
The new Mac Pro: The audacity to say “Yes” in a design culture of “No” - Aaronn
https://marco.org/2017/04/15/mac-pro-audacity-of-yes
======
obblekk
"""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."""

-=-=

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.

i'm strongly in the boat that the purpose of design is to solve people'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.

-=-=

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 _which were
more usable_. but now we've gone too far. the designs are simpler than ever,
but no longer in the service of greater usability. it's time to make tech
product design less minimal, less simple, but more useful.

-=-=

the culture of designers is a core part of the cause of over pivot. it's
elegant to list out a series of design principles (interface guidelines) and
then reject every problem that can't be solved within those principles. it's
elegant, but does not necessarily produce better product designs.

~~~
tensor
Design is all about solving user problems, not producing beautiful interfaces.
If fact, if you tried to tell a UX designer that their job was to produce
beautiful designs that didn't solve user problems they'd quit on the spot.

The Mac Pro is not a simple nor minimal design. It's actually quite a complex
design that is optimized for space over flexibility, arguably not good UX. The
old Mac Pro, on the other hand, was a great design. It could be criticized as
being too expensive, but it was configurable, and very easy to configure to
boot. It perfectly met it's target audience.

In summary, I don't think you understand the goals modern UX design and are
wrongly assigning blame.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
In that case a lot of designers don't understand modern UX design either, and
it's perfectly reasonable to blame them for that.

Small example - the Google Maps app on iOS used to have a "Show route" button.
You could tap it while driving to zoom out and see the entire route.

Now that space has a menu, and you have to tap the menu and then select the
zoom view. Two taps.

This is literally a potential disaster while driving because you have to think
about what you're doing, look at the screen for longer, and keep your hand
coordinated long enough to tap correctly.

This is not solving the user's problem - unless the user's problem is a secret
desire to rear end the car in front.

This used to be called style over substance, or form over content - and it's
everywhere, from flat/material design that doesn't distinguish between buttons
and labels, to mystery meat burger menus, to invisible options that are so
well hidden users never discover them, to useful ports and hardware features
that disappear and have to be replaced by a pack of ugly dongles.

Minimalism is great _when it solves the user 's problems._ When it creates new
problems for the user, it's not so great.

Far too many designers - including some famous names at Apple - don't seem to
understand this.

~~~
paulryanrogers
"You could tap it while driving..."

This probably violates the Google Maps EULA if not the law in some places.

------
mgamache
I bet Apple with have the 'courage' to use proprietary connectors inside the
case to limit user upgrade options.

~~~
chiph
Bring back NuBus!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NuBus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NuBus)

~~~
pcurve
My god, NuBus. Daystar accelerator cards, radius graphics cards... Fun days of
upgrading Mac that became outdated 1 year after you bought it.

------
e28eta
Usually, when the "what we'd like to see in {iOS,macOS}++" articles come out,
it'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.

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.

[1] [https://carpeaqua.com/2017/04/09/a-software-developers-
mac-p...](https://carpeaqua.com/2017/04/09/a-software-developers-mac-pro/)

------
dbg31415
> Mac gamers need a high-speed/low-core-count CPU, the best single gaming GPU
> possible, and VR hardware support.

So honestly, are there any real "Mac Gamers"? At this point I think everyone
knows to just boot into Windows to play games... the hardware isn't amazing
for gaming, but games run a lot better on Windows than they do on MacOS on
Apple hardware. Feels like "Mac Gamers" debate was settled years and years
ago... if you're serious about gaming, even like casually-serious, you
wouldn't even consider running MacOS.

It'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 / 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.

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't think games will ever be
optimized for Macs the way they are for PCs, but I'd be happy just switching
into Windows on the Apple hardware when I played games.

\---

Side note... anyone else play Escape Velocity? I got to thinking about "good
Mac games" 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.

* EV Nova | Ambrosia Software, Inc. || [http://www.ambrosiasw.com/games/evn/](http://www.ambrosiasw.com/games/evn/)

* Marathon (video game) - Wikipedia || [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathon_(video_game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathon_\(video_game\))

* Hellcats over the Pacific - Wikipedia || [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellcats_over_the_Pacific](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellcats_over_the_Pacific)

~~~
jblow
It's very sad. Halo was originally announced at MacWorld:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eZ2yvWl9nQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eZ2yvWl9nQ)

but history did not go that way....

~~~
dbg31415
I totally forgot about this! Thanks for sharing.

Halo demos at MacWorld 1999...

Microsoft buys Bungie in 2000...

Halo: Combat Evolved comes out exclusively on XBox in 2001... along with the
launch of XBox. What would XBox be without Halo?

* Microsoft Buys Bungie, Take Two Buys Oni, PS2 Situation Unchanged - IGN || [http://www.ign.com/articles/2000/06/20/microsoft-buys-bungie...](http://www.ign.com/articles/2000/06/20/microsoft-buys-bungie-take-two-buys-oni-ps2-situation-unchanged)

------
eddieh
_> Many also use the optical audio inputs and outputs, and would appreciate
the return of the line-in jack._

Maybe some people want that, but real audio pros have dedicated hardware audio
interfaces that connect over USB/FireWire/Thunderbolt/PCIe.

~~~
themihai
or ethernet(avb, dante)

~~~
voltagex_
I've never used any pro audio equipment - wouldn't Ethernet be more of a pain
than other connectors? You've normally got less Ethernet jacks than any other
port on a machine.

~~~
Sanddancer
It may be a pain to only use one connector, but the protocol itself compared
to a lot of external busses is a lot nicer. One of the big things ethernet
gives is a lot lower latency. The ear is pretty latency-sensitive, with voice
latency of 15 milliseconds being a threshold where most people can start
noticing. Because of the polling nature of USB, you've got to wait for the bus
to ask for data, which means you're going to have at least a couple of
milliseconds of latency. Also, because Ethernet is a many-to-many protocol,
you can do things like have the synchronization clock on the same connection
as data, so you don't need to run a million clock cables along with your data
cables.

~~~
jjoonathan
Sure you don't have that backwards? USB 2+ has isochronous transfers with
guaranteed bandwidth and latency that come with guaranteed start-of-frame
timing strobes every 0.125ms with a jitter spec much better than that.
Ethernet... doesn't.

~~~
Sanddancer
It depends on the type of USB audio device. USB MIDI devices, for example, use
bulk transfers because they need reliable communications to handle things like
sysex sends. Additionally, Ethernet, through the AVB suite [1] does have time
reservation, synchronization, and other things that are very useful in dealing
with realtime data.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Video_Bridging](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Video_Bridging)

------
mnm1
The only way you'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's why
the last decent pro machine is 7 years old and why I'm not holding my breath
for the next one. It's guaranteed to be proprietary like _all_ the rest of
their hardware these days. Making a pro machine is not that hard. It's by far
the simplest type of machine because by definition it should be able to handle
_anything_. Hobbyists and corporations alike have been building them for
decades. The fact that Apple can't build the simplest type of machine says a
lot about them as a company in 2017. None of it good.

EDIT: Discussions around minimalism and design at this point are beyond
irrelevant when Apple can't actually build a computer that serves pro users'
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.

------
vertis
Not directly related to the Mac Pro, but my 2014 MacBook Pro has annoyed me
only having 2 USB ports.

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.

What is the benefit of having those sides of the computer be empty?

~~~
kylec
What sort of scenarios require 3 or more USB ports simultaneously on the go? I
can understand at a desk, but I'm having a hard time imagining a non-contrived
scenario where you would need them regularly on the go.

~~~
devonkim
I'm more upset that the two ports aren't on the same side of the laptop. This
precludes use of portable hard drives that use two USB connections.

~~~
saagarjha
I'm actually happy that Apple moved the USB ports away from each other. I used
to have a non-Retina MacBook Pro and it was a royal pain to get two "large"
USBs to fit at the same time.

------
watertorock
Let'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.

------
jbmorgado
They just added a mostly superfluous "tab bar" that most of the users have
just no use for... how's that for that Apple's _brilliant_ minimalism the
author of the article preaches about?

