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Its butterfly keyboard design has failed, but Apple has yet to admit its mistake

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Re: Its butterfly keyboard design has failed, but Apple has yet to admit its mistake

#491

Post by faizshah »

randallsquared wrote: post #471
gnicholas wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spend less than 10% of my time at my computer maxing my processor. I spend more than 90% of my time using the keyboard. I’ve seriously considered selling my 2017 MBP and buying a 2018 MBA. Then I heard the problems still haven’t been solved with that model and nixed that idea. But I would much rather have a slower machine with a reliable/comfortable keyboard than a faster machine with a brittle/uncomfortable one.

Speed and utilization are not the same. My 2018 MBP was a great speed improvement over the 2015 MBP I previously used, even in cases where the 2015 MBP wasn't using all cores (which really rarely happened, since for the workloads I use, multiple Electron apps and Docker for Mac, typing in Slack would start stuttering as soon as multiple cores were in constant use). I don't think it was ever usable enough at 6-7 cores…

I've had the opposite experience.

I use a mid 2012 retina that I bought used and have spilled water on 4 times. I keep 10 chrome windows open with around 15-20 tabs open each. In addition to microsoft word, sketch/figma, atom/pycharm/rubymine/intellij, multiple preview books, multiple iterm instances, postgres, and the Books app.

I don't have any trouble except when using docker for mac (which I just use the cloud for now) and photoshop.

I would like to get a new laptop though.

Re: Its butterfly keyboard design has failed, but Apple has yet to admit its mistake

#492

Post by mrguyorama »

weberc2 wrote: post #465
mrguyorama wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meanwhile, if you're like me and don't like how the mouse or trackpad respond, you're SOL, because there is zero configuration allowed. Try using a non-magic mouse on a mac. It's hell.

What? I do have a non-magic mouse. What issues do you have?

Pointer speed was atrocious and turning off stupid acceleration was impossible without crazy plist hacking

Re: Its butterfly keyboard design has failed, but Apple has yet to admit its mistake

#493

Post by lrem »

camelNotation wrote: post #410
cmiles74 wrote: post #324

A co-worked of mine convinced the company to buy them a MacBook (the first the company has ever purchased) to replace their aging Dell laptop. They have been doing more and more work on the company's iOS app and the aging Mac mini the company had purchased needed to replaced anyway. After having the laptop for just over a year, they called me upset as the laptop would no longer power on. After some gentle interrogati…

Not only are Thinkpad keyboards the most comfortable and satisfying on the market, you can literally pour water on them and it will drain out the bottom of the laptop without ever touching internal components. After using my Thinkpad for about six months, I can't go back. The keyboard is amazing, build quality is rock solid, screen is 4k with 100% RGB, and you can actually upgrade the thing. I buy a laptop because I…

Macbooks used to survive that too. My 2009-ish Pro got half a liter of sweet tea to the keyboard. Keypresses sounded crunchy for almost a year, but otherwise it worked fine.

Re: Its butterfly keyboard design has failed, but Apple has yet to admit its mistake

#494

Post by mrguyorama »

lenocinor wrote: post #450
mrguyorama wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just realized, wait, windows has had that feature since at least 2000 ! Is that not standard on linux distros?

But doesn't malware like to hide in there in Windows? I've had it turned off for years on my Windows machines for that reason.

That sounds like a poor strategy over just running Windows Defender or the like

Re: Its butterfly keyboard design has failed, but Apple has yet to admit its mistake

#495

Post by hollander »

makecheck wrote: post #483

Apple seems to focus more on the “can cost a lot” definition of “Pro”, and not the “get important work done” definition of “Pro”. The only correct course when offered a more-expensive and clearly-regressing machine is to not buy it (though I suspect Apple might actually have come out making more money this time around). They need to also realize that if anyone is likely to accept reasonable trade-offs (like thickness…

Apple has lost sight of it's original motto to be independent, creative and do the things that other people didn't dare to do or simply never thought of. This created a cult, often despised, but mostly admired, and being part of that cult was more important than having the best technical value for the money.

Now their purpose seems to maximize on making money off the brand value. That won't last. There is no vision anymore. Well, the "vision" is thinner, thinner, thinner, and all the while make it twice as expensive. I suppose there is a real market for this, many people may want it, but I think there are many users who don't care about 1cm thicker laptops, or having the fasted custom made ssd-connector. They prefer lower price and swappable disks and batteries. Oh and working keyboards. I'm glad with my 2015 macbook with good keyboard, but I don't know what I would do if this thing crashed tomorrow...

Re: Its butterfly keyboard design has failed, but Apple has yet to admit its mistake

#496

Post by babyslothzoo »

I too experience keyboard problems on the new MacBook Air keyboard design. Spontaneously unresponsive keys, and a spacebar that inserts two spaces regularly. In any endeavor that requires precision syntax to be entered in a reliable manner, that is an obvious problem.

On a positive note, the new MacBook Air has an Escape key, function row, and does not include a Touch Bar.

Re: Its butterfly keyboard design has failed, but Apple has yet to admit its mistake

#497

Post by 13rac1 »

reacharavindh wrote: post #416
seba_dos1 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but I just don’t have time to a.) tune and configure it to work and have decent battery life with whatever hardware I choose or b.) troubleshoot it when it randomly decides to break itself on update From my experience, troubleshooting macOS when it randomly decides to break is almost a Windows-like experience - lots of frustration and no sensible help on the internet (unless your problem is so trivial it gets solve…

Very much there with you. I run MacOS on my MBP for work. I built a workstation at home and run Ubuntu on it. I decided to upgrade to latest Ubuntu drooling over the GNOME perf improvements and I have a system that wont connect to any network and the settings app won't open and would like to send a crash dump to Canonical :-( I can afford such problems on my personal desktop, google the issues and spend a part of day…

This is why both my work and personal machines only run LTS versions.

Re: Its butterfly keyboard design has failed, but Apple has yet to admit its mistake

#498

Post by marmaduke »

culturestate wrote: post #177
marmaduke wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The research project in question will use as much RAM as is available, and we already have 128gb machines available, and access to larger. Why, for just running some MATLAB scripts through SSH would you need to stay with the Apple ecosystem for that?

I have no idea. Could be some OS X package oddity, or maybe they just like to AirDrop stuff to themselves? In any case, I suspect if you do a little discovery with that person - what specific problem are you trying to solve by staying with a Mac? - you'll find the answer. You might even be able to convince them to change their order if you find it's something that can be easily worked around in a way they hadn't thou…

Yeah I get your point of view. I have a MBP. I also maintain a HPC cluster. I didn’t blindside this person with a refusal, rather I asked what use he had for a maxed out iMac pro. When he said it would be used essentially as a shared server for remotely running data analyses, I explained the other options (dell server mentioned above).

As the IT guy I also have to deal with when these macs break or they are misconfigured, which happens a lot more easily than the Windows machines because the latter are in a domain and managed. The Mac guys are way too “I know what I’m doing” until they can’t get the printer working.

If Mac didn’t involve huge increases in price and integration pains for the organization I would be less negative but that’s how it is.

Re: Its butterfly keyboard design has failed, but Apple has yet to admit its mistake

#499

Post by 0az »

gnicholas wrote: post #448
tzakrajs wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guess this guy was pleased with his slower processor too.

I spend less than 10% of my time at my computer maxing my processor. I spend more than 90% of my time using the keyboard. I’ve seriously considered selling my 2017 MBP and buying a 2018 MBA. Then I heard the problems still haven’t been solved with that model and nixed that idea. But I would much rather have a slower machine with a reliable/comfortable keyboard than a faster machine with a brittle/uncomfortable one.

This is exactly why I went for a 2015 MBP instead of a newer one last year. Having a better keyboard and physical escape/function keys (plus the significantly lower price) outweighed the lack of USB C/Thunderbolt 3. This may have a shorter "tail", in terms of long term utility, but hopefully there'll be a MBP refresh at around that time. If that is still found wanting, I suppose I can join the Thinkpad+Linux club.

Re: Its butterfly keyboard design has failed, but Apple has yet to admit its mistake

#500

Post by rhizome »

npongratz wrote: post #463
oehpr wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well, you can do what I do and wipe the OS. Though, that's a bit of a time investment.

That's obvious, and certainly the first thing I'd do upon receiving such a device. But given how Lenovo got caught more than once pushing malware (after promising they'd fix it), I worry the problem could be deeply engrained in their product philosophy, and as such, I don't know that I'd even trust their firmware. But maybe people change, and maybe I'm just being paranoid and depriving myself unnecessarily from hardw…

The harddrive that came with my ThinkPad hasn't seen electricity since it left the factory, I replaced it before I ever turned the laptop on.
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