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Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Keyboard

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Re: Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Keyboard

#431

Post by dTal »

JdeBP wrote: post #395
dTal wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mounting a seldom-modified and highly sensitive and critical filesystem r/w by default , when the existence of buggy implementations is known, is a deeply irresponsible decision. Blaming the rest of the world for the fallout from their crappy design decisions is a pattern of behaviour among some systemd developers. Fortunately you don't have to use systemd. I'm happily running Void Linux.

On the subject of what is known: It displays some ignorance of this subject to blame it on systemd, when Matthew Garrett told people that it was really his fault. * https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/693494314941288448 The people who relate the tale as if it were a systemd thing or something that the systemd people did are ill-informed. It was entirely a kernel thing. This was even stated outright at the time by the cr…

Fair enough. It seems the issue is more subtle than I'd thought.

Re: Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Keyboard

#432

Post by tsenkov »

no1youknowz wrote: post #408

Apple. This issue is seriously simple. Take the previous design, you know the one from late 2012 to 2015. If you must (sigh), take out the SD card, HDMI, USB A, MagSafe and replace with USB-C. I don't know who suggested this, but whatever. Don't add in a touch bar. Don't add in an over sized touchpad. Leave the keyboard alone. The layout of the model is amazing. I purchased a late 2012 in Jan '13. It's been my daily…

+1 :) I use the exact same machine and I simply don't want to upgrade it with the current options.

I don't even need anything higher resolution (retina is great), honestly. In fact, I don't even need a more performant (or more cores on my) processor (my quad-core i7 works great with everything), or better GPU - all I need is:

- 64GB RAM;

- 2TB SSD;

- better camera.

Re: Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Keyboard

#433

Post by noway421 »

repsilat wrote: post #178
rmrfrmrf wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows is so terrible, though. I could never go back.

Twoish years ago I moved from Linux full time to Windows at home and whatever the Apple OS is called at work. The Apple one was a pain. Command line tools are almost but not quite right (zcat in particular just doesn't work) and I found the user experience pretty annoying at first but passable after that. Still don't really understand how "installing software" is supposed to go, and lots of struggle against Homebrew…

The fact that MacOS/Darwin has BSD utilities instead of GNU is a common gotcha. Not a showstopper though, `brew install coreutils` will get you the tools you are used to!

Re: Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Keyboard

#434

Post by mirchibajji »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #357
Symbiote wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Running Linux, of course. I wish more people would. That's the best way to get any issues fixed, whether by filing bug reports, writing up a workaround on a wiki or Stackoverflow to help others, or fixing the bug. It's important for us to own our own tools, and keep the right to do with them as we wish. We expect this for our servers, but ignore it for laptops and desktops. If developers continue like this, then us…

And why do you think that a lot of people who are painfully aware of all the issues you mention still refuse to use Linux on a laptop while happily using it on servers? There is a riduculous repetitiveness about this debate. For me and many others, Linux on a laptop has always been unstable, insecure, hot and noisy. Many specific issues can be fixed if you put in the effort, but on almost every dist-upgrade something…

It boils down to what kind of trade-offs we are willing to make.

I might have been one of those Linux users that didn't have many serious issues for decades. Tried OSX for a while (2013-14), but didn't like how OSX gets in the way, though Mac hardware seemed decent. I would rather put up with an unusable fingerprint reader under Linux (Thinkpad Carbon X1), rather than OSX idiosyncrasies. There are other issues with the current Thinkpad (screen mirroring doesn't work reliably), but that is not a deal breaker for me

Re: Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Keyboard

#435

Post by isostatic »

keymone wrote: post #415
isostatic wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've run xubuntu on this thinkpad since 2010, currently 16.04. I've just rdesktopped into a windows machine to run a cisco ASA tool. Just had to reboot it. YMMV of course, and the plural of annecdote isn't data, but I find it hard to raise bugs when they don't affect me.

well i consider myself fairly technical and i've been trying various linuxes since 2003 - every single time there were some issues that i can't imagine non-technical person to deal with. no matter the distro, no matter the desktop environment, no matter the hardware. graphics drivers, sound system, xorg config, multiple monitors, wifi, you name it. so excuse me if i take your comment about "no hardware problem since…

I've had tons of problems on the occasions I've built a windows machine -- took me 12 hours to get a windows 7 machine running casparcg successfully in 2015.

I guess it's what you know.

Re: Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Keyboard

#436

Post by codemusings »

dingo_bat wrote: post #121

> In the meantime, let’s give some other companies a shot. Dell and HP have gorgeous, reliable, repairable flagship laptops that are getting rave reviews. Right now, I think they’ve done more to earn your business than Apple has. The laptop mentioned in the "rave review" link is an elitebook 840 g5. I have been using the 840 g1 as my primary laptop for the last 4 years and it really is a sturdy device. The hardware i…

The 840 G5 has an off center trackpad with buttons and a number key block. How this is still a thing is absolutely beyond me.

Re: Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Keyboard

#437

Post by ankurdhama »

tracer4201 wrote: post #342

I honestly don't understand all these quality sacrifices just to make things thinner. It makes the product actually feel somewhat cheap and brittle. The same thing confuses me with smartphones. Everyone keeps making these bacteria and finger print magnets thinner... the minute you drop it, it's shattered or unuseable... and so then you're buying a case to protect it from scratches and shatter... so what's the point o…

They (and all other companies) have one goal - successful sustainable business. The keyword here is sustainable.

Re: Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Keyboard

#438

Post by blauditore »

Lukas_Skywalker wrote: post #389
blauditore wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and so then you're buying a case to protect it from scratches and shatter... so what's the point of making it thinner in the first place? I agree, also in terms of material. I'd love to buy a plastic phone with some bezel that doesn't shatter easily. The Nokia Lumias a couple years back (e.g. the Lumia 800[0]) were good-looking and super robust. But manufacturers obviously don't have much incentive to make hardware…

I (still) own a Lumia 830 from back then. It's incredible what my phone endured (drops from a car roof, down a few stairs, even a short dive in a kitchen sink), and I don't really know why the thing is so sturdy since it truly looks good. I recently bought a spare display for about 40$ and a battery for 20$, just so I can replace them if anything should happen in the future.

> and I don't really know why the thing is so sturdy since it truly looks good.

One factor is that the cover glass doesn't go all the way out to edges and corners. This leaves some "crumble zone", as phones by the laws of probability most often land on edges.

What do the corners of your phone look like? I bet they're dented, at least that used to be the case for me.

Re: Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Keyboard

#440

Post by aninhumer »

sneak wrote: post #363
neuronic wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure how this can fly over peoples heads, but the point is marketing. There is virtually zero disadvantage in making the phones 2mm thicker and add to their robustness and battery life this way. Virtually zero... except _marketing_ and hence sales.

If sales increase when it is thinner, it stands to reason that customers want thinner devices. Just because you disagree with them doesn’t mean you’re not wrong for saying there is zero disadvantage. The disadvantage is not giving customers what they want.

>If sales increase when it is thinner, it stands to reason that customers want thinner devices.

No it means consumers think they want thinner phones, not that they actually prefer using them in practice. That's what marketing means.

And of course, the reason they think thinner is better is also marketing. Keep repeating something and people will internalise it without criticism.

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