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Apple To Refresh Entire MacBook Lineup Next Month, Air and Pro To Feature Kaby Lake (bloomberg.com)
Apple will unveil new laptops during its annual developer conference, known as WWDC, next month, reports Bloomberg. The company is going to refresh the MacBook Pro (as well as Air and just the 'MacBook' models) with new seventh-gen processors from Intel, the newest available, the report adds. Last year, Apple launched three new MacBook Pro laptops with older sixth-generation chips, which means people who already own the newer model may be a bit dismayed by Apple's refresh. From the article: Apple is planning three new laptops, according to people familiar with the matter. The MacBook Pro will get a faster Kaby Lake processor from Intel, said the people, who requested anonymity to discuss internal planning. Apple is also working on a new version of the 12-inch MacBook with a faster Intel chip. The company has also considered updating the aging 13-inch MacBook Air with a new processor as sales of the laptop, Apple's cheapest, remain surprisingly strong, one of the people said.
When you buy any laptop there's going to be an update before too long - even if Apple were not doing "new" models there's usually some kind of mid-year refresh you're going to not be getting.
At the time of the last MacBook Pro release there was a lot of technical analysis pointing out all of the things coming on-line in the next few years - the new intel processors, and with them mobile chipsets that could handle more memory efficiently. So it was pretty easy to judge at the time if you should buy a laptop then, or wait another year if you really wanted the Intel processor update.
Not everyone cares about all of the aspects of a laptop being at peak, it's always judging tradeoffs and deciding if a system will meet your needs.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This time, we're taking away the SCREEN. SCREENS were invented as a part of 1960s/1970s MAINFRAME technology and are outdated. The entire computer will run with SIRI.
Mac Pro probably in mid-2018, is what they lightly implied last time around. Still too early to be sure, basically.
I hope they will quickly do away with the Touch Bar, which, as much a fan of Macbooks that I am, has been totally useless. Even worse, it interferes and causes errors when I do other tasks that happen to go near the Touch Bar, such as the calculator.
Every time I try to use the calculator (and the top row of number keys) my fingers graze the Touch Bar, which then triggers an incorrect calculation because the Bar adopt some calculator function keys while open.
There is something positive to be said about having keys that have physical boundaries and limited functions, and having that well separated from a touch bar which, if it provided some actually useful function, had the versatility to change roles during use. They should have kept dedicated physical volume, brightness keys -- which now hide behind 2 finger presses on a strip that you have to look at carefully to find where to press.
Aside from that inconvenience, I have to date used the Touch Bar approximately 0 times productively. I am not a video manipulator, so maybe that's what it's designed for, but so far, nothing. I am not really in need of having quick access to emoticons when I chat, thank you Apple...
i wouldn't equate adding ram to innovation, however, fact is, the only reason i held off buying new mbp is 16gig ram ceiling.
i want (almost need) 32gig in my next laptop.
get a non apple laptop, problem solved
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
...this. I have an older Macbook Pro. The Intel Core i5 CPU is okay for what I need. But the 8 GB max RAM is laughable. Newer models I see on Apple's website have a little more horsepower of late. But a year or so ago I was specking out some higher-end Mac workstations for our marketing/advertising staff. Either I could get a model with a lot of RAM, but an older Intel CPU. Or vice-versa.
They've confirmed that the next Mac Pro, which will be using a modular approach that should allow for easier customization and upgradeability, is already in the works, but that it shouldn't be expected until 2018.
Have a look at the New York Times getting their review of the iMac so desperately wrong in 1998. You sound like that.
My MacBook, single USB C, does 'real work' just fine. The MacBook Pros will do more of it, should you need to. The aim isn't a million dongles, the point is you've bought the start of the new normal.
and storage on a M2 card the same ones used on pc's
apple will lose people who take the bar in some states with that pad.
Yes, in continuing the Apple tradition of removing useless external ports with each "upgrade", these will feature a single thunderbolt port and no external power connection. One. Single. Port!
Of course, you have to buy a new laptop after the 10 hour battery life is up.
Do you have ESP?
They just want their devices to sit on a desk and look pretty. Not be sullied by using them to do something.
Sounds awesome. Intel is getting ready to launch its Core i9-series to compete with AMD's Ryzen 9, aaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnnnddddddddd Apple will be featuring neither. Tip your stock broker accordingly.
Right, because buying the newest model of laptop and phone from the same company and neither one comes with a cable that connects the two together, is "the start of the new normal." In what fantasy universe is that even remotely justifiable? That the iPhone doesn't come with a USB-C cable is proof that the claim that USB-C is the future is flawed and that Apple isn't putting its money where its mouth is. If they truly wanted to have people adopt USB-C, they would convert their entire product line over and flood the market with natively operating cables, all for relatively low cost. One could even argue that they should do away with packaging USB-A connectors in their products.
As long as they continue the anti-consumer practices of glued-in batteries, soldered-in RAM, etc, it's just bullshit to force the systems into premature obsolescence.
I like the touch bar, and think it's an excellent idea they just need to refine a bit.
In my case I agree that the Siri button is a little too easy to hit, because my finger will slide up off delete and graze it.
My solution would be either to make the touch bar pressure sensitive and require a bit more force to trigger Siri, or to put up some kind of small ridge between the keys and the touch bar so your finger could not slide up there from the row of keys below.
My only complaint about the Touchbar is that I often use the laptop shut attached to an external monitor so I *really* would like an external keyboard with the Touchbar.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
...as long as Apple expects us to keep using dongles,
They do not, they expect you to use USB-C devices.
That will be more and more true. Already this last month, I went looking for a slim external hard drive case and the best one I found was... USB-C. So I have to use a dongle to use it with older equipment...
Because USB-C is so much more versatile the changeover is going very rapidly. Why do you insist on staying behind the ENTIRE (not just Apple) computer industry? Many high end Android phones are also USB-C now...
My guess that the iPhone switches to USB-C this year or next. There is no reason to keep Lightning since USB-C has all the same advantages (basically the main one, being able to plug in either direction plus it is small).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Some people are more eager than others to buy all new USB-C based peripherals that work with their shiny new Macbook without an adapter. Personally, I'd like to wait for the price to come down on them first.
I'd imagine that most businesses will drag their feet as long as possible. If we learned anything from the latest cryptolocker fiasco, there are a bunch of them still running 10 year old PC's with Windows XP.
Agreed, the lack of bundling a cable with the iPhone is a flaw they should fix and it will be interesting to know if they do with their next phone. But you can buy USB C -> Lightning, same way as you can buy USB A -> Lightning. I really don't think the entire strategy is invalid due to the lack of a $10 cable.
Last year's MacBook not allowing 32GB of RAM was on Intel, not Apple.
For sure that is the biggest driver behind the early update, so you'll see expansion up to 32GB (possibly beyond) with the newer laptops.
I also also question the wisdom of filing RAM increases under "innovation" while ignoring last year they added the Touchbar....
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
SCREENS were invented as a part of 1960s/1970s
Screens? In the 60's early 70's? Would have loved to have screens! We had teletype machines, line-printers with keyboards attached! You're "screen" was a roll of paper. Files edited one line at a time. You think they call 'em "carriage-return" and "line-feed" for nothing?
Gett^H off my lawn^H^H^H^HLAWN!
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
How many USB-C devices do you currently have? Not 5 years from now when you will have replaced your laptop, now?
And no, you dongles don't count.
The right thing to do would have been to include at least 1 USB-A port.
I've had two Airs in the past three years, and the 2nd one only because the first was stolen. It was covered by insurance, so I tried like hell take advantage of the situation as an opportunity to upgrade. But I ended up buying the exact same configuration. For my purposes, given it's not a primary device, the thing is perfect. Will go all day and then some, is almost as easy to carry around as an iPad, yet you can throw some moderately compute-intensive chores at it and performs admirably. The only thing it doesn't have is retina, but that would just add weight or subtract battery life or both---so no thanks.
But for the love of Pete, Apple, please don't trash this gem. I have nightmares of them going with two USB-C ports. Or going Retina. Please, just don't. Up the RAM max, update the CPU, give us more SSD capacity, whatever. Just don't fuck with the mag-jack, keep the SD card slot in there, and only put USB-C in as replacements for the USB3 ports that are there already if you must. But that's probably wishful thinking.
The current iteration of Air is about as perfect a light-to-medium workflow laptop as you can get right now, and now I fear it will be history.
(and before you trash me as a fanboi, my career has been Windows/Linux software development for 30 years, and I've gone through at least 5-6 generations of Dell laptops in the course of my work).
Last time I checked, it was in a trash can.
WTB [sig], PST!!!
Steve Jobs dies and everyone in Apple forgets how to think.
Another day closer to redwood heaven
The iMac was wrong to not have a floppy drive. It was very difficult to get data on or off of that thing, right up until the point that it was totally obsolete garbage, at which point almost every PC around could read and write USB. What did everyone who bought an iMac do? They also bought a fucking floppy drive to plug into it.
It's success was DESPITE its lack of floppy, not BECAUSE of it. It was a bad call at the time, historical revisionism aside. No one was arguing that a max 2 megabyte standard disk with really slow write speeds was going to be used forever- the point was, it was used at the PRESENT.
No, that's not "on Intel". Other laptop integrators have had no issue adding 32 gigs of RAM. You just end up with less battery life as a result.
A LOT less battery life. It's not on Apple to refuse to sell what is essentially a crippled system because of limitations Intel imposed. It's not like you can on the fly switch to acceptably low power RAM for a laptop!
To me it's funny that Apple moved away from Motorola because they were screwed by system limitations, than Intel screws them over the same way years later... this is what will drive Apple to designing main system chips (well will drive them to use said chips, I'm sure they have been designing them for years).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
A pro-level machine needs pro-level connectivity.
True. I went for a refurb of last-year's Pro, just for the ports. A photographer friend of mind is suffering with his Touchbar model because he HAS to have USB Type-A style ports for his cameras and other equipment, so he's got this cheesy-looking third-party multi-port dongle that keeps falling out when he moves the machine from place to place because Type-C is so damn small and doesn't grip that hard.
Apple should take notice that PC laptops don't all stink anymore... and they all feature a full variety of ports. USB Type-A, in particular, is not going away soon, nor is it likely that the thumb-drive your co-worker just handed you has a Type-C connector. Maybe for the tiny Macbook a single Type-C with Thunderbolt is ok, but for the bucks you throw down on a Pro model, it's just irritating that you have to shell out yet more bucks (and space in your bag) for at least a Type-A dongle, which makes comparably equipped PC's that much more attractive.
and so-what that the Type-C can be used for power... stop showing off and bring back the MagSafe connector.
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
Agreed - if you're buying into USB C today, then you have early adopter status with all the attendant pain as well as benefits that comes with it.
Also agreed with the business one too - but then, look what happened to them...
It's not about the cost of the cable. It's about convenience and what Steve Jobs once used to say, "it just works." It's about Apple as a company being able to stand behind their design decision to put ONLY USB-C ports in their pro laptop, from which it is only logical to promote USB-C adoption by including the required cables in their other products, even to the point of excluding USB-A, if that is how serious and sincere they are about USB-C adoption. As it is now, their approach is half-assed. If they aren't willing to commit to include a Lightning to USB-C cable in their iPhone boxes, then the decision to put USB-C ports ONLY in their flagship laptop is wrong. If you argue that they shouldn't have to pay to include both, then my response is that they should take out the USB-A cable, and make those users pay $10 for the legacy connector, if they really believe that USB-C should be adopted. That's how the serial port and RS-232 was killed off in the iMac days: the devices that were included in the box were natively USB-A. They didn't sell iMacs with mice and keyboards that used the old connectors, and then ask you to buy a $N dongle. It worked out of the box.
Anything from 2013 to 2015 can be upgraded to 16 GB - not the ultimate of 32 or 64 but it IS a laptop.
16 GB in my 2015 MBP is fine. 8 is really limiting the machine. YMMV.
But come on, a minimal processor refresh is not particularly exciting nor unexpected. Maybe some ports this time. Or at least a custom sleeve with dongle pockets.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
1) The Touch bar needs to physically PRESS DOWN like the trackpad does.
2) 32GB ram
3) magsafe power (and use a cable that doesn't purposely wear out quickly)
4) BATTERY. Simple-- have a 2nd cover that is a bit thicker. Sell 2 models; only battery and 1 cover piece would differ. Or perhaps they can get those new pure lithium batteries and not change anything.
5) an ESC key. ignore the stupid designers who put balance against functionality at an increased price. Hell, make it black if you must, like the finger print scanner on the right side.
6) USB-A. HOUSES are being wired for USB-A, it is not going away anytime soon. USB-2 memory sticks are still quite common.
7) If you kill HEADPHONES I will finally move to linux.
On a desktop, you could make that argument. On a laptop, it needs to actually work with random crap you get in conference rooms and classrooms. People don't want to take a ton of dongles with them everywhere for ethernet, USB C to A, HDMI, DVI-D, VGA, and any other ports I'm forgetting. I don't carry a purse. I don't like huge computer bags. I want something small, light weight and portable with a laptop but I also want to avoid 20 dongles.
Apple should have at a minimum:
1 usb A, 1 usb c
ethernet
HDMI
mini display port
nice to have: headphone jack
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
You think Apple hate the Mac Pro? Have you seen what they've done to the Mac mini?
#DeleteFacebook
To late, replaced my retina macbook pro with ubuntu gnome on a razerblade pro v2 last weekend boubt the new macbook pro will out spec it.
Of course, you have to buy a new laptop after the 10 hour battery life is up.
I think they can and will do better than that with a new MacBook Air. It comes in an empty box. Actually it's just the empty box, because it's Air. Now that's courage.
I'm using a late 2013 27" iMac with the 2GB GTx 775M and 3.4Ghz i5.... And I just used a friend's late 2008 imac with dual quad processors or something like that, and I gotta say, the prices on ebay look tempting as an "upgrade" option. With PCI cards that can do USB 3.0 and possibly handle the newer graphics cards, any new Pro models next year had better really haul butt.
I had a sucky sig.
Yes and no.
Microsoft still thinks USB-A is the normal for instance.
I will compare it to consumer electronics moving over the decades from dual RCA to 3.5mm jack. This doesn't change the basic feature of getting sound in or out, except for a few special jacks like headphone + mic on the same jack or non standard playback controls.
And if you get a DJ mixer or an AV receiver etc., it's still full of RCA inputs!
Tho in fairness, nobody really cares.
My other point is contrary to the 90s, a computer isn't a rare thing that's obsoleted after three years, same for the peripherals. So "regular" (non ultrabooks) laptops might keep USB-A for the next decade and desktops might as well keep at least two forever. Desktops still have PS/2 and DVI, because people want to plug their cable or peripheral in. They aren't excited by the idea of their cable not fitting in.
Or to continue the audio analogy, people don't replace their amplifier because it still has a turntable (phono) input.
OEM desktops don't have PS/2 as they come with keyboard + mouse, aftermarket motherboards have PS/2 ; in the 90s, the OEM had PS/2 while the piecemeal desktops used DIN for the keyboard and COM port for the mouse, before adopting PS/2.
So, everybody could end up using only USB-C but this will take long and it is less likely due to everything using USB-A, not just some old keyboard, bad mouse or 28800 bps modem.
The Mid 2012 MBP will accept 16 GB also. I bought one specifically to max it out and use for app development. All together I spent just shy of 550 bucks.
Good used Macs were never this cheap or this good relative to the new models. It really illustrates the slow pace of PC innovation by Apple and maybe the industry as a whole.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Typing as we speak on my originally purchased in 2012 macbook pro (101 base model) with maxed out ram and ssd upgrades. Its so bizarre...im on a 6 year old laptop that I feel no need to upgrade...
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They don't need (and I really wish they would not consider) a case redesign. The 2008/2009 cases were (still are) fabulous. Great cooling, hugely serviceable, expandable, plenty of room for drives, rackable, plenty of I/O, good looking, tough, quiet, reasonably secure...
All they actually need to do is abandon that trashcan thing as a (really) bad idea and cook up a new tower-fitting motherboard, for which I have no doubt whatsoever Intel has readily available sample electrical designs, add the I/O sauce of the day to it, change a few cutouts for the case to match, and ship the damn thing.
That whole "sometime in 2018" could mean they're going to do something "courageous" again. Otherwise there's little excuse for the timing. Well, unless they're not starting until 2018. Which might be the case. [lies:] No pun intended.
It's possible the new "courage" will be something worthy, but based on the trashcan and the headphone screwups and the lack of wired networks on various models and the withering of the mini's capabilities... I think "courage" has failed them as far as actually making something, you know, better. I just wish they would go back to the tower. Maybe pop out a mid-tower for the masses, too.
Here's hoping. I'd almost certainly buy a new mac pro with current CPU and (upgradable) GPU hardware and upgradable memory and drives and so on. Unless they screw it up. Again.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Like MF839LL models? :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
lol, HP zd7000 FTW.
Hehe, my dad's old laptop had a regular P4 instead of the M variety. Throw your shoulder out trying to carry it and burn your leg off trying to use it :)
Hell of a computer though. had a mobile Geforce and nice stereo speakers and a huge screen.
Still useable, altho I think my desktop is now lighter.....
This. A thousand times this. The latest version is such a disaster that the previous-generation 4-core Mini was still selling for above-retail prices a couple of years after they discontinued it. It went from being the perfect low-end server to a toy in a single generation.
To be fair, that's partly Intel's fault for using a different pinout for the four-core version, but still....
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I'll hold off upgrading until I can get more than 16GB of RAM.
It's worse even than that - you can't plug the new iphone headphones into your mac anymore. It used to be that the microphone, volume and pause/play buttons worked on your mac and your iphone interchangeably. Not any more.
Nope, not that generous any more. Plus, I no longer have a paper tape reader. :) I'll probably sell it someday, so it doesn't get lost in some relative's WTF box at the time of my death.
However, I did write a complete emulation of the 6809 and the Flex OS, which you can get from here, if you're so inclined. It's a few years later than the paper tape, but on the other hand, it's hugely more capable, just as one might expect. Plus, the 6809 is a dream to program, unlike any other microprocessor of its vintage, or prior.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
We've seen the future, and the future is touch-boards!
Apple saw how popular its touchbar equipped models were with people who have too much money and no technical experience.
Studies with a focus group of this demographic have revealed that people are sick and tired of keyboards that aren't a flat piece of glass over a backlit LCD panel.
Sigger than your average
Proprietary modular design? I can't see them doing anything less than that.
So they're gonna make an SGI O2? That went really well. Look at how well SGI is doing.
then ressurrect jobs ffs. Timmy is making a titanic out of apple lol...
Don't worry. They have a big ring-shaped new building to use as a life preserver.
IMO, the trashcan thing is great. Internally, I think they could improve the cooling if they had 6 boards instead of 3, connected like an equilateral hexavon. For an equilateral triangle, it's likely that the cooling doesn't reach the vertices or the connecting points of the boards
Have the Kaby Lake processes reached the Xeon? If not, there's the answer - of why they're not yet refreshing the Mac Pro.
OS X used to be the go to for graphics and rendering, now it's what? Table-top hood ornaments?
Was that during the era of the Power Macs? Looks like one can't have both: if one wants to go to a CPU that does a good job in energy saving, which was the whole point of abandoning the PowerPC in favor of the x64 (not that it applies here, on the Xeon), then one will lose the performance. Although I have no idea why Apple doesn't prefer NVIDIA's video cards.
Honestly, I think Apple should migrate its entire line to its A* CPUs, so that it has a single uniform architecture that can be leveraged from the NVIDIA cores that deliver good graphics performance, to the ones from themselves that deliver good power consumption.
I agree the performance boost will be minimal... from the processor.
However what Apple will be doing is putting much more powerful GPU's into the newer laptops, and also allow for much more ram (I am thinking a cap of 64 GB).
That's because Apple heard all of the complaints about how they didn't have a "real" pro laptop and are doing an about face on that as quickly as they can. It's all part of the same drive that is totally re-working the Mac Pro, it's just they can tune up new laptops much faster.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Until that I'm running a 2013 old one. See no need to upgrade, everything works. Price is no issue.
17779 eligible voters in a district, 17779 'vote' as one. This is Russia.
All I really have to say to that is I don't consider internally non-upgradable desktop machines to be anything I could describe with "great" other than greatly undesirable. And that's what the trashcan design is to me: a machine that's frozen in its capacities as soon as I buy it, short of littering my desk with power warts, easily stolen / damaged drives, an external PCI cage, and a nest of unwanted cables. Which kind of obviates that "neat small cylinder" idea pretty thoroughly. Not to mention being a security nightmare.
If you like the cylinder design, that's all you and of course that's fine. But I don't. I find it appallingly short-sighted and 100% unwanted.
Fortunately, my bought-cheap-off-EBay 2009-era 12/24 core, 64 GB, 3 GHz-ish Mac Pro tower is humming right along. So I can hold off a while yet before having to go the hackintosh route. So really, we're both happy, eh? :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
It just worked. .... Back when Steve ran things.
Prediction, in 2018 they will go back to a keyboard that works and diet down the Double Big Mac trackpad.
It just worked. .... Back when Steve ran things.
Steve still runs things. Laptops have got to be slimmer and lighter than the previous generation because Steve said so. Minimum number of ports, because Steve said so. Older ports get tossed way too early in the lifecycle because Steve said so.
Maybe someday there will be a Khrushchev moment at Apple when a new guard actually stands up and says "well, you know maybe Steve wasn't perfect like we've always said and maybe we should start listening to our customers and..." but at the moment Apple is run by Steve's handpicked acolytes and they aren't going to disrespect their Godhead.
The continued need for legacy ports is the excuse that was used to pillory Apple for going with USB-A. I wonder how that turned out...
Yes, but no. Apple products never had "legacy ports" like RS-232 serial ports, parallel ports, PS/2 ports, any of that "legacy" stuff PC's carried around. All their stuff was proprietary round DIN sockets for serial/Appletalk, or round 4-pin Apple-exclusive Apple Desktop Bus. The only "legacy" Apple was breaking from was its own, and they chose a standard being pushed by Intel, one that was prime to be adopted by PC's as well because their ports were just as weird, old, and inflexible.
Here, the need to rush to USB-C isn't that great. USB-A is almost just as capable. The only thing standardizing on USB-C does for Apple's laptops is shave a little more space, but there are plenty of PC laptops comparably thin and light that, at the cost of a few grams, offer HDMI and USB-A in addition to thunderbolt so the user can get straight to work. Again, PC laptops don't all stink anymore, and this is just one more reason not to pay the Apple tax. Sometimes, a little market research is worthwhile.
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
Steve Jobs dies and everyone in Apple forgets how to think different.
Fixed that for you.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
An entire case redesign could be done in 3 months if they weren't such wankers about how it had to look. Pro desktop lines don't need a Johnny Ive video.
A) No Mac, including the Pro models have ever looked shit like a cheap PC.
B) If "Pro desktop lines don't need a Johnny Ive video" - how do you explain this?
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
In my experience, even in the mid 90's, 3.5" diskettes were useless because they held so little. Most college students were using Zip drives.
Win95 'supported' USB and there were tons of ports on the Dells and HP of the day but there was nothing to hook up to them. The iMac really was the driving force behind USB adoption.
Unfortunately Apple is going the same way as all the other "idiots".
Thy think people want to sync their phone with their laptop via the cloud.
I wonder how long it takes that apple offers "myapple" email addresses like gmail.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Steve never said: minimum thickness.
And he also never said: minimum number of ports.
However I agree that a laptop with twice the thickness and twice battery live and twice the hard disk storage would be my child, and oh: 17" screen or bigger!
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
What's more aggravating is no HD upgrade path. My mac book pro 2013 has a 256 gig HD and I can't simply put a fiking terabyte drive in there.
Steve never said: minimum thickness. And he also never said: minimum number of ports.
It's just that when he was in charge the devices got slimmer and lighter and the number of ports got "simplified". The trend continues even though Steve Jobs is no longer sliding laptops into envelopes during keynotes and most people love it. Tech folks looking for expandability, flexibility, raw power etc. from Apple products are SOL.
You can get your wishlist laptop from a number of other suppliers though. What you can't get is your wishlist laptop with an Apple logo on it running OS/X (not, at least, without Hackintoshing it). Until some brave soul from Apple's Black Ops team comes running down the aisle at a keynote and throws a fat heavy powerful Apple laptop through Steve's face projected on the screen then you're one of the SOL Brigade.
Proprietary modular design? [...] So they're gonna make an SGI O2? That went really well. Look at how well SGI is doing.
I wouldn't be surprised if a proprietary design is exactly what they end up doing, though they may just take a Thunderbolt-based approach, given that it would suffice for most of this sort of stuff.
That said, unlike SGI they're not pinning the company's success on this one sector of their business. Even if the Mac Pro fails (which, frankly, it already has for the last few years), you still have a wildly successful company, though not one that's at the top of its game. As such, drawing those sorts of parallels to SGI seems unwarranted.
Instead, I'd draw parallels back to Firewire or the other ports they championed (perhaps even Thunderbolt in its various incarnations) that haven't exactly taken the world by storm.
I have acquired three 2010-2012 Mac Minis (the 2010 is the one that still has an optical drive and only goes to 8GB RAM), one of which is the 4-core i7 version. I mostly use them remotely via screen sharing and ssh.
I still have not purchased a MacBook Pro newer than 2012, but have instead acquired a few more "backup" laptops (and Magsafe-1 power supplies) as the prices have become affordable. Being able to upgrade most of them to 16GB of RAM (when Apple sold new computers with 4GB and 8GB soldered) has kept such old models still relevant. Intel CPUs not getting significantly better, as happened with the P4 to Core transition, also contributes to computers that old being useful. The main issue becomes the lack of a modern GPU, but most of those computers never had a GPU anyhow, other than the Intel built-in.
I had to wait out Apple's (very bad) computers in the '90s (I had a Power Computing tower to get me through that time), and now I wait out Apple's fixation on thin-uber-alles and glued-together non-upgradeable but shiny crap, in hopes that sanity will return.
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In my opinion, the loss of Steve Jobs is clearly why everything from Apple started sucking after 2012. It's the "Disney Effect", where WDC kept churning out animated musicals for years, because that's what they were making when Walt died. In Apple's case, it's the obsession with thin, even in "Pro" product lines.
If they had simply kept the 17", even without a Retina screen, I would have bought one by now. Now I've got a late-2011 17" with a broken GPU that I am finally about to have the time to get it sent off to someone who can replace the stupid chip. (It's apparently not a lead-free BGA problem, it's the connections inside the GPU chip itself, supposedly you can heat them to a bit less than the solder melt temperature and they will work again for a while before failing again. Nvidia made a bad batch of chips in 2011-2012.)
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The sheer number of Retina-era MBPs is finally starting to drive the prices of 2010-2012 (the ones that can be upgraded to 16GB) into a useful price range. My best price so far has been $200 for a 2008 (?) 17" that was not working. Turns out that its heat sink didn't have a heat sensor on it. I'm guessing that it was overheating and some moron thought he needed a new heat sink (instead of just new thermal paste) so he got one off of ebay that didn't have the sensor. I was able to wedge in a heat sink from a 15" scraptop donor for now until I can get around to ordering a sensor for it.
In spite of the fiddly nature of some of the parts, and especially the construction of the earliest Unibody MBPs (holy shit the original 15" with the removable battery is a mess inside), the later ones are quite repairable from spare parts as long as the motherboard is still working. But replacing the keyboard looks like a major pain in the ass unless you swap it along with the top case. (I'd love to take the keyboard from that 15" and put it on my old 17", the ribbon cables even look like they might be in the same place.)
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Floppy disks were already way too small for anything useful by then, and the floppy disks you could buy after the late '90s sucked and were unreliable. (Source: me trying to install Slackware on floppies written by another computer, it seemed like half the time there would be a disk error on every disk.)
The real mistake they made was having no interface faster than 10Mbps Ethernet and 12Mbps USB. The original iMac was the last Mac to not have Firewire until they stopped making Firewire ports.
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The mid-2010 can go up to 16GB.
#DeleteFacebook
I've just checked Amazon, Curry's, Argos and even Tesco's websites. Almost all hard drives are USB3 and very few are USB-C.
I did't say hard drive, I said small external HD enclosure.
I bought it on Amazon and the best ones I found were mostly USB-C...
The cases go first but the other things like portable hard drives follow soon after. Do you seriously not remember this from past transitions??
In fact it's hard to find USB-C
It sure seems like there are a lot of options to me.
I have had zero trouble finding USB-C anything.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm using a late 2013 27" iMac with the 2GB GTx 775M and 3.4Ghz i5.... And I just used a friend's late 2008 imac with dual quad processors or something like that, and I gotta say, the prices on ebay look tempting as an "upgrade" option. With PCI cards that can do USB 3.0 and possibly handle the newer graphics cards, any new Pro models next year had better really haul butt.
Either you had a stroke and can't remember the difference between an iMac and a Mac Pro, or you are the most incompetent troll ever.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
So they're doing a refresh to bring their systems a bit more up to date. The real world benefits are small; they'll be about 10% faster than the models they replace and will have slightly longer battery life. Streaming fans who hook up their laptops to an external display will get one more benefit: the new systems will presumably support 4K streaming because they'll have the required Kaby Lake processors.
Updating the Air is a bit more of a step forward since it's currently still using a 5th generation processor; it might get a 20% speed improvement. Apple probably was thinking that it would go end of life by now, but they still have a lot of presence in the higher education market and the Air is their main product there. The ultrathin MacBook is a bit too limited, and I don't think Apple is prepared to cut the price to the under-$1000 level that they need to reach. The MacBook Pro is too expensive; the CS and media studies majors will buy it because they need the extra power but most students will not.
The question if they do update the Air: will they just shove in a newer CPU and leave the rest of the design as it is, or will they decide that the product has a longer term place in their product lineup and give it a more substantial refresh? The relatively low display resolution stands out as the #1 thing they could improve, though that would bring up the question of cannibalizing their more expensive products. It's also likely that a new version would move to USB-C for charging and connectivity - but would they go all-in as they have on their other products, or offer a mix of USB-C and legacy USB ports as most Windows laptops have?
The ultrathin MacBook might see some design changes as well, though not as major. The most popular thing Apple could do with that system would be to shoehorn in at least one more USB port; that would allow the user to connect something and charge the system at the same time without the need for yet another dongle. The MacBook Pro design is less than a year old, so I don't expect any changes there other than the CPU and perhaps some tuning of the available configurations (amounts of RAM and flash memory, etc).
"The continued need for legacy ports is the excuse that was used to pillory Apple for going with USB-A. I wonder how that turned out..."
Back when _that_ changeover happened, USB 1.1 was 12 Mbps and replaced: serial ports (0.115 Mbps), ADB (0.125 Mbps), parallel ports (0.150 Mbps unless you got one of the very newest ones), and GeoPort (1 Mbps). USB replaced a whole pile of ports with ONE bus that was 10-100x faster. It had enough speed to manage all the devices you plugged into the old ports, all at once.
SCSI users had cause to complain, but they weren't the target market for the iMac.
In 2017, USB-C is at best twice as fast as the standards it replaces.It can't replace a whole pile of connectors all at once, and it's anyone's guess whether a given port/cable/device supports Thunderbolt, USB 3.1, or both.
USB-C isn't terrible, but right now it's a new plug for the sake of having a new plug.
Oh, they're thinking all right.
They're just thinking... different.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Why is everybody obsessing over "space for drives"? Have you looked at a 3.5inch drive bay recently? They are enormous. On the other hand, I have a USB3.1 1Tb Samsung SSD on the desk next to me, and it is significantly smaller than a 2.5inch laptop drive even with the external case. The new Mac Pro doesn't need space for drives, it needs space for SSDs.
IO is different too compared to when the cheese grater design was invented. The new Mac Pro will almost certainly have nothing but zillions of USB-3.1 / Thunderbolt ports and an ethernet port, because in mid 2018, that's all you'll need - it's actually all you need now as long as you are OK with one of those USB-C adapters. I have one that has two USB-A ports, HDMI and an SD-card reader.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
SJ was fired from Apple back then because (among other things) he INSISTED in the original Mac not getting more RAM. He thought that more RAM would cause devs to just stuff more features into their programs instead of thinking about better and simpler ways to solve workflows.
So: Jobs pretty tight about hardware. He never wanted to just throw in more RAM and more ports and whatever.
That being said: I daily use a late 2008 MacBook with just 5 GB. Works totally great. The new MBP's will go to 32GB.
The sheer number of Retina-era MBPs is finally starting to drive the prices of 2010-2012 (the ones that can be upgraded to 16GB) into a useful price range.
Interesting... just how useful is it to have retina? My eyesight isn't fantastic, I can't see individual pixels from a normal seating distance. Is fidelity the only value the new screens have or am I missing something? Will retina apps look messed up on my computer?
The read/write/lifetime considerations for SSDs and spinning storage are still different. For pro machines, one can reasonably assume that writing to storage may be a big deal. Plus, you can put a lot of things into a drive bay besides drives. Plus, you have a drive bay, you can put SSD or spinning media in there (or many other things.) Choice! If you have internal slots for SSDs... well, then that's all you have.
It's different in that there are more options. It's not different in that one doesn't need what one had before. So for a reasonable design, add I/O. By all means. Who's going to argue against more capability? That'd be dumb. But don't be throwing out things that are still widely in use. You know, like.... headphones. Ethernet. HDMI.
Now, see, there's that again. No, I don't want a bunch of adapters. I don't want extra stuff cluttering everything up. I want the ports. The trashcan is crippled because everything ends up flung on one's desk, power supplies, drives, etc. It's awful. We need to move away from that. And it's not like this stuff is expensive, or like drivers need to be written. Apple should just do it right and quit trying to tell us stupidity = courage.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
"It can't replace a whole pile of connectors all at once"
It can replace any connector on a laptop, including the power connector.
The power cord is usually the only thing I have plugged in that is dragged across a footpath to where the power outlet is.... the USB devices and my headphones are connected to things at the desk.
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Exactly, I'm at bifocal age, except it's really a stealth trifocal, because my uncorrected vision is perfect at about 5-8 inches, so I'll lie down with the laptop on my chest. Retina is intended to let you have higher resolution for photographs and font details and interpolation. I think they intended for you to keep your effective UI dpi about the same. But I have no actual experience with using the newer models.
My main late-2011 17" had its GPU break back in March, and I've finally sent it out for repair. (seems I missed the official Apple repair program by 3-4 months!) I've been using a 13" in the meantime. I miss being able to see two things on the screen at once. The 17" was like having what would be called a "two-page monitor" back in the 90s.
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