Jony Ive’s vision was killed today

[leman]

10 mm? That is a cm. It is not as bad as that is it?

Sorry, braid fart on my side. Its less then one mm (1.68cm vs 1.6cm on 16")

Can it work at full load with near silent fans

I doubt it, if you really max it out you will probably hear something. But then again they improved the airflow at low RPM and when are you goin to run that computer full speed? It's going to be much cooler and quieter than the previous model.

Apple bragged about the power efficiency and yet they make larger and thicker MBP. Counter intuitive.

They also improved the GPU performance by a factor of at least 3x, so there is also that.

Granted the MBP 2016-2020 was near catastrophic in thermals.

Na, the thermals were fine, better than average at least. The problem was the Intel CPU that would go full load any time you press a key...

 

[leman]

So for me the Magsafe is a somewhat retrograde move, though will only be a major annoyance if they've done something really stupid and removed the ability to charge through USB-C (or if they've done something terminally dumb and returned to chargers with a non-removable cable like the old magsafes used to have, so that you can only use the charger for one purpose and have to replace the whole thing when the plastic sheath around the cable splits - I really hope that bad old way is one we've seen the last of!).

They said you can still use USB-C for charging. When I am in the office I will still plug it into my display...

 

[cupcakes2000]

In fact I won't say that we 'lost' one port because on Intel base Macs, Thunderbolt bandwidth is shared by the ports of the same side. However, on Apple Silicon, we have dedicated bandwidth for each port, so we are having 40Gbps more but not less. If you don't need the fastest port and just need a lot, just buy a Thunderbolt 4 hub with multiple downstream Thunderbolt ports like you are using a USB Hub.

Brilliant. So now we’re back to square one but with a separate portion of users requiring a dock/dongle so the whinging few can plug an sd card or hdmi directly in.

 

[andreasfcb]

As a professional user, I always found that the Macbook Pro became too much of a consumer mass-product, nearly a so-called ultrabook.

If I want portability, I usually don't want performance. In that case, I will go with a product that is as light and slim as possible. The Macbook Air was that product for many years.

But over the course of the last years, the Macbook Air and Macbook Pro became nearly the same product. This made no sense to me.

I conclude that the Macbook Pro finally becomes more professional again. If it is a mm thicker and some grams heavier for more specs and battery life, that is fine.

 

[leman]

As a professional user, I always found that the Macbook Pro became too much of a consumer mass-product, nearly a so-called ultrabook.

The funny thing is that the original MacBook Pro was, in many regards, one of the first ultrabooks. Apple's focus was always to deliver the best possible performance in the most mobile package. For years, they were limited by their technology partners. Now that they have their own chips, they can finally build what the wanted: a machine where you don't have to choose between power and performance.

 

[Gnattu]

you don't have to choose between power and performance

This makes the MacBook Pro extraordinary. There is no PC can be even close to this for now and perhaps for another few years.

 

[EastHillWill]

Right, what’s the performance of the card reader? Can’t find any clear info…

Looks like we have an answer. Per @dcseifert on Twitter:

Apple has confirmed to us that the SD card slot in the new MacBook Pro 14/16 is UHS-II (over 300Mbps). Not as forward looking as UHS-III (over 600Mbps) would be, but thank god it's not UHS-I (about 100Mbps)

 

[leman]

Looks like we have an answer. Per @dcseifert on Twitter:

Apple has confirmed to us that the SD card slot in the new MacBook Pro 14/16 is UHS-II (over 300Mbps). Not as forward looking as UHS-III (over 600Mbps) would be, but thank god it's not UHS-I (about 100Mbps)

That's not too bad, right?

 

[JMacHack]

The future may be wireless one day, but it wasn’t in 2016 and isn’t in 2021.

 

[Fishrrman]

Thread title and premise:
"Jony Ive’s vision was killed today"

 

[theorist9]

A laptop first and foremost usability parameter is to be portable also as a workstation. The thicker and heavier it is the less it will move form your desk and defies the first goal of a laptop. Sure, there are other usability parameters but if you are considering ergonomic solution such as noise look elsewhere - ie desktops. All laptops perform worse than desktop on all usability parameters except portability. Finding the balance between portability and secondary usability parameter is difficult and a matter of opinion.

Fully agree that Ives vision took the MBP (and MP 2013) too far in Intel/AMD era and in reality he was designing for ASi. The M1 pro and Max would work well in a slimmer package. That the poor durability of the butterfly keyboard was not caught in QC is an enigma. Who did decide to let the butterfly keyboard pass? Any evidence it was Ive alone?

Oh, I don't blame Ive at for the QC issue with the butterfly KB's. [Indeed, I explicity said I was ignoring that.] I don't think anticipating that was his role (unless the engineers warned him that this would be a problem, and he ignored them; but there's no way for me to know if that happened). Instead, I blame him for the design/usability failure—not seeing the human factor problem with those KB's, which was that their low travel and hard stop could cause soreness with extended typing, and made them noisy.

Portability is of course important in a laptop but, in a performance-type laptop like the MBP, some portability has to be sacrificed for peformance. The new 16" is only .6 mm thicker, 2 mm wider and deeper, and 100 -200 g heavier (depending on whether you get the Pro or Max) than the Intel 16", so that's not a big difference. If portability is your ultimate goal, there's the MBA. And I disagree that noise is relevant only to desktops. Many who buy MBP's use them as their only machine, which means they have to meet both mobility and desktop replacement roles.

 

[thenewperson]

Hard to believe Jony wasn't involved in the design of these machines.

 

[thenewperson]

Dupe.

 

[theorist9]

Brilliant. So now we’re back to square one but with a separate portion of users requiring a dock/dongle so the whinging few can plug an sd card or hdmi directly in.

The problem is you've set this up in a ridiculously biased and insulting manner, where of course what you want is perfectly fair and reasonable, and corresponds to the overwhelming majority of users, while the opposing position is just a few others "whinging".

I.e., someone could just as well have written that you're the one who is "whinging" about not having a fourth TB port, when a lot more users will likely make use of the HDMI port than would make use of a fourth TB port.

Indeed, the reason we have the current design is partly because Apple created a Pro Workflow Team that carefully queried a diverse group of pros to determine what the majority actually would find most useful.

There's nothing wrong with having a strong, passionate preference one way or the other, and explaining your reasons. That's what we do here on this site. But how about doing it without insulting the other side (especially when that same insult could be even more easily directed back at you)?

 

[jz0309]

I feel we made:
1 step forward with the processor
1 step forward with the display
1 step forward with the "notch"
1 step backwards with SD card & HDMI
1 step backwards with Magsage

But, they will sell like hot potatoes and I am really looking forward to the updated mini and the replacement for the 27 iMac - for me one of those will be my next computer, I am perfectly happy with my M1 MBA

 

[Arsenikdote]

Instead, I blame him for the design/usability failure—not seeing the human factor problem with those KB's, which was that their low travel and hard stop could cause soreness with extended typing, and made them noisy.

I feel like that is not a miss on design. Our company employed people who went into other businesses and collected data. They used the MacBook (RIP) and did remote data entry day in and day out. Not a single complaint, in fact when there was a complaint it was when they had to use the external keyboards when they were back at the office. Also, so you don't think they were "forced" into accepting things, they all had the option of getting the Air as well. It was kind of crazy because I personally loved the keyboards but thought I must just be odd. When the "keyboard gate" happened I polled all of our auditors and they all said they loved the keyboard compared to other laptops they used. Not sure what percentage of people we represent, but to categorically call the keyboard a miss on design seems inaccurate. (failure aside)

 

[ScreenSavers]

Good riddance to Jony Ive’s “vision” if that’s what you want to call the 12” MacBook. As a Pro user, I’m glad to see that the new MacBook Pros are actually returning to being Pro laptops.

 

[Andropov]

Hard to believe Jony wasn't involved in the design of these machines.

Exactly. Specially since they have so many throwbacks to previous Macs designed by Ive (the PowerBooks). I think what happened is that the target audience changed more demanding professionals instead of prosumers. Something that wasn't possible with Intel, due to power consumption and lack of variety in the CPU selection. Having their own SoCs has allowed Apple to truly differentiate their product lines.

There was no way to make a laptop equivalent to the Intel Mac Pro without making a gigantic machine which wouldn't have been very portable. But I think this is it.

 

[theorist9]

I feel like that is not a miss on design. Our company employed people who went into other businesses and collected data. They used the MacBook (RIP) and did remote data entry day in and day out. Not a single complaint, in fact when there was a complaint it was when they had to use the external keyboards when they were back at the office. Also, so you don't think they were "forced" into accepting things, they all had the option of getting the Air as well. It was kind of crazy because I personally loved the keyboards but thought I must just be odd. When the "keyboard gate" happened I polled all of our auditors and they all said they loved the keyboard compared to other laptops they used. Not sure what percentage of people we represent, but to categorically call the keyboard a miss on design seems inaccurate. (failure aside)

Interesting. I personally disliked the KB, but of course I'm just one person. However, nearly all (not all, but nearly all) the reviews I've read of it, across a wide range of publications, agreed with me, so I assumed the feeling was widespread. Further, the difference in loudness was measurable. I can't speak to what your auditors found—maybe they preferred the butterfly to other non-Mac latop keyboards because the latter weren't very good.

The better comparison would be if your auditors were asked how they felt about the butterfly vs. the (2015) MBP KB, since that's the heart of it: When people said they didn't like the butterfly, they weren't saying they liked it less than other mfr's laptop keyboards—they were saying they didn't like it as much as that on the older MBP.

Finally, the Air is a lower-end design, so it's not surprising they picked the MBP (since they weren't paying for it). I.e., they may have been picking the MBP in spite of the KB, not because of it.

Also, I expect there's a general psychological factor here, which is when you're given somethign very nice (an MBP) for free, you might be much more inclined to forgive its faults than if you had to pay for it yourself. If someone gave me an Aston Martin for free whose, say, trunk didn't close as smoothly as I'd like, I'd be much more inclined to forgive that than if I'd paid for it myself!

 

[Arsenikdote]

Also, I expect there's a general psychological factor here, which is when you're given somethign very nice (an MBP) for free, you might be much more inclined to forgive its faults than if you had to pay for it yourself. If someone gave me an Aston Martin for free whose, say, trunk didn't close as smoothly as I'd like, I'd be much more inclined to forgive that than if I'd paid for it myself!

Can I get in on the free Aston Martin as well!!

Actually it was the MacBook vs MacBook Air not the MBP. So they were relatively comparable as we were giving them option of the smaller MB Air or the similar sized MacBook (not pro).

But true, it wasn't a lab test so a lot of factors could have come into play for sure! And I still think we were in the minority, it was just an interesting observation by a group of workers that used them constantly.

Also the volume was actually one thing that people mentioned enjoying about the keyboard. Personally I don't agree but some people like super loud mechanical keyboards that remind me of the 90's So a lot of preferences at play!

 

[triton100]

The new MacBook Pro is thicker, heavier, with a Magsafe, an SD card reader and the biggest one: the HDMI 2.0 (not 2.1). The Touch Bar dream is gone, Giving way for the older function key row.
They also love protrusions, Triple on the iPhone camera and now the feet of the MacBook Pros look way more protruding than the previous version.
And let’s not talk about the unnecessarily wide notch without the face ID.

“ We believe in a wireless future“ said Jony five years ago.
Well the future looks like the past, with more ports and no touchbar. The new Macbook Pro is an updated 2012 MacBook Pro with Retina display rather than an evolution of the 2016 model.
The sleek and elegant chassis is lost.
The epitome of that vision was the 2015 12” inch MacBook, super thin with only one usb-c port. One could argue that it was a visionary device ahead of its time but that the path was indicated. Six years later and today apple killed that vision. Jony Ive is gone and his vision too.
Despite boasting less power hungry processors compared to Intel the device isn’t thinner than the 2016 MacBook Pro.
So long for minimalism. I really hope that this is only for the pro MacBooks and that we will see a super thin 12 inch device with only two USB-Cs.

This is ridiculous. Anyone can come up with a revolutionary and visionary design if they strip out all the important components required that are actually needed by the product in the first place, leaving them a blank canvas to design the thinnest lightest most aesthetic machine they can imagine. But it won’t actually do the job that it’s required to do. Form over function. Thing is form over function doesn’t pay the bills when you need a machine that works as intended. Ives was far from revolutionary. He crippled the machine in favour of design aesthetics. That’s not good design whatsoever.

 

[Hombre53]

"Well the future looks like the past, with more ports and no touchbar. The new Macbook Pro is an updated 2012 MacBook Pro with Retina display rather than an evolution of the 2016 model."

The 2012 15" MBP "Unibody" was the best Apple laptop of all time. Anything closer to that design, function and usability is a step forward.

 

[KPOM]

Fully agree that Ives vision took the MBP (and MP 2013) too far in Intel/AMD era and in reality he was designing for ASi. The M1 pro and Max would work well in a slimmer package. That the poor durability of the butterfly keyboard was not caught in QC is an enigma. Who did decide to let the butterfly keyboard pass? Any evidence it was Ive alone?

Agreed that Jony Ive's designs would work better with Apple Silicon, but it's unusual that Apple isn't taking advantage of those designs now that Apple Silicon is here. The 12" MacBook is a case in point. Give it a "Magic Keyboard" and an M1, and I think it would sell well. The Air proves that the M1 works well without a fan, which the Core M chips did not.

 

[KPOM]

Good riddance to Jony Ive’s “vision” if that’s what you want to call the 12” MacBook. As a Pro user, I’m glad to see that the new MacBook Pros are actually returning to being Pro laptops.

A 12" MacBook with an M1 and a "Magic Keyboard" would be great for frequent travelers. It would be nearly as powerful as the 13" MacBook Pro and a lot lighter.

 

[theorist9]

Agreed that Jony Ive's designs would work better with Apple Silicon, but it's unusual that Apple isn't taking advantage of those designs now that Apple Silicon is here. The 12" MacBook is a case in point. Give it a "Magic Keyboard" and an M1, and I think it would sell well. The Air proves that the M1 works well without a fan, which the Core M chips did not.

They'll probably take more advantage of AS's thermals in the way you mention with the M2 Air, which should have an entirely new case design.

Not sure if they'll also release an ultracompact 12" AS MacBook—though with AS's thermals, and reduced bezels, it is intriguing how slim and light it could be.