Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

cfenollosa.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 567 posts

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

#71

Post by ubercow13 »

fuzzy2 wrote: post #36
rafamvc wrote: post #6

Wsl 2 is incredible. Got a 1000 dollars dell desktop and it is insanely faster than my Mac. Windows has improved a lot, and Linux based development on windows is a lot easier now. 5 years ago I would have quit a job if they asked me to use windows. Macos is still marginally better but not worth the cost IMHO.

Windows (the technology) is okay. Not good, but okay. Windows (the experience) degrades every day. Everything is slow even though the specs are good. Granted, corporate “additions” like O365 ATP don’t help and aren’t part of the core system. But many users have to bear with them nonetheless. And have you looked through the diagnostic data Windows sends? That cannot be turned off without hacks? They get live notificat…

>Everything is slow even though the specs are good

Have you tried running without antivirus? Some parts of Windosw are still slow eg the filesystem, but the main thing making everything slow is antivirus software IME, including Defender.

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

#72

Post by qfwfq_ »

> This situation is very annoying, especially for a touch typist as my fingers are always on hjkl and my thumb on the spacebar. This makes my thumb knuckle constantly brush the trackpad and activate it.

I thought standard touch typing position was index fingers on the notches (f & j in US QWERTY). With that & some fairly large hands, the trackpad rests comfortably outside of my palm area? the trackpad seems pretty well-designed to just miss the palm in standard position.

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

#73

Post by nanna »

HugoDaniel wrote: post #17

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…

Out of interest, what's the status of Linux support for the touch bar these days?

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

#74

Post by garmaine »

GolDDranks wrote: post #11
mister_hn wrote: post #2

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.

Coming from a 2013 Air, he probably should have picked up a 2017 Air, the latest "old-style" MacBook made by Apple.

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

#76

Post by soapdog »

tpush wrote: 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 think I'm getting six with a Surface Pro X

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

#77

Post by lkramer »

cameronbrown wrote: post #39
lkramer wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, why not simply run Linux at that point?

Because the experience is terrible for the uninitiated. And this is coming from someone who ran Arch as their primary OS since I was 10. Laptop Linux on the whole is not a fun experience for those who just want a machine to work (which was what MacBooks were supposed to be about). I just bought a Surface Laptop 3, and the machine is great. The hardware is nice, Windows on a laptop has improved tenfold since I've last…

Yeah, I guess the experience differs...

I run Ubuntu on my work Dell Latitude (i3wm), Debian on my personal System 76 (Mate) and both work more or less flawlessly, although I do agree with the guy who said Battery is not great.

I also have a Desktop with Windows and Linux dual booting, and while I agree Windows is quite polished when it works, I also find a million little annoyances.

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

#78

Post by have_faith »

leereeves wrote: post #61
have_faith wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do wonder why they don't put more effort into the camera on the MBP. Of course it's not going to get used as a camera like a phone but with the economies of scale they have with the cameras going into iPhones you would think they could at least be on par with their own phone cameras from years ago.

Many more people are using the camera on their computers now for videoconferencing. Of course the decision was made long before anyone had heard of COVID-19, but it turned out to be a bad one.

Yeah I get their reasoning. It seems to still go against their brand positioning to have such a glaring omission of quality though. I remember when they would spend money figuring out how to poke tiny holes into the side of their laptops so they could have almost invisible battery charge indicators (now gone). You're not really supposed to consider if the quality of a feature on a Mac is good enough for something, it just should be. Hopefully they will sort it out.

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

#79

Post by foldr »

rooam-dev wrote: post #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.

>as in my data be safe

You should have disk encryption turned on. I would not worry unless you think there is someone who is willing to spend an enormous amount of time and effort to access your data.

Post reply on HN