Apple’s Philip Schiller Talks Computers, Touchscreens and Voice on the New MacBook Pro

David Phelan:

We first talked in an Apple-white private room at Infinite Loop, the company’s Californian headquarters, minutes after the new laptops had been unveiled and followed up a few days later…

This rarely happens. I assume it’s because the internet almost burned down from the heat of the discussions after the new MacBook Pro event.

Phil Schiller answers David’s questions:

The new MacBook Pro is a product that celebrates that it is a notebook, this shape that has been with us for the last 25 years is probably going to be with us for another 25 years because there’s something eternal about the basic notebook form factor.

Now this will be an interesting quote to return to in 25 years. I will actually put this down in my calendar.

If you made the Mac a touchscreen you’d have to figure out how to make it a good experience with your finger on a touchscreen. Trust me, we’ve looked at that — it’s a bad experience. It’s not as good or as intuitive as with a mouse and trackpad.

People assume Apple has never tried to make a touchscreen device. I was more than certain that they entertained the thought more than once, without Phil’s confirmation.

Then there are very fine and fast USB card readers, and then you can use CompactFlash as well as SD (…) So, that was a bit of a trade-off. And then more and more cameras are starting to build wireless transfer into the camera. That’s proving very useful.

Quite frankly, the camera companies, such as Nikon and Canon, are terrible at implementing features, which should have been standard years ago, wireless transfers being right there at the top.

And we are proud to tell you that so far our online store has had more orders for the new MacBook Pro than any other pro notebook before. So there certainly are a lot of people as excited as we are about it.

This is a tough one to judge — people have waited for so long for a new MacBook Pro, that it could just be then finally putting their orders down.

To be fair it has been a bit of a surprise to me. But then, it shouldn’t be. I have never seen a great new Apple product that didn’t have its share of early criticism and debate — and that’s cool. We took a bold risk, and of course with every step forward there is also some change to deal with. Our customers are so passionate, which is amazing.

We care about what they love and what they are worried about. And it’s our job to help people through these changes.

That’s the thing. I curse, swear, and shout, because I love, not because I hate. I want and expect the new MacBook Pros to be the best — my iPhone too, for that matter — but apart from the usual suspects, I do have two complaints:

there is no screen cloth included in the box; I still use the one from my 17″ MacBook Pro and have two more stashed away, for when this one finally gives out; I use it every single day to wipe down my screen and I expect a new one for every Mac; perhaps this is strange of me, but this is an expensive machine — I want to feel that Apple sweated the details;

the charger extender is missing and now a $19 optional accessory, which I consider bad taste; I’m sure most people never used it, but that’s besides the point.

Anyway, I have one on order too… with the Touch Bar.