Meh
Whatever they release it will be mid specification and terribly expensive.
But I do agree the MacBook Pro is long long overdue complete refresh.
Apple has stashed what looks like a photo of its new MacBook Pro – due to be announced this week – in the very latest macOS Sierra update. Reg reader Richard Tobin tipped us off to the image's location; the file shows a person scanning their fingerprint for a Touch ID check with Apple Pay open, suggesting the print is used to …
The UK is in for a shock, once they start having to pay the 1:1 UK:US Dollar pricing, with VAT@20%,the UK Prices for the new macbook might end up been slightly higher than the US.
I'm guessing 5-10% above US Prices, A $1500 new mabook will be £1650 in the UK
(In fairness, the Apple upfront cost is always high, but the cost of ownership, especially if you implement a 'limited damage plan, keep the box' policy, is minimum {over a three year life} for macbooks. Don't take my word for it, listen to IBM)
The problem (more so) with this macbook will be the lack of drivers for anything other than macOS for the specialist devices - the Oled touchpad and the fingerprint touchID, Windows 10 AU 1607 Bootcamp drivers maybe, but you won't see Windows 8.1/7SP1 drivers.
I call this the 'travelling circus of Driver implementation'. A new laptop gets released, comes into town. The drivers appear just before the circus arrives and leave not long after the circus leaves, leaving you with laptops where they can only run certain OS's, which acts a window of opportunity. This works with Printers too.
It's even harder where those drivers only run on a very small subset of machines (like specialist fingerprint readers/oled touchpanels). Has the effect to make these, very restrictive proprietary drivers, making the laptop obsolete quicker, as regards to new OSs.
Regarding the 1cm bezel which Apple are bound to salvate over, we had this in 2005 on a Toshiba Portege M100, then we seemed to lose narrow bezels for 10 years.
Apparently Frank is blessed with some sort of special X ray vision that lets him see inside the case of a laptop even in a photo, able to see what CPU it has, how much RAM, the display resolution and battery life.
If he can see the price too he can save us from having to read about it after Apple's announcement!
You hardly ever use function keys, so who cares? If they tried to do that with the parts of the keyboard you interact with all the time, then I agree it would suck.
Not sure there's much value, but I suppose I could see applications like Photoshop relabel all the function keys to serve purposes within the program, and power users might like that.
"For controlling volume (or Photoshop brush size, for example) a well implemented touch-strip may be a better than traditional keys."
Yes, it may be better if it is implemented well. The Carbon X1 problem was poor visibility of the touch strip icons (to me at least and this could be remedied) and you need to look down at the touch strip to find the correct key instead of letting your fingertips find the proper function key.
An extremely well implemented Mac Wheel could in theory work better than your regular keyboard. It's just very unlikely.
If the touch strip proves to be a genuine improvement then Apple be praised.
"You hardly ever use function keys, so who cares? "
Only if you are a pointy clicky user. People who learn to use their computers properly really don't want to be reaching for a mouse or even a track-pad while using the keyboard, so have learned many KB short cuts, many of which use the F-keys. At the very least, F1 - help, F11 - browser full screen, F3 - find command in many apps, etc.
"Keyboard keys need to be real keys, not stupid touch panels."
I wonder how it fits in to the various disability access laws? I know a few blind users who prefer Apple, but if they can't find the function keys, or keys change function/shape/size in different apps, it's going to be impossible to use.
Lenovo tried these "dynamic funtion keys" with their top tier X1 Carbon laptops couple years ago and it was horrible to use. Fine for the IT declined execs - who rarely bother with function keys anyway.
It was a novelty that didn't work and fortunately Lenovo came to their senses and the later X1 Carbons are using physical function keys again.
I'm typing this on a Lenovo X1 Carbon with a dynamic touch panel above the keyboard. Everything for me about the X1 Carbon is a fantastic apart from the deeply irritating dynamic touch panel thing. I understand why people like Macs (I used them until MacOS 7.5.4 drove me insane, as did programming the things down to the VBL interrupt) - but why ruin them with this thing? It is, of course, possible that Apple will get the dynamic touch panel thing right. If they do that would be great - maybe Lenovo will fix their too!
Exactly...
I never like the idea of a touch row replacing the fn keys (if anything, I'd like *two* rows of real keys for functions keys and special controls without needing fn combos...)
The implementations then have always been the typical half-assed, low quality and badly supported OEM crap...
Apple has really to nail it to get it right and not feel like a gimmick....
If they wanted to try a new dynamic strip for extra keys, then sure fine. But don't remove the existing function keys to do it. Add a new row above the function keys and see if people start using them. A lot of people do know and use shortcut keys and taking them away is NOT going to be popular. But yes they are probably a minority and Apple clearly doesn't care about any minority user bases.
What you can't see is that it has not a single connector.
No headphone socket, no USB sockets, no charging socket. It comes with a sealed 'Lifetime' non-rechargeable battery good for 12 months (actual life may vary, based on 32 seconds use per day).
You might think that omitting the charging socket is a dumb idea, but they're just leading the way into your future boys and girls.
I remain completely staggered that they've systematically dropped the Magsafe connector from their portable computers. This, at least for me, was one of the more compelling aspects for the MacBook [Pro] machines as it offered a genuine benefit - trip over the mains cable and it safely detaches without wiping out the machine in the process.
As for connectors - completely agree. The chase is on for removing as much functionality as possible in the name of "courageous" decisions making it 0.1mm thinner. This seems to be a disease pervading Apple under Cook. If you want it super thin get a MB Air. If you buy a MacBook Pro you are probably planning to do some serious work with it so it should be connectors galore.
Someone from the design department should have talked to a dev. This is going to add a real negative for developers who use VI. I have the good sense to use emacs, but, this is going hurt them with programmers. What's left? Lenovo? Dell? This seems like pointless change for changes sake. Also, when you have to drag around a few dongles to make it useful, I don't see that as elegance.
You and me might use VI but 99.9% of users won't and don't care. Most other industries don't use "home/consumer tools" to do the job - your garage doesn't use the supplied wrench from the boot of your car to change wheels.
What I'm saying is there's noting compelling manufacturers to make products nice for devs. They are only interested in the bottom line, and that comes from "normal" sales.