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2018 MacBook Pro Review

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Re: 2018 MacBook Pro Review

#381

Post by andromeduck »

basica wrote: post #298
sbenj wrote: post #279

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 th…

In 2014 I bought the top of the line MBP for $2700AUD. To get a top of the line model now it's $4100AUD. As someone who loves macOS, I'm still not gonna buy a new MBP until the price reaches some level of reasonableness. I've been seriously considering of getting a Dell and using Linux instead and I may just do so if there's no budging of the prices in the next 2-3 years.

AUD also fell around 30% vs USD during the same period so that seems about right.

Re: 2018 MacBook Pro Review

#382

Post by martin-adams »

anovikov wrote: post #358
twblalock wrote: post #190

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’m imagining someone who went into a fallout shelter about 10 years ago, somehow only had HN as a source of news, and suddenly re-entered the world. What would such a person be suprised to learn? I suspect Apple still being a successful company would come as a huge shock to such a person. So…

Tesla? Why would anyone on HN doubt survival of Tesla? Except making impossible claims about delivery deadlines, they weren't mentioned in any especial sins worth mentioning. And Tesla Roadster looked definitely like the big future in 2008.

Probably because they are burning through cash and aren’t profitable yet. They’ve had some close calls with running out of money in the past.

Re: 2018 MacBook Pro Review

#384

Post by ballooney »

comex wrote: post #352
adrianN wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was in primary school we were taught that our backpacks shouldn't weigh more than 10% of our body weight. That's not much when you're in third grade, but I think most adults can comfortably carry laptops that are two millimeters thicker and weigh a pound more than the Macbook.

But a pound saved from the MacBook is an additional pound of other stuff you can carry with it.

Such as all the adaptors and dongles you need to turn it back into a functional laptop.

Re: 2018 MacBook Pro Review

#385

Post by microtonal »

freehunter wrote: post #192
bluedino wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Macs have never been cheap. There was a period where the Air (at Let’s go back in time to when the choices were the $1799 12” PowerBook, $2199 15” PowerBook, or the $1299 iBook

I just looked at Apple's US site and the base model 13" MBP is $1299 brand new. So the "fantastic deal" $1199 MBP is only $100 less than today's 13" MBP straight from Apple with no discount.

But it is six years later and that $1299 MBP still comes with an 128 GB SSD.

And I agree with your parent poster. In 2009 I bought a MacBook aluminium for ~1050 Euro. Later I replaced the memory by 8GB and the hard disk by an SSD. You could open it with a simple lever to replace the hard disk, memory, and battery.

My 2016 MacBook Pro, which cost 1700 Euro in early 2017 was more expensive than my 2009 MacBook Pro after upgrades (of course, with a more modern CPU).

It's sad that we seem to be standing still on the memory/storage size front, paying even slightly higher prices. In the meanwhile extensibility has gone out of the window. The only winners are Apple and the subset of the market that want even thinner laptops.

Re: 2018 MacBook Pro Review

#386

Post by JohnBooty »

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #248
manigandham wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. I would and did for a long time, and I am very glad for the lightening trend. Try considering for just a moment that there are many people in the world who aren't as ablebodied as you. Small changes can make big differences.

I know a lot of people with physical disabilities. I've been one myself; I'm married to one.

Nobody's asking Apple to make all of their laptops heavier. And I don't think anybody's asking for 9lb / 4kg monstrosities from Apple, either.

What I see is a lot of people wishing for pro laptops from Apple that eschew their "lightness at all costs" philosophy in favor of a more balanced approach that offers some extra functionality in exchange for, say, an extra pound of weight or something.

That wouldn't preclude Apple from selling smaller, easier-to-carry models.

That's a reasonable ask, yes?

Re: 2018 MacBook Pro Review

#387

Post by inamberclad »

h4waii wrote: post #157
inamberclad wrote: post #76

That automatic display makes me think about the bad experiences I have with the hardcoded adaptive contrast on my XPS-13 9350. It makes it unusable for pro grade photo editing since the features can't be turned off and the monitor therefore can't be calibrated. In addition, when trying to use the nightlight feature of the new gnome stack, the color temperature swings wildly with subtle color changes on the page cause…

There is a hack to disable this for the FHD matte 9350. I applied it to mine, and it's successfully disabled. Your mileage might vary, there are a few different panels apparently. https://github.com/advancingu/XPS13Linux/issues/2

There's a whole bunch of things in that thread, which one is the hack?

Re: 2018 MacBook Pro Review

#388

Post by JohnBooty »

imron wrote: post #363
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 on the other hand wouldn't mind if they made the laptop a little bit thicker in exchange for better battery life. When the discrete graphics chip is being used, plus a retina display, and or several dongles plugged in for ethernet, usb-a or whatever, battery life on my 2017 MBP while doing development work is maybe 3-4 hours. It was quite a shock to go to that from the 8-9 hours I used to get from my older MacBook…

    I now find myself opening them, doing a task and 
    then closing them so as not to activate the discrete
    graphics chip and drain the battery.
Sounds like what's really needed here is a way to tell MacOS not to use the discrete graphics chip when on battery power.

Is there no way to do that? It's been a while since I used a MBP with discrete graphics. There used to be a menubar app for that, but I always felt it should have been an option baked into MacOS itself.

Re: 2018 MacBook Pro Review

#389

Post by gaius »

bla2 wrote: post #77
richdougherty wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has a strategy where they don't compete on price and it works well for them. They've been able to get fantastic margins while other hardware manufacturers have struggled. Their higher price reinforces their premium brand identity too. Apple does build high quality products so the brand identity is earned to some extent. Of course, they could sell these high quality products significantly cheaper, but why mess w…

For Macs, in my opinion they used to build high quality products, but they're losing their lead. macOS hasn't improved in ways that matter to me in years and some things got worse. The hardware used to be untouchably good, but the new MacBook Pros are worse for me than the original retina MacBook Pro I still use -- performance hasn't improved much (the latest upgrade might have changed that) and keyboard, ports, powe…

they used to build high quality products, but they're losing their lead

Jobs would never have let that keyboard out of the door. I doubt Cook has ever used one - but hey look at the animated poop emoji!

Re: 2018 MacBook Pro Review

#390

Post by microtonal »

coldtea wrote: post #68
stefano wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very unfair comparison. You need to compare the relative price against comparable laptops produced today. Also Apple seems to be the first laptop producer to raise prices instead of lowering them. In 2010, I could get a MacBook for 1000 euros. The equivalent laptop upgraded to today's standards would cost 2-3 times that.

> That's a very unfair comparison. You need to compare the relative price against comparable laptops produced today. Well, first spec them comparatively though. Which includes things like same CPUs and GPUs, and the quality of the screen, the touchpad, and the casing. High-end MS Surface laptops, for example, cost just as much (15 inch Intel Core i7-8650U CPU clocked at 1.9 GHz, a discrete Nvidia 1060 GPU with 6GB of…

The MacBook was a low spec machine for students and such.

The MacBook Aluminium was everything but a low spec machine (in fact, they sold it a year later as 'MacBook Pro') and I bought it for 1050 Euro new in 2009.

The plastic MacBooks were ok, but definitely not so cramped at the time as a MacBook Pro base model today. I know it's a hard disk, but the 2008 model had more storage than today's base model MacBook Pro (160GB vs 128GB).

At the time, macOS worked well on spinning platters, while having an SSD is pretty much a necessity now.

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