Marco Arment botched his last blog post, when he suggested Apple should have kept USB-A ports on the new MacBook Pro.

Today's post shows he's thought about the issue a little more. From A world without the Mac Pro – Marco.org:

Pros wouldn’t be as angry about the limitations of the new MacBook Pro line if there was an alternative that solved their needs.

That's the sentiment that powered my earlier critique of the new line of MacBook Pros when I said that they Built the Wrong Truck. Underneath that was the regret that they'd only built one new model of trucks.

In that post, I included a tweet...

Would I trade the TouchBar etc in #NewMacBook redesign for proc/mobo updates across the entire line, keeping same designs? Yes, yes I would.

Implicit was also that I'd've taken (vs "traded") the new MBP if they'd also given me updated hardware with old designs everywhere else. If the Mac mini had a new processor and wasn't RAM hamstrung, I would've preferred a truck-ier MBP, but I would've considered biting -- I think I've owned three or four minis, and still use one as a build box at times. Three grand is probably too much for me to go Pro, but two grand and updated internals (and maybe only one graphics card to save them some cash) would've been attractive, and cut the MBP sting a little. And for non-crossplatform devs in boats otherwise similar to mine, I've got to think an updated, less expensive Pro would've been a near no-brainer.

I want a new Mac truck. Right now, I only have one model with three trim levels to choose from. The rest of the stable might as well all be certified used.

Of course, I've also always said that if you've got a few cheapskates complaining about price, you're probably pretty close to the right mark. So Marco's new $3k Pro is probably close to the money. I was surprised to see that he said "The existing iMac is great, but it isn’t enough."

He had a Pro, swapped to a [nearly maxed out?] iMac for the screen, but now wants to come back and use an external screen that's as nice. If I were an Apple-only dev, I would too...

And can you do a better job selling a Mac Pro than Marco does at the end?

From marco.org:

It’s the only pro-grade, workstation-class operating system that has ever been easy to use and nice enough that we wanted to spend more time at our workstations.

And hidden behind our pro apps and terminal windows are the shared photo streams we made last night, showing pictures of our children to their grandparents, who are running the exact same operating system.

One random final comment:

From marco.org again:

Linux can solve some pro needs, but not most. It’s a fantastic server OS but a miserable desktop one, and that will probably never change.

Oh, come on. Really? What's missing, other than, say, Messages? Linux is great. It's missing an iOS simulator, which I'd have to think is the real problem for Marco.

Labels: apple, macbook pro, marco, truck