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Comment by ryanSrich | Hacker News Reader

Apple should make the macbook pro a lot more customizable IMO. Have multiple keyboard types, add/remove touch bar, add/remove ability to upgrade RAM after purchase, customize number of ports and port types, etc.

I know a lot of people (myself included) that would gladly pay for those types of upgrades.

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Just re-release the 2015 MacBook Pro as MacBook Classic.

Classic Keyboard ( Scissors, with decent Key Travel ), Classic MagSafe, Classic "Sane" Sized TrackPad ( so you dont get as much or zero false positives ), SD Card, HDMI.

Change the USB port to USB-C and upgrade the CPU. That's it. Dont touch anything else.

Totally agreed! I use one for work and seriously considered buying one privately.

Pros:

- It doesn't have the new square styling I find ugly

- The trackpad is reasonably sized

- It already has the force touch trackpad

Cons:

- The bezels are looking a bit thick nowadays (though not preposterously so)

- The processor is getting a bit slow for heavy tasks

- It can't output 4k@60hz via HDMI (only realized that one recently)

- It doesn't have USB-C

This model with upgraded internals, ports (and upgradability, come on) would be a very solid offer.

Kinda pathetic on Apple that the thing we want the most is like 7+ years old design

I'm sure ThinkPad owners feel the same way about the keyboards in t420 and previous (the classic 7 row)

Is it pathetic that we find 100+ year old buildings and designs beautiful? Aesthetics are reasonably consistent outside of design trends and hype. The old macbook was and always will be very nice.

There was a point where Apple started streamlining things just for the sake of saying they streamlined them. The MagSafe delete, the switch to USB-C/TB3 ports exclusively, Touch Bar, the weird keyboard that everyone hates....all of these were a reaction to the fact that PC/Mac sales essentially stagnated for the five years preceding the pandemic. They wanted to stir up demand IMO.

Their best keyboard was around ~2008 with the aluminum shaped keys — I’d rather have that keyboard with the added thickness any-day.

I just handed my 2015 down to my son, and when I pulled it out of the cupboard I couldn’t believe how unwieldy and heavy it felt. It’s crazy what a difference few pounds makes...

The 2015 15" and 2020 16" MBPs are almost exactly the same weight...

Imagine the sales that would generate

That’s a nice thought, but their manufacturing process doesn’t seem easy to make more modular. The inside of these machines tends to be an elaborate, compact mesh of components, not well suited to accommodating much customization outside of the specs of perfectly compatible components.

I imagine a different keyboard would require space to accommodate both types in any chassis, otherwise making multiple processes for each chassis and keyboard. That gets expensive fast. It also increases surface area for problems, which is expensive in terms of customer support, preparing and fixing processes, reputation, etc.

Their limited options are partially to ensure quality, reduce price points, and decrease time to market. It’s a trade off. I’m personally content with their choice - it’s why I tend to stick with their hardware.

I could be wrong. This is just my uninformed take on it.

I’ve always said they need to separate dev from creative machines. For most devs keyboard is way more important than gpu or display color accuracy.

Maybe that could be the differentiator for Apple Silicon. Keep x86 for devs who need compatibility. Creatives who need compute. Or they could just keep pushing iPad as creatives device even further...

I'd argue if a "dev" doesn't need more compute than a "creative", he or she is doing obsolete work.

I have the impression that a dev workflow resembles: 1. Editing code locally 2. Running expensive computation on a remote compute/database server

Creatives need to edit massive complex files with sophisticated real-time simulation of their contents.

Devs are editing text files...

I’m guessing you don’t work in a compiled language...

Lemme know languages compile on a GPU

Strange comment if you've ever worked in either role. I need a much more powerful computer to render a video or voxel than I do to build an entire SaaS application.

Yeah who needs functional base system libraries when you could be working on MACHINE LEARNING instead

Grow up

A computer is for computing. If you don't have demanding computations to run, you are most likely waisting the potential of your machine(s), and not pushing your art to the limit. If you don't do that, you are obsolete. Who said anything about MACHINE LEARNING?

Why are you typing this message on your computer or phone? You are not maxing the CPU and drive out to 100%.

What about Apples history makes leads someone to think they would ever allow customers to 1) select different types of keyboards for their laptops 2) define the number/ types of ports in the same laptop SKU?

I’m not criticizing your desire to want those things. But this feels like you are defining some ideal and then lamenting the company for not delivering you ideal, when their history shows they don’t believe in that ideal at all.

That would indeed be a dream. There is definitely a space in the lineup for a machine which does offer reasonably upgradable components, like battery, memory and storage, as well as better repairability. There are enough professionals, who would be willing to pay for such a machine and bear it, it if gets larger than the current machines. Maybe in an 18" form factor as the followup to the long-discontinued 17" MB Pro.

I can understand that Apple has a tradition of being an extremely streamlined company with a small lineup. That was essential to its grows in the early 2000ths. But it is now a 2 trillion company, so they should allow for a bit more variety (how many different iPads do they sell?) just to make more customers happy/able to choose Apple hardware at all.

They could definitely open up the Touch Bar a bit more and let developers build something for it that’s actually useful.

I’m not a fan of it in general, but the Touch Bar is surprisingly open. Have you checked out BetterTouchTool?

I love the TouchBar!

What’s your usecase for it? My work laptop has one and I use it to change the brightness of my screen and to lock it. That’s it. I really miss the physical escape key, especially when using vim...

- One tap to enter Picture-in-picture mode in Safari when watching YouTube.

- Choosing an emoji in WhatsApp Desktop.

- Pausing and seeing a podcast's listening progress in Apple Podcasts, even when the app is in the background.

- Compiling in Android Studio.

I have a physical ESC key, so I don't have a problem with the touchbar.

> Pausing and seeing a podcast's listening progress in Apple Podcasts, even when the app is in the background.

How do you have a background app's control in the TouchBar so that the foreground app's controls are not displayed?

You may already know this, but you can remap your Caps Lock to escape if you don't use it (System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Modifier Keys). It keeps you on home row too, which is nice for vim.

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