Wow. This is what it's come to. "It hasn't gotten worse! Yayy!"
>It makes almost nothing worse and almost everything better, finally bringing the Mac Mini into the modern age.
So, no, it's not "yayy" because it "hasn't gotten worse", it's "yayy", because "[it makes] almost everything better".
Having seen teardowns of a MacBook, I'm pretty sure that one without a touchbar would be more-or-less a completely different computer - different keyboard, yes. To accomplish that, though, you'd need to also make a different housing to accommodate it, and a different motherboard, too, because this stuff's all soldered together as a single unit these days.
And for all that, people would still be griping about the keyboard and the monoport.
They ignored those for the 2018 MBP refresh, probably because the new Macbook Air was coming. I'd bet on the full keyboard MBP getting discontinued now that it's out, or best case having the 2017 hang around while the touchbar models continue to see updates.
The Escape has higher powered CPUs than the Air or MacBook, but I don't think anyone is buying from those three based on horsepower.
Keeping it optional indefinitely, then, defeats this goal.
I don't see how this thing is practical across the entire Mac line.
1. Widespread touchbar adoption
2. Increased sales of Apple keyboardsActually, I do: They'll raise the price of the cheapest iMac configuration and include the keyboard in the box. After seeing the starting Mac Mini prices, it makes total sense.
I only estimated that they were going for 100% laptop coverage. But I can imagine a future where Apple keyboards have a touch bar option. Though not as important because Macbook touch bar penetration can drive developers to integrate with it, alone.
At which point it's not much different than gestures when it comes to answering your questions. What happens when you use a Logitech mouse on your macOS desktop instead of a Magic Trackpad?
Note that touch bar integration cannot have unique features, so it's never required. The challenge is to get developers to care about it which is the prerequisite for users to care about it.
Its OK if you like it. I'm sure lots of people do, but you know damn well significantly more people have had issues with this laptop than normal, so I'm not sure why you're implying otherwise.
The keyboard is by far the worst I've ever used, and I've owned a variety of $200 Wal-Mart black friday laptops and a couple of netbooks, in addition to some high end stuff. I had a friend with an older MBP attempt to show me something using my computer and he could barely type on it without frequent mistakes. Within a minute he was getting frustrated. It just feels terrible. I never thought anything would be worse than typing on a touch-screen but Apple's engineers have accomplished a horrifying miracle. Its like they intentionally tried to design something that's as loud as a mechanical keyboard while still having worse tactile feedback than a $5.00 rubber dome keyboard.
On top of that, its not noticeably faster, after 4.5 years it still maxed out @ 16GB Ram (They fixed this in 2018 but its too late), which is not enough for my use case + it died after 3 months (Not the keyboard, it was a power issue).
This is both the most expensive and the worst computer I've ever owned. The 2013 MBP I'm using now as a loaner while I get my new one fixed is, to quote Steve Jobs "Like getting a glass of ice water in hell." It just works.
I don't hate it, but I wish more of the tools I use took advantage of it.
I think it could be massively improved by shortening it a little on the left to make room for a physical escape key. That's about 95% of my problem with it.
And your post also answers you sibling comment: Ctrl modifier is useful outside of just Emacs.
Try it out. I believe the API changed in the macOS release before Mojave, so they relaunched Karabiner under the name Karabiner Elements. This option is under the "Complex Modifications" tab.
If I was writing a list of tricks for macOS power users to try, this would be my number one. Up there with binding a global show/hide hotkey for iTerm (I use Ctrl-Space, thus CapsLock-Space).
I currently use Karabiner for this as well, but a slightly different configuration.
The two rules I use are:
* R-Cmd + hjkl are arrows (which works great with HHKB but even on native MBP it requires less movement of hand from trackpad or typing hand than the arrow keys)
* Caps solo is Esc while Caps with another key equals Ctrl.
Is there a way to do this in Linux as well? I currently have to use Linux regularly and I rebind Caps to Ctrl however for Vim it isn't ideal. So I'd like to have the same functionality I have with Karabiner on Linux (Xorg / console).
It's not optimal, but I do it because backtick is about the same position as a hardware Escape key. It makes using vim feel ok again.
This option is available from the KE Complex Modifications tab.
Ahh... the good 'ol Scottsman shows his face yet again! Right on time!
Refuting the initial generalization by saying that no "serious" computer users use their Touch Bar because their computers are closed is nearly a textbook example of the fallacy.
I'll compromise. We'll call it the no "serious" computer users fallacy instead of the no serious Scotsman fallacy.
The touchbar is so much less functional than the keys it replaces. Some key combinations now require serious acrobatics, and you can’t touch type as easily.
We’re not buying any more macs until it improves.
What kind of work do you / your teammates do? I walked into an Apple store last week prepared to hate the keyboards and touch bars, but was very pleasantly surprised. My ladyfriend wanted to see the Air, but was so taken with the Touch Bar for photo work that she will be buying an MBP instead. While it might not be everyones cup of tea, I think Apple may have figured is demographics correctly on this one.
Yup, that's exactly what the HN groupthink would like to believe. What is by definition a small user demographic complains repeatedly/loudly that their problems are the most important, indicative of "everyone", and Apple is doomed because so-and-so bought a Surface Pro/Dell/System76. The hyperbolie is kicked up a notch here, as clearly any $200 Walmart laptop keyboard is better.
As is typical, there's never any data to support the claims and a significant number of counter anecdotes are dismissed absent critical reasoning ("you know damn well...!"). Instead, the echo chamber resonates unabated by logic.
Throw in an out of context Steve quote and you can identify this drivel pretty uniformly. It's usually best to ignore, though at times a response is merited when it's completely off topic and unhelpful (as it is here, the new Mac mini seems awesome regardless of a hater's two year old take on the tbMBP).
I also like the touchbar. The touch-slide volume is a nifty improvement...I use the touchbar for the occasional screengrab...and that's about it. As someone mentioned above, I too would really like a physical Escape key
Just like your comment, this is an anecdotal opinion on the Internet. I didn't read your response and come away with the conclusion that you were attempting to represent it as a peer reviewed white paper, so I'm not sure why you're holding my random Internet comment to the same standard.
My anecdotal evidence is that all of the typical places people go to talk about technology on the Internet(reddit, hacker news, blogs, etc.) seem to have to more complaints about the keyboard on the new MBP than I recall seeing about the old model, which was almost universally hailed as the best laptop on the market.
Included with that anecdotal evidence is my own experience in a company with hundreds of people that use MBPs. There might be other companies where everyone loves them.
It would be really helpful if we could trust Apple to publish accurate, relevant data on the new MBP vs the old one, but they have a history of hiding, denying and/or lying about issues with Apple products.
>The hyperbolie is kicked up a notch here, as clearly any $200 Walmart laptop keyboard is better.
This isn't hyperbole. Its just my opinion and it was presented as such. I've been using computers since the early 90s. I've never used a keyboard that felt worse to me than the MBP. When I say that I don't mean that its one of the worst keyboards I've ever used, I mean that its THE worst keyboard that I have ever used, which is obviously just my opinion.
>Throw in an out of context Steve quote and you can identify this drivel pretty uniformly
This isn't a case where reusing a quote is changing the context of what he meant. I wasn't saying that Steve Jobs agrees with my opinion of the new MBP. This should be pretty obvious. The original context was that Steve Jobs felt one product was so superior to another one that getting the former was like getting a glass of ice water in hell. Its a perfectly relevant quote used in the same way that he did. I just happen to be comparing different products.
>It's usually best to ignore, though at times a response is merited when it's completely off topic and unhelpful (as it is here, the new Mac mini seems awesome regardless of a hater's two year old take on the tbMBP).
1. Its perfectly on-topic to discuss the quality of Apple products in a post about an Apple product. The reputation of their products is pretty valid when people are discussing whether to buy a newer product.
2. I didn't bring up the MBP, someone else did and I responded.
3. Not liking a single Apple product doesn't make me a "hater". I loved my 2013 MBP, I loved all of my iPhones/iPads, and I love MacOS. Apple released a product that I have an issue with. Lots of other people are having the same issue. I'm not sure why you have to react to that like a personal attack.
There's this phenomenon where if lots of people have an issue with something and then a random person buys the product and has a good experience, that person decides to dismiss everyone that has had an issue, pretend its impossible the issue existed, and then act like there must be something wrong with the people that had the issue. I don't really understand that because with any product that sells thousands or millions, its typical for some people to have issues even if most like it. In this case, it just happens to be a product where a slightly larger percentage than normal is having an issue.
It could be better - it could require a bit more of pressure to press buttons and could have haptic feedback like the touchpad, but I bet someone is working on that, even if it means extending haptic feedback to the whole chassis (which is not a bad idea anyway).
If drcongo doesn't mean to speak for "Anyone who owns a MacBook Pro with Touch Bar", drcongo should refrain from using those exact words. And you should probably refrain from speaking for drcongo.
It's interesting that you chose the term "sweeping generalization". It almost always carries a negative connotation. In fact, it's considered to be a logical fallacy (see https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFalla...).
> I find it really annoying when someone says something like "everyone likes cats!" and then someone, inevitably, will hop in and reply with "ACTUALLY, I hate cats."
I'm sorry I annoyed you. I find it annoying when someone speaks for me and gets my opinion wrong.
edit: Is it really "inevitable" though? It happens every single time? (just kidding)
> This isn't a mathematics proof.
No, but communicating clearly and honestly is important, even in casual conversations.
Got a new one from my new job, keyboard stuck.
My brother bought a new one, keyboard stuck.
Performance is better across the board (6-core i9 vs 4-core i7, 32GB vs 16GB, faster SSD). It has a larger, pressure-sensitive track pad. The display is better.
I have a slight preference for the old keyboard, but I don't dislike the new one. I could take or leave the TouchBar. I was never a big user of the F keys and IntelliJ, where I spend a lot of my time, has good TouchBar support. I like having Touch ID. I'd prefer to have a real escape key, but the button is still in the same place so I haven't had to retrain my fingers to hit it.
USB-C with a Thunderbolt 3 hub is marginally more convenient than a Thunderbolt 2 hub plus a MagSafe power cord. I do miss MagSafe though.
Reality: Apple product breaks sales records.
This is the thing - narrow single issue analysis that doesn't even acknowledge that other factors of consideration even exist, inevitably will result in conclusions with very limited applicability.
I don't like the touchbar, I don't like the new keyboard, and I don't like the new ports.
I think there is something wrong if, now two years later, there are still people like me who not only don't see a clear benefit to upgrading, but see it as a net-negative.
Ideally, there should be nearly no one (if anyone) who prefers the previous iteration.
But the sides of the function keys are the escape and power keys, so the row itself couldn't go away
I wish the Touch Bar was farther offset, 50-100% taller for a better display area, and that the escape and touch id/power buttons were distinct. I also wish there was a standard way for applications to advertise functions for it (I have some really useful tools that are third party, such as mic mute).
I'll be getting a 2018 Mac Mini once they're available for order here, so this machine will see much less use then, just basically if I need to be able to do something while travelling (which isn't that frequent).
How else would you bind ESC?
There is nothing wasteful about it when you've been trained that way.
However, while users are mostly just faced with perhaps-hard choices about how to remap the given keys, the keyboard manufacturer and integrator Apple had many other options. Caps Lock is currently 2U wide on both ISO and ANSI layouts https://i.ytimg.com/vi/3tJagPz-xIw/maxresdefault.jpg , so it could fairly comfortably be split into a 1U Esc and Caps Lock. You could even give Escape the outside position: that's not a big reach, just the mirror-image of the ISO English # key and more convenient than Esc's existing position in both ANSI and ISO, and there's an arguable case for not putting Esc on too much of a hair-trigger position near the home row anyway. Alternatively you could carve a 1U key out from the right of the right Shift, which is pretty uselessly overlong on both ISO and ANSI.
Granted, that's not all of it. He is celebrating that it's gotten better, but he is also specifically celebrating that it hasn't lost many advantages.
I'm hoping it will be good for 3 more years.
Craftily hidden in a footnote for that paragraph.
edit: apparently Apple TV doesn't have optical audio either.
This is just a standard annoying thing with Apple though. Their designs are very 'forward looking' in that they don't consider what potential customers already have so much as they do what their own future peripherals are going to need.
Anecdotally: I do have a Mac mini with my receiver, which I replaced this year. But the new receiver not only has USB input, it has wifi and built-in clients for Spotify, Tidal, Pandora, TuneIn, Roon, whatever protocol Windows uses for media sharing whose name I'm utterly blanking on right now, and a dozen or so other services, with Apple Airplay 2 theoretically coming in an update.
edit: I'd be curious to see what people are using optical for today (I'm under the impression audio pros mainly use USB interfaces as well)
And it works great over ARC! The TV remote's volume buttons get passed through automatically, and it turns itself off and on along with the TV. I don't even know where the soundbar's own remote is anymore.
I have an external DAC/amp, and I had been using optical until I recently upgraded my workstation. Now I am using USB, because the new motherboard doesn't have optical; I assumed USB would be fine, so the lack of optical wasn't something I considered with the purchase.
Unfortunately there's an awful amount of hiss with USB on this DAC. I'm not knowledgeable enough to pinpoint what's causing it, but standard remedies I've found (eliminate ground loop, try ferrite cores, get a usb filter) have not made a difference. It could be the USB interface on the DAC side, I have no idea.
While I don't _need_ an external DAC, I like using one for a few reasons: mine has a low output impedance which is good for some headphones, a convenient switch to toggle between headphone and speaker output, and a big volume knob with really smooth action. I like it. The alternative is to use the motherboard's ports; this motherboard does jack sensing such that the rear line out gets disabled if something is plugged into the front, so switching between headphones and speakers involves plugging/unplugging the headphones all the time. I also don't like adjusting volume through a tray applet.
You'd be converting from USB to optical, at which point you'd break the ground connection which would be where your hiss is coming from (assuming it's still noiseless when still being used with optical). Then, your concern would be jitter and whether the added conversion is adding lots of jitter to the equation. Your DAC might (or might not) be good at rejecting jitter noise. I've got a Lavry DA10 that's exceptionally good at rejecting jitter (in crystal mode), but that's mastering grade and maybe overkill for you.
It wouldn't add literal noise, but it's also possible for the USB connection to be more jittery than a different computer making the optical connection. That's partly hardware and partly software design (controlling how the data stream is buffered, and associated things that might slightly modulate the audio data clocking). So a change in computer feeding the DAC could also substantially affect the 'sound' of the DAC, as well as the noise issue you observed.
This isn't a huge issue for me, it's just an example of where I'd prefer to use optical. If it ends up bothering me such that I need to fix something, I'll 'fix' the motherboard.
So it's the DACs fault, but maybe it's fair to say that it's harder to make a good DAC when USB is how the data is being delivered. I'm sure a high end USB DAC doesn't have this issue, but I'm pretty impressed with my cheap offbrand optical DAC that was $11. I'm guessing I would not be so impressed with the $11 USB version.
Optical has the benefit of always being electrically isolated.
Optical digital means perfect isolation from the ground plane of the computer. It's that simple. The DAC can do whatever it needs to manage its own noise levels, but you're pretty much guaranteed a huge difference from entirely decoupling the DAC from the computer's ground plane. That electrical interference can do a surprisingly enormous amount of damage to the analog circuitry of the cheap DAC, which itself is probably not very resilient at rejecting any sort of electrical interference.
If you used optical before, it can be reasonable to use USB->optical. A lot of USB audio interfaces already have this. I'm not making use of it, but the USB interface I have on my Mini has an optical out.
It doesn't matter that I have my audio preference set to "prefer external audio" because the effing thing decides to switch back and forth between 2 and 30 times on startup, and maybe 80% of the time it settles (properly) on the receiver, and 20% of the time it tries to use the TV speakers, which are off, and of that 20% of the time, at least half of the time I HAVE to power everything down and start all over again. The other half of the time I can go through the menu with the slow-ass on-screen menu, and manually toggle back to receiver.
I just want an effing option that says "never in hell try to use the fucking TV speakers, for the love of god".
Also, I've had compatibility problems with HDMI between my old Mac Mini and my receiver. I don't know how to troubleshoot those sorts of issues. I do know that optical audio always works perfectly with every device I've ever used it with, though.
I send HDMI to my TV which sends optical to my sound system, and it still works pretty well. Earlier this year I bought a nice sound system with a receiver for the reasons you mentioned, but it added extra lag to my video games, so I returned it. My current sound system also supports ARC but it causes most of the same problems. Decoding those fancy codecs creates lag on every system I've tried, so sticking to LPCM over optical seems to be the only way to enjoy games still.
Isn't that what it was before ? I swear I had previous mac minis with a combo port like that ... why would they not continue that ?
Marco made a few million when Tumblr was sold, has a profitable podcast app and is on either the most popular or second most popular Apple related podcast.
I doubt that he’s hurting so much for money that he has to lie to get a loaner Mac Mini.
Similarly with audio... I don't know if this is true with Macs too, but on PC laptops I've often found the mic quality sucks or has interference, and I started using USB inputs.
> I Can’t Believe The Mac Mini Is This Awesome, I Can’t Even Say “Again” Because It Never Was
Sounds like his conclusion is that it's better than it used to be.
If SSD could be upgraded buying a i5/i7 would have offered amazing upgrade paths down the road. This machine misses the mark IMHO but not by much.
Having said that, I’m still going to get one with 512gb ssd, because I just want everything neatly in one box.
Everything I read said to get the 2012 model, not the 2014 one, which was slower, less memory, less everything - way worse. So the last one before this new one definitely did get a lot worse.
The only real competition I see for the Mac Mini is the little computers from System76. But they're about the same price.
Are the USB C ports Thunderbolt?
I'm now wondering if VCV Rack is sufficiently multicore that it will perform better on more expensive Mac boxes, or whether this little thing has now set the bar for ability to run demanding modular synth software live. That would be really convenient.
Building a PC mothership is certainly cool as hell and I'm not knocking it, but there's something to be said for 'this is my live performance rig, it's stable as a rock and it fits in my pocket. And it's cheap enough that if I'm headlining Coachella with my modular jams, I'll buy a second one and clone it so I have a backup, there onstage ready to be plugged in if there's a problem'.
I'm with Marco on this one. Looks nice. I know what I'm getting with a Mac of this type, and this definitely looks nice to me.
(Assuming you use a typical USB A audio interface rather than something more exotic)
FWIW, I also do electronic music, though just as a hobby.
OK, hardcore studio level stuff.
Yeah, that's a bit beyond my hobby "Behringer" type stuff. Recently upgraded from 2-in/4-out to 4-in/4-out. Still plenty of bandwidth on USB 2 for that.