New Macbook Pro
I’ve been patiently awaiting the Macbook Pro refresh to replace a dying 2013 MBP (laptops don’t like coffee, who knew?).
This wait was somewhat of a let down when I saw the rumours and leaks. I hoped they were wrong. They weren’t and it was worse than I expected.
Apple have decided in the 2016 MBP refresh to do away with all ports except for four USB-C and a headphone socket.
Gone are thunderbolt2, traditional USB2/3, HDMI output, SD card slot and the Magsafe power connector.
Like many people, I find change hard but I also accept that things do need to change or you can never make progress and move forward. USB-C does indeed have some nice benefits in terms of throughput and functionality.
For my usage I mostly need the ethernet port (occasionally), the SD card slot for photography and USB2/3 ports for thumb drives, time machine backups and Lightroom camera tethering.
So what are my options to continue with this functionality?
I already have an Apple thunderbolt2 ethernet adapter but this is now physically incompatible. There is an Apple TB2 to USB-C adapter if I want to stump up a hefty £50 but it’s actually cheaper to discard(!) my existing adapter and buy a new USB-C adapter for £30 or so.
A pair of Apple USB2/3 to USB-C adapters are £40 or a USB-C hub is around £30.
A USB-C SD card reader is another £20 or so.
So, to get me back to where I was, I’m looking at somewhere between £50 and £100 in adapters, dongles or hubs.
For me this is not too bad I guess, but what if I was one of those people who wanted HDMI output, the Apple adapter to provide HDMI output is £70.
What about if I had an expensive TB2 storage device, or I had some legacy Firewire device, I’d still be looking at £50 for that TB2 adapter.
Ideally what I want is an all in one hub and SD card reader, perhaps with ethernet too, but that just doesn’t seem to exist as USB-C is still so new.
The new style of all-in-one docks are quite a good solution if you are taking your laptop to an office every day, and want to plug in one cable to connect up all of this but they are again a bit pricey, bulky for mobile usage, often want a PSU and I’m not sure there is one yet that offers all of this including SD card reader.
Now you may type into web searches and find plenty of USB-C kit around, but as I have increasingly found a lot of the non-brand stuff is just too often a load of cheap crap and seemingly even has potential to kill your gear.
http://gizmodo.com/cheap-usb-c-cables-could-kill-your-phone-or-laptop-1757115350
As personal examples, the last time I bought a cheap USB2 hub off eBay it lasted a few months before it broke, randomly disconnecting devices any time some i/o happened on another port. Some time back I bought a no brand USB2 to IDE+SATA adapter, for quickly connecting up hard drives for extracting data, and it worked well. Until that is the time that I needed to extract a large amount of data, it was slow, very very s-l-o-w, so much that I had to eventually give up and plug it into an actual IDE interface.
So the branded stuff really is essential if you want it to actually work and work well, never mind emitting magic smoke from your new laptop.
Update: Apple say that this is the best selling MBP ever. At the same time there has been so much negative reception to the whole dongle issue that they have temporarily reduced the price on all their adapters!
What is going on at Apple?
Apple has always been about aesthetics, usability and user experience. Or to put it another way, Apple products have been nice to look at, nice to touch, intuitive to use and functional. These were all a big part of the influence of Steve Jobs.
Since Steve Jobs passed away Apple has gradually lost sight of these core values, sometimes in small ways and sometimes in bigger ways.
You could argue that the sticky out camera bulge on the iPhone6/6+ and 7/7+ is cosmetic but Steve Jobs would have been a stickler for that. As to the Apple add on battery pack case I think he would have picked that up and thrown it at whoever came up with that idea. Not only does it look the most horrible undesigned product in the new Apple era it’s also a messaging problem that admits that mobile battery stamina is really not good enough yet. That would never have seen the light of day under Jobs. The new iOS7 redesign is nice and up to date, but there are some aspects of it that are really unintuitive and you can see hacks that have been added in such as the small ‘< Back to [app]’ that appeas in the menu bar. Again, some of this wouldn’t have happened under the attention to detail of Jobs.
Back to the MBP, it’s an advance, new CPU,RAM,SSD and the Touch Bar is actually a really nice innovation. But this is where Apple have actually gone wrong, they are now so focused on innovation (after too much harsh critique on lack of innovation) that they have completely forgotten about user experience and functionality. They’ve advanced so much that they’ve pushed USB-C through before the market and userbase are ready.
The new MBP requires me to buy a whole load of add-on adapters to enable me to do the basic work I want to do. That’s right, the first thing I need to do to enable me to use my new Apple product is buy more product, some of it even third party, this is totally utterly brain dead and not the Apple way.
This is bad from not just a cost perspective, but more importantly from a user experience point of view it means that when you sit down with your laptop the first thing you need to do is reach in to your bag and pull out some more gear, and that’s providing you’re remembered to put it in your bag.
Not only that but the aesthetics of it are ugly with lots of dongles and hubs sprawling all over your desk (remember why the iMac is an all in one desktop? to eliminate the rats nest of cables and mess..).
As if to compound this lack of consideration to functionality, Apple don’t even have new adapters yet for some things, it’s been 18 months since the new 12″ Macbook was released with a sole USB-C port but there isn’t a new Apple ethernet adapter with USB-C connector, only third party offerings, it’s almost as if they don’t care.
At the keynote Apple said they had made the new MBP thinner and with a smaller footprint, totally missing the point that this is why the Macbook Air was created.
The Pro is meant to provide a range of functionality for professionals (hence the name) — such as being able to pop an SD card straight in, or plugging an HDMI screen right in. Apple have gone for thinner or smaller instead of retaining the SD card slot and a couple of USB2/3 ports that professionals need.
We’ve also gone backwards with the loss of the Magsafe connector, a really great innovation that has saved many many power cable trips from destroying laptops.
Lastly, and this is the most visible representation of the loss of vision at Apple — if you buy the latest apple iPhone handset, out of the box you can’t plug it into the latest Apple Macbook Pro because there are no USB2/3 ports.
The Brexit effect
One last niggle, the worse than I expected bit, but I can’t blame Apple for this, the new MBPs have all suffered a hefty price rise. Brexit has knocked the exchange rates quite hard and Apple have had to adjust all their pricing. This issue is then compounded further when you have to buy a load of expensive adapters on top.
Conclusion
I’ve had discussions about this in my friend circles on Facebook and there were many photographers who were very dismayed with the new model, for all the reasons I have cited. I think the new MBP will suffer sales from anyone wants a mobile laptop with connectivity.
Apple really need to hire a new Jobs, not a new CEO but a new stickler, a new pain in the arse, a new user experience and usability authoritarian who goes around making sure that their products don’t ship like this. Sadly, I can’t see this happening and I see Apple slipping further and further away from where they once were.
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