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The best laptop ever made

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Re: The best laptop ever made

#211

Post by felippee »

ashildr wrote: post #199
felippee wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah sure. But sometimes you are traveling, without access to your backup. Or something did not yet make it to the backup. Or whatever, 100 other situations. Making SSD soldered on as opposed to putting a $3 connector just adds to fragility. On $3k laptop. No thanks.

So a connector is /less/ fragile than a soldered connection? I don’t think so. If you’re really depending that much on the ad-hoc access to a backup, drop an additional external SSD in your bag and add it to timemachine. That’s even more secure. I highly doubt that you are currently packing an external adapter to transplant your internal SSD to in case your notebook fails....

Let me explain: motherboard has 1000 components. One of them fails and it is likely a brick. SSD contains several chips. Most probably what will fail will not be an SSD but some capacitor somewhere on CPU power line. With a separate SSD, you buy connector/another laptop, pull it out of a bricked machine and you are good to go. With a soldered on SSD you a F^%$ed. All for a $3 connector.

I'm not paying $3k to be inconvenienced by such retarded design and carry yet another ssd along with my bag of dongles, because apple decided to get cheap on a $3 connector. Kapish?

Re: The best laptop ever made

#212

Post by mgkimsal »

mehrdada wrote: post #200
mgkimsal wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They weren't design issues as much as manufacturing/parts issues, though. There's nothing to 'fix' with a missing SD card port, or missing USB-A ports. That doesn't mean they may never add them in a future release, but probably won't, as it would admit being 'wrong' (and may be less needed in a few years). I was honestly surprised at the USB-C-only approach (even though I know it's Apple's "way" to just remove stuff…

The poor implementation of keyboard and TouchBar are not design issues either. Add haptic feedback and TouchBar can get GREAT. I do miss SD card a little bit, but it is no big deal, and I don't get all the fuss with USB-A at all. If you have an Android, MacBook is really made for you. If you have an iPhone you just got to grab a USB-C to Lightning cable (not dongles) and get on with your file. At your desk you really…

> and I don't get all the fuss with USB-A at all.

I don't get why people don't understand what the fuss is about.

external drives, external mice, external keyboards and USB drives. All of these are things that I or colleagues have/use on a regular basis. To spend north of $3k on a "pro" computer, but still get nickel and dimed to be able to use things that you could use 3 minutes before making 'the switch' is annoying/insulting/stupid. I'll go so far as to say had they even included a token C-A dongle in the box as a gesture... it would have been appreciated.

If only to do a backup/migration from an existing macbook, you very likely are going to be backing up to a non-usb-c device, and will need a connector just to do a migration.

Re: The best laptop ever made

#213

Post by zeveb »

puppetmaster30 wrote: post #53

I have one. Here is my next one: https://system76.com/cart/configure/lemu8

If System76 would support straight Debian stable, I'd be a customer for life. I actively dislike Ubuntu, and think that supporting Debian will result in 'free' Ubuntu support, while not being noticeably more expensive to begin with.

Re: The best laptop ever made

#214

Post by jwr »

I'm staying with my 2014 MacBook Pro 15", trying to weather the storm. Perhaps I'll be able to wait out the current "Jony Ive running rampant and unchecked" period. Perhaps next year somebody at Apple will finally speak up and say "no". Perhaps next year we will have a split between "Pro" laptops (with useful ports, useful keyboards, keys on keyboards, and without trying to achieve extreme thinness) and consumer laptops, which have an entirely different set of compromises.

Today Apple is making all its products according to one specific set of tradeoffs: external out-of-the-box form over function, thinness over everything, usability comes last. This set of tradeoffs is fine for some products, but not for every product.

Re: The best laptop ever made

#215

Post by chaoticmass »

recursive wrote: post #134
myhf wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

ding ding ding

This guy gets it.

I suppose if I bit the bullet and unlearned years of muscle memory I could do without those keys, but at this point it's not worth the effort. I'll stick to ThinkPads if I need to code on a laptop.

Re: The best laptop ever made

#216

Post by raincom »

ksec wrote: post #208
raincom wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After 1000 cycles or after 4 years, just have the battery replaced by Apple for $199 + taxes, then you will have a good macbook pro, as apple will replace the keyboard and trackpad, along with the battery for $199.

>as apple will replace the keyboard and trackpad, along with the battery for $199. Is this standard for all MacBook?

It is the standard for any laptop in which batteries are glued to the top case.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/retina-battery-replacem...

Re: The best laptop ever made

#217

Post by platinumrad »

camgunz wrote: post #196
platinumrad wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't mind answering how was your experience with the ordering process? Did you get them via LCDfans or did you use a proxy in China? Did you order them assembled or did you put the motherboards in X61s that you acquired separately? Thanks!

Of course! I tried a few different ways; ordering was kind of difficult. I tried a couple PMs on Reddit which got lost, I tried the order form a couple times from facebook.com/lcdfans but that didn't work out either. Then I sent a Facebook message, Jacky responded and we started emailing. That worked. I think their email addresses are listed on the FB page. Basically the strategy is to be relentless haha. Ordering it…

Awesome, thanks a lot!

Re: The best laptop ever made

#218

Post by mozumder »

roryisok wrote: post #172
felippee wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah sure. But sometimes you are traveling, without access to your backup. Or something did not yet make it to the backup. Or whatever, 100 other situations. Making SSD soldered on as opposed to putting a $3 connector just adds to fragility. On $3k laptop. No thanks.

And the only reason that decision was made was to stop you from DIY upgrading the SSD and getting a few more years out of your $3k laptop

No. It was done to save motherboard space.

Those upgradable connector ports have a cost associated with them.

Re: The best laptop ever made

#219

Post by chrisparton1991 »

bluedino wrote: post #195
chrisparton1991 wrote: post #90

Reparability is the main downside to the retina MPBs for me. With my old MBP I could swap out the battery in 30 seconds, and I could upgrade the RAM. Neither of these are possible any more. That said, I'm still using my 2012 retina MBP and it's going great. These things are built to last!

Upgrade-ability forced me to selle mine last year. I had on of the low-end models with 8GB/256GB and needed more space and memory.

That's a bummer. It makes me sad that we have to stop using hardware that's 90% fit for purpose because we can't upgrade the 10% we need to.

Re: The best laptop ever made

#220

Post by sincerely »

JHonaker wrote: post #203
simonh wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DongleGate is a real thing, I'm actually putting off getting a new MPB until I get my head around what I can and cannot use different USB-C connectors for, but honestly dropping wired ethernet along with the optical drive was the right thing to do. There has to be a balance between features on the device and the number of people that will end up ever using them. Hardly anyone uses wired ethernet these days, so expect…

Hardly anyone at home, maybe. I still plug my desktop into wired at home, and the vast majority of computers at work have wired dock stations that work so much better than the WiFi in the building. I don’t think you can honestly say hardly anyone uses wired Ethernet.

I'd put money on 90%+ of desktops being wired, but in the context of laptops, it's a pretty reasonable statement to make.
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