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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

#341

Post by pjmlp »

TACIXAT wrote: post #192
laddng wrote: post #18

I've had a good, satisfying run with MacBook Pros, but now I'm stepping off the Apple train. I understand that Apple is trying to go in a new direction with the new MacBook Pros, and I won't complain about it. I am now simply moving to an Arch Linux setup on an old Lenovo Thinkpad Carbon X1 to continue living inside the Terminal.

I really feel most Linux distros were made for developers and development. Whenever I try to do things on Windows and OSX I get insanely frustrated with the amount of friction. It's nice to have an OS that trusts you and lets you make mistakes.

UNIX developers.

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

#343

Post by trapperkeeper79 »

jbmorgado wrote: post #277
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…

Well, he goes trough more than the bar. I have a 2013 15" MacBook Pro, the diference with the top of the line that came out yesterday comes down a slight bump in the dedicated Graphics Card (which I don't appreciate since I use CUDA a lot and as such I actually prefer the GTX 750M to a only slightly better AMD card in the new model), and a 0.1 GHz bump in the processor (back from the 2.3 GHz i7 my MacBook Pro has). I…

I'm surprised why more devs are not getting upset at the lack of an Nvidia GPU option.

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

#344

Post by Johnny555 »

Szevth wrote: post #279
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…

Why do you need a new Macbook when your machine probably does everything? The specs between a 2016 and 2013 are negligible for web browsing and programming. Unless you're doing heavy video editing or 3D rendering.. So many people upgrading notebooks when they don't need to.

I think that's the point of the article -- developers have little reason to upgrade -- if they want more memory, faster CPU's or more cores, then they need to go with a non-Apple laptop.

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

#347

Post by busterarm »

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…

With the abysmally low margins typically made off of keyboards and mice along with the fact that the highend of the market is driven by desktop gamers, I think you're going to see plain USB Keyboards and Mice sticking around for a long, long, long, long time. Hell, I can still buy some of my favorite keyboards with a PS/2 connection or with an included adapter.

I've been using external devices for these with my macbook for years.

Edit: In fact, I think this applies to almost any low-cost, low-margin pluggable. Laptop coolers/fans are another. Either USB-C is going to kill the market for these or you're wrong.

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

#348

Post by musesum »

I've bought every single MBP since 2007, when I switched over from Windows to focus on iOS. This may be the first one I skip. Not sure.

PRO: My muscle memory is solidly in the MacOS+Xcode camp. Switching from ctrl key to command key for basic operations resulted in my RSI injury going away. Why? My guess: because the thumb is now the pivot point for commands, instead of the pinky. As a result, my hands splay inwards instead of outwards. Back during my MS-Win days, the solution was to get a split keyboard for the desktop. No longer need that.

CON: The main problem a dynamic set of keys is that you have to look at them. Each eye saccade wastes 200 milliseconds. I also assign app shortcuts with cmd-option-fn and use divvy + cmd-option-fn to assign reorganize window placement.

Plus, I wanna play with ML using CUDA. Am missing the Nvidia GPU that came with my 2013 MBP.

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

#349

Post by slg »

masklinn wrote: post #226
slg wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might remove the dongle but is it any better? I now need either two cables, one to hook my phone up to my laptop and one to hook it up to my computer, or a new charger that accept USB-C but won't be compatible with most other devices out there.

> That might remove the dongle but is it any better? Er… yes? > I now need either two cables, one to hook my phone up to my laptop and one to hook it up to my computer Except you carry one cable with you and the other one stays hooked to an eventual desktop computer, rather than having to carry around a cable and a dongle.

What kind of plug do you find in cars? What kind of plug do you find in hotel nightstands? What kind of plug do you find in airplanes? What kind of plug do you find in almost every outlet charger made by Apple or anyone else? The answer to all of those isn't USB-C. So if you want to connect your iPhone to both your laptop and almost all charging sources in the real world, you need either two cables or one cable and a dongle.

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

#350

Post by copperx »

I know the post is complaining about removing physical keys, but wasn't it completely idiotic to have removed the SD card slot? I know that most people don't use it. And maybe having it in the 13" is overkill, but what about keeping it in the 15" one Apple? It's a "Pro" computer, and the most common use case isn't for developers, but hobby, prosumer, and pro photographers, who use (gasp!) dedicated cameras with SD memory.
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