New Macbook Pro
Just watching the Apple presentation for the new Macbook Pro. They just had a demo of DJ Pro using the new touch bar. I think the most embarrassing Apple demo ever, lol.
In the market for a new laptop… I’m leaning towards the non-touchbar edition, but I can see the touchbar being pretty sweet for music production if Ableton integrates it.. but I have a Push anyways.
just make the whole display touchscreen ffs lol
I had to use program touchscreen kiosks daily for 5 years, and they are totally wrong for 90% of tasks the way software is currently written. Vertically mounted touch screens are a real carpal tunnel problem waiting to happen and then there is the fingerprints !
I genuinely see a whole lotta potential with the touch bar especially in mouse intensive apps e.g. Photoshop, Logic …
IMHO it cool would it be to be able to see all your VU’s instantly. Scroll across your channels strips in logic. Select one the channel and be able to adjust the parameters, add tracks and change / demo instruments play drums, keyboards, select arpeggios and change the timing without ever needing to use a mouse, trackpad, controller or 3 key shortcuts whatsoever.
For document editing you could potentially save each block of of text or images as a touch areas across them and copy / paste to re-arrange them by drag and drop on the touchscreen.
In spreadsheets all your formulas could be selected across the touch bar, you could swap between sheets on one click.
Your system clipboard could contain multitudes of regularly used items that could be copied and pasted between applications.
In short though it could give you back literally all the real estate thats currently taken up by on screen mouse menus. In the case of logic you could in theory gain over 100px on the top of the screen currently being used as a control bar whilst still retaining all the functionality without actually hiding it.
Of course we’ll have to wait and see how exactly its implemented by software companies and I for one really hope they bring out a standalone keyboard with the touch bar implemented
- This is gonna be a learning curve for everyone and it will all depend on the execution.
The lack of magsafe and card reader is what bugs me the most. Losing those just to make them a few mm slimmer is a big step back in my opinion but that’s just the path they are going, at least it still has a headphone jack…
Another interesting design change is that the illuminated Apple logo on the lid is gone. Lit apples in the booth will be slowly fading away, be it for the drop of this or people switching back to PCs so they can use a bloody thumb drive without a dongle.
Lots of these on the market currently and guessing lots more to arrive 
USB-C is going to become the new standard and Apple are not generally known taking it slow when it comes to dropping old ones even if peripheral manufacturers haven’t caught up yet
Will really miss the glowing Apple though
Dropping magsafe - ugh 
its saved my ass numerous times and lack of it cost me $1000 (iBook Toilet seat)
Why did they take out easily the best thing ever.
I for one am excited for a dongle octopus that has just about every connector possible on it
Wonder if it might be a patent issue ? Or maybe there was no other way to utilize every port for power input, who knows
Much neater than an octopus
And then you have these one for everyday needs
To shave a few mm off the case ¯_(ツ
_/¯
Lol
Ridiculously expensive. I hope their sales flop big time. I will be looking at the previous model
Big PITA, on the upside this seems to be a move towards a universal laptop charging port and cable standard by most of the big names similar to micro USB on the majority of phones now.
Only one charger for everything outside the house.
Anyone remember how much of a pain in the ass it used to be trying to find someone with the correct charger for your phone that just ran out of juice (unless it was a Nokia!) and now someone at the party is bound to have a lightning and/or micro USB and probably a Powerbank as well
Apple phones and tablets however I can see sticking with USB-C > lightning cables for the sole reason of being a thinner connector inside the device.
With this development and the possible issues that it could cause in the producer/dj world, one has to wonder if we will see a number of people go back to PC’s instead towing the company line with Apple. I’m actually really interested in the razor blade stealths or the surface pros. Has anybody on here used either one of those for production/live purposes and if so, what do you think?
I’ve got a Surface Pro 4 for work and have installed Traktor on it to use my S5 for a few mobile gigs as I was one that rolled back to Mountain Lion and 2.6.8 due to Core Audio issues with my main MacBook Air. Worked fine and if Apple didn’t fix Core Audio with Sierra I was seriously considering using that as a main gig laptop, or getting one of those new Razer laptops.
Thinking of getting the basic MacBook Pro, it’s essentially an Air Pro … It’s got the processor and screen the Air should have got! I have no issues with 2 ports, I deal with that now anyhow. First port for whatever soundcard or mixer, other port for power and USB hub for midi/HID with a USB-C hub of some sort … Need to find the right one first though.
And here’s the MagSafe replacement …
SOmeone said touch screens are useless. I literally converted a tablet to a touch screen for traktor and use it on the regular… lol
touch strip is stupid.
$4699 NZD … what the actual fuck lol. Must be a high proportion of people with too much money and not enough brain cells eh.
Only thing this has on my rig is the quad core cpu, and the innovative touch strip
p.s mine cost about $2200 NZD all up with the SSD and 2gb Geforce.
This is so the perfect example of how the head of a company can lose touch with reality… All the executives are making hundreds of millions and didn’t go in a normal company for a long time, we need USB and we need MagSafe !! You realise they did this because it was the only way to elevate the price and nothing else, they just couldn’t justify a higher price with no significant changes, the shareholder must be happy…
And without noticing anyone, they put the price up for all older generation (yeah you heard well, in France you can have the same Macbook that you could have one month ago, but for 50€ more…)
I actually just bought a brand new MBP this weekend, but not this new version. this new version is spec’d better than mine, with more versatility, and costs less.
But my only qualm is that this new version, or being an early adopter in general, is that i refuse to pay to be a beta tester. Other than that, I am genuinely impressed with adopting a full USB-C standard. This completely goes against the MFI accessory strategy that Apple is currently perusing with its mobile phones.
I’m hoping the sales will plummet with this MBP as well, the update is not so bad, not being able to go with 32Gb Ram was silly move to save a little battery life, i personally don’t mind the new USB-C ports, but hate the idea of converting everything over but USB-c seems inevitable.
I’ve recently built a Hackintosh 6 core X99 monster with 32Gb of Ram that runs rings around and MBP for my music production needs, and i’ve learnt a thing or two about Hackintosh in general which is pretty cool
So if anything i’ll wait until Kaby Lake is released and get a low specced 13" MBP (they shouldn’t be called Pro IMO)
Personally I wouldn’t want the MBP to have touch screen and i also think the touch screen is pretty dumb for anything serious pro related, what i’d rather see is a small box without keyboard or screen that could interface with an ipad pro, sort of like the surface book and some how using both OSX for when the ipad pro is connected, being able to snap it off and run iOS for everything else, that way the upgrade cost would be minimal as you could replace either the ipad as the screens get better or if the ipad isn’t fast enough and you could also replace the “laptop box” part as the new chipsets get faster (i’d also make the Ram user replaceable and graphics cards as well (but Apple wuld never go this way)
I like the though of a modular approach with all of my tech things.
I’m also thinking of getting out of the Apple eco system now , because i think they are starting to lose their way . abit, but i haven’t used Windows since XP (i use it at work every day and kind hate it)
They’re saying it’s the biggest MBP pre-order numbers ever.
Also, you do realise the 16GB limitation is Intel’s fault, right?
And you can’t call the touch strip dumb because you haven’t used it yet, we only seen a small demo, it’s usefulness will be determined by how developers integrate it into their apps… I agree it has huge potential to be a pointless gimmick but I’d rather wait to try it before passing judgement.
I agree with some of the things said in this post.. removing stuff just to make it thinner and lighter is just stupid, the MagSafe was a great innovation.. other than that, in spite of the price, it’s a pretty decent, powerful laptop.
You can also blame Brexit for the price increase.
Well it should be faster, its a desktop workstation, and you are comparing it to a 3lb Notebook 
How many notebooks do you think they would sell with the 32gb ram vs 16gb configuration considering they’d be charging probably $500+ for the upgrade ? I’m sure they did the math.
A video professional will surely impressed by being able to download 4k content from 4 sources simultaneously at full bandwidth ? Theres not a single other notebook currently capable of doing that on the market!
Not every “Pro” needs 32gb of ram - in fact I’d say that in the grand scheme of things its probably less than a couple of percent of their pro customers will probably ever hit the 16gb mark and even then virtual memory access is going to be fast as hell with that Super Speedy SSD they’ve installed.
It’s not a workstation, never supposed to be despite its ability to be used as one for the vast majority. Its supposed machine you take on the road to throw something rough together on-site, transfer your files etc.. not to render a complete feature film or compose an entire movie score. Thats what workstations are for anyway.
As regards musicians playing live, well thats not gonna chew up 16gb of ram unless you are being really silly with your track and effects usage.
Could have transitioned by giving us a couple of USB 3 ports ? Sure. But by not doing it they have just forced the hand of peripheral manufactures to get their Sh1t together and provide cables with their equipment and/or provide USB-C interfaces faster than they probably planned. Something that was never going to happen with thunderbolt given the completely different connectors and (and expensive!) cables involved.
Apple don’t change up things unless they really need to, I’d say this was a major factor for ditching both USB and Magsafe. They can probably safely use this exact case layout for the next 3 years with only Speed bumps and refinements to the touchpad.
Magsafe is IMHO the greatest loss, and yet the ability to use a single charger to provide power for multiple devices may well be of greater benefit than a few broken laptops in the grand scheme of things.
I’m a Pro-User, mostly web-development, a side of production and image editing sitting here typing this on a 6 year old mid-specced dual core i5 iMac with 8gb of Ram and yet i’m un-hindered by the speed or lack of ram outside of 4k video (sure, I do need to freeze logic tracks occasionally).
[QUOTE]Personally I wouldn’t want the MBP to have touch screen and i also think the touch screen is pretty dumb for anything serious pro related, what i’d rather see is a small box without keyboard or screen that could interface with an ipad pro, sort of like the surface book and some how using both OSX for when the ipad pro is connected, being able to snap it off and run iOS for everything else, that way the upgrade cost would be minimal as you could replace either the ipad as the screens get better or if the ipad isn’t fast enough and you could also replace the “laptop box” part as the new chipsets get faster (i’d also make the Ram user replaceable and graphics cards as well (but Apple wuld never go this way)
[/QUOTE]
Touch screens don’t work for OS use, you are right - and the touch bar isn’t designed to be a touch screen or pad or whatever. The Touch bar is designed that you can do simple mouse tasks without taking your hands off the keyboard to move your mouse. Thus making it a more efficient workflow.
Why not a big touch pad you ask ? That would require you to make as many gestures as a mouse and move your hands even further away from your keyboard and your eyes further away from the screen. It would not improve things. It would just make it “different” - just like a vertically mounted touchscreen does.
If I can scroll the timeline of a movie or logic production without needing to use the trackpad - thats pretty dang cool. If I can insert a new track, choose an instrument or play some chords without needing to use up screen real-estate or a bundle of shortcut keys thats pretty cool too.
The potential for the touch bar is enormous, not just for “pro” apps but for basic stuff like for example select a font, changing its size adding an effect in a word document - it could cut down on keyboard to mouse movements by a factor of 6x and thats just one really simple gesture.
*just realized how freaking long this is haha