Hacker News Reader

Comment by awjr | Hacker News Reader

I'd almost hoped they would have released a refreshed Macbook Pro range. I realise they are unlikely to recognise the joy and immense pleasure working on a MBP has brought me over the years, with the previous MBP being the pinnacle.

Sadly I see the current MBP as something I will not be buying and will more than likely move back to a high end windows laptop.

View on HN

You should give the new MBP a try (the version without the touchbar, of course).

It's the best laptop I've ever used by a long shot.

Most complaints about the newest one are that it's slower, palms keep activating the larger track pad while typing, and of course the lack of memory.

Most people who enjoy the touch bar are video designers rather than devs etc who use a lot of function keys.

I'm a dev and I enjoy it. Though it kinda sucks when I can't connect to an external monitor at home, have yet to buy any dongles for that. I'm kinda curious who finds themselves needing more memory, and for what purpose. No doubt more can be helpful, but having 16 hasn't really ever felt slow to me. Even when running multiple virtual machines.

You run multiple virtual machines simultaneously and 16GB of RAM doesn't feel slow to you? They must have seriously optimized the hardware to the point that the RAM goes farther. Running multiple VMs on my 2015 MBP with 16GB RAM is a nonstarter. How much memory are you devoting to each VM, and how much do you allocate for overhead on the host system?

I'm spoiled though - these days I spend most of my time on a machine with 128GB RAM and an i7-6900K :). I can barely recall what it's like for a machine to hang.

The SSD is crazy fast, and can make up for a lack of RAM in many circumstances. Swapping isn't as painful when your disk can read and write at 1.5-2 GB/sec.

Depends on what VMs and what other software you're running, no? You could comfortably fit a LAMP VM in what an Electron app like Slack uses...

As someone who has a similar desktop (128gb RAM w/ 12 core 3.3ghz Xeon Mac Pro) and the aforementioned late 2016 MBP w/ touchbar, I can definitively state you're being hyperbolic.

Last week I noticed I had Android Studio, Xcode 8.3b4, Xcode, IntelliJ, VMWare w/ Windows 7 Enterprise running Simplicity Studio and IAR Embedded Workbench, and Adobe Photoshop all at once. I was happily running along just fine without realizing I hadn't closed anything while switching tasks until Google Docs started consuming 6gb of RAM in a single browser tab.

Are you talking about a 2015 MBP or the 2016 with touchbar in the second paragraph? I honestly can't imagine all of that running on my 2015 MBP.

2016 w/ touchbar. I've done similarly heavy workloads on a 2015 MBP with same RAM and it was "ok", but certainly noticeable. I think the biggest contributing factor is likely SSD speed, but that's just a guess.

Who does serious video editing on a laptop? The difference between editing on a laptop and a high end desktop is night and day and can't even imagine working more then a few hours on a laptop for editing.

Yeah, high end video editing goes way easier with a beefy GPU.

Louis CK edits his show on a MacBook. I don't know if you consider that serious, but it's a pretty good show.

I imagine for him the portability is required or he just hasn't tried it with a desktop :)

I am a dev, already tried it out in a few stores and enjoyed using it.

If I would be on the market for a new laptop, that wouldn't be the reason for me to avoid buying it.

Rather the lack of CPU/GPU features versus something like a Lenovo W541.

Yours is the first note I've seen that palms are causing problems on the trackpad. The reviews, and folks I know who have one, seem to give the "palm rejection" high praise.

I had problems with this until I disabled "Tap to click". It's disabled by default so maybe that's why it hasn't been widely noticed yet.

I ordered my first ever MBP last week (it should arrive this Friday) but I'm really worried about these palm rejection issues I've been hearing about. Is the touch pad ok even though you disabled tap to click? It just seems very unergonomical to select text, drag, etc, but maybe force touch makes it better?

I've always had issues with the palm rejection on my current computer (ASUS/Ubuntu), and only managed to live with it by disabling the touch pad and using an external mouse. If the palm rejection turns out to be a problem on the new MBP I'll return it. No way I'm paying that much for a computer I can't properly use to write code.

Not sure what other computer I should buy in that case though, if I want something running MacOS. I really, really want the MBP to be a great computer.

I haven't had any issues since if that helps! :)

Devs use function keys a lot, on the Mac?

I'm a web developer and am keyboard-centric, but I've never ever had to use one function key from I can remember.

What are they used for? I do use the ctrl key while in the terminal, but what I am missing with the function keys..?

Some IDEs make extensive use of function keys, e.g. IDEs from JetBrains (IntelliJ IDEA, WebStorm, …).

On the Mac?

Yes. http://imgur.com/a/4FeMz

I have the 15" with touch bar and absolutely love it - everything from the shallow keyboard to the brightness to the massive touchpad. Just perfect. The touch bar was admittedly next to useless until I ran across an app ("BetterTouchTool") that lets me customize it freely with my own shortcuts and widgets - now I actually use the touch bar multiple times a day as opposed to never.

So I wouldn't completely give up on the Touch Bar versions, especially since the 15" has a good performance bump over the 13".

What kind of work do you do? I'm tempted to jump on the 13" but I'd be coming from a 15" and am worried I'll be missing the extra screen space.

Not OP but I went from a 15" to a 13" a few years ago. 90% of the time it doesn't bother me at all. I do think I'll switch back to 15" next time I upgrade. The main reason I switched was size/weight but by the time I'm due an upgrade again in a couple of years I have a feeling the 15" will be comparable to my current 13" in size/weight.

Can you explain your opinion? Sadly I am a jaded person who hears your words like yours and thinks "Fan Boy."

I have no interest in proving that I am not a "Fan Boy".

> the version without the touchbar

If you're charging, it has one available USB port. It looks like a perfectly good and well priced machine otherwise, but I don't really want a hub constantly dangling off the side.

I was disappointed with the MBP 2016 announcement especially because I was looking to replace my 2008 Macbook and was eager to buy, but then I thought about it and the disappointment was only related to the pricing and the touch bar. The touch bar annoyed me both in theory and in actual use for about 30 mins at the Apple store.

The one without touchbar has a worse processor but the benchmarks show the difference is not significant, it's also a more efficient processor, combined with a bigger battery and my dislike of the touch bar it became a no-brainer so I ordered one configured with 16 GB recently and I receive it next week. I am so excited, I'm changing from 2008 tech to 2016, the display is amazing, I have never had a retina display before. Happy to hear you think its the best laptop you have ever used. I upgraded my old Macbook several types from 2 GB to 4 GB to 8 GB , HDD to SDD, battery, but clearly no models allow that anymore so I had no choice in that respect.

The 2016 MBP is absolutely amazing. Just give it a shot. You won't regret it! Just takes a little getting used since there are many new design changes.

I have been using the 12" MacBook now as my primary computer for about five months, and the build quality of the keyboard is so poor I am completely shocked. What I wanted was an 11" Air with a retina screen, but they just had to make the thing so #!%@&=+ thin that it is now just a piece of $%#@. Is the MacBook Pro's also-stupidly-thin keyboard much better? They claimed the MacBook's keyboard was somehow a step up from before, but it is actually just "as good as they could make it while optimizing for thin above any sane design constraint" and it really really really sucks; it has actually driven me to stop using my computer as often due to the combination of the keyboard itself falling apart and the damage to my hands and wrists from typing on it: I seriously have started sitting at a desk so I can use a real keyboard again, which is not something I ever felt the need to do with any of Apple's previous keyboards; and at that point there is absolutely no reason to get an Apple computer in the first place as I could use anything else and I wouldn't notice the difference :/... I mean, I may as well just use a desktop computer (and I actually have essentially been doing just that, slowly transitioning to a Windows desktop I had built for VR work, even if only because it is better designed to handle all of the desktop accessories and is much faster, with a top-of-the-like graphics card).

The keyboard in the Pro is much better. I prefer its feel to the now-spongey-feel of the older chicklet-style keyboards.

I'm in the same boat, though; just wanted an 11" Air with Retina display, and I'd be happy. The 12" is not that at all, so I finally jumped ship to the 13" Pro. Not as happy as the air in terms of portability, but it's a solid laptop (non-TB).

It took me a while to get used to the thin MacBook keyboard, but I find it OK now. I probably will buy AppleCare for my MacBook because it doesn't seem robust.

That said, coupled with the LG ultradef monitor, which is also a USB-c hub, I find the MacBook to be just fine for software development.

This. My wife's MacBook Air is slowly dying and we've been hoping for a 13" MacBook Air with Retina display but it never happened. We went and tried the new MacBook Pro with the touch pad and the 12" MacBook, but she just doesn't like the feel of the new keyboard. This truly disappointed her as she really liked how light her MB Air was and the battery life, but she just couldn't get around the feel of the new MacBook Pros' keyboard. When her laptop finally stops to function, we'll have to choose between a 2015 MacBook Pro 13" or a Windows laptop.

I know this isn't what you want to hear, but typing on it for 2mins in a store isn't going to convince you. I did that too and hated it. I later ended up getting one for work a year ago and in under a week I could barely type on my older personal MBP. The key travel is awesomely shallow and further reduces any wrist stress for me. My only complaint is when I'm typing very fast / forceful, it can be a bit clacky (I prefer my keyboard dead silent). I've since switched to a late 2016 MBP and think it's keyboard is even better, but it's only a mild difference compared to the big leap before.

It's not so easy on Windows side either. If you are really after a powerful machine that is convenient to carry with you (that means quad-core, 32GB), the choices are quite limited.

These the Dell stuff of course, but for example on Lenovo you would need to go with P50 or T470p. The latter is just a refresh of an old model and lacks for example USB-C and also the PCIe NVMe is only 2x. Kind of acceptable for now, but not so future proof. Also the displays are not really on par with Apple. To get a nice display you would go for X1, but there you are stuck with dual core and 16GB. Then we you start looking at the laptops in detail, you find out things like thermal throttling under load, displays getting dimmer and CPUs slower when running on battery etc. There's much more to the laptops than just the CPU and max memory capacity. Also lets not forget that Lenovo announced the new lineup already last year and still they are not shipping all the promised features. That's like over 3 months between promise and delivery.

Can I recommend the Lenovo P50?

I switched, and it's incredible. I have 64GB of ram and a xenon processor. It's incredible. It's not as sleep as the mac, but I spend so much less time waiting.

I never have to think about "should I close down this VM/android emulator" etc. I have more RAM then I had hard drive space on my laptop in 2010.

The P50 is pretty impressive, especially compared to my older W540 which is a brick. We just ordered one for a new-hire on my team, and we'll probably end up replacing the W540/W541's over the next 18 months as everyone becomes due for a hardware refresh.

My gut feeling is that this will be coming pretty soon – probably when the appropriate Intel chipset is available. I understand and share the skepticism about purchasing one at the moment, but I'm holding off on thinking about a platform switch until it's clearer where the high-end Apple line is going.

I'm with you there. The newest MBP's are probably good but the price is way too high. I'm going to be buying a windows machine for the first time in 10 years.

I felt the same as you, when I bought my first Macbook after weeks using I remember my feelings and my thoughts "what a good laptop, what ergonomic machine, great pleasure to have it and work with".

I don't think we'll get a new MBP until Intel release the new chipset with support for more than 16 GB of low profile RAM, so probably not before the autumn.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com