Apple Stops Selling 2015 MacBook Pro With Old-Style Keyboard, Legacy Ports (arstechnica.com) 114
After announcing new MacBook Pro models today, Apple has removed the 2015 MacBook Pro from the Mac section of its website. Ars Technica reports: Beloved by many, the 2015 MacBook Pro had a number of features that have since been changed or have disappeared entirely from new MacBook Pro models. Arguably the most polarizing among these tweaks is the butterfly keyboard -- the 2015 MacBook Pro predates that mechanism, making its traditional keyboard a preferred alternative for many users. The 2015 MacBook Pro also contained legacy ports that Apple has since abandoned in the newest models: USB-A, HDMI, and Thunderbolt 2 ports, and an SD card slot. All of the newest MacBook Pros exclusively feature Thunderbolt 3 ports, which some will appreciate but all will scowl at when they're forced to buy multiple dongles to connect legacy accessories. Currently, Apple has a few 2015 MacBook Pro models listed in its online clearance section, but it's likely that Apple will not have more to sell after those are gone.
Courageous (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Fiat. Fiat owns that brand.
(Greasy haired musclebound moron drivers grit their teeth)
Re: (Score:2)
Somebody typed 60k lines of code on a keyboard with no DEL key, no PgUp/PgDown keys, no home/end keys, and stunted halfling cursor keys?
Rather him than me.
Re: (Score:2)
1: vim plugin
2: I agree on the stupid change to 1/2 size cursor keys, that was dumb but apparently no one at Apple touch types (as evident by the touchbar you have to look at).
I'm one of those people who can actually work without looking at the keyboard, I guess that is a lost skill.
Re: (Score:3)
Damned straight there was demand. Their 2015 unit was the last one that was actually suitable for general use. Whenever we needed to get a MBP, that's what I would buy. I bought one 2016 model and the person was seriously unimpressed with it.
In fact, I don't know one single person that is actually happy with the 2016+ models. One person I know bought one, and then sold it again 3 months later cause they couldn't stand it anymore.
The lack of useful ports is infuriating. Whoever came up with that idiotic key
Re: (Score:2)
It's courageous of them to stop selling products for which there is continuing demand.
While Slashdot bitches about them never introducing anything new.
Re: (Score:1)
The new machines are, in many ways, worse than what they were selling 3 years ago.
It took courage.
Those aren't legacy ports (Score:5, Insightful)
They are "current" ports.
USB-C ports are "ports of the future."
Now, VGA video would be a "legacy" port.
Re: Those aren't legacy ports (Score:3, Interesting)
Because it doesn't have DRM bullshit. It's analog and it WORKS.
The first time you watch a meeting get delayed because someone's laptop and the projector refuse to get along, you'll understand why VGA is still necessary.
Re: (Score:1)
You'll have to agree that "malware" (as in: software that was not installed from the Microsoft App Store) didn't intrude and take over the computer, though.
Or is it 'good malware, bad malware' in the vein of 'good cop-bad cop'?
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
DVI was nice because it was digital without DRM. This changed with HDMI, which was just another form factor for DVI signals. As a result, it's possible to have HDCP over DVI, as some monitors accept HDMI extensions over the old-style port.
VGA on modern hardware means you'll be converting digital to analog to digital again, which is beyond idiotic. Also, you'll be dealing with all sorts of analog adjustments with the image alignment. I agree it's still practical to have a laptop with VGA out -- in many ca
Re: (Score:2)
Don't use HDMI. Don't ask for HDMI. Don't accept systems that *only* support HDMI.
Display Port is your friend. Use it for everything that you can.
*Note: The only limitation of Display Port is cable run, and it can't go beyond about 2m. Perfect for desktop use, but little else. HDMI does have a superior run length over DVI, but in light of how shit (by my definition, HDCP is utter shit) HDMI is, it's a tough call. Use DVI for long cable runs whenever possible.
Interesting. I've been a kind of fan fo DP, but the only DP hardware I've had so far are outputs on my computers, and adapters to DVI and HDMI. My display hardware is either cheap second-hand monitors, or needs long cable runs.
I've had the impression that HDMI is the "consumer" tech given all the marketing around it and the whole post-HD display craze, while DP is "professional" with with features like daisy-chaining that consumers couldn't possibly understand. DP also allows more displays on some (lapto
Re: (Score:2)
I only have two DP ports on my laptop dock, and I like having three monitors. So two on DP and one on VGA is necessary. I know there are DisplayPort MST "hubs", but I haven't had any luck with those.
Re: (Score:2)
I only have two DP ports on my laptop dock, and I like having three monitors. So two on DP and one on VGA is necessary. I know there are DisplayPort MST "hubs", but I haven't had any luck with those.
Good point, this is especially true with laptops. Personally, I probably couldn't live with those three side by side, as VGA quality would be so different from the digital ones. At home I'm fine with VGA for watching movies, but for anything else I've been spoiled by the crisp and pixel-accurate digital displays.
Re: (Score:2)
Honestly, VGA quality on the monitor I'm using is really damn good, it surprised me a little bit. It's an Eizo FlexScan EV2416W and it just locks on perfectly to the test pattern at lagom.nl that I use for auto sync on VGA-connected monitors. Very solid-feeling stand as well, and the best TN panel I've ever seen.
Re: (Score:2)
and it WORKS.
Uh. Noooooo. Hmm, why is this fuzzy patch on the screen? Better run auto-adjust. Oh great, now it's cleared up- wait, there's another one over here. Hmm, better run again- oh shit, now half the screen's cut off. Manually reposition, great, now it works- oh WTF, the colors are messed up. VGA is an incredibly finicky protocol that is literally entirely dependent on the auto-adjust's heuristics in the arbitrary monitor if you don't want to spend 20 minutes messing with the settings menu (and you still won't fi
Re: (Score:2)
Now, VGA video would be a "legacy" port.
Or for a Macintosh, DB15 RGB video, or for that matter, ADB. Or an external floppy connector.
Comfortable keyboards are for chumps (Score:5, Insightful)
How long until the keyboard is just a giant touch pad with courageous gestures to enter text?
All text entry will be done with swiping. You'll thank us later.
Re:Comfortable keyboards are for chumps (Score:4, Informative)
MacBook is becoming a big iPad. The Maxipad (Score:3)
They way they are going, the MacBook Pro will soon just be a really big iPad. The Max iPad, or Maxipad.
Re: (Score:2)
https://imgur.com/gallery/r102w
Re: (Score:1)
How long until the keyboard is just a giant touch pad with courageous gestures to enter text?
All text entry will be done with swiping. You'll thank us later.
Never.
They are going to jump straight to the anal probe. You have to squeeze it in different ways to get different gestures and keystrokes. Emphasis on strokes.
I know it seems scary, but courage.
Re: (Score:2)
Besides, unless you spend a bunch of money, modern keyboards are all crap. The wireless one I'm using on my Mac right now... it looks great, which is its intended purpose (and why the iMac replaced a PC with a Ch
Floppy drives and 25 pin parallel ports (Score:2)
We should add those back as well.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
And composite video.
Re: (Score:2)
And composite video.
Booyea! I'm pissed because Apple doesn't have magnetic core memory. Fucking Hipsters anyhow.
Re: (Score:3)
Are you from the future where all your daily-usage peripherals have USB-C connectors?
Re: (Score:1)
well they'd go well with having a not shit keyboard and ports that most people still use.
I remember when apple dropped the floppy drive way back when. Everyone I knew who had a mac bought an external floppy drive because apple mindlessly dropped it before there was actually a replacement.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
well they'd go well with having a not shit keyboard and ports that most people still use.
People have been predicting Apple would go out of business since 1984. They've survived this long and with much bigger mistakes, they'll be fine.
I remember when apple dropped the floppy drive way back when. Everyone I knew who had a mac bought an external floppy drive because apple mindlessly dropped it before there was actually a replacement.
There was a replacement, CD-RW. A CD-RW drive was standard equipment on all Apple computers of the era except the lowest end iMac desktops. Also at the time I remember floppy disks being notoriously unreliable and too small to store the growing size of files. A floppy drive was fine for text, simple HTML, and such but worthless for people that were wanting to p
Re: (Score:1)
A CD-RW drive was standard equipment on all Apple computers of the era except the lowest end iMac desktops.
Bullshit.
My $2,000 Blue & White G3 from May 1999 came with a DVD/CD reader only, and that was an extra hundred bucks over the basic CD drive. I had to spend an extra $250 for a firewire CD burner.
It did have a built-in Zip drive though. What a joke!
BONUS ROUND: The built-in hard disk controller would cause data corruption if anything bigger than a 6GB drive was plugged into it. I had to spend another $100 for a hard disk controller with Mac firmware that wouldn't fuck everything up, when similar part
Re: (Score:2)
Bullshit.
Um... okay. Was that necessary? A simple, "I believe you were mistaken" would have sufficed.
My $2,000 Blue & White G3 from May 1999 came with a DVD/CD reader only, and that was an extra hundred bucks over the basic CD drive. I had to spend an extra $250 for a firewire CD burner.
My mistake. I must have missed that. I remember having a debate with my siblings on buying an iMac for Mom. I wanted her to have the iMac with Firewire, a VGA port, and CD-RW, while my siblings thought the cheaper one without VGA or Firewire and only CD-ROM was enough. We were both kind of right. She never had a desire to burn a CD but when the screen went on the blink (bad capacitors were common among all com
Re: (Score:2)
People have been predicting Apple would go out of business since 1984. They've survived this long and with much bigger mistakes, they'll be fine.
What on earth has that got to do with this thread? The presence or absence of those predictions won't make my work macbook pro any less crap.
There was a replacement, CD-RW. A CD-RW drive was standard equipment on all Apple computers of the era except the lowest end iMac desktops
No. I was there and you're mistaken.
Firstly, look here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Macs never had 25 pin parallel ports, or any other kind of Centronics interface. They did have 25 pin SCSI ports, though, which meant they were noisy and thus problematic in the later years. They also had crappy termination (and at least one machine with nonstandard termination, the IIfx.)
Re: (Score:1)
They had 25 pin SCSI ports, which people destroyed by hooking up their Centronics printers.
Centronics printer ports were common addon cards for the Apple 2.
Re: (Score:2)
We should add those back as well.
Why Apple pulls this shit is beyond me - All PC laptops still have serial ports, amirite?
And apparently no PC user has ever used an adapter - not one! Only Apple uses adapters.
Re: (Score:2)
You're implying that people have unreasonable requirements. Nobody is asking for anything unreasonable.
USB are still actively used. Hell, Apple still includes USB3 with their own iPhones for Pete's sake! Apple themselves are literally selling flagship products that cannot be connected to other flagship products Apple sells, unless you buy additional accessories.
HDMI is still an active standard that is being updated. Hell, HDMI will long outlive the next several generations of laptops. I don't know abou
MacBook Pro mid-2015 here (Score:4, Funny)
I for one welcome our new USB-C overlords.
Re: (Score:2)
I bought a 13" 2015 MBP refurb from Apple last week.
Re: (Score:1)
more like Dongle overlords
Re: (Score:1)
The Netbook (an Asus Aspire One) that I bought for $300 a few years ago has been upgraded to 8gb of memory and a 1TB hard drive. It isn't fast, but it's light, reliable and generally capable. I guess I probably waited about six months before I upgraded the hard drive.
My only Apple laptop is a Powerbook 165C, which is an okay system, too.
You'll get this 2014 MBP (Score:2)
When this one dies, if Apple hasn't fixed their fuckup, I'm moving to a System76 Linux laptop.
Re: You'll get this 2014 MBP (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: You'll get this 2014 MBP (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I wonder why (Score:5, Funny)
I wonder why Tim Cook is so crazy about dongles.
Re: (Score:1)
Re:I wonder why (Score:4, Funny)
I wonder why Tim Cook is so crazy about dongles.
There's a joke there which I am fighting not to make...
Re: (Score:2)
why Tim Cook is so crazy about dongles.
Cook is convinced Jobs' design genius is limited to having as few ports as possible.
Re: (Score:1)
Also "as thin as possible" and battery life be damned.
Re: (Score:1)
Well, duh. He's gay. :P
Bought a 2015 last year (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
I like the log that I drop in the toilet, which is where Apple's USB-C-only plan belongs.
And on the flip side (Score:5, Insightful)
I have been a Mac user since the 1980's. My 2011MBP has died, I went looking and came away with the realisation that Apple does not produce anything that I would pay for, nothing!
Sorry Apple, I want Ethernet, USB-A, Audio, Thunderbolt 2 as well as 3, I want an SD card reader, I want a real keyboard with no wank bar at the top, I want a Mag-safe connector. I want to be able to upgrade the RAM myself, as well as the SSD storage, I have no intention of paying your "retail + 200%" prices.
I want better battery life, do I care if it will be thicker than last years model...hell no, that would actually be appreciated as the extra weight means it will not feel like its about to flip over on its back
Will it happen, I doubt it. Apple is like a teenager, so bloody busy looking at their small screen they can not see or hear what is happening around them.
So... the next mission is to figure out what a reasonable laptop with Linux on it will be....
And for all the Mac developers I had bought software off over the last 30+ years.... cheers, thanks, but I have to leave now.
Re: (Score:1)
You might try the Dell XPS developer edition. I've read nice reviews. I have a Dell laptop at work and I find it pretty good for a PC, checks the boxes I care about.
At home now I have a stack of PC parts on the floor that arrived today (funny oh look there's Apple's hardware refresh announcement ahead of September) to make a new desktop machine. I'm sick of the fan in my 2013 MBP whirring away. If I miss OSX too much there's always old tonymacx86 w/ clover to the rescue and I will still keep my MBP for now.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Yup. This. My 2011 mbp got handed down, and i've got a 2015 mbp now. I miss the ethernet, but its overall been a decent unit.
But im not seeing anything from apple i'd buy as a replacement. Its just useless garbage.
Perhaps ironically, the surface laptop from microsoft is looking pretty good these days; and a number of my peers are getting those now.
I've also had a couple standing offers on my 2015 mbp whenever i let it go; not because these people can't afford a new one, but because they don't want apple's l
Legacy? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I was about to post exactly that.
Virtual +1 insightful.
USB-other-than-C is not legacy (Score:3)
In the last year I've bought several new devices with USB connectors. In all cases the computer-end of the included cable was USB-A, and in all but one case (the GoPro) the device end was micro USB-B. These are not only currently shipping products, but one of them is brand-new to the market two months ago. I *might* have considered one of these MacBook Pros to replace my 2012 11" MacBook (an excellent form factor for travel but a lousy screen resolution for FCPX or Lightroom) if they'd gone back to a decent keyboard, but I'm not going to use something where I can't even tell if the keystroke registered or not. And no, I don't want haptic feedback, I want key travel.
Re: (Score:2)
1. Go to Apple.com or an Apple store.
2. Buy the most expensive MacBook they make.
3. Buy the most expensive iPhone they make.
4. Then buy a $19-$35 cable to connect them.
https://www.apple.com/shop/iph... [apple.com]
Re: (Score:2)
You can still get a 2015 MacBook Pro while there's still some left for sale.