<i>Why can’t you plug the Lightning headphones that come in the iPhone box into the new Mac? Why doesn’t the iPhone come with the right cable for the new MacBook Pro? Why doesn’t Apple make a screen that properly works with its own devices? Why did Apple highlight how great the Touch Bar is for Messaging, but didn’t even port most of the new iMessage features to macOS properly? Do I have to carry two pairs of headphones now? How do I charge my Lightning cable mouse? Why remove the HDMI port, a standard that’s still incredibly popular for plugging into TVs? Why remove the SD card, a popular slot for… creatives using cameras?</i><p>Yikes. I mean... yikes. I hope Apple has some good answers to most of those questions.
I'll give Apple a hint how to solve this conundrum.<p>a) bring back that key row, people prefer physical keys over touch-strips and -pads and -screens for a reason - you can use them without taking your eyes off the screen<p>b) for those applications where you'd benefit from a visual representation of whatever data you're manipulating the keystrip is rather limited in space, but fortunately nearly all laptops already include a touch-sensitive area under the keyboard...<p>c) ...so just put an OLED-display under the touchpad? Have it run iOS for ease of development, not that developing for iOS is easy but there are loads and loads of developers who already know the platform. Add some haptic feedback to make it usable eyes-off and for those who have bad eyesight and you've got your next 'amazing' gadget.<p>As an added bonus it should be possible to use any iOS device as a 'remote' for applications which utilize the touchpad-with-pictures. Call it DisplayPad and you're done for the next show.<p>The same could be done by Google (Android on ChromeOS or whatever comes after), by Microsoft, by... anyone, really.
A user on reddit put it like this<p>>Apple used to be focused on making their devices better, now they're just focused on making them even thinner.<p>Think that is really accurate.
Really hits the nail on the head. This product is just confusing. It's not as if there aren't good things about it, but there are so many weird confusing decisions that it's like death by a thousand cuts.<p>It's baffling just to contemplate the number of new cables, dongles, and adapters I'd need to buy. I'd be shocked if it was less than $150 worth of <i>things that add no new value</i>.<p>I had planned to buy a new MBP this year. Based on this update I'll be waiting to see what they come up with next year.
Earlier post with over 280 comments:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12817332" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12817332</a>
In The Hard Thing About Hard Things Ben Horowitz says there is two types of really successfull people in the business word: Chaotic visionaries and orderly executioners, called type 1 and type 2.<p>I think Apple is a perfect example for this, with Jobs having been the visionary and Cook the guy who implements these visions.<p>Horowitz stated that a company works only well with the visionary at the top. We can see how true this as Cook just is not creative. I am sure he works really hard and is really smart but he should have never gotten to where he is now.
At first I thought he would only be a interim solution to manage Apple while they search for another creative genius but that seems not to be the case.
>The MacBook Air is dead, which is great news<p>I'm not sure why that is - partly because I've got one and like it. Also I guess now the Air 11" is gone we're supposed to but the 12" Macbook but it doesn't review as well - on the most obvious Amazon reviews the 11" has 81% 5* reviews and the new Macbook had 59%. It seems a shame that thin with few ports and shiny seems to be prioritized over user satisfaction.
I honestly don't see how all this whining is justified, except for the fact that you need dongles to hook up your shiny new iPhone and EarPods to your MacBook.<p>• People wanted Skylake, they got Skylake.<p>• They got faster GPU and I/O and great battery life. The numbers on these are impressive, especially the I/O.<p>• They got 4 ports of the fastest and most versatile interfaces for external devices ever. The removal of all other ports is really no worse than when the VERY FIRST iMAC went USB-only back in 1998! [1][2] We all see how the rest of the industry followed, as it will again when everything becomes USB-C.<p>• The Touch Bar is actually a cool new input device that brings context-sensitive multitouch to macOS without bastardizing the traditional desktop UI as Windows does. You wanted innovation, you got it. What do people expect to happen to laptops at this point anyway?? I don't see any good alternative ideas being offered.<p>• Lastly, and I'm amazed at how this is being overlooked in every discussion: The move to 30-BIT-PER-CHANNEL SCREENS! I have an iPad Pro and the difference that a wide color display brings has to be seen in person to be appreciated. Accurate color representation in consumer devices is a field which has languished <i>for over 20 years.</i> I believe mad props are due Apple for pushing everyone ahead, and up until now I don't think there were any good laptops for actually creating and previewing P3 content, without connecting them to expensive external screens.<p>----<p>Now the bad things.<p>I only recently purchased an iPhone 7 and a 9.7" iPad Pro. I love them to bits, especially their wide color cameras and screens, but I won't be able to connect them to an already-expensive new MBP, or use the new Lightning EarPods, without spending even more money on dongles and carrying around extra stuff with me everywhere.<p>Given the prices, I really think Apple should have softened this by at least bundling Lightning-to-USB-C with the new MacBooks. <i>WHY</i> fight within your own ecosystem?<p>The naming is also a disaster. I don't really mind them calling the 9.7" iPad "Pro" (it's an amazing device) but putting out a "MacBook Pro" without a Touch Bar really muddies the waters and only creates confusion. They should've just called it a 13" MacBook, and given it a choice of more colors.<p>These are the areas where they are justifiably deserving of ire, but on the whole I think all this relentless negativity is a bit excessive and feels like the work of competitor-hired PR firms, but I hope it pushes Apple to address the actual issues.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac#History" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac#History</a><p>[2] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy-free_PC" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy-free_PC</a>
The new MacBook pros remind me of Walter Isaacsons bibliography of Steve Jobs. The first thing Jobs did when returning to Apple was cut all the products down to theee core products. In 2016, it seems to be going the other direction again.