Live data from Hacker News

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

theoutline.com

571–580 of 644 posts

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

#571

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.

The lack of emphasis of good input is absolutely maddening when people were buying macbooks with lousy specs for the price, low-res displays for the price, who absolutely loved the fantastic trackpad, adequete keyboard, and good build quality. Now the devices are getting more fragile and the keyboards aren't even average they're junk. The touchbar is shit. Apple seems to be regressing to their form over function puck…

> The touchbar is shit.

It really is. Way to go making it impossible to (un)mute and adjust the volume without opening my eyes.

And in exchange of what, really? The privilege of losing the physical Esc?

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

#572
post #414
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> whichever idiot thought putting the power plug at the bottom of the Magic Mouse was a good idea. For those not familiar with the Apple Mouse, the commenter means that the power plug is on the part that you’re supposed to have on the mousepad, meaning you can’t charge it while using it, at all. Easily the worst way to design a mouse, ever. I don’t understand how it was approved.

> Easily the worst way to design a mouse, ever. I don’t understand how it was approved. I do. It was on purpose. They do not want people using the wireless mouse as a wired mouse with a short, thick cord not designed for it. Which is totally what my parents would do.

Or maybe they didn't want to support both Bluetooth and USB data communication. Or create user confusion if it didn't act as a USB mouse when plugged in?

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

#573
post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Ideapads are built like the cheap piece of crap x86 Windows laptops you can buy from anyone. They are fine for grandma checking her email but they are not meant to be on the move or do anything hard. I'm assuming the engineering teams are totally different. Thinkpads aren't cheap and the build quality generally shows that.

Thinkpad quality is nowhere near what it was when IBM was building them however :(

I think the perceived quality of older TPs is higher, but the objective quality is not so.

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

#574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the cord itself that would be exposed to the strain of the movement. It's the Lightning connector which was never designed to be moved within the socket tens of thousands of times a day.

You just design in a sinuous strain relief channel. Then any craptastic connector will survive.

To be fair, Apple's industrial design team seem no more likely to come up with a remotely adequate sinuous strain relief channel than to put a telescopic antenna or physical keypad on the iPhone. The MacBook Air and iPhone are literally the only consumer electronics gadgets whose cables I've needed to replace due to fraying at the join, and that's with adapters released after Apple lost class action lawsuits over strain relief issues with the previous generation Macbooks.

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

#575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fo…

> I don't have any trouble except when using docker for mac

That's... the same experience? Not "opposite", for sure.

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

#576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also since you mentioned research, in my domain people buy those MacBooks because they can, because they are a status symbol, just to run Word and read PDFs, because all the big people in our field have macs. I see this as a cult to be honest.

Have you considered that, alternatively, those people choose Macs because they find them nice to use or that they prefer OS X to Windows? The Apple cult definitely exists, but the anti-Apple cult is equally real and to be honest they both blow my mind.

Yep. I still think it’s a cargo cult effect: I can just hear them thinking “if I use a Mac I will have a higher impact factor” lol

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

#577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right! This is one of my biggest peeves with anti-Apple complainers...there are a few legitimate complaints with some of Apple's current designs but this isn't one! Apple Pencil 2 wireless charging nonwithstanding, this is the better design. Plugging in to your iPad is much better than having to dig out a cable, plug it into the Pencil, plug the other end somewhere else. Just think when your Pencil dies, which is mor…

> Just think when your Pencil dies, which is more convenient? Just think, when your Pencil plug end snaps, because it was protruding from the end of the iPad and you've dropped it, or hit something, or made a sudden move, etc, how convenient would that be? It's a bad design, end of story.

I have not once heard of anyone having their Apple Pencil’s plug break because it was protruding. There is significant strain relief and it would take significant effort bordering on malicious intent to break it.

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

#578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I agree it's great hardware. Do you run Linux? Because my problem with Lenovo is Windows. It's hot garbage despite the perception that Windows is decent again. But what's not great hardware is the touchpad. I always miss the Apple touchpad. It's perfect.

I run Ubuntu on a Thinkpad X1 Carbon. Runs beautifully out of the box, install was very easy, and I haven’t had a single issue with it.

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

#579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dropping the magnetic power cord connector is a major issue for me, but otherwise I wholeheartedly agree.

The cool thing with USB-C on the Pros is you can charge from any of the USB-C plugs, on both sides! On my old Mac the magsafe plug always seemed to be on the wrong side no matter where I seemed to be (Murphy's law). I wore out multiple mag safe cables from being bent too sharply around to the opposite side of the laptop where the nearest plug to my desk, bed, seat in the airport always seemed to be. Then there is the…

Long ago, I had a Dell laptop with ports on the back. Never an issue, cables out of the way, out of sight.

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

#580
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discontinuing MagSafe should also be on this list.

Being able to plug the AC adapter into either side of the laptop > MagSafe.

Why not a plug on the back, out of sight?
Post reply on HN