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I will never ever buy a MacBook Pro if they don't get rid of the TouchBar. The sheer arrogance of Apple to think they know better than their customers infuriates me. I only use a 2018 MacBook Pro because work supplied it, and because my 2015 MacBook battery was dying and the only option the IT department gave me was to upgrade to the 2018 model.

I may simply go back to Windows at home if that's the case, and will use a Windows Laptop at work if possible. Seriously, fuck Apple for this arrogance.

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I'm in agreement with your eloquent response.

The touch bar is an unacceptable gimmick for me, a solution in search of a non-existent problem (my physical escape key is doing just fine). I'm also not going to buy Bluetooth headphones, just because they decided to drop support for standard headphone jacks.

The right to repair and extend my personal computer is another. It's common human decency, which apparently is not a priority at Apple anymore.

Sadly, this seems to be a symptom of a larger systemic issue among most large/"successful" tech companies - sheer arrogance and lack of respect for users ("useds").

I really don't see the problem with any of this stuff.

I like physical escape keys, I really don't want expensive Bluetooth headphones, and I like having a headphone jack on my phone. I also like being able to repair and upgrade my equipment.

So what do I do? I don't buy Apple stuff.

Then I read discussions like this one and chuckle at all the people griping about all these things, and then continuing to buy and use stuff from the most hacker-unfriendly company on the planet. It's almost like they want to suffer.

Thankfully, Apple is not a monopoly, or even close to one, and there's lots of alternatives (which of course have their own downsides, but not for basic stuff like these issues), so none of this stuff bothers me, and I wonder what anti-consumer action they'll take next to piss people off so I can laugh about it.

I love my 2012 Mac Book Pro (okay, my employer's). They OK'd buying a new one, but honestly, I still haven't found a good reason to switch out for a new one, except the weight (I bike in to work, and those extra pounds are a drag)

Part of the thing you'll see on forums like this towards apple is the fact that there is a disproportionate number of developers who for one reason or another need to use MacOS professionally, such as developing iOS apps. A lot of us use Macs because we have to in order to target Apple platforms with our products.

They may not have a monopoly, but they do control ~40-50% of the smartphone market in the West and force developers to use MacOS to target their phones. In other markets like pro media production, they absolutely have a monopoly on machines.

A lot of us are frustrated by the fact that with each generation, Apple has made an inferior product that costs more money at every tier of their Mac catalog. Even if we're not paying for the machines, we have to go through the rigamarole of repair delays and thermal throttling under load even on the "pro" machines.

>there is a disproportionate number of developers who for one reason or another need to use MacOS professionally, such as developing iOS apps. A lot of us use Macs because we have to in order to target Apple platforms with our products.

Then you need to stop whining and use the tool you have to use to do your job.

I don't like Windows, but there aren't many jobs out there where I don't have to use it in some capacity. Luckily, I get to do my development in Linux, but I still have to use Windows for Office applications, Outlook email, running Linux VMs, etc., so I can't get away from it entirely. It's one of the things I put up with so I can make a living, just like I also have to put up with a commute, getting up in the morning, etc.

If you don't like developing iOS apps, then move into another line of work. I don't have any interest in developing Windows apps in C#, so I don't go into that field, and stick with work which lets me do at least some of my work in Linux. But to be fair, if I was forced to choose between writing C# .NET Windows 10 apps and cleaning toilets for a living, I'd take the Windows job.

>A lot of us are frustrated by the fact that with each generation, Apple has made an inferior product that costs more money at every tier of their Mac catalog.

That's their entire business model: sell fancy-looking stuff at inflated prices to non-technical people that they're able to operate, and who also are willing to spend a lot of money on that image and that brand name. It's like getting a job as a Bentley mechanic and complaining that Bentleys aren't as practical as a Toyota or F150.

I'd like to add to the above, about using Outlook: I truly despise using Outlook for my email. It's truly horrible. It's so incredibly slow and buggy and I have to frequently kill it and restart it so it'll show me my emails and there's even a very noticeable lag between my typing and the characters showing up on the screen. I can't believe people pay for this turd.

But it's just one of the things I have to put up with for the job, like many other annoyances, and overall things are pretty good which is why I'm still here. Thankfully my job doesn't entail a large amount of email. So I don't understand why people complain so much about Macs; if you don't like it, don't buy it, but if you're being given it for work, that's why it's called "work": it's not supposed to be fun. If Outlook started causing me so much trouble that it was impairing my work performance, I'd bring it up with my management and let them deal with it. If they didn't, I'd just continually remind them of how much of my time is being wasted by it so they don't think I'm slacking off.

The GP is literally throwing out the reasons s/he won't buy a MacBook... in the same way that you did. What don't you understand?

Yeah, sorry for the grumpy rant..

It is a bit hypocritical (or masochistic) for me to complain about Apple products while still using them, albeit older models.

One reason why I'm frustrated is that I fondly remember the era of Apple ][. To quote, "Wozniak's open-architecture design and the Apple II's multiple expansion slots permitted a wide variety of third-party devices, including peripheral cards such as serial controllers, display controllers, memory boards, hard disks, networking components, and realtime clocks."

Recent trends seem to be an affront to the spirit of personal computing, and that's what I'm lamenting essentially.

do you use Linux and don’t need access to let’s say Adobe software? Or do you use windows and don’t mind being actively spied on?

MacOS and Apples seemingly honest dedication to privacy are the only reason I use Apple hardware.

Apart from hackintosh type solutions I don’t see a way to have both.

I use Windows, and I'm not actively spied on (at least by MS, my employer is another matter). Enterprise editions of Windows don't have spyware (nor would it work behind corporate firewalls, or on closed networks).

At home, I use Linux. No, I don't "need" access to Adobe software. I do my work at work, using the tools they provide me.

>MacOS and Apples seemingly honest dedication to privacy

Seemingly. You can get real privacy if you use Linux, and you can use it on all kinds of hardware.

For me, MS Office is the only reason I use Mac OS. If it were available on Linux, I would move tomorrow.

That's where I will end but it makes me sad because my 2013 Macbook Air is without a doubt the best machine I've owned in my 20 years as a software developer. Everything about the hardware is pleasant and I mostly like the OS. I would love to just carry on but as it is currently, I find myself researching alternatives. That is time I would rather spend being productive.

“I may simply go back to Windows at home if that's the case, and will use a Windows Laptop at work if possible. Seriously, fuck Apple for this arrogance”

If only Windows was better. My home MacBook just broke after 6 years and I am looking for a replacement. At work I have Dell and Surface devices and after weighing everything I still think a new MacBook is the best of all. They are worse than the 2015 models but still better than everything else on the market once you look at hardware and OS. Just my personal opinion.

In general it seems there is a trend to making things worse for whatever reason. The new MacBooks are worse than the ones a few years ago and Windows 10 is worse than 7. They should just have added WSL, HyperV and other goodies to Windows 7 and left the UI alone and it would be a better OS.

I am in agreement with you that my current MBP will be my last if my only options in the future are with that damn, silly, expensive gimmick so eloquently called the touch bar.

I'm still salty about the magsafe.

Same. When I bought the MacBook, that was one of those things I noticed as “of course it makes sense. Why doesn’t everybody do this?” Then Apple went ahead and took an axe to it. This was truly an idiotic move. Don’t add usbc if you can’t find a way to make it MagSafe!

Opposite here, the magsafe was a constant nuisance, always disconnecting. I like being able to drag the cord with the laptop.

And the laptop with the cord.

This is how you get frayed cords.

I liked the Magsafe connector. But with USB-C, I like being able to connect the power cable from either side.

MagSafe was nice, but I'm a big fan of being able to use an industry standard $30 charger with 60W USB-C, 3x USB-A ports, and a removable charging cable.

Having to replace a whole $80 proprietary charging brick because the cable connection frayed was a pretty shitty deal.

Is it impossible to have a removable Magsafe cable?

Probably not, but Apple never made one.

The option we have now are magnetic breakaway USB-C nubs, but I've been hesitant to jump on that train because of stories about them breaking off in ports, short circuiting, or failing to connect properly. And especially if you have a 15" MBP with the 87W power brick, I don't think they can handle that amount of power.

Eventually I hope to see some well made versions of that from known good vendors, but even things like Griffin BreakSafe have crappy reviews right now.

I have collected 4 magsafe chargers from the various companies I've worked at because when I returned my laptop or got an extra, they never asked for the chargers back. It was very convenient, but now that I'm on the 2018 USB-C one, I have to throw all of them away via e-waste because I have literally no use for them.

You could try eBay or Craigslist for those.

Since Apple never licensed out MagSafe, the market has been full of poorly built counterfeits rather than anything from reputable manufacturers. That’s another thing I don’t miss.

Anyway, I’d bet there’s still some market for used MagSafe chargers to be used with older macs whose chargers have frayed.

there exist magsafe to usb3 converters.

Hah, the new Macbook laptop with only USB-C connectors: Slimmer and weights 2Kg less. But now you have to take with you 3kg of USB-C to everything (hdmi, mini-DP, USB-A, thunderbolt, ethernet, MicroSD, SD) adapters, each one costing you $15 at least. Oh, and this "feature" costs you $100 extra on the new MacBook laptop.

I hate Apple.

Magsafe patent expires sometime around 2025 luckily.

I think they design computers not because they're arrogant but because it's their job.

I get that they don't always hit the nail on the head, but then who does? Hopefully they will learn from their mistakes and get better.

Also, I think a lot of their users do like the computers they make. There are inherent tradeoffs in any product that isn't isn't entirely custom designed for a specific customer. (Actually, that's a tradeoff too, since an entirely custom designed computer with tiny production runs would be very expensive.)

Anyway, I don't think you should get mad. For yourself, go get the computer you want. (And for work, well, like most of us, you lose some personal flexibility when you work with other people. Hopefully, the greater things you can accomplish as part of a group is good compensation, or if not that, then at least the paycheck is.)

> I may simply go back to Windows at home if that's the case

Linux and open BSD variants are calling...

This is my story in a nutshell too.

After the 2018 MacBook Pro keyboard started breaking down (after 1 year of use, once replaced already) I gave up on Apple and bought a 3 pound LG Gram 17 inch laptop.

Using Windows for the first time in 10 years, all I can say is it has come a long way. They've put serious effort into making development for linux via WSL and VS Code a dream.

The laptop is also fantastic, 17" of 16:10 real estate, light, the macbook feels like a stone now.

The downsides are the keyboard is a tad too small as it includes a numpad and takes a couple weeks to get used to. I wish it was a bit bigger, there was room for this.

The other issue is by default the laptop is set to too aggressively throttle in software and requires tweaking.

Other than that fantastic all around, 2 nvme slots, 1 upgradable ram slot, lots of IO. .

I use both Mac and Windows at home. Trust me when I say that you'll prefer the Touch Bar, as bad as it is, over Windows.

If Apple didn’t know what their customers wanted, how do you explain the Mac revenue numbers?

https://sixcolors.com/post/2019/01/apples-dramatic-q1-2019-r...

> The sheer arrogance of Apple to think they know better than their customers

Nobody gets it right all the time but Apple has a history with this type of behavior of being correct.

I'm interested to see your list of the times their controversial decisions were correct after Steve Jobs died.

It's still controversial, in part because it's still relatively recent, but removing the headphone jack. No major manufacturer's flagship phones come with headphone jacks anymore, despite all the PR ridicule they initially flung. In another 5-10 years, I doubt any new phones will be manufactured with headphone jacks.

Samsung is not a major phone manufacturer and their Galaxy S line(s) are not flagship phones?

You can buy a Galaxy S10e with a headphone jack today.

But beyond that, we have to define what being _correct_ entails. It is _because_ of Apple that other manufacturers followed suit and their justification was ostensibly for making a slimmer phone (fitting more components into the shell) which was quickly proven to be irrelevant. I don't romanticize about the headphone jack but the premise behind the claim that Apple could be "correct" to remove it doesn't seem foundationally solid as an argument (let alone from a historical standpoint).

What's your experience with Linux?

I 100% agree with you about the touch bar, but you might be underestimating the user-hostility of modern Windows and the shoddiness of Windows computer manufacturers.

I've had devices from from Dell, Microsoft (3x), and Lenovo (2x) in the past few years, and they've all had hardware or driver issues either from the start or within the first few months. Tried countless registry hacks and driver reinstallations, spent dozens more hours on the phone with support reps who have no idea what they're doing, finally gotten a replacement but it doesn't include warranty coverage so the next failure is game over. Worst support by far was Dell -- they refuse to admit there's a problem, transfer you to wrong departments, and just wait for you to hang up. Their basic warranty coverage also only includes "depot service", which means you mail the machine away for two weeks and literally all they do is wipe it and reinstall the OS. Lenovo sent somebody to my home and actually resolved the issue.

Even when the system is put together correctly, every Windows update breaks something, or reverts some setting to a default value, and you don't get to choose which ones you need and which to skip. That Persian calendar fix is going to break your touchpad. Your system event log will be full of errors, and you won't know if you should be concerned. But that's just how Windows is, rotted and barely clunking along. Not to mention the built-in app ecosystem -- my wife tried their Mail app for a while, and one day it deleted all of her emails and calendar events. OneDrive sucks. Everything about Windows sucks.

I've done the "Reset This PC" thing on 3 different machines, and it's bricked all of them.

By contrast, the MacBook Pro that I've used at work for a few years has had zero problems and the OS feels so much more coherent. I do passionately hate the touch bar; I accidentally brush it all the time and suddenly the volume changes or Siri pops up or whatever irritating thing. I miss having a real Esc (yes, I've remapped Caps Lock, but muscle memory dies hard).

I've always used Windows laptops, but recently I've realized the MacBook is actually not more expensive after you factor in the hours of maintenance and the fact that Windows machines will die much more quickly no matter what you do.

You thinking that you know better than Apple is not arogant a bit, I guess.

You won’t buy one, but you’ll use one daily to make a living. I was expecting a different conviction given your strong language. ;)

He only uses a 2018 MacBook Pro because work supplied it.

I use Windows at work, but there's no way I'd pay for it on my own or use it at home.

People who work as janitors probably aren't exactly wild about cleaning dirty toilets every day, but they do what they have to do to earn a living.

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