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Filing the corners off my MacBooks

kentwalters.com

561–570 of 700 posts

Re: Filing the corners off my MacBooks

#561
post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How the f are you supposed to type? Ideally I'd like full support for my arms from the elbow to the wrist. In my first job - i think it was in 1997, I had my own small room with an L-shaped desk with a rounded corner. That gave a few inches of space for resting my arms - both when typing on a quite reasonable Pentium laptop, and especially when using the mouse. Since then, the desks and the chairs has become shittier…

Like a person playing the piano. If your arms are resting, then your fingers and wrists are doing the maximum amount of reaching as you type. If you use a wrist rest you are encouraging your fingers/wrist to reach up (bend in your wrist) instead of neutral or reaching down (more natural position).

Straight wrists is good, but hovering like a pianist is not good for extended computer use.

Re: Filing the corners off my MacBooks

#562
post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hottest day of the year in the US varies by 3 months from California to Texas, which is only about half the width of the country. I would imagine the region you're in has a different hottest day of the year from say Kashmir or your neighbor Sri Lanka.

The three months difference must be based on a wild corner case. What cities are you basing that statement on? I played around with weatherspark and all the places I tried looked like this : https://weatherspark.com/compare/y/1705~8813/Comparison-of-t...

I don't know whether to call it a corner case or not, but I was pretty easily able to find this one (based on my own experience – the peak temperature in the East Bay has always felt very late in the year): https://weatherspark.com/compare/y/541~3268/Comparison-of-th...

Re: Filing the corners off my MacBooks

#563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ergonomics is one of those things where you don't understand it until it effects you. Everyone can tolerate discomfort at some level and at different levels but obviously there best practices that manufacturers can partake in to make hardware more ergonomic. For example, the monitor should be at eye level vertically but with laptop that's very hard to accomplish unless you position yourself in a reclined fashion to b…

> the monitor should be at eye level vertically This is slightly misleading advice. The ideal place for the display has the top of the display at roughly eye level, or for a very large display maybe slightly above, which puts most of the display below eye level. Humans actually have great ability to look slightly downward for long periods of time while doing stuff with their hands, even while keeping their head held…

Don't allow your head/chin to drift forward.

Welcome to "tech neck" - upper crossed syndrome, from looking slightly down.

You're inviting some surprising symptoms, not just neck and back pain, but things like numbness, tingling, or pain shooting down your arms. Really not fun.

Key posture correction seems to be pulling head back. Some physical therapy exercises can help as well.

https://deukspine.com/blog/tech-neck-forward-head-posture-tr...

Re: Filing the corners off my MacBooks

#564
post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been a problem for a decade (or more?) but, for me, it's not just the sharp edge, it's also the angle of the keyboard. My Dell XPS is almost as sharp (there's a microscopic chamfer, which won't be enough to explain the difference), but because the body is wedge-shaped, the keyboard sits at a slight angle which makes it feel so much better to me. Propping the back of the Macbook on something helps - only needs to…

> The chargers contained a grounding pin internally, but it wasn't actually connected to anything. Utter madness That is standard procedure in consumer electronics actually. My work MBP is charged via external display and sure enough, I get zapped every now and then. The bundled charger also has just two pins.

Every single time I get up and then sit back down, I have to brace myself for electrical impact. Maybe it's the universe telling me to stop working (or stop taking breaks... hmm).

Re: Filing the corners off my MacBooks

#566
post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> save our wrists If your wrist is in contact with the edge of the laptop while you are actively typing, then your typing style has a good chance of giving you RSI. You'd be better off trying to fix that than trying to make the fast path to RSI more convenient.

How the f are you supposed to type? Ideally I'd like full support for my arms from the elbow to the wrist. In my first job - i think it was in 1997, I had my own small room with an L-shaped desk with a rounded corner. That gave a few inches of space for resting my arms - both when typing on a quite reasonable Pentium laptop, and especially when using the mouse. Since then, the desks and the chairs has become shittier…

A more concrete way of putting it is if you are putting so much weight on your wrists that the edge of the MacBook is making you uncomfortable, you're probably doing it wrong.

Re: Filing the corners off my MacBooks

#567

I just did this to my MacBook not because of the sharp edge but because the pitting turns a sharp edge into a sawblade. Something about the grounding on on the frame when plugged in mixed with my sweaty hands leads to damage along this sharp edge on every MacBook I've ever owned. See https://www.reddit.com/r/macbook/s/hbyVh5SJhw for another poor soul with the same caustic skin

Oh is that why it happens? Was wondering why the spot directly under my wrist was pitted into a sawblade. I also filed it, though just enough to remove the pitting, nothing like the OP did. It's easy for me to feel the mains frequency while gently rubbing the top surface of the MacBook while it's plugged in. Really feels unsafe, but neither me nor the computer have suffered any serious injuries yet.

I have super dry skin and I also feel that weird ac effect when lightly touching and moving along the surface of pretty much any aluminum mac device since they started making them aluminum.

And almost no other device I've ever used. My aluminum Framework does not do it. My wifes magnesium LG Gram does not do it.

I have felt it on other things but only extremely rarely. It's bizarre that whatever it is they're doing different, it's probably wrong, and they've kept doing it in every device for decades.

To describe the effect in more detail for anyone who doesn't already know: It's like the case is alternately grabbing and releasing your skin at 60hz.

It's a bit like chatter, ie the periodic friction you use to ring a wine glass by wetting the rim and then running your finger along it. It rings because the combination of the friction, the lack of friction from hydroplaning, and the rubbery give of your skin, makes your skin alternately grab and release 30,000 times a second. Only in this case you are only barely touching the case not pressing enough to make any friction or make a squeal noise. It's like static electric charge attraction. Just touching the case you feel nothing, but move your finger along the surface and you feel it vibrate your finger without any friction to explain it.

It's unsettling and displeasing, which are strange words to expect from an apple device at least when you are only talking about the design and not the tech stack or corporate behavior. It makes me think of cheap electronics from a country with no consumer safety regulations that will probably burn down every 3rd house they wind up in.

It's probably harmless, but then again a lot of things that are harmless in short infrequent doses turn out to have been harmful after you did it for 10 hours a day for 20 years.

Re: Filing the corners off my MacBooks

#568

I used a macbook for almost 2 years and genuinely don't understand how people can tolerate these machines. My wrists would be cut up all the time to the point where I looked like I was self harming myself and the glary screen is entirely unsuable anywhere but a darkest basement. Not to mention the terrible keyboard. To this day I'm perplexed how macbooks have such high desirability by full time developers when they'r…

There's no way you can cut your wrists on the edge of a MacBook. To do that, you would have to be leaning straight-armed with all of your weight on the edge of the keyboard, which is a typing style that I've never seen. Mac keyboards are some of the best that I've ever used. There's nothing special about the Mac screen one way or the other.
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