2016 Retina MacBook Pro Caveats
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I have to say, I'm really impressed by the single-cable solution. The monitor charges the laptop (57W maximum, which is less than the Apple charger, but "good enough"), and the laptop sends both video and USB peripheral connections to the monitor, which acts as a USB 3.0 hub.
One cable. It's kind of amazing and magical if you think about it.
There are some rough edges, though:
(1) Sometimes the computer reports that it's not charging. Sometimes it does. We don't know why just yet. We can always connect the Apple-supplied charger though.
(2) When the display goes to sleep, it disconnects all the devices on the hub. This is a problem for external disks, as the OS complains that it has been detached without being ejected first. I hope LG fixes this in a future firmware version.
(3) We can't use the Apple-supplied USB charging cable to connect the laptop to the display. The connectors are the same, but.. it just doesn't work. As a technical person, I understand why; but it's going to be unnecessarily confusing to people if two cables that look alike don't act alike. This is going to raise technical support costs greatly until all USB-C cables are capable of all transports and functions and the old ones are phased out. Why Apple didn't ship a fully-capable cable in the box is puzzling to me.
https://www.wired.com/2011/06/thunderbolt-cable-teardown-rev...
Thunderbolt 2 had the same compatibility issue in that it was the same connector as Mini DisplayPort but couldn't run over a standard DP cable. That was pretty minor since it's not like everyone has a pile of loose DP cables sitting around.
On the other hand, your average consumer never uses a Thunderbolt device to begin with on account of them being significantly more expensive than other accessories. They'll likely never run into this even with it using a USB-like cable, and the people who do need TB will figure it out.
Thunderbolt displays can do hubs at full speed, the 5K LG Ultrafine has 3x USB 3.1 gen 1, which IIRC means up to 5 Gbps (vs 480 Mbps for USB 2).
Not sure why your comment was marked [dead] but I just vouched it so it should be back.
Can you imagine if AC power had the same plug for both 110V and 220V? And you just had to "guess" which one was the right one?
That's a common problem with power supplies that require setting a hard switch to choose between 110V and 220V.
It's hard to see the profusion of semi- and incompatibilities permissible in the USB-C connector as anything but a regression.
On that note, always look on the back for a manual switch. Just to be safe. Its unlikely a regular consumer would need to but I'm learning to change my habits.
The Apple-supplied cable is probably a USB 2.0 cable, with a chip indicating it can handle 5A.
I've been thinking two of the 4K LG monitors Apple offers next to each other in portrait orientation would be nice. However, the lower UHD resolution at 27" rather than 21" probably makes a lot more sense for me if I want to be able to sit further away from the display.
If my eyes are 3-4ft away, 160ppi probably doesn't even look like it has less definition than 220ppi.
I remember someone saying that the nominal usage wattage of a newer MBP 15" is around 15W, perhaps double if CPU taxed.
And yeah, it is going to confuse a lot of people.
Edit: In case it wasn't obvious to the readers, the reason behind the missing toothbrush and missing USB-C 3.1 cable are the same.
Who the hell expects a toothbrush with their laptop? Or a random USB cable in that matter?
Now, do people need USB-cables when using their electronic devices? And would that little extra be appreciated?
Since Apple's shipping a "random USB cable" anyhow, it would make sense for them to ship the version of it that actually does all the things they've been advertising.
good to get it confirmed here.
I think what is more of a concern would be the possibility that some laptops now tend to unthrottle the CPU when on AC power (or more accurately throttle their already LV CPUs when on battery), which can mean the internal temp gets pretty high and can be bad for the battery.
That being said, we have no guarantee that the power management is being done properly, but Apple seems to really have a handle on the power usage of their devices (even if they can't quite figure out their connectors or software). It's definitely a concern on lower end laptops.
Indeed part of battery quality is to let the device manage when charging happens, but a big problem is that the device is expected to be charged when being hooked up to a charger for a bit. You don't want customers to walk away from home thinking they have a charged device, but end up only being able to use the device for a short time.
I guess there is some well thought out system to it.
But to answer your question: no. We don't run Windows at home and have no such test equipment.
Apple had the one-cable thing back in 1998.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Display_Connector
Power went the other way, but still. Crazy it's taken us this long to get back to it.
But NeXT had it in '88, power included (!): http://www.uk.netbsd.org/ports/next68k/faq.html#connections
Is there a monitor that doesn't suffer this issue? My Dell's USB hub power is linked to the monitor power. I can't plug a mouse into the monitor if I want to use that mouse to wake up the computer.
My Dell P2715Q display does work properly as a hub when it's asleep.
The P2715Q has all sorts of quirks. I have a pair of them connected to my Windows computer, and when they go to sleep, Windows basically forgets where all the open windows were and disperses them somewhat randomly. Of all the monitors I've used, I've only ever experienced this with the P2715Q.
I also notice that the power output of the USB ports on the monitors is barely enough to charge any recent mobile device.
Instead of "sleeping", they appear to make the OS think they've been powered down/disconnected instead. When a monitor goes to sleep, I can hear the "device disconnected" chime in Windows, which should not happen.
That's because it's probably supplying the USB spec of 500ma. That's not a fault, it's how it should work. The usb-looking chargers that come with many recent mobile devices are using a bastardized set of "not really standards" to let them pump more juice through the USB port than is allowed.
But some do allow it to go out of spec, and if that happens you'll only be able to get that extra power if you are using a "charging only" cable (which tricks the phone into thinking it's plugged into a power-only USB outlet and it tries to draw more than 500ma).
So with a USB cable (that's not actually a USB cable), plugged into a USB port (that's not actually a USB port) you can get over that, but it's not meant to run that way on several levels.
It's one of the things that USB-C is meant to solve. Let the device and power source negotiate on how much can be sent and received by each (even being able to swap which way power is going). Sadly that means that cables are no longer just a bunch of metal in a wrapper, they need a set resistance or in some cases built-in IC's, and that means that now a shitty cable can cause issues.
Is this a new feature? I've never heard of monitors charging laptops before.
This is why I'm quite disappointed that Apple exited the display business. Small issues like this highlight the different scope of LG and Apple business models. As a display manufacturer, LG is primarily concerned with a display that works well in its primary use (e.g. when it's on) and much less concerned about secondary uses - it's not really their problem. Apple, on the other hand, is concerned with the overall user experience, and has designed their business model around this (including cost centers like customer service / genius bar appointments). LG just feels a lot less pain on this issue than Apple would.
Hopefully Apple can find a way to preserve a certain level of user experience now that they're no longer manufacturing. There's no MFi certification equivalent for Mac, but it seems like there should be.
This is probably also relevant for wifi routers, now that they've left that business too.
Is this official? Did they make some kind of statement? I think during the even they showed a Mac Pro connected to a monitor but it wasn't Apple. I was kind of confused by that at the time but now it might make sense.
There was also a thread on here yesterday about how they've existed the router business. Very odd, since so many of their customers like having a complete ecosystem.
BTW, Windows and Linux have the same problems. The fault lies with the storage device vendors.
The reason is that USB2 cables are cheaper and easier to make longer. The charge cable is 2m and $19, the Belkin 1m is $22, the Belkin Thunderbolt 0.5m is $22, and the Belkin Thunderbolt 2m is $52.
Also, the charge cable is emarked and supports charging at 5A (100W). Regular USB C cables only support 3A and 60W.
I also have an audio interface connected to my sound monitors, and it is also quite bad for it to lose its power, producing a loud blasting sound. If monitor becomes a power supply, we need it to never stop supplying it, just like notebook doesn't stop when it goes to sleep.
Do you routinely change your volume by only one increment? Whenever I change my volume I have to tap up and down a few times to figure out the exact volume I want, and with the Touch Bar that's just one extra tap (tapping the < button gets you the volume up/down buttons).
I understand you returned it so you can't exactly test this, but it would've been interesting to see if that particular issue was fixed by just disabling automatic brightness adjustment.
You can actually get the top-tier CPU in mid-2015 MacBook Pro 15" (i7-4980HQ @ 2.8 GHz) for less than the current base model 15" (i7-6700HQ @ 2.6 GHz). And have it be ~16% faster for multi-core tasks, and some 9% for single-core.
2015 multi-core: 13945, 2016 multi-core: 12006
2015 single-core: 4292, 2016 single-core: 3926
http://browser.primatelabs.com/mac-benchmarks/
Admittedly, those are synthetic benchmarks, but my performance concerns are primarily related to CPU-bound tasks that should be well-captured in these benchmarks.
That plus the freedom from a dedicated GPU – I am strongly against having one in my laptop –, and I would very strongly consider the mid-2015 one.
I've been willing to give Apple and the new MBP the benefit of the doubt on this stuff, and in particular I don't mind that it needs dongles now if that means we get universal USB-C adoption faster. But the dongles need to actually exist and work now!
It doesn't mean it can't do DP over a specific type-c to DP cable/dongle, which presumably are or will be a thing (eg: https://store.google.com/product/usb_type_c_to_displayport_c...). The author appears to want to wait for docks that do both DP and power delivery, if I understand correctly.
I have to admit, my assumption for the monitor having both sizes of the display port (vs both being full sized DP) and including a DP-> mDp cable were so that the monitor worked out of the box no matter what type of port the source computer had. All possible combinations are satisfied.
I guess other monitors from the same line have miniDP inputs too.
I'm OK with the computer using USB-C exclusively, but Apple needs to make adapters available for other common ports. Relying on third parties for something as common as DisplayPort is not good.
I hardly ever boot into OSX any more - most of my work is in Windows and I generally like Windows better anyway - especially with the crisper font rendering after using the ClearType tuner compared to the fuzzier OSX text.
(Yes, OSX - I haven't even bothered to upgrade to Sierra.)
So I guess my next upgrade will be back to another ThinkPad, and I'll keep this old MBPR for OSX/macOS/iOS testing.
So I started using Boot Camp more and found it to be very snappy. Also I was doing some VR work on Windows, and that only works on physical hardware. (The MBPR is not a great machine for VR, but it's good enough for the system integration stuff I was doing.)
The only hardware issues I've run into compared to running Windows in Parallels are:
* Apple's Ethernet dongle is not hot-pluggable in Windows like it is in OSX/macOS. A reboot is required if you want to plug it in. You can plug and unplug the Ethernet cable on the fly, just not the dongle itself.
* By default, the trackpad two-finger scrolling works in the traditional "scrollbar" style (swipe your fingers down and the display content moves up). I prefer the "natural" style where it is more like using a touchscreen. I found an easy registry tweak to fix this on this page:
http://waded.org/2013/01/15/perfecting-trackpad-scrolling-in...
I didn't use any of the other tweaks on that page, just the scroll direction.
* The touchpad driver is not as good as the one in OSX. Specifically, it's much more susceptible to false right clicks, and it's fussier about the style of click-dragging where you hold the touchpad down with one finger and drag with another. In OSX this works pretty naturally; in Windows it works only if I hold the pad down at the left bottom corner and then drag with another finger.
* And of course, I miss the TrackPoint from my ThinkPads.
The finishing touch was to get one of these Windows logo decals to cover up the Apple logo:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B014I1ICX8/
So now my MacBook Pro is officially a WinBook Pro!
It's basically the same reason you'd need custom Windows drivers for any hardware. It's just that in this case, it's Apple hardware.
You mean HDMI? On non-Apple/non-Microsoft laptops HDMI is by far the most common way to connect external displays followed likely by VGA and then finally DisplayPort.
The article is saying that a TB3 -> TB2 adapter and a mini-DisplayPort -> DisplayPort adapter don't chain correctly. I haven't tried that; I assume the author is correct.
https://twitter.com/technosucks/status/800831482608484352
"You might not be able to use the Esc button in the Touch Bar if the app you're using becomes unresponsive." https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT207358
Fortunately you can still force the Mac to shut down with the Touch ID button after it locks up.
In the video linked above the Apple menu also didn't appear to work, despite the mouse cursor moving, which matches my experiences.
Exactly - what not everyone realizes is that the top menu is rendered and events from it are dispatched into the process of the current (active) application. If that thing refuses to return from an event handler dispatched from the main thread's run loop, (i.e. most cases where program has hung), you can't use the Apple menu.
1. Battery life is much lower than specified: http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/battery-life-for-13-and-...
2. Some users report graphic card problems: http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/pool-do-you-have-graphic...
Here is how it looks like: http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/graphic-card-freaks-out-...
3. TouchBar graphics sometimes display on the screen instead of on the TouchBar: https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/5eap94/someones_touc...
The 2016 13" non-Touch Bar Pro has a 54.5-watt-hour battery.
The 2016 13" Touch Bar Pro has a 49.2-watt-hour-battery!
The components in the 2016 models are more power efficient. But at some point you'll run into physics.
Apple may claim the battery life is the same as before when watching a movie (probably entirely HW accelerator offloaded by now), but if you're compiling code all day I wouldn't expect the new laptop to match the previous battery life based on the raw numbers alone.
2015: 2.7GHz dual-core Intel Core i5, Turbo Boost up to 3.1GHz, with 3MB shared L3 cache: 28 W TDP [0]
2016 (Touch Bar): 2.9GHz dual-core Intel Core i5, Turbo Boost up to 3.3GHz, with 4MB shared L3 cache: 28 W TDP [1]
Both chips use the same 14nm process, and there's no free lunch. The "refined" 14nm process for the Skylake chip is put towards a tiny frequency bump.
[0] http://ark.intel.com/products/84985/Intel-Core-i5-5257U-Proc...
[1] http://ark.intel.com/products/91166/Intel-Core-i5-6267U-Proc...
https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/5eap94/someones_touc...
I tried it at the Apple Store and it's pretty much unusable. (It had the seen issue as the writer, apparently relying on the physical click to know whether or not I had pressed it. In addition, I also mistyped it a lot. Maybe hack to replace the whole touch bar as one single ESC key will do it...)
I've been told to remap the ESC to CAPS LOCK to vim usage, but I seem to be one of a rare breed who uses the latter the way it was intended to be, so that's a no go for me.
Does the 'fn' key force-change the touchbar to display F1-F12?
If so, then I don't understand the folks bemoaning the lack of physical "function keys" from their apps, which I assume they mean that they use the F(n) keys, since the mechanics of this are the same.
I'm a fast touch typist, but have never have hit F(n) keys accurately without glancing at the keyboard when I do use them, so I assume I would have no problem with the TouchBar based F keys.
Yes it does
[1] System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard > "Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys" option on El Cap.
Lenovo backtracked, and subsequent generations lost the "touch bar" and use regular keys.
I don't use Macs often, but that's definitely one place where Apple is so far ahead in their implementation that it's not even funny. Using the touchpad for anything more complex than surfing the web is much more comfortable.
If it's only whilst the key is held it effectively means you'd have to use your right hand to press the escape key ...which doesn't sound ideal to me.
Not really relevant, but when Vi was originally developed, the escape key was in a more convenient location — right where the tab key is now. It was never intended for users to have to reach that far to hit such an essential key.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File%3aKB_Terminal_ADM3A.svg
Edit: also, Control-c and control-[ do the same thing.
They're not actually the same. C-[ is the same as Esc but C-c is not.
Using C-c to leave Insert mode won't trigger InsertLeave.
If you select a vertical visual block and insert a comma at the end of each line E.g. C-v}$A, Using Esc or C-[ to leave insert mode will insert the comma at the end of every line in the paragraph but using C-c will only insert after the first line.
Also if you get used then to using C-c in Vim then you'll potentially run into issues if you try to use it in other Vi places e.g. anything that uses readline or your shell.
IMHO C-[ is a much better solution for these reasons.
:imap <C-c> <Esc>
Remapping caps lock would be good too, but I already have caps lock remapped to Ctrl and I'm just used to that. In anticipation of what seemed like the inevitable loss of my escape key, I've been trying really really hard to like Ctrl-[ the last three weeks, but I've just given up. I keep opening up Ctrl-P searches or hitting Ctrl-]. My pinky just can't do it. So I've given up and made Ctrl-C work and it's so much better.
True but you're still out of luck in other Vi like places.
As an alternative I used Karabina in the past to map Caps lock into Esc (when pressed and released) and Ctrl (when pressed with another key). I think you could also make it latch as Caps lock by using Caps-Shift but I'm not 100% on that.
Does anyone know if Karabina has been updated to work with Siera yet?
Agreed. I use set -o vi in bash and of course my little remapping is of no use there.
As an alternative I used Karabina in the past to map Caps lock into Esc (when pressed and released) and Ctrl (when pressed with another key).
This was something else I had suggested to me, but while probably about 50% of my computer use on a daily basis is on OSX, the other 50% is linux; for all of xkb's data-driven flexibility, I'm not sure whether it can do something like this. And I can't afford to build muscle memory for something I can only use on one platform.
That's easy - what @Lio was talking about was having Caps Lock be a tap for <Esc> and then holding it with another key would be <C->. Is that what you're talking about? Karabiner can accomplish this on macOS, but I can't find a gconf/gsetting/xmodmap combination to do this on Linux. Caps Lock as Escape is easy. Caps Lock as Ctrl is easy. Caps Lock as both doesn't seem to be possible on Linux.
Am I wrong? Can you point me toward more info on this? I'd really appreciate it - I would so love to be able to use tap-for-escape in all readline contexts.
The worry about building up muscle memory around something not portable is exactly what lead me to force myself to use C-[ as Escape too.
I've stayed El Capitan because I couldn't think of anything I found compelling in Sierra. I'll probably reconsider when Karabiner-Elements becomes a suitable replacement.
For vim, you can map tab to being your new esc. Chances are you are using expandtab option, so actual tab usage is not big (it exists though, left here as an exercise for a reader )
Anyway im moving to kabylake dell xps 13. After 9 years with apple. Windows from 2016 gives much better linux integration. And its good to challenge yourselfe with such a big change every 10 years. Its bicycle for your mind (c) Jobs.
I find Windows 10 to be an enormous improvement over 7 and 8; they finally fixed some of the stupid little things that have been issues since NT 3.1. Like the awful terminal emulator or the dialog box for editing environment variables. It seems like Microsoft is finally being run by someone who cares about details.
Other neat insert mode shortcuts include C-h for Backspace, C-m for Return and indent/outdent with C-t and C-d.
I am intrigued; what's your use case that requires so much uppercase text?
It's an option.
But there are so many programs that require ESC, so it's only a half-way solution.
Just clone it into your root directory and ensure it's named ".vimrc". It won't work otherwise. Then just restart your terminal. I'd google some things in there if you don't fully understand what they do.
The external monitor and wifi issues seem egregious, could these be OS related issues?
My understanding is that the TB2/3 dongle issue is a hardware limitation; although I'm hopeful the WiFi issues with older USB-C devices will go away.
I wouldn't expect a high-end Apple product to have this issue though; this is the type of problem you expect from cheap beige box PCs.
1. If you have a newer wifi AP that supports 5ghz, it might allow you to create a separate SSID for 5ghz, which is great, because now you can specify which network you want to connect to, and can choose the 5ghz. band to avoid this interference. Some routers don't let you specify, and use the same SSID for both bands, which means you can't really tell what you're connecting to.
2. Unfortunately, 5ghz. has a shorter range, so it will be less reliable in large houses, or where coverage is weak.
Of course, Apple ignores every single problem.
We HN users are fortunate to be "in the know" about these issues, because we keep up with this information.
Can you imagine how the out of the box experience would feel like for less-informed early buyers of the new MBP who find out about these issues post purchase?
I get the impression it's going to hurt the "everything just works" reputation that Macs have had for the longest time.
Maybe all this was possible before but I never knew about any of it. If that's the case that's another strength of the touch bar -- I had no issue discovering this functionality this time.
Lenovo did name it "Adaptive Keyboard" and obviously wanted it to change depending on context, but without 3rd party software support it's not going to offer much. You get layouts for F-keys, home, web browsing, and Skype:
http://www.thinkwiki.org/w/images/4/47/LAdapKey-001.png
And as far as I can tell, it's just "buttons that move around," without any more flexible UIs like the sliders/scrubbers that Apple is pitching. You're making the "no tactile feedback" compromise that everyone hates, and not actually getting much for it.
Use acceptance was miserable because it wasn't actually useful.
In an post release interview Jony Ive implied that the touch bar was the first step in a new paradigm.
Imagine the Photoshop toolbar being available on your iPad's touch screen, while you're editing a photo on your Mac. Or playing a video game while using your iPhone for controls.
It is as if they asked ipad users to design the macbook.
I think that's a decent mental model for what we are seeing here. These macbooks make perfect sense if you look at them from the point of view of an ipad/iphone user.
Apparently the "$3000 facebook machine" market is much bigger than the "finally, a unix workstation that doesn't suck" market.
Which makes it worse than worthless, remembering that when I use it on my lap it will constantly disconnect itself. I'm happy to see Magsafe go, I'm just not thrilled that it's not being replaced with something better.
Feel very comfortable with the decision.
Ultimately the 2016 MBP is a "V1" new product, which I think most of us are trained to allow some maturation before jumping on board.
It should be mature enough in 3-5 years when I'm looking to replace my 2015 MBP!
I currently use a max spec 11" air. I expect it to last 4+ years.
I recently purchased a spare max spec 11" air.
I'm not going to pay attention to any of this noise for 8-10 years.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2423604,00.asp
https://www-ssl.intel.com/content/www/us/en/io/universal-ser...
I am able to use my external 27" just fine. I have a DisplayPort cable plugged into the second Thunderbolt port on the dock. It's all working.
This is reminiscent of the way the Thunderbolt Display behaves: You cannot plug a DisplayPort monitor directly into the Thunderbolt Display, but you can daisy-chain another Thunderbolt device to the Thunderbolt Display, and then plug a DisplayPort cable into the Thunderbolt device on the end of the chain, and then it works.
Likely the reason they discontinued the Apple monitors is because they wouldn't work with the new MacBook.
I'm assuming OSX vs linux distro's like ubuntu is the same thing. The sum of the little things must make you a lot more productive. I cant wait to be honest. I just need to decide, 13 inch vs 15.
When you do everything 1-off, like different phones than every one else, different clothes, different hobbies, don't listen to mainstream music even if it's fun you really get left behind in life & it's a lonely affair.
It was a nice change when one morning I woke up after a long time of running my life in a different direction than every one else that I got to hit traffic with every one else. "Oh, this is where every one is, thank god". I think it's a bad idea to do everything 1-off for some minor advantage in your head.
1. The keyboard. Not the Touch Bar; the rest of the keyboard. There isn't much travel and I'm afraid it will aggravate my RSI. I've tried pressing the keys more gently, but sometimes I'm too gentle and miss keystrokes. Pressing the right side of the caps lock key is unreliable even when I press it fairly firmly. And the right shift key has gotten stuck once already. I'll give it some more time to see if things improve, but RSI is a deal-breaker. I'm considering returning the laptop.
2. The battery life. It's nowhere near 10 hours when I'm doing development. I haven't been keeping close track but I'd say less than 5 and less than previous generations. I think they used a processor which is more efficient at idle and took away a lot of battery to make it thinner. It's maybe not more efficient when working, so the battery life is reduced if you use the processor more heavily than they've anticipated.
3. The Touch Bar. I'm sure I can make it work, but I would prefer to have a physical escape key for vim, especially given that the caps lock key is questionable too so that may be out as a substitute.
4. That going from 1 TiB of storage to 2 TiB of storage would cost another $800, and the SSD is not even replaceable later. I don't want to spend that much, so I have 1 TiB that I'm already close to with photos likely to push it over. I really wouldn't mind having a 512 MiB SSD and a 2 TiB hard drive, but that's not an option. It wouldn't be as much of a problem if Apple Photos (or some other inexpensive product) had good support for auto-selecting part of the library to have on the SSD as a cache of full storage on a network/external/cloud drive. (I.e., one library that I could open up and add stuff to while disconnected, view some recent / starred / non-hidden photos while disconnected.)
5. 16 GiB of RAM rather than 32 GiB and not expandable. I gather this lost a three-way battle with battery life and thickness/weight.
Most of these (#1, #2, #4, #5) are the negative consequences of Apple's anorexia.
Having only USB-C ports isn't a problem for me. Losing MagSafe makes me a little sad—it has saved laptops for me—but I like the idea of being able to plug in just one cable to do everything. Those docks don't actually exist yet, but they will soon. In the meantime, I have the included power adapter, a USB-C to DisplayPort cable, and a portable USB-C to three-port USB-A + gigabit Ethernet hub. It'll do.
But for work reasons, I'm upgrading to a new 2016 rMBP, and I'm a little hesitant .. the reason is, I'm a vi user. So I figure I'll get used to the difference in tactile response from the current ESC key to the Touchbar experience .. eventually.
But what I've been thinking is that I'll just map CAPSLOCK to Escape, since I hardly ever use Caps for anything important. This sort of amuses me a little, since I've heard of folks doing this for years, when a real Escape key was available anyway .. but they did it for ergonomics reasons. So, I'm hoping I'll be able to live with that experience as a dedicated vi user.
What I'd like to know - for you guys who are vi users and have a 2016-rMBP in front of you - is whether you think this is viable, or just not worth the hassle - i.e., just use the Touchbar escape and see how it goes. What do you think?
I need to buy a new laptop today. For development, not to play games. The unix underpinning of MacOS always made their machines attractive, expensive, but attractive nonetheless.
I'll go visit the Apple store and see but it is starting to look like it'll be a waste of time. It looks like I'll make a detour over to Best Buy and get one of the high end HP laptops with 17 inch screen, full keyboard, lots of ports, etc.
I can then install VMWare Workstation with Ubuntu Desktop. Add another couple of VM with Ubuntu Server, run them all at once in a virtual network to simulate application and DB servers and develop on Linux.
Done deal. Probably half the money. With what's left over I can go buy that TIG welder I've been eyeballing.
In another thread, someone recommended shopping the Microsoft store for a 'signature edition' laptop; these are major-brand laptops (HP, Lenovo, Dell) with the septic mess of malware/shovelware left out - just a clean Windows install.
https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/5e094c/users_are_rep...
When I used a third-party MiniDisplayPort to DVI adapter, wireless would not work. When I used the Apple adapter, it worked fine.
Interestingly enough, I found that under some circumstances the 3rd-party adapter will work fine. My working theory is that it doesn't have as much shielding as the Apple adapter and puts out just enough interference to clobber my WiFi signal when I'm far enough away from the access point.
Maybe this is the same issue?
Or go all bohemian and spin up linux on a chromebook.
Things really aren't quite that desperate yet.
I've used a single Macbook for stretches of 4-5 years at points and I've had to pull out the HD when the logic board has died... seems really sad that I'd be tied to Apple's support in the event I need to access data to use on another machine when previously it was something I could solve in 15 minutes.
Either use the official (and somewhat slow) Migration Assistant/Time Machine or after you clone your drive from the old machine, make sure to use Recovery Mode/Cmd-R and reinstall the operating system from the recovery partition. For me, though it took several hours to install, it quietly retained all my data and resolved all issues I had been seeing with stock macOS 10.12.1.
I know they're catering to "media" types but for any engineer who also happens to be a 10x and well rounded, doing art, music and other fields will feel constrained.
Apple has left the golden middle ground a long time ago and is going after the "media" types only. News flash: the margins in those youtubers-sectors are very low, hence the spending will dry sooner rather then later.
I've been using the MBP pro circa 2012 and upgrading/hacking the hardware.
It's aging gracefully and next laptop will be a non-mbp which can run MacOs through VM. Price parity allows much more horsepower and modularity.
New MBP, pretty but objectively silly.
I don't think that this is a very good good laptop for media-youtuber types either. Just watch Casey Neistat's review of the new rMBP. He really wants to like it, but it's really clear from what he's saying that it's completely unsuited to his needs. In particular, the loss of the SD card slot is going to hurt anyone who uses pro camera equipment.
Well color me surprised.
Now I really don't know which target market they're trying to aim for, cause where I'm standing it's a net miss, aside from the millennial generation which isn't a bread winning one for the most part.
Maybe I'm not seeing their big picture, but as far as I'm concerned, A net producer from technical to art, this machine is a fail.
I have a 2012 rMBP and I'm thinking of upgrading to a refurb 2015 rMBP. I'd like to upgrade to the last good generation of MBP; it might be a while before Apple decides to start making good laptops again.
Also, I hope Apple fixes the palm rejection on the giant trackpad soon. I wind up accidentally activating Siri quite a lot.
Otherwise, good machine.
I love OSX, but no OS is worth that much.
If it's a Mini DisplayPort display (which uses the exact same connector as Thunderbolt), then it won't work.
Display <> DisplayPort-to-mDP2 <> TB 3 to 2 <> USB-C to TB 3 <> MacBook
What is going on?
Monitors last a very long time. I think maybe that wasn't taken into much consideration.
It's OK that Apple has bet big on USB-C/TB3, but the least thing Apple could have done (this year at least) is throw in a couple of USB-C to USB-A adapters in the box.
When I bought a Macbook Pro in 2011, the only thing I needed to buy were some miniDP -> [hdmi/dvi/vga] adapters. The standard set of ports and SD reader covered pretty much everything else I could possibly need. And, it included the 3-prong extension to the power brick, which was indispensible to me -- no client I went to ever gave me a cube to sit at with a power bar that was close enough or had enough room for the brick to plug in properly. Now, that extension is an extra $20.
How do you expect Apple to sell them for $20 a pop then?
Because I like to use <C-c> too, I have just remapped it to <Esc> in all modes.
And now I read this:
System Integrity Protection (SIP) was disabled ... csrutil status ... boot into the recovery mode... hold ⌘-R when booting ... open a terminal ...type csrutil enable and reboot ... DisplayPort-to-mDP2 cable to connect to the Thunderbolt 2 port ... get a Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 dongle ... Thunderbolt 2 means 4 PCI Express 2.0 lanes with DisplayPort 1.2 ... Change the monitor to MST mode ... recover via HDMI ... Apple Digital AV Adapter ... HDMI instead of mDP2 ... third-party DisplayPort adapter ...
And so on and so on. "Just works"?