Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features

inputmag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

551–560 of 562 posts

Re: Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features

#551

Post by skohan »

bmelton wrote: post #315
dtech wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Others never use SD and have a USB-C to A dongle permanently plugged in (me). The ideal exact connectors probably differ a lot per person, and at least USB-C+Thunderbolt can support everything. HDMI is probably the least controversial, although there will also be people who never connect external displays.

Agreed. It probably should have occurred to me before, but a lot of the Wacom and Huion drawing tablets with screens use HDMI for display and some kind of USB for input. Obviously that would be better if they were upgraded to thunderbolt models that could do both, but that would of course require another $1000+ upgrade for those users on top of the laptop. Of course the real question is how much more quickly does thu…

I have noticed that it seems like more windows users at work are also using thunderbolt for displays on small and light laptops

Re: Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features

#552

Post by beckler »

blue1 wrote: post #157
kradeelav wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cosigned, and writing this comment on my own faithful 2010 MBP. Still works like a charm, even if some sites don't load due to legacy browsers. Having the correct USB plug-ins for my old-but-durable wacom tablet and an internal CD drive is still critical for my usage and I can't believe some of those parts were the first to go in the madness. Currently tempted to switch to the M1, but still worried about loosing the…

Seconded. But why legacy browsers? My mid-2010 MBP, still going strong, runs High Sierra, which supports all current browsers.

I have a early 2011 MBP on High Sierra.

I recently reported a bug to Mozilla that I was experiencing in Firefox. They couldn't reproduce it, but it was essentially the integrated graphics are so old in this machine that their new render engine was causing major glitching issues. The solution was to hard code the use of the previous engine for older laptops.

This, among a number of other issues made me decide to recently upgrade... but hearing about these old-but-new features makes me want to cancel my order and wait it out a bit longer.

Re: Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features

#553

Post by javajosh »

ApolloRising wrote: post #522
javajosh wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, a terrible idea, like putting a motor on a sailboat! I mean, why would you ever need 2 methods of propulsion?! (Some boaters even bring oars and towline! Insane!)

You obviously don't sail. You need a motor on a sailboat to either fight a strong tide to dock, to escape an incoming storm if the wind is pushing you towards a storm. Many other uses such as regenerating the batteries so you have your food not spoil. Sails/masts/rigging also fail so you need a backup to get you to port in an emergency.

The true statement is that either I don't sail OR sarcasm is sometimes hard to pick up on the internet. I grew up cruising on my dad's sailboats, raced dinghies in college, and have owned a variety of sailboats myself, the last being a humble 35' Erikson. So, I would say it's the later.

Re: Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features

#554

Post by Jonovono »

hugey010 wrote: post #489
Jonovono wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, I would think most programmers touch type which at least for me make the touch bar useless. Since it's always changing I have to look down to see what button I am about to press. For me, if it's something common enough that the touchbars ability to change makes that functionality useful I would have found or made a keyboard shortcut for it. I just upgraded from a MacBook pro to a MacBook air for the main…

In many situations, you don't have to look at the touchbar to know what the keys are. For example, when using terminal, vim / ide emulation, I know left is Esc key. It does make spamming Esc feel less weird to me.

I find it harder to touch type on the non physical keys. BTW, you can remap ESC to caps lock. Look into hyperkey ;p

Re: Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features

#555

Post by 8ytecoder »

Kognito wrote: post #487
yarcob wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really hope that you're right, but to be honest I'm not holding my breath. I also don't think the 2015 Macbooks were perfect, it's just that I don't care about any of the new things Apple has introduced. What I would really like would be a cellular modem so I don't have to bother with hotspots on the train and maybe a stylus for marking up screenshots. For my use cases, Apple expects me to carry a Macbook, an iPad,…

Given Apple have gone cellular with everything all the way down to the Watch, I’m always amazed they never included it in a Macbook.

There’s a solid reason to have a cellular modem in a MacBook - data only plans. It’s cheaper in the US to buy a cellular plan addon for iPad than to pay for data as part of the main plan.

Re: Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features

#556

Post by weaksauce »

novok wrote: post #476
weaksauce wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He wanted an objectively perfect, extremely thin portless wireless machine. i mean that is the ipad pro with a keyboard. (not perfect comparison i guess but is closer to that ideal) The mbp is supposed to be for professionals and that comes with a need for flexibility and functionality. the quest for thinness was misguided in my opinion.

The iPad Pro fails at many laptop-esque tasks. I tried during a vacation, and it was way more work and way slower than it needed to be, and it wasn't because it wasn't powerful enough, it was the OS. Dumping photos from an SD card with not apple photos ran into a lot of annoyances and was a lot slower than doing the same thing with a 5 year macbook pro at that point, something that is objectively slower in the CPU re…

yeah the macbook air does fit the bill better than an ipad... you're right. i forgot that those still existed.

Re: Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features

#557

Post by Kirby64 »

yarcob wrote: post #353
oblio wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HDMI will probably be around for TVs, but with USB 4 I imagine we're 5-10 years from most of the current ports going away completely, except for a collection of USB C ports of different levels (3, 3.x, 4).

Importantly, HDMI will be around for projectors. Almost every meeting room and every class room everywhere in the world has a beamer and an HDMI cable on the desk. I don't think this is going to change in the next 5 years. It took more than 10 years for most of the world to upgrade from VGA to HDMI cables, and HDMI works fine technically, so there's less pressure to upgrade to USB-C. So for the foreseeable future, if…

Or just do what my company started doing: chain a dongle to the projector. If you have a Type-C port, use the dongle. If you have HDMI, use the direct HDMI cable.

This $30 dongle is cheaper than upgrading all the projectors to support Type-C, and still allows older PCs to use HDMI.

Not really sure what's unreliable about USB-C to HDMI dongles... sure if you buy a crappy one they have issues, but good ones aren't expensive these days (at least, for projector resolution. YMMV if you're trying to do 4k or something)

Re: Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features

#558

Post by copperx »

Kognito wrote: post #487
yarcob wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really hope that you're right, but to be honest I'm not holding my breath. I also don't think the 2015 Macbooks were perfect, it's just that I don't care about any of the new things Apple has introduced. What I would really like would be a cellular modem so I don't have to bother with hotspots on the train and maybe a stylus for marking up screenshots. For my use cases, Apple expects me to carry a Macbook, an iPad,…

Given Apple have gone cellular with everything all the way down to the Watch, I’m always amazed they never included it in a Macbook.

I remember that Qualcomm licences their modems for an outrageous price if they're for a computer, that might be a reason they were never included. But I believe Apple will now manufacture their own cellular chips.

Re: Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features

#559

Post by ApolloRising »

javajosh wrote: post #553
ApolloRising wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You obviously don't sail. You need a motor on a sailboat to either fight a strong tide to dock, to escape an incoming storm if the wind is pushing you towards a storm. Many other uses such as regenerating the batteries so you have your food not spoil. Sails/masts/rigging also fail so you need a backup to get you to port in an emergency.

The true statement is that either I don't sail OR sarcasm is sometimes hard to pick up on the internet. I grew up cruising on my dad's sailboats, raced dinghies in college, and have owned a variety of sailboats myself, the last being a humble 35' Erikson. So, I would say it's the later.

Awesome a fellow salt. Sarcasm was definitely hard to pickup but glad you had so much fun on the boats. I picked it up later in life and would have been so nice to have done that as a kid.

Re: Apple's MacBook revival plan: Bring back old features

#560

Post by llampx »

totalZero wrote: post #524
OkGoDoIt wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been hearing this argument for years now. Years of pain, and I still don’t feel like we’re any closer to this supposed future. Maybe it was a mistake?

I charge my phone on my laptop charger, and charge my laptop on my dock. When I want to undock my laptop, I disconnect a single cable. I have two monitors that can run off a phone or a laptop using just a USB cable (no power supply). I can even charge my MBP off a Lenovo charger without a second thought. None of this was possible prior to those "years of pain." I personally welcome our USB-C overlords.

Charging standardization is only a small part of what was promised via USB-C though.
Post reply on HN