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Comment by CountSessine | Hacker News Reader

I haven’t forgiven this guy for the latest “thin at any cost” 4th gen MacBook Pro we’ve had since 2016. He ruined the best programer’s laptop on the market.

Maybe with him and his ego gone, they can fix the next generation and salvage the product line.

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I travel frequently for work. I like having a pro machine that is light and thin. I am okay with compromises, but understand that the target audience feels differently. I believe my Macbook Pro goes more places than before due to the compactness. That includes using python, photo, design, and general office work.

That's why we were given the Air and 13" Pro.

>Air

Weak specs and small screen.

>13" pro

Weaker specs and smaller screen than 15" Pro.

I, for one, like my light and thin 15" Pro, though I understand not everyone will feel this way.

Do you actually need the thin part or just the light part? I used to amuse people by demonstrating that my not-at-all-sexy ThinkPad weighed less than the original MacBook Air despite being a lot thicker and more powerful.

The recent iPhones in particular bother me. What’s the point of being mostly thin if the camera lens sticks out and snags on things?

I had to block my Credit Card after it snagged on the lense and I dropped it without me noticing.

Yes, I find the thinner the device the easier it is to pack. I should say overall volume. If I can travel for 1-2 days with a simple backpack, that is best case scenario. I keep trying to go 100% iPad Pro but its not quite there yet. I have taken plenty of day trips with just my macbook pro, no case or sleeve.

I've got a thin and light Mac that still has the ports.

A thin laptop is much easier to lug around, it has changed my wardrobe from a huge backpack to increasingly compact folios.

They even hid the camera bump in promotional depictions.

Few people travel frequently, but I bet as you go higher and higher up the food chain at Apple, you find more and more frequent travelers in the social circles of those Apple employees.

This might explain the apparent overemphasis on thinness.

This is an interesting point. There are many CVP-levels who either rarely use their own product or only use parts that might be relevant for marketing demo. The result is that lot of other parts that is actually used by customers goes unimproved for years on. You can tell how good the leader of a product is by exploring its parts outside of marketing demos.

I don't travel for work very often, but as I work remotely I do work out of coffee shops and libraries fairly frequently in order to get some time outside of the house. I have a 2016 13" mbp and I find that its weight and form factor make me much more likely to go out and work elsewhere on a whim than when I had an older 13".

I find the touch bar worse than useless, and while I like it when it works, I find the reliability of the keyboard extremely frustrating given that the machine cost over two grand. But the weight and form factor are things that I really do like about the machine.

I think it’s fine they made it this way but they still should have kept the ACTUAL Pro line - ie a more versatile machine. The new MacBook Pro’s just don’t cut it as much for professional applications as they used to (at least in my field of filmmaking/multimedia)

I like the thin and light part, but the keyboard really makes it so that I would rather not do any work on it. I can see people getting used to it, but the tiny click just makes me doubt the reality of my typing. To be fair, it's not that bad, it's just that there are plenty of other choices that don't have the drawback.

Personally, I've settled on the 13" Surface Book as my travel machine. A bit heavier, but plenty of power, great screen, fine battery life, GPU if you really need it, and a keyboard that I don't hate. Now with WSL2 it doesn't have its previous drawbacks as a dev environment either.

I like thinness, and agree that small volume is generally important, but for the target audience it seems that Apple made too many compromises for that thinness.

I keep seeing this, and I've got one and disagree.

I quite like the new keyboard feel, I can type damned fast on it. The touchbar implementation in IntelliJ is nice, touch ID is great to login, I travel quite a bit so having something powerful but super light is a huge boon.

It's probably not for everyone, but it felt like an upgrade over the 2015 model I was using before ... and sure, they jumped the gun on USB-C but I've since upgraded to a monitor that has a USB-C input and that's just a single cable to both charge the device and to output video ... which is damn near magic.

YMMV I guess, but I work as a programmer at a company where all the programmers carry these around and spend their whole days in emacs or tmux+vim. There are about a hundred of us in our local office. I haven’t found anyone who doesn’t hate this thing, and it all comes down to that stupid butterfly keyboard. We’re a company of super-efficient touch typists, and the 2015 MacBook pros with their scissor switches are coveted and traded.

Do you really have a lot of programmers typing on a laptop keyboard for much of the day? That would seem really strange to me. No laptop keyboard is good compared to a good mechanical, or really any external keyboard. I have one of these pros and I type on it a fair bit because I commute on the bus and I agree its not the best...but at the office I have proper equipment for doing programming work.

Yes!

I'm typing on my 2015 MBP right now! It's not as good as a blue-switch or Alps mechanical keyboard, but it's pretty damn good!

Just looking around though, I can see that the majority of external-keyboard users here in the office are using 2016-and-later 4th gen MBPs. The keyboard is just bad enough to mandate rather than encourage external keyboard use.

I also have a 2015 MBP at work, though newer hires have the ones with the new keyboard and touch bar, and while I primarily work at my desk with a keyboard plugged in (the basic apple keyboard, no numpad), I certainly go to meetings and work in other rooms that require me to use the onboard keyboard all the time, as do my colleagues.

Happens all the time. I'm not at a desk all the time -- I need to move my laptop around to interface with hardware and such.

My 2015 MBP keyboard is my favorite non-mechanical keyboard.

I think I actually type faster on my MBP, but I get more enjoyment out of a mechanical keyboard.

> spend their whole days in emacs or tmux+vim

It could be argued that a MBP is the wrong tool for the job then and they would be better served with a Linux-powered laptop.

> We’re a company of super-efficient touch typists, and the 2015 MacBook pros with their scissor switches are coveted and traded.

If you want a REALLY good keyboard nothing beats the old ThinkPads before they went chiclet. Those would be even more coveted.

I just got the new, new one, and the keys are pretty squishy. I'm anticipating some tendonitis from this guy.

But at least it doesn't sound like I'm typing angry every time I type at a normal speed.

This exactly. I don't know if it's Ive or Cook, but I'm really wondering what I'm doing to do when my older Apple devices kick the bucket.

Apple, if you're listening, bring back real keyboards and the headphone jack!

Thinkpads are nice

I haven’t forgiven him for iOS 7. I absolutely love the classic iOS look and hate the bland, confusing, flat look.

Maybe it's my lack of exposure to older iOS devices, but I haven't had any problems with it since getting my first iPhone last year.

They’ve done enormous changes since 7 to improve it. 7 was absurd - buttons looked like simple text everywhere. I always had to toggle on a function where buttons became underlined so I could use the thing. There was huge criticism even in knowledgeable design circles (see Nielsen Norman who do usability studies) that it was really really objectively worst because it was so confusing. It’s a lot better now.

It's slightly better now in terms of usability. Aesthetically it’s as big of a disaster as when it first came out. There’s only so much polishing they could do to a turd.

Can you find a screenshot? When I just search iOS 7 in image search it looks 99% like iOS 12 to me. iOS 6 on the other hand with its drop shadows and reflections has aged super badly.

The "feel" of iOS7 was horrible. It was also buggy in many design ways.

They’re still just text. Open Apple Mail and have a look.

I always have the underlining on so i wouldn’t be able to see it anymore. Seriously the underlining of links just makes sense.

True. But then I feel it’s just a website. Which is odd. Because even web apps don’t have underlined links

Thin laptops are so cool from design standpoint. Though I wish they still kept all the necessary ports to support ecosystem outside Apple. Coming to Ive - I appreciated him for the cool Unibody design of MBPs. They beat all other competition - just by looks & sturdiness.

> He ruined the best programer’s laptop on the market.

Do people really think the macbook as a device is great for programming?

Maybe it's just personal preference but I've always hated the keyboard (spacing was bad and lots of more less mainstream keys that are important in programming like the function keys were really small) and how annoyingly large the mouse pad is.

The trackpad is perfect. It's the best feature of the macbook pro, and it's why they don't have or need a touch screen. It works perfectly. If they'd just pair it with a real keyboard...

I just want a thick MacBook Pro again. To my brain, thin = flimsy and cheap. Give me something with some weight to it, and a keyboard that doesn't suck. Heck, just refresh the 2011 design with modern tech and I'll be happy.

(And no more friggin' touchbar that messes up my Vim workflow. please!)

Get a laptop protector. You'll get the weight and added protection.

I agree, but he also brought us the 2016 MBP which is possibly the best programmer's laptop ever made.

The 2016 4th generation MacBook Pro with its execrable butterfly keyboard is what I’m talking about. Thinness for thinness-sake - forget about typing efficiency, typing correctness, or repetitive stress injuries. Damnable thinness at any cost.

I think that was a joke about the differing opinions on the 2016 MPB. It’s either the best or the worst programmer’s laptop depending on who you ask and how much they like deep key travel.

You mean the 2015 MBP? That's widely regarded as the last good MBP.

I'm thinking the third-generation MBP. The last one before the TouchBar. But, honestly, I loved every generation of Appl laptops except for the most recent.

Why was it a better laptop for programmers than any other high-end laptop with a different OS?

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