There is no denying that Apple lost their design genius when Jony Ive left. However, there’s also the speculation that Jony Ive might have gotten bored and churned up questionable designs (keyboard, mouse, Touch Bar, you name it), which just proved that he is human, and can get tired and bored.
In any case, Apple clearly reverted back to its old Jony Ive designs — the iPhones look like iPhone 4s, only bigger (yeah, definitely better), and now the 2021 MacBook Pro designs look like the Powerbooks of old, after clearing the pipeline for the last of Jony’s designs. Are we going to see the next iMac to look like Pixar’s mascot again? I’m getting my hopes up. Anyway, Apple is going back to the true and tested Jony Ive designs, as they move on to an Ive’s less Apple, and give their designers breathing room to explore and bring new designs that are whimsical and exciting that Apple was known for.
The 2021 Apple Silicon 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro, as I have mentioned above, look like the Powerbooks. The look is one thing, but these new Macbook Pros also welcome the re-introduction of old ports, like the Magsafe (which was a killer design back then, but was removed to make the laptops thinner), HDMI (although some are saying it is not the latest 2.1 spec) and SDXC reader. I have transitioned fully to a dongle-full life over the span of five years. The USB-C hub that I carry supports both the Macbook Pro and the iPad Pro, so not much value for me with the addition of the SDXC and HDMI. The Magsafe, on the other hand, is most welcome. I have tried those silly USB-C magnetic adapters, and they’re just clunky and unreliable. Finally, who can forget that the new Macbook Pro designs sport a notch! Yes, the upgraded camera (now 1080p) is designed similar to the FaceID cameras on the iPhone and iPads, but without FaceID. What was Apple thinking? Well, personally, I don’t mind it really — it just disappears after awhile, and it does not eat up the display resolution, specially with new ProRes displays.
Apple gave in to customer feedback when they ditched the butterfly keyboard first, but now it seems like they also covered the major issue, lack of ports. Will they give us a touchscreen Macbook in the future? I doubt that. What is important is that Apple is listening (finally?).
Now, if only Apple will listen to privacy and security experts and abandon their Child Safety plans of doing on-device scanning, then that will be super awesome and great. The paper, “Bugs in our Pocket: The Risks of Client-Side Scanning”, is just one of the many papers and petitions published about client-side scanning (or on-device scanning), and I hope that Apple’s Tim Cook and the rest of the leadership team and their Board of Directors, will finally bin this idea and plan, and work with these privacy and security experts for a better way of combatting child sexual abuse materials. So, when are we getting full end-to-encryption for iCloud, including backups?