The new MacBook • Hacker News Board

Re: The new MacBook

#941

Post by Macha » Tue, Mar 10, 2015, 2:26 PM UTC

cweiss wrote: post #573

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me the biggest case is going places where I might have an unexpected peripheral need. For instance, it's not uncommon for someone to need to transfer me some files with a flash drive. If I were to buy this thing, I'd have to carry a USB Type-A dongle all the time , just in case. Rather than have say... an extra millimeter of thickness, and the USB port just built right in.

I'm fairly sure it wont be too long before they come out with USB/USB-C flash drives. I've already seen several USB/Micro-USB drives.

How long until everyone you know (include non technical people) upgrade to them? I personally don't carry flash drives around, but I occasionally need to get files from non technical friends who do, and many of them are still using old 128mb or less USB 1.1 flash drives.

Why would they go out and buy new ones to fit in certain models of laptop if the limited capacity and slow speed hasn't already gotten them to replace it?

Re: The new MacBook

#942

Post by oneeyedpigeon » Tue, Mar 10, 2015, 2:32 PM UTC

tambourine_man wrote: post #817

nostrademons wrote: post #634

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a big fan of the Finder of System 7. It seemed to hit the sweet spot where you could do just about everything you needed to easily (it had collapsible tree views, folders, computed folder sizes, drag & drop, copy & paste, labels, etc.), but it didn't try to hide things from you or restrict what you could do, it didn't get too fancy and guess at your common tasks, it actually showed your filesystem instead of Appl…

I'm also a huge fan of the spatial Finder concept, but memory has a way of rendering the past in better lighting. System 7 (or 8, 9 for that matter), didn't have copy & paste. You could copy file names into SimpleText, for example, but you couldn't use it to manage files. Also, clicking anywhere outside a window would deselect every file you had carefully chosen, so dragging and dropping was a Zen exercise. And there…

OSX still doesn't have cut & paste for files, which is utterly ridiculous IMO. Keyboard support for Finder is all-round lacking.

Re: The new MacBook

#943

Post by valm- » Tue, Mar 10, 2015, 2:34 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #580

ChristianGeek wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to wipe it...just set up a dual boot: http://www.howtogeek.com/187410/how-to-install-and-dual-boot...

Why waste half a drive?

Wiping it will make it hard to update firmware. I learned this the hard way.

Re: The new MacBook

#944

Post by onhopwood » Tue, Mar 10, 2015, 2:35 PM UTC

SiVal wrote: post #509

nkoren wrote: post #261

This is a beautiful machine. Once again, Apple excels at hardware. But what the living hell is going wrong with Apple's desktop software? OS X and Apple's applications suite have been getting steadily worse with every release. Look at the App store: the latest releases of OS X, iPhoto, iMovie, Pages, and Numbers are (in stark contrast to earlier versins) all rated at 2.5/5 stars, with the plurality being 1-star revie…

Because you can't really tell how well software is working when looking at the device edge-on, and that's apparently the way Apple looks at them most of the time. I mean this more metaphorically than literally, but I'm so tired of complaints about the ridiculously primitive Finder being met with, "the edge of the iMac now appears even thinner, now that we've repositioned formerly convenient connectors and such into a…

I agree with you 100% , I still use my 2011 15 inch Macbook pro. I haven't upgraded the OS in almost 2 years.

Re: The new MacBook

#945

Post by icantthinkofone » Tue, Mar 10, 2015, 2:41 PM UTC

OT but, on Chrome and Firefox on FreeBSD, all the images and most of the text have the opacity of the images set to zero in their CSS and I can only see a couple of headlines. I presume their javascript is not detecting something correctly and not doing this right. Interesting. I've never seen that before.

EDIT: I just now noticed that the link above goes to /macbook/ but, if you go to the Apple site and click on Mac, the pathname is /mac/ and now I can see and read everything. Also interesting.

EDIT2: Ah but the Macbook link still doesn't show everything.

Re: The new MacBook

#946

Post by collyw » Tue, Mar 10, 2015, 2:43 PM UTC

jameshart wrote: post #40

colinramsay wrote: post #8

Are there things here where Apple is significantly further ahead than the competition? Innovating on keyboards, trackpad, battery life, power usage and form factor - there just seem to be innovating simultaneously on more levels than the competition. Another thing - that vibrating trackpad gizmo feels like a couple of innovations away from true touch feedback on an iPhone? Any thoughts?

Apple's role here is often to be more opinionated, or braver, than others. They were the first to adopt USB, first to stop shipping floppy drives, first to ditch optical drives, first to make high-DPI ('retina') displays a standard feature... they are willing to be the one who goes out there and says 'we all know this is where things are going - so let's quit pussy-footing around and just do it'. This new MacBook ann…

First to ditch wired network connector. Pain in the arse.

Re: The new MacBook

#947

Post by ssmoot » Tue, Mar 10, 2015, 2:51 PM UTC

rsynnott wrote: post #224

thesimon wrote: post #28

1.2Ghz processor seems like a dealbreaker for professional applications (Coding, Video editing) but for applications the Air was used before it actually seems okay.

I have a 1.7GHz 2012 MBA, and have used the more recent 1.3GHz Haswell version, which is a little faster (clock speed is not everything). It's fine for programming, though it does perhaps push Scala compile times into annoying territory. Now, that said, this is a Core M; it may end up a little slower than the current Macbook Air.

This is my worry. Can the 1.2GHz version run IntelliJ and SBT comfortably "for the most part" (I don't really mind if a clean compile takes ~30% longer) or will I wish I'd bought the 13" i7 MBA?

I wish I knew how to find compiler benchmarks for these CPUs. Or even better how it would compare to the i7 3770 in my iMac...

Re: The new MacBook

#948

Post by jhasse » Tue, Mar 10, 2015, 2:52 PM UTC

titanomachy wrote: post #732

npalli wrote: post #468

Looks like apple has finally introduced a netbook or iPad with a keyboard. Frankly, I'm disappointed with this macbook as I was expecting a full scale retina macbook air. After seeing the Dell XPS 13, I was hoping apple will take the retinafy the regular air. Ah well, the wait continues. Let's see -- 1. Resolution of 2304x1440 which means at Retina this is 1152x720!. This is worse than the 11 inch air, much less the…

> I was hoping apple will... retinafy the regular air I doubt that's happening soon. With this new macbook on the market, the only use Apple has for the Air is as a budget option. The new macbook is smaller and lighter, the only advantage of the air is its 12 hour battery life compared to this thing's 8, but that's to be expected considering how gutless the Air is.

The Air's i5/7 CPUs are faster then the new Macbook's Core M.

Re: The new MacBook

#949

Post by X-Istence » Tue, Mar 10, 2015, 2:55 PM UTC

batiudrami wrote: post #786

nickysielicki wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry but when you ship a machine with ONE PORT for the purposes of charging and peripherals, this absolutely needs to be in the box. Nickel and $80'ering me on a $1400 computer is ridiculous. I'll stick with my thinkpad.

I'm surprised it isn't. My ASUS Ultrabook came with a USB-Ethernet and MiniDP-DVI adapters in the box, despite coming with the usual 2xUSB3, MiniDP & Micro HDMI ports. Though I guess it's not that surprising. Back in the day, my Gen4 iPod came with a power brick, a USB cable and a Firewire cable. Now you get a single USB cable.

The iPhones at least -- haven't purchased an iPod in a long time -- still come with power bricks.

Re: The new MacBook

#950

Post by rlonstein » Tue, Mar 10, 2015, 2:57 PM UTC

nsxwolf wrote: post #561

SiVal wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you can't really tell how well software is working when looking at the device edge-on, and that's apparently the way Apple looks at them most of the time. I mean this more metaphorically than literally, but I'm so tired of complaints about the ridiculously primitive Finder being met with, "the edge of the iMac now appears even thinner, now that we've repositioned formerly convenient connectors and such into a…

Curious - what do Finder complainers consider the gold standard of file browsers that Finder should aspire to be? I do most of my file management at the command line so I don't experience the pain of Finder very often, and I've generally been able to get Finder to do what I want without much fuss. Windows Explorer is, to me, a painful experience (but its 1980s DOS command line is so much worse) I've found the various…

Also a CLI guy but I use Pathfinder, http://www.cocoatech.com/pathfinder/