I have owned macbooks only since 2017 and found the older (2011 era) aesthetic design to be bulky and not too appealing. I own a 2020 model, which looks sharp and professional. I don't like them going back to this rounded edges on the bottom. I love everything else, except this simple gripe over aesthetics.

> I have owned macbooks only since 2017 and found the older (2011 era) aesthetic design to be bulky and not too appealing. I own a 2020 model, which looks sharp and professional.

There used to be a time when what people considered “professional hardware” was versatility and durability over pure aesthetics. I’m not saying we can’t have both form and function with professional grade hardware but with the later iterations of the MBP Apple have put form ahead of function and then trained an entire generation of developers to look at hardware superficially. I honestly weep for the industry if this is the path we are destined to continue down.

I never get people who moan about people caring about aesthetics.

Computers are our workplace, we spend most of our lives in them.

Would you be just as productive if we put your desk in a reeking pig sty?

You’re conflating form and function with your example (“reeking” is not an adjective for form, and a pig sty is not even a functional office space to begin with).

I have no issue with people wanting their work environment to be pretty but aesthetics shouldn’t hamper the person’s ability to get their work done. (at least not unless you work in an industry where aesthetics is your job).

It’s about wanting your environment to be pleasant.

I see this is the time any company can do both ground breaking performance and a solid design let alone Apple. I don't want them to go back to the intel with discrete gpus and remove extra ports. I want a sharper design is all. It's not much to ask both, Apple after all cares a lot about design, I don't know how they came up with such a design while their all their iPads lineup (bar basic iPad) and iPhone lineup has a boxy design but this MBP is rounded.

“Rounded” is a common design element throughout the history of Apple — including iPhones and iPads. It also has zero baring on the function of the device so who cares if it’s a little more boxy or rounded? It’s supposed to be a “Pro” device not some piece of art.

I suppose I'm the only one who cares and at the same time I never claimed it affects the functioning of the device. Like I mentioned it in another comment, it is a very minor and a picky thing, but Apple takes such a great pride in the uniformity and design. With all of their current generation iPhones and iPads having a boxy design, it is strange they resorted to such a design choice that too in their top of the line macbook pros

I think there's a lot I agree with there.

But I will say, the aluminium body is genius in terms of form and function. That's not an aesthetic compromise, it's the right thing.

I think many owners of the old machines like them for how they worked.

Function over form.

I miss the 2012 model every time I use the 2018 model I own now. One was peak Apple design everything worked, was robust, and just genuinely pleasant to use. The other rock bottom form over function with a disastrous keyboard that I never got used to with it's crap layout, lack of essential keys, shitty cheap feel, etc. And that was before it started having the well publicized issues.

I like that they are going back to basics with the new models. Not crazy about the notch but otherwise it is all good. Decent screen, memory and ssd are super expensive but at least there's plenty of it now.

I'll wait a few months to see if their quality levels are back where they should be. Because I'm beyond taking their word for it after my last experience. I'm particularly curious to see if it delivers on the performance hype and thermal behavior when actually using it for doing work. If that's even close to what they are promising, it's going to be a bad year for Intel.

Does anyone know if those neural processors do anything useful or is that only for people that use specialist stuff like video editing tools? I run docker, intellij, vs code, etc.

>Function over form.

All the time. The Macbook pro is meant to be for pros, pros care about other things like having physical function keys over it having a "light blue color that matches my shirt :)".

I haven't bought a Macbook since 2016 bc of all the trash they've been doing. A laptop without magsafe would last ~2 weeks in my household, so just that thing makes it for me.

Also, best battery, best screen, best trackpad, ports. Assuming nothing weird comes out later (screen or thermal issues) this will be the best laptop on the market for the next 10 years.

Great decision to have fired Jony Ive back then.

Oh I totally get that, I like functionality and the 2017-2020 MBP barely qualified as Pro laptops. I have a huge windows desktop for my actual pro work, MBP was just a mobile device and for some freelance work. A sharp design would be nicer is all I'm saying

Well, perceptions change. In 2012, the aesthetic and design was state of the art. Felt I looked good every time I pull it out.

But I still use a 2012 MBP. Doesn't look sharp anymore, and its always been pretty heavy, but they keys work sooooo well, the touchpad is a miracle of engineering, 9 years of daily use and everything still works beautifully. And frankly, I mostly don't notice any lag still (though I might if I was doing video editing). And the port selection meant that I could hook up to just about anything with no hassle ... including ethernet. Wifi is still inferior to an ethernet port.

I understand the perceptions in fashion and design will keep changing. But it is only recently Apple adopted boxy design in all their iPads and iPhones except the basic iPad and iPhone SE II. Why not follow that, the trend is set across the board. This top of the line macbooks have a design similar to the basic $329 iPad, I can't wrap my head around such a decision.

I know it's a very minor and a picky thing, but Apple takes such a great pride in the uniformity and design, it's strange they resort to this.

I've owned Macbooks since 2003. Typing this on a 2020 Macbook Pro 13". It's just been a long evolution of getting thinner. IMO, and as others have stated, going all-in on thinness drove a series of design mistakes that seem to be reversed here. Rounding out the thinner leading edge gives a bit more space, and would guess makes it feel more solid. I don't like the thinner front end being a little suspended above the surface of the table, it makes me worry about it bending.

The 2003 12-inch Macbook with the aluminum keys was like a textbook made out of solid metal. That keyboard felt great.

This looks like a great machine to me and I am a little sad I bought in Feb!

The 2015 15" Macbook Pro was 1.8 cm thick. The 2019 16" Macbook Pro was 1.6 cm thick. The mew 2021 16" Macbook Pro is 1.68 cm thick. So the 16" got slightly thicker than the old one but not as thick as the old 15".

The 2020 13" Macbook Pro was 1.5 cm thick. The new 2021 14" Macbook pro is 1.55 cm thick. So that is only 0.5 mm difference.

Yeah, the design suck. But these are machine that are going to be used 8-10 hours a day. Better be functional than trendy.

I know I'm in the minority regarding the keyboard, but on my 2019 model it's been flawless and I really have come to like it quite a bit, more than the one on my 2014 even (except for the vertical arrow keys that is. Seems like nobody at Apple actually tested their usability)

Is it the late-2019 16" MBP?

If so, that's not the keyboard everyone hates. They were already backtracking the butterfly switches by that point

No, it's the 13" with butterfly switches. The only thing I worried about was dependability but they added the extra rubber membranes that year (I think) and anyway, the keyboard has caused me zero issues, and made every other keyboard feel clunky to me, including my previous favorite keyboard on my 2013 15" MBP.

I recently got a new M1/MBP and really love the utility of a customized TouchBar (using BetterTouchTool). I'm sad it'll be gone! It's actually great - but certain functions are missed (like a dedicated volume buttons).

I was laughing when every single one of these changes was presented as "revolutionary" in the keynote. No, you just had to revert everything because your previous revolution was universally hated by users.

Ignoring that none of the changes was presented as "revolutionary" (the touchbar wasn't mentioned, magsafe was referred to as "Brought back", and the ports were simply noted for convenience), for some small but very loud subset of HN users, an Apple event is all a giant lie if it apparently isn't hosted by some sneering Apple detractor.

It's an Apple product launch. Like every product launch ever in the history of ever, they point out the features of the thing they launch.

They said "function keys, replacing the touchbar." So they did mention it.

But yes, I don't care how they market it. They'd be dumb to pause and say "oh yeah we were stupid, here's your old toys back."

> They'd be dumb to pause and say "oh yeah we were stupid, here's your old toys back."

Maybe I'm weird, but my respect for a company that did that would go way up, not down.

Obviously they wouldn't say "we were stupid", but I'd absolutely appreciate an admission along the lines of, "during our design journey over the past X years, we've realized our customers prefer having a full function key row on their keyboard / more ports / MagSafe / etc., so we've listened and are bringing them back!" To me, that signals a group of folks who know they are fallible, listen to customers, and do their best to meet customer needs.

But of course admitting those sorts of things wouldn't be consistent with Apple's brand. Apple is all about "we know better than you know what you want and can do no wrong". Which is fine, and seems to have created a lot of success for them, but it's always turned me off.

> Maybe I'm weird, but my respect for a company that did that would go way up, not down.

I think technically-minded people would take that well, but the business/management types don't like doing stuff like this, likely because it has a chance of making the stock fall (or even just not rise as much as they wanted it to).

I wonder how much of the mechanical keyboard community increased sheerly because of the fact that many MacBook owners hated their laptop keeps.

> "oh yeah we were stupid, here's your old toys back."

"We heard your feedback and we listened."

> I was laughing when every single one of these changes was presented as "revolutionary" in the keynote.

Exactly none of these changes were presented as "revolutionary", that's just in your head.

I had the feeling they owned it. Like, the woman said something about "no need for adapters" and you could have maybe seen a little smirk on her face while saying that - but I don't know...

they listened to customers and reverted a lot of bad decisions from the past. What else do you want? That they admit they made bad decisions in what is essentially a sales event/pitch? This is more than anyone could have hoped for imo.

The more hilarious thing was the hate for it.

I would much rather have more usb-c ports that can do anything and add dongles, than have ports that are functionally limited.

>> because your previous revolution was universally hated by users.

Nah. It was hated by a small but vocal minority of users, of which HN has a lot of.

You're provably wrong : if it was a minority, they wouldn't have reversed. See headphone jack on iPhone.

"Provably wrong"? On the contrary, if it wasn't a small minority, Apple wouldn't have continued to break sales records with each iteration they release.

I posit that "hate" is too strong a word. I would describe the changes as merely unpopular.

Power users forget that function keys and even command shortcuts are pretty much useless for normal users.

>About 90 per cent of computer users don't use CTRL-F to search for a word - as they don't know such a keyboard shortcut exists, a Google survey found.

The results stunned Google's Uber Tech Lead for Search Quality and User Happiness, Dan Russell.

I think we just all assume that we all know it, but no one actually does."

https://www.smh.com.au/technology/only-one-in-10-know-what-c...

To be fair, the Macbook Pro is aimed squarely at power users. The majority of normal users are better off with the Air.

>Nah. It was hated by a small but vocal minority of users, of which HN has a lot of.

I have not met a pro user that wasn't annoyed by not being able to plug in HDMI at some point without a dongle...

It was even worse. Those macbook owners would cause the others in the meeting to be annoyed when they couldn’t plug in and had to send their slides to someone else with a hdmi port and keep repeating the words “next slide”. It was viral annoyance.

My employer issues a dongle with a type A, type C, and HDMI port on it with every MacBook. That only helps if you actually have the dongle with you. One popular option was to just keep the dongle attached at all times. Personally, I found an adhesive pouch and attached that to the back of the monitor, and carried the dongle around that way.

I wonder when I'll be able to get one of these new Macs at work ...

At my office they just gave up and replaced the HDMI connectors with USB-C connectors in every meeting room. Now it's the people with the older windows laptops who need a dongle.

Nice to meet you. I could not care less. If I need to plug something with a cable, it may have a dongle as well.

I personally think if it was just a vocal minority, Apple would not have relented. They play the long game, so they probably saw a decrease in their user base somewhere, or at least a trend there.

>small

Do you have a source for that? Because if that was the case, it would seem silly for them to undo.

I think he meant "hate" is too strong of a word. My impression is it just didn't serve much of a purpose for most people. I almost never use the function keys for anything but volume control anyway, and probably wouldn't have used the touch bar for anything but that either. It was just a waste. I probably wouldn't have hated it if I got one, maybe even found some nice uses for it, but I still think it was the right choice to get rid of it.

Not really, the performance will make your 2011 mbp feel an extra 10x older now.

And then they added a notch hahaha