Apple’s new MacBook Pro laptops were shown on October 27 to a relatively small audience at the company’s headquarters. The machines were redesigned to be smaller with a respectable offering of hardware options in processors, RAM, storage, and graphics horsepower. The highlight, of course was the Touch Bar with Touch ID which offers innovation for the tired row of function keys along with fingerprint security.
The only surprise was the significant bump in price over the predecessors. And for me, Apple seemed to apologize for this by offering a less expensive MacBook Pro without the Touch Bar and half the USB-C ports.
Apple executives seemed to be prepared for this reaction and conducted an unusual interview with Cnet reporters. I can’t recall such an interview at previous product launch events.
During this interview, Apple asserted that the MacBook Pro models were designed to an experience and not a price point. I’ll take them at their word, but the prices are still too high. Comparably equipped premium Windows computers aren’t cheap but are much more affordable. So the whole designed-to-an-experience-and-this-is-what-it-costs argument is kind of hollow.
If the experience was paramount, the MacBook Pro line would start off with 1 TB of flash-drive storage.
Another point on the steep price: The day after the launch event, Amazon had a Touch Bar-equipped MacBook Pro discounted $200 and the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro discounted $360. Hmm.
In the past, Apple has poked fun at Windows PCs with touch screens. Their opinions were arguably valid, but their actions might not be fully in line with their words. With the large trackpad and the new Touch Bar, I’d argue Apple is making everything “touch” except the screen. I don’t intend this to be an outright criticism of Apple, but it’s something to consider.
And finally, let me pick on Apple about input/output. The MacBooks appear to be all going to USB-C/Thunderbolt 3. While this creates an uncomfortable period where there are few directly compatible peripherals, I feel this is the right way to go. USB-C is the future. It powers devices, runs video/audio, and offers very high data speeds. And each port can do more than one thing per connection. What’s not to love about USB-C?
Meanwhile, the iPhone still uses Lightning connections. And the latest iPhones, the 7 and 7 Plus, courageously lost their headphone jacks (but you can still connect your wired headphones to the new MacBook Pros). To do right by their customers, Apple needs to lose Lightning in favor of USB-C on the very next iPhone.
That has to be obvious.
Don’t get me wrong, I find the new MacBook Pro laptops very attractive. They’re top of the line and will perform very well, I’m sure. But I can’t bring myself to afford the one I want right now. Perhaps more of the discounts Amazon previewed will become more widespread soon.
So … my waiting continues…
UPDATE Oct 30, 2016: So this is part of the designed experience? The right-hand side USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 ports have reduced performance. I know this would only be noticed by few users, but still…