anchor.diff:  
   *I really don't want a touch screen laptop*. The Touch Bar is just the right amount of touch interactivity without a sea of fingerprints and arm-raised ergonomics.
   
  -Apple's 15" Macbook Pro is basically opening the door to the future I want. Just 3-4 weeks to wait...+Apple's 15" MacBook Pro is basically opening the door to the future I want. Just 3-4 weeks to wait...
positive.code: 
  I want to talk to some of the FUD that has led to a number of complaints, but first there are certainly a few areas where Apple could have done better and helped curb some of the unrest.
  
  1. *No iGPU-only option for the 15" model*. Apple built expectations starting with the 2012 release of the Macbook Pro with Retina display that there would be a number of price tiers making the computers more accessible depending on your choice of compromises. Providing a 15" Macbook Pro without an AMD graphics option available could have helped extend that entry level 15" model price downward.
  
  2. *No compatibility aids in the box*. One USB-C -> USB-A dongle wouldn't have been the end of the world. It'd bring out of the box compatibility for the iPhone, your current external drive, and that one flash drive still attached to your keychain. Of course the quantity of complaints for _shipping a computer that comes with a dongle to be useful_ would be just as bad as _I can't use anything without buying a dongle_ but I digress... 
  
  3. *Not refreshing the Mac Pro at the same time (or earlier)*. Intel is a significant issue here. There aren't any hex-core Skylake-based Xeons out right now and there are zero Kaby Lake Xeons of any kind. But Broadwell has https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadwell_(microarchitecture)#Server_processors[tons of configurations, target="_blank"] and this machine should have been updated when those became available. Yes, the GPU story would be incomplete as it would still have been stuck in the 28nm generation, but we wouldn't be 1000+ days since an update with no product to pitch towards people eager to spend even more money for even more computer.
  
  4. *All Touch Bar equipped Macbook Pros should ship with 16GB of RAM*. They just should. These are supposed to be pro machines, the prices went up. The 13" machines shipping with 8GB is unfortunate.
  
  
  I'm not going to include the SD card here. The _it's not a pro laptop_ crowd should really take a look back at the history of the Macbook Pro and the issues that were made large in the past...lest we forget the removal of Firewire and https://rubenerd.com/macbookpro-expresscard/[the ExpressCard slot, window="_blank"]. The prevailing argument of the time being that going from an ExpressCard slot to an SD card slot was a downgrade unlike other legacy port eliminations in the past. Now we're back to a port that lets you connect a number of multipurpose things instead of providing a single use and that's apparently the worst, too. Yes, Compact Flash has largely gone away in the interim and was a driving factor for flexibility being important, but the result is bemoaning the return of options.
  
  image::/images/macbooks/expresscard.jpg[]
  The dongle you put *_in_* your computer (source: buysku.com)
  
negative.code: 
  From here we enter the territory of _they literally could not do what you want_ without either shipping nothing or shipping a piece of functionality that compromises the rest of the product too strongly in another area.
  
  1. *It doesn't have Kaby Lake?* There's a lot here. First, there are no quad core CPUs for the 15" line (in the 40-50W vicinity). Second, there are no 20-30W  dual core CPUs for the 13" line. Intel did release 15W CPUs which would be suitable in the Air lineup (or the non Touch Bar MacBook Pro) and 4.5W CPUs for the MacBook, but launching newer generation hardware (with low tangible benefit) on the lowest tier products seems like a recipe for customer confusion.
  
  2. *It doesn't have DDR4?* RAM is a non-trivial power drain on the overall system and Apple uses LPDDR3 modules (LP being low power). Skylake doesn't support LPDDR4. Kaby Lake wont even support LPDDR4. Let's also not forget that switching technologies for switching technology's sake isn't useful. DDR4 provides improvements in only a small slice of computing tasks and otherwise provides minimal if any tangible benefit even with a significant clock speed increase. With greater clockspeed comes greater latency timing.
  
  3. *It doesn't come with a 32GB RAM option?* See above. This would have pushed Apple away from LPDDR3 modules, again, compromising battery life in a way that is not in line with any decision they've made in providing a baseline of battery life for the past 4 years of models of computers. Intel is not helping here.
  
  4. *AMD graphics?* Nvidia approached this generation from the top down, releasing its highest powered devices first and is only now starting to fill in its lower power options suitable for laptops hoping to have any battery life. AMD took a different approach, hitting baseline VR and then filling in its lower power products next. AMD also focuses on OpenCL, whereas Nvidia has continually pushed CUDA. Apple embraced OpenCL a long time ago and isn't likely to make any changes in that area. I know it's tempting to think of the performance of Nvidia's flagship devices, but the battery life compromise (or the weight/portability compromise for having more battery) is again, not something that should ever have been expected in the MacBook Pro line. External GPUs for OS X aren't far. The choices here are in line with the overall performance at every step of the MBP evolution.
  
  5. *The price is so high!* Apple arguably added an Apple Watch in material cost with the Touch Bar and Touch ID sensor. They also are utilizing extremely high performance SSDs. Claiming 3+GBps performance all but guarantees a variation or competitor to Samsung's 960 Pro line of SSDs. The outrage at the _Apple Tax™_ for the +$1200 cost on the 2TB SSD (and respectively the cost of the 1TB upgrade) seems reasonable, but at the time of this writing, the 2TB 960 Pro retails for $1300. It's just what the hardware costs. They included Alpine Ridge controllers, didn't offer an iGPU 15" model, increased the size of the force touch hardware for the trackpad, and once again dramatically improved the display. This all costs money. They filled in some of the price gap with the non-Touch Bar model...
  
  