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Comment by m12k | Hacker News Reader

I feel like the Apple we've seen since Jobs died is exactly what I would have expected if someone let the designers run the show without a strong product manager to reign them in: Gorgeous and mostly user-friendly products, but slightly too caught up in their own cleverness instead of the actual needs of real users.

I hope there's a chance to rectify that now - though I fear it won't happen until someone more visionary and less 'operations-focused' takes the helm of the company. Steve Blank did this excellent analysis and comparison between Balmer and Cook [0] - I hope there's a Satya Nadella in Apple's future too.

[0] https://steveblank.com/2016/10/24/why-tim-cook-is-steve-ball...

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Apple has very skilled engineers, makes great strides in security, and I'm impressed by their hardware skills.

However, UX is their weakness. I don't know why we keep pretending that UX is Apple's strength. Have you used their window manager? Have you used their workspace implementation? Clearly they haven't used it themselves. Everything about the Mac UI is geared toward just having a pile of windows in one workspace.

Their window switcher by default requires switching between applications then switching between the windows of that application. Why?

Rearranging the contents of workspaces is a complicated dance of swipes and drags and other mouse-heavy movements. On a decent window manager, this can all be done with keyboard shortcuts.

They neglect power-users. They neglect usability for those with limited range of motion.

> They neglect power-users.

The way i see it is Apple provides simple defaults which work best for most/avarage users.

If you want something different/extra vs the default, you can customize some stuff within SystemPreferences (like keyboard shortcuts) or install a third party app (like BetterTouchTool, Contexts, Moom, Magnet, etc.)

Personally, i much prefer my Macbook's UX over my Windows10 UX.

I like how Window management works in macOS more than the other platforms! The touchpad gestures are great. Or, if you're using a mouse with extra buttons, one of the side buttons can get mapped to Mission Control, which works wonderfully!

I did prefer App Exposé in Snow Leopard, but ah well...

"the other platforms" leads me to suspect you haven't tried many other window managers. Linux has too many to name.

I mean, I'm certainly not a Linux expert, but I've played with it before. I've used Gnome, Pantheon (elemenataryOS), and i3wm.

Not a fan of tiling window managers, personally.

Agreed. The only thing that mitigated this is that larger screens naturally made us more prone to having a bunch of windows open on a screen. Back in the 1024x768 days, not being able to maximize a window on Mac was ridiculous. "Full screen" view is/was a terrible "solution" to this.

The fact that windows can't be "snapped" like on Windows is so frustrating. (Yes, I know there are 3rd party apps for this.)

> The fact that windows can't be "snapped" like on Windows is so frustrating.

They can actually: press and hold the green button, then drag the window to the side.

So that's infuriating... but thanks.

And illustrates one of my core problems with Apple stuff: so much is hidden in gestures I'll never naturally discover unless someone tells you. Likely where Snapchat got the idea

> Their window switcher by default requires switching between applications then switching between the windows of that application. Why?

Really? When I use four fingers and swipe up (instead of down), I see windows from all applications and can switch between them

Try using the keyboard e.g. Alt+Tab in Windows.

Download 'Magnet'

Not a native solution but very lightweight and solves a lot of your issues.

And if you want something extremely powerful and robust, check out Hammerspoon. Much more complicated setup but basically turns the MacOS window manager into a proper tiling wm.

I really recommend Amethyst, which is an xmonad-like tiling window manager for OSX. It's still not as configurable as xmonad, but certainly nicer for me than the default WM:

https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst

Have you tried spectacle https://www.spectacleapp.com/?

>I'm impressed by their hardware skills.

I am not anymore the Macbook Pro is a huge disappointment. iCloud runs on Google Cloud because Apple thought the cloud was a feature. Apple should have bought Dropbox instead of having to rely on Google for their Cloud offering especially since they are talking about being a service company instead of a product company.

>Apple should have bought Dropbox

Apple did try to purchase Dropbox when Jobs was still around...

https://www.businessinsider.com/dropbox-ceo-drew-houston-on-...

Wait - "by default"? Is there a way to fix the window switcher?

[Edit] Never mind, I see others volunteered info. Having come from Windows, I thought I was just stuck with the way things were. Fixing this today!

> Gorgeous and mostly user-friendly products, but slightly too caught up in their own cleverness instead of the actual needs of real users.

This is so true. Hence the dongle epidemic.

Touch Bar which adds little value to mainstream Mac users

What dongle epidemic? A USB-C version of every important cord or connector has existed for _years_. Anyone who still has dongles is choosing them.

If you walk into an Apple store and buy their top of the line laptop and top of the line phone and take them home you’ll quickly realize there is no way to plug them in to each other.

That is, in fact, stupid.

Worse yet. Walk into an Apple store and buy their top of the line laptop and top of the line mouse, and take them home -- realize a few days (maybe weeks, to be fair) later that you cannot charge your mouse with your laptop without a dongle.

Even worse yet, once you get the dongle you cannot use your mouse while it is charging cause the port is on the bottom.

>If you walk into an Apple store and buy their top of the line laptop and top of the line phone and take them home you’ll quickly realize there is no way to plug them in to each other.

All these worse case assume you can actually walk into an Apple Store in the first place. They are jam packed and a complete mess.

( I haven't seen the new layout and workflow of Post Angela Ahrendts Apple Store yet, so many be they are better now. )

I could not believe this when I realized it.

You're holding it wrong way

It's silly but it's hardly worse. Take a four minute break.

jUsT bUy A sEcOnD mOuSe!

Seriously?

Just echoing some absurd justifications/arguments for bad design made by diehard Apple fans.

Just because you saw a dumb comment once doesn't mean you have to use it as a strawman.

It's a negative to the design, but the worst possible case is you go read or watch something where you won't need your mouse for 10 minutes.

See, you say that, but I've actually had the situation where my network was down and I had to wait 4 minutes before I could get it back up because of the stupid mouse design.

My wife works in a small, elementary school and I help with the computers from time to time. One day, their network was misbehaving and I needed to change some settings on their iMac "server". I quickly discovered that the mouse had lost it's charge over the 2 months that they didn't use it and I had to plug it in and wait for it to get a small charge. Well, first I had to find a USB <--> Lightning cable.

Anyway, the worst possible case is not that you go read something for a while; sometimes your network is down and you have to wait 10 minutes before you can fix it. Just because some designer thought it would be ugly to put a "tail" on a mouse.

If you haven't used a mouse in months you're lucky it's still there.

More seriously if it went from misbehaving to calling you in to getting to the computer and adjusting it, it doesn't sound like the four minutes of charge time was anything but negligible. Finding a cable sounds like a bigger issue, and that could happen to any wireless mouse. (and wireless is definitely not a dumb design decision, there are clear usability advantages to wireless mice)

Or just buy a second mouse.

The way he wrote his comment (inverse capitalization) is an indication of sarcasm (on Reddit).

Or the USB-C Lightning cable

It's ridiculous that iPhone didn't switch to USB-C when they dropped the headphone jack. Apple used to be so good about consistency and compatibility between products.

If we're talking about consistency, how about the headphone port on the Macbook? You need a dongle to listen to music on your phone, if you want to use the same headphones for your computer.

Thats somewhat more forgiveable: the desktop should be a superset of laptop ports, and laptop a superset of phone ports

A couple counterarguments:

(1) "No way with the cables included in the box" is not the same as "no way." There's a USB-C to Lightning cable in the bag right next to me. That lets me plug a top of the line Apple laptop into a top of the line Apple phone. With no dongle, even.

(2) In practice, there are zero times over the last two years that I've had to plug a phone into a laptop. I can't honestly remember why I bought this cable; I think I wanted to see whether USB tethering to the phone was better than using the mobile hotspot feature (spoiler: kind of a wash). I am sure there are people reading this, possibly including you, raising their fists to the sky and screaming BUT IT IS THE PRINCIPLE OF THE MATTER, and, sure, okay, I guess. But is it?

One can make that argument that Apple should include both cables in the boxes, or a USB-A to USB-C dongle, or something. But in practice, just how many people need the USB-C cable for their phone, even if they have a USB-C laptop? The vast majority of people are probably only using Lightning cables to charge their phone from a charger, in which case it doesn't matter, or to plug into their car, which means they need USB-A anyway. (People may also be using Lightning-to-not-USB dongles, like headphone ports and HDMI output, but that's irrelevant to this.)

The people waving fists aren't doing it for "PRINCIPLE OF THE MATTER". They are literally forced to use extra dongles and components for THEIR workflow.

Here's my reason:

https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Headset-H390-Noise-Cancellin...

I can't find any replacements. Anyone on my team that tries whatever bluetooth whatever, they always sound distant or scratchy just plain lagged. On the other hand they keep asking me to tell them what I use because I always sound crystal clear with no background noise. I send them that link and immediately dismiss it because it's cheap, uses a stupid USB connector and their laptop doesn't support the plug without dongles. (I use a 2014 MBP)

Yet they keep complimenting me, like literally every call on how good I sound to them. I don't care if they found a $200 lightning plug version with large ear cups - they don't sound like I do.

I'm not sure if you're the one who downvoted me, but dude, the "workflow" that I was responding to was not YOUR workflow, was it? I was specifically responding to someone who said there was "no way" to connect an iPhone to a USB-C MacBook, pointing out they were just flat-out wrong. You can make that connection very easily, with no dongles involved.

I'm sorry if you thought I was making some blanket statement that all workflows are absolutely wonderful under all circumstances on laptops that have moved to USB-C, but I also don't think that would be a remotely fair reading of what I wrote.

Almost everyone's complaints are resolved by changing lightning ports to USB-C. Obviously it will take time for that change to make it into the next hardware refresh of the mouse/keyboard/trackpad but it should have been on the iPhone two years ago.

Is it? Frankly, “syncing” your phone to a computer isn’t really a thing anymore with the advent of cloud storage and streaming music.

USB-A is probably cheaper and more universal as a wall-charging, or car charging standard right now.

> https://www.apple.com/uk/shop/product/MQGJ2ZM/A/usb-c-to-lig...

You don't need a dongle.

So why isn't this cable included with a new iPhone purchase? Where is the Apple USB-C iPhone or iPad charger?

> So why isn't this cable included with a new iPhone purchase?

Not everyone has a recent MacBook. Makes sense to stick with USB-A for now, I guess, for maximum compatibility.

> Where is the Apple USB-C iPhone or iPad charger?

Here https://www.apple.com/us-hed/shop/product/MR2A2LL/A/30w-usb-...

If I want to get 10 GB of RAW photos onto my 2013 MacBook Pro, I just pop the SD card out of the camera and into the laptop. Transfer is done in about a minute or two.

No SD card reader means the new MBP just couldn’t do this without dongles, full stop. That’s a step backwards.

“Full Stop” is always a good argument. I have a USB-C card reader which I guarantee you is faster than the one you have.

Sure, internal card readers were nice. But they’re gone from Apple now. Really not sure why people keep talking about this.

Show me the SD card that can saturate USB 3 or USB C. The fastest sony cards top out at about 300Mbps. Heck, USB 2 could handle that at top speed (theoretically; most implementations stunk). USB C is better with really high bandwidth things like eGPU, 4k displays, etc., but sd cards are not the best argument to make here.

The fastest SD cards are 300 megabytes/second, not megabit. All my Sandisk Extreme Pro cards, for example. I also have a bunch of Extreme Pro CF cards that are 160MB/s.

And then there's CFast - speeds in the 400MB/s range.

Apologies, I messed up my capitalization. That ought to have been "MB". You're right that things like compact flash are faster, but USB 3 has can handle over 600 MB per second.

Right, but modern cards can certainly saturate USB 2.0 easily.

you still need the card to support that speed though...

I'd imagine the card reader and USB are the same speed, unless they screwed up the implementation of the reader

Still not sure I understand what you mean. If you have a slower USB, slower card reader, or slower card, all components are bound by that speed. The USB 3 supports a much faster than the card speed; I'm guessing most readers are similar speed. The cards themselves are the limiting factor here.

You're mixing up bits (Mb/s) and bytes (MB/s). Some SD cards are rated at up to 300MB/s, about 10x what USB2 can deliver.

It often used to be the case that internal SD card readers are USB2, even when the device has an USB3 port.

>I have a USB-C card reader which I guarantee you is faster than the one you have.

an extremely and misguided guarantee - any usb 3.1 reader is likely to be similar/same

Perhaps he's alluding to the fact that a lot of laptops have had USB2 card readers internally but USB 3 ports going out.

First, that's not a dongle, that's an SD card reader. A dongle would adapt a USB-A reader's plug to a USB-C plug.

Second, this is a step forward. Previously, people who didn't need to carry around SD card readers had to, in the form of bulkier laptops with smaller batteries. Now, only folks who need readers have to carry them around. That's a win.

It's not unreasonable to call an SD card reader a dongle:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dongle#Other

I knew defining a dongle would bring out the pedants, and that makes me very happy, but I think the real point is being overlooked here.

Folks who want an SD card reader or HDMI should carry around SD card readers and HDMI cables. People who don't want those things shouldn't have to carry them around.

I modernized all my accessories years ago. USB-C is all I or, I would argue, nearly anyone needs. I'm truly sorry that your job requires you to carry a little extra gear, but it's not my job, so don't burden me with it. (If you disagree, then explain why the MBP shouldn't have compact flash, micro SD, etc.)

>> I knew defining a dongle would bring out the pedants

Some might say your narrow definition of dongle was an attempt at being pedantic.

>> I think the real point is being overlooked here.

The real point being overlooked isn't the dongle issue, or being minimalist. It's a product line diversity issue.

You have to be aware that a lot of people who won't switch away from Mac are doing it because of love of the OS, and not necessarily the love of the hardware itself.

Apple has basically decided to make all of their laptop lines ultrabooks (as is their right).

If you look at all the other companies who make laptops, they have non-ultrabook lines for people who need ports, etc. Apple has chosen not to cater to those people, and those people, whose requirements used to be satisfied by previous iterations of Macbooks, are now complaining.

You do realize that ports are holes right? They make your laptop lighter.

The amount of metal removed from the case is heavier than the connector and PCB traces.

Don't carry around the cables if you don't want to, but your argument is ridiculous.

They do have stuff inside them though, so I'm not suggesting they make it heavier but having the required electronics does take up space that can be otherwise utilised.

I wish everybody who buys a new MacBook Pro all the best, and I hope they enjoy it. I just won’t be getting one. (The card reader was just the icing on the cake; the unreliable keyboard and failure-prone backlight ribbon cable are the main reasons I won’t buy one.)

Ultrabooks exist for a reason, and my personal opinion is that it’s a bummer that the “pro“ offering is less capable and more annoying to use for media editing than it used to be.

Even though my last Mac, the early 2011 15" Macbook Pro, was a complete lemon in terms of execution (GPU overheating issues), I loved that design and form factor. It had all the ports I wanted, plus the end-user expandability. At one point I popped out the optical and stuck in a second SSD.

Apple didn't handle the recall for the 2011 MBP problems very well.

This was incredibly problematic for me, considering Apple's fantastic reputation for customer support. After that experience, I basically went back to Windows, and the transition was surprisingly smooth.

Dongle

Noun: A thing I have to carry around to use my new device that I didn't have to carry to use my old device.

Dongles have existed long before USB-C (and even A).

Pretty much 'a small thingie' that has to be attached to a computer for the latter to carry some specific task. Hence, a card reader fits the dongle definition and it should be part of any laptop...

There used be dongles that served copyright protection.

> Hence, a card reader fits the dongle definition and it should be part of any laptop...

Which card reader? SD? Micro SD? SD and Micro SD? Any of the half-dozen other standards that some cameras still use?

> No SD card reader means the new MBP just couldn’t do this without dongles, full stop.

So you go out and buy a dongle. Or you just connect the Camera with a cable and you don't have to fiddle with the tiny SD card.

I personally never use SD cards, or any other flash cards. I never use the ethernet jack on a laptop. I very rarely use thumbdrives or other USB devices. I also don't use serial out, or PCMCIA, or compact discs, all of which still conceivably are necessary for some users.

On the other hand, I always need an adapter for video out, because it's either VGA or HDMI or even DVI.

So I go out and buy a dongle. I'm glad that the ports on my laptop is not the superset of all things anyone might need on there.

The problem has less to do with dongles than having a diverse product line catering to multiple user types.

Apple has basically decided to make all their laptop lines ultrabooks (which is their prerogative). And because a lot Mac users are more loyal to the OS than the hardware itself, they're stuck with what Apple is offering.

As a consultant who goes to different clients, I prefer to have built-in ports as opposed to having dongles I can forget, lose or leave behind. Also, a lot of cables will wear out, and they will stop working when you need them the most (I've ruined quite a few video dongles).

This is why the old unibody MBPs were so great. Yes, they were a little chunkier, but that tradeoff was well worth it for the convenience.

It's not a consequence of being an ultrabook. Being thin means you can't have VGA or normal ethernet ports. Everything else can fit.

it doesn't even mean that.

I've seen unfolding Ethernet ports that still let the laptop be crazy thin

That's why I said normal, in fact! I'm not entirely sure how durable those weird Ethernet ports are, but they certainly exist.

I have only one laptop that had an "expanding" ethernet port (a Lenovo), and it's not great. It's the first flaky built-in ethernet port I've ever had in a laptop.

> Also, a lot of cables will wear out, and they will stop working when you need them the most (I've ruined quite a few video dongles)

Okay, but if a dongle breaks, you just buy another dongle. If a video port breaks, that's a much more expensive replacement - though I suppose you can get a USB video dongle these days.

On a side note, I wish that wireless video was more of a thing, given the security issues with physical connectors.

>> Okay, but if a dongle breaks, you just buy another dongle.

Sure. But what if you're onsite somewhere and can't get one nearby? This is a huge problem if you're somewhere where you are required to use a wire for networking (these places do exist).

Buy a spare.

> What if the spare breaks as well?

The universe hates you, you're doomed.

So the solution is to have a briefcase full of dongles?

That's why I no longer have a Mac and have a Windows laptop instead.

That’s a bullshit argument. My SO‘s Lenovo Laptops USB A ports broke. My USB-C Ports seem significantly more robust, not by implementation but by design. I don’t care about some five dollar China dongle- I care about the connectors of my computer and in this regard there is not a single connector that can compete with USB-C.

>> That’s a bullshit argument.

I said "That's why I no longer have a Mac and have a Windows laptop instead." It's not an argument. It's simply a statement of fact that explains a choice I've made for myself.

I literally switched from a user serviceable Mac laptop with plenty of ports (15" 2011 MBP) to user serviceable PC laptops with plenty of ports, with one of the primary reasons being that the newer Macbook models didn't satisfy my desire to have a full suite of ports that includes ethernet.

As for broken ports/connectors, I've had zero port failures in almost 3 decades of laptop ownership, and I don't consider myself to be very gentle plugging/unplugging my peripherals.

At the moment, I have 2 laptops with USB-C and 3 without. I personally don't see a huge difference in robustness between the USB-C and USB-A ports. Even when I buy a USB-C laptop, I still make sure that it still has at least one USB-A port so I can have dongle-free interoperability with my peripherals.

I've on three separate occasions had to run to an Apple store to buy the SD card reader dongle AGAIN because I left one of them at home while travelling. On each occasion the only option was the expensive 50 dollar SanDisk one, so i'm 150 dollars out of pocket due to this questionable choice already.

My wife has had similar experiences with the HDMI adapter.

This was of course never a problem during the years in which Apple provided a sensible choice of ports, built right into the machine.

I'll let you in on a secret: You don't have to buy Apple-branded dongles if you have an Apple computer.

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=usb-c+sd-card+reader

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=thunderbolt+3+hdmi

As my post makes clear, I was travelling at the time.

I'll also "let you in on a secret": Apple don't make a USB-C SD card reader.

So, you're traveling to that place on three separate occasions and you somehow always end up in the same Apple store that already ripped you off before?

I'm starting to believe you like it that way.

It's great that you don't mind throwing out all of your peripherals every time Apple decides to remove a port.

I personally have better things to spend money on, so I generally don't get rid of my devices until they stop working. Apple's made it a PITA to do that, so I've stopped buying their products. Problem solved.

I don't throw them out. I buy another dongle.

Here's a selection of connectors that you can supply with Thunderbolt3 or plain USB dongles, most of which I actually own:

- Serial-Port

- Parallel-Port

- PS/2 Port

- USB A/B/C/Mini/Micro Port

- Firewire 400/800

- HDMI (and Mini HDMI)

- DVI

- VGA

- DisplayPort and Mini Displayport

- 10/100/1000 Mbit/s Ethernet

- SD/MiniSD/MicroSD Card

- CF Card

- Memory Stick

- SATA/mSATA

- IDE

- 3,5mm and 6.35mm audio jacks

Not everyone needs all of these ports, all of the time. They need some of these ports, some of the time - but everyone's requirements are different. You probably wouldn't argue that a Macbook should have Firewire Ports, but those are some of the most expensive devices you'd have, if you have them.

Should the Macbooks have more ports? Absolutely, but they should be Thunderbolt 3 ports.

You can't even insert a usb flash stick without an adapter.

Top 3 dedicated ports for me would be:

- USB-A

- HDMI

- ethernet

The humorous post that made me smile, then made me sad: https://blog.pinboard.in/2016/10/benjamin_button_reviews_the...

Ridiculous. All my old flash drives (and my new ones) are usb-a, because it is still widespread and compatibility is important (I need to be able to connect to more than my one laptop). Ethernet is still faster, and can be necessary. Very few monitors have actual USB-C connectors. Same with peripherals.

USB-C-all-the-things is great if you live in the valley environment of shiny new every thing; not so much if you have to deal with all the stuff that all ready exists.

Also, have you considered the amount of e-waste produced by this change-over?

Tell that to Apple then, who are still shipping a USB-A to Lightning cable inside every single iPhone box that is incompatible with the vast majority of computers they ship, and has been for years now.

Apple's own products often need additional dongle purchases to work with each other using the standard cables they ship with. This is not just a question of people choosing them, a new cable or a dongle is forced if you want to charge your Apple phone from most Apple laptops.

I'd argue that when Apple feel the market for USB-C is mature enough that they can ship a USB-C cable in an iPhone box, this is probably the canary in the coal mine that indicates the dongle epidemic is over.

Older readers will remember that in the PowerPC era, the Powerbooks and iBooks often shipped with a handful of video dongles as standard - in the box no less! (my S-Video one got a lot of use way back when). If Apple had just shipped a single reliable USB-A -> C adapter with every MacBook and stomached the tiny cost, this could have appeased a great many people rightly annoyed by this badly managed port transition.

I do think usb-c and thunderbolt over usb-c are the future. However, what is problematic is they've put the design of super thin over practical. What once were internal components are now external dongles. The price of the laptops didn't go down because of less hardware, it actually went up and increased/grew a market of dongle-land. Now to get an equivalent laptop from a few years before we have to spend hundreds of dollars to be able to connect that external monitor, use ethernet, or usb-a.

You serious? My old macbook had a port for everything I needed. My new one has a grand total TWO usb-c ports, and that's supposed to suffice. Madness.

You're probably getting those cords and connectors straight from Apple, because if they aren't made for Apple products, most often than not they don't work.

Operations focused could be good. Some of the older iPhones are better IMHO. Small enough to use 1 handed, headphone port, battery could be improved while keeping form factor.

An operations person would see that as a market that will migrate to Android if the need is not met.

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