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Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

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Re: Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

#531

Post by rz2k »

colomon wrote: post #369
m12k wrote: post #316

It's actually kind of amazing to see the discourse shift against Apple and the new MacBook Pro to the point where it seems almost self-reinforcing. Like someone turned the reality distortion field on backwards or something. I've been wanting a mac laptop the size and weight of a MacBook Air 13" but with a retina display for years, and the ability to connect usb, power and external display with just a single cable is…

It feels to me like you are putting this backwards. I've been using the MBP as my main software development platform for eight years now. My current machine is a maxed out mid 2014 15" MBPr. What does the new MBP offer me over that? 1) Very slightly faster. (2.9 vs 2.8) 2) 2 TB SSD instead of 1 TB. 3) Ability to charge and drive monitor over single cable. But what is the price? 1) $4,199 -- nearly $1000 more expensiv…

For $150 the ssd is twice as fast at the least. The options for external monitors are also much, much better.

Re: Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

#532

Post by x0x0 »

nicky0 wrote: post #226
x0x0 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just bought a new mid 2015 mbp for that reason. Beyond the $300 price increase, there's an additional $400 backdoor price increase for additional chargers and a pile of dongles to replace all the functionality that currently works. Not throwing in a single usb-A port was the final fuck you that tipped me over the edge to the older generation.

$400 for dongles? Got a breakdown on that?

Two additional chargers, one that stays in my backpack and one for the other room in my house where I work: $180. $150-ish worth of dock for my desk so various stuff works including Logitech wireless mouse, monitor, external drives -- I didn't choose one yet but that's the price range. DVI for projectors and HDMI for various stuff: $100. Three $10 usb-A dongles, one each of which would probably be tied to the power adapters because I personally and professionally have a dozen devices that use usb-A. And the above is well over $400.

Re: Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

#533

Post by maksimum »

nextos wrote: post #186
wineisfine wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had the same thing. Turns out, I'm more of a design snob then I thought I was. Trying to move away from macOS and trying out Windows and a few Linux distro's, my god it's all ugly. I don't care much about Apple hardware specifically, but they got my hooked because of the OS. Pretty lame.

Try something without any design at all, like Linux with a tiling window manager and some minimal applications.

Back in 2009 my dream was to run OSX with a Thinkpad keyboard and trackpoint. Now that I have OSX on a Thinkpad X220 my dream is to run i3-wm with unified application design language and underlying foundations. On OSX Spotlight works well and gives me what I want, and applications look good. There aren't any missing icons and text size isn't all over the place. Amethyst WM on OSX is pretty good, but it's not as good as i3. I'm not sure if it's easier to make applications look good on Linux or to get a WM that looks more like i3 on OSX.

Re: Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

#534

Post by hedora »

tedmiston wrote: post #462
wildmusings wrote: post #400

Personally, luxury laptop lines don't make sense for me at this point. There was a time when it was the only way to get decent hardware, but those days are long gone. Four years ago I spilled water on my 2009 17" MBP (RIP) and Apple wanted $1200 for the repair. Instead, I spent ~$1300, including three-year accident-protection insurance where they show up at your house THE NEXT DAY, on a Thinkpad T530 and I couldn't b…

> But what I value in a computer just doesn't align with the value that premium ultra-thin laptops provide. It's not about being ultra-thin as much as the quality and experience of macOS over anything else.

Yeah; I think this is the other problem. I've had my first-ever mbp at work for almost three years. Each OS release is buggier than the last (and all of them fail on resume every once in a while). Example from el capitan: The ctrl and alt keys sometimes get 'stuck' when switching to and from a full screen vnc session (with the builtin client). So, a dozen times a day, I start typing into vnc, and hilarity ensues. It turns out ctrl and alt handling in vnc is surprisingly complicated, but the point is that this is a regression. It never happened before el capitan.

VNC, you ask? As our product has matured, the build has gotten slower, so my local vmware vm is useless. The remote xeon is pretty iffy too (and it is not three years out of date like apple's comparable offering).

Writing on macos and shipping the code is a non-starter, and I like to be able to cut and paste urls / download things into my linux working directory directly from firefox.

Worse, it is not like some things improved while others regressed. Take the mail and calendar clients (the other programs I actually use) for example. Other than waiting, there is no way to dismiss the "you've got mail" notifications without opening the email (thus borking my vnc session again). Since apple is deep into the minimalism cult, I know they are organizationally incapable of putting an X on the popup.

That is the story of my $2800 VNC client with buggy keyboard, crashy kernel and iffy mail client. At least it has an escape key, reasonable keyboard play, and good battery life.

In apple's defense, I don't know of and better options that work out of the box. Microsoft and google perform way too much user surveillance, and Ubuntu Unity (i.e. Dell XPS developer edition) broke the alt key. When did desktop/laptop software start sucking so badly?

Re: Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

#535

Post by kabdib »

enjo wrote: post #17

The latest rev pushed me to a PC for the first time in like 15 years. It's partly because I didn't love the new Macbook Pro, but also cause hey..change is fun sometimes. I'm very happy with my new Surface Book. I never thought I'd like the touchscreen as much as I do. I LOVE being able to go to tablet mode for calls and stuff where I sort of want to just wander around. The pen has completely changed how I do flow-cha…

Actively taking my Mac environment into a Linux one. Have been for a couple of weeks now. [1]

I use PCs for most of my development work, and Macs when I can (when I'm doing the more ops-like bits of devops, and for personal use). The MacOS environment is really nice, and the Windows tools for writing native code are really good, but the writing is on the wall: Own your computing environment or you will working at someone's sufferance.

I'm not going to go full bull-goose Stallman, but it seems like a worthwhile thing to do.

[1] It's rocky. Device support is spotty, and user interfaces are often staggeringly bad. Maybe with more people piling on things will get better.

Re: Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

#536

Post by FireBeyond »

Fnoord wrote: post #261
FireBeyond wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. My employer, who is almost exclusively Mac, were reluctant to get me the new MBP. I got a Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition (Kaby Lake) and so far, so good. Am very happy. Like you say, I wish it had the Apple touchpad (but not the new one - that's getting _too_ big). Everything else is great. The Infinity Edge screen, beautiful keyboard...

Been considering getting one. They come with option of Ubuntu. But I read too many complaints on things like coil whine, HiDPI, and low uptime on battery.

Did hear about coil whine - mine doesn't exhibit it.

HiDPI looks pretty good for the most part.

I largely run with AC power, so really need to test this (I've only had it since Friday).

Re: Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

#537

Post by collyw »

pronik wrote: post #427
mej10 wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people literally get joy out of using things that are well designed and don't feel cheap. When it is a device you are going to use constantly for work and other things then it becomes very easy to justify buying a "luxury" laptop. I used the same iMac for 5 years (only added an SSD) and have used the same MBP for 4 years and it still has a lot of life left.

ThinkPads are well-designed and do not feel cheap. There are just two things they are not: extra-thin and shiny.

The Thinkpad Carbon I have is pretty thin.

Re: Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

#538

Post by XaspR8d »

slantyyz wrote: post #473
scholia wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ditto. Last year, I made the mistake of buying a non-touch laptop thinking I didn't care that much. Had to take it back to the shop and swap it for a touch-screen machine....

If you want touch on your laptop and you're not ready to upgrade yet, you should check out the AirBar. You do need to buy the right bar for your screen size though. It's obviously not as good as a real touch screen, but it seems like a decent substitute until you can get one. Product Site: http://www.air.bar/ Video Review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QR5r1EfvheI

No 17" models. :(

Re: Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

#539

Post by EasyTiger_ »

danielweber wrote: post #525
bluedino wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> but Windows is still the king of ugly. >> So I've been considering Linux as my first option. Linux re-defines ugly. It works great but it's very kludgy. Like many others I can setup my workflow on any of the three machines and have tried it out on many different machines from Dell to IBM to Apple. Sublime, terminals, Chrome/FireFox, DropBox, it works well enough on anything but I made my current choice on 'nicenes…

Maybe I'm an old fart, but everything seems to be getting worse. OSX is worse than it was, Windows is worse than it was, Linux is worse than it was. If you just want to browse the web, okay, but anything beyond that and you are off in a maze of twisty passages, none of them like the other.

Windows has definitely got worse for the consumer, but great for Microsoft. Not sure MacOSX has got worse... there just isn't much innovation anymore

Re: Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

#540

Post by lobster_johnson »

mikegerwitz wrote: post #395
lobster_johnson wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also considering a switch, but Windows drives me up the wall whenever I touch it. macOS has been getting uglier and more awkward to use the last few years, but Windows is still the king of ugly. So I've been considering Linux as my first option. I fired up a few VMs and dipped my toes in various Linux desktop environments: Elementary, Fedora 25, and Ubuntu (Unity) so far. These are all GNOME 3 variants. And... oh…

> they're still figuring out what it's supposed to even be "It" can be any distro. GNU/Linux distros aren't a single entity, and they never will settle on a common interface---that's a good thing. Larger distros like Ubuntu will, but if you're going to adopt this perspective, you'll need to start thinking about the individual distributions and companies/communities behind them rather than "the" GNU/Linux desktop.

> that's a good thing

Not if you're looking for a macOS alternative. I'm fine with the "distros" doing what they want. However, that is not going to lead to a cohesive experience of the kind that macOS is able to provide.

A bigger problem than the desktop environment may be that apps are written to different UI toolkits (these days mostly GTK+ and Qt), and the different environments provide themes to get a unified look. Most apps aren't targeting a particular desktop environment, and so you get this inherent tension, where it's "unopinioned all the way down" and nobody makes a clear decision about a unified look/feel to anything.

I can see why a certain group of hackers like this jangly mess where a lot of time is spent on customizing stuff to work exactly the way they like it, being able to choose a completely different "window manager" and so on. I was like that in my early years, and today I just want things that work. What I want is consistency and stability with a mind behind it. I want it to boot up and render high-quality, subpixel-aliased fonts, and then I'd like to get right to work.

The KDE community seems more closely aligned with this idea, but they still don't control the apps, and unfortunately they still seem to be stuck in the Windows 2000 copy machine mindset.

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