Who knows what it was that brought Apple to current Macbook Pro design. Perhaps it was the years of technical headaches like the butterfly keyboards, perhaps it was a growing awareness of a significant body of professional users who were holding onto their old pre-2015 systems instead of opting for USB-C charging Touchbar foolishness. Whatever it was, when Apple brought back Magsafe charging and a healthy number of ports to the Macbook Pro in 2022, I finally let go of my of my old system and upgraded my laptop. It didn't hurt that the battery had swollen on my Macbook Pro, distorting the enclosure and leaving me worried that the system might spontaneously combust.
My Macbook Pro isn't the only Apple device I need to replace or upgrade, but sadly, it seems like it's one of the few Apple designs that are aligned with my needs.
My current iPhone is an original iPhone SE. Often, when people see it these days, they're like, "what is that?" At one point, I had tried an upgrade to the iPhone Xs, but the lack of a home button made the device extremely frustrating to use. Back then, my wife pointed me to a way to use the accessibility features to create a soft home button, which helped, but didn't save it. I ended up switching the SIM card out and going back to my old iPhone SE, using the iPhone Xs as a camera (it was a good camera). I even upgraded my original 64GB iPhone SE to a 128GB model I was able to find online.
I kept hoping that the iPhone SE2 would keep the body style and features of the original iPhone SE, but when it was announced — and it was basically an iPhone 8 — I knew I wouldn't be getting a new SE. Sure, it still had a home button, but they got rid of the headphone jack and the lens protruded from the back. My iPhone SE is probably the last Apple iPhone that doesn't really need a case to protect the device.
Since that time, I've upgraded my iPhone Xs (a camera) to an iPhone 13 Pro that is still, just a camera. I don't use it for calls. I don't use it for listening to music, even though I have Airpods. If Apple sold something like it that was a smaller and lighter top-tier camera (like the old iPod Touch), I'd probably consider one of those instead. The iPhone Mini models, that have since been cancelled, were tempting for their smaller, more appropriate size, but the lower grade camera and the lack of a headphone jack kept me from switching to that device as my all-in-one phone.
The iPhone 13 Pro is also full of features that I don't use — the wireless charging is just about useless for me, and the absence of a fingerprint sensor is inconvenient whenever you need to wear a mask or when you're outside wearing sunglasses. Did I mention that I hate the volume/power button configuration?
With the way the various model designs have been going, I don't expect the iPhone to ever return to the type of design that I would use. That branch of development seems to have closed and we're stuck with oversized devices without industry-standard headphone jacks going forward. I've resigned myself to knowing that my best hope is to replace my battery again, sometime in the future.
The Disappointing Design Direction for the iPad Line
My iPad is an old 10.5" iPad Pro. When I purchased it, I liked to use it to view (and sometimes color-correct) images. These days, I mostly use it to stream various video services. It's been about six or seven years since I got this iPad, and the battery is failing. I've had it on flights and been unable to stream more than about 2 hours of content before the battery dies. I'd probably replace the battery, but when we've tried to do that, we've wound up with iPads that don't work right any longer. Even though the battery issue was becoming a problem last year, every time I look at upgrades, I give up.
Sadly, the iPad upgrade path is the barrier that keeps me from upgrading. In one respect, I'd like to switch to a new iPad Pro with a modern M-series chip — that's what we upgraded my wife to when the first M1 iPads came out. While the Face ID has had a few authentication issues, it's not as big of an issue with the iPad as it is with a device you carry around outside in the world. At the same time, the lack of the home button means I'd be stuck with the little white dot, the soft home button that I use on my iPhone 13 Pro — kind of a pain when your watching streaming content. But the worst is probably the lack of a headphone jack. As of today's post, the only iPad in the current line-up that still has a headphone jack is the 9th generation basic iPad.
I know what the corporate line is on this — you can use Airpods or with the older Lightning-based devices, you could use their Apple Lightning connector earbuds. Now it's, "you can use an adapter dongle." But the simple question is, why can't I just use regular headphones, the same ones that I can use to connect to my Macbook Pro. When I'm on the plane, I want to use headphones. I have nice headphones that I use when I'm on the plane. I can use them to connect to in-flight audio on international flights, but I can't connect them to the newest iPad?
With the phones, I've heard some people try to sell the idea that the standard audio jack would make the iPhone less water resistant. Okay, but the iPad isn't used in the same environments and it doesn't need to meet that standard. The iPad Pro was pitched as sort of a laptop replacement — when the laptop has an 3.5mm audio port. It's probably just a matter of another rev or two for them to try and remove the audio port from the Macbook Pro, but seriously, WTF Apple?
I know. It's a pretty simple usage model, and I'm sure that I'm not the only one that operates this way, but suddenly, the theme running through Apple designs is that I'm the idiot, that my usage patterns and my expectations for the technology are wrong. Frankly, if the things that I designed were that misaligned with my audience, I'd be out of work.
Perhaps the funniest aspect of this was when Apple announced their Hi-Resolution Lossless Audio, but it wouldn't work on any of their existing audio components. It didn't work on Airpods, Airpod Pros, or even their Airpod Max headphones — even if you were using a wired connector with the Airpod Max headphones. It's kind of like being saddled with another version of the Touchbar.
So here I sit, with a dying iPad. It seems like my best choice for a replacement is the base model from the previous generation, where I'll get one or two improvements like a faster processor and a battery that can hold a charge, but I'll lose some better speakers and some screen quality. And by making that choice, I'd be choosing a system that may not run next year's OS, or if not next year, a year or two after that. Thanks Apple.
These are the kinds of things that make you wish for the old version of Apple, the one that actually solved design problems rather than working through iterations of designs that progress toward getting rid of that terrible "notch" or trying to find ways to make people use Siri.
