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MacBook Pro

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Re: MacBook Pro

#911

Post by dvcrn »

This event confused me. I had a bunch of emotions from happiness to utter confusion.

I love gimmicks and thought the TouchBar was cool. Then I thought about it how I would usually use it, and the answer was "close to never because I touchtype". Then I realized that the ESC key that I use for so many things blindly is now more awkward to reach. Then I realized that the TouchBar doesn't have haptic feedback which makes precision work more difficult. Then I realized the coming version might actually have haptic feedback and force touch.

Then I realized that the MBP is still limited to 16GB RAM max. If I buy this machine I want to use it for 6 years to come. 6 years with 16GB RAM doesn't seem realistic.

I am not a negative person and absolutely love my Mac. I love the apps that I own and I can't wait to get my hands on the new Final Cut Pro. But I don't know if I want to buy another Mac. Remember when everyone told you the 15" MacBook is effectively a desktop replacement? That's what I want. A desktop replacement for work that I can also put in my pocket and carry somewhere else.

I absolutely don't mind buying 2 Macs. One portable one (12") and one semi/non-portable one for the heavy lifting. But right now that doesn't seem to be the option.

For example: The new FCPX is amazing! But it requires a lot of specs to deal with the ever increasing resolution. It's highly possible that phones can soon record 6k footage in <6 years that need to get edited somewhere.

Re: MacBook Pro

#912

Post by rjohnk »

santaclaus wrote: post #464
binthere wrote: post #69

This trend of killing hardware buttons needs to stop. It's very inconvenient. The sense of touch is important for me. It's one of the annoying things I don't like about many Android devices and it seems that Apple is slowly transitioning to this as well.

Hardware buttons have no place in a post millennial world. Kids under 12 don't even know what physical buttons are.

2056 After decades of touch interfaces, Apple releases, "Button" a revolutionary device that connects the physical world with the digital. FEEL the movement. HEAR the keypress.

Old millenials gesture wildly and swipe back and forth on VR forums saying how amazing it is to actually use senses of touch.

Re: MacBook Pro

#913

Post by vacri »

mtift wrote: post #616
vegasje wrote: post #346

Seems like my next laptop won't be a MacBook Pro. Can anyone recommend a good Linux laptop that will offer up to 32gb of RAM and have decent battery life?

http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/t-series/t460 If you need 32GB of RAM, then the ThinkPad T460 would qualify. And Lenovo claims it has 18 hours of battery life, which seems more than decent to me. I switched from MacBook Pros to the ThinkPad T Series running GNU/Linux a few years ago and I have not been disappointed. My only caveat is that I like to run Debian stable, and that seems to work better on old…

If it's just the age of the kernel worrying you, have a look at the backported kernels for debian stable.

Re: MacBook Pro

#914

Post by flomo »

robinson7d wrote: post #783
untog wrote: post #179

I know USB-C is the future, but it's going to be a long, long, long time before all our devices are using it - particularly external displays. My current Macbook Pro has an HDMI port. I use it every day. I do not want to carry a converter dongle with me everywhere (I did that with my old Air that only had a DisplayPort). To echo other complaints: this is supposed to be a professional machine. I don't care about it be…

In 1998 the iMac dropped most other ports. Admittedly, maybe a bit less severe because it still had an ethernet port, and a couple FireWire. But it did drop the ports that were commonly used for peripherals and devices, which is the similarity. People used those, every day. In the exact same model, they also dropped floppy drives. A _lot_ of stuff people used frequently was no longer supported in that device. I'm not…

I'd argue the iMac was a different situation because there was an immediate upside to using USB peripherals, namely they were much cheaper than Mac proprietary stuff. For example HP had a popular inkjet printer, the PC (parallel port) version was $150, while the Mac (serial port) version was $300. The floppy wasn't a huge loss either as most Mac users were using Zip disks.

There's no real advantage right now in using TB3/USB-C, because pretty much nothing else uses it. And I'd bet that, in 2020, USB-A, HDMI, DP, and even VGA will still be in common use, so I'll probably be using dongles forever.

Re: MacBook Pro

#915

Post by makecheck »

simplexion wrote: post #878
makecheck wrote: post #78

When I am at a desk, the lid is closed so both TouchID and touch-anything effectively don’t matter, including any display information. In fact, I am worried about applications gradually putting information only on the Touch Bar that cannot be found anywhere else. Perhaps they could have placed a TouchID button on the SIDE of the laptop (usable when open or closed). And hopefully the ENTIRE Touch Bar display is also a…

This is something I will never understand. Why would you reduce your work space by not extending the displays?

One advantage of closing the lid is that whatever you had open on the laptop will then “jump” to the big screen and may even figure out that there is more screen space and resize automatically. If you just open the lid and plug it in, everything you had open on the laptop remains cluttered on the small screen and your big additional desktop is just blank.

I’ve occasionally used both at once (e.g. E-mail in the small laptop window, everything else on the big screen) but that is generally for when I don’t plan to move for quite awhile. If I am constantly grabbing my machine, coming back, etc. then closed-lid is less of an interruption.

Re: MacBook Pro

#916

Post by kkylin »

nkw wrote: post #164

Wow. I hate to say it, but I thought the products in Microsoft's event yesterday were way more exciting than anything from Apple lately. This plus macOS Sierra seems like a whole lot of "meh". This coming from a guy whose first computer was an Apple IIe, who owned a Mac Cube, and whose daily driver is a trashcan MacPro.

I've found Sierra to be very disappointing. A few new features I'll never use, and things I do use everyday are now broken, e.g., the new PDFKit broke Skim annotations. Sigh.

The new machine actually looks ok to me, though I agree the advance over the previous model seems very incremental.

Re: MacBook Pro

#917

Post by jorgthuijls »

jaxn wrote: post #535
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 b…

My thoughts exactly. My next laptop will be a Surface Book as well.

Limited RAM, no Fn keys, no ports used in enterprises all over the world... I'm not carrying the lightest laptop money can buy if it has to be accompanied by the largest bag of adaptors.

Re: MacBook Pro

#918

Post by dclowd9901 »

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.

Brilliant time for someone to make a move in the Linux space. I do not want a Windows box, but would love something as refined as a Mac running a slick GUI on top of Linux.

Re: MacBook Pro

#919

Post by goerz »

dasmoth wrote: post #163
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.

It may not be the ports you want but 4x Thunderbolt/USB-C connectors is not exactly "no ports".

I find the lack of at least one legacy USB port extremely worrying. Will the following work with a USB to Firewire/USB-C dongle?

* boot from USB (bootable CarbonCopyCloner backup)

* Yubikey (government issued, so I can't easily get an updated key)

* Kensington R800 presenter (supposedly, it's "just a USB keyboard", but I've had it not work via Bluetooth dongle or with the USB to Lightning dongle for the iPad, even though regular USB keyboards work)

Re: MacBook Pro

#920

Post by jsz0 »

Shivetya wrote: post #684
npgatech wrote: post #165

This event was by far the most disappointing Mac event in the history. A lot of the time was wasted in: - Mildly funny jokes and comparison with 90's technology. - 90% of the talk was about the touch bar. - Awful demos of Photoshop & some cringy DJ. I was hoping we would see: - A new MacBook with all day battery life and touch bar, even thinner design. Ok, I understand that they are trying to consolidate their produc…

I think the touch bar is just horrid, its a step backwards if not simply a declaration of being out of touch. Who looks at their keyboard anymore? For a company with so many touch oriented devices the last thing they needed is an extension of the keyboard

I look at my keyboard when I use function keys (no muscle memory) and some symbols I rarely use. Does that make me a bad person? Sorry.
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