Should Apple make the MacBook Pro thicker to solve its issues?

29 Comments

  • Milos - 5 years ago

    I hope that technology improved over past few years, so they can keep it slim but fix all the problems.

  • Michael A C - 5 years ago

    Basically bring back the 2012 MacBook Pro, but with better processor, video card, a better screen, and USBc along with the legacy ports too. And to make it perfect, a swappable battery.

  • Zeeshan - 5 years ago

    I voted for thin and thick models, the thick model should be customized-able. and thin model apple can do what they feel better for the majority of its customers.

  • Chris - 5 years ago

    They should keep making the Air for people who want lightweight and the Pro should focus on function. They should bring back the magnetic power cord and at least one USB 3 port for those of us who sometimes have to connect to older components. It took me 2 hours to find a work around for backing up an old drive that only has Cowie FireWire outputs, as it is literally impossible to connect it directly to the MBP.

    More flexibility us ALWAYS better

  • Dale Howard - 5 years ago

    The shareholders will see the light when Apple's back finally breaks under the load of it's arrogance.

  • Brian - 5 years ago

    they need to make their laptops thicker and most importantly fix that god-awful keyboard!!! More key travel and more contour on the keys! NO MORE FLAT CHICLET keyboards!!!!! Oh, and bring back the mag-safe power connector.

  • victor - 5 years ago

    I love my MODULAR macbook pro mid 2012. Since then, all new macbooks pro suck because they stop allowing "pro" users to freely access and upgrade their machine's hardware. For sure one reason for this is that they have been focusing on making it thinner. If my 2012 macbook breaks down and they havent release something fair for the macbook pro community, I'm moving forward with my life to windows or linux ( matebook pro from huawei looks nice).

    I want my macbook pro to have just enough thickness to be able to play with my hardware. But not to thick to not be able to move it around. after all, it is a laptop made for developers. Laptop meaning is not a damn desktop to just place it in one place.

  • Chris - 5 years ago

    I'm currently using a mid 2012 MacBook Pro. It doesn't have USB-C but it does have a plethora of other ports as well a an SD Card reader, and a dvd player. Some of the ports are actually not necessary and I certainly wouldn't hold my breath for a dvd or bluray, but why not? I don't fly. I don't need the thinnest, lightest laptop. When I travel for work it's in a VERY large pickup. If my laptop weighs 2lbs/4lbs...I don't really care. I like the dvd because if I'm in a rural area (read-no streaming) I can go to Redbox and watch a movie. And I don't have to carry around a dongle and all kinds of external peripherals. Make it a little bigger, include more stuff, faster processors, better battery life. Make the Air it's own separate category for crying out loud. Some people will buy both.

  • Gregorio - 5 years ago

    Apple has gone totally overboard with their form over function. I just recently had to have a new motherboard in my two year old iMac that cost me $635. It was bad enough that the motherboard would fail in just two years, but to illustrate just how unrepairable their products are now, even Apple was unable to effect the repair without breaking the screen in the process. Even though they replaced it at no cost, it's absolutely ridiculous that they can't put their computers together with screws to facilitate the inevitable repairs that come with their reliance on shoddy components.

  • HowardS - 5 years ago

    Apple's best laptop was the 1998 Wall Street 2 PowerBook. Easy to upgrade, swappable devices, good screen, not too heavy. What I want now is more like that, less like my 2016 system which requires an external keyboard and trackball. Too much design, not enough function, Apple!

  • Davine - 5 years ago

    I have always been a PC person through and through. My husband swore how wonderful Apple and Mac were. He surprised me with a Mac Pro. It was a $2300 joke on us. It broke and had to be repaired less than 4 month's after opening it. Lost all the hard drive with no back up because I didnt know how to use the damn thing. I had a Toshiba that lasted me for 7yrs! Once. Never again Apple.

  • gbdoc - 5 years ago

    I’m becoming increasingly disappointed with the direction Apple is going. Whizbang “services”, “content”, and accessories , all to get more fun out of your various small Apple products, while computers, which was why Apple started in the first place, which used to be trailbreaking “bestest with the mostest” products and the Gold Standard of performance and design, are no longer the apple of Apple’s eye. Mac users paid a premium because they got a premium product. There’s not a single Mac produced today which lives up to the standards of yore. What attention they have been giving to Macs is all about questionably important, questionably needed, questionably useful design stuff – smaller bezel (WOW), bigger trackpad (WOW), TouchBar (SUPERWOW), a few mm. thinner and a few mg. lighter (can you top this???), Dark Mode (finally I can work!). Macs, even the top models, no longer have cutting-edge, ultra-capable, top-of-the line innards and other components, and shamelessly offer products which are less reliable, and actually seem to have been cheapened and dumbed-down; the lower, “consumer-grade” Macs are even more underwhelming. Keyboard? Missing I/O slots? Bendgate?

    I still can’t imagine switching to a Windows PC, and I’ll be getting a new Mac soon, but I already know it won’t be nearly as good as it could be. If Apple only cared.

  • David Silberman - 5 years ago

    I have been an Apple consumer and even used an Apple 2E back in the day. A few years ago I purchased for the FIRST time an Android Samsung S7 phone not an iPhone. I seriously doubt I will replace my current non touch bar 2017 13" MacBook Pro. Within a month of ownership the keyboard went out and it took two repairs to get it right. Thank goodness it was still under warranty. l fear for the long term life of this model keyboard after the replacement time limit has expired. I understand why Apple wants to prevent upgrades as they want to control the entire supply chain but I have an idea. Apple could make an upgradeable pros or other models that can only use proprietary RAM and SSD that you can only buy through the Apple website. This way Apple continues to make money and the consumers who can upgrade or pay somebody to upgrade their machines could do so. Sure there probably will some leakage of RAM chips and SSD, through theft or even duplication, but the majority of the profit will continue to go to Apple. If I find I need more RAM or bigger SSD I want to be able to have access to those components. Cars have a life span but manufactures continue to make improvements in new models . Apple on the other hand has gone backwards and has alienated many customers. I have not used him but if you have a serious Apple repair problem try Louis Rossmann in New York: https://www.yelp.com/biz/rossmann-repair-group-new-york-2 Check out his YouTube posts it is eye opening and sobering demonstrations of Apple failures to replace parts and repair of their machines.

  • Todd - 5 years ago

    I'm trying to find every excuse I can to get my company to STOP buying Macs because they have become such a bad investment. I can't repair them in house, so after 3 years of applecare are up they aren't worth fixing. I can't upgrade the RAM and SSD, so I have to over-spec new Machines. Only the 2 most expensive MBP's have discrete graphics, so I'm in about 4 grand just so a creative team member can run Photoshop. Apple has nerfed Mac server to the point that I need expensive 3rd-party tools to manage the macs. They killed my ability to net-boot and install a cloned install, so configuring new machines is a lot less straightforward. At this point, the strength of their OS and ecosystem is vastly outweighed by the increased cost and complexity.

  • Steve Yager - 5 years ago

    I literally couldn't care how thick the laptop is. Just make it work well.

  • Roger - 5 years ago

    Leave it thin and make a matching dock the connects with magnetic connector

  • Frank Elsesser - 5 years ago

    I user a slightly heavier and thicker WinTel laptop. Not a major disadvantage because of those characteristics.

  • Derek - 5 years ago

    I’d say just overall make it just a little thicker but not nearly like this graphic.

  • Aaron K - 5 years ago

    I’m okay with thin, but when it impedes the thermal health of a computer, that’s concerning. I own an iPad Pro 3, and the thinness is a real issue.

  • Eric Nichols - 5 years ago

    I stopped upgrading my Mac laptops several years ago due to the recent design changes. I'm using an old MacBook Air and it's great because:

    1) The keyboard is awesome
    2) The trackpad actually moves when I click it
    3) There is a physical Escape key
    4) There are 2 old-style USB ports that I can plug things into

    Now, it's getting old and the battery life isn't great anymore. I won't "upgrade" to one of these new machines with a terrible keyboard and all the other issues, of course. So I'm thinking I have to switch to a Linux laptop, or maybe Windows. Mac Laptops have been useless to me in recent designs. Apple needs to revert or else continue alienating its actual "pro" users. (While I was working as a software engineer at Google I had an older Macbook Pro. for my work device. I could have traded it in for free for a top-of-the-line new one but I told them to please let me keep the old one; I saw my colleagues struggling with the bad new "pro" designs.)

  • Glenn Morrow - 5 years ago

    I bought a 2015 13" MBP in 2016 for the connection of USB and memory cards. It's not a desktop replacement but 75-80%. Make it thicker using carbon fiber, better cooling and replace the crappy failing keyboards. What about a touch screen? IDK The new MBP are the screens that much better, for $2200 13". NO! Look at HP and Sony etc. A really quick 16G Ram, i9 quad core that can drive an external 4k monitor. I would buy it tomorrow!

  • Christoph Vogelbusch - 5 years ago

    Do you guys make sure Apple sees the results of these pools? I don’t think Apple should adhere to public opinion, but I think they should know about it, to widen their options

  • Roarke Clinton - 5 years ago

    If you want a thin computer get a MacBook Air. MacBook Pros should be a powerhouse tool completely capable of handling anything a professional can throw at it. Make the battery life longer, put hdmi and other ports back (#nomoredongles), and go so far as to put RTX 2080 Nvidia graphics cards to topout performance. This thing should take the cake!

  • Andre Lamb - 5 years ago

    Apple should make up its mind. They either want to be PRO or not. Stop putting PRO labels on average consumer computers. Computers that, back in the day would take just about anything you threw at it in the pro world but now has no native connectivity. They overheat, the screens are faulty because of a $6 cable, the batteries have shorter lives, etc. They should drop the PRO and add A&D (adapter and dongles) since you can't use any of their products without them now. What is going on with this company???

  • RL - 5 years ago

    I have been buying all Macs, mostly pro towers and pro laptops for my music business and studios ever since Apple began. I stopped our buying sprees when Apple stopped selling computers and laptops that couldn’t be easily upgraded and maintained. The thin thing for Pros is STUPID!!! I bought an “Air” laptop for that! They need to remove the Pro label if they’re going to keep making cheesy thin laptops and desktops with subpar specs/ not able to maintain or upgrade drives/ram / low battery/ too hot/ limited i/o thin-problem keyboard, and rename it MacBookBoo! Most pro users that I know care about function with style, but not sacrifice big ram/drive specs etc. for a little bit of thin. Buy a second laptop for portable-small-personal and a Pro for just portable Pro. As a side note, the new MacMini should have a Pro version: remove the power supply again... allowing bigger drives and ram (user serviceable and exchachangable) / will run cooler. A great trade-off for a power supply brick.

  • Ron - 5 years ago

    The 13" Retina MB Pros from 2012 to 2015 were just a few millimeters thicker and a little heavier than the current 13" MB pro. I owned one and the thickness and weight were absolutely no burden to me, but I got great battery life and enjoyed the keyboard on that model much more than on my 2016 MB Pro with Touch Bar.

    So, yes, I'd be thrilled to put up with a modestly thicker & heavier MB Pro in order to get better keyboard and battery life.

    If Apple made these changes to the MB Pro line, Apple would still have the MB Air line for people who prioritize thinness and lightness.

  • Lloyd - 5 years ago

    Just thick enough to get the maximum performance out of the processor (i.e., no throttling), that allows a keyboard with a decent amount of travel, and user-expandable RAM.

  • Ashley - 5 years ago

    It should be thin for sure but it should not compromise on power and graphics. Yes it is a pro laptop which means the users want pro features as well as portability. I fly a lot and i do photoshop and lightroom and some video editing in a flight 35k feet in the sky. MacBook Pro helps achieve my work goals. I do have iMac Pro at work and home as a pro desktop which seamlessly transfer my work from my laptop to desktop whenever needed. My team write apps while they travel and use Xcode in long haul trans atlantic flights and sometimes do some animation work and photo editing as well. Ultimately, solving the problems by keeping the same thin profile is the only way for users like me.

  • Clinton Lugert - 5 years ago

    Absolutely. This is a pro machine that sits on a desk. It's not a watch or a phone or a pad. I am carrying it infinitely less than I am working on it. I want my pro machine the be a power, expandable, Swiss army knife. Not a needle that can only do one thing.

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