Slashdot Mirror
Apple Unveils New MacBook Pro Featuring OLED Touch Bar, Touch ID - Powered By Intel Skylake Processor (arstechnica.com)
At an event on Thursday, Apple unveiled the new 2016 MacBook Pro. The redesigned MacBook Pro comes with "incredible extreme" all-metal body. The main attraction of the new MacBook Pro is an OLED touch strip at the top that Apple is calling the Touch Bar. The Touch Bar comes with a fingerprint scanner Touch ID that users can tap to log-in quickly to their computer as well as make online payments. The touch strip offers on-screen button that changes according to the application you're running. Schiller, Apple SVP, said it was time Apple gotten rid of the dedicated function keys. The new MacBook Pro is thinner and lighter than the existing model, and it is powerful too. It comes in two screen sizes: 13-inch, which weighs 3 pounds and measures 14.9mm -- down from 18mm from older MacBook Pro. The trackpad is larger too, Apple says, twice as larger than the older one. Also, it's Force Touch trackpad. ArsTechnica adds: Both laptops are still recognizably MacBook Pros, but in keeping with Apple's design priorities they've got slimmer profiles and smaller footprints. This is made possible in part by the move to USB Type-C ports like the one in the MacBook, all four of which support Thunderbolt 3. All four ports can be used to charge the system, too. Compared to the measly one port in the MacBook, the MacBook Pros are much more appealing to people who plug lots of stuff into their computers at once. Apple has also made the cowardly decision to retain the headset jack. Both systems include new Intel Skylake processors -- dual-core chips in the 13-inch Pro and quad-core chips in the 15-inch model, just like before. The 13-inch Pros ship exclusively with Intel Iris 540 GPUs, while the 15-inch models ship with Polaris-based AMD Radeon graphics at the high-end.The 13-inch model MacBook Pro starts at $1,799, whereas the 15-inch model starts at $2,399.
Apple Menu -> System Preferences... -> Keyboard -> Keyboard Tab -> Modifier Keys and select Esc for Caps Lock.
I mean, you had that mapped already, right?
PLEASE HELP I THINK I DID IT WORNG
You are doing it wrong. "Siri, press the escape key" :-)
No, we have mapped caps lock to ctrl.
Mapping it to ESC makes no sense.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Waited years for an update and this is it? Seriously? A touch bar? That's what they added? It took years to add something that other manufacturers added and abandoned?
What I'm most pissed about is that they are offering a "pro" system with a max of 16GB of RAM.
I'll be looking elsewhere and seeing what better, truly "pro" laptops can be hacked to run MacOS.
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
Terrible company, they've been going out of business for decades now.
Don't forget the $80 adapter from thunderbolt 3 to normal thunderbolt so you can plug in your $200 thunderbolt-to-usb dock where you can have a usb-to-ps2 adapter, connected to a ps2-to-xt keyboard adapter, though! IT'S MAGIC
And I was hoping for a new Mac mini. The poor thing hasn't been updated* since 2012.
* it was downgraded in 2014.
2016 marks the end of Apple brand loyalty. We have quite clearly reached the point where the roadmap Steve Jobs laid out has ended, and now Cook and Ives are on their own, screwing things up as they go.
The outrage about today's keynote at AppleInsider is palpable. Among the common complaints are:
- These computers are overpriced and underwhelming. The price of the entry-level MacBook Pro was bumped up hundreds of dollars, and all they did was increase the price and remove ports from it. (The entry-level model only has two Thunderbolt ports (USB, etc. have been removed), and one of the ports has to be used for charging! What kind of "Pro" computer is that???)
- The mind boggles that they removed the "esc" key from a supposedly "Pro" computer.
- They removed the MagSafe connector, which is arguably one of the greatest features of Apple's laptops.
- The only connections are Thunderbolt 3, meaning that you will need a dongle for ~anything~ you want to connect. Do you own an iOS device? Better hope you have a USB-C adapter for it.
- Removal of the SD drive.
Apparently Apple has also been sending out emails to some of its customers asking if they use features such as the headphone jack on their laptop. (Because of course, they're going to remove it from there as well.)
This company has lost its mind.
Well, I just got back from Apple's website where I found out that the new MBP 15" still maxes out at 16GB RAM. Arrrgggghg!!!!
I refuse to upgrade until they give me 32GB, minimum!
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
10 hours is under "normal" workloads. My 2015 MBP lasts anywhere from 4 to 10 depending on what I'm doing. I'd much rather have it be double that so I don't need to plug it in as often.
The Surface Book looks very intriguing right now as it has an advertised 16 hours of battery life. The first gen Surface Book managed to get 13 in tests so that's actually believable.
OK, I'll bite.
Macbook Pro, 15-inch (just announced):
- Intel "Skylake" (6th gen.) processor
- New! Improved! USB Type-C with Thunderbolt 3 support!
- AMD Radeon "Polaris" GPU
- $2399
Dell XPS 15 (available since November 2015):
- Intel "Skylake" (6th gen.) processor
- USB Type-C with Thunderbolt 3 support
- nVidia GTX 960M GPU
- $1699 ($1749 with Windows Pro instead of Home edition)
Seriously, Kaby Lake has been out and available at retail for 2 months now, with a focus on mobile. OEM's have already started selling laptops with Kaby Lake CPU's. Apple, however, cheaped out on the core part of their system, so what makes you think they won't cheap out on everything?
Then you have the puffery about USB-C and TB3. My Dell has had that for nearly a year. Marketing is one thing, but don't insult me with your lies, Apple.
Then there's the pathetic AMD GPU. Just make a goddamned nVidia driver for macOS already.
And finally, we have the enormous price difference. Now, granted, Dell has jacked their price up since I got mine, but it's only about $200 more, not $700 more like Apple is reaming their customers for.
This is why I'm not a Mac guy anymore. Well, this, and Windows is just as good as macOS these days. (And that's an opinion that is likely to piss off the cultists something fierce.)
Did you catch in one of the videos where the Touch Bar changed to show the Accept/Decline buttons of an incoming Facetime call? Imagine being in the middle of an important workflow, and as you move your finger to touch a virtual key, it suddenly changes its meaning, and because you shouldn't have to keep moving your eyes from the display to the keyboard, you end up affecting that call by mistake? The user should *never* have to look at the keyboard to confirm they are typing what they think they're typing. Hell, the way that Touch Bar works, even looking at it isn't good enough if the keys can change meaning right out from under your fingers.
One note: The Skylake chips used in the high end MBP are quad-core. The Kaby Lake chips that are shipping are dual-core and apparently Intel won't be shipping quad-core chips for several months.
You can't ship what you don't have.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
You did a survey of what most people want?
Most people bitch about their cell phone battery life but that hasn't led to Apple doing anything but making their phones thinner and their batteries smaller.
Maybe what most people want has nothing to do with it and it is more a matter of advertising thinnest and lightest works even though people end up disappointed about things that actually matter like battery life.
Good luck with that 10 hours of battery life doing more than watching videos, at low brightness with WiFi turned off.
No new desktops at all. A laptop that has no video ports, no magsafe power, no SD card slot... just 4 stupid thunderbolt ports that will require a rats nest of dongles to make usable.
And Apple wonders why their revenues are nosediving?
What a complete joke for something that has Pro in the name.
Don't worry, that'll be changing next summer when they bring their product names into line - like they did with their OS offerings this past summer.
iPhone will become Apple Phone.
iPad will become Apple Pad.
MacBook Pro will become Apple Laptop.
Looking further out... they'll probably consolidate their naming scheme further to be consistent with what they did with their retail outlets.
Apple Phone will become Apple.
Apple Pad will become Apple.
Apple Laptop will become Apple.
And you, the Apple Customer, will also become Apple.
So Apple will take your Apple to the Apple to be repaired, er, reAppled. It's like the Smurfs, but with Apples!
#DeleteChrome
Sure. What a pleasure it would be to use vi, if only I had a touch-panel across the top of my keyboard for heavily-used commands like "escape", "colon", "slash", "single-quote", "h", "j", "k", "l"...
Here you go.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Not only that, but you'd have to start, inasmuch as there is zero tactile feedback, and you don't know what's up there until you look.
Funny thing... if they'd have gone with a touchscreen on the main laptop monitor, they wouldn't have needed to do this and it would have been a metric fuckton more capable and it would be where you're already, you know, actually looking (but then again, since there's nothing really good about this thing, and there are a lot of things that aren't, I guess they really needed something to confuse the potential buyers.)
But hey. No touchscreen for you.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Ok but I wouldn't buy the Dell system if they paid me. Or HP. There isn't a good notebook vendor other than Apple, and now we're stuck with whatever Apple chooses to give us. Yay world.
Most people who hate Dell or HP base their opinion on low cost low quality systems ($500 to $700 range) which tend to fail more often due to cheaper components. Both HP and Dell have very nice high end quality systems, but you have to pay for the higher quality. I love my Dell XPS 13 laptop and I have several HP Workstation class desktops (Z640) running, all of which have been very reliable.
Not only that, their entry level model has TWO, count em, TWO total USB-C ports! One of these ports will be probably utilized by the charger, so that leaves ONE ONE ONE open port.
This replaces a Magsafe charger port, two thunderbolt ports, HDMI port, and a SD card slot!
Even their so called wide gamut display uses the P3 color space, and is usually used for projectors. If you want to create content, the display should be a Adobe RGB based gamut. This laptop must be designed for consume only purposes, not to create content.
Really Apple? You must either be attempting to drive your fan base away from laptops or turning your laptops into consume-only devices like your iPhones. Which begs the question why is this laptop labelled "Pro"? Pro what?
OEM's have already started selling laptops with Kaby Lake CPU's. Apple, however, cheaped out on the core part of their system, so what makes you think they won't cheap out on everything?
You've got your facts backwards: Apple is the one that went with the more expensive, more powerful part, and it's the other OEMs who are cheaping out by using the chips they are.
The Kaby Lake chips that are available today are the dual core models. The quad-core Kaby Lake chips that would be suitable for use in a MacBook Pro won't be available for another few months. Moreover, even if they had waited, it wouldn't have made much of a difference. The performance gap between the generations is minimal (which seems to be the general trend for CPUs these days), whereas the dual core to quad core performance gap is substantial for the types of work you expect pro users to be doing. Sticking with Skylake was definitely the right call because it allowed them to release a more powerful machine without the wait, and it was definitely not the cheaper route.
Then you have the puffery about USB-C and TB3. My Dell has had that for nearly a year. Marketing is one thing, but don't insult me with your lies, Apple.
You accuse them of puffery and lies without citing examples of either. They said it has Thunderbolt 3 via USB 3.1 Type-C. They never claimed it was first laptop to offer it (nor would they, since they launched one earlier this year that had it), though they're definitely the first to embrace it to such a degree by putting four of the ports on one machine, making them the only ports the computer has, and making them equally usable for all tasks (i.e. you can plug any cable--including the power cable--into any of them).
Then there's the pathetic AMD GPU. Just make a goddamned nVidia driver for macOS already.
It's the not-yet-released Radeon Pro 460 (i.e. the mobile version of the RX 460), and the Polaris architecture has been going head-to-head with nVidia's latest architecture (Pascal) in terms of both performance and power efficiency. But facts be damned. It's apparently "pathetic" because an Anonymous Coward has declared it so.
There are certainly valid reasons to go from Mac to Windows (I'm even planning to do so myself before the end of the year) or vice versa, but it sounds to me like you're just grasping for any reason you can find to rationalize the decision you made.