You can thank me for the MacBook Pro update, since I bought an Air on June 14th. It was too difficult to keep waiting, and most of my “if only” excuses were essentially removed during the Air’s 2017 update. The entry level got a slightly faster processor and 8 gigs of RAM on the bottom end, just enough to get by. And look at all the ways it’s better than a MacBook Pro…

• USB-A ports.
• SDXC card for cameras
• Magsafe
• DisplayPort
• A reliable keyboard

The last sticking point for me was the price. At $1000, it’s too steep. But Best Buy had a sale June 14th for the bottom of the line Air for $700 plus tax. You can’t beat that. That’s competitive.

I’d been holding out for a new MacBook for literally years now, having gotten a Lenovo gaming laptop to use as my programming rig back in 2016 when I thought Apple had created a MacBook that wasn’t really for Pros with this new generation of MacBooks. Phil Schiller said as much, when he claimed the new 13“ Pro could replace the Air, and Walt Mossberg agreed, saying that ”if these new MacBooks simply didn’t carry the Pro label, we’d all have a lot less to complain about". Wow. This is a consumer laptop.

You might recall my comparison of bottom of the line MacBook processors. Even after last month’s update, nothing’s changed there, at the low end. The MacBook Pro “Escape” 13“ still has a crappy i5–7360U, with a top-end only about 80% higher than the Air. The 12” MacBook is only 6% faster. None of these are speed demons. You’ve got to pay $1799 to get to the new processors in the latest refresh.

Neither step up from the Air are worth the price. The calculus said that I’m much better off spending $770 after tax on an Air, and putting the difference between the Air and Pro (even when the Escape was on sale at B&H for $1200 (which was tempting)), towards a new desktop or a future MacBook. In a sense, I can get an Air to bide me over now, and bank over $400 of my budget to put towards my next MacBook.

Marco agrees

Heard a lot of my reasoning coming out of Marco Arment’s mouth on the most recent episode of The Talk Show. He basically said that laptops are optimized to run [predominantly] at a nice, low clock speed that sips power. You can get this low-power mode from an Air or the most powerful 15" Pro. Your compilations will suffer, but as I said when I talked about my $100 Lenovo S100, small computers with great battery life are a lot more useful than you’d think. Work on headless tasks in console apps (rather, make your tasks into many headless programming tasks), and you’ll be surprised how much you can get done.

Laptops – all laptops – are made for low power tasks. If you want as much power as you can carry, sure, max something out. But unless you’re okay with a “tall” gamer laptop (Marco actually talks about this) with the requisite fans and sorry battery life (hello, Lenovo Y700!), you’re not going to be able to cool your proc, no matter who you are.

You really want power? Stay at home and get a desktop.

At some point, I’d settle for a quality mini upgrade, which sounds like it could happen soon, but I’m hopeful the new Mac Pro will have an entry level that’s worth a look.

But you get the point. If I want portable macOS, the answer was and, I think, remains the Air on sale. It’s cheap, convenient, and reliable. Even after the update, it’s not worth paying $300 more for a 8250U i5 8210Y (4141 score) and a Retina screen. Instead, I’ll pocket that cash and hope for something that makes sense later.

To date, the only thing I really dislike is that HDMI out (via DisplayPort adapter) is limited to 1920x1080. You have to use DisplayPort input on your monitor if you want higher resolution. This has been a Mac hardware limitation for a while that I’ve never really understood.

Labels: apple, bargain, benchmarks, best buy, hardware, lenovo, mac pro, macbook, macbook pro, marco

As a general rule, I try to stay away from Daniel Dilger's written pieces. They're usually entirely too long for the points they're making (sound familiar? ;^D), and each has about five syllogistic fallacies that drive me bonkers. Luckily, they also tend to have such obviously biased, clickbaity titles that they're easy to filter from your RSS feed.

Accidentally stepped into one this morning. Lots to disagree with that's not worth the time, but I did want to cover this one, which I've heard from less sensationalist, smug writers:

From Editorial: The future of Apple's Macintosh:

Mac Pro

The Late 2013 release of Mac Pro may have been a mistake. Its design wasn't readily upgradable, but Apple also lacked the sales volumes to warrant regular significant update cycles. If a cycle is too long, the benefits of product cycles described above begin to evaporate. It may have been better for Apple to have designed a system other vendors could upgrade, with room for standard PCIe graphics cards and perhaps even CPU packages. [emph mine]

Though not having a PCIe slot is a fairly consistent complaint that's recently gotten a lot of press, I don't think that's the problem. The problem is that the silicon inside the Mac Pro hasn't been updated since 2013.

The PCIe complaint is really just an extension of the argument that Apple's been slack with updates. Asking for PCIe is a little like saying, "If you're not going to stay current, let me do it myself!" (Of course, that's also, imo, why it's smart to add a PCIe slot. But that's another argument...)

Here's DED's logical faceplant: There's plenty of volume for Apple to update the innards.

The enthusiast's motherboard & GPU market

Every few years, I upgrade my whitebox tower; it's a computer I build myself. Every time I do, I wade through tons of motherboard options. Though the one I have in there now is still for sale on NewEgg, it's from some squirrelly third-party selling out of date hardware for over twice its original price, iirc.

Same thing with video cards. There are tons of companies rebadging Nvidia's and ATi's latest in different configurations, turning over almost completely each year. (And here, my crappy card is out of stock.)

Are you really going to tell me Apple can't afford to make just one new motherboard and video card each year?

My point is that these enthusiast computer components usually don't last long on the marketplace. You have a slew of options at any one point, but in 6-12 months, no matter how intelligently you shopped, what you bought is usually long in the tooth, replaced by one or more upgraded boards by each company in the direct-to-builder motherboard category.

Fewer Mac Pros than enthusiast Asus boards? Rly?

Does anyone really think Apple sells fewer Mac Pros than ASRock sold of their "H97M Anniversary LGA 1150"? I can't imagine that's the case for a second.

And that's where Apple's let you down. You can build an all-in-one pro model if you keep it relatively recent, and you keep it recent by upgrading the mother- and video card daughter -boards. If Apple's going to release a Mac like this, it has to commit to upgrading the motherboard, processor, and GPU options at least yearly. No redesign of the outside needed.

I understand there are issue with the trash can. Maybe there's not enough airflow for cooling a GTX 1080 with the trash can's single giant fan. Maybe it's not as forward-thinking as Apple wanted.

That doesn't mean you're stuck with 2013 silicon through 2017! And there's no reason whatsoever not to make a new motherboard that'll accept new Intel wafers each time they're refreshed. None.

If ASRock -- and Asus, and MSI, and Gigabyte -- can each release new mobos yearly for the enthusiast PC market, Apple can release one for Mac Pro users.

Apple only needed to be as committed as a reputable motherboard manufacturer -- no, less. They only needed to upgrade one mobo and GPU for one enclosure. They weren't and they didn't. It had nothing to do with sales volume. Really?

It's been three and a half years. Not enough sales volume? Three years' sales of Mac Pro are less than one year of Asus enthusiast boards?

Sales volume? That's a fail all around.

Labels: apple fail, dilger, hardware, mac pro