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

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

#431

Post by a_e_k » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 4:43 PM UTC

mehrdadn wrote: post #363

philliphaydon wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the font is large as if I'm elderly It's probably the easiest to configure terminal ever... https://www.hanselman.com/blog/HowToMakeAPrettyPromptInWindo... > and opening Settings fires up Visual Studio of all things Settings opens what ever editor is your default for .json files. > with GUIDs that I have no idea what to do with 1 guid to identify each option? I guess Windows Terminal was designed for developers and…

It seems to have been specifically designed for developers who enjoy a difficult UX because anything not up to that standard that is childish to them, which in my experience is the same thing Linux tools optimize for. I guess Windows has been very much trying to cater to that sector, so maybe now I can understand its appeal.

My reading had been that they plan to build a nice configuration UI on top of the JSON eventually, but the focus right now is on the core functionality (and letting the settings stabilize first).

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

#432

Post by carlesfe » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 4:48 PM UTC

theandrewbailey wrote: post #161

> First, it's impossible to get a terminal screen without anti-aliasing. My favorite font, IBM VGA8, is unreadable when anti aliased, which is a real shame, because I've been using it since the 90s, and I prefer non-anti-aliased fonts on terminals. That's a great font, but unless you're using it at 15 (16?) point exactly, it's a mess. For those places, I use Nouveau IBM instead. It tries to recreate the shapes with n…

Thank you! I will give it a try

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

#433

Post by derefr » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 4:49 PM UTC

ploxiln wrote: post #412

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…

I've seen reports of pops/crackles in digital audio mixing/synthesis applications being fixed by disabling hyperthreading. This makes some sense if hyperthreading can sometimes cause extra latency for some threads to get real CPU work done, which is hard for the OS to strictly control. There have been a few different ways to disable hyperthreading on macbooks over the years, but recently Apple offers a good way (to m…

> This makes some sense if hyperthreading can sometimes cause extra latency for some threads to get real CPU work done, which is hard for the OS to strictly control.

Threads requiring hard real-time responsiveness can (and do) request to be marked as such by the scheduler. And the OS is certainly aware of what hyperthreads-presenting-as-cores belong to which physical cores, and uses this information in scheduling. So I'd find it implausible that any modern OS (esp. one that already had good DAW support) doesn't already have logic to try to keep the other hyperthreads of a core on which a hard-realtime thread is running, as uncontended as possible, by either not scheduling, or very conservatively scheduling (i.e. "early" pre-empting) anything on that hyperthread.

I have a feeling it's something much more arcane. Maybe a hitch generated by the core switching "licenses" due to an AVX512 instruction.

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

#434

Post by rb808 » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 4:50 PM UTC

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…

Pixelbook go is absolutely perfect for people like this https://www.google.com/chromebook/device/google-pixelbook-go....

Good Keyboard, good Screen, Fast and good battery life.

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

#435

Post by karatestomp » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 4:51 PM UTC

rednum wrote: post #273

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…

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 Sir…

I think all my musical equipment has a USB-B port on them, work over USB 2.0, and I've got like a dozen USB-A/USB-B cables around. Those plug into every other computing device in my house except new Macbooks (and iPads, but, Lightning to USB-A adapter, so, still USB-A, and notably I can't share that adapter with a Macbook because Apple's approach to this has been a bizarre mix of foot-dragging and waffling on the iDevice side while running way ahead of the pack on the other). My enthusiasm level for buying new cables or adapters only for fairly new Macbooks when any other new computing device I buy would still have USB-A ports, and then have them maybe not work anyway because USB-C compatibility and cable/adapter quality is a shit-show, is exactly zero.

And I'm not made of money and I have other hobbies that require cash so I buy used musical equipment so I can get low-end pro gear a generation or two old for at or under new prices for amateur/crappy gear. There's little chance I'll buy any USB-C native musical equipment of any kind before 2030 or so. Who's cycling out all their gear—musical or otherwise—so fast that dropping USB-A and HDMI entirely in 2016, on a "pro" laptop, made any damn sense?

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

#436

Post by hcurtiss » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 4:52 PM UTC

habosa wrote: post #196

This is a good overview and I agree with almost all of the points. For the last 20 years I have owned nothing but Mac computers (going back to OS 9 days). I have a MacBook Pro for work so 5 years ago I bought myself a $750 Asus Zenbook and installed Windows and Ubuntu on it, expecting to just use the Ubuntu partition. With the release of WSL, suddenly my Windows laptop is my favorite machine for both personal use and…

As an iPhone user, I really do appreciate the integration with MacOS. Mostly iMessage and FaceTime.

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

#437

Post by vijucat » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 4:54 PM UTC

bragh wrote: post #405

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…

> 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'.

> Why are you lying?

See, this is why Linux zealots don't effect any change in others. When OP wrote something incorrect about Windows, in my perception, I gave him the benefit of doubt ("Maybe you haven't been using Windows in recent years"). But when I wrote something incorrect, in your perception, you straightaway jumped to "lying".

And it's not as if you don't know that the possibility exists. You wrote, "just google for 'windows 10 ignores active hours'", which shows that you know that I possibly do not know about this.

And yes, I have no idea if this is truly the case. I suppose Microsoft determines that some updates are critical security patches and will push them through despite attempts to postpone indefinitely.

Of course, if they allowed you to postpone critical updates and you got hacked, then it's, "OMG!! This evil corporation WANTED me to get hacked, that's why I use Linux", right? You're hopeless, and I will not be wasting further time replying to you.

Edit: I did that Google search and found that Windows ignores Active Hours in the sense that it still downloads the updates. But it does not Restart the PC. I could be wrong, but I'd appreciate if you can state it politely.

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

#438

Post by derefr » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 4:55 PM UTC

philliphaydon wrote: post #356

mehrdadn wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you explain what's so good about the Windows Terminal? I've tried it multiple times and been disgusted every time. The grayscale smoothing looks ugly as hell, the font is large as if I'm elderly, you can't even right-click to get a menu in the window, and opening Settings fires up Visual Studio of all things with GUIDs that I have no idea what to do with. All I see is it has tabs which I've lived without in eve…

> the font is large as if I'm elderly It's probably the easiest to configure terminal ever... https://www.hanselman.com/blog/HowToMakeAPrettyPromptInWindo... > and opening Settings fires up Visual Studio of all things Settings opens what ever editor is your default for .json files. > with GUIDs that I have no idea what to do with 1 guid to identify each option? I guess Windows Terminal was designed for developers and…

>> and opening Settings fires up Visual Studio of all things

> Settings opens what ever editor is your default for .json files.

And one can also point out that macOS opens XCode for (even XML-based) .plist files.

It's getting to be a standard convention, now that IDEs are almost "ships with the OS" kind of software, that the OS thinks configuration files should be opened in the IDE, rather than the system GUI text editor (Notepad; TextEdit.) Because, I guess, the system text editors were never really made to edit code, and make no guarantee that they won't break the formatting of code, while IDEs do make that guarantee.

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

#439

Post by meroje » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 4:57 PM UTC

Nextgrid wrote: post #424

IceWreck wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> USB-C hubs are not possible like you could do with USB 2 or 3 TIL. Why is this not possible?

You'd probably find a more authoritative source and better documentation by searching, but here's my understanding of it: USB-C can be used with alternate modes like DisplayPort or Thunderbolt, where the wires are no longer transmitting USB data but are used as a dumb pipe for the underlying protocol. If you get a hub it can choose to either operate in the following conditions (depending on its type and capabilities)…

But I don't need or care about all that, what I need is a hub just like we had all those years that gives usb3 connectivity in a c form factor to 5 devices or more. If I need more there are plenty docking stations available.

edit: I also looked for a usb A hub with usb-c upstream, still no luck and stuck with a hub+power adapter and dinky otg a-to-c.

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

#440

Post by linuxhansl » Tue, Jun 02, 2020, 4:58 PM UTC

I have a MacBook Pro from work, and a Lenovo X1E Gen2 with Linux (Fedora KDE spin) at home. The Lenovo is slightly newer, but the two are roughly equivalent.

The Linux machine needs work for setup. The laptop shipped with Windows, so installing Linux is on you - but Levono started shipping some of their laptops with Linux. I pretty much just installed Fedora from a live CD.

Once setup, it is faster, KDE is easier to use - I realize that is subjective, has better heat management, lighter, an even better keyboard - Lenovo is known for that, and is more reliable.

With a good deal the X1E also costs 30-40% less than the equivalent MacBook Pro.

I like the MacBook as well, I just think it does not justify the price and if you are a little bit tech-savvy there are better or at least equivalent options out there.

Edit: I also have a 2013 Lenovo T440p that I gave to my son, it's still a strong and fast laptop - and the improvements in Fedora/Linux made is _faster_ over time, not slower!