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MacBook Pro Keyboard Drives Me Crazy

ryanbigg.com

321–330 of 586 posts

Re: MacBook Pro Keyboard Drives Me Crazy

#321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a life-long Mac user, I feel the opposite. Whenever I have to use Windows, it feels like Windows Explorer is missing lots of features I take for granted, some that the Mac has had since the 90's. Stuff like spring-loaded drag and drop, directory sizes being calculated in list views, QuickLook... It also has some really braindead design choices like sorting directories separate from files, making navigating with th…

Interesting. I use a MBP for work, and hate that Finder intermixes directories and files. I much prefer having directories sorted separately: it makes it easier to drill down through a hierarchy of all the directories are grouped together...

What about sorting by type/kind? Sounds like you might be on sort by none/name...

Re: MacBook Pro Keyboard Drives Me Crazy

#322

I know this topic has been done to death on HN, but this remains a persistent concern. I've had two keyboard replacements. If you haven't had it done, it's a "topcase" replacement - which involved a good half of the machine. It's a big change and I was told to allow for 5 business days as well. My Macbook Pro is out of the 4 year replacement window - and the Spacebar is starting to fail. I've owned every form-factor…

> My Macbook Pro is out of the 4 year replacement window - and the Spacebar is starting to fail. If you're out of the 4-year replacement window, then your MBP must not be a 2016 or newer model.

My mistake - I meant to say "coming out of". I got the very first of the 2016 (and the touchbar) models.

Re: MacBook Pro Keyboard Drives Me Crazy

#323

I think Jony was shown the door over this debacle, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Phil is next. When is the last time you’ve seen Phil on stage at an event? He’s the one who introduced these keyboards and praised them up and down, he’s probably going to take the fall for them as well. I have money burning a hole in my pocket right now to buy a MBP but I can’t do it. It is literally a defective product. Shame on Apple…

MacBook revenue is a rounding error in Apple's books.

Re: MacBook Pro Keyboard Drives Me Crazy

#324
post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Surface Book 2 is no question, hands-down one of the best pieces of kit I've ever ever owned, it's a phenomenal machine and I've not regretted moving back to Windows for a single second (except for a decent terminal, but that's almost here too)

When the battery dies on the Surface Book, you won't be able to repair it even at a Microsoft Support center. They will just take it back and offer a cheaper price on a replacement. With an iFixit repairability score of 1, it's ridiculously difficult to do the replacement yourself too. Having to throw out a fully functional device once the battery goes weak should be a practice that gets banned at least for the sake…

Microsoft itself does not replace batteries but UBreakIFix will replace Surface batteries for about $200.

Re: MacBook Pro Keyboard Drives Me Crazy

#325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are four of us at work that use Linux--the other 30 or so all have MacBooks. There are no converts, either you started a Linux person, or you started a Mac person. My little Linux enclave has some theories about the cognitive effect of all the polish that you find on Apple products, but we can't separate our biasses from good science, especially because there's nobody to ask that knows both worlds. So I have a…

The primary difference is whether you think it's alright to spend £35 on a single simple cable or not. Many things that follow simply hinge on that.

This might have seemed as a superficial witticism, but it's not meant as one (honestly!).

There's a fundamental difference in approach towards hardware and software that's cultivated slowly, gently, and steadily by Apple. The objective is to shell out money to the company and its ecosystem, and starts with vendor lock-in with proprietary tech and cheap but paid apps in a closed-off app store, to reach to the point of an annual budget for Apple expenditures that follows the latest iterations of their products, which are buffed up with New! Shiny! Features! that aren't much thought out, but are nominally innovative.

Now, if you go the Linux/BSD open source/free software path, you'll be hard pressed to find software to throw money at. Best you could do is donate to support your favourite projects, but that's optional rather than mandatory. After settling down with a nice system configuration, you'll similarly be hard pressed to find reasons to waste money on continued "upgrades", instead opting for something that works, and returning to it. People buying couples (or even stockpiles) of, say, x203's is a good example here. They're not buying the marketed "cutting edge", they're rather opting for something that supports their workflow, at a fraction of a price.

This demonstrates a fundamental difference of attitudes, on the one hand people subscribing to an open-ended channel of (fashionable?) updates in hardware and software, and on the other people maintaining and updating a workflow. Perhaps obviously, I'm viewing this from the slightly biased dev angle (and not necessarily webdev either).

Understandably, video and graphics people may come from different tech cultures and have different expectations, where the Apple way is more or less the only (apparent) way.

TL;DR, I see the Apple mentality as bombastic value inflation with more varnish than wood, while the FOSS camp as gradual value increase albeit with the occasional splinters.

Disclaimer: I do make daily use of my MBA 11" 2013, but I'd be hard-pressed to change it. Yet if I'm forced to, I'd probably not go for lustre, but for something equally functional. (Think of a "My other laptop runs OpenBSD" bumper sticker.) When I need to offload a build cycle that'd take too long on the MBA, I do so on a Fujitsu rather than a Mac Pro.

There you go. Downvote a guy to assure a better explanation.

Re: MacBook Pro Keyboard Drives Me Crazy

#326
post #10

> If Apple releases their new Macs with an identical keyboard, then I'm ditching Macs and will pick up a Microsoft Surface Book or something similar. Whatever it is, I'll make sure to pick a laptop that has a god damned functional keyboard. Same here, MBP keyboards are unbearable. Trying to develop on OSX has become a hassle. Gotta jump through hoops to get gdb to work. Windows with WSL on a Surface Book feels extrem…

Go give windows a try and report back. I've been using Windows for the past couple of weeks and, granted maybe I haven't really given it a chance, using it after using Macs for 10+ years is not great. Maybe developing on macOS has become a hassle (I don't see that, but sure), but doing everything on Windows is a hassle. Taking a screenshot. Opening the right file. Displaying UI at a reasonable scale . Think what you…

> Maybe developing on macOS has become a hassle (I don't see that, but sure), but doing everything on Windows is a hassle.

I have Windows installed on a Bootcamp partition on my Macbook Pro. Aside from the hassle and quirks of a different operating systems (coming from MacOS I find Windows extremely lacking in UX), I find perplexing the way Windows handles color profiles. Same computer, same screen, but everything is super saturated in Windows. In some websites with a lot of color in the background it can be jarring.

Re: MacBook Pro Keyboard Drives Me Crazy

#327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go give windows a try and report back. I've been using Windows for the past couple of weeks and, granted maybe I haven't really given it a chance, using it after using Macs for 10+ years is not great. Maybe developing on macOS has become a hassle (I don't see that, but sure), but doing everything on Windows is a hassle. Taking a screenshot. Opening the right file. Displaying UI at a reasonable scale . Think what you…

Eh, as someone who's primarily used Windows (and a bit of Linux with xfce) for my entire life I find Macs basically unusable (seriously how do I browse the file system). I think it's more of a question of familiarity than anything else.

Finder is probably the worst part of using a Mac. But explorer isn’t that much better either

I am currently forced to use windows and it’s near impossible to get anything done with it without feeling frustrated. It simply doesn’t follow my speed and line of thought on anything.

I am quite shocked after using Mac for 7 years how little progress or even regression windows 10 went through. Without making this into a windows bashing thread only the explorer related things I can think of:

- unzip hidden behind right click or freaking menu button. And a dialog with checkbox to “show files after extraction”. Mac: double click. New folder. Done

- rename through right click or f2. Laptop means fn+f2. Mac: press enter, type, done

- quicklook on Mac is the single greatest feature ever. Mainly because it works in file dialogs. Need to upload a file but don’t know which one? Just quicklook. Windows afaik has no equivalent

- somewhat related, maximum length of file paths. There is no excuse for that in 2019. If unzipping fails because of this the software is just plain bad

And this is just explorer which I barely use. Shocking

Re: MacBook Pro Keyboard Drives Me Crazy

#328
My experience has been similar. I upgraded from the 2014 MBP (which is a glorious machine) to 2018. The day I got it, I realized it had issues with the keyboard (several keys repeating). Took it back to the store, got a new device. The issue wasn't as widely acknowledged back then. When I complained to the store that I was experiencing the same issue again, the gave me yet another device, same issue. Went back to the store and they got annoyed at me. They complained that none of their other customers reported this issue.

They accused me of installing apps that were causing this issue although I had nothing of that sort installed. I am a web developer and like to think that I know computers well enough to not install sketchy apps. I had installed all the same apps that were in my 2014 MBP so when I confronted the store, they just gave me a random reason and sent me away. I got so fed up trying to convince these people that there was an issue. I ended up buying a Magic Keyboard and using that instead.

Mind you, all this happened in India where Apple doesn't have a direct retail experience. 3rd party retailers have zero training procedures in place. Their staff isn't nearly as knowledgeable as their US counterparts about the products they are selling. This whole keyboard fiasco has been my worst Apple experience.

Re: MacBook Pro Keyboard Drives Me Crazy

#329
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go give windows a try and report back. I've been using Windows for the past couple of weeks and, granted maybe I haven't really given it a chance, using it after using Macs for 10+ years is not great. Maybe developing on macOS has become a hassle (I don't see that, but sure), but doing everything on Windows is a hassle. Taking a screenshot. Opening the right file. Displaying UI at a reasonable scale . Think what you…

> Displaying UI at a reasonable scale. It's amazing how bad Windows still is at this. In my experience, connecting monitors of different densities results in crazy things breaking, like the "maximize window" feature.

It's also funny, though, how selectively we remember things.

Only a few years ago Mac multi-monitor support was horrific. You couldn't straddle two screens with a window. And heaven help you if you were dealing with full screen, your second monitor was effectively disabled.

Re: MacBook Pro Keyboard Drives Me Crazy

#330
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, just to throw another opinion into this dumpster fire: I had to get a new laptop, knew I was getting a 2019 MBP, and was terrified the keyboard experience would be horrendous due to the coverage I see on the topic here. And it isn't at all. It feels different than my 2015 model, but... definitely not worse. I may even be just slightly better because it's noticeably quieter. Just one perspective, but yeah. The k…

I liked my 2019 MBP keyboard too. Until one week I noticed it kept repeating e's and n's. And then I learnt its not fixable unless you are prepared to go without a machine for 3 to 14 days. And then I learnt from Rossman Youtube that your machine might never be the same again after Apple's "genius"'s get their hands on. Honestly, I thought it was all a fuss about nothing. But it isn't. BTW my machine is 6 months old.…

Had the same with my work MBP. Started about 6 weeks into using it, went to the Apple Store and got told it would take at least 14 days. Asked them for an exchange device so I could keep working and they almost laughed at me.
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