“Apple’s not a company that backtracks easily. It’s got a lot of pride and a reputation for moving forward,” Jason Snell writes for Macworld. “And yet every so often the company makes a decision that it thinks is right and is ultimately proven to be completely wrong.”
MacDailyNews Take: Cough – notch – cough!
“I’m starting to imagine what Apple might do if it decides that some of the decisions it’s made the past few years regarding Mac laptops might have been… misguided,” Snell writes.
1. One USB-C port on the MacBook
2. The low-travel butterfly keyboard
3. The Touch Bar and Touch ID
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: No.1 is not a mistake. MacBook is a road machine. As with two generations of MacBook Airs before them, we don’t use our MacBook ports for anything but charging as it is. If you want more ports on a portable, Apple offers other options.
No.2 is ripe for improvement and we fully expect that Apple is continuing to work on their physical keyboard designs.
No.3 is up in the air. Touch ID is going the way of the dodo with Face ID (soon) to arrive. The Touch Bar is fine as it is. It doesn’t need a “killer app.” We use the function row far more often with the Touch Bar than with physical keys.
I love the touch bar!
I would love to hear how people would react if an interactive touch bar that can at least potentially do whatever you want in that space on top of whatever buttons can do was proposed to be replaced by a series of mostly dumb keys with set icons on them that are limited in flexibility and are by the overwhelming majority of users barely used. The outcry would be like a scene from Les Misérables.
Really can’t stand the latest MacBook and MB Pro keyboards. Even my old Air has a better feel for typing.
Touchbar should continue. It may not be fully realized, but it has merit.
Keyboards need to be rolled back a few years. Very few had anything but praise for MacBooks back then. Thinness does not trump function of the primary input device on a laptop.
MacBook Adorable is fine with the one port; it IS designed for maximum portability via size and weight limits. A 2nd port would likely end all criticism of this model. MB Pro need more than they currently have +++ the return of Magsafe.
I would add soldered on hard disks. It’s not right that MacBook Pros can no longer have their hard disks upgraded. RAM I get, but hard disks? Sad…
It’s for that very reason that I’m replacing my Air with a MBPro from a couple of years back. Haven’t picked out exactly which one yet but it will be one with a replaceable drive and a better keyboard than they have now.
That would be the mid-2012 MBP which is what I’m using now. It’s my 2nd that I got from eBay. You can change the battery, RAM and hard disk.
It’s sad that I’m still using a 5-year old MBP design when I needed a new one. But none of Apple’s current offerings appeal to me 🙁
The customer is always right, right?
Of course, if you are an Apple fanboy you don’t have a opinion, Tim Cook will give you one.
Kolache! What’s wrong? You’re making a vacuous negative comment… so unlike your usual sunny self.
SJ did a pretty good and above all exceedingly successful job of letting the customer know what they wanted. Whats more once they realised it they were demanding it from the opposition which is why competitors inevitably followed within a few years. Companies usually go bust for giving the customer what they think they want and sticking therefore to the status pro rather than what they will want when they see it in action. So your argument is totally flawed in conflicts with the evidence from about 1998 when Apple took this policy.
Though I would agree that there’s nothing wrong with any of those features per se, it’s equally true that if they reversed course tomorrow I doubt anyone would complain, their utility is far from essential. And yeah – the soldering was and is big slap in the face, as was ditching ports (sorry, MDN, but realistically, most users need more than one, not everyone can afford the latest MBP) and eliminating Magsafe, that was a truly useful feature, it was crazy to drop it.
So if Touch ID goes away does that mean there will be a notch at the top of my next MacBook display? Neato! /s
The laptops started getting worse once they sealed them shut where we cannot replace batteries, replace the HD or add memory.
The Gizmo Bar is not that special and the new Keyboards are awful.
Taking away Mag Safe is stupid.
One USB C port is a joke.
MagSafe was probably the best practical idea ever put on a laptop.
Look botty, when you stick to the topic and refrain from politics, people respect your opinion. Could this first sentence be a turning point for you?
kiss my ass, hypocrite.
99% of the time, my laptop is closed and connected to the magic keyboard with numberic pad, Magic Mouse 2, and two 27” 5K ultrafine LG displays. So none of these are a problem for me. I have 8 extra USB-C ports in total, I never even see the Touchbar, but the new MacBook keyboard is actually my preference over the longer travel I get on the wireless keyboard. I was kind of hoping the new wireless keyboards were built the same way. It would actually be really nice if there were a keyboard that matched the MacBook perfectly including a touchbar along the top.
I agree with you on every point.
The USB-C port on my MacBook is becoming unreliable – I guess wear, over time, makes the connection loose.
And I have always hated the keyboard.
But this has always been The American Way – style over function. American cars always looked great but were space inefficient, didn’t stop well and didn’t like corners or poor roads.
There are many things to like about the Nacbook. But, in truth, it’s faults become harder to live with over time.
You don’t sound like an American, Americans aren’t whiners.
Where have you been? The whining and misdirection comes 140 characters at a time night and day, nonstop.
I must have gone through a black hole in my sleep. However I see delusion is still sat in its armchair smoking a pipe.
The immediately preceding keyboard was better than the current one. It was quieter and less conducive to typos. The only improvement is that the new one is thinner. Who cares?
The trackpad is way too wide. One reviewer returned his; David Pogue taped cardboard over the sides to make it smaller. I tend to have a lot of stray taps, since I actually use it as a laptop, so the wider trackpad means I haven’t bought one.
Could there be an option: normal trackpad, wide trackpad?
Does Apple do user and usability testing any more?
I have the 2016 MacBook. If Apple did nothing but add a second USB-C port to the 2018 MacBook, I’d upgrade… especially if it was on the other side of the case.
On my MacBook Pro, I love being able to plug in on either side.
besides all the good points about keyboard etc from actual users in the above posts, I’ll to point out even from a MARKETING point of view there is confusion:
see the MacBook Air has MORE ports than the Macbook.
Steve Jobs always wanted the product lines to be clear and easily defined, so that customers are not confused.
I believe the original intent was:
— Air , lightest , thinnest , most portable, least expandability.
— Book, mid range
— Pro , executive and ‘truck’.
No wonder the press gets confused , not understanding that if you wanted MORE PORTS you should go to the ‘supposedly lighter’ Air, forcing MDN to keep explaining “If you want more ports on a portable, Apple offers other options.”
Also the high end MBP is now a great executive laptop but the true expandable, upgradable , power GPU, 32 GB ‘TRUCK ‘ is missing.
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if I was sarcastic (and you know Davewrite is NEVER sarcastic — lol) I would say something like : “To actually build correct stuff the SVPs would need to talk to users and sometimes attend MAC centred activities like Mac user groups, mac using small businesses like graphics, audio shops , games and nerd conventions (like drone meets) etc and NOT JUST FASHION SHOWS (like the Apple sponsored Met Gala) , rock concerts etc
They would also treat designers working on Macs almost as good as those designing door handles (one and half years for the Campus door handles according to Reuters). I suspect today you get as much respect designing a funky new Watch band as a new Mac. ”
———-
And for those who think door handles are more important and Macs are dying:
Aug 2017 Quarter Financials:
Mac revenues:$ 5.59 billion
iPad revenues : $4.96 billion
Other Products (Watch, TV, Beats, iPod, AirPods, accessories like Watch Bands etc) : 2.73 billion.
note MACS made like TWICE the other products, Watch, AirPods etc COMBINED.
yet…
NO MAC ADS ? not even cheap web ads, I’m looking at Amazon and a MICROSOFT SURFACE AD RIGHT NOW ON THIS MDN PAGE… !
100% spot on
Serious ommissions that if Apple was a car manufacturer would have seen a massive law suite that would most likely have crippled the company by now.
No Mac osx has built in S.M.A.R.T hard drive detectiion but after 3 errors you drive will run at half speed. If your brakes on your car failed a warning light on the dash would tell you.
There is a kickstart USB-c too Magsafe proving consensus is against Apple designers opinion.
Merging of the IOS and OSX developer teams is short sigted and Apples direction is still minalist but how far do you go? If you take a man and a woman and take away too much eventually you cant replicate and yiu engineer the end of the species..
Spill water on your new Macbook and there is no quick way to get your unbacked up data and the Apple stores Genuises (now word for dumb bums) do not even have OWC encoy cases to put the 2012-2015 m3 ssd into. This happened to an international student with 4 days to go to her final exam, shame Apple, shame on you.
What this world needs is not more automation but more feedback (menumeters) and more teaching and making smarter humans.