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

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

#841

Post by reitanqild » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 5:39 PM UTC

foldr wrote: post #772

reitanqild wrote: post #733

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both linux and Windows seems to get basic text selection right, yes. Of modern desktop os-es, Mac OS X was the only one who has ever consistently surprised me on this . It might not be a big deal to everyone but for me who - deal with text day out and day - and prefer to keep my hands at the keyboard (even when I have a nice trackpad) small thing like this matters. Just like details like a good trackpad matters to ot…

The text selection shortcuts are completely consistent on modern OS X, in my experience. At least, I can't find an app where shift+alt+right_arrow doesn't select a word.

I've moved on but between 2009 and 2012 this changed from application to application.

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

#842

Post by coldtea » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 5:42 PM UTC

throwaway2048 wrote: post #824

coldtea wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't have to "do with it". It's enough that "it" didn't cause any backslash, and instead we've seen ever raised sales volumes...

so clearly being an asshole makes me steve jobs right, or at least it cant hurt! right?

You seem confused.

a) "clearly being an asshole makes me steve jobs right"

I never claimed any causative chain of that sort. I said that thinner continued to sold in droves, not that making something thin necessarily will make it sold.

b) "or at least it cant hurt! right?"

That's closer to what I said, which is the continuously thinner products never hurt Apple's sales.

And to answer your question, yes, obviously it can't hurt in someone becoming like Steve Jobs -- since it didn't hurt Steve Jobs himself. In fact, if anything, it could have been necessary to Jobs success, and goes with his obsession and attention to detail and crazy push to his employees.

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

#843

Post by thinkythought » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 5:46 PM UTC

Brian_K_White wrote: post #806

ender89 wrote: post #728

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm with popsiclepete. I had a long string of "smart" devices before the iphone and they were, unilaterally, garbage. Even the ones with great hardware(looking at the treo 600 series here especially) had awful software and bad battery life.

I bought the very first color palm pilot and was first-in a lot of tech. All this stuff was really, really clunky to use and just generally bad. I couldn't hand it to someone else and expect them to figure out how to use it without being shown.

Also, styluses were terrible except for corner-case inputs. The fact that there's essentially only one mainstream brand making a main-line phone with them goes to show this was true.

I agree it was a flub the iphone didn't launch with apps, but i honestly think people needed a year to get used to the interface concept and a lot of complete garbage would have come out of people trying to get first mover on the market(and it DID, even a year later, absolute shovelware)

People really shouldn't be romanticizing pocketpc, or even palmOS. The first truly good mobile OS palm put out was WebOS, and it took microsoft until windows mobile 7... both after the iphone.

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

#844

Post by roystonvassey » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 5:47 PM UTC

symfoniq wrote: post #738

roystonvassey wrote: post #586

I am a huge fan of Apple's products and never understood the fuss when the new Pro Keyboard attracted bad press, reading it on my old, robust pre-2015 era Macbook. Until now. I got the new one at my job three months back. And, here I am, still struggling with and super annoyed with the missed keystrokes (the buttons are so thin/don't press properly), the almost non-existent 'Enter' keys (seriously, who messes with th…

Same boat. Against my better judgement, I bought a 2017 MacBook Pro about 6 months ago to make it easier to work with a client. I sold it this week at a big loss. Between the terrible keyboard, the useless Touch Bar, and the dongle hell, and general hardware flakiness, this was the worst laptop I've ever owned, Apple or otherwise (and I've owned almost every Apple laptop generation since the PowerBook G3). Good ridda…

Oh yeah, forgot the add-ons. My laptop bag is now like a knapsack - usb converter, hdmi converter and an another for the earphone.

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

#845

Post by nkkollaw » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 5:50 PM UTC

pas wrote: post #690

nkkollaw wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Europe minimum mandatory warranty is 2 years.

Could you link to some explanatory source for that?

There you go: https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/sell-abroad/client-gua...

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

#846

Post by woolvalley » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 6:01 PM UTC

fooker wrote: post #345

woolvalley wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't really say those are the reasons why. The app store and code signing have been fairly bureaucratic to deal with from day one. It's actually improved compared to the initial years from turn around times measuring in a day or two vs a week or two. I remember doing such tricks such as resubmitting the same binary and it getting passed. It really is a dice roll. Compile times comes from swift and promoting it…

>Swift compile times have been improving as time goes on. Swift compile times will never be close to ObjC or C compile times, no matter how much engineering goes into it. This is because of how the language is designed, it requires a typechecker which solves an NP hard constraint solving problem.

There is a whole bunch of low hanging fruit in the swift compiler as far as compile speed goes.

What swift compiler devs complain most about is about how operator overloading causes some sort of O(n^k) or worse check, because things like the '+' operator has dozens of implementers.

If your really worried about type inference slowing you down, you can write out all of your types like you didn't have type inference. You could even do it in an automated fashion like your source code was some sort of cache.

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

#847

Post by reitanqild » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 6:02 PM UTC

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #789

gnufied wrote: post #766

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Linux on a laptop has always been unstable, insecure, hot and noisy. Wait -- insecure? How? You mean full disk encryption? I am typing this from thinkpad with full disk encryption and SELinux enabled Fedora. Sure there are problems with Linux on laptop but even if you don't have SELinux enabled - security has never been an issue (or no worse than Windows and OSX).

What I was specifically referring to there is that Ubuntu's NetworkManager (in combination with Open VPN) had (or still has?) a DNS leak right out of the box for years.

Am I underestimating that or is that are really small thing compared to "press-enter-twice-for-root" on one of the two big commercial OSes?

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

#848

Post by kennxfl » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 6:02 PM UTC

roystonvassey wrote: post #586

I am a huge fan of Apple's products and never understood the fuss when the new Pro Keyboard attracted bad press, reading it on my old, robust pre-2015 era Macbook. Until now. I got the new one at my job three months back. And, here I am, still struggling with and super annoyed with the missed keystrokes (the buttons are so thin/don't press properly), the almost non-existent 'Enter' keys (seriously, who messes with th…

Apple products are overrated. Their selling point is security and ease of use but we all know you that a computer cannot protect you from breaches. As for ease of use, most devices nowadays are pretty intuitive.

Why would anyone buy a low performance laptop for thousands of dollars, additional dongles and external keyboards when you can get a lightweight MSI laptop that's far superior in every single way for so much less?

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

#849

Post by throwaway2048 » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 6:10 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #842

throwaway2048 wrote: post #824

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so clearly being an asshole makes me steve jobs right, or at least it cant hurt! right?

You seem confused. a) "clearly being an asshole makes me steve jobs right" I never claimed any causative chain of that sort. I said that thinner continued to sold in droves, not that making something thin necessarily will make it sold. b) "or at least it cant hurt! right?" That's closer to what I said, which is the continuously thinner products never hurt Apple's sales. And to answer your question, yes, obviously it…

Or you know, it actually held him back, but not enough to make him unsucessful?

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

#850

Post by analognoise » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 6:11 PM UTC

794CD01 wrote: post #840

analognoise wrote: post #764

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is such a bullshit argument.

I don't want to spend my time making a toaster - I just want toast.

Also this is why FOSS software continually reinvents the wheel, badly. Want some BS program? There are a million of them. Want an actual tool that requires deep talent and domain knowledge? Outside of compilers, if it's FOSS, it is almost certainly garbage.