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The best laptop ever made

marco.org

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Re: The best laptop ever made

#131

Post by sitharus »

mythbuster2001 wrote: post #126
petercooper wrote: post #63

I feel like the odd one out. I buy a new MBP every 12-18 months (have owned all Intel generations), use my MBP for hours every day, and think the latest is by far the best. Being able to charge on either side is a big deal for me as I move around a lot, plus being able to use 30W USB-C power packs and third party chargers (e.g. Anker) without fear of fire.. a massive boon for me, especially as my phone and Nintendo S…

Wait till your Macbook dies and you try to pull some data out of the soldered on SSD. I find dongles annoying, lack of magsafe irritating but the soldered on SSD is what really puts me off.

But you have backups right? Betting on data recovery is a really poor strategy, you might drop your laptop under a truck.

Re: The best laptop ever made

#132

Post by recursive »

mcphage wrote: post #118
chaoticmass wrote: post #48

Keyboard layout makes it nigh unusable for my work, programming.

That's a shame, since there are thousands of programmers who are using it for their work right now.

Why would that make it a shame? There are a lot of people using tools of all kinds that are insufficient for others.

Re: The best laptop ever made

#133

Post by gutnor »

blhack wrote: post #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…

> 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 biggest problem IMO is that Apple decided to outsource the whole connectivity problem to third party. Apple provides no [1] cable, no monitor, no external anything that uses the ports. At the very least Apple could have done some sort of certification program so that their user are not left with an infinite combination of unmarked cables of varying capability, or something to show commitment and strategy.

That's like removing the headphone jack and failing to provide their Airpods for months. But at least they announced the Airpods ...

2015 was a terrible year for Apple, the year they did nothing right - not because their product were bad just meh, but their delivery, the PR was terrible. 2016 is ok so far, but following 2015 it does not feel like enough.

[1] OK they provide cable and dongle, the point is that there is no USB-C product line or anything special around them, nothing that really help or make USB-C cool, just Apple-basic package as exiting as the ashtray option in a Tesla.

Re: The best laptop ever made

#134

Post by recursive »

myhf wrote: post #102
chaoticmass wrote: post #48

Keyboard layout makes it nigh unusable for my work, programming.

What keys do you need that aren't on a 78-key layout?

I haven't used it, but from the photo, I don't see home, end, pageup, pagedown, and backspace. (or maybe delete, but at least one of the two.)

Personally, I use all those regularly.

Re: The best laptop ever made

#135

Post by bhj »

petercooper wrote: post #63

I feel like the odd one out. I buy a new MBP every 12-18 months (have owned all Intel generations), use my MBP for hours every day, and think the latest is by far the best. Being able to charge on either side is a big deal for me as I move around a lot, plus being able to use 30W USB-C power packs and third party chargers (e.g. Anker) without fear of fire.. a massive boon for me, especially as my phone and Nintendo S…

Yep. I love my late 2013 15" (typing on it now), but also use a late 2016. They're both great machines, and there were controversial things about the 2012-era models at the time (soldered RAM, proprietary PCI connector for the SSD (I don't believe there was a standard for this at the time), no ethernet, the usual chiclet keyboard qualms, etc.) and that Marco doesn't mention those today actually bodes well for the latest design, I think.

The USB-C transition is certainly painful right now, but he's glossed over many advantages of the current model too:

- 3+GB/s (yes, gigabytes) storage speed

- 10Gb/s USB (and 4 of them)

- Thunderbolt 3 (and 4 of them)

- Discreet GPU is standard (thank you Apple)

- Touch ID on a Mac really is nice

- Better screen (actually very low reflectivity for a so-called "glossy")

- Better sound

- Better cooling (and quieter indeed)

- Does make the previous model seem thick and heavy to me, so we'll have to agree to disagree on that one

- I like the keyboard, but it requires some adjustment for sure

Re: The best laptop ever made

#136

Post by jkubicek »

dpkonofa wrote: post #130
trb8 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I feel like the odd one out. You're not. I have the late 2016 model. It replaced my ~2013-2014 model and I consider it an improvement. The Touch Bar / touch-id is a (mostly irrelevant) improvement over a row of keys that I never used. I think my computer would be worse if it dedicated space to a SD card slot reader. I've never used it. I wouldn't mind a USB-A port. But I have only wanted to plug something in twice…

On the USB-A port thing, what reason does anyone have for plugging their phone into their computer anymore, though? Everything about iOS and macOS now supports wireless sync and file transfer. I can't think of a single thing that I'd even need that for...

If you have a long commute, it’s nice to have a 4lb battery strapped to your back

Re: The best laptop ever made

#138

Post by burntrelish1273 »

"Best?" really?

- Glued in batteries

- Difficult to repair, especially the poorly-manufactured logic board

- No Kensington security slot

- Soldered in RAM

This is why I still use an 13" A1278 non-Retina from 2012: 2x SSD's, 16 GiB of RAM, SD slot and KS slot. It's a little thick but sturdy, not the fastest CPU but it's solid.

The latest MBP's have unreliable logic boards and Apple's repair policies result in massive charges for binning whole boards instead of repairing cheap components. For such reasons, the "best" macOS laptop these days is arguably a hackintosh Lenovo such as T440 or P50s.

- Spill-resistant, awesome keyboard

- Nearly unbreakable

- Upgradable with commodity parts

- Repairable

- Crazy-long battery life

- Necessary ports included

It doesn't make sense to go with over-priced, soldered-in components that lack sufficient repairability.

Re: The best laptop ever made

#139

Post by lemoncucumber »

blhack wrote: post #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…

> 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 (!!!).

A better comparison would be when the original iMac abruptly dropped support for SCSI, ADB, and serial in favor of USB, which was almost unknown at the time. The iMac drove demand for USB peripherals and started us down the path to USB becoming ubiquitous, but everyone griped about it at the time and there were all sorts of ADB-to-USB adapters for awhile.

That being said, I think USB-C does have some serious issues which Marco outlines well in another post: https://marco.org/2017/10/14/impossible-dream-of-usb-c

Re: The best laptop ever made

#140

Post by grzm »

burntrelish1273 wrote: post #138

"Best?" really? - Glued in batteries - Difficult to repair, especially the poorly-manufactured logic board - No Kensington security slot - Soldered in RAM This is why I still use an 13" A1278 non-Retina from 2012: 2x SSD's, 16 GiB of RAM, SD slot and KS slot. It's a little thick but sturdy, not the fastest CPU but it's solid. The latest MBP's have unreliable logic boards and Apple's repair policies result in massive…

> "Best?" really?"

> "It doesn't make sense…"

People are definitely entitled to their opinions, and any definition of "best" is going to be based on what one's priorities are. It's clear your priorities and Marco's aren't the same, which is fine. The incredulity you express here is really unwarranted.

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