Slashdot Mirror
Apple To Launch Thinner, Lighter MacBook Pro Models With OLED Touch Bar, Touch ID In Fall (9to5mac.com)
Apple plans to refresh its MacBook Pro line later this year. The makeover will see both 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Pro models replace their function keys atop laptop keyboards with an OLED touch bar, according to a report. Both the models will also have Touch ID fingerprint sensor, and will support Thunderbolt 3 USB-C port, multiple outlets are reporting citing ever-so-reliable KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. The refreshed MacBook Pro model will be thinner and lighter as well. There's no word on if -- and when -- the MacBook Air lineup will receive a refresh.
This is still the main marketing touch point?
I am starting to believe all the "Apple is starting to stagnate" hype...
Apple, I think it's time to reformulate the sales pitch...
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
Lenovo tried getting rid of F-keys with a touch bar in the X1. It failed SPECTACULARLY. I suspect the same will happen to Apple here. Professionals use F-keys. A lot. and not being able to touch type them is a glorious, horrible, pain in the ASS.
My iphone is warped. Your products are becoming crap. Please stop. Full stop.
I don't want a thinner laptop but I would like a more tactile keyboard. (sent from my 2015 mac pro)
And who said innovation was dead? OLED touch bars are what I want!
Swapping the function keys for a touch bar is gimmicky on a machine that is labeled as "pro". And that is before even getting to the stories of OLED burn in.
Upgraded ports are always nice, but again on a Pro model you need to have as many as you can cram in.
But what is obviously missing from TFA is the things that make a computer important: CPU, memory, drive space, screen resolution. None of them get a mention.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Is it still too expensive to make an OLED screen that big?
You'll notice that over the last few years, even the fanboys are getting annoyed by the stupid shit Apple is doing.
Keys with less travel on a supposedly "pro" laptop? Thinner computers for the sake of... what, exactly? People want more battery life, Apple keeps innovating on that end but it only results in the same battery life because they stupidly keep making their laptops thinner.
The low-end computers keep getting slow 5400 RPM drives, as if 7200 RPM drives were somehow incredibly more expensive. And Apple keeps using laptop parts in desktop computers which is just insane, not to mention that they're even making their desktop computers thinner. That doesn't help anyone. The last straw is that they're now soldering the RAM, meaning you can't even upgrade your computer a few years later. That's the complete opposite of being a green company. You can use all the solar panels all you want, Apple, it doesn't mean squat if your hardware gets discarded sooner than it needs to be.
I've been waiting to upgrade my MBP for a year now. It is a 2012 and feeling long in the tooth. Been waiting for a "redesign" - but Q4? Lord.
The last time Apple innovated was with the iphone, in 2007. It basically have the same product line for 10 years straight.
Meanwhile, Lenovo and Dell keep throwing out freak notebook after notebook, with the hope that some design sticks, and some actually do (Yoga, Hybrid tablets, rugged notebooks, etc.)
We want Fatter with multi day batter and 17 freaking inches in size with a retina display.. The fact that used 17" MBP laptops are going UP in value are a fantastic indicator of this. It's the only peice of electronics outside of an Apple -I that gains in value almost daily.
Give us a workstation 17" that is fat as the 2012 MBP that allows the installation of 2-3 .2 SSD drives and the option to install metric buttloads of ram.
Dammit Apple, people will pay $2500-$3000 for that.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I'm writing this on an Early 2011 15" Macbook Pro, which is frankly on it's last legs. In fact, it's at the point where I can't really move it around.
It would have been pretty unusable years ago, except that this is one of the last Macbook Pros that you could upgrade the RAM and harddrive on. I got this thing with the least amount of RAM and cheapest harddrive I could, and as time went on I added more RAM and an SSD. New lease of life. And that stuff all cost me about $250 rather than the extra > $1000 Apple would have charged.
I want (and pretty much need) a new laptop, and Apple makes great ones. Yeah, people say "Apple Tax!" a lot, but spec-for-spec, Apple laptops are pretty much equal to other manufacturers and the *usability* is *phenomenally* better. From the UI design to the friggin *trackpad*.
But if I can't upgrade my own machine... sorry, not happening. And that goes for any other laptop maker.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
No interest at ALL in a macbook. Miserable chicklet keys, extremely limited I/O, small display... meh.
I would be interested (VERY!) in a new Mac Pro if they go back to a real computer case that can hold multiple drives, allows memory expansion, choice of and multiples of, graphics cards, a reasonable measure of physical security (a surface full of desk warts I most definitely do NOT want.) The current round model simply drove me to EBay to buy older units. I'd be interested in a couple of minis, too, if they were still actually upgrading them instead of downgrading them. Apple's choosing to go backwards with CPU capacity and memory upgradability closed the mini door pretty sharply.
Honestly, I think Apple has lost their way in the computer space. They've left a trail of severely buggy, unfixed OS's behind them, broken applications and services, dropped support for various aspects of the system, pretty much hosed the app store, limited (or eliminated) expandability and choice, built a bewilderingly non-functional macpro, knocked the mini back to much less of a computer than it used to be, and are pathologically fixed on the "thinner, thinner" mantra and associated tunnel-vision-like goals while functionality and bugfixing goes wanting.
I like working with OS X, but without the company having a decent vision, I can't move along with Apple, I just hang with my current OS level and hardware, or buy more hardware from the same series off EBay, and continue waiting to see if Apple is going to come to their senses, or not. I test my commercial and free software development under the latest OS X, but I don't use it, because it simply isn't functional enough. Things like missing PPC emulation are show-stoppers for me, I have many thousands of $ of PPC apps that work just fine and no intention of abandoning them, nor is it convenient to only run them in a VM. Nothing else I can really do. Don't like Windows, been there, been burned by Microsoft, not going back; and until/unless linux builds in a standard GUI layer I can depend upon without compromising my commercial software development financially or GPL-wise, it's not even in the running.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
It's obvious to me now that the mindless marketing drones at Apple need to spend more time around humans to understand that we can actually carry around a portable device that weighs more than a dog fart. Sorry, but I just don't get the whole lighter and thinner bullshit, especially after Bendgate.
With all the damn statistics and metrics being captured in this world today, it floors me that companies still feel zero need to actually ASK the damn customer what they would want or even need in a new laptop design. I'm willing to bet exactly no one was demanding or even asking about thinner at this point, and weight is a pathetic metric anyway when everything out there is already been reduced considerably in the last few years. We're humans, not mice.
The theory is that if they can make them thin and light enough, they'll see a sales increase due to people rebuying stuff that they lost in the couch cushions or that got blown away in a brisk wind.
Log in or piss off.
Not into violating software agreements, terms of service, etc. As far as I know, OS X isn't licensed for use on non-Mac hardware. Be interesting to learn differently, though. Are you aware of a legally clear path to do this? If the answer to that is yes, the next question would be, are you aware of a high-end machine where OS X will install cleanly without any screwing around?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Why is Apple stubbornly staying with soldered memory when users clearly don't like it? Are they not supposed to be the company of great customer service that loves and listens to their community? Not in this case. I can sure see how it benefits Apple to do it that way but Joe Public...not so much.
Here is my wish list:
1) Bring back the 17" Macbook Pro. Yes it's big and bulky but I'm willing to put up with that for the extra screen real estate.
2) Bring back user upgradable memory. If it truly is a Macbook Pro then it should come with 8GB minimum and I should be able to plug in up to 32GB (or maybe even 64) as and when I need it. If the laptop was aimed at home users I could maybe see not wanting them to be able to do this but I'm a professional and I know how to open laptops and upgrade them. I should be able to do this on my own and without a trip to the Genius lab.
3) Ports - lots of them. Wireless is nice but sometimes I prefer a hardwired network connection. Gimme a network port. I also need a couple of HDMI ports and at least 3 USB ports. Why not throw in a Firewire port too? I know that it's kind of old technology now but a lot of people still have firewire drives and would like to be able to plug them in.
4) Bootcamp. Why not have the option to have Bootcamp pre-installed if you know you're going to use it? Or maybe a prebuilt virtualized Windows. Yes, some of use would prefer to do it ourselves but others might appreciate the convenience.
5) I'm tired of the race to the thinnest laptop. I want something with a battery big enough to last the whole day, or more, doing intensive processing. If that adds a half pound or a half inch so be it. This is supposed to be a big boy laptop, not some hipster toy.
6) 4K display. Could you imagine a 4K display on a sweet 17" laptop with a matte finish? Heaven.
Until then I'm hanging on to my creaky old 2008 era Macbook Pro.
I don't know the investments he's trying to rescue... but Ming-Chi Kuo at KGI Securities has been predicting OLED and AMOLED displays for Apple products the last 3 releases, and Apple has not been stupid enough to oblige him with a product containing one.
Also, I can not see Jony Ive putting a different looking bar at the top where the functions keys normally go, and breaking up the overall design into three zones that end up looking so incredibly different from each other, and certainly, not to draw a display down where it ends up taking up attention from the main display. That just totally violates the design principles he espouses when you talk to him about it.
But I'm sure a lot of people clicked that link, which I guess is the point...
I code for a living, and I love my mac book air to death. I use it mainly as a thin client to connect to servers/build servers to do actual heavy lifting.. and the usual presentation/writing work for which this is more than enough. This is connected to an external keyboard and display.
The battery lasts for around 6 hours, which is good enough to last a conference. I would rather have a thin *nix machine than a heavy one. If you'd rather have a heavy box that you don't want to move, get a desktop.