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It's insane that you believe that you know everything wrong with the world's largest company and would do better than everyone else if you were running it (like shipping a Lighting-to-USB-C cable for an unrelated MBP, without once considering that it would make more sense to include a USB-C-to-USB-A dongle with new MBPs, but it's 2016 so plugging your iPhone into your Mac to sync isn't as common), but ignoring that for a moment, try to realize that the only thing you can do is vote with your wallet. You don't like Apple moving into the future with technology then buy form a different company, or create your company where you cater to the clotting-edge customer.

Believe me. The voting has already begun. There's a huge slap in the face coming Apple's way. Let's talk in 2 years and see how this MBP 2016 snafu has worked in Apple's favour. If they don't bow to users' will in the next iteration of MBP or try to make amends, 2016 is going to be remembered as a watershed year.
 
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The truth is somewhere in between. Apple wants better profit margins and relies on the psychology of previous pricing. A truly reflective price of technology would fluctuate between a Mac costing $2500 at launch and decreasing to $1000 after 4 years. The problem is, no one would buy in year 1 and the corporation would ultimately fail. Our commercial world isn't set to deliver value for tech, it's set to deliver profits for margins.
The general point is that competing products are often at similar price points. Microsoft now competes in the premium hardware segment and they ask for similar prices. The Surface Book uses the 15W Kaby Lake chips vs. the 28W and 45W Skylake chips that the Touch Bar MacBook Pros use. Granted, it has tablet functionality but that's a difference in design philosophy more than anything else.

And although base technology gets cheaper over time, it's a given that as technology gets cheaper, it increases demand for even more technology (SSDs were a novelty 8 years ago, largely absent from mainstream Windows PCs as recently as 4 years ago, and now we're talking 3.1 Gbps bandwidth in a $1499 MacBook Pro!). All else equal, someone who had $2499 to spend in 2004 was spending the equivalent of $3100 today. Yes, it's possible to get a $200 Chromebook that runs circles around a 2004 notebook, but someone with $3100 can easily afford a 15" MacBook Pro with the latest and greatest display technology and I/O.

Apple has consistently achieved 35-39% margins on its products, which is a testament to its brand. I don't see anything in the new MacBook Pros that harms Apple's brand.
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Believe me. The voting has already begun. There's a huge slap in the face coming Apple's way. Let's talk in 2 years and see how this MBP 2016 snafu has worked in Apple's favour.
My guess is that it will sell reasonably well. The main complaint seems to be that it is about $200 overpriced. That's easily fixable if Mac sales continue to slide. Most people will get over the legacy port issue very quickly. An adapter or hub is a one-time purchase, and there are plenty of choices.
 
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Believe me. The voting has already begun. There's a huge slap in the face coming Apple's way. Let's talk in 2 years and see how this MBP 2016 snafu has worked in Apple's favour.
Yes, yes, Apple has never done anything right and will shutting its door any day now. If I had a share of stock for every time I've heard that Chicken Little story… oh, wait, I essentially do.
 
When has Apple ever gradually removed anything? The iMac didn't gradually remove ADB or SCSI in favor of USB. Apple went all in with USB-A. 18 years later, they have gone all-in with USB-C. At least there are lots of USB-C to A adapters.

As for mice, Apple's own products work without adapters as they use Bluetooth. But Apple has been emphasizing the trackpad for more than a decade now.

What's so hard to comprehend? When you're dropping thousands of dollars on a "pro" laptop that ships with substandard hardware just so it can be a little lighter and a litter thinner you should not also be asked to drop even more on dongles so you can use your existing accessories that happen to make use of industry standard ports.

You can not take an iPhone 7 or iPad Pro and connect it to these new machines without a dongle. If that isn't the very definition of stupid I don't know what is.

Apple is out of the laptop and desktop business. They are in the botique computer business. You get to vastly over pay for substandard hardware that looks great and costs an arm and a leg and isn't compatible with most of your industry standard accessories.

Thanks but no thanks. I'll grab a Dell that costs $1000 less with better hardware and industry standard ports.

Apple has jumped the shark. OS X is a better OS but it's not worth an extra $1000.
 
I think most people are asking Apple to include both cables during the transition that they impose on their users, rather than just one of the two. And I don't know if you're being facetious but isn't the small percentage (2% as you so eloquently puts it) all the more reason that Apple should do it (as it's financially negligible in the grand scheme of things)?

No. I haven't plugged my iPhone into a Mac to charge it in at least two years. I use airdrop and iCloud to transfer files, I backup wirelessly. I use a dock at home and work with their own power supplies to charge my iPhone. I travel with a charging cube in my backpack, which I use to charge my iPhone. I dislike charging my MBP when on the go because of how cumbersome the charging brick and cable are, so I would only plug that in if I absolutely had to, and even then I wouldn't presume to charge my phone at the same time which would only slow down the whole process.

I have zero need to plug my iPhone into my MBP. That's likely the norm, not the exception. Certainly Apple has demonstrated that they are aware of the needs of their customers by providing a 3.5mm adapter with the iPhone 7, something I think was a mistake, and something I don't personally need, yet they have enough information that it was needed to provide for free, and sell for a substantial subsidy over their usual pricing margins. Their routine polling -- whether MBP customers use the headphone jack among their most recent -- gives them insight into the wider use behaviors of their customers. I'd argue they have sufficient insight that most customers aren't charging their iPhones via their MacBooks, and those who do can buy what they need. At the end of the day, Apple is a business, and there's no reason to expect them to give away something most don't need. The very fact the Retina MacBook was released without a USB-C to Lightning cable available, and continues to be sold without one, suggests there's no great need for one, which is likely to be the case going forward.
 
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My guess is that it will sell reasonably well. The main complaint seems to be that it is about $200 overpriced. That's easily fixable if Mac sales continue to slide. Most people will get over the legacy port issue very quickly. An adapter or hub is a one-time purchase, and there are plenty of choices.
If Apple introduced the new 15" MBP without the Touch Bar and then said, "We also have this multitouch display bar to help speedup your work efficiency, and it also includes Apple Pay and Touch ID, but it costs an extra $200," I'd have still pre-ordered the same model.
 
No doubt that TB3/USB C is a far superior standard. It just stinks that a lot of us still have a ton of USB A devices and still use the SD card slot. It's always going to stink to move on. I would wage that Apple will be one of the first big players to have a portless laptop as soon as wireless charging becomes a better alternative to plugging in. Or in Apple speak, as soon as wireless charging is good enough but still an inconvenience, they will remove the power adapter.
Potentially but that's years off. I suspect Macs will always have at least one physical port. Imagine a 12" MacBook with a Touch Bar and wireless charging and that's probably Apple's vision of the Mac in 2026. We'll see.
 
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What's so hard to comprehend? When you're dropping thousands of dollars on a "pro" laptop that ships with substandard hardware just so it can be a little lighter and a litter thinner you should not also be asked to drop even more on dongles so you can use your existing accessories that happen to make use of industry standard ports.

You can not take an iPhone 7 or iPad Pro and connect it to these new machines without a dongle. If that isn't the very definition of stupid I don't know what is.

Apple is out of the laptop and desktop business. They are in the botique computer business. You get to vastly over pay for substandard hardware that looks great and costs an arm and a leg and isn't compatible with most of your industry standard accessories.

Thanks but no thanks. I'll grab a Dell that costs $1000 less with better hardware and industry standard ports.

Apple has jumped the shark. OS X is a better OS but it's not worth an extra $1000.

Apple hasn't required a PC for use with an iPhone or iPad since 2009. If you want to plug yours into a Mac for some reason, that's your business. There's no reason for Apple to support that behavior if it's not necessary.
 
The user experience is still there, but it is an experience that is getting poorer and poorer with each product release.

People should voice their concerns, hoping that Apple might sit up and take notice—as it has done in the past.

If everyone accepts what Apple puts out without question, Apple will go the same way as VHS, MySpace, Blackberry, 35mm film, etc, etc, etc.

The offering today is increasingly muddled and compromised and inconsistent. That might be good enough for you and for some people, just as some people still walk around today with old Nokia and Blackberry phones, but it isn't good enough for the people who can see all the flaws and the cheapness and the rip-off pricing.

Apple can afford to lose some of its geek customers, but it can't afford to lose many of them, because the dissatisfied geeks here on MacRumors and other forums are the people who shape the buying decisions of the people that surround them. I can point to thousands of sales in the last ten years that have come from my recommendation of Apple products to friends, family, and clients I have advised. If I cut away the clients, my influence has still impacted on hundreds of sales for Apple, and if I withdraw that support for Apple, the people around me will follow my lead when they next change their computers, phones, and tablets.

And I am not alone. A lot people you speak to on here are people who carry purchasing influence for their friends and families.

Ditching the headphone jack on one device but then using it in the next is inconsistent, expensive, and frustrating for users.

Dissing the function keys and then launching a new MBP with function keys just a few minutes later is utter madness—showing how disjointed Apple’s thinking is.

The issues over RAM specs, RAM limits, battery life, missing power cables, incompatible devices, the need for dongles, etc, etc, etc are further evidence of a company that no longer knows what it is doing and no longer cares to provide the best user experience it can.

Yes, some people—like you—are happy with what Apple is churning out. And some people are very unhappy at seeing a once-great company come out with half-baked over-priced products that offer a half-hearted and underwhelming user experience. If half-hearted and underwhelming are good enough for you, that's great—for you.

Sure, Apple might have moved on. Perhaps it doesn't want the geeks any longer. Perhaps it thinks fashion and celebrities can keep it afloat. Time will tell. But I think the writing on the wall is pretty clear: Apple is haemorrhaging support. The evangelist geeks made Apple what it is today. I really don't think it can afford to lose them, so I’m thrilled to see people posting their frustrations and ideas out in public. The people who take action are the people who change the world. The people who accept things blindly are the ones who waste their lives on mediocrity.

If you think everything is perfect, that's good for you. Don't be upset by other people who have greater dreams, higher expectations, and the determination not to be cheated in life.



Well said.
 
All else equal, someone who had $2499 to spend in 2004 was spending the equivalent of $3100 today. Yes, it's possible to get a $200 Chromebook that runs circles around a 2004 notebook, but someone with $3100 can easily afford a 15" MacBook Pro with the latest and greatest display technology and I/O.

Inflation. A $2499 PowerBook G4 would be about $3100 in today's dollars.

You must also consider then targeted average incomes, the technology offered in such products at the time was more advanced at reasonable prices than what is currently offered at higher entry price-points, and the increasing amount of profit margins.

You+Keep+Using+That+Word.jpg
 
That argument has been made and debunked long ago.

Technology has become less expensive as SSD's, RAM, CPU's, GPU's have all come down in price. I've built my share of Hackintoshes and have 2 Mac Pro5,1's that I updated with genuine Apple parts (current used WiFi ac + BTLE Broadcom chips, USB 3.1 PCIe, GPU - everything aside from Thunderbolt for obvious reasons). They all compare or beat my current gen Mac Pro6,1 12-Core dual D700 32GB RAM system that prices at $6k almost three years later.

It seems this is personal for you, so I'm backing out as these types of exchanges rarely benefit anyone.
1) You're saying inflation doesn't exist?

2) Your argument would make sense if you're talking about the same, old parts without any increase in performance or capacity, and no radical jumps in the states of the art.
 
No. I haven't plugged my iPhone into a Mac to charge it in at least two years. I use airdrop and iCloud to transfer files, I backup wirelessly. I use a dock at home and work with their own power supplies to charge my iPhone. I travel with a charging cube in my backpack, which I use to charge my iPhone. I dislike charging my MBP when on the go because of how cumbersome the charging brick and cable are, so I would only plug that in if I absolutely had to, and even then I wouldn't presume to charge my phone at the same time which would only slow down the whole process.

I have zero need to plug my iPhone into my MBP. That's likely the norm, not the exception. Certainly Apple has demonstrated that they are aware of the needs of their customers by providing a 3.5mm adapter with the iPhone 7, something I think was a mistake, and something I don't personally need, yet they have enough information that it was needed to provide for free, and sell for a substantial subsidy over their usual pricing margins. Their routine polling -- whether MBP customers use the headphone jack among their most recent -- gives them insight into the wider use behaviors of their customers. I'd argue they have sufficient insight that most customers aren't charging their iPhones via their MacBooks, and those who do can buy what they need. At the end of the day, Apple is a business, and there's no reason to expect them to give away something most don't need. The very fact the Retina MacBook was released without a USB-C to Lightning cable available, and continues to be sold without one, suggests there's no great need for one, which is likely to be the case going forward.

And where is the dock plugged into?
 
1) You're saying inflation doesn't exist?

2) Your argument would make sense if you're talking about the same, old parts without any increase in performance or capacity, and no radical jumps in the states of the art.

That's not what I wrote. Also, no. And, no.

See Post 564. Also, economics. Great to learn.
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At least have the decency of not putting words in other people's mouth.

Thank you for having the "courage" in stating what many are thinking.
Xanax.jpg
 
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Oh and only 720p iSight camera. Surfaces all have 1080p camera. Oh well, sexy machine!
1) This is one thing that can directly be blamed on the thinness. They would currently need a thicker top casing or potentially a much more expensive camera module (if it even exists) to get to 1080p (or 2160p) for the FaceTime camera. Is going to a thicker display casing worth getting a better front-facing camera? For me, it's not. I tape mine up anyway and really dislike any sort of video chat, but I know plenty of others that love to video chat so they probably would want a better camera.

2) Is 720p really that bad for a close up of someone's face or is this just a "well something else has it so Apple should have it, too"? Why doesn't this apply to other things like USB-C. Those that rallying against the new MBP should be trying to get their PC vendor of choice to start adopting it, not bitching that Apple is moving into the future.
 
My guess is that it will sell reasonably well. The main complaint seems to be that it is about $200 overpriced. That's easily fixable if Mac sales continue to slide. Most people will get over the legacy port issue very quickly. An adapter or hub is a one-time purchase, and there are plenty of choices.

Most likely it'll miss their own sales target for the rest of 2016 and the first quarter of 2017. My guess is a new MBP is already in the pipeline with specs that match the price tag.
 
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What's so hard to comprehend?
You can not take an iPhone 7 or iPad Pro and connect it to these new machines without a dongle. If that isn't the very definition of stupid I don't know what is.
It's actually very easy to comprehend. I now have one charger for my macbook and my phone. No dongle, no extra cables, no extra chargers. No need for old USB-ports. Yes, it would have been great if the usb-c to lighting cable would ship with the macbook(-pro) or the phone. But the $19 is not a big deal
 
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Fixed that for you. Also, calm yourself down. You're going to have a stroke if you keep carrying on with people in this manner.
Altering the context of people's posts. The telltale sign of the troll.

When you finally look up the definition of inflation to see that is does, in fact, exist, you should also look into how the relatively cost of the PC has dropped considerably since it was first introduced. Note: Cost ≠ price. You should also look into the rapid increase in capabilities over the years, and if possible try to use critical thinking to see how this affects the utility. That last one requires some critical thinking so maybe you should ignore that last one.
 
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