Comment by latch | Hacker News Reader

Comment by latch | Hacker News Reader

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I'll take this opportunity to vent.

I bought new 13" mbp w/touchbar (only the touchbar version has the most powerful CPU). From day one, the butterfly keyboard's been a pain. Most days its fine, but now and again, for hours, keystrokes aren't recognized.

I don't live anywhere near an apple store and the local authorized repair store has a) crappy online reviews and b) wanted to keep it for 2 weeks.

I flew to a country with an apple store and they were super friendly and "fixed it". One week later, the problem is back (though much less severe).

Also, my touchbar occasionally crashes (maybe once every 2-3 weeks) and I need to kill the process. It gets "stuck" on whatever the last key I press, which is fun when that happens to be reduce brightness.

Even though it's new, I've seriously considered abandoning the platform. However, when I looked, I still didn't find anything that seemed close to acceptable. I don't understand why Google doesn't turn the Pixelbook into a proper linux laptop. (XPS 13 has awful camera placement, isn't available in my region, and you can only get 16GB ram if you also spend more for a touch screen).

I feel a little better now.

Yep, I spent over $3k on my MacBook pro and I had the exact same experience. Keys stopped working consistently, brought it into the Apple Store and they cleaned it out, only to have it stop working just a few days later -- and has been getting worse.

I regret buying this laptop every day. I'm considering switching to Linux or even Windows for my next personal computer.

Windows 10 is good. Try it.

Yeah, no thanks. Last time I tried using it I was severely unimpressed. Basic things like viewing photos and previewing downloaded songs is so much more obtuse in Windows than on OS X, not to mention all the snooping Microsoft does. Explorer would even crash trying to generate a thumbnail for a corrupt photo that I wanted to delete.. so I popped the SD card into my Mac to delete it

Yep, and it's so slow. On my new desktop rig (2017, $3,5k worth of hardware) it's ridiculously slow. Opening a exporer, wait 2 seconds. Open a network drive, it might open, if you're lucky. Even mundane things like opening Adobe software or Office takes noticeably longer than on my 2014 Macbook Pro. And it's not the hardware, geekbench is in expected territory, AIDA64 benches fine. It's just somehow, slow. Feels slow, at least. And then there's the visual inconsistencies. Open the details on a network view and EVERY TAB has a different UI style (one of them going back to the early 2000's) I find that inexcusable. But hey, games, they run fine.

I've considered the surface book but it's Windows 10 S, so I'll stick to old Mac

My reply was for the parent poster who already showed an intention of trying Linux or Windows. :) . I know a lot of people here scorn Windows.

Maybe you want to take a look again. The base model comes with Windows 10 S, but can be upgraded for $30 USD to full fledged Windows 10.

Not op, but I'd prefer 7

Can't you freely upgrade to the regular Windows 10 when you buy a Surface Book ?

The saying "if you give a man a fish he eats for a day, if you teach him to fish he eats for the rest of his life" seems applicable here. Microsoft gives you a fish with Windows 10, Linux provides tackle, bait and boat.

I'm not sure I agree with that analogy, but it does bring up an interesting choice. Do you just want to buy a fish every now and then with money earned with your regular job, or do you want to spend the time learning how to use your boat, the best way to use bait and tackle according to the latest industry insights and plug the holes in your boat when they appear?

I'm not making a value-judgement either way. Different people have different needs.

I'm getting ever closer to accepting the pain of shifting my life away from Apple. Apple is becoming gimmicky and useless. On top of that, the security issues of late are like Windows XP level crap.

> I bought new 13" mbp w/touchbar (only the touchbar version has the most powerful CPU).

It is very telling of the folly of that touchbar that people feel they need to apologise for having chosen a model with that feature.

I have the 15” MBP Touchbar and think it’s the best keyboard I’ve ever had on a laptop. (And I’ve used a lot of laptops.)

I actually like the feel of the butterfly keyboard. I just don't like that it doesn't work very well.

Likewise, I have had the 13” since it was released and absolutely love the keyboard, it’s never failed me once.

I wish they’d let us ship MacBooks in to a service center and bypass the local authorized repair centre even if they had to tack on a small surge charge. I can send in an iPhone (and presumably an iPad): why not their MacBooks?

> even if they had to tack on a small surge charge

I think you meant "surcharge," but in this era of Uber, congestion pricing, and cryptomania, that is a marvelous malapropism.

Whoops! I did indeed

You can in some countries. Here in Japan, it's faster to call phone support and ship it in to the service center yourself since that's what all the authorized repair centers are just going to do anyway (none of the ones near me fix Mac hardware on-site) so you're cutting out the middle-man.

It seems that at least in Spain you can get an XPS 13 with 16GB RAM and a FullHD screen

http://www.dell.com/es/p/xps-13-9360-laptop/pd?ref=PD_Family

The new XPS 13 has a better camera position and a good touch pad but still not a great battery. It’s close. Maybe next year.

What about a surface book?

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