How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists • Hacker News Board

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#151

Post by wlesieutre » Tue, Dec 20, 2016, 5:14 PM UTC

aninhumer wrote: post #117

ohyoutravel wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I used to have a SP3. When you're just reading something, your hand tends to end up resting along the right side of the computer, and you scroll in the corner of the screen using your thumb. It's more comfortable than scrolling with a trackpad.

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#152

Post by sqeaky » Tue, Dec 20, 2016, 5:14 PM UTC

ewzimm wrote: post #139

coldtea wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Compared to a five year old 17"? More like double the power. And unbelievably faster SSD (even if you have a…

The high-end processor on the 2011 Macbook Pro was the 2860QM. Current options on the 15" are the 6700HQ, which is about 1% faster on single threads and 14% faster on multiple threads, and the 6920HQ, which is about 23% faster on single threads and 36% faster on multiple threads.

For the C++ codebase I work with my 6700 compiles 4.5 MLOC of code in a little less than half the time my 2nd gen i7 does. Hardly scientific, but the 6th i7s are really fast.

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#153

Post by ashark » Tue, Dec 20, 2016, 5:18 PM UTC

jayd16 wrote: post #149

muninn_ wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're living in a transitory period as we move from a world of wires and connectors to a wireless world. This is the pain we have to endure as technology is pushed forward. If it were up to the luddites and their obsession with compatibility, a laptop would have a dvd drive, firewire, usb-a, usb-c, thunderbolt, hdmi, dvi, vga, sd, microsd,vga, and display port all in one laptop chassis. Having one single port, that c…

The pain is completely self imposed. Wired ports and wireless technology are not mutually exclusive. USB-C is great bit there's no reason to remove all other ports. Technology will get adopted. It doesn't have to be forced.

IMO they should have given us one transition model before going all USBC. Leave one USBA, HDMI, sdcard slot (my wife and I use it all the time, and it is the pro after all, used by many in graphics arts, film, and photography). Downgrade power to USBC (yeah, losing magsafe or moving it to a dongle is a downgrade) if you must, replace the thunderbolts and other USBA with USBC.

That way I'd have a chance to actually pick up any USBC devices whatsoever before moving to a laptop that can only connect to USBC without dongles. 'Cuz right now I have zero, and so does my Mac-only office. Even the couple of USBC Android testing phones floating around come with a to-A USB cable, so I'd have to buy a new cable for them.

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#154

Post by beat » Tue, Dec 20, 2016, 5:18 PM UTC

TYPE_FASTER wrote: post #84

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…

> This week, my mother's crappy Windows computer died, and I bought her a Chromebook. It was great! Yeah, no kidding. I have a $160 Toshiba Chromebook that is great for most tasks. Apple's risk in dropping the Premiere/FCP crowd is that the mass audience they are seeking will discover how good Chromebooks are, and the price tradeoff, and use them with Google cloud services for pretty much everything.

Indeed. One of the big selling points of Macs was that they weren't running Microsoft Virus Studio, and didn't turn into a filthy pit of malware when handed to someone without a degree in computer security.

Chromebooks are probably more secure than Macs.

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#155

Post by coredog64 » Tue, Dec 20, 2016, 5:18 PM UTC

runjake wrote: post #105

dragonbonheur wrote: post #6

Maybe the time is right for SGI to get back into making workstations again now that Apple doesn't seem to care as much as before.

SGI is no more. They collapsed and sold their branding off and it traded hands a few times into virtual non-existence.

IIRC, HP just bought the still somewhat valuable HPC technology. I'm hopeful that HP, with it's penchant for open sourcing things it doesn't understand, will open up 4dwm.

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#156

Post by wutbrodo » Tue, Dec 20, 2016, 5:19 PM UTC

treve wrote: post #60

Pigo wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought a Chromebook Pixel out of curiosity and have loved every minute of it. It's fun and really slick, and even as the most expensive, by far, it's still a fraction the cost. It was easy to put Linux on it for real dev, and I keep hearing about more and more methods ( https://mrchromebox.tech ). Plus it has all the Play Store apps now. Everyone I know is just waiting for work to buy them a Surface, but doesn't wa…

The big thing that has deterred me so far, is that I heard it's not really usable unless you're cool with having a google account. Despite having one, I thought it was a bit offputting for that to be a dependency.

From what I've heard, throwing Linux in it works really well from a compatibility standpoint (and obviously doesn't require a Google account). I believe Linus was using a pixel as his dev laptop some time back.

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#157

Post by sgspace » Tue, Dec 20, 2016, 5:19 PM UTC

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…

Hey I ran into the same issue with Xcode 8 breaking all my existing iOS projects. If you go to developer.apple.com and find the downloads section you can download older versions of Xcode. You can have multiple Xcode versions installed on a single machine. I have Xcode 7 and Xcode 8 sitting right next to each other in my applications folder.

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#158

Post by gerbilly » Tue, Dec 20, 2016, 5:20 PM UTC

emp_zealoth wrote: post #136

muninn_ wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're living in a transitory period as we move from a world of wires and connectors to a wireless world. This is the pain we have to endure as technology is pushed forward. If it were up to the luddites and their obsession with compatibility, a laptop would have a dvd drive, firewire, usb-a, usb-c, thunderbolt, hdmi, dvi, vga, sd, microsd,vga, and display port all in one laptop chassis. Having one single port, that c…

There will be no purely wireless ever. Wired interfaces have too many advantages coming directly from physics and their reliability is unparalelled. Personally I dont use anything wireless apart from WiFi, and even then only on my laptop

You know what you find if you open up a wireless router? Wires!

(Well traces anyway, but you know what I mean.)

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#159

Post by kkylin » Tue, Dec 20, 2016, 5:20 PM UTC

blankenship wrote: post #29

deedubaya wrote: post #13

I still think macOS/OSX provides the best user experience for personal computing. It's the lack of substantial hardware updates which is driving users away. If creatives are going to pay a premium for a Mac, there should be something to differentiate it between the competition besides the privilege to run macOS. Heck, it should have something to differentiate it from the last model! I'll still recommend Macs for my f…

I’ve never owned a PC. The first computer I ever used was a Macintosh II. The first desktop computer I bought was a Power Mac G3. My first laptop was that adorable little Powerbook G4. And I’ve been using an iPhone since 2007. I’m not frustrated because of the hardware — I’m frustrated because 50% of the software on my phone is made by Google, who seems to actually still care about making useable, stable software tha…

Ditto! My first machine was an Apple IIe, and my second a Mac SE/30. I've loved almost every Apple machine I've ever owned. The software, on the other hand, seems to get progressively worse. Not so bad to make me ditch Macs, yet, but enough to make me think about it.

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#160

Post by beat » Tue, Dec 20, 2016, 5:21 PM UTC

curun1r wrote: post #127

beat wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cheapest I can get into a 15" MBP with a terabyte of storage (and I need a terabyte) is $2999.

Only if you need the touchbar. The non-touchbar model can be had for $2599, including the horribly overpriced 1 TB upgrade. If you can figure out how to use an external drive (Samsung T3 is $349, tiny and performance should be roughly on par with an internal drive), you can knock another $250 off that and still have the 256 GB that comes with the standard configuration. As a plus, the T3 is trivially upgradable when…

I don't want to have to carry around an external drive with me almost everywhere I go, just so I can do my work and listen to my tunes. I don't have to do that now!