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Teardown of 13-inch MacBook Pro With Touch Bar Reveals 'Cosmetic' Speaker Grilles [Updated]
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Tweeter up, Woofer down. This would make sense.Ack this headline is inaccurate, not sure who's fault it is but you can clearly see the holes going throw above the tweeter speaker:
And iFixIt says "Judging from the through-holes under the smaller speaker, we assume this is a tweeter designed to produce high frequency audio." Not sure whats going on with the rest of the holes though.
However, we can't actually see the holes go through like we see it on the MacBook Escape.
MacBook Pro "Escape Edition"
MacBook Pro with Touch Bar and Touch ID
( Maybe they made the photo too early during the teardown. )
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Same opinion here, and let's not forget that these trends were well underway under Jobs also. They're just not making things that meet my relatively modest needs and they have predatory pricing to boot.
Perhaps you should google "single point of failure", something that computer manufactures care about ( Apple clearly isn't in that business anymore ). If the mother board fails, and the SSD has confidential data... the WHOLE MacBook is going in the crusher. That's not an improvement in anyway. Not better... just THINNER. The Apple way.
IT Pros expect BOTH. Direct access to the storage device ( not soldered on ) AND a backup.
Like Apple USED TO DO!!! OPTIONS are a good thing. "Apple Computers" used to agree. Every single complaint about Apple usually ends in " i used to be able to..."
Used to be able to :
Upgrade RAM
Upgrade Storage
Access storage in target mode
Open my old data ( FCPX only )
Repair my computer without throwing it away
Buy a 17" laptop
Buy a desktop computer that's newer than three years old
Not worry about my $4000 laptop being pulled to the ground via it's power cable.
Apple 2016 IS NOT anywhere close to the same company as Apple 2010. People complain because they would like to see the return of that great company that cared more about CUSTOMERS than they do Shareholders reports and Jon Ive's fragile feelings. Now Apple only cares about Twitter, Beats, and making every product paper thin.
Please retire Ive... PLEASE!
I'm pretty disappointed with the fail that is the new macbook pro as much as the next guy, but usb-B? I've never seen a laptop with one. Not even desktops. Usually usb-B ports are for auxiliary hardware like external hard drives or midi controllers. Not to mention it's huge.
Thunderbolt ports, they all have them. But it would be nice if they all came with 4 by default.
Not sure what you mean by difficult to open. One of apple's biggest selling points is that you can lift up the lid with one finger. This has not changed as far as I can tell.
But I do agree with the other points. Fake speakers makes no sense. Either have them there for a reason or don't have them.
I'm willing to forgive the strange and unusual conservative approach Apple has with respect to innovation. I'm willing to forgive that they don't want to use touch screens, at least on their laptops. I'm even willing to forget the premium price increase on the Emoji bar. But the lack of an SD card slot? Can you seriously make the argument that it takes up too much space? Also disappointed that there's virtually no way to upgrade it. It would be nice if you could remove and replace the ram, SSD, and battery.
You seemed to not really understand individual component and product statictical reliabilty at all. A person I know years ago stated we need to becareful about pooling our ignorance on certain subjects.
The industry I work always uses the statictical probabilty of failure in determining new product reliability and actual real time use. This, statistical planning, it is a normal process used in product development and determining the probability of failure.
Would you like for me to point to a HBR article or are you capable of googling such things on your own?
True, but build material aside it's not like having a CD drive slot but it's just for show, hypothetically speaking. Steve loves his material (look at Apple Store). But features (materials aside) aren't just for show, like fake drawers or something.
Haha, they gave it a repair ability score of 1, I bet they wanted to give it 0. Apple has reduced its components number which saves costs, and made it unpairable to the majority by anyone apart from Apple, thus increasing costs, plus the huge price hike. Heal this must definitely be Tim Crooks new Apple Mac. I can't wait to see the iMac and Mac Pro with soldered SSD drives on the higher end models and 200 dollar plus power buttons.
As for fake speaker grills::
The speakers have been totally redesigned to provide as much as twice the dynamic range and up to 58 percent more volume, with two and a half times louder bass for maximum boom. And they’re connected directly to system power, enabling up to three times more peak power. So they make MacBook Pro the perfect choice for mixing a track on the fly, editing video on location, or enjoying a movie on the go.
http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/
Funnily enough no mention of fake speaker grills.. time for Ive to go, he's clearly lost it. What a joke of a computer.
They gave the Surface Pro 4 a repair ability score of 2 even!! And that's glued together!!
https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Microsoft+Surface+Pro+4+Teardown/51568
This is all that makes up the new computer, as I said saving costs::
As for fake speaker grills::
The speakers have been totally redesigned to provide as much as twice the dynamic range and up to 58 percent more volume, with two and a half times louder bass for maximum boom. And they’re connected directly to system power, enabling up to three times more peak power. So they make MacBook Pro the perfect choice for mixing a track on the fly, editing video on location, or enjoying a movie on the go.
http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/
Funnily enough no mention of fake speaker grills.. time for Ive to go, he's clearly lost it. What a joke of a computer.
They gave the Surface Pro 4 a repair ability score of 2 even!! And that's glued together!!
https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Microsoft+Surface+Pro+4+Teardown/51568
This is all that makes up the new computer, as I said saving costs::
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DOOD, did you go into a coma for 30 years??? I own that same Mac... still works!
So... the first Mac wasn't upgradable... and the 2016 model is not upgradeable. But virtually every machine in between WAS upgradable. And every computer today NOT made by Apple is upgradeable. Apple is wrong, they are in the minority... and honestly i think they are doing this on purpose to drive people away. They DON'T WANT TO MAKE COMPUTERS. It's so incredibly obvious. Ive, Cook and Ferengi will throw a party the day Macintosh is retired. I expect that party in 2017
Makes it look cheap and prototype like.
Of all the things Johny Ives talks about "design" and "deliberate" and "functionality" and not implementing things that don't serve a function and sacrificing other things as "curage".
This tear down is very...... Revealing ???????
Come to Apple, where you pay premium for questionable design. Speaker grills on a 13" machine is a blinding and inconsistent design choice to say the least.
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They are a multinational corporation, they want to own every nook and cranny of the tech market, they know how elite their designs are and how a tremendous number of iSheep are going to continue to buy everything they spew out. Business will not stop, it will shift and it will change, but non of apple's operations would ever stop. As long as people continue to buy their stuff, they will only grow
wow, the new mbps really suck hard. i already had my cheque written for a new laptop. after the disaster with the new mbp i debated if it was worth to buy an old 2015 mbp for 2/3 the price (but with nearly the same power, removeable ssd, mag-safe, sd-card reader, usb-a, thunderbolt connectors, hdmi, ...). i might still do that, just to have a reasonably fast macbook over the next years. on the other hand - maybe i don't need a new laptop anyways, and maybe apple has to walk back a bit after the first wave of sales tapers out. i'd buy one, if it were 500-1000€ cheaper (at least like last year's model).
Haha, they gave it a repair ability score of 1, I bet they wanted to give it 0. Apple has reduced its components number which saves costs, and made it unpairable to the majority by anyone apart from Apple, thus increasing costs, plus the huge price hike. Heal this must definitely be Tim Crooks new Apple Mac. I can't wait to see the iMac and Mac Pro with soldered SSD drives on the higher end models and 200 dollar plus power buttons.
This is all that makes up the new computer, as I said saving costs::
They have to design every component, people always forget the apple philosophy of Zen minimalism LMAO !!!!
i'm an engineer, so i could benefit from learning some statistics.
please, can you explain to me how are 2016 models more reliable than previous ones? what makes you say so?
OK I googled "single point failure" as it pertaind to IT and here's the best I found :
http://techblog.mdsol.com/2014/06/16/no_single_points_failure.html
It's about the loss of data and the cloud not about computer repair.
I work in an industry where having a single point failure take down the entire systen is more than huge it is disastrous! So the issue here is what failure/loss are you pointing to, hardware or data?
- My saved data is lost from an HD failure then shame on me for not backing it up.
- If I don't back it up because I count on replacing the MB then shame on me also.
- If my screen fails... shame on me for not backing up my data.
Moral: Back up data and prevent a single point failure.
Get Extended Apple care if you all are worried about a hardware failure and if you are worried about data loss, BACK UP YOUR DATA!!!!
BTW the Corp I work for destroys the HD if there is a failure to prevent Data from being stolen. If I turn in a working device they wipe it clean and if it is still technologically capable (will run current OSs well) they will either repurpose, after wiping it, to another employee or sell it. However, normally the IT folks just destroy things and buy new devices.
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I stuck my $4K back in the cookie jar, I'm voting with my wallet, and for the last iterations of the MacPro, Mini & Macbook Pro, it's been a real let down.
At some point you just have to realize it's not going to get better. It'll take more than a hat and a slogan to fix Apple at this point.
You obviously missed the course then in school, did you have someone else take the test for you?
Did you google and find an answer to your ignorance or just jumping in the pool and muddy it a bit more?
BTW HBR stands for "Harvard Business Review."
Let's see simple google search results:
- From 1982 - https://www.computer.org/csdl/trans/tc/1982/07/01676070.html
- Wiki on predictive modeling :https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictive_modelling
And there's a huge list of more.
So how and what do you engineer, maybe we should all be worried!
In case you missed the memo:
There ARE speakers under the grills.
There ARE speakers under the grills.
Do they?? I think they just give a load of specs to someone and say build it.
Less components equals lower production costs.
What's not going to be better?
Have you ever personally replaced components in any of your Apple computers in the past? Is that what is not better?
This looks like the only reasonable response. If the computer is designed to not be repaired, then we should have longer warranties.
Did anyone check the headphone jack? Maybe it's just there - but disabled.
Someone also needs to check all of the ports. Maybe one or two are just cosmetic also.
If Apple is always about symmetry, why aren't there fake USB-C ports on the right side of the MacBook Escape? Or one port left and one port right? No it's got to be, two ports left, no ports right.