Jean-Louis Gassée:
With both the RAM limitation and “donglegate” we see self-inflicted wounds, a puzzling lack of storytelling by a company that has a long history of controlling the narrative. Apple was forced to react with labored explanations and admission-of-guilt price cuts days after the late October launch. Experienced Apple executives violated a cardinal rule of selling: Don’t let the customer discover the problem. No product is perfect, so tell it all, tell it now, and tell it yourself. If you don’t, your customers — and your competition — will tell it for you.
As usual, Gassée makes some great points.
I agree, it’s a great piece, worth reading just for his personal experience with the new machine(s).
I don’t think customers discovered any problems Apple didn’t cover in their release press. It seems to have been more of non-customers making up problems (which is something that has been with Apple for a long time).
her?
yeah. just more tech pundits and echo chamber nonsense, same as it ever was with an apple launch. next year this time everyone will have one and forget they’re supposed to hate it.
Is she funny or something?
But Gassée’s very point is that Apple is usually very good at preemptively getting in front of these criticisms. The major difference is that they’ve been on the defensive this entire product launch instead of owning the narrative themselves.
Maybe have another look at Gassée’s avatar on that page.
Whoops.
There sure is a lot of telling going on with a lot of Apple products as of late.
So if I buy a product and have issues with it then I should keep those problems to myself so that I don’t offend other people? Wow, talk about having sand in your vagina.
As I said most of this uproar has been non-customers, i.e. people who haven’t purchased or used the new MBP. There is a culture of wanting to be outraged about everything (which you seem to be a part).
I am an actual customer. The new MBP has two major problems. The arrow keys are stupid and the battery life problem is real.
I don’t love the new low-travel keyboard, but I’m getting used to it (except for arrow keys). The touchbar is cool, but I’m not using it much yet. Touch ID is a nice addition. USB C is going to be awesome in the future, so I’m ok with the port situation. Don’t need more than 16GB, although that could change during the time I own the machine.
Did I mention the arrow keys suck?
HPs new Spectre has only USB C ports. Yay, innovation!
New MacBook Pro has only USB C ports. Boo, Apple, boo!
HPs new Spectre is the worlds thinnest notebook. Yay, innovation!
New MacBook Pro is thinner than previous models. Boo, Apple, boo!
HPs new Spectre has a touchscreen for an OS not designed for touch. Yay, it has a touchscreen!
New MacBook Pro has a touch bar that changes with the current app being used. Boo, Apple, boo!
And I could go on.
So why bother trying to control the narrative? It’s the same as it ever was.
While not a fan of it, Windows 120 is indeed designed for touch. microsoft’s big issue is that the meaning system ids not and cannot be designed for touch. But the ability to be able to draw on a screen directly is something worthwhile.
If Apple were smart, they would make the giant trackpad into a true second display.
The arrow keys are definitely non-optimal, though that’s been an issue for more than year with the Macbook line. Fortunately I haven’t run into the battery issues. Hopefully Apple will get that sorted shortly.
the Spectre is a macbook competitor, not a macbook pro competitor. You cant compare them and trying to is just making excuses. You seem to forget how everyone saying that the macbook was the laptop of the future and they somewhat forgive/like the single usbc and yet now you are using a non relevant example to try to bolster your point.
I often agree with his articles, but where he got the idea that Apple is normally good at these things… escapes me.
Yes, they handled the iPhone 7 and the lack of a headphone jack well. Putting something into the box that allows people to use their existing devices was exactly the right thing.
But this was about the only time in recent years when they have showed this wisdom. For many years they have been 100% mum about removed features (iWork, iMovie, FCP… people had to learn about all the removed features after installing their new versions). In case of iMovie and FCP most things returned over a long period, iWork is still a shadow of its former self.
And with the MBP they have certainly set a new low when it comes to corporate communication. Schiller’s (somebody I usually like) stance on SD-card readers being not needed and a headphone jack being required by “pros” was falling pretty flat on the face when the only pro feature of this port (the Toslink interface) has been removed. I am not a non-customer, I am typing this on a new 15″ MBP. The missing Toslink means I can’t connect my quality DAC and desktop speakers. I am fine with the USB-C stuff in general, but why they were unable to space them so that you can at least put two flash drives into them at the same time… maybe 95% empty space on both sides was not enough… And the battery life is just plain abysmal. And I am not talking about the time indication, I am talking about actual times. Running nothing but Office apps, Mail and Fantastical I have not achieved more than 4:30 hrs ever (without a single app ever showing up as being a heavy consumer). My 2012 Retina MBP easily provides 7 hrs doing exactly the same (with its original battery, which sits at 840 cycles).
There is a lot to like about this machine, but Apple’s legendary attention to detail is clearly absent from it. The wobbly, plasticky power button, the terrible arrow keys, the sharp edges around the vents and hinge, the terrible power brick without any cable management and any visual indication of the charging status… All areas where Apple has been leading for over a decade. Want external battery indication, a proper brick with extension cable and cable management, a visual standby indication (sleep light), a better graphics card with CUDA support, 32 GB RAM and weighing the same as the new MBP (and having the same CPU, TB3, a UHD display with almost full aRGB coverage and better battery life, 6-7 hours with ease)… Dell’s XPS 15 provides that for 2,000 USD less. Yes, OS X beats the living crap out of Windows 10, and the XPS 15 has driver and stability issues galore. (I have both, so I can tell.) But Apple needs to make a bigger effort. If all they can do is one computer upgrade a year, it should not have any of these issues.
I will keep mine, as I want to use OS X. But I won’t recommend it to anyone with these issues and at that price point. And this has not been true since they were still making clones.
I don’t think this would be as useful as you suggest.
How often do you look at the trackpad? Most touch typists almost never do.
All while the touchpad is large for a gesture device, its a pretty small screen and way too small to be a useful drawing surface.
I was really looking forward to the new MacBook Pros. I was long overdue to upgrade from my 2009 MBP. I kept it going by maximizing the RAM and adding an SSD but the screen is starting to fail. But after seeing what Apple offered and reading articles like this one, I decided to skip it and use my iPad and bluetooth keyboard for mobile use and transfer all the computer-requiring functions from my MBP to my 27″ iMac at home. I installed Screens so that if I’m out and need info from the iMac I can get it. So far this is working great. Instead of upgrading from a 2009 MBP to a Touch Bar MBP, I’ll upgrade from an iPad Air 2 to next year’s iPad Pro. That’ll save me a lot of money.
Well, Windows 10 is not designed for touch, some parts of it are. The crappy parts are. The incomplete replacement for the control panel and the junky tile apps are. None of that is good for anything (I have to work with this stuff every day, and it is just bad beyond discussion.)
So far, you can’t even use Office without a pointing device. You have to get an iPad for that.
(I do have a touch screen on my XPS 15, I turned it off in the firmware within 2 or 3 days, as it is good for absolutely nothing.)
Amen!