Hacker News Reader

Look, this keyboard thing is a huge stain on their reputation. But I think you vastly overestimate all the other vendors in this space.

Oh, don't get me wrong. Apple hardware from 2012-2015 was really great, and I recently reversed my decision to "upgrade" to a Dell XPS 15 w/ Ubuntu 18.04 in order to stick to my MacBook because it honestly wasn't an upgrade.

But I think Apple is coasting on its fundamentals and trying to monetize (cannibalize) a bunch of intangibles that led it to meteoric success in the first place, and that would worry me as an AAPL shareholder (I'm not one). At least in the field of package management, Linux is doing some pretty interesting things; 'snap' is pretty interesting: https://snapcraft.io/, so are AppImages: https://appimage.org/, and this is in addition to the regular updates to 'apt' or 'yum' that are officially supported by distros. Meanwhile, 'brew' still dominates the OSX landscape because Apple can't be bothered to create its own package manager. When was the last time Apple updated native UNIX-like tooling? I had heard it was around OS X Lion (basically when Steve Jobs died).

"Apple hardware from 2012-2015 was really great"

You didn't have your MacBook Pro spontaneously reboot because of the NVIDIA problem? I don't know if it was the driver or the hardware but it wasn't fun.

Hasn't happened to me. If it did, I might have switched completely already :-)

In fact that was why I returned the XPS 15, the OEM version of Ubuntu 18.04 (which did have correct sleep/hibernate behavior and worked well with the OEM battery) couldn't detect the NVIDIA Quadro P2000 card at all, which I wanted to run CUDA with. That persisted after about three factory resets, so I was like kthxbai.

This sort of thing is why I've resigned to just use WSL (after switching from Mac). Works well enough.

I'm still using my MacBook Pro from 2010, and I'm working on ways to mitigate the NVidia card rebooting at its worse it was 120 times a month, but I've managed to get it down to about 10 times a month.

Although IDEs seem to cause frequent reboots, but using Jupyter is far more stable.

I found this[0] fix when I last researched this problem for a client. It seemed to substantially reduce the problem. The only drawback is the need to re-run it after MacOS updates, but I don't think this functionality has been the target of any updates from Apple for some time anyway.

[0] https://github.com/julian-poidevin/MBPMid2010_GPUFix

...or troubles with SATA cables seemingly designed to break in the most subtle ways.

If that's the same issue I had, it was a defective nvidia chip. I went through 2 logicboards and I know several of my friends who had 2012 MBPs went through a few too.

We used to be an Apple shop, and we had a lot come in due to that issue.

The NVIDIA problems hit laptops from many manufacturers. I remember buying an HP TX 1000 with a faulty NVIDIA chip to try and reseat the GPU via heat (it didn't work but it was a cheap experiment)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZ1i78kmb0M

Aren't snap and AppImages trying to do exactly what Mac OS app bundles have been doing for ages?

I think so, and I think Apple does a better job with macOS app bundles than Linux does with either snap or AppImages. In particular, I really like the macOS permissions design; snap upgrades in the background I think and compatibility issues broke some infra on my end, which was annoying.

But Linux has something like that now, and Apple has been staying still. It's not perfect, it's still fragmented, and a lot of fundamentals like fit+finish Linux will likely never get right. But it exists and it didn't exist before. And it's toyable/open-ish for the most part, so it'll last and won't change against your wishes without you being able to fork it or stay on an older version, and for professional users who devote a lot of time to their setup, software warts like that that I can whack with a stick without letting out the magic smoke in my computer are more bearable than things I can't fix and out of my control, like my keyboard not working because Apple likes thin laptops.

Not exactly. Snap is a container (like Doker for desktop apps). AppImage is almost like it, but it contains an executable header in addition to the FS image. DMG are pretty much just a glorified ISO image.

How long has the keyboard issue been going on? Have we seen Apple take any accountability? In case you have tech support staff at your employer, go talk to them about how widely prevalent this issue is. When I heard the defect rates I was amazed that Apple has not issued a recall.

It's amazing how much PR bullshit they instead do, like in the article, claiming it's just a small number blah blah blah. How about deleting threads on their support forums?

Next up, airpodbatterygate.

But they perform similar if not better at a cheaper cost.

Dell and Lenovo offer me choice. If my keyboard fails under warranty, I can return my machine for a repair, I can get an on-site repair if my warranty covers it, or I can just ask them to overnight me a new keyboard. My warranty will remain intact after I've fitted that replacement keyboard. They'll sell me spare parts for older machines and provide a full service manual. If I'm a corporate customer, I can buy a stock of parts to keep my fleet running.

Apple fundamentally do not care about professional users. They are either ignorant or indifferent to the ways that their service model fails to meet the needs of professional users.

I don't think this is about trust. As long as there isn't a competitor that builds a better product, people won't switch. I don't like Apple at this point, but I'm struggling to come up with a better alternative to an iPhone or Macbook, despite the growing number of flaws.

It is about trust in the sense that there was a time when buying Apple products was a safe choice. They were expensive, but you could count on them being well-designed (though you always had to be careful with first gen products) and working together seamlessly. If you could afford them, there was no reason to consider other options. That kind of brand loyalty I had is gone now. Maybe I can't switch yet, but I'm begrudgingly using their products, and am actively on the lookout for alternatives. When the right one will come along, I'm out.

You mean like buying IBM was a safe choice in the 80s?

I don't know if people will switch per se, but people will be less inclined to purchase the latest and greatest from Apple, and less willing to invest in new things like AirPods or iWatch.

If my MacBook Pro dies, which I really hope it doesn't because it's great, and I want to back up my iPhone to local storage, I might get the cheapest Mac Mini I can and use it as a storage device. Yea, I can't move something like that to Linux as long as Linux mobile backups are not great. No, I won't pay for iCloud, and I won't use my MacBook Pro dying as an excuse to buy a new MacBook Pro or an iMac like I might have before. On the side, I may be purchasing a thousand dollars in PC parts and running Linux on desktop, and using my MacBook Pro to just SSH into my desktop using OpenVPN and dynamic DNS through AWS Route 53, and using it as a mobile battery-powered shim, which can be much more easily commoditized. Maybe my MacBook Pro dies and I use a Thinkpad as a replacement to SSH into my desktop, and I learn to love Thinkpad: https://geoff.greer.fm/2019/03/04/thinkpad-x210/

I should hope Apple doesn't want that. Apple should want me purchasing the Mac Pro or the iMac Pro, and maybe complement that with the MacBook, and some AirPods and an iWatch to boot. The buying decision shouldn't be like pulling teeth, and since it is, I think Apple has lost a good deal already.

I will say my personal pain tolerance for this kind of stuff is low. I will personally invest a great deal of energy to future-proof my personal infrastructure. But I don't think others are too far behind as long as Apple keeps increasing or maintaining the cost of being an Apple customer over time.

I’m definitely an Apple fan - my family has 4 iPhones, two cellular iPads, and two 4K AppleTVs. But I don’t see any reason to get a Mac unless you are an iOS developer. What does it give me over Windows + the Windows Subsystem for Linux? I would be using the same software either way. VSCode, a browser, and Unix terminal, etc.

When I owned Macs the first time between 1992 - 1998, the ecosystem around MacOS was clearly superior. The second time around when it was my secondary computer 2005-2010, there was really no differentiator.

That being said, if I were in need of a better personal computer today, I would get a Mac Mini just because.

> I'm pretty sure at this point Apple has lost the trust of the professionals community. I personally don't think I would ever buy new equipment from Apple again. At most, I might buy a refurbished iPhone SE downgrading from my iPhone 7 (or spare parts for my iPhone 7) and spare parts for my 2012 non-Retina MacBook Pro. It's simply not worth upgrading to new Apple equipment unless you have a lot of spare change burning a hole in your pocket, or you're a visual/graphic designer and your programs are Apple-specific.

I keep saying this, but every time I try non-Apple stuff I run screaming back. when I felt like my 2013 MacBook Pro was getting long in the tooth last year, I got a X1 Carbon 6th Gen. Now I'm just counting the days until my wife won't get cranky if I buy another computer. It's big things and little things. I had to reinstall Windows because random background crapware was causing battery life to vary wildly doing the same thing. (Not even third-party crapware, just like Windows randomly deciding to chew through your battery scanning for viruses or indexing stuff.) The screen developed a cluster of dead pixels within six months. The depot service replaced it for free, which was nice, but the new one has a uneven backlighting in the lower right corner. (Lenovo's Q&A for its LCDs is shit.) Oh, and the bezel is just a sticker that is starting to lift and peel. The LTE card has never worked right, despite repeated driver updates. At first it would just die during sleep, more recently it's started conking out while I'm using it. The touchpad is just okay. Windows is unpredictable crap these days. I replaced the stock install with LTSB which is a bit better. But random shit just won't work. The taskbar will randomly refuse to hide, then you'll have to play a game of "guess notification icon is preventing the taskbar from hiding" (it's usually Windows Defender). Edge fails in basic things like searching PDFs (and won't let you use a separate PDF plugin or set PDFs to auto-download instead). Chrome, meanwhile, eats up your battery.

Apple has a high-profile fuckup every now and then, but at least it tends to be one thing that affects some defined set of machines you can work around, not pervasive random shit Q&A that you can't avoid.

You're right though, Apple has been going downhill. I used to get a new Apple laptop every couple of years, and held off on the 2016-2018 for the reasons you mention. But at least I have hope for Apple. My iPhone XR is just about perfect, totally trouble free. I have zero hope for Lenovo, etc.

I just want a touchpad on a Linux-capable machine that doesn't suck as much as my Macbook's touchpad doesn't suck.

Oh, and any sort of ability to integrate or do anything with my iPhone (non-jailbroken) on my Linux machines would be a big plus.

Macbooks have a pretty standard touchpads, "force touch" aside. It's just a matter of proper software and configuration. Of course gesture support in software isn't comparable in any way, but my Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro touchpad on GNU/Linux generally feels better than Macbook's ones or Magic Trackpad 2 on macOS.

Also, I've got some non-jailbroken iPhone for development and I have no issues with installing ipa's on it from GNU/Linux. I didn't need more though, so haven't tested anything else, but working app installer makes me think that other simpler things should work too :P

So besides force touch and software support there is no difference....

Isn’t that kind of big deal?

Force touch? Hardly, it's a gimmick. The only "big deal" out of it is silent clicking, which is why I own Magic Trackpad 2, but not everyone will care about that.

Software support - well, yes, but it's within the application makers and power users reach to fix it. There's a common myth that "Apple touchpads work on magic", while in fact neither hardware nor the driver is so special. It's just the apps.

>Professionals are the ones requiring the latest equipment, purchasing the highest-margin products with the highest price inelasticity (not looking for discounts), the ones most likely to advertise through word-of-mouth, and the ones contributing the most to brand value.

Apple is still selling the Mac Pro that is unchanged from the 2013 model for full price. It's abundantly clear that they either don't know what professionals want or they don't care.

Exactly. OP comment is thinking that professionals are the one spending the most money. I strongly disagree without knowing any statistics but I'm going to assume by looking at the sheer number of macbooks that young people have to look at youtube and iphones to have cool photo filters are their major market. Like I said, I don't have any statistics, but I'm willing to put money on it. The ones that have money can afford the high end stuff but they are always not professionals

I'm pretty pissed at Apple. I'm typing this on a 2017 MacBook Pro, which is my first (and probably the last) Apple machine.

At first I loved the keyboard but it started to misbehave within the first months of use. Now it's unusable without Unshaky (key repeating blocker written specifically for this case by some other poor Apple customer). The battery never lasted very long but now it seems it's broken too. Oh, and the specs, heavily underpowered considering it's price.

I need something to do the work on so I can't just send it out to repair and wait a couple of weeks to get it back. At first I considered getting myself some cheap laptop for the interim period but once I started to look for other options I decided I'm not going back.

I'm buying a ThinkPad and selling the MacBook when it's repaired, even though it's probably not worth half of its initial price now. It got under my skin so much I just want to get rid of it.

Rant off.

I mostly agree with everything you've said. However, I'm using a 2012 Retina Macbook Pro, 1st-gen retina, and it still holds up really well. One of the best future-proofing purchases I've made, which usually I don't care about. Also, the iOS app store is one of the largest gaming ecosystems in the world.

Totally agree with you.