By now I got used to the fact that people on Internet will try to prove themselves how much smarter they are than Apple by criticizing every single product Apple introduces only to see Apple make truckloads of money every single quarter on the same products these “smart” people second guessed and dismissed. Though negativity and gasps of people on whatever Apple introduces is quite common and a part of narrative of many bloggers in the current day, the reactions to newly introduced Macbook Pro models surprised me. While there were genuine concerns over the decisions Apple made into making the new Macbook pros, some rants were well, rants so as to say. Let us address them one by one.
16 GB RAM
Let’s address the elephant in the room. This is the feature people were disappointed the most. ‘Throw battery concerns out of the way and make a laptop that has 32GB RAM in it and do all the work arounds a 32GB RAM laptop should have. Make it an half inch thicker and throw in some fans so that at the end of the day I’ll have my 32 GB RAM Macbook’ is what many have been saying. Let’s say Apple obliged and made that variant of that laptop. Just imagine how people would have trolled that? Let’s think about niches and market sizes. If only about 10% of users are likely to have memory issues at 16 GB and that only for specific tasks like 4K video editing and they would face that issue 20% of the time, how many would have bitten the bullet and say, I want a computer with 32 GB RAM anyway? 40% maybe? What are we down to? 4 out of 100? Well a rational person wouldn’t make a laptop to that kind of low odds niche!
Partly it is intel that has to be blamed here for the reason that its Skylake line currently has no support for low powered RAM. So Apple stuck to 16 GB RAM over battery concerns. Canonlake that might be released next year might support LPDDR4 RAMs. (LP being low powered)
Let’s talk Dongles
Apple removed SD Card slot, USB A type ports, Thunderbolt and Magsafe ports for 4 multifunctional USB type C ports. If one could take a step back and think of the ports they use most of the times, we probably would never have used a port in its life time. I, for example never used the thunderbolt port and SD card slot. All I used were the power and USB ports. So I still pay for half the ports I don’t use. So the issue here is should everyone pay for the ports 10% people use? or should I get an option to customise them? The nice thing is that the multifunctional ports (All the 4 ports can take power, act as thunderbolt, USB, HDMI or firewire. So its upto you to decide where you plug in the power and where you connect your display) on the Macbook Pro give you the options to have the capabilities you need, not the capabilities Apple thinks someone might need. So its upto you to decide where you plug what. About the adaptors, spending $19 for an adapter for occasional use to complement $1499 Macbook is not that big a deal. Aren’t we spending that much anyway for the accessories when we get a new iPhone? Time for some perspective!
But there will be some people who still aren’t convinced by the argument above and say “Why couldn’t Apple include support for both the ports?” That’s the whole concept. Apple want us to transition to the future as fast as they can. In an alternative parallel world where Apple would have included both USB C and USB A ports, would you be willing to consider USB C port as the interface when you contemplate on purchasing a new hard drive knowing the fact that USB A is still there? (And is inferior?) You wouldn’t because cost and compatibility are always in your mind.
A lot of this boils down to this concept: We demand Apple innovate, but we insist they don’t change anything.
Side Note: The same thing happened with Adobe Flash in 2010. Apple could have easily included support for Adobe’s flash player in iOS and would have avoided huge controversy and backlash from users and developers. The fact that they encouraged vastly superior HTML 5 and importantly didn’t support flash bought some monumental changes in the industry. Its not the argument: “As HTML 5 is superior we all should transition our content to HTML 5 for better experience” that wins around website owners. Its the argument “Now that iOS doesn’t support flash, we will loose lucrative market if we don’t transition our content to HTML 5 and stop using Adobe Flash” that wins. See the difference?
This is the same thing Apple had done, has been trying and will continue to do.
Why Headphone Jack?
Now there were some people that poked and made fun on “courage” statement and pointed out why they didn’t remove headphone jack from Macbook Pro too? Phill Schiller had an amazing answer - “The 3.5mm jack is more than just about headphones for the laptops, which makes it different to the iPhone 7 situation. If it was just to plug in headphones, the port wouldn’t be necessary. However, the 3.5mm jack remains in the product as pros have studio monitors, amps and other pro audio gear that do not have wireless solutions."
This explains to me why decisions made by Apple might look outrageous in the short run but make perfect sense in hindsight. It happened with floppy, CD drive, Flash and will happen with Headphone Jack and all the legacy connectors it removed this time.
