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Seven years later, I bought a new MacBook. For the first time, I don't love it

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Re: Seven years later, I bought a new MacBook. For the first time, I don't love it

#551

Post by luord »

Meanwhile, I'm pretty happy with the laptop I bought from system76 and am eagerly waiting for the one they're building themselves. I was assigned a mac for my most recent job and I barely touch it.

Many people are mentioning wsl in the comments and not only that really doesn't make up for all of windows's shortcomings, I still think it's a new first step in MS's traditional EEE ("look, developers! You don't need to use linux anymore, you can run your setup directly from windows now!"). Not coincidentally, wsl2 seems like a slow move into the "extend" step.

I don't think they'll ever manage to extinguish Linux, but it certainly won't be thanks to the developers who are doing microsoft's job of pretending that wsl is the ideal and giving it free publicity. If one needs Linux tools that much, one should just use it.

Re: Seven years later, I bought a new MacBook. For the first time, I don't love it

#552

Post by [deleted] »

exdsq wrote: post #450
thomaslord wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm honestly baffled that you've never experienced an update that bricked your system - how long have you been using Windows? Two years ago Microsoft released an update that killed Windows on my brand new (at the time) desktop (i7-8700k, gtx 1080). I thought "no big deal, I'll boot up my old desktop and deal with it later" but when I turned on that machine (i5-2500k, rx480), it applied the same update and also killed…

I’ve only worked in tech for six years but I started as a sysadmin and managed a network of ~50 windows computers for two years, and then worked in a windows dev shop for three years, and I’ve never once seen an update brick Windows. I’ve bricked windows by being dumb but I’ve also bricked Linux by being dumb. Sometimes I feel like it’s cool to hate Windows, like it’s cool to hate Java.

[deleted]

Re: Seven years later, I bought a new MacBook. For the first time, I don't love it

#553

Post by EricE »

rednum wrote: post #217

I did switch from 2012 Macbook Air to 2019 Macbook Pro a few weeks ago and I can't agree more with the article. One of the reasons I'm using Mac instead of Linux is that I make music. And the new Macbook sucks for this purpose: the same recording settings I used on my old laptop are not usable on the new one. 90% of time things work fine, but sometimes I get glitches and pops in the middle of the recording. Why? Who…

It's looking more and more there is some wonkiness with the T2 chip as it's now responsible for USB, among many other things.

To quote Scotty - the more complicated they make things the easier they are to foul up.

Re: Seven years later, I bought a new MacBook. For the first time, I don't love it

#554

Post by dcchambers »

rafamvc wrote: post #6

Wsl 2 is incredible. Got a 1000 dollars dell desktop and it is insanely faster than my Mac. Windows has improved a lot, and Linux based development on windows is a lot easier now. 5 years ago I would have quit a job if they asked me to use windows. Macos is still marginally better but not worth the cost IMHO.

> Wsl 2 is incredible.

My experience shows WSL is passable, but it often feels "hacky" and incoherent. For professional work it just doesn't feel right to me. Plus the usability of Windows OS itself is just a complete mess... Honestly, I'd rather just run a regular VM with linux and full-screen that, rather than deal with Windows with Linux bolted on to the side.

If work is paying, I'm still going macbook, as I don't really care about the reliability aspect of the machine nor the insane cost of peripherals/the laptop itself. If I'm paying, I'll probably go for a Dell or Lenovo machine and install Linux. I just can't stand using windows any more.

Re: Seven years later, I bought a new MacBook. For the first time, I don't love it

#555

Post by armandhammer »

karatestomp wrote: post #435
rednum wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, all my audio equipment (keyboards, controllers, interface) is USB A and I don't see producers switching en masse (and even if they do, do I really want to throw away my favorite keytar?). The only exception is Roli block but Roli is kinda meh - fun to play every once in a while but not something I'd like to use every day to lay bass track or piano chords. I've disabled a ton of various background stuff like Sir…

I think all my musical equipment has a USB-B port on them, work over USB 2.0, and I've got like a dozen USB-A/USB-B cables around. Those plug into every other computing device in my house except new Macbooks (and iPads, but, Lightning to USB-A adapter, so, still USB-A, and notably I can't share that adapter with a Macbook because Apple's approach to this has been a bizarre mix of foot-dragging and waffling on the iDe…

You do know that all you have to do is buy a USB-B to USB-C cable and you can connect your existing equipment to your Macbook, right? I mean it sucks that the new Macbooks have so few USB-C ports, but there's nothing preventing you from plugging in all of the older USB-A/B/micro/etc equipment directly into it as long as you buy the correct $5 cable with a USB-C connector on the other end. No dongles necessary.

Re: Seven years later, I bought a new MacBook. For the first time, I don't love it

#556

Post by musicale »

> the palm rejection algoritm is not good enough

Ugh, this is my main complaint about the last edition MacBook Pro - worse than the butterfly keyboard (which I had to replace twice but which currently works.)

It's baffling because palm rejection worked flawlessly for me on the smaller trackpad on the 2012 MacBook Pro as well as the entire screen of the 11" iPad pro.

Re: Seven years later, I bought a new MacBook. For the first time, I don't love it

#557

Post by armandhammer »

rednum wrote: post #263
lostlogin wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could this all be dongle related? So much bad seems to get introduced by dongles and I have spent so much time debugging crazy issues that have been due to USB C dongles. Mine have almost all been monitor related, but at this stage there is almost nothing that I would be surprised to see fixed by switching/removing a dongle.

By dongles you mean just hubs or also adapters? Unfortunately, I also want to record vocals or external instruments for which I need a MIDI interface (which uses USB A); and I don't think you can buy USB C midi keyboard yet (actually Roli Block has USB C but I don't like it much and 95% of time I'd rather use normal keyboard). Is there particular dongle you can recommend? (By the way, my Focursite interface does not…

You don't need a dongle to use regular old USB-A devices with a USB-C computer. All you need to do is replace the cable which is usually like $5. So if your MIDI keyboard or audio interface has a USB-B connector on the hardware side (like the Scarlett do), just buy a USB-B to USB-C cable. I don't know why the myth of needing a USB-C-to-A dongle has persisted for so long.

Re: Seven years later, I bought a new MacBook. For the first time, I don't love it

#558

Post by mister_hn »

GolDDranks wrote: post #11
mister_hn wrote: post #2

why don't you return it back then and buy something better? Isn't there a money-back guarantee for the first X days?

The problem is that there isn't anything better. The author said that he hates using Windows and his experimentation with Linux wasn't an entire success. That limits him to Macs. The 2016-2018 models were a disaster. The only reasonable choice left is the choice he made.

nothing better?

Well, questioning about Linux depends really on what kind of distribution the author used previously. Some are less efficient than others.

Considering hardware, the whole set of AMD Ryzen3 and Ryzen4 based laptops are much better than a MacBook, in computing power, flexibility, energy efficiency and lately also in price, plus they have the advantage that you can later upgrade SSD or RAM, while on MBP everything is soldered and you're out of luck later on.

The day MacOS will be fully virtualized, it might be the doom of the MBP and iMac.

Re: Seven years later, I bought a new MacBook. For the first time, I don't love it

#559

Post by [deleted] »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #340
fsflover wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just don't buy "Windows certified" laptops... Upd: why downvotes? My Librem 15 and Lenovo T400 both work flawlessly for many years. They are designed for GNU/Linux.

> " Just don't buy "Windows certified" laptops... " All x86 servers, PCs, and laptops are designed to run Windows by adhering to a specification issued by Microsoft and certified by running a suite of compatibility tests provided by Microsoft ( https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/test/hlk/ ). The free OSes are piggybacking on that; there is no independent, neutral standard for the architecture of x86 PC…

[deleted]

Re: Seven years later, I bought a new MacBook. For the first time, I don't love it

#560

Post by Nextgrid »

Kirby64 wrote: post #550
Nextgrid wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I know the spec doesn't allow it for some reason. I guess one reason could be the power side (which I haven't mentioned and I am not familiar with it)? Let's assume the hub requests 19V from the upstream port. Unless it has built-in, variable, per-port voltage regulation, it will not be able to respond to power requests from the downstream devices if they differ from what is coming from the upstream port. T…

See, you could technically design something that does that. Per-port up to 100W charging it definitely possible. Basically you have a USB PD controller on every port with dynamic voltage control. This is all possible, it's just a HUGE pain in the ass (and costs a lot) to design that way. The problem is you essentially end up with potentially a giant, VERY expensive USB hub. And no one wants to spend $400 on a USB hub…

Which is why USB-C is bad, nobody asked for a protocol where the benefits are marginal but the downside (one of many) is that a proper hub that replicates the behavior of previous generations now costs more, and since nobody would pay that much, economies of scale don't apply and thus it doesn't exist at all or is available as very niche specialized units (kinda like opto-isolated USB hubs which go for $200.

You could also theoretically use 10Gbit Ethernet to transfer data from your phone but we don't go around putting SFP slots on phones because we don't want every single cable or charger to cost $100 and be more complex (thus more prone to failure) than needed.

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