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New MacBook Pro Is Not a Laptop for Developers Anymore

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Re: New MacBook Pro Is Not a Laptop for Developers Anymore

#171

Post by ungzd »

Swizec wrote: post #107
ericjang wrote: post #37

I dislike this post intensely. The opinion comes across as uncharitable, as the author probably has not used this Macbook Pro yet. How can you (alexeysemeney) be so sure? I consider myself a developer, and I almost never use the Fn and ESC keys on my Mac. Everybody uses the computer differently, but I'm pretty sure this is not a deal-breaker for most. One could also argue that the touch bar might lead to innovative d…

I smash the esc key violently every time I climb myself into a corner with Emacs shortcuts and don't know how to get out. But it's on a proper mechanical keyboard because prolonged use of builtin keyboards hurts my hands.

But it uses C-g as cancel, not Esc.

Re: New MacBook Pro Is Not a Laptop for Developers Anymore

#172

Post by happywolf »

I am a developer and I have a mechanical keyboard hooked up to the rig, so I seldom use the mac keyboard anyway. My main complaint would be the hardware doesn't seem to get better. The USB-C ports I do see them coming, but given my 2014 MBP is still running strong, I will hold on to upgrade for a little longer.

Nah, I am completely out from Linux around 5 years ago. Had spent my fair share of time and effort (~10years) using Linux, solving some corner cases that hit me along the way. To me, using Linux is just like driving on a highway with sink holes sprinkled along, the ride will be gay and smooth _until_ you hit those holes. Either you fix those yourself (It is open-source remember!?) or hope for some kind souls to help out.

Thanks but thanks...

Re: New MacBook Pro Is Not a Laptop for Developers Anymore

#173

Post by awinder »

VT_Drew wrote: post #79
shenanigoat wrote: post #5

Dramatic click bait IMO. You could really hack that touchbar to do some great productivity enhancements.

Yeah, I don't understand all the outrage over the touchbar. It changes depending on your application. So can't you setup VIM so the touchbar displays a "normal" or "classic layout", which would display all the keys that the previous model had? I am far more disappointed in the elimination of magsafe and only having USB C ports.

The killer is that the lack of feedback on that bar would probably make it difficult to touch type the "buttons" on that classic layout

Re: New MacBook Pro Is Not a Laptop for Developers Anymore

#174

Post by easytiger »

pilif wrote: post #83
slg wrote: post #23

This doesn't even get into the dongle problem. The simplest example is that if you want to hook up Apple's flagship phone up to their flagship laptop for development, you need a dongle. And if you want to share one of their flagship wired headphones between the two devices, you need another dongle. Therefore if you want to connect three of Apple's flagship devices together on a daily basis, you can't go anywhere with…

> you need a dongle or an USB-C to Lightning cable. Those exist. And so do any USB-C to any other USB-Plug cables. Considering that Apple revises their hardware builds about every four years, it makes sense to move to strictly USB-C now as two years from now, I'm quite sure no more peripheral will come out that has anything but USB-C. So within the next 2-3 years you'll have collected heaps of USB-C cables that will…

> or an USB-C to Lightning cable.

How is that different in any way?

Re: New MacBook Pro Is Not a Laptop for Developers Anymore

#175

Post by ilolu »

Lots of people point out about touch bar being context sensitive. Why cant each app have context sensitive widget bar. Or why not just have another context sensitive menu bar which each apps can customize. Are we not getting the same user experience but with a mouse/trackpad instead of a touch bar ?

Re: New MacBook Pro Is Not a Laptop for Developers Anymore

#176

Post by witty_username »

AlexMuir wrote: post #35
bitwize wrote: post #3

So use an editor that supports a modern UI, like Sublime Text or Atom, and not something originally designed for an ADM-3A terminal.

Good luck using Sublime or atom over SSH.

Edit locally and copy the file?

Or you could use nano.

Re: New MacBook Pro Is Not a Laptop for Developers Anymore

#177

Post by wlesieutre »

ericjang wrote: post #37

I dislike this post intensely. The opinion comes across as uncharitable, as the author probably has not used this Macbook Pro yet. How can you (alexeysemeney) be so sure? I consider myself a developer, and I almost never use the Fn and ESC keys on my Mac. Everybody uses the computer differently, but I'm pretty sure this is not a deal-breaker for most. One could also argue that the touch bar might lead to innovative d…

I do some programming (Xcode and VS Code), I do some 3D art (blender, substance), and I do some photography (Lightroom). Not all of those programs will support it at launch, but I expect they will sooner or later. And the new screen sounds fabulous (I have a wide gamut external screen already, though it's AdobeRGB instead of P3, the MacBook will do better in reds and not quite as well in greens). I wish it were cheaper, sure, but this looks like a fantastic computer to me.

Yeah, you need some different cables. You might need to rebind some hotkeys. It might take a while for some pieces of software to support the touch bar properly.

If you don't want to be an early adopter or you can't get over your Vim muscle memory, pick up a refurbished 2015 model and the rest of us can buy a few new USB cables and move on with our lives.

Re: New MacBook Pro Is Not a Laptop for Developers Anymore

#179

Post by blowski »

soyiuz wrote: post #120
blowski wrote: post #36

I was waiting for the new Macbook Pros as I need to buy a new laptop, and was going to give my old Macbook Pro (2014 model) to my wife. But given that they have nothing of value (I don't care about gimmicks like the new touch bar), I've decided to abandon Mac and go back to Linux. I'm just a typical web developer, running a bunch of virtual machines, and an IDE. Any recommendations? I saw the Dell XPS 15 for around £…

I would also recommend Lenovo Thinkpads, which are quite popular with Linux folks. The X and T in particular give a lot of bang for your buck. I am also eying Thinkpad 13 as a great beater machine replacement for my aging x230.

How easy is it upgrading the RAM? I like the look of T560, but it only comes with 8GB.

Re: New MacBook Pro Is Not a Laptop for Developers Anymore

#180

Post by sdegutis »

jws wrote: post #8

Bah, these entitled kids. I guess being old enough to remember keyboards before they had escape keys helps, but ␛ is just keyboard syntactic sugar for control left square bracket . Read your ASCII table! C-[ is even a quicker type avoiding RSIs from all those long pinky reaches. (More seriously, as much as it bothers me to retrain my pinky, most uses of the escape key would be many times better if the lefthand side o…

A lot of non-command-line developer apps use Escape though, like all Jetbrain's IDEs.
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