After days of thinking about it, I think I know where my disappointment stems from.
I'm not disappointed with the new MBP, I'm disappointed that for the first time in my life 4 years have passed and I can't buy a significantly better machine than my old one. My old MBP has 16gb ram, 256gb SSD, 2.3Ghz quad core (i7). A new MBP would be the same with maybe a slightly faster RAM and a bit faster, but mostly just less hungry CPU architecture.
The GPU is marginally better but there's only so much you can shove in a laptop. Modern GPU monsters are as big as my whole computer.
When I look around for a better laptop (price/performance/weight/battery/everything) I can't find one.
Desktops are in the same boat. I've been looking around to replace my SEVEN year old desktop. CPU performance, going by PassMark score, looks to be about twice as fast now as mine.
Twice the speed is a nice upgrade, but only doubling the speed over seven years? I think about a seven year span like 1994-2001 and going from a 486 DX to a Pentium 4 would have been a whole different story.
I understand that disappointment, but it is inevitable with two trends: the end of Moore's law for CPUs and the fact that four year-old specs are good for the bulk of users doesn't help to drive prices down.
The primary thing that has been improving since 2012 is the death of spinning platters across the boards (though a lot of sub-$1000 laptops still seem to have them) and larger SSDs in base models.
Of course, for some scenarios newer generation CPUs help tremendously. E.g. AVX2 can be a large improvement if your work relies a lot on SIMD instructions.
Alas my biggest problem is that Chrome acts funny with 50+ tabs across 4+ windows (ram), that compiling JavaScript is slow (cpu) and that my computer grinds to a halt when I'm livecoding (gpu rendering currently done by cpu instead).
So yeah ... I hit all the things that aren't likely to improve soon.
It's even more true for the Air, which is pretty much identical. I bought a 4/128/i5 machine in 2011 and I'm thinking of buying basically the same machine again. A bit faster RAM/disk/CPU/USB, sure, but everything else remains unchanged. It's a shame they're likely to discontinue this, because it's a magnificent machine for ~£1000. It's held on like a charm, it has most of the ports one needs - all it could use is a USB-C in place one of the USBs, drop the charging port and you can release it again. Without this, Apple won't have an all-around entry-level laptop, they will have the tiny, port stripped 12" and then a £1500 Pro.
There's a reason the 13" Air was the laptop to buy five years ago. I'd be sad to see it go. Unless Apple manages to release a 13" laptop closer to the £1000 mark, I don't know what I'll buy when my trusty old one stops operating. Perhaps you could drop the retina screen and the dedicated graphics card? Reuse the shell, change the internals. Please.
> There's a reason the 13" Air was the laptop to buy five years ago.
I have a 2011 MBA (probably the same as yours - MC965D/A w. DE keyboard) and it has its problems: very noisy fan and lackluster display (low resolution). I'd purchase a 12" MacBook instead today.
Same here, I am not going to buy the 2016 model of MBP since it does not offer anything to __me__ over my current one (MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015)).
Slightly off topic but new models from Apple tend have serious issues in terms of reliability. Our office has many new MB Airs and they regularly freeze up with the latest macOS and only power off & power on helps. Another disappointment is the new iPhone 7, not having audio jack, offering zero alternatives to audiofile users to listen to lossless audio on their phone (using the external DAC is a joke). I am not sure where Apple is headed nowadays but it seems it is not for me anymore. I am going to use iPhone 6s until it breaks down and move over to a different platform. If Apple does not get their shit together with MPB I will do the same as well.
They could stick a GTX 1060 in there, like Razer has in their Blade 15. But that, along with the 32gb ram option, would probably result in a slightly thicker laptop with poorer battery life.
But that makes me wonder: why didn't they make the 12" macbook a macbook air, make the new 13" and 15" macbooks, and then come out with the slightly thicker, more powerful pro 15"... and maybe 13"
I'm not disappointed with the new MBP, I'm disappointed that for the first time in my life 4 years have passed and I can't buy a significantly better machine than my old one. My old MBP has 16gb ram, 256gb SSD, 2.3Ghz quad core (i7). A new MBP would be the same with maybe a slightly faster RAM and a bit faster, but mostly just less hungry CPU architecture.
The GPU is marginally better but there's only so much you can shove in a laptop. Modern GPU monsters are as big as my whole computer.
When I look around for a better laptop (price/performance/weight/battery/everything) I can't find one.
That's what I'm disappointed about.