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Seven years later, I bought a new MacBook. For the first time, I don't love it

cfenollosa.com

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Re: Seven years later, I bought a new MacBook. For the first time, I don't love it

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A huge number of small annoyances during "normal" usage of a computer. Issues with sleep, displays, hi DPI, even my wallpaper and fonts don't always display correctly...

Just don't buy "Windows certified" laptops... Upd: why downvotes? My Librem 15 and Lenovo T400 both work flawlessly for many years. They are designed for GNU/Linux.

I had Lenovo T530 and it worked OK, but with half the battery life. Then I had XPS 15 and I got it working after a lot of fiddling, but with a third of battery life and with hidpi issues on wake up.

The battery thing is really a killer for me.

Re: Seven years later, I bought a new MacBook. For the first time, I don't love it

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's harsh but I agree with those points, Windows is still a consumer oriented operating system at its core, which has a lot of undesirable features for a developer.

Like ? You probably should be using a windows pro install and not one with crapware from the manufacturer

Until a feature update ago, I was quite disappointed with Win10 as a dev platform. I'm running Win 10 Pro. Especially Windows Update was just plain intolerable.

However some time the past months I realized I don't think about Windows much... which means it's no longer constantly annoying me.

There are still stupid things, like Apps display language not being tied to the OS display language setting (wtf?!), but I can live with that. On a day to day basis my machine stays on, is performant, and does what I ask it to.

Re: Seven years later, I bought a new MacBook. For the first time, I don't love it

#53

why don't you return it back then and buy something better? Isn't there a money-back guarantee for the first X days?

The problem is that there isn't anything better. The author said that he hates using Windows and his experimentation with Linux wasn't an entire success. That limits him to Macs. The 2016-2018 models were a disaster. The only reasonable choice left is the choice he made.

[deleted]

Re: Seven years later, I bought a new MacBook. For the first time, I don't love it

#54
post #49
post #37

"8-9 hours with all apps closed except Safari. Browsing lightly, with an occasional video, and brightness at the literal minimum. This brightness level is only realistic if it's night time. In a normally lit environment you need to set the brightness level at around 50%." "When I push the laptop a bit more, with a few Docker containers, Pycharm running, Google Chrome with some Docs opened, and brightness near the max…

I have an xps 13 bought 5 years ago. I'm getting also around 8-9 hours of browsing time if I occasionally open YouTube. Quite more if I only code and don't spawn docker apps like databases. Spoiler, I use Xubuntu with CPU frequency set to power save but again, I've used this laptop massively during around 5 years already.

My four year old XPS lasts an entire 10 minutes on battery doing nothing at all.

Though when I got it, it very easily lasted the entire day, even if watching videos and such.

Re: Seven years later, I bought a new MacBook. For the first time, I don't love it

#55

I have the new 16 MBP and love the touch bar. I find it much easier to change brightness/sound (place the finger and drag); I find it much easier to control apps, like music, safari, and all, and the habituation period was shorter than with the keys back in the day (when i started using macs). I would love to be able to easily customize the touch bar though, the author mentions BetterTouchTool, looks good, might be w…

Changing music on Spotify doesn't work for me 80% of the time. Physical keyboard worked 100% of the time.

I hate the touchpad greatly. 0 benefits to me but tons of annoyances. I keep touching random buttons I never intended. I cannot press the correct button without looking (used to put volume to really low in bed)

Re: Seven years later, I bought a new MacBook. For the first time, I don't love it

#56
My biggest concern/blocker is the soldered storage.

1st - if it fails during warranty, how do I send it for repair safely (as in my data be safe)?

2nd - it decreases its value imho. I mean how many people buy/trust used storage? I wouldn't.

Re: Seven years later, I bought a new MacBook. For the first time, I don't love it

#57

mbp2020 - https://cfenollosa.com/blog/img/cam-mbp.jpg air2013 - https://cfenollosa.com/blog/img/cam-mba.jpg iphonese2016 - https://cfenollosa.com/blog/img/cam-se.jpg Perfect illustration of "Apple is iphone-first company".

Please don't post pictures of myself into a third party website :)

Can you please remove the imgur post?

Fixed the broken link: https://cfenollosa.com/blog/img/cam-se.jpg

Re: Seven years later, I bought a new MacBook. For the first time, I don't love it

#58

I have the new 16 MBP and love the touch bar. I find it much easier to change brightness/sound (place the finger and drag); I find it much easier to control apps, like music, safari, and all, and the habituation period was shorter than with the keys back in the day (when i started using macs). I would love to be able to easily customize the touch bar though, the author mentions BetterTouchTool, looks good, might be w…

If Apple had two versions of their laptops, one with the touch bar and one without, I feel pretty confident that the version with the standard F-keys would outsell the touch bar.

I mentioned this before, but the real proof that the touch bar isn't for professionals is that you can't buy an Apple keyboard with the touch bar. Local labor laws require that I have a "external" keyboard when working at my desk, so the touch bar is pretty worthless, unless it was available on the standard alone keyboards as well, and it's not.

Personally I prefer the old keyboard because I find it easier to change volume and brightness using a key and not a slider, but that's personal preference.

Re: Seven years later, I bought a new MacBook. For the first time, I don't love it

#59
>it's impossible to get a terminal screen without anti-aliasing. My favorite font, IBM VGA8, is unreadable when anti aliased

You could try scaling your favourite bitmap font 2-3x up - I did this with mine when switching to a 4k laptop. Unless this means that terminals no longer support bitmap fonts at all.

Re: Seven years later, I bought a new MacBook. For the first time, I don't love it

#60
Not a laptop but I just wanted to add that the latest Mac Mini does a decent job. Also, not being a laptop forces me to avoid work while sitting in a cafe or when going out on a short trip. I mostly do backend work with some front-end work mixed in lately, but no graphical-intensive stuff.
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