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Elon Musk is known for his incredibly ambitious, multi-year visions for the future. Tesla’s initial Master Plan, funding cheap vehicles with expensive ones, was realized with the Model 3. Now the Cybertruck is part of a whole new Master Plan that has much more to do with SpaceX than Tesla. You might love the Cybertruck, or you might hate it, but it was never designed for you. Cybertruck was designed to be extremely rugged, Mars rugged. Some Musk tweets aren’t always what they appear (“funding secured” comes to mind), but this one can be taken at face value. Those flat steel panels and thick windows can handle Martian dust storms. Flat panels are also easy to pack and significantly simplify manufacturing and assembly. Every apparent design constraint improves Cybertruck’s chances of being assembled or even manufactured on the Red Planet. Out of This World Design Futuristic is both a great and horrible description of the Cybertruck. It’s absolutely reminiscent of 80s design, like it came out of a or fever dream. This seems unlikely to be the result of Tesla designers starting with a blank canvas, as notes. If you ask automative designers to imagine the future, it’s always more and more aerodynamic shapes. Curves are great for aerodynamics, so why are all the exterior panels so flat? Blade Runner Total Recall Jalopnik The truck’s unibody exoskeleton frame is definitely unique. says that achieving a high towing capacity with a unibody frame can only be done with flat panels. Maybe, but a unibody design also makes the body shell easier to manufacture. Flat panels are also easier to manufacture, and much simpler in assembly. They're also much easier to pack tightly when hitching a ride inside the Starship’s cargo hold. TechCrunch If the Cybertruck is a sales success, it might even revolutionize automative manufacturing and assembly with simpler and cheaper methods. All of these elements make the Cybertruck a reasonable Martian vehicle. Then there’s that clean metal exterior without any pesky paint. Painting sheet metal on Mars would be horribly complicated, and would lose its protective qualities with one 66mph dust storm encounter. There’s a similar benefit in using thick, flat window panels. Especially if your goal is to maintain oxygen and pressurization inside the truck. It’s unlikely Tesla designers decided on completely flat panels without big functional advantages. We weren’t great at predicting the future back in the 80s, and automative design will stick with aerodynamic shapes for performance and efficiency. But if we see Cybertrucks racing across Martian soil, then this really is the most futuristic design of all. Starship Stainless Steel The Cybertruck as the SpaceX Starship. It also seems that Musk within a month of switching from on the Starship Rocket. If the decision to move to stainless steel for the Starship was done in conjunction with Cybertruck development, there might be more synergies here than expected. uses the same stainless steel alloy alluded to a crazy truck design aluminum to steel So why pick steel when aluminum alloys are lighter, stronger, and more flexible? For both the Starship and Cybertruck, steel is significantly cheaper to source and manufacture with. Steel is half the price of aluminum, and about a third cheaper to build with. Tesla Stock-Selloff It’s worth looking into why markets reacted so negatively to the Cybertruck announcement. Polarizing design Not taking pickup market seriously Overly optimistic pricing By breaking norms with an unconventional design, it seemed as if Tesla was missing a huge opportunity. The pickup truck market is one of the , only second to crossovers in the United States. Since pickup trucks don’t have the same weight and size constraints as compact cars, Tesla could really showcase its technological edge in batteries and electric motors. The Cybertruck specifications are impressive, but could have been better with a lightweight aluminum body. Lack of easy truck bed access from the side led others to question how well it addressed pickup owners’ needs. Finally, coming at under $40,000 just seemed incredibly unrealistic for Tesla to generate any kind of margin. It was possible to take a short position right after the announcement during closed markets using . largest automative markets Morpher Elon Musk is aiming to go to Mars by 2024, and with Cybertruck rumored to only go into production in 2021, it makes sense to plan for Martian ruggedness. What Martian settler wouldn’t want a rugged vehicle that has six seats, 14,000 pounds of towing capacity, and 3,500 pounds of payload capacity? If the Cybertruck is a sales success, it might even revolutionize automative manufacturing and assembly with simpler and cheaper methods. For now I think the best way to look at the Cybertruck is as Starship’s little brother. As the official vehicle of Mars, Cybertruck is much more like the Corvettes driven by NASA astronauts than the F-150. Image from NASA

Tesla Cybertruck: Built for Mars, Available on Earth

In a world where smartphone brands like Samsung and Apple already existed, Chinese brand OnePlus took a bold step by introducing the world to a smartphone of its own. The company made its debut in the year 2013, with the main motive to make a high-end device with an affordable price range. And the company did just that! True to its tagline, “Never Settle”, the company brought to us the flagship killer OnePlus smartphones with amazing features and a price tag that was easy on the pockets. OnePlus has come a really long way since its first smartphone. Let’s take a look at how the smartphones have evolved since OnePlus One to the upcoming OnePlus 6. OnePlus One Oneplus.in OnePlus One was introduced in 2014. Unlike all other smartphones, which are easily available in the market, this smartphone required an invite for a buyer to place their order. However, it was the 64GB internal storage capacity that caught everyone’s attention. When most smartphones back in the day offered 32GB storage, OnePlus was offering a whopping 64GB at a reasonable price range. As for the design, the smartphone stood out from the rest of the other Android smartphones back in the day. OnePlus One sported a unique sandstone rear panel. Other than that, the smartphone came with the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor. Additionally, with a 13-megapixel rear camera, the smartphone was able to capture some incredible images. If that wasn’t enough, the camera also had support for recording videos in 4K resolution and capturing images in burst mode. For a smartphone with features like most high-end devices, it was priced at Rs 21,000. A , don’t you think? smartphone with an affordable price OnePlus 2 Oneplus.in The second smartphone by the company retained a lot of features from the first. Some of the similar features that we saw again were the sandstone finish and the storage capacity. Nevertheless, the company managed to make a lot of changes to its second smartphone. One key feature which was introduced was the ‘slider’. Positioned on the left side of the smartphone, the slider allowed users to switch between ring, silent and do not disturb mode. On the other hand, another interesting feature was the introduction of the USB Type-C port. Back in 2015, a very few smartphones supported this port. So every OnePlus 2 user had to make sure to carry around their personal charger. Apart from that, the smartphone continued its support for 4K recording and came up with the new HDR mode. OnePlus 3 Oneplus.in When compared to the first two flagship smartphones by the company, OnePlus 3 stood apart in terms of design. Instead of a sandstone finish, OnePlus 3 was the first smartphone by the company to sport a metal finish. Moreover, the rear panel also came with antenna lines on the top and bottom. Other than that, the phone also featured rounded edges which gave it a very classy look. Moreover, the smartphone was also the first to come with ‘Dash Charging’. This allowed users to charge their OnePlus 3 smartphone in a matter of 30 minutes. Some of the other features included an upgraded Snapdragon 820 processor and 6GB RAM smartphone. During its launch, the smartphone was priced at Rs 27,999. OnePlus 3T This smartphone was an obvious upgraded variant of the OnePlus 3 smartphone. It made its debut 3–4 months after its predecessor. Some of the updates included- a better front camera, a bigger battery and an even more powerful processor. The company also launched a new 128GB storage variant of this smartphone which was priced at Rs 34,999. Similarly, the base variant was priced at Rs 29,999. OnePlus 5 Oneplus.in OnePlus 5 created a buzz for being the first smartphone by the company to sport a dual rear camera setup. The setup included a 16-megapixel and 20-megapixel sensor with support for portrait mode. Apart from the vertically placed dual cameras, the smartphone came with the similar metal unibody design as its predecessors. Furthermore, the smartphone was fuelled by a powerful Snapdragon 835 processor. Even this smartphone was made available in two storage variants- 6GB RAM with 64GB of internal storage and 8GB of RAM with 128GB of internal storage. OnePlus 5T After seeing the success of the OnePlus 3T, the company decided to launch another updated variant called OnePlus 5T. Interestingly, OnePlus 5T was the first smartphone by the company to sport an 18:9 aspect ratio. This meant that the placement of the fingerprint scanner was moved to the rear panel. Other than that, the only other upgrade was the rear camera features. The update included support for low-light photography. With this phone, the company decided to go on a different track and launched a OnePlus 5T Star Wars Variant which was a treat for all the Star Wars fans. OnePlus 6 This smartphone made its debut on May 16, 2018, in London. However, except for a complete design revamp, there is nothing that we haven’t seen before on the OnePlus devices. As for the design change, OnePlus has followed the most predictable notch display with rounded edges. What’s interesting is the glass design on the rear panel made of Corning Gorilla Glass 5. Additionally, we know that the . However, the device will also be compatible to download the Android P Beta build. smartphone runs on the latest Android OS As for the specifications of the smartphone, it is powered by the superfast Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor. The smartphone is available in 6GB RAM (64GB storage, 8GB RAM (128GB storage) and 8GB RAM (256GB storage) variants. Apart from this, OnePlus has partnered with Disney to launch a OnePlus 6 Avengers Infinity War variant. The smartphone isn’t official yet, but we can expect it to launch soon. Marvel Studio All in all, we can say that the OnePlus smartphones are not designed to bring anything new but to do everything better. OnePlus smartphones are known for their amazing performance, usability and software. Maybe, that’s the main reason that . And what makes them even better is the mid-range price tag that they come with. Who wouldn’t want a smartphone with all the high-end features in an affordable budget, right? But what makes the OnePlus devices stand out from the rest is that they give the users exactly what they are looking for and that’s why the smartphones continue to prosper. OnePlus holds 48 percent premium market share in India

OnePlus One to OnePlus 6: How the Flagship Killer Has Aged So Far

Here is a short theory. Product innovation is all the work which satisfies one of these two outcomes: A) it increases the size of the core user base B) it increases the amount of added value for the product This is it. Really. And you can see this in place at the current Behemoths of software: Google, Facebook and Apple. The most handy case study about product innovation is Apple. I’m sorry I don’t have others at hand, I wish I did because these big companies have been hyper second guessed already. But, bear with me. The core user base is made of those users who buy into the company’s mission, most users will buy into the company’s vision. On the laptop market, Apple’s core user base were artists and creators of all kinds, yet not because the machines were significantly better. Actually, the premiums were rarely justified. These core users bought into the positioning of Apple’s unofficial mission: Man is the creator of change in this world. As such he should be above systems and structures, and not subordinate to them. It doesn’t matter that the above was not the “official” Apple mission. It illustrates perfectly the creator’s dilemma about the tools of creation and the basic “it just works” expectation. Their initial core user base of artists and creators weren’t there because Photoshop ran faster or because it was cool to own an Apple machine, they were there because these people saw Apple as a company which understood what they mean and what they need. So how did they innovate? The first product innovation that expanded the core user base was the move of the OS to a unix type system. This expanded the core user base to include software developers, lured in by the extensive tool chain and reliability newly found in OS X, finally a useable Linux. For what laptops are concerned, the base value proposition is simple: a portable powerful computer. Apple differentiated their laptops with their high performance, driven by the control of both hardware and software. The added value is all product development which increases the gap between the basic value propositions and the perceived added value. Apple was making great laptops but began to up the ante on added value with product development such aluminum unibody, Retina display or the glass trackpad. All these were product innovation because it increased the delta between the basic value proposition of the Apple laptops and the added value which the user perceives to pay for. The advantage of having a high core user base is that you can outlast market innovation delivering a constantly shitty product. The advantage of a high added value proposition is more money, money coming from engagement and repeated use. With a core user base that today spans multiple consumer categories Apple continues to thrive even while they clearly deliver shittier products. Reaping benefits of a good gap between base and added value, Apple still collects premium margins and consumer lock-ins without proposing new products. This is the power of product innovation. The core user base is the best foundation for the product against a destabilizing . future For every user that has at least one friend is a core user. This makes their foundation “fortress level”. It is impossible to successfully attack Facebook, and it appears that the sole good strategy is a Trojan Horse. facebook If I was Google, I’d get the Russians buy and misuse a lot of Facebook advertising. A huge margin between base value proposition and the added value is the best attack against competing products. For Google, every other thing it provides on top of search results is added value. Facebook is a fortress, Google is a raging army. With the immense added value to the basic product benefit of searching the web it is impossible to stand to their attack, whatever you do they did better or will do better. It is impossible to successfully defend against Google. and it appears that the sole good strategy is flee and burn. Google requires privacy and content. Content for the basic benefit and privacy provides the added value. Flee and burn is a tactic where you run like hell but you destroy everything that the invading army might use as a resource. Marching on deserted land takes an immense toll. If I was Facebook I’d do my best to starve Google’s content hungry war machines by luring publishers to put their stuff inside my walls. I’d also support all those NGO’s that try to make available private data less and less of a default. Product innovation is a term really thrown around. Remember though that there are many ways to confuse innovation for what it isn’t: optimizing profits or increasing returns is not product innovation improving feature delivery times is not product innovation increasing market share is not product innovation Product innovation is hard. For example, Apple TV. This product is still a hobby project so many years after it’s inception. Why? Well, how can you expand the core user base of “people who watch tv”? You can but in a very hard and complicated way. When something is hard and complicated execution suffers big time. They tried making it a game console, failed. They tried to smarten all those dumb TV’s, they failed. Also, how can you increase the added value delta for a TV accessory? Pretty hard. 4K, too late. Aggregate content? Not enough. Touch remote? … Does the iPhone X innovate as a product? There is something new about AR and the edge to edge display is specifically good for AR. This AR push though, is it going to expand on the core user base of the iPhone? I don’t think so, because it’s a me too move and it does not deliver much usefulness, so far. Face ID is not product innovation because it is a mere feature, not actual product development. It is also required because of the edge to edge screen. Again, product innovation is hard. Everything that works in increasing the core user base always bears the risk of alienating the folk who were there in the first place. Everything that produces added value increases pressure on supply chains, on production cost and on overall product quality.

Things generally suck because of product innovation

User experience. The two words that have taken the world by storm, uttered by toddlers, teenagers, young adults, not so young adults going through a midlife crisis, cocaine addicts, old adults and all their immediate relatives and friends at their funeral two years later; dropping it into conversations like comma in a long list of other often unnecessary punctuation marks in a convoluted, pretentious yet potentially meaningless sentence, like this one for instance. Two seemingly unrelated words bastardised together by the beautiful, yet practical limitations of the English language and Donald Norman of the 1990’s. A who is traditionally seen as someone like this guy over here, has been rebranded into a faceless icon representing virtually any human being not in a coma. Except hipsters and millennials. They’re something else. “user” Dude pretending to snort cocaine off a spoon, but it’s likely just flour. And then there’s . A word to be taken seriously and often associated with people of a certain age and level of expertise around something, like Stifler’s mum for example: “experience” Stifler’s mum drinking, smoking and talking to Paul Finch. Or — under its other meaning — people standing in the crane position in a remote location doing yoga for no other rational reason than the “ of contorting their muscles and bones into odd positions without anyone seeing how miserably they fail. Well, other than the wildlife around them, that is … experience” Some dude on a beach doing yoga, with a sea-lion imitating him. But simplicity is divine and while there’s nothing divine in the good ole Queen’s English, it is undeniably a simple language. So simple in fact that it has become the official language of aviation, the de facto language of IT, wannabe cool kids and anglo-fetishists. If you’re thinking I am going nowhere with all of this, you’re dead wrong. The English language itself is a great — scratch that — the greatest example of spot on user experience. In fact it’s so darn spot on that , , and summarises the entire human existence, traditions, sorrows and joys, past, present and future of being English, knowing English and living on the British Isles. Ireland included. “Fish and chips.” “Please.” “Pub!” “It’s raining.” The point I am desperately trying to make is that, just like software in true Apple fashion, the English language . Why create a new word for user experience when you can simply take two otherwise unrelated words, line them up side by side and consider them a whole new concept worthy of at least one other entry in Webster’s Dictionary. just works The truth of the matter is, UX is nothing new. It’s just the digital era that propelled it into the . Suddenly every second college graduate stuck it on their resumes, and those who finished two years before them and were able to write three lines of jQuery and SASS, self-graded themselves up to popping out of every basement and attic bedroom like chimps from a burning banana plantation. And suddenly eee-everybody was UX this, UX that, the oooh and the aaaah of crows acting smart about the shiny lid of a near-empty tin-can smelling of yesteryear’s gone-off beans and a dead fly stuck into the used-to-be tomato sauce. “buzzword-o-sphera” “solid” “UX Architects” UX has been turned into the misunderstood foster-child of software development by over-zealous sales agents, misguided designers, ignorant engineers and under-achieving project managers. User experience has been watered down and liquified into effects, klickety klackity sliding, fading, bouncing nonsense, layouts, wireframes and prototypes, most of which have next to no relationship with UX. It has to be said: most self-proclaimed and even industry awarded UX professionals are in fact glorified UI designers. There. I said it. It needs to be understood once and for all that a user’s experience with a piece of software, be that a simple website, web app, mobile, desktop or IOT app is not limited to what they see. In fact there are people who don’t see any of it, because they are visually impaired. But let’s forget about the blind folks for a second. Take Alexa for instance. The only interface with Alexa is speech. How do you wireframe that? Where do you put your fancy sliding panels and fading boxes? You don’t. My UX with Alexa — which by the way isn’t that great — is limited to me yelling at her ass to tell me something, which she often can’t. As if that were not bad enough, our conversations are riddled with 3–4 second pauses while to Amazon’s web servers to grab an answer for me that is often less informative and natural than the one Siri provided in under 1s sprinkled with her usual fun personality. “she hobbles” Alexa is a great example of iffy user experience and none of it has to do with visual design. To be perfectly honest I don’t even look at the Echo Dot, and I am sure most people don’t care much about any of the Echo device’s design and button layout. What I am concerned about and what makes my user experience lacking is that I need to wait for the answer, it’s often the wrong answer and it starts talking to me out of the blue when nobody asked her anything. Three issues: Lack of available and accurate content. Has nothing to do with visual design. Over-reliance on network availability and the speed at which it fetches the data. Has nothing to do with visual design. Sub-standard hardware and software integration. Has nothing to do with visual design. Frankly, Alexa just isn’t that intelligent, and the truest, and smartest thing it ever told me was this: Alexa telling me how “disconnected she feels” without wifi… ME: Alexa, do you feel lonely? ALEXA: No, because I’m never really alone. Although… when the wifi is out, I do feel disconnected. I swear, this is just a happy coincidence, I have not planned this, but Alexa actually just made my point. If there is no wifi, Alexa is useless, and I may as well talk into my toilet bowl, because at that point listening to the “echo” — pun intended — I’d get out of it, would be a lot more fun than the entirely void user experience Alexa would provide me. Burn Echo, buuurn! Me and all my imaginary friends dancing around the burning fire of bad user experience Now, you might want to say, that the term UX was coined ages ago, when IOT required a bigger stretch of imagination than coming up with seven Star Wars movies. And they even messed that up — aka, ruined my user experience — by releasing them in the wrong order!!! But OK, fine, let’s put IOT aside. Tell me, what’s your experience with Facebook and Instagram on a slow connection? How many times did you sit on the loo staring at the spinner, crossing your fingers for it to load soon enough to not end up having to request a half-day holiday for it at work? Because you can’t just close the app, do your work and expect that half an hour later it’s just going to magically be there. That does not happen. Why would it? It’s not part of design, It’s not part of UX, so it’s probably not important. No, you need to stare at it. There’s power in the blood, and the sweat of your stare. Oh, come ooon, load alreaaargh!!!! You see, someone at some point decided to spread the awful rumour that UX is about visual design, layouts and interactions. And that massive heap of misinformation kept growing bigger and bigger into a monolith of blatant lies so impressive that they convinced the recruitment industry as well. And recruiters started hiring the great wizards of Sketch, Adobe XD, JustInMind and the likes, who all talk about UX as if it were something you can understand, resolve and architect inside an app. Except you can’t. And they though they could do UX in an app… LMAO Please, someone tell me how a UX professional sketches Godaddy’s severely outdated PHP 5.4 into the app, or a possible migration to Linode where the back-end developer decides to work with Node? How do you Adobe XD Javascript being turned off, or the network being slow or down? How do you account for accessibility or service-workers in JustInMind? How is all your fancy wire-framing going to tackle all of the above? Or is that not part of user experience? Oh, but it so bloody is! One simply cannot talk about UX without having a holistic understanding of software development. Designs, layouts, bells and whistles are a mere fraction of a much larger picture. I’d argue that in 2017, someone who has not spent at least two years each, working with front-end, back-end, database and server technologies can’t possibly have an overarching understanding of what generates great user experience. Those AJAX calls don’t just happen at a snap of a finger, you know. They actually require the presence of certain technologies. The moment you introduce dynamic content, you also need to think of how to deal with it for unsighted users for instance. As if that wasn’t enough, you need to take into account the performance of the software, under dire conditions like slow network connections and a sudden surge of users. Can it scale, will it slow down and leave people frustrated? Does it work on every operating system, or every browser? Is there a consistent experience on all major screen readers? Does it work like a PWA, offering an offline experience? If so, does it save the data the user submitted or will you ask them to resubmit? Is it internationalised or are you expecting everyone to speak English in Kazakhstan? Just what happens when things get lost in translation… All of the above, and so many more things contribute to user experience. Nobody cares about where you place the search bar in your app, if it returns a million plus one unfiltered results that I then have to scroll through — oh but wait, I can’t because lazy loading has not been enabled and the browser crashed from a data overload it cannot process fast enough. How exactly do you deal with that in Adobe XD again? Right. You don’t. In fact 90% of UX you don’t deal with in a tool. You deal with it in infrastructure, database, back-end code, choice of front-end frameworks, and then, maybe then you fire up Sketch. You see, user experience is a very personal one and you’re tempted to think it’s all about the visual and interactive experience, but interactions are becoming more and more complex and multidimensional, all of which require a large number of services, libraries and frameworks to work in tandem. And then there’s the weirdos like me… Apologies for the wonky iPhone 7+ “bokeh effect”… Just the other day I went to Dublin Octoberfest for lunch, and when I handed over the money for the “bratwurst” and the non alcoholic Erdinger, I heard the lady count the money in german. Because we’re in Europe, tips are mostly not required, but to me the fact that I was served by a “proper German”, meant the world, and just for that, I left a tip! It wasn’t the presentation of the food, the coldness of the beer, or flavour of the sausage, all of which you’d expect to matter. For me those were all a given, and what made my user experience stand out, was something few would think of: authenticity. It prompted me to go back the next day and get this: Smoked pig knuckle and fried potatoes And I am going to go back on Saturday as well! And that’s what great user experience is — an invitation to experience it again, and again. And that experience is an overall experience. Trust me, nobody would spend $2.5K on a Macbook Pro if it had Windows on it. Apple knows that very well and they’ve bet their entire business on UX. Not saying they’re perfect but they do get it mostly right, and not because of the aluminium unibody designs or retina and super-retina screens. If there were crappy software behind the hardware, if there wasn’t an established and well-functioning eco-system behind it all, providing a holistically positive user experience, Apple would not exist today. The crux of user experience is every answer that you can come up with for , and that answer is never singular and will always, but always touch on every layer of your application. If it doesn’t, you clearly missed something and most of your users will use it out of necessity rather than choice, and choices are always plenty… what makes a product great — Attila Vago writer of codes, blogs and things that live on the web. Programming polyglot, pragmatic doer, member of the “taking care of business” crowd, with a no nonsense attitude. An easily inspired inspirational individual with a strong predilection towards most things nerdy, good, carnivorous food, and Lego. Uses a Mac. Runs at 6 a.m. HackerNoon and Quora author.

Let’s Talk About UX, Baby …

The new MacBook Pro is moving away from its core customers. I stood up from my chair, a new wooden office chair in the library discussion room with the smell of young Swiss pine, and walked toward the whiteboard on the wall to host the meeting for our marketing project. I made my way behind my teammates’ chairs in the tiny meeting room, and when I walked behind Eddie, a brilliant guy who talked really fast, I tripped the charger cable of his white MacBook. What will happened next just flash through in my head, his laptop will fell and break. I’m so sure of this because I just tripped the cable of my own Toshiba Portégé the week before. But magically, nothing happened. He picked up his cable and laughed at me “Don’t worry David, it’s magnetic!”. That’s the WOW time for me to know MacBook and I told myself I would definitely get one in the future. Unfortunately, the time to get a new laptop did not take too long to come. One year later, my Toshiba Portégé just kept showing me the blue screen and I know it’s time to say goodbye. I bought my first unibody aluminum 13-inch MacBook when it launched at 2008, and it stayed with me almost 8 years before I got my current 15-in retina MacBook Pro last year. Generally in the last 10 year, a MacBook Pro is more powerful and stable against other laptops using Windows as their operating system, especially when handling works such as and . Before my first MacBook, I never had a Windows-based laptop that can maintain the speed and performance for more than 1.5 years, so I was pretty amazed about how my 13-inch MacBook has performed. Therefore, I pay extra attention to MacBook updates every year, however, it’s been a while since last big updates for MacBook. design programming It took Apple 4 years, 4 months, and 16 days for Apple to introduce the new MacBook Pro on October 27, 2016. To be honest, the new MacBook Pro is a product of disappointment and simply is not a “Milestone” or “A big step forward” as Apple’s marketing head, Phil Schiller, claimed. Although I don’t feel any compulsory emotion as others who waited for years for a revolutionary MacBook Pro, as a gadget enthusiast and as early adopter, since there is no WOW moment for me toward the new MacBook Pro as I had before, I can safely say that you should probably skip the new MacBook Pro 2016 and maybe wait for another year. USB-C Taking away ports including USB-A and HDMI in the old MacBook Pro and shifting to USB-C only needs courage (not the one for iPhone 7 ), although a lot of people disagree with the move, I think it’s a necessary pain to move forward. headphone jack and EarPods USB-C is smaller and thinner than bulky USB-A, and can handle power, data, as well as video on a single cable. The entry-level MacBook Pro has two USB-C ports, and the high-end one has four ports. On the new MacBook Pro, USB-C ports will become he only way to hook up your chargers, memory card reader, external output, pretty much everything. Even you have a slimmer new MacBook Pro, you won’t find your life a lot more easier to carry it with you on daily basis since you need to bring a lot of dongles with you in the bag everyday, which add weight and size to your bag. This inconvenience can be alleviated if Apple really care about their customers and did it right, however, they did not. If you are a loyal iPhone users and just bought your iPhone 7, sorry, you need to buy another adapter in order to connect your iPhone with new MacBook Pro. Furthermore, there’s no power extension cable with the new MacBook Pro as they did with the old MacBook Pro, and you need to for $19. purchase it Adopting USB-C is a necessary pain. Although USB-C is an open standard and you can find other adapter and dongle online for price lower than Apple, as a early adopter of new MacBook Pro, there is no way to get rid of the dongle hell in the beginning. From the long term perspective, Apple’s move to USB-C is necessary and help to set the industry standard. Some one got to do it. Design There’s no doubt that the new MacBook Pro is still the most beautiful laptop in the world. It’s slim, sleek, beautiful and even feels great with every touch. But to be honest, and a bit unfair for sure, we’re used to it. We’re used to what Apple has offered in the recent years and the design of new MacBook is simply another “Apple Product” instead of something that turns the world around. The new MacBook is still the most beautiful laptop. The design, like iPhone 6 & 7, is just identical as competitors’ product, stylish and with better taste. In other words, the new MacBook Pro’s design does not set industry standard as iPhone 4 & 5 did in their launch date. Although I think the team of Jonathan Ive did a good job to design the new MacBook Pro a better looking one than its previous model, it is not revolutionary, and even the Surface Book surpass it in many forms, in an ugly way though. Performance The new MacBook Pro uses the Skylake architecture for their chip, instead of the Kaby Lake that has been adopted by handful of machines. It was a safe choice to launch the new MacBook Pro on time, which is a slap in the face with Phil Schiller’s “The calendar isn’t what drives any of the decisions” statement from the . interview with CNET OK, the chip is not impressive, how about RAM? Well, the new MacBook Pro has a maximum of 16 gigabytes of RAM, the same limit as the previous MacBook Pro. But these are not the worst. The new MacBook Pro has become the first MacBook that did not to receive . The test found out that the battery life of new MacBook Pro “varied dramatically from one trial to another”. Before the consumer report, there were a lot of complaints online regarding the poor battery life of the new MacBook Pro. Some customers claimed that their new MacBook Pro can only use for 3 to 4 hours instead of 10 hours as Apple advertised. To me, it’ s the last straw that breaks the camel’s back since battery life is crucial for laptops and previous MacBook has done a great job in this category. recommended ratings from Consumer Reports Touch Bar So, here comes the Touch Bar, the one that ignite so many discussions in this new MacBook Pro launch. A lot of people are really excited about it, however, I did not find it useful for current offering. For now, Touch bar looks more like a gimmick to me and I think the excitement behind it only stems from the lack of improvement in laptop business for way too long. It’s like a drop of water fall into the dry desert — saturated but will evaporate hastily. The Touch Bar is really eye-catching in the first appealing because those keys it has replaced are something outdated. And then Apple present the use case of Emoji. WOW! That’s a really impressive marketing out there. Use case of Touch Bar for native apps does not make much sense. Nevertheless, when I get a hand on it, I don’t find it helpful in simplifying workflow. For example, when I open the Notes app and start typing, Touch Bar will give you suggestions of words. Like I type “I” and it display suggestions like “will”, “am” for me to press. To be honest, this is rather silly when I can type 10 times faster on my keyboard. Also, when I open Safari, the Touch Bar will allow you to quickly select different browser tabs. In this case, I prefer using my usual keyboard shortcut of “cmd+number” or “cmd+option+left or right key”to jump from one tab to another, which are also faster than pressing on the Touch Bar. Other cases like Touch Bar with Photo app and Final Cut Pro, are rather bad UX comparing to what Apple has achieved in the last 10 years. Apple is a pioneer in user experience, but with Touch Bar, it proves that its pace has slowed down. That’s for the case of UX on Touch Bar so far, however, the future is still not defined. I am looking forward to more app integration with Touch Bar to offer a better experience than Apple did for its native apps. The key is, if you want users to lift their hands from keyboard and move to any specific button on Touch Bar, you need to offer them a stronger incentive. Right now, the incentive is weak. If Touch Bar can only offer users with tasks they can simply done on the keyboard, it will still be useless as the outdated keys it replaced. Will developers and designers switch to Surface? In the past, Apple successfully launched and ad campaign to attract frustrated Windows users to try Mac. It was a series of successful marking that bring Apple’s MacBook series one of the top choice for professional customers like designers, photographers, and developers. But now, it’s to ask consumers to “switch” to its Surface Book because of the new MacBook Pro launch. With Microsoft lurking behind, Apple really needs to think twice about who their customers really are and design the product for them. The new MacBook Pro has betrayed its core and most loyal customers, designers and developers, and while most of them are early adopters in this area, they can easily jump to other interesting product, such as Surface. Maybe this time, it will be Mac to be . “Switch” “Get a Mac” Microsoft’s turn disappointed Switched

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