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Popular Mac Developer Slams Apple for 'Sad State of Macintosh Hardware'

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Re: Popular Mac Developer Slams Apple for 'Sad State of Macintosh Hardware'

#71

Post by gutnor »

lucisferre wrote: post #12

Completely agree. Reliability has plummeted with almost every release since the retina MBP. Crashes are a regular thing and most of the physical "improvements" outside of compactness and weight have been unwanted. The touch bar in particular is just a dead appendage. But my previous and extensive experiences with Linux and Windows ecosystems tell me that the grass is not greener, so I stay and put up with the problem…

> Crashes are a regular thing and most of the physical "improvements" outside of compactness and weight have been unwanted.

I feel like the 3D touchpad is completely underrated but it really is amazing. It does everything that the mechanical one was doing except better. 2 years after getting it, I still can't believe it is not mechanical.

Re: Popular Mac Developer Slams Apple for 'Sad State of Macintosh Hardware'

#72

Post by virusduck »

It would be heartening if someone from Apple at least said they were hearing the complaints. Number one, IMO, being this idiotic keyboard. Then the ports, then the touchbar fiasco. Stagnation is not nearly as big an issue as those issues. As others have said, change in technology in general has stagnated. If I HAD to buy a new laptop today, I might buy a Macbook, but I'd have a hard look at the state of the competition's trackpads first. Then probably go with the older MBAir with the better keyboard....

Re: Popular Mac Developer Slams Apple for 'Sad State of Macintosh Hardware'

#73

Post by slantyyz »

post_break wrote: post #21
H1Supreme wrote: post #9

For years and years, I've advocated that Apple should just release the OS like Windows. It runs fine on a lot of PC hardware you can buy off the shelf (I've built a few PC's that do just this). And, with the Nvidia drivers that were released a year or two ago, most graphics cards people want to run are available. I realize that there's a lot involved with suddenly trying to support an array of hardware. But, maybe re…

I'd pay $500 to license MacOS to run perfectly on my XPS13. Instead I have to do it myself with hacks and stuff.

If you want a painless process, you've basically got to go through the compatibility lists and find a laptop that is easily hackintoshed. More often than not, it's not the laptop you have or want to buy.

Re: Popular Mac Developer Slams Apple for 'Sad State of Macintosh Hardware'

#74

Post by lagadu »

metabrew wrote: post #18

Mid-2012 MBP with SSD, retina, and 16gb here. I've got an HDMI port, SD card reader, two USB ports, two thunderbolt ports, magsafe power, and a proper, reliable keyboard. I despair at the current crop of mac hardware. If this machine dies on me before some decent mac hardware arrives, I'm not sure what i'll do - but it definitely won't involve buying a new macbook with the touchbar, stupid keyboards, and no ports.

Similar camp here. My 2012 MBA has been a lovely ultrabook but now that it's showing its age and I'm looking to replace it this year, I've decided to move away from the OSX ecosystem and am currently waiting for the next Surface pro to launch.

The current lineup is just so unappealing.

Re: Popular Mac Developer Slams Apple for 'Sad State of Macintosh Hardware'

#75

Post by huebnerob »

slewis wrote: post #60

Interestingly for me, the annoyances of the new MacBook have faded into the background (no escape key, worse keyboard). I learned to hit ctrl+[ in vim, and don’t mind the keyboard until a key sticks for a little while. Meanwhile I can’t imagine going back to the thicker form factor. I don’t mean to downplay people’s issues, and Apple definitely didn’t do a wonderful job here. But I do find that my day to day experien…

I agree and have the same feelings, but there should at least be an option for people who don’t want to prioritize size over performance.

Apple is the worlds biggest company, they can do better than ‘one size fits all’. Yes, that mantra is also part of their design philosophy, but it needs to be executed intelligently not blindly.

There’s a long but diverse tail of professional use cases, and there’s definitely not a single box that can hold all of them.

Re: Popular Mac Developer Slams Apple for 'Sad State of Macintosh Hardware'

#76

Post by yebyen »

grk wrote: post #67
subway wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with USB-C? It's seen a pretty wide-spread uptake over the last couple years, and you're hard pressed to find a new laptop from any manufacturer that doesn't use it for charging.

https://marco.org/2017/10/14/impossible-dream-of-usb-c

This sounds like an absolutely horrifying state of affairs. I did not know what a bullet I dodged by opting for the non-touchbar 2015-Mac that still has those regular old USB-A and HDMI/Mini-DP ports.

> Many Android phones support Qualcomm’s Quick Charge over USB-C, which is different — usually — from the official, better, newer USB-C Power Delivery (PD) standard. Apple products, some Android phones, and the Nintendo Switch use USB-C PD. Quick Charge devices don’t get any benefit — usually — from PD chargers, and vice versa.

... and this is just a small sample.

Re: Popular Mac Developer Slams Apple for 'Sad State of Macintosh Hardware'

#77

Post by white-flame »

unknown_apostle wrote: post #56
metabrew wrote: post #18

Mid-2012 MBP with SSD, retina, and 16gb here. I've got an HDMI port, SD card reader, two USB ports, two thunderbolt ports, magsafe power, and a proper, reliable keyboard. I despair at the current crop of mac hardware. If this machine dies on me before some decent mac hardware arrives, I'm not sure what i'll do - but it definitely won't involve buying a new macbook with the touchbar, stupid keyboards, and no ports.

Yep. And no 32GB because they just had to make it 1mm thinner.

Technically, that was because of battery life, not thickness. The limits on that particular Intel chipset are 16GB LPDDR3 or 32GB non-low power DDR4, and Apple chose to use the LPDDR3.

I have a basic 32GB DDR4 laptop* which was contemporary to the touchbar MBP, and while I'm very happy with the running battery life, the suspended battery life isn't as long as I would prefer (usually doesn't last 24 hours). I suspect that's because of the RAM. However, the MBP has a larger battery than mine, so I don't think it would have been that big of a problem.

[* = Clevo N240BU, same as the newest System76 Lemur. i7-7500U, iGPU, opted for m.2 only, 4-cell removable battery, slim 14" 1080p, real HDMI/ethernet/USB-A&C/headphone/SD ports.]

Re: Popular Mac Developer Slams Apple for 'Sad State of Macintosh Hardware'

#78

Post by tonyedgecombe »

pwinnski wrote: post #61
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The figures don't show that, Mac sales are continuing to rise whilst the rest of the industry is in decline. There are clearly some vocal critics here, that isn't real evidence though.

I think rising Mac sales are masking the problems for Apple. From Apple's perspective, rising sales demonstrates that the criticisms are coming from a tiny discontented minority. From my perspective, sales may be rising for many reasons, but these criticism don't bode well for the future. All these new Mac users will face the same problems, and that will slow replacement rate.

But they will know what the statistics are for returned faulty hardware. If the reliability rate is as bad as implied then I can't imagine them ignoring it.

Re: Popular Mac Developer Slams Apple for 'Sad State of Macintosh Hardware'

#79

Post by bborud »

Is there any indication that Apple is taking these complaints to heart?

I suspect that the lack of updates may be indicative of Apple switching to an ARM based CPU for their laptops and desktop machine. If this is the case it probably wouldn't make sense for them to invest a lot in designing a new laptop around an Intel processor. It would also explain the delays since they would both need to get to grips with the hardware design AND provide a solution for running software compiled for x86 on ARM.

While they have done this before, the task is much bigger this time as there is considerably more software available for the Mac that would need to work on the new architecture.

Of course, this still raises questions. The first being how long it would take to stabilize the platform again. The second whether Apple will be sufficiently interested in the desktop/laptop market to deliver more consistent and meaningful product updates going forward.

If they are indeed going to ignore the desktop/laptop market the interesting question would be how this would affect the sales of their other products.

My guess is that if they manage to break up with developers, through inaction or otherwise, there is probably going to be a slow decline that nobody gets particularly worried about until it can't be compensated for with cheap sales tricks.

Re: Popular Mac Developer Slams Apple for 'Sad State of Macintosh Hardware'

#80

Post by ballenf »

"sandworm101" commented[0] in the prior discussion that:

> Given Apple's grip on users, they may even see laptops as a competitor to their iPhone business. Time on the macbook is time not on the iPhone.

You can't get very much free / OSS software for your iPhone. You can't get around Apple's 30% cut on paid software.

At least subconsciously, I believe this thinking explains a lot.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17313613

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