDMI output, but that's irrelevant to this.)
The people waving fists aren't doing it for "PRINCIPLE OF THE MATTER". They are literally forced to use extra dongles and components for THEIR workflow.
I can't find any replacements. Anyone on my team that tries whatever bluetooth whatever, they always sound distant or scratchy just plain lagged. On the other hand they keep asking me to tell them what I use because I always sound crystal clear with no background noise. I send them that link and immediately dismiss it because it's cheap, uses a stupid USB connector and their laptop doesn't support the plug without dongles. (I use a 2014 MBP)
Yet they keep complimenting me, like literally every call on how good I sound to them. I don't care if they found a $200 lightning plug version with large ear cups - they don't sound like I do.
I'm not sure if you're the one who downvoted me, but dude, the "workflow" that I was responding to was not YOUR workflow, was it? I was specifically responding to someone who said there was "no way" to connect an iPhone to a USB-C MacBook, pointing out they were just flat-out wrong. You can make that connection very easily, with no dongles involved.
I'm sorry if you thought I was making some blanket statement that all workflows are absolutely wonderful under all circumstances on laptops that have moved to USB-C, but I also don't think that would be a remotely fair reading of what I wrote.
Almost everyone's complaints are resolved by changing lightning ports to USB-C. Obviously it will take time for that change to make it into the next hardware refresh of the mouse/keyboard/trackpad but it should have been on the iPhone two years ago.
If I want to get 10 GB of RAW photos onto my 2013 MacBook Pro, I just pop the SD card out of the camera and into the laptop. Transfer is done in about a minute or two.
No SD card reader means the new MBP just couldn’t do this without dongles, full stop. That’s a step backwards.
Show me the SD card that can saturate USB 3 or USB C. The fastest sony cards top out at about 300Mbps. Heck, USB 2 could handle that at top speed (theoretically; most implementations stunk). USB C is better with really high bandwidth things like eGPU, 4k displays, etc., but sd cards are not the best argument to make here.
The fastest SD cards are 300 megabytes/second, not megabit. All my Sandisk Extreme Pro cards, for example. I also have a bunch of Extreme Pro CF cards that are 160MB/s.
And then there's CFast - speeds in the 400MB/s range.
Apologies, I messed up my capitalization. That ought to have been "MB". You're right that things like compact flash are faster, but USB 3 has can handle over 600 MB per second.
Still not sure I understand what you mean. If you have a slower USB, slower card reader, or slower card, all components are bound by that speed. The USB 3 supports a much faster than the card speed; I'm guessing most readers are similar speed. The cards themselves are the limiting factor here.
First, that's not a dongle, that's an SD card reader. A dongle would adapt a USB-A reader's plug to a USB-C plug.
Second, this is a step forward. Previously, people who didn't need to carry around SD card readers had to, in the form of bulkier laptops with smaller batteries. Now, only folks who need readers have to carry them around. That's a win.
I knew defining a dongle would bring out the pedants, and that makes me very happy, but I think the real point is being overlooked here.
Folks who want an SD card reader or HDMI should carry around SD card readers and HDMI cables. People who don't want those things shouldn't have to carry them around.
I modernized all my accessories years ago. USB-C is all I or, I would argue, nearly anyone needs. I'm truly sorry that your job requires you to carry a little extra gear, but it's not my job, so don't burden me with it. (If you disagree, then explain why the MBP shouldn't have compact flash, micro SD, etc.)
>> I knew defining a dongle would bring out the pedants
Some might say your narrow definition of dongle was an attempt at being pedantic.
>> I think the real point is being overlooked here.
The real point being overlooked isn't the dongle issue, or being minimalist. It's a product line diversity issue.
You have to be aware that a lot of people who won't switch away from Mac are doing it because of love of the OS, and not necessarily the love of the hardware itself.
Apple has basically decided to make all of their laptop lines ultrabooks (as is their right).
If you look at all the other companies who make laptops, they have non-ultrabook lines for people who need ports, etc. Apple has chosen not to cater to those people, and those people, whose requirements used to be satisfied by previous iterations of Macbooks, are now complaining.
They do have stuff inside them though, so I'm not suggesting they make it heavier but having the required electronics does take up space that can be otherwise utilised.
I wish everybody who buys a new MacBook Pro all the best, and I hope they enjoy it. I just won’t be getting one. (The card reader was just the icing on the cake; the unreliable keyboard and failure-prone backlight ribbon cable are the main reasons I won’t buy one.)
Ultrabooks exist for a reason, and my personal opinion is that it’s a bummer that the “pro“ offering is less capable and more annoying to use for media editing than it used to be.
Even though my last Mac, the early 2011 15" Macbook Pro, was a complete lemon in terms of execution (GPU overheating issues), I loved that design and form factor. It had all the ports I wanted, plus the end-user expandability. At one point I popped out the optical and stuck in a second SSD.
Apple didn't handle the recall for the 2011 MBP problems very well.
This was incredibly problematic for me, considering Apple's fantastic reputation for customer support. After that experience, I basically went back to Windows, and the transition was surprisingly smooth.
Dongles have existed long before USB-C (and even A).
Pretty much 'a small thingie' that has to be attached to a computer for the latter to carry some specific task. Hence, a card reader fits the dongle definition and it should be part of any laptop...
There used be dongles that served copyright protection.
> No SD card reader means the new MBP just couldn’t do this without dongles, full stop.
So you go out and buy a dongle. Or you just connect the Camera with a cable and you don't have to fiddle with the tiny SD card.
I personally never use SD cards, or any other flash cards. I never use the ethernet jack on a laptop. I very rarely use thumbdrives or other USB devices. I also don't use serial out, or PCMCIA, or compact discs, all of which still conceivably are necessary for some users.
On the other hand, I always need an adapter for video out, because it's either VGA or HDMI or even DVI.
So I go out and buy a dongle. I'm glad that the ports on my laptop is not the superset of all things anyone might need on there.
The problem has less to do with dongles than having a diverse product line catering to multiple user types.
Apple has basically decided to make all their laptop lines ultrabooks (which is their prerogative). And because a lot Mac users are more loyal to the OS than the hardware itself, they're stuck with what Apple is offering.
As a consultant who goes to different clients, I prefer to have built-in ports as opposed to having dongles I can forget, lose or leave behind. Also, a lot of cables will wear out, and they will stop working when you need them the most (I've ruined quite a few video dongles).
This is why the old unibody MBPs were so great. Yes, they were a little chunkier, but that tradeoff was well worth it for the convenience.
I have only one laptop that had an "expanding" ethernet port (a Lenovo), and it's not great. It's the first flaky built-in ethernet port I've ever had in a laptop.
> Also, a lot of cables will wear out, and they will stop working when you need them the most (I've ruined quite a few video dongles)
Okay, but if a dongle breaks, you just buy another dongle. If a video port breaks, that's a much more expensive replacement - though I suppose you can get a USB video dongle these days.
On a side note, I wish that wireless video was more of a thing, given the security issues with physical connectors.
>> Okay, but if a dongle breaks, you just buy another dongle.
Sure. But what if you're onsite somewhere and can't get one nearby? This is a huge problem if you're somewhere where you are required to use a wire for networking (these places do exist).
That’s a bullshit argument. My SO‘s Lenovo Laptops USB A ports broke. My USB-C Ports seem significantly more robust, not by implementation but by design. I don’t care about some five dollar China dongle- I care about the connectors of my computer and in this regard there is not a single connector that can compete with USB-C.
I said "That's why I no longer have a Mac and have a Windows laptop instead." It's not an argument. It's simply a statement of fact that explains a choice I've made for myself.
I literally switched from a user serviceable Mac laptop with plenty of ports (15" 2011 MBP) to user serviceable PC laptops with plenty of ports, with one of the primary reasons being that the newer Macbook models didn't satisfy my desire to have a full suite of ports that includes ethernet.
As for broken ports/connectors, I've had zero port failures in almost 3 decades of laptop ownership, and I don't consider myself to be very gentle plugging/unplugging my peripherals.
At the moment, I have 2 laptops with USB-C and 3 without. I personally don't see a huge difference in robustness between the USB-C and USB-A ports. Even when I buy a USB-C laptop, I still make sure that it still has at least one USB-A port so I can have dongle-free interoperability with my peripherals.
I've on three separate occasions had to run to an Apple store to buy the SD card reader dongle AGAIN because I left one of them at home while travelling. On each occasion the only option was the expensive 50 dollar SanDisk one, so i'm 150 dollars out of pocket due to this questionable choice already.
My wife has had similar experiences with the HDMI adapter.
This was of course never a problem during the years in which Apple provided a sensible choice of ports, built right into the machine.
So, you're traveling to that place on three separate occasions and you somehow always end up in the same Apple store that already ripped you off before?
It's great that you don't mind throwing out all of your peripherals every time Apple decides to remove a port.
I personally have better things to spend money on, so I generally don't get rid of my devices until they stop working. Apple's made it a PITA to do that, so I've stopped buying their products. Problem solved.
Here's a selection of connectors that you can supply with Thunderbolt3 or plain USB dongles, most of which I actually own:
- Serial-Port
- Parallel-Port
- PS/2 Port
- USB A/B/C/Mini/Micro Port
- Firewire 400/800
- HDMI (and Mini HDMI)
- DVI
- VGA
- DisplayPort and Mini Displayport
- 10/100/1000 Mbit/s Ethernet
- SD/MiniSD/MicroSD Card
- CF Card
- Memory Stick
- SATA/mSATA
- IDE
- 3,5mm and 6.35mm audio jacks
Not everyone needs all of these ports, all of the time. They need some of these ports, some of the time - but everyone's requirements are different. You probably wouldn't argue that a Macbook should have Firewire Ports, but those are some of the most expensive devices you'd have, if you have them.
Should the Macbooks have more ports? Absolutely, but they should be Thunderbolt 3 ports.
Ridiculous. All my old flash drives (and my new ones) are usb-a, because it is still widespread and compatibility is important (I need to be able to connect to more than my one laptop). Ethernet is still faster, and can be necessary. Very few monitors have actual USB-C connectors. Same with peripherals.
USB-C-all-the-things is great if you live in the valley environment of shiny new every thing; not so much if you have to deal with all the stuff that all ready exists.
Also, have you considered the amount of e-waste produced by this change-over?
Tell that to Apple then, who are still shipping a USB-A to Lightning cable inside every single iPhone box that is incompatible with the vast majority of computers they ship, and has been for years now.
Apple's own products often need additional dongle purchases to work with each other using the standard cables they ship with. This is not just a question of people choosing them, a new cable or a dongle is forced if you want to charge your Apple phone from most Apple laptops.
I'd argue that when Apple feel the market for USB-C is mature enough that they can ship a USB-C cable in an iPhone box, this is probably the canary in the coal mine that indicates the dongle epidemic is over.
Older readers will remember that in the PowerPC era, the Powerbooks and iBooks often shipped with a handful of video dongles as standard - in the box no less! (my S-Video one got a lot of use way back when). If Apple had just shipped a single reliable USB-A -> C adapter with every MacBook and stomached the tiny cost, this could have appeased a great many people rightly annoyed by this badly managed port transition.
I do think usb-c and thunderbolt over usb-c are the future. However, what is problematic is they've put the design of super thin over practical. What once were internal components are now external dongles. The price of the laptops didn't go down because of less hardware, it actually went up and increased/grew a market of dongle-land. Now to get an equivalent laptop from a few years before we have to spend hundreds of dollars to be able to connect that external monitor, use ethernet, or usb-a.
You're probably getting those cords and connectors straight from Apple, because if they aren't made for Apple products, most often than not they don't work.
Operations focused could be good. Some of the older iPhones are better IMHO. Small enough to use 1 handed, headphone port, battery could be improved while keeping form factor.
An operations person would see that as a market that will migrate to Android if the need is not met.
With the iPhone X Apple put serious R&D into a display that folds back on itself for the sole reason that a phone is more ascetically pleasing when the boarders are symmetrical. Even after a year and a half every phone except the iPhone has an asymmetrical chin. Will Apple still be able to make decisions like that without Ive in a leadership position? For Apple's sake I really hope so.
Notch? What notch? I have an iPhone X and mine has ears which extend the display up into the top of the phone where the camera is placed to get my status bar out of the screen. Brilliant! I say.
This is a very weird way of viewing the issue. The space is physically there, but because the size of the phone is ok anyway experience-wise it seems to be an extra feature?
Well, depends on how you define 'first world problems'. But again, you should look at other phones today, not the ones from 2007. I thank my god every day that some companies finally had the courage to do original/innovative work to get rid of that. Not all of them will be successful, but honestly, the notch is nothing more than a compromise, and an ugly one at that.
Yeah. Old Casio watches have screens with notches, punches, dual screens, screens in screens... you name it. They’re fine. They actually work well and don’t bother anyone.
The whole point of this thread is how brilliantly elegant Ive's designs are. Yeah, it's all 1st (or 0th) world problems to talk about such issues -- that's a given entering into the discussion, not a reason to shut discussion down.
All I’m saying is that the notch doesn’t FEEL like it removes screen for me, rather ticks away the status bar making the notch “issue” not an issue at all.
It is an absurd position that your way of thinking is logical while the counterparty’s is emotional. In fact quite dishonest as a rhetorical technique. Less of a notch that is asymmetrical would look worse due to human preference for symmetry, and what the parent said is that the current solution does in fact put the statusbar at notch level. So why does it matter?
I suggest looking at the response the user made to the comment for a different reaction than your comment. Also i didn't say one way was better nor that I looked at it logically, or did I?
Interesting! Good design is human in nature and may sometimes be against a colder logical approach. I do wonder about brand and identity though but those are harder to look at from a distance.
Somewhere between 4:3 and 16:9 (usable in portrait or landscape, obviously) seems an optimal screen shape for the vast majority of games and apps. (For a PC, 16:10 seems noticeably better than 16:9)
Going wider than 2:1 doesn’t seem to be adding useful screen space, really
This has got to be one of the best quotes that illustrates what I believe to be wrong about everything related to Apple and it's products: the blatant and worrisome repackaging of ideas and words.
I'm not facetious at all when I say: Thank you for this quote. I'll save it and use it all the discussions I'll have on the subject from now on. It has really added a key-puzzle-piece to my understanding of the Apple-mindset.
The "notch" (Who came up with the term anyway? I don't believe Apple actually identifies it with a name.) is most definitely meant to be a notch: when applications are full-screen the notch will actually "eat" a part from your screen. This was shown since day 1 of the introduction where a phone was on display with the Wonder Woman movie full-screened and HDR activated. This is Apple's intended and expected behavior. It's Apple's choice to put the "notch" front and center, not to hide it with software and even set up guidelines to ignore it in application development.
Personally, I have an issue with notches and I will never own a device that has one. I find it a lazy, ugly and uninteresting way to increase the screen to body ratio of phones. But I'm somewhat glad with the current experimental designs that are being released by other manufacturers. It's refreshing to see different takes on the issue wether by popping up camera's, flipping over camera's or now even hiding camera's under the screen. Now that is innovation, that is design, that is actually looking for a solution for a very difficult problem. Instead Apple chose to put the "notch" front and center and to ignore it even going so far as to almost market it as a feature. Because look at all the high-tech stuff you get because of it. Sorry, I'm not buying it.
And this shows the incidious marketing that Apple partakes in. It redefines words and ideas on an active basis:
- A motherboard isn't a motherboard, it's a logic-board. It does exactly the same thing, it is exactly the same thing and even is produced in exactly the same way as motherboards. But somehow the brand on the shell makes it different.
- A Mac is different from a Personal Computer and as Louis Rossman has indicated a Mac can "regress" into becoming a PC. How is this possible, it does the exact same thing, is build in the same manner, uses the same technology and serves the exact same purpose.
- An "App" is basically a term that collects all the things that are software-y. A deamon? That's an app that runs in the background. A service? That's an app. A compiler? That's an app. A game? That's an app. A script? That's an app. A shell? That's an app. Etc...
- A repository with a gui suddely is an app-store. No, it's a software repo with included DRM for free.
- Durcing the introduction of the then new "earpod" design of the corded headphones that statement was made that they were engineered to guide audiowaves into your ears. Gee wiz Batman, what are all the other headphones doing then?
- The CE Iphones were "unapologetically plastic". So they are just plain and simple plastic. Just like all the other manufacturers out there.
- The famous "I'm a mac and I'm a PC" commercial is so obvious that it almost hurts. No, they both are PC's; they just look a little different.
This repackaging of words and ideas is a very worrisome trend. It muddies the water when it comes to definitions of words and it eventually will lead to the muddying of the truth. Not only that, but if we accept this sort of repackaging with our PC and phone hardware; why should we not accept it in other aspects of our lives? Why should there not be alternative-facts, when there are alternative PC's? It's a mechanism in our psyche that is prone to abuse and therefore we should not partake in it, even if it maximises profits.
It's all actually pretty simple, look at the definition of the word and if all of it applies; it sticks. How you feel about that does not matter.
I wish I could triple-vote your post. The redefinition of words, the abuse of language, is Orwellian.
> but if we accept this sort of repackaging with our PC and phone hardware; why should we not accept it in other aspects of our lives?
But most of us already do - in politics this redefinition of words is common. "Oil companies" become "energy companies", etc etc.
> It's a mechanism in our psyche that is prone to abuse
The hardest thing to change in an person is their identity. If someone's identity is tied to a particular belief (the earth is flat, my deity can throw bolts of lightning, etc) then anything that contradicts that belief is either ignored or else spun to fit the existing belief system of that person.
On iOS? Nothing, 'cause there is no such thing. The "status bar" shows the battery indicator, the signal strength, and wether you are on cellular or wifi.
On the left, you've got the name of the carrier you are currently using, whos text is scrolling. If it's unlocked, it shows the current time and if GPS is enabled.
... none of which appear in the notch-level "ears". Which is fine (tho were it up to me, I'd prefer VPN status somehow integrated w/ signal strength indicators for cell & wifi).
I don't know that I agree with that considering the S10+ has what amounts to a hole in the top right corner. The notch isn't great but I actually think I prefer seeing those 2 options side by side.
I prefer the hole, for two reasons: A lot less total space of the display is missing, and the part that is missing is one side rather than the middle, so you still have room for a mostly full width uninterrupted status bar.
Are you saying face ID is so fragile moving the camera 1 inch or less than an inch to the right kills all functionality? You manage to line your phone up so precisely each time you use it?
Not OP, but I believe he's talking about how the iPhone's large notch size is due to additional hardware used by face id. Having that size notch on the left/right side wouldn't be much better than in the center.
Personally, I'd rather use my fingerprint anyway.
They have infrared and dot projector, otherwise every phone has mic, speaker, proximity sensor, etc. They chose to stuff everything in the notch, it wasn't necessary.
I prefer the notch and no chin. These design decisions are difficult but ultimately the iPhone X was an impressive phone . The S10 is a nice phone too, to me both look good in the photo. Jony Ive has contributed great work to the design of mobile / personal computing products. Today I smile walking into a tech store and ooogling at the surface book, XPS and Lenovo. Peer pressure has improved the design across the board. I’m a 20+ year apple customer and recently my 2 year old mbp went in for some restoration work. First time i’ve had to use Applecare. For a company like Apple outsourcing design seems similar and counter intuitive however from an objective perspective I question design choices. My 2012 MBP has a tidier appearance to my 2017 MBP which requires many dongles and adapters. To me that is a bad design. So it might be that Jony is more responsible for design problems and this is it for Apple.
it's a funny chain of consequences. put a notch, now the bottom border is too thick, so you thin it up with a very expensive manufacturing process. if you had not a notch there, there would have not been a need to move away the chin to maintain visual symmetry.
anyway even with most manufacturer producing notch design, I still find no benefit that entices me to move to a notch model for a feature that adds a total of 44 pixels rows at twice the selling cost to maintain visual border symmetry, but I understand there are people obsessed with aesthetics that are willing to part a sizeable amount of money for a symmetrical bezel.
It appears I'm just not the target audience of apple anymore.
heck, I can use firefox and ublock on android, so iphones look even worse feature wise from here. they look good and cost a lot and that's it.
even the app quality argument holds little value today as there's not many app today that aren't just cross-compiled
plus, a billion of little cuts, like not being able to download an mp3 and use it as alarm or ringtone, having to use safari for sites that use webgl, having skype etc to open link into safari forcing every time a copy paste etc etc.
iphones aren't bad experience as long as you commit to every single defalut they pick for you. outside that, they're pretty and they're expensive.
three years ago the tech gap in the hardware itself was enough to justify the price, with even high end androids having wholly inadequate performances, and I had iphones all the way up to the 5s, but that's irrelevant now, with even the midrange android beefy enough to go trough every application you can throw at them with ease.
I'm conflicted on this topic. on one hand carriers are acting like total trash about android security. on the other hand people aren't forced into a lease and can get a vanilla android one device from a lot of different vendors and enjoy faster upgrades from the vendor and extended upgrades from projects like lineageos.
I think the root cause is the general populace voting with their wallet in a way that doesn't align with the best practices as seen from a more security conscious mindset.
however this issue intersects weirdly with budgeting and upgrading frequency. bar consideration on used market depreciation, one iphone purchase can get you 3 midrange android phones, so for the same budget you'd be more or less on the same os "freshness" for a comparable period of time, so to say, with increasingly better hardware and fresher batteries (because if you take 5 years as a iOS device lifetime you'll be hit by battery and subsequent performance degradation, likely twice), and of course if one has the budget to change device every year the issue disappears regardless of the platform.
as long as one can avoid carriers devices, I guess.
I think of phones as a 3 year replacement cycle. Though I am in year 4 with my 6s now. I get the manufacturer's original warranty plus the additional 2 years of repair or replace from my American Express card. One upside of keeping longer is that I am personally contributing less to the e-Waste problem than if I went through an Android phone per year.
So ballpark math, a $900 iPhone XR would be covered by either Apple or American Express for 36 months and cost me $25/month to maintain. I effectively run a leasing program for myself inside my small business budget.
I'm lucky enough to be on Android One, so the only contact point I've with Android OS is the notifications and every now and then the settings app, everything else I've replaced, from the launcher to alarm application to the browser.
People care of iOS mostly because they're forced to interact with iOS bundled apps daily and well, if you compare those bundled app with the mess that's on non Android One devices Apple comes on top, but there are other choices.
How about decisions like removing the headphone jacks from the company's most popular music players, the very devices with which people are supposed consume the media-centric services that Tim Cook and analysts say are the future of Apple?
Apple manufactures bluetooth headphones also [0] .. do the math. The really popular Beats headphones for example are made by Apple indirectly. By cutting off the headphone connection, they are encouraging people to buy new products instead of using old and proven technologies.
Apple has done this all the time during their history, eg. look at the whole adapter situation where you just have to buy extra hardware to connect your new device to anything.
And this is where whole "ecosystem" comes in.
If you switch, you will either have to replace all of your devices, or have inconveniences while using them together.
This decision was promptly copied by every other major phone manufacturer, for the same reasons Apple made the decision. The 3.5mm jack is obsolete and getting rid of it enables a better, tougher device which is more waterproof.
The largest non-Apple player in the industry, Samsung, continues to ship flagship phones with a 3.5mm jack and with waterproofing that has been consistently ahead of the iPhone. Samsung Galaxy has been IP68 since the S7 in 2016. Something the iPhone didn't achieve until the XS & XS Max.
The idea that this was about waterproofing is a fabrication.
It blows my mind how people call things obsolete without replacing all of their functionality. The only reason the 3.5mm jack is considered obsolete is because Apple said so. Literally nobody had any problem with it existing up until the day Apple announced that iphone. If this isn't the definition of sheeple then I don't know what it is.
Its not obselete when 100s of millions of people use it everyday and the replacement is expensive, needs replacing because the batteries die and has poorer sound quality.
No phone is more waterproof with it than without (they all have complex data ports with many connection vs three or four in a jack). No phone has a bigger battery. No phone is tougher.
It allows Apple and others to sell expensice Bluetooth ear buds.
Most milspec phones have been waterproof for a long time. Kyocera has a group of phone models (named Hydro) that are/were waterproof, although they aren't very impressive or popular, and rely on caps with gaskets.
Apple is a trendsetter and nobody can deny that. That doesn’t make the headphone jack an anti feature. I use a 6S to this day when I could get a XS, for the headphone jack and smaller size/weight.
It was also recently reversed by Google for the Pixel 3a. I'm hoping other manufacturers follow suit. It's fine to admit a mistake and many have been made in phone design recently.
I guess it's not as super obvious as it sounds, but if you take a look at a 3.5mm audio jack, it's not that hard to imagine creating a hermetically sealed (and therefore waterproof) female plug for that specification.
I don't think Ive departing from Apple would be entirely a bad thing, though. Most of Apple's really great designs are thanks to Jony, but some of their really stupid ones (e.g the horrible butterfly keyboards) have his fingerprint on them too.
I have never heard of nor noticed the chin difference of iPhones before. I don't see how the loss of attention to detail at that expense would materially impact Apple, except maybe for the better.
I often think with apple people either get what they care about or they don’t.
I own the most recent iPad and iPad mini (on that now) and I like both but neither more than my Nokia 6.1.
All three are functional devices that do what I need with little to no fuss.
The tiny aesthetic differences between them are lost on me or more accurately are irrelevant to me.
Which is why I don’t have an iPhone, for tablets apple are hands down the best but for my phone needs a Nokia running stock android at one fifth the price does 99% of what I care about.
I have zero loyalty to a brand or a platform, I use whatever works for me at the time I guess.
Samsung is contracted for the manufacturing but that doesn't mean Apple didn't come up with large portions of the design or otherwise find and support the project
I commend them on their willingness to see this design decision through, yet I wonder if it is actually good design.
The article already mentions it makes the phone more expensive and I do wonder, if it does not make the phone also harder to use? At least on my android, I already find the chin on the smaller side and with big hands it gets harder to grasp the phone at a part where I don't accidentally trigger something on the display. I would guess it would also strain my thumb even more when trying to tap stuff at the bottom of the screen. From looks alone, more display is always gorgeous, but from a usability standpoint, I am not so sure.
I've never accidentally activated anything with my palm on my iPhone X or XS. I think Apple just has superior palm rejection (see also their massive laptop trackpads)
I have literally never noticed that. If this is what the differences between phones have come to today then to me it seems like there isn't really anything to write home about anymore and the market is completely saturated.
Love them of hate them, Apple has always spent a lot of attention to details in their products.
I myself like them more just because of their manufacturing processes. It’s like those YouTube channels that have videos of industrial machinery showing how tomatoes are sorted or paper clips are bent.
given their recent focus on being a services/media company, it wouldn't surprise me if they moved out of hardware entirely at some point in the future.
They became the most valuable company in the world by selling hardware. What on earth would possess them to get out of that incredibly lucrative market in which they have an unparalleled privileged position??
This is mistaken, Apple sells devices and the software comes with; it’s a key selling point. Yes they expanded their services sector, because product is getting hard to push — but it will always be the core business.
I think you're more right than people are giving credit for. They clearly haven't cared much about their hardware with any true innovation for a long time.
It's unlikely they will move out of the market which gives them the most recognition as a brand and accounts for a disproportionately high % of their revenue.
The services are to sell more to the people in their hardware ecosystem.
Their "focus" in services/media is because the # of iphone customers has plateaud, so now they are now growing by selling more to the same customers, not selling the same to more customers.
Personally, I think focus should be on battery life improvement, app management UX, privacy (for example, to this day I can't turn off ALL notifications) etc. I would take 20% thicker iPhone for 20% better battery life and headphone jack any day. Cosmetic changes and thinness-for-thinness sake are worthless.
You would but vast majority of Apple customers would not. There are often calls to "vote with your wallet" and that's what people do. This is why we have no jack and thin phones.
Given that Apple doesn't offer superior phones (with better battery life and headphone jacks), voting with your wallets essentially comes down to getting a Apple one or a non-Apple one.
It is important to note that it is dropping a lot _in China_. Chinese smartphone market is very different from the rest of the world as a smartphone is basically a WeChat machine. Chinese also value novelty and camera capabilities more (by camera capabilities I mean stuff like auto beautification).
Not only in China, though - I'm in Europe, and I see people making the switch in growing numbers - even for the teens, that 2000s "I need to have the newest iPhone" hype has waned and now Samsung & Co. are being considered more.
iPhone omnipresence is pretty much an American phenomeon ... I've seen more iPhones in Vegas in one day than I see in Germany in six months.
According to some stats I have found[1][2] it does not seems like there is any exodus, if anything it seems that iOS gains market share every December (gifts?) and then loses a bit over the year, but the number has been stable since forever.
There are definitely less iPhones in Europe than in US, but that is more of a reflection of the global trend. iPhone was dominant in US because for a long time they had a carrier subsidy system that made it not worth it to buy a phone on a plan for less than $450 (because you paid the same price no matter the price of the phone). Back at that time that's what an iPhone cost.
In Europe the subsidies worked differently so the price was a more important factor.
I got one of these fucking things, and I noticed my thumb feels strained when I use my phone. It's because my thumb has to bend down a lot further to reach the bottom of the "chin" all the time.
I used to love my mac book pro. Sadly, it is not the same device which it used to be. The quest to make it thinner has actually made it a substandard machine. I feel Apple has lost a lot of developer love and brand capital since Jobs. I am hoping things would improve on the product front. Not all devs live in the US. For devs in developing countries, a mac book pro is a serious investment. We want a machine which is robust and long-lasting.
If things continue they way they have in last few years my next machine will not be a mac book.
Everyone should watch the Louis Rossmann channel before lionizing, much less even saying anything good about modern MBP's they don't seem to understand what's been lost and what sucks. It's not been a long-lasting product for at least 5 years:
- the batteries are glued in, making them very difficult to change
- there's no locking slot
- GPU goes out
- the unencapsulated (motherboard) is very susceptible to any humidity, which leads to corrosion
- the JTAG shorts out traces
- the keyboards are crap: noisy, fragile and have to be ripped out violently with pliers
- display cable goes out
- no availability of official replacement parts
- no official component-level repair leading to unnecessary e-waste and unnecessary charges
- no longer has MagSafe
- thin, bendable and fragile
- extremely overpriced
- overcharged for repairs
- denied data recovery when it's possible
- community of unrealistic, brainwashed, tribalist fans who lack perspective and criticism
I have a Lenovo T480 which is 10x better than a T490. Snag one while you can, because it's totally ruined in the name of drinking Johnny's brand of Jonestown KoolAid.
I was part of that unrealistic, brainwashed, tribalist community for many years. Except not for apple. For PC. I switched over to a mbp this past year after having used countless different PC laptops over the past ten years, and my god, my mbp just feels so much better than my previous laptops in so many ways. Yes there are shortcomings, but the overall user experience is nothing to gloss over.
"- community of unrealistic, brainwashed, tribalist fans who lack perspective and criticism"
Why do you feel the urge to insult those that do not see the world like you do?
You call them "unrealistic", so it makes you fell realistic.
"brainwashed" so it makes you feel clear minded.
"tribalist" so it makes you feel individually intelligent.
"lack perspective", so you believe you have perspective.
The fact is that some of these people are really smarter than you are and happier and more fulfilled than you are. And have way more money than you have. Some of them will be stupid, but not all like you believe.
These people have real reasons to choose an Apple product and they are as valid as your reasons.
While everything you say is true, the fact is that these people give them a different value that you do. I have a friend that has a company and earns 2000 dollars everyday, does he cares about an overprice laptop? Not really, he cares about time, and interruptions(he had a Windows laptop that used to interrupt him for hours at the worst possible time), he cares about weight, and malware installed by default that you could not uninstall.
Right now I am criticizing your attitude. How do you respond to it is a way to measure your level of "handling criticism ability" that you implicitly presume of.
But it does feels different, doen't it? Criticize others is so easy.
Why are people so worked up over choice of a product? I don't really particularly care for Macbooks, but it's just a manufactured laptop. There is no real identity or pride to be derived from these sorts of consumerist choices. You have a need for a tool that does x, y, and z. You pick one you like that does what you need out a lineup of a dozen that mostly do x, y, and z. Pride is in the productive work you do with a tool, not having a tool in itself. Pride in simply having a thing is just marketing department garbage.
But does he really have a point about the Mac Pro, though? "This computer is ridiculously priced for my use case" != "this computer is ridiculously priced for the use case it was intended." The 2019 Mac Pro is going after the workstation market that SGI in particular was in a quarter-century ago, whose "entry-level" machines started at $10K.
I get why people are salty about the 2019 Mac Pro not being the Mac Pro they wanted. It's not the Mac Pro I wanted -- it's not the Mac Pro I owned, although back then it was called the PowerMac G5. But the PowerMac and original tower Mac Pros were always a bit of an anomaly in the Mac timeline, anyway; most of their flagships trended toward "holy hand grenades that's expensive" rather than "that's a little expensive but I bet I could swing it." The Macintosh IIfx started at $9000 in 1990; it was replaced by Apple's first tower, a Quadra 900, for a mere $7200 a year later, this at a time when an average PC was under $2K.
If someone wanted to make a serious critique of Apple's pricing, they'd be far better off starting with "look at how expensive their most expensive stuff is," it'd be "look at how expensive their least expensive stuff is." You could certainly build that case for Macs, where the cheapest option is $799 and the cheapest (modern) notebook is $1199.
When was the last time you tried the trackpads on different brand notebooks?
They've gotten better.
For me the Dell XPS 13 9350's trackpad was good enough that getting all the goodies (USB A and USB C, a repair guide, changeable standard M.2 SSD, SD slot, non crappy keyboard, a lot cheaper) compared to the MacBook Pro made me switch to the Dell notebook.
It doesn't matter how good the other trackpads are if they don't have the software driving it. Even with Microsoft standardising the trackpad interface for drivers in Windows 10, that doesn't matter when plenty of non-Metro applications don't support multi-touch gestures or, if they do, inconsistently.
The MacBook story isn't components. When people compare a MacBook to a PC laptop, that's about where the comparison ends. Nobody wants to admit that the marriage of hardware and software does make a difference; this denial always comes from people who don't know what that difference is or never bothered to appreciate it and thus can't understand why others do.
I went from a MBP to a Dell Inspiron 7370 I installed Ubuntu on. I've found the trackpad to be just fine. I'm not doing any advanced multi finger gestures, but regular scrolling and two finger movements are good. Plus, I haven't ran into any palm rejection issues.
I'm a mouse user (who actually really liked both the much maligned mighty mouse and magic mouse), but when it came to track pads, I hated that Apple didn't have physical buttons for the trackpad.
My hand eye coordination on trackpads has never been great (and I'm not getting any younger), and I've always had issues with taps as clicks.
I've since switched back to Windows, and it drives me nuts that all the PC laptops that follow Apple's design lead that have dropped the physical trackpad buttons. Thankfully most of the business and "pro" laptops still have them.
The haptic trackpads on the newer macbooks are perfect for this. You can click anywhere on the pad and the amount of pressure required is exactly the same. It's not tap to click, because you need to actually press down for a click to register.
>I want to be able to have a finger on a physical button that doesn't detect any touch movements when dragging something.
But dragging works exactly the same as it does when you have a physical button. You press down with one finger and make the dragging motion with another. You can click and drag with a single finger if you want to (as I've just discovered - never occurred to me to do it that way), but you don't have to.
I have always found strange things to happen when my held down finger (on the "virtual button") moves too much or changes pressure - on both Windows and Mac. That's just one more thing to think about in the back of my head.
I especially hate the click and drag with a single finger, especially if I have multiple external monitors connected.
Personally, I prefer that a physical button only has two states (on/off), and that there be a physical division between the left and right buttons (so I don't have to look down and see whether my thumb is "over enough" - on a buttonless pad, it seems to never be over enough to the right when I want a context menu).
In the end, I just want the track pad to track, and buttons to be buttons. I don't want a unified trackpad with buttons and a software-based solution to guess what I'm trying to do. This is just me and my use case, obviously ymmv.
Yes, but when you're trying to position something precisely, that's a problem. This doesn't happen when you have a physical button that only has an on/off state.
Keep in mind, I hate trackpads because I'm generally clumsy with them. That's just how I am. I get that it's not an issue for other people who have better hand-eye coordination.
> But dragging works exactly the same as it does when you have a physical button.
No it doesn't, if I press down with the side of my thumb and then move around my index finger the thumb will rotate. On a physical button that doesn't matter but on a virtual button the thumbs movement will also move around the pointer. Using the thumb for buttons and index and long for trackpad is much faster and more accurate than using virtual buttons in my experience, not as good as a mouse but close.
I've been sitting here for a good minute trying to make my thumb rotate the way you've described on my Magic Trackpad (no hardware buttons) and it simply isn't doing that.
> Using the thumb for buttons and long for trackpad
I disagree. When I want to drag and precisely position something, I use three finger dragging. They've hidden it recent versions of macOS under Accessibility, but I find it much simpler and more precise than having to do finger gymnastics.
Right, you can't do it without hardware buttons. However with hardware buttons below the track-pad I can easily use it with either hand alone and still be fast and accurate. Therefore having hardware buttons below the trackpad is necessary for me, it is so much better than using anything else feels horrible.
Edit: Rereading my original post I guess it is possible to think that I say that virtual buttons are better. What I meant that the thumb rotating like that on the trackpad screws everything up. Sorry that I wasn't clear.
But one's thumb doesn't rotate like that. If one needs to make one's thumb rotate to use a trackpad with a thumb and another finger, that trackpad must be the size of a sheet of paper.
I'm probably misunderstanding. I think I'd need a video to understand what you mean.
I don't use my thumb. It wouldn't really make sense to click and drag that way on an Apple trackpad since you don't have to reach down to the bottom. It's very easy to do using your index finger and middle finger.
Right, which is why having physical buttons where you can properly leverage the thumb and thus free up your other fingers to do only mouse movement and scrolling is better.
That makes no sense. You can't scroll and drag at the same time.
You are probably just trying to use the trackpad in the suboptimal way that you're used to using trackpads with physical buttons. When you can click anywhere, there's no reason to use your thumb in the first place, other than muscle memory.
Incidentally, as others have pointed out, there is no issue with using the thumb to press the button on an Apple trackpad if that's how you want to do it. You can "roll" it as much as you want to while clicking and dragging and it won't move the cursor.
You have to turn off "Tap to click" in the touchpad preferences. I can't remember if it is on by default or not, but it's the one thing I can't deal with. Any sort of accidental brush acts like a click and that's annoying, which sounds like what you are complaining about.
It's not on by default, which is what puzzles me about slantyyz's comments. I can't imagine anyone finding clicking and dragging more difficult on a macbook than on another laptop.
I find clicking and dragging more difficult on laptops without physical buttons (Macbook and Windows) than laptops with physical trackpad buttons. YMMV
> I have a Lenovo T480 which is 10x better than a T490. Snag one while you can...
The T490 is a regression, I agree, but the upcoming Lenovo P53 looks to be a great machine. It has almost same chassis (just a couple improved ports) as the P52, which is (IMO) superior to the T480. And you can get it with Linux installed at the factory!
There seems to be a consistent slide, where once-venerable machines like the Macbook "Pro", Lenovo T-series, HP Elitebook etc. get slimmed and down-spec'ed to expand the market to more buyers.
Hopefully the Apple can now produce a new top-end product line, the "Macbook Actually For Professionals Again" or something like that. Then they could continue marketing to and designing for students and media consumers with the MBP, and release better hardware for those who need it.
What about T490s? My university offers one but we can also receive the same amount of money as research funding. Do you think it'd be wise to choose the T490s over money? I mean, has this model improved things in the Lenovo series?
Depends on your research. Is your use case primarily/frequently walking around to various conference rooms, working at a table or in a lab, or are you running intense programs at a dedicated desk? For the first, the 490s and other new thin-and-light laptops are great, for the second, everyone's trying to sell you laptops designed for the first use case, and for the third, a desktop will blow every equally-priced laptop out of the water.
The 's' is the "slim" thinner and lighter version in the T-series. They do use better components (Carbon/magnesium instead of glass-fiber-reinforced nylon) to built the S, and it costs a little more as a result and is easier to tote around. But it will be harder to repair and upgrade than the standard model, and have poorer thermal performance . It also lacks the discrete GPU, has soldered-on RAM vs. the T490's one DIMM slot, and technically lacks an RJ45 Ethernet port.
The T490s does have a proprietary micro-RJ45 port that's thin enough to fit in the laptop and can convert to RJ45 with a special dongle, which to me is the epitome of everything wrong with modern laptops.
GP and I were griping that the T490, like the Macbook Pro, is trending toward the thin-and-light form factor. They dropped the RJ45 port so they could make the T490s 16.7mm thin, and the T490 is 17.9mm thick. My current upgrade plan is aimed at the P53, which is 25.8mm thick, supports 170W of thermal dissipation and processing power instead of 60W, has replaceable/upgradeable RAM, storage, batteries, more ports...and still weighs less than 6 lbs.
That machine can be trivially carried on the brief 2x/day walk from my desk to the lab, and I would't find it worthwhile to cut that weight in half if it means a poorer experience the other 7.9 hours of the day.
I brought in my phone for a warranty exchange when the charging port was damaged. Phone at 7% without the ability to charge, I was told emailing photos to myself was the only option and was prodded to use the cloud storage in the future.
It’s unfortunate I wasn’t in the position to leave without a new phone. Years of photos were lost that day due to this lack of option and my own failure to back up locally.
No way. If the device got lost or crushed then it's all user fault. But with the device completely intact, just needing to be charged (you could even swap the battery if you actually wanted to help the customer), lack of backups gets much less than half the blame here.
Louis Rossmann and his cult followers - they seem to feed on the righteousness cause that Rossmann has cultivated over the years. His rants do have truth but the way he conveys is emotion driven and designed to lure people into this cult of Apple haters.
There is one thing to criticize Apple on objective basis and another to develop a deep sense of hatred, vulgar insults, angry rants, personal attacks and fostering despicable contemptful culture with an emotional agenda. He has built a huge community of people that love watching him rant just about anything.
May be its just me but I don't enjoy this type of content even if I agree with their general assessment or opinions.
That said, I do like what he is doing for Right-To-Repair movement along with folks from iFixit and EFF.
Surely risking to sound just like one (not a fan, btw, just watched a couple of videos) but I think his opinion of Apple in terms of hadware quality and attitude towards customers in need of service has more merit than most people's - given that he's dealing with it all day, every day.
On top of the quality getting worse, so has the repairability too - but not only that - customer's ability to have the device repaired anywhere else except by Apple directly (difficulty for independent repair businesses to order parts, obtain service manuals, renew licences etc...) has taken a big hit in the last few years. And Apple's suggested course of action has increasingly been very costly replacements of half of the laptop for even the smallest issues...
Since it's hard to spread that to the broader public, and people notoriously love to see other people ranting and throwing rocks at stuff, he seems to have taken that approach - and earn some additional money from YT along the way...So, yeah, partially agree with you, but I think the intentions are more good than bad, and more people need to be talking about it in any case, if something is to be improved.
That is not entirely true, he does commend Apple when appreciate, such as display quality compared to all other Laptop. The thing is, some of the stuff he mentioned has been there since 2016 MacBook Pro, like the Thunderbolt High Voltage pin issues that has been there for 3 years now.
There's a certain irony or je ne sais quoi that Apple themselves try very hard (desperately?) to have truth conveyed in a way that is emotion driven and designed to lure people in.
My MBP is the best machine I've ever owned. I bought it brand new in 2015 and it is still just as good as the day I got it. Your comparison is unfair given that there have been excellent machines in the past 5 years but they lost focus in the past 3 years.
Maybe relatively, but not really. Wouldn't call a device with poor thermals, and a throttling device "great". Nor do the constantly swelling low quality batteries make it great.
Unfortunately, I can't use a laptop which has a joystick in the middle of the keyboard. Until they stop that I'll have to go dell xps13 when my mbp-2014 dies.
If I remember correctly when I bought my X1C 6th gen recently, mainly : one ram slot is soldered and lose of the secondary/optional battery to have crazy autonomy.
MBP was rarely the best option for most developers, just the coolest one or they were succumbing to peer pressure, any other explanation has always been inexplicable.
Its unix with a generally nicer/hassle-free ux and better arbitrary device support... its utility for development seems fairly obvious to me. The only major factors are price and recently ports and physical reliability.
Hell, what are your alternatives? Linux on laptops is broadly a mess until fairly recently... and Windows is Windows.
So far it's been the best option for me when it comes to getting work done efficiently without banging my head against a wall. What would you recommend?
Most of the developers I know have no shame and can't be peer pressured, and still often use MacBooks.
Given his penchant for thinness over function, I hope this means we can have a thicker pro laptop again, with all the ports back and a more robust keyboard.
It’d be interesting to see the results of a survey on this I think, I and I know many of my peers are of the exact opposite opinion. I like the move to usb-c, I like the new keyboard, I don’t mind (but also don’t really use) the Touch Bar but I can’t live without Touch ID at this point. The big trackpad is magical to me, and the thickness and weight of the 13” is just right. I have an older MBP as well, 2013 maybe, and it’s lovely too but it feels like an old truck next to my sleek sports car that is my 2016 MBP.
I for one would be sad if they went back on some of the supposedly bold moves they’ve pulled, to be honest. The only thing I wish is that they’d kill that silly lightning connector for the phones so I could have usb-c goodness there too!
I guess that’s just design for ya – it’s often divisive, especially if decisive.
Nothing wrong with USB-C and the big trackpad is fine too, and I would love to have touchID on my 2015MBP. But getting rid of mag power and the USB-A ports, HDMI port, and SD card slot was a big step back.
Maybe you don't ever need to present anything from your laptop, but if you talk to anyone who does, they will tell you how awful it is to not have an HDMI port. The USB-C to HDMI is the worst adapter I've ever seen.
And if you're a semi-pro photographer, the lack of an SD card slot is terrible. And of course almost all accessories are still USB-A.
I think they really needed a transition design for 3-4 years that included USB-C but still had the "legacy" ports—in quotes because when they announced the C-only model I hadn't even seen a USB-C port or cable in real life yet.
USB-A is nowhere near being on the way out yet. Especially when their own damn mobile devices still come with A cables. We're way into their attempt to push everything to USB-C but I went to Target to grab one for my work laptop (to be able to charge an iPhone or iPad from it) and the C cables that are anything other than C-to-A (for some android phones) are 100% Apple branded. Everything's still A and Micro-USB. A whole wall of that. USB-C? Only in a tiny Apple section. Flash drives? Mostly still A. Everything, really. Having only C continues to suck, and it looks like it will for a while. Apple's switch to C doesn't even seem to have changed things that much—everyone seems to just still do A and assume the poor Macbook users will plug in a hub or use an adapter.
USB-C is baffling. Suppose you buy into the dream of one cable type for everything. So you buy printers, scanners, optical drives, external hard drives and SSDs, and so on that have USB-C connectors, and you buy USB-C flash drives, and buy USB-C to USB-C cables to hook it all up.
But your computer only has two USB-C ports!
No problem, you think. You've run into the same problem before with computers with USB-A connectors. The answer was simple: buy a hub that connects to one of your computer's USB-A connectors and provides several USB-A connectors to hook up your devices.
You just needs a hub that connects via USB-C and provides several USB-C ports.
That's harder than it should be. There do not seem to be many of these available, and those that are tend to not have very good reviews.
> USB-C is baffling. Suppose you buy into the dream of one cable type for everything.
I may be mistaken but I think that was the original USB dream as well. It's been a source of immense irritation to me at times over the years to find that I don't have quite the right mini/micro/whatever[1] USB cable to hand to connect whatever device I happen to have with me. USB-C just adds to what is already a mess of a situation as far as I can see.
[1] Don't get me started with cables that have USB-A on one end and some proprietary connector on the other: I'm looking at YOU, Garmin, with the stupid cables for your Fenix line of watches (which aren't great, btw: learn from my mistake and don't buy one), and YOU, Nintendo, for the daft 3DS charger socket that would have been just fine if it were a micro-USB socket.
Mini USB? I haven't seen new devices with that since like 2004. All phones moved towards Micro USB <-> USB-A. The amount of devices I have which simply have Micro USB <-> USB-A is staggering and almost always are the cables compatible with each other. My main issue with Micro USB is that some of the endpoints on _devices_ are badly soldered, leading to the port coming out. Such occurred on the Nokia N900. I rather have my cable getting broken than the port on the (expensive) device.
What Apple did though with MagSafe was simple yet elegant. It is something I do as well with my Micro USB and USB-C cables (making them magnetic; I'm using TOPK cables for that). USB-C as replacement for MagSafe is a step backwards.
I bought a 4K Action cam last year and a dashcam this year that both used mini-USB. I've also seen a guy making some open hardware to adapt some retro something or other being proud of picking mini instead of micro since it's "less fragile"
It's not baffling to me. Usb-A isn't appropriate for small form factors. USB-C is. Why can't I plug the same things into my phone that I can plug into my computer? I'm already phasing out USB-A simply because I think a device you can only use on your phone with a single is limited. I used to carry around a laptop to do network diagnostics... I've realised you can literally do the same crap from your phone by using USB-C dongles... and the form factor is actually better.
Mind you Apple seems to be missing one of the main practical advantage of USB-C by slapping a lightning port on their phones thus ensuring donglegeddon. This drives me insane. Apple for all the puffery about giving consumers what they don't know they wanted is instead giving consumers an inferior choice that ensures lock-in and keeps vendors happy.
I want a USB-C hub with at least 5 USB-C ports and no other legacy ports. Only USB-C. An added bonus would be alt-mode video transmission from my Mac and power. Does such a beast exist? Not that I can find!
Yes, it's somewhat surprising that all those USB-C hubs seem to focus on providing an interface to other connectors rather than just offering more of the same, as in more USB-C ports. Maybe it's a technological limitation?
In any case I'm grateful that the Mac Mini I upgraded to recently at least offers 4 generous Thunderbolt/USB-C ports.
I've heard this second-hand (or third-hand) and my EE knowledge is nowhere near good enough to say how accurate this is, but: Apparently the power delivery negotiation mechanism in USB-C is vastly more complex than for USB-A, so hubs with lots of USB-C ports would need new, more complex chips compared to equivalent USB-A hubs. It already took a few years for reliable hubs to turn up when we first got USB 3.0. I'm assuming the manufacturers might also be trying to hit USB 3.1 Gen2 speeds at the same time as supporting USB-C, which presumably further tightens reliability tolerances. I'm guessing with all that, they might not be able to hit the desired price points with this stuff yet, and all that complexity probably also takes a lot of power so bus powered USB3.1 hubs with USB-C downstream ports are presumably a tricky proposition too.
Not only that, but those two ports cant serve hubs properly. At work, I try two hubs connect power cable, two monitors, a keyboard and a mouse. It's too much data or power or something, and the mouse gets screwy.
IIRC correctly Firewire was Apple's baby and they policed their patents/trademarks on that until it suffocated. You couldn't even call it firewire, you had to call it "IEEE 1394". It was the superior technology and it loped along until USB 2 provided comparable speeds and it became obsolete.
That's because USB doesn't have daisy chaining (unless you count integrating a hub into the device). Thunderbolt has daisy chaining but it's so expensive that devices only use Thunderbolt if they really need it.
Buy into the dream deeper: lose as many wires as possible. Of course some things just need to be connected, but plenty of other devices sync or operate OTA.
I'm calling it - USB-A will still be around going strong 10 years from now. Take a stroll through a BIC Camera in Tokyo. How many USB-A accessories are still for sale? It's about 99% of the stock. I'm sure it's the same at a Best Buy in the US.
Apple and the fanboys calling it a "Legacy" port are completely out of touch with reality.
Best Buy has an inventory turnover ratio of approximately 6* - So clears its entire stock on average every 8 weeks. While there might be a large percentage of USB-A products currently, once a technology market shifts it's quite surprising how fast suppliers will also change their product supply and you see a fairly rapid change in stock even in big box stores.
Most of the devices I have purchased in the last year have been USB-C. Sony headphones, LG display, my car even has USB-C charge ports. Look at many manufacture lineups and the new flagships are USB-C. I do still have a bunch of USB-A devices, but they're older buys at this point.
I think there will be a few year gap, but 10 years might be a little too pessimistic. Time will tell I guess!
Well we're already 3 years in since the new generation USB-C only Macbook Pro came out. Let's call it 7 years for a total of 10. Not putting a lone USB-A port on it was an act of extreme arrogance imho
> Apple and the fanboys calling it a "Legacy" port are completely out of touch with reality.
It is now a legacy port on Apple laptops. I think it's the correct term to use in context, regardless of fandom. It is referring to ports that existed in the past, and are being phased out on the platform in question.
I've had USB C phones for almost 4 years now. Most micro USB cables have swapped to C with a few C to micro adapters around (1/2" dongles on a key ring). At work we just purchased USB C based drives for imaging/deployment process. If I didn't prefer displayport and had the cash to drop I'd see about USB C monitors at home too. It's taking over but the USB A standard is still in use.
I’d tend to agree, although look at the success of new connection technologies Apple pioneered when they were coupled with things that already did similar things.
FireWire, all speeds: was always coupled with USB or other tech that possibly didn’t carry data as fast as FW, but was “good enough” for lots of things. FireWire never really took off aside from digital video cameras, and that got phased out over time, too.
DisplayPort: nope.
Compare that to the original iMac, which dropped the serial and SCSI port. People gasped, but in not too long (at least now, looking back in it), USB was everywhere.
And now USB-C. Would it have been as popular as it currently is - on lots of chrome books, many phones, even the Nintendo switch - if Apple has not been so gung ho on it? Possibly, but a bit of me doubts it.
I REALLY don't see Apple as leading the charge on USB-C. I see them as a laggard given their refusal to put a USB-C port where it's most useful - on their phones. They also weren't the first to put the ports on their laptops.
Just because they ship a laptop with 4 USB-C TB ports and nothing else doesn't mean they're driving USB-C adoption nearly as much as say Samsung or Huawei. If anything because they literally don't use the same port across different types of devices unlike other phone/laptop sellers... They're discouraging USB-C adoption and making dongles more appealing since you will still need dongles if you're using all Apple even if you have USB-C native stuff.
Apple aren't pushing people towards expensive new standards they're just making consumer unfriendly decisions. Making it so you can't use USB-A does not mean you're making it easy to adopt USB-C... They make adopting USB-C unnessecarily painful.
USB C in Chromebooks pre-dates apple's usage. And several other manufacturers were putting USB c in their devices before apple even announced. And apple still isn't using it in their phones.
Their tech is 2019 appropriate if you don't have an Apple laptop, is the thing. And they even provide some USB-C stuff for Apple devices, but only from Apple, I assume because the demand is nearly nonexistent. Just like if it were a proprietary Apple port—though I think they actually have some lightning cables from other manufacturers, at least, unlike USB-C.
[EDIT] I just think they whiffed well ahead of the ball on this one, is all. No USB-C ports to 100% USB-C ports was premature. I think the percentage of their market that was like "oh good now I can plug all my USB-C stuff into this, which is most of what I have!" rounds down to zero, while all my geek friends and co-workers' reactions were closer to "so... there will be zero things in my home or office I can plug into this without an adapter? And for this I gain... maybe 1mm more of thinness?" with actual experience quickly confirming that concern as valid, as #donglelife continues without end in sight.
If you remember the original iMac, they did the same thing with USB-A.
Everybody was concerned that the iMac's only I/O port was USB (when others had serial, parallel, and maybe SCSI/USB as an afterthought), and it was completely incompatible with legacy peripherals. For many years USB accessories were considered specialty items for the Mac market.
It kinda sucked at first... but it's not clear if USB would have even caught on if Apple didn't do that. In the long term, Apple clearly made the right move.
At the very least, this isn't outside of Apple's usual playbook.
> but it's not clear if USB would have even caught on if Apple didn't do that.
Here's the problem with that argument; Macs are a pretty small percentage of the computer market, and always have been. Consumer peripheral companies are driven by what people will buy, not moving the market forward.
USB was always going to be what it is, and if you want evidence of Apple's lack of power here just look at FireWire. They pushed it hard, but consumers didn't care so it died.
USB had been out for a couple of years at that point, and it had no traction. I remember finding PCs with dusty, unused USB ports next to the PS/2 plugs and serial ports.
Macs are definitely a small portion of the computer market, but it’s a big enough market for companies to target. You’ll find Mac-specific keyboards from big-name companies like Logitech, for example. With the iMac, USB went from “weird connector nobody uses” to “we have a guaranteed pool of millions of customers with no alternative.” And because of the U in USB, those products worked with PCs too, if they had USB ports and drivers to make them work. It kicked off a virtuous cycle where more peripherals meant more computer supporting them meant more peripherals.
FireWire wasn’t the same scenario since there was no pressing need to support it. USB was good enough for 99% of what people needed. Unless you needed high speed storage or high end audio, you didn’t need it, and USB versions were cheaper anyway. FireWire was never pushed so hard that it was the only thing available on many popular computers.
I’m not sure if it carried over to hardware, but Macs and iOS have always punched above their weight in terms of money spent by people using them vs using other platforms. More money is made by apps sold on iOS than on Android, for example.
Disagree wholeheartedly. I bought a USB-C to Video adapter from Amazon that has DVI, VGA, HDMI, and mDP and it only takes up one space on my MacBook and the only time I ever need to use it is when I'm presenting so I can just keep it in my laptop bag. That also means that I don't have to worry about what tech is being used at the place I'm presenting because I have all the options covered as opposed to just having 1 port or multiple ports on my machine.
At my desk, I have a USB-C hub that's connected to both monitors, storage, power, and my keyboard/mouse and it's also 1 cable and 1 slot on the MacBook. I can hook either up to whatever port on whatever side I want to. The flexibility is way more worthwhile than a dedicated HDMI port to me.
I get the appeal. At my (home) desk, I have the same (minus power), except it's Thunderbolt, which my 2014 MBP has. For a couple beautiful years I could switch monitor/headset/kb/mouse between work and home laptops with 1 simple plug. Now that the work lappy is USB C though things aren't simple anymore.
Wouldn't an USB-C enabled monitor provide the same functionality? Whenever you plug in either laptop the USB-C connection would provide video, an USB hub (on the monitor) and even charge your laptop. What am I missing here?
Well, unless you don't use an external display. And in that case why not just get an USB-C hub with video out? Your Thunderbolt-enabled Macbook should work regardless.
I'm not sure why they wouldn't be simple. Thunderbolt has a USB-C variant. Just get a USB-C to Thunderbolt adapter and keep it plugged in on the end at all times. You'll be in exactly the same situation you were in before and now future-proofed for other, newer Thunderbolt devices.
So, on the power side of the equation, I have come to understand why they chose to go the direction they did.
With the previous generation of MagSafe/MagSafe II power supplies, if the cable gets frayed, you have to replace the entire power supply. If the MagSafe connector gets hosed, you have to replace the entire power supply. Basically, if anything goes wrong beyond the AC input side, you have to replace the whole power supply. I ended up buying a whole bunch of these things over the years, so I am particularly sensitive to the amount of money I've spent.
With the USB-C power supplies, if something goes wrong with the cable, you just get a new cable. If something goes wrong with the connector on the cable, you just get a new cable. The only time you need to replace the entire power supply itself is if something goes wrong internally, or if something goes wrong with the USB-C connector on the power supply. And since cables are engineered to break before cable connectors, that is much less likely.
Don't get me wrong, the MagSafe connector has saved my machine on several occasions. But I understand why they want to be able to cheaply and easily replace just the cable part, because that's the part that is most likely to have hardware failures.
I do wish they had figured out some way to have a standardized cable interface on the power supply itself, and a MagSafe-like connector on the other end. That would have been the best of both worlds. But failing that, I think I will grudgingly take the second-best solution, which is to have a standard USB-C connector on both ends.
Now, this whole concept of mixing USB-C, USB-C Power Delivery, and Thunderbolt 3, that's a whole 'nother Gordian Knot that I really wish they had not created.
> if the cable gets frayed, you have to replace the entire power supply
This is true for the existing design but it would have been easy to redesign the power supply to avoid it.
Just look at the other end: the wall-plug end has long been replaceable; it slides out so you can put on a different plug or a longer cable. This could be true on the MagSafe side as well -- then any Mac power supply could be used with any generation Mac, just by switching out the MagSafe/USB-C end.
But the MagSafe cable would serve exactly one purpose, whereas the usb-c cable does not. And now I can charge from Either side of the box too – great stuff! When my cable broke it wasn’t a big deal, I had an extra (shorter) cable I could use, and then go get a new one later. I’d be hard pressed to buy extra MagSafe cables to carry around just in case one broke, but the extra usb-c cables are actually useful or other things too.
Common sense and good design will not rule over sales generation thru designed in obsolescence. I had to buy new adapter with mag-safe for my 2013 Air. Got a new MBP at work a few days later and the replaceable cable makes so much sense. Now just needs a cable maker to produce a USB-C to MagSafe cable.
Funny how other laptops (and I've owned PC laptops and macbooks) have cables that don't fray. Only Apple's old magsafe cable has that fine rubbery material that disintegrates with time, and no strain relief on the connector.
On my cables the material starts to crumble and crack. Something about that particular type of rubber. But maybe it depends on the market or where it is manufactured. I seem to remember some lasting longer than others, I think it didin't happen on the 2014 model, but did on my original 2011 charger and on the replacement I had to buy (within the first year). But the 2016 usb-c cable doesn't really have this issue I think. Maybe it's the climate, warmer summers?
I found that this happened if you are around cigarettes. Once I moved away from that family member, I’ve not had another one die in that fashion since.
Happens all the time with any cables really. I've had many cables succumb to the good ol' lemme just adjust may chair right over your cable there type situations. Particularly when you have to run the cable to an awkwardly placed outlet.
You can certainly damage a cable, but I'm sure those old thick black PC charging cables with a barrel connector are way sturdier than the flimsy but aesthetically pleasing macbook ones.
That's such nonsense. I've never had a thinkpad cable wear out on me. I've got a whole box sitting around somewhere full of them because they never break. But thinkpad cables aren't unusually robust; Dell cables last just as long. Most cables last effectively forever unless you slam a door on them or something unreasonable like that.
The only cables I've seen reliably fall apart after no more than a few years are Christmas tree light strings from the dollar store, and Apple charging cables.
Every other consumer electronics manufacturer just figured out how to make cables that didn't fray, and it's nothing to do with the magnet...
The boon from the USB-C is that you can charge with a borrowed commodity cable when you've left your adapter at home and aren't in an office full of Macbooks. But it's been left to third parties to implement the concept of combining USB-C and a magnetic joint in the same cable.
(I'd have been tempted to get into the manufacturing business if they hadn't...)
I always hated the MagSafe connectors because I almost always used my laptop with the power connected but not on a table or other hard surface (eg a bed), and it would invariably fall off constantly.
I had this problem too on my 2015 MPB, when Apple went from Magsafe 1 to Magsafe 2, which was (vertically) thinner. The Magsafe 2 easily disconnected when there was even a little vertical torque.
I bought a Snuglet, a thin metal shell that inserts into the Magsafe recess on the MBP. It reduces vertical and horizontal clearance between the Magsafe connector halves. In my case, this has completely eliminated unwanted disconnects.
Disclaimer: no connection with Snuglet or NewerTech, just have found the product useful as advertised.
USB-C is not making it better, my t480s cable is too heavy and you can see it tugging on the connector and it's not sitting straight but tilted. I already managed to break one USB-C socket on my 2016 macbook pro, I can see it breaking soon on the thinkpad if I don't caress it, which means not letting the cable hang and making sure not to bump it with my knee.
I was annoyed by the MagSafe removal but I've had 5 of these [0] since the change and I have zero complaints. My Neato has eaten them multiple times and they are still kicking and if they ever die, it's just a cheap cable rather than a new power supply. I went through multiple of the old magsafe power supplies despite ample application of Sugru [1]. Overall I think moving the magnetic disconnect to the cable is a good move.
> With the previous generation of MagSafe/MagSafe II power supplies, if the cable gets frayed, you have to replace the entire power supply. If the MagSafe connector gets hosed, you have to replace the entire power supply. Basically, if anything goes wrong beyond the AC input side, you have to replace the whole power supply. I ended up buying a whole bunch of these things over the years, so I am particularly sensitive to the amount of money I've spent.
This is a design issue that doesn’t require a USB-C cable to fix.
When I do presentations in my department's conference room, I just AirPlay to the AppleTV connected to the projector. It was a great solution because it allows anyone on the team to do presentations. All they have to do is mirror their screen and bring their mouse or trackpad into the conference room. It's been a godsend.
If I have to do presentations in other buildings on campus (about every other week), I bring my USB-C to HDMI dongle. It's super small, weighs nothing, and always works.
I've heard that there are some off-brand USB-C to HDMI adapters from Amazon that are flaky, but the Belkin one that the IT department got me is rock solid. I've used it probably 30 times so far.
I doubt anyone who really had to do presentations minds carrying around a tiny dongle, compared to all the other things they'll bring to a presentation.
if you're a semi-pro photographer, the lack of an SD card slot is terrible
The pro photographers in my company's Communications department all say they hate built-in SD card readers. They all use standalone units. I don't know why, though. I'll have to ask.
And of course almost all accessories are still USB-A.
That's the same moaning people did about parallel and serial ports.
Just that I have never been in a conference room with an Apple TV attached to the projector. They are a pretty expensive addon considering that I rarely see other Macs at the business meetings I attend.
AirPlay is great unless it isn't. It would often not work correctly in my last office. There was something about the network that caused it to drop, freeze, or refuse to connect. When possible we'd use HDMI instead of fighting with it.
Screen cast dongles are pretty much a dime a dozen these days though. Maybe I’m lucky but in he past two years or so I haven’t been anywhere that still relies on hdmi for presenting on big screens. Except conferences.
Amazon has a bunch[0] but couldn't really vouch for any of them, I mainly use Apple TV (not just for airplay.) I've also seen these things in pretty much any electronics store I've been the past couple of years, particularly ones in touristy areas – I guess plenty of people like to cast video to hotel room TVs maybe?
A buddy of mine used a dongle for his big screen pre-streaming features era TV. He mainly used it to stream games from his phone or iPad to the TV, and Netflix. I think it was chromecast though, not airplay, but same difference really.
I'm not sure I'd put a lot of credibility in the reviews on apple.com. Especially for a device like a display adapter which is frequently connected to a finicky and/or cheap device like a projector or display.
No, I think that people who have had bad experiences with their adapter are more likely to go the manufacturer's website and post comments about how it didn't work for them. If Amazon wasn't a wasteland of fake reviews, I might actually trust it more than Apple's website.
So don't trust Amazon because fake reviews, don't trust Apple reviews cause users are dumb and confuse adapter issues with third-party devices issues, I think you just don't trust reviews regardless.
but if anything Apple adapters tend to be higher quality than third-party ones?
Actually the Apple HDMI adapters seem to be very fragile. They continue to stop working after moderate use. I have two dead ones on my desk and plenty more that we bought with MacBooks. The offerings of MonoPrice seem to be solid though. Apple's entry also seems to have problems with budget TVs unlike others, it is very weird.
I'm not an Apple fan and I never had any of their products, however I think this is still the right direction,even if it's super painful. I've got Dell Xps 13,which only has USB-C ports and SD card slot. Initially you get annoyed you can't connect your usb stick,hdmi cable and etc.,but then you start thinking like screw them.There are endless variations of cables,ports and standards and it's just mad. I just hope that over the next few years we'll get to the point where it's much more unified and you don't need to carry 20 different adapters..
Yes, USB-D is supposed to do that. 1 port for all applications. You will be able to daisy-chain your screens, keyboards, printers and projectors, but also power supply, and it also adds TouchID compatibility. One port to rule them all. USB-D is the future!
> Maybe you don't ever need to present anything from your laptop [...]
I do, almost daily. I even bought the HDMI dongle thinking I might need it when doing presentations outside of my usual workplaces but I have literally never used it. The presentation problem was solved years ago by airplay and chromecast, and the only thing I use HDMI for these days is to hook up things permanently, not temporarily.
I did think at first that I’d miss MagSafe, but I’ve never had an issue with the cable sticking in the port such that I yank my laptop of the table, and I’ve yanked that cable out a number of times. As another commenter rightly pointed out as well, the move from MagSafe actually meant when my cable got damaged because someone put a chair on it I didn’t have to swap the whole power supply, just the cable. Huge win and since I had extra I could solve it right then and there.
I’m no photographer though, so can’t really say for the SD thing. Maybe that does suck.
Maybe for your personal monitors. A far more annoying problem is connecting to conference room projectors. My or still has conference rooms with nothing but VGA cables plugged in to the projector.
This is exactly why I'm 100% for the USB-C switch. I have 1 dongle that handles every video type to USB-C - VGA, DVI, HDMI, and even mDP. There's no reason for all 4 of those ports to be built into the computer on the off chance that I need one of them.
I have the opposite perspective. I'd like my $3000 device to have all the ports I'm likely to need over the lifetime of said device. Dongles and specific adapter cables are a pain.
But then we're back at the beginning of this conversation and you're saying you'd rather have a larger, bulkier, laptop that can accommodate several of these single-use ports. The entire conversation was related to why USB-C was a good/bad decision. I think it was a good decision because I have infinitely more flexibility than I'd have with what you're suggesting. Anything that needs to work over the "lifetime of said device" needs to be able to handle future technologies and having dedicated HDMI ports, for example, is not useful for that because even the HDMI spec has changed multiple times in the last few years.
Your HDMI argument falls a bit flat, since even the brand spanking new USB-C in the latest macbook pros don't support HDMI-2.0 in alt-mode. Instead you need to run them in Displayport and actually run a converter, which is hot and bulky, or you can't get 4k60.
Besides, I'm not fundamentally against dongles, if you REALLY need one because tech has changed or whatever then sure, but let's not require 5 just to operate your computer normally straight out the box.
I really don't see any disadvantage to having an HDMI port, a Type-A USB port and an SD card reader around for making the transition period to USB-C easier. Considering the compromises made to the keyboard, I don't buy that the ports were the thickness limit, either.
Then we'll have to agree to disagree. I've run several hundred presentations over HDMI with the dongle that I have and have been able to do several hundred more via VGA, DVI, etc. without that. Other than that, I don't have 5 dongles. All my devices and cables are USB-C now and it's of great benefit to me that I can be flexible and plug them in anywhere, chain them, get power from them, and essentially run them all off of 1 hub that only takes 1 cable to the computer. For me, USB-C is amazing.
Define 'pro'. My Sony A7iii uses SD cards. My Blackmagic pocket cinema writes to USB-C. If anything C-Fast is a dying medium. SD cards are tremendously cheaper, and at this point likely as fast.
The D810 came out in 2014, Nikon have since favoured XQD over CF. The D5 was available with both, but the D500 and D850 both take an SD and XQD card - and their new mirrorless line is XQD only.
Of course, the next CF standard, CFexpress, is XQD-shaped and devices will be backward compatible.
I prefer the ability to easy replace my usb c cable if it gets damaged, compared to buying a new 80$ brick with MagSafe. Also the ability to charge my laptop from either side is awesome too.
Also once iPhone new iPhone will have a type c charging you will be able to use a cable from your MacBook to charge your phone, so you will only need to carry MacBook charger without worrying about a separate cable for your iPhone
> Maybe you don't ever need to present anything from your laptop
I present all the time, but I can't remember the last time I had to plug in. The problem with trying to plug in is that the other side could be anything from VGA to DP. Should VGA ports be stuck back onto the MBP?
> And if you're a semi-pro photographer, the lack of an SD card slot is terrible.
What about the CF, XQD, or mini-SD slot? I'm an enthusiast photographer (maybe even semi-pro as I have been paid for my pics before), and soon I will not have a need for an SD card slot.
> mag power
Mag safe was nice, but I recently took a trip where I needed a single power brick and cable for my MBP and iPad. Once the iPhone goes USB-C it will make traveling even that much easier.
> Mag safe was nice, but I recently took a trip where I needed a single power brick and cable for my MBP and iPad. Once the iPhone goes USB-C it will make traveling even that much easier.
I didn’t even realize how much this would matter to me until I went traveling. All of a sudden I don’t even need anything but the brick, because I’ll just either hook it up to my phone directly with a ubs-c to lightning cable (and it charges crazy fast) or I’ll use the laptop as a hub. I still carry a sugar cube with me just in case, but I never use it really.
Get a USB-C Lightning cable. One brick, two cables, and you can charge the iPhone on the other devices. Yes it’d be better if the iPhone was USB-C too but that basically has been my strategy: get a set of USB-C to A/B/Mini/Micro/Micro3/HDMI/Lightning cables (not that I lug all of them around, they’re merely plugged into my accessories). There exist USB-C magnet thingies too.
Agreed. I'm an enthusiast photographer and previously semi prod. The SD card slot is nice to have some times, but most of the time I use a dedicated card reader for CF, SD, and micro-SD cards.
> And if you're a semi-pro photographer, the lack of an SD card slot is terrible.
If you're a semi-pro photographer you should stop wasting your time with a built-in SD card slot and get an external USB 3.1 Gen 2 card reader. Fstopper running the numbers:
> Even if you don't want to spend the money on a more expensive memory card, buying a nicer ProGrade card reader is still worth it.
>Nothing wrong with USB-C and the big trackpad is fine too, and I would love to have touchID on my 2015MBP. But getting rid of mag power and the USB-A ports, HDMI port, and SD card slot was a big step back.
All of the above plus a thicker battery.
95% of the time I use my MBPr plugged in, but the few times I need to run it on battery power it would be nice to have longer than 2hr run time (late 2013 MBPr 15" w/ Iris Pro/GeForce GT 750M and brand new battery).
The 2013 MBPr 15" models have the largest li-ion battery allowed to be brought onto an airplane by the FAA, so you're not going to get anything bigger than that. My complaint is that they've made the batteries smaller than that maximum on the new models (starting 2016)
At least with USB-C Macs you can bring a separate standard USB PD battery pack and charge off that. There was no such option for the MagSafe Macs (there was a third party company that made one but Apple sued them to death)
The users who want/need all those ports are pretty niche, even among power user developers and graphic designers. I think Apple did their market research on this.
It only has one DVI port and the USB-pass-through. Funny as it is, I am writing this post on a Dell 30" screen connected via this very adapter to a 2015 MB Pro. Yes, this was one of the worst contraptions of a dongle ever made, but in this case, it was the only way to create dual-link DVI ouptut (needed for resolutions larger than 1920x1080) from a Displayport.
I present. Adapter is a bit big but don’t carry it unless I need it. Happy with all the changes except: the keyboard is completely broken.
When I first got a new air I loved the new keyboard - I really like the feel - but now I have repeated keypresses I have fallen out of love with apple.
So you are saying: having a built-in hdmi port would have been useful.
There is very little reason not to have all ports - hmdi, mini display port (+display port) readily available; connected straight to the video card. There is plenty of room.
I don't recall a lot of people crying about the loss of a DVD drive. That was the moment where everyone outside techdom was forced to realize that everything goes over the network.
Also, as someone who still has a iMac with an optical drive, their failure rate (Apple or any other brand) has always been atrocious.
Professional photographers should (IMHO) either shoot tethered or get an external USB 3.1 (>5Gb/s) external card reader. Fstopper recently did some quick benchmarks, and the transfer times were significantly faster:
USB-C is good, when Thunderbolt is integrated. I'm fine with getting rid of everything else. I have a cheapo HDMI adapter that works great.
But putting the ports millimeters apart on the side of a computer that offers at least nine inches of space is idiotic: https://i.imgur.com/0HGp7O0.jpg
The new keyboard is insufferable; you might as well just go to a membrane keyboard at this point. The deletion of a dozen keys for the sake of the emoji bar is embarrassing, especially on a "pro" computer. Now programmers are supposed to step through code with a featureless strip that goes to sleep every few seconds? The crowning offense is not even OFFERING the option of real keys, when the "consumer" Air has them.
The big trackpad is a mistake because the heels of your hands are in contact with it all the time, necessitating who knows how much spurious-touch-rejection logic that simply fails occasionally and sends your cursor to some other part of the screen or document... or your hand simply executes an unintended click or right-click.
Another baffling failure: Why doesn't the Pencil work on those giant touchpads? Now THAT would be useful!
Yes, it's definitely divisive. In my case, I do need a reliable keyboard, I do not have a single USB-C device around me that I can connect (while having literally tens of USB-A devices), I do not need or want the touchbar, I want the function keys, and I don't mind the extra thickness. The new macbooks make all the wrong compromises for me.
So, if it is divisive, why not make both kinds? Why does there need to be a single compromise across the entire line?
I hate the fact that I am reduced to living in fear of what will be taken away the next time they present a computer. I find it bizarre that we have pretty much accepted that we need to give something up for the "new thin and light", and we just wonder what it's going to be and explain to ourselves how we didn't really need all those USB ports or headphone ports after all.
Also, magsafe saved my bacon many times, and I'm looking at a USB-C connector on my wife's laptop and its so worn out that the plug is almost falling out. Magsafe was a much better solution.
Oh, I would really like to! Believe me, I'm considering it regularly.
And yet: nobody else comes close in terms of providing me with a complete ecosystem where I can get things done. And I do know: I regularly use both Windows and Linux.
I doubt they sell enough Macbook Pros for it to ever make sense to make multiple "editions" like that; I doubt they'd get that many more sales.
If you are a software developer you really don't have to buy a Mac these days. Linux is great on Dell and Lenovo laptops and they offer a lot more selection.
I'm a software developer that has recently switched from Mac to Linux. Some colleagues have switched as well.
For me the primary reason was, that at the time of the switch the MBP was only available with 16GB RAM - just like the MBP I had purchased five years before. There was nothing "Pro" about that. That was last year.
Never regretted the switch. For work related stuff Linux is optimal. Docker for Mac alone is the pest.
> So, if it is divisive, why not make both kinds? Why does there need to be a single compromise across the entire line?
I’m guessing because it’s probably cheaper and easier to produce fewer models, and not enough benefit to producing more. It obviously rubs some people the wrong way, but perhaps not nearly enough, no matter how vocal they may be.
The crux today is the OS. It’s gotten to the point that I’d pay 300$ per computer per year for a paid Linux that makes... me... feel b... beautiful, I know it sounds very immature but macOS makes me feel like I have succeeded in life and can afford the right tool, and Linux makes me feel like I have a knock-off that I constantly need to debug.
I’m paying that price for IntelliJ so I don’t see why I couldn’t afford an OS for employees.
But $300 per year is more or less the prime for Apple products, but the drawback is their hardware loses features.
Well, my point is that design is opinionated and my opinion is clearly contrary to yours – in the past five years (and more) Apple has set the standard for what laptops should be. Thanks for proving my point! :o)
> in the past five years (and more) Apple has set the standard for what laptops should be.
Setting the standard for laptops implies that other manufacturers are racing to keep pace with their changes. Fortunately (in my opinion), there has not been a giant uptick in other laptop manufacturers removing standard keyboard keys, making devices thin to the point of fragility, and requiring a myriad of dongles to perform many basic tasks.
Engineering and design need to meet to produce a product that is beautiful and functional. Unfortunately, the keyboard fell short and the limitations imposed by the design made those failures maximally painful for customers.
Yeah the new keyboard is great. I love how they finally got the up and down arrow keys merged into a single key. And how the Esc/F-keys are now impossible to touchtype. The difference between me using the computer and my cat sitting on it is now approaching zero and while for me this is detrimental and potentially career-ending, it is a massive step forward for cats.
That's funny, because nearly all the Apple fans I know (myself included) are extremely jaded with their laptops since the touchbar model came out. Throwing out the ports and making the keyboard awful in favor of becoming thinner doesn't exactly read as a "Pro" product to me.
I cannot imagine defending the move to 100% usb-c ports. An iphone out of the box cannot be connected to a new mac laptop. It's complete insanity. The rest of the world isn't there yet. Every single person I know who owns a usb-c mac laptop owns a $100 dongle that they carry everywhere with them.
For me being able to plug in USB type-A is a non-negotiable part of using a laptop still, 4 years after the move. Same with HDMI. I also regularly plug SD cards in.
It doesn't make the laptop thinner, it makes it bulkier because the adapter is a necessity.
The mid 2012 Macbook Pro Retina was the best Macbook. It had a HDMI port, USB-A ports, SD card reader, and a Magsafe plug that wouldn't send your Mac flying if someone ran into the cord.
Mine worked well for 6 years, but it had a hidden defect where the graphics card would cause a kernel panic. Even though it was a factory defect, Apple said it was "vintage" and I was forced to upgrade. Sad part is Apple will never make a Macbook like that especially with a starting price of $1600.
I'm still using mine. I'm seriosly thinking of moving to Linux when it is no longer working or supported by the OS. And that MagSafe adapter has saved my bacon on multiple occasions...
I had one too, and I went to a pixelbook instead of the new MBP. Pixelbook is awesome, form factor is great, it is so light, and now that I'm used to tap-to-click, going back to a Mac trackpad feels so clunky.
> An iphone out of the box cannot be connected to a new mac laptop. It's complete insanity.
While I disagree with pretty much everything else you said, this is 100% on point. That they haven't moved iPhones and iPads to usb-c yet, or at least include a usb-c to lightning cable in the box, is mind boggling to me.
That’s cool, I wouldn’t mind that either because there’s nothing killer about the Touch Bar. It’s not useless either though. I use zoom daily, and the ability to just tap mute on the Touch Bar is pretty nice. Not can’t live without it nice like Touch ID, but not negligible either. There are a number of little features like that in apps that make the Touch Bar a net positive for me.
USB-C is great. Keyboard is horrible. I'd prefer the last gen trackpad - the new one is needlessly silly and easy to bump by accident. Touchbar is garbage and needs to go, Touch ID is great.
Please give me back an sdcard reader at minimum. VGA port is probably too much to ask for but literally every conference room on the planet still has that as their default with other options being a bonus and I'm sick of accidentally leaving my adapters behind.
Apple fan for 30+ years, been using them professionally since they switched to unix under the hood. Swapped my 2014 macbook out for a 2018 model. It is terrible in so many ways. Three months ago I switched to a Dell running Ubuntu, and haven't been this happy since the 2014 macbook ;)
The keyboard is the worst keyboard I've used in at least 15 years, the giant touchpad pisses me off constantly with no benefit, the OS just copies other people now, the touchbar is the least offensive thing but still stupid, and the loss of the magsafe is a bummer. Huge disappointment.
But, that's ok, turns out Ubuntu as a desktop is amazing, and so I'm really happy with the switch!
Every professional developer I know that has a mac is refusing to switch away from their previous model (or older) macbook.
I would like to see exactly zero regression from the current design.
I think there is a very tiny but vocal minority, particularly in the tech community, who have issues with it. Most people have few complaints if you are talking about the most recent keyboard. It may still have some room for improvement but the last couple generations of butterfly keyboard have improved each step of the way.
I'm the same way and most of the people I know IRL are the same way. It seems like it's only online that I hear people complain about the keyboard and the lack of ports. The biggest complaint online that I see is the physical escape key (and I'm even a developer and don't care about it) and I have yet to meet a single person who has that complaint.
> I have yet to meet a single person who has that complaint
We haven't met, but hi. I have that complaint. The omission of a physical escape key is the reason I cancelled my MacBook Pro order. I tried training myself on my MacBook with a remapped Caps Lock but to no avail. Vim habits die hard.
That's completely contrary to my point. You're still just a random person online from Hacker News. The vast majority of people that aren't on a niche website like this have no issues with the keyboard. I haven't gotten a single complaint related to the keyboards from our employees using MacBooks. In fact, overall, we get far less complaints about the MacBooks, in general, than we do with our Dell and HP laptops.
I never said it does. I just said that only a minority of niche customers actually hold the same opinion as you. The vast majority of people are perfectly happy with both the new keyboards and the lack of a physical escape key. You don't prefer it but that has to mean that you're a minority of the population that buys their products.
Indeed. In this, and other things besides. Consequentially I've learned to be distrustful of majorities, and their self-appointed spokespeople in particular.
Back on topic, though: thankfully the new Air has an Escape key and enough grunt to develop on (the MacBook being underpowered for some tasks). I was not looking forward to exiting the Apple/OSX ecosystem for my next laptop.
My experience with usb c is from people in my lab with usb c only MacBooks, looking to move files and borrow one of our extra drives, realize they don’t have the ubiquitous usb a and look for other solutions. Or trying to plug into a projector that has hdmi and 6 adapters but no usb c yet, then trying to get their presentation to another notebook..
I’ll keep my multi port Mac Pro till it falls apart at this point
A Pro device should be like a truck, not a sleek sports car.
Having ports available when you need them, not running out of battery, having a keyboard optimised for comfort and accuracy, and having a screen that is visible in all lighting conditions are core requirements for a device that is there to enable you do work. Most changes to the MacBook Pro have been driven by aesthetics and minimalism.
Keeping with the car metaphor: your mileage may vary I guess. I'm getting great mileage out of my MBP, with none of those issues you mention, so I guess the sports car edition is fine with me. That's why I'd love to see a proper survey on this, because I never hear these complaints from people I meet, only online.
Totally!
People are always commenting on how old my systems are. Last half of 2012 15” and an iPhone 5s... I just shrug and say “last of the Jobs models” and then I play this clip for them.
The boldest move at the moment would be "We believe that thinness for the sake of it, is dead as a trend, today we are announcing a new direction that will see us build beautiful products that are nonetheless expandable, repairable, green"
My only beef with usb-c is that there doesn't seem to exist a hub that offers multiple usb-c ports with via a single usb-c port. Until those are mainstream, I feel that usb-c is inferior to a/b.
"Does the new MacBook Pro's Touch Bar improve your workflow?" 38% say "No, I only use it for function keys it replaced", 23% say "Waiting for more app/function support", 21% say "Yes, it improves my workflow", 16% say "Other". https://9to5mac.com/2017/01/24/macbook-pro-touch-bar-poll/
Twitter poll: "Just out of interest, with @marcoarment in mind, does anybody actually like the Touch Bar of the new MacBook Pro?" "With over 1,000 responses, the results were effectively 50-50." https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/04/03/twitter-poll-to...
I really don't worry about dongles though, what gave you that idea? I have a few cables, and I do have a couple of dongles but never really use them so mostly they're spending time in a box somewhere.
What does the thinness of the device actually get you though? I know most very thin laptops are no lighter than my much thicker x230, but come with way less expandability, crummier keyboard, and less ports. What does the thinness get you when they weight the same?
I work pretty much exclusively on my 13" laptop. I carry it with me pretty much wherever I go. It being thin and light is crucial to fitting it in my bag, and not being uncomfortable to lug around. The current form factor is pretty much perfect to me – slips right into its dedicated slot in my bag, and the weight it adds to my bag is really no biggie. I wouldn't mind if it was lighter, but it's damn near perfect to me at this point.
I'm with you. I'm mildly annoyed with the TouchBar, but willing to accept it for Touch ID, and as for the rest - I'm not finding it nearly as grating as I thought I would, and a worthwhile sacrifice for the lower weight.
As the owner of a 15”, I agree on all points but one. I would sacrifice a little thinness for more battery life and repair ability. Love the keyboard, love the track pad, fine with usb c, meh on Touch Bar.
It's not insanity, it just depends what they were talking about. Personally I like the feel of the keyboard and find it's quite nice to type on, but I don't like the reliability issues. I've already had mine replaced once, and there's nothing preventing the replacement from failing again at some point.
It's very easy to brush aside the failure rate until it happens to you.
I cut my finger quite badly a couple of weeks ago. Being unable to just switch my phone on as I picked it up was a whole world of annoying. It's surprising just how quickly we take these things for granted.
The top comment on this thread is asking for the ports back. The majority has spoken.
My workstations have become a dumpster fire of dongles and I constantly have to unplug something to use the ports for something else. The previous model was so much better.
By the same logic, my comment to the original post is currently the top of all comments – does that mean the majority have rebutted in favor of the current design? Of course not.
Point being: whether a design is good or not is mostly subjective, and great design is often polarizing. A more scientific survey would be interesting, but it's still fun to see all the diverse responses here.
I left Apple years ago because of this. Extremes are never good. Hardware was getting thin and UI flat for the sake of looking pretty to the masses. And from what I see things got a bit worse.
I actually prefer the aesthetics of early MacBook / MacBook Pro unibody and iPhone SE. And they were a pleasure to use. Good key travel and easy to hold with one hand, respectively.
I hope there is a bit of function re-introduced into the design equation, so that products become more balanced.
I have nothing but pure unadulterated love for my iPhone SE. I can’t imagine myself with a bigger phone and I’m just waiting for them to make a similar new model. Sometimes I wonder if they will though.
I feel the same way about pre Touch Bar MacBooks - not that I have anything against Touch Bar (I think it’s fine and should probably be a lot more hackable) but the new keyboard just causes me cramps and finger pain after very little time. The old keyboards were so so good. Tactile, clicky and solid.
My next Mac after my 2013 MacBook Pro finally kicks it will probably be a 2014-2015 MacBook Pro if I can find one. I was issued a brand new MacBook Pro for work and I hate it. Hate the Touch Bar and keyboard and only liked using it docked to a keyboard and external displays.
I went 2011 to 2015 last year. Turns out it was really easy to find a 2015 refurb on Apple's store. But you should probably do it sooner than later, as they will get more rare the further out we get from 2015.
What will you do when your 2015 MBP gets too old? Are you hopeful that they'll get back to a more developer friendly laptop with functioning keyboard, etc?
I ask because I'm encountering the same conundrum and wondering if I should just force myself to make the switch to a different OS and way of working now.
I had company over last night, and brought out my iPhone 4S. I have my current 128GB SE, and we compared them to the iPhone 8 (which the owner’s children referred to as a small phone).
4S was the pinnacle of miniaturization tech. The SE screensize would fit in the 4S form-factor.
Most popular comment was “I can fit this in my pocket.”
I think the argument for using universal chargers or battery packs makes sense for phones, where it is certainly understandable that you'd find yourself somewhere with a phone but without means to charge it - most people carry their phones in a pocket, where a charger battery might not fit or be comfortable to carry.
Moments where you'd find yourself with a laptop but without a charger are far harder to imagine for me... If you're carrying around your laptop it means you're using some sort of bag or backpack, at which point there's no reason not carry a charger in it too.
Magsafe's main function (safety against falls), on the other hand, has saved my 2013 MBP more times than I can count. It is a godsend, specially for people that live around small children or pets.
I agree with you. I also loved the magsafe. My current laptop, not from Apple, uses a similar charger and I like it a lot. I very rarely have my laptop without my charger, plus it has an extra usb port on the power brick to charge my phone.
Where do you live? At least 90% of my flights in economy class (US) in the past 2 years have had in-seat power. The other ones mostly didn't because they were either super low budget (or Hawaiian Airlines - worst airline I've flown more than once) or there was a reliability issue. I'd still prefer to have a battery pack as a backup, but the lack of power in the seat is now much less of an issue than the fact that there's no room in economy class to work without straining your arms.
Can confirm, it has been great. No more running around the office trying to find another macbook user when I accidentally leave my charger at home. I just easily roll up to anyone using a newer Lenovo laptop (that charges with USB-C) and use their charger.
Ironically, it happens more often than not the other way around. Anecdote incoming. When I had to use a Lenovo laptop last month for a week as my on-call machine, the Lenovo charger refused to charge the laptop. It would register, because the power button would blink when I plugged it in, but the laptop would refuse to turn on even after an hour of charging. Plugged it into a macbook charger, and it turned on like a charm instantly.
Microsoft has always had great hardware. I’ve been using a Microsoft keyboard for 20 years, even with all my macs, and up until I got a Magic Trackpad unused a Microsoft mouse too.
Probably. I liked my Surface Book, it was an amazingly solid piece of hardware with good design and some nice innovations. However, Windows killed the device for me. After a year of use, it felt more sluggish than 3+ years old macbooks, even after I did the factory reset.
I'll be damned, there are [0] and at first glance it seems like a good replacement. Granted, it is still annoying to have to buy a damn dongle for almost every port.
I'm not sure how much he actually did versus just being the spokesperson, but my recollection is that they pushed him to the front around the release of iOS7, the announcement for which was when all Apple's "bold" moves, in both software design and hardware form vs. function trade-offs, started making me do quizzical-german-shephard.jpg several times at each product reveal event. I'm hoping his influence was, in fact, major and that he'll have even less future influence than the announcement implies, so maybe they'll change course.
One can hope, but I’m sure his decisions were not based off design quirkiness entirely. Apple must have a department that shows people want thinner and thinner laptops and that’s what they aim for. Right?
I, too, would like the option of a thicker laptop and my beloved magnetic break-away power connector. That has saved my bacon many times when my foot caught the cord. I assume that wold permit a thicker battery with a longer lifetime...
If he took away MagSafe I couldn't be happier he's gone. I still think it's a bold move by Apple if it was voluntary, they have so much to lose if their new design deviates from the old significantly even if it doesn't they're unlikely to gain much as it's probably near impossible to find a Steve Job replacement when it comes to design.
I don't get why you'd bother when you can get a better machine for half the cost. Install Linux on it if you don't like Windows. Unless you're hired to work on some Mac-exclusive software and it's a work laptop I just don't get why anyone would buy a Mac laptop when they're so objectively overpriced and underfeatured.
Objectively is a hard claim when it comes to an integration of software and hardware. What is the integration of hardware and software worth to any particular person? What is Apple doubling down on privacy worth to another one?
Current MBP hardware is nothing exciting to me. But my previous MBP was lasted me 2009 to 2016 I believe, with a few upgrades. And I like the OS.
I don't mind working in Linux or Windows but I prefer a lot of things about the Mac.
A lot of conveniences, and things that I feel have better execution. Rather predictably decent performance and good integration between software and hardware. That sort of thing.
I was OK with USB-C as it matches my Android phone and the iPad Pro. I'm down to a single charger for travel. It has drawbacks but makes a bit of sense. Not a fan of the new keyboards, really don't like the Touchbar. But overall I'm still fairly happy.
So that's why I, personally, bother. I care about whether they improve it because in spite of the Mac as a platform not hitting the sweets sports as well as previously for me it is still worth the premium they charge. To me.
I consider Macs expensive, I'm not sure that I consider them overpriced. Under-featured I'd dismiss out of hand, I'm sure they could be to some but it really depends on what you are looking at.
128GB SSD vs 1TB HDD, you can buy your own 1TB SSD for around $150, far from the $800 upcharge Apple wants to charge you for that option
And mine doesn't need dongles to do basic tasks like plug in a mouse or ethernet cable or monitor.
I've used Mac OS for a week at a time and it really seemed like nothing special.
So $500 less and I get a bigger screen, more RAM, better CPU, much better GPU, much better disk space, actual USB/HDMI/ethernet ports, with no tangible downsides unless for some reason you literally cannot just get used to using Windows 10, which is a perfectly fine OS. Plus being able to run basically whatever games I want.
Edit: And I just noticed the MBP doesn't even have a numpad. Another dealbreaker for me.
Doesn't the model you link to have a non-retina display? It's hardly comparable. You're not paying for raw specs when you buy a mac. You're paying for the screen, the trackpad, the aesthetics, the thin profile, the battery life, the speakers and microphone, and the OS. Apple has the good taste not to max out the specs if it means sacrificing other, more important features.
If you look for Windows laptops that check all the aforementioned boxes (leaving aside the trackpad, as none of them have good trackpads), you'll be paying just as much as you pay for a macbook.
I've used the trackpad and looked at the screens of MBPs and it was nothing special. Didn't even realize the resolution was more than normal 1080p at the time. Battery life/speakers/microphone/trackpad are fine on mine. I don't see how you could think aesthetics are important enough to skimp out on power.
I'm sure I could tell it was over 1080p if I was paying close attention. It's mostly just passing familiarity being around coworker computers. Maybe Macbook trackpads really are that great but I have no complaints about mine. And I'm sure the battery life is fine if you turn on power saving features and don't leave intensive stuff running.
I'm just pointing out that there are real differences between a macbook and an $800 Windows laptop. Those differences may not matter to some people, which is fine. But it's simply not the case that the laptops you're linking to are comparable to macbooks. E.g., I would not switch to those laptops primarily because of the trackpad, screen, battery life and overall build quality.
Well. I'm glad you can find computers that you find worth their price.
I do use Windows 10 for gaming and some audio/video editing stuff, mostly because of ports and fat hardware. I don't enjoy dev work on it. I could get used to it. But I vastly prefer the way my workflow matches with MacOS. Good terminal, decent package management, good battery for travel.
If I wanted another dev OS it would probably be a Linux.
But I find the quality of execution on MacOS and the surrounding ecosystem to generally be better. I prefer the experience. If it costs a premium but shaves some frustration for me, that feels worthwhile at this time.
It is fine that you don't want to pay that. Is it bothering you that I don't mind the higher price?
I feel like you are jumping to a lot of conclusions. I have worked with a number of different bash implementations and terminals on windows. I haven't found one I appreciated as much as the ones I use on MacOS or have used on Linux.
Am I correct to understand that you dismiss my arguments about why I prefer another operating system and prefer a certain computer type in spite of higher cost as entirely invalid and part of some intellectual bankruptcy?
You seem to have no interest in seeing how another perspective might make sense to another person. If I were to argue like you I'd go with "No one cares to pay for hardware and software anymore. That's why Google gets away with eroding our privacy. Your hardware is full of bloated driver management tools. Your operating system has ads. It is just one data point telling me that people have no standards and lousy taste."
That's how I experience your arguments, no curiosity. I've been politely considering that your opinion probably reflects your needs. I would have appreciated the same courtesy. But what do I know. I'm just a signifier for humanity's decision-making. Bah.
After considering everything I've seen and experienced about Apple products, I just can't help but feel like there really is nothing substantial to them these days, and it follows from that that I find it questionable people still buy them. I wouldn't quite use this to call people intellectually bankrupt. Maybe there really is to something to them providing enough value to be worth the markup to some people but I doubt that's the case for most.
Yep. They had already been giving him tremendous leeway to work on side projects outside Apple for several years, they certainly would have allowed him to establish a formal studio for this side-business stuff if that's all it was. Clearly this is about no loner seeing eye-to-eye on his decisions in the expanded c-suite role that encompassed UI design etc.
If this means a more functional bias to future hardware designs that could be good but the design of the hardware is really a huge selling point for me at least with the phones. I use my iPhone X without a case and marvel even a year after buying it at its design almost everytime I pick it up.
I absolutely love the current MacBook Pro as it is, keyboard, Touch Bar and all. The only changes I would wish for are an OLED/better screen with a higher native resolution, and perhaps make it even lighter. :)
I may be in a minority, but I find the 2013 etc. Macbooks way too thick for my tastes. 2015 Macbooks Pro seem like the sweet spot. Although I love the thinness of 2016+ Macbooks also.
I love the thin design. I'll take a single USB-C port over multiple ports any day. (and yes, I do use an external monitor, which is a USB hub, and a 1Gbps ethernet dongle)
Look at Jony's designs, everything from the first iMac to the soon to be released Mac Pro can be boiled down to a rectangle with rounded corners. 20 years of the same core element has caused it to become stale.
Or maybe just maybe market decided that this was actually the best form factor for computer so far? Maybe also not unrelated to the fact that screens are rectangle...
You can’t blame Apple as it’s one of the few company that actually tried alternatives... that market rejected.
To name a few : the twentieth anniversary Mac, the "Luxo" iMac, and more recently the trashcan MacPro
Yeah, the designer who shat out the worst keyboards on the market, which cripple $4000 computers... and then doubled down on the grossly defective design by putting condoms under every key.
This is after deleting a dozen useful keys and replacing them with an asinine and embarrassing emoji bar... again on a "pro" computer without even offering the option to get rid of it... and yet that option exists on the non-"pro" Air.
The designer who declared that you don't want more battery capacity in your mobile device, so users are carrying power bricks and wads of wire around with them and begging bartenders to plug their iPhones in, or crawling under tables in public places to do so.
The designer who removed headphone jacks from MEDIA-CENTRIC phones, phones that are supposed to provide access to streaming-media services and the future of Apple.
The designer who turned out a computer with, in effect, no I/O ports.
The designer who championed peek-a-boo UI and the idiotic "flat" look, where using software is now an Easter-egg hunt with many controls disguised as plain text and the states of others indistinguishable.
And I don't even care if he ripped off earlier designers. The real problem is that he has waged a war on USEFULNESS that has driven the mobile-phone market and computer markets BACKWARD.
And talk about the new $6000 Mac Pro which got memed a lot because of its astounding similarity to a grater. Although, I know this is not going to ruin Ive's legacy cause he's also been responsible for some great designs like iPhone 4 and aluminum MBP.
update:
I know it was designed like that due to air flow considerations. I just pointed out the fact that it seems the design team didn't get input from others, who IMO would've mentioned the similarity sooner, possibly helping Apple alter the design.
People here have been complaining about how Apple has prioritized aesthetics over functionality. It's worth taking a different stance and criticize Apple's choice of functionality over aesthetics in Mac Pro design.
As a person with knowledge of machining and who is rather technical, the "grater" design is honestly pretty appealing to me- I wish the New Pro's had filters, but that design looks cool.
It does, at least, look better than the last PC I built.
I admire the work it took to build it but not the design.
I have a Coolermaster H500 (I wanted high air flow with filters as I have ambulatory fur producers (cats)), it’s a bit too RGB for me but other than that very very functional and was a dream to build inside.
Against that the Mac Pro doesn’t fair well on cost to function at all.
I wasn't focusing on the cost aspect, mostly the "dang, that's a cool front panel" aspect.
I do agree that it needs some filters, but other than that, it looks pretty good, and I like it. Does that mean I'm going to spend $6K on a base Mac Pro? Probably not- I have friends with access to everything I need- I'd just have to come up with a design.
The Mac Pro makes sense in a media production environment for very specific reasons. I work in filmmaking and motion design and you would sell your mother for that machine.
> I just pointed out the fact that it seems the design team didn't get input from others, who IMO would've mentioned the similarity sooner, possibly helping Apple alter the design.
????
The model before the "trashcan" was popularly called the cheese grater for a long time, so I'm sure they were well aware of the resemblance already.
Well they aren’t losing 100% of him since they are still able to retain his services. If this price movement was due to his departure it would indicate he has an even higher valuation.
As much as we can man-myth the man, he’s got one of the best design teams on the planet around him. Unless they all leave (and even if they do, they could replace them all with the second best design team in the world quickly as all industrial designers would jump to work at Apple) I don’t see how this could anywhere but up.
Remember it was rumoured Ive who insisted in the super luxury version of the Apple Watch, and they had to drop it because it was so absurd. He also bought a Bentley around the same time. I just got a feeling without Steve to ground him, his posh Englishness might have led him astray.
But the stock dropped 1% in the seconds after the announcement. This isn’t a 1% drop over the entire day; it’s a 1% drop in 30 seconds after the market has closed. I think it’s safe to say the market values Ive’s contribution to Apple at $9b
He’s making more money at Apple than he will leading his own design agency.
This makes me think that he no longer finds his work compelling at Apple. Or Apple decided it’s time for a new leader, but wants things to have a soft landing.
Since he was the Chief Design Officer at Apple, responsible for all design, I imagine his role came with a lot of management overhead. I'd wager a guess that maybe he wanted to ditch the corporate overhead (and spend more time directly working on design), and as a bonus he'll get to take on a wider range of projects. Also possible that he wanted to go back to the UK and that his firm will be located there.
From Daring Fireball speculation his move to Chief Design Officer was already a move for him to be distanced from day to day design. Sort of a soft firing already, but by moving him up.
I think it's more likely that he wants to be able to have more input on projects outside of Apple and Apple aren't happy with design consultancy being part of their business. So the obvious resolution is to let him be independent, safe in the knowledge that Apple will always have enough cash to pay whatever it takes to get him to work on their projects.
I think this is good for Apple, I found that I was not impressed or excited about his work after Steve Jobs wasn't there to help him refine his instincts any longer.
Everything he did after that just seemed ... uninspired.
Hopefully this signals the end of the designers tyranny at Apple.
While physical design has been of paramount importance in Apple's rise to the top, it has been more and more detrimental as Jony and his group wandered into worshipping at the altar of luxury and Platonic idealism.
When combined with /not/ ignoring other than luxury market segments and usability that was fine. But when Jony's star was completely ascendant everything else was sacrificed at that altar (see butterfly keyboard, single port MacBook, escape key-less touch bars, no 32 GB MacBook Pros since that would require non-power-sipping RAM.)
I could have lived with this if the design of the software hadn't also suffered in conjunction with the hardware. Jony was given responsibility for UX and it also started prioritizing abstract design principles over actual usability with extremely low contrast UI elements and other poor choices.
As we saw those points being walked back and Apple being responsive to the complaints, I've been wondering if Craig Federighi's star was rising and if Jony's was dimming, since I doubt he was a willing participant in the diminution of his artistic choices. Seeing the extreme effort he was putting into charity[0] and the spaceship campus, instead of his actual responsibilities, it all combined to me that he needed to either get re-focused by the CEO or get a new job.
I don't like that phrase, "tyranny of design". It implies design is just one side of a product. But design is everything. It is both form and function. A product that has great visual design is still a failure if the functional design is bad. A great designer is holistic and will be able to bring form and function into harmony..
While I don't have the inside scoop on how Jonathan Ive works, my impression is that he's good taste and excels at pushing the edge in materials and manufacturing processes -- he pioneered the aluminium unibody, for example -- and is probably a good leader. But he is not a great or original designer. Apple's recent history is littered with mistakes and poor design decisions, functional and aesthetic both, as well as a lot of unoriginal, boring visual design. There's obviously a lot of pressure at Apple, and they don't make anything easy for themselves, but that's not enough of an excuse to explain everything.
To me, the most audacious design decision in recent years was the iPhone X's removal of the home button in favour of a purely gesture-based UI combined with Face ID. That's great design that just worked.
The iPhone has one of the most slippery surfaces of almost all objects I own. It looks great in photos and ad videos but completely incompatible to the goal of safely holding it in the human hand. Things have became so bad with iPhone XS that I have never seen anyone using it without some ugly sleeve. If anyone has dared not using case/sleeve, they would experience heart wrenching drop out of hand within their first week of use.
Do you think this is good design? Why do you think this would happen at design-first company like Apple?
It's a bad design feature that is sadly common across premium smartphone brands - e.g. the Pixel 3 is also quite hard to grasp. One thing where I think lower-end phone design tends to be better, a function of their lower priority on aesthetics.
It's the fault of wireless charging. Premium phones used to have metal backs, but that is incompatible with wireless charging so we are cursed with glass for eternity now.
For most part, I haven’t had a case on my XS since launch. Love the feel. Have yet to drop it. I do put a case on it when I’m doing things like camping or taking photos at amusement parks.
> But design is everything. It is both form and function.
Steve Jobs would agree with you: "People think it's this veneer – that the designers are handed this box and told, 'Make it look good!' That's not what we think design is. It's not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works."
So I think OP's term "tyranny of design" could be better phrased "tyranny of form" (as opposed to function).
A big part of the problem is that many designers seem to really want to be artists, not designers, and they tend to want to pull design in an artistic (i.e. form-centric) direction.
A casual glance at Dribbble makes this pretty clear.
The computer fits in my bag, even with my reading glasses. I can carry it a long time without my shoulder getting sore, which means I can use it all day on the go. Another poster mentioned that 32 gig of ram is impossible because the thin design needs lower power requirements. This actually tends to mean that you have more battery time (which is paradoxical, really).
I don't have a mac (or even want one), but I've benefitted from the trickle down effect where Toshiba seems to want to close ridiculously thin, long battery lasting macs.
Actually, the tyranny of design at Apple existed long before Jonny Ive. It began with Donald Norman who regularly discusses his Philip Starck juicer which "not meant to squeeze lemons, it is meant to start conversations."
I can't find the quote, but Donald Norman said something along the lines of "create something beautiful and people will say it's wonderful and easy to use".
This has always been the Apple way, and I don't see that changing. At Apple, form has always had priority over function.
That’s interesting. I always thought of Don Norman as having sensible, clear design principles. In the Design of Everyday Things [1], one of his main points was that devices should be always be clear about what they do, by presenting unambiguous affordances to the user. A row of light switches is no good; they should be organized so that they map to location in the room. A fridge with two knobs for temperature and volume of air should present a clear mental model to the user in its documentation, or better yet have a more direct interface to simply select the desired temperature for a given area. Doors that should be pulled should have handlebars; doors that should be pushed should have horizontal plates.
If there’s anyone whose design principles I’d want at Apple, it’d be the guy who espoused clarity and unambiguity. Him waxing poetic about a useless juicer seems very out of character, although he did indeed say that [2]. I’d be interested to hear more about his more current work for Apple.
It’s just not true. The early iOS had great fundamental usability.
The new voice recorder app is fundamentally worse than its predecessor in almost every way. IOS usability not a flat line. It started above industry standards, brought the whole industry up with it (Google would never have invested in Material Design without Apple’s competitiveness), and then seemingly when Scott Forstall left, took a real downturn.
I heard that employees started putting post-its on walls to help people walk around safely, which infuriated someone important, because they were all taken down and told not to do that any more.
Wouldn't surprise me if something like that is what sealed the deal, but the criticism of Apple's design decisions has been building for some time now.
(Apart from the price:) Nothing. It's a complete reversal from the trashcan. It's cheesy (!), loud, fun, it has personality, you can take it apart, mess with its insides, which are actually worth talking about. And people LOVE it - just as they'd probably love a decent Macbook which is maybe 0.2in thicker, but comes with an Esc key, a keyboard which won't die within a year, and enough ports to be usable.
I think he/she meant that the trash can model was very poorly received whereas the new one has generated a lot of excitement. If the new one was designed without Ive or against his wishes, it could have seriously called his value into question.
I have to imagine that he's going to have the biggest non-solicitation clause ever in history.
He's partnering with Marc Newsom and others... who he's collaborated with heavily in the past for Apple Watch (and other one-off auction products, etc).
Jony's got to be tired of designing with the Apple aesthetic after all this time, and maybe wants to design a car or toaster again.
Jony Ive defines the Apple aesthetic and he has already changed it multiple times (bondi blue, white plastic, aluminum & glass) so he could change it again if he wants.
Yeah, more likely he already has various clauses in his contract. But since his new company is doing business with Apple they could also add conditions to that deal.
I agree, I bet this is about designing non-computer products for him, but it looks like he'll still have some level of input on Apple products as an external consultant.
Genuine question: Who cares? I love design, and I love the engineering Apple has done, but, I've got to believe that Apple keep their aesthetic without keeping the same exact people. I think I would count this as a win for Apple - an opportunity to change the guard and give permission for some new designers to give a critical eye to the products they make. I would love to see them take maybe 1 or 2 steps back from minimalism.
IMO Watch is just plain unattractive as a design object. Tinkering with the crown colour or the strap choices hasn't changed that. I keep waiting for it to be refined, so far not.
I'm also not sold on the new(ish) font and flat UI style. They work, more or less, but there's something very bland about them.
The big hits were game changers and were anything but bland - the original Bondi Blue iMac, the MBP aesthetic, the Macbooks including the Air, and the iPhone.
Good design integrates form without breaking function, and that hasn't been the case with the not-really-working keyboards, the touchbar, the bottom charge port on the Magic Mouse, the death of the headphone jack, the end of MagSafe, the missing ports on too many laptop models, and others.
I don't know which of those Ive was responsible for. I suppose we'll find out over the next few years.
I tend to agree with you - at some point the whole "take everything away that you can do without" became "do without". my MacBook pro is great, but I would love more ports. I don't care as much about weight, I'd happily do with more battery, and more keyboard travel.
Generally, when I think of "Pro" I'm thinking of more features, not just the same features but more powerful. I would think that pros actually have different needs, and that their tools would have different functions to suit.
Ben Thompson wrote an article[1] about this problem in 2015 after Ive just got "promoted".
From the article:
In my estimation, whether Ive intends it or not — and I think he likely does, for what it’s worth — this is the beginning of the end of his time at Apple. To give up “management” in exchange for “thinking freely” is, when it comes to business, akin to shifting from product-focused R&D to exploratory R&D. Steve Jobs was very clear on the consequences of that approach:
"One of the things I’ve always found is that you’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology. You can’t start with the technology and try to figure out where you’re going to try to sell it. And I’ve made this mistake probably more than anybody else in this room. And I got the scar tissue to prove it."
I found this quote/clip in this excellent Gruber piece, Working Backwards to the Technology; the analogy I’m trying to draw is that just as the best way to ensure that great technologies make it to market is to start with the product and work backwards, inventing along the way, the best way to lead an organization’s design direction is to lead the organization, and that means managing. And that is what Ive is giving up.
[1]: "Jony Ive “Promoted”, The Implications of Not Managing, What About Apple?"
His work is great aesthetically but I'm guessing there has been some conflict at Apple for him to leave.
I wouldn't be surprised if all the latest Apple problems originated from engineering constraints imposed by his decisions. From the trashcan Mac Pro to the butterfly keyboard.
This is an interesting hypothesis. It is reminiscent of Steve Jobs' insistence on his carved wood Apple /// design (which the motherboard didn't fit into) or that the original Macintosh must not have a fan (because computers with fans were junk.)
Both designs contributed to reliability problems (multiple boards/ribbon cable/flexing/loose DRAM chips on the Apple ///, failed analog boards on the Mac.)
I haven’t forgiven this guy for the latest “thin at any cost” 4th gen MacBook Pro we’ve had since 2016. He ruined the best programer’s laptop on the market.
Maybe with him and his ego gone, they can fix the next generation and salvage the product line.
I travel frequently for work. I like having a pro machine that is light and thin. I am okay with compromises, but understand that the target audience feels differently. I believe my Macbook Pro goes more places than before due to the compactness. That includes using python, photo, design, and general office work.
Do you actually need the thin part or just the light part? I used to amuse people by demonstrating that my not-at-all-sexy ThinkPad weighed less than the original MacBook Air despite being a lot thicker and more powerful.
The recent iPhones in particular bother me. What’s the point of being mostly thin if the camera lens sticks out and snags on things?
Yes, I find the thinner the device the easier it is to pack. I should say overall volume. If I can travel for 1-2 days with a simple backpack, that is best case scenario. I keep trying to go 100% iPad Pro but its not quite there yet. I have taken plenty of day trips with just my macbook pro, no case or sleeve.
Few people travel frequently, but I bet as you go higher and higher up the food chain at Apple, you find more and more frequent travelers in the social circles of those Apple employees.
This might explain the apparent overemphasis on thinness.
I don't travel for work very often, but as I work remotely I do work out of coffee shops and libraries fairly frequently in order to get some time outside of the house. I have a 2016 13" mbp and I find that its weight and form factor make me much more likely to go out and work elsewhere on a whim than when I had an older 13".
I find the touch bar worse than useless, and while I like it when it works, I find the reliability of the keyboard extremely frustrating given that the machine cost over two grand. But the weight and form factor are things that I really do like about the machine.
This is an interesting point. There are many CVP-levels who either rarely use their own product or only use parts that might be relevant for marketing demo. The result is that lot of other parts that is actually used by customers goes unimproved for years on. You can tell how good the leader of a product is by exploring its parts outside of marketing demos.
I like the thin and light part, but the keyboard really makes it so that I would rather not do any work on it. I can see people getting used to it, but the tiny click just makes me doubt the reality of my typing. To be fair, it's not that bad, it's just that there are plenty of other choices that don't have the drawback.
Personally, I've settled on the 13" Surface Book as my travel machine. A bit heavier, but plenty of power, great screen, fine battery life, GPU if you really need it, and a keyboard that I don't hate. Now with WSL2 it doesn't have its previous drawbacks as a dev environment either.
I think it’s fine they made it this way but they still should have kept the ACTUAL Pro line - ie a more versatile machine. The new MacBook Pro’s just don’t cut it as much for professional applications as they used to (at least in my field of filmmaking/multimedia)
I like thinness, and agree that small volume is generally important, but for the target audience it seems that Apple made too many compromises for that thinness.
I keep seeing this, and I've got one and disagree.
I quite like the new keyboard feel, I can type damned fast on it. The touchbar implementation in IntelliJ is nice, touch ID is great to login, I travel quite a bit so having something powerful but super light is a huge boon.
It's probably not for everyone, but it felt like an upgrade over the 2015 model I was using before ... and sure, they jumped the gun on USB-C but I've since upgraded to a monitor that has a USB-C input and that's just a single cable to both charge the device and to output video ... which is damn near magic.
YMMV I guess, but I work as a programmer at a company where all the programmers carry these around and spend their whole days in emacs or tmux+vim. There are about a hundred of us in our local office. I haven’t found anyone who doesn’t hate this thing, and it all comes down to that stupid butterfly keyboard. We’re a company of super-efficient touch typists, and the 2015 MacBook pros with their scissor switches are coveted and traded.
Do you really have a lot of programmers typing on a laptop keyboard for much of the day? That would seem really strange to me. No laptop keyboard is good compared to a good mechanical, or really any external keyboard. I have one of these pros and I type on it a fair bit because I commute on the bus and I agree its not the best...but at the office I have proper equipment for doing programming work.
I also have a 2015 MBP at work, though newer hires have the ones with the new keyboard and touch bar, and while I primarily work at my desk with a keyboard plugged in (the basic apple keyboard, no numpad), I certainly go to meetings and work in other rooms that require me to use the onboard keyboard all the time, as do my colleagues.
I'm typing on my 2015 MBP right now! It's not as good as a blue-switch or Alps mechanical keyboard, but it's pretty damn good!
Just looking around though, I can see that the majority of external-keyboard users here in the office are using 2016-and-later 4th gen MBPs. The keyboard is just bad enough to mandate rather than encourage external keyboard use.
They’ve done enormous changes since 7 to improve it. 7 was absurd - buttons looked like simple text everywhere. I always had to toggle on a function where buttons became underlined so I could use the thing. There was huge criticism even in knowledgeable design circles (see Nielsen Norman who do usability studies) that it was really really objectively worst because it was so confusing. It’s a lot better now.
It's slightly better now in terms of usability. Aesthetically it’s as big of a disaster as when it first came out. There’s only so much polishing they could do to a turd.
Can you find a screenshot? When I just search iOS 7 in image search it looks 99% like iOS 12 to me. iOS 6 on the other hand with its drop shadows and reflections has aged super badly.
Thin laptops are so cool from design standpoint. Though I wish they still kept all the necessary ports to support ecosystem outside Apple. Coming to Ive - I appreciated him for the cool Unibody design of MBPs. They beat all other competition - just by looks & sturdiness.
> He ruined the best programer’s laptop on the market.
Do people really think the macbook as a device is great for programming?
Maybe it's just personal preference but I've always hated the keyboard (spacing was bad and lots of more less mainstream keys that are important in programming like the function keys were really small) and how annoyingly large the mouse pad is.
The trackpad is perfect. It's the best feature of the macbook pro, and it's why they don't have or need a touch screen. It works perfectly. If they'd just pair it with a real keyboard...
I just want a thick MacBook Pro again. To my brain, thin = flimsy and cheap. Give me something with some weight to it, and a keyboard that doesn't suck. Heck, just refresh the 2011 design with modern tech and I'll be happy.
(And no more friggin' touchbar that messes up my Vim workflow. please!)
The 2016 4th generation MacBook Pro with its execrable butterfly keyboard is what I’m talking about. Thinness for thinness-sake - forget about typing efficiency, typing correctness, or repetitive stress injuries. Damnable thinness at any cost.
I think that was a joke about the differing opinions on the 2016 MPB. It’s either the best or the worst programmer’s laptop depending on who you ask and how much they like deep key travel.
I'm thinking the third-generation MBP. The last one before the TouchBar. But, honestly, I loved every generation of Appl laptops except for the most recent.
The most important designer of the 21st century so far, he was responsible for the most successful product of all time and a design aesthetic that reshaped the whole industry. I find it hard to judge individual features and products, because who knows how or why specific decisions were made. An amazing legacy, I really look forward to an autobiography, it will probably the closest we will ever get to the Ives/Jobs team.
Personally I've cringed at every design decision he's brought about since iOS 7 and the flat design push. Skeuomorphism was perfect, and virtually every Apple product has been dragged down since then.
Kind of sad that this whole thread is blaming him for any kind of problem somebody has with Apple hardware, I find it hard to believe that Ives oder anybody else took those decisions (USB C, thinness) without a clear sense of strategic direction and a very good business reason.
People are openly wondering if the next MBP will go back to having things like USB-A ports. As if! We've already bought the new dongles, dang it! I'd be surprised if the next round of PC's doesn't follow Apple's lead, just like the phones did when Apple removed the audio port.
Apple used to be known for their amazing designs. That was when Steve was running the company. Since his death Apple has been in a free fall in the design space. Most of the comments here seem to be about their awful hardware design. Yes, the thin macbook is not very usable, and the Homepod which is shaped like an amorphous blob is uglier than any Bose speaker. But what about their software? Their UI design is super unusable too. (See some specific examples here https://uxcritique.tumblr.com/ ) Flat design is a usability disaster; see studies from Nielsen Norman group and others https://www.nngroup.com/articles/flat-design-long-exposure/
I am glad Ive is gone. Maybe Apple can now recover.
That seems pretty hyperbolic, especially considering that Nielsen says flat designs are on the right track. To quote, "Early pseudo-3D GUIs and Steve-Jobs-esque skeuomorphism often produced heavy, clunky interfaces. Scaling back from those excesses is good for usability. But removing visual distinctions to produce fully flat designs with no signifiers can be an equally bad extreme. Flat 2.0 provides an opportunity for compromise — visual simplicity without sacrificing signifiers."
And that Tumblr blog appears equally hyperbolic. There are some clear UI/UX mistakes in there, but the blog is conveniently ignoring how visually noisy those pre-Yosmite GUI elements are in-context by providing oddly cropped screenshots to make a point.
The biggest ding they could come up with against skeuomorphism is "heavy, clunky"?
Skeuomorphic UIs maybe "heavy" and "clunky", but they were also beautiful, whimsical, and fun! They brought me joy each time I use them. Flat design, in contrast, is soulless and depressing.
God I miss the Steve Jobs era! Apple could've been the beacon of light amongst darkness, like it used to be. But his death, and the subsequent betrayal of his trust by Jony Ive, condemned the entire world to soulless and depressing UIs. And there's no end in sight.
EVERYTHING beautiful is skeuomorphic. The page turn in iBooks, page curl in maps, cover flow, the shred animation in older versions of Passbook, the date picker in iOS 6, rotating settings gear (when updating iOS 6), the Time Machine interface in older versions of OS X, photo borders and shadows in older versions of iWorks documents, etc.
This is not surprising, because our sense of beauty comes from the physical world.
So what is the problem with skeuomorphism?
Tech enthusiasts would like their phones to look like something from the future, not something from the past. But ordinary everyday people prefer for it to look like things they are already familiar with, or can relate to.
Tech enthusiasts worry that the skeuomorphism was getting totally out of hand, particularly where the UI metaphor started limiting functionality (e.g. an address database that's limited to what a Rolodex can do, rather than exploiting what is possible with a computer). But this is not really true. For example, iBooks has instant search, something only possible with a computer.
Some people point out that many skeuomorphic elements reference things that a large part of Apple's audience hasn't used in a long time, if ever. True, but here's the thing: It doesn't matter whether the user has ever seen a reel-to-reel tape. What matters is whether the visuals depict a physical object that the user can model in his mind. If it is too abstract (that's the opposite of physical) then non-tech-enthusiast users will find it hard to intuit.
Some people say skeuomorphism looks tacky. This is partly true. Skeuomorphism is hard to do. When done poorly it does look tacky. But when done well it looks very beautiful.
By removing all skeuomorphism Apple threw the baby out with the bathwater.
He might be gone, but, after 30 years with Apple, helping the company rake in billions and billions of dollars in sales, he is set for life and can pretty much do whatever he wants. His next venture might impact you down the line.
Just like evolution requires selection to work, good design requires an good filter. I think Jobs was the filter that made Jony Ive good. Without filter Ive appears to be just another unbridled ego not quite able to retain focus on what is important.
I hope this means Apple will hire designers more respectful of utility for the MBP and iMac lines and start catering to professionals. And then Ive can focus on making insanely expensive to manufacture halo products with CNC’ed cheese graters.
Aside from the iPod, I've never liked any Apple product. They feel constraining, less practical, less compatible, less comfortable, more expensive.
The value of Apple products is mostly based on marketing. Apple sells products by appealing to people's insecurities. Apple products appeal to status-focused people who want to see themselves as cool and sophisticated to the point that they are willing to overlook the terrible UX.
The mouse is so flat, it makes your hand sore. The keys are so low and sensitive that you keep hitting the wrong keys and they easily break. The navigation for most of their UI makes no sense. If you open the laptop while it's sitting on your laps, it will pinch you when you open it. Having to use Command+C to copy stuff by pushing with your thumb is awkward even after years of use. Siri will keep popping up when your finger accidentally touches some random key. Switching between multiple desktops/windows is a pain (e.g. even compared to Ubuntu). Finder is shockingly bad; it's a struggle to navigate; merely copying the current directory path is infeasible... The list of UX problems goes on and on; I'm not even a UX designer but I can see all these problems.
Jony Ive certainly took Apple to a new style era. I wonder who will be the next one to do that and to me this is exciting. It means we will "maybe" a new style from Apple. I owned most of the Apple products designed by Jony and pre-Jony era. Can't be more excited with this. Also what he will do outside Apple, it triggers my curiosity what he will be involved, I bet appliances.
What's always struck me about Apple, is that despite their espoused "form follows function/Rams philosophy" - it's clearly not their pattern.
They normally seem to start with a great idea (iMacs, ipods, iphones, whatever) - and then add really great incremental additions (mag-safe, 'retina displays', thumb-scanners etc) - and then completely lose sight of what they were originally trying do do as they iterate further.
The air being thin was impressive, and ushered in everybody else pulling their finger out.
However removal of headphone jacks, connectors, to achieve this was nothing anybody asked for.
Not just one the small stuff either - thermal problems on the g4 cube, trash-can, imac pro.
The new Pro though looks awesome. Arguments over pricing are separate - but first form-is-function device I've seen from them in an age.
I'd like to think Jony hates it, and has stomped off in a huff (or having finally convinced the company to ship it, and point them in the right direction, he's happy to walk away from his baby).
Inevitably most every creative person crave independence regardless level. So he pulled a kanye and started his own Donda. Now awaiting LoveForm x Mercedes, LoveFrom x Piguet, LoveFrom x Nike, LoveFrom x Apple luxury goods collabs.
I'm not sure why you're being downvoted, this is an interesting idea. I'd love to see Jony Ive's design language make it into other products like shoes or car interiors.
A few days ago, Nick Law - current Chief Creative Officer of the Publicis Groupe - announced that he will be leaving to join Apple for a "once in a lifetime opportunity." Maybe he'll replace Jony Ive?!
Seems like good news to me for both Apple and Ive. I don't think any of the Apple design complaints posted elsewhere in the thread will be addressed, but I hope a new design voice will emerge for the next generation of Apple products.
And Ive seems to have been anxious to expand his work surface for quite some time, especially as seen via Apple Watch. It will be interesting to see what he does for other products in other spaces. I hope green field suits him well.
Since the early 2000s Apple's feature removals have been good--except for the escape key/touchbar fiasco.
I've given it long enough and unlike the headphone jack which was painful but managable, the MBP with touchbar needs a re-do. Physical buttons for escape key and volume/brightness was a bridge too far.
Hopefully that can now happen with someone else in charge.
I suspect he had a hand in several recent Apple "successes" like extra thin keyboards that break easily, $999 monitor stands and not to forget, the cables that come apart easily.
While his work was definitely important at Apple, I think he might have lost the needed balance when SJ left
I think this may well be true. I've argued for years that what Steve Jobs was exceptionally good at was acting as a kind of "product editor": he could look at a program or a device and very quickly pinpoint problems. He wasn't perfect at this -- it's easy to point out big flubs and minor misfeatures -- but he was clearly better at it than most people at most companies, and sure seems to be better at than anyone left at Apple.
(More than one long-time Apple employee has told me that they think Scott Forstall was nearly as good at this as Jobs was, and that it's quite possible some of Apple's more egregious form-over-function blunders in the last five or six years would have been avoided if Forstall was still on board. Forstall was admittedly the champion of skueomorphism, but I'd accept the silly linen backgrounds if it meant better keyswitches.)
I wouldn't put cables on him, but he did have a big hand in the 2013 Mac Pro, which was possibly the worst thought-out Apple product of the last decade.
He did push boundaries, but sometimes boundaries pushed back.
While I get the appeal of the Retina Macbook Pros and forward, my love affair with the Mac laptop ended with the discontinuation of the 15" unibody Macbook Pros.
Those unibody laptops represented just about everything I wanted in a laptop.
A powerful laptop with a quad i7 with a bunch of useful ports (including ethernet) and the ability swap out the RAM and storage easily.
Before I ever got a mac (or cared about these sorts of things), I saw the Jony Ive exhibit at the design museum - left quite an impression on my family and me - we thought of computers as some kind of calculator++ but this felt like something out of a very upscale music studio.
It's good that it's happened - will raise wave of criticism Apple deserves.
It's good that Apple will remain the main client of Jony Ive - we all make mistakes, but he did a lot for devices design and I'm sure he still can push it forward. Maybe new position will give him more freedom, maybe Apple need more freedom :)
Apple’s problem is that they are looking at their customer base for directions, while ironically every business course uses Apple’s iPhone as THE example for addressing pains from a first principle, evidence based, customer discovery approach. Which is sad because at some point Apple was very inspiring.
The move is great on Ive's side, but on the customer side I thing Apple will start to do the right compromise, and then the wrong ones. Apple should start to promote others designers, this job is like a dream (huge company, almost unlimited budget, and you can price the articles high).
That’s their press release boilerplate. The same paragraph appears at the bottom of every press release, though it gets updated from time to time. They’ve been doing that since at least 2004.
What happened to the Beatles after the death of John Lennon? How did the Doors manage themselves creatively after Jim? It is going to be fascinating to see how Apple manages creativity, collaboration and inspiration hereon.
I've never been impressed by anything that man has done. He just sailed along with the ideas and changes made by Jobs. Ive seems like the typical designer who is unaware of anything hardware related. The trashcan was proof of that. The new cheese grater is probably a royal pain in his rear because it doesn't looks pretty.
Even his voice overs were tacky as hell. Easy to make fun of. Cringeworthy at best.
When Jobs dies Apple's creativity and forward-thinking also died. They started multi-touch, they made touch screens work, they made MacBooks that weren't full of stickers and big humps of plastic, they made smartphones with an OS that actually worked smoothly.
When Jobs died they stopped innovating. Maybe a few remnants of Jobs' ideas were implemented but none of them to the degree of innovativeness and quality during his time.
Jobs would have canned so much crap Apple has released over the years. He would have made certain products so much better by simply spending several billions more on research and development.
Jobs wasn't there to suck up to shareholders. He was not even there for us. I'm pretty sure he was there for himself and his legacy.
Jony Ive was never part of anything impressive. To me, he's just the talking head with a voice who they hopefully took away any control from.
Apple needs to spend some of their countless billions on innovation and setting standards that are 5 years ahead of the competition. Instead, they're twice as expensive with outdated tech. Such a shame.
Another possibility: Apple can’t pay him a big salary without a huge IRS tax.
With a sole company, he’ll be able to invest his earnings into the company as well as deduct several of the expenses. Significantly reducing his tax rate.
What exactly is his job? Is he a designer who says - this is how our product should look like? Or does he actually engineer the product deciding which component should be smaller, etc?
I wonder how this will affect Apple's product lines over the next decade. It seems like Ive had huge influence on most of their products. Who will take his place?
His lieutenants are taking over, per the Apple news release. Alan Dye, for one, has been around for forever. The bigger question I have is if he’s taking (or will take) most of his team with him to his new company (where Apple will be a client).
Maybe we’ll get a MacBook Pro that doesn’t throttle the cpu and has a decent keyboard that doesn’t break after a year because the product designers wanted a super thin computer.
too bad the 'designers' are stuck on static endpoints like appearance. Functional design is ignored. How many gestures am I supposed to remember? iOS13 is crazy with multiple 'spaces'. Why is no one implementing auditory input? I would like to say 'switch to workspace 1' and have it do that, or 'minimize', or 'next tab', etc.
I don't know the details of how this would work, but I can see rationale in general of compartmentalising and furthermore making each compartment self sufficient.
It can easily happen that a department in a company becomes unprofitable or complacent in the absence of direct market forces.
Interesting that this comes at a time when Apple is redefining itself with Privacy, iPadOS and other major efforts. Could this have been a planned announcement? Just wondering the timing and if it means anything..
Geez, from these responses you'd think Jony Ive nearly killed Apple or something. There's a lot of inevitable criticism about Apple, whether it's Macbook Pro and its lack of ports or the iPhone and it's lack of headphone jack. One aspect that I've noticed about this criticism is that it always presumes to be absolutely, undoubtedly correct. That there can't and isn't another perspective. Apple sucks. Clearly. Obviously.
For instance, take the Macbook Pro. There's two ways of viewing it. The first view is that it sucks. There's no USB A ports to plug in flash drives. There's no SD card reader. The lack of function keys is inexcusable, terrible, whatever. The second view is that it's incredible. The laptop is thin and absolutely beautiful. You can palm it in one hand with ease. When you hold it, you feel its lightness and lithe.
The main difference between these points of view is that the first perspective has prerequisites. The people who hold this view are those who use flash drives, or those who need SD card readers, or those who use function keys. Take note, this is far from the general population. I know I don't need a lot of these features on a daily basis and I'm not unusual. On the other hand, the second point of view is one of aesthetics. And as much as some may claim the contrary, we all value aesthetics to a degree. Even if some may vocalize to the contrary, deep down everybody likes pretty, shiny stuff.
And man, Apple (and therefore Ive) makes pretty, shiny stuff like no other. What I respect about Ive is just how relentless he is in his pursuit of beauty. Beauty in aesthetics, but also beauty in sensation. What stuns me is how no other computer company has figured this out. I have a ThinkPad on my desktop and it's just so goddamn ugly. It's made of this cheap plastic that feels light, yet the laptop is heavier than my Macbook Pro. The lid is too heavy, so you have to hold the bottom portion down to open the laptop. There are two unnecessary logos that are too small to be easily read from afar and too ugly to be worthwhile. The laptop just feels bad. Granted, a ThinkPad is a bit of a strawman. Microsoft's own products are probably a better comparison. To an extent, they're quite nice, pretty beautiful even. Yet they still don't have this relentlessness towards beauty that Apple has. Their products still feel like compromises. And in compromising the products have become more attractive to group A or population B. But they have lost their raw magnetism, the beauty that attracts all. Whether or not this alienation of the small groups is worth the attraction of the larger population is a separate debate, but I respect Apple and Ive's decision to stay on one side.
Speaking of, it's rather fascinating seeing how Apple can make a product feel "new" for so many different iterations. I've thought that a particular iteration was the pinnacle of this product, that nothing else would look cooler or newer or more...well futuristic. Only to be totally proven wrong by the next iteration.
The new headquarters syndrome strikes again. Ive, sidelined, went eyeballs deep into the new headquarters, alongside a decline in physical product quality like the trashcan design miss and keyboard gremlins. Hardware and software teams kept executing but there’s clearly a need for a change in design.
Apples design has been a big yawner for a few years now. Apple watch and MBPr impressed me. Since then? Seems like the design had actively getting worse since 2015 I.E. MBP with touchbar.
The Mac Pro and Apples new display don't look terrible to me but the cheese grater aesthetics aren't amazing either and it's a bit of a rehash of the Powermac G5. There was also that charger they cancelled.
Maybe apple should consider going back to their playful aesthetic? Aluminum and glass is just so... Yawn
I still have my G5 iMac in a corner and its design is just wonderful. The acrylic housing with a white interior holds up just great. It also was possible to open it with a screwdriver or even a penny.
Unpopular view - Jobs kept Ive focussed. Jobs, for all his many faults, had very, very good taste, and also had a user's-eye view of design.
Ives seems to have a designer's eye view on design. Without Jobs to keep him on track he started designing for posterity and for design magazine pictorials - not for customers.
The classic designs - blue iMac, iPod, iPhone, laptops, possibly the initial MacPro sketches - all happened under Jobs when Apple was trying to expand its share of the mass market.
The failures - gradient tint flat UI in iOS 7, butterfly keyboard, disappearing ports, end of MagSafe, HQ glass wall injuries, etc - are all failures of form over function and happened after Jobs died.
There's some overlap - Anglepoise iMac, some of the special editions, puck mouse, that plastic clamshell laptop - but the hit rate under Jobs was far higher.
I agree with this. I think even under Jobs there were plenty of silly things but one of the things he was great at was attracting talent and keeping them busy. So squirt out the odd dud here and there but they're ready and available for coordinated moonshots.
I still consider the iPhone 4S to be "the best iPhone". To me it's a design classic. A triumph of balanced form and function. I loved the weight of it, the hardness of it. The cool feel of it in my hand. Nearly indestructible too, unless it fell face first on a tile floor ... if I could still use it as my phone I would.
EDIT in fact 4S + ios 5 was peak iPhone for me. I think, actually that may have been around the time of Steve's passing … RIP "insanely great".
I replaced two screens, a battery, and two home buttons in 4s’s. So everything you said about how they felt and looked, plus they were pretty easy to repair.
Never found myself getting excited about iPhone hardware, I guess partly because with the giant screens you don't really notice it. I've got an 8 Plus now and find it very difficult to go back to the titchy old devices.
I consider the current iPad Pro lineup to be a step in the right direction. Those sharp, flat edges remind of the iconic iPhone 4 / 5 / SE design language. The recent roundness of iPhones in contrast feels rather conventional and boring.
It’s Steve Jobs’ mausoleum. Probably an important landmark for the next century, even if it’s a distraction now. I’m sure most mausoleums seem pointless when they are built but a good mausoleum can be an important player in future history.
I’ve seen a lot of people seeing it the other way around, that the Pencil was the last product he was involved with because he chose to focus almost entirely on the headquarters.
There have been misses (as well as obvious hits) all through his career. No one recalls the completely round puck mouse? It’s wishful to think of it as a recent decline. I hope there’s a return to being really functional. Thicker, longer lasting, quality over shiny OR bright plastic
My guess is that he is leaving Apple specifically to work on non-computing projects. I think he wants to work on a wide range of design challenges, and he probably has done everything he can with Apple.
Honestly I just doubt Ive would want to "bless" more than one competing product. The way I imagine this is that it frees Jony Ive to expand his unique brand of "perfection" to more product types than Apple sells.
Like, maybe Jony Ive continues to push Apple products and design as the best computers/phones, and then also is now designing appliances and cars and furniture.
Few, if any of Apple's competitors are willing to invest in the high manufacturing costs it takes to produce something like a Macbook Pro, or a 2019 Mac Pro. Apple isn't one to cut corners, unlike a lot of its competitors.
Any Ive design produced by a competitor is unlikely be at the level of anything Apple produces.
That's an interesting thought. I guess that could hold true if he had clauses in his contract or didn't want to affect his bazillion shares. Other than that, I find it interesting because it doesn't seem to affect other designers. Architecture springs to mind.
Nor has anyone else claimed that... it would kind of defeat the purpose of forming a separate company, wouldn't it.
The alternative is that this is actually a PR spin on Ive leaving Apple, and he'll have no influence over Apple products any more. I prefer to think it's not that though, and I'll get an Ive designed iPhone and an Ive design Dell.
It's form over function (see: laptop so thin that the keyboard doesn't work, you can't fit any port, etc. etc.), which is definitely NOT good design.
Both Apple's hardware and software have been nosediving for the past 5 years. So much so that I'm still using a 2015 MacBook Pro, and only because of macOS because Microsoft Surface Book looks about 1000 times better than anything Apple's ever made—and it has a detachable touchscreen with pen.
I hope this is good news for Apple to get better at design again.
Hopefully this lets Apple move back to making great devices that look great, instead of devices with seriously compromised performance in exchange for being very slightly more thin.
I don't wish him bad but I am really hoping I will finally be able to upgrade my MacBook pro with a model that has a good keyboard and some extra ports.
What if St(eve) Jobs picked Mr. [E|I]ve just because that's the name needed to hand out apples to people, especially the bitten ones? In other words: is his design really that important?
When you give a lot of power to someone with a lot of talent, great things can happen. The downside is that nobody’s perfect (even talented people) so a person with a lot of power can make a wrong decision and that may be all it takes for the decision to be final.
In that type of structure, preventing wrong decisions comes down to things like the personality traits, wisdom, etc. of the people with all the power. In other words, is he or she the type of person that can be convinced NOT to do something that they would otherwise decide to do?
I can only observe what has come out of Apple in recent years. I immediately saw things I disliked in their software when Jony Ive was also put in charge of software (to this day, much of iOS-7-style apps seem form-over-function to me and I want more gradients, damn-it). And there were also some massive hardware failures, most of all keyboards, screens and Touch Bars. If Jony made most of these calls and just couldn’t be convinced otherwise, I’m glad he’s gone and look forward to a happy medium of “pretty nice but usable” hardware and software.
I hope there's a chance to rectify that now - though I fear it won't happen until someone more visionary and less 'operations-focused' takes the helm of the company. Steve Blank did this excellent analysis and comparison between Balmer and Cook [0] - I hope there's a Satya Nadella in Apple's future too.
[0] https://steveblank.com/2016/10/24/why-tim-cook-is-steve-ball...