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Comment by ntsplnkv2 | Hacker News Reader

This issue is currently keeping me from buying a Macbook Pro right now.

I'll take a slightly thicker laptop with a working keyboard. I don't mind them making it slim, but a keyboard has to work. Not taking the risk, especially given how expensive it is to repair macs.

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I have exactly the same problem. Working as a contractor and using the machine for most of the day, every day, means its price as basically irrelevant, I will always buy best machine that will allow me to be most productive. I would buy MBP at any price right now because Windows and Linux are taking too much of my time babysitting and I just want powerful laptop that actually works.

Unfortunately I just can't afford a machine that can be brought down at any moment by a speck of dust or that has a keyboard that makes me think someone went out of their way to make typing more difficult. Don't even make me started on not having physical function keys.

Apple, if you listen, not everybody needs shiny toy. Some people need machines for work and have a different system of values or needs that make it more important that the machine is reliable and ergonomic than having nice looks or being 1mm slimmer.

I was most pissed off by the redesigned arrow keys. I can never find them by touch anymore. I have to look down every time. It was a completely pointless change. I’m convinced they did it just to specifically piss me off.

They could just re-release the mid-2014 15", and I think they'd sell a bunch of them.

Add a motherboard update to new CPU and make it expandable to 32GB RAM, and they'd fly off the shelves.

Yeah, would be happy with their 2010-2012 layout for keyboard/trackpad... 2014-2015 for trackpad interface and USB A/C and headphone jack. Modern CPU and 32-64gb ram.

At this point, next laptop may well be a linux box... likely going the same when I replace my desktop later in the year.

I'd just take a model that enables NVME..I have the last model where the hardware was there but they were emulating SATA still

> Not taking the risk, especially given how expensive it is to repair macs. Same for me - I won't be purchasing one of these new macbooks even though I'm in need of an upgrade.

I have one for work and the keyboard's terrible. Keys will sporadically get stuck or stop working properly. Never had this problem with the old-style keyboards.

I'll take a slightly thicker laptop with a working keyboard

Someone should create a laptop which has equivalent aesthetics, high build quality, very high robustness, awesome battery life, an awesome mechanical keyboard, and gaming-laptop like GPU/CPU specs.

I don't care if it's an entire inch thick. Just make the edges super rounded, and I can get it into my backpack just fine! (I'd say to brand it 'THICC' but I'm not sure if that wouldn't draw it towards gaming laptop territory.) The current basic spec 15" Razer Blade is very close to this, but not quite.

There are plenty of preferably laptop designs on the market, the problem is that they do not run OS X.

See, the problem is being limited to OS X. Windows is good these days. Linux is good too.

Or, at least, when I left OS X, it was just as clunky & crashy & inconsistent as everything else. And I realized that all my tools ran elsewhere or I could find decent alternatives.

I got really tired of limiting myself to the Apple silo. IMO, Apple's only thing was that they were nearly perfect, and that was reason to accept lock-in. Now, not so much.

I'm sorry but Windows is not "good these days". It's as terrible as ever.

It's definitely not "terrible as ever" as far as I'm concerned. I've been using Windows since the start and it's fully usable as my daily driver for development these days. Web dev under WSL and building Firefox works as well for me as it did under OS X.

When did you leave macOS?

I was alternating between a Windows desktop gaming PC and a Mac laptop for work since 2001 or so, with periodic hardware upgrades along the way. Finally gave up on the Mac laptop about 3 years ago and haven't been back.

You may not care if it's an inch thick, but you'll care when it weights 20lbs.

It doesn't have to be 20lbs. A fully beefed up Razer Blade with GTX 2080 weights 4.7lbs vs a much less powerful Macbook Pro's 4lbs. Thickness of 0.7" vs 0.61"

That doesn't have a mechanical keyboard, which will add quite a bit of weight and thickness (which adds more weight).

The one laptop that ACTUALLY has a mechnical keyboard, the MSI GT83, weighs 13lbs not counting the 2 (!!) 330w power supplies. Shipping weight is 24 lbs.

It does have a mechanical keyboard: https://www.razer.com/gaming-laptops/razer-blade-pro

edit: screenshot for posterity https://i.imgur.com/D1Fyrtv.png

Honestly, that machine is more a "luggable" than a laptop, in the grand tradition that includes Kaypro CP/M and Commodore SX-64 luggables with built-in CRTs.

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