Considering the 6th gen MacBook Pro doesn't exist yet, I'm not sure how it can be a train wreck.
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Apple's Most Questionable Design Decisions in Recent Memory
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Um. How often do you need to charge it?
Pro tip- when the better is getting low, plug it in just before you finish work for the evening. When you come back in the morning it’s 100% and ready to do for another month or two.
My tesla can’t drive drive while it’s charging either. Doesn’t mean it’s a failure of a product. Just needs a human with a small amount of foresight to operate it ?
Because some like it and some don't. A decision to discontinue on the new Macs was totally welcomed by most, but some just accepted regardless (including myself). I liked the Touch Bar. personally. Would have like it to be more customizable as well as included with the new Mac Book Pro 2022. There is room for it...but I think (as other threads have said) those who liked the Touch Bar seems "ok" without it (also like myself). Worked great with Logic Pro and Final Cut Pro (not including the need for a larger left and right arrow keys on the new Mac Book Pro). Final Cut especially needs the left and Right arrow keys bigger, but oh well.
How is "becoming a wired mouse" for a couple of hours a month while it charges worse than becoming a dead mouse and forcing you to stop work while it re-charges? I have a Logitech mouse - when the battery gets low you plug in the cable and keep working with the minor inconvenience of a cable, until it is charged, then remove the cable. Actually, in reality, I plug it in and forget about the cable until long after the mouse is fully charged - after which it is good for another month (or was years ago when it was a new mouse and the batteries were tip-top - but that will apply to the Tragic Mouse too).
...so, less flexibility is good and people should be forced to use it how Ive Hast Decreed (actually, it's not even that -see later). Got it.
If you have a mouse with a sensibly-placed charging point, you don't have to keep working while gets a full charge (leaving it good for a few weeks of untethered work). You want to drop everything and have a coffee for 10 minutes while the mouse gets just enough charge to make it through the rest of the day? Fine go ahead - nothing is stopping you.
Does this make the Magic Mouse unfit for use? No, but that is not the point - this is a premium, $80 mouse from a company that prides itself on design. For that, you expect attention to detail - instead you get cut corners.
....and that brings us to the point. This isn't the result of some careful design decision bourn out of the inscrutable wisdom of Apple's black-belt designers. It's just Apple sparing every expense, thus:
1. Take an existing design with removable AA batteries
2. Update it with a fixed Li battery by making the minimum viable changes.
3. ???
4. Profit
Anybody with (and with the management's permission to apply) an ounce of insight would realise that there's a difference in affordance between a fixed battery and removable AAs - vis. the AAs can be replaced in seconds leaving the mouse up-and-running while the old batteries are re-charged externally. That could easily be mitigated by locating the charging port and allowing the mouse to be used while it was charging but - oh fiddlesticks - that would mean changing the design of the whole mouse rather than just replacing the bottom panel. Perish the thought, it's not like we're a 3 Tn company with massive resources, selling our products at a healthy premium profit margin or anything...
I think it's safe to assume there are significantly more people who don't than do.
It ultimately has more cons than the pros it brought and the cons are just that much more significantly irritating to deal with.
In the typing of this reply, I have accidentally touched the f12 section and brought up HTML view.
All of this is so true! So much was hanging onto "Form over function" J. Ive driven design. I almost paused to give an exception to the 2013 Mac Pro because it is still a fine machine I love to use. But nah. The Mac Pro line (since the customizable G5) has been a non-starter for most pros working in real engineering and complex design environments.
I would put the Airpods Max case as an example of great design. I went through a lot of OTE headphones in my life and never once used the cases that came with them whereas I use the “bra” all the time thanks to how quickly I can slip it on and because of its lightweight and near zero footprint.
I think it was not a "mistake", but an attempt that did not work (thermal issues). I have one and updated the CPU (scary but success), RAM and Hard drive. I love it actually, but a "mistake" I would disagree. It was more of an thermal issue that prevented upgrading the cards and getting other vendors to buy into it. If you came from the 2012 Mac Pro or earlier, than of course you might not like it due to no PCI ports or expansion. The Mac Pro 2013 would have better been served as a Mac Mini Pro.
If it never came out and came out now with a M-class Silicon chip, probably people may have had a different experience and/or opinion. As a "Mini" Pro now with the M-class chips...might have worked.
I thought the Siri remote was interesting at first — it had a gyro in it so you could use it for games, and the touch sensor was very responsive. I agree it was a lousy media remote though.
I’m surprised nobody has mentioned the other dumb thing about it: this light, thin object had a GLASS SURFACE that would be destroyed if dropped on a tile floor. That happened to me while kiddo was staying with a grandparent, and there were many years.
It’s been a while so I don’t remember the exact cost, but as I recall a new one would have been $80 but the Apple store gave me a refurbished one for “only” $70.
It spent its whole life in a silicon condom-case that made it less pleasant to use but easier to hold and way more protected from accident tap drops.
I replaced it with the aluminum updated remote as soon as it because available.
I’m surprised nobody has mentioned the other dumb thing about it: this light, thin object had a GLASS SURFACE that would be destroyed if dropped on a tile floor. That happened to me while kiddo was staying with a grandparent, and there were many years.
It’s been a while so I don’t remember the exact cost, but as I recall a new one would have been $80 but the Apple store gave me a refurbished one for “only” $70.
It spent its whole life in a silicon condom-case that made it less pleasant to use but easier to hold and way more protected from accident tap drops.
I replaced it with the aluminum updated remote as soon as it because available.
The tech sites have never really understood the design for the AirPods Max case. They're not designed for "throwing in a bag". They're designed for quick access and easy charging/sleeping. Works well for those two points of emphasis. And you don't get those with a "throw in a bag" design.
I get a notification to charge it before it dies.
And I prefer the clean look of it. The black one looks so good I wish I can lick it without questioning my mental wellbeing.
Am I the only one who thinks, that the external power brick for the new iMacs fits into the same category? Reminds me of the days the power brick for the Mac Mini was nearly as big as the Mini itself. And plugging the Ethernet into the power brick makes it even worse.
Bad as the charging design is (it only takes one look to see that this is an accident waiting to happen) I think this only scratches the surface of the awfulness that is the Apple Pencil 1.
1. Vulnerable charging position (QV)
2. The biggie - has non-replaceable rechargeable battery and no off switch so, if left unused for too long will totally drain the battery, destroying it and turning the whole pencil into a $100 brick. That's what happened to mine (although the fact that it was left unused owes something to 3-6 below).
3. Totally round and rolls for miles - even the makers of cheap biros have adopted the genius idea of making them hexagonal or including a pocket clip so they won't roll off the desk.
4. Has cap and tiny gender-changer which can be lost (remember, this was exclusively an iPad peripheral)
5. Top heavy design - at least as long as a brand-new pencil but much heavier - hold it in a typical "pencil grip" and the center of gravity is way above the point you are holding it. The purely cosmetic aim of making it "no thicker than a regular pencil" was allowed to override actual ergonomics.
6. Designed exclusively for the (ultra portable) iPad Pro with no thought about how it could be clipped to the iPad or simultaneously charged.
5 is probably the most pathetic - this was primarily an accessory for the (then) new iPad Pro which included a new magnetic dock/charging port for the smart keyboard but the two products were apparently designed in different silos. How on earth were the iPad smart connector and the Pencil not designed to work together?
I was always so paranoid about accidentally snapping it while charging that I always used the adapter and charged it VIA a lightning cable attached to my MacBook. The only time I plugged it into my iPad Pro was when the Bluetooth was having issues with it so I had to make it forget the pencil and then pair it again...which happened way too often
I can get behind most of the criticisms in the article, but never got the vitriol against the Magic Mouse 2 charging port. You get fair warning well in advance that the battery is low, charging doesn’t take long, and keeps its charge for weeks. It seems to me that anyone who rails against it is really just looking for something to complain about.
While I can't quite call it "questionable", I am not a fan of the design decision with respect to the size of the Up and Down arrow keys on magic keyboards. It is nice and compact, but not practical for my needs. Unless I look at the keys as I press them, I usually press both Up and Arrow keys at the same time.
Per the original Apple Pencil, it was designed to charge that way because the tech for inductive charging in that form factor wasn't really ready yet. That's not a design mistake. That's Apple wanting to get the Pencil onto market so that people could use it. Oh, the horror...
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Well, yeah, since it seems that the only reason for the power brick and magnetic connector was the completely unnecessary desire to make the iMac too thin - not only too thin for the power adapter but too thin to accept an IEC mains connector or an Ethernet port. But... oh, look - magnets! shiny!
Having Ethernet on the brick is a classic "works for me" echo-chamber decision: if (a) your ethernet socket is located beside the mains socket and (b) all that is within reach of the magnetic cable without needing the mains extension cable then it looks like a really good idea. However if - heaven forfend - your Ethernet is (say) coming from a switch or router at desk level and your power is at floor level (...and maybe needs the extender cable) then it's a dumpster fire that means running the power cable down to the socket and an ethernet cable back up to the router.
...and, also, a nice example of asymmetrical disadvantages. Floor level Ethernet and port is on the computer? Get one of those spiral cable tidies to bind your power and Ethernet cables neatly together (which, if you care about, you sorted years ago for your old computer). Desk-level Ethernet and port is on the power brick (and if you need an extension cable that is mid way between your computer and the socket) - sorry, you're holding it wrong.
Oh, and with the old design, if the power socket was too far away you could get a bog-standard IEC cable of whatever length you needed and have a seamless cable between the computer and the wall. Now you're stuck with a power brick half way along.
It's like evolution without the "getting better" part.
1. Yeah, No. There is no reason the lightning port could not have been placed at the front of the mouse to allow charging without turning it on it's back like a wayward turtle. A charging dock? Yeah, No times 10.
There is no reason the mouse could not be charged and used at the same time. Logitech and others have mice that charge and can be used at the same time. I have one. It's never occurred to me to NOT unplug it when I was done charging it.
Points 2 and 3, why not then turn the wireless keyboard over to charge it? Did Apple mistakenly leave the charging port where it is on the keyboard? Why treat one differently then the other?
Face it, the mouse charge port being on the bottom is just wrong.
I’d add the ability to accidentally close Safari without any confirmation as a design fail, forcing me to use a third party app to manage it cause rebinding hotkey doesn’t work.
Also, I agree all questionable design choices here, and I am still surprised to see Apple refuse to make charging experience look nicer. It’s not like the mouse will last indefinitely. Or maybe Magic Mouse 3 will incorporate special mouse pad that powers the mouse and there will be no battery inside the mouse?
Also, I agree all questionable design choices here, and I am still surprised to see Apple refuse to make charging experience look nicer. It’s not like the mouse will last indefinitely. Or maybe Magic Mouse 3 will incorporate special mouse pad that powers the mouse and there will be no battery inside the mouse?
We do forget sometimes the amount of products Apple produces and pushes the boundaries with. Most of these other companies that Apple always get compared to only make one genre of product.
You don’t hear about bad Logitech computer designs.
Or how terrible the Dell phones are.
Or how Nvidia really screwed up their tablets this year.
Etc. etc.
And don’t get me wrong a poor decision is a poor decision, but that hindsight thing can make us all point fingers and look like Einstein. ?
You don’t hear about bad Logitech computer designs.
Or how terrible the Dell phones are.
Or how Nvidia really screwed up their tablets this year.
Etc. etc.
And don’t get me wrong a poor decision is a poor decision, but that hindsight thing can make us all point fingers and look like Einstein. ?