Throws hands up in air
I've only used my battery pack four or five times in the year and a half I've had my 6s. Most of the time I'm not far away from a plug - either at home, in my car, at work, etc.
But when I travel, a slightly bigger battery wouldn't be enough. I would want twice the battery life - something I can get by using a battery pack - but I probably wouldn't get from a slightly larger iPhone.
If you have to optimize, why optimize for the edge cases instead of the most popular case and give options for those times people need it.
Since getting my Pixel XL I have a noticed I rely on external battery packs less as I often have access to a power socket for at least an hour or two when I travel.
I can count on running off the battery all day as long as I can get it plugged in while I fetch a sandwich for lunch.
If I plug mine into a 2 amp usb A charger it says that it is not charging, but does that mean it is drawing zero watts, or only that it is only drawing 10 watts? It would be nice to charge it overnight if only a phone charger happens to be around, or even just slow down the discharge rate while using the laptop.
Forcing user to learn all kinds of magic rules for how to "treat their battery" seems very old-fashioned and strange.
What you have to consider with fast charging is that it degrades the batteries faster and produces more heat.
I can understand if someone says they want even lighter.
One of the things that has changed my life for the better is switching entirely to devices that can use any USB power brick or USB charger in a pinch. This includes my cameras, tablets, phones, audio gear, and so on. The only remaining outlier is laptops.
As for battery packs, I have multiple devices, but I carry one battery pack that can charge all of them as needed. My phone is much lighter in my pocket for not having to have a larger battery (that I don't usually need), my ipad is easier to handle, etc.
For instance the new MacBook Pro 13" is my first MacBook Pro, simply because it's the first that is thin/light enough for me to carry around. Before that I had a MacBook Air from 2011. The MacBook Pro is vastly more powerful, but to write code it doesn't help much. It's not like SublimeText was slow on the MacBook Air. It's however night and days when it comes to browsing the web...
Frankly, I'm more annoyed by the bulk and weight of the power adapter than I am about 1mm or 1# off the laptop.
I welcome powerful laptops that are as light as possible.
Where are people working that they need a full day of untethered charge? I've never been to a client that didn't provide me with a power outlet.
4 or 5 hours of real world use for a developer workstation is just fine train commuting or sitting in a coffee shop in the morning.
More battery would be nice, but thinness and espcially weight matter a great deal to me. I literally sometimes don't even have my charger with me, because that small amount of added weight annoys me a great deal. Although I'm probably a bit extreme in that regard.
My main qualm is your note that tech bloggers love the thinness and that people will buy it based on their recommendation.
A) do most people really read tech blogs to figure out what computer to buy? Or do most people ask the best buy guy or their friend? (I would guess the latter, but I am not super sure so I'm gonna leave it as a question...)
B) many tech bloggers to express their disappointment in manufacturer's obsession with thinness. (Examples: MKBHD, Android Police, maybe even Anandtech)
(On a separate note, I have read way too many tech blogs...)
If you want bigger laptops, go out and buy the biggest one you can find. If all these people that say they want it do that, you can be sure the market will be flooded with laptops with a big battery.
Apple doesn't even have the thinnest laptop anymore, that achievement is now in HP's hands with the 10.4mm thick Spectre (and before that it was HP's Envy)
Interesting to note that there are reports that there was a failed battery design that would have given these latest models even more battery[0]. However, I think your suggestion is more reasonable. If there's less space being used for components, fill it with more battery. Then they could possibly have offered the 32GB of ram they couldn't offer due to battery concerns[1].
[0]https://www.macrumors.com/2016/12/20/larger-battery-gold-col...
[1]https://www.macrumors.com/2016/11/21/phil-schiller-32gb-ram-...
As for battery life, I need enough battery to be able to go to meetings without having to take the charger with me. It's not usual for me to work 8 hours without having a charger near to me. Also, as far as I know, the new Macs with USB-C, can be charged from an external battery pack.
Thus i find myself thinking about some way to do a combo of frames/cases and batteries so that one can add a frame to a laptop and insert batteries into the frame to extend overall runtime.
The idea of the frames being that if one replace the laptop one only need to replace the frame but continue to use the batteries.
I think the battle over thinness and weight was well worth it but the next battle is getting workflow to work in a full touch screen interface similar to the surface pro do and not he half ass move Apple made with that touch bar. Applications and imagination are holding that up. I do not expect keyboards to ever go away completely but pointing devices are another thing entirely
Professional whats? Executives, salespeople, real estate agents, pediatricians, beer distributors - all of these people are professionals, and all of them can and do benefit from smaller and lighter computing power.
Clearly your idea of a professional is someone who is chained to a desk writing code or processing complex 3D graphics. No question those are professional uses as well, but the idea of a 'professional computer user' covers a lot more ground these days than your insular definition.
I'm not sure why people who need high performance are so sniffy and condescending about those who don't. A requirement for massive computer resources doesn't make the work more valuable or respectable. Your moral worth is not linked to the number of processors you require to get your work done.
> Or the infinite other ultrabooks available now?
They don't run MacOS.
People with more strenuous computing needs are miffed because the MBP used to fit our use case, and now it doesn't. There isn't a single Apple product focused on the high performance market any more, and some of us are bitter.
The current laptop lineup is great, and perfect for a wide range of professions, myself included. But there is nothing for the person who wants more power, even if with more weight and cost. The desktop lineup is okay, but 3-year-old models keep being sold at launch prices, and are not practically upgradeable.
Nobody cares if HP comes out with boring laptops one year - because there's always Lenovo, Dell, etc to choose from, and for desktops you can always build your own. But if you want to stay with your software and workflows on MacOS, Apple is the only maker of Macs.
My "suggestion" for Apple would be to give up on the Mac Pro desktop line, take one high-end Dell workstation every year, and test and qualify it to run MacOS. People already build Hackintoshes, so it cannot be too complex compared to designing and building their own hardware.
This would mean that people who want to pay $10-50k, can have a MacOS computer with 44 cores, a terabyte of memory, 4 graphics cards, 8 SSDs in RAID, and so on. Add a generous "Apple tax" to make it worthwhile for Apple, and people who want the power always have one "really maxed out" option. And everyone who complains about laptops not being powerful enough can be told to get a desktop instead.
I submit that it's because the people in one camp feel that Apple screwed them in order to cater to people in the second camp. The people in the first camp are sick of hearing how the MBP is adequate for the people in the second camp, and are projecting a little bit.
I do mind that they don't offer at least one good alternative that is "programmer pro": harddisk can be changed, RAM can be added, battery can be replaced and may be bigger. I really don't mind 5mm or even 1cm extra thickness if that gives me all this for a reasonable price. And the 2012 Macbook Pro (without retina) was offered up til last year, but that was no real option with four year old hardware and still for the same price.
Do you know of that instant update feature in Excel? It automatically updates cells when you alter one, up to a certain performance point. My MacBook (non anything) stops doing so much faster than when I use a desktop. When I do process a line of heavier formulae I do have to also wait a fair amount longer than when I use a larger machine.
And the pretty penny argument does not really hold up when you are talking about it as a company expense, due to the very favorable tax perspective.
Sorry but that has to be one of the most ridiculous benchmarks I've seen in a long time.
I think that the only thing that could "trick" them into making a gaming machine is VR, as it requires similar hardware.
They don't "need" to... We just really want them to.
They made their brand exactly by caring about the people they are throwing away now. It's not obvious if their brand will sustain itself without those people.
Screen size. I'd personally love a 15" fanless MacBook.
The macbook pro is a computer for professional computer users.
A professional philosophy professor has no need of a macbook pro, a professional video-editor does.
Being a 'professional; in your white-collar classification, doesn't imply that you're a professional computer user.
It's not an insular definition, it's a specific definition.
I don't see why. A philosophy professor might prefer a larger screen and a faster CPU for their web browsing and document editing. And, while a professional video-editor would understandably gripe about it, I have no doubt they could get their work done—if they had to—on a 12" MacBook. Video editors used to get fine work done on Pentiums that offered a small fraction of the performance.
It's not an insular definition, it's a specific definition.
Set by whom? Where?
This is about the semantics of the word 'professional' and avoiding confusing a 'professional' in the white-collar-job sense, and a 'professional computer user'.
Set by whom? Where?
Well, apple don't define their terms formally in a Dictionary, they're subject to interpretation. I would say they've historically marketed the Macbook pro as a computer for 'professional computer users', not 'professional' in the white-collar vs blue-collar sense of the word.
Everyone wants batteries that last longer. How often did you look at your last generation mbp and wish it was thinner?
I love the fact that I don't have to carry a charger for the Macbook, even after 2 years of usage it still runs long enough to last a workday.
Okay so its not the new Macbook we're talking about here. I think I may have the same one, I bought it in 2014 and I love it. It still takes everything I throw at it, and it connects to everything. Full SSD which I was wary of at first but once you get used to no moving parts - which don't break - it's hard to imagine going back to clunky spinning platters.
I'd be hard pressed to go for the new MBPs though. My 2014 is so light it barely registers as it is. I'd prefer to keep the same degree of connectivity and utility. The new one I'm afraid seems a bit much of show pony.
I'm concerned with the direction Apple's software is taking as well. Others here mention the abandonment of the high end, with regards to photography, video, music etc. but even the middle-ground is a mess. iTunes keeps getting clunkier and clunkier to the point where I'm seriously considering not getting an iPhone because that's the last reason I need to use it at this stage.
I think the Photos app leaves a lot to be desired as well. A lot of people moaned about iPhoto - but to me it seemed way better.
Then there was Yosemite, which is actually the only dark period in my MBP's life. Things would just mysteriously stop working, and regular reboots were fairly common. What particularly stands out is that fiasco around mDnsResponder / Discoveryd - which ironically most acutely affected users with a mostly Apple ecosystem.
Each of these three instances, as well as other notables such as Apple maps, are cases where Apple just couldn't "leave well enough alone"; took something that worked okay and foisted a big steaming pile of dog poo on us instead.
In fairness though the emphasis seems to be on "think different" these days rather than "it just works" but it may as well be "software is hard, lets go shopping".
Sorry, I seem to have gone way off on a tangent here. Though I feel the general sentiment is still OT. Thanks!
Look, it plays Angry Birds and that thing with the cars - what more could anyone want?
And there's a text and presentation editor, and a spreadsheet, because those are super important.
I'd guess there's no one to represent any of the pro user communities in Cupertino any more at the top levels. There's certainly no passion for making beautiful, creative tools any more.
I still like the hardware - the iPad Pro is a favourite in this house, and I'm enjoying a new MacBook - but how I wish someone could give MacOS software like iTunes and Photos a kick up the ass to make it awesome instead of eccentric and annoying.
And how I wish Apple would open up to all the creative communities and start listening to what pro users want, instead of telling us that we don't really need what we used to have and we should - y'know - just get over ourselves.
Edit: Evidently the downvotes have proven that thinner devices do not lead to increased risk of bend damage.
At least give people a choice. The 17" used to be fantastic as well, and I still miss it. It was big and bulky enough that causal users didn't want it and so Apple didn't have to try to appease them with it as much.
It'd be great if they licensed MacOS again if they're going to give up on the higher end as we've seen with the Mac Pro 0-upgrades-in-4-years zero-commitment-to-the-platform approach they've taken, as we've seen with killing Xserve, with the dual-core-only Mac minis after the 2012 model, with iMacs using all laptop parts...
They message they send is clear: we make computers to do Facebook and some Excel on, not for making movies (FinalCut Pro X dropping tons of pro features), not for photographers (Aperture is discontinued), not for DJs (no more FireWire and 100% USB-C), not for programmers or hacker types (check how old their versions of unix tools are, dtrace locked out with rootless AKA SIP, non-upgradable/repairable hardware, Mac App Store limitations). All the reasons macs sold so well with pros before are basically nonexistent in 2017, and I predict that they'll slowly fade out of the pro scenes. At some point, consumers will notice ("why doesn't every major DJ have the glowing Apple logo on stage anymore???") and they will stop being cool.
I'm pretty convinced that all it would take to usurp Apple is a really solid design like an old IBM or a sturdy Dell with a touchpad that doesn't register your palm half the time, and a chassis that doesn't droop a few mm on one side when you pick it near the corner. Sadly, even today, there are not many options for laptops that don't feel like complete crap compared to any MacBook.
Regarding overall portability, I think the 13 inch MacBook air is a good compromise. The new 13 inch MacBook pro is about the same weight, but obviously a lot more powerful, and is smaller in dimensions. It's a breeze to work on planes with this machine.
I'd rather see the next iteration of MacBook Pros with better heat dissipation and longer battery life than with 1 mm improvement in thickness.
https://www.amazon.com/UX330UA-AH54-13-3-inch-Ultra-Slim-Pro...
Sure the ratio changes, but I'm not sure how that is relevant.
Make of that what you will, but we exist.
Never. Not once. I almost found it comical how thick the old MacBook Pro was to my Retina MacBook Pro. Then after using a new one for a while and going back to my once-thin rMBP 13", it feels as thick as the old generation.
You and the OP highlight a problem here: Apple's offerings in the "pro" segment is too limited to satisfy all different users' needs.
Apple needs to diversify.
I think it goes the other way; the manufacturers' obsession with thinness (for mostly aesthetic reasons) goes a long way to explain why they're focusing on reducing power draw.
It's great that they are reducing power draw, but by making everything thinner (usually translating into decreased power storage), those gains in efficiency are largely cancelled out when it comes to battery life in real-world usage.
When creating these things, the designers, engineers, and marketing people obviously have some kind of target battery life in mind, and it seems as though the target is always "about the same battery life as the last generation," whereas there's no end to the number of compromises and engineering efforts that go toward cutting 1 mm off one dimension.
And of course, the tech bloggers all go nuts about how thin the newest generation is compared to the last, and people buy computers based on their recommendations.
Aren't these things thin enough already, at least for professionals? Why not go for some truly earth-shattering battery life on one of these laptops? Do people really care more about that 1 mm than they do about potentially hours of additional battery life?