Is This Reaction Normal?

[Dave410]

Hey Gang,

As I mentioned in another post, I'm a long-time PC user who is planning to switch to Mac and I've just started paying serious attention to Mac products. I notice the reviews on the 2016 MacBook Pro are decidedly mixed and there is a lot of pro and con right here on MacRumors. Is that normal? Has the release of other Apple products been met with such division inside the Mac community or is there something different about this product? Talking to Mac friends and looking in from the outside, I was under the impression that Mac users were always happy and Macs always worked. I have an EE degree so I know that's not possible, but you know what I mean.

I'm not trying to stir things up, but I've been agonizing over the 2015 v. 2016 decision and if this kind of reaction is normal it will shed new light on the 2016. Hope that makes sense.

Cheers,
Dave

 

[dark_mark]

All previous MBP releases were met with SOME negativity. But I have NEVER seen so many complaints and issues like today. And oh, reviews for all previous MBPs were always positive.

I decided not to pay attention to negative reviews and bought the 15" TB. Well I regret that decision and I should have paid attention to them, mainly because I am getting 4 hours battery life just browsing the web.

My previous MBP easily lasted 10 hours under the same conditions.

 

[jk76]

I ordered 15" MBP right away when it was possible. I've had it for several weeks now, and I have no problems with battery life, especially when browsing web with Safari. (I've seen 15+ hour battery life on low display brightness, which is more than enough for me.) In my opinion this machine compares favourably in comparison to 2012 rMBP; sure, it's not cheap, but it's either as good as or better than the one I had before.

 

[ntnskrds]

Yeah, I would say it's normal !!
You must understand that there is no such thing as mac community nowadays (at least not as you envision it). The success of the iphone has made macs kind of mainstream. There are more people with macs now then there have ever been and most of them are not able to tell you what Rosetta is without help from Google...

Macs are now nothing more than well made but still mass-produced computers and like all mass-produced things they are not without faults (this has always been the case).

And there is something else that has changed recently. People were genuinely thrilled and wowed by the iphone. Unfortunately, they believe that this should be the case with every product Apple launches. People have unrealistic expectations from Apple.

 

[Toutou]

A majority of people that I know who care about the Mac are pretty confused about the current situation. Apple is clearly paying less and less attention to the Mac. And yes, Mac users used to be happy, back when software updates didn't remove functionality and new machines were better than those they were replacing.

 

[jk76]

Yeah, I would say it's normal !!
You must understand that there is no such thing as mac community nowadays (at least not as you envision it). The success of the iphone has made macs kind of mainstream. There are more people with macs now then there have ever been and most of them are not able to tell you what Rosetta is without help from Google...

Macs are now nothing more than well made but still mass-produced computers and like all mass-produced things they are not without faults (this has always been the case).

And there is something else that has changed recently. People were genuinely thrilled and wowed by the iphone. Unfortunately, they believe that this should be the case with every product Apple launches. People have unrealistic expectations from Apple.

Neither the original Macintosh nor the original iPhone were particularly marvellous devices or had some sort of hand-picked customer base, but sure, go ahead and feel like it was so. There was no magic pixie dust involved even back then. Both devices, like almost everything Apple has ever produced, were mass-produced of mainstream components using primarily mainstream technologies, although at least at many points in time with more style and sense (not to mention reality distortion field) than the competition.

Latest MBPs are no different, in my opinion. They're sensible compromises in design for those who don't need to perform penny-pinching tricks. It may be that customers feel their precious bubbles getting burst and are angry of it, but I don't really spot the huge fault at Apple doing what they do. Frankly, lots of Apple products in the past have been outright awful - even the iconic ones.

The new MacBook Pro I'm using right now is as fine a laptop as I can get now; I'm not disappointed at all. But at the same time, I am the kind of person that doesn't believe in pixie dust exclusivity of Apple products or communities. To me, Apple has always been an integrator with more style than most - but not more. And there aren't really any that special on the market, after all.

 

[BarracksSi]

Yeah, it's normal.

People go online to complain (especially here at MR, it seems), but not to say, "Hi. No problems. Bye."

I also think that longtime Mac owners already don't want to put up with any crap (which is why I bought a Mac in the first place).

What I think is hilarious is, Apple was brought back from the brink of implosion with the famed tagline, "Think Different" -- but now that Apple did something new and different with the newest MB Pros, people complain.

Can't please 'em all. Oh, if we could go back to 1998 and see how the pundits reacted when the iMac dropped the floppy drive (and a LOT of other ports and connections...).

 

[Nik]

I had a 3,300$ MacBook Pro 15" 2016 and returned it. Keyboard sucked becuase it was extremely noisy. Needing adapters for everything does not feel right at all (esp. SD Cards). And the batterylife was the last nail in the coffin.

 

[therealseebs]

Hey Gang,

As I mentioned in another post, I'm a long-time PC user who is planning to switch to Mac and I've just started paying serious attention to Mac products. I notice the reviews on the 2016 MacBook Pro are decidedly mixed and there is a lot of pro and con right here on MacRumors. Is that normal? Has the release of other Apple products been met with such division inside the Mac community or is there something different about this product? Talking to Mac friends and looking in from the outside, I was under the impression that Mac users were always happy and Macs always worked. I have an EE degree so I know that's not possible, but you know what I mean.

I'm not trying to stir things up, but I've been agonizing over the 2015 v. 2016 decision and if this kind of reaction is normal it will shed new light on the 2016. Hope that makes sense.

Cheers,
Dave

This is not even a little normal. I've seen previous rounds of complaints, I've had complaints before, but this is a totally different ballpark from normal.

There's always "a lot of pro and con". What I've never seen before is a significant number of returns. Like, yeah, I bought 2011 and 2012 machines when the rMBP came out, because I hate glossy screens, but I could basically live with the machines, since I mostly work in clamshell. (If I were working with the laptop almost-always as a laptop, I would have had to quit Apple sooner.) But this? No. This is not normal.

For cryin' out loud, no actual shipping product exists which lets you do the "just one cable handles everything" that is the big selling point of USB-C, because the MBP needs 85W and nothing does that except Apple's charger and the fancy new LG monitors, and the LG monitors don't have any of the ports people are looking for without dongles. There are rumors that an actual product could fill that need sometime next year. Maybe.

In the last 30ish years of owning Apple products, I returned a Performa to upgrade to a higher-end Mac. Until now. Of the three 2016 MBPs I originally planned to have for myself and my spouse, we ended up with two 2015 MBPs and a Dell. That's a Vote Of No Confidence.

 

[BenTrovato]

People love to hate Apple. It's been the case since day 1.

 

[therealseebs]

What I think is hilarious is, Apple was brought back from the brink of implosion with the famed tagline, "Think Different" -- but now that Apple did something new and different with the newest MB Pros, people complain.

You have entirely misunderstood.

"Think Different" was aimed at customers. The idea was, the Mac was a computer for people who wanted something above and beyond the absolute lowest common denominator.

Apple used to support users who wanted something not everyone wanted.

Now Apple says "this is what most people want, this is all you get, there are no options for anything that isn't going to be of interest to the majority of users".

 

[BarracksSi]

You have entirely misunderstood.

"Think Different" was aimed at customers. The idea was, the Mac was a computer for people who wanted something above and beyond the absolute lowest common denominator.

Apple used to support users who wanted something not everyone wanted.

Now Apple says "this is what most people want, this is all you get, there are no options for anything that isn't going to be of interest to the majority of users".

You remember when the iMac came out, though, right? And later, as port after port was gradually removed from the laptop lineup? It's always been, "This is what we're going to make, this is what you get." Nobody misses ribbon cables, as far as I know.

The capabilities haven't subsided -- you can do as many things now via one port as you used to do with six -- but come on, we've been doing this since the 1900's and people suddenly decide to reach for the torches and pitchforks?

 

[ntnskrds]

You have entirely misunderstood.

"Think Different" was aimed at customers. The idea was, the Mac was a computer for people who wanted something above and beyond the absolute lowest common denominator.

Apple used to support users who wanted something not everyone wanted.

Now Apple says "this is what most people want, this is all you get, there are no options for anything that isn't going to be of interest to the majority of users".

Not, really ...
'Think different' was marketing . It's purpose was not to identify different people. It's purpose was to make you feel 'different and special' by owning the product. Cheap trick really but it worked well as we can see ...

 

[BarracksSi]

Not, really ...
'Think different' was marketing . It's purpose was not to identify different people. It's purpose was to make you feel 'different and special' by owning the product. Cheap trick really but it worked well as we can see ...

That, and to identify Apple as willing to do things differently than other computer companies were doing. It wasn't really targeted at only the users as it was meant to describe Apple's approach as a whole, which included everyone from the users back to the designers and engineers.

 

[therealseebs]

You remember when the iMac came out, though, right? And later, as port after port was gradually removed from the laptop lineup? It's always been, "This is what we're going to make, this is what you get." Nobody misses ribbon cables, as far as I know.

Yes, I remember. And I was actually in favor of the USB change. I was not in favor of losing Ethernet, and thought it might indicate Apple gradually abandoning the market segment I'm in. I was right.

The capabilities haven't subsided -- you can do as many things now via one port as you used to do with six -- but come on, we've been doing this since the 1900's and people suddenly decide to reach for the torches and pitchforks?

The real world capabilities are much worse, and I think you're missing the point if you think this is only about the ports.

2015 macs had MagSafe, which I liked. They had a charger with any way at all to determine whether it was charging if the display wasn't working correctly. That little LED was neat. They also had function keys, which I use. They also had reasonable key travel. And a touchpad that I thought was perfectly usable. And an SD reader. Go back a bit further, we used to have the option of buying memory or drive upgrades sometime after the machine was built.

Also, a year or two back, there were dedicated teams of engineers who worked on macOS exclusively, full time, and macOS was getting significant development. Now, there are no dedicated macOS teams; there's only iOS teams who periodically work on backporting stuff to macOS. Feature development is pretty much gone from macOS, which now exists pretty much to be the custom development environment you need to have to target iOS.

To put it another way: It doesn't matter whether you agree with people or not. The question is whether they are in fact unhappy, and a whole lot of long-term dedicated Mac users are very unhappy with Apple right now. This has been building for a long time, I think, as Apple gradually trimmed things we cared about, but the 2016 MBP is a particularly egregious example, having cut a whole lot of things people cared about, all at once, in order to achieve goals that many people had no interest in, plus a sharp price hike and an incredibly badly-handled launch with quality control problems.
[doublepost=1482860484][/doublepost]

That, and to identify Apple as willing to do things differently than other computer companies were doing. It wasn't really targeted at only the users as it was meant to describe Apple's approach as a whole, which included everyone from the users back to the designers and engineers.

Yes, so if next year's macbook pro is a very thin slice of granite with no actual electrical components, that'll be a good example of "thinking very different" and probably make the remaining Apple community quite happy. I can already see the MacRumors headline: "Apple solves battery life!"

 

[aevan]

The real world capabilities are much worse, and I think you're missing the point if you think this is only about the ports.

2015 macs had MagSafe, which I liked. They had a charger with any way at all to determine whether it was charging if the display wasn't working correctly. That little LED was neat. They also had function keys, which I use. They also had reasonable key travel. And a touchpad that I thought was perfectly usable. And an SD reader. Go back a bit further, we used to have the option of buying memory or drive upgrades sometime after the machine was built.

MagSafe, LED light and function keys. Yup. Real world capabilites have all but evaporated. We're just left with super-bright, wide-color displays, great performance and excellent mobility. But yes, LED lights and function keys.

I try to get some real work done, but I don't see that LED light and I just... I just can't. No capability.


You know, I can almost understand people who want more RAM. I can understand some people get frustrated with battery issues. I can understand people who don't want to pay that much money. But LED lights? Function keys? You don't like the new keyboard? I don't know, I've got to be honest, this looks like serious trolling to me.
[doublepost=1482862144][/doublepost]

This is not even a little normal. I've seen previous rounds of complaints, I've had complaints before, but this is a totally different ballpark from normal.

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...nch-retina-macbook-pro.1473731/#post-16109717

Tiny harddrive, barely enough RAM (and not upgradable to the "enough" level), no dedicated graphics, only dual-core processors. It certainly isn't bad, but Apple just took the "pro" out of the 13" line. And come on - it's freaking expensive. If you upgrade the SSD to 512gb and get an i7 (still dual-core - WTF?) processor, it's only 99$ cheaper than the mid-level 15" rMBP, which packs a heck of a lot more power. What gives???

the 13" is NOT a pro device in my opinion. It's more like a beefed-up and slightly heavier Macbook Air. For that, it just costs way too much.

(One of the Retina MacBook Pro, 2012 comments)

Yup, completely not normal. Never happened before.

 

[BarracksSi]

My quick tangent on MagSafe -- (and the conversation, as a whole, illustrates my original point of Mac users not wanting to put up with any crap )

Discontinuing MagSafe means...

Losing:
- Quick connect
- Easy disconnect (best thing ever, IMO)
- LED indicator

Gaining:
- Power input not restricted to just one socket
- Cheaper, easily replaceable cable
- Can use different chargers and portable batteries
- Can [they say] charge one laptop with another
- Can still have MagSafe-style safety disconnect via a third-party gadget

I've been a huge MagSafe fan -- it's saved my bacon often enough -- but I think the change to USB-C charging is, on balance, a good move.

[/tangent]

 

[ixxx69]

Hey Gang,

As I mentioned in another post, I'm a long-time PC user who is planning to switch to Mac and I've just started paying serious attention to Mac products. I notice the reviews on the 2016 MacBook Pro are decidedly mixed and there is a lot of pro and con right here on MacRumors. Is that normal? Has the release of other Apple products been met with such division inside the Mac community or is there something different about this product? Talking to Mac friends and looking in from the outside, I was under the impression that Mac users were always happy and Macs always worked. I have an EE degree so I know that's not possible, but you know what I mean.

I'm not trying to stir things up, but I've been agonizing over the 2015 v. 2016 decision and if this kind of reaction is normal it will shed new light on the 2016. Hope that makes sense.

Cheers,
Dave

It's pretty similar to past releases of Apple products, but MacRumors forums are also just following a world-wide trend of FUD, hate, ignorance, opinions = facts, echo-chambers, stuck in their bubble, etc. Just look at recent politics. The very first reply to your post is by someone who has been blanketing the forums with those kind of posts. A few others here doing the same thing. It seems like tons of controversy because of the quantity of posts, but probably 75% of those hundreds of posts are generated by the same two-dozen posters, who just post in every thread day after day, week after week, month after month.

The same thing happened with the:
2012 rMBP (cMBP forever!)
2012 iMac (too thin! still bashing it)
2013 Mac Pro (the same posters are still bashing it on a near daily basis 3 years later - that's commitment!)
2014 Mini (still bashing it!)
2015 MacBook (underpowered netbook toy!) - they all get endlessly bashed by the same group of posters in each of those respective forums (sometimes the same posters bashing all of them).

If you go by these forums, Apple has created the worst product line in the history of computers and the only reason Apple is still in business is because of all the mindless sheep/Apple fanatics.

 

[jk76]

If you go by these forums, Apple has created the worst product line in the history of computers and the only reason Apple is still in business is because of all the mindless sheep/Apple fanatics.

And the saddest part is that biggest haters claim they are serious Apple fans. If I were the company, I'd seriously steer away from such fans; likelihood of them stabbing me (as their idol) would be at least thousandfold of those that choose to be indifferent, or even just mildly displeased of me.

 

[boilingDream]

It is not normal. For many, the 2016 Macbook Pro will be a downgrade from the 2015 Macbook Pro. That should tell you something.

I honestly think this is a terrible time to switch from Windows. At least wait for the next hardware update to see if Apple is willing to repair some of the damage they've done.

I have been using Macs since 2008, but my next machine will most likely not be a Mac. I think that's regrettable, but there are now so many indications Apple is not prioritizing computers nor MacOS anymore that many Mac buyers feel forced to switch to Windows/Linux.

 

[boast]

Last time was the 12" MacBook in 2015 and then the 2013 Mac Pro before that. Anything else has just been the "normal" criticism one can expect.

But since the rMBP affects the most of the Mac customer base, it's impact has been the largest thus far.

 

[zedsdead]

There is always debate over Apple products, however this time there is a real issue: BATTERY LIFE. See the Bloomberg article (not just CR) which screams volumes about what happened with these machines. The non-touch bar model DOES NOT have these issues however.

Other examples were iPhone 4 Antenna issue and the MacBook Air Gen B/C screen line issue. In both of those cases there were actual problems but Apple refused to acknowledge anything (but things were magically fixed with the next redesign in both cases).

I can attest first hand as an owner of the Touch Bar 13" that the battery life was sub-par and inconsistent. I have owned plenty of Mac laptops and desktops over the years. This was the first one I have EVER returned. I also picked up a non-touch bar model to test, and the battery life is already much better.

 

[MacRobert10]

People are upset with the new MacBook Pro because of the lack of I/O ports other than USB-C. USB-C isn't a proven or well accepted technology yet...and it may not be. The last post by "Old Guy Tom" on Dec. 26, 2016 in the following thread:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/usb-c-huh.2022212/

pretty much nails why people are angry. The old products typically had a lot of current/contemporary ports and the unit could be used right out of the box. Now, it's all about USB-C, but I can't find a single USB-C device, other than adapters, at any of my local computer shops. I'm sure they'll crop up eventually, but for now it's an adapter fest. It's bad enough that the 15" model only has 4 ports, but the 13" units only having 2, with one being used for power, is simply preposterous.

With respect to the OP, there will always be complainers, but in this case the number of complaints is well founded. I don't think I've ever seen this before, at least not at this level.

 

[spacebro]

I'm an EE getting out of the apple system. 4+ years ago there was a trend towards EE tools becoming cross platform with OS X support. A lot of engineers started getting macbooks and using parallels for the bits that are still windows-only. Real cross platform support never materialized. It seems like the OS X versions are always buggy or some USB driver you need is still windows-only. I no longer believe there will ever be good cross platform support until all the tools we use move to browser based. Get a MacBook if you want to do iOS dev, otherwise it isn't worth it.

Hey Gang,

As I mentioned in another post, I'm a long-time PC user who is planning to switch to Mac and I've just started paying serious attention to Mac products. I notice the reviews on the 2016 MacBook Pro are decidedly mixed and there is a lot of pro and con right here on MacRumors. Is that normal? Has the release of other Apple products been met with such division inside the Mac community or is there something different about this product? Talking to Mac friends and looking in from the outside, I was under the impression that Mac users were always happy and Macs always worked. I have an EE degree so I know that's not possible, but you know what I mean.

I'm not trying to stir things up, but I've been agonizing over the 2015 v. 2016 decision and if this kind of reaction is normal it will shed new light on the 2016. Hope that makes sense.

Cheers,
Dave

 

[Macalway]

It's because the market has matured so much they have to struggle to come up with something so that people will upgrade. And on top of it, these things are very expensive.