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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.
It's not just the touch bar, they FUBAR'd the entire keyboard. I'm nearly a year into using a MBP 2016 model daily and still make repeated typos due to low keyboard stroke depth. It's like typing on a piece of flat plastic.
Apple has always made its customers pay for high-end features that they did not want.
I agree. Back when I owned Macs it was sad to see how many features they forced down our throats.
First it was USB. They took away my awesome ADB, Modem and Printer ports.
Then they added Gigabit ethernet to all of their machines.
Finally they shoved out this thing they called 'Airport' back when I was happy dragging around my 10-BaseT ethernet cord around the dorm room.
I would like the touch bar a hell of a lot better if they didn't cannibalize the goddamn F-keys or most importantly the Esc key. It's not like they don't have enough surface area to keep both. The trackpad is as big as your whole hand. This is a Pro machine where those keys are actually important. They obviously realized that when they had to introduce the option to purchase the high end models with standard keyboards. How this did not get shot down the second it came out of Ive's group is a complete mystery.
I have one and I just dont get it. First of all as a touch-typer I never look at the keyboard. Therefore, it's completely awkward to have to look down at the keyboard from the screen to see some shortcuts buttons that randomly appear. Also, the buttons that appear arent useful at all so far. Fact is I only got the model because I wanted the Touch ID button (which also not very functional compared to the iPhone).
This was a big goof up by apple.
I know why he is a former employee: he lacked Courage.
...The current [MacBook Pro] line forces users to pay for the Touch Bar on the higher end devices whether they want it or not...
Apple has always made its customers pay for high-end features that they did not want. Why do you think Apple's products are marketed more as a fashion statement than something that is useful? You can get more people to pay for unwanted features when they are "fashionable."
Just to clarify, every fucking vendor is now selling products riddled with bullshit features no one asked for in order to drive massive profits.
Apple is hardly the only one doing this crap now. They're merely the best at it.
I'm more interested in the coming iMac Pro....I really would like that 5K screen combined with some actual GPU muscle behind it....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
This post is 100% Click-Bait. No where in the article did the author say anything remotely like the headline for this post. So why is it in quotes? Author was actually pretty neutral overall. Said he wants to give the touchbar more time to develop and would either make it ubiquitous among all macs or optional on high end.
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.
...Apple is hardly the only one doing this crap now. They're merely the best at it....
I'd agree with that comment. Apple has turned it's products into fashion statements. In the world of fashion, the price is often disconnected from the underlying value.
Useless things PC owners paid for
5.25" floppy drives, parallel ports, Rs-488 serial ports, premium sound cards, Mouse ports, and these days they pay for CD players. All of those were niche market items when the rest of the world had long moved on to newer technologies but still installed by default on generations of PCs.
On the other hand who's to say a context sensitive touch bar won't catch on? A decade or more ago every bond groaned when yest another serial port was added to PCs already festooned with Parallel ports, Mouse ports, keyboard ports, serial ports, and PC card slots. another serial standard???? like that was going to catch on.
at that time most keyboards didn't have that ubiquitous 6th row of keys they all have now for screen brightness sound etc... the touch bar is replacing that with non-mechanical keys. in the long run it will be cheaper
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Oh wait, you can't. Not without looking down to check if virtual ESC button is there and where it is. And not without looking down to see if it actually "pressed" or not.
Touch bar has got to go. And give the ESC key back or lose developers, who will quit you just on the principle of not supporting this design-dumb idea.
Suggestion: Put a touch bar (perhaps vertical) to the right of the touch pad. If you need gimmicky stuff like audio volume slider etc.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Relax. They're busy removing all that crap.
*rimshot*
https://galliumos.org/
Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
I basically got it for the extra USB ports. I mainly use it with an external 4k screen and usb keyboard anyway.
I expected more, but in principe it's not bad.
When you start debugging in Xcode, the TouchBar changes and you get buttons for step in/over/out, plus continue running. However since I consider myself in the high-risk RSI category, I use an external keyboard (Kinesis Freestyle 2) and I know the shortcut keys by heart now, but that took a loooong time since I'm not in the debugger every day.
TouchID: In and of itself, it's not bad either. However when you use a password manager, it goes from bad to great because you use it ALL the time.
I do agree with the writer of the article about the new iMac Pro. Why didn't that new external keyboard with touchbar and fingerprint reader? I hope it's some technical/safety reason, because I think it's weird that for such a machine, this tech isn't included.
I'd love TouchID to work on my Linux servers, in combination with sudo. I mean why not? Very convenient.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
Apple Desktop Bus was actually kinda cool.
Developed by Woz himself. First model that had it was the Apple IIGS.
A serial daisy-chained protocol, designed to be hot-swapped and to make it possible to bit-bang the bus with an inexpensive microcontroller.
Unfortunately the hardware designers then messed up, so it was not considered safe to hot-swap it.
Compare that to USB, which requires a complex software stack in the device firmware .. and if you want to "daisy-chain" devices you would have to implement a separate hub - which means that few devices even have one.
And don't even go into how overly generic and all-encompassing the USB HID protocol for keyboards and mice is, which means that operating systems don't support everything in a complete or consistent manner.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
I know you're making a joke, but ADB was actually a really nice standard. USB is superior, but I was actually kind of annoyed when they got rid of it.
Is Apple putting a gun to these people's heads?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Apple has always made its customers pay for high-end features that they did not want.
I agree. Back when I owned Macs it was sad to see how many features they forced down our throats.
First it was USB. They took away my awesome ADB, Modem and Printer ports.
Then they added Gigabit ethernet to all of their machines.
Finally they shoved out this thing they called 'Airport' back when I was happy dragging around my 10-BaseT ethernet cord around the dorm room.
We can add some to that list can't we? Those evil bastards cut the weight of a laptop from a feather light 4 kilograms to a spine distorting 1 kilogram, they reduced the thickness of a laptop from that of an average Unix programming manual to an utterly unacceptable one and a half centimetres and they had the unmitigated gall to shove UHD laptop displays down our reluctant throats. I feel your pain brother! We all do...
I don't use a Mac because I am part of the Sheeple or bought into Apple's marketing. I use a Mac because I am (despite strong efforts from Apple to make it otherwise) more productive using it compared to the alternatives. I have a very nice employer-provided Windows laptop that I have to use as well and it reminds me daily how much easier it is to do my job on a Mac.
I need to upgrade my Late 2011 MacBook Pro. I can still do what I need to do on it, but technology has marched on and the faster processors, additional memory capacity and an SSD would be nice.
I have no need for the TouchBar, priced out the non-TouchBar i7, 16G, 1TB SSD 13-inch MacBook Pro model and was ready to bite the bullet. It did bothered me that, even with i7, the fastest processor was not available on the non-TouchBar version (and the clock rate wasn't even as has as the 2011 MBP it would be replacing), but clock rate isn't everything and it would still be better than what it was replacing.
Then I discovered that the non-TouchBar MBPs only have two USB-C connectors and one is used to power the laptop. To get four USB-C connectors, I would have to get the TouchBar model and that pissed me off. That was the straw that broke the camel's back and I am now probably going to replace my 2011 MBP with a Early 2015 (Broadwell) instead of a new MBP.
There's no less than two companies (and maybe more, I just haven't been looking that hard) that make better MacBook Pros than Apple, with the single feature they can't do better is that you can't (legally) run macOS on them.
https://www.razerzone.com/gami...
http://www.dell.com/en-us/shop...
Both have better displays, better GPUs, better RAM capacity, better CPU options, and are maybe slightly heavier, but not when you figure on all the dongles you'll have to pack around with you on the Mac to plug in shit you already own, or may run across.
Oh, they are also massively cheaper, even before the overpriced dongles. Apple is just behind, and it's by their own doing. And I say this as someone who has used an Apple laptop since the PowerBook 5300.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Meh, considering how much I paid for a fully loaded MBP the touchbar cost is insignificant. It's not that bad, though since I am not usually looking at it I am ignoring most of what's on it. That, and it takes a bit longer to modify brightness and sound than I'd like.
I would like to see Apple provide more tools for using it to input things like Unicode symbols used in Perl 6! While we are dreaming I'd like to exchange my screen for a multitouch capable one that opens flat to the table and use with a pen. Oh, and next time would it be so hard to avoid making razor-sharp edges on every part of the case? I am constantly worried about tearing my slacks and the part where you open the cover (just like my 2009 MBP) has wickedly sharp knife-like points on it.
the touchbar uses an extra monitor driven by the graphics card to provide the seamless extensibility that it does — so i dont think you could easily add something like that to any old USB keyboard — because you would also need the support of a graphics card to do so.
it is only possible on the macbooks because the graphics card is already rolled in to the same package as where the touchbar is.
2cents from toronto island
john p
In the long run this will be cheaper than mechanical keys. You still want mechanical keys for typing but you don't type on that top row. So even if all it did was permenantly show the F-keys it will not be costing extra. and if it works out it could have a lot of other uses such as more expressive touch modalities without the nuiscances of a full touch screen. cheaper too.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
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 was offered a Mac mini at work a few years ago. Since I didn't have to give up anything (my existing Linux and Windows workstations), I gave it a go.... a good, solid go. Not an hour or two, but a month. I simply didn't like it. I didn't like the windowing, the lack of mouse acceleration that I couldn't just change, a lot of windowing issues like borders, from where you could resize. Some things couldn't be changed, and the things that were fixable (like acceleration) were either crazily stupid, or you could buy something to do tweaks. And that's the thing about apple users - they just keep paying, and in that case, for features they had in older versions of the OS.
So it really comes down to perhaps being more difficult, but extremely customizable (like Linux... which, while difficult, also has vastly more helpful resources on the net... and also really only difficult if you want to customize the UI because of so many options), to really rigid and easier to use because of it (MacOS), with Windows somewhere in the middle. I simply didn't like it. I don't berate other people's personal choices, though... some people like it, so it's great we have choice.
Now, as far as TFS goes, "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" is just ridiculous. Apple doesn't need to do jack. People that want it, buy it, unwanted features and all. That's what life is like, and if Apple is happy with sales, they don't need some ex-wife telling them how to run the company.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
BAR test and other banned places make it so that you need an system with the same base power but without this.
I'm old enough to remember when they made you pay for this "mouse" thingy that nobody had asked for and nobody wanted.
This is why people make hackintoshs apple does not offer choice that people need.
The Imac pro seems like it is going to fail. As the start price price is to high and due to apples push for thin and looks. Most people will be forced to pay apple pricing for RAM / Storage / CPU upgrades. As few will want to void the warranty and deal with unglueing reunglueing the screen Just to upgrade the ram.
Apple may change $600-$1200+ to go from 32 GIG to 64 GIG. right now an 4 stick 64 GB DDR4 ECC kit is about $800-$1000
This. You can have a fully functional Linux laptop for $100. It's cheap enough to be disposable, and still powerful enough for dev work at least.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
"it just works.... so long as you only do what we explicitly allow you to and never want to actually USE your computer."
Hogwash. A MacBook comes with a full development stack preinstalled, and no limit on "what you can do with it" other than your own ability. An out-of-the-box MacBook is more capable than an out-of-the-box Windows computer, and roughly equivalent to Linux.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...A lot of anti-Apple people like to say that, and if they've rarely used Macs, they probably believe it....
I do not say that because I am anti-Apple, but I say it as an Apple customer who has used Apple products (including Macs) and came to that opinion as someone who did not see the value of Apple's fashion statements.
Don't forget that magnetic latching power cable, I'm so glad Apple decided to get rid of this... my reflexes have greatly improved in trying to catch my laptop.
I gave it a go.... a good, solid go.
Me too. I used a Mac on a daily basis for a couple of years, and never really got used to it. Nothing about it is intuitive to me, and I spent a lot of time just trying to figure out how to do things that should not have been complex.
But that's the beauty of having options! Macs don't work well for me, but they do for others.
Thanks for the insight, apple shill #239392.
Ctrl-[ 4 eva
Like many people, I'm in the habit of resting my hands on the keyboard. On a Macbook with a touch bar, I'm constantly performing random actions (often starting Siri) by mistake. No doubt with time I could learn not to do this, but I'm not willing to pay extra and have to relearn using the keyboard, for no significant advantage.
The touch bar is clearly a gimmick, but please name a single OEM who doesn't charge for every feature they build into their computers, even the ones that aren't wanted?
It's unfair to single Apple out for doing the same thing as literally every manufacturer in the history of manufacturing.
but I run desktops & buy my own hardware and use PostScript compat. printers so I'm kind of cheating. My kids Toshiba laptop was a nightmare of crap bloatware software.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I've always enjoyed my Macbook Pros. There are people who feel like it's some fashion/gimicky thing, but it has an underlying Unix/Linux flavor with an appealing GUI. You get the best of both worlds. That being said, I was excited to see my new work laptop had the TouchBar, but after about 5 minutes I put it back to the default Mac keys, and haven't looked back. I love the idea of keys that can change with context, but the reality is I never use it for that.
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
Apple Desktop Bus was actually kinda cool.
Developed by Woz himself. First model that had it was the Apple IIGS. A serial daisy-chained protocol, designed to be hot-swapped and to make it possible to bit-bang the bus with an inexpensive microcontroller. Unfortunately the hardware designers then messed up, so it was not considered safe to hot-swap it.
And yet most of us did so on an almost daily basis to no ill effect, FWIW.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
You all sounds just as whiny as the people complaining the new models only have USB-C ports...
The TouchBar is not amazingly useful yet, but over time we'll see a lot of value as apps integrate it. For me the one thing I think the TouchBar really needs is haptic feedback. Well one more thing - we need to have a TouchBar on external keyboards too, the lack of that is what is really lowering adoption even for a lot of laptop owners.... including it would also mean iMac users could join in the TouchBar fun.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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?
Apple don't need to do anything. Sorry Chuq, but Apple doesn't need to even listen to you.
They don't even need to acknowledge your existence. You haven't worked for Apple in over 10 years.
When you did it was as tech support and internal email systems.
Now you're an expert on product development and marketing?
Macbooks? I don't know. Macbook Pros OTOH are pretty well made, so much so that that glue etc actually doesn't matter because after 5+ years it's time to buy a new one anyways.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
I gave it a go.... a good, solid go.
Me too. I used a Mac on a daily basis for a couple of years, and never really got used to it. Nothing about it is intuitive to me, and I spent a lot of time just trying to figure out how to do things that should not have been complex.
But that's the beauty of having options! Macs don't work well for me, but they do for others.
I've had no significant problems. I can bring up a shell, type unixy things at it, compile LaTeX, C and run many more froo froo languages. People running a window system on Linux - now that's odd behavior. Haven't these people heard of screen?
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
We shopped recently to replace a very aging MB air that my wife used. Five minutes of prodding and typing in the Apple store and we picked the non-touch-bar MBP. The killer feature being a working escape key. Seriously, the escape key is to the new MBPs as the headphone jack is to the iPhone 7.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
What happened to the decade after 10 base T cable?
Nothing. I bought a new "Quicksilver Mac when I went away to college in 2001.
My dorm was one of the first to have Ethernet so it was the last to get upgraded. We only had 4xT1s for the whole campus so it didn't matter much.
We also had a Hub instead of a switch which means you could arp poison and 'listen in' on peoples traffic.
I'm not sure what reality show you were on, but wow. Perhaps had you asked someone well-versed in macs, you'd have gotten responses to your issues that may have opened doors. If you can deal with Linux's flaws, then there's no mac issue. FWIW, I don't use Launcher nor Mission Control, or a host of over available things, yet I manage running multiple applications and documents with ease. Mouse acceleration? It's been under the "Mouse" preference panel forever, from what I recall, haven't been there in years. And you don't need to buy anything to do tweaks. In fact, I've been running with video blocked for years in Safari, because you can turn it off with a simple command (no, it's not available via a GUI, which would be nice, but that'll be fixed in Safari 11 apparently) etc etc etc.
As for Touch Bar, I still haven't figured out a reason for it. It's a nice tweak, maybe, for video or sound editing, but everything else? Not convinced, please leave the F keys alone thank you.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Whatever made ADB so great didn't really matter, since it was only really used for keyboard and mouse.
The RS-422 serial ports were superior to RS-232, but made annoying by using DIN plugs instead of conventional serial ports.
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.
I've been primarily a Mac user since around 2000-2001, when OS X was a new thing and I was bored with the same old DOS and Windows routine.
The #1 thing that took me MONTHS to warm up to and embrace on the Mac was the handling of the application menu bars. If you're used to other GUIs, it really is kind of painful getting used to the idea that the "Finder" (essentially the desktop you're working with to do everything else) has its own menu bar that only has focus when you click on some unused portion of your screen to bring it forward. And as you launch applications and go between them, that same top menu bar changes to perform as the menu set for whatever app has focus.
And to be honest? Although I've gotten completely used to it now, I *still* don't know that I care much for the way the "Finder" is handled like that. I feel like everything else related to OS X is controlled from the Preferences panel, so why not the stuff on that Finder menu too? If I want to show or hide my connected network drive shares, wouldn't that be a good option to put someplace under Networking in System Preferences instead? I feel like it's a concept carried over from pre OS X days and isn't necessarily the best way to do things today. But it is what it is.
I think the other thing that seems to take people a long time to get used to on the Mac is the liberal use of compressed .dmg image files. In the Windows world, it would be almost like people regularly having you download applications in the form of ISO images and expecting you to mount them temporarily to the desktop as virtual CDs or DVDs so you could copy over or install software from them, and then unmount them again when you're done. Weird, right? I mean, you usually only download an ISO because you're going to make a bootable disc or USB thumb drive from it or something. But in the OS X world, they "think different". You commonly have to uncompress a .zip or other archive file just to wind up with a .dmg that you have to mount so you can get to its contents. And cleaning that up requires remembering to unmount the mounted image first (by dragging to the trash) so you can delete the .dmg file successfully. This took me more than a month to really wrap my head around and consider normal/usual.
But really, I think more in OS X is similar to using Windows (or even a popular Linux GUI) than different. It's nice not having the Windows registry to hassle with - but "prefs" files nested in the hidden Library folder, under various sub-folders, is somewhat equivalent. (If you just delete your apps by trashing them from your Applications folder, they often still have leftover bits and pieces in that Library folder -- even if leaving them behind typically does no real harm.)
I find that OS X does a generally superior job of handling peripheral setup. I can often get Bluetooth to pair and work with things that Windows struggles to use properly. Wi-fi seems a bit easier to manage on the Mac, including the dedicated application for detecting and managing any Airport devices on your network (although Apple is disappointingly getting out of the wi-fi router market). More printers just plug in via USB and work on my Macs than in Windows, too.
And obviously, OS X is much less of a hassle when it comes to malware and virus threats. (Sure, it can be infected. People who say Macs don't get viruses are clearly wrong. But the point is, they just don't have the severe issues Windows machines have. Maybe it's due to a better underlying architecture, or maybe it's just because far less effort is put toward infecting Macs? Who knows, and to an extent, who cares? I've used them for 15+ years now and it's held true that they just have fewer issues.)
If you really used the Mac for a YEAR or more and still dislike it? Cool ... it's not for you. But I'm just saying, it's not an OS change I felt fully comfortable with until I kept plugging along with it for at least several months -- maybe even 6 months?
I have one of these laptops and I'm quite frustrated with it. The touch bar is the least of the issues - although I appreciate Touch ID for my password manager, the rest of the bar is meh. It's everything else that's wrong. The keyboard is pretty bad. I started off really liking it for the extra clickyness, but it just isn't stable, sometimes keys fail to register in certain places, which changes as the laptop warms and cools. Yesterday the 'k' key just stopped working, which you'd think would be a hardware issue, maybe a crumb. But rebooting fixed it?!
Compared to the previous model the new mbp has poor battery life. And it's oddly slow. Maybe that is due to the higher screen resolution it's pushing - jitter and odd delays here and there.
None of the new stuff and forced hardware changes with USB3, no lame touchbar, etc. I am bummed that Apple no longer offers to customize and order 2015 model online like its MF839LL (http://apple.com/us-hed/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro?product=MF839LL/A&step=config). The defaults are crap like the small SSD, RAM, etc. sizes. :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I'd also point out that it's not always much of a premium. A lot of times, when people complain that Macs are super-expensive, the complaint is something like, "That Macbook Pro is $1,300?! I can get a Dell laptop for $300. What a rip-off!" But then if you look at it, the Macbook is thinner, lighter, more powerful, has a better screen, and uses higher quality parts than the $300 Dell laptop. The model that's closest is probably the XPS model, and when you price out something with comparable features, you get something that's fairly comparable in price. Maybe it's still a little cheaper. Sometimes, you find the Dell is more expensive.
Admittedly, sometimes Macs are way too expensive for what you get. Most often, this happens when they haven't updated a model for a long time. Apple doesn't drop prices when a model hasn't been updated for a while, so if the latest iMac costs $1,200 and they don't update it for 2 years, then in two years it'll still cost $1,200 and it'll be 2-year-old technology. I'm not a huge fan of that, but that's just the way Apple runs things.
The mouse was not required or particularly wanted or useful in text interfaces. As soon as you entered GUI-land, it was wanted by pretty much everyone. One went with the other.
I would take exception to the it was more of a "fashion statement than something that is useful"
Traditionally Apple never was on the beading edge of the of technology. In terms of hardware and features they were on par with the others. What Apple had normally done was use the existing features and implement it in a polished and complete way. Normally a lot of the new features that other makers may put in their devices are buggy, or just are not useful, yet.
However the touch bar seems to be one of these new features, that just isn't that useful. Especially with touch screen being standard on laptops for a while now. Having a touch bar just doesn't seem that big of feature.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
You don't need to ARP flood a hub. They send all traffic automatically to all ports.
Until you want to connect it to anything else. Then I hope you have a lot of dongles. And a USB C hub. Might need another bag the size of that Macbook to carry all those. And the cables as well. Meanwhile that Windows PC will plug into HDMI, DisplayPort, VGA, Ethernet, and USB...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
It's because the collar and chain they get is shiny and new!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
No, instead they force you to store it on their poorly protected cloud so retards can get a copy of your naughty pics. Much better.
lucm, indeed.
Ugly fonts, retarded window maximizing, and a title bar that's a liability on large screens. If you don't see those as massive idiocy in terms of UX, you're in denial.
lucm, indeed.
if you look at it, the Macbook is thinner, lighter, more powerful, has a better screen, and uses higher quality parts than the $300 Dell laptop
No they don't. Dell has a 7-day inventory turnover for parts, they're always on the forefront of components. On the other hand, Apple "refreshes" its Mac hardware every 5 years, if that. They probably already have the parts for the shiny, bleeding-edge new Mac you'll buy in 2023.
lucm, indeed.
The Touch Bar, if engineered right, can be very useful.
Mysteriously, you didn't provide actual examples of those useful things it could do.
lucm, indeed.
Houston votes (D). It's half black and hispanic and a lot of the whites that live in the city are properly guilt ridden professional class, government and academic types that mindlessly support every tenet of the progressive world view.
No, you're just a hate filled liberal sperging out on the interwebs. Please don't stop; the more visible you people are the better.
Sounds like you've got your diatribe well expressed too. Let he who is without sin and all that...
It's not a diatribe. You'll see that one day if you free yourself from the Clinton doll you've got up your ass. ( <- that is a diatribe, see the difference?)
lucm, indeed.
Ugly fonts, retarded window maximizing, and a title bar that's a liability on large screens. If you don't see those as massive idiocy in terms of UX, you're in denial.
Ugly fonts? Really? If you don't like them, install some alternates. Not a problem. Better yet, the entire system will use them and scale them as appropriate across the UI. Windows still has a mish mash of dialog boxes within the OS itself that have a number of different behaviors and capabilities, some dating to Windows 2.x days. Linux? Clunky as hell UI. You'll need to show me what you think is a better UI.
What's the problem with the title bar? I have large screens, somehow I'm not seeing the issue. If you don't like the title bar, there's always full screen mode.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
proprietary screws. SCREWS!!!
Don't worry, Microsoft have now overtaken Apple with a laptop that can't even be opened without permanently damaging it...
The iMac range is for the desktop -- the only battery in it should be for keeping the system clock running.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
I agree. Because Apple has made some good decisions in the past, all of their decisions are good.
I don't think that was what the GP was claiming, just refuting the idea that Apple had a history of adding useless features. Apple have been ahead of the curve on certain features that are now mainstream, and have made a few missteps (Thunderbolt, for example).The Touchbar is pretty ridiculous and not part of any historical pattern. I'm tempted to say it's something that could only exist because Jobs died...
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
An Apple has far less ability to any fiddling with it.
It's not any less necessary than Windows - but when you do have an issue with Windows, it's often a lot easier to fix the problem.
Whatever made ADB so great didn't really matter, since it was only really used for keyboard and mouse.
I must have imagined my graphics tablet and my joypad. Others must have imagined dongles and even modems.
The RS-422 serial ports were superior to RS-232, but made annoying by using DIN plugs instead of conventional serial ports.
Which one exactly? 25 or 9 pin, DTE pr DCE, male/female, with or without handshake, carrier detect etc. signals wired through? And that's before we get into protocol settings. Let alone the other connectors used with RS-232.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
For any surviving Slashdotter who's not rageblind at the mere mention of Apple, here's a thought.
Properly engineered products can have a roadmap that's a few years long. For a product to come out about 9 months after Touch Bar while not including one doesn't indicate that its omission was a last-minute decision.
If you choose to believe that this interface has no future, knock yourself out. However, the evidence presented gives no support to this theory.
Oh right, I was thinking MacBook.
No they don't. Dell has a 7-day inventory turnover for parts, they're always on the forefront of components.
So the same model Dell has different parts after just a week. Gee, a dream for all enterprise IT who have to manage that shit.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
No they don't. Dell has a 7-day inventory turnover for parts, they're always on the forefront of components.
Having fast turnover for your inventory doesn't mean that you're constantly getting newer technology, nor does it mean that you're constantly getting the highest quality parts. It might mean that you're just being restocked with the same old crappy parts every 7 days. Or it might mean that they're using slightly different parts every 7 days and not testing the integration very well.
Esc is in the top-left as it's always been. You don't even have to look down as it follows Fitt's Law and extends to the edge of the touch bar.
You can also set it to display F-keys by default.
The obvious thing to do would be bring back the 17" Macbook Pro and put the touchbar between the f keys and the screen. Might as well have sockets for the Ram and SSD while they are at it and add a few ports and a replaceable battery. I probably still wouldn't want to use the touchbar but at least it would be a macbook pro worth upgrading too. Maybe even a small screen / touch pad which you could use a pressure sensitive stylus with :)
Maybe that's just asking too much for a high end laptop.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
For the record, Dell has basically invented mass customization. Their manufacturing agility has been copied by their Asian suppliers, and that's how today we get such a rich ecosystem of computer vendors.
And if you ever have to work in enterprise IT (which you clearly don't), Dell are as good as it gets; their inventory management system is terrific, allowing you to download updated drivers for all the components you've cherry-picked during the customization process even years later, thanks to their tag system that other vendors have tried to copy but failed. Dell also makes it immensely convenient for companies to keep a running bill instead of having to pay huge sums upfront, making it easier to align your payments with the depreciation period and with the EOL. When you buy high end equipment, they tell you exactly how many spare parts they keep and how far they are. They were the first major vendor to offer (and support) Linux on their servers. They're a great IT vendor.
So go play with your consumer-grade junk backed by disorganized, incompetent support, and feel free to keep being smug about it.
lucm, indeed.
When I saw your comment I remembered you as a low-added-value contributor that I usually ignore. Just to be sure I went to see your posting history, and yes, in the latest 14 posts you've accused people of being fascists or nazis 8 times, and basically called people stupid or morons over and over.
There's never an actual point in your comments, never a counter-argument, just shallow insults. It's like you're afraid to say anything of substance because it would allow people to disagree with you, so instead you just heckle from the peanuts gallery.
Free yourself from this fear, Plumpysnatch, and add even a tiny bit of content in your posts. The world is dying to drink at this well of wisdom hidden behind your smug, shallow replies.
lucm, indeed.
Then they added Gigabit ethernet to all of their machines.
I remember that. They used proprietary connectors for their network ports and required you to buy special, expensive dongles to attach an RJ45 connector. I don't recall ever seeing a PC that used anything other than coax or RJ45, and if it did, you could just pop in a PCI card to fix that. Macs did have PCI available, of course, but you had to pay thousands for that privilege.
Since Apple, IIRC, has moved to NVMe SSDs, I think you already have your SSD solution. 2 slots would be better, naturally. RAM slots would be nice but since LPDDR currently maxes out at 16GB, and they're shipping with 16GB, so what do you want to upgrade to?
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Are you on crack? If not, you may want to seek medical attention.
Macbooks in particular are notoriously poorly-made. They use adhesives for everything rather than fasteners "because reasons."
I work on laptops every single day. I have done for more than 10 years. Mostly they are plastic snap tabs, "scotch" tape and even masking tape inside. Even the circuit boards are fabricated on the cheap. I get that you object to industrial adhesives because they make repair-ability more difficult for the end user, or even small shops, but year in and year out Macs are top-rated for reliability because they are well built.
I'm old enough to remember when they made you pay for this "mouse" thingy that nobody had asked for and nobody wanted.
Don't forget when they made us all pay for the uncommon and expensive 3.5" floppies rather than the ubiquitous 5.24" floppies that was the industry standard. I won't even go into how they tied up system resources with a GUI.