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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

#831

Post by blhack »

__m wrote: post #325
blhack wrote: post #189

I wish apple would just make a line of laptops aimed at professionals. They could give us back a real keyboard, give us back USB ports, give us back swappable batteries, and give us back SD card readers (although this could be microsd at this point). They could even call it "macbook professional" or something like that. /s There is just absolutely no reason for these changes. The lack of USB ports on this laptop is s…

don't forget the cd drive and sweet floppy disc

Those have ubiquitous replacements. USB and flash memory don't.

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

#832

Post by jmmcd »

yellowapple wrote: post #816
ravenstine wrote: post #795

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (the now defunct) Steve Jobs That's one way to refer to a dead guy.

This is my new favorite euphemism for death. "Deceased" just sounds boring. "Defunct" has a certain weight to it.

How about "obsolete"? "Deprecated"? "No longer supported on this hardware"?

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

#833

Post by paulsmal »

DoritoChef wrote: post #734
jacquesm wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm running linux on all my machines, including a Macbook Air and it works very well. Unstable, insecure, hot and noisy would not be words I would use to describe my setup. The only noisy machine here is parked in another room and given its size and processing power it is noisy but that goes with the territory. Apple doesn't make anything that is even remotely equivalent. Which means I can run the same software on al…

May I ask what distro you're running? I tried Ubuntu 16.04LTS some time ago, and it didn't seem to get along very well with my mid-2015 MBP.

I was a happy user of Arch+i3wm on MBP 2015.

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

#834

Post by JadeNB »

Luc wrote: post #805
JadeNB wrote: post #758

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

How I wish I lived in that world. Here in the US, my wife recently had a nightmare situation where the insurance company insisted that they didn't cover a certain cost because they didn't know what it was sure, the hospital insisted that they had never assessed the cost and so couldn't explain it to the insurance, and yet somehow everyone seemed to agree that the never-assessed cost nonetheless absolutely had to be paid.

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

#835

Post by pjlegato »

pedrocr wrote: post #507
admg wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd agree with that, I run stock ubuntu on a thinkpad t460p. I have only one issue which is that display scaling is not fractional, its in set values which doesn't play well with resolutions above 1080p. Thats a gnome issue though and doesn't stop the screen working perfectly when the resolution is set to 1080p instead of 2550x1440 or whatever it is.

This is trivial to fix actually. Ubuntu 16.04 had "fractional" scaling by default but in reality all it did was between 1x and 2x use 1x with larger fonts. 18.04 lost that with the gnome transition but you can just change the font scaling manually. Less convenient and polished but still there in the tweak tool. Firefox also includes a scaling option in the configs. With those two settings my T460s with the 2560x1440…

This, right here, is an excellent case-in-point illustration of the reason Linux isn't widely used on laptops: even on expensive, high end hardware with excellent Linux support, and the most popular distribution, very basic functionality like screen resolution not only doesn't "just work" out of the box -- getting it to work properly at all requires serendipitously stumbling across a random forum post somewhere that directs you to the needle-in-the-haystack magic config file tweak that makes it work properly.

Can I please just get a Carbon X1 running MacOS?

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

#836

Post by hrktb »

exergy wrote: post #441
hrktb wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The same thing confuses me with smartphones. I like how John Siracusa explains the concept of "naked robotic core" To paraphrase, the phone is the computing unit, and the user customizes it to fit it's usage. People that never dropped a phone in their life can use it as is. People who work in construction can put hardcore shells that survive multiple floor drops. Those who like furry cases can go wild and those who…

First of all, I disagree that people _want_ to put furry cases on their phones. Too many people have walked around for too long with giant cracks on their screens that they've realised it's better to slap on a case, even with the ugliness that goes with it. Having some minion drawing on the back of the case is just a minor positive. More importantly though, I cannot stand how glib Apple is with their devices. Surely…

Bumper cases or transparent case is super cheap and available anywhere.

People with furry cases took the time to find some and surely cared a lot about getting the right one. It’s a whole world other there.

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

#837

Post by Joeri »

admg wrote: post #397
AsyncAwait wrote: post #377

Earlier 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…

I'd agree with that, I run stock ubuntu on a thinkpad t460p. I have only one issue which is that display scaling is not fractional, its in set values which doesn't play well with resolutions above 1080p. Thats a gnome issue though and doesn't stop the screen working perfectly when the resolution is set to 1080p instead of 2550x1440 or whatever it is.

What’s the battery life like compared to windows? I have the t460p running w10 with the extended battery and I’ve never run out of power in the middle of a workday. It would be painful to give that up, but at the same time I’m interested in running linux as main OS.

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

#838

Post by pjlegato »

fimbulvetr wrote: post #691
AsyncAwait wrote: post #377

Earlier 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…

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…

This is exactly why Linux isn't more widely used: most business and professional users regard "switching to a different window manager in order to work around repeated graphics glitches" as a dealbreaker-level problem in a tool they use for their work.

It's supposed to be an appliance that gets out of the way and enables higher level work, not a fascinating engineering project. The tool should _just work_, all the time. You shouldn't have to know or care what a window manager even is. That's what MacOS got right.

Now, if only Apple could go back to having the best hardware, too.. :/

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

#839

Post by reitanqild »

foldr wrote: post #790
ajross wrote: post #783

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I took your sarcasm to imply that linux desktop keybindings were inconsistent. If that's not what you mean (I mean, reading it again, I'm really pretty sure that's what you meant), then I apologize.

They are inconsistent between applications/toolkits. I was saying that this is not a big issue for me personally.

You still forget that I mentioned text selection shortcuts. They've been fairly consistent across 20 years of Windows and every major Linux Desktop environment.

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

#840

Post by 794CD01 »

analognoise wrote: post #764
794CD01 wrote: post #698

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

A 'free' computer that doesn't actually run any of the tools you need is worthless. Makes a good doorstop, I guess.

Indeed. You are free to modify it to run those tools, or create alternate tools that do run (maybe not so much after Oracle v Google). But ain't nobody got time for that.
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