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Its butterfly keyboard design has failed, but Apple has yet to admit its mistake

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Re: Its butterfly keyboard design has failed, but Apple has yet to admit its mistake

#221
post #14

> “So, just curious, why did you buy another one?” she asked, referring to the 2018 MacBook Air I’d gotten six months after selling the Pro. I was hoping she talked more about this part, but brushing it aside by bringing up "Apple ecosystem" is pretty unsatisfactory. It does tell you, though, that Apple has its target demographic by the balls, and broken keyboards are certainly not chasing them away. Macbooks will ge…

> they tried a Windows laptop and liked it This requires Windows to become likeable. I (and plenty of other people) will like Windows once it: * has a consistent UI instead of 3 control panels with icons and UI paradigms ranging from Windows 95 to Windows 10. * ships with quality applications that don't try to eat the entire screen to display 2 lines of text (pretty much all "modern" built-in apps are a disaster in t…

don't mention the Enterprise edition which you can only get in volume, so no solution for freelancers & small businesses

I agree with your larger point and most of your bullet points, but just as an FYI to anyone that's looking into Enterprise edition: you can get Enterprise licenses in small volumes.

Because of various data security clauses in some of our contracts, and MS's refusal to discuss issues like HIPAA compliance with respect to telemetry, I looked into getting Enterprise for our small business and found that there are resellers (I have experience with CDW and mychoicesoftware.com) that will provide small numbers of licenses -- in fact, I started with one license with each provider. Right now we have 2 licenses through mychoice and 4 licenses with CDW.

It's a pain in the ass because it's a subscription service and you're dealing with two parties for support (the reseller and MS) but it is doable.

Re: Its butterfly keyboard design has failed, but Apple has yet to admit its mistake

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Specs” are a very minor piece of what most people, including nerds, care about in a laptop. “Why would anyone ever buy a BMW, when you can get a Dodge Challenger with more horsepower for cheaper?”

Marketing? EDIT: Specs are everything. Not just HP. Specs are how many USB ports the vehicle has. The colors of buttons. The comfort. Also, I wasnt sure if you thought a BMW was actually better. They are lower rated, but BMW has a huge marketing presence in the US.

In response to your edit: if you define "specs" broadly enough to include the comfort and the color of buttons, then sure, "specs are all that matters", tautologically.

On the other hand, with this broad of a definition, no, there is no other computer on the market with the same "specs" as a Macbook Pro.

Re: Its butterfly keyboard design has failed, but Apple has yet to admit its mistake

#223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is good experience to be able to buy Apple device and be sure that everything there is pretty good. Choosing among thousands of alternatives is pretty frustrating. What brand should I choose? HP, Dell, Lenovo, IBM, Acer, Asus, whatever? I need good display, fast CPU, good battery life, enough RAM. Pretty vague requirements. You are buying Macbook and it's just good, you don't have any regrets, because its CPU is o…

>buy Apple device and be sure that everything there is pretty good. The alternative is that you spend 30 minutes of research and get a superior product cheaper. This isnt an opinion, this is reality. You can find a computer with better specs than Apple, cheaper. I'm not sympathetic to the 'mom' who doesn't know what RAM is, they get penalized by Apple for being an uninformed consumer. Is there any reason for a 'Nerd'…

In my experience: it’s ”unix” on a laptop that just works.

Easy access to up-to-date tooling through brew: zsh, docker, bash, vim et al.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve been a Linux only user since the 90’s and for many years used the dell xps developer edition.

But, the mac touchpad (I know, I’m doing it wrong) and screen coupled with superior battery time as well as solid sleep/wakeup makes for a great experience.

The new air, without the ridiculous touchbar and updated keyboard is actually pretty great.

One nerds ¢2.

Re: Its butterfly keyboard design has failed, but Apple has yet to admit its mistake

#224
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I send easily 8-10 hours per day looking at my screen. Screen quality has a large effect on how tied my eyes are at the end of the day. When I was younger it wasn't as noticeable but I'm not young anymore and my eyes are noticeable happier with the MacBook Pro screen that any other screen I've tried. For me it's an issue of eye health.

There are plenty of non-Apple hidpi laptops.

Just like there is more to cameras than megapixels, there is more to a display than resolution. Simply saying “hidpi” does not necessarily solve the problem.

Re: Its butterfly keyboard design has failed, but Apple has yet to admit its mistake

#225
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

X1 Extreme is a better choice imo, up to 64G (replaceable), 2 m.2 slots, a GTX1050 for casual gaming or ML and a 4K display. I have one on order. There is also the P1, which comes with a Xeon (!) option and Quadro P1000 graphics. The market for the P1 is pretty specific, but if you need those nVidia certified drivers, this is the one. Edit: obviously you wouldn't run Linux on the P1 if you bought it for the certified…

I'm in the market to replace my macbook. Does the X1 Extreme support usb-c charging (charging the laptop with usb-c)?

Yes it does.

Re: Its butterfly keyboard design has failed, but Apple has yet to admit its mistake

#226
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there any reason for a 'Nerd' to pick Apple? You are making a typical nerd assumption, which is to equate "better product" with "better specs".

The rest is just marketing. Apple is very good at Marketing. EDIT: Will someone explain what this theoretical 'non spec' thing that matters is? The Apple logo?

> Will someone explain what this theoretical 'non spec' thing that matters is?

That's hard to do, since you're being vague about the meaning of "specs".

How about this: you find an example of a non-Apple laptop that you think has "the same specs" or better as a 15-inch MBP, and I'll point out how it's different.

Re: Its butterfly keyboard design has failed, but Apple has yet to admit its mistake

#227
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> whichever idiot thought putting the power plug at the bottom of the Magic Mouse was a good idea. For those not familiar with the Apple Mouse, the commenter means that the power plug is on the part that you’re supposed to have on the mousepad, meaning you can’t charge it while using it, at all. Easily the worst way to design a mouse, ever. I don’t understand how it was approved.

Have you actually used the mouse? I haven't, but hearing from people that have actually used it (and not gotten all worked up about how bad this design is in theory) - they actually thought it was the BETTER design as the battery charged ridiculously fast. Meaning when they ran out they would charge it for a minute and got like a couple hours of use. This resulted in them actually using it as a wireless mouse instead…

> Meaning when they ran out they would charge it for a minute and got like a couple hours of use.

That's a minute longer than you should have to wait to keep using your mouse. I can appreciate that they minimized the impact of the poor design, but that doesn't mean it's not a poor design.

> This resulted in them actually using it as a wireless mouse instead of a wired one.

Does that improve functionality at all? It sounds like the same style-over-substance design that's led Apple to sacrifice important functionality for unnecessary size/weight cuts in the last few years.

Re: Its butterfly keyboard design has failed, but Apple has yet to admit its mistake

#228
Everyone speaks about being ‘locked in’ to the apple ecosystem. I’m happy to be in the ecosystem and I’m happy to pay more for my devices. The alternatives are simply interior (having used all platforms myself). In particular when you are trying to work across multiple devices from different ecosystems.

Re: Its butterfly keyboard design has failed, but Apple has yet to admit its mistake

#229
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of non-Apple hidpi laptops.

How is win or linux support for those these days?

Pretty poor. At fractional scaling on Windows, expect that even preinstalled applications (Computer Management, for instance) will be very fuzzy. GNOME works fairly nicely, but as usual expect glitches and strange scaling problems with non-GTK applications, multiple monitors, etc.

I continue to prefer a screen where it has a high pixel density but is plenty usable without any scaling.

Re: Its butterfly keyboard design has failed, but Apple has yet to admit its mistake

#230
Not admitting your mistake this much is simply lying. They have a severe honesty problem admitting their hardware faults. How is this legal? Imagine if car companies, instead of recalling their broken shit, just lied and quietly tried to fix it on next year's model...

When the free keyboard replacement program shuts down, and Apple still denies the problem, and Apple happily charges you $795 every so often to fix their mistake over the life of the machine, will it be fraud?

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