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The best laptop ever made

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Re: The best laptop ever made

#73
post #17

This is the most elegant critique to the current line of Macs I've read so far. I hope it reaches the right eyes and ears. While Steve Jobs was unique, I believe Apple has the right people to continue delivering the same great products. They just need to let them do their jobs. This said, I'm looking forward to test a Pixel 2 Chromebook.

This is the most elegant critique to the current line of Macs I've read so far. I hope it reaches the right eyes and ears.

I tried a 12" MacBook. It was a gorgeous machine and wildly fast given its size.

But its trackpad is a grotesque monstrosity, and while I writing I too often activated it by accident, flinging the cursor to some distant spot by accident. Then I'd have to stop, recover, and reset.

I can't figure out what usability case would mandate a trackpad that large.

I returned the computer and suspect that the last generation of 13" MBPs may become "legendary," because they don't make the ginormous trackpad error.

Re: The best laptop ever made

#74
post #44

I don't know, I kind of think that the best ever is Macbook Air 2015. I would also argue that Macbook Air was the first laptop ever since it was the first truly portable - not just transportable personal computer ever. For the first time a notebook was light, performant and run long enough on battery to be actually usable out of your office or home. Yep, the screen is not retina but it's also significantly lighter, t…

I completely agree with you. The battery to power balance was amazing. It really lasted all day unlike the MacBook/MacBook Pro we have today.

Re: The best laptop ever made

#75
post #54

It's odd that this was posted as I was thinking along these lines the other day. I have a 2012 Retina 15". The first generation. I spec'd it out at the time hoping for it to last me at least a few years. From 2015 I've been eyeing off every new release of Macbook Pro thinking "yeah this time I'll upgrade" but then I realise there is actually nothing wrong with my current one. Like, nothing at all. I realise the batte…

Were the issues with mouse lag on the 2012 model hardware or software related? I tried a 2012 right when it first came out and got physically nauseous from the extreme degree of mouse lag when scrolling. The 2013 never had any problems and I've been using that for the last 4 years.

Re: The best laptop ever made

#76
This makes me so sad. My laptop is a tool that I use for close to 12 (maybe even more!) hours per day. Every single day. It is the tool I use more than any other tool. It is such an important part of my life. It's so important that it work well.

I remember when I got my first MBP (it was a 2010 model). I had long been a linux user, and getting the mac was something I had done begrudgingly. I remember how the little LED on the front would fade (not blink!) on and off. I thought it was really cool. I heard a story (maybe from here, actually?) that the apple engineers studied the way that humans breathe when they're sleeping, and modeled the fade after that.

When I told this story to one of my friends (a long time mac user) she just laughed and said "Welcome to mac, Ryan.".

I can't imagine a "welcome to mac" story like that one anymore. The only version of "welcome to mac" I can think of is Apple seemingly crippling their own hardware. Can't use your headphones on their $1000 (!) phone? Welcome to mac! Can't plug anything USB into your laptop without an adapter? Welcome to mac! Can't even plug your $1000 phone into your $1500 laptop made by the same company without an adapter? Welcome to mac!

The new MBPs are just such a downgrade. I totally get why they dropped the optical drive when they did. Online/flash storage was getting cheap enough and ubiquitous enough that it was a real replacement for CDs.

This is not the case with USB-C, evidenced by the fact that apple doesn't even use it on their own consumer electronics yet (!!!).

The new macs are really pretty. I do not understand and probably will never understand their hardware design decisions.

Re: The best laptop ever made

#77
Isn't it also the revision that removed the possibility to easily upgrade the RAM & storage ?

Personally, this is when I started seeing the MBP derails from my needs.

Culminating (so far) with the touchbar. Even after a couple of month with it, its disadvantages run deeper than its advantages.

Re: The best laptop ever made

#78
post #54

It's odd that this was posted as I was thinking along these lines the other day. I have a 2012 Retina 15". The first generation. I spec'd it out at the time hoping for it to last me at least a few years. From 2015 I've been eyeing off every new release of Macbook Pro thinking "yeah this time I'll upgrade" but then I realise there is actually nothing wrong with my current one. Like, nothing at all. I realise the batte…

but for now it really is the best computer I've ever owned.

I mentioned this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15700403 regarding the 12" Macbook, but I'm baffled by the size of the trackpads on the new laptops. What's the point of having trackpads that large? It seems only to impair usability.

Re: The best laptop ever made

#79

The current MacBook Pro should've been a separate product line, like the MacBook Air was. Those who are happy with the sacrifices it makes could switch over, but they wouldn't have to leave everyone else out in the cold.

Those should be the new "macbook"s. The pro line should carry pro features.

Re: The best laptop ever made

#80

For me it's the Lenovo T61 with a 14.4" 4:3 display (or any of the older 4:3 IBMs). Yes, compared to modern laptops it is heavy, slow, bulky and has a shitty display but: i) I can replace every single piece of it with a simple screwdriver and ii) 4:3 is still the best aspect ratio for reading and developing. If I am doing the latter I prefer a screen with a lot of height. A 4:3 aspect ratio gives me a tall screen whi…

Movies have always been widescreen, in general. I believe VHS and broadcast was a detour. Do you remember all the "this has been modified to fit your screen"?

Since computer displays are advertised by their diagonal measure, for monitors with the same display area, a wide screen monitor will have a larger diagonal measure, thus sounding more impressive. -- Wikipedia

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