Apple's Phil Schiller: 'We Don't Design for Price, We Design for the Experience'

[kdarling]

Considering it is an entire iOS device under there, I understand the price difference.

That's because you've obviously never designed a coprocessor system. (I have, and even ported a realtime OS to one.)

Putting a cut-down OS on a coprocessor is old as the hills. Even chips like disk controllers can have cut down realtime OSes on them.

It's quick, and cheap, too, especially if you own the OS as Apple does. Apple used a tiny piece of iOS because it also had code already written for TouchId. This must've saved them a ton of time.

Heck, SIM cards and Chip&Pin cards have had ARM processors for decades, often running Java. South Korea Telecom even put Android on their SIMs back in 2010. And those cards and SIMs cost about $15.

So no sir, we're talking a comparatively cheap solution here. Throw in the display, and we're talking maybe $30-40 cost including R&D. Actually, if they sell millions of these, cut that in half.

It was the smart and relatively easy thing to do.

 

[Bigsk8r]

The touch bar seems like a big joke. It doesn't even replace the Mac OS dock.

This is actually one thing I hoped it WOULD do. Allow you to quick launch from the Touch Bar that would be a customizable dock when you want, and toggles over to app specific functions when you want.

That would free up more screen space and actually be nice to have.

 

[maverick28]

You may not design for price, but my credit card is not designed for your price.

You always have a choice. Buy cheaper refurbished, older generation Mac or Windows PC (so splendidly made and packed with lots of innovative features Surface Book or Surface Tablet, or Dell XPS, or Lenovo Yoga). Like whining?

 

[bobesch]

It's a late 2011 model. I bought it in 2012 brand new when I realized the 17" was going away. At the time, it offered connections for what you might encounter in life without the need for carrying adapters and dongles. A real "Pro" device. USB-A isn't Legacy. Where's the lightning port to go with the shiny new lightning headsets? MagSafe has always been a welcome feature. Why'd that get the axe?

There are plenty of modern ports that could be on a modern MacBook Pro. USB-A, USB-C, HDMI, Mini HDMI, DisplayPort, Lightning, Line in, Line Out, MagSafe, SD Card, Ethernet... As it sits now I couldn't connect my iPhone, iPad, DSLR, Ethernet cable, Mouse, Thumb Drive, Display, lightning earbuds, or charge my Watch without fooling around with hubs or adapters.



There's nothing "Pro" about the MacBook Pro now. Old processor, old memory, low end GPU, and poor connectivity. GG.

Do you use / recommend any ExpressCard/34?

 

[zone23]

Yes what I experience is high price so makes sense.

 

[pedzsan]

Do you use / recommend any ExpressCard/34?

I had (have) an ExpressCard/34 to eSATA but I would not recommend it. It is not 100% rock solid. And if you hang terabytes of disk off of it and it happens to go "blip" every six months, that means you must do (to be safe) a file system check after every blip. And... I got a bad feeling that it might go blip while doing a file system check. So I eventually migrated to USB based drives that do not go "blip" periodically.

Yea... with a journal file system you don't really need to do fsck after each blip but if it is your treasure disks, I felt better doing an fsck each time.