hey everyone! my name's emmanuel.and i'm raffael, and welcome to the apple pub. and today we're going to be covering apple's "spring forward" event, more in particular the macbook product, so, umm, what are your thoughts about that one? i, personally, i mean i like the idea of it being, you know, a little thinner, lighter but to me it's lacking. it's just, they went to far with the thinness, they kind of you know… they compromised a little too much, in my opinion. and i agree with some areas - i think there's a market out there for that product and anytime you're dealing with portable products you're going to have compromises. you're going to have to give up something in order to include or exclude something else
so, you know, there's always that trade off going on there. and for me, i think i'm more sympathetic towards the product than you, but i do have a few issues that make me want to sit out of it. so, couple features off the top your head- yea, before we get on with it let's just hit some of the, you know, facts of what it came out with, just in case you guys haven't heard. they are calling it the macbook line again apparently, even though it is a macbook air, but thinner than a macbook air, i'm not sure why they did that, but that is what's going on. (yea) it is (lighter, thinner) yea it's lighter, thinner by an entire pound from the macbook air. it only weighs 2 lbs. it is, how much thinner?they said it was 24% thinner than the
macbook air. i don't know how much lighter it is than the macbook air i know that generally the laptops are 2.9 lbs (yea) it's about a-- (about a) yea, it's about a pound less (yea). they also, they designed a new keyboard, i guess for it because to make it so thin, the regular keyboards that they had, what was it the scissor keyboard? (yea) i think it's called. they made a butterfly keyboard. which is actually kind of cool, i haven't tried it out yet but it seems like it should be interesting though. basically they did a bunch of things with the keyboard where it allowed them to make the device thinner. but, force touch was a big where the track pad now has
the technology to sense how much pressure you're applying to it, same with apple watch, by the way. but, it actually lets you know that it's clicking even though it's not moving at all, it's just a vibration on your finger. yea, i personally haven't tried it yet so i don't exactly know how it works i mean i had some reservations about things that could go wrong with it but you tried it out and you said it was pretty good though, right? pretty good, yea. it felt just like a click. i was actually shocked because i thought it would kind of feel gimmicky, but it, i thought i was pressing down on an older macbook and i had to actually go to the top of the trackpad cuz i know you can't
click on that.because it's not depressing exactly, and i clicked on that part and i'm like wow! it feels like the whole thing's a button. it was pretty cool, pretty cool. and what other features were there. there was a retina display, that one's huge i can't believe it. i mean it's, it's kind of like, okay yea finally they brought it to the air, but, you know it's been there done that. i mean to me it's not that big of a deal considering it is a 12" screen. i mean sure it'll look more crisp, but i was never really looking forward to that. i mean, sure great, if you can add it on, add it on. that's cool, but it wasn't like, it's not a deal breaker for me if it was for a laptop
and it did have a usb-c port, only 1 of it by the way and that's where you charge the device from and add any peripherals, and we'll go over all that that is one of my biggest pet peeves on this, but we'll get to that when we get to it. but the other thing also they're finally offering colored versions for these, you know (oh yea) what is it, silver, black and gold?silver, the term is space gray if you want to be technical, but yea, it's basically the same color they have for the iphone. you're iphone can now match with your macbook.and your tablet! (yes!) why not? i love it, look check this out! why not? so let's just jump right into this. the thinness and the lightness of the new macbook.
that's pretty much the headlining feature. so, it us 24% thinner than the macbook air, and it is, and the current macbook air is 2.96 lbs, and the current macbook that they just announced is 2.03 lbs. so it's about a pound lighter. it's a pound.yea, about a pound. so- a pound.i'm a technical guy, i need to be technical! but, so, what are your thoughts about, just the lightness and thinness of it? i mean, just like with a lot of apple products--i mean sure if you want to make it thinner, if you want to make it lighter, go for it, as much as you can. sure, i would like, you know, it's a thin product, it's a light product, it's going to be
more comfortable. but, there's a point where you should not compromise anymore. you need to look at it and say, ok we can make it this thin, but what are we giving up? and is it too much? and in my opinion, they compromised a little too much. and i don't know if i mentioned this before, but i do think that for some people, i think for a lot of people that's true, and for a lot of others that's not true. it depends on one's needs. that's why it's a very specific market for this product. so, for me personally, i'm just thrown off by the fact that it's called the macbook when it is lighter than the macbook air, thinner than the macbook air, and it has less processing power than the macbook air. traditionally the macbook air
was supposed to be- light as air!it was like the netbook of apple yea, it wasn't as strong on performance, it was lighter/thinner but, now it seems like the macbook took that, all the attributes of a macbook air, but guess what? it's still a macbook so it's kind of confusing.that to me, also, just like i was saying, from a marketing standpoint, that is really weird. you have a product line that is already specified for being lightweight and underpowered but still capable for it's fieldlight tasks yea, but now you're really.. why would you call it the macbook? you bring this product out that is even lighter (ringing) (laugh) really? ..it is even…
oh sorry (laugh) we aren't stopping? it rang already, might as well.. so yea, it's lighter, it's thinner. why aren't you calling it the new macbook air? or the macbook air retina? that's just how i see it. and that's what it was rumored to be for a while. there were a ton of rumors about a retina macbook air. i kind of wish what they did with the macbook pro line up they would do with the macbook air, where for a while they released a macbook pro retina, but they still kept around the old macbook pro's without the retina. and over time, the retina lineup kind of took the place of the traditional macbook pro lineup.especially with the price as well.
yea, and they dropped the price, and now it's like, it's just macbook pro retina, that's basically it. there's one macbook pro at 13" that they still sell without retina, but they still have kind of two lineups with the pro. i wish they did that with the air. i don't know, apple is apple, they chose to call it a macbook for whatever reason, so it is what it is. any?not really, i mean, like i said, i can only see that confusing people. but, you know, their decision, like you were saying earlier, it is pretty much a macbook air in our opinion. yea, and for all intents and purposes, to us at least, it's a macbook air. the next thing is the keyboard. so, the keyboard, they made it, the device, the mechanism
within the keyboard that you actually press down on, they mentioned it was a scissor mechanism, now it's a butterfly mechanism. long story short it's 4x more stable and it is 40% thinner. so, basically, it's never been a problem for me to have the keys bend over to one side.yea i've never even noticed it. yea they were saying it's more stable, where it'll stay flat rather than overtime kind of shifting over. so, it's nice to have.yea, honestly, i really, it's not something for me to say, "oh look! it's a new feel!" or whatever, it's not that cool but the fact that it's 40% thinner, sure by all means, if it works, go for it. innovation's innovation.yea, and i like how they
said "full sized keyboard" …it's a keyboard, it goes from end to end, and is, each key is 17% bigger. so, i mean it's nice to have, but, i don't know, for me, i like the extent apple goes to innovating. and i think this is an innovation, it's a small gain, but over the long term you keep doing things like this, where the keyboard's been around for god knows how many decades, and now it's like this new offering. i don't know, i think it's like apple would be the one to think of redesigning that, no one else would take the time to, so, and they would market it really well too. i think they did a good job with that. practically speaking, it helps with the thinness butyea, and honestly in my opinion,
this is one of the things they did right, where they didn't really compromise. it's like we needed to make it thinner, and they made it work, they didn't remove a feature, they created a new way to get it to work. which, i think they should of that with some of the other things, but as we get to them, i'll give you my opinion on that. but yea, what was the next point we wanted to make? it was basically going to the backlighting, which it's basically, instead of having one huge backlight under the keyboard, they replaced it with an individual light for each key. i thought that was pretty neat. saves on battery. for me it really makes no difference, i can't see why, it's never been an issue to me,
sure if it saves on power, go for it. beyond that… yea, i think i would like not having just a huge backlight it might have been just for size that they did that. maybe there, cuz i know underneath there's maybe a panel of light, maybe they just removed that and just put an led right in the button itself, just to save space. i'd image, most of the battery though on a computer that you waste is typically just from the display light, and i'd imagine the second biggest battery hog would be the backlight, if you're using it. it's a welcome edition. again it's these little wins that make a big difference over time. but like you said, it's
i would never notice it, honestly.they make an improvement one place and then, what do you do with that extra? now you have less space being taken up, a lot of people argue it should use it for a battery, or otherwise, but apple went with making it thinner with the extra space they saved. again, not for everyone, to me it's a macbook air so that's fine, so far. and now, force touch yea, i honestly haven't tried it out but you said you had, it seems like a cool idea to me, like i said, i had a little reservation about it, i wasn't sure how it works, but how about you let us know what you thought about it. basically the new track pad, instead of having a hinge or a button where you click
down on which takes up space, cuz there needs to obviously be space for it to move down into. they basically made it where it's just a flat track pad with a haptic engine? they call it a "taptic engine", traditionally they call it haptic feedbackhaptic feedback, yea. what haptic feedback does is it basically gives you feeling on your fingers. and as i mentioned earlier, the way it helps out is it makes feel like you're clicking it when you're actually just pushing down on a flat surface that isn't moving. really cool for me, i think raff is-- yea, it's not that big of a deal, i haven't tried it, as long as my track pad works, which honestly, apple, in my opinion, their track pads work better than most.
my experience when i've used other laptops. so yea, if it works, it works, i have no issues with it. more features the merrier. aside from the fact that they turned the whole thing into a button, even though it's not, i loved that. i think that's really cool, but the way they demonstrated it where you could force touch on a fast forward button for a video and depending on how much force you put, it fast forwards twice as or 5x as fast or, i don't know, 7x as fast depending on the force, i thought that was a little-- yea, that's going a little on the--gimmicky, in the sense that it'll only work on, i'm assuming itunes and--it was quicktime they did it on, i remember
yea, it would be apple specific products, and i'm a vlc fan and i just thought, i don't know, i thought it was, i think they need to find a better use for it in specific areas, and i'm sure it'll come, but right now i just like that i could click anywhere and feel like it's a button. and i couldn't tell the difference, again, i'm just not over that, over experiencing it, but that's pretty much. again it makes it thinner the next two things were the color and the retina display, which everyone knows about at this point, we don't really need to go over. but, usb-c port. this is a new port that, i believe apple helped invent but they're not able to come out and announce it that way, but what do you think?
honestly, i think it's great, you know, it's a new usb port, it's a lot faster, it's capable of running both video, audio signals through it and everything. which is great! …if there as more than one of them. and also if i didn't have to buy a separate adapter for everything i needed to do.yea and i agree, i like that it's all in one. you could do hdmi, vga, charge the macbook with it, or power up a display, hdmi i guess. but, one thing i didn't like that i think most people kind of overlooked was the fact that this means that magsafe is dead, at least for the macbook. and that makes be sad because, i'm a big fan of magsafe! that was a great feature to have, mostly because, i had mentioned to you earlier,
that because power ports get damaged so easily on other laptops. that was like one of the greatest features. i've so many times stepped on my cord and had it just flip out and nothings happened at all. i think i've stepped on my friends laptop while it was charging on a sofa arm, and it fell (haha)such a great friend! but i do think--yea! i am (haha) but i do think that the way they're approaching this is that--honestly, i think it would have been a lot better that when you purchased the new macbook, it at least came with a dongle or two, the adapters, for at least, to get to regular usb, or, well maybe
hdmi not so much, but at least the usb port. just a regular usb port, something that almost everyone still requires or has something to use with a usb. they always push forward and i like that, you know, the fact that they got rid of floppy disks first, and then the cd drive, and i know you still miss the cd drive, but for me it's like, get rid of it, i never use that space. but i feel like usb-c is great, but just have one more, i need to charge while i do something else. eventually- yea and currently the only way to do it is you have to spend $80 to get a dongle that allows you to both charge and use the usb as well. the cpu was my other little pet peeve. they thinned it out so much, they removed the fan, understandable,
but now you have this very underpowered cpu.yea i agree with that. it's to the point where it's even weaker than most cell phones nowadays. i think that this ipad air 2, is actually, if you ran a geekbench benchmark, it's going to be on par with the 1.3ghz (1.1ghz*) processor in the macbook that they just announced.yea which to me it's just too much of a step back. you're going so forward with everything, you're making it thinner, sleeker, lighter, you put in this new technology with the keyboard, the touch pad, the retina display, which they made even a thinner panel, now all of a sudden, the one thing that i think should be important which is processing power,
for a laptop--it's a laptop, even if it is a netbook, you have an ipad to be able to use for the lower end stuff. but this is a laptop. $1300, i want some power in this, and 1.3ghz (1.1ghz*) just is not cutting it for me. and i would agree, and you could probably upgrade it to 1.6ghz (1.3ghz*) or something even more expensive.but yea, i do think it's really under powered-- just want to quickly correct an error, the cpu actually starts at 1.1ghz and can be upgraded all the way up to 1.3ghz i was initially impressed cuz i saw 8gb of ram, which should be standard nowadays, and i was like, i was really happy because i didn't have to pay extra for that
yea and the 256gb solid state, which is great for a starting point nowadays. obviously i would want more, but understandable, it's still pretty expensive to get an ssd drive nowadays, even now.yea, and the read/write on their is usually pretty fast. so, i was happy about all that, so the ssd, the ram, and then when i saw the cpu(and then the stumbling block) yea, it is on the weaker end, again, this is a netbook to me, if i were to get one. but, apart from the cpu fanless, it's nice to have i guess, low heat. the battery, i thought was pretty cool how they, how the laptop tapers off so they needed to fit the battery in that area.yea that design that they did where
they step--it's like step ladder batteries, just to fit it in. yea it's like a bunch of sheets filling up that extra space that bends up at the end of the laptop. i thought that was cool, squeeze out as much battery life as you can. i still think they should have kept it a little thicker and just gone all out, 12-hour battery like they do with the 13" air. i think that would have been awesome. also, i think, maybe it was with the size, making the end tapered up so much at the end that they had to put in the camera as a 480p camera, which--why? why would you do that? like, 720p is even considered a low end standard nowadays considering 4k cameras are everywhere. why would you step back to 480p?
yea that to me, and i'm not just saying this because i'm a fanboy or whatever, but i never use my eyesight camera, and it's--i'm actually planning on taping the thing off because i'm paranoid about of the nsa and whatnot, but i mean, yea i get it, i don't use it much myself either, but at the same time, that is really a big step backwards.and my thought was, i personally don't use it, i don't care about it, but for a macbook, advertised as a macbook, it should at least have minimum 720pi know, like i was saying it's been the standard in their line, the air, the pro, even the macbook beforehand, before it stopped selling, i think. it was 720p, why would would you drop back so much? that should
never happen, i understand cutting some corners, not taking a technology forward because you're trying to get it as light and as thin as you possibly can, but not to the point where you have to step back in technology.yea, yea, i mean, again i see it justified if you view it from one way and not justified in another. if it was an air, and it was a little cheaper, i would totally be for it, but the fact that it's not--that, i know it's just a name, but it really grinds my gears that it's a macbook, and yet there are so many compromises for thinness and lightness. so it just doesn't add up to me. so that--so what would your final score on this be? final score, okay, as a netbook, i'd say 7.5 to 8? but as a macbook,
i'd say 4 to 5… and the reason why is, this device, if it was just a couple hundred dollars cheaper, i would view it as the macbook air, and i would be totally ok with buying one and using it for that purpose where i don't need a bunch of ports, i don't need all this performance, i use it as a netbook. but the fact that it costs as much as a macbook pro, 13" and it's lacking in so many other ways. it kind of like, it's great where they focused on it, but it's not where they made all these compromises and tried to pass it off as a macbook. so, that's my thought on it. how about you? yea, and me, personally, as you know, i've always been more towards the old macbook, macbook pro lines, i was never much for the air's. nowadays, yes, they brought it up,
but for me it falls around, i have to give it around a 3 or a 4, just because it really doesn't do it for me. i love the fact that they made it retina now, that they made it thinner, that the battery life is still consistent, they have this new keyboard, the new touchpad, but just the fact that--okay it's a pound lighter, i can put it in my--it's very easy to carry around, but now i have to carry around all of these adapters just to be able to use it. i use usbs, flash drives, everywhere. i'm consistently giving one person something, transfer over, transfer this, i'm always working with files and stuff, it's just too much of a compromise for me. i think the second generation, when they come out with maybe a second port, maybe give you a dongle/adapter that goes
from usb-c to regular usb right off the bat, i think for me would have done a lot more. for you, i think that's why macbook pros and macbooks, traditional sense, would have been great, i just think that, future, looking forward, they should take this macbook and just rebrand it as the macbook air. and moving forward-- yea the air retinayea macbook air retina, and moving forward, it's like, you have your pro for everything else you need, all the ports and all of that, or even just a regular macbook with more than one port, that doesn't have all those compromises. they did do a great job with everything you mentioned, they did rethink a lot of things and, i really like that, it's a big thumbs up for me. so, again as a
macbook air, drop it a few hundred dollars, you guys have got a solid 8 from me. yea it's the price point that's just really bad for me, just for what it is. it's the same mistake that google made with their pixel, the original pixel. they fixed some of their points now, but, i don't know, it's like you're making a mistake that another company already made, in my opinion.alright, and that pretty much sums it up. if you guys disagree, or agree with anything we've said, please let us know in the comment box down below, and you know we actually read them because we have no followers (haha).yet! yet. but once we do--we still will read them!
no! we won't! he will! i won't! (haha)oh thank you.. (haha) no, i'm kidding! (haha) but yea, we really are interested because i feel like sometimes i'm out of touch, i'm more partial towards apple and what they do and--raff mingles with everything so,yea, i kind of jump back and forth, i use an android phone, i have a--like apple laptops, but i like to make my own custom pcs. i just go around everywhere.yea, and i would really be interested in just seeing if i'm out of touch with reality or, whats going on, but i do think, more or less, we do see eye to eye on a lot and it was a good discussion. so, yea, if you liked it, like, subscribe, so on so forth, and look forward to more from us!
we're covering the--the apple watch next week! so, look out for that, and yea, until then, we'll see you then! take care!see you!
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