Wish they focused more on functionality rather than what color a MacBook should be.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple Tested Larger Battery and Gold Color Option on MacBook Pro, Lightning Port on MacBook
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
How can YOU determine what's out of hand vs. what's "fair"? I've met numerous Mac users, and their fervor and fanaticism is what got many of them interested into the Mac environments in the first place. It's only natural to see people severely upset about when things go the other way.
This article if it's correct, it describes how Apple is totally lost!
so they took like forever to update the MacBook Pro, then they discovered a battery issue just before they release it? and then they went back to the old design selling it for higher price point!
WOW!
so they took like forever to update the MacBook Pro, then they discovered a battery issue just before they release it? and then they went back to the old design selling it for higher price point!
WOW!
And why am I incorrect? There are millions computers and billions of devices aren't going to cease to exists after you received your Macbook Pro. How many device are now sold with USB-C after the macbook released almost one and a half year ago? iPhone is still USB-A...
Of course eventually it will be USB-C, but that will take years.
USB-C and USB-A is not exclusive, they could easily have added one USB-A port and saved the world from a million of new adapters and cables. But that doesn't line their pockets.
I have thought that myself but the general assumption is that his replacement would be better. Who could they promote to be Steve Plan B? Sometimes it is better to accept the status quo.
We're well aware of that. But they've created a product that's worse than the previous generation in every possible way. No physical function keys, slower CPU, way less battery life, no legacy USB port, no SD card reader. The only thing they improved is the display. Everything else is worse.
Signs I find most disturbing re: Cook's Apple. 1) The $19 power brick cord as an additional purchase for the NMP. Honestly??? That is so absurd and greedy. Hard to believe a product manager was forced to decide that without upper mgmt pulling the strings. Really the worst (greediest) product decision I have ever seen and I was a product manager for HP's Inkjet consumables 
2) Big bet Cook made on China phone sales a few years ago. He put too many eggs in this basket. Shareholders will soon suffer as China govt shifts tech towards its home companies. 3) Didi purchase was done to appease the Chinese govt. Tim showed his weakness to the Chinese here. Never do that. Right now Apple has relied heavily on Chinese iPhone sales to goose top-line. Has been softening, and will continue to do so. Weakness in the NMP intro would not have mattered if this bet had paid off. Next few quarters financials will be interesting.
2) Big bet Cook made on China phone sales a few years ago. He put too many eggs in this basket. Shareholders will soon suffer as China govt shifts tech towards its home companies. 3) Didi purchase was done to appease the Chinese govt. Tim showed his weakness to the Chinese here. Never do that. Right now Apple has relied heavily on Chinese iPhone sales to goose top-line. Has been softening, and will continue to do so. Weakness in the NMP intro would not have mattered if this bet had paid off. Next few quarters financials will be interesting.
I find it increasingly hard on this forum to differentiate between any of it's threads from the standard "bash Tim", "apple doomed" and "its not like the old days" that every thread here seems to accumulate. Perhaps I am the last human here and its now chatbot nirvana ? That would make more sense frankly as I do belong to quite a few other brand forums (Porsche being one) and none serves up such a steady drip-drip of negativity.....
Unless you're being facetious (or can't read) that's explicitly not what happened.
They were going to use the scalloped design for more battery life, very difficult batteries to mass produce as only one product in the world uses it right now. They found that this scalloped design failed testing somewhere along the way (obviously very late, my guess is sample production runs) and had to revert to the "old design" to get it shipped.
That's regarding the battery only. Your post reads as if the went back to an old design of the MBP itself.
Hahaha! Everyone low-key loves McDonald's french fries. I do!
That's it, that's what I said:
1. They took forever to update the MacBook Pro and then discovered the issues very late.
2. They reverted the battery to old design and less battery life and yet they charged more!
Just magic!
Why would a battery design be the driving factor in price point? That doesn't make sense.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
First, let's see if 200 million people buy it. If we're going to make our points by projecting future sales, you might as well claim 500 million or all 7 billion people.
Second, again, Apple has great momentum. Blackberry & Nokia had great momentum for spans of time in the past too. They had record revenues & profits rolling in too. And when alternatives came onto the marketplace, their momentum facilitated them ignoring what their customers were wanting (too). Where are they now?
Sears was Amazon before Amazon. Record revenues & profits. All of their exclusive product lines deemed best available in their niches (too). Where is Sears now? Why did Amazon beat Sears at their same basic game?
None of this is trying to imply that Apple is doomed- hopefully not. Instead, the point is that the "look how much revenue & profit Apple makes" argument is not a be-all, tell-all gauge of customer content. Heroin dealers can pile up record revenues & profits too but we don't argue the happiness of their customers based on how rich the drug cartels are getting.
Blackberry, Nokia, Sears, Sony, etc had times of very content customers too until those customers became sufficiently discontent, at which time they stopped buying from their former favorite seller and shifted to someone else. Revenues & profits don't project that. Instead, you don't see consumer discontent and then brand defection in the revenues & profits until AFTER they've abandoned the brand.
Take off your ADF hat and read comments around here carefully. It's not just "Apple is always right" defenders vs. trolls. I (subjectively) see more and more posts from people writing stuff like how much of a fan they've been of Apple for XX years "but this is the last <Apple product> I buy." Have I never seen such comments before? No. But has that been as thick as it seems now? Definitely not. It's hard to write all such people off as trolls when they profess long-term Apple product-buying histories.
And subjective (non) studies of people posting to a forum like this are almost certainly not reflective of the masses. However, I do buy that the bulk of people here are here because they are- for the most part- passionately Apple people and I think I see sentiment increasingly trending in the wrong direction. Why? IMO, too many issues like the subject of the article seeming to validate these feelings that the corporation doesn't care so much about many of the products it's customers love... only the money.
And nothing particularly wrong with caring about profitability either, but Apple has the (long-term) reputation of making its margins not by nickel & diming but by delivering wow consumer benefits in it's products. Stuff like this article and letdowns in new product rollouts, dongle fragmentation, etc don't seem to align with the long-view of the Apple we consumers thought we knew. So sure, they are rolling in the revenues & profits right now but I still argue that is not a solid gauge of customer sentiment... just strong momentum, just like the strong momentums enjoyed by Blackberry, Nokia and Sears in the past.
Apple doesn't have to become the next Blackberry, but- IMO- the path to avoid that is cranking up consumer delight instead of burning goodwill by leveraging ecosystem change resistance. Consumer delight used to show by the majority of us just burning to buy the next big thing to come out of Apple. In the last 3 or 4 years, what has been that next big thing? A slice of us might argue the watch. Another slice might argue these airpods. But what has excited & delighted the bulk of us?
Last edited:
Sure it's selling, but I won't buy one. I'm sure there's a non-insignificant opportunity cost that Apple incurred by rushing this out and I'm sure they'll correct the issues soon enough. There's that general idea that it's good to wait for a product refresh when Apple introduces a new design. This looks like a good example of that.
'Millions' may be happy and not regret getting one. I'm more than happy to use my existing laptop for another few months. I know I'd regret not having the 'Kaby Lake' or 'full size battery' version.
There's irony is that Apple might be selling more than they can make in spite of making bad decisions.
After this great new all 2016 MBP buyers should give back/return their machines and wait for the new one.
Steve Jobs is rolling in his grave !!!
Steve Jobs is rolling in his grave !!!
It's very interesting that they had to backpedal on the battery to an older design. I wonder how much power that new design would have had. I have the 15 inch 2016 and definitely the battery is the one thing I don't like about it. Feels bizarrely lacking so it makes sense that apple compromised. A bit disappointing that they raised the price even while knowing that they are screwing their customers a bit. That being said, still a killer laptop. Sucks that I had no choice but to upgrade this year. A well, I'll be selling and going cannon lake in 2 years anyways.
Oh you're absolutely right. Despite the qualms with the new MacBooks, I believe they are still pretty solid prosumer machines.
And I believe that is where Apple have decided their place is. The prosumer market. Good enough power and performance for MOST folks, including those doing video and photo (and maybe some AutoCAD) work. But for those that need the Xeon processors, for those that need a beefy graphics card (and I believe I know there are many, many of those folks out there), for those that need a LOT of RAM, they just aren't Apple's priority. And it's sad. Especially when you look at Apple's roots and how they used to be a company for the professionals. But Apple goes where the money is. It's the truth. They are a consumer / prosumer electronics company.
And to be frank, we'll see how long "prosumer" remains part of their business plan. The bit in the article about Apple wanting to make the Mac more like the iPhone is worrisome.
Not speaking for everybody, but obviously there's a lot of stupid sheep that will buy anything as long as it has an Apple logo on it. And it speaks volumes--it's the reason why the new MBP is selling, despite it lacking the I/O and battery power necessary for it to be a "pro" laptop.
I think you're wrong here. These forums provide a voice to users. The stuff that bubbles up out of here (battery issues on mbp) are valid. Sure it might not be as eloquent as you'd like, but that doesn't matter.
That's all a good thing. Taken as a whole, Apple can say - yeah, we're paying a price for our decision making. They can choose to address it or not.
From the article:
"Apple re-organized its software engineering department so there's no longer a dedicated Mac operating system team."
Really disappointing. No wonder bugs I've reported almost a year ago aren't fixed. My Mac still shuts down in the middle of a task like downloading or rendering due to non-smart energy saver options (a bug that was not present in Snow Leopard or Lion but was "updated" in later versions). Also the impending loss of the automator features in future versions of the OS is alarming as it takes away a lot of the power and customization of the OS, which IMHO lets computers do what they were meant for--automate tasks.
"Apple re-organized its software engineering department so there's no longer a dedicated Mac operating system team."
Really disappointing. No wonder bugs I've reported almost a year ago aren't fixed. My Mac still shuts down in the middle of a task like downloading or rendering due to non-smart energy saver options (a bug that was not present in Snow Leopard or Lion but was "updated" in later versions). Also the impending loss of the automator features in future versions of the OS is alarming as it takes away a lot of the power and customization of the OS, which IMHO lets computers do what they were meant for--automate tasks.
How is the current MB Pro future-proofed if/when Thunderbolt 4 comes out in a couple of years? The way to future proof your products is to allow the user to open them up and do upgrades, including the possibility of adding a board that would provide future connectivity.
No, you'r the normal one. And most site like Porsche are the normal ones. It's rare that someone who doesn't like Porsche would go to a site for enthusiasts, so you have a much more intelligence conversation. On the other hand, since Apple is the most valuable, high profile company in the world, trolls are more naturally attracted to Apple sites.
Don't think the swamp is normal behavior. It's just that as MacRumors hasn't policed the forums, the majority of folks who just want to read good discussion among Apple enthusiasts get tired of the trolls and silly comments - "Apple sucks, etc." they leave and it becomes a vicious cycle where trolls constitute a greater percentage and they have to make even more absurd statements to stand out. MacRumors feels trapped because they need the clicks to survive since they exist only with selling ads. Why am I here? To keep in shape, I counter troll for sport.
Last edited: