Shahid Kamal Ahmad has a Few Things to Say about his MacBook Pro

Shahid Kamal Ahmad — best known for his work at Sony’s PlayStation division, has a few words to say about his MacBook Pro in his post titled, “MacBook Pro? No“.

Let me count the way my latest MacBook Pro is not suitable for professional use, but before I do that, you should know that I’ve been buying and recommending Macs since 2001. I’ve spent a fortune on them. I love them, but I only like my latest MacBook Pro (a 2016 model with the Radeon Pro 460). I write this with a heavy heart and a malfunctioning keyboard.  This is a story about unrequited hardware love.

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You know that a design has failed when you’re forced into using it. The Touch Bar is Apple’s Clippy. An embarrassment.

I currently use a Mid-2011 iMac as my desktop computer and a Mid-2013 MacBook Air as my notebook. Both these Macs are now old, slow and I’m looking to replace them with better & faster Macs. The iMac will probably be replaced by a 27-inch 5K iMac, largely because I cannot afford the iMac Pro at ₹4,15,000 here in India. The MacBook Air on the other hand, or just in general for that matter, won’t be replaced with another notebook — at least in the near future, for one very simple reason.

Apple does not currently make a better & faster notebook computer.

The current MacBook Pro lineup raises more questions than it solves, and Shahid outlines many of them perfectly. I’d have loved to replace both my Macs with a single MacBook Pro machine, but today’s lineup is anything but a “Pro”.

There are so many incredible things that Apple brought to the table in the past years, but decided to throw them away for no good reason.

  • I want a MacBook Pro that’s actually powerful.
  • I want a MacBook Pro with a keyboard keys that doesn’t stop working in a few months.
  • I want a MacBook Pro with a decent number of ports
  • I want a MacBook Pro without a Touch Bar — or at least one where the Touch Bar doesn’t take away functionality. Move it to the bottom of the screen if you want to.
  • I want a MacBook Pro where I can upgrade the default RAM. Apple doesn’t offer BTO options in India.
  • I want a charger with an indicator light at the end to tell me the charging status.
  • Heck, I want a charger that ships with a goddamn cable.

I absolutely loved my 2008-era 15-inch MacBook Pro and I’d love to use a MacBook Pro as my primary machine, but as it stands today, I just can’t.

January 11, 2018 ✚ Permalink

Some Thoughts on Apple’s WWDC 2017 Announcements

Apple WWDC 2017

At its annual Worldwide Developers Conference 2017 this week, Apple delivered a jam-packed keynote address on Monday. As has been tradition over the last few years, a bunch of us Apple enthusiasts gathered at the iXyr Media HQ to watch the keynote together. Unlike the last few keynotes, the WWDC 2017 keynote address lasted almost 2.5 hours, and the company had so much to talk about. They even completely skipped talking about their sales and growth, and their tvOS platform barely got 2 minutes on stage, only so that Tim Cook could mention that the Amazon Prime Video app is finally coming to Apple TV later this year.

Over the next 140 minutes or so, Tim Cook and other Apple executives took the audience through an incredible journey, in what is touted at one of the best Keynotes that Apple has ever delivered, largely for the sheet number of announcements that the company had to make.

Here is a list of everything major Apple announced at WWDC 2017 and some thoughts on the announcements:

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June 8, 2017 ✚ Permalink