I Hate My MacBook
tbray.org
tbray.org
Shitty Bluetooth, terrible keyboard, unreadable glossy screen, accidentally active trackpad, slow and heavy, cold metal feel.
Finder is the worst navigation experience in the world. Windows 95 and the first version of Nautilus were better. Why does it try to pretend like there is no filesystem?
My Thinkpad is much better and hasn't needed a refresh.
In general i can live with the all the aforementioned, but i hated the previous 2 year period with the random Wifi disconnection issues; it sometimes made my work unbearable.
Hence, i would say that the biggest issue with MBPs is the deterioration in apple software.
I've seen this complaint before from Windows users interacting with Finder, but I've never understood where it is coming from.
Aside from the "Recents" tab, everything is organized into files and folders, just like any other file system explorer. The sidebar is mostly shortcuts to different folders, and I always navigate down in a nested folder hierarchy to find my files.
Is it that the "Recents" tab is the default view that gives this impression?
Unfortunately I have to interact with finder when I want to use things like Firefox or Jetbrains IDEs.
You can't traverse the filesystem tree without descending and then reascending, and for complex paths it's impossible to know where you're going.
Finder is garbage at finding and exploring.
Cmd+Opt+C on the other hand does not copy the current path into my clipboard.
I have the downloads folder in the dock and use it frequently.
It's pretty accessible. Most of the complaints I see regarding Finder seem to be a result of trying to use a Mac in the same way as another OS. It's different, but takes just a quick search to find all the shortcuts and stuff and it's very simple.
Command-Option-C: copy the full path of the selected file or folder as plaintext, with space characters not escaped with backslashes.
Command-C, then Command-V into a terminal prompt: paste the full path of the copied file or folder, with space characters backslash-escaped. Tested in Terminal and iTerm2.
Did you even use Finder or are you just trolling?
The actual keyboard shortcut, if you'd like to reproduce the behavior you get with Cmd+L in a browser, is Cmd+Opt+C Cmd+Shift+G Cmd+V.
And this drives me nuts :)
If you want to force system wide view settings in finder, delete all DS_Store files and then do the thing with cmd+j
Hardware aside, I honestly don't understand why anyone who writes software would write software on a closed source OS.
The excuse I most often hear is that "they have better things to do than mess with Linux configuration". That's a healthy viewpoint, for say, a scientist or an artist. But if a software developer does not like hacking around with software they are probably in the wrong career. In my opinion, giving up control over your most important tools for a bit of short term convenience is bad economics.
But instead you use macOS?
You should give it a shot :)
Otherwise the fair comparison would be to a hackintosh, which would probably much more work.
1.) I absolutely agree on the Ubuntu front (though I don't believe for a second that things are better elsewhere. E.g.: Python on Windows is way worse in my experience). But I dislike Ubuntu (and Debian, for that matter) for many related experiences I had in the past.
2.) I'd say, though, that you're missing out on good containerization solutions if you're wrestling with Python installations on a server distribution.
3.) Most importantly: Where things like Docker or LXC don't apply (or don't apply as much; like development/desktop usage), the single best concept I've encountered so far would be the way NixOS and Guix handle installations. I sincerely hope that model will take off in the next couple of years. And I'm pretty sure that if it takes off, it will be on either Linux (most likely) or BSD.
This is some gatekeeping right here. There's a lot more to developing software than hacking and dealing with low level linux configuration just to get my graphics and sound working at the same time after a system update
Sounds like you’ve never used a modern Arch based distro. In 2 years of using Manjaro as my daily driver that’s never happened to me.
I personally love Miller Columns and the lack of them in any other file browser is one of many things keeping me from switching to Linux. Navigating my entire file system just with arrow keys feels like a breeze.
If I remember correctly, Windows 95 opened a new window for every folder you clicked on. I recall very messy desktops on being five levels deep.
I've had sane settings for macos for years and migrated with them.
But I've set up a fresh machine recently and I will say the default settings for macos have changed. There are a lot of annoying "recent apps" and "recent files" and non-filesystem things in sidebars that I keep banging my head against.
It takes a while to set it up to do just simple files and folders.
I do keep applications and utilities in the dock, and set that up as:
display as folder
view contents as list
I first used mac os seriously starting with 10.5, when it was possible to it run on a PC, and I was lucky enough to have a compatible enough PC.
The experience was unbelievable to me. Everything was so smooth and snappy. I was using mainly linux at the time, with KDE. I naturally wanted to get an actual mac, especially since I was tired of the plastic laptops of the time, failing in random ways, being noisy, shoddy linux support, etc.
My current daily driver is a late 2013 15" MBP and it is honestly the best computer I've ever had. It's almost 7 years old and it never had any kind of problem whatsoever. Connectivity is superb (integrated optical out, sd card, thunderbolt, 4K60 output, HDMI). The only thing I sometimes missed was an ethernet port (I work in operations). I actually enjoy the touch of the metal, prefer it to the plasticky PCs. Yes, the glossy screen is sometimes a pain, but it's actually usable outside whereas my work PC with the matte screen is a mess. Performance is sufficient for my needs, though, granted, I don't do heavy lifting with it.
While I love the computer itself and used to love mac os, I do have the feeling that it's gone downhill. As others have noted, there's random lagging in Safari, random system services start using the cpu at 100% for no reason, etc.
So I guess my point is that a lot of people used to love the mac ecosystem, which I think was really great, and they still want to love it despite the drop in quality, maybe hoping it's only temporary. There might also be some kind of "brand loyalty" / "emotional investment" going on. Although, as far as I'm concerned, I seem to be looking much more at thinkpads as a possible replacement if I had to get a new computer right now.
I'm no Mac fanboy, at all. But I love my 2014 MBP, best money I ever spent on tech. Its 2020 now, it runs like new, withstood mechanical stress, battery still holds all day with careful use. Bluetooth works fine. Keyboard is fine for laptop. CPU is fine for intensive calculations. Terminal is as good as Linux. Homebrew 'just works'; I can't count how many times I got my apt package manager into a major pickle, that required awkward backtracks. I went through a number of system upgrades that didn't break anything. 'Setting up' the computer involved powering it up, I didn't have to debug my hardware like I had to every time with new/upgraded Linux.
This is 180 deg different to my Linux experience, never mind Windows (that's a disaster). Linux is cute, but caused me issues with all the points above.
Sounds like this is very different to your experience, so much so that perhaps it is just that Macs have a large variance in quality over the years. Reading what I see now, I'm not sure I would buy another Mac. This makes me sad - my trusty 2014 MBP is the perfect computer, as far as I'm concerned, but surely at this age its days are counted.
People who seem to share this opinion often mention the 2014 vintage.
Then I became a developer, around the same time that MacBook keyboards started to suck, and now I use a ThinkPad and haven't looked back.
Because you just can't abstract away the existence of a filesystem to create a "simpler" experience for some users. You just have to teach them how to use one and avoid letting them shoot themselves in the foot.
Pretty sure he will come back to MacBooks after using something else for a while.
MacBooks are considered one of the best not because they don't have any problems, but because they have the least amount of them.
I switched to Mac 2 years ago and not looking back. Even though I am using 2017MBP with garbage keyboard, I replaced it for free and can replace again for few more years so it's not even a problem.
So it’s not just that everything else is worse, which I agree with, it’s also that Apple is getting worse.
The issues that came, like the keyboard, or lack of repair DIY ability coincided with the advent of the iPhone. The question at the moment is whether 2019 and 2020 is a quality age for MacBooks or not, and I don't know the answer to that, but it does appear like 2012 MacBooks are more resilient than 2019 ones.
I think a Frankenstein Dell XPS / MacBook is round about time now from some company X.
Half a year later, and it's... okay. It gets the job done. But then so does my old trusty Asus UX32LN (i7-4500, 8 GB RAM), running Ubuntu with all the hardware working out of the box. I've had more hardware glitches with the Mini so far than I'd had with the UX32LN.
Software-wise, I don't feel much difference. I pretty much live in Emacs and the browser, and both work everywhere. I like the polished feel of macOS (although I've had a brief encountered with it in the Snow Leopard days and it felt _more_ polished back then), but I do miss the customizability of Linux (the macOS maximize/fullscreen experience is subpar).
I have no real problems with my Windows and Linux setups though. I had a loaner MBP and Mac Mini for about a year for testing purposes and frankly I did not see a single thing (OS/hardware) that would cause me to switch. So your statement about "the least amount of problems" is likely what you feel personally and does not really translate to what somebody else would fine.
One of the reasons was that I couldn‘t make Mail.app working with Exchange/Microsoft 365 (especially shared mailboxes) and the other that Docker is so slow (volumes with many files are unusable). It‘s sad to not have a single OS for everything. I now need Windows to write e-mail and Linux to do my work.
I would have kept a Mac and installed Linux in dual-boot but I need something that „just works“ because I need to do work sometime and I wasn‘t sure enough that it will work smooth.
They're using Office 365 too, so I tried using it in the browser (Firefox) and I loved it so much that I can't use the local outlook client anymore. It just feels sluggish, and I hate that I have to let go of the slider when scrolling to see the message list update. I don't think shared mailboxes are handled very well, though.
Online Office 365 is not a workable solution, because I‘m a contractor and need to use up to 3 exchange accounts within a single day. And that‘s a lot of logout-login if done in the browser. Chrome (profiles) is not an option for me.
Keyboard replacement is only free for up to three times.
Problems with the hardware: - When I use any of the USB-C ports on the left to charge it, performance tanks... why? because for some reason it overheats when you do this and the CPU gets throttled.
- When I use a high-speed USB-C device (USB 3.1, Displayport, etc) in the ports on the left, the WiFi stops working. This always seems to get blamed on cheap cables, but this answer does not satisfy me.
- The TouchBar is awful in many ways, but the most fundemental failure is that it regularly doesn't detect key presses! I tap a key, I can see the "highlight" effect, but nothing happens.
My gripes with macOS:
- Performance when using an external monitor is pretty poor. When I have my Dell U2720Q connected, WindowServer starts using more CPU and the interface gets noticably sluggish.
- With the macbook having "the fastest SSD on a laptop" and APFS being "designed for SSDs", I expect some decent performance when dealing with disk IO. But particularly Archive utility is always very slow to extract files, and Finder always has a (small, but annoying) delay when listing folder contents.
- Updates take ages and are MASSIVE. - The XCode 12 update, which I had to rush to download after apple released iOS 14 with no warning, was 11GB and took ages to download, and ages to extract and install. - macOS minor updates also have large downloads and take between 30-60 minutes to install
However:
* I had to pay to replace the screen when it suffered the well-recognised broken ribbon cable issue. Unfortunately, Apple only offer free replacements for the 13” model, not the 15” - which is just outrageous, given the identical mechanism of failure. (Some weird ‘Fight Club’ calculations on the background there, I suspect.)
* USB-C connections are very unstable (physically) - like, hold your breath and don’t make any sudden moves while you’re copying large files via that route
* For some reason only some of the four USB-C ports work for video. This has changed - pretty sure they all did when it was new.
* My battery is shot and giving me the service message after about 310 cycles. It’s meant to last 1000, apparently. (I should get in touch with Apple, but after the screen debacle I just get a sense of weariness at the thought.)
At some point I’ll need to replace it... and I have no idea what I’ll do. I like MacOS (up to Mojave, at least) and the idea of going back to Windows or struggling with Linux makes me shudder. But likewise I’m not going to buy another Mac laptop, given the huge range of issues they now suffer.
Maybe this is what Jobs meant when (referring to Tim Cook) he shook his head and said he’s “not a product guy”? Apple are ultra-successful, but the essential quality of their products is on a downwards trajectory.
I actually had a poke around the XIP format after I was particlarly annoyed after the XCode update.
For XCode: The XIP contained some kind of DEFLATE'd index I didn't bother with. Most of the meat was an uncompressed "PBXZ" stream, which contained various LZMA compressed CPIO chunks.
I like the Mac platform and still prefer it over the alternatives, but this sentence really sums up my thoughts about the development of macOS.
If you think Bluetooth is lame on MacBooks try even activating BT on Intel NUC, Dell Latitude, etc.
If I had to pick few strong arguments against MacBooks these would be miserable memory options for both RAM and hard drive, and overall extortionist prices in Europe.
Regarding the general software experience, even after a year of constant use, I can say that for me personally, a half-decent Linux distro has a lot better usability. I still don't exactly get how Finder works (when does it show me the list view, when the broken folder view with a unnecessary scrollbar - as there is enough space to show all of the icons), the whole app ecosystem is a shock, where it's normal that basic tools (like FTP Client) cost 50EUR or come crippled (Like FileZilla). It's a horrible feeling coming from OSS world.
One UX example I like to show to people is, that on my Ubuntu based home laptop, after connecting Logitech mouse, I get it's battery indicator automatically integrated in the same place with my laptop (and other) batteries. Smooth, no-frills. Something that "the most user friendly system in the world" lacks. And I could go on and on and on... At first I was thinking that it's just the change and I will get used to OS X, but looks like this ain't happening.
I like the touchpad and screen, but I mostly use external screen and mouse anyway.
Have you installed Homebrew?
Has not been my experience with either Arch/kde or Ubuntu at all, but to each their own. They have their own strengths but usability isn't one of them IMO.
> the whole app ecosystem is a shock, where it's normal that basic tools (like FTP Client) cost 50EUR or come crippled (Like FileZilla). It's a horrible feeling coming from OSS world.
OSS versions of tools like FTP clients exist in the macOS world as well[0]. Theres a small but high quality ecosystem of independant mac software thats been around for a long time.
[0] https://cyberduck.io/ https://github.com/serhii-londar/open-source-mac-os-apps
Edit: added a link and removed a sentence.
My conclusions are that the entire brand lacks substance and the productivity gains are marketing. The prices are quite frankly ridiculous especially here in the UK. The cloud offering is buggy, unreliable and inferior to just about everyone else. The things are an administrative and tooling nightmare. The software is mostly inferior and suffers from terribly discoverability problems and it’s really difficult to drive from a keyboard. I think a lot of it is running a hype train. Look at iOS 14. I can’t actually think of a single new feature or function that actually made any difference to me. But oh so much marketing.
When I sold my Apple kit recently I replaced it with a custom build Ryzen 3700X, 64Gb RAM, 1Tb NVMe SSD, GeForce 1660, 27” 4K display, Cherry MX keyboard. The iPad was replaced with a Lenovo T495s. I had change left after selling the Apple stuff. If I wanted to buy that sort of power in the Apple ecosystem I’d be down an additional £2000. I use Office 365 personal for cloud stuff. It just works.
Edit: when I look back I don’t look back fondly at my previous MacBooks. They were universally trouble in some way or another from thermal issues to fragility and unreliability. What was I thinking.
I was hooked and hyped to get the new 2016 MacBook Pro. Talk about polar opposite experience:
* The keyboard is terrible (replaced 3 times already),
* Touchbar is meh (if you touchtype when do ever look at it - this feels like a thing that’d be more useful for entry level machines where you are likely to find hunt-and-peck typists) and it now flickers in the corner occasionally.
* The fan is noisy
* I can no longer upgrade the ram or internal storage
* I’ve gone almost completely usb-c but the lack of usb-a and hdmi is still annoying on occasions - especially on a pro machine
On the good side
* the speakers are amazing
* the “retina” display is crisp and bright
* it’s amazingly small and light
What’s really killing Macs right now is the software-side “it just works” seems like a thing of the past e.g.
* I used to chuckle at people on windows when waking from sleep but Macs (possibly because of FileVault) feel just as slow now
* As mentioned in the post general Bluetooth flakiness (tbf it does seem like the latest patch release or two of Catalina seems to have got on top of this now)
* Using spaces (inc animation) for full-screen and making that what happens for the maximise button - just weird and clunky
* General system responsiveness - it just feels sluggish
I really can’t believe the turn around - they’ve managed to turn a customer-for-life to now I’m seriously considering getting a Linux-based laptop instead.
I tried using linux for a few years but it never quite worked as I wanted, I’d have to run VMware for all the apps I wanted and that wasn’t a great experience and I ended up just booting linux to start windows and use that with the same problems I always had (needed to keep resetting windows).
I switched to mac last year and haven’t had any trouble, finder is a bit odd and not great but everything else works well. For the few apps I really need windows for parallels works but I only neee like two apps in it so it is much cleaner and I don’t have to keep resetting it.
For the life of me, I cannot discern any performance difference between the two. One thing I can discern is that the screen on the newer one has a big yellowish blob all around the edges of it, its left command key works half the time and it crashes constantly. I am so happy when I get to return to working on my home machine and god forbid it finally shits the bed on me because I have no idea what I would get next.
This means the laptop feels incredibly quick for launching programs and doing short intensive tasks without turning on the fan because the processor unleashes hidden performance when you do something that you'd expect to be slow. It looks and feels like magic to people coming from other platforms, which is probably what Apple is going for with their designs.
However, this also artificially limits the CPU performance because of aesthetics and form over function. Long-duration workloads like games suffer from substandard processor performance at the cost of the device, which is multiplied by the stupidly high resolution requiring more rendering power. It's even worse in bootcamp because Windows can't use many of the sensors and power features because of a lack of drivers.
Perhaps Apple knows their own chips will net about the same performance as their current limited CPUs for a lower cost and it doesn't want to redesign the experience to make effective use of Intel's turbo frequencies. Even though AMD is surpassing Intel as we speak, their high-end processors are incredibly fast if you just give them some space. They suck in a lot more power that way, but giving people the option to choose performance over battery life would probably solve a lot of grips for Apple users who only use the laptop at work or at home, near a wall plug where they can recharge whenever.
I am really impressed with Apple's speakers though, I don't think there's anything that comes close to their laptop speakers.
But it's not just Apple doing this. It's literally the principle behind ultrabooks in general.
If you don't want this you have to go back to big fat workstation laptops or slightly less fat gaming laptops, which in turn were designed for 14 year olds and usually have a shitty touchpad.
For Bluetooth, I flat never have problems. I use Bluetooth headphones (Sony) and a Mac keyboard and touchpad, and they genuinely do just work - I don’t get spurious disconnects and everything sounds just fine. I have far more problems with BT on Windows 10 than on Mac - with devices failing to connect after the laptop is turned on and off, etc. Mac supports both AAC and aptX for audio codecs, too - so it works with pretty much any audio gear just fine.
It’s not going to feel faster on a single thread - because intel are not really any faster on a single thread. Having six cores is nice though!
The rest is all very subjective and it’s fair to have a difference of opinion there, though.
https://github.com/sytelus/pcprep/blob/master/windows/proces...
I have a new 13inch MacBook that does indeed feel quite fast. I suspect this is because I havent turned on harddisk encryption (despite being regularly nagged to do so)
1. The haptic feedback on the trackpad stops working when the machine gets hot.
2. Once the upper part of the chassis becomes hot enough, part of the screen gets black lines and ghosting which gets worse as I continue to use it until it goes completely black (this is because the T-CON board is very close to the heatsink).
3. The SSD conveniently failed 1 month after the warranty ended. The official repair cost was about 50% of the cost of the machine. Luckily this was the last Macbook to have non-soldered SSD, and I got a replacement from AliExpress for $50.
Oddly, I've never run into the infamous keyboard issue.
Whenever I buy something new I feel like I am making myself complicit to everything that went into making it, and I know it ain't pretty, so why do it when I don't have to.
My top-level motivation for starting out was just to reduce my monthly/annual expenditures so that I could "downshift".
Anyone else thinking about this? Is the Pro worth it over Air?
This has been true for decades. Every time a new lineup is released, Hacker News declares this to be the last straw.
The circle of life!
So far, I'm quite happy. It's not crazy fast, especially in react native + android emulator, but for now I won't change it until good ARM version ships.
Seriously thou, mine does struggle when driving the retina display and a 4k especially with games refreshing at 50+ fps.
I have had blutooth struggles too - until I bought a Bose head set, which works perfectly with the macbook all the time and even displays great range and resilience to things like walls. The magic keypad and trackpad have always worked perfectly - conclusion 3rd party protocols and chipsets can be crap.
Touchbar/control strip is brilliant, especially for powerpoint, the extra preview is perfect.
Take the new Ryzen 4800 series, bolt it on a sub-1000 dollar Asus laptop and put on Windows-Subsystem-Linux 2 (WSL2), you get native Linux development on a laptop that can play high res games.
I'm seriously looking at switching back to either a windows or linux powered machine.
Also, it's ridiculous that a $2800 machine needs an ugly-as-sin $250 extra box to have decent connectivity to monitors etc. The $800 machine I'm using right now has that connectivity out of the box, in a sleeker form factor.
Apple has labelled the key in the upper-right corner "delete" for the last 30 years. It deletes selected objects, or without selection letters or objects to the left of the cursor. In Terminal, it sends ASCII-127 (DEL), not ASCII-8 (BS), just like ancient DEC terminals.
Most PC vendors labelled the key in that position "backspace". Without selection it deletes letters or objects to the left of the cursor, and with selected objects it may or may not delete them. In most Windows and Linux terminals, it sends ASCII-127 (DEL), not ASCII-8 (BS).
Given all of this, it not at all obvious to me that the key should really be named "backspace" rather than "delete".
I’m pretty sure that I can make some assumptions about what is going to be obvious to most based on that alone.
Aside from that - explicitly having both Backspace and Delete is also obviously better than having only one of them and hiding the other beneath a multi-key shortcut.
You mistook pointing out a flaw for complaining though. I'm not complaining since I'm not stuck on a Mac. I keep one around for doing iOS things and for helping Mac users figure out how to do things.
Personally, I prefer to use a Linux desktop system that draws deeply from the Windows UI and currently that is Manjaro with XFCE. With that I get the best parts of Windows, I can customize it to do just about anything I want and it's even more stable than Mac or Windows.
Also, want to delete a file? Yeah that's going to be a different keystroke, the delete is only for text.
But wait, you'd think that surely you could just remap that little fingerprint key which does absolutely nothing when pressed? Nope, it's unmappable. :-)
Not at my Mac, but I’d think it’s function+option+delete?
> you could just remap that little fingerprint key which does absolutely nothing when pressed
Doesn’t it put your computer to sleep and shut it down?
On macOS it's option+delete.
> On Mac, somehow I never remember how to do it and end up deleting the entire line of text. It's just stupid.
It's stupid that the shortcut on MacOS is different than on Windows and you can't remember it?
> Also, want to delete a file? Yeah that's going to be a different keystroke, the delete is only for text.
AFAIK there is no macOS shortcut to delete a file in Finder. There is a shortcut to move a file to Trash. This is a different action than deleting text (there is no Trash for text), so I think it's fair to use a slightly different shortcut (command-delete).
There is: Option+Command+Delete.
I normally get the shortcuts that I don't remember from the menu bar, but I forgot that holding option shows alternative options.
I agree that switching hence and forth between the two systems is a bit annoying. I configured AutoHotKey on Windows to get my Mac-shortcuts there. (Command being Alt).
There are other computers out there. Better ones. More interesting ones with funky form factors, if that's what you're into. There are faster ones, lighter ones, ones with touch screens and ones with far, far better keyboards.
I’m shocked how bad the selection is.
It’s funny. At one time, the integration between iOS and OSX was a selling point. Now, with so much cloud support, OSX integration doesn’t matter. In some ways, Apple made decoupling from their ecosystem very easy.
I use my 2017 air outdoors. It’s not great, wouldn’t want to be using things with black backgrounds, but it’s doable. And pros have a lot more nits than it.
If you have those things off and it’s duller than other laptops that aren’t specifically built for outdoor use then yeah you might have a lemon.
And so I’ve gone back to Windows. I get devices and an OS that works with everything and WSL2 + Windows Terminal give me a great Linux dev environment (or multiple!) with almost no battery cost.
I also run a laptop with Ubuntu, but it’s Linux so still fussy.
I can’t believe I’m saying this but Microsoft has got it figured out.
Also, the Lightroom subjective experience as a measurement is a bit problematic, because Adobe products are the kind that prioritize featurefulness (aka bling) over performance and stability. I know it's a popular product suite: feel free to express opposite impressions. Adobe's answer to this (and it's not really fair to single Adobe out) is that you just need a beefier machine; that way the performance issues are offloaded to the user. I suspect that they constantly buy the fastest machines for their developers, because that way developers don't notice performance problems, so no time is spent on fixing performance.
I wish these developer companies would have a limit on how recent their dev hardware can be (or how powerful). That would cause them to address performance and save users a lot of money on upgrades. There would be other desirable secondary effects because addressing performance might lead to addressing technical debt (Adobe Photoshop has color management bugs dating back decades).
They went so overboard that yes while the CPUs, SSDs and RAM are all faster the overall machines don’t feel faster in general use and yes do feel buggy.
Apple had to admit an embarrassing mistake with the MacPro fiasco, then another one with the keyboard. Eventually they’ll fess up to screwing up the MBP and MacOS itself.
The outside is prestine as it always has been. I used it extensively in cafes, but the battery is still fine. I work up to 8hrs a day with it and I love it.
Very hesitant to get a new once though. Especially with everyone still complaining!
Bluetooth · It’s lame
Yep, bluetooth is lame. The ecosystem could actually be considered defamation against Harald Bluetooth at this point. If he wasn't long dead.
The place this is killing me is Lightroom.
Sure. From the Lightroom FAQ: Drawing to the screen can be slow when Lightroom is using the entire screen of a high-resolution display. Also: don't use Lightroom in 2020 if you want to experience a responsive UI.
To make professional use of a MacBook Pro, you need a CalDigit TS3+
Wrong. The CalDigit TS3+ lacks a PS/2 port, used by all true professionals. I mean, where would you even plug a mouse in? It's so lame.
MacOS[...]It’s still the best general-purpose computer user experience available from anyone
OK. But you still hate it. I guess George Bernard Shaw did say that all progress relies upon the unreasonable person. Actually, he said that all progress relies upon the unreasonable man, and he was opposed to vaccination, so let's not put too much store by his utterances.
The keyboard is neither better nor worse than my 2014 machine. Shouldn’t I expect progress in five years?
What progress are you expecting from a machine that converts finger waggles into alphanumeric characters?
Blame Apple for being so obsessed with thinness over cooling requirements.
Since Kaby Lake-R however, on the same manufacturing process (with some refinements), core counts increased massively on the Intel side. That made power usage more than double with the increased turbos too.
That being said I think the OS is holding the platform back a ton. For me Docker is a huge part of my workflow and the need for a Linux VM is a deal breaker on my Mac. Spinning up docker means my mac’s fans scream at almost 100%. I hate that. Since moving to an admittedly uglier Dell Linux laptop (not an XPS) I don’t have that same issue.
God No. Why is this happening on HN as well.
It has absolutely nothing to do with CISC vs RISC. x86 ( with all modern instruction sets add on ) is Complex, doesn't make a less complex ISA like ARMv8 RISC.
Intel is not responsible for the software problems or keyboard issues.
>> The ARM MacBooks will change everything.
Remains to be seen.
I really hope they are. My 2010 MacBook Air was hands down the best portable I've ever owned. It lasted for nearly nine years and was still running surprisingly well until the end.
I am really hesitant to get an Apple replacement given the issues brought up in these comments and Apple Silicon on the horizon.
I'll wait and see.
The Apple build quality is second to none. That my 2013 MacBook Pro is still going strong is a testament to that. And the keyboard fiasco means they had a time when form won over function but I see them reverting to the old keyboard as function coming back into relevance.
I’m hoping for an Apple Silicon MacBook Air or something equivalent to to replace my heavy pro — but it’d be for personal use not professional given my reservations posted above and since Desktop Linux has come so far.
On the bright side, you can get them really cheap refurbished.
I don't understand? Are you saying macOS is Linux?
I wish I could return my MacBook. Really don’t like this computer. Unable to resale it also for a good price :(