
Open Letter to Tim Cook - Jerry2
https://petersphilo.org/2016/10/29/open-letter-to-tim-cook/
======
IBM
Best comment [1] I read a couple of days ago:

>One thing constantly said to founders here is "don't let a vocal minority
come in, tell you they love your product, and then turn into bullies that tell
you how you should make said product. You never made it for them; they aren't
your market. Don't get confused into thinking they are, just because they're
loud." I think that about sums up the relationship between Apple and software
developers who use their hardware.

Which is good advice for Tim Cook and all of Apple. You don't want to end up
making the MBP version of this [2].

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12818193](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12818193)

[2]
[https://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/2236.html](https://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/2236.html)

~~~
graeme
Are professional users really a "vocal minority" of the MacBook _Pro_?

I'm not a developer. I run an online business and use a MacBook Pro for video
recording, editing, and general website admin.

I needed the extra processing power, and the ports. The new model has me
apprehensive, though I'll certainly look at it.

What's the target demographic this new MBP is serving, though?

~~~
c0nducktr
> What's the target demographic this new MBP is serving, though?

I've been thinking about this a lot lately.

I think the new MBPs are, well... not good, considering the price. I really
like my 2012 MacBook Air. It's still going strong, although I wish I had went
for the 8GB of RAM instead of just 4.

But when I was talking about the new models with my friends and coworkers, a
lot of us shared one thought: We don't think it's worth the money, but we
can't spend $2000 on a laptop anyway, so whatever.

So we're not the target market.

It seems that people here don't really want one either, so 'Developers who
frequent Hacker News' also doesn't seem to be the target...

It seems like maybe it's just 'wealthy people who want a sleek-looking, well
made piece of hardware', which it is. Maybe it includes businesses that will
provide one to their employees, and will buy the extra dongles and whatnot.
There's probably a lot of them in each group. If I had the money, and didn't
care that it didn't have the fastest processor, the ability to have a crazy
amount of RAM, and would need an extra damn cable just to connect my iPhone, I
would love to buy one too.

One thing seems pretty certain, and it's that there is room for a competitor
to jump in and make a great laptop for the people who are looking for
something different. I really hope someone can make it work.

~~~
DanHulton
I really wish I agreed with you. Unfortunately, there's literally nobody who
can step in here and make a truly competitive product, since it won't run the
same OS.

I mean, I develop for the web, so I could very well switch to Windows or Linux
at this point, and after some pain points, I'd probably be back up and running
and around 90% as happy as I was before. But that last 10%, where things don't
work _quite like_ I want them to, well, that would grate. And over time, I'm
probably going to grow to hate that machine.

Plus, what about people who make iOS apps? Or heck, even just develop for the
Mac? There's literally no other option than a Mac.

This is a big part of why people are so upset, is because we _can 't_ just
wait for a competitor to jump in and save us. We've let ourselves become
dependant on Apple, and -- like you put it -- we seem not to be the target
market anymore. As much our fault as theirs maybe, I'm not one to judge, but
it still sucks.

~~~
guelo
There's also a 10% that works better on Windows than on Macs and you're not
currently aware of it. I've switched between Macs and Windows and Linux as my
daily driver several times and there's always an annoyance when you switch and
everything doesn't work the way you want t. But it goes away quickly, within
days. And then the next time you switch you're again annoyed that things don't
work the way the new way you're used to. Actually, I've been mostly using Macs
for the last 4 years and I still think window management and the Finder are
inferior to Windows'.

~~~
milesokeefe
I agree re: win > macOS on window management but why do you prefer the file
explorer? The lack of tab support is a major pain point for me on the windows
explorer, that combined with the great file preview support that Finder has
makes it much more useful to me.

There may be some features I'm missing though, I only use Win10 for gaming.

~~~
guelo
Hmm, you're right, Finder has a lot of good things over Explorer, also search
is mostly superior. I get annoyed by things like forced hidden system folders,
fewer fields available for file sorting (I've been annoyed by being unable to
sort images by resolution), how they try to hide the path of files which is
especially annoying for search results. I guess it's another of those things
where some things are better and some things are worse.

------
have_faith
Not to beat a dead horse but I'm also considering abandoning Apple as I'm due
an upgrade now.

I'm still using a MBP from 2010 that I added an SSD and some extra ram too,
it's still going strong although showing it's age it has served me very well
over the years.

Gluing parts in that used to be user replaceable, models now are 16gb of ram
only (can someone explain this one?), thinness for thinness sake, removing
standard ports etc. I can live with non-apple hardware but I would much prefer
to use MacOS. Considering dual-booting a hackingtosh/linux.

I get the impression they are trying to transition their laptops to life
cycles closer to their phones and I won't be coming along for the ride.

~~~
ktRolster

      >models now are 16gb of ram only
    

Do you have a use for more than 16gb? Serious question.

~~~
chrisfosterelli
I'm often noticing a ton of swapping going on, causing serious system-wide
lag, when I have a few dozen Chrome tabs and two VM's running in addition to a
few other standard programs which use a lot of memory (Slack).

It's not hard to rub up against 16GB in a standard developer workflow.

~~~
jonlorusso
> a few dozen Chrome tabs

There's your problem.

~~~
newscracker
I agree. Chrome is a big bloat on Windows and OS X/macOS. I find Safari to be
quite lean (memory and energy consumption) on OS X/macOS. I miss that Firefox
is not keeping up since it's the most flexible browser for my use.

------
jmeller
Apple built its PC business on the backs of creative professionals because
they were among the few groups who thought Macs were worth more than $0.00,
thanks to its superior experience with Adobe's creative suite when compared to
Windows.

Apple now has a dominant position in the PC market, not because they catered
to creative professionals, but because they listened to their initial creative
audience and focused on making their computers better.

Apple doesn't focus on the Mac Pro because they want to abandon creatives, it
is simply because the Mac Pro doesn't enable any meaningful use-cases not
served by the 5k iMac or its notebook line.

Form-factor, screen quality, battery life, weight, speed of I/O, and all the
other design goals the author dismisses, are perhaps the most important
metrics meaningful for the current generation of laptop buyers, including
professionals.

~~~
agumonkey
A lot of video shops also used Mac extensively for decades. It seems it wasn't
only good marketing, they were alright for this profession.

Saying this lightly, I was a kid in the 90s, but I do remember a lot of ads
for large Mac stacks (towers, disks, video cards, etc). Tiny SGIs in a way.

~~~
flukus
> video shops

Presumably you mean video editing shops and not blockbusters? Our video shops
were green screen terminals on DOS until... well until they ceased existence.

~~~
agumonkey
I couldn't say which precisely, maybe only part of the market, maybe some part
of the post production pipeline. Surely lots were done on Flame like systems,
which AFAIK weren't Mac based.

------
petersphilo
Hello All, i am the OP of:
[https://petersphilo.org/#post-71](https://petersphilo.org/#post-71)

Just wanted to add a couple of things: Pro hardware can exist and has existed
at Apple for most of its existence, please look back at the post and comments
for evidence..

My point was not that Apple should choose between 'pro' hardware and
consumer/boutique hardware, in fact, Apple has a long tradition of keeping
both happy..

Maybe Apple really isn't interested in the Mac any more, or even in
developers. But who makes the apps, the games, etc..

Why not keep power users, keep their 'street cred' as the 'creative platform'
and make a little (a lot, actually) scratch on the side...

Old geezer cries out: Can't we all just get along?

~~~
pjmlp
Developers on Mac were always using the same computers as everyone else.

I don't remember having a Mac Classic Pro or a LC Pro and so forth.

~~~
dasil003
Very odd your selective memory. You don't remember the Macintosh IIfx?

~~~
pjmlp
No.

Back in those days the Mac was almost nonexistent in Portugal.

There was just one official importer, Interlog, and buying anything Mac
related meant traveling to Lisbon.

So the first time I actually programmed on a Mac was in 1994, on Classic and
LC models.

The only ones available on the university campus on a single room! I think
there were around 10 there.

The remaining ones were located in the IT department, used by the secretaries
and a few teachers.

~~~
dasil003
Ah! Boa tarde, então ;)

So you were using education-targeted macs, but there were always pro-level
computers from Apple ever since the very early days (Lisa, Apple IIGS, Power
Mac G3, G4, G5, etc). It's only once they discontinued the cheese grater Power
Mac that things started to get pretty bad for users who need expansion and
massive power.

------
neotek
I'm looking forward to seeing what John Gruber over at Daring Fireball will
have to say about all this, since his perspective tends to lean heavily toward
giving Apple the benefit of the doubt and all I've seen so far is relentless
negativity about the new MacBook Pro lineup.

Personally, I'm extremely disappointed - I've been desperately holding off
buying a new MacBook Pro to replace the aging mid-2012 non-retina model I'm
still using, but what would I really be upgrading for now? I already have 16gb
of RAM and a big SSD, sure I don't have a Touch Bar but I don't give a shit
about it anyway. The only thing I truly need is a retina screen and for that I
could just buy a second-hand MBP for substantially less money, and I wouldn't
need to buy a thousand dongles.

~~~
Yaggo
Same here. I only wished for 32 GB RAM (would happily pay for 64 GB even with
Apple premium, but hey).

------
grzm
I agree with the gist of the letter. Watching "Truth in 24" makes me
appreciate Audi so much more.

I thought this snippet from Jason Snell summarizes the new MacBook Pro
offering well:

 _" I don’t quite get the existence of the low-end, non-Touch-Bar-having
13-inch MacBook Pro. On stage, Phil Schiller argued that it was essentially a
Retina replacement for the 13-inch MacBook Air, and I can see that. But it’s
$500 more and is it really a MacBook Pro? Does the MacBook Pro line need to
have this extra product attached at the bottom of it, lacking the most
interesting feature of the rest of the line?_

 _" Then again, it’s not really a MacBook either, because it’s heavier and has
two Thunderbolt 3 ports rather than the one USB-C port on the MacBook. It’s a
tweener product and Apple has apparently decided that it doesn’t want to
introduce another new name to its laptop line, so MacBook Pro it is. But it’s
weird. Not necessarily bad—it really does fill a niche that’s between the
full-on MacBook Pro and the MacBook—but weird nonetheless."_

[https://sixcolors.com/post/2016/10/a-few-quick-thoughts-
abou...](https://sixcolors.com/post/2016/10/a-few-quick-thoughts-about-
thursdays-mac-event-in-cupertino/#theotherothermacbookpro)

I think this is likely the beginning of a correction in Apple's laptop
offerings. MacBook/MacBook Air/MacBook Pro was a departure from the
consumer/pro split. Apple was overdue in updating the MacBook Pro and got a
bit caught in the power/CPU/memory state of current offerings. For a lot of
people the new MacBook Pro will be good. Just not the Pro (some) are looking
for. Hopefully we will see a true Pro model next Fall.

~~~
enraged_camel
Agreed on the price. I was holding out for a retina MBP/MBA around the $1,000
mark. As things stand though, I'll probably add another 4 GB ram to my 2011
MBA and use it for a few more years.

------
girfan
The 15inch MBP has i7 Quad Core processor, Radeon graphics and double the RAM
than the default 13inch models. This is not a minor jump in performance. I
agree that they do sometimes prioritize size, thickness and beauty over
performance but I don't see what else could go into the 15inch MBP that it
currently lacks?

~~~
sotojuan
The new Macbooks are so close to being great it's annoying. The specs are fine
by me and I'm neutral on the Touch Bar, but the price and lack of ports just
makes them not worth it. While I'm glad Apple is trying to move the industry
to use USB-C for everything, it wouldn't had killed them to include some USB
3.0 ports and an HDMI port.

It's going to be at least 3-5 years until the industry uses USB-C and by that
point a new series of Macbook Pro will have been released.

This applies to the non-Touch Bar Macbook as well. Price and specs are fine,
but why does it only have two USB-C ports?

~~~
jacobolus
> _it wouldn 't had killed them to include some USB 3.0 ports and an HDMI
> port._

Magsafe, USB Type A, HDMI, and Mini DisplayPort / Thunderbolt 1/2 are all
literally too wide to fit within the width of the new laptop’s sides. They
would have needed to make the whole laptop noticeably thicker or otherwise
differently shaped to fit any of those. The headphone jack barely fits.

~~~
phire
My current laptop is thinner than the new 13" Macbook Pro (bearly, by just
0.5mm). Way thinner than the 15" Macbook Pro.

Yet it has full sized USB 3.0 ports, a USB-C port, SD slot and an HDMI port.

The only reason those ports don't fit on the new MacBooks, is because the
bottom curves up near the edges.

~~~
grzm
Oh, don't tease! :) What's your current machine?

~~~
phire
Nothing special: Acer Aspire S.

And it's far from the only ultrabook around that thickness with those kind of
ports. I'm just amused that it has more variety of ports than the Pro machine
which costs 3 to 4 times as much. (though, no thunderbolt 3)

But it's not even in the same market as the Macbook Pro, it should be
competing with the Macbook. I was kind of hoping to upgrade it to a Macbook
Pro when the new model was released.

------
jbmorgado
For me it comes down to a simple thing. When you launch 2 of your major
products separated by 2 months (iPhone and Macbook Pro) and they can't work
together without an adapter because you are using different ports in the
iPhone and cannibalising ports in the MacBook Pro, then your company by
definition, lacks vision and aim.

We can apologize Apple all we want, we can pretend there is a greater vision
going on behind the scenes, but sorry, it just isn't, I can't even use the
headphones from my new iPhone to listen music/sound in my new MacBook Pro (not
alone connect my iPhone to the MacBook Pro to charge/transfer media with the
lightning port) without an adapter.

That's an utter lack of vision, development path, aims of the products. It's
literally a mess.

------
smegel
The reason motorcycle companies invest in racing is not just to establish
cred, but to actually push the boundaries of technology and innovation that
they can then incorporate into their "consumer" models.

A "true Pro grade" computer offers no such advantage - in fact most of the
innovation comes from making things smaller and thinner - as soon as you take
away the weight/size restriction, sure you can make supercomputers in a box,
but it's also pretty darn easy to do so.

And the final point - consumer bike customers usually watch bike racing, and
probably dream of being a pro bike racer - few Mac customers could care less
about "digital creative professionals" and don't really want to emulate being
one of them.

~~~
ktRolster
_few Mac customers could care less about "digital creative professionals" and
don't really want to emulate being one of them._

What do you think most Mac users want?

~~~
smegel
A next-gen iPhone.

------
votr
I feel like Tim Cook decided to double down on the "Apple as a luxury brand"
business model.

If that's the focus, then it makes sense to emphasize thinness, aesthetics,
and raise the price at the same time.

Microsoft on the other hand seem to be working hard on winning developer
mindshare again, as they know they can't compete with Apple in the branding
space.

I hope the surface book 2 will have a 32gb option.

~~~
yasky
Alas without the 3-finger drag gesture on the Surfacebook, it's a non-starter
for me. It's horrifying to think that even though the hardware supports it,
that gesture is patented and cannot be used.

------
andr
Given the Mac's history in the last few years, and the fact that it only
accounts for 12% of Apple's revenue and 8% of shipped units, I see two
scenarios:

1) Apple gets out of the Mac business in a few years - Apple is not the kind
of company to wait patiently for its product lines to run into the ground. The
only reason they really need the Mac is Xcode for all those iOS apps that need
to be developed. I wouldn't be surprised to see an Xcode for iCloud, or maybe
even some kind of partnership with Microsoft (Visual Studio already lets you
build iOS apps, just not in Swift).

2) Apple is working on the Mac's second act (third?), which could only be a
switch to ARM. It makes business sense because a lot of the R&D will be united
between iOS and Mac - making those A9s and A10s sure isn't cheap. And it
explains the lackluster progress from customers' perspective.

My bet is on #1, so all the criticism about the MacBook's ports or RAM is just
barking up the wrong tree.

~~~
mojuba
> The only reason they really need the Mac is Xcode for all those iOS apps
> that need to be developed.

This is simply not true. MacOS is at the very least a companion OS that gets
more and more tightly integrated with the iOS devices. App handover, now also
copy/paste, etc etc. An iPhone without a Mac loses many of its advantages over
Android. Let alone that there are no signs Apple is going to abandon the Mac
business as you say, the recent MBP announcements being the best proof of it.

On (2) switching to ARM: I personally don't believe in this, because this will
break a lot of software and will seriously piss off a lot of people. The
switch to Intel was relatively easier back in the day because the Mac user
base at the time was laughable and there was a big promise that the Macs will
become a lot more powerful. I know about the bitcode and stuff, but the more I
think about it, the less I believe Apple is prepared to make the switch for
its laptops and desktops. Maybe, just maybe one separate product line like
MacBook Air switches to ARM, but then what's the point?

~~~
boulos
The switch to x86 from PPC turned out to be such a ridiculous win in terms of
overall performance and compatibility that the community's initial reaction
(omg! Nooooo!) was defused.

Apple also did a good job with Rosetta, which they kept around for quite some
time. You'll note that Intel has folks that have done binary translation of
ARM in an attempt to grab some mobile market share. The same could be done on
the x86 => ARM side.

But it only works if the result is fast enough. We're probably still not that
close today, but what odds would you take on 5 years? If most of the software
folks are writing on macs is for other Apple ARM-based products, it doesn't
sound so crazy to emulate x86 for people doing "server" work.

------
Mithaldu
To be honest that zoolander phone is utterly excellent and if it were a real
thing i would buy it in a heartbeat.

If only so i have a phone i can use for phone calls where i don't need to
worry about the battery running out, and which i can stuff into any pocket on
my body.

~~~
redial
I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but if that Zoolander phone were real, the
battery on it might not even last a day.

~~~
Mithaldu
Depends on whether you stuff an entire android OS into it. With only the
minimum in user amenities most of it should still be the battery for a drop of
hardware.

------
davedunkin
Car companies don't sell their race cars.

~~~
toufka
But they do sell to the public AMG, Motorsport, and TRD versions of their
regular car lines even when they are not 'big sellers'.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-
AMG](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-AMG)

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

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

just as Apple used to have

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

~~~
treehau5
I don't know how to explain it -- but as an enthusiast, I sorely, sorely miss
the S2000 and hope Honda comes out with something similar. It really feels
like it lost something without it.

~~~
resist_futility
the new type R is probably the closest they'll make

------
newscracker
In the recent keynote about the MBP refresh with the TouchBar and the
professional apps (like Adobe Photoshop and Final Cut Pro) being adapted to
it, Apple showed an MBP setup with a couple of 5K LG monitors (which Apple
mentioned it worked with LG for) for professional work, along with external
RAID storage from Pegasus. The message I got was that MBP is the pro line,
which can be "expanded" on the display and storage fronts. Unfortunately, it
still leaves RAM and internal storage stuck (pun intended) with whatever came
in during the purchase!

At the end of the keynote, I was left with the impression that the Mac Pro is
going to be canned in a few months, probably along with the Mac mini - just
disappear silently from the store. Even the iMac may get canned in a couple of
years, leaving the portable MBP as the sole Mac available. This may be the
leading act for introducing an ARM based MBP, thus eliminating the effort to
deal with a refresh of other Macs to ARM based chips.

I've expressed my frustration here on this topic before. Apple seems unwilling
and incompetent to put in what it takes to show that it still can do and
maintain things well.

~~~
chongli
If you're going to be using the machine professionally and hooking up a couple
5k monitors for doing video or high end photo work, why not connect an
external RAID or NAS as well? Are there use cases where one needs to carry
around many terabytes of video portably but without access to a 5k monitor?

------
znpy
What is going to happen imho:

Apple is doing and will do a shitload of money anyway.

People will buy Apple stuff anyway because people already are: unless you are
an Apple user, you should know how "religious" (I'm being kind here) Apple
users are. They have been consciously been buying outdated and overpriced
hardware until now, and they have been super proud about this too.

So this is going to last anything from five to ten years at least, still imho.

I have no true idea whether newer apple stuff is so bad or not (besides the
idiotic drop of the audio jack on the iPhone). But Apple users have been
subject to this Apple-isy for literally decades.

I have a suspicion that now that Apple Macbook Pros are so widespread,
complaining about Apple is the new hipsteria.

This is what I feel, reading the news, on a foggy October, almost-November
morning.

------
vacri
Meh. With $200B in liquid assets, Apple can do whatever it feels like. If it
ever did find itself in the doghouse (unlikely), it could survive there for
decades while it figured out how to recapture the mojo.

------
anindha
I don't get the racing analogy. It's not like you can buy a Formula One racing
car.

If Apple started making super computers to play chess then the analogy would
be valid.

~~~
toyg
Author says in the comment that F1 is the only competition where you can't buy
what is being raced - every other competition requires vehicles that are
actually sold.

Besides, you can't buy an F1, but you _will_ buy fast cars from manufacturers
based on their F1 results. Ferrari could ship a Jeep tomorrow and people would
still buy it thinking it's the fastest Jeep ever.

~~~
stonogo
This is true in name only. NASCAR, despite its name, races cars nobody
produces. And you can't buy a MotoGP-spec motorcycle without essentially
ordering one custom-built. The same is true for rally car races.

------
kyriakos
Outside HN I really haven't seen posts complaining about the new Apple
offerings. So it could be Apple only pissed off a particular type of
developers.

~~~
toyg
Reddit is ablaze. The first comments on Ars were very snarky too.

~~~
kyriakos
What subreddits by the way? (I want to have a look)

~~~
toyg
On /r/apple, keynote megathreads were an angry affair. All subsequent MBP-
related threads, even the ones with positive titles, are full of people
discussing alternatives. The "preorder" thread has been hastily unpinned.

These are the people who spent a year posting almost-daily "waiting" threads,
and who would normally be discussing how to cheat or sell their souls to get
the latest gizmo right away. I expect people in /r/pcmasterrace are laughing.

------
thomasjudge
I'm sure that besides what appears in the various media outlets, this being
one of them, plenty of people are communicating their dissatisfaction directly
to Tim and others in Apple management. But I've come to the conclusion that
they don't listen to customers, and they don't really care what we think. So
rather than write emails to Tim, I'd like to try and start communicating with
Apple's board. Any ideas on how to reach them?

~~~
Freak_NL
Even if you could reach them, what arguments will you provide them with to
even start to consider pushing for a change of plan? As far as they can
predict (and they are probably quite knowledgeable about the market) people
will buy their laptops and they will make a neat profit. That is, Apple upper
management is doing its job — making a profit; having some long term strategic
vision.

They are undoubtedly aware of a certain amount of discontent being vented on
the internet, and will most likely consider placating it (not addressing it) a
process that needs to be looked into to.

If you want to make a difference, vote with your wallet. System76 makes nice
laptops, and Dell's XPS line isn't too bad.

------
dolguldur
Apple inverted the previous Christmas-like feeling of "we have something new
for each of you" to a "we've removed something you personally liked" that
seems to cover many of us.

I haven't commented yet at all since I think several issues aren't actually as
big as people are concerned about them, but overall, I'm frustrated with the
situation for computing.

I don't know how Apple works internally, but for me the problem is clearly not
Tim Cook, but rather Jony Ive. He seems to be obsessed with some sort of
purity that I appreciate in design. However form vs. function is too much of a
tension to be bearable within one person. I think Apple lacks folks who weigh
in on the functionality side of things. Why? Becasue Ive is magically
associated with Jobs, Ive is almost like some medium to get to Jobs, or at
least that's how I think some folks perceive him.

In reality Ive seems to be the person who'd rather have a nice TouchBar that
spans the whole width of the keyboard instead of keeping just the escape key,
which is obviously used much more than the other function keys.

I thought about this a lot and by now I know I'll definitely be okay with it,
especially since there's no other non-tactile key near it (meaning my body
will know I've hit escape once it touches the flatness that doesn't give in).

Another personal thing for me is the Magsafe. I really liked it not just as a
trip-proof charging solution, but also for the way you connect it. It's so
effortless, it's fun again and again. It's one of these micro-reinforcements
that makes us love products. And again I can see the conflict. The new beauty
is that you can dock so many devices and charging with just one single cable.
I think that's a pretty great feature.

If there was more functionally thinking folks with power at Apple, they'd
probably suggested to keep a Magsafe and allow the MBP to be charged by either
that or over the USB-C. But you see how "ugly" even this though is, right?!
It's a compromise and so in the end I think the current MacBook Pro is the
result of not making any compromise in any of these decisions and that yields
the product they showed us.

So part of me hates this chasing of pureness since I see it almost as some
neurotic obsession about the visual aesthetics. I guess it would take a lot of
self-confidence for a company like Apple to be okay with things that could be
easily portrayed as compromises by the press. On the other hand I realize I'm
pathetic and I'm not really working on improving any of this, so I thank Apple
for pissing us off because it's somehow stimulating as well. (Even if it's
just stimulating as in "work harder", so I can buy one of these without
thinking too much about it).

~~~
stephendedalus
I think you're right. If they would have kept MagSafe they could have kept the
HDMI port on the other side. But then the MBP wouldn't have been symmetrical.
That seems to be the current obsession with Ive. The iPhone 7 is symmetrical
as well, even if the new speaker is fake.

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ky738
k. - Tim Cook

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daxfohl
Because remember those popular Mac|Windows commercials from a few years ago?
If you want a stodgy get-stuff-done kind of thing then you'll have to talk to
some Microsoft nerds sporting antique crap like headphone jacks. Apple only
cares about how hip you look, with your brand new airpods and all your
disposable income.

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chrisbennet
As a professional developer, I would have loved to stick with Apple laptops
but clearly us pro's aren't one of their target demographics, maybe we never
were. (And I don't mean that in a snarky way.)

Metaphorically speaking, sometimes when a girl is nice to us, we think she's
more interested in us than she really is. I think Apple was just "being nice"
to us in the past and we took it the wrong way.

