There is no easy way to say this, Apple's new Macbook Pro is a definitive downgrade from previous releases, and a compelling reason why I have stayed with PC. This is the worst Macintosh release in Apples entire history. The flaws of this new Macbook Pro are impossible to ignore. Such as the fact that HDMI is now gone. Firewire is gone. Thunderbolt is gone. An optical drive? SD Card slots? Pff, who needs them? All the useful ports are fucking gone. But it gets even worse. Much worse.
Just to attach your phone, camera, and any other device to your Macbook Pro requires the purchase of a 50$ or more dongle, per attachment. Imagine a sea of unseemly and ugly tangled mess of cables cluttering your desk with no room for anything, and you are close to describing the new MacBook Pro experience. It's grade A bullshit. Even worse, people are releasing hacks solely to fix Apple's gross negligence and blatant incompetence with the Macbook Pro. You know that you utterly fucked it up when people release mods just to add features to the older model which have removed for no reason other than simple aesthetics which means jack fucking shit to any power user:
http://www.businessinsider.com/2016-macbook-pro-adapter-adds-hdmi-sd-card-usb-ports-2017-1
I recently purchased an Alienware 17 inch beast of a laptop, at a fraction of the cost of the new Macbook Pro, with a much faster processor, 8 GB VRAM Nvidia graphics card, double the RAM capacity at 32GB DDR4, a solid state hard drive, larger HD display that is Oculus Rift enabled, and with tons of ports, all for over a thousand dollars less. If you enjoy paying over three thousand dollars for a computer with only 2GB of VRAM in fucking 2016 and quad-core processors below 3.0 GHZ, you are being conned and played like a fucking sucker. Apple is ripping you off to your very face, but people continue to shell out the money for garbage product. OS X is an excellent operating system, but Windows 10 is looking to become a serious competitor. I love the Microsoft Surface, as it demonstrates what Windows 8.1's tablet functionality should have operated as in the first place.
The bottom line is that Apple is in trouble. They have successfully alienated their power users through releasing a machine with fewer features than previous versions. The Mac platform needs help. SmartTouch does not justify the removal of ports, and the lack of reliable hardware. My advice is to wait to purchase a new portable Macintosh until Apple hires a new development team with an inkling of common sense.
My Product Rating: 0/10
