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MacBook Pro with faster performance and new features for pros

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Re: MacBook Pro with faster performance and new features for pros

#651

Post by tjohns »

reificator wrote: post #644

Biggest new feature they could add would be to not have an additional screen taking up battery life and shining in my face, unable to be dimmed with f.lux. Maybe instead we could have a row of keys that provide some sort of function, and maybe a key that allows the user to escape. That would be a pretty useful feature that I can guarantee I would use dozens or hundreds of times a day. I'm considering replacing my Mac…

I know it's trendy to hate on the touchbar... but for what it's worth, I personally find it more useful than the old function keys.

Most mac apps don't use function keys as shortcuts, so the old keyboard ended up being used for media keys (volume, brightness, play/pause, etc.).

The touch bar gives me a better version of that (I actually get a volume slider), plus more apps actually make use of that space to provide useful shortcuts now. And the scrub bar for media playback is really great when you have audio playing in the background.

Yes, you lose tactile feedback. But battery life doesn't seem to be a big problem. At least for me, it's been net positive.

Re: MacBook Pro with faster performance and new features for pros

#652

Post by j45 »

gervase wrote: post #476
mbesto wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They didn't do that because it is not what most people want. > Better to focus on the 90% of customers who buy products So either you're wrong, or Apple's PR team is really bad positioning their product. From the Press Release itself in the first few paragraphs: ideal for manipulating large data sets, performing complex simulations, creating multi-track audio projects or doing advanced image processing or film edit…

I believe this is a case of a disparity between who they say their products are for (power users), and who they are actually for (people who want to think of themselves as power users). This would be similar to, for example, many sportswear brands who say they are for professional athletes, but whose primary consumer base is... not. In both cases, they may still attract the audience they claim to target, but in pract…

Very nicely put. A $1600 MBP pro user is different than a $4500 MBP pro user. The niche market also drives credibility.

Re: MacBook Pro with faster performance and new features for pros

#653

Post by navidfarhadi »

virtualwhys wrote: post #334
conatus wrote: post #292

In the world outside of Macs how much would £2,699.00 get me and what would be worth getting? For development work.

Dell Precision 5530 looking like a killer machine at that price point.

It definitely looks like a nice machine and probably the best competitor to the 15" rMBP right now (alongside it's twin the XPS 9570) but do a search for all of the QC issues on the Precision 5510/5520/5530 and XPS 9550/9560/9570 and you will quickly see that there are a huge number of problems with this computer. That said, you can configure it with Dell's "Next Business Day" international onsite service (which is more like service in 2-3 days, at least based on my anecdotal experience) which is a nice touch.

I've spent a very long time researching 15" mobile workstations for the last year or two since I will eventually need a replacement to my 2015 15" rMBP and I have come to the conclusion that pretty much every one of them has some sort of huge deal breaker for me. At this point I'm just hoping that my 2015 15" rMBP can last for another couple of years while we await some design refreshes from Lenovo, Dell, and Apple.

Re: MacBook Pro with faster performance and new features for pros

#654

Post by packersville »

rbanffy wrote: post #493
mbesto wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They didn't do that because it is not what most people want. > Better to focus on the 90% of customers who buy products So either you're wrong, or Apple's PR team is really bad positioning their product. From the Press Release itself in the first few paragraphs: ideal for manipulating large data sets, performing complex simulations, creating multi-track audio projects or doing advanced image processing or film edit…

> Aren't those all features described exactly for the "niche developer/macrumors posters"?! Yes, and, trust me, most developers I know who got newer MBPs are pretty happy with theirs. I know I am and I hope I get one of these newer ones next week. 6 cores and 32 gigs of DDR4 make a lot of a difference. The vi users make jokes about the Esc key, of course (but I'm into Emacs, so no problem for me). One company I know…

The MBP with the new keyboard has been a bad experience for as well as a few of my co-workers. I switched back to a 2015 version we had laying around.

When I am forced to move to a new machine I am strongly considering grabbing a Dell or Lenovo and throwing Ubuntu on it. Experience has been that bad.

Re: MacBook Pro with faster performance and new features for pros

#655

Post by tomaskafka »

Dunedan wrote: post #481
baseten wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me the touchbar was just a clever way to get their own processor into their laptops for some large scale real-world testing before they ditch intel and build the entire thing themselves. 2020 is a good guess I'd say.

Maybe the Touchbar was just a "clever" way to prepare all of us for sole touch-based input, which is going to be included in the MBP in 2020. ;-) P.S.: I don't even think touch-only input is neccessarily a bad idea. All Apple has to do to make it work is to implement some kind of really good haptic feedback which also allows to feel individual keys. I even expected that for this iteration of the MBP for the Touchbar.

> Hypothesis: Apple's low-profile MBP keyboard is just a temporary stage that should prepare us for solid state keyboard.

> What is that? A non-moving keyboard where a feedback is faked convinvingly enough via localized haptic feedback.

> See iPhone home button and MBP trackpad.

https://mobile.twitter.com/keff85/status/1011350819210498050

Re: MacBook Pro with faster performance and new features for pros

#656

Post by megaframe »

mbesto wrote: post #445
r0fl wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't do that because it is not what most people want. Apple has to make changes that will sell more laptops to the masses to maximize shareholder value. The niche developer/macrumors posters will never be happy regardless of what Apple does. Better to focus on the 90% of customers who buy products and make up 10% of the complaints then to focus on the 10% of customers who make up 90% of the complaints.

> They didn't do that because it is not what most people want. > Better to focus on the 90% of customers who buy products So either you're wrong, or Apple's PR team is really bad positioning their product. From the Press Release itself in the first few paragraphs: ideal for manipulating large data sets, performing complex simulations, creating multi-track audio projects or doing advanced image processing or film edit…

I think this is like cars that market themselves as capable of racing and/or off roading, but people use them to commute in stop and go traffic. Majority of people don't select products for rational/practical reasons.

Re: MacBook Pro with faster performance and new features for pros

#657

Post by karmakaze »

As much as I agree with detractors comments here, this could be close enough. Use capslock for esc rather than ctrl and maybe someday the touch bar will have a use for me. The alternative of using Linux on another brand is fine too, so for me might just come down to configured pricing. The only minor downside is no Xcode for iOS apps. I tend to use flutter now anyway.

Re: MacBook Pro with faster performance and new features for pros

#658

Post by sbov »

latch wrote: post #227
drewg123 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is all what you're used to. I switched from a Linux KDE desktop to a Mac 11 years ago. I ended up switching back to Linux & KDE after about 6 months of use, and giving the Mac to my inlaws. What it came down to for me is that I've been using the same window manager shortcuts since the late 80s, and I can't make them work with OSX. Eg, I use focus-follows mouse, and some strange mouse-button + ALT key combos to mov…

"It is all what you're used to" I don't think this is true. Ubuntu is far less consistent with keyboard shortcuts and menu bars from app to app (OSX has this nailed). This is overwhelming my biggest problem. cmd+c, cmd+v for copy and paste across all apps. Not all apps minus terminal. Double click URL portion in firefox, entire url is highlighted, double click url part in other places, only that word/segment is highl…

> Not all apps minus terminal.

Note that you can change terminal to use ctrl-c and ctrl-v for copy/paste. Then if you want to interrupt a running program, use ctrl-shift-c (which as far as the shell is concerned is the same as ctrl-c).

Re: MacBook Pro with faster performance and new features for pros

#659

Post by orbitingpluto »

figers wrote: post #313
jawilson2 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you develop for iOS on a Surface?

I have a MacOS vm running on my new surface pro 2017, I really wanted built in LTE and a detachable keyboard for reading articles, docs, email, etc XCode even connects over WiFi to my iPhone when both are on the same network, but I did have to jump through a few hoops to get it all working

What's your best online resource for figuring out how to do and, more importantly, maintain that?
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