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Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

engadget.com

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Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#291

Post by derefr »

AJ007 wrote: post #154
basch wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am a developer. Ill bet you 99% of mac sales are NOT to developers. Despite them arguably wanting to court developers to write swift programs, their hardware sales team doesnt seem to care about developer prosumers.

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

And Mac developers don't have to use MBPs to develop Mac applications. Use an iMac( Pro) or Mac Mini at your desk. Use a Macbook Air as a portable. Neither has a touchbar.

(Heck, technically, Mac developers don't even have to use Apple products to develop Mac applications. I've done native macOS app-dev and the only thing I have that runs macOS is a Hackintosh.)

Consider also this analogy: you don't develop console games on the console itself. You develop and build them on a computer using a cross-compiler, and then push them to a dev-kit unit to test them. Same thing applies here: just because you're writing macOS software, doesn't mean you need to be using macOS. You could stand up an office EXSi server running macOS VMs to serve as a CI server and test environment, and then actually write your macOS software in VSCode on Linux, pushing it over to the server to test it. People have done this. It's no harder than, say, developing for Android.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#292

Post by ilikehurdles »

basch wrote: post #227
carlosdp wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That’s quite an assertion. I love (loved?) OS X and the hardware behind it. It’s the most polished unixy system money can buy. I don’t like the current generation of hardware, though.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#293

Post by andrei_says_ »

magduf wrote: post #85
lioeters wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in agreement with your eloquent response. The touch bar is an unacceptable gimmick for me, a solution in search of a non-existent problem (my physical escape key is doing just fine). I'm also not going to buy Bluetooth headphones, just because they decided to drop support for standard headphone jacks. The right to repair and extend my personal computer is another. It's common human decency, which apparently is no…

I really don't see the problem with any of this stuff. I like physical escape keys, I really don't want expensive Bluetooth headphones, and I like having a headphone jack on my phone. I also like being able to repair and upgrade my equipment. So what do I do? I don't buy Apple stuff. Then I read discussions like this one and chuckle at all the people griping about all these things, and then continuing to buy and use…

do you use Linux and don’t need access to let’s say Adobe software? Or do you use windows and don’t mind being actively spied on?

MacOS and Apples seemingly honest dedication to privacy are the only reason I use Apple hardware.

Apart from hackintosh type solutions I don’t see a way to have both.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#294

Post by nathan_f77 »

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.

Thanks for the recommendation! I'm still using a 2012 MBP. I think it's still fast enough and has plenty of RAM (16GB). I also replaced the battery last year. But I think it's time to upgrade to a better computer.

I tried to purchase a new MacBook Pro last week, but they refused to accept my payment for some reason (even after multiple calls to Apple support and my bank.) I'm living in Thailand so it's probably something to do with fraud prevention, but I didn't get any answers.

I think my order problem was a blessing in disguise, because I recently saw that they are releasing a much better keyboard for new MacBooks in 2019/2020. I wish they would also get rid of the touch bar and bring back the MagSafe charger, but at least there's there a better keyboard.

But now your comment (and some replies) have convinced me to start looking at a Thinkpad x1 carbon, and maybe going back to Ubuntu. I don't do too much iOS development any more, but hopefully I can still get MacOS running in a VM if I need it. I was also using Sketch quite a lot, but I've switched to Figma now (which runs in a browser.) I also saw that there's an unofficial Electron app [1]. I think I can probably do everything else I need on Linux: Chrome, Terminal, VSCode, Slack, Spotify, Skype. Looks like I can even run Line desktop app [2] (chat app used in SE Asia.) The Docker storage driver has been painfully slow on my Mac, so it would be nice to start incorporating Docker in more of my development and testing workflow.

I'm just not looking forward to all the random issues I'll need to figure out.

[1] https://github.com/ChugunovRoman/figma-linux

[2] https://askubuntu.com/a/517944/8485

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#295

Post by lbotos »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #243
basch wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've been working in Silicon Valley at tech companies for the past 15 years, and MacBook Pros have been massively dominant for the web developers, server-side developers, database developers, technical developers, and mobile developers on not only iOS but Android. None of this can be explained by "Apple provides them a toolkit and exposure." I am pretty confident that developers use OS X because, yes, they like the h…

Yes, but also, it was basically linux, which meant that it was close enough to the hosts that you were connecting to. It was a nightmare to admin Linux from Windows in the past.

I have a college aged brother, and Microsoft currently owns GitHub, and is providing the linux subsystem, which is a huge signal that "developers are welcome." His whole generation is developing on $300 Dell laptops and it's easy. Mac used to provide that, but you paid for it.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#297

Post by closetohome »

BonesJustice wrote: post #146
Eric_WVGG wrote: post #24

This thread is going to dissolve into a pile-up on the Touch Bar, so I wanna jump in front of this. Readers of this site are mostly “hackers,” however mutated or dumbed-down that term has become over the years, correct? Everyone here has their windows and spaces just so, a full complement of shortcuts and trackpad gestures, and if they're serious about the Macintosh tools like TextExpander. As standard as GUIs are, w…

I think the Touch Bar is an interesting tool with plenty of potential. My objection is that I'm forced to forego physical function keys to get it. When I'm stepping through code, I want physical keys with tactile feedback. I would be thrilled if Apple offered an alternate "developer's configuration" with a row of physical function keys and a Touch Bar above it. There is plenty if room; they'd only need to shrink the…

I think this configuration would have made the most sense as a first version of the feature in general. Let people get used to having it above the function keys, and find uses for it. If it's a well-received feature, maybe maybe at some point in the future move it down and replace the function keys.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#298

Post by ilikehurdles »

snowwrestler wrote: post #197
ravenstine wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not complaining about the drag. I'm complaining that I have to tap once to open the slider and then drag it. Whereas it was easier just to have two buttons, one for increment, and one for decrement, that I could just tap or hold down.

Just put your finger on the icon and slide it one way or the other. You don't have to wait or tap more than once. Edit for clarity: when you do this, your finger is not actually "on" the slider handle itself. The slider shows up in its usual place, which is offset from where your finger is. But the sliding still adjusts it. It's a shame that this is not intuitive or discoverable. Its much more efficient but I had to…

It sucks that it drags away my focus away from what I’m doing, and has me leave my typing position. Having a fun slider as a visual indicator when there already is a visual indicator on screen doesn’t make up for this inefficiency.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#299

Post by arthurdenture »

peterkelly wrote: post #264

I wasted two hours the other night because of the touchbar. I had turned my macbook pro's screen brightness down to complete black as I was using an external monitor only, and in a dark environment. Some time later I happened to restart my machine, and both the internal and external displays came up completely black. The touchbar displayed only "Esc", without the normal brightness control. I had to figure out from me…

Heh, be thankful you figured out the problem before taking it in for hardware repairs: https://9to5mac.com/2019/06/11/macbook-pro-problem/
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