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Comment by volkl48 | Hacker News Reader

Among my many hats, I do some official Apple work.

What you are talking about is not allowed for work done under Apple.

The top case is one part which cannot be disassembled so far as they are concerned. It contains the main part of the shell, the keyboard, the trackpad, and the battery. A failure in any part of it is to be serviced by a complete replacement of the top case.

It is not an exceptionally expensive component, but it is a significant amount of labor. The top case is pretty much the "base" that all other components are attached to. Which means you take everything else out (logic board, display, fans, vent, etc) and move it to the new one.

Also, the touch ID bit is a bitch to move.

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Maybe something like this will finally force Apple to start making their laptops more serviceable.

After being an Apple user since 2006, I’ve just switched to a Thinkpad for my home machine. Compared to a MacBook Air, the X series is only 1mm thicker, but smaller in all other dimensions, including weight. Yet I can upgrade the storage and memory, and replace parts myself that fail (the battery can be swapped while it’s running). It also has a full array of ports including USB type A & C, HDMI, headphone jack, SD card slot (the latest version has replaced the Ethernet port with a dongle).

Admitidely they don’t look as nice, but I’m not really a design sensitive person.

> Maybe something like this will finally force Apple to start making their laptops more serviceable.

I am afraid they will just increase the already huge margins, to account for similar cases in the future.

They won't. So you can stop having that fear. There's no evidence whatsoever that they'd even consider that.

I'm pretty sure they charge based on what the market will bear rather than what it costs them to manufacture and service. If they have been effective at this it means there is no room for increases.

In other words if customers would accept higher prices then Apple would have already increased the prices.

Off-topic, but what is the point of having a mini ethernet port if you still need a dongle anyway? USB ethernet adapters are cheap. They could just kill the port and save some pennies.

To have a fixed MAC address for the enterprise where it matters.

Spoof the adapter's MAC?

How is the trackpad? I intentionally bought a MacBook Pro late 2015 version just before they went out of stock because I actually like all those “old” ports, the old keyboard and so on.

I’d prefer to stay on os/x because Linux is still tedious in the way that you have to configure it to make it tolerable and windows had gone from great (7) to something that annoys me on a daily basis (10).

But I’m mainly scared of the mouse. The MacBook trackpad is damn near magical and I’m not sure I could ever use a laptop with a trackpad that didn’t come close to it. The price point and the design choices on the MacBook line as well as it’s price point (price can be mitigated by buying older versions like I did) have made me consider other options, thinkpads being the main competitor. But how is the trackpad?

Being an real mouse person, the trackpad is usually good enough (using Thinkpads since 2006), however when I don't have it around, I happen to be more heavy stick mouse user than the trackpad.

I really miss its ergonomics when using other brands.

I'm in the same boat. Got a second hand 2015 model like new because of screen and topcase repair program. At work I'm forced to use a Dell with Linux. I like that I can configure everything about Linux to reduce the difference to my Mac workflow (key shortcuts etc). But I hatr that I must configure almost everything to get to a basic workable environment. As for trackpads on the Dell, I avoid using it as it makes me cry compared to my macbook's also the keyboard just sucks, backspace and other keys not registering reliably.

That’s interesting to hear. I’m using a cheap HP running Ubuntu supplied by my current job. I was considering switching to an XPS13 for my personal machine.

What’s currently keeping me on my late 2013 MBP for the moment is poor default behaviour of desktop Linux.

Like the Bluetooth forgetting the state it was left in on every reboot.

Or something, I don’t know what, constantly reversing horizontal trackpad scroll direction (but leaving vertical alone). Or blanking the screen after 20s of inactivity regardless of the screen/power settings in Gnome.

I know that I’ll eventually get that stuff under control but it’s weird it doesn’t work out of the box without a trip to Stack Overflow.

I'm more interested in what the TrackPoint is like.

It takes time to get used to. But it is sooo worth it - I don't need to ever move my hands off the keyboard. I still prefer standalone mouse (but I'm still gamer, so nothing can beat speed & accuracy of dedicated mouse for me), but even when I have plugged it in I sometimes use trackpoint to keep hands on the keyboard. In cramped places (bus, train) I work without problems, and I wonder how awkward would it be with using standard touchpad with laptop in your lap - too close to your stomach, so not much space for hands. Also I don't ever have problems with accidental touching of touchpad - it is simply disabled.

Problem is, there are not many notebooks with trackpoint :/

Btw I can't talk about newest models, but this thing does not change much.

A coworker got himself a T470p (I think), the trackpad hardware is fine, albeit a bit small for my taste; the problem to me is more about how it is leveraged by the software (OS) side of things: both Linux DEs and Windows make visual feedback of multitouch gestures feel weird somehow. Maybe that's a habit of mine being used to macOS though. I'm not overly fond of the trackpoint, but that's a nice option and it's right on the home row next to HJKL. I hate how the B letter is offset though, kinda ridiculous but I find it a real eyesore and an aesthetic failure somehow.

I have a t460p for software development, which is basically the same machine as that t470p, and absolutely love it. It has workstation-class performance with the quad core i7, 32 gb ram and dedicated nvidia graphics, all of which can run full blast without throttling. But if I use it moderately it still has all day battery life.

I almost never use the trackpad, preferring a mouse. I don’t like them even on macbooks (I also have a macbook air for casual use). But it’s definitely worse than macbooks.

I never noticed the offset b, but now that you’ve pointed it out to me it’s going to bug me. Thanks. I do like the keyboard better than the air’s keyboard. I haven’t used the new mb pro’s keyboard to any extent so can’t compare, but I like a bit of key travel so probably would still prefer the lenovo.

Afaik Linux DEs treat gestures as hotkeys, hence the weirdness - you can't do them as gradually as with osx, it's all or nothing.a

Yep I’ve got a 2013 MBP I’m too scared to upgrade at the moment. I’ve been weening myself off it and into a Windows 10 desktop recently this solving both problems.

Plus the desktop is second hand enterprise stuff and cost virtually nothing which was a pleasant surprise.

Apple can also just swap out the complete part and then ship the broken one to China to be disassembled and repaired cheaply.

Afaik this is what they do. Apple service centers need to return broken parts to Apple after 'repair'. Apple can then recycle/refurbish these parts of they seem fit. But they probably won't discount the customer for the benefit they receive from this approach.

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