Of course this isn’t a solution for people who use their MacBooks in closed position with bluetooth accessories this won’t work, so we will has to wait for an apple fix or manually turn bluetooth off and on at night.
Chance Miller at 9to5Mac is has the report of a rumor that Apple is getting rid of the touch bar. Honestly I think this is great news. It was a stupid idea. I want keys that are always in the same spot.
Now we will see if Apple every does a touch screen with a laptop. I know Apple says it isn’t good, but being able to use a pencil on it would be amazing.
Honestly I would love an iPad that is actually a Mac, like an old school Modbook. That would be my first laptop in a long time, and it would be easy since they use the same processor now, but I doubt it is coming anytime soon, but I would love to be proved wrong.
And the apple pencil is so damn good , using on a mac would be amazing, and I know I can use sidecar, but it isn’t perfect yet.
Apple has released it’s first 3 Macs with the M1 chip it is designing itself making for the 2nd processor transition in the history of the mac and the first ARM based Macs, now on the same platform as the ipad and iPhone.
Apple’s stats make it look really fast and the first benchmarks make it a very impressive machine and 3 of the fastest macs apple has every released.
Of course for now it is useless to me as Adobe software does not yet run or at least run well under Rosetta. Still the performance of Final Cut Pro sounds impressive and I love that the latest beta of DaVinci Resolve 17.1 runs on M1 Macs already. And Adobe has a beta of Photoshop out as well.
What scares me is the single thunderbolt channel and only 2 ports and the fact that it can’t run an external graphic card even with it’s thunderbolt port.
And what is even scarier for me is that the M1 shares it’s memory between the graphics card and the onboard memory. So you had better get the 16GB because you are sharing them with the video processing. If this continues you will need to really get more RAM on high end machines (which hopefully won’t top out at 16GB as the current machines do.
Still the processors do have impressive performance already so the higher end version will likely be very impressive.
And it is amazing that basically the MacBook Air is only different in a single GPU core being disabled, and the MacBook Pro and Mini having fans to cool the system down.
I look forward to what the truly pro Apple M1 Machines will look like, but I don’t look forward to the software update cost that will go along with it, and the software that will break and end up going by the wayside.
Quentin Carnicelli recently posed a great article on the sad state of upgrades across the whole line of the Macintosh Computers. Basically it comes down to the fact that other than the iMac Pro which came out in December (half a year ago) there isn’t a single mac that has been updated in a year.
This is really a sad state. And the Mac Mini has been almost 4 years without an update or a price drop for old as hell hardware. Macs used to at least get processor upgrades once in a while with the form staying the same, but it seems we are not even getting that anymore.
Apple really has become a phone company that occasionally releases some new computer hardware.
And this makes me worry even more for the supposed new MacPro which we will learn about in 2019! Honestly no computer should take 3 years to design and ship. Especially when what Pros really want is the old cheese-grater with updated hardware. All the hints at a modular design really scares me. I don’t want modular, I want upgradeable with off the shelf PC components. Not some proprietary monstrosity that is upgradeable with over-expensive modules that only follow Apple’s upgrade schedule, which is slow at best. And most of us want some choice, mostly the choice to use NVIDIA graphics cards and not have to run it externally via thunderbolt which is not and never will be as fast as a 16x PCI bus.
The terrifying part, is that it has only 2 ports on it. A headphone jack and a USB Type C port. The USB 3 Port is more advanced than USB 3 with a reversible connector, that can drive a monitor and also power a computer.
I can’t even articulate what an awful idea this is. One connector means you need a hub to attach anything else to the laptop. My mom for example has her fitbit sync in the usb port, which would have to be left in the hub. And even worse is the removal of Thunderbolt.
Apple is really pushing Thunderbolt as it’s next generation connectivity, even giving up the much faster (and far superior) PCI Slots in it’s MacPro in favor of of Thunderbolt. And having Thunderbolt in the Air made it expandable to an amazing degree that would never have been possible with a machine like this, and you could use the same devices across the mac lineup. Even with it being USB 3.1, which can do 10 Gbps, or the same as Thunderbolt 1 (not 2 though, which can 20 Gbps), they should have the same ports across the whole range, so accessories are interchangeable. Unless Apple is getting rid of Thunderbolt all together in favor of USB 3.1, which to me should mean they need to go back to PCI Card expansion in later MacPro’s (and who the hell wanted the trashcan MacPro anyway), which I highly doubt, they should not do this.
I know Apple does not read this blog, nor care what I have to say, but PLEASE APPLE DON’T DO THIS!!!!
Dave Pogue in the New York Times has a great article on all the new goodies Apple released yesterday, but for me the most interesting part is what he has to say on the MacPro’s.
Many Apple observers also wonder if Apple thinks that desktop computers are dead, since not a word was said about the iMac and Mac Pro. An executive did assure me, however, that new models and new designs are under way, probably for release in 2013.
Still though, that could really mean the iMac are getting an update soon, and the MacPros will just continue with these crappy updates, but one can still hope that Apple has reversed course and is finally working on a new and more powerful MacPro with the latest technology and powerful NVIDIA support (how about a QUADRO 5000 and a GeForce GTX 690 or at least 680). Still the tech in the MacPro is so far behind at this point, they need to work fast or more and more people will move to Windows in the Interim!
Apple has the pages up on the new MacBook pros.
The MacBook Pro with Retina Display, and the new 13 and 15″ MacBook Pros with the old encloses and Optical Drives.
I am still not sure about SSD as it is just too small. Especially if I am moving to a laptop as my main machine for e-mail and documents and a tower for editing. The worst part is my music and video library is almost a terrabyte itself, so there is no way that could make it on a laptop!
Well, not like I can afford anything new right now, but it does look like Windows will be in my future!