Is there any good use of touch bar for coders?
New 13-inch MacBook Pro
391–400 of 1001 posts
Re: New 13-inch MacBook Pro
#392Earlier quoted context omitted.
I HATE the touch bar. I simply H A T E it. I hate it so much that I started to carry an TKL keyboard all the time with me just to avoid using this piece of sh*t touch bar and internal keyboard (MBP 2017). As a developer it is crucial that I can use my keyboard without any looks but as there is no way to tell which function key you press on the touch bar the bar itself is completely useless for me. Beside the butterfl…
I just purged Apple from my life largely because the touchbar continues to live on. Love my new Lenovo, btw. As a workaround for the touchbar that worked pretty well, I bought a silicon keyboard protector for the Apple Magic Keyboard, cut out the area for the function keys, and used hot glue to glue it over the touch bar. Prevented the touchbar from activating at the slightest touch and did return some of the feel of…
I admire your resourcefulness and dedication, but it hurts me that people are resorting to literally cutting and pasting hardware workarounds just to recreate what had been a standard part of computer keyboards for decades until some highly paid, well-meaning design team decided to screw with it completely unnecessarily.
Hey Apple laptop division, if you or your social-listening analysts are reading this: I hope the price inflation permitted by inclusion of the Touch Bar helped offset the lost lifetime value of the customers that it continues to repel.
Re: New 13-inch MacBook Pro
#393Re: New 13-inch MacBook Pro
#394What I find irritating is the fact that you have to get the 2ghz CPU in order to be able to get 32gb RAM. It feels like artificial price inflation because the refresh is definitely not as exciting as people had hoped (no 14" micro LED screen, like every single "leak" suggested). Also, the base CPU is an 8th gen chip, you need to fork out a lot of extra $$$ to get to 10th gen.
It's non-obvious, but the 13" MacBook Pro is actually two different computers. On the low end it has a 15W CPU, two Thunderbolt 3 ports, and a single fan, and on the high end it has a 28W CPU, four Thunderbolt 3 ports, and a dual-fan system. The low end version can only be configured with 16GB of memory, whereas the high end version can be configured with 32. It's not artificial price inflation, they're actually diff…
But of course, as is the Apple way, this is deliberately unclear. You would have no idea about this at all unless you were, at-minimum, keeping up with Intel CPU improvements (or regularly browsed Hacker News.)
Re: New 13-inch MacBook Pro
#395$1800 if you want more than 2 ports (one of which is for charging). Between this and the Touch Bar, I’ll probably get an MBA instead to replace my 2017 Pro.
If you don't mind fan noise that is. The 2020 Air has shit cooling.
I enjoy my Macbook a lot but I wonder when people will crack and not shove money into Apple's behind for "premium" machines with so many flaws.
I love my MBP but its issues make me feel like €1000 less and I'd be perfectly happy.
Re: New 13-inch MacBook Pro
#396Earlier quoted context omitted.
The day has come. Last year or so ;) Macbook, Ipad Pro, Cheap phone (Moto G / Pixel 3A) everything on my desk shares just one power brick.
There are unfortunately some devices that are nominally USB C but don't actually support the spec properly, like the Nintendo Switch. So some caution is required still.
The Switch may or may not freak out in the face of arbitrary USB-C chargers; but it's always supported Apple's USB-C chargers just fine. (I get the sense that Nintendo developed the console by relying on Apple USB-C chargers, until they made their own.)
Re: New 13-inch MacBook Pro
#397Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you coding on it? I'm a bit worried about the thermals, and whether I would get fan noise when I'm compiling or running my 3 minute test suite.
I’ll tell you a little secret: when compiling or running multi-minute test suites, or sometimes even just being in a videochat, the fans rev up, and sound like a weak hair dryer, even on the 16” MBP (which is what I currently use). The thermals on Apple laptops from the last several years don’t seem to be designed to work without frequently revving the fans way up.
Ugh, I was afraid of that. I've been clinging to my 2013 MBP, waiting for an upgrade with a bearable keyboard, and then when the 2020 MBA came along I thought I might have the ideal machine, but then I started hearing about the thermals. Was hoping the new 13 inch MBP might fit the bill instead, but it sounds like the thermals are just kinda crappy these days.
Re: New 13-inch MacBook Pro
#398I've a macbook pro 13' 2017 - It's the worst laptop I've used in the past 10 years. It continuously gets smoking hot lot of fan noise and very often kernel panics. I have lost faith in apple macbook especially when price to hardware ratio is higher than anyone else in the industry I expect the machine to just work seamlessly. I'm very soon disposing the laptop and buy a dell or a thinkpad. I'm not looking at apple ag…
My work machine is a 15" MBP and I dislike it for similar reasons. The design is just totally unsuccessful at managing the heat generated by its components.
On the other hand, my personal laptop is an Air (2019, I think) and I have no such complaints—it's very stable and only heats up when I'm putting it under heavy (relative to its power) load. It also lacks the execrable Touch Bar.
I would guess that Apple's drive toward replacing Intel's processors with their own has a lot to do with heat. Will be interesting to see how that goes, but for now it seems like their reach exceeds their grasp.
Re: New 13-inch MacBook Pro
#399To me this pricing sits too closely with the iPad Pro plus magic keyboard, which Apple has been trying to sell as good enough to be your next Computer. What’s also puzzling is that the new iPad Pro and magic keyboard combo is so heavy it’s basically a laptop.
The iPad Pro is heavier than the 2020 Macbook air, so.. yeah...
Re: New 13-inch MacBook Pro
#400I was curious how the 13 inch was priced so I compared it to a new Dell XPS 13. Dell has a better processor (maybe, [2]) , but I couldn't find the option to upgrade the Dell to 4TB internal SSD, so I compared both with the 2 TB option. Ram is the same at 32GB. Dell came out to $2399[0] USD and Apple came out to $2999[1] USD. Dell Pros: * Row of function buttons (I've used BTT to customize my touch-bar to the point wh…
Genuinely curious, have you had your MacBook Pro knocked over from the power cord since switching away from MagSafe? Lots of people complain about missing MagSafe but I’ve never seen or heard of this actually happening. I’m sure it has happened but it just doesn’t seem like a big problem. For me, just in the past month I’ve had the usb charger yanked out by the cord multiple times by people and pets tripping over it…
The very first day I had my first USB-C mac i had an incident with my standing desk that Magsafe would have saved.
These days I tend to use my laptop at my desk with external monitors, but the thing that worries me the most when I'm somewhere else is the yanking of the cable weakening the and/or reducing the reliability. I had to re-solder the power adaptor on an old Acer a few times, I don't think I've got the parts or skills (or time) to do that on a few year old Mac.