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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

#321

Post by erikpukinskis »

snowwrestler wrote: post #255
erikpukinskis wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It just occurred to me that the situation with the Touch Bar is similar to what Apple has done with 3D Touch... it seems like Apple is making a bet that more complicated input devices are better, which is a total about face from their past positions. Notably the 1-button mouse, and the original buttonless iPhone. I think it's a bad call. To me, these input devices create a lot of confusion for very little benefit. I…

> it seems like Apple is making a bet that more complicated input devices are better, which is a total about face from their past positions. Swapping hardware buttons for touchscreen controls has been a huge success for Apple for over a decade, with the iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, even the Apple Watch. The Touchbar is just another step down that path. It's arguable whether a fixed set of hardware "F" buttons are more u…

> Swapping hardware buttons for touchscreen controls has been a huge success for Apple for over a decade, with the iPhone

They didn't swap in this case though, they added. Equivalent to the touchscreen + keyboard phones of yore.

In terms of degrees of freedom, the touchbar adds a lot. It's not a simple swap. The iPhone input system has fewer degrees of freedom than a blackberry did.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#323

Post by chisleu »

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…

I'm addicted to CMD+C/CMD+V.

I've tried making it happen in Linuxes and windows, but always with failures in one app or another, or having to configure each individual application I use independently.

The keyboard is the reason I love mac for running my Linux clusters. If I didn't have that, I would have the fantastic UX features like instant scrolling. Scrolling anywhere else is a choppy and laggy nightmare for me.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#324

Post by moksly »

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…

I just finished selling my MBP to a refurbishing company because I got so sick of the keyboard and touchbar. OS/X isn’t really the advantage it used to be either with Ubuntu becoming actually tolerable and Microsoft doing WLS.

At least the resale value of the MBP is something no other hardware can really compete with. I mean, I know I kind of cheated by buying on a students discount for a diploma course I was taking on the side at the university. But I managed to get 80% of what I originally spent on a 8 month old machine, and I most certainly won’t be able to do with whatever I replace it with.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#325

Post by mirthflat83 »

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.

Nope, a lot of people think it’s obsolete because of the Macbook Air. Larger screen, similar thickness, and a more powerful processor. They would still think so even if the 12” Macbook had an upgrade.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#327

Post by nathan_f77 »

snek wrote: post #92
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.

I just got an x1 extreme, and although it takes a bit more fiddling than an x1 carbon to get running with Linux, it's an amazing experience after my macbook air. Hackers, if you want to move away from the mac ecosystem, take a look at thinkpads running linux.

I was wondering if you could please provide some more details about the fiddling? Were you having issues with the graphics card, audio, sleep mode, etc.?

It looks like a great laptop, and I'm tempted to get one instead of a new MacBook. But it might also be dangerous to get the latest model if Linux devs haven't had time to support it yet.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#328

Post by darod »

docker_up wrote: post #222
wlesieutre wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

there exist magsafe to usb3 converters.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#329

Post by saagarjha »

mirthflat83 wrote: post #325
saagarjha wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Nope, a lot of people think it’s obsolete because of the Macbook Air. Larger screen, similar thickness, and a more powerful processor. They would still think so even if the 12” Macbook had an upgrade.

Not everyone thinks that a larger screen is an upgrade.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#330

Post by kkylin »

tbolt wrote: post #308
kkylin wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I blame this mostly on Apple's human interface guidelines: https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline... Scroll down to "Design Considerations": "Use the Touch Bar as an extension of the keyboard and trackpad, not as a display." But what I really want is for the touch bar to be a display and input device for things normally elsewhere: time, date, maybe CPU usage, etc. This to me is not a hardware pr…

Checkout Pock - https://pock.dev

This looks really cool. Thanks!
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