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The 2020 MacBook Air

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Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#81
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What vanity projects?

I think there are three: the golden watch, the coffee table book and the Apple Park. Although the park seems to have worked out really well in the end.

Soldering SSD to MacBook Pro motherboard. Eliminating the ability to remove it when logic board dies and retrieve data with a Simple USB adapter.

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#82

I don't see the reason to buy a such a compromised machine over a X1 Carbon or a XPS 13. No ports, crappy soldered everything, worst company for consumer rights, etc. They have nice screens I guess? And you can't deny the brand appeal of the Apple logo.

My partner has had a few airs over the years. Never once has she ever wanted to plug anything into any port, other than power. I think a lot of users are the same.

It's a very pretty facebook machine that she has never needed tech help for. I'll stick with my XPS 13 though.

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#83
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What vanity projects?

I think there are three: the golden watch, the coffee table book and the Apple Park. Although the park seems to have worked out really well in the end.

Yes, now that people have stopped smashing their faces into the glass walls. There were multiple 911 calls for head trauma in the first few weeks of moving into the office.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Apple-was-warne...

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#84

I don't see the reason to buy a such a compromised machine over a X1 Carbon or a XPS 13. No ports, crappy soldered everything, worst company for consumer rights, etc. They have nice screens I guess? And you can't deny the brand appeal of the Apple logo.

My partner has had a few airs over the years. Never once has she ever wanted to plug anything into any port, other than power. I think a lot of users are the same. It's a very pretty facebook machine that she has never needed tech help for. I'll stick with my XPS 13 though.

A very expensive and overly complicated Facebook machine.

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#85

I don't see the reason to buy a such a compromised machine over a X1 Carbon or a XPS 13. No ports, crappy soldered everything, worst company for consumer rights, etc. They have nice screens I guess? And you can't deny the brand appeal of the Apple logo.

>And you can't deny the brand appeal of the Apple logo.

I would be embarrassed if I carried one around. But my friends are tech guys, not Starbucks hipsters.

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#86
post #9

I'm not sure why Apple gets all this credit for making a reliable keyboard, something the rest of the industry figured out decades ago.

The rest of the industry…? At work we have lots of Lenovo and HP laptops and those keyboards are, IMO, clearly inferior to my MBA 2012.

People seem to like apple keyboards, and I believe that they sincerely do, but it never made any sense to me. Apple has always had average/poor ergonomics in my book, from their weirdly shaped mice to slippery phones that people keep dropping.

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#87
post #15

It's hard to take Gruber seriously anymore. I haven't seen anyone with such an obvious bias for Apple and disdain for anything non-Apple so 99% of what he writes about Apple is going to be sunshine and butterflies. If you aren't going to say anything controversial, why bother even listening to you? I'll just watch Apple's PR videos and be happy.

I like "I don't know, maybe the option to add the touchbar?"

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What vanity projects?

- Touchbar - Keyboard - Shaving off more and more millimetres off notebooks when no one was asking for at the expense of functionality - The disaster that is Apple's current approach to software design - Mice that have to be charged from the bottom - Apple pencil that can only be charged by sticking it into iPad's lightning port - Moving audio jack the the right on the laptops when 99% of world's headphones have cabl…

> 99% of world's headphones have cables coming out of the left ear

Is this number intended as a factual statement or hyperbole? I’ve only ever used headphones with cables going to both ears, to neither ear, or ones where you can plug it in on either side.

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#89
post #58

Uh no. 8GB memory is not okay. 16GB is marginal but $200 more. Can you upgrade the memory?

8GB is absolutely fine for most people, but it is an expensive upgrade.

In my experience with family members who have 8G laptops, they are not fine. Even my mother who just uses a web browser, mail.app and occasinally Photos is not fine with 8G. Her MacBook Pro regularly ground to a halt. I replaced it with a used model that was almost exactly the same except that it has 16G and now she is fine.

Re: The 2020 MacBook Air

#90

"Jony Ive was the hero long enough to become the villain" may be an overdone take at this point, but this just continues to prove it true. Ive led Apple's design org through a renaissance that lasted two decades, but it ultimately collapsed in a string of vanity projects that put a serious dent in Apple's design credibility. Maybe it was not having Jobs as a counterbalancing force that wasn't afraid to say "no;" mayb…

What vanity projects?

I think these are references to Apple's change in software design once Jony Ive became in charge of human interface design in late 2012 as well as the 2013 Mac Pro and the 2016 MacBook Pro. From a software standpoint, I've noticed a change in the quality and feel of Apple products since OS X Yosemite, and it hasn't been for the better. I found (and still find) Photos.app to be a downgrade from iPhoto, and I'm also finding less fit-and-finish in Apple's software overall, though it still remains more polished to me than Windows 10 or Linux desktops. It's a far cry from the days where Apple was obsessed with UI design, both in terms of form and faction, from the days of the early Macintosh all the way through the Snow Leopard era.

The keyboard fiasco regarding the 2016 MacBook Pro is well-known. Regarding the 2013 Mac Pro, I'm actually typing this on a 2013 Mac Pro; it's not a bad computer at all by any means, but Apple severely miscalculated this machine's capability of getting regular refreshes due to thermal issues that they admitted to in 2017. Had it been a one-off model similar to the 20th Anniversary Macintosh, then its reputation would have been better. But this miscalculation, as well as Apple's unwillingness to correct course until their announcement in 2017, meant that the Mac Pro went for six years without upgrades, an eternity in the computer industry.

All of these issues, combined with other problems that may or may not have anything to do with Jony Ive (e.g., the lack of upgrades in the Mac Mini, the lack of user-serviceability in many Mac models, the price gouging for RAM and storage upgrades at purchase time) have eroded the reputation of the Mac brand and has caused some Mac users to switch to either Hackintoshes, Windows, or Linux.

With that being said, I've been more impressed with Apple's Mac upgrades lately. While I'm still bummed that Apple didn't make a $2,999 or $3,499 entry-level 2019 Mac Pro, the $5,999 Mac Pro appears to be a solid Mac desktop, and I'm glad that Apple listened to its customers in the creative professional market who need machines like that to do their work. I'm also glad that Apple has corrected course regarding its laptop keyboards, and the 2020 MacBook Air looks like a compelling buy. I might end up buying one later this year to replace my aging 2013 MacBook Air.

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