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Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Keyboard

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Re: Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Keyboard

#161

Post by voltagex_ »

oldcynic wrote: post #128
bdcravens wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what can they do? Make the battery thinner so they can get sane key travel back within the case without increasing overall thickness? Go back to previous thickness; it wasn't that bad, and thin for the most powerful portable they sell isn't necessarily a good thing. They could even couple it with advancements in battery tech to finally put 32GB on their laptop.

That's my preferred answer. We can have magsafe back too. :) Sadly Apple rate thinness too highly, so I suspect they'll not give it up easily.

Consumers seem to - I'd take a Galaxy S8+ with twice the thickness to get some decent battery life.

Re: Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Keyboard

#162

Post by cjmoran »

ashishb wrote: post #137

I wrote about my experience while looking for a personal laptop in 2013: https://ashishb.net/tech/the-weird-state-of-laptop-industry/ Little has changed since then. There is still a considerable gap, and no one is building a developer laptop. What surprises me is the amount of energy Google is pouring into Chromebooks, they could have made an excellent (GCP-integrated?) developer laptop instead. For backend engineers…

Google is working on making Chromebooks more developer-friendly. Some of them support running full desktop Linux apps now, but it's still in the experimental stages and I wouldn't recommend buying one for that specific feature until it's more mature.

That said, I've been doing light webdev work on a Chromebook using Crouton (to run desktop Linux alongside ChromeOS, with seamless switching) and aside from difficulties with the MicroSD slot and apt-get on Ubuntu it's been quite nice. Getting solid, first-party Linux desktop app support would make Chromebooks a serious contender in the "cheap dev laptop for light work" space, and I think Google is working toward that.

Obviously, the hardware is going to preclude you from doing any serious heavy lifting, but I'm pretty excited to see what they come up with in another year or two. The battery life on these things is fantastic, plus some of them can also run Android apps.

Crouton installation instructions can be found here: https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton

A tip: while you can find ARM distributions of Linux distros and packages, it'll make your life much easier to get a Chromebook with an x86 processor.

Re: Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Keyboard

#163

Post by stcredzero »

zamfi wrote: post #146
stcredzero wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say the issue is, and continues to be, growing pains. They're certainly losing the lead in software engineer talent (giving it away to whom, I'm not sure). I keep on interviewing recent Comp Sci graduates who have a 3.75 or a 4.0 and who can't tell me how to implement cycle detection -- to the extent that they could write a pseudocode function signature or some kind of concretely implementable design. Many of the…

> When my Macbook Pro is "locked" it flashes an image of the desktop screen just before switching to the login prompt. This used to happen to me and I was very annoyed. Felt like a major security hole. But now I get a scrambled image before the login prompt. Are you on the latest macOS?

I also get the scrambled image as well. I am on the latest, last I checked. I generally keep updated.

Re: Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Keyboard

#164

Post by spiritcat »

partiallypro wrote: post #26
cududa wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Absolutely wrong assessment. This is a design team running amok after their own goals

Thinner for the sake of being thin has been an Apple problem for a while now.

Thinner for the sake of making other laptops look thick and crappy.

Re: Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Keyboard

#165

Post by FullyFunctional »

hum I'm been ticked since they cancelled the 17" MBP and I am more than a little annoyed that I lost physical esc and function keys (Yes, I used them - in Emacs).

It bad enough that I'm now spending a non trivial amazing amount of time on non-Apple laptops, but soo many apps have no acceptable alternative on Linux, sadly (I buy Linux version whenever I can).

Re: Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Keyboard

#166

Post by dzhiurgis »

mushufasa wrote: post #68
acomjean wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they'll gradually improve the keyboard. It won't be great but it will be good enough. like the "don't hold it that way" antenna gate problem and the phone bending problems.. They'll fix.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_4#Antenna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_6#Chassis_bending Honestly, its hard to get off the mac ecosystem though. I have a macbook pro, and am starting to look at linux laptops. Th…

System 76 (the small linux-only hardware manufacturer) just refreshed their Oryx Pro last month, which looks pretty capable and looks from afar to be really good build quality. https://system76.com/laptops/oryx I haven't found many/any reviews of it since the refresh -- does anyone on HN have one who can attest?

I’ve read some reviews about System76 and a lot of people seem to hate build quality to the extend or returning them.

Then there’s https://lambdal.com/products/tensorbook that focus on ML workloads.

Re: Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Keyboard

#167

Post by always_good »

malloryerik wrote: post #50
solomatov wrote: post #36

I was absolutely ok with repairability of 2013 pro models. But what they did with new keyboard design is awful. I write this now from my Dell XPS 13, not from my MacBook Pro different models of which I used for > 5 years.

Writing from my 2017 MacBook Pro. Apart from the keys being louder than before and my nagging fear of an errant crumb or cat hair I'm happy, typing is crisp and maybe faster for me than on any other keyboard. I move my hands less. In comparison my regular Mac keys now feel loose and smooshy, almost as if they'd been produced by the Haribo Gummy Bear factory. (Not that this is a horrible feeling. I miss gummy bears; c…

My girlfriend and I bought 2017 MBPs at the same time.

She barely uses hers. I use mine daily and heavily. When I use hers now, I'm startled by how crisp and clicky her keys are compared to mine.

Not to mention my absolutely failing keyboard (many caps coming right off).

But I'd say the new MBP keyboard felt amazing for about one month. Now it's the worst keyboard I've ever used in my life.

Re: Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Keyboard

#168

Post by [deleted] »

greglindahl wrote: post #62
dguaraglia wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MacBook Pro users and MacBook users generally don't overlap. It's fine if you want a super-light, super-thin ultramobiles, but it makes little sense to compromise the Pro's usability in the name of thinness. I've been a Mac user for the last 7 years and for the first time I'm getting a non-Mac computer because the MacBook Pro is no longer attractive. It's a shame, because I have invested a significant amount of time…

Are you sure about that? When I work at my desk I use a dock and some monitors, and all the heavy lifting is on a remote server. I suppose there could be a selection effect for workers whose employers force them to work solely on their laptop, but is that common? If you look at derefr's comment, he appears to work like I do.

[deleted]

Re: Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Keyboard

#169

Post by saghm »

mehrdadn wrote: post #151
rmrfrmrf wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite the opposite, I would think. Removing the gender references doesn't detract from the argument, so why have them at all?

I don't know, but what I'm asking is: if your real question is "why mention X's gender?" then why instead ask "why mention X's gender but not mention Y's gender?" ?

I think the point is to make the difference more stark; merely saying "why include the manager's gender" doesn't show the inconsistency between calling out the gender in the case of the employer the writer is unhappy with but withholding it in the case of the employee the writer is happy with.

Re: Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Keyboard

#170

Post by deathanatos »

> [Apple quietly announced][1] that they were extending the warranty on their flagship laptop’s keyboard by four years.

No, they didn't. If you read the very source the article cites for this, you find,

> The program covers eligible MacBook and MacBook Pro models for 4 years after the first retail sale of the unit.

The original warranty was 1 year[2]; this is a three year extension.

"Extending by 4 years" is just too good to be true. Although, I had no idea the warranty on MBPs was so bad; a well built machine should trivially last a year. And now that I Google around, this doesn't seem to really be unusual on Apple's part. My last laptop had a 4 year warranty, and it lasted about that long. But my current laptop only had a 1 year standard, and I had forgotten that I paid $80 to extend it for 3 years. Apple seems to offer an extended warranty ("AppleCare+") but wants $270 for it.

[1]: https://www.apple.com/support/keyboard-service-program-for-m...

[2]: https://www.apple.com/legal/warranty/

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