
On 2016 Apple: What do “Pro” users want? - carlesfe
http://cfenollosa.com/blog/what-do-pro-users-want.html
======
hartator
I think what this kind of articles are missing out is Apple usually sacrifices
something for something else.

For example, the MacBook Air sacrifices performance for extreme portability
and decent battery life. The first retina MacBook Pro bets heavily on high-DPI
screen for the first time ever in computers, but less connectors and no DVD.
It was risky bets, but a vision was behind. This generation of MacBook Pro
asks for a lot as sacrifices (CPU almost already a generation behind, no
legacy ports, no SD card, limited RAM, no battery life improvement, ifixit
scores lowered, no magsafe, no Nvidia GPU, no screen DPI improvement, etc.)
for nothing substantial or exciting. I think that's the reason people are
complaining loudly, and I think for the first time in the past 10-year MacBook
history, it's fair.

~~~
rz2k
One type of port to rule them all, and fastest storage available are pretty
good advances.

The ifixit teardown makes the machine look like a real mess inside, but I
think drastically simplifying the connections to all external add-ons and the
continued focus on the bottleneck of storage speed give reason to be
optimistic about what the future holds.

~~~
GVIrish
One type of port that requires most professionals to buy a bunch of dongles.
That's not more useful, that's a hassle.

Macbooks have had available SSD's for awhile.

When it comes down to it, a bunch of sacrifices were made to make this Macbook
thinner, which simply is of very little benefit to professional users. It's
nice, but not when it comes at the expense of performance and usability.

~~~
rz2k
It's double the speed of last year's SSD. Competitors' computers with the same
speed hard drives will be upgraded more easily, but they aren't any cheaper
right now.

While ridiculous that Apple doesn't ease the transition with more included
cables, my house is full of different types of monitor cables, hard drive
cables, and iOS device cables that seemed to change every two years. At least
now I might get a decade out of the next generation of them.

------
jasonjei
At the risk of being a contrarian, Apple's focus on being a consumer-product
company is deeply rooted from the beginning. You could argue its focus on UI
since the beginning of OS X was for consumers rather than developers.

Microsoft is a famously developer-friendly company (sorry, "developers,
developers, developers," comes to mind). However during Ballmer-era years,
user experience was jumpy, and developers had free reign to build their
products even if it was disconnected from the OS look and feel. The transition
to Windows UAC, for example, was a result of Microsoft being too lax on
developers for many years before (writing to anywhere on C drive), until
Microsoft said they couldn't just write to anywhere.

Apple has been restrictive to developers, and that has been the way with Steve
Jobs. They've locked down many APIs (even abruptly deprecated them) and
punished apps that don't conform to Apple's consistent look and feel. So in
that sense, Apple may not be the friendliest to developers, but it has pushed
a more consistent product. Perhaps these restrictions are why Apple's products
give all users a good experience despite more annoyances to the developer.

~~~
atemerev
OS X / macOS was always ultra-developer-friendly.

Python? Preinstalled. Git? Got you covered. Ruby? Sits right there. Java?
Check. Ant, Maven? You bet!

There is no other OS offering the same level of convenience to developers, no
matter what stack they used.

~~~
jasonjei
Those versions of Python and Ruby are terribly old. Java is no longer included
by default. Clang/LLVM/Git is installed only after you download Xcode.

I believe that is a consequence of macOS being built with BSD foundations.
They're there. But let's not pretend macOS *nix/POSIX stuff is great; there's
a reason that MacPorts exists.

I'd argue that Ubuntu does offer greater. Let's not pretend Xcode is a good
IDE, either. I can't even recall the number of times I had my project crash on
me.

~~~
atemerev
Now, yes, they are (not terribly, but it's better to install Homebrew and
update it). I am describing the situation a few years ago.

And no, e.g. Ubuntu doesn't include Ruby or Git in default installation, nor
FreeBSD.

~~~
swordsmith
Why should Ruby, Git and a bunch of other tools be in the default
installation? If you are a developer installing it is easy enough. If I want a
minimum dev environment, I don't want to go around searching and uninstalling
a bunch of packages.

Convenience to development should be measured by how easy it is to
install/access development tools when you need them -- such as how well the
package manager work, not how much stuff the base system come with.

------
edko
I would be willing to pay for a macOS license that would allow it to run in
any machine I like. This will probably never happen but, who knows, if
Microsoft has become a Platinum member of the Linux Foundation, anything can
happen.

~~~
r00fus
A nice dream, but who's going to build all the drivers? Or would you expect
Apple to do some Windows-Certified / MFI type of program for driver
compatibility?

Color me surprised if we ever see this, as this kind of approach almost killed
Apple in the early 90s.

~~~
drinchev
My 2 cents :

1) Drivers already exist for a huge list of hardware, that can run macOS (
Hackintosh project did a lot of work on that part ). Maybe there will be some
unofficial list of supported CPU / Motherboards, etc, for which list Apple
will not care anyway ( NO WARRANTY part of the TOS ).

2) Apple nowadays earns millions from phones & tables. MacBooks / iMacs are
not as big as they were a couple of years ago.

~~~
r00fus
So you're asking Apple to give up a proven revenue stream and full control of
the platform for a chance to compete with Microsoft (as prominent desktop OS)?

Pretty sure you'll be waiting a long time for that, despite how awesome it may
sound.

------
kilburn
Replaceable components: ram, disk and battery should be easy to swap, and the
system should supoort plenty more than the base configuration (preferrably up
to 32Gb ram and simultaneous sata and m.2 drives).

Don't forget a good, centered, trackpad (apple is fine on this front, but many
competitors are not) and keyboard with the common keys but no numpad.

Couple these two things with a clean-looking, sturdy build in a 13,3 inch
laptop and my money is yours to take. I can atand the weight/thickness of pre-
retina macbooks no problem.

~~~
sdegutis
Not gonna happen. If you could just buy replaceable parts, they'd lose a lot
of money on hardware sales, even if a lot of the replaceable parts were sold
by them. Both planned and perceived obsolescence is _good_ for their business,
for their revenue stream.

~~~
nicky0
I think the soldering in of parts has more to do with craving thinness than
trying to create obsolescence.

------
eddieroger
This circles around the real point, which I think is that "Pro" is a marketing
term. As the author points our, he makes money off a machine without the Pro
label. I do as well, with my main Mac being an iMac. Pro used to designate
more clearly between models, but it has always been a marketing term first and
foremost. A chef is only as good as their food, not their knives.

> Experiment, but not on my lawn

That's the real crux of it, isn't it? Everyone wants Apple to innovate and
change and stuff, up until it affects the pieces of the Mac they like. Apple
just managed to step on a lot of toes simultaneously by wiping the exterior of
nearly all connectors and slots.

~~~
Karrot_Kream
> That's the real crux of it, isn't it? Everyone wants Apple to innovate and
> change and stuff, up until it affects the pieces of the Mac they like.

Right, but if Apple seriously wants to continue targeting Developers, then
they need to produce a product that will actually target them properly.

It's like music equipment. If you look at home music equipment, the marketing
and user-friendliness is completely different from the pro music market,
despite the fact that they essentially just play music.

~~~
eddieroger
I genuinely don't think Apple wants to target developers, and I don't think
they ever have. WWDC Is a great example - they could easily fit every
interested developer in the expanse that is all of Moscone, if not going to
larger venues altogether, but instead they limit. Part of this is because of
the interest from consumers in Apple and the absence of a consumer show like
MacWorld, but if Apple really cared about developers, they wouldn't make us
enter a lottery to attend a conference for us. Apple is a publicly traded
company, and their first responsibility is to shareholders, not developers -
or any other field where the term "Pro" could apply, like artists, or
musicians, or videographers, or photographers.

------
notadoc
Nothing too crazy.

32GB and 64GB RAM options

A replaceable SSD because they can and do fail

Options for good GPU

A few standardized ports like USB, HDMI, audio in/out, not requiring 3000
different dongles to connect to every peripheral and accessory currently in
existence

An Escape key that is hardware, and in a regular location

Decent battery life

Note the prior generation MacBook Pro lines largely met those requirements,
except for more RAM.

------
protomyth
I'm fine with the new ports[1]. I even found an ok hub[2]. I'm not fine with
the Touch Bar or the horrible arrow keys, but I guess I'll live. I'm also not
fine with the price increases.

What I want from a Pro machine, is standard, expandable memory and storage. I
would have been an amazing cheerleader if I could put in more RAM[3] and a
bigger M.2 drive.

If that means that its not quite as thin, then all good. Thin isn't my first
Pro item.

1) I'm not as fine on the iPhone since obsoleting my headphones was really not
acceptable for a proprietary connector (Lightning) instead of a standard
(USB-C). Finding a dongle that allows listening and charging is not cool.

2)
[http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA0Y44N600...](http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA0Y44N60044)

3) I understand ECC RAM is out the windows with Intel.

------
atemerev
Macbook Pro became _the_ developer's machine due to a curious incident.

Remember Ruby on Rails and the initial hype? DHH, the author of Rails, is a
marketing genius. He was probably one of the first people who introduced a
development platform with screencasts. Those screencasts featured beautiful
pixel-perfect TextMate editor, available only on Mac OS X.

Everybody said "wow!" and started buying Macs and coding Rails. After
sluggishly slow IDEs of the day and geeky vim/emacs stuff with dangling
corners and UI flickering, TextMate was pure visual Nirvana. Thankfully, Ruby
came preinstalled with Macs.

And thus, the market was created. Apple probably didn't intend to make Macs a
solid developer's machine, but it happened, and it was supported until
recently.

Now, the support has been withdrawn, and it left many people in Limbo. I have
moved to Ubuntu, but I will miss my happy days with OS X.

~~~
blobbles
I think it started even earlier than that, with the launch of Mac OS X. At
that time, all dev software on Windows was expensive or pirated, and while
Linux had the free tools, the desktop experience wasn't the best. So here was
OS X, with all the OSS compilers and such, and you could still run Photoshop
and Word.

Now, Windows has free dev tools, and Linux has a much nicer desktop.

------
Shivetya
What I want.

Timely updates so we don't see particular lines rot for more than a year. With
regards to ports, its fine if you want to move to the new "port" that will be
the future. However when doing so please consider providing an inexpensive
solution to support older ports required just to connect to other products you
released just this year.

I know some are tired of the port argument, but something is broke in Apple
when the various product lines require adapters to connect.

As for other products, more flexibility in configuration. having to buy the
top model to get a gpu choice isn't consumer friendly. plus your ssd prices
still make me flinch. and if you aren't going to update then a price reduction
is owed

------
yedpodtrzitko
These Macbook articles are going on for a weeks now. Is there anything in this
one what hasn't been said yet?

~~~
blister
I think the best argument in this article that hasn't really been stated
elsewhere is (paraphrasing): "the pro machine needs to adapt to the needs of
the professional producers (music, dev, writers that need insane battery life,
etc)".

His main thesis was "play with the Macbook Air, iMac, Macbook lines, but if
you're going to use the 'Pro' branding, be capable of supporting professional
use cases."

The other interesting thought nugget from the article was buried up at the
top: (paraphrasing) "perhaps too many consumers have been buying Macbook Pros
because it's a sturdy, dependable machine. This consumer support and use
product may be producing marketing and usage metrics drowning out the ACTUAL
use cases of the professionals that need a more powerful machine."

If this new generation MBP is really just a slightly enhanced Macbook Air
because that's how several million people choose to use their MBP, it ignores
the tens of thousands of people that need "pro" level hardware (or even just
modifyability) in order to create content (iOS apps, music, video, software)
that actually drives Apple's Walled Garden ecosystem.

~~~
nicky0
That argument is precisely the one that has been stated over and over again.

------
znpy
I'll make a possibly controversial statement, but... The fact that someone
uses a laptop to make money do not qualify such laptop as a "pro" laptop.

Accountants can happily use a random sub-500$ laptop and make money.

If your job is to poke people with a stick, is your stick a pro stick?

Pro is more likely to be defined as something particular/peculiar that you do
not find on other usual/consumer/widespread brands and accomodates very
particular use-cases.

Let me exemplify:

\- you are a professional video editor. you do not only enjoy, you _need_ fast
storage, a lot of fast storage.

\- you do CAD. you do need a fast video card and cpus.

\- you are a researcher who needs computing power. not enough power to justify
a fancy coud solution or stuff like that, but enough that a regular core i5 is
not enough.

If your very rare use-case can be met by a laptop, then said laptop is a pro-
level laptop. Otherwise, without any more fuss, it's not.

Sidenote: according to what i have said until now, ThinkPads have always been
and currently are pro-level laptops (xeon cpus, multiple hard disks, removable
bays, ports, docking stations, nvidia quadro cards, hi-res displays,
intergated colorimeters, fingerprint readers, you name it).

Stop complaining and wasting your money, join the pro side.

~~~
slantyyz
>> Pro is more likely to be defined as something particular/peculiar that you
do not find on other usual/consumer/widespread brands and accomodates very
particular use-cases.

FWIW, Dell, HP and other vendors use the term "workstation" to cover what
you're talking about.

IIRC, Schiller did use "workstation" in the keynote when he talked about
connecting the MBP to two external 5K monitors, but in general, the meaning of
"Pro" is so diluted (esp compared to "workstation") that it means different
things to different people.

~~~
znpy
> FWIW, Dell, HP and other vendors use the term "workstation" to cover what
> you're talking about.

Yes, indeed. And as with many other things, Apple being Apple, decided to name
their workstation differently.

------
zedadex
> Unless there is an external factor which drives iPhone sales: the
> availability of iPhone software, which is not controlled by Apple. This
> software is developed by external Pros. On Macs.

I wouldn't say the demand for iOS apps is as elastic as the author thinks. The
big push towards building for iOS isn't 'mostly people just playing around
with xcode', but people actively pursuing profit off the market of users the
iOS env has.

Even if fewer MBP users led to a significant ramp-down in the number of unique
quality-app devs in the app store (I doubt it), the big players and their apps
would still be around, as would many more hopefuls trying for a slice of the
pie.

------
atemerev
USB-C only: fine. I am a happy owner of Macbook'2015 with a single USB-C port,
this works for me.

16G RAM maximum: what is it, 2013? I am a Scala software engineer, and 16G is
the minimum to feel comfortable. OK, I could live with it, if only...

Dual core mobile CPU: dual-core?! in 2016? These days, _mobile phones_ spot 8
cores. Apple's own iPhone has 4-core CPU. This is a joke, right?

GPU: Intel Iris Graphics 510, with no discrete graphics option. OK, right,
this _is_ a joke.

tl;dr A computer with a dual core CPU and integrated graphics is not a
developer's machine, no way. Goodbye, Apple. I have spent tens of thousands
dollars buying your stuff, but enough is enough.

~~~
lanna
why is discrete graphics required for software development? i spend most on my
time typing text or using the terminal, intel iris is more than enough.

~~~
atemerev
If you work with machine learning / data science, you need GPU for accelerated
computing. Yes, I can train my models on servers rented at Amazon (which I
used to do), but those are expensive.

~~~
dagw
For me it's not even that. I just want to be able to develop and test my CUDA
code on my dev machine. It doesn't even have to be super fast.

------
patrickmay
I particularly agree with the desire for a 17" screen. For that and 32 GB of
RAM I would a significant amount of weight and slimness.

------
wineisfine
What annoys me is that they don't even bring out 1 additional decent model.
How much work would that be? Or to upgrade the Mac Pro?

This is just a slew of poor decisions that would've never happened under Jobs,
who was really always future proofing and 2 steps ahead. Ive checked out
mentally and Cook's interpretation of Jobs vision is obviously just below par.

------
youdounderstand
I'm a "pro" user that does development. I do all my work via Microsoft Remote
Desktop so I care most about portability, battery life, screen size, and
keyboard/trackpad usability and comfort.

But I also like to play video games in Bootcamp, so a ~2x faster GPU than the
Radeon 460 would be nice, like the Geforce 1060 in the Razer Blade.

~~~
nicky0
You sound like the perfect customer for a Windows laptop.

------
nhatbui
Anybody know of a laptop+OS combo that can give me the same fluid navigation
of windows/workspaces as OS X?

 _That_ has always been the best feature for me: snappy, fast, fluid
window/workspace navigation with the 3-finger swipe. Great for going back and
forth between docs and the IDE (split-screen makes texts too small for my
13").

------
slantyyz
fta>> "What is a Pro user?"

I'm not sure this is as important than what the "Pro" suffix has implicitly
meant to a significant group of users in the past. From Apple's perspective,
the meaning seems to have changed a little ("premium model" vs "powerful +
flexible"), and that's irked a lot of people.

fta>> "This Macbook Pro is a great machine and, with USB-C ports, is future
proof."

It is a great machine, and it is future proof, but it's also "present-
unfriendly". IMO, Apple should have treated 2016 as a "bridge" year and left a
legacy port or two, and then done away with legacy ports a year later, but
that's just me.

------
atomashpolskiy
USB, HDMI, 32G RAM, escape key. Also wouldn't mind a better graphics card.
Looks like I need anything except the new MBP. If only OS X wasn't so good...

UPD: how could I forget about a hardware camera/mic switch?))

------
IdontRememberIt
Isn't Apple simply launching a half backed MBP to better contrast when the new
Intel CPU are available? (looks like the same strategy with the iphone 7, but
for different reason)

~~~
nicky0
That would be ridiculous. Releasing a shit product now just to make the
successor look better is not Apple's MO. Does any company do that?

~~~
augustt
The first iPad mini was released in October 2012 without retina. iPad gen 3
was released March 2012 with retina. I don't understand why they couldn't have
included retina in the mini... maybe they purposefully withheld it so people
would buy gen 2?

------
gwbas1c
A USB port. I don't want to have to hunt for a dongle so I can plug in a thumb
drive or a mouse.

~~~
oftenwrong
I'd be satisfied with 5-10 usb type-c ports on each side of a mbp

~~~
gwbas1c
Is that a joke? I just plug all those devices into my monitor, which acts as a
hub.

~~~
slantyyz
>> Is that a joke? I just plug all those devices into my monitor, which acts
as a hub.

Not all monitors have that capability though.

------
stcredzero
Pascal GPU. A laptop powerful enough to run games and VR. Retina screen would
be nice too.

------
megablast
What do these articles keep missing?

If the Intel chip isn't available yet, what can Apple do? The latest chip they
use only supports 16gb.

