Apple Stops Selling 2015 MacBook Pro With Old-Style Keyboard, Legacy Ports (arstechnica.com)

After announcing new MacBook Pro models today, Apple has removed the 2015 MacBook Pro from the Mac section of its website. Ars Technica reports: Beloved by many, the 2015 MacBook Pro had a number of features that have since been changed or have disappeared entirely from new MacBook Pro models. Arguably the most polarizing among these tweaks is the butterfly keyboard -- the 2015 MacBook Pro predates that mechanism, making its traditional keyboard a preferred alternative for many users. The 2015 MacBook Pro also contained legacy ports that Apple has since abandoned in the newest models: USB-A, HDMI, and Thunderbolt 2 ports, and an SD card slot. All of the newest MacBook Pros exclusively feature Thunderbolt 3 ports, which some will appreciate but all will scowl at when they're forced to buy multiple dongles to connect legacy accessories. Currently, Apple has a few 2015 MacBook Pro models listed in its online clearance section, but it's likely that Apple will not have more to sell after those are gone.

Comments

Courageous

[cinghiale]

It's courageous of them to stop selling products for which there is continuing demand.

Re:Courageous

[Anonymous Coward]

And they'll still fly off the fucking shelves despite our protestations. :/ Fuck that touchbar shit, too.

Re: Courageous

[Anonymous Coward]

And which have a working keyboard.

So courageous of them to replace a reliable working keyboard with the flakey and fragile butterfly model.

Re:Courageous

[alvinrod]

Was there continuing demand, or just left over inventory? I'm sure there's still a little bit of demand for a Plymouth Barracuda, but I doubt that Chrysler (or whoever owns that brand now) is going to devote a production line to making any more.

Re:Courageous

[Bing Tsher E]

Fiat. Fiat owns that brand.

(Greasy haired musclebound moron drivers grit their teeth)

Re:Courageous

[Ol Olsoc]

It's courageous of them to stop selling products for which there is continuing demand.

While Slashdot bitches about them never introducing anything new.

Re:Courageous

[Anonymous Coward]

It's pretty simple, really: they should keep selling the old stuff until they introduce something better.

The new machines are, in many ways, worse than what they were selling 3 years ago.

Re:Courageous

[Anonymous Coward]

Literally, the highest praise I've heard was "It didn't break after 60k lines of code. I hated every moment."

I think the issue is that every tech company assumes everyone loves apple and gets macbooks for employees.

Apple is a company that generally doesn't care about releasing a product that is terrible if people will be forced to use it.

Re:Courageous

[Joce640k]

Somebody typed 60k lines of code on a keyboard with no DEL key, no PgUp/PgDown keys, no home/end keys, and stunted halfling cursor keys?

Rather him than me.

Re:Courageous

[Joce640k]

The new machines are, in many ways, worse than what they were selling 3 years ago.

It took courage.

Re:Courageous

[ilsaloving]

Damned straight there was demand. Their 2015 unit was the last one that was actually suitable for general use. Whenever we needed to get a MBP, that's what I would buy. I bought one 2016 model and the person was seriously unimpressed with it.

In fact, I don't know one single person that is actually happy with the 2016+ models. One person I know bought one, and then sold it again 3 months later cause they couldn't stand it anymore.

The lack of useful ports is infuriating. Whoever came up with that idiotic keyboard design should be tarred, feathered, and shot. These machines are now completely unupgradable, forcing you to max out your purchase up front since it's hard to predict what your usage will be like 3 years down the road. The battery is not only not replaceable, but it's not even serviceable outside of a factory anymore so if you need your battery replaced you're out a laptop for several weeks.

Apple's lineup has become f__king brain damaged right across the board and, as another poster has already said, Apple now produces not one single product that I would want to buy.

The only reason Apple is even a viable option is cause Microsoft has turned Windows 10 into a complete shitshow. At least with Apple, I can actually control when updates occur AND be reasonably confident that an update won't brick my machine.

Re:Courageous

[bobm]

1: vim plugin
2: I agree on the stupid change to 1/2 size cursor keys, that was dumb but apparently no one at Apple touch types (as evident by the touchbar you have to look at).

I'm one of those people who can actually work without looking at the keyboard, I guess that is a lost skill.

Those aren't legacy ports

[Anonymous Coward]

They are "current" ports.
USB-C ports are "ports of the future."

Now, VGA video would be a "legacy" port.

Re: Those aren't legacy ports

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet its still incredibly common...

Re: Those aren't legacy ports

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it doesn't have DRM bullshit. It's analog and it WORKS.

The first time you watch a meeting get delayed because someone's laptop and the projector refuse to get along, you'll understand why VGA is still necessary.

Re: Those aren't legacy ports

[Anonymous Coward]

Our meetings are always interrupted by Win10 updating.

Though the last one didn't fully restart we got a *ding* the updates are scheduled to install, 30s later, *ding* the updates are installing, 30s later, *ding* the updates are installed, 120s later the whole PC turned off without even a graceful shutdown or "installing updates" message.

Re:Those aren't legacy ports

[Anonymous Coward]

Agree. iPhoneX comes with cable with USB port on one end.

Re: Those aren't legacy ports

[TeknoHog]

DVI was nice because it was digital without DRM. This changed with HDMI, which was just another form factor for DVI signals. As a result, it's possible to have HDCP over DVI, as some monitors accept HDMI extensions over the old-style port.

VGA on modern hardware means you'll be converting digital to analog to digital again, which is beyond idiotic. Also, you'll be dealing with all sorts of analog adjustments with the image alignment. I agree it's still practical to have a laptop with VGA out -- in many cases I've come across, there's a relatively modern projector at the ceiling, but they only put a VGA cable up there.

Re:Those aren't legacy ports

[drinkypoo]

Now, VGA video would be a "legacy" port.

Or for a Macintosh, DB15 RGB video, or for that matter, ADB. Or an external floppy connector.

Re: Those aren't legacy ports

[Bing Tsher E]

You'll have to agree that "malware" (as in: software that was not installed from the Microsoft App Store) didn't intrude and take over the computer, though.

Or is it 'good malware, bad malware' in the vein of 'good cop-bad cop'?

Re: Those aren't legacy ports

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't use HDMI. Don't ask for HDMI. Don't accept systems that *only* support HDMI.

Display Port is your friend. Use it for everything that you can.

*Note: The only limitation of Display Port is cable run, and it can't go beyond about 2m. Perfect for desktop use, but little else. HDMI does have a superior run length over DVI, but in light of how shit (by my definition, HDCP is utter shit) HDMI is, it's a tough call. Use DVI for long cable runs whenever possible.

Re: Those aren't legacy ports

[EmeraldBot]

and it WORKS.

Uh. Noooooo. Hmm, why is this fuzzy patch on the screen? Better run auto-adjust. Oh great, now it's cleared up- wait, there's another one over here. Hmm, better run again- oh shit, now half the screen's cut off. Manually reposition, great, now it works- oh WTF, the colors are messed up. VGA is an incredibly finicky protocol that is literally entirely dependent on the auto-adjust's heuristics in the arbitrary monitor if you don't want to spend 20 minutes messing with the settings menu (and you still won't fix that mysterious blurry patch). If you don't like the DRM or onboard audio of HDMI, then you should use DVI or perhaps DisplayPort (not sure if it has its own DRM), but not VGA. VGA is a godawful standard and one of the cases where the replacement really is a much better choice.

Re: Those aren't legacy ports

[Anonymous Coward]

> by my definition, HDCP is utter shit

We don't give a shit about your definition.

Re: Those aren't legacy ports

[Anonymous Coward]

Candy Crush and Bubble Witch Saga beg to differ

Re: Those aren't legacy ports

[KozmoStevnNaut]

I only have two DP ports on my laptop dock, and I like having three monitors. So two on DP and one on VGA is necessary. I know there are DisplayPort MST "hubs", but I haven't had any luck with those.

Re: Those aren't legacy ports

[TeknoHog]

Don't use HDMI. Don't ask for HDMI. Don't accept systems that *only* support HDMI.

Display Port is your friend. Use it for everything that you can.

*Note: The only limitation of Display Port is cable run, and it can't go beyond about 2m. Perfect for desktop use, but little else. HDMI does have a superior run length over DVI, but in light of how shit (by my definition, HDCP is utter shit) HDMI is, it's a tough call. Use DVI for long cable runs whenever possible.

Interesting. I've been a kind of fan fo DP, but the only DP hardware I've had so far are outputs on my computers, and adapters to DVI and HDMI. My display hardware is either cheap second-hand monitors, or needs long cable runs.

I've had the impression that HDMI is the "consumer" tech given all the marketing around it and the whole post-HD display craze, while DP is "professional" with with features like daisy-chaining that consumers couldn't possibly understand. DP also allows more displays on some (laptop) GPUs as they can share the sync signals (or something like that; my Thinkpad x220i can only show 2 different displays if not using DP, even though it has 3 outputs when counting the internal display). Alas, the cable length limitation is a deal-breaker for me, as I only need multiple monitors with my live projection gigs. I also hear that DP isn't safe from DRM either.

The situation reminds me of DAT. You had this nice tech for recording CD-quality digital audio in the 80s, but it was mostly restricted to the professional market. Years later, crippled derivatives such as DCC and Minidisc were introduced to consumer markets so they couldn't make bit-exact copies. All this effort to make technological development go backwards...

Re: Those aren't legacy ports

[TeknoHog]

I only have two DP ports on my laptop dock, and I like having three monitors. So two on DP and one on VGA is necessary. I know there are DisplayPort MST "hubs", but I haven't had any luck with those.

Good point, this is especially true with laptops. Personally, I probably couldn't live with those three side by side, as VGA quality would be so different from the digital ones. At home I'm fine with VGA for watching movies, but for anything else I've been spoiled by the crisp and pixel-accurate digital displays.

Re: Those aren't legacy ports

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Honestly, VGA quality on the monitor I'm using is really damn good, it surprised me a little bit. It's an Eizo FlexScan EV2416W and it just locks on perfectly to the test pattern at lagom.nl that I use for auto sync on VGA-connected monitors. Very solid-feeling stand as well, and the best TN panel I've ever seen.

Re: Those aren't legacy ports

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't had this problem in 10 years. At least.

Re:Those aren't legacy ports

[Anonymous Coward]

Or for a Macintosh the letter "T" key on the keyboard. I's aggressive, you don' need i and i's overraed. I's no used in "Mac", "Macbook", "iMac Pro", "iPhone X".
He superpors will be called Hunderbol from now, which you have to admi sounds super cool.

Re: Those aren't legacy ports

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks media industry cuck.

Good thing I don't give a shit about your opinion anyway.

Comfortable keyboards are for chumps

[yuriklastalov]

How long until the keyboard is just a giant touch pad with courageous gestures to enter text?

All text entry will be done with swiping. You'll thank us later.

Re:Comfortable keyboards are for chumps

[Solandri]

The Onion beat you to that punchline almost a decade ago.

Re:Comfortable keyboards are for chumps

[Anonymous Coward]

No keyboard required! Siri dictates!

Re:Comfortable keyboards are for chumps

[Known Nutter]

Also...

https://imgur.com/gallery/r102w

Re:Comfortable keyboards are for chumps

[Anonymous Coward]

After all, this is the same company that somehow decided the IBM PC-jr had the ultimate keyboard concept for their front-line desktops: cheap, small, wireless, no tactile keycaps.

Re:Comfortable keyboards are for chumps

[Anonymous Coward]

How long until the keyboard is just a giant touch pad with courageous gestures to enter text?

All text entry will be done with swiping.

Palm already did that.

Re:Comfortable keyboards are for chumps

[cyn1c77]

How long until the keyboard is just a giant touch pad with courageous gestures to enter text?

All text entry will be done with swiping. You'll thank us later.

Never.

They are going to jump straight to the anal probe. You have to squeeze it in different ways to get different gestures and keystrokes. Emphasis on strokes.

I know it seems scary, but courage.

Re:Comfortable keyboards are for chumps

[demonlapin]

If I could use the Swype update where they fixed the annoying problem where swiping "me" resulted in "née" all the fucking time, I'd actually be okay with that. Touch typing with one hand - I never looked at the keyboard except to enter numbers. It went downhill pretty fast after that, though.

Besides, unless you spend a bunch of money, modern keyboards are all crap. The wireless one I'm using on my Mac right now... it looks great, which is its intended purpose (and why the iMac replaced a PC with a Cherry blue keyboard), but I'd never write an essay on this thing.

Re:Comfortable keyboards are for chumps

[Anonymous Coward]

theonion's apple wheel videos seems more relevant every day.

This has to be bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't kept up with Apple stuff but it's inconceivable that USB & HDMI are "legacy." Either TFA is a lie or newer Apple computers must be completely useless.

Re: This has to be bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Just useless until you buy $100 worth of dongles.

Re:This has to be bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to catch you up; apple computers are completely useless.

Floppy drives and 25 pin parallel ports

[MikeDataLink]

We should add those back as well.

Re:Floppy drives and 25 pin parallel ports

[guygo]

and a paper-tape reader.

Re:Floppy drives and 25 pin parallel ports

[MikeDataLink]

And composite video.

Re:Floppy drives and 25 pin parallel ports

[Anonymous Coward]

and a modem with RJ11 jack!

Re:Floppy drives and 25 pin parallel ports

[Northdot]

Are you from the future where all your daily-usage peripherals have USB-C connectors?

Re:Floppy drives and 25 pin parallel ports

[serviscope_minor]

well they'd go well with having a not shit keyboard and ports that most people still use.

I remember when apple dropped the floppy drive way back when. Everyone I knew who had a mac bought an external floppy drive because apple mindlessly dropped it before there was actually a replacement.

Re:Floppy drives and 25 pin parallel ports

[drinkypoo]

Macs never had 25 pin parallel ports, or any other kind of Centronics interface. They did have 25 pin SCSI ports, though, which meant they were noisy and thus problematic in the later years. They also had crappy termination (and at least one machine with nonstandard termination, the IIfx.)

Re:Floppy drives and 25 pin parallel ports

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the present. And they all have USB-C connectors. Thanks for asking.

Maybe open the wallet a bit and spend some money, bro.

Re:Floppy drives and 25 pin parallel ports

[Anonymous Coward]

No its just the babbling of people that blindly follow and mindlessly parrot whatever apple tells them.

Re:Floppy drives and 25 pin parallel ports

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet the stupid apple users still cheered.

Re:Floppy drives and 25 pin parallel ports

[Bing Tsher E]

They had 25 pin SCSI ports, which people destroyed by hooking up their Centronics printers.

Centronics printer ports were common addon cards for the Apple 2.

Re:Floppy drives and 25 pin parallel ports

[Ol Olsoc]

We should add those back as well.

Why Apple pulls this shit is beyond me - All PC laptops still have serial ports, amirite?

And apparently no PC user has ever used an adapter - not one! Only Apple uses adapters.

Re:Floppy drives and 25 pin parallel ports

[Ol Olsoc]

And composite video.

Booyea! I'm pissed because Apple doesn't have magnetic core memory. Fucking Hipsters anyhow.

Re:Floppy drives and 25 pin parallel ports

[blindseer]

well they'd go well with having a not shit keyboard and ports that most people still use.

People have been predicting Apple would go out of business since 1984. They've survived this long and with much bigger mistakes, they'll be fine.

I remember when apple dropped the floppy drive way back when. Everyone I knew who had a mac bought an external floppy drive because apple mindlessly dropped it before there was actually a replacement.

There was a replacement, CD-RW. A CD-RW drive was standard equipment on all Apple computers of the era except the lowest end iMac desktops. Also at the time I remember floppy disks being notoriously unreliable and too small to store the growing size of files. A floppy drive was fine for text, simple HTML, and such but worthless for people that were wanting to play MP3 files, move PDFs, and so on. At the time there was a lot of competition for floppy replacements and choosing anything as a replacement at the time would most likely result in failure. It was perhaps quite wise to leave the choice to the user to buy as a peripheral.

What competed with floppy? There's the CD-RW I mentioned, it stored a lot but was slow and awkward at first, and still kind of expensive. Zip drives were doing well, at 100MB each, fast, and (IIRC) about $10 per disc. There was the "floptical", a magnetic/optical hybrid that was backward compatible with floppies in that it could read and write floppies in the same drive. There was the MO drive, or magneto-optical, which as I recall worked similarly to the floptical but confusingly came in multiple incompatible sizes/formats. PD, phase-writer dual, which was similar to and somewhat backward compatible with CD-ROM. There was the big brother to Zip, Jazz, a drive that had 1GB, and later on 2GB, cartridges. There was the Mini-disc, which started as a purely audio storage media but moved into data storage. I'm sure I'm missing a few.

Two things were clear at the time, the floppy was essentially already dead as a usable storage media, and what would ultimately replace it was unclear.

Most people I knew got Zip drives. The place I worked at the time used MO. What signaled the end of the floppy to me was coming to work and finding a CD-R in my mailbox with a note that I was to do something with the file on the disc. I don't remember what I was to do with the file only that I was confused to put the CD-R in my computer and find only a single 2MB file. I went to the author of the note to ask if there was supposed to be more than a single 2MB file on a disc that could store 700MB. He told me he tried putting it on a floppy but it wouldn't fit. He thought he might put it on a MO disc but he knew my computer didn't have a MO drive. All else failing he burned it to a CD-R (which were still kind of expensive at the time) for me to work on because he knew all the computers in the department had a CD-ROM drive.

I mentioned CD-RW as the replacement for floppy because hindsight is 20/20. At the time the choices weren't so clear.

Re:Floppy drives and 25 pin parallel ports

[preflex]

A CD-RW drive was standard equipment on all Apple computers of the era except the lowest end iMac desktops.

Bullshit.

My $2,000 Blue & White G3 from May 1999 came with a DVD/CD reader only, and that was an extra hundred bucks over the basic CD drive. I had to spend an extra $250 for a firewire CD burner.

It did have a built-in Zip drive though. What a joke!

BONUS ROUND: The built-in hard disk controller would cause data corruption if anything bigger than a 6GB drive was plugged into it. I had to spend another $100 for a hard disk controller with Mac firmware that wouldn't fuck everything up, when similar parts were about $15 for PC's.

I never bought another Apple ever again, and their hardware has only become more abusive since.

Re:Floppy drives and 25 pin parallel ports

[blindseer]

Bullshit.

Um... okay. Was that necessary? A simple, "I believe you were mistaken" would have sufficed.

My $2,000 Blue & White G3 from May 1999 came with a DVD/CD reader only, and that was an extra hundred bucks over the basic CD drive. I had to spend an extra $250 for a firewire CD burner.

My mistake. I must have missed that. I remember having a debate with my siblings on buying an iMac for Mom. I wanted her to have the iMac with Firewire, a VGA port, and CD-RW, while my siblings thought the cheaper one without VGA or Firewire and only CD-ROM was enough. We were both kind of right. She never had a desire to burn a CD but when the screen went on the blink (bad capacitors were common among all computer makers of the time) there was no way to salvage the machine by hooking up a different display, and without Firewire I couldn't put the machine in target disk mode to copy the files off.

It did have a built-in Zip drive though. What a joke!

Maybe the joke was on me. I found Zip drives quite useful and popular among my co-workers, friends, and family, at the time. That popularity died quickly with the "click of death" in later models.

BONUS ROUND: The built-in hard disk controller would cause data corruption if anything bigger than a 6GB drive was plugged into it. I had to spend another $100 for a hard disk controller with Mac firmware that wouldn't fuck everything up, when similar parts were about $15 for PC's.

I'm not sure how to respond to that.

I did some research on this to refresh my memory and this was a problem on many systems of the era because the IDE/ATA protocol of the time did not support "big" drives. Well, there was a spec for ATA-2 that supported drives larger than 128GB in 1996 but it took a few years for it to be adopted widely. This was not unique to Apple, or to the G3 towers. What you are complaining about is analogous to buying a DVD player with an HDMI1.2 port and then complaining that it didn't support Blu-ray and 4K/HDMI2.0 displays when they came on the market.

I never bought another Apple ever again, and their hardware has only become more abusive since.

Bullshit! Um... I mean I believe you are mistaken.

Nothing Apple made was more abusive to the user than the Performa series of computers. The candy colored computers were quite the improvement over the previous models. The loss of SCSI ports kind of sucked since I had a considerable investment in SCSI devices. Losing ADB meant all kinds of expensive keyboards and Wacom tablets used at work became worthless overnight. Unpacking those G3 systems at work also meant I could retire some Performa systems that gave me headaches everyday. I vaguely recall running into drive size issues at the time but I got around it on the Performas and beige G3 desktops since they had SCSI controllers on the motherboard and I shuffled drives around to put the "big" ATA drives in the G4 systems and salvaged enough "big" SCSI drives from retired Macs to keep everyone happy.

This shuffling things about required some explaining at one point because I retired a Performa instead of an older PowerMac. I had to explain to my boss that the Performa had bad RAM soldered to the motherboard and could not be repaired, that's why it kept crashing. What pieces of shit. That retirement allowed me to salvage it's good RAM on DIMMs, and other parts, then install them in other computers to extend their life a bit. More G3 and less Performa made me and the people I supported much happier.

Re:Floppy drives and 25 pin parallel ports

[serviscope_minor]

People have been predicting Apple would go out of business since 1984. They've survived this long and with much bigger mistakes, they'll be fine.

What on earth has that got to do with this thread? The presence or absence of those predictions won't make my work macbook pro any less crap.

There was a replacement, CD-RW. A CD-RW drive was standard equipment on all Apple computers of the era except the lowest end iMac desktops

No. I was there and you're mistaken.

Firstly, look here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

None of the iMac models before 2001 had CD-RW drives. Not coincidentally, before 2001 was then I encountered these things.

Secondly while the price was rapidly crashing, not only were CR-R drives expensive, CD-Rs themselves weren't cheap. Oh and a lot of machines with old/crappy CD drives which were very common couldn't read CD-RWs and sometimes even CD-Rs. Finally even surmounting those, CD writers weren't that common which means people couldn't give files to you.

And I encountered this in 2000. It was worse in every way in 1998 when Apple first did that.

So yeah the floppy drive was past due for replacement except they were still widely used because of the lack of good alternatives. Zip drives were useless if you needed to send a file to someone without one, which was pretty common with people who didn't routinely deal with large files.

Re:Floppy drives and 25 pin parallel ports

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple II most definitely had parallel ports....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Floppy drives and 25 pin parallel ports

[ilsaloving]

You're implying that people have unreasonable requirements. Nobody is asking for anything unreasonable.

USB are still actively used. Hell, Apple still includes USB3 with their own iPhones for Pete's sake! Apple themselves are literally selling flagship products that cannot be connected to other flagship products Apple sells, unless you buy additional accessories.

HDMI is still an active standard that is being updated. Hell, HDMI will long outlive the next several generations of laptops. I don't know about you but every single projector and television I've seen in the last several years include HDMI. Not one single device supports USB-C/TB3.

Ethernet is still a very important and active standard. There are many situations where wifi is simply not an option, and forcing people to go Wifi only is just dumb.

Other manufacturers don't seem to have even the slightest difficulty including these additional ports in their machines. Apple's refusal to include them boils down to exactly one thing: greed. They know they have their customers over a barrel and they can max out their dongle revenue.

Apple is doing their damndest to make themselves irrelevant to anyone other than the browsing facebook at starbucks crowd.

Re:Floppy drives and 25 pin parallel ports

[Anonymous Coward]

There was the Mini-disc, which started as a purely audio storage media but moved into data storage.

Not on the mass market whatsoever, because of Sony. Different heads of the Sony hydra were biting each other.
This was when most TV shows and movies were using some data Minidisc as a prop and plot device containing the super secret documents of the CIA, launch codes, way to access the satellite, etc.

MacBook Pro mid-2015 here

[AlanObject]

I for one welcome our new USB-C overlords.

Re:MacBook Pro mid-2015 here

[93 Escort Wagon]

I bought a 13" 2015 MBP refurb from Apple last week.

Re:MacBook Pro mid-2015 here

[Tsolias]

more like Dongle overlords

Prices

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool. You should next let me know about MacBooks when they start selling them for $300 so I can treat mine like shit and upgrade every six months.

Re:Prices

[Bing Tsher E]

The Netbook (an Asus Aspire One) that I bought for $300 a few years ago has been upgraded to 8gb of memory and a 1TB hard drive. It isn't fast, but it's light, reliable and generally capable. I guess I probably waited about six months before I upgraded the hard drive.

My only Apple laptop is a Powerbook 165C, which is an okay system, too.

You'll get this 2014 MBP

[barrywalker]

from my dead, cold fucking hands.

When this one dies, if Apple hasn't fixed their fuckup, I'm moving to a System76 Linux laptop.

Re: You'll get this 2014 MBP

[firepoet78]

Exactly what I just did this past weekend. :-(

Re: You'll get this 2014 MBP

[Anonymous Coward]

You killed someone and took their laptop?

Re: You'll get this 2014 MBP

[youngone]

I would be interested in hearing about your System 76 laptop. I have been considering one myself.

Re:You'll get this 2014 MBP

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2013) still works like a champ.

Re: You'll get this 2014 MBP

[firepoet78]

This is the best review of the model I purchased: https://betanews.com/2018/05/0... I havenâ(TM)t received it so I donâ(TM)t quite know how well Iâ(TM)ll like it, but assembly and shipping were pretty fast! And they were quite responsive when I asked how things were going.. ;-)

Re: You'll get this 2014 MBP

[youngone]

Thanks.

Re:You'll get this 2014 MBP

[Anonymous Coward]

Mine's 2015, but in exactly the same boat.
That Oryx Pro looks really nice.

They need to:
-Add back at least one USB-A.
-Make RAM/Storage upgradable.
-Have the option for real function keys.

Before I buy from them again.

Re: You'll get this 2014 MBP

[Anonymous Coward]

2 of my employees' old Windows laptops have just been replaced with System76 Linux laptops. They are both using them for all sorts of stuff with no problems. They're nice, very usable, and much more cost effective than a Mac.

Now if only someone could convince Cook...

[Anonymous Coward]

That Apple needs to make the pMac and vMac real things and through teledildonics and machine learning create a computer that can please you in all ways through the day and long and deep into the night :)

Gettin' that Apple twitch

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. Love the smelll of a freshly opened box of Apple gear!

It gives me that twitch in my manhood, reminds we of when I was a young twink at the our small town library's Wednesday night Apple User Group meeting. I was just a pimple faced kid, but this old gentleman took me under his wing the first night. He took me back to his house after the meeting to show me his stuff. And boy did he show me. I was scared at first, but in true spirit of true Apple camaraderie, he gave me lessons in being gay. Everything from how to walk, how to groom, how to do it of course!

Until that night I didn't know I was gay. But after the first couple meetings of the AUG, I was hooked. Without them I probably would have just evolved into your typical incell gamer nerd. But now I have all the friends I need and more, and I can find them at any Apple Users Group in Anytown, USA!

I wonder why

[ruddk]

I wonder why Tim Cook is so crazy about dongles.

Re:I wonder why

[Iwastheone]

Step One: Profit. There is no Step Two.

Re:I wonder why

[93 Escort Wagon]

I wonder why Tim Cook is so crazy about dongles.

There's a joke there which I am fighting not to make...

Re:I wonder why

[hcs_$reboot]

why Tim Cook is so crazy about dongles.

Cook is convinced Jobs' design genius is limited to having as few ports as possible.

Re:I wonder why

[Bing Tsher E]

Also "as thin as possible" and battery life be damned.

Re:I wonder why

[Anonymous Coward]

"ruddk" already made it.

Re:I wonder why

[antdude]

Well, duh. He's gay. :P

Re: I wonder why

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be a pussy. The correct term on /. is to refer to him as a faggot.

MacBook is becoming a big iPad. The Maxipad

[raymorris]

They way they are going, the MacBook Pro will soon just be a really big iPad. The Max iPad, or Maxipad.

Re:MacBook is becoming a big iPad. The Maxipad

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet women love you

Bought a 2015 last year

[clay_buster]

Mag Safe, a good keyboard, twin video ports and the light up apple logo on the lid. Yeah, I'm shallow. I like the log that I can lay stickers over so that they light up.

Re:Bought a 2015 last year

[Anonymous Coward]

I like the log that I can lay stickers over so that they light up.

I like the log that I drop in the toilet, which is where Apple's USB-C-only plan belongs.

Re:Bought a 2015 last year

[Anonymous Coward]

I like the logo that I can lay stickers over so that they light up.

It is funny how emotional we get to little things.

I won't buy another Mac laptop until sanity comes back to it.

Hail Victory.

[Anonymous Coward]

Darkness is abolished in the presence of TRUTH.

Hail Victory.

Re: Seek & DESTROY - Metallica

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy crap, take your meds.

Re: Seek & DESTROY - Metallica

[Anonymous Coward]

With Jews, you lose

And on the flip side

[sit1963nz]

Apple now has nothing I want to buy.

I have been a Mac user since the 1980's. My 2011MBP has died, I went looking and came away with the realisation that Apple does not produce anything that I would pay for, nothing!

Sorry Apple, I want Ethernet, USB-A, Audio, Thunderbolt 2 as well as 3, I want an SD card reader, I want a real keyboard with no wank bar at the top, I want a Mag-safe connector. I want to be able to upgrade the RAM myself, as well as the SSD storage, I have no intention of paying your "retail + 200%" prices.

I want better battery life, do I care if it will be thicker than last years model...hell no, that would actually be appreciated as the extra weight means it will not feel like its about to flip over on its back

Will it happen, I doubt it. Apple is like a teenager, so bloody busy looking at their small screen they can not see or hear what is happening around them.

So... the next mission is to figure out what a reasonable laptop with Linux on it will be....

And for all the Mac developers I had bought software off over the last 30+ years.... cheers, thanks, but I have to leave now.

Re:And on the flip side

[Anonymous Coward]

You might try the Dell XPS developer edition. I've read nice reviews. I have a Dell laptop at work and I find it pretty good for a PC, checks the boxes I care about.

At home now I have a stack of PC parts on the floor that arrived today (funny oh look there's Apple's hardware refresh announcement ahead of September) to make a new desktop machine. I'm sick of the fan in my 2013 MBP whirring away. If I miss OSX too much there's always old tonymacx86 w/ clover to the rescue and I will still keep my MBP for now. I just see a lot of pros abandoning Apple hardware, and not because they wanted to, because Apple doesn't offer what they want any more.

I also noticed they only updated the MacBook Pros, where's the Mac Pro? Imac, Mac Mini? The Box with user upgradable parts in a giant case that looks like a cheese grater? I'm already running an expensive super micro box for my server. I would have at least considered Apple if they had offered an option. I remember the old XServes were kind of cool. I suppose Form over function is here to stay and Pro gets redefined as iOS in the next few years...

Re:And on the flip side

[vux984]

Yup. This. My 2011 mbp got handed down, and i've got a 2015 mbp now. I miss the ethernet, but its overall been a decent unit.

But im not seeing anything from apple i'd buy as a replacement. Its just useless garbage.

Perhaps ironically, the surface laptop from microsoft is looking pretty good these days; and a number of my peers are getting those now.

I've also had a couple standing offers on my 2015 mbp whenever i let it go; not because these people can't afford a new one, but because they don't want apple's latest nonsense but still want a newer apple than what they have now.

Now, with hyper-v, docker, and microsoft's linux subsystem for windows all becoming very usable, windows10 for all its flaws is just as easy, to run *nix stuff and connect to *nix stuff eroding one of apples big draws for me, and with apple talking about rolling out their own CPU... they're actively running away from where I'm interested in going.

Re:And on the flip side

[Parker Lewis]

I prefer the Precision line, the 15" ones. They are thin, but with upgradable parts.

Re:And on the flip side

[Anonymous Coward]

<AOL>Me Too!</AOL>
My first Apple machine was a Mac LC.
I've the exact same complaints about the current laptops.
On the software front, they keep breaking things.
They like to pretend that iPhoto never existed once they came out with their "Photos" app.
For a while, every version of iMovie required re-learning it (or so it seemed.)
And that's just the first party stuff.
No, developers won't update 10 (or even 5)-year old games to run on current OS/HW; "just upgrade to the latest version" is not the answer to many programs.
There's something about Apple deprecating OpenGL. No one there remembers Quickdraw3D and how it took the industry by storm.

They're trying hard to chase long time users away. I guess I have to oblige.

Re:And on the flip side

[Anonymous Coward]

How often do you plug any of that stuff into your laptop? Rarely do I plug in anything other than a charger/monitor oh and my headphones.

I got a USB-C to USB-A adaptor, but I rarely use it.

My monitor has USB-A, thunderbolt and ethernet plugs on it and also charges the laptop. When I plug into it at work my laptop automatically switches to the hardwired ethernet link and I have my nice keyboard and mouse ready for use.

Get with the times man, or buy a second-hand model that still has the old stuff you like to use.

You are a cow.

[Anonymous Coward]

Cows say moo. MOOOOOOO! MOOOOOOO! Moo cows MOOOOOOO! Moo say the cows. YOU ANTI-SEMITE COW!!

Legacy?

[YuppieScum]

I don't think that word means what you think it means...

Re:Legacy?

[DontBeAMoran]

I was about to post exactly that.

Virtual +1 insightful.

USB-other-than-C is not legacy

[MichaelJ]

In the last year I've bought several new devices with USB connectors. In all cases the computer-end of the included cable was USB-A, and in all but one case (the GoPro) the device end was micro USB-B. These are not only currently shipping products, but one of them is brand-new to the market two months ago. I *might* have considered one of these MacBook Pros to replace my 2012 11" MacBook (an excellent form factor for travel but a lousy screen resolution for FCPX or Lightroom) if they'd gone back to a decent keyboard, but I'm not going to use something where I can't even tell if the keystroke registered or not. And no, I don't want haptic feedback, I want key travel.

Re:USB-other-than-C is not legacy

[sootman]

1. Go to Apple.com or an Apple store.
2. Buy the most expensive MacBook they make.
3. Buy the most expensive iPhone they make.
4. Then buy a $19-$35 cable to connect them.
https://www.apple.com/shop/iph...

Re:USB-other-than-C is not legacy

[DontBeAMoran]

You can still get a 2015 MacBook Pro while there's still some left for sale.