IMO the new machines aren't bad machines and have better-than-MacBook keyboards and a great big trackpad along with that OLED Touch Bar, but not really compelling either, and stuck on Skylake (because of Intel) and at a high price. And some are short on ports.
They're fine machines overall but given the high price and pro-dongle approach for a last gen CPU, people are bound to be disappointed.
I'm not completely surprised though. Often in the first gen of a new Apple design, some things just need to be fixed. For this round I think what needs to be fixed is price and Skylake, and of course USB-C / Thunderbolt product availability. A lot of that isn't under Apple's control but nonetheless I suspect gen 2 will see happier customers.
What's wrong with Skylake? There are no Kaby Lake processors at the 28 W TDP level. Plus Kaby Lake is pretty much identical to skylake.
As mentioned, I'm likely getting the 12" MacBook when it gets updated. Overall it's a way nicer machine. However, it does have limitations and it costs more.
Just from a video standpoint, no HW decode of VP9, only partial support of HEVC decode. This is not an issue for the discrete GPU models. I would honestly tell anyone asking to pass on the 13" and cheap 15".
Also power improvements.
Speedstep v2 yes, but at the same process and architecture, it'll amount to a few percentage points of a difference.
But it's a moot point, Intel has no relevant Kaby Lake processors to sell.
And all 15" MBP have discrete GPU now
There is a $1999 15" model, without touchbar and intel graphics. Actually, I am a little confused, I could have sworn that model didn't exist yesterday. Could be just the terrible way they layout the page for the 15" model on the store. You need to scroll down to see the cheap model, probably just didn't notice it.
That $1399 is the XPS 13 with the 1080p screen. It goes up to $1699 for the QHD+ display. Still $200 difference to go for the MBP, although you get a stronger processor (intel HD 540 graphics).
It's a smaller difference in the US.
I think your points are almost all true, but there's an effective $300-$500 price increase across the entire new line-up. Especially at the entry level SKU, even "most people" will start to care about what they're buying even if they aren't looking at specs/features like we are.That seems to be generally true of Apple products in general as of late. Forum goers who've never touched hardware condemn it; reviewers who've tried it, as well as actual users, are generally positive.
My theory is that enthusiasts love to nitpick hardware, because they're the sort who care about getting everything just right... but they're not most people. While forums obsess over factors like bezel ratios, removable batteries and legacy ports, most everyone else is too busy enjoying the devices to notice. This isn't to excuse risky decisions like no headphone jack on the iPhone 7 or the absence of an SD card reader on the new MacBook Pro, but they'er not the life-and-death issues that they're made out to be here.
Yeah we already think this is pretty crazy, but go look at Apple's new prices for the UK. Sure Brexit is not the company's fault, but their sales in a reliable market are going to tank.In Canada, the MBA13 8GB/256GB is 1449$.
The cheapest new MBPr13, also 8GB/256GB is 1899$.
Pretty big difference. The MBA13 is what most people buy, and what they'll continue buying because the new MBP is too expensive. So Apple's bestseller will continue to be an old laptop with huge bezels and crappy screen.
Meanwhile, a Dell XPS 13 Kaby Lake 8GB/256GB goes for 1399$ currently.
Am sort of at a loss, lots of criticism in the forum of the updates, but the reviews are generally positive.
A 1080p IPS that's already better than the MBA 1440x900 TN piece of crap with 1" bezels from 2002.
And the Touch model 3200x1800 IPS just destroys the MBA.
Of course. They want more review units in the future. Also it's easy to say it's great if it's not coming from your wallet. The machines are good but the pricing is out there. I think the negativity is when you make comparisons to what your dollar with fetch you in the Windows world. Carbon fiber construction, OLED displays etc.
Also that statement about how these are a fashion statement comes from what I've seen in the headphone world where literally $5-25 in parts can sell for $1000 and up because of the external design or look of the product or the branding. I think the pricing here takes a lot into consideration the premium positioning of MacBooks more than the technical abilities of the product. It just seems that a lot of your money goes towards that look and branding over what's inside.
From what I've seen, reviewers aren't as easily impressed as you might think. Companies generally only cut off review units if you're frothing at the mouth about a product and you don't have a good reason for it. Saying the battery life is bad or the absence of a given port is a problem? That's fine. Throw a fit saying company X makes overpriced crap, and nothing significant to validate your points? Of course you won't get a review unit again... you'd be a bad reviewer in that case.
I'd also point to the flip side of this coin: people who do buy products will sometimes get irrationally defensive, because it's their money at stake. A lot of the antagonism you see between fans online comes from people trying to justify their purchases. They'll paint Apple as the devil because they bought a Windows PC; they'll slam the Xbox One because they bought a PS4 and can't afford two consoles. Internet arguments would be very different if it was easy to own devices from more than one platform.
Yeah, too expensive, limited on ports. I was hoping for an eventual 2 USB-C MacBook. I wasn't expecting it would be a MacBook Pro.New MacBook Pro 13" with Fn keys: This is where the wheels fall off for me. There's no way Apple should have labelled this as a MacBook Pro. Not only does it lack the Touch Bar feature, but Apple has butchered this SKU by removing the two right TB3 ports. This can cause potentially huge problems when it comes to docking the device or using it with any accessories/peripherals. Like the Touch Bar model, dual core Skylake is pretty anaemic. It wouldn't be so bad if they managed to push battery life to 12 hours or so. The pricing is also outrageous for such a gimped model.
I have no use beyond 16 GB, but limiting it to 16 GB seems strange to me for a Pro machine. That said, I don't think I know anyone that uses 32 GB RAM on a Mac of any sort. Yes they exist, but there sure aren't many of them.But there's another head scratching aspect of the Touch Bar Pros, and that is the fact that professionals often use their MacBook Pro closed and hooked up to an external monitor and dock. This pretty much renders the Touch Bar and larger track pad useless (the latter not being too much of an issue as a lot of people have separate Magic Trackpads). So, for those users, there really isn't much incentive to upgrade to these new Pros: the 13" isn't that much faster than the previous model (no quad core), the 13" has no AMD GPU, a lot of ports have been cut out, the 15" has Polaris 11 which isn't that much faster than the 370MX, and all models are limited to a maximum of 16GB of RAM! A lot of this isn't Apple's fault (Intel has had endless issues with their 14nm process and Polaris 10 is too power hungry), but they could have used DDR4L for 32GB of RAM or shoved in Polaris 11 into the 13" Pro. Further, a lot of these problems are exacerbated because they didn't bother to update the Mac Pro or Mac Mini.
What chipset does the MacBook use? Cuz if Intel 100 series, it'd likely get that again in 2017 with Kaby Lake, and that doesn't include Thunderbolt 3 support. To get Thunderbolt 3, it'd require a separate chip, and I'm not convinced Apple will do that for the MacBook. If they do add Thunderbolt 3, it will be when it's for free and without wasting previous motherboard space.MacBook Air: I'm very glad to see the 11.6" model cut, and the 13.3" model being pushed further toward obsolescence. Actually, I'm surprised that Apple didn't retire both models as the displays are just plain awful. They just aren't defensible in the year 2016. Furthermore, from a marketing point of view, getting rid of both the MBAs would have cleaned up the line up a little bit, and pushed the MacBook as the clear entry level model. Which leads me to my next point...
MacBook 12": I was very surprised that Apple didn't cut the price of the MacBook. The Mac's best years were when Steve Jobs introduced the MacBook (plastic and aluminium unibody), MacBook Pro 13" (unibody), and MacBook Air to the masses at the $999-1200 price range. I was hoping for a Kaby Lake and TB3 refresh, but with the Skylake refresh only being 6 months old, I suppose that was overly optimistic. But hopefully next year Apple introduces a Kaby Lake refresh, retires the 13" MBA, and cuts the price on the 12" MacBook. This device really has the potential to be a huge seller for Apple.
A lot of this isn't Apple's fault (Intel has had endless issues with their 14nm process and Polaris 10 is too power hungry), but they could have used DDR4L for 32GB of RAM or shoved in Polaris 11 into the 13" Pro.
A 1080p IPS that's already better than the MBA 1440x900 TN piece of crap with 1" bezels from 2002.
And the Touch model 3200x1800 IPS just destroys the MBA.
That is truly a machine which needs to be seen in person to understand. 13.3" screen in what a competitor's 11.6" case would be. That small bezel look impresses far more in person than in pics.
The comparison is to the MBP.
I bought an XPS 13 for someone. It would have been a MBP had Apple released something over the summer. It's a good machine, reasonable value too. Really compact.
But I wouldn't want it for myself. The trackpad for instance: it's small because the screen is 16:9, and there's no such thing as two-finger right click.
IMO, Apple has had the best trackpads for the past 10 years. I don't know why the PC makers have such a hard time making something as good... esp. since the earlier ones for Apple were Synaptics to begin with, just like the rest of the industry.
I don't like the IBM/Lenovo eraserhead at all.
I have no use beyond 16 GB, but limiting it to 16 GB seems strange to me for a Pro machine. That said, I don't think I know anyone that uses 32 GB RAM on a Mac of any sort. Yes they exist, but there sure aren't many of them.
I'm just trying to decide whether or not to upgrade my 7.5 year old MacBook Pro to 8 GB RAM. I have light usage, but these days with memory hogs like Chrome, even just surfing can slow down on a 4 GB machine.Was going to sell my laptop but decided against it when there was no option for 32GB of RAM and Nvidia graphics. Next time hopefully.
I don't like touchscreen laptops much either, and the Touch Bar is a good compromise, with a location that actually makes sense - with easy reach. I often felt the function bar was underused, but what I envisioned were third party desktop keyboards with programmable keys. Instead what Apple did was to have virtual keys. In retrospect that makes a lot of sense, since again those are not primary typing keys. That said, I agree with the comment that the lack of haptic feedback is a downer.Ars has some excellent info in their review:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/1...-pro-and-how-apples-t1-bridges-arm-and-intel/
Lots of good reading on Daring Fireball too:
The touch bar is essentially an iOS device
Why Apple's touch bar was the right thing to do <- excellent perspective
Also, is anyone else concerned that the touch chip is named T1?
Keep in mind Lenovo is doing a pre Black Friday sale and that Thinkpad X1 yoga with OLED is going for cheap. Call in and get about an extra $100 off. I simply asked the rep if he can work with me on price. That's it. It has a fingerprint reader but it's for logging on not buying stuff. The built in pen also has 2048 levels of pressure.
Also that WiGig dock is available for it. So much more technologically advanced. MacBooks are more fashion advanced. Like beats headphones.