Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Keyboard • Hacker News Board

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

#481

Post by rasz » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 9:53 AM UTC

phinnaeus wrote: post #3

Realistically, I just can't really see Apple fixing this by introducing a new keyboard design that's any thicker. As much as I would love to hear "We've heard your feedback on the keyboards and we've made some drastic changes to address them in our new Macbook Pro", it just doesn't seem like their style. What do others think they're going to do for their next release of laptops?

Historically they just keep replacing old broken hardware with new/reworked broken hardware. Reworking includes reheating GPUs (!), or putting rubber shims(!) over vulnerable BGA chips with cracked solder joints.

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

#482

Post by Theodores » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 9:53 AM UTC

girvo wrote: post #444

jarym wrote: post #418

Stupid Apple - I blame Schiller. They won’t support 32Gb ram because it might decrease battery life and requires them to reengineer the logic board but they’re totally cool with a fragile ass keyboard GLUED to a battery! Really there’s no way to call this anything other than insanity. I remember the media used to talk about the ‘halo effect’ - well I’m someone who has Almost every MBP between 2002-2012 and every iPho…

I thought the RAM thing would decrease battery life, because it requires a different intel chipset — as shown by the contemporary laptops from other manufacturers with the same CPUs and chipset topping out at 16GB as well? I could be misremembering, and it frustrates me either way, but I was certain that Intel also held some blame for this?

You are correct, I bought an Intel NUC with an i7 in it and that had the 16Gb limit. Furthermore, it only had two cores and hyperthreading whereas I was 'used to' i7 having four proper cores and HT.

I wanted to have a desktop that I could leave on without it taking lots of power (CO2 matters) or needing a wind-tunnel grade fan to keep it cool (noise matters). So it had some variant of what Apple used. In my opinion this CPU was a dud, I had to upgrade the BIOS numerous times and it wasn't any quicker than my elderly i5 powered laptop. Plus it wasn't as silent as hoped:

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/boards-kits...

Apple used the same RAM limited CPU in 2015:

https://www.apple.com/shop/product/G0QP3LL/A/refurbished-133...

The subsequent products with the useless keyboard were to use iterations of this lemon of a CPU.

My Intel NUC is actually in a drawer unused. I had lost a couple of keys on the elderly i5 laptop, I bought a new backlit keyboard for that on ebay, it came from China in an incredible 3 days and cost ~£50 including shipping. This is the keyboard I am using right now. It actually looks super cool as the laptop was originally all in silver, the replacement keyboard and surround is black and the design looks so good because the mousepad is still silver coloured. It looks like a high end German product due to that colourway combo.

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

#483

Post by bhnmmhmd » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 9:53 AM UTC

Symbiote wrote: post #315

dleslie wrote: post #252

I like machines that are built to take a beating. My penultimate laptop was an HP Mini 101; I only replaced it on a whim, and still use it from time to time. The keys have been worn to be smooth, concave and most are missing the printed text. When I last opened it up to add an SSD a suprising amount of sand came pouring out; having been taken to many beaches, tossed in bags, and generally used outdoors it had accumul…

> 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…

From Game Theory perspective, "not using Linux" is actually the game's equilibrium. Because if you have to choose between a proprietary OS (Windows, macOS) and an FOSS (GNU/Linux, BSD, ...), you'd have to choose the former in order to increase your own utility. If people said they're gonna start using Linux from now on, that wouldn't work, since at least some are willing to "unilaterally deviate" from that decision and use Windows/macOS to gain a boost against others.

If you want people to start using FOSS, you'd have to offer them something they can't have on non-FOSS alternatives.

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

#484

Post by keymone » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 9:53 AM UTC

metargz wrote: post #474

keymone wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> give us back USB ports, give us back swappable batteries, and give us back SD card readers also dvd, ethernet, hdmi, vga and floppy, yeah. sorry, i want neither of these in my laptop. i want it to be lightweight, small, solid and durable body without moving parts or too many holes. what you want is achievable with dock station.

> sorry, i want neither of these in my laptop. i want it to be lightweight, small, solid and durable body without moving parts or too many holes. Thinkpad T480s weights about the same as the current MBP, has more useful ports (I find having hdmi, ethernet and older usb handy on a device I use in my work trips), good keyboard, replaceable hardware and whatnot. It is bigger, but Lenovo makes smaller Thinkpads too. Subj…

i'm not defending macbooks here unconditionally. of course keyboard is worse than previous generation. i hope apple fixes it in the next. but otherwise, macbooks are hands down best hardware design of a laptop on the market. touchpad alone makes me not even consider any of the lenovo stuff. visual, tactile and functional design matter more to me than having 32g ram. not having more holes is preferable to me than having more holes. abandoning everything for 4 usbc ports is painful at first, but a great decision that will move the industry as a whole forward.

of course this is all subjective, use whatever works best for you.

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

#485

Post by sh4z » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 9:54 AM UTC

sharpshadow wrote: post #470

m_st wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple (MBP15 late 2013, iMac 27 late 2009) user at home, Dell XPS 15 9550 (2015) user at work here. While I totally agree with you about the new MBP, please just know that the XPS 15 isn't without it's problems too! It must just be that Windows users are more used to lower quality hardware/software that such things are accepted... I really like my XPS 15 as it is fast and as compact as a MBP, but: - Microsoft Surface…

There is a XPS Developer Edition with Linux instead of Microsoft. I'm personally stuck with Win 7. Will never update to Win 10 and OSX does not seem to be a good choice nowadays. That means Linux will make the run the next years, hopefully.

Personally I like to just get the Windows version and load Linux with GRUB as a second boot option. The few times I need to do something on Windows (photo editing, some games) I just reboot.

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

#486

Post by lmm » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 9:55 AM UTC

jarym wrote: post #418

Stupid Apple - I blame Schiller. They won’t support 32Gb ram because it might decrease battery life and requires them to reengineer the logic board but they’re totally cool with a fragile ass keyboard GLUED to a battery! Really there’s no way to call this anything other than insanity. I remember the media used to talk about the ‘halo effect’ - well I’m someone who has Almost every MBP between 2002-2012 and every iPho…

I've been very happy with my Surface Book, FWIW - as beautiful as it is powerful, though with a price to match. (But there are plenty of good options these days - I've heard good things about the XPS too, though personally I didn't like the feel of the keyboard).

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

#487

Post by jillesvangurp » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 9:55 AM UTC

Overly dramatic; Apple is doing fine. But they are definitely behind in appeasing the pro user segment with decent hardware and not doing nearly enough to fix that. I replaced my 2012 model (essentially the last model that had Steve Jobs' fingers all over it) late last year with the 15" model. So far so good with the keyboard but not looking forward to having to cash in my overpriced apple care and lose it for a week or more while Apple does whatever it needs to do to fix a problem that shouldn't need fixing.

What I want and what Apple sold me are miles apart at this point and they came very close to losing my business. Technically, I could be up and running using Linux and not lose a lot of time having to switch tools. Essentially everything I care about should just work. I do backend stuff. In the end I chickened out and had to replace my old laptop in a hurry and went for an easy upgrade to not lose time dealing with a different OS, configuring shit that shouldn't need configuring, shopping around, etc. That's what it means to be a pro, I just don't have time for that stuff. I don't even mind the steep price. I'm totally OK paying 4K for a laptop that I use every day for 3-5 years. Not a problem. Earns itself back within weeks. I bill more per week.

But I do want quality and performance. I'm getting neither with the latest model. It's fine but nothing special. Mind you, I have the tricked out version with the extra GPU memory, faster cpu, etc. But it's 16GB, just like the one it replaced. Has a slightly faster 4 core CPU, just like the one it replaced. I guess the SSD is a slightly faster but don't really notice much difference. The retina screen is nice but I would have preferred a non glossy one. I clocked my builds before and after and they're about 30% faster on the new machine. That's appalling for a state of the art laptop replacing a laptop that was half a decade old.

On top of that the keyboard absolutely sucks. It's loud, flimsy, lacks keys I need, the arrow keys are tiny, etc. Terrible job in form over function style design. The touch bar is a nice gimmick but not getting a lot of value out of it. Definitely not worth losing the function keys over. I don't think I would miss it.

If I were to shop right now and had more time to do so. I'd be looking to get one of those nice new CPUs with 6 or more cores (yes, I actually use them), 32 GB, or 64 GB even. Decent cooling so the laptop doesn't throttle itself every time I need some performance. A keyboard that doesn't suck. And less dependence on dongles would also be awesome though not super critical for me. If that means 0.5cm thicker laptop: great. Not a problem.

On a positive note, I know several people that have abandoned Apple. They seem quite happy with their windows/linux laptops but they seem to be replacing them fairly quickly as well. My observation with issues they are having is that competitors still have some catching up to do. You get issues with trackpads on linux, webcams that are in weird positions (dell), build quality issues, etc.

All that means in my book that all Apple needs to do is slightly up their game on the quality front and they'll be fine.

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

#488

Post by mort96 » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 9:56 AM UTC

stephenr wrote: post #460

kbumsik wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dell XPS has up to 32GB with the exactly same CPU.

And it won’t be using low power memory modules. That’s the trade off.

Maybe, if their MacBook Pros were just a little bit thicker (say, the thickness of the 2013-2015 models), they'd be able to fit a big enough battery for the extra power draw to not matter too much?

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

#489

Post by jillesvangurp » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 9:59 AM UTC

ryenus wrote: post #476

vivan wrote: post #413

I was one of those annoying Apple evangelists for years. My 2010 MacBook Pro was my baby and I loved it. Eventually it got to the point where I had to replace it (after 7 years!) and when I went to look around at the new MacBook Pro range, I was so disgusted by all the problems that I ended up getting a Dell XPS 13. I consider my original MBP and the following models to be some of the best laptops you could buy at th…

The 2015 MBP is still available, though not that obviously: https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs-2015/

Yes but at that price, it's a very bad deal. You might as well buy a refurbished second hand model.

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

#490

Post by lmm » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 9:59 AM UTC

manigandham wrote: post #370

eric-hu wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I own a 2012 MacBook pro 15' and work gave me a 2016. The difference is about 1.5 pounds, going from 5.6 pounds to 4 pounds. The difference is big enough that I've slowly started using my work laptop for most of my personal needs too, even though I initially wanted to keep my work laptop clean of unnecessary personal data.

You drop more weight just going to the bathroom in the morning. I find it extremely hard to believe that a few pounds makes a difference to any physically capable adult.

The difference between a laptop I can comfortably have in a backpack or messenger bag when cycling is huge - it goes from something I took when I was specifically planning to use it (and worried about back pain even then) to something I essentially have on me at all times now.