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

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

#261

Post by toxican »

Foivos wrote: post #169
paulcarroty wrote: post #12

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".

A lot of it has to do with how laptop web cams work in general and it is not only Apple's problem [1]. A way to improve this situation a bit would be to be able to use the camera of an iPhone as a web cam, either over USB or wifi. You still have the compression and USB transfer, but at least you use the better optics of the phone. There are third party tools, such as EpocCam, that can do it, but require the installat…

I'd actually never encountered the "Take photo" option before. That's pretty nifty.

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

#262

Post by Cthulhu_ »

panpanna wrote: post #134
fuzzy2 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporate IT says no. :) I don’t know what’s wrong with my work PC. Home PC also has Windows (because games) and is super fast (even with Defender, but without ATP).

From own experience this is 99% corporate shenanigans. You should have a serious talk with your IT department. Sometimes they are not aware how much garbage they are throwing at people through Active Directory. In my experience, the best way around such issues is to force IT to dogfood their own system instead of having special laptops for IT employees.

For the IT department it's a tradeoff though; they'd rather have everyone be inconvenienced or their hardware not working at 100% than to risk a virus wreaking havoc on their networks, or ransomware crippling their whole organization. Even without the restricted Windows machines they struggle with enough shit already, because people can't behave on company hardware on the one hand, and every employee is a target.

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

#263

Post by rednum »

lostlogin wrote: post #257
rednum wrote: post #217

I did switch from 2012 Macbook Air to 2019 Macbook Pro a few weeks ago and I can't agree more with the article. One of the reasons I'm using Mac instead of Linux is that I make music. And the new Macbook sucks for this purpose: the same recording settings I used on my old laptop are not usable on the new one. 90% of time things work fine, but sometimes I get glitches and pops in the middle of the recording. Why? Who…

Could this all be dongle related? So much bad seems to get introduced by dongles and I have spent so much time debugging crazy issues that have been due to USB C dongles. Mine have almost all been monitor related, but at this stage there is almost nothing that I would be surprised to see fixed by switching/removing a dongle.

By dongles you mean just hubs or also adapters? Unfortunately, I also want to record vocals or external instruments for which I need a MIDI interface (which uses USB A); and I don't think you can buy USB C midi keyboard yet (actually Roli Block has USB C but I don't like it much and 95% of time I'd rather use normal keyboard). Is there particular dongle you can recommend? (By the way, my Focursite interface does not work with "quality" Aukey hub that I bought, I'm using some noname dongle for that).

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

#264

Post by efficax »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #255
modernerd wrote: post #123

The XPS 17 will be my next “MacBook”. It should be out this month and it ticks all the boxes for me (great screen, supposedly good cooling, user-replaceable SSD/RAM, acceptable weight and size for a 17" laptop). https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/13/21257006/dell-xps-17-15-r... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyRUWM_LOPQ I've been trying Windows again after ~20 years on Macs (via a borrowed Lenovo Carbon X1 and then a s…

Once there's a terminal emulator for Windows that works as seamlessly as iterm and there's no more weird hacks required like Cygwin / minTTY (I believe the windows subsystem for linux does that) I might start to consider moving; most software I use for development is cross-platform anyway (vs code, intellij, nodejs, go). But for now my 2017 macbook works well enough. I do think it's overpaid though; outside of the oc…

https://github.com/microsoft/terminal

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

#265

Post by Symbiote »

rcarmo wrote: post #216
mrweasel wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Denmark, among others I assume. Using your laptop, without external monitor and keyboard is only allowed as an exception, even when working from home, and only for a short period of time. You can use the laptop monitor as a secondary display. It's a pretty good law, which forces employers to provide you with an ergonomically sound work environment. You're also required to have a height adjustable desk and chair... an…

Honest question: How does that work for remote? I do have a home office with a window, chair and whatnot, but many of my colleagues don't.

One option was to ban working from home, which was my employer's official stance.

On 13 March, we took from the office anything we needed (monitors, keyboards, mice, desk chairs). No-one said they didn't have a desk, so I don't know how we would have handled that.

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

#266

Post by vorpalhex »

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…

When I first got the touch bar, I hated it with a passion. Now I actually like it, and in some apps it's better.

I think the biggest issue is the mis-aligned defaults and lack of training on it. Things like knowing you can slide to adjust volume and brightness from the buttons (which is entirely non-obvious) and the ability to control it a bit better were big game changers for me.

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

#267

Post by mikelward »

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.

I'm still using a 2012 Lenovo laptop because I could upgrade its disk and RAM, and replace its battery. Otherwise I'd have had to buy a new laptop years ago.

Disappointing that most Lenovo laptops now have soldered RAM but you can only get up to 16 GiB.

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

#268

Post by dnh44 »

bootlooped wrote: post #148
GekkePrutser wrote: post #82

This blog seems to be down. Yeah I can't deal with the new keyboards myself. Especially the butterfly ones, but even the new redesigned ones are too thin for me. Edit: Lol, the page works again and the keyboard is the one thing he does like :) I can't imagine this but I did notice the new keyboards are highly polarising. Some people love them, some hate them (like me). I really love the keyboards on the thicker think…

I have always been in disbelief of people who have to type for a living and also like Mac keyboards. It's like somebody told the designers "make it as close to a flat sheet of aluminum as you possibly can". I'll give it that it looks clean and elegant, but the actual tactile experience is garbage.

I’ve been using a 12 inch MacBook for the last four years and it’s got one of the keyboards that no one seems to like.

However if I hadn’t read it here I wouldn’t have thought there was anything wrong with it and most of my job involves typing.

In fact I think the keyboard is quite great. I do type quite softly and quietly though. For me using other keyboards feels like walking in sand and that my fingers have to work a lot harder.

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

#269

Post by aembleton »

lostlogin wrote: post #237
Gracana wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As others have said, that's not it. It's the line filter capacitors in the power supply. There's two types: X capacitors which filter differential noise (between line and neutral) and Y capacitors which filter common mode noise (between line and chassis.) Some small AC current (microamps) will pass through the Y capacitor to the chassis. If the chassis is ungrounded, you may be able to feel the current when you touch…

> you may be able to feel the current when you touch it. Are there people who can’t feel it? It really is gross and people comment on it as soon as they touch it.

I can't feel it

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

#270

Post by mydongle »

modernerd wrote: post #123

The XPS 17 will be my next “MacBook”. It should be out this month and it ticks all the boxes for me (great screen, supposedly good cooling, user-replaceable SSD/RAM, acceptable weight and size for a 17" laptop). https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/13/21257006/dell-xps-17-15-r... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyRUWM_LOPQ I've been trying Windows again after ~20 years on Macs (via a borrowed Lenovo Carbon X1 and then a s…

I wish Dell would stop using the Killer wifi and use an Intel one though...
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