not a bad theory, but you think they would have been smart enough to figure that one out.
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's Phil Schiller: 'We Don't Design for Price, We Design for the Experience'
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
not a bad theory, but you think they would have been smart enough to figure that one out.
This is the most arrogant thing I've ever seen anybody write.
There's people who can't afford it, which is fine (nothing paltry about that). It's a valid criticism - Apple needs to have something affordable in the Mac space if they want to stay relevant. But as they've just shown, they couldn't care less about market penetration, and they will continue losing money and losing market share.
And even if people could afford it anyway (which is the case for most of these people, by the way; 3000 dollars isn't as massive as you seem to be proud of), these people are being smart with their money as they realize exactly what Apple's trying to pull here: giving us "meh" hardware with a keyboard gimmick, gimping it by removing all useful ports so that we have to go out and buy dongles for everything (more $$$), removing past innovations like the MagSafe, banking on a stupid "courage" argument despite including an analog 3.5mm port anyway, giving us less inside the box than ever before, and at the same time raising the price drastically.
There's "I can't afford this" and then there's "I can afford this but I will not support such scummy business practices and choose to invest my money into companies that fight for the customer and thus who deserve my money, not a company that's losing billions and a lot of market share every quarter as people realize how terrible to their customers they are."
You should be ashamed of yourself for stooping so low as to make fun of other people for their financial status. Your parents would not be proud of how you turned out.
Last edited:
The marketing team is lacking (pure) imagination...
You actually think it's Apple doing the copying here??
The prices are exactly in line with every other new MBP announcement of the past decade plus.
The aggressive move towards the future while abandoning tech that is still widely in use is also quintessentially Apple.
You seem to appreciate what Apple has built in the past, but you now want them to change to be more like every other PC maker on the market. You can't have both.
I think everyone is missing the most exciting point. This is the first time EVER that there's a physical Siri button on a Mac. That's revolutionary, I know. Because they told me so.
I can honestly say that your bias against the "other" OS is truly unfounded today. I use both, and continue to use both for various purposes, and honestly at the end of the day Windows is just as easy to use as MacOS, and you might even be surprised at what Windows 10 can do these days compared to Mac.
I agree that using any single OS for many years, the idea of switching an OS is daunting, but if you are a professional and feel you are being underserved and overcharged for the products Apple delivers then you owe it to yourself to try the other OS and put your bias on pause until you do.
I was going to write an essay on why you're utterly wrong here but honestly, it looks like they have you bent already for a new MacBook, so there's no point.
scottish wrote:
"I expect Apple to design for the experience but surely someone questions whether the Touch Bar is worth an additional $500?"
The touchbar holds no interest for me, as I hardly use the existing set of function keys on my 2010 MacBook Pro. Increase and decrease screen brightness, raise and lower volume is about it.
Other than that, I don't see all that much justification for a $500 price increase in the entry-level MacBook Pro.
It has a different CPU, but that was to be expected.
It has THE SAME amount of base-level RAM (8gb).
It does have a larger SSD (256gb vis-a-vis 128gb). But the bumped-up drive doesn't add all that much to the build cost. Perhaps nothing at all, considering as to how drive prices have come down.
It has different ports, actually FEWER of them. Any increase in cost (design + build) for these ports will be recovered (and more) with the dongle sales folks will have to buy to actually use them.
So... seems like we're expected to pay about a $400 premium for the touchbar and "the experience" of using it.
I sense that Schiller's glib comment "we don't design for price, we design for the experience" is gonna come back and bite Apple on its you-know-what.
It's as if they're willing to write off a sizable portion of the user base who (particularly in these difficult financial times for many) had to "reach" to buy a laptop in the $1,200 price range. Guess they'll have to "settle" for the cheapest end of the product line, tough luck.
Actually, I was leaning towards buying a new base-model MBPro. I wanted the new-tech ports and would live with the dongles. Again, didn't care about the touchbar. I would have been willing to pay, say, an additional $100 or so over the cost of the 2015 models.
But NOT $500 more. No way.
I'll just keep on using my ol' 2010 MBPro until it stops working.
Then I'll pick up a 2015 refurb.
That'll work for me...
"I expect Apple to design for the experience but surely someone questions whether the Touch Bar is worth an additional $500?"
The touchbar holds no interest for me, as I hardly use the existing set of function keys on my 2010 MacBook Pro. Increase and decrease screen brightness, raise and lower volume is about it.
Other than that, I don't see all that much justification for a $500 price increase in the entry-level MacBook Pro.
It has a different CPU, but that was to be expected.
It has THE SAME amount of base-level RAM (8gb).
It does have a larger SSD (256gb vis-a-vis 128gb). But the bumped-up drive doesn't add all that much to the build cost. Perhaps nothing at all, considering as to how drive prices have come down.
It has different ports, actually FEWER of them. Any increase in cost (design + build) for these ports will be recovered (and more) with the dongle sales folks will have to buy to actually use them.
So... seems like we're expected to pay about a $400 premium for the touchbar and "the experience" of using it.
I sense that Schiller's glib comment "we don't design for price, we design for the experience" is gonna come back and bite Apple on its you-know-what.
It's as if they're willing to write off a sizable portion of the user base who (particularly in these difficult financial times for many) had to "reach" to buy a laptop in the $1,200 price range. Guess they'll have to "settle" for the cheapest end of the product line, tough luck.
Actually, I was leaning towards buying a new base-model MBPro. I wanted the new-tech ports and would live with the dongles. Again, didn't care about the touchbar. I would have been willing to pay, say, an additional $100 or so over the cost of the 2015 models.
But NOT $500 more. No way.
I'll just keep on using my ol' 2010 MBPro until it stops working.
Then I'll pick up a 2015 refurb.
That'll work for me...
just because we are newbies on here, does not mean we are newbies to mac or computing ..... still I'm glad you're having fun
You missed the point. Even for Mac standards, these laptops are grossly overpriced.
I can afford it. In fact I've been waiting on it. It's not that they jacked the price. It's that they jacked the price while removing functionality, removing compatibility, and while using old hardware to boot. This update was long overdue. There's no reason they couldn't get it right.
Can't plug and play any USB devices without carrying around some sort of hub or adapter
Can't plug in any display without using some sort of adapter
Removed the safety of Magsafe
Removed the SD card slot
Used last year's processors when this year's began shipping to OEMs in the Q2
Used last generation DDR3 memory when DDR4 went on sale in 2014
Used a low end GPU
A max of 16 gigs of memory in a "Pro" machine that surely could use a 32 gig option for some... like me
A starting amount of 256 gigs of storage for the price is insulting
Sold us a bill of goods on the "courage" of removing the 3.5mm jack in the new phone, then left it in the Macbook Pro without giving us a lightning port to use lightning headphones you also sold us on.
So we get emojis for function keys, space gray, and touchid to show for the price increase. Apple isn't innovating anymore. The magic is gone. We should have cloned Steve Jobs when we had a chance.
So much this. I know people say "Steve killed the floppy and Steve killed the..." and that's true but he also kept his rudder in the water. You've got a situation now where you have a new 3.5mm sporting laptop that cannot charge the new 3.5mm-less iPhone without an adapter and the adapter it DOES come with just gives it basic 3.5mm functionality and the headphones the phone comes with don't work on the new laptop (without an adapter). Also, the wireless headphones are clearly a disaster.
Steve may have not been perfect and he did a lot of stuff I hated but he still had common sense and street smarts. He would have most certainly pointed out the ridiculousness of this hodgepodge of a lineup. They probably have more adapter SKUs in the Apple Store than they did iPod SKUs when it opened.
If you're not a newbie to mac or computing, then you should know that historically Macs have been very expensive compared to everything else. The past few years of cheaper Macbook Pros and Airs was a brief anomaly.
Curious, what great products have you developed and brought to market that makes you such a genius?
Go ahead. I have no intention of buying one of these.
I buy high-end Windows laptops regularly as part of my job. These prices are not out of line, and no different than they have been forever at Apple.
People are just reacting to the fact that the prices on the old models have already been reduced over the past years, and I bet there are a ton of people on here using $800 Air's that are pissed because they can't afford the brand new Pro's. Well guess what, you couldn't back in 2008 either.
No they aren't! They start at exactly the same as every other new MBP of the past decade! Which means they've actually come down in price. You are reacting to the fact that you've gotten used to the reduced prices of the mature (meaning OLD) products of the last few years.
Just leave. Enjoy your malware infested Windows PC and the daily reboots. Seriously. I will LMAO if I still see you 6 months from now still commenting on Mac
Yes I can afford it. Would I want to buy it at that price point? No.
Would I buy one if apple priced the machines at the same price point as the prior generation? Definitely.
Would I buy one if apple priced the machines at the same price point as the prior generation? Definitely.
I'm sure your professional track record and successes give you credibility to direct Jony and the Apple team
Odd, given that the most negative comments I've read are about the 'cheap keyboard'.
I'll reserve judgement, but will not likely be buying anything new for a while.
I'll reserve judgement, but will not likely be buying anything new for a while.
You're absolutely correct. You don't have to go very far back to see this isn't unusual pricing. In 2010 a 13" Macbook Pro with 2.66ghz Core2Duo was $1500. This was not a very good computer, even for the time.
I can afford it. In fact I've been waiting on it. It's not that they jacked the price. It's that they jacked the price while removing functionality, removing compatibility, and while using old hardware to boot. This update was long overdue. There's no reason they couldn't get it right.
Can't plug and play any USB devices without carrying around some sort of hub or adapter
Can't plug in any display without using some sort of adapter
Removed the safety of Magsafe
Removed the SD card slot
Used last year's processors when this year's began shipping to OEMs in the Q2
Used last generation DDR3 memory when DDR4 went on sale in 2014
Used a low end GPU
A max of 16 gigs of memory in a "Pro" machine that surely could use a 32 gig option for some... like me
A starting amount of 256 gigs of storage for the price is insulting
Sold us a bill of goods on the "courage" of removing the 3.5mm jack in the new phone, then left it in the Macbook Pro without giving us a lightning port to use lightning headphones you also sold us on.
So we get emojis for function keys, space gray, and touchid to show for the price increase. Apple isn't innovating anymore. The magic is gone. We should have cloned Steve Jobs when we had a chance.
What are doing on a Mac that has your memory sitting at 15+ in use? And please don't say 'running Virtual Machines' because that is just not a demanding enough use case to upturn Apple's engineering.
Here's a more realistic picture when my VM's are not running on my iMac, but many apps are in use:
