[ashtonkem]

Assuming you’re willing to buy a MBP personally, skipping it over the notch seems inexplicable to me. In every other way this seems like the best MBP delivered in a literal decade, assuming they didn’t mess up the keyboard. Much faster processor, faster display, better keyboard, better peripherals, and finally removing the 16GB memory cap. They even maintained compatibility for people like me who prefer single cable docks.

Of course if price is the reason, then that makes more sense. Apple seems to be returning to a wider (and more reasonable imho) price and performance gap between the pro and the air. If I was in the market for a laptop, and I’m not because I think laptops are silly in general[0], I’d go for an air. The pro is very much in the “work will buy one for me” price, and it offers performance I don’t really need out of a personal machine.

0 - As I’ve said before, laptops generally compromise too much for my tastes. Like many others I work entirely from a desk, so my personal mac is and always will be a mini. But since work will inevitably give me one of these, I’m thrilled that they’ve made it so much better, even if I wouldn’t buy one myself.

[hparadiz]

I wanted to get one personally cause I'm still on a 2014 but the design puts me off. It looks like one of those old school 2008 models. The notch is just ugly.

I'd get one but I need it to look premium if I'm dropping 4k and right now it looks like it's from 2008

[ashtonkem]

It’s your money, but this mode of thinking is utterly alien to me.

The point of the MBP is that it’s for professionals. It’s a tool, not a fashion statement. The idea that it’s not worth the money because it looks outdated is utterly baffling to me; it’s worth the money because they’ve stuffed it full of the most performant components apple has ever put into a laptop ever. I want it to be a function over form machine, and worrying about its looks as part of the buying decision genuinely never crossed my mind.

If you want a fashion statement laptop and don’t need the performance, then don’t get a MBP. Again, your money; I don’t get it, but you do you. But the issue here isn’t that the laptop is bad per se, the issue is that that laptop wasn’t made for your use case.

[wayneftw]

> It’s a tool, not a fashion statement.

Pffft, as if Apple didn't market every. single. one. of their products as a fashion statement.

Apple clearly has always chosen form over function and being different over function. That's the only reason why the ridiculously useless Dock exists at all - marketing loved it since it embodies both of those traits.

[ashtonkem]

> Pffft, as if Apple didn't market every. single. one. of their products as a fashion statement.

Nonsense. The Mac Pro is clearly marketed as a professional took for professional use, always has been. Ditto with their high end displays. I don’t even think they had these objects in the last Apple Store I went into, actually.

Furthermore, every single ad I’ve ever seen for the MBP has been about artists, creatives, and programmers using it to make things. They have always presented it as the professional’s tool for creating stuff, even if at times that’s been a bit of a farce.

Now compare how they presented the MacBook, a laptop that they sold in gold color. That is a laptop they presented as a fashion choice, and interestingly it’s also the laptop they abandoned first.

> Apple clearly has always chosen form over function and being different over function

It’s only “always” been this way if you’re relatively young. In fact Apple’s turn towards form over function sometime after Job’s death caused quite a bit of angst here, both in terms of their hardware and software design. I’m old enough to remember when the MBP was unquestionably the best laptop a developer could buy, and I was very sad to watch it slowly lose ground to other laptops as Apple pursued thinness over user experience, hardware specs, upgradability, or durability.

If anything else, what I’m seeing today seems like a return to Apple from earlier in my career, when they made professional grade laptops that lead the pack. There are still some changes I’d love to see, such as more upgrade ability, but an Apple that’s willing to make its devices thicker if it improves user experience is very much a “function over form” move.