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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

#401

Post by kuwahara »

baxtr wrote: post #383
fluffything wrote: post #353

I also still have the same MacBook air as the author and have been wanting to upgrade for... 2 years or so. Not only the Webcam is a downgrade. You also loose Magsafe. Not a big loss, but a downgrade none the less. > The touchbar. [...] Regular users probably find it useful and cute. No they don't. My GF bought herself a new Macbook because... she has an iPhone and thought "For what I use the computer, any computer s…

Maybe I am dumb and stupid, but I actually like the Touch Bar... ESC key is a bit annoying but I don't mind it that much.

In the keyboard settings on Mac they make it easy to re-map Caps Lock to Esc.

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

#402

Post by crooked-v »

Nextgrid wrote: post #385
cannam wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I still don't have anything that's USB-C aside from adapters for work laptop The USB-C thing is culturally a bit curious. It's been three or four years since reviewers of laptops and the like started complaining if they didn't have USB-C ports - but there still seems to be very little need for them. The few devices I've acquired that have a USB-C socket on the device have all come with a cable having a USB3 type A…

USB-C is garbage from so many perspectives. User friendliness is a problem. There's no easy way to tell what protocols a USB-C device actually supports, whether it's USB 2, USB 3, DisplayPort, etc. USB-C hubs are not possible like you could do with USB 2 or 3, so you're always limited to the number of USB-C ports on your machine. The only possible hubs are those that give out USB-A ports, which is fine now because mo…

USB4 will in theory fix most of this by setting minimum required capability at 20 Gbit/s with DisplayPort Alt Mode, and laying out support for hubs from the start. It still has a painful number of 'optional' alt modes depending on device type, though.

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

#403

Post by fluffything »

StavrosK wrote: post #373
fluffything wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've offered to help, but she doesn't want to mess with configuration. I've posted in other threads how she "fixed" it. She actually bought one of those keyboard covers, cut off the touchbar part, and fixed it with tape. She literally has a crappy piece of plastic on top of her keyboard that physically prevents here from accidentally touching the touchbar. A 10 dollar hack on a 2k$ machine. I don't think she will buy…

Agreed, it's terrible that that's required. At least it works for now, hopefully she can sell it and buy something much cheaper.

I have a Thinkpad Yoga 3rd gen with Linux that she loves, so she'll probably migrate to that.

I use my old macbook air 90% of the time, and the yoga so 10% of the time. So at least she gets to use it every now and then.

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

#404

Post by karatestomp »

cannam wrote: post #370
karatestomp wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I still don't have anything that's USB-C aside from adapters for work laptop The USB-C thing is culturally a bit curious. It's been three or four years since reviewers of laptops and the like started complaining if they didn't have USB-C ports - but there still seems to be very little need for them. The few devices I've acquired that have a USB-C socket on the device have all come with a cable having a USB3 type A…

I don't get why they didn't do a transitional design for a few years. Replace the Thunderbolt ports with USB-C but leave the rest the same. It takes me probably damn near a decade to cycle even half my peripherals to a new interface, and I bet that's closer to the norm than people going out and replacing 100% of their stuff with USB-C and Bluetooth within a year, so going to using a port that I had not even actually seen yet in the wild when they switched cold-turkey was a baffling decision.

Hell, to this day the only actual USB-C devices I've seen in person are Apple peripherals and monitors catering to Macbook users, which almost all include other ports anyway. I'd add Android phones but those mostly have USB-A connectors on the other end of the cable (like the iPhones that were shipping for a while after the USB-C Macbooks came out—there's another giant WTF). USB-C market for flash drives seems to suck (form factor's worse, price is higher).

[EDIT] oh and when the new port is intended to replace all other ports the half-life on "legacy" devices for me probably goes from ~10 years to ~20. Seriously. WTF Apple.

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

#405

Post by bragh »

vijucat wrote: post #241
shrimp_emoji wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Nadella's a great CEO compared to his predecessors. D: But, yeah, that + stuff like your OS restarting behind your back whenever you lock your screen and walk away keeps me on Linux despite the very tantalizing promises of WSL2.

> 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…

> b) "Change active hours", which can be used to specify an 18-hour window within which, "We won't automatically restart your device during this time"

Why are you lying? That part has been there for a long time and doesn't work anyway, just google for 'windows 10 ignores active hours'.

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

#406

Post by Nextgrid »

ImprobableTruth wrote: post #228
thegagne wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even server includes candy crush and all the junk.

I'd be pretty surprised if that's true. I've recently switched to windows 10 pro and I don't have candy crush or anything installed.

I think it depends on the region or maybe even the time period (maybe those promotional deals only run for a certain period of time and eventually get renewed, if you're unlucky enough to reinstall while in the correct region/period you get it).

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

#407

Post by bound008 »

StavrosK wrote: post #365
fluffything wrote: post #353

I also still have the same MacBook air as the author and have been wanting to upgrade for... 2 years or so. Not only the Webcam is a downgrade. You also loose Magsafe. Not a big loss, but a downgrade none the less. > The touchbar. [...] Regular users probably find it useful and cute. No they don't. My GF bought herself a new Macbook because... she has an iPhone and thought "For what I use the computer, any computer s…

Can she disable the touchbar?

The problem with disabling the Touch Bar is that it becomes difficult to adjust volume, brightness, and other things that were once easily accessible and addressable by muscle memory. Personally, I have encouraged those affected to return these machines and email Tim Cook (Apple) to let them know they refuse to pay extra money for something that makes the computer harder to use.

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

#408

Post by Nextgrid »

411111111111111 wrote: post #180
neutronicus wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My employer provided workstation ( which presumably uses Pro) is still always spamming me about Teams and OneDrive.

You can disable that with local admin. The domain admin could too, but they're mostly just there to get their paycheck, not to improve your experience so they won't bother.

The argument is that you shouldn't have to disable it to begin with.

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

#409

Post by IceWreck »

Nextgrid wrote: post #385
cannam wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I still don't have anything that's USB-C aside from adapters for work laptop The USB-C thing is culturally a bit curious. It's been three or four years since reviewers of laptops and the like started complaining if they didn't have USB-C ports - but there still seems to be very little need for them. The few devices I've acquired that have a USB-C socket on the device have all come with a cable having a USB3 type A…

USB-C is garbage from so many perspectives. User friendliness is a problem. There's no easy way to tell what protocols a USB-C device actually supports, whether it's USB 2, USB 3, DisplayPort, etc. USB-C hubs are not possible like you could do with USB 2 or 3, so you're always limited to the number of USB-C ports on your machine. The only possible hubs are those that give out USB-A ports, which is fine now because mo…

> USB-C hubs are not possible like you could do with USB 2 or 3

TIL. Why is this not possible?

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

#410

Post by cosmotic »

"[bad retina support] is not Apple's fault"

Yes it is. Apple chose a resolution that was not 1/nth as dense and thus everything non-retina needs a lot more work to fix. Apple could have implemented and tested it better. This is 100% on them.

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