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New 13-inch MacBook Pro

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Re: New 13-inch MacBook Pro

#431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently switched from an Air to an XPS 15 9570. I was very excited, it seemed to have all the best qualities of a MacBook, minus the shotty keyboard, and superior performance per dollar (at the time). Things went downhill rather quickly. I've had massive cooling issues, I've removed and replaced the thermal paste. I've been forced to operate the laptop on the "Cool" thermal setting; downgrading the performance of…

that was my experience as well before returning xps and getting a new macbook. on any intensive work it would get so hot that i could not rest my hands on it.

I had an old XPS13, and eagerly ordered the XPS15 9570 fully loaded the moment it was available in the UK.

What followed was a year of fan noise, thermal throttling, GPU switching problems and many hours lost trying to get the right combination of Ubutunu + Nvida drivers working.

So when my house was burgled and that machine got stolen, I went back to the XPS13 form factor. Smaller, lighter, longer battery life, quieter. Only disadvantage being the max of 16GB RAM.

Once the XPS13 finally arrives with 32GB RAM I may well upgrade again.

The new MacBook Pro may tempt me, but I am certainly not giving up proper function keys.

Re: New 13-inch MacBook Pro

#432

Earlier 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…

Wow, is there no software setting to simply disable the touchbar inputs?

Re: New 13-inch MacBook Pro

#433

Earlier 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.

I'm charging my Switch with random cables just fine? I've heard that the issue was only with third party docks, not with USB-C cables.

Re: New 13-inch MacBook Pro

#434
post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve always found the 13” Pros to be the “worst of both worlds” compromise. You don’t get the svelte lightness of the Air, or the generous desktop or raw power of the big boy. Whatever your priority is, it’s just not there. A 14” screen would have at least differentiated the product. I think a lot of these are bought by corporate bean counters and people who assume that Airs must be awful if they’re the most affordab…

Having used a '15 (I think) 13" Pro for two internships, I actually found it met my needs really well. I personally can't stand any 14"+ laptop, so the 13" Pro hit a great spot for me of being: * Svelte enough to watch Netflix in bed with or throw in my bag to take on a commute * Powerful enough that I never had major performance issues when plugged in at my desk at work, driving an external monitor I look back on th…

right, but have you used the Air? It's much nicer for similar performance.

Re: New 13-inch MacBook Pro

#435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is still behind Lenovo. They don't have the TrackPoint, only glossy screens, not even 16:9, no Linux support, only one battery instead of two replacable ones, and so on.

I no longer care about removable batteries. I finally recycled my 2011 MacBook Air late last year, after 8 years of hard service doing development work on the go. The battery had half of what it once had, but the CPU and Ram could no longer keep up. Removable batteries were more important back when batteries sucked, now they last the life of the machine.

This is just a matter of usage. MacBook Pro batteries have never lasted me more than ~3 years before signficant degredation (usually marked by swelling, needing replacement to avoid having the touchpad eject from the machine), and that number held from pre-unibody to post-retina. As an anecdote, the later generations seemed to degrade faster than the earlier ones.

Serviceable batteries are very important.

Re: New 13-inch MacBook Pro

#436
post #84

A little disappointed it’s not the rumoured 14” model as I’ve been looking to replace both my 15” and 13” MacBooks. Also, regarding other comments on “just” the 4 core CPU - it’s probably all they could squeeze in without having to redesign the chassis/thermal design. I’m going to hold off for a tear down to see if they have improved the cooling system like they did (Or claimed to) with the 16” version.

I’ve always found the 13” Pros to be the “worst of both worlds” compromise. You don’t get the svelte lightness of the Air, or the generous desktop or raw power of the big boy. Whatever your priority is, it’s just not there. A 14” screen would have at least differentiated the product. I think a lot of these are bought by corporate bean counters and people who assume that Airs must be awful if they’re the most affordab…

> You don’t get the svelte lightness of the Air

The Pro is barely any thicker and barely any heavier.

Re: New 13-inch MacBook Pro

#437
post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The good thing about USB-C chargers, if you break the cable you can just buy a new one. No soldering necessary. I chew through a lot of MagSafe charges in the past few years. I fixed most of them, but you can't disassemble them without damaging it.

EDIT: If you talking about the connector inside your laptop, that is a different story.

Re: New 13-inch MacBook Pro

#438
>Magic Keyboard also features a physical Escape key

Physical escape is what we all need right now, but like people with pre-Magic Keyboard touch bars, we're all going to have to settle for mental Escape for a while.

Re: New 13-inch MacBook Pro

#439

I 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…

The real news is that you can get 32gb RAM and 4TB SSD in a 13-inch form factor

Sometimes its not really about the price, its about "can you?".

I'm glad Apple (and Dell) is addressing the market, alongside the improvements in the technology in their supply chain.

There have definitely been some years where I have been pretty sure something was possible but everyone was holding out for another year because a processor came out too late, or some totally antitrust violating agreement, or milking consumers, all while we just had to assume there were some quality control or battery life issue.

I am glad to know this is going to be generally available.

Re: New 13-inch MacBook Pro

#440

I 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…

The macbook still electrocutes you when it's plugged in since the grounding is all fucked up.

This is still a problem: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3969131

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macbook-pro-giving-me-e...

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/10545/is-it-bad-th...

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