Have you found that plugging those into a dock instead has too much an effect on reliability?
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 to Announce Redesigned 14-Inch and 16-Inch MacBook Pro at WWDC, Says Wedbush Analyst
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
My guess is that the new iPhone/MacBook Pro will introduce some hardware features that they’ll wish developers to learn about and focus on. I can’t see them ever having a hardware announcement directly beforehand because then it will potentially be a black box on how third party developers can interface. And if it happens after, then they’d kind of have to dance around the integration topic.
I think they like maximum buzz, so I’m betting there’s a good reason if they choose to announce at WWDC. Maybe attendee preorder priority! Hoping for some good surprises regardless!
If Apple sold an identical monitor to the one in the new iMac in the same shape (minus the chin), I WOULD buy it for $700 in a heartbeat. A beautiful, high-DPI monitor like that would last me at least a decade. I'd get an external Magic Keyboard and use the setup with my MacBook whenever I'm not on the move. I would LOVE it.
But I think it would not sell at that price... that's why Apple probably won't make one.
Last edited:
Unfortunately, I don’t have a full function Thunderbolt 3 dock (I own a CalDigit TB3 Mini Dock - Dual DP) to be able to give you an opinion. I use this setup when doing audio work specifically. I prefer to have the Focusrite plugged directly into a USB port, but I plugged it into the TB3 Mini and plugged that into the USB-C port and run an external 4K (BenQ SW271) monitor via one of the DisplayPort connectors. It worked perfectly fine there.
All things being equal, I like having the four ports, but with my M1 MacBook Pro, I am considering coughing up cash for the TS3 Plus as I need PD charging, extra USB and a DisplayPort, since I can no longer use my eGPU with the M1. I have 3 Thunderbolt docks (2 Cal-Digit, 1 El Gato) and one USB-C hub (Satechi) and the only issue I have with any of them is the really dismal SD Card performance of the Satechi.
Wow, that is crazy - I did not have that experience! I still have the same one from 2011 that I'm using right now! Rock solid. I have changed the way I use it though - now it's purely a display, not a hub.
As @Abazigal mentioned and I explained, there’s just two different philosophies at play. I have a 2012 and a 2015 MacBook Pro and I had a 2015 maxed out 15” as my work machine and I NEVER used HDMI, always DisplayPort and so I never cared about Apple ditching HDMI. But somewhere, there was a user doing a similar job to mine who used HDMI every single day and I can imagine the anxiety of not having a dongle right on hand for a presentation, deposition, et al.
I also have to confess that having a built-in SD Card slot has been useful for me when grabbing pics and video off of my trail-cam instead of either bringing it in, or taking my MBP to the cam and plugging it in via a USB Mini to USB-A cable. So I’m conflicted there as the main argument has been that no one needs SD Card as cameras are getting rid of it, which isn’t really true. I own 4 cameras and they all use SD, I have two audio recorders and they use SD, and a trail cam that uses SD. I never cared that Apple got rid of SD as their port was fairly slow and a little glitchy on my 2012 MBP. I preferred faster USB readers that I could hook up to anything, but having it onboard for the trailcam has been a huge convenience to me.
I guess as long as there are plenty of TB3/USB4 ports, I’m good with SD Card and HDMI, but no more damn USB-A ports. They just need to die. Not really keen on MagSafe as I welcomed USB PD and all the versatility it offers over a proprietary MagSafe connector and charger.
I guess we’ll find out soon enough.
With everything being rumored this week, why do I feel like the Keynote is going to be a 3 hour event? Hopefully it's less than that, but it feels like everyone wants everything announced at this thing. I remember WWDC like 2 years ago was very very thorough, with the new OS update announcement and a few hardware announcements. I'm sure they need to hold some of this stuff for other announcements throughout the year, like the Iphone event or maybe even another event. I'm just really hoping they talk about the new software and service updates. Isn't that was the gist of "development" are, more on the software side?
It was my workplace display back in 2012 along with a 2012 Retina MacBook Pro. We must have gotten a bad batch or something, even took mine to the Apple Store twice, but could never replicated the issue in the store. Had keyboard and mouse connected to keyboard hooked up to one of the USB ports to have it ready to go when getting to work and it would work for a couple of weeks and then stop for week or a couple of days. Hated those displays, but if it’s been rock solid for you, that’s great. The previous Cinema displays were my golden unicorns…20” displays especially. Had one drop on the linoleum floor from 3’, bent the hell out of it and it just kept chugging along. Same for the 30” displays. Little flaky with Thunderbolt docks and dual DP to DVI adapter, but great image and backlighting even after years of continuous use.
Yeah, there are, but this is an easy conquest for Apple, along with wireless access points and I still believe Tim dropped the ball on this one trying to laser focus the company and move us all to cellular iPads back in 2012-2016.
After the lease was up on the 27” Thunderbolt displays, I went with Dell P2715Q in August of 2015, which worked great until they wouldn’t ever wake up. Image was great, but no wakey. Drove me nuts. And Dell doesn’t give two s***s as their support page says macOS is not supported, so they wash their hands.
So we came up with a workaround and lived with the until we were ready to return them. Despite my troubles with the TB Displays, I still had enough goodwill with Apple to want to use their displays, they were simply better, more consistent and the employees liked them and for the most part they worked pretty well. But on build out of the new lease, Apple no longer sells any displays, at all. Which would have been an easy sale if they made any, but nope, nothing. So we bought a couple of P2715Qs off the lease and kept them paired with a 30” ACD. It’s a fail on Apples part and while Apple should NOT offer 27 different displays like Dell does, it wouldn’t kill them to offer counterpart displays to the iMacs and let MBP owners avail themselves. Users go into the Apple Store want Apple stuff, you would think Apple would figure this out as they seem to figure out how to sell $39 keychains and $300 Hermès watch bands. This is my biggest criticism of Tim Cook in that, and this has always been Apple, they only want to take responsibility for just so much and then your on your own. At the end of the day, there is a line, but really, make the experience complete. Outsourcing to LG or Blackmagic things that are central to a core setup for most users just pisses people off. It even shows in the way Apple tries to present these ideal situations for the use of their devices which really only resemble about 50% of their userbase. They need to account for 80% and not worry about the last 20% of those of us that are here that do insane crazy stuff with our setups. But there’s a good 30% of users that fall through the cracks and they manage to find solutions, because Apple sort of blows at anything beyond that golden 50%. External displays and Wireless solutions closed up a big hole for a lot of users.
My other gripe was that they never updated the Thunderbolt Displays to take advantage of Thunderbolt 2 and make the USB ports USB 3 compatible, ditch the FireWire (50/50) on this. Instead Tim just kept producing the same old display. That just reeks of cheap.
I had a 30" as well - just a magnificent creature, and I kind of hope the iMacs, and hopefully this rumoured display goes in the right direction.
I don't think it's even cheapness. I think it's just a culture of a team getting bored. Everyone moves on to more prestigious projects. Google is also notoriously bad at this.
Yeah, you’re a talented employee inside Apple and they say “You can work on monitors, you can work on the wireless access point team, or something new and different that will look much cooler on your resumé. Pick one!”
It could be that the iPad was the “next great thing” Steve Jobs was referring to. I mean, the user base for it is far larger than the Mac ever was or could be, so a lot of folks think it’s a great thing, too. So, Tim’s just following the same script, maybe just a bit slower than Steve Jobs would have.
I can get about 80% of my computing done on an iPad, the other 20% is simply a hard stop, which is why I invested in an M1 MBP. What has held me back from moving to an iPad Pro full time is iPadOS. I’m still using a 2017 12.9” iPad Pro. I’ve contemplated upgrading every time a new iPP 12.9” is released, but until Apple removes the showstoppers for me, the money invested in a faster iPP is simply a waste until the OS removes those barriers. I’m hoping that iPadOS 15 hits the mark or at least gets closer than what we have now. Personally, the Mac is still really relevant for most of us and the move to Apple Silicon finally got me excited again about Apple in general. It’s a great time to be an Apple fan.
We don't know what Steve would've done with the iPad, though.
One thing that strikes me is he demo'd the iPad 2 running GarageBand and iMovie. That was a decade ago. Would the iPad under him have been on a trajectory of more productivity apps? Would we have had Final Cut Pro by now?
What’s sad is that we don’t even have some sort
of control surface or secondary monitor functionality inside of FCP utilizing the iPad in any capacity after 11 years. I understand that extending Logic and/or Final Cut Pro into the iPad space does/can/will/might put a damper on LumaFusion or Ferrite, et al. but to have nothing Pro grade at all from Apple on their iPad Pro just makes no sense to me if the iPad is supposed to supplant the Mac in any way shape or form. Apple sort of articulates it’s vision for the platforms, but then releases an iPad Pro with the same capability as the Mac but with an OS that is severely lacking as an alternative/successor to macOS. I have no idea what Steve vision was, but the iPad, which I love, seems more like a product waiting to exhale.
It's really not that rare (at all) if you look at the history of WWDC over the past ten years.
That’s what I mean by Tim’s going slower than I think Steve Jobs would have. If he really felt that strongly about the next great thing, I have no doubt that he’d have already called for the end of macOS by now to the chagrin of many. I can’t even say for sure if he would have even entertained the M1 Mac experiment.
Sure, people would have been ticked, but he’s Steve Jobs, he’s ticked off FCP 7 users, OS 9 users, PowerPC users, etc.
It wouldn’t have been completely foreign territory to him.Last I looked, it was 50% and that was INCLUDING when Apple talked about hardware but didn’t ship until much later (Mac Pro). If you exclude those where a produce was announced but not released, I wonder what it’d be?
2003 - Power Mac G5
2004 - Cinema Displays
2006 - Mac Pro
2008 - iPhone 3G
2009 - iPhone 3GS, MacBook Pro
2010 - iPhone 4
2012 - MacBook Air, Retina MacBook Pro
2013 - Mac Pro, AirPort Time Capsule, AirPort Extreme, MacBook Air
2017 - iMac, MacBook, MacBook Pro, iMac Pro, iPad Pro, HomePod
2019 - Mac Pro, Pro Display XDR
10 of the last 18 have included hardware. I wouldn’t say that’s “rare“ by any means. Even if it was down to 50/50, which it would be if you looked over the last 20, would you say that getting heads in a coin toss is rare? It’s just not uncommon for them to announce Pro hardware when it’s ready, and there have been a plethora of other signs indicating that these MBPs are indeed ready.
Sure, TB3 can be used to plug into any hard drive available but the solution is less mobile. With the Nifty drive you could semi-permanently add an SD card in a way where it sits flush with the MBP case. That is a very sleek solution that no TB3 drive offers.
No, I wasn’t saying they were rare, just that 50/50 is more of a coin flip than a sure thing. You could flip a coin and be likely to predict correctly based on that. I’ll have to look at some of the WWDC videos to find out if all of these were systems available for purchase during WWDC. For example, I wouldn’t count 2019 as that wasn’t available for sale for most people until 2020.
Couldn't agree with you more about the dis-continued Airport Routers. My AirPort Extreme is still in service as you read this. Glad I bought my MacBook Pro last year too!
I just put my airport extreme back in service in my garage, with backhaul through a powerline adapter. Amazing how well the airports work.