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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

#711

Post by heyts »

bisby wrote: post #284
ericjang wrote: post #37

I dislike this post intensely. The opinion comes across as uncharitable, as the author probably has not used this Macbook Pro yet. How can you (alexeysemeney) be so sure? I consider myself a developer, and I almost never use the Fn and ESC keys on my Mac. Everybody uses the computer differently, but I'm pretty sure this is not a deal-breaker for most. One could also argue that the touch bar might lead to innovative d…

As a vim user, esc is pretty important. I would say the author clearly knows very little computer specs: "The MacBook Pro had options with 2.4 gigahertz dual-core processors back in 2010. Anything new in 2016? Not really, well… nope." Because a 2010 2.4ghz dual core is identical to a 2016 2.4 ghz dual core.... I thought we got over comparing processors purely by their clock speed a long time ago. (I will agree that t…

The interesting thing is that Apple just released the ability to remap Caps-Lock to Esc. natively in macOS 10.12.1, which doesn't seem to be incidental.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12818839

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

#712

Post by ixtli »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #409
ixtli wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sort of surface-y anger makes the rounds every time apple does _anything_ to their hardware.

What were people upset about with the last retina macbook pro refresh?

I can't source this at all but I remember getting into an argument (maybe on reddit?) about how the lack of changes after almost two years between refreshes meant the product line was "dead" or that apple could no longer innovate.

Edit: It just seems to me that if they do nothing it means that steve job's death is also the death of apple, but if they do something big its an indication that they've forsaken their core user base.

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

#714

Post by accatyyc »

polyfractal wrote: post #680
st3v3r wrote: post #663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The F1 keys are not important for debugging. When I'm debugging, I'm not concerned with what's faster. So I use the icons and the mouse.

This is really just a war of opinions now, but the F1 keys are indispensable to me. My fingers rest on the hotkeys for "step into", "step over", "run to breakpoint" and I can keep my eyes glued to the watch list, inspecting the variables at each step. Some times you want to quickly step into functions, other times step over, and it's just really handy to have it mapped to keys. I'm not even a power emacs user or some…

But what if your IDE simply adds the debugger buttons to the touch strip instead? They could even have the correct icons and update state as you debug. Seems even better to me.

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

#715

Post by GrinningFool »

bisby wrote: post #284
ericjang wrote: post #37

I dislike this post intensely. The opinion comes across as uncharitable, as the author probably has not used this Macbook Pro yet. How can you (alexeysemeney) be so sure? I consider myself a developer, and I almost never use the Fn and ESC keys on my Mac. Everybody uses the computer differently, but I'm pretty sure this is not a deal-breaker for most. One could also argue that the touch bar might lead to innovative d…

As a vim user, esc is pretty important. I would say the author clearly knows very little computer specs: "The MacBook Pro had options with 2.4 gigahertz dual-core processors back in 2010. Anything new in 2016? Not really, well… nope." Because a 2010 2.4ghz dual core is identical to a 2016 2.4 ghz dual core.... I thought we got over comparing processors purely by their clock speed a long time ago. (I will agree that t…

I find it interesting and perhaps a bit telling that the most common response to the Esc key portion of this post is remap/use a different key binding.

How is that a reasonable response? To me, the reasonable response would be, "I remap/whatever, but maybe it's best if you look at a different platform where this isn't a concern." Or, "I can see how that's a problem, here's what I do."

We do have some responses in the 'reasonable' category, by we also have replies like "Esc is, by and large a useless key." and "It's really a non-issue because you can rebind keys so easily, it's not even funny" and "the ESC key in vim can lead to RSI" and "Only if you're too lazy to rebind it to any of the many more finger friendly options". All of them saying, "You're doing it wrong" - even if not in so many words.

Telling someone they're wrong to dislike a specific change because a workaround happens to exist says to me that you're making a whole lot of assumptions about other people based on what works for you at best, and being patronizing at worst.

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

#716

Post by jljljl »

falcolas wrote: post #568
denzil_correa wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much. I am struggling to understand the issue here.

Three points: The escape key is not where it is normally. The escape key is not present in all contextual operations (that is, you can open up a menu on the touchbar which causes the escape key to disappear in favor of a "close" button). There is no physical feedback that you've hit escape.

I will admit, the lack of taptic feedback on the touch bar is surprising to me, given it's presence in the touchpad

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

#717

Post by snowwrestler »

mikejmoffitt wrote: post #706
snowwrestler wrote: post #699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To use the function keys on an old MacBook Pro, you have to chord with the "fn" key to override the brightness, volume, etc controls. To use the functions keys in the touch bar in the new MacBook Pro, you have to chord with the "fn" key as well. So where is the difference...

It has always been possible to set those keys to default to F-key functions instead of media functions. The difference here is that the position may not be constant, and you can't feel with your fingers what you're over before you commit to activating the function, so you must look. In some contexts you can "get used to it", but this is a steeper uphill battle.

I would not be surprised if one of the customizations of the touch bar is to set the function keys as the default.

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

#718

Post by elcct »

laichzeit0 wrote: post #486
ericjang wrote: post #37

I dislike this post intensely. The opinion comes across as uncharitable, as the author probably has not used this Macbook Pro yet. How can you (alexeysemeney) be so sure? I consider myself a developer, and I almost never use the Fn and ESC keys on my Mac. Everybody uses the computer differently, but I'm pretty sure this is not a deal-breaker for most. One could also argue that the touch bar might lead to innovative d…

I put it to you that you've never used a debugger if you've never used Fn keys.

If you have to use debugger then your code must be really bad

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

#719

Post by njitram »

azmenak wrote: post #104
slg wrote: 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…

From Apple's site: - USB-C to Thunderbolt 2: $49 - SanDisk SD Card USB-C Reader: $49.95 - USB-C AV Multiport Adaptor (HDMI): $69 Spend another $168 and you access to add the same ports you have now!

The nice thing about USB-C is that its a standard, so you don't have to buy it from Apple only anymore like before. For example I have https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01K7C53K2 for $69, which is really useful: plug one cable in and everything is connected.

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

#720

Post by otterley »

otterley wrote: post #456

I think there are some technological limitations behind the 16GB maximum RAM configuration. The highest-density DDR3 DRAM packages I could find that run at the rated speed are 8 gigabits, which means 16 chips are required on the board. There probably just isn't enough room there for 16 more chips. 16-gigabit packages are slowly arriving on the market, but I imagine it'll be a couple more years before they're availabl…

Correction: It's a CPU limitation when used with LPDDR3 modules. See http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/core/7th-g... (See section 2.1.1.3, "LPDDR3 supported memory devices")
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