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 th...

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