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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

#291

Post by gambiting »

lostlogin wrote: post #248
vijucat wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> stuff like your OS restarting behind your back whenever you lock your screen and walk away https://imgur.com/a/qAWLzsu Maybe it's been a couple of years since you tried Windows? Right now, if you go to the Windows Update part of Settings, the top 2 options are: a) "Pause updates for 7 days" and b) "Change active hours", which can be used to specify an 18-hour window within which, "We won't automatically restart you…

Wait, you can’t set it up so that it won’t restart itself? In case it isn’t obvious, I am not a windows user.

Not through that menu, but it can be done through the policy editor. You can also just disable the update service if you want to.

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

#292

Post by bitwize »

lostlogin wrote: post #248
vijucat wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> stuff like your OS restarting behind your back whenever you lock your screen and walk away https://imgur.com/a/qAWLzsu Maybe it's been a couple of years since you tried Windows? Right now, if you go to the Windows Update part of Settings, the top 2 options are: a) "Pause updates for 7 days" and b) "Change active hours", which can be used to specify an 18-hour window within which, "We won't automatically restart you…

Wait, you can’t set it up so that it won’t restart itself? In case it isn’t obvious, I am not a windows user.

No. Sooner or later, you will have to let it update. Updates are important, and Microsoft doesn't want the service calls they're going to get if you don't update and something breaks or you get hacked.

So just like "your contract with the [TV] network is you're going to watch the spots", your contract with Microsoft is you're going to install the updates, and you consent to be spied on, and...

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

#293

Post by harpratap »

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)

> Although to be fair, my containers are first class citizens

It's a Linux Machine? Because on OSX it's a well known issue that Docker sucks up your CPU and thus battery - https://github.com/docker/for-mac/issues/3499

I get a similar 2-3 Hour battery life on my older 2017 model

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

#294

Post by blunte »

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 hope you like high heat, high fan noise, and thermal throttling issues (common XPS issues that myself and others have experienced). I hope you also like random Wifi failures, random freeze-the-world-while-some-app-is-having-a-network-timeout issues.

macOS is getting worse, no doubt. But Windows still has multiple unacceptable problems (ungodly slow unzipping, still!, random heavy lag or freezing, surprise 30 minute Windows Update installations happening during a reboot you had to do during important work, etc. etc.)

Plus, the day to day file management story is still sub-par in Windows. If you've gotten used to Quicklook on a Mac (because it's so handy), you're SOL on Windows. How hard is it to provide a spacebar activated preview popup?

PDF reading and printing is still a nightmare on Windows compared to macOS. Again I refer to Quicklook, whereby you can open and scan/read a PDF near instantaneously; in Windows it's slow and clumsy. Saving (printing) anything as a PDF on a Mac is fast and easy. In Windows it's a slow, multi-click process.

And Linux... on the desktop... still not there. Yes with the right hardware and the right drivers and config, distros like Fedora can be pretty close to perfect. But you still have HiDPI problems sometimes (Windows does as well), random UI-related service crashes, app/package-system conflicts (since there is no one standard package management system that all apps agree upon), and more.

Sadly, the entire computing experience has peaked and declined in the last few years. That said, macOS is still the best desktop OS for everything but gaming.

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

#296

Post by ubercow13 »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #281
ubercow13 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you leave some task processing overnight, that's probably not your 'core hours', unless you set it that way and not in the day. But then what if all your work is lost when an update is installed in your lunch break? It's ridiculous that there is (or was? Not sure if it's changed) no way to never automatically install an update. Remember when Windows 10 was released and there were reports that Windows 8 would liter…

I renerally assume that all work can suddenly dissapear unless saved to disk, duew to powercut or app crashing or whatever else. Autosave, etc. If you do have some long task like rendering that takes hours, thats of-course trickier.

Yes of course - saving work regularly is good. However apart from long-running tasks you can still lose things like the current state of your desktop and applications. Consider if you were working on something involved and had many applications running all with some complex state set up. You might not lose any data but you have lost the 'working memory' of what you were doing.

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

#297

Post by mthoms »

toxican wrote: post #235

The touchbar is super useless unless you install something like MTMR[1] to customize it. The downside of course is that you need to be comfortable with some code to modify it outside of any pre-defined profiles. But even then I don't find myself using it much. Also while Mac's aren't meant for gaming, when I do game I find the touchbar to be a poor replacement for the F keys. I play WoW and have F1-F5 bound to certai…

I've found this tiny utility a great help. It provides haptic feedback for all touch bar presses (BetterTouchTool also has this feature).

https://github.com/niw/HapticKey

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

#298

Post by jtwigg »

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've had an XPS 13 and XPS 15 and both suffered from coil whine, bad graphics and overheating. I would steer clear if I was you. My current dev laptop is a Razor which has been a much better experience than the XPS.

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

#299

Post by x3haloed »

buro9 wrote: post #66

Just got my first MBP. Found problems with USB devices on day 1 with USB 2.0 devices intermittently freezing. Documented https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/gp5b1z/usb_20_issues_o... , and there is a workaround... do not use any hub that shows a USB 2.0 device to the Mac, find and use a USB-C hub that presents everything as USB 3.0 to the Mac even if it's USB 2.0 I believe that this is a Catalina software bug, and…

Anyone know of a good hub that works that way?

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

#300

Post by jboog »

blunte wrote: post #294
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 hope you like high heat, high fan noise, and thermal throttling issues (common XPS issues that myself and others have experienced). I hope you also like random Wifi failures, random freeze-the-world-while-some-app-is-having-a-network-timeout issues. macOS is getting worse, no doubt. But Windows still has multiple unacceptable problems (ungodly slow unzipping, still!, random heavy lag or freezing, surprise 30 minute…

I'm sure the bugs you mention about Windows exist and are terrible, but I made the switch to Windows after converting to Mac ~9 years ago and I haven't experienced anything but very minor annoyances.

I still prefer the Mac OS experience, design, and usability, but the price premium for Apple products is not worth this modest improvement. I still have and enjoy my Iphone Xs but might consider switching to Android in a couple years whenever I need to upgrade.

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