I've never owned a Mac computer, I've always been a Windows guy. I do keep up with Apple because I love technology and I couldn't live without my iPhone and iPad. Everyone tells me I should switch to a Mac but once again I'm glad that I haven't.
The iPhone was the first Apple product I ever purchased. It was so incredible and so easy to understand, I instantly fell in love with it. At the time, a phone with only four physical buttons was unheard of but it simply made sense to anyone who picked it up. It's easy to overlook just how groundbreaking the original iPhone was because every smartphone has copied Apple's incredible user interface.
Each iteration of the iPhone has become more powerful with updated features and hardware. Everyone knows that each iteration of the iPhone has a better camera, but the last truly useful hardware update was the addition of the fingerprint reader. It's integrated in such a way that you don't ever even have to consider it. It just works.
3D Touch
Then 3D Touch was introduced to the iPhone. In my opinion, it's the first feature added to the iPhone that has actually made using the phone worse. When I first attempted to use Force Touch instead of intuitively knowing how, I found myself randomly mashing my thumb around the phone trying to guess when Force Touch was available. After a few days of trying I simply gave up using it altogether.
Here's a video of CNET trying to prove its value:
Being that most iOS devices don't have 3D Touch hardware, and this older hardware still needs to run current iOS versions, Apple is forced to keep 3D Touch as an almost useless feature. It feels like a neat trick, something that Apple can say "see what our phone can do that yours can't," but I'm not sure that it makes the experience of using the phone any better. At least not yet. Luckily, the addition of this feature didn't make the iPhone experience worse because Apple doesn't force you to use it. It's simply a feature that most iPhone users completely ignore.
The Touch Bar
This all leads to today's announcement of the new MacBook Pros with OLED "Touch Bar." The idea sounds great; to have a touchscreen built in to the top of a keyboard that changes based on the program you are currently using. So for instance if you were editing a video, you might be able to scrub through footage by sliding your finger across the Touch Bar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVPRkcczXCY
The biggest potential problem with this design is that most professionals who use a computer on a daily basis simply don't like looking down at their keyboard. Each time I have to take my eyes off the screen to try to find a key on my keyboard I am forced to lose focus on whatever I was working on. But perhaps the bigger issue is similar to my issue with 3D Touch: If the Touch Bar is constantly changing, you will always be looking down wishing that something useful would show up while it rarely will.
In their promo video, the user receives a phone call and the "answer or ignore" option doesn't pop up on the screen, it only appears on the Touch Bar. Does this mean that you have to use the Touch Bar? I know at times I like using my laptop with an external mouse and keyboard and I would hate to be forced to use a laptop keyboard for random tasks. But, on the flip side, if these tasks do not force the user to use the Touch Bar, I would assume the average person will just go back to using a standard mouse rather than leaning forward to see what option on the Touch Bar may or may not be available. Check it out in Photoshop. Does this really seem like a more simple option?
These design updates, where hardware and software are so intertwined, can't easily be added, removed, or updated. You wouldn't want to become accustom to using a Touch Bar on your laptop when that Touch Bar doesn't exist on your iMac. Apple also can't add super useful features to the Touch Bar that would destroy the usability of old devices without it. Because of this, for the Touch Bar to become actually useful it will have to be on every Apple device from now on. If it's not, I imagine it will die out completely, perhaps being replaced by a standard full touchscreen.
Of course there is a reason why Apple hasn't created a touchscreen laptop yet: current computer operating systems simply are not optimized for touch. I own three touchscreen Windows laptops and although I was excited with the new feature when I bought them, I've found that I almost never touch them. It's easier to use a mouse. The Touch Bar doesn't feel like an answer to this problem. It feels like a neat trick that will soon be replaced with something better.
Dongles
Don't get me wrong, I hate all of the different types of cables. I dream of the day that every device I own uses a single type of cable. Even better, I would love to see all cables die and for everything to be wireless. The problem is that we don't currently live in that world and a big contributor to this issue is Apple. Apple is the one who keeps changing these cables around. They are the ones who put a single USB-C cable on their new MacBook. They are the ones who removed the headphone jack on the iPhone 7 and forced users to use the Lightning port for audio. Now they have removed every single standard USB port from the new MacBook Pro and replaced them with four Thunderbolt ports.
If Thunderbolt is the future, I'm all for it. Let's put a Thunderbolt jack on every Apple device from now on and let's never change the shape of the port. If it needs to be updated, make the new cables and accessories backwards compatible like USB 1, 2, and 3. If Apple did this I'm sure every other manufacturer would pick up this cable and it really could become the industry standard, but as long as Apple has multiple standards, nobody else is going to jump on board.
Perhaps the most humorous part of the MacBook Pro launch is that Apple supplies a pair of lightning headphones to use with the brand new iPhone 7 but they can't be used with the new MacBook Pro. If the headphone jack is "obsolete" then the entire Apple product line should reflect that, but Apple has once again failed to choose a standard and stick with it.
Update: It was pointed out in the comments that Thunderbolt 3 is a different size than Thunderbolt 2 and Thunderbolt 3 and USB-C are compatible. This is certainly good news because it appears to be the standard for all current Mac laptops and hopefully all computers and phones in the near future. Now they just need to swap out Lightning connectors for Thunderbolt 3 in iPhones and iPads and there will be one simple port across all Mac platforms.
Conclusion
This article may be a little strange coming from someone who doesn't actually own a Mac, but these decisions that Apple continues to make are the very reasons why I never left Windows. I want a better user experience, not just a sleeker one.
I hope I'm wrong and that Apple's new Touch Bar is the future of computing. If it's implemented well, it certainly could be a huge step forward. I also hope that Apple can push the Thunderbolt port into the market as the new industry standard. I just don't want them to forget why we love them: their innovative products and unmatched user experience. Of course we like slick looking products too, but not at the cost of usability.
http://www.apple.com/apple-events/october-2016/ <-- PLEASE WATCH THE KEYNOTE HERE. Tim and the staff spend a lot of time VISUALLY explaining to you how the Touch Bar and the ports work.
How many hdmi to TB3 cables have you seen around? How many currently owned peripherals will no longer be DIRECTLY compatible with this new machine? It's a stupid move by apple, and it falls directly in line with all the other stupid moves they've been making lately. I have loved apple, and I'm getting tired of watching them flop time and time again. As a professional, would you rather have your workstation be more like your mobile device, or your mobile device more like your workstation? Which is more productive really? Which seems more like advancement to you?
My biggest gripe with this whole thing is the omission of SD Card slot. making a laptop friendly and powerful for photography or anything is understandable , but for that matter removing support for USB thumb drive and external hard drives is just painful. When I carry a laptop I want it to be able to do my tasks without any major accessories, and if I have to carry dongles for USB and SD card its just not worth the money.
Don't take me wrong, i would not mind spending money on dongles, but just the sheer inevitability of not having the basics is just mind boggling. for $$$$ the macbook better have all connections available on it to be useful. too bad i will try to find solace in using surface book i7 instead which has a pen and USB and SD card slot!.
"I found myself randomly mashing my thumb around the phone trying to guess when Force Touch was available."
EXACTLY. And that is precisely the problem with Apple's peek-a-boo/Easter-egg UI, which has gotten far worse under Jony Ive. Now, controls are not demarcated as controls. They're indistinguishable from plain text. So we're apparently supposed to poke, click, and hover over every pixel on the screen, looking for hidden goodies. Apple has forgotten that the "G" in GUI stands for GRAPHICAL. So now there are mystery swipes and asinine "gestures" that we're just supposed to guess at in order to access essential functions.
Apple's peculiar ignorance of usability cripples so many of its products and applications. The incredible removal of the headphone jack from its best-selling MUSIC PLAYERS is just the latest affront. This embarrassing "touch strip" gimmick exacerbates another longstanding Apple design defect: the lack of a real Delete key on its laptops. While every other manufacturer has managed to provide a Delete key on even the smallest keyboard, Apple provides only a Backspace key mislabeled "delete." Apple has petulantly maintained this defect even after the Eject key became obsolete, freeing it up to be Delete! There's simply no excuse.
So now Apple has removed 12 or so keys that we could use to address its design error or perform other functions. Many of us have used Karabiner to remap a function key to be Delete (although Apple broke Karabiner with Sierra, another WTF), but now that's impossible.
What about programmers, who need function keys to step through code while watching the screen? Forget that: Now we have no palpable keys, and (as you point out) we never know WTF this "touch bar" is doing from moment to moment.
And speaking of Photoshop, I've also used function keys to address glaring design deficiencies in that application. Like the lack of a "Paste as new image" function. Oh well, forget that.
To a developer, your points are right on the money. Now I'm supposed to spend time learning new SDK and coding functions for this asinine gimmick that only exists on SOME keyboards and one platform, when I will always have to provide a redundant "conventional" method for accessing them as well? Oh, and for a platform that only has 5% market share? In an era when people give less and less of a rat's ass about computer applications? Shove that, Apple.
When legions of apologists (including the fawning, pathetic press and its sham "reviews") give Apple a free pass on anti-user, anti-customer, and anti-industry affronts like this, we all lose. The smug retort of "well then don't buy it" doesn't cut it. Why? Because in both the phone and computer markets, there are only two viable OSes. When one gets away with massive regressions and degraded functionality, the other will often follow suit. Then we're left with no viable option and our jobs (and daily tasks) get harder.
Don't vote with your money or make excuses for regressive junk like the "touch bar," phones without headphone jacks, and products that are pointlessly "thinner" at the expense of battery life. And DO complain. Don't let Apple or anyone else get away with feigned ignorance or the ability to claim market approval of defective design.
STAND UP FOR BETTER.
I think I will miss the mag safe the most...now I get to go back to the days when I rip the cord loose.
I agree...the port on the iPhone 7 should have become USB C then it would have been universal with the new MacBooks and everything else going forward.
Hopefully someone will design a power brick with usb 2 format ports on it and a sd slot and cdmi. that way you can get away with only carrying one device during this long transition period.
I have a mac and a pc, and for the past couple of years I think apple is moving off of the small studio and pro market and just trying to go into the home market.
Why put radeon cards in a computer when all of adobe programs ask for nvidia cuda cores for performance boost. The hardware isn't that great for the spec and price.
Loosing all the ports to funnel you into buying more attachments just pisses people off. I remember how awesome it was when a client handed me a blueray with footage on it and I had to pull out an old machine because I didn't buy an external yet.
Under Tim Cook, Apple is not going to maintain its position as the premier technology company. Consider how Apple led the industry with these dramatic tech and hardware introductions: iMac (1998), iPod and iTunes (2001), iPhone (2007), iPad (2010). What has Apple introduced under Cook? Apple Watch (2014), a product Jobs would never have released, without demanding greater refinement. Jobs was relentless in driving his team, demanding more and more before a product could be unveiled. Remember, just weeks before iPhone was to be debuted, Jobs noticed its screen was scratching while he carried it in his pocket. He told the team: fix this, and fix it now. I don't see Cook insisting on this level of performance from Apple, and the competition they face today is many times greater than what Jobs had to deal with.
I disagree. I think the touchbar has a great potential to make shortcuts. I love it. And that they changes every port to USB-c is really drastic. But it's a step into the future. Just when they released the first iMac without disk drive, without lpt and com ports. But with USB!!!!! And look at us now! I hope that all manufacturers will change there cables to USB-c to make it real UNIVERSAL serial bus!
Most likely the connection will have to be third cards you'll have to buy. Apple keeps tight royalties on connections so the dream of usb-c as universal is slim.
My current 15.4 inch MacBook Pro was purchased in late 2013. I popped for an upgrade to the graphics card so I could process video with apps that offload processing to the GPU. It struggles with 4K a bit but I can always edit with proxies. I do a lot of Photoshop/Lightroom work on it, especially when I am on the road. I use a USB 3 connected 1TB SSD external drive to store images and vid on remote shoots. I use the SD card slot daily. I also use a 256gb USB 3 drive thumb for secondary backup.
If I am to upgrade to the new MacBook Pro I need a compelling reason to do so. At current prices I would have to spend roughly $3,100 on a new machine (this includes updating the system drive to to 1TB). In addition I am buying dongles to attach what are now obsolete connectors. All of this so I can watch function keys on the TouchBar change based on which app is currently running. Or I sit tight and keep working with what I have, which already works pretty well as is. And that is what I will do, at least for another 2 years. The upgrade is just not that compelling.
I disagree. Yes, the change to just one port is radical and painful but in two or three years we'll all see it was a right choice. And admit it, no one else but apple has guts to do it. I hope that one port will be a standard in near future. Also touch bar seems to be a better thing than I thought. Sure, keyboard shortcuts are faster and more convenient so pros won't be using it for work, but in other apps it might be a good thing. Just give it a time to get used to it.
That touch bar sounds like it'll be as easy to use as the old scroll wheel was on the iPod classic...
I am at the point where I want a new updated Mac Pro and a Ipad pro that can act fully as a laptop on the road. I think we can phase out the actual laptop now, its just not necessary anymore.
I think Apple’s design philosophy is more ‘form over function’. The products look great but at the expense of usability. Look at the aluminum Mac Pro. More internal storage and upgradable than the ‘trash can’ Mac Pro. But the trash can Mac looks great. The iPhone 7, looks great but I cannot plug in my headphones, and where do I plug in my external mic for video?
Even the software side has taken a hit. Aperture was a better product (at the time) than Lightroom but Apple killed it and Lightroom has taken over. Final Cut Pro 7 was nearly the film industry standard until Apple killed it too, and launch a crippled Final Cut Pro X. FCPX has improved but it is too late. I think Apple has lost its way. Will it be such a major design force in 10 years time?