Live data from Hacker News

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

cfenollosa.com

321–330 of 567 posts

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

#321
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…

Sometimes my wifi drops out when I connect a USB-C hub to my MBP (Mojave). I should really look into it.

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

#322

I find USB-C to an almost scandalous regression in technology. Few people seem to be talking about it given how much frustration I would think there is over it. My MBP has 2 USB-C ports. That’s all. Of these ports, the options to expand off of them are slim to nil. I have not encountered a single hub or multi port adapter, including Apple’s that works properly or reliably. Essentially it is a situation where I cannot…

CalDigit TB3 docks work perfectly in my experience across Macs, ThinkPads and the occasional oddball machine. This has been the case for several years now.

Likewise, I regularly present using the Apple adapter with HDMI, USB-A (for a remote) and power input without issue.

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

#323
post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People see it as less analogous to Solitaire, and more analogous to the McAfee crapware you get bundled with cheap PCs.

And why is that? I never even once played Solitaire and uninstalled Candy Crush without even looking at it. What's the deal with this sudden hatred towards nonsense that was installed 35 years ago as well and had a way bigger impact on system resources (in terms of disk space and screen real-estate) than Candy Crush? Is it because it's a mobile port - too colourful and too in-your-face about it being a mindless pasti…

Solitaire and the other games were included just as features. You had to seek them out, and they were there for you to enjoy if you wanted.

Candy Crush is given prime real estate in the start menu, and is a highly commercial game with in-app-purchases. It's a straight-up advert.

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

#324

I find USB-C to an almost scandalous regression in technology. Few people seem to be talking about it given how much frustration I would think there is over it. My MBP has 2 USB-C ports. That’s all. Of these ports, the options to expand off of them are slim to nil. I have not encountered a single hub or multi port adapter, including Apple’s that works properly or reliably. Essentially it is a situation where I cannot…

My work laptop is one of the 2 port Pros too. To make matters worse it's the lowest space spec too.

Total nightmare using this for video work, not enough space to store the video files so have to use an external drive, dongles are not reliable enough to keep a drive mounted so have to dedicate one port to that, second port has my screen but when my battery goes low I have to go back to editing just on the laptop screen because I have to plug the power back in.

It's just compromise after compromise and for what? What did I as a user as a customer gain here?

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

#325

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".

Unfortunately, a lot of this comes down to "no-one wants a laptop lid as thick as a phone". Without major technology changes, laptop webcams are never going to be good; there's just no room for the optics.

Stop making excuses, the Macbook Air lid is not as thick as a phone and is the best of the 3.

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

#326

I am coming from an T440p (Ubuntu 18.04) to an MacBook Pro 16 and i feel all his points. I want to add how bad some parts of the Mac UX are. GNOME surely has some really really bad UX decisions but overall I think (hold on tight) GNOME is better than Mac in terms of UX. My MacBook is simply not designed for pro users. I might add that the Mac is far more stable than Ubuntu and looks better but in the end as far as I…

You are not alone. My work machine is Mac and after Fedora with GNOME on personal laptop I feel constantly annoyed by basic UX stuff like window and workspace management.

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

#327
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Would it be feasible to run a Windows Pro or Server version in a laptop? (or at least shut all the "windows 10" stuff and return to something that look like Windows 2000?)

I use a Mac. I spun up a windows server image on AWS and I've been doing all of my development on that. It's cheap if you turn it off and it has snapshots. And it's available from any machine with remote desktop.

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

#328
post #300
post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I switched to Windows 10 about 3 years ago. Absolutely no problems. I'm careful to stay on the "happy path", but my Lenovo laptop works fine out of the box, and my Supermicro based desktop dual-Xeon workstation works great, too. Speedy and reliable.

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

#329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

>Microsoft doesn't want the service calls they're going to get

Does anybody ever thought "Ouch, Windows broke again! Time to call Microsoft helpdesk"?

(side note: I think updates would generate more issues and calls, not less)

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

#330

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://conemu.github.io/

Very powerful.

Post reply on HN