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MacBook Pro Keyboard Drives Me Crazy

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Re: MacBook Pro Keyboard Drives Me Crazy

#211

Post by halotrope »

dpedu wrote: post #28
therein wrote: post #10

> If Apple releases their new Macs with an identical keyboard, then I'm ditching Macs and will pick up a Microsoft Surface Book or something similar. Whatever it is, I'll make sure to pick a laptop that has a god damned functional keyboard. Same here, MBP keyboards are unbearable. Trying to develop on OSX has become a hassle. Gotta jump through hoops to get gdb to work. Windows with WSL on a Surface Book feels extrem…

The Surface Book 2's (the model I own) keyboard is probably one of the best laptop keyboard on the market today. Proper key travel and spacing and it's even backlit. I particularly like that they volume controls are on F1-F3 since they plus the Fn key can be operated single-handedly. I just wish it ran Linux better - I find Windows unusable.

I just installed Ubuntu on mine and after updating the kernel with surface drivers[1] It works surprisingly well (Touch works, detach clipboard, nvidia-gpu, function keys). Its really a great linux machine tbh 1 https://github.com/jakeday/linux-surface

Re: MacBook Pro Keyboard Drives Me Crazy

#212

Post by halotrope »

jasonhansel wrote: post #122
therein wrote: post #10

> If Apple releases their new Macs with an identical keyboard, then I'm ditching Macs and will pick up a Microsoft Surface Book or something similar. Whatever it is, I'll make sure to pick a laptop that has a god damned functional keyboard. Same here, MBP keyboards are unbearable. Trying to develop on OSX has become a hassle. Gotta jump through hoops to get gdb to work. Windows with WSL on a Surface Book feels extrem…

Switch to Linux! (Yes, I know I'm one of those people.)

Just did. For work it is unbeatable. GUI is not annoying anymore

Re: MacBook Pro Keyboard Drives Me Crazy

#214

Post by bdcravens »

Wingman4l7 wrote: post #76
tolmasky wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great, will they be offering free trade-ins? These are $2000 computers that have a major broken component. Not to mention, the second a computer comes on sale that doesn't have this issue, the resale value of the current MacBooks will be disproportionately affected compared to previous revisions. So a nice double whammy: a miserable experience during its use, and an unusually small resale value afterwards.

This is a company that renders many of its perfectly working phones and tablets virtually worthless via centralized cloud account locking that is easily forgotten and left on. I doubt they care about resale value.

When you reset an iPhone or iPad it always prompts you for the iCloud password to remove the lock. eBay also gives you the same reminder. The only way you're selling iCloud locked devices is if you're usually too lazy to reset or it's a stolen device. (Though other situations happen - I recently sold some iPhones for my wife's family, which belonged to someone who died of Alzheimers)

Re: MacBook Pro Keyboard Drives Me Crazy

#215

Post by b3b0p »

zmmmmm wrote: post #35

The worst thing is, the 2015 MBP keyboard was nearly perfect. The vast majority of the time I don't even use an external keyboard even when I am working at a desk and am plugged into monitor. It's one thing to fail at designing something because it is hard and you haven't figured it out yet. It's quite another to regress to incompetence on something you already perfected.

Can't agree.

Coming from a Thinkpad (the standard for what makes a great keyboard), PowerBook Titanium (keyboard was bad, but nothing like the 2016/17 MacBook Pro), PowerBook 12 / 17 (my favorite), and the first MacBook Pro (still pretty great) everything starting with the unibody has been downhill. Ever since, the keyboard and I believe battery even have not been user replaceable. There was a time one could walk into an Apple Store and actually purchase the battery in a box off the shelf, take it to the counter and buy it like any other product.

I have a 2017 and 2018 15 inch MacBook Pro. The 2017 is almost unusable. The 2018 is much better relatively. I also had a 2015 13 inch. Can't say the keyboard was great on that either.

I've been tempted to try retrofit a 12 inch PowerBook with more modern parts like the devoted Thinkpad users have done.

Re: MacBook Pro Keyboard Drives Me Crazy

#217

Post by wlesieutre »

julien_c wrote: post #191
judge2020 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

~~Deploying and debugging iOS apps is still not available via wi-fi I believe.~~ Edit: added xcode 9.

Yes it is

You have to plug it in once to enable this, so you still need a dongle or cable.

I'm all aboard the USB-C train though, if only Apple would switch the rest of their lightning stuff over.

Since that's not happening, here's hoping that this year's iPhones finally ship with a USB-C charger and USB-C to Lightning cable in the box.

Re: MacBook Pro Keyboard Drives Me Crazy

#218

Post by ak217 »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #194
iamleppert wrote: post #12

I switched to a Thinkpad after I had the horror of using a new Macbook. Running Ubuntu is lovely, so much so that for a developer there is little reason to be using a Macbook anymore. You can get a lot more bang for the buck using a Thinkpad AND have a functional keyboard. Apple should be very worried. Once they loose the developers, users won't be long to follow.

How's the touchpad? That's literally my biggest hold up. I haven't seen anything that holds a candle to Mac's touchpads yet.

Not OP but the trackpad on the Thinkpad X1/P1 is still not good compared to the MBP. It's small (much smaller than the 2015 MBP). Because it has a hinge, you have to either turn on tap-to-click (which has poor palm rejection) or further cut the area where you can click to the bottom half (and deal with variable click strain/travel).

I've heard that Dell makes better trackpads nowadays, but I haven't tried one to verify yet. Regardless, I believe it still has a hinge, so hardware wise I do think the force touch trackpad (and its driver) is still MBP's biggest moat.

Re: MacBook Pro Keyboard Drives Me Crazy

#219

Post by ztjio »

pkamb wrote: post #192
msbarnett wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh. That’s an incredibly high end reference monitor targeted at a niche set of high end video producers that already overwhelmingly prefer to rack mount their reference monitors. Most of the target market doesn’t need or want that stand.

Most of the should-be-targeted market just wants a $1500 retina display.

LG sells a perfectly good one for $1299 that Apple also sells in their stores. They are very good displays.

Re: MacBook Pro Keyboard Drives Me Crazy

#220

Post by kalleboo »

_coveredInBees wrote: post #136
p1necone wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, as someone who's primarily used Windows (and a bit of Linux with xfce) for my entire life I find Macs basically unusable (seriously how do I browse the file system). I think it's more of a question of familiarity than anything else.

I hear you about Finder. Windows File explorer seems a lot easier and more feature rich compared to Finder. The single most annoying thing is that there is no easy/ obvious way to grab the path to a file/folder in Finder, which seems like the most basic of features. I did figure out a keyboard shortcut at some point, but Finder feels so dated as a file manager.

As a life-long Mac user, I feel the opposite. Whenever I have to use Windows, it feels like Windows Explorer is missing lots of features I take for granted, some that the Mac has had since the 90's. Stuff like spring-loaded drag and drop, directory sizes being calculated in list views, QuickLook... It also has some really braindead design choices like sorting directories separate from files, making navigating with the keyboard a pain (and last I checked, this can't even be turned off!)

To me Windows Explorer feels like it hasn't been updated with modern features since XP, aside from adding the ribbon

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