It would be a major achievement to make it less reliable. I have had computers for ~40 years now, and none had a keyboard as bad as the one I'm using now (MBP13, 2018).
It's really frustrating and I don't really want to go without my machine for the time it would take to fix. Unshaky has really helped in making my keyboard usable.
It basically detects and eliminates duplicate keypresses within a configurable threshold for each key.
To me it’s absolutely insane that people have gone to the lengths of actually writing software in order to fix a very basic issue with an extremely expensive luxury product of the worlds largest company. One in this thread mentioned using tape to cover up the Touch Bar in order to avoid triggering it accidentally!
Apple ducked up big time with the post-2015 generation MacBooks, and it was caused by the weird hunt for thinness and gimmicky features which nobody want from a professional portable workstation.
"Thinner than a 2015 MacBook Pro" is last on most people’s wishlists. What good is a thin laptop if the keyboard fails and the performance you pay for can't be used since the operating temperature is too high?
It says a lot about a company when a large amount of customers just don’t care for the new features and they just want the new performance in the old form factor.
It’s like the ones who made the current generation never uses a laptop, and has no idea about how people are actually using the product.
"Today, however, [Apple] told me that they’re taking three explicit steps to help with the keyboard situation. 1. The MacBook Pro keyboard mechanism has had a materials change in the mechanism. [...]"
Big news to me is that replacements of older butterfly keyboards (program extended again) will receive new 4th-generation keyboards. Previously if you brought a 1st-gen in, you'd get a new 1st-gen keyboard.
The articles make clear that only 3rd-gen replacements (the ones with last year's new membrane) will get today’s new keyboards. 1st and 2nd-gen customers are still stuck (no pun intended) with their original problem designs.
I just had the keyboard (really the entire top assembly) replaced on my 13" 2016 mbp, and I'm pretty sure it got the 4th gen keyboard. The keys feel and sound significantly different, and the Apple employee who did the replacement (or I think that's who I talked to) said that they were putting redesigned keyboards in for the replacements. I was pretty unhappy that I had to get this done and I'm still not in love with the machine, but I will say that with less than 24-hour turnaround and the new key feel, the replacement process left me with a good impression.
That's really interesting. Where are you located? I had my 2017 done a few months ago (back when they were shipping them all out), and I definitely got the old mechanism. Would love to get the new version!
This was at the Apple store in Walnut Creek. I think they’re shooting for 24-ish hour turnaround at all of their stores now. I was putting the repair off until I was sure that I could get it done quickly. They told me that they’re not yet quoting 24 hours, but they do do them in store now, and they typically quote 3 days or so.
I just had the top case replaced in my 2016 MacBook Pro 15, and they used a top case from a 2017. The tech confirmed that they use the 2017 top case for 2016 models, but the 2018 top case isn’t compatible.
The 2017 does have changes vs the 2016 to make it quieter and less clicky.
My 2018 13" mbp has been in repair (for the keyboard ofcourse) for weeks now and they told me it won't be finished until somewhere in june, so this might explain why it's taking so long, perhaps it was on hold for a 4th gen keyboard replacement. I sure hope this 4th gen keyboard fixes the problems.
This is the real announcement, to be honest. 8 cores is a convenient smokescreen, and they clearly don't want to talk about how borked their product is at WWDC so they are dropping the keyboard update with this news like it's a detail when it's actually the real story.
These shitty keyboards cast a shadow over the whole product line. If they didn't fix it the third time around, it's time to abandon the damn mechanism and accept that thicc computers can be beautiful, too.
The other thing I would question is whether or not the cooling is sufficient as well. 8 cores doesn't mean much if you can't keep them working at a reasonable clock.
Ehh, fixing the keyboards (assuming its fixed--they've said the same thing 2 or 3 times now) and hopefully the monitor cable only addresses the literally broken things about the new laptops and ignores the other things people prefer the 2015 for. Although multi-core is nice to see, it still maxes out at 32G--without an option to upgrade later, either.
It still looks to have the same camera I had in my 2009 MBP...this can't be a cost/space/engineering thing since iPhones exist. I don't care if it's higher res. Make it higher quality and less noisy. I genuinely miss charging and battery LEDs they removed from the case (and magsafe). I've plugged in my laptop overnight only to find it never charged once or twice. I see the touchbar causing more problems than it solves.
I'm actually disappointed. I was hoping whatever next Macbook Pro they released would be a significant update or offer more compelling things.
Wish there was an option to buy a 15 inch with no touch bar. I cannot find any suitable use for it on my current model, and I often hit items inadvertently due to the lack of tactile feedback
This so much. I would have upgraded at least twice already if that was an option. Sadly, it isn't and that's why I still use a pretty old model hoping it doesn't get too obsolete soon.
Are you sure you wouldn't rather have the 2008-2012 body? It's a bit easier to upgrade or repair.
(At work I have a 15" MBP with the 2013 body. I'm eligible for upgrading it, but what would I replace it with that could possibly be better? Literally the only downside that I care about is the fact that most conference rooms at work no longer have magsafes lying around.)
The big improvement in the 2012-2015 body is that getting rid of upgradability and the optical drive allowed putting in a huge battery (basically the max allowed on airplanes). It also cut the weight by more than a pound.
There's a lot to love in the 2013-2015 line, but the 2008-2012 series will always have my heart. I've never had a laptop so easy to work on, and being able to put two drives in a portable is icing on the cake.
Yup, I'm on an old top-of-the-line 2011 that I swapped out the DVD for an extra SSD. It's spoiled me — such that to replace it I want 16-32GB of RAM and 1TB SSD.
I think it's time to make peace with changes like this, proportionate to their importance to overall impact on functionality. One free slot (with a maximum amount of RAM determined by Intel, not soldering) is probably good enough. Same with removable batteries (the need for which is obviated by USB charging). Indicator LEDs, probably not worth it. Screen aspect ratio, and so on, are probably worth complaining about though.
Maybe you don't want to comment, but are people inside Apple that use a MacBook all day generally happy with the keyboards? I know there's going to be a mix of opinions, but here and on sites like Reddit, it feels like there's a majority opinion that the new keyboards are worse.
Why do you say that? Isn't that entirely a personal preference thing? I have preferred any good non-Apple touchpad I have tried to Apple's. (To be fair, 90% of laptops sold ship with cheap, terrible touchpads.) The touchpad on my Dell XPS is a good example; zero finger friction, physical left/right buttons at the bottom of the touchpad, and perfect sensitivity / detection of tap to click and two finger scroll. The drivers support "natural" scrolling too.
On the other hand, Apple's touchpads have to be configured to even enable tap-to-click(?!), and click-and-drag doesn't even work with it... On pretty much any non-Apple touchpad and OS combination, double-tapping on a draggable object enables dragging mode, where you can move the object around the screen with one finger.
If Apple seriously got its software story together, it would at least support better configurability for its touchpads. But even then, it wouldn't have physical buttons, which I prefer.
After I got the haptic touch trackpad, I can’t go back to physical buttons. Ability to click anywhere on a trackpad with a click like feedback is one of the best things Apple ever did.
Maybe if they reduced the force required to click the button by about 75% I could get used to it. It's so hard to push from my normal typing position that I feel like I have to use leverage from my arm instead of just a finger. Plus it's not comfortable to click and drag when you have to continually push down - I'd still want tap to click available even if they improved it.
Yep. I switched from a Macbook Pro and I definitely miss the touch pad.
But I don't miss the keyboard. Or the touchbar. Or the hotkey layout. Or the operating system. Or not being able to upgrade my hard drive when I needed to.
Obviously all humans are different but this has never happened to me, not even once. I use it often and would be annoyed to go back.
I would love to see real data about the Touch Bar, but sadly it’ll never get released. So we are all left to private theories and speculation and anecdotes.
I have this problem, but the reason I think it's a problem is that I have to switch back-and-forth between a number of machines, some with touchbars, and some without.
Just this month I got matching external keyboards for all, and it's been much easier having one set of muscle memory no matter what I'm doing.
I would pay +$500 happily for that as a CTO config. Retaining the touchid button would be nice but not critical. I'd pay +$1000 for mechanical top row plus faceid.
My problem is that due to wrist injury I angle my left hand enough that my pinky finger sometimes touches esc or other areas. I have remapped the touch bar but not having esc where I want it also sucks. Mechanical keys don't actuate merely on touch, so this is only a problem on apple.
I'm considering remapping caps lock to esc and then putting tape over the touchbar, at least on the left side, to reduce sensitivity
Same problem here. Turns out one of my fingers brushes the area just above the number keys when performing certain modifier-key stretches. Never noticed it before, since it's not an issue with real buttons. Try locking it to only the main view (no per-app views) in the settings, then customize it to remove almost everything from it. Only way I was able to make it tolerable.
It's not just this new high-end option that is missing, they haven't updated the 13 inch non-touchbar model _at all_. They completely skipped it in the refresh a few months ago and it is still using 7th gen processors (the touchbar model was updated, but only to an 8th gen processor. All 15 inch models were updated to 9th gen).
I don't believe the non-touchbar model has received a single spec update since it was announced (though I am having difficulty determining that for sure)
My suspicion (and I'm not alone in this) is that the 13" non-touchbar model -- Marco Arment dubbed it the "MacBook Escape," which I kind of love -- was intended to be the replacement for the MacBook Air, but it misunderstood a lot of what people liked about the Air. Now that Apple has reconsidered and actually updated the Air in its beloved wedge form factor, the MacBook Escape is kind of in philosophical limbo. Apple's modus operandi these days is to leave models around way past their reasonable expiration date, and I think that's what we're seeing here; there's a good chance that the Air is going to get a refresh within 12 months and when that happens, the Escape is going to go away.
I also suspect today's bump is kind of a "holding pattern" update and Apple is working on a more significant redesign of their laptop line that's going to try and address the criticism they've been receiving over the last couple of years. (While it's possible we'll see the first sign of that at WWDC, seeing this press release just a couple weeks before WWDC makes me suspect that we won't see truly new laptops until 2020.)
I never got why, if they really want the touch bar, they don't do both. F-keys and touch bar. I kinda would have welcomed this because the "fn" key is a horrible presence on any laptop keyboard anyway and I'd happily would have seen them delegate screen brightness and audio to the touch bar as a separate input.
My guess is that Apple is using the idiot bar as a trial balloon for abolishing physical keyboards altogether in favor of a touch interface (perhaps one with reconfigurable raised bumps for keys).
Getting away from Fn entirely is tough -- it's still useful as a way of simulating keys like PgUp/PgDn/Home/End (Fn+arrows) and forward delete (Fn+Backspace).
Why laptop makers deleted those keys from the keyboard I'll never understand. With just an extra column of keys to the right of Enter, you get delete, page up, page down, home, and end. All very useful keys, right at your fingertips. Panasonic does it right on their rugged laptops, and some other manufacturers still have those keys on some business models, but most have done away with them.
I mean, look at the Dell XPS 15 keyboard. All that space on both sides of the keyboard, and yet they make us chord to do something as simple as Page Down.
I've been using MacBook Pro's with the touch bar for a while now, but I just picked up a MacBook Air (in addition to my MacBook Pro). It has a mechanical top row, with just the Touch ID button at the end and it's fantastic. It's so nice to have those keys back! I would pay $100 extra for a MacBook Pro without the touch bar.
I actually really like the touch bar. I'd enjoy my 2016 MBP if it wasn't for the 2 keys that are now unreliable on the keyboard. That and the fact that it crashes every time the battery runs out.
I like the touch bar too. I just want the Esc key back (although they did add the option to remap CapsLock to Esc, so hurray for that, but honestly it was a delayed feature.)
I have the Caps Lock key mapped to Control (for Unixy things, especially Emacs), and the Control key mapped to Escape -- which, incidentally, improves locality of the Force Quit key combination.
> I actually really like the touch bar.
An app called Pock supposed to make it vaguely useful, but fails to display consistently...
> the fact that it crashes every time the battery runs out.
This. Mine crashed with caffeinate on and would boot into state where display is off. Took me an hour and bunch of stress reset SMC/NVRAM/etc that brought it back to life.
Yeah, it's great. When I use my MacBook Pro at my desk, I just use an external keyboard and that covers a lot of usage time where I don't have to deal with the touch bar.
I feel like this is such a common refrain and yet when a maker like System76 tries to enter this market they still still fuck it all up by jamming a number pad in the side. Why do they all do this?
System76 is using OEM gaming laptops, so are probably a little limited in what they can do.
They keys are slightly smaller (I think), but I have gotten used to them. I do like having the number pad though.
The only thing I'm missing in my mac -> linux conversion, is lightroom (it seems to process raw files better). I'm getting better at the linux equivalent "darktable". I sometimes feel I would pay for software on linux to get a polished experience.
it's not responsive enough either. maybe I have a light touch, but I never had problems with the physical keyboard before. many times I go to pause my music or change volume and the buttons don't register for 2 or 3 presses.
I thought the ESC key was going to be annoying, but it has ended up being everything else.
also the huge trackpad is annoying. at home with the laptop on my lap I hit the edges all the time and send the mouse flying. had to turn off "hot corners" because I kept locking my laptop randomly.
When I first got mine I found it fun to customize using BetterTouchTool, but I quickly realized it was no replacement for having hardware buttons. I miss them so much.
I've refused my 3-year upgrade and fear the day I'll need a replacement for my late 2015 macbook. It's sad being stranded on hardware that is starting to show its age when the newer devices leave little to be desired from a usability standpoint. It also hurts that any replacement will be incompatible with my $150 dock.
Yeah, we are really down on the touch bar because one failed hard and another crashed so it showed nothing. It was quite the irritating thing. The keyboards are just a failure.
I actually wish they had a touch id sensor on the back of the display like some Android phones so it is accessible when I have the machine plugged into a display.
I really, really don't want thinner. I want the glued in battery banned, and a replaceable keyboard with ability to clean and replace the keys. I guess I just want a different definition of Pro.
Also I'd love an option without external GPU. GPU switching is still slow and occasionally buggy, wastes power and has no benefit for me when writing any app.
However I don’t see Intel switching to AMD. They have all the same problems, more or less. Primarily Apple has little control over their future with an outside supplier.
Is it possible to get them without the touchbar? I’ve pounded my poor old MacBook (2013) into submission and the bottom row of keys are starting to not work intermittently. We’ve got a bunch of the newer machines in the office and I just can’t get on with that keyboard and touchbar.
I strongly feel you would be better off getting the keyboard replaced in your MBP 2013 than upgrading to a new MacBook. (See my post history/other comments on this thread for my background and a more thorough explanation.) A keyboard upgrade would be around $200 or less—check local shops near you for price quotes.
>The MacBook Pro keyboard mechanism has had a materials change in the mechanism. Apple says that this new keyboard mechanism composition will substantially reduce the double type/no type issue. Apple will not specify what it has done, but doubtless tear-downs of the keyboard will reveal what has been updated.
They say it's improved. But check back in a year or so to see if it works, because the 3rd gen revisions didn't end up fixing it before.
If you have a 3rd gen butterfly keyboard, replacements will now use the 4th gen.
If you have a 1st or 2nd, they'll continue to replace the failing keyboards with more failing keyboards. Lucky me!
In other news for the 2016 MBP, there's a new repair extension program for the "Oops we made the display ribbon cable too short" issue. Haven't had that problem myself, but this was an expensive goddamn laptop and I'm not optimistic about its resale value or lifespan after the 4 year repair window is up. Multiple known design flaws that cost $600-$800, and in the keyboard's case are just putting in more of the same failure-prone parts.
These used to excite me because I've desperately needed 32gb and faster procs and used to upgrade every 2-3 years but now I just yawn at MBP releases. I'm so unexcited by everything about this form factor other than the fact that it has OSX. I'm guessing I'll be on my 2016 until I finally bite the bullet and quit using OSX if they don't make a more compelling package to spend my $3k on in the next few years.
I don't want thinner. I don't want a touchbar. I don't want this oversized touchpad I touch constantly when it's on my lap. I don't want this terrible keyboard solution required due to the desire for thinness. I don't want to carry 3 USBC dongles or to buy a $350 USBC hub at every single desk I have with monitors (home, work). I want a bigger battery. I want more ports. I want less bezel. I want a chassis that doesn't scratch and dent.
I thought the same thing. Now I'm stuck with a $1500 Asus laptop that barely plays Netflix a year and a half later. despite an 7th gen i7 and 16gb of DDR4. Now I'm saving up for a Macbook Pro again, despite my hatred for the keyboard and touchbar.
Maybe he has a spinning disk in it? I see lots of laptops in that price range that go for the 1TB HDD instead of the 256GB SSD. Windows 10 on a 5400RPM HDD is pretty miserable these days, the OS just can't stop touching the disk and it's forever IO bound.
I've had the same problem. I had a i7 T420 with 16GB of RAM that was lightning quick when I got it and over a few years became completely unusable even for basic tasks. When I hit the Windows key to open the start menu, I could turn and take a sip of coffee before it opened. Reformatting and reinstalling from scratch did nothing to improve the speed.
I switched to a Macbook soon after and it is just as fast today as it was when I got it four years ago. I recently fired up that old T420 and popped an older, unused SSD into it. Instant game-changer. It is unbelievable how much faster it is with an SSD, the same speed it was with Windows 7 when I first got it.
Hitting the Windows key on Windows 7 even with an HDD was instant. Hitting the Windows key on Windows 10 with an HDD tok seconds. Installing an SSD brought it back to being instant.
If they're using Chrome rather than Edge or the native app then the video is rendered in software, which will quite possibly result in a poor experience on an underpowered machine.
(TBH the same issue happens on a Mac though, except Safari instead of Edge).
That makes sense, I guess Netflix won't choose a video quality/resolution to play back based on your processing power but rather just on your network bandwidth
Does it have a SSD in it? Unfortunately some manufacturers like to spec out everything except a SSD. If it doesn’t, and especially if they stuck you with a hybrid drive (ugh), upgrade to a SSD and it should perform well again. It will certainly be an order of magnitude cheaper than a new laptop, too.
Same here. Replaced my MacBook Pro with an X1 Carbon last summer. Short circuiting my usual 2-year upgrade cycle and buying whatever Apple releases this fall.
Anything unique about it? Are you running Windows 10? Latest updates? Need any driver updates? (Most drivers are updated by Windows but a few, like graphics/network sometimes benefit from checking yourself.)
Are you running a (really) resource intensive anti-virus program?
I own an $800 Asus gaming laptop and a $700 Asus ultrabook. One with 7th gen i7 and 16GB DDR. The other with 8th gen i7 and 16GB DDR. One has SATA SSD and other NVMe SSD. One is 1 year old. The other is 2 years old.
Both of them can run Visual Studio Professional, VS Code, Netflix, Hulu, StarCraft 2. Both are very fast and a joy to use. One is heavy; the other is light!
If it has a 5400 rpm hard drive, consider getting a 2.5" SSD to replace it, and use software to clone the drive. (Although it kind of sounds like you could use a fresh install.)
I guess "hacker" doesn't really mean what it used to mean. I thought it used to mean people who are curious and like to tinker. Maybe it now means "busy people who have no time to actually tinker but like the idea of tinkering".
in order to eek out a tenth of a gigahertz for their marketing materials (with rapidly diminishing returns because physics), manufacturers usually set Turbo Boost Power Limits 5-10 (or more) watts too high. Since Turbo Boost usually maximizes a single core's frequency and the heat generated increases exponentially, it creates a very concentrated heat spike in the silicon. Even if the CPU heat sink is good enough to passively dissipate that much heat from all of the cores, the turbo boost hot spot forces the fans to spin up early before the CPU knows how long the boost will be needed (otherwise Turbo boost would significantly reduce the lifetime of the CPU). Combined with random scheduled OS tasks that take a split second of turbo to run a process [..]
This could also apply to thermal throttling of the CPU. Imagine if your laptop is on that edge, with some dust in the heatsinks and fans, then a can of compressed air and an install of ThrottleStop (or other software) to underclock a little and reduce the maximum boost frequency, and thereby reduce thermal throttling, might make it run smoother and faster-on-average.
Or another possibility:
If your fan is spinning up when scrolling in Slack it's likely an indication that Electron (Chrome) is refusing to use the GPU for rendering acceleration. This is likely either due to a driver issue or the driver/gpu being on chrome's blacklist. I had this problem once on a hackintosh and as I recall starting Slack from a terminal with the `--ignore-gpu-blacklist` option fixed it.
"I don't want thinner" is really what apple needs to hear.
Thinner means you take away my ports so I have to carry dongles. Yes, I'd actually love to have at least one old-fashioned USB2 port. I know, I'm insane, but USB2 devices didn't exactly disappear just because USB-C is great. I still have a lot of them.
Thinner means you take away magsafe, which is one of those great "gosh, apple is so clever" features that's very, very useful.
Thinner means you give me a keyboard which, at best, completely sucks (layout, feel) and at worst, can't actually do its job because of reliability problems.
Thinner means I could have more battery life.
I'm literally carrying around TWO 2015 MBPs on a daily basis right now and it's TOTALLY FINE, APPLE. I'm not dying over the weight or amount of space they take up. I hardly even notice. For what developers do with laptops, thinner is way down on the priority list. I wish you'd listen to us.
Also: I literally have no use for the touchbar that isn't perfectly handled by function keys, and I hit ESC 1000 times a day because I'm a vim user. Why do you hate me?
Please just release a mac that looks exactly like a 2015 MBP with an i9 and some USB-C ports, and I will be lining up to throw $3k at you. As is, I'm getting as much life out of my 2015's as I possibly can (they're running great, btw, but I doubt they'll make it to your next refresh if it's 3 years away). When they finally die, if the only MBPs available have garbage keyboards and touchbars, I will grudgingly stop being a Mac user.
> Thinner means you take away my ports so I have to carry dongles.
I'm not sure it does really. The modern MacBook Air chassis is the same size as the old one. But it's lost Magsafe, a useful keyboard, USB-A, it's lost a port on the 13 inch, and no SD card slot.
Apple hasn't got rid of these things for thinness. It's gotten rid of them because of a misguided belief that the replacements are better than the loss of flexibility, or just plain working.
Apple are wrong about these things. But the problem is much more fundamentally that Apple seems to have lost it's ability to engineer well and it's judgement about how to please it's Mac customers. Thinness is just a symptom.
People have complained about Apple removing things since they first removed floppy drives. They remove them not because of some misguided belief, but because it’s old tech. I have a MBP from 2012 still going strong. When laptops last that long a bit of future proofing is a bonus. If you swap laptops every other year then you obviously miss out on this benefit. PC manufacturers will start removing USB ports and if history is any judge we’ll see zero complaints about them doing it, just like with the floppy
There are two reasons the floppy drive isn't a very good comparison, in my opinion. The first is that floppy drive usage had already dropped dramatically because software was distributed on CDs and macs had been networked for years. So the use cases for floppies were a lot fewer and farther between, meaning it was less upsetting to people that Apple made the bold move of just dropping them. Also keep in mind that by this point, the Zip drive had absolutely taken over as the sneakernet of this era, and those were 100% aftermarket add-ons. The second reason the floppy is very different is that if you consider the tree of all the devices that are plugged into your mac, floppy drives are leaf nodes. Nothing else plugs into them, so removing them impacts nothing but floppy usage. Every day I plug in a DisplayPort monitor, an HDMI monitor, USB 2.0 yubikey, and USB 2.0 keyboard+mouse via a USB 2.0 hub. That's a lot of perfectly functional stuff to replace just because Apple jumped the gun on deciding USB-C had taken over.
Evidence that it hasn't: the hundreds of people walking around my workplace with gigantic USB 2.0 + HDMI + displayport dongles dangling from their laptops all the time, or starting meetings by saying "oh shit, i left my dongle in the other building. Can I borrow someone's so I can use the projector?"
Floppy is a terrible example to support your point.
When floppies were removed, almost nobody had to purchase external floppy drives to use their existing library of floppies.
1.44mb is pretty useless when you already have a flood of cheap USB flash drives 64+mb at the time.
Heck, even during the windows 95 days, I only touched floppies to be able to boot into ms-dos to reinstall windows.
When you buy a brand spanking new $1500 iPhone Xs and a brand spanking new $4000 MBP and walk out of the Apple Store with no way to connect the two without a dongle, you know you’re eating whatever shit Apple is feeding you.
> > Thinner means you take away my ports so I have to carry dongles.
> I'm not sure it does really.
Not 100% true, you're right, but the thinness is definitely the reason ethernet went. My 2010 had an RJ45 on it, and there's just no room for it on the 2015 or the later ones. However, I do think the design aesthetic that calls for thinness is related to the design aesthetic that fetishizes the simplicity of having as few blemishes on the case as possible. Floppy eject button? We can do it in software. Mouse buttons? Reduce it to one. No wait, reduce it to zero (magic mouse). Trackpad buttons? Remove them. Ports? As few as possible. Sleek. I feel like putting on a black turtleneck.
Agreed, the keyboard is awful. I just want a decent/good keyboard, an HDMI port, and just 1 USB A port, I'll definitely take 0.5mm thicker for those. Well, at least they kept the headphone jack...
32gb ram and an 8 core processor is awesome, but all the downsides have turned me away from getting the next gen unless they fix those things.
I don't really get the hate for these keyboards. I benchmarked my typing speed on my 2019 MBP and a few other keyboards, I didn't notice any significant difference. Just a keyboard...
They are loud, to the point of being annoying during a meeting / conference call and the travel distance is a bit too short for some people, making typing unpleasant. If you use a Lenovo or even a dell of equal body thickness for a bit and then get back to a modern Mac, the difference is huge.
The two main issues for me are failure rates and key travel. My fingers literally hurt when I use it. The 2012-2015 form was probably less beautiful to look at (and slightly thicker), but it was much better to type with.
I'm glad someone else mentioned their fingers physically hurting when using it. I haven't seen many other complaints round this online and its shocking - This made me stop using the device completely - I was in pain just by typing normally!
I don't mind it (though as I commented elsewhere, the volume of the keypresses is a bit louder). I think most of the complaints are aimed at reliability however, which is a bit scary on a $2000+ machine (even though I had to replace the SSD, the keys on my 2013 MBP are still as good as day 1)
Yeah but there's no way this thing has the thermal or power capacity to actually run that 8-core CPU at its rated specs. This already happened with the 6-core in the previous gen, and it certainly doesn't look like Apple did anything to improve thermal capacity in this refresh. Hopefully they at least addressed the lack of VRM power delivery, but that doesn't seem likely.
So you're taking a platform that was already pushed past its thermal & power capacities, and increased the thermal & power load by another 30% (keep in mind these are all still on Intel's 14nm that hasn't really changed, so no efficiency improvements here). Maybe the reviews will be surprising, but I wouldn't bet on it.
> Well, it says they did, but I guess you know better.
I don't see any comments from Apple talking about improving the cooling. What are you referring to? And what did they change? It still looks like the same tiny opening in the hinge, with no additional venting anywhere?
Completely agreed. I’m on my 2016 max spec. Need to take it in for keyboard repair at some point and I’ve barely used the keyboard as I’m using external keyboard and monitors 99% of the time. If they offered the new one with an option to get it without the Touch Bar and old style keyboard that alone would be an instant buy for me.
I don’t get the touch pad complaint (I don’t agree with the others either but that’s a boring worn out argument) - macOS has had excellent “accidental touch” detection in my experience.
So I come from the weird world of Thinkpad point-stick users so take my ergo desires with a grain of salt if you hate that thing. I don't like having to use a buttonless touchpad to begin with and while the MBP touchpad is the best I've ever used I loved it on my 2015 and despise how large it is on the 2016 I've got now. I do EVERYTHING I can to not use this laptop as a laptop. It's keyboard and touchpad experience are just awful, well, the keyboards awful, the touchpad size is just an annoyance.
When I sit with the laptop on my lap, like on the couch, I find that I'm constantly adjusting things to not touch it. Whether it's my jacket or a blanket or my phone cable or my own hand. I just constantly trigger it and I'm sure I have it on the lowest sensitivity with palm rejection. I'm pretty sure even when I'm on a desk I'm constantly adjusting where my arms are because it's getting triggered (or I just feel like I have to pay attention to it).
FWIW, I dislike every single Apple keyboard, mouse and touchpad ever created and refuse to use them to the point that I bring my own kb/mouse to work because every job hands me those. I have tried them, at times, for months.
Meanwhile my palm can literally rest on the touchpad while typing and I don’t trigger it. Are you in a particularly dry area or something? This is completely the opposite of my experience and I’ve used every MBP since they changed the name from PowerBook. I agree on the keyboard though, but then again I dislike any laptop keyboard due to the short key travel and lack of a mechanical option
But is it because it is triggered or you think it will be triggered? I don’t know that I’ve ever accidentally triggered the trackpad in 12 years of MBPs
> don't want thinner. I don't want a touchbar. I don't want this oversized touchpad I touch constantly when it's on my lap. I don't want this terrible keyboard solution required due to the desire for thinness. I don't want to carry 3 USBC dongles or to buy a $350 USBC hub at every single desk I have with monitors (home, work).
You may not realize it yet, but you are no longer Apple's market. Do your future self a favor and figure out how to transition to something sustainable.
Apple used to make computers that were both elegant and practical... But the iphone taught execs that there is a much more profitable market willing to pay through the roof for extremely stylish looking computers at the cost of _everything_ else, they will keep going further down this road because there is plenty of demand. Apple now sell gorgeous Ferraris, but the kind that will drive you insane and are not actually useful or comfortable for anything other than showing off.
The good news is that sexy PC laptops now exist, and some of them are still actually practical too! better yet some of those sexy practical laptops run Linux! Well!
Have you considered just getting a workstation and doing everything on it via ssh?
Guess it depends on what kind of stuff you do. I adopted that workflow years ago out of necessity (need to routinely do some heavy lifting) and will never go back.
I just can’t see myself spending that much on a laptop. I can’t productively use my laptop for day to day use without connecting it to two external monitors and keyboard anyway.
You can get an 8 Core 27 inch 5K iMac $100 cheaper, with less thermal constraints.
Having one desktop-powerful machine that can turn into a laptop when you unplug it from its dock and go with me anywhere is well worth the extra $100. And I'm saying this as someone with a dedicated desktop just for rendering/games. The desktop gives me customization and upgradability but the fact that I lose portability is huge and I'll never, ever own just a desktop machine. I'd prefer to own a laptop that can do my desktop duties when docked.
that's the theory, but in real life the macbook won't sustain 5ghz for very long at all, even less so with 8 cores. It simply can't get rid of the heat fast enough and throttles the speed to stay under thermal limits (while still toasting your balls).
The situation isn't helped by the GPU inside the same slim mbpro chassis that also gets super hot, it's particularly bad when you run mixed CPU/GPU workloads like rendering. So your desktop ends up being much faster for continuous workloads, even if on paper they both have 8-core 5ghz CPUs.
I had the 2018 6-core i9 mbpro. Got rid of it, if I were to buy a new mbpro again I would get a 4-core one.
So for GPU intensive workloads at least, it seems to make more sense to get a lower spec’d laptop for the road and an external GPU as a docking station if you need the portability.
Apple has a couple of eGPUs they made with Blackmagic (AMD RX580 - you don't want this one - and Vega 56), very slick looking and silent but unfortunately GPUs not user upgradeable and not great value for money.
You can use most tb3 eGPU enclosures and an AMD GPU of your choice. Vega64 prob the best choice now, Navi around the corner, can't use NVidia at all thanks to Apple. It'll cost you less than the official Apple eGPU and the GPU will be upgradeable
Are the new 8-core CPUs fast enough to make them faster than the old CPUs were before all the Intel bugs? Or are we just ponying up more cash for the same level of performance?
As someone who is desperately wanting to upgrade from a mid-2012. I say big deal.
No better display like oled.
Looks like the same keyboard to me. Oh the material has changed? Who cares, it's the same failing mechanism.
More CPU eh? Means it'll just get hotter much quicker and there will be more throttling to be fixed via software.
At this rate, for Apple to get my $$$ again they'll have to release a 16" [oled] macbook pro, with a redesigned keyboard and arm chipset so that the body is entirely cool even under load.
Maybe in 2022 I can see myself buying another macbook pro. Man, I can't wait till Tim Cook gets replaced. We need another visionary at he helm of Apple. Someone who will push the envelope again!
The thing is, they don't even need to push the envelope. I would have been happy with a classic MBP with upgraded hardware but without USB C ports and no touchbar.
It's just that they keep introducing stupid, useless gimmicks.
IMO they needed one transitional design where they replaced the thunderbolt (is that right? I get all their storm-named ports mixed up) ports, and maybe the charger port if they must, with USB-C, but kept HDMI and at least one USB-A. I use the SDCARD port all the time but I could see their getting rid of it. The other stuff? Gimme a break, going all USB-C from a state of no USB-C? WTF was I supposed to plug into it without an adapter or buying all new peripherals and drives?
All the USB-C ports on the new MacBook Pros double as Thunderbolt 3 ports — IMO this is a big advantage over other laptops where some ports are USB-C only.
I've only ever had a 2016+ MBP as a work computer so I didn't mind the USB-C stuff too much (especially with a dock that I didn't have to pay for). The lack of dedicated ethernet port and SD card reader is vexxing though (on my personal 2015 MBP).
> All the USB-C ports on the new MacBook Pros double as Thunderbolt 3 ports — IMO this is a big advantage over other laptops where some ports are USB-C only.
The disadvantage is that one of those USB-C ports will be your charging port when there is only 4 on the 15" and 2 on the 13".
I don't mind USB-C/Thunderbolt so much, I think it's great we'll get products that will be forced to adopt it (looking at you, audio interfaces/DACs). The MBP has been a port desert for a long time and dongles are awful UX - and they just keep removing more and more of them.
It baffles me when they try and do things that seem to improve UI/UX, like the touchbar (which I hate, but I get it), the move to Retina displays, high quality dual-front facing speakers on all models now, etc... but then they turn around and remove IO options and roll out a terrible keyboard. It seems like they have warped priorities for the mac line.
Personally if the move to ARM and don't offer MacOS as a standalone product, the pro-media world will probably abandon Macs altogether. And I don't really want to develop for another OS, I love mac. The machines are just awful.
If any of your TB3 or USB-c devices is decent (ie not a cheap Chinese POS) and has a/c power it’ll probably provide power back to the laptop over the same connection.
OLED is not a very good idea for a computer monitor currently with their pretty bad image retention. Go look at the iPhones at Best Buy. You can see they have pretty bad retention (unless your Best Buy is good and replaces the phones often).
Yea, this is the reason there aren't any OLED PC monitors (unless you count that one portable one that's overpriced and has terrible color reproduction)
I have never seen retention on my Pixel2XL. Not even a little bit. I used to see retention on my last OLED phone. Maybe we're getting close to OLED displays that are good enough? And yes, sometimes I have my phone on for a long time. And yes, there are static elements just like on a desktop.
You wont notice it if you use your phone. Retention happens when the screen is on all day showing a static image that doesn't change. On a macbook that would mean the apple logo for sure would burn in. Hell, even on my non-oled lcd monitors they're burning in even though they're not supposed to.
Even with pixel shifting you can still get retention too, so that's not really an option right now. I'm hopeful some company in the future will come up with a way to prevent it altogether - but it's going to have to be some kind of new screen tech.
I don't leave my screen on the same image all day. It's on about as much as my phone. I turn it off if I'm not actively using it. This is my point. If I can have it on my phone, I should be able to have it on my desktop.
The arrow keys and touchbar make that machine completely unsuitable for writing code, at least for me. My right hand needs to unconsciously lock on to the arrow keys, and that's just impossible with that layout. There's nothing to grab on to. My new iMac keyboard sits in a drawer collecting dust solely because of the arrow keys.
And the butterfly mechanism is unproven and untrustworthy, I don't care how many times they update it.
They need to go back to using the same keyboard mechanisms for both their desktops and laptops, and they need to go back to the old arrow key layout.
There is some claim that they've fixed the keyboard issue.
Aside from that, across 2 MacBook Pro's and a MacBook Air, I've had 0 keyboard issues. I don't know if I've just gotten lucky, kept my keyboard clean, or what, but it just has never been a problem for me.
The failure rate of the butterfly keyboard design is clearly orders of magnitude too high and is the sort of thing people should genuinely lose their jobs over (and perhaps they have). But "orders of magnitude too high" might well mean one or two percent, rather than one or two tenths of a percent; outside the company, I don't think we have any reasonable estimates of the failure rate, just anecdotes. My work laptop has no problem, although its lid is usually closed; my home laptop, a MacBook Escape, also has had no keyswitch problems, although I mostly use an iPad for portable work now. Most of my coworkers have new butterfly-switch keyboards and I don't hear of significant issues; I've talked with a couple Mac IT people at different companies and they haven't experienced huge failure rates, either. This is, again, all anecdotal, though; some people will come back and say "I'm in an eight-person group and three of us had bad keyboards."
RT. I upgraded to the late-2018 MBP from a 2013 MBP and after three months of heavy dev usage cannot get used to the new keyboard layout (specifically arrow keys) and touchbar.
Really wish Apple would start offering touch bar as an option when you purchase!
This is the first time I've seen somebody else complain about the arrow keys and I completely agree.
It's by far the most infuriating aspect of this new keyboard.
Another thing that I have a hard time explaining is my inability to orientate myself on this keyboard; several times a day I have to move the laptop around, look at the keys and "reset" myself to the keyboard. I don't know what that's about but I've only ever experienced it on this keyboard.
My personal machine is a 2014 MBP which will be replaced with something other than a mac once the time comes.
I hate my MBP arrow keys, but unless I'm doing a little work from home or in a meeting I never use the keyboard, instead I have a full size apple keyboard that I love and use with the macbook in clamshell mode hooked up to a dell 4k.
I'm probably not buying a new macbook pro for a long time... it's just not worth it to have such a high end machine that I use as a glorified traveling mac mini.
For my next work upgrade I am requesting a linux laptop.
The press release is downright misleading. For 8 cores, or even 6, you have to buy the 15" model. Neither are available in the 13" model. And the 15", while starting at $2399, is not the 8 core option, that is the old 6 core option.
And of course the 8 core option, at $2799, only has 512GB of disk space and 16GB RAM. If you want a reasonable 32GB and 1TB disk space (which presumably you would if you have a use for 8 cores), it's a whopping $3,600.
And that is of course before accessories and tax.
I thought that after the overpriced iphone release they would have changed their pricing on everything else, but I guess it's just same old apple.
WHY? This is literally the only thing that bothers me about Apple pricing. I get that you pay for the design, I get the quirks like introducing touch bar, everything. But I don't get why upgrading from a $50 to a $100 SSD adds 400 dollars.
This sort of "upgrade" nickel and diming is true of every laptop vendor, but Apple is definitely one of the worst. It's like their pricing structure is stuck in 2012
The SSDs they use really do cost that much though. Even if you got them from another manufacturer they'd be about that expensive. Apple don't use cheap SSDs...they use blazing fast, top of the line units not found on many other laptops.
If you have criticism, price isn't a valid one.
But you can definitely argue that they should have cheaper/slower options so that consumers who don't need blazing fast SSDs can still benefit from increased storage.
Geekbench across OS's and motherboards is worthless, especially when they have different file systems. You need to look a the spec sheet for the actual hardware, or compare on the same machine with an aftermarket part.
I'm extremely skeptical that Apple has some magic SSD with 6.5x read/write speed of everyone else.
You can buy SSD with the same specs 3.2GB Read and 2.2GB Write for much cheaper. Samsung sells 970 EVO 1 TB m.2 for $300 [1] but you can even buy cheaper on amazon for less than $235. Keep i mind those +$400 was price for upgrade from 500GB to 1TB not the price of 1TB which is much much more.
For example Apple charges upgrading macbook pro 13 from 128GB (silly they even offer pro machine with such small SSD) to 1TB for..... $800! So in other words prices their 1TB SSD disk for ~$1000. It's insane.
Fair enough but Lenovo doesn't solder their SSD. Nothing prevents you from buying the cheapest option and upgrading yourself, e.g. Lenovo thinkpad X1 Extreme has even 2 SDD m.2 slots. You also don't have to max out you storage when buying because you can always upgrade it in the future once you need more storage or when SSD gets even cheaper few years later. On top of that those 2 m.2 slots allows you to put disk in raid 0 or use second one with optane memory once its cheaper and worth it.
Aren't those just the numbers for SATA connection vs. M.2 PCIe?
Apple doesn't manufacture SSDs, they buy them from the same companies that Dell, HP, Asus, etc... do. There isn't special Mac only models of those drives, it's all the same hardware in the end. The only advantage I see is that Apple was quick to switch to M.2 and macrumors cherry picked their competition to avoid PCs with M.2 SSDs.
To make things worst, out of all the laptop vendor Apple is the only one with their own SSD controller, which is not a small percentage of BOM cost in SSD. And they are one of the few that gets favourable NAND pricing due to the volume they move with iPhone and iPad.
So… they charge half the price Apple does, and if you don't want to pay it you don't have to care because it's a standard m.2 so you can swap it with a retail drive (at which point you have both the original and the replacement for 50% more storage at a lower price), which you can't do with a soldered Apple drive.
Looks like the test is done by just copying a large file and measuring the time it took. This, of course, gives some idea of performance, but they are quite many things that can affect the results.
On the original article[1] the table also shows results from a synthetic benchmark. This shows 2.6GB/s for Macbook and 1.2GB/s for Dell XPS. They also mention that it's a bit apple vs oranges, since different tools were used for the benchmark.
In case you haven't realized you can buy comparable 1TB NVMe SSDs in today's market for around $100. I see the budget Intel 660p hit $80 for 1TB on sale, or high-end Phison E12 drives at $115 for 1TB on sale.
FWIW the 660p has significantly lower throughput (though not 6x by any stretch of the imagination), it's listed and benched around 1800 for reads and writes.
Your article is comparing against non workstation class laptops. Other laptops in the same class put two NVME SSDs in a RAID configuration for double the throughout.
The listed performances are those are that of a 970 EVO (and the 970 EVO Plus improved on write speed, to almost par with read speed at 3500 and 3300).
The 1TB EVO Plus is $250 on newegg. Not as replacement for an existing 500GB, just retail price for the drive. The 2TB EVO is listed at $550, the 2TB EVO Plus is listed at $650.
Not to mention that it’s basically 4 SSDs on 4 PCIe buses.
Edit: I don’t really understand downvotes. SSD on recent Macbook Pros does connect to the northbridge via 4 PCIe lanes. And this is not what “but look I can the same for £50” SSD does.
Most current era laptops use NVMe. Bargain basement laptops might still use SATA, but lets not pretend that the MBP, while extremely fast, is at all unique.
My favorite comment on this sort of thing was the claim that Apple uses components made from the powdered bones of unicorns. Sometimes I think that's not far off.
Apple now solders in the SSD into the motherboard. My guess is the cost of an entire motherboard with a larger SSD simply costs more to manufacture. Or their target audience doesn't really care about money - they care more about the "premium" experience that comes with the Apple brand.
8-core CPU, even presumably with HT off after all the recent Intel vulnerabilities, makes me laugh after my personal experience with my late 2016 MacBook Pro 13 touch bar with fastest (at that time) i7. During normal browsing especially with plugged charger, it was heating so much that something in the keyboard was unglueing. The space bar and 'c' produced different clicking sound. I was quite unhappy with that since it was my first experience with Apple products. I took it to Apple Store, they replaced the top part (with keyboard), it fixed 'c' and 'space', but issue appeared in '~' and 'tab'. I took it again to Apple Store, they replaced top part again. And again same issue with different keys. I took it there again, since replacing top case didn't help they proposed to replace whole laptop. I agreed. New laptop had the same issue again so I had nothing to do but wait when Apple will acknowledge the issue. They didn't but started to replace keyboards because of key stucking issue, so I requested a fix again and finally they managed to fix it...
Sure, performance will increase, I'm not arguing with that. I was just refering to my own experience. Personally, particarly this issue, made me use servers/clusters more, so data analysis or massive code compilation I do remotely, and for me 'Pro' now means a stable OS, good screen, good touchpad, good sound laptop which just runs IDE and browser (and occasional small Python tests of algorithms in Jupiter).
Everything thermal throttles, that's what turbo is.
The issue last year was because Apple was applying the thermal throttling in such a way as to make the average performance of the CPU significantly lower than it needed to be by throttling too much, too quickly then recovering to too high of a clock speed too quickly thus ping-ponging between a very fast/high/hot state and a very low/cool state. In many cases the CPU would drop down below 600mhz for me for periods of time.
A proper setup will have a graph with a brief (~30s) burst to turbo max followed by a thermal throttle slightly below what the system can sustain followed by a recovery to the max sustained clock speed at just below the thermal limit.
e.g. 4.2ghz for 30s to 2.2ghz recovering to 2.6ghz sustained.
The exact profile is highly workload dependent but a properly designed system invariably follows that general profile.
Using Safari with an adblocking extension that makes use of WebKit’s native content blocking capabilities makes an enormous difference when it comes to heat and power draw. I’ve tried Chrome and Firefox with uBlock Origin and both are considerably more demanding in CPU use while not being that much faster. Where Chrome and Firefox has my fans ramped up to 60%, Safari has them running at 10% or switched off.
Really wish both Google and Mozilla would press pause on feature development for a couple of years and make efficiency the top priority.
Any recommendation on a good adblocking extension for Safari on MacOS? I've been using KaBlock but I've not found a great source that meaningfully compares the existing options.
It costs a couple bucks but Wipr does pretty well and gets regular updates.
Another nice bonus to content blocker extensions like these is that they’re just JSON rule lists that Safari compiles into bytecode and runs against pages as they load. The extensions are barred from access to everything, meaning they can’t be bought up and turned into Trojan horses.
P.S. I'm not a picky person. I work in a quiet office so even my colleague noticed the issue without me pointing. At the beginning I really wanted to fix the issue. Later it was rather for 'feedback' and a matter of principle.
We repair these as part of our business, and to be clear, both the keyboards and the screens are failing on these at an alarming rate.
iFixit detailed the issues with the screens, which (in Apple's unending quest for "thinness") use a thinner flex cable to connect the display to the rest of the laptop. This thinner cable is prone to breakage, and we are already seeing 2016-2017 MacBook Pros in our shop regularly for this issue.
Since Apple built the flex cable into the display, the only solution (even from third parties like us) is a new display. At $600-$700 each, this is unacceptable.
And, like the keyboards, this is a part that's pretty much guaranteed to fail (unless you basically never open your laptop.)
Apple hasn't announced a fix yet, even with a petition with over 11,000 signatures, and more screens failing by the day.
From the time the keyboard issues happened, I made a strong recommendation to avoid buying these. If you can do your work on a PC, do so. (Personally, I now use a Dell XPS 15 as a "desktop replacement", and kept my old 2013 MacBook Pro around too.) If you need a Mac, consider a desktop version (with a SSD!), or stick with the 2015 or older MacBooks.
Even if you think the keyboard issues are fixed, consider too that this is the 4th generation of these keyboards--and Apple promised that the 2nd and 3rd generation would fix these as well. This plus the screen issues means switching to PC if you need speed should be a serious consideration.
I had this issue. I assumed it was heat related, as the laptops can get real hot and sometimes I’m sure it doesn’t shut down properly when you close it - on mine the marks corresponded with the top bit of the keyboard, where it gets hottest.
Brought it in under Apple care and it was replaced (along with the keyboard, rolls eyes) no questions.
I would add to this that I genuinely don't think that the keyboard failures are due to dust - it seems far more likely to me that the switches are simply failing due to poor design.
Yeah the upgrade policy at my work kicked in and they tried to give me one of these... instead I got a Thinkpad X1 Extreme and put Linux on it. No regrets.
I'm curious to hear about your experience with the X1 Extreme. My current employer has an equipment stipend that's the exact cost of a maxed out 15" macbook, I'd rather get the Thinkpad, a nice monitor and go to a conference.
Have one of the new 15" macbook pro with touch bar. My keyboard will never break simply because I never, ever use it. It's awful to type on, possibly the worst keyboard I've ever used. As is the track pad. I have a mouse plugged into it so I don't have to use the track pad. My MBP is basically a compact desktop machine and for that it is great. Fast and responsive.
Did something change regarding the trackpad? MacBook trackpads have always been at the top of the class, far better than any other manufacturer by leaps and bounds.
Well, you don't need to use the keyboard extensively to break it. I used my MBP 2017 in the same manner as you, but still have to replace the keyboard twice.
Thanks for the downvote on what I thought was not even controversial. If we have to discuss whether "SSD is undoubtedly the single biggest system performance upgrade in the past 10 years." is correct then I think we can call it agree to disagree.
Not much point in complaining about downvotes on here. There is a certain population of, well, professional contrarians on HN, and there's also the (deliberately?) poor design decision that places the upvote and downvote arrows a few pixels apart. Someone may have voted you down by mistake. Think empty boat[1], not U-boat.
Leaked Apple service documents did say that the intent of the latest gen was to fix the reliability problems, so I don't think it's just an assumption.
I will agree and add a data point here. My 2017 MBP has had chronic keyboard issues, despite being in for repair twice and having had the entire top case replaced. Seriously disappointed in this computer considering the price I paid. I am planning my escape from this platform.
Keep profits up by externalizing cost of ownership.
If Apple is looking to be a totally integrated vertical, they would be wise to bring the fixit community into their stores and actually fix these things.
The status quo of push people to replace increases costs for folks today and the mess of disposable high tech gadgets onto the next generations.
Well, hopefully plural. But we seem keen to fuck that possibility right up while we fetishize our own feelings of unjustifiable entitlement.
I love my Dell Latitude 5491 - six cores is more than enough for my work at the moment, and the NVMe drive absolutely screams. Much lighter than a workstation notebook, too.
Thanks, this makes me feel better about my decision a couple months ago to switch to Lenovo's ThinkPad P1 Mobile Workstation. I don't have any regrets switching from Apple hardware, and frankly Linux is so much more superior (especially when using i3[0]), I'm quite pleased with it.
(The only complaint I have with the ThinkPad is the fan is super aggressive and very loud. It usually doesn't run for long, but it spins up with a whirring noise pretty often for 1-5 seconds before slowing down.)
Went exactly the same route a few weeks ago deciding between a new macbook pro or something else and went for the P1. Had some troubles with the UEFI due to outdated firmware (be sure to update that first thing) and other than that, I'm quite happy with the results. Battery life could be better, the fans are indeed more aggressive and I miss some of the touch gestures (swipe for browsing) that I didn't yet get to set up. My previous device was a late '14 MBP and that still works fine but is getting slow and quite hot.
Yeah, I am a fan of Arch on the desktop, but the P1 runs Nvidia's P1000 chip and Arch doesn't seem to like that, so I went with Ubuntu+i3 for now. Updating the firmware first is definitely critical, as you could brick the machine otherwise.
I'll echo my disappointment in battery life, although admittedly i3 and xfce defaults are probably not doing me any favors here...
> this is a part that's pretty much guaranteed to fail (unless you basically never open your laptop.)
I have a 2016 MacBook "Pro", and every single part has been replaced (thanks, Apple Care) except the bottom plate.
It seems to me they are not really designed to be moved, or used in an environment with, you know, particles and such. Plug it in once, put a transparent dome over it, look at it, and you'll be just fine.
My 2016 is the first MBP where I've felt that. I have huge dents on it and it's in a Thule laptop bag if it's not on my desk. I'm not exactly gentle on my backpack but I never had to concern myself with my old 2015s (had a couple of these). I rarely use it outside of work, I take it home just for emergencies and it sits on my coat rack in the bag.
And you know what I'd totally pay $3k for a full on desktop replacement that does what I do with it. Fatten it up, give it better thermals, removable batteries, make it MORE durable, etc. I remember using 12lb Dell laptops. We're past the point of diminishing returns on portability now.
I'm pretty sure mine has a gnarly corner gash (at the corner of the monitor) from tossing it onto my cars leather seat while its in its padded backpack.. sad.
i am sticking to my 2017 macbook air. This is from a time when apple knew what they where doing, and it has a proper usb port. And the handy magnetic connector that saved my laptop more times than i care to mention. My next laptop prob wont be a mac.
I feel this comment is very misleading, since it looks like you are describing these new 8-core machines, which have been announced literally today and you cannot possibly have any experience of.
> If you need a Mac, consider a desktop version (with a SSD!), or stick with the 2015 or older MacBooks.
This is what I did.
I bought a 15'' 2015 model the day after the 2016 models were announced. I didn't even know about the keyboard problems, but the touchbar, the lack of ports, the price, and the shallow key travel were deal breakers for me.
I used it for about a year but the integrated GPU and the 4th gen CPU ran too hot. At the time I lived in Cancún so quite hot, and the fan noise was becoming annoying even when doing skype calls and such. Also running it on my lap was uncomfortable.
So at the start of 2018 I sold the MBP and got a 5K iMac with SSD since I really didn't need the portability anymore. Best Mac I've ever owned.
I have an old 2014 13'' MBP laying around which I use in the rare occasions I'm away from my iMac.
Not seeing anyone else mention this problem so perhaps I'm an edge case but I have a 3 month old Macbook Pro (work supplied, fortunately) and I'm getting double presses on certain keys. I've managed to ameliorate it a bit with software [0] but it's still a disgrace that this is happening on a $4K machine.
I've had a 13" MBP with Touch Bar since December 2016 and have had keys that felt weird, keys that repeated, keys that didn't work unless you pressed really hard, and keys that didn't work no matter how hard you pressed them.
I've had the top case replaced for free two times under warranty, and the extended 4-year warranty does make me slighty less worried. The battery is also replaced as part of the top case which is a pretty nice bonus.
Though it is still a major inconvenience to be without my main computer for a week while it's being repaired.
Mine started after probably 8 months. I ignored it until it became work stopping (I decided against installing software to compensate) and had it replaced under warranty. Soon after getting it back I got a keyboard cover which seems to be doing its job. I hate accessories, and am really disappointed they released a new mbp in this same form-factor.
For now the display fix is only for 2016 displays; though I suspect with more bad press they’ll extend to 2017 and 2018 models too.
I have a 2016 model which is starting to get the stage light problem. I wonder if it’s worth getting it fixed now or if I should wait until it gets worse before taking it in for servicing.
> And a free fix for keyboard issues on all butterfly keyboard laptops
Don't know about the very latest one (assuming there is 4th gen) but so far this has been more like a workaround that breaks down again at some point since the design is not solid. Getting an inherently flawed replacement for free isn't worth celebrating IMHO especially considering how expensive these things are.
I've had issues with macbook pro keyboards for every model since the 2016 one, but I've never had an issue with Apple not doing an in-warranty repair. In fact, usually they swap out the battery for me during these repairs too.
Contrast this with every other PC manufacturer where they require me to ship the item to them, wait for weeks. Apple gives it back to me within a couple of days.
A Lenovo (or Dell, and maybe also HP, haven't looked at their offerings recently) laptop in the price class of a Macbook Pro typically comes with on-site warranty support (and for cheaper business models it's typically an affordable upgrade), or you can bring or ship it to a local service partner and have them fix it and deal with the warranty claim.
My first and only buy has a serious quality factory issue: two keys not working, screw under a third one, and God knows what within the laptop.
The shop I bought redirected me to Lenovo website for the exchange, three numbers later (two weren't working at all) I am waiting for a document from Lenovo then I can go back to the shop for the exchange. It might take 5 days or one month.
I am a bit unhappy. At least the warranty is cheap (yeah?)
I just upgraded my 13" 2015 Macbook Pro's SSD from 256GB -> 1 TB for ~100 USD. With 16 GB of RAM, a great keyboard that's given me no issues, recently replaced screen lamination under warranty, and now a faster and larger SSD, I see absolutely no reason to upgrade to the new generation of Macbooks in the next few years.
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Apple ducked up big time with the post-2015 generation MacBooks, and it was caused by the weird hunt for thinness and gimmicky features which nobody want from a professional portable workstation.
"Thinner than a 2015 MacBook Pro" is last on most people’s wishlists. What good is a thin laptop if the keyboard fails and the performance you pay for can't be used since the operating temperature is too high?
It says a lot about a company when a large amount of customers just don’t care for the new features and they just want the new performance in the old form factor.
It’s like the ones who made the current generation never uses a laptop, and has no idea about how people are actually using the product.
But if you don’t like butterfly keyboards... yep, still butterfly even if it’s reliable now.
"Today, however, [Apple] told me that they’re taking three explicit steps to help with the keyboard situation. 1. The MacBook Pro keyboard mechanism has had a materials change in the mechanism. [...]"
The 2017 does have changes vs the 2016 to make it quieter and less clicky.
These shitty keyboards cast a shadow over the whole product line. If they didn't fix it the third time around, it's time to abandon the damn mechanism and accept that thicc computers can be beautiful, too.
The crazy thing is that it was/is. Who didn’t love it?
It still looks to have the same camera I had in my 2009 MBP...this can't be a cost/space/engineering thing since iPhones exist. I don't care if it's higher res. Make it higher quality and less noisy. I genuinely miss charging and battery LEDs they removed from the case (and magsafe). I've plugged in my laptop overnight only to find it never charged once or twice. I see the touchbar causing more problems than it solves.
I'm actually disappointed. I was hoping whatever next Macbook Pro they released would be a significant update or offer more compelling things.
It's like they're trying to be as stupid as possible.
(At work I have a 15" MBP with the 2013 body. I'm eligible for upgrading it, but what would I replace it with that could possibly be better? Literally the only downside that I care about is the fact that most conference rooms at work no longer have magsafes lying around.)
The MacBook touch pads are leagues above all the competition. It’s the number one thing that keeps me away from my think pads.
On the other hand, Apple's touchpads have to be configured to even enable tap-to-click(?!), and click-and-drag doesn't even work with it... On pretty much any non-Apple touchpad and OS combination, double-tapping on a draggable object enables dragging mode, where you can move the object around the screen with one finger.
If Apple seriously got its software story together, it would at least support better configurability for its touchpads. But even then, it wouldn't have physical buttons, which I prefer.
But I don't miss the keyboard. Or the touchbar. Or the hotkey layout. Or the operating system. Or not being able to upgrade my hard drive when I needed to.
I would love to see real data about the Touch Bar, but sadly it’ll never get released. So we are all left to private theories and speculation and anecdotes.
Just this month I got matching external keyboards for all, and it's been much easier having one set of muscle memory no matter what I'm doing.
My problem is that due to wrist injury I angle my left hand enough that my pinky finger sometimes touches esc or other areas. I have remapped the touch bar but not having esc where I want it also sucks. Mechanical keys don't actuate merely on touch, so this is only a problem on apple.
I'm considering remapping caps lock to esc and then putting tape over the touchbar, at least on the left side, to reduce sensitivity
WTF, honestly.
I don't believe the non-touchbar model has received a single spec update since it was announced (though I am having difficulty determining that for sure)
Well it's all 14nm Skylake, so that really doesn't matter at all.
I also suspect today's bump is kind of a "holding pattern" update and Apple is working on a more significant redesign of their laptop line that's going to try and address the criticism they've been receiving over the last couple of years. (While it's possible we'll see the first sign of that at WWDC, seeing this press release just a couple weeks before WWDC makes me suspect that we won't see truly new laptops until 2020.)
Not perfect, but at least sort of helpful.
The main point, let me have a nice version without the touchbar is shared.
This makes me confident they'll add haptic feedback in the next Macbook.
I mean, look at the Dell XPS 15 keyboard. All that space on both sides of the keyboard, and yet they make us chord to do something as simple as Page Down.
That would consume room for the touchpad.
Here's the keyboard in all its glory (if you're curious): https://www.apple.com/newsroom/images/product/mac/standard/M...
I never use Caps Lock anyway.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
> the fact that it crashes every time the battery runs out.
This. Mine crashed with caffeinate on and would boot into state where display is off. Took me an hour and bunch of stress reset SMC/NVRAM/etc that brought it back to life.
The only thing I'm missing in my mac -> linux conversion, is lightroom (it seems to process raw files better). I'm getting better at the linux equivalent "darktable". I sometimes feel I would pay for software on linux to get a polished experience.
I thought the ESC key was going to be annoying, but it has ended up being everything else.
also the huge trackpad is annoying. at home with the laptop on my lap I hit the edges all the time and send the mouse flying. had to turn off "hot corners" because I kept locking my laptop randomly.
I actually wish they had a touch id sensor on the back of the display like some Android phones so it is accessible when I have the machine plugged into a display.
I really, really don't want thinner. I want the glued in battery banned, and a replaceable keyboard with ability to clean and replace the keys. I guess I just want a different definition of Pro.
You can use phrase "the fastest Mac notebook ever" each year when a new notebook released.
However I don’t see Intel switching to AMD. They have all the same problems, more or less. Primarily Apple has little control over their future with an outside supplier.
I might bite if they've fixed this. Oh and no touch bar.
Not worth buying until we have at LEAST a few months of experience to see if they really did this time.
They say it's improved. But check back in a year or so to see if it works, because the 3rd gen revisions didn't end up fixing it before.
If you have a 3rd gen butterfly keyboard, replacements will now use the 4th gen.
If you have a 1st or 2nd, they'll continue to replace the failing keyboards with more failing keyboards. Lucky me!
In other news for the 2016 MBP, there's a new repair extension program for the "Oops we made the display ribbon cable too short" issue. Haven't had that problem myself, but this was an expensive goddamn laptop and I'm not optimistic about its resale value or lifespan after the 4 year repair window is up. Multiple known design flaws that cost $600-$800, and in the keyboard's case are just putting in more of the same failure-prone parts.
I don't want thinner. I don't want a touchbar. I don't want this oversized touchpad I touch constantly when it's on my lap. I don't want this terrible keyboard solution required due to the desire for thinness. I don't want to carry 3 USBC dongles or to buy a $350 USBC hub at every single desk I have with monitors (home, work). I want a bigger battery. I want more ports. I want less bezel. I want a chassis that doesn't scratch and dent.
Any idea what's wrong with it?
I switched to a Macbook soon after and it is just as fast today as it was when I got it four years ago. I recently fired up that old T420 and popped an older, unused SSD into it. Instant game-changer. It is unbelievable how much faster it is with an SSD, the same speed it was with Windows 7 when I first got it.
Seriously, get an SSD.
Hard to get much faster than instant.
(TBH the same issue happens on a Mac though, except Safari instead of Edge).
Anything unique about it? Are you running Windows 10? Latest updates? Need any driver updates? (Most drivers are updated by Windows but a few, like graphics/network sometimes benefit from checking yourself.)
Are you running a (really) resource intensive anti-virus program?
I own an $800 Asus gaming laptop and a $700 Asus ultrabook. One with 7th gen i7 and 16GB DDR. The other with 8th gen i7 and 16GB DDR. One has SATA SSD and other NVMe SSD. One is 1 year old. The other is 2 years old.
Both of them can run Visual Studio Professional, VS Code, Netflix, Hulu, StarCraft 2. Both are very fast and a joy to use. One is heavy; the other is light!
If it has a 5400 rpm hard drive, consider getting a 2.5" SSD to replace it, and use software to clone the drive. (Although it kind of sounds like you could use a fresh install.)
in order to eek out a tenth of a gigahertz for their marketing materials (with rapidly diminishing returns because physics), manufacturers usually set Turbo Boost Power Limits 5-10 (or more) watts too high. Since Turbo Boost usually maximizes a single core's frequency and the heat generated increases exponentially, it creates a very concentrated heat spike in the silicon. Even if the CPU heat sink is good enough to passively dissipate that much heat from all of the cores, the turbo boost hot spot forces the fans to spin up early before the CPU knows how long the boost will be needed (otherwise Turbo boost would significantly reduce the lifetime of the CPU). Combined with random scheduled OS tasks that take a split second of turbo to run a process [..]
This could also apply to thermal throttling of the CPU. Imagine if your laptop is on that edge, with some dust in the heatsinks and fans, then a can of compressed air and an install of ThrottleStop (or other software) to underclock a little and reduce the maximum boost frequency, and thereby reduce thermal throttling, might make it run smoother and faster-on-average.
Or another possibility:
If your fan is spinning up when scrolling in Slack it's likely an indication that Electron (Chrome) is refusing to use the GPU for rendering acceleration. This is likely either due to a driver issue or the driver/gpu being on chrome's blacklist. I had this problem once on a hackintosh and as I recall starting Slack from a terminal with the `--ignore-gpu-blacklist` option fixed it.
If you NetFlix from Chrome, that might be worth a try, or upgrade/downgrade display drivers for testing. ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19415775 )
An i7 that could stream video, should still be able to stream video. If it can't, something has gone wrong, and should be traceable and fixable.
Thinner means you take away my ports so I have to carry dongles. Yes, I'd actually love to have at least one old-fashioned USB2 port. I know, I'm insane, but USB2 devices didn't exactly disappear just because USB-C is great. I still have a lot of them.
Thinner means you take away magsafe, which is one of those great "gosh, apple is so clever" features that's very, very useful.
Thinner means you give me a keyboard which, at best, completely sucks (layout, feel) and at worst, can't actually do its job because of reliability problems.
Thinner means I could have more battery life.
I'm literally carrying around TWO 2015 MBPs on a daily basis right now and it's TOTALLY FINE, APPLE. I'm not dying over the weight or amount of space they take up. I hardly even notice. For what developers do with laptops, thinner is way down on the priority list. I wish you'd listen to us.
Also: I literally have no use for the touchbar that isn't perfectly handled by function keys, and I hit ESC 1000 times a day because I'm a vim user. Why do you hate me?
Please just release a mac that looks exactly like a 2015 MBP with an i9 and some USB-C ports, and I will be lining up to throw $3k at you. As is, I'm getting as much life out of my 2015's as I possibly can (they're running great, btw, but I doubt they'll make it to your next refresh if it's 3 years away). When they finally die, if the only MBPs available have garbage keyboards and touchbars, I will grudgingly stop being a Mac user.
I'm not sure it does really. The modern MacBook Air chassis is the same size as the old one. But it's lost Magsafe, a useful keyboard, USB-A, it's lost a port on the 13 inch, and no SD card slot.
Apple hasn't got rid of these things for thinness. It's gotten rid of them because of a misguided belief that the replacements are better than the loss of flexibility, or just plain working.
Apple are wrong about these things. But the problem is much more fundamentally that Apple seems to have lost it's ability to engineer well and it's judgement about how to please it's Mac customers. Thinness is just a symptom.
Evidence that it hasn't: the hundreds of people walking around my workplace with gigantic USB 2.0 + HDMI + displayport dongles dangling from their laptops all the time, or starting meetings by saying "oh shit, i left my dongle in the other building. Can I borrow someone's so I can use the projector?"
When floppies were removed, almost nobody had to purchase external floppy drives to use their existing library of floppies.
1.44mb is pretty useless when you already have a flood of cheap USB flash drives 64+mb at the time.
Heck, even during the windows 95 days, I only touched floppies to be able to boot into ms-dos to reinstall windows.
When you buy a brand spanking new $1500 iPhone Xs and a brand spanking new $4000 MBP and walk out of the Apple Store with no way to connect the two without a dongle, you know you’re eating whatever shit Apple is feeding you.
> I'm not sure it does really.
Not 100% true, you're right, but the thinness is definitely the reason ethernet went. My 2010 had an RJ45 on it, and there's just no room for it on the 2015 or the later ones. However, I do think the design aesthetic that calls for thinness is related to the design aesthetic that fetishizes the simplicity of having as few blemishes on the case as possible. Floppy eject button? We can do it in software. Mouse buttons? Reduce it to one. No wait, reduce it to zero (magic mouse). Trackpad buttons? Remove them. Ports? As few as possible. Sleek. I feel like putting on a black turtleneck.
Do yourself a favour:
https://vim.fandom.com/wiki/Map_caps_lock_to_escape_in_macOS
2) I already have capslock remapped to "hyper" aka ctrl+alt+shift+command and use it heavily.
32gb ram and an 8 core processor is awesome, but all the downsides have turned me away from getting the next gen unless they fix those things.
I don't really get the hate for these keyboards. I benchmarked my typing speed on my 2019 MBP and a few other keyboards, I didn't notice any significant difference. Just a keyboard...
Yeah but there's no way this thing has the thermal or power capacity to actually run that 8-core CPU at its rated specs. This already happened with the 6-core in the previous gen, and it certainly doesn't look like Apple did anything to improve thermal capacity in this refresh. Hopefully they at least addressed the lack of VRM power delivery, but that doesn't seem likely.
So you're taking a platform that was already pushed past its thermal & power capacities, and increased the thermal & power load by another 30% (keep in mind these are all still on Intel's 14nm that hasn't really changed, so no efficiency improvements here). Maybe the reviews will be surprising, but I wouldn't bet on it.
Well, it says they did, but I guess you know better.
I don't see any comments from Apple talking about improving the cooling. What are you referring to? And what did they change? It still looks like the same tiny opening in the hinge, with no additional venting anywhere?
2018 Macbook Pro is 3mm thinner than 2015 MBP.
0.5mm for all the things you asked for sounds really hard.
When I sit with the laptop on my lap, like on the couch, I find that I'm constantly adjusting things to not touch it. Whether it's my jacket or a blanket or my phone cable or my own hand. I just constantly trigger it and I'm sure I have it on the lowest sensitivity with palm rejection. I'm pretty sure even when I'm on a desk I'm constantly adjusting where my arms are because it's getting triggered (or I just feel like I have to pay attention to it).
FWIW, I dislike every single Apple keyboard, mouse and touchpad ever created and refuse to use them to the point that I bring my own kb/mouse to work because every job hands me those. I have tried them, at times, for months.
You may not realize it yet, but you are no longer Apple's market. Do your future self a favor and figure out how to transition to something sustainable.
Apple used to make computers that were both elegant and practical... But the iphone taught execs that there is a much more profitable market willing to pay through the roof for extremely stylish looking computers at the cost of _everything_ else, they will keep going further down this road because there is plenty of demand. Apple now sell gorgeous Ferraris, but the kind that will drive you insane and are not actually useful or comfortable for anything other than showing off.
The good news is that sexy PC laptops now exist, and some of them are still actually practical too! better yet some of those sexy practical laptops run Linux! Well!
Guess it depends on what kind of stuff you do. I adopted that workflow years ago out of necessity (need to routinely do some heavy lifting) and will never go back.
You can get an 8 Core 27 inch 5K iMac $100 cheaper, with less thermal constraints.
Sure I would take one if my company paid for it.
The situation isn't helped by the GPU inside the same slim mbpro chassis that also gets super hot, it's particularly bad when you run mixed CPU/GPU workloads like rendering. So your desktop ends up being much faster for continuous workloads, even if on paper they both have 8-core 5ghz CPUs.
I had the 2018 6-core i9 mbpro. Got rid of it, if I were to buy a new mbpro again I would get a 4-core one.
Apple has a couple of eGPUs they made with Blackmagic (AMD RX580 - you don't want this one - and Vega 56), very slick looking and silent but unfortunately GPUs not user upgradeable and not great value for money.
You can use most tb3 eGPU enclosures and an AMD GPU of your choice. Vega64 prob the best choice now, Navi around the corner, can't use NVidia at all thanks to Apple. It'll cost you less than the official Apple eGPU and the GPU will be upgradeable
No better display like oled. Looks like the same keyboard to me. Oh the material has changed? Who cares, it's the same failing mechanism. More CPU eh? Means it'll just get hotter much quicker and there will be more throttling to be fixed via software.
At this rate, for Apple to get my $$$ again they'll have to release a 16" [oled] macbook pro, with a redesigned keyboard and arm chipset so that the body is entirely cool even under load.
Maybe in 2022 I can see myself buying another macbook pro. Man, I can't wait till Tim Cook gets replaced. We need another visionary at he helm of Apple. Someone who will push the envelope again!
It's just that they keep introducing stupid, useless gimmicks.
I've only ever had a 2016+ MBP as a work computer so I didn't mind the USB-C stuff too much (especially with a dock that I didn't have to pay for). The lack of dedicated ethernet port and SD card reader is vexxing though (on my personal 2015 MBP).
The disadvantage is that one of those USB-C ports will be your charging port when there is only 4 on the 15" and 2 on the 13".
I don't mind USB-C/Thunderbolt so much, I think it's great we'll get products that will be forced to adopt it (looking at you, audio interfaces/DACs). The MBP has been a port desert for a long time and dongles are awful UX - and they just keep removing more and more of them.
It baffles me when they try and do things that seem to improve UI/UX, like the touchbar (which I hate, but I get it), the move to Retina displays, high quality dual-front facing speakers on all models now, etc... but then they turn around and remove IO options and roll out a terrible keyboard. It seems like they have warped priorities for the mac line.
Personally if the move to ARM and don't offer MacOS as a standalone product, the pro-media world will probably abandon Macs altogether. And I don't really want to develop for another OS, I love mac. The machines are just awful.
Such an unnecessary ‘enhancement’, and reminds me of the old HP Pavilion laptops, touting Altec Lansing speakers, which I thought was asinine.
Even with pixel shifting you can still get retention too, so that's not really an option right now. I'm hopeful some company in the future will come up with a way to prevent it altogether - but it's going to have to be some kind of new screen tech.
And the butterfly mechanism is unproven and untrustworthy, I don't care how many times they update it.
They need to go back to using the same keyboard mechanisms for both their desktops and laptops, and they need to go back to the old arrow key layout.
I will wait another year until 2020.
Aside from that, across 2 MacBook Pro's and a MacBook Air, I've had 0 keyboard issues. I don't know if I've just gotten lucky, kept my keyboard clean, or what, but it just has never been a problem for me.
I'm fed up and switching to a different brand.
Really wish Apple would start offering touch bar as an option when you purchase!
It's by far the most infuriating aspect of this new keyboard.
Another thing that I have a hard time explaining is my inability to orientate myself on this keyboard; several times a day I have to move the laptop around, look at the keys and "reset" myself to the keyboard. I don't know what that's about but I've only ever experienced it on this keyboard.
My personal machine is a 2014 MBP which will be replaced with something other than a mac once the time comes.
I'm probably not buying a new macbook pro for a long time... it's just not worth it to have such a high end machine that I use as a glorified traveling mac mini.
For my next work upgrade I am requesting a linux laptop.
And of course the 8 core option, at $2799, only has 512GB of disk space and 16GB RAM. If you want a reasonable 32GB and 1TB disk space (which presumably you would if you have a use for 8 cores), it's a whopping $3,600.
And that is of course before accessories and tax.
I thought that after the overpriced iphone release they would have changed their pricing on everything else, but I guess it's just same old apple.
Well, after they did that other phone manufacturers announced even more expensive phones, so I'm not sure they're stepping back from that so soon.
Switching from 512MB to 1TB SSD: +$400
WHY? This is literally the only thing that bothers me about Apple pricing. I get that you pay for the design, I get the quirks like introducing touch bar, everything. But I don't get why upgrading from a $50 to a $100 SSD adds 400 dollars.
If you have criticism, price isn't a valid one.
But you can definitely argue that they should have cheaper/slower options so that consumers who don't need blazing fast SSDs can still benefit from increased storage.
Here's how the 2018 Macbook's SSD stacks up against the competition: https://cdn.macrumors.com/article-new/2018/07/macbookprossdt...
That's why there's such a huge price difference. Not because they're randomly picking high upgrade prices to screw customers.
I'm extremely skeptical that Apple has some magic SSD with 6.5x read/write speed of everyone else.
[1] https://www.samsung.com/us/computing/memory-storage/solid-st...
https://imgur.com/a/ug87MaI
Apple doesn't manufacture SSDs, they buy them from the same companies that Dell, HP, Asus, etc... do. There isn't special Mac only models of those drives, it's all the same hardware in the end. The only advantage I see is that Apple was quick to switch to M.2 and macrumors cherry picked their competition to avoid PCs with M.2 SSDs.
The read / write speeds on the SSD in the Macbook Pro are insane.
see: https://www.macrumors.com/2018/07/13/2018-macbook-pro-fastes...
we are talking at least 6x what other laptops use.
It's the difference between cheap SATA SSDs and expensive NVMe PCIe SSDs.
Search for comps on any online retailer and you'll see how expensive and fast those are.
> Search for comps on any online retailer and you'll see how expensive and fast those are.
$250 for a 1TB 970 EVO Plus. Which has better write throughput.
https://imgur.com/a/ug87MaI
That 250$ more to upgrade to the 1tb from the 512gb.
the retail price of the upgrade is 450$
OP said it's a 50$ upgrade.
It is not.
It's a 450$ retail price and 250$ sale price for a slightly slower SSD.
Yes, companies make money when they do things for you.
And OP was wrong, that doesn't make you right:
> They are not 'suspicious' they really are that fast compared to the standard cheap SSDs.
They're not that fast compared to SSDs retailing for half the price of the upgrade.
> Search for comps on any online retailer and you'll see how expensive and fast those are.
I did and they're not.
> It's a 450$ retail price and 250$ sale price for a slightly slower SSD.
No matter how much you hate it, it's still a $250 retail price: https://www.newegg.com/samsung-970-evo-plus-1tb/p/N82E168201... And a $125 upgrade: https://www.newegg.com/samsung-970-evo-plus-500gb/p/N82E1682...
On the original article[1] the table also shows results from a synthetic benchmark. This shows 2.6GB/s for Macbook and 1.2GB/s for Dell XPS. They also mention that it's a bit apple vs oranges, since different tools were used for the benchmark.
[1] https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/2018-macbook-pro-benchmar...
More problematically, it also has serious latency degradation issues when working outside the SLC cache: https://www.anandtech.com/show/13078/the-intel-ssd-660p-ssd-...
No one is saying those SSDs are Apple exclusive, they are however expensive.
They charge 450$ retail and 250$ on special for a slightly slower SSD
https://imgur.com/a/ug87MaI
The 1TB EVO Plus is $250 on newegg. Not as replacement for an existing 500GB, just retail price for the drive. The 2TB EVO is listed at $550, the 2TB EVO Plus is listed at $650.
Edit: I don’t really understand downvotes. SSD on recent Macbook Pros does connect to the northbridge via 4 PCIe lanes. And this is not what “but look I can the same for £50” SSD does.
I guess there's a reason it's "Pro".
The issue last year was because Apple was applying the thermal throttling in such a way as to make the average performance of the CPU significantly lower than it needed to be by throttling too much, too quickly then recovering to too high of a clock speed too quickly thus ping-ponging between a very fast/high/hot state and a very low/cool state. In many cases the CPU would drop down below 600mhz for me for periods of time.
A proper setup will have a graph with a brief (~30s) burst to turbo max followed by a thermal throttle slightly below what the system can sustain followed by a recovery to the max sustained clock speed at just below the thermal limit.
e.g. 4.2ghz for 30s to 2.2ghz recovering to 2.6ghz sustained.
The exact profile is highly workload dependent but a properly designed system invariably follows that general profile.
... unless the system was designed to handle the thermal load, in which case it would not thermal-throttle and you'd see a sustained clock speed.
Really wish both Google and Mozilla would press pause on feature development for a couple of years and make efficiency the top priority.
Another nice bonus to content blocker extensions like these is that they’re just JSON rule lists that Safari compiles into bytecode and runs against pages as they load. The extensions are barred from access to everything, meaning they can’t be bought up and turned into Trojan horses.
iFixit detailed the issues with the screens, which (in Apple's unending quest for "thinness") use a thinner flex cable to connect the display to the rest of the laptop. This thinner cable is prone to breakage, and we are already seeing 2016-2017 MacBook Pros in our shop regularly for this issue.
Since Apple built the flex cable into the display, the only solution (even from third parties like us) is a new display. At $600-$700 each, this is unacceptable.
And, like the keyboards, this is a part that's pretty much guaranteed to fail (unless you basically never open your laptop.)
Apple hasn't announced a fix yet, even with a petition with over 11,000 signatures, and more screens failing by the day.
From the time the keyboard issues happened, I made a strong recommendation to avoid buying these. If you can do your work on a PC, do so. (Personally, I now use a Dell XPS 15 as a "desktop replacement", and kept my old 2013 MacBook Pro around too.) If you need a Mac, consider a desktop version (with a SSD!), or stick with the 2015 or older MacBooks.
Even if you think the keyboard issues are fixed, consider too that this is the 4th generation of these keyboards--and Apple promised that the 2nd and 3rd generation would fix these as well. This plus the screen issues means switching to PC if you need speed should be a serious consideration.
iFixit article on "stage light" display issues/"flexgate": https://ifixit.org/blog/12903/flexgate/
Brought it in under Apple care and it was replaced (along with the keyboard, rolls eyes) no questions.
MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2016, Four Thunderbolt 3 Ports) MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2016, Two Thunderbolt 3 Ports)
>Note: No other Mac notebook models are part of this program.
Sigh.
Are there any reliable ~$1000 laptops to host linux?
... what? That's simply not true.
Dell also has an upcoming Memorial Day sale where they will discount certain models, and the new XPS 15 is due out next month.
https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/xps-15/spd/xps-...
The storage in the MBP is wicked fast even in the base configuration.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Huawei-MateBook-13-i7-8565U-Ge...
Samsung PM981s (and really Samsung SSDs in general) tend to trounce the competition, but IIRC the XPS 13 uses some mediocre SK Hynix SKU.
It's massive, needlessly so in my opinion.
SSD is undoubtedly the single biggest system performance upgrade in the past 10 years.
And we will soon past the halfway point of 2019, Apple is still selling an iMac with 1TB 5400 RPM HDD by default.
Apart from AirPod and Apple Watch, there is nothing on the current Apple's product line I am satisfy with.
[1] https://www.thedailyzen.org/2015/05/27/the-empty-boat-by-chu...
Personally, I think it makes no sense to complain that some large company is selling an option that you don't want.
I don't think is true is it? I think this was just an assumption people made.
Despite the constant outrage on HN, I have a 2018 15" MBP and have had zero issues with the keyboard breaking or screen failing.
If Apple is looking to be a totally integrated vertical, they would be wise to bring the fixit community into their stores and actually fix these things.
The status quo of push people to replace increases costs for folks today and the mess of disposable high tech gadgets onto the next generations.
Well, hopefully plural. But we seem keen to fuck that possibility right up while we fetishize our own feelings of unjustifiable entitlement.
(The only complaint I have with the ThinkPad is the fan is super aggressive and very loud. It usually doesn't run for long, but it spins up with a whirring noise pretty often for 1-5 seconds before slowing down.)
[0]: https://i3wm.org/
I'll echo my disappointment in battery life, although admittedly i3 and xfce defaults are probably not doing me any favors here...
You can even turn the fan higher than Lenovo lets it (but it might fuck your fan over... Oops)
I have a 2016 MacBook "Pro", and every single part has been replaced (thanks, Apple Care) except the bottom plate.
It seems to me they are not really designed to be moved, or used in an environment with, you know, particles and such. Plug it in once, put a transparent dome over it, look at it, and you'll be just fine.
And you know what I'd totally pay $3k for a full on desktop replacement that does what I do with it. Fatten it up, give it better thermals, removable batteries, make it MORE durable, etc. I remember using 12lb Dell laptops. We're past the point of diminishing returns on portability now.
My personal 2013 has led a pretty rough life (including a couple of drops), and the sum total of damage over time is... one plastic foot missing.
This model came out three hours ago, it looks like.
How can you claim this? Are you making the assumption that they have made no changes whatsoever to the keyboard or hinge?
I feel this comment is very misleading, since it looks like you are describing these new 8-core machines, which have been announced literally today and you cannot possibly have any experience of.
This is what I did.
I bought a 15'' 2015 model the day after the 2016 models were announced. I didn't even know about the keyboard problems, but the touchbar, the lack of ports, the price, and the shallow key travel were deal breakers for me.
I used it for about a year but the integrated GPU and the 4th gen CPU ran too hot. At the time I lived in Cancún so quite hot, and the fan noise was becoming annoying even when doing skype calls and such. Also running it on my lap was uncomfortable.
So at the start of 2018 I sold the MBP and got a 5K iMac with SSD since I really didn't need the portability anymore. Best Mac I've ever owned.
I have an old 2014 13'' MBP laying around which I use in the rare occasions I'm away from my iMac.
[0] - https://unshaky.nestederror.com/
I've had the top case replaced for free two times under warranty, and the extended 4-year warranty does make me slighty less worried. The battery is also replaced as part of the top case which is a pretty nice bonus.
Though it is still a major inconvenience to be without my main computer for a week while it's being repaired.
https://www.apple.com/support/13-inch-macbook-pro-display-ba...
And a free fix for keyboard issues on all butterfly keyboard laptops:
https://www.apple.com/support/keyboard-service-program-for-m...
For now the display fix is only for 2016 displays; though I suspect with more bad press they’ll extend to 2017 and 2018 models too.
I have a 2016 model which is starting to get the stage light problem. I wonder if it’s worth getting it fixed now or if I should wait until it gets worse before taking it in for servicing.
Don't know about the very latest one (assuming there is 4th gen) but so far this has been more like a workaround that breaks down again at some point since the design is not solid. Getting an inherently flawed replacement for free isn't worth celebrating IMHO especially considering how expensive these things are.
Contrast this with every other PC manufacturer where they require me to ship the item to them, wait for weeks. Apple gives it back to me within a couple of days.
They have also never said that 2 and 3 keyboard were fixes for the keyboard issue.
I am surprised someone in the business can be so far behind the news.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/02/17/apple-plans-new-1...
Also in this update: Pro Vega 20 GPU is an option.