Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#221

Post by mrkstu » Tue, Jul 09, 2019, 6:33 PM UTC

davnicwil wrote: post #123

notafraudster wrote: post #39

To me the bigger news here is killing the MacBook. It's a weird product -- crazy overpriced, and with a bunch of concessions in terms of the design, but I like that it's extremely light (33% lighter than a MacBook Air) and has no fan. I had hoped never to buy another laptop with a fan again. Yes, I know performance sucks, which is why I run most of my code on a server instead of locally on my computer. I think really…

I'm a bit disappointed and surprised by this news. Agree with everything you said about the price being ridiculous and the performance being inadequate, but it was all about the form factor - what a gorgeous machine for travel-friendly computing. I always viewed it as a v0.1 of the future of their light travel-friendly laptop model, and fully expected it to receive incremental performance upgrades and eventually repl…

May be a sign laying groundwork for an ARM Mac- the 12" MacBook is the obvious target for initial replacement by an ARM variant. By not having a side-by-side Intel-ARM model Apple minimizes market competition and direct performance comparisons.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#222

Post by docker_up » Tue, Jul 09, 2019, 6:34 PM UTC

wlesieutre wrote: post #51

hu3 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still salty about the magsafe.

MagSafe was nice, but I'm a big fan of being able to use an industry standard $30 charger with 60W USB-C, 3x USB-A ports, and a removable charging cable. Having to replace a whole $80 proprietary charging brick because the cable connection frayed was a pretty shitty deal.

I have collected 4 magsafe chargers from the various companies I've worked at because when I returned my laptop or got an extra, they never asked for the chargers back. It was very convenient, but now that I'm on the 2018 USB-C one, I have to throw all of them away via e-waste because I have literally no use for them.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#223

Post by wil421 » Tue, Jul 09, 2019, 6:35 PM UTC

teamski wrote: post #183

Imagine a random manufacturer, let's say HP, was the one bringing a touchbar to their notebooks. Some press, a lot of laughter but quickly, nobody would talk anymore about them and/or buy that notebooks. With Apple, people keep on complaining OVER years. The touchbar, the prices, the crappy keyboards... the reason? IDK, maybe they are locked-in and can't move to another platform but there is only one single reason to…

Nobody really cares what Dell or HP are putting out. All eyes have been on Apple for a long time and lots of people who have never even used a Mac have a lot to say about them.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#224

Post by eridius » Tue, Jul 09, 2019, 6:35 PM UTC

cleong wrote: post #209

eridius wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a developer, the thing that excites me the most about the Touch Bar is the fact that there's a dedicated Xcode "pause" button on it when you're debugging an app in Xcode. If I were developing a macOS app that would finally be a great way of pausing in the middle of a mouse gesture or keyboard chord. But since I'm doing iOS development these days I don't actually end up using it, oh well.

That pause button is usually a function key in other keyboards.

Having it be a physical key, no matter what, can screw with trying to debug key chords in an app.

And Xcode doesn't use a function key to pause, since that would also interfere with any apps that use function keys. The default keyboard shortcut for pausing in Xcode is ⌃⌘Y, and I think you have to bring Xcode to the foreground for that to work anyway.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#225

Post by makecheck » Tue, Jul 09, 2019, 6:36 PM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #32

When the Touch Bar is discussed the discussion often turns into "is the Touch Bar useful or not?" When the crux of the whole issue is that they removed a row of keys (F- keys and escape key), because the new oversized touchpad needed to be 10mm bigger. If they had simply left all the keys, shrunk the touchpad, and added the Touch Bar above the keyboard, people who didn't like the Touch Bar would simply choose not to…

Not entirely true.

- Touch Bar clearly factors into the cost. There is simply no way it is cheaper to have this when one could have just keys.

- It adds brightness to peripheral vision. Even if you don’t use it, it is “there” as a distraction.

- It is a great way to randomly trigger events by mistake.

- This is a laptop with limited battery power, it is more efficient to have keys doing nothing than to have a touch screen.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#226

Post by robert_tweed » Tue, Jul 09, 2019, 6:36 PM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #32

When the Touch Bar is discussed the discussion often turns into "is the Touch Bar useful or not?" When the crux of the whole issue is that they removed a row of keys (F- keys and escape key), because the new oversized touchpad needed to be 10mm bigger. If they had simply left all the keys, shrunk the touchpad, and added the Touch Bar above the keyboard, people who didn't like the Touch Bar would simply choose not to…

While this is true, I am also put off by the increased attack surface of a proprietary embedded OS (watchOS) running in the touchbar, outside the control of the main OS and by extension, not under my control either.

Given how much everyone around here hates similar things like UEFI and the Intel IME (with good reason), I'm surprised this one seems to slip under the radar. Probably because everyone is much more incensed about losing necessary physical keys. Classic misdirection.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#227

Post by basch » Tue, Jul 09, 2019, 6:38 PM UTC

carlosdp wrote: post #163

AJ007 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but 99% of Apple hardware sales are dependent on Mac developers.

Yea this is one of Apple's largest advantages as a platform, they really don't want the Macbook to fall out of favor as the developer's machine of choice.

People dont use osx/ios because developers like the hardware. Developers develop for osx/ios because apple provides them a toolkit and lots of potential customers, and exposure through the appstore.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#228

Post by scarface74 » Tue, Jul 09, 2019, 6:38 PM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #142

mirthflat83 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The writing was on the wall. I doubt anyone was buying the Macbook. Still, the 12 inch Macbook is one of my favorite devices that Apple has ever made. It’s unbelievably light and portable and people will have no idea what this means until they actually hold it because no other laptop has this kind of lightness/portability. This and the fanless part are the major reasons I bought it and I think the price is justified…

> I doubt anyone was buying the Macbook. Only because it was out of date, probably. Aside from its specs it served the market of "thin and light computers that are easy to take around" just fine.

The same market that the iPad Pro’s are starting to serve.....

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#229

Post by snazz » Tue, Jul 09, 2019, 6:39 PM UTC

redisman wrote: post #157

ngngngng wrote: post #6

Disclaimer: I like the touchbar. I swapped escape and caps lock, installed Pock, and never looked back. This is my last MacBook. Xubuntu on a Thinkpad x1 carbon works great for everything I do, at a fraction of the price, with a keyboard the doesn't stop working with dust, and with more than just USB-C.

Do people use Hackintoshes on other laptops or is that still an exercise in frustration? The main reason at this point I still use MBP's (apart from employers buying them) is macOS.

Check out other people’s successes on r/hackintosh and use that to influence your purchases. You might need to replace WiFi cards or other specific components but following the subreddit’s Vanilla guides worked really well for me last week on a desktop. I see lots of brands of laptops that it works on too.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#230

Post by barefoot » Tue, Jul 09, 2019, 6:39 PM UTC

I’m a developer and love the Touch Bar. I’ve never had a problem pressing the escape key and I use VIM and other applications that make use of it on a regular basis.

While I’m not a fan of replacing physical controls with touch-sensitive counterparts in safety-critical settings like cars and airplanes I think the Touch Bar is a significantly underrated improvement that I use and enjoy constantly.

I wonder how many other users feel the same way but never comment?