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Comment by function_seven | Hacker News Reader

Apple has ditched so many cool things in the MacBook line.

1) MagSafe. I know they really want to go all in on USB-C, but the original MagSafe connector was awesome. Even the weaker 2.0 version was nice. There were two instances where that connector saved my laptop.

2) The laser-drilled power indicator. That was so cool. It looked like the light magically appeared through the aluminum. Now there's no indication whatsoever if your laptop is on or asleep or off.

3) The 2007-2011 keyboards. The ones with the real travel. Even the 2012 version with slightly reduced travel was okay. But my 2007 MacBook had the best laptop keyboard I'd ever used.

4) HDMI and SD Card slot. These are the kinds of things that you happen to need when you least expect it. When you're least likely to have that dongle with you. They're also thin ports that will fit nicely without bulking up the chassis.

5) Of course, function keys and an ESC key.

I'm going to keep my 2012 MBP going as long as I can. But when it dies or is no longer supported, I'm pretty sure ThinkPad is where I'm headed.

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While I also love MagSafe and its features, wouldn't having a more standard port is much better?

iPhones are constantly bashed by a group of users because of not having USB-C connectors. Having four USB-C ports with identical capabilities on a MacBook pro is a more pragmatic and flexible solution to have, when compared to MagSafe.

On the power level and power button issue, Apple changes its features to shape customer behavior and expectation from its devices. Apple removed battery meter from Macs since it's standby is too long (30 days) and robust (auto-hibernation), so you're unlikely to run out of juice.

They also believe in the stability of MacOS such that it's not important whether the machine is off or in standby. Because it boots in ~10 seconds and wakes up in ~2. They want to remove these distinctions from their computers and try to lower your cognitive load. Actually this is one of the finest features of the Macs IMHO. They don't make you think to use it.

Open the lid, and if the screen doesn't come on, press the power button, done.

>>While I also love MagSafe and its features, wouldn't having a more standard port is much better?

I don't understand why it can't have both. Have a magsafe port, ship with a magsafe charger. But if you happen to connect a USB-C charger to one of the USB-C ports, charge through that too. No issue. Playstation portable was like this - you could charge it through proprietary playstation charger, or if you connected a mini-usb cable it would charge through it. No issue.

It's also possible and a sound idea, however I think that idea is filtered by Johnny Ive's "remove everything which is not strictly necessary" rule, and his love for clean designs and symmetry (which is an evolution of Sony design philosophy BTW).

Well Johnny has gone way too far. My needs include more than the bare minimum. I get wanting to standardize in USB-C. Maybe move the magnet up a bit on the cable?

What I don’t appreciate is the over-emphasis on useless symmetry or minimalism. Good design is more than looks and polish. Functionality is the reason I buy the thing. Design is why I choose the brand. If the functionality isn’t there, I don’t care how pretty it is.

IMHO, Macs are much more functional than they look, but they need a different way of thinking and some adjustment. Apple likes to move in front of the curve in terms of connectivity and its utilization. It's their way of design, and they like to show it as a part of the brand.

However, I'm not implying that everyone should be comfortable with the operation principles of new MacBooks or their devices in general. I love the challenge and the different perspectives they bring, but it's sometimes limiting and slowing down until finding the best way to utilize them.

This is why we have different brands and designs, because one design indeed doesn't fit all.

To continue my Rams quotes from above: "[Good design] makes a product understandable". If having to find out how to best use your tool is a challenge (especially when the new iteration seems to be such an apparent step backwards compared to the old), maybe it simply isn't good design.

>> If having to find out how to best use your tool is a challenge (especially when the new iteration seems to be such an apparent step backwards compared to the old), maybe it simply isn't good design.

Cough, cough......USB-C. Looking at the plug there is no way to tell whether the cable will support fast charging, video, or even 3.0 or just 2.0 USB. All of those cables share the same socket but provide different functions.

Well, this is where Apple gets it right - every USB-C socket supports everything. (Ok, mostly. Looking at you, MacBook 12!)

Socket - yes. But you can walk into an official Apple store, buy a brand new MacBook Pro + an "apple approved" LG USB-C display, and guess what - the USB-C cable that is bundled with your MacBook Pro cannot be used with the display that you just bought. What's worse, MacOS won't tell you why it doesn't work - it just won't. It's the worst and most user-hostile design in computers I have seen in years.

Ah, of course, I misread - the cables. No disagreement from me here. :)

You're right.

I also like Rams and aware some of his work. Also I see traces of his work through Mac/iOS calculators (which nods to Braun's ones), and apple's software (low level) design philosophy.

That adjustment, at least in my case, doesn't come from the tool itself. I'm also a heavy Linux desktop user, so making two systems work nice (for my standards) took some time when I introduced Macs into my workflow ~10 years ago. Currently I have no friction. I think if I was solely a Mac user, that initial friction should be non-existent.

OTOH, the newest Mac I have is a Mid-2014 MBP. I don't know how the new ones compare.

Honestly, I'm way too flexible and adaptable when it comes to new designs and paradigms. I think I don't have the complaint circuitry in my brain. I like to just accept and adapt. I see it as a way to counteract the tendency of being fixed on things I like, but are outdated. I also love to bring good ideas and features from new things to the old, to refine my old habits and increase productivity.

But, as I always say, that's just me.

Well, Ive's a huge (self-proclaimed) Rams/Bauhaus fan, that's where the philosophy primarily stems from. It just seems that he seems to emphasize Rule 2 ("[good design] makes a product useful") less and less.

And one could argue they're not following that rule; I don't think the touch bar is particularly attractive, and on the iphone it has (had?) a bulge for the camera and an indentation in the screen, both of which aren't "good design" IMO. They're compromises to support certain features (face ID / front facing camera array AND a big screen, good camera)

Symmetry, huh?

Please explain the protruding camera from the back of the phones.

I doubt Ive is driving these design regressions. (Unless he’s always been a rubbish designer from day one.) It seems the khakis are running the show at Apple since Jobs passed.

Magnetic usb-c cables do exist for those who are unaware. My only problem with them is many of them only support power or usb 2.

I've had to replace my Macbook Pro USB-C charger twice in a year, and I'm fairly certain my magnetic USB-C adapter are to blame. The first problem appeared some time after I got the adapter, but at some point I just stopped using it, because the magnet are too weak, and because it have to be oriented a certain way. A few weeks ago I used it again, forget the laptop in the charger overnight, and it was dead the next morning.

I think the adapter was from the brand Baseus.

Seems you are not the only one https://www.amazon.co.uk/Looyat-Baseus-Magnetic-Cable-Macboo...

Surface Book does that. It can be charged via either a USB-C port or a Surface Connect port (which also happens to be similar to MagSafe i.e. magnetically attached).

Ah but then you'd have TWO different kinds of ports on your laptop. We should be thankful already that Johnny Ive let us keep the headphone jack on the 2017 MBP, although I don't expect it to last much.

Given how things are trending, I predict the MBP of the future will have no ports, no keyboard, and the screen will be just a static image of the apple logo, although at 4 times retina resolution.

you mean an ipad? i guess that's the joke.

Re the now removed power light, it’s a real pain point for me as I now cannot trust my laptop is truly asleep when I close the lid. Previously I’d just wait for the light to start “breathing” and I know it’s sleeping.

I’ve been caught out several times now on the new units where I closed the lid and came back hours later only to find the laptop still on and very warm.

Mostly seems down to VMs or backups running that don’t seem to want to suspend. So now I always suspend my VMs and stop backups. Which slows down my workflow greatly since it takes a minute each to suspend and resume the VM itself. I also find myself holding the laptop undercarriage right up against my ear listening for the whirring of the fans and if they stop. I look like a right idiot doing it, but there’s no other way to tell.

Fun fact: While the later (PSP3000) models could, early models (PSP1000) couldn't charge via mini USB. Not too relevant but it's a common misconception.

I might love my iPhone even more with a MagSafe lightning port connector. Especially with a light to tell me if it’s charging or won’t take power because I forgot to unlock the phone.

I will say I understand the benefits of standardization, but the MagSafe has saved me so many times. I wish all companies would have adopted that. I have kids and a dog, and many times my power outlets are not in the most convenient of places meaning I need to connect to them using an extension cord, etc. That thing has been pulled out of my machine more times than I can count, and I fear even thinking about how many times my laptop would have been pulled on the floor, port broken etc. without it. It is absolutely one of my favorite features.

nope. i've had my usb-c mbp for 1.5 years and the usb ports are already wearing out. the power cable slips out of 2 of the ports just from gravity.

my last magsafe macbook air lasted 5 years as a daily driver. i doubt this piece of shit will last another year. i've already had to send it in once for a logic board replacement once.

the keyboard on this one is starting to go as of this week (one key not registering), so i think i'm gonna have to send it in again.

not to mention the pain in the ass of carrying dongles everywhere

I honestly consider buying a 2015 mbp and selling my newer one at least once a month. That was the last good laptop apple made.

>While I also love MagSafe and its features, wouldn't having a more standard port is much better?

And to piggyback off of this, I imagine the future will be wireless charging in this realm, so in theory you wouldn't need to worry about charger cables plugged into your laptop at all.

> iPhones are constantly bashed by a group of users because of not having USB-C connectors. [...]

I found that most (if not all) people who rave about a USB-C-only future do not actually use more than 1 or 2 peripherals. Or they want it for power connection only.

Anybody who a) has a significant number of USB-A peripherals (in my case, I'd say the number is above 30 distinct devices), b) understands that the USB-C label doesn't mean that it will work when you plug it in, has a more sensible approach: USB-C is fine, but don't remove our USB-A (or lightning) ports just yet.

> Having four USB-C ports with identical capabilities on a MacBook pro is a more pragmatic and flexible solution to have, when compared to MagSafe.

A more pragmatic solution to what? Everything I plug into these ports is via some ugly after-market adapter. There is not a single natively USB-C peripheral or cable that I have ever needed to attach (other than the power cable, of course). Even the iPhone itself is incompatible.

Luckily it's only a work machine and I get to use my older personal MBP at home...

> Having four USB-C ports with identical capabilities on a MacBook pro is a more pragmatic and flexible solution to have, when compared to MagSafe.

Four ports costs extra. The base model, which is ostensibly also a "pro" computer, only has two ports. That's one for power and one for everything else. If all of the pro machines came with four ports, then complaints about the USB-C transition wouldn't be so great.

My current Macbook Pro is probably the first bit of Apple hardware in two decades that's made me actively consider alternatives. It's been the one laptop - premium at that - from Apple which I've had continual frustrations with compared to its predecessor, for all the reasons listed above.

I love USB-C, but not for power. Already, two of my ports are loose. I've never had that on any previous Apple power connector. MagSafe was a brilliant solution to real problems, and just dropping it without a superior alternative is not at all what I expect from Apple.

I also like the universality of USB-C, but it's not like Apple didn't opt to keep one legacy port for usability reasons - that little headphone port. SD and HDMI would have been enough.

And yes, the keyboard is terrible. For a machine I spend all day on, designed for pros, its a disappointment. Like most people here, it always takes me a little time to adapt to a new keyboard; unlike in the past, after more than a year I still loathe this one.

Perhaps the only thing that doesn't bring out my inner rage is the Touchbar. I'm largely ambivalent about it - the lack of esc/f-keys was annoying for a few days but I adapted. Obviously, others disagree, but on this list its the one choice I could have found a way to rationalize.

I could have written this ^^^ comment myself; I've been very disappointed with my 2017 MacBook Pro. They keyboard keys feel unpleasant, and now my H key has become unreliable (about 50% of the time it works, about 25% of the time it fails to register, and 25% of the time it types 2 characters). Dealing with dongles is not worth the headache. The touchbar is a step back in UI. The new trackpad is so large I bump it all the time. MagSafe was beloved for a reason.

Yesterday the last straw landed and I started setting up my 2012 MacBook again, at least for my writing, where I need a reliable built-in keyboard. I know Apple has a repair program for the 2017 MacBook keyboard[1], but it's my work machine, it's really hard to part with it for 1-3 days of repairs.

Edit to add: Moments after posting I run across this link: https://theoutline.com/post/6409/the-new-and-improved-macboo...

[1] https://www.apple.com/support/keyboard-service-program-for-m...

I have had my keyboard repaired twice on my 2017, and the last time I went in (last week) they told me 10 days for the repair, which probably makes sense (as they are getting lots of repair orders) but seems totally unacceptable to me as a developer who is only lucky enough to be able to afford a 2nd machine.

For all the same reasons, I upgraded from a 2012 MacBook Pro to a 2018 model and returned it right away. I bought a lightly-used 2015 model on eBay instead. 2015 was the last model with a real keyboard. It feels just like my 2012 but with a small bump in all the specs.

> I'm going to keep my 2012 MBP going as long as I can. But when it dies or is no longer supported, I'm pretty sure ThinkPad is where I'm headed.

ThinkPads have garbage quality control. My last three: two T450s that had bad backlight bleed. Then a X1 Carbon 6th Gen that doesn't have backlight bleed, but LTE that just stops working randomly. (At least once a day, usually when waking up from sleep--so bad I've just disabled it.) Also, the X1C6 has the best trackpad on the ThinkPad line, or so I'm told, but it still sucks compared to a MacBook Pro. My next machine is going to be a Surface Laptop, I think.

Ugh, the touchpad. You’re right about that, and I’ve forgotten about it because my current work-issued ThinkPad spends almost 100% of its time on a dock.

Maybe the Surface is my next machine. Who knows what will be out there when I finally have to let this laptop go.

My 2008 MBP has a cool feature I miss: regardless of whether the laptop was o switched on or off, lid open or shut, you could press a little button on the left side and a number of LEDs would light up to indicate how much battery you had left.

Just to clarify, that's #2 in op's list. I did not know this was discontinued. I'm gonna go home and hug my 2012 MBP extra hard.

I was referring to the power light on the front of the early aluminum MBPs.

But this battery level indicator should be #6 on my list. I forgot about that. It was cool, too.

I forgot to list magsafe as one of those awesome things that was lost. I could take or leave the power indicator but it was kind of cool. It's such a no brainer that I'm surprised it's not been copied. Apple must have patented it too well.

My understanding was that they purchased the company that specialized in the laser perforation and all of the proprietary equipment required to make the metal thin enough for the light to shine through, which is a big part of the reason we haven't seen it elsewhere. And yeah, probably IP too.

Bang & Olufsen have the same thing on some of their products, as does Koenigsegg for the center console in their cars.

There were several articles around that...

It was a very special manufacturing procedure, something that is hard to copy without the special hardware.

And Apple bought all that supply. You couldn't get the production line to do it...

(IIRC, bit my memory may fail me on that. Please Google it, I would be interested in rereading it!)

Microsoft's Surface connector is Magsafe-ish, with USB and DP lines running through it as well. When I get to the office I put my laptop vaguely near the connector and it snaps into place, giving me two extra monitors, an external keyboard, and gigabit Ethernet.

It's been copied. My Dell XPS has it :)

I'd like a power and / or activity indicator, especially my previous mac (2013 or 14 Retina) had Issues in that it just wouldn't start up with no indication whatsoever that it was on, starting up, or there was a problem.

I mean just show an error on the screen. It's not the end of the world.

My absolute favorite feature from older Macbooks was the access panel on the bottom for swapping the battery and hard drive. I'm not sure what models have them; I have a standard Macbook from ~2008 that has it. You just press a lever and the panel comes right off, exposing the user-serviceable parts. You could swap the battery using no tools in about 10 seconds. Or you could swap the hard drive using a screwdriver in a few minutes.

I thought I'd miss MagSafe. After nearly two years without it, it turns out: I don't, because USB-C cables will disconnect in a lot of situations where MagSafe would've disconnected as well and USB-C has the advantage of allowing me to choose the side to plug the charging cable in, which is pretty convenient.

Same here.

The funny thing is, some people have a hard time losing features no matter what. There are alternatives to MagSafe, such as the Griffin BreakAway, but they don't buy these.

MagSafe wires insulation always breaks at both ends and the connector is too wide to fix that with a heat-shrinked tube easily.

SD Card slot is an essential thing, I can't believe they've removed it.

Lack of HDMI is not a problem IMHO, I've bought a great Thunderbolt-HDMI converter for about $10 on AliExpress, out it on my HDMI cable and forgotten about the problem.

Lack of some keys has always been a pain, removing even function keys and an ESC key looks like they really hate people that use terminal.

Removing classic USB ports was too ahead-of-time, they should have waited at least some years before doing this (BTW I actually am not sure USB-C is going to become the standard, there are a lot of problems with it).

> SD Card slot is an essential thing, I can't believe they've removed it.

Is this sarcasm? I don't remember the last time I used an SD Card on a laptop.

You probably don't have a DLCR camera and are comfortable with the built-in SSD capacity. Not having an SD slot while having a cam is like not having a car in LA, many Macbook users also rely on SD cards for "hard drive expansion", there even are SD cards designed right for this (e.g. https://gizmodo.com/this-leave-in-sd-card-merges-with-your-m...).

All these talks about SD Cards, it would have been fine if Apple were actively pushing an Energy Efficient Super High Speed Wireless Direct Transfer from Camera ( Do you mean DSLR? ) to Mac.

Then getting rid of SD card is more about moving towards the future, and not the past. The problem is not only does such standard not exist, Apple isn't working on any, the industry couldn't care less.

This is very different to all previous Apple's removal, where there is a clear better alternative, that might not be as good now but it is in their Spring as Steve Jobs would likes to put it.

> DSLR

Sure. I was very tired and couldn't remember the correct abbreviation, excuse me (believe it or not it's the first time in my life I actually typed it :-)).

> Then getting rid of SD card is more about moving towards the future, and not the past. The problem is not only does such standard not exist, Apple isn't working on any, the industry couldn't care less.

Makes sense but in fact I'm glad nobody is inventing a replacement. There are things that just work great, are simple and don't have to be replaced. Like headphone jacks. And SD cards are among of these things.

I am really excited about crostini on Chromebooks. I think a year from now a lot of us 2012 MBP users will find a new home in the Chromebook world.

ChromeOS + Android Emulation covers a lot of ground for UI needs in the developer workflow. For everything else, you have Linux via Crostini.

They have a much better security model than even OS X + little snitch + little flocker, too. I have both nvme pixelbook and touchbar rmbp and find myself using both a lot.

There are hacks for the magsafe desire...

https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/7/12/15960594/m...

I just switched to a new 2018 macbook pro. The missing esc key isn't so bad. Thought I would hate it, but like everything else, including new FB redesigns, you get used to it and move on.

If I wanted to bother with hacks I wouldn't have Apple products.

No esc key? They just crippled vi/vim users. For a piece of hardware that was the preferred laptop for Linux admins, that's stupid.

Hitting an escape key in the far upper left is more likely to cripple you than almost anything else.

I use press-and-release on the alt key to send 0x1b, as DEC intended.

I'd suggest looking into remapping caps lock to esc if you miss it. This is something I do even on my Dell XPS.

But then you can’t use caps lock for control...

You can do both! I always remap my caps lock to act as escape when tapped and control when held. I wrote a blog post on how to do it: https://www.dannyguo.com/blog/remap-caps-lock-to-escape-and-...

> 2007 MacBook had the best laptop keyboard I'd ever used.

You mean 2007 Macbook Pro right ? One of the best tactile responses I'd ever experienced on a keyboard. Thinkpad T520 was another I really enjoyed typing on.

In my case it was the white plastic MacBook (non pro).

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