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New MacBook Air

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Re: New MacBook Air

#211
post #81

- Quad core processor - Scissor keys - No touch bar MacBook Air, the new MacBook for Pros.

I honestly never understood the hate for the touchbar. It allows me to be much more granular with volume and brightness, and I never really used F-keys anyway.

I appreciate the touchbar every day (esp. with bettertouchtool) but the soft escape is horrendous as it's used in so many of my workflows and isn't 100% responsive and doesn't give any tactile feedback.

Re: New MacBook Air

#213

Good. I'm hoping this will hurry along Dell's new XPS 13 Developer Edition configs with 32 GB of mem, 1080 display (I prefer battery over 4K) and linux. I have been itching to throw money at Dell since that was announced in January and here we are. Granted, the pandemic obviously hit their supply chain so I can understand.

Not sure if it fits your requirements, but i've been very happy with my System76 Darter Pro with those stats.

Re: New MacBook Air

#214

After using the latest Macbook Pro 13" for over a year I have recently had my 2015 Macbook Pro 13" repaired. Both are max specs. It was a $600 bill, but it has been so worth it. The keyboard just works, it doesn't run hot and the fan doesn't blast under the slightest load, the performance is much better, the battery lasts longer and the external screen + keyboard and mouse are detected every single time without havin…

I'm in a similar position, bought a 2019 13" Pro. I've got to say, I'm really happy with my 2020 Thinkpad Carbon X1 and won't be looking to upgrade again for a long time.

Re: New MacBook Air

#215
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except - 16GB RAM Can you even run Eclipse with just 16GB?!

Exactly. I'm deciding between 32GB or even 64Gb, just to be on the safe side. Because nowadays you're running Slack, Spotify, several messengers, Firefox, Chrome, IntelliJ, Docker and Kubernetes on your local machine.

Which is kind of horrifying, if you stop and think about it. You're wondering whether you need another 32G of RAM to run a basic working environment, a glorified text editor, and some communications software. I used a BBC that could do that in 32K of RAM in the 1980s! Obviously I'm not really suggesting the functionality today is equivalent, but the idea that ultimately you're meeting the same basic needs yet it now takes a million times as much space is... unsettling.

Re: New MacBook Air

#217

Anybody know what's the cheapest setup you could get away with for iOS/xcode development? Would it be a (used) Macbook Air, or can you not really run xcode effectively on them?

Mac mini with at least a 2K external display.

Re: New MacBook Air

#218
post #19

The refined scissor mechanism with 1 mm of travel delivers a responsive, comfortable, and quiet typing experience. The inverted-T arrow keys help you fly through lines of code, spreadsheets, or game environments. This isn't progress. This is the baseline. Apple have gone from bad to OK, and they're celebrating as though they've achieved something amazing.

Ok. How should they communicate this? "We've gone back to where we were three years ago after a mistake, sorry." I don't understand what the issue is with Apple trying to sell their products. It sounds like people here are upset that marketing and sales exists, and that they use language to try to make their products seem impressive, and that consumers aren't rational when it comes to buying things.

> "We've gone back to where we were three years ago after a mistake, sorry."

Yep this is the right move, and as someone else says, this would be worthy of respect.

I think we've all just about had it with corporate bullshit -- and to be sure that says more about this moment in time than anything else.

Apple is consistently guilty of blowing smoke up our collective asses. It would be nice if they could give it a rest and simply be honest. But here we are.

Re: New MacBook Air

#219
post #192

I'm still using a 2015 MacBook Pro that I'm clinging to, despite the screen having developed an annoying flicker every few minutes. I know 4 others in my office with Apple laptops, and they're all 2015 MBPs because until now, nothing else has been acceptable. This seems to be like an answer to the "Can we just have the 2015 MBP with updated hardware?" question. Pending benchmarks, this could be the light at the end o…

I love my 16" MBP, aside from the dongles situation (though I rarely need peripherals at all). It has the same keyboard mentioned here; feels great to me. The Touch Bar doesn't really bother me.

Recently upgraded from my 2015 15 inch MBP to the new 16 inch MBP (32 gigs of ram). Overall it big upgrade - the higher resolution and bigger screen are awesome, and my XCode builds are compiling faster. That being said, I hate the touchbar for a few reasons - Having to look at the keyboard to change volume is not an upgrade in user experience - The touchbar freezes for me once a week or so and I have to go to the command line to kill the process - The icons don't make any sense - (xcode dustcan anyone)?

Also, maybe its because I am a rock climber and my skin gets roughed up, but the finger print sensor has never worked for me on any apple products and its a waste of space. All and all though, the faster computer and bigger screen is worth it for me.

Re: New MacBook Air

#220
post #81

- Quad core processor - Scissor keys - No touch bar MacBook Air, the new MacBook for Pros.

I honestly never understood the hate for the touchbar. It allows me to be much more granular with volume and brightness, and I never really used F-keys anyway.

Volume adjustment is actually a great example of why I hate the touchbar.

- I can't adjust the volume without looking at it. Because the touchbar is flat with no haptic feedback when I land on a button, it's hard to remember the exact position of the volume 'button' without looking. Sounds trivial - but combined with point 2....

- The way the volume control expands - it actually moves the 'volume down' button AWAY from your finger, which again requires me to keep looking at the control.

This means that when a loud song comes on, it can take 2-3 seconds to quickly turn the volume down in total. I could do that with one single keypress in half a second or less on a keyboard, without needing to look at the keyboard.

That can also be the difference between missing a key detail from a quiet speaker on a Hangout.

Flashy, but it's a terrible user experience by every metric other than looks, I guess.

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