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New 13-inch MacBook Pro

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741–750 of 1001 posts

Re: New 13-inch MacBook Pro

#741

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used the touch bar for years, and frankly, it's provided me zero value whatsoever. The only thing I use it for is occasionally adjusting volume or brightness but of course I can no longer do that without looking down at what I'm manipulating. Third party apps have totally ignored it. The physical escape key is the second useful thing in the entire function row, but hey at least it's got two useful things now (an…

You can program your touchbar with something like BetterTouchTool. It's laughable that Apple ships the touchbar with such useless functionalities, but you can turn the touchbar into whatever you want, it's an amazing tool. For example, when I open iTerm I have buttons for my local development env (DB, redis, api, frontend, various microservices) color-coded by status and can start/stop them by tapping a button. You c…

Wow that sounds awesome. You can do this with just BetterTouchTool? Could you share your config?

Re: New 13-inch MacBook Pro

#743
post #715

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can program your touchbar with something like BetterTouchTool. It's laughable that Apple ships the touchbar with such useless functionalities, but you can turn the touchbar into whatever you want, it's an amazing tool. For example, when I open iTerm I have buttons for my local development env (DB, redis, api, frontend, various microservices) color-coded by status and can start/stop them by tapping a button. You c…

Nothing you describe relies on touchbar, only Fn keys

The visible status and feedback on what pressing the bar will do isn't replicatable with just Fn keys.

Re: New 13-inch MacBook Pro

#744

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...

Not in EU with a grounded plug.

Re: New 13-inch MacBook Pro

#745
post #718

Bringing back the escape key is such a admission of their original screw up. I'm glad they admitted it and reversed the design decision. But I'm still on a 2012 15" MacBook that's running strong. I normally would have updated but using my work 15" has been horrific between the dongles, the keyboard randomly dropping keys (last week "G" would not work, now it's back. The most infuriating thing about the touch bar, out…

Everyone keeps talking about vi/emacs stuff. While that was annoying, the more annoying aspect was when macOS softlocked and I was unable to hit the chord (cmd+opt+esc) to get the kill task window because the touchbar froze as well. Having a virtual ESC key in software that can be frozen, where part of your keyboard chord to kill apps includes the ESC key is really, really, stupid and caused me lots of wasted time th…

Real Vi/emac users don’t use the esc key. It’s way too far frome home row.

Re: New 13-inch MacBook Pro

#746

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I still miss mag-safe adapters though. I still don't understand that decision. With any luck the mag-safe connector will be back in a couple of years. Of course Apple will call it "new" .

If you care about it, just buy a magnetic USB-C dongle: https://www.amazon.com/usb-c-magsafe/s?k=usb+c+magsafe Returning to magsafe would be a downgrade when you can just magsafe-ify any of the ports yourself with a cheap adapter.

Not an entirely bad idea, however I t should be obvious that having an adapter hanging out the side of ya laptop is less than ideal.

Re: New 13-inch MacBook Pro

#747
post #158

Funny anecdote: Apple offers a trade-in when buying a new Macbook. I decided to have a look. I entered the serial number of my Macbook Air 11" (Late 2010). I confirmed that it boots up, has no defects, has no optical faults and that I will include the power supply. Apple offered 10€ ($12). Yay?! PS: This ancient notebook runs macOS High Sierra with the current 2020-2 security patch and sells for an astonishing 200€ o…

You'll have the same experience with CarMax if you try to trade in a vehicle that is too old, even if it is in perfect condition. It's not worth their time, but they want to be able to say they accept all trade-ins. So they offer you a flat $200 and wholesale the car for parts or scrap.

Re: New 13-inch MacBook Pro

#748
post #724

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still surprised that so many people are stuck on the Escape key but it's probably no surprise that the ones that are stuck are all developers using vi or emacs. I love the Touch Bar and had no problem adjusting/remapping and find the utility of the Touch Bar for video and audio editing to be invaluable now. I wasn't sold on it before but, over the last year or so, I'll be really disappointed if they remove it. Ad…

On the contrary, I'd say the ESC key is even more important to normal consumers than programmers compared to, say, the backtick key. I mostly use it for coming out of fullscreen for youtube, netflix etc and I'm sure most consumers don't even know what a backtick is.

You're probably right about the unpopularity of the backtick key, and it's too bad. I use cmd-` probably 1000 times every day. For me cmd-` and cmd-Tab completely obviate any need for Mission Control or any of the other 14 different mechanisms in MacOS that show you all your windows and let you click one with the mouse.

Re: New 13-inch MacBook Pro

#749
post #197

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…

After several years I can unequivocally say I still hate the touch bar. I love touch ID, but the bar needs to go. USB-C was all about standardizing. I'm still not sure how I feel about it, I did love magsafe, but I also love that in theory someday I'll have one cable to rule them all. And I'll be able to charge my headphones/laptop/phone/random device with a usb-c cable instead of needing 8 of them.

I (a) remapped escape and (b) taped a piece of cardboard over everything except the fingerprint scanner, and the touch bar works much better.

Re: New 13-inch MacBook Pro

#750

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used the touch bar for years, and frankly, it's provided me zero value whatsoever. The only thing I use it for is occasionally adjusting volume or brightness but of course I can no longer do that without looking down at what I'm manipulating. Third party apps have totally ignored it. The physical escape key is the second useful thing in the entire function row, but hey at least it's got two useful things now (an…

You can program your touchbar with something like BetterTouchTool. It's laughable that Apple ships the touchbar with such useless functionalities, but you can turn the touchbar into whatever you want, it's an amazing tool. For example, when I open iTerm I have buttons for my local development env (DB, redis, api, frontend, various microservices) color-coded by status and can start/stop them by tapping a button. You c…

I can see state indicators for various services being remotely useful. But git workflow? I have terminals open anyway and everything is easily accessible from shell using aliases and ^R etc anyway.

Is there a way to decouple touchbar from active window btw? For example if I have Skype running I'd like to have Skype's buttons on touchbar regardless of focused window. I tried using BetterTouchTool but all I found out was quite hacky ways to mimic keypresses and whatnot instead of pinning app specific UIs.

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