Professional Mac Users' Complaints List Grows After 'Disappointing' Apple Event

[Craig Hindall]

This is going to be my first post here. I consider myself an Apple Fanboy without being an iSheep (at least I think). I took the plunge and bought the iPhone 7 Plus though I told myself I would not. I like it. It is much faster then my iPhone 6 Plus. I gave my nephew my 2011 MacBook Pro 13 with 16GB of RAM and 256GB SSD because he needed a computer and I was hoping to upgrade. Sadly even though I saved the money I just can't justify the price. It is upsetting that my 2011 MacBook Pro had more Pro then the new one just released. I can't justify it. I am VERY angry at Apple! One reason is the video at the beginning showing different people with disadvantages using Apple products. That's me! I was born with Cerebral Palsy. The doctors said I would never see or walk. However my grandparents had other ideas and bought me an Apple Computer. It changed my life. But after the event with the increase in prices and requirement for "dongles" I feel as if Apple is saying "Your money is not good enough for us anymore". I always understood the "Apple Tax" because with it came quality and longevity. There are many companies that don't have top of the line tech (cough Nintendo) but still produce amazing products that their consumers will use. But these MacBook's had many of the features taken away. I can't image any notebook without at least 1 USB port.

I fear the Mac product line is failing. I understand the iPhone makes a lot of money but so can the Mac. Anyone remember the "Mac vs PC" commercials? How many people switched from PC to Mac because of Vista and Apple's advertising campaign? They had great hardware and an amazing OS!

Some will say I am living in the past. I love Apple I really do. I want them to succeed. I am hoping I can stay a Mac user.... Here is to the future. Thanks for reading and letting me pour out my feelings.

 

[Ntran]

Touch bar is a cool feature but not great. Try to recall yourself how often do you use the function keys on your Mac? You use it occassionally to make some changes to your computer then leave them there. Most of the functions of the touch bar have been handled fine for years by the trackpad. Apple's trackpad is simply one of the best out there on the market

 

[newyorksole]

People should read through the comments when Apple announced the unibody MBPs in 2008. Not much different than what we see today.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apple-announces-new-aluminum-macbooks.580479/

Lmao omg! History repeats itself. Those comments are amazing. Wow.

Thank God for archives. Everyone reading this post, PLEASE read the comments in the linked article above. Apple is doing just fine.

 

[mchak58]

If you need more than the new MBPro, PRICE is not the problem; it's lack of POWER.

I would gladly pay over $5,000 US for an updated Mac Pro or MBP with 32 GB RAM. If you are making a living off this machine, spending an extra $1,000-$2000 every 3 years for your main tool (compared to a laptop) should not be a problem. Yes, it's a niche within a niche, but if Apple is one of the world's largest companies, with many billions in Cash, they ought to be able to do ALL of these things at once.

I sometimes need to auto-process a folder containing 10+ GB of hi-res photos, opening each one in Photoshop, downsampling it, converting it to CMYK or RGB, and then re-importing it into InDesign; or creating multiple hi-res PDFs of large books full of hi res images. I have several of these types of processes that run via a script or plugin, and having a faster CPU would speed up these tasks. I'd pay extra to speed those things up - but Apple's current products are not upgradeable. The old MacPro big aluminum tower was great - I could open the side, add RAM, hard drives, video cards - all within 5 minutes.

Apple needs to offer a machine that isn't meant to be used at a coffee shop. Those of us who need the power will pay the higher price.

 

[FreshBoy]

The guy in the coffeeshop writing their new novel as depicted in a typical image of a Macbook user is fine with the base line models so who would be interested in the the more powerful ones? That's right, the creatives, dev ops, programmers, data analysts...basically everyone who has needs for lots of CPU/GPU horsepower, memory and disk space. Anybody who uses virtual machines needs lots of RAM and a beefy CPU. Graphics/3D/video software is using GPU to render more and more.

I would not be surprised if more of these people would be willing to move to more powerful Windows or Linux machines. PC manufacturers have also generally caught up with Apple when it comes to the hardware design though the trackpad is still a bit better. Personally as a web developer I might consider a Surface Pro for my next machine because I have little need for lugging around a laptop which I will generally connect to an external display, keyboard and mouse. There is literally nothing in the new MBP that I feel is worth an upgrade over my current one.

Are you due an upgrade?

 

[kk1ro]

Yeah people who haven't spent one second with these machines throwing a temper tantrum saying they're not going to buy. As far as I know Apple has never offered 32GB RAM option with the MBP before, when the machine was thicker and heavier than it is now. Why are we getting these temper tantrums now?

Because it's 2016, people do much more resource-intensive tasks nowadays and most other "Pro" laptops are upgradeable to 32GB of RAM.

As far as I know, Apple never offered a 16GB option before 2012, so why introduce it at all? As far as I know, Apple never offered Intel CPUs before 2005, so why introduce them to the Mac line?

Because tech evolves, users' needs evolve and Apple needs to evolve along with them. It's weird that this even needs to be said.

 

[movielad]

I remember my time at an Academy Award winning VFX facility and having to manage Shake. What joyous times it was when we discovered that Apple were going to abandon it. And when I left that company to work for a VFX software development company, we principally all used Macs (it is - was - maybe still is with the new model - a brilliant device for engineers). I brought in an Xserve to help build Mocha, the planar tracking software. Mocha went on to win an Academy Award in the technical Oscars category. And Apple then only went and discontinued the Xserve.

It flirts with creative professionals, but never really seems to go any further. It has caused a hell of a lot of problems as a consequence.

 

[jscooper22]

Unfortunately I have architects on MP 5,1s and a couple 4,1s, need to upgrade them yesterday and want them on laptops so no choice but to get these. But yes, it was underwhelming.

 

[tito2020]

Perhaps MacDoomers would be a better name for this site now.

What is the big deal its only a computer,not like they reinvented it.

 

[AfroAbel]

Show me the desktop solution. Cook showed two workspaces, a mobile one, and an office with multiple LG monitors and a MacBook Pro hooked up to everything. Considering that the iMac and Mac Pro were ignored last week, this seems to imply that the MacBook Pro is THE solution they are offering everyone. It doesn't cut it for those in the two groups above.

They should have at least mentioned desktops, or presented a complete refresh of the Mac lineup. We are worried that they did...

They're waiting for Kaby Lake desktop CPU's for the iMac, it would have been quite stupid to announce an iMac refresh when it's already on SkyLake.

No excuses for the Mac mini/Pro though.

 

[Bacillus]

Maybe the 32gb complainers should read up on why the MacBooks have no 32gb option:
"The quad-core Kaby Lake processor still having not seen the light of day has caused other problems that are being attributed to Apple, and not as having been foisted upon the company by Intel. For low power consumption, Skylake only supports LPDDR3, which is limited to 16 gigabytes.
LPDDR4 will not be supported in MacBook Pro-bound Kaby Lake quad-core processors until possibly the end of 2017, and perhaps later."

Which makes their technical/architectural decisions, for the last 5 years or so, inexcusable

 

[dallegre]

A lot of these people are living in the past. We are where Steve Jobs predicted we'd be, living in a post-PC era where the market for high-end traditional computer products is a niche within an already tiny niche.

What Tim and Apple are doing is absolutely right for the company. Those complaining and hating on Apple and Tim are broadly speaking living in the dark ages.

Content creators are living in the dark ages. Got it.

 

[I7guy]

The mainstream media is TOO SCARED to write anything against Apple or else they won't get tickets to next Apple event. But now their credibility is at stake. So what will those media houses like iAnandtech or iVerge choose? Apple or their website readers?

So if they don't bash Apple they are basically lying is your view?

 

[Rogifan]

And $1000 extra for a 64GB SSD

Heh. So Apple is leaving 32GB option off the table because they're jerks who don't care about Pros even though they could make serious money on it considering how much they charge for upgrades.

 

[Kwstas]

If Apple wants to drop high performance in favour of lifestyle, at least give us some free cloud rendering ;-)

 

[yeknommonkey]

Now I'm actually glad Adobe made me go subscription for CC so i'm not tied in to mac due to software outlay. I've actually started using the PC (which was previously for 3d only) for a lot of other work while i was waiting for the mac updates, but now thinking i'll just treat the PC to some upgrades (which i can actually make! too!)

 

[bruceosx]

I don't really get what is wrong with the new MBP.
I'm a web/software developer

You can do web dev and most "office" software development on a Pentium 3 from 15 years ago. The picture is a lot different if you are a "creative" professional who works with big images in photoshop, edits multiple 4k streams of video, or tries to port/write demanding 3d games for the mac. Traditionally, Apple has always targeted these "creative PROfessionals" with their PRO products.

I remember keynotes with Steve were he showcased a Power Mac running Photoshop faster than a more expensive Pentium machine, and the Mac finished well ahead of the Windows alternative. I remember benchmark tables where OSX came out ahead of Linux in 3D graphics performance by a wide margin.

Where are we today? You can get better specs on a Windows machine that is literally 1000 bucks cheaper. My Photoshop on the 5K iMac, even topped out with the highest graphics spec, is a slog. Even Linux outperforms macOS not only in 3D, but also in compute-expensive tasks by at least 30% across the board - even on their own machines thanks to the incredibly bad, old and broken (graphics) drivers that OSX ships with. The game world is talking VR, but Apple fails to construct a computer with a graphics card that is even remotely capable of the performance required, and comments like "If they ever release a good computer, we will [release an Oculus runtime for Mac]" by Luckey are sadly nothing but the truth. Microsoft is walking all over the Mac Desktop with a more powerful, more feature-rich, truly "revolutionalry" and "magical" creative pro device like the Surface Studio.

What does Apple do? They get a DJ douche on screen, tapping on a 1-dimensional touch screen interface, manipulating a couple of small audio streams. Whoop di doo, a 500 buck Lenovo with a base level i3 can do that.

16GB RAM? That's the least of the Mac's problems, really.

 

[Rogifan]

Interesting that you consider the Surface Book to be a 'laptop' rather what it is which is a convertible tablet.

When has Microsoft ever called the Surface Book a tablet? And just because something is convertible no longer makes it a pro level device?

 

[Roobun]

People seem to forget A LOT on these forums and in the world in general. I wish someone made a document or some type of graph that showed all of the things that went down while Steve was alive and then they'd realize "wow, so Apple isn't that much different now after all."

HA! With Steve Jobs, the philosophy was "You don't need this, but you really want it."
Now, it's "we've stopped updating desktops because we have courage"

 

[Neodym]

The priorities are clear now, thinner and more mobile seems to be better than "thicker and more powerful."

That could have been said with every iteration. Imagine Apple would have voted for "thicker and more powerful" already during the PowerBook era: Today's Apple notebooks would be pitiable behemoths that no one would want to lug around.

Where do you want to draw the line of "not any thinner or more mobile" and stop pushing the boundaries?

And one of the biggest criticisms, the 16GB Ram limit, seems to originate from Intel not providing the required hardware to drive bigger low power memory in their CPU's. Now imagine the backlash if Apple would switch to desktop memory, double the thickness to accommodate the necessary bigger battery for 9 to 10 hours battery time (or accept a battery time reduction by some 30-50%) or even switch to another CPU (like AMD or in house Ax processors). The backlash would be much bigger than it is now.

Call me apologist if you like, but I can understand the decision problems Apple is facing. And seeing that the delivery times already slipped, it seems as if the mute majority of customers are simply buying that thing in droves, while the vocal minority is publicly complaining, only to eventually buy the new MBP nevertheless, because the content market is so lucrative that the risk of not participating would be bigger than the risk of participating.

 

[Zillion]

To do what? Use a fast protocol to read a slower protocol which makes no difference in terms of speed?
If you are a photographer you do care about the SD card slot, and quite a lot.

Well I am not a photographer and neither are many Macbook Pro users, so why do I need a machine which needs to sacrifice other stuf just because you want to insert your ancient medium in the most modern laptop directly?
This sounds really like when the super drive disappeared etc.

 

[69Mustang]

So I guess Microsoft's Surface Book isn't a pro machine either since it doesn't offer 32GB RAM option? Is that the defining criteria on what makes a laptop "pro"? How did all these "pros" survive before? How are they surviving now? It's not like the market is flooded with laptops that offer 32GB and 64GB RAM.

This type of argument is useless. If I am an Apple fan and a Mac user, what does it matter if Microsoft offers 32GB or 320GB of RAM? It's even more useless considering a Windows machine can be had from multiple vendors who do offer 32GB of RAM. Microsoft isn't the only option. Macs only have one vendor; vendor A. You can't go to vendor B, C, or D for a Mac. An MBP fan gets no comfort from MS not offering something. There's no shared misery.

A simple BTO option would have squashed the noise. A person choosing that option would have obviously valued the power over longer battery life.

 

[Rogifan]

Great clip. It's as though he's talking about Cook.

Because everyone loved the decisions made on his watch.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apple-announces-new-aluminum-macbooks.580479/

 

[kasakka]

People should read through the comments when Apple announced the unibody MBPs in 2008. Not much different than what we see today.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apple-announces-new-aluminum-macbooks.580479/

Those were probably a lot worse than what we got now. I remember the displays were horrible TN panels and the lack of FireWire meant a lot of musicians had to cough up a significant sum for what at the time were worse latency USB devices. Or buy a Macbook Pro, though I can't remember if those had FW either.

I hope that at least the ports stabilize in the next few years and everyone is using USB-C rather than constantly changing them every year.

 

[Bacillus]

When has Microsoft ever called the Surface Book a tablet? And just because something is convertible no longer makes it a pro level device?

Why doesn't Apple name the MBAir the Pro (lots of connections), name the MacBook the Air (thinnest), and name the Pro the MacBook (not expandable)