For his test of the new MacBook Pro, Joanna Stern you Wall Street Journal had the pleasure of chatting with two Apple executives. The journalist was thus able to question John Ternus, SVP in charge of hardware, and Tom Boger, VP in charge of Macs, on these new machines and the choices made by the manufacturer. In particular, why does the notch that cuts out the top of the screen not integrate Face ID?
As often, Apple officials do not respond directly to the question asked. They prefer to highlight the Touch ID sensor integrated at the top right of the keyboard and which is, according to Tom Boger, more practical on a laptop since the hands are already on the keyboard anyway. Which is not wrong, but we could retort that the user’s face is usually already in front of the screen too …
If Face ID has not been integrated into the new MacBook Pro, it is more for reasons of space (especially thickness, the necessary sensors are too thick for the thinness of the screen on these Macs), costs or lack of development time. Anyway, we can hope that Apple ends up adding Face ID to a Mac, and why not the future big iMac which is not a laptop and which is not constrained by finesse. According to the latest rumors, however, this is not ready to happen for several years yet.
Face ID on Mac: not for a few years!
The interview also mentions the lack of a touchscreen, with the same response we’ve heard for years: the iPad is the best computer with a touchscreen, the Mac is optimized for indirect input. On the ease of repairing these Macs and upgrading them, Apple officials point out that the unified memory of the Apple Silicon chips partly explains the excellent performance of these Macs. As for the lack of water resistance, this is not a request from users according to Tom Boger.
In terms of repairability, we can still note that the battery is no longer stuck anyhow like on the old models, and that we can finally simply remove it:
The battery of the new MacBook Pro can again be easily replaced
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