Apple just introduced a new line of MacBook Pros with more power, a Touch Bar, and some hefty prices.
I am not impressed.
I’ve never much liked the whole concept of a touch pad. I’ve always found them unintuitive and inconvenient. If I want to use my fingers on a surface, I want that surface to be the display itself. Dragging my fingers across a metal plate is not a confidence-inspiring experience. And now, dragging my fingers across a narrow bar, awkwardly placed at the top of a keyboard, is even less desirable.
Since the introduction of the Apple Watch, I began to lose confidence in Apple’s design team. The dismal sales of the Apple Watch should’ve been a clue that their design team has lost it’s way. Has Jony Ive run out of good ideas?
Unfortunately, the Touch Bar on the new MacBook Pros looks to be another gimmick, much like the Apple Watch. There is some indication that Apple may subconsciously know this since they are offering one model without the Touch Bar.
I appreciate the smaller size and more powerful architecture, but that is about all I can appreciate about this new lineup of MacBook Pros.
I read somewhere that Steve Jobs’ concern over Tim Cook is that Cook is not imaginative enough; he’s the Numbers Man, but not the Big Idea Man. When Cook introduced the Apple Watch, what flashed through my mind was Sculley and the Newton. Both are great concept devices, great in theory, but fell (or in the process of falling?) apart when transferred from idea to reality. Both are (or seem to be, in the Watch’s case) a case of the new CEO flexing his muscle, trying to prove that he can be just as imaginative as Jobs.