Comment by mikestew | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mikestew | Hacker News Reader

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Windows 10 works marginally better. Both remain vastly inferior to MacOs.

That's where I'm stuck. We're all-in at our house on Apple stuff. I'm no Windows hater per se, hell, I used to work at Microsoft and my wife still does. And there was a time that I'd say about Mac OS: "this is what an operating system should be". Oh, you most certainly disagree, but bear with me. I don't say that anymore. Too much half-assed shit, and yada yada, no need to repeat it here; macOS ain't what it used to be. But what else am I going to use? I keep rootin' for Linux, but every time I boot one of my VMs, well, it ain't replacing macOS just yet. Windows (at least the NT variants) when I worked for MSFT was a perfectly servicable operating system. It wasn't Unix, but it was better than classic Mac OS, and pretty damned solid. But I have to use Windows 10 at work now, and I fucking hate it. Again, no need to repeat it all here, I just do.

Yeah, Mac hardware sucks, too. I guess when my 2012 retina dies, I'll have to...oh, wait a minute, I'm still plugging away on a seven year old laptop? That I've dragged all over God's creation and use daily? Still as functional as the day I bought it? I dunno, will I find a better alternative come replacement time? Or has the quality of everything else gone down, too? I know, I know, X1 Carbon, XPS; but then my gut seems to think that I hear just as much complaining about those, too.

So in truth, when the 2012 MBP dies, I have no idea what I'm going to do to replace it.

EDIT: thanks, folks. Don't know why I hadn't considered used 2015. If a 2012 is fine, I ought to be tickled with a 2015, right? :-)

Sidenote: "which listed the magical indentation that purges reserved space." Unless you're using Python, I think the author wants to replace "indentation" with "incantation".

Find a used 2015 mbp. I love mine (15 inch, mid 2015).

I probably would have upgraded for a better gpu, but the keyboards are too iffy for me. I shed a lot, and if dust/detritus is the mbp keyboard killer, it will never work for me.

Honestly I mostly use my iPad now. Work-work is still a dell laptop with win 10, and is daily torture to use. Mostly from all the corporate spyware my employer loads it down with.

At home, even for coding, I use the iPad second gen 12.9 and a vps.

I'm in the same boat as the guy you replied to and yea, I hear people recommend the 2015s all the time. Might do that, eventually. Then my laptop is 4 years old instead of 8 (and I'll probably still have to pay 4 digits for a used one). But what about 5 years from now? At one point, these options fade away.

My hope is that Apple is secretly listening.

They can't be happy about the negative butterfly keyboard headlines. They can't be completely unaware of "professionals" with a "Pro" model mentioning how they don't care about how flat their MBP is and would rather have better hardware. Any mention of the state of MBPs these days leads to a discussion about how disappointing they are. Every single time they get brought up!

That wasn't always the case, despite all the people making fun of Apple users being brainwashed and whatnot. Up until – yea, basically 2015, Apple users happily chuckled at these discussions as the overall usage of Apple products remained a pleasant experience. But I don't see that anymore. I see desperate clinging to pre-2016 models, a hope that "things will improve" and nervous looks at the alternatives (Win 10, Linux), which don't seem attractive at all.

Basically, if Apple announced a new MBP line tomorrow, 2mm thicker but with a proper keyboard, MagSafe, no-nonsense specs and an option to drop the gimmicks (touchbar) for shaving a few hundred dollars off that insane price (current 15" offers starting at 2.699,00€, here, that's with a 256GB SSD), I bet they'd get overrun with preorders within seconds.

I have hopes because, honestly, I'm out of options and it sucks. So I have to interpret certain things positively. Apple just dropped 3DTouch from the new iPhones, which is an indicator they're willing to let go when shit plain doesn't work out. Jony Ive leaving might be a completely random and unrelated event and I generally respect what he did for keeping things clean and focused – but maybe his departure is a signal to return back to more... "robust" design? Who knows. Whatever the case, Apple needs to get its head out of its ass and acknowledge just how unhappy even die hard fans are with their current MBP line.

> My hope is that Apple is secretly listening.

I'd love to believe this -- I have 5 Apple laptops from the Pismo G3 through a mid-2012, and liked all of them -- and I'd love to go back to being satisfied with that kind of purchase cycle again.

But I don't think Apple got it right before by listening in the sense of gathering feedback, I think they had some internal vision that came from a kind of attention to people like you and I as a market that they cared about.

And I think either the people who had a knack for that vision are gone, or the days when Apple could be bothered to care about that market are gone.

To echo the others, I had a similar problem though I was on a 2011 MBP. Didn't want the new MBP so I bought the most pimped out 2015 model you could get, the one with the 2.8Ghz i7 CPU, AMD GPU and 1TB SSD. Also had a low battery cycle count (<50).

Plan to use this one for at least another 5 years. It's still plenty fast.

Just get a 2015 MBP. These are the last ones with MagSafe and more than Thunderbolt 3 ports.

Why did Apple ever remove MagSafe? Makes no sense to me.

I understand why they did--but I also think keeping magsafe would have been fine, too. When I looked for non-Mac alternatives my criteria was; no proprietary connector, either magsafe-like (like the Surface) or USB-C.

I really really wish they didn't ditch all of the other nice stuff when they ditched magsafe. They got rid of the external battery charge level indicator, the light showing if it's charging, etc. A few times now I've woken up expecting a charged laptop but the cable was loose or not plugged in on the other side (and I missed the sound). It's really awkward to open the lid and wake it up to see how fully charged it is or if it has finished charging. Minor details like those were what I liked about using a Mac.

They do have third-party USB-C cables with LEDs, but since they're passive (just looking at current traveling through the cable) I've heard they're not always correct. I'm curious, but skeptical, of the USB-C cables with the magsafe-like breakoff.

So in truth, when the 2012 MBP dies, I have no idea what I'm going to do to replace it.

There are used MBPs available from various reputable sources. That's my goto at work, when someone's laptop dies.

Would love a list of any reputable sources... the keyboard is starting to fail on my beloved mid 2012 (last model with matte screen!).

macsales.com is my first choice. I am unaffiliated with them. Just a satisfied customer.

If you'll decide to go with pre-2016 MacBook, find a Louis Rossmann video about what mac to buy. He repairs MacBooks for a long time and thus has a good idea about which model will serve you the longest. As I recall, his recommendation was to go with some 2014 model instead of 2015 because of some faults 2015s had. Of course, you'll need to weigh it against the performance differences between the two.

the problem with this is that he repairs laptops from people who don’t know how to take care of them so the problems he’s repairing will likely never be a problem for someone here. i’ve never once had any of the problems in any of his videos (or even a problem at all). he sure talks shit about apple like they’re all junk though.

Oh yeah, he's definitely biased, but if you filter the stuff, and I understand how you wouldn't want to, but if you filter it, there are descriptions of issues that you can't avoid with care. Some examples:

1. dGPU that's soldered poorly and whuch thus gets cracks in solder balls after repeated heat cycling because the cooling solution and fan curve is not tuned for performance.

2. Motherboards being poorly supported, which leads to them flexing a little every time the laptop is opened and clised, which leads to components becoming desoldered due to cracks in the solder.

3. On the newer macbooks he says that there are chips that just die randomly, as he's had specimens that were quite new and without a sign of bad handling on the inside and out and yet a chip has gone bad all of a sudden.

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