Apple Is Listening • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple Is Listening

#41

Post by overgard » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 3:38 AM UTC

Releasing a hilariously overpriced and ugly computer that can cost as much as a new car and might appeal to a niche of a niche, to me, doesn’t really demonstrate any change in direction. (I love how people keep saying “the most powerful Mac ever”. Ok, but the laptop I bought 7 months ago for 2k has about the same amount of power as the base 6k Mac and it’s not housed in a giant garish cheese grater)

I say this as a person that bought exclusively macs from 2009 - 2015 but they don’t have a single computer I even remotely want at the moment.

Re: Apple Is Listening

#42

Post by DDH-182 » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 3:41 AM UTC

No they aren't. If Apple were listening, we wouldn't be expected to shell out $6000 for a machine where we're going to have to disable half the cores (and lose 40-60% of the remaining performance) to achieve "it might work" security (until the next Intel vuln is found). If Apple were listening they wouldn't be selling a freaking monitor stand for $1000. If Apple were listening, they wouldn't be forced to abandon bash because they can't be bothered to actually comply with the GPL (v3). Nobody can justify Apple at this point and the sooner it dies, the better.

Re: Apple Is Listening

#43

Post by scarface74 » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 3:41 AM UTC

overgard wrote: post #41

Releasing a hilariously overpriced and ugly computer that can cost as much as a new car and might appeal to a niche of a niche, to me, doesn’t really demonstrate any change in direction. (I love how people keep saying “the most powerful Mac ever”. Ok, but the laptop I bought 7 months ago for 2k has about the same amount of power as the base 6k Mac and it’s not housed in a giant garish cheese grater) I say this as a p…

It’s not for you. The market that it is for are chomping at the bit to buy one.

But as far as it’s “garish appearance”, that’s exactly what Pro’s were asking for something that didn’t put form over function.

Re: Apple Is Listening

#44

Post by JohnBooty » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 3:44 AM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #27

TurbineSeaplane wrote: post #17

Sure - working great for somebody like Marco who’s already loaded.

You know that's an old popular meme in the Apple community... "That might work for Marco". Marco didn't come from money or have any connections. He found a job on Craigslist working for a random guy named David Karpe as his first employee. They started Tumblr and he lucked out when it got acquired by Yahoo and made a few million. But the acquisition happened after he started a blog that became popular, wrote Instapap…

I really feel like you're missing the point of "That might work for Marco, since he has a lot of money" comments.

You've summed up, very neatly, why he's talented and worked hard and has earned his money.

But nobody's claiming he didn't earn his bunches of money.

What they're stating is a simple fact: six thousand dollar computers might make sense for somebody with a bunch of money. But not for people with more modest means.

Re: Apple Is Listening

#45

Post by intellix » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 3:44 AM UTC

Half of the keyboard started acting up on my 6 year old Early 2013 15" MBP yesterday. Was waiting for the rumoured 16" rework but had my hand forced to the 2019 15". The touch bar is already winding me up as I'm used to resting my fingers on the edge of the top of the keyboard. It's constantly like: Siri, mute, brightness! siri! siri!

It looked cool on iMessage that I could scroll through smileys but that's about it. Just about ready to completely disable the thing. Not sure how they'll be able to backpedal on it cause replacing it would mean admitting it was a failure.

Perhaps replacing all keys with mini screens to allow total customisation of what's displayed with the ability to still scroll on them?

Re: Apple Is Listening

#46

Post by adrusi » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 3:45 AM UTC

fastball wrote: post #19

secstate wrote: post #6

I think I might just be done with Apple. That culture of saying nothing and the surprising customers with things is like betting in Vegas. And unfortunately for Apple, the house always wins. They can repair the damage of the Mac Pro debacle with a new Mac Pro, but they haven't owned the train wreck of a keyboard on the Macbook Pro. Sure, they might be ready to hit it big on a double down on black, but in the meantime…

What about the trackpad though? I just can't get over how inferior everyone else's trackpads are.

Apple's trackpads are still in a class above the rest, but trackpads from other manufacturers have seen great improvements over the last 2–3 years.

The choice between Thinkpads and Macbooks is one between best-in-class keyboard with a passable trackpad and passable keyboard with a best-in-class trackpad. To me, that's a tossup.

Re: Apple Is Listening

#47

Post by Phlarp » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 3:47 AM UTC

OBLIQUE_PILLAR wrote: post #9

marricks wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn’t get me HN points to say, but I’m a developer who loves my MBP.

are you a fan of the butterfly keyboard ?

I have a 2017 15" and my girlfriend has a 2016 13", we both do technical work with these machines as our primary work devices.

Neither of us have any issues with the keyboard other than the clearly above average failure rates and the hassle of getting it repaired. My 15" has not exhibited any issues at all, the slightly older 13" has started to develop some stickiness with the arrow keys.

Obviously there are issues with this keyboard and I eagerly await a redesign on it (as well as haptic feedback on the touchbar and making the touchbar option across all models).

On the whole I'm quite happy with the extended warranty as it essentially amounts to free AppleCare+, and given their insistence on making the overall device unserviceable it also amounts to a deductible free midlife battery replacement.

It's an elegant solution to the whole fiasco in my mind-- the cost of servicing all these keyboards has to be painful beyond normal for them given that ridiculous design, magnified further by the fact that end users should have no problems encouraging the keyboard to fail if/when they want a scratch free case or 0 cycle battery. To say nothing of how it undermines the value of AppleCare as a service, both because you can get nearly the same thing for free, and the existence of the keyboard program is straining their staff resources on repairs, which are otherwise almost exclusively devoted to AppleCare customers.

Re: Apple Is Listening

#48

Post by Barrin92 » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 3:47 AM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #27

TurbineSeaplane wrote: post #17

Sure - working great for somebody like Marco who’s already loaded.

You know that's an old popular meme in the Apple community... "That might work for Marco". Marco didn't come from money or have any connections. He found a job on Craigslist working for a random guy named David Karpe as his first employee. They started Tumblr and he lucked out when it got acquired by Yahoo and made a few million. But the acquisition happened after he started a blog that became popular, wrote Instapap…

I don't think the OP was saying that he doesn't deserve his money, but it really is absolutely absurd. Apple is an international company, worth a trillion dollars selling millions of devices.

I work in the UK. I make about 80k a year pre-taxes. That's an average, if not relatively high salary for a developer. "Regular old enterprise developers" don't make 5000 bucks in two weeks, at least not in 99% of the developed world, not to speak of the rest.

And it's true that technology in 1992 was very expensive, but technology is actually supposed to get cheaper, that's the entire point, you get more for less. If you pay more for the same, that's anti-technology

Re: Apple Is Listening

#49

Post by scarface74 » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 3:48 AM UTC

dcosson wrote: post #40

scarface74 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as a desktop Mac, a suitably configured iMac is more than powerful enough for development. A $2100 5K iMac - 6 Core I5 3Ghz (turbo boost to 4Ghz), 256GB SSD, 16GB of RAM. The RAM is user upgradable and an external SSD drive would be as fast as any normal internal SSD drive. As far as a laptop? I'm not spending my own money on a development class laptop. I hate developing with just a laptop. I have a dual exter…

Biggest annoyance with the iMac though is you can’t, say, work from home with your work laptop and plug it into the screen. This is another case with macs where the situation 8 years ago was much better since they used to have target display mode. From what I understand, they killed it because they needed to use a custom format to drive the 5k screen initially. Now regular DisplayPort 1.3 and 1.4 have enough bandwidt…

That’s why I said I'm not spending my own money on a development class laptop. I have the same Bluetooth keyboard and mouse at home and at work - in other words, I don’t care about the keyboards on the MacBook Pros. Decent regular monitors are cheap. If/When I do get a 5K iMac for person use, my current two monitors will be attached to it for personal use and attached to my work laptop when I bring it home.

Re: Apple Is Listening

#50

Post by pupdogg » Mon, Jun 10, 2019, 3:51 AM UTC

Apple's 2013 "trash can" design of MacPro actually helped HP Z8 series desktops finally get recognized for their power! No one realized that there existed a beast much more powerful than a MacPro.