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Review: Touch Bar MacBook Pros give an expensive glimpse at the Mac’s future

arstechnica.com

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Re: Review: Touch Bar MacBook Pros give an expensive glimpse at the Mac’s future

#41

Post by dpark »

rplst8 wrote: post #29
cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #23

People bitch about dongles but if you think about it, who would make this progress if Apple doesn't? Apple is probably the only consumer tech hardware company out there that can do this. I almost think it's their responsibility to push the boundary. People make fun of the term "Courage" and I thought that was funny at first too. But the more I think about it the more I get what he's trying to say. Right now NO ONE ot…

There was plenty of progress in the laptop market before Apple became the power-player that it is today. Did Apple play a part? Yes. Did many of the other companies that have since gone out of business, merged, or still exist today? Yes. Personally, I don't think touch interfaces are progress - for laptops (or desktops). There are many reasons this is true, but the biggest one for me is that your finger obscures thin…

> There are many reasons this is true, but the biggest one for me is that your finger obscures things on the display when you use it, and there is often very poor or no tactile feedback.

This is a poor argument against touch interfaces on laptops/desktops. This argument applies 100% to every touch interface, and yet we use touch interfaces for phones, and tablets, and modern point-of-sale systems, and the decent car navigation systems, etc, etc.

There are compelling arguments against touchscreens on laptops and desktops, but this doesn't seem to be one.

Re: Review: Touch Bar MacBook Pros give an expensive glimpse at the Mac’s future

#42

Post by rch »

threeseed wrote: post #21
rch wrote: post #19

> I use 13-inch laptops almost exclusively these days Stopped reading the review at this point.

Why ? Most office workers for example only untether their laptops when going to meetings. They are every bit as "power user" as those who use a 15 inch laptop.

Interesting. I guess my workflow and concerns are a little different since I often work without benefit of an attached monitor, and my meetings start by logging into whatever computer is in the conference room. If I'm at my desk, I'm working on hardware that's well beyond what I'd expect from any laptop.

The 'thinner, lighter' perspective just doesn't fit well with my particular requirements.

Re: Review: Touch Bar MacBook Pros give an expensive glimpse at the Mac’s future

#44

Post by little_data »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #23

People bitch about dongles but if you think about it, who would make this progress if Apple doesn't? Apple is probably the only consumer tech hardware company out there that can do this. I almost think it's their responsibility to push the boundary. People make fun of the term "Courage" and I thought that was funny at first too. But the more I think about it the more I get what he's trying to say. Right now NO ONE ot…

I think replacement of magsafe with usb-c is a step in the right direction. Hopefully one day products will all have the same ports...unless there's a cooler faster usb-d that has even more function. Maybe one day there will be no ports at all.

Re: Review: Touch Bar MacBook Pros give an expensive glimpse at the Mac’s future

#45

Post by cletus »

jacquesc wrote: post #25
cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #23

People bitch about dongles but if you think about it, who would make this progress if Apple doesn't? Apple is probably the only consumer tech hardware company out there that can do this. I almost think it's their responsibility to push the boundary. People make fun of the term "Courage" and I thought that was funny at first too. But the more I think about it the more I get what he's trying to say. Right now NO ONE ot…

PC Laptop world is actually really competitive. Check out Razer, Alienware, Yoga line, and Microsoft Surface. They're innovating like crazy. Touch screens, OLED displays, external GPUs, different form factors, VR capable performance, etc. And many of those laptops integrated Thunderbolt 3 a while ago. Regrettably, Apple has us all locked into their ecosystem via software so it feels like they are the only ones innova…

See I don't see this as "innovating like crazy". I see it as "adding bullet-list features like crazy", which isn't quite the same thing.

This is always where Apple has excelled eg not adding touch screens to laptops cos it's ergonomically terrible (as Steve Jobs IMHO rightly said).

Apple has also historically taken technologies that have been in the market for awhile and made them not suck. Wireless is a prime example. Anyone else remember the days where you had to setup a wifi connection by specifying encryption type and trying to figure out if you were WEP, WPA1, WPA2 or WPA2-Enterprise? Apple came long and simply let you enter a password. OSX will figure out the rest.

The problem with the new Macbooks (IMHO) is that it represents a change in philosophy. As one review said "USB-C is the future but we're living unfortunately still living in the present" (paraphrased from The Verge IIRC).

How much would it have hurt to have 2 A and 2 C ports?

This rush to market has also led to some compatibility issues between TB3 devices.

A comment I read online (on HN IIRC) went something like "we've moved from a world where if the cable fits, it works to where the cable fits and nothing works". It's a salient point: the cost of a universal connector is putting us in cable hell.

PCs have long been a case of marketing pinheads building incoherent bullet lists (ie throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks). You're seeing negative reaction because people expect more from Apple.

Re: Review: Touch Bar MacBook Pros give an expensive glimpse at the Mac’s future

#46

Post by merb »

Razengan wrote: post #27
cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #23

People bitch about dongles but if you think about it, who would make this progress if Apple doesn't? Apple is probably the only consumer tech hardware company out there that can do this. I almost think it's their responsibility to push the boundary. People make fun of the term "Courage" and I thought that was funny at first too. But the more I think about it the more I get what he's trying to say. Right now NO ONE ot…

It's more baffling when "pros" who claim to have been loyal to Apple for decades but aghast at getting only USB-C, forgetting that Apple have done this before, way back in 1998: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy-free_PC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac#Influence And again with the removal of the CD drives and Ethernet ports. Does anybody really miss any of those things? I'm sure the loss of RS-232 ports and flop…

I still have a RS-232 to USB cable for MAC which I regulary use with minicom for Cisco/HP network devices.

Re: Review: Touch Bar MacBook Pros give an expensive glimpse at the Mac’s future

#47

Post by loco5niner »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #23

People bitch about dongles but if you think about it, who would make this progress if Apple doesn't? Apple is probably the only consumer tech hardware company out there that can do this. I almost think it's their responsibility to push the boundary. People make fun of the term "Courage" and I thought that was funny at first too. But the more I think about it the more I get what he's trying to say. Right now NO ONE ot…

> And pros don't complain about their tools.

Why wouldn't they complain? Because it's unprofessional? Nonsense. If a tool isn't up to it's designed task (especially if it used to be),complaining is certainly in order.

Re: Review: Touch Bar MacBook Pros give an expensive glimpse at the Mac’s future

#48

Post by Eric_WVGG »

threeseed wrote: post #9
headcanon wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple's definitely playing the long game here. When the retinas came out, the absence of an ethernet port was a bit inconvenient for me, but now I don't miss it at all. It's possible that in a few years, when this model matures and goes down in price, the touch bar gets more wide support, and everything uses USB-C, then it will make a lot more sense to get one.

Two predictions from me. (1) They sell out and it is the most popular MBP model to date, (2) They don't reduce the price in the future. Apple is awfully good at knowing just when to extract that little bit more from their customers. And I suspect that similar to the USB-C MacBook the concern over ports will just be from a vocal but tiny minority.

I have to disagree on that. Unlike the more vertically oriented iOS devices with their A series processors, Mac pricing has always been highly volatile, and new form factors always start at high prices which quickly degrade as Apple perfects the manufacturing processes. Macbook Airs, for example, started out as premium-priced devices, before settling into the entry-level.

I can't find hard numbers for MBPs, but here's a list of prices over years for Mac Pros; from a consumer perspective, the changes are essentially random.

https://marco.org/2013/12/22/mac-pro-pricing-over-time

Re: Review: Touch Bar MacBook Pros give an expensive glimpse at the Mac’s future

#49

Post by merb »

simonsarris wrote: post #26
davidf18 wrote: post #18

Many of us just want the 15" display preferring longer battery life and smaller size/weight to using a discrete GPU. I am at a university and the 15" rMBPs are popular with students as well as researchers. I currently have the 2015 rMBP 15". Thus, it is disappointing that there is not replacement for the version that uses only the integrated graphics. Also, the Intel 530 graphics of the 2016 rMBP 15" appears to be lo…

> I've looked online and it appears that the 530 is about 20% slower than the 2015 rMBP 15" iGPU. This is probably due to the increased screen resolution. If you make the resolutions of both models the same I suspect it will be comparable or faster in benchmarks. (2015 MBP default resolution of 2880×1800 vs new, 3360×2100) Something similar happened with iPads came out with retina displays. Pushing lots of pixels con…

a little bit akward that they raised the resolution. 2880x1800 was just fine, having 3360x2100 also means that you again needs to tweak everything if you might use linux.

Re: Review: Touch Bar MacBook Pros give an expensive glimpse at the Mac’s future

#50

Post by lightbyte »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #39
gokhan wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>...who would make this progress... Are you talking about loosing ports? A lot of people think it's not progress but something limiting their options. > I'm not buying a device whose primary purpose is to stick in my USB cable. People don't stick cables to laptops just for the sake of sticking it, no? People work with lots of devices with different interfaces. People travel to different offices and need to "stick" a…

Please google why Apple got rid of the ports. They didn't do it to make you suffer.

They did it because the lightning port is proprietary and digital. You need to pay them to license it, and they can put DRM on it when they eventually choose to. That's main reason that they will never admit.
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