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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

#191

Post by dognotdog »

totalZero wrote: post #164
skohan wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope they don't bring back USB-A, but the SD card slot and hdmi have been sorely missed. If you do anything with photography, being able to just plug the card directly into your laptop makes a world of difference. Same thing with walking into any meeting and already knowing you'll be able to plug into a projector if needed, without having to run out and grab a dongle.

If you do anything with photography, you are carrying around a camera, batteries, and lenses anyway. Just buy a 12$ card reader and put it into your camera bag with all your other expensive stuff. It surprises me that people who buy high-dollar computers are so reluctant to buy an extra cable. TB3 natively supports DP at faster speeds than HDMI 2.0b can push. You can buy a TB3 to DP1.4 cable online for $15. Even the…

Maybe consider that it’s more nuanced in real life.

That $12 card reader, even expensive USB-3 card readers, are often a lot slower than that builtin one. They get lost and broken, not even considering that when you’re on the go, many photographers will absolutely try to shed as much unnecessary weight as possible, as not many people are built like the hulk or have an entourage of assistants doing the heavy lifting.

I use my laptop a lot outside of an office, and having that multitude of builtin ports is an absolute must, as dongles are quite difficult to deal with in situations when I don’t have a flat surface to put the laptop on. That TB/Ethernet dongle I regularly do have to use has been a great source of frustration.

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

#193

Post by arusahni »

vemv wrote: post #181

Honestly I've never understood why laptops are so strongly associated with developer culture. They are inefficient and conflated machines - two things that tend to be contradictory with software engineering. More practically, many people find themselves completely dependent on Apple's design whims. Mac Pros (or server racks in general) are closer to the kinds of machines that we deploy to (they use Xeons for one thin…

I feel like the migration to open floor plans and offices where you need to take your knowledge base everywhere (e.g., conference rooms) has lead to laptops being the default loadout for many companies.

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

#194

Post by someonehere »

Of course Ive pushed the design this way. He also designed the Apple Watch to be a design centric device and didn’t want it to be about health.

I wonder if any of these design choices are what led to him leaving. I’m almost confident a consensus was around one of these major changes he bet on and leadership heard all the nasty feedback across the web. Maybe Ive took it personally and just decided his time was over.

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

#196

Post by someonehere »

I bought a Microsoft Surface laptop 13” for work to test builds with. That laptop has a headphone port, USB-A, USB-C and a proprietary Microsoft port the power adapter plugs into. Don’t have that adapter handy while traveling? You can still charge it via the USB-C port with another charger. I can see Apple copying another facet of Microsoft’s Surface line. The other being the Magic Keyboard for the iPad Pro.

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

#197

Post by kgermino »

bnj wrote: post #179
keepingscore wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was this team on holiday when they designed the mouse to have it's charging port on the bottom?

I have to wonder if that design came about because Apple didn’t want people to leave the mouse plugged in all the time. It’s the kind of reasoned institutional blunder that I feel like I encounter in my work life fairly often out of momentum and groupthink.

I suspect the conversation was closer to “make it rechargeable, but don’t change anything else.”

You obviously can make an Apple style mouse that plugged in sensibly, but that would require changing the case and internal layout. The way they did it the new battery and charge port fit in the space left by the old AA’s.

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

#198

Post by dijksterhuis »

acjohnson55 wrote: post #4

I've said this in probably a dozen HN comments over the years, but my 2010 MBP is still my favorite computer of all time. It has a matte screen and 4TB of upgradable onboard storage. It was frustrating watching MBPs move progressively farther away from the features I really loved on that machine. Eventually, I jumped ship for the PC world again, where I found the hardware much more inspired. The Airs are already quit…

> my 2010 MBP is still my favorite computer of all time

Seconded. Mine has dents all over the body, battery has been replaced a few times, upped the memory and replaced the optical drive with 1TB storage.

It's performed surprisingly well for over 10 years. Once had to visit the "geniuses" to replace the logic board after a few years, but that's it really.

Its worked in pubs behind the bar, as a live mixer for audio gigs, as a development machine, as a university note making machine...

Although now I've got what seems to be a hardware fault with the display where black pixels turn bright green. That and the fact the speakers and microphone are shot to pieces means I'll have to move on soon.

End of an era for me. I will miss this machine dearly.

--

On jumping ship: if I can work out a way to get iTunes + Apple Music running reliably on Linux I'll be jumping over there asafp. Not liking the software direction (news/rumours?) Apple has taken recently.

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

#200

Post by yoz-y »

dwaite wrote: post #53
rckoepke wrote: post #26

I'd love if it had an excellent webcam. I imagined the M1 would have a better webcam than the 2015 Retina MBP but instead the newest built-in webcams are significantly worse in quality. I'd imagine including a camera system from an iPhone would make a huge difference for Apple's users given the popularity of remote meetings these days.

Unfortunately the back lid is not thick enough for that - even the iPhone isn't thick enough for the iPhone camera system, hence the "bump". I actually wouldn't mind something closer to the iPad + magic keyboard design in a pro macbook, which would have the thickness needed for a significantly better camera.

iPhone and iPad front facing cameras do not need a bump and they run circles around the crap in MacBooks though.
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