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

#541

Post by alpaca128 » Wed, Jun 03, 2020, 9:17 AM UTC

llampx wrote: post #509

modernerd wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've also seen user experience reports in the wild that say, “I tried those settings but I still had a forced update halfway through my Big Important Presentation”. I haven't had that myself so far. Hate to say it works on my machine but that's been my experience to date.

Those users invariably have been blindly clicking away the update notification and have picky themselves to blame.

Clicking away the dialogue should never trigger the update. It's the opposite of what the whole UI of Windows has always worked like.

And you're wrong either way - I've had forced updates wreck Windows without seeing a single notification or update setting beforehand.

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

#542

Post by modernerd » Wed, Jun 03, 2020, 11:06 AM UTC

ryukafalz wrote: post #508

modernerd wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say Microsoft adds one. You tick it and what MS currently considers “essential telemetry” is turned off completely, instantly, and for real. The risk seems to be that people who don't understand the implications of not sharing basic telemetry, when faced with a box that says “share nothing”, “share essential“, and “share essential and optional” would choose “share nothing” every time, because it just _feels_ be…

> The OS and apps can't tell if you're eligible for an update because they don't know if your hardware/drivers will run the new version, because you won't tell them what hardware/drivers you're running now. Why do you need to give Microsoft a bunch of details about your hardware for this? Why can’t Microsoft publish info about which hardware/drivers are supported in the new update, and then your machine determines wh…

Windows uses delta/differential updates for monthly “quality” updates[1] because it uses less bandwidth than big-blob updates.

For diffed updates to work efficiently Windows first works out what hardware/software you have. Then it can either:

1. Send info about the system to an update server and let the server decide what updates it needs.

2. Download a big manifest of all available updates (as you describe) and calculate locally what updates it needs.

Either way, Windows then has to make a request for updates specific to the system, at which point you reveal info about your software and hardware that you were attempting to hide in (2) anyway.

For the semi-annual feature updates, the process is more like you describe where there's a compatibility check then a large download (~3-6GB) containing all new features, even if your system won't be able to make use of all of them.

[1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/update/p...

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

#543

Post by tosers4 » Wed, Jun 03, 2020, 1:09 PM UTC

qayxc wrote: post #231

tosers4 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solitaire is not asking you for money

Well, you are free to not start the app, unpin it from the start menu and even uninstall it, so what's the problem?

there have been reports of it appearing again, at least in W10's early days.

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

#544

Post by jlokier » Wed, Jun 03, 2020, 2:24 PM UTC

kakuri wrote: post #472

What is the obsession with laptops? While I fully understand they have their uses, I don't understand why someone who is employed full-time doing programming would cripple their own work environment by using a laptop. I've been hearing and reading about laptop complaints for years from "professional" programmers. It's very easy to avoid so many problems by building your own desktop. If money isn't an issue then just…

A lot of people don't do all their work sat in the same spot all day.

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

#545

Post by artsyca » Wed, Jun 03, 2020, 2:34 PM UTC

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…

Realistically how long can one expect to keep using a retina Macbook pro? I've had my mid 2015 since.. Mid 2015 and now I'm getting paranoid it'll up and explode on me out of the blue

I have a new OWC SSD upgrade so that should be alright.. Trying to keep it running cool without heavy software but the battery is at like 500 charge cycles and 70% capacity man it feels so scary getting old

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

#546

Post by technotarek » Wed, Jun 03, 2020, 2:51 PM UTC

technotarek wrote: post #138

“Sometimes, after resuming from sleep, the laptop doesn't detect its own keyboard. I can assure you, the keyboard was there indeed, and note how the dock is still the default one. This happened to me minutes after setting up the computer for the first time, before I had any chance to install software or change any settings.” Glad to hear it’s not just me. I think I solved this by re-enabling Bluetooth (2020 MBA). The…

Darn. Happened again with Bluetooth enabled. Pretty bad bug Apple. I've had my brand new 2020 MBA for ~4 weeks and this has happened probably 10-15 times now.

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

#547

Post by derefr » Wed, Jun 03, 2020, 3:09 PM UTC

SahAssar wrote: post #473

derefr wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's unavoidable telemetry. I.e., there's metadata about your interactions with Microsoft's servers that Microsoft inescapably derives from those interactions. You can certainly ask them to throw that metadata away; but—if you're paranoid enough to be worried what they'll do with it in the first place—then why are you trusting them at their word? It would seem the only route to privacy, in such a world, is to neve…

Sure, but none of that requires there to be unique IDs or hardware info sent to their servers. Let's not pretend that Microsoft enabled us to make that choice for ourselves. Requesting software packages from a server should not require them to keep logs or send uniquely identifiable info.

> unique IDs

One thing that unique IDs are necessary for, is deduplication. Without a unique ID when talking to e.g. the update server, then their statistics (used to determine which updates should be e.g. CDN prioritized) will be heavily skewed in favor of anyone who has configured their system to poll the server more often.

(Yes, they can partially resolve this problem by looking at the request IPs—but, well, NAT. Sometimes even entire countries are behind a small set of IP addresses (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier-grade_NAT).

The ideal thing here would be for everyone to have a public IPv6 address, and then that address could be your "unique ID" without really uniquely identifying you or your device, but rather just uniquely identifying "a place to deliver updates to", like a mailing address uniquely identifies a place to deliver parcels to.

(This might not seem so relevant for updates, but a clearer example is in crashes. All OS vendors prioritize the issues in their issue-trackers by their prevalence among users, counted as the number of times a Crash Report has been [voluntarily] submitted that seems to be "about" that issue. Crash reports need to be deduplicated by installation to be useful for prioritization; a piece of software that happens to get into a super-edge-case crash loop and so crash a million times for one user, should not be prioritized over a piece of software that crashes once for a million users. Just the opposite, really.)

> hardware info

If we're talking about software updates, then this is part of the "inescapable metadata." Yes, the OS vendor can stuff each update full of all possible updates for all possible drivers released in the interrim—and that's a workable idea, if you're Linux. It's not workable in the Windows/macOS ecosystems, where "drivers" are third-party bloatware blobs that ship with their own GUI control panels et al. Such a monolithic update, covering all possible bloatware driver blobs, would be hundreds of GiB. It makes far more sense in Windows/macOS to just have the client retrieve the GPU/RAID/printer/camera/etc. drivers (and updates for said drivers) they need, as separate packages, from the server. And that separate retrieval essentially describes, piece by piece, your hardware profile.

> require them to keep logs

I never said it was (or should be) required; only that, if you're paranoid, you should have no reason to believe that they're not doing that, even without any client-side telemetry being pushed. A paranoid person would expect that even Linux distributions keep the access logs for their package servers (incl. gathering them from mirrors), and act accordingly.

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

#548

Post by Kirby64 » Wed, Jun 03, 2020, 3:16 PM UTC

crooked-v wrote: post #402

Nextgrid wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Just because USB4 becomes a thing doesn't mean people will support it. 20Gbit/s and the DisplayPort Alt Mode means people definitely will choose to go with USB3 or USB2 USB Type-C.

Remember, all USB Type-A ports aren't USB3. Likewise, all USB Type-C ports won't become USB4.

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

#549

Post by Kirby64 » Wed, Jun 03, 2020, 3:42 PM UTC

IceWreck wrote: post #409

Nextgrid wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It's definitely possible, it's just a bit expensive. There's nothing in the USB-C spec that disallows you from doing this. Also if you're trying to do the thing where you have charging input but data output on one port, it gets complicated.

That said, I see no reason why you couldn't design a basic USB-C USB2 or USB3 hub. Hell, it could have 5 ports with no defined 'input' port (just 5 USB C jacks), and you could have that work properly with some pain.

If it has a captive USB-C cable and 4 USB-C outputs, that would be even easier to program. Again, it's just expensive. You need a lot of active circuitry to make it work.

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

#550

Post by Kirby64 » Wed, Jun 03, 2020, 3:46 PM UTC

Nextgrid wrote: post #442

meroje wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As far as I know the spec doesn't allow it for some reason. I guess one reason could be the power side (which I haven't mentioned and I am not familiar with it)? Let's assume the hub requests 19V from the upstream port. Unless it has built-in, variable, per-port voltage regulation, it will not be able to respond to power requests from the downstream devices if they differ from what is coming from the upstream port. T…

See, you could technically design something that does that. Per-port up to 100W charging it definitely possible. Basically you have a USB PD controller on every port with dynamic voltage control.

This is all possible, it's just a HUGE pain in the ass (and costs a lot) to design that way. The problem is you essentially end up with potentially a giant, VERY expensive USB hub. And no one wants to spend $400 on a USB hub.