Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple’s 2016 in review

chuqui.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 408 posts

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#271

Post by seanmcdirmid »

origami777 wrote: post #140
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has the Surface Book stabilized yet? I really want to buy one but I keep hearing about their issues. My S3 is probably an abandoned puppy now but works really well... when it is working at all. MBPs are still the best computer one can get for a rock solid Windows experience; even the surface book trackpad (supposedly precision?) seems to not really compare to what comes on a MBP, and touch doesn't often fill in the g…

That is my feeling as well. I walk past the Microsoft store and look at the slick surface hardware and daydream about it being a good device and me using it, then I remember the many years of windows pain that I suffered. I keep walking.

Just to be clear, I have no problem with windows, just that it seems to run best on Apple hardware via bootcamp.

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#272

Post by gurkendoktor »

panic wrote: post #5

How do they fix this? They need to do more talking — and even more listening — with their users. Engage with the influencers. Sit down and find out what their developers need that the current products don’t offer. Find out what is making their users unhappy. Asking people what they want will give you predictable results: complaints about any kind of change and positive feedback about shiny-looking features that demo…

> complaints about any kind of change and positive feedback about shiny-looking features that demo well

"The internet" wanted a better cheese-grater Mac Pro, Apple delivered a shiny, un-upgradable computer.

"The internet" wanted incremental Mac upgrades, Apple added the gimmicky TouchBar to the one Mac model that was still popular.

3D touch, Mavericks' Finder tags, Siri on the Mac, using the watch to unlock your laptop... I feel that Apple's updates are 90% gimmick and 10% substance at this point. I agree that Apple needs to find a new Steve Jobs, but in the meantime, asking customers for feedback doesn't look like it could make matters worse.

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#273

Post by jasonlotito »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #113
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you think MBPs have problems, it's nothing compared to the issues I've had with Surface. Microsoft really needs to execute much better in addition to creating innovative experiences, firmware and driver meltdowns aren't fun. See, I've had the exact opposite experience with my Surface. Most of the people I know much prefer MacBooks but are exploring the possibility of switching to something in the surface line. I…

Has the Surface Book stabilized yet? I really want to buy one but I keep hearing about their issues. My S3 is probably an abandoned puppy now but works really well... when it is working at all. MBPs are still the best computer one can get for a rock solid Windows experience; even the surface book trackpad (supposedly precision?) seems to not really compare to what comes on a MBP, and touch doesn't often fill in the g…

Personally, my experience with my Surface Book has been nothing but pleasure. I have the latest SB, and it's the best laptop I've had in a long time. It's well crafted, feels good working on it, and quick. And the battery life is awesome. I cannot express how impressed I've been with the battery life. And this isn't browsing the web. This is with Unity and Visual Studio open and actively working with it.

Going back to my rMBP for work feels limiting and slow.

There are workflow changes and difference I'm having to work through. They are different systems, after all. But it's been a good experience so far.

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#274

Post by acdha »

nicolas_t wrote: post #114

I went from almost never needing to restart my mac (with Snow Leopard) to having to restart it a couple of times a week with Sierra. The UI just becomes totally unresponsive (the cursor stops moving, the time in the menu bar stops ticking and the spinning wheel stops spinning) and needs a restart. And I don't even have things like SIMBL installed (I used to with snow leopard, not anymore). I just have Karabiner eleme…

Both of the problems you mentioned sound like previously undetected hardware issues or possibly an issue with a kernel extension. Sierra, like its predecessors back to 10.0, does not need to be restarted except for updates in normal usage – but the symptoms you describe are characteristic examples of a hardware failure (halting animations suggests it's not I/O but something like the CPU/GPU or a kernel extension). Similarly, enabling FileVault is a reliable process which doesn't cause disk corruption but since it accesses the entire disk it sometimes exposes pre-existing corruption.

I would start by checking the logs to see whether there's anything obviously failing, running the hardware diagnostics (reboot while holding down the D key – https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201257), and then uninstalling all of the apps which you mentioned that require privileged access since at least Karabiner and Little Snitch are kernel extensions and third-party kexts are notorious sources of bugs for months after a new OS X release.

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#275

Post by treehau5 »

deepGem wrote: post #213
Guyag wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know any good resources on the future of conversational agents? In terms of what need they fulfil - I don't use Ok Google/Siri/Cortana, and rarely use my Echo but for music, and find it hard to understand where they fit in. Home automation is the only thing that comes to mind ("only").

Check out X.ai and Clara labs. Some of their blog posts highlight what needs they fulfil. These are not messaging agents but conversational nonetheless.

Has anyone stopped to think, "do people actually want to talk to a computer?" I think we are more simply interested in commanding them to get our tasks done easier, but this "conversational" nonsense and making it more human like is, well, nonsense.

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#276

Post by Lio »

new299 wrote: post #257
Lio wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree with this but at the same time I'm annoyed with the current state of macOS and the Mac product line. The Mac (and maybe the AirPort Extreme) are the only Apple products I really care about or depend on. I'm holding on to my iPhone because Apple have a great strategy with regard to privacy and user rights but I'm not upgrading it because I'm pissed off about the Mac. Pathetic as that is, as a Mac user…

As a UNIX-like system loving dev... I always found macs (running MacOS) a bit frustrating for dev work. It's nice that you have a familiar command structure to work with, but installing software from homebrew/whatever else was always a nightmare. They were nice laptops... but it seems inefficient. So I maintain 2 laptop. A macbook which I basically use for Skype and office work (and use about twice a month), and a ch…

Each to their own I suppose. I personally don't find homebrew to be a nightmare at all but that is of course anecdotal.

You are mistaken if you think that Apple never intended the Mac to be used for general purpose Unix development though, they used to advertise it for that purpose on the science section of their website, before it was removed.

https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/apple-drops-science-...

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#277

Post by acdha »

anonred wrote: post #155
nicolas_t wrote: post #114

I went from almost never needing to restart my mac (with Snow Leopard) to having to restart it a couple of times a week with Sierra. The UI just becomes totally unresponsive (the cursor stops moving, the time in the menu bar stops ticking and the spinning wheel stops spinning) and needs a restart. And I don't even have things like SIMBL installed (I used to with snow leopard, not anymore). I just have Karabiner eleme…

> I used to use Exposé all the time, now I don't because everything slows to a crawl when I activate it. Too true. I just tried opening Mission Control on a maxed-out MacBook Pro with Sierra and it took 7 seconds. It's a shame that Snow Leopard isn't compatible with most toolchains now.

That's at least 6 seconds slower than a 2010 MacBook Air running Sierra. It might be worth watching Activity Monitor when you open it to see whether you have something like swapping or simply I/O issues loading all of the icons – high latency is a common indicator that a storage device is about to fail.

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#278

Post by alphonsegaston »

matt4077 wrote: post #198
richardboegli wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the Macbook Pro was meant to be for Power Users?

I have no idea what these self-annoited "professionals" do, but it's actually quite difficult to get the MacBook Pro to its limits. Doing webdev or using Xcode it's hard to ever notice any delay. But maybe I'm just a noob who isn't professional enough to suddenly discover that life just isn't worth it without 32GB of RAM.

As an artist/illustrator, I'm often working with multiple, large (1GB+) files when preparing stuff for print. Photoshop eats up 8GB of ram doing just about nothing, so when you try to bulk apply some rendering action, export files, or hell, even use their brush engine with something besides the default tool presets, the current gen macs don't cut it. And this doesn't into account running a Cintiq and another display, or their awful integrated graphics setup, etc, etc

I'm currently looking at gaming Desktops to replace my current setup because those are the only things with enough horsepower anymore. It sucks because I feel like I'm going to have to divide up a lot of the scripted tasks I have to make my workflow more efficient, given the lack of a real Unix environment on Windows.

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#279

Post by mjolk »

tnone wrote: post #176
adamlett wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is a company that is following the process they learned when Steve ran the show, without any clear understanding of why that process exists Apple created Apple University years before Steve died, to understand clearly why they became so successful. They even hired a top professor from an Ivy League university to run it. Whatever ails Apple these days is not caused by them not understanding how they became great…

You cannot teach taste and vision. Apple giving up monitors is the clearest sign of that: it's the face of the computer, so much that novices confused it for the computer itself. The Jobs-style answer was the all-in-one iMacs and the monitor-as-a-dock, a computer that wants to be seen. The Cook-style answer is to put somebody else's logo right on their product's display case. Madness.

For someone that was waiting for this hardware refresh to get a Macbook Pro and a new Cinema Display, I was surprised that the keyboard became less utilitarian and the display more-so.

Re: Apple’s 2016 in review

#280

Post by nilkn »

Lio wrote: post #162
caconym_ wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you figure "pure neglect"? What are the features you're missing in the current Mac lineup? Which products from other manufacturers make a meaningful improvement on Apple's offering for "devs"?

Well a computer with enough GPU performance to work with VR would be a nice start. Apple don't currently have anything available other than hacking an eGPU set up together. The "current" Mac Pro is over 3 (4?) years old now. Users can't upgrade it because of the proprietary GPU cards and Apple don't seem able to keep it relevant themselves. It's difficult to have a professional relationship with a supplier where the…

VR is a subset of PC gaming right now, and Apple has never offered hardware sufficient for high-end PC gaming.
Post reply on HN