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2018 MacBook Pro Review

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Re: 2018 MacBook Pro Review

#271

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

bodas wrote: post #118
stupidcar wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost as if Apple aren't even basing their hardware strategy on what developers are complaining about on Hacker News.

I'd go further and say that Apple isn't basing their hardware strategy on the needs of any real person. It's a laptop with only USB-C ports (and the 13-inch only has two of them). You can't even plug a USB stick into it. The only people who asked for a laptop like that are working at Apple.

To add another point: I've had a 2017 MBP for over a year now and I don't mind that it only has USB-C plugs. I have an adapter for the rare cases when I want to plug in some older USB device.

I actually really like their push towards USB-C everywhere. The only major device I own that doesn't use USB-C is actually my old iPad. If they killed their proprietary adapter in favor of USB-C I'd be very happy.

Re: 2018 MacBook Pro Review

#272

Post by briandear »

ambulancechaser wrote: post #149
Osmium wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd go further and say that Apple isn't basing their hardware strategy on the needs of any real person. Real person here! I love the USB-C only approach. I love being able to charge from either side of my laptop, and I love having single cable to plug in at my desk for RAID/monitor/ethernet/charging/etc. I want my laptop minimal; if I want it to do more, I can add more.

you're extolling the benefits of USB-C not the lack of USB-A. The presence of a USB-A would not affect your listed benefits in the least.

Definitely, they should put a SCSI port on the next version.

Weren’t we having this discussion when they dropped the floppy drive? Should they keep USB-A forever? When is it ok that they drop USB-A? The original move to USB-A was met with resistance to people then that were angry that suddenly their ADP or other older devices wouldn’t connect — but then device markers saw the advantages of USB and quickly moved to embrace it. They are starting to see the advantages of Thunderbolt 3 and eventually, USB-A will go the way of the serial port — but not without the requisite hang-wringing and “get off my lawn” first. In 3 years, nothing but dollar-store junk will still use USB-A.

Re: 2018 MacBook Pro Review

#273

Post by briandear »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #172
godzillabrennus wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would increase the thickness of the laptop. Apple is design driven. I also hate the new keyboard but couldn’t care less about using dongles if I get a thinner laptop.

I don't understand. At this point, what are the benefits of a thinner laptop? Lighter I can understand, but what does a thinner laptop enable you to do?

Take up less space in your bag.

Re: 2018 MacBook Pro Review

#274

Post by briandear »

slavik81 wrote: post #270
bigiain wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." -- Henry Ford Nobody asked for USB ports when they had serial/parallel ports, or for the floppy drive to disappear, or to lose the VGA connector. I don't know if Apple have made the right calls here (on either the USB-C ports or the keyboard), but they do have some history in making eventually-winning calls on at least some of these things.…

> Nobody asked for USB ports when they had serial/parallel ports, or for the floppy drive to disappear, or to lose the VGA connector. I don't recall being annoyed by those changes. In particular, the VGA->DVI transition was handled really well. Just about everything was DVI-I and would accept a VGA signal over a DVI cable, so you just bought a VGA->DVI cable and continued using VGA.

So basically a “dongle?”

Re: 2018 MacBook Pro Review

#275

Post by bigiain »

slavik81 wrote: post #270
bigiain wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." -- Henry Ford Nobody asked for USB ports when they had serial/parallel ports, or for the floppy drive to disappear, or to lose the VGA connector. I don't know if Apple have made the right calls here (on either the USB-C ports or the keyboard), but they do have some history in making eventually-winning calls on at least some of these things.…

> Nobody asked for USB ports when they had serial/parallel ports, or for the floppy drive to disappear, or to lose the VGA connector. I don't recall being annoyed by those changes. In particular, the VGA->DVI transition was handled really well. Just about everything was DVI-I and would accept a VGA signal over a DVI cable, so you just bought a VGA->DVI cable and continued using VGA.

Macs with USB but no SCSI connector were a big cause of complaints where I was back then (I worked around lots of designers with SCSI Syquest and Zip drives, and all their client archives of high-res photoshop and page layout work on them), and _everybody_ in my circles thought Apple were insane for leaving floppy drives off... (These were a long time back though...)

Re: 2018 MacBook Pro Review

#276

Post by spike021 »

bla2 wrote: post #102
saagarjha wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> macOS hasn't improved in ways that matter to me in years What ways matter to you?

Consistent UI, simple and fast built-in apps for common tasks, good unix subsystem, fast file system, pretty text rendering, system libraries that make it fairly easy to write good native apps, etc. macOS has all this, but it had all this for a while. There are so many good things in it. Preview.app is great -- it even lets you do simple PDF editing, while being fast, reliable, and easy to use. CoreGraphics does beau…

>Consistent UI

I feel like UI is one of the things that shouldn't really be complained so much about. If you're talking about apps, then it's sort of hard to have a consistent UI when everybody's doing Electron apps or using other frameworks like it.

Re: 2018 MacBook Pro Review

#277

Post by briandear »

bogomipz wrote: post #267
bodas wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd go further and say that Apple isn't basing their hardware strategy on the needs of any real person. It's a laptop with only USB-C ports (and the 13-inch only has two of them). You can't even plug a USB stick into it. The only people who asked for a laptop like that are working at Apple.

Indeed and perhaps the height of absurdity - if you were to go buy a brand new iPhone 8 today, the cable that comes with the phone has a USB 3.0 connector not an USB-C connector at the far end. So you can't even plug a brand new iPhone 8 directly into a brand new Macbook Pro without buying a cable as a separate purchase.

Except you don’t need to, generally. Setting up a phone doesn’t require a computer connection and, since USB-A phone chargers are ubiquitous, it doesn’t make much sense to go Thunderbolt 3 on iPhone’s default cable yet because the days of the iTunes setup process are long gone. The primary use of that cable that comes with iPhone is for charging — and it does include a charger. Unless you are the .025% of iPhone owners that do development, your complaint really doesn’t matter. With AirDrop, AirPrint and iCloud, there really isn’t much point to connecting to a computer for the vast majority of users.

Re: 2018 MacBook Pro Review

#278

Post by reificator »

slavik81 wrote: post #270
bigiain wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." -- Henry Ford Nobody asked for USB ports when they had serial/parallel ports, or for the floppy drive to disappear, or to lose the VGA connector. I don't know if Apple have made the right calls here (on either the USB-C ports or the keyboard), but they do have some history in making eventually-winning calls on at least some of these things.…

> Nobody asked for USB ports when they had serial/parallel ports, or for the floppy drive to disappear, or to lose the VGA connector. I don't recall being annoyed by those changes. In particular, the VGA->DVI transition was handled really well. Just about everything was DVI-I and would accept a VGA signal over a DVI cable, so you just bought a VGA->DVI cable and continued using VGA.

> I don't recall being annoyed by those changes. In particular, the VGA->DVI transition was handled really well. Just about everything was DVI-I and would accept a VGA signal over a DVI cable, so you just bought a VGA->DVI cable and continued using VGA.

Just about everything was USB-C and would accept a USB-A signal over a USB-C cable, so you just bought a USB-C->USB-A cable and continued using USB-A.

I don't see a difference. Except the part where you say the transition was handled well. I didn't feel good applying that to USB-C...

Re: 2018 MacBook Pro Review

#279

Post by sbenj »

Am I the only person on here who is bothered by the specs of the base models? For $2400 you get a 2.2 Ghz machine with a 256 GB ssd and 16 GB of Ram. That was seriously overpriced and it hasn't budged in this new release. Seems like you've got to spend well north of 3K to get a reasonable machine. That is way over the market.

The model in the review is fully loaded. Apple will charge you a cool $3200 to upgrade to that 4TB ssd mentioned in the review. Apple's habit of gouging on peripherals is not... endearing.

Also, aren't many premium laptops 4K at this point?

Re: 2018 MacBook Pro Review

#280

Post by TomVDB »

manigandham wrote: post #200
lclarkmichalek wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because I go to meetings and work from home sometimes. Only thing I'd use a standard USB for would be charging, which isn't really something I do in meetings, and I have plenty of chargers at home.

You didn't answer the question. It doesn't need to be so dysfunctionally thin and light to travel between work and home sometimes. Nobody is going to suffer from an extra pound of weight.

> Nobody is going to suffer from an extra pound of weight.

For many things in life, it’s not about whether or not you suffer, it’s about what’s more or less pleasant. And for many, that even trumps an occasional inconvenience.

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