Steve Jobs is like Willy Wonka from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Tim Cook is like a salesman who is trying to get kids to pay 50% more for same candy.
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New MBP—and Everything Else—is Threatening My Apple Purchasing Habits
- Thread starter BWhaler
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Steve Jobs is like Willy Wonka from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Tim Cook is like a salesman who is trying to get kids to pay 50% more for same candy.
This is what I'm looking forward to the most with USB-C. Here at work, I've discovered the convenience of a docking station -- although the laptop is a work-issued Dell Latitude (which itself is thicker than my MBP and my wife's MBA stacked on top of each other) and it drops onto a docking station which is the size of a "ultra-portable" printer.
An aside on the Mac Pro desktop --
I skimmed through a couple recent barefeats.com comparisons pitting the top-spec 2016 15" MBP against the current 5K iMac and a not-quite-spec'd-out 2013 Mac Pro. The ol' trashcan is still, by some benchmarks, the fastest Mac produced today. It needs a big update -- TB3, USB-C, SSD speed, etc., on top of any potential CPU/GPU upgrades -- but I'm surprised that it's still got some life in it. Let's hope it gets updated later this year (and, being the only made-in-the-USA Mac, it'd make for a good show).
A lot of seeming conflicts arise from not differentiating the models. The most complaints are about the 13" TB. The 13" nTB and 15" aren't getting so many complaints, and professional reviews have been backing Apple's claims about them. There are also a lot of complaints based on faulty measurements, or even just seeing what others have said.
That said, there do seem to be legitimate problems with the battery life in some cases, especially with the 13" TB. Some of them resolve with adjustments to software or use, some don't.
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Ha, not all Apple Store employees are geniuses! The 15 gets good reviews and good battery life according to the professional reviews and my own experience.
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There is a fork of gfxCardStatus, version 2.4.3i. It works OK on my system.
You get a notification when the system switches between discrete and integrated graphics. You can also force the system to integrated graphics instead of discrete. Recommended!
You make no sense to me at all. If your conclusion is that Apple is advising people that their MBPs are having battery issues, keep on believing that.
To everyone else who want to listen: it's fine. The battery life on my 15" is solid and is so for a lot of people.
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Thanks for the info!
Apple has changed. Computers are only 10% of its business. But this doesn't mean you can't buy exactly what you need. Used MBP's have jumped in price when the new super thin 2016 came out, but you can still buy a later 2016 15 inch that will beat the late 2016 in CPU tasks, have all the ports, 16 gb RAM and a 256gb SSD for $1600 from PowerMax.
Your battery isn't what you want? For an accessory the size of a portable drive, and $154 you can have a back up battery giving you an additional 10 hours or more of time. Your internal SSD is less than you want? For $299 you can install a TarDisk that fits in your SDXC socket that gives you 256gb more and interacts seamlessly with your internal drive(or if you don't need seamless, then $144 for another 256gb at 90mb/s transfer). You always wanted to be a gamer or run high power rendering, but don't want a giant Mac pro. Get a Bizon or Wolf external graphic card that is 9 -12 time faster that the fastest internal graphics Apple ever ever put in a laptop or even an iMac.
So many accessories will make your late model MBP blow away the current models that its a waste of time to be complaining. And who in their right minds wants to use Windows 10(or Linux---as I have all three on different machines right now) when they could use El Capitan or Sierra?
Your battery isn't what you want? For an accessory the size of a portable drive, and $154 you can have a back up battery giving you an additional 10 hours or more of time. Your internal SSD is less than you want? For $299 you can install a TarDisk that fits in your SDXC socket that gives you 256gb more and interacts seamlessly with your internal drive(or if you don't need seamless, then $144 for another 256gb at 90mb/s transfer). You always wanted to be a gamer or run high power rendering, but don't want a giant Mac pro. Get a Bizon or Wolf external graphic card that is 9 -12 time faster that the fastest internal graphics Apple ever ever put in a laptop or even an iMac.
So many accessories will make your late model MBP blow away the current models that its a waste of time to be complaining. And who in their right minds wants to use Windows 10(or Linux---as I have all three on different machines right now) when they could use El Capitan or Sierra?
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50% more every year, for the same candy.
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I agree. Windows is a mess and I much prefer MacOS. But I do think they're trying to change that. The Surface Studio is a great product, in my opinion. Microsoft are doing some good stuff, Amazon are also doing good stuff particular with Alexa - which is a great product.
Can't remember the last time I saw Apple announce a great product.
Facts don't enter into this kind of stuff much, but in fact the base 2016 15" is $100 less than the similarly spec'd 2015 model was when it was released. And it's plainly better in a dozen ways.
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October 2016.
2015 MacBook Pro 15" that sold for $2499 had 512 GB SSD, not 256 GB and you have to remember that cost of technology goes down over time and not up.
I also remember a time when a MacBook Pro 15" only costs $1799.
LMAO
Oops, you're right. So the price has gone up by $100. How does that compare to "50% more"? Again, obviously improved in many ways as well.
Best MBP so far, of course. If any MBP has been great, this one is. Not a close call either.
I'm curious as to why people say this. What do you think has been missing since Steve passed? Don't you think his role in the company was likely exaggerated anyway? I mean there are presumably a lot of smart people at Apple. To give one guy most of the credit seems like a reach.
And you'd be wrong. Apple have released nothing great since Jobs died. They're all just sub par 'good' products.
So clearly better is worse, and sub-par is good. Got it.
There are bad products, good products and great products. Great products were the first iPhone, the first iPad. Good products are everything Apple have released since Jobs died. Because they've not put enough effort into anything they're doing because they're complacent. Apple make money now, not technology. Stop affording them every pardon, they need to pull their thumbs out.
True, but the story is a bit more complicated. First, the entry-level 15" MBP has traditionally costed $1999. In 2010, Apple indeed reduced the price to $1799, which was then raised again for the retina models. However, it becomes really interesting when we look at the component prices. One this is that Intel has massively raised CPU prices in that time. For instance, the i5-520 in the first $1799 model was $225. The i5-3615QM in the first retina MBP was $378 — a whopping $123 increase. Add to it a high-end SSD and display (for the time) and the price increase is not that unreasonable. Things are getting worse after it though — the base Haswell in the later MBP models was $440 — that is a flat $200 increase over the CPU prices of the 2010 model. Its actually quite interesting the Apple managed to go back to the 'original' $1999 pricing at that point, I guess that cutting the dGPU was one of the deciding factors here.
As to the current prices: the base Skylake in the 2016 15" model is $378 (so $62), but the base model now includes a dGPU as well as the new manufacturing process/display/touchbar etc. As these become more cost-efficient, I'd expect the base price to fall down to $2199. The historical $1999 seems unlikely, unless suppliers like Intel dramatically cut their prices.
Bottomline: its easy to accuse Apple and Cook of money-grabbing and whatnot, but as usual, if one looks at the factors more precisely, one can always find rational reasons for most things. Of course, nobody would argue agains the facts that Apple has unnaturally high margins — but then again, that was always Apple's thing. The fact is though, the final prices of their products do reflect fluctuations in the component market. An alternative would be for them to abandon their high margins, but that is a very different topic.
And then again, I think its very strange that you of all people are criticising Apple's prices. I mean, didn't you have very favourable opinions of the Microsoft Surface line, which offers a dual-core laptop with the prices that rival those of the 15" MBP as well as an AIO with a mobile CPU and a $100 HDD for over $2,999?
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I didn't know Jobs personally, but I'd bet that the new MBP would be his dream laptop. A powerful, super-mobile laptop with universal ports capable of insane transfer speeds. Its a culmination of the laptop vision that Apple has been pursuing for at least a decade. I admit that I was quite worried about the future of Apple under Cook&co, but the 2016 MBP has put me at ease. Apple is still what it was (even though they are facing some internal struggle which they should figure out ASAP) and its vision hasn't changed a bit.
It is not my conclusion, it is the experience of someone in this thread. I'm sorry that doesn't make sense to you, and am glad your MBP is fine.
Working on an a really ugly version of an iMac with a touchscreen that is useful for a very small segment of the market, and i know i don't want a touch screen desktop! A premium notebook that left users with constant power management issues throughout 2016 (which you would see constantly talked about every weak practically at thurrott.com) with what has got to be one of the most ugly laptop hinges ever seen.
Meanwhile Apple has been getting their products ready for the future, putting USB C on their devices, coming up with useful things like being able to copy and paste between your iPhone, Mac and iPad while Microsoft is still trying to copy them by creating premium end hardware, and yet in 2016/17 they are shipping them without a USB C port. So Microsoft will have to be busy again playing catchup by putting USB C ports on in the future, and its was only 6 months ago they stopped alienating their customers by ramming Windows 10 down Windows 7 and 8 users throats like foie gras. But its ok they have decided to start putting Ads in Windows now which i'm sure will be popular.
I could then maybe look a Microsoft OneDrive and see what work they have been doing there, or not, another example of a stinking pile of **** from Microsoft and anyone who has had to deploy OneDrive for Business will know what a mess it is.
So it really depends what spin you put on things when it comes to what Microsoft has been working on.
User hostile? Now I'm really curious. How is it user hostile? Its the most user-friendly and flexible computer I have ever used!
1. I didn't said that the price increased 50% in a year. Rather, I was pointing out the creeping up of prices. Nice deflection attempt though.
2. Do you know what's better then the 2016 MBP? The one that came right before it.
CEOs may not have their hands in every product, but they very much set the culture of the company.
With Steve Jobs, it was about making the most innovative products.
With Tim Cook, it was about making the most money.
It is a good product, but it hasn't become substantially better in years.
First, when making historical comparisons, I tend to start with the 2011 model. These comes with Intel Sandy Bridge processors which are considered to be relatively modern. So looking at the processors for the 15" MacBook Pro:
Intel Core i7-2635QM/i7-2675QM (2011): N/A
Intel Core i7-3615QM (2012): $378
Intel Core i7-3630QM/i7-4750QM (2013): $378/$434
Intel Core i7-4770HQ (2014): $434
Intel Core i7-4770HQ (2015): $434
Intel Core i7-4770HQ (2015): $434
Intel Core i7-6700HQ (2016): $378
The only substancial increase in price was when Apple move to Intel Processors that has integrated Iris Pro graphics, but as a result, Apple was able to get rid of the dGPU, negating the cost.
Most OEMs also pay substantially lower then the suggested prices.
Retina display and SSD did add to the cost, but there's a problem with your argument: technology gets cheaper over time.
SSDs now cost less than 1/6 of what it did in 2012, yet Apple hasn't increase the SSD capacity of its laptops by six folds.
Price of the Retina display has similarly gone down in price.
As you have mentioned, I have favorable of the Microsoft Surface, but that's not because of the price (which is horrible), but rather, because of the innovations that it brings.
So a huge PC display with DCI-P3 color space, 4.5K resolution, pen and touch doesn't excite you, but USB-C and universal copy and paste do?
Had Apple released the Surface Studio, you would be saying how innovative and futuristic it is.
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You can't plug any of the stuff you'd usually plug in without a bunch of expensive adapters and docks?
I connect all my peripherals + charger via a single port nowadays. The dock costed somewhere around $80-$90. I can't really imagine anything more user friendly then that — the next step is full wireless (inclusive power delivery). And as far as expensive adapters go... almost every iteration of Apple laptops came with some sort of proprietary video out connector. Now at least they use industry-standard port. USB-A has been around for almost two decades, probably longer than any other port in the history. Its finally time to let it rest and move on to something better.
Your description of 'user-hostile' is akin to calling fuel injection user-hostile (as some people still due) because it prevents the user from doing their own car maintenance. Kind of forgetting that it also gives them better fuel efficiency and cleaner engines.
If that is so you must have had some crappy computers.
So the points in favor for Microsoft is a $3000 tablet that is using a spinning hard drive (as well as similar last gen processors that Apple got criticized for using in the new MBP) and a laptop that has had more QC issues than the significant amount we've seen from the new MBP?
I'm not saying be a blind loyalist to Apple if you feel there are better options. But if we're going to call out one side for the corners they felt like they had to cut to get a product to market we can't overlook it when the competition does the same.
It's crazy to think a company will be at the top forever. Source: look at every single company that's been at the top. With that said, unless you got a defective MBP, the machine is a beauty.