I really enjoyed the Macbook Pro up till about 2014. I have no comments beyond that because the ones that followed were not interesting and I moved directly to Thinkpads.
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 screen is amazing
- Battery life is decent
ps. On the other side, I don't have experience working on a high-end XPS/Thinkpad, but the main reason to buy is the OS. 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.
nah. I switch between windows, linux, and osx for work and personal use all the time. OSX is just fine. Windows is just fine. Linux is just fine. Everything is at about the same level of ability, the same level of suck, and the same level of "just works." Every modern OS is good looking, occasionally frustrating, and generally effective once you take a few days to figure them out.
That's how I feel about it. There is a convergence towards common usability as long as you choose your graphics card carefully for GNU/Linux (no nvidia).
Or you know, to have a UNIX, but also a nice just-works-most-of-the-time desktop UI, device support (for stuff like external audio interfaces, scanners, etc) and access to all kinds of proprietary pro apps, from Above and Microsoft to whatever.
A key reason to own a Mac would be to build iOS apps and MacOS software.
For me, the reason to own a Mac (besides hardware support and generally liking macOS) is the amount and quality of third-party software. There is a lot of software that I either need or want, and there are no good-enough competitors on Linux, e.g.: Microsoft Office (for work), 1Password, Affinity Designer, Pixelmator, Acorn, LaunchBar, Little Snitch, Tweetbot, Mic Snitch, DeckSet, Paprika (for recipes), Things, PDF Expert, Arq, Dash, Sonos, etc. In addition, a lot of these tools and macOS are very well integrated, e.g. I can directly search Dash or 1Password from Launchbar. I can make a phone call to a person directly from Launchbar, etc.
For some work there are better open source tools, e.g. Emacs as an editor, org-mode for notes/outlining, LaTeX for typesetting, Handbrake for video transcoding. But they all work fine on macOS.
Oh, that same old argument. No they're not. Absolutely not even close. This is coming from someone who actually uses linux 90% of the time every day. Linux on the desktop is still a huge mess, every desktop environment on linux is a real pain to use, I won't go into details, but those who use linux daily on the desktop cringe reading comments like this, unless using a wm like dwm or i3, but those suck BIG TIME too if you ever have to leave the terminal.
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."
> drag and drop feels like a first-class UI metaphor
This is definitely a taste thing. Personally I hate drag and drop, everytime I'm forced to do it I wonder why the developers are making me perform virtual manual labor. Why am I applying constant pressure to carry things from one side of the screen to the other?
It is for some. I love linux and want to use it but in printing industry you are done without adobe indesign. There is no good way to run indesign on linux.
I am hoping for kvm/virtulasition with gpu passthrough will soon be good enough solution.
> if you are using vim, it is more efficient to use ctrl+[ instead of the escape key
I'm always amazed by how, after using vi(m) for so many years one can always learn something new. I opened a session and tried it out and then found my hand moving to the escape key automatically...
Interesting. The 2017 Macbook Pro is the first Macbook I've ever had, and I find the keyboard terrible. I can't put my finger on it exactly, but I just struggle to type on it, often finding letters missing from the words I've typed, and the keys never being where my fingers expect them to be. The key travel just feels wrong too.
By comparison, I also have a very cheap Asus netbook (13", I think) - it was about £100 compared to about £3000 for the MBP, and it actually has a better keyboard!
How long have you had it? What’s your typing style?
Finding where the key tops are is largely down to familiarity/practice, and it’s possible your netbook had smaller-than-standard key spacing, which then might take some time to readjust to the standard key spacing.
I’m sorry Apple made the key tops bigger and the gaps between keys smaller on this version though, as smaller key tops with wider spaces between tend to help train your fingers to find the right keys and reduce errors from accidentally hitting a corner or edge of the neighboring key. The change to the arrow key layout is IMO a serious regression.
I also think the key travel is a bit too shallow, but after a while most people can sort of get used to it. The new snappier tactile feedback is pretty nice. I wish they could figure out a way to make a keyboard with the old amount of key travel (or even slightly more), very reliable, but with the new tactile feedback which hearkens back to full-travel clicky switches of the 70s and 80s.
Many people used to rubber domes and cheap laptop keyboards end up with a typing style where they really mash the keys down hard into the bottom of the stroke. This especially comes about when people use the cheapest type of rubber dome boards (e.g. the ones that came with most PC desktop computers in the 2000s, including Macs) which need to be pressed all the way down to actuate, and sometimes actuate unreliably unless the key is pressed very firmly; using such a keyboard for any extended time ingrains incredibly damaging habits.
If you try to do a hard mashing style of keypress on a key with extremely shallow travel and not much cushion at the bottom, you’ll put a sharp impact on your fingers with every keystroke, and cause quite a bit of strain. It’s kind of like what happens if someone habitually runs wearing shoes with thick padded heels, landing on his/her heels with every step, and then switches overnight to running barefoot on concrete, without changing running form. Ouch!
If this describes your typing style, try to figure out a way to type with a lighter springier kind of stroke, ideally with your forearms and palms floating in the air above the keyboard instead of resting on any surface. Try to type with just enough force to reliably actuate the key, but not much more. (Irrespective of which type of keyboard you are using.)
Edit: in response to otempomores’s dead comment: this is not intended as an apologia (maybe try reading more carefully?). As a long-time keyboard nerd, I’m just sharing some of my impressions of the changes (positive and negative), and providing some hopefully helpful additional feedback/advice, most of which should be broadly applicable beyond this particular keyboard.
Thanks for taking the time to write such a detailed response!
I've had the netbook for 1-2 years, but I only use it one every few months or so. Still, it's a joy to type on for such a small device.
The Macbook I've only had for 6 months or so, and I only use it once a week or so (I work mostly on Windows, but need to build iOS apps). I should also have said it's the 13" version.
TBH, I don't really want to try change my typing style to suit the MBP; that kind of reminds me of Apple's infamous "your're holding it wrong" response to users complaining of aerial issues with one of the iPhones from years back :)
I regularly work on quite a few different keyboards (6, I think!) and indeed have worked on several over the years, but this is the only one I've ever had any real issue with.
> The Macbook I've only had for 6 months or so, and I only use it once a week or so
The once a week part might make it extra difficult to adjust. I’ve seen reports from several people who found the new Apple keyboard uncomfortable/weird for the first few weeks of full time use, but then got used to it well enough.
Switching between a full-travel desktop keyboard (of whatever type) and a very low-travel keyboard could be a pretty jarring transition.
Personally I prefer a keyboard with longer travel distance, and generally despise all laptop keyboards. The new Apple laptop keyboard is for me not really significantly better or worse than previous Apple laptop keyboards or than the better PC laptop keyboards. It’s a bit different – a nicer tactile response, but less travel distance – but for me those are roughly a wash.
Have you considered using an external keyboard with the laptop? I generally prefer to use an external keyboard if I have any significant amount of typing to do.
As for “holding it wrong” – many if not most people I have watched type have quite terrible posture and typing style, which is why so many end up developing repetitive strain injuries. 40 years ago, typists were likely to go through serious typing training at a secretarial school, and learn ways of sitting and typing which tried to accommodate human practice to the shape of the typewriter so that it was possible to be efficient while not injuring themselves. Nowadays people tend to learn in an ad-hoc way by just picking up the device and figuring it out for themselves. I constantly see people sitting slouched, their arms reached way out in front of their bodies and palms or forearms resting on the table, with wrists flexed uncomfortably upward, etc.
Most of our furniture (and definitely our computer keyboards!) are not very well designed for human anatomy. Ideally keyboards would be split into two pieces, tented upward at the middle, and detached from a display so that the keyboard part could be kept close to the torso. Each half of the keyboard would be better designed to put as many buttons as possible within very easy reach, and aligned with the fingers instead of an arbitrary staggered grid dictated by the implementation details of 19th century typewriters. The screen could be placed slightly below eye level, tilted slightly upward, and at least 2.5 or 3 feet away from the face. Logical keyboard layouts would be fixed to be more efficient and convenient. Etc.
Yeah, I went from 2015 to 2016 MacBook Pro and the keyboard is way way worse. I use several keyboard and this new one is the only one where I regularly make typos (which is very frustrating when typing passwords).
It is interesting how polarizing the butterfly mechanism is. I absolutely love it. I can type more accurately and faster on it (they keys feel more stable) and I dread when I have to use an external keyboard with the old scissor switches or a pre-butteryfly MacBook. My colleagues who have a new MacBook Pro also prefer the new keyboard. The only large downside seems to be that it breaks more quickly.
Of course, in the end it is a matter of taste. It would be nice if Apple could find some compromise between the new and the old design. But Apple being Apple, they will stick to it ;).
This is like saying the Xbox 360 is polarizing. It's not that some people love it and some people hate it. It's that some people get a working one and some people get a broken one.
There's enough complaints about broken butterfly keyboards to conclude that the failure rate is significantly higher (across both the first and second generation).
My experience between a 2015 MBP and a 2017 MBP tells me that the problem is the lack of a tactile difference between keys. Unless I'm focusing really hard, there's very little to tell me without sight where my finger is on a key.
This results in hitting 1 instead of ~, losing my place on the keyboard on a regular basis, and being completely unable to find the arrow keys by touch. Perhaps my typing is a bit sloppy, but it works just fine on the 2015 MBP, with a tiny fraction of the errors I encounter on the 2017 MBP.
So it's the best trackpad based on sample size of 1, or what?
Lucky you have gotten a keyboard that works. My WPM suffers from having to go back and correct stuff all the time. Of course, now it's almost ingrained that in order to make a space, I have to press the spacebar, and then backspace to remove the extra space.
If your laptop is still under warranty and you can wait a few days while they ship it back and forth, Apple will replace the keyboard for you free of charge.
This is what I find to be the problem. I can get used to typing on it and it's even weird to go back to normal keyboards now. However, keys keep getting stuck due to dust and that is quite unacceptable.
How long have you been using it? The keyboard keys getting stuck seems to be a fairly common problem. I think it stems from dirt getting stuck beneath the edges. I had the „k“ key not respond at all for a few days, then I furiously scratched along the edges with a finger nail, and after that it always registered two key strokes (better than none at all). After some weeks, functionality returned to normal.
The escape key has a steep learning curve, but after a few weeks you learn to always hit it. I don’t like the lack of physicality though.
Touchbar controls sometimes get stuck in a State (Eg after sliding volume up or down), so I had some instances of suddenly playing very loud music when I really couldn’t use it.
Battery life is 2h for me, with XCode, Simulators, Safari and Slack open. My previous MBPro (first with Retina display) did 3h in this scenario although its components were older and needed more power. Maybe High Sierra is to blame though.
I would have loved an iteration on the previous design - change 2 USB-A ports for USB-C, maybe the new keyboard and only slightly bigger touchpad, and I personally don’t care about the lit Apple logo. It‘s not nostalgia, but pure practicality. My coworkers were always a bit envious of my MBPro, but now they hear me swearing a lot about this and that.
You bet I was in rage. I told everyone about it, and ranted on Twitter. I‘m a coder too, you know. But we have no Apple store in Austria, just certified partners, and they all were like „Uhm, we don’t dare try fix this.. we have to send it in. Or do you want a new keyboard? That would be €€€ and you have to leave your machine here with us for a couple days“. Since I have no portable backup machine, I decided to stick it out instead - I thought it might fix itself since it seemed to have to do with dirt beneath the edges. Patient? Yes. Forgiving? Not so much.
I am so happy that we live a 25 minute drive from an Apple store now. When I lived in the northern Netherlands, there was only an Apple dealer nearby. They were absolutely terrible. I once had a broken 'f' key, the laptop was still under warranty and they were blaming me that I broke the key by removing the key cap (which I didn't). They only repaired the laptop after a lot of arguing.
I had to use my warranty twice at an Apple Store and the experience was stellar. One time they repaired my phone within two hours. With a broken MacBook Pro, they just replaced it. No questions asked. I know that some people have bad experiences, but for me their support has been a lot better than that of Apple dealers and other vendors (looking at you Motorola/Lenovo).
I'll add my anecdotal experience to this too. I had to have the whole keyboard replace on mine last week because of a stuck b-key. Fortunately it was still under warranty through work. As of last night some miniscule crumb has got behind the up-arrow key and I have the same problem again.
Yeah.. try cleaning it with a finger nail or piece of sturdy paper. Even though it looks like not doing much, this regularly fixes my problems. Perhaps the crumbs are just pushed inward.
My MBP is a 2016 model, decked-out 13-inch. I can't say I love the Touch Bar but I don't dislike it either. It works fine. I wished the Touch ID sensor was used for more dialogs–some don't use it and I can't understand why. The keyboard is great, love it. The touchpad is awesome, absolutely love it. The screen is amazing. The battery life is OK (I wished it was better but I come from crappy laptops so it is much, much better than what I already know).
I'll echo these sentiments. I've had the older macs and I love the new butterfly keyboard a lot more. I recall it taking me a week or two to get use to, but I was hitting the same WPM/accuracy right off the bat.
As for Windows, I think they have some great hardware out there. I really enjoyed the Surface, but the OS was terrible. What I realized was that software developers didn't take the time to really focus on the UI and polish the apps. Even apps like 1password had horrendous experience. I hacked it into a hackintosh, but it was a pain to keep it updated and some features were missing from a real Mac. At the end of the day, a Mac still wins over for me.
Edit >>
Wanted to add, the one thing that annoys me about the touchbar is that I accidentally hit the top right keys when I hit backspace. Aside from that, I'm fine with it on vim. Escape isn't an issue.
I hate the keyboard (I'm a 110+ WPM typist). I can't feel them as well because there is no sculpting and the key edges are too far from the center of the keys. The keys tend to get stuck and/or don't activate (my Option key requires extra pressure to work). Easily the worst keyboard Apple ever invented.
The touchbar is useless. The only things I ever use on it are the brightness and volume controls - which worked just fine with the function keys they removed. Actually, they worked better, because I didn't have to look at the keyboard to use them.
The trackpad is ridiculously large, which makes it awkward. Palm detection is poor because my palm hovers just above the trackpad when I am typing, and the slightest brush (as I'm typing) moves the pointer. This would not be a problem with a trackpad of reasonable size.
I agree with the rest. Even on my external keyboards, I have caps-lock mapped to Ctrl and Esc via a Karabiner-Elements script.
The old 15” MacBook Pro design with Iris Pro graphics looks like the best Mac laptop available right now, unless you cant cope without more graphics horsepower. For most of the last year I’ve been dithering about getting a new MacBook, and when I first saw the touchbar models I though that was the design for me, but I’ve never pulled the trigger. The negative issues individually wouldn’t be a big deal, so at first I discounted them, but taken altogether it’s too much. I’ll see what they come up with this year, and if they don’t address most of these issues I’ll look at getting a previous design machine second hand.
A company I work with wanted me to have a corporate laptop. I said I would only accept an original 15" rMBP, with keys and magsafe. I waited an extra 6 months until they got one for me. It's used but I don't care. As a vim user with kids and dogs, the new MBP is dead to me.
Yeah I'm pretty sure this Macbook Pro I have from 2014 will be my first and last. I've loved it, I'd buy it again, if it was the same design with new specs. I'm not going to downgrade for the same or an increased price tag. And for what? Shaving 0.3lbs off? Worse battery life? Someone get those noodley Apple designers some weights to lift. And some brains.
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 change (even if you don’t think it’s worth the trade-off in keyboard button travel distance, elimination of some ports, opportunity missed for a larger battery, etc.).
Personally I wish they had allocated an extra millimeter of depth for the keyboard.
Are you carrying two laptops at the same time? I found I've not had too much trouble carrying my laptop in a backpack since 2008 (when I replaced a beastly ~5kg 15" Acer with a thin 2.5kg 14" Dell Latitude).
That really made a huge difference (the Acer used to give me backaches, as it also had a much larger power brick) but all the laptops since didn't really bother me in terms of weight.
No, one at a time. I’m just saying that there is a noticeable difference between carrying the new one all the time vs. carrying the old one all the time. And that one was noticeably more portable than the previous model with the spinning disk and CD drive.
That really made a huge difference (the Acer used to give me backaches, as it also had a much larger power brick) but all the laptops since didn't really bother me in terms of weight.
I cycle to work every day. I found switching from a MacBook 12" (2015) to a MacBook Pro (2016) a huge downgrade in this respect (the 12" is 0.45 kg lighter).
If Apple releases a MacBook 12" with at least two USB-C ports and good 4k@60Hz support, I will probably switch back to the MacBook 12" on the next upgrade.
Yeah this is what killed the MacBook/Pro as a touch typist and vi user for me. Plus, the extreme low travel of the keys. Went with an XPS 13 instead, which I can fully recommend. The keyboard, in particular, works really well for me.
I've been considering buying a new MacBook Pro, but the advice I hear is to just wait for the next model (in a few months?) and hope that it doesn't have all its USB ports removed or broken keyboard.
The next model won’t change the port layout or the keyboard. Apple just doesn’t work like that. A redesign of the MBP isn’t due for years, and no amount of negative feedback will change that. (Look at the Mac Pro for a concrete example of this.)
Really? When did Apple turn on a dime to bring out a refresh to a poorly received model?
The 2002 iMac G4 (the "sunflower") was discontinued in June 2005 without a replacement in place. It wasn't until the end of the year that Apple brought out a redesigned iMac. If they could have introduced a new iMac faster, they certainly would have -- today it's almost inconceivable that they didn't have a consumer desktop for sale during much of 2005.
Thats true but they might release new Macbook Air that does not suck. I would stay away from MBP. I switched to Dell XPS after being 10 years on Macs and I have been happy with it.
I really enjoy mine. In the beginning, I really loved the keyboard, but recently it caused me trouble; shift key hangs sometimes, my m key feels like it is stuck and my space bar works only on the left half. Maybe I’d hand it in for repair. It’s a bit annoying but I can handle it.
What frustrates me, though, is that I cannot connect a second screen without rebooting. Hopefully a High Sierra and not a hardware issue.
I switched to a Dell XPS-15 after 2 MBP’s. It’s been pretty decent.
I don’t use the keyboard or trackpad so I can’t comment on that.
There is no real dock for it. The $200 one they sell as a docking station is really more of a port expander; it doesn’t charge your laptop and didn’t work with my monitors so I gave it away.
Dell XPS 13 or 15. Some will recommend ThinkPads, but in a side-by-side comparison two years ago, the XPS 13 won hands down against the Carbon X1 they had on display at the shop, for its much better display alone (and it's cheaper, too). ThinkPads keyboards are held in high esteem, but I found the XPS keyboard to work better for me. Didn't get a chance to play with the retro ThinkPads with old-school, non-chiclet keyboards, though. Dell last week introduced the XPS 13 developer edition with Ubuntu 16.04 preinstalled and officially supported. That would be the notebook I'd be buying in a heartbeat if mine stopped working or if I needed 16gb RAM (combination of 16gb and non-glare screen is only available in EU for now it seems).
I have a similar problem to GP. Going to try to make my late 2015 MBP last another year, but not sure what to do next.
Problem with the Dell XPS is it still only supports 16GB of RAM, which is getting to be aggravating for me.
The reason I keep buying Macs though is OSX - I just like it. Linux would be a good fit in many ways, but you can't run Office 365 on it, which is unfortunately a deal breaker. (I know there are alternatives, but I don't really like them - the real killer for me is the loss of Excel.)
A friend of mine holds on to an even older MBP. Due to Apple's generous replacement policy, he's recently got all parts save for the chassis replaced for free or for relatively little money, so sits in front of a brand-new 2012 MBP.
But surely it would be appreciated if Apple could get over their design fixation. For me, there's nothing "Pro" with the MBP. "Pro" doesn't mean "bad-ass", but having (display, keyboard) options for me, a characteristic the MBP lost years ago when the current MBP line was introduced, with the design/aesthetics of the unibody chassis only working with a glare screen. The Touch Bar thingy, and it's mandatory-ness on higher end MBPs is as non-Pro as it gets. It can't be in Apple's interest that real pro users long for the days of old MacBooks/PowerBooks/Snow Leopard, can it?
The 16gb limitation is something the MBPs suffer from as well, and is dictated by Intel chipsets, isn't it?
I think you're correct there, although it's very aggravating, regardless of who's fault it is.
I still have a late 2011 17 inch MBP equipped with quad core i7 and upgraded to 16GB RAM plus a 1TB SSD. I still use it fairly regularly, in particular for Ableton Live. It's really the last MBP you could plug enough peripherals into without needing a separate hub and, key point, still has Firewire, which I need for my audio interface (USB always sucked for this because it chews CPU, whereas Firewire doesn't).
Honestly, as a machine to tote around all the time, I prefer the 15 inch form factor, but the 17-incher is great for working with a lot of tracks simultaneously, and it has all those wonderful ports:
- 3 or 4 USB ports
- 1 Firewire port
- 1 Mini display/Thunderbolt port (two would be nice, but I'll live)
- Line out AND line in (something sadly missing from newer models)
- Digital audio out and (I believe) in (using same ports as line out/in)
For the use cases I needed and still need it's a much more useful system than the current line-up. And, of course, OSX has much more capable audio handling built in than Windows (no messing around with ASIO, no app exclusivity over access to audio hardware).
I have to agree - same gripes for me. This MacBook is my 8th Apple laptop going back to sometime in the late 90s (my first was a pre-PowerPC PowerBook), and it's the first one where I really and truly have regretted the purchase. I've usually had a second laptop during that time (ThinkPad usually, Surface lately), and I've rarely had more nice things to say about the non-Apple machine until now.
Also, the main selling point of Macs for me since 2001 when I made the big switch to an Apple-dominant hardware ecosystem was having a Unix-based system that had a reasonable desktop environment. Lately, the Windows Subsystem for Linux has been making me question if MacOS and the corresponding hardware is worth the headache.
The points brought up are mostly valid complaints. Although Apple would never increase the device thickness to give the user more battery life.
I’m holding off on buying a MBP as the current keyboard has terrible travel distance and seems to be unusually susceptible to breaking from dust. If Apple had an updated MBP with a durable keyboard (maybe in a few years? hopefully), I’d buy it right away.
Apple clearly aimed the new macbook pros at creative professionals (and wannabe end-consumers), hence the touchbar and the enormous trackpad. They got rid of the glowing logo to make the screen thinner.
Anyways, Apple could afford to offer the dopest machine for software developers, without all the shenanigans, but with all the usability and performance.
From what I recall, the creative professional market has always been their intended "Pro" market. It's unfortunate that they are unwilling to offer a MacBook Pro Developer Edition, but it's not surprising given Apple's history.
While I agree on most of the topics. Especially on the touchbar(useless crap). But “make the display a 16” 4K HDR OLED” - why would you need a 4K in a 16”? It will just eat batter life
We’ve got a few a part of the upgrade cycle, but so far the keyboard issues alone have forced a revert to the old rMBPs. Keys just stopped working in the middle of a production bug, during the holiday season. The new switches make a pretty presentation, but Apple really needs to understand that as developers our jobs literally depend on them working well.
These arguments are made for cell phones all the time too. The consensus is that it's impossible to please everyone.
At least for phones, and this might be similar to laptops, we made decisions on everything based on intensive research, usability testing, and profitability. Companies can't simply cater to specific demographics and hope for the best. For example, the keyboard quality on the MBP could be a valid concern for some, but it's possible that it was a justifiable solution for them based on cost-reduction. (a worthy-risk, in their opinion. not mine, IMHO). It could be that the keyboard is perfectly fine for most people.
Finding a delicate balance between every factor is a tough challenge, and I know for a fact that following every advice on the internet is not a solution.
I slightly edited my comment. It's a valid claim and I totally agree that the keyboard is atrocious for me as well.
But products aren't just made overnight. I can almost certainly guarantee that these issues came up before release, but they decided that the cost to fix it wasn't justifiable enough. I personally see a lot of problems with that but I'm just letting you know from my experience working at an OEM, Google, and a huge Electronics company.
I'm in the same boat with a broken keyboard. Was like that new. Got it repaired (which involved flying to a different country). Better, but still happens.
Very frustrated. I was going to get the new XPS 13, but:
- Isn't available in my country (online store doesn't ship in my country anyways)
- Doesn't seem available in Singapore or Malaysia
- Only 8GB option in Taiwan
- 16GB option only available with UHD and 1TB SSD in HK (neither of which I want, nor want to pay for)
All these country-specific sites are awful to use and navigate and digest. If they can't get this right, I'm thinking the many complaints about the hardware aren't exaggerated.
So...ya. Still dreaming that Google's Pixelbook will officially support Linux at some point.
I went the same way. Used to have a MBP that lasted for years (from ~2008). When it finally imploded I got a MBA. Amazung battery life for my work pattern (mostly terminals and vim). It would routinely get 12-14hr, although that would drop to 8-9 if I opened a web-browser and watched video or did anything js heavy.
Sadly I had to get rid of the MBA and did not like the look pf this year’s macs, so I got a XPS13. It is a nice machine, but it has issues.
- Network adaptor is shit. Flakey, loses connection, incompatible with our cisco routers, power draw is completely unstable.
- Keyboard is really nice.
- Screen is a bit dim.
- Touchopad registers phantom touches constantly, driver support for elimination doesn’t work.
I’ve still got it running ubuntu 16.04. Everything on it mostly works, but to be a nice machine:
So strange. I posted this exact site hours ago and now it is on the top of hacker news. Not sure how that happened since it is the same url. I guess the algorithm doesn’t like me.
In any case, I have been a Mac user my entire life. I too have one of the 2016 MacBook Pros and I have to say I hate it. I previously owned an iBook, two PowerBooks, a MacBook Pro, and a MacBook Air. This is by far the worst Apple laptop I have ever owned. My parents needed a new Mac laptop and I recommended the 13 inch air cause it is the only usable one in their entire product line now.
I was thinking of writing a similar post about all the issues I have but the main thing is the keyboard. What good is a computer that you can’t type on. One spec of dust or one crumb and your keyboard is done. My space bar sometimes inserts two spaces and sometimes inserts spaces between letters. My left command key doesn’t register half the time which is insanely frustrating since I use keyboard shortcuts for everything. Some days I feel like throwing it out the window. The sad thing is I actually prefer the FEEL of the keyboard and the travel to the old one, but the issues with keys not working correctly are too much to overcome. In addition I have talked to a lot of people who have a new MacBook Pro and I haven’t found one person who hasn’t had an issue with the keyboard. I’m honestly shocked there hasn’t been a class action suit yet. It probably wouldn’t matter anyway cause Apple would just give me a free can of compressed air and blame me for eating over my keyboard.
I previously had an 11 inch MacBook Air and it was perfect just missing the Retina display. Apple went ahead and did all this stuff they thought people would want without understanding that no one cared, and they ruined a perfectly good product.
> What good is a computer that you can’t type on. One spec of dust or one crumb and your keyboard is done. My space bar sometimes inserts two spaces and sometimes inserts spaces between letters.
All I can say is that I haven't had an issue with the keyboard malfunctioning. I am now concerned that it's only a matter of time given the comments in this thread, though!
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 is moving in the wrong direction, yet they are currently still the best offer out there.
> The article read more like a list of minor annoyances to me
It is mostly a list of minor annoyances, and if MacBook Pros were about half their current price, it would make sense to accept them as inevitable.
But when you're paying close to $2800 (or £2800 - about $3800 -- if you're in the UK) for a laptop you have the right to expect better. If I want a crappy keyboard and a short battery life, I can have them without paying a massive premium.
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 and the only thing that Linux so far does not do for me is Photo management. So I have dual boot with windows and Lightroom.
Looking at how bad the new macOS is, I feel I made the right decision and tiling WM is such an incredible productivity/mind clarity boost.
At some point I might get an XPS 15 or similar. But for now this works perfectly.
So I bought a MBP 13 Mid-2017 Non touch bar. The left shift key started failing about 2 months ago. Went to Apple, and they replaced the key which seemed to have fixed it. It started failing again this week.
I noticed there's a bit of correlation with how hot the machine is running. Ironically, I bought this upgrade to my previous MBP (another 13" from 2013) to run docker better -- but for anyone who runs docker for development knows, the machine runs hot.
The keyboard isn't so bad once you get used to it (I type fairly fast at 120-150 wpm), but the keyboard reliability issue is really something that bugs me as it affects productivity. If you're a programmer, needing to train to use the shift key on the contralateral side is a pain -- especially give all the muscle memory that's been trained over the years.
The removal of the Magsafe port alone conveys someone stopped believing in what they believed in strongly before. [1]
Now that Apple has taken a controversial stance on the design of the newer Macbooks (no Magsafe, fewer ports, no ESC key, etc.), I think it's going to be hard for them to fallback to their previous design as that would be an admittance of their failure. And this alone means to me I wouldn't be buying a laptop from them for the next couple of years until they admit they screwed up, or come up with a better solution. This is a classic example of don't fix something if it ain't broke.
At the same time, I can't imagine myself using a HP or Lenovo either after being used to the MacOS ecosystem. All one can do is just hope, I guess.
For the record, I own a retina 2014 MacbookPro, and I think it's the perfect machine for any programmer.
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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 screen is amazing
- Battery life is decent
ps. On the other side, I don't have experience working on a high-end XPS/Thinkpad, but the main reason to buy is the OS. 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.
Is that still true? I feel like that argument is vanishing more and more these days.
There's a lot more choice than just macOS and Windows.. :)
A key reason to own a Mac would be to build iOS apps and MacOS software.
For me, the reason to own a Mac (besides hardware support and generally liking macOS) is the amount and quality of third-party software. There is a lot of software that I either need or want, and there are no good-enough competitors on Linux, e.g.: Microsoft Office (for work), 1Password, Affinity Designer, Pixelmator, Acorn, LaunchBar, Little Snitch, Tweetbot, Mic Snitch, DeckSet, Paprika (for recipes), Things, PDF Expert, Arq, Dash, Sonos, etc. In addition, a lot of these tools and macOS are very well integrated, e.g. I can directly search Dash or 1Password from Launchbar. I can make a phone call to a person directly from Launchbar, etc.
For some work there are better open source tools, e.g. Emacs as an editor, org-mode for notes/outlining, LaTeX for typesetting, Handbrake for video transcoding. But they all work fine on macOS.
> 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."
This is definitely a taste thing. Personally I hate drag and drop, everytime I'm forced to do it I wonder why the developers are making me perform virtual manual labor. Why am I applying constant pressure to carry things from one side of the screen to the other?
I am hoping for kvm/virtulasition with gpu passthrough will soon be good enough solution.
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.
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.
I'm always amazed by how, after using vi(m) for so many years one can always learn something new. I opened a session and tried it out and then found my hand moving to the escape key automatically...
By comparison, I also have a very cheap Asus netbook (13", I think) - it was about £100 compared to about £3000 for the MBP, and it actually has a better keyboard!
Finding where the key tops are is largely down to familiarity/practice, and it’s possible your netbook had smaller-than-standard key spacing, which then might take some time to readjust to the standard key spacing.
I’m sorry Apple made the key tops bigger and the gaps between keys smaller on this version though, as smaller key tops with wider spaces between tend to help train your fingers to find the right keys and reduce errors from accidentally hitting a corner or edge of the neighboring key. The change to the arrow key layout is IMO a serious regression.
I also think the key travel is a bit too shallow, but after a while most people can sort of get used to it. The new snappier tactile feedback is pretty nice. I wish they could figure out a way to make a keyboard with the old amount of key travel (or even slightly more), very reliable, but with the new tactile feedback which hearkens back to full-travel clicky switches of the 70s and 80s.
Many people used to rubber domes and cheap laptop keyboards end up with a typing style where they really mash the keys down hard into the bottom of the stroke. This especially comes about when people use the cheapest type of rubber dome boards (e.g. the ones that came with most PC desktop computers in the 2000s, including Macs) which need to be pressed all the way down to actuate, and sometimes actuate unreliably unless the key is pressed very firmly; using such a keyboard for any extended time ingrains incredibly damaging habits.
If you try to do a hard mashing style of keypress on a key with extremely shallow travel and not much cushion at the bottom, you’ll put a sharp impact on your fingers with every keystroke, and cause quite a bit of strain. It’s kind of like what happens if someone habitually runs wearing shoes with thick padded heels, landing on his/her heels with every step, and then switches overnight to running barefoot on concrete, without changing running form. Ouch!
If this describes your typing style, try to figure out a way to type with a lighter springier kind of stroke, ideally with your forearms and palms floating in the air above the keyboard instead of resting on any surface. Try to type with just enough force to reliably actuate the key, but not much more. (Irrespective of which type of keyboard you are using.)
Edit: in response to otempomores’s dead comment: this is not intended as an apologia (maybe try reading more carefully?). As a long-time keyboard nerd, I’m just sharing some of my impressions of the changes (positive and negative), and providing some hopefully helpful additional feedback/advice, most of which should be broadly applicable beyond this particular keyboard.
'I m sorry but it doesn't fit around the neck'
'Just tilt your head slightly'
'it is to narrow at the waist'
'Well you certainly could need some exercise. Try to take this yoga pose'
'Now its too short around the arm, im sorry but-'
'You shouldn't be, movie stars have worren this type of cut- just assume the pose Brando has on this photo.. theire its perfect'
The man pays and leaves the shop. Under a lantern down the street he passes two others.
'Did you see that guy? Poor cripple..'
'.. but the cloths on this guy. Excellent tailor!'
Moral of the story - if it needs defense speeches it sucks big time.
I've had the netbook for 1-2 years, but I only use it one every few months or so. Still, it's a joy to type on for such a small device.
The Macbook I've only had for 6 months or so, and I only use it once a week or so (I work mostly on Windows, but need to build iOS apps). I should also have said it's the 13" version.
TBH, I don't really want to try change my typing style to suit the MBP; that kind of reminds me of Apple's infamous "your're holding it wrong" response to users complaining of aerial issues with one of the iPhones from years back :)
I regularly work on quite a few different keyboards (6, I think!) and indeed have worked on several over the years, but this is the only one I've ever had any real issue with.
The once a week part might make it extra difficult to adjust. I’ve seen reports from several people who found the new Apple keyboard uncomfortable/weird for the first few weeks of full time use, but then got used to it well enough.
Switching between a full-travel desktop keyboard (of whatever type) and a very low-travel keyboard could be a pretty jarring transition.
Personally I prefer a keyboard with longer travel distance, and generally despise all laptop keyboards. The new Apple laptop keyboard is for me not really significantly better or worse than previous Apple laptop keyboards or than the better PC laptop keyboards. It’s a bit different – a nicer tactile response, but less travel distance – but for me those are roughly a wash.
Have you considered using an external keyboard with the laptop? I generally prefer to use an external keyboard if I have any significant amount of typing to do.
As for “holding it wrong” – many if not most people I have watched type have quite terrible posture and typing style, which is why so many end up developing repetitive strain injuries. 40 years ago, typists were likely to go through serious typing training at a secretarial school, and learn ways of sitting and typing which tried to accommodate human practice to the shape of the typewriter so that it was possible to be efficient while not injuring themselves. Nowadays people tend to learn in an ad-hoc way by just picking up the device and figuring it out for themselves. I constantly see people sitting slouched, their arms reached way out in front of their bodies and palms or forearms resting on the table, with wrists flexed uncomfortably upward, etc.
Most of our furniture (and definitely our computer keyboards!) are not very well designed for human anatomy. Ideally keyboards would be split into two pieces, tented upward at the middle, and detached from a display so that the keyboard part could be kept close to the torso. Each half of the keyboard would be better designed to put as many buttons as possible within very easy reach, and aligned with the fingers instead of an arbitrary staggered grid dictated by the implementation details of 19th century typewriters. The screen could be placed slightly below eye level, tilted slightly upward, and at least 2.5 or 3 feet away from the face. Logical keyboard layouts would be fixed to be more efficient and convenient. Etc.
> I can't put my finger on it exactly
Sounds like that's your problem!
Of course, in the end it is a matter of taste. It would be nice if Apple could find some compromise between the new and the old design. But Apple being Apple, they will stick to it ;).
There's enough complaints about broken butterfly keyboards to conclude that the failure rate is significantly higher (across both the first and second generation).
This results in hitting 1 instead of ~, losing my place on the keyboard on a regular basis, and being completely unable to find the arrow keys by touch. Perhaps my typing is a bit sloppy, but it works just fine on the 2015 MBP, with a tiny fraction of the errors I encounter on the 2017 MBP.
Lucky you have gotten a keyboard that works. My WPM suffers from having to go back and correct stuff all the time. Of course, now it's almost ingrained that in order to make a space, I have to press the spacebar, and then backspace to remove the extra space.
(The MacBook 12" also uses the butterfly mechanism, though the 2015 version uses the first iteration.)
The escape key has a steep learning curve, but after a few weeks you learn to always hit it. I don’t like the lack of physicality though.
Touchbar controls sometimes get stuck in a State (Eg after sliding volume up or down), so I had some instances of suddenly playing very loud music when I really couldn’t use it.
Battery life is 2h for me, with XCode, Simulators, Safari and Slack open. My previous MBPro (first with Retina display) did 3h in this scenario although its components were older and needed more power. Maybe High Sierra is to blame though.
I would have loved an iteration on the previous design - change 2 USB-A ports for USB-C, maybe the new keyboard and only slightly bigger touchpad, and I personally don’t care about the lit Apple logo. It‘s not nostalgia, but pure practicality. My coworkers were always a bit envious of my MBPro, but now they hear me swearing a lot about this and that.
And then it healed itself so that's no biggie?
Makes me wonder about your workflow. I write code and would have been in a (silent, I'm from Sweden) rage in a day or less.
Holding out for so long with a major fault seems very forgiving.
I had to use my warranty twice at an Apple Store and the experience was stellar. One time they repaired my phone within two hours. With a broken MacBook Pro, they just replaced it. No questions asked. I know that some people have bad experiences, but for me their support has been a lot better than that of Apple dealers and other vendors (looking at you Motorola/Lenovo).
My MBP is a 2016 model, decked-out 13-inch. I can't say I love the Touch Bar but I don't dislike it either. It works fine. I wished the Touch ID sensor was used for more dialogs–some don't use it and I can't understand why. The keyboard is great, love it. The touchpad is awesome, absolutely love it. The screen is amazing. The battery life is OK (I wished it was better but I come from crappy laptops so it is much, much better than what I already know).
As for Windows, I think they have some great hardware out there. I really enjoyed the Surface, but the OS was terrible. What I realized was that software developers didn't take the time to really focus on the UI and polish the apps. Even apps like 1password had horrendous experience. I hacked it into a hackintosh, but it was a pain to keep it updated and some features were missing from a real Mac. At the end of the day, a Mac still wins over for me.
Edit >>
Wanted to add, the one thing that annoys me about the touchbar is that I accidentally hit the top right keys when I hit backspace. Aside from that, I'm fine with it on vim. Escape isn't an issue.
The touchbar is useless. The only things I ever use on it are the brightness and volume controls - which worked just fine with the function keys they removed. Actually, they worked better, because I didn't have to look at the keyboard to use them.
The trackpad is ridiculously large, which makes it awkward. Palm detection is poor because my palm hovers just above the trackpad when I am typing, and the slightest brush (as I'm typing) moves the pointer. This would not be a problem with a trackpad of reasonable size.
I agree with the rest. Even on my external keyboards, I have caps-lock mapped to Ctrl and Esc via a Karabiner-Elements script.
The old 15” MacBook Pro design with Iris Pro graphics looks like the best Mac laptop available right now, unless you cant cope without more graphics horsepower. For most of the last year I’ve been dithering about getting a new MacBook, and when I first saw the touchbar models I though that was the design for me, but I’ve never pulled the trigger. The negative issues individually wouldn’t be a big deal, so at first I discounted them, but taken altogether it’s too much. I’ll see what they come up with this year, and if they don’t address most of these issues I’ll look at getting a previous design machine second hand.
Jony Ive needs to get out more.
A good article about the Macbooks is “The Best Laptop Ever Made” https://marco.org/2017/11/14/best-laptop-ever
The weight reduction surprisingly doesn’t have a lot to do with battery capacity.
https://www.cnet.com/news/macbook-pro-october-2016-battery-l...
But it's still a reduction in capacity (from 99.5 watt-hours to 76).
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 change (even if you don’t think it’s worth the trade-off in keyboard button travel distance, elimination of some ports, opportunity missed for a larger battery, etc.).
Personally I wish they had allocated an extra millimeter of depth for the keyboard.
That really made a huge difference (the Acer used to give me backaches, as it also had a much larger power brick) but all the laptops since didn't really bother me in terms of weight.
I cycle to work every day. I found switching from a MacBook 12" (2015) to a MacBook Pro (2016) a huge downgrade in this respect (the 12" is 0.45 kg lighter).
If Apple releases a MacBook 12" with at least two USB-C ports and good 4k@60Hz support, I will probably switch back to the MacBook 12" on the next upgrade.
I stick it on my stand and plug in my Vortex Race3 and wait for Apple to make a laptop that doesn't suck.
The 2002 iMac G4 (the "sunflower") was discontinued in June 2005 without a replacement in place. It wasn't until the end of the year that Apple brought out a redesigned iMac. If they could have introduced a new iMac faster, they certainly would have -- today it's almost inconceivable that they didn't have a consumer desktop for sale during much of 2005.
I don’t use the keyboard or trackpad so I can’t comment on that.
There is no real dock for it. The $200 one they sell as a docking station is really more of a port expander; it doesn’t charge your laptop and didn’t work with my monitors so I gave it away.
Problem with the Dell XPS is it still only supports 16GB of RAM, which is getting to be aggravating for me.
The reason I keep buying Macs though is OSX - I just like it. Linux would be a good fit in many ways, but you can't run Office 365 on it, which is unfortunately a deal breaker. (I know there are alternatives, but I don't really like them - the real killer for me is the loss of Excel.)
But surely it would be appreciated if Apple could get over their design fixation. For me, there's nothing "Pro" with the MBP. "Pro" doesn't mean "bad-ass", but having (display, keyboard) options for me, a characteristic the MBP lost years ago when the current MBP line was introduced, with the design/aesthetics of the unibody chassis only working with a glare screen. The Touch Bar thingy, and it's mandatory-ness on higher end MBPs is as non-Pro as it gets. It can't be in Apple's interest that real pro users long for the days of old MacBooks/PowerBooks/Snow Leopard, can it?
The 16gb limitation is something the MBPs suffer from as well, and is dictated by Intel chipsets, isn't it?
I still have a late 2011 17 inch MBP equipped with quad core i7 and upgraded to 16GB RAM plus a 1TB SSD. I still use it fairly regularly, in particular for Ableton Live. It's really the last MBP you could plug enough peripherals into without needing a separate hub and, key point, still has Firewire, which I need for my audio interface (USB always sucked for this because it chews CPU, whereas Firewire doesn't).
Honestly, as a machine to tote around all the time, I prefer the 15 inch form factor, but the 17-incher is great for working with a lot of tracks simultaneously, and it has all those wonderful ports:
- 3 or 4 USB ports - 1 Firewire port - 1 Mini display/Thunderbolt port (two would be nice, but I'll live) - Line out AND line in (something sadly missing from newer models) - Digital audio out and (I believe) in (using same ports as line out/in)
For the use cases I needed and still need it's a much more useful system than the current line-up. And, of course, OSX has much more capable audio handling built in than Windows (no messing around with ASIO, no app exclusivity over access to audio hardware).
XPS 15 does have 32GB RAM? Though it only comes with the 4K UHD model.
Also, the main selling point of Macs for me since 2001 when I made the big switch to an Apple-dominant hardware ecosystem was having a Unix-based system that had a reasonable desktop environment. Lately, the Windows Subsystem for Linux has been making me question if MacOS and the corresponding hardware is worth the headache.
I’m holding off on buying a MBP as the current keyboard has terrible travel distance and seems to be unusually susceptible to breaking from dust. If Apple had an updated MBP with a durable keyboard (maybe in a few years? hopefully), I’d buy it right away.
Anyways, Apple could afford to offer the dopest machine for software developers, without all the shenanigans, but with all the usability and performance.
My Xcode using half is constantly angry with Apple, but my Logic Pro using half is still in love. :)
At least for phones, and this might be similar to laptops, we made decisions on everything based on intensive research, usability testing, and profitability. Companies can't simply cater to specific demographics and hope for the best. For example, the keyboard quality on the MBP could be a valid concern for some, but it's possible that it was a justifiable solution for them based on cost-reduction. (a worthy-risk, in their opinion. not mine, IMHO). It could be that the keyboard is perfectly fine for most people.
Finding a delicate balance between every factor is a tough challenge, and I know for a fact that following every advice on the internet is not a solution.
It's not just the author, everyone in my team with the new MacBook have the same issue with some buttons.
But products aren't just made overnight. I can almost certainly guarantee that these issues came up before release, but they decided that the cost to fix it wasn't justifiable enough. I personally see a lot of problems with that but I'm just letting you know from my experience working at an OEM, Google, and a huge Electronics company.
Very frustrated. I was going to get the new XPS 13, but:
- Isn't available in my country (online store doesn't ship in my country anyways)
- Doesn't seem available in Singapore or Malaysia
- Only 8GB option in Taiwan
- 16GB option only available with UHD and 1TB SSD in HK (neither of which I want, nor want to pay for)
All these country-specific sites are awful to use and navigate and digest. If they can't get this right, I'm thinking the many complaints about the hardware aren't exaggerated.
So...ya. Still dreaming that Google's Pixelbook will officially support Linux at some point.
Sadly I had to get rid of the MBA and did not like the look pf this year’s macs, so I got a XPS13. It is a nice machine, but it has issues.
- Network adaptor is shit. Flakey, loses connection, incompatible with our cisco routers, power draw is completely unstable.
- Keyboard is really nice.
- Screen is a bit dim.
- Touchopad registers phantom touches constantly, driver support for elimination doesn’t work.
I’ve still got it running ubuntu 16.04. Everything on it mostly works, but to be a nice machine:
- network adaptor needs a complete replacement.
- get used to disabling the touchpad.
In any case, I have been a Mac user my entire life. I too have one of the 2016 MacBook Pros and I have to say I hate it. I previously owned an iBook, two PowerBooks, a MacBook Pro, and a MacBook Air. This is by far the worst Apple laptop I have ever owned. My parents needed a new Mac laptop and I recommended the 13 inch air cause it is the only usable one in their entire product line now.
I was thinking of writing a similar post about all the issues I have but the main thing is the keyboard. What good is a computer that you can’t type on. One spec of dust or one crumb and your keyboard is done. My space bar sometimes inserts two spaces and sometimes inserts spaces between letters. My left command key doesn’t register half the time which is insanely frustrating since I use keyboard shortcuts for everything. Some days I feel like throwing it out the window. The sad thing is I actually prefer the FEEL of the keyboard and the travel to the old one, but the issues with keys not working correctly are too much to overcome. In addition I have talked to a lot of people who have a new MacBook Pro and I haven’t found one person who hasn’t had an issue with the keyboard. I’m honestly shocked there hasn’t been a class action suit yet. It probably wouldn’t matter anyway cause Apple would just give me a free can of compressed air and blame me for eating over my keyboard.
I previously had an 11 inch MacBook Air and it was perfect just missing the Retina display. Apple went ahead and did all this stuff they thought people would want without understanding that no one cared, and they ruined a perfectly good product.
Is there a laptop where this isn’t a problem?
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 is moving in the wrong direction, yet they are currently still the best offer out there.
It is mostly a list of minor annoyances, and if MacBook Pros were about half their current price, it would make sense to accept them as inevitable.
But when you're paying close to $2800 (or £2800 - about $3800 -- if you're in the UK) for a laptop you have the right to expect better. If I want a crappy keyboard and a short battery life, I can have them without paying a massive premium.
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 and the only thing that Linux so far does not do for me is Photo management. So I have dual boot with windows and Lightroom.
Looking at how bad the new macOS is, I feel I made the right decision and tiling WM is such an incredible productivity/mind clarity boost.
At some point I might get an XPS 15 or similar. But for now this works perfectly.
I noticed there's a bit of correlation with how hot the machine is running. Ironically, I bought this upgrade to my previous MBP (another 13" from 2013) to run docker better -- but for anyone who runs docker for development knows, the machine runs hot.
The keyboard isn't so bad once you get used to it (I type fairly fast at 120-150 wpm), but the keyboard reliability issue is really something that bugs me as it affects productivity. If you're a programmer, needing to train to use the shift key on the contralateral side is a pain -- especially give all the muscle memory that's been trained over the years.
Now that Apple has taken a controversial stance on the design of the newer Macbooks (no Magsafe, fewer ports, no ESC key, etc.), I think it's going to be hard for them to fallback to their previous design as that would be an admittance of their failure. And this alone means to me I wouldn't be buying a laptop from them for the next couple of years until they admit they screwed up, or come up with a better solution. This is a classic example of don't fix something if it ain't broke.
At the same time, I can't imagine myself using a HP or Lenovo either after being used to the MacOS ecosystem. All one can do is just hope, I guess.
For the record, I own a retina 2014 MacbookPro, and I think it's the perfect machine for any programmer.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hzseCyqr4s