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'The MacBook Pro's One-Year-Old Signature Feature Touch Bar Has No Future, But Users Are Required To Pay a Premium For It' (chuqui.com)
Chuq Von Rospach, a former Apple employee and commentator, has criticized the MacBook-maker to force consumers to pay extra for the Touch Bar -- a signature feature of the last year's MacBook Pro lineup -- in order to have the highest-end MacBook Pro currently available. He writes: The current [MacBook Pro] line forces users to pay for the Touch Bar on the higher end devices whether they want it or not, and that's a cost users shouldn't need to pay for a niche technology without a future. So Apple needs to either roll the Touch Bar out to the entire line and convince us we want it, or roll it back and offer more laptop options without it. [...] So what's the future of the Touch Bar? I don't know. I'm not sure Apple does, either. I was fascinated that when Apple released the iMacs earlier this year not one word was mentioned about the Touch Bar or Touch ID and support for them via an updated keyboard or trackpad was nowhere to be found. I'm taking that as an indication that after the lackluster response to this with the laptop releases, they've gone back to the drawing board a bit before rolling it out further.
I agree. Because Apple has made some good decisions in the past, all of their decisions are good.
A lot of anti-Apple people like to say that, and if they've rarely used Macs, they probably believe it. But there really is something to "It just works". I say that as a user who is fluent in Windows, macOS and Linux. Obviously, it doesn't ALWAYS "just work" - it's a computer and nothing is perfect. But compared to my Windows and Linux boxes, for day-to-day stuff, I have to do far less fiddling with my Macs.
Yes, Apple users do pay a premium, but for most of them, they do so for the ease of use and reliability, not for some naive devotion to fashionability.
Something that Chuck acknowledges but is glossed over in the summary is that the Touch Bar is only in the MacBook Pro for now. If it gets added to the MacBook line, as he suggests, the Pro users aren't paying extra but all MacBook users might be. Also there is the underlying assumption that the Touch Bar never changes. Could it become a force touch sensitive in the next iteration? Could Apple use the same tech and make the entire Track Pad double as a screen?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Relax. They're busy removing all that crap.
What the fuck kind of shitty IDE are you dweebs using that relies so heavily on function keys and esc? Xcode doesn't, IntelliJ doesn't, Android Studio doesn't. Don't tell me you're still writing code in some piece of shit text editor Richard Stallman hacked together in the 80s? I'm glad Apple doesn't hold everyone back just for a couple useless baby boomers.
Beyond being attractive, which is more important in many households than you'd believe, they are pure tech porn when you open them up. They are so well laid out and so well fabricated. Perhaps that is why they have such a high resale value. Go check eBay for yourself. It is amazing what a 5 year old MacBook goes for.
I know him, too, and I happen to agree with him. But I don't think that was intended as a cheap shot at him, so much as a cheap shot at Apple for the whole headphone thing. :-)
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
What happened to the decade after 10 base T cable? How shitty was your mac? Fuck, I guess you needed to be forced new technology if you held on 10 years too long. How the fuck was this modded funny?
A new bus design with every new generation throughout the 90's
SCSI instead of internal expansion slots
round mice
proprietary connectors everywhere
replaced Mac Pro towers with unmaintainable, but aesthetically pleasing, trash-can Mac Pros with no expansion capabilities
replaced maintainable Power PC MAC tower and iMac designs with unmaintainable iMac designs that save 1/2 an inch of thickness
Wireless mice with the charging ports on the bottoms of the mice so that you can't charge the mouse while you use it
quiet or fan-less designs that can't dissipate heat efficiently enough for unthrottled operation.
soldered-in hard drives
soldered-in memory chips
batteries that are not user replaceable.
proprietary screws. SCREWS!!!
Also, please note that the standards you mention, (USB, Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11) were not invented at Apple. Not a one. Meanwhile, they stifle their own really great inventions (e.g. firewire, Final Cut Pro). Apple makes great technology. Then, they somehow manage to twist things around that it just makes it a pain in my ass to support.
Yes, I am bitter. 20 years in IT dealing with Apple's hostility to business and education customers will do that to a person.