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Apple Updates Air, Pro Laptops, Kills Off the MacBook

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Re: Apple Updates Air, Pro Laptops, Kills Off the MacBook

#41

Why does choosing an Apple product always require a degree in Apple marketing and design? I generally like their products but you need to do so much research about everything from the weird ass product names (does Air even mean anything anymore?), to where exactly in the product cycle each product is. Am I about to buy something that will be upgraded in a week?

I think you are exaggerating how confusing the apple product stack is. I'm no apple fan and I know roughly what to expect from each model. the air is the low end model (for apple at least); you get this if you want the cheapest possible apple laptop. if you want to spend more money, you pick between the ultraportable macbook or a more powerful macbook pro. I couldn't tell you the difference between all the iphones an…

> the air is the low end model (for apple at least); you get this if you want the cheapest possible apple laptop. if you want to spend more money, you pick between the ultraportable macbook or a more powerful macbook pro.

That's how it was before this announcement. Now the MacBook is gone, leaving the updated MacBook Air as the most portable option. This makes a lot more sense, since the "Air" name was meant to denote portability, and the original Air was the most portable option when it was introduced.

Re: Apple Updates Air, Pro Laptops, Kills Off the MacBook

#42
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current Air might as well be fanless. The fan is nowhere near the heatsink on the CPU, once it finally kicks in it only pushes the air through the case, its impact on the CPU temperatures is minimal.

"It has a fan, but the fan is useless" is worse than merely having a useful fan :/.

Also worse than no fan, since you could fill that space with battery if there wasn't a fan there.

Re: Apple Updates Air, Pro Laptops, Kills Off the MacBook

#43
post #2

That's Courage. For real this time, one of the first things Steve Jobs did when he came back to Apple was that he slashed the product line and killed off a ton of things so that the company could focus on what truly mattered; building great computing devices. I am positively encouraged that Apple has grown to the point where they took feedback critically and have returned to a more Jobs-ian way of operating. As they…

I wish they would keep Macbook, Macbook Pro, Mac, Mac Pro, iMac, iMac Pro and so on. Pro is for Professionals (beefest CPUs, ECC memory, workstation-grade GPU, abundance of ports, big battery), ordinary model for ordinary people (desktop-grade hardware, design, etc).

Re: Apple Updates Air, Pro Laptops, Kills Off the MacBook

#44
post #2

That's Courage. For real this time, one of the first things Steve Jobs did when he came back to Apple was that he slashed the product line and killed off a ton of things so that the company could focus on what truly mattered; building great computing devices. I am positively encouraged that Apple has grown to the point where they took feedback critically and have returned to a more Jobs-ian way of operating. As they…

Not sure if the whole post or only part is /s, but IMO they need to have the courage to drop the Touch Bar. Everything else I can live with, but now there’s literally no MacBook Pro I will buy. I have the 2016 Function Key model, and maybe my next upgrade will be to a 2015 Pro... or to a non-Apple laptop (sigh).

I love my touchbar :)

Re: Apple Updates Air, Pro Laptops, Kills Off the MacBook

#45

Macbook Pro "improvements" over the last 3-7 years: * No more matte display * RAM soldered to the board * SSD soldered in * remove all ports except USB-C * make keyboard worse * remove function keys, replace with touch surface that's redundant at best But it's very thin! And even thinner was the recent Macbook, and if the law of "diminishing returns" matters as little as the usual defenses of all the above tradeoffs…

I like my 2013 MBP because the newer thin laptops I just feel like I'm going to break them.

Re: Apple Updates Air, Pro Laptops, Kills Off the MacBook

#46

Why does choosing an Apple product always require a degree in Apple marketing and design? I generally like their products but you need to do so much research about everything from the weird ass product names (does Air even mean anything anymore?), to where exactly in the product cycle each product is. Am I about to buy something that will be upgraded in a week?

I have a Mac that I use daily and I have no idea what model it is or what the specs are. I'm also a technology professional.

Re: Apple Updates Air, Pro Laptops, Kills Off the MacBook

#47
post #2

That's Courage. For real this time, one of the first things Steve Jobs did when he came back to Apple was that he slashed the product line and killed off a ton of things so that the company could focus on what truly mattered; building great computing devices. I am positively encouraged that Apple has grown to the point where they took feedback critically and have returned to a more Jobs-ian way of operating. As they…

Not sure if the whole post or only part is /s, but IMO they need to have the courage to drop the Touch Bar. Everything else I can live with, but now there’s literally no MacBook Pro I will buy. I have the 2016 Function Key model, and maybe my next upgrade will be to a 2015 Pro... or to a non-Apple laptop (sigh).

I like the touch bar. Sure it's a few tweaks to get it how I want but I like it.

Re: Apple Updates Air, Pro Laptops, Kills Off the MacBook

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if the whole post or only part is /s, but IMO they need to have the courage to drop the Touch Bar. Everything else I can live with, but now there’s literally no MacBook Pro I will buy. I have the 2016 Function Key model, and maybe my next upgrade will be to a 2015 Pro... or to a non-Apple laptop (sigh).

I'm certain people who are OK with the touch bar don't care about it as much as the people who hate it, but I for one prefer that they are iteratively innovating on the keyboard for macs. I'd rather they do that than make a thick brick of a laptop with a row of mostly useless function keys that a vocal minority has been harping for.

my 2015 Pro is so much better than mycompany 2017 Pro w/ touchbar

like people are saying, most people just don't care about the touchbar. It does get annoying at times (as a vim user). Why WHY do they hide the esc key and have it take two inputs to increase the volume/brightness by more than 1 tick (sliding is terrible).

Other than that, I totally agree, the real focus should be the keyboard. Because it's shit. Here aresome of the awesome problems I go through on a daily basis at work.

- space bar double spaces all the time. Turned off key repeat and also whatever other suggestions I could find on Stack

- backspace deletes too many characters

- keys double type or are just not responsive (space, left shift, fucking / for some reason)

yeah, real fun using it especially while I'm on call right now and working on prod servers!! WORK ON THE KEYBOARD APPLE

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