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Portables (Apple) Apple

Apple Announces New 13-inch MacBook Pro With Magic Keyboard (theverge.com) 114

Posted by msmash from the new-gadget-alert dept.
Sooner than expected, Apple has announced a new 13-inch MacBook Pro with a Magic Keyboard. It features optional Intel 10th Gen processors and starts at $1,299. In one sense, it is a minor spec-bump upgrade for the existing lineup of 13-inch MacBook Pros. But it also represents the end of an era: Apple no longer sells any new laptops with the much-maligned butterfly keyboard mechanism. From a report: Apple has moved relatively quickly to cycle out the butterfly keyboard from its lineup. The 16-inch MacBook Pro was announced in November 2019, followed by a refreshed MacBook Air with Magic Keyboard this past March. In the span of six months, Apple has completely swapped out its entire laptop lineup with models that use better scissor-switch keyboards. Compare that to the five years it spent trying to make the butterfly keyboard mechanism work since the 2015 MacBook (now discontinued). As with the last MacBook Pro, Apple is sticking with Thunderbolt 3 / USB-C connectors, two or four of them in total (plus a headphone jack). The Touch Bar also remains for better or worse, alongside a Touch ID fingerprint sensor and -- praise be -- a real, physical Esc key. The RAM can be upgraded to 32GB and the storage can be specced all the way up to 4TB. Apple says that 10th Gen Intel processors have a turbo boost up to 4.1Ghz and that the new Intel Iris graphics support the Pro Display XDR at full 6K resolution.
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Apple Announces New 13-inch MacBook Pro With Magic Keyboard More

Apple Announces New 13-inch MacBook Pro With Magic Keyboard

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  • Testing a Corporation's Ego (Score:4, Insightful)

    by BrendaEM ( 871664 ) on Monday May 04, 2020 @10:21AM (#60020520) Homepage
    Apple's butterfly keyboard was a study to see how long a company needs to admit a mistake. Let's watch how long the Touch-Bar lasts. When you have some spare time, look at the general look of the Apple keyboards, and then the Apollo DSKY : )

    • Re:Testing a Corporation's Ego (Score:4, Interesting)

      by MikeDataLink ( 536925 ) on Monday May 04, 2020 @10:34AM (#60020558) Homepage Journal

      Let's watch how long the Touch-Bar lasts.

      Now that they've added a physical escape key back, I really like the Touchbar.

      • I really wish that the new Macbook Pro had physical volume controllers. The touchbar volume slider looks cool, but takes longer to adjust.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by berj ( 754323 )

      I type all day every day from a typing experience standpoint I never had a problem with the butterfly keys. I really like the super low travel. I did have some problems with keycaps that came loose but I got that fixed under warrantee very quickly. If the new keyboard gives me the same feel but with a bit more durability then I've got no problem. The reliability issues they had with the butterflies was definitely a black mark on their reputation. But this laptop has served me well for 4 years. As a near

      • If you are the type that never has your laptop around pets or food than the butterfly keyboard is ok I'm sure. Personally unless I was to use a vacuum on the keyboard every time I used it, I get a year and a half lifetime out of it.

        I've be interesting in knowing exactly what you use the touchbar for that you find you find you are more productive with it. Volume adjustments take one click to expose the slider and then a slide to adjust the slider; which is much more difficult than just pressing the volum

        • Why would I have pets around when I'm not hungry?

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by berj ( 754323 )

          No pets or kids for me.. but I'm not super shy about eating around my keyboard. Every now and again something will get under a key (though it's more rare than earlier ones which had larger gaps) it's not too hard to dislodge it with an air can.

          Volume (and brightness0 adjustments are so much nicer wit the touchbar.. just tap and drag.. no multiple taps on multiple keys to increase and decrease the volume. Just tap and drag.. that's it. Very simple to get where I want. I can also configure what is on the to

          • I don't see how tapping on a 'I want to change the volume button' and then a 'this is the level of volume I want' slider then closing out of the slider is in any way quicker than a real key assigned to volume up or down.

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by berj ( 754323 )

              I don't see how tapping on a 'I want to change the volume button' and then a 'this is the level of volume I want' slider then closing out of the slider is in any way quicker than a real key assigned to volume up or down.

              That's not how it works (or at least not how it needs to work)

              Only one tap:

              Tap (and hold), then drag, then let go.

              That's it. All one movement. No extra taps needed.

              • Mine has never worked that way.... that's kind of my point, with the touch bar there is no standard way for things to work. I knew where each function key was without looking down at the keyboard. With the touch strip not only are the function keys hidden but the functions that are there change in the way they work all the time depending on what you have open.

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by berj ( 754323 )

                  I'm not sure how that can be.. it's a core feature of the touch bar and has been from, as far as I know, the beginning. Or at least since late 2016 when this video was released:

                  https://youtu.be/aU2eqKO-Fz4?t... [youtu.be]

                  The whole point is to have the touchbar be context sensitive.

                  BUT.. the right hand side of the touchbar (called the control strip) is constant.. it never changes unless you explicitly do so. Only the middle part (the app controls) changes from app to app.

                  ALSO.. you don't have to use it that way. Yo

                  • Drink more kool aid, that's all I have to say. Clearly you use your mac for very different things than I do.
                  • I just rebooted my macbook to the empty desktop. When it starts up, I see a brightness, volume, mute, and siri button on the right of the touch bar. To adjust the volume I need to:
                    1. Press the volume button
                    2. Move to the middle of the touch bar to adjust the volume slider
                    3. Close the volume slider

                    I'm not sure how your touch bar could be set up to show the volume slider all the time, as it takes up 1/3 of the entire slider.

                    When there was a volume button you just had to tap it three times.

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by berj ( 754323 )

                      I don't have my volume slider set to show up all the time.. where are you getting that?. Are you reading what I wrote? Did you watch the video I linked? It's even cued up to the right spot.

                      Let me try again.

                      1) press and hold on the volume button.. the volume slider will appear
                      2) slide your finger back and forth (without ever lifting it off).. the volume will go up and down
                      3) lift your finger off.. the volume slider will disappear after a second

                      That's it. no more no less. This is how all touchbars work out

                    • You're right that works..... which leads me to another irk I have with Apple. They don't give any indication that the button has that functionality. Why not just put arrows on each icon so you know you can slide them?

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by berj ( 754323 )

                      Not everything can be discoverable in a modern OS. Heck.. the I'm not sure that any extra arrows in the icon would tell you that hold and drag would work out of the blue. I just read the MacOS User's Guide and it's laid out quite clearly.. though it's not like there are bright neon arrows pointing at it:

                      https://support.apple.com/en-c... [apple.com]

                      There's even another mode that I didn't know about: you can just flick left and right on the button without holding down and it will volume up/down one step.

                      It is what it i

                    • "Not everything can be discoverable in a modern OS"

                      Yet no one I know has these issues using Windows, or even Gnome and KDE. An OS that is written for anyone to use shouldn't require documentation to use it.

                      This also brings to bear my irk that I have to press the option key to see the menu items for the option key. That's called obfuscation and it has no place in a UI.

                    • Also, "Not everything can be discoverable in a modern OS" isn't indicating a problem in older OSes. It's underscoring a problem with modern design, that visuals are too often made more important than functionality.

                • It actually does work that way. I didn't think it did until I just tried it. You really can just tap the volume and start dragging and it adjusts the "thumb" on the volume "slider" proportionally to how much you move your finger.

                  I hate the touchbar a little less now.

                  • Yes I realized that too. I don't understand why Macos doesn't give any indication that it can be used this way. It just looks like a plain button.

        • I think I've got the one keyboard that came off the assembly line that works.

          2017 MacBook Pro, never been in the shop for the keyboard, been around my two dogs it's whole life, and even in the room exposed to wallboard mud dust from a project I did in my office without thinking about covering it up. Still works perfectly.

          Of course now that I've posted this, I'll have half the keyboard fail on me in the next 72 hours, because that's how life works.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by slazzy ( 864185 )
        Strange you haven't had more issues, in my office the average is 3 keyboard replacements per year on the butterfly.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by berj ( 754323 )

          I'm not denying that the problem exists.. it most certainly does. Just that none of them happened to me and *regardless* of the durability problems I rather like the low travel butterfly switches. If durability wasn't an issue I would have no problem using this keyboard until the end of time.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Misagon ( 1135 )

      They have put the physical Escape key back, to the left of the Touch Bar.

      They have also halved the size of the left and right arrow keys, to somewhat resemble the pre-2015 keyboards. Those keys are still not halved on the desktop "Magic" keyboard. The new keys are slimmer and wider than the old half-size keys though, so they are still not as good.

      That's three admissions of mistakes in one keyboard.

      • They have put the physical Escape key back, to the left of the Touch Bar.

        They have also halved the size of the left and right arrow keys, to somewhat resemble the pre-2015 keyboards. Those keys are still not halved on the desktop "Magic" keyboard. The new keys are slimmer and wider than the old half-size keys though, so they are still not as good.

        That's three admissions of mistakes in one keyboard.

        Would you rather they act like Microsoft; who, like our Dear Leader, never admits a mistake?

    • The butterfly keyboard really was a huge mistake from beginning to end, and with this update, I believe they may have finally eliminated the last of them from their lineup. I don't know what took them so long, whether it was hubris, manufacturing contracts, a misguided belief that they made the best design choice, or some other engineering difficulty, but I am very glad that era is behind us. The few times I tried typing on butterfly keyboards, they were incredibly displeasing to use, and I didn't even have

      • I don't know what took them so long, whether it was hubris, manufacturing contracts, a misguided belief that they made the best design choice, or some other engineering difficulty, but I am very glad that era is behind us.

        The butterfly keyboard had an entire lifespan of less than 3 years. Considering product design lifecycles, the fact that they pushed-out at least 4 versions (3 butterfly, 1 scissor) in that amount of time, each one incrementally better than the last, is actually pretty responsive by their mechanical R&D teams. There was quite a lot of engineering, prototyping, and testing that went on during that time period; keeping in mind that it takes far longer to iterate a physical/mechanical design than it does a

    • But I like the touch bar!

      Granted, it is severely limited by Apple's golden cage, and somwhat by its hardware design... But I always wished companies would sell small touch screen displays that are as wide as the main display and only one to four inches high, that go between the keyboard and display, so you could put stuff like the task bar, tabs and toolbars in there.

      • But I like the touch bar!

        Granted, it is severely limited by Apple's golden cage, and somwhat by its hardware design... But I always wished companies would sell small touch screen displays that are as wide as the main display and only one to four inches high, that go between the keyboard and display, so you could put stuff like the task bar, tabs and toolbars in there.

        You do realize, of course, that there are some very nice Utilities for the Touch Bar. Here are some:

        https://www.digitaltrends.com/... [digitaltrends.com]

    • Apple's butterfly keyboard was a study to see how long a company needs to admit a mistake. Let's watch how long the Touch-Bar lasts. When you have some spare time, look at the general look of the Apple keyboards, and then the Apollo DSKY : )

      At least they do actually listen. Unlike Microsoft, who just barrel through one mistaken initiative after another, never actually fixing anything.

      • It took Apple almost THREE YEARS and THREE GENERATIONS of butterfly keyboards before going back to the proven scissor-switch keyboards.

        And all of that bullshit for what? Making their laptops one or two millimetres thinner? Laptops have been more than thin enough for at least half a decade now.

        The butterfly keyboard switches was a neat idea that should have stayed a lab prototype.

    • Considering the thing was very clearly an attempt at trying to differentiate an otherwise pretty humdrum laptop after pretty much everyone started selling machines with a very similar milled aluminium construction (including the glued-in battery), high-density display and scissor switch keyboard I wouldn't count on it going away any time soon. Apple being Apple they absolutely do need there to be something special about their devices to justify the stupidly high prices they're asking of them.

      Don't get me

  • Base and middle trim 13" MacBook Pro still stuck on 8th gen Intel processors.

    To borrow a word from CmdrTaco: Lame

    • If I were buying a Mac today, I'd definitely stick with the MacBook Air. The Pro used offer the advantage of lots of different available ports, which is no longer the case. The CPU isn't a big differentiator anymore; the display is good either way; plus you get actual function keys with the Air. You save money and get a lighter laptop.

  • Finally, I can upgrade my 2012 MacBook Pro. I actually have two of them and they still work just as well as (actually better than) they did 8 years ago. I hope the new one will be as good an investment.
    • This weekend I just realized that my MBP is 7 years old. Poking around in some power management settings and saw a flag that the battery was down to 60% capacity and should be replaced.

      It still does everything just fine and I don't expect to replace it any time soon.

    • I hope the new one will be as good an investment.

      I guess that depends on what they mean by the "RAM can be upgraded to 32GB". Does this mean that you can upgrade the RAM yourself or are they still soldering everything to the motherboard? I have my doubts that they reversed course on soldering the RAM. Either way, it doesn't seem like the storage is upgradeable, so you better choose a pretty big option if you hope to get 8 years out of it like you did with the 2012 Macbook Pro. Also, you'd better max o

  • A regular keyboard for everyone else is a magic keyboard for Apple users, got it!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by waspleg ( 316038 )

      Don't forget the exorbitant brand mark up.

    • It's fascinating to watch Apple. It's almost as if they're evolving in reverse, taking the greatest care and pains to specifically and individually piss and shit on everything that's ever worked well.

      It's a brilliant plan, really.

  • First they forced a keyboard design that nobody asked for on all of their laptops Then, when people expressed that they hated it and it became apparent that it had major design flaws, they continued to ram it down everyone's throats for several years. Finally, they invented a new "magical" keyboard which simply uses pretty much the same tech they had before they fucked it all up and everyone is amazed. Damn, it must be good to be Apple!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Nidi62 ( 1525137 )

      First they forced a keyboard design that nobody asked for on all of their laptops Then, when people expressed that they hated it and it became apparent that it had major design flaws, they continued to ram it down everyone's throats for several years. Finally, they invented a new "magical" keyboard which simply uses pretty much the same tech they had before they fucked it all up and everyone is amazed. Damn, it must be good to be Apple!

      They New Coked it?

  • ...Compare that to the five years it spent trying to make the butterfly keyboard mechanism work since the 2015 MacBook (now discontinued).... --- Makes me happy that I stopped buying Apple computers when I began to see the planned obsolescence of Apple products. But at least I wasn't suckered into buying a defective product. "...five years it spent trying to make the butterfly keyboard mechanism work..." Yikes! and Apple continued to sell it during that time frame!

  • Wait, that almost sounds reasonable... (Score:3)

    by BAReFO0t ( 6240524 ) on Monday May 04, 2020 @11:05AM (#60020684)

    Apart from the price and Intel.CPU of course.

    Has theire been a change in power recently?

    • Has theire been a change in power recently?

      Yes, John Ive [wikipedia.org] left.

      Since then the MacBook Pro also priorities RAM over being thin and got a physical Esc key.

  • I refuse to buy a laptop (at least one for my personal use for work) that does not have Home, End, and Page Up & Down keys. Navigating and editing source code already requires too much chording for acceptable binding of those operations to yet more keypresses. For example I regularly use CTRL+SHIFT+Home or CTRL+SHIFT+End to select from the cursor to the start or end of the document. I use CTRL+UP and CTRL+DOWN to scroll up and down a line at a time when viewing source (which is not the same as actual

    • I'm sure Apple will miss you. For the rest of us, fn + <arrow> works just fine.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by berj ( 754323 )

      Luckily my chosen source editor (Vim) handles all of this functionality without even *needing* cursor keys. Having to take my hands off the home row is substandard to me.

      But for the traditional sorts of keys.. there's so much more functionality than what you describe that it needs to have chording anyways so I don't mind:

      pageup - fn up
      pagedown - fn down
      home - fn left
      end - fn right

      So far so good.

      But what if you want your edit point at the top of the document? cmd-up
      bottom cmd-left
      start of line cmd-left
      end o

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Megane ( 129182 )
      Just add the fn key to the arrow keys to change them to Home/PgUp/PgDn/End. And the fn key is next to both ctrl and shift, so it's not like your fingers need to be elsewhere. Are you seriously complaining that you have to press 4 keys at a time instead of 3? Or did you lose a finger from your left hand in an industrial accident?

    • Apple has supported some "emacs" style keyboard shortcuts in MacOS since it was known as OpenStep - ctrl+a is the same as a home key, ctrl+v same as end key.

      More info: https://jblevins.org/log/kbd [jblevins.org]

  • Haters gonna hate (Score:5, Interesting)

    by blindseer ( 891256 ) <blindseer.earthlink@net> on Monday May 04, 2020 @11:12AM (#60020712)

    This looks to be a relatively unremarkable update to the Macbook product line. That doesn't mean that there won't be Apple haters that will come out to nitpick on something as a reason to not buy it, or express frustration on why anyone else would buy it.

    Here's an idea, if you don't like it then don't buy it. If you are "forced" to use Apple products because they are provided to you where you work then it sucks to be you.

    What's going to be the complaint this time? Or is everyone just going to bring out the same old same old and complain about the use of USB-C and Thunderbolt? Face it, this is the trend, your future will be "dongle hell". Or, you can realize that this is a hell you create in your mind. Put the dongle on the cable, put the cable in your laptop bag, and pretend in your mind that the dongle and cable are a single entity. When you need to plug something in it's finding the appropriate cable in your bag, plug the USB-C end into your laptop and the other end into whatever it is you wanted to connect.

    If there is anything remarkable about this then by my estimation it would be that computers have matured enough that a new laptop of today shares so much with a laptop from nearly 15 years ago. If well maintained a first generation MacBook Pro would not look out of place. There would be little doubt that it is an older model but placing an exact age on it would be difficult. USB-A ports would be recognizable, as would the Ethernet port. The sound in and out ports would be recognized too, but some my find it curious that there are separate in and out instead of a combined in/out port. DVI and FireWire might be odd until shown a DVI to HDMI cable and a FireWire drive.

    We just aren't seeing the big leaps in technology like we did years ago. Instead of talking about gigahertz and gigabytes the most remarkable aspects of new laptops is the kinds of keys on the keyboard.

    • You may be the type of person who is able to keep every dongle with them at all times and know where they are. Some people require a great deal of effort to be prepared in this way and don't want to be slaves to their devices. Sure, you don't have to use a mac.... until you need to develop in ios or macos. My choice was use a mac or be fired for not being able to perform part of my job. Now is my job worth freeing myself from Macos? That's a close one...

      • You may be the type of person who is able to keep every dongle with them at all times and know where they are.

        What "type of person" would that be? Could it be the kind of person that is an adult?

        Some people require a great deal of effort to be prepared in this way and don't want to be slaves to their devices.

        I assume that you are like most people that will on occasion leave your domicile and drive somewhere. This requires having a key to lock your door and another to start your car. Is the need to keep track of your keys "being a slave to your devices" too?

        Sure, you don't have to use a mac.... until you need to develop in ios or macos. My choice was use a mac or be fired for not being able to perform part of my job. Now is my job worth freeing myself from Macos? That's a close one...

        This is not unique to Apple devices. Laptops have needed cables and adapters from the very beginning. There were at least three different kinds of parallel ports in comm

        • Well I can see that you are perfect. Clearly there is no reason to refute you. I don't need my life more complicated than it has to be, not going to forgive a company for willingly making it that way.

      • Yeah, god forbid that you put a tiny little adapter into the bag that you already use for carrying the laptop and it's battery charger. WHAT A BURDEN TO HAVE THAT EXTRA 5 GRAMS OF PLASTIC IN MY BAG.

        You really will complain about anything and everything won't you? Feel free to go back to the days of PCMCIA where you had to have a card AND a dongle to do what you can just do with either nothing (bluetooth, wifi) or a small USB-C dongle today. Oh, and lots of things you could NEVER do with PCMCIA, such as 1 [akitio.com]

    • This is matured? Needing special organizational skills to use?

      My, my.

    • It seems to have at least 4 USB-C ports, so at least I don't see problem with hooking up your favourite dongles.

      • It seems to have at least 4 USB-C ports, so at least I don't see problem with hooking up your favourite dongles.

        Of course this is not a problem.

        I'm not going to claim that four ports will be enough for everyone but I've found that four would fit most cases for me. I will typically setup my laptop with power, a mouse, a network connection, and then with four ports I'd still have a port free to plug in a flash drive or display or whatever. My current MacBook Pro has only two USB-C ports so in case I need more than power and a mouse I pack a hub.

        What the haters keep bringing up is the need for any dongles. As if this

        • The one I have never reconciled is that literally everyone carries their laptop in a bag of some kind, with the big power brick (some much bigger than others). Why is adding a 5 gram USB-A to USB-C adapter such a hardship when you are already carrying kilograms of shit in your bag?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by martinX ( 672498 )

        Only the top end ones have 4 USB-C ports. The others have 2, which is a piss-poor effort really.

        • And they're so closely spaced that you'll need adapters and careful jiggering.

          And the damn thing will only charge fast enough to keep it turned on from the top left port. So you have only have 1 or 3 ports, but you can't actually use them because of spacing, so you wind up with 0 or 1 usable port.

          • The spacing is far worse on my Dell XPS 15, which has all the ports everyone is clamoring about, but you can only use half of them at a time because the designers didn't think about cables that have strain relief connectors on them. I seriously cannot use the HDMI and USB-A port on the left side of the machine at the same time, and it only has a single USB-C / Thunderbolt 3 port on it. Also on the left.

            But we don't hear anywhere close to the bitch howl piss and moan about Dell that we do about Apple. Why

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by martinX ( 672498 )

      Well, my complaint is that Apple didn't take the opportunity to increase the screen size to 14" keeping the same or similar chassis size and decrease the bezel width, as they did moving from 15" to 16" recently. That alone would have convinced me to move from my 2013 15" MBP.

      And while we're talking about dongles and adapters, the 2013 MBP has stacks of real ports which are incredibly handy. SDXC, HDMI, 2 Thunderbolt 2 ports and 2 USB3 ports, and the awesome Magsafe 2 power port. Given that the chassis hasn'

      • So I don't hate the new 13" MBP, but there's nothing compelling enough in it to move me from my 2013 15" MBP. Given the 7 year difference, that speaks volumes.

        You are proving my points. First is that we are seeing computing technology reach a level of maturity that we are less concerned about the actual computing power and more about things like the quality of the keyboard. You complain about the size of the screen bezel and other relatively trivial matters that don't affect the utility of the computer much. I have little doubt that many people will find all kinds of reasons to not buy a new computer. Chief among them is that we aren't seeing the large leaps

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by martinX ( 672498 )

          The proof of computer power isn't as obvious for some as it is for others.The 2013 15" MBP is a very capable machine, but I'm not going to be able to throw HEVC at it. The new ones handle HEVC quite capably, but things like this don't show up as "pure power". If we were talking desktops with PCI slots, we wouldn't be talking at all because I would buy a graphics card that I could pop in and be done with it. Laptops are a different beast, though.

          Overall, however, I have no overwhelming need to replace my old

  • Make a product that sucks, keep at it when everybody hates it, because, after all, you're Apple and you are always right (New Coke lasted less than 3 months), then come up something more like what you had before and call it "Magic". You know, "Magic" as in "it actually works".
    Another brave* move from Apple!
    They could have surprised us with some fast Ryzen CPUs, but I guess a functional keyboard is enough for now ;)

    *As in Brave Sir Robin

    • Well, you have to give it to them that the last two or three iterations of the bad keyboard wasn't too bad...
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

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