5 things that suck about Apple’s new MacBook Pro

While mostly I’ve liked the new MacBook Pro in the weekend I’ve used it there are some glaring issues that I need to point out which make me question the use of the Pro nomenclature on these notebooks. Apple is obviously arguing otherwise, and there is some logic to what it is suggesting but some of the things with these notebooks are going to be deal-breakers for people. Even, I, someone who doesn’t really push the limits of the new Macs to their fullest has found some of the design decisions to be limiting. Let me elaborate.

1. The biggest issue is the absence of the standard USB ports. There really is not getting around the fact that at the moment you can’t plug in even a pen drive to this laptop leave alone a memory card or an HDMI cable. The only route is a dongle for one thing or the other. If you end up with Apple’s dongles, you will pay a lot of money and have ugly dongles hang out of the sides of this beautiful machine. I haven’t been able to hook up my camera, nor can I charge my iPhone on this machine. Ironically, the charger of this machine has come in handy in charging my Google Pixel, which is all kinds of strange.

2. The new keyboard is very shallow and people who like clattering the keyboard will find it hard to adapt quickly. Only after 4 days of heavy duty usage, I’ve become used to this keyboard. I can imagine people who are used long key travel will not like this keyboard. It really is a keyboard that’s likely to appeal to touch typists more than anyone else.

3. The battery life isn’t as good as the MacBook Air which will be a deal breaker for someone upgrading from an Air. The bigger issue is that it isn’t even as good as a 13-inch MacBook Pro from last year. Apple could perhaps make some improvements to the operating system with a software update, but until that happens, I am not getting more than 5 hours with the screen brightness at full and no more than 7.5 with it lowered to usable levels.

4. Apple reportedly made the display assembly so thin that it didn’t have any room left to add the backlit Apple logo on the top of the notebook. Instead, like the retina MacBook, the new Pro models get this machined Apple logo, which looks quite nice, but it doesn’t exude that level of coolness in the dark as the older MacBooks.

5. The touch bar, so far, it hasn’t proven to be life changing. Perhaps, that speaks of the amount of apps that are leveraging it or perhaps it also speaks about a pro user who has had years of training of Mac keyboard shortcuts would probably find it quite pointless. So far, the touch bar seems like something designed for a dummy, but not a pro user, which is the target audience of the MacBook Pro.

After Killing iPhone’s 3.5mm Jack, Apple Plans To Remove USB Ports From Upcoming MacBooks

Short Bytes: Following the recent rumors, it’s expected that the new MacBook Pro laptops will do away with the traditional USB and the MagSafe charging ports in favor of the USB Type-C port. The Thunderbolt port will also be upgraded to Thunderbolt 3.

 

The fall is about to arrive and the rumor mill has started churning news about Apple MacBook lineup. It’s almost a year and a half since Apple released the MacBook Pro with Retina display in May 2015. Reports from Macotakara, claimed trusted Chinese sources, suggest that there is a new MacBook Pro in the works.

The new MacBook Pro is expected to launch on October 27 but the official release announcements haven’t been made. It is rumored to come with the USB-C port which originally debuted in the Apple ecosystem with the 12-inch MacBook. This will also mark the exit of the normal USB ports and the MegSafe charging port from the MacBook Pro. The USB Type-C on the MacBook Pro is accompanied by Thunderbolt 3.0 port. It’s, however, not known how many USB Type-C ports will be there.

Other than the changes in the ports, there might be an OLED touch bar above the keyboard replacing the physical function keys and allowing the buttons to be customized. The Touch ID support is also expected to be introduced. The rumors don’t include reports about4G LTE feature patented by Apple for the laptops.

It’s good to see that Apple is not ditching the analog audio jack in their MacBook lineup. And Macbook owners will have the opportunity to play with the dinos for some time.

That was for the Pros. In the case of the MacBook Air, 11-inch variant may go out of production so that more attention could be paid to the 13-inch MacBook Air. A Type-C USB port is also rumored to land on the MacBook Air.

Macotakara via 9to5Mac

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This blog was first published on: https://fossbytes.com/macbook-pro-release-date-and-new-features/

THE IPHONE 7 IS MORE POWERFUL THAN THE MACBOOK AIR — BUT THERE'S A CATCH

The iPhone 7 is one of the most powerful smartphones to date, but did you know that’s it’s actually more powerful than plenty of computers? In fact, it’s more powerful than both the MacBook Air and the 2013 MacBook Pro.

This appraisal comes from John Gruber, who notes that the iPhone 7 pretty much leaves every other smartphone in the dust when it comes to performance, achieving a single-core score of 3,450 on Geekbench, which is around twice the score as the second-best device, the Samsung Galaxy S7.

It’s only recently that we have even been able to compare smartphones and computers. Previously, there wasn’t a direct comparison between Geekbench’s scores for desktop and mobile devices, but Geekbench has made a recent effort to bring the two scoring systems in line with each other to make for easier comparison.

Still, there are a few things to keep in mind when it comes to benchmarks. Benchmarks are an indicator of a phone’s performance, but they don’t always line up with real-world results. In fact, manufacturers can sometimes optimize how a phone runs to achieve higher benchmark scores while leaving real-life performance behind.

The other thing to remember is that Geekbench measures things like CPU speed, but the amount of RAM and SSD speed will help make the MacBook perform a lot faster.

Still, that doesn’t take away from the fact that the iPhone 7 is really the most powerful smartphone ever, and whether the iPhone 7 is more powerful than MacBooks or not, it’s still impressive.  Other smartphone manufacturers will likely be playing catch up for at least the next few months or so. It will be interesting to see how Android handsets stack up against the iPhone 7 once the Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 starts shipping on devices.

This Blog was first published on: http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/iphone-7-more-powerful-macbook-air/