[0x0]

A maxxed out MBP costs €5000, which is $5447.95. And you can't connect your iphone, your iphone headset, hdmi, magsafe, sd-card or usb. And you don't get tactile escape keys or function keys. Or Nvidia. Or even an OpenGL implementation from this decade! This show is over :(

[masklinn]

> A maxxed out MBP costs €5000

That's quite dishonest considering a fair bit of that is the 1700€ 2TB SSD (which is not an unfair price, that's about what Samsung announced for the 960 Pro)

> which is $5447.95.

Also dishonest, most people expect USD prices to be without tax, you're including the ~20% european VATs in that by converting back from tax-included euro prices.

[dogma1138]

The 960 pro 2TB costs between 1200 and 1300 EUR (depending on the country and store, or ~1100 GBP in the UK) that's 400-500 EUR difference and it's unlikely that you'll get an NVME drive faster than the 960 Pro, in fact it would not surprise me if it's the 960 pro in it, and if it's not in all honesty it's likely to be inferior.

1700 EUR for an upgrade is ridiculous even if the 960 Pro would cost 1700 EUR which it doesn't even remotely do the upgrade should've been it's price minus the price of the 512GB SSD. Effectively Apple is charging you anywhere between 2100 and 2500 EUR (2100 if you use the 960 pro 512 price, 2500 if you use the "apple price") for that 2TB SSD.

This is by no shape or form acceptable, taxes or anything else be damned.

[0x0]

Fine, maxxed out except 1TB instead of 2TB SSD and the total is €4.039. The bump up/down from 2TB to 1TB is "only" €960.

Also sales tax isn't dishonest. I have to pay it to buy the machine!!

This is a ton more money than what maxxed out macbook pros were around 2013 in €, and to be honest the total package feels like a downgrade.

[masklinn]

> Also sales tax isn't dishonest.

I didn't say sales tax was dishonest, I said converting back a tax included price into USD was, and explained why. Aside from US sales tax being much lower than european ones (as low as 0%) US prices are pretty much always displayed without taxes, so you're making the machine look 20% more expensive than it actually is as far as american viewers understand it. A fair quote would have been to provide the regular USD price ($4300 maxxed out, or $3500 for 1TB).

[0x0]

Well if US sales taxes are as low as 0% then I think it IS a fair comparison.

Feature-wise, it feels like the 2013 device is worth the 2016 price and the 2016 device is worth the 2013 price.

[masklinn]

> Well if US sales taxes are as low as 0% then I think it IS a fair comparison.

That's completely nonsensical, Apple doesn't decide where you live and they don't set how much VAT to apply, they've got a "manufacturer price" and add VAT on top.

[cynix]

> That's completely nonsensical, Apple doesn't decide where you live and they don't set how much VAT to apply

The point is that it is possible to buy it somewhere in the US without tax, whereas no such method exists in the EU.

[0x0]

My original point was that the € price for a maxed out machine appears much higher than previous MacBook Pro launches, regardless of sales tax. The USD conversion was just a side note.

[Zikes]

> Also sales tax isn't dishonest. I have to pay it to buy the machine!!

What they mean to say is that VAT is included in the price tag in Europe, so when people see the € number they'll say "and that's exactly what it will cost" whereas in the US prices are before tax, so we will mentally inflate the number by ~10% when we see it.

[monatron]

It is if you're making a critique of the manufacturer. Apple has no control over where you choose to buy the machine.

[SysArchitect]

US sales taxes vary depending on state. There is no direct comparison.

[jobu]

> *And you can't connect your iphone, your iphone headset, ...

This my biggest issue with the MBP. WTF are they thinking here?! Why didn't the iPhone7 port get switched to USB-C from lightning if they knew the MBP was going to USB-C/TB3? The whole point of Apple products is that they work better the more of them you have.

[sakopov]

Not an Apple fan by any means but I've just gotten tired of the poor build quality of Windows laptops and terrible battery life year after year. So I've been patiently waiting to upgrade my 3-years-old XPS to a MBP. Heard that the price range will likely be fairly close to the old generation of MBP. Well, what i saw today is just too cost-prohibitive for very little reason. I'm now hoping that Surface Book or the new XPS are worth the money.

[tmikaeld]

I'm in the same boat. I've been lifting any virtual rock for any decent affordable development laptop that isn't two generations old with a bad CPU (Read Celeron or Atom). But there aren't any, there's only the 600€ range and up.

Then comes Apple, which I've been waiting for - I have the Macbook Air and Macbook Pro. But for this price and with no 32GB RAM upgrade possibilities and 8GB RAM for 220€?

No... Just NO. This is the last straw, I'm going to try Linux for the iftiest time.

[slgeorge]

> I'm going to try Linux for the iftiest time.

When you do that please, please buy something where it's preloaded onto the system (e.g. Dell XPS) so that you get the same sort of hardware/software experience that you get from the integrated apple. It will cut out so much fiddling and possibilities of a terrible experience!

[tmikaeld]

Thanks for the advice, that's actually the exact modell i plan on getting. But I was unsure if it was a modern CPU, seemed dated? Or are the newer XPS also called XPS?

The worst thing was that the linux version cost 2x more than the normal one here in Sweden...

[sakopov]

I ended up purchasing Dell XPS 15 today. In terms of battery life, build quality and power there isn't much else besides it that compares to Macbook Pro (at least not until Surface Book 2 comes out but then it'll be horribly expensive too). I think what you're talking about is the Dell XPS developer edition. I'm not even sure if Dell sells them anymore. You might just get the Windows 10 Home Edition and throw a Linux distro on it. At least that's my plan.

[tmikaeld]

Would you please let me know if Linux works just as well on the Windows version as the Developer version.

Somehow i imagined they where different, but they probably aren't.

[pavlov]

Apple sells a USB-C to Lightning cable, so you don't need a dongle to connect an iPhone.

The rest of your points stand though.

[0x0]

For €5000 you can't connect your state-of-the-art iPhone to your state-of-the-art Mac out of the box. You have to pay extra, and you have to carry around an awkward dongle adapter and hope you don't forget it! Fucking lol.

[mcphage]

> you have to carry around an awkward dongle adapter

Huh? It's not a dongle, it's just a cable. You do need a cable to connect your phone to your laptop.

[seba_dos1]

But that's not a cable that everyone has everywhere.

So many times around me poor iPhone owners couldn't charge their phones at parties because nobody had their kind of cable around, while for microUSB you've got plenty of helpful charger and powerbank owners.

To be honest, lately owners of phones with USB-C were having the same problem, but I guess it's gonna change faster than with Lightning cables.

[spott]

It isn't a dongle adapter, it is a usb cable with usb-c on one side and lightning on the other.

[maxerickson]

A cable of rather limited uses is the moral equivalent of a dongle.

[SysArchitect]

Except that it increases utility.

I can now bring a single charger that can charge my MacBook Pro and my iPhone. I just need a USB-C to USB-C cable and a USB-C to Lightning cable.

Charge my laptop or charge my iPhone or charge both (use the laptop as a passthrough).

It will reduce the amount of stuff I carry, I tend to carry just an iPhone charger while traveling in case I want to bring it with me where I don't bring my laptop, extra space in luggage and weight.

[maxerickson]

Increases utility over what? If the ports all match, you can choose to carry 1 or 2 cables depending on whether you want to make 1 or 2 connections. Since the ports don't match, you need a cable for each type of connection you might want to make.

[0x0]

Can you plug this particular cable into a wall adapter iOS charger? If not, then you still need two different cables depending on whether you want to charge from the wall or the mac.

[SysArchitect]

You can't plug it into the wall adapter iOS charger, but you can plug it into a USB-C charger that comes with the MBP.

[devopsproject]

It is just another cable\dongle\adapter\hub we must buy again and again. These products should "just work" together.

[Bud]

Ok, great. Then let's all go back to 2001 and use 10Mbps first-generation USB for everything. Oops! It won't supply enough power, it's now FOUR THOUSAND times slower than modern interfaces, it can't drive monitors, etc.

Maybe your idea isn't so great.

[devopsproject]

Have fun playing with your dongles