Apple Stops Selling 2015 MacBook Pro, Lineup Now Limited to Thunderbolt 3 Models [Updated]

[Baymowe335]

It is still more money, it doesn't matter how much, it is simply more money than they use to make. There is a huge profit margin on dongles, great ROI.

It's insane to think they'd purposely mess up their products so you'll buy dongles. They have an overall strategy they are executing. You might thing it's wrong, but it's just like the decision to remove the headphone jack.

It's like saying Apple should ship every iPhone with a small scratch in the screen and then sell a buffing compound to remove it. They would never do that.

The thunderbolt ports are versatile and have many advantages. There are tons of reasons they'd want to do this, but it's not to make money on dongles...don't be so daft.

 

[FNH15]

No, they’re still very much in the now - and USB C is still very much ‘the future’

The philosophy of "I skate to where the puck will be, not where it has been" has been with Apple for many years. The original iMac dropped a lot of the legacy peripherals people used during the day in favor of USB and FireWire. USB 3.1 is standardized, and will be here for many years to come. The transition is painful for many, myself included (my setup involves both HDMI, Thunderbolt 2, and USB 2) but it needs to be done.

Staying in a mentality of the past or even the present gets a company nowhere. Look at US auto manufacturers in the 70s and 80s, where even "high end" manufacturers like Cadillac stayed set in their idea of what a car should be and should contain, and how they got blown away by manufacturers bold enough to think differently (i.e BMW/Mercedes). 10, even 5 years from now, the mainstream consumer will have mostly switched to USB C devices, with legacy ports being used less and less with each passing year.

 

[Falhófnir]

The philosophy of "I skate to where the puck will be, not where it has been" has been with Apple for many years. The original iMac dropped a lot of the legacy peripherals people used during the day in favor of USB and FireWire. USB 3.1 is standardized, and will be here for many years to come. The transition is painful for many, myself included (my setup involves both HDMI, Thunderbolt 2, and USB 2) but it needs to be done.

Staying in a mentality of the past or even the present gets a company nowhere. Look at US auto manufacturers in the 70s and 80s, where even "high end" manufacturers like Cadillac stayed set in their idea of what a car should be and should contain, and how they got blown away by manufacturers bold enough to think differently (i.e BMW/Mercedes). 10, even 5 years from now, the mainstream consumer will have mostly switched to USB C devices, with legacy ports being used less and less with each passing year.

Sure I get what you’re saying, only it isn’t a dichotomy you can have USB A, HDMI and SD card slots co-existing with USB C. If this design cycle ends next year as we have come to expect, then having a mix of ports including USB C but not only USB C would have been a perfect balance to start the transition off. They could then have really put their weight behind USB C with the 2020 model year computer when it had already gained some traction. As things are they’ve just created a bigger opportunity to make money from accessories - if that didn’t feature in their thinking I see no reason they wouldn’t have included a USB A adapter in the box for the literally everything that uses that connector currently, and especially back in 2016.

 

[jefftomascak]

$6399 for the top one!! wow?

 

[icymountain]

They affect a small, messy percentage (Stop eating two inches from your MacBook People).

I work for a major university, and only a small amount of our new MacBooks have seen issues. Most people love the Touch Bar too. Macrumors' audience is resistant to change, and not representative of the general Mac population.

Could you document the "small amount" ?

Also working in a university (faculty). Recently, I thought about making some basic statistics about people in my group.

So far, five "new keyboard" (Macbook Retina or Macbook Pro Retina). Out of five, one keyboard needs to be replaced (several dead keys), and two users who said from time to time "my keyboard is not working well, a key seems stuck". One of these two keyboards was replaced (mine, due to another failure affecting the top case...) and has not had a problem since then. Small sample, but already, significant complaints. No way to say if things are improving, but I am very interested in data from larger samples!

I cannot count how many keyboards of the previous generation were used in the group. Maybe 30. I do not remember hearing about a single complaint (not even a broken key). So, in that regards, the new ones seem to definitely do worse.

 

[jonblatho]

The best MacBook Pro ever. Farewell. You were much better design than the current one.

Please take a moment to realize that you are speaking to a computer, an inanimate object, as if it were a person.

 

[FNH15]

Sure I get what you’re saying, only it isn’t a dichotomy you can have USB A, HDMI and SD card slots co-existing with USB C. If this design cycle ends next year as we have come to expect, then having a mix of ports including USB C but not only USB C would have been a perfect balance to start the transition off. They could then have really put their weight behind USB C with the 2020 model year computer when it had already gained some traction. As things are they’ve just created a bigger opportunity to make money from accessories - if that didn’t feature in their thinking I see no reason they wouldn’t have included a USB A adapter in the box for the literally everything that uses that connector currently, and especially back in 2016.

I was a little surprised that they didn't include at least one USB-A to USB C adapter in the box, like the original Intel MacBook Pros included a DVI to VGA adapter. From Apple's perspective, I suspect they don't want to have multiple, different ports on their laptops, where space is a premium. The iMacs include both USB C and USB A, which was a good decision from a transitionary perspective.

 

[jinnyman]

Please take a moment to realize that you are speaking to a computer, an inanimate object, as if it were a person.

So? I'm free to express my thought anyway.

 

[jonblatho]

So... Apple stops selling the best designed MacBook Pro in history (one that actually has good ports!), yet continues to sell the worst designed Mac Pro with 6 year old hardware...

Oh, for Christ’s sake. Apple has stated publicly (which is extremely rare for an unreleased product) that they’re working on a new Mac Pro that fixes where they fully admit they went wrong with the 2013 model and hope to have it out next year.
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So? I'm free to express my thought anyway.

So strange.

 

[H2SO4]

Just bought one a month ago. Glad I got in there.

 

[Falhófnir]

I was a little surprised that they didn't include at least one USB-A to USB C adapter in the box, like the original Intel MacBook Pros included a DVI to VGA adapter. From Apple's perspective, I suspect they don't want to have multiple, different ports on their laptops, where space is a premium. The iMacs include both USB C and USB A, which was a good decision from a transitionary perspective.

I’m sure they had their reasons, it just honestly felt a premature move to me even by Apple’s standards. USB A is probably still far more ubiquitous than most of the standards they dropped were two years post the fact, it seemed CDs had already peaked and started giving way to internet and USB drive data in 2013 when they dropped the SuperDrive.

 

[jonblatho]

10, even 5 years from now, the mainstream consumer will have mostly switched to USB C devices, with legacy ports being used less and less with each passing year.

The mainstream consumer already seldom needs to plug in at all. Ports in general will be used less and less.

 

[oldmacs]

The mainstream consumer already seldom needs to plug in at all. Ports in general will be used less and less.

Not the mainstream users I deal with.

 

[jonblatho]

Small sample, but already, significant complaints.

If you’re university faculty, I’m surprised you’re concerning yourself with a “sample” of five notebook computers out of dozens of millions sold in the first place.
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Not the mainstream users I deal with.

Congrats! Apple’s sold millions of notebooks with one port to millions of satisfied customers.

 

[oldmacs]

Congrats! Apple’s sold millions of notebooks with one port to millions of satisfied customers

Congrats! They are an extremely small group of people.

 

[AMTYVLE]

The last of the best MacBook Pro. Glad I have mine. Still runs like the day I unboxed it in 2015.

 

[ignatius345]

RIP MagSafe. One of the best bits of design Apple ever came up with, in my opinion.
[doublepost=1531412253][/doublepost]

I cannot count how many keyboards of the previous generation were used in the group. Maybe 30. I do not remember hearing about a single complaint (not even a broken key). So, in that regards, the new ones seem to definitely do worse.

Exactly. The thing all the butterfly keyboard apologists seem to be missing is this: nobody had any real opinions about the last generation of MacBook keyboards, which is exactly as it should be. It's a keyboard. It should be boring and reliable and "just work". If people have strong, divided feelings about a laptop keyboard, or differing experiences of its reliability, that's an immediate design fail.

 

[bladerunner2000]

Please take a moment to realize that you are speaking to a computer, an inanimate object, as if it were a person.

Not much better than all the glorifying and cheerleading that goes around here over a corporation that doesn't give a crap about it's consumers, lol.

 

[MacNut]

Can you hear the collective groans of corp IT managers everywhere?

Don’t they do that on a daily basis.

 

[torquer]

Its always amusing to me to see "tech" people so romantic about legacy hardware and software.

I imagine many of you bemoaned dropping the floppy drive on the original iMac (if you're old enough).

Apple neither cares nor doesn't care about its consumers. They care about profit, and they seem to make quite a bit of it.

 

[mrderik]

I vowed no more dongles after I switched from a 30 pin iPhone to a Lighting model. Laptops same way, which is why I still have the two I do even though I could go buy a new one. The SD card slot is (still) invaluable, and the 400 zillion USB sticks on the planet that most everyone STILL use, both now require a dongle? Not the end of the World, but still greatly inconvenient. Macs are suppose to 'just work' and they do, so long as you have the right set of cords and dongles with you for any occasion.

~Sigh~

Like the bad old days when your MAC had DVI in a VGA World, and Firewire in a USB World. Yes, Firewire and DVI were better, but still terribly inconvenient. So it feels like like Apple is going backwards in the usability category, and really they are for probably the majority of users.

 

[apolloa]

Hmm still rip off memory prices and no doubt soldered memory.

 

[Glockworkorange]

"on clearance." Lol. For the same $1,999.99 entry price.

 

[aylk]

It's insane to think they'd purposely mess up their products so you'll buy dongles. They have an overall strategy they are executing. You might thing it's wrong, but it's just like the decision to remove the headphone jack.

It's like saying Apple should ship every iPhone with a small scratch in the screen and then sell a buffing compound to remove it. They would never do that.

The thunderbolt ports are versatile and have many advantages. There are tons of reasons they'd want to do this, but it's not to make money on dongles...don't be so daft.

I'm not saying that this is wrong, I'm a shareholder. I'm just stating the fact that the immediate result of the decision of selling you the ports after the first sale, instead of including them in the product, is that Apple makes more money this way. We just didn't had the technology to do this before. Apple is a public corporation, their purpose is to increase value for their shareholders, corporations do that by making good ROI decisions. Switching from ports to dongles is one of those decisions, and profits are the primary benefit for Apple and their shareholders.

It's fair to compare a dongle to a scratch on the screen, but it's way harder to convince customers that scratches are "the future of computing", you gotta figure out your go-to-market strategy. If you can manufacture an essential product for $2 that customers then have to buy for $20, then that's an awesome product for the business, with an immense profit margin. Even if you have to make some awful product design decisions to make it work, it is still an unbeatable business decision. That's how you create a consumer product company as incredibly rich as Apple...

 

[Turnpike]

Complaints. Meh, you had 3 years to buy one and can still get them from plenty of other sources.

I'm one of those who didn't jump when they should have... can anyone tell me where I might still find a new or (APPLE ONLY) refurbished 2015 Macbook Pro? I have several of them, and actually prefer them more (keyboard, ports) than the newer ones.... thanks in advance!