We repair these as part of our business, and to be clear, both the keyboards and the screens are failing on these at an alarming rate.
iFixit detailed the issues with the screens, which (in Apple's unending quest for "thinness") use a thinner flex cable to connect the display to the rest of the laptop. This thinner cable is prone to breakage, and we are already seeing 2016-2017 MacBook Pros in our shop regularly for this issue.
Since Apple built the flex cable into the display, the only solution (even from third parties like us) is a new display. At $600-$700 each, this is unacceptable.
And, like the keyboards, this is a part that's pretty much guaranteed to fail (unless you basically never open your laptop.)
Apple hasn't announced a fix yet, even with a petition with over 11,000 signatures, and more screens failing by the day.
From the time the keyboard issues happened, I made a strong recommendation to avoid buying these. If you can do your work on a PC, do so. (Personally, I now use a Dell XPS 15 as a "desktop replacement", and kept my old 2013 MacBook Pro around too.) If you need a Mac, consider a desktop version (with a SSD!), or stick with the 2015 or older MacBooks.
Even if you think the keyboard issues are fixed, consider too that this is the 4th generation of these keyboards--and Apple promised that the 2nd and 3rd generation would fix these as well. This plus the screen issues means switching to PC if you need speed should be a serious consideration.
> If you need a Mac, consider a desktop version (with a SSD!), or stick with the 2015 or older MacBooks.
This is what I did.
I bought a 15'' 2015 model the day after the 2016 models were announced. I didn't even know about the keyboard problems, but the touchbar, the lack of ports, the price, and the shallow key travel were deal breakers for me.
I used it for about a year but the integrated GPU and the 4th gen CPU ran too hot. At the time I lived in Cancún so quite hot, and the fan noise was becoming annoying even when doing skype calls and such. Also running it on my lap was uncomfortable.
So at the start of 2018 I sold the MBP and got a 5K iMac with SSD since I really didn't need the portability anymore. Best Mac I've ever owned.
I have an old 2014 13'' MBP laying around which I use in the rare occasions I'm away from my iMac.
Thanks, this makes me feel better about my decision a couple months ago to switch to Lenovo's ThinkPad P1 Mobile Workstation. I don't have any regrets switching from Apple hardware, and frankly Linux is so much more superior (especially when using i3[0]), I'm quite pleased with it.
(The only complaint I have with the ThinkPad is the fan is super aggressive and very loud. It usually doesn't run for long, but it spins up with a whirring noise pretty often for 1-5 seconds before slowing down.)
Went exactly the same route a few weeks ago deciding between a new macbook pro or something else and went for the P1. Had some troubles with the UEFI due to outdated firmware (be sure to update that first thing) and other than that, I'm quite happy with the results. Battery life could be better, the fans are indeed more aggressive and I miss some of the touch gestures (swipe for browsing) that I didn't yet get to set up. My previous device was a late '14 MBP and that still works fine but is getting slow and quite hot.
Yeah, I am a fan of Arch on the desktop, but the P1 runs Nvidia's P1000 chip and Arch doesn't seem to like that, so I went with Ubuntu+i3 for now. Updating the firmware first is definitely critical, as you could brick the machine otherwise.
I'll echo my disappointment in battery life, although admittedly i3 and xfce defaults are probably not doing me any favors here...
For now the display fix is only for 2016 displays; though I suspect with more bad press they’ll extend to 2017 and 2018 models too.
I have a 2016 model which is starting to get the stage light problem. I wonder if it’s worth getting it fixed now or if I should wait until it gets worse before taking it in for servicing.
> And a free fix for keyboard issues on all butterfly keyboard laptops
Don't know about the very latest one (assuming there is 4th gen) but so far this has been more like a workaround that breaks down again at some point since the design is not solid. Getting an inherently flawed replacement for free isn't worth celebrating IMHO especially considering how expensive these things are.
Thanks for the downvote on what I thought was not even controversial. If we have to discuss whether "SSD is undoubtedly the single biggest system performance upgrade in the past 10 years." is correct then I think we can call it agree to disagree.
Not much point in complaining about downvotes on here. There is a certain population of, well, professional contrarians on HN, and there's also the (deliberately?) poor design decision that places the upvote and downvote arrows a few pixels apart. Someone may have voted you down by mistake. Think empty boat[1], not U-boat.
Not seeing anyone else mention this problem so perhaps I'm an edge case but I have a 3 month old Macbook Pro (work supplied, fortunately) and I'm getting double presses on certain keys. I've managed to ameliorate it a bit with software [0] but it's still a disgrace that this is happening on a $4K machine.
I've had a 13" MBP with Touch Bar since December 2016 and have had keys that felt weird, keys that repeated, keys that didn't work unless you pressed really hard, and keys that didn't work no matter how hard you pressed them.
I've had the top case replaced for free two times under warranty, and the extended 4-year warranty does make me slighty less worried. The battery is also replaced as part of the top case which is a pretty nice bonus.
Though it is still a major inconvenience to be without my main computer for a week while it's being repaired.
Mine started after probably 8 months. I ignored it until it became work stopping (I decided against installing software to compensate) and had it replaced under warranty. Soon after getting it back I got a keyboard cover which seems to be doing its job. I hate accessories, and am really disappointed they released a new mbp in this same form-factor.
I feel this comment is very misleading, since it looks like you are describing these new 8-core machines, which have been announced literally today and you cannot possibly have any experience of.
I had this issue. I assumed it was heat related, as the laptops can get real hot and sometimes I’m sure it doesn’t shut down properly when you close it - on mine the marks corresponded with the top bit of the keyboard, where it gets hottest.
Brought it in under Apple care and it was replaced (along with the keyboard, rolls eyes) no questions.
Yeah the upgrade policy at my work kicked in and they tried to give me one of these... instead I got a Thinkpad X1 Extreme and put Linux on it. No regrets.
I'm curious to hear about your experience with the X1 Extreme. My current employer has an equipment stipend that's the exact cost of a maxed out 15" macbook, I'd rather get the Thinkpad, a nice monitor and go to a conference.
I've had issues with macbook pro keyboards for every model since the 2016 one, but I've never had an issue with Apple not doing an in-warranty repair. In fact, usually they swap out the battery for me during these repairs too.
Contrast this with every other PC manufacturer where they require me to ship the item to them, wait for weeks. Apple gives it back to me within a couple of days.
A Lenovo (or Dell, and maybe also HP, haven't looked at their offerings recently) laptop in the price class of a Macbook Pro typically comes with on-site warranty support (and for cheaper business models it's typically an affordable upgrade), or you can bring or ship it to a local service partner and have them fix it and deal with the warranty claim.
My first and only buy has a serious quality factory issue: two keys not working, screw under a third one, and God knows what within the laptop.
The shop I bought redirected me to Lenovo website for the exchange, three numbers later (two weren't working at all) I am waiting for a document from Lenovo then I can go back to the shop for the exchange. It might take 5 days or one month.
I am a bit unhappy. At least the warranty is cheap (yeah?)
I would add to this that I genuinely don't think that the keyboard failures are due to dust - it seems far more likely to me that the switches are simply failing due to poor design.
Leaked Apple service documents did say that the intent of the latest gen was to fix the reliability problems, so I don't think it's just an assumption.
> this is a part that's pretty much guaranteed to fail (unless you basically never open your laptop.)
I have a 2016 MacBook "Pro", and every single part has been replaced (thanks, Apple Care) except the bottom plate.
It seems to me they are not really designed to be moved, or used in an environment with, you know, particles and such. Plug it in once, put a transparent dome over it, look at it, and you'll be just fine.
My 2016 is the first MBP where I've felt that. I have huge dents on it and it's in a Thule laptop bag if it's not on my desk. I'm not exactly gentle on my backpack but I never had to concern myself with my old 2015s (had a couple of these). I rarely use it outside of work, I take it home just for emergencies and it sits on my coat rack in the bag.
And you know what I'd totally pay $3k for a full on desktop replacement that does what I do with it. Fatten it up, give it better thermals, removable batteries, make it MORE durable, etc. I remember using 12lb Dell laptops. We're past the point of diminishing returns on portability now.
I'm pretty sure mine has a gnarly corner gash (at the corner of the monitor) from tossing it onto my cars leather seat while its in its padded backpack.. sad.
I will agree and add a data point here. My 2017 MBP has had chronic keyboard issues, despite being in for repair twice and having had the entire top case replaced. Seriously disappointed in this computer considering the price I paid. I am planning my escape from this platform.
Have one of the new 15" macbook pro with touch bar. My keyboard will never break simply because I never, ever use it. It's awful to type on, possibly the worst keyboard I've ever used. As is the track pad. I have a mouse plugged into it so I don't have to use the track pad. My MBP is basically a compact desktop machine and for that it is great. Fast and responsive.
Well, you don't need to use the keyboard extensively to break it. I used my MBP 2017 in the same manner as you, but still have to replace the keyboard twice.
Did something change regarding the trackpad? MacBook trackpads have always been at the top of the class, far better than any other manufacturer by leaps and bounds.
I love my Dell Latitude 5491 - six cores is more than enough for my work at the moment, and the NVMe drive absolutely screams. Much lighter than a workstation notebook, too.
i am sticking to my 2017 macbook air. This is from a time when apple knew what they where doing, and it has a proper usb port. And the handy magnetic connector that saved my laptop more times than i care to mention. My next laptop prob wont be a mac.
Keep profits up by externalizing cost of ownership.
If Apple is looking to be a totally integrated vertical, they would be wise to bring the fixit community into their stores and actually fix these things.
The status quo of push people to replace increases costs for folks today and the mess of disposable high tech gadgets onto the next generations.
Well, hopefully plural. But we seem keen to fuck that possibility right up while we fetishize our own feelings of unjustifiable entitlement.
After 8 years of macbooks, after using the 2018 model, I switched to a Dell Precision 5530 running Ubuntu 18.04 and it is awesome. The hardware is great, and having Unix under it all was the only real reason I liked Macs (used to be hardware, too). Granted, I don't need Adobe stuff, or anything else that doesn't run or have an alternative on Ubuntu (although it is dual-booted with Win10, but I've never used it, just keep it for when I want to play a game)
The Macbook pro 2018 was the worst laptop experience I've had in at least 15+ years. So disappointing, but maybe this will let Unix laptops finally start taking real market share.
I can only come to the same conclusion. Typing this on a 2018 MacBook 15 inch, and it's a disaster. I still keep accidentally hitting the Touchbar ten times per day while typing (it's not a press-bar, duh), I need a dongle for _everything and their mother_, battery lifetime isn't good, the keyboard is prone to mistyping and double clicks, the screen doesn't get bright enough sometimes, I can't get any higher spec hardware, it really feels like a super expensive toy to me.
I'd buy something different if there was a real alternative OS-wise (I feel too old to compile my own kernel for a glitchy wifi driver, and Windows? Nah, get away...)
I recently was forced to upgrade by 2015 laptop at work because the battery life was finally short enough that I couldn't stand it. I hate dongles. The 2015 Macbook will stand as their last best laptop. Nothing about the 2018 laptop is better, it's only worse. I don't understand why they don't see this.
There should really be a huge multi-billion dollar class action lawsuit for their keyboards and fixability to wake them up. I'm so angry.
100% agree. I'm typing this on a 2015 Macbook Pro, and holding on for dear life, even as it has started alerting me about servicing the battery. It's a great machine. I tried using the touchbar on my son's newer MBP. It's awful, and not meant for serious use. His laptop has been replaced once already due to keyboard issue, and starting to show defects again.
I did it last year on my 2012 rMBpro after it have been complaining about servicing the battery for about a year, and while it wasn't a walk in the park, it all worked out great.
Tip: there are 2 ways to replace the battery.
One is by following the official iFixit etc instructions where you remove absolutely everything before you peel off the battery with acetone.
The other is by immediately peeling off the battery right away. In that case, you have to be careful that the acetone doesn't flow onto the speakers (because they'd melt.) That's the way I, and many other with me, did it. It still only took me about 1 hour to get everything back up and running.
Or just take it to the Apple Store and pay them $199 to repair the battery which also gets you an entirely new top case and keyboard (old, original stock)
Yeah in my experience that 199$ price doesn’t happen in real life, as they tell you they need to replace the whole top case. Never understood why they publicly list the 199$ battery change price. Am I missing something?
AFAIK, If your battery is in the service battery condition (generally, less than 80% health), then you'll get the $199 price, otherwise you have to pay for the top case. It's the same repair either way but they charge for it differently.
I just had the battery replaced in two mid-2014 MBPs. They said that I'd be paying for the battery replacement (199), but that they would also replace the keyboard and trackpad and I wouldn't be charged for either. However, the way they stated it initially was a little confusing, since it sounded like I'd be paying an additional 100, but they were quick to clear it up.
They did say that they might need to replace the shell (battery was slightly swollen in both machines) and that I'd be responsible for that cost, but that didn't happen for either box. I don't think they replace the shell unless it's really, really deformed. Neither of my machines would sit flat and both were obviously swollen. One I could practically spin like a top (and the trackpad was screwed).
I got both back with no deformities, a new battery, keyboard, and trackpad, and a 199 bill (plus tax).
I wouldn't rule out getting it fixed. If you do end up paying a little more, then you can probably sell it for more than the price it cost to fix.
I had to have my mid 2015 rMBP battery & top case replaced by a premium service provider in New Zealand due to a bulging battery. Thankfully I still had a couple of weeks of AppleCare left as the bill came to over $1300NZD ($850 USD). A $199 replacenent would be a dream.
I really do wonder whether Apple is running afoul of consumer law here. Surely $1300 is not a reasonable cost for a battery replacement.
Last time I looked I was quoted somewhere in the neighbourhood of $600 for a rMBP battery replacement - but that was just the battery. Even that IMO is not a reasonable cost for what it is - the only reason it costs that much is the fact that it's glued in, and the fact that Apple charge so much for the part.
indeed, the cheapest official vendor I could find in my country would have been about $600 for a battery replacement on my 2014 model. It's ludicrous. I bought a battery online for $60 or something including shipping from China...
I just had to have my screen replaced (by a third party repair shop), and while they were at it, they vacuumed out a lot of cat hair for free. Now it runs much cooler, and seems like a new machine!
You can also replace the thermal paste, although now that it's not overheating all the time, I won't have that done until next time it overheats and slows down and I need to have it vacuumed out again.
i bought an $80 battery (ifixit? i can't remember now) and took it to a local shop and had it back in 3 hours. they charged $120. So... ~$200 but I had same day replacement.
Internally there is nothing rigid to crack, they should bend with enough force. Catching fire is a real concern, but if you can get the battery voltage down real low they should be inert enough to pry out if you can manage it without puncturing the pack. (you'd have to bypass whatever internal low voltage protections they have)
Yes. I'm glad there was no glue. Battery was swollen for at least a year until I replaced it. I remember there were three screes holding it in place so there was no glue by design. Wish current macbooks would hold up to this kind of serviceability.
me too, I think I spent 2 hours on the replacement just to get the old battery loose from all the glue, afraid I'd puncture it in the process. So. Much. Glue.
Ha! I literally typed out another comment about how I to refuse to leave my 2015 macbook pro for a newer model. The new keyboard, touchbar and usb-c everywhere is so lame
Now that I have children of laptop-using age, I'm almost at the point where literally every single day I'm thinking about how useful MagSafe is. It was such a good invention for notebooks.
I really don't care about the "charge from either side" benefit of USB Type C. I do appreciate the fact that you can use aftermarket cables though - especially considering how poorly constructed Apple's are.
For me, odd things like inability to have a dark dock and titlebar and light windows. Using quickview on a file in Finder and then pressing shift-up used to select the file and the one above it, and then show a preview of the newly selected item. Now in Mojave they "fixed" it so that it shows the preview of the first file only, which is a colossal pain because now I can't filter through a giant list of photos to decide which ones to keep in an easy quick way. I have to look at each file individually.
I am sure I will think of some other annoyances. I've kept a 2012 MBP on Sierra, and love that machine far more, eg. keyboard is actually good and is quiet, real function keys, real ports as found on every other device in the universe, ability to use my audio interface, network ports etc etc
A couple of control freak things. I despise the junk mail folder that can't be hidden or removed and requires an extra "are you sure" click to delete messages. It refuses to copy files from my external hard drive. I have to disable SIP to do some fairly normal stuff. Siri, though I have it turned off. Location on photos.
A year back I replaced the battery on my 2013 15" model - like the other commenters, I paid $199 at the Apple Store for a new battery, topcase, including keyboard and trackpad. I also recently bought a used 2015 Pro on ebay as a backup. I have a 2016 13" touchbar pro, and after replacing the original keyboard, I'm actually quite happy with it. But for the 15" model I just don't think the price is justified given the specs... my next mac might be a Thinkpad with Ubuntu and virtualized MacOS, sorry to say.
Virtualized MacOS because of Mac or iOS dev? Hard to imagine why someone would use a virtualized OS for normal usage or consumption. But maybe I’m missing something.
Also typing on a 3+ year old 2015 MBP. Touchwood no issues except for a slightly wonky right speaker. I hope I can extend its life until Apple comes to its sense, or it'll have to be a Dell XPS for me...
I hate accessories, but after getting my keyboard replaced I got a keyboard cover and so far it seems to be doing its job. It also makes me feel less like I have to baby it--which is something like in tools I use.
You keep it plugged in all the time? Do you feel a noticeable drop in battery life? When mine reached those 80% health I felt like it had lost half its battery life or more...
15" Retina MBP late 2013 with original battery. System reports 142 cycles (I mostly use it at a desk) and condition Normal.
Unfortunately it's not at all normal, it's swollen to the extent that the bottom of the case is slightly warped and the macbook will no longer sit flat. It's also affected the trackpad which doesn't click very well any more. I noticed these things a while back but didn't realise that the battery was the cause until I opened it up a couple of days ago to clean it out (something I do once or twice a year).
Now awaiting a battery replacement kit from iFixit and not looking forward to removing the old one. Probably going to try the dental floss method someone mentioned above (very, very carefully and far away from anything flammable).
I'm disappointed that Apple didn't either kill the Touchbar, or commit to it fully: why is there no desktop keyboard (wireless or wired) with the Touchbar? Presumably a huge amount of Pro users (this is a Macbook "Pro", right?) plug into keyboard, pointing device, and monitor frequently...
At least Lenovo just ditched their Touchbar after the disastrous 2nd generation of X1 Carbon, never to be seen again. Also did a mistake with the 2014 series of ThinkPad by removing the mouse buttons due to a bigger touchpad, just to give them back when the users complained enough in 2015.
Buying max RAM from start is a $200 extra which may validate saved space. Not justified is soldered SSD. Ive doubled SSD size once a year to extend laptop life by 6 or 7 years.
I would not give them credit for not being able to create a touchpad as good as Apples and just giving up. The MacBook touchpad is an amazing piece of hardware. I still think its too big now, but the hardware itself is one of the best things about the MacBook.
And I'll add the obligatory comment how us ThinkPad users enjoy our keyboard with the TrackPoint, experience no other manufacturer provide. I'd just remove the touchpad for more keys to the keyboard.
Agreed that I wish they had embraced, extended, or extinguished the Touch Bar. A larger offset from the top row of physical keys, a physical escape key, some form of accidental touch elimination, and/or a taller display surface would all be useful changes.
WRT to an external keyboard with it - in addition to making keyboards more expensive and proprietary, the Touch Bar is powered by the T2 chip, which is not just used to power the Touch Bar and TouchID, but for system functions like boot-up.
Even with these features removed, dynamically paired TouchID sensors would be a change to Apple's security model (which requires a hardware/data reset to pair a new TouchID sensor for security reasons).
Haptic feedback. I don't understand how they can understand how essential this is and implement it with increasing sophistication in both phones and trackpads but abdicate it entirely with the Touch Bar. To the point that third party software to use the trackpad haptics on touchbar clicks is a thing now: https://www.haptictouchbar.com/
I suspect it's probably hard to get the keyboard to straddle the touch bar, but I couldn't help think: Why not physical escape and power keys at the ends?
They should have just kept the F-keys and provide a system level option to neuter the touchbar as just a modern day reference card for the keys. It's not like the wrist rest isn't big enough to sacrifice for more room up top.
I work from home and open the laptop only if I need to be on a video call. Otherwise yeah, plug into keyboard. I had to work in a coffeeshop one day and had to use the keyboard. I have no idea how anyone can tolerate that piece of shit, to put it lightly.
Killing the touch bar would make Tim Apple lose face, and he lacks the Jobsian stagecraft spin to salvage it.
The touch mbp should've been a macbook air-like spin off, used to demonstrate the viability of the tech by letting people who want it choose it... instead of forcing everyone who wants a high end laptop to pick that model.
But the Apple keyboards are already $150, with no “lower” model available. Add a touchbar and it will be a $300 keyboard. Note that the price bump for emoji-enabled Macbooks is about the same.
Third party keyboards are a lot cheaper and work just as well, plus you get real F-keys if you want.
While I personally wouldn't buy it (I'm kind of picky about the tactile feel of the keyboard), you can get this fully functional Bluetooth keyboard for $20.
Apple also sells external keyboards with real F-keys. Their newer external keyboards are meh, but the previous model, the A1243 Wired Keyboard with Numeric Keypad [0] is amazing. It goes up to F19, and I just generally prefer their layout. I've been using an A1243 as my programming keyboard for nearly a decade. When they stopped selling them I even bought a used spare as backup for when my current keyboard dies.
My only complaints with the A1243 are that the top row is half-sized, and that it has a useless eject button between F12 and F13 which can't be remapped.
Fair enough, it is an expensive keyboard, so any major issues you have with it make the price harder worth it.
I don't use tilde much.
There is no absence of a super key. Its on the spot where alt often is, and alt is on the spot super often is. It shares key with shift.
The ctrl is where caps lock is on today's keyboards. If I have caps lock I rebind it anyway. So ctrl and super are easiest to reach, whereas the spot where ctrl often is is difficult to reach (there is nothing there on the HHKB).
So in short this keyboard assumes you normally rebind caps lock to ctrl, it assumes you never use the ctrl elsewhere. It assumes you use super more than alt. It is pretty close to a traditional Sun keyboard.
Funny thing is also, you can buy the keyboard without print on the keys, so that you can rebind it in any way you prefer.
What?? I use it all the time: Tilde in vim for upper/downcase and bash for home and backtick for jumping to marks and in JS for template strings. Great key.
Windows is perfectly viable for doing development, so is Linux. You can easily get a laptop that is cheaper and more reliable than a Macbook. About the only thing you'll be missing is a cool Apple sticker, but you can get those on eBay. Your wallet will thank you, and so will your fingers.
A Macbook was a reasonable, even logical choice in 2012. Now, not so much.
Apple can have me back if they want -- hey, take my money! -- but they have to stop fucking up. I don't know why the Apple board isn't simply pounding the hell out of the management that's been allowing the poor quality and user-hostile decisions of the past several years.
[Hmmm, I just looked at their board members. That would explain a lot...]
> Windows is perfectly viable for doing development, so is Linux.
Viable, yes. I've spent the last year (since replacing a 2013 MB Pro) with a Dell 15 XPS, roughly 50/50 Windows & Linux (Ubuntu then Fedora). Both work. They each run everything I need a laptop for.
Honestly neither is quite as good a desktop for me as macOS, but they are near enough that even if I liked the current generation of MacBooks (which I don't), I wouldn't consider it worth paying the premium.
There isn't a single solution I'm truly happy with. Windows 10 is yucky but for me fairly practical (meaning mainly it doesn't waste my time). Linux is more appealing and almost worth it for the speedy file access, but is too time-consuming for me to to commit to. MacOS is my favourite all-round OS, but (Hackintoshes aside) only runs on hardware I don't want (and certainly not at the price). I guess the only thing I haven't tried is ChromeOS. Maybe next time. 2019 desktop OS's are a sorry scene.
> Linux is more appealing and almost worth it for the speedy file access, but is too time-consuming for me to to commit to.
I hear a variation of this semi-often and I never quite get what that's supposed to mean. Maybe being a full-time Linux user for a decade has made me used to whatever people are complaining about, but I don't think so, people are complaining about having to fix broken HW/SW occasionally, however as someone who:
- Picks Linux-supported hardware specifically, as opposed to a random, generic PC, (something you wouldn't do with macOS either, btw).
- Runs a rolling release distro, so if anything should experience more breakage than the regular Ubuntu LTS/Fedora user.
I can honestly say that my workflow is basically:
-> Turn the laptop on, (or wake from sleep, yes that works well on solid HW)
-> Get my work done
-> Update the system every couple of days, (rolling release updates)
-> Repeat
Now does occasionally some package update their config that I'll have to merge or something like that? Sure, maybe once or twice a year.
When I do have to use macOS for builds, I experience glitches, (like the login bar loading and never finishing), various annoying updates, (& update prompts), apps, (like Duet Display), randomly breaking when you need them, occasional kernel panics, (but more frequent than I ever had on Linux, in fact I had one on Linux maybe once), choppy performance even on a top spec 2016 MBP due to poor thermals, video rendering issues when switchable graphics is enabled etc.
All in all, my macOS experience is actually somewhat worse than on Linux. It's nothing I can't deal with, but it's nowhere near as trouble free as people make it seem.
I honestly think it comes down to things like macOS being more animated by default, having 3D shadows under every window, the dock enlarging the icons as you scroll pass them, your coworkers having a Mac as a status symbol etc. rather than some big technical hurdle.
Possibly once a year I install Ubuntu on my laptop and am always determined to move over to Linux on the desktop but sadly it takes only a few days of frustration before I revert back to OSX.
It's nothing to do with 3D shadows under windows, the dock enlarging when I roll over it or my co-workers being impressed because I've got a Mac, because they all have Macs too.
That last point is the least of it - honestly, I have no desire to impress anyone with what technology I happen to use and find it quite extraordinary that anyone thinks owning a Mac is some kind of status symbol.
It's not as if Apple product ownership is a rare thing, people from all walks of life own Macbooks or iPhones or whatever, yet this falacy that Mac/iPhone owners buy these products to impress people still somehow persists.
No, it's the fundamental user experience on various desktop managers I've tried on Linux that while it clearly works for other people, it simply doesn't for me.
There's nothing wrong with that, and I'm sure if I persisted with it for longer then I'd perhaps be happy enough using Linux on the desktop but to be honest it's time I'm not that interested in investing, when I'm immediately productive on OSX, and was when I first started using OSX back in 2004.
My OSX experience is wholly different to yours - I get rare update notifications, possibly because of the software products I use? and performance on my 2018 MBP is as quick as I've ever experienced, but then it should be for a modern computer.
For me, OSX/macOS simply stays out of the way and lets me get on with doing work. I'm sure Linux does the same for you but be assured, the reason I use OSX is not a single one of those reasons you've suggested.
- All the keyboard shortcuts are consistent across apps.
- Hit space to instantly quick-look almost any file, in the finder, in my torrent client, etc.
- Global menu bar doesn't waste space.
- Time Machine provides revision control for your entire drive, integrated into apps, where you can browse and revert to old versions. Even works when you only occasionally hook up your backup drive as it syncs.
- Window/desktop management with real multitouch gestures (not triggers that only kick in after you complete a gesture).
- Smooth font rendering without gamma or hinting errors. Smart kerning adjustment for long labels in tight spaces. Smart ellipsis that displays the start and end of long filenames.
- Icons represent files and can be dragged e.g. from document window titlebars. Right click to get a breadcrumb of all the directories the file sits in, so you can trivially open a finder window for what you're looking at.
- Half downloaded files are resumable bundles that keep the source URL inside. Can even copy to a different machine and resume there just by double clicking.
- Integrated disk, partition and image management, including creating encrypted disk images through the UI, and restoring images to drives.
Just a few things keeping me on this platform.
Oh also, when I upgraded my 2013 mbp to a 2015, migrating was trivial, as both laptops set up an adhoc wifi and transferred everything 1-to-1 without having to do anything. My customized Unix environment that lived though 3 or 4 major OS upgrades transplanted as if nothing changed.
Linux doesn't want to provide that level of convenience because it requires too much cat herding and agreement, while Microsoft can't without breaking years of legacy crap.
And I read that cookie-cutter response almost every time. Fine. Whatever. We have different experiences. I accept yours (because I think most people are more-or-less truthful). You don't accept mine (because ?).
> I honestly think it comes down to things like macOS being more animated by default, having 3D shadows under every window, the dock enlarging the icons as you scroll pass them, your coworkers having a Mac as a status symbol etc. rather than some big technical hurdle
Feel free. "Honestly think" any invented story you wish.
I was actually genuinely interested in you expanding what is actually harder, or rather what needs 'managing', I am not doubting your story, I just find it somewhat hard to wrap my mind around the specifics. I don't really personally care if you use Linux or not, but I am kind of tired of always hearing that 'I don't want to manage stuff' talk, without any specifics as to what that actually means.
Well I'll take you at your word that you're interested and 'not doubting' my story. But can you at least see why that isn't the impression I got from reading your comment? You even said you thought people were swayed by bouncing animations and fancy docks! [Edit: and that very dismissive status symbol comment - believe me, you'd laugh at that if you saw me in my crude rainforest shack, with nothing resembling a developer's office within 100 miles] FWIW, which isn't much, I always auto-hide docks, and DE preference is roughly i3/sway > Gnome > macOS > Windows.
Linux use for me isn't so much a matter of large technical hurdles, but the death of a thousand cuts. By the time of my last f/t Linux use round (just a couple of weeks ago) I didn't have any outstanding tech issues. There was nonessential hardware I couldn't get working at all or well (fingerprint scanner, SD card reader, gpu switching), but I could live with that.
It's more a matter of having a constant barrage of small issues, often with new software I install, each of which is quite soluble, but only after reading documentation (often poor). That's just not how I want to spend my time. I'm not going to enumerate the issues because, as I say, by and large I solved them. They are mostly trivial but constant. I would rather have spent that time listening to music, or learning Mandarin.
I keep logs of all my computer admin & troubleshooting in markdown files. I've been roughly 50/50 linux and windows over the last year. Eyeballing the logs, it's clearly true for me - Windows gives me hardly any issues to solve at all. I install stuff. It works. I get on with my work and the rest of my life. In contrast I have vast reams of notes about the various little niggles I had with Ubuntu and then Fedora.
[Edit: sorry - I forgot your I just find it somewhat hard to wrap my mind around the specifics. So just one example. Nothing big, but bear in mind I'd have something like this at least 3 or 4 times a week. I want to be able to dial down power use sometimes - if I'm low on battery, doing undemanding stuff and won't be near an outlet for a while. Windows: I didn't have to read any docs. Click on battery icon, and slide left on the popup control. Fedora: click around in gnome and find nothing. Search for info on how the Gnome power management interacts with whatever service is started by systemd. Find nothing up to date (Fedora doc on the topic was from version 14 or 17 and bore no resemblance to my version 30). Read up a bit on tlp and powertop, but still unclear on their relationship to whatever Gnome does. Find broken links to relevant AskFedora posts because they've deleted all the old pages moving to Discourse. Ask a question. Get no answer. I could have solved it eventually with a bit more reading, sure. But like most things I wanted to do, it would take orders of magnitude more time to figure out than on macOS or Windows.]
Actually you don't - I did give my reason for not committing to linux, despite in some ways preferring it, which is that it took up too much of my time to manage, compared to either macOS or Windows. What do you want, proof? Evidence that I'm not a paid Apple-and-Microsoft corporate shill?
I moved away from the Mac for 3D work a few years back just because CUDA based rendering engines were such a game changer. I was totally expecting the experience to just be gritting my teeth and dealing with Windows for the power, but actually I've been pleasantly surprised that it's honestly improved a lot and MS is taking the approach of tackling one or two pain points a year consistently, like modernizing the Terminal this year and I'm sure one day they'll get to Explorer which is the last thing that bugs me.
I also bought a Surface Go recently and this has convinced me I could move away from Mac completely (To a Surface Pro) if need be, the industrial design is excellent, the keyboard is an absolute joy to type on and it's so versatile, like a "Pro" machine should be.
I tested them all (well, the main contenders) and even the flagship Surface Book trackpad is not comparable to a current MacBook. The Surface Book trackpad is like almost identical to a MacBook from around 2012-2013 era.
Admittedly the current MacBook trackpad is too big - but is otherwise functionally perfect in terms of its multi-touch and haptic feedback.
I guess touchpads must be far more important to some of you than they are to me. I'll only touch mine on the rare occasion I'm lazily reading on my laptop rather than a tablet. I'd hardly miss if it stopped working.
Have you done any iOS development in Xcode on that 13" MPB of yours? Unless you have excellent eyesight and use a screen resolution that gives you the max real estate, it's incredibly frustrating to use the code assistant editor, or to run the simulator.
I must have spent a couple thousand hours of iOS development on it. I use the default 1280x800@2x resolution with Xcode filling the screen (but not in fullscreen).
I do all my work on a vanilla 13" MBP, it works just fine. I also use 13" Linux and Windows laptops almost daily, and the "touchpad experience" there is indeed painful.
> Also, you can use the external Apple trackpad they sell with any OS.
I think the problem isn't the hardware, but the software (or more likely a combination of both). The MBP touchpad under Windows with Bootcamp is also quite terrible.
Agreed. But you can hack their replacement programs to extend the life of the newer (post 2015) models. There are a few battery replacement programs on MacBook Pro’s (e.g. https://www.apple.com/support/13inch-macbookpro-battery-repl...) and there is also a keyboard replacement program (https://www.apple.com/support/keyboard-service-program-for-m...). Replacing either practically gives you all new internals because of they way everything is soldered on. I just did that on my 2016 model and it should hopefully last me now a few more years.
If it’s any consolation (probably the opposite) my 2017 MBP, without Touch Bar, has gotten about 2h battery when running a now-typical corporate “pro” stack (docker, slack, Outlook, etc) sind day one. If only running UNIx stuff plus maybe a browser I can push it to 6.
Every time I get out my 2013 MBP (not for the day job) I remember what a computer could be.
Slack and Outlook - I either use the web versions or just use my phone. They are both cross platform battery killers.
Docker - I don’t use it, but if it’s anything like the VMs I use to run, it also kill batteries.
I’m better off provisioning all of that on our DEV AWS Account and just connecting via my phone’s hotspot if I don’t have a reliable network connection and running very few things locally.
I recently discovered the web Slack and am trying to use it more. Seems to help, which ought to be a huge embarrassment to $WORK or whatever they call it.
I used to use Outlook Web and might go back. The native client is a nightmare but does some useful things the web one doesn’t.
Docker has been a huge boon to my dev efforts, usually much lighter weight than an old school VM, so I’m no hater but if I had to work on battery more often I’d probably do the same thing, spend a few bucks on AWS and only work online but with better battery life.
All that still won’t get me more than 6h though.... :-(
I am still rocking the MBP 2015 and recently changed the battery. Did you consider doing the same? That is, updating batteries instead of getting the new ones?
The 2015 Macbook Pro has the Force Touch trackpad as well (so no physical movement), so it has the exact same feel when you click at the top of the trackpad. Everything before the 2015 did have that issue though, you're correct. Never really bothered me though to be honest. The nicest part of the FT trackpad if you ask me is the ability to make trackpad clicks almost silent, and the fact that it's (supposedly) less likely to break.
> Gone is the gimmicky TouchBar, gone are the four USB-C ports that forced power users to carry a suitcase full of dongles. In their place we get a cornucopia of developer-friendly ports: two USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt 2 ports, a redesigned power connector, and a long-awaited HDMI port.
I still think the PowerBook 540c was the best Apple laptop that I ever used.
Although I had switched over to Windows by the time of the Pismo G3/500 (voted the best ever), I had my 540c upgraded with a PowerPC, and got many years of delightful service out of it.
It had two big symmetrical removable battery compartments, so you could switch out one at a time and keep running on as many batteries as you have pre-charged without interruption! Plus there was an external dual battery charger.
And you could swap a hard disk drive or CDROM into one of those bays.
Plus it was fat enough that it was able to cool so it didn't overheat all the time like an MBP.
Anorexic thinness isn't a thing for me: I'd trade a lot of thinness for huge removable batteries and great ventilation.
I never really liked the 500 series - I preferred the 1400 (I know, weirdo). The Intel MacBooks have had their moments (glass trackpads, SD card readers, quad core in the 2011 15"), but almost all of them had design defects of some kind:
* Original white and black MacBooks had sharp edges and cracking wrist rests
* 2nd Gen MBP had 8600GT chip death issues
* First Unibody MB/MBP had glossy screen not suitable for indoor lighting
* First Polycarbonate Unibody had chassis cracking and rubber base warping issues (but was otherwise an excellent machine, too bad they didn't resolve those issues and keep selling it...)
* 2011 15" will all eventually fail due to faulty GPUs
* 2012 Retina MBs had underpowered GPUs
* Retina MBPs had soldered RAM and proprietary SSDs (10.13's NVMe support for those older machines with a simple adaptor has made a complete mockery of anyone defending Apple's stupid proprietary pinout, too), glued batteries and display coating problems
In saying that, the original aluminium unibody was a spectacular design. It felt so much more premium than any other machine of the time it was absurd.
I personally think absolute peak Apple notebook was the 2012 MacBook Pro 15" with the Anti-Glare display. All the best things about the pre-retina Unibody design, but serviceable, with USB3, no known serious GPU or CPU flaws, and none of the retina issues such as staingate or glued battery.
Had they made a Haswell revision of that to get the better battery life I'm reasonably convinced it would still be a seriously popular machine today.
Oh the glued hinge right behind the hot air vent is hilarious. I forgot about that one.
Yes, glossy screen had an anti-reflection coating added for Retina models that then proceeded into staingate. To make matters worse they took away the matte anti-glare option entirely because they thought their new compromise was best. Yelp.
Right, obviously heat is an enemy of li-ion batteries. My understanding (and I could be wrong) is that if a MBP is plugged in the power bypasses the battery once it reaches 100% charge, correct?
That is my understanding as well. Most of my macbooks (I've owned 3) have been plugged in the majority of the time, with at least some time every few days spent on battery power unplugged. I'd say you're fine as long as you're using the battery at least once every 2-3 weeks -- longer than that might not be good for the battery over long periods of time.
I have no dongle issue (I rarely plug anything into my laptop), but the Touch Bar was terrible for me. I was finally able to use Karabiner to suppress escape (I mapped caps lock to esc which is more convenient anyway).
I can see the Touch Bar probably makes sense for people who look at the keyboard while they type, which might be a majority for all I know, but for touch typists it's at best worthless, and the accidentally triggering is terrible.
This is my personal laptop but the screen is really crap. My work laptop is a 2015 13” MBP. Work recently offered to upgrade me to a new MBP. I declined.
The Air's display isn't that bad. It's a good TN panel with a good non-retina resolution (1440x900 on the 13"), decent contrast, and good (for TN) viewing angles. It's certainly a big step up from the frankly abysmal base WXGA TN displays of many Lenovo/HP/Dell machines.
But yes, it's not even close to the retina IPS displays.
I own two of them. And a 2015 13” MBP with a Retina display. And a current iPad mini and an iPhone XS. And a BenQ 32” 4K display. And before that I had a 2009 13” MBP.
All of the non-iOS displays are calibrated via a munki.
The MBA display from this generation (my kids have the 11” MBAs with basically the same crap display) is the worst I’ve used by far. So bad it’s basically useless for photo editing. The contrast stinks. The color gamut stinks. You can’t look at it off-axis at all.
No no, I’ve looked at a lot of displays in my life. It’s my least favorite. The 2009 13”
MBP display was better.
That there are non-Apple laptop displays that are even worse is cold comfort.
Haha, never pick up a base model ThinkPad then. Some of those displays are just ridiculously bad.
I measured the contrast of my 2013 MBA at ~800:1 with my Spyder3 back in the day, which is pretty OK for TN. It got somewhat close to 60% sRGB coverage.
For reference, my ThinkPad X230's TN display measured ~180:1 and couldn't even get to 50% sRGB.
No it isn't suitable for photo editing, but then no TN display really is due to the viewing angle colour and contrast shift. I haven't measured the 2015+ models but understand that the actual panel panel is meant to be the same. It's not what I would personally choose, but I thought it was acceptable at the time, even next to the TN MBP displays.
Just spent $200 on new battery and install for my 2015 MBP. I wish I'd opted for the 1t model vs 512g drive, but was getting refurb and at the time they had no 1t left - wasn't sure they'd have any more (friend of mine snagged one a few weeks later!)
Hi there. You can buy a sintech adapter on amazon that will let you put a standard NVME SSD into a macbook air/retina 2013-2015 model (and maybe some others).
It costs about $20.
With that, you can choose some of the cheap, new, fast, 2TB disks and get a massive improvement in speed and storage capacity for relatively little money. Google around; there are some recommended drives.
From what I've read the 'long' version of the sintech is the best one to buy. The upgrade process is on ifixit; it's super easy. You will also need a torx screwdriver; again you can buy a 'mac fixing kit' for $5-10 on amazon etc.
> I feel too old to compile my own kernel for a glitchy wifi driver, and Windows? Nah, get away...
Linux hasn't had issues with the major wifi chipsets in ages. It's as plug and play as Mac and Windows are. There are plenty of reasons people might choose to avoid Linux, but drivers (outside of specialty, niche or obscure hardware) aren't really a reason anymore.
Graphics drivers are a constant source of trouble and confusion (so many driver projects and PPAs). My gf has a Linux laptop that stops working after every dist upgrade, and it's always some driver issue (or yet another Ubuntu NetworkManager bug).
Also, if the system isn't shut down cleanly, it will never just boot up again in spite of supposedly using a journaling file system. She always has to run e2fsck in manual mode (i.e confirming every single repair), specifying the address of a backup superblock.
Printing and scanning is broken as well. Not for some niche hardware but for one of the most widely deployed HP printer/scanners.
So on her particular laptop, Linux is anything but plug and play. If you're saying that Linux works well on your laptop I will believe you. It has never worked well an any laptop I owned and drivers have always been the main reason for that.
I believe you cannot simply run Linux any laptop. You have to buy a laptop specifically for Linux.
I've used laptops and desktops with GPUs from all 3 manufacturers. The only issues I've had were either really minor (ie. About the same as the other platforms), or with graphics switching (ie. Bumblebee). If you're just using the recommended drivers for the hardware I'd be extremely surprised if it was as unstable as you describe.
For reference, it's recommended you use the open source drivers for Intel and AMD, and the proprietary drivers for NVIDIA. No PPAs required.
The place where I remember a gap was laptops with dual graphics cards designed to use a low power one for light duty and a more powerful one for heavy duty tasks.
That said, avoiding that mess is fine for a non-gaming laptop. And I've had no trouble installing Linux on Dell, Asus, or Lenovo. Many configurations specifically listed Ununtu as an OS option (but why bother getting it preinstalled), so sure any of those would be fine. They're not especially rare anymore.
> I believe you cannot simply run Linux any laptop. You have to buy a laptop specifically for Linux.
No you don't. Ive had debian on a lenovo laptop for five years with none of the issues you speak of. Printing and scanning work great (dell and brother printers). It boots fine after a hard power off. No update has ever fubard anything. I have no more trouble hooking up to a projector than anybody else (my boss has a mac and complains about hooking up to projectors).
I've also run linux without issue on prior laptops from toshiba, acer and sony and some off brand thing from 10 years ago. I have a brother who runs linux on a dell laptop just fine (and has for years). A co-worker runs linux on a newish sony laptop. I guess I'm just living in the perfect intersection of hardware that just magically always works with linux. Or maybe, linux just works.
> Linux hasn't had issues with the major wifi chipsets in ages.
… except (ironically) if you use Linux on a MacBook Pro with Touch Bar. In this case there are severe issues with the wifi firmware making wifi completely unusable: https://github.com/Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux#wi-fi
The annoying thing is that for once this is an actual bug in the firmware and the upstream doesn't care about fixing it. It's simply not fixable on Linux side without rewriting the whole wifi stack to use Mac's model. It's not the typical "Linux hasn't got a driver", but without digging into the issue it looks like that.
I had a miserable time with the Broadcom drivers as well-- I actually abandoned them completely to instead use an adapter with Ralink driver. No hiccups, let alone crashes, since.
No. It's better than no driver. (I'll assume it works at all in some capacity.)
While there are some companies that make wifi cards you can't use easily, that's just one thing you check before buying, just as e.g. general reliability/performance.
That's way worse than no driver. By 'crash', I mean the whole kernel crashes. And, by the way, it does advertise linux support (for linux 4.10, but that's in the fine print).
AFAIK dual-display over thunderbolt is just not working very well for example (there are issues when going to/back from sleep). I've tried switching to Linux on my 2013 MBP for a couple of weeks, and gave up.
I can only come to the same conclusion. Typing this on a 2018 MacBook 15 inch, and it's a disaster. I still keep accidentally hitting the Touchbar ten times per day while typing (it's not a press-bar, duh)
My favorite problem is activating Siri when I use Touch ID (yes, I know you can remove Siri from the Touch Bar). I miss the physical escape key. But the Touch Bar is great for volume control and scrobbling. Touch ID is awesome though (if I manager to hit the right area), I really miss Touch ID on my Linux machine.
I need a dongle for _everything and their mother_
Don't get me started on the dongles. I was a fairly early adopter (had the first generation 12" MacBook). They actually sold USB-C adapters initially where the USB-A port only supports USB 2.0. Yep 80 Euro for an adapter that only does USB 2.0.
Then their USB-C HDMI adapter only support HiDPI at 30Hz (due to supporting an older HMDI version). Again, unbelievable for an adapter that was initially 80 Euro.
So, I had to buy a USB-C <-> DisplayPort adapter to hook up a HiDPI screen at 60Hz (third-party USB-C <-> HDMI adapters universally had bad reviews). The adapter works fine on the MacBook Pro 2016. I updated later to the MacBook Pro 2018, and for some mysterious reason the adapter does not work on the MacBook Pro 2018, no output at all (still works fine with my wife's 2016). So I had to buy yet another adapter... (What's the point of USB-C as a universal interface if it is not universal?)
I wish they would just offer a variant with physical function keys and a Touch Bar. They’d have plenty of room for both if they reduced the comically oversized touchpad.
From what I can recall, the reason why the USBC to DP adapter isn't working on the 2018 models is that the macbooks now have special end to end encryption (read: DRM and forced market penetration) to only allow you to use "apple authorized" dongles.
I have been using a System76 Darter Pro (max cpu and ram) with Pop!_OS 19.04 and it’s been a dream to use. My day to day workload includes docker, node.js services, Postgres, mongodb, and gis tasks. I get about 6 hours of battery life while working and about 8 or so when doing non-work tasks. It’s the real deal. I’m also driving a 4K monitor with the laptop display on as well. Smooth as butter. However, I’ve tried some modeling with Sweet Home 3D. That didn’t go so hot. The Darter can use thunderbolt external gpus though and I’ve been meaning to pick one up and see how well it works
Pop OS on a T series Lenovo have been fault free for me.
Ive run it on T480, T580 and T480S.
The T490 which has just been released has a much brighter panel so opt for that one if you can.
It only reinforces the idea that PopOS is little more than a reskinned Ubuntu (which is not a bad thing!). The only non different default setting is the availability of a recovery partition, while the other features mentioned are basically just different defaults.
For what it's worth, KDE [Plasma] is just a desktop environment - you can run it on Ubuntu.
As of 2019, I'm fairly happy with Linux on the desktop; usability is really solid, WINE is significantly better than years before, and many games will play perfectly fine with basically no manual configuration thanks to projects like DXVK.
I'm running KDE on Arch. And, I'm definitely happier than I was on Windows.
There's a number of people who can't stand KDE because of lack of consistency in padding etc (I have to take their word for it because I cannot see such things).
Often such people seem to enjoy using Macs and I defend that choice.
Personally I prefer Linux or even Windows to Macs because of (drumroll) consistency.
I want my keyboard to look mostly the same year in and year out. I want the layout to be roughly similar either I sit on my laptop keyboard or an external keyboard. I want modifier keys to work the same between apps. As a heavy multitasker I want my alt-tab to work the way it used when I learned it.
As for why KDE/Linux instead of Windows I just really like it for some reason. On top of that I prefer the Linux ecosystem, the reduced build times I get when I compile, the snappier git etc etc.
I recently got a Purism Librem 13 and it's been golden. The only thing I miss from MacBooks is the touchpad. I did replace their PureOS with stock Ubuntu, which was a breeze and probably improved performace due to proprietary drivers.
I've not compiled my own kernel in the last 5 years and all of my hardware has been supported. Not saying that you can't run into h/w compatibility issues with Linux today, but I don't think that you should keep yourself from using Linux as a daily driver if you're worried about hardware compatibility. Just get a thinkpad, and you'll be golden.
>I feel too old to compile my own kernel for a glitchy wifi driver
You can buy hardware that comes with Linux support including drivers. Changing your workflow is always a pain though, so Linux with a decent DE like KDE could be a suitable alternative for you but because of the big change you could get frustrated and hate the experience.
I am also at that period in life where I don't get pleasure from tinkering with compiling custom kernels, making the PC boot 10% faster, use the latest and greatest... so for me Kubuntu LTS fits perfectly it may be a good option for you too.
> I feel too old to compile my own kernel for a glitchy wifi driver, and Windows? Nah, get away...
You can buy laptops with various flavours of Linux pre-installed from a number of different manufacturers right now, you know that right? In the distant past I used to regularly compile my kernels out of necessity and also out of curiosity and trying to eke every last drop of performance from my systems. Now? No way. Have not done that in ages. And you never need to compile a kernel to get a driver working these days, every now and again what you might find is that you have to blacklist a driver or drop a manufacturers firmware into place. In truth, I had to do the exact same on a Macbook to get a non Apple blessed SSD running at full tilt many years ago.
Linux, by any reasonable metric, stands shoulder-to-shoulder with MacOS and Windows today. I can't believe in 2019 with Chromebooks, Lenovo, Dell, Purism, System76 (and those are the ones that I know off the top of my head) you still think compiling kernel drivers is a thing. Even Microsoft makes Linux apps these days: VS Code, Skype, SQL Server, … so that's got to tell you something. The real hold-out is Adobe. I'd love if IBM bought Adobe (after their Redhat purchase) and made all Adobe's apps cross-platform.
Not sure what your usage is like, but after being on OSX for 10 years and going back to Windows 10, I don't miss it much. Windows 10 is pretty great these days.
Zoom on Macs is so much more convenient than on Win10, even with aerozoom, I also tried the sysinternals zoom: no dice, Win10 usability is still kluncky. I got both and still use the 2015 Pro a lot more than the way more beefy oled-screen Dell.
I have Windows running along side macOS on my Mac Pro. It boots faster and the video screams... when it’s not installing updates. Seriously. It’s worse than my xBox.
The only reason I want a Mac again is for MacOS's hiDPI support. I can't stand regular screens anymore, and from what I've heard, Windows 10 hiDPI support is non-existent, even for non fractional scaling.
Using Windows 10 forces one to either use a low resolution screen, or deal with the consequences (most non-flagship software fails at scaling).
And that's not even getting into font rendering issues. Windows 10 can't render don't properly, except in design apps such as InDesign, for some reason. As for Linux compatibility, Win10 does a semi-decent job emulating Linux system calls with WSL.
And get a refurbished T440p with a quad core CPU that's fast and costs you a couple of hundred of euros. Replace parts when they break. No need to pay the premium for the new models.
That must have been a wonderfull f*up on the part of your service center.
Here where I live they would have to refund you the machine, if they weren't capable to repair it within 30 days (while under warranty, which I assume X1 Extreme was). The only manufacturer, whose service is able to achieve 30 days here is Apple ;).
With Lenovo, and previously IBM, I've had experience to have issues fixed NBD, even when I was retail customer.
Lenovo standard customer support sucks ass. Pay a little more and they route you to IBM support (at least in Canada). Those people are godly. Next business day, go to your home, fix whatever you want, accidental damage, whatever, all covered.
Running a 2017 MBP model at work here, have all those issues and more. My Bluetooth chip somehow freezes without fail after X hours of usage and requires a hard power cycle to fix, often if I put it to sleep on a night I wake it up to a kernel panic message.
I have a 2013 MBP at home that I still use every night, the worst thing that has happened to it in all those years of daily usage is 3 of the feet have fallen off. The thing has been an absolute champ and I would have dropped serious money on another by now if they hadn't changed it.
Interesting, I’ve never experienced these usability problems. Maybe accidentally hit the touchbar once or twice a day for the first week, before I got used to it.
BTW you can customize the touchbar to move stuff around so it’s not in the way of your fingers (e.g. top-right corner).
But yeah it sucks and there’s no real use-case for it, the standard keys are way better. The only thing I like about it is the TouchID, but they’ve showed with air that it can be a standalone thing.
The usb-c transition happened too early, it’s annoying that you can’t even plug in an usb if you forgot to bring the dongle. The nice thing about it is being able to plug the charger at any port, but that’s no reason to have only the usb-c ports.
Agree on the OS, I’ve probably bought into their ecosystem way too much to make a smooth transition away. Also the trackpad experience is still superior. But the list of reasons why I would buy a macbook after this one bites the big one is getting shorter.
Guy spent a year trying to build a better slack, but then finds out people love to complain about slack, but will not make any steps to actually try any alternatives.
>I feel too old to compile my own kernel for a glitchy wifi driver
You'll be happy to hear about dkms then. Just install the driver, let your package manager update it and it will recompile on its own for whatever kernel you're using.
I'm a UX engineer who recently switched from Macbook Pro to the Ubuntu version of Dell XPS 13. Now that I use Figma, a web-based design app, I no longer need any Mac-native design software. I am pretty pleased!
The XPS 13 has an edge-to-edge display/small footprint, the top of the line whiskey lake processor, 16GB of RAM, and a crazy-good battery life. (I opted for 1080p screen instead of 4k to get that 10+ hr battery life.) All of this for <$1200 with my employer's discount. The equivalent would be 2k+ on a Mac.
There have been one or two hiccups worth mentioning: 1) the trackpad, while not terrible, isn't as good as Mac's. 2) Multi-monitor support on Ubuntu hasn't been perfect. I couldn't get 18.04 to work out of the box with my three monitors; however, once I upgraded to Ubuntu 19.04, it worked out of the box. Phew.
That sounds awesome, except a low resolution screen (1080p) is a no-go in 2019. So far I haven't heard of anyone being pleased with Linux or Windows milquetoast hiDPI support.
I am still using a MacBook Pro 2018 as my laptop, but do my primary work on an Intel NUC8i5BEH with Linux. I work remotely from my home, so I rarely need the laptop anymore.
The NUC has the same quad core Intel i5-8259U, with double the RAM and double the SSD size at approximately a quarter of the price of MacBook Pro. If you don't have an existing screen, you can buy a good Dell HiDPI screen for ~500 Euros.
The Linux NUC feels much faster than the MacBook Pro, probably because of faster syscalls on Linux, and generally better optimizations in Linux. But for me the killer feature is NixOS. NixOS has a steep learning curve, but with atomic updates/rollbacks, declarative system configuration, and the ability to have virtualenvs with any package, it is hard to go back to a system that does not have these features. (I use Nix on macOS, but it is more of a gateway drug than the whole experience.)
Of course, there are some sharp edges, Bluetooth headset (including Airpods) support is better on macOS, you can't beat Microsoft Office for Office compatibility (duh), and Skype works better on macOS.
Recently I purchased an HP Envy with and AMD chip for $550 USD and got myself used to sway + i3statusbar-rust. Everything is simple, can be backed up using git and I use at most 300mb of ram after boot. Computer startup is less than 10 seconds and shutdown is less than 3.
I think this is the third time I feel this way about computers. First one was when someone told me about Apache and Linux in 2000, second when I discovered postgis + geodjango in 2007.
I have the previous generation NUC, a NUC7i5BNH, as my home computer. I put it in a Akasa fanless case, and it's wonderful — it's completely silent.
I use Kubuntu, since I've been using KDE for 15 years. I use 5% of the configuration options — just by looking, you'd think it was a default install — but I really miss that 5% if I'm on a Mac or Windows.
I've been using a desktop at work for the last ten years and hopefully to the foreseeable future. With a price of a MacBook pro you get 16-24 cores, good cooling facilities, 32-64 GB of RAM and excellent Linux support.
I built a desktop a few months ago after 10 years of laptops. Wow, what a difference time makes! It's incredible what you can get on even a modest budget when speccing desktop components.
I also have a desktop at work, along with a couple of other people.
If I need a laptop for a meeting or to travel, I can either use "my" 5-year-old one, or the spare new one. Or the conference room desktop, which has a real keyboard and mouse.
For running Adobe products, I use Virtualbox running Windows 10 on my Linux laptop. The speed of hypervisors has gotten so good recently I genuinely can't tell the difference over running Windows natively, even though this laptop is 8 years old now. Everything "just works" and so I don't see why which programs you need to run should determine what brand of computer you buy or what OS you run on it, any more.
I guess the one exception (other than gaming?) is if you need to run any MacOS only software. (I can't even name any, other than that written by Apple, off the top of my head.) I have Mojave running in Virtualbox, but it's noticeably slower than both Linux natively and Windows 10. That could be the 8 year old laptop thing again.
I see a huge difference running WIndows in Virtualbox. Possibly because I'm doing everything wrong but it sucks for graphics stuff like Adobe products and I can't even get it to hit 60fps like my standard linux desktop.
We're still a way off passing through graphics cards etc in a 'just works' sort of way (yes there's hugely involved ways to get it done) so it's going to be a short while before I could agree with you that Windows VM's are fully ready to replace native installs for situations like mine.
My main system is currently a late 2012 maxed out Mac Mini that struggles with Adobe products. I also miss Linux on my desktop so your set up is appealing to me. Looking to use Lightroom, Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop. By chance have you passed through a drawing pad?
On the flip side I switched from a Dell (XPS 15 9570) to a MacBook Pro 2018 15" last August after multiple issues with the Dell.
I've not had a single issue with the MacBook Pro yet. Not a single crash/kernel panic, no keyboard issues, no T2 or TouchBar issues. I open the laptop in the morning and it wakes from sleep and works all day. I almost only ever reboot it for system updates that require it so usually every 4-6 weeks.
I'm not super keen on the keyboard but it honestly isn't horrible to type on. I do worry about reliability though. However I am at almost 300 days of zero problems where I had issues with my XPS out of the box that seems are still not fixed having looked at /r/Dell on reddit recently. Shocking that Dell have taken close to a year and things like speaker pops are not resolved.
I also had a ThinkPad but sadly Lenovos quality control isn't what it used to be and the two units I received had hardware defects. And with modern ThinkPads being less serviceable (the new T series has soldered RAM, CPU and WiFi?!) I can see even Lenovo starting to go the Apple way with soldered storage within two years.
Also while I do no deny Apple screwed up with the butterfly keyboard I do feel all the attention being on Apple is a little unfair and can lead people to think Dell, Lenovo, Microsoft are much more reliable which just isn't true in my experience. In the past few years Microsoft's Surface line has without question been the worst laptop experience I have ever had with software and hardware issues not to mention even less repairability than Apple laptops!
The attention on Apple really isn't unfair when you a) compare their 2016+ machines to their 2015 ones, and b) dig a little deeper into some of the design flaws of the machines beyond the keyboard.
For example:
* The trackpad on 2016+ models is too large for many users who experience palm rejection issues.
* The display cable on 2016 and 2017 machines was too short, and is now starting to cause the issue known as "flexgate". It's almost a given that with enough use, every one of these machines will suffer this failure. To make matters worse, unlike the 2015 machines where the display cable could be replaced on its own, the entire display assembly is glued together on 2016+ machines and has to be replaced as a whole unit.
* Stupid electrical decisions such as putting pins for high voltage backlight power and low voltage data signalling right next to eachother mean that there's a good chance the machine will fry itself if it gets at all humid inside (most machines do at some stage, especially if used on a lap). Most other notebooks do not do this and are much more durable in this regard.
* The storage being soldered is fucking braindead. Apart from being planned obsolescence due to NAND flash's finite lifespan and macOS's increasing hunger for storage space, data recovery is not possible without a proprietary system to connect to a lifeboat port on 2016-2017 machines. 2018 machines have no such port and at this stage, there is no known way to recover data from working flash chips on a dead logic board without board-level repair.
Apple made far better computers in 2015. The competition also being shit doesn't excuse Apple's regressions.
> Apple made far better computers in 2015. The competition also being shit doesn't excuse Apple's regressions.
Totally agree with you there.
My opinion on it being "unfair" on Apple is more to do with the fact that such things are not unique to Apple yet they are the only ones who get pulled up in the tech and even media.
I had two Surface devices from Microsoft; a Surface Book 2 and a Surface Laptop and both were pieces of crap yet cost the same (or there abouts) as an Apple laptop. Sure I see people complain about it here and there but no way near the level you see complaints about Apple products.
One area that bugs me quite a bit is YouTube and tech website "reviewers" such as The Verge et al. Right out the gate the 2018 15" model was ripped apart for the thermal throttling (and it should have been, it was a problem that Apple mostly fixed within a week to be fair) but the same people never mention the same or worse throttling from an XPS or Surface. Or any other long term issues those product lines have had and never been properly addressed. The XPS 15 coil whine, DPC latency, colour saturation issues, speaker crackle, squeaky spacebar, etc. All have been issues on the XPS 15 for several revisions and Dell have still hardly even acknowledged such problems.
So while I think Apple did fuck up with several design decisions on the current MBP I feel it is only fair to point out that the alternatives people often recommend come with their own set of issues as well. My Surface Laptop had a fan issue after just two days. The solution? Total unit replacement because the whole thing is glued together and you can't open it without damaging the alcantara keyboard fabric! So that meant a full system backup and restore which brought along another issue as the machine had been upgraded to Windows 10 Pro via the Windows Store but that is locked to the motherboard and ARRRRRRGH it was such a pain in the ass.
The sad truth is Dell, Apple, Lenovo, Microsoft, Asus, etc. all make shitty hardware decisions in the name of appearance and/or thinness. It sucks but it is reality. I just wish people would bitch about Dell, etc. as much as they do Apple. Maybe then they would fix things rather than deflect to Apple for being "worse" (which is false but believed to be true because of reporting).
I've also defended Apple a lot in the past for usually "getting most things right" where other manufacturers just don't. And you're right, they deserve to be cut down for stupid solved-problems-a-decade-ago like coil whine and rattling fans.
My viewpoint comes from expecting better from Apple because they've been better in the past, and only have a small number of SKUs to deal with. 2006-2012 saw Apple introduce new generations that solved problems and almost unilaterally improved upon their predecessors. They made a few hiccups (such as 2008's glass displays), and 2009's non-removable batteries, but they were reasonable well-thought compromises. Apart from serviceability, the 2012-2015 Retina era did the same.
On the other hand, Dell/Lenovo/HP etc vomit product lines all over the place and have done for as long as I can remember. Seldom do they keep the same basic chassis for more than 2 releases, and even when they do they don't seem to learn lessons and iterate to improve.
In saying that, comparing 2019 XPS, Latitude, Inspiron, and ThinkPads to their 2012 counterparts show marked improvement in many aspects, and few regressions. I guess that's a sorry indictment of PC notebooks at the start of the decade more than anything else...
I guess you could call that unfair on Apple, but then you look at the price they ask for their machines and quickly forget about fairness...
This is EXACTLY what I think.
While I hate the lack of reliability in the latest macbooks, I would say that the other manufacters are not doing anything better at all. The XPS 15 is full of issues and Dell doesn't even acknowledge them, the XPS 13 has basically everything soldered on apart from the SSD and the Thinkpad is going that way as well (just look at the latest X1 carbon and T490s). The Surface devices are just as expensive as the macbooks and just as impossible to repair.
I won't even consider Asus/Acer because in my opinion they simply put junk conponents (with junk drivers) in their products and they're not reliable at all, even in the high price range.
What's funny is that if you actually look at the thermal behaviour of thin and light laptops (go on notebookcheck.com), you'll notice that the MBP 15 is one of the best when compared to the XPS 15, X1 Extreme, Zenbook 15 Pro, etc., And yet everyone only complains about the mac.
(Furthermore, I still find macOS superior to Windows 10, even if I'm a long time Windows user, but that's about personal tastes.)
Personally, I've just stoppped listening to journalists, youtubers or whatever, I just read the reviews and look at the graphs on notebookcheck.com and search for potential issues on reddit/other speficis forums.
I have a late 2013 MacBook pro and the Dell precision 5530 running Ubuntu 16.04.
The Precision 5530 is faster for everything except when I'm using it for video conferencing. A regular Hangouts session brings it down to its knees.
I will be holding on to my 2013 MacBook pro as long as I can :).
I got a maxed out late 2013 MBP and I too am going to hold onto it as long as possible. 4 core i7, 16gb of ram, discrete gpu and it still runs like a champ. The only problem I had was that the battery recently swelled up which caused problems with the touchpad and fans, but apple ended up replacing the battery, keypad, touchpad, and casing for $300 which wasn't too bad considering ifixit wanted like $1,000 bucks for all those parts and now it feels like new.
Me too. I see little reason to upgrade it. I planned to upgrade it two years ago but am still waiting for something that's up to the expected design. More memory (more than 16 gig) would have been nice when I bought it, but that's the max Apple allowed and it can't be upgraded.
I've yet to have to replace my battery. I'm hoping that the 2019 edition is worth buying, e.g. this stuff built in:
* Escape key
* SD card reader
* Older USB and new USB C sockets
* HDMI out
* >1TB SSD
* magnetic power adapter
I'd also like to see touch screen but let's see. I'd give that up for all the above.
I really don't see the point in making the macbook pro an ipad with a keyboard and some extra umpf. They're totally missing the target audience.
Mine is the early 2013 maxed out and also runs like a champ. The battery is going bad, so I'm glad you posted how much you paid for it. I'm really not looking forward to an upgrade.
If the battery starts to swell, get it replaced and see what Apple quotes you. I delayed it (thought the fan noise was because of dust so i tried opening it up and shooting compressed air at it and that did not work but I did notice how hard it was to close it back up) until it caused the fan to non-stop whining at an unbearable rate.
Took it in for an official check up to double-check it as i was thinking about ordering fan parts to repair it myself. They said the battery looked to be swelling which they thought was causing the insane fan noise and quoted me $200 for the battery replacement. I thought I could buy the battery cheaper but grudgingly accepted as they said it would cover all the repairs with that fee. They shipped it to a repair center and then upped the fees by $100 for labor. I again grungendly accepted it as I just wanted it fixed, I could mess up the personal repair, and having them do it saves me time.
After getting the laptop back that looked brand new with all the replacements, I remembered why I love Apple. I'm just surprised they didn't tell me all the parts they were going to replace for the $300 as that would have sold me instantly especially considering my trackpad had been half broken but I did not associate it with the swelling battery at the time.
Yes for Video conferencing Mac or Windows are so much better when it comes to hardware and application support. Being in need of some Unix-compatible, Macs are still my first choice although my last purchase decision was really not easy...
I'm not defending the Macbook -- I can happily say I have not used a recent model one -- but for additional perspective on Dell laptop keyboards, I absolutely hate the keyboard on my 15"-16" Dell Precision provided by my employer. The keys are oddly far apart compared to a conventional desktop keyboard. I struggle to type with any accuracy on the builtin keyboard -- especially for things like entering my password, where mistakes are hidden.
Full disclosure: I am a Dell employee and obviously these views are my own and not that of Dell.
The precision 5530 is an absolutely fantastic machine. Best laptop I’ve ever owned. I was a MacBook Pro user since 08, and when it came to replacing the ailing 2013 MBP, I was not at all impressed with what apple had to offer. Fedora was a great experience (using i3, but gnome is pretty nice too), and I haven’t looked back at all. The only downside is that I can’t do iOS development on it, but that can be handled with a VM where necessary. I only wish dell made them with an AMD gpu rather than the Nvidia Optimus garbage.
I recently upgraded my computer at work, and instead of going for a beefier laptop I opted to build an AMD Ryzen 7 2700 machine, and I could never been happier, running Fedora on it is many many times faster than any laptop out there. The build only costed $900 and the specs are far superior than what I would get for a laptop on that price range. Since most of the time I spend at my desk programming I feel it was a good move, and when I have to go to meetings I have my Surface Pro 6 which serves me very well on that purpose.
What have the biggest annoyances been when switching?
I occasionally try switching but always get frustrated with the amount of time I have to spend fussing with graphics drivers, multitouch drivers, keyboard shortcuts, etc, but it's possible that's because I've only really attempted it on Apple hardware.
Driver issues were very minimal (had to turn off a power management thing, and use the on board graphics card for most usage), maybe an hour-ish. Otherwise, I was completely shocked how modern the experience is. Honestly, I find it better than the Mac UI because it lets me just get shit done without getting in my way. Keyboard shortcuts are weird, but I was using Windows 10 in the mix as well, so I'm used to that. However, I was never big into the apple ecosystem, so it would be more painful if you have an iphone, ipad, use itunes for everything, etc.
I'm in the google ecosystem, so life was crazy easy.
I've been running macOS on both my XPS 15 (9550) and desktop (Haswell i3 based w/ Nvidia graphics). The experience is good on both systems but they definitely have their caveats.
The XPS is probably the most positive experience thus far, it'ss a 9550 with i7/16GB RAM/1TB NVMe/GTX 960/4K. It's currently running Mojave 10.14.3, everything except the SD Card reader and Nvidia GPU work (including the touchscreen, WiFi OOTB, Bluetooth, etc.). The GPU really isn't a problem, Intel graphics work with full acceleration and anything GPU-heavy gets done on the desktop. Helps with battery life too; my system's battery health is down to ~45% but I can still squeeze out a good 4 hours from it. It's not very well supported, you really gotta stay on top of updates and be ready to fix what breaks, but when it's running it's a dream to use.
The desktop on the other hand is a completely different beast. It's got an i3-4150/8GB RAM/GTX 980 and currently running High Sierra 10.13.6 (because of a lack on Nvidia drivers in Mojave). Getting it setup was a little bit of work, the WiFi/Bluetooth card needed an enabler kext and audio needs a bootloader tweak to work, otherwise it's functionally indestinguishable to a legitimate Mac; It can even be updated through the Mac App Store, iCloud/iMessage works, Handoff works.
I personally wouldn't build one again. I've built 4 in my life and my last one was High Sierra (last year is when I stopped using it).
It'll run great (NOT problem free) for 6 months; just enough time to forget everything you learned over the entire weekend you dedicated to initially getting it working, then update or something will break and you have to dive back into the tonyx86/etc rabbit hole for another entire day or an entire weekend.
Look at what he said, it's great when it works. That's the problem.
Stuff will usually still "work" but your video drivers will drop your resolution to 640 and you have to fight with that and try new kexts, sometimes your sound will flake and you'll research how to fix it, etc.
If your time is remotely valuable and you want your personal equipment to just "work" and not have to be tinkered with it's unpleasant.
That's why I was so excited the Mini finally got updates, but that doesn't really work with egpus so I wound up just going back to my MBP.
Smiliar boat except with a lenovo x1 extreme. After typing on my lenovo for 1 day going back to my macbook pro retina feels like an absolute disaster. It's like we've been gaslit by apple to believe these computers are good. They're not. They're complete trash
Note that the 18.04 LTS will have the older version of Budgie and not the latest; the latest version is available with 19.04, but won't be available for LTS until 20.04 - though I am sure there's ways of getting it installed if you really wanted to.
I switched to Budgie Ubuntu 18.04 LTS after my super-long-in-the-tooth-modified-to-hell-and-back Ubuntu 14.04 LTS install face-planted after I tried to install a new version of the NVidia proprietary driver using a very hacked and patched together gcc setup (something I did for an online MOOC where I needed a greater version of C++ than 14.04 supported - not the smartest thing I ever did, but it worked well for a while, and long enough to complete the MOOC).
My 14.04 install started with a Minimal version, then I built it up from there to a look-and-workalike Crunchbang (#!) system. This was done just after #! ceased being supported (after I had played with it and liked it), but before the community picked up the pieces (ultimately resulting in Bunsen Labs distro).
It worked well, but after it finally fell over, I decided I wanted to go a different route on a new install - and Budgie Linux with Ubuntu 18.04 LTS is where I ended up. I couldn't be happier; it allows me a desktop experience that I swear is very close to what I have on the MBP I use at my employer, but I have customized my own way (though I did grab a set of SVGs for a better looking trashcan for Plank). I also had to write a new wallpaper switcher (in python) as I didn't like anything as well that exists. Minor things, though. Overall, it's a great desktop - gives me some freedom to play, but is still beautiful and highly functional.
One thing I'll never do again, though, is install anything that isn't "standalone" in /home or a "deb" package (or something like AppImages); anything that must be compiled from source will either be made into a package to install, or I'll put it on a VM (that's what ultimately led to my old system falling over - too much crap in too many places without any kind of tracking, etc - my fault, ultimately).
I've been running Ubuntu on my Latitude 6650 since new a couple years back. Unfortunately due to my company moving to Office365 fully, its no longer viable for a daily driver - mostly due to no support for Teams (except for a crappy broken web interface), Outlook & OneDrive.
Always had Windows available in Virtualbox, but its definitely slower & had endless audio issues with conferencing (you don't want to be the guy who always has sound problems)
Now switched to Windows 10 on a dual boot - which is much easier on the fan, laptop not running nearly as hot as switching between the GPU & onboard graphics is seamless. Despite decades of Linux experience (servers & desktop) I could never get Prime working properly to switch to onboard graphics when needed...wasted days of my life on this.
Despite this Ubuntu 19.04 has big improvements in driver support & if it wasn't for Office, I would have gladly stayed on Linux.
Now its Kali in Virtualbox for me which is almost as good as running natively.
Windows has better toolbar management, mouseovers & switching between apps. Also since Ubuntu moved back to Gnome, switching between Virtualbox VMs has been buggy (display driver issues no doubt)
Linux has a better file browsers (windows explorer hasn't changed in a decade, no tabs & looks terrible) & much better terminal options.
I'll miss Linux as my daily OS, but I guess MS has its grip tightly on most organizations balls these days.
> Windows has better toolbar management, mouseovers & switching between apps. Also since Ubuntu moved back to Gnome, switching between Virtualbox VMs has been buggy (display driver issues no doubt)
I find both Mac and Windows' window managers much less pleasant than one of the many tiling window managers on Linux, since they automate away a ton of manual window management. That being said, I invested an unreasonable amount of time into configuring xmonad to behave in the way I want to, and the default window manager on, say, Ubuntu, is indeed pretty bad compared to Windows / Mac.
Amethyst, an xmonad-clone for Mac, works well enough, but still has bugs and is nowhere near as configurable as tiling WMs on Linux.
I'm using Ubuntu, which hasn't really changed in the last 5 years or so (gah the Ambiance theme), and still find the GUI super limited, slow, ugly, bad fonts, etc. IMO its inferior to macOS and Windows by miles.
Come on, didn't you have a Dell Inspiron 8000? Those things were the Macbook Pro of the day, sexy and horrible with BSODS due to flexing motherboards and gorgeous 1600x1200 displays.
My previous worse experience was on a Dell, actually :) Forget the model, but it was a 17" monster and horribly unstable with a crap keyboard and dim display. But that was back in the early 2000s, and I'm shocked it's Apple that gave me an experience that was nearly as bad.
Yeah, I'll probably be switching to a Surface Book. I don't mind spending for a premium laptop but I care about it feeling good to use and I just don't like the newer Macbooks.
Were drivers a problem? Did you run into any problems with the nvme SSD? I tried booting Opensuse but it couldn’t see the SSD. Maybe I just need to try Ubuntu.
No problems with the nvme ssd that I've noticed. I went with Ubuntu because Dell ships with Ubuntu as an option, so I figured they worked the kinks out :)
thanks for the reply, you inspired me to grab Ubuntu 18.04, put it on a usb key and boot my 5530, but alas it doesn't recognize the NVMe disk. There's a single line from dmesg about remmapping a NVMe disk, but Nothing on fdisk -l.
What version of Ubuntu are you running? Is it produced by Dell or the generic release?
edit nevermind I found a fix: in the BIOS (F2 while booting), I needed to set System Config -> SATA Operation -> AHCI. With that, the nvme is found just fine.
After that, it's been awesome. While inch-for-inch I like Mac trackpads the best, I hated the giant trackpad on the current macbook line, and the Dell trackpad is the right size and probably 95% as good. I don't care too much about not having all of the swipe shortcuts Mac has, so I didn't try to get more working on Ubuntu, but that could be a pain if you are into them. (Ubuntu has two-finger support out of the box that works great).
I was really pleased that closing the screen and opening it works just as well as Macs for suspending and resuming. Win10 does subpar at that.
The UI isn't quite as smooth as Mac, but it is still very smooth and easy. Just like the Dell 5530 isn't as thin as the current Mac, it is totally thin enough. Apple is just polishing for the sake of polishing at this point.
Plus, I have Ubuntu underneath, which makes it awesome for more line of work (software guy, call it "full stack", I do all kinds of stuff, but all Linux-based).
One thing that's holding me back is that my early 2014 maxed-out 13in Macbook Pro model is still pretty great. I find it better than the 2018 I use at work. Better keyboard, MUCH better trackpad (although I'm using the mouse more these days) and performance-wise, I barely notice any difference...
The battery is nearly dead. Maybe worth it for me to have it serviced and just keep using it for some more time.
My unibody/pre-retina mid-2012 is still getting them (and I'm still using it, because it's the last/best machine that still had a truly matte screen!), so you're probably safe for a few more cycles.
I have the larger battery, and for daily development (including web stuff) usage, I get 10+ hours. Even if I'm doing heavy dev (running test suite, lots of compilation, etc) it drops down to maybe 5-6 at worst.
Keeping an updated Win10 on the laptop is a good idea, it makes the unit easier to sell when it’s time to move on. And you don’t want to pay for that twice.
There's really no need to keep Win10 on the laptop. The Win10 license is kept in the UEFI so you can reinstall from a Win10 ISO at any time and it will activate correctly. This even has the added bonus of removing the Dell bloatware from your Windows install.
> The Win10 license is kept in the UEFI so you can reinstall from a Win10 ISO at any time and it will activate correctly.
Not if Windows 10 detected that you have "major" hardware changes. In which case, your new installation won't be activated (granted, Microsoft doesn't enforce activation on). You may need to extract the license key from UEFI and type it in manually to get activation to work. It's a hassle.
I got bit by these "major" hardware changes on a computer I'd passed on to my relatives. For whatever reason I had had the onboard Ethernet adapter disabled in BIOS when I upgraded from Windows 7 to 10, and enabling it prevented Windows from activating at all. (FWIW, it was not a laptop.)
Unlike in the past, when all you had to do was call in and recite your license key, these days their policy is to accept nothing else but a proof of purchase, which in my case was from almost 10 years prior. Luckily enough, I had it archived.
Yeah, the exact definition of "major" hardware change is kept as a secret by Microsoft so that it's not easy to defeat that activation mechanism for pirates.
The newer version (version 1511 and above) of Windows 10's digital licenses are essential a private key (as in asymmetric cryptography, called digital entitlement[1], stored in UEFI), as opposed to the a 25-character product key we used before. If for whatever reason the activation program cannot find that key, it won't be activated.
- Keyboards with much worse action that are more prone to failure (from dust no less) and require replacing the motherboard to fix... all for a Touchbar no one wants and 0.5mm cut in thickness.
- Loss (over the years) of the ability to upgrade the CPU, SSD or memory;
- Display failures due to broken ribbon cables;
- The USB-C clusterF; and
- Loss of MagSafe (this one still hurts).
All for a premium price.
Go back 5 years and you have two great choices:
1. The 13" Macbook Air for under $1500, which was a great compromise of power, portability and affordability; or
2. The 15" Retina Macbook Pro, which was more upgradeable, less failure prone and had a better keyboard.
I bought a 2017 MBP and I deeply regret it. Luckily it hasn't failed yet. If and when it does I may be better off just throwing it away.
How did Apple lose its way so badly here? Serviceability matters. It's too expensive to be a throwaway device.
So who really cares if your throwaway $44k device can now have 8 instead of 6 cores? Really?
I guess I'm the only one that thinks USB-C is actually better?
The biggest win is that now I can use a single dongle for power, displayport to my monitor, and connection to a USB hub. So if I take my laptop home or into a meeting room, when I get back to my desk it's just a single thing to plug in now instead of 3+ separate cables. And since this stuff is all standardized now and there's no longer anything Apple proprietary like Thunderbolt 1, I would guess other makers will follow suit eventually and most monitors will support it directly without even needing a dongle.
Plus the MagSafe port was not without problems - every few months I would get like a little magnetic pebble or something stuck in there, and then it's plugged in but not charging charging and usually I'd realize when my laptop is almost dead and then have to find something small to try to pluck it out of there. The USB-C port doesn't have this issue and it's still a relatively small port with very low resistance to being pulled out. Tripping over the power cord just has never really been an issue for me, it kinda seems overblown (knock on wood though, I guess).
I do miss the external LED that showed whether you were connected to power or not and whether it was fully charged, it would be nice if they found a way to add that back on the side of the laptop or something since it can no longer be on the cable itself with a standard USB-C cable.
I don’t get the whining about lack of USB type-a ports or the sd card slot and hdmi port. One, ONE $30 adapter gives you all of those and you have 3 TB3 ports still to use, AND it will read more memory card formats. Edit: AND it will have more USB-A ports than the old MBP had!
I saw a manufacturer a while ago had a little magnetic adapter for a USB-c power port, too.
Oh and the common complaint about flash drives - I bought one with type a one end, and type-c the other for about $12 I think.
The added functionality of TB3 far outweighs any of the small losses IMO.
That's not how TB3 works though. Those cheap dongles don't necessarily pass through correctly, and this can lead to all manner of problems when you have sensitive equipment connected. Lots of reports of audio issues on USB C Macs when using external dongles, for example.
The actual TB3 hubs cost $150 minimum iirc.
This may not cause trouble in your own use case, but it's definitely potential cause for concern for people that need a lot of I/O
I don't believe that's how TB3 works, either. I might be mistaken or out of date, but I've looked. At any price I haven't seen an actual TB3 hub that gives you more ports than you start with. The ones that do aren't TB3, they're extra power-only or USB-only USB-C ports. Everything I've seen is just a passthrough TB3 port with additional accessories that are generally USB or HDMI tunneled through.
> Lots of reports of audio issues on USB C Macs when using external dongles, for example.
If you're talking about audio production...that tends to go with everything computer related for 30+ years. Which port you plug in, the brand of cable you use, the minor software release--all are potential problems. Everyone tends to have a unique setup, too.
I do miss the external LED that
showed whether you were
connected to power or not and
whether it was fully charged
This reminds me of the battery button that displayed a range of leds to show charge percentage when closed.
Seems like Apple could have kept MagSafe and added the usb-c ports w/ option to charge through usb-c or MagSafe. it probably wouldn’t have been a very Apple-like thing to do and then you don’t have nice clean symmetric ports, but that little cable definitely saved lots of repair dollars over the years for me
I feel the same way. I do really miss magsafe (and the charging light), but I really like plugging in 1 cable for power, monitor, and accessories.
There are USB-C cables with a charging light on them. I'm a little dumbfounded why Apple doesn't offer this--their USB-C cables already come in one flavor for charging and another for high speed data. It's made worse because Apple also took off the white LED /and/ battery charging indicator on the case.
I haven't used them (there might be other brands), I hear they can be slightly weird depending on the computer+power brick because they seem to observe the power draw for the LED color.
I was initially sceptical of USB-C, but was looking forward to having less things to plug in. Then I learnt that USB-C only supports up to 100W of power, and even worse the MBP included charger is only 87W. All high performance laptops draw more power than that at high load (think gaming, rendering, etc.).
I just don't see USB-C ever replacing a proper charging cable if it can't even supply enough power to run the computer! The computer you leave to render overnight will drain the battery to flat and subsequently shut down/throttle. How is that in any way acceptable?
MagSafe 1 and 2 topped out at 85W. There are gaming laptops that require more than one brick-sized charger. There are legitimate complaints in this thread, but this isn’t one of them.
I'd classify any laptop with 6 or more intel cores and a dedicated gpu >= rx560/gtx1050(ti). Not so sure about mobile, but a desktop RX560 on its own uses 80-100W[0] which doesn't really leave any headroom for a 6 (yet alone an 8 core) cpu.
The comment was about USB-C generally, not limited to the MacBook implementation. There isn’t an inherent reason why two cables couldn’t carry twice the power of one.
I have a USB-C only Lenovo (well I guess it has USB-A but I never use it, I'm all in bluetooth/USB-C) and a latest gen Mac Air. I've got a USB-C charging cable for each, a dock at home and at the office that is USB-C (and manages peripherals including monitor).
Seriously a "PC" and Mac sharing all the same chargers and docking solutions. This is incredible. I never had a Mac with mag safe so maybe I just don't know what I'm missing, but the practicality of plugging in ONE cable and that same cable works between both machines and I can bring both with me places without fretting about chargers.
When I got my 2017 MBP and was comparing PCs I either wanted Magsafe-like or USB-c (Surface is magsafe-like). I ended up with a Macbook Pro. Late one night a few months after getting it I forgot a charger and ran to Target, then Wal-Mart looking for a USB-C charger and everything was still proprietary chargers. Maybe one of the display units had USB-C charging, but they didn't sell standalone chargers. USB-C had been around at least since 2015 so I didn't think I was that early of an adopter...
At least this seems to have changed a bit. Like you said, it's so nice to charge non-Apple headphones or my Switch without hunting for extra cables.
Ha! Totally forgot the Switch is USB-C, I just moved and realized I left both of my chargers in my previous apartment and now both laptops are dying, but I have the Switch!!
Really just the MagSafe is the big difference they lost. Supposedly the keyboard sucks, why don’t they just fix it or go back to the previous iteration.
Either way I think these are still the best notebooks you can buy.
Ubuntu doesn’t even work right on my dell desktop - it never remembers dual monitor settings, even with Nvidia official drivers installed.
When I open my MacBook Air I can just use it without waiting or worrying. That much is still the same; except now you have to worry about someone tripping over your power cord
> Either way I think these are still the best notebooks you can buy.
Five years ago you could make that statement and not have to think twice about it. However now there is too much competition.
1. Dell XPS
2. Matebook X Pro
3. Asus Zenbook Pro
These are just 3 laptops off the top of my head that can compete with the latest and greatest Macbook Pro and come out arguably better. The keyboard, thermal issues and touchbar have really hurt the latest macbook pro. Apple needs to admit they are wrong, ditch the shitty butterfly keyboard and fix the random issues that have started plaguing the Macbook in Apple's quest for thinness.
I last looked a few years ago and was disappointed at the non-Apple selection (because I was disappointed at the Apple selection, too).
I was looking at 13" models. Comparable PCs were very similar in form factor--non-replacable RAM and a 1tb SSD option (either included or added later myself) took the cost very close to each other. I know Apple laptops have a decent resale value and I'm familiar and comfortable with Apple's warranty and service (others might be great, too, but that'd be an unknown for me).
I needed a webcam for work and having it by the keyboard was a no-go. I know this recently changed and I was very disappointed a brand new Macbook Pro has the exact same camera a 2009 model had. They all had a similarly poor situation with USB-C, too. Either none, 1 for charging and like 1 USB-A port, or only 2-4 USB-C ports.
Looking at the failure rates and support for each brand, a trackpad and keyboard that wasn't as good, having to use Linux (I wasn't planning on using Windows), none of them looked any better.
I wish there was better competition (at least for what I'm looking for) and I wish Apple would fix the things everyone liked about the 2015. Not all of it is thinness...I miss a charging light and battery meter, give better non-touchbar options (I'd like touch ID and more USB-C ports), upgrade your camera for Pete's sake.
I’ve borrowed recent fancy dell XPS 1-2 year old from IT, used and abused by previous employees.
They don’t hold up well at all. Trackpad feels crap compared to my 5 year old mb air, screens suck, keyboard feels meh. They might start out nice but they deteriorate really quickly from my firsthand sampling
The old MacBooks I’ve used from IT, however, still function like original except for the visual wear and tear you see and the ugh of using something all scratched up
Check out ebay, it's filled with used/old xps notebooks in good condition. Your single experience isn't necessarily reality. I agree that nothing competes with apple for the trackpad experience. But the screen on latest XPS beats the Macbook Pro. The XPS also offers a much better keyboard experience compared to the butterfly keyboard. And it's keyboard isn't inherently flawed and susceptible to malfunctioning due to dust.
I agree older macbooks were simply amazing and definitely a cut above the rest. But my point is that compared to the latest macbook pro, the 3 laptops I mentioned are very good competitors. It didn't used to be like this. Apple may have produced very reliable laptops many years ago, but that's no longer the case.
And all three have coil whine, for example. So I, a technical person, would personally get a MB Air for the same price despite any problems it has. So there is still a huge market and Apple doesn't have much incentives to do so, unfortunately.
I think everyone is just using "reliability" as an opportunity to whine about the feel of the keyboard.
Which is silly, because after using one for a year and then going back to my Air, that keyboard feels mushy and unresponsive. The original 12" MacBook keyboard had actual issues with ergonomics and usability - successive versions did not.
For what it's worth, my multi-monitor settings are remembered just fine in Ubuntu 19.04. I _just_ switched from Macbook Pro to Dell XPS 13/Ubuntu, and I couldn't get multi-monitor to work for Ubuntu 18.04, but everything worked out of box for 19.04. But I don't know if upgrading will mess with any legacy config you may have!
Thanks!!! I am upgraded from 14 to 18 and was disappointed that not even Ubuntu got multi monitor to remember basic settings properly. I’ll give 19 a shot then !!
There are a lot of things to complain about with the newer MacBook Pros (like not offering a hardware function row without hobbling the machine). I think the MagSafe removal is one of the least strong of them.
The green LED sucks. I would charge my 2012 MacBook Pro in my bedroom, but can’t because of the light. Also, I can’t charge it and use the laptop in my lap because the MagSafe falls off easily. The new charger solves both of these problems.
It's not ageing that fast. Mine has a 1TB drive and I'm too lazy to wipe it clean but I'm sure with a clean wipe it would run like new. The keyboard is still intact, all of the hardware in fact.
I've been wondering for a while now why USB-IF hasn't defined a standard magnetic connector. I'm surprised none of the flagship smartphones or laptops have tried to push their own magnetic connector. They're desperate to differentiate themselves in the current market and wireless charging is falling behind quickly due to physical constraints.
I use a volta cable for my phone and it is wonderful. It handles power and data just fine. My only issue is that I have to use a dongle.
There's clearly demand for it. Magsafe and volta have proven its effectiveness. It would be a great solution for portable consumer electronics like laptops, cameras, tablets, and phones.
> all for a Touchbar no one wants and 0.5mm cut in thickness.
I second this. It's been years now, and I still don't really see TouchBar as indispensable. Not enough apps make special use of it yet.
I don't care as much about thinness either. I just want something that works where I can replace or add RAM and storage myself.
As for magsafe, you can get a 3rd party replacement if you're willing to spend $50.
The only reason I stayed is because of MacOS, but current Apple hardware has gone into a weird direction. It's harder and harder to stay when Windows now ships with Linux.
I have a 2016 MacBook Pro, and "luckily" the anti-glare coating failed. There is a free repair program for the screen appearing stained, and replacing the display panel replaced the integrated display ribbon cable that had also failed.
I don't think dust is the cause of all the keyboard failures. I had been using it as a desktop computer for over a year. It isn't in a dusty room, and the computer still spends months without being opened. Furthermore, sometimes on waking a key will be stuck in a pressed condition, such that I can't successfully enter a password to log in. Pressing all of the keys doesn't reset the state, but force rebooting does.
If I do use the MacBook Pro's keyboard some of the keys intermittently fail to detect presses, but because there are both problems with keys being stuck engaged, and keys failing to detect presses, I suspect that the switches have some flaw where they can generally degrade due to heat rather than only dust fouling the contacts.
Anyway, I haven't yet had the keyboard replaced, because the failure is still intermittent, and I'd like to get a fresh keyboard right before selling it, sometime after a teardown confirms whether this new model is really likely to be less error prone, or maybe after a more thorough redesign for Ice Lake chips in the 13" model later this year or early next year.
Followup for anyone reading the above with a dark screen/flex cable problem in a 2016 MacBook Pro: today, Apple announced that they will now cover this problem up to four years after the original purchase date.
Not really. It's a cause. But it's also fairly clear given there are key clusters that are more likely to fail that it's heat related sometimes too.
There's probably not a single cause. And indeed, some of the fixes are probably making some of the other issues worse (I would not be at all surprised if the dust membrane is exacerbating the heat issues, and that's why the issues with the MacBook Air are just as bad if not worse than the other machines).
> - Keyboards with much worse action that are more prone to failure (from dust no less) and require replacing the motherboard to fix... all for a Touchbar no one wants and 0.5mm cut in thickness.
The keyboard replacement replaces the top-case, your motherboard and everything else is transplanted over to the new top-case.
I actually really like USB-C. The ability for any cable to work at any port is extremely nice, so I don’t have to run the power cord awkwardly just to meet the left side of the laptop.
Apple has always made aggressively experimental design changes that were a mix of steps forward and backward. Hockey puck mice, mass logic board failures, soldered flash drives and batteries, ports and dongles, etc.
These used to excite me because I've desperately needed 32gb and faster procs and used to upgrade every 2-3 years but now I just yawn at MBP releases. I'm so unexcited by everything about this form factor other than the fact that it has OSX. I'm guessing I'll be on my 2016 until I finally bite the bullet and quit using OSX if they don't make a more compelling package to spend my $3k on in the next few years.
I don't want thinner. I don't want a touchbar. I don't want this oversized touchpad I touch constantly when it's on my lap. I don't want this terrible keyboard solution required due to the desire for thinness. I don't want to carry 3 USBC dongles or to buy a $350 USBC hub at every single desk I have with monitors (home, work). I want a bigger battery. I want more ports. I want less bezel. I want a chassis that doesn't scratch and dent.
> don't want thinner. I don't want a touchbar. I don't want this oversized touchpad I touch constantly when it's on my lap. I don't want this terrible keyboard solution required due to the desire for thinness. I don't want to carry 3 USBC dongles or to buy a $350 USBC hub at every single desk I have with monitors (home, work).
You may not realize it yet, but you are no longer Apple's market. Do your future self a favor and figure out how to transition to something sustainable.
Apple used to make computers that were both elegant and practical... But the iphone taught execs that there is a much more profitable market willing to pay through the roof for extremely stylish looking computers at the cost of _everything_ else, they will keep going further down this road because there is plenty of demand. Apple now sell gorgeous Ferraris, but the kind that will drive you insane and are not actually useful or comfortable for anything other than showing off.
The good news is that sexy PC laptops now exist, and some of them are still actually practical too! better yet some of those sexy practical laptops run Linux! Well!
"I don't want thinner" is really what apple needs to hear.
Thinner means you take away my ports so I have to carry dongles. Yes, I'd actually love to have at least one old-fashioned USB2 port. I know, I'm insane, but USB2 devices didn't exactly disappear just because USB-C is great. I still have a lot of them.
Thinner means you take away magsafe, which is one of those great "gosh, apple is so clever" features that's very, very useful.
Thinner means you give me a keyboard which, at best, completely sucks (layout, feel) and at worst, can't actually do its job because of reliability problems.
Thinner means I could have more battery life.
I'm literally carrying around TWO 2015 MBPs on a daily basis right now and it's TOTALLY FINE, APPLE. I'm not dying over the weight or amount of space they take up. I hardly even notice. For what developers do with laptops, thinner is way down on the priority list. I wish you'd listen to us.
Also: I literally have no use for the touchbar that isn't perfectly handled by function keys, and I hit ESC 1000 times a day because I'm a vim user. Why do you hate me?
Please just release a mac that looks exactly like a 2015 MBP with an i9 and some USB-C ports, and I will be lining up to throw $3k at you. As is, I'm getting as much life out of my 2015's as I possibly can (they're running great, btw, but I doubt they'll make it to your next refresh if it's 3 years away). When they finally die, if the only MBPs available have garbage keyboards and touchbars, I will grudgingly stop being a Mac user.
> Thinner means you take away my ports so I have to carry dongles.
I'm not sure it does really. The modern MacBook Air chassis is the same size as the old one. But it's lost Magsafe, a useful keyboard, USB-A, it's lost a port on the 13 inch, and no SD card slot.
Apple hasn't got rid of these things for thinness. It's gotten rid of them because of a misguided belief that the replacements are better than the loss of flexibility, or just plain working.
Apple are wrong about these things. But the problem is much more fundamentally that Apple seems to have lost it's ability to engineer well and it's judgement about how to please it's Mac customers. Thinness is just a symptom.
People have complained about Apple removing things since they first removed floppy drives. They remove them not because of some misguided belief, but because it’s old tech. I have a MBP from 2012 still going strong. When laptops last that long a bit of future proofing is a bonus. If you swap laptops every other year then you obviously miss out on this benefit. PC manufacturers will start removing USB ports and if history is any judge we’ll see zero complaints about them doing it, just like with the floppy
There are two reasons the floppy drive isn't a very good comparison, in my opinion. The first is that floppy drive usage had already dropped dramatically because software was distributed on CDs and macs had been networked for years. So the use cases for floppies were a lot fewer and farther between, meaning it was less upsetting to people that Apple made the bold move of just dropping them. Also keep in mind that by this point, the Zip drive had absolutely taken over as the sneakernet of this era, and those were 100% aftermarket add-ons. The second reason the floppy is very different is that if you consider the tree of all the devices that are plugged into your mac, floppy drives are leaf nodes. Nothing else plugs into them, so removing them impacts nothing but floppy usage. Every day I plug in a DisplayPort monitor, an HDMI monitor, USB 2.0 yubikey, and USB 2.0 keyboard+mouse via a USB 2.0 hub. That's a lot of perfectly functional stuff to replace just because Apple jumped the gun on deciding USB-C had taken over.
Evidence that it hasn't: the hundreds of people walking around my workplace with gigantic USB 2.0 + HDMI + displayport dongles dangling from their laptops all the time, or starting meetings by saying "oh shit, i left my dongle in the other building. Can I borrow someone's so I can use the projector?"
Floppy is a terrible example to support your point.
When floppies were removed, almost nobody had to purchase external floppy drives to use their existing library of floppies.
1.44mb is pretty useless when you already have a flood of cheap USB flash drives 64+mb at the time.
Heck, even during the windows 95 days, I only touched floppies to be able to boot into ms-dos to reinstall windows.
When you buy a brand spanking new $1500 iPhone Xs and a brand spanking new $4000 MBP and walk out of the Apple Store with no way to connect the two without a dongle, you know you’re eating whatever shit Apple is feeding you.
> > Thinner means you take away my ports so I have to carry dongles.
> I'm not sure it does really.
Not 100% true, you're right, but the thinness is definitely the reason ethernet went. My 2010 had an RJ45 on it, and there's just no room for it on the 2015 or the later ones. However, I do think the design aesthetic that calls for thinness is related to the design aesthetic that fetishizes the simplicity of having as few blemishes on the case as possible. Floppy eject button? We can do it in software. Mouse buttons? Reduce it to one. No wait, reduce it to zero (magic mouse). Trackpad buttons? Remove them. Ports? As few as possible. Sleek. I feel like putting on a black turtleneck.
Agreed, the keyboard is awful. I just want a decent/good keyboard, an HDMI port, and just 1 USB A port, I'll definitely take 0.5mm thicker for those. Well, at least they kept the headphone jack...
32gb ram and an 8 core processor is awesome, but all the downsides have turned me away from getting the next gen unless they fix those things.
Yeah but there's no way this thing has the thermal or power capacity to actually run that 8-core CPU at its rated specs. This already happened with the 6-core in the previous gen, and it certainly doesn't look like Apple did anything to improve thermal capacity in this refresh. Hopefully they at least addressed the lack of VRM power delivery, but that doesn't seem likely.
So you're taking a platform that was already pushed past its thermal & power capacities, and increased the thermal & power load by another 30% (keep in mind these are all still on Intel's 14nm that hasn't really changed, so no efficiency improvements here). Maybe the reviews will be surprising, but I wouldn't bet on it.
> Well, it says they did, but I guess you know better.
I don't see any comments from Apple talking about improving the cooling. What are you referring to? And what did they change? It still looks like the same tiny opening in the hinge, with no additional venting anywhere?
I don't really get the hate for these keyboards. I benchmarked my typing speed on my 2019 MBP and a few other keyboards, I didn't notice any significant difference. Just a keyboard...
They are loud, to the point of being annoying during a meeting / conference call and the travel distance is a bit too short for some people, making typing unpleasant. If you use a Lenovo or even a dell of equal body thickness for a bit and then get back to a modern Mac, the difference is huge.
The two main issues for me are failure rates and key travel. My fingers literally hurt when I use it. The 2012-2015 form was probably less beautiful to look at (and slightly thicker), but it was much better to type with.
I'm glad someone else mentioned their fingers physically hurting when using it. I haven't seen many other complaints round this online and its shocking - This made me stop using the device completely - I was in pain just by typing normally!
I don't mind it (though as I commented elsewhere, the volume of the keypresses is a bit louder). I think most of the complaints are aimed at reliability however, which is a bit scary on a $2000+ machine (even though I had to replace the SSD, the keys on my 2013 MBP are still as good as day 1)
I thought the same thing. Now I'm stuck with a $1500 Asus laptop that barely plays Netflix a year and a half later. despite an 7th gen i7 and 16gb of DDR4. Now I'm saving up for a Macbook Pro again, despite my hatred for the keyboard and touchbar.
Maybe he has a spinning disk in it? I see lots of laptops in that price range that go for the 1TB HDD instead of the 256GB SSD. Windows 10 on a 5400RPM HDD is pretty miserable these days, the OS just can't stop touching the disk and it's forever IO bound.
I've had the same problem. I had a i7 T420 with 16GB of RAM that was lightning quick when I got it and over a few years became completely unusable even for basic tasks. When I hit the Windows key to open the start menu, I could turn and take a sip of coffee before it opened. Reformatting and reinstalling from scratch did nothing to improve the speed.
I switched to a Macbook soon after and it is just as fast today as it was when I got it four years ago. I recently fired up that old T420 and popped an older, unused SSD into it. Instant game-changer. It is unbelievable how much faster it is with an SSD, the same speed it was with Windows 7 when I first got it.
Hitting the Windows key on Windows 7 even with an HDD was instant. Hitting the Windows key on Windows 10 with an HDD tok seconds. Installing an SSD brought it back to being instant.
Does it have a SSD in it? Unfortunately some manufacturers like to spec out everything except a SSD. If it doesn’t, and especially if they stuck you with a hybrid drive (ugh), upgrade to a SSD and it should perform well again. It will certainly be an order of magnitude cheaper than a new laptop, too.
If they're using Chrome rather than Edge or the native app then the video is rendered in software, which will quite possibly result in a poor experience on an underpowered machine.
(TBH the same issue happens on a Mac though, except Safari instead of Edge).
That makes sense, I guess Netflix won't choose a video quality/resolution to play back based on your processing power but rather just on your network bandwidth
Anything unique about it? Are you running Windows 10? Latest updates? Need any driver updates? (Most drivers are updated by Windows but a few, like graphics/network sometimes benefit from checking yourself.)
Are you running a (really) resource intensive anti-virus program?
I own an $800 Asus gaming laptop and a $700 Asus ultrabook. One with 7th gen i7 and 16GB DDR. The other with 8th gen i7 and 16GB DDR. One has SATA SSD and other NVMe SSD. One is 1 year old. The other is 2 years old.
Both of them can run Visual Studio Professional, VS Code, Netflix, Hulu, StarCraft 2. Both are very fast and a joy to use. One is heavy; the other is light!
If it has a 5400 rpm hard drive, consider getting a 2.5" SSD to replace it, and use software to clone the drive. (Although it kind of sounds like you could use a fresh install.)
I guess "hacker" doesn't really mean what it used to mean. I thought it used to mean people who are curious and like to tinker. Maybe it now means "busy people who have no time to actually tinker but like the idea of tinkering".
in order to eek out a tenth of a gigahertz for their marketing materials (with rapidly diminishing returns because physics), manufacturers usually set Turbo Boost Power Limits 5-10 (or more) watts too high. Since Turbo Boost usually maximizes a single core's frequency and the heat generated increases exponentially, it creates a very concentrated heat spike in the silicon. Even if the CPU heat sink is good enough to passively dissipate that much heat from all of the cores, the turbo boost hot spot forces the fans to spin up early before the CPU knows how long the boost will be needed (otherwise Turbo boost would significantly reduce the lifetime of the CPU). Combined with random scheduled OS tasks that take a split second of turbo to run a process [..]
This could also apply to thermal throttling of the CPU. Imagine if your laptop is on that edge, with some dust in the heatsinks and fans, then a can of compressed air and an install of ThrottleStop (or other software) to underclock a little and reduce the maximum boost frequency, and thereby reduce thermal throttling, might make it run smoother and faster-on-average.
Or another possibility:
If your fan is spinning up when scrolling in Slack it's likely an indication that Electron (Chrome) is refusing to use the GPU for rendering acceleration. This is likely either due to a driver issue or the driver/gpu being on chrome's blacklist. I had this problem once on a hackintosh and as I recall starting Slack from a terminal with the `--ignore-gpu-blacklist` option fixed it.
Same here. Replaced my MacBook Pro with an X1 Carbon last summer. Short circuiting my usual 2-year upgrade cycle and buying whatever Apple releases this fall.
I don’t get the touch pad complaint (I don’t agree with the others either but that’s a boring worn out argument) - macOS has had excellent “accidental touch” detection in my experience.
So I come from the weird world of Thinkpad point-stick users so take my ergo desires with a grain of salt if you hate that thing. I don't like having to use a buttonless touchpad to begin with and while the MBP touchpad is the best I've ever used I loved it on my 2015 and despise how large it is on the 2016 I've got now. I do EVERYTHING I can to not use this laptop as a laptop. It's keyboard and touchpad experience are just awful, well, the keyboards awful, the touchpad size is just an annoyance.
When I sit with the laptop on my lap, like on the couch, I find that I'm constantly adjusting things to not touch it. Whether it's my jacket or a blanket or my phone cable or my own hand. I just constantly trigger it and I'm sure I have it on the lowest sensitivity with palm rejection. I'm pretty sure even when I'm on a desk I'm constantly adjusting where my arms are because it's getting triggered (or I just feel like I have to pay attention to it).
FWIW, I dislike every single Apple keyboard, mouse and touchpad ever created and refuse to use them to the point that I bring my own kb/mouse to work because every job hands me those. I have tried them, at times, for months.
Meanwhile my palm can literally rest on the touchpad while typing and I don’t trigger it. Are you in a particularly dry area or something? This is completely the opposite of my experience and I’ve used every MBP since they changed the name from PowerBook. I agree on the keyboard though, but then again I dislike any laptop keyboard due to the short key travel and lack of a mechanical option
But is it because it is triggered or you think it will be triggered? I don’t know that I’ve ever accidentally triggered the trackpad in 12 years of MBPs
Completely agreed. I’m on my 2016 max spec. Need to take it in for keyboard repair at some point and I’ve barely used the keyboard as I’m using external keyboard and monitors 99% of the time. If they offered the new one with an option to get it without the Touch Bar and old style keyboard that alone would be an instant buy for me.
Have you considered just getting a workstation and doing everything on it via ssh?
Guess it depends on what kind of stuff you do. I adopted that workflow years ago out of necessity (need to routinely do some heavy lifting) and will never go back.
"Today, however, [Apple] told me that they’re taking three explicit steps to help with the keyboard situation. 1. The MacBook Pro keyboard mechanism has had a materials change in the mechanism. [...]"
This is the real announcement, to be honest. 8 cores is a convenient smokescreen, and they clearly don't want to talk about how borked their product is at WWDC so they are dropping the keyboard update with this news like it's a detail when it's actually the real story.
These shitty keyboards cast a shadow over the whole product line. If they didn't fix it the third time around, it's time to abandon the damn mechanism and accept that thicc computers can be beautiful, too.
Ehh, fixing the keyboards (assuming its fixed--they've said the same thing 2 or 3 times now) and hopefully the monitor cable only addresses the literally broken things about the new laptops and ignores the other things people prefer the 2015 for. Although multi-core is nice to see, it still maxes out at 32G--without an option to upgrade later, either.
It still looks to have the same camera I had in my 2009 MBP...this can't be a cost/space/engineering thing since iPhones exist. I don't care if it's higher res. Make it higher quality and less noisy. I genuinely miss charging and battery LEDs they removed from the case (and magsafe). I've plugged in my laptop overnight only to find it never charged once or twice. I see the touchbar causing more problems than it solves.
I'm actually disappointed. I was hoping whatever next Macbook Pro they released would be a significant update or offer more compelling things.
The other thing I would question is whether or not the cooling is sufficient as well. 8 cores doesn't mean much if you can't keep them working at a reasonable clock.
Big news to me is that replacements of older butterfly keyboards (program extended again) will receive new 4th-generation keyboards. Previously if you brought a 1st-gen in, you'd get a new 1st-gen keyboard.
The articles make clear that only 3rd-gen replacements (the ones with last year's new membrane) will get today’s new keyboards. 1st and 2nd-gen customers are still stuck (no pun intended) with their original problem designs.
I just had the keyboard (really the entire top assembly) replaced on my 13" 2016 mbp, and I'm pretty sure it got the 4th gen keyboard. The keys feel and sound significantly different, and the Apple employee who did the replacement (or I think that's who I talked to) said that they were putting redesigned keyboards in for the replacements. I was pretty unhappy that I had to get this done and I'm still not in love with the machine, but I will say that with less than 24-hour turnaround and the new key feel, the replacement process left me with a good impression.
I just had the top case replaced in my 2016 MacBook Pro 15, and they used a top case from a 2017. The tech confirmed that they use the 2017 top case for 2016 models, but the 2018 top case isn’t compatible.
The 2017 does have changes vs the 2016 to make it quieter and less clicky.
That's really interesting. Where are you located? I had my 2017 done a few months ago (back when they were shipping them all out), and I definitely got the old mechanism. Would love to get the new version!
This was at the Apple store in Walnut Creek. I think they’re shooting for 24-ish hour turnaround at all of their stores now. I was putting the repair off until I was sure that I could get it done quickly. They told me that they’re not yet quoting 24 hours, but they do do them in store now, and they typically quote 3 days or so.
My 2018 13" mbp has been in repair (for the keyboard ofcourse) for weeks now and they told me it won't be finished until somewhere in june, so this might explain why it's taking so long, perhaps it was on hold for a 4th gen keyboard replacement. I sure hope this 4th gen keyboard fixes the problems.
I own both a 15" Macbook Pro 2017 model with touch bar and a Dell XPS 15" 2017 model. Both have their pluses and minuses. Both needed major repairs. Dell needed logic board and screen replaced. Mac needed logic board and keyboard.
I mainly use the Mac. It's much quieter, has an amazingly vivid and bright retina display, extremely good battery life, best track pad in the industry and the best speakers on any laptop I've ever had. I like the keyboard, I even game on it. I don't get the whole dongle issue but I'm not a heavy user of peripherals. I have two USB-C port extender dongles should I ever need anything from ethernet to firewire 800. I've used them like twice in the last two years.
The Dell is fine, but I'm just not a big Windows fan. The keyboard is kinda meh, the bluetooth is poor, the screen isn't as bright or vivid and has some light bleed and the build has that cheap plastic feel about it. If it was any more reliable than the Macbook, I think I would be persuaded by the argument about the hardware, but both have had problems, both required lengthy repairs, etc. I have extended warranty on Dell and Applecare for the Mac and I needed them for both.
Laptops fail. My PC motherboard with ultra durable components also failed after two years. Heat and dust and micro-imperfections in silicon will do their thing. Sure, Apple made some questionable design choices. It's still a great machine.
Dell XPS laptops are some of the best Linux laptops out there. No need for Windows. I've been using the same model as you with Linux for a while now and an very happy with it.
I've tried to go full Linux desktop. I hated it. On the servers I manage, I run terminal only and mostly BSD systems. Linux desktop just boils my piss. Plus I need Adobe apps, and a few other bits and pieces of software. I need my machine to facilitate my work, not get in my way. I appreciate that Linux works like that for some, but for me, not at all.
Just using a Linux desktop vanilla out of the box is setting yourself up for failure. If you plan to be in Linux full-time, you'll have to meet it half-way, and do a lot of customization work. I've got scripts checked into github that setup the machine how I like, which includes XMonad as a window manager, tmux + a heavily customized neovim for terminal and coding, and Brave+Vimium as my browser. I almost never have to touch the mouse and it's fast as hell. Sharp learning curve but one you are over it it's much more efficient and out of your way than windows or os x. If you are going to be using computers professionally for more than a year, as most of us probably are, it's almost certainly worth a few months of effort to have a low level hotrod as your environment.
A few years ago I bought an XPS 15 9530 (2013) and I hate that thing.
A few months after I got it the touch screen failed. Dell put some effort into repairing it (about an hour of remote support for updating the BIOS and afterward a technician visited me twice to replace the display (the first time he didn't have the correct replacement screen at hand)).
However, a while later the screen started to flicker sometimes. At first, I took it for a software issue and since I didn't use the laptop that often I didn't really care. When I realized that it was, in fact, a hardware defect (again), the warranty had expired.
So good Linux support is one (very valuable) thing, but if the build quality is that bad (I mean, even my 300€ first gen Eeepc still runs with fewer problems), I am not willing to pay the XPS premium again.
For real? I have Dell XPS at work an had tons of problems installing linux on it. I ended up finding a respined Ubuntu ISO in github that has plenty of patches pre-applied that mostly works, but still have some issues now and then with random freezes and with a thunderbolt dock.
Admittedly, I was not a desktop linux user and didn't have much experience tinkering with it, but a coworker of mine who has been using linux for many years and who I would consider a fairly advanced user (heavily configured distro using his own modified tiled desktop environment, etc) had the same issues and couldn't even figured out how to install Debian on it without having the fans spin up randomly and with everything working (I think the webcam didn't work).
Try updating the firmware of the laptop and possibly the dock. Then do a clean install of Ubuntu. I just upgraded my stock 18.04 with stock 19.04, everything works great.
Now that I think of it, you can boot with the LiveCD to see if it will help before trying this.
If the random freezes continue you may have bad ram or other components need to be replaced.
I've also switched to an XPS15 as a linux machine - the largest benefit Dell has over Apple is that IF something breaks (or I break it accidentally) someone will be at my home or at work within 24 hours with replacement parts and will fix it, no questions asked. I can't afford having to go to the apple store and wait days for a replacement when it's my main work machine. The build quality is quite decent and if you look inside it's clearly designed to be repairable on-site, while fixing Apple notebooks often requires replacing entire sections at once and the use of specialized tools.
Can confirm. 10 years ago I burned motherboard and processor trying to overclock my Dell PC. Within 24h a Dell support guy was at my home with all parts of the PC and replaced it without questions asked.
After the quick replacement I even told him it was probably my fault but he replied saying it doesn't matter because on average customers don't abuse and I was just a number to them.
Wish there was an option to buy a 15 inch with no touch bar. I cannot find any suitable use for it on my current model, and I often hit items inadvertently due to the lack of tactile feedback
I've been using MacBook Pro's with the touch bar for a while now, but I just picked up a MacBook Air (in addition to my MacBook Pro). It has a mechanical top row, with just the Touch ID button at the end and it's fantastic. It's so nice to have those keys back! I would pay $100 extra for a MacBook Pro without the touch bar.
Yeah, it's great. When I use my MacBook Pro at my desk, I just use an external keyboard and that covers a lot of usage time where I don't have to deal with the touch bar.
I actually really like the touch bar. I'd enjoy my 2016 MBP if it wasn't for the 2 keys that are now unreliable on the keyboard. That and the fact that it crashes every time the battery runs out.
I like the touch bar too. I just want the Esc key back (although they did add the option to remap CapsLock to Esc, so hurray for that, but honestly it was a delayed feature.)
I have the Caps Lock key mapped to Control (for Unixy things, especially Emacs), and the Control key mapped to Escape -- which, incidentally, improves locality of the Force Quit key combination.
> I actually really like the touch bar.
An app called Pock supposed to make it vaguely useful, but fails to display consistently...
> the fact that it crashes every time the battery runs out.
This. Mine crashed with caffeinate on and would boot into state where display is off. Took me an hour and bunch of stress reset SMC/NVRAM/etc that brought it back to life.
I never got why, if they really want the touch bar, they don't do both. F-keys and touch bar. I kinda would have welcomed this because the "fn" key is a horrible presence on any laptop keyboard anyway and I'd happily would have seen them delegate screen brightness and audio to the touch bar as a separate input.
Getting away from Fn entirely is tough -- it's still useful as a way of simulating keys like PgUp/PgDn/Home/End (Fn+arrows) and forward delete (Fn+Backspace).
Why laptop makers deleted those keys from the keyboard I'll never understand. With just an extra column of keys to the right of Enter, you get delete, page up, page down, home, and end. All very useful keys, right at your fingertips. Panasonic does it right on their rugged laptops, and some other manufacturers still have those keys on some business models, but most have done away with them.
I mean, look at the Dell XPS 15 keyboard. All that space on both sides of the keyboard, and yet they make us chord to do something as simple as Page Down.
My guess is that Apple is using the idiot bar as a trial balloon for abolishing physical keyboards altogether in favor of a touch interface (perhaps one with reconfigurable raised bumps for keys).
Are you sure you wouldn't rather have the 2008-2012 body? It's a bit easier to upgrade or repair.
(At work I have a 15" MBP with the 2013 body. I'm eligible for upgrading it, but what would I replace it with that could possibly be better? Literally the only downside that I care about is the fact that most conference rooms at work no longer have magsafes lying around.)
The big improvement in the 2012-2015 body is that getting rid of upgradability and the optical drive allowed putting in a huge battery (basically the max allowed on airplanes). It also cut the weight by more than a pound.
There's a lot to love in the 2013-2015 line, but the 2008-2012 series will always have my heart. I've never had a laptop so easy to work on, and being able to put two drives in a portable is icing on the cake.
Yup, I'm on an old top-of-the-line 2011 that I swapped out the DVD for an extra SSD. It's spoiled me — such that to replace it I want 16-32GB of RAM and 1TB SSD.
Why do you say that? Isn't that entirely a personal preference thing? I have preferred any good non-Apple touchpad I have tried to Apple's. (To be fair, 90% of laptops sold ship with cheap, terrible touchpads.) The touchpad on my Dell XPS is a good example; zero finger friction, physical left/right buttons at the bottom of the touchpad, and perfect sensitivity / detection of tap to click and two finger scroll. The drivers support "natural" scrolling too.
On the other hand, Apple's touchpads have to be configured to even enable tap-to-click(?!), and click-and-drag doesn't even work with it... On pretty much any non-Apple touchpad and OS combination, double-tapping on a draggable object enables dragging mode, where you can move the object around the screen with one finger.
If Apple seriously got its software story together, it would at least support better configurability for its touchpads. But even then, it wouldn't have physical buttons, which I prefer.
After I got the haptic touch trackpad, I can’t go back to physical buttons. Ability to click anywhere on a trackpad with a click like feedback is one of the best things Apple ever did.
Maybe if they reduced the force required to click the button by about 75% I could get used to it. It's so hard to push from my normal typing position that I feel like I have to use leverage from my arm instead of just a finger. Plus it's not comfortable to click and drag when you have to continually push down - I'd still want tap to click available even if they improved it.
Maybe you don't want to comment, but are people inside Apple that use a MacBook all day generally happy with the keyboards? I know there's going to be a mix of opinions, but here and on sites like Reddit, it feels like there's a majority opinion that the new keyboards are worse.
Yep. I switched from a Macbook Pro and I definitely miss the touch pad.
But I don't miss the keyboard. Or the touchbar. Or the hotkey layout. Or the operating system. Or not being able to upgrade my hard drive when I needed to.
I think it's time to make peace with changes like this, proportionate to their importance to overall impact on functionality. One free slot (with a maximum amount of RAM determined by Intel, not soldering) is probably good enough. Same with removable batteries (the need for which is obviated by USB charging). Indicator LEDs, probably not worth it. Screen aspect ratio, and so on, are probably worth complaining about though.
This so much. I would have upgraded at least twice already if that was an option. Sadly, it isn't and that's why I still use a pretty old model hoping it doesn't get too obsolete soon.
Same problem here. Turns out one of my fingers brushes the area just above the number keys when performing certain modifier-key stretches. Never noticed it before, since it's not an issue with real buttons. Try locking it to only the main view (no per-app views) in the settings, then customize it to remove almost everything from it. Only way I was able to make it tolerable.
It's not just this new high-end option that is missing, they haven't updated the 13 inch non-touchbar model _at all_. They completely skipped it in the refresh a few months ago and it is still using 7th gen processors (the touchbar model was updated, but only to an 8th gen processor. All 15 inch models were updated to 9th gen).
I don't believe the non-touchbar model has received a single spec update since it was announced (though I am having difficulty determining that for sure)
My suspicion (and I'm not alone in this) is that the 13" non-touchbar model -- Marco Arment dubbed it the "MacBook Escape," which I kind of love -- was intended to be the replacement for the MacBook Air, but it misunderstood a lot of what people liked about the Air. Now that Apple has reconsidered and actually updated the Air in its beloved wedge form factor, the MacBook Escape is kind of in philosophical limbo. Apple's modus operandi these days is to leave models around way past their reasonable expiration date, and I think that's what we're seeing here; there's a good chance that the Air is going to get a refresh within 12 months and when that happens, the Escape is going to go away.
I also suspect today's bump is kind of a "holding pattern" update and Apple is working on a more significant redesign of their laptop line that's going to try and address the criticism they've been receiving over the last couple of years. (While it's possible we'll see the first sign of that at WWDC, seeing this press release just a couple weeks before WWDC makes me suspect that we won't see truly new laptops until 2020.)
Obviously all humans are different but this has never happened to me, not even once. I use it often and would be annoyed to go back.
I would love to see real data about the Touch Bar, but sadly it’ll never get released. So we are all left to private theories and speculation and anecdotes.
I have this problem, but the reason I think it's a problem is that I have to switch back-and-forth between a number of machines, some with touchbars, and some without.
Just this month I got matching external keyboards for all, and it's been much easier having one set of muscle memory no matter what I'm doing.
I would pay +$500 happily for that as a CTO config. Retaining the touchid button would be nice but not critical. I'd pay +$1000 for mechanical top row plus faceid.
My problem is that due to wrist injury I angle my left hand enough that my pinky finger sometimes touches esc or other areas. I have remapped the touch bar but not having esc where I want it also sucks. Mechanical keys don't actuate merely on touch, so this is only a problem on apple.
I'm considering remapping caps lock to esc and then putting tape over the touchbar, at least on the left side, to reduce sensitivity
Yeah, we are really down on the touch bar because one failed hard and another crashed so it showed nothing. It was quite the irritating thing. The keyboards are just a failure.
I actually wish they had a touch id sensor on the back of the display like some Android phones so it is accessible when I have the machine plugged into a display.
I really, really don't want thinner. I want the glued in battery banned, and a replaceable keyboard with ability to clean and replace the keys. I guess I just want a different definition of Pro.
I feel like this is such a common refrain and yet when a maker like System76 tries to enter this market they still still fuck it all up by jamming a number pad in the side. Why do they all do this?
System76 is using OEM gaming laptops, so are probably a little limited in what they can do.
They keys are slightly smaller (I think), but I have gotten used to them. I do like having the number pad though.
The only thing I'm missing in my mac -> linux conversion, is lightroom (it seems to process raw files better). I'm getting better at the linux equivalent "darktable". I sometimes feel I would pay for software on linux to get a polished experience.
I've refused my 3-year upgrade and fear the day I'll need a replacement for my late 2015 macbook. It's sad being stranded on hardware that is starting to show its age when the newer devices leave little to be desired from a usability standpoint. It also hurts that any replacement will be incompatible with my $150 dock.
it's not responsive enough either. maybe I have a light touch, but I never had problems with the physical keyboard before. many times I go to pause my music or change volume and the buttons don't register for 2 or 3 presses.
I thought the ESC key was going to be annoying, but it has ended up being everything else.
also the huge trackpad is annoying. at home with the laptop on my lap I hit the edges all the time and send the mouse flying. had to turn off "hot corners" because I kept locking my laptop randomly.
When I first got mine I found it fun to customize using BetterTouchTool, but I quickly realized it was no replacement for having hardware buttons. I miss them so much.
Also I'd love an option without external GPU. GPU switching is still slow and occasionally buggy, wastes power and has no benefit for me when writing any app.
I'm currently using the last, best 2015 macbook, and having tried a newer model as a work computer for a short while previously, am dreading the day I need to think about replacing it.
How about this apple. "macbook util". The pro line can keep the thin delicate stuff. Give me the 2015 case, screen, keyboard, and magsafe, with some new internals and a usb-c. I'd happily hand over my money.
Wasn't that kind of the point of the "Pro" line? I mean, if you just wanted a kinda cool laptop, you'd buy a MacBook or MacBook Air. It's now the MacBook Prosumer, and there is no pro option.
Hacker News has been whinging about this Apple dilemma for years. I'm sorry to say that I just don't think there will ever be the golden age of MacBooks again. The "Pro" ideas coming from Cupertino are gimmicky at best for developers, and we will be stuck working on various Linux machines and leave the MBP problems to designers. The hacker-type software engineer is not Apple's target market for the MBP, and I think even before it was likely coincidence.
If you look at the pro target even in this post, the majority of Mac "pro" use cases being displayed here are creative in nature. Devs generally aren't spending their days editing video or sitting in Maya and they are targeting those markets - people who need power but don't wrench into their OS internals or open a debugger when something goes wrong. Those customers are also a lot less flighty as long as their creative tools work.
As for me, I stopped complaining and wishing for a pony, accepted that the MacBook is dead, and moved to a ThinkPad for daily use. My 2015 MBP will stick around when I need macOS, but it's best to start converting my workflow to a different platform where I see a future for development work.
> Devs generally aren't spending their days editing video or sitting in Maya and they are targeting those markets - people who need power but don't wrench into their OS internals or open a debugger when something goes wrong. Those customers are also a lot less flighty as long as their creative tools work.
But their requirements aren't much different to developers in terms of the machines. They need reliability most of all - a MacBook failing in a production location you've had to shift kit to or have performers at can be a huge concern. Dongle life makes everything harder for no benefit. They still need to type sometimes, even spaces or the letter 'e'! MacOS's development on emerging creative technologies like HDR is not exactly setting the world on fire.
I can assure you, there are a lot of creative professionals in outright dismay at the state of Apple's current laptop line.
I love Thinkpads but the trackpads, screen, and build quality leave a lot to be desired. Every Mac is the same level of assembly/quality but ThinkPads vary too much from one to another.
The prices for the high-performance models are almost as high as Apple and the power bricks are actually bricks.
I have a t490 with 500 nit display. 100% ARGB / SRGB. I haven't seen any macbook display that's sharp. Btw I have a personal 2012 Retina Macbook pro & a 2018 Macbook pro that I use for work for frontend.
The 2012 Retina displays are no less sharp than the best display on the T490. Are you sure you aren't just comparing macOS to Windows?
I'm the biggest critic of modern Apple notebooks there is, but I can't fault the quality of the MacBook Pro displays. They are, and have been for a long time, the best displays on notebooks.
How is the keyboard on the T490? I have a T460s at home where I like the keyboard a lot. I have a T470s at work, where the keyboard is a little less to my liking and I tried a colleagues T480s where it felt awesome again - so how about the T490? Can't really decide between T480s, T490, T490s or 6th gen X1 carbon.
The T490 does 100% Adobe RGB? I'm impressed. Seems like Lenovo has been really listening to people complain about the horrendous gamut ThinkPads have been afflicted with for some time.
The modern X1 carbon does not have this problem. I’m using the 8th generation and the trackpad is very good, along with a screen that accomplishes full-on HDR, and much better color depth.
There are other issue with almost every ThinkPad, X1 Carbon included.
Speaker quality is a lottery with every model, and none of them are as good as the 2013+ MacBook Pro. Coil whine and electrical noise is almost a given from either the machine itself or Lenovo's chargers. The quality of the audio output on the machine is almost certainly not as good as that on the MacBook Pro.
Oh, and I can all but guarantee that the battery in a MacBook Pro will have better longevity than that of the ThinkPad.
You also have to pay almost MacBook Pro prices to get decent specs out of the Lenovo machines.
I bought a MacBook Air recently and the decision was really tough. Obviously the Pro has much more horse power but on the other hand: why would I need so much CPU and possibly GPU on a laptop? If I want to do some data intense task, it will be by far more convenient to run it on a remote server. The tasks run while the laptop is in my back pack and low CPU power means also longer battery life time.
Yes, the keyboards have high failure rate. But I mean Apple is not known for its conservative design. If I compare my new MacBook Air with most other laptops, especially old ones, those look like teleported from 30 years ago. The new keyboard is far better to type on and my latent RSI highly appreciates less motion necessary - slow SSH sessions punish me with double types but there are solutions, maybe Mosh (mobile shell) works.
People should also consider that progress means regress in some way. Most technologies advertised on HN have some serious flaws compared to the old school alternatives. But who seriously wants to go back to 90s computing?
I'm quite happy with the new laptop, it's perfect for development, it can be used anywhere, it can be charged with my phone charger (!) and the case is made of iPad Pro scrap, I couldn't be happier.
You tolerate a glitchy keyboard that double types? Madness. Stockholm syndrome!
Loads of ultra-portable PC laptops are perfect for development, can be used anywhere whatever that means, and charge with USB type-C making them compatible with a proper universal power standard.
Progress is not regress. Regress is regress, progress is progress. I'm sorry for saying this but it sounds like you're only convincing yourself that black is white in order to justify your purchase to yourself.
On a more positive note, Mosh was a game changer for me, integrate it into your toolchain, you won't be disappointed.
The laptop is 1-2 months old only but I had no problem with it. Indeed I had double types in an SSH session with a wacky AI cloud provider but IMHO that's a software problem. (And maybe in 2019 I should anyway rely on Job submissions, web interfaces instead of Terminal connections.)
> Progress is not regress. Regress is regress, progress is progress.
When I switched from Windows to Linux on the Desktop it was progress in terms of stability but regress in terms of application and driver support. macOS is for me better application and driver support but the choice of hardware is more limited. After all it's not just the laptop you buy but all the components, the components' abilities/driver support, the cases. I think the perfect computer only exists in the product owner's mind ;)
That's exactly it. That on top of the bling factor. Nobody buys MacBooks, all I see are MacBook Pros. Because of this Apple had to start catering the to consumers who care more about thinness and bling rather than utility. The pro device became a device for everyone.
I get why they'd like like to sell a pro device to more people. That's fine. It marketing world pro/professional seems to often equate to "better". If someone wants to spend an extra thousand to load the news a bit faster, sure. Apple will and should happily take their money, and they can repurpose product names in service of this all day.
I would like to imagine there's space in the market for a "pro" model that would feel markedly worse for the average consumer, and shouldn't be mistakable in its name for something that would serve them better.
I see this time and time again on Hacker News, and really don't understand why people seem to think that "pro" in any way equates to "developer" or to "someone who needs a lot of computing horsepower".
"Pro" means professional. The vast majority of working professionals, in the vast majority of professional fields, run Office, a mail client, a browser, and maybe a line-of-business app. Professionals regularly attend meetings, and like to be able to carry their laptop around without breaking their backs.
The needs of professionals are generally largely in line with the needs of the average consumer.
You can come up with 'professional' jobs that need more horsepower (people like traders who want to run 6 monitors, and software devs (although personally I don't understand why software devs really need more horsepower)) but those are most definitely the exception.
< although personally I don't understand why software devs really need more horsepower
When i build test and lint the smallish piece of software i work on it can take quite a while. More horsepower means quick turn around cycle from "make change see result". Also sometimes i am running multiple VM or containers.
Yes, a developer's edition. I'll take a heavier, larger device with more and varied ports and extended battery life please. An all-hardware keyboard with a useful arrow-key configuration that doesn't make me press the wrong key all the time. An actual 'esc' key so I have my caps lock key back.
While I'm dreaming, I want a smaller touch pad too. That's right where your hands rest. I'm constantly having issues with moving the pointer because of unwanted touches being recognized.
I've been using this machine for 6 months now, and as an iOS dev I'm locked in. But I don't love it, even if they thought I was gonna.
My piano teacher had me play scales with a coin on the back of my hand, if that helps.
If you look at the anatomy of the wrist you’ll see the problem. It’s worse for woman who have been pregnant (the lining sells for some reason and stays that way)
I've done that too. It's an improvement, but it's made things a little more difficult in other ways - like for some reason it's very easy for me to confuse Tab and Escape/capslock now. In some typing scenarios, I just can't seem to keep them straight.
Yes, I wrote pretty much exactly this in another reply in this thread. The main problem is that "thinner" costs a lot in terms of other features and functionality, and yet there is a whole class of users for whom "thinner" has no value whatsoever. That's me. Stop trying to make it thinner and pleasing us becomes easy.
i think it’s high time apple decouple screen size, core-count and thinness with “pro-ness”
there is no technical reason (that i know of) stopping apple from selling a 15 inch laptop as thin as the macbook air (and still even get a low-clocked 4 core cpu in there)... i for one would buy that up in a heartbeat
for those that really need power, they can have a much thicker 6 or 8 or higher core cpu + discrete gpu and it would be fine (for that target) i would imagine...
but maybe apples marketing dept knows more than i do (not being sarcastic)
The arrow keys and touchbar make that machine completely unsuitable for writing code, at least for me. My right hand needs to unconsciously lock on to the arrow keys, and that's just impossible with that layout. There's nothing to grab on to. My new iMac keyboard sits in a drawer collecting dust solely because of the arrow keys.
And the butterfly mechanism is unproven and untrustworthy, I don't care how many times they update it.
They need to go back to using the same keyboard mechanisms for both their desktops and laptops, and they need to go back to the old arrow key layout.
This is the first time I've seen somebody else complain about the arrow keys and I completely agree.
It's by far the most infuriating aspect of this new keyboard.
Another thing that I have a hard time explaining is my inability to orientate myself on this keyboard; several times a day I have to move the laptop around, look at the keys and "reset" myself to the keyboard. I don't know what that's about but I've only ever experienced it on this keyboard.
My personal machine is a 2014 MBP which will be replaced with something other than a mac once the time comes.
I hate my MBP arrow keys, but unless I'm doing a little work from home or in a meeting I never use the keyboard, instead I have a full size apple keyboard that I love and use with the macbook in clamshell mode hooked up to a dell 4k.
I'm probably not buying a new macbook pro for a long time... it's just not worth it to have such a high end machine that I use as a glorified traveling mac mini.
For my next work upgrade I am requesting a linux laptop.
RT. I upgraded to the late-2018 MBP from a 2013 MBP and after three months of heavy dev usage cannot get used to the new keyboard layout (specifically arrow keys) and touchbar.
Really wish Apple would start offering touch bar as an option when you purchase!
There is some claim that they've fixed the keyboard issue.
Aside from that, across 2 MacBook Pro's and a MacBook Air, I've had 0 keyboard issues. I don't know if I've just gotten lucky, kept my keyboard clean, or what, but it just has never been a problem for me.
The failure rate of the butterfly keyboard design is clearly orders of magnitude too high and is the sort of thing people should genuinely lose their jobs over (and perhaps they have). But "orders of magnitude too high" might well mean one or two percent, rather than one or two tenths of a percent; outside the company, I don't think we have any reasonable estimates of the failure rate, just anecdotes. My work laptop has no problem, although its lid is usually closed; my home laptop, a MacBook Escape, also has had no keyswitch problems, although I mostly use an iPad for portable work now. Most of my coworkers have new butterfly-switch keyboards and I don't hear of significant issues; I've talked with a couple Mac IT people at different companies and they haven't experienced huge failure rates, either. This is, again, all anecdotal, though; some people will come back and say "I'm in an eight-person group and three of us had bad keyboards."
8-core CPU, even presumably with HT off after all the recent Intel vulnerabilities, makes me laugh after my personal experience with my late 2016 MacBook Pro 13 touch bar with fastest (at that time) i7. During normal browsing especially with plugged charger, it was heating so much that something in the keyboard was unglueing. The space bar and 'c' produced different clicking sound. I was quite unhappy with that since it was my first experience with Apple products. I took it to Apple Store, they replaced the top part (with keyboard), it fixed 'c' and 'space', but issue appeared in '~' and 'tab'. I took it again to Apple Store, they replaced top part again. And again same issue with different keys. I took it there again, since replacing top case didn't help they proposed to replace whole laptop. I agreed. New laptop had the same issue again so I had nothing to do but wait when Apple will acknowledge the issue. They didn't but started to replace keyboards because of key stucking issue, so I requested a fix again and finally they managed to fix it...
Using Safari with an adblocking extension that makes use of WebKit’s native content blocking capabilities makes an enormous difference when it comes to heat and power draw. I’ve tried Chrome and Firefox with uBlock Origin and both are considerably more demanding in CPU use while not being that much faster. Where Chrome and Firefox has my fans ramped up to 60%, Safari has them running at 10% or switched off.
Really wish both Google and Mozilla would press pause on feature development for a couple of years and make efficiency the top priority.
Any recommendation on a good adblocking extension for Safari on MacOS? I've been using KaBlock but I've not found a great source that meaningfully compares the existing options.
It costs a couple bucks but Wipr does pretty well and gets regular updates.
Another nice bonus to content blocker extensions like these is that they’re just JSON rule lists that Safari compiles into bytecode and runs against pages as they load. The extensions are barred from access to everything, meaning they can’t be bought up and turned into Trojan horses.
Everything thermal throttles, that's what turbo is.
The issue last year was because Apple was applying the thermal throttling in such a way as to make the average performance of the CPU significantly lower than it needed to be by throttling too much, too quickly then recovering to too high of a clock speed too quickly thus ping-ponging between a very fast/high/hot state and a very low/cool state. In many cases the CPU would drop down below 600mhz for me for periods of time.
A proper setup will have a graph with a brief (~30s) burst to turbo max followed by a thermal throttle slightly below what the system can sustain followed by a recovery to the max sustained clock speed at just below the thermal limit.
e.g. 4.2ghz for 30s to 2.2ghz recovering to 2.6ghz sustained.
The exact profile is highly workload dependent but a properly designed system invariably follows that general profile.
Sure, performance will increase, I'm not arguing with that. I was just refering to my own experience. Personally, particarly this issue, made me use servers/clusters more, so data analysis or massive code compilation I do remotely, and for me 'Pro' now means a stable OS, good screen, good touchpad, good sound laptop which just runs IDE and browser (and occasional small Python tests of algorithms in Jupiter).
P.S. I'm not a picky person. I work in a quiet office so even my colleague noticed the issue without me pointing. At the beginning I really wanted to fix the issue. Later it was rather for 'feedback' and a matter of principle.
As someone who is desperately wanting to upgrade from a mid-2012. I say big deal.
No better display like oled.
Looks like the same keyboard to me. Oh the material has changed? Who cares, it's the same failing mechanism.
More CPU eh? Means it'll just get hotter much quicker and there will be more throttling to be fixed via software.
At this rate, for Apple to get my $$$ again they'll have to release a 16" [oled] macbook pro, with a redesigned keyboard and arm chipset so that the body is entirely cool even under load.
Maybe in 2022 I can see myself buying another macbook pro. Man, I can't wait till Tim Cook gets replaced. We need another visionary at he helm of Apple. Someone who will push the envelope again!
OLED is not a very good idea for a computer monitor currently with their pretty bad image retention. Go look at the iPhones at Best Buy. You can see they have pretty bad retention (unless your Best Buy is good and replaces the phones often).
Yea, this is the reason there aren't any OLED PC monitors (unless you count that one portable one that's overpriced and has terrible color reproduction)
I have never seen retention on my Pixel2XL. Not even a little bit. I used to see retention on my last OLED phone. Maybe we're getting close to OLED displays that are good enough? And yes, sometimes I have my phone on for a long time. And yes, there are static elements just like on a desktop.
You wont notice it if you use your phone. Retention happens when the screen is on all day showing a static image that doesn't change. On a macbook that would mean the apple logo for sure would burn in. Hell, even on my non-oled lcd monitors they're burning in even though they're not supposed to.
Even with pixel shifting you can still get retention too, so that's not really an option right now. I'm hopeful some company in the future will come up with a way to prevent it altogether - but it's going to have to be some kind of new screen tech.
I don't leave my screen on the same image all day. It's on about as much as my phone. I turn it off if I'm not actively using it. This is my point. If I can have it on my phone, I should be able to have it on my desktop.
The thing is, they don't even need to push the envelope. I would have been happy with a classic MBP with upgraded hardware but without USB C ports and no touchbar.
It's just that they keep introducing stupid, useless gimmicks.
IMO they needed one transitional design where they replaced the thunderbolt (is that right? I get all their storm-named ports mixed up) ports, and maybe the charger port if they must, with USB-C, but kept HDMI and at least one USB-A. I use the SDCARD port all the time but I could see their getting rid of it. The other stuff? Gimme a break, going all USB-C from a state of no USB-C? WTF was I supposed to plug into it without an adapter or buying all new peripherals and drives?
All the USB-C ports on the new MacBook Pros double as Thunderbolt 3 ports — IMO this is a big advantage over other laptops where some ports are USB-C only.
I've only ever had a 2016+ MBP as a work computer so I didn't mind the USB-C stuff too much (especially with a dock that I didn't have to pay for). The lack of dedicated ethernet port and SD card reader is vexxing though (on my personal 2015 MBP).
> All the USB-C ports on the new MacBook Pros double as Thunderbolt 3 ports — IMO this is a big advantage over other laptops where some ports are USB-C only.
The disadvantage is that one of those USB-C ports will be your charging port when there is only 4 on the 15" and 2 on the 13".
I don't mind USB-C/Thunderbolt so much, I think it's great we'll get products that will be forced to adopt it (looking at you, audio interfaces/DACs). The MBP has been a port desert for a long time and dongles are awful UX - and they just keep removing more and more of them.
It baffles me when they try and do things that seem to improve UI/UX, like the touchbar (which I hate, but I get it), the move to Retina displays, high quality dual-front facing speakers on all models now, etc... but then they turn around and remove IO options and roll out a terrible keyboard. It seems like they have warped priorities for the mac line.
Personally if the move to ARM and don't offer MacOS as a standalone product, the pro-media world will probably abandon Macs altogether. And I don't really want to develop for another OS, I love mac. The machines are just awful.
If any of your TB3 or USB-c devices is decent (ie not a cheap Chinese POS) and has a/c power it’ll probably provide power back to the laptop over the same connection.
Apple designers need a new mantra, the age-old adage: "Form follows function." As it is, they're choosing a form ahead of time and compromising on function.
The vast majority of users choose Macs because of the great OS and the hardware specs. The "thinness" or "sleekness" is only a nice-to-have, and only if it doesn't require compromise elsewhere.
Apple's motto has always been "form/fashion/culture over function" and you can see that in many instances throughout their past.
Aside what was mentioned in your other replies, I think the biggest piece of evidence is the fact that they stuck with their one-button mouse for such a long time even after multi-button mice became a very common third-party hardware purchase alongside a new Mac.
Another commenter mentioned a famous Steve Jobs quote where he said something along the lines of "the form is the function" but I'm absolutely positive that's part of an overall sales-pitch and not a description of reality.
> Apple's motto has always been "form/fashion/culture over function"
That is untrue. You might get away with arguing that it's the case now to an extent, and you could've argued that with the famously dysfunctional hockey-puck-mouse that shipped with the first iMacs, but to adduce the one-button mouse as evidence for said hypothesis betrays your ignorance of UI research and Apple's good old Human Interface Guidelines.
The HIG is utter garbage, objectively wrong on many topics and Apple never even follows every aspect of it themselves.
Here's all the desktop UI research you need to know: Apple has the worst UI of any desktop OS by far. It's full of undiscoverable functionality, icon-only buttons that you have to click first to find out what they do and lacking many features for basic things like window management... But it certainly is hilarious watching people operate it, swiping furiously to find that full-screen app that they lost because there's no real maximize button and the dock is now hidden or having to use the mouse pointer to do just every operation because the keyboard acceleration sucks.
Their mobile OS UI is very similarly meh, lacking options, hiding things and so-forth...the only thing really good about it is that it's more stable than Android.
And actually your own ignorance has been displayed here. There's nothing about the alleged superiority of one-button mice in the HIG. Look it up.
The only 8-bit Apple that suffered from inadequate cooling was the III. An average II would never overheat. You could, of course, load your II to a limit it'd fail, but my //e was fairly loaded (320k of RAM, SSC, Grappler, Microsoft Softcard (1 MHz Z-80), AE clock, Disk II and a PAL-M board). The II+ had mostly the same configs, with 64K and a Videx 80-column card in dual-head configuration. Both ran warm-ish for about a decade before going into storage.
Actually you're mistaken. Initial Apple II's had poor cooling due to Steve Jobs' opposition to vents on aesthetic grounds. A few months later the case was revised, but the lesson didn't sink in, as evidenced by the infamous Apple III.
> The first production Apple IIs had hand-molded cases; these had visible bubbles and other lumps in them from the imperfect plastic molding process, which was soon switched to machine molding. In addition, the initial case design had no vent openings, causing high heat buildup from the PCB and resulting in the plastic softening and sagging. Apple added vent holes to the case within three months of production; customers with the original case could have them replaced at no charge.
Interesting point. However, there was also the famous Steve quote where he was adamant that design is about function, and not about how pretty it looks.
> “Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People think it’s this veneer – that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”
The hardware specs are "meh" at best, but the build quality is still better than the competitor..
I have a newer Thinkpad for work, and it feels cheap and plastic compared to my MBP. The Lenovo creaks when I pick it up with one hand, and just feels flimsy. The MBP feels solid and integrated.
It's their thin-is-better lighter-is-more-important model.
In the traditional 14-16" size, the T4xx/T5xx devices do what they are supposed to. A changable battery (while running, without tools) enables you to do things like swapping an empty battery for a full one, either by plugging in shortly, using a secondary battery in the case, or briefly shutting down.
I don't want to carry that much energy with me all the time, but I still want the option to use the device without having significant downtime. A short break is fine, but that's 5-10 minutes, not 30+ for charging the battery.
They have a price point where they can be made solid and well put together. Lenovo also sells cheap laptops of lower quality. Not sure why that's a problem. Or do you think people shouldn't be given cheaper options?
The Air is an exception—it was in this limbo where it looked like it didn’t have a place in the product lineup between the MacBook and MacBooks Pro. A couple of exceptions is hardly “usually.” The other lines are updated regularly with whatever is the latest in October.
I've struggled with this idea - almost everything (outside Apple specific development) is ported to Windows. My work is in .NET and various Javascript frameworks. Never had a problem with Windows.
Plus I feel if I really needed a Linux environment, the Linux subsystem would fill that need.
Early WSL was a pain, but they’ve come a long way. My entire web dev stack works natively on WSL these days–and WSL2 is due any day now, which should make it entirely on-par going forward.
I'm a little skeptical given the shortcomings/difficulties I encountered last year, but a solid competitor to macOS as a unix workstation with broad desktop app support would be great to have.
Even in the last year it’s actually a dramatic shift in the landscape. I use WSL as my full-time development environment with Docker/PHP/Node.JS, and have few problems getting anything working–no more than any other platform.
Yeah, I really wanted to WSL to be ready for prime time, and bought a Dell XPS 13 on that expectation, but... nope. It's still mostly promise, you only pull off using it for day-to-day unix-based dev if you're willing to put in a lot of effort, jump through hoops, address unanticipated conditions, and otherwise engage in a lot of yak-shaving.
Our family has lots of Apple hardware and I’ve had Macs off on over the years. But, the last time I owned a Mac - the 2006 Core Duo Mac Mini - I realized that there was no software that I was using on it that I couldn’t get for Windows that I cared about.
I also told myself I needed a Windows laptop for hobby projects outside of work. A few things happened to make me think about getting another Mac within the next 18 months.
- All of my work now is cross platform .Net Core, JavaScript, and Python.
- I don’t have any plans on doing any Windows specific development.
- In the unlikely event that I need to do anything on Windows, I’ll spin up an EC2 instance in my hobby AWS account.
- the chances of any company I work for not giving me a Windows laptop is slim.
But honestly, I don’t do side projects that aren’t work related and I hardly ever use my computer at home besides as a Plex server. I use my iPad at home mostly with a Bluetooth keyboard for the rare personal MS Office work
You're in a bit of a niche though; gamedev is heavily slanted towards the microsoft ecosystem, and that might be changing depending on how Stadia is adopted.
Web and mobile are such a huge chunk of our everyday lives now though that I would dare say that everything else pales in comparison.
And Apple has had the mindshare of that crowd for quite some time now. But...
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Personally, I despise working with both Windows and current generation of Linux desktops. They are clunky, inconsistent, cluttered etc. However, they are improving (albeit slowly sometimes) while Apple's "pro" offerings are degrading at an alarming rate. And with the impending advent of Marzipan we might see an exodus of pro users from MacOS.
What's the rationale behind Marzipan causing an exodus of pro users? Even if there were a flood of low-quality mobile apps onto the Mac... I don't see how that would reduce the availability of existing desktop-first apps.
In case of Linux and Windows you can see their effort to improve things. Their failures and shortcomings stem from either decades of legacy (Windows) or lack of overarching vision and resources (Linux).
Whereas MacOS... It has always been billed (and billed itself) as the UI/UX front runner. It was (or was trying to be) polished, consistent, good.
Apple had Human Interface Guidelines in as early as 1987[1]. Apple was the definitive yardstick interfaces would be measured by.
But in the recent year(s)... Apple has been consistently dropping the ball themselves. When their own first-party apps break almost every single HIG [2], how can one expect third-party developers to create quality apps. When their own third-party apps are locked in to landscape mode (iOS dashboard and iOS books interface), how can one expect third-party developers spend any significant amount of time creating seamless experiences across multiple screen sizes (and Apple’s own Marzipan apps like Newsstand and Home are barely ok at best).
When your OS is no better than the competition, what’s to stop people from using the competition (which actually shows willingness to improve).
It's interesting that you describe a Unix/Linux development environment as web development friendly. Historically, the only relationship between the two was that a portion of the server/hosting market ran on Solaris and Linux boxes (and now, Linux servers and VMs). But that's not really why it became popular for web development.
Since web development doesn't require a proprietary dev toolkit, it gravitated towards the platform that most naturally supports software development in general. And that happened to be Unix/Linux.
Mobile and enterprise, you say? Android Studio and IntelliJ IDEA feel no more at home on Unix than they do on Windows. Same for MySQL and Oracle stuff. As for the Web, granted I only do occasional Angular development, I can also say I've never faced any limitation - not even considering the WSL compatibility layer.
It really depends on what languages/frameworks you use. A lot of common languages have package support in the standard repos for Ubuntu-based distros, and the command line is more of a first-class citizen in Linux environments than in Windows or macOS.
For me it's less about what's "so great" and more about what's not awful.
I need a Unix-like command line environment and Windows is inferior there. Otherwise it's fine (I use it on my gaming machine), but if you look closely you can see it's a huge mess (e.g. the insane state of the control panel(s)) in ways Mac OS just isn't.
Linux is too much work. I say this as someone who has used it for years, still uses it every day, I've compiled my own kernels, etc., but it's just too much work to get everything working perfectly on my personal machine, especially on a laptop.
Mac OS doesn't have many of these problems. I am old, I have too much real work to do, and I need a machine that works and gets the fuck out of my way. I am past the point where I consider fiddling with the guts of my OS a badge of honor and think having a bunch of code up on my screen makes me look super cool like Neo from The Matrix. For people like me who don't need things it doesn't have and like what it does have, it's a good choice.
Now if only Apple would stop making so many dumb hardware choices...
Another feature that keeps me on OS X is the ease of imaging a system and booting from that image. Also target disk mode - I've yet to see anything that comes close in Windows or Linux but I admit I'm a bit out of touch.
I wholeheartedly agree. I'll add, though, that due to some recent work in deep learning I started running Pop_OS 19.04. Other than the stupid name, it's actually been surprisingly great at doing everything I need and staying out of the way without me having to fiddle with it. I can run steam, skype, zoom, and everything but office as easily as on any other os.
Overall polish is not to Mac level, but it's a smidge above Windows 10. Which is about 100x better than my prior experiences with desktop linux.
Windows is crap. The UI is totally schizoid, with different apps using different toolkits. Office for Mac integrates more cleanly into the look and feel of the rest of the OS than Office for Windows. There are two different settings apps with different features. Basic things are poorly designed. E.g. if you put the task bar in autohide mode, it routinely gets “stuck” because some notification is keeping it from hiding.
Best example is still the Settings/Control Panel mess in Windows 10. It's always a fun game guessing where the setting I need is, especially considering the useless Start menu search.
That being said, I have high hopes considering their latest efforts, the new terminal looks cool, powershell is useful and WSL2 looks to bridge the gap. I'm a die hard macOS user that requires Windows for a variety of work tasks, i'm glad to see the effort and competition.
Electron is a browser. So a huge chunk of things are native: keyboard support, inputs, dropdowns, context menus, menus, preference panes, popups, window chrome etc.
And all this is available to developers out of the box. Very few "cross-platform UI toolkits" can come even close.
That said, a fully native app would be a better option, but Electron apps are ok (unless devs go out of their way to make them bad)
The problem is that the controls generally are made by web developers rather than just using the underlying platform’s widgets so, list views look wrong, input handling is slightly off, etc. All the normal issues with applications made with web technologies.
Additionally, browsers are one of the most out-of-place feeling applications because the look and feel is controlled by the website, not by your operating system.
I'm curious which applications made you come to this conclusion. I've heard a lot of Electron criticism, and most of it is very valid, but I think Slack, Spotify, and Atom very much fit into the macOS UI environment.
Kinda like how iTunes was brushed metal forever while the Finder was Aqua and some apps roll their own UI to mimic Aqua? It's not like either Apple or Microsoft produce consistent applications, let alone the lack of control they have over third party developers. There is also Carbon vs. Cocoa, where different programs get different services "for free" from the operating system (e.g. spell check). Apple is just as guilty as Microsoft.
Giving a couple of decade-old examples doesn’t show that Apple is “just as guilty.” Apple has two toolkits: Carbon, a legacy framework for transitioning from MacOS classic, and Cocoa. Microsoft has releases a new toolkit/look-and-feel basically every other year. (Win32, WPF, Metro, UWP, etc.) And unlike Carbon, which is depreciated, Win32 is in active use by new apps and keeps getting new features.
There are a lot of different versions of Win32 and WPF based on the Windows and .NET version they’re targeted to, respectively.
Cocoa is more like targeting an evergreen browser. Just target the version that is just old enough to support enough users and you’re good (and users are happy). Unlike evergreen browsers, though, you do hit hard cutoffs once every few years, but I suspect navigating those means updating the compilation/signing process more than rewriting anything (correct me if I’m wrong).
I thought they'd more than deprecated it, and that Carbon apps won't run anymore on Mojave. They declined to do a 32-64 port all the way back in Mountain Lion.
The original discussion was about desktop operating systems but if you toss in iOS, how many look-and-feel changes does that add? Given the state of Marzipan apps that Apple thought were fine to ship, it may be ever more relevant. Apple didn't even replace the "slot machine" date picker from iOS which is horrible to use with a mouse.
Microsoft is the same as its always been but acting like Apple has a clear, unified, and sane design doesn't reflect the evidence.
Microsofts worst enemy, IMO, is their OEMs who are allowed to put all kinds of custom side-hustle garbage into the OS and it takes alot of work to remove it. Essentially, you have to pay a premium to a manufacturer to signal you're a "serious" user instead of "consumer" user, or you have to spend time removing spam... I mean "custom" apps that the OEM got paid to put onto your machine. At least, Apple only hustles their own ecosystem apps and let you safely hide or remove most of them.
Spoken like someone who does not know Windows. If you buy a machine that comes with windows, and just use it off the shelf it, is a total mess as you say. (As well as probably loaded with crapware)
If you know Windows youre gonna install LTSC on that machine and have a nice productive time.
I am curious, do you buy a mac and just use it for work without any setup, off the shelf? If so that is a point in its favour I guess.
Also as someone who only knows Linux and Windows and is not familiar with Mac OS, anytime I have to use it, it is a baffling experience, common things are done with gestures and keyboard shortcuts that one would never be able to intuit or discover.
I find some random completely new Linux windows manager that Ive never seen before much easier to get to grips with than Mac OS.
Funny you say that, because I wiped whatever was on my X1 Carbon and installed LTSC. Then I had to install the Lenovo touchpad driver because two finger scrolling didn’t work. But that installed a “synaptic touchpad enhancement” background task that was a marked battery hog. The touchpad driver would restart the service if it was killed, so I had to delete the executable. (It led to no apparent change in functionality and notably improved battery life.) at this point, we are solidly in “total crap” territory. I’ve had half a dozen Macs, and never do anything to it besides install the apps I use. I sometimes change the wallpaper, but not even necessarily that. Everything is perfect out of box.
Thats fair enough. Laptops can be very finicky for drivers.
I've been using LTSC on my work / gaming desktop for about 6 months and its been the best OS experience ive had since DOS. Everything works perfectly, and otherwise it just stays out of my way.
You're right that the off-the-shelf experience with Windows can be very dodgy depending on what your OEM is and what crap they decided to put into the core OS.
I'm conflicted about all this myself because I have a good experience with Win10 once I get all the extra nonsense removed, the settings changed, and my shell setup working. I feel like Windows rewards people who are willing to put the time into it now, but its not as easy as dealing with Mac OS where you basically just clear off the toolbar, put the shell and whatever dev apps onto it, and maybe tweak a few settings and you're okay to go.
Well it has decent window manager with multiple desktops, does not require antivirus and supports Adobe. For graphicdesign/developer there really arent many other choices. Also if you work with sound its hands down best OS.
I wouldnt say superior, Logic, Ableton, Reason, Cubase etc. They're all different, they all have their own strengths and weaknesses. Eg. Ableton has pretty crappy midi sequencing capabilities whereas Reason has probably the best. They all fit different use cases.
It is "form" which made macbook THE notebook to have.
> The vast majority of users choose Macs because of the great OS and the hardware specs
Very wrong. Your average consumer can barely differentiate between MacOS/Windows. The vast majority choose it because it's the best social-status-wise. Which it became because of form. Everybody knows that only poor people have Androids/PCs.
>Everybody knows that only poor people have Androids/PCs.
Having worked on several university campuses, I agree with you about Apple promoting themselves as a status symbol, but - I think you might have to run in upper-class or at least urban circles to even notice this difference. I grew up in small town America, where nobody was buying laptop computers the price of a used car. Doctors, lawyers, pretty much everybody I knew as a kid ran Windows. Most people had a traditional desktop tower, whether or not they had a laptop.
The few exceptions tended to be geeks, or people who were devoted to the Apple ecosystem because they had been using Macs since at least the early '90s.
Now that I'm in urban university circles, I'm the only person using Androids / non-Apple PC hardware. Apple really seems to be the "default", and people using other things are doing so for pretty solid technical reasons.
I dunno, I used to recommend a lot of relatives -- aunts & uncles, nephews and nieces in school -- buy macbook airs, particularly when they were $900 / $1k-ish out the door.
Now that they're $1400 w/ 16g ram / $1500 out the door, I recommend them to no one. $1.5k is just too much money for a basic laptop.
The exact ratio could be argued, but there are customers with varying levels of familiarity with computing tech. Calling people "wrong" is just plain silly.
My 2018 Macbook Pro's screen failed. They replaced it for free, but damaged the webcam in the process.
They told me I'd need to pay over 500 dollars to get it fixed since I could not prove it was damaged while switching screens.
You need to escalate to a manager if you're being honest and really want your Webcam fixed.
Source: Work at a phone/computer repair store. Mess ups happen but even the technician might not know if they broke the camera, if it was working before, etc. They may just be too low to make exceptions for you and have to assume it was already broken.
This is a completely appropriate use of small-claims court. It's the one place where a regular citizen can afford a fair trial against Apple in the U.S.
No you don’t. And this is actually why a lot of people win them against corporations — it’s cheaper to just let you have the hundreds or few thousand you’re asking for.
Yeah, my friend did that against Samsung in Canada and it was an automatic win. A few days before the court appearance Samsung bent and sent him the money.
Ask for the functional test that's performed before and after each repair, if they can't produce the results you should be able to escalate further quite easily.
Keep escalating. Try emailing Tim Cook if you can’t get results. I had to resort to that once and their executive team reached out and solved everything. I don’t abuse it, but it is needed sometimes.
I’ll sacrifice myself at the alter of Steve Jobs. I have a 2018 MacBook Pro with a 6-core CPU and 32GB of RAM and I absolutely love it (with exception to the Touch Bar which sucks if you’re a VIM user). Once you get used to the butterfly keyboard you can fly. The light weight makes traveling with a 15 inch laptop a pleasant experience. The screen, speakers, and touch pad are fantastic. I haven’t had a single issue with the keyboard, and I am constant munching on food, getting crumbs in between the keyboard, etc. Dongle life isn’t as bad as it sounds. Put one in your backpack and use it when needed. I also bought the LG 5K monitor and that has been the perfect compliment to this laptop. OK back to drinking more kool aid.
When in God's name will they get rid of TouchBar? I DESPISE IT. Why not add the function keys back and add the touch bar above it? I see that there's space above!
I think this is the root of most of these Apple design faux pas... he goes back to the Steve Jobs Era and was definitely blessed.
With Steve gone there is probably no one at the company who can actually say "This is the worst !@#$%^& thing ever!" like Steve Jobs liked to say. Tim Cook doesn't seem to be a product guy or something and trusts Ive too much.
Ive's ideas were good back in the day when everything was huge and clunky but he seems to look at everything and try to think it is still not sleek & minimalist enough and he's just gone too far at some point. It's a wonder we still have keyboards at all on these laptops!
I have a 2018 MBP and I am lucky.. I use it 99% of the time plugged in at my desk at work. They provided us all with $400 OWC USB-3 docks so I mostly dodge the dongle thing. I have some cheaper dongles at home that live permanently on my desk. So I also don't run into too many touchbar issues since I rarely do anything serious on the internal keyboard.
For some reason my usage I don't have battery issues. A lot of my co-workers do. Ad blockers don't help with Docker & Eclipse hogging CPU.
I wish for 32GB of ram every day, we got our 2018 laptops < 6 months before they added the 32GB option.
Linux is much better, I tried a pilot System 76 laptop our IT let us try. It was great for development, hugely better than the Mac. But it was horrible as a laptop, horrible for going to meetings. Drained the battery in 1 hour if you had to do a WebEx. Constant WiFi & VPN issues. Having to reboot the machine sometimes to clear up issues with external displays and internal displays. I gave it back after a month when I admitted I was wasting 40% of my work time chasing linux issues.
> I gave it back after a month when I admitted I was wasting 40% of my work time chasing linux issues.
I feel like this isn't spoken about enough. Or that I'm doing something wrong which most people who say how their lives have changed for the better by switching to Dell+Ubuntu don't experience.
I really liked MacOS for development. It gave me a familiar Unix-like environment that didn't require me to screw around trying to fix trivial things over and over again. I didn't have to screw around with kernel updates or try to troubleshoot anything. I only ever needed to set things up once, I didn't have to worry that the next time I reboot I might lose configurations.
I've been using Elementary OS/Ubuntu on a Surface Book now for a while and dealing with it is ongoing frustration. At some point my top bar just disappeared and never came back. Trying to add any sort of modification that tries to make using the OS more intuitive leads to all sorts of unexpected issues.
I want to love GNU/Linux. I really do. But I can't even remotely understand how anyone could love it more than MacOS. GNU/Linux feels like it's always in Beta.
In truth, using GNU/Linux gives me a feeling of imposter syndrome. I feel like the reason why I can't stand it even though so many people love it isn't because the operating systems are bad, but because I'm just incompetent and don't know what I'm doing. It's frustrating.
This. They should have kept Scott Forstall. It used to be Steve Jobs that keep them in tact, and Tim Cook just pick side and tried to get harmony. Now we know It didn't work.
Right there with you. It'd be a neat addition if it didn't require sacrificing F-keys, and/or was an optional upgrade. First thing I checked is if the new 15-inch has a non-Touch-Bar option (the answer is no). I just ordered a new MacBook Air, despite being relatively underpowered, and a significant factor in the choice is that it's the only way to get Touch ID and F-keys.
My speculation is that this will be the last model with it. Next year's redesign will give up on the concept. They just have too many parts and the economics of it sort of demand a final run.
I too wish they would make a better computer, but for now I continue to use them because they are the only machine that I can work on with little fuss of setup and go.
I have the 2018 model with the "Keyboard" which has been fine because I use a Bluetooth Mechanical keyboard anyway and a BT Mouse. I have a single cable or "Dongle" that supplies power, 3 displays, 5 USB 3.0 type A, 2 USB Type C, a SD Card Reader and Ethernet. Its also Daisy-Chained to an External GPU and temps stay good. When I need to go portable I just unplug a single cable and go.
Thanks. I feel the same. I work at my client as well as in my own office, and when leaving my desk, I often take my laptop with me. The single Thunderbolt cable is fantastic like that.
WHY? This is literally the only thing that bothers me about Apple pricing. I get that you pay for the design, I get the quirks like introducing touch bar, everything. But I don't get why upgrading from a $50 to a $100 SSD adds 400 dollars.
In case you haven't realized you can buy comparable 1TB NVMe SSDs in today's market for around $100. I see the budget Intel 660p hit $80 for 1TB on sale, or high-end Phison E12 drives at $115 for 1TB on sale.
FWIW the 660p has significantly lower throughput (though not 6x by any stretch of the imagination), it's listed and benched around 1800 for reads and writes.
The listed performances are those are that of a 970 EVO (and the 970 EVO Plus improved on write speed, to almost par with read speed at 3500 and 3300).
The 1TB EVO Plus is $250 on newegg. Not as replacement for an existing 500GB, just retail price for the drive. The 2TB EVO is listed at $550, the 2TB EVO Plus is listed at $650.
Most current era laptops use NVMe. Bargain basement laptops might still use SATA, but lets not pretend that the MBP, while extremely fast, is at all unique.
Not to mention that it’s basically 4 SSDs on 4 PCIe buses.
Edit: I don’t really understand downvotes. SSD on recent Macbook Pros does connect to the northbridge via 4 PCIe lanes. And this is not what “but look I can the same for £50” SSD does.
So… they charge half the price Apple does, and if you don't want to pay it you don't have to care because it's a standard m.2 so you can swap it with a retail drive (at which point you have both the original and the replacement for 50% more storage at a lower price), which you can't do with a soldered Apple drive.
Looks like the test is done by just copying a large file and measuring the time it took. This, of course, gives some idea of performance, but they are quite many things that can affect the results.
On the original article[1] the table also shows results from a synthetic benchmark. This shows 2.6GB/s for Macbook and 1.2GB/s for Dell XPS. They also mention that it's a bit apple vs oranges, since different tools were used for the benchmark.
Your article is comparing against non workstation class laptops. Other laptops in the same class put two NVME SSDs in a RAID configuration for double the throughout.
This sort of "upgrade" nickel and diming is true of every laptop vendor, but Apple is definitely one of the worst. It's like their pricing structure is stuck in 2012
The SSDs they use really do cost that much though. Even if you got them from another manufacturer they'd be about that expensive. Apple don't use cheap SSDs...they use blazing fast, top of the line units not found on many other laptops.
If you have criticism, price isn't a valid one.
But you can definitely argue that they should have cheaper/slower options so that consumers who don't need blazing fast SSDs can still benefit from increased storage.
You can buy SSD with the same specs 3.2GB Read and 2.2GB Write for much cheaper. Samsung sells 970 EVO 1 TB m.2 for $300 [1] but you can even buy cheaper on amazon for less than $235. Keep i mind those +$400 was price for upgrade from 500GB to 1TB not the price of 1TB which is much much more.
For example Apple charges upgrading macbook pro 13 from 128GB (silly they even offer pro machine with such small SSD) to 1TB for..... $800! So in other words prices their 1TB SSD disk for ~$1000. It's insane.
Fair enough but Lenovo doesn't solder their SSD. Nothing prevents you from buying the cheapest option and upgrading yourself, e.g. Lenovo thinkpad X1 Extreme has even 2 SDD m.2 slots. You also don't have to max out you storage when buying because you can always upgrade it in the future once you need more storage or when SSD gets even cheaper few years later. On top of that those 2 m.2 slots allows you to put disk in raid 0 or use second one with optane memory once its cheaper and worth it.
Aren't those just the numbers for SATA connection vs. M.2 PCIe?
Apple doesn't manufacture SSDs, they buy them from the same companies that Dell, HP, Asus, etc... do. There isn't special Mac only models of those drives, it's all the same hardware in the end. The only advantage I see is that Apple was quick to switch to M.2 and macrumors cherry picked their competition to avoid PCs with M.2 SSDs.
Geekbench across OS's and motherboards is worthless, especially when they have different file systems. You need to look a the spec sheet for the actual hardware, or compare on the same machine with an aftermarket part.
I'm extremely skeptical that Apple has some magic SSD with 6.5x read/write speed of everyone else.
To make things worst, out of all the laptop vendor Apple is the only one with their own SSD controller, which is not a small percentage of BOM cost in SSD. And they are one of the few that gets favourable NAND pricing due to the volume they move with iPhone and iPad.
My favorite comment on this sort of thing was the claim that Apple uses components made from the powdered bones of unicorns. Sometimes I think that's not far off.
Apple now solders in the SSD into the motherboard. My guess is the cost of an entire motherboard with a larger SSD simply costs more to manufacture. Or their target audience doesn't really care about money - they care more about the "premium" experience that comes with the Apple brand.
Just thought I’d chime in to say I’m loving my Thinkpad X1 with Debian.
If you want to install Debian on the X1 it’s pretty easy. Just make sure to fix some of the sleep issues using the (easy) instructions on this page, which in my experience still apply to Debian:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X1_Carb...
"Just make sure to fix some of the sleep issues..."
A great example of why people buy Macs, though. Most people don't want to faff around with hackery getting Linux to work properly. And with Windows 10's horrible privacy issues, Macs are still the best choice. They're buying them for the software, not the hardware.
I understand these issues are an impediment to Linux adoption.
However people always say this as if Linux is at fault. Well, mostly the sleep issues exist because the laptop ships with windows, and windows has some fancy sleep mode that involves a specific bios setting.
Linux uses more traditional sleep settings, so when installing Linux one must change that bios setting and then run a command to tell the OS that setting has been changed.
So you didn’t say Linux is at fault, but just to be clear: this is just what you get when the manufacturer doesn’t support your preferred OS.
However as a robotics engineer, I prefer open source over ease of use. I’m not suggesting regular people do this, but sharing the tips with the Hacker News crowd who may also be fine with running a few terminal commands to get a great OS experience on hardware which may be a better value than a MacBook today given their issues discussed in this thread.
I think everything you’re saying is right; but also it doesn’t matter. When my mum asks me which computer to buy, I’m not going to recommend the computer that has defects that I can explain away. I’m going to recommend the machine that works out of the box, where I won’t have to goof around with graphics drivers via PPI or whatever to make an external display work.
Sure, but I really must emphasize that I am not advocating this setup for your mom or anyone’s mom necessarily. I’m saying that if you’re a developer you may like this setup. The fact that Linux is not always a great choice for non technical people isn’t really relevant to the value some of the people from Hacker News may get out of it.
I agree with you and for a long time I recommended apple to others. But now I don’t feel comfortable doing that anymore because “it just works” no longer holds true.
I agree. My 2012 MacBook Air was rock solid and often made it between macOS point releases without being restarted.
My 2016 MacBook Pro has display issues, keyboard issues, the USB c power cable falls out sometimes. When I first got it, the machine sometimes crashed when connecting an external display. They fixed that, and then the machine would just not see the display sometimes until I reboot. I use an EGPU now - which performs better but the machine ends up needing a reboot (or just hard crashing) every week or two. It’s abysmal. Oh, and I’m starting to get the stage light effect on the display now. I’m relieved I’ll be able to get that fixed for free now, since I imagine it’s only going to get worse as the cable degrades. I feel like Apple snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
I’ll probably replace this machine in a year or two. I don’t want to run Linux or windows on my work laptop but I’ll do what I need to do in order to have a reliable computing environment. Since they’re near the end of this design cycle I’m hoping this 2019 edition or the one after have most of the design problems fixed. If not, Linux for windows is looking mighty fine these days.
Problems with sleep/resume were what ultimately convinced me to switch from Linux to Mac 12 years ago. It's insane to see there are still issues with it today.
Well, as I’ve said in a different comment, there is a very clear reason why the computer does not come configured properly for Linux sleep modes. Windows is using a new sleep system that seems to involve disabling a sleep mode in the BIOS, and the laptop arrives installed with Windows. Once you install Linux, you just need to go in to the BIOS and change the setting from windows specific sleep modes to traditional sleep modes, and then after you reboot you need to tell Linux that sleep mode is now available.
It’s not a problem with Linux, it’s just due to the fact that Linux and windows are different and the laptop is configured for windows. Once you make the change the sleep behavior is wonderful and I keep the laptop in my bag for days at a time on sleep.
I actually have this problem with 2017 MBP. If I put lid down with anything less than 10% it will black screen and repaired a hard reboot upon opening the screen. Fortunately these days most apps have auto save.
They can try to cram all the overheating CPU power into the thin chassis as much as they like, but it is lagging so much behind in GPU power.
The top-of-the-line option, a Radeon Pro Vega 20 with 4GB of HBM2, doesn't seems like it's going to perform much better than an NVidia Geforce GTX 1050[0], and at $350 extra it's twice the cost of a standalone NVidia Geforce GTX 1050.
The sad part about this, I thought I'd put together a new Mac Mini as a once a month gaming machine and a daily OSX driver so I didn't have to built an entire gaming desktop.
Well there's an absolute ton of issues with external GPUs in bootcamped Windows.
Yeah I do build $1500-2500ish gaming PCs every few years. I game a lot less than I did a decade ago, maybe a few times a month, so I wanted OSX around when I wasn't. But I'm done building hackintoshes. I had a really nice one the last 3 years waiting on the Mini to ever (because we gave up) update and it did. I was really excited to use that with OSX as my daily and flip to Windows + egpu when I gamed. I'm glad I looked into it to verify it ran egpus horribly (if at all). I didn't expect there to be any issues with that. Figured it'd be perfect.
So now instead I've got a "gaming" desktop that sits pretty idle and a MBP again.. like usual.
Mobile GPUs perform absolutely miserably; no surprise given the design constraints. Using your link as a comparison, its nearest neighbors are top-of-the-line parts from nine years ago, and budget parts from four years ago.
Mac user since 1984. Zero problems with my 2017 MBP other than a loose command key that was replaced same-day, within 5 mins after arriving at the store. My company has bought 20+ MBP in the past two years. We’ve had three units with screen issues (stuck pixels etc) that were all replaced on the spot.
None of that outweighs the conveniences of OS X.
I’ve been reading about how Apple screwed the pooch for almost forty years now, and yet they just keep taking over the world...
15% of your laptops have had major hardware issues in 2 years? Seems ridiculously bad given this is a premium product. I will never understand the loyalty to Macs given they are so obviously inferior to PC offerings these days.
I have the 15" 2018 MacBook Pro and would not recommend one until the following issues are resolved:
- It runs really, really hot. It cannot be used on your lap. I cannot imagine how hot a faster model would be.
- The keyboard is unreliable. I have not had the stuck key problem (yet!), but I do notice occasional crunching like something is stuck in the keys. I do not eat around this machine on purpose.
- The Touchbar is really bad. I wanted to like it. But, it is annoying more times than it is helpful.
- Not having a touchscreen when every other high end machine does seems more and more like a gap that needs to be resolved.
- Windows management continues to be crap in OSX.
There are a lot of good things. The screen is good. The touchpad is top notch. OSX is reliable and fast. But, yeah, the hardware just sucks right now. No way around it.
I agree that the default OS window management is pretty limited but this can literally be solved for $5 or less (sometimes $1) using utilities on the App Store that perform snapping, saved layouts, etc.
I'm a few weeks into an XPS 15 after a decade of Apple. I'm really liking it as well. I'm even running Windows 10, of all things— between WSL and native SSH + git and friends on powershell via Chocolatey, I'm finding it surprisingly comfortable.
I think my main frustration is just that a few things about the trackpad aren't quite right. For example, I can't find a combination of settings under Windows which give the physical right-click behaviour that Mac OS has.
I haven't experienced the coil whine issue, but I'm also mostly powering it from a USB-C dock, if that makes any difference.
I love how big the screen is— it's a 15" display in a chassis that's barely bigger than my old 13" MBP. That said, camera below the screen is a definite negative, so that's great if it's been moved back; I've just assumed I'll get a clip-on USB cam and leave it at home for VC use.
Is it possible to get them without the touchbar? I’ve pounded my poor old MacBook (2013) into submission and the bottom row of keys are starting to not work intermittently. We’ve got a bunch of the newer machines in the office and I just can’t get on with that keyboard and touchbar.
I strongly feel you would be better off getting the keyboard replaced in your MBP 2013 than upgrading to a new MacBook. (See my post history/other comments on this thread for my background and a more thorough explanation.) A keyboard upgrade would be around $200 or less—check local shops near you for price quotes.
After the keyboard on my 2017 MBP started to fail, I “upgraded” to a 2018 model because I couldn’t afford to be without a machine for a week or longer. Now the keyboard on this supposedly improved model is also starting to go.
For many years I was a very happy Apple customer and even converted several family members to MacBooks. But now that Apple has shown just how little regard they have for their pro customers by trying to sell us this broken keyboard for the fourth time I’m getting off the bus for good. My next laptop will not be a Mac. Thank god I stopped doing iOS development.
How hot will this thing be with 8 cores? Unless they've cut some ventilation holes in the bottom of the laptop. MBPs aren't exactly known for good thermal regulation (my previous one I had to actually undervolt the CPU so it wouldn't overheat while playing games for even < 30m).
Don't see anything re: keyboard so guessing that there aren't any changes there, unfortunately.
Dave Lee made a video about the Core i9 (now previous generation) that thermal throttled almost immediately under load. The throttling was so terrible it actually performed worse than the 2017 MacBook Pro.
A few months after purchase and my MacBook Pro's keyboard has already been in for repairs and the screen glitch is too intermittent to replicate so they won't fix it. A Mac without Applecare+ is foolhardy -- these machines are engineered to fail under normal use -- so this should be considered as part of the base price IMHO. Applecare only covers 3 years so that's the lifetime of the product. That's an expensive value prop.
My colleague's Macbook keyboard broke today. Close to 400 quid to diagnose and fix (we declined, its a huge chunk of the original price). Just ofer 4 years old (which is nothing) and juuuuust out of the replacement programme Apple has for keyboards they knew were faulty.
Lifelong Apple suporter until the past few years. Avoid like the plague.
Ugh yeah the 4 year thing sucks. Apple should be saying 8 years or thereabouts in my opinion. It’s clearly a design flaw that they were aware of (and still are trying to paper over) on a very expensive product, but one which is usually loved by customers. Seeing all the negativity this issue causes sucks, as does knowing my 2017 will probably be useless as a laptop one day because of it
It's telling that they immediately list these brand new laptops on their page offering extended support for the defective keyboards[1].
Unpopular opinion, but I continue to believe Apple needs to just walk away from the computer business. It's a negligible part of their core phone business, and it shows. I really wish that they'd license the OS to let people (and OEMs) build quality workstations.
My MacBook Air keyboard is a PITA with repeating and spurious keys. The software is buggier ever week. Apps crash, OS X freezes. And I have similar problems with my other Apple devices.
Problem is, it’s still far superior for anyone who needs to do technical and general office work. Tried Linux, doesn’t cut it for the latter. And the industrial design etc is still much better.
So Apple is on this downward trend in quality, and it worries me because there’s no alternative. Are we just going to see productivity drop across the board as Apple gradually regresses back to the mean?
We need more Apple-like companies designing great products.
When the touchbar macbooks were announced,I immediately went out and bought a used 2015 macbook. The great thing about them is that they are good for quite a long time because macs dont tend to get bogged down over time
I love the unix lineage on Mac OS with a consumer ready GUI.
By far the #1 thing that keeps me from using windows as my main machine is the registry.
I do have an old windows desktop that I upgraded with SSD and maxed out the ram and it runs great with windows 10.
I also run windows 10 in parallels on my Mac (for the office suite and a few windows only programs. Time machine backup works incredibly well and I can 100% rely on it. I can be up and running in minutes even if my windows 10 image gets completely destroyed.
I had a mac stolen, went to the store, bought a new one, restored from time machine almost immediately.
The only thing Ive been disappointed in is that the stability of the last two versions hasnt been great. I used to go months without a reboot, now I crash about once every two weeks.
The press release is downright misleading. For 8 cores, or even 6, you have to buy the 15" model. Neither are available in the 13" model. And the 15", while starting at $2399, is not the 8 core option, that is the old 6 core option.
And of course the 8 core option, at $2799, only has 512GB of disk space and 16GB RAM. If you want a reasonable 32GB and 1TB disk space (which presumably you would if you have a use for 8 cores), it's a whopping $3,600.
And that is of course before accessories and tax.
I thought that after the overpriced iphone release they would have changed their pricing on everything else, but I guess it's just same old apple.
When the first touchbar 15-inch came out, I went out and bought it as I was in need of a computer and I was waiting for the release. I used it for maybe 2 days.... I went RIGHT back and bought a brand new last of the good non-touchbar macbook pros from the preview year. I still have it and it still runs great. I have never had any issues with it.
I've even filled out a survey that apple sent me about macbook pros a while ago. And I explicitly wrote to go back in the design of the keyboards, the ports and the thickness.
I will use this computer until I can't fix it anymore.
I continue to be amazed by releases on Macs about how "powerful" they are.
I use a Dell XPS running Ubuntu with 12 cores and 32GB of ram with a 1050 in a 15 inch. It is a really amazing platform, doesn't have these keyboard or screen issues, and cost less than a MacBook Pro.
I've just about given up on Apple. My spacebar on my 2017 15" MacBook Pro started going bad after only three months. Bundle that with the pointless Touchbar and the arrow key layout and I just can't see myself using another until they sort all of that out.
I recently switched to a Dell XPS 15 9560 running Pop!_OS. Talk about a simple setup for a Linux system running a HiDPI screen. Before that, I was running Manjaro with i3 and it was fairly easy to set up but took a bit more fiddling.
I think Apple needs a tick-tock development cycle where the tick is making their products thinner and the tock is fixing all the usability and reliability regressions.
Still only USB Type C ports though on a $2000 machine? It feels like such a rip off. For two years now my primary device has been a MBP with only USB Type C, and for two years now I haven't had a single device I can plug into it without a dongle.
I'm so sick of these fucking dongles. Thank god it still has the 3.5mm port, because it must have taken an act of divinity to prevent that part of the Apple crazy from reaching the MBP yet.
Nice. But I don’t need more speed, I need longer battery life, a better keyboard, and a screen that can, at least for short periods, be super bright (for outdoor use).
Lack of speed ceased to by my concern with the 2013 MBP (which I still use today).
I'll get excited when they issue a press release detailing how the 5th generation keyboard is really going to fix it this time, because they gave up on butterfly^W^W^W^Whave an amazing new mechanism. All the cores in the world do me no good if I cannot efficiently input characters into the machine.
Better hurry up, Apple, the mid-2012 is starting to get cranky, and I wouldn't want to have to buy a ThinkPad.
I recently bought a thinkpad t490 and installed Manjaro. Best experience I ever had on a laptop. Followed by my late 2012 Macbook pro that served me faithfully for the past 6 years. At work, as front-end dev, I use a 15" 2018 Macbook pro.one of the worst laptops I ever used. Kernel panics weekly. Almost as shitty as one of the Dell ultrabook I used in 2012 before I switched to a Macbook
Until they fix the keyboard for real I'm not going there. I might hold out for a USB type A port, too -- other companies make perfectly good laptops with these.
How dependent is Apple on the "nerd factor" with its laptops? They definitely got a boost from capturing designers and "hip engineers" a while back; if these folks got disgusted and left, would it matter now?
Apple should really consider including AppleCare+ in these top end machines, particularly given the quality issues of the current model. Apple should provide some indication of confidence in their own workmanship. Or their confidence in their Foxconn quality control commitments. Don’t push that uncertainty off on the customer.
I love my 2016 MacBook Pro (touchbar is not great but kinda neat, I’ve replaced my usb-b->a to usb b->c cables so only need a dongle to travel, I can fly on the keyboard IFF my fingernails are trimmed very tight (lol), screen is great, sound is great, it’s fast as hell).
However, as you can see in my comment history, I’ve had substantial issues with keyboard and screen outside of warranty. Apple, fortunately and rightfully, has completely taken care of it; but I had several days of consternation while I had to wait and see what Apple decided to do. Makes me really think twice spending a lot on a new one.
I just upgraded my 13" 2015 Macbook Pro's SSD from 256GB -> 1 TB for ~100 USD. With 16 GB of RAM, a great keyboard that's given me no issues, recently replaced screen lamination under warranty, and now a faster and larger SSD, I see absolutely no reason to upgrade to the new generation of Macbooks in the next few years.
well what everyone seems to be missing here is this: we don't have a choice. the alternatives are not better. so apple has no incentive to make its products better, in fact there is incentive to make them worse in order to cut costs and increase revenues (a luxury afforded by the lack of comptetition). the profit margins on dongles are probably much greater than on anything in the system. until something comes along to seriously challenge their monopoly, or apple discovers the kind of pride it had under jobs, it will continue to get worse (at least for us folk who actually use these machines to their potential. there is clearly a market for which they are stylish instagram viewers). this is a great opportunity for MS, who is heavily courting developers. now with linux subsystem et all and all that's left is to close the trackpad gap. apple can fade away into irrelevance.
>The MacBook Pro keyboard mechanism has had a materials change in the mechanism. Apple says that this new keyboard mechanism composition will substantially reduce the double type/no type issue. Apple will not specify what it has done, but doubtless tear-downs of the keyboard will reveal what has been updated.
They say it's improved. But check back in a year or so to see if it works, because the 3rd gen revisions didn't end up fixing it before.
If you have a 3rd gen butterfly keyboard, replacements will now use the 4th gen.
If you have a 1st or 2nd, they'll continue to replace the failing keyboards with more failing keyboards. Lucky me!
In other news for the 2016 MBP, there's a new repair extension program for the "Oops we made the display ribbon cable too short" issue. Haven't had that problem myself, but this was an expensive goddamn laptop and I'm not optimistic about its resale value or lifespan after the 4 year repair window is up. Multiple known design flaws that cost $600-$800, and in the keyboard's case are just putting in more of the same failure-prone parts.
Are the new 8-core CPUs fast enough to make them faster than the old CPUs were before all the Intel bugs? Or are we just ponying up more cash for the same level of performance?
Keyboard issues aside, these laptops are a thermal disaster. Mine heats up and gets loud fans if 20% or more CPU is used for more than a minute or two.
My non-Retina MBP would need to be at 100% for 10-15+ minutes for the fans to kick in at half the volume.
It's really frustrating and I don't really want to go without my machine for the time it would take to fix. Unshaky has really helped in making my keyboard usable.
It basically detects and eliminates duplicate keypresses within a configurable threshold for each key.
To me it’s absolutely insane that people have gone to the lengths of actually writing software in order to fix a very basic issue with an extremely expensive luxury product of the worlds largest company. One in this thread mentioned using tape to cover up the Touch Bar in order to avoid triggering it accidentally!
Apple ducked up big time with the post-2015 generation MacBooks, and it was caused by the weird hunt for thinness and gimmicky features which nobody want from a professional portable workstation.
"Thinner than a 2015 MacBook Pro" is last on most people’s wishlists. What good is a thin laptop if the keyboard fails and the performance you pay for can't be used since the operating temperature is too high?
It says a lot about a company when a large amount of customers just don’t care for the new features and they just want the new performance in the old form factor.
It’s like the ones who made the current generation never uses a laptop, and has no idea about how people are actually using the product.
It would be a major achievement to make it less reliable. I have had computers for ~40 years now, and none had a keyboard as bad as the one I'm using now (MBP13, 2018).
Apple says the machines are 40% faster. But Intel has patched their ZombieLoad vulnerability this week which is a 40% perf hit. So these machines are going to be as fast as unpatched machines that we have today?!
The 40% performance drop only applies if you turn off hyperthreading, which nobody (including Apple) is doing out of the box. You can consider these processors vulnerable to ZombieLoad and unpatched out of the box. The timeline for development of a new product like a laptop is so long that these have been planned for months prior to the vulnerability announcement, if not a year or more.
If you want a machine that doesn't have ZombieLoad, and is also Intel, you have to wait until they really patch it in new hardware or disable hyperthreading.
Beyond all the comments about the poor fixability of the MBP (screens), the absolutely horrid keyboard and the laughable amount of RAM in a $3200 laptop, who actually wants these things? They are unusable for a professional who actually types on them all day and now with the ever increasing Intel performance tax why spend the extra money on a processor that will likely have 30-50% less performance than claimed the day you buy it. Apple has become the brand of excess and ignorance.
I have an oct-core 13" WQHD 16 GiB/1 TiB SSD hackintosh with 10 hr battery life. Screw Apple with their unrepairable, overpriced, horrible hardware is unappealing.
Wow, it is listed... I wonder what the root cause is for all of these problems with the MBP line.
For the record, I have exchanged my 2018 MBP twice (so far) because of multiple different hardware problems. Not inspiring confidence to see the 2019 preemptively listed here.
I find it astonishing that they've included it in the replacement program. That gives me no confidence whatsoever, and after having replaced and returned both 2016 and 2017 MBP models, I am going to stay well clear of this keyboard form factor.
I think you can actually interpret this new MacBook Pro's inclusion in the repair program multiple ways. It could mean that they don't have much confidence in the updated keyboard. But it could also mean that they want to reassure customers that they will be taken care of. Kinda like the free bumpers in response to Antennagate: Antennagate wasn't actually a thing, but they gave away free cases to mollify people and just shut the door on the whole issue.
I have no idea which of those is the correct interpretation...
I know the keyboard is garbage but I always get AppleCare and treat my machines very well but if I got a 2019 model with the butterfly keyboard I’d be even more paranoid about dust and foreign particulates getting under the keys. I’m still most productive on OSX but that is changing as the Linux ecosystem gets better and better.
If they would just go back to the old pricing model and bring back a sane robust keyboard people would be so much happier.
I'm a web developer and I need a reliable keyboard that's comfortable to type on. The MBP keyboards have been neither comfortable nor reliable since 2015. I've been holding onto my 2015 MBP with it's scissors mechanism keyboard for dear life. For the first time in ten years, my next laptop won't be a MBP. It'll either be a Lenovo ThinkPad or a Dell Inspirion running Linux. Goodbye Apple.
Do not buy a new one until some other fool (like me) purchases one sight-unseen and shares whether the machine runs without issues.
I did this with a top-spec'd 2016 MBP that eventually got replaced with a 2017 due to the frequency of problems. Recently spent too many hours getting my 2017 repaired (& back up to its previous state) for the same issues.
Apple still makes very good products, but they're starting to move away from differentiators that made them successful over others. A lot of computing products are what I'd call "engineered to fail". In that, the design of the product sucks in an objective way, and any technically minded person can see the failure coming from a mile away. For e.g. buggy custom software for stupidly trivial tasks like application/system updates, and then making it worse by installing it as a kernel service, or using sub-par plasticky components, poor frame construction, or pre-loading crap-ware, zero attention to ergonomics, not caring if the vendor's software blends with the underlying OS, not caring about UX impact of their software, etc.
For me 13” Retina MBP circa 2013 was the pinnacle of form factor, price, & performance. Unfortunately they went out of support and employer forced us to upgrade with 15” Touch MBP. I don’t have any complaints about keyboard, guess I’m just lucky in that regards.
But new MacOS and hardware are frighteningly unstable. I have observed roughly 1 in 5 times that it’ll crash outright with blank screen when attached to external display. Resetting PRAM, & SMC work for a couple of days and then back to same behaviour. Apple Store had a quick look but stupid thing didn’t crash so they blamed it on faulty cables at work and home. How can a cable can cause it to crash even after disconnected?
Unless they up their game I’ll never spend my own money on another Mac.
I have a max spec 2018 15" MacBook Pro and I love it but this update is just dumb.
The 2018 model can't fully use the current hexa-core CPU so slapping another two cores in isn't going to help things. It is going to be basically useless outside of ~5 seconds turbo boost.
While I haven't had a keyboard issue it is a constant source of anxiety which sucks. I was really hoping Apple would go with a redesign this year (as unlikely as it was) and I had planned on selling this 2018 model and upgrade but with the same keyboard and a pointless CPU update in same body I will pass.
Hopefully next year we see a redesign with a decent keyboard. Also got my fingers crossed for a 120Hz ProMotion display.
With every model that comes out I keep feeling better about my Mid-2015 15" i7 model. Thinking about buying an eBay OEM 1TB SSD and keeping it for the next 5 years at this point. If anyone has a SSD they'd be willing to part with please reach out!
Will it be possible to use 8 cores effectively given the thermal limitations of such a thin device? I wouldn't be surprised if the 6 core model gives about the same level of performance for most workloads as the 8 core one.
"MacBook Pro now delivers two times faster performance than a quad-core MacBook Pro and 40 percent more performance than a 6-core MacBook Pro, making it the fastest Mac notebook ever.1"
Most useless quote ever.
I never had that impression, I always felt like the software sold the hardware. The hardware was always premium hardware with premium prices and correspondingly premium margins, but because the hardware was so good, people who bought it mainly for the software felt good about their purchase, and didn't mind paying extra for higher-end hardware than they might otherwise buy for themselves. This avoids the race-to-the-bottom dynamic that resulted in the Windows PC market getting saturated in low-quality, low-margin hardware for so many years.
Put another way, having great software enables upselling thriftier consumers on the hardware, which is the thing that actually makes money, especially now that OS upgrades are free and don't make money on their own. As long as both the software and the hardware are indeed great, then people feel good about their purchase.
If it's no longer the best hardware (or the best software), then that positive reinforcement loop goes away, and you end up with users who still like macOS, but not as much as they used to, who are doubly frustrated because they feel like they have to spend even more money on hardware that is no longer best-in-class, and has features that they're paying extra for that they view as negatives (touchbar, butterfly keyboard, unergonomically huge trackpad, minimal ports, dongletown, unasked for levels of thinness that forces so many compromises, greatly diminished resale value, etc.).
I’m not sure how old you are, but for a very long time mac os was actually almost a liability : you never knew if the software you needed was going to run on that platform. That’s why mac was for a very long time used only in niche markets ( sound and graphic designers, then developers started to use it starting mac os X).
Also, you think to mix hardware with hardware power, but you seem to forget design. The mac renaissance of the steve jobs 2 era started with a new line of cute colored imacs, great advertising, and strong brand recognition. Those kind of things you don’t get with software.
I’m old enough to remember the bad old days but it’s a good point. I was specifically thinking of the post-MacOS, OS X (Panther and later especially) era.
It's remarkable that the reception on HN is so hostile, in stark contrast to the old days. And yet Apple doesn't seem to care, marching on in their reductionist quest.
Who are their target PRO users then, if not the developers?
What sort of frustrates me most about this isn't that I hate the touchbar, or that I'll have to buy it, but that it's hard to find a system with competitive specs that costs as much or less.
I want a system with an octo-core i9, 32GBs of RAM, a metal body, and a large multi-touch trackpad. As much as I hate to say it, if you want a high-end laptop, Apple still has the market. I found some Dells that are close spec wise but not all the way there, or systems which are as thick as a deck of magic cards... They're (apple) are gonna get my $4k whether I like it or not.
I had the most maxed-out 15” MacBook Pro at the job I just retired from (now at 68 I am just writing and working on my side business developing a knowledge graph- deep learning product). While it was a nice laptop, the System76 laptop with a 1070 GPU I bought for myself blows away the MBPros for what I need (good model training performance and really fast recompile’s of my Haskell code base when I can’t ‘stack —fast’).
I have a fairly new MacBook that I still love for its portability and it is great for light weight stuff, but it is not my main driver.
There are some really cool custom Thinkpads shoving new guts into the classic T60 body. I guess it's not really feasible for MacBooks? I looked for a 2012 or 2013 body with new hardware but nothing.
My 2013 is still working, but the screen hinge is loose and it's probably wearing on the display cable. Nothing new there, though. The display cable was the first thing to fail on my white iBook around 2005.
Wish I still had the Macintosh Portable with the built in carrying handle and roller ball I found at a garage sale! Now that would be a neat mod. Talk about a good keyboard.
"MacBook Pro now delivers two times faster performance than a quad-core MacBook Pro and 40 percent more performance than a 6-core MacBook Pro, making it the fastest Mac notebook ever.1"
So, I need a personal laptop and I think I will go for the 2013-2015 rMBP. I want to go for X1 Carbon but haven't had nice experience with Ubuntu on it.
I looked at the 4 core i7 configurations and they have Geekbench score of 13k-14k. So, doesn't seem that bad compared to the new processors and should hold up on CPU front for three more years I guess.
I had a question to people who use 15" MBPs. Since I am not able to get 13" ones with 16 GB RAM. Are the 15" noticeably bulky and less mobile than 13" ones?
Oh no, I was looking to get an x1 carbon because of the supposedly great Linux support. What kind of problems where you experiencing? And was it the 14", or the extreme?
This was the 2017 14" X1 Carbon(not the extreme one). Mostly battery issues, it was holding up very less on sleep and in use. I was using Ubuntu and Ubuntu actually certifies the hardware. The keyboard was just plain awesome though. I don't think you would find a better keyboard in the slim form factor.
Since this was an office one, I returned it and continued on my 2014 rMBP. It might have been fixed now btw. I will also try the newer X1s I can before finalizing on one.
Switched last year to Lenovo and while the ecosystem around Windows has for sure its issues, it's still night and day. I've been decades on Macs and I lost the interest for computers then. Since I am back to Windows/mainly WSL somehow this interest came back.
Back then, I was smiling at those PC builders with their RGB 'crap' but now I'd love to build my own battlestation with RGB everywhere. The PC ecosystem is more authentic, honest and more about tech.
Yet another with the horrendous Touchbar. Looks like I'll be holding on to my 2012 MBP for a while more. Maybe will look for a like new 2015 one if there are any still out there.
If I get a new Apple laptop, it'll be on a business lease because there's just _way_ too much risk in owning one of these new models with the display and keyboard problems.
I think everyone is overreacting to this. Yes Ive had to buy a can of compressed air but otherwise I like the new keyboard feel and key size. Considering all the tradeoffs im happy
At that price point, I couldn't see the point of buying a Mac Pro, versus buying a real desktop and a disposable Asus or Acer or Chromebook for the rare times I need to lug something around.
I think the only thing that might tempt me is if they brought back the 17" form factor, but I don't think they have made those for almost a decade. Those things were monsters, and everyone I know who had one rode it until it wouldn't go anymore.
Having used a Hackintosh as my desktop for the last 10 years without issue I'm inclined to attempt the same for my laptop now that my 2013 Macbook Pro is looking a bit old. At nearly half the price it's becoming a no-brainer. Are there high-end laptops with screens comparable to Apple's retina display nowadays? I'm also assuming disk and RAM can be replaced in Dells and ThinkPads but maybe I'm mistaken?
For people with double entry keyboard issue, I highly recommend https://github.com/aahung/Unshaky - uses software to ignore double entry. Mine(2018) has developed an issue within 3 months of hard use on one of the worst keys - backspace.
I've introduced over 5 bugs because of this shite, by randomly deleting one dangling brace...
I'm on a Mid 2012 MacBook Pro, i7, 16GB of RAM, it does the job for most of my development.
My problem is, not development work, but my dependence on the MacOS ecosystem over the past 13 years. Music & iPhone in iTunes, Photos app etc. I can do Java, Python, Node on a PC with Linux but I still need some kind of Mac. What do all the Mac apostates do about that?
Still on "MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2013)," which is probably my 5th Macbook Pro (or equivalent) Been waiting for ages for Apple to fix their shit with the keyboard and make 32GB RAM an option for the 13". Hell will probably freeze over before any of that happens. Most likely, I'll have to get a desktop Mac and a Linux laptop.
I work on both a MacBook pro 15 with 32 gb and a Thinkpad X1 Carbon 32gb everyday. Apple is still light years ahead. The inconsistent UI on a Windows machine is infuriating, but Office is unsurprisingly powerful for teams. 8-core? I'll happily take it. Windows is retarded. The lack of empathy in user experience adds up to countless wasted hours.
Honestly, with the new Pro laptops having so much issues, my next Mac setup will be an iMac with an Air. After using the 2018 model, I have a different level of respect for my 2015.
So much double typing on 2018, who designed that keyboard? It is not even a Pro laptop for authors anymore, who arguably need the least computing power.
Pro mid 2012 user here ,oved to SSD couple of years earlier and added 4gigs of ram this year and happy customer ever.
Unfortunately I use external hard disk as boot , and in recent releases of MacOS I think apple started pushing towards fusion drive due to which had to buy a new ssd and move again ( any other alternatives?)
The whole thing can't keep a 4 core CPU from overheating and throttling. Not too mention with that small power brick and the USB-C charging cable, you can't even provide enough power to that beast of CPU regardless of i9 being less power hungry then the i8 is.
I have a 2015 Retina Macbook Pro and it is still fast enough for me. When it fails I will either buy another of the same model or get a PC and put Linux on it. What Apple has done to this product line is awful. At best it's just bad design, at worst it's exploitative.
I'll buy a new Macbook Pro the day Apple return Magsafe, a keyboard that I can distinguish between individual keys with my fingers, doesn't break, and isn't loud, and a no-touchbar option.
Until then my 2014 MBP will have to suffice, and if that breaks I'll use Linux.
I just can’t see myself spending that much on a laptop. I can’t productively use my laptop for day to day use without connecting it to two external monitors and keyboard anyway.
You can get an 8 Core 27 inch 5K iMac $100 cheaper, with less thermal constraints.
Having one desktop-powerful machine that can turn into a laptop when you unplug it from its dock and go with me anywhere is well worth the extra $100. And I'm saying this as someone with a dedicated desktop just for rendering/games. The desktop gives me customization and upgradability but the fact that I lose portability is huge and I'll never, ever own just a desktop machine. I'd prefer to own a laptop that can do my desktop duties when docked.
that's the theory, but in real life the macbook won't sustain 5ghz for very long at all, even less so with 8 cores. It simply can't get rid of the heat fast enough and throttles the speed to stay under thermal limits (while still toasting your balls).
The situation isn't helped by the GPU inside the same slim mbpro chassis that also gets super hot, it's particularly bad when you run mixed CPU/GPU workloads like rendering. So your desktop ends up being much faster for continuous workloads, even if on paper they both have 8-core 5ghz CPUs.
I had the 2018 6-core i9 mbpro. Got rid of it, if I were to buy a new mbpro again I would get a 4-core one.
So for GPU intensive workloads at least, it seems to make more sense to get a lower spec’d laptop for the road and an external GPU as a docking station if you need the portability.
Apple has a couple of eGPUs they made with Blackmagic (AMD RX580 - you don't want this one - and Vega 56), very slick looking and silent but unfortunately GPUs not user upgradeable and not great value for money.
You can use most tb3 eGPU enclosures and an AMD GPU of your choice. Vega64 prob the best choice now, Navi around the corner, can't use NVidia at all thanks to Apple. It'll cost you less than the official Apple eGPU and the GPU will be upgradeable
I would be so wildly impressed if this was any better in continuous workloads than the next model down, or even a couple models down. There's no way in hell there's enough thermal headroom for that CPU to fire on all cylinders for more than 30 seconds or so.
As long as they dont do away with the Touch Bar, I am not going to get one. People use machines with real keyboards for a reason. Ruining that experience by forcing a touch component onto a keyboard user is just absurd!
I got the 2017 model and i regret it, i spent almost 3k for the fully equipped 13" and already had to replace the display ($500 at local authorized shop) and have the keyboard problem. I wish i had stayed with my 2015 :(
My boycott of the Macbook "Pro" will continue until they add additional I/O ports (including HDMI and standard USB ports) and until they add a num pad (a big reason I've stuck with Windows over the years).
I would hope that if MBPs gain a numpad, it’s optional. For many it’s dead space that moves the home row and trackpad off center, making for an awkward typing position. In my case I won’t even consider a laptop that doesn’t have a no-numpad variant available.
Typing this on a Dell Precision 7530. Comes stock with Ubuntu. 128gb of ram, 4 times what Apple offers, at close to the same cost. Linux font rendering still sucks, but I may never use another Apple product again.
It is really tiresome to see every single thing Apple introduces here... but when Lenovo introduced the X1 Extreme with the exact same CPU, where's the HN article? Why the fruit toy is so important?
The latest Apple magic keyboard has butterfly-like keys and is an absolute joy to type on. No issues after a couple of years of daily use. Why can’t this mechanism find its way into a MBP?
Just replaced the battery and threw new thermal paste on my Mid-2014 15" for $300. Discrete graphics, no TouchBar and a keyboard with travel. I hope this thing runs for another 5 years.
I'm still using 6 years old MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013, bought refurbished version) with Intel Core i7 at 2GHz with 8GB of RAM and 256 SSD, couldn't' be happier.
I'm fairly sure my 2012 core-i7 MacBook Pro with SSD and 16GB ram still has comparable performance for most applications. Single core speed has pretty much stagnated over the years.
When my MBP Mid 2010 died, I bought a Samsung Chrome 3 with 4gig of RAM. It runs linux and 80% of the Android apps. And the battery lasts all day. I may never buy another computer.
The many failures (keyboard, screen, random freezes that need a hard shutdown) forced me to also switch to an XPS 13 on Kubuntu. I wish Apple would make a good Macbook again.
The touchbar is an abortion. A touchpad screen would have been a better innovation. Two dimensional touch area with multi gesture and visual feedback – just like an iphone.
OLED is the future of laptop displays (all displays really). I won't buy a new MacBook Pro until we get one. Until then I'm looking to get the new X1 Extreme.
>8-core Intel Core processors, delivering Turbo Boost speeds up to 5.0 GHz, while the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar features faster quad-core processors with Turbo Boost speeds up to 4.7 GHz.
Cooled by what? Oh, right, almost nothing. If you actually know enough about computers to know what those numbers mean, you also know that those clock speeds cannot be sustained with this laptop's cooling solution. It is just baffling people who don't know better with numbers.
Nope. Me too. My 2018 MBP 15" is my dream laptop. The machine I've always wanted. Superfast. Light to carry everywhere. Comfy to work with on the couch. Connects to 2 5K displays at my desk. Even the speakers are decent. The 2016's keyboard was too clicky/rattley, but the 2018's is nice and tight.
I can guarantee after owning 30+ laptops in my life you won't find one that I consider the perfect match so I'm just to the point where I know what I want and can deal with flaws in other places as long as that one desire is answered. Unfortunately what I want is OSX..
But trust me I've got Amazon open and am ready to swipe right on something new and better whenever it comes along.
For whatever reason a lot of companies are going laptop only. The company I work, for example basically banned workstations in the latest round of upgrades. So a lot of people who need what would be a moderately powerful desktop computer end up having to buy ridiculously powerful laptops like this one.
Contrary to what most people are saying in this thread, I have the latest MacBook Pro revision (2017 model?) and I absolutely love using it. I really like the keyboard and haven't had any problems with it malfunctioning.
HN is saturated beyond practical use, by both bike shedding and forum sliding, simultaneously. And oh yeah, bot brigades and mechanical turks.
Donglegate threatens to cleave a trillion dollar company from a crucial money gland that ejaculates valuable flotsam when palpated.
USB-C and headphone jacks. That's what stabbed the company in the aorta. Try to remove the knife and it bleeds out.
Tim Cook's homosexuality has been proven as incapable of effective leadership. Try and doubt this.
We wouldn't be here if we had a person in charge who gave a fuck about pulling pussy. Never trust a man that masturbates with another man's anus. Ring sphincters are for shitting. Moustaches shouldn't strain cum.
Got the 6-core one a few months ago, what a great machine. I love the 4 usb-c ports that can turn into anything I want. I like the Touch Bar, the only question is why I cannot get this for my iMac Pro as well. The keyboard is very nice to type on. It is a super fast machine. Love the screen. And with AppleCare plus, I am not afraid of components failing. Stop the whining, bitches.
I am starting to think this online complaining is an organised attack on apple rather than anything genuine.
Some gullible people still actually believe what they read on the internet in terms of “organic” user comments and companies know it.
I don’t know what the failure rate of the keyboards is, only apple could know this, so it is impossible for me to say anything about that. Either way, they keep trying to improve its reliability. As for how it feels, it is faster to type on then the older ones. The new MacBooks also look better.
People complain about all of these things like the touchbar as if they type all day on their laptop. If you do, you have serious problems with your neck and posture. It is a laptop, designed for 2 hours per day at most.
Meanwhile, people make all these hilarious claims about “how great windows is now with wsl” and how their dell is supposedly great and so on. Ahh, these are compete bullshit. Windows sucks even more now with all the advertising, wsl will always be a shitty emulation layer, and dell make computers that aren’t even comparable to apple in quality.
I see people all the time say “they were going to get a MacBook but all the comments put them off”. I would suggest those people wake up and stop putting faith in anything you read on the internet. If you know people having problem with their MacBook, then that is a real data point. Internet comments and videos are not.
However I don’t see Intel switching to AMD. They have all the same problems, more or less. Primarily Apple has little control over their future with an outside supplier.
The MacBook has always been mediocre hardware hyped and marketed beyond all reason. Even way back all the nonsense about unibody construction was a total myth, Thinkpads were even more durable but didnt have the hype.
Apple knows they will keep selling these things due to the brand image.
As a Vim user: no physical escape key, no deal. I've recently tried working on one of these, and the bar is really annoying for another reason: as you switch between apps it keeps changing right in the corner of your vision, distracting from what's going on on the screen. WTF were they thinking?
what's a good way for vim to have that when you ssh into a remote box? Would you do the rebinding in the Terminal app or something, agent forwarding or something similar?
I ssh into newly provisioned boxes regularly to edit some config files so I'd need something that works not just locally...
The remap is at the OS level, so if you remap caps lock to control or escape, that's what your machine will send over SSH when you press it. No need to change for every terminal app you use.
Standard key mappings are performed by the OS of the computer to which your keyboard is connected (either physically or via bluetooth or some such). When you press caps lock, the OS sees a caps lock keypress, but any application programs on your computer, including terminal, will see only an ESC keypress. Terminal will dutifully send the ESC press to the ssh program running in Terminal, which in turn should send it along to the remote host into which you are ssh'd.
I was also of this mind but I'm really pleased with the workaround of mapping Caps Lock to Escape (more ergonomic when using Escape) and mapping Left Shift + Right Shift to Caps Lock when pressed simultaneously. I use Karabiner-Elements (https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/document.html) to implement these remaps in addition to some others such as Shift + Delete/Backspace for forward delete.
The problem with this is this is just one of half a dozen other computers I'd be using. I see no reason whatsoever to remap anything to anything after paying nearly $4K for the privilege. It should adapt to the way I've been doing things for the past 25 years, and intend to continue for 25 more.
This. FWIW, I have mapped some perma nent functions (brightness,volume etc) to the touchbar (you can do that from the preferences), so it doesn't keep changing based on the application in focus.
This is a work laptop so I am stuck :(
We repair these as part of our business, and to be clear, both the keyboards and the screens are failing on these at an alarming rate.
iFixit detailed the issues with the screens, which (in Apple's unending quest for "thinness") use a thinner flex cable to connect the display to the rest of the laptop. This thinner cable is prone to breakage, and we are already seeing 2016-2017 MacBook Pros in our shop regularly for this issue.
Since Apple built the flex cable into the display, the only solution (even from third parties like us) is a new display. At $600-$700 each, this is unacceptable.
And, like the keyboards, this is a part that's pretty much guaranteed to fail (unless you basically never open your laptop.)
Apple hasn't announced a fix yet, even with a petition with over 11,000 signatures, and more screens failing by the day.
From the time the keyboard issues happened, I made a strong recommendation to avoid buying these. If you can do your work on a PC, do so. (Personally, I now use a Dell XPS 15 as a "desktop replacement", and kept my old 2013 MacBook Pro around too.) If you need a Mac, consider a desktop version (with a SSD!), or stick with the 2015 or older MacBooks.
Even if you think the keyboard issues are fixed, consider too that this is the 4th generation of these keyboards--and Apple promised that the 2nd and 3rd generation would fix these as well. This plus the screen issues means switching to PC if you need speed should be a serious consideration.
iFixit article on "stage light" display issues/"flexgate": https://ifixit.org/blog/12903/flexgate/
> If you need a Mac, consider a desktop version (with a SSD!), or stick with the 2015 or older MacBooks.
This is what I did.
I bought a 15'' 2015 model the day after the 2016 models were announced. I didn't even know about the keyboard problems, but the touchbar, the lack of ports, the price, and the shallow key travel were deal breakers for me.
I used it for about a year but the integrated GPU and the 4th gen CPU ran too hot. At the time I lived in Cancún so quite hot, and the fan noise was becoming annoying even when doing skype calls and such. Also running it on my lap was uncomfortable.
So at the start of 2018 I sold the MBP and got a 5K iMac with SSD since I really didn't need the portability anymore. Best Mac I've ever owned.
I have an old 2014 13'' MBP laying around which I use in the rare occasions I'm away from my iMac.
Hah. My daily driver is a 2013 13" MBP. :) Works fine.
Thanks, this makes me feel better about my decision a couple months ago to switch to Lenovo's ThinkPad P1 Mobile Workstation. I don't have any regrets switching from Apple hardware, and frankly Linux is so much more superior (especially when using i3[0]), I'm quite pleased with it.
(The only complaint I have with the ThinkPad is the fan is super aggressive and very loud. It usually doesn't run for long, but it spins up with a whirring noise pretty often for 1-5 seconds before slowing down.)
[0]: https://i3wm.org/
Went exactly the same route a few weeks ago deciding between a new macbook pro or something else and went for the P1. Had some troubles with the UEFI due to outdated firmware (be sure to update that first thing) and other than that, I'm quite happy with the results. Battery life could be better, the fans are indeed more aggressive and I miss some of the touch gestures (swipe for browsing) that I didn't yet get to set up. My previous device was a late '14 MBP and that still works fine but is getting slow and quite hot.
Yeah, I am a fan of Arch on the desktop, but the P1 runs Nvidia's P1000 chip and Arch doesn't seem to like that, so I went with Ubuntu+i3 for now. Updating the firmware first is definitely critical, as you could brick the machine otherwise.
I'll echo my disappointment in battery life, although admittedly i3 and xfce defaults are probably not doing me any favors here...
You can configure that on windows using tpfancontrol. Should be similar on Linux. Tweak the fan curve to whatever the hell you want.
You can even turn the fan higher than Lenovo lets it (but it might fuck your fan over... Oops)
They have announced a free fix for displays on 2016 models:
https://www.apple.com/support/13-inch-macbook-pro-display-ba...
And a free fix for keyboard issues on all butterfly keyboard laptops:
https://www.apple.com/support/keyboard-service-program-for-m...
For now the display fix is only for 2016 displays; though I suspect with more bad press they’ll extend to 2017 and 2018 models too.
I have a 2016 model which is starting to get the stage light problem. I wonder if it’s worth getting it fixed now or if I should wait until it gets worse before taking it in for servicing.
> And a free fix for keyboard issues on all butterfly keyboard laptops
Don't know about the very latest one (assuming there is 4th gen) but so far this has been more like a workaround that breaks down again at some point since the design is not solid. Getting an inherently flawed replacement for free isn't worth celebrating IMHO especially considering how expensive these things are.
Apple has already released a fix for the screen issue, with a longer cable less likely to break. This was months ago.
They have also never said that 2 and 3 keyboard were fixes for the keyboard issue.
I am surprised someone in the business can be so far behind the news.
> If you need a Mac, consider a desktop version (with a SSD!)
SSD is undoubtedly the single biggest system performance upgrade in the past 10 years.
And we will soon past the halfway point of 2019, Apple is still selling an iMac with 1TB 5400 RPM HDD by default.
Apart from AirPod and Apple Watch, there is nothing on the current Apple's product line I am satisfy with.
Thanks for the downvote on what I thought was not even controversial. If we have to discuss whether "SSD is undoubtedly the single biggest system performance upgrade in the past 10 years." is correct then I think we can call it agree to disagree.
It could be one of the other sentiments you expressed.
Personally, I think it makes no sense to complain that some large company is selling an option that you don't want.
Not much point in complaining about downvotes on here. There is a certain population of, well, professional contrarians on HN, and there's also the (deliberately?) poor design decision that places the upvote and downvote arrows a few pixels apart. Someone may have voted you down by mistake. Think empty boat[1], not U-boat.
[1] https://www.thedailyzen.org/2015/05/27/the-empty-boat-by-chu...
Not seeing anyone else mention this problem so perhaps I'm an edge case but I have a 3 month old Macbook Pro (work supplied, fortunately) and I'm getting double presses on certain keys. I've managed to ameliorate it a bit with software [0] but it's still a disgrace that this is happening on a $4K machine.
[0] - https://unshaky.nestederror.com/
I've had a 13" MBP with Touch Bar since December 2016 and have had keys that felt weird, keys that repeated, keys that didn't work unless you pressed really hard, and keys that didn't work no matter how hard you pressed them.
I've had the top case replaced for free two times under warranty, and the extended 4-year warranty does make me slighty less worried. The battery is also replaced as part of the top case which is a pretty nice bonus.
Though it is still a major inconvenience to be without my main computer for a week while it's being repaired.
Mine started after probably 8 months. I ignored it until it became work stopping (I decided against installing software to compensate) and had it replaced under warranty. Soon after getting it back I got a keyboard cover which seems to be doing its job. I hate accessories, and am really disappointed they released a new mbp in this same form-factor.
> We repair these as part of our business
I feel this comment is very misleading, since it looks like you are describing these new 8-core machines, which have been announced literally today and you cannot possibly have any experience of.
Are these using differently designed screens and keyboards from other models from the past N generations?
Mm, sure, but you are making assumptions too.
Have you come across a second issue with the screens as well, which causes them to develop moving yellow spots? (for examples see: https://gregsamborski.com/macbook-pro-led-screen-discolorati...)
I had this issue. I assumed it was heat related, as the laptops can get real hot and sometimes I’m sure it doesn’t shut down properly when you close it - on mine the marks corresponded with the top bit of the keyboard, where it gets hottest.
Brought it in under Apple care and it was replaced (along with the keyboard, rolls eyes) no questions.
Yeah the upgrade policy at my work kicked in and they tried to give me one of these... instead I got a Thinkpad X1 Extreme and put Linux on it. No regrets.
I'm curious to hear about your experience with the X1 Extreme. My current employer has an equipment stipend that's the exact cost of a maxed out 15" macbook, I'd rather get the Thinkpad, a nice monitor and go to a conference.
PopOS? I've had fits, even w/ stock 19.04 on my X1E.
Dozens of our developers are using these for a couple of years now - no problems yet.
I've had issues with macbook pro keyboards for every model since the 2016 one, but I've never had an issue with Apple not doing an in-warranty repair. In fact, usually they swap out the battery for me during these repairs too.
Contrast this with every other PC manufacturer where they require me to ship the item to them, wait for weeks. Apple gives it back to me within a couple of days.
A Lenovo (or Dell, and maybe also HP, haven't looked at their offerings recently) laptop in the price class of a Macbook Pro typically comes with on-site warranty support (and for cheaper business models it's typically an affordable upgrade), or you can bring or ship it to a local service partner and have them fix it and deal with the warranty claim.
My first and only buy has a serious quality factory issue: two keys not working, screw under a third one, and God knows what within the laptop. The shop I bought redirected me to Lenovo website for the exchange, three numbers later (two weren't working at all) I am waiting for a document from Lenovo then I can go back to the shop for the exchange. It might take 5 days or one month. I am a bit unhappy. At least the warranty is cheap (yeah?)
I would add to this that I genuinely don't think that the keyboard failures are due to dust - it seems far more likely to me that the switches are simply failing due to poor design.
Is the switches failing because of dust not poor mechanical design?
> this is the 4th generation of these keyboards--and Apple promised that the 2nd and 3rd generation would fix these as well.
I don't think is true is it? I think this was just an assumption people made.
Leaked Apple service documents did say that the intent of the latest gen was to fix the reliability problems, so I don't think it's just an assumption.
A leaked internal document is a far cry from "Apple promised" though. If they wanted to make a public commitment, they would have done.
> this is a part that's pretty much guaranteed to fail (unless you basically never open your laptop.)
I have a 2016 MacBook "Pro", and every single part has been replaced (thanks, Apple Care) except the bottom plate.
It seems to me they are not really designed to be moved, or used in an environment with, you know, particles and such. Plug it in once, put a transparent dome over it, look at it, and you'll be just fine.
My 2016 is the first MBP where I've felt that. I have huge dents on it and it's in a Thule laptop bag if it's not on my desk. I'm not exactly gentle on my backpack but I never had to concern myself with my old 2015s (had a couple of these). I rarely use it outside of work, I take it home just for emergencies and it sits on my coat rack in the bag.
And you know what I'd totally pay $3k for a full on desktop replacement that does what I do with it. Fatten it up, give it better thermals, removable batteries, make it MORE durable, etc. I remember using 12lb Dell laptops. We're past the point of diminishing returns on portability now.
My work-issued 2017 has a visibly crushed corner of the display casing, from dropping my backpack on the floor.
My personal 2013 has led a pretty rough life (including a couple of drops), and the sum total of damage over time is... one plastic foot missing.
I'm pretty sure mine has a gnarly corner gash (at the corner of the monitor) from tossing it onto my cars leather seat while its in its padded backpack.. sad.
I will agree and add a data point here. My 2017 MBP has had chronic keyboard issues, despite being in for repair twice and having had the entire top case replaced. Seriously disappointed in this computer considering the price I paid. I am planning my escape from this platform.
They announced a screen repair program too: https://www.apple.com/support/13-inch-macbook-pro-display-ba...
>Eligible models are listed below.
MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2016, Four Thunderbolt 3 Ports) MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2016, Two Thunderbolt 3 Ports)
>Note: No other Mac notebook models are part of this program.
Sigh.
Have one of the new 15" macbook pro with touch bar. My keyboard will never break simply because I never, ever use it. It's awful to type on, possibly the worst keyboard I've ever used. As is the track pad. I have a mouse plugged into it so I don't have to use the track pad. My MBP is basically a compact desktop machine and for that it is great. Fast and responsive.
Well, you don't need to use the keyboard extensively to break it. I used my MBP 2017 in the same manner as you, but still have to replace the keyboard twice.
Did something change regarding the trackpad? MacBook trackpads have always been at the top of the class, far better than any other manufacturer by leaps and bounds.
It grew really, really big. So big that it's almost impossible to avoid while typing, and palm-rejection often can't cope with that.
As swiftcoder says.
It's massive, needlessly so in my opinion.
> We repair these as part of our business, and to be clear, both the keyboards and the screens are failing on these at an alarming rate.
This model came out three hours ago, it looks like.
How can you claim this? Are you making the assumption that they have made no changes whatsoever to the keyboard or hinge?
> And, like the keyboards, this is a part that's pretty much guaranteed to fail (unless you basically never open your laptop.)
Despite the constant outrage on HN, I have a 2018 15" MBP and have had zero issues with the keyboard breaking or screen failing.
I love my Dell Latitude 5491 - six cores is more than enough for my work at the moment, and the NVMe drive absolutely screams. Much lighter than a workstation notebook, too.
I’ve deployed over a dozen since 2016 without any issues.
Personally, I won't feel the keyboard issue is resolved until the keyboard is a user replaceable part.
i am sticking to my 2017 macbook air. This is from a time when apple knew what they where doing, and it has a proper usb port. And the handy magnetic connector that saved my laptop more times than i care to mention. My next laptop prob wont be a mac.
Thank you so much for sharing this information.
Keep profits up by externalizing cost of ownership.
If Apple is looking to be a totally integrated vertical, they would be wise to bring the fixit community into their stores and actually fix these things.
The status quo of push people to replace increases costs for folks today and the mess of disposable high tech gadgets onto the next generations.
Well, hopefully plural. But we seem keen to fuck that possibility right up while we fetishize our own feelings of unjustifiable entitlement.
The cheapest XPS 15" is more expensive than the cheapest MB 15".
Are there any reliable ~$1000 laptops to host linux?
> The cheapest XPS 15" is more expensive than the cheapest MB 15".
... what? That's simply not true.
I’m not sure where you’re looking, but the XPS 15 starts at $1000. Of course, you’re not going to want that hybrid drive.
Dell also has an upcoming Memorial Day sale where they will discount certain models, and the new XPS 15 is due out next month.
https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/xps-15/spd/xps-...
I was going to say that the SSD is slower on the XPS, and it is, but it’s close.
The storage in the MBP is wicked fast even in the base configuration.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Pro-15-2018-2-6-...
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Huawei-MateBook-13-i7-8565U-Ge...
Samsung PM981s (and really Samsung SSDs in general) tend to trounce the competition, but IIRC the XPS 13 uses some mediocre SK Hynix SKU.
Thinkpad T series and Dell Latitude 7390/7490 are good choices around that price.
T480
Louis Rossman does a great job documenting Apple's stupid (greedy?) design decisions.
After 8 years of macbooks, after using the 2018 model, I switched to a Dell Precision 5530 running Ubuntu 18.04 and it is awesome. The hardware is great, and having Unix under it all was the only real reason I liked Macs (used to be hardware, too). Granted, I don't need Adobe stuff, or anything else that doesn't run or have an alternative on Ubuntu (although it is dual-booted with Win10, but I've never used it, just keep it for when I want to play a game)
The Macbook pro 2018 was the worst laptop experience I've had in at least 15+ years. So disappointing, but maybe this will let Unix laptops finally start taking real market share.
I can only come to the same conclusion. Typing this on a 2018 MacBook 15 inch, and it's a disaster. I still keep accidentally hitting the Touchbar ten times per day while typing (it's not a press-bar, duh), I need a dongle for _everything and their mother_, battery lifetime isn't good, the keyboard is prone to mistyping and double clicks, the screen doesn't get bright enough sometimes, I can't get any higher spec hardware, it really feels like a super expensive toy to me.
I'd buy something different if there was a real alternative OS-wise (I feel too old to compile my own kernel for a glitchy wifi driver, and Windows? Nah, get away...)
I recently was forced to upgrade by 2015 laptop at work because the battery life was finally short enough that I couldn't stand it. I hate dongles. The 2015 Macbook will stand as their last best laptop. Nothing about the 2018 laptop is better, it's only worse. I don't understand why they don't see this.
There should really be a huge multi-billion dollar class action lawsuit for their keyboards and fixability to wake them up. I'm so angry.
100% agree. I'm typing this on a 2015 Macbook Pro, and holding on for dear life, even as it has started alerting me about servicing the battery. It's a great machine. I tried using the touchbar on my son's newer MBP. It's awful, and not meant for serious use. His laptop has been replaced once already due to keyboard issue, and starting to show defects again.
Replace the battery.
I did it last year on my 2012 rMBpro after it have been complaining about servicing the battery for about a year, and while it wasn't a walk in the park, it all worked out great.
Tip: there are 2 ways to replace the battery.
One is by following the official iFixit etc instructions where you remove absolutely everything before you peel off the battery with acetone.
The other is by immediately peeling off the battery right away. In that case, you have to be careful that the acetone doesn't flow onto the speakers (because they'd melt.) That's the way I, and many other with me, did it. It still only took me about 1 hour to get everything back up and running.
Or just take it to the Apple Store and pay them $199 to repair the battery which also gets you an entirely new top case and keyboard (old, original stock)
Yeah in my experience that 199$ price doesn’t happen in real life, as they tell you they need to replace the whole top case. Never understood why they publicly list the 199$ battery change price. Am I missing something?
AFAIK, If your battery is in the service battery condition (generally, less than 80% health), then you'll get the $199 price, otherwise you have to pay for the top case. It's the same repair either way but they charge for it differently.
I just had the battery replaced in two mid-2014 MBPs. They said that I'd be paying for the battery replacement (199), but that they would also replace the keyboard and trackpad and I wouldn't be charged for either. However, the way they stated it initially was a little confusing, since it sounded like I'd be paying an additional 100, but they were quick to clear it up.
They did say that they might need to replace the shell (battery was slightly swollen in both machines) and that I'd be responsible for that cost, but that didn't happen for either box. I don't think they replace the shell unless it's really, really deformed. Neither of my machines would sit flat and both were obviously swollen. One I could practically spin like a top (and the trackpad was screwed).
I got both back with no deformities, a new battery, keyboard, and trackpad, and a 199 bill (plus tax).
I wouldn't rule out getting it fixed. If you do end up paying a little more, then you can probably sell it for more than the price it cost to fix.
Was macOS or the diagnostics tool saying "service battery"?
Mine's in for a battery replacement for 199 right now.
Was macOS saying "service battery"?
Yep.
I had to have my mid 2015 rMBP battery & top case replaced by a premium service provider in New Zealand due to a bulging battery. Thankfully I still had a couple of weeks of AppleCare left as the bill came to over $1300NZD ($850 USD). A $199 replacenent would be a dream.
I really do wonder whether Apple is running afoul of consumer law here. Surely $1300 is not a reasonable cost for a battery replacement.
Last time I looked I was quoted somewhere in the neighbourhood of $600 for a rMBP battery replacement - but that was just the battery. Even that IMO is not a reasonable cost for what it is - the only reason it costs that much is the fact that it's glued in, and the fact that Apple charge so much for the part.
indeed, the cheapest official vendor I could find in my country would have been about $600 for a battery replacement on my 2014 model. It's ludicrous. I bought a battery online for $60 or something including shipping from China...
Not an option if you have a 2012 rMBP
Are they not replacing 2012 batteries?
They are vintage/obosolete as of the end of 2018 so the stores are not obligated to service them any longer.
Not anymore.
It was $299 on my 2013. Still worth it though.
The way I did it was to use dental floss to cut through the glue and then removing the batteries.
Round here (which I can probably generalize as Europe) there are lots of small shops who repair mobile phones and computers.
Replacing a Macbook battery should be a routine task for any of them.
I just had to have my screen replaced (by a third party repair shop), and while they were at it, they vacuumed out a lot of cat hair for free. Now it runs much cooler, and seems like a new machine!
You can also replace the thermal paste, although now that it's not overheating all the time, I won't have that done until next time it overheats and slows down and I need to have it vacuumed out again.
http://www.mackungfu.org/TheonethingtodotomakeyourMacBookPro...
or take it to a local repair shop.
i bought an $80 battery (ifixit? i can't remember now) and took it to a local shop and had it back in 3 hours. they charged $120. So... ~$200 but I had same day replacement.
Mid 2012 MBP here. Replaced battery with new one from iFixit 4 weeks ago. There was zero glue so no peeling necessary.
You were lucky! Putting so much force on those batteries, I was afraid they'd crack and catch fire.
Internally there is nothing rigid to crack, they should bend with enough force. Catching fire is a real concern, but if you can get the battery voltage down real low they should be inert enough to pry out if you can manage it without puncturing the pack. (you'd have to bypass whatever internal low voltage protections they have)
Yes. I'm glad there was no glue. Battery was swollen for at least a year until I replaced it. I remember there were three screes holding it in place so there was no glue by design. Wish current macbooks would hold up to this kind of serviceability.
Just make sure they are flat: if not charged they don't catch fire?*
* Advice from the internet: procede with caution.
me too, I think I spent 2 hours on the replacement just to get the old battery loose from all the glue, afraid I'd puncture it in the process. So. Much. Glue.
Ha! I literally typed out another comment about how I to refuse to leave my 2015 macbook pro for a newer model. The new keyboard, touchbar and usb-c everywhere is so lame
> usb-c everywhere is so lame
Do you mean "not having anything other than USB C is lame", or "I dislike USB C and wished Apple had gone with something else"?
Personally I’m still bitter about the death of MagSafe, which was the greatest thing ever.
Now that I have children of laptop-using age, I'm almost at the point where literally every single day I'm thinking about how useful MagSafe is. It was such a good invention for notebooks.
I really don't care about the "charge from either side" benefit of USB Type C. I do appreciate the fact that you can use aftermarket cables though - especially considering how poorly constructed Apple's are.
Just ordered a 2015 MBP from the Apple Store, they're still out there!
if you need to 'upgrade' there's a sintech adapter that will let you put a MUCH bigger and faster ssd in there.
You can buy a like-new, souped-up 2015 Macbook Pro on ebay. I am very happy with mine, except for the new OS.
I just got a certified refurbished one from the Apple Store.
> except for the new OS
What do you dislike about the OS? Presumably it's running macOS Mojave?
For me, odd things like inability to have a dark dock and titlebar and light windows. Using quickview on a file in Finder and then pressing shift-up used to select the file and the one above it, and then show a preview of the newly selected item. Now in Mojave they "fixed" it so that it shows the preview of the first file only, which is a colossal pain because now I can't filter through a giant list of photos to decide which ones to keep in an easy quick way. I have to look at each file individually.
I am sure I will think of some other annoyances. I've kept a 2012 MBP on Sierra, and love that machine far more, eg. keyboard is actually good and is quiet, real function keys, real ports as found on every other device in the universe, ability to use my audio interface, network ports etc etc
This may help:
http://osxdaily.com/2018/10/15/dark-menu-dock-light-theme-ma...
Edit. It does to a degree. Firefox takes on the dark theme but everything else seems fine so far.
A couple of control freak things. I despise the junk mail folder that can't be hidden or removed and requires an extra "are you sure" click to delete messages. It refuses to copy files from my external hard drive. I have to disable SIP to do some fairly normal stuff. Siri, though I have it turned off. Location on photos.
Just returned to say: OS 10.14 rebooting while asleep because it's pouting about some nonstandard software or file.
Personally, Mojave has caused my 2013 rMBP 15" to go from a near-silent machine most of the time to one that has fans spinning noisily at all times.
Have tried everything short of a complete reformat - NVRAM, SMC reset. Nothing in activity monitor gives me any clues either.
I even rolled back to High Sierra to check my sanity. No crazy fan spin. Reinstalled Mojave --> crazy fan spin.
install smcfancontrol
A year back I replaced the battery on my 2013 15" model - like the other commenters, I paid $199 at the Apple Store for a new battery, topcase, including keyboard and trackpad. I also recently bought a used 2015 Pro on ebay as a backup. I have a 2016 13" touchbar pro, and after replacing the original keyboard, I'm actually quite happy with it. But for the 15" model I just don't think the price is justified given the specs... my next mac might be a Thinkpad with Ubuntu and virtualized MacOS, sorry to say.
Virtualized MacOS because of Mac or iOS dev? Hard to imagine why someone would use a virtualized OS for normal usage or consumption. But maybe I’m missing something.
Holding on to my 2015 MBPro for dear life as well.
protip: get a sintech adapter and stick a big fast nvme disk in there. another 1-2 years before you need a new computer.
Also typing on a 3+ year old 2015 MBP. Touchwood no issues except for a slightly wonky right speaker. I hope I can extend its life until Apple comes to its sense, or it'll have to be a Dell XPS for me...
Same here. My right speaker is blown out. Go to settings and set the fader to left. Not sure if the speaker can be fixed.
I hate accessories, but after getting my keyboard replaced I got a keyboard cover and so far it seems to be doing its job. It also makes me feel less like I have to baby it--which is something like in tools I use.
weird I'm on an early 2013 MBP (original battery) at 81% health (226 cycles)
That's a shockingly low health for a battery with that few cycles. Actually, if you use your computer every day, that's a small number of cycles…
It's 6 years old, it's perfectly acceptable health for a battery that gets use.
2012 MBP here: 87.3% health (6900 mAH as designed, 6021 mAH now) on 871 cycles, 2533 days old. Pretty impressed with it really. I use this Mac a lot.
You keep it plugged in all the time? Do you feel a noticeable drop in battery life? When mine reached those 80% health I felt like it had lost half its battery life or more...
Same here (2013 Retina MBP)
yep late 2013 Retina MBP 15"
mostly plugged in, but I don't have any anxiety when I unplug it
What software are you using to get the percentage? My Early 2015 MBP is on around 300 cycles but not sure how to get the percentage.
https://www.coconut-flavour.com/coconutbattery/index.html
Late MBP 2013 at 87% health capacity (481 cycles)
15" Retina MBP late 2013 with original battery. System reports 142 cycles (I mostly use it at a desk) and condition Normal.
Unfortunately it's not at all normal, it's swollen to the extent that the bottom of the case is slightly warped and the macbook will no longer sit flat. It's also affected the trackpad which doesn't click very well any more. I noticed these things a while back but didn't realise that the battery was the cause until I opened it up a couple of days ago to clean it out (something I do once or twice a year).
Now awaiting a battery replacement kit from iFixit and not looking forward to removing the old one. Probably going to try the dental floss method someone mentioned above (very, very carefully and far away from anything flammable).
I'm disappointed that Apple didn't either kill the Touchbar, or commit to it fully: why is there no desktop keyboard (wireless or wired) with the Touchbar? Presumably a huge amount of Pro users (this is a Macbook "Pro", right?) plug into keyboard, pointing device, and monitor frequently...
At least Lenovo just ditched their Touchbar after the disastrous 2nd generation of X1 Carbon, never to be seen again. Also did a mistake with the 2014 series of ThinkPad by removing the mouse buttons due to a bigger touchpad, just to give them back when the users complained enough in 2015.
Have to give them credit for that.
The touchbar on the 2nd gen X1 Carbons was seriously bad, but in fairness it was worse than the Macbook Pro touchbar.
I wonder whether they'll turn back on their choice to solder RAM on basically all their ThinkPads...
One can only hope.
I really wish. At least the T490 and P-series are still available with replaceable RAM modules.
Buying max RAM from start is a $200 extra which may validate saved space. Not justified is soldered SSD. Ive doubled SSD size once a year to extend laptop life by 6 or 7 years.
I would not give them credit for not being able to create a touchpad as good as Apples and just giving up. The MacBook touchpad is an amazing piece of hardware. I still think its too big now, but the hardware itself is one of the best things about the MacBook.
And I'll add the obligatory comment how us ThinkPad users enjoy our keyboard with the TrackPoint, experience no other manufacturer provide. I'd just remove the touchpad for more keys to the keyboard.
Agreed that I wish they had embraced, extended, or extinguished the Touch Bar. A larger offset from the top row of physical keys, a physical escape key, some form of accidental touch elimination, and/or a taller display surface would all be useful changes.
WRT to an external keyboard with it - in addition to making keyboards more expensive and proprietary, the Touch Bar is powered by the T2 chip, which is not just used to power the Touch Bar and TouchID, but for system functions like boot-up.
Even with these features removed, dynamically paired TouchID sensors would be a change to Apple's security model (which requires a hardware/data reset to pair a new TouchID sensor for security reasons).
Haptic feedback. I don't understand how they can understand how essential this is and implement it with increasing sophistication in both phones and trackpads but abdicate it entirely with the Touch Bar. To the point that third party software to use the trackpad haptics on touchbar clicks is a thing now: https://www.haptictouchbar.com/
I suspect it's probably hard to get the keyboard to straddle the touch bar, but I couldn't help think: Why not physical escape and power keys at the ends?
They should have just kept the F-keys and provide a system level option to neuter the touchbar as just a modern day reference card for the keys. It's not like the wrist rest isn't big enough to sacrifice for more room up top.
Agreed. F Keys + additional touchbar would have actually been useful.
The lack of a physical escape key galls me the most.
I remapped caps lock to esc.
I remapped esc to caps lock (physically) on day one. 6 months later, I'm still mentally re-mapping it occasionally.
Emacs users remap caps lock to escape lock!
Isn't the Touch ID sensor a "physical power key"?
> Why not physical escape and power keys at the ends?
Courage.
I work from home and open the laptop only if I need to be on a video call. Otherwise yeah, plug into keyboard. I had to work in a coffeeshop one day and had to use the keyboard. I have no idea how anyone can tolerate that piece of shit, to put it lightly.
I actually like the new keyboard quite well. It helps with RSI issues for me.
Killing the touch bar would make Tim Apple lose face, and he lacks the Jobsian stagecraft spin to salvage it.
The touch mbp should've been a macbook air-like spin off, used to demonstrate the viability of the tech by letting people who want it choose it... instead of forcing everyone who wants a high end laptop to pick that model.
But the Apple keyboards are already $150, with no “lower” model available. Add a touchbar and it will be a $300 keyboard. Note that the price bump for emoji-enabled Macbooks is about the same.
Third party keyboards are a lot cheaper and work just as well, plus you get real F-keys if you want.
While I personally wouldn't buy it (I'm kind of picky about the tactile feel of the keyboard), you can get this fully functional Bluetooth keyboard for $20.
https://www.amazon.com/Anker-Bluetooth-Ultra-Slim-Keyboard-D...
Apple also sells external keyboards with real F-keys. Their newer external keyboards are meh, but the previous model, the A1243 Wired Keyboard with Numeric Keypad [0] is amazing. It goes up to F19, and I just generally prefer their layout. I've been using an A1243 as my programming keyboard for nearly a decade. When they stopped selling them I even bought a used spare as backup for when my current keyboard dies.
My only complaints with the A1243 are that the top row is half-sized, and that it has a useless eject button between F12 and F13 which can't be remapped.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Keyboard#/media/File:App...
The eject button can be used in the combination “Cmd Alt Eject” to put to sleep. If it can’t be remapped, at least let’s find a way to use it ;)
I have a theory that Apple will eventually replace the entire keyboard with a giant “Touch Bar.”
Try the HHKB. There's even a BT version (with USB as well). It does come at a price though.
I've never been able to justify spending $250 on a keyboard that put the backtick/tilde in the wrong place.
Plus, I actually use the "Windows" key now, so its absence would be missed.
Fair enough, it is an expensive keyboard, so any major issues you have with it make the price harder worth it.
I don't use tilde much.
There is no absence of a super key. Its on the spot where alt often is, and alt is on the spot super often is. It shares key with shift.
The ctrl is where caps lock is on today's keyboards. If I have caps lock I rebind it anyway. So ctrl and super are easiest to reach, whereas the spot where ctrl often is is difficult to reach (there is nothing there on the HHKB).
So in short this keyboard assumes you normally rebind caps lock to ctrl, it assumes you never use the ctrl elsewhere. It assumes you use super more than alt. It is pretty close to a traditional Sun keyboard.
Funny thing is also, you can buy the keyboard without print on the keys, so that you can rebind it in any way you prefer.
> I don't use tilde much.
What?? I use it all the time: Tilde in vim for upper/downcase and bash for home and backtick for jumping to marks and in JS for template strings. Great key.
It's for consistency across their product line:
force touch -> force touchbar
;)
Just walk away from the Mac.
Windows is perfectly viable for doing development, so is Linux. You can easily get a laptop that is cheaper and more reliable than a Macbook. About the only thing you'll be missing is a cool Apple sticker, but you can get those on eBay. Your wallet will thank you, and so will your fingers.
A Macbook was a reasonable, even logical choice in 2012. Now, not so much.
Apple can have me back if they want -- hey, take my money! -- but they have to stop fucking up. I don't know why the Apple board isn't simply pounding the hell out of the management that's been allowing the poor quality and user-hostile decisions of the past several years.
[Hmmm, I just looked at their board members. That would explain a lot...]
> Windows is perfectly viable for doing development, so is Linux.
Viable, yes. I've spent the last year (since replacing a 2013 MB Pro) with a Dell 15 XPS, roughly 50/50 Windows & Linux (Ubuntu then Fedora). Both work. They each run everything I need a laptop for.
Honestly neither is quite as good a desktop for me as macOS, but they are near enough that even if I liked the current generation of MacBooks (which I don't), I wouldn't consider it worth paying the premium.
There isn't a single solution I'm truly happy with. Windows 10 is yucky but for me fairly practical (meaning mainly it doesn't waste my time). Linux is more appealing and almost worth it for the speedy file access, but is too time-consuming for me to to commit to. MacOS is my favourite all-round OS, but (Hackintoshes aside) only runs on hardware I don't want (and certainly not at the price). I guess the only thing I haven't tried is ChromeOS. Maybe next time. 2019 desktop OS's are a sorry scene.
> Linux is more appealing and almost worth it for the speedy file access, but is too time-consuming for me to to commit to.
I hear a variation of this semi-often and I never quite get what that's supposed to mean. Maybe being a full-time Linux user for a decade has made me used to whatever people are complaining about, but I don't think so, people are complaining about having to fix broken HW/SW occasionally, however as someone who:
- Picks Linux-supported hardware specifically, as opposed to a random, generic PC, (something you wouldn't do with macOS either, btw).
- Runs a rolling release distro, so if anything should experience more breakage than the regular Ubuntu LTS/Fedora user.
I can honestly say that my workflow is basically:
-> Turn the laptop on, (or wake from sleep, yes that works well on solid HW)
-> Get my work done
-> Update the system every couple of days, (rolling release updates)
-> Repeat
Now does occasionally some package update their config that I'll have to merge or something like that? Sure, maybe once or twice a year.
When I do have to use macOS for builds, I experience glitches, (like the login bar loading and never finishing), various annoying updates, (& update prompts), apps, (like Duet Display), randomly breaking when you need them, occasional kernel panics, (but more frequent than I ever had on Linux, in fact I had one on Linux maybe once), choppy performance even on a top spec 2016 MBP due to poor thermals, video rendering issues when switchable graphics is enabled etc.
All in all, my macOS experience is actually somewhat worse than on Linux. It's nothing I can't deal with, but it's nowhere near as trouble free as people make it seem.
I honestly think it comes down to things like macOS being more animated by default, having 3D shadows under every window, the dock enlarging the icons as you scroll pass them, your coworkers having a Mac as a status symbol etc. rather than some big technical hurdle.
Possibly once a year I install Ubuntu on my laptop and am always determined to move over to Linux on the desktop but sadly it takes only a few days of frustration before I revert back to OSX.
It's nothing to do with 3D shadows under windows, the dock enlarging when I roll over it or my co-workers being impressed because I've got a Mac, because they all have Macs too.
That last point is the least of it - honestly, I have no desire to impress anyone with what technology I happen to use and find it quite extraordinary that anyone thinks owning a Mac is some kind of status symbol.
It's not as if Apple product ownership is a rare thing, people from all walks of life own Macbooks or iPhones or whatever, yet this falacy that Mac/iPhone owners buy these products to impress people still somehow persists.
No, it's the fundamental user experience on various desktop managers I've tried on Linux that while it clearly works for other people, it simply doesn't for me.
There's nothing wrong with that, and I'm sure if I persisted with it for longer then I'd perhaps be happy enough using Linux on the desktop but to be honest it's time I'm not that interested in investing, when I'm immediately productive on OSX, and was when I first started using OSX back in 2004.
My OSX experience is wholly different to yours - I get rare update notifications, possibly because of the software products I use? and performance on my 2018 MBP is as quick as I've ever experienced, but then it should be for a modern computer.
For me, OSX/macOS simply stays out of the way and lets me get on with doing work. I'm sure Linux does the same for you but be assured, the reason I use OSX is not a single one of those reasons you've suggested.
- All the keyboard shortcuts are consistent across apps.
- Hit space to instantly quick-look almost any file, in the finder, in my torrent client, etc.
- Global menu bar doesn't waste space.
- Time Machine provides revision control for your entire drive, integrated into apps, where you can browse and revert to old versions. Even works when you only occasionally hook up your backup drive as it syncs.
- Window/desktop management with real multitouch gestures (not triggers that only kick in after you complete a gesture).
- Smooth font rendering without gamma or hinting errors. Smart kerning adjustment for long labels in tight spaces. Smart ellipsis that displays the start and end of long filenames.
- Icons represent files and can be dragged e.g. from document window titlebars. Right click to get a breadcrumb of all the directories the file sits in, so you can trivially open a finder window for what you're looking at.
- Half downloaded files are resumable bundles that keep the source URL inside. Can even copy to a different machine and resume there just by double clicking.
- Integrated disk, partition and image management, including creating encrypted disk images through the UI, and restoring images to drives.
Just a few things keeping me on this platform.
Oh also, when I upgraded my 2013 mbp to a 2015, migrating was trivial, as both laptops set up an adhoc wifi and transferred everything 1-to-1 without having to do anything. My customized Unix environment that lived though 3 or 4 major OS upgrades transplanted as if nothing changed.
Linux doesn't want to provide that level of convenience because it requires too much cat herding and agreement, while Microsoft can't without breaking years of legacy crap.
> I hear a variation of this semi-often
And I read that cookie-cutter response almost every time. Fine. Whatever. We have different experiences. I accept yours (because I think most people are more-or-less truthful). You don't accept mine (because ?).
> I honestly think it comes down to things like macOS being more animated by default, having 3D shadows under every window, the dock enlarging the icons as you scroll pass them, your coworkers having a Mac as a status symbol etc. rather than some big technical hurdle
Feel free. "Honestly think" any invented story you wish.
I was actually genuinely interested in you expanding what is actually harder, or rather what needs 'managing', I am not doubting your story, I just find it somewhat hard to wrap my mind around the specifics. I don't really personally care if you use Linux or not, but I am kind of tired of always hearing that 'I don't want to manage stuff' talk, without any specifics as to what that actually means.
Well I'll take you at your word that you're interested and 'not doubting' my story. But can you at least see why that isn't the impression I got from reading your comment? You even said you thought people were swayed by bouncing animations and fancy docks! [Edit: and that very dismissive status symbol comment - believe me, you'd laugh at that if you saw me in my crude rainforest shack, with nothing resembling a developer's office within 100 miles] FWIW, which isn't much, I always auto-hide docks, and DE preference is roughly i3/sway > Gnome > macOS > Windows.
Linux use for me isn't so much a matter of large technical hurdles, but the death of a thousand cuts. By the time of my last f/t Linux use round (just a couple of weeks ago) I didn't have any outstanding tech issues. There was nonessential hardware I couldn't get working at all or well (fingerprint scanner, SD card reader, gpu switching), but I could live with that.
It's more a matter of having a constant barrage of small issues, often with new software I install, each of which is quite soluble, but only after reading documentation (often poor). That's just not how I want to spend my time. I'm not going to enumerate the issues because, as I say, by and large I solved them. They are mostly trivial but constant. I would rather have spent that time listening to music, or learning Mandarin.
I keep logs of all my computer admin & troubleshooting in markdown files. I've been roughly 50/50 linux and windows over the last year. Eyeballing the logs, it's clearly true for me - Windows gives me hardly any issues to solve at all. I install stuff. It works. I get on with my work and the rest of my life. In contrast I have vast reams of notes about the various little niggles I had with Ubuntu and then Fedora.
[Edit: sorry - I forgot your I just find it somewhat hard to wrap my mind around the specifics. So just one example. Nothing big, but bear in mind I'd have something like this at least 3 or 4 times a week. I want to be able to dial down power use sometimes - if I'm low on battery, doing undemanding stuff and won't be near an outlet for a while. Windows: I didn't have to read any docs. Click on battery icon, and slide left on the popup control. Fedora: click around in gnome and find nothing. Search for info on how the Gnome power management interacts with whatever service is started by systemd. Find nothing up to date (Fedora doc on the topic was from version 14 or 17 and bore no resemblance to my version 30). Read up a bit on tlp and powertop, but still unclear on their relationship to whatever Gnome does. Find broken links to relevant AskFedora posts because they've deleted all the old pages moving to Discourse. Ask a question. Get no answer. I could have solved it eventually with a bit more reading, sure. But like most things I wanted to do, it would take orders of magnitude more time to figure out than on macOS or Windows.]
You didn't exactly share your story, so we have to make stuff up ;)
Actually you don't - I did give my reason for not committing to linux, despite in some ways preferring it, which is that it took up too much of my time to manage, compared to either macOS or Windows. What do you want, proof? Evidence that I'm not a paid Apple-and-Microsoft corporate shill?
I just wanted to make a joke to release what I found to be unnecessary tension.
Right, sorry - I'm sure I'm not the first person to be humourless on the internet ;)
I moved away from the Mac for 3D work a few years back just because CUDA based rendering engines were such a game changer. I was totally expecting the experience to just be gritting my teeth and dealing with Windows for the power, but actually I've been pleasantly surprised that it's honestly improved a lot and MS is taking the approach of tackling one or two pain points a year consistently, like modernizing the Terminal this year and I'm sure one day they'll get to Explorer which is the last thing that bugs me.
I also bought a Surface Go recently and this has convinced me I could move away from Mac completely (To a Surface Pro) if need be, the industrial design is excellent, the keyboard is an absolute joy to type on and it's so versatile, like a "Pro" machine should be.
With WSL, you might as well run Windows and do all Linux development there as well.
To an extent. Speed is an issue (might be fixed with WSL2). The other issue is that some parts are missing, i.e. systemd.
It gets you pretty far, but not all the way. I guess for most people in most cases its fine.
the touchpad performance on the mac is second to none. Can modern windows or linux come even close?
> Can modern windows or linux come even close?
The Surface line trackpads are extremely close and their keyboards actually surpass current Apple boards.
I tested them all (well, the main contenders) and even the flagship Surface Book trackpad is not comparable to a current MacBook. The Surface Book trackpad is like almost identical to a MacBook from around 2012-2013 era.
Admittedly the current MacBook trackpad is too big - but is otherwise functionally perfect in terms of its multi-touch and haptic feedback.
I guess touchpads must be far more important to some of you than they are to me. I'll only touch mine on the rare occasion I'm lazily reading on my laptop rather than a tablet. I'd hardly miss if it stopped working.
Absolutely not. The good thing is that any extended development session calls for an external monitor, keyboard, and mouse/trackpad.
Also, you can use the external Apple trackpad they sell with any OS.
> The good thing is that any extended development session calls for an external monitor, keyboard, and mouse/trackpad.
For you. I do all my development on a 13" laptop.
Have you done any iOS development in Xcode on that 13" MPB of yours? Unless you have excellent eyesight and use a screen resolution that gives you the max real estate, it's incredibly frustrating to use the code assistant editor, or to run the simulator.
I must have spent a couple thousand hours of iOS development on it. I use the default 1280x800@2x resolution with Xcode filling the screen (but not in fullscreen).
I do all my work on a vanilla 13" MBP, it works just fine. I also use 13" Linux and Windows laptops almost daily, and the "touchpad experience" there is indeed painful.
> Also, you can use the external Apple trackpad they sell with any OS.
I think the problem isn't the hardware, but the software (or more likely a combination of both). The MBP touchpad under Windows with Bootcamp is also quite terrible.
No.
Agreed. But you can hack their replacement programs to extend the life of the newer (post 2015) models. There are a few battery replacement programs on MacBook Pro’s (e.g. https://www.apple.com/support/13inch-macbookpro-battery-repl...) and there is also a keyboard replacement program (https://www.apple.com/support/keyboard-service-program-for-m...). Replacing either practically gives you all new internals because of they way everything is soldered on. I just did that on my 2016 model and it should hopefully last me now a few more years.
If it’s any consolation (probably the opposite) my 2017 MBP, without Touch Bar, has gotten about 2h battery when running a now-typical corporate “pro” stack (docker, slack, Outlook, etc) sind day one. If only running UNIx stuff plus maybe a browser I can push it to 6.
Every time I get out my 2013 MBP (not for the day job) I remember what a computer could be.
Slack and Outlook - I either use the web versions or just use my phone. They are both cross platform battery killers.
Docker - I don’t use it, but if it’s anything like the VMs I use to run, it also kill batteries.
I’m better off provisioning all of that on our DEV AWS Account and just connecting via my phone’s hotspot if I don’t have a reliable network connection and running very few things locally.
I recently discovered the web Slack and am trying to use it more. Seems to help, which ought to be a huge embarrassment to $WORK or whatever they call it.
I used to use Outlook Web and might go back. The native client is a nightmare but does some useful things the web one doesn’t.
Docker has been a huge boon to my dev efforts, usually much lighter weight than an old school VM, so I’m no hater but if I had to work on battery more often I’d probably do the same thing, spend a few bucks on AWS and only work online but with better battery life.
All that still won’t get me more than 6h though.... :-(
> I used to use Outlook Web and might go back. The native client is a nightmare but does some useful things the web one doesn’t.
Is Mail.app, or some other mail client, an option for you?
Why didn't you just replace the battery?
I am still rocking the MBP 2015 and recently changed the battery. Did you consider doing the same? That is, updating batteries instead of getting the new ones?
I upgraded from 2015 to 2018 at work recently and then went back to IT and asked if I could change my mind and trade back. The 2015 is nicer.
The 2018 model shouldn't be called an upgrade in any way.
I much prefer the touchpad. It's so nice being able to click the top part easily.
The 2015 Macbook Pro has the Force Touch trackpad as well (so no physical movement), so it has the exact same feel when you click at the top of the trackpad. Everything before the 2015 did have that issue though, you're correct. Never really bothered me though to be honest. The nicest part of the FT trackpad if you ask me is the ability to make trackpad clicks almost silent, and the fact that it's (supposedly) less likely to break.
Turn off haptics and use tap to click. Once you go tap you'll never go back?
It's faster…
Not in a way that I could perceive at work. I guess both the 2015 and 2018 are "plenty fast" for the web development work that I do.
Obligatory "Benjamin Button Reviews the New MacBook Pro" link (late 2016): https://blog.pinboard.in/2016/10/benjamin_button_reviews_the...
> Gone is the gimmicky TouchBar, gone are the four USB-C ports that forced power users to carry a suitcase full of dongles. In their place we get a cornucopia of developer-friendly ports: two USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt 2 ports, a redesigned power connector, and a long-awaited HDMI port.
Can I have one of those please?
I still think the PowerBook 540c was the best Apple laptop that I ever used.
Although I had switched over to Windows by the time of the Pismo G3/500 (voted the best ever), I had my 540c upgraded with a PowerPC, and got many years of delightful service out of it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerBook_500_series
I had a 5300 for a while and it was a piece of crap compared to the sturdy souped-up 540c.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerBook_5300
It had two big symmetrical removable battery compartments, so you could switch out one at a time and keep running on as many batteries as you have pre-charged without interruption! Plus there was an external dual battery charger.
And you could swap a hard disk drive or CDROM into one of those bays.
Plus it was fat enough that it was able to cool so it didn't overheat all the time like an MBP.
Anorexic thinness isn't a thing for me: I'd trade a lot of thinness for huge removable batteries and great ventilation.
https://web.archive.org/web/20060324140419/http://www.insane...
I never really liked the 500 series - I preferred the 1400 (I know, weirdo). The Intel MacBooks have had their moments (glass trackpads, SD card readers, quad core in the 2011 15"), but almost all of them had design defects of some kind:
* Original white and black MacBooks had sharp edges and cracking wrist rests
* 2nd Gen MBP had 8600GT chip death issues
* First Unibody MB/MBP had glossy screen not suitable for indoor lighting
* First Polycarbonate Unibody had chassis cracking and rubber base warping issues (but was otherwise an excellent machine, too bad they didn't resolve those issues and keep selling it...)
* 2011 15" will all eventually fail due to faulty GPUs
* 2012 Retina MBs had underpowered GPUs
* Retina MBPs had soldered RAM and proprietary SSDs (10.13's NVMe support for those older machines with a simple adaptor has made a complete mockery of anyone defending Apple's stupid proprietary pinout, too), glued batteries and display coating problems
In saying that, the original aluminium unibody was a spectacular design. It felt so much more premium than any other machine of the time it was absurd.
I personally think absolute peak Apple notebook was the 2012 MacBook Pro 15" with the Anti-Glare display. All the best things about the pre-retina Unibody design, but serviceable, with USB3, no known serious GPU or CPU flaws, and none of the retina issues such as staingate or glued battery.
Had they made a Haswell revision of that to get the better battery life I'm reasonably convinced it would still be a seriously popular machine today.
>* First Unibody MB/MBP had glossy screen not suitable for indoor lighting
This didn't affect me (and it didn't change until Retina, I think), but EM209 <https://randyzwitch.com/broken-macbook-pro-hinge-fixed-free/... hit me twice, the second time not covered by Apple.
Oh the glued hinge right behind the hot air vent is hilarious. I forgot about that one.
Yes, glossy screen had an anti-reflection coating added for Retina models that then proceeded into staingate. To make matters worse they took away the matte anti-glare option entirely because they thought their new compromise was best. Yelp.
I got my 2015 mpb battery replaced. I'm back to smooth sailing. Always plugged in so it'll last as long as possible.
It had bad battery bloat but when I got it back from apple care everything looked new.
What does Apple recommend wrt keeping a MBP always plugged in? That's what I do almost all the time, but I'm curious what they say about it.
Battery will last its longest if it's reasonably frequently used.
Ultimately if you want the longest battery longevity, keep it between 50% and 85% charged, and keep the machine cool.
Right, obviously heat is an enemy of li-ion batteries. My understanding (and I could be wrong) is that if a MBP is plugged in the power bypasses the battery once it reaches 100% charge, correct?
That is my understanding as well. Most of my macbooks (I've owned 3) have been plugged in the majority of the time, with at least some time every few days spent on battery power unplugged. I'd say you're fine as long as you're using the battery at least once every 2-3 weeks -- longer than that might not be good for the battery over long periods of time.
I have no dongle issue (I rarely plug anything into my laptop), but the Touch Bar was terrible for me. I was finally able to use Karabiner to suppress escape (I mapped caps lock to esc which is more convenient anyway).
I can see the Touch Bar probably makes sense for people who look at the keyboard while they type, which might be a majority for all I know, but for touch typists it's at best worthless, and the accidentally triggering is terrible.
I think the maxed out 2017 Air (before the retina display) is their best, if you're not doing much video or too much ML.
This is my personal laptop but the screen is really crap. My work laptop is a 2015 13” MBP. Work recently offered to upgrade me to a new MBP. I declined.
The Air's display isn't that bad. It's a good TN panel with a good non-retina resolution (1440x900 on the 13"), decent contrast, and good (for TN) viewing angles. It's certainly a big step up from the frankly abysmal base WXGA TN displays of many Lenovo/HP/Dell machines.
But yes, it's not even close to the retina IPS displays.
I own two of them. And a 2015 13” MBP with a Retina display. And a current iPad mini and an iPhone XS. And a BenQ 32” 4K display. And before that I had a 2009 13” MBP.
All of the non-iOS displays are calibrated via a munki.
The MBA display from this generation (my kids have the 11” MBAs with basically the same crap display) is the worst I’ve used by far. So bad it’s basically useless for photo editing. The contrast stinks. The color gamut stinks. You can’t look at it off-axis at all.
No no, I’ve looked at a lot of displays in my life. It’s my least favorite. The 2009 13” MBP display was better.
That there are non-Apple laptop displays that are even worse is cold comfort.
Haha, never pick up a base model ThinkPad then. Some of those displays are just ridiculously bad.
I measured the contrast of my 2013 MBA at ~800:1 with my Spyder3 back in the day, which is pretty OK for TN. It got somewhat close to 60% sRGB coverage.
For reference, my ThinkPad X230's TN display measured ~180:1 and couldn't even get to 50% sRGB.
No it isn't suitable for photo editing, but then no TN display really is due to the viewing angle colour and contrast shift. I haven't measured the 2015+ models but understand that the actual panel panel is meant to be the same. It's not what I would personally choose, but I thought it was acceptable at the time, even next to the TN MBP displays.
Just spent $200 on new battery and install for my 2015 MBP. I wish I'd opted for the 1t model vs 512g drive, but was getting refurb and at the time they had no 1t left - wasn't sure they'd have any more (friend of mine snagged one a few weeks later!)
> I wish I'd opted for the 1t model vs 512g drive
Hi there. You can buy a sintech adapter on amazon that will let you put a standard NVME SSD into a macbook air/retina 2013-2015 model (and maybe some others).
It costs about $20.
With that, you can choose some of the cheap, new, fast, 2TB disks and get a massive improvement in speed and storage capacity for relatively little money. Google around; there are some recommended drives.
From what I've read the 'long' version of the sintech is the best one to buy. The upgrade process is on ifixit; it's super easy. You will also need a torx screwdriver; again you can buy a 'mac fixing kit' for $5-10 on amazon etc.
thanks!
Battery replacements are fairly cheap. I did that with my 2014 air and it's now good for another three or four years.
Was it not possible to replace the battery?
I do not mean officially, just get one in there, unofficially.
> I feel too old to compile my own kernel for a glitchy wifi driver, and Windows? Nah, get away...
Linux hasn't had issues with the major wifi chipsets in ages. It's as plug and play as Mac and Windows are. There are plenty of reasons people might choose to avoid Linux, but drivers (outside of specialty, niche or obscure hardware) aren't really a reason anymore.
Graphics drivers are a constant source of trouble and confusion (so many driver projects and PPAs). My gf has a Linux laptop that stops working after every dist upgrade, and it's always some driver issue (or yet another Ubuntu NetworkManager bug).
Also, if the system isn't shut down cleanly, it will never just boot up again in spite of supposedly using a journaling file system. She always has to run e2fsck in manual mode (i.e confirming every single repair), specifying the address of a backup superblock.
Printing and scanning is broken as well. Not for some niche hardware but for one of the most widely deployed HP printer/scanners.
So on her particular laptop, Linux is anything but plug and play. If you're saying that Linux works well on your laptop I will believe you. It has never worked well an any laptop I owned and drivers have always been the main reason for that.
I believe you cannot simply run Linux any laptop. You have to buy a laptop specifically for Linux.
I've used laptops and desktops with GPUs from all 3 manufacturers. The only issues I've had were either really minor (ie. About the same as the other platforms), or with graphics switching (ie. Bumblebee). If you're just using the recommended drivers for the hardware I'd be extremely surprised if it was as unstable as you describe.
For reference, it's recommended you use the open source drivers for Intel and AMD, and the proprietary drivers for NVIDIA. No PPAs required.
The place where I remember a gap was laptops with dual graphics cards designed to use a low power one for light duty and a more powerful one for heavy duty tasks.
That said, avoiding that mess is fine for a non-gaming laptop. And I've had no trouble installing Linux on Dell, Asus, or Lenovo. Many configurations specifically listed Ununtu as an OS option (but why bother getting it preinstalled), so sure any of those would be fine. They're not especially rare anymore.
> I believe you cannot simply run Linux any laptop. You have to buy a laptop specifically for Linux.
No you don't. Ive had debian on a lenovo laptop for five years with none of the issues you speak of. Printing and scanning work great (dell and brother printers). It boots fine after a hard power off. No update has ever fubard anything. I have no more trouble hooking up to a projector than anybody else (my boss has a mac and complains about hooking up to projectors).
I've also run linux without issue on prior laptops from toshiba, acer and sony and some off brand thing from 10 years ago. I have a brother who runs linux on a dell laptop just fine (and has for years). A co-worker runs linux on a newish sony laptop. I guess I'm just living in the perfect intersection of hardware that just magically always works with linux. Or maybe, linux just works.
> Linux hasn't had issues with the major wifi chipsets in ages.
… except (ironically) if you use Linux on a MacBook Pro with Touch Bar. In this case there are severe issues with the wifi firmware making wifi completely unusable: https://github.com/Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux#wi-fi
The annoying thing is that for once this is an actual bug in the firmware and the upstream doesn't care about fixing it. It's simply not fixable on Linux side without rewriting the whole wifi stack to use Mac's model. It's not the typical "Linux hasn't got a driver", but without digging into the issue it looks like that.
I thought the whole point of this thread was to avoid using Macbooks so how is this relevant?
Driver for my wifi card under linux crashes. Granted it is a 'staging' driver, but it's still a pretty bad look.
I had a miserable time with the Broadcom drivers as well-- I actually abandoned them completely to instead use an adapter with Ralink driver. No hiccups, let alone crashes, since.
No. It's better than no driver. (I'll assume it works at all in some capacity.) While there are some companies that make wifi cards you can't use easily, that's just one thing you check before buying, just as e.g. general reliability/performance.
That's way worse than no driver. By 'crash', I mean the whole kernel crashes. And, by the way, it does advertise linux support (for linux 4.10, but that's in the fine print).
Linux on Macbooks is still crap though...
Runs great on my 2014 MBP.
AFAIK dual-display over thunderbolt is just not working very well for example (there are issues when going to/back from sleep). I've tried switching to Linux on my 2013 MBP for a couple of weeks, and gave up.
yeah no shit, apple only wants you to run macos on their hardware.
Directly from Apple’s support page.
“Install Windows 10 on your Mac with Boot Camp Assistant”
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201468
Has Apple ever officially stated that they support running Linux on Macs?
Well you did say ever....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MkLinux
Huh, TIL.
I can only come to the same conclusion. Typing this on a 2018 MacBook 15 inch, and it's a disaster. I still keep accidentally hitting the Touchbar ten times per day while typing (it's not a press-bar, duh)
My favorite problem is activating Siri when I use Touch ID (yes, I know you can remove Siri from the Touch Bar). I miss the physical escape key. But the Touch Bar is great for volume control and scrobbling. Touch ID is awesome though (if I manager to hit the right area), I really miss Touch ID on my Linux machine.
I need a dongle for _everything and their mother_
Don't get me started on the dongles. I was a fairly early adopter (had the first generation 12" MacBook). They actually sold USB-C adapters initially where the USB-A port only supports USB 2.0. Yep 80 Euro for an adapter that only does USB 2.0.
Then their USB-C HDMI adapter only support HiDPI at 30Hz (due to supporting an older HMDI version). Again, unbelievable for an adapter that was initially 80 Euro.
So, I had to buy a USB-C <-> DisplayPort adapter to hook up a HiDPI screen at 60Hz (third-party USB-C <-> HDMI adapters universally had bad reviews). The adapter works fine on the MacBook Pro 2016. I updated later to the MacBook Pro 2018, and for some mysterious reason the adapter does not work on the MacBook Pro 2018, no output at all (still works fine with my wife's 2016). So I had to buy yet another adapter... (What's the point of USB-C as a universal interface if it is not universal?)
I wish they would just offer a variant with physical function keys and a Touch Bar. They’d have plenty of room for both if they reduced the comically oversized touchpad.
From what I can recall, the reason why the USBC to DP adapter isn't working on the 2018 models is that the macbooks now have special end to end encryption (read: DRM and forced market penetration) to only allow you to use "apple authorized" dongles.
I have been using a System76 Darter Pro (max cpu and ram) with Pop!_OS 19.04 and it’s been a dream to use. My day to day workload includes docker, node.js services, Postgres, mongodb, and gis tasks. I get about 6 hours of battery life while working and about 8 or so when doing non-work tasks. It’s the real deal. I’m also driving a 4K monitor with the laptop display on as well. Smooth as butter. However, I’ve tried some modeling with Sweet Home 3D. That didn’t go so hot. The Darter can use thunderbolt external gpus though and I’ve been meaning to pick one up and see how well it works
Pop OS on a T series Lenovo have been fault free for me. Ive run it on T480, T580 and T480S. The T490 which has just been released has a much brighter panel so opt for that one if you can.
Looking into Pop OS, I found these useful links:
https://pop.system76.com/docs/difference-between-pop-ubuntu/
https://www.osboxes.org/pop_os-19-04-and-18-04-vm-images-ava...
I like PopOS but that first link is terrible.
It only reinforces the idea that PopOS is little more than a reskinned Ubuntu (which is not a bad thing!). The only non different default setting is the availability of a recovery partition, while the other features mentioned are basically just different defaults.
They also include better support for NVidia drivers vs stock Ubuntu. Thats very appreciable when you have a laptop with integrated and discrete GPU.
Exactly, so why do you not just use Ubuntu?
> Exactly, so why do you not just use Ubuntu?
For us who don't prefer Mac OS:
It copied way to much from Apple.
The alt-tab is in particular has been a usability disaster for some of us I think.
For a while I'd install Ubuntu and try from time to time but now I've given up on them.
I keep wondering whether I should try Linux again. Is KDE any better than Ubuntu?
For what it's worth, KDE [Plasma] is just a desktop environment - you can run it on Ubuntu.
As of 2019, I'm fairly happy with Linux on the desktop; usability is really solid, WINE is significantly better than years before, and many games will play perfectly fine with basically no manual configuration thanks to projects like DXVK.
I'm running KDE on Arch. And, I'm definitely happier than I was on Windows.
Depends on what you want from your desktop:
There's a number of people who can't stand KDE because of lack of consistency in padding etc (I have to take their word for it because I cannot see such things).
Often such people seem to enjoy using Macs and I defend that choice.
Personally I prefer Linux or even Windows to Macs because of (drumroll) consistency.
I want my keyboard to look mostly the same year in and year out. I want the layout to be roughly similar either I sit on my laptop keyboard or an external keyboard. I want modifier keys to work the same between apps. As a heavy multitasker I want my alt-tab to work the way it used when I learned it.
As for why KDE/Linux instead of Windows I just really like it for some reason. On top of that I prefer the Linux ecosystem, the reduced build times I get when I compile, the snappier git etc etc.
I recently got a Purism Librem 13 and it's been golden. The only thing I miss from MacBooks is the touchpad. I did replace their PureOS with stock Ubuntu, which was a breeze and probably improved performace due to proprietary drivers.
I've not compiled my own kernel in the last 5 years and all of my hardware has been supported. Not saying that you can't run into h/w compatibility issues with Linux today, but I don't think that you should keep yourself from using Linux as a daily driver if you're worried about hardware compatibility. Just get a thinkpad, and you'll be golden.
>I feel too old to compile my own kernel for a glitchy wifi driver
You can buy hardware that comes with Linux support including drivers. Changing your workflow is always a pain though, so Linux with a decent DE like KDE could be a suitable alternative for you but because of the big change you could get frustrated and hate the experience.
I am also at that period in life where I don't get pleasure from tinkering with compiling custom kernels, making the PC boot 10% faster, use the latest and greatest... so for me Kubuntu LTS fits perfectly it may be a good option for you too.
> I feel too old to compile my own kernel for a glitchy wifi driver, and Windows? Nah, get away...
You can buy laptops with various flavours of Linux pre-installed from a number of different manufacturers right now, you know that right? In the distant past I used to regularly compile my kernels out of necessity and also out of curiosity and trying to eke every last drop of performance from my systems. Now? No way. Have not done that in ages. And you never need to compile a kernel to get a driver working these days, every now and again what you might find is that you have to blacklist a driver or drop a manufacturers firmware into place. In truth, I had to do the exact same on a Macbook to get a non Apple blessed SSD running at full tilt many years ago.
Linux, by any reasonable metric, stands shoulder-to-shoulder with MacOS and Windows today. I can't believe in 2019 with Chromebooks, Lenovo, Dell, Purism, System76 (and those are the ones that I know off the top of my head) you still think compiling kernel drivers is a thing. Even Microsoft makes Linux apps these days: VS Code, Skype, SQL Server, … so that's got to tell you something. The real hold-out is Adobe. I'd love if IBM bought Adobe (after their Redhat purchase) and made all Adobe's apps cross-platform.
Not sure what your usage is like, but after being on OSX for 10 years and going back to Windows 10, I don't miss it much. Windows 10 is pretty great these days.
Zoom on Macs is so much more convenient than on Win10, even with aerozoom, I also tried the sysinternals zoom: no dice, Win10 usability is still kluncky. I got both and still use the 2015 Pro a lot more than the way more beefy oled-screen Dell.
I have Windows running along side macOS on my Mac Pro. It boots faster and the video screams... when it’s not installing updates. Seriously. It’s worse than my xBox.
The only reason I want a Mac again is for MacOS's hiDPI support. I can't stand regular screens anymore, and from what I've heard, Windows 10 hiDPI support is non-existent, even for non fractional scaling.
Using Windows 10 forces one to either use a low resolution screen, or deal with the consequences (most non-flagship software fails at scaling).
And that's not even getting into font rendering issues. Windows 10 can't render don't properly, except in design apps such as InDesign, for some reason. As for Linux compatibility, Win10 does a semi-decent job emulating Linux system calls with WSL.
Fonts are terrible on Windows. It feels like nitpicking, but as a former designer, I notice. Constantly.
> Windows 10 hiDPI support is non-existent
This is not true.
If you purchase a Dell developer laptop or any Lenovo Thinkpad you dont have to worry about hardware support for Linux. Works out of the box.
And get a refurbished T440p with a quad core CPU that's fast and costs you a couple of hundred of euros. Replace parts when they break. No need to pay the premium for the new models.
Yup I was actually typing this on a T440p. Excellent deal with this laptop.
I had to wait three months for Lenovo to replace my X1 Extreme's motherboard because switching to discreet graphics to install Linux bricked it.
That must have been a wonderfull f*up on the part of your service center.
Here where I live they would have to refund you the machine, if they weren't capable to repair it within 30 days (while under warranty, which I assume X1 Extreme was). The only manufacturer, whose service is able to achieve 30 days here is Apple ;).
With Lenovo, and previously IBM, I've had experience to have issues fixed NBD, even when I was retail customer.
Well shipping was like 30 days late so they tried to say it wasn't eligible for return.
I just got it back and as much as I want to use it I'm trying to return it still...
Lenovo standard customer support sucks ass. Pay a little more and they route you to IBM support (at least in Canada). Those people are godly. Next business day, go to your home, fix whatever you want, accidental damage, whatever, all covered.
I love those guys.
Running a 2017 MBP model at work here, have all those issues and more. My Bluetooth chip somehow freezes without fail after X hours of usage and requires a hard power cycle to fix, often if I put it to sleep on a night I wake it up to a kernel panic message.
I have a 2013 MBP at home that I still use every night, the worst thing that has happened to it in all those years of daily usage is 3 of the feet have fallen off. The thing has been an absolute champ and I would have dropped serious money on another by now if they hadn't changed it.
Interesting, I’ve never experienced these usability problems. Maybe accidentally hit the touchbar once or twice a day for the first week, before I got used to it. BTW you can customize the touchbar to move stuff around so it’s not in the way of your fingers (e.g. top-right corner). But yeah it sucks and there’s no real use-case for it, the standard keys are way better. The only thing I like about it is the TouchID, but they’ve showed with air that it can be a standalone thing.
The usb-c transition happened too early, it’s annoying that you can’t even plug in an usb if you forgot to bring the dongle. The nice thing about it is being able to plug the charger at any port, but that’s no reason to have only the usb-c ports.
Agree on the OS, I’ve probably bought into their ecosystem way too much to make a smooth transition away. Also the trackpad experience is still superior. But the list of reasons why I would buy a macbook after this one bites the big one is getting shorter.
Not meant as a dig at you, but your comment reminds me so much of this recent HN story: https://www.derrickreimer.com/essays/2019/05/17/im-walking-a...
Guy spent a year trying to build a better slack, but then finds out people love to complain about slack, but will not make any steps to actually try any alternatives.
May suggest running Ubuntu in a VM for a while, see how it works for you? Not that that will help address driver issues.
Fwiw, it's my current setup - I'm currently trying to decide between installing it outside the VM, or migrating to a cloud desktop.
Unix still isn't a great desktop, but, as the alternatives get worse, it's coming into its own.
You mean Linux (not Unix). MacOS is a certified UNIX operating system.
>I feel too old to compile my own kernel for a glitchy wifi driver
You'll be happy to hear about dkms then. Just install the driver, let your package manager update it and it will recompile on its own for whatever kernel you're using.
This is if you even need such a thing.
I'm a UX engineer who recently switched from Macbook Pro to the Ubuntu version of Dell XPS 13. Now that I use Figma, a web-based design app, I no longer need any Mac-native design software. I am pretty pleased!
The XPS 13 has an edge-to-edge display/small footprint, the top of the line whiskey lake processor, 16GB of RAM, and a crazy-good battery life. (I opted for 1080p screen instead of 4k to get that 10+ hr battery life.) All of this for <$1200 with my employer's discount. The equivalent would be 2k+ on a Mac.
There have been one or two hiccups worth mentioning: 1) the trackpad, while not terrible, isn't as good as Mac's. 2) Multi-monitor support on Ubuntu hasn't been perfect. I couldn't get 18.04 to work out of the box with my three monitors; however, once I upgraded to Ubuntu 19.04, it worked out of the box. Phew.
Pretty happy with this setup!
That sounds awesome, except a low resolution screen (1080p) is a no-go in 2019. So far I haven't heard of anyone being pleased with Linux or Windows milquetoast hiDPI support.
I am still using a MacBook Pro 2018 as my laptop, but do my primary work on an Intel NUC8i5BEH with Linux. I work remotely from my home, so I rarely need the laptop anymore.
The NUC has the same quad core Intel i5-8259U, with double the RAM and double the SSD size at approximately a quarter of the price of MacBook Pro. If you don't have an existing screen, you can buy a good Dell HiDPI screen for ~500 Euros.
The Linux NUC feels much faster than the MacBook Pro, probably because of faster syscalls on Linux, and generally better optimizations in Linux. But for me the killer feature is NixOS. NixOS has a steep learning curve, but with atomic updates/rollbacks, declarative system configuration, and the ability to have virtualenvs with any package, it is hard to go back to a system that does not have these features. (I use Nix on macOS, but it is more of a gateway drug than the whole experience.)
Of course, there are some sharp edges, Bluetooth headset (including Airpods) support is better on macOS, you can't beat Microsoft Office for Office compatibility (duh), and Skype works better on macOS.
Same thing here (Intel NUC + NixOS).
Recently I purchased an HP Envy with and AMD chip for $550 USD and got myself used to sway + i3statusbar-rust. Everything is simple, can be backed up using git and I use at most 300mb of ram after boot. Computer startup is less than 10 seconds and shutdown is less than 3.
I think this is the third time I feel this way about computers. First one was when someone told me about Apache and Linux in 2000, second when I discovered postgis + geodjango in 2007.
I have the previous generation NUC, a NUC7i5BNH, as my home computer. I put it in a Akasa fanless case, and it's wonderful — it's completely silent.
I use Kubuntu, since I've been using KDE for 15 years. I use 5% of the configuration options — just by looking, you'd think it was a default install — but I really miss that 5% if I'm on a Mac or Windows.
Came here to say the same thing. If you can avoid using a laptop, I know many people can't, a desktop buys you a lot of freedom.
Freedom to choose good components, a fanless case, and a functional OS like NixOS.
I've been using a desktop at work for the last ten years and hopefully to the foreseeable future. With a price of a MacBook pro you get 16-24 cores, good cooling facilities, 32-64 GB of RAM and excellent Linux support.
I built a desktop a few months ago after 10 years of laptops. Wow, what a difference time makes! It's incredible what you can get on even a modest budget when speccing desktop components.
I also have a desktop at work, along with a couple of other people.
If I need a laptop for a meeting or to travel, I can either use "my" 5-year-old one, or the spare new one. Or the conference room desktop, which has a real keyboard and mouse.
I also work at a company heavily reliant on Microsoft Office. It makes it hard to pick any OS that isn't Windows or Mac.
Cloud apps like Google Docs, Hangouts, Slack etc.. were supposed to make the OS less important. It's too bad we're not there yet.
Why not just use Windows then? If you really need *sh and command line tools, just get WSL, msys or cygwin.
Maybe first move to using Microsoft apps online?
Why don't they use Google Docs instead of MS Office? It's 2019...
Multitude of reasons:
* your documents cannot leave your company network,
* you need features not supported by gdocs,
* you need to work offline,
* you need 100% compatibility for produced files,
* (fill in your favorites)
Lack of MS Office (non-365) availability for Linux is quite a barrier to Linux adoption in more places.
For running Adobe products, I use Virtualbox running Windows 10 on my Linux laptop. The speed of hypervisors has gotten so good recently I genuinely can't tell the difference over running Windows natively, even though this laptop is 8 years old now. Everything "just works" and so I don't see why which programs you need to run should determine what brand of computer you buy or what OS you run on it, any more.
I guess the one exception (other than gaming?) is if you need to run any MacOS only software. (I can't even name any, other than that written by Apple, off the top of my head.) I have Mojave running in Virtualbox, but it's noticeably slower than both Linux natively and Windows 10. That could be the 8 year old laptop thing again.
I see a huge difference running WIndows in Virtualbox. Possibly because I'm doing everything wrong but it sucks for graphics stuff like Adobe products and I can't even get it to hit 60fps like my standard linux desktop.
We're still a way off passing through graphics cards etc in a 'just works' sort of way (yes there's hugely involved ways to get it done) so it's going to be a short while before I could agree with you that Windows VM's are fully ready to replace native installs for situations like mine.
My main system is currently a late 2012 maxed out Mac Mini that struggles with Adobe products. I also miss Linux on my desktop so your set up is appealing to me. Looking to use Lightroom, Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop. By chance have you passed through a drawing pad?
I have not, but Virtualbox supposedly supports passing through the USB protocol itself, so I imagine it works; at least it's supposed to work?
Yes, you can pass USB devices through most hypervisors, including Virtualbox.
For example, I tried a smartcard reader inside VM (host: macOS, hypervisor Virtualbox, guest: Windows) and it worked.
On the flip side I switched from a Dell (XPS 15 9570) to a MacBook Pro 2018 15" last August after multiple issues with the Dell.
I've not had a single issue with the MacBook Pro yet. Not a single crash/kernel panic, no keyboard issues, no T2 or TouchBar issues. I open the laptop in the morning and it wakes from sleep and works all day. I almost only ever reboot it for system updates that require it so usually every 4-6 weeks.
I'm not super keen on the keyboard but it honestly isn't horrible to type on. I do worry about reliability though. However I am at almost 300 days of zero problems where I had issues with my XPS out of the box that seems are still not fixed having looked at /r/Dell on reddit recently. Shocking that Dell have taken close to a year and things like speaker pops are not resolved.
I also had a ThinkPad but sadly Lenovos quality control isn't what it used to be and the two units I received had hardware defects. And with modern ThinkPads being less serviceable (the new T series has soldered RAM, CPU and WiFi?!) I can see even Lenovo starting to go the Apple way with soldered storage within two years.
Also while I do no deny Apple screwed up with the butterfly keyboard I do feel all the attention being on Apple is a little unfair and can lead people to think Dell, Lenovo, Microsoft are much more reliable which just isn't true in my experience. In the past few years Microsoft's Surface line has without question been the worst laptop experience I have ever had with software and hardware issues not to mention even less repairability than Apple laptops!
The attention on Apple really isn't unfair when you a) compare their 2016+ machines to their 2015 ones, and b) dig a little deeper into some of the design flaws of the machines beyond the keyboard.
For example:
* The trackpad on 2016+ models is too large for many users who experience palm rejection issues. * The display cable on 2016 and 2017 machines was too short, and is now starting to cause the issue known as "flexgate". It's almost a given that with enough use, every one of these machines will suffer this failure. To make matters worse, unlike the 2015 machines where the display cable could be replaced on its own, the entire display assembly is glued together on 2016+ machines and has to be replaced as a whole unit. * Stupid electrical decisions such as putting pins for high voltage backlight power and low voltage data signalling right next to eachother mean that there's a good chance the machine will fry itself if it gets at all humid inside (most machines do at some stage, especially if used on a lap). Most other notebooks do not do this and are much more durable in this regard. * The storage being soldered is fucking braindead. Apart from being planned obsolescence due to NAND flash's finite lifespan and macOS's increasing hunger for storage space, data recovery is not possible without a proprietary system to connect to a lifeboat port on 2016-2017 machines. 2018 machines have no such port and at this stage, there is no known way to recover data from working flash chips on a dead logic board without board-level repair.
Apple made far better computers in 2015. The competition also being shit doesn't excuse Apple's regressions.
> Apple made far better computers in 2015. The competition also being shit doesn't excuse Apple's regressions.
Totally agree with you there.
My opinion on it being "unfair" on Apple is more to do with the fact that such things are not unique to Apple yet they are the only ones who get pulled up in the tech and even media.
I had two Surface devices from Microsoft; a Surface Book 2 and a Surface Laptop and both were pieces of crap yet cost the same (or there abouts) as an Apple laptop. Sure I see people complain about it here and there but no way near the level you see complaints about Apple products.
One area that bugs me quite a bit is YouTube and tech website "reviewers" such as The Verge et al. Right out the gate the 2018 15" model was ripped apart for the thermal throttling (and it should have been, it was a problem that Apple mostly fixed within a week to be fair) but the same people never mention the same or worse throttling from an XPS or Surface. Or any other long term issues those product lines have had and never been properly addressed. The XPS 15 coil whine, DPC latency, colour saturation issues, speaker crackle, squeaky spacebar, etc. All have been issues on the XPS 15 for several revisions and Dell have still hardly even acknowledged such problems.
So while I think Apple did fuck up with several design decisions on the current MBP I feel it is only fair to point out that the alternatives people often recommend come with their own set of issues as well. My Surface Laptop had a fan issue after just two days. The solution? Total unit replacement because the whole thing is glued together and you can't open it without damaging the alcantara keyboard fabric! So that meant a full system backup and restore which brought along another issue as the machine had been upgraded to Windows 10 Pro via the Windows Store but that is locked to the motherboard and ARRRRRRGH it was such a pain in the ass.
The sad truth is Dell, Apple, Lenovo, Microsoft, Asus, etc. all make shitty hardware decisions in the name of appearance and/or thinness. It sucks but it is reality. I just wish people would bitch about Dell, etc. as much as they do Apple. Maybe then they would fix things rather than deflect to Apple for being "worse" (which is false but believed to be true because of reporting).
I generally agree.
I've also defended Apple a lot in the past for usually "getting most things right" where other manufacturers just don't. And you're right, they deserve to be cut down for stupid solved-problems-a-decade-ago like coil whine and rattling fans.
My viewpoint comes from expecting better from Apple because they've been better in the past, and only have a small number of SKUs to deal with. 2006-2012 saw Apple introduce new generations that solved problems and almost unilaterally improved upon their predecessors. They made a few hiccups (such as 2008's glass displays), and 2009's non-removable batteries, but they were reasonable well-thought compromises. Apart from serviceability, the 2012-2015 Retina era did the same.
On the other hand, Dell/Lenovo/HP etc vomit product lines all over the place and have done for as long as I can remember. Seldom do they keep the same basic chassis for more than 2 releases, and even when they do they don't seem to learn lessons and iterate to improve.
In saying that, comparing 2019 XPS, Latitude, Inspiron, and ThinkPads to their 2012 counterparts show marked improvement in many aspects, and few regressions. I guess that's a sorry indictment of PC notebooks at the start of the decade more than anything else...
I guess you could call that unfair on Apple, but then you look at the price they ask for their machines and quickly forget about fairness...
This is EXACTLY what I think. While I hate the lack of reliability in the latest macbooks, I would say that the other manufacters are not doing anything better at all. The XPS 15 is full of issues and Dell doesn't even acknowledge them, the XPS 13 has basically everything soldered on apart from the SSD and the Thinkpad is going that way as well (just look at the latest X1 carbon and T490s). The Surface devices are just as expensive as the macbooks and just as impossible to repair. I won't even consider Asus/Acer because in my opinion they simply put junk conponents (with junk drivers) in their products and they're not reliable at all, even in the high price range. What's funny is that if you actually look at the thermal behaviour of thin and light laptops (go on notebookcheck.com), you'll notice that the MBP 15 is one of the best when compared to the XPS 15, X1 Extreme, Zenbook 15 Pro, etc., And yet everyone only complains about the mac. (Furthermore, I still find macOS superior to Windows 10, even if I'm a long time Windows user, but that's about personal tastes.) Personally, I've just stoppped listening to journalists, youtubers or whatever, I just read the reviews and look at the graphs on notebookcheck.com and search for potential issues on reddit/other speficis forums.
I have a late 2013 MacBook pro and the Dell precision 5530 running Ubuntu 16.04. The Precision 5530 is faster for everything except when I'm using it for video conferencing. A regular Hangouts session brings it down to its knees. I will be holding on to my 2013 MacBook pro as long as I can :).
I got a maxed out late 2013 MBP and I too am going to hold onto it as long as possible. 4 core i7, 16gb of ram, discrete gpu and it still runs like a champ. The only problem I had was that the battery recently swelled up which caused problems with the touchpad and fans, but apple ended up replacing the battery, keypad, touchpad, and casing for $300 which wasn't too bad considering ifixit wanted like $1,000 bucks for all those parts and now it feels like new.
Me too. I see little reason to upgrade it. I planned to upgrade it two years ago but am still waiting for something that's up to the expected design. More memory (more than 16 gig) would have been nice when I bought it, but that's the max Apple allowed and it can't be upgraded.
I've yet to have to replace my battery. I'm hoping that the 2019 edition is worth buying, e.g. this stuff built in: * Escape key * SD card reader * Older USB and new USB C sockets * HDMI out * >1TB SSD * magnetic power adapter
I'd also like to see touch screen but let's see. I'd give that up for all the above.
I really don't see the point in making the macbook pro an ipad with a keyboard and some extra umpf. They're totally missing the target audience.
Out of that list, you'll definitely get USB-C sockets and probably the 1TB SSD. I can't see any of the rest of it ever being on a MacBook again.
You're probably right; but it seems odd that the power adapter is such a step back
Mine is the early 2013 maxed out and also runs like a champ. The battery is going bad, so I'm glad you posted how much you paid for it. I'm really not looking forward to an upgrade.
If the battery starts to swell, get it replaced and see what Apple quotes you. I delayed it (thought the fan noise was because of dust so i tried opening it up and shooting compressed air at it and that did not work but I did notice how hard it was to close it back up) until it caused the fan to non-stop whining at an unbearable rate.
Took it in for an official check up to double-check it as i was thinking about ordering fan parts to repair it myself. They said the battery looked to be swelling which they thought was causing the insane fan noise and quoted me $200 for the battery replacement. I thought I could buy the battery cheaper but grudgingly accepted as they said it would cover all the repairs with that fee. They shipped it to a repair center and then upped the fees by $100 for labor. I again grungendly accepted it as I just wanted it fixed, I could mess up the personal repair, and having them do it saves me time.
After getting the laptop back that looked brand new with all the replacements, I remembered why I love Apple. I'm just surprised they didn't tell me all the parts they were going to replace for the $300 as that would have sold me instantly especially considering my trackpad had been half broken but I did not associate it with the swelling battery at the time.
Yes for Video conferencing Mac or Windows are so much better when it comes to hardware and application support. Being in need of some Unix-compatible, Macs are still my first choice although my last purchase decision was really not easy...
I'm not defending the Macbook -- I can happily say I have not used a recent model one -- but for additional perspective on Dell laptop keyboards, I absolutely hate the keyboard on my 15"-16" Dell Precision provided by my employer. The keys are oddly far apart compared to a conventional desktop keyboard. I struggle to type with any accuracy on the builtin keyboard -- especially for things like entering my password, where mistakes are hidden.
Full disclosure: I am a Dell employee and obviously these views are my own and not that of Dell.
The precision 5530 is an absolutely fantastic machine. Best laptop I’ve ever owned. I was a MacBook Pro user since 08, and when it came to replacing the ailing 2013 MBP, I was not at all impressed with what apple had to offer. Fedora was a great experience (using i3, but gnome is pretty nice too), and I haven’t looked back at all. The only downside is that I can’t do iOS development on it, but that can be handled with a VM where necessary. I only wish dell made them with an AMD gpu rather than the Nvidia Optimus garbage.
I still consider macOS UI much more superior. Also I love the new MBP with the TouchID integration.
I recently upgraded my computer at work, and instead of going for a beefier laptop I opted to build an AMD Ryzen 7 2700 machine, and I could never been happier, running Fedora on it is many many times faster than any laptop out there. The build only costed $900 and the specs are far superior than what I would get for a laptop on that price range. Since most of the time I spend at my desk programming I feel it was a good move, and when I have to go to meetings I have my Surface Pro 6 which serves me very well on that purpose.
What have the biggest annoyances been when switching?
I occasionally try switching but always get frustrated with the amount of time I have to spend fussing with graphics drivers, multitouch drivers, keyboard shortcuts, etc, but it's possible that's because I've only really attempted it on Apple hardware.
Driver issues were very minimal (had to turn off a power management thing, and use the on board graphics card for most usage), maybe an hour-ish. Otherwise, I was completely shocked how modern the experience is. Honestly, I find it better than the Mac UI because it lets me just get shit done without getting in my way. Keyboard shortcuts are weird, but I was using Windows 10 in the mix as well, so I'm used to that. However, I was never big into the apple ecosystem, so it would be more painful if you have an iphone, ipad, use itunes for everything, etc.
I'm in the google ecosystem, so life was crazy easy.
I have two System76 Meerkats and a Purism Librem 13, which are an absolute breeze.
I think the craziest thing is that the newer macbooks have worse battery life than the 2015 macbooks.
Lenovo T480 hackintosh here.
What has the hackintosh experience been like for you?
I've been running macOS on both my XPS 15 (9550) and desktop (Haswell i3 based w/ Nvidia graphics). The experience is good on both systems but they definitely have their caveats.
The XPS is probably the most positive experience thus far, it'ss a 9550 with i7/16GB RAM/1TB NVMe/GTX 960/4K. It's currently running Mojave 10.14.3, everything except the SD Card reader and Nvidia GPU work (including the touchscreen, WiFi OOTB, Bluetooth, etc.). The GPU really isn't a problem, Intel graphics work with full acceleration and anything GPU-heavy gets done on the desktop. Helps with battery life too; my system's battery health is down to ~45% but I can still squeeze out a good 4 hours from it. It's not very well supported, you really gotta stay on top of updates and be ready to fix what breaks, but when it's running it's a dream to use.
The desktop on the other hand is a completely different beast. It's got an i3-4150/8GB RAM/GTX 980 and currently running High Sierra 10.13.6 (because of a lack on Nvidia drivers in Mojave). Getting it setup was a little bit of work, the WiFi/Bluetooth card needed an enabler kext and audio needs a bootloader tweak to work, otherwise it's functionally indestinguishable to a legitimate Mac; It can even be updated through the Mac App Store, iCloud/iMessage works, Handoff works.
I personally wouldn't build one again. I've built 4 in my life and my last one was High Sierra (last year is when I stopped using it).
It'll run great (NOT problem free) for 6 months; just enough time to forget everything you learned over the entire weekend you dedicated to initially getting it working, then update or something will break and you have to dive back into the tonyx86/etc rabbit hole for another entire day or an entire weekend.
Look at what he said, it's great when it works. That's the problem.
Stuff will usually still "work" but your video drivers will drop your resolution to 640 and you have to fight with that and try new kexts, sometimes your sound will flake and you'll research how to fix it, etc.
If your time is remotely valuable and you want your personal equipment to just "work" and not have to be tinkered with it's unpleasant.
That's why I was so excited the Mini finally got updates, but that doesn't really work with egpus so I wound up just going back to my MBP.
Wondering what the battery life is like compared to running linux on your hackintosh ? :D
Have a 5520 with 19.04 and very happy with it, with the exception of the 16:9 screen ratio, which is too narrow but common.
Smiliar boat except with a lenovo x1 extreme. After typing on my lenovo for 1 day going back to my macbook pro retina feels like an absolute disaster. It's like we've been gaslit by apple to believe these computers are good. They're not. They're complete trash
> I switched to a Dell Precision 5530 running Ubuntu 18.04
If you want a desktop experience that comes close to MacOS on Ubuntu, give Budgie Desktop a try; it's developed for Solus:
https://github.com/solus-project/budgie-desktop
...but is available for Ubuntu - you can install it separately, or as it's own distro:
https://ubuntubudgie.org/
Note that the 18.04 LTS will have the older version of Budgie and not the latest; the latest version is available with 19.04, but won't be available for LTS until 20.04 - though I am sure there's ways of getting it installed if you really wanted to.
I switched to Budgie Ubuntu 18.04 LTS after my super-long-in-the-tooth-modified-to-hell-and-back Ubuntu 14.04 LTS install face-planted after I tried to install a new version of the NVidia proprietary driver using a very hacked and patched together gcc setup (something I did for an online MOOC where I needed a greater version of C++ than 14.04 supported - not the smartest thing I ever did, but it worked well for a while, and long enough to complete the MOOC).
My 14.04 install started with a Minimal version, then I built it up from there to a look-and-workalike Crunchbang (#!) system. This was done just after #! ceased being supported (after I had played with it and liked it), but before the community picked up the pieces (ultimately resulting in Bunsen Labs distro).
It worked well, but after it finally fell over, I decided I wanted to go a different route on a new install - and Budgie Linux with Ubuntu 18.04 LTS is where I ended up. I couldn't be happier; it allows me a desktop experience that I swear is very close to what I have on the MBP I use at my employer, but I have customized my own way (though I did grab a set of SVGs for a better looking trashcan for Plank). I also had to write a new wallpaper switcher (in python) as I didn't like anything as well that exists. Minor things, though. Overall, it's a great desktop - gives me some freedom to play, but is still beautiful and highly functional.
One thing I'll never do again, though, is install anything that isn't "standalone" in /home or a "deb" package (or something like AppImages); anything that must be compiled from source will either be made into a package to install, or I'll put it on a VM (that's what ultimately led to my old system falling over - too much crap in too many places without any kind of tracking, etc - my fault, ultimately).
I've been running Ubuntu on my Latitude 6650 since new a couple years back. Unfortunately due to my company moving to Office365 fully, its no longer viable for a daily driver - mostly due to no support for Teams (except for a crappy broken web interface), Outlook & OneDrive.
Always had Windows available in Virtualbox, but its definitely slower & had endless audio issues with conferencing (you don't want to be the guy who always has sound problems)
Now switched to Windows 10 on a dual boot - which is much easier on the fan, laptop not running nearly as hot as switching between the GPU & onboard graphics is seamless. Despite decades of Linux experience (servers & desktop) I could never get Prime working properly to switch to onboard graphics when needed...wasted days of my life on this.
Despite this Ubuntu 19.04 has big improvements in driver support & if it wasn't for Office, I would have gladly stayed on Linux.
Now its Kali in Virtualbox for me which is almost as good as running natively.
Windows has better toolbar management, mouseovers & switching between apps. Also since Ubuntu moved back to Gnome, switching between Virtualbox VMs has been buggy (display driver issues no doubt)
Linux has a better file browsers (windows explorer hasn't changed in a decade, no tabs & looks terrible) & much better terminal options.
I'll miss Linux as my daily OS, but I guess MS has its grip tightly on most organizations balls these days.
> Windows has better toolbar management, mouseovers & switching between apps. Also since Ubuntu moved back to Gnome, switching between Virtualbox VMs has been buggy (display driver issues no doubt)
I find both Mac and Windows' window managers much less pleasant than one of the many tiling window managers on Linux, since they automate away a ton of manual window management. That being said, I invested an unreasonable amount of time into configuring xmonad to behave in the way I want to, and the default window manager on, say, Ubuntu, is indeed pretty bad compared to Windows / Mac.
Amethyst, an xmonad-clone for Mac, works well enough, but still has bugs and is nowhere near as configurable as tiling WMs on Linux.
Manjaro i3 version running Pantheon and Gala, for me :) I love it more than MacOS.
I'm using Ubuntu, which hasn't really changed in the last 5 years or so (gah the Ambiance theme), and still find the GUI super limited, slow, ugly, bad fonts, etc. IMO its inferior to macOS and Windows by miles.
Try Pop_OS
try /r/unixporn. SFW despite the title. It's a community of people who spend time making (mostly) Linux desktops that look incredible
I remember when compiling a window manager written in haskell was exciting - I have a newborn here now and must prioritize ;)
Come on, didn't you have a Dell Inspiron 8000? Those things were the Macbook Pro of the day, sexy and horrible with BSODS due to flexing motherboards and gorgeous 1600x1200 displays.
My previous worse experience was on a Dell, actually :) Forget the model, but it was a 17" monster and horribly unstable with a crap keyboard and dim display. But that was back in the early 2000s, and I'm shocked it's Apple that gave me an experience that was nearly as bad.
Yeah, I'll probably be switching to a Surface Book. I don't mind spending for a premium laptop but I care about it feeling good to use and I just don't like the newer Macbooks.
Were drivers a problem? Did you run into any problems with the nvme SSD? I tried booting Opensuse but it couldn’t see the SSD. Maybe I just need to try Ubuntu.
Basically no, but I did this to fix up an intermittent lock up bug:
https://medium.com/@agathver/nvidia-gpu-optimus-prime-and-ub...
No problems with the nvme ssd that I've noticed. I went with Ubuntu because Dell ships with Ubuntu as an option, so I figured they worked the kinks out :)
thanks for the reply, you inspired me to grab Ubuntu 18.04, put it on a usb key and boot my 5530, but alas it doesn't recognize the NVMe disk. There's a single line from dmesg about remmapping a NVMe disk, but Nothing on fdisk -l.
What version of Ubuntu are you running? Is it produced by Dell or the generic release?
edit nevermind I found a fix: in the BIOS (F2 while booting), I needed to set System Config -> SATA Operation -> AHCI. With that, the nvme is found just fine.
Any issues with that model? I'm thinking of doing a similar switch but I really don't want to be fighting driver and compatibility issues.
I was having a one-a-day random lockup, that was fixed by this: https://medium.com/@agathver/nvidia-gpu-optimus-prime-and-ub...
After that, it's been awesome. While inch-for-inch I like Mac trackpads the best, I hated the giant trackpad on the current macbook line, and the Dell trackpad is the right size and probably 95% as good. I don't care too much about not having all of the swipe shortcuts Mac has, so I didn't try to get more working on Ubuntu, but that could be a pain if you are into them. (Ubuntu has two-finger support out of the box that works great).
I was really pleased that closing the screen and opening it works just as well as Macs for suspending and resuming. Win10 does subpar at that.
The UI isn't quite as smooth as Mac, but it is still very smooth and easy. Just like the Dell 5530 isn't as thin as the current Mac, it is totally thin enough. Apple is just polishing for the sake of polishing at this point.
Plus, I have Ubuntu underneath, which makes it awesome for more line of work (software guy, call it "full stack", I do all kinds of stuff, but all Linux-based).
One thing that's holding me back is that my early 2014 maxed-out 13in Macbook Pro model is still pretty great. I find it better than the 2018 I use at work. Better keyboard, MUCH better trackpad (although I'm using the mouse more these days) and performance-wise, I barely notice any difference...
The battery is nearly dead. Maybe worth it for me to have it serviced and just keep using it for some more time.
i refuse to let go of my 2015 model because i can't stand the new ones. Not sure what I am going to do when it stops receiving new OS upgrades
My unibody/pre-retina mid-2012 is still getting them (and I'm still using it, because it's the last/best machine that still had a truly matte screen!), so you're probably safe for a few more cycles.
Based on historical evidence, you'll likely get updates for another half decade or so.
What’s the battery life like?
I have the larger battery, and for daily development (including web stuff) usage, I get 10+ hours. Even if I'm doing heavy dev (running test suite, lots of compilation, etc) it drops down to maybe 5-6 at worst.
Keeping an updated Win10 on the laptop is a good idea, it makes the unit easier to sell when it’s time to move on. And you don’t want to pay for that twice.
There's really no need to keep Win10 on the laptop. The Win10 license is kept in the UEFI so you can reinstall from a Win10 ISO at any time and it will activate correctly. This even has the added bonus of removing the Dell bloatware from your Windows install.
> The Win10 license is kept in the UEFI so you can reinstall from a Win10 ISO at any time and it will activate correctly.
Not if Windows 10 detected that you have "major" hardware changes. In which case, your new installation won't be activated (granted, Microsoft doesn't enforce activation on). You may need to extract the license key from UEFI and type it in manually to get activation to work. It's a hassle.
I got bit by these "major" hardware changes on a computer I'd passed on to my relatives. For whatever reason I had had the onboard Ethernet adapter disabled in BIOS when I upgraded from Windows 7 to 10, and enabling it prevented Windows from activating at all. (FWIW, it was not a laptop.)
Unlike in the past, when all you had to do was call in and recite your license key, these days their policy is to accept nothing else but a proof of purchase, which in my case was from almost 10 years prior. Luckily enough, I had it archived.
Yeah, the exact definition of "major" hardware change is kept as a secret by Microsoft so that it's not easy to defeat that activation mechanism for pirates.
The newer version (version 1511 and above) of Windows 10's digital licenses are essential a private key (as in asymmetric cryptography, called digital entitlement[1], stored in UEFI), as opposed to the a 25-character product key we used before. If for whatever reason the activation program cannot find that key, it won't be activated.
[1]: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/12440/windows-10-ac...
> which in my case was from almost 10 years prior. Luckily enough, I had it archived.
If you bought your Windows license online with a Gmail address, Google has you covered. https://myaccount.google.com/purchases
Macs used to be for hackers, but now they are too mainstream
What a clusterF is modern Mac hardware:
- Keyboards with much worse action that are more prone to failure (from dust no less) and require replacing the motherboard to fix... all for a Touchbar no one wants and 0.5mm cut in thickness.
- Loss (over the years) of the ability to upgrade the CPU, SSD or memory;
- Display failures due to broken ribbon cables;
- The USB-C clusterF; and
- Loss of MagSafe (this one still hurts).
All for a premium price.
Go back 5 years and you have two great choices:
1. The 13" Macbook Air for under $1500, which was a great compromise of power, portability and affordability; or
2. The 15" Retina Macbook Pro, which was more upgradeable, less failure prone and had a better keyboard.
I bought a 2017 MBP and I deeply regret it. Luckily it hasn't failed yet. If and when it does I may be better off just throwing it away.
How did Apple lose its way so badly here? Serviceability matters. It's too expensive to be a throwaway device.
So who really cares if your throwaway $44k device can now have 8 instead of 6 cores? Really?
> Loss of MagSafe (this one still hurts).
I will NEVER forgive them for this.
Jobs was RIGHT when he said this was a major innovation over everyone else.
Now Apple is either saying he was wrong or THEY are wrong. They're not BOTH right.
My 2015 is the last MBP I will ever buy and it's aging fast...
I think it's hackingtosh from here on out.
I primarily use Ubuntu but I have to have a Mac as our app runs cross platform and I need somethign to test with.
I guess I'm the only one that thinks USB-C is actually better?
The biggest win is that now I can use a single dongle for power, displayport to my monitor, and connection to a USB hub. So if I take my laptop home or into a meeting room, when I get back to my desk it's just a single thing to plug in now instead of 3+ separate cables. And since this stuff is all standardized now and there's no longer anything Apple proprietary like Thunderbolt 1, I would guess other makers will follow suit eventually and most monitors will support it directly without even needing a dongle.
Plus the MagSafe port was not without problems - every few months I would get like a little magnetic pebble or something stuck in there, and then it's plugged in but not charging charging and usually I'd realize when my laptop is almost dead and then have to find something small to try to pluck it out of there. The USB-C port doesn't have this issue and it's still a relatively small port with very low resistance to being pulled out. Tripping over the power cord just has never really been an issue for me, it kinda seems overblown (knock on wood though, I guess).
I do miss the external LED that showed whether you were connected to power or not and whether it was fully charged, it would be nice if they found a way to add that back on the side of the laptop or something since it can no longer be on the cable itself with a standard USB-C cable.
It’s not just you.
I don’t get the whining about lack of USB type-a ports or the sd card slot and hdmi port. One, ONE $30 adapter gives you all of those and you have 3 TB3 ports still to use, AND it will read more memory card formats. Edit: AND it will have more USB-A ports than the old MBP had!
I saw a manufacturer a while ago had a little magnetic adapter for a USB-c power port, too.
Oh and the common complaint about flash drives - I bought one with type a one end, and type-c the other for about $12 I think.
The added functionality of TB3 far outweighs any of the small losses IMO.
Edit2: sd card not ssd card.
>One, ONE $30 adapter gives you all of those
That's not how TB3 works though. Those cheap dongles don't necessarily pass through correctly, and this can lead to all manner of problems when you have sensitive equipment connected. Lots of reports of audio issues on USB C Macs when using external dongles, for example.
The actual TB3 hubs cost $150 minimum iirc.
This may not cause trouble in your own use case, but it's definitely potential cause for concern for people that need a lot of I/O
> That's not how TB3 works though.
The USB/hdmi/memory card adapters for $30 aren’t TB3, they’re USB-C.
If you want “a lot of I/O” then going back to 2 usb3 ports isn’t going to help you.
A single TB3 port will handle the same external I/O the previous MBPs had across all ports barring TB2.
> That's not how TB3 works though.
I don't believe that's how TB3 works, either. I might be mistaken or out of date, but I've looked. At any price I haven't seen an actual TB3 hub that gives you more ports than you start with. The ones that do aren't TB3, they're extra power-only or USB-only USB-C ports. Everything I've seen is just a passthrough TB3 port with additional accessories that are generally USB or HDMI tunneled through.
> Lots of reports of audio issues on USB C Macs when using external dongles, for example.
If you're talking about audio production...that tends to go with everything computer related for 30+ years. Which port you plug in, the brand of cable you use, the minor software release--all are potential problems. Everyone tends to have a unique setup, too.
Seems like Apple could have kept MagSafe and added the usb-c ports w/ option to charge through usb-c or MagSafe. it probably wouldn’t have been a very Apple-like thing to do and then you don’t have nice clean symmetric ports, but that little cable definitely saved lots of repair dollars over the years for me
I feel the same way. I do really miss magsafe (and the charging light), but I really like plugging in 1 cable for power, monitor, and accessories.
There are USB-C cables with a charging light on them. I'm a little dumbfounded why Apple doesn't offer this--their USB-C cables already come in one flavor for charging and another for high speed data. It's made worse because Apple also took off the white LED /and/ battery charging indicator on the case.
https://www.amazon.com/Moshi-Integra-USB-C-Charging-Cable/dp...
I haven't used them (there might be other brands), I hear they can be slightly weird depending on the computer+power brick because they seem to observe the power draw for the LED color.
I was initially sceptical of USB-C, but was looking forward to having less things to plug in. Then I learnt that USB-C only supports up to 100W of power, and even worse the MBP included charger is only 87W. All high performance laptops draw more power than that at high load (think gaming, rendering, etc.).
I just don't see USB-C ever replacing a proper charging cable if it can't even supply enough power to run the computer! The computer you leave to render overnight will drain the battery to flat and subsequently shut down/throttle. How is that in any way acceptable?
MagSafe 1 and 2 topped out at 85W. There are gaming laptops that require more than one brick-sized charger. There are legitimate complaints in this thread, but this isn’t one of them.
> All high performance laptops draw more power than that at high load
You’re going to need to qualify what you mean by “high performance”.
I'd classify any laptop with 6 or more intel cores and a dedicated gpu >= rx560/gtx1050(ti). Not so sure about mobile, but a desktop RX560 on its own uses 80-100W[0] which doesn't really leave any headroom for a 6 (yet alone an 8 core) cpu.
[0] https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-radeon-rx-560-4gb,5...
Recent MBP15s have 6 or 8 cores, and at least Radeon pro555, 560 or some variety of Vega.
They run on an 87W charger fine.
Two USB-C ports in parallel would get you to 200W.
According to this[0], Macbooks will only charge off one cable. Not sure if anything has changed in that regard since 2016, but I'd wager it hasn't.
[0] https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/259744/what-happen...
The comment was about USB-C generally, not limited to the MacBook implementation. There isn’t an inherent reason why two cables couldn’t carry twice the power of one.
What was the wattage on the older models?
The most powerful MagSafe adapter is 85W. GP must be talking about some PC gaming laptop
I also enjoy the USB-C more. I don't know when or why, but at some point the MagSafe got annoying.
You can even have a MagSafe USB-C cable.
I have a USB-C only Lenovo (well I guess it has USB-A but I never use it, I'm all in bluetooth/USB-C) and a latest gen Mac Air. I've got a USB-C charging cable for each, a dock at home and at the office that is USB-C (and manages peripherals including monitor).
Seriously a "PC" and Mac sharing all the same chargers and docking solutions. This is incredible. I never had a Mac with mag safe so maybe I just don't know what I'm missing, but the practicality of plugging in ONE cable and that same cable works between both machines and I can bring both with me places without fretting about chargers.
When I got my 2017 MBP and was comparing PCs I either wanted Magsafe-like or USB-c (Surface is magsafe-like). I ended up with a Macbook Pro. Late one night a few months after getting it I forgot a charger and ran to Target, then Wal-Mart looking for a USB-C charger and everything was still proprietary chargers. Maybe one of the display units had USB-C charging, but they didn't sell standalone chargers. USB-C had been around at least since 2015 so I didn't think I was that early of an adopter...
At least this seems to have changed a bit. Like you said, it's so nice to charge non-Apple headphones or my Switch without hunting for extra cables.
Ha! Totally forgot the Switch is USB-C, I just moved and realized I left both of my chargers in my previous apartment and now both laptops are dying, but I have the Switch!!
Really just the MagSafe is the big difference they lost. Supposedly the keyboard sucks, why don’t they just fix it or go back to the previous iteration.
Either way I think these are still the best notebooks you can buy.
Ubuntu doesn’t even work right on my dell desktop - it never remembers dual monitor settings, even with Nvidia official drivers installed.
When I open my MacBook Air I can just use it without waiting or worrying. That much is still the same; except now you have to worry about someone tripping over your power cord
> Either way I think these are still the best notebooks you can buy.
Five years ago you could make that statement and not have to think twice about it. However now there is too much competition.
1. Dell XPS
2. Matebook X Pro
3. Asus Zenbook Pro
These are just 3 laptops off the top of my head that can compete with the latest and greatest Macbook Pro and come out arguably better. The keyboard, thermal issues and touchbar have really hurt the latest macbook pro. Apple needs to admit they are wrong, ditch the shitty butterfly keyboard and fix the random issues that have started plaguing the Macbook in Apple's quest for thinness.
I last looked a few years ago and was disappointed at the non-Apple selection (because I was disappointed at the Apple selection, too).
I was looking at 13" models. Comparable PCs were very similar in form factor--non-replacable RAM and a 1tb SSD option (either included or added later myself) took the cost very close to each other. I know Apple laptops have a decent resale value and I'm familiar and comfortable with Apple's warranty and service (others might be great, too, but that'd be an unknown for me).
I needed a webcam for work and having it by the keyboard was a no-go. I know this recently changed and I was very disappointed a brand new Macbook Pro has the exact same camera a 2009 model had. They all had a similarly poor situation with USB-C, too. Either none, 1 for charging and like 1 USB-A port, or only 2-4 USB-C ports.
Looking at the failure rates and support for each brand, a trackpad and keyboard that wasn't as good, having to use Linux (I wasn't planning on using Windows), none of them looked any better.
I wish there was better competition (at least for what I'm looking for) and I wish Apple would fix the things everyone liked about the 2015. Not all of it is thinness...I miss a charging light and battery meter, give better non-touchbar options (I'd like touch ID and more USB-C ports), upgrade your camera for Pete's sake.
I’ve borrowed recent fancy dell XPS 1-2 year old from IT, used and abused by previous employees.
They don’t hold up well at all. Trackpad feels crap compared to my 5 year old mb air, screens suck, keyboard feels meh. They might start out nice but they deteriorate really quickly from my firsthand sampling
The old MacBooks I’ve used from IT, however, still function like original except for the visual wear and tear you see and the ugh of using something all scratched up
Check out ebay, it's filled with used/old xps notebooks in good condition. Your single experience isn't necessarily reality. I agree that nothing competes with apple for the trackpad experience. But the screen on latest XPS beats the Macbook Pro. The XPS also offers a much better keyboard experience compared to the butterfly keyboard. And it's keyboard isn't inherently flawed and susceptible to malfunctioning due to dust.
I agree older macbooks were simply amazing and definitely a cut above the rest. But my point is that compared to the latest macbook pro, the 3 laptops I mentioned are very good competitors. It didn't used to be like this. Apple may have produced very reliable laptops many years ago, but that's no longer the case.
And all three have coil whine, for example. So I, a technical person, would personally get a MB Air for the same price despite any problems it has. So there is still a huge market and Apple doesn't have much incentives to do so, unfortunately.
I think everyone is just using "reliability" as an opportunity to whine about the feel of the keyboard.
Which is silly, because after using one for a year and then going back to my Air, that keyboard feels mushy and unresponsive. The original 12" MacBook keyboard had actual issues with ergonomics and usability - successive versions did not.
For what it's worth, my multi-monitor settings are remembered just fine in Ubuntu 19.04. I _just_ switched from Macbook Pro to Dell XPS 13/Ubuntu, and I couldn't get multi-monitor to work for Ubuntu 18.04, but everything worked out of box for 19.04. But I don't know if upgrading will mess with any legacy config you may have!
Thanks!!! I am upgraded from 14 to 18 and was disappointed that not even Ubuntu got multi monitor to remember basic settings properly. I’ll give 19 a shot then !!
Going back would be admitting they were wrong, and they couldn't say "the thinnest MacBook ever" at their next announcement.
Have you tried one of the numerous solutions out there?
Unlike MagSafe, the higher-end ones aren't limited to just power.
https://www.engadget.com/2019/02/11/thundermag-magsafe-thund...
There are a lot of things to complain about with the newer MacBook Pros (like not offering a hardware function row without hobbling the machine). I think the MagSafe removal is one of the least strong of them.
Could it be that battery life is so much better now, so people don’t have their computers plugged in as much of the time when working?
The green LED sucks. I would charge my 2012 MacBook Pro in my bedroom, but can’t because of the light. Also, I can’t charge it and use the laptop in my lap because the MagSafe falls off easily. The new charger solves both of these problems.
Can you put some tape over the LED?
It's not ageing that fast. Mine has a 1TB drive and I'm too lazy to wipe it clean but I'm sure with a clean wipe it would run like new. The keyboard is still intact, all of the hardware in fact.
Here's the announcement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeqF7zcBOVA
It was revolutionary, and they removed it.
> Loss of MagSafe (this one still hurts).
I've been wondering for a while now why USB-IF hasn't defined a standard magnetic connector. I'm surprised none of the flagship smartphones or laptops have tried to push their own magnetic connector. They're desperate to differentiate themselves in the current market and wireless charging is falling behind quickly due to physical constraints.
I use a volta cable for my phone and it is wonderful. It handles power and data just fine. My only issue is that I have to use a dongle.
There's clearly demand for it. Magsafe and volta have proven its effectiveness. It would be a great solution for portable consumer electronics like laptops, cameras, tablets, and phones.
What's holding it back?
I think Apple has a patent
Last I heard someone else has the patent. Not Apple. Maybe someone with background information can shed light on the story.
Apple does have a patent, but I don't know if it's the only one http://patft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=...
> all for a Touchbar no one wants and 0.5mm cut in thickness.
I second this. It's been years now, and I still don't really see TouchBar as indispensable. Not enough apps make special use of it yet.
I don't care as much about thinness either. I just want something that works where I can replace or add RAM and storage myself.
As for magsafe, you can get a 3rd party replacement if you're willing to spend $50.
The only reason I stayed is because of MacOS, but current Apple hardware has gone into a weird direction. It's harder and harder to stay when Windows now ships with Linux.
I have a 2016 MacBook Pro, and "luckily" the anti-glare coating failed. There is a free repair program for the screen appearing stained, and replacing the display panel replaced the integrated display ribbon cable that had also failed.
I don't think dust is the cause of all the keyboard failures. I had been using it as a desktop computer for over a year. It isn't in a dusty room, and the computer still spends months without being opened. Furthermore, sometimes on waking a key will be stuck in a pressed condition, such that I can't successfully enter a password to log in. Pressing all of the keys doesn't reset the state, but force rebooting does.
If I do use the MacBook Pro's keyboard some of the keys intermittently fail to detect presses, but because there are both problems with keys being stuck engaged, and keys failing to detect presses, I suspect that the switches have some flaw where they can generally degrade due to heat rather than only dust fouling the contacts.
Anyway, I haven't yet had the keyboard replaced, because the failure is still intermittent, and I'd like to get a fresh keyboard right before selling it, sometime after a teardown confirms whether this new model is really likely to be less error prone, or maybe after a more thorough redesign for Ice Lake chips in the 13" model later this year or early next year.
Followup for anyone reading the above with a dark screen/flex cable problem in a 2016 MacBook Pro: today, Apple announced that they will now cover this problem up to four years after the original purchase date.
The 13" 2015 model had the same issue. They replaced my screen for free a few months ago.
> I don't think dust is the cause of all the keyboard failures.
well, this is known to be the cause
Not really. It's a cause. But it's also fairly clear given there are key clusters that are more likely to fail that it's heat related sometimes too.
There's probably not a single cause. And indeed, some of the fixes are probably making some of the other issues worse (I would not be at all surprised if the dust membrane is exacerbating the heat issues, and that's why the issues with the MacBook Air are just as bad if not worse than the other machines).
> - Keyboards with much worse action that are more prone to failure (from dust no less) and require replacing the motherboard to fix... all for a Touchbar no one wants and 0.5mm cut in thickness.
The keyboard replacement replaces the top-case, your motherboard and everything else is transplanted over to the new top-case.
The motherboard is not replaced. “Only” the battery, top case, touch-bar, and keyboard.
That's exactly what them person you're replying to said.
But look at what we got in return... The laptops are now 1mm thinner than they were before!
For me main indicator is that 2015 MacBooks are still selling at a rather good price.
I actually really like USB-C. The ability for any cable to work at any port is extremely nice, so I don’t have to run the power cord awkwardly just to meet the left side of the laptop.
Apple has always made aggressively experimental design changes that were a mix of steps forward and backward. Hockey puck mice, mass logic board failures, soldered flash drives and batteries, ports and dongles, etc.
People always forget the flaws of the past.
This is a really good point. Although I still inexplicably love the matte screen swivel head G3s...
These used to excite me because I've desperately needed 32gb and faster procs and used to upgrade every 2-3 years but now I just yawn at MBP releases. I'm so unexcited by everything about this form factor other than the fact that it has OSX. I'm guessing I'll be on my 2016 until I finally bite the bullet and quit using OSX if they don't make a more compelling package to spend my $3k on in the next few years.
I don't want thinner. I don't want a touchbar. I don't want this oversized touchpad I touch constantly when it's on my lap. I don't want this terrible keyboard solution required due to the desire for thinness. I don't want to carry 3 USBC dongles or to buy a $350 USBC hub at every single desk I have with monitors (home, work). I want a bigger battery. I want more ports. I want less bezel. I want a chassis that doesn't scratch and dent.
> don't want thinner. I don't want a touchbar. I don't want this oversized touchpad I touch constantly when it's on my lap. I don't want this terrible keyboard solution required due to the desire for thinness. I don't want to carry 3 USBC dongles or to buy a $350 USBC hub at every single desk I have with monitors (home, work).
You may not realize it yet, but you are no longer Apple's market. Do your future self a favor and figure out how to transition to something sustainable.
Apple used to make computers that were both elegant and practical... But the iphone taught execs that there is a much more profitable market willing to pay through the roof for extremely stylish looking computers at the cost of _everything_ else, they will keep going further down this road because there is plenty of demand. Apple now sell gorgeous Ferraris, but the kind that will drive you insane and are not actually useful or comfortable for anything other than showing off.
The good news is that sexy PC laptops now exist, and some of them are still actually practical too! better yet some of those sexy practical laptops run Linux! Well!
"I don't want thinner" is really what apple needs to hear.
Thinner means you take away my ports so I have to carry dongles. Yes, I'd actually love to have at least one old-fashioned USB2 port. I know, I'm insane, but USB2 devices didn't exactly disappear just because USB-C is great. I still have a lot of them.
Thinner means you take away magsafe, which is one of those great "gosh, apple is so clever" features that's very, very useful.
Thinner means you give me a keyboard which, at best, completely sucks (layout, feel) and at worst, can't actually do its job because of reliability problems.
Thinner means I could have more battery life.
I'm literally carrying around TWO 2015 MBPs on a daily basis right now and it's TOTALLY FINE, APPLE. I'm not dying over the weight or amount of space they take up. I hardly even notice. For what developers do with laptops, thinner is way down on the priority list. I wish you'd listen to us.
Also: I literally have no use for the touchbar that isn't perfectly handled by function keys, and I hit ESC 1000 times a day because I'm a vim user. Why do you hate me?
Please just release a mac that looks exactly like a 2015 MBP with an i9 and some USB-C ports, and I will be lining up to throw $3k at you. As is, I'm getting as much life out of my 2015's as I possibly can (they're running great, btw, but I doubt they'll make it to your next refresh if it's 3 years away). When they finally die, if the only MBPs available have garbage keyboards and touchbars, I will grudgingly stop being a Mac user.
> Thinner means you take away my ports so I have to carry dongles.
I'm not sure it does really. The modern MacBook Air chassis is the same size as the old one. But it's lost Magsafe, a useful keyboard, USB-A, it's lost a port on the 13 inch, and no SD card slot.
Apple hasn't got rid of these things for thinness. It's gotten rid of them because of a misguided belief that the replacements are better than the loss of flexibility, or just plain working.
Apple are wrong about these things. But the problem is much more fundamentally that Apple seems to have lost it's ability to engineer well and it's judgement about how to please it's Mac customers. Thinness is just a symptom.
People have complained about Apple removing things since they first removed floppy drives. They remove them not because of some misguided belief, but because it’s old tech. I have a MBP from 2012 still going strong. When laptops last that long a bit of future proofing is a bonus. If you swap laptops every other year then you obviously miss out on this benefit. PC manufacturers will start removing USB ports and if history is any judge we’ll see zero complaints about them doing it, just like with the floppy
There are two reasons the floppy drive isn't a very good comparison, in my opinion. The first is that floppy drive usage had already dropped dramatically because software was distributed on CDs and macs had been networked for years. So the use cases for floppies were a lot fewer and farther between, meaning it was less upsetting to people that Apple made the bold move of just dropping them. Also keep in mind that by this point, the Zip drive had absolutely taken over as the sneakernet of this era, and those were 100% aftermarket add-ons. The second reason the floppy is very different is that if you consider the tree of all the devices that are plugged into your mac, floppy drives are leaf nodes. Nothing else plugs into them, so removing them impacts nothing but floppy usage. Every day I plug in a DisplayPort monitor, an HDMI monitor, USB 2.0 yubikey, and USB 2.0 keyboard+mouse via a USB 2.0 hub. That's a lot of perfectly functional stuff to replace just because Apple jumped the gun on deciding USB-C had taken over.
Evidence that it hasn't: the hundreds of people walking around my workplace with gigantic USB 2.0 + HDMI + displayport dongles dangling from their laptops all the time, or starting meetings by saying "oh shit, i left my dongle in the other building. Can I borrow someone's so I can use the projector?"
Floppy is a terrible example to support your point.
When floppies were removed, almost nobody had to purchase external floppy drives to use their existing library of floppies.
1.44mb is pretty useless when you already have a flood of cheap USB flash drives 64+mb at the time.
Heck, even during the windows 95 days, I only touched floppies to be able to boot into ms-dos to reinstall windows.
When you buy a brand spanking new $1500 iPhone Xs and a brand spanking new $4000 MBP and walk out of the Apple Store with no way to connect the two without a dongle, you know you’re eating whatever shit Apple is feeding you.
> > Thinner means you take away my ports so I have to carry dongles.
> I'm not sure it does really.
Not 100% true, you're right, but the thinness is definitely the reason ethernet went. My 2010 had an RJ45 on it, and there's just no room for it on the 2015 or the later ones. However, I do think the design aesthetic that calls for thinness is related to the design aesthetic that fetishizes the simplicity of having as few blemishes on the case as possible. Floppy eject button? We can do it in software. Mouse buttons? Reduce it to one. No wait, reduce it to zero (magic mouse). Trackpad buttons? Remove them. Ports? As few as possible. Sleek. I feel like putting on a black turtleneck.
>and I hit ESC 1000 times a day because I'm a vim user
Do yourself a favour:
https://vim.fandom.com/wiki/Map_caps_lock_to_escape_in_macOS
1) I have an escape key because I'm clinging to my 2015 MBP
2) I already have capslock remapped to "hyper" aka ctrl+alt+shift+command and use it heavily.
Agreed, the keyboard is awful. I just want a decent/good keyboard, an HDMI port, and just 1 USB A port, I'll definitely take 0.5mm thicker for those. Well, at least they kept the headphone jack...
32gb ram and an 8 core processor is awesome, but all the downsides have turned me away from getting the next gen unless they fix those things.
> an 8 core processor is awesome
Yeah but there's no way this thing has the thermal or power capacity to actually run that 8-core CPU at its rated specs. This already happened with the 6-core in the previous gen, and it certainly doesn't look like Apple did anything to improve thermal capacity in this refresh. Hopefully they at least addressed the lack of VRM power delivery, but that doesn't seem likely.
So you're taking a platform that was already pushed past its thermal & power capacities, and increased the thermal & power load by another 30% (keep in mind these are all still on Intel's 14nm that hasn't really changed, so no efficiency improvements here). Maybe the reviews will be surprising, but I wouldn't bet on it.
> and it certainly doesn't look like Apple did anything to improve thermal capacity in this refresh
Well, it says they did, but I guess you know better.
> Well, it says they did, but I guess you know better.
I don't see any comments from Apple talking about improving the cooling. What are you referring to? And what did they change? It still looks like the same tiny opening in the hinge, with no additional venting anywhere?
> Agreed, the keyboard is awful.
I don't really get the hate for these keyboards. I benchmarked my typing speed on my 2019 MBP and a few other keyboards, I didn't notice any significant difference. Just a keyboard...
They are loud, to the point of being annoying during a meeting / conference call and the travel distance is a bit too short for some people, making typing unpleasant. If you use a Lenovo or even a dell of equal body thickness for a bit and then get back to a modern Mac, the difference is huge.
Failure rate, not typing speed, is the crux of the concern. Additionally, at least for me, is the volume of the keypresses - much louder.
The two main issues for me are failure rates and key travel. My fingers literally hurt when I use it. The 2012-2015 form was probably less beautiful to look at (and slightly thicker), but it was much better to type with.
I'm glad someone else mentioned their fingers physically hurting when using it. I haven't seen many other complaints round this online and its shocking - This made me stop using the device completely - I was in pain just by typing normally!
I didn’t get it until I bought a new keyboard and starting working on it. You quickly realize how uncomfortable this keyboard is.
I love the keyboard.
I don't mind it (though as I commented elsewhere, the volume of the keypresses is a bit louder). I think most of the complaints are aimed at reliability however, which is a bit scary on a $2000+ machine (even though I had to replace the SSD, the keys on my 2013 MBP are still as good as day 1)
Have you found it?
2018 Macbook Pro is 3mm thinner than 2015 MBP.
0.5mm for all the things you asked for sounds really hard.
I'd take 3mm thicker than the 2015 without suffering much. These things go into backpacks that have much more space anyways.
I thought the same thing. Now I'm stuck with a $1500 Asus laptop that barely plays Netflix a year and a half later. despite an 7th gen i7 and 16gb of DDR4. Now I'm saving up for a Macbook Pro again, despite my hatred for the keyboard and touchbar.
> Now I'm stuck with a $1500 Asus laptop that barely plays Netflix a year and a half later. despite an 7th gen i7 and 16gb of DDR4.
Any idea what's wrong with it?
Maybe he has a spinning disk in it? I see lots of laptops in that price range that go for the 1TB HDD instead of the 256GB SSD. Windows 10 on a 5400RPM HDD is pretty miserable these days, the OS just can't stop touching the disk and it's forever IO bound.
I've had the same problem. I had a i7 T420 with 16GB of RAM that was lightning quick when I got it and over a few years became completely unusable even for basic tasks. When I hit the Windows key to open the start menu, I could turn and take a sip of coffee before it opened. Reformatting and reinstalling from scratch did nothing to improve the speed.
I switched to a Macbook soon after and it is just as fast today as it was when I got it four years ago. I recently fired up that old T420 and popped an older, unused SSD into it. Instant game-changer. It is unbelievable how much faster it is with an SSD, the same speed it was with Windows 7 when I first got it.
Seriously, get an SSD.
Still doesn't seem right. with an SSD it's only as fast as Windows 7 on a rotating HDD?
Hitting the Windows key on Windows 7 even with an HDD was instant. Hitting the Windows key on Windows 10 with an HDD tok seconds. Installing an SSD brought it back to being instant.
Hard to get much faster than instant.
Does it have anything to do with Win10 start menu want's to download an ad to show you?
It's no longer bottlenecked on the disk IO presumably.
Yeah I mean a machine like that should be able to run web apps with no problems...
Does it have a SSD in it? Unfortunately some manufacturers like to spec out everything except a SSD. If it doesn’t, and especially if they stuck you with a hybrid drive (ugh), upgrade to a SSD and it should perform well again. It will certainly be an order of magnitude cheaper than a new laptop, too.
Check for thermal throttling. Dust can severely slow down a laptop, even though task manager says that it is only using 10% of the CPU.
Why does it barely play Netflix? Why would a Macbook be better?
If they're using Chrome rather than Edge or the native app then the video is rendered in software, which will quite possibly result in a poor experience on an underpowered machine.
(TBH the same issue happens on a Mac though, except Safari instead of Edge).
That makes sense, I guess Netflix won't choose a video quality/resolution to play back based on your processing power but rather just on your network bandwidth
Netflix's determination is made primarily on the basis of DRM security levels in this case.
Like others said, what?
Anything unique about it? Are you running Windows 10? Latest updates? Need any driver updates? (Most drivers are updated by Windows but a few, like graphics/network sometimes benefit from checking yourself.)
Are you running a (really) resource intensive anti-virus program?
I own an $800 Asus gaming laptop and a $700 Asus ultrabook. One with 7th gen i7 and 16GB DDR. The other with 8th gen i7 and 16GB DDR. One has SATA SSD and other NVMe SSD. One is 1 year old. The other is 2 years old.
Both of them can run Visual Studio Professional, VS Code, Netflix, Hulu, StarCraft 2. Both are very fast and a joy to use. One is heavy; the other is light!
If it has a 5400 rpm hard drive, consider getting a 2.5" SSD to replace it, and use software to clone the drive. (Although it kind of sounds like you could use a fresh install.)
I guess "hacker" doesn't really mean what it used to mean. I thought it used to mean people who are curious and like to tinker. Maybe it now means "busy people who have no time to actually tinker but like the idea of tinkering".
From this long discussion a couple of months ago ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19415185 ), this comment is about fans spinning up:
in order to eek out a tenth of a gigahertz for their marketing materials (with rapidly diminishing returns because physics), manufacturers usually set Turbo Boost Power Limits 5-10 (or more) watts too high. Since Turbo Boost usually maximizes a single core's frequency and the heat generated increases exponentially, it creates a very concentrated heat spike in the silicon. Even if the CPU heat sink is good enough to passively dissipate that much heat from all of the cores, the turbo boost hot spot forces the fans to spin up early before the CPU knows how long the boost will be needed (otherwise Turbo boost would significantly reduce the lifetime of the CPU). Combined with random scheduled OS tasks that take a split second of turbo to run a process [..]
This could also apply to thermal throttling of the CPU. Imagine if your laptop is on that edge, with some dust in the heatsinks and fans, then a can of compressed air and an install of ThrottleStop (or other software) to underclock a little and reduce the maximum boost frequency, and thereby reduce thermal throttling, might make it run smoother and faster-on-average.
Or another possibility:
If your fan is spinning up when scrolling in Slack it's likely an indication that Electron (Chrome) is refusing to use the GPU for rendering acceleration. This is likely either due to a driver issue or the driver/gpu being on chrome's blacklist. I had this problem once on a hackintosh and as I recall starting Slack from a terminal with the `--ignore-gpu-blacklist` option fixed it.
If you NetFlix from Chrome, that might be worth a try, or upgrade/downgrade display drivers for testing. ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19415775 )
An i7 that could stream video, should still be able to stream video. If it can't, something has gone wrong, and should be traceable and fixable.
Same here. Replaced my MacBook Pro with an X1 Carbon last summer. Short circuiting my usual 2-year upgrade cycle and buying whatever Apple releases this fall.
Sorry to say, but you should have bought a Dell or Lenovo. -- On the other hand I think something is wrong with your Asus, this can't be.
Bizzare, my $800 Asus from 2013 still plays Netflix just fine. But I did swap in an SSD and replaced the battery once.
I'd have tried a Dell XPS or Surface Pro.
I don’t get the touch pad complaint (I don’t agree with the others either but that’s a boring worn out argument) - macOS has had excellent “accidental touch” detection in my experience.
So I come from the weird world of Thinkpad point-stick users so take my ergo desires with a grain of salt if you hate that thing. I don't like having to use a buttonless touchpad to begin with and while the MBP touchpad is the best I've ever used I loved it on my 2015 and despise how large it is on the 2016 I've got now. I do EVERYTHING I can to not use this laptop as a laptop. It's keyboard and touchpad experience are just awful, well, the keyboards awful, the touchpad size is just an annoyance.
When I sit with the laptop on my lap, like on the couch, I find that I'm constantly adjusting things to not touch it. Whether it's my jacket or a blanket or my phone cable or my own hand. I just constantly trigger it and I'm sure I have it on the lowest sensitivity with palm rejection. I'm pretty sure even when I'm on a desk I'm constantly adjusting where my arms are because it's getting triggered (or I just feel like I have to pay attention to it).
FWIW, I dislike every single Apple keyboard, mouse and touchpad ever created and refuse to use them to the point that I bring my own kb/mouse to work because every job hands me those. I have tried them, at times, for months.
Meanwhile my palm can literally rest on the touchpad while typing and I don’t trigger it. Are you in a particularly dry area or something? This is completely the opposite of my experience and I’ve used every MBP since they changed the name from PowerBook. I agree on the keyboard though, but then again I dislike any laptop keyboard due to the short key travel and lack of a mechanical option
But is it because it is triggered or you think it will be triggered? I don’t know that I’ve ever accidentally triggered the trackpad in 12 years of MBPs
Completely agreed. I’m on my 2016 max spec. Need to take it in for keyboard repair at some point and I’ve barely used the keyboard as I’m using external keyboard and monitors 99% of the time. If they offered the new one with an option to get it without the Touch Bar and old style keyboard that alone would be an instant buy for me.
Have you considered just getting a workstation and doing everything on it via ssh?
Guess it depends on what kind of stuff you do. I adopted that workflow years ago out of necessity (need to routinely do some heavy lifting) and will never go back.
https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/21/apple-announces-new-macboo...
"Today, however, [Apple] told me that they’re taking three explicit steps to help with the keyboard situation. 1. The MacBook Pro keyboard mechanism has had a materials change in the mechanism. [...]"
This is the real announcement, to be honest. 8 cores is a convenient smokescreen, and they clearly don't want to talk about how borked their product is at WWDC so they are dropping the keyboard update with this news like it's a detail when it's actually the real story.
These shitty keyboards cast a shadow over the whole product line. If they didn't fix it the third time around, it's time to abandon the damn mechanism and accept that thicc computers can be beautiful, too.
Ehh, fixing the keyboards (assuming its fixed--they've said the same thing 2 or 3 times now) and hopefully the monitor cable only addresses the literally broken things about the new laptops and ignores the other things people prefer the 2015 for. Although multi-core is nice to see, it still maxes out at 32G--without an option to upgrade later, either.
It still looks to have the same camera I had in my 2009 MBP...this can't be a cost/space/engineering thing since iPhones exist. I don't care if it's higher res. Make it higher quality and less noisy. I genuinely miss charging and battery LEDs they removed from the case (and magsafe). I've plugged in my laptop overnight only to find it never charged once or twice. I see the touchbar causing more problems than it solves.
I'm actually disappointed. I was hoping whatever next Macbook Pro they released would be a significant update or offer more compelling things.
I feel like the power management through USBC on the new Macbooks is not good. Frequently my CPU would overheat whenever I was charging my computer.
> If they didn't fix it the third time around, it's time to abandon the damn mechanism and accept that thicc computers can be beautiful, too.
The crazy thing is that it was/is. Who didn’t love it?
The pre 2016 retina MacBook Pros were thin enough with a great keyboard. Then they went and broke them.
The other thing I would question is whether or not the cooling is sufficient as well. 8 cores doesn't mean much if you can't keep them working at a reasonable clock.
They didn't fix it.. it still has the god damn touch bar.
It's like they're trying to be as stupid as possible.
Big news to me is that replacements of older butterfly keyboards (program extended again) will receive new 4th-generation keyboards. Previously if you brought a 1st-gen in, you'd get a new 1st-gen keyboard.
The articles make clear that only 3rd-gen replacements (the ones with last year's new membrane) will get today’s new keyboards. 1st and 2nd-gen customers are still stuck (no pun intended) with their original problem designs.
I just had the keyboard (really the entire top assembly) replaced on my 13" 2016 mbp, and I'm pretty sure it got the 4th gen keyboard. The keys feel and sound significantly different, and the Apple employee who did the replacement (or I think that's who I talked to) said that they were putting redesigned keyboards in for the replacements. I was pretty unhappy that I had to get this done and I'm still not in love with the machine, but I will say that with less than 24-hour turnaround and the new key feel, the replacement process left me with a good impression.
I just had the top case replaced in my 2016 MacBook Pro 15, and they used a top case from a 2017. The tech confirmed that they use the 2017 top case for 2016 models, but the 2018 top case isn’t compatible.
The 2017 does have changes vs the 2016 to make it quieter and less clicky.
That's really interesting. Where are you located? I had my 2017 done a few months ago (back when they were shipping them all out), and I definitely got the old mechanism. Would love to get the new version!
This was at the Apple store in Walnut Creek. I think they’re shooting for 24-ish hour turnaround at all of their stores now. I was putting the repair off until I was sure that I could get it done quickly. They told me that they’re not yet quoting 24 hours, but they do do them in store now, and they typically quote 3 days or so.
It could be that they don’t guarantee you get a new generation keyboard but you might. One would presume they quit manufacturing the old design.
My 2018 13" mbp has been in repair (for the keyboard ofcourse) for weeks now and they told me it won't be finished until somewhere in june, so this might explain why it's taking so long, perhaps it was on hold for a 4th gen keyboard replacement. I sure hope this 4th gen keyboard fixes the problems.
I own both a 15" Macbook Pro 2017 model with touch bar and a Dell XPS 15" 2017 model. Both have their pluses and minuses. Both needed major repairs. Dell needed logic board and screen replaced. Mac needed logic board and keyboard.
I mainly use the Mac. It's much quieter, has an amazingly vivid and bright retina display, extremely good battery life, best track pad in the industry and the best speakers on any laptop I've ever had. I like the keyboard, I even game on it. I don't get the whole dongle issue but I'm not a heavy user of peripherals. I have two USB-C port extender dongles should I ever need anything from ethernet to firewire 800. I've used them like twice in the last two years.
The Dell is fine, but I'm just not a big Windows fan. The keyboard is kinda meh, the bluetooth is poor, the screen isn't as bright or vivid and has some light bleed and the build has that cheap plastic feel about it. If it was any more reliable than the Macbook, I think I would be persuaded by the argument about the hardware, but both have had problems, both required lengthy repairs, etc. I have extended warranty on Dell and Applecare for the Mac and I needed them for both.
Laptops fail. My PC motherboard with ultra durable components also failed after two years. Heat and dust and micro-imperfections in silicon will do their thing. Sure, Apple made some questionable design choices. It's still a great machine.
Dell XPS laptops are some of the best Linux laptops out there. No need for Windows. I've been using the same model as you with Linux for a while now and an very happy with it.
I've tried to go full Linux desktop. I hated it. On the servers I manage, I run terminal only and mostly BSD systems. Linux desktop just boils my piss. Plus I need Adobe apps, and a few other bits and pieces of software. I need my machine to facilitate my work, not get in my way. I appreciate that Linux works like that for some, but for me, not at all.
Just using a Linux desktop vanilla out of the box is setting yourself up for failure. If you plan to be in Linux full-time, you'll have to meet it half-way, and do a lot of customization work. I've got scripts checked into github that setup the machine how I like, which includes XMonad as a window manager, tmux + a heavily customized neovim for terminal and coding, and Brave+Vimium as my browser. I almost never have to touch the mouse and it's fast as hell. Sharp learning curve but one you are over it it's much more efficient and out of your way than windows or os x. If you are going to be using computers professionally for more than a year, as most of us probably are, it's almost certainly worth a few months of effort to have a low level hotrod as your environment.
A few years ago I bought an XPS 15 9530 (2013) and I hate that thing.
A few months after I got it the touch screen failed. Dell put some effort into repairing it (about an hour of remote support for updating the BIOS and afterward a technician visited me twice to replace the display (the first time he didn't have the correct replacement screen at hand)).
However, a while later the screen started to flicker sometimes. At first, I took it for a software issue and since I didn't use the laptop that often I didn't really care. When I realized that it was, in fact, a hardware defect (again), the warranty had expired.
So good Linux support is one (very valuable) thing, but if the build quality is that bad (I mean, even my 300€ first gen Eeepc still runs with fewer problems), I am not willing to pay the XPS premium again.
Agreed, the Linux support for the Dell XPS machines is excellent.
For real? I have Dell XPS at work an had tons of problems installing linux on it. I ended up finding a respined Ubuntu ISO in github that has plenty of patches pre-applied that mostly works, but still have some issues now and then with random freezes and with a thunderbolt dock. Admittedly, I was not a desktop linux user and didn't have much experience tinkering with it, but a coworker of mine who has been using linux for many years and who I would consider a fairly advanced user (heavily configured distro using his own modified tiled desktop environment, etc) had the same issues and couldn't even figured out how to install Debian on it without having the fans spin up randomly and with everything working (I think the webcam didn't work).
Try updating the firmware of the laptop and possibly the dock. Then do a clean install of Ubuntu. I just upgraded my stock 18.04 with stock 19.04, everything works great.
Now that I think of it, you can boot with the LiveCD to see if it will help before trying this.
If the random freezes continue you may have bad ram or other components need to be replaced.
I've also switched to an XPS15 as a linux machine - the largest benefit Dell has over Apple is that IF something breaks (or I break it accidentally) someone will be at my home or at work within 24 hours with replacement parts and will fix it, no questions asked. I can't afford having to go to the apple store and wait days for a replacement when it's my main work machine. The build quality is quite decent and if you look inside it's clearly designed to be repairable on-site, while fixing Apple notebooks often requires replacing entire sections at once and the use of specialized tools.
Can confirm. 10 years ago I burned motherboard and processor trying to overclock my Dell PC. Within 24h a Dell support guy was at my home with all parts of the PC and replaced it without questions asked.
After the quick replacement I even told him it was probably my fault but he replied saying it doesn't matter because on average customers don't abuse and I was just a number to them.
Wish there was an option to buy a 15 inch with no touch bar. I cannot find any suitable use for it on my current model, and I often hit items inadvertently due to the lack of tactile feedback
I've been using MacBook Pro's with the touch bar for a while now, but I just picked up a MacBook Air (in addition to my MacBook Pro). It has a mechanical top row, with just the Touch ID button at the end and it's fantastic. It's so nice to have those keys back! I would pay $100 extra for a MacBook Pro without the touch bar.
Here's the keyboard in all its glory (if you're curious): https://www.apple.com/newsroom/images/product/mac/standard/M...
This is exactly I want. A function row with just touchid..
Yeah, it's great. When I use my MacBook Pro at my desk, I just use an external keyboard and that covers a lot of usage time where I don't have to deal with the touch bar.
I actually really like the touch bar. I'd enjoy my 2016 MBP if it wasn't for the 2 keys that are now unreliable on the keyboard. That and the fact that it crashes every time the battery runs out.
I like the touch bar too. I just want the Esc key back (although they did add the option to remap CapsLock to Esc, so hurray for that, but honestly it was a delayed feature.)
CapsLock to Esc is a new feature? I've had control mapped to CapsLock for years...which is one reason I'm actively avoiding the TouchBar.
I have the Caps Lock key mapped to Control (for Unixy things, especially Emacs), and the Control key mapped to Escape -- which, incidentally, improves locality of the Force Quit key combination.
I never use Caps Lock anyway.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
> I actually really like the touch bar. An app called Pock supposed to make it vaguely useful, but fails to display consistently...
> the fact that it crashes every time the battery runs out.
This. Mine crashed with caffeinate on and would boot into state where display is off. Took me an hour and bunch of stress reset SMC/NVRAM/etc that brought it back to life.
I never got why, if they really want the touch bar, they don't do both. F-keys and touch bar. I kinda would have welcomed this because the "fn" key is a horrible presence on any laptop keyboard anyway and I'd happily would have seen them delegate screen brightness and audio to the touch bar as a separate input.
Getting away from Fn entirely is tough -- it's still useful as a way of simulating keys like PgUp/PgDn/Home/End (Fn+arrows) and forward delete (Fn+Backspace).
Why laptop makers deleted those keys from the keyboard I'll never understand. With just an extra column of keys to the right of Enter, you get delete, page up, page down, home, and end. All very useful keys, right at your fingertips. Panasonic does it right on their rugged laptops, and some other manufacturers still have those keys on some business models, but most have done away with them.
I mean, look at the Dell XPS 15 keyboard. All that space on both sides of the keyboard, and yet they make us chord to do something as simple as Page Down.
My guess is that Apple is using the idiot bar as a trial balloon for abolishing physical keyboards altogether in favor of a touch interface (perhaps one with reconfigurable raised bumps for keys).
I sincerely hope you're wrong.
> I never got why, if they really want the touch bar, they don't do both. F-keys and touch bar.
That would consume room for the touchpad.
Not a big deal, it’s too big anyway, especially on the 15”
I just want a MBP that is a late 2013 body with modern hardware inside it. I know there are many others like me.
Are you sure you wouldn't rather have the 2008-2012 body? It's a bit easier to upgrade or repair.
(At work I have a 15" MBP with the 2013 body. I'm eligible for upgrading it, but what would I replace it with that could possibly be better? Literally the only downside that I care about is the fact that most conference rooms at work no longer have magsafes lying around.)
The big improvement in the 2012-2015 body is that getting rid of upgradability and the optical drive allowed putting in a huge battery (basically the max allowed on airplanes). It also cut the weight by more than a pound.
Most of that is the optical drive, right?
There's a lot to love in the 2013-2015 line, but the 2008-2012 series will always have my heart. I've never had a laptop so easy to work on, and being able to put two drives in a portable is icing on the cake.
They keyboard on the '08-'12's noticeably better than in the '13-'15. Either is way better than the current version.
Yup, I'm on an old top-of-the-line 2011 that I swapped out the DVD for an extra SSD. It's spoiled me — such that to replace it I want 16-32GB of RAM and 1TB SSD.
I'd shelve another k for 17"...
I preferred the 2007 body (the one before the chicklet keys.)
It's probably time to start banging the ThinkPad drum again, but first they need to put their RAM back in sockets.
Disclaimer: work for Apple but about 1000 miles away from hardware
The MacBook touch pads are leagues above all the competition. It’s the number one thing that keeps me away from my think pads.
Why do you say that? Isn't that entirely a personal preference thing? I have preferred any good non-Apple touchpad I have tried to Apple's. (To be fair, 90% of laptops sold ship with cheap, terrible touchpads.) The touchpad on my Dell XPS is a good example; zero finger friction, physical left/right buttons at the bottom of the touchpad, and perfect sensitivity / detection of tap to click and two finger scroll. The drivers support "natural" scrolling too.
On the other hand, Apple's touchpads have to be configured to even enable tap-to-click(?!), and click-and-drag doesn't even work with it... On pretty much any non-Apple touchpad and OS combination, double-tapping on a draggable object enables dragging mode, where you can move the object around the screen with one finger.
If Apple seriously got its software story together, it would at least support better configurability for its touchpads. But even then, it wouldn't have physical buttons, which I prefer.
After I got the haptic touch trackpad, I can’t go back to physical buttons. Ability to click anywhere on a trackpad with a click like feedback is one of the best things Apple ever did.
Maybe if they reduced the force required to click the button by about 75% I could get used to it. It's so hard to push from my normal typing position that I feel like I have to use leverage from my arm instead of just a finger. Plus it's not comfortable to click and drag when you have to continually push down - I'd still want tap to click available even if they improved it.
Maybe you don't want to comment, but are people inside Apple that use a MacBook all day generally happy with the keyboards? I know there's going to be a mix of opinions, but here and on sites like Reddit, it feels like there's a majority opinion that the new keyboards are worse.
Sometimes I just smash the keys till they get unstuck.
Yep. I switched from a Macbook Pro and I definitely miss the touch pad.
But I don't miss the keyboard. Or the touchbar. Or the hotkey layout. Or the operating system. Or not being able to upgrade my hard drive when I needed to.
And a $20 mouse is leagues above any touchpad.
not for me, my hand kill me with any mouse, vertical included. Cannot leave the mac's touchpad
I think it's time to make peace with changes like this, proportionate to their importance to overall impact on functionality. One free slot (with a maximum amount of RAM determined by Intel, not soldering) is probably good enough. Same with removable batteries (the need for which is obviated by USB charging). Indicator LEDs, probably not worth it. Screen aspect ratio, and so on, are probably worth complaining about though.
This so much. I would have upgraded at least twice already if that was an option. Sadly, it isn't and that's why I still use a pretty old model hoping it doesn't get too obsolete soon.
GPD Pocket Max.
Same problem here. Turns out one of my fingers brushes the area just above the number keys when performing certain modifier-key stretches. Never noticed it before, since it's not an issue with real buttons. Try locking it to only the main view (no per-app views) in the settings, then customize it to remove almost everything from it. Only way I was able to make it tolerable.
Not only does Apple offer no option to buy a 15 inch with a full keyboard, they’ve also failed to upgrade the 13 inch model with this refresh.
WTF, honestly.
Well, the 13" they offer with the full keyboard hasn't been updated since 2017 if that makes you feel any better. Or worse.
This refresh was about the new high-end 8-core processors. Why would they update the "13 inch model" now?
It's not just this new high-end option that is missing, they haven't updated the 13 inch non-touchbar model _at all_. They completely skipped it in the refresh a few months ago and it is still using 7th gen processors (the touchbar model was updated, but only to an 8th gen processor. All 15 inch models were updated to 9th gen).
I don't believe the non-touchbar model has received a single spec update since it was announced (though I am having difficulty determining that for sure)
My suspicion (and I'm not alone in this) is that the 13" non-touchbar model -- Marco Arment dubbed it the "MacBook Escape," which I kind of love -- was intended to be the replacement for the MacBook Air, but it misunderstood a lot of what people liked about the Air. Now that Apple has reconsidered and actually updated the Air in its beloved wedge form factor, the MacBook Escape is kind of in philosophical limbo. Apple's modus operandi these days is to leave models around way past their reasonable expiration date, and I think that's what we're seeing here; there's a good chance that the Air is going to get a refresh within 12 months and when that happens, the Escape is going to go away.
I also suspect today's bump is kind of a "holding pattern" update and Apple is working on a more significant redesign of their laptop line that's going to try and address the criticism they've been receiving over the last couple of years. (While it's possible we'll see the first sign of that at WWDC, seeing this press release just a couple weeks before WWDC makes me suspect that we won't see truly new laptops until 2020.)
> 7th gen processors (the touchbar model was updated, but only to an 8th gen processor. All 15 inch models were updated to 9th gen).
Well it's all 14nm Skylake, so that really doesn't matter at all.
Obviously all humans are different but this has never happened to me, not even once. I use it often and would be annoyed to go back.
I would love to see real data about the Touch Bar, but sadly it’ll never get released. So we are all left to private theories and speculation and anecdotes.
I have this problem, but the reason I think it's a problem is that I have to switch back-and-forth between a number of machines, some with touchbars, and some without.
Just this month I got matching external keyboards for all, and it's been much easier having one set of muscle memory no matter what I'm doing.
I would pay +$500 happily for that as a CTO config. Retaining the touchid button would be nice but not critical. I'd pay +$1000 for mechanical top row plus faceid.
My problem is that due to wrist injury I angle my left hand enough that my pinky finger sometimes touches esc or other areas. I have remapped the touch bar but not having esc where I want it also sucks. Mechanical keys don't actuate merely on touch, so this is only a problem on apple.
I'm considering remapping caps lock to esc and then putting tape over the touchbar, at least on the left side, to reduce sensitivity
Yeah, we are really down on the touch bar because one failed hard and another crashed so it showed nothing. It was quite the irritating thing. The keyboards are just a failure.
I actually wish they had a touch id sensor on the back of the display like some Android phones so it is accessible when I have the machine plugged into a display.
I really, really don't want thinner. I want the glued in battery banned, and a replaceable keyboard with ability to clean and replace the keys. I guess I just want a different definition of Pro.
while software driven, there is a program you can get called Haptic Touch Bar, which vibrates when you hit the touchbar buttons.
Not perfect, but at least sort of helpful.
The main point, let me have a nice version without the touchbar is shared.
How does that work? I thought the haptic feedback is only in the trackpad.
It vibrates the trackpad. Works surprisingly well.
Very cool.
Just tried this. Makes the touch bar much more usable.
This makes me confident they'll add haptic feedback in the next Macbook.
I wish there was an option to get the current specs into the 2015 macbook pro so I could avoid the keyboard.
I feel like this is such a common refrain and yet when a maker like System76 tries to enter this market they still still fuck it all up by jamming a number pad in the side. Why do they all do this?
System76 is using OEM gaming laptops, so are probably a little limited in what they can do. They keys are slightly smaller (I think), but I have gotten used to them. I do like having the number pad though.
The only thing I'm missing in my mac -> linux conversion, is lightroom (it seems to process raw files better). I'm getting better at the linux equivalent "darktable". I sometimes feel I would pay for software on linux to get a polished experience.
I don't even care about the Linux environment so much as I just want a physical enclosure equivalent in finish to the 2015 era 15" MacBookPro.
https://github.com/niw/HapticKey
Cool, thanks for sharing! (Seems like a missed opportunity that Apple didn't add their own built-in haptics to the TouchBar.)
Yeah it would be great if the touchbar itself had haptic feedback. But the trackpad haptic feedback works surprisingly well.
I've refused my 3-year upgrade and fear the day I'll need a replacement for my late 2015 macbook. It's sad being stranded on hardware that is starting to show its age when the newer devices leave little to be desired from a usability standpoint. It also hurts that any replacement will be incompatible with my $150 dock.
it's not responsive enough either. maybe I have a light touch, but I never had problems with the physical keyboard before. many times I go to pause my music or change volume and the buttons don't register for 2 or 3 presses.
I thought the ESC key was going to be annoying, but it has ended up being everything else.
also the huge trackpad is annoying. at home with the laptop on my lap I hit the edges all the time and send the mouse flying. had to turn off "hot corners" because I kept locking my laptop randomly.
When I first got mine I found it fun to customize using BetterTouchTool, but I quickly realized it was no replacement for having hardware buttons. I miss them so much.
Also I'd love an option without external GPU. GPU switching is still slow and occasionally buggy, wastes power and has no benefit for me when writing any app.
No touch bar + better keyboard.
I'm currently using the last, best 2015 macbook, and having tried a newer model as a work computer for a short while previously, am dreading the day I need to think about replacing it.
How about this apple. "macbook util". The pro line can keep the thin delicate stuff. Give me the 2015 case, screen, keyboard, and magsafe, with some new internals and a usb-c. I'd happily hand over my money.
Wasn't that kind of the point of the "Pro" line? I mean, if you just wanted a kinda cool laptop, you'd buy a MacBook or MacBook Air. It's now the MacBook Prosumer, and there is no pro option.
Hacker News has been whinging about this Apple dilemma for years. I'm sorry to say that I just don't think there will ever be the golden age of MacBooks again. The "Pro" ideas coming from Cupertino are gimmicky at best for developers, and we will be stuck working on various Linux machines and leave the MBP problems to designers. The hacker-type software engineer is not Apple's target market for the MBP, and I think even before it was likely coincidence.
If you look at the pro target even in this post, the majority of Mac "pro" use cases being displayed here are creative in nature. Devs generally aren't spending their days editing video or sitting in Maya and they are targeting those markets - people who need power but don't wrench into their OS internals or open a debugger when something goes wrong. Those customers are also a lot less flighty as long as their creative tools work.
As for me, I stopped complaining and wishing for a pony, accepted that the MacBook is dead, and moved to a ThinkPad for daily use. My 2015 MBP will stick around when I need macOS, but it's best to start converting my workflow to a different platform where I see a future for development work.
> Devs generally aren't spending their days editing video or sitting in Maya and they are targeting those markets - people who need power but don't wrench into their OS internals or open a debugger when something goes wrong. Those customers are also a lot less flighty as long as their creative tools work.
But their requirements aren't much different to developers in terms of the machines. They need reliability most of all - a MacBook failing in a production location you've had to shift kit to or have performers at can be a huge concern. Dongle life makes everything harder for no benefit. They still need to type sometimes, even spaces or the letter 'e'! MacOS's development on emerging creative technologies like HDR is not exactly setting the world on fire.
I can assure you, there are a lot of creative professionals in outright dismay at the state of Apple's current laptop line.
I love Thinkpads but the trackpads, screen, and build quality leave a lot to be desired. Every Mac is the same level of assembly/quality but ThinkPads vary too much from one to another.
The prices for the high-performance models are almost as high as Apple and the power bricks are actually bricks.
I have a t490 with 500 nit display. 100% ARGB / SRGB. I haven't seen any macbook display that's sharp. Btw I have a personal 2012 Retina Macbook pro & a 2018 Macbook pro that I use for work for frontend.
The 2012 Retina displays are no less sharp than the best display on the T490. Are you sure you aren't just comparing macOS to Windows?
I'm the biggest critic of modern Apple notebooks there is, but I can't fault the quality of the MacBook Pro displays. They are, and have been for a long time, the best displays on notebooks.
How is the keyboard on the T490? I have a T460s at home where I like the keyboard a lot. I have a T470s at work, where the keyboard is a little less to my liking and I tried a colleagues T480s where it felt awesome again - so how about the T490? Can't really decide between T480s, T490, T490s or 6th gen X1 carbon.
> 100% ARGB / SRGB.
The T490 does 100% Adobe RGB? I'm impressed. Seems like Lenovo has been really listening to people complain about the horrendous gamut ThinkPads have been afflicted with for some time.
sure, but the trackpad criticism is still valid.
The modern X1 carbon does not have this problem. I’m using the 8th generation and the trackpad is very good, along with a screen that accomplishes full-on HDR, and much better color depth.
There are other issue with almost every ThinkPad, X1 Carbon included.
Speaker quality is a lottery with every model, and none of them are as good as the 2013+ MacBook Pro. Coil whine and electrical noise is almost a given from either the machine itself or Lenovo's chargers. The quality of the audio output on the machine is almost certainly not as good as that on the MacBook Pro.
Oh, and I can all but guarantee that the battery in a MacBook Pro will have better longevity than that of the ThinkPad.
You also have to pay almost MacBook Pro prices to get decent specs out of the Lenovo machines.
I bought a MacBook Air recently and the decision was really tough. Obviously the Pro has much more horse power but on the other hand: why would I need so much CPU and possibly GPU on a laptop? If I want to do some data intense task, it will be by far more convenient to run it on a remote server. The tasks run while the laptop is in my back pack and low CPU power means also longer battery life time.
Yes, the keyboards have high failure rate. But I mean Apple is not known for its conservative design. If I compare my new MacBook Air with most other laptops, especially old ones, those look like teleported from 30 years ago. The new keyboard is far better to type on and my latent RSI highly appreciates less motion necessary - slow SSH sessions punish me with double types but there are solutions, maybe Mosh (mobile shell) works.
People should also consider that progress means regress in some way. Most technologies advertised on HN have some serious flaws compared to the old school alternatives. But who seriously wants to go back to 90s computing?
I'm quite happy with the new laptop, it's perfect for development, it can be used anywhere, it can be charged with my phone charger (!) and the case is made of iPad Pro scrap, I couldn't be happier.
You tolerate a glitchy keyboard that double types? Madness. Stockholm syndrome!
Loads of ultra-portable PC laptops are perfect for development, can be used anywhere whatever that means, and charge with USB type-C making them compatible with a proper universal power standard.
Progress is not regress. Regress is regress, progress is progress. I'm sorry for saying this but it sounds like you're only convincing yourself that black is white in order to justify your purchase to yourself.
On a more positive note, Mosh was a game changer for me, integrate it into your toolchain, you won't be disappointed.
The laptop is 1-2 months old only but I had no problem with it. Indeed I had double types in an SSH session with a wacky AI cloud provider but IMHO that's a software problem. (And maybe in 2019 I should anyway rely on Job submissions, web interfaces instead of Terminal connections.)
> Progress is not regress. Regress is regress, progress is progress.
When I switched from Windows to Linux on the Desktop it was progress in terms of stability but regress in terms of application and driver support. macOS is for me better application and driver support but the choice of hardware is more limited. After all it's not just the laptop you buy but all the components, the components' abilities/driver support, the cases. I think the perfect computer only exists in the product owner's mind ;)
Have you had issues with the display or keyboard? I’ve had my display exchanged twice, and topcase exchanged 3 times now.
That's exactly it. That on top of the bling factor. Nobody buys MacBooks, all I see are MacBook Pros. Because of this Apple had to start catering the to consumers who care more about thinness and bling rather than utility. The pro device became a device for everyone.
I get why they'd like like to sell a pro device to more people. That's fine. It marketing world pro/professional seems to often equate to "better". If someone wants to spend an extra thousand to load the news a bit faster, sure. Apple will and should happily take their money, and they can repurpose product names in service of this all day.
I would like to imagine there's space in the market for a "pro" model that would feel markedly worse for the average consumer, and shouldn't be mistakable in its name for something that would serve them better.
I see this time and time again on Hacker News, and really don't understand why people seem to think that "pro" in any way equates to "developer" or to "someone who needs a lot of computing horsepower".
"Pro" means professional. The vast majority of working professionals, in the vast majority of professional fields, run Office, a mail client, a browser, and maybe a line-of-business app. Professionals regularly attend meetings, and like to be able to carry their laptop around without breaking their backs.
The needs of professionals are generally largely in line with the needs of the average consumer.
You can come up with 'professional' jobs that need more horsepower (people like traders who want to run 6 monitors, and software devs (although personally I don't understand why software devs really need more horsepower)) but those are most definitely the exception.
Yeah, but why not get a cheaper MacBook Air if you don't need the power?
< although personally I don't understand why software devs really need more horsepower
When i build test and lint the smallish piece of software i work on it can take quite a while. More horsepower means quick turn around cycle from "make change see result". Also sometimes i am running multiple VM or containers.
It really helps some developers out.
Everybody needs a functioning keyboard.
I don't think MacBook has been updated in more three years, so that might be part of the reason people aren't buying them.
Yes, a developer's edition. I'll take a heavier, larger device with more and varied ports and extended battery life please. An all-hardware keyboard with a useful arrow-key configuration that doesn't make me press the wrong key all the time. An actual 'esc' key so I have my caps lock key back.
</dreamsequence>
That sounds like a regular laptop
Is there a petition I can sign? Will pay 20% on top.
While I'm dreaming, I want a smaller touch pad too. That's right where your hands rest. I'm constantly having issues with moving the pointer because of unwanted touches being recognized.
I've been using this machine for 6 months now, and as an iOS dev I'm locked in. But I don't love it, even if they thought I was gonna.
FWIW, not resting your hand/wrist but keeping your hand parallel to the floor will reduce your chance of inflaming your carpal tunnel.
Consider the large touch pad a gift from Apple in this regard :-)...
Ok i will try.
My piano teacher had me play scales with a coin on the back of my hand, if that helps.
If you look at the anatomy of the wrist you’ll see the problem. It’s worse for woman who have been pregnant (the lining sells for some reason and stays that way)
This is a bit of a side note, but I remapped my caps lock key to escape and it makes things a lot easier.
I've done that too. It's an improvement, but it's made things a little more difficult in other ways - like for some reason it's very easy for me to confuse Tab and Escape/capslock now. In some typing scenarios, I just can't seem to keep them straight.
Yes, I wrote pretty much exactly this in another reply in this thread. The main problem is that "thinner" costs a lot in terms of other features and functionality, and yet there is a whole class of users for whom "thinner" has no value whatsoever. That's me. Stop trying to make it thinner and pleasing us becomes easy.
i think it’s high time apple decouple screen size, core-count and thinness with “pro-ness”
there is no technical reason (that i know of) stopping apple from selling a 15 inch laptop as thin as the macbook air (and still even get a low-clocked 4 core cpu in there)... i for one would buy that up in a heartbeat
for those that really need power, they can have a much thicker 6 or 8 or higher core cpu + discrete gpu and it would be fine (for that target) i would imagine...
but maybe apples marketing dept knows more than i do (not being sarcastic)
The could call it the "Macbook Classic"
I would pay top dollar for a 2011 era 17 inch macbook chassis, with 2019 era internals.
YES YES YES YES!
Sign me up.
Take my money!
And no touch bar please
The arrow keys and touchbar make that machine completely unsuitable for writing code, at least for me. My right hand needs to unconsciously lock on to the arrow keys, and that's just impossible with that layout. There's nothing to grab on to. My new iMac keyboard sits in a drawer collecting dust solely because of the arrow keys.
And the butterfly mechanism is unproven and untrustworthy, I don't care how many times they update it.
They need to go back to using the same keyboard mechanisms for both their desktops and laptops, and they need to go back to the old arrow key layout.
I will wait another year until 2020.
This is the first time I've seen somebody else complain about the arrow keys and I completely agree.
It's by far the most infuriating aspect of this new keyboard.
Another thing that I have a hard time explaining is my inability to orientate myself on this keyboard; several times a day I have to move the laptop around, look at the keys and "reset" myself to the keyboard. I don't know what that's about but I've only ever experienced it on this keyboard.
My personal machine is a 2014 MBP which will be replaced with something other than a mac once the time comes.
I hate my MBP arrow keys, but unless I'm doing a little work from home or in a meeting I never use the keyboard, instead I have a full size apple keyboard that I love and use with the macbook in clamshell mode hooked up to a dell 4k.
I'm probably not buying a new macbook pro for a long time... it's just not worth it to have such a high end machine that I use as a glorified traveling mac mini.
For my next work upgrade I am requesting a linux laptop.
RT. I upgraded to the late-2018 MBP from a 2013 MBP and after three months of heavy dev usage cannot get used to the new keyboard layout (specifically arrow keys) and touchbar.
Really wish Apple would start offering touch bar as an option when you purchase!
There is some claim that they've fixed the keyboard issue.
Aside from that, across 2 MacBook Pro's and a MacBook Air, I've had 0 keyboard issues. I don't know if I've just gotten lucky, kept my keyboard clean, or what, but it just has never been a problem for me.
They claim, but then my MacBook Pro with the upgraded keyboard had to get fixed twice due to the "sticky key" issue.
I'm fed up and switching to a different brand.
The failure rate of the butterfly keyboard design is clearly orders of magnitude too high and is the sort of thing people should genuinely lose their jobs over (and perhaps they have). But "orders of magnitude too high" might well mean one or two percent, rather than one or two tenths of a percent; outside the company, I don't think we have any reasonable estimates of the failure rate, just anecdotes. My work laptop has no problem, although its lid is usually closed; my home laptop, a MacBook Escape, also has had no keyswitch problems, although I mostly use an iPad for portable work now. Most of my coworkers have new butterfly-switch keyboards and I don't hear of significant issues; I've talked with a couple Mac IT people at different companies and they haven't experienced huge failure rates, either. This is, again, all anecdotal, though; some people will come back and say "I'm in an eight-person group and three of us had bad keyboards."
Anecdotally, at my company, the failure rate is closer to 30%.
I have the wireless Mac keyboard and I agree about the arrows. I’ve had this keyboard for years and I’m still not used to that arrow placement.
The butterfly mechanism isn't the problem, they've been used in Panasonic laptops for years. The problem is pushing it to such extremes.
Not that ergonomic errors keys are not desirable, but you can mostly avoid using arrow keys by switching to Ctrl+B Ctrl+F Ctrl+P Ctrl+N.
Or maybe an hjkl vim remapping is in order :)
I've been waiting a year to replace my 2015 MBP. Will probably have to wait another year now :L
8-core CPU, even presumably with HT off after all the recent Intel vulnerabilities, makes me laugh after my personal experience with my late 2016 MacBook Pro 13 touch bar with fastest (at that time) i7. During normal browsing especially with plugged charger, it was heating so much that something in the keyboard was unglueing. The space bar and 'c' produced different clicking sound. I was quite unhappy with that since it was my first experience with Apple products. I took it to Apple Store, they replaced the top part (with keyboard), it fixed 'c' and 'space', but issue appeared in '~' and 'tab'. I took it again to Apple Store, they replaced top part again. And again same issue with different keys. I took it there again, since replacing top case didn't help they proposed to replace whole laptop. I agreed. New laptop had the same issue again so I had nothing to do but wait when Apple will acknowledge the issue. They didn't but started to replace keyboards because of key stucking issue, so I requested a fix again and finally they managed to fix it...
Using Safari with an adblocking extension that makes use of WebKit’s native content blocking capabilities makes an enormous difference when it comes to heat and power draw. I’ve tried Chrome and Firefox with uBlock Origin and both are considerably more demanding in CPU use while not being that much faster. Where Chrome and Firefox has my fans ramped up to 60%, Safari has them running at 10% or switched off.
Really wish both Google and Mozilla would press pause on feature development for a couple of years and make efficiency the top priority.
Which Safari adblocker do you like? Is there one with a similar "freedom-ness" to uBlock Origin?
Any recommendation on a good adblocking extension for Safari on MacOS? I've been using KaBlock but I've not found a great source that meaningfully compares the existing options.
It costs a couple bucks but Wipr does pretty well and gets regular updates.
Another nice bonus to content blocker extensions like these is that they’re just JSON rule lists that Safari compiles into bytecode and runs against pages as they load. The extensions are barred from access to everything, meaning they can’t be bought up and turned into Trojan horses.
Brave had made a huge difference for me. As much as I'd like to support Mozilla by using Firefox,i just can't justify it. Brave is amazing.
8-core CPU means that I can rebuild my code almost twice as fast. That's 8 minutes vs. 16. Doesn't make me laugh.
I guess there's a reason it's "Pro".
The performance will only be better for the first 30 or so seconds anyway before the cpu has to start thermal throttling.
Do you have benchmarks that show anything like this? Or are you referring to the firmware bug that was fixed shortly after release, last year?
Everything thermal throttles, that's what turbo is.
The issue last year was because Apple was applying the thermal throttling in such a way as to make the average performance of the CPU significantly lower than it needed to be by throttling too much, too quickly then recovering to too high of a clock speed too quickly thus ping-ponging between a very fast/high/hot state and a very low/cool state. In many cases the CPU would drop down below 600mhz for me for periods of time.
A proper setup will have a graph with a brief (~30s) burst to turbo max followed by a thermal throttle slightly below what the system can sustain followed by a recovery to the max sustained clock speed at just below the thermal limit.
e.g. 4.2ghz for 30s to 2.2ghz recovering to 2.6ghz sustained.
The exact profile is highly workload dependent but a properly designed system invariably follows that general profile.
> a properly designed system invariably follows that general profile
... unless the system was designed to handle the thermal load, in which case it would not thermal-throttle and you'd see a sustained clock speed.
Sure, performance will increase, I'm not arguing with that. I was just refering to my own experience. Personally, particarly this issue, made me use servers/clusters more, so data analysis or massive code compilation I do remotely, and for me 'Pro' now means a stable OS, good screen, good touchpad, good sound laptop which just runs IDE and browser (and occasional small Python tests of algorithms in Jupiter).
P.S. I'm not a picky person. I work in a quiet office so even my colleague noticed the issue without me pointing. At the beginning I really wanted to fix the issue. Later it was rather for 'feedback' and a matter of principle.
As someone who is desperately wanting to upgrade from a mid-2012. I say big deal.
No better display like oled. Looks like the same keyboard to me. Oh the material has changed? Who cares, it's the same failing mechanism. More CPU eh? Means it'll just get hotter much quicker and there will be more throttling to be fixed via software.
At this rate, for Apple to get my $$$ again they'll have to release a 16" [oled] macbook pro, with a redesigned keyboard and arm chipset so that the body is entirely cool even under load.
Maybe in 2022 I can see myself buying another macbook pro. Man, I can't wait till Tim Cook gets replaced. We need another visionary at he helm of Apple. Someone who will push the envelope again!
OLED is not a very good idea for a computer monitor currently with their pretty bad image retention. Go look at the iPhones at Best Buy. You can see they have pretty bad retention (unless your Best Buy is good and replaces the phones often).
Yea, this is the reason there aren't any OLED PC monitors (unless you count that one portable one that's overpriced and has terrible color reproduction)
I have never seen retention on my Pixel2XL. Not even a little bit. I used to see retention on my last OLED phone. Maybe we're getting close to OLED displays that are good enough? And yes, sometimes I have my phone on for a long time. And yes, there are static elements just like on a desktop.
You wont notice it if you use your phone. Retention happens when the screen is on all day showing a static image that doesn't change. On a macbook that would mean the apple logo for sure would burn in. Hell, even on my non-oled lcd monitors they're burning in even though they're not supposed to.
Even with pixel shifting you can still get retention too, so that's not really an option right now. I'm hopeful some company in the future will come up with a way to prevent it altogether - but it's going to have to be some kind of new screen tech.
I don't leave my screen on the same image all day. It's on about as much as my phone. I turn it off if I'm not actively using it. This is my point. If I can have it on my phone, I should be able to have it on my desktop.
The thing is, they don't even need to push the envelope. I would have been happy with a classic MBP with upgraded hardware but without USB C ports and no touchbar.
It's just that they keep introducing stupid, useless gimmicks.
IMO they needed one transitional design where they replaced the thunderbolt (is that right? I get all their storm-named ports mixed up) ports, and maybe the charger port if they must, with USB-C, but kept HDMI and at least one USB-A. I use the SDCARD port all the time but I could see their getting rid of it. The other stuff? Gimme a break, going all USB-C from a state of no USB-C? WTF was I supposed to plug into it without an adapter or buying all new peripherals and drives?
All the USB-C ports on the new MacBook Pros double as Thunderbolt 3 ports — IMO this is a big advantage over other laptops where some ports are USB-C only.
I've only ever had a 2016+ MBP as a work computer so I didn't mind the USB-C stuff too much (especially with a dock that I didn't have to pay for). The lack of dedicated ethernet port and SD card reader is vexxing though (on my personal 2015 MBP).
> All the USB-C ports on the new MacBook Pros double as Thunderbolt 3 ports — IMO this is a big advantage over other laptops where some ports are USB-C only.
The disadvantage is that one of those USB-C ports will be your charging port when there is only 4 on the 15" and 2 on the 13".
I don't mind USB-C/Thunderbolt so much, I think it's great we'll get products that will be forced to adopt it (looking at you, audio interfaces/DACs). The MBP has been a port desert for a long time and dongles are awful UX - and they just keep removing more and more of them.
It baffles me when they try and do things that seem to improve UI/UX, like the touchbar (which I hate, but I get it), the move to Retina displays, high quality dual-front facing speakers on all models now, etc... but then they turn around and remove IO options and roll out a terrible keyboard. It seems like they have warped priorities for the mac line.
Personally if the move to ARM and don't offer MacOS as a standalone product, the pro-media world will probably abandon Macs altogether. And I don't really want to develop for another OS, I love mac. The machines are just awful.
If any of your TB3 or USB-c devices is decent (ie not a cheap Chinese POS) and has a/c power it’ll probably provide power back to the laptop over the same connection.
The 13" has 4 thunderbolt ports
The audio quality of the speakers pisses me off because of how good it sounds.
Such an unnecessary ‘enhancement’, and reminds me of the old HP Pavilion laptops, touting Altec Lansing speakers, which I thought was asinine.
Wait... you are pissed off because you get better sound quality from your laptop speakers?
Yes. It is an unnecessary and over-engineered feature, where effort should have been spent on other parts of the machine.
That's certainly a fresh take.
Tim Cook has got to go.. he's pathetic.
Apple designers need a new mantra, the age-old adage: "Form follows function." As it is, they're choosing a form ahead of time and compromising on function.
The vast majority of users choose Macs because of the great OS and the hardware specs. The "thinness" or "sleekness" is only a nice-to-have, and only if it doesn't require compromise elsewhere.
Apple's mantra is "form over function".
It most definitely did not use to be.
Apple's motto has always been "form/fashion/culture over function" and you can see that in many instances throughout their past.
Aside what was mentioned in your other replies, I think the biggest piece of evidence is the fact that they stuck with their one-button mouse for such a long time even after multi-button mice became a very common third-party hardware purchase alongside a new Mac.
Another commenter mentioned a famous Steve Jobs quote where he said something along the lines of "the form is the function" but I'm absolutely positive that's part of an overall sales-pitch and not a description of reality.
> Apple's motto has always been "form/fashion/culture over function"
That is untrue. You might get away with arguing that it's the case now to an extent, and you could've argued that with the famously dysfunctional hockey-puck-mouse that shipped with the first iMacs, but to adduce the one-button mouse as evidence for said hypothesis betrays your ignorance of UI research and Apple's good old Human Interface Guidelines.
The HIG is utter garbage, objectively wrong on many topics and Apple never even follows every aspect of it themselves.
Here's all the desktop UI research you need to know: Apple has the worst UI of any desktop OS by far. It's full of undiscoverable functionality, icon-only buttons that you have to click first to find out what they do and lacking many features for basic things like window management... But it certainly is hilarious watching people operate it, swiping furiously to find that full-screen app that they lost because there's no real maximize button and the dock is now hidden or having to use the mouse pointer to do just every operation because the keyboard acceleration sucks.
Their mobile OS UI is very similarly meh, lacking options, hiding things and so-forth...the only thing really good about it is that it's more stable than Android.
And actually your own ignorance has been displayed here. There's nothing about the alleged superiority of one-button mice in the HIG. Look it up.
There were hints of it even back in the Apple II and Apple III era, both of which released with inadaquate cooling.
The only 8-bit Apple that suffered from inadequate cooling was the III. An average II would never overheat. You could, of course, load your II to a limit it'd fail, but my //e was fairly loaded (320k of RAM, SSC, Grappler, Microsoft Softcard (1 MHz Z-80), AE clock, Disk II and a PAL-M board). The II+ had mostly the same configs, with 64K and a Videx 80-column card in dual-head configuration. Both ran warm-ish for about a decade before going into storage.
Both ran perfectly silent.
Actually you're mistaken. Initial Apple II's had poor cooling due to Steve Jobs' opposition to vents on aesthetic grounds. A few months later the case was revised, but the lesson didn't sink in, as evidenced by the infamous Apple III.
> The first production Apple IIs had hand-molded cases; these had visible bubbles and other lumps in them from the imperfect plastic molding process, which was soon switched to machine molding. In addition, the initial case design had no vent openings, causing high heat buildup from the PCB and resulting in the plastic softening and sagging. Apple added vent holes to the case within three months of production; customers with the original case could have them replaced at no charge.
Indeed, but that initial error was quickly corrected and those cases are unbelievably rare these days.
This was my general experience as well.
Having pulled a //e out of storage, that's all still true, FWIW. (I need to recap that machine one day soon.)
Interesting point. However, there was also the famous Steve quote where he was adamant that design is about function, and not about how pretty it looks.
Found it:
> “Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People think it’s this veneer – that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”
– Steve Jobs
hardware specs? They usually very outdated. They didn't update the air processor for like 4 generations.
The hardware specs are "meh" at best, but the build quality is still better than the competitor..
I have a newer Thinkpad for work, and it feels cheap and plastic compared to my MBP. The Lenovo creaks when I pick it up with one hand, and just feels flimsy. The MBP feels solid and integrated.
I'd love a 2013 MBP with modern components.
My X1 Carbon, which cost as much as a 13” MBP, has a plastic sticker for a bezel. It’s now peeling off.
Good lord, I knew the newer Lenovo models were underwhelming but that's their flagship premium model. That's utterly unacceptable.
It's their thin-is-better lighter-is-more-important model. In the traditional 14-16" size, the T4xx/T5xx devices do what they are supposed to. A changable battery (while running, without tools) enables you to do things like swapping an empty battery for a full one, either by plugging in shortly, using a secondary battery in the case, or briefly shutting down. I don't want to carry that much energy with me all the time, but I still want the option to use the device without having significant downtime. A short break is fine, but that's 5-10 minutes, not 30+ for charging the battery.
I believe the hot-swappable batteries are a goner on the latest T series machines.
Thinkpad doesn't say much. What series? Thinkpads range from supermarket offer bin to mobile workstations like P1.
It's a P52s.
The fact that it matters is part of the problem. All of the Apple laptops feel solid and well put together.
They have a price point where they can be made solid and well put together. Lenovo also sells cheap laptops of lower quality. Not sure why that's a problem. Or do you think people shouldn't be given cheaper options?
Don't use the same name for the quality product and the flimsy product.
There are way too many options across too many series. I don't know how people even choose, much less a layman.
> Or do you think people shouldn't be given cheaper options?
This is a cheap rhetorical tactic.
Sure, there's lots of models to choose from and potential for analysis paralysis. That's not what I understand the OP was complaining about though.
The Air is an exception—it was in this limbo where it looked like it didn’t have a place in the product lineup between the MacBook and MacBooks Pro. A couple of exceptions is hardly “usually.” The other lines are updated regularly with whatever is the latest in October.
12" MacBook hasn't been updated in 2 years.
I didn't mean Apple's are always top-of-the-line. Only that specs are usually close to the top of customers' criteria.
Lots of people on HN call the Mac OS 'great' ... But why? What is so great about it that is not similar on Linux or Windows?
When ye say "great", I think ye mean "the one I am familiar with".
Since the introduction of Mac OS X, I've always thought of macOS in terms of a Venn diagram of two partially overlapping circles:
(A) Operating systems that major desktop apps support
(B) Developer-friendly operating systems (Unix/Linux at the core, default shell is bash or similar, etc.)
Windows is in (A). Linux is in (B). But macOS is in the overlapping area between (A) and (B). It's the best of both worlds.
I've struggled with this idea - almost everything (outside Apple specific development) is ported to Windows. My work is in .NET and various Javascript frameworks. Never had a problem with Windows.
Plus I feel if I really needed a Linux environment, the Linux subsystem would fill that need.
> Plus I feel if I really needed a Linux environment, the Linux subsystem would fill that need.
Have you actually used it? A bunch of devs I work with continually have issues relating to WSL so i'm not sure if its comparable to macOS.
Early WSL was a pain, but they’ve come a long way. My entire web dev stack works natively on WSL these days–and WSL2 is due any day now, which should make it entirely on-par going forward.
That's big news! Apparently any day now is by the end of June. Here's the announcement for anyone who (like me) hadn't already heard:
I'm a little skeptical given the shortcomings/difficulties I encountered last year, but a solid competitor to macOS as a unix workstation with broad desktop app support would be great to have.Even in the last year it’s actually a dramatic shift in the landscape. I use WSL as my full-time development environment with Docker/PHP/Node.JS, and have few problems getting anything working–no more than any other platform.
Yeah, I really wanted to WSL to be ready for prime time, and bought a Dell XPS 13 on that expectation, but... nope. It's still mostly promise, you only pull off using it for day-to-day unix-based dev if you're willing to put in a lot of effort, jump through hoops, address unanticipated conditions, and otherwise engage in a lot of yak-shaving.
Our family has lots of Apple hardware and I’ve had Macs off on over the years. But, the last time I owned a Mac - the 2006 Core Duo Mac Mini - I realized that there was no software that I was using on it that I couldn’t get for Windows that I cared about.
I also told myself I needed a Windows laptop for hobby projects outside of work. A few things happened to make me think about getting another Mac within the next 18 months.
- All of my work now is cross platform .Net Core, JavaScript, and Python.
- I don’t have any plans on doing any Windows specific development.
- In the unlikely event that I need to do anything on Windows, I’ll spin up an EC2 instance in my hobby AWS account.
- the chances of any company I work for not giving me a Windows laptop is slim.
But honestly, I don’t do side projects that aren’t work related and I hardly ever use my computer at home besides as a Plex server. I use my iPad at home mostly with a Bluetooth keyboard for the rare personal MS Office work
Sketch is probably the single biggest seller of Mac's.
I'd say it's probably Microsoft Office or Photoshop…
(B) Web developer friendly. I am a game dev. I have no need for Unix.
You're in a bit of a niche though; gamedev is heavily slanted towards the microsoft ecosystem, and that might be changing depending on how Stadia is adopted.
Source: myself, a gamedev for AAA titles.
Imo HN needs to be reminded as much as possible that not all of programming is web-apps.
Its very common here in comments (and articles) for the two to be synonymous.
Web and mobile are such a huge chunk of our everyday lives now though that I would dare say that everything else pales in comparison.
And Apple has had the mindshare of that crowd for quite some time now. But...
---
Personally, I despise working with both Windows and current generation of Linux desktops. They are clunky, inconsistent, cluttered etc. However, they are improving (albeit slowly sometimes) while Apple's "pro" offerings are degrading at an alarming rate. And with the impending advent of Marzipan we might see an exodus of pro users from MacOS.
What's the rationale behind Marzipan causing an exodus of pro users? Even if there were a flood of low-quality mobile apps onto the Mac... I don't see how that would reduce the availability of existing desktop-first apps.
Broken windows theory.
In case of Linux and Windows you can see their effort to improve things. Their failures and shortcomings stem from either decades of legacy (Windows) or lack of overarching vision and resources (Linux).
Whereas MacOS... It has always been billed (and billed itself) as the UI/UX front runner. It was (or was trying to be) polished, consistent, good.
Apple had Human Interface Guidelines in as early as 1987[1]. Apple was the definitive yardstick interfaces would be measured by.
But in the recent year(s)... Apple has been consistently dropping the ball themselves. When their own first-party apps break almost every single HIG [2], how can one expect third-party developers to create quality apps. When their own third-party apps are locked in to landscape mode (iOS dashboard and iOS books interface), how can one expect third-party developers spend any significant amount of time creating seamless experiences across multiple screen sizes (and Apple’s own Marzipan apps like Newsstand and Home are barely ok at best).
When your OS is no better than the competition, what’s to stop people from using the competition (which actually shows willingness to improve).
[1] https://blog.prototypr.io/rediscovering-apples-human-interfa...
[2] https://grumpy.website/post/0RsaxCu3P
It would redefine the standard to which Mac apps would be held to.
It's interesting that you describe a Unix/Linux development environment as web development friendly. Historically, the only relationship between the two was that a portion of the server/hosting market ran on Solaris and Linux boxes (and now, Linux servers and VMs). But that's not really why it became popular for web development.
Since web development doesn't require a proprietary dev toolkit, it gravitated towards the platform that most naturally supports software development in general. And that happened to be Unix/Linux.
Web, and mobile, and many types of enterprise. That’s quite a bit more development than games.
Mobile and enterprise, you say? Android Studio and IntelliJ IDEA feel no more at home on Unix than they do on Windows. Same for MySQL and Oracle stuff. As for the Web, granted I only do occasional Angular development, I can also say I've never faced any limitation - not even considering the WSL compatibility layer.
Also embedded and high-performance computing developer friendly. Other areas where Linux is the #1 OS. MacOS isn't as suitable there.
I did web dev. Don't see how Linux would help me.
It really depends on what languages/frameworks you use. A lot of common languages have package support in the standard repos for Ubuntu-based distros, and the command line is more of a first-class citizen in Linux environments than in Windows or macOS.
The only feature in *sh, that is superior to PowerShell I know about is proliferation of parameter completion for tools.
Otherwise it's the same git, cmake, etc I use everywhere, just a different language.
For me it's less about what's "so great" and more about what's not awful.
I need a Unix-like command line environment and Windows is inferior there. Otherwise it's fine (I use it on my gaming machine), but if you look closely you can see it's a huge mess (e.g. the insane state of the control panel(s)) in ways Mac OS just isn't.
Linux is too much work. I say this as someone who has used it for years, still uses it every day, I've compiled my own kernels, etc., but it's just too much work to get everything working perfectly on my personal machine, especially on a laptop.
Mac OS doesn't have many of these problems. I am old, I have too much real work to do, and I need a machine that works and gets the fuck out of my way. I am past the point where I consider fiddling with the guts of my OS a badge of honor and think having a bunch of code up on my screen makes me look super cool like Neo from The Matrix. For people like me who don't need things it doesn't have and like what it does have, it's a good choice.
Now if only Apple would stop making so many dumb hardware choices...
Another feature that keeps me on OS X is the ease of imaging a system and booting from that image. Also target disk mode - I've yet to see anything that comes close in Windows or Linux but I admit I'm a bit out of touch.
I wholeheartedly agree. I'll add, though, that due to some recent work in deep learning I started running Pop_OS 19.04. Other than the stupid name, it's actually been surprisingly great at doing everything I need and staying out of the way without me having to fiddle with it. I can run steam, skype, zoom, and everything but office as easily as on any other os.
Overall polish is not to Mac level, but it's a smidge above Windows 10. Which is about 100x better than my prior experiences with desktop linux.
Windows is crap. The UI is totally schizoid, with different apps using different toolkits. Office for Mac integrates more cleanly into the look and feel of the rest of the OS than Office for Windows. There are two different settings apps with different features. Basic things are poorly designed. E.g. if you put the task bar in autohide mode, it routinely gets “stuck” because some notification is keeping it from hiding.
Best example is still the Settings/Control Panel mess in Windows 10. It's always a fun game guessing where the setting I need is, especially considering the useless Start menu search.
That being said, I have high hopes considering their latest efforts, the new terminal looks cool, powershell is useful and WSL2 looks to bridge the gap. I'm a die hard macOS user that requires Windows for a variety of work tasks, i'm glad to see the effort and competition.
Of course, electron is bringing this great fragmented ui experience to macOS
Electron is a browser. So a huge chunk of things are native: keyboard support, inputs, dropdowns, context menus, menus, preference panes, popups, window chrome etc.
And all this is available to developers out of the box. Very few "cross-platform UI toolkits" can come even close.
That said, a fully native app would be a better option, but Electron apps are ok (unless devs go out of their way to make them bad)
The problem is that the controls generally are made by web developers rather than just using the underlying platform’s widgets so, list views look wrong, input handling is slightly off, etc. All the normal issues with applications made with web technologies.
Additionally, browsers are one of the most out-of-place feeling applications because the look and feel is controlled by the website, not by your operating system.
> So a huge chunk of things are native: keyboard support, inputs, dropdowns, context menus, menus, preference panes, popups, window chrome etc.
Note that Chromium (and hence Electron) reimplements many of these things.
I'm curious which applications made you come to this conclusion. I've heard a lot of Electron criticism, and most of it is very valid, but I think Slack, Spotify, and Atom very much fit into the macOS UI environment.
I have command-shift-u bound to “open selected url” this reliably works in cocoa apps and often doesn’t work in electron apps.
EDIT: VS Code is the main place I run into this
A ui is more than its appearance: the interaction model of electron apps is always slightly off from cocoa apps.
>The UI is totally schizoid
Kinda like how iTunes was brushed metal forever while the Finder was Aqua and some apps roll their own UI to mimic Aqua? It's not like either Apple or Microsoft produce consistent applications, let alone the lack of control they have over third party developers. There is also Carbon vs. Cocoa, where different programs get different services "for free" from the operating system (e.g. spell check). Apple is just as guilty as Microsoft.
Giving a couple of decade-old examples doesn’t show that Apple is “just as guilty.” Apple has two toolkits: Carbon, a legacy framework for transitioning from MacOS classic, and Cocoa. Microsoft has releases a new toolkit/look-and-feel basically every other year. (Win32, WPF, Metro, UWP, etc.) And unlike Carbon, which is depreciated, Win32 is in active use by new apps and keeps getting new features.
Win32: 1995 WPF: 2006 Metro (design language): ~2011 UWP: 2015
Win32 and WPF are both more than "decade-old," so really you're down to two. I'm not sure that 3 toolkits in 24 years is "every other year."
There are a lot of different versions of Win32 and WPF based on the Windows and .NET version they’re targeted to, respectively.
Cocoa is more like targeting an evergreen browser. Just target the version that is just old enough to support enough users and you’re good (and users are happy). Unlike evergreen browsers, though, you do hit hard cutoffs once every few years, but I suspect navigating those means updating the compilation/signing process more than rewriting anything (correct me if I’m wrong).
I thought they'd more than deprecated it, and that Carbon apps won't run anymore on Mojave. They declined to do a 32-64 port all the way back in Mountain Lion.
The original discussion was about desktop operating systems but if you toss in iOS, how many look-and-feel changes does that add? Given the state of Marzipan apps that Apple thought were fine to ship, it may be ever more relevant. Apple didn't even replace the "slot machine" date picker from iOS which is horrible to use with a mouse.
Microsoft is the same as its always been but acting like Apple has a clear, unified, and sane design doesn't reflect the evidence.
Microsofts worst enemy, IMO, is their OEMs who are allowed to put all kinds of custom side-hustle garbage into the OS and it takes alot of work to remove it. Essentially, you have to pay a premium to a manufacturer to signal you're a "serious" user instead of "consumer" user, or you have to spend time removing spam... I mean "custom" apps that the OEM got paid to put onto your machine. At least, Apple only hustles their own ecosystem apps and let you safely hide or remove most of them.
Spoken like someone who does not know Windows. If you buy a machine that comes with windows, and just use it off the shelf it, is a total mess as you say. (As well as probably loaded with crapware) If you know Windows youre gonna install LTSC on that machine and have a nice productive time. I am curious, do you buy a mac and just use it for work without any setup, off the shelf? If so that is a point in its favour I guess.
Also as someone who only knows Linux and Windows and is not familiar with Mac OS, anytime I have to use it, it is a baffling experience, common things are done with gestures and keyboard shortcuts that one would never be able to intuit or discover. I find some random completely new Linux windows manager that Ive never seen before much easier to get to grips with than Mac OS.
Funny you say that, because I wiped whatever was on my X1 Carbon and installed LTSC. Then I had to install the Lenovo touchpad driver because two finger scrolling didn’t work. But that installed a “synaptic touchpad enhancement” background task that was a marked battery hog. The touchpad driver would restart the service if it was killed, so I had to delete the executable. (It led to no apparent change in functionality and notably improved battery life.) at this point, we are solidly in “total crap” territory. I’ve had half a dozen Macs, and never do anything to it besides install the apps I use. I sometimes change the wallpaper, but not even necessarily that. Everything is perfect out of box.
Thats fair enough. Laptops can be very finicky for drivers.
I've been using LTSC on my work / gaming desktop for about 6 months and its been the best OS experience ive had since DOS. Everything works perfectly, and otherwise it just stays out of my way.
You're right that the off-the-shelf experience with Windows can be very dodgy depending on what your OEM is and what crap they decided to put into the core OS.
I'm conflicted about all this myself because I have a good experience with Win10 once I get all the extra nonsense removed, the settings changed, and my shell setup working. I feel like Windows rewards people who are willing to put the time into it now, but its not as easy as dealing with Mac OS where you basically just clear off the toolbar, put the shell and whatever dev apps onto it, and maybe tweak a few settings and you're okay to go.
Well it has decent window manager with multiple desktops, does not require antivirus and supports Adobe. For graphicdesign/developer there really arent many other choices. Also if you work with sound its hands down best OS.
In what way is MacOS best for working with sound? The industry has long ago moved on to Windows.
I'm not so sure about that - I can't remember the last time I was in a studio that wasn't running macOS to be honest.
Logic is superior in many ways to other DAWs. There are some hardcore Logic users out there.
I wouldnt say superior, Logic, Ableton, Reason, Cubase etc. They're all different, they all have their own strengths and weaknesses. Eg. Ableton has pretty crappy midi sequencing capabilities whereas Reason has probably the best. They all fit different use cases.
There's some neat features in the OS for developers but you can do the same thing with a Linux machine.
It is "form" which made macbook THE notebook to have.
> The vast majority of users choose Macs because of the great OS and the hardware specs
Very wrong. Your average consumer can barely differentiate between MacOS/Windows. The vast majority choose it because it's the best social-status-wise. Which it became because of form. Everybody knows that only poor people have Androids/PCs.
>Everybody knows that only poor people have Androids/PCs.
Having worked on several university campuses, I agree with you about Apple promoting themselves as a status symbol, but - I think you might have to run in upper-class or at least urban circles to even notice this difference. I grew up in small town America, where nobody was buying laptop computers the price of a used car. Doctors, lawyers, pretty much everybody I knew as a kid ran Windows. Most people had a traditional desktop tower, whether or not they had a laptop.
The few exceptions tended to be geeks, or people who were devoted to the Apple ecosystem because they had been using Macs since at least the early '90s.
Now that I'm in urban university circles, I'm the only person using Androids / non-Apple PC hardware. Apple really seems to be the "default", and people using other things are doing so for pretty solid technical reasons.
I dunno, I used to recommend a lot of relatives -- aunts & uncles, nephews and nieces in school -- buy macbook airs, particularly when they were $900 / $1k-ish out the door.
Now that they're $1400 w/ 16g ram / $1500 out the door, I recommend them to no one. $1.5k is just too much money for a basic laptop.
The exact ratio could be argued, but there are customers with varying levels of familiarity with computing tech. Calling people "wrong" is just plain silly.
My 2018 Macbook Pro's screen failed. They replaced it for free, but damaged the webcam in the process. They told me I'd need to pay over 500 dollars to get it fixed since I could not prove it was damaged while switching screens.
You need to escalate to a manager if you're being honest and really want your Webcam fixed.
Source: Work at a phone/computer repair store. Mess ups happen but even the technician might not know if they broke the camera, if it was working before, etc. They may just be too low to make exceptions for you and have to assume it was already broken.
Was it replaced for free because it was under warranty? If so, wasn’t the webcam under warranty?
Small claims court?
This is a completely appropriate use of small-claims court. It's the one place where a regular citizen can afford a fair trial against Apple in the U.S.
Unfortunately you generally have to sue where the corporate HQ is. That makes it impractical for most people.
No you don’t. And this is actually why a lot of people win them against corporations — it’s cheaper to just let you have the hundreds or few thousand you’re asking for.
No you don't
Yeah, my friend did that against Samsung in Canada and it was an automatic win. A few days before the court appearance Samsung bent and sent him the money.
Ask for the functional test that's performed before and after each repair, if they can't produce the results you should be able to escalate further quite easily.
Keep escalating. Try emailing Tim Cook if you can’t get results. I had to resort to that once and their executive team reached out and solved everything. I don’t abuse it, but it is needed sometimes.
I’ll sacrifice myself at the alter of Steve Jobs. I have a 2018 MacBook Pro with a 6-core CPU and 32GB of RAM and I absolutely love it (with exception to the Touch Bar which sucks if you’re a VIM user). Once you get used to the butterfly keyboard you can fly. The light weight makes traveling with a 15 inch laptop a pleasant experience. The screen, speakers, and touch pad are fantastic. I haven’t had a single issue with the keyboard, and I am constant munching on food, getting crumbs in between the keyboard, etc. Dongle life isn’t as bad as it sounds. Put one in your backpack and use it when needed. I also bought the LG 5K monitor and that has been the perfect compliment to this laptop. OK back to drinking more kool aid.
When in God's name will they get rid of TouchBar? I DESPISE IT. Why not add the function keys back and add the touch bar above it? I see that there's space above!
Am I the only one that feels this way?
Not till Jony Ive leaves?
I think this is the root of most of these Apple design faux pas... he goes back to the Steve Jobs Era and was definitely blessed.
With Steve gone there is probably no one at the company who can actually say "This is the worst !@#$%^& thing ever!" like Steve Jobs liked to say. Tim Cook doesn't seem to be a product guy or something and trusts Ive too much.
Ive's ideas were good back in the day when everything was huge and clunky but he seems to look at everything and try to think it is still not sleek & minimalist enough and he's just gone too far at some point. It's a wonder we still have keyboards at all on these laptops!
I have a 2018 MBP and I am lucky.. I use it 99% of the time plugged in at my desk at work. They provided us all with $400 OWC USB-3 docks so I mostly dodge the dongle thing. I have some cheaper dongles at home that live permanently on my desk. So I also don't run into too many touchbar issues since I rarely do anything serious on the internal keyboard.
For some reason my usage I don't have battery issues. A lot of my co-workers do. Ad blockers don't help with Docker & Eclipse hogging CPU.
I wish for 32GB of ram every day, we got our 2018 laptops < 6 months before they added the 32GB option.
Linux is much better, I tried a pilot System 76 laptop our IT let us try. It was great for development, hugely better than the Mac. But it was horrible as a laptop, horrible for going to meetings. Drained the battery in 1 hour if you had to do a WebEx. Constant WiFi & VPN issues. Having to reboot the machine sometimes to clear up issues with external displays and internal displays. I gave it back after a month when I admitted I was wasting 40% of my work time chasing linux issues.
> I gave it back after a month when I admitted I was wasting 40% of my work time chasing linux issues.
I feel like this isn't spoken about enough. Or that I'm doing something wrong which most people who say how their lives have changed for the better by switching to Dell+Ubuntu don't experience.
I really liked MacOS for development. It gave me a familiar Unix-like environment that didn't require me to screw around trying to fix trivial things over and over again. I didn't have to screw around with kernel updates or try to troubleshoot anything. I only ever needed to set things up once, I didn't have to worry that the next time I reboot I might lose configurations.
I've been using Elementary OS/Ubuntu on a Surface Book now for a while and dealing with it is ongoing frustration. At some point my top bar just disappeared and never came back. Trying to add any sort of modification that tries to make using the OS more intuitive leads to all sorts of unexpected issues.
I want to love GNU/Linux. I really do. But I can't even remotely understand how anyone could love it more than MacOS. GNU/Linux feels like it's always in Beta.
In truth, using GNU/Linux gives me a feeling of imposter syndrome. I feel like the reason why I can't stand it even though so many people love it isn't because the operating systems are bad, but because I'm just incompetent and don't know what I'm doing. It's frustrating.
MacOS is generally good but doesn't have a fully supported package manager.
Personally I use Ubuntu Mate and couldn't be much happier. There is no real learning curve if you've used a traditional desktop.
Amen. Ive is a hack without the firm hand of a Jobs to guide him and keep him on a tight leash.
This. They should have kept Scott Forstall. It used to be Steve Jobs that keep them in tact, and Tim Cook just pick side and tried to get harmony. Now we know It didn't work.
Right there with you. It'd be a neat addition if it didn't require sacrificing F-keys, and/or was an optional upgrade. First thing I checked is if the new 15-inch has a non-Touch-Bar option (the answer is no). I just ordered a new MacBook Air, despite being relatively underpowered, and a significant factor in the choice is that it's the only way to get Touch ID and F-keys.
My speculation is that this will be the last model with it. Next year's redesign will give up on the concept. They just have too many parts and the economics of it sort of demand a final run.
Wow, people are really salty about Apple.
I too wish they would make a better computer, but for now I continue to use them because they are the only machine that I can work on with little fuss of setup and go.
I have the 2018 model with the "Keyboard" which has been fine because I use a Bluetooth Mechanical keyboard anyway and a BT Mouse. I have a single cable or "Dongle" that supplies power, 3 displays, 5 USB 3.0 type A, 2 USB Type C, a SD Card Reader and Ethernet. Its also Daisy-Chained to an External GPU and temps stay good. When I need to go portable I just unplug a single cable and go.
Thanks. I feel the same. I work at my client as well as in my own office, and when leaving my desk, I often take my laptop with me. The single Thunderbolt cable is fantastic like that.
I checked their store out of curiosity.
Switching from 512MB to 1TB SSD: +$400
WHY? This is literally the only thing that bothers me about Apple pricing. I get that you pay for the design, I get the quirks like introducing touch bar, everything. But I don't get why upgrading from a $50 to a $100 SSD adds 400 dollars.
Because they don't use slow SSDs.
The read / write speeds on the SSD in the Macbook Pro are insane.
see: https://www.macrumors.com/2018/07/13/2018-macbook-pro-fastes...
we are talking at least 6x what other laptops use.
In case you haven't realized you can buy comparable 1TB NVMe SSDs in today's market for around $100. I see the budget Intel 660p hit $80 for 1TB on sale, or high-end Phison E12 drives at $115 for 1TB on sale.
FWIW the 660p has significantly lower throughput (though not 6x by any stretch of the imagination), it's listed and benched around 1800 for reads and writes.
More problematically, it also has serious latency degradation issues when working outside the SLC cache: https://www.anandtech.com/show/13078/the-intel-ssd-660p-ssd-...
The listed performances are those are that of a 970 EVO (and the 970 EVO Plus improved on write speed, to almost par with read speed at 3500 and 3300).
The 1TB EVO Plus is $250 on newegg. Not as replacement for an existing 500GB, just retail price for the drive. The 2TB EVO is listed at $550, the 2TB EVO Plus is listed at $650.
That's outdated now. Most high end PC laptops use NVMe drives, and good NVMe drives are only slightly slower than the apple proprietary drives.
Most current era laptops use NVMe. Bargain basement laptops might still use SATA, but lets not pretend that the MBP, while extremely fast, is at all unique.
A fast 1TB NVMe SSD costs $105, and that's retail. So your narrative doesn't make much sense. 10x cost can only be explained by profit margins.
Not to mention that it’s basically 4 SSDs on 4 PCIe buses.
Edit: I don’t really understand downvotes. SSD on recent Macbook Pros does connect to the northbridge via 4 PCIe lanes. And this is not what “but look I can the same for £50” SSD does.
Most NVMe drives use 4 lanes.
I don’t doubt they are faster than other laptop SSDs, but those results look quite suspicious.
They are not 'suspicious' they really are that fast compared to the standard cheap SSDs.
It's the difference between cheap SATA SSDs and expensive NVMe PCIe SSDs.
Search for comps on any online retailer and you'll see how expensive and fast those are.
> It's the difference between cheap SATA SSDs and expensive NVMe PCIe SSDs.
> Search for comps on any online retailer and you'll see how expensive and fast those are.
$250 for a 1TB 970 EVO Plus. Which has better write throughput.
Here is what Lenevo charges for a similar upgrade using a slightly slower SSD
https://imgur.com/a/ug87MaI
That 250$ more to upgrade to the 1tb from the 512gb.
the retail price of the upgrade is 450$
So… they charge half the price Apple does, and if you don't want to pay it you don't have to care because it's a standard m.2 so you can swap it with a retail drive (at which point you have both the original and the replacement for 50% more storage at a lower price), which you can't do with a soldered Apple drive.
You are moving the goal posts of the original comment.
OP said it's a 50$ upgrade.
It is not.
It's a 450$ retail price and 250$ sale price for a slightly slower SSD.
Yes, companies make money when they do things for you.
> OP said it's a 50$ upgrade.
And OP was wrong, that doesn't make you right:
> They are not 'suspicious' they really are that fast compared to the standard cheap SSDs.
They're not that fast compared to SSDs retailing for half the price of the upgrade.
> Search for comps on any online retailer and you'll see how expensive and fast those are.
I did and they're not.
> It's a 450$ retail price and 250$ sale price for a slightly slower SSD.
No matter how much you hate it, it's still a $250 retail price: https://www.newegg.com/samsung-970-evo-plus-1tb/p/N82E168201... And a $125 upgrade: https://www.newegg.com/samsung-970-evo-plus-500gb/p/N82E1682...
Not to mention those are retail prices, not wholesale prices. Which includes Retailer or Distributor's margin.
Looks like the test is done by just copying a large file and measuring the time it took. This, of course, gives some idea of performance, but they are quite many things that can affect the results.
On the original article[1] the table also shows results from a synthetic benchmark. This shows 2.6GB/s for Macbook and 1.2GB/s for Dell XPS. They also mention that it's a bit apple vs oranges, since different tools were used for the benchmark.
[1] https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/2018-macbook-pro-benchmar...
Your article is comparing against non workstation class laptops. Other laptops in the same class put two NVME SSDs in a RAID configuration for double the throughout.
And in those workstation class laptops (that use NVMe PCIe SSD), do you only pay 50$ more to upgrade from 512gb to 1tb?
No one is saying those SSDs are Apple exclusive, they are however expensive.
It's about $100 more to go from 512 GB to 1 TB, and these are better than what Apple puts in their machines. https://www.mrmemory.co.uk/ssd-upgrades/lenovo/thinkpad/p1
That's not how much Lenovo actually charges.
They charge 450$ retail and 250$ on special for a slightly slower SSD
https://imgur.com/a/ug87MaI
"On special." This is merely typical price for a reseller. The point is that Apple is overcharging at least 2x compared to competitors.
If you are surprised that Apple charge more, welcome to the real world.
This sort of "upgrade" nickel and diming is true of every laptop vendor, but Apple is definitely one of the worst. It's like their pricing structure is stuck in 2012
The SSDs they use really do cost that much though. Even if you got them from another manufacturer they'd be about that expensive. Apple don't use cheap SSDs...they use blazing fast, top of the line units not found on many other laptops.
If you have criticism, price isn't a valid one.
But you can definitely argue that they should have cheaper/slower options so that consumers who don't need blazing fast SSDs can still benefit from increased storage.
Here's how the 2018 Macbook's SSD stacks up against the competition: https://cdn.macrumors.com/article-new/2018/07/macbookprossdt...
That's why there's such a huge price difference. Not because they're randomly picking high upgrade prices to screw customers.
You can buy SSD with the same specs 3.2GB Read and 2.2GB Write for much cheaper. Samsung sells 970 EVO 1 TB m.2 for $300 [1] but you can even buy cheaper on amazon for less than $235. Keep i mind those +$400 was price for upgrade from 500GB to 1TB not the price of 1TB which is much much more. For example Apple charges upgrading macbook pro 13 from 128GB (silly they even offer pro machine with such small SSD) to 1TB for..... $800! So in other words prices their 1TB SSD disk for ~$1000. It's insane.
[1] https://www.samsung.com/us/computing/memory-storage/solid-st...
As I posted elsewhere in this thread; Lenovo charges 450$ retail and 250$ on special for a similar upgrade.
https://imgur.com/a/ug87MaI
Fair enough but Lenovo doesn't solder their SSD. Nothing prevents you from buying the cheapest option and upgrading yourself, e.g. Lenovo thinkpad X1 Extreme has even 2 SDD m.2 slots. You also don't have to max out you storage when buying because you can always upgrade it in the future once you need more storage or when SSD gets even cheaper few years later. On top of that those 2 m.2 slots allows you to put disk in raid 0 or use second one with optane memory once its cheaper and worth it.
Aren't those just the numbers for SATA connection vs. M.2 PCIe?
Apple doesn't manufacture SSDs, they buy them from the same companies that Dell, HP, Asus, etc... do. There isn't special Mac only models of those drives, it's all the same hardware in the end. The only advantage I see is that Apple was quick to switch to M.2 and macrumors cherry picked their competition to avoid PCs with M.2 SSDs.
Geekbench across OS's and motherboards is worthless, especially when they have different file systems. You need to look a the spec sheet for the actual hardware, or compare on the same machine with an aftermarket part.
I'm extremely skeptical that Apple has some magic SSD with 6.5x read/write speed of everyone else.
To make things worst, out of all the laptop vendor Apple is the only one with their own SSD controller, which is not a small percentage of BOM cost in SSD. And they are one of the few that gets favourable NAND pricing due to the volume they move with iPhone and iPad.
My favorite comment on this sort of thing was the claim that Apple uses components made from the powdered bones of unicorns. Sometimes I think that's not far off.
Sadly, this is basically true of every major OEM. It's just you generally have recourse to make the change yourself.
Apple now solders in the SSD into the motherboard. My guess is the cost of an entire motherboard with a larger SSD simply costs more to manufacture. Or their target audience doesn't really care about money - they care more about the "premium" experience that comes with the Apple brand.
Just thought I’d chime in to say I’m loving my Thinkpad X1 with Debian.
If you want to install Debian on the X1 it’s pretty easy. Just make sure to fix some of the sleep issues using the (easy) instructions on this page, which in my experience still apply to Debian: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X1_Carb...
"Just make sure to fix some of the sleep issues..."
A great example of why people buy Macs, though. Most people don't want to faff around with hackery getting Linux to work properly. And with Windows 10's horrible privacy issues, Macs are still the best choice. They're buying them for the software, not the hardware.
I understand these issues are an impediment to Linux adoption.
However people always say this as if Linux is at fault. Well, mostly the sleep issues exist because the laptop ships with windows, and windows has some fancy sleep mode that involves a specific bios setting.
Linux uses more traditional sleep settings, so when installing Linux one must change that bios setting and then run a command to tell the OS that setting has been changed.
So you didn’t say Linux is at fault, but just to be clear: this is just what you get when the manufacturer doesn’t support your preferred OS.
However as a robotics engineer, I prefer open source over ease of use. I’m not suggesting regular people do this, but sharing the tips with the Hacker News crowd who may also be fine with running a few terminal commands to get a great OS experience on hardware which may be a better value than a MacBook today given their issues discussed in this thread.
I think everything you’re saying is right; but also it doesn’t matter. When my mum asks me which computer to buy, I’m not going to recommend the computer that has defects that I can explain away. I’m going to recommend the machine that works out of the box, where I won’t have to goof around with graphics drivers via PPI or whatever to make an external display work.
Sure, but I really must emphasize that I am not advocating this setup for your mom or anyone’s mom necessarily. I’m saying that if you’re a developer you may like this setup. The fact that Linux is not always a great choice for non technical people isn’t really relevant to the value some of the people from Hacker News may get out of it.
I agree with you and for a long time I recommended apple to others. But now I don’t feel comfortable doing that anymore because “it just works” no longer holds true.
I agree. My 2012 MacBook Air was rock solid and often made it between macOS point releases without being restarted.
My 2016 MacBook Pro has display issues, keyboard issues, the USB c power cable falls out sometimes. When I first got it, the machine sometimes crashed when connecting an external display. They fixed that, and then the machine would just not see the display sometimes until I reboot. I use an EGPU now - which performs better but the machine ends up needing a reboot (or just hard crashing) every week or two. It’s abysmal. Oh, and I’m starting to get the stage light effect on the display now. I’m relieved I’ll be able to get that fixed for free now, since I imagine it’s only going to get worse as the cable degrades. I feel like Apple snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
I’ll probably replace this machine in a year or two. I don’t want to run Linux or windows on my work laptop but I’ll do what I need to do in order to have a reliable computing environment. Since they’re near the end of this design cycle I’m hoping this 2019 edition or the one after have most of the design problems fixed. If not, Linux for windows is looking mighty fine these days.
My god.
Problems with sleep/resume were what ultimately convinced me to switch from Linux to Mac 12 years ago. It's insane to see there are still issues with it today.
Well, as I’ve said in a different comment, there is a very clear reason why the computer does not come configured properly for Linux sleep modes. Windows is using a new sleep system that seems to involve disabling a sleep mode in the BIOS, and the laptop arrives installed with Windows. Once you install Linux, you just need to go in to the BIOS and change the setting from windows specific sleep modes to traditional sleep modes, and then after you reboot you need to tell Linux that sleep mode is now available.
It’s not a problem with Linux, it’s just due to the fact that Linux and windows are different and the laptop is configured for windows. Once you make the change the sleep behavior is wonderful and I keep the laptop in my bag for days at a time on sleep.
I actually have this problem with 2017 MBP. If I put lid down with anything less than 10% it will black screen and repaired a hard reboot upon opening the screen. Fortunately these days most apps have auto save.
They can try to cram all the overheating CPU power into the thin chassis as much as they like, but it is lagging so much behind in GPU power.
The top-of-the-line option, a Radeon Pro Vega 20 with 4GB of HBM2, doesn't seems like it's going to perform much better than an NVidia Geforce GTX 1050[0], and at $350 extra it's twice the cost of a standalone NVidia Geforce GTX 1050.
[0]: https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/radeon-pro-vega-20.c32...
The sad part about this, I thought I'd put together a new Mac Mini as a once a month gaming machine and a daily OSX driver so I didn't have to built an entire gaming desktop.
Well there's an absolute ton of issues with external GPUs in bootcamped Windows.
So.. that's not even an option.
Yes, it's a bad idea. At that point I'd suggest
- getting a console, which probably offers the best price/performance ratio
- using something like ASRock's Deskmini A300 which is really affordable and features a GPU capable of light to medium gaming
- or use a proper desktop setup if you don't want to cut any corners
In any case stick to a proper Windows environment for gaming. My daily driver is a Mac Mini, but for gaming I boot up a dedicated Windows box.
Yeah I do build $1500-2500ish gaming PCs every few years. I game a lot less than I did a decade ago, maybe a few times a month, so I wanted OSX around when I wasn't. But I'm done building hackintoshes. I had a really nice one the last 3 years waiting on the Mini to ever (because we gave up) update and it did. I was really excited to use that with OSX as my daily and flip to Windows + egpu when I gamed. I'm glad I looked into it to verify it ran egpus horribly (if at all). I didn't expect there to be any issues with that. Figured it'd be perfect.
So now instead I've got a "gaming" desktop that sits pretty idle and a MBP again.. like usual.
Mobile GPUs perform absolutely miserably; no surprise given the design constraints. Using your link as a comparison, its nearest neighbors are top-of-the-line parts from nine years ago, and budget parts from four years ago.
Mac user since 1984. Zero problems with my 2017 MBP other than a loose command key that was replaced same-day, within 5 mins after arriving at the store. My company has bought 20+ MBP in the past two years. We’ve had three units with screen issues (stuck pixels etc) that were all replaced on the spot.
None of that outweighs the conveniences of OS X.
I’ve been reading about how Apple screwed the pooch for almost forty years now, and yet they just keep taking over the world...
15% of your laptops have had major hardware issues in 2 years? Seems ridiculously bad given this is a premium product. I will never understand the loyalty to Macs given they are so obviously inferior to PC offerings these days.
My experience with PC makers was far worse in terms of failure rates and more importantly, support. Small sample size, though.
There was a rumor about a new 16.5 inches mbp. I guess that would be another year then.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/02/17/apple-plans-new-1...
I have the 15" 2018 MacBook Pro and would not recommend one until the following issues are resolved:
- It runs really, really hot. It cannot be used on your lap. I cannot imagine how hot a faster model would be.
- The keyboard is unreliable. I have not had the stuck key problem (yet!), but I do notice occasional crunching like something is stuck in the keys. I do not eat around this machine on purpose.
- The Touchbar is really bad. I wanted to like it. But, it is annoying more times than it is helpful.
- Not having a touchscreen when every other high end machine does seems more and more like a gap that needs to be resolved.
- Windows management continues to be crap in OSX.
There are a lot of good things. The screen is good. The touchpad is top notch. OSX is reliable and fast. But, yeah, the hardware just sucks right now. No way around it.
I agree that the default OS window management is pretty limited but this can literally be solved for $5 or less (sometimes $1) using utilities on the App Store that perform snapping, saved layouts, etc.
Can you please give links? I only know about Stay so far.
For instance, “Window Tidy” or “Magnet” ($0.99). There are probably others.
There is zero benefit to more powerful CPUs in MacBooks when the thermal profile of the CPU heatsink design leads to throttling very rapidly.
I'm a few weeks into an XPS 15 after a decade of Apple. I'm really liking it as well. I'm even running Windows 10, of all things— between WSL and native SSH + git and friends on powershell via Chocolatey, I'm finding it surprisingly comfortable.
I think my main frustration is just that a few things about the trackpad aren't quite right. For example, I can't find a combination of settings under Windows which give the physical right-click behaviour that Mac OS has.
I’m really considering the switch to XPS also; I think their latest model moves the camera back to the top as well.
What about the track pad isn’t working? And do you notice any “coil whine” I’ve been reading about?
My other choice may be a Precision but haven’t read enough about it.
Thank you
I haven't experienced the coil whine issue, but I'm also mostly powering it from a USB-C dock, if that makes any difference.
I love how big the screen is— it's a 15" display in a chassis that's barely bigger than my old 13" MBP. That said, camera below the screen is a definite negative, so that's great if it's been moved back; I've just assumed I'll get a clip-on USB cam and leave it at home for VC use.
Is it possible to get them without the touchbar? I’ve pounded my poor old MacBook (2013) into submission and the bottom row of keys are starting to not work intermittently. We’ve got a bunch of the newer machines in the office and I just can’t get on with that keyboard and touchbar.
I strongly feel you would be better off getting the keyboard replaced in your MBP 2013 than upgrading to a new MacBook. (See my post history/other comments on this thread for my background and a more thorough explanation.) A keyboard upgrade would be around $200 or less—check local shops near you for price quotes.
After the keyboard on my 2017 MBP started to fail, I “upgraded” to a 2018 model because I couldn’t afford to be without a machine for a week or longer. Now the keyboard on this supposedly improved model is also starting to go.
For many years I was a very happy Apple customer and even converted several family members to MacBooks. But now that Apple has shown just how little regard they have for their pro customers by trying to sell us this broken keyboard for the fourth time I’m getting off the bus for good. My next laptop will not be a Mac. Thank god I stopped doing iOS development.
What made you stop doing iOS development? I would consider a Mac Mini for that and remote into it from a decent machine.
Mainly just because I don't enjoy it and don't enjoy building the kind of things people want to build on mobile for the most part.
Also because I think the market for native apps is shrinking and that the web has more growth potential.
How hot will this thing be with 8 cores? Unless they've cut some ventilation holes in the bottom of the laptop. MBPs aren't exactly known for good thermal regulation (my previous one I had to actually undervolt the CPU so it wouldn't overheat while playing games for even < 30m).
Don't see anything re: keyboard so guessing that there aren't any changes there, unfortunately.
Dave Lee made a video about the Core i9 (now previous generation) that thermal throttled almost immediately under load. The throttling was so terrible it actually performed worse than the 2017 MacBook Pro.
https://youtu.be/Dx8J125s4cg
That was a software bug IIRC
His follow-up video after the patch, FWIW: https://youtu.be/UTguywiC9aw
That's exactly what I'm wondering. I returned a recent 2019 MBP because it was getting so hot just after an hour of normal usage.
A few months after purchase and my MacBook Pro's keyboard has already been in for repairs and the screen glitch is too intermittent to replicate so they won't fix it. A Mac without Applecare+ is foolhardy -- these machines are engineered to fail under normal use -- so this should be considered as part of the base price IMHO. Applecare only covers 3 years so that's the lifetime of the product. That's an expensive value prop.
My colleague's Macbook keyboard broke today. Close to 400 quid to diagnose and fix (we declined, its a huge chunk of the original price). Just ofer 4 years old (which is nothing) and juuuuust out of the replacement programme Apple has for keyboards they knew were faulty.
Lifelong Apple suporter until the past few years. Avoid like the plague.
Ugh yeah the 4 year thing sucks. Apple should be saying 8 years or thereabouts in my opinion. It’s clearly a design flaw that they were aware of (and still are trying to paper over) on a very expensive product, but one which is usually loved by customers. Seeing all the negativity this issue causes sucks, as does knowing my 2017 will probably be useless as a laptop one day because of it
It's telling that they immediately list these brand new laptops on their page offering extended support for the defective keyboards[1].
Unpopular opinion, but I continue to believe Apple needs to just walk away from the computer business. It's a negligible part of their core phone business, and it shows. I really wish that they'd license the OS to let people (and OEMs) build quality workstations.
[1] https://www.apple.com/support/keyboard-service-program-for-m...
My MacBook Air keyboard is a PITA with repeating and spurious keys. The software is buggier ever week. Apps crash, OS X freezes. And I have similar problems with my other Apple devices.
Problem is, it’s still far superior for anyone who needs to do technical and general office work. Tried Linux, doesn’t cut it for the latter. And the industrial design etc is still much better.
So Apple is on this downward trend in quality, and it worries me because there’s no alternative. Are we just going to see productivity drop across the board as Apple gradually regresses back to the mean?
We need more Apple-like companies designing great products.
When the touchbar macbooks were announced,I immediately went out and bought a used 2015 macbook. The great thing about them is that they are good for quite a long time because macs dont tend to get bogged down over time
I love the unix lineage on Mac OS with a consumer ready GUI.
By far the #1 thing that keeps me from using windows as my main machine is the registry.
I do have an old windows desktop that I upgraded with SSD and maxed out the ram and it runs great with windows 10.
I also run windows 10 in parallels on my Mac (for the office suite and a few windows only programs. Time machine backup works incredibly well and I can 100% rely on it. I can be up and running in minutes even if my windows 10 image gets completely destroyed.
I had a mac stolen, went to the store, bought a new one, restored from time machine almost immediately.
The only thing Ive been disappointed in is that the stability of the last two versions hasnt been great. I used to go months without a reboot, now I crash about once every two weeks.
If only there was a way to buy it without that stupid touch bar.
> Apple introduces first 8-core MacBook Pro, the fastest Mac notebook ever
You can use phrase "the fastest Mac notebook ever" each year when a new notebook released.
Apple is well-known for never talking about competition. They like to pretend it doesn't exist and only compare their products to the previous series.
Oddly enough though, in 2014, they introduced Mac Minis that were slower than the previous generation.
That's how they launch the best iPhone ever every year.
I don't get why companies keep using this phrase... Of course the new model is "the best ever," so why even say it.
They don't even have to release a new model.
We really wish they would though.
The press release is downright misleading. For 8 cores, or even 6, you have to buy the 15" model. Neither are available in the 13" model. And the 15", while starting at $2399, is not the 8 core option, that is the old 6 core option.
And of course the 8 core option, at $2799, only has 512GB of disk space and 16GB RAM. If you want a reasonable 32GB and 1TB disk space (which presumably you would if you have a use for 8 cores), it's a whopping $3,600.
And that is of course before accessories and tax.
I thought that after the overpriced iphone release they would have changed their pricing on everything else, but I guess it's just same old apple.
> I thought that after the overpriced iphone release they would have changed their pricing on everything else, but I guess it's just same old apple.
Well, after they did that other phone manufacturers announced even more expensive phones, so I'm not sure they're stepping back from that so soon.
$3600 isn't all that much. Bought a G3 PowerBook for that much with 256GB of RAM and 80GB HD.
And a 20 year old laptop is relevant because... ?
256GB of RAM, eh?
Back in 1999 that would have been the deal of the decade.
When the first touchbar 15-inch came out, I went out and bought it as I was in need of a computer and I was waiting for the release. I used it for maybe 2 days.... I went RIGHT back and bought a brand new last of the good non-touchbar macbook pros from the preview year. I still have it and it still runs great. I have never had any issues with it.
I've even filled out a survey that apple sent me about macbook pros a while ago. And I explicitly wrote to go back in the design of the keyboards, the ports and the thickness.
I will use this computer until I can't fix it anymore.
Didn't they announce the flex gate repair program today?
https://www.macrumors.com/2019/05/21/apple-backlight-service...
It's only for the 13'' 2016 model.
Best 80-something € spent so far were on a new battery set https://eustore.ifixit.com/en/Parts/MacBook-Parts/Macbook-Pr...
Cost me 2 hrs and some bruised fingers but I'm good for years.
And if Apple hasn't amended this disaster when this battery fails, I'll replace it again.
I continue to be amazed by releases on Macs about how "powerful" they are.
I use a Dell XPS running Ubuntu with 12 cores and 32GB of ram with a 1050 in a 15 inch. It is a really amazing platform, doesn't have these keyboard or screen issues, and cost less than a MacBook Pro.
Can you link to the 12 core version? I wasn't aware of any laptop with 12 cores, and I can't find a reference to more than 6 on the Dell site.
I've just about given up on Apple. My spacebar on my 2017 15" MacBook Pro started going bad after only three months. Bundle that with the pointless Touchbar and the arrow key layout and I just can't see myself using another until they sort all of that out.
I recently switched to a Dell XPS 15 9560 running Pop!_OS. Talk about a simple setup for a Linux system running a HiDPI screen. Before that, I was running Manjaro with i3 and it was fairly easy to set up but took a bit more fiddling.
I think Apple needs a tick-tock development cycle where the tick is making their products thinner and the tock is fixing all the usability and reliability regressions.
Still only USB Type C ports though on a $2000 machine? It feels like such a rip off. For two years now my primary device has been a MBP with only USB Type C, and for two years now I haven't had a single device I can plug into it without a dongle.
I'm so sick of these fucking dongles. Thank god it still has the 3.5mm port, because it must have taken an act of divinity to prevent that part of the Apple crazy from reaching the MBP yet.
Nice. But I don’t need more speed, I need longer battery life, a better keyboard, and a screen that can, at least for short periods, be super bright (for outdoor use).
Lack of speed ceased to by my concern with the 2013 MBP (which I still use today).
I'll get excited when they issue a press release detailing how the 5th generation keyboard is really going to fix it this time, because they gave up on butterfly^W^W^W^Whave an amazing new mechanism. All the cores in the world do me no good if I cannot efficiently input characters into the machine.
Better hurry up, Apple, the mid-2012 is starting to get cranky, and I wouldn't want to have to buy a ThinkPad.
I recently bought a thinkpad t490 and installed Manjaro. Best experience I ever had on a laptop. Followed by my late 2012 Macbook pro that served me faithfully for the past 6 years. At work, as front-end dev, I use a 15" 2018 Macbook pro.one of the worst laptops I ever used. Kernel panics weekly. Almost as shitty as one of the Dell ultrabook I used in 2012 before I switched to a Macbook
Is there a marketing person here who can help Apple come up with some good copy for the thicker laptops they need to make?
They need to quit being so thin it seems.
“Thicc in specs and has the body to show for it”
“We listened”.
A 2016 Macbook Pro speaking at a graduation, saying "My generation has failed you".
"Think̶ different."
Thick different.
Until they fix the keyboard for real I'm not going there. I might hold out for a USB type A port, too -- other companies make perfectly good laptops with these.
How dependent is Apple on the "nerd factor" with its laptops? They definitely got a boost from capturing designers and "hip engineers" a while back; if these folks got disgusted and left, would it matter now?
Apple should really consider including AppleCare+ in these top end machines, particularly given the quality issues of the current model. Apple should provide some indication of confidence in their own workmanship. Or their confidence in their Foxconn quality control commitments. Don’t push that uncertainty off on the customer.
I love my 2016 MacBook Pro (touchbar is not great but kinda neat, I’ve replaced my usb-b->a to usb b->c cables so only need a dongle to travel, I can fly on the keyboard IFF my fingernails are trimmed very tight (lol), screen is great, sound is great, it’s fast as hell).
However, as you can see in my comment history, I’ve had substantial issues with keyboard and screen outside of warranty. Apple, fortunately and rightfully, has completely taken care of it; but I had several days of consternation while I had to wait and see what Apple decided to do. Makes me really think twice spending a lot on a new one.
I just upgraded my 13" 2015 Macbook Pro's SSD from 256GB -> 1 TB for ~100 USD. With 16 GB of RAM, a great keyboard that's given me no issues, recently replaced screen lamination under warranty, and now a faster and larger SSD, I see absolutely no reason to upgrade to the new generation of Macbooks in the next few years.
well what everyone seems to be missing here is this: we don't have a choice. the alternatives are not better. so apple has no incentive to make its products better, in fact there is incentive to make them worse in order to cut costs and increase revenues (a luxury afforded by the lack of comptetition). the profit margins on dongles are probably much greater than on anything in the system. until something comes along to seriously challenge their monopoly, or apple discovers the kind of pride it had under jobs, it will continue to get worse (at least for us folk who actually use these machines to their potential. there is clearly a market for which they are stylish instagram viewers). this is a great opportunity for MS, who is heavily courting developers. now with linux subsystem et all and all that's left is to close the trackpad gap. apple can fade away into irrelevance.
Any news on their broken keyboard design?
I might bite if they've fixed this. Oh and no touch bar.
>The MacBook Pro keyboard mechanism has had a materials change in the mechanism. Apple says that this new keyboard mechanism composition will substantially reduce the double type/no type issue. Apple will not specify what it has done, but doubtless tear-downs of the keyboard will reveal what has been updated.
They say it's improved. But check back in a year or so to see if it works, because the 3rd gen revisions didn't end up fixing it before.
If you have a 3rd gen butterfly keyboard, replacements will now use the 4th gen.
If you have a 1st or 2nd, they'll continue to replace the failing keyboards with more failing keyboards. Lucky me!
In other news for the 2016 MBP, there's a new repair extension program for the "Oops we made the display ribbon cable too short" issue. Haven't had that problem myself, but this was an expensive goddamn laptop and I'm not optimistic about its resale value or lifespan after the 4 year repair window is up. Multiple known design flaws that cost $600-$800, and in the keyboard's case are just putting in more of the same failure-prone parts.
They claim (again) to have fixed it.
Not worth buying until we have at LEAST a few months of experience to see if they really did this time.
Are the new 8-core CPUs fast enough to make them faster than the old CPUs were before all the Intel bugs? Or are we just ponying up more cash for the same level of performance?
Keyboard issues aside, these laptops are a thermal disaster. Mine heats up and gets loud fans if 20% or more CPU is used for more than a minute or two.
My non-Retina MBP would need to be at 100% for 10-15+ minutes for the fans to kick in at half the volume.
and looks like the same problematic keyboard :-/
It's really frustrating and I don't really want to go without my machine for the time it would take to fix. Unshaky has really helped in making my keyboard usable. It basically detects and eliminates duplicate keypresses within a configurable threshold for each key.
https://unshaky.nestederror.com/
To me it’s absolutely insane that people have gone to the lengths of actually writing software in order to fix a very basic issue with an extremely expensive luxury product of the worlds largest company. One in this thread mentioned using tape to cover up the Touch Bar in order to avoid triggering it accidentally!
Apple ducked up big time with the post-2015 generation MacBooks, and it was caused by the weird hunt for thinness and gimmicky features which nobody want from a professional portable workstation.
"Thinner than a 2015 MacBook Pro" is last on most people’s wishlists. What good is a thin laptop if the keyboard fails and the performance you pay for can't be used since the operating temperature is too high?
It says a lot about a company when a large amount of customers just don’t care for the new features and they just want the new performance in the old form factor.
It’s like the ones who made the current generation never uses a laptop, and has no idea about how people are actually using the product.
It's a new generation of the keyboard. Hopefully it turns out to be way more reliable.
It would be a major achievement to make it less reliable. I have had computers for ~40 years now, and none had a keyboard as bad as the one I'm using now (MBP13, 2018).
They changed something in it and claim it’s fixed (yet again). We’ll see how it shakes out.
But if you don’t like butterfly keyboards... yep, still butterfly even if it’s reliable now.
Where did you see the photo of the keyboard?
Apple says the machines are 40% faster. But Intel has patched their ZombieLoad vulnerability this week which is a 40% perf hit. So these machines are going to be as fast as unpatched machines that we have today?!
The 40% performance drop only applies if you turn off hyperthreading, which nobody (including Apple) is doing out of the box. You can consider these processors vulnerable to ZombieLoad and unpatched out of the box. The timeline for development of a new product like a laptop is so long that these have been planned for months prior to the vulnerability announcement, if not a year or more.
If you want a machine that doesn't have ZombieLoad, and is also Intel, you have to wait until they really patch it in new hardware or disable hyperthreading.
"The 40% figure is only with hyperthreading off" source: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210107
Still no 32GB RAM option on 13”. Still no option to remove Touch Bar. Still almost the same keyboard. Pass.
Beyond all the comments about the poor fixability of the MBP (screens), the absolutely horrid keyboard and the laughable amount of RAM in a $3200 laptop, who actually wants these things? They are unusable for a professional who actually types on them all day and now with the ever increasing Intel performance tax why spend the extra money on a processor that will likely have 30-50% less performance than claimed the day you buy it. Apple has become the brand of excess and ignorance.
I have an oct-core 13" WQHD 16 GiB/1 TiB SSD hackintosh with 10 hr battery life. Screw Apple with their unrepairable, overpriced, horrible hardware is unappealing.
How?
1. No OLED
2. No keyboard fix
3. No thin bezels
4. Still annoying touchbar.
5. $2799 for the 8-core with 16GB RAM and only 512GB SSD.
Hahaha.. No, thanks.
FWIW, this update includes an updated keyboard. Whether or not that's a fix remains to be seen.
Given it is the 3rd attempt at fixing a fundamentally broken mechanism design, I think it's fairly likely it doesn't actually fix anything.
Edit:
lol, they actually have already included this new laptop in the keyboard replacement program:
https://www.apple.com/support/keyboard-service-program-for-m...
Wow, it is listed... I wonder what the root cause is for all of these problems with the MBP line.
For the record, I have exchanged my 2018 MBP twice (so far) because of multiple different hardware problems. Not inspiring confidence to see the 2019 preemptively listed here.
I find it astonishing that they've included it in the replacement program. That gives me no confidence whatsoever, and after having replaced and returned both 2016 and 2017 MBP models, I am going to stay well clear of this keyboard form factor.
I think you can actually interpret this new MacBook Pro's inclusion in the repair program multiple ways. It could mean that they don't have much confidence in the updated keyboard. But it could also mean that they want to reassure customers that they will be taken care of. Kinda like the free bumpers in response to Antennagate: Antennagate wasn't actually a thing, but they gave away free cases to mollify people and just shut the door on the whole issue.
I have no idea which of those is the correct interpretation...
On balance, this is to increase consumer confidence in the product - knowing that they can get a free replacement makes them more likely to buy.
6. AND... just a 6' power cord, and the presumption that you'll plug that brick into that so-nearby power outlet.
And no ports, so you have to bring the freaking dongles wherever you go.
What're ya talkin' bout! It's no problem at all! https://i.lensdump.com/i/WHUBii.jpg
gross.
How's the thermal handling with the 8core? Full speed for half a minute, then throttled?
I know the keyboard is garbage but I always get AppleCare and treat my machines very well but if I got a 2019 model with the butterfly keyboard I’d be even more paranoid about dust and foreign particulates getting under the keys. I’m still most productive on OSX but that is changing as the Linux ecosystem gets better and better.
If they would just go back to the old pricing model and bring back a sane robust keyboard people would be so much happier.
I'm a web developer and I need a reliable keyboard that's comfortable to type on. The MBP keyboards have been neither comfortable nor reliable since 2015. I've been holding onto my 2015 MBP with it's scissors mechanism keyboard for dear life. For the first time in ten years, my next laptop won't be a MBP. It'll either be a Lenovo ThinkPad or a Dell Inspirion running Linux. Goodbye Apple.
Do not buy a new one until some other fool (like me) purchases one sight-unseen and shares whether the machine runs without issues.
I did this with a top-spec'd 2016 MBP that eventually got replaced with a 2017 due to the frequency of problems. Recently spent too many hours getting my 2017 repaired (& back up to its previous state) for the same issues.
Very disappointing given the price point.
I'll buy one after they remove that touchbar. Please remove the touchbar.
If the internal fan layout didn't change this is going to be baaaad.
Apple, make it a little thicker to handle a better keyboard and cooling system.
Apple still makes very good products, but they're starting to move away from differentiators that made them successful over others. A lot of computing products are what I'd call "engineered to fail". In that, the design of the product sucks in an objective way, and any technically minded person can see the failure coming from a mile away. For e.g. buggy custom software for stupidly trivial tasks like application/system updates, and then making it worse by installing it as a kernel service, or using sub-par plasticky components, poor frame construction, or pre-loading crap-ware, zero attention to ergonomics, not caring if the vendor's software blends with the underlying OS, not caring about UX impact of their software, etc.
For me 13” Retina MBP circa 2013 was the pinnacle of form factor, price, & performance. Unfortunately they went out of support and employer forced us to upgrade with 15” Touch MBP. I don’t have any complaints about keyboard, guess I’m just lucky in that regards.
But new MacOS and hardware are frighteningly unstable. I have observed roughly 1 in 5 times that it’ll crash outright with blank screen when attached to external display. Resetting PRAM, & SMC work for a couple of days and then back to same behaviour. Apple Store had a quick look but stupid thing didn’t crash so they blamed it on faulty cables at work and home. How can a cable can cause it to crash even after disconnected?
Unless they up their game I’ll never spend my own money on another Mac.
I have a max spec 2018 15" MacBook Pro and I love it but this update is just dumb.
The 2018 model can't fully use the current hexa-core CPU so slapping another two cores in isn't going to help things. It is going to be basically useless outside of ~5 seconds turbo boost.
While I haven't had a keyboard issue it is a constant source of anxiety which sucks. I was really hoping Apple would go with a redesign this year (as unlikely as it was) and I had planned on selling this 2018 model and upgrade but with the same keyboard and a pointless CPU update in same body I will pass.
Hopefully next year we see a redesign with a decent keyboard. Also got my fingers crossed for a 120Hz ProMotion display.
With every model that comes out I keep feeling better about my Mid-2015 15" i7 model. Thinking about buying an eBay OEM 1TB SSD and keeping it for the next 5 years at this point. If anyone has a SSD they'd be willing to part with please reach out!
I assume the New CPUs are 14nm Coffee Lake-H:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Core_i9_micropro...
Will it be possible to use 8 cores effectively given the thermal limitations of such a thin device? I wouldn't be surprised if the 6 core model gives about the same level of performance for most workloads as the 8 core one.
"MacBook Pro now delivers two times faster performance than a quad-core MacBook Pro and 40 percent more performance than a 6-core MacBook Pro, making it the fastest Mac notebook ever.1" Most useless quote ever.
Funny how people used to be apple hardware sold the software after steve jobs decided to end the mac clone strategy.
But judging by all the comments out there, it feels now that the only reason people buy mac hardware is because of mac os.
I never had that impression, I always felt like the software sold the hardware. The hardware was always premium hardware with premium prices and correspondingly premium margins, but because the hardware was so good, people who bought it mainly for the software felt good about their purchase, and didn't mind paying extra for higher-end hardware than they might otherwise buy for themselves. This avoids the race-to-the-bottom dynamic that resulted in the Windows PC market getting saturated in low-quality, low-margin hardware for so many years.
Put another way, having great software enables upselling thriftier consumers on the hardware, which is the thing that actually makes money, especially now that OS upgrades are free and don't make money on their own. As long as both the software and the hardware are indeed great, then people feel good about their purchase.
If it's no longer the best hardware (or the best software), then that positive reinforcement loop goes away, and you end up with users who still like macOS, but not as much as they used to, who are doubly frustrated because they feel like they have to spend even more money on hardware that is no longer best-in-class, and has features that they're paying extra for that they view as negatives (touchbar, butterfly keyboard, unergonomically huge trackpad, minimal ports, dongletown, unasked for levels of thinness that forces so many compromises, greatly diminished resale value, etc.).
I’m not sure how old you are, but for a very long time mac os was actually almost a liability : you never knew if the software you needed was going to run on that platform. That’s why mac was for a very long time used only in niche markets ( sound and graphic designers, then developers started to use it starting mac os X).
Also, you think to mix hardware with hardware power, but you seem to forget design. The mac renaissance of the steve jobs 2 era started with a new line of cute colored imacs, great advertising, and strong brand recognition. Those kind of things you don’t get with software.
I’m old enough to remember the bad old days but it’s a good point. I was specifically thinking of the post-MacOS, OS X (Panther and later especially) era.
It's remarkable that the reception on HN is so hostile, in stark contrast to the old days. And yet Apple doesn't seem to care, marching on in their reductionist quest.
Who are their target PRO users then, if not the developers?
What sort of frustrates me most about this isn't that I hate the touchbar, or that I'll have to buy it, but that it's hard to find a system with competitive specs that costs as much or less.
I want a system with an octo-core i9, 32GBs of RAM, a metal body, and a large multi-touch trackpad. As much as I hate to say it, if you want a high-end laptop, Apple still has the market. I found some Dells that are close spec wise but not all the way there, or systems which are as thick as a deck of magic cards... They're (apple) are gonna get my $4k whether I like it or not.
What about the mitigation against MDS? Without hyperthreading, the advantages are less perceivable.
And how expensive is it? No thanks, up to today, a Dell/Lenovo+Linux goes way way better than MBP and the heavy OSX.
I had the most maxed-out 15” MacBook Pro at the job I just retired from (now at 68 I am just writing and working on my side business developing a knowledge graph- deep learning product). While it was a nice laptop, the System76 laptop with a 1070 GPU I bought for myself blows away the MBPros for what I need (good model training performance and really fast recompile’s of my Haskell code base when I can’t ‘stack —fast’).
I have a fairly new MacBook that I still love for its portability and it is great for light weight stuff, but it is not my main driver.
There are some really cool custom Thinkpads shoving new guts into the classic T60 body. I guess it's not really feasible for MacBooks? I looked for a 2012 or 2013 body with new hardware but nothing.
My 2013 is still working, but the screen hinge is loose and it's probably wearing on the display cable. Nothing new there, though. The display cable was the first thing to fail on my white iBook around 2005.
Wish I still had the Macintosh Portable with the built in carrying handle and roller ball I found at a garage sale! Now that would be a neat mod. Talk about a good keyboard.
"MacBook Pro now delivers two times faster performance than a quad-core MacBook Pro and 40 percent more performance than a 6-core MacBook Pro, making it the fastest Mac notebook ever.1"
most useless math ever
So, I need a personal laptop and I think I will go for the 2013-2015 rMBP. I want to go for X1 Carbon but haven't had nice experience with Ubuntu on it.
I looked at the 4 core i7 configurations and they have Geekbench score of 13k-14k. So, doesn't seem that bad compared to the new processors and should hold up on CPU front for three more years I guess.
I had a question to people who use 15" MBPs. Since I am not able to get 13" ones with 16 GB RAM. Are the 15" noticeably bulky and less mobile than 13" ones?
Oh no, I was looking to get an x1 carbon because of the supposedly great Linux support. What kind of problems where you experiencing? And was it the 14", or the extreme?
This was the 2017 14" X1 Carbon(not the extreme one). Mostly battery issues, it was holding up very less on sleep and in use. I was using Ubuntu and Ubuntu actually certifies the hardware. The keyboard was just plain awesome though. I don't think you would find a better keyboard in the slim form factor.
Since this was an office one, I returned it and continued on my 2014 rMBP. It might have been fixed now btw. I will also try the newer X1s I can before finalizing on one.
I don’t think they are and prefer 15” now. I even can fit my 2017 15” in my old Incase bag that was made for the last generation of 13” MacBook Pros.
Ah. Thanks for the info. Newer 15" ones are thinner and smaller so that is possible. I will take my bag and try fitting the old 15" one. :)
Switched last year to Lenovo and while the ecosystem around Windows has for sure its issues, it's still night and day. I've been decades on Macs and I lost the interest for computers then. Since I am back to Windows/mainly WSL somehow this interest came back.
Back then, I was smiling at those PC builders with their RGB 'crap' but now I'd love to build my own battlestation with RGB everywhere. The PC ecosystem is more authentic, honest and more about tech.
Yet another with the horrendous Touchbar. Looks like I'll be holding on to my 2012 MBP for a while more. Maybe will look for a like new 2015 one if there are any still out there.
If I get a new Apple laptop, it'll be on a business lease because there's just _way_ too much risk in owning one of these new models with the display and keyboard problems.
I think everyone is overreacting to this. Yes Ive had to buy a can of compressed air but otherwise I like the new keyboard feel and key size. Considering all the tradeoffs im happy
At that price point, I couldn't see the point of buying a Mac Pro, versus buying a real desktop and a disposable Asus or Acer or Chromebook for the rare times I need to lug something around.
I think the only thing that might tempt me is if they brought back the 17" form factor, but I don't think they have made those for almost a decade. Those things were monsters, and everyone I know who had one rode it until it wouldn't go anymore.
Having used a Hackintosh as my desktop for the last 10 years without issue I'm inclined to attempt the same for my laptop now that my 2013 Macbook Pro is looking a bit old. At nearly half the price it's becoming a no-brainer. Are there high-end laptops with screens comparable to Apple's retina display nowadays? I'm also assuming disk and RAM can be replaced in Dells and ThinkPads but maybe I'm mistaken?
For people with double entry keyboard issue, I highly recommend https://github.com/aahung/Unshaky - uses software to ignore double entry. Mine(2018) has developed an issue within 3 months of hard use on one of the worst keys - backspace.
I've introduced over 5 bugs because of this shite, by randomly deleting one dangling brace...
I'm on a Mid 2012 MacBook Pro, i7, 16GB of RAM, it does the job for most of my development. My problem is, not development work, but my dependence on the MacOS ecosystem over the past 13 years. Music & iPhone in iTunes, Photos app etc. I can do Java, Python, Node on a PC with Linux but I still need some kind of Mac. What do all the Mac apostates do about that?
And quadruples down on their shitty keyboard design. I guess they never heard of the sunk cost fallacy or the old adage about polishing turds.
Did they introduce a keyboard that doesn't suck?
To anyone who has used the apple keyboard service program:
https://www.apple.com/support/keyboard-service-program-for-m...
How long does it take to get your macbook back?
I'm having this issue and I want to figure out how long i'm going to be out of commission for
They're now replacing them in-store. It was 4 days when I took mine in to the Palo Alto store, back when they had to ship it out.
About three days. Opted to have it shipped back to me and they overnighted it.
~24 hours is what it took for my replacement.
Still on "MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2013)," which is probably my 5th Macbook Pro (or equivalent) Been waiting for ages for Apple to fix their shit with the keyboard and make 32GB RAM an option for the 13". Hell will probably freeze over before any of that happens. Most likely, I'll have to get a desktop Mac and a Linux laptop.
I work on both a MacBook pro 15 with 32 gb and a Thinkpad X1 Carbon 32gb everyday. Apple is still light years ahead. The inconsistent UI on a Windows machine is infuriating, but Office is unsurprisingly powerful for teams. 8-core? I'll happily take it. Windows is retarded. The lack of empathy in user experience adds up to countless wasted hours.
These announcements are getting just as cringey as the Wolfram announcements...
andHonestly, with the new Pro laptops having so much issues, my next Mac setup will be an iMac with an Air. After using the 2018 model, I have a different level of respect for my 2015.
So much double typing on 2018, who designed that keyboard? It is not even a Pro laptop for authors anymore, who arguably need the least computing power.
Pro mid 2012 user here ,oved to SSD couple of years earlier and added 4gigs of ram this year and happy customer ever.
Unfortunately I use external hard disk as boot , and in recent releases of MacOS I think apple started pushing towards fusion drive due to which had to buy a new ssd and move again ( any other alternatives?)
Knock on wood my Macbook Pro that is now about 6 months old has been holding up flawlessly. Keyboard is great.
The whole thing can't keep a 4 core CPU from overheating and throttling. Not too mention with that small power brick and the USB-C charging cable, you can't even provide enough power to that beast of CPU regardless of i9 being less power hungry then the i8 is.
Apple just doesn't want to learn.
It says something about Apple when my first reaction is "yeah...I'm going to hang back and see if this laptop too is going to have lots of problems".
Apple's war on repair shops doesn't make me want to spend a lot of money on an Apple laptop. It's just a bad investment.
I have a 2015 Retina Macbook Pro and it is still fast enough for me. When it fails I will either buy another of the same model or get a PC and put Linux on it. What Apple has done to this product line is awful. At best it's just bad design, at worst it's exploitative.
I'll buy a new Macbook Pro the day Apple return Magsafe, a keyboard that I can distinguish between individual keys with my fingers, doesn't break, and isn't loud, and a no-touchbar option.
Until then my 2014 MBP will have to suffice, and if that breaks I'll use Linux.
Does it mean the rumored 16" MBP is dead? https://9to5mac.com/2019/02/19/macbook-pro-16-inch-concept-r...
I just can’t see myself spending that much on a laptop. I can’t productively use my laptop for day to day use without connecting it to two external monitors and keyboard anyway.
You can get an 8 Core 27 inch 5K iMac $100 cheaper, with less thermal constraints.
Sure I would take one if my company paid for it.
Having one desktop-powerful machine that can turn into a laptop when you unplug it from its dock and go with me anywhere is well worth the extra $100. And I'm saying this as someone with a dedicated desktop just for rendering/games. The desktop gives me customization and upgradability but the fact that I lose portability is huge and I'll never, ever own just a desktop machine. I'd prefer to own a laptop that can do my desktop duties when docked.
that's the theory, but in real life the macbook won't sustain 5ghz for very long at all, even less so with 8 cores. It simply can't get rid of the heat fast enough and throttles the speed to stay under thermal limits (while still toasting your balls).
The situation isn't helped by the GPU inside the same slim mbpro chassis that also gets super hot, it's particularly bad when you run mixed CPU/GPU workloads like rendering. So your desktop ends up being much faster for continuous workloads, even if on paper they both have 8-core 5ghz CPUs.
I had the 2018 6-core i9 mbpro. Got rid of it, if I were to buy a new mbpro again I would get a 4-core one.
So for GPU intensive workloads at least, it seems to make more sense to get a lower spec’d laptop for the road and an external GPU as a docking station if you need the portability.
Definitely.
Apple has a couple of eGPUs they made with Blackmagic (AMD RX580 - you don't want this one - and Vega 56), very slick looking and silent but unfortunately GPUs not user upgradeable and not great value for money.
You can use most tb3 eGPU enclosures and an AMD GPU of your choice. Vega64 prob the best choice now, Navi around the corner, can't use NVidia at all thanks to Apple. It'll cost you less than the official Apple eGPU and the GPU will be upgradeable
I would be so wildly impressed if this was any better in continuous workloads than the next model down, or even a couple models down. There's no way in hell there's enough thermal headroom for that CPU to fire on all cylinders for more than 30 seconds or so.
900+ comments and basically all about the HW issues (keyboard, display connector) and uselessness of the touchbar. Doesn't look good for Apple.
(I had to replace my 2015 MBP13 with the a late 2018 model. I am too mightily disappointed and would not buy a new Apple laptop).
Still no CUDA. Does this one come with a keyboard? I think I'll stick to my almighty 2015.
As long as they dont do away with the Touch Bar, I am not going to get one. People use machines with real keyboards for a reason. Ruining that experience by forcing a touch component onto a keyboard user is just absurd!
I got the 2017 model and i regret it, i spent almost 3k for the fully equipped 13" and already had to replace the display ($500 at local authorized shop) and have the keyboard problem. I wish i had stayed with my 2015 :(
My boycott of the Macbook "Pro" will continue until they add additional I/O ports (including HDMI and standard USB ports) and until they add a num pad (a big reason I've stuck with Windows over the years).
I would hope that if MBPs gain a numpad, it’s optional. For many it’s dead space that moves the home row and trackpad off center, making for an awkward typing position. In my case I won’t even consider a laptop that doesn’t have a no-numpad variant available.
This is pretty pointless considering the previous hex core i9 offering ran into a thermal wall regularly.
Without meaningfully overhauling the cooling system there is no reason to think that an 8 core on the same process is going to fare well.
Typing this on a Dell Precision 7530. Comes stock with Ubuntu. 128gb of ram, 4 times what Apple offers, at close to the same cost. Linux font rendering still sucks, but I may never use another Apple product again.
https://www.apple.com/support/keyboard-service-program-for-m...
Am I reading this update correctly? Is it now impossible to get a new Apple Laptop < 15" with 16GB of RAM?
Looks like a Matebook X Pro next time for me, or an XPS. Thankfully my '14 MBP runs beautifully still.
It is really tiresome to see every single thing Apple introduces here... but when Lenovo introduced the X1 Extreme with the exact same CPU, where's the HN article? Why the fruit toy is so important?
The latest Apple magic keyboard has butterfly-like keys and is an absolute joy to type on. No issues after a couple of years of daily use. Why can’t this mechanism find its way into a MBP?
> The latest Apple magic keyboard has butterfly-like keys
I don't think it does.
Just replaced the battery and threw new thermal paste on my Mid-2014 15" for $300. Discrete graphics, no TouchBar and a keyboard with travel. I hope this thing runs for another 5 years.
I'm still using 6 years old MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013, bought refurbished version) with Intel Core i7 at 2GHz with 8GB of RAM and 256 SSD, couldn't' be happier.
Does that mean we won’t have a real update at the usual June event? :(
I'm fairly sure my 2012 core-i7 MacBook Pro with SSD and 16GB ram still has comparable performance for most applications. Single core speed has pretty much stagnated over the years.
When my MBP Mid 2010 died, I bought a Samsung Chrome 3 with 4gig of RAM. It runs linux and 80% of the Android apps. And the battery lasts all day. I may never buy another computer.
The many failures (keyboard, screen, random freezes that need a hard shutdown) forced me to also switch to an XPS 13 on Kubuntu. I wish Apple would make a good Macbook again.
The touchbar is an abortion. A touchpad screen would have been a better innovation. Two dimensional touch area with multi gesture and visual feedback – just like an iphone.
OLED is the future of laptop displays (all displays really). I won't buy a new MacBook Pro until we get one. Until then I'm looking to get the new X1 Extreme.
Who cares if it's an 8 core that boosts to 5 GHz? The cooling on Macbooks is thrash and it will throttle on sustained multithread workloads.
Anyone have the latest scuttlebutt on the switch from Intel to ARM processors? My sources of mac gossip are pretty outdated these days...
No thank you. Sticking with iMac for the next 3 years. After having to return the new MacBook Pro with the fantastic shaky new ports.
Meanwhile, non-touchbar 13" macbook pros still have dual-core cpus.
Somebody might say "Apple continues the war against its own users".
None of the promo pictures show the keyboard, Touch Bar or trackpad. CPU speed is not the reason I haven't upgraded. Those are.
Glad to see a laptop with Coffee Lake. AVX-512 makes a big difference for code that can use it.
Also in this update: Pro Vega 20 GPU is an option.
Cofee Lake has no avx-512
You're right.
>8-core Intel Core processors, delivering Turbo Boost speeds up to 5.0 GHz, while the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar features faster quad-core processors with Turbo Boost speeds up to 4.7 GHz.
Cooled by what? Oh, right, almost nothing. If you actually know enough about computers to know what those numbers mean, you also know that those clock speeds cannot be sustained with this laptop's cooling solution. It is just baffling people who don't know better with numbers.
Woah, are they leading the market into 8c (16t?) notebooks? They lagged most vendors in shipping 6c notebooks previously.
Lenovo already announced the 8C Thinkpad X1 Extreme although it isn't shipping yet.
Did they fix that horrible "butterfly" keyboard and the trackpad with completely broken palm rejection?
To the people still complaining about dongles: It's 2019. Maybe buy a couple of USB-C cables and move on?
I use a mid-2012 MacBook Pro that still feels ahead of the newer stuff. Progress isn't always linear.
Fascinating that the embedded pictures don't even show the keyboard (or the much-unloved Touch Bar).
Useless. Same crappy, defective 5/6 of a keyboard, and defective display.
I jumped ship. Love my System 76 Darter.
I find it rather disappointing they didn't announce 8-core iMacs and Mac Minis at the same time.
Material change now after the `quieting` mechanism. The can just keeps getting kicked down the road.
“Apple introduces 8-core MacBook Pro”*
* Performance now equivalent to 6 cores due to Intel microcode vulnerabilities
But ... did they fix the keyboard?
Great, no need for a new Mac Pro!
lots of talk about the keyboards and the displays. But did they fix the thermal issues?
8 cores and no working keyboard
I just love my 2018 MB pro, including its keyboard. Am I crazy? Am I the only one?!
Nope. Me too. My 2018 MBP 15" is my dream laptop. The machine I've always wanted. Superfast. Light to carry everywhere. Comfy to work with on the couch. Connects to 2 5K displays at my desk. Even the speakers are decent. The 2016's keyboard was too clicky/rattley, but the 2018's is nice and tight.
Command-F K E Y B O A R D
'keyboard' not found
Command-W
What model of Intel CPU is it?
Do these machines lose any performance due to Intel’s latest vulnerability?
Do these come with HT off and other MDS mitigations enabled by default?
Same great keyboard! /s
Utterly ridiculous they haven’t redone this keyboard yet.
Why does it show Fortnite gameplay on the screen? What the fuck?
16 -> 32 GB of ram is a $400 option... ouch
32Gb 13inch MBP please.
Wonder how bad this is going to thermal throttle.
so this means no macbook pro upgrade during the next apple wwdc event (june the 3rd). i was secretly hoping for a redesign
Who even needs a laptop that powerful
after many years of MacBook Pro I recently switched to Lenovo x1 6th + Ubuntu and never looked back .
Apple tries to make me a fan of them
Until it overheats and throttles :)
Thank you but no, thank you. Too little, for too much, too late. In the best GoT tradition: NOT TODAY!
Why would you want to spend 2k+ on a laptop with an abysmal keyboard?
I buy $3k laptops. The only time they're not docked is when I'm on a plane or on my couch..
Apparently buying a macbook is like being a battered wife making excuses for her husband. It's sad and unfortunate.
I can guarantee after owning 30+ laptops in my life you won't find one that I consider the perfect match so I'm just to the point where I know what I want and can deal with flaws in other places as long as that one desire is answered. Unfortunately what I want is OSX..
But trust me I've got Amazon open and am ready to swipe right on something new and better whenever it comes along.
Who even needs a laptop that powerful?
For whatever reason a lot of companies are going laptop only. The company I work, for example basically banned workstations in the latest round of upgrades. So a lot of people who need what would be a moderately powerful desktop computer end up having to buy ridiculously powerful laptops like this one.
But do they have an escape key?
$1,800 for 13-inch laptop.
nothing about the keyboard?
Contrary to what most people are saying in this thread, I have the latest MacBook Pro revision (2017 model?) and I absolutely love using it. I really like the keyboard and haven't had any problems with it malfunctioning.
Nearly 400 replies to a single parent comment.
HN is saturated beyond practical use, by both bike shedding and forum sliding, simultaneously. And oh yeah, bot brigades and mechanical turks.
Donglegate threatens to cleave a trillion dollar company from a crucial money gland that ejaculates valuable flotsam when palpated.
USB-C and headphone jacks. That's what stabbed the company in the aorta. Try to remove the knife and it bleeds out.
Tim Cook's homosexuality has been proven as incapable of effective leadership. Try and doubt this.
We wouldn't be here if we had a person in charge who gave a fuck about pulling pussy. Never trust a man that masturbates with another man's anus. Ring sphincters are for shitting. Moustaches shouldn't strain cum.
> revised BUTTERFLY KEYBOARD
NO BUY.
> should reduce missed/double key presses
But not fix them.
> Announced along with an expanded Keyboard Service Program to cover the 2018 laptops
This one will also be affected.
Dead laptop line.
Thinkpad X1 Extreme 2nd generation too.
9th Generation Intel® Core i9-9880H with vPro (2.30GHz, up to 4.80GHz with Turbo Boost, 8 Cores, 16MB Cache)
If only they could introduce a working keyboard!
Got the 6-core one a few months ago, what a great machine. I love the 4 usb-c ports that can turn into anything I want. I like the Touch Bar, the only question is why I cannot get this for my iMac Pro as well. The keyboard is very nice to type on. It is a super fast machine. Love the screen. And with AppleCare plus, I am not afraid of components failing. Stop the whining, bitches.
I am starting to think this online complaining is an organised attack on apple rather than anything genuine.
Some gullible people still actually believe what they read on the internet in terms of “organic” user comments and companies know it.
I don’t know what the failure rate of the keyboards is, only apple could know this, so it is impossible for me to say anything about that. Either way, they keep trying to improve its reliability. As for how it feels, it is faster to type on then the older ones. The new MacBooks also look better.
People complain about all of these things like the touchbar as if they type all day on their laptop. If you do, you have serious problems with your neck and posture. It is a laptop, designed for 2 hours per day at most.
Meanwhile, people make all these hilarious claims about “how great windows is now with wsl” and how their dell is supposedly great and so on. Ahh, these are compete bullshit. Windows sucks even more now with all the advertising, wsl will always be a shitty emulation layer, and dell make computers that aren’t even comparable to apple in quality.
I see people all the time say “they were going to get a MacBook but all the comments put them off”. I would suggest those people wake up and stop putting faith in anything you read on the internet. If you know people having problem with their MacBook, then that is a real data point. Internet comments and videos are not.
Glad I bought the case for my mbp 13 2015.
Still using Intel CPUs, judging by the fine print.
It'd be massive news if they weren't - you'd be hearing about that first not having to look for it in the small print.
I too am still waiting for the mythical bitcode powered 100 core ARM MacBook here.
They won’t switch without a period for developers to get ready, like the PPC to Intel transition.
Switching to AMD shouldn't require anything from a developer.
Agreed. I was assuming ARM.
However I don’t see Intel switching to AMD. They have all the same problems, more or less. Primarily Apple has little control over their future with an outside supplier.
Apple Computers should have SSD built-in.
Isn't the SSD on these soldered to the motherboard? You can't get any more built-in than that.
What’s that Apple? You still haven’t fixed the keyboard?
Well then I won’t be buying one.
The MacBook has always been mediocre hardware hyped and marketed beyond all reason. Even way back all the nonsense about unibody construction was a total myth, Thinkpads were even more durable but didnt have the hype.
Apple knows they will keep selling these things due to the brand image.
Okay but hold on a second, I didn't see this in any of the comments so far:
A fully specced new macbook pro with the i9 costs 6500 DOLLARS.
i9 CPU, 32GB RAM, 4TB SSD, and Vega Pro GPU.
I have spent, in 15 years of owning/building computers and laptops, around $8000 total. The fact that these numbers are even comparable is insane.
As a Vim user: no physical escape key, no deal. I've recently tried working on one of these, and the bar is really annoying for another reason: as you switch between apps it keeps changing right in the corner of your vision, distracting from what's going on on the screen. WTF were they thinking?
As a Vim user, just do what any sane man would do and rebind caps lock to escape. Much better.
what's a good way for vim to have that when you ssh into a remote box? Would you do the rebinding in the Terminal app or something, agent forwarding or something similar? I ssh into newly provisioned boxes regularly to edit some config files so I'd need something that works not just locally...
The remap is at the OS level, so if you remap caps lock to control or escape, that's what your machine will send over SSH when you press it. No need to change for every terminal app you use.
Standard key mappings are performed by the OS of the computer to which your keyboard is connected (either physically or via bluetooth or some such). When you press caps lock, the OS sees a caps lock keypress, but any application programs on your computer, including terminal, will see only an ESC keypress. Terminal will dutifully send the ESC press to the ssh program running in Terminal, which in turn should send it along to the remote host into which you are ssh'd.
I was also of this mind but I'm really pleased with the workaround of mapping Caps Lock to Escape (more ergonomic when using Escape) and mapping Left Shift + Right Shift to Caps Lock when pressed simultaneously. I use Karabiner-Elements (https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/document.html) to implement these remaps in addition to some others such as Shift + Delete/Backspace for forward delete.
Seconded, though I also make my caps lock function as control when held down: https://www.dannyguo.com/blog/remap-caps-lock-to-escape-and-...
The problem with this is this is just one of half a dozen other computers I'd be using. I see no reason whatsoever to remap anything to anything after paying nearly $4K for the privilege. It should adapt to the way I've been doing things for the past 25 years, and intend to continue for 25 more.
This. FWIW, I have mapped some perma nent functions (brightness,volume etc) to the touchbar (you can do that from the preferences), so it doesn't keep changing based on the application in focus. This is a work laptop so I am stuck :(
I get it, but also please map capslock to escape, your pinky will thank you for it
I remapped my computer to Thinkpad X1 Carbon running Linux instead.
Love these overpriced facebook machines lmao