The new Mac Pro: The audacity to say “Yes” in a design culture of “No”

&quot;&quot;&quot;While minimalism is one aspect of one view of good design, it’s often overused, underconsidered, and misunderstood, resulting in products with surface-level appeal that don’t actually work very well because they were optimized for visual design and minimalism rather than overall real-world usefulness.&quot;&quot;&quot;<p>-=-=<p>this is a crisp characterization of the problem of silicon valley product design today. almost every redesign of major products brings a simpler, more beautiful design which ends up being less useful.<p>i&#x27;m strongly in the boat that the purpose of design is to solve people&#x27;s problems in ways that are hard to think of but easy to appreciate. in the way that a good symphony is hard to write but easy to recognize.<p>-=-=<p>in the 90s the design of mass products like AOL got too complex and it created an opportunity for people to enter the market with simpler designs <i>which were more usable</i>. but now we&#x27;ve gone too far. the designs are simpler than ever, but no longer in the service of greater usability. it&#x27;s time to make tech product design less minimal, less simple, but more useful.<p>-=-=<p>the culture of designers is a core part of the cause of over pivot. it&#x27;s elegant to list out a series of design principles (interface guidelines) and then reject every problem that can&#x27;t be solved within those principles. it&#x27;s elegant, but does not necessarily produce better product designs.

I bet Apple with have the &#x27;courage&#x27; to use proprietary connectors inside the case to limit user upgrade options.

Usually, when the &quot;what we&#x27;d like to see in {iOS,macOS}++&quot; articles come out, it&#x27;s just a couple weeks before Apple announces the new features and I shake my head because it is already way too late for the feedback to reach Apple.<p>In this case, if you believe the rumors that development on the new Mac Pro is still very early, it actually seems like articles like this and [1] might do some good.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;carpeaqua.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;04&#x2F;09&#x2F;a-software-developers-mac-pro&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;carpeaqua.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;04&#x2F;09&#x2F;a-software-developers-mac-p...</a>

&gt; Mac gamers need a high-speed&#x2F;low-core-count CPU, the best single gaming GPU possible, and VR hardware support.<p>So honestly, are there any real &quot;Mac Gamers&quot;? At this point I think everyone knows to just boot into Windows to play games... the hardware isn&#x27;t amazing for gaming, but games run a lot better on Windows than they do on MacOS on Apple hardware. Feels like &quot;Mac Gamers&quot; debate was settled years and years ago... if you&#x27;re serious about gaming, even like casually-serious, you wouldn&#x27;t even consider running MacOS.<p>It&#x27;s sad... I remember playing Unreal back in the day on a Mac (one of the colorful case Macs) in college. The game ran so much better than it did on a PC... steam looked like steam, lighting looked better... everything was clearly better on a Mac than any PC I had seen &#x2F; had access to. But when the latest generation of MacPro was new (ha, 2000 years ago at this point)... I fired up a game on it (running MacOS) to see how it compared... and I got better gaming performance on a $400 off-the-shelf-PC with a $250 graphics card added.<p>What I would LOVE to see is just a Mac like the slightly older MacPro -- aluminum tower case. With lots of standard expansion slots so we could expand as needed (specifically video cards). I don&#x27;t think games will ever be optimized for Macs the way they are for PCs, but I&#x27;d be happy just switching into Windows on the Apple hardware when I played games.<p>---<p>Side note... anyone else play Escape Velocity? I got to thinking about &quot;good Mac games&quot; and that one stands out. Also most of the Marathon series (spiritual precursor to Halo). Hellcats stood out too for being advanced for the time... most everything else came out on PC first though I think.<p>* EV Nova | Ambrosia Software, Inc. || <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ambrosiasw.com&#x2F;games&#x2F;evn&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ambrosiasw.com&#x2F;games&#x2F;evn&#x2F;</a><p>* Marathon (video game) - Wikipedia || <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Marathon_(video_game)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Marathon_(video_game)</a><p>* Hellcats over the Pacific - Wikipedia || <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Hellcats_over_the_Pacific" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Hellcats_over_the_Pacific</a>

<i>&gt; Many also use the optical audio inputs and outputs, and would appreciate the return of the line-in jack.</i><p>Maybe some people want that, but real audio pros have dedicated hardware audio interfaces that connect over USB&#x2F;FireWire&#x2F;Thunderbolt&#x2F;PCIe.

The only way you&#x27;re going to make a useful pro machine is to have one with standard parts that can be upgraded easily, something Apple absolutely refuses to do and has refused to do in any of its products for many years. That&#x27;s why the last decent pro machine is 7 years old and why I&#x27;m not holding my breath for the next one. It&#x27;s guaranteed to be proprietary like <i>all</i> the rest of their hardware these days. Making a pro machine is not that hard. It&#x27;s by far the simplest type of machine because by definition it should be able to handle <i>anything</i>. Hobbyists and corporations alike have been building them for decades. The fact that Apple can&#x27;t build the simplest type of machine says a lot about them as a company in 2017. None of it good.<p>EDIT: Discussions around minimalism and design at this point are beyond irrelevant when Apple can&#x27;t actually build a computer that serves pro users&#x27; needs. Those factors only come to play when you actually have the ability to build a proper product. Apple does not have that right now.

Not directly related to the Mac Pro, but my 2014 MacBook Pro has annoyed me only having 2 USB ports.<p>It feels like I need to plug in more than two devices every day. So I end up carrying around a USB hub. Which is just annoying.<p>What is the benefit of having those sides of the computer be empty?

Let&#x27;s hope apple wakes up about the MacBook Pro too. The new model is not Pro at all and the touch bar is a nuisance.

They just added a mostly superfluous &quot;tab bar&quot; that most of the users have just no use for... how&#x27;s that for that Apple&#x27;s <i>brilliant</i> minimalism the author of the article preaches about?