100% agree. All the time I hear "it's not a pro machine if it doesn't have 16GB of RAM" or "a pro machine needs firewire and HDMI out and a headphone jack and real function keys" and I think... am I just not a professional? Because I rarely use an external monitor, rarely use the function keys as actual function keys, and I'm fine with 8GB of RAM and a core i5. But my MacBook is 100% my work laptop, and I get paid a heck of a lot of money, so...?

I mean, professionals are the most likely to use dongles and attachments. We sometimes have esoteric needs (I very frequently require a serial port, but I'm not crying that Apple doesn't include one), we can commonly get our work to pay for them, and we generally have a desk to put things on and a bag to carry them with. Consumers wouldn't put up with that nonsense, they just want to use Facebook and Netflix.

We've already established that I am not a professional because I don't need HDMI or function keys, so all I can say from the outside looking in is... man professionals are seriously whiny. Also can we start a campaign to get Apple to put a full-size serial port back on their laptops? That's something a real professional would use.

Function keys? How do you step into a function in xcode? F7? Continue? F6. What about in Windows? As the right-click menu button doesn't exist, shift-F10 does what you want on a mac. But apparently this is now impossible. And I wouldn't like to imagine the wasted time in Visual Studio trying to click continue and step into etc compared with F10 and F11. I would get zero work done all day. Also on the Mac I use ctrl-F2 for the menu bar etc etc etc I cannot imagine life without function keys.

I drive projectors with my display port. I record my band with the FireWire interface on mine. I copy files off my camera with SD card (it's a Sony HX60). I use 16GB of RAM because I develop under OSX and Windows at the same time, given that Windows is running in a VM and running Visual Studio.

Basically what we're expecting is a full useful laptop that is capable of a variety of uses without additional dongles and hardware. What's the point of a slim laptop if you need a thick bag of dongles just to use it? It's truly stupid. My Mac isn't just for web browsing. And this isn't whining - it's having expectations of a device that it is not some form of glorified etch-a-sketch. If you stick the word "pro" on it, it has to be more than a consumer device.

What's next? The enter key is redundant?

There's the single biggest problem I have with people complaining about this on behalf of all professionals everywhere: we're not all programmers. I don't step through code. I don't. Never have.

There are some valid complaints. I use Ethernet and VGA a lot, and the dongles I already bought are useless with the new machine since it doesn't have Thunderbolt ports. Kind of annoying, but everyone kind of accepts that Ethernet and VGA are gone now. No one sheds a tear for them, but I still have to use them. No one sheds a tear for serial, but I still have to use it.

I really think it's hilarious that the one thing everyone seems to agree that we like about the Mac is that it's Unix, and Unix is all about small, single-purpose modules that work together. Yet when Apple creates a laptop that's the embodiment of that philosophy, it's the end of the world.

So yeah, you can keep acting like it's not a pro machine because you can't step through code with your function keys (which I'll remind you, still fucking exist), or you can realize the "pro" world is a lot bigger than your needs. At least your function keys are still built into the laptop. I have to carry an Ethernet, VGA, and serial adapter with me everywhere. It could be worse.

But I wouldn't saddle your machine with my particular needs, because not everyone needs what you need. Pro doesn't mean "specifically tailored to your particular needs".

No need for the profanity.

I am stating that if a replacement machine doesn't do what the previous generation did, its user base will shrink as it will no longer be useful to the same user base. This is precisely what everyone is upset about - it isn't an improvement if we can't use it in the same situation.

Certainly, we have different requirements from the machine. But whilst stating that my user requirements shouldn't be your requirements and that I shouldn't expect them to be, you are then asserting that people who don't fit into your happy requirements set are all "whining"?

Obviously there is a need for profanity or the entire concept would never have been invented. It's actually quite perfect for this situation to emphasize that the function keys you're complaining no longer exist? They do still exist. So... yeah, you're whining about nothing. Oooh, they changed the kind of key, so what? They're still there. You can still use them. They didn't take them away, so your entire point is completely gone.

I'm not even sure where this idea of "the function keys are gone" even came from. Apple showed them on stage for crying out loud! They're still fucking there. How do you step through code? THE SAME WAY YOU DID ON THE OLD ONE.

In this context, I would say that there is no need for profanity. I wasn't questioning the invention of profanity itself.

You sound an angry person.

> everyone kind of accepts that Ethernet [is] gone now

I just want to emphatically disagree with this particular point.

Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's not generally accepted. When was the last time a MacBook had one? And they still sell like hotcakes. Ultrabooks are selling pretty well too, without Ethernet. Even the Dell XPS that everyone recommends doesn't have Ethernet.

It's generally accepted that Ethernet is gone now because people have been buying laptops without Ethernet for years now.

Is that because they are selling laptops without Ethernet? We may be confusing the effect with the cause.

As a professional myself, I don't like dongles, especially if I'm travelling.

I don't want to worry about forgetting or losing a critical dongle if I need to connect to a wired network, projector or whatnot. I also don't want to have a USB dongle if I know a client is going to be giving me a USB key to exchange some files. Having the right built in ports means you have less to worry about when you're on the road, and visiting a client in the middle of nowhere. The last thing a professional needs to happen is to get into an embarrassing situation because of their hardware situation. No thanks.

Having said that, I'm not really dependent on any particular OS any more, so it doesn't matter to me if Apple, Dell, or Lenovo make a design decision I don't like. There's a pretty good chance that someone out there makes something that satisfies the majority of my needs.

If I was dependent on macOS and ready for a hardware upgrade, however, I think I'd be pretty grumpy about yesterday's announcements and non-announcements. Because of that, I can sympathize with the uproar.

No, this isn't that hard. You could design two lines of products and satisfy almost everyone: MacBook and MacBook Pro.

The MacBook line would be optimized for mobility, for pros and college students who need a real computer (not an iToy) with them all the time to do serious work of a general businessy nature: organize projects into folders, use apps like a browser, Keynote, Excel, Word, lightweight photo apps, media viewing, a good text/code editor, a terminal, etc. Lots of reading and writing work, software dev on the road, email, checking flight status, giving presentations (in the office, in class), etc. It would be designed to have battery life extended significantly via 3rd-party USB-C batteries, so you would have the mobility of a light machine with the option of significantly extending battery life when you needed it. Lightweight, mobile, untethered, pro work.

The MacBook Pro line would be optimized for computer power that was still portable: NVidia GPU, lots of RAM, lots of internal storage, big screen (17" version available again), serious battery life, no connector shortage. The words "thinner" would never be uttered. Instead: "more powerful". By allowing it to be a little thicker and heavier (not huge, maybe 50% thicker than a 2015 MacBook Pro), you could use less compact, previous gen RAM and SSD, thereby getting much more for the same price. It wouldn't actually be very thick and heavy except relative to the lightweight line; it would just be optimized for how much of a serious computer you could deliver without making it too large, rather than the current "how thin can we make it without rendering it useless?" This machine would often be used docked to large monitors as a full-powered desktop but could be taken on the road (these things wouldn't be any larger than every laptop used on the road a few years ago.) Photoshop, 3D graphics rendering, serious gaming, video editing, serious software dev docked to large, desktop screens that could be continued on an airplane, number crunching AI and big(ish) data without having to offload to a server farm, having 100 tabs open in Chrome while editing 4K video, having a full library of books and 100 videos on the internal drive for use when traveling, etc.

These two lines could share most design and mfg yet satisfy pros of all sorts without needing much of an increase in number of models made.

I generally agree with your segmentation.

Unfortunately Apple does not (well, not any more). And there is a huge contingent who still wants the thinnest possible Pro model.

I would suggest further breaking the Non-pro line into super thin (New Macbook) and thin (Macbook Air) models, and the Pro line into super thin (2016 rMBP) and not-so-thin (the model you describe).

The problem here is that the thinnest possible Pro model is not Pro. You can call it Pro, but it's not Pro anymore.. it's Thin.