“Technology has been on a diet for years now. Whether we’re talking about notebooks, tablets, or smartphones, manufacturers seem convinced that the thinner a thing is, the better,” Mark Coppock writes for Digital Trends. “The question is, what are we giving up when we give up girth?”
“In terms of notebook PCs, the MacBook Air was the first successful model to make thin and light the primary selling point. And that made sense — most notebooks at the time were indeed quite chunky,” Coppock writes. “Today, all but the least expensive notebooks, or most powerful gaming machines and workstations, are thinner and lighter than before the pursuit of thinness took hold. But being thin has taken a toll.”
“Now, we have notebooks that are so thin that they sacrifice functionality. They offer fewer ports, reduced-travel keyboards, and smaller batteries,” Coppock writes. “The best example is the 2016 MacBook Pro, where Apple shaved off a few millimeters from an already thin machine, and in the process shaved off much of its appeal, too.”
MacDailyNews Take: Specious. See:
Phil Schiller: Apple has more orders for MacBook Pro with Touch Bar than for any other professional Mac notebook ever.
“Apple has a reputation for maximizing battery life in its notebooks, but no matter how efficient Apple managed to make the new MacBook Pros, the fact remains – if it hadn’t focused so much on making the new machines thin, then it could have packed larger batteries inside, and perhaps increased battery life over previous models [as opposed to decreasing it],” Coppock writes. “HP wanted to find a way to meet all customer needs or, as [Mike Nash, HP’s Chief Technologist and VP, Customer Experience and Portfolio Strategy] put it, to focus on providing an optimized experience, instead of what the company perceives as the compromised experience. HP decided to increase the machine’s thickness a bit to ensure that the 4K machine would give customers roughly the same battery life as the old model with Full HD screen.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: There’s a lot of rigmarole about legacy ports. That’s not an issue. USB-C is the future and, for the relatively few using dongles today, the dongle-life will quickly come to an end.
What HP, a company hardly worth mentioning anymore, says is pretty much meaningless. With their design chops or lack thereof (“copy the way Apple’s Macs look” is not an admirable design mantra) and lack of profits, HP likely couldn’t even make a decent laptop as thin as the MacBook Pro.
Now, that said, we’ve asked this type of question before — for example, Open thread: What’d be wrong with slightly thicker iPhone with more battery life and a flush camera assembly? — so we’ll ask you again here: Would you prefer a slightly thicker, slightly heavier MacBook Pro if that meant it could deliver longer battery life?
I currently own a MacBook Pro 2016 touch bar with 16 gb ram and 500 gb @ 2.7 ghz.
It is awesome!
The battery life, however, sucks. You’re hearing it from a real owner.
If I do non-pro work like surfing the net or watching s video the battery life is great and lasts a long time.
However, if I actually do real work the way “Pro” users actually are supposed to work on a beefier machine then I get around 2.5 hours from a fully charged machine to a basically dead machine.
This is with the screen turned on at half brightness and all of my other apps other than what I am working on turned off. I am a Logic Pro X user running version 10.3.
I am frustrated because Apple keeps trying to go thinner and thinner to make the laptop look sexy.
Look, I am not opposed to pushing the envelop at all but when I start losing my battery life and get the results I am getting, then I will start to be irritated at Apple.
Apple has been attacked for having lower than normal battery life and rightly so. I would rather have a slightly thicker device with much better battery life than having to carry around a power chord when I go work on music at Starbucks. Apple if I want super thinness, I’ll go buy a iPad Pro but I got the pro laptop to do real work for a pro.
I’m starting to get the feeling that Apple throws a “pro” term on things simply to charge a premium price.
Is it really worth the pro term of the battery life isn’t great anymore?
Well, silly, you’re suppose to leave it plugged in all the time.
“I say, that’s a joke, son.”
Now that’s a funny
Was that First 2004 then 2016?
I have a 2012 MacBook Pro with an i7 that I use a lot without the battery. I found that if you set the display brightness to 100% that it looks great but only lasts for about 3 to 4 hours.
Apple recommends that you set the display brightness down lower for mobile use to get the most computing. Have you considered trying that? You can also turn off BlueTooth for a longer battery life.
The comment I made above mentions I have the screen brightness turned to 50% already and I literally have everything turned off except Logic Pro. No safari, no mail, no nothing. Just Logic Pro so I can maximize battery life.
I still get around 2-2.5 hours before I have about 5% battery life left. I literally have to have it plugged in because if I need to go out after work, I don’t have any juice left.
Doing a lot of the aforementioned ‘pro work’ is going to require having the screen brighter than 50%. We are talking about more than just typing, here. If you have to plug it in to make the most of it, then why would you buy a portable in the first place? Workstations were never intended for the average user, but they are essential for creating what the average user actually uses. Don’t even get me started on trying to do real work of this sort on an iPad.
I have a mid-2012 with a Core I5 with 16 GBs RAM and 500 Gb SSD that I love.
I tried the new MacBook Pro just yesterday and the keyboard would take some getting used to. It typed fine and was very fast with almost no mistakes, but it just felt cheap! I know this doesn’t matter and it may last forever but I wonder how many non-Apple users try one and think the same thing?
Exactly it’s the reason why I were turned mine the battery life is god awful!!
I’ve been thinking about returning mine. The next one might not come out until the second half of the year and I don’t think I can make it that far out.
And lets not forget the bullying that goes with that reduced battery life… The RAM is artificially restricted by Apple to 16 gig instead of 32 since Apple thinks it would have too great an impact on battery life. Screw that, let the end user decide if shorter battery life is a sacrifice worth making to get 32 gig. For me it is. Or would be if given the choice.
The thing is that battery life probably wouldn’t last 2 hours with 32gb of ram in the new macbook pros. Apple doesn’t want THAT bad of a publicity hit.
I gotta ask…what is it about LogicProX…that is in any way, an app that requires being mobile? It’s principally a desktop app by virtue of multi processing many audio effects, synths etc and all in 64bit only mode. My advice…cull all those legacy 32bit plug-ins – they really bog down Logic and swallow gulps of processing power.
My new maxed out new 2016 13″ gets stellar battery life doing Photoshop – far better than my 2012 15″” Pro.
It’s gotta be mobile. I use it on tour. I use it to go to a friends place to record, wether that place is around the block or around the world I carry a studio in my backpack.
While I’ll keep Logic Pro tethered to my audio interface on my desk while recording, it’s nice to be able to plug in some headphones and work on mixing from wherever I happen to be.
quite an instant barrage of up votes ya’ got there, cowboy.
I use my Touchbar MacBook Pro for programming and the battery just drains like there’s no tomorrow. And this is using Apple’s proprietary Xcode. I listen to music on Google Music while writing code so I had to instead listen to music on my iPhone so that it didn’t drain as quickly.
I wish that they would have made a thicker option with a bigger battery.
HP the company for at least a year or so have been boasting about how thin their laptops were and indeed while they could made a big thing of one being the thinnest in the world. Pathetic really and the brown nosing swallow it whole reaction of the writer suggests that a look at his bank balance might be in order.
“Would you prefer a slightly thicker, slightly heavier MacBook Pro if that meant it could deliver longer battery life?”
Of Course!
I am proud to NOT be a hipster who judges everything by how I might look walking down the street carrying the worlds thinnest computer to a coffee shop, on the off chance that Apple might video me for an ad.
After all, its now what you can do, but how you look!
It’s not a thinness issue, it’s a weight issue, and I think a lot of people care quite a lot about weight.
This is the way that some companies operate. They prefer to trash talk their rivals and to try and shape talking points to diminish the market leaders.
When the MacBook Air was initially launched there was similar talk from Apple’s rivals where they tried to ridicule everything from the lack of an optical drive through to the battery being held in with 19 screws. To the surprise of absolutely nobody, those companies rushed to make a me-too ultra book incorporating amazing features such as no optical drive and batteries that contributed to the physical strength of the device.
It would be much more classy to make a product that was better, who’s merits are self-evident and didn’t necessitate you talking down your rivals, but these days that seems to be beyond the capability of HP.
Don’t forget it was HP who got a MacBook Air and used it as a knife to cut some company official’s birthday cake, making fun of the air, while scrambling to copy it.
The difference being that those Apple competitors still built heavier workhorse machines for those that wanted them. Apple gave that market away.
HP! That’s ok, I don’t plan on buying any HP stuff anymore anyway. 😊
We will see the new Mac Pro as soon as they can slim it another 4mm and carve an additional 6oz from the body.
And the 2017 Mac Pro will probably also ensure the use of even more dongles and cables to make it an even more unsightly cord-infested mess than it is now. All in the name of Ivesian “progress”!
Oh let’s not forget to lock down the video cards with AMD so those who want Nvidia and CUDA acceleration are DEE-NIED!
The 2017 Mac Pro is gonna be so thin that you won’t see it coming from Apple.
Just different design philosophies. Fortunately, consumers can make the decisions on which they prefer.
USB-C is cool. I like it, a lot. However, it is not quite mainstream yet. At this time, I cannot find any USB-C rev. 2 (10 Gbps) flash drives. Only rev.1 which is USB 3.0 speeds (5Gbps), manufacturers need to get on the ball and get this stuff out there. Pronto!
In my experience, USB 3.1 gen 1 devices perform a little bit faster when connected to a USB 3.1 port than a 3.0 port. The difference is small but it’s definitely there. I confirmed it with multiple benchmark runs.
Agreed. Hopefully this year sometime we will see Rev.2 devices.
Back in the day, my brother brought home a 17″ HP laptop that his employer gave him. The brick weighed 11 pounds! And, the battery lasted about 30 mins, since it had one of those 3Ghz CPUs that could heat a house. After I showed him my 17″ Apple, at 6 lbs, he never brought that HP shoulder breaker home again. Now, he carries an iPhone 6+, and doesn’t bring a laptop.
“Whereas Apple alienated a significant percentage of its otherwise loyal user base by sacrificing function for form, HP went in the opposite direction. It recognized that people want a nice-looking machine that’s relatively thin and light, but they don’t want to give up functionality to get it.”
I prefer a camera flush with the skin of the body.
Having something stick out from the body seems like a mistake, as though they designed the phone and then when it was too late they realized the camera lens was going to stick out from the body and there wasn’t anything they could do to fix it.
The phone should be one smooth object front and back, with nothing protruding.
“Phil Schiller: Apple has more orders for MacBook Pro with Touch Bar than for any other professional Mac notebook ever.”
And when you ignore a piece of hardware and get some built up demand, that will happen. That does not mean it is the ideal system, only that it is newer, offers new tech, and a new warranty, etc. I bet a overhaul of the Mac Pro or iMac or…. would have the same effect.
I bet that 90% of “Pro” users would prefer a thicker more capable system. Leave the skinny laptop with the tiny battery for the “Air” crowd. Give the Pro’s more/better/bigger/faster ports, processors, drives, RAM, batteries, etc…. They need to get stuff done.
You can never be too rich or too thin!
HP is innovating in HW while Apple busies itself with Watch Bands, Rental Rap (Apple Music), Dongle Fever (no ports or connections) and ever skinnier products that cost more and do less with each succeeding generation.
I agree, our company recently bought some awesome HP zBooks. The things are fast, get awesome battery life, have plenty of ports both HDMI and USB-C included, and excellent video chipsets. I think Apple has lost its way with regards to the Mac. There’s probably a whole ton of people who really just want macOS on superior hardware.
in our sector of industry, mac is the tool of choice.
however we are steering incoming users away from the new one, and telling them to get the last years model if they want it to work well with the software we use.
sad but true.
we will not be mass updating to the new macbook pros across our fleet.
VGA all the way! All Apple laptops should support it.
I would love a workstation class machine that had all of that great, Apple industrial design it was a bit thicker and heavier to accommodate the beefier processor and GPU, RAM, and battery to support it all. At the top-end, pep market, performance trumps weight and girth.
Yes!
Let me explain this website talks so much fucking propaganda I’m a Mac on her but get your head out of your ass Mac daily news. Apple absolutely sacrifice function for form and I totally disagree with that concept Regardless people use FireWire ports people use USB ports to the three still there is no way in fuck that anybody spending $2400 on a fucking laptop should have to buy dongle adapters that is a load of bullshit Also they should also be allowed to have access to the innards of their iMac at least to clean out the fan from dust accumulation and yes it does happen as I’ve been into my own even in a low dust environment. I’ve seen this in many devices not only apples and that’s why you should be able to lease clean your fan and blow out the dust stuck in the systems without avoiding your warranty. I am not a fan of windows but I call it as I see it they should give you more bang for your buck when it comes to what you invest in with apple give you a more robust graphics card for laptops and desktops and match some of the other specs to give you a system that will last longer
I really don’t get this functon over form argument. I have the 15” 2016 MacBook Pro and I don’t feel like I’m sacrificing anything. It’s better in every way than my mid 2012 MacBook Pro. It runs FCP X, Logic Pro X, Motion, Photoshop and Audition better than the 2012 machine. Is it a Mac Pro? No, it’s not. It’s a sacrifice I took when I sold my 2013 Mac Pro and bought this. As far as it being a sacrifice against some HP machine? Give me a break.
“Would you prefer a slightly thicker, slightly heavier MacBook Pro if that meant it could deliver longer battery life?”
Yes.
I love my new 15″ MacBook Pro with Touch Bar but I would love it even more if it had a bigger battery and even more then that if it had 32GB of RAM. That being said, I find it sad to read that people returned these due to these small issues.
This is a great machine. I develop database and do large amounts of 2D graphics. I have to run Parallels Desktop often due to the nature of my business. This machine handles all of the Adobe apps, Filemaker Pro and Parallels like a champ, but I would love that bigger battery.
Not all Pros run Logic.