Posts about Apple

Casey Johnston has an article at The Outline about how bad the MacBook Pro keyboard is, which is an issue that has plagued many people I know — including myself.

In March of this year, a scant five months after I bought my 2016 13” MacBook Pro With Touch Bar (Apple could stand to shorten the name too), my space bar got stuck.

At first, I thought it was me. In my ten+ years of owning Apple equipment, I couldn’t accept that the fault was the laptop. I actively thought I was hitting the key wrong. This was before there was a ton of hubbub about these keyboards, or at least before I was aware of the hubbub.

About a week after I first noticed the issue, it was to the point where the space bar never worked. No matter how I hit it. So I brought it to an Apple Store tout suite. First, they told me I was hitting it wrong.

I’m not joking. The Apple Store Genius told me I was typing wrong.

Then, after trying it himself, he agreed this was a real problem. He set out to fix the issue, and told me they were going to replace the space bar on my keyboard.

He came out about an hour later and told me the problem was solved, and that they had removed and replaced the space bar. There was a piece of dust, I was told, and they had removed it. This ​“fixed” my issue, he claimed.

But the keyboard still didn’t work.

I tested it before I left the store, and promptly returned the laptop to the Genius’ hands. First, he assured me (again) that I was typing wrong. Then, he tried it, and agreed there was still a problem.

Keep in mind, this was the same Genius who helped me before.

He took my laptop away and told me they’d ​“let me know” when they identified the issue. I was told they’d keep my computer overnight to run some diagnostics and take a look at it, since they had ​“never encountered” this issue before.

Twenty-four hours later, they called me mid-afternoon to ask if I had a recent backup of my hard drive. They took my space bar off, but they couldn’t get the space bar back on because they key had snapped. So they needed to replace the entire bottom case on my laptop, and that part order and replacement would take three days or less. They were going to rush it because they knew my business relied on my laptop. It should go fine, they said, but they wanted to make sure I had a backup in case something happened.

Two days and twenty-three hours later, they called me with good news and bad news. The good news was that my part had arrived. The bad news was that the keyboard was somehow associated with the Touch Bar, and the connection there had gone faulty, which meant they had to replace the Touch Bar. They said that all of my keys were mis-aligned, because the keyboard wasn’t properly set in the factory to begin with, and that was when the problem started. I was lucky to have made it five months into my usage.

But Touch ID is connected to the Touch Bar, so they had to replace that too. And Touch ID is connected to the logic board, so that was getting replaced. And the hard drive and the RAM were both soldered to the logic board, so…

Well, you get the picture.

Then, instead of replacing the laptop, which would have made more sense at that point, they replaced the logic board, SSD, RAM, Touch Bar with Touch ID, and external casing on my MacBook Pro. I got it back eight days after I handed it to the Genius Bar.

Just the other day, I realized that my warranty was coming up to a close on this MacBook Pro. I’m approaching my first full year of ownership. So I spent $375 (Canadian), including taxes, on AppleCare for my $3,000 laptop. Because for the first time since I started buying Apple products, I absolutely do not trust this machine.

But it’s my daily driver. What can I do?

I really like typing on this keyboard, but I hate this keyboard.

Designer Mike Rundle put together an incredibly detailed blog post about a potential iPhone XX in 2027. I don’t normally bet on patents, but Mike is a smart guy and has done some terrific (and plausible) research here.

Part 1 and Part 2 are also available.

My 13″ MacBook Pro with the Touch Bar and 16gb of RAM arrived on November 16^th. I’ve had nearly a month to put it through its paces. To me, a month feels like an appropriate amount of time before putting together some real thoughts on the machine. It’s enough time to get used to using it every day and see if it makes your life easier. 

I’ve learned over the past month that all of the so-called deal-breakers are overblown. 

The New Form Factor

Let’s start with the obvious: these new laptops are shockingly thin and light. Half a pound (compared to the generation) is a ton of weight to lose. And it’s got a smaller footprint than my iPad Pro, which never ceases to amaze me. 

I ​“downgraded” from a 2012 15″ to the 13″ because I wanted the lightest professional MacBook I could get my hands on. This delivers. It feels solid in my hands, but in my bag, I don’t even know it’s there. I’m not joking: I always open my bag halfway to my destination to make sure I didn’t forget the laptop. I carry my laptop with me everywhere. This is a huge perk for me.

A lot of ink has been spilled about Apple has sacrificed performance and battery life for the sake of weight and size. I don’t think that’s a big deal, even if it’s true (more on that later). 

I’ve also heard people say that nobody wanted a thinner and lighter laptop. But I did. My father in law, a consultant who travels every day with his laptop, also told me he wanted a thinner and lighter laptop. (He ordered a new 15″ as soon as they were available.)

Normal people like thin and light laptops. Laptops are meant to go with you. They should be thin and light. 

The new Pros are the descendants of the MacBook Air. The 13″ Pro is thinner than an Air, weighs the same amount, and is much more powerful. For me, this is the perfect size for a portable computer. 

How many of us basically wanted a MacBook Air with a Retina display for years? This is basically that, but somehow even smaller. It’s fantastic.

The Keyboard

It’s still my favourite keyboard ever. Bar none. It makes my desktop keyboard feel like mushy junk. 

The Touch Bar

I like the Touch Bar. It’s a nifty little feature. Eventually, it’s going to be more useful than the function keys (I already use it more than I ever used the function keys). I find I’m already adapting to it, and tapping where the Touch Bar would be on my Bluetooth keyboard for certain things. 

So the Touch Bar, and Touch ID with it, are both great. I’m looking forward to having them on an external keyboard. 

All that being said, nobody needs either feature. We’ve lived without them for years, and could continue to. It’s the very definition of a nicety. 

Not unlike an Apple Watch, come to think of it.

I love it, but you don’t need it.

The Trackpad

I never knew I wanted a larger trackpad. Apparently, I did. The trackpad on this laptop makes me happy. It’s given me no issues. I love Force Click, or whatever they call it. I’m fascinated by its mechanics (it feels like a real click to me).

It looks too large, but in practice, it feels great. The trackpad on old MacBooks feels so constrictive now, by comparison, that they almost feel unusable. And they were the best trackpads on the market.

The new trackpads are better. I love them.

Performance

It’s more than fast enough. 

I wish I could stop there, but I can’t. I have never seen so many angry rants about how under-powered a laptop is. This laptop handles everything I throw at with gusto, including (but not limited to):

• Multiple virtual servers
• Multiple large PhotoShop files
• Multiple large Sketch files, with dozens of art boards each
• Any IDE I throw at it.
• Code processors
• Too many internet tabs
• And iTunes (but actually)
• And running all of the above at once is a non-issue.

In all honesty, computers have been fast enough for the overwhelming majority of us for years. I’d wager a bet that most of us would get by just fine on a 2013 13″ MacBook Air. 

Some of you are reading this and claiming heresy, insisting that you need at least 32gb of RAM and as many cores as you can buy. While that may be true, and I don’t doubt your understanding of your own needs, I suspect you’re never going to find a good laptop anyway. You need a professional desktop for power like that.

The thing is, laptops need to be portable. That means thin and light. Most laptops, including Apple’s professional lineup, don’t need to compete for the interests of über-demanding developers and filmmakers. For those people, there’s the Mac Pro. And I suspect Apple has a new version of that computer coming soon to satisfy their needs.

Every computer is a compromise towards portability or power. In this case, I think Apple made the right call.

The Dongles

They haven’t made a difference in my day-to-day life. I wrote about the dongles previously, but having given more thought to it, there is one thing that confuses me.

USB‑C is very nice. USB wasn’t really nice before. I never liked USB before. Now I do. What took them so long to get around to making a nice, small, reversible jack?

I’m not mad that the MacBook Pro is all in on this. I think Thunderbolt 3 and USB‑C are great (and I’m thrilled that I can power a 5K display with Thunderbolt 3). I just want to know why it took so long.

I also wonder: had USB always been this nice to use, would Apple have used it for their iPhones and iPads instead of Lightning? I’d prefer USB‑C at this point (although I’m sure it will never happen).

Two other quick thoughts: I don’t miss the SD card slot. It was nice to have before, and it would have been nice to have it over the past month, but plugging in a card reader (or just using USB) hasn’t been an issue.

However, I really miss MagSafe.

Battery Life

This is the only area where the new laptops are disappointing. I’m definitely not getting the ten hours of battery life that Apple is claiming. I’m somewhere around eight — respectable, for sure, but not as advertised.

Apple already issued a ​“fix” for the problem, which hides the ​“Time Remaining” estimate from the battery life bar. Apple claims it was inaccurate (although I haven’t seen any hard evidence to the point). Regardless, it doesn’t change real-world battery life.

This is one area that is truly unfortunate. You have to decide if you need a thin and light laptop, or if you need a laptop with great battery life. You very well might need both, which makes it hard to recommend these new MacBook Pros to you right now.

The 13″, in general, seems to last a little while longer than the 15″ laptops. I think that’s because it doesn’t have a discrete GPU. My old laptop was a 15″, and I’m getting roughly double the battery life with this new Pro than I was with the old one. So take that how you will.

For me, eight hours is an improvement over the four hours I used to get (massively so). I’m pretty happy with eight hours. But when you get actively working on photo development or anything too power-hungry (video editing), the battery starts to dive pretty quick. I went down 30% today with two hours of photo editing in Lightroom.

Even if you’re fine with six to eight hours of battery life (and I am, especially by comparison to my older machine), Apple’s estimates will make you feel lied to. I don’t mind a laptop with eight hours of battery life. Just tell me up front. 

Apple didn’t. And that’s gross.

Finally

I’ve lived with this machine for a month, and it’s quickly becoming my favourite laptop ever. It’s an improvement in every area for me (although it’s slightly less powerful than before), and I find it easier than ever to put my laptop in my bag and walk all over the city for a day of meetings.

To me, that makes a great laptop.

It’s a shame about the battery. For most people, it might not be a deal breaker. I can get through an entire day on battery without an issue, and I can use the laptop on and off throughout a weekend without having to charge it too. But frequent flyers have reason to be disconcerted.

But apart from that, to me, these laptops are a win. They’re a big indicator of the future of computing: small devices that can become massively powerful thanks to the capabilities of things like Thunderbolt 3.

My motto is simple: buy the smallest laptop your workflow will allow you to, and plug it into the largest and best display available when you’re at your desk. With the new MacBook Pros, I finally have a truly tiny laptop with a lot of oomph.

And it can power a 5K display to boot.

Part 1 is available here. It’s got the dongles you’re looking for.

It took me a week and a half to figure out how to log in to my MacBook without using Touch ID.

Let’s say you plug in your MacBook Pro to an external monitor and use it in Clamshell Mode. (I do this all the time to work on my external monitor.) Things are going well. You’re getting work done on your giant screen, feeling like a boss.

And then it happens.

You step away for lunch, and come back to discover the laptop is now asleep. 

“No problem,” you think, tapping on a key to wake up the screen.

At this point, you’re greeted with your avatar and user name. You don’t know it, because there aren’t any indicators on the screen, but your MacBook is encouraging you to use Touch ID on the new Touch Bar.

(Touch ID is wonderful on the new laptops, by the way.)

There’s one problem: you can’t use Touch ID with the laptop closed. So you open the laptop, put your finger on the sensor, and then close the laptop once you’re logged back in. Your windows re-arrange themselves again.

Another annoyance.

It turns out: you don’t have to do this! If you click on your name on the log in screen, you get the option to type in your password instead of using Touch ID.

There’s no indicator you can do this. I only know because I furiously clicked everywhere on the screen in desperation.

There’s no reason for this in 2016. Your laptop should know when it’s closed and driving an external display, and it should compensate accordingly. This is bad design.

The weird thing is, you and I both know there are probably dozens of people in Apple using their new MacBook Pros in Clamshell Mode with those fancy new 5k displays. The fact this isn’t fixed from the get-go is pure laziness.

It’s a first-world problem, but this is the only major pain point I’ve experienced with the new MacBook Pro since I got it. This is the only major workflow ruiner. It’s astonishing that this is a problem.

But here we are.

The first issue was my external monitor.

I have a Dell U2515H, a monitor Apple has doomed to irrelevancy because it lacks USB‑C and Thunderbolt 3. In its place, the Dell is rocking a bunch of standard USB ports, DisplayPort, and HDMI.

It’s a good monitor. (I know: they’re all good monitors, Brent.) I replaced my Thunderbolt Display with it. The Dell is more colour-accurate, and it has smaller bezels. It’s also much brighter thanks to an almost imperceptible anti-glare coating on its LCD screen. 

Getting rid of my Dell monitor because my laptop doesn’t play nicely with its port wasn’t happening.

So I set myself up with the first dongle, a USB‑C hub with HDMI out, three old-school USB ports, and an SD card reader. It was $85 when I bought it. Now it’s $65, one month later. Oops.

But that’s not all! Apple really hates HDMI, and doesn’t display RGB colours over HDMI without some serious hacking.

$85 and an hour of frustration and Terminal hacking later, my new MacBook Pro worked over this monitor.

With my old MacBook Pro, all I had to do was plug in the DisplayPort cable. And that was it.

The new MacBook Pro comes with some compromises.

Dem Dongles

The dongles are definitely an issue.

Despite that, I don’t carry any dongles with me. Maybe I’m an edge case, but I don’t remember the last time somebody passed me a USB stick that I needed to act on right away. Murphy’s Law has me reluctant to share this information with you, but I don’t suspect my needs will change any time soon.

But the Dongle Life is a problem. The SD card reader in the dongle I bought doesn’t work, so I need to attach my camera via USB and use Image Capture to bring images in off my DSLR. But the write speeds are so fast on the new laptop that I don’t notice a big difference in speed. It’s just an annoyance.

I tried a 12″ MacBook before the new Pros came out (some brief thoughts on that here), and the dongles were much more of a problem there. On the MacBook Pro, the dongles are an inconvenience, but not a serious problem — at least, not for most of us.

That Keyboard Though

Can we talk about the keyboard for a second? Because this is a fantastic keyboard.

This is one of those times where I undoubtedly and passionately believe the haters are wrong.

The keyboards on the old Retina MacBook Pros are wobbly in comparison. They’re too shallow to alleviate the issue, and not firm enough to be consistent. The spacing between keys is ridiculous. Typing on them feels completely inferior after an hour of typing on a new MacBook Pro.

My wife has a 2011 MacBook Pro, and those keys have even more travel than my Retina MacBook Pro did. The keys on that 2011 pro are lovely. They’re firm, and they don’t wobble from side to side.

The keys on the new MacBook Pro, similarly, offer firm and tactile feedback. They make a wonderful clicky sound that anybody who likes mechanical keyboards will enjoy. And if you don’t pound on your keys like an angry gorilla typing with a hammer, they can be pretty quiet.

Let me offer a new theory: the keyboards Apple put on laptops in between 2012 and 2015 were all missteps. They were the bad keyboards. Hindsight is 20/​20, though, and it’s hard to see the flaws in the one you love.

Two Weeks In

Exactly two weeks ago today, this new laptop arrived. Obviously, we haven’t had a ton of time to bond yet. And I’m still in the honeymoon phase.

But there’s a lot to process with this thing. And I do my best thinking when I’m writing. I still want to write about the keyboard, the Touch Bar, and the actual design of this thing.

But in the meantime, I have to admit: it’d be sort of nice to have an SD card reader that worked.

About six weeks ago, I put in an order for a customized 12” MacBook to replace my aging 2012 MacBook Pro. I wanted to see if I could get away with using the 12” laptop on a daily basis.

As a graphic and digital designer (and front-end web developer), my needs aren’t insane. But I do spend a bit of time in and out of some power-hungry apps every day.

I use Photoshop to edit images, Illustrator for logo mockups and vector work, and InDesign for print design. I’m also going back and forth between Adobe XD and Sketch for digital design.

I spend most of day hanging out with files around 250mb in Sketch. These files have a couple dozen artboards in them, a ton of pages, and quite a few images. To manipulate the images, I’m usually running Photoshop in the background and exporting updated images as I go.

Most of the time, I’m also running a couple browsers, streaming music, and working in a couple text editors. But none of that requires too much power.

And for most people, I’d guess that this laptop has more than enough power — especially for anybody running Office, working on documents in the cloud, or browsing the web.

In other words, for many people — millions of people — the 12” MacBook is powerful enough.

And for the record, if I was willing, I could make it work too.

But let’s say you want to keep everything running in the background all the time. I do this every day. Photoshop is almost always going in the background, and it almost always uses up a ton of CPU without me realizing it.

These little MacBooks don’t have fans. So at some point, the laptop needs to cool down — because Photoshop is warming it up. And to cool down, it simply throttles the speeds of the laptop. So the mouse gets laggy and Sketch gets a lot harder to use.

Now, I could quit Photoshop, but all of this is a bad omen for use as a daily driver.

Let me repeat that: this isn’t the MacBook for you if you plan on using it as a daily driver. It won’t end well.

However, this MacBook shines as a laptop.

This is where Apple got it right. This is a gorgeous, paper-thin, tiny, featherweight of a laptop. It weights practically nothing in my bag and feels like carrying around an iPad, but it’s so much more capable. And if my primary machine was a desktop, I’d absolutely want to carry around this 12” laptop. Because it’s very capable.

In fact, I’d go so far as to say that you could probably do just about anything on it for a few hours at a time.

But after a few hours, it starts to get noticeably slower (in my use case). Maybe I had a bum machine, but I didn’t feel like swapping it out for a new one.

Instead, I just ordered a new laptop. One of those 13” MacBook Pros with a Touch Bar. It’s not that I need all that power, but I do think I need a fan.

If you’re a designer, or a developer, and you’re wondering if you should get the 12” laptops, I do have some advice for you. Get the 12” MacBook only if you plan on using it primarily as a laptop away from your powerful desk machine. This can’t do both, and it can’t be a primary laptop. Not yet. Maybe in a year or two (in fact, I’d be surprised if it took longer than that), but not yet.

If you’re not a creative professional, or a demanding computer user (a video editor, computer scientist, audio engineer, or the like), you should honestly pick up a 12” MacBook. It’s got all the computer you need in a tiny, lovable little body. It’s quiet, thin, and sleek as heck. I fell in love with mine. I was sad to return it.

About two weeks ago, I ordered a specced-out 12” MacBook. I had a good feeling that there’d be new MacBook Pros before the end of the month, and knew I could return the 12” within 14 days if I didn’t like it (or didn’t think it was powerful enough for my work).

This is going to be a little self-indulgent and very long, but buying an Apple laptop is a lot more complicated than it used to be.

To set this up a bit, I should explain a bit of what I do every day. I spend about 50% of the day plugged into a display, and 50% working with the laptop on my lap. Usually, I’m running iTunes, Mail, Codekit, Sketch, Coda, Safari, Chrome, TextWrangler, MAMP, iA Writer, and Transmit. At any given time, I might also be running a good chunk of Adobe’s apps: Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, or Experience Design. OS X, or macOS as it is now called, is integral to my workflow.

I need to replace my aging 2012 15” MacBook Pro. It was the first generation with Retina display, and at this point, it’s got a few issues of its own:

• My display was one of the ones that suffered with the burn-in problem. I’m using my laptop more and more as a laptop these days, instead of solely plugging it into an external monitor, so that’s becoming a huge annoyance.
• It’s really heavy and bulky at 4.5 pounds. This was great when I used it as a desktop that could become a portable if need be, but now that I use the machine as a portable that occasionally becomes a desktop (and I carry the laptop in my bag a lot), it’s way too heavy.
• The video card is dying on the laptop. It’s getting really quirky, especially when it runs Adobe apps. The screen will go black randomly. Sometimes, when I boot the machine up, the screen is black until I reboot it (again). It’s frustrating. As a result, I’m never buying a computer with an independent graphics card again (unless I can easily replace it).
• The battery is dead. If I’m writing, like I am right now, I can get about five or six hours out of it. If I’m doing any design work or coding, I get about two and a half — at most. I could pay Apple a few hundred bucks to fix this, but why bother? I can’t get them to easily swap out the video card, so it’d be more of a bandaid than a real problem.

Replacing the MacBook Pro meant it was time to look around. Last time I bought a computer, I knew immediately which one was rihgt for me. These days, I’m not so sure.

My first inclination was that 12” MacBook. It’s an amazing little machine. Unlike most people, I love the keyboard on it. (I’m thrilled the keyboard is making its way to the new MacBook Pros.) But even at its top-end spec (which was over $2,000 in Canada!), it only comes with a 1.3ghz CPU.

I don’t really understand what all these numbers mean, although like anybody else, I understand the gist that higher is better. I suspected, with my limited knowledge of these things, that the 12” MacBook would be fine for most tasks. And it is, actually. I’ve read a lot of reviews and reports saying the machine is under-powered, but those are largely overblown.

But when things get bad, they get really bad.

Let me give you the quick five-step method to slow down the frame rate on a 12” MacBook:

1. Run a code compiler in the background that automatically refreshes your development environment every time you make a change to the site’s code. (Codekit.)
2. Have a local server running on your MacBook with something like MAMP.
3. Open a 250mb Sketch file and get to work while you code.
4. Open Photoshop to do some lightweight image editing and create assets for your website design. Leave Photoshop running in the background.
5. Now use the computer as you normally would for a couple hours, leaving all this running. Things are fine. But suddenly, the computer slows down to about 12fps. This is called ​“thermal throttling,” and it’s an issue I encountered on day three of using the MacBook as a daily driver.

Thermal throttling occurs on the 12” model because it doesn’t have a fan. So while the laptop can do some tasks pretty quick for a brief period of time, it has no way to cool down when it starts to heat up. Which means that it has to slow down.

Anyway, the 12” MacBook was a no go for me. It’d be great if I had a desktop and only used it on the road, but it won’t work as a daily driver.

So back to square one.

On Thursday, Apple announced the new MacBook Pros. They’re more or less what I wanted: thinner, lighter, still packing more than enough power to do what I want every day.

But I’m a little confused by my options.

Here are your options if you want to get work done on an Apple laptop these days:

• The 12” Macbook. In Canada, it starts at $1,649. This price has gone up since I purchased it two weeks ago, actually, by $100. Ouch. Unless you’re an office worker or just need a laptop for use on the go when you’re away from your main machine, it’s sadly a little underpowered.
• The 13” MacBook Air. In Canada, it starts at $1,199. Expensive, somewhat powerful — good enough for just about everybody, I think. I could make do with it. But it has a low-resolution screen. I wish Apple would axe this and lower the cost of the 12” MacBook.
• The old MacBook Pros. Pass. Too heavy, too bulky, and definitely not the new hotness. If I wanted one of these, I would have bought one two weeks ago. Oh, and their price hasn’t gone down in the wake of the new laptops. They’re even more expensive than before. So why bother?
• The 13” MacBook Pro, without a Touch Bar. In Canada, it starts at a poop-your-pants price of $1,899. It’s supposed to be the Air replacement (it has a smaller footprint and weighs more or less the same). It’s less powerful than the MacBook Pro with the Touch Bar, and once you spec it up to comparable-ish levels, the prices are on par. So, this seems like an oddly-positioned tweener device. I thought about order this, but when I can pay the same amount for the MacBook Pro with the new Touch Bar and upgraded RAM, why wouldn’t I?
• The 13” and 15” MacBook Pro, with a Touch Bar. This is the new hotness. In Canada, the 13” starts at a ​“sell-your-kidney” $2,299. I got the ​“my-wallet-is-bleeding” mid-tier model with 512GB of storage and 16GB of RAM (a necessity in design these days). The 13” version is, again, smaller than a MacBook Air — and they weigh the same amount.

Of course, I could always go Windows. I actually walked down to the Microsoft Store yesterday and tried out the Surface Book (the Surface Studio wasn’t available for demo yet). It’s a very nice laptop, but I don’t like the way the stylus feels in my hand. I also don’t like the space between the screen and the keyboard, even when the laptop is closed — that hinge is so weird! I’d spend most of my days cleaning dirt, dust, and hair out of the keyboard as a result. Plus, I still hate Windows. So I’m skipping this too.

Am I happy with the options? Mostly. Oddly, it seems to me that laptop prices are climbing — particularly the prices for professional machines. If the prices hadn’t changed from one generation to the next, I think we’d have a great set of new laptops from Apple.

Consider this: you can buy a decent Chromebook for a couple hundred bucks, but top-of-the-line computers from both Apple and Microsoft are climbing towards $3,000 and above. I don’t get it.

I remember balking at the price for my 15” MacBook Pro in 2012. The price then, with the extra storage space I got in my model, was just over $3,000. The laptop I’m getting now is nearly the same price, and has arguably fewer features: I’m not getting a video card, there are fewer ports, and MagSafe isn’t a thing anymore.

I don’t think Apple has lost its direction. I think Microsoft is finding their mojo, and everybody’s competing to make a really great laptop for pro users, instead of a laptop that delivers exclusively on specs. For the old guard of PC users, this all seems confusing and gimmicky. To me, it’s just plain old expensive.

But I need a new laptop. So here I am.

Last week, Apple announced they were removing the headphone jack for their new iPhone. It wasn’t the first time they removed an ​“essential” feature; most of us remember losing the floppy drive, disc drives, Ethernet ports, and even the traditional file system (on iPad and iPhone). 

News like this usually doesn’t pan out well, but this time it was particularly tone-deaf. When Marketing SVP Phil Schiller said they were removing the headphone jack because they had ​“courage,” I think the internet broke. I’ve never seen Twitter turn anything into a meme so quickly. 

But it wasn’t the first time Apple had used that line. 

Full credit to 9to5Mac for noticing this first, but Steve Jobs once said something similar. Here’s a link to the YouTube video that’s been making the rounds this weekend. If you can’t watch it, or don’t have the time for it, here’s a quick transcription (again, courtesy of 9to5Mac):

We’re trying to make great products for people, and we have at least the courage of our convictions to say we don’t think this is part of what makes a great product, we’re going to leave it out. Some people are going to not like that, they’re going to call us names […] but we’re going to take the heat [and] instead focus our energy on these technologies which we think are in their ascendancy and we think are going to be the right technologies for customers. And you know what? They’re paying us to make those choices […] If we succeed, they’ll buy them, and if we don’t, they won’t, and it’ll all work itself out.

Apple didn’t have to say anything different when they debuted the iPhone 7 last Wednesday. Steve already said it perfectly. 

I don’t think Apple is doomed, and I don’t think they’re any worse for wear without Jobs. These marketing blunders can happen to anyone. Apple is the world’s largest company, and they put good design at the core of everything they do — but sometimes, they can’t get their own story straight. Jobs was great at that. 

The thing is, Jobs knew it’s not always what you say. It’s how you say it. There’s a lesson to be learned here, and it’s pretty simple: choose your words carefully. 

Even Apple picks the wrong words sometimes.

Last week, Apple made a big splash with its latest iPad offering, the iPad Pro. Featuring a massive screen with insanely high, pixel-perfect resolution, a nearly-perfect don’t-call-it-a-stylus digital pencil, and an incredible amount of computational power than surpasses the overwhelming majority of laptops in the wild, the new iPad should be a no-brainer for a creative professional like myself. I want one so badly. But I still can’t use it for work. 

With that explosive, perhaps controversial lede out of the way, I should clarify: I think a growing number of people can use the iPad for work, particularly with the split-screen features of iOS 9. If you tend to work a lot in the Office suite and send a lot of email, I think the iPad could easily replace your laptop. 

But for the creative pro that Apple is pitching this to, I think it’s a dud. 

To begin with, there’s a dearth of applications in the creative industry for the iPad. Adobe has made a couple, but they’re designed for mobile and meant to get us started with our ideas. If we want to finish them, Adobe is pretty clear that we need to do so in a desktop application. You still can’t run Xcode on an iPad. You still can’t make a proper mockup on an iPad. 

Part of the problem is the App Store. My preferred mockup app on the Mac, Sketch, won’t be coming to the iPad any time soon. Emanual Sa explains:

But the biggest problem is the platform. Apps on iOS sell for unsustainably low prices due to the lack of trials. We cannot port Sketch to the iPad if we have no reasonable expectation of earning back on our investment. Maintaining an application on two different platforms and provide one of them for a 10^th of it’s [sic] value won’t work, and iPad volumes are low enough to disqualify the ​“make it up in volume” argument.

Yikes. I don’t believe that app trials would fix everything, but I think it’s time Apple threw developers a bone. Unsustainable software businesses won’t entice great software developers to invest in your ecosystem. 

The other problem is that iOS is still a sandboxed environment. You can have a great app like Coda running on iOS, but it’s pretty limited: no external servers, limited language compilers, etc. I spend a lot of my day coding in text editors. When I can’t do half my work on a device because there’s no possibility of an app in that product category being available for it, that’s very constraining.

With all that being said, even when there is an app available for iPad that I could use in my workflow, I’m not sure I want to use it. 

Recently, I’ve been experimenting with the beta of an app called Protosketch. It’s similar enough to Sketch that I can get some work done with it. But doing some of this work without the precision of a mouse is cumbersome, particularly on my first-gen iPad Air (whose single gigabyte of RAM is really beleaguered while running the app). The larger iPad Pro might make it better, but it’s not worth spending $1,000 to find out. 

If you want my hot take on when iPads will kill off desktops, it’s pretty simple: desktop computers lose their usefulness when the software available on the iPad becomes more valuable than its hardware. I don’t think we’re there yet, but I hope the iPad Pro helps spur us along. Like I said, I want one.