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I can understand a lot of people being upset since most of the old interfaces are still widely used. However, in the next five years USB C will be ubiquitous.

It's that they do a clean break. You don't buy something today based on standards that come up within 5 years. You buy it based on immediate needs and changes that are likely within the next year or so. It's also not a given that usb c will win. It's just likely. Apple stuck 4 thunderbolt ports on the mac pro, yet within two years they started drifting towards usb c.

Pretty sure Skylake chips didn't exist back in 2013

Apple reused the base mode from last year. It's also the same price. The new ones start at $2400, and they needed one at $2000. They kept the 2015 model (at the same price), which stayed with Haswell. Given his phrasing, he may not have noticed that.

I'm pretty sure the 13" retina was $1699 when it was released. That is how Apple does it. The MacBook Air was almost $1799 i think when it was released in 2008. These prices will come down but this is the price for getting the newest model from Apple.

The air was a new product line where they clearly made a mistake in positioning. They made some pretty extreme corrections and launched something excellent at a lower price point. They left their older product lines there. Those continued to receive updates, whereas the air was a new addition.

The 13" and 15" macbook pros are quite possibly the most popular macs, and they aren't constrained by the number that can be produced outside of product launch windows. Apple increased prices by 20% on those, not a new product line that could fail and go away. It's a completely different and much more aggressive move, which I think will backfire on them. Remember that Apple typically only updates product pricing at refresh times, aside from exchange rate adjustments.
 
Well I look forward to debating further when you decide to look at this logically or objectively. Until then, have a good day. ;-)

Great answer! You could've just said you don't have any real retort other than "but it's thinner and lighter." Come on, enlighten us with your excellent objective and logical reasoning for the power adapter to cost $38 more. Or why Apple's own USB-C/AV adapter can't even provide full power from the included power adapter. Or how carrying all these dongles is a positive. Please, tell us all about the good reasons for these poor decisions. If you've got anything other than "thinner and lighter" that is.
 
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I can understand that external HDDs will mostly be USB-C in the near future, but I don't see any replacement coming for SD cards. Pros still use SD cards, so they'll be forced to use third-party adapter junk? The "courageous" decision to dump the 3.5mm jack would sound a bit more credible if Apple publicly stated their disdain for the SD, USB, HDMI, Mini-Display ports, etc. It'll be great once we have a universal port, but it's going to be a mess for at least another 5 years or more. Would be glad to hear some insights into this with more knowledge on the subject.
 
2 out of 3 of the new rMBPs could not possibly have been produced 9 months ago.
I would be interested to hear which features couldn't have been included 9 months ago...... USB C 3.1, totally available. Skylake Mobile Chips with Intel 550 Iris Graphics, available. (Weren't they available from September 2015.....?) This isn't about whether that tech was available but more about the fact that Apple decided to delay a Skylake update until it introduced a machine that people had to buy. With the lack of alternatives people who want to stay in the Apple ecosystem but upgrade to a tech thats been out a year have to bite the bullet..... Apple could easily have introduced a Skylake old style MB Pro in the spring with USB C in a couple of ports to drive peripheral sales and then introduced a Kaby Lake full on USB C machine in the spring of 2017.... but they chose not to. I think it says a lot about the attitude of the company to their customers that they feel bringing out a laptop with chips that were introduced over a year ago, is a great thing......! I love Apple but if you look at the trajectory its not going in a direction which is positive or healthy for it's customers.
 
I would be interested to hear which features couldn't have been included 9 months ago...... USB C 3.1, totally available. Skylake Mobile Chips with Intel 550 Iris Graphics, available. (Weren't they available from September 2015.....?) This isn't about whether that tech was available but more about the fact that Apple decided to delay a Skylake update until it introduced a machine that people had to buy. With the lack of alternatives people who want to stay in the Apple ecosystem but upgrade to a tech thats been out a year have to bite the bullet..... Apple could easily have introduced a Skylake old style MB Pro in the spring with USB C in a couple of ports to drive peripheral sales and then introduced a Kaby Lake full on USB C machine in the spring of 2017.... but they chose not to. I think it says a lot about the attitude of the company to their customers that they feel bringing out a laptop with chips that were introduced over a year ago, is a great thing......! I love Apple but if you look at the trajectory its not going in a direction which is positive or healthy for it's customers.

Nothing above 15w Skylake mobile chips were available until June 2016. Any skylake laptop before then had an Air/Ultrabook class CPU. This has been repeated a hundred times over the past days
 
Yes, you're right. I was referencing the base i7 in the 15". Do you mean dedicated GPU? External GPUs are very new and have their own power supplies. Hopefully they become common place in the future as well as USB-C.

Yes, meant dedicated GPUs. Thanks for the correction.

Especially now since Thunderbolt 3 show up in more and more notebooks - external GPUs have a lot of potential. Razer Core looks great to me. As more solutions like that will be coming up prices should get somewhat lower.

Speaking of new MacBook Pro, it might be actually easier to have an external GPU work with it in Bootcamp in a 13" model than 15" duo to absence of dedicated GPU in 13" one. I am sure we will have this answered shortly after reviewers start getting their devices. 15" tops up at $5000 (Euro/Pounds etc.). $7500 MacBook Pro 15 based gaming machine anyone?o_O
 
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Yes, meant dedicated GPUs. Thanks for the correction.

Especially now since Thunderbolt 3 show up in more and more notebooks - external GPUs have a lot of potential. Razer Core looks great to me. As more solutions like that will be coming up prices should get somewhat lower.

Speaking of new MacBook Pro, it might be actually easier to have an external GPU work with it in Bootcamp in a 13" model than 15" duo to absence of dedicated GPU in 13" one. I am sure we will have this answered shortly after reviewers start getting their devices. 15" tops up at $5000 (Euro/Pounds etc.). $7500 MacBook Pro 15 based gaming machine anyone?o_O
Is the Razer unit mainly an enclosure or a full fledged unit with card? It looks like an enclosure. Hopefully it's better than the rest of their questionable hardware. I do wonder how it would perform under OS X but the issue remains that the card manufacturer, or rather the chip one, will have to release drivers for OS X.
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Nothing above 15w Skylake mobile chips were available until June 2016. Any skylake laptop before then had an Air/Ultrabook class CPU. This has been repeated a hundred times over the past days
You sure? The i7 6920HQ in the new 15" MacBook Pro (highest processor trim) was available Quarter 3 2015: http://ark.intel.com/products/88972/Intel-Core-i7-6920HQ-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-3_80-GHz
The base i7, the 6870HQ was available in Quarter 1 2016: http://ark.intel.com/products/93340/Intel-Core-i7-6870HQ-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-3_60-GHz

We're now in Quarter 4 2016. Over a year later. Not to mention that PC OEMs were making use of the i7 6920HQ from around January and still offer it alongside the 6700HQ and 6770HQ beginning in March of 2016. So you're telling him and the rest of us those high power mobile i7 processors weren't available until June 2016 despite being available as a CPU upgrade option long before then?

Furthermore, I'm curious where you got June 2016 from when nothing was released during Q2 2016 according to Intel's Ark pages or Wikipedia. Literally nothing in June 2016. 45 Watt units were released September 1 2015 alongside low power/low watt units.

So if the processor wasn't available, the 6920HQ, as you vehemently say it wasn't until June 2016, then how the heck did MSI use it in a gaming laptop and released it in December 2015?

The MSI GT80S sports the Intel Skylake i7 6920HQ (The same one used in the top level 15" pro), a GTX 980 in SLI with 16 GB of GDDR5, Thunderbolt Type C, 32 GB of 2133 DDR4 (expandable to 64 GB), 512 GB PCIe SSD, 1 TB Hard drive and other goodies as a gaming/workstation laptop.

If your post were any true, that machine and others like it released a couple months after the 6920HQ would be paper weights thanks to their ultra low wattage processors. Or that MSI and other OEMs have a remarkable time machine and were able to travel 6-8 months into June 2016, grab those processors and go back to October-December 2015 and put them in their machines.
https://www.amazon.com/MSI-GT80S-Titan-SLI-072-THUNDERBOLT/dp/B01974IDWQ

The Dell Precision 7710 offered that processor as an upgrade in January 2016. As did the Y50 and iBuyPower.


Edit:


15" Class

6920HQ Q3 2015 - Highest Trim MacBook Pro
6770HQ Q1 2016 - Second Highest Trim MacBook Pro
6700HQ Q3 2015 - Third Highest Trim MacBook Pro

13" Class

6267U Q3 2015 - Third Highest Trim MacBook Pro
6360U Q3 2015 - Lowest Trim MacBook Pro


The 13" class makes use of Dual core i7s as well, including an underclocked one by about 100 Mhz.
 
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Honestly... the people who claim the new macbook needs more ports are stuck in the past. Just adapt to the future. In less than 5 years nobody uses hdmi, sd cards, usb-a or any other legacy stuff. Just get over it.
 
When Steve Jobs made things thinner and ditched old tech it was to adopt something better, these guys are ditching technology in a way it makes Apple products with less usability value.

FOUR USB-C ports , FOUR, they couldn't make it 3 and 1 USB so we can at least sync our iphones?! I don't understand?

Hope Tim gets fired sooner than later, ditching usability and power just to make a PRO computer thinner, those who want a thinner computer can buy the NON-PRO model.
 
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So they made the price higher and made it slower? WTF is this?
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Honestly... the people who claim the new macbook needs more ports are stuck in the past. Just adapt to the future. In less than 5 years nobody uses hdmi, sd cards, usb-a or any other legacy stuff. Just get over it.
Even if TVs stop using HDMI, which they won't, nobody replaces TVs often enough for it to matter. I'm sure every TV/projector I'd plug my Mac into will still be the same exact equipment in 5 years. Also, other PC manufacturers will continue using USB-A, so accessories will continue using it. You'll get USB-C only if you pay 3X as much.
 
Maybe Apple will finally wake up and realize they can't treat its Mac line like the iPhone. Small feature bumps that innovate little aren't going to get people to buy 1000+ machines.

...and yet sales seem to be outpacing production already...I think Apple will be just fine :)
 
Just curious, how do you give lectures at different places (some with DVI, some with HDMI, and some with VGA) without adapters at present? Does your laptop have all of those ports built in?
hdmi build in but yes, I have adapters for dvi and vga of course but rarely need any of them since hdmi is standard at most places I'm at.
 
So they made the price higher and made it slower? WTF is this?
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Even if TVs stop using HDMI, which they won't, nobody replaces TVs often enough for it to matter. I'm sure every TV/projector I'd plug my Mac into will still be the same exact equipment in 5 years. Also, other PC manufacturers will continue using USB-A, so accessories will continue using it. You'll get USB-C only if you pay 3X as much.
Most people I know, including myself haven't used usb-a for atlest 3 years now. And I'm 100% sure that most pc manufacturers will shift to usb-c within 2 years. About HDMI, yes TV's won't be upgraded that often and they are probably gooing to use HDMI but people use their Apple TVs, Chrome Casts etc. for televised content. Who even watch regular TV these days? I certainly haven't for many years.
 
You've never used a USBA 3.0 Thumb Drive, receiver, line for anything in over 3 years? I'm also curious what you think of CF cards, SD cards and other mediums still used and loved by professionals in the field. USBC makes a hell of a lot more sense if the devices they recorded two were native USBC. If they bought a card reader with USBC connector, they'd still be limited by the card's read speed. That next generation port with the very pricey cable for what it is rather useless.

Let's take this as an example. It's a big card, not the fastest, but one that's commonly used by pros as a backup card.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00NP699ZI

512 GB. Let's say a good low end pro dSLR or mirrorless takes RAW photos in the 70 MB range. That's rather low, but let's go by that. Say a photographer uses about 7-9 of those cards during a shoot. It's going to take a long time to transfer onto their computer and then to their RAID NAS even with USBC/TB3. So not only did they lose a native port, but they spent money to effectively dump data at the same rate they used to. Say these cameras soon came with native USBC ports. The transfer would still be limited unless card technology made some giant leaps or the pictures went onto on board storage. Think small form factor SSDs for dSLRs and others of their kind.

Samsung or was it Lexar make a class 10 uhs-ii u3 card capable of reading and writing at high speeds in bursts or solid concurrent recording states provided the device they're in has a large enough cache. These can be used for 4K video. Storage is very limited. Lots of cards will be used. Lots of waiting because there's no native USBC device that uses native storage.
 
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Most people I know, including myself haven't used usb-a for atlest 3 years now. And I'm 100% sure that most pc manufacturers will shift to usb-c within 2 years. About HDMI, yes TV's won't be upgraded that often and they are probably gooing to use HDMI but people use their Apple TVs, Chrome Casts etc. for televised content. Who even watch regular TV these days? I certainly haven't for many years.
People do watch regular TV, but when they don't, being able to plug a Mac into the screen is nice. If it's not someone's house, there won't be an Apple TV there. Even in a home, it's often easier for a guest to pull up a movie on his Mac than it is to find it on the Apple TV. It's also nice for educational purposes; people here in college connect their Macs to classroom projectors all the time.

"I'm 100% sure that most pc manufacturers will shift to usb-c within 2 years" Most PC manufacturers just got rid of VGA, if that gives you an idea of how long they support older connectors. And really, you don't use USB-A? You must not use a keyboard or mouse, which lots of people do use, but how do you charge your iPhone?
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I don't understand why so many people keep complaining about MagSafe. Yes, it was awesome when it was introduced, when you could barely squeeze 3 hours out of a charge. Now we can get 10 hours out of a charge. I rarely see people plugged in at cafes; I'm one of the only people who has to as I'm still on a 2011 MacBook Pro. I've been working from cafes for the past 4 years, and no one has ever tripped over my cord. Not once.

MagSafe is a niche feature that the average person just doesn't need. But if you're in that niche, you can get the Griffin BreakSafe.

There is literally no reason to complain about it.
You get 10 hours when it's new. If you keep using those 10 hours up, it'll stop lasting 10 hours. Better to keep it plugged in when you're at a desk.
 
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hdmi build in but yes, I have adapters for dvi and vga of course but rarely need any of them since hdmi is standard at most places I'm at.
I actually read on another tech site's blog comments where one lecturer has a backpack full of cords and extensions depending on where he's going. Nuts having to deal with so many cords thanks to Apple's trendsetting.
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"I'm 100% sure that most pc manufacturers will shift to usb-c within 2 years" Most PC manufacturers just got rid of VGA, if that gives you an idea of how long they support older connectors. And really, you don't use USB-A? You must not use a keyboard or mouse, which lots of people do use, but how do you charge your iPhone?
Just two months ago I had to use a plethora of adapters just to get an old VGA monitor connected to a computer to check the internal data out. That was "fun." But I'm thankful they still sell X-VGA adapters.
 
I actually read on another tech site's blog comments where one lecturer has a backpack full of cords and extensions depending on where he's going. Nuts having to deal with so many cords thanks to Apple's trendsetting.
Apple has always been bad with video connectors in particular, and they've actually been generally improving. Throughout the late 90s and all the 2000s, they were using weird things like mini VGA and mini DVI and (a bit more standard but still bleh) mini DisplayPort. HDMI in the rMBP was the first time they had a NORMAL video connector on a Mac. I use it all the time, and it's great.
 
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You get 10 hours when it's new. If you keep using those 10 hours up, it'll stop lasting 10 hours. Better to keep it plugged in when you're at a desk.
Yep. I liked Mag Safe on my old MBP. I don't want to sound like a parrot, but it saved my butt many times when I forgot the cable was there and walked right into it.
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Apple has always been bad with video connectors in particular, and they've actually been generally improving. They used to use weird stuff like mini VGA and mini DVI.
Yep. Started in the early 90s until they adopted standards much later. It was a joke because somewhere after the Intel flip, they said they don't want to be like PCs and have dozens of useless cables. Well what do you know? They did just that.

I was bummed when my very old ADB products went bad and I couldn't find anything in a USB world. This was before eBay and other internet services.


Edit: Just noticed you're a Berkley student. Nice. Like it there?
 
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"I'm 100% sure that most pc manufacturers will shift to usb-c within 2 years" Most PC manufacturers just got rid of VGA, if that gives you an idea of how long they support older connectors. And really, you don't use USB-A? You must not use a keyboard or mouse, which lots of people do use, but how do you charge your iPhone?
Yeah, PC manufacturers are slow getting rid of stuff but for sure they have always added new usb standards fast. And why would I charge my iPhone through my Mac anyways? I have never plugged my iPhone to my Mac. Literally.
 
I don't understand the fuss about the pricing. It seems to be mostly in line with the previous (and earlier) generations?
Well, no. The 2016 equivalent of my 2014 Macbook Pro costs almost 22% more (3200 Euro against 2500 Euro).
 
The late 2008 entry level MacBook Pro "Core 2 Duo" 2.4 15" (Unibody) was originally £1,399 in the UK.

Now I can get the entry level 12inch MacBook for £1,249 and entry level 13 inch MacBook Pro £1,449 and we now have to spend £2,349 (£950 more) to get the *most recent* 15 inch model!

The technology in the new MacBook/Macbook Pro is more advanced, I know, and the pound is down, but even before that happened everything was a lot more expensive.

I'm calling b*llshit!
 
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I never used to complain about the prices, and I have always purchased the highest configurations available on portables. However, this is the first time that I've had reservations. I can get by in the wild with my iPhone 7 and the Apple Watch. The 'laptop' allows me to have entertainment and something to do when I'm on travel or just hanging out at Starbucks. I gave away my iPad to my girlfriend as my current MacBook 12-inch worked just fine. Well, that was up until the keys started sticking. Even after a trip to the Apple Store, it's back to the same old thing in less than a month.

Sidebar: For something that's fun to use, I'm seriously looking at the new Microsoft Surface Studio thing'. Sure, it's a different animal and cannot compare to a portable at all. But I do believe at $1k less fully loaded including the 32gb of RAM; I would get more use (fun) out of it than I would from one of these new MacBooks.
 
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Honestly... the people who claim the new macbook needs more ports are stuck in the past. Just adapt to the future. In less than 5 years nobody uses hdmi, sd cards, usb-a or any other legacy stuff. Just get over it.

But some of us need to have meetings, make presentations, use USB2 and USB3 devices now, not in five years from now - and preferably without a pocket full of dongles...

Adding an extra centimeter in depth to the MacBook Pro would have allowed a pair of USB a legacy ports (and a little bit more battery). In this case I think it's probably Ive that vetoed that decision whilst Tim could see the profit benefits in selling more overpriced dongle's (possessive form because Siri text to speech sucks)

If only I could update the 4 GB of RAM on my MacBook Air...
 
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