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Apple Said To Plan First Pro Laptop Overhaul in Four Years (bloomberg.com)
It's been a while since Apple upgraded most of its computer lineups. It has come to a point, where it's being advised that the Cupertino-based company should stop selling the dated inventories. But the wait will be over later this year, says Mark Gurman, the reporter with the best track record in Apple's ecosystem. Reporting for Bloomberg, Gurman says that the company will be overhauling its MacBook Pro laptop line for the first time in over four years, packing it with a range of interesting features. From the report: The updated notebooks will be thinner, include a touch screen strip for function keys, and will be offered with more powerful and efficient graphics processors for expert users such as video gamers, said the people, who asked not to be named. The most significant addition to the new MacBook Pro is a secondary display above the keyboard that replaces the standard function key row. Instead of physical keys, a strip-like screen will present functions on an as-needed basis that fit the current task or application. The smaller display will use Organic Light-Emitting Diodes, a thinner, lighter and sharper screen technology, KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said earlier this year. Apple's goal with the dedicated function display is to simplify keyboard shortcuts traditionally used by experienced users. The panel will theoretically display media playback controls when iTunes is open, while it could display editing commands like cut and paste during word processing tasks, the people said. The display also allows Apple to add new buttons via software updates rather than through more expensive, slower hardware refreshes. [...] Apple is using one of AMD's "Polaris" graphics chips because the design offers the power efficiency and thinness necessary to fit inside the slimmer Apple notebook, the person said.
If you open a Macbook Air, the entire thing is filled with tamper-proof epoxy and glue and any type of serviceability is practically impossible.
i vote for getting rid of the sharp edge that's grating the skin off my wrists. i'd similarly welcome a computer that can keep itself cool without sounding like an asthmatic jet engine. it would also be nice to be able to fall asleep with a running computer on my chest/abdomen without being woken up by a burning skin sensation.
Fantastic. Nothing suits a keyboard better than having to look down at it to use it.
You can't even replace the traces between components without separating the board layers? Madness, everyone knows traces should be on the surface of the board where you can make a nice solder bridge if you so desire or fortune dictates!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Now how about a Mac mini overhaul? The last change was two years ago and it was actually a downgrade from the 2012 models.
There's something really wrong at Apple for still selling computers in 2016 with 5400RPM hard drives and only 4GB of RAM.
The updated notebooks will be thinner
Fuck off
Who cares about thinner lighter for a _PRO_ notebook PRO means expandable. They should make it thicker and heavier, if it means I can install updated drives and memory a few years from now.
a touch screen strip for function keys
please no. i get it, its 2016 and everything has to look like the holodeck had sex with minority report but your original concept of function keys interlocked with brightness and UI controls is infuriating enough for unix/linux users.
a strip-like screen will present functions on an as-needed basis that fit the current task or application.
they already did that, they were called function keys. they didnt need to change to suit applications. again, it sounds like we're ginning up a product thats reached the end of its conceivable means of enhancement.
Apple's goal with the dedicated function display is to simplify keyboard shortcuts traditionally used by experienced users
then just keep the function keys where they are. you know, function keys, the things weve been using for 30 years simply and without the added complexity of a dedicated AMOLED strip of independently driven touchscreen representations of whatever you think the application needs. im sure fanbois will go nuts for this strip, but the rest of us just see this refresh as coming off desperate.
Good people go to bed earlier.
then just keep the function keys where they are
Personally I couldn't give a rip about the function keys. They generally aren't very useful to me anyway. What I'd like Apple to do is put a proper goddam backspace AND delete keys on their laptops. It's annoying as hell to have to hit Fn+delete on a Macbook.
Removable batteries can be inspected visually for defects that generally precede failure.
Typically, this means bulging, but unusual hot spots are also good indicators (assuming you've handled the battery enough to know how it feels normally).
It is also very easy to hard reboot a device with a removable battery and to ensure it is unpowered when opening it up to troubleshoot or upgrade.
Laptop batteries are capable of producing dangerous electric shocks, and it is the most basic safety measure to isolate all sources of energy before working on any equipment.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
Wow. Are there really that many folks out there who touch-type with their function keys? I mean, I honestly don't know -- maybe there are, but I certainly haven't seen them.
Think about how awful Apple's current scheme is, where fkeys are overloaded for brightness control, volume control, keyboard backlight control (really?), and whatever else.
Now picture mapping those controls onto a touch-strip with a display. A small cluster of controls to the left (right, whatever), one for screen brightness, one for volume, one for keyboard backlight (again, whatever).
Touch one, and a slider control expands out from it. Slide left to decrease, slide right to increase. Maybe, if extensive user testing supports it, "drag off the bottom" to commit your new setting or "drag off the top" to cancel it. Or maybe just lifting your finger commits it, and cancel isn't needed; we certainly don't get "cancel" with the current up/down key controls. Maybe touch detection only gives an x-axis value, but if I were sitting on Apple's patents, I'd certainly add at least a rudimentary y-axis measurement, and multi-touch detection.
Double-tap (or "mash") the volume control to mute or unmute.
Double-tap or mash screen brightness to blank or restore the screen.
Don't want controls? Map a simple out-of-band gesture (again, drag-up or drag-down seems ideal) to move between fkeys, system functions, and application functions.
I don't have any idea what Apple will actually do with this strip, but I hope it's less of a disappointment than their touch keyboard and multitouch stuff so far. I used the FingerWorks Touchstream keyboard for years, and I'm still bitter that Apple hasn't used more than 30% of the gestural technology they got when they bought out and shut down that company.
Paying up front for capacity you'll need only later may make sense for a house, but not for a laptop.
When I bought each of my Mac laptops, I knew I'd want to upgrade their memory eventually. In general, "maxing them out" would have entailed spending thousands of dollars for memory that I wouldn't need for another year or two -- at which point I'd be able to buy it from a third-party seller at a tenth of the cost. Same thing with storage.
It's actually even worse than that -- for my first pro-level laptop (a G3 in 1999), the largest Apple-supplied memory configuration was 384MB, but third-party upgrades took it to 768. For my current daily driver (a last-of-the-line 17" MBP), Apple specs said its maximum RAM was 8GB, and that was all they'd sell you. I bought it from Apple's refurb store in 2012 or 2013, I think, when I saw that there would be no new 17-inch models. I immediately upgraded it from the stock 4GB to 16GB, at a total cost of something like $95 (I forgot to send in the $10 MIR). Buying an 8GB instead of a 4GB model would have increased the price by hundreds of dollars. And then there's storage -- I put up with the stock 500GB spinner for a couple of years, then popped in a 1TB SSD I got for under $300. When 4TB or 10TB SSDs are cost-effective, if I want one of those, it's another easy swap.
The "just buy all the machine you'll need up front" approach is wasteful. You'll get more capacity and spend less money in total by starting with just enough, then upgrading. But if cost is no object, or you're solidly committed to just replacing your machine every year, knock yourself out. At least with Apple gear you get good resale value.