Looking back at Apple’s ‘Hello Again’ event which took place last month where the company launched the new MacBook Pro line up, Philip Schiller in an interview with The Independent defended the criticism coming Apple’s way. Schiller is Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing and a familiar face in Apple keynotes.
Taking on the contention that the MacBook Pro 2016 has taken a step back in terms of design and functionality Philip said that Apple has implemented a design that has never been put on an Apple device. The new MacBook is lighter, thinner as well as denser. Plus it also has this huge track-pad which Schiller described as one of the greatest challenges while manufacturing the notebook. 
Schiller said – “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.”
There has also been criticism regarding the removal of SD card slot which would force users to buy an additional SD card reader. Justifying this criticism, Schiller said – “Then there are very fine and fast USB card readers, and then you can use CompactFlash as well as SD.”
Surprisingly, Apple hasn’t removed the 3.5 mm Headphone jack from the new MacBook Pro lineup and the reason behind this according to Schiller was to cater the people at studio monitors and setups which might not have wireless headphones as yet. He also mentioned that though the future of headphones is wireless, but the MacBook Pro being a powerful device is used for several editing and other studio activities which require powerful wired headphones.
Moreover, though Apple included Siri in the MacOS, the voice command ‘Hey Siri’ is still missing which is where Schiller pointed out that MacBook Pro is not a device which will remain in your pocket, “So if you still have to go across the room to wake the Mac, then what’s the point? You need to build system-wide electronics that are in the right standby state, listening for that catchphrase and that’s not built into the electronics of Mac today.” – He is quoted as saying.
Apart from this, Apple has further been criticised for not including the ‘Escape Key’, including four thunderbolt 3 ports which now requires adapters even to connect an iPhone to MacBook Pro 2016. Further, MacBook Pro cannot be maxed out to 32GB RAM and the lack of MagSafe port and SD Card slot further pile up the criticism. Nevertheless, Apple points to the ‘amazing’ response before the actual shipments start as an indicator.