I had a 13 inch MacBook Pro 2016. Sold it. Went back to using my 2013 MacBook Pro. I have an iPhone 7 and I miss my headphone jack every day. The best phone I ever owned was the se.
Apple is happily going off in a nonsense direction where their products are less and less useful because they are less complete and therefore less “self reliant” as devices.
See that’s what people don’t articulate. It’s not that the design changes are bad. Some are great. It’s that the balance of great design and great utility is what made apple impossible to beat as a phone and a laptop, and then there was the fact that they were seamlessly integrated (something apple has still failed to fully exploit — their stuff could be mind blowing). This is what made the brand great, and I feel like people miss that part of the argument.
When you bought a 2013 MacBook Pro, you didn’t need to buy accessories because it had it all - hdmi, usb, etc. - and it was useful without any additional accessories and met or exceeded my needs in almost all circumstances. I didn’t need a dongle to present and I didn’t need a cable adapter to charge my phone. When I packed for a conference I would grab my laptop, a power supply (that I could trip over in hotel rooms while working with no worries and that neatly wrapped up), and an hdmi to dvi adapter in case the projector failed, but that was it. Now I feel like Apple has externalized all of that utility in an effort to boost margins or go thin, and it’s basically made the devices reliant on a host of adapters, both for phones and laptops (and actually the 2013 Mac pro was the same problem).
Apple needs to understand what made them great was that they weren’t the ultimate steak knife, they were the ultimate survival knife, and get back to building the most useful, thought out and self-contained devices like they used to. They had a sweet spot, but we’re going back to the Apple cube across all product lines again, and nobody wants that.
The pro computer failure and the move away from nerd needs to slab of glass has lost balance and is heading into design over substance. The pendulum needs some rebalancing.
> When you bought a 2013 MacBook Pro, you didn’t need to buy accessories because it had it all - hdmi, usb, etc. - and it was useful without any additional accessories and met or exceeded my needs in almost all circumstances.
Except it didn't have VGA which is still popular in conference rooms to this day, so you needed an adapter for that. Some people probably needed an adapter for Ethernet as well.
Not to mention you needed a MagSafe 2 charger instead of a universal USB C charger.
> effort to boost margins or go thin, and it’s basically made the devices reliant on a host of adapters
They did it on the MacBook because USB C is more convenient than having specific use ports. The same reason you're happy that the 2013 MacBook had two USB three ports instead of two PS/2 ports and a serial port.
As for removing the headphone jack from the iPhone, they did it because you can send audio over Bluetooth or lightning. No reason to include a redundant port that does only one thing.
This mythical device does not exist. USB-C PD includes 5 different power profiles[1] and even if your adapter is big enough subtle compatibility problems still pop up - my colleague's laptop complains about his adapter every time you plug it in for some reason. The situation is better than when every PC product line had their own power connector, but if you were in the Mac ecosystem you already mostly had the same thing because every laptop just used the same of Magsafe connector.
USB-C also brings back the problem of tripping over the power cord and sending your $3000 laptop careening towards a wall or the floor.
> As for removing the headphone jack from the iPhone, they did it because you can send audio over Bluetooth or lightning. No reason to include a redundant port that does only one thing.
I've been using the top rated "budget" Bluetooth headphones from The Wirecutter for a year now (Jabra Move) and they blow. Like most bluetooth devices, the connection only works "most of the time", sometimes they connect but don't identify as headphones (?) and I have to power cycle them.
They also weigh noticeably more than my previous favourite, portable, wired headphones (Sennheiser PX 100-II) with worse sound quality to boot. I only noticed this when switching back to my wired headphones after I forgot the Bluetooth ones at work and realizing that the wired ones felt almost weightless by comparison. If this is the best that Bluetooth headphones in the ~$100 range have to offer, I don't want it.
Oh yeah, and I have to charge the fuckers every day because what I needed was another device that's useless unless I remember to plug it in constantly when I'm not using it.
> All you should need to know about a charger is the max wattage.
Right. It should be that easy, but in practice not everyone is going to implement the spec correctly. If you call Apple support when someone else's power adapter doesn't work I guarantee they will tell you that only official Apple power bricks are "supported".
At the moment, in practice, I've mostly seen USB-C chargers showing up with newer tablets, not laptops. So if you need to bum a charge from someone you're probably going to get a charger that's too small.
> This mythical device does not exist. USB-C PD includes 5 different power profiles[1]
It does exist. Yes, there are issues like the ones your colleague experience but most of the time you can charge your phone, MacBook, or Windows laptop with the same USB C charger.
> USB-C also brings back the problem of tripping over the power cord and sending your $3000 laptop careening towards a wall or the floor.
You can buy an adapter for this if it's really something you're worried about [1].
It should also be pretty clear by now that Apple expects most of their users to not be using their MacBook while it's plugged in. The majority of MacBook owners will rarely need to thanks to the improvements in battery life over the past five years or so.
> What if I want to charge my phone and listen to music and own really nice headphones that don't need to be upgraded every year?
You can't. Again, most people never use this functionality. It is unfortunate for those that do but that's why the adapters exist. Much like the lightning to USB 3 adapter I have for my iPad. It would be convenient for me if I didn't need that adapter to plug a midi keyboard in, but the amount of people actually plugging midi keyboards in doesn't merit including a USB port on the iPad.
All of your complaints about bluetooth headphones are perfectly valid. Some people like them, some people don't. Lucky for you, a $9 dollar adapter for your wired headphones will solve all of your problems. Hardly even worth complaining about, especially if you were willing to spend ~$100 on a set of bluetooth headphones.
Well, I will just not buy devices with no analog audio out.
Saved those adapter, charger, hassles and all my existing gear works great!
Same for ports. I will not purchase one of these all in one port devices.
Charge and listen happens all the time in cars, BTW.
MIDI is not comparable to the charge and listen case.
Besides, a whole lot of people hate dongles. I am one of them.
And yes, I stepped right off the Apple train the moment I heard these things were coming. Did not look back.
I have things from the freaking 80's, like great headphones, that work just fine. Got other things to spend my money on, and chasing adapters down really is not one of them.
> You can't. Again, most people never use this functionality.
I don't think I'm THAT much of an exception. I sit at an open-ish desk all day and wear headphones to block out ambient noise. I also need to charge my phone at some point in the day if I want it to last through my commute in the evening. This means that I often need to charge while listening.
Given the popularity of open offices and limitations in phone battery life, I don't think this is so rare.
This. Just moved back from my 2014 rMBP Pro to a 2012 Thinkpad X220 for the trackpoint and keyboard. Shame about the display but eh there are external FHD displays when you really needs to. Retina screen and trackpoint is going to be amazing when I upgrade to a X1 sometimes I guess haha.
Do you have an IPS display for your X220? It doesn't increase the resolution, but it does make it much better. (The X220 is pretty easy to swap the screen on too.)
No I don't, but I am looking to swap the TN display with a FHD IPS screen, as mentioned in [0], but sadly there are very few aftermarket kits around these days last I've checked.
I have a couple of the FHD mods from here ( https://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=122640 ), but they took quite a while to get to me, and by then my enthusiasm for experimental soldering had waned, but sometime I will try.
But even just swapping in an 1366x768 IPS panel for the TN panel of the same resolution makes a great difference. And those you can find fairly cheaply.
Well, the 2012 model was very nice. Also OSX of the era was bit better perceived than current ones, I think it was in some ways around the peak of OSX.
I think the point is more about people being so change-averse that it's basically impossible to take many of the "reviews" of new generations of Apple products seriously. Every time they roll out something new the universal consensus on sites like HN is that it's not just useless but actually has negative utility; it's the worst thing anyone has ever put on the market; if Apple ever does manage to sell any of this piece of crap they'll all be returned and exchanged for older models; Apple will be bankrupt within the year because they just don't understand how to make good things anymore!
And then a couple years later when the next next generation comes out, suddenly that worst-thing-ever-that-was-going-to-bankrupt-them turns out, actually to have been amazingly great and darn near perfect, so why did they go and mess it up!
Responding to you on a '15 MBP-- completely agree. Mine is still running like the wind, in great physical shape, and now sports a Big Lebowski sticker. What more could I want?
Fun comparison; for all their efforts to reduce the physical size of the device Apple has managed to shave whole 2.5 mm from the thickness. To get that, they have needed to drop ports, compromise keyboard, and reduce battery size about 15% (99.5 Wh -> 83.6 Wh).
I don't know what sort of bubble the product manager or whoever lives in that makes that a reasonable tradeoff. Sure, it might seem neat on paper that they have reduced the height 13% and total volume 18%, but in practice, well...
Compared to the Lenovo ThinkPad Carbon X1 6th Gen they’re just one mm thinner, but much worse keyboard & ports config and 20% worse battery life. I guess it’s exactly one mm too thin. The Lenovo also weighs 1358-1126=242 grams less. And then there is also the silly TouchBar...
Indeed, I consider myself lucky that I happened to by a Macbook in 2015. Hopefully by the time I need to upgrade they'll have sorted things out again. Otherwise I may have to go for a windows pc next time.
2015 MBP 15" retina has the older, more reliable, keyboard, magsafe power, decent CPU and adequate GPU, HDMI, 2 mini-DP, regular USB 3 ports.
You could go older but there's no need unless you want a DVD drive. And you'd sacrifice CPU performance and maybe memory capacity.
Alas, it seems the Apple official Refurb store sold the last of their 2015 MBP models earlier this year. The earliest ones I see now (in US/UK/HK stores) are 2016 models.
You could swap out the DVD drives for a second hard drive. But that era MBP was a bit underpowered IMO. I had a great 2012 before the keyboard started failing. Now enjoy a 2015.
You are correct. But they're backward compatible with Mini DisplayPort. The only cables I've seen people plug in to them are minidp to {DVI, HDMI, DP}.
External hard drives are mostly USB3, and I don't know anyone with an external GPU.
The 2015 was the last of that body style, so it has the latest "guts" (CPU etc) with the previous keyboard and ports (USB-A, HDMI, Magsafe). Plus, with the non-mechanical touchpad, there's room for a slightly larger battery¹.
1: "The 2015 revision brought the modern Force Touch trackpad and used the space savings to increase the battery to 99.5 Wh, just under the 100 Wh carry-on limit for most commercial airlines" from Marco Arment, https://marco.org/2017/11/14/best-laptop-ever
have you ever repeated that line in an Apple store or any other tech shop?
it turns into the twilight zone with the rebuttals they come up with. mostly it is related to the sells and extrapolating that to consumer satisfaction.
Agree - I'm still using my 13" Mid 2009 Macbook - it has everything on it that I need, I got offered a latest Macbook from work, had to turn it down. That weird bar at the top, a keyboard that just feels horrible to type on, and a shiny screen that is just not for me.
Of course this is a matter of taste, but I seriously don't get the hate for the new keyboard. It took me two days to get used to it. The one thing I concede is, that it is loud.
The 2018 keyboard is much less clacky than the 2016 one but the travel is the same. I’m glad most of my typing is on an external keyboard anyway.
I don’t have a problem with Esc being on the Touch Bar because it’s the leftmost target and nothing is that close to it. Maybe I’d feel differently if I was a regular vi user.
I liked it well enough until keycaps started sticking to my fingers and falling out while I was typing. I think the overheating weakens the tiny and fragile plastic hooks. Also, some keys get stuck or repeat letters but I got used to it.
If it is a 200€ laptop, I might be okay with this. But paying 2800€ (15" model, least expensive configuration) and then not being able to work because the keyboard falls apart … unforgivable. Let’s hope Apple introduces a more reliable Pro laptop next year. Until then I have to plug along on my 2014 model.
Assuming you were offered a MacBook (as in, non pro), you made a great choice. The dongle life is grim and even with the right ones (good luck there) you get stuck. Yuck.
Apple is happily going off in a nonsense direction where their products are less and less useful because they are less complete and therefore less “self reliant” as devices.
See that’s what people don’t articulate. It’s not that the design changes are bad. Some are great. It’s that the balance of great design and great utility is what made apple impossible to beat as a phone and a laptop, and then there was the fact that they were seamlessly integrated (something apple has still failed to fully exploit — their stuff could be mind blowing). This is what made the brand great, and I feel like people miss that part of the argument.
When you bought a 2013 MacBook Pro, you didn’t need to buy accessories because it had it all - hdmi, usb, etc. - and it was useful without any additional accessories and met or exceeded my needs in almost all circumstances. I didn’t need a dongle to present and I didn’t need a cable adapter to charge my phone. When I packed for a conference I would grab my laptop, a power supply (that I could trip over in hotel rooms while working with no worries and that neatly wrapped up), and an hdmi to dvi adapter in case the projector failed, but that was it. Now I feel like Apple has externalized all of that utility in an effort to boost margins or go thin, and it’s basically made the devices reliant on a host of adapters, both for phones and laptops (and actually the 2013 Mac pro was the same problem).
Apple needs to understand what made them great was that they weren’t the ultimate steak knife, they were the ultimate survival knife, and get back to building the most useful, thought out and self-contained devices like they used to. They had a sweet spot, but we’re going back to the Apple cube across all product lines again, and nobody wants that.
The pro computer failure and the move away from nerd needs to slab of glass has lost balance and is heading into design over substance. The pendulum needs some rebalancing.