Apple’s October 18th event was short and revealed only 3 main products. The first product to be revealed was the new colorful HomePod mini’s, the next was the AirPods, and finally the MacBook Pro. Should we call it the NEW MacBook Pro or should we call it the MacBack Retro?
When Apple announced the new 16″ and 14″ MacBook Pro’s people were quite excited about the M1 Pro and M1 Max chips to allow for better & faster performance. The thing that threw some people off was the revival of a full keyboard and adding back the missing ports including an SDXC card slot. They even brought back the old MagSafe connector. What?
When the MacBook Pro’s rolled out that had Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) as their main connector they pitched it as versatility. 4 of the same port allowed the notebook to be thinner and you always knew all you needed was a USB-C to connect to your MacBook Pro. Now we are going backwards to the non Thunderbolt 3 design by adding back all the old ports, MagSafe, SDXC, HDMI, and also going back to full keyboard without Touch Bar.
The Touch Bar was also announced as innovative by providing an unlimited range of possible buttons in the top bar. The same reason iPhone’s don’t have physical buttons is because you can change the layout, controls, keyboard, and images to match the application. Now we are removing that and selling it as a feature upgrade to have a physical keyboard…What?
All in all the reception of the retro ports has been well received from people commenting about it on twitter. The real thing I think that has made people upset is why remove them in the first place? Was it just a mistake made by the engineering team? Did they plan to remove and add back to sell more MacBook’s? A lot of questions around that piece of it and I would hope that Apple will start thinking further down the road. I remember when Apple announced going to only have USB-C (Thunderbolt 3) ports and we were reminded of Flash, Floppy Disks, CD Drives, etc that Apple was always the trendsetter in removing. This is the first time they brought it back so it definitely isn’t sitting well with some.
The MacBook Pro performance upgrades, speakers, and display were all very well welcomed additions. The retro style is also welcomed but with questions.
If you didn’t get to see the Apple Event, we added the video below for you to watch:
I hope next year they bring back the Zip Disk. I remember when Apple made a huge investment in that. Let’s keep going Retro.
