I'm in my 50's, and been a mac user for along time. After Jobs, they lost their magic. Cook is a care taker CEO. No innovation anymore. That price for the pro is outrageous. I feel bad for college students wanting one .I recently went back to school, and picked up a Surface Pro 4 labor day special, with trade in, and out the door was 549.00. Granted it is the base core m3, but for office, video etc. it works perfect. The screen resolution is perfect for these old eyes. Yes it doesn't have super battery life, about 6 hours, but that's all I need. I can afford the new Pro, but that price is too high for what your getting. And a ipad pro doesn't cut it. No excuse for that function bar.
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Apple's Phil Schiller: 'We Don't Design for Price, We Design for the Experience'
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Even leaving aside all the discussion of the relative merits and value of the TouchBar on the new MacBook Pros.
To me the essence of yesterday’s event is that Apple no longer has anything to offer to average people who love macOS and are looking for a modern, affordable, versatile and mid-powerful laptop – that sweet spot the MacBook Air filled for many years – in their current lineup. The entry point for modern Apple laptop currently currently stands at 1,499€ for the MacBook here in Germany. And what exactly is it you get for that price? An underpowered and not really versatile niche product not fit for use a primary computer. What makes this all the more offensive is that the company even raised the prices on all of their now ancient machines such as the above mentioned MacBook Air.
As a student looking for good value for money in a laptop that runs macOS this really puts me in a conundrum with no good alternatives.
To me the essence of yesterday’s event is that Apple no longer has anything to offer to average people who love macOS and are looking for a modern, affordable, versatile and mid-powerful laptop – that sweet spot the MacBook Air filled for many years – in their current lineup. The entry point for modern Apple laptop currently currently stands at 1,499€ for the MacBook here in Germany. And what exactly is it you get for that price? An underpowered and not really versatile niche product not fit for use a primary computer. What makes this all the more offensive is that the company even raised the prices on all of their now ancient machines such as the above mentioned MacBook Air.
As a student looking for good value for money in a laptop that runs macOS this really puts me in a conundrum with no good alternatives.
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Those things are indeed pro-grade specs, but because of Apple wanting to go so slim, they're making a slow machine in terms of CPU (13" seems to be dual core only) and GPU performance (Pro 450 with 1TFLOPs is barely faster than the 0.8TFLOPs of the MacBook Pro 2011!) and pro users simply have no use for a product that is this slow. Okay, the touch bar is nice for DJ's, but who cares that IO is fast if anything that comes into the machine cannot be processed at reasonable speeds? Noone can defining this machine for photo or video editing.
I've used Apple laptops since the 540c in the 90s. Up until a few years ago I would be excited about new Apple products. It's hard to acknowledged that nothing Apple is doing these days interests me and certainly nothing feels exciting or useful. And, judging by the audience's response at Apple's event, I'm not alone. Apple seems to have run out of ideas and are pushing technology just for the sake of it. I can see that the touchbar is better than function keys, but I can't see how this will be useful in the way they are saying. I mean, when you're working on something on the screen, you don't want to look down at the touchbar all the time. Also, while touch typing, you're looking at the screen and to have to look down for some automatic fill function just isn't practical and slows things down. Maybe it could be helpful in editing photos, but even there I think a good trackpad and GUI is better than messing around with a tiny strip at the top of the keyboard. If the trackpad was like the touchbar I think it would work better, but even then not particularly useful.
And the price is crazy in today's market given that there is little new except for the questionably useful touchbar. I am living in the UK right now where the prices are beyond belief because of the falling pound. I've never hesitated to pay for Apple reliability and quality before, but this is too much even for me.
And the price is crazy in today's market given that there is little new except for the questionably useful touchbar. I am living in the UK right now where the prices are beyond belief because of the falling pound. I've never hesitated to pay for Apple reliability and quality before, but this is too much even for me.
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The price of the new Macbook Pros is fairly outrageous, but the problem is the rather mediocre specs. 16Gb DDR3, cheap and crappy dGPUs (and they have the cheek to ask for $100 for the 460), doesn't make a good value for money proposition. The "magical" toolbar or whatever is called seems little more than a gimmick.
I thought I'd order a 15" after the announcement but now I'm not so sure. Seems underwhelming and the price isn't doing it any favours.
I thought I'd order a 15" after the announcement but now I'm not so sure. Seems underwhelming and the price isn't doing it any favours.
DDR3 RAM on top of the line stuff in November 2016, yes Phil. I stopped believe your crap long time ago
Can't you just stick to what you have? Or is that not an option?
The next surfacebook pro is waiting for me... but after new year or so, want see what will be with kaby lake first...
Here is something for people to keep in mind. Recently the British Pound sank in the UK and Apple followed the footsteps of Microsoft and raised prices by 20% 
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...macs-in-u-k-by-20-percent?cmpid=yhoo.headline
Remember below when Apple did the same thing in Japan when YEN tanked?? YEN has since rose from 125 YEN to around 100 YEN and is currently at around 105 YEN so why didn't Apple drop the prices by 20% after YEN appreciated in value??
https://www.macrumors.com/2015/03/10/apple-price-increase-2015-usd/
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...macs-in-u-k-by-20-percent?cmpid=yhoo.headline
Remember below when Apple did the same thing in Japan when YEN tanked?? YEN has since rose from 125 YEN to around 100 YEN and is currently at around 105 YEN so why didn't Apple drop the prices by 20% after YEN appreciated in value??
https://www.macrumors.com/2015/03/10/apple-price-increase-2015-usd/
4 years ago we could buy a retina MBP for about kr 15000; the price now is kr 27000 - ie almost double. With purchasing agreements etc. we can have two 15" i7-based Windows machines (with 32GB RAM) with 4 years support for the same as one new rMBP.
That's not super relevant though is it. The world and IT are very, very different now. All computers were expensive then.
I'm disappointed.
I had been wanting a new MBP for awhile and waiting for the new one to come out.
Apple fan since 2000.
I'm going to be moving on to another option and sadly I don't even know what, but the price of the new MBP and the loss of USB/HDMI/SD Card reader really put me out of touch.
Really disappointed
I had been wanting a new MBP for awhile and waiting for the new one to come out.
Apple fan since 2000.
I'm going to be moving on to another option and sadly I don't even know what, but the price of the new MBP and the loss of USB/HDMI/SD Card reader really put me out of touch.
Really disappointed
If you talk out of your ass for 20 year you start to believe it... I'm sorry, but this MBP is waaaay overpriced. The base 15 is 2900 dollars where I live. Are you kidding me? This is the first time in 10 years that I'm looking into switching away for macOS. Which is a shame, I LOVE macOS. But I love living indoors even more... I just can't afford it.
Schillers statement on touch input reminds me of my grandads stance about the internet, which has absolutely no use to him - doesn't mean it has tremendous use for a large group of people though.
The whole "gorilla arm" story with vertical input planes is utter nonsense. Content creators are used to vertical input planes. Vertical input planes didn't stop DaVinci to make some awesome art. Vertical input planes didn't stop my teachers to teach me math, didn't stop architects to draw concept on their walls, didn't stop great thinkers and scientists to develop fantastic ideas on their black boards!
Hey Phil here is news. We are all SITTING on our desks and risking our health and getting bad backs, because typewriters and later desktop COMPUTERS forced us to sit down! Don't assume this is how people want to work with their digital devices! We want them to be portable and un-obstructuve as a sheet of paper. Microsoft get's this!
It's the most disappointing statement to come out of a company that was known to "get things right". Look at the full Mac lineup and what they have done ... 1 out of 6 Mac lines has gotten a minor MVP (minimum valuable product) update - that's it.
Schiller is telling me the trackpad is end all be all solution on how I am asked to edit content on my productivity device?
The keyboard and mouse input I'm forced to use as input of my daily work is TERRIBLE. I had 20 years to get adjusted to the mouse, but guess what, I can't use the mouse for sketching or quick annotations on layouts. We need to get rid of that mouse as a main input device, Trackpads are just an interim solution until you can go "all the way".
We want a pen, and we want it to be able to directly manipulate the content we are seeing on the screen, everything else is a cheap workaround to technological limitations that do not exist today.
The whole "gorilla arm" story with vertical input planes is utter nonsense. Content creators are used to vertical input planes. Vertical input planes didn't stop DaVinci to make some awesome art. Vertical input planes didn't stop my teachers to teach me math, didn't stop architects to draw concept on their walls, didn't stop great thinkers and scientists to develop fantastic ideas on their black boards!
Hey Phil here is news. We are all SITTING on our desks and risking our health and getting bad backs, because typewriters and later desktop COMPUTERS forced us to sit down! Don't assume this is how people want to work with their digital devices! We want them to be portable and un-obstructuve as a sheet of paper. Microsoft get's this!
It's the most disappointing statement to come out of a company that was known to "get things right". Look at the full Mac lineup and what they have done ... 1 out of 6 Mac lines has gotten a minor MVP (minimum valuable product) update - that's it.
Schiller is telling me the trackpad is end all be all solution on how I am asked to edit content on my productivity device?
The keyboard and mouse input I'm forced to use as input of my daily work is TERRIBLE. I had 20 years to get adjusted to the mouse, but guess what, I can't use the mouse for sketching or quick annotations on layouts. We need to get rid of that mouse as a main input device, Trackpads are just an interim solution until you can go "all the way".
We want a pen, and we want it to be able to directly manipulate the content we are seeing on the screen, everything else is a cheap workaround to technological limitations that do not exist today.
How about those of us with expensive Android and Chrome devices do we get to stay dad?
There was another one of those slow reveal from close up, in shadow with a staccato. Deliberate. Jony Ive. Voiceovers. Where he. Portentiously. Describes how the new product feature. Underpins. The. Essential. Being. Of. The new product.
They really are becoming predictable and rote part of any new product keynote.
Right there with you. The £1699 QuadHD XPS 15 is under serious consideration at the moment.
Affordability is "absolutely something we care about," Schiller says. "But we don't design for price, we design for the experience and the quality people expect from Mac. Sometimes that means we end up at the higher end of the range, but not on purpose, just because that's what it costs."
Lol OK that's probably why everything is expensive then.
Lol OK that's probably why everything is expensive then.
Good news for Mac users that they're still committed to the notebook form factor (though I still get the feeling they're itching to kill off most/all of the desktops) and the confirmation that they're not going to try to make macOS = iOS is pretty big.
I'm no longer one of them though
1) I don't remember them ever having confirmed before that they actually decided against turning macOS into iOS, that would've been useful information. I always thought it was probably going to be gradually done over the course of a decade (after all, they've already been locking things down more and more with "System Integrity Protection" etc), and was constantly making contingency plans such as switching to cross platform software so I could easily bail if it turned into a walled garden like iOS.
2) I get that it took this long because they wanted more than just a speed bump, that's somewhat a good idea, but it was so long that I gave up waiting and bailed (well, a combination of that, distaste at their treatment of customers with things like iPhone touch disease, etc etc)
3) Price may not be any consideration for them, but it is for me. Any chance of me returning to the Mac just went out of the window - the touch bar is a brilliant idea, I love it, but compared to picking up a 1-2 year old Thinkpad refurb for £500 it's not £1250's worth of a brilliant idea!! I can't afford to be forking out £1750 on a laptop (especially of a type that can't really be repaired or upgraded), that's just insane. Even the pleb version is insanely priced (£1450). No can do.
Good luck to them, I'm out. They've always pushed the "hard to justify the price but it's so sexy..." boundary but have taken a leap over it now!
I'm no longer one of them though
1) I don't remember them ever having confirmed before that they actually decided against turning macOS into iOS, that would've been useful information. I always thought it was probably going to be gradually done over the course of a decade (after all, they've already been locking things down more and more with "System Integrity Protection" etc), and was constantly making contingency plans such as switching to cross platform software so I could easily bail if it turned into a walled garden like iOS.
2) I get that it took this long because they wanted more than just a speed bump, that's somewhat a good idea, but it was so long that I gave up waiting and bailed (well, a combination of that, distaste at their treatment of customers with things like iPhone touch disease, etc etc)
3) Price may not be any consideration for them, but it is for me. Any chance of me returning to the Mac just went out of the window - the touch bar is a brilliant idea, I love it, but compared to picking up a 1-2 year old Thinkpad refurb for £500 it's not £1250's worth of a brilliant idea!! I can't afford to be forking out £1750 on a laptop (especially of a type that can't really be repaired or upgraded), that's just insane. Even the pleb version is insanely priced (£1450). No can do.
Good luck to them, I'm out. They've always pushed the "hard to justify the price but it's so sexy..." boundary but have taken a leap over it now!
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Do you think Apple will explain Phil's remarks during the spec details for 15"? "Starts with 16 gigs of memory"...? If it starts with that implies an upgrade option. Strange choice of words. Perhaps there is 32Gb option coming soon but is not available yet? I hope so.