I guarantee you will see USB C in a big way at CES this year. Apple has tremendous influence in ways that are not immediately obvious. For example, every app on iOS was developed on a Mac and developers have huge influence over hardware direction as they are in regular communication with hardware vendors.
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Jony Ive "hears" your macbook criticism
- Thread starter The Samurai
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I 100% agree that Apple does have a huge market influence in the personal computer space.
After Apple released 2015 12" MB/ 2016 MBP , many laptop vendors started to implement at least 1 Type-c connector to their device. Arguably (other than newly released XPS 13) no one implemented ONLY Type-C ports. But Asus/Dell/Lenovo/HP did this, because they realise that computer accessory makers do react to that.
And give the iphone Headphone-jack situation. Apple did, not so long after that other companies started to follow that trend.
Single handedly, Apple has the most market influence in the personal computer/smartphone market.
After Apple released 2015 12" MB/ 2016 MBP , many laptop vendors started to implement at least 1 Type-c connector to their device. Arguably (other than newly released XPS 13) no one implemented ONLY Type-C ports. But Asus/Dell/Lenovo/HP did this, because they realise that computer accessory makers do react to that.
And give the iphone Headphone-jack situation. Apple did, not so long after that other companies started to follow that trend.
Single handedly, Apple has the most market influence in the personal computer/smartphone market.
Apple have always been trendsetters, and there is always some risk of backlash when you do something unexpected or original. Thunderbolt 3/USB C is the most significant hardware interface advancement since the original USB. The idea that one port can be all-purpose (charge, data, video, audio etc.), daisy-chainable, all while being compact and reversible has never been done and I am amazed at those who do not see why this move to all USB C is a great design choice. Do we really want to be fumbling around with proprietary chargers, hdmi/displayport/minidisplayport/dvi/vga/thunderbolt2/ etc. until the end of time? What if I need three ports for video instead of the one that typically ships? USB C solves all of these issues and then some.
Most importantly, the tech encourages hubs. Hubs are ideal for notebook computers as they enable quick disconnect and portability. Having to plug in 7 cables into different ports on a mobile computer makes far less sense than plugging in one cable to a hub.
But then again... you don’t have to buy it! Get a windows PC laptop! If you’re doing photography or web development a newer MBP 16 GB should be fine... I’ve done amazing things with 12 so I don’t really see the issue unless your doing virtual orchestra stuff which can utilize the ram. Still, the speed of today’s PCIE and TB drives blur that line.
The fact that he older model MacBooks can outperform the new ones, because the new ones are too small to provide somewhat adequate cooling should be a flag to Apple that they screwed up. I by no means whatsoever classify the current MacBook Pro as a Pro device. Thermal throttling is a huge issue, battery life isn’t as good as the last model, the Touchbar isn’t that useful and adds to the expense for no good reason, the keyboard is unacceptably flimsy and unpleasant to use, etc. It’s simply a bad move.
Steve Jobs may have been a jerk, or may have put the prices a little steep for Apple products, but at least he never settled for “acceptable” and demanded the best experience for our benefit. A little something Cook’s team severely lacks. Saying that Cook’s team is a little greedy would be a gross understatement.
Steve Jobs may have been a jerk, or may have put the prices a little steep for Apple products, but at least he never settled for “acceptable” and demanded the best experience for our benefit. A little something Cook’s team severely lacks. Saying that Cook’s team is a little greedy would be a gross understatement.
I have both a Macbook Pro 15" from 2015 and 2017. The 2017 model is faster than the 2015 model. I have not suffered from thermal throttling at all. The 13" nTB is probably different, I don't know.
For me, getting a 15" notebook that weighs 200g less than the 2015 model is a welcome change. Notebooks are designed to be portable for travelling. Everything on the 2017 model is very professional to me. The 4 TB3 ports are fantastic in their versatility. The keyboard is very usable for me, too.
Actually, its the other way around. The new laptops are better at providing consistently high performance then the old ones. The 2016/2017 15" is one of the few laptops on the market that can run the CPU on the high boost levels for prolonged periods of time (other machines being gaming laptops). No performance has been sacrificed by the new form factor.
Here are few links with detailed tests:
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Pro-15-2017-2-8-GHz-555-Laptop-Review.230096.0.html (look at the processor section for sustained cinebench run)
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/an-opinionated-cpu-benchmark-of-the-2016-15-mbp.2026475/ (A test that I did when I got my 2016 model)
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Hmmm... the “Graphical User Interface”
The MOUSE
FIREWIRE
THUNDERBOLT
I can go on but these are the things that PC’s never had until after the Mac used them originally.
TB was a joint venture between Intel and Apple.
You forgot the USB
I mean the original USB. Macs were the first computer to use it, to great disdain of the reactionary crowd back then (if you google, you'll find quite a few complains about Apple dropping the serial port and adopting the "marginal" USB connector in 1998).
You forgot the USB
I said other things... you want me to go on? Anyway, it’s not a debatable subject it is evidential in its own right.
No, no, it wasn’t meant as a criticism. I just wanted to mention USB explicitly, since what is going on now (USB-C etc) is the exact repetition what has happened 20 years ago.
True....but then 20 years ago (if my memory serves me well) it was only removing one port, but this time it was replacing all the ports at once. Now we have to use ugly dongles instead to make up for the lack of ports. It makes the beautiful design look like an octupus.
I actually agree with the move to the new port and it is the future.... for I like the idea of progress, but it will take some time for the industry to catch up with the changes. I don’t think the move was well thought out on a practical level. It seemed more so the desire to just be the first to do and further move the industry toward more of a cloud based stuff.
Conceptionally, I like the idea and direction, but practically the costs and real time usuage of the new port is difficult at this time. It might take some time for that to change. We are barely seeing thunderbolt 3 peripherals coming out now to replace the last thunderbolt 2 technology. We hardly saw any peripherals out there when thunderbolt 1 came to the scene (even thunderbolt 2). USB 3 JUST became somewhat of a standard a few years ago, replacing USB 1.1 and USB 2.
The industry is really slow regarding upgrading to new ports, so adoption of the new technology has high replacement costs. That has to be considered if we purchase a new MacBook Pro....or instead use octupus dongles.
You forgot the USB
There's a major difference: back in 1998, you had to throw away virtually all your old devices since there were no adapters, or the adapters became available only months or years later. Parallel port printer? SCSI drive? Sucks to be you.
Now, you can still use each and every device you have, even if it's for the price of a cheap cable or adapter, which all are already available.
Apple has the Apple Stores where tens of thousands of customers come everyday and tell them what they need to accomplish. They also collect vast amounts of telemetry to back it up.
Except, the Mac never had a parallel printer port, PS/2 mouse/keyboard connector or RS232 serial port: pre-USB it used proprietary ADB ports for mouse/keyboard and quirky LocalTalk/RS423 serial ports for printers and modems. Any peripheral you bought pretty much had to be Mac-specific - USB was a vast improvement over RS423 and rapidly opened the floodgates to cross-compatible PC/Mac peripherals. A lot of PCs already had USB ports gathering dust, and the launch of the iMac ignited interest.
SCSI was expensive (the PC world only used it for server/workstation class stuff), used bulky cables and had all that device numbering and termination malarky to worry about - and wasn't really an issue with the iMac target market.
The "pro" Macs kept SCSI for another year or two - and of course, back in those days, the PowerMacs had PCI slots while the PowerBooks took PCMCIA cards so it was easy to add SCSI back in.
In 1998, USB was a big step forward and opened all sorts of new possibilities.
Today, USB-C is mainly just an annoyingly different-shaped plug for the same USB-3 and DisplayPort 1.2 that you've been using for the last 10 years. Oh, Thunderbolt's just got faster, but it was already faster than any external drive you could afford. Nothing in 1998 compared to the range and ubiquity of USB-A devices around today, and in most cases the only practical upshot of switching to USB-C is that the ruddy plug fits in the hole again.
In 1998, specs were doubling every 18 months, so your 2-year-old peripherals were due for replacement, anyway. Your new 1998 Mac probably had more internal storage than your old Mac and your collection of external drives combined. Today, not so much - your 1,2,3,4,5 year-old peripherals are still perfectly good, and you've probably taken a reduction in storage capacity so that you can benefit from the only real game-changer of the past 5 years: SSD.
I disagree. Again, USB C is a big step forward and opens all different types of possibilities. Imagine a single hub for every single device. Come home and plug one cable into your computer. Charge your phone, laptop and power bank with the same cable. Use the same cable for everything. Not only that, the USB C ports onthe Macbook can be adapted to ANY other port. Unlike currently if you run out of a port you're SOL. A single USB C with a hub can become HDMI, Ethernet, 3 USB, SD and MicroSD. The future of devices will be smaller and thinner. The future will be one cable for everything. What I think could've been better was the implementation.
The plug shape/port is wonderful.
Knowing what works with it and what doesn't however is a huge nightmare of non-discoverability.
Beyond that, reliability and quality of hubs & devices implementing USB-C is also now a new flux point.
On my 2015 MBP, I plug a display into the HDMI port and it works every single time with zero hiccups or weird issues, etc. That has been the complete opposite of our experience with the in home 2016 13" MBP. Just a nightmare of compatibility and weirdness issues after going through many dongle & cable options.
That I do agree with. The implementation of USB C hasn't been very good. In my opinion all USB C accessories, cables and such should have Power Delivery and 3.0 gen 2 (aka 3.1) protocol built in with a new symbol, then additional symbols for each additional protocol it supports (TB3, DP, HDMI, etc)
so if he hears our criticism, what is he gonna do about it?
I still maintain touchbar looks like something I don't want, and the 15" whole bottom lid looks off to me ratio wise: buffer between keyboard and screen, speaker size, trackpad, palm rest etc
I'm still liking my 13" nTB 2016 coming from the 12" rMB 2015. but I'm more forgiving of the usbc situation admittedly
I still maintain touchbar looks like something I don't want, and the 15" whole bottom lid looks off to me ratio wise: buffer between keyboard and screen, speaker size, trackpad, palm rest etc
I'm still liking my 13" nTB 2016 coming from the 12" rMB 2015. but I'm more forgiving of the usbc situation admittedly
People use PCIE expansion chassis and to me that’s just as much $$ IMO. If you want expansion then it costs! TB3 will be all over sooner than you think! Look at TB... it took a while too now every PC user is in envy to have it! It’s just a matter of time but there are solutions out there if you pony up the $$!
...was already possible with Thunderbolt 1/2 except for the indignity of having to plug in a separate power cable... but then again, USB-C devices that can deliver enough power for the 15" MBP are few and far between.
...but not your iPhone, iPad, iPod Magic Keyboard/mouse because Apple have insisted on sticking with Lightning for those.
Would that be a USB charge cable (5A charging, but no USB 3, thunderbolt or video), a USB-C 3.1 cable like this one (USB 3.1g2, displays, no Thunderbolt, power limited to 3A), a short passive Thunderbolt cable (USB3.1, TB3 and display - but this one is limited to 3A/60W power) or an active Thunderbolt cable (40Gbps TB3, 60W power but, whoops, no USB3.1 - only 2.0, will drive Thunderbolt displays but not USB-C displays) or there's this one that does actually seem to do it all... at a price?
Plus, since current USB-C and TB3 implementations don't support DisplayPort 1.3/1.4, don't expect full-size DisplayPort or HDMI connections to be vanishing anytime soon - oh, and coming down the pike we have new native HDMI alt mode (c.f. current USB-C to HDMI adapters that actually use DisplayPort alt mode) so we're going to have a whole new source of confusion with HDMI adapters and displays.
Rubbish - all Apple's pre-2016 computers had Thunderbolt 2 ports (2 of them on the rMBP and iMac, 4 on the nMP) which were likewise "universal" and could be docked, adapted, daisy-chained etc. to your heart's content. The 2 USB 3 'A' ports could also be connected to (ubiquitous and cheap) hubs and a variety of adapters. The HDMI and SD reader were "bonuses" while the much-loved MagSafe meant that you didn't have to "waste" a high-speed data port for charging.
So, suddenly, we've gone from 4 well-established general-purpose ports plus HDMI, SD and power, to either 2 or 4 new general-purpose ports (that currently need new adapters for existing devices) full stop. Yeah, it's great that they can do "everything" because you're gonna need that to replace the ports that have been taken away.
Now the 2017 iMac is actually a slight improvement: but only because you've still got 4 USB 3s, Ethernet, SD and power plus the new option of using your TB ports as extra USBs (except... there were always TB2-to-USB adapters).
...in the dreams of tech industry analysts desperate to find another "boom" industry rather than face the fact that computers have become "mature" and people no longer have a reason to upgrace every 18 months. Back in the real world, the size of devices for people who actually do stuff is now determined by the size of a usable keyboard and display, an adequate battery and the ability to disspate the heat from a decent CPU/GPU combo (sure - everyone I know has a smartphone and a tablet... as well as a regular laptop or desktop - not instead). USB-C is, indeed, great for the mobile dream - yet mobile is the one place that Apple isn't using it.
Actually, the future for mobile will be hermetically sealed and wireless.
Sure - Apple could have made at least one model MBP with TB3 instead of TB2 but retaining the "legacy" ports (like they did with the iMac). They could have made sure that a "reference" TB3 dock that restored all the legacy ports was in the store from day 1. Intel needn't have borked TB3 (and Intel-implemented USB-C) by limiting it to DisplayPort 1.2a and could have supported passive TB3 over short USB-C 3.1 cables. The USB consortium could have required that all certified devices supported USB3.1g2, 5A charge etc. and avoided a bewildering variety of cables. They could have gone straight to USB 3.2 so that USB-C in "USB mode" actually had a bandwidth advantage over USB-A.
Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda. Reality: they didn'a.
Another issue for me is the overly large trackpad. Who asked for that? Due to the size of my hands and the fact that I am a touch typist, the new trackpad edges cut into the meat of my thumbs when I rest my hand on the keyboard. Very uncomfortable.
I would have been happy if Apple had simply upgraded TB2 to TB3 and upgraded the screen quality. That would have been perfect for my use cases.
My one wish is for a thin bezel around the screen (see Dell XPS 13") with increased screen size. I would love two MBP models in 14" and 16" sizes.
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This sentiment has been echoed over the years, but Apple has never and likely will never do so because they want to push their vision, not our choice, for computing.
BTW, I do agree with you, especially with this latest iteration of the MBP.
Before, AppleCare seemed like just a good option and I never needed to use it. My Apple products at the premium price tag before were top quality along with the parts inside. That was mainly why I bought and justified the high purchasing upfront cost. I still even have a Mac Pro 2010 and it runs like a champ, including the battery to my surprise. All of my old Apple stuff still work with no issues. Did not need ApplesCare really back in the day, only if you wanted to make sure....
Now...under Tim Cook it seems mandatory. Why? Not because of the technology, but the components inside (less quality to maximize profits). Maybe I was “lucky” with my selection when buying, but it seems more so now that the products are not lasting longer. Not saying that the products are not still good (or the parts inside), but the new Apple will take risks on questionable “less expensive” parts it seems or vendors who will deliver what they want at a lessor price then others. Once you make that a priority, then you risk faulty parts..so now Applecare is a must instead of an option.