I was given a newish macbook at work, and the touch bar really is grating IMHO. I haven't encountered build quality issues but little things like not being able to easily hit ESC in Vim or F5 in Firefox really annoy me. I probably will get a linux friendly laptop from Dell for my personal use when my old one finally keeps over.
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
#712Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a new Oryx Pro. I'm not an expert on laptop build quality but to me the Oryx Pro looks and feels great. It is in fact a Clevo P955ER, which I know I could get for cheaper, but personally I want to support System 76's selling and supporting Linux laptops. I'd actually be interested to see if a straight-up Clevo P955ER with Pop!_OS installed is any more or less stable than an Oryx Pro. Anyways here are my though…
No _need_ to reboot. Restarting the Xorg/Wayland server, maybe. You might be able to fool it into thinking you just hot-plugged the GPU, at least as far as the screen layout is concerned. Remember: the only reason you need to reboot linux is to get a new kernel, or because the kernel FUBAR'd and corrupted data.
That makes sense. Pop_OS! has a button for switching graphics that prompts you to reboot. I bet that could be updated to only restart X11 or something https://github.com/pop-os/gnome-shell-extension-system76-pow...
Re: Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Keyboard
#713I obviously don't matter, but I was spending several thousand dollars every two years on Apple hardware (laptops, and before that a Mac Pro desktop before it became a small cylinder that I can't upgrade). For one person the total amount I've spent probably approaches 8-10K in the last 10 years or so.
But not since the new MacBook Pro laptops. As a heavy vim user, the touchbar is an immediate dealbreaker. As a lover of mechanical keyboards (cherry MX brown both at home and at work), the keyboard is a dealbreaker. As a taker-of-photos and Lightroom/Photoshop user, the USB-C-only and dongle requirements is the final straw (although probably more tolerable than the other two problems).
There are other people like me (especially on HN). And now the fact that Apple doesn't seem to care about people like myself, and that they're happy to not take my money, really makes me wonder if they've gotten too arrogant for their britches. There really is a sense of Apple waging war against its users (as the HN parody site n-gate likes to say). I feel like I'm being asked to adapt to the above annoyances - and for what, an operating system that makes it a pain to stop processes that auto-update (Adobe), that has ancient versions of GNU utilities, that has numerous competing / overlapping package managers (brew and so forth)? Sorry, no.
Today I have a MS SurfaceBook (not without its problems but tolerable) and a custom build that's lightning-fast thanks to a Ryzen processor and M2 storage (a US $1600 that Apple would probably sell for $3500). For Unix I use MobaXTerm (Putty/PuttyCM/X/Cygwin/etc. all glued together) and cloud instances [edit: and CentOS VMs for work and personal projects; I don't have enough free time in my life for Linux on the desktop's high maintenance] .
Re: Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Keyboard
#714Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
FWIW, my Macbook (not my primary machine) cost me 400€ second hand and I spent another 100€ upgrading to 8GB Ram and an SSD drive. It's a ten year old machine which runs like a dream. I challenge anyone to find a better computing solution for 500€. You could install Linux on a 500€ laptop but you wouldn't have the keyboard or screen quality of the Macbook, nor would have access to the Apple ecosystem. A lot of progra…
> You could install Linux on a 500€ laptop but you wouldn't have the keyboard or screen quality of the Macbook
You're literally posting in a story about terrible Apple keyboards... The whole point to this subthread is about alternatives with better keyboards!
Re: Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Keyboard
#715Earlier quoted context omitted.
> what can they do? Make the battery thinner so they can get sane key travel back within the case without increasing overall thickness? Go back to previous thickness; it wasn't that bad, and thin for the most powerful portable they sell isn't necessarily a good thing. They could even couple it with advancements in battery tech to finally put 32GB on their laptop.
That's my preferred answer. We can have magsafe back too. :) Sadly Apple rate thinness too highly, so I suspect they'll not give it up easily.
It irks me even more when they try to keep their desktops thin.
Re: Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Keyboard
#716Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You could install Linux on a 500€ laptop but you wouldn't have the keyboard or screen quality of the Macbook, nor would have access to the Apple ecosystem. I used a 2009 MacBook pro for close to 3 years. The following are my opinions, they are not valid for everyone but for some of us they are very valid: Keyboard had ctrl in a different spot than every other keyboard I ever spent significant time with. (Disclaimer…
>Basic things like selecting a word using the keyboard would take one of three key combos depending on which app. I think sometimes it was ctrl-shift-arrow, sometimes alt-shift-arrow and sometimes fn-shift-arrow. Whereas all Linux GUI applications follow a completely consistent set of keyboard bindings...
Yes! Exactly! It's the only environment where I can rely on all text entry working with emacs keybindings, though to be fair I have to poke a setting to get that.
Oh wait, you were being sarcastic. Well, at least you were wrong and learned something I guess.
(No seriously, you're wrong here. Linux desktops solved the uniform keybinding problem in a cross-desktop way like a decade ago. You just don't like it because they're different, not because they're inconsistent.)
Re: Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Keyboard
#717Stupid Apple - I blame Schiller. They won’t support 32Gb ram because it might decrease battery life and requires them to reengineer the logic board but they’re totally cool with a fragile ass keyboard GLUED to a battery! Really there’s no way to call this anything other than insanity. I remember the media used to talk about the ‘halo effect’ - well I’m someone who has Almost every MBP between 2002-2012 and every iPho…
Apple (MBP15 late 2013, iMac 27 late 2009) user at home, Dell XPS 15 9550 (2015) user at work here. While I totally agree with you about the new MBP, please just know that the XPS 15 isn't without it's problems too! It must just be that Windows users are more used to lower quality hardware/software that such things are accepted... I really like my XPS 15 as it is fast and as compact as a MBP, but: - Microsoft Surface…
Whenever I get a BSOD, I miss working on my older Macbook Pro. I just got BSOD this morning as I was reading this, on a brand-new high-end HP ZBook laptop nonetheless. It's the third time that BSOD had happened since I got it few weeks ago, and it turns out that the culprit was the HP's included bloated software called HP Velocity, which is supposed to improve network performance on laptop.
Re: Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Keyboard
#718Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or the alternative, paying attention.
You’re making the bold assumption that there is anything being said that is worth paying attention to.
Then decline the meeting. Unless you're a very junior developer or a brand new employee (and probably don't have the necessary experience or context, respectively, to determine whether or not you need to pay attention) you probably have the right to decline meeting invites.
Re: Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Keyboard
#719Earlier quoted context omitted.
Technically no, not exactly. It’s intel’s fault. Their damn architectures won’t support DDR4LP - that’s the low power variant - because they’ve become complacent. Also the lack of PCIe lanes forced Apples’s hand on USBc only design, although it’s such a daft choice they should’ve just gone with 2 TB ports and keep the other “legacy” available. But no, they had to brag about dual 4K external monitors to it had to be 4…
>"Also the lack of PCIe lanes forced Apples’s hand on USBc only design," Can you elaborate on this? Is this related to DDR4LP? Is there a connection?
>Also the lack of PCIe lanes
https://ark.intel.com/products/97462/Intel-Core-i7-7920HQ-Pr...
I don't think PCIe lanes and low power ram are directly related, but it is just another sign of Intel attempting to control the market via feature segregation.
The CPU only has 16 PCIe lanes. Which is flat out retarded when 4 of them will be used by NVMe, and 8 (and really 16 should be) can be used by video. This only leaves 4 additional PCIe lanes for any other devices, including USB-C and thunderbolt.
Simply put, if there were any competition in the market, that CPU look much different. Low power ram and 8 more PCIe lanes at least.
Re: Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Keyboard
#720Earlier quoted context omitted.
The 11 inches MBA is the best laptop for me. If they just upgrade the processor to the latest gen, and the screen to retina I'd upgrade to that in a heart beat.
Clinging to my 11" MBA (2014) as well. 4-core, perfect size, indestructible. Totally agree that if they would make any modest improvements just to keep it current (proc, mem, wifi, etc.) I would refresh every year or two. I don't want the newer MacBooks with half the processor, no magsafe, and bad keyboard.
2-core, 4-thread
If they updated the screeen on the 11” it would be perfect. The 12” Retina screen is such a huge improvement over the 1366x768 screen