No New MacBook Airs as Apple Instead Makes Lower-End, $1,500 MacBook Pro (arstechnica.com)

Alongside the two new MacBook Pros, Apple also unveiled a refresh for its popular MacBook Air lineup. The company is calling this: the MacBook Pro, same branding as the other two MacBook Pros. It's a lower-end version of the new MacBook Pros, with no "Touch Bar" (or the Touch ID) and is powered by a slightly slower processor. Starting at $1,499, this MacBook Pro model is slightly cheaper too, though. From an ArsTechnica report:Apple said it will continue selling the existing 13" MacBook Air, but the company made a point of comparing that model to this new lower-end Pro, putting it somewhere between the Air and the other Pros in the lineup. The new 13" MacBook Pro starts at $1,499 and will begin shipping today. The new higher-end Pros will start at $1,799 for the 13" model and $2,399 for the 15" model while shipping in two to three weeks. If you don't select any hardware upgrades, the low-end 13" Pro has a sixth-generation Intel Core i5 processor with dual cores clocked at 2.0GHz, Intel Iris Graphics 540, 8GB memory, and 256GB SSD. It is available in space grey and silver, and it can cost up to $2,599 if you select the highest CPU, memory, and storage upgrades. Those available upgrades include a 2.4GHz Core i7 processor, 16GB of memory, and 512GB or 1TB of SSD storage. The new 13" laptop has a 2560x1600 Retina display, two Thunderbolt 3/USB-C ports, and a headphone jack. It has the same Force Touch trackpad and redesigned keyboard as the higher-end models despite not integrating the Touch Bar and Touch ID.

Comments

I hope Apple knows

[Anonymous Coward]

As of the latest surface announcements, Microsoft is ahead of them hardware-wise in everything except for the iPhone.

Re:I hope Apple knows

[110010001000]

That doesn't matter at all. The vast majority of people don't buy electronics based on the hardware. The Surface is DOA. They are on version 4 and LITERALLY no one is buying them. Even the NFL doesn't want them, and they are getting $100 of millions to use them.

Re:I hope Apple knows

[0100010001010011]

Maybe they can work on the OS next.

Re:I hope Apple knows

[Jeremi]

^This.

Any new computer hardware on the market these days is plenty powerful enough to handle anything a typical user might ever want to do.

That means that unless you're a power user (or video game or VR enthusiast), there's going to be very little difference between your experiences using a modern low-end vs a modern high-end system; either one will work just fine for you.

So the remaining criterion (other than purchase price) is the quality of the user-experience -- i.e. how much of your time at the computer is spent getting accomplished the things you want to accomplish, and how much is spent dealing with computer problems?

Minimizing the latter is what Mac users are willing to pay extra for.

Re:I hope Apple knows

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe if they sold it in more than a handful of countries. I'm from a EU country and it is simply not available in the online store.

Re:I hope Apple knows

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because specs matter so much!

You could have the latest and greatest specs in a laptop, but if it's running Microsoft Unstable Spyware as its OS, who the fuck cares?

Re:I hope Apple knows

[Anonymous Coward]

Meh who cares. It's all about the software now. The hardware race ended a few years ago.

Re: I hope Apple knows

[Anonymous Coward]

I see a lot of surfaces being used. I ise on as well. The NFL problems are NFL problems. You know that grandparent that cant figure out how to get rid of tool bars? Thats basically your abwrage NFL coach, when it comes to computers.

Re:I hope Apple knows

[Anonymous Coward]

^this

shut the fuck up.

Re: I hope Apple knows

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember when the iPod mini was released, I had a state of the art MP3 player with a million features, but used the mini once and changed players within a week. It's userability blew me away. Playlists on the fly!!
Hardware isn't what sells to the masses. It never has been, and I can't foresee the day it will be.

Re:I hope Apple knows

[Anonymous Coward]

good luck with that, Apple seems to have really given up on the OS side the last few years so expecting them to fix OS X is a pretty long shot.

Re:I hope Apple knows

[bloodhawk]

perhaps you live in a different universe to the rest of us. Surface Pro's and Surface books have been a massive sales success for them. The NFL issues have nothing to do with Surface devices and everything to do with the application and network connectivity provided to teams.

Re:I hope Apple knows

[SeaFox]

Maybe they can work on the OS next.

Maybe that highlights the real problem here. Just as Microsoft was able to grow lax and fail to deliver products because of their monopoly in OS usages in the 90's, Apple, being the sole provider of legitimately supported MacOS machines, is under no pressure to make computers that have the features consumers want.

"Maybe Apple can work on their hardware next" -- why should they with their captive audience?

Re: I hope Apple knows

[Anonymous Coward]

and where is my 32GB MacBook?

Re: I hope Apple knows

[Anonymous Coward]

ok, well you keep using that circa 2014 MacBook you've got there.

Re:I hope Apple knows

[Anonymous Coward]

True. Apple doesn't have anything anywhere near 192dpi of the Surface Studio. :-)

Re: I hope Apple knows

[Anonymous Coward]

most desktop users need 8GB. maybe if you are video editing or heavy gaming, 16GB at most.

Re:I hope Apple knows

[Anonymous Coward]

Minimizing the latter is what Mac users are willing to pay extra for.

And how do I do even really really simple things like opening a file from a network location with the file open dialog?

Re: I hope Apple knows

[Anonymous Coward]

Just use windows 7, very rock solid OS no crashes or spyware here.. But then again I've gone to great lengths to secure it like disabling netbios and dcom and closing all ports, only surf in a VM etc

Re: I hope Apple knows

[Hylandr]

Gaming Need/Want => 64Gb

Re: I hope Apple knows

[andrewa]

I agree; most desktop users need 8GB.  This is supposed to be a "Pro" device though... I run at least two VMs at all times on my current MBP, even though I'm heavily invested in the Apple ecosystem (two 16GB Mac Minis, two iMacs), it's not looking like my next laptop will be from Apple unless they introduce a 32GB (at least) model in the next six months, will probably opt for a custom Linux laptop capable of at least 32GB and run OS X on one of my VMs.

Re: I hope Apple knows

[TechyImmigrant]

My desktop has 32GB. I use it too.

Crypto can be a memory hog at times.

Re:I hope Apple knows

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't matter that their hardware has fallen behind?? Shit. It sure seems like it mattered here just yesterday.

Re: I hope Apple knows

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple is completely missing the bus on RAM. The range of users that won't settle for 16GB is only getting bigger, which means that Apple's addressable market is only getting smaller.

Re: I hope Apple knows

[corychristison]

I've noticed even in the non-apple world, laptops capable of handling 64GB of RAM are pretty rare.

My desktop has 32GB. Most days I don't need it, but I certainly enjoy having it when I /do/ need it. I run Funtoo Linux, highly optimized, and in my quiet days I usually stay in under 1GB. The second I boot up Windows in a VM that quickly jumps to over 8GB, then if I fire up Photoshop or Illustrator, that jumps over 10GB easily. I don't do much for graphics these days, but its certainly nice to be able to when I need.

I have my /tmp directory mapped to a tmpfs and portage (the gentoo/funtoo package manager) to do its compiling in there to keep my SSD from degrading faster.

Re: I hope Apple knows

[corychristison]

I meant to say laptops capable of handling 32GB are rare, not 64GB.

Re:I hope Apple knows

[Trogre]

Any new computer hardware on the market these days is plenty powerful enough to handle anything a typical user might ever want to do.

I wish that were true.

There are still laptops being sold today with mechanical disks and Microsoft Windows, and 2GB RAM. So your experience involves waiting for the system to boot, log you in, and swapping memory to and from disk while you go and make a cup of tea. Once you finally get to your desktop environment, then heaven help you if you want to actually launch a program.

Re:I hope Apple knows

[Anonymous Coward]

Hah, my problem with Mac OS is Apple add to many fucking "features" and have made everything annoying and unstable over the last 8 years. Jobs gone, and soda pop company reborn, marketing driven development.

Re: I hope Apple knows

[andrewa]

Yep, I've seen one or two 64GB laptops, but they are beasts, and I'd question the quality and reliability of the hardware.  I don't think it's unreasonable to expect 32GB as an option - certainly relatively few people will require it, maybe more *want* it....  We've had 16GB in laptops for several years now.
As mentioned in my initial post, I've got more than enough hardware capable of handling this at home, but hopping on a plane a couple of times a week leaves me really wanting a nice reliable, light-weight, powerful laptop to be able to develop my software in a similar environment.

Re: I hope Apple knows

[gumbi west]

what are you doing that 16 GB isn't enough? Keep in mind it has an SSD so the swap isn't exactly slow.

Re: I hope Apple knows

[0100010001010011]

I love my Dell M6700. It's a mobile workstation. 4 hard drives, 32 GB of ram, 17" screen and full keyboard.

But I realize I'm not someone Apple makes laptops for.

Just as easy to get OS X in a VM of some sort.

Re: I hope Apple knows

[subk]

It's called Virtualization. Perhaps you've heard of it? At least in passing...

Re:I hope Apple knows

[exomondo]

That means that unless you're a power user (or video game or VR enthusiast)

Yes, the sort of person who would choose the "Pro" model over the standard or low end models. What exactly is the Pro model supposed to be for if not exactly these people?

Re:I hope Apple knows

[TheRaven64]

My father got a Surface fairly early on and has been happy with it. He wanted a lightweight device with a long battery life that ran Word, PowerPoints, Outlook, and a web browser. The Surface was precisely that and that also appealed to a lot of other corporate types. Now Office works on Android and iOS, it's not clear that the Surface will continue, but in a lot of places it's seen as the tablet for real work.

Re:I hope Apple knows

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you know what 'literally' means

Re:I hope Apple knows

[sabbede]

But do they get it? I support both, and in my experience Macs minimize neither task time nor trouble time.

Re: I hope Apple knows

[Anonymous Coward]

"shut up"

So it's just more mac religion.

Re:I hope Apple knows

[Robert Goatse]

The NFL doesn't want them not because they are Surface tablets, but because looking at paper photographs is easier than dealing with any tablet.

Re: I hope Apple knows

[Anonymous Coward]

it doesn't matter what I am doing. all I said was the range of users that won't settle for 16GB is only getting bigger. folks can continue to ask "why do you need more than 16gb" but they increasingly sound like dinosaurs.

Re: I hope Apple knows

[gumbi west]

Why are you virtualizing on a laptop? Why not use a server?

Re: I hope Apple knows

[cthulhu11]

In the trunk of my flying car.

Re: I hope Apple knows

[cthulhu11]

Running MS Windows stuff in a Fusion VM is much simpler than maintaining centralized suitable infrastructure and dealing with VNC or whatever. Plus not everyone has a "server" at home.

Re: I hope Apple knows

[cthulhu11]

Having non-pathetic terminal and SSH clients alone clinches it.

Re: I hope Apple knows

[gumbi west]

I do development and run large custom code all of the time. My Windows machine has 8 GB of memory and I rarely use it up. When I do I should be on a server anyways--laptops aren't really made to run dead out for hours on end. Plus, my servers have far more cores and memory that you're ever going to see in a laptop. Basically, if you want 32 GB in your laptop you're doing it wrong. Aside from my work stuff, I also have some servers at home. It's far less expensive than updating my laptop every few years.

Re: I hope Apple knows

[cthulhu11]

I made no claims re 32GB. But I also think it absurd to set up a UPS and server rack and have to air condition my garage just to run Visio once every couple of months.

Re: I hope Apple knows

[cthulhu11]

Or to be shackled to my home when I'm on call because you have decided that I shouldn't run the virtualization I need to do my job. SSH over cell data is viable. I'm skeptical that VNC or whatever would be.

Re: I hope Apple knows

[gumbi west]

Everybody has their own needs, but my bet is that the 16-32 GB requirement crowd is pretty slim.

Re:I hope Apple knows

[Anonymous Coward]

Surface has been a massive sales hit for them with huge increases each quarter, they are now approaching a billion a quarter in Surface sales. Office on Android and IOS is cool but Office isn't the primary selling point (as can be clearly seen by the quarterly surge in sales in the last figures even though office for android and Ios was available). It is a lightweight, reasonably powerful, good hardware and runs ALL your corporate apps, something Android and IOS can only do through things like remote virtual app and desktop solutions where even the best of them quite frankly sucks balls. Giving an exec something that is relatively cool AND is a productive device is a huge win. We just ordered 6,000 surface devices for one of the places I contract into, they are putting about a quarter of their staff on surface devices after the initial trials saw most people putting their ipads in drawers to collect dust after trying them.

Re: I hope Apple knows

[sabbede]

The existence of which my users of either platform are unaware.

Re: I hope Apple knows

[Coren22]

As subk and others mentioned, Virtualization, but also, this is their Pro laptop, not the consumer laptop. You will have people running photoshop, or doing video processing, drafting software, circuit board or chip fabbing. There are many things pro users will use their computers for that the average user doesn't.

Re:I hope Apple knows

[Coren22]

Perhaps you should educate yourself, as literally has literally changed definitions due to the public's misuse of the word.

http://www.merriam-webster.com...

Definition of literally
1: in a literal sense or manner : actually "took the remark literally" "was literally insane"
2: in effect : virtually "will literally turn the world upside down to combat cruelty or injustice — Norman Cousins"

Escape Key?

[Anonymous Coward]

It has the same Force Touch trackpad and redesigned keyboard as the higher-end models despite not integrating the Touch Bar and Touch ID.

So does it still does not have an escape key then?

Re:Escape Key?

[Hadlock]

Yes, ironically, the lowest end model has the features that the people buying the high end i7 models need. Presumably there will be a developer edition 13" model with an esc key and an i7 as a BTO

Re:Escape Key?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Mr. Cook needs to put down the Jungle Juice.

Re:Escape Key?

[cfalcon]

The lowest end model has keys, not the new do-dad. But the do-dad is just app-sensitive keys: if you need it to be an escape key, then it is.

Re:Escape Key?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, ironically, the lowest end model has the features that the people buying the high end i7 models need.

Except the ability to attach a display, external storage device and power cable ... because Apple handicapped it with just two ports. I guess it's "Pro" because that's one more than the MacBook has.

Re:Escape Key?

[tsqr]

Yes, ironically, the lowest end model has the features that the people buying the high end i7 models need.

Except the ability to attach a display, external storage device and power cable ... because Apple handicapped it with just two ports. I guess it's "Pro" because that's one more than the MacBook has.

It has two Thunderbolt ports and a USB-C charging port. So yes, you can attach a display (adapter/cable not included), external storage device (adapter/cable not included) and power cable (power supply and cable included, by God!).

Re:Escape Key?

[gweilo8888]

Indeed, because if there's one thing that Apple doesn't want its customers doing, it's escaping beyond that garden wall.

Re:Escape Key?

[tw2k]

No. It has two ports that accept a USB C style plug, both of those ports also support Thunderbolt 3. However in the use case, you may well find that the monitor has a hub AND provides power back to the Mac too, such as the LG one they showed in the announcement.

Re: Escape Key?

[Anonymous Coward]

what, do you use vi or something?

Re:Escape Key?

[ShanghaiBill]

if you need it to be an escape key, then it is.

Correct. Also, an ESC key is included on the touch bar by default. So if unless an app changes it, you have an ESC key.

Disclaimer: I just ordered a new 15" Macbook Pro for my wife. She is a vim user, so the ESC key is a mission critical necessity.

Re: Escape Key?

[TechyImmigrant]

what, do you use vi or something?

Every day.

Re: Escape Key?

[Anonymous Coward]

it took courage to remove the escape key. eventually we'll be able to ditch the entire keyboard.

Re:Escape Key?

[cfalcon]

> She is a vim user

Is the offspring of a vim user and an emacs user fertile? I don't know if such miscegenation is legal- I would check the POSIX standard to be sure.

Re:Escape Key?

[Hadlock]

There's a number of USB-C capable displays already, I can think of three off the top of my head and the last time I looked was back in July. Monocable has USB-C -> Mini Display Port and HDMI adapters for under $10; the world will catch up.
 
In other news, the Macbook Pros can support up to 2x 5K displays. Not shabby.

Re:Escape Key?

[Anonymous Coward]

You buy with I7 but not for 1500.00 and the other when the app you use needs an escape key one will light up So open VI pretty sure an api for the bar.

Re: Escape Key?

[cthulhu11]

Show of hands for who can get their employers to shell out $1700 for a monitor? I had a hell of a time getting approval for anything better than 1080p even at 1/4 the price of that LG. More likely and expensible is the inevitable $200-300 dock for the small fraction of users who will routinely plug in more than one device.

Re: Escape Key?

[cthulhu11]

It didn't work out on Silicon Valley and I couldn't see it working out IRL. Those glorified line-editor users are just too alien.

Whoa!

[wbr1]

And the crowd goes mild.

Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

And I thought the new Surface AIO was overpriced.

Bye, MagSafe

[beckett]

they removed one of the biggest selling features for me: MagSafe. That one connector has saved my notebook's ass many times, and it's a sad day to see it disappear off notebooks until Apple's magsafe patent expire someday. PreviouslyApple claimed the macbook air was too light for the magnets to separate, but i don't think that argument applies for the heavier macbook pro.

jerks.

Re:Bye, MagSafe

[j-beda]

they removed one of the biggest selling features for me: MagSafe. That one connector has saved my notebook's ass many times, and it's a sad day to see it disappear off notebooks until Apple's magsafe patent expire someday. PreviouslyApple claimed the macbook air was too light for the magnets to separate, but i don't think that argument applies for the heavier macbook pro.

    jerks.

I like MagSafe too. Looks like Griffin (and others?) are selling magnetic couplers for USB-c ports:

https://griffintechnology.com/...

Re:Bye, MagSafe

[nine-times]

PreviouslyApple claimed the macbook air was too light for the magnets to separate, but i don't think that argument applies for the heavier macbook pro.

The new Macbook Pro is about 0.06 lbs heavier than the Macbook Air.

Still, I essentially agree with you. Magsafe is great, and If they're going to make the Macbook Pro so it only has 3 ports on it, I'm not sure I like the idea of using one of them for power.

Re:Bye, MagSafe

[Anonymous Coward]

You just lack courage!

Re:Bye, MagSafe

[chispito]

they removed one of the biggest selling features for me: MagSafe. That one connector has saved my notebook's ass many times

I think it's a great design that should be replicated on all laptops... but I've never once had anything bad happen to one of my Windows laptops because someone tripped over the cord. When people say this, and talk about all the times the MagSafe saved something, I wonder what kinds of environments they're using their laptops in.

Re:Bye, MagSafe

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? I have magsafe on my MacBook Air. It's a 9", and several years old, so maybe they made them lighter and stopped including magsafe? Bummer, because I really like the connector. I once destroyed a mainboard by leaving the laptop in a place where someone tripped over the power cord.

Re:Bye, MagSafe

[Anonymous Coward]

Diningroom table with kids. Magsafe has saved me many times.

Re:Bye, MagSafe

[Anonymous Coward]

How true... long time ago, I had 1 laptop destroyed (the screen) since I grabbed accidentally the power cord while moving, and another time a co-worker killed by old HP the same way. Since then I have mac, and I can't count how many times those machines have been saved by MagSafe connector

Re:Bye, MagSafe

[blind biker]

It makes sense for Apple: one MacBook saved is one less sale for them.
And I'm not even joking - I would not put this past them.

Re:Bye, MagSafe

[TechyImmigrant]

Still, I essentially agree with you. Magsafe is great, and If they're going to make the Macbook Pro so it only has 3 ports on it, I'm not sure I like the idea of using one of them for power.

I particularly like being able to wave the connector somewhere near the port and have them pull together. Even when I'm drunk. It's pretty classy.

Re: Bye, MagSafe

[Anonymous Coward]

it took courage to get rid of MagSafe

Re: Bye, MagSafe

[Anonymous Coward]

What you mean is you damaged a mainboard such that a few minutes with a soldering iron would be needed to repair it.

It's a good thing this is Slashdot and not some site with only your typical IT types hanging out on it, terrified of real hardware.

Re:Bye, MagSafe

[Anonymous Coward]

That still sticks out so it can hit something and break the port. That isn't a great solution.

Re: Bye, MagSafe

[Anonymous Coward]

Cats

Re:Bye, MagSafe

[Nemyst]

While MagSafe's gone, the Surface line uses the exact same principle in their connectors, providing the same advantages. I think the biggest difference is that they are somewhat bigger and carry more than just power.

Re:Bye, MagSafe

[fluffernutter]

I don't get magsafe. I try to sit with my laptop in bed and my lap pushes out the connector. I move my laptop across the room, the connector comes out. It is very annoying. It is so much simpler to just have a well made cable with a durable connector. I abuse Thinkpad connectors all the time and have never lost one.

Re:Bye, MagSafe

[perpenso]

That still sticks out so it can hit something and break the port. That isn't a great solution.

It may be a great solution for the Apple Thunderbolt Displays. For laptops in the classroom or kitchen its still probably a good solution, the danger is someone yanking the cord. Banging the laptop, and in such a way to just hit the adapter perfectly, doesn't seem like one of the more common hazards.

Re:Bye, MagSafe

[Vadim Makarov]

If you ask me, good riddance of this annoyance that gets disconnected every time I twitch the machine on my lap. BUT I have no less than eight magsafe 90 W power supplies installed: 5 in different rooms of my house, 1 in office and 2 in the lab at work. The moment I upgrade to the new Mac all that goes to trash, and in case of the lab will have to be duplicated (as several of my students use older Macs).

Now, it has 2 TB SDD which I want, but no word if the SDD is sold separately and is backwards-compatible with the previous models.

I kind of getting the point of my colleagues that Macs are inflexible and overpriced. I am beginning to doubt my next notebook will be Mac.

Re:Bye, MagSafe

[dr.Flake]

A while ago, i stumbled on this ad.
Its for micro usb, but surely it could be made for usb-c as well. Thier target is phone chargers, so weight inertia shouldn;t be an issue.

http://www.dx.com/p/wsken-micr...

Re:Bye, MagSafe

[TheRaven64]

I tripped over the charging lead to my ThinkPad (R31) while it was on the top of a chest of drawers doing a big compile job. The machine flew across the machine and landed on its corner, with the edge of the case popping off. The compile paused for a few seconds and then continued and I was able to pop the case together, but I was very glad that it was my cheap laptop! I've kicked the charging cable for my MBP a few times (I often leave it by or on the sofa, plugged into the wall) and had the cable pop out, especially in my last house where the socket was in front of the sofa and so the cable had to run across the floor. I'm a bit nervous about having a connector where kicking the power cord can damage the device.

The main thing about the new MBPs though is 16GB in a £4000 laptop in 2016? WTF? I can get a 2TB SSD, but not 32GB of RAM? Seriously?

Re:Bye, MagSafe

[j-beda]

A while ago, i stumbled on this ad.
Its for micro usb, but surely it could be made for usb-c as well. Thier target is phone chargers, so weight inertia shouldn;t be an issue.

http://www.dx.com/p/wsken-micr...

It looks like there are a variety of options that claim data as well as power for micro usb - here is another one:

http://www.dx.com/p/magnetic-d...

With all the Apple models now using USB-c exclusively, there is going to be quite a market for adapters and docks and general peripherals with USB-c.

Re:Bye, MagSafe

[Anonymous Coward]

"The machine flew across the machine and landed on its corner"
could you demonstrate this? having a hard time trying to visualize this,

Re:Bye, MagSafe

[TheRaven64]

Words are hard. The second 'machine' should be 'room' (but the laptop did land on the corner of the laptop, not on the corner of the room).

Low end?

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy fuck. I can get a decent Windows laptop for 1/3 of that and it won't be obsolete in two years. I swear to god Apple is like a "stupid" tax.

Re:Low end?

[Grishnakh]

I swear to god Apple is like a "stupid" tax.

Not exactly. Taxes are involuntary: you're required to pay them whether you want to or not. No one is forcing anyone to buy an Apple. People do this entirely willingly, just like they happily and willingly buy or pay for things like cable TV (including premium sports channels), church tithes, horrifically expensive handbags or designer clothes like from Coach or Gucci, Jeeps, or Harley-Davidson motorcycles.

Re:Low end?

[Anonymous Coward]

Obsolete in two years? the fucking this is already obsolete, using last generation processors, limited memory expansion. What "Pro" machine uses last generation processors and maxes out at 16gb of RAM?

Re:Low end?

[cfalcon]

Skylake is not obsolete. Kind of confused about the 16 GB max, but that does not seem shockingly small for a laptop.

Re:Low end?

[swalve]

Maybe it's a mobile chipset / low power thing?

Re:Low end?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's using laptops Skylakes that look like ranging from top of the line to middle of the line. There's no Kabylakes out of that quality yet- just like a couple models. If you buy a brand new top of the line Alienware, it looks like it uses pretty much the same chips? I can't be sure.

Re:Low end?

[TheRaven64]

16GB isn't shockingly small for a laptop, but it is a bit embarrassing for a high-end laptop. The top of the line MBP is £4000. Dell has been selling laptops with 32GB of RAM for about 4 years and more RAM is one of the big reasons I was considering replacing my current three-year-old MBP. A marginally faster CPU, a faster GPU, a bigger SSD and some gimmicks are all far less useful to me than being able to run a couple of 4-8GB VMs all of the time.

Re:Low end?

[Anonymous Coward]

why would you need 4 vm running all the time? seriously, not being an ass, why would you need essentially 5 operating systems running on one laptop all the time?

Re:Low end?

[TheRaven64]

Because I do development. I need a Linux VM because the Altera tools only work on Linux. I need a couple of FreeBSD VMs for software work, and I might occasionally need a Windows VM. Mostly the 'running all the time' part comes because I typically interact with VMs via SSH and so I don't want to have all of my sessions die when I suspend the VM (I use autossh + tmux, but it's a bit clunky and I'd rather they just sat there as sleeping processes).

Only from Apple

[QuietLagoon]

is a $1500 notebook considered "lower end."

Re:Only from Apple

[nine-times]

It's not their low-end laptop. On the other hand, their low-end laptop is $999 (or $1300 if they discontinue the Air), which still isn't cheap. On the third hand, shop out a similarly spec'ed laptop (with of a similar size, weight, screen quality, etc.) from other vendors, and if you can find something, it'll probably be similarly priced.

Re:Only from Apple

[QuietLagoon]

It's not their low-end laptop.

I didn't say it was their low-end laptop.

.
I was citing the summary title which said it was Apple's lower-end laptop.

Re:Only from Apple

[DidgetMaster]

Just about everyone else is selling a laptop with the latest i7 processor, 256GB SSD, 16 GB DDR4 RAM, and even a 17 inch screen for quite a bit less than Apple's 'lower end' laptops.

Re:Only from Apple

[nine-times]

The title says, "Lower-End... Macbook Pro".

Re:Only from Apple

[QuietLagoon]

Yup. Lower-end. Just as I said.

Re:Only from Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

But then you'd have to basically jailbreak OSX to run it. Who in their right mind would want to do that?

Re:Only from Apple

[nine-times]

You: "Only from Ford is a $27k car considered 'lower end'."

Me: "Yeah, but that's the lower-end *Taurus*. Ford sells cheaper cars. You can get a Fiesta for $14k"

You: "I didn't say that the Taurus was their low-end car. I said lower end."

Me: "Yeah, but lower-end *Taurus*."

You: "Exactly. Lower-end."

Me: "What the hell are we talking about now?"

Re:Only from Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple killer here.

If it had a 970M or 10-series, it'd be a no-brainer.
Even the 960M is 15% faster than Apple's offering.

Re:Only from Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

If by 'similar' you mean 'half the price', then yes, it will be similarly priced.

Houston, we have erection!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, what is all this about Apple?

MBP 15"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gee, I'm still running my mid-2010 15" MBP. It has a 1 TB SSD in it, too (added myself). It has 8GB RAM (added myself), too. It has a crappy graphics card in it, too. It cost a lot less, even with the upgrades. And is running at a higher clock. I do real work on my laptop. PASS on the new Apple, RIP Jobs!

2 ports and one needs to to be used for power

[Joe_Dragon]

2 ports and one needs to to be used for power. How much for a power + TB 3 / USB 3.1 gen 2 pass though dongle? Or even a power + usb A 3.1 + e-net one?

Re:2 ports and one needs to to be used for power

[Anonymous Coward]

I get it that some people do need the extra ports. But truthfully most people don't and can work fine without it. Apple is really pushing for you to work over wifi and avoid connecting usb drives. If you need an external monitor, you can power the Macbook through that connection.

The future doesn't revolve around peripherals that need to be attached anymore. I mean this for most people, not the tech nerds here of course.

USB C 3.1 is hopefully the last fucking connector we have to deal with. It's reversible, can charge the device, has plenty of bandwidth. I challenge Apple to drop the goddamn lightning connector on the next iPhone.

Re:2 ports and one needs to to be used for power

[Joe_Dragon]

256GB is small for some people / work flows and wifi does not work that well when you have 30-50 all on the same AP or have your area loaded with 6-10 AP all talking over each other.

Re:2 ports and one needs to to be used for power

[unixisc]

How many people buy Apple's wireless printers if they need to print something? Not everyone wishes to drive to FedEx Kinkos or other such shops. What if someone wants a bigger or more ergonomic keyboard? Or mouse? What if one doesn't want to spend more on iCloud, having burned enough money on the MBP?

Although if I were a Mac user, I'd probably get an off the shelf USB hub, connect it to the USB C port on the Mac, and then run whatever connections I needed to anything else - printers, speakers, keyboards, et al. Although in case of the printers, the drivers alone could potential cull my choices.

Re:2 ports and one needs to to be used for power

[Anonymous Coward]

And the people that don't fit into "most people" are the main target audience of "Pro" laptops.

Re:2 ports and one needs to to be used for power

[dgatwood]

Apple is really pushing for you to work over wifi and avoid connecting usb drives.

Then they need to put more than 1 TB of storage in the thing. The days of being able to use a Mac without external storage are in the past, not the future. Five or six years ago, my laptop had 1 TB of storage. Now, even with the hardware they announced today, I'm still stuck with the same capacity, and a lot more data to store in it. I maintain multiple external drives at this point. Apple's hardware hasn't failed to meet my storage needs this badly since the mid-1990s.

Re:2 ports and one needs to to be used for power

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL are you in a time-warp from the 90s? I doubt there is a single printer on the market today that does not have native Mac drivers. In fact, most wireless printers automagically pop up in the "printers nearby" section of the mac print dialog and have drivers auto-installed.

How many people buy Apple's wireless printers if they need to print something? Not everyone wishes to drive to FedEx Kinkos or other such shops. What if someone wants a bigger or more ergonomic keyboard? Or mouse? What if one doesn't want to spend more on iCloud, having burned enough money on the MBP?

Although if I were a Mac user, I'd probably get an off the shelf USB hub, connect it to the USB C port on the Mac, and then run whatever connections I needed to anything else - printers, speakers, keyboards, et al. Although in case of the printers, the drivers alone could potential cull my choices.

Re:2 ports and one needs to to be used for power

[R3d M3rcury]

I get it that some people do need the extra ports.

Yes. They're called "Pros."

But truthfully most people don't and can work fine without it.

Most people aren't "Pros." For those people, there are options like the MacBook and MacBook Air.

If Apple wants to sell to "Pros," they need to have a MacBook that does what a Pro wants to do. That means performance--I'm fine with an extra pound of weight if it's 50% faster at rendering images, compiles, etc. I need to be able to charge it while attaching a camera and a USB dongle or external hard drive. That's the sort of thing a "Pro" might do.

I agree that my Mom isn't going to be doing something like that and there are a lot more people like my Mom than there are people like me. But taking a laptop designed for my Mom and sticking the word "Pro" at the end doesn't suddenly make it a Pro laptop.

Look, if the "Pro" market isn't big enough for Apple anymore, that's fine. Go out with your head held high and make computers for my Mom. I'm sure she'll love them.

Re:2 ports and one needs to to be used for power

[TechyImmigrant]

USB C 3.1 is hopefully the last fucking connector we have to deal with.

Ha ha, That's funny. I like your style.

Re:2 ports and one needs to to be used for power

[ColdWetDog]

You can get 2 TB in the 15 inch. For a price, of course.

Re: 2 ports and one needs to to be used for power

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone with unix in their uid ought to know macOS uses CUPS and pretty much every network attached printer serves that protocol over the network if it wants to connect to a Mac or Linux box.

Re: 2 ports and one needs to to be used for power

[unixisc]

Right, but since there's only 1 available USB port, they'd need to use a wireless printer. So does CUPS support wireless printers in the same way it supports ethernet printers?

Re:2 ports and one needs to to be used for power

[dgatwood]

Good to know. It isn't mentioned on their spec page (or wasn't when I looked right before posting that).

Re: 2 ports and one needs to to be used for power

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there a difference? It's an IP printer.

Re: 2 ports and one needs to to be used for power

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, but since there's only 1 available USB port, they'd need to use a wireless printer. So does CUPS support wireless printers in the same way it supports ethernet printers?

I think I'm going to invent a device, it will attach to a USB port, and have more USB ports on it.

I know, its too hard and go fuck myself.

Re: 2 ports and one needs to to be used for power

[Anonymous Coward]

Network is network.

Re: 2 ports and one needs to to be used for power

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh no you don't! You people already stole PC and App. You bastards aren't taking away the word pro.

I'll be skipping this generation ...

[timholman]

I've got a mid-2012 13" MacBook Pro that's been my workhorse. Between media files and virtual machines, I'm using about 850 GB of a 1 TB hard drive. At my current rate of data expansion, I'll probably break the 1 TB barrier in the next year or so.

After seeing today's product announcements, it looks like I'll be buying a Samsung 2 TB SSD for my current machine instead, given that the cheapest 2 TB configured MacBook Pro would be a 15" edition at $3800. There is no longer a 13" model to replace what I have.

I've been a loyal Apple laptop buyer for 15+ years, but the wheels have finally fallen off the wagon for me. I don't need a laptop thin enough to shave with. I want something that will allow me to upgrade the SSD at the very least. And no more Magsafe adapter? I can't count the number of times the Magsafe has saved me from damaging my laptop, not to mention the insanity of having only USB-C on a supposedly professional model.

So what's the alternative? A Dell? An HP? A Surface? Every bit as bad, or worse. Who would have ever imagined that the entire laptop market would have either cost-cut or over-specialize itself into irrelevance for professional users?

All I can do is wait and hope that the next iteration of MacBooks will provide a return to sanity.

Re:I'll be skipping this generation ...

[Anonymous Coward]

MSI WS60 series seems to be hitting a decent sweet spot if you want a 15.6" format laptop. Discrete Graphics, everything accessible/replaceable for the most part. Just shitty battery life. ( :/ ) I've been considering it, but picked up a smaller Aorus X3 with similar specs/ability. There's a Clevo that's also got some great specs but it's plastic as fuuuuuuuucccckkkkkkk.

Re:I'll be skipping this generation ...

[maglor_83]

All I can do is wait and hope that the next iteration of MacBooks will provide a return to sanity.

Don't hold your breath.

Re:I'll be skipping this generation ...

[ELCouz]

Thinkpad... the new P70 workstation is a delight... forget Dell, HP

Re:I'll be skipping this generation ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to say it, but I'm pretty sure the sanity train has left that station permanently. They're no longer even trying to revolutionize things, they're citing courage for doing confusing things, and they're forcing users to either use old tech, use new tech with attachments/hubs/etc, or leave them completely.

I've got a 2011 MBP getting close to its last legs (it suffered a few accidents thanks to four legged hellbeasts), and I've pretty much decided my next computer is going to be a used 2011 MBP as I'm not interested in buying something that requires me to drop an extra $25 for the ability to plug a USB 3 or 2 device in.

Re:I'll be skipping this generation ...

[timholman]

Don't hold your breath.

Yeah, I know. I'm not particularly hopeful either.

On the other hand, in two to four years we may be seeing Micron's 3-D Xpoint memory moving into the high-end prosumer market. So maybe, just maybe, Apple will market a 13" laptop with several TB of memory before the end of the decade. If I can just keep the current laptop going with an SSD upgrade, I may be able to make it.

Re:I'll be skipping this generation ...

[timholman]

Thinkpad... the new P70 workstation is a delight... forget Dell, HP

Nope, I am not going to replace my 13" MBP with a 17" behemoth that weighs 7.6 pounds. Size and portability do matter to me, just not to the insane extent that Apple tries to push it.

Re:I'll be skipping this generation ...

[timholman]

I've got a 2011 MBP getting close to its last legs (it suffered a few accidents thanks to four legged hellbeasts), and I've pretty much decided my next computer is going to be a used 2011 MBP as I'm not interested in buying something that requires me to drop an extra $25 for the ability to plug a USB 3 or 2 device in.

That will be my strategy as well, assuming my mid-2012 MBP doesn't hold out. Buy a used mid-2012 model to replace it, and hope Apple produces another laptop that I'm willing to buy within the next 2 to 3 years.

Re:I'll be skipping this generation ...

[ELCouz]

Maybe because i'm used to the weight but 7.6 lbs is nothing... I move on the field all the time with this "behemoth", plenty of screen estate , color accuracy is very good plenty of storage bays if you are looking for storage space... very comfortable on the lap since the weight is spread on a large surface. But it doesn't show-off as macbook would.

Re:I'll be skipping this generation ...

[ColdWetDog]

Just looked at the 17 Lenovo Thinkpad T70 - with 32 GB RAM and a measly 512 GB SSD the thing runs at $4200. Other than a slightly better screen and moderately improved graphics chip, it's annoyingly comparable to my 2011 17 inch MBP (24 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD, 1 TB HD), better trackpad.

Damn. This really wasn't supposed to happen. Looks like it's a refurbered 2015 15 inch MBP with 16 GB RAM (actually OK for what I do) and some aftermarket drive additions.

So incredibly disappointed.

Re:I'll be skipping this generation ...

[Anonymous Coward]

They will keep raising the price until people no longer buy their laptops. It;s easy. Just don't buy it. Buy something else.

At work I have a MacMini with 2 x 24" monitors to do web development (Drupal back-end PHP developer). In my previous job I had a MacBook Air 11" with a 27" monitor. Both are good enough for me, but we do everything in the cloud.

I hope they will bring out a Skylake CPU MacMini for the same price it is now, and also continue the Air laptops with just new CPUs for the same price. Who needs retina screens when you hook it up to a big monitor anyway?

Re:I'll be skipping this generation ...

[thegarbz]

Fuck me you're easy to please. I want everything, I want it all powerful, and I want it the size of a tablet?

Your big problem is you think professional laptops include a use case which they simply don't do. 13" "professional" laptop? Hell no. You'll alienate more users with than then not.

Re:I'll be skipping this generation ...

[apoc.famine]

I posted pretty much the exact same comment, including current laptop model, earlier this week. I'm leaning System 76 at this point. At bare minimum, while the hardware isn't quite as nice as Apple's, I can configure a real MBP replacement for half the cost of the current generation of MBPs with 2x the hardware capacity. And ports galore. And a real battery. And a matte screen.

Re:I'll be skipping this generation ...

[ilsaloving]

I just had the same discussion with a friend. Between Microsoft's shittastic Windows 10, and the joke that Apple insists on becoming, we're at a loss as to what to do. The entire playing field has gone to crap.

I have a 2011 MBP that I upgraded the memory on and HDD on, and it's pretty much 'good enough'. I would like to upgrade, but the options available seem to be getting worse each year.

Dell's Ubuntu XPS machine looks interesting, but there's just no equivalent to Parallels for linux. VirtualBox works, but it's vastly slower and less capable, and VMWare Workstation is frustratingly expensive compared to Fusion on Mac.

Re:I'll be skipping this generation ...

[chihowa]

Fuck me you're easy to please. I want everything, I want it all powerful, and I want it the size of a tablet?

Your big problem is you think professional laptops include a use case which they simply don't do. 13" "professional" laptop? Hell no. You'll alienate more users with than then not.

This is a reasonable professional laptop, and what I've been using for coding and data analysis for the last few years. Tons of ports, upgradable SSD/RAM, and easy to constantly lug around at 4.5 lbs. I don't need a huge monitor in the field and just because someone doesn't want to drag one around doesn't mean that they're not doing real work on the laptop.

If Apple refreshed this system, I'd stay with them. That model is also the last system that is easily upgradable, too.

NFL is useing a shity web app over wifi in a poor

[Joe_Dragon]

NFL is using a shity web app over wifi in a poor environment for 100% uptime must work wifi. I hope the servers are local and are not being held back by web traffic getting in the way.

Still limited to 16GB of RAM....

[firebeaker]

... no magsafe, no headphone jack, no optical out.

Not excited.

Re:Still limited to 16GB of RAM....

[thegarbz]

It has a headphone jack.

Literally the only good announcement here is that they didn't remove the one thing they stripped from their other flagship device. What a frigging joke. It's good now that I can't connect my phone to my laptop without an adaptor, can't connect my laptop headphones to my phone without an adaptor, and best of all both adaptors are different so I get to pay twice as much for the privilege of nothing being inter-connectable all brought to you by a company who used to have inter-connectivity of their products be a number one selling feature.

Re:Still limited to 16GB of RAM....

[dgatwood]

Even better, like every recent MacBook Pro, the headphone jack has optical outputs. The only thing correct in that post was the amount of RAM.

Re:Still limited to 16GB of RAM....

[firebeaker]

Ah, you're right, I'm wrong. They kept the headphone jack.

It still doesn't have the optical out according to Apple's specs, or the magsafe 2 charging port.

Re:Still limited to 16GB of RAM....

[TechyImmigrant]

No headphone jack would have tipped the scales. I never put headphones in my phone, but I live with my bose noise cancelers plugged into my computer all days at work and when I'm on planes.

I swear that all the manufacturers are going to follow the no headphone jack meme in the next couple of years because they can't help themselves and the world will hate them for it and then they will slowly come back after a new generation of management gets to power and decides to undo the errors of the past.

Re:Still limited to 16GB of RAM....

[TechyImmigrant]

But what has optical at the other end? I don't know of anything and I have my share of musical equipment to support my guitar and recording habit.

Re:Still limited to 16GB of RAM....

[Anonymous Coward]

Odd, my 20 year old pioneer receiver has an optical port.. So does my brand new Android TV.. I'm pretty sure my 5 year old blue ray has it too.

Re:Still limited to 16GB of RAM....

[firebeaker]

http://www.logitech.com/en-us/product/speaker-system-z906?crid=1588. Or any home theater setup.

Re:Still limited to 16GB of RAM....

[TechyImmigrant]

Ahh. I listen with headphones. I record with mixing consoles and various XLR/buffer/USB gizmos. None of them use optical. I don't own anything you could describe at a component of an old school hifi setup. The TV uses ethernet.

Re:Still limited to 16GB of RAM....

[TechyImmigrant]

Thanks. A whole genre of home electronics I managed to completely avoid.

Re:Still limited to 16GB of RAM....

[dgatwood]

Oops, sorry. I missed the mention of Magsafe. :-)

Did the optical output ever appear on the spec sheets?

Re:Still limited to 16GB of RAM....

[Kneissl]

I've been an Apple fan since the Apple II.. They've abandoned computers. I'm done till they come out with something worth owning again.

Re:Still limited to 16GB of RAM....

[thegarbz]

But what has optical at the other end?

Everything since the last 90s? Computers, walkmans, home theaters, digital radios, cdplayers, md recorders, dacs, DATs, ....

Re:Still limited to 16GB of RAM....

[Anonymous Coward]

You can only send 2 channels uncompressed over optical; more only with Dolby Digital or DTS, and I don't think macOS can live encode to that. It's not great. Most of the time for PC audio to a home theater you use HDMI now.

Re:Still limited to 16GB of RAM....

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather have a Nomad.

Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

Kinda Meh all around. nothing great at the top end and the low end is completely uninspiring and overpriced. Apple really have lost their way.

mini, imac, mac pro still same price and same old

[Joe_Dragon]

mini, imac, mac pro still same price and same old hardware configs.

Apple, your Ex Girlfriend and Inertia

[Scot Seese]

Apple is becoming the girlfriend who you started becoming disenchanted with a year ago, but keep seeing because you know each other and have relationship inertia, and it's easier to coast than the scary challenge of starting over.

So, Apple continues to offer less value to consumers yet demands the same, or higher price points. With customers locked into iTunes, locked into iMessage, locked into the app ecosystem on both mobile and desktop, this is a calculated gamble that they can put ho-hum parts in a box on your desk and you won't ask them to get their shit boxed and moved out by the weekend.

And I'm keeping the fucking dog and the espresso machine.

Re: Apple, your Ex Girlfriend and Inertia

[Anonymous Coward]

when you come with a new Lenovo, it will be clear enough.

Re:Apple, your Ex Girlfriend and Inertia

[Anonymous Coward]

What did you expect from dating Tim Cook?

That and Unix supported by corporate IT

[raymorris]

The last two places I worked, Windows and Mac were the allowed, supported desktop operating systems. Everyone in my group would much prefer Unix over Windows, and Mac is certified Unix.

My employer before these last two supported one desktop environment, CentOS. It was a security company with a lot pf access to customer networks, so Windows wasn't allowed on the company network.

Somewhat disappointed

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm somewhat disappointed, as this appears to represent a significant price increase. I have a 13" Retina MBP from mid-2013. It was several hundred dollars cheaper than even this low-end model.

Actually, they're still selling the previous one

[93 Escort Wagon]

You have to scroll to the bottom of their "MacBook Pro" page, click on the lower-end 13" laptop (e.g. the one this submission is talking about), and then scroll down again... but Apple is still listing and selling the previous version, complete with MagSafe, two full-size USB 3.0 ports, two Thunderbolt 2 ports, and an SD card slot. The base price ($1299) has a 128GB drive, but you can configure it with more storage.

Not in my book

[AndyKron]

Lower end is $1500? Not in my book

No new Macbook Air?

[Photonmaker]

Dang..my current one is getting dull. What am I going to shave with now?

no touch bar? sign me up!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the only one of the new machines that I will ever consider purchasing.

Low end?

[Anonymous Coward]

I dont think that term means what you think it does.

Too. Much about Money

[Anonymous Coward]

Wtf: a 2500$ Laptop with only 256G disk?

MacBook Pro (15-inch, Late 2011)

[Anonymous Coward]

Processor 2.4GHz Intel Core i7 (an actual ht QUAD)
Memory 16 GB 1333 MHz DDR3
Startup Disk Samsung 840 Evo 1TB
Display 15 inch
Graphics AMD HD 6770m 1024 MB + Intel HD 3000 512 MB

Ok apart from the gfx, tell me why I should downgrade EVERYTHING else 6years later?

My next upgrade will be the ssd in my then 7! year old beast. After that I will hunt down the 2012 model, the last known good production MBP.

esc = Ctrl + [

[HiThere]

Perhaps Apple wants people to remember tricks.

Re:esc = Ctrl + [

[Anonymous Coward]

Or the ASCII table

14 hundo is low end....

[Anonymous Coward]

I think i'll hold on to my 2012 "upgraded" pro just a little while longer....

ITS OVER

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been responsible for directing the purchase of almost $1M worth of apple hardware in various capacities since 1999. But I'm done! They lost me on the desktop side with the trashcan Mac Pro and now they have lost me on the laptop side. Why now? No 32gb ram, no headphone jack, no optical out, no upgrades of anything at all ever ( ssd). If they had just added better graphics and support for 32gb ram and changed NOTHING ELSE, I would have been happy.

But fuck this.

Re:NFL is useing a shity web app over wifi in a po

[Anonymous Coward]

ANd Microsoft has never been responsible for any problems. I was getting a little scared there. Windows 10 uber alles!

What "refresh"?

[Anonymous Coward]

The lead from the Slashdot story: "Alongside the two new MacBook Pros, Apple also unveiled a refresh for its popular MacBook Air lineup."

Huh? What "refresh"? There is no refresh of the MacBook Air. The Air is the same as it was before. Instead, there is a new low-end MacBook Pro for $1500.

Re:Problem for parents

[TheRaven64]

I ran a Mac-like Linux distribution on her Linux PC, but it was not 'the real thing'.

I doubt you found something that's actually Mac-like. For example, did drag-and-drop work reliably between any arbitrary pair of applications? Did all of the applications support scripting remote? Did it have a system-wide search that did full-text indexing of all document types (including PDFs, office documents, and so on)?

Most such things are really crappy copies because they only duplicate the superficial irrelevant crap. I don't care if it looks like OS X - Apple's made a bunch of poor design decisions there in favour of good demos at the expense of long-term usability and it would be easy to improve matters. I do care that the core functionality works. Unfortunately, GNUstep has nowhere near enough contributors to be able to do a good job.

Re:Problem for parents

[Anonymous Coward]

Keyboard copy paste works great in Windows. I try to limit remote anything from running on my machine. Searching documents is not an OS function. Head back to userland. We've got this without your advice.

Re:Problem for parents

[TheRaven64]

Keyboard copy paste works great in Windows

Yup, mostly works in Windows. But now go to a 'Mac-like Linux distro' - can you copy an image in your web browser, paste it into your mail client, chat client, or word processor? What about a vector image, do you get a resizeable PDF or something rasterised? Does it work with video? If you drag a folder from the file manager into a terminal, does it give you a correctly-escaped path (actually, this one seems to have started working in the last couple of years in most DEs)?

I try to limit remote anything from running on my machine.

Which implies that you don't actually understand what remote scripting is. Can you write a script that runs in one process that controls multiple others? OS X does this with AppleScript and the OSA bridge (so you can now also write scripts in JavaScript and a few other things). Windows apps increasingly do it with PowerShell. There's no real *NIX equivalent. If I want to write a script that is triggered whenever a file appears in a network share and does something with it, I have a lot of powerful tools for doing this in *NIX, until one of the applications that I want to involve has a GUI and then it all falls apart. Even something trivial like 'when a file appears on the FTP site create a new TODO item in my calendar and a new email from this template' is hard to do with most *NIX DEs.

Searching documents is not an OS function. Head back to userland.

It's a desktop environment function, which is part of the 'Mac-like distro'. And it's a nontrivial one. Spotlight provides an API (albeit a really crappy one based on COM of all things) that allows every app to provide a plugin for full-text indexing of documents. When I install a new app on OS X, every document created by this app is searchable via a system-wide search. If I want to see all of the documents containing a search term, I can easily, even if they're something like PowerPoint presentations or PDFs (or strings in video or audio file metadata). OS X also ships with a bunch of plugins for common file types. I believe that Windows search does something similar. A few DEs have some kind of similar search, but without the kernel support for something like the fsevents framework on OS X they're often stale and without plugins from most apps they only usefully index a tiny subset of documents.

We've got this without your advice.

And this attitude is why most Linux DEs suck.

Yep, time to go back to Linux

[wiredog]

Debian Unstable ftw.

So "Pro" means nothing now?

[sabbede]

You can't replace your low end option with one you still call "Pro" and have it mean anything. Not that calling a 13" laptop "professional" makes any sense anyhow.

At least they're using the latest hardware for once, lending some credence to their pricing. What, really? These aren't using the latest hardware? Well shit, that's a ripoff.

That touchstrip is pretty cool though. Not sure that justifies the price though. Aside from the SSD (which were too expensive at the time) and display resolution, it's spec'd the same or lower than my almost 2 year old 15" M2800, which had a retail price of $1200 for when it came out.

Re:NFL is useing a shity web app over wifi in a po

[Coren22]

I wonder if they would see an improvement by switching over to private frequencies or 5 Ghz wifi due to less interference.

My assumption about the NFL story was also that it is likely the network or app, not the tablets. Both of my parents have surfaces, and I haven't ever heard of any issues like that from them.