Apple’s MacBook Pro isn’t the touchscreen laptop it ought to be

Ever since Phil Schiller brought up the issue while introducing the second-generation MacBook Air, Apple has made a point of publicly resisting the pressure to introduce touchscreen Macs. Computers need a fundamentally different interface than your smartphone or tablet, Apple argues, and it’s cumbersome to keep raising your hand to the display. However, the new MacBook Pro’s Touch Bar really amounts to a confession — it’s an acknowledgment that touch input can improve your computing experience, and that Apple has been missing out on technology that some PC users take for granted. As big a step forward as the Pro may be, it’s not necessarily the giant stride that you might like.

You only have to look at the Pro’s Touch Bar’s features to imagine what could have been. Some of these elements wouldn’t be practical with a touchscreen (you can only fit so many editing buttons on-screen at a time), but many of them are. Why should you scrub through a video timeline on your keyboard when you could manipulate it directly on the display? Many everyday activities, such as choosing emoji in Messages or playing music in iTunes, practically beg for direct finger input. This isn’t to say that Apple’s Touch Bar implementation is clunky. So far, it appears to be very thoughtful. It’s just a perpetual reminder that there’s a more direct way to meld touch with conventional computing, and Apple is passing up the opportunity.

It’s understandable why the company would implement a navigation strip instead of redesigning macOS for touchscreen support. The Touch Bar is no doubt a challenge (including for developers who want to support it), but reworking an entire operating system is a massive undertaking that can easily run into trouble. Ask Microsoft how hard it was to design a touch-native platform that still appeals to non-touch users — Windows 8’s touch-first interface spooked some PC buyers, and even Windows 10’s more balanced strategy has its problems. Dive deep into Windows’ settings using only a touchscreen and you’ll quickly grow frustrated.

However, Windows also shows that you don’t have to redo an entire operating system for touchscreens to be useful. There’s a good reason why the Surface line and other hybrid laptop/tablet PCs are thriving in an otherwise shrinking market: more often than not, you can use whatever interface makes sense at a given moment. Want to play a touch-oriented game, or navigate a spreadsheet with a trackpad? You can do both. The MacBook Pro’s input will likely be very effective in most cases, but it comes across as inflexible. Apple’s rejection of finger input in macOS may prevent incidents where touch works poorly, but it also denies you situations where touch would work beautifully.

Lately, Apple has had a simple answer to those calls for a proper touchscreen interface: buy an iPad Pro. And for certain users, it has a point. The iPad has one of the better big-screen touch interfaces you can find, and it’s refreshingly easy to use compared to a traditional PC. But it just isn’t going to fit the needs of many Mac buyers, especially customers who can justify premium machines like the MacBook Pro. It doesn’t have many of the things pros need, whether it’s raw performance, an accessible file system or sophisticated multi-app windowing. If anything, the iPad Pro rubs some salt in the wound. It’s a reminder that Apple’s touchscreen experiences stop where the Mac lineup begins, and that other PC makers aren’t asking you to give up touch just because you want to run AutoCAD or Photoshop.

This isn’t to dismiss the MacBook Pro by any means. Based on our initial hands-on time, it’s an impressive system that could satisfy many owners (at least, those that don’t want a built-in SD card reader). You may well enjoy the Pro for years without once wishing that you had a touchscreen. But it’s also a tantalizing glimpse of what could have been, or possibly where Apple will go. And when a large chunk of the industry is welcoming touchscreens with open arms, it’s hard not to wonder whether or not Apple is heading in the right direction. The Touch Bar is a safe choice for now, but it wouldn’t be shocking if Apple had to change course and embrace touch in a bigger way.

Click here to catch all the news from Apple’s “Hello Again” event.

Hacker behind ‘celebgate’ jailed for 18 months

The individual behind the 2014 iCloud image leaks — more commonly known as the Fappenning — has been sentenced. Ryan Collins, 36, will serve an 18 month jail term for one count of violating the Computer Fraud and Misuse Act and another of illegally obtaining access to a computer. Officials at the Department of Justice believe that Collins was able to access over 600 accounts, including those of several famous women. Collins was also found to have run a fake modeling agency in which he mislead people into sending him their naked images.
Collins pleaded guilty to the charges back in March and, while the case was brought in LA, he was sentenced in Pennsylvania, close to where he resides. In a statement, California’s DA noted that investigators couldn’t establish a link between Collins obtaining the images and their public leaking. Despite this, the pictures — which included compromising shots of Jennifer Lawrence and Gabrielle Union — did filter out. The FBI’s Deirdre Fike believes that the sentence handed down is “proof that hacking into the accounts of others and stealing private information or images is a crime with serious consequences.”

Via: THR

Source: Department of Justice, (2)

First look at the new MacBook Pro (the one without the Touch Bar)

This is the new MacBook Pro. But it’s probably not the one you were hoping to read about. What I have here today is the new entry-level 13-inch model — the one without the multi-touch Touch Bar you’ve surely heard about by now. No, this is for all intents and purposes the Pro that replaces the MacBook Air. (The Air is still on sale — for now — but unless you have an inflexible budget, you should buy the new Pro instead.)

As a refresher, the new Pro weighs the same as the Air, at approximately three pounds, but has a noticeably smaller footprint. It also has the Retina display you always wished you had on the Air. There are some other differences too, including a much larger touchpad, a redesigned keyboard and a new selection of ports: just two Thunderbolt connections and a headphone jack. Oh, and it has a new price: The 13-inch Pro starts at $1,499, a bit more than you would have hoped to pay for a refreshed Air.

The laptop is shipping now and on display in Apple Stores, so there’s nothing stopping you from getting hands-on today. For my part, I received my test unit yesterday evening, which means I am in no way ready to publish a full review. But I am ready to give you a first look. Join me.

First impressions

Let’s start with the design: Holy moly, is this thing small. I noticed it right away, just because my normal work laptop is a MacBook Air, which means I’m used to something much larger than this. The difference is especially obvious if you stack one machine on top of the other. Though both have 13.3-inch screens, the new MacBook Pro has a much smaller footprint — it’s shorter and less wide. Truly, trimming down that humongous bezel from the Air makes a world of difference. Just ask Dell, whose compact, 2.6-pound XPS 13 paved the way for laptops that take up shockingly little space. Basically, if you can achieve a nearly bezel-less screen, you can then squeeze it into a much smaller chassis than you would otherwise.

The MacBook Pro also weighs about the same as the Air: 3.02 pounds versus 2.96. And that underscores another reason the Air should probably be given the axe. It was once a featherweight feat of engineering; now it’s heavier than competing Windows machines (the XPS 13 being just one example), and it weighs the same as Apple’s once-heavier Pro line. All that said, three pounds is still plenty portable, especially if you’ve bought MacBook Pros in the past and are used to toting around something heavier. For those of you who are upgrading, this will feel like an improvement.

At 14.9mm thick, the Pro is also 12 percent thinner than the Air, though that’s not quite as obvious, just because the Air has a wedge-shaped design that gets narrower at the end. Thinner is generally good, so long as the battery life doesn’t suffer. In this case, it also means thinner ports. (Though let’s face it, Apple likes to get rid of legacy ports, so it would have done that even on a thicker machine — and did, on the 15-inch Pro.) Where there used to be several full-sized USB connections and an HDMI socket you’ll now find two Thunderbolt 3 ports, along with a headphone jack. If you choose one of the higher-end MacBook Pros, you’ll get four Thunderbolt ports.

Either way, be prepared to un-learn some old habits. Gone is the MagSafe power adapter, though you can at least charge out of any Thunderbolt port now. You’ll also need a dongle for any accessories requiring a full-sized USB connection. Out of the box, you cannot charge your iPhone off this.

In many other ways, the MacBook Pro looks and feels similar to the previous generation. It’s made of unibody aluminum, available in silver and Space Gray. Though the 500-nit display is 67 percent brighter than the previous-gen Retina panel, with 67 percent higher contrast and 25 percent more colors, the resolution is the same, at 2,560 x 1,600 (a pixel density of 227 ppi). It’s lovely, especially with those tiny bezels and skinny metal frame around the screen. Particularly for those of you who have only ever owned the Air or an ancient MacBook Pro, you’re in for a treat.

The keyboard is both the same as before, and also not the same. As I said, this is the version of the MacBook Pro that does not have the OLED touchscreen stretching above the keyboard. That means the physical Escape key has lived to see another day — as have all the other Function keys, including brightness and volume controls.

So the keyboard looks the same. But then you touch it. Under the keycaps, Apple went with the same “butterfly” mechanism that it first introduced on the 12-inch MacBook. That means these buttons are shallower and less pillowy than on the last-gen MBPs, but still manage to be a lot springier than they look. I felt a little sour at first, giving up my old keyboard design (I don’t love change), but so far I’m typing away at this very story, and I’m not making many typos either.

As for the Force Touch trackpad, it’s 46 percent larger than before, making it nearly as big as Apple’s Magic Trackpad accessory. It’s more than enough space for the basics — stuff like scrolling and pinching to zoom. I’ll be curious, too, to see how it fares in more professional-grade use cases, like video and photo editing. More on that some other day.

All the stuff we’ll save for our review

There’s a reason I’m not calling this a review. There’s so much I haven’t had time to test! Apple says the battery life on both the 13- and 15-inch MacBook Pros can reach 10 hours. I’ll be sure to investigate that claim. Apple also stepped up to sixth-gen Intel Core processors across its lineup, with faster solid-state drives promising read speeds of up to 3.1 gigabytes per second. Oh, and I specifically didn’t mention the speakers earlier either. I’d like to listen to my very large, and very eclectic, Spotify collection before weighing in on the audio quality.

Given that the Pro has always been aimed at power users — and has a starting price to match — I don’t want to give the performance short shrift. And benchmarks are just the beginning too; real-world use matters as well. So give me a few days to live with this thing and I’ll be back soon with a full review. In the meantime, what’s the over/under on how long Apple waits before killing off the 13-inch Air?

Photos by Edgar Alvarez