Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Do people still connect their iPhone to their computer with a cable? I haven't for years.

apparently they haven't worked this out yet, because it really does 'just work'. Love how when I get a new phone it automatically sets it up exactly like the old one without any wired connection.

Apple laptops and devices are all geared to being wireless. If you embrace this way of using Apple tech then the use of cables disappears.

Icloud storage
Apple music
Photos on cloud
wireless headphones

Use it all everyday and has been seamless across all my devices without a single one connected to the other ever. These devices are :

Iphone 7+
Ipad pro 12"
Apple watch
2 x Macbook pros [13 & 15"]

I get some usage requires connection - camera / video etc. but on the whole this dongle / connection situation has become way over exaggerated by people who don't know how to use what they have.

As an aside my favourite thing now is the SSD sizes required in a new computer. I just got the 13" TB and left it at 256gb as all the photos and music are on the cloud. Absolutely no need to increase to 512gb. Use an external SSD hooked up to the monitor for photos from a camera that are large files - works a treat.
 
  • Like
Reactions: clauzzz203 and GCMD
So you buy a flagship laptop and a flagship phone from the same company and you then have to buy a separate cable to connect them? So much for the "It just works" ethos . . .
If you require a physical connection, then yes. Big deal.

If you don't want to buy a new cable, then a dirt cheap USB-A to USB-C adapter will work just as well with your existing cable and you may even have one of those adapters already for other USB-A devices. Again, big deal.
 
  • Like
Reactions: clauzzz203 and GCMD
I bought 2 USB C to Micro B (USB 3.0) cables, 1 USB C to Lightning Cable and 1 USB C to USB 3.0 Female adapter when I bought my 2016 15" MBPtb for less than 50 bucks...and I doubt I'll need to by anything else.

I already have a SD card reader...my 2013 13" rMBP didn't have an SD slot...
I don't use an external monitor...
I have an iMac and a Mac Mini...so I don't NEED ethernet on my MBP...

And, if I remember correctly, you can WIRELESSLY backup your iPhone...

Unnecessary drama and complaints. If you don't like it, don't buy it. But you don't spend this much money on a computer without research and you don't then complain about something you've accepted going in.


This is getting ridiculous.
 
Aesthetically the current pro is not only the most beautiful machine Apple has ever shipped, it's the most beautiful laptop anyone has ever shipped. At some point you do need to ship. They may make some design improvements, but this machine is likely going to stay this way for the next 3 years with minor changes.
 
Before - Beautiful!
macbookpro2015.jpg


After - Ewww!
C_hub_satechi003-780x577.jpg




I love when reviewers say how beautiful the 2016 MacBook Pro looks. I concur. It truly is a thing of beauty. But after honeymoon phase luster wears off is when some truly see its problems. Users will make it ugly by dongles and hubs that protrude from it. All Apple had to do was give us 2 USB-C, 2 USB-A, and leave the SD slot alone. But they went screw that and made connecting an iPhone 7 which needs a dongle itself to the MBP an even bigger hassle.

I am looking into the "12 MacBook. Waiting for its third gen. I think it is the most ideal footprint for me. But ironically the 2015 MacBook was already showing the beginning of the end for ports. If it isn't a MB, there is always an iMac or Razor Blade I can purchase...

You've got to be joking right? The first photo doesn't even have a power cord attached. The second photo is intentionally cluttered. I know I always keep a small pile of paperclips right next to my laptop as well?!?

Don't buy yourself Starbucks today and instead buy this and end your cable problems.

613YvHsNNyL._SX425_.jpg


They are two for $9. Attach them to the end of anything you need to plug in and be done with it.

Take the 2015 Macbook Pro. Add the SD card sticking out. Attach the Magsafe power cord. Attach two USB 3.0 cables. Add a displayport cable for that external monitor (so you get two cords for power and external monitor versus one now.) Don't forget to add a small plant, ruler and a pile of paperclips to clutter up the photo.

The second photo actually shows the beauty of the choices because you can now DETACH all that legacy stuff via one port quickly and move on with your beautiful laptop.

In fact if this were my laptop, I'd have that be a hub instead of something hanging directly off the side and put it somewhere further away. Then I can come in and just plug one cable to my laptop that has power, display and every ugly device that needs a cord to access it in one place.
[doublepost=1483635791][/doublepost]
Sure, because this looks fun...

Dave Lee is my favorite YouTube reviewer when it comes to laptops...

David Lee might be disappointed but perhaps that is because he didn't score a Macbook Pro via BH for less than $2400 with 16/500 and the Radeon Pro 455 like I did. The main issue for him seems to be cost and the fact that Adobe makes their stuff run like unoptimized crap.

He declares the build quality is unmatched PERIOD by anyone else out there. The screen and thermals are great. He doesn't measure the SSD speed at all but if he did he would find it twice a fast as competitors and would find the read and write speeds are great versus just read that Dell and others seem to use to cheap out.

He doesn't use FCP at all. While he is pretty good at what he does, the reason this laptop is doing well, and will be grabbed by so many YouTuber's is because of Final Cut Pro. With background rendering and quick exporting, it is often five to ten times faster than Premiere. Plus it is a one time expense versus a monthly subscription. You could say that you shouldn't have to buy specific hardware to run a particular app but that is true of Premiere as well. He notes specifically that what makes Premiere so faster on PC vs Mac is that they have adopted a CUDA via Nvidia for use as a rendering choice for Premiere and thus the very inefficient software becomes somewhat faster when specifically purchasing and using Nvidia cards.

I looked at many of the laptops he featured in his second video you linked. I specifically took a very hard look at the Dell XPS15 which he notes is $1900 with the same features. However when following up on the Dell it took them nearly 6 months of bios and driver updates to get the laptop working right. There are still complaints about coil whine. The USB C ports are found to be working at half speed for no reason anyone has cared to explain yet. (People have even investigated and found there are enough PCI express lanes reserved, etc. Oh and of course everyone complains the battery life is crap and depending upon the reviewer they either got a screen that was decent for color matching or a complete mess.

As I dug into several of the PC laptops, I kept running into issues I don't care to deal with specifically also dealing with the cramped lack of space due to persistent taskbar, in window menus and running on a 16x9 screen. The laptop reviews gloss over the typical sore spots. (Trackpad, terrible speakers, fan noise, etc.)

It isn't worth it.
 
Last edited:
And that's what makes it esthetically unpleasing to me. Just my opinion...


Then return it and don't look back. Your view of this is incorrect - absolutely nothing in terms of insight to the design process can be gathered from there being a separation of the Touch ID / power button area with the Touch Bar. It's a button, not a part of the touch bar.

Would you rather them go back in time and machine out a dedicated power button in the chassis? It's unnecessary. You may hate the line, and that's valid I guess, but what are you really going to do about it if something like that bothers you so much? Buy an older model where the manufacturing tolerances are years behind?
 
You've got to be joking right? The first photo doesn't even have a power cord attached. The second photo is intentionally cluttered. I know I always keep a small pile of paperclips right next to my laptop as well?!?

Don't buy yourself Starbucks today and instead buy this and end your cable problems.

613YvHsNNyL._SX425_.jpg


They are two for $9. Attach them to the end of anything you need to plug in and be done with it.

Take the 2015 Macbook Pro. Add the SD card sticking out. Attach the Magsafe power cord. Attach two USB 3.0 cables. Add a displayport cable for that external monitor (so you get two cords for power and external monitor versus one now.) Don't forget to add a small plant, ruler and a pile of paperclips to clutter up the photo.

The second photo actually shows the beauty of the choices because you can now DETACH all that legacy stuff via one port quickly and move on with your beautiful laptop.

In fact if this were my laptop, I'd have that be a hub instead of something hanging directly off the side and put it somewhere further away. Then I can come in and just plug one cable to my laptop that has power, display and every ugly device that needs a cord to access it in one place.
[doublepost=1483635791][/doublepost]

David Lee might be disappointed but perhaps that is because he didn't score a Macbook Pro via BH for less than $2400 with 16/500 and the Radeon Pro 455 like I did. The main issue for him seems to be cost and the fact that Adobe makes their stuff run like unoptimized crap.

He declares the build quality is unmatched PERIOD by anyone else out there. The screen and thermals are great. He doesn't measure the SSD speed at all but if he did he would find it twice a fast as competitors and would find the read and write speeds are great versus just read that Dell and others seem to use to cheap out.

He doesn't use FCP at all. While he is pretty good at what he does, the reason this laptop is doing well, and will be grabbed by so many YouTuber's is because of Final Cut Pro. With background rendering and quick exporting, it is often five to ten times faster than Premiere. Plus it is a one time expense versus a monthly subscription. You could say that you shouldn't have to buy specific hardware to run a particular app but that is true of Premiere as well. He notes specifically that what makes Premiere so faster on PC vs Mac is that they have adopted a CUDA via Nvidia for use as a rendering choice for Premiere and thus the very inefficient software becomes somewhat faster when specifically purchasing and using Nvidia cards.

I looked at many of the laptops he featured in his second video you linked. I specifically took a very hard look at the Dell XPS15 which he notes is $1900 with the same features. However when following up on the Dell it took them nearly 6 months of bios and driver updates to get the laptop working right. There are still complaints about coil whine. The USB C ports are found to be working at half speed for no reason anyone has cared to explain yet. (People have even investigated and found there are enough PCI express lanes reserved, etc. Oh and of course everyone complains the battery life is crap and depending upon the reviewer they either got a screen that was decent for color matching or a complete mess.

As I dug into several of the PC laptops, I kept running into issues I don't care to deal with specifically also dealing with the cramped lack of space due to persistent taskbar, in window menus and running on a 16x9 screen. The laptop reviews gloss over the typical sore spots. (Trackpad, terrible speakers, fan noise, etc.)

It isn't worth it.
As you already know, the post was just more noise to add to the cacophony of bitching non-owners. Eventually, the idiocy will subside and we will get back to talking about real issues and workflow workarounds. The things people post are just mind boggling. I just can't wrap my head around why these people do this. A meme does not a clever post make. Feeling bad for potential buyers who need to wade through this crap. Sure there are issues, but it's hard to discuss when you have to read through irrelevant BS at every turn. These people need to get a life or just buy a PC, then everyone wins!
 
  • Like
Reactions: Jayderek
After seeing a thread posted on the MR site yesterday about fingerprint tech and Apple working on their own proprietary implementation of it through glass, I came to a conclusion as to why I didn't buy the Macbook Pro 2016.

It's from looking at the touch bar and finger print sensor and seeing a small line between them.
They are two components!

Now while this may seem petty and trivial to most, it says 2 things to me.
1. They pushed a really good product, not a great product. If they spent a little more time developing the technology the touch bar and fingerprint sensor could have been one seamless glass panel. And seeing that they are two components it was an eye sore as soon as I looked at the machine for the first time. My conclusion Tim Cook is more worried about numbers and sales then waiting a little longer for the great product.
2. Johny Ive has given up or isn't as good as everyone thinks when it comes to "attention to detail" as he's always saying.

I'm sure they will do this in the next gen. with Kaby Lake or maybe when they hit the Cannon Lake model in 2018, but I can wait. My mid 2013 Air is plenty good for programming and development work.

It's funny how that little detail prevented me from getting a new computer.

Pointless speculation really. Unless you live in the Dragon's Den it's easy to criticise the fire.
 
Apple laptops and devices are all geared to being wireless. If you embrace this way of using Apple tech then the use of cables disappears.

wait the day when your non-apple router/modem/... crashes so badly that you need to connect it to your computer to get inside the dashboard and then realized that you dont have a port or neither dongle for the ethernet cable :D
 
wait the day when your non-apple router/modem/... crashes so badly that you need to connect it to your computer to get inside the dashboard and then realized that you dont have a port or neither dongle for the ethernet cable :D

I have a 2016 MBP15 and think it is a terrific machine. But I can not understand why we have to wait till March for Belkin to release a USB C to Ethernet dongle! That is why I keep my Thunderbolt 2 to Ethernet dongle to connect with my MBA.

Wait a minute. Just thought of three dongle solution for the 2016. USB C to Thunderbolt 3 dongle. Then a Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 dongle (available now) and then a Thunderbolt 2 to ethernet dongle. How about that for creativity? Boggles the mind!

Donald Barar
 
Last edited:
Switching from a 2015 rMBP with a thunderbolt dock to a rMB and nMBP has been easy. I am a minimalist who has very little on my desk. The thunderbolt dock had much more clutter than the one port connect I do at home and the office. I don't use ethernet anymore, moved away from SD cards and USB thumb drives two years ago, and can't remember when I last connected my iPhone to my laptop. I suspect I am similar to a majority of Apple's user base in 2017.
 
After seeing a thread posted on the MR site yesterday about fingerprint tech and Apple working on their own proprietary implementation of it through glass, I came to a conclusion as to why I didn't buy the Macbook Pro 2016.

It's from looking at the touch bar and finger print sensor and seeing a small line between them.
They are two components!

Now while this may seem petty and trivial to most, it says 2 things to me.
1. They pushed a really good product, not a great product. If they spent a little more time developing the technology the touch bar and fingerprint sensor could have been one seamless glass panel. And seeing that they are two components it was an eye sore as soon as I looked at the machine for the first time. My conclusion Tim Cook is more worried about numbers and sales then waiting a little longer for the great product.
2. Johny Ive has given up or isn't as good as everyone thinks when it comes to "attention to detail" as he's always saying.

I'm sure they will do this in the next gen. with Kaby Lake or maybe when they hit the Cannon Lake model in 2018, but I can wait. My mid 2013 Air is plenty good for programming and development work.

It's funny how that little detail prevented me from getting a new computer.

You probably should've actually used one before jumping to conclusions about the quality/design of the product. Not bashing you, just pointing out that I'm convinced 90% of people poo pooing the new MBP are people that have never seen one in person much less touched one.
 
wait the day when your non-apple router/modem/... crashes so badly that you need to connect it to your computer to get inside the dashboard and then realized that you dont have a port or neither dongle for the ethernet cable :D
Fair point, but Apple is probably thinking that MBP owners would have at least one alternate computer that most households do. Even starving students will shell out for a gaming PC. If I didn't have access to 3 other computers, I would buy a dongle just in case. Actually I have a usb-c hub, so no I wouldn't. Point is, Apple has designed for likely, every day use, not worst case scenario that everyone seems so infatuated with. They could build a computer that covers every possible scenario, but then you have a PC with vga ports (or last year's MBP). I will reiterate, some of us REALLY like the new form factor. Trade-offs are worth it. I will get flamed for this, but I hope the next refresh in 3+ years is EVEN thinner and lighter. It just makes me use my laptop more (as opposed to my ipad) because it isn't much more trouble and physical keyboard always wins for me.
 
After seeing a thread posted on the MR site yesterday about fingerprint tech and Apple working on their own proprietary implementation of it through glass, I came to a conclusion as to why I didn't buy the Macbook Pro 2016.

It's from looking at the touch bar and finger print sensor and seeing a small line between them.
They are two components!

Now while this may seem petty and trivial to most, it says 2 things to me.
1. They pushed a really good product, not a great product. If they spent a little more time developing the technology the touch bar and fingerprint sensor could have been one seamless glass panel. And seeing that they are two components it was an eye sore as soon as I looked at the machine for the first time. My conclusion Tim Cook is more worried about numbers and sales then waiting a little longer for the great product.
2. Johny Ive has given up or isn't as good as everyone thinks when it comes to "attention to detail" as he's always saying.

I'm sure they will do this in the next gen. with Kaby Lake or maybe when they hit the Cannon Lake model in 2018, but I can wait. My mid 2013 Air is plenty good for programming and development work.

It's funny how that little detail prevented me from getting a new computer.


Was it that little detail or was it the price? C'mon now be honest....with yourself.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.