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Ask HN: What do you want to see most in the next iteration of the Macbook Pro?

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61–70 of 108 posts

Re: Ask HN: What do you want to see most in the next iteration of the Macbook Pro?

#62

I know you say "apart from the obvious 32 GB ram", but I'm gonna say it anyway. On the off chance anyone from Apple reads this, I want to signal boost that as much as I can. It gets in the way daily, and as more places adopt docker (and Mac not having a native docker layer worth using), the RAM limit is stifling . A keyboard nobody complains about again. Better battery life. A return to Magsafe.

Two questions:

1) What are you doing that requires 32 GB RAM? I assume it's for work -- what kind of products are you building?

2) Is a cloud desktop not an optional? I have a few friends who connect to powerful cloud machines from Chromebooks and Airs, and they seem to love it.

Re: Ask HN: What do you want to see most in the next iteration of the Macbook Pro?

#63
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the last two laptops you've owned? When are you planning to replace your current laptop? What will the next one be if the next MBP includes Touch Bar and Touch ID? If not a Mac, what OS will you run?

This MBPr 2012 made me move back from MBA + iMac to just a laptop. Before that, MBP. Right now I'm trying to find a lightly used MBP 2015 with R9 and ~2 years of AppleCare left, to buy myself some time to either migrate away from Apple or be positively surprised with a new product that convinces me to stick with them longer. Been a Mac user for well over 10 years now, so the final decision won't be taken lightly. I k…

Cheers.

Re: Ask HN: What do you want to see most in the next iteration of the Macbook Pro?

#64
post #36

I know you say "apart from the obvious 32 GB ram", but I'm gonna say it anyway. On the off chance anyone from Apple reads this, I want to signal boost that as much as I can. It gets in the way daily, and as more places adopt docker (and Mac not having a native docker layer worth using), the RAM limit is stifling . A keyboard nobody complains about again. Better battery life. A return to Magsafe.

It is not, and was never Apple's choice to limit the MB Pro to 16 GB. Educate yourself: https://macdaddy.io/macbook-pro-limited-16gb-ram/

"Educate yourself" is not a constructive way to disagree with someone.

Also, it's absurd to suggest that Apple could do absolutely nothing about this Intel limitation if they wanted to.

I'm sure it would cost them more time/energy than they'd be willing to spend on the MB Pro, but that's been the problem for Pro users for a while, hasn't it? Apple doesn't care as much about it as its users do.

Re: Ask HN: What do you want to see most in the next iteration of the Macbook Pro?

#65
post #12
post #5

This will sound trite, but I'm completely serious. The number one thing I want to see in the next MacBook Pro is the abandonment of the Touch Bar. Make it a row on the keyboard again. I didn't think that the Touch Bar was useful when I first saw it, and now, six months later, I haven't found one more reason that I'd want ever want it. I don't want haptic feedback or any other kind of improvement. Apple made a mistake…

I also hate the touch bar, but far worse is how they ruined all the other keys with the new, super loud low travel design. I want the keyboard from my 2013 model back. It was nearly perfect.

I think my favorite MacBook Pro keyboard was the one on the Aluminum PowerBook. The 12 inch Aluminum PowerBook is my favorite Apple product of all time. It was perfect to me in every way.

Re: Ask HN: What do you want to see most in the next iteration of the Macbook Pro?

#67
post #62

I know you say "apart from the obvious 32 GB ram", but I'm gonna say it anyway. On the off chance anyone from Apple reads this, I want to signal boost that as much as I can. It gets in the way daily, and as more places adopt docker (and Mac not having a native docker layer worth using), the RAM limit is stifling . A keyboard nobody complains about again. Better battery life. A return to Magsafe.

Two questions: 1) What are you doing that requires 32 GB RAM? I assume it's for work -- what kind of products are you building? 2) Is a cloud desktop not an optional? I have a few friends who connect to powerful cloud machines from Chromebooks and Airs, and they seem to love it.

Some devs these days are using VMs extensively to develop on different projects and environments, and those devs need more RAM.

Cloud desktop works iff you have a good internet connection at the time

Re: Ask HN: What do you want to see most in the next iteration of the Macbook Pro?

#68
post #5

This will sound trite, but I'm completely serious. The number one thing I want to see in the next MacBook Pro is the abandonment of the Touch Bar. Make it a row on the keyboard again. I didn't think that the Touch Bar was useful when I first saw it, and now, six months later, I haven't found one more reason that I'd want ever want it. I don't want haptic feedback or any other kind of improvement. Apple made a mistake…

Having used a MacBook Pro with a Touch Bar for about 10 months now, I'll have to agree that it didn't really improve my UX in any meaningful way. I have tried various customization tools, but I don't find myself using it for anything other than controlling playback, display brightness and volume, and the old function keys did that just fine. In fact, they were easier to hit correctly most of the time.

I don't hate the Touch Bar - it didn't really make things worse for me, but that's not really a good enough reason to keep it around. TouchID has saved me a lot of time spent entering my passphrase, so that's been great, but I imagine that can easily be replaced with FaceID in a future release, which would have the nice side-effect of solving the lack of biometric authentication on the iMac.

Re: Ask HN: What do you want to see most in the next iteration of the Macbook Pro?

#70
I'd like all keys to be a small OLED screen or something similar. This would make it much easier to customise keyboards, avoid language issues and would also help with learning shortcuts. (pressing command, would change "C" to a copy symbol for example)
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