First time poster, long time reader.
So, like many I was utterly disappointed by the new Macbooks. My 2012 Macbook Air died a month ago, seemed like good timing. Sadly, as many know, the new ones are ridiculously over priced and use old components. I was angry for a while, but I thought I'd share a constructive solution.
If you are not an iOS developer (see below) the solution is quite simple.
Vote with your wallet.
This is coming form a long term Apple user. Even I got fed up. My first mac was a Titanium Powerbook, then a 12" iBook, the very first iPod (with many different models later on), an 17" iMac, the aluminum macbook, a 21" iMac, and finally a 11" inch Macbook Air and a 27" Imac. I even recommended the hardware to others. I did my part
. But enough is enough. Vote with your wallet.
There are plenty of laptops from other manufactures which are good and portable. The Dell XPS 13 is an example (small footprint, light, has normal USB ports, 1 Thunderbolt 3 port, SD-card reader etc and up to date internals for a better price). I am personally not a big fan of the tiny bezels, I think they overdo it. Some protection from the background distraction around the screen is beneficial. My personal choice is the new Razor Blade Stealth, a 12.5" ultrabook, with the option to connect an external GPU. Very light, same build quality (all aluminum) as macbooks, and a good price (starting at 999)
with Kaby Lake and 16GB of RAM by default. That's the config I would have expected in the Macbook Pro, with or without that gimmicky touchbar.
As far as the OS is concerned, I get the windows hate. I really do. Though windows ten is a big improvement. But Ubuntu has come a loooong way and is very user friendly. If you are the typical mac user that wants things to work with no frills, let me tell you: You can do it!
And if something did arise, you will become a little more computer literate in the process. Email, web browsing (chrome or firefox), youtube, facebook, twitter, messaging, music, and video (latter with VLC for example), unity, scientific computing (matlab, R, sci-python etc,), coding (eclipse, sublime), vecotrgraphics (inkscape), distraction free wring (focuswriter), libre office, all work flawlessly on ubuntu. If you need MS office you can either boot into windows or try running it with wine under linux. Gimp for basic image editing, the list goes on.
I you need video editing or the adobe suite, you can boot into windows.
Personally I can live with that gimmicky touch bar, and I never used siri, which the only two features you would truly give up. But if you have to have the Apple logo to show of at the coffee shop, I cannot help you.
As far as eco-system lock-in is concerned, I feel like this is highly overrated. I cannot remember when was the last time I had to connect and sync my iPhone. I use iCloud for notes, contacts and calendars. Notes could be replaced by onenote or evernote. But keeping them on the phone exclusively for now is also an option. Contacts can be exported on the mac (as vcards) and imported in linux.
The only reason not to switch is as a developer of iOS apps who wants to work on a laptop. You are screwed, I guess. Either continue to use older hardware (it runs x-code just fine after all) or buy overpriced smaller laptops with the same outdated internals. Sorry developers. A big FU from Apple.
Now to some brief analysis. Why is this happening? Just a few ideas.
These new computers, the port dropping etc, is not designing for price, or designing for experience. It is plain old designing for share-holder value. This all a symptom that Apple may have reached the limits of growth. Phone growth stagnating, iPad demand falling, mac demand falling, watch demand ???. No TV deal coming through, car project "resized". Where can future profits and growth come from? Easy: A drop as many features (e.g. ports, thus cutting cost), use old (read: cheap) components, up the price, sell adapters, and hope that people will still buy it.
Adapters are an intergresting example. I used to work with PCs for a while, and the biggest profit margin we had was always on cables and adapters. Think, it's basically rubber (or white shiny plastic), a bit of wires and maybe a small board, produced in bulk in China at a cost of pennies a piece and sold for 30-50$. That is a healthy profit, or, oif you look at it differently, a great way to f*** over customers. To be clear, I am not saying Apple's strategy is to replace profit from Macs with profit from adapters, but is a part of the strategy.
So that is it. I made up my mind, I am going with Ubuntu on the razor blade stealth. The hardware looks awesome and is up to date at a good price. I am not saying I am never going back to Apple laptops, but for now, I'll pass.
What do you guys think?
