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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

#271

Post by phren0logy »

leetrout wrote: post #23

I bought the 2018 air. I loathe it. What a waste of money and junk keyboard. That said my new job gave me a System 76 laptop and I’ve been delighted all week with it. I don’t care for the offset keyboard but at least it actually works correctly. If it had better palm detection on the trackpad it would be the best laptop I’ve owned since my 2013 MBP (which is still goin strong).

Based on my experience with PopOS on my desktop system, I've been eyeing the System76 laptops. I think they are re-badged Cleo laptops presently, but they have plans for their own hardware. Assuming the hardware is as thoughtful as the distro, I'll be ordering one.

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

#272

Post by CydeWeys »

Gracana wrote: post #210
SCdF wrote: post #81

> By the way, not including the extension cord is unacceptable. This cord is not only a convenience, but it increases safety, because it's the only way to have earth grounding for the laptop. Without it, rubbing your fingers on the surface of the computer generates this weird vibration due to static. .... THAT'S WHAT THAT IS? I have wondered for _years_ why my laptop sometimes feels that way. Another mystery solved!

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…

So then it's two causes, either one of which they could have fixed to prevent the problem.

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

#273

Post by rednum »

karatestomp wrote: post #238
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…

My wife's been having repeated AV glitches on her '19 Macbook Air. Video audio cuts out after a few minutes very frequently, across browsers and even on local players and for audio on locally-downloaded podcasts. Video calls do similar things, which has, you know, been a problem. Best I can figure is there are some bad software + hardware glitches with some of the Siri-related stuff and maybe the fingerprint chip. Di…

Yeah, all my audio equipment (keyboards, controllers, interface) is USB A and I don't see producers switching en masse (and even if they do, do I really want to throw away my favorite keytar?). The only exception is Roli block but Roli is kinda meh - fun to play every once in a while but not something I'd like to use every day to lay bass track or piano chords. I've disabled a ton of various background stuff like Siri but this setup is still flakey. If I were trying to make money on my music I'd be really pissed now.

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

#274

Post by ClumsyPilot »

paulcarroty wrote: post #20
exdsq wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 for WSL 2. I'm a huge advocate of it at work where people are very pro-Linux. I have noticed a few issues with it that don't make sense seeing as it's meant to have a full Linux Kernel (such as sockets not appearing) but that could be Ubuntu-20.04 being the one at fault to be fair :)

-1 for WSL. If I need Linux, it will be obviously native. Also WSL doesn't solve: * forced Windows updates when you don't need them * shitload of failed updates: bricked OS, deleted user data etc * stupid non-uninstallable game icons in start menu, a lot of vendor-forever-locked garbage like cortana & one drive * bad fs performance in general

Sometimes i read thing like this and I feel they are from a different universe.

I am the first port of call for IT issues of the whole family, including grandma. Like 10 people, and the last time we had issue caused by windows update was like 5 years ago when a laptop was trying to update to W10 from W8. That required a bit of manual intervention.

Game icons certainly arent there for me any more.

Whats the issue with Onedrive? I mean, its preinstalled, but you dont have to run it.

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

#275

Post by panpanna »

slantyyz wrote: post #226
panpanna wrote: post #127

> When I push the laptop a bit more ... I get around 4 hours. In comparison, that figure is reasonable. Overall, it's not bad, but I expected more. How can this be "reasonable" from a new laptop? Maybe that's typo because I can get more from a five years old laptop under similar load. (Although to be fair, my containers are first class citizens)

I don't think I've ever gotten close to the advertised battery life from any new laptop, Mac or Windows, but I probably use a lot of apps and settings that aren't battery friendly (e.g., I prefer a brighter than average display). So when I do get 4h of battery life, I'm pretty happy.

Well, I have had _some_ laptops even exceededing their advertised 10+ hrs battery life but only under a _specific_ configuration (basically the one it came with. An OS reinstall would kill the battery life).

Also, things have improved significantly in linux-land. Someone finally had time to turn off unused peripherals in the kernel and battery life doubled over night

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

#276

Post by lm2s »

>When video conferencing or under high stress like running multiple VMs the system would miss key presses or mouse clicks. I'm not saying that the system was laggy, which it was, and it is expected. Rather, that I would type the word "macbook" and the system would register "mok", for example.

To the key missing part, my hunch is that this is happening because of software workarounds that Apple did on macOS to reduce the problems in their previous keyboards clusterf*ck.

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

#277

Post by thomaslord »

exdsq wrote: post #171
paulcarroty wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

-1 for WSL. If I need Linux, it will be obviously native. Also WSL doesn't solve: * forced Windows updates when you don't need them * shitload of failed updates: bricked OS, deleted user data etc * stupid non-uninstallable game icons in start menu, a lot of vendor-forever-locked garbage like cortana & one drive * bad fs performance in general

WSL2 is a Linux VM, what's your use-case for native over that? - You can disable updates - I'm on the insider version and this has never happened to me, let alone for 'normal' users. - You can uninstall all of that stuff - It's not that bad, I work on a decentralised database and we have similar performance across Windows and Linux. Windows was a bit tougher to do but it got there :)

I'm honestly baffled that you've never experienced an update that bricked your system - how long have you been using Windows?

Two years ago Microsoft released an update that killed Windows on my brand new (at the time) desktop (i7-8700k, gtx 1080). I thought "no big deal, I'll boot up my old desktop and deal with it later" but when I turned on that machine (i5-2500k, rx480), it applied the same update and also killed the Windows install. At that point I gave up on using a desktop for the day and booted up Windows on my laptop (i7-7700HQ, gtx 1050m), only to have that also install the update and kill the install.

I'd had Windows updates break before that, but always on one machine so it was easy to write off as some driver quirk or something weird I had installed.

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

#279

Post by ben7799 »

I've always been more of a desktop user myself. My first computer I bought with my own money was a Windows laptop in 1995 when I went to college. Mac really wasn't an option then, Classic Mac OS was terrible for a CS student, didn't run any of the required software I needed, and were super expensive. That was pretty much Apple's darkest hour. Laptops were stupid expensive back then, so 1997, 2000, 2003, etc.. I built/rebuilt my own homebuilt desktops on the cheap.

2004 I got a Mac Mini. 2006 I got a Mac Pro.

2012 Apple pissed me off dropping support for the Mac Pro, so I went back to a homebuilt windows desktop. Actually used a case I had laying around from 2004-2005 as well. Less than 1/3 the investment of the Mac Pro. That machine is still in service now with just a better video card + SSD. Great machine, still very snappy, but I am getting tempted to rebuild it.

Also grabbed a Surface Pro i5 for $800 in 2017. Very happy with that machine, but it gets used for home consumer type stuff and not development work.

In the meantime I've had a whole bunch of Macbook Pros for work from 2012-2020.

The 2018 15" MBP I have right now is by far the most disappointing Mac experience..

A lot of my issue is that I work on a product that runs in Docker... docker sucks on Mac IMO, and most of my issues are around needing more RAM & CPU for hyperkit & docker to suck down.. but the Mac is rampant with high latency in the UI and other issues that drive me nuts.

- Keyboard is starting to fail, and it sucks, not even comfortable. I'm stuck at home so it's trickier for IT to give me a new MBP. When I was going to the office I could mostly ignore the KB and use external, circumstances around lockdown have meant more use of the internal KB issues.

- Hate the touchbar, never gotten any decent use out of it. And I use vi plenty of course.

- I have some of the palm rejection issues the blogger mentions but that's not so bad.

- OSX seems to be bottom of the barrel when it goes into swap, linux and windows both seem to handle high memory usage better.

- USB-C has been nothing but a PITA. Didn't need so many dongles with the older Macbook Pro and the USB-C doesn't buy me much. I have yet to have any device with a USB-C plug that can plug right into the MBP 2 years later.

- Quality of audio on the headphone jack is horrific on my 2018 MBP... it has the most noise of any PC I've ever had, not even in the same ballparks as my previous MBP which was great. Not sure what's going on here.

- Battery life on MBP is fine except when using docker or running builds. Then it's like an hour or two.

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

#280

Post by ricketycricket »

Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #186
SCdF wrote: post #81

> By the way, not including the extension cord is unacceptable. This cord is not only a convenience, but it increases safety, because it's the only way to have earth grounding for the laptop. Without it, rubbing your fingers on the surface of the computer generates this weird vibration due to static. .... THAT'S WHAT THAT IS? I have wondered for _years_ why my laptop sometimes feels that way. Another mystery solved!

Does the current MacBook come with 3 prong plug with ground pin? My iPad Air 2 doesn't and it does have this issue when touching the aluminium when charging.

I believe only the extension cord has grounding, not the adapters that plug on to the power supply. US version: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MK122LL/A/power-adapter-e...
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