On October 27th, Apple held one of its quarterly events at its campus in Cupertino, California to unveil the new line of MacBook Pros. These new machines garnered a great amount of attention during and directly preceding the event; press has again spiked in the last few days as people release reviews on the next generation of Apple’s professional laptop computer. The source of all the excitement centers around the design and functionality shift seen in these computers: namely the lack of ports and poor specs. Some are claiming that the moniker is wrong for this computer and that is the source of complaint; others assert that the technological shift Apple is trying to lead comes prematurely.

Historically, Apple has been notorious for leading shifts in removing conventional technology from electronic devices, from the removal of the optical drive to read CDs in the original MacBook Air to the recent axing of the headphone jack in the iPhone 7. Now, the Silicon Valley titan is poised to remove all other ports from its computers except for the USB type-C port. This move was first seen in the new MacBook computer that arose to much fanfare for having only a USB type-C port and a headphone jack. With the new generation of MacBook Pros, there are either two or four of these USB type-C ports flanked by a headphone jack. Effectively, Apple is making the claim that the future is only USB type-C.

The critics of this move argue that these universal ports will be the future, but the future is not now. They state that many ports like HDMI, SD card reader, and thunderbolt had their place and were very useful to the photographer, video editor, or other professional who paid such a large sticker price for the creme de la creme of laptop computing. Presently, using many of these ‘pro’ functions requires numerous adapters that are cumbersome, expensive, and easy to misplace.

However, all is not bad with these new marvels of engineering and design. The screens are brighter, more brilliant, and are housed in a smaller body. The MacBook Pros are thinner and lighter than ever before. Most notably, the trackpads are enlarged to twice the size of last generation counterparts and a new touch enabled bar sits above the keyboard with special functionality dependent upon a fingerprint reader and upon which app is in use. These additions and changes in design have made many come to call these new machines upgrades to the MacBook Air, which saw no new addition to its line and only a price decrease to the current models.

As usual, Apple has made divisive moves that conjure much debate and scrutiny within the technological industry and will ultimately come down to the preference of consumers to make the steep purchase of a MacBook Pro that now starts at $1499.

Sources: Apple, The Verge  Photo Source: Apple Newsroom