It\u2019s not getting any better. The battery life on the 13\u201d Touchbar MacBook Pro is abysmal – partly because yes, running a Retina display with an i7 processor and 16 GB of RAM is hard, but also because the battery is only two-thirds the size of the previous MacBook Pro Retina 13\u201d model\u2019s battery.<\/p>\n
This is getting out of hand. This obsession with making everything thin and light and stylish is going to kill Apple in the professional realm, because Steve Jobs was right: we\u2019re moving toward a computing world of cars and trucks. And if you\u2019re not one of these all-hat-no-cattle bro-country rednecks, you want a truck not because it looks cool, but because you need a damned truck.<\/em> And Jony Ive, in his inimitable bullshit limey skinny-britches manner, has given us the equivalent of a shiny all-glass pickup truck with a neon undercarriage and a four-gallon gas tank. Sure, I could have gotten a better battery in the non-Touchbar model, but then I could have exactly two<\/em> USB-C ports, one of which I need for power, and been right back to the MacBook Air problem of one port to choose between external display or gigabit Ethernet and not even a regular USB option as fallback.<\/p>\n What I wanted<\/em> was a professional grade laptop that I could use for work. What I have<\/em> is a computer that right now I cannot plug into any<\/em> of my work accessories – not Ethernet, not my desktop monitor, not my iPhone cable, not any of the thumb drives – without adapters that, in some cases, are backordered for delivery in three weeks. And on the previous MacBook Pro, I could have plugged in Ethernet and<\/em> an external display and<\/em> power and still had multiple USB inputs. If I do all that now, I\u2019ll have\u2026one. Put another way: if you buy a MacBook Pro and an iPhone 7, you have no way of connecting them that isn\u2019t wireless.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll repeat what others have said: the MacBook Pro may be the laptop of the future, but we need a MacBook Pro for right fucking now.<\/em> Apple isn\u2019t interested in making that, and what that says about the future of Apple is chilling for someone whose career is based on supporting Apple products in the enterprise.<\/p>\n The truly ironic thing in all this is that my iPad mini, which I bought through ill-gotten means on Boxing Day in 2013, is still kicking and works just fine. I\u2019m on my second SmartCover, but in all other respects it\u2019s held up pretty good. The battery life is still more than acceptable – runs rings around this brand new laptop – and it fits in my peacoat pocket and pretty much makes it unnecessary to carry a laptop anywhere. I didn\u2019t even need the laptop at the JNUC 2016 conference – the iPad and iPhone gave me alternate data options (the Wi-Fi was shit on toast) and all-day battery usability in a way the laptop couldn\u2019t. And the iPad mini got there three years ago and hasn\u2019t let me down since, from Portland to Maui to Disneyland to Legion Field. Even the 200 MB free LTE data every month from T-Mobile is an ongoing value.<\/p>\n Apple was already making sleek pretty consumer portables – and I know, because the iPad mini has been my only personal \u201claptop\u201d since I got it. It\u2019s the only thing I use in the evenings at home for browsing or reading or Slack or making notes or what have you. It\u2019s there. It\u2019s fine. There is a role for the professional laptop, and Apple\u2019s just not interested in filling it any more. That\u2019s just one more piece of bad news bullshit to lay at the feet of this godforsaken year we\u2019ve had.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s not getting any better. The battery life on the 13\u201d Touchbar MacBook Pro is abysmal – partly because yes, running a Retina display with an i7 processor and 16 GB of RAM is hard, but also because the battery is only two-thirds the size of the previous MacBook Pro Retina 13\u201d model\u2019s battery. This … <\/p>\n