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MacBook Pro? No

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Re: MacBook Pro? No

#91

Post by latch »

lettergram wrote: post #78

I recently (well a year ago), switched from using and recommending a MBP to a Lenovo with Linux. Buy a $500 ThinkPad T450s - off eBay, replaced it with new internals. I get 20Gb of RAM, 2x1Tb SSDs, a nice keyboard, a decent track pad, 10 hours of battery life - total cost: $1300-$1800. I've done this for myself and three family members and we all couldn't be happier. I fly a lot and having that battery life is so hel…

Lenovo has a pretty awful history of security / privacy issues. For me, it feels like giving them money [1], is saying that I'm ok with that behaviour (which I'm not)

[1] I know you said you bought off ebay, but I don't think that distinction matters

Re: MacBook Pro? No

#92

Post by jacobolus »

ak39 wrote: post #72
jacobolus wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carrying around the two laptops, the newer one’s slightly smaller bezel, significantly thinner case, and weight reduction (overall, it fills 22% less volume and weighs 13% less) make a pretty big difference in portability, without the sacrifices that go into the Air laptops. If you leave it on a desk all day, then it doesn’t really matter, but if you’re constantly taking it on the go you’ll likely appreciate the chan…

Isn’t the Air designed for that purpose?

The new laptops have many spec advantages over the Airs. Most notably for me, they have displays with double the pixel density.

Re: MacBook Pro? No

#93

Post by mh- »

Veen wrote: post #71
zegl wrote: post #36

My biggest issue with the MPB is that if you accidentally press Option+[Any touch bar icon] the System Preferences will open. This happens quite a lot for me on a keyboard with Swedish layout, where it is easy to accidentally rest my right pinky on the touch bar when when writing chars such as { and [. * "(" is Option+8 * "{" is Option+Shift+8

I had no idea that alt + Touch Bar opens the display preferences or the sound preferences. Quite a useful tip!

(fyi to those of us holdouts..)

On the older ones with real keys it does the same thing:

alt+volume => opens sound prefs

alt+brightness => display prefs

alt+mission control => ..

alt+keyboard backlight => keyboard

also, unrelated but occasionally useful.. alt+shift allows you to adjust volume/brightness in fractional increments.

Re: MacBook Pro? No

#94

Post by thepoet »

I know it is unfair to compare a laptop with a desktop but this is what I did based on my specific usage pattern. I upgraded from a 13 inch 2014 Macbook Pro with 8G RAM to a 27 inch iMac. I am still keeping the Macbook pro for travel, though I fear the out of warranty costs now that AppleCare is over. I wanted a faster, powerful machine but did not want to move out of macos with all those programs and settings from last 4 years. Also, all the other laptops had some issue or the other be it the low battery life in ultrabooks to the bad display, weak processors, or build quality issues. The 2017 touchbar MacBook Pro is the best built laptop one can buy but it looked too expensive to me for what it offered. I explored building a hackintosh but it seemed maintaining it was too much pain.

I now use a Samsung T5 external SSD over USB-C as my macos boot drive in the iMac, which I can unplug and boot with my Macbook when I travel. While being 40% cheaper than the 15 inch macbook in my country, the iMac gives me a faster processor that does not thermal throttle after 5 minutes of 100% usage, 24 GB of cheaper RAM (and yes easily upgradable to 64GB), a gorgeous 5k display, lots of ports, a somewhat better graphics card for the rare gaming and lots of space to save data files. With some difficulty, you could also replace the drives and processor.

Re: MacBook Pro? No

#95

Post by martind81 »

I've just had my keyboard serviced a couple weeks ago because of the sticky keys issue.

So I reluctantly bought a keypad cover. I normally hate covers. But weirdly I like this one; it's very thin, perfectly adjusted and it almost improves the touch. And it's almost invisible. I really like it and it makes me feel way safer.

Re: MacBook Pro? No

#96

Post by martind81 »

martind81 wrote: post #95

I've just had my keyboard serviced a couple weeks ago because of the sticky keys issue. So I reluctantly bought a keypad cover. I normally hate covers. But weirdly I like this one; it's very thin, perfectly adjusted and it almost improves the touch. And it's almost invisible. I really like it and it makes me feel way safer.

For those interested, this is the cover I got: UPPERCASE GhostCover Premium Ultra Thin Keyboard Protector for MacBook Pro with Touch Bar 13" or 15" (2016 and 2017, Apple Model Number A1706, A1707) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MRKLH27?ref=yo_pop_ma_swf

Re: MacBook Pro? No

#97

Post by Meekro »

eecc wrote: post #83

I’m also stuck on an old MacBook Pro model. Can’t justify the price but after some research — namely trying to find an equivalent Lenovo or Hp or whatever — I reached the conclusion that it’s mostly Intel’s fault. Let me explain: Intel chipsets don’t support enough lanes to supply USB-c, GPU, SSD and anything else with no less than 4 of them. The extra “legacy port breakout” ruins the tally and that’s why Apple dropp…

The 2015 Macbook Pro included an SSD, 2x Thunderbolt 2, 2x USB3, HDMI, and an SD card slot. It had 9 hours of battery life. Are you saying Intel chipsets actually regressed since then? If not, then it seems like Apple is the one who has regressed here.

Re: MacBook Pro? No

#98

Post by bitL »

jnsaff2 wrote: post #64
mrweasel wrote: post #29

I think it depends on what your profession is. The article read more like a list of minor annoyances to me, but I may have a very different usage compared to the author. The problem to me is, that if I want to switch from the Mac, I have no where to go. I have yet to see another laptop in the same build quality or and OS that just let me do my work to the extend that MacOS does. Apple is far from perfect, and the Mac…

Also depends on your profession. I DevOps and was tired of waiting for the new MacBook Pro (I have the 2012 Pro which is showing its age), so a few months before they released the current iteration I got the skull canyon nuc and put Linux with i3 on it. It is so easy to chuck into a bag and carry between work and home (you need monitors, power and keyboard at both places though). I am so much more productive with i3…

You can install macOS on your NUC, it works surprisingly well (i.e. 100%). I have one with i5/16GB and quad-boot Linux Mint/macOS/W7/W10.

Re: MacBook Pro? No

#99

Post by shabble »

314 wrote: post #85
shyang wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>My default editor is vim and don't have issues with escape if you are using vim, it is more efficient to use ctrl+[ instead of the escape key. This way your hands are staying where they mostly are.

Ctrl-c does the same and it is easier to press.

it's not 100% equivalent, for example C-v (select visual block), I, ..., C-c will cancel the block prepend action, whereas esc or C-[ will execute it.

Took me a while to realise that when messing around with visual/block.

I still mostly use C-c from muscle memory though, but do occasionally swear at it.

Re: MacBook Pro? No

#100

Post by chipotle_coyote »

chrisper wrote: post #26
atmosx wrote: post #6

I have the exact opposite experience so far. By all means, this is a professional laptop in my opinion. To expand a bit: - I love the keyboard, best I've seen on a laptop (I'm a 80+ WPM typist) - I don't have issues with the touchbar, getting used to quickly manage apps like spotify. - My default editor is vim and don't have issues with escape - Trackpad is the best I've seen on a laptop - The machine is fast - The s…

>but the main reason to buy is the OS Is that still true? I feel like that argument is vanishing more and more these days.

I suspect it's the part after this that's more important:

> My workflow and tools are tailored around the mac. It's not that I can't find my way through Linux or even a BSD Laptop running i3. It's that I don't want to.

I've been mostly full-time on the Mac since...2003, I think? I would be fine with Linux or FreeBSD, and I could live with Windows, but I'd just prefer not to. For me, macOS captures nearly everything that I loved about old-school Macs and everything that I love about Unix. There's a lot of little touches that make macOS just "feel better" to me, although I've found in practice those get to be really hard to explain in ways that don't make me sound slightly insane. For instance, drag and drop feels like a first-class UI metaphor on macOS in ways that it never did to me on Windows or any Linux desktop environment; I'm dragging and dropping all the time on the Mac in ways that I didn't--or in more than a few cases, simply couldn't--elsewhere. And when people rail against how difficult macOS is to customize and bend to their will, it's clear they're using very different metrics than I am.

I think other GUIs have certainly narrowed the gap over the years, and not everyone agrees with Apple's design decisions. (Including me, although most of the ones that drive me nuts are hardware decisions, and a continued obstinance in opening iOS up enough to let it become the general-purpose computing platform they seem to be positioning it as.) But as long as macOS keeps doing what I want and Apple doesn't screw the pooch hardware-wise, then I'm in the camp of "yes, I will buy Apple products to keep running macOS."

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