To be fair we're very much in a bit of a lull before a whole heap of new tech comes out, doing a redesign right now IMHO would be silly.
There's X-point, and new GPUs from both AMD and Nvidia due to ship within months.
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So Disappointed about the Keynote
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To be fair we're very much in a bit of a lull before a whole heap of new tech comes out, doing a redesign right now IMHO would be silly.
There's X-point, and new GPUs from both AMD and Nvidia due to ship within months.
True, equally the rMBP is woefully overdue a meaningful update it`s now starting to get laughable, especially at current pricing. We will all see at WWDC, personally I don't expect to be blown away just more awesome thin & light with less pro in the Pro. Personally I see Apple moving ever more to the mid-ground with the Mac, and who can blame them as the sales figures are certainly healthier than most, however this does result in a far more average offering with the MBP.
Q-6
Silly Apple waiting for Intel to fix the screwup called Skylake. Imagine the threads here if Apple was experiencing the problems Microsoft, Dell and others are having.
Naturally Apple never get`s anything wrong out the box, maybe they should just keep running 4th Gen Cpu`s & mediocre graphics in their top tier notebooks to be on the safe side
On a more serious note, Apple should at least drop their price point on some systems, instead of raking in the margins, it`s not like their going to give it back come the eventual upgrade. Current 15" rMBP with dGPU is way overpriced, then again if people are willing to pay, Apple is more than willing to take their money...
Q-6
Yup if it ain't broke don't fix it until an update is truly better. A tick-tock thing. If you hold Apple in such distain why are you (and others) here? That's a behavior I never understood on enthusiasts websites.Naturally Apple never get`s anything wrong out the box, maybe they should just keep running 4th Gen Cpu`s & mediocre graphics in their top tier notebooks to be on the safe side
On a more serious note, Apple should at least drop their price point on some systems, instead of raking in the margins, it`s not like their going to give it back come the eventual upgrade. Current 15" rMBP with dGPU is way overpriced, then again if people are willing to pay, Apple is more than willing to take their money...
Q-6
Some of us hold Apple to higher standards, and that included progression. Of late the Mac has virtually stalled regarding innovation. Forums are a common ground where like minded individuals debate common interests, equally that does not mean all have to put that common interest on a podium and worship it...
Q-6
OSX still is the best OS IMHO, but Apple seems to try to kill it. Both by releasing broken software updates and falling behind in term of hardware. When they release the first retina macbook pro, mid-2012, it was incredibly revolutionary and risky with the retina display and it was incorporating unreleased chips from both Intel and Nvidia. This time seems to be done.
Initially there was display driver issues between Intel & Microsoft, for the most part these have been resolved by firmware/driver updates from Intel, Microsoft and the OEM`s. Skylake in general offers significant advances in power management & integrated graphics amongst others.
Q-6
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Exactly, Apple is now "softening" the Mac, in favour of IOS devices, I hope to be proved wrong equally at WWDC I only expect more of the same with little if any significant improvement to the MacBook Pro, naturally it will be thinner...
OS X needs to return to a realistic timeframe for development, not launching beta`s on the public. Personally I now keep all Mac business related system a version behind the current one, to avoid the mess that 10.10 & 10.11 delivered to many. In an ecosystem where you control both hardware & software there is little excuse to deliver substandard product at premium pricing.
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Tired of waiting so pulled the trigger on a 1.2 512 Space Gray with 3 years Apple Care. Now it is time to downsize and sell some excess hardware locally.
Took half a product cycle to possibly fix the issues, glad Apple sidestepped that cow pie. The power management issues still not fixed if other forums are to be believed.
Not to worry I still have an Early 2008 15" MBP we can fall back on, given Skylake is such a disaster, oddly enough rest of the world is getting on with the benefits of Intel`s 6th generation CPU`s. Reality is Apple has no competition in the OS X environment, so they have the luxury to dance to their own tune, charging a premium for what in some cases is mediocre hardware.
I have no issue with Apple being conservative, equally progression is rather expected, or dare I say more realistic pricing should be applied.
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Pricing is one of things that will be based on what people will pay. Cost based pricing applies primarily to commodity items where there's no real differentiator between you and your competitor.
As you note, Apple has OSX and positions itself as providing a "solution" combining OS and computer. Enough people will pay a premium for that packaged solution that they clearly don't seem to feel a need to play in the low cost arena.
The other guys don't have an OS to differentiate themselves from their competitors so they have to offer features and bleeding edge hardware versions even if there are bugs and issues. Or they cut every corner they can so they can compete on price in a race to see who can make the least margin per units sold. VERY different target markets, even if they overlap somewhat. Look in th phone market at the difference between market share and profit share.
I really don't think spec chasers will likely ever be truly happy with Apple, simply because Apple has no real incentive to satisfy them. Round pegs and square holes. Apple clearly will use new tech when it suits them, particularly if it allows them to differentiate the whole package. Yet at other times they seem perfectly happy to continue with non-cutting-edge components when there's no compelling reason in context of the overall user experience for the average Joe User. Fact is, anyone hanging out her on MR is likely already somewhat at the fringe of their main target user base.
As you note, Apple has OSX and positions itself as providing a "solution" combining OS and computer. Enough people will pay a premium for that packaged solution that they clearly don't seem to feel a need to play in the low cost arena.
The other guys don't have an OS to differentiate themselves from their competitors so they have to offer features and bleeding edge hardware versions even if there are bugs and issues. Or they cut every corner they can so they can compete on price in a race to see who can make the least margin per units sold. VERY different target markets, even if they overlap somewhat. Look in th phone market at the difference between market share and profit share.
I really don't think spec chasers will likely ever be truly happy with Apple, simply because Apple has no real incentive to satisfy them. Round pegs and square holes. Apple clearly will use new tech when it suits them, particularly if it allows them to differentiate the whole package. Yet at other times they seem perfectly happy to continue with non-cutting-edge components when there's no compelling reason in context of the overall user experience for the average Joe User. Fact is, anyone hanging out her on MR is likely already somewhat at the fringe of their main target user base.
I suspect that really Tim Cook is not capable of running the company. He doesn't seem able to allocate the vast resources of the company to keep the entire product line up to date. He either has an obsession with thinness (form) at the expense of function or he can't say "No" to the designers. To have a mac mini running a Haswell with Iris 5100 while Intel has released NUC Skull Canyon with Skylake i7 and Iris Pro 6200 graphics is a disgrace. Why they couldn't simply update the Macbook with Skylake and its slightly better graphics at that low TDP point, as well as DDR4 2133 RAM is similarly disgraceful for the amount of money these people are making. Not that I would buy a windows machine at this point but if Apple were keeping up with the updates they would be CRUSHING the competition. Tim Cook was a superb operations guy and maybe he should demote himself back to that. Take the COO title and find somebody else for the CEO job. http://betanews.com/2016/03/17/intel-skull-canyon-nuc-core-i7-6770hq-ddr4-nvme-thunderbolt-3/
Yes, Apple is really suffering...
I'm thinking that maybe the concentration on iOS was a kind of homage to the original iPhone introduction as this was the final keynote in that specific auditorium. Maybe I'm reaching but it doesn't seem implausible. Tim Cook did mention the significance of the auditorium in regards to Steve Jobs legacy as a final note. The original iPhone along with iOS is probably the most substantial thing to happen to Apple in the past 20 years, arguably more significant to the introduction of the iPod. Even more so when you think about which products have attained the highest popularity and profits among their offerings.
This is not to say that I wouldn't mind a strong showing on Macs at WWDC, because that would be great. I hope there is a renewed interest in maintaining their Mac lines. I'm not sure why a company with as much resource as Apple would let the Mac Pro stagnate like it has, especially with all the R&D that went into the redesign.
This is not to say that I wouldn't mind a strong showing on Macs at WWDC, because that would be great. I hope there is a renewed interest in maintaining their Mac lines. I'm not sure why a company with as much resource as Apple would let the Mac Pro stagnate like it has, especially with all the R&D that went into the redesign.
I enjoyed the keynote. It's pretty cool how much renewable energy the company uses now, and CareKit + ResearchKit look awesome. It really surprises me that no other device makers are building this up. To top it off, it's open source.
People complaining about the SE are idiots. I'm sorry, but the device is awesome (especially at $400). It's the budget phone, get over the design. It works well enough, and the specs are crazy good in it. It is by far the best 4" phone out there at a great price.
I was a bit disappointed in the RAM on the 9.7" IPP, but will still probably pick it up. I doubt we'll see any iOS devices with more than 2GB (other than the 12.9" IPP) anytime soon. It's probably more of a sign that they intend to not massively grow RAM (like Android) than anything else. Everything else is pretty awesome in it, and given the big performance bump of the A9X there probably won't be a new one for another 18 months again. Considering storage options, they're only like $50. It's fair considering it got a pretty big bump with speakers, screen tech and processor. As for the "under clocked processor" over the 12.9", chill out. There's way less pixels. They perform similarly according to arstechnica.
As for the MacBooks.. There were no rumors leading up to it, so not a big surprise. I wanted it most but WWDC is only 3 months and there were instantly rumors of a big redesign. I'd rather then get it right than rush a release.
Tim Cook is doing a good job. Apple doesn't need the aggressive, dictatorship style leadership style of Jobs anymore, they need a person to let talented people make amazing devices. With it this large, they simply cannot run under one person's complete control anymore. I see them slowing releases of things for quality a lot more, instead of trying to do everything in a once a year schedule. iOS 9.3 is probably a good example of letting feature implementation wait until they're ready. iOS 9 was slow at first, but quickly patched up. As a software developer, this seems like they're doing development well. The new laptops will be out when they're ready too. My first Apple product was a 6+, I have to say Apple has really come a long way in the last few years under Cook. I love what they're doing.
People complaining about the SE are idiots. I'm sorry, but the device is awesome (especially at $400). It's the budget phone, get over the design. It works well enough, and the specs are crazy good in it. It is by far the best 4" phone out there at a great price.
I was a bit disappointed in the RAM on the 9.7" IPP, but will still probably pick it up. I doubt we'll see any iOS devices with more than 2GB (other than the 12.9" IPP) anytime soon. It's probably more of a sign that they intend to not massively grow RAM (like Android) than anything else. Everything else is pretty awesome in it, and given the big performance bump of the A9X there probably won't be a new one for another 18 months again. Considering storage options, they're only like $50. It's fair considering it got a pretty big bump with speakers, screen tech and processor. As for the "under clocked processor" over the 12.9", chill out. There's way less pixels. They perform similarly according to arstechnica.
As for the MacBooks.. There were no rumors leading up to it, so not a big surprise. I wanted it most but WWDC is only 3 months and there were instantly rumors of a big redesign. I'd rather then get it right than rush a release.
Tim Cook is doing a good job. Apple doesn't need the aggressive, dictatorship style leadership style of Jobs anymore, they need a person to let talented people make amazing devices. With it this large, they simply cannot run under one person's complete control anymore. I see them slowing releases of things for quality a lot more, instead of trying to do everything in a once a year schedule. iOS 9.3 is probably a good example of letting feature implementation wait until they're ready. iOS 9 was slow at first, but quickly patched up. As a software developer, this seems like they're doing development well. The new laptops will be out when they're ready too. My first Apple product was a 6+, I have to say Apple has really come a long way in the last few years under Cook. I love what they're doing.
Depends.
There's no real discrete GPU improvement for the 15 available yet and the only real major benefit of Skylake over the 28 watt dual core Broadwell is the iGPU really. Which 13" macbook owners don't really care too much about, because no one buys a 13" macbook pro for GPU performance.
Yes, there's a minor benefit they could get but from the better iGPU but it would mean a motherboard redesign on both sizes and on the 13" for questionable benefit, and most of the 15s are discrete GPU anyhow.
I can see why Apple are holding off until the new Nvidia and/or AMD GPUs are out (my bet is on AMD again due to their inherently stronger hardware in openCL) and just not bothering with the 13" until that point because no one buys a 13" for the graphics performance anyway and Broadwell was already so late.
The SSD performance on the MacBooks is so stupidly fast compared to almost any PC notebook on the market, so it's not like there's no reason to buy mac hardware at the moment.
Right now is a just really dumb time for apple to do a major update to the Macbook Pro line (given their model cycle lengths). A few months and there's going to be a lot more to slip into the coming update. I don't see apple stalling innovation, i see them just waiting until its a sensible time to do a significant update. A new CPU model number and a new integrated GPU are IMHO not really worth the hassle just yet when there's so much more imminent.
Most OEMs change models far more rapidly yes. That's why their margins are 10% (retooling costs money, they get lower volume discounts, etc.) and Apple's are 40%, and why you get decent support with Apple and trash with most of the others.
If any notebook could do with an update in Apple's lineup (barring the Airs, which will be discontinued after the current model I strongly suspect) it is the Macbook, which would benefit a LOT from Skylake.
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And as to macbook pricing. It's not that bad if you actually compare like for like (and i don't just mean CPU model + ram size and SSD size).
Sure if you compare a Macbook to a Dell Vostro or something of course the Dell is cheaper. Compare to a similarly specced latitude or HP elite book and at least where I am the pricing is in the ballpark (based on company pricing we have been offered from HP and DELL). And the HP/DELL will look and feel 3 years old after 3 years. The macbook does not.
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Could be much better. Stock price reflects this. Do you really think anybody who knows anything would buy a Macbook Pro or Mac Mini at this time. Not to mention the Pro tower. Apple still would benefit from higher market share.Yes, Apple is really suffering...
Yes I do.
People who have a job to do, need a machine NOW, and actually know that for the job they are doing the 5% CPU improvement is irrelevant... and know what caveats the current machines have.
Waiting for some indeterminate time for some unknown spec computer with potentially unknown bugs and reliability problems when you need something today is retarded.
Top tip:
there is ALWAYS something faster on the horizon. Whilst you're waiting for some magical new machine that is 5% faster and 10 grams lighter, other people are enjoying the machine they already bought, and getting their work done.
I've been doing the computer thing for 25 years now and the longer you use this stuff the more you realise that the minor differences you'll see from a single generation to the next are not worth sweating over (exceptions back in the late 80s/early 90s back with the 386, 486 and original pentium - those were huge jumps in real-world general performance over the previous models). Buy machine, keep it 3-5 years, replace.
If you "can wait" for the next model quite happily, then you can probably wait until the model after that as well.
Sure, if its a "want" then whatever. But if you're buying a machine to do a job, you buy what's available when you need it.
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put it this way. let's say the new machines come out with USB-C only. I'd much rather have my current 2015 model thanks.
Is this likely to happen? Maybe not THIS revision. But who knows. Apple push things pretty hard sometimes, and I'd personally much rather my thunderbolt 2 and USB3 ports, thanks. Waiting for the new machine may or may not be a good idea
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Whoa, no updated RMB's in March, overhauls to the Pro, and Apple keeping the Air alive?
Wow, wish someone here would have predicted that. What a smart person that would have been.
BJ
Depending on the argument that very person defends, DigiTimes is either an unreliable source or a source that helps boost one's ego. DigiTimes are sometimes a good laugh. It was them who predicted new retina macbooks in March. In June we may simply have a larger 15" MBA rebranded as retina macbook and then everybody on this forum will have won the argument.
I suggest we wait until June. Personally, I'm out of the waiting game because the company I work for will get me a 13" MacBook Pro. Our Company laptops are the best laptops in the world, regardless of their parameters and microprocessor architecture, because I do not pay for them from my salary.
Exactly it "depends" I frankly don't expect too much of the next generation of MBP as it will likely just be a sleeker, slimmer version of what we already have with the addition of TB3. I think it`s petty much given that what we will see physically will be a larger MacBook. I guess my issue is that I expect Apple to produce "professional" level notebooks for lack of better words, when in reality Apple`s focus is average consumer, which makes perfect sense for the volume sales that Apple seek.
Personally I use my hardware as a key function of business (heavy engineering), therefore if new hardware can give me an edge it`s a worthwhile improvement. As is additional utility, admittedly this is not the current Mac`s strong point. Right now I can see significant potential for PC`s with pen input, so in some respects Apple may well be out the picture for 2016.
Q-6
Serious question:
What do you consider to be a requirement of a "professional" notebook? What do you think Apple is missing?
I'd argue that portability and battery life are in fact the two most important factors for the majority of "professional" users in a portable.
If you're just lugging a machine from desk to desk for high end work you can just as easily do that with a Mac Pro (Assuming you can borrow a monitor at the client's premises or whatever).
Then comes ports. And in this regard there is simply nothing in the market that has the external connectivity options of the Macbook Pro. Or even a future replacement with TB3/USB-C. 10/20 gig finer channel/iSCSI SANS, 10 gig networking, thunderbolt direct attached storage, external GPUs, etc. It's all available. Thunderbolt is the only option that can do a lot of that, and lesser options such as USB3 can be carried over thunderbolt if required anyhow.
As far as "Pro" stuff goes for me, I reckon the Macbook Pro line is pretty on the money. ECC RAM and a better GPU for some users sure, but once you start trying to stuff high power GPUs into a portable you just kill the battery life so badly it is desk bound when actually using the GPU in anger which means you're back to the point of "may as well lug a Mac Pro from desk to desk".
In terms of GPU power per watt (which is what matters when on battery), nothing on the market can compete with the intel integrated GPUs at the moment. Hopefully third parties pull their finger out this time around with Thunderbolt 3 eGPUs. You can already buy off the shelf thunderbolt GPU enclosures, a mate built his own (hooked up to an 11" MBA) and stuck a titan in it... can't really do that with any other portable. And that will SMOKE whatever internal GPU you can get in anything else, and not weigh 6kg to carry when you're on battery (at which point the discrete GPU is useless due to minuscule battery life when working it hard).
So really... what is the MBP missing in your opinion in terms of Pro features, vs. what else is out there?
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what i'd really like to see is a 15" machine with 2 CPU sockets in it. Get rid of the discrete GPU, and use the thermal headroom you get back to do dual socket quad core CPUs, and hook up an eGPU when on AC power at a desk.
16 threads in a portable (with 2x intel GPUs for when away from the eGPU), yes please.
I realize intel do not currently offer multi-socket capable mobile processors, but I'm sure Apple can swing it. Or just demand an 8 core mobile CPU with a bigger integrated GPU in it...
Internal storage and expandability for me are a non-issue. If you're storing massive amounts beyond 1 TB on your portable you are doing things wrong. It's a scratch area for projects you're working on whilst your actual permanent storage is a SAN somewhere...
And pro/business users don't generally upgrade (well, sensible ones with a concept of TCO don't anyhow). You buy the spec you need, sell it and replace once it is considered EOL by the business. The second you're paying someone's time to crack the things open and spend money on replacing parts, you're burning huge amounts of money in lost time, lost warranties, etc. For a Pro booking out a few grand a day, a couple of hours lost time while the machine is in bits (let alone also paying someone to actually do the work and pay for parts) would pay for trade-up to a new machine.
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