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Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features

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Re: Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features

#131

Post by sitkack »

foldr wrote: post #89
sitkack wrote: post #17

The keyboard! I have an M1 mac, I typing this from a 2012 macbook air. The new keyboards are utter crap! They are still crap. If I could have the M1 in an x220 shell, with the mac trackpad, I would be good.

>The new keyboards are utter crap! They are still crap Hold on, are you claiming that the new scissor switch keyboards have similar reliability issues to the older butterfly keyboards? If not, then this is really just a matter of taste. You can't please everyone with keyboards. People do genuinely have different preferences regarding feel and key travel. It honestly seems hyperbolic to describe a keyboard that most p…

I am not saying they have similar reliability issues, not enough time has passed for that to be determined. Utter is too strong of a word, the keyboard has the same qualities for me that made the butterfly keyboards suck.

They may have fixed the reliability issues, but they have not fixed key travel issues. The person that designed this keyboard is a very particular person, and this person probably does not like the keyboard in the 2012 MBA.

It isn't just preference, the new keyboard is slightly uncomfortable to use, the key pressure is too high and the travel too low, so the impulse on the tendons is too sharp.

The gist is that Apple has over designed its product and made design the number one metric. Design only works when it is subservient to function.

Re: Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features

#132

Post by varjag »

Symbiote wrote: post #107
pharmakom wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Apple can make a Magsafe cable for USB C that would be the best of both worlds. (I know third parties have made them but Apple would probably do a better implementation) I also can't wait for the removal of the Touchbar. This prevented me from buying previous Macbooks because it was just one compromise too far for such an expensive machine. Is this Apple's "Coke Classic" moment?

Doesn't Apple generally make worse cables than the competition? It is very rare for a PC laptop power cable to break. There's a rubber grommet which protects the cable as it enters the plug from extreme and repeated bending. For supposed aesthetics, Apple don't include this, and their cables fray easily. (This is based on my experience managing hardware for a small organization, Dell/HP/Lenovo/etc business laptops co…

Very rare? Come on. I still have that Dell somewhere which had cable frayed right where its stress relief mold ended.

Re: Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features

#133

Post by m463 »

BluSyn wrote: post #14

My controversial hot take-- I have never needed an SD card, and have gone all-in on USB-C. I will be very disappointed if they add back in USB-A/HDMI/SD ports, or remove USB-C charging in favor of proprietary charge port. Sounds like unnecessary feature bloat. Please just do MagSage + USB-C, so I can maintain my one-cable-for-everything, making traveling lighter and simpler. Here's my counter argument to all those th…

An extra port is not inconvenient - you just won't use it. A missing port is SUPER inconvenient.

Can't tell you how annoying it is to require a USB-A dongle or adapter, same with HDMI.

Re: Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features

#134

Post by avianlyric »

BlackVanilla wrote: post #104
davidrm wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not a concern, the more powerful the charger, the better. The devices that are being powered are the ones controlling the charging, the charging brick will derate itself if devices demand more than it can handle. It might hurt the brick, it will get hot or perhaps noisy if it’s a cheaper one. It’s like openning every single faucet at your house, as long as the pressure and flow at the source are ok, the faucets…

Thanks for this. Would that "slowing down" harm the device though? Obviously, I should err on the side of higher wattage, but if the power adapter provides lower wattage than is required, would that harm the device?

No. That really isn’t how electronics works.

Basic charging works on the principle of deciding a charging voltage (which is either 5v or negotiate to be higher via Power Delivery) plus as many amps as the charger can provided.

As a receiving device the only thing you really care about it voltage. If it’s to high, then stuff gets fried, two low and stuff just doesn’t turn on.

The amps are determined by how much the receiving device can consume. And of course decreases as the device charges (if you’ve got a full battery, then you don’t need more power). If the receiving device pulls to many amps, then the voltage will start to drop, this then causes the receiving device to reduce its power consumption.

Ultimately power electronics are extremely robust today, you would have to try very hard to fry modern electronics. This is a result of how modern electronics converts power, which naturally makes them very robust to fluctuating inputs. (I’m simplifying a lot, want to learn more then look up DC-DC converters, and see how they’re implemented in silicon)

In short, just don’t worry.

Re: Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features

#135

Post by awll »

zxcvbn4038 wrote: post #50

This is a really exciting development! Everything I miss from the 2013 MacBook Pro - no final word on what ports are being added or if they are bringing back the SD slot, but MagSafe, a working keyboard, and an escape key are themselves welcome. The touch bar ended up being completely useless except for muting/unmuting zoom calls and smashing the left hand side seventeen times in a row until it finally registers as a…

If you are a vi user, you could consider using CTRL-[ instead of escape. I find this to be more comfortable and quicker to use anyways and you wouldn't need to use the touch bar anymore

Re: Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features

#136

Post by m463 »

pdimitar wrote: post #79
Brajeshwar wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May I suggest a little different look at the use of SD Card slot on your MacBook (Pro). About 5 years back, I had one of those SD Drive stick-in for MacBook Pro that stays there. There were few (Nifty Drive, MiniDrive, etc). The primary use I see are; 1. Have a clone backup of your primary drive. (Carbon Copy Cloner, SuperDuper, Time Machine). 2. Have an extra storage handy for a rather economical price without luggi…

I have a 512GB SD card plugged at all times in my iMac Pro and I use it as an entry point for various backups (which get distributed to cloud storage for redundancy after). I too am a bit confused by the non-popularity of such a setup. SD cards are okay for rarely changing data (or data that changes little, exactly like the incremental backups) and are extremely compact. I view SD cards as the diskettes I always want…

I am partial to the samsung fit usb drives. You can boot off of them in a pinch. But current usb-c devices need a dongle.

Re: Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features

#137

Post by hatchnyc »

I use two MacBooks for programming for several hours each every single day, my personal machine has a touchbar, my work machine does not. I realize this is blasphemous to say and I did think I would hate the touchbar for all the reasons, but I actually ended up liking it.

I had imagined myself tapping virtual function buttons and the whole thing seemed silly and useless and worse than having physical keys, but VS Code and other dev tools actually have good integration, and when I open an app like Adobe Illustrator which I don't use frequently enough to memorize all the hotkeys it's quite handy to have the commands listed.

Re: Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features

#138

Post by wtallis »

grishka wrote: post #74
speedgoose wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current trend in user interfaces is not to design for desktop but for mobile first, because that's where the large majority of users are. Of course you have exceptions, when a company develops an application only for desktop for example or when a company can afford developing and maintaining many versions of one user interface. Already today it's very fine to use a laptop with a touchscreen on most websites. And…

You aren't making much sense. If someone is making a desktop app , how could it possibly be mobile first ? Even if you're using the cancer that is Electron, that design with a lot of whitespace is always deliberate. I'm not saying that it's not fine to use a touchscreen laptop for something. I'm saying that no one uses them like that with any kind of seriousness because it's awkward and physically inconvenient to pok…

> I'm saying that no one uses them like that with any kind of seriousness because it's awkward and physically inconvenient to poke your fingers into a vertical surface in front of you for any extended period of time.

I think users of Windows laptops have embraced touchscreens in spite of these downsides, because a touchscreen is still less bad than the touchpads on those laptops. But Apple doesn't have the problem of bad touchpads, so they have no reason to compensate with touchscreens.

Re: Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features

#139

Post by dividedbyzero »

sneak wrote: post #124
BluSyn wrote: post #14

My controversial hot take-- I have never needed an SD card, and have gone all-in on USB-C. I will be very disappointed if they add back in USB-A/HDMI/SD ports, or remove USB-C charging in favor of proprietary charge port. Sounds like unnecessary feature bloat. Please just do MagSage + USB-C, so I can maintain my one-cable-for-everything, making traveling lighter and simpler. Here's my counter argument to all those th…

Anyone who shoots photos or videos on a real camera uses SD cards near-constantly. It wouldn't affect your not using the port for them to include it. Adding magsafe doesn't mean not supporting usb-c charging, or removing any usb-c ports. Your take obviously isn't that controversial: the maker of the best laptops in the world agrees with you, or at least they did at one time.

It's really annoying though that I still have to stick SD cards into readers; my Fuji X-T4 doesn't support acting as a proper SD card reader and CaptureOne 20 can't fetch images off camera devices ... meanwhile the camera is plugged in for USB-C charging anyway...

Re: Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features

#140

Post by avianlyric »

osamagirl69 wrote: post #86
theodric wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

24-pin ones that accommodate even Thunderbolt are available

It is somewhat anecdotal, but I had one of those and it blew out 2 usb-c docks. The first one went kaput about a month after I started using the magnetic adapter and I chocked it up to bad luck. The replacement fried about a week later and I put 2+2 to together and removed the adapter and haven't had any trouble over the last ~1 year. All I can say is that I am glad it was the dock that fried not any of the laptops t…

I would be surprised if those magnetic adapters handle disconnects properly.

USB-C connectors have pins of different lengths so device can detect them being disconnected, and do things like turn the power off. They also make guarantees that the ground pins are first to connect, and last to disconnect.

My guess would be that you disconnected your laptop while it was pulling lots of power. The pins got disconnected in the wrong order, which resulted in the electronics in the dock getting fried or a high voltage line for power delivery got momentarily connected to a data line, and fried something.

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