“I know that Apple and design guru Jony Ive are obsessed with making products as thin as possible,” Dennis Sellers writes for Apple World Today. “I don’t think they’ll be satisfied until they make Macs, iPads, and iPhones as thin as a sheet of paper.”
“Still, here’s a radical idea,” Sellers writes, “how about focusing that obsession with thinness for the consumer-oriented products and make ‘thicker’ Mac laptops for pro users?”
“Y’know, a laptop that’s ‘fat’ enough to support internal fans to keep things cool,” Sellers writes. “Or let’s get really crazy and imagine the return of the 17-inch MacBook Pro.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: One can always dream.
The law of diminishing returns can also be applied to industrial design. Apple’s eternal quest for thinness eventually runs into issues such as bulging camera assemblies, battery capacity, strength (breakability), etc. – is Apple’s quest for thinness now bordering on the quixotic?
So, is it “you can never be too thin” or is it “thin enough is thin enough?” — MacDailyNews, December 21, 2015
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Hey, Jony: Enough with the thin.
Everything is thin enough. Sometimes too thin. Thinner isn’t the answer to everything, nor is thinness intrinsic to good design. We’d gladly take a bit more robustness and battery life over more unnecessary thinness, thanks. – MacDailyNews, June 25, 2018
SEE ALSO:
Thinner and lighter laptops, a trend driven by Apple, have screwed us all – July 24, 2018
Open thread: What’d be wrong with slightly thicker iPhone with more battery life and a flush camera assembly? – December 21, 2015
As long as Cook & Ive are driving the plans for Macs we won’t see a thicker or more capable MacBook Pro. That is a reality we’ll have to accept. They will keep cranking out MacBook Pro that are almost, but not quite, state of the art just so long as they can make them smaller, lighter, and thinner.
That pair would label the 12″ MacBook a “Pro” machine if they thought they could get away with it.
Forget the mac, how about a thicker iPhone with a bigger battery.
Maybe they should make 2 phones in each category. iPhone and iPhone Thick. Instead of using a case, I’d be more than happy to have a ticker phone I can hold and not drop. I wouldn’t need a case if it was a little thicker, and double the battery life! I’d always choose the iPhone Thick.
No, do BOTH.
Obvious you do not make a living on a Mac …
No, make it SO thin that it’s just a screen but runs for 10 hours. Then, people just buy big ol’ heavy battery cases (weights) for them if they want a heavier phone. Apple could sell “iWeights” up to 5 pounds in half pound increments.
Modular design is done all the time and if done right could allow a MBP to become the “jump up” without massive infrastructure/mfg change on Apple’s part.
A Prime Example: Let the bottom plate of the MBPro be removable and replaceable with one having more battery cells and potentially a plug-in board with more SSD and other capability.
The new “bottom plate” could even have added ports.
It means designing the MacBook Pro with a couple new interconnects, but lets Apple sell the “Upgrade” and power users could really benefit.
There are a lot of ways to fix problems if you are willing to look, not just ahead, but around 360 degrees!
How about a thicker Mac mini that is not called mini anymore, just plain Mac? There is no product called Mac.
Thicker Macbooks and 2 versions of Mac OSX – one simple version that is just eye candy for most people, and a Pro OS X that lets users produce content, tweak the GUI and use software that Jonny doesn’t want us to?
The writer wants “Fans”?!
Yuk 🙁
The only product I want to be thinner is the watch. And that’s the only product that seems ridiculously thick.
thats because Apple wants you to buy fashion statements and ridiculous clunky large watches are fashion statements like skinny jeans, black frame glasses, tall hair that makes guys look like 7th graders with big heads and beards. YOU MUST CONFORM!
“Conform” to flavor of the year liberal fashionistas … NEVER! 😉
The classics are where it is at but it takes years to mature and wean yourself from the yearly treadmill money machine …
Don’t put powerful processors places they can’t be cooled properly! They’re operating so hot they’ll warp the logic board and cause premature failure.
Sadly this is a general industry trend and Apple is hardly the only one doing it.
It seems Apple has a reason for charging $379 for AppleCare for the 15” MBP. That’s 15.8% of the price of the cheapest 15” which I find quite concerning. It must surely be based upon future predictions, which doesn’t bode well. At first, I suspected it was related to keyboard issues and class action lawsuits and perhaps that is true, but I bet the heat issues have a lot to do with it, too. Laptops have always had more expensive AppleCare than their desktop cousins, which is expected. But today’s MBPs have only one moving part – the fan! Something smells a bit fishy…in fact, it smells like burned fish!
I miss my 17” MBPro. The size would be an advantage all the way around. You could put better GPUs, more battery life, fans, Harddrives and more connector ports. A DVD player, a waffle maker, drink dispenser that would cool the system and make it ONE FREAKING INCH THICK! Just give me more power!!! I’m tired of going to my 2015 iMac 5K and it outperforms by leaps and bounds my 2016 MBPro on every pro app I own, which is pretty much all of them. Multiple camera on FCX… I finally bought that stupid freaking eGPU from black magic and I’m a little happier with my 32” BenQ monitor, but still upset that they let the ErgoDesigner (Jonny) touch our ProLine Mobile Apple Hardware. Jump back funky cat… you’re a little outta line where the performance is at. Oh well… I was bored and since I quit Facebook, I had to rant. Love Apple but seriously… seriously. Seriously Jonny.
I second the return of the 17″ MBP. Mine died two weeks ago. Graphics card went kaput. Can’t get it replaced either since it’s soldered.
Third!
“When the aluminum PowerBook G4s were first released in January 2003, 12-inch and 17-inch models were introduced first” — Wiki
Bought mine the first day and it died in May after 15 years of trusty service. Funny thing though, I can still upgrade it today and was given a price by a Mac reseller.
It was thin for its time and much heavier, but it had a DVD drive and all the ports Pros crave and could ever use. No high priced dongle HELL. The keys were rock solid and never failed.
I would buy a 17” Pro model today in a heartbeat if it had the same specs and upgradability. Couldn’t care less about weight or thinness.
Since it’s all about making money with Apple today and Cook and Ive have their heads up there you know what — I don’t expect it to happen, sad …
It’s always been about making money. Apple products were famously always overpriced and underpowered yet they always sold quite well, presumably because of the reality distortion field once wielded by marketing Svengali Steve Jobs. So successful was he at brand building that Apple today is the emblem of personal style and identity, embraced by millennials and their as-yet-unnamed generation of offspring, all of them feeling entitled to an uncomplicated computing experience with gleaming, gossamer etherial devices. It’s a bitter reckoning, to be sure. Give me Soviet-style iron bolted to the floor. Just make sure it runs macOS.
“t’s always been about making money.”
Not like today Apple making money is full throttle greed
mode. Make thinner, less material cost and cooling is a problem. Remove ports, less material costs. Force expensive dongles that one poster pointed under were not ready for over a year …
Maybe I’m more inured to Apple’s outrages than you because I use Microsoft’s products more and tend to see both companies as equally opportunistic. I never bought Apple’s hype any more than I did Microsoft’s; what mattered were the technical specifications and the applications. Yes it sucks when you buy into an ecosystem and they yank the rug out from under you. Both of ’em have done that to me over the years and I don’t like it any better than the next user. However, mounting a crusade to remove the CEO as though it was a political campaign seems like misplaced energy. The CEO is merely a convenient target for our displeasure, and can’t possibly make a difference in the marketplace—which is influenced by factors far beyond the behaviour of individual jackasses. We can’t resurrect Steve Jobs from beyond the grave, and we don’t want to resurrect Steve Ballmer or Bill Gates either. What we need is to drop the activism and face reality squarely.
“ What we need is to drop the activism and face reality squarely.”
NO. What we need is a new CEO and until that time the activism continues. You may not like it, so don’t bother to read it .,,
You can always take it to a reballing shop, they’re probably able to get a new GPU for your Mac and resolder it.
Give it a try,
Forget it, thick and Apple don’t rhyme. It will never, ever happen. Pipe dream.
yeah… I know. but I want them to know the TRUTH!!!! too much FAKE NEWS about people wanting razor blade pro hardware…? !!! with NO ports! GRRRRRrrrrrrr. 17″ MBPro always Trumps smaller stuff; it’s PRO STUFF! It’s the dingleberries that want sleek and nice! I want to be able to grab that laptop by the… wait, what was I talking about?
I agree, I don’t like computers or phones that are too thin, they feel cheaper and more prone to bending or breaking.