Putting Apple’s New MacBook Pro in Perspective

I’ve resisted writing about Apple’s new MacBook Pro since it was announced in late October. But the flood of negativity I’ve seen, much of which has surprisingly come from Apple enthusiasts, requires discussion.

I broached this topic a bit on last week’s episode of What the Tech, noting that the new MacBook Pro should be examined in the context of Apple’s ongoing mission for this product line. And what’s fascinating, I think, is to revisit Apple’s description of the previous-generation MacBook Pro, when it was announced in 2012, in light of this year’s upgrade.

“You want a next generation MacBook Pro to have a killer new display,” Apple’s Phil Schiller said on June 11, 2012, during the WWDC 2012 keynote address. “You want it to have an architecture built for the future. You want it to be radically thin and light. And of course you want it to be bold and to embrace the newest technologies and will be willing to discard the old legacy things so you can make something unlike any other notebook that’s been made to date.”

You may think you know where this is headed, but you’re only partially right. So let’s start with the obvious.

The first bit about the killer new display was particular to 2012: At that time, the MacBook Pro had a low-resolution, non-Retina display, so that was the big upgrade that year. That need no longer exists, so the new MacBook Pro from 2016 features the same resolution, forcing Apple to tout the display being the “brightest, most colorful Mac notebook display ever.” But the rest of that quote sounds like it’s something Apple could have said this year about the 2016 MacBook Pro. (Though one might quibble at the details. That’s what we do, of course.)

Now let’s step beyond the obvious.

Mr. Schiller said “you” in that description of the goals for MacBook Pro. Not “we” which would have meant “Apple.” Please re-read that and see how that colors things in a very interesting way. Apple, he is saying, is doing what its customers want. Or at least what they think their customers want.

This makes sense, right? While critics have painted some of Apple’s recent design decisions—like its removal of the headphone jack in the iPhone 7—as user-hostile, I’ve come to see this thinking as both correct and admirable. And in taking these tough steps, Apple is ultimately doing the right thing for its customers, and for the industry. Certainly, the iPhone 7 has not suffered from this particular decision: Very clearly, this is the very best smartphone that shipped in 2016.

But that thinking assumes that Apple always makes the right decisions. And with the MacBook Pro, I see some decisions that are as provably dumb as they are user-hostile, especially when you consider the intended target market for this product. So let’s evaluate the design changes in this new product.

USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 for expansion. Here, Apple clearly made the right decision, and while critics will complain about dongles or even about the lack of an SD card slot—spare me—that’s just backward thinking, or faux outrage. Instead, Apple is correctly pushing its premium portable computer into the future. And as I argued in Welcome to the USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 Era, this incredible port—of which Apple supplies four on most MacBook Pro models—is versatile and wonderful.

Touch Bar I can’t state this clearly enough: This silly toy of a UI has no justification on a Pro-level device, and Apple should have debuted it only on its consumer-level portable Macs. At the very least, it should be an option only on all MacBook Pros. That you can’t get a 15-inch MacBook Pro without this abomination is an embarrassment.

Keyboard. I likewise cannot state this clearly enough: Apple’s new butterfly keyboards are terrible, and the argument that this new version is somehow a bit better than the unusable version in the base MacBook in no way excuses this mistake. They keyboards on previous generation MacBook Pros—like those on the MacBook Air—were for all intents and purposes perfect as-is. And if the new MacBook Pro really needed to be a bit thicker to accommodate actual type-typing, so be it. This was a terrible design decision that makes the MacBook Pro unusable for virtually anyone who has to type for a living.

Trackpad. Apple’s trackpads have long been the best in the business, and the standard by which we so harshly judge all the PC trackpad wannabes that have come since. But the combination of the terrible Touch Bar and the comically large trackpads on the new MacBook Pros screams inferiority complex. And for the love of God, Apple, just put a freaking touch screen on these devices already. You’ve been pussy-footing around this for years.

16 GB of RAM. The new MacBook Pros can be had with 8 GB or 16 GB of RAM, whereas previous versions also offered 32 GB as an option. Why? Apple explained after its launch event that 32 GB of RAM would have had a deleterious effect on battery life, and that most users could get their work done with just 16 GB of RAM. That’s ridiculous: Apple should offer 32 GB of RAM and simply explain the trade-off, and those who want such a thing can make an informed decision for themselves. After all, most MacBook Pros are probably used tethered to electricity at a desk most of the time anyway. Let the people decide.

Skylake processors. Given the disastrous time Microsoft had with Intel’s Skylake processor, I had praised Apple for mostly skipping this generation of processor, assuming its new devices would use the more reliable Kaby Lake chips. Nope. Inexplicably, Apple went with the year-old Skylake processors for the new MacBook Pro, making your expensive new purchase (see below) immediately less new than you thought it was. Pro customers tend to be up on this kind of thing, and they know when they’re being treated in a second-class manner. And nothing says second-class quite like selling yesterday’s technology in a new product.

Price. This is my usual pet peeve, yes. And while I feel that complaining about high pricing is perhaps the single most justifiable argument I could make on anyone’s behalf, in this case it’s inarguable: The new MacBook Pros are more expensive than similarly-configured previous generation models, and are in fact horribly-overpriced, even for premium devices. A 13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar starts at an incredible $1799, while a 15-inch version goes for $2399 and up. It’s like Apple saw Microsoft’s Surface Book pricing and wanted to raise the ante. There is zero justification for these prices.

So. How did they do?

Let’s look back on that Schiller quote from 2012 for what I feel is a fair answer. After all, surely a new product can meet the goals that Apple established four years ago.

Does the new MacBook Pro have “an architecture built for the future”? No. The Skylake parts are a concern, as is the lack of 32 GB of RAM and the lack of user-upgradeable RAM or storage (which, granted, I did not mention above).

Is the new MacBook Pro “radically thin and light”? No question. But as noted, it’s too thin in that it necessitates a huge compromise on the keyboard. And that is a great example of Apple making the wrong decision on behalf of its customers. Or as some might say, a classic Apple “form over function” mistake.

How about being “bold and embracing the newest technologies [while being] willing to discard the old legacy things”? Here, Apple nets a win: USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 is the right approach from a future-proofing perspective, and it helps Apple meet that need.

The thing is, I’m not sure Apple really is meeting the needs of its customers. The previous-generation device did, by all accounts. But the new one seems curiously tone-deaf to real-world needs, and there are too many areas—that ridiculous Touch Bar, the terrible keyboard, and the RAM limitation, in particular—where the MacBook Pro simply falls short.

My theory, however, is that this wasn’t explicitly user-hostile. That is, I think Apple actually got caught up a bit in its own mythology, and felt that it could simply make any radical changes it could dream and have them be not just accepted but loudly applauded by its too-compliant user base. The reaction Apple has received so far is unprecedented. And I think the company is legitimately surprised.

How Apple responds to these complaints will be telling. History is not kind here: The company has a terrible record of fixing problems, and I could cite a number of examples off the top of my head where it stuck by bad designs (like the external antenna design that made the iPhone 4 nearly unusable; it’s still with us today, improved a bit with each subsequent revision). But Tim Cook’s Apple isn’t Steve Jobs’ Apple, and while Cook can rightfully be faulted for being out of touch, he has shown some bouts of user-focused determination. (Like requiring Scott Forstall to personally apologize for the Apple Maps mess and then firing him when Forstall refused.)

Hardware isn’t fixed as easily as software. That said, I see a few possibilities for solving this mess without requiring changes to the existing platform. And if Apple is smart, it can do so without admitting any guilt, but rather by increasing user choice. They are:

Make the Touch Bar optional on all MacBook Pro models. This will lower the price by $200 to $300 per model, I bet, and give Pro users a device they’re not embarrassed to look at.

Let users configure the device with 32 GB. It’s just common sense.

Make four USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 ports the standard. I didn’t mention this, but the lower-end 13-inch MacBook that doesn’t include the Touch Bar only has two USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 ports. That’s OK for MacBook (or some future MacBook Air), but not for a Pro device.

Apple should also consider making a thicker Pro with a real keyboard for those pros who do type for a living. It could be like the Surface Book with Performance Base and perhaps even include additional functionality to justify its higher price. A portable workstation, if you will. A MacBook Pro you could actually get work done on.

Also, just to kind of bring this thing full circle, I went back and watchedApple’s October press event to see whether the firm updated the language it had used to describe its goals for MacBook Pro.

It did not. Instead, the company offered only vague platitudes, which I think should be a clue to the company’s executives about why they’ve failed their customers.

First, Apple CEO Tim Cook walked the press/cheering section through a history of the company’s portable computers. He noted that the first PowerBook “defined the modern notebook,” with subsequent products heralding various firsts for the industry.

“For 25 years, we’ve been defining what a notebook is, and what a notebook can do,” he said. “And today, we’re going to do it again.”

Phil Schiller was even vaguer, noting that the new MacBook Pro was “seriously cool,” with a “whole new, incredibly extreme design” and “innovations not possible before.” It is the thinnest and lightest MacBook Pro Apple has ever made, Schiller said, and it is smaller and weighs less than the previous version. Sure.

But there is one more thing.

Since that event, Apple has said that the new MacBook Pro, despite the complaints, was already the best-selling new Pro device that it has ever shipped. Leaving aside the very real possibility that such a thing could be very, very temporary, I would worry about the impact this device has had on its pro customers, who I would imagine are among the most influential of followers.

Apple has built its business on the well-heeled, and it has catered to an almost exclusively premium market, especially with its Mac product line. And it cannot afford to treat these people with disdain, whether you believe that this new product is a dud, a sensation, or something in-between. Apple isn’t big on focus groups or feedback of any kind, but I recommend that the company really pay attention here.

This is the kind of bad experience that we in the PC world understand very well, whether it’s the crapware that PC makers put on their devices, the overly-aggressive tactics Microsoft used to upgrade users to Windows 10, or whatever else. This kind of thing wears you out, makes you start thinking about alternatives. And if you’re not careful, a few outliers can become an avalanche.

Back in 2012, I was waiting on what rumors promised would be a 15-inch MacBook Air, and I planned to buy one and run Windows on it. Apple never released such a product—the rumor was really pointing to the MacBook Pro with Retina display cited above—so I went skulking back to the PC world and a 15-inch Samsung Ultrabook instead. I still have that PC, by the way.

I didn’t buy the MacBook Pro with Retina display back in 2012 for one reason only: It was way too expensive. This new Pro is far more expensive than its predecessor, but it also comes saddled with far too many other issues for me to ever consider it. And based on what I’m hearing from Mac users, for once we’re all on the same page.

Apple needs to fix this. Mac users should never agree with me. 🙂