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The new MacBook

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Re: The new MacBook

#671

Post by davej »

jader201 wrote: post #210

Is the world really as obsessed with smallness as Apple thinks it is? From what I keep hearing (and this is anecdotal, of course), it seems that most people would prefer to (reasonably) maximize the battery life with the downside of adding a bit more heft. Of course, there's always a balance that has to be stricken, but it seems like Apple always pushes much more to the side of size over battery vs. what seems to be…

~9 hours for a machine with a 2304*1440 display is pretty impressive even if you don't consider the smallness of the new Macbook.

Re: The new MacBook

#672

Post by JBiserkov »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #620
JBiserkov wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally swear by Total Commander[0] (previously Windows Commander). [0] http://www.ghisler.com/

I was going to ask if you were Russian, then I noticed your username. Most TC fans I know are Russian, and most Russians I know are TC fans.

I'm not Russian, I'm Bulgarian :-)

I really wish TC was open source so it was more actively developed.

Re: The new MacBook

#673

Post by jayfuerstenberg »

727374 wrote: post #577
nsxwolf wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious - what do Finder complainers consider the gold standard of file browsers that Finder should aspire to be? I do most of my file management at the command line so I don't experience the pain of Finder very often, and I've generally been able to get Finder to do what I want without much fuss. Windows Explorer is, to me, a painful experience (but its 1980s DOS command line is so much worse) I've found the various…

Nobody is claiming a gold standard. With that said, I prefer windows explorer because you can simply type a path into the address bar (with tab completion if you need it) and navigate to a place on the filesystem. That's all. If finder added this one feature I'd be overjoyed. Instead, I find myself opening up menus to get to so many locations on the machine. For example, if you want to simply go to your home director…

Take your well-visited paths and drag them to the left (where Apps, Documents, etc… are).

Then just click on those labels. It's even faster than typing the path in Window's location bar.

Re: The new MacBook

#674

Post by blister »

calinet6 wrote: post #354
ghshephard wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OS X is pretty good about sharing memory, so 8 GB is fine. I routinely run about 15-20 Apps on my MacBook Air, including a VMware instance with Windows XP, Aperture, Google Earth, Excel/Word/Powerpoint/Outlook/Mail.app. The only people who require more than 8 GB on OS X are those who have Apps that specially require a lot of memory to perform - Image Processing, Databases, etc... I used to be in the "Buy as much memo…

It got a lot better in Mavericks with compression and better subsystems, but I'm sorry, I still push the limits with 16GB. 8 isn't enough for OSX at this point.

I just bought a 32GB iMac because my Air with 8GB was sluggish with Unity3d and Flash (needed for work). I'm glad I did. This is the best system I've ever owned.

Re: The new MacBook

#675

Post by igl »

nsxwolf wrote: post #561
SiVal wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you can't really tell how well software is working when looking at the device edge-on, and that's apparently the way Apple looks at them most of the time. I mean this more metaphorically than literally, but I'm so tired of complaints about the ridiculously primitive Finder being met with, "the edge of the iMac now appears even thinner, now that we've repositioned formerly convenient connectors and such into a…

Curious - what do Finder complainers consider the gold standard of file browsers that Finder should aspire to be? I do most of my file management at the command line so I don't experience the pain of Finder very often, and I've generally been able to get Finder to do what I want without much fuss. Windows Explorer is, to me, a painful experience (but its 1980s DOS command line is so much worse) I've found the various…

Since nobody else mentioned it: Directory Opus. Looks big and clunky at first look but it's actually very fast and 100% customizable. You could strip it down to a dual list view and operate it purely by keyboard shortcuts. Buttons are defined in a copy pasteable xml format, are scriptable, come in various forms and let you bind events for left/right/middle click. The only caveat is: windows only. I would kill for a Linux version.

Re: The new MacBook

#676

Post by mark_l_watson »

babuskov wrote: post #655
mark_l_watson wrote: post #645

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dual boot my old MacBook Air between OS X and Ubuntu - really nice because some software development tasks are just easier on Linux. (Off topic, but a good tip: buy a 64gig memory card and always keep it in the memory slot with a file system friendly to both Linux and OS X - there are cards designed to fit in flush on MacBook Airs. This lets my old 128gig MBA comfortably support dual boot, and the shared file syste…

I'm curious which tasks you find easier? I was a hardcode Linux user before I got Mac, so I had to try it. Four months later, and I never boot into Ubuntu anymore because everything works equal or better on OSX. Am I missing something?

Good question. There is quite a lot of software (dev tools) that are trivially installed with aptget, but not so easy (if possible) with homebrew.

I am mostly retired now, but I am working on a commercial product, and still write the occasional book, and advise consulting customers - that is my excuse for experimenting with LOTS of open source projects. If it is easier to check something out on Linux, then I take the minute to reboot.

That said, when developing I mostly "live" in IntelliJ (mostly for Clojure and ClojureScript, a little for Java and Javascript) and running IntelliJ on OS X (or even Windows 8.1) is nicer than on Ubuntu(because of trackpad issues).

Re: The new MacBook

#677

Post by girvo »

mslot wrote: post #452
nkoren wrote: post #261

This is a beautiful machine. Once again, Apple excels at hardware. But what the living hell is going wrong with Apple's desktop software? OS X and Apple's applications suite have been getting steadily worse with every release. Look at the App store: the latest releases of OS X, iPhoto, iMovie, Pages, and Numbers are (in stark contrast to earlier versins) all rated at 2.5/5 stars, with the plurality being 1-star revie…

I just had one of my first exposures to OS X, helping a friend get rid of particularly nasty adware called Downlite. It was nastier than anything I've ever seen since Windows 98, and obviously I've never seen anything like it on Linux. Stunning, really. I'm still considering getting my first Macbook though after this announcement, so I do hope they'll build a better security model.

For it to be nasty and hard to get rid of, your friend must have given it admin access when he installed it? No security model that I'm aware of can stop that; OS X out of the box stops you from being able to run unsigned code, which would've stopped that entirely.

Re: The new MacBook

#678

Post by CHY872 »

trishume wrote: post #538
CHY872 wrote: post #256

This seems like an obvious prelude to ARM CPUs in MacBooks.

This actually looks to me like a huge win for Intel. A full fast Intel CPU, with no fan! The ability to be passively cooled was previously one of ARMs serious advantages.

No one actually cared that a laptop needed a fan, though. Apple could have put a fan in this and no one would have seen it as a huge deficiency.

Re: The new MacBook

#679

Post by pistle »

nigelsampson wrote: post #661
nickysielicki wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry but when you ship a machine with ONE PORT for the purposes of charging and peripherals, this absolutely needs to be in the box. Nickel and $80'ering me on a $1400 computer is ridiculous. I'll stick with my thinkpad.

The Surface Pro's come with only one USB port on the device, they make it up for it with having one on the power brick which I think is an awesome idea.

And a Mini Display port. External monitor(s) on the one and USB hub the other. Surface can drive 1 4k or 2 1080p monitors from that port. Will be interesting to see if you can get the daisy-chain of monitors off that AND have a spot to set up a hub or charge another device.

Re: The new MacBook

#680

Post by gcr »

Is this laptop aimed for the high-end Macbook Pro users, or is it poised as the spiritual successor to the Macbook Air?

According to the tech specs, this has the slowest processor (1.1 Ghz Intel Core M) of all of their models and the oldest graphics card (Intel HD Graphics 5300).

Granted -- I know I shouldn't commit the cardinal sin of "The number is lower so it's worse." My words aren't meaningful. I guess I'm just confused about who this product is aimed for.

EDIT: After looking around, this machine seems less powerful than the Air. I'm guessing it's aimed for those who want something more stylish with pizzazz at the expense of higher specs. The target user wants to own a machine that feels futuristic and magical. This machine is just certainly not targeted toward my needs.

In terms of specs, it's This machine Air > MBP (?). In terms of price, it's Air < this machine < MBP.

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