451–460 of 586 posts
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> Apple has consistently shown that it cares more about form over function. No one needs their laptops to be any thinner than they already are Well, this depends. Here's how a user put it: "I have to admit being a bit baffled by how nobody else seems to have done what Apple did with the Macbook Air - even several years after the first release, the other notebook vendors continue to push those ugly and clunky things.…
There are different use cases for different laptops. I can certainly see the advantage of a laptop that's as light as possible, but that's never going to be a 15" laptop. On the other hand, some people want lots of power or a massive screen, and then making it as thin as possible just makes no sense.
It used to be the Pro (PowerBook) was targeted towards Pro users, and the regular MacBook (iBook) was targeted towards consumers. This also nicely aligned with price segmentation, but that was secondary. The focus was on pro vs consumer. Then Apple added the Air, where the focus, as the name implies, was on thinness.
At some point, however, these categories became less of a distinction between the targeted consumer which happened to align with price segmentation, but instead became all about price segmentation itself. I think that’s where the devices went off the rails. The Pro in MacBook now basically just means this is the most expensive machine in the Apple lineup...
All the lines basically have the same priorities now, with the only difference being the manufacturing budget, which determines what features are available.
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The 2015 MBP is great! I have a spare one stockpiled. I wish they would keep it basically as-is, replace one of the (generally unused) thunderbolt ports with a USB-C port, add their secure enclave T2 security chip, and update the CPU/chipset. Maybe even add FaceID...
All I want is 32G memory. Literally just do that, keep everything else identical and I will spend $3k to buy a new one.
I switched to a Thinkpad after I had the horror of using a new Macbook. Running Ubuntu is lovely, so much so that for a developer there is little reason to be using a Macbook anymore. You can get a lot more bang for the buck using a Thinkpad AND have a functional keyboard. Apple should be very worried. Once they loose the developers, users won't be long to follow.
There are four of us at work that use Linux--the other 30 or so all have MacBooks. There are no converts, either you started a Linux person, or you started a Mac person. My little Linux enclave has some theories about the cognitive effect of all the polish that you find on Apple products, but we can't separate our biasses from good science, especially because there's nobody to ask that knows both worlds. So I have a…
That's a clear over generalization. I started with Mac, used everything Mac for about 15 years (various Macbooks, Mabooks Pro, iMacs and one Mac Pro) and then changed to everything Linux about 5 years ago.
I am a scientific researcher, my main activity in the computer is programming, I didn't miss the Mac at all except for a little tool that I used for my personal life (GarageSale) and that I couldn't get anything similar (it's a tool to create eBay auctions in a much easier and nifty way).
Anyway, there is nothing about the Mac itself I miss.
I'm just waiting for enough people to have this happen to them, complain about it, and it becomes a class action situation .. like so many other failures of Apple quality management in the last decade. The last time this happened, Apple ended up replacing my whole system - because they'd misapplied thermal paste to their CPU's, on top of using poor quality GPU's from Nvidia ..
At some point, this is going to be a problem for Apple. At a Trillion-dollar market cap, I wonder how soon, however ..
Recently my b key started to exhibit the same symptoms on my 2016 model. I avoided having to use the keyboard at all costs because it's a serious impedance to my productivity and it still happened to me. What's most infuriating is the realization that I bought a $3000 laptop with a keyboard that will break sooner or later and there's nothing you can do about it except sell it at a substantial loss. Even if I go throu…
I'm off the Apple train. I honestly don't trust them to make reliable hardware anymore. They've had three years to fix this mess but they have shown zero initiative or intention to do it. Apple has consistently shown that it cares more about form over function. No one needs their laptops to be any thinner than they already are. And no one needs the useless, expensive touchbar.
Apple was an oasis of reliable design because short of Lenovo and Dell other brands were horrible in critical ways(e.g. no decent *nix support, or lack of decent international keyboard), and Thinkpads have a very opinionated design to put it mildly, leaving only Dell for a lot of us.
I kinda hate the current crop of MacBooks, but I am not sure I want a Dell either. For people listening to ATP, I see it as the same issue as John Siracusa and his Oxo cheese grater, there's just no obvious good replacement.
At some point Ive became to have major role in making decisions of what's going in to production. Jobs had serious health issues, couldn't keep his eye on everything and finally he passed away which made Jony the guy who was making decisions pretty much on his own. I bet that trashcan MacPro, butterfly keyboards, "thinness war", sticking for too long to one design etc., those are all his ideas that he pushed trough.
Quite recently Apple realized that leaving everything in Ives hands is not that good idea after all and I have a feeling that redesigned MacPro and decision to ditch butterfly keyboards from newest MBPs was forced on Ive and that's the real reason behind him becoming external contractor for Apple. They couldn't fire him completely but they needed changes and Jony didn't liked restrictions on his design choices so they've split.
As for the future, we already saw that story in the past and as we know history like to repeat itself. In the next 2-3 years Apple products will become more in line of what users wants. They finally started to listen to people and it will result with better products, at least in short term. Times has changed and I hope that history will not repeat itself in the next step when, like in the 90s, Apple will become shadow of it's former self, trying to build products based on financial statistics and polls and not on engineering and design talent of their employees. After all we think we know what we want but in reality there will be products and solutions that we can't imagine right know and no amount of polls will give the answer to a question what's next, what's behind the horizon.
I think this is a clear case of over engineering, not just "poor" engineering.