Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Keyboard • Hacker News Board

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

#801

Post by stcredzero » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 4:27 PM UTC

jacobsenscott wrote: post #762

justwalt wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kinds of mistakes would someone who fits this description make?

Deeply nested if/else logic, very long functions. Imperative logic that could be better written by higher level constructs like function composition, complicating code with micro-performance hacks, etc. In general inflexible code. Of course not all of this is because I leaned C first. A lot of it was simply due to being a new programmer. But this kind of code is more prevalent in general in the C world. Just browse s…

But what you are citing here isn't a problem with learning C and C++. It's a failing of a generalist education. You might have known enough to avoid the gotchas of concurrency, but just out of school, you didn't know what you didn't know about business application development.

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

#802

Post by Chlorus » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 4:30 PM UTC

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #357

Symbiote wrote: post #315

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…

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…

Hell, the second article on Phoronix at this very moment is "GNOME Will No Longer Crash If Attaching A Monitor While The System Is Suspended", and if you scroll back further, repeated promises that Linux power management is getting better.

OS X and Windows also have broken usability, but at least their users don't run around telling people "it works fine for me! Just make sure you use a LTS distro with 5+ year old packages and without any hardware made since 2005"

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

#803

Post by rbanffy » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 4:30 PM UTC

foldr wrote: post #780

reitanqild wrote: post #743

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Learned that. But it doesn't compose with shift for selection. I also learned and still use the official workaround for that which is pretty nice often: shift + arrow up/down while on start/end of a line

>But it doesn't compose with shift for selection. Yes it does. Ctrl+Shift+E selects the text up to the end of the line.

As an interesting note, it doesn't work with MS Office.

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

#804

Post by yardie » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 4:31 PM UTC

cptskippy wrote: post #710

protonimitate wrote: post #684

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone have any insight into why Apple's QA took a turn for the worse over the past couple years? Buggy IOS/OS releases and now the hardware issues... I always equated Apple with quality and consistency (along with price), but now I can't really see how the price is justified with the issues they have been having.

They no longer have Steve Jobs Quality Control? He was the type of person to play with something for 5 minutes and say "yeah... no" or to eagerly take something he liked and abuse the hell out of it for 24 hours then come back with a laundry list of improvements. He was a jerk and he cared deeply about user experience. In his absence you have what exactly? Tim Cook lacks vision, if you want your mountain moved to Plu…

I am still confounded how people continue to say that Tim Cook has no vision, as if he's simply some sort of bean counter with green shades who just lucked into become the CEO of one of the world's largest companies.

Tim Cook's vision is much larger than computers if you haven't been paying attention. Look, from what I can observe, ever smaller devices, lifestyle devices, the focus on privacy, their take on the cloud; Apple is looking to position itself to exist intimately in our lives. The only way to get there is to have the same level of trust that you do with family or even a lawyer. \\

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

#805

Post by Luc » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 4:32 PM UTC

JadeNB wrote: post #758

fnordsensei wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same in Sweden. Warranty is 3 years by law, but the seller in responsible for whatever period that's not covered by the manufacturer. This sometimes results in customers being ping-ponged between seller and manufacturer a few times before the seller gives in.

> This sometimes results in customers being ping-ponged between seller and manufacturer a few times before the seller gives in. Why would the seller give in, if it can always just ping the buyer back to the manufacturer one more time?

Because small claims court judges tend to side with the consumer in these cases.

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

#806

Post by Brian_K_White » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 4:33 PM UTC

ender89 wrote: post #728

cptskippy wrote: post #710

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They no longer have Steve Jobs Quality Control? He was the type of person to play with something for 5 minutes and say "yeah... no" or to eagerly take something he liked and abuse the hell out of it for 24 hours then come back with a laundry list of improvements. He was a jerk and he cared deeply about user experience. In his absence you have what exactly? Tim Cook lacks vision, if you want your mountain moved to Plu…

It's more like Steve Jobs was such an uncompromising asshole that he would rather throw a substandard product in the garbage than put out something he considered lesser. He didn't have vision, nothing he "made" was revolutionary at all, and he didn't make anything after the NeXT. Steve Jobs was amazing at two things: getting in on the ground floor (the iphone came out so quickly after the first all touch screen smart…

I had a full touch screen, color, icon grid of 3rd party apps, internet enabled, smart phone in 2001.

Samsung SPH-i300

I had multiple web browsers, email, irc client, telnet and ssh clients, and an open marketplace of thousands of 3rd party apps for every oddball purpose, like I had a resistor color decoder, netmask calculator, etc.

2001.

iphone came out in 2007, and had no 3rd party apps.

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

#807

Post by cptskippy » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 4:34 PM UTC

ender89 wrote: post #728

cptskippy wrote: post #710

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They no longer have Steve Jobs Quality Control? He was the type of person to play with something for 5 minutes and say "yeah... no" or to eagerly take something he liked and abuse the hell out of it for 24 hours then come back with a laundry list of improvements. He was a jerk and he cared deeply about user experience. In his absence you have what exactly? Tim Cook lacks vision, if you want your mountain moved to Plu…

It's more like Steve Jobs was such an uncompromising asshole that he would rather throw a substandard product in the garbage than put out something he considered lesser. He didn't have vision, nothing he "made" was revolutionary at all, and he didn't make anything after the NeXT. Steve Jobs was amazing at two things: getting in on the ground floor (the iphone came out so quickly after the first all touch screen smart…

> He didn't have vision, nothing he "made" was revolutionary at all, and he didn't make anything after the NeXT.

Maybe vision is the wrong word. You're right that he wasn't imagining the future most of the time. What he did have was a degree of objectivity and restraint. He wasn't blinded by the "wow" factor of a new technology and could objectively weight it's merits. Where as most tech companies try to cram the latest and greatest technology into their products to have an impressive bullet list to show around, he held back until he felt the technology was ready.

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

#808

Post by stcredzero » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 4:34 PM UTC

varjag wrote: post #352

djsumdog wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I knew CS graduates who loved parsing theory and could implement some basic C compilers, and I knew some who didn't know what a SCSI controller was. You get out of your education what you put into it. I had someone in an interview in Berlin ask me to write a garbage collector. In CSC 202, our professor talked about using reference counts. Reference counts can get leaks if you have two objects referencing each other w…

When people say they expect someone to implement cycle detection, they usually mean Floyd's algorithm. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycle_detection#Floyd%27s_Tort... If you come up with something else (like tagging nodes), you get a strike for inefficiency. It looks simple enough to feel smug about once you know it, at the same time there's near zero chance the interviewers could come up with this algorithm independ…

When people say they expect someone to implement cycle detection, they usually mean Floyd's algorithm.

Not necessarily. Sometimes the dataset only has on the order of 10k nodes, and you just want to warn users if they create a cycle, or keep particular routines from going into an infinite loop.

If you come up with something else (like tagging nodes), you get a strike for inefficiency.

A few days ago, I implemented cycle detection in an event notification system where the graph size is relatively small in just 4 lines of code, which should be immediately understandable by any competent programmer. That you should mandate Floyd's algorithm in all cases gives you a strike for pedantic design without regard to cost/benefit.

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

#809

Post by sanderjd » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 4:38 PM UTC

blackaspen wrote: post #792

sanderjd wrote: post #785

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe this is a market opportunity for somebody to build a laptop with high end components (monitor, keyboard, touchpad) running a super-duper-well-integrated linux.

I believe you're looking for the XPS13 that comes with Ubuntu.

I've heard that, but I'm skeptical: does Dell maintain the integration, or do they just install Ubuntu on it? If I seem to have a problem with the integration between the installed touchpad, who do I go to? The Ubuntu forums, or Dell support?

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

#810

Post by stcredzero » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 4:39 PM UTC

blub wrote: post #258

stcredzero wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had someone in an interview in Berlin ask me to write a garbage collector. In CSC 202, our professor talked about using reference counts. Jeez. I think my profs covered ref counting as an introduction, then also went on to cover mark/sweep and generational collectors. We also covered compaction, copying and bump allocation. I don't think it took that long. If I were running a shop that focused on, say Java, I would…

You're trying really hard to find a connection between implementing a GC and debugging memory leaks... and failing. The whole freaking point of a GC like say Java's is that an average programmer can use it without having to understand how exactly it's implemented. Of course it won't hurt to know that, but it's not at all mandatory knowledge. One just has to know which situations the GC can't cope with and avoid them.…

You're trying really hard to find a connection between implementing a GC and debugging memory leaks... and failing.

I spent years at a vendor for a Virtual Machine. That you would compose such a sentence shows that you are ignorant of some aspects of optimization. You don't even know what you don't know, and projected that ignorance on another.

The whole freaking point of a GC like say Java's is that an average programmer can use it without having to understand how exactly it's implemented.

One of my company's most frequent consulting tasks was helping clients optimize to maximize throughput for the generational GC. That you jumped to the conclusion that I was talking about memory leaks is pretty damning.