Someone reposted the video. It does ‘look’ much thicker than previous gens. Love it!
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New Video Provides Extensive Hands-on Look at New 16-inch MacBook Pro [Updated]
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I’m guessing that poster didn’t even know this “new” design is actually Jony Ive’s old design so he probably doesn’t even realize how foolish his post reads.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple designers are laughing their butts off at posters like him who are praising this ”new” design.
Listen up here… we are still struggling through a PANDEMIC… we’ve all put on a little weight, let’s not go shaming these beautiful beasts
Some people just need a 16inch but with the performance of M1, which is still more than fast enough for most non GPU intensive work.
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The 14 inch is thinner and the 16 inch is just 0.02 inch thicker. I think the rounded bottom design is giving the illusion of being thicker than they are. The M1 is supposed to enable smaller and lighter designs when performance is equivalent, but Apple chose to maximize the MBP for performance with better airflow, which is understandable given its target audience.
While no doubt it's a great machine with more focused on features which make it more convenient to use for pros, I do fear that apple is slowly designing/making products by committee. There will always be a trade off when making products, so while I understand the clamor that form has outweighed function past 5 or so years, it will always be impossible to appease everyone. I've always loved apple products for their balancing act, leaning a bit more towards design. If everything was about battery life, upgradability, ports that a lot of people on these forums have talked about, to me their products would just be PCs and beige boxes. I'm a pro user that has always been inspired by their products, where it wasn't just specs I was after. As if it were, than I would have just stayed in the PC world.
When the first M1 chips came out, seeing the thinness of the iMac, was hoping we could finally have the best of both worlds and have a tech solve for some of the previous constraints, as agree functionality was limited by some of the design decisions on the macbook pros. But for this generation, feels like function was the ONLY focus. Almost a parody of apple.
Yes I understand that it didn't get that much thicker, but there doesn't seem to be any finesse in the design. The tapering served a visual purpose on the previous models, vs now being a rectangle box, that harks back to the powerbook. A product that was designed based on limitations during that time, so a bit disheartening to see the design not progress on the macbooks. Same with the new iMac. Feels a bit soul-less. From a product design standpoint, still think the current iPhone, iWatch and Ipad Pros are beautiful, yet still very functional pieces of hardware. But if the iWatch ends up going the way of flat sides as rumored, to me this new era of iMac, Macbook Pros and potential iWatch, are going the way of generic / mass design.
Sure I'm in the minority and love that we can have these discussions, but for me, miss being excited by the actual design of apple products vs just focusing only on specs. That's what always made Apple great to me.
When the first M1 chips came out, seeing the thinness of the iMac, was hoping we could finally have the best of both worlds and have a tech solve for some of the previous constraints, as agree functionality was limited by some of the design decisions on the macbook pros. But for this generation, feels like function was the ONLY focus. Almost a parody of apple.
Yes I understand that it didn't get that much thicker, but there doesn't seem to be any finesse in the design. The tapering served a visual purpose on the previous models, vs now being a rectangle box, that harks back to the powerbook. A product that was designed based on limitations during that time, so a bit disheartening to see the design not progress on the macbooks. Same with the new iMac. Feels a bit soul-less. From a product design standpoint, still think the current iPhone, iWatch and Ipad Pros are beautiful, yet still very functional pieces of hardware. But if the iWatch ends up going the way of flat sides as rumored, to me this new era of iMac, Macbook Pros and potential iWatch, are going the way of generic / mass design.
Sure I'm in the minority and love that we can have these discussions, but for me, miss being excited by the actual design of apple products vs just focusing only on specs. That's what always made Apple great to me.
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I know what you mean. The new MacBook Pro design kind of reminds me of an Altoids tin with the bulbous rounded bottom and flat lid. The thickness doesn't bother me but I'm working on a 2012 non-retina MacBook Pro and even it looks more modern. The later retina models even more so. I guess it comes down to the fact they didn't taper the bottom and top with these new ones.
I think Apple finally has a fully differentiated line of laptops to highlight the flexibility of their processor architecture. From the thin and light Air, to a portable workstation in the 16” Max.
The 16” Max fills the hole left by the old 17” in a much better form factor that rivals a 5 year old 15”. The Air outruns last years MBPs.
I couldn’t give a darn about the notch— I feel it was a compromise to make the “omg the forehead and chin!” crowd happy, and I never had a dog in that fight. I have some nits about the choice of ports (SD, really, in this day and age?) but, again, I think it was a compromise to make other people happy so I’ll deal with it.
I think the new differentiation in the line forces us all to reconsider what is the right machine for each of us, but it looks to me like the new line will mean fewer of us need to compromise. The only exception I can see is if you were hoping for what would essentially be a 16” Air— those folks will have to wait.
The 16” Max fills the hole left by the old 17” in a much better form factor that rivals a 5 year old 15”. The Air outruns last years MBPs.
I couldn’t give a darn about the notch— I feel it was a compromise to make the “omg the forehead and chin!” crowd happy, and I never had a dog in that fight. I have some nits about the choice of ports (SD, really, in this day and age?) but, again, I think it was a compromise to make other people happy so I’ll deal with it.
I think the new differentiation in the line forces us all to reconsider what is the right machine for each of us, but it looks to me like the new line will mean fewer of us need to compromise. The only exception I can see is if you were hoping for what would essentially be a 16” Air— those folks will have to wait.
This is MacBook Pro. If Apple made it thinner and lighter, it would heat up more, have less battery life and slower performance and pros would only complain. They made the right choice. As far as thinner and lighter designs, there's already a rumor of a new MacBook Air coming next year. Expect that to be thinner and lighter because it is called MacBook Air.
I think you might be jumping the gun on "you’ll absolutely struggle to get the fans to kick on." These things have a lot more GPU power than the M1, and if you do any serious work that uses them, then maybe such predictions might be off the mark. None of us know yet.
Come on, the 2019 16" MBP was thicker than the previous releases. This isn't really new news. But yep, fully agree, nice to see function over form return. But we do miss the days of Ives's design genius, tempered by Steve's overall genius, when Apple had both form AND function in spades. Tim couldn't control Ives, so we lost function, but he did give him the shove, so function is back, but at the cost of form.
Watch the iJustine podcast put up yesterday. She had 2 Apple execs and they challenged her to try and get the fans to kick on….just saying. I don’t have one, so I can’t say for sure….but that seems like a strong testament that these chips sip power and don’t normally get hot thus fans hardly ever turn on.
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So easy path, if it didn’t impose any performance constraints, would have been to keep the current Macbook Pro design; Apple would have probably gotten some pushback on that, but not as much as this design. They could have adopted the iPad Pro design approach with straight sides and right angles to a flat top and bottom and been consistent with where they currently are for iPads and iPhones, but that would also look very thick if it was .6”+ so they probably would have received a fair amount of criticism for that. I’m really curious if their choice of the basic shape was intended to be a reference back to the older MacBook/PowerBook design or if there are some real reasons for the shape (better thermal design, better fit for components or to achieve battery capacity, etc.). I’m assuming that in this iteration of the MacBook Pro that Appl3 has correctly chosen to avoid thermal throttling as much as is practical and most of us would be very unhappy if they had created this wonderful processing capability and then crippled it with throttling….
Yes, a 16" M1 MBA would sell well, going by the comments on this forum. But that doesn't mean the 16" MBP needs to be compromised for it.
And also understandable since it is enjoying the adulation of M1 vs Intel. Nothing like better designed thermals to really rub it in
Yep, we are starting to see products now that don't have the bulk of Steve's magic genius touch. There are still major thing sabout these machines that is still Steve, including, surprisingly, the actual the chips themselves, firstly, since they are basically Steve's iPhone chip beefed up, and secondly because plans to release AS in Macs actually began when Steve was still around. Other things about this entire design that are heavily borrowed from the Steve era, are things such as the keyboard, unibody, and so on. But there is also the new management's touches and details that are lacking the genius, and starting to mess it up a bit. Thankfully, this new management has started to learn that they aren't infallible, and will lose major slabs of their customer base if they don't listen to their feedback and don't get their input. There's still that overarching arrogance though, but hopefully it will chip away as each major stuff up gets hammered.
Yes, it seems pretty clear that there is a market for a 16” Mn-based MacBook Air targeted to support a very different customer base than what these MacBook Pros are targeted to support…
I agree. It looks like Apple was trying to make it fit in with the look of the iPad Pro and iMac, but for some reason it didn't work out this time around. I have a 2015 15" and it's almost perfect. I don't think I will upgrade anytime soon because I mainly use x86 virtual machines and archive videos.
Have to imagine it was partly due to ports and just changing up the design for the sake of design. The latter seems unlike Apple but say that because of the design feeling non progressive to me.
The thing is only 2kg, how weak and pathetic are you? I'll be buying a 16", and travelling the world with it. I used to have the 17" back in the day, and that thing was 3kg, and had a 17" screen with big bezels. I travelled the world with that thing no problems at all. It fit in my hand luggage day pack laptop bag just fine. The screen realestate was a joy, and I still miss it. Very happy to have 16.2" over 15.4" again, but I'd buy an 18" if they made one. PS - I fully recommend the InCase laptop day packs, they are brilliant. Attractive, very functional, and solid as a rock. I got the InCase Icon Backpack, absolutely brilliant. It's my second one, and the first one lasted for years and years with almost daily use, and is still actually usable, but started to look a bit ratty, so got a new one. Worth the extra coin for the Icon model, as the extra space is awesome.
The old lid and body taper towards the edges. They are much thicker ~ 0.5" in from the edge. Notice that huge gap between the two machines.
Which is fine but a machine like that isnt in Apple’s lineup right now, doesnt make the new macbook pros bad, just means your use case isnt represented. It’s not like this is new, there never was a 16” iBook to step up from the 14” and complement the 17” powerbook for example
I have to admit, I am starting to come around on the notch somewhat, but haven't seen it in person. It's definitely not a deal breaker, even though I don't think Steve would have stood for it. I don't mind the keyboard at all, and I think you'll find it will grow on you, and you'll start thinking the old ones look outdated. I've noticed fashion works like that, at first I hate a new fashion, but then grow to like it and often end up buying it. The other thing about little changes like that, is they differentiate the new models to the old, and if you're into status at all (and we all are to some degree if we are honest with ourselves at all, unless we are fully enlightened buddhist monks), then you will enjoy that difference.