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New 13-inch MacBook Pro

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Re: New 13-inch MacBook Pro

#791

Post by williamdclt »

monadic2 wrote: post #779
williamdclt wrote: post #699

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…

> You can program your touchbar with something like BetterTouchTool. I just have no use for a touchbar. After all, I have a screen! I never look at my keyboard.... it’s all about tactile feedback, which the touchbar notoriously lacks.

> I just have no use for a touchbar

I find this very narrow-minded. You can't imagine a single thing that a programmable tactile interface would bring over keys (that you probably can't reliably touch-type either, fn keys are far)?

I never looked at my keyboard either. I still don't, I look at my touchbar from time to time to do things that would take me longer to do if I had to move a cursor (checking the time, my next calendar event, controlling music amongst a dozen things)

Re: New 13-inch MacBook Pro

#792

Post by [deleted] »

horsawlarway wrote: post #757
mr_custard wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Useful figures, so thanks for providing those. It's been a few months since I last looked into the latest prices. I agree with you that it's still worth it. However, I feel that without comparing the OS and tight OS integration, this doesn't represent one of the most important aspects of a comparison between the two, when considering a purchase. I go through this same loop every time I buy a new machine... yes, usual…

If you're fine paying a consistent 600 tax, just make the leap and give a reasonable xps machine running linux another chance. My work machine is a 13" macbook pro on Catalina, my personal project machine is a 15" dell xps from 2017. Of the two, I'm delighted by the XPS running Arch/Gnome/Wayland. I'm much, MUCH less delighted by the Catalina crap box.

[deleted]

Re: New 13-inch MacBook Pro

#793

Post by mekster »

boromi wrote: post #380
lostmsu wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of driver issues did you get?

I tried to return the POS but Dell wont take it back since I was a few days past their 30 day return policy. Let's not forget I had to deal with a minor fallout due to the pandemic, but their "customer service" department doesn't care about personal issues and difficulties customers have had during the last month and only profit and sales. I'm never buying Dell

There's a reason Dell produces stuff cheaply.

Re: New 13-inch MacBook Pro

#794

Post by DenisM »

bla3 wrote: post #788
DenisM wrote: post #783

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is still a problem: The three posts you provided are from 2012, 2013, and 2011. So is it really still a problem?

I still feel minor electric shocks with my 2016 MBP if I charge it with my ThinkPad power plug and touch the chassis.

Are you in Europe perchance? I have a feeling that wiring in the EU is more prone to sparks than in the US, so maybe grounding behaves differently as well, due to some sort of variation in building and wiring codes.

Re: New 13-inch MacBook Pro

#795

Post by brightball »

tolmasky wrote: post #759

I decided to switch back to the (new) MacBook Air instead. I feel that had the butterfly fiasco never happened, this generation of laptops may have just dumped the Touch Bar entirely, but instead, there were so many general keyboard complaints (escape key specifically, general Touch Bar complaints, and of course the butterfly keyboard complaints), that it is reasonable that they are trying to see if this new "reduced…

> Do "normal people" ever refresh a website?

College football fans on national signing day.

Re: New 13-inch MacBook Pro

#796

Post by mekster »

criddell wrote: post #242
alexggordon wrote: post #125

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…

One reason I'll recommend an Apple product over any PC to friends is the Apple Store. Aside from being able to see and play with the hardware, Apple's support experience is better than any PC maker's. Why doesn't Dell open a store in every neighborhood that has an Apple store? They should be able to match the Apple consumer experience, but more importantly (to Dell), they could run business support operations from th…

> Why doesn't Dell open a store in every neighborhood that has an Apple store?

How would they manage to keep any competitive pricing if they do that? They have cheap prices because they hire totally cheap support labors doing crappy support.

Re: New 13-inch MacBook Pro

#797

Post by kevindong »

Everyone whined about the touchbar and keyboard of the more recent models a lot. But personally, I was fine with them. I don't really have a preference between the non-touchbar vs. touchbar models. Same goes for butterfly vs. scissor keyboards. They were all fine for me.

My person MBP is from 2015 and I've had a 2018 and 2017 15" MBP (with touchbar/butterfly switches) for work and they've all been thoroughly acceptable.

Re: New 13-inch MacBook Pro

#798

Post by bitwize »

Jonovono wrote: post #691
MaintenanceMode wrote: post #632

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…

I could care less about the ESC key being gone (remapped that to caps lock) but I hate the touchbar so much. Half the time i'm listening music and go to pause it the bar doesn't work, or tells me it's already paused even though music is playing.

The fact that you remapped Esc to Caps Lock and don't miss the latter just indicates the non-essentiality of Caps Lock.

Guess which key Apple will remove next :)

Re: New 13-inch MacBook Pro

#799

Post by pier25 »

dividedbyzero wrote: post #767
anbop wrote: post #686

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is most heavy computer users set themselves up with a proper ergonomic setup, i.e. external keyboard. And by not building the touch bar into external keyboards, they killed the entire concept of the Touch Bar, because any "pro" application has to assume that you may or may not have a touch bar and can't put essential functionality there. Which limits the Touch Bar to proper first-class support primarily i…

I guess the actual, underlying problem is, the Touchbar is bad UX for a bunch of software engineers, but pretty great for most everyone else. Think about it – you lose some keys you never really had a use for anyway except as media keys, and you get almost analogue-ish volume and brightness controls, apps can give you context-dependent options that are really discoverable (which F-keys totally aren't) and can adapt t…

> but pretty great for most everyone else

Honestly I think most people would rather save $200-300 than have the touchbar.

If you look at the average mac user, not pros but regular office people, they use stuff like Launchpad and rarely use keyboard shortcuts. You'd be surprised how many macOS users don't even use Spotlight for instance.

Re: New 13-inch MacBook Pro

#800

Post by mekster »

twalla wrote: post #590
alexggordon wrote: post #125

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…

If Apple made a 13 inch MBP without touchbar but with 4 ports I’d buy 3 because I know they’d immediately discontinue or “improve” it.

Back then, Apple hardware only differentiated in hard disk spaces for the different prices and provided equal experience to users and now their lineup is such a mess and if you want 4 ports, you have to take 512GB space which is typically way too big and no clear distinction between Air and Pro but more like Pro is Air + all sorts of random options.

Sadly, Jobs' vision is fading out.

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