As much as I love my MacBook Pro (15", a couple of generations old), I've always felt that it was just a shade shy of being perfect. You'd think that with two new generations having been introduced since I bought mine, that Apple would have dialed in those imperfections and gotten the product "right."
Well, my assistant called this morning and reminded me that they haven't. You see, he's been holding off replacing his banged up (dropped) MacBook Pro for awhile, and was hoping that a new iteration would give him everything he wanted. Would that it were so.
I understand the compromises that you have to make in fitting a lot of components into a small space. Sometimes you just can't fit the pieces together. Nevertheless, it sure feels like a game of "you may gain something but we'll take something away" now.
The good news: faster processors and most importantly, more memory (though US$1000 for a 4GB upgrade, come on Apple, that's so far out of whack your price basically says you don't want anyone to take you up on it). 8GB running Photoshop is better than 4GB (or 6GB if you've got the right memory modules) running Photoshop. Ditto with a few other key applications for the traveling graphic artist, photographer, or videographer. And, yes, getting Firewire back on the 13" model was nice too. Better battery life, yes, another welcome addition. It was mentioned several times at the introduction that the new 15" model has a bigger color gamut, though absolutely no detail on that has been released. I'll count that as a plus, though it's an unknown plus at the moment.
But the bad news: the ExpressCard slot is gone. In its place is a SD card reader. This is not a good trade, regardless of the fact that you can now carry an SD card as an emergency boot drive (yes, you read that right: repartition a standard SDHC card into GUID and you can make it bootable). But the problem is that the real pros that are buying the MacBook Pro need the slot for its bus access. It's what allows videographers to use extremely fast eSata drives, audiographers to use real digital input, and photographers to get decent external drive performance (for backups of images). There is no alternative available. "Use a Firewire card reader," says Apple. Apparently they don't come back to the hotel at the end of the day with several 16GB CompactFlash cards to download and to create backups of. If Steve Jobs had to sit in my room and chat with me while I waited for cards to transfer with the new machine and then to an external drive, there'd be a new model with the ExpressCard slot restored in days, I think.
Thing is, I thought us pro designers, illustrators, videographers, and photographers were relatively core to Apple's success. The message they're sending is "we don't design for you much any more." Great. The message we might send back is "we don't buy from you much any more, nor do we tend to recommend your product as much."
Couple such decisions with the now unswappable battery--what does Apple have against user-swappable batteries?--and the glossy-only screens, and the slower internal SATA bus (back to 1.5Gbs from 3, which slows any really fast SST drive you might want to use) and it seems we get as many steps backward as we do forward. But then, maybe Apple really wants to sell more to the masses now. Funny thing is, the masses want lower prices first and foremost. Us pros, we'll pay for the features we need.
I know, "just get a 17". Sorry, but the extra size and weight don't fit my bag needs or those of other pros. Personally, I don't need a new laptop yet (though I would have liked to address more memory), so I'll just skip another generation of update. My assistant? Well, he's been limping along for awhile hoping that Apple would do it right. I'm not sure what he's going to do. Well, I know one thing he did: phone me and complain ;~).