
MacBook Pro Launch: Perplexing - chmars
https://mondaynote.com/macbook-pro-launch-perplexing-b47003037b2e#.hs0avj7se
======
jld
Apple's support page on USB-C power seems to be a sign that all is not well at
Apple.

> [https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201700](https://support.apple.com/en-
> us/HT201700)
    
    
      You can verify that you're using the correct version of the Apple
      USB-C Charge Cable with your Mac notebook and its USB-C AC Adapter.
    
      The cable's serial number is printed on its external housing, next
      to the words "Designed by Apple in California. Assembled in China."
    
      • If the first three characters of the serial number are C4M or FL4,
        the cable is for use with the Apple 29W USB-C Power Adapter.
      • If the first three characters of the serial number are DLC or CTC,
        the cable is for use with the Apple 61W or 87W USB-C Power Adapter.
      • If the cable says "Designed by Apple in California. Assembled in China"
        but has no serial number, you might be eligible for a replacement USB-C charge cable.
    

For a company whose brand was for quite some time "It just works" to ask you
to read a serial number, printed in gray, in 4 or 6 point font, off a light
gray cable is dumbfounding.

Here's a photo of an Apple USB-C charging cable to illustrate what finding the
serial number looks like.
[http://i.imgur.com/ffVLDYl.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/ffVLDYl.jpg)

The serial number is right below the control key, if you're curious.

~~~
steven777400
What happens if the wrong cable/adapter are combined? I'm just curious as a
non-Apple user. I mix-and-match USB-B chargers and cables between my various
devices all the time, and never experience a problem (except maybe slower than
maximum charging sometimes). I assume the issue here would also simply be sub-
optimal charging; but I have heard that some USB-C situations can actually be
dangerous to the device since more power logic is in the USB cable ends?

~~~
bravo22
cables are rated for different power and that is signalled by specific
resistor values. I'm assuming in this case Apple just cheaped out, to save a
few cents, and didn't make them all rated for 3A. Therefore you'd only get
slow charging as a side-effect.

------
CraigJPerry
My 13" ships back tomorrow. Keyboard befitting of a crappy laptop not a
premium macbook pro, touchbar located where you hardly ever look (your
keyboard), wifi borked on resume from sleep, fit and finish is poor - a
disjoint ridge where the bottom panel and the unibody frame fail to meet
accurately on the bottom rear, performance is below par regardless of what the
reviews + benchmarks claim, intellij is not fast on this laptop.

USB-C wasn't an issue for me personally even though i have tons of electronics
dev boards + associated junk i plug in all the time.

~~~
rhexs
I sent mine back almost entirely because of the keyboard. Shocked that most of
the reviews gave Apple a free pass on that one.

One surprise was how good the speakers were though. Really hard going back to
the tinny garbage on most everything else after hearing those.

~~~
vondur
Perhaps because a keyboard is a personal preference? Most of the reviews have
mentioned the new keyboard as a love it or hate it thing. My wife has the new
13" model, and she loves the keyboard. I'm typing this on a spiffy mechanical
keyboard. I don't think I could get used to one of the new Macbook Pro
keyboards.

~~~
rhexs
Does anyone actually prefer the new style low travel keyboards to the old
ones? I'm guessing an extreme minority of users does. I can see indifference
or thinking the slimmer profile is a good tradeoff, but not objectively liking
the keyboard better. Most of the reviews seem to be an iteration on "well, I
got used to it and it's not that bad!"

Who knows. I'm probably just crazy.

~~~
rayiner
I objectively prefer the new keyboard. I've got a light touch and in my
opinion any travel beyond what you need to be able to tell you've hit the key
is wasted effort.

I've got a laptop keyboard on my desk ([https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-
ThinkPad-Compact-Keyboard-Trac...](https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-ThinkPad-
Compact-Keyboard-TrackPoint/dp/B00F3U4TQS)), and would have one of the new
macbook keyboards if they made a standalone one.

------
dlevine
It's of note that this post was written by Jean-Louis Gassee, former executive
at Apple and creator of BeOS.

~~~
secstate
I actually really appreciate JLG's tone when reporting on Apple. Given his
history with the NeXT-BeOS debacle, I wouldn't expect him to be so charitable.
Of course, time heals all wounds and I get the impression JLG is pretty well
adjusted, but still.

Man, BeOS was awesome.

~~~
ndesaulniers
As someone who knows nothing about BeOS, what was awesome about it?

~~~
ashark
It did scheduling magic to keep the UI responsive and media from skipping even
under (at the time) heavy load. This was on single-core processors in the two
or low three digits of MHz, mind you, with 128MB of RAM if you were _really_
lucky. The OS itself also seemed to be snappier than its competitors.

Windows on the same machine? MP3 playback would stutter when you hit refresh
on a webpage (bearing in mind those were one hell of a lot lighter than the
ones today) or any number of other minor actions. Hourglasses constantly.

Linux? Window-smearing-on-drag as far as the eye can see. Even worse media
performance than Windows(!), though maybe with some ricing/tweaking it was
better.

Macs at the time? Oh god. I don't know how they got a reputation for being
more stable than contemporary Windows machines. Fewer system crashed maybe,
but apps crashed constantly. Multitasking performance mediocre. Disk swap all
over the place.

BeOS? Buttery smooth UI and MP3 playback while running the Teapot 3D demo and
browsing the web, all at the same time. It was _awesome_ , and had the Unixy
bits coupled with a good and consistent UI that we wouldn't see again until
OSX. Faster booting than the competition. Neat extras like a built in web
server (Poorman, IIRC) that could be run with a few clicks, too. I think BeOS
was known for having an unusually pleasant and sane API in addition to
performing so well, though I never wrote any software for it personally.

~~~
hcarvalhoalves
> This was on single-core processors in the two or low three digits of MHz,
> mind you, with 128MB of RAM if you were really lucky.

Actually, BeOS ran at first on proprietary hardware (BeBox), which featured
dual or quad PowerPCs, and it was initially designed to make use of the
multiple processors. Only later it got ported for Intel platform where single-
processor was more common, but it was meant to shine on multi-processor
boards.

~~~
acomjean
I had it running on a powerPC mac clone (Power computing machine) 200 mhz. Ran
great but the lack of software made it hard.

In historical context as Apple's internal OS upgrade program failed, and they
bought Next Computer instead of Be (rumored to be an option). The rest is
history..

"Power Computing, cognizant of (Apple CEO) Amelio’s attitude toward the
clones, attempted to avoid keeping all its eggs in Apple’s basket. It began to
actively support Jean Louis Gassée’s BeOS. Be’s first public demonstrations
were on Power 120’s (upgraded versions of the Power 80), and Power Computing
began selling machines outfitted with BeOS out of the box, thus bypassing
Apple’s 7.25% royalty." from: [http://lowendmac.com/2014/power-computing-
fighting-back-for-...](http://lowendmac.com/2014/power-computing-fighting-
back-for-the-mac-or-stealing-apples-customers/)

------
donmb
Am I the only one here who is happy with the new Macbook? I find the speed
incredible - the keyboard feels much more "natural". The touchbar saves me a
lot of time. Downsides are that it's not supported yet in lot of important
applications I use (Slack, Atom). I'm not bothered at all by the USB-C ports.
USB dongles are on sale for 2€ on Amazon/ebay and work properly. Besides that
I have nearly no more external devices I have to attach (except external HD
sometimes but even those are Wifi connected nowadays). \+ not a real benefit
but the design of the MBP is amazing and a real eye catcher again. For me this
is a shitstorm for nothing.

~~~
iwritestuff
No. I am wondering the exact same thing. The MBP bash on reddit/HN seems like
a cry for easy karma. I love everything about the new MBP and even have good
battery life with it!

------
hackuser
Off the cuff social theory, FWIW (not too much, but interesting to consider
more generally): My guess is that the real issue and discussion is a subtext,
that Apple has lost its cache, and that people are testing and exploring the
shape and boundaries of the new social dynamic/norm around Apple.

How far has their social position slipped? If I say X will I get a strong
response, or is it going too and will it receive a negative response, or does
it go not far enough and will it seem bland and be ignored.

It's like gossip - or it is actually gossip. It's the currency (or securities
market) of social status.

I used to follow a sports team where the head coach and one chief assistant
were beloved. I said that if they don't play well then the other chief
assistant is in trouble, because he had little reputation with the fans and
would be blamed by process of elimination, whether or not it was his fault.
Sure enough, despite undeniable, simple evidence that his area of
responsibility was performing well (points are a very easy metric), he got the
blame and then the shaft.

If Jobs was still around, unconventional decisions would be seen much more
positively; Cook and Apple no longer have that cache and now their position
will be tested until their new social position is established.

~~~
overgard
I can only speak for myself, but I dont really buy it. As early as two years
ago I was super excited to buy the retina iMac, and my perception of the
company then was about the same as it is now. I think this new generation of
products has just had too many issues, and apple gets judged more harshly
because the tight lockdown of their ecosystem makes moving harder. If dell
came out with a bad laptop I can go buy an HP, but if apple comes out with a
bad laptop I have to switch all my software.

~~~
jeffjose
Tight lockdown of their ecosystem should make it easier not harder. A more
open company, such as Microsoft, would have customers that use all sorts of
compatible devices and accessories to worry about. One could argue Apple has
it easy. Most people use their devices in predictable configuration.

~~~
ajmurmann
I think the OP's usage of "harder" was about the consumer situation if the
company screws up and not the challenge for the company.

------
nsxwolf
The intensity 16GB RAM limit complaints really surprised me. I don't remember
such complaints about the 2015 model lacking a 32GB option. We've been stuck
at 16GB on the MacBook Pro for years now.

Did something happen in the last year that made everyone demand 32GB?

~~~
Fnoord
> Did something happen in the last year that made everyone demand 32GB?

Yes, RAM-wise applications become more bloated due to containers, VMs, and the
(ab)use of JS-based applications or 'apps'.

Take into account I am typing this on a MBP from 2010, 6 years old, which
shipped with 4 GB RAM which I was able to upgrade easily to 8 GB RAM, with a
256 GB SSD which I put in myself after updating from a 512 GB 5400 RPM HDD.

By some (certainly not everyone) MBPs are bought to be an investment of
several years, yet MBPs are no longer 'pimpable'. You can't upgrade their
internals anymore. So what happens? People buy them with higher specs than
they need. Which means a bigger or quicker SSD, and bigger or quicker RAM.

Which brings me to the following point: the MBP used to be a relatively bulky
laptop/notebook, but a beast. A compact, less powerful version was the Macbook
Air which as the name suggests was also lighter. At best, it has shifted. At
worst, this is no longer the case. Because the MBP is designed to be light
_itself_.

Finally, the battery. If it is _already_ bad with 5 hours out of the box, this
can be improved perhaps via software. Who knows? That is the risk of buying.
You don't wanna take that risk. A product as expensive as this one needs to
have high uptime out of the box. Plus, the battery will degrade over time as
well, and Apple products haven't been known to have easily replaceable battery
(compare to Dell XPS).

Now, the problem with all of the above points is that they're all made so that
the MBP -supposedly the powerhorse of notebooks/laptops of Apple- is _smaller_
and _weights less_. Whereas they had the Macbook Air line for that purpose
before. It just doesn't make sense from a customer PoV to pay more for less!

You see, those who'd like to buy a device for years to come don't mind the
USB-C debacle that much. Because in x years, it'll be everywhere (lets assume
x=2 for the sake of argument, while the device is being used for 5 years and
even if the device isn't used for 5 years it has resale value!).

~~~
SomeHacker44
I have a 2011 MacBook Pro 15". It has two hard drives in it including a SATA
III SSD, and 16G RAM. It's still running strong.

I can't imagine why Apple has not been able to improve on the computer's
specifications for serious professional engineer use in five years. The CPU
increase and GPU increase is unimpressive. (Why no quad core in 13"?) Retina
is fantastic, but not a substitute for proper amounts of memory. The only
major improvement is the awesome bandwidth of the 1T SSD in the new models.

I use the F-keys extensively in my workflow. I could barely even reliably hit
the ESC key at the Apple Store when testing vi. The keyboard was also
atrocious, but I would probably adjust if it had F-keys.

The bottom line is this is just not a useful laptop for me. Super sad, cause I
would have liked a top-of-the-line computer. I am going to get an Alienware
13R3 or Razer Blade instead. Sorry, Apple, you've taken too long to put out a
reasonable professional laptop.

------
cjslep
I have a unibody aluminum model MacBook (not Pro) from late 2008 that still
chugs along. I had to replace the battery twice in its lifetime via an Apple
support store. I also replaced the harddisk myself to put in a SSD.

It's been incredibly reliable as a consumer laptop (dev work is on a desktop).
I have had zero incentive to upgrade, except the difficulty of finding
chargers whose cables don't fray. This was before the magnetic attachments.

I've finally been entertaining about getting another laptop/tablet for
consumer non-dev use, and none of the options I'm considering are Apple.

~~~
rz2k
Have you tried replacing the batteries yourself? A cheap battery I got off of
eBay for a 2012 model registered over 100% of the stock battery capacity for
at least six months. It looks like they only run $30 for your model.

To make the charging cables more durable you might try liquid electrical
tape[1] which you can find at almost every hardware store. The trick to making
this custom cable boot adhere the best is painting all the way around the
cable and connector back to where you started before it sets. That way the
material bonds to itself rather than only the cord and connector.

[1] -
[http://www.gardnerbender.com/en/ltw-400](http://www.gardnerbender.com/en/ltw-400)

~~~
smitherfield
Not the parent, but personally, when it comes to extremely volatile and
explosive components that go directly on top of my most vital regions, I think
it's best to focus my money-saving efforts elsewhere.

------
vacri
I don't understand why the author thinks that people aren't allowed to
complain about RAM limitations at the launch, and instead expects them to wait
the 2-3 weeks before the items ship _and_ then use certain software on them
long enough for usage patterns to come through. If 16GB ram isn't enough for
you now, it's utter nonsense that "maybe Photoshop will run just fine on 16GB
on the new hardware".

I would also have made a bigger point of Apple not having enough USB dongles
to supply their 'new, modern' laptops. It's a pretty big complaint to level
against the "so what, it's one dongle" apologists, if you can't get one in the
first place.

~~~
rz2k
I am curious about how the morale within the Mac group must be. In an
alternate universe the last iPhone would have ditched Lightning for USB-C, and
Skylake MacBook Pros similar to the ones just released ones would have come
out two or three quarters ago instead.

While it's okay if not everyone at Apple is interested in the MacBook Pros,
the people designing them have to be disheartened by the reactions. Decisions
to put off this release for so long seems like it must have been a strategic
one made outside of the group which probably wanted to ship a Skylake MacBook
Pro a long time ago.

Imagine (over-)simplified analysis that showed customers keeping their
machines for an average of three years, or four product generations that were
each about three quarters long. If Apple changed the time between generations
to six quarters, then they would have retooling costs for only two cohorts of
customers rather than four, and it would also get economies of scale similar
to having twice as many customers buying each release.

Now imagine that suitable Kaby Lake CPUs with Iris graphics turned out to much
further off in the future than originally expected, and Apple ended up
deciding they had to release a Skylake MacBook Pro rather than being able to
skip the microarchitecture.

So they do, but it's later than it might have been, and there end up being
some issues that make it seem like it was designed and released quickly rather
than like it had been refined even more than usual. And, on top of it all, the
difficult, but ultimately beneficial, transition to all USB-C everywhere ends
up being needlessly antagonizing to customers due to a cheap decision not to
toss free legacy adapters and free USB-C/Lighting cables in the box of every
new MacBook Pro.

------
spudlyo
As a somewhat unrelated aside, as a Logic Pro user I thought it was odd to
read Logic described as "memory hungry". For my small projects (16-32 tracks)
logic uses just under 1G. For me it's Logic's CPU hunger that turns my MBP
into a noisy space heater that I'd like to see tamed, although it's actually
somewhat nice when recording in my car in winter.

~~~
smilekzs
The DAW itself is usually highly optimized. What eats the CPU: synths and
effects (because your CPU is not a dedicated DSP). What eats the RAM: Samplers
(by GiBs).

~~~
S_A_P
This- I have tried to strike a balance by using software efx, external dsp
(Apollo 8 duo) and some hardware/ mic'Ed instruments so that I'm "load
balancing" my music making. (Ok I admit it's just gear lust). I have a late
2014 with the 512 ssd and I notice a lot of peaking in hd activity during and
for a few seconds after recording. It's somewhat related to latency but still
more than I expect. Anyone else see this?

~~~
twostoned
As a musician, this post turned me on a bit.

------
nawtacawp
I have been on a MBP since they were introduced. This was the first time I
wanted to upgrade my laptop and switched away from Apple. The lack of ports
coupled with consumer complaints and lack of anything innovative drove me
away. I would have never guessed I would have ever left Mac after so many
years of a good user experience.

~~~
tomatoman
What did you switch to?

~~~
nawtacawp
I switched to a Razer Blade Stealth. I'm not a gamer and I've never used a
Razer product, but I like this laptop. I had to ditch Windows, running Debian.

~~~
pault
Have you been able to get good hardware support? Trackpad, function keys, etc.
Can you sleep and restore?

~~~
kagamine
Not OP, but I fixed sleep and restore on an HP Elitebook yesterday by
installing the Nvidia display driver, the nouveau driver seemed to be what was
stopping it from waking. That has been my experience with every PC with a
dedicated GPU.

~~~
maxsilver
For what it's worth, the Razer Blade Stealth does not have a dedicated GPU,
just a regular integrated Intel HD 620 like many other Kaby Lake ultrabooks.

The Razer Blade (regular, non-Stealth) is the model with the dedicated GPU.

~~~
pault
I've been seriously considering picking up the fully loaded model with the
desktop 1080 GPU, but I'll want to dual-boot windows 10 and some variant of
debian for gaming and to experiment with machine learning, respectively. I'm
afraid I'll end up spending several weeks trying to get everything set up
correctly and then hit some dead end after it's too late to return it. It's
the same price as the new MBP but the specs are crazy[1].

[1][http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-systems/razer-blade-
pro#spec...](http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-systems/razer-blade-pro#specs)

Edit: Looks like there are some resources around the webs:

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:sT9Hs6...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:sT9Hs6laKlwJ:https://xipherzero.com/ubuntu-16-04-razer-
blade-2016/&num=1&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1&vwsrc=0)

[https://insider.razerzone.com/index.php?threads/new-razer-
bl...](https://insider.razerzone.com/index.php?threads/new-razer-blade-
stealth-dual-boot-windows-stock-ubuntu.17534/)

~~~
nawtacawp
I bought mine from the Microsoft store. I've heard Razer's support is not the
best and returning products to them is not the most pleasant experience.

I've found that the Arch Linux Wiki is a pretty good resource for all of the
Razer Blade laptops.

------
cptskippy
The author spends $2000 on a laptop but can't wait 30 days for it to arrive so
he spends $2800 on another laptop and says he'll just give the other one to
his wife when it arrives. He also buys a $600 monitor and it doesn't work
properly and so he returns it an vows to buy the $1000 model when it becomes
available.

I don't know what to make of that exactly.

~~~
holman
He was an early exec at Apple, and he founded Be and BeOS. I think we can
allow him to be a bit out of the ordinary when it comes to his computing. :)

~~~
cptskippy
It doesn't make doubling down on something with in burns you any less strange.

------
chmaynard
> A knowledgeable individual tells me that [the battery problem in the 2016
> 15" MBP] is probably a curable software problem.

I'm experiencing the same battery life problems reported by JLG. Activity
Monitor doesn't report anything unusual, so I suspect the CPU is not the
culprit. When I reported the problem to Apple Support, they asked me to run
sysdiagnose and send them the output.

Apple cranks out a new beta of MacOS 10.12.2 every week or so, and I install
them immediately because of the possibility of a software fix.

I recall that the first Retina MacBook Pro (mid-2012) had some problems too,
so I'm not too surprised about this. I plan to be patient and see how
responsive Apple is to the fast battery drain issue. I'm very happy with the
machine otherwise.

------
resist_futility
Would have loved to get a new MBP but Apple seems content to ignore the reason
people buy their laptops. Now I'm waiting for the new iMacs instead, losing
portability but hopefully getting more for the money.

------
frik
I got a new MacBookPro 13" without the touchbar. It's a good device.

The only strange thing is it has only two USB-C ports and an analog audio
ports. One of the USB-C ports is used for the power adapter, so one port left.

------
Sideloader
Why do so many "critical" stories about Apple products come across like ads
for Apple stuff? Even this piece starts with a run down of features even
though it's not relevant to the main point being made.

------
EGreg
This guy speaks like he used to introduce Apple's products or something. Come
on dude, this stuff ain't easy! Try introducing successors to the Mac. That
was some genius work right there ;-)

------
godmodus
So now mbp folk feel about apple the same way thinkpad old folk feel about
lenovo.

There's a huge market opening here. We may see the rise of a third hardware
giant just yet.

~~~
m_mueller
I think Google would be in a prime position. If they'd release a killer
Chromebook Pro geared for developers I think people would eat it up. There's
millions of developers world wide, with none of the big companies really
catering for them anymore - more than enough for a decent computer market.

------
blinkingled
It's a matter of resources - Apple has limited resources and history of
execution glitches even when they aren't stretched out. With the continuous
strain to find the next new thing, put out an iPhone release every year,
improve iOS and also dabble in cars - even though these sound like separate
things different teams should be able to do, the integration aspect and
company culture makes it very hard for Apple.

It is very logical that Apple will dump or merge some product categories
sooner rather than later. There's little chance macOS will be made touch
friendly and with little resources to keep the Mac updated (see Mac Pro) it
just makes sense for them to sell the iPad Pro somewhat like Microsoft does
for Surface line - lower cost model without physical keyboard and a Macbook
like one that shares the same SoC and runs the same iOS. Get XCode running on
it and that solves the problem of iOS App Developers. Make the Pro version of
iOS little less restrictive and add better multitasking and that helps the
regular iPad line as well. Much easier than redoing macOS for touch.

It also solves the margin and control issues for Apple. One OS, shared
CPU/SoC, no need to do Mac and macOS development anymore and that frees up a
ton of resources. It's just too good for Apple to not do it. And if they could
solve the problem of pesky "pros" wanting to control their hardware and OS
better by slowly making the Mac more and more inconvenient/unattractive - they
are going to do it.

~~~
lcbs
> Apple has limited resources

I keep seeing this written in various places and I don't understand it. Apple
aren't short of a dollar and they haven't been short of a dollar for a good
long time. How is it that they can find themselves with "limited resources"?
What does that actually mean?

~~~
toyg
It's just an old refrain that Jobs used as a mantra, back when Apple was
indeed short on cash. It gets burned into customers' brains as a catch-all
excuse whenever they ask _" Why don't you do <perfectly logical thing> ?"_
"well, y'now, we have limited resources."

This was fine up to and including the first couple of iPhone releases; now it
really sounds like bog-standard corporate weaselwords. Apple just built a
space-age campus as big as a town, could run a small country for years with
all the money stashed offshore, and keeps raking in cash from their ecosystem
and content services. If they don't do X is simply because either they don't
want to, or they are not good enough at doing it.

~~~
whywhywhywhy
> Apple just built a space-age campus as big as a town

Wonder how much director time was spent signing off the minutiae of that
project VS these so called Pro laptops and the touchbar as a concept over the
past 2 years.

~~~
wmf
Yep. Mac Pro, AirPort, and monitors are canceled but check out that spaceship,
art book, and Christmas tree!

