[HN Gopher] New MacBook Pro has first 'DIY-friendly' battery rep... ___________________________________________________________________ New MacBook Pro has first 'DIY-friendly' battery replacement design since 2012 Author : tailspin2019 Score : 346 points Date : 2021-10-27 15:32 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.ifixit.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.ifixit.com) | JohnWhigham wrote: | Really sucks to see how awesome the new MBP is. It's too bad the | CSAM scandal had to happen; never buying another Apple product | again because of that shit. | ajvs wrote: | And heaer I thought I was the only person who just can't get | enthused about their new MacBooks, knowing that CSAM could just | get added at any point in the future without my consent. | aunty_helen wrote: | Stockholm syndrome doesn't look like Stockholm syndrome. | | Everyone cheering apple on for making the laptop they should have | made in 2016. Wow! No Touch Bar it's so much better. | | Semi replaceable batteries! How great. The funny thing is, if | they had dropped the ports on this generation instead of the | last, less people would have cared. | destitude wrote: | I still remember when you didn't even have to open up the "MBP" | and could replace the battery directly from the bottom. Even had | green led indicator to show how much charge it had directly on | the battery case. | irae wrote: | Maybe you also remember batteries wore terrible, especially | durability. It was quite common to see people replacing | batteries on less than 1 year old laptops. Nowadays batteries | easily endure 2 to 5 years without becoming useless. Sure, | there are still memory issues and reducing total time over the | years. But replacement is required way less often. | pengaru wrote: | lipo pouch batteries are not durable, they swell up and | deform housings quite often... all it takes is heat. | r00fus wrote: | Man, I wish they would go back to having battery indicator on | the case again. Truly miss that as I don't want to wake it just | to find out if I need to seek a plug. | hwbehrens wrote: | Wow, I totally forgot about that period. I recall that I used | to plug in my laptop when I arrived at my desk, then _remove | the battery_ to ensure that it was running exclusively on wall | power in an effort to improve battery health. I never did have | to replace that battery... | latortuga wrote: | Was this MBP era or iBook/PowerBook era? I seem to recall this | being the case on the old Titanium Powerbooks in the early 00s. | | Remember the glowing light near the laptop latch that would | slowly swell to tell you that your laptop was asleep? | lostgame wrote: | There was a MacBook Pro era - even a couple Unibody revisions | - that kept the easy user replaceable battery intact. | | The Unibody had this lovely latch mechanism that also allowed | you to easily replace your hard drive and/or RAM. | | God, I miss those days. :( | r00fus wrote: | Yup my beautiful 2008 "ALU" MBP had this. Was very sleek. | lostgame wrote: | Those were the days. I remember replacing the battery on my | iBook G4 when it died. :) | usui wrote: | Ease of being able to replace the battery has never been the | reason stopping me from upgrading from a 2015 MacBook Pro. Anyone | with the the intent of replacing a battery today will be able to | make it after buying some readily available tools. | | What I need is the ability to swap out my SSD in the laptop, | either for data retrieval, backing up, or upgrades. Unfortunately | good removeable storage seems to be a thing of the past. I say | "good" because I don't want to boot the newest MBP off a slow SD | card. | major505 wrote: | Well, this is great. Because, while I don`t like to admit they | launch a lot of trends that other manufactures tend to follow. | Hope they go the same way. | throwawaymanbot wrote: | replaceable battery and permanent surveillance ? | [deleted] | busymom0 wrote: | > We removed the trackpad and, lo and behold, there are cut-outs | to access the pull tabs that hold the middle battery cells in | place. | | That's not exactly what I was expecting based on the headline. | Still seems pretty complicated. | webmobdev wrote: | Thank you, frame.work - https://frame.work/ - this is what | happens when there is real competition and innovation in the | market. | pzo wrote: | I wouldn't call it as easily repairable as frame.work - | frame.work doesn't use those glue white strips instead they | just have few screws and you can remove such battery without | struggle. | | I once changed battery in my old iphone SE and it's a real pain | if such white strips break - and they are sooo thin that it's | really easy to break. Once it breaks you have to use heat gun | and fishing line as improvised saw to cut battery from the | case. | | BTW My old macbook 15'' pro 2012 unibody had only screws and | easily removable battery | webmobdev wrote: | Same here - I had to use a hair dryer and dental floss to | "saw" through the adhesive strip once it broke off ... damn | near took me around 30 - 40 minutes! (And some HP laptops | don't even need screws but provide sliding buttons to easily | "unlock" and remove / change the battery). | skinnymuch wrote: | I've never heard of this. Only one of my casual tech blog | reading or coding friends have. I don't think Apple would do | something because of such a small competitor. The Wikipedia | entry for it only has an introduction section. | benbristow wrote: | It's gotten a bit more media attention recently as Linus (of | Tech Tips/YouTube fame, not Linux/Git fame) has made a rather | large investment in them and has been talking about them a | lot on his platforms. | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSxbc1IN9Gg | skinnymuch wrote: | It said his investment is $200K-ish. His YouTube stuff | seems insanely popular, so he invested a couple weeks of | profit at most? | benbristow wrote: | I have no idea of his financials but that does sound like | more than a few weeks of profit. Remember he has a lot of | staff to pay, the huge office/studio space and bills for | that and running stuff like the LTT Store which will have | expenses also. And then supporting his family on top of | that. | monocasa wrote: | I imagine the LTT Store is a net positive with fantastic | margins. | alphabettsy wrote: | They're a competitor by definition, but not by any practical | consideration. | | Despite seeming like a great company and product they probably | sell fewer machines and have less mindshare than the $19 Apple | cleaning cloth. | | Since all laptops previously had and some still have | replaceable batteries, including Apple, I'm also curious how | Framework gets credit for this innovation? | desiarnezjr wrote: | By bucking the trend and good PR really. Framework is | interesting, but in reality reminds me of when Thinkpads were | still tank-like workhorses that were quasi self-servicable | over decade a ago. For the most part, you could swap | components out, which is Framework's whole schtick. | | The ship has sailed on replaceable RAM and storage IMO, | because most of us want the performance increases that losing | upgradability brings. It's a trade-off but one that's worth | it in the long run. | Jcowell wrote: | I sincerely doubt framework was even a factor in the decision | making of whether or not MacBook batteries should be follow | iPhones already existing design. | brianwawok wrote: | 100%. It was probably due to some EU lawsuit or other, and | rather than make 2 designs (US / EU), they just changed the | design to make everyone happy. | | It's weird that US companies basically need to be sued by the | EU for stuff to be consumer friendly.. | webmobdev wrote: | > _I sincerely doubt framework was even a factor in the | decision making_ ... | | Oh, you may be surprised at how closely Apple watches and | reacts to PR and its competitors - it's one of the things | they do right and are really good at. Some examples: | | 1. After Apple's very successful launch of the iPhone, they | got a huge shock in Europe when Jolla, a small, new startup | of ex-Nokia employees launched a phone with a new mobile OS | that _outsold_ the iPhone. When Apple realised that Jolla 's | marketing emphasised "user privacy", Apple strategically | _temporarily_ shelved its plan to collect user data (for | which it was getting bad PR) and even pretended to abandon | their advertising platform. And that worked out very well for | them because luckily for them Jolla was mismanaged, and | failed. | | 2. Frame.work has received highly positive reviews from both | the media and users / patrons all of whom have acknowledged | and appreciated the creativity and innovative use of existing | technology to create a highly repairable laptop. While it may | not have outsold any Mac device yet, the PR buzz it has | generated has focused public spotlight back on right-to- | repair and created new awareness and appreciation for | repairable electronics. Invariably, comparison has been made | with Apple's popular yet deliberately hard-to-repair devices | and you can bet that it has made Apple quite uncomfortable. | (With regulators breathing down their neck about right-to- | repair, the last thing Apple needs is an innovative | competitor that tauts repairability as a feature). | | 3. When Apple released a Mac Mini with soldered RAM and SSD, | the criticism and poor sales forced them to backtrack and | release the next Mac Mini with replaceable RAM. (Again, a | temporary strategic withdrawal). | | 4. The current and new Apple iPhones size and design are | inspired by Sony mobiles phones, one of the few companies in | the world that still has their own design division and | produces amazing phones with great hardware. | | 5. The whole "thin device" craze at Apple was inspired by a | Motorola phone. (And ofcourse, it remains popular as it aids | their "planned obsolescence" goal for their devices). | | I am not completely disparaging Apple - reacting to PR and | their competitors is something giants sometimes ignore at | their peril. But Apple doesn't, and they cleverly calibrate | their strategy to maintain their competitive lead. | | (I'd even say the article linked to is just a fluff piece | trying to convey the impression that the new Apple laptop is | suddenly a more easy to repair device because the battery is | no longer glued like before but uses stretchable adhesive :). | I recently repaired an iPhone SE and the battery adhesive | broke as I was pulling it carefully and after that it was a | real pain to remove it without damaging anything - easy to | repair, my ass.) | desiarnezjr wrote: | So in just a few months Apple pivoted all their years of | planning, engineering, design, supply chain and production | for the new Pros to "compete" with a small startup that | sells probably less in total than what Apple might sell in | 12 minutes? | | Right... | | Snark aside, the 2021 Pros seem well balanced between | moving things forward hardware wise, and still offering | enough I/O. They're likely not perfect at all, and for me | the M1 Air is more than enough. | | But all those things - planning, engineering, design and | supply chain and last mile distribution take years to | execute on, not weeks or months. | benbristow wrote: | Hi, Linus! :P | drclau wrote: | AFAIK, replacing the battery on the previous generation meant | replacing the top part of the body, to which the battery was | glued. That included replacing the keyboard and the touchpad (not | 100% sure if the old keyboard and touchpad could have been kept; | maybe they were replaced just because of the damage done to them | by the expanding batteries). At the same time, the previous | generation had battery problems and keyboard problems (as pointed | out in sub-comments), which meant many were replaced for free | even out of warranty (as it happened to me due to faulty | battery). | | I suspect someone at Apple realized how much would have been | saved if only the battery was not glued to the case. | | Edit: mentioned the keyboard problem, which would result in | replacing the battery too it seems. | fishtoaster wrote: | It had the nice side effect that I got a brand new battery | every time I had a single janky keyboard key. My battery is | always nearly-new! :) | hedgehog wrote: | Same, but then the last time the battery went bad (swelling) | with only about 30 cycles on it. | martinko wrote: | I suspect that they see the right to repair movement and are | trying to preempt it, at least to an extent. | gregoriol wrote: | It's probably just that replacing too many parts when one | breaks was getting too costly for them | stuff4ben wrote: | You know, it could be both... | eli wrote: | Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but adding convenient | pull tabs really does feel like a shift in direction to at | least be less hostile to non-Apple or DIY replacements. | They could have easily opted for a special battery removal | tool. | rasz wrote: | What good are pull tabs when you cant buy original | replacement battery(1)? | | /1 without giving up your business books for 5 years | selling your customers privacy, and giving up ability to | do component level repair. | samwillis wrote: | I wander if the new keyboard design with plastic rather than | aluminium between the keys will also make it easer to replace | it too, it almost looks like the module that could be swapped. | I'm sure we will find out from iFixit soon! | | I suppose it also means that the top case is no longer tied to | different keyword layouts, fewer SKUs. That will have helped | cut costs! | | (written on a 2019MPB with duff ender key) | dsego wrote: | it's a black anodized aluminum inset from what I can find | online | selykg wrote: | This is also how I got two new batteries replacements when I | had to send my MBP in for keyboard replacement due to the | stupid thing breaking (repeatedly). | | Each time the system showed 0 cycles on the battery and I | basically got a nice reset. Loved that part of it at least. | egypturnash wrote: | hahaha, my 2016 MBP chews through batteries - I'm on my | fourth, I think - and every time I get a new battery it comes | with a new keyboard, so I haven't had any of the keyboard | problems some are plagued with. | chrischen wrote: | Yep I had annual keyboard replacements on all the butterfly | macs I owned. I considered it a nice feature that the keyboard | had this defect because it also meant a free annual battery | replacement. | bityard wrote: | I wonder if all of the recent interest in right-to-repair laws | by various states impacted the new design. | grishka wrote: | That's what "authorized service providers" do. Unauthorized | ones do replace just the battery by ungluing the old one. | tobias2014 wrote: | The article says "reasonably DIY-friendly". I think this is an | important distinction. Just because the battery has pull tabs | doesn't mean that it's easy to get to that point. | tobyjsullivan wrote: | A lot of comments seem focused on the incentives to apple and | what's motivating the change. All fair questions. To me, though, | it feels like just a radically different approach this year. | | 2016 macbook felt like leadership got in a room and said "okay, | let's make a list of all the sexy things we can think of that | would make the macbook unique". This netted things like thin- | beyond-practicality, touchbar, removing all the ports, etc. | | 2021 macbook feels like leadership got in a room and said "okay, | let's make a list of all the top things everybody is complaining | about most." And they just fixed everything (well, most things) | on that list one-by-one. | EEMac wrote: | If you create a problem, people will beg you to sell them the | solution. | dylan604 wrote: | Like Coca Cola's New Coke solution. | bluescrn wrote: | It was all going well until somebody said 'let's have a notch!' | when they'd already decided not to add face ID... | rbanffy wrote: | I feel that, on the ports and touchbar side, this was a step | backwards. The SD slot is a good thing, but the replacement of | one USB-C with a (vintage) HDMI port and the addition of a | proprietary power connector is a leap backwards in time. | | The Touchbar was my daughter's favorite - an Emoji keyboard. It | also did a lot more - bringing up manpages in the terminal, | having app-specific buttons (no need to hunt down the Zoom | window to mute). People wanted an ESC key and they got it | eventually. I couldn't care less about function keys. I get it | was _very_ expensive for the little if offered, but, still, it | 's still useful. More useful than F1 to F12 ever were. | | Magsafe is nice from a safety standpoint (I have a kid and work | from the couch sometimes), but with all-day battery life, what | is the use of it? On my desk, the Mac is plugged into power, | two external monitors, ethernet, keyboard and trackpad with a | single cable, as God intended it to be. That's 3 free USB-C | connectors for anything else (such as the external storage) and | there is one power brick that lives in my backpack along a pair | of US/EU adapters for when I need to travel. With USB-C power, | it was nice to have the Dell and the Mac sharing power bricks | when needed (if I said that 10 years ago, I would laugh myself | out of the room) | | I like the replaceable battery, but I miss the touchbar and | actively dislike the reintroduction of Magsafe. | FabHK wrote: | > bringing up manpages in the terminal | | Ha, that was one of my use cases as well. Not an extremely | compelling one, though, to be fair. (^[?]? does the trick | with a keyboard shortcut). | matwood wrote: | > Magsafe is nice from a safety standpoint (I have a kid and | work from the couch sometimes), but with all-day battery | life, what is the use of it? | | I was having a similar discussion the other day. MagSafe was | amazing when my Intel MBP had to basically be tethered to | power all the time. My M1 MBA only ever gets charged at my | desk plugged into a dock/monitor. MagSafe was great when it | was needed, but its time is passing. | boardwaalk wrote: | The MagSafe connector is just USB-C on the other side, so | it's almost just a form factor thing (though obviously it | doesn't support data). | | And you can still power the thing over USB-C (alongside | data), just not at the same wattage/no quick charge. It's | perfectly serviceable unless you're doing something really | punishing. | | The only problem I've had so far is getting a two monitors | working with my particular USB-C dock (it works with an Intel | MacBook). Hopefully it's a software/firmware thing, because I | enjoy the single cable life as well. | rbanffy wrote: | If it completely replaced the USB-C port and made the power | brick also an Ethernet interface, I'd love it. USB-C minus | data isn't what I'd expect from USB-C. | johncalvinyoung wrote: | my only real disappointments with the new MBPs so far, on | paper (haven't received mine yet) have to do with | networking. I was really hoping the new MagSafe would be | precisely that, data+power with ethernet in the power | brick. I'd have recommended adding 140W bricks to every | desk in our office if that had been the case. | | And while I understand the chipset availability | limitations, 2x2 802.11ax will at best nearly equal the | performance of my 2017 MBP in my current 3x3ac | deployment. Guess I'll have to hurry up transitioning to | ax. | ArchOversight wrote: | It was a known limitation of the M1 that it only supported | one external display even if your Thunderbolt dock | supported two displays. | | The M1 simply couldn't push more pixels. | rowanG077 wrote: | This is false. It has nothing to do with pushing pixels. | Else it should be easily be able to handle 4 Full HD | monitors instead of a single 4k monitor. | JoshGlazebrook wrote: | Vintage in what sense? HDMI is literally one of, if not the | most common types of display ports on TVs, Monitors, game | consoles, etc. I think most people would choose a straight | HDMI to HDMI connection over trying to find the right | USB-C/lighting/whatever cable to fit their needs (which is | very hard to actually do). The HDMI port has stayed the same | for a long time, yet new HDMI specs come out every few years | expanding the capabilities. | rbanffy wrote: | I was being a bit cruel. It's an HDMI 2.0 port, which is | useful for presentations (a USB-C to HDMI dongle lives in | my backpack for that reason). 2.0 will drive a 4K monitor | at 60 fps. Never tried that, but, IIRC, the original USB-C | port (and HDMI 2.1) could do it at 120 fps (which, for my | terminals, would be... totally overkill, just like 60 fps | already is). | giobox wrote: | While I agree HDMI 2.0 on a new for 2021 machine is an | odd choice, displays can still be connected to the | Thunderbolt 4 ports much like the previous gen. Apple's | spec sheet says two external monitors at 6k/60hz | supported this way via TB4. | | All of this is to point out, has anyone confirmed 4k/120 | on the thunderbolt port? Given the 2x6k monitor output 4k | @ 120hz sounds like it should be possible, unless Apple | have nerfed the output. | masklinn wrote: | > Apple's spec sheet says two external monitors at | 6k/60hz supported this way via TB4. | | It's 2 for the Pro but 4 for the Max (technically 3 plus | I think 4K@60, because that's the limit of the hdmi | port). | [deleted] | bitwize wrote: | Ports tend to be common until Apple deprecates them. | rbanffy wrote: | Apple is still one of the large personal computer | manufacturers. | bitwize wrote: | Nevertheless, when Apple excludes a port the other OEMs | start wondering whether that port is necessary or if | they're including it out of blind convention. | | Likewise, when Apple champions a non-proprietary port on | their PCs, other manufacturers tend to follow suit. | | Apple is more than just another large OEM. They are _the_ | standard bearer for the personal computing industry. They | have tremendous influence over what a computing device | looks like and how it connects to peripherals and other | machines. (WiFi was largely a lab experiment before Apple | 's AirPort.) | [deleted] | notyourwork wrote: | What's wrong with a USB-C to HDMI cable if you need that | connectivity? | handrous wrote: | You can pick up a 2015 MacBook and walk away carrying | nothing else, and handle a wide variety of situations | that may occur. Three things enable this: long battery | life (don't need your brick); a touchpad that's not | absolute hell to use for more than a minute or two at a | time (don't need an external mouse); and port selection. | Need something off Bill in marketing's USB stick (it'll | be USB-A, almost certainly, even in 2021, let alone | 2016)? Need to plug into a TV or projector, or even just | a normal monitor that's not super-duper-new? HDMI is far | and away your best bet, especially if you're not carrying | your own cables. Photographer has some pictures for you | that need to go on the web site (or you _are_ the | photographer)? SDCard reader, no problem. | | That ease-of-use--just pick it up and walk away, you | don't even need to think about it--is significantly | weakened if you need a few special cables and dongles to | be similarly-well-prepared. | potta_coffee wrote: | This is why I never upgraded from my 2015 MBP. I'm still | using it everyday, God forbid it breaks. My next laptop | will be something else entirely, with Linux on it. | notyourwork wrote: | I mean let's be honest, how many of us are road warriors | that need every single type of connectivity known to | exist? Having a single port type on your device | simplifies one half of the equation. | | Your device's ports are a casualty of the lack of | standard data port. The HDMI on displays makes you feel | like you need an HDMI on your laptop, I disagree if my | USB-C port can do that AND a whole bunch of other things. | myelin wrote: | With my 2014 MBP, my Windows laptop, or my Chromebook, I | can plug straight into a hotel TV and watch a movie from | my laptop. With my 2019 MBP, I need an adapter. | | This doesn't seem like a big deal, but the first time I | went on vacation with my family after getting the 2019 | MBP, I forgot that I needed to pack the adapter, and we | couldn't watch whatever series we were currently binging | on Netflix or HBO, which was pretty annoying. I'm happy | to see HDMI ports showing up on more laptops these days! | handrous wrote: | > I'm happy to see HDMI ports showing up on more laptops | these days! | | HDMI is going to be especially sticky, and great to have | built-in, for _years_ to come, most likely. AFAIK USB-C | _cannot_ replace it, because, like most data cables that | aren 't HDMI or Ethernet, it has really, really short | max-length limitations. Meanwhile, HDMI can have runs of | 20+ meters and work totally fine, no repeaters or | anything. If you're building in a ceiling projector, or | have a TV at one end of a room but the connection in a | conference table, you _will_ use HDMI. Something might | replace it, but it 'll be a cable we've not heard of yet, | not USB-C. | Sebb767 wrote: | You can send USB C and/or Thunderbolt over fiber. It's | rather expensive as of now, but it's possible. | | Example 50m cable: https://www.rockshop.de/corning- | thunderbolt-3-optical-cable-... | masklinn wrote: | Despite intensely disliking meetings I regularly get | pulled into them, and having to go back to your desk to | get an adapter wastes everybody's time and makes you look | like an idiot. | | It also requires carrying an adapter at all times just in | case. | | > Your device's ports are a casualty of the lack of | standard data port | | To my great dismay HDMI is the standard video port, | that's why it got added back. | | > The HDMI on displays makes you feel like you need an | HDMI on your laptop | | No, what makes them feel that is that every video input | aside from specifically desk-top computer displays is | HDMI. | spockz wrote: | And this is why our meeting rooms have either usb-c | called directly for video or an hdmi to usb-c adapter tie | wrapped to the hdmi cable. | notyourwork wrote: | We used to have other cable's for video prior. However, | today we expect interoperability across so many more | devices that saying we need this to be a video cable and | this to be an audio cable put us in this position in | first place. | | Over time I imagine we will evolve to a more standard | "data transfer" cable that is what USB-C is trying to do. | The transition isn't always easy and will introduce | friction to various use cases. | | Remember firewire? Today when I'm mobile I have a | bookbag, a laptop and a small accessory bag. The | accessory bag has various cables, dongles and adapters to | ensure I have plug-ability. | | Going back to your desk is a work problem, the office | should just have those dongles in all the conference | rooms and the problem you describe is entirely moot. | handrous wrote: | > Going back to your desk is a work problem, the office | should just have those dongles in all the conference | rooms and the problem you describe is entirely moot. | | You run into this a lot places where only some developers | and maybe the artists use MacBooks. Everyone else has fat | Windows machines that have every port known to man and | don't need dongles. Past the initial (annoying and | unnecessary, but oh well) adjustment period, it wasn't | _that_ bad for all-Mac shops, but it 's a real pain in | mixed shops because it's basically _just_ a MacBook | problem. | handrous wrote: | > I mean let's be honest, how many of us are road | warriors that need every single type of connectivity | known to exist? | | Road warrior? It also meant you could grab it and go to | the _conference room_ and not have to take anything else | with you, or go back to your desk for something. Packing | for a business trip? _Maybe_ you need to throw the power | brick in the bag. That 's all. Every single type? It had, | what, five, including the rather niche Thunderbolt ports? | _Those_ are what should have become USB-C ports, as that | change would have been 100% an improvement. Keep the | rest, including USB-A, which might _finally_ not be the | most useful USB port to have in, oh, 2030 or so, if | trends continue. Should be right about the time USB-C is | being replaced ( "Can you believe anyone ever thought | that cable situation was OK? LOL.") | | > Having a single port type on your device simplifies one | half of the equation. | | I don't think it's been most people's experience that | having only USB-C makes their device _simpler_ to use | with a broad range of peripherals, even ~5 years after | Apple went all-in on it. | notyourwork wrote: | I'm not sure I see it, the same. | | At home I have a CalDigit docking station. One cable to | my laptop, and I get power, video to a second monitor, | digital audio connection to a DAC for audiophile quality | headphones, SD card reader if I really need it and wired | ethernet. The laptop still has 3 open USB-C ports. How is | it not beautiful that a single cable takes care of all of | that. Sure, we've had docking stations forever but they | weren't single cable, they looked like cash registers you | have to literally sit your laptop in to get the same | level of connectivity. | | When I'm traveling I have a few cables for various | scenarios and adapters. USB-C to HDMI for video, also | works for my iPad so it serves two purposes. I don't use | SD-cards on the road so this isn't a problem for me but a | USB or USB-C or whatever to SD-card reader isn't bulky | enough to gripe about for traveling. | | At work conference rooms can simply provide the needed | connectors so when I disconnect from my desk and end up | in a conference room I still have the connectivity I | need. | handrous wrote: | I definitely agree that USB-C makes a great connector for | workstation-type docking situations, if you're getting to | pick all the hardware for that purpose (which is what | I've done, too). | | > USB-C to HDMI for video, also works for my iPad so it | serves two purposes. | | I get why they didn't do it at first (lower-end models | exist in part to use up parts from previous higher-end | models, so you can't just change them all on day one) but | it's crazy to me that they're still shipping iOS devices | of any kind with Lightning ports. The dongle thing would | have been less annoying if I could at least use the same | dongles on _all_ my (new) Apple devices, iOS and MacOS | alike. As it is, only my 4th-gen iPad Pro has it. [edit] | And man, is it so frustrating that they 've almost | achieved a situation where you can travel with one brick | and one cable to provide power for your laptop _and_ | phone _and_ a tablet... but no, they kept putting out new | Lightning devices for years. | jaywalk wrote: | When Apple finally ditches Lightning on the iPhone, | people are going to raise holy hell. That's probably the | only reason it's still there. | somewhereoutth wrote: | Yes. Luckily I fetched up at that place around 2015 - so | I was given the best MacBook Pro ever made, and the best | iPhone ever made - the 5S. Shame to have to give it all | back really. | | Still baffles me why there was no hash key though. | cycomanic wrote: | It seems that you're not in a line of work where people | give a lot of presentations. Where I work it was almost a | certain that at the beginning of some presentation | session one mac speaker had to ask if someone had an | adapter because they lost/forgot... theirs. If lucky | another speaker was on a mac as well and has an adapter, | otherwise someone has to go find an adapter somewhere | notatoad wrote: | it's great if you have one. doesn't work so well if you | don't have one. | | HDMI is great because whatever random TV you want to | connect to probably already has some other device plugged | in with a 6' HDMI cable that you can steal. | zzyzxd wrote: | The proprietary power connector is not a leap backwards in | time. The current generation of USB-C spec just can't provide | more than 100W PD charging, which the 16 inch model needs. | masklinn wrote: | > I feel that, on the ports and touchbar side, this was a | step backwards. The SD slot is a good thing, but the | replacement of one USB-C with a (vintage) HDMI port and the | addition of a proprietary power connector is a leap backwards | in time. | | Just because it's a leap backwards doesn't mean it's bad. | Sometimes changes are not good and backtracking is. | | * HDMI inputs are in super common world in the professional | world, it's become the standard for all video projection or | conference room TVs (unless you still have an even more | ancient VGA) and having to carry adapters to meetings or to | give talks is a pain in the ass. It's also pretty much the | standard for digital audio (since Apple also removed SPDIF). | | * The touchbar was shit, it could have been OK as an | _addition_ to function keys, but it precluded any and all | muscle memory and quick access to featues. "More useful than | F1 to F12 ever were." isn't even remotely true. | | * And not all users are at your desk, that the laptop has | "all day battery life" (as long as you only watch youtube | videos, you're not going to get 11h battery life if you're | actively working with demanding software) doesn't mean people | won't need to charge them at places which are not _your | desk_. Plenty of people work on kitchen tables and whatnot, | with the power cable in the way and yankable by a pet, a | child, or just somebody going through. | | > On my desk, the Mac is plugged into power, two external | monitors, ethernet, keyboard and trackpad with a single | cable, as God intended it to be. That's 3 free USB-C | connectors for anything else (such as the external storage) | and there is one power brick that lives in my backpack along | a pair of US/EU adapters for when I need to travel. With | USB-C power, it was nice to have the Dell and the Mac sharing | power bricks when needed (if I said that 10 years ago, I | would laugh myself out of the room) | | Certainly I can't see how you could ever survive with only 2 | free USB-C connectors left. Poor you. | least wrote: | > * The touchbar was shit, it could have been OK as an | addition to function keys, but it precluded any and all | muscle memory and quick access to featues. "More useful | than F1 to F12 ever were." isn't even remotely true. | | I mean, the F1-F12 keys are so mostly useless that the | majority of laptops require you to press a modifier to use | them as such. They replaced them with functions that are | more broadly useful to most people: media keys, brightness | control, keyboard back lighting, etc. I mostly agree that | _those_ keys are easier to use than the touchbar, though. | hn_throwaway_99 wrote: | > The Touchbar was my daughter's favorite - an Emoji keyboard | | This is the Macbook _Pro_ , they shouldn't be optimizing for | children's love of emojis. I get what you're saying about | your other usages of it, but I hate the Touchbar with the | heat of a thousand suns, and given that Apple _did_ decide to | remove it on the Pro I 'm guessing my sentiment was in the | majority. | Spivak wrote: | I don't get this charicterization where professionals don't | have fun or use those childish whimsical things like | emojis. By a huge huge margin I use more emojis at work | than anywhere else and having a keyboard for them is quite | nice. | | The Touch Bar is infinitely more useful than the function | key row -- volume and brightness sliders are way better | than "louder" and "brighter" buttons. Answering calls with | the bar is easier than mousing over to the Teams | notification. | rbanffy wrote: | Even when using emojis, I am extremely serious and | professional. | rbanffy wrote: | I may or may not have (ab)used mine as an emoji keyboard | after realizing Github Enterprise could deal with emojis | just fine. | hbn wrote: | Cmd+ctrl+space | | You can then search for whatever emoji you want and hit | enter without taking your eyes off the screen or your | fingers off the keyboard. Typing emojis was never a | problem in macOS that the touchbar needed to solve | crazysim wrote: | The default fn key with globe icon by itself keystroke | works as well on the newer MacBooks. | rymate1234 wrote: | To be fair you can still charge the new macbooks via USB C if | you want, and magsafe in this iteration is just a USB C to | magsafe cable now | PostThisTooFast wrote: | And yet Apple's laptops STILL don't have a real Delete key. | Just a Backspace key mislabeled "delete," while everyone else | manages to fit a Delete key onto even small keyboards. | | There was never an excuse for it, but when the Eject key became | pointless and Apple still didn't fix the problem... it became | classic, infantile Apple pettiness. | felixbraun wrote: | So looking forward to the next version of iPhone 4 -- hopes | higher than ever | waynesonfire wrote: | > "okay, let's make a list of all the sexy things we can think | of that would make the macbook unique" | | what are we talking about here? pussy right? | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuTvA1_NNSo | brightball wrote: | Is the hard disk / SSD / NVMe still soldered to the board? | DrBenCarson wrote: | To summarize: the MBP no longer has a "hard disk". | | It has flash memory that is coupled with the SoC. | | This is to make the memory bottleneck tolerable (considering | the cpu and ram move 400GB/s) | colechristensen wrote: | I replaced one of the (honestly I don't know what to call | them... gumstick sized ssd?) in a MacBook that had it as a | separate component and it was a bad idea. It required an | adapter board, some large proportion of available products on | the market weren't compatible, and even with one that was | there was still occasional strange behavior. Soldering in was | the least of the problems. | peterburkimsher wrote: | "blade style drive" -> M.2 | | I also replaced the SSD in my 15" MacBook Pro 2014, and | currently use a 4 TB M.2 drive. | | When a replacement battery fried my logic board, I didn't | lose my data. It didn't take multiple hours to re-clone | from backup; I just used a screwdriver to move the SSD over | to my spare laptop (13" Pro 2015). | | A computer for me is primarily a data storage and retrieval | device. Data loss is an existential risk to it. Data | security doesn't bother me as much as it does other people; | once the hardware is accessible, all bets are off anyway. I | do get some strange behaviour with the new SSD (periodic | weekly crash/reboot) but still accept that in order to have | the larger capacity (4 TB is much more than the 512 GB when | the laptop was new). | fouc wrote: | I did a similar replacement and it was a great idea! But | you had to pick the right adapter, also the 2015 MBP had | the least compatibility issues. | gregoriol wrote: | There are still a few things left for 2022 models | masklinn wrote: | MBPs haven't had a "hard drive" to solder on in a few years: | the "T2" security chip is also the SSD controller, managing | the "freestanding" flash chips (which are soldered onto the | board). The SSD isn't a separate thing at all. | mehrdada wrote: | That, however, does not prevent the flash chips from being | removable. Sure you would not be able to access the data, | but could replace/upgrade the flash without throwing away | the computer _when_ they fail. In fact that exists in a | real T2 product: Mac Pro. You won 't be able to replace it | with off the shelf NVMe though. | rbanffy wrote: | If you go to the other extreme of the spectrum, to the eMMC- | based laptops, they are also soldered to the motherboard. | | Which is really a shame (I have one Acer Aspire laptop and I | mount /var/log as tmpfs without swap so it doesn't devour the | eMMC like the RPis do with SD cards) | masklinn wrote: | I fear 2016 MBP was Jony Ive unimpeded by practical concerns. | behnamoh wrote: | Good riddence of him. | masklinn wrote: | He still works with Apple as an independent stylist (Apple | is LoveFrom's primary client), but likely not with the | seniority and off-hands approach from others he had as | chief design officers, which clearly was an issue with no | Jobs to oversee. | Andrew_nenakhov wrote: | Courage! | poo-yie wrote: | Well said! Now they need to do the same with macOS. | elicash wrote: | This meeting, however, probably would have been in like 2017. | We're just seeing the results now. | hdjjhhvvhga wrote: | That would be nice, but would mean reversing all the decisions | from 2016. Also, I'm happy about having more ports, but not all | my devices are USB-C, especially pendrives. A noticeable part | of my routine is dealing with various dongles just because | someone thought they will decide what I need and in which | direction I should be pushed. In the meantime, all other | vendors continue to support USB-A. | notyourwork wrote: | It seems I fall in the minority but I've become quite fond of | the touchbar. Its a dynamic user input, if my phone rings I can | touch answer on my touchbar to pick it up, if I want to seek or | scroll on a spotify song I can do that with a touch and slide. | | I don't see the dislike for it. | sgt wrote: | That's the only thing I use the touch bar for (I have a 2018 | MBP); to hit the red button after a FaceTime call. | wintermutestwin wrote: | I love my touchbar. Until it freezes. Then I am whining that | I want F keys back. | elboru wrote: | Touch feedback is important for a lot of us. Specially when | I'm concentrated while debugging something, I don't want to | have to look at my keyboard. But I see value for other use | cases, maybe having both the touchbar plus the F keys would | have worked fine? | matwood wrote: | I was indifferent to the Touch Bar, but Apple needed to | release an external keyboard with it if they really wanted it | to catch on. I just never took the time to figure out good | use cases since I could _only_ use them when using the laptop | keyboard. | rootusrootus wrote: | I can dream. Mechanical keyboard with carefully implemented | Touch Bar and Touch ID. Sign me up and take my money. But | Apple seems to only want to make external keyboards that | use laptop keys. | fouc wrote: | That makes total sense actually, I'm surprised they never | released an external keyboard with a Touch Bar | Tsiklon wrote: | I think an external keyboard with the Touch Bar would | have been incredibly expensive. The one that ships on the | laptops was wired into the T1/T2 chips and ran a custom | version of iOS. Effectively an interface to a second | built in computer | TeMPOraL wrote: | IIRC the dislike was mostly driven by the touchbar | substituting for physical F keys. If they somehow managed to | have both, I suspect people would be happy. | mostlysimilar wrote: | I already have a dynamic interface to control: the one on the | display. Having the "keyboard" change throws off my intuition | on where to place my fingers and how to interact. | | Looking down at the touchbar each time to assess what the | current interface is adds a tiny amount of additional | overhead to my interactions that I dislike. It's not | _terrible_, but it's not my preference. | | I also really dislike the lack of tactile feedback. | papito wrote: | Once you start using it for autocomplete in a text field, the | touch bar is pretty cool. You also can glance at it during a | zoom meeting to see if you are muted. RIP. | handrous wrote: | > I don't see the dislike for it. | | 1) You can't really make it part of your muscle-memory | workflow if you use an external keyboard more than a very | small percentage of the time, rendering it nearly useless for | lots of people, right out of the gate. | | 2) Some of us discovered we _barely_ brush the Touch Bar | (F-key) area while typing certain keys (numbers, for me, | which means also all the symbols that are on the number | keys). This meant we had to all-but disable the damn thing to | keep it from opening iTunes and doing other crap, apparently | "at random" but actually because our fingers were straying | 0.01mm onto the Touch Bar without our realizing it. Result, a | fair percentage of users had to force like 3/4 of the bar to | be empty all the time, or else face constant irritation when | using the built-in keyboard. | timeon wrote: | 1) we are talking about MBP - it is just under the screen | you will always see them. | | 2) I get it but comparing to desktop keyboard F-keys are | dead without Fn-key so unlike Touch Bar mbp f-keys are not | on par with desktop keyboard. | ziml77 wrote: | I'm able to tolerate #1, but #2 definitely makes it suck | for me. Haptics and requiring some pressure would have made | the touchbar much easier to not hate. | handrous wrote: | Right, I'm not necessarily anti-touchbar _as an idea_ | (though I also wouldn 't pay any amount of money to gain | even some hypothetical good version of it) and wasn't | _that_ bothered by losing the F-keys, but as implemented | it was harmful for me, not even neutral, so I lost my | F-keys and all I gained in return was an extra step to | set up a new MacBook (set Touch Bar to one static mode | rather than context-sensitive, then replace most of it | with "spacer" elements). | christkv wrote: | This of this. Made me strip the touchbar of all the icons I | could on the left side. | cletus wrote: | The 2016 wasn't leadership, it was Johnny Ive without Steve | Jobs bringing him back to reality. | | Touch Bar? This was nothing more than adding expense to raise | the ASP (Average Selling Price) of Macbooks, that had fallen | precipitously low from a shareholder perspective because of the | superb value-for-money proposition that was the 13" Macbook | Air. | | The butterfly keyboard was Ive shaving off 0.5mm of the width | for a worse user experience with a higher production cost and | less reliability. | | USB-C only was a philosophical move rather than a practical one | that forced people everywhere to carry dongles. The USB-C cable | situation was and continues to be a nightmare as different | cables support different subsets of data, power and video and, | worse yet, different versions of each of those. Worst of all, | it was the loss of the much-beloved MagSafe. Also, the ports | weren't all the same. You were better off charging from the | right (IIRC) rather than the left. | | Replaceable RAM and SSD being lost is still painful. Personally | I don't believe this was about forcing users to pay for | upgrades primarily. It was about shaving off a small amount of | volume. | | Ive is gone and every one of those decisions has been reversed | or at least significantly amended. This is no accident. | blablabla123 wrote: | I'm quite happy about the move to USB-C and changed all my | stuff to it as soon as possible. 5 years ago I had several | micro usb and mini usb chargers, some of them broken. On a | regular base I had to buy new chargers and cables. The | MagSafe power supply cables broke easily (but yes, the port | was nice). Now there's just one cable for everything, I still | have 2 phone fast chargers but both actually work. Also I can | just charge my phone without searching for the charger and | the laptop can be connected to screen/keyboard with just 1 | USB-C cable. | | After all, Apple were also the first to sell Desktops without | Floppy or Optical drive. | nebula8804 wrote: | >Replaceable RAM and SSD being lost is still painful. | Personally I don't believe this was about forcing users to | pay for upgrades primarily. It was about shaving off a small | amount of volume. | | Louis Rossman gets a lot of things wrong because he does not | have a computer engineering background. For example, he does | not understand why Apple used SPI on the Macbook Air instead | of USB despite it having USB capability. I had to correct him | to explain that when your design goal is extreme power | saving, you have to cut everything including running your | data over SPI instead of a more power hungry USB bus. | | Furthermore one reason they ship soldered on Ram is | technical. It has been explained here from time to time that | they are achieving much higher memory bandwidth with the | memory modules they are using and it necessitates being | soldered on. If the design goal is to build the most | responsive laptop while maintaining excellent power savings, | then this is the right approach to take. | grishka wrote: | I can understand the soldred RAM on M1 -- yes, speed of | light and other laws of physics get in the way. But why | solder the SSD? What's the technical benefit of _that_ over | putting an M.2 slot in there or something? How do you | recover your data if you spill coffee on your laptop? What | involved simply yoinking the SSD out of the slot now | requires a fully working motherboard. | jacobolus wrote: | This is pure speculation, ungrounded from any evidence. | | The touch bar is a very flexible (effectively) analog input + | rich display device. If adequately supported by software it | can be an amazing input, affording a range of useful | functions not replicable with discrete buttons. In general, I | really wish modern computers had more analog inputs | available. Analog knobs, jog wheels, sliders, trackballs, | etc. are tragically missing. | | I have seen no evidence that Jony Ive was its patron, and no | evidence that including it had anything to with making | laptops expensive as a goal. | | The problem with the touch bar is that (a) it only shipped on | a limited subset of devices so software authors could not | depend on it, (b) after its initial functions, Apple made | limited effort to adopt it in all of their own software, | improve its integration into the system, or push boundaries | of what it could do as an input device. | | > _The butterfly keyboard was Ive shaving off 0.5mm of the | width for a worse user experience with a higher production | cost and less reliability._ | | No, this was some Apple-internal mechanical engineering group | trying to design the best extremely thin keyboard they could, | but getting bitten hard by a mismatch between reliability in | a prototype vs. full-scale factory production + poor | estimation of reliability in a wide variety of contexts over | a longer period of time. Nobody ever set out to make a "worse | experience" or higher cost. | | There are many suboptimal features of the common rubber dome | + scissor stabilizer laptop keyboards, and I wish more | companies were brave enough to experiment with alternative | designs in search of improvements. (Disclaimer: my favorite | "laptop" keyboards are | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PS/2_portable_computers and | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Portable) | saghm wrote: | > No, this was some Apple-internal mechanical engineering | group trying to design the best extremely thin keyboard | they could, but getting bitten hard by a mismatch between | reliability in a prototype vs. full-scale factory | production + poor estimation of reliability in a wide | variety of contexts over a longer period of time | | Okay, but...what caused them to try to make a keyboard that | thin in the first place? GP is suggesting that it was | driven by Ive, which you dispute, but you only give an | alternative explanation for the "what", not the "why". | tarsinge wrote: | > The touch bar is a very flexible (effectively) analog | input + rich display device. | | It just can't work with people like me that never look down | at their keyboard. I'm not trying to be elitist, it's the | honest truth. I wanted to love the Touch Bar, tried plugins | like Pock, but in the end no matter how hard I tried I | can't help and force myself and interrupt what I'm doing to | look down, it just doesn't make sense. | hardlianotion wrote: | It might have worked with some kind of haptic feedback | device? | diskzero wrote: | It was tried. Many, many people spent many, many hours | inside of Apple trying to make the Touchbar more useful. | The simple fact was that looking down at it was a context | shift and, in general, no one wanted to do it. It exposed | functionality that you would eventually learn to drive | from the keyboard. | RobertDeNiro wrote: | You're not meant to look at your keyboard. It's simply | not efficient. | IggleSniggle wrote: | I actually really like the TouchBar _except_ for the | dramatic input lag. The input lag is so damn high that I | never ever use it. If you could swipe left /right on it | without holding down first, as on an iPhone, and if touch | events generally had the same responsiveness as on an | iPhone, I think everyone would have loved it much more. RIP | TouchBar. | Zelizz wrote: | I used BetterTouchTool to add a second volume slider with | no delay and no on-screen UI, for changing the volume | while I watch something :) | | I highly recommend using BetterTouchTool to get the most | out of it if you still have a device with the touch bar. | deeblering4 wrote: | > Analog knobs, jog wheels, sliders, trackballs, etc. are | tragically missing. | | Fwiw they are readily available by way of USB (e.g. MIDI) | controllers. There are loads of dedicated knobs, faders, | pads, etc. with a large amount of software to customize and | translate those inputs (in addition to the array of | software supporting them natively) | | Obviously that would be external to the computer, but I | think given the highly specific nature of analog controls | it makes sense for these to be external. I'm having | difficulty imaging a set of analog controls that would be | at the same time universally useful and efficient in terms | of weight and space utilization. | jjoonathan wrote: | > Headphone jack? Gone. Ethernet port? Gone. VGA port? | Gone. Floppy disk drive? Gone. | | Also the parallel port. I remember the drama! | | It goes the other way, too. When Apple put cameras in all | of their laptops, the press relentlessly bashed them for | wasting BOM on something so useless and expensive. Then the | industry realized it was a good idea and followed suit. | Similar for retina displays -- the term "High Definition" | had become synonymous with "good enough" and ground PC | monitor advancements to a halt for a decade. Phones were | coming out with higher resolutions (not pixel densities, | resolutions) than full-size monitors. Then Apple figured | out how to market higher resolutions, the press mocked them | for wasting money, but word got around that HD might not be | the end-all of display technology and consumer panel | resolutions started to climb again. | | Here's a counterexample, a niche that could really use the | Apple Bump but hasn't gotten it and probably won't get it: | 10 gigabit ethernet. 1GbE became synonymous with "good | enough" and got so thoroughly stuck in a rut that now it's | very typical to see 1GbE deployed alongside a handful of 10 | gigabit USB ports and a NVMe drive that could saturate the | sad, old 1GbE port many times over. | | Sometimes taking risks results in a Touch Bar or Butterfly | Keys. That's just the nature of risks. The only way to have | a 100% feature win rate is to limit yourself to copying | features that someone else has proven out, but if everyone | does that then the industry gets stuck in a rut. | | I'm glad Apple exists, even if I don't personally feel the | need to fund their experiments. | PostThisTooFast wrote: | Lumping the headphone jack in with VGA and floppies is a | tired, bullshit tactic. Speakers (and our ears) are | driven by ANALOG signals. The phone, as long as it | produces sound, will need to contain a D/A converter and | an amp. Removing the headphone jack is simply a petty, | anti-customer denial of electrical access to something | that the device is already doing. | | Now we have to have redundant D/A converters in every | sound-reproduction device. The result is totally | unpredictable (and often shitty) sound quality, the | opposite (but totally predictable) result from what | apologists were touting when defending this rip-off. | Sebb767 wrote: | > 1GbE became synonymous with "good enough" and got so | thoroughly stuck in a rut that now it's very typical to | see 1GbE deployed alongside a handful of 10 gigabit USB | ports and a NVMe drive that could saturate the sad, old | 1GbE port many times over. | | This has a few reasons: | | - 10 GbE was, until quite recently, pretty power | intensive and it still is more expensive and hot than | gigabit | | - Devices in LAN, especially those with high bandwidth | usage, have become far rarer. A lot has moved to the | cloud and the bandwidth of most people can't saturate 100 | Mbit, not to speak of Gigabit. | | - LAN as a whole has become rarer. A lot of people now | only use WiFi with their phones or laptops, up to the | point that most people now have (theoretically) faster | WiFi than LAN. | | Combined, there are few reasons to take the expense of | putting a high-speed ethernet port on a device. Luckily, | the introduction of 2.5GbE and 5GbE has decreased the | jump a bit and you see those ports on a few consumer | devices now. | jjoonathan wrote: | > 10 GbE was, until quite recently, pretty power | intensive and it still is more expensive and hot than | gigabit | | PCIe 3.0 transceivers were 8Gb/s and supported | preemphasis and equalization, closing the sophistication | gap with their off-backplane counterparts. How many | PCIe3+ transceivers has the average person been running | (or leaving idle) for the last decade? These days a | typical processor has 16Gb transceivers by the dozens and | 10Gb hardened transceivers by the handful. I just counted | my 10Gb+ transceivers -- I have 36 and am using... 10 | (EDIT: 8/4 more, HDMI is 4x12Gb/s these days). | | The reason why 10GbE is expensive has nothing to do with | technology, nothing to do with marginal expense, nothing | to do with power, and everything to do with market | structure. Computer manufacturers don't want to move | until modem/router/ap/nas manufacturers move and | modem/router/ap/nas manufacturers don't want to move | until computer manufacturers move. | | These snags don't take much to develop, just "A needs B, | B needs A," and bang, the horizontally segmented | marketplace is completely immobilized. That's why the | market needs vertical players like Apple who can push out | A and B at the same time and cut through these snags, or | high-margin players like Apple who can deploy A without B | and wait for B to catch up. Otherwise these market snags | can murder entire product segments, like we've seen | happen to LAN. | | No, it isn't because of reduced demand. People are | recording and editing video more than ever, taking more | pictures than ever, streaming more than ever, downloading | hard-drive busting games more than ever, and so on. LAN | appliances would have eaten a much healthier chunk of | this pie if LAN didn't suck so hard, but it does, so here | we are. | | > Luckily, the introduction of 2.5GbE and 5GbE has | decreased the jump a bit | | Yaay, PCIe 2.0 speeds. 2003 called, it wants its | transceivers back :P | Sebb767 wrote: | Power is a big differentiation. You need to send 10GbE | over 100m (some break the standard and only offer 30). | Have you ever touched a 10GbE SFP module or the heat sink | of a card? They're quite hot and you need to provide that | energy, which is not a problem on a desktop, but a big | one on a laptop. If the laptop has RJ45, that is. | | > modem/router/ap/nas manufacturers don't want to move | until computer manufacturers move | | Modems and routers only make sense once they serve a link | that is actually beyond 1Gbit - which is rare even today. | Also, these devices are minimal and the hardware required | to actually route 10Gbit is a lot more expensive. Even | Mikrotiks cheaper offerings today can't do so with many | routes or a lot of small packages (no offense to them, | their stuff is great and I'm a happy customer - it's | still true, though). | | APs are a bit different, as WiFi recently "breached" the | Gbit wall (under perfect conditions). But there are | already quite a few with 2.5Gbit ports to actually use | that. | | NAS, on the other hand, are a bit held back by the | market. Still, high-models have offered either 10Gbit | directly or a PCIe-slot for a long time now. | | > People are recording and editing video more than ever, | taking more pictures than ever, streaming more than ever, | downloading hard-drive busting games more than ever, and | so on. LAN appliances would have eaten a much healthier | chunk of this pie if LAN didn't suck so hard, but it | does, so here we are. | | The professional video editing studios with shared server | are already on 10 Gbit LAN, the stuff has been available | for years. Pretty cheap even, if you buy used SFP+ cards. | Switching was expensive until recently, but I'd say that | the number of people which need a 10G link to a lot of | computers are even less. | | And LAN competes with flaky, data-limited, expensive 100 | MBit lines (if you're lucky). 1GbE is beyond awesome | compared to that and yet it lost, anyway. | | > Yaay, PCIe 2.0 speeds. 2003 called, it wants its | transceivers back :P | | I'm not happy, either, but its better to at least go | beyond Gigabit speed rather than stay stagnant even | longer. | kevingadd wrote: | Are you really suggesting that PCIe and ethernet are | equivalent? There are so many differences, starting with | the distance... | devonkim wrote: | 10 GbE is still iffy even with CAT6 cabling over copper | which complicates deployments and user experience. As a | result, prosumer type devices like recent AMD x570 | motherboards and the upcoming Intel Z690 based ones are | including 2.5 GbE ports that are rated to work over CAT5E | and provides enough bandwidth for a few hundred GBps with | a lot less power usage on the switch side (something like | < 4w / port seems common) and makes it easier for low | cost passively cooled switches to work alongside a | switching SoC that doesn't need to be terribly | sophisticated to hit the latency requirements needed to | support 2.5 GbE. | fleventynine wrote: | 10GBASE-T is power hungry and unreliable, but dirt-cheap | 10GBASE-LR and 25GBASE-LR transceivers work great up to | 10km. If only they could figure out how to fit the | transceivers into mobile-friendly packaging. But for a | workstation they're great. | Sebb767 wrote: | That's true, I actually run fiber in my home for that | reason. I think the problem with fiber is, though, that | the technology is pretty unknown to consumers and working | with fibers is a lot harder than working with cables; | they take a lot less abuse before breaking, for example. | But if someone is going for 10Gbit+ in their home | network, I can highly recommend fiber. | cptskippy wrote: | > Combined, there are few reasons to take the expense of | putting a high-speed ethernet port on a device. Luckily, | the introduction of 2.5GbE and 5GbE has decreased the | jump a bit and you see those ports on a few consumer | devices now. | | I think the only thing driving 2.5/5/10GbE at all is that | WiFi Access Points need it. | Sebb767 wrote: | Compare the cooler for a 2.5GbE card [0] to that of a 10 | GbE card. The fact that WiFi (which is what most | consumers use) now supports those speeds surely helps, | but 2.5GbE is also simply far easier to integrate and | power. | | [0] https://www.amazon.de/XIAOLO-Netzwerkadapter- | Unterstutzung-L... | | [1] https://www.amazon.de/XG-C100C-Netzwerkkarte- | RJ45-Port-802-3... | birdman3131 wrote: | The scary part? 1GbE is older than I thought. A couple | weeks ago I replaced a 1GbE switch (gs524t) at my work | and got curious. Said model came out in 2001 or 2002. | jagger27 wrote: | Copper gigabit Ethernet is about as old as USB 1.1. | bluedino wrote: | >> Also the parallel port. I remember the drama! | | Printers I can see. An entry-level HP LaserJet was $600 | back in 2000, something not as easily replaced as a | serial mouse or gamepad. | | >> a niche that could really use the Apple Bump but | hasn't gotten it and probably won't get it: 10 gigabit | ethernet. | | They stuck it on the Mac Mini | my123 wrote: | As a $100 additional option... | | (which granted, isn't too bad compared to the price of a | _new_ 10GbE card, but still...) | GloriousKoji wrote: | I thought the touchbar was great idea but I hated that the | function keys (and especially esc for a while) were | sacrificed for it. They could have taken that 1cm of | vertical space from the ridiculously huge touchpad instead | and given us a ridiculously huge touchpad along with | function keys and a touchbar. | stack_framer wrote: | > This is pure speculation, ungrounded from any evidence. | | It's not ungrounded from the _anecdotal_ evidence that | these changes are coming after Ive 's departure. | | > I have seen no evidence that Jony Ive was its patron, and | no evidence that including it had anything to with making | laptops expensive as a goal. | | Holy, evidence Batman! Leadership 101: When your title is | "Chief Design Officer", the design buck stops with you. | When your company releases an updated design to an existing | product, you had some kind of say in that design. Period. | Even if your "say" was just that you were aware of it, and | didn't veto it. | [deleted] | BoorishBears wrote: | > Holy, evidence Batman! Leadership 101: When your title | is "Chief Design Officer", the design buck stops with | you. When your company releases an updated design to an | existing product, you had some kind of say in that | design. Period. Even if your "say" was just that you were | aware of it, and didn't veto it. | | This is just shifting goalposts because you got called | out. | | You didn't word your comment as "these things happened on | Ive's watch" you consistently word your comment like Ives | was personally pushing for something. | | It's a common refrain on HN and it's never backed with | proof. | | And speaking of your first comment: | | > Ive is gone and every one of those decisions has been | reversed or at least significantly amended. This is no | accident. | | ... you realize that this is a new generation of MBP | landing on the exact same cadence they've come out on in | the last few decades? | | So it makes perfect sense to have drastic changes land | now regardless of who's in charge? | | Not mention the fact it hasn't even been two full years | since Ives left. And the fact the HDMI port was coming | back leaked at the start of the year. | | So unless you seriously think Apple designs a laptop in | the course of a single year, it's highly unlikely he had | no input on the current machine. | Dylan16807 wrote: | > You didn't word your comment as "these things happened | on Ive's watch" you consistently word your comment like | Ives was personally pushing for something. | | This is not a meaningful difference when he's in charge | and it's a flagship product. | BoorishBears wrote: | I knew this would be the response, and it's _utter_ | nonsense. | | But definitely extra points for trying to act like it | being a flagship is why maybe this is an exception. | | - | | Flagship product or not, people do not say "Sundar Pichai | recently made an unliked change to YouTube" despite his | Director role | | People do not say "Kevin Scott's new Windows version is | being disliked" despite him being MS's CTO | | > these things happened on Ive's watch | | Is a factual statement | | > Ives was personally pushing for X. | | Is gossip that HNs tell themselves to feel better. | | Or is Johnny Ives magically a special case because people | don't like him? | | I mean seriously, if you think being a leader means you | are personally pushing for every single solution as | opposed to personally _accepting_ every solution... and | that you always have the exact same level of personal | love for everything that you allow, you 've never lead | anything with any sort of scale. | | Being a leader is about compromise, not turning every | project into a 1:1 reflection of what your preferred | choices would have been. | Dylan16807 wrote: | You're naming people that are managing entire companies. | | The person in charge of _design_ , for a company that has | a handful of physical products, is a completely different | situation. It's reasonable to blame them for _top level | product design decisions_. What happens in that specific | realm is what they want. The top priority of their job is | those few dozen decisions. The opposite of a CEO that 's | overseeing ten thousand different things. | | Be a little less stuck on the word 'pushing'. The fact | is, when it's one of the main things you're in charge of | choosing, and you allow a decision and then stand by it | for a long time, you _are_ now pushing it. | | Also, wait, you're the one that inserted the word | 'pushing' into the conversation! If you're upset with | that wording, you're upset at a strawman. | BoorishBears wrote: | Kevin Scott is a CTO. He's in charge of _top level | product technical decisions_ | | The top priority of his job is those few dozen decisions. | | Be a little less stuck on the word "Director". The fact | is, when you're one of the main people in charge of | allowing decisions, it's not the same as personally | championing them. | | - | | > Also, wait, you're the one that inserted the word | 'pushing' into the conversation! If you're upset with | that wording, you're upset at a strawman. | | You know you can just read the comment I referred to | right if you've already forgotten right? | | _The butterfly keyboard was Ive shaving off 0.5mm of the | width for a worse user experience with a higher | production cost and less reliability._ | | Does that sound like personally assigning blame to Johnny | Ive for something? It'd be one thing if it said Ive's | team or something, but it's the common refrain parroted | on this site | | - | | If John manages Joe and Joe deletes a database in prod, | do you say "John's subordinate deleted a database in | prod" or do you say "John deleted a database in prod". | | You see how there's a difference there even though both | acknowledge that John has a part in what happened? | | It's not that complicated to see the difference if you've | ever interacted with any sort of situation where the buck | _actually_ stopped with leadership, but I guess that 's | not universal. | Dylan16807 wrote: | > Kevin Scott is a CTO. He's in charge of top level | product technical decisions | | Then it's probably fair to blame him for some high-level | decisions. But technical decisions go well beyond design, | and microsoft has _so many_ products, so it 's harder to | say how much you can point at him. | | > The top priority of his job is those few dozen | decisions. | | I honestly have no idea which few dozen you mean. Across | all of microsoft? I could list a bunch for "apple product | design", like the way airpods fit, the decision to have | no holes in airtags, the keyboard and touch bar choices | in macbooks, etc. | | Maybe the start menu location? You could probably blame | him for the choice of xbox models too. I'm not singling | out Apple in saying that executives should be considered | responsible for certain high-level decisions. | | > Be a little less stuck on the word "Director". | | I'm stuck on the word "design". He's the design guy. | | > The fact is, when you're one of the main people in | charge of allowing decisions, it's not the same as | personally championing them. | | If it's one of the top few most important decisions under | your job purview, the difference is so minor as to not | matter outside the company. | | > Does that sound like personally assigning blame to | Johnny Ive for something? It'd be one thing if it said | Ive's team or something, but it's the common refrain | parroted on this site | | Assigning him blame is not the same as saying he 'pushed' | it. The buck stops here for design. He gets the blame | because he strongly approved it and he could have easily | spent entire days on the decision because that's the core | of his job, and spending enough time on the decision is | also his job. | | > If John manages Joe and Joe deletes a database in prod, | do you say "John's subordinate deleted a database in | prod" or do you say "John deleted a database in prod". | | John decided to delete a database in prod. Ive decided to | go with this keyboard. | | Assuming the delete wasn't accidental, because the | keyboard definitely wasn't accidental! If it was an | accident this analogy isn't relevant. | r00fus wrote: | Just putting this out there [1] - Steve Jobs would have | rightfully put responsibility for these design changes | under the Chief Design Officer. | | "Somewhere between the janitor and the CEO, reasons stop | mattering," says Jobs, adding, that Rubicon is "crossed | when you become a VP." | | In other words, you have no excuse for failure. You are | now responsible for any mistakes that happen, and it | doesn't matter what you say. | | [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-on-the- | difference... | trevyn wrote: | I think it's fair to say that Jony was ultimately the DRI | ("directly responsible individual" in Apple-speak) for | all industrial design, so he "owns" it, which is a bit | above "signing off" or "accepting", whether or not he was | personally pushing for something. | | This is a bit of a quirk of how Apple structures | responsibility, and makes it a bit more fair to say that | "Jony made a disliked change" in a way that doesn't quite | apply at Google or Microsoft, where responsibility tends | to be a bit more diffuse. | BoorishBears wrote: | DRI has expanded throughout the tech industry, I can't | remember the last time I was on a team that didn't use | the concept. | | But I provided a simple analogy above. | | Say John manages Joe and is the DRI for data storage. If | Joe goes and deletes the production database, John has | some blame even though he didn't _personally_ delete the | database. | | Do you not see the difference between saying "John | deleted production?" and "John's subordinate deleted | production?" | | Both are assigning some blame to John, but only one is | factually true. | | This entire conversations almost feels like the typical | HN inability to realize the world is not black and white. | | It's like people need Johnny Ives to personally have | opened up a CAD drawing and shrunk the MBP because it's | utterly impossible that a larger team decided on the | vision for an entire flagship possible. | | - | | Lol the replies. What a weird way to dodge a simple | question lol. | | "John's subordinate deleted production" implies that John | is partially responsible, but accurately reflects he did | not personally delete it. | | You're not even mentioning Joe, you're accurately | reflecting John was in charge, but you're also not | _lying_ and saying John did it. | trevyn wrote: | "John was responsible for production having been deleted" | because of the systems and processes he did or did not | put in place. At a high enough level of abstraction, this | is all that matters. | | Jony was responsible for the Touch Bar. | | Anyway, some evidence: "For years, Apple Chief Design | Officer Jony Ive has expressed a desire for the iPhone to | appear like a single sheet of glass", suggesting that | this could have been part of a larger overall design | direction. (https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-unlikely- | to-make-big-chan...) | | I'd be willing to bet that they mocked up MacBooks with | full touchscreen keyboards. | | Further, I don't think it's a coincidence that I don't | mind typing an email (core C-level activity) on an iPad | on-screen keyboard, but I'd find it infuriating to try to | code on. | spacedcowboy wrote: | I work at Apple, I'm a senior engineer - been there for | almost 2 decades. I'm DRI on a few things here and there. | | Not a single decision is made on things that I am DRI on | without me being a part of that decision. I may not get | my way if I'm over-ruled for corporate reasons, but I | know about it, and being the DRI, I get a slightly- | larger-than-average say in what happens. Generally it | takes a director or VP to over-rule what I want, and then | the radar is very clearly marked as such. | | Apple takes the concept of the DRI very seriously. You | don't give responsibility without also giving power. | | My opinion: There is _zero_ chance (not "a small | chance", _zero_ chance) that Jony Ive didn 't sign off | on, and explicitly endorse the Touch Bar. Something that | obvious, in that commanding a position in the user | interface would never have escaped his personal input and | attention. | bscphil wrote: | Thank you for saying this, your personal experience here | is just about the best insight we could ask for. | Subjectively, there's an odd lack of current Apple | engineers weighing in on threads here at HN relative to | other FAANG companies. I've often wondered if the | company's rules were stricter. | Sharlin wrote: | Isn't it well-known that Apple's culture is extremely | secretive? | rusk wrote: | John's subordinate asks John if he should delete | production. John says go ahead. | karaterobot wrote: | > When your title is "Chief Design Officer", the design | buck stops with you. | | Agreed with this. When you're coming to the CDO position | after 20 years of being a hands-on designer at that | company, most recently as the head of both human | interface and industrial design across the entire | organization, and having been described as being the | person with the most operational power at Apple, after | Steve Jobs himself, _even before being promoted_ , my | guess is that these design changes did not sneak under | his radar. It is most likely that he set the goals that | produced these designs, and that he was aware of and | approved of them from the beginning. And I suspect that | as a new C-level, he was probably even more hands on than | that. | | But since in this thread we are being asked to hold | ourselves to a very high standard of rigor, I should note | that I have not submitted this comment to peer review, or | made my data available for replication at this time. I'm | just basing this on, you know, how jobs work. | threeseed wrote: | > my guess is that these design changes did not sneak | under his radar | | Ive is part of the Senior Leadership Team. | | No major decision in the company sneaks under his radar. | | But that doesn't mean he is responsible for every | decision. | threeseed wrote: | > When your title is "Chief Design Officer", the design | buck stops with you. | | That's only because in your ignorant reality you have | made it so. | | The actual reality is that what constitutes a product is | so much more than just the design. For example it | includes what features should and shouldn't be there. And | that is a decision largely coming from the Product team. | Or how it works. Which comes from Hardware Engineering | team. | danaris wrote: | There's a big difference between "Jony Ive, as CDO, must | have signed off on this, and thus bears responsibility | for it" and "Jony Ive was pushing for this, for these | specific reasons". | Oddskar wrote: | The touch bar was fingers on glass. It's not appropriate | for a professional device since it requires you to look | down and doesn't lend itself to the "mechanical" use of | devices that high-paced work requires. | | Also, you _can_ actually add the analog inputs yourself. | The DIY keyboard community -- which is flourishing with | options and new vendors -- has lots of options available. I | myself have two analog knobs and one trackpoint on my | keyboard. It 's absolutely amazing. | compiler-guy wrote: | If the analog add ons are DIY or even extra money, then | software developers cannot rely on them being present and | won't develop good software and use cases for it. At | least not most of them. The best you can hope for is | niche software support. | | So adding stuff yourself is nice (I do it myself!) but | not a way to move the industry or even the Apple | ecosystem forward. | pdpi wrote: | Analogue input is pretty much a solved problem. Not only | do we have standards for game controllers, but also MIDI | control surfaces give you a wide variety of analogue | physical controls. MIDI even comes with incredibly rich | input automation. | | Sadly, the only company I'm aware of producing that sort | of hardware for use outside the music industry seems to | be Loupedeck. | Oddskar wrote: | Niche software support? My keyboard and the analog addons | works on Mac, Windows and Linux with excellent support | since it runs QMK firmware. | compiler-guy wrote: | How well does this analog input work with, say, | Photoshop? | karmelapple wrote: | I was really hoping Apple had a big leap forward in | fingers-on-glass interaction planned. Imagine if the | glass could kind of raise or move down so you could | "feel" where the buttons were. Heck, even providing a few | notches in the chassis, above the Touch Bar, for a finger | to "feel" relatives where it was, and require a harder | "press" to activate the Touch Bar, would have been likely | a game changer. | | But they didn't. And I was always confused that the Touch | Bar never got more love from the hardware developers. | | That definitely makes me wonder if it was pushed by Ive | or someone at Apple as a pet project, but abandoned once | the initial development was done. Seemed very Un-Apple to | do something like that these days though. | | It also wasn't easy to build software for the Touch Bar | from what I could gather. I had lots of ideas for little | tools (think iStat-like gauges, but perhaps for things | like the mic input level), but it wasn't very easy to | build one when I tried. | | RIP Touch Bar. You might not be missed too much, but I | bet something like you will come up again in a decade or | two. | giantrobot wrote: | > That definitely makes me wonder if it was pushed by Ive | or someone at Apple as a pet project, but abandoned once | the initial development was done. Seemed very Un-Apple to | do something like that these days though. | | I think it was more like they decided to add the | equivalent of an Apple Watch to Macs to support TouchID | and then asked "what else can we do with it?". | diskzero wrote: | > That definitely makes me wonder if it was pushed by Ive | or someone at Apple as a pet project, but abandoned once | the initial development was done. Seemed very Un-Apple to | do something like that these days though. | | Yes. It wasn't Jony. It came from the software side. I | won't name who to protect the guilty. | threeseed wrote: | > It's not appropriate for a professional device since it | requires you to look down | | Apart from developers many professionals do look down all | the time because they typically have other devices | connected e.g. synths, photo/video editing rigs. | | And Touchbar was designed much more for that audience. | diskzero wrote: | I can see how you might make that assumption based on how | the Touchbar has exposed functionality, but this was not | the goal of the Touchbar as it was sold internally. It | was sold as one of the next great UI affordances. It came | from some of the same people that brought us Mission | Control, the Dock, Expose, etc. I worked on a lot of | these features and I never use them. Shame on me. | nsxwolf wrote: | My touch bar almost always has "Display Connected: | [Mirror Displays] [Extend Desktop]" on it. I can fiddle | around and get it to show app-specific things, or hold Fn | to see the F keys, but most of the time I'm using it it | shows those useless multi-monitor buttons. | | I'm sure there's some setting somewhere that defaults to | showing whatever the layout for the in-focus app is, but | it's failed to make me care enough about it to try to | figure it out. | epistasis wrote: | On a laptop, that "look down" means looking at the bottom | pixels of the screen. | | The looking was never the problem, IMHO, the problem was | execution and utility. It was actually distracting when | there was adaptive completion results continually | flashing. And the rest of the buttons were never great. | | If _every_ single dialog box flashed the buttons, that | would be a win as it is easier and faster to tap the | touchbar than it is to navigate the cursor and then | click. But this obvious use case never really | materialized. | | And if, like most "professional" users, the laptop is | operated via an external keyboard, the muscle memory | never develops. | setr wrote: | > It's not appropriate for a professional device since it | requires you to look down and doesn't lend itself to the | "mechanical" use of devices that high-paced work | requires. | | Sure it could; it just has to beat the cost of the | lookup. If you could have done some complex operation | trivially with it, that couldn't really be done with some | keyboard shortcut, being a dynamic visual field would be | fine. | | Of course, volume sliders don't fit that bill, and I | don't think anyone really found something that did... but | it's not some fundamental guarantee that it would be | useless. | wyre wrote: | What keyboard do you have with a trackball? | formerly_proven wrote: | G80-11800 of course | Oddskar wrote: | Oops. Should have been "trackpoint" and not trackball. | It's a pimoroni trackpoint breakout board. | evan_ wrote: | The Ultimate Hacking Keyboard has trackball options: | | https://ultimatehackingkeyboard.com/ | ksec wrote: | >and no evidence that including it had anything to with | making laptops expensive as a goal. | | It is product differentiation. The MacBook Pro 2016 | redesign was delayed by a year due to Intel's CPU problems. | The touchbar Macbook also had higher ASP from the start. It | was the Post PC era. Everyone was suppose to leave the PC ( | including Mac ) platform to Tablet. It doesn't get any | clearer than that. Even making an iPad ads "What's a | Computer". Making an ASP increase is a typical move of a | market where you want to milk it. Did I mention they | completely neglect Mac Pro for years? | | >Jony Ive was its patron | | Despite media wants to claim otherwise at the time and had | shills cover it up. He spend most of his time on Apple | Retail redesign and Apple Park. But iPhone X and Macbook / | MacBook Pro was his vision of how the ultimate MacBook Pro | and iPhone would be as he said so himself. He was named CDO | in 2015, along with some design team restructuring. The | "Designed by Apple in California" chronicles 20 years of | Apple design photo book came out in _2016_. When he finally | left in 2019, the media and shills were suggesting he hasn | 't actually been on product design for quite a few years. | His earlier work on Apple in 2011+ was iOS 7 re-design. ( | After Scott Forstall was out ) And we all know how that | went as they spend the next 3 years to iterate _out_ of it. | To the point their old UX design head had to _retire_. And | if you look at the changes to Apple Retail Store redesign, | they were the same. Form over function. Partly Jony 's | fault, partly Angela. | | >Nobody ever set out to make a "worse experience" or higher | cost. | | Apple filled many patents where they were looking at | keyboard on a flat piece of glass with Force Touch and 3D | Touch. These patents were specific to computer. Higher BOM | cost are often used as moat in any luxury items. | | >to design the best extremely thin keyboard they could... | | If it wasn't for the butterfly keyboard. The internet would | not have a group of people and product reviewer now talking | about key travel distance. The thin keyboard has a similar | typing experience as typing on glass...... | | >There are many suboptimal features... | | No one fault them for trying. But the first report of | keyboard problem came out in _2016_ from MacBook users. | Less than one year after its launch even before the MacBook | Pro TouchBar. Apple constantly delete report of the problem | on its support forum. The whole thing only gotten attention | when an online press themselves decide to blog about it and | went viral. That was _2018_. They stopped reporting Mac | user satisfactory in 2018, both in keynote and in investor | meeting. It took nearly 3 years of ranting before Tim Cook | even made a Keyboard Service Program. | | Basically without Steve Jobs, no one had the gut to say, | fuck this. This isn't working. Close it down. Work on a | alternative or go back to where it was and we make a | Service Programme. Instead they drag on it for years. | Without product sensibility and direction. | sedatk wrote: | All Apple had to was to have the touch bar over function | keys, and nobody would complain _at all_. | edgriebel wrote: | THIS! Touch bar is cool but when they went and removed | _the ESC key_ they failed. Both would be ideal | ceejayoz wrote: | Touch Bars have had a separate, physical ESC key since | 2019. I'm looking at one right now. | sedatk wrote: | ESC itself doesn't cut it for me. With my resting hand | position on the keyboard, my fingers touch the touch bar, | and it always causes something either catastrophic or | very frustrating. On a similar note, I'd gotten used to | pressing Fn keys without looking at the keyboard. With | touch bar, I have to carefully analyze the touch bar | before doing anything with Fn keys. It's a very | problematic experience overall. If it was a separate bar, | I wouldn't have any of these issues. | minimaxir wrote: | Due to _years_ of vocal complaints from developers since | 2016. | ceejayoz wrote: | Sure, but "both would be ideal" _exists_. You can have an | Escape key and Touch Bar, if you want. | trevyn wrote: | I think two rows of function keys would be ideal! | | Each with a little OLED display, please. (Why hasn't this | happened yet??) | dmitriid wrote: | It's not "ideal". Function keys are exactly that: | physical keys. Something you can use without looking down | at your keyboard. | [deleted] | wnissen wrote: | What I always wondered is why they didn't start with a $999 | base model (like the original iBook) that was cheap, but big | and slow. if you wanted premium | performance/expandability/ports/screen, you could pay $2K for | the Pro model in the same form factor. If you wanted | portability, you could pay $2K for the Air in a smaller form | factor with the same performance as the iBook. The cheapest | model being the most portable is bizarre. | | Then again, the iPad Mini is more expensive than the larger | iPad, so obviously there is something going on I don't | understand. Perhaps the cost of engineering the motherboard | and battery in an integrated package are so high that they | can't afford to split the line any further. | | The 2021 14" Pro is the first truly pro model in a while. I | hope they keep it up. The keyboard is actually usable for | extended periods, it has ports, the screen is great (to be | fair, all Apple retina screens are great to varying degrees). | Did I need it? No. But I wanted it. The last Mac laptop I | bought for myself was the 2015 13" MacBook "Pro", so they're | getting more money out of me this time around. | trevyn wrote: | >the iPad Mini [$499+] is more expensive than the larger | iPad | | Sort of. The $329+ "iPad" has internals that are a few | generations old, kind of like the iPhone SE. The iPad Air | ($599+) and iPad Pro ($799+) are the "real" current larger | iPads. | nothis wrote: | I want this to be true but to be honest, I care less about | the Ive angle than them simply doing it! It seems like | someone with power said, "hey, what are these letters P, R | and O standing for, again?". | dlivingston wrote: | > Touch Bar? This was nothing more than adding expense to | raise the ASP | | I thought it was a great idea, and I still do, but am so glad | they removed it. It sounds great on paper, but practically, I | used it for nothing other than adjusting brightness and | volume. | | > The butterfly keyboard was Ive shaving off 0.5mm of the | width for a worse user experience with a higher production | cost and less reliability. | | Agreed. It really wasn't great. From a design perspective, | it's quite clever, but from a usability perspective it was | horrible. | | > USB-C only was a philosophical move rather than a practical | one that forced people everywhere to carry dongles. | | Apple has a long, long history of doing this. Headphone jack? | Gone. Ethernet port? Gone. VGA port? Gone. Floppy disk drive? | Gone. | | I'm fine with it in moderation, frankly. USB-C is so clearly | the future that where I take offense is that the _rest_ of | Apple 's lineup doesn't work with it (iPhones, AirPods, some | iPads, etc.). | | > Replaceable RAM and SSD being lost is still painful. | | Perhaps, but now that RAM is not only part of the SoC but a | significant reason that the SoC is so good (high bandwidth | shared memory between CPU and GPU), it's a change I'm more | than fine with. | | > Ive is gone and every one of those decisions has been | reversed or at least significantly amended. This is no | accident. | | Agreed. This finally, truly, feels like a Pro machine: | "design first" is an approach for consumer products and, to | Apple's credit, works very nicely on the iPad and iPhone and | consumer MacBooks (generally). "Design first" for pro | machines is great for the 3 minutes after opening the box, | but when trying to do real work, you'd sacrifice all the | bezels in the world to shave 30% off compile times. | npongratz wrote: | > Apple has a long, long history of doing this. Headphone | jack? Gone. Ethernet port? Gone. VGA port? Gone. Floppy | disk drive? Gone. | | The MBP designers still bravely include the 3.5mm headphone | jack [0], though it is certainly true that the iPhone | designers courageously jettisoned the jack. | | [0] https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro-14-and-16/specs/ | RHSeeger wrote: | > iPhone designers courageously jettisoned the jack. | | There are a LOT of us that still believe this was a | horrible choice. | Miraste wrote: | That was probably sarcasm, Apple was widely mocked for | referring to the removal as "courageous" at the time. | npongratz wrote: | Indeed, I was lampooning their terrible decision to | remove the headphone jack and their gall to refer to it | as "courage." I'm still salty about the whole ordeal. | dwaite wrote: | That they decided to remove it in the face of many people | saying it was a terrible decision was exactly why they | referred to it as "courage". A lot of phones have removed | it since for most of the same reasons - the modern 3.5mm | is a pretend spec. | vmception wrote: | I've never had any consequence from this except now my | headphones also dont have the option of being a wired | headphone, which means I have to ask the flight attendant | for headphones to watch a movie on their screens. | Everyone else is in the same situation though so its | commonplace. Dont know if you've flown anywhere in the | last year but a lot of people have. | dlivingston wrote: | I think most over-ear Bluetooth headphones have the | ability to also act as wired headphones, via some flavor | of USB -> Aux cord/adapter. | dmitriid wrote: | > The MBP designers still bravely include the 3.5mm | headphone jack | | And in Jony Ive designs they've had it on the wrong side | for years. The 2021 model finally moves it back the left | side. | grishka wrote: | > Apple has a long, long history of doing this. Headphone | jack? Gone. Ethernet port? Gone. VGA port? Gone. Floppy | disk drive? Gone. | | There's an important distinction here you're glossing over: | unreliable, wireless, software-controlled Rube Goldberg- | esque connections (bluetooth, wifi) can't possibly | supersede reliable wired ones. Wired connections "just | work" 99.999999% of the time, and when they don't, you can | actually see and inspect the thing that connects your | devices to troubleshoot it. Wireless works only when it | feels like it. | | VGA, on the other hand, was fully superseded by various | digital video interfaces, and floppies were fully | superseded by optical media and then various forms of cheap | flash memory. | | And I mean it. People do still miss headphone jacks, and | people do still buy ethernet dongles for their laptops. | People don't really miss floppies and CDs. | timeon wrote: | You are probably right but if we are talking about Touch Bar | there are (at least few) people (like me) that prefer it to | functional keys. | cmelbye wrote: | Innovative design doesn't work without an internal champion | who can rally the company around unconventional ideas. Jobs | played that role, but now Apple is led by the operations | team. The word "design" does not appear anywhere on their | executive leadership page. | | Unconventional ideas are inherently risky. They're just not | worth pursuing if buy-in can't be secured and leadership is | more focused on compromising to increase profit margins, etc. | For that reason, it's great (in the short term!) that Apple | is rehashing known-good designs from a decade ago. However, I | don't see that strategy working in the long term. | thedougd wrote: | Sometimes I wonder if folks use rose colored glasses when | thinking about MagSafe. I don't miss MagSafe and I enjoy the | interchangeability of chargers. | | I could not keep my 13" MacBook plugged in while using it on | my lap. The MagSafe cord repeatedly fell off when my leg, or | a pillow bumped into it. My MacBook MagSafe port had black | marks on it from arcing. At least three times I couldn't get | it to charge because a metal fragment (once a folded paper | staple) became magnetically stuck to the receiving side. On | one of those occasions I couldn't fix it till I got home and | grabbed some tweezers. | | It was a smart solution, but IMO to a tripping problem that | wasn't widespread. | zemvpferreira wrote: | No, it's universally loved because it has universally saved | macbooks from nasty falls. I upgraded to a sans-MagSafe | 2020 16" MBP when my 2015 MBP had a $600 screen failure. I | broke the 2020's screen in the first week. Sold it, | repaired my 2015 and have been happy ever since. | | Through all it's faults and problems, I can't shake how | good my 2015 MacBook Pro has been: great keyboard, MagSafe, | good enough everything, great keyboard. Did I mention how | great the keyboard is? It's on my lap right now, purring | and tethered to power as usual. | lotsofpulp wrote: | Yes, I have none of the experiences that thedougd has | had, but have had multiple instances of the wire being | yanked on. | dsego wrote: | And the cables were fraying constantly because the | connector didn't have strain relief and it was using some | weird rubber compound that crumbled. I had the misfortune | of having the L-shaped one which was really bad (and they | knew it because the next iterations returned to T-shaped). | It didn't disconnect to prevent my macbook from falling | from my desk and made my relatively new macbook all dented | and beat up. When that fragile L-connector inevitably | fractured and failed, and the cable not being detachable, I | had to spend around hundred dollars to buy a whole new | power brick. And that one was ruined within a year. | hamburglar wrote: | The shape of the MagSafe 1 cord end was better for | lap/lounging use because it didn't stick directly out as | far the way MagSafe 2 did. It came out into a fairly low | profile cylindrical shape that made the cord turn an | immediate right angle so things didn't lever it over and | make it fall off. | trevyn wrote: | I really missed the orange/green charging/charged LED, I | was a bit surprised they didn't throw that on a USB-C cable | or the exterior of the machine. | GoofballJones wrote: | Ive was probably cursing at the announcement: "WTF are you | doing! You're giving people what they want? That's not the | Apple I left, mate. By this time, in 2021, there should be NO | ports on the Macbooks, and it should be so thin you could | shave with it. What the hell is all this?" | tomxor wrote: | If Ive had stayed for one more year they probably would | have been selling 1mm _thick_ rectangles of anodized | aluminium. There 's probably an Onion report for that. | | It's ironic the extremes Apple design has ended up at, | because there was a point in time (when both Ive and Jobs | were working together) when Dieter Rams claimed Apple was | the only company that really followed his ethos, minimalism | with a critical qualification of honesty, where form | follows function... but for the last decade it's been more | like the aesthetic of minimalism at all cost... it's funny | because that sounds quite a lot like skeuomorphism, it's | pretentious. | eloisant wrote: | Behold, the Macbook Wheel! | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA | dylan604 wrote: | "What the hell is all this?" | | It's okay Ive. It's called "something useable" or even, if | I might be so bold, "something the users want". | shoto_io wrote: | How do you know all this? We're you at apple at the time? | tobyjsullivan wrote: | I don't think apple decided to "undo Ive" immediately, | though. The 2019 models attempted an incremental fix approach | - fix the keyboard layout, add a physical escape key - while | trying to preserve the 2016 features (usb-c only, thinness, | touchbar). It seems clear that it wasn't until 2021 that | apple has decided to throw all the crap out entirely. | clairity wrote: | i have the 2019 mbp, bought reluctantly earlier this year | after my 2015 went wonky. based on what i'd heard, i wasn't | expecting much, but it was clearly an improvement, even if | it was incremental (touch id, bigger/brighter screen, | better sound). the biggest obvious lack in the upgrade was | the performance-battery life tradeoff, which is entirely on | intel stagnating for over a decade. apple addressed these | most glaring issues via the combo of m1 and more battery in | the 2021. usb-c or touch bar were minor issues in | comparison (that notch tho...). | cletus wrote: | Yeah I agree this wasn't a binary switch. | | Pure speculation: the forcing function for the big changes | in the latest models was the M1. That forced a redesign of | probably the entire unit anyway (eg different thermals, | chipsets, power requirements, etc). Prior to that the path | of least resistance was incremental changes and fixes. | fragmede wrote: | Where do the 2021 Macbok Pro Intel models fit in? | danaris wrote: | What 2021 MacBook Pro Intel models? | | As far as I'm aware, the last Intel MBPs were released in | 2020, and simply continued the 2019 design language. | Toutouxc wrote: | The 13" Pro was updated to M1 together with the Air. | danaris wrote: | Sorry, still confused. That happened in Nov 2020 (so it's | not a 2021 model), and it's an M1 (so not an Intel | model)...so what 2021 Intel MBP is being referred to? | Toutouxc wrote: | > forced a redesign of probably the entire unit | | Both laptops (Air and 13" Pro) that the M1 launched in | kept their previous designs. So the switch from Intel to | Apple Silicon itself wasn't the cause. The switch from M1 | to M1 Pro and Max, maybe. But even the previous Intel | machines had some serious TDP (and thermal issues), and | even that wasn't enough to justify a redesign. | dylan604 wrote: | It's the 2021 model. They were working on this in 2020 | maybe even 2019, but it takes time to deploy. Not that they | didn't think about it until 2021. </pedantic_mode> | threeseed wrote: | > it was Johnny | | Again with this rubbish. | | I have worked at Apple and Ive does not unilaterally make the | product decisions in the company. It is a combination of | Product Marketing, Hardware Engineering, Design, Procurement | etc and they are all discussed and signed off by the Senior | Leadership Team. | | When you building products at the scale Apple does decisions | are years in the making. And so they need to make them based | on what they think the future will be. Mostly they are right | and sometimes they are wrong e.g. USB-C being the standard | connector for everything. | SkyPuncher wrote: | > Also, the ports weren't all the same. | | This was the most shocking to me. I learned that the left and | right side ports run through different buses, but each side | does not have enough capacity to supply both ports at full | speed. This mean I had to buy long USB cable to run to the | other side of my Macbook in order to supply 3 monitors. I | have a port just sitting unused. | | Also, there seems to be a problem with left-side USB ports | when charging. They cause the system to overheat (or at least | think it's overheating). | | https://www.forbes.com/sites/barrycollins/2020/04/24/why- | you... | jdminhbg wrote: | > Touch Bar? This was nothing more than adding expense to | raise the ASP (Average Selling Price) of Macbooks, that had | fallen precipitously low from a shareholder perspective | because of the superb value-for-money proposition that was | the 13" Macbook Air. | | If customers don't like the Touch Bar, how does this make any | sense? If pro users will pay (made-up number) $2000 for a | MacBook Pro regardless of whether or not it has a Touch Bar | because it comes with the CPU/GPU they want, adding a Touch | Bar just decreases the margin. | | If the MacBook Air is a better value-for-money proposition | than the MacBook Pro to begin with, and customers do not | actually like the Touch Bar, then why would they start | switching to the MacBook Pro? | JustSomeNobody wrote: | > If the MacBook Air is a better value-for-money | proposition than the MacBook Pro to begin with, and | customers do not actually like the Touch Bar, then why | would they start switching to the MacBook Pro? | | The psychological effects of the word "Pro". | jdminhbg wrote: | Right, but the word "Pro" existed before the Touch Bar, | and as far as we can tell customers did not actually like | the Touch Bar. | jollybean wrote: | Touch Bar I think was a legit attempt at modernization. | | Every time I 'see' a touchbar, I want one. | | They look cool and useful. | | The only reason I don't have one, is because everyone seems | to indicate they are useless. | | It's also possibly a platform issue - maybe they just didn't | get enough participation etc.. | | Also - 'thinner' is a rational and generally positive thing, | it's just that we've reached a threshold where the | diminishing marginal returns are starting to weigh on other | things. | | Even ports - it's not an aesthetic issue only - they're | trying to get everyone onto a standard. Frankly, I support | the notion - I'd love it if everyone just used the same dam | connector. The reason I don't like my 'USB C only Mac' is | only because the ecosystem isn't there yet. If the ecosystem | were there, I'd be fine with it. | Spivak wrote: | I'm kinda sad to see the Touch Bar go so fast because I | have one and actually like it a lot. The variant where it | has a physical escape key is perfect. | rudedogg wrote: | > Touch Bar I think was a legit attempt at modernization. | | I agree, I think they're really interesting. The way we | interact with computers hasn't changed much, and having a | set of buttons you can configure sounds amazing. | | I wish they would have just put it above the physical | function keys, and deployed it to all MacBooks and wireless | keyboards. Being limited to just some MacBook Pros probably | hurt the number of apps that adopted it. | st-keller wrote: | Not everyone says the touchbar is useless. I absolutely | love it! I will miss it. And the new Macbook may be a beast | but it looks terribly old - like a yesterday-machine. For | the first time Apple released a product i will buy because | it will be more capable - but not because i want it! | wiredfool wrote: | I think that the touchbar could have been fine if it had | been spaced one row above a full sized set of function | keys. | | As it is, when I use the keyboard on my work MBP, my | fingers will brush the touchbar and do things. I have | turned off the functionality in most apps so that I don't | get that. (terminal especially) | | For my actual usage, it's a step backwards from the | pre-2016 function keys, an always available | pause/play/stop, volume and brightness. I can't be doing | something in emacs and then hit pause or louder, it's | switch to music and then I can pause. | | The lack of a physical escape key also dooms it in my | usage. (no, escape is not going on caps-lock, that's where | control goes) | | So the work MBP is 99% used with an external | keyboard/monitor. The personal 2015 MBP is generally used | on the lap. | | USB-c is ok, and the real magic is when you've got a | Thunderbolt/USB-c power delivery monitor with a built in | usb3 hub. One wire to the laptop and you're done. (and even | better when the monitor has a built-in kvm so that the | other computer is just a switch away, without mucking with | cables). | onion2k wrote: | Apple products are excellent, well built, and they last. If | they didn't add new things regularly far fewer people would | buy. I think a lot of the new features on Apple products have | simply been attempts to make things look different enough to | be worth buying. | | This includes removing the things they've added... | diskzero wrote: | People are commenting this post and saying it is speculation, | and until someone who directly was involved in these | discussions shows up to comment, I suppose it is. | | I have been in design meetings with Jony, and Scott Forstall, | and many others whose decisions were micromanaged by Steve at | every step. You can argue that a lot of Steve's design | decisions were questionable; rich Corinthian leather | skeumorphism, lickable Aqua widgets, brushed aluminum window | title bars, but he owned them. | | Steve and Jony would sit for hours outside of Caffe Macs | going over designs. Steve would spend even more time inside | the industrial design area going over prototypes. He would | spend a couple of hours every week meeting with every | software team that had user facing features. He had input on | almost every pixel on the screen and every | button/port/display/etc on hardware. | | Once he was gone, the drift began. It was inevitable that | focus would shift. Scott no longer had protection by Steve. | Jony fixated on the new campus and things like watch bands. | No one had Steve to rein in whatever impulse they had. Sure, | people would ask "What would Steve do?" but we also had Tim | Cook pushing to optimize production, lower cost of goods and | increase margins. | | Apple still has Steve DNA, but it continues to be diluted. | You may disagree with Steve's vision and opinions, but it was | strongly held and enforced. I feel almost everything about | the last generation of MacBook Pros went against what Steve | would have wanted and I am glad I wasn't there when those | decisions were made. | justicezyx wrote: | Well Steve's is being martyred into a figure head for | people who disagree with Apple's direction. Often used in | contradictory situations. For example, one can claim too | thin being against with Steve, and someone else opposite. | | Come-on, that guy has died for 10 years. His opinion on | anything one cited for is *UNKNOWABLE*. Stop saying he will | approve or disapprove some ideas... That's literally | meaningless statement... | steelframe wrote: | Whenever someone working at Apple has a Big Idea(TM), | invoking "This is what Steve would have done" is now | pretty much a mandatory tactic in arguing your position. | diskzero wrote: | Of course you are right. I have a snapshot of Steve in my | head that I apply, but his opinion changed frequently, as | evidenced by the various permutations of the OSX | interface designs. | | That being said, I just can't believe he would have been | happy about the various issues with the old MacBooks. So | many things feel so wrong. | lstamour wrote: | I think it's fair to say that Apple was more responsive, | faster, with someone like Jobs. There was just a bit more | push through the company to fix X, Y or Z. It's hard to | say that any features in particular were delayed for iOS, | but I think it's possible macOS would have seen a bit | more churn, arrived at the macOS 11 design sooner, and | maybe already have a redesign in the works to handle the | new "notch" at the top. | | That said, pure speculation on my part, but I think the | notch would not have launched on the laptops without some | other benefit - e.g. Face ID - or it would have been on | pause until it was small enough to match the current menu | bar's height. There was sometimes more of a push to get | things "just so," I think. Either way, I miss the old | showy product introductions. I like the polish of the | videos under lockdown, but it feels like the format | drains the enthusiasm a bit. | | And it's hard to point to anything recent, except maybe | AirPods Pro and recent software releases, where Apple | really knocked it out of the park. Most Apple hardware | seems like incremental improvements rather than flashy | impulse buys. Maybe I'm just more impatient than I used | to be. | anonymouse008 wrote: | I'm very curious about a few things - how does someone | like Steve gain so much respect from so many different | types of people? Was it the 'we've won before with him, | so I must believe'? - a Nick Saban like persona. Or was | it that he was unbelievably empathetic? -- that doesn't | make sense, because not all empaths are able to rally | people to a cause due to the bleeding heart syndrome. | | I ask because it is almost as if you see the bricks | change shape at Apple trying to fill the missing piece... | they know they need that influence, it's just not there, | and honestly, I want to be a part of an organization that | operates in the post-kicked out Steve aura. | dwaite wrote: | Totally agree - my understanding is Steve Jobs just was | 100% committed to an opinion, until someone convinced him | to go 100% in on a different opinion. | | I'd also add that with Jony Ive on the way out for years, | there are a lot of decisions attributed to him that he | likely did no more than sign off on. | ksec wrote: | Pretty much sums up my opinion from 20+ years of following | Apple. | | It is sad. No one knew what to do with Apple Retail. That | was the most neglected part of business. | | Ron Johnson left. Scott Forstall forced out. Katie Cotton | _retired_. ( I felt both Scott and Katie had a bit of Steve | Jobs in them ) Mansfield _retired_. It sometimes feel Apple | is now largely run by Tim Cook and Eddy Cue. | | Although the new MacBook Pro do seems to show there are | people in Apple that still give a damn. That their voice | may have been previously drown out. Quote from Steve. | | >It turns out the same thing can happen in technology | companies that get monopolies, like IBM or Xerox. If you | were a product person at IBM or Xerox, so you make a better | copier or computer. So what? When you have monopoly market | share, the company's not any more successful. | | >So the people that can make the company more successful | are sales and marketing people, and they end up running the | companies. And the product people get driven out of the | decision making forums, and the companies forget what it | means to make great products. The product sensibility and | the product genius that brought them to that monopolistic | position gets rotted out by people running these companies | that have no conception of a good product versus a bad | product. | | > They have no conception of the craftsmanship that's | required to take a good idea and turn it into a good | product. And they really have no feeling in their hearts, | usually, about wanting to really help the customers. | | Really wish Steve was still alive. | amelius wrote: | Sorry, but I can't find any sympathy after they squeezed | every penny out of developers in the app store. | | > And they really have no feeling in their hearts, | usually, about wanting to really help the customers. | | Developers are customers too. | dec0dedab0de wrote: | _Worst of all, it was the loss of the much-beloved MagSafe._ | | I wish all of my cables were magnetic, The amount of things I | have broken in my life by tripping is downright embarrassing. | I do like being able to charge my mac book from my external | monitor, and keeping my apple power supply in my bag in-case | I need to go somewhere. It would just be nice if I didn't | have to label my cables. | roland35 wrote: | It would be nice if there was some sort of standard like | USB for magnetic charge cables! I do like the standard USB | c charger that I can use for my laptop, phone, and switch, | but there are certainly clear advantages to magnetic | disconnect | slantyyz wrote: | I use magnetic tear away cables for a lot of my gear. They | have magnetic tips for lightning, USB-micro and USB-C. | | For stuff like charging headphones, LED lights and other | random gadgets with mixed plug types, I use charge-only | cables for that stuff, and it's been super convenient. | | There are also magnetic cables that support limited fast | charging and data, but only at USB 2.0 speeds, so that | could still be a deal breaker for some people. | Scramblejams wrote: | I'm often tempted by magnetic adapters but when I look on | Amazon at the options, it seems like I always see reviews | from people who said it nearly caught their stuff on | fire. | | You have any recommendations for high quality magnetic | gear? | slantyyz wrote: | I've used A.S., TopK and Melonboy without any issues. | hamburglar wrote: | My experience with magnetic usb-c connectors is that the | magnet can't be very strong, because then it just pulls | the adapter out of the port when you try to disconnect | it. | kitsunesoba wrote: | > it seems like I always see reviews from people who said | it nearly caught their stuff on fire. | | This is part of a larger problem with a lack of | regulations on high-current accessories. In the US, the | FTC should probably be doing stringent inspections of | imported cables, chargers, etc similar to how the FCC | currently inspects communication devices so the | substandard/dangerous ones get turned away at the border. | Dylan16807 wrote: | Is the cable going from your laptop to your monitor in a | position that you can trip on it? | | Some kinds of cable really benefit from easily detaching, | and some don't. | dec0dedab0de wrote: | _Is the cable going from your laptop to your monitor in a | position that you can trip on it?_ | | Not at my desk, but sometimes when I temporarily plug | into another monitor or a television it can be a problem. | | For my desk, I wish I just had a dock like my thinkpad | from 10 years ago, or at least if the connectors were on | the back so I didn't have wires sticking out on both | sides. | | _Some kinds of cable really benefit from easily | detaching, and some don 't._ | | It's not like other connectors are difficult to | disconnect. My previous macbook had an hdmi port that | would disconnect if i breathed on the cable too hard. | USB-C does seem a bit more snug so far, but who knows how | well it will last. Magnets done well just have a better | chance of surviving if you trip on something, or if you | drop your laptop. | Tsiklon wrote: | USB-C is supposed to be rated for many times more | insertion cycles than USB-A which is a big bonus in it's | favour, that said they do tend to get perceivably looser | over time. | hamburglar wrote: | I have one laptop whose usb-c port has loosened up to the | point where I have to wedge something under the cable on | the table to create upward pressure in the port or it | won't charge reliably. | | I've been way more impressed with the durability of | lightning ports. They get dirty and need to be cleaned | out but their mechanical strength is amazing (apple's | cables on the other hand...). I like that Apple is | confident enough in the strength of the lightning port | that in the Apple stores, the standard display is to have | the phone being physically supported by the port alone, | even in an environment where hundreds of careless people | are going to be messing with it. | cesarb wrote: | Another advantage is that USB-C has all the springs on | the cable, while USB-A has springs on the port. When the | springs get loose, with USB-C you can just replace the | cable, while with USB-A, you'd have to replace the port. | andrei_says_ wrote: | > The USB-C cable situation was and continues to be a | nightmare as different cables support different subsets of | data, power and video and, worse yet, different versions of | each of those. | | I'm about to upgrade from a 2015 MBP and am wondering - is | there a usb-c cable I can buy which works with everything | guaranteed? | roflchoppa wrote: | It's the right thing to do from a service prospective, the last | design had it built into the top case. I'm sure they hit supply | issues with all the keyboard failures on the old model. Are the | speakers in the old model removable? If not more topcase | constraints ha. | gregoriol wrote: | At least you got a new/clean keyboard everytime your battery | did need service | supernes wrote: | They should check if the camera stops working when you replace | it. | znpy wrote: | I wonder if this is the effect of Jony Ive being gone. | human wrote: | I have been due to replace my battery on my 2019 MBP (I know, | yeah...). The problem is not the price (which is steep) but the | fact that I have to leave << my girlfriend >> at the shop for 3-4 | days. This new design is a game-changer. | asdff wrote: | Any apple repair they are going to make you wait. They don't do | much of anything in the store anymore these days, they just | scan with their software and send away. No clue why they don't | image a loaner laptop for you in the meantime. They much such a | big hubbo about pros using their hardware then they don't offer | services that pros require for their hardware, like no downtime | since they can't just tell the client that their rig is out of | commission for four days. | r00fus wrote: | This would be great - they could image your machine & imprint | onto the replacement with activation/etc even having you | authenticate AppleID as needed. Is disk-imaging like | CarbonCopyCloner possible on newer machines? | throwaway744678 wrote: | That comment about the new "Apple Polishing Cloth" is hilarious. | 20$ for a piece of cloth... | | Glad the battery is easier to replace, though (speaking from | experience!) | mpalczewski wrote: | The cleaning cloth was sold out immediately. | | $20 is a ton for a cleaning cloth, but a small price to pay for | consumers of apple products. | | Here is the alternative (personal experience) 1. You search on | amazon 2. Get presented with 1000 products 3. Read some | reviews, wonder if this is the best product for your iPhone, | will it work on the laptop 4. decide you don't really need a | cleaning cloth | | The apple solution, solves your problem for a price. | | I haven't bought the apple cloth, but have and am considering | it. | olliej wrote: | But it's an artisanal cloth made of unicorn fur! | jjoonathan wrote: | The lint must be picked one-by-one off the unicorns with | extra small tweezers that can only be held by child laborers! | smoldesu wrote: | Not just any child laborers, mind you: your $20 are getting | your the finest Uighur and political prisoner labor money | can buy! | jangid wrote: | They are late though. Last year I have switched to Debian because | of very few DIY repair options in MacBooks. And I discovered OS | superiority as well. Everything in Debian (Gnome) is so fast - | opening PDF files, Files (finder), Terminal, EMacs. Debian | running on i5 is much faster then macOS running on i7. | dsauerbrun wrote: | is it faster than osx running on m1 though? | smoldesu wrote: | I don't imagine it would make much of a difference, unless | there's some kind of M1 upgrade kit for older Macbooks I | never heard of. | hdjjhhvvhga wrote: | Whoah! That's fantastic news for the customers and the | environment! I was thinking of skipping this model, but now I'm | sure I'll buy it. | fsflover wrote: | It's still not repairable... | jonnycomputer wrote: | It seems to me, making batteries difficult to service and replace | is very consumer-unfriendly--not to mention shitty to the | environment. So this is definitely step in right direction. Not | exactly so easy as pulling it out from the bottom like back in | the day of bricks, but hey. | mrfusion wrote: | Does framebook have an easily replaceable battery? | banana_giraffe wrote: | Depends on your definition of "easy" | | https://guides.frame.work/Guide/Battery+Replacement+Guide/85 | | It's past my personal definition, but just barely, since it | involves dealing with a ribbon cable and an apparently fragile | connection for the battery itself. It's not too bad, but not | something I want to try and walk someone through if they're not | used to this sort of thing. | martini333 wrote: | The actual content: https://www.ifixit.com/News/54122/macbook- | pro-2021-teardown | sulam wrote: | Thanks for the direct link, it'd be good if the post linked | here vs a reheated version of the same content. | gilgoomesh wrote: | It's been updated to this link, now. | dang wrote: | Url changed from https://9to5mac.com/2021/10/27/new-macbook-pro- | battery-repla..., which points to this. | tailspin2019 wrote: | Thanks, I considered posting the iFixit link but the title of | that article being "Teardown Teaser: Is the 2021 MacBook Pro | Repairable?" didn't really convey what I thought would be | specifically of interest to HN (ie the battery angle which the | original article chose to focus on). | | Didn't want to editorialise the iFixit link with 9to5mac's | title but we ended up there anyway :) | dang wrote: | Yes, it's a mixed bag no matter how one slices it. (mixed | metaphor too, apparently) | zrm wrote: | Credit where credit is due. Let this be a trend. | spicybright wrote: | Hear hear. It's frankly amazing how this model did a 180 in | these aspects. | IshKebab wrote: | Yeah it's like they took the list of everyone's complaints - | touchbar, ports, magsafe, battery and fixed them all. Very | un-Apple-like. | | There's only really minor complaints left, like the | unreplaceable RAM and disks, and lack of touchscreen. | blhack wrote: | >lack of touchscreen. | | Please god no. | randomluck040 wrote: | Touchscreens are my personal nemesis, too. I have | literally no scenario where I'd like to lift my hand from | the keyboard or touchpad to put my finger on my screen to | click something. Maybe it's a thing with other use cases | though. I think the new Microsoft Studio Laptop does it | in a reasonable way since you can fold it and use a pen | and all. Still not for me but with foldable devices I get | it at least. | yazaddaruvala wrote: | The "unreplaceable RAM" will only get "worse" from your | perspective. Meanwhile, many people, myself included, are | very happy to have better efficiency/performance by co- | locating the all of the silicon. | | Once Apple invests in 3D chiplets, it is very likely that | RAM, CPU, and GPU will be all be the same component. This | is also likely necessary to eventually get memristors into | commercial SOCs. I think maybe even the SSD might get | pushed into the chiplet if they can manage the 3D real- | estate. Ideally, even colocate the UWB and cellular | modem[1] onto the single 3D chiplet or maybe have two SOCs | one for compute+storage and one for wireless. | | [1] | https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-10/apple- | sta... | chrischen wrote: | The SSD also has to be replaceable (without a full logic board | swap) or the machine also has a constrained usable lifetime. | alphabettsy wrote: | I'm sure this is more to save $$ for Apple, but either way it's a | win. It's nice to feel like someone is actually listening with | this new redesign. | zerof1l wrote: | I don't get what is the news here and why this is in top. You | could always replace the battery. It's just that it is not easy. | Now to replace it, you need to remove a trackpad. Ridiculous. You | still can't purchase a replacement battery from Apple to replace | it yourself. The only option is to purchase it from a place like | iFixit once your warranty is out, or pay ridiculous price at | Apple. | m463 wrote: | I guess "pull tabs" makes it slightly different... | bigbaguette wrote: | Well, the last battery I bought from iFixit was flawed and | killed the logic board. Victim among a few others of a bad | batch. They refunded the battery at least. | | Now I can fry my logic board again without having to go through | the major pain of removing the original battery. | teilo wrote: | This is incorrect. We are an Apple self-service shop (meaning | we are authorized by Apple to do our own repairs, order OEM | parts, etc.). In the 2019 models, battery replacement required | a new top shell. | drcongo wrote: | I'm impressed that you dignified that post with an answer. | Wingman4l7 wrote: | No it doesn't, you're (understandably) just not willing to do | the large amount of labor required to rip out the battery: | | https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+15-Inch+Touch+Bar+2. | .. | givemeethekeys wrote: | The 2013 and 2015 MacBook pros have a battery and charge | controller that is so badly glued onto the body that you're | bound to damage something else in the process of trying to | replace it. | eli wrote: | FTA: _" this new MacBook Pro has, at the very least, the first | reasonably DIY-friendly battery replacement procedure since | 2012."_ | MrBuddyCasino wrote: | I'm not sure what is supposed to be an improvement? I | replaced a MBP 2015 battery myself, and this did not require | removing the touchpad. | thenayr wrote: | How long did it take you? What level of expertise do you | have in terms of disassembly / electronics in general? Did | you read this quote from the article: | | "Even better, it appears the battery isn't trapped under | the logic board. That could mean battery swaps without | removing all the brains first--a procedure we've been | dreaming about for a while." | | That...seems like a pretty big improvement? | MrBuddyCasino wrote: | It would be an improvement if swapping batteries on a | 2015 MBP required removing the logic board, which it | doesn't. | | As to expertise: you just need to remove a few screws and | then the power connector, its not difficult just tedious. | riffic wrote: | all the steps are designed to prevent you from damaging | your speakers with adhesive removal solvent. | | You don't have to follow each step, but if you don't know | any better you should. | | taking shortcuts just leads to sloppy outcomes, like any | repair method. | masklinn wrote: | I was going to say that they may have been talking about | the 2016 revision (g4 / touchbar) with that quote and | maybe the retinas (g3) were not that bad. | | But I went to check the battery replacement guide for the | 2015 and...: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+15- | Inch+Retina+Disp... | | > Steps 74 | | > Time Required 2 - 3 hours | | _However_ according to the comments the ifixit people | were playing it _very safe_ , most of the steps in the | first half are not entirely necessary and the procedure | can be completed in about an hour. | MrBuddyCasino wrote: | The guide is bullshit and what one would write if one | wanted to minimize liability. A fishing line (or plastic | spudger) will save those 2h. | paxys wrote: | Sucks that this is now the gold standard whereas for laptops | sold a decade ago you didn't even need to open up the chassis | or use a screwdriver to replace the battery. | Spooky23 wrote: | Laptops a decade ago were modular and thick enough to have | a frame to support the structure. | | The removable battery in your device wasn't supporting the | device. It's a design trade off that most OEMs have made. | | It's an argument akin to complaining about unibody cars. | For the vast majority of people, like 95%, nobody was | replacing laptop batteries on a regular basis. | riffic wrote: | My experience with expanded lithium batteries says | otherwise. | Spooky23 wrote: | My team maintained about 30k laptops at one point. | | We historically bought <1000 batteries a year, mostly due | to environmental issues like cold and good lifecycle | management. | riffic wrote: | I must either have extremely bad luck or I'm doing | something wrong with my computers that's triggering | battery swelling. | | having > 3% of your batteries go puffy though is still | significant when you can redesign your machines to be | easier to repair. | Brian_K_White wrote: | My month old Framework belies this. | c1sc0 wrote: | I had a black PowerBook in the early 2000s where I could | swap out the battery while the system was running, if I was | fast enough ... sub-5sec swap | masklinn wrote: | You did for the MBPs, the last of their laptop I remember | needing no tools to swap the battery is the plastic | macbooks. | vinay427 wrote: | Aluminum MBPs that had batteries that were swappable | without opening the case existed as well, in the first | few MBP generations around 2006 or so. | asdff wrote: | early unibody macbooks had a door built into the bottom. | You had access to the battery and HD with no tools. Apple | said they anticipated users would upgrade to SSDs in a | few short years during that release keynote so they | wanted to make it easy for their users (imagine apple | saying something like that now!! the heavens would open | up!!!) By the time the late 2012 unibody models were | released, the door was removed and you had to remove the | whole bottom case, but this wasn't so bad as it was only | like 8 phillips head screws (merciful in a world of tri | tip sandwiches and screwdrivers) | masklinn wrote: | Unless you're talking 2009 only then no "early unibody" | did no have a door, I have a 2010 on my desk. | | Pre-unibody I can believe. I had a whitebook and the | battery popped off and revealed the disk bay and RAM. | TMWNN wrote: | As asdff said, you're wrong. The first metal unibody | MacBook Pro (15") and MacBook (13") in 2008 had batteries | behind doors. In 2009 the MacBook was replaced with a) | the unibody plastic MacBook and b) 13" unibody metal | MacBook Pro, while that year's 15" MacBook Pro was almost | unchanged, but all three 2009 models lost their doors. | asdff wrote: | https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Unibody+Model+A1278+ | Bat... | ryanhuff wrote: | I have a 2012 MBP, and Apple won't replace the battery. The | laptop works great, but Apple considers "obsolete". Sad. | TMWNN wrote: | The unibody (non-Retina)'s battery is very, very easy to | swap. The Retina's is more difficult, but I do not have | personal experience. | asdff wrote: | I have this computer too and I recommend the replacement | sold on BH photo video. I just put it in and I can somehow | get like 7 hours plus of use from this computer doing very | light stuff (like reading hn). Impressive for a computer so | old. Still very performant for me imo with 16gb of ram and | an SSD upgrade under the hood. I was looking at the m1 but | I'll hold off, nothing pushing me away from this device | currently and it seems like I will have software | compatibility issues on ARM until they refine rosetta or | offer bootcamp again. | ryanhuff wrote: | Do you have the Retina model? How long did the swap take | you? | asdff wrote: | I have the nonretina. The swap took me probably 5 minutes | if that. However long it takes to unscrew 10 screws. | desiarnezjr wrote: | Replaced the Retina 2012 15" MBP battery fairly recently, | as well as the SSD a long while ago (with an adapter) and | took maybe 8 minutes, minus the screws, each time. The | worry is the 3rd party batteries won't last long or will | swell sooner than OEM parts. | masklinn wrote: | If you have a 2012 you can easily replace the battery | yourself, just check the relevant ifixit guide for the | screw bits you need, IIRC from my 2010's replacement the | battery has a pair of screws (one of which I think is | behind the HDD bracket, though I may be misremembering) and | an adhesive strip on the back which can easily be | overpowered (though it's probably a better idea to soften | it using heat from the trackpad side). | | According to coconut I replaced my battery back in | 2017~2018 or so (battery was manufactured in October 2017) | and it was a breeze. "New" battery is at 6934/7000mAh (99% | capacitity). | ryanhuff wrote: | According to ifixit, just 106 easy steps to replace and | re-assemble! :) | dont__panic wrote: | In a world where Apple is pushing on-device CSAM scanning and | serial number locking cameras to motherboards, it's nice to see | that some of their products still respect users' rights. | | Now if only we could get an iPhone Pro with this kind of respect | for right to repair. | sneak wrote: | You can't wipe the drives on these machines fully and make them | functional again without an internet connection back to Apple. | | Even the Monterey installer doesn't work offline at present, | even the full 12GB one, or even a usb one made with | createinstallmedia --downloadassets. | | You must transmit your serial number to the mothership. | asdff wrote: | Replaceable battery, after removing the trackpad to access the | final set of cells. Not the easiest projecdure and still is going | to result in users doing what they do today, handing the machine | off to a technician rather than be able to change the batteries | on their device themselves. What a fall from grace from the first | unibody macbook, where you could remove the battery with no tools | and five seconds of your time since they engineered a door with a | latch. I guess we celebrate what small affordances we can get | these days. | [deleted] | scohesc wrote: | So they say it can actually be replaced. | | Nice! | | Hopefully they don't pull an iPhone and individually serialize | batteries that authenticate with other chips on the phone - if | they don't match you get an annoying warning and supposedly | underclocked CPU causing performance issues even if it's a brand | new battery. | kfprt wrote: | With the iPhoneification of their product line I'm sure that's | exactly what's going to happen. | londons_explore wrote: | What is the component between the CPU and the fan on each side? | | It appears to be non-rectangular silicon... Or perhaps some power | MOSFETs under a cover? | aaaaaaaaaaab wrote: | 2022 iphone will have a 3.5mm jack. Mark my words ;) | acomjean wrote: | I'm not positive, but by removing the headphone jack, they sell | more AirPods and force bluetooth on which enables the airtag | and find my network to be more way more functional. | tryauuum wrote: | words marked | n8cpdx wrote: | Do people still use wired headphones on the go? It's been a | while since I've seen any. You can get decent Bluetooth | wireless headphones for ~$20 now. I remember spending $10 every | few months when I was using wired headphones back in the day. | Every few months because the wired inevitably broke or frayed | (don't forget you have to put them somewhere when you're not | using them). It was hell with jackets and layers in the winter. | | I always got the orange version of this: | https://refreshcartridges.co.uk/productimages/a_121995.jpg | | In any case where I care enough to listen wired, I also care | enough to get a separate DAC. The cheap Bluetooth is | competitive with the cheap wired these days and last longer. | | Example: https://www.amazon.com/TOZO-T6-Bluetooth-Headphones- | Waterpro... | | Id rather use that space for extra battery capacity. | asdff wrote: | I do, I use some sony MDRV6 cans when travelling or doing | work. They are 10 years old and will last another 40 at least | producing this reference tier sound. I think I payed $70 for | these. I have no interest in airpods or crap like that, I | already have their wired ones which I use exclusively for | video conferencing and I know what sort of sound comes out of | those. | potta_coffee wrote: | I use wired headphones. I don't like charging my headphones. | I'm not big into mobile phones or other devices though, so | IDK, I'm probably an atypical user. I'm actually annoyed that | phones no longer have headphone ports on them. | arprocter wrote: | Yes - no need to charge them, less likely to get lost, no | figuring out if my device speaks random codec v1 or 2 | | MMCX connectors mean you can replace the cable, not that I've | ever broken a Shure one (they use Kevlar) | paconbork wrote: | >Do people still use wired headphones on the go? | | I do, at least. The main reason is that they just work. I | never have to worry about pairing with different devices, | walking too far away and disconnecting, keeping them | charged... I have a pair of bluetooth headphones but I'm | pretty sure they're not charged. | smoldesu wrote: | I only use wired headphones when the wireless alternative | uses AAC. | [deleted] | throwaway81523 wrote: | I only use wired headphones. Bluetooth = PITA. Wired earbuds | are like $1 for crappy ones, which are good enough for my | purposes. I also have a bigger set of over-the-ear headphones | from back before wireless was a thing, and those work fine in | all my stuff too. Bluetooth is sort of like USB, a basically | sane and simple idea that got committee-enhanced to the point | of permanent brokenness. | gsich wrote: | Yes they do. | humanistbot wrote: | I hate having to remember to recharge yet another device. My | wired earbuds never run out of battery. | londons_explore wrote: | Are they pads for extra DRAM on the bottom left of the PCB? | | Will we see hobbysts with a heat gun adding ram to these things? | BGA soldering with tweezers and a heat gun doesn't look too | tricky on those because the pad spacing is easily within what you | could manage with tweezers. | | The actual pin layout isn't a standard I recognize - so I assume | apple has ordered custom made ram chips .. | rwaksmunski wrote: | For me the 2021 MacBook Pro is a single USB-A port away from | perfect. I want to use my old but good | printer/scanner/mouse/thumb drive/external hard drive/yubikey | without dongles. | nazgulnarsil wrote: | A lot of dongle talk seems weird to me. A to C adapters are | cheap. Buy a bunch and leave them on the things you regularly | use. No dongle to track. | tantalor wrote: | > we notice ... battery pull tabs | | Is the picture supposed to show these new tabs? I don't see | anything. Can I get a red arrow? | fakename wrote: | It's the thing being stretched between the fingers. Like a | command strip. | riffic wrote: | Is this Apple? | | Well, maybe I'll consider one of these over a Framework. I'll | lean strongly towards the Framework machine but at least Apple is | reconsidering some of their design choices over the last decade. | tantony wrote: | I recently bought a Framework as a replacement for my 2012 MBP. | I ordered it a few weeks before the new M1 announcements | because I liked their philosophy. And the hardware is, in fact, | great! | | But the Linux desktop experience has been ... frustrating to | say the least. And I say this as someone who has used linux in | the terminal at my job every day for 5+ years now. It's | ridiculous that the software experience still cannot match my 9 | year old laptop running macOS Sierra on a 2.5GHz Core i5 and | 8GB of DDR3 RAM! | | I am running PopOS 21.04. There's inconsistent keyboard | shortcuts, lack of touchpad precision, glitchy touchpad | gestures, inconsistent fingerprint auth and more. Just on Day | 2, I somehow ended up with a machine that somehow took 30+ | seconds to go from login to desktop and 3-4 second lag when | typing with 100% CPU usage when running any GUI app. The only | way to fix it was to completely reinstall the OS -- I have no | idea what caused this. I have now found some usable options for | implementing my preferred touchpad gestures ("fusuma") and | system-wide keyboard shortcuts ("kinto.sh") though there are | still many quirks that are irritating. | | I like Framework's approach, so I supported them by buying the | device. I promised myself I will keep daily driving it for at | least a month to give it a chance. If it keeps getting on my | nerves, I will sell it and buy one the of the new 14" MBPs. | Life's too short to spend hours upon hours fiddling with | configuration files and reinstalling operating systems to get | basic functionality working. | yepthatsreality wrote: | Personally I find Gnome environments pretty ugly. I switched | to KDE on my Framework and it's almost night and day that I'm | leaving my desktop Gnome install behind for KDE as well. | speedyapoc wrote: | Very nice to see! | | I use my machine in closed clamshell around 90% of the time which | means the battery is usually in pretty terrible shape after a | couple years of use. Will be happy to see battery replacement | times hopefully go down on these new machines as waiting 5-7 days | isn't fun to deal with. | asdff wrote: | I really don't understand why macbooks are set up to still draw | off the battery when under AC power. You can only get a mac to | run off ac power only if you start it up with the battery | physically removed iirc. I had a macbook where I was spinning | fans for most of the day and I got it down to 85% battery | capacity within a year since it keeps straining the battery | even when its just sitting on my desk running off a 90W power | adapter at 100% charge. Its like, whats the point of paying for | these workhorse laptops if you are going to be blowing through | batteries once you actually start to utilize the power you are | paying egregiously for? Might as well get a powerful mac mini | and connect to it with ssh from a much cheaper laptop. | hbn wrote: | > I had a macbook where I was spinning fans for most of the | day and I got it down to 85% battery capacity within a year | since it keeps straining the battery even when its just | sitting on my desk running off a 90W power adapter at 100% | charge | | They released a feature in Big Sur where it learns if you | always keep your laptop plugged in, and during those times | (which may be all the time, like in my case) it'll hover the | battery between 70-80% to preserve battery health, and won't | charge up to 100% until you tell it to manually (click the | battery icon -> "Charge to full now") | TMWNN wrote: | >I use my machine in closed clamshell around 90% of the time | which means the battery is usually in pretty terrible shape | after a couple years of use. | | For those of us who usually use our MacBooks attached to the | wall, deep discharging (AKA "calibration"; | <https://www.newertech.com/batteries/power-calibration-guide/>) | on a regular basis is a substitute, but is annoying to do. | | I similarly went through batteries every couple of years. I now | use FruitJuice (on the App Store) as the menu bar battery | indicator. If it finds that the computer hasn't been used on | battery long enough, about once a month the app guides me | through running a maintenance cycle to run it down to 20%. I | presume that following FruitJuice's advice is why my latest | third-party battery is still at 103% health after more than a | year. | riffic wrote: | > FruitJuice | | Thanks for the tip, I'll have to give this a shot. | 1970-01-01 wrote: | Important question: Are the batteries serialized or will any 3rd | party battery just work? | exoque wrote: | That's not at all what I think of when I hear the words | 'replaceable battery'. Too bad. | ct0 wrote: | About as replaceable as a tesla's battery. You simply cant do | it yourself. Seems like a trend. | Ductapemaster wrote: | This is dismissive and incorrect. iFixIt, the authors of this | piece, provide everything someone needs to do such a | replacement: tools, parts, and in-depth user guides. I've | replaced an older-generation MacBook's battery using their | stuff, and it worked fine. What more do you want? | asdff wrote: | The vast majority of people are not comfortable opening | their computer and mucking around the guts. In the old days | Apple made this simple for their users: | | https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Unibody+Model+A1278+Ba | t... | Brendinooo wrote: | I had a 2007 MacBook Pro. Replacing the battery for that | laptop meant toggling two switches and popping it out, then | dropping a new one in. | | It's not unreasonable for people to ask for that level of | simplicity. | GordonS wrote: | It's similar for most older laptops too. I have a few | older HP laptops, and on every one the battery just | slides out if you pull it hard enough - no screws at all. | lamontcg wrote: | Yeah there's still a long way to go to get back to where we | used to be. | sbuk wrote: | What is the use case? Modern batteries hold their charge for | a long time. In a review I saw today, the reviewer - a | professional photographer and filmmaker no less - said that | he managed to shoot edit and export a video on a single | charge[0]. The need to swap out batteries with these device | has all but disappeared, save for permanent replacement. | | [0]https://youtu.be/I10WMJV96ns?t=643 | lamontcg wrote: | The use case is the ability to easily replace/upgrade the | batteries, RAM and drives by the end consumer without | requiring any specialized tools or procedures barring | removing some screws. | | This is what we used to have with laptops 10+ years ago. | | Swapping batteries due to charge issues was never | particularly important to the majority of consumers and is | a red herring. | sbuk wrote: | The benefits provided by SoCs outweigh the benefits of | user upgradeable RAM for me. | | > Swapping batteries due to charge issues was never | particularly important to the majority of consumers and | is a red herring. | | Why? | rasz wrote: | You say that like those are somehow mutually exclusive. | sbuk wrote: | They kind of are by definition - System on a Chip. I'll | rephrase; the benefits of having on-package RAM (unified | would be even better!) outweigh the benefits of user- | upgradable RAM. User upgradable/appendable storage is | another thing entirely. | rasz wrote: | The _only_ real benefits of on-package RAM are cost and | forcing planned obsolescence. You get maybe 0.2ns latency | difference by not laying out ram socket next to CPU. | lotsofpulp wrote: | >The benefits provided by SoCs outweigh the benefits of | user upgradeable RAM for me. | | And 90% of laptop users. Utility of computer upgrades for | most people's needs stagnated 5 to even 10 years ago. I | think the last big material improvement before M1 for | regular consumers was SSD replacing HDD. | Nition wrote: | Just noting an alternative use case: When I used to take my | laptop (a Dell XPS M1530, later a Dell Studio XPS 13) on my | walk between home and university, I'd take it without the | battery in as that made it much lighter. There were power | points where I was going anyway. | Kluny wrote: | I don't get it - the battery isn't glued in, and you can remove | it without damaging other parts. Isn't that pretty good? | atoav wrote: | I can flip my notebook over, pop the battery out and put a | new one in within 5 seconds. That is replacable. | | I also replaced a macbook battery once, with a hot air | resoldering station (to soften the adhesive) and a metal | bucket filled with sand nearby in case it catches fire (the | battery was balooning and bending the aluminium frame out of | shape). The whole thing took nearly an hour. Ultimately it | was also replaceable, but this was needlessly painful. | Rebelgecko wrote: | When I hear "replaceable battery", it makes me think of the | days when packing a spare battery was a viable alternative to | bringing a laptop charger with you (I don't think any MBPs | were like this, but Powerbooks were). It's funny how the | Overton window has shifted. | | This procedure looks doable and relatively low risk for | technical people, but it's not something that my mom can do | while sitting at a Starbucks | klelatti wrote: | The first gen MBP (which was basically a PowerBook with | Intel) had this. I remember pondering whether to buy one. | robocat wrote: | Your spare battery is now a power bank: | https://www.powerbankexpert.com/best-power-bank-for- | macbook-... | | Sure, a bit less power efficient, but surely cheaper than | an Apple product, and you can choose your features e.g. AC | inverter! | asdff wrote: | It's still an entire procedure. You have to remove the | trackpad to access all the cells. Most users aren't going to | be confident doing that to their $2000 laptop, they will | continue doing what they do with glued in batteries today | which is hand it off to a technician and playing the flat | rate apple repair fee. | | Pretty good was the first unibody macbook (open latch with | one finger, remove door with two fingers, remove battery with | two fingers, done): | | https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Unibody+Model+A1278+Bat. | .. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-10-27 23:00 UTC)