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Huh, that came as quite a surprise.
To summarize, I think I'll just use MacRumors headlines. First, the new models: MacBook Air Updated With True Tone Display and Lower $1,099 Starting Price Entry-Level 13-Inch MacBook Pro Updated With 8th-Gen Processors, Touch Bar, Touch ID, and T2 Security Chip Then, they discontinued something: Apple Discontinues 12-Inch MacBook And lastly, two tidbits: Apple Drops Prices on High-End Storage Upgrades for iMac, iMac Pro, MacBook Pro, Mac mini, and Mac Pro New MacBook Air and Base 13-Inch MacBook Pro Have Same Keyboard as Higher-End 2019 MacBook Pros |
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Now, some thoughts:
This is mostly a good update. A good ol'-fashioned speedbump which, for a few years, we saw too few of. There are still nits to pick — for instance, why does the MacBook Air have Bluetooth 4.2 instead of 5.0? Why does the low-end MacBook Pro lack Hey Siri when the MacBook Air has it? Why has the iPad Pro had ProMotion for two years, and not a single Mac does today? |
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¡Damned!
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Purgatory
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Maybe we'll see a 16" now that the line is cleaned up a bit. So it goes. |
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Lovable Bastard
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Boston-ish
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Jony is barely out the door and they're killing his MacBook!
The MacBook One was always a bizarre machine though, so this isn't really a surprise. Apple should have just kept the 11" MacBook Air and given both Airs a retina display, rather than introduce the MacBook One. These are nice, small spec-bump and product lineup clarifying updates, but it's great to see this larger trend of Apple caring about the Mac again. Logic, logic, logic. Logic is the beginning of wisdom, Valeris, not the end. |
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The "oh and by the way, despite the price tag, the keyboard reliability is unclear" is just the cherry on top of that. I hope so! But I don't think so. Maybe if they only do a slight speed bump, but a newer Intel generation would have to wait until Comet Lake-H in Q2 next year, so it doesn't seem very plausible Apple would upgrade before that. |
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Yes! |
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Lord of the Rant.
Formerly turtle2472 Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Upstate South Carolina
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I'm just mad that Rose Gold isn't available because my wife really wants one in that color. Pretty much anything in that color for that matter.
I am glad to see the lineup get a cleanup though. I was actually having a hard time thinking through what model I might get her and now it's much easier. She really is at the bottom end of usage...mostly. I mean, a Chromebook could be enough for her until she opens Photos. Then she actually uses some computing power. Louis L'Amour, “To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.” Visit our archived Minecraft world! | Maybe someday I'll proof read, until then deal with it. |
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Which way is up?
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Boyzeee
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Maybe the 12" MacBook dropped to make room for the first Ax-based thing to be announced this fall?
Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe the 16" MacBook Pro will be Ax-based? Maybe. Maybe not. I'm glad to see the MacBook drop from the lineup. Also glad the 2017 (2012?) MacBook Air drop as well. Two systems that made no sense. The 13" MacBook Pro also makes more sense now, although I am curious to see what kind of performance specs a quad-core 1.4GHz i5 w/HT has. That little sucker might become the best value in the lineup. - AppleNova is the best Mac-users forum on the internet. We are smart, educated, capable, and helpful. We are also loaded with smart-alecks! :) - Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. (Mat 5:9) |
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If they do that I SWEAR TO GOD SOMEONE WILL SUFFER
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Much longer answer: Hard to say. My current speculation is that it's an unannounced Whiskey Lake-U part that has lower clock rate than existing parts, but adds a beefier GPU instead. Going by roughly comparable Geekbench scores, that would sadly mean that it's slightly slower to the two-years-old CPU at single-core (new ~3860 vs. old 4341), and only 21% faster at multi-core (new 10948 vs. old 9084), despite twice the core count, mainly because it's going down from 2.3 GHz to 1.4 GHz. Turbo Boost seems to be better on these, though. Also, built-in Spectre/Meltdown mitigation. Really, if you want performance improvements, you need to wait until later in the year (and that seems optimistic) for Ice Lake to ship in volume. |
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Veteran Member
Join Date: Oct 2005
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Phew, no more of that three-notebook-line nonsense.
When I first saw the 16" MBP talk, I guessed in my head that it would just replace the 15" by having less bezel. We'll see what happens there. |
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Which way is up?
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Boyzeee
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I make the statement more based on value for the customer. The previous non-Touch Bar model was a poor value next to a 2018 MacBook Air. Gaining the Touch Bar and Touch ID adds some value, but there is still the "big difference" between a MacBook Pro and a MacBook Air. Not sure those first two things are worth $200, although I suspect they will sell a lot of computers.
- AppleNova is the best Mac-users forum on the internet. We are smart, educated, capable, and helpful. We are also loaded with smart-alecks! :) - Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. (Mat 5:9) |
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Rocket Surgeon
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: The Canadark
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I feel afraid to say it out loud, but:
I'm still running everything on a 2015 13" MBP. If I can just eke out a few more months, I might get to skip the whole Butterfly keyboard thing altogether..... |
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Which way is up?
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Boyzeee
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It's possible that the "16" MB Pro" rumored to be on the way will have a different keyboard design. However, rumors floating signaled a new MacBook Air was on the way in the fall that had a scissor keyboard. Today's announcement seems to put that rumor to rest. It is highly doubtful that Apple would announce another new MB Air 3 months after this refresh. Although Apple has released new systems 6 months apart, the development cycle for current systems does not need to support that. A new keyboard will require an entirely new chassis, which means a full redesign. That is unlikely so close together.
I can see a new chassis being introduced on a new high-end system, though. Just not on a refreshed thing so close. - AppleNova is the best Mac-users forum on the internet. We are smart, educated, capable, and helpful. We are also loaded with smart-alecks! :) - Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. (Mat 5:9) |
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Lovable Bastard
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Boston-ish
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The rumored edge-to-edge screens will give all the MacBooks a "free" inch on the display, so I wouldn't be surprised if we get 12" and 14" edge-to-edge Airs, and 14" and 16" edge-to-edge Pros.
Logic, logic, logic. Logic is the beginning of wisdom, Valeris, not the end. |
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Lord of the Rant.
Formerly turtle2472 Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Upstate South Carolina
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Less bezel will certainly make similarly sized machine hold bigger screens. Not all bad of a concept either. I was looking at my MBP thinking about it after reading this comment and realizing it really doesn't need to be that big of a bezel. Nor does the iMac need such a bezel and chin. I'd happily jump on a 16" MPB because I really miss my long in the tooth 17" MBP.
Louis L'Amour, “To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.” Visit our archived Minecraft world! | Maybe someday I'll proof read, until then deal with it. |
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Veteran Member
Join Date: Oct 2005
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Can we whack the “iPad” now, maybe bumping the entry price of the Air down by $50 or something to make the iPad line make sense too?
Notebook: One consumer line and one pro line, check. iMac: One consumer line and one pro line, check. Headless: One consumer line and one pro line, check. iPad: Confusion in the mainstream part of the line. Ideally, consumer side has one standard and one mini size, and pro side stays like it is now. Support for both Pencil generations across the board would be nice too, since right now it’s basically a “does your iPad have a Touch ID home button? Gen 1 Pencil. If not, Gen 2” situation. Some think the iPod Touch should be killed off, but I like keeping it around. It would be nice if it actually, you know, had Touch ID added, but I guess they have a surplus of OG home buttons to use up. |
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It (bizarrely — and it appears temporarily) lacked some features like Touch ID, but its CPU was better (especially at multi-core), as was its GPU. But… it had a really odd place in the line-up. Like PKIDelirium said, I'm glad the confused line-up is done. The Air has Touch ID, mind you. Which was crazy. You upgrade from the Air to the Pro and lose Touch ID? (To be fair, that discrepancy only existed for less than a year.) Quote:
Once again, a picture emerges where, depending on how you look at it, either Intel screwed Apple, or Apple unduly had high expectations from Intel. They expected Iris Pro to continue on the 45W H-series (nope), the 5W Y-series path for the 12-inch MacBook to be viable (nope), the 15W U-series to have Iris Plus (missed two entire generations! and is apparently only now coming back), and of course more generally for Intel to reach 10nm, which would've helped with a lot of the previous assumptions. As much as I'm wary of the speculated ARM move, I can't really blame Apple for keeping its options open. (And while AMD Ryzen is interesting on the desktop and server, it doesn't seem to scale that well to mobile.) |
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(Not sure about edge-to-edge. A notch in the menu bar?) |
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The 16-inch Pro could really only offer a speedbump, CPU-wise. The next nice upgrade, Comet Lake-H, isn't scheduled until Q2. (And no, it still won't be 10nm.) As for the Air, yup. Which is kind of interesting, because Ice Lake-Y is launching just a few months from now. My guess: Apple isn't that confident Intel can deliver it at scale, so they chickened out and went with the much safer 14nm option. |
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Veteran Member
Join Date: Jul 2005
Location: Unknown
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This is good timing for me. We have been waiting for the back-to-school promo before getting my son his graduation present. I appreciate being able to get extra storage now at a reasonable price. That said, if I had been given a choice, I think I would rather have seen the RAM prices drop. You can always add external storage, but external RAM will never be a thing.
Do you know where children get all of their energy? - They suck it right out of their parents! |
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Which way is up?
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Boyzeee
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For the customer looking for a computer in this price range, "better" is only on paper. We're talking internet, email, Word. The customer is gaining nothing.
Yeah, I know. But value is dependent on implementation, and Touch ID still leaves a bit to be desired. One touch should get you into the computer, and from then on the computer should know who is using it. You shouldn't have to "log in" every time you click an admin button. I feel the same way about Apple ID authentication. Shouldn't the damn system know you've already logged in? - AppleNova is the best Mac-users forum on the internet. We are smart, educated, capable, and helpful. We are also loaded with smart-alecks! :) - Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. (Mat 5:9) |
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Lord of the Rant.
Formerly turtle2472 Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Upstate South Carolina
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The flaw to that is the time you step away from your system for any reason and someone else gets physical access to it. One time authentication for the entire session is a horrible idea. I can see a 15 minute window though. I would set mine to be immediate, but for people in cases like you can I understand why you wouldn't want to log in that frequently.
Louis L'Amour, “To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.” Visit our archived Minecraft world! | Maybe someday I'll proof read, until then deal with it. |
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I've always found it odd that macOS defaults to leaving sudo sessions open for five minutes, but not doing the same for its authorization framework (which might as well be a GUI for sudo*). It's a weird inconsistency that has been there since the 10.0 days (and I assume Rhapsody before that?).
Maybe they didn't want to change it for sudo for fear of breaking compatibility with shell scripts that assume sudo lasts for a while? *) That is roughly how it works in Ubuntu. |
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Which way is up?
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Boyzeee
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It's a broken system that isn't very well thought out. I think Apple is thinking to post-apocolyptic, here. - AppleNova is the best Mac-users forum on the internet. We are smart, educated, capable, and helpful. We are also loaded with smart-alecks! :) - Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. (Mat 5:9) |
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Lord of the Rant.
Formerly turtle2472 Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Upstate South Carolina
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Yeah, you'd think it would be worked out with SSO and AppleID. Especially if you use/link your AppleID to your account on the Mac/Phone. Maybe that's part of the fixes that will be felt with 10.15?
Louis L'Amour, “To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.” Visit our archived Minecraft world! | Maybe someday I'll proof read, until then deal with it. |
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And surely you just leave iTunes, App Store, Books logged in? What I find far more concerning are those global, modal alerts in iOS that ask for your Apple ID but don't tell you anything about which app is asking or why. That's not great. |
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Which way is up?
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Boyzeee
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Honestly? Every day. Whenever we do data transfers! And, yes, I know this seems like a special case, but the system asks you to validate your Apple ID when the new account is created. Then it asks again when you accept the included apps, and then again to update those apps, and again after that to authenticate iTunes. And then, if Apple ID needs any additional crap, a 5th time! All in the space of 5 minutes. Even in a special use case, that is a broken system.
There need only be one Apple ID login in this case: When the setup assistant asks us to log in! And that's it. The system should just populate all the apps for a certain time period. Whether that is 15 minutes or something else I don't care. Same thing happens whenever a software update is done on a Mac. - AppleNova is the best Mac-users forum on the internet. We are smart, educated, capable, and helpful. We are also loaded with smart-alecks! :) - Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. (Mat 5:9) |
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Correct assumptions:
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That means the processor swap makes a lot more sense now. *) Assuming there aren't weird gotchas as a result of this not being Whiskey Lake. Doesn't seem like it, though. |
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Which way is up?
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Boyzeee
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Yeah, I just saw the initial performance scores and they make me happy. This price range needs some separation from the MacBook Air, and so does the "Pro" name. Even at 1.4GHz, that little sucker has some guts! Glad to see it. It won't be a hard sell from an Air.
- AppleNova is the best Mac-users forum on the internet. We are smart, educated, capable, and helpful. We are also loaded with smart-alecks! :) - Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. (Mat 5:9) |
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