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My personal fight against the modern laptop [video]

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Re: My personal fight against the modern laptop [video]

#31

Post by Girlang »

jalfresi wrote: post #27
branchless wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll never understand this. If you want value for money why even look at apple? Never mind nuances like planned obsolescence.

I don't want to waste my time dicking around with drivers and other such noise - I want to get on with my tasks. An operating system linked to s fixed set of hardware provides me exactly this. My time is worth far more to me than the cost of a Macbook.

If you don't want to dick with drivers, run Windows. I'm on a Surface Book Pro now. It "just works."

Re: My personal fight against the modern laptop [video]

#32

Post by jlgaddis »

balls187 wrote: post #20
ClassyJacket wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Snow Leopard was so stable. I went months at a time without restarting or having major bugs. I wish we could get that reliability back.

(12:46) ~/src/landedcost/main-site/app/utils [vikram7119-master] $ uptime 12:47 up 15 days, 17:26, 4 users, load averages: 2.09 2.15 1.95 Sierra has been an absolute rock for me. My last reboot was due to an OS update.

Get ready to reboot again.

Re: My personal fight against the modern laptop [video]

#33

Post by branchly2 »

jalfresi wrote: post #27
branchless wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll never understand this. If you want value for money why even look at apple? Never mind nuances like planned obsolescence.

I don't want to waste my time dicking around with drivers and other such noise - I want to get on with my tasks. An operating system linked to s fixed set of hardware provides me exactly this. My time is worth far more to me than the cost of a Macbook.

> I want to get on with my tasks. An operating system linked to s fixed set of hardware provides me exactly this.

I get the same thing from [ThinkPenguin](https://www.thinkpenguin.com/), though the OS isn't linked to the hardware in any way --- they just choose free-software compatible hw.

Re: My personal fight against the modern laptop [video]

#34

Post by otalp »

branchless wrote: post #25
0xADADA wrote: post #23

This talk expresses many of my concerns with desktop & laptop hardware over the last few years. Recently however, Apple has changed their hardware design philosophy from a fairly open platform to a more proprietary and disposable one. They’ve eliminated the ability to change or upgrade components. The 3rd generation MacBooks have a battery that is glued in place, the memory is soldered directly to the logic board. La…

I'll never understand this. If you want value for money why even look at apple? Never mind nuances like planned obsolescence.

Depends on what model. I think the 2017 MacBook and MacBook Pro's are overpriced, but I'd say the MacBook Air post-2012 is still possibly the best laptop on the market for many people.

For $999 you now get 8 gigs of RAM, SSD that is faster than most competitors, a trackpad that is better than any competitors', and by quite some distance, the best battery life on any laptop. I get something like 20 hours when I'm reading PDFs or using emacs indoors, and about 12 hours of web browsing.

There's less QA issues than most newer laptops with the Air since Apple has been making it for years, and it's still one of the lightest laptops in the field without compromising on too much. The resale value is also higher compared to equivalent laptops because of the 'Apple' brand, so that offsets the buying price to an extent.

Coming to the OS, while it's far from perfect, it's not a privacy nightmare like Windows nor a battery drain like Linux. Linux on a desktop is something I like, but on laptops they still suck a lot of battery life compared to MacOS.

TL;DR: If your idea of a laptop is a portable device that runs smoothly, handles low to medium level workload and lasts(literally) all day, the Air is a solid pick.

Re: My personal fight against the modern laptop [video]

#35

Post by justinsaccount »

psankar wrote: post #10

The new thinkpad keyboards are absolutely shitty. I am happy that more people are complaining about it. The classic thinkpad keyboard had nice ergonomic aspects. You can touch-type the function keys without looking down, because they are all grouped in four. The arrow keys are proper sized buttons (even the macbook has it wrong). There is a slight curvature on each key's surface that makes it easy for the finger to f…

> You can touch-type the function keys without looking down, because they are all grouped in four.

This is true. The new Fkeys are not grouped.

> The arrow keys are proper sized buttons (even the macbook has it wrong).

This is false, look at the linked image[1] and tell me that the arrow keys are different on the new keyboard.

> There is a slight curvature on each key's surface that makes it easy for the finger to feel the borders.

This is also false. The chicklet keys are slightly concave and the island layout makes it extremely easy to feel the borders of each key.

> All of these are missing in the new keyboards.

Again, this is false.

> This chiclet design is the worst thing to happen for the thinkpads.

This is subjective. I have both keyboards, and I like the new style better. I'm a linux user and I use vim. I've probably pressed the Fkeys 10s of times in the years I've owned either laptop. The entire row could be removed and I probably wouldn't even notice.

It's fine if you don't like the new keyboard, but the reasons you are giving are simply not true.

[1] https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ksPFqBdMikM/maxresdefault.jpg

Re: My personal fight against the modern laptop [video]

#36

Post by ryanmarsh »

jalfresi wrote: post #27
branchless wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll never understand this. If you want value for money why even look at apple? Never mind nuances like planned obsolescence.

I don't want to waste my time dicking around with drivers and other such noise - I want to get on with my tasks. An operating system linked to s fixed set of hardware provides me exactly this. My time is worth far more to me than the cost of a Macbook.

This. I'd wager that the entire set of hardware and software tools most of us use to make a year's worth of income could be purchased with two weeks of income (or less). The laptop being the majority of it. That's pretty astounding.

So yah, did I just drop ~$2,500 on a new MBP? Yes. Did I enjoy spending it? No, but I also want the thing to "just fucking work" and it's a tiny fraction of my income considering my last Apple laptop lasted me almost 4 years... before I dropped it.

Re: My personal fight against the modern laptop [video]

#37

Post by SomeHacker44 »

psankar wrote: post #10

The new thinkpad keyboards are absolutely shitty. I am happy that more people are complaining about it. The classic thinkpad keyboard had nice ergonomic aspects. You can touch-type the function keys without looking down, because they are all grouped in four. The arrow keys are proper sized buttons (even the macbook has it wrong). There is a slight curvature on each key's surface that makes it easy for the finger to f…

Maybe, but the new MacBook Pro keyboard is so loud I have been banned from the bedroom with my laptop. (TouchBar is also terrible.) What a disaster.

Re: My personal fight against the modern laptop [video]

#38

Post by ianai »

ethereal_int wrote: post #24

Personally I'd like a heavy and large desktop that fits in a typical backpack complete with batteries, with a thin ultrabook like wireless screen+keyboard, detachable like the surface. I know i'm in a very tiny minority, but eventually with streaming solutions like the TPCast for Vive it might be viable (you can diy a 12volt desktop from 18650s, but probably not a good wireless hdmi yet). Or if not, hopefully when we…

Something like that was my day dream when the original iPod came out. I even emailed sjobs suggesting it.

Re: My personal fight against the modern laptop [video]

#39

Post by elbrian »

0xADADA wrote: post #23

This talk expresses many of my concerns with desktop & laptop hardware over the last few years. Recently however, Apple has changed their hardware design philosophy from a fairly open platform to a more proprietary and disposable one. They’ve eliminated the ability to change or upgrade components. The 3rd generation MacBooks have a battery that is glued in place, the memory is soldered directly to the logic board. La…

>Put simply; I don’t see any manufacturers building laptops at the same level of quality that Apple does, and yet, I can’t buy a product that is so tightly controlled, and designed to be obsolete in two years.

Dell has been making laptops of equal or better quality for a couple years, now.

The XPS line is absolutely stunning.

Re: My personal fight against the modern laptop [video]

#40

Post by slantyyz »

hartator wrote: post #9

yeah, it feels like in 2010, you had awesome mac and pc options. Snow Leopard was perhaps the best OS ever.

>> yeah, it feels like in 2010, you had awesome mac and pc options. Snow Leopard was perhaps the best OS ever.

If I could have a 2010 15" Unibody Macbook Pro running Snow Leopard but with today's retina screen, CPU/chipsets and ports (and maybe more battery in place of the optical), I would be SO happy with that setup.

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