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Kuo: Apple to include new scissor switch keyboard in MacBook

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Re: Kuo: Apple to include new scissor switch keyboard in MacBook

#531

Post by ycombonator »

iamben wrote: post #196
FabHK wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have the first MacBook Pro that came with the Touch Bar, and it's the worst computer I've ever owned. Same here (well, I have the "cheap" one without the Touch Bar). Everything has been replaced at least once (on Apple Care, fortunately) except the bottom plate. > The only reason I got it is because the MacBook Air it replaced was dying Same here. That MBA was a fine machine.

I'm still using my MBA from mid 2013. It's a wonderful thing. Battery is "replace soon" but it's mostly plugged in. It's battered and bruised, but still fast enough. I've been debating a change for a while and figured at the start of the year I'd wait to see if they were going to ditch the bf keyboard if they release a new MBA. Super glad I waited, fingers crossed I get the same life out of the next one! Say what you…

I am in a similar situation as you. Have a Mid 2012 MBA. Works fantastic. Also Catalina beta seems to have sped the system performance immensely. Always plugged in because of the battery.

Re: Kuo: Apple to include new scissor switch keyboard in MacBook

#532

Post by diegof79 »

briandear wrote: post #431
dmix wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Apple gets rid of the TouchBar + fixes the keyboard that'd eliminate 90% of the complaints against Macbook Pros.

The Touchbar is a source of many complaints? Or just a small slice of people who complain loudly? Anecdotally, I have many relatives with touchbar MacBook Pros and they haven’t complained about it. Is it possible that many people actually like the touchbar but they don’t spend their time on specialized forums singing its praises? It just seems like the assumption that people hate the touchbar is selection bias. Aside…

The TouchBar is fine and looks nice. The problem is not the TouchBar itself, but how Apple decided to not care about many usability details complementary to the TouchBar (besides the ESC key).

Something really stupid (related to TouchBar design) happened to me about 2 weeks ago.

I watched a movie using an external TV, and I set the laptop screen brightness to zero. The movie ended, so I shut down the machine using the TV as a monitor.

Next day, when I turned on the laptop (without the TV). Zero! No sound, nothing, only the artificial "ESC" key in the TouchBar. My first reaction... "ohh the brightness", it happened before with older MBP models.

But... Where are my brightness keys!? For some reason, there were not displayed. (after a little bit of search in support forums, I found that some users were not seeing TouchBar keys during login too).

I connected the TV again... nothing. I tried to login... but since I couldn't see the login screen, I ended in the password recovery mode. In total desperation (that included trying to reboot in recovery or to do a SMC reset without any visual and auditive feedback), I found by chance that the screen displayed the right brightness if I open/close the lid.

When I saw the password reset mode screen, I was happy. But if I restarted the brightness remained in zero! and no TouchBar... After another trial & error of open closing the lid, I saw the pass recovery screen again. Then I deactivated FileVault to reboot in recovery mode, and finally, I saw the brightness keys in the TouchBar!!! (it was a WTF moment).

I searched in a lot of forums if it was possible to change the brightness with another key combination, but it wasn't possible. My secondary keyboard is a MagicKeyboard that is Bluetooth only... so I almost have to contact support for a very stupid design decision to not give the users a secondary method to control brightness when the TouchBar fails.

BTW previous Mac models emitted a sound during power on... that would have been helpful. It's very hard to know if your computer is working without any feedback. And it's also very hard to hit the recovery key combination without auditive feedback.

I like the aesthetics of Apple design, but as an Apple user for many years... the change of priorities in the hardware user experience is noticeable.

Re: Kuo: Apple to include new scissor switch keyboard in MacBook

#533

Post by wila »

gambiting wrote: post #509
miles wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have a 2009 MacBook Pro (Core2Duo + 4GB of ram), I've added an SSD years ago, and it runs absolutely fine, I use it almost daily to browse the web. ... the updates stopped at El Capitan unfortunately. ... I'm not that bothered. You might want to consider running Manjaro[0] or Haiku[1] instead (I've had great luck with both on older MacBooks [2,3]). Nessus reports El Capitan as a "Critical" vulnerability due to la…

Sure, but it's a laptop to look up some kitchen recipes, watch YouTube and use facetime occasionally. If it has security vulnerabilities I'm genuinely not bothered - any minute spent installing another system is a minute just not worth it for me.

Which is fine if you keep that laptop in its own isolated network. Otherwise it might end up being used for gaining access to other machines in your network.

Re: Kuo: Apple to include new scissor switch keyboard in MacBook

#534

Post by gambiting »

t34543 wrote: post #527
gambiting wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the updates stopped at El Capitan unfortunately. There is a way to force it to update to Mojave but I think couple hardware bits stop working(....camera?) and I'm not that bothered.

Staying at latest patch levels are more about security vs features.

Don't get me wrong, I don't disagree. I just don't think it's worth my time to update it to watch YouTube and open BBC Good Food from time to time. The laptop never leaves the house, my assumption is that the attack surface for it is literally zero.

Re: Kuo: Apple to include new scissor switch keyboard in MacBook

#535

Post by alanfranz »

electrichead wrote: post #493
andrei_says_ wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could buy a 2015 MacBook Pro and upgrade to rock solid keyboard, sane-sized trackpad, MagSafe, hdmi, USB ports and an SD card port. It’s not thin enough to slice salami but I am a vegetarian so that’s not a big deal.

I did exactly this a year ago but one caveat to note is that if you're using an external monitor, the video card in this one doesn't support a good resolution. I'm stuck with 1080p.

I have got the 2015 15" model with Radeon R9 M370X and it supports 4k@60Hz over DP.

Re: Kuo: Apple to include new scissor switch keyboard in MacBook

#536

Post by alanfranz »

notvplez wrote: post #524
jordanthoms wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4k60hz is also possible over displayport, on my Late 2013 mbp I need to use switchresx to get it going (but I've found that pretty set-and-forget), but on the newer ones than that it works without any hacks AFAIK

Could you share some details about how you do this? Do you need displayport on both ends, and is it a monitor or TV? I have the same machine and a 4K TV with only HDMI-inputs and am curious if I can achieve this is in some way. Switchresx looks really useful anyway, so thank you for that. :)

There's no HDMI 2.0 support in 2015 MBPr AFAIK. So no 4k@60Hz over HDMI. You must get DP.

Re: Kuo: Apple to include new scissor switch keyboard in MacBook

#537

Post by caconym_ »

rev12 wrote: post #121

It seems like there are two camps of people: Those who are very pleased to hear they will be backpedaling on their updated keyboard designs. Those who "don't understand" because they actually like the new keyboards (and the TouchBar even). No matter where you stand, the new keyboards are highly controversial and divisive, and that's not good. The old keyboards didn't put people into opposing sides, they just were the…

What about we who like the new keyboards (sans Touch Bar, personally) but understand (being intellectually mature adults) that people's preferences differ, probably at least in part because their typing styles also differ?

To be honest I expect this group greatly outnumbers your number 2), but being quietly satisfied with a thing is not a state of mind as conducive to jumping into an internet flame war as one of contempt for those who don't agree with your own subjective opinion of a thing or things.

The big problem I have with the new design is the reliability. I haven't personally had a key stop working, but it seems to be a real problem, and I do think the keys on my machine that has them (12" Macbook) have gotten fairly mushy after just a few years of use. That shouldn't happen—a really good keyboard will last for decades and/or tens of millions of strokes per key.

Re: Kuo: Apple to include new scissor switch keyboard in MacBook

#538

Post by tga »

electrichead wrote: post #493
andrei_says_ wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could buy a 2015 MacBook Pro and upgrade to rock solid keyboard, sane-sized trackpad, MagSafe, hdmi, USB ports and an SD card port. It’s not thin enough to slice salami but I am a vegetarian so that’s not a big deal.

I did exactly this a year ago but one caveat to note is that if you're using an external monitor, the video card in this one doesn't support a good resolution. I'm stuck with 1080p.

"With OS X Yosemite 10.10.3 and later, most SST 4K (3840 x 2160) displays are supported at 60Hz on these Mac computers:

    MacBook Air (Early 2015) and later
    MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015) and later
    MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014) and later"
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206587

Earlier years will only do 30Hz, which is fully usable for development/office work.

Re: Kuo: Apple to include new scissor switch keyboard in MacBook

#539

Post by mustacheemperor »

gurkendoktor wrote: post #380
pmart123 wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people made the same argument when Jobs removed the cd drive from laptops. It seemed like an issue at the time given most software was still installed from CDs. After a two year dark period where you had to use an external cd drive, most people didn’t miss it.

The first USB-C MacBook came out four years ago . I've just taken a look at Amazon: the top hits for keyboards are USB-A, the top hits for projectors use HDMI, the top hits for 4K screens have HDMI and DisplayPort ports. Apple's portable devices all ship with USB-A charging cables. Do USB-C thumbdrives even exist? Yes, some transitions in the past worked really well. That doesn't mean that other transitions are autom…

>Do USB-C thumbdrives even exist?

The only hits I find on google are for a few sandisk drives with terrible amazon reviews reporting they're slow and get searing hot in the drive after only a few seconds of use. I'm kind of surprised sandisk would release that, one reviewer even reports theirs smoking after being inserted into a recent MBP. I'm also a bit surprised nobody has produced a working drive yet? Maybe there's so little demand for thumb drives these days it's just not worth the r&d to accomodate the standard with adequate cooling.

Re: Kuo: Apple to include new scissor switch keyboard in MacBook

#540

Post by wila »

orev wrote: post #194
RayVR wrote: post #144

Having used the 2018 MacBook Air for about 3 months now, I can say I really detest it and I would return it if that were possible. 1) the keyboard. This thing really feels like slamming your fingers into a metal slab. I think my iPad Pro keyboard is better. The MacBook Air keyboard is also very loud. For something with so little depth the sound is shocking. 2) the webcam. Total garbage. In a laptop this expensive I t…

At least for the magsafe thing you can buy USB-C magnetic adapters like the “CONMDEX USB C Magnetic Adapter”. Doesn’t address the other major shortcomings, but it’s a small win.

Perhaps that one is ok. Bought the baseus variant and after a month it is unreliable for charging already. Never had that issue with a magsafe.
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