New MacBook Pro Is Not a Laptop for Developers Anymore • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by hultner » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 3:31 PM UTC

gre wrote: post #92

cypres wrote: post #24

It's funny they bring up devs using vim, because the only vim key they removed is Esc, which a lot of vim devs remaps to caps-lock or similar anyways. I almost never use the F keys, so if they kept the Esc key but removed the rest it would be perfect :)

I don't know anyone who remaps capslock to esc. It just sounds like something that is fun to say on hackernews. You didn't even say you use it, you said a lot of vim devs do, to which i would counter--they dont. The better choice is remapping capslock to ctrl.

I do! I'm both a heavy vim user and have my ESC remapped to capslock. And otherwise ESC=>^] anyway so you can always do that (however it's a bit awkward so I'd rather use capslock).

Another thing I really do think deserves to be mentioned is which developer do really spend extended amount of time on the laptop keyboard when not traveling? Both at home and work I'm using the Microsoft Sculpt keyboard and keep the laptop docked with 3 external displays, with these new 5k-monitors two will probably be enough.

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

#242

Post by watmough » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 3:31 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #7

Honest question: what's the alternative? I've got a 2013 rMBP 15 inch. What's my next machine? I'm not willing to regress on display (220 ppi or better), screen size, or battery life (8-9 hours real use). I might regress on quad core to dual core if everything else is perfect. EDIT: The XPS 15 gets more like 5-6 hours with the high res display by my understanding. The Surface Book has the right combination of resolut…

Ok, I'll put in a word for the HP ZBook Studio.

You can have i7 quad-core, dual 1 TB SSD, 32 GBytes RAM (maybe more), backlit keyboard, thin(ish) form factor, and a fantastic 3840 x 2160 screen. Graphics are NVidia M1000M which is desktop class and runs CineBench 11(?) OpenGL test at 93 fps (faster than my NVidia GTX 970).

This is by FAR the nicest and thinnest portable workstation-class laptop I've ever used. It's easily carryable-around, which is more than I can say for any previous laptop such as the larger Dell Precisions, HP Elitebooks I've previously used in this class.

In particular, fast Samsung NVM SSDs and fast laptops are a match made in heaven.

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

#243

Post by blowski » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 3:31 PM UTC

matwood wrote: post #126

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 £…

Good luck with HiDPI. It is very application dependent, so I would check what you typically use. From what I have tried and read, macOS handles HiDPI and multi-monitors much better than any other OS out there right now. I'm so used to HiDPI just working on my MBP that I never even realized it was an issue on the other OSes until I started thinking about switching.

That's both surprising and disappointing. I'll check for that, thanks.

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

#244

Post by masklinn » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 3:31 PM UTC

joshstrange wrote: post #148

egeozcan wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really shocked about this, I mean, I had thought that they saw the future in USB-C after they previewed the MacBook.

? Thunderbolt 3 is compatible with USB-C (in terms of the port)

More specifically, TB3's connector is the USB-C port.

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

#245

Post by derefr » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 3:31 PM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #166

m3ta wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've developed on a MacBook Pro for the last 5 years in vim and I have never touched the escape key or any of the F keys, ever. If you're using vim and reaching for the escape key you are doing it wrong imho. Rebind esc to something else (like capslock) or learn another pattern that has more ergonomic value.

> If you're using vim and reaching for the escape key you are doing it wrong imho. So generations of Vim users are doing it wrong but you have the right answer?

Recent generations, yes. vi was designed for a keyboard where the Escape key was where the Caps Lock key is today. When Escape ended up in a hard-to-reach place on the 103-key layout, vi users sighed and rolled with it (and new users didn't know any better.)

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

#246

Post by manulp » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 3:31 PM UTC

easytiger wrote: post #156

m3ta wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've developed on a MacBook Pro for the last 5 years in vim and I have never touched the escape key or any of the F keys, ever. If you're using vim and reaching for the escape key you are doing it wrong imho. Rebind esc to something else (like capslock) or learn another pattern that has more ergonomic value.

A lot of us live in a transient computing world, where we neither own nor have permissions to edit the bindings. Having one host with a binding and 6 other client's envs without, would a context switch failure invoke

The bindings are done on your macbook, it works seamlessly on the clients you connect too.

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

#247

Post by Tloewald » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 3:31 PM UTC

I don't use vim and consider myself highly biased towards guis despite being a long time programmer. I am also an Apple user since the Apple II, and owned the original inside Mac and Human Interface Guidelines books.

Even for me, losing the escape key is a bit scary. It may be mitigated by customization of the bar. Function keys have always been dumb and replacing them with dynamic controls is awesome.

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

#248

Post by tuckermi » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 3:32 PM UTC

gre wrote: post #92

cypres wrote: post #24

It's funny they bring up devs using vim, because the only vim key they removed is Esc, which a lot of vim devs remaps to caps-lock or similar anyways. I almost never use the F keys, so if they kept the Esc key but removed the rest it would be perfect :)

I don't know anyone who remaps capslock to esc. It just sounds like something that is fun to say on hackernews. You didn't even say you use it, you said a lot of vim devs do, to which i would counter--they dont. The better choice is remapping capslock to ctrl.

I'm not the GP, but for what it's worth I do remap capslock to esc. I mostly use a Kinesis Advantage keyboard where the escape key is one of the chiclet rubber keys, so using vim (at all) really begs for either a remapped esc or brain-retraining to use ctrl-[.

I'm not sure if it's a better or worse choice to remap capslock to ctrl - but it's certainly viable. The old Sun keyboards used to have that layout...

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

#249

Post by ekianjo » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 3:32 PM UTC

bsenftner wrote: post #109

rayiner wrote: post #7

Honest question: what's the alternative? I've got a 2013 rMBP 15 inch. What's my next machine? I'm not willing to regress on display (220 ppi or better), screen size, or battery life (8-9 hours real use). I might regress on quad core to dual core if everything else is perfect. EDIT: The XPS 15 gets more like 5-6 hours with the high res display by my understanding. The Surface Book has the right combination of resolut…

I'm testing out a strange setup that is working surprisingly well: I have a beefy desktop: 64GB RAM and 32 cores. Then I carry an Intel Compute Stick, portable laptop and mouse with me. I just plug into any HDMI monitor to do basic work, or RDP/TeamViewer into my desktop for real work. Surprising how well this is working...

That won't work if you can't get a reliable connection everywhere you go.

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

#250

Post by dan1234 » Fri, Oct 28, 2016, 3:32 PM UTC

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…

I think Apple could’ve avoided a lot of the hate if they’d bundled a few of the more common adapters as standard, to ease people through the transition to using USB-C for everything.

If I bought a new MBP today, I’d need:

* a Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) to Thunderbolt 2 Adapter at £49

* a USB-C Digital AV Multiport Adapter (giving HDMI and a USB port) at £69

* a USB-C to USB Adapter at £19

That’s £137 just to connect the things I have currently connected to my 2015 MBP (external monitor, Thunderbolt HD, my phone and a USB->FTDI programmer).