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The new MacBook

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Re: The new MacBook

#961

Post by screamin_jesus »

otakucode wrote: post #954
screamin_jesus wrote: post #776

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one area where apple really exels though, in both hardware and software is the touchpad. I cannot stand using the touchpad on any windows laptop I used, the touchpad is 99% the reason I still use a mac/osx.

The only experience I have with OSX is toying around with a little Mac Mini. What is special about Apple's touchpad? I'm honestly curious.

Near perfect gestures integration, and the touchpad behaves very consistently and reliably system wide (osx has system wide smooth/responsive scrolling for example), and the touchpad hardware itself is just very nice and pleasant to use.

Windows touchpads are usually all over the place in my experience, mostly due to drivers/windows' poor touchpad support. super basic stuff like 2 finger scrolling is often very janky and unreliable on the windows laptops I've used. I had actually ended up switching from windows to linux on my previous laptops because the touchpad even worked better under ubuntu than it did under windows.

I love windows on my desktop PC, but I cannot stand on using windows on a laptop

Re: The new MacBook

#962

Post by mironathetin »

ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #67

I think the single port is a deal breaker for me-I really like the 12 inch form factor (finally!) but this is too. But at least it starts out with 8GB of RAM-I wouldn't have put it past Apple to put only 4 in the base model.

Apple supplies an adapter with usb, vga or hdmi ports. From there, we are back to the usb hub on the desk. The adapter costs only 79$ (:o)

Re: The new MacBook

#963

Post by u02sgb »

graeme wrote: post #757
hbbio wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few things have changed (I use them daily for 6 years): 1) I has more bugs (for instance, drag and dropping an image from a browser makes it crash). 2) The format has changed, it's now incompatible with computers running last year OS, Mavericks. 3) It automatically uploads new document or documents you open in the cloud. 4) I have lost my iCloud contents twice (each time when syncing from an iPad under poor network…

They also removed a bunch of Pages features used by Powerusers. It used to be a reasonable substitute for Word. I'm still on Pages 09 because I had a bunch of manuscripts made in that program. They don't format well in Pages 13. I'm going to keep using Pages 09 until Apple forces its obsolesence. Probably will look at Word instead since they seem committed to stability and the ability to actually do real work on a co…

Not sure what your feature set requirements are, but LibreOffice is a pretty good replacement for Word.

Re: The new MacBook

#964

Post by rebootthesystem »

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…

Windows Explorer is, by no means, perfect, but it is miles ahead from finder. I use both regularly and find myself cussing at Apple far more than at Microsoft. Applications too. Get rid of "Save As". Now you have a doubly useless menu on top if each monitor instead of on the app window, where it belongs. They are trying to stick to an interface that worked fine on a single screen 9 in mac in the dark ages. Well, it sucks. Don't believe what I say, go run a Mac with three 30 inch monitors and have a dozen apps open. Do the same on a PC. Even if you go back to Windows XP it is FAR more usable. No contest. All if our machines have 2 to 3 large monitors so these grievances are a source of daily frustration and productivity hits in the real world.

Re: The new MacBook

#965

Post by deveac »

gcr wrote: post #680

Is this laptop aimed for the high-end Macbook Pro users, or is it poised as the spiritual successor to the Macbook Air? According to the tech specs, this has the slowest processor (1.1 Ghz Intel Core M) of all of their models and the oldest graphics card (Intel HD Graphics 5300). Granted -- I know I shouldn't commit the cardinal sin of "The number is lower so it's worse." My words aren't meaningful. I guess I'm just…

>Is this laptop aimed for the high-end Macbook Pro users, or is it poised as the spiritual successor to the Macbook Air?

I think it's clearly the latter. They're pushing the boundaries of portability on a machine with a full sized keyboard. The port decision is clearly the future, but as with the original MBA, the market isn't quite ready to make the leap re: the tradeoffs. It's incredibly thin, light, and amazing looking machine with no compromises where it truly matters most, -the keyboard and the screen. The basic premise is in place. It feels to me like the Air will yield to this once the difference in value from the remaining tradeoffs (battery life, price, etc) shrinks a bit.

Re: The new MacBook

#966

Post by ant6n »

mrinterweb wrote: post #611

Macbook $1299 "Up to 1.3GHz dual-core Intel Core M processor" Macbook Air $899 "Up to 2.2GHz dual-core Intel Core i7 processor" Seems like a big step down in processing power at a higher price.

Haswell+fan vs Broadwell w/o fan.

Re: The new MacBook

#967

Post by ant6n »

XorNot wrote: post #937

Less ports is not what I want in a laptop. At all. Dongles and whatnot are a plague on portability, and take up more space then whatever gains are made in the hardware usually. The laptop I want? One which has it's entire power supply, and the 110/240VAC cable and plug able to coil up inside it so I can literally just carry "the laptop" and not have to worry about chargers.

I'd want one that uses an USB for charging. Same charger as phone. Charging from a USB plug in an airplane. ... I guess this is actually it. Except it needs more than one connector.

Re: The new MacBook

#968

Post by moe »

eropple wrote: post #956
moe wrote: post #717

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"More powerful" is a little hard to isolate Not really. Just look at the Passmark scores: Macbook Air (Early 2014): 4159 [1] Macbook : 3096 [2] The new Macbook is 25% slower than the MacBook Air. [1] http://cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-4650U+%40+... [2] https://cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+M-5Y70+%40+1...

Where are you getting those specs? AFAIK the 2014 MacBook Air doesn't come out of the box with an i7 4650U, but rather an 4260U, which has a Passmark score of 3617. Also note that the Apple presentation noted a Turbo Boost top of 2.9GHz, not the 2.6GHz of the Core M 5Y70 that you linked. It's the difference between horsepower and 0-60. There are other factors involved. (This is largely academic, though, because I dou…

Where are you getting those specs?

I googled, for the MBA 2014:

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook-air/specs/macb...

For the new Macbook you are right that Apple appears to use a slightly faster variant of the 5Y70 that doesn't seem to have a benchmark on cpubenchmark.net yet (at least I couldn't find it).

I'd be surprised if these 300MHz made a significant difference, though.

Re: The new MacBook

#969

Post by tmd83 »

tambourine_man wrote: post #931
tmd83 wrote: post #921

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fairly new OSX user and I kind of hate finder. My first gripe is of course the feeling that no one cares about these basic conveniences @apple. Some of these are also found from other people's comment but I want to highlight that they also matter for me. 1. The fact that most file browser has editable auto-complete location field. 2. That it doesn't show the size of the selected files in status bar. 3. That when you…

3 - Show Inspector: command-option-i 6 - command-c, command-option-v 7 - Don't know if that's what you mean, but you can hide everything on the view menu. 8 - If you mean spotlight index, yes

XtraFinder solves a few of the problems for me like enter/backspace for navigation. But thanks for chipping in with some of the solutions.

7 - Essentially is the default view of Windows Explorer, files are listed from top to bottom and wrapping around to next column. This is the most compact way to browse a lot of files when you are not worried about their size/type and only interested in the names.

But even if some of the problems can be fixed by installing extra software or obscure shortcut the fact remains finder is simply painful to use as is to manage or work with files. It can't even find files unless someone provides an index and it's named finder.

Apple and OSX has a lot to love from build quality to universal copy-paste (a sore issue in linux). But I find in some failures/limitations apple is by far the worst player around.

Re: The new MacBook

#970

Post by jpalomaki »

Apple's product lineup keeps on growing and growing. Wonder if this is a good direction? Now there are five different iPad models, five different laptops and three desktops.

Sometimes choice is good, sometimes not. It used to be that buying an Apple did not require too much thinking because there were not that many to choose from.

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