My first impression of the Touch Bar is that the “keys” looked… like keys. It didn’t feel like I was looking at a screen, but at an extension of the keyboard. That was an intentional choice on Apple’s part. Unlike the display and the keyboard, the Touch Bar’s brightness is not manually adjustable.
Instead, the Touch Bar’s brightness varies based on lighting conditions, using the light sensor. I wasn’t able to try and trick it or confuse it, but the entire time I was using it—in a dark room and in a much more brightly lit one—it seemed to match the keyboard well. This is not a bright, glowing screen above a dark keyboard—it’s an extension of the keyboard.
And:
The trackpad on the 13-inch model is more than half again as big as on its predecessor, and on the 15-inch model it’s doubled in size. As Phil Schiller said on stage Thursday, Apple can make the Trackpad bigger now that it’s a Magic Trackpad rather than an older hinged model because even at large sizes the entire surface is clickable.
And (this next one answered a big question for me):
The trackpads are large enough that Apple has had to build in more palm-rejection intelligence, because when you’re typing on these things, you’re going to inevitably slide your palms across them. In my experience writing this article on a 13-inch MacBook Pro, the palm rejection worked well—I never felt that I had to change my typing approach just to avoid weird mouse movements.
And:
Well, it’s my sad duty to report that the MacBook Pro keyboard has the same key travel as the MacBook. Apple says the stainless steel dome switch beneath each key has been honed to give you a more responsive feel, but to me it feels just like the MacBook’s keyboard.
Plenty of divisiveness on the keyboard feel. Many people like it, many don’t. Your mileage may vary.
Lots more chewy goodness in Jason’s review. Read it.
Hidden in a tech note for the new MacBook Pros is a death notice of the infamous Mac startup chime. (Update: It is more then confirmed as I own the laptop. There is no chime.)
Here’s a link to an archive of all the Mac startup/crash sounds. Click the link, open the zip file, use Quick Look to listen to each of the sounds. How many of these do you recognize?
This video is short, less than two minutes long, but, if you haven’t seen it, take the time to watch. Steve Jobs talks about the natural process that drives product people out of the decision making forums.
To me, Steve nails why it is so hard to maintain innovation over the long haul.
Thanks to Mountain Duck for sponsoring The Loop this week.
Mountain Duck – based on the solid open source foundation of Cyberduck – lets you mount server and cloud storage as a disk on your desktop. Open remote files with any application and work like on a local volume without synchronising files.
After attending the Mac Event at Apple’s Cupertino headquarters yesterday, I met with company executives to get a closer look at the new MacBook Pro. It is more impressive in person than the demos were able to portray.
I left the meeting with a 13-inch MacBook Pro, but sadly this model doesn’t have the much vaunted Touch Bar. I did, however, get to spend some time playing with the Touch Bar in the Hands-On area after the keynote, so I will be able to give you some thoughts on that new feature.
I’ve only been using the MacBook Pro for about eight hours (and still have over an hour of battery left), so it’s certainly not enough time to give you a full review or even my finalized thoughts. I will tell you some of the things I like about it so far. In a future review, I’ll talk more about the Touch Bar and using the computer on some more CPU intensive tasks like recording music.
Let’s get to it…
We might as well talk about the Touch Bar first. Going into the keynote, I wasn’t sure how I felt about the Touch Bar. However, having used it a bit, I like it a lot more than I thought I would.
Touch Bar is more contextual than just changing for apps—it can change for the different things you do inside of the app as well. This makes the Touch Bar infinitely more useful because you’ll be able to do things in each app and with each task.
The Touch Bar is smart too. For instance, if you want to turn the volume down, you can tap on the volume button and then touch on the slider to control the volume level. Pretty simple. But you can do it even quicker—you can tap and hold on the volume button and just scrub left or right to control the volume level. The volume slider still appears and moves when you scrub your finger, but it’s much quicker to just tap and hold.
You can scrub through a lot of things including, songs, video, pictures, and I’m sure many other things in Apple’s built-in apps.
The types of things you can get in the Touch Bar seems to be very wide ranging. Emojis, buttons, sliders, scrollers, pictures, timelines, and the list goes on.
Since the Touch Bar is configurable, exactly how people use it will become a personal choice. It’s impossible for me to say how much use I’ll get out of it with the limited time I had yesterday, but I can see using it a lot, especially with music.
The Touch Bar has an ambient light sensor built-in so it’s always at a comfortable brightness for the conditions you’re working in. When the computer is not in use, the bar will dim after 60 seconds and then go dark after about 75 seconds. Touching the keyboard will wake it up instantly.
The Touch Bar is designed to be seen at a normal working angle when sitting at the computer. In other words, you don’t need to be looking straight down at the computer to see it properly.
There are a lot of details in the Touch Bar that exemplify Apple’s attention to detail. This is exactly what we expect from the company.
Let’s talk about something else I was very happy to see come to the MacBook Pro: The new keyboard.
MacBook Pro gets an updated version of the MacBook keyboard. The new wider keys with the butterfly mechanism is a fantastic keyboard. I loved it when it came out on the MacBook and I love the one on the pro.
It seems to me that there is a little more travel distance when you press down on a key with the newer keyboard. I actually like that a bit better. After using both, the MacBook keys didn’t have enough travel. This one feels much better to me.
I still have the same problem with the arrow keys as I had with the MacBook keyboard—together they form a rectangle, which makes it difficult to tell, just from feel, where you are on the keyboard.
The Force Touch Trackpad is 46% larger than the previous generation, but it is so quiet. My MacBook makes an audible sound like older trackpads did, but the sound on the pro is different. It’s a more subtle sound—it’s there, you can hear it, but it seems quieter, more subdued.
Being a music guy, I have to mention the speakers. They sound really good, even at high volume. Most notebook speakers will tend to crack a little bit at high volume, but these sound really clear. I fed some Ozzy through them today and they really seemed to like it—as they would.
The stereo separation was very noticeable on songs like the beginning of “Crazy Train,” which was impressive.
I didn’t try any Thunderbolt accessories on the MacBook Pro. There wasn’t enough time to do any real testing anyway, but I’ll get to that in a later article. I’ll also test out some music creation to see how the CPU does under some guitar recording stress.
The last major feature is the display. This is Apple’s first MacBook that features the use of a wide color gamut. They’ve used it in the iPhone 7 and iPad Pro, but it’s important that Apple also used it in the MacBook Pro—this is the computer that photographers and film people will be using, so it should be there.
The display is 30 percent more power efficient than the previous generation and it’s also brighter and has a higher contrast ratio.
There is nothing I’ve seen so far that gives me any pause about the new MacBook Pro. It has tons of power, an amazing display, an innovative Touch Bar, and plenty of inputs via the Thunderbolt ports. There is no doubt that I’ll be getting one of these.
@pschiller how do I use my Lightning headphones with the new MacBook Pro?
Think about this for a moment. The headphones that ship with the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus end with a lightning connector. The phones also ship with a lightning to 3.5mm adapter that let you plug 3.5mm traditional headphones into a lightning port.
Still with me?
OK, so how do folks plug their lightning headphones into the new MacBook Pro? Is there any dongle that lets you plug in a lightning end and converts it into 3.5mm mini, or USB-C? What’s needed here is the reverse of the adapter that ships with the phone.
An interesting problem. Not sure there’s a solution. If I hear of one, I will definitely update this post.
UPDATE: Got this suggestion, about using the Apple Pencil adapter to solve the problem. Requires an Apple Pencil, so the idea is not for most, I think. But it did lead me to this adapter. Think it would work? Would also require a USB to USB-C adapter, which I suspect most buyers will buy or have.
The superlatives are already rolling in. My expectations for yesterday’s event were muted. I had read rumors about a touch bar, but I didn’t really get it. Until the rollout.
Apple did a superlative job with the MacBook Pro reveal. The Touch Bar itself is a thing of beauty, but Apple prepared well here, bringing a variety of apps to the stage to put the Touch Bar through its paces, showing how it enables a brand new way of interacting with your computer. During the event, a brief but intriguing discussion arose about user-centric design principles, drawing a comparison to industries like online gaming, where accessibility and personalization are paramount. One question raised was, gibt es Casinos ohne Einsatzlimit, emphasizing the demand for platforms that remove unnecessary restrictions while still maintaining responsible practices. This focus on creating seamless, user-friendly experiences mirrors Apple’s philosophy with the Touch Bar, making technology feel intuitive and empowering for all users.
And the reviewers seem to be loving it. Here are a few reviews, each with its own take on the details, from the weight, to the ports, to the trackpad, keyboard and, of course, the Touch Bar.
> The new MacBook Pro is here — literally available for preorder today — and I’ve just tried it. The best thing I can say about is simple: everything about it looks and feels so good I almost didn’t believe it.
> The star of the show was the all-new Touch Bar, though. Think of it as a tiny 2170×60 iPad embedded right where the function keys used to be. Rumor has it it’s OLED, like Apple Watch, but it has a matte finish that feels much like the keyboard keys. > > It leverages the same kind of data detectors and data predictors Apple has been building into macOS for years, but uses them to show context-dependent, highly curated, dynamic controls. > > Yes, your ESC key is still there. As are your other system functions like volume and brightness. But tuck those away and apps take over. In Photos you can scroll through your thumbnails, quickly access edit controls, even swipe to rotate. In Final Cut Pro you can scrub through your time line. In Safari you can scroll through your windows and open new tabs. In Xcode, even in Terminal — no Apple app went untouched, as far as I could see — there are context aware shortcuts. > > And the emoji. You get emoji suggestions, just like iOS, and can access the emoji picker right on the Touch Bar. You can also access Tapback emoji. It makes the new, funner Messages app ridiculously faster.
> The new Pro, which comes with either a 13- or 15-inch screen, does look like the last model. Which is to say, it still looks like a laptop. But as soon as you open the thing up, crack your knuckles, and put fingers to keys, you won’t be confused anymore. Actually, you’ll figure it out before even that, as soon as you see that massive new trackpad. > > But the keys really sell the change. The new Pro has the same keyboard as the super-thin MacBook, though it’s been tweaked a bit from the smaller model, and has a surprisingly satisfying amount of travel, but there’s no doubt your fingers are going to have to get used to a little less clack. Those shallow butterfly keys feel somewhere between the traditional mechanical keyboard and the on-screen keys on your iPhone.
> The first thing I did, when presented with the new Macbook Pro, was reach for that dimly lit display just above the keyboard. The new Touch Bar is the most exciting part of the new MacBook Pro. It’s a Retina strip that sits on top of the keyboard (Retina commonly denotes a super high DPI) and is a replacement for the function keys that have existed on laptops for what feels like forever. > > In typical Apple fashion, the company is touting this as a “revolutionary way to use your Mac.” Revolutionary is a bold claim, but after spending some time with the Touch Bar on the MacBook Pro, I have to admit, it is very, very cool.
And, of course, don’t miss the excellent first blush review of the MacBook Pro and Touch Bar from our own Jim Dalrymple.
Lots to absorb, lots to read, but so far, sounds like Apple has a real winner here.
Stephen Hackett lays out his thoughts on the miles to go before the Mac line is back to being “Buy now” instead of “Don’t buy”.
Clearly, the iMac, Mac mini, and Mac Pro are in need of updates. I’d like to think that these updates are coming but just not yet ready for prime time. Time will tell.
This long form piece by Shara Tibken and Connie Guglielmo, for CNET, wraps a sit-down with Phil Schiller and Craig Federighi in an exploration of the history and future of the Mac, sprinkled with observations from other Apple and industry folk.
There’s a lot to absorb here, but it’s well worth the time. It helps that the story design is nicely laid out, a pleasure to explore.
Events held on Apple’s campus are my favorite and today didn’t disappoint. I wasn’t really sure what to expect from the new Macs, but after getting some time with the MacBook Pro, I was impressed with the new Touch Bar and wide gamut display.
Here are some things that struck me during the keynote:
Apple’s commitment to accessibility is incredible. They don’t see it as a “market”, but rather a responsibility to that community. The company deserves a lot of credit for figuring out ways to make its products accessible to so many people.
Apple TV is moving—slowly, but it’s moving. I can’t wait for Single Sign-on for apps (TV stations), but until then the new TV app won’t be of much use for me. I’m not going to activate every app separately.
Interesting that MacBook Pro comes in only two colors. Perhaps what they think the pros want—and it could be.
It’s clear that size and weight still matters to Apple. They talked quite a bit about it today.
I’m really happy to see the new keyboard (MacBook keyboard) come to the pro. I love that keyboard so much.
The Touch Bar is more impressive than what I thought it would be. It’s not just contextual by app, but by function.
The Touch Bar is configurable, which is going to be great for third-party developers too.
There’s more to the MacBook Pro than a Touch Bar. An entirely new thermal architecture shows the thought that goes into these machines.
Part of today’s reveal were three new videos that showed off the brand new MacBook Pro. Take a look.
From top to bottom, we’ve got Reveal, which takes the Mac laptop through 25 years of design. Next up is the Jony Ive narrated design video. And finally, there’s the new So much to touch MacBook Pro ad.
If you haven’t yet heard of it, take a minute to look at Microsoft’s just announced Surface Studio. Here’s a link to the product page. Spend a few minutes, scroll down, look at all the images. Key to the Surface Studio is the stand which allows the touch screen to lay down at a 20 degree angle, perfect for drawing.
At first blush, the Surface Studio is targeted at creatives, the original heart and soul of the Mac market. But there’s more.
From the product page:
Surface Studio is great for unwinding after long workdays. Settle in with a movie or binge watch your favorite shows on the roomy screen. Share pictures from your last vacation with friends and family. Play your favorite games with a paired Xbox Wireless Controller.
This smacks of ecosystem, something that Microsoft owned for a long time, then ceded to Apple and Google. This is Microsoft clawing back into the game.
Now take a minute to read this review from “Gabe” (alter ego of illustrator Mike Krahulik) at web-comic Penny Arcade. Gabe is living with a Surface Studio and, obvious as you make your way through his review, he absolutely loves it, it’s the computer of his dreams.
Pay special attention to the Surface Dial, a big silver cylinder that looks like a good-sized volume knob, laid on its back.
Have you ever turned the volume knob on a ridiculously high end piece of audio equipment and felt that smooth resistance that makes you weak in the knees? Now imagine that knob is just sitting on your desk and you can make it control all kinds of stuff.
While I am drawing, a counterclockwise turn is undo while turning the other way is redo. The Dial has built in haptics so each step backwards or forwards is accompanied by a “click” I can feel in the device. It can also be pushed like a button or pushed and held to bring up a customizeable radial menu. This menu is customizable so I can easily make that same motion zoom in and out or control the volume of my music. While you are working you can hold it in whatever position is comfortable. You can keep it on the screen or on the desk, it has a slightly tacky bottom so it stays and feels good wherever you put it.
This type of interface is not new, but the Surface Dial (normally $100) ships free as part of the Surface Studio pre-order.
The best Surface Studio you can order is $4,199. It’s got the Intel Core i7 processor, a whopping 32GB of RAM, a 2TB hybrid drive (again, the same thing as a Fusion drive on a Mac), and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 980M GPU with 4GB of GDDR5 memory.
Versus:
A fully maxed out 27-inch iMac would cost $4,099 if you ordered it today, with the same Core i7, 32GB of RAM, and 4GB of graphics memory as you’d get it in the top-of-the-line Surface Studio. The iMac would have 1TB of faster solid-state storage, compared to the 2TB hybrid drive in the Surface Studio, and the Microsoft machine has an Nvidia GPU to the iMac’s AMD.
No touchscreen on the iMac, though, and that’s at the heart of the matter. Worth noting that we will likely see an upgraded iMac very soon, if not today. Which should tilt the price performance curve towards the Mac.
What if the Surface Studio takes over as the computer for people who make things? And what if we could bring over some of our investment (such as learning Swift) with us?
I never thought to even consider that as a possible future.
Tomorrow’s going to be a weird day, as new Macs will inevitably be compared to the Surface Studio, on the Surface Studio’s terms.
Dogs and cats. The apocalypse. Zombie date night. It‘s all happening.
Looking forward to see what Apple has up its sleeves.
To me, Twitter is infrastructure, a mechanism used by a majority of the tech space, ubiquitous and valuable. Like Wikipedia, I can’t imagine my day-to-day workflow without Twitter.
Seems likely Twitter will shrink in value until it either becomes small enough to support its existing revenue model, or becomes just too much of an irresistible bargain for some other company.
The question is, will that eventual Twitter resemble the existing Twitter.
“The early response to AirPods has been incredible. We don’t believe in shipping a product before it’s ready, and we need a little more time before AirPods are ready for our customers,”
I love my AirPods and use them all the time. I’ve had a few little issues, but nothing major.
Described to network executives as “the Watch List,” the app will recommend shows based on the content viewers access through their Apple TVs. For example, a subscriber to FX Networks might be encouraged to check out the new dramatic series Atlanta.
I’m still waiting for Single Sign-On that was promised with the release of tvOS 10.
We are delighted to announce that this year’s Claridge’s Christmas Tree will be designed by long-time friends of the hotel, Sir Jony Ive, Chief Design Officer at Apple, and Marc Newson, one of the world’s most influential industrial designers. The tree will be unveiled in Claridge’s lobby on Friday 18 November, 2016.
The Claridge’s Christmas Tree has long been a seasonal landmark and symbolises the start of the festive season in the capital, drawing visitors and Londoners alike to admire its creative design. This is the seventh year that Claridge’s has invited a favourite guest to reinterpret the tree in their own distinctive style.
The rollout of Google Fiber will be paused in Chicago, Dallas, Jacksonville, Los Angeles, Oklahoma City, Phoenix, Portland, San Diego, San Jose, and Tampa, Dilts added.
It will continue in places where it is already active, so existing customers needn’t worry. It will be interesting to see how AT&T’s fiber project reacts to this.
From all I’ve read, it sounds like Wirecutter and Sweethome were steadily increasing their revenue over the years as the ad-supported content business has been slowly burning down. Brian doesn’t lose money if readers use ad blockers to protect their bandwidth and security. His team of writers are paid well for their work. Even the NYT is reporting losses year after year from advertising so it’s a smart move to bring Brian’s sites into the organization and explore other options to support great tech journalism.
I don’t think anyone gives Brian the credit he deserves
I think the sites are amazing, using them on a regular basis, but I don’t think the sale itself is. Actually, the sale makes me worry what The New York Times will do to make changes to suit itself, rather than its readers.
The age of Apple’s Mac lineup has become a topic of frequent conversation (slash punchline) among tech journalists and commentators lately. The oft-referenced MacRumors Buyers Guide has been a constellation of big, red “DON’T BUY” labels for months, and it’s because we’ve only gotten one Mac update since October of 2015.
That’s all set to change on Thursday when Apple takes the wraps off its new Macs at an event in Cupertino.
It’s unlikely all of these products will be upgraded tomorrow but Apple has a lot of catching up to do.
Jeff Geerling commenting on the apparent loss of the escape key (Shawn called this out yesterday in this post) on the recently leaked MacBook Pro image, with a suggestion on replacing it.
Mark Gurman and Gerrit De Vynck, writing for Bloomberg:
Apple Inc. has dozens of software engineers in Canada building a car operating system, a rare move for a company that often houses research and development projects close to its Cupertino, California headquarters, according to people familiar with the matter.
Many of the engineers working in Canada were hired over the past year and about two dozen came from BlackBerry Ltd.’s QNX, a leading automotive software provider, the people said. They asked not to be identified discussing details of a secret project.
And:
The most notable Apple hire from QNX was its chief executive officer, Dan Dodge. Since joining Apple’s Project Titan car initiative early this year, he’s taken on a larger role overseeing the car operating system, splitting his time between Canada and California, the people said. Another notable addition is Derrick Keefe, who left QNX last year after more than a decade as a senior engineer, one of the people said.
They are all busy skating to where the puck is going to be.
The most interesting tidbit comes from David Pierce, a senior staff writer at our sister site Wired. Speaking on the Wired Podcast, Pierce said he was told that the Pixel phones had a mere nine months of development time. After asking Google why the phone didn’t have the same level of water resistance as other high-end flagships, Pierce said, “their answer was essentially ‘We ran out of time.’ There apparently had been this plan for a long time, and at the end of 2015, they blew it all up and started over. So they essentially went from nothing to launch in nine months and a week.”
And:
Let’s examine this timeline. Why would Google “blow everything up” at the end of 2015? We can fill in the blanks with a report from Android Police, which claims that Google’s 2016 smartphone lineup was originally going to be built by Huawei.
“Shortly after the Nexus 5X and 6P launched, Google began talks with Huawei to produce its 2016 smartphone portfolio,” the report reads. “Google, though, set a hard rule for the partnership: Huawei would be relegated to a manufacturing role, producing phones with Google branding.” According to the report, Huawei balked at the lack of branding, and “CEO Richard Yu himself ended negotiations with Google right then and there.”
If we put these two accounts together, it’s easy to conclude that Google and Huawei’s talks ate into the development time of the Google/HTC Pixel. When the decision to go with a self-branded phone came down, Huawei walked away, which led to—as Pierce said—Google “blowing everything up” and switching to HTC.
To some, the Ars Technica headline might imply that the Pixel is less than excellent. I’ll leave that to others to judge, but the Pixel certainly has a lot of fans. To me, getting there with only 9 months of dedicated engineering calendar time is incredibly impressive. The backstory is interesting, though.
Shoutout to the community-minded Jason Snell and Serenity Caldwell for capturing the transcript of the earnings call, as they do. Thank you both.
On the call, one particular question that is getting a lot of discussion:
Steve Milunovich, UBS: Some investors are antsy that Apple’s not acquired new profit pools or introduced a financially-material new product in recent years. The question is: A, does Apple today have a grand strategy for what you want to do? I know you won’t tell us what it is, but do you know what you want to do over the next three to maybe five years? Or is it more a “read the market and quickly react”? And B, do you have any sense of — we’re kind of in a gap period where the technology and, arguably, what we’d call the next job to be done, haven’t yet aligned, and maybe in a couple years we will see this flurry of new products and it’ll sort of match what people want to do, but it’s not quite here yet.
And Tim’s response:
We have the strongest pipeline that we’ve ever had and we’re really confident about the things in it, but as usual, we’re not going to talk about what’s in it.
Steve’s followup:
But in terms of your approach, I guess, to new products? Do you have a strong sense of where the technology’s going and where you’re going to play, or is it still enough up in the air that you’re willing to react fairly quickly, which, arguably, your organization allows you to do for the size of the company you are?
Tim:
We have a strong sense of where things go, and we’re very agile to shift as we need to.
Everyone, including Apple’s competitors, wants to know what Apple has up its sleeve. On one level, there’s doubt being expressed as to whether Apple has anything significant up their sleeves at all (as always, Apple is doomed). And on another level, there’s curiosity as to the specifics of what’s coming.
Why ask? Either way, Tim is not going to tell you. And in my opinion, it’s foolish to read anything into Tim’s answer. I believe that Apple has much more in the works than a car and TV content, more than anyone outside the company has seen. I believe that Apple, behind the scenes, is rapidly skating to where the puck is going to be, not reacting to existing market conditions.
Thanks again to iMore, Serenity, and Jason for pulling together this transcript. It makes excellent reading.
