Comment by SysArchitect | Hacker News Reader

Comment by SysArchitect | Hacker News Reader

As a professional software dev/system architect using MacBook Pro's, I am excited about the new MacBook Pro. I'll miss the SD card for my amateur photography, but I'll live.

It's still got the 3.5mm for my headphones, with USB-C hopefully daisy chaining non Apple displays will finally become a reality, and thankfully my work has upgraded to using wireless technology for displaying screens in conference rooms (which works from OS X and Windows).

The new context sensitive function bar is going to take some getting used to, but I have been using Caps lock for escape for years now and OS X just got native support for mapping that.

Grabbed a USB-C to lightning cable while I was at it. Now I can just bring a single charger and charge either my Mac or my iPhone or both at the same time. I rarely use USB drives, so unfortunately I'll need a dongle for that, but it's not that big of a deal.

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I am more sad that there was no announcement for the Mac Pro/Mac Mini. Also no Apple display, instead handing that to LG, so it looks like Apple is pulling out of the desktop market (I wonder how long the iMac will last).

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Edit: There is one thing I will miss, and that is MagSafe. It has saved my laptop many a time in it's lifetime. I am hoping Apple builds a USB-C to MagSafe cable that provides the same functionality to save laptops from a tripping hazard.

Very strange. What are Vim users going to do without the ESC key? Ctrl-c and ctrl-[ don't work in some Vim emulation tools or for browser extensions that provide Vim keybindings.

Function keys are important for some things. F1 (help), F5 (reload page), F11 (full screen), F12 (browser dev tools), shift-F2 (Firefox terminal), alt-F4 (close window), etc..

I almost bought a Macbook in August, but I decided to get a Thinkpad 460 instead. I deleted Windows 10 and installed Ubuntu 16.04. The Thinkpad was $1,000 cheaper than the Macbook and has better specs (24 Gb RAM), except for the screen. The screen on the Thinkpad is better in one way though: it has a matte finish, so there is less glare. There is also a middle button on the touchpad, which is great for copy/paste in Linux.

Hearing about the missing ESC key makes me very happy that I didn't switch to Mac.

Edit: I see that there is a touchbar, but I have a fully touchscreen keyboard, and it's impossible to type without looking at it. A touchbar seems like it would be less efficient than keys. Keys are programmable too, while still providing reference for your fingers.

> What are Vim users going to do without the ESC key?

They have the pleasure to install an additional ESC server which simulates the ESC key with an ios device :-)

https://github.com/brianmichel/ESCapey

It's amazing that Apple considers the backquote/tilde key so much more important than the ESC key.

Looks like a reasonable solution. :)

They are all important. Backticks for things like markdown, reStructuredText, ES6, and shell scripting. Tildes for file paths and regex. ESC for Vim keybinding emulation in many programs.

The ESC key on the touchbar doesn't look like it's in the right position, but maybe people will be able to retrain themselves to feel for the left edge of the touchbar with the little finger and then tap with the ring finger.

It doesn't seem ideal, but I'll try it at a store before making a final opinion. I'm still relieved that I didn't switch from Linux to Mac though. :)

While I don't completely disagree, you might find this helpful :) :

F1 → ⌘?, F5 → ⌘R, F11 → ^⌘F, F12 → ⌘⌥J, ⌥+F4 → ⌘W (just window/tab) or ⌘Q (entire app).

I was also scared about the removal of MagSafe when I first got my Macbook 12", but in reality what happens when you trip on your power cable is that it will come out from the plug in the wall since the cable is not attached to the transformer.

Detaching easily from the wall socket is a peculiarly US phenomenon. In the UK for example it takes considerable force exactly perpendicular to the socket to remove a plug, and all retail cables are moulded to the plug. So one end is anchored to the wall ans the other is connected to a €3500 laptop...

It would have made more sense to move the Magsafe connector onto the PSU DC output.

I think they are talking about the USB-C connector detaching at the wall, not the power plug detaching.

Exactly ^^

You can get one of these USB-C cables with magnetic locks https://griffintechnology.com/us/breaksafe-magnetic-usb-c-po...

This adaptor is rated at 60W. The 15" MBP charges at 85W

The new MacBook is 61W for both 13" and 15" variants - https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs/

The 13" is 61W. The 15" is 87W. You're looking at the 13" specs, click on the 15: tab at the top of the page and scroll down.

Aha, what a confusing web page. Thanks for catching that.

I was kind of hoping for an iMac update too. Not anything important, but move it to USB-C so it's in line.

Surface Studio perhaps? ;)

It will be interesting to see if Apple decides to try to respond to that thing. It's pretty impressive in quite a few ways.

They most likely will just like they did with the iPad pro.

> It will be interesting to see if Apple decides to try to respond to that thing.

Probably not, they really seem dead-set against touch interfaces of macOS, and have made pretty much no improvement to it towards that end.

They're probably right about that. But they could put the pin sensor technology from the iPad Pro into an iMac and get a pretty good product. They did a fantastic job with it.

One reason might be that, if you buy a Macbook with a touchscreen, there is less reason to buy an iPad in addition to the Macbook.

I had one laptop with a touchscreen and it was so annoying that I disabled it. Every time I would brush something off of the screen, or someone would point at my screen and touch it, unexpected things would happen. Keyboards are much more efficient than touchscreens, so there didn't seem to be any point.

That would have been nice. I was hoping for Mac mini update too. I still have mine from 2012, and the newer versions don't really offer much over that version.

Just upgraded the SSD in it from the fusion drive to a full on SSD, and it is incredibly fast now.

I think the real "killer feature" of this screen will be distracting the user. I already experience this with my phone lighting up when it's lying at the bottom of my screen.

> I have been using Caps lock for escape for years

I didn't knew people were doing that :O, whats the benefit?, and how do you turn on caps?

I don't turn on caps. I usually only need it for a single letter, so the shift key does wonders.

I follow this setup[1], where caps lock can both function as ctrl and esc depending on how long you press/hold.

[1]: http://stevelosh.com/blog/2012/10/a-modern-space-cadet/#cont...

> I didn't knew people were doing that :O

I rebind mine to control.

> whats the benefit?

Control is an actually useful key, in Emacs specifically but also in OSX in general as all OSX controls have emacs-ish chords support (e.g. C-a C-e for start and end of line). Having Control on a large well-placed key is more convenient than have it on a small key in the corner, and I've literally no use for capslock.

> how do you turn on caps?

I don't think I've ever wanted that in the last 20 years or so, every single toggling of capslock has been by mistake. In fact one of my issues with windows is there still isn't a way to easily remap capslock, it takes 3 clicks in OSX (or ChromeOS), it takes installing third-party software or hand-rolling custom keyboard layouts on windows.

Vim user here... hence why it is mapped to Esc.

All the time I see people saying they never want caps lock. I develop in Java and it's convention to have constants be caps lock; other languages do something similar too. In that case what would be the solution without caps lock, typing each character holding shift? I think I'll try it to see how it goes but sounds weird to me.

> In that case what would be the solution without caps lock, typing each character holding shift?

Yes, what little you need to type before autocompletion kicks in anyway, and code is mostly not constants, writing constants is a much rarer case than chording Control in emacs, terminal or cocoa text control.

I have the shift key for when I want to type caps. I don't think I have EVER used caps lock to type in all caps.

I remap caps lock to be the control key. I have never in my life used caps lock.

I have. All the time.

Mostly when doing finances with stock trading tickers. Tickers are almost always presented and handled in upper case. So when I'm doing work in the trading space, caps lock goes on and stays on.

S 1M IBM @MKT

Makes sense! I don't do anything with stocks.

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