Now that Apple has alternative hardware what they do next is very important - will they replace the lemons or spend the next decade claiming they're not responsible in court? Will the four year keyboard program be extended or are the 2016 MBPs almost junk already?

I'd concluded that Apple didn't really think much of laptops anymore, and had simply moved on to caring more about other form factors: it seemed a logical conclusion if one assumed that people at Apple were in fact competent.

This shows some real care regarding laptops as a form factor and puts them back in the running for a lot of buyers, including me. But there's still one major issue that I don't see people talking much about -- the way that Apple's decisions regarding storage (namely soldering it to the board AND making it so that there's no way to access it in the event of a logic board failure) increases consumer risk as well as decreasing consumer choice:

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-removes-the-Customer-Dat...

It increases risk of data loss. That's a choice that impacts the day-to-day experience much less than the keyboard, which explains why the keyboard has gotten much more attention, and it really is nice that a company arguably built on attention to experience returned to that aspect of it. But this kind of choice makes a huge difference in a moment of failure, and it's at least equally user-hostile, especially in a product bearing the name "pro" where data recovery can be a matter of business continuity.

I suppose that one can argue a responsible professional will be using network and external backups (and of course all responsible professionals worth considering or selling anything to will do this, right?), and so this isn't necessary, and Apple's thing (wise or unwise) is that they frequently reconsider and eliminate things that aren't crucial. But redundancy in some areas is wise, and I can't see what they think eliminating both removability AND emergency direct access when it come to storage actually buys them. Even if one assumes it's a lock-in action for service, it makes the actual service more difficult and costly.

I'm liking the keyboard correction. I just bought a 2014 MBP to replace an older failing MBP, so I'm not in the market for something else for a year or two, but when that comes up, I'll be seriously looking at the 16" as an option. And this will be what I'm thinking about.

The "butterfly mechanism" keyboards are awful, unreliable, and get worse with time, so I'm very glad to see them go. Likewise, the return of the physical Escape key is very welcome.

But honestly, the design of the arrow keys has never bothered me in the slightest. If anything, the present configuration is slightly better because it's aesthetically cleaner and gives you a larger surface to hit the left and right arrows.

Hopefully this trend continues and they can iterate on this model even further.

However, there is always the option of an external keyboard. But then you end up carrying even more peripherals that you end up with a really thin light laptop and a second bag with all the adapters to enable to you to use the laptop in the way you want. For some it does feel like you got sold an electric sports car, yet end up having to tow a caravan about to carry all the spare batteries and other accessories you had in your previous car.

But certainly an opportunity to embrace modular design and allow the end user to customize in a way that has benefits and would win over pundits.

EDIT [spelling and fat finger W's]

Apple still hasn't walked back on mandatory notarization on Catalina.

In January 2020, they're removing the option to run software that isn't locally compiled or notarized[1].

[1] https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=09032019a

Seems that if you scream hard enough AAPL listens:

> What Apple emphasized is simply that they listened to the complaints from professional MacBook users. They recognized how important the Escape key is to developers — they even mentioned Vim by name during a developer tool demo.

* https://daringfireball.net/2019/11/16-inch_macbook_pro_first...

They have been forced to add it to just about every model to keep people from downgrading to avoid the thing. Which ok saved me money, but I would expect this to get the point across.

What makes you think they stopped? You know it takes a couple years to design and ship hardware at this level (as well as to design the production lines to be able to build a few million more copies), yes?

It’s not like a web app where they can change, test, PR, and deploy in a few days or weeks or months. There is a lot of preproduction work that goes into building the kind of objects Apple is now famous for and are almost taken for granted.

Edit: I may be overly snarky, but I find it hard to imagine that recent mbp models were not influenced by the social clout that the iphone brought to the apple brand.

Only when flattening the design for the 2016 year did they reduce it to 76Wh.

"Pro" has basically been sapped of all meaning as a term.

Will there be some "pro" users (really: power users, people who run stuff that maxes out this new model's capabilities)? Yep. Will they be a minority, while most users will buy it because of its luxury status, keeping up with the times, or ecosystem familiarity/lock-in? Also yep.

I thought the previous macbook pro felt great for a week out of the box. Then switches started breaking and keycaps started coming off within the first three months.

In fact, the issue seemed to be that it feeling good out of the box was the only testing Apple did on it.

https://www.amazon.com/Magnetic-Adapter-Connector-Quick-Char...

IMO, those are completely different.

The sscape key provides access to a fundamental concept, "go back, undo, I didn't mean it, no!". This even goes beyond humans. E.g, my dogs have the same concept.

Function keys are abstract in a distended way... they mean, generally, some function specific to a certain context that doesn't fit into the general patterns, but is maybe pretty commonly needed in that context.

IMO, the Touch Bar, with text and graphical cues, is better suited. Of course, various software has been written to the F1-12 abstraction, and physical keys are nicer to type on, so it's not all good. But I think this is a case of one step back, two steps forward.

For me I'd actually pay to have a model without TouchBar (but with TouchID, which actually is really useful).

There is no such thing as a USB-C hub. The protocol doesn't support it. That's one really concrete way that USB-C is inferior. I think I heard rumors that the proposed replacement fixes that, but Thunderbolt 3+USB-C is inferior that way.

It's also easier to snap off. That's two. Yes, it's better in a lot of objective ways, but there are also non-imaginary ways in which it's a pretty substantial compromise.

Maybe we should do a longbet on whether you're willing to talk smack about T3 once T4 hardware comes out. Because I bet you will.

They should at a minumum have included a few choice dongles with the system. (usb-c to usb-a, and maybe usb-c to HDMI)

Additionally, they should have completed the ecosystem too. a mac-to-mac upgrade requires a dizzying variety of dongles, where one firewire cable was all that was required in previous systems.

As Steve Jobs says, you should start from the user experience and work backwards. Dongle hell is not a good user experience, especially when Apple's obsession with slimness is in part due to portability.

But why do I have to be the hostage here? I don't want to wait for "the rest of the market catches up", I want to get my work done, and my work requires plugging in lots of USB-A peripherals. The move to USB-C only was premature and trying to force the market using users as hostages shows incredible hubris.

I'm about 70-30 on it being satire

Music professionals, video professionals, photographic professionals, and plenty of other professionals all have collections of USB peripherals which aren't going to be updated any time soon - either because there are no USB-C replacements, or because a complete replacement program might easily run to four figures, edging up to five for some users, and in extreme cases will be as high as six.

Some of these people tour or travel a lot. Having to rely on dongles - which can be lost, or stolen, or which may stop working for random reasons - is very much not a good idea.

Telling these professionals to "deal with it" is unhelpfully obtuse.

Things do change, but change for the sake of change isn't a good thing.

Meanwhile, I can use all 4 ports to: - Run a display With a dongle

- Charge my laptop Did you need 4 ports to do this? How is this better than a magsafe connector?

- Charge a phone Existing USB ports do this fine, and most charger cables have USB-A on one end. USB-C-USB-C cables are extremely limited in their use and are more expensive.

- Connect a drive Again, no advantage over USB-A

Apple has "solved" non-existent problems and in exchange they've created a whole new slew of problems. Why should I have to replace all my existing cables to work with a computer? It's because Apple is designing for slim cases above all else. (So slim and delicate that resting my hand on the case while typing causes random keypresses).

I broke an early macbook screen by tripping over the charging cable. When they made the switch to magsafe cables it was to explicitly prevent this very common occurrence. They traded trip-proof laptops for the ability to plug your charger into 4 different ports. What possible advantage could that offer?

Other companies have dealt with change better than Apple. For example, I can buy a professional tier laptop from Microsoft or Lenovo with plenty of USB ports, while Apple's reaction to change has been to ignore their professional users' use-cases.

Being able to come to work and plug in a single cord and have it drive my mechanical keyboard, headphone amp, monitor, and power is pretty amazing IMO.

What I didn’t like was that over three or four of the Apple USB-C to hdmi/usb-a/whatever the last one was (thunderbolt?) and one third party adapter I never found one that wasn’t super choppy with my input.

So my Webcam would stutter, and my keyboard would suddenly repeating the same key 12 times (admittedly making for a pretty exciting experience with ViM).

Very frustrating. It may have been my computer. Don’t think I’d heard of others with the same issues in my workplace. But really made working a PITA sometimes for me.

Meanwhile my 2015 MBP did just fine with the same hub through switch setup, so it was most likely the USB C hardware driver in the Apple Laptop.

If you have 1 or 2 USB-C ports odds are you'll need a dongle. Since the only USB-C dongles don't multiply ports, it'll have multiple USB ports. If you had a lot of USB-C ports, you'd likely get adapters and switch to USB-C as you upgraded things. Now, unless you can switch to wireless, you basically have to replace it with a USB device.

Out of curiosity, what PS/2 mouse do you use?

That argument can be used to explain away any problem.

4 usb ports are massively redundant. Even if someone loves usb-C having a usb-A port will add a lot of usability without compromising on anything else.

I tried to plug my firewire into my USB-C port and it didn't work. Help!

I mean, why stop there? Apple could just go to zero ports and force everyone to use Wi-Fi peripherals. They could sell a wi-fi peripheral hub for backwards compatibility. Then they could get rid of the power port and use inductive charging. That would make for an insanely sleek machine, even if it were insanely painful to use.

It was a bad decision 2 years ago when they introduced this generation of Macbook Pros, and it's still a bad decision.

(why a second incompatible magsafe - this is beyond me)

Interesting.

Basically my background is software (like everybody else here), but around 2009 or so that started bleeding into hardware via arduino/hackerspaces.

And then that bled into doing some consulting work on large advertising installations (building motor control software for robots, building interfaces etc. Some of the stuff I've worked on has been for SXSW,comic con, and the super bowl).

I got lucky in meeting some really cool people doing really cool stuff at burning man, and they eventually let me help on some lighting and fire effects control stuff. That group then eventually morphed into a group that is also building things for music festivals, and when custom stuff needed to get built for it, I was somebody who could help, and so I got to.

As far as the travelling stuff: that was something a friend of mine was doing, but when she wasn't able to go on a trip, she connected me with her employer, which then led to more jobs etc.

But yeah, basically show up and be nice to people. Offer to help a lot.

And youtube videos.

I agree that 4K can be considered excessive, but 1080p would be the appropriate resolution in 2019 for a high end machine.

In these situations, a higher resolution camera wouldn't hurt. A better mic is higher priority though, so I'm happy to see that in the specs.

Exactly. I would prefer a 200p camera.

Fair enough. But for some people it might be.

It is much more comfortable to perform video calls via laptop than via phone because a phone typically needs to be held in position manually. Therefore, I believe that most people would, if given a choice, prefer to use a laptop for video calls.

Also, people might actually want their video to have high resolution. For whatever reason. Even to show their facial flaws. Not providing them an option to do that, despite the fact that the required hardware is cheap and available, is an unnecessary restriction.

Finally, if a high resolution camera was included and someone would not want to use that high resolution, they can simply switch the camera to a lower resolution mode.

There are plenty of premium and luxury laptops at that price point that have HD cameras, and they don't prevent you from running unauthorized software[1].

Even the Surface has better cameras.

[1] https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=09032019a

In fact, if a phone really wanted to take good pictures (and not just market 'megapixels') they'd have focus, light balance, shutter speed controls. About all they can do is take still portraits.

Imagine buying the top of the class Mercedes S-Class only to find out that the steering wheel is far worse than the ones that Mercedes uses in other models - you'd somehow feel cheated.

Because the marginal cost of a better camera doesn't yield a sufficient increase in marginal revenue.

(I apologize for this sounding snarky - I am genuinely curious)

[1] https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iPhone+11+Pro+Max+Teardown/1... BBC’s

Facetime on iPhones is a lot better than Facetime on Macbooks

I do agree that they have slipped in this area, though I think it's an inevitable consequence of being a trillion dollar company. Apple was only able to become a trillion dollar company because their marketing and operations were easier to manage, and companies in a market-leading position typically grow until the point their size overwhelms their ability to steer the ship.

Maybe the experience in USA with Apple Stores is different, but when forced to buy a Mac by work recently I had to deal with some ridiculous wait times just for asking for 32G ram.

One way. The other is, if your computer breaks you either upgrade or spend a lot to have it repaired by Apple. There's no downside in using non soldered down ram and storage, it's just the nth lock in strategy.

Quality problems? You mean like the over-engineered keyboard they've had issues with for three years?

Some decades longer design patterns are battle tested/aren't broken, yet Apple continually tries to break them - thinness to the extent that they now solder memory/disk to the board, putting out a keyboard design that isn't sufficiently tested, and all sorts of Catalina issues that people have documented online.

Really annoying they continue to do this, especially given they charge excessive markup on memory upgrades (2x32GB DDR4 SODIMMS average $250-300, Apple charges you $800 for 64GB of memory).

So yeah, Apple is not even on my radar if they don't offer a 14" form factor. I also don't use other Apple products, so there's little reason for me to compromise.

bonus: add the magsafe port back to achieve god tier

\s

Sure, I know plenty of people who've had the same Lenovo/HP/whatever laptop for 5, even 10 years but every single time I personally used their laptop I was embarassed at how bad the experience was. Sluggish, ugly, with fans spinning like they needed to put out a fire.

After almost 5 years the 13" 2015 Macbook Pro I'm currently writing on hasn't lost one beat. It's as snappy and as usable as the very first day. I haven't formatted once, I've easily kept it up to date, I only replaced the battery because it was lasting 4 hours instead of the original 6-7. I can still edit videos, run VMs, play not-too-demanding games, do Photoshop, like the first day I bought it. And everything makes me think I'll be able to do so for the next 2-3 years, at least.

I've travelled with it to 10 countries and dropped it 5 or 6 times. There are multiple dents on the corners but, damn, this thing is tough!

The thing is a rock. The keyboard still looks (and works) like new with no visible wear on the trackpad. There are a few scuffs and tiny dents on the outer case but nothing noticeable from any distance. One of the rubber feet on the base has fallen off in the last few months but that doesn't bother me too much.

One problem that has developed is that the glass at the top of the bezel has what looks like air behind it. This is cosmetic except that it interferes with the camera, which now is permanently blurry. I replaced the original battery ($49) recently - it lasted almost 6 years and still held 60 minutes of charge.

I figure I can get at least another 12 months out of this thing since it runs Catalina just fine. My next laptop will also be a Mac.

I'm at a different job now and have a 2018 MBP (usb-c only, 15" base model), less than a year old, that is used on a daily car commute (much gentler than the old bike commute) and the keyboard is giving me lots of grief. I will happily turn this one back into the company.

* Used it under direct sunlight (and I live in Singapore so it's both hot and humid) multiple times

* Took it out to sea on boats multiple times for testing robotics

* Dropped it on concrete accidentally

* Left it in dusty labs etc

It's display finally died after being splashed with rain water but the machine itself still boots to this day. Apple made them really well but I can't say the same about the newer models.

This replaced a 2010 MBP which caught fire after I spilled a drink next to it. The case sucks spilled liquids up like a straw!

I use a T470 thinkpad now. It cost less than a replacement screen for a 15” rMBP did! I have literally beaten the shit out of it for months and it just shrugs it off. I also had a T440 which was abused heavily and shrugged it off.

I had an X220 I poured a coffee in and nothing interesting happened too.

Stay with the thinkpads if you’re an idiot like me.

You're joking. You realize this forum is filled with programmers and other digital creative professionals, right?

When they started removing ports I use I switched to a Thinkpad T-series. It's been the perfect laptop for my use.

Apple probably has better data on how it gets used than I do, but that's almost exclusively what I'd use it for if I had it.

A quick search reveals the Razer costs around $500 USD more in NZ than in the US (converted prices to USD). The MBP 16" is $400 more. Wouldn't part of the reason it costs more be because of this legislation?

I think my next Mac will be whatever laptop still has all of its keys and I’ll just keep building machines to run linux with a one-step Kubernetes solution for development clusters. Many people don’t want to assemble machines and that makes a beefy laptop running Minikube the easiest solution to dodge cloud costs outside of production.

Ethernet

(micro-)SD card

Keyboard

Mouse

Displays

Flashing microcontrollers (technically could be done over BT but it is a pain in the ass)

Gamepad

I've bought dongles/docking stations for all of these devices but it is a huge hassle when traveling, which is a use case a laptop should be able to excel at. Adding just a single USB-A port and HDMI would be a complete gamechanger for me. Apple wouldn't be able to sell as many of their $70 dongles though.

Ethernet, 1-2 USB Type A, SD Card, 3.5mm audio, DisplayPort, (while charging too).

As we can see, Apple's 'Pro' products simply do not work me.

That is just what is plugged in to my computer right now, (all USB type A)

How about iPhones, as a great example? :P

TV got much much cheaper in the last 10 years too and that's not because manufacturer cut their margins, mass production + mature tech + price/perf going down = price stagnates or drops.

I think what the touchbar brings is always active tutorial/reminder as to what's possible with the touchbar. Due to it's very nature you don't have to be taught what's on there, you can see, you then don't have to remember/rely on building up muscle memory.

I imagine it sucks for accessibility. I'd still want one before my faculties faulter, I imagine I'd get some use out of it with my IDE.

If the external keyboard had a TouchBar and I would start incorporating it into my workflow I can see it's use-fullness.

Maybe I've just had a limited, poor experience with it, but from the apps I've used these functions are only available on the touchbar when the app is focused... which has the controls anyway.

I was using Skype for Business and it had the audio controls in the touch bar, and also on the screen about 1.5" inches above the touchbar. I wanted to mute and unmute when I had the app in the background, but I couldn't. Useless.

Most apps don't use it very well though - I actually quite dislike Safari's overcomplicated tab buttons - I can't make out anything so it's basically useless, and I use cmd left arrow to go back not the touchbar button.

I would love to have a hardware escape key. But despite the shitty butterfly keyboard issues I'm currently going through I want to keep this Macbook as long as possible.

Well, these have physical buttons pre-touchbar, so the touchbar is definitely slower since it requires two clicks (one to summon the slider) and you have to look at it instead of just feeling it.

But in all fairness, the F-keys on a mac never really worked like function keys, they've always been more of a row of OSX-keys. I can understand why Apple felt a need to innovate that space, but I am not impressed.

It's a solution looking for a problem. It's garbage.

i never type with capslock on, and find using it for escape helps my vim workflow

The touchbar is a flawed design concept imho. The entire reason I touch type is so that I don't have to look down from my screen. My eyes remain on the screen for 99% of the time I am working. It's jarring and discontinuous for me to have to look down to use the touchbar. That's why I personally never liked it. I think the tactile feedback of a real physical button is essential.

I think Apple realizes this already to some extent because they went and added a physical escape key.

Wait, that might not work for me -- I use emacs in a terminal.

about butterfly switches... garbage

I have heard the XPS 15s tend to have more "issues."

I don't know about the battery but the hinge was certainly a problem with the line in general, since it was a flimsy plastic thing unable to hold the weight of the 4k screen it came with...I'd be a bit surprised if that hasn't been fixed in the around 2.5 years since I bought it though.

I saw companies repeating the same mistake times and times again. I'd call it a "Mercedes disease." Mercedes 600 series used to be a supercar of the time, but the moment Mercedes management saw that Americans are OK with it being a regular consumer level car, they made Mercedes the reputation it has in US now "expensive and disposable."

S classe is still a luxury car, but under the skin there is nothing really special about it, and it could've easily sold for half the price if not for Mercedes logo on it. Most of clientele for S600 are the people who are just fine with paying extra $50k for the badge, and there are a whack a lot of them in the US.

I'd say the overoptimisation and product management are the issue. Quoting myself:

> See, a first reduction from ~64Wh to 62Wh might've not been even visible and been a valid "product management" decision, and not impacted the sales.

> A second cut from 62 to 56 might've only deterred few power users, and could also be validated from the same standpoint, if evaluated without knowledge of the context.

> But the third cut from 56 to 52 will blow up, despite the rest of the product getting the biggest year on year improvement ever.

A decision to cut the battery a tiny little bit to save some pennies might've made sense business-wise every single time, but it did cut deep into the positive image of the product.

Lack of touchbar is not one of those good reasons.

>Phyisical keys are great but 12 buttons labelled F1 to F12 with different functions depending on the program also isn't he pinnacle of UX

x1000. Function keys have almost always been useless to me. Once in a while I will remember what one is mapped to and use it, but for the most part they go unused.

Pretty much everyone I know and every workplace I've seen has proper monitors and keyboards for everyone (developers included). A laptop has terrible ergonomics. That makes the touchbar a bit pointless, except when working on a train or plane, or at a meeting or conference.

It's just a showstopper for a lot of us that it's another screen you have to look at. I don't want my eyes to leave the main screen. It's like if they tried to turn the trackpad into a screen: no matter how much functionality it might have, it's still somewhere I don't want to have to look when I'm using a computer.

I also was amazed at how unused it was. You probably named the only apps that use the touchbar because nothing on her computer did. And if they did, it was just cloned UI of UI that the main screen already had. I think the only useful usecase I've noticed is that the touchbar will show the url of the current video when you fullscreen it, if I want to damn it with faint praise.

Thing is, Mac OS isn't as great as it used to be either. They used to be brilliant developer laptops, but Apple seems to want everybody in their walled garden.

My summarized conclusion is that: OS X isn't that great. It's not "bad," don't get me wrong, but it's nothing marvelous. Perhaps at one point in time there was some advantage over a Windows or linux environment but at this point in time, unless you're tied to some package tied to a specific environment for some reason, just work with the environment you're most comfortable with. I don't know how much time I've had to waste adjusting to the OS X environment (especially muscle memory keyboard shortcuts I'm accustomed to), finding replacement niche applications that were environment specific, figuring out how to do basic tasks that are simply different.

On that note, avoid committing to a specific environment unless your application really needs to squeeze out every cycle of performance. It's 2019 and we have portable options now for most application demands.

There were other things (good-enough port selection complementing the high battery life and good trackpad to mean I could just grab my laptop and go for nearly any situation, without taking anything else, being high among them) but they're gone now. It's basically the software and the trackpad keeping me around. I'd rather use a "worse" Macbook specs-wise than a Win10 or Linux laptop that's much better on paper, because the experience will still suck far less. Design, "thinness", trendiness, all that, don't give a shit. Give me a brick of a Thinkpad with an Apple trackpad, official macOS support, and a 20% lower price than a MBP at same specs, and I'll take that option in a heartbeat.

would you agree with this change to your description?:

"Yes, you could get [better] hardware somewhere else..."

If it's just about running MacOS, they absolutely apply.

There are nothing else making the macbook lines worth it. If Linux with hardware manufacturer come up with a standard for greater touchbar control, the mac will be out of circulation in no time.