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New MacBook Pro Is Not a Laptop for Developers Anymore

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Re: New MacBook Pro Is Not a Laptop for Developers Anymore

#71
post #29
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that caps lock is an improvement over escape's location. But, if you're like me, you also find it to be an improvement over control's location so you have caps lock mapped to that already so rebinding esc to caps lock is not an option.

You can have the best of both worlds on *nix: tap == ESC, hold == CTRL http://www.economyofeffort.com/2014/08/11/beyond-ctrl-remap-...

That's not a bad option and I had not considered it. I will try it out, thanks!

Re: New MacBook Pro Is Not a Laptop for Developers Anymore

#72
post #27
post #7

Honest question: what's the alternative? I've got a 2013 rMBP 15 inch. What's my next machine? I'm not willing to regress on display (220 ppi or better), screen size, or battery life (8-9 hours real use). I might regress on quad core to dual core if everything else is perfect. EDIT: The XPS 15 gets more like 5-6 hours with the high res display by my understanding. The Surface Book has the right combination of resolut…

I "defected" a few months back and I am now using a Dell XPS 15 Intel® Core™ i7-6700HQ CPU @ 2.60GHz × 8 16GB Ram running Ubuntu 16.04. It is a beautiful machine, very sturdy, fast and an excellent keyboard. It is available with a 238ppi screen, but I chose 141ppi because I don't care about the extra pixels on a dev machine.

How are the trackpad and the battery?

Re: New MacBook Pro Is Not a Laptop for Developers Anymore

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft's Surface Book.

Surface boook is just as gimped - 16gb ram, about same cpus, same expensive storage, and other gimmicks (detacheable screen won't do you much good in helping to develop stuff)

Escape key included

Re: New MacBook Pro Is Not a Laptop for Developers Anymore

#74
post #23

This doesn't even get into the dongle problem. The simplest example is that if you want to hook up Apple's flagship phone up to their flagship laptop for development, you need a dongle. And if you want to share one of their flagship wired headphones between the two devices, you need another dongle. Therefore if you want to connect three of Apple's flagship devices together on a daily basis, you can't go anywhere with…

All those arguments were once said when the first iMac came out and all it had were USB ports. All devices will have USB-C connectors soon, and instead of getting dongles, you'll be simply replacing your cables to be USB-C versions of them all.

Re: New MacBook Pro Is Not a Laptop for Developers Anymore

#75
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I "defected" a few months back and I am now using a Dell XPS 15 Intel® Core™ i7-6700HQ CPU @ 2.60GHz × 8 16GB Ram running Ubuntu 16.04. It is a beautiful machine, very sturdy, fast and an excellent keyboard. It is available with a 238ppi screen, but I chose 141ppi because I don't care about the extra pixels on a dev machine.

What about the trackpad? Most Windows laptops I've tried recently still have trash trackpads.

[deleted]

Re: New MacBook Pro Is Not a Laptop for Developers Anymore

#76
post #3

So use an editor that supports a modern UI, like Sublime Text or Atom, and not something originally designed for an ADM-3A terminal.

I like terminal editors because they're easier to use in a distributed computing environment, furthermore, you're almost certainly going to able to run vim no matter what the hardware looks like and you /really/ can't say the same thing about some of these others (especially if they need some weird HID like the touch bar).

Applications that have terminal UIs tend to be significantly more well behaved than those that don't, this isn't always the case it's just a trend I've noticed.

Re: New MacBook Pro Is Not a Laptop for Developers Anymore

#77
Ok, I think Apple is not hitting the Dev group of consumers at all. But what I certainly do not want to do is judge a machine that I have not tried. Yeah, I am almost 100% I won't buy this machine, no reason, cause I use maxed out 13" I bought 9 months ago, but I will go to a store and spend some time with it, and after that come to the internet and tell my impression.

Markets and products change over time, sometimes for worse, sometimes for better. Nobody is forcing anyone to buy this machine, yes it is expensive, yes it is not geared towards Pro consumers as we all used to think and expected from this one the same, yes it is Apple on the verge of their creativity. So what? It has never been better situation with alternative laptops and hybrids. You have fantastic products from Microsoft and Dell!

What is my opinion on this whole thing, is that with laptops we got to the point of saturation. They started as big and clunky boxes in 90s, to a slimmer but still heavy and chunky plastic bricks in early 2000s. Then we got aluminum body, after that CPUs staled with performance, and went with the rout of lower voltage, which allowed for longer battery life and less heat exhaustion. Then aluminum bodies went really slim, tablets and touch screens came in play, opening whole new market of hybrids.

And now we come back to the point where we say, we do not want gimmicks in our laptops, that's okay, Apple shoulda have given the option of non Touch Bar 15" MBP, but it would require further price tweaking. And then we come to the point of price. Yeah it is going up! We had a period from 2012 to 2016 where computers were pretty affordable, in terms where you get solid battery life and computer performance with at least FHD screen slight under thousand dollars. Now market is shrinking, because of the nature of technology and innovation, market got saturated, and we are here where we are. I just do not understand people screaming all over the internet. I mean I was too when I watched the presentation, this isn't the Apple I fell in love with more than 10 years ago. But what can you do... When the time comes for purchase of my new computer (I am Software Engineer, so quite niche market) I will evaluate every option with my head cool. Yeah, I like UNIX and I was using Mac computers for more than 10 years, but Microsoft has never been stronger with hardware and PC games, and Dell is fine too. That is the good thing both for whole market and Apple fans, because change is needed inside Apple! When their money and stocks start to go down the sink that will make them realize and fight for the lost costumers. Have a nice day, just my 2c.

Re: New MacBook Pro Is Not a Laptop for Developers Anymore

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft's Surface Book.

Surface boook is just as gimped - 16gb ram, about same cpus, same expensive storage, and other gimmicks (detacheable screen won't do you much good in helping to develop stuff)

> about same cpus

That's charitable. It has a dual-core 15W TDP CPUs, the 13" touchbar uses a dual-core 25W CPU and the 15" uses a quad-core 45W CPU.

Incidentally, all Kaby Lake laptops use either 4.5W duals or 15W duals, there's nothing else out yet.

Re: New MacBook Pro Is Not a Laptop for Developers Anymore

#79

Dramatic click bait IMO. You could really hack that touchbar to do some great productivity enhancements.

Yeah, I don't understand all the outrage over the touchbar. It changes depending on your application. So can't you setup VIM so the touchbar displays a "normal" or "classic layout", which would display all the keys that the previous model had? I am far more disappointed in the elimination of magsafe and only having USB C ports.

Re: New MacBook Pro Is Not a Laptop for Developers Anymore

#80
post #23

This doesn't even get into the dongle problem. The simplest example is that if you want to hook up Apple's flagship phone up to their flagship laptop for development, you need a dongle. And if you want to share one of their flagship wired headphones between the two devices, you need another dongle. Therefore if you want to connect three of Apple's flagship devices together on a daily basis, you can't go anywhere with…

I'm really shocked about this, I mean, I had thought that they saw the future in USB-C after they previewed the MacBook.
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