I've made a lot of posts in this thread the last couple of days because this topic is something I do feel pretty strongly about. This post might be the last or one of the last posts I make on this now because I need to take up the challenge of one person I responded to earlier, and get back to real work and life.
I take issue with a couple of things:
1. People jumping up and down about specs, ports, and not being able to mess with the insides, again as if that stuff specifically is the stuff that matters.
It's not. What matters is using the tool to do the job. At least that's Apple's position. If your goal is to f*** with it then you're not Apple's target market and you haven't been since the first Mac came out in 1984. Let it go. It's never going to happen.
2. People spouting things like "no one likes the keyboard/touch bar/whatever" or "no one wants an All In One" or "everyone wants X port" and Apple's alienating their user base by not listening to that particular complaint.
That's ridiculous because the people saying this can't possibly be speaking for everyone. And those statements completely ignore the facts of what the market is saying with their wallets. If
no one wants an AIO, then why do iMacs sell so well? If
no one likes the keyboard or touch bar (I happen to rather love the keyboard, although the touch bar I can take or leave) then why are these things selling better than ever? If these people's statements were true then Apple's MBP sales would be plummeting. They're clearly not.
3. People saying or at least suggesting that Apple's decisions are insane because those decisions are not meeting their specific use case as if that's the only one that matters, or back to 2 above and their use case is supposedly everyone's. This comes down partly to the upgradeability stuff I covered above, but to ports more than anything else.
And this ports thing is probably my biggest beef because it goes directly against what I want in a Mac.
I wrote to Tim a year or two before the 2016 MBP came out and I said I was tired of lugging round a machine that had a slew of ports on it I had absolutely no need for. But then again I didn't want to suggest he make a Mac that only catered to MY needs because others have different needs. But with Thunderbolt - the ultimate docking port - everyone could have everything (sure, with adapters). Before TB there was no easy way to have more than one ethernet port. The "fast" port on the Mac was FireWire and there was usually only one of those. There was usually only one kind of video port (so only one external monitor. And driven by a mobile GPU. With thunderbolt I could have everything (including desktop class GPU's "in" my laptop via eGPU).
And in 2016 he gave me exactly what I asked for. A mac with four thunderbolt ports and nothing else (ok he gave me a headphone jack as well). But that said I'm pretty sure they were planning it anyway and I highly doubt my email had anything to do with it. So why did they do it?
The point I'm really trying to make in all the many responses I've posted in this entire thread the last couple of days (which really just started because someone got up my nose and I felt the need to call him out and ... now it's all a bit out of hand lol) is that Apple is trying to push the industry away from the many "standards" it's currently dealing with, and push it towards two:
1. Wireless (Wifi and bluetooth) for everything that doesn't need to be faster than what those offer, and
2. USB-C (the -C port, more than the USB protocol) including Thunderbolt 3 (the protocol) for everything that does.
They have pushed the industry forward in the past to adopt new and better standards, that the industry wouldn't have without them - classic example is the removal of basically everything except USB and CD in the original 1998 iMac. Thanks to that move, followed by the companies that jumped on the bandwagon, we're not all still using floppies, Serial and Parallel ports, etc. today.
And that wasn't the first or last time. Heck the GUI became a reality because of the Mac in the first place, and everyone complained then that that wasn't compatible with anything. Sure each of these technologies existed before Apple did their thing, but if Steve hadn't built the Mac do you think Microsoft or anyone else would have come up with Windows or any other GUI on their own in anywhere near the time frame it happened? Sure, we'd probably have GUI interfaces by now (35 years later), but how much more recently would it have been than it actually was, thanks to the Mac in the first place. How many years (or decades) longer would we have been using text based user interfaces in computers before someone else pushed the GUI? (No, Apple didn't think of it. But they pushed it).
And what about when they released the iPhone and everyone complained it didn't have a physical keyboard? Where would the phone industry be today if Apple hadn't pushed that?
Every time they've done this there's been growing pains. The industry has pushed back every time. And MR readers (or the equivalent of the day) have complained about how it's not compatible with whatever's there at the time, and how they have to adapt one way or another (physical adapters, or change of habits or whatever else).
So yes...
Some users still need HDMI.
Some users still need SD cards.
Some users still need USB-A.
But the
absence of these from Apple's computers are already pushing manufacturers to adapt their choices to accommodate Apple.
Example: One person mentioned the pain of configuring any given camera's wifi/bluetooth connection. I can't speak to the pain of that (no experience with it) but I can be confident that as Apple pushes the industry forward it will get much better.
And just like we wonder now how we ever did anything productive without the internet, or how we ever navigated anywhere without GPS, or how we ever communicated without email or cell phones (or facebook lol), one day...
... we'll look back on these silly little SD card things and wonder why we weren't connecting our cameras wirelessly all along.
... we'll look back on the many different sized and shaped ports and connectors (even 12 or so different USB connectors alone!), none of which fit each other, on all our devices, and wonder how we ever connected anything and wonder why everything wasn't one connector in the first place.
...etc.
And we'll be there 10 years sooner than we would otherwise have been, largely (not arrogant enough to think it's solely, but still, largely) because Apple took
everything else off their flagship laptops.
Meanwhile, it's only the laptops they're removing everything from. Which makes sense. A laptop is a device you carry everywhere, so you want it to have as little in it as possible while still meeting as much needs as possible. Thunderbolt 3 does that better than anything ever before. Someone here gave a list of four devices attached to his mac, and oh no, we're out of ports! That's idiotic and naive. Thunderbolt 3 is a extreme high performance docking port. If you attach a dock to each of your ports then you can have nearly 50 ports on your Mac. And yes, that's a bit idiotic too, but just pointing it out to point out the idiocy of his comment.
My iMac Pro (and all the iMacs) still have four USB-A ports, SD card port, RJ-45 Ethernet, and yes, even a headphone jack! Contrary to people's comments here, Apple's not insane. There's no reason to take all those off a desktop. But space, weight, and battery life are all at a premium on a laptop. And there is absolutely
no way Apple can create the perfect set of miscellaneous ports on their laptops to cater to everyone (Someone here even said the laptops need two HDMI ports and two full sized DP ports. Wtf? Thank god they didn't do that).
So four extreme high performance daisy chainable docking ports on a laptop are the perfect solution that either directly or indirectly meets
everyone's needs. Yes, I say indirectly - sometimes you have to buy an adapter or two. But it means
you get to choose which ports
you want, regardless of what everyone else wants
And if you don't want a million dongles, is
one too many? Buy
one hyperdrive. And there are a number of different configurations of that product so you can pick and choose which ports you want on that
one "dongle". And when you do, the sum total of weight and volume you are carrying with you (with one of those plus a current 15" MBP) is still less than what you carried with you when you had your 2015 MBP and all the ports that come with the hyperdrive. But OMG it's two physical pieces of equipment instead of one. You can remember to carry your power adapter with you. And your keys. And your wallet. You really can't remember this one extra device that has all your ports on it? Or... if you just keep it permanently connected, then you have your 2015 MBP back but with 2018 specs. And Mag-safe whiners? Get any one of
these and you can connect it to
either side!!
So... perhaps the MBP isn't the
perfect device for any
one individual because it doesn't have the
exact configuration of ports on it that that individual wants. (It's not even perfect for me, despite all my ranting here. Frankly I want 6 or 8 Thunderbolt 3 ports. Yes, I would use them.) But indirectly it's the
perfect device for almost everyone. Here's the kicker:
They just moved the entire selection of port options external to the machine and shrunk the machine accordingly. What's the problem?
If you read all that and still don't get it, or you get it but still detest it, then yep, Apple isn't for you. No amount of complaining is going to make Apple change this course. Same with their approach to upgradeability and repairability. My suggestion is you get off this forum, switch to Windows, and do something else far more productive and enjoyable with your life.
PS. 2019 Mac Pro...
Upgradeability and repairability? Brace yourselves. I can guarantee the upcoming "modular" Mac Pro is going to be
very selective about whatever "modular" means in that context. Apple doesn't want the support nightmare of dealing with every piece of hardware possible out there. And I don't want to have to pay for them to have that nightmare. The absence of that nightmare is a large part of what makes Apple stuff work soooo much better than Windows (and if you don't agree with that statement then you're on the wrong forum in the first place - There's a reason Apple doesn't currently work with NVIDIA).
It's going to a pretty narrow selection of interchangeable options that will do the same thing the MBP's do: Meet the vast majority of practical needs, without necessarily catering to people's specific spec desires (NVIDIA vs AMD? Forget it. AMD does the job. They're running with that and that's it, for now at least) or to people's desire to tinker. They are building a
tool with which people can perform their
professional jobs. Not a piece of machinery people can take apart and f*** with.
If I had more time and motivation I'd proofread this post more and try to cull it down. I'm sure someone's going to try to tell me I don't have a life because I bothered to write all this in the first place, but its length is because I can't be bothered trying to make my points more concisely, and I'm going to sign off now and get back to my life.
