It’s a joke that the new MacBook Pro with a Touchbar is called a “Pro” machine. Perhaps Apple should call it the MacBook Exec or Edition. I won’t bother rehashing the many quibbles that others have already covered. Yet, once again, the punditry has failed to notice the biggest and most obvious flaw and are ranting about the wrong things. Let me rant about the right things for you. You’re welcome.
The Touchbar MacBook Pro is a failure because you cannot upgrade its storage capacity. Ever. Why? Because the SSD is a soldered-in and non-upgradable boat anchor.
A woman using Touch Bar on MacBook Pro
While some may quibble with the 16GB RAM limit, at least there were technical limitations to that. Namely it was limited by the particular Intel chipset. Furthermore, nothing stops you from maxing out the RAM when you order the machine. Generally speaking, Apple lets you buy a Pro laptop with the maximum addressable RAM for its given chipset.
However, that argument does not hold water with storage. The Touchbar MacBook Pro is limited to a paltry 2TB SSD. I have an old 2011 17” MacBook Pro with a 2TB SSD, and I can easily put in a 4TB SSD today, and 15TB in the not so distant future.
Storage Size Matters for Pros
The reality is, professional users need and use lots of storage, and those storage needs change with time. A pro machine needs to be adaptable. By limiting and freezing the machine to 2TB, Apple ensures that professionals who need more storage space need to look elsewhere. Further, it totally makes the machine a ‘disposable’ device for those that buy it today. Once they run out of space, for example, a year later, the only option is to get rid of the machine, and hope there is a new machine with more storage available. That’s nuts!
There is no excuse for Apple making storage non-upgradable (other than greed or gross incompetence). They put an upgradeable SSD slot in the non-Touchbar, entry-level MacBook Pro. So whatever marginal idiot reason they trot out for not including it on Touchbar models is total BS. Talk to the hand; I don’t give a $#*%. The machine’s battery or thinness would not have been compromised in any serious way with the inclusion of the slot, again, as evinced by the entry level model.
This storage lock-in has no business on any machine with a “Pro” moniker. It just further shows how heinously out of touch Apple has become with its core professional and creative user base. Let’s pray that Apple has woken up, and the next revision of its MacBook Pro will avoid this critical mistake. Otherwise, Apple will continue to bleed its pro users to companies that are not tone deaf to their needs.
Well for one, I’m already using 1.5TB of data on my laptop.
How can someone run out of 2TB of storage in a “single year” I have a 256 GB macbook 2016 and I haven’t run out of storage. I HAVE 226 GBS LEFT! I don’t think we should be using notebooks for our everyday “pro” users. If you want to be able to get to upgrade storage and RAM, GET A DESKTOP!.
I’m glad 2TB is enough for you, but not for me. I just ran out of space on my 2TB SSD, and now this 2016 machine is a boat anchor. I now have to get a 4tb drive for my ancient 2011 MBP which can easily accommodate a 4tb SSD.
That external drives work for your work case, doesn’t mean it works for all other pros.
Gentlemen, i think this MBP 2016/2017 is made with bunch of flaws… 1. Many users are experiencing graphic failures 2. Many are also experiencing SSD failures Sadly a friend who lives in West Africa bought one and within two months, the SSD failed. Now being non-replaceable, only option is to send back to the store he bought it from in Carlifornia, USA. bummer. Apple behave like witch-crafts taking away the HDMI, USB A, or Ethernet Port. How do you call a PC without the above port? (Tablet) How can you call a PC without these ports a PRO? I’m never… Read more »
I returned mine. I have two Retinas 15″ pre crap-bar. Not having a physical escape key and the loss of magsafe and the destruction of all ports in favor of the useless and too-few USB C was too much. Tim Cook is a crook and a loser compared to Steve Jobs.
@lee. I do not know of any studies, and I don’t think Apple breaks out numbers on individual models much less groups of buyers. As far as I know I’m the only one that’s done some investigation on this. I have been in the MacRumors Mac Pro forums for years and years and noticed that many of the die-hard mac pros were leaving. In 2 of my articles I cite to the threads where mac pros were leaving and you can see some excerpts in those articles from the threads or read through the threads yourself: https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/apples-failure-to-scale/page2 https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/the-new-mac-pro-is-a-failure/page3 There was… Read more »
Agreed John! And a sincere Thank You Mr. Kheit for having the courage to point it out and defend your position! The unexpectedly large number of complaints about the new models seem like background noise by comparison. Why? Tho not ideal, you can workaround most with a few dongles or extra power supply. But the soldered-in SSD is the only one that truly limits the usefulness & useful life of the machine! Cloud Storage isn’t a cure-all: I’m an engineer & programmer. Most of my customer sites are government, pharmaceutical, military, & health care. These generally aren’t supportive of Cloud… Read more »
Apple should release new Mac models every year, as done with iOS gadgets. Macs should have standard connectors allowing upgradable components, including SSD, RAM, CPU and GPU. And last but not least, Apple should not charge two to three times more for the very same component when compared to resellers like Amazon.
Can you give us any links to studies on that?
@mick, I need more than 1TB because I do more than work with GIFs. I did give you one. Video professionals, when they composite video they work on while traveling will frequently need well over 1TB of video, and the more storage they have, the better. Non local storage tends to be too slow, or counter to the purpose of a small svelte laptop. Again, your arguments of 1TB should be enough for anyone not only fly in the fact of reality for many creative professionals, they go down in the pantheon of super great ideologies like ‘640k should be… Read more »
Apple has taken the closed system to a perverted level. Hard drives, ram and video cards should be expandable. By forcing one to only be able to upgrade at the time of purchase with only Apple making the upgrade is not just greedy it will prove fatal for Apple. Cook has damaged Apple’s integrity with some decisions that Jobs would have had nothing but contempt for. El Captain and Sierra show that Apple is ending it’s relationship with the customer base that has been loyal from day one. Cook’s team has degraded the hardware, can’t release any OS on any… Read more »
I am genuinely interested in what kind of work you do that requires you to keep that much with you when you are disconnected. Mick that was the basis for my comment about identifying ourselves as what professional field. Someone writing literature is going to have different portable computing needs than someone working in video. Even then I would rather do extensive work at a desktop than at “portable location” even if I had a portable hooked to an external monitor and keyboard. I used to work in graphic arts, these days I mostly yell at the kids on my… Read more »
Then scurry off to buy your big professional Windows laptops with lots of local storage then. You never answered why you need so much storage on a portable device. I’m all ears. What special projects are you working on that you need to store more than 1Tb LOCALLY? Do you not have a corporate SAN? Can you not afford a NAS box? Is your broadband slow and flakey? Do you do your remote work in a McDonalds? I am genuinely interested in what kind of work you do that requires you to keep that much with you when you are… Read more »
Aside from their apparel, Steve Jobs and Tim Cook couldn’t be less polar opposites of each other. From what I’ve heard about Steve Jobs, he was a major jerk towards his employees, but man, was he a visionary! Tim Cook I have heard is super nice to his employees, but boy howdy, does he stink as a businessman! The only reason that could possibly explain why he hasn’t been ousted yet by the shareholders is because he *is* the majority shareholder. Between the removal of the SD card port on the latest MBP iterations, the non-removable SSDs on the higher… Read more »
Lee. True, financially they are doing great. And if the Pros left, I think it would affect probably less than 1% of their revenue, if that…at least initially. However, I think it’s good to remember that John Scully had record revenues in the years after firing Steve Jobs. Scully was coasting off Steve Job’s work before the bottom fell out and the company almost went under. Just because the financials today are good, doesn’t mean they will be good in another 5-10 years. And I guarantee you, if a sizable number of creative/pro’s leave, they will have an outsized impact… Read more »
It isn’t like Apple is struggling financially with the products that they are offering. if the “professionals” left how much would hurt Apple’s bottom line.
“Go buy a PC or keep your outdated gripes to yourself.” And that is exactly what many long term mac users have done or are considering doing and many of them are speaking out in the hope Apple will hear them somehow from with their arrogance vacuum! You and Apple can spin it however you like, modular offers more options than a closed design, more options will suit the needs of more people which means more sales. Apple has forgotten their own mantra ‘form follows function’ and now its ‘form over function’. Or rather ‘Profits over function’ which given Tim… Read more »
Professionals come in a number of models and configurations. It would help if when referring to yourself if you would say writer, illustrator, video editor, journalist, photographer, or whatever.
I’m sure you and your “colleagues” are busy making very very high quality and sassy gifs, but those creative that work with more than that, might need a bit more storage for say their video needs.
You know mick, if Apple had read this article:
https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/the-new-mac-pro-is-a-failure
They might have avoided the embarrassment of this:
https://www.macrumors.com/2017/04/06/mac-pro-interview-full-transcript/
Enjoy your 1TB drive, who could ever want more than that, or 640K 🙄 Bill Gates approves.
I can’t believe all of those dinosaurs on here, including the author, complaining about a lack of storage on their portable devices. Seriously? What kind of professional user works permanently disconnected? All of those creative content pros that sit in the park working on 15Tb project files – those ones? What a load of rubbish. Just because you joined the industry long before cloud storage, wireless networks, or even wired networks were around, doesn’t mean that vendors should support your old habits. Keeping all your files on a portable device is the most ridiculous concept in 2017 – not to… Read more »