Jony Ive was right

[theluggage]

I have noticed the following:
- 13” M2 MBP, will be delivered next day
- 13” M2 MBA will be delivered in 2 weeks.

Well, for starters, orders & shipping for the MBP started a month earlier than for the MBA, so it's had time to pass the initial surge of orders & settled down. Add that to the laundry list of reasons why you can't conclude anything about actual sales figures from that one little factoid.

That said, I don't think anybody here would be particularly staggered if the M2 MBA wasn't outselling the M2 MBP - which is older & worse-specified than the MBA in every department except cooling. It's existence a bit of a puzzler - yes, it hits the spot for some people, which is great, but Apple isn't known for keeping niche products going.

Except... Apple have gone out of their way to keep a 13" MacBook Pro in the low-$1000s price range on their books ever since 2010, even after the MBA became hugely popular. Even in 2012, when the Retina MBPs appeared, they introduced an updated "Classic" 13" MBP which hung around for 4 years (they also updated the 15" classic, but it only lasted a year). That was immediately replaced with the 2016 13" no-touchbar MBP, then the "2 port" 13" MBP, but which always occupied a seemingly narrow niche between the MBA and the "proper" (4-port) MBP. These did, at least, use Intel chips that were also midway between the ultra-low power Air chips and the regular-mobile 4-port MBP - but then along came the M1 where the entire sub-$1999 Mac range was using exactly the same SoC and the MBP kept going, apparently just for the small performance advantage by having a fan... Then the 13" MBP was the first to get the M2...

So, either the 13" MBP knows where Tim Cook buried the bodies, or Apple have some non-obvious reasons for needing a 13" MBP in their lineup. Maybe it's just an inexplicably big seller, possibly attracts a lot of government/education/corporate orders (perhaps it says '13" MacBook Pro' on some list of approved products) or maybe they just want one, fairly conservatively designed, general-purpose laptop always available in case the new shiny develops a reputation for catching fire or something.

I am just saying Apple made a mistake getting rid of Jony Ive.

No, I think the magic happened when Ive and Jobs were working together. When Ive became more senior, paired with Cook (undeniable business credentials, but - unlike Jobs - not really a tech visionary), Apple went to far down the form-over-function - rather than "form-follows-function" - and I suspect (it's only speculation) that it was Jobs keeping Ive grounded.

 

[cupcakes2000]

It's lighter on paper. Any healthy adult will struggle to tell the weight difference between the 14" MBP and the 13" MBA.

Now I am sure there are people who will be able to find significant weight difference between the 14" MBP and 13" MBA, but they have other issues clearly.

Ok then. I think I’m pretty done with this ridiculous conversation 😂

 

[spiderman0616]

So butterfly keyboard was not an engineering disaster, but rather a Design Disaster? What?
Let the forum Blame Jony as much as you want, but the thing is quite a few may have some real thoughts to process, blaming a designer for all failures than engineers, designs are quite tested and ratified by the product management team, so if the PMT found those 2016 devices to be good, well, then, blame actual engineers, designs are tested and if they don't work well, the designs are reviewed, had Jony had obsession of thinness, we wouldn't have seen thicker iPhones since iPhone 8, a larger, quite modular Mac Pro 2019, and also thicker MBP like the ones in 2019 Oct, whose designs as per rumours were confirmed by 2019 Q1, and lastly many say that performance and function over form has increased since Jony left, well I am pretty sure those who bought the Mac Studios are happy with chips than ports, under Jony too we had return of ports on the Mac Pros, and yes Apple still has obsession of thinness, without Jony, the new MacBook Air for Example, without Fan is the thinnest Mac Ever made
Even during Steve era too, we had obsession of thinness, with most products being thinner than their predecessors and also with repetitive mentioning of how thinner the device has become to its predecessor. So that all being said, lastly I just want to say, let us not blame Jony for all such mistakes and blame the actual guys, and I am sure, we all may realise at one point or another that Jony was quite important for what Apple stood for, we are now seeing the loss of design at Apple, which is quite fundamental to Apple

Ive's obsession with thinner thinner thinner at all costs is what led to the butterfly keyboard. A MacBook is like an F1 car. They will do whatever it takes to get that extra millimeter of whatever to make the design more optimized. In this case, Apple overstepped. They chose to alter the primary way people interact with the device in service to the new thinner design.

It didn't go well. The keyboards were bad. The laptops ran hot and loud. Again, the best things to happen to the Mac were Intel and Ive getting their hands off it.

 

[MauiPa]

Play WoW and you will see it thermal throttle. It is pretty easy to thermal throttle these machines.

lets talk about thermal throttling. One word: Dell. There is no way the MBA is even in the same league for thermal throttling. But as articles have pointed out. No one smart who does heavy CPU/GPU intensive tasks would buy a passively cooled laptop in the first place. One of your "see it throttles" videos is throttling when rendering 8k video. I'm sure no one has to explain that to you

 

[Wokis]

Play WoW and you will see it thermal throttle. It is pretty easy to thermal throttle these machines.

Funny I keep playing and playing it and while the powermetrics clearly show that it eventually does throttle, the impact on gameplay is minimal. Those new efficieny cores must be golden.

Of course if one is serious about gaming you'll get a system with a fan, and probably not a mac in the first place.

 

[Bug-Creator]

Let the forum Blame Jony as much as you want, but the thing is quite a few may have some real thoughts to process, blaming a designer for all failures than engineers, designs are quite tested and ratified by the product management team, so if the PMT found those 2016 devices to be good, well, then, blame actual engineers, designs are tested and if they don't work well, the designs are reviewed, had Jony had obsession of thinness,

Everyone that greenlighted those flawed products is to blame.
Jony was a part of the group and not just a background voice everybody else would/could just ignore.

 

[AbhiAchShan]

Ive's obsession with thinner thinner thinner at all costs is what led to the butterfly keyboard. A MacBook is like an F1 car. They will do whatever it takes to get that extra millimeter of whatever to make the design more optimized. In this case, Apple overstepped. They chose to alter the primary way people interact with the device in service to the new thinner design.

It didn't go well. The keyboards were bad. The laptops ran hot and loud. Again, the best things to happen to the Mac were Intel and Ive getting their hands off it.

With the same thinness, we got MacBook Air 2020, same design, but different keyboard, and the good things happening aren't Jony leaving, but rather the Apple's Semiconductor Industry's revolution

 

[spiderman0616]

Funny I keep playing and playing it and while the powermetrics clearly show that it eventually does throttle, the impact on gameplay is minimal. Those new efficieny cores must be golden.

Of course if one is serious about gaming you'll get a system with a fan, and probably not a mac in the first place.

Yep. I did all kinds of gaming on my M1 Air, of course with the understanding that it was not designed for that task, and couldn't believe how well it did. It eventually got pretty warm to the touch, but never seemed to choke on any of my games as far as performance. Of course, there were settings I could turn on/up that would make it start chugging, and that's how I would know I was just simply pushing the machine past where it was designed to go.

A year later I upgraded to an M1 Pro MacBook Pro. All those settings I had to lower or turn off in games on my Air could now be turned on and left on with minimal hit to frame rates. Because this system has a fan and a lot more power and RAM, it can sustain that performance for however long I want to play.

This isn't hard to understand. The Air is for small bursts of activity, the Pro is for sustained activity. It shows in the price, chassis dimensions, features, and marketing. Most consumers have a basic understanding of it. It's YOU that doesn't seem to, OP. Because people have been happily using their MacBook Airs for years and years at this point.

 

[AbhiAchShan]

Everyone that greenlighted those flawed products is to blame.
Jony was a part of the group and not just a background voice everybody else would/could just ignore.

Yes, but that doesn't mean you only blame everything on him, as this forum is doing

 

[spiderman0616]

Yes, but that doesn't mean you only blame everything on him, as this forum is doing

Yes, but the thread title seems to want to blame NOTHING on him.

 

[Bug-Creator]

Yes, but that doesn't mean you only blame everything on him, as this forum is doing

*shrug* he was the most powerful individual at Apple (maybe even more than Steve) and he has as of today not admitted being wrong despite overwhelming evidence.

-> he has it coming

 

[Wizec]

It's lighter on paper. Any healthy adult will struggle to tell the weight difference between the 14" MBP and the 13" MBA.

Now I am sure there are people who will be able to find significant weight difference between the 14" MBP and 13" MBA, but they have other issues clearly.

Any healthy adult that cannot tell that something is nearly a full pound (.8lb) lighter than another item may not be as “healthy” as you posit.

That’s a lot of weight both literally and relatively. 3.5lb is 23% heavier than 2.7lb!

 

[AbhiAchShan]

*shrug* he was the most powerful individual at Apple (maybe even more than Steve) and he has as of today not admitted being wrong despite overwhelming evidence.

-> he has it coming

What's the overwhelming evidence? He doesn't need to apologise for what mistakes weren't committed by him

 

[AbhiAchShan]

Yes, but the thread title seems to want to blame NOTHING on him.

The Thread Title is just I guess Parodying the blame game which is put on him

 

[AlixSPQR]

Play WoW and you will see it thermal throttle. It is pretty easy to thermal throttle these machines.

Mac users generally don’t care about games, so that’s irrelevant.

 

[spiderman0616]

Mac users generally don’t care about games, so that’s irrelevant.

And the ones that DO care about games would not buy an Air.

 

[MayaUser]

Play WoW and you will see it thermal throttle. It is pretty easy to thermal throttle these machines.

For once, what is your logic to bring Jony back when the macs behind Jony were throtteling even more?! So you dont like the new ones because they thermal throttle in WoW but you want Jony design over function to thermal throttle even more ?! so whats your logic? how old are you?
stop trolling...if these M1/M2 Mba thermal throttle in your eyes...its clear you didnt had Intel Mba during Jony Ive era to see REAL thermal throttle and burning devices...even big laptop like 16" Mbp with i9 was a mess

 

[MajorFubar]

Me when people start banging-on about how Macs are crap at games:

(In other surprising news, a Ferrari isn't the best choice of car in which to go buy a week's grocery shopping for a family of four. But guess how many Ferrari owners GAS...)

 

[darngooddesign]

Play WoW and you will see it thermal throttle. It is pretty easy to thermal throttle these machines.

If you are playing graphically intensive games at the highest settings, you're not going to choose a Mac with the least powerful GPU?

 

[MayaUser]

If you are playing graphically intensive games at the highest settings, you're not going to choose a Mac with the least powerful GPU?

i think his logic is the issue here
He wants to bring Jony Ive back for these devices to be even thinner and throttle even more

 

[MayaUser]

The MBA is small and light? I have hold the 14” MBP and 13” M2 MBA in both my hands and I couldn’t tell the difference in weight between the two.

Thats the issue right there...if you cant feel the difference then the issue is on you, not on devices.Physics dont lie
Why people like him are allowed to make posts like these?! Is an insult to our judgement and in our tech knowledge

 

[eltoslightfoot]

But with the 13" M2 MBP can run games without having to worry about it. And it basically weighs the same as the MBA. 160 grams is nothing.

This is absolutely, irrefutably, demonstrably not true. You have to lower settings significantly over a gaming laptop. 100%

 

[MayaUser]

"160 grams is nothing."
i bet if his next phone will weight 160grams more....it will no longer be nothing, it will be too heavy (bring Jony back part II )
iphone 14 pro max to weight an extra 160grams...to be around 400 grams....

 

[BootsWalking]

More people bought iPhone 12's than the smaller and lighter iPhone 12 mini. I guess Jony Ive was wrong.

Or, maybe it has nothing to do with the factors you think it does.

 

[Carlos970]

People that want to game, should go for the MBP rather than the air. However most gamers would not choose a Mac in the first place.

Yes the Air will throttle under load, but it is so fast compared to Intel laptops at a similar price point and size, it's still quicker. In fact the performance of the M2 throttled is generally no worse than the M1 not throttled.

The people that choose the Air are unlikely to be doing a lot of video editing or gaming, and hence the throttling is almost a non issue.

The M2 MBP is using a rather dated design, does not have MagSafe, a slightly smaller screen and huge bezels, it also has the Touch Bar which a lot of users don't like, and will probably be going the way of the dodo on the next redesign.

People that want to game? Im sorry my friend... I'm a gamer here, let me explain:

People always WANT to game... they can play chess in any mac... they can download a few indie crappy low quality rip off game from the apple arcade, that will be sufficient, a task any mac can do regardless the price tag.

IF YOU ARE A GAMER OR YOU WANT TO GAME HARDCORE

let's be clear... I am a mac user since early 90's... I got my first PC, an asus laptop in 2021.
before that i used mac intels running windows over bootcamp. So, this is a non biased answer here for you ppl

Gaming on a Mac is not considered... Gaming on Intel macs, is underperforming due thermal differences in laptops. You can get a close to responsible Gaming experience with a high end graphic iMac, the Pro or the last 27 models, or a MacPro. and that is precisely why is not considered. Ive seen people expending 10k on PC gaming rig... lets be clear, a 10K mac pro wont perfomr even as close to thos type of rigs on gaming grounds... It may do workflows and loads of multimedia content run better and faster, but thats about that, Even if the hardware surpasses of the of the pc it wont perform for gaming as well as the pc counter part. That has to do a lot with the graphic cards integration and multipurpose hardware spec that you get on pc. Macs, they carry on with powerful chips, specially nowadays, but it is targeted hardware, or as one would call it "one trick pony" it will excel like no other computer in the market will, but only for specific tasks that it was designed for.

Today I have a MBP 14 max, the 64gb of ram and 32 graphic cores. I edit a lot of videos a day, they short videos, i can make a 1 minute cut in less that 10 minutes and then export it in even less than 45 seconds, honestly... I think i spent the extra 2k in vain.. i should have got the pro entry level, and still would have enjoyed a more than fair work experience. It is an overkill of a machine. But, I'm waiting for no man's sky to be released for apple silicon, believe it or not, the complexity of that game make it better than cybertrash (cyberpunk) to bench mark test. the SoC work more like processors on tablets and phones than a standard pc, honestly, i think the comparison from the olds x86 against these new ones is a bit odd... is like (and excuse if i offend anyone) lets say im talking with my buddies about ladies, and one of them ask "hey do you prefer asians or europeans" I would clearly said "I would like both of them please" because, euro girls are very pretty, and asians are also very pretty too, the have various differences and i guess thats what make them equally unique, none is better than the other one, just different, like cheese cake and lemon pie.