Like many loyal Apple customers, I’m greatly disappointed by the 2016 MacBook Pro upgrades, especially for the 15″. Here are the most important reasons not to upgrade at this time:
- Expensive, the base cost is $2,399, an increase of $400 from before.
- No low end version of the 15″ MacBook Pro. The lower cost 15″ at $1,999 is more than a year old and only moderately faster than my 2013 laptop.
- iPhones can’t connect to the MacBook Pro without yet another dongle
- Performance improvement for common tasks is incremental, not worth the price increase
- The critically important magnetic, break-free MagSafe adaptor is gone
- The built-in SD card slot is gone so you’ll need a peripheral to upload camera photos
- The headphone jack won’t work with your new lightning-based iPhone 7 headphones
- A lot of developers are frustrated that the memory limit remains at 16 GB due to battery life issues
- No USB A ports: external hard drives, thumb drives et al. now require a dongle
- Reduced key press like on the MacBook
- No power extension cable like they’ve always had
- Space gray is for Windows laptops
The positives just don’t outweigh all the above negatives. Michael Tsai has the best rundown of developer frustration I’ve read (via Daring Fireball).
Why does everyone characterize a different cable as a “dongle”? Yes you need a USB-C to lightning cable to connect an iPhone but not a dongle. It just sounds weird.
when companies make bad choices for customers I like to dingle their brand using words like dongle. Apple does make a lot more dongle’s than computers now. Apple’s got the best dongles. It’s hard to pay more for dongles if you don’t overpay for them at Apple. Apple, the world’s premier dongle maker.