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Thoughts on the Late 2016 MacBook Pro

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Re: Thoughts on the Late 2016 MacBook Pro

#131

Post by AsyncAwait »

Buetol wrote: post #114
jonaswi wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was in the exact same situation. I was so tired of being forced to buy overpriced hardware from apple that I'm not even happy with just because I work with OS X. I then bought a new Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition and was really surprised that a) the scaling doe snot even work with dells own "tweaked" Ubuntu (even the installer looked horrible) and b) "coil whine" is a thing at this price point. I was so unhappy with…

I did the same, bought an XPS 13 become it seemed everybody would recommend it but got many problems (battery died, wifi range is very low, suspend on disk not working, no hdmi, ...) I then discovered Clevo, they sell very customizable laptop where you can have crazy specs (two HDD, 64gb ram, latest i7) for very reasonable prices (compared to apple). I'm waiting for mine but it seems like the perfect solution. Also,…

Have a Clevo, it can feel a bit plasticky at times, but the performance is great and Linux runs well, so overall am very happy with it.

Re: Thoughts on the Late 2016 MacBook Pro

#132

Post by HNLogInShit »

hmigneron wrote: post #42

I'm always surprised when developers don't talk about the F keys in their reviews of the new MBP. I mostly agree with the author regarding the escape key, the touch bar isn't really a problem in that regard, it still works and I got used to "pressing" it on the touchbar really quickly. I really really miss physical F keys though. I spend a lot of time debugging (either in the Chrome debugger or in IDEs) where pressin…

The Touch Bar takes a gimped, defective keyboard and makes it worse.

Apple laptops have always been hobbled by their inexcusable lack of a real Delete key. They only have a Backspace key that's mislabeled "delete." WTF? And Apple petulantly insisted on keeping this defect even after the Eject key became obsolete and could easily have been re-used for Delete.

So I thought, well at least maybe you can configure the Touch Bar to have a Delete key (albeit a non-palpable one). NOPE.

Many times I wonder WTF Apple's problem is. Another great example is the iPhone's most ridiculous defect: the lack of audible notifications of a missed call. You can be in the shower, or down the hall doing laundry with your phone on its charger in your bedroom (since the battery is a piece of shit) and miss a call... and you'll never know it until the next time you use your phone. There is simply no excuse for this. 1990s cell phones had this glaringly obvious feature.

And NOBODY IS ASKING FOR THINNER PRODUCTS. The ridiculous PR gymnastics and gimmicks to make the computer eke out the rated time is STUPID. Put a bigger battery in the goddamned computers and phones. The "thinness" gimmick was played out a decade ago.

Re: Thoughts on the Late 2016 MacBook Pro

#133

Post by HNLogInShit »

nicky0 wrote: post #81
hmigneron wrote: post #42

I'm always surprised when developers don't talk about the F keys in their reviews of the new MBP. I mostly agree with the author regarding the escape key, the touch bar isn't really a problem in that regard, it still works and I got used to "pressing" it on the touchbar really quickly. I really really miss physical F keys though. I spend a lot of time debugging (either in the Chrome debugger or in IDEs) where pressin…

I have made my living for the past 8 years as a macOS software developer. I never use the F keys.

Well, that's your loss.

When I started doing Mac development, I immediately mapped the F keys to match Visual Studio's.

Re: Thoughts on the Late 2016 MacBook Pro

#134

Post by gog »

yokohummer7 wrote: post #124
chadcmulligan wrote: post #115

I don't hear much about the display on the MBP, it's as near to perfect as any display I've ever seen, using text is beautiful, the colour depth is extraordinary - and its a laptop. I plugged in a new external 1080p monitor and thought at first there was something wrong with it, but no it's just the difference in crispness. Not only that you can run 2 external 5K monitors! from a laptop! The SSD's are so fast, it's a…

One thing I find odd about the display is that it somehow changes white balance occasionally depending on the content. I'm not sure if this only happens on BootCamp or not, but it's a bit surprising. Is there any setting to turn off this?

Are you maybe running f.lux?

Re: Thoughts on the Late 2016 MacBook Pro

#135

Post by mgkimsal »

hpaavola wrote: post #73
r00fus wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Apple keeps it, they will improve on it to the point where it doesn't suck.

I don't believe that the fundamental issue can be fixed. Ironically "Touch Bar" is something you can't feel when you touch it. Real physical buttons guide your finger to the correct location if you miss them slightly. "Touch" buttons don't. To fix that, one would need to rework the whole OS and applications in such way that they don't use F-keys at all, but rather something else. So, fixing Touch Bar means rethinking…

if there was even a way to just have the f-keys on all the time by default, that would have helped. Last I looked, that was not an option - you needed to hold down the fn key (or control?)

Re: Thoughts on the Late 2016 MacBook Pro

#136

Post by rectang »

theodorton wrote: post #112
yokohummer7 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, my experience is the opposite: while using the new MacBook I realized how infrequent I was using the function keys. The only times that I noticed the "missing" function keys were when I tried to open up the web developer console (F12), or rename a file (F2). I did see Apple's rationale here: ordinary users won't miss them, given I, being a developer, didn't miss them either. But unlike you and the OP, pressing…

You can re-map the Escape key to Caps Lock. I bought the new MBP and got used to this. Although I returned it later and went back to my previous machine, I still use Caps Lock as Escape. I'm using Karabiner Elements on Sierra. brew cask install karabiner-elements Edit: I also believe it causes less strain on my fingers.

I've already got `caps lock` mapped to `control`, mainly because of where Apple put the `fn` button.

As a heavy Vim user, I'm not looking forward to the `esc` trouble when I get my next Apple laptop.

Re: Thoughts on the Late 2016 MacBook Pro

#137

Post by akvadrako »

theodorton wrote: post #112
yokohummer7 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, my experience is the opposite: while using the new MacBook I realized how infrequent I was using the function keys. The only times that I noticed the "missing" function keys were when I tried to open up the web developer console (F12), or rename a file (F2). I did see Apple's rationale here: ordinary users won't miss them, given I, being a developer, didn't miss them either. But unlike you and the OP, pressing…

You can re-map the Escape key to Caps Lock. I bought the new MBP and got used to this. Although I returned it later and went back to my previous machine, I still use Caps Lock as Escape. I'm using Karabiner Elements on Sierra. brew cask install karabiner-elements Edit: I also believe it causes less strain on my fingers.

You don't need third party software for this. Just look under Keyboard in System Prefs.

Re: Thoughts on the Late 2016 MacBook Pro

#139

Post by simonh »

phaed wrote: post #83
blakesterz wrote: post #5

I don't know why I keep reading these reviews, but I do. This one seems decent, he covers everything from his real world experiences. I was kind of not surprised at his conclusion... As it is, it feels like a little “fuck you, suckers” from Apple and I can’t help but feel a little disappointed. That is due mostly to the price.

Also I assume the decisions that don't benefit the end-user (touchbar, keyboard, thinness, etc.)

You assume wrong. Read the review.

Re: Thoughts on the Late 2016 MacBook Pro

#140

Post by therealunreal »

EnderMB wrote: post #102

I waited for over a year for the new MBP to come out, but in the end I shelled out a bit more money for a Surface Book. Since then, I've used the new MBP, and while it's a great machine I don't regret my purchase for a second. My only gripe with the Surface Book is that installing Linux is a bit of a nightmare (not sure if this is still the case), but I'm happy enough with running Ubuntu on a virtual machine.

Similar experience here. The killer feature for me is that the screen is detachable and can be flipped, it has served me very well both as a dev laptop and a tablet.

Agreed about Linux too, I didn't even try (yet). But WSL is nearly there, I think the next update will be able to launch windows executables from bash (they say it's in the insiders build).

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