Hacker News Reader

Comment by philjohn | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com