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Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Keyboard

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Re: Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Keyboard

#691

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And why do you think that a lot of people who are painfully aware of all the issues you mention still refuse to use Linux on a laptop while happily using it on servers? There is a riduculous repetitiveness about this debate. For me and many others, Linux on a laptop has always been unstable, insecure, hot and noisy. Many specific issues can be fixed if you put in the effort, but on almost every dist-upgrade something…

> For me and many others, Linux on a laptop has always been unstable, insecure, hot and noisy. I've successfully converted many people with similar claims over to Linux and here's what I've found; most of them were trying Linux on a subpar, non-standard laptop, (Like an old MacBook or a slow Celeron), to lower their investment if they don't like it, which is fine, but then comparing the experience to their high end M…

This. I've had linux on the desktop since 2002, and unstable, insecure, hot and noisy are the polar opposite of what I've experienced on the whole. Sure, from time to time a tool would experience issues and cause heat from pegging the CPU, or they're would be some vulnerability cause it to be insecure. I'd doubt it's anymore insecure than windows or osx, and I certainly feel like it's more secure.

Unstable? I really only run LTS, though prior to ubuntu I ran debian stable, and I rarely run into anything unstable except for certain glitches which are often graphics related and worked around with different approaches, sometimes resorting to using a different window manager.

How did I do it? I ran business level laptops. Not high-end consumer laptops - those are junk, I mean 3 generations of the Dell D series, 3 generations of the Dell E series, HP Z Books, etc.

I should also point out that mostly kept with distro packages. If I broke down and installed another, I kept it out of /usr and in my homedir or /usr/local to isolate it, or I used a PPA from a trustyworthy source (Just because it's a PPA doesn't mean it's written by a competent person). When things did break, upgrades, etc. I did not blame Linux, I blamed the package that caused it.

Re: Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Keyboard

#692
post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counter-point, I haven't had a single Apple keyboard fail on me yet (although I do not own the new Macbook, so I don't have the dreadful one) and my Matias broke after just 1 year.

Matias talks a good game, but we bought 30 of their keyboards and they didn’t last very long. We had much better luck with Logitech. Also, we are batting a 1000 on broken butterfly keyboards. It is really disappointing and frankly the feel of the things is awful.

Worrying! I've had two (one at home, one at work) over the last 3 years. What were the failure modes?

Re: Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Keyboard

#693

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Especially in cases when it doesn't need to be thinner. I just tried out a Apple Magic Keyboard, which is a razor blade for some reason, and had wrist pain within a few hours of using it. Everybody's different, but this keyboard is trash. It is designed solely to look pretty in marketing photos. If you're talking about the keyboard on the new MacBook Pros, yes, it's trash. If you're talking about the standalone key…

Is he's talking about this thing? https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/611149H28WL... Because I absolutely love it, been coding on it for years.

He's talking about the second version, but everything he said still applies to this (in the way he thinks it).

Re: Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Keyboard

#694
Here's my unpopular opinion.

I like the new keyboard better.

I have a 2012 MacBook Pro at home and just recently got the newest one at work. While I don't love the Touch Bar, I don't hate it like most people. I don't use any `esc` heavy apps like vim so that's a pretty big factor. The most annoying thing is honestly the lack of volume buttons.

When I use my old MacBook Pro at home the keys feel slow and spongey. The new ones are fast and crisp. I guess I've been lucky enough to not have any of them fail on me.

Re: Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Keyboard

#695
post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I honestly don't understand all these quality sacrifices just to make things thinner. It makes the product actually feel somewhat cheap and brittle. It's easy: every time people had the chance to buy thinner or thicker products, they flocked to the thinner ones. The complaints are random outliers around the internet, but the actual Apple's sales numbers (record years after record years and reduced sales for thicker…

"Not just some "vacuous" "non-technie" users either (as the stereotype says)." Actually, Linus comes off to me as particularly non-techie. He obviously cares about it enough to get the work done but couldn't care about it more than that. Not even the OS (outside of the kernel) is of any interest to him (dissing debian because he thinks the installer is too cumbersome etc.). Compare the MacBook Air with the lenovo x-s…

>Actually, Linus comes off to me as particularly non-techie. He obviously cares about it enough to get the work done but couldn't care about it more than that.

Non tinkerer is not the same as non-techie.

In fact I'd call tinkerers the par-excellence non-techies. They don't do anything technologically productive (much less write their own kernel), they just play with tech toys.

Re: Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Keyboard

#696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You'll need to back up that statement with factual sources, because clearly all Apple decisions aren't always backed by marketing studies because all their products are not always that successful. What marketing studies? I'm talking about marketing results. Their ever thinner laptops remained at the top of best selling laptops in their price class -- selling several times more than the closest competitor ever since…

> What marketing studies? I'm talking about marketing results. Their ever thinner laptops remained at the top of best selling laptops in their price class -- selling several times more than the closest competitor ever since Jobs came back to Apple in 1999. we're talking about phones here, not laptops and correlation is not causation, you didn't demonstrate what you state as a fact.

You seem confused. I'm not trying to establish a causal relationship between thin and sales. I'm stating (it's a fact) that people have flocked to thin products.

We're also not "talking about phones here". The post is about the MacBook Pro keyboard. That's a laptop. You first brought up phones, when you mentioned "bigger screens".

Besides, even in phones, the ever thinning models kept selling very well, whether they had bigger screens or not.

Re: Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Keyboard

#697

Apple. This issue is seriously simple. Take the previous design, you know the one from late 2012 to 2015. If you must (sigh), take out the SD card, HDMI, USB A, MagSafe and replace with USB-C. I don't know who suggested this, but whatever. Don't add in a touch bar. Don't add in an over sized touchpad. Leave the keyboard alone. The layout of the model is amazing. I purchased a late 2012 in Jan '13. It's been my daily…

So many have suggested these things... But Apple prefers to only listen to customers it believes are "right customers."

Re: Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Keyboard

#698

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Running Linux, of course. I wish more people would. That's the best way to get any issues fixed, whether by filing bug reports, writing up a workaround on a wiki or Stackoverflow to help others, or fixing the bug. It's important for us to own our own tools, and keep the right to do with them as we wish. We expect this for our servers, but ignore it for laptops and desktops. If developers continue like this, then us…

From Game Theory perspective, "not using Linux" is actually the game's equilibrium. Because if you have to choose between a proprietary OS (Windows, macOS) and an FOSS (GNU/Linux, BSD, ...), you'd have to choose the former in order to increase your own utility. If people said they're gonna start using Linux from now on, that wouldn't work, since at least some are willing to "unilaterally deviate" from that decision a…

The offer is there. It's freedom, and most people don't want it.

Re: Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Keyboard

#699
post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or dear! I tried about everything possible but didn't think it could be related to such a generic setting! Found this article that shows where it is: https://www.howtogeek.com/189856/ask-htg-how-can-i-keep-my-b... I searched the web, updated Dell drivers, found some Reddit thread where they explained cryptic settings in the device manager... All of that didn't help. I gave up when I found yet another blog post where…

Make sure you return and tell us if it that fixed your issue. https://xkcd.com/979/

Looks good so far. The Microsoft Surface Precision mouse still works in Bluetooth mode. Now I can definitely recommend this mouse.

Tomorrow I'll test the Microsoft Surface mouse, AKA Microsoft Modern mouse.

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