Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

MacBook Pro

apple.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

531–540 of 1001 posts

Re: MacBook Pro

#531

Post by masklinn »

lostgame wrote: post #454
inputcoffee wrote: post #335

Everyone seems disappointed but I think the reason is this: There isn't that much to innovate on the laptop. If you want real innovation, you need new form factors: voice recognition, VR, intelligent devices and so on. The laptop is excellent at what it does and the only thing you can really do is make it faster and lighter.

Everyone's disappointed because we don't WANT innovation. We WANT better battery life, not a slightly thinner laptop. We WANT our USB ports and MagSafe. We WANT a touchscreen MacBook. We WANT significantly upgraded specs, and expandability. We WANT to have the same physical keyboard layout we've had forever. We WANT Apple to stop f•••ing us around by increasing the price while actively removing features. THIS laptop…

> We WANT our USB ports and MagSafe.

Talk for yourself, all-type-C is one of the things I was seriously looking for.

Re: MacBook Pro

#532

Post by [deleted] »

cpr wrote: post #132
benologist wrote: post #21

TBH the touch bar seems like a half-arsed response to everyone else getting touch screens. Swiping photos, swiping timelines ... would be more natural on your actual screen, and almost as natural just using the trackpad or mouse.

Except that you can reach these "keys" with your hands staying on the keyboard. No "gorilla arm" problem.

[deleted]

Re: MacBook Pro

#533

Post by stemuk »

massysett wrote: post #449
dguaraglia wrote: post #410

As a heavy Vim user, this might be my last Apple development machine. I can always remap Caps Lock to Esc, but years of muscle memory > a flashy feature I have little use for. There's nothing I'd pay extra for in this new machine: touchbar is a meh, biometric authentication has been around since ~2005, the hardware specs are finally catching up with what everyone else has been shipping for a couple years, the new key…

Linux is not bad. But nobody is making decent Linux hardware, and the instant you slap Linux onto a Windows machine, battery life plummets. My days buying Windows machines and struggling to get Linux on them are over. I'd rather buy a Mac and get a Unix I can use without having to install it. Is anyone actually selling a decent preinstalled Linux laptop? If I really wanted to use Linux I would rather buy a Windows la…

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon is actually among the strongest MacBook competitors. It has a really strong i7 provessor, 512GB SSD and 8 GB of ram. All of this in a light carbon unibody enclosure, and at 1499 (without OS- saves Windows 10 licensing costs) its even pretty cheap for the specs you get.

Re: MacBook Pro

#534

Post by alejandromaka »

brentm wrote: post #320

I hate to take away from the complaining in here but I actually think it looks pretty nice. I was pleasantly surprised with the interactions they demonstrated with the new ribbon display. I knew they were going to announce it and didn't think I'd care but I will walk away from the video with the feeling that I want one.

congratulations on being the only positive comment in here. thank you.

Re: MacBook Pro

#535

Post by jaxn »

ynniv wrote: post #143

Apple has replaced the MacBook Pro with a faster MacBook Air labeled "Pro". I have no idea how they could think that professionals would use a MacBook Air (no ports, shallow keyboard, no expansion, no innovative features, marginally lighter). A tiny ribbon display is completely useless to me. They removed the escape key. Twenty years of using Macs and I'm not sure what my next laptop is going to be.

I am feeling the same way, except that I know what my next laptop will be. I am ordering a Surface Book.

The weird screen thing looks terrible on this MBP. It will require me to look at my keyboard, not my screen.

Meanwhile, the Surface Book gives me a touch screen (which is important to me because I create web software that is used on touch screens), the pen is great, the dial looks interesting, so I will probably buy that too.

The Surface Book should work great on my desk with an additional monitor and keyboard / mouse / dial. Whereas the MBP completely loses the utility of that weird touch bar thing in that same setup.

Also, I use virtualization on my Mac to develop a .NET app. So, now I don't have function keys for the guest OS?

It was developers who led the way to Apple's dominance in the notebook space, and I suspect it will be developers who lead the migration in the opposite way.

The question for me is, will I end up ditching the iPhone too?

Re: MacBook Pro

#536

Post by agumonkey »

coldtea wrote: post #133
blocke wrote: post #24

The touch bar examples shown are a usability disaster. You're going to hide UI from the screen and make me keep looking at the keyboard to find functionality? I stopped looking at the keyboard every 10 seconds when I learned how to touch type. The presenter spent most of his time looking at the keyboard and not the screen. This gimmick will disappear when Apple decides a touch screen is needed to complete the slow me…

> The touch bar examples shown are a usability disaster. You're going to hide UI from the screen and make me keep looking at the keyboard to find functionality? That's the wrong way to think of it. It's not a keyboard, it's an adaptive toolbar. And it's close to what professionals in several industries pay handsomely for -- control surfaces, only this one is also adaptive. > I stopped looking at the keyboard every 10…

Everybody wants 'this' yet nothing nailed it. Keyboard are strange beasts, and designers rarely have the right context or experience. A virtual bar is awesome in theory; but the fixed and tactile qualities that seem idiotic today are actually part of the value. Imagine a piano without keys. Even non weighted keys are despised by any musician. Your mind and body have lots of subtle cue sensors to perceive and react accordingly. Anything that contradicts this will fail for refined/industry use.

Re: MacBook Pro

#538

Post by laurent123456 »

Still no 17-inches version unfortunately. I don't get why they no longer make one - is there no demand at all for it? It's basically why I've switched to an ASUS laptop since I don't want to bother with an external monitor (not to mention the extra cost).

Re: MacBook Pro

#539

Post by verisimilidude »

rcarmo wrote: post #419
rayiner wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microsoft really hit it out of the park yesterday. Did we watch the same event? Microsoft introduced a $3,000 desktop PC in an era when nobody uses desktops anymore. It introduced a minor update to the Surface Book that starts at $2,300 with dual-core CPU, only 8GB of RAM, and last-gen graphics hardware. For the same price as the new Surface Book i7, I can get an MBP 15" with bigger screen, twice the RAM, and a qua…

Dude, I use a desktop. A Mac mini, in fact, which has been struggling for the latter half of the past 6 years. I'm seriously considering getting a PC instead, even though I've written http://taoofmac.com for 14 years. (I do happen to work for Microsoft, by the way, but would very much prefer to keep my home setup on a separate tech stack for the sake of keeping an open view. I'm now ogling the Skullcandy NUC and wond…

I did exactly that. After using the Mac forever (started on 10.1), I got kinda fed up and made the jump to an Intel NUC with Linux. I tried Elementary OS and didn't find it to my liking. But I really really dig Fedora, specifically Gnome 3. The breadth of choice in Linux desktop environments at the moment is neat and not something I expected when I made the leap to PC.

Re: MacBook Pro

#540

Post by hiram112 »

blinkingled wrote: post #495

Apple's price points are no longer attractive anymore for the laptops. Previously you could buy a current gen MBA 11/13 for decent prices relative to what they offered. You could also buy MacBook Pros for less - for a 15" the starting price is now $2399!

Agreed. For non development use, an Air was fine and I'd actually recommend them at $900 (often on sale at BestBuy or Ebay).

I just bought a brand new Dell Latitude Ultrabook with i7 and SSD for $600 from the outlet store. I added ram for $40 and it has a three year warranty.

An i5 MBP at 2x-3x the cost is no longer worth the OSX premium, especially for those users who need only a browser and MS Office.

Post reply on HN