Bit rough assuming that a "pro" user also needs to have editorial skills to get thier point across
I'd assume his skill lies in photography and not journalism
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Open letter from a Pro about the actual MacBook Pro
- Thread starter sjac
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Bit rough assuming that a "pro" user also needs to have editorial skills to get thier point across
I'd assume his skill lies in photography and not journalism
I get why a lot of people are disappointed with the latest Mac offerings. Paying a lot of money for a Mac and then having to buy some inexpensive dongles can be frustrating. As another member said, Apple cut to the chase instead of doing it incrementally with the ports. And if Apple had chosen the incremental route, those who purchased such Macs would probably be upset that Apple subsequently released the cut to the chase model.
No matter which direction Apple moves, there are going to be people who complain and expect Apple to keep going in the direction that said users expect of them.
I just purchased the late 2016 MBP without touch bar. I wasn't thrilled about having to buy 2 extra dongles after laying down a lot of money. At the same time, that extra $45 dollars is a lot cheaper to me than spending even more on the touchbar model or even a 15" model, both of which would probably be overkill money wise and daily use wise.
No matter which direction Apple moves, there are going to be people who complain and expect Apple to keep going in the direction that said users expect of them.
I just purchased the late 2016 MBP without touch bar. I wasn't thrilled about having to buy 2 extra dongles after laying down a lot of money. At the same time, that extra $45 dollars is a lot cheaper to me than spending even more on the touchbar model or even a 15" model, both of which would probably be overkill money wise and daily use wise.
Okay, I'll bite. What makes this a real pro machine?
In my opinion the last real pro machine was the 2011 17 MacBook Pro with matte screen .
Good luck writing a dissertation or a legal brief on a soft keyboard. Many people spend most of their computer time with hands on keys, only rarely using trackpad or mouse. For those people a horizontal input surface and vertical display surface makes a ton of sense.
Equally a touch screen adds, and takes nothing away. Bring the dynamism of a well designed 2 in 1 a game changer for some...
Q-6
A touchscreen without a physical keyboard and trackpad is called an iPad, I'm writing on one. We don't need to speculate how Microsoft will compete in the tablet market, because we already know. When they introduced the Surface Pro, it was the bigger brother of the ARM-based Surface, which completely tanked due to lack of applications. Now Microsofts tablet market share is under 2%.
It's not just that holding up your arms is a stress position and a form of torture. For decades every piece of UI on Mac and PC has been optimized for mouse input, but with Windows 8 all click targets were remodeled to become touch targets, with severe negative consequences for usability and compatibility. It's been a destruction of all previous UI conventions without creating a sound set of new rules, because the trackpad is still there. iOS and macOS are different where they need to be inputwise and work together on everything else. With Windows 7, 10 and XP it's the complete opposite.
A physical keyboard is always going to be superior to the best software keyboards, because it's giving haptic feedback. That's the reason why you might want a Smart Kayboard on an iPad even though it makes the touch surface vertical. But there already is a category of devices which combine a physical keyboard with a vertical screen and that's a laptop. The laptop is very good at being a laptop and didn't need the Surface Pro with a stand to turn into 'laptop mode'. With the new MacBook Pro your hands don't need to move back and forth between keyboard and touchscreen, because the Touch Bar is a part of the keyboard. Users can keep eating apples without stress for their arms or fingerprints on their screens.
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Well, to me it looks more like, the ones who are actively moaning in here "about the MacBook Pro" are Apple devoted hobbyists with semi professional ambitions. Pros would simply buy what suits their job best, and done is the topic.
The other Problem is, everybody is looking at the MacBook Pro from his own perspective only.
You can always moan about everything, like...
About displays, glossy or not. Personally I prefer glossy.
About available ports, I'm happy to not have usb-a ports, I hate em anyway.
About RAM the ones who want 32 moans about 16, the ones who want 64 moans about 32.
About graphics, the ones who moan about AMD460, wants nvidia 1050, then there are people who wants Quadro cards or FireGLs, etc.
Battery, etc.
The list can get very very long and become a never ending story.
I could also argue with senseless stuff like...
A real pro uses a table anyway. And while you are sitting at the table, just buy a stationary workstation, with 128GB EEC(for accuracy) and XEON cpus. It's a Laptop not Desktop.
Real professional Photographers use CF cards, SD cards sucks, there is no reason for a SD slot.
W00t no CF slot? How to plug the CF of my Canon Mark IV.
Real Pro can claim, and gets a tax return anyway, the MacBook costs exactly 0.
Etc.
Hell, just buy what suits best your usage, and do the math if it worths or not.
It can be so simple...
The other Problem is, everybody is looking at the MacBook Pro from his own perspective only.
You can always moan about everything, like...
About displays, glossy or not. Personally I prefer glossy.
About available ports, I'm happy to not have usb-a ports, I hate em anyway.
About RAM the ones who want 32 moans about 16, the ones who want 64 moans about 32.
About graphics, the ones who moan about AMD460, wants nvidia 1050, then there are people who wants Quadro cards or FireGLs, etc.
Battery, etc.
The list can get very very long and become a never ending story.
I could also argue with senseless stuff like...
A real pro uses a table anyway. And while you are sitting at the table, just buy a stationary workstation, with 128GB EEC(for accuracy) and XEON cpus. It's a Laptop not Desktop.
Real professional Photographers use CF cards, SD cards sucks, there is no reason for a SD slot.
W00t no CF slot? How to plug the CF of my Canon Mark IV.
Real Pro can claim, and gets a tax return anyway, the MacBook costs exactly 0.
Etc.
Hell, just buy what suits best your usage, and do the math if it worths or not.
It can be so simple...
You don't want a matte screen, you want to get rid of reflections. A 67% brighter screen and anti-reflective coating are better solutions to the same problem, because they don't destroy the brilliance of colors as matte screens do. Likewise a Retina screen with variable resolutions offers the same amount of pixels and screen real estate on a 15" screen as a standard resolution 17" screen, while being a lot smaller and lighter. And if you really need the screen to be bigger, you can connect two 27" 5K monitors simultaneously. So you see, the new MacBook Pros are indeed far superior to the old **** you use.
For me? Because I can run all the apps I make a living from - Photoshop, Zbrush, 3D Coat flawlessly, as fast as I can on my iMac 5K - the quad-core Skylake i7 will handle everything with ease, and the super-fast SSD will help me open those 500Gb PSB files faster.
The screen seems to be amazing, bright - important for illustration work. I'm not saying the P3 color gamut is required, but I'm certainly excited to use it.
I can use all of my pro tools on it and have more ports available - I can attach my Intuos Pro (with a cheap adapter), USB-C lightning cable for my iPad Pro (to use Astropad via cable) and still have 2 USB ports available - for my mouse (on my current MBP I have an issue when I connect the Intuos on one port and the iPad Pro via cable - on the other, I have no USB ports left). Even better, when I buy the new Cintiq Pro next year, I will be able to connect it directly to the USB-C port and use one cable for power, usb signal and image instead of 3 (yes, 3!) I needed for my Cintiq Companion (that one device used up half the ports on my previous MacBook Pro, and is one of the reasons I stopped using it).
That's a great example how USB-C/TB3 is helping professionals. The Cintiqs are nothing but professional devices - they are expensive tablets used only by people who make a living with them. And these devices require 3 thick cables and a power brick (I'm not kidding, all these cables and the brick require a separate bag for me!), and now they can use just one, simple, thin cable - and no power brick as the laptop will provide power. Great times.
Also, even with all this desktop-class performance, I will be able to easily carry around this computer around, not only between offices in my studio (the great battery life will help, as I won't have to search for power outlets as I visit each team) but when I work from a different location completely. I currently use my iPad Pro to discuss concept art, but I cannot open ztool and PSD files there. And my current MacBook Pro is a bit heavy, the difference is not big, but you'd ve surprised how many times I lift it and just leave it on the desk, grabbing my iPad. I don't know if that will change with the new MBP, but I do know that I carried the 13" around much more. It's not a necessity, but it is a convenience to have such a portable, and yet a powerful computer.
Finally, I believe the Touch Bar will be useful in Photoshop - I won't have to rely on my Wacom Remote to have a capacitive slider to change the brush size, it will be built in, alongside other options. One less thing to carry around.
In fact, this is something of a dream computer for me. It's how I imagined computers of the future, when I started doing digital work.
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It takes nothing away until you accommodate the touch screen by properly sizing controls and such for touch input, at which point I've lost screen real estate for nothing.
[strikethough]I just want to point out that this person is arguing that, by adding a screen on the keyboard, Apple has reduced the amount of screen "real estate."
That's how outrageous the whining has gotten.[/strikethough]
EDIT: I misunderstood, s/he didn't mean that, my apologies !
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I agree - for touch, you'd have to change the whole interface design, reducing real estate. Without it, Apple can focus on making the interface optimized for a precise input device - mouse and trackpad, while Microsoft has to (poorly) balance two input methods.
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For most people, this is the balance. Only a small minority is having issues with it - but is most vocal about it.
well its not a workstation and never really has been for a long time - if a mobile workstation is needed, go to Dell & HP as Apple doesn't, and won't, make it.
As usual it all depends on the definition of pro. I am a 'pro' and it is perfect for me and my needs. I am not complaining at all about USB C, the thinness or the extended battery life. I am not convinced on the touch bar, but remain neutral on it for a few months at least.
People will always complain if it doesn't fit there needs which is fair enough, as we all need to do something different. It is just unfortunate that Apple concentrates on the majority rather than the minority [good business sense though]
That's not what I said. I said if apple were to make the main screen a touchscreen it would inevitably result in a loss of real estate.
The Windows-8-ification of macOS, avoided thanks to TouchBar. Apple really doesn't add stuff without thinking about how it would effect the rest of the system.
Can't argue with that.
In the long run though, those dedicated fans will go somewhere else. Once that happens and product x is the new hot topic. Everybody else will follow. 10 years ago Treo devices were pretty sweet.
But they don't get rid of reflections. They reduce them, but they don't remove them. And it turns out that what makes reflections bad isn't "total number of photons hitting my eyes that were reflected at some point", but the clarity of the reflections.
With a matte anti-glare screen, I get no clearly-visible reflections distracting me from the image being presented. With the rMBP screen, I get clearly-visible reflections of me, or anything behind me, or whatever else. So even if the total luminance hitting me is in principle lower, it's more distracting.
Right now, the monitor next to my primary display happens to have a glossy bezel. Just the bezel. Every time my head shifts even a tiny bit, the reflections of objects behind me in the bezel move, which I find distracting and unpleasant. My primary monitor's bezel is matte-finish, and it's actually reflecting more light overall, but the light doesn't move, so it doesn't bug me. It's just a static thing.
I suspect you are also conflating two different changes. The Retina displays have mostly been much higher-quality color displays than Apple's previous non-Retina displays, so the colors look much more vibrant. But that's not because they're glossy; if you had one of the old displays with a glossy surface, it didn't look nearly as "brilliant" as the newer ones do.
When I upgraded my non-mac laptop recently, I went from a display which was either 1st-gen IPS or non-IPS to a really nice modern IPS display. They're both anti-glare/matte, not glossy, but the new one looks massively superior. Even though neither is glossy.
For some people, the glossy screens work okay. They certainly do look really good in the store, and they have that initial "wow" factor... But if I'm doing long-term work, I absolutely do not want a glossy screen. I'll get headaches and eyestrain and usually a bit of a sore neck from trying to adjust my head to get the glare to go away.
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No.
No one's saying Apple should only make a heavy-duty machine that has a few more ports and a matte screen, even if it weighs a bit more and doesn't look as Incredibly Shiny in stores.
But it'd be really cool if they also made that machine.
No argument there. I don't think they would do it, but I'm not against it.
But we all know that Apple will usually make just one class of pro MacBook, and the question is - is this one good for majority of pros - or some prosumer-casual mainstream device for rich people that most people here are claiming it to be.
All I'm saying - all I've been saying all this time - is that for some.... even most of us.... this IS a pro laptop that meets most, if not all, of our needs. And that the fact that some people require more, doesn't mean it's an underpowered, Apple-obsessed-with-thinnes casual user device that some people claim it to be. Nothing more, nothing less. You want something more? Matte screen? Old ports? Who am I to say that you're wrong to want these things? I am saying that just because I don't want these things - I'm not automatically "less pro" or whatever than you.
But we've been through this, haven't we? Take your matte screen for example. Apple stopped making devices with matte screens, what, 4 years ago? 5? They will never make them again. They are trying to reduce reflections on their glossy screens and it's obvious they won't go away from that direction. Why bring it up now? What's the point? I'm honestly asking. Did you really not see this coming 4 years ago?
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The perspective of the guy who whined about the new Mac means nothing to me. It's speculation, nothing more than a complete waste of time. The Mac isn't even available yet, he's never used one, and he's never had a chance to use it - let alone be in a production room for a few weeks putting it through its paces. There's no credibility to be had...
In 2005, I got a job working for a small engineering firm. As the new guy, I got the boat anchor PC but was expected to be productive and billable on Day 1. I bought a small fast slave HD, installed it, spent about an hour optimizing Windows/AutoCAD/ESRI apps into a workstation that was optimized to my tasks and the machine turned into a screaming production machine. The other guys in the office changed their tune from derision to envious in a day - but only after they had a chance to use my workstation for themselves. And, I was using only 2 GB of RAM while chewing through multi-GB SHAPE files faster than anyone in that company ever did before.
It's not about individual components - it's about how they're assembled, with forethought, and used in a workflow.
The guy isn't even a whiner, there's nothing to whine about yet except specs. Worse, he's guilty of spreading FUD IMHO. Only after using the new Mac is he even qualified to offer an opinion - even then, he can only offer that it won't work for him. Yeah, I want more/bigger/better/faster, but I'm going to an Apple Store to try one out before making my own judgment.
OTOH, I'll wager a bet that Intel made Apple a great deal on "Clearing out all of those Skylake processors and DDR3 memory in the back room so we can sell you the good stuff!" :evil grin:
In 2005, I got a job working for a small engineering firm. As the new guy, I got the boat anchor PC but was expected to be productive and billable on Day 1. I bought a small fast slave HD, installed it, spent about an hour optimizing Windows/AutoCAD/ESRI apps into a workstation that was optimized to my tasks and the machine turned into a screaming production machine. The other guys in the office changed their tune from derision to envious in a day - but only after they had a chance to use my workstation for themselves. And, I was using only 2 GB of RAM while chewing through multi-GB SHAPE files faster than anyone in that company ever did before.
It's not about individual components - it's about how they're assembled, with forethought, and used in a workflow.
The guy isn't even a whiner, there's nothing to whine about yet except specs. Worse, he's guilty of spreading FUD IMHO. Only after using the new Mac is he even qualified to offer an opinion - even then, he can only offer that it won't work for him. Yeah, I want more/bigger/better/faster, but I'm going to an Apple Store to try one out before making my own judgment.
OTOH, I'll wager a bet that Intel made Apple a great deal on "Clearing out all of those Skylake processors and DDR3 memory in the back room so we can sell you the good stuff!" :evil grin: