Because I can work in Zbrush, 3D Coat and huge Photoshop files on MacBook Pro 15" with ease, and I can't do it on a MacBook. This is exactly the attitude that is wrong: if you don't need 32Gb, than MacBook - or even iPad Pro - is enough for your needs.
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Open letter from a Pro about the actual MacBook Pro
- Thread starter sjac
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Because I can work in Zbrush, 3D Coat and huge Photoshop files on MacBook Pro 15" with ease, and I can't do it on a MacBook. This is exactly the attitude that is wrong: if you don't need 32Gb, than MacBook - or even iPad Pro - is enough for your needs.
I don't think there are very many people who would argue against Apple offering a "workstation" replacement for that 5% of the "pro" market that needs it. The problem is that Apple is not interested in developing a laptop that will sell in the tens of thousands or even a hundred thousand. If they can't sell millions of them (and they can't - there's just not a large enough market for them), then they're simply not going to make that product.
No offense to the "Pros", but thats what I mean. My company buy this Macbook Pros by the thousands (across a few years.) Whereas the Pro buy one every 5 years.
only us -market, the home of apple. abit misleading, dont you think? and i think you missed the real point here: "Of those who bought an Apple laptop in 2014, some 40% had since bought another brand." that is a bad sign.
and you really cant compare apple as a company to others. people who have win laptops spread all over the win market: asus, hp, lenovo, acer.. whatever.
if there was another company producing osx laptops, the peek for apple would be low - apple does too much compromises.
and you really cant compare apple as a company to others. people who have win laptops spread all over the win market: asus, hp, lenovo, acer.. whatever.
if there was another company producing osx laptops, the peek for apple would be low - apple does too much compromises.
Misleading or not, it sold more in 5 days than competitors did in a year in USA. Would you honestly say it's "not selling well"?
As for compromises - to quote Big Lebowsky - That's just, like, your opinion, man
I don't know. But I can tell you this: I've never been able to get a screen protector to go on a screen without dust getting under it. Not ever. I'm just not good at that.
I would pay more for a matte screen. It would be worth a lot more to me than "retina" is.
I miss the 17" MBP so much sometimes.
I'm a pro (at something or other). New MPB's are great. I ordered two.
As a data point: I have a mac, and my spouse has a mac, and one of our friends has a mac, and most of those machines were up towards 4 years old before this launch. We were waiting on the launch because the existing rMBP models were year and a half old technology, at full price. So the launch happened. And now... We have four-year-old macs. We aren't going to just not do anything. The year and a half old macs are significantly slower, so they're pretty unappealing right now. The new ones are... well, sort of bad, in a lot of ways, but the upgraded specs mean that they're at least usable. One of the people will definitely be fine. I'm not actually sure yet whether it'll work out.
But we screwed up; we let ourselves get into a situation where we were reliant on Mac-only software, and where Apple had nothing on offer that was actually going to be a good fit. And whatever, I can afford to waste money sometimes, so I'm getting one of them. But I'm not happy about it. It's been two weeks since the announcement, and I've spent many hours researching things, and I've tried to order enough dongles and parts that I will be reasonably likely to be able to set the new machine up and get work done with it on the first day. I don't actually have confidence that I won't have overlooked something, or missed a compatibility note, so it's entirely possible that I'll end up continuing to use my old Mac until I buy some additional dongle.
And that's a pretty clear sign to me of the direction things are going in. Apple's not making machines for people with workloads remotely like mine anymore. I can sorta kludge things along and make do, but at this point, the real take-home lesson for me is that I need to stop being reliant on OS X. There's only a handful of Mac-only tools I'm really relying on now. I can make most of them go away, but it'll take months to find and get used to replacements. And I'm still not sure whether I can tolerate Windows 10 enough to deal with it, or whether I'm going to be dealing with some variety of Linux.
Every Apple product announcement since the initial rMBP has been full of disappointments and compromises for me. They haven't made a single machine I could be enthusiastic about. The price gap between Mac and PC hardware has gotten larger, not smaller. The gap in ports and other functionality, likewise. And while there's plenty to loathe about Windows 10, hey, guess who now ships with a reasonably-functional Unix subsystem? That'd be Windows.
I've been on MacOS X since it was called NeXTStep. I still have NeXT hardware in my basement. Even now, I absolutely prefer MacOS to any of the alternatives. It's just that, without hardware that's even remotely close to what I want, it's costing me too much. I could deal with the dollar cost; what I can't deal with is the time, stress, and inconvenience of having machines which are perpetually moving directly away from what I want.
Matte screens are pretty important to me. I hate the Retina's glossy screen. It's a disruption, it gives me headaches, it's exactly what I don't want and never have wanted. But it looks pretty and sells to the one and only market Apple still targets, so it's the only option. Ethernet is important to me. A broader selection of ports is important to me. MagSafe was an incredible thing, and honestly one of the people I buy laptops for is clumsy, and magsafe on his laptops has probably saved me $4k in the last few years. (And that's why I'm buying two new laptops, not three; he's getting a 2015 laptop with magsafe.)
I mean, you guys can keep redefining "pro" until it means "only these eight guys over here", and ignoring all the pro users who can't get stuff done on the new machines without a lot of headache and hassle. Certainly, that seems to be Apple's strategy.
But it's not exactly great platform advocacy to be smug and derisive towards people who have been long-term fans and supporters of the platform.
... I rambled. Point is, every person in my social circles outside macrumors who bought one of these machines did so because they absolutely can't switch off OS X now, and they want a Mac with a reasonably-recent CPU. And most of us are now actively shopping around among competing products to find stuff we can get acceptable performance and behavior out of, and figure out how to replace our Mac-only apps. Because the writing is pretty clearly on the wall; we're no longer in Apple's demographic.
Thank you for the nice post - I understand what you're saying. The only thing I think you're wrong about is "every person in my social circles". In fact, you're not wrong, but it is a bit misleading: our social circles tend to be made of people that share our views in some way at least. Not always - but I think there is a good chance that people that are in your circles have similar, hm, sensitivities like you. Why am I saying this? Because my circles include a lot of digital artists, illustrators, sculptors - and they are all really excited about these new MBPs (the only issue is the price). That doesn't mean it's an indicator of anything, but it shows how it's hard to make conclusions by looking at the people that surround us. Not to get into politics, but I think this is the reason the US presidential elections were such a shock to some people.
As for yourself - I really can't disagree with anything you said. You clearly stated that Apple is not making computers for your workloads - and you avoided the "they don't make them for pros" line that is a bit insulting to people like me. I can only hope they either offer something you can use better, or that you find some luck in the Windows world. It's good that Windows is not so bad anymore (I wouldn't go as far as calling it good, but it's not bad). Also, in a year or two from now, USB-C will be the standard, MacBook Pros will come with 32Gb RAM and perhaps even with some powerful Nvidia GPUs. I think the computers some people want will come, even from Apple.
Good luck.
Interesting about Radeon Pro 450/455/460 vs. Iris Pro 580 power efficiency. Did you see a good comparison of that somewhere? I was really hoping for an iGPU-only version (Iris Pro 580) and was disappointed when all models had dGPUs. I find the 2015 iGPU-only version cool and quiet and like the idea of more reliability when I don't really need a dGPU (not to mention notebookcheck.net shows the 450 slightly below the 580 in performance). If those Radeons really are more efficient than Intel's top iGPU, that would be refreshing...though I still miss the iGPU-only option.
The other thing I worry about is 2D performance of the HD 530 for basic desktop tasks. It seems to be generally regarded as less performant than the previous version's iGPU (Iris Pro 5200), which definitely stutters a bit at times. Will that actually be a step backward for light tasks? Doesn't seem like they'd let that happen, but it will be interesting to see how they fare when the reviews start pouring in.
I suspect it'll take longer than that for USB-C to be "the" standard, and... Even if it were, I still want SD readers, I still want Ethernet.
I also still want machines that are much closer to the high end of the laptop performance curve... And Apple's never going to make those unless they decide that maybe some users don't want "thin" more than anything.
And I don't see that happening. So I'll probably end up with a lone mini sitting around for the occasions when I need to run xcode, or just stop targeting Mac/iOS entirely. But I'll always be sad about it, because dammit, this operating system has such incredible potential, and most of what it could do is being abandoned in favor of Even Thinner.
And that's the thing. For years, people have been telling me either that Apple will totally make a machine that would do the job, or that the machines they're making will do the job. And it keeps becoming more and more obviously completely false.
Also, the thing about "insulting to people like me"... You might want to consider tone yourself, because you have made a lot of posts recently using words like "myth" which basically come across as saying "the people who are unhappy don't know what they're talking about".
I've been a devoted fan of this operating system since 1988. I've done Unix kernel work. I've been using Macs since 1984 or so, and have probably owned them continuously for over 20 years now. I don't really need random people on the Internet telling me that I don't appreciate OS X, don't understand the technical issues involved, or don't understand Apple. No, I do understand Apple, and I do appreciate OS X, and that's why I'm sad.
Quite the opposite. "Pro" used to mean media-creation in Apple land. That's a comparatively small market. Now "pro" means the majority of people who use their Macs as part of their profession. I'm a lawyer, a semiconductor engineer, and a software developer. And the new MBP seems pretty great to me. In the old days I wasn't a "pro" because I wasn't making music videos or whatever.
I think you're defining the term on the wrong axis. It's not about whether or not the thing you use it for is "a job". It's about the relative specs and functionality of the product lines. The "pro" line is "more specs, more features, more functionality". Even now, it's sort of the case; the MBP does have more options and features than the non-pro Macbook, for instance. It's just that it used to be that the "pro" line was sort of a bells-and-whistles thing, the intent of which was "whatever you need, the pro line can do it". And yeah, that meant some features that only a minority of users used.
But say only 5% of your audience cares about Ethernet, and only 5% care about upgrading RAM, and only 5% care about swapping in new drives, or having a second drive, and only 5% care about firewire, and only 5% care about the SD card, and only 5% care about magsafe...
There's some overlap, but all those 5%s add up to a lot more than 5% of the total user base, and all of them are now disappointed, because no machine with the features they want is on offer.
Not in any way to answer for Aevan on his behalf - I'm sure he has his own thoughts on that, but while I think you make a good point in general, you seem to be failing to distinguish what these "myth" posts are addressing (whether specifically using the word "myth" or similar language) - AGAIN - it's not that no one needs 32GB of RAM, it's not that no one needs a faster GPU, it's not that dongles aren't needed for some things... that's not the "myth" - that's well understood by anyone posting here who has any technical knowledge.
The "myth" that is being bucked, is that from reading this forum, you would think 75%+ of the laptop market needs more than the MBP offers. And that's just totally off-base. It's like 5% of the laptop market needs more than the MBP offers. And probably 75% of that 5% would never consider a MBP anyway no matter how many ports it had or how much RAM it had. It's a really niche market.
If you do understand Apple, I'm sure you get why they're aren't making the laptop you need.
I've been an Apple fan (definitely not fanboy) since the early '80s. I had subscriptions to all the popular computer magazines of the time. I read all the books on Apple way back then. We've seen all these same complaints for decades. From the original Mac (not enough RAM, no hard drive, mouse isn't for "real" pros), to the Apple IIc (new ports and lack of expandability) to their products being too expensive (really, nearly every new or significantly revised product Apple has ever introduced).
So, I was window-shopping laptops the other day, and I looked at a lot of laptops. And about 95% of the laptops for sale have at least one of these features. And you're saying that at most 5% of the entire market needs any of them.
Do you seriously think that every other company has completely failed to do any market research at all, and that all the market research results ever published are wrong?
My best guess is, they've gotten really focused on profits, on only making the most profitable and most popular things.
And they've forgotten about indirect effects. Apple's had a huge boom in software from people who got a Mac because the Mac was the best computer for them, and therefore when they develop software, that's the natural target for them. Long ago, I knew lots of people with Windows laptops. Then OS X really sorta hit its stride, and the early macbooks were pretty good machines. Maybe a bit light on GPU, but everything was back then. They were still at least credible attempts, and you could get a high-end machine that had a 1920x1200 display, and a nice keyboard, and they added stuff like magsafe. And basically all the software people I know who weren't using Linux or BSD switched to Macs for their primary laptop. Because they were the best machines. And then, of course, if they developed stuff, they developed it for OS X. And we see a lot of really nice programs that started out on OS X.
But now it's going the other way. Microsoft added Unix support to Windows 10, and it's sorta crappy, but it's there at all. And a lot of the people I know who switched to OS X because the early MBPs were great machines are no longer interested in the MBP line. Why?
Magsafe. Ethernet. Keyboard. Magsafe alone was enough to sell some people on a Mac if they didn't have a really compelling reason to use something else. Amazing feature. I absolutely adore it and I am already worried about post-magsafe machines getting yanked off tables, etcetera. Ethernet is apparently minor to a lot of people, but not to some others. And the keyboard... I haven't actually yet seen anything from a full-time writer or programmer who likes the new keyboard better than a keyboard with travel. I have seen a lot of people saying they think it's probably tolerable and you sorta get used to it and can muddle along, but that it's a good idea to have an external keyboard now. And now we add things like SD slots, or USB ports that work with any existing devices, or HDMI/displayPort, and so on.
One of the things that's been great about MacOS development is the number of people doing it out of love and because they enjoyed the platform. And those are the people hardest hit here. Companies will produce crappy MacOS ports if they think there's enough users, and they won't care whether their cheap offshore porting team likes the keyboard.
But there's a reason Scrivener is no longer Mac-only.
The pricing thing has stayed a pretty minor complaint, for me anyway, that whole time.
I don't recall a ton of complaints about the lack of hard drive on the original mac; I think we were the only people we knew who had ever owned a hard drive, so the idea wasn't widespread yet.
Yes this is a bit ridiculous. Apple has the lowest reflectivity glossy screens out there, their coatings are amazing.
I noticed they all had 16gb RAM or Less... "Except for the "Joke" addition
The same website has and interesting article about 16gb Limitation https://www.slrlounge.com/is-16-gb-of-ram-in-the-new-macbook-pro-enough/
It's worth a read
Ok all you 32gig memory people are driving me crazy. So far I can not find one reason besides running multiple VMs where OSX runs better with more than 16 gig of memory. Even rendering of video and graphics does not appear to have any substantial gains, if any, from memory beyond 16 gig.
I have googled for an answer and can't find one, so if any of you 32gig advocates can provide us with real numbers of performance and memory use please fill us in.
Thank you in advance.
[doublepost=1479014665][/doublepost]So what exactly is a "Pro?"
A professional is a member of a profession or any person who earns their living from a specified professional activity. The term also describes the standards of education and training that prepare members of the profession with the particular knowledge and skills necessary to perform their specific role within that profession. In addition, most professionals are subject to strict codes of conduct, enshrining rigorous ethical and moral obligations.[1] Professional standards of practice and ethics for a particular field are typically agreed upon and maintained through widely recognized professional associations, such as the IEEE.[2] Some definitions of "professional" limit this term to those professions that serve some important aspect of public interest [3] and the general good of society.[4][5]
In some cultures, the term is used as shorthand to describe a particular social stratum of well-educated workers who enjoy considerable work autonomy and who are commonly engaged in creative and intellectually challenging work.[6][7][8][9]
So what makes the MBP a professional device?
I have googled for an answer and can't find one, so if any of you 32gig advocates can provide us with real numbers of performance and memory use please fill us in.
Thank you in advance.
[doublepost=1479014665][/doublepost]So what exactly is a "Pro?"
A professional is a member of a profession or any person who earns their living from a specified professional activity. The term also describes the standards of education and training that prepare members of the profession with the particular knowledge and skills necessary to perform their specific role within that profession. In addition, most professionals are subject to strict codes of conduct, enshrining rigorous ethical and moral obligations.[1] Professional standards of practice and ethics for a particular field are typically agreed upon and maintained through widely recognized professional associations, such as the IEEE.[2] Some definitions of "professional" limit this term to those professions that serve some important aspect of public interest [3] and the general good of society.[4][5]
In some cultures, the term is used as shorthand to describe a particular social stratum of well-educated workers who enjoy considerable work autonomy and who are commonly engaged in creative and intellectually challenging work.[6][7][8][9]
So what makes the MBP a professional device?
Ugh yeah.... I forgot about that when buying them for my iPhone. I'd buy them in packs of two, because the first one simply always fails. But for a big screen, that would get costly.
Once, I had it succeed in one go, i.e. no dust. That was when I was working for a company who made custom electronics and had a cleanroom