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How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

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Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#111

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

beat wrote: post #16

My main computer is a five year old 17" MBP. I've upgraded it to the max and done repairs to maintain it. I need the computational power - I use it for programming, photo editing at scale, and recording/mixing music. It would cost me $3000 to replace it with a computer that is not significantly more powerful, has a smaller screen and less I/O functionality, and would be incompatible with my audio interface unless I d…

>Chromebook

It might be usable for some stuff, but if you don't devmode it (mine's a school computer, so I can't), it's really insufficient for a wide variety of tasks. It does (credit to Google) have a very good SSH client, and (credit to the mosh team) have a very good Mosh client, so if you've got a fast network and you're an emacs/vi/vim user, it's okay for dev work, but it's not ideal.

And it's rubbish for games.

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#112

Post by fritzw »

ohyoutravel wrote: post #90
electic wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did take a close look at the Surface Pro. Sorry, the build quality is nowhere near a MacBook Pro. Secondly, I found the touch screen very gimmicky. I tried using it for a week and found that my hand just hurt lifting it up repeatedly and also hated switching context from the keyboard to the screen. Not to mention, the screen was full of smudge marks after awhile. To be honest, I really found myself using the keyboa…

I really like the touchscreen on my Surface Pro and don't find it gimmicky. It's very useful, especially to scroll while reading an article, or to use it in "tablet mode," or just to hit buttons on command prompts. I don't use it for everything, but it is good at making small efficiency improvements in my overall life with my computer. Not accusing you of anything, but I suspect if Apple released a laptop with a touc…

You had me at scrolling. Apple is in denial. If nothing else it's the number of times I've witnessed someone try to manipulate the OS on a MacBook only to find themselves dumpfounded, "duh it's not a touchscreen". Well maybe it should be

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#113

Post by lhopki01 »

electic wrote: post #83
kruipen wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The touch screen on the Surface has one killer application: scrolling while reading. It's very natural to scroll content with a thumb on the edge of the screen.

Yes, but you have to lift your arm up. It is far far faster to scroll through a web page with the touchpad.

Lift your arm up? I can rest my arm on the desk and have my thumb in the lower right corner of the screen. It's actually much nicer than having my hand in front of me slightly raised to have two fingers to scroll with. Try it now.

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#114

Post by bryanlarsen »

jaxondu wrote: post #89
electic wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did take a close look at the Surface Pro. Sorry, the build quality is nowhere near a MacBook Pro. Secondly, I found the touch screen very gimmicky. I tried using it for a week and found that my hand just hurt lifting it up repeatedly and also hated switching context from the keyboard to the screen. Not to mention, the screen was full of smudge marks after awhile. To be honest, I really found myself using the keyboa…

> Fix the battery issue. I don't think there is any hardware/software issues for the poor battery performance in latest MacBook Pro. The TouchBar uses AppleWatch CPU under the hood, and anything with a screen will suck up battery rather badly. They might be able to squeeze some more juice by software update. Its likely noticeable improvement will come with the refresh next year. The one thing Apple needs to do is the…

The parent article has the first good explanation I've seen for the battery issues in the new MacBook Pro. Apparently they wanted to use a fancy non-square battery but it failed some tests so they reverted to a much smaller square battery at the last minute, thus the significant drop in capacity.

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#115

Post by jungturk »

bsenftner wrote: post #85
delegate wrote: post #57

Hardware is not the only problem Apple has right now vis-a-vis developers. Apple's flagship IDE, XCode, is also lagging behind, at least when talking about C++ development, but even Swift doesn't get too much love it seems. Having used it since at least version 5, XCode 8 has been a frustrating experience for me starting from day one, when it defaulted to Swift version 3.0 and so broke all of the existing Swift proje…

XCode is the #1 reason I was never able to fully commit to a Mac. Hell, I was a Mac beta tester back in '83! (At age 17.) I've owned one, and used them as my main email machine for decades, but I never could wrap my head around the IDE poverty that is XCode. Even when I wrote Mac software, I did not use XCode, or whatever they called it back then. These days, I still have a Mac for email and it is my main system for…

I'm confused why the presence of Xcode would prevent one from using a Mac with whatever IDE they preferred. Atom, IntelliJ, VSCode, Sublime, VIM, etc... all work just fine on Macs.

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#116

Post by rvail2 »

electic wrote: post #83
kruipen wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The touch screen on the Surface has one killer application: scrolling while reading. It's very natural to scroll content with a thumb on the edge of the screen.

Yes, but you have to lift your arm up. It is far far faster to scroll through a web page with the touchpad.

Not if you're using it in tablet mode.

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#117

Post by aninhumer »

ohyoutravel wrote: post #90
electic wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did take a close look at the Surface Pro. Sorry, the build quality is nowhere near a MacBook Pro. Secondly, I found the touch screen very gimmicky. I tried using it for a week and found that my hand just hurt lifting it up repeatedly and also hated switching context from the keyboard to the screen. Not to mention, the screen was full of smudge marks after awhile. To be honest, I really found myself using the keyboa…

I really like the touchscreen on my Surface Pro and don't find it gimmicky. It's very useful, especially to scroll while reading an article, or to use it in "tablet mode," or just to hit buttons on command prompts. I don't use it for everything, but it is good at making small efficiency improvements in my overall life with my computer. Not accusing you of anything, but I suspect if Apple released a laptop with a touc…

>It's very useful, especially to scroll while reading an article

I don't understand why someone using a laptop would want to scroll by lifting their arm up to the screen, rather than just moving two fingers on the touchpad where their hand is already resting.

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#118

Post by RHSeeger »

TylerE wrote: post #76
DigitalJack wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Just buy something from newegg and call it "workstation." Apple has two things going for them: top notch physical quality laptops and macOs. That's really it. Who cares how shiny a desktop workstation is... ideally you don't even see it. the only reason to buy a desktop from Apple is macOs. And if that doesn't matter to you, why by from apple at all? And for that matter why buy a desktop from anyone when you can…

There are more useful attributes to a well-made desktop system than "shiny". "Quiet" is a big one.

My MacBookPro is considerably louder than my desktop (Windows) gaming PC with 6 fans in it. When the laptop gets hot, its a beast as far as noise (comparatively speaking, that is... its not going to disrupt a call or anything).

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#119

Post by macjohnmcc »

anjc wrote: post #56
macjohnmcc wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a Microsoft Surface Pro 3 with i7 processor and I would not trade my Macbook Pro (3 1/2 years old) for it. The Surface frequently heats up to be too hot to hold as a tablet and just isn't nearly as fast.

There must be something wrong with it then if it heats up too hot to hold, and its i7 doesn't make it more performant than an old MBP

Too be too hot to hold doesn't mean it's blistering hot just not comfortable to hold.

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#120

Post by SomeStupidPoint »

blackguardx wrote: post #98
SomeStupidPoint wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I switched from a MBP to a Surface, and eventually to a $500 generic "hybrid" laptop (with decent Linux support). Turns out moving to the cloud for developer work and not playing videogames on my laptop really cuts down on my computer needs. (Also, saving that much money justifies more cell data to tether with, so it's actually more convenient at times.) YMMV though, because I worked in ML, and so had to make the clo…

What brand/model is your generic hybrid?

Dell Inspiron 13, 5000 Series 2-in-1.

It's not fabulous, and most of the criticisms are correct, but it was $500-600 when I was looking to buy, and has done reasonably well.

Mostly, it was just a choice to save $1-2k on a laptop (every 1-2 years) and spend the money on cellphone data and lattes.

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