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Comment by ksec | Hacker News Reader

The video [1] has much more explanation.

3:2 screen ratio, I really wish the whole PC industry including Mac moves towards it. Even 16:10 is not enough when we increasingly clutter the vertical space with OS menus, controls, dock. And then Browsers address bar, tab bar, then we have the WebSite layout which is also taking vertical space at the top for navigation.

1.3mm Key Travel. Which is the same as the old perfect MacBook Scissors Keyboard. Instead Apple went to 1.0mm Key travel in their magic keyboard just to save face.

Sane size precision trackpad, no more absurdly large trackpad that has easy false positive when you are typing on it.

Replaceable SSD, Keyboard, and Monitor for easy repair. Wow.

Surface Connect - Is that Microsoft version of MagSafe?

Larger sensor for better quality HD Video Call. They even compare it to MacBook Air 2020 LoL.

I haven't looked at PC Laptop hardware for quite some time, but in mid 2010, Dell or HP's motherboard and Laptop layout just aren't anywhere near as good as Apple. But this Surface Laptop definitely took lots of clues from the old MacBook ( I am wondering if they have ex-Apple MacBook Engineers on their team ).

Ignoring the Software, this Laptop looks exceptionally good!

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3N3u6NyWSY

View on HN

> 3:2 screen ratio, I really wish the whole PC industry including Mac moves towards it. Even 16:10 is not enough when we increasingly clutter the vertical space with OS menus, controls, dock. And then Browsers address bar, tab bar, then we have the WebSite layout which is also taking vertical space at the top for navigation.

I hated the 16:9 popularity of computer flat screens. Definitely agree about needing lots of vertical space. I was content with 1600x1200 for years, and then 1920x1200 (1.6 vs 1.5 ratio) was available that was acceptable. Amazing how much smaller 1920x1080 felt, and is just a joke for anything other than watching videos (maybe games? i'm not a gamer) in my daily usage. Never tried one of those rotated 90, but it might be more useful as 9:16.

Haha, same here.

Last week I watched a review of the LG gram and the reviewer said he liked the new 16:10 screens more, because they are higher and this new [sic] trend was promising.

Meanwhile I'm using one of the last reasonably priced 16:10 screens I could get 10 years ago before the whole industry decided people only want 16:9.

Same goes with glare and non-glare

It's like display creators lost their minds in 2005.

For laptops/smaller desktop screens, the taller ratio definitely makes sense, although for laptops it makes for some form factor challenges in terms of overall and perceived size.

For larger desktop screens, I definitely prefer the aspect ratio most closely matching full screen video. And for my comically large (43”) monitor, I couldn’t use the extra vertical space if I tried. Reducing the width would just limit my usable horizontal space and shrink video for my dual purpose TV use.

> Same goes with glare and non-glare

On this I’d also distinguish portable/desktop use cases. And weirdly they’re the opposite of what I’d prefer. It’s almost impossible for me to find large screen glass-front monitors with the contrast and color space benefits that come with that. And portable usage definitely benefits more from glare protection.

> And for my comically large (43”) monitor, I couldn’t use the extra vertical space if I tried.

It's actually pretty hilarious if you have a monitor arm that allows rotating the monitor, the amount of vertical space is ludicrous. You can fit a side by side diff with over 200 lines of code visible.

It's not very practical, though.

My goodness my whole body got tired trying to imagine using this.

I got nerdy about it and measured the ratio... you'd get 250 lines at my not very good eyesight 12pt font size. A more common font size might eve yield 300 lines

Keep in mind that the monitor will be pretty far from your eyes at those dimensions. For me, when rotated, the monitor extends from below waist height to the top of my head when standing straight at a standing desk.

It's a bit silly though, since the keyboard is far too low for typing comments on a diff. And if one raises the desk so that the keyboard is at the right height, it's a good workout for the neck to put it mildly.

One of my monitors is a widescreen that I have rotated. It's great for having lots of code but unfortunately too narrow for diffs.

I'm really digging my 2560x1440 display. Lots of vertical and enough room for two side by side windows.

games/videos on 3:2 is just huge black bars. Definitely not for extended gaming.

I used (and still have) the original Chromebook Pixel in my closet with a 3:2 screen. amazing for browsing documents, but YouTube videos always felt off.

If I can ask, what is so bad about black bars? (For video that is, for a modern game it's inexcusable)

If your primary use of a computer is for gaming or video playback, then 16:9 does seem the right choice. If that is your use case, having anything taller than 16:9 means all of those extra pixels will primarily only ever be displaying black. What's the point of that? If your primary use of a computer is anything but games/videos, then the occasional letterboxing is much less egregious. As a gamer, instead of paying for more pixels, that money can be spent on faster refresh. Less pixels also helps allow for faster refresh, etc.

At home with TVs, I'm okay with the letter boxing to watch 1.85,2.35 type content on my 1.78 screen. It's the trade off as making a movie buff 2.35 screen would force majority of 1.78 content to be window/pillar boxed.

It's not a deal breaker; videos are just a mild inconvenience from the screen ratio. But if most of my usage is in media instead of documents, I'd prefer to utilize as much of the screen as possible.

My Pixel was mostly used as a portable school laptop for web browsing and development, so for those tasks it did a great job. But there was always that nagging feeling when viewing videos and seeing even more black bars on top/botton than even my 16:10 monitor at home.

I am still using two 1600x1200 screens at home, since 2007. Samsung 204B, replaced capacitors once.

I didn't see 1920x1080 as worth the upgrade. Although I have recently had to tweak/mod a few games as they didn't support my screen resolution.

Now, I want 2x 4k screens: - play games at 1080, I have not the money for 4k gaming at high refresh rates.

- and desktop productivity at 4k, with one screen portrait for reading.

Wowza! Is your skin semi-transparent with all of those rads streaming at you? Those old school CRTs were gorgeous, and I kept ahold of mine until it bit the dust in 2008. I do enjoy the desk real estate that was recovered after getting rid of those dinosaurs.

I had a massive Trinitron before these but no, a Samsung 204B is nothing like those glorious old CRTs. A 204B is old tech LCD now, not that great really, but functional.

I do sunburn far easier than I'd like though! :-P

I went the 4K route. I initially wanted a 40 inch 4K but settled for 32 inch. I'd recommend to get a single 40K display. You'll have the screen real estate of 4 24" monitors at 1080p side by side plus some extra space on top and bottom.

You can probably use it without scaling so high dpi compatibility won't be a problem.

Don't settle for 32 inch get a 40+ inch one.

Once you went the 4K way every other DPI resolution looks awful. I had a private 4K monitor and got a company laptop update and a new monitor at the office. I first thought what the heck can't the IT department get their video drives right on a fresh install until I realized that unsharp resolution just is the native pixel densitiy of the display.

So in order to get crisp DPIs, 32'' with fractional scaling might still make sense. At least to me, it's like reading crisp sharp paper online.

Not sure how you arrived at the 40" number, but I tried this when shopping for a new screen and could not stand the head movement needed to handle that size, as well as the geometry distortion due to the flatness. 32" ended up the sweet spot for me. Maybe a highly curved 40" 4K would work better? That I haven't tried yet.

>I'd recommend to get a single 40K display.

Hellzyeah! Where can I get one of those bad boys? And how many arms and legs plus first born children are needed to give up to get one of those mythical beasts?

Can't decide if you mean 40" display or 4K display? Or did you combine 40" + 4k into 40k?

I've had a Thinkvision 1920x1200 IPS for years. I'd love to get a higher resolution replacement, but nothing modern has that 1.6 aspect ratio that I've found to be so practical.

Last week I finally upgraded my home setup to two 27" 2560×1440 displays which are 16:9. I had two 1920×1080 before that, while at work I have two 1920×1200 (16:10), not that I've seen those in a year. I'm only a week in, but I have to say it's a really nice setup.

The increase in vertical space is exactly what I was missing while coding: that alone is a significant and worthwhile upgrade, and for that the fact it's 16:9 is kind of irrelevant. Because it's 16:9, YouTube, games, etc still work the way they always did.

Compared to my monitors at work (1920×1200 / 16:10), the benefit is I can run two browser windows side-by-side with a comfortable 1280px width that most sites work great with. 1920px is too narrow to run 50%/50%, but I find also usually wasted at 100% width.

There's not that many other options.

I can't actually find many 16:10 on the market.

4K is usually 3840x2160, which is 16:9. For me this doesn't make sense: either the monitor(s) end up being too massive, the text is too tiny, or I have to scale up and basically have the same vertical space as 1080p 16:9 just with sharper text.

21:9 3440x1440 is probably the next most popular aspect ratio, but two are just way too big for my desk space and I didn't think I'd be happy with one (it's only a tiny bit more area vs 2x 1080p).

The 32:9 "ultra-wide" 5120x1440 look pretty great, but in practice seem to have some challenges. As an example, you can't really do full screen sharing anymore because no one else can see it. Window management becomes a constant pain because "full screen" most apps/websites are just not going to be useful at 5120px wide. And for games it seems to be mixed: when they work it looks pretty cool, but many don't work properly. And on top of that, going fullscreen gaming means you don't get a second monitor to keep an eye on something else, even if your game is running in 16:9 with black bars. For video editors or people working on stupidly big spreadsheets it might make sense, but not for me. (Doesn't help it's 4x the cost of a 2560×1440 display, either).

Doesn't the display driver have an option to pretend to be 2 separate monitors?

> 4K is usually 3840x2160, which is 16:9. For me this doesn't make sense: either the monitor(s) end up being too massive, the text is too tiny, or I have to scale up and basically have the same vertical space as 1080p 16:9 just with sharper text.

But the sharper text is the whole point. That's why I abandoned the idea of getting a 4k 43" monitor, the DPI is the same as on a FHD 22" one. Even a 32" is "pushing it", as in the DPI isn't that high.

However, note that not all text needs to be big. In my case I run a 4k screen at 100%, which allows me to have tiny title and toolbars, which means more actual space. I don't need the UI elements to be huge, and since I mostly use terminals and web browsers, adjusting the "content text" is enough. Of course, YMMV on Windows and Mac OS where you have to click a lot of buttons, so their being tiny might be an issue.

Of course, if for your use and / or preference "sharper text" doesn't matter, you can save a bunch of money by staying with lower-resolution screens and / or get a single giant one if that's your cup of tea.

>The 32:9 "ultra-wide" 5120x1440 look pretty great, but in practice seem to have some challenges. As an example, you can't really do full screen sharing anymore because no one else can see it.

I only have a 21:9 ultrawide but this is definitely a drawback. I have a second monitor that is just 16:9 that is used for all of my screen sharing

> the same vertical space as 1080p 16:9 just with sharper text

I work with text all day. I want it as sharp as I can get it.

3440x1440 is 43:18, not 21:9.

I have two 24" 1920x1200 (16:10) monitors at work, one of them rotated 90 degrees. I previously had to 24" 1920x1080 (16:9) monitors in the same configuration, and 16:10 is far preferable imo. The 1080 pixel width is often just a little too narrow for comfortable browsing (causing mobile layouts to be used or horizontal scrolling to be necessary), and I haven't had any of that since switching to the 16:10 monitors.

My home (and home office) setup is 14" 1920x1080 laptop + 24" 2560x1440 screen (1x scaling), and I like that a lot, too. The WQHD screen is wide enough to have two things open side by side, which can feel cramped on FHD, while also having sufficiently many vertical pixels.

I always figured that 16:9 screens took off because they could leverage the panels being produced en masse for HDTVs.

That sort of made sense for desktop monitors, for a little while, but the overlap between laptop/monitor and TV offerings has almost completely disappeared-- 17" and smaller TVs are not mass market items.

I wonder if part of it is just as a penny pinching gimmick now: a square monitor of X diagonal gives you more square centimetres of panel than a wider screen does.

> Replaceable SSD, Keyboard, and Monitor for easy repair. Wow.

By far the biggest selling point for me! I wouldn't even consider apple products for this reason.

Exactly. At least Microsoft has courage.

Unlike Apple who seems to like to solder everything onto the board, such that to fix the SSD would require an entirely new logic board and a trip to the Apple Store.

That alone makes the Surface 4 'look' like a good deal, but at the price of $1000? No thanks and no deal (For now).

It's super weird to see this phrased as "courage". I can understand the desiderata--"I want a user-servicable laptop" is entirely a reasonable position--but framing this narrative as "courageous" is bizarre. It's all a mix of branding and utility.

If anything, Apple's environmental impact and their advertising around it is a staggeringly courageous amount of bullshit considering how hard they make it to service, upgrade, and repurpose old devices.

I use my Apple devices for a substantially longer time than the alternative, so I would say I’ve probably consumed less.

They generally have a much better resale value compared to other brands too. People are still buying old macs on ebay.

I just listed my old mac on eBay yesterday. It's from 2015. Absolutely would not bother with any other laptop.

I'm pretty sure they're referencing Apple saying it took "courage" to remove the iPhone's headphone jack.

And for my generation: the courage to ditch CD-ROM drives!

AFAIK, companies "having courage" has been a meme for a few years after Apple said it took great courage (or similar) to remove the headphone jack.

"Courage", as well as "A sense of pride and accomplishment" means different things now, because some presentations have given those words new life.

In the case of "Courage", Apple branded their decision to remove the headphone jack as "courageous".

"A sense of pride and accomplishment" is from the Battlefront video games, when marketers were talking about some features that either cost hundreds-of-dollars, or literally hundreds of hours of gameplay to unlock.

What is the new meaning of the word "courage" then? I presume it just means a decision other than the "safe" option. It's a bit melodramatic, perhaps, but not really a new definition. From an individual perspective, someone may have felt they were sticking their necks out and were in danger of hurting their career if the decision led to backlash and a reversal.

(Talking about the audio jack change, no idea how making easy-to-maintenance parts is not the safe choice).

For one, courage is the mean between cowardice and recklessness. I.e., the pursuit of a good where the risk is rationally justifiable in proportion to the good.

Can't comment on whether the decision makers were being courageous or not in any way. Not sure any of us could.

I was actually considering it a lack of courage: that Apple is so insecure and concerned with its own lack of or zero innovation in last decade or so that it forces its customers to keep buying costly new devices and keep getting costly repairs by means like making devices unrepairable (e.g. literally using a new pin configuration in every other MacBook SSD which are non standard to start with), making devices breakable (glass backs?) etc.

Soldering "everything" is not specific to Apple.

But boy, the crowd here loves to harp on it though.

Really hoping that Jony Ive leaving will have a positive impact in regards to serviceability. Hopefully the blowback for their obsession with thinness was due to Ive.

Compared to the pricetag of Macbooks, $1000 is a great deal, no?

The $999 Air will outperform this most likely. Build quality will be similar

Yeah, the M1 will kill whatever CPU they'll put in this, I wish they had also an ARM version.

I think MS has ARM based Surface laptops.

It's just that they're a joke compared to the M1.

They have AMD options, not just Intel.

> At least Microsoft has courage.

I see what you did there: https://www.theverge.com/2016/9/7/12838024/apple-iphone-7-pl...

Are you kidding me? SSD?

In 2012, 4-5 days after the purchase of my first and last MacBook Air, they gave me a quote that was half the price of the new MBA when a key cap just popped out. I literally was using it and it popped out.

Their reasoning: physical damage + (this is the kicker) in Air there’s no provision to repair the key or key cap, entire lower board/chassis needs to be replaced.

Yes just a key cap! I shouted to customer support. It was replaced. I decided I am not paying for another fruit company laptop. (In their defence they tried to pull this off in a country with pretty much no or no accessible consumer protection)

I'm having a hard time believing that. The 2012 Air keyboard is a normal scissor keyboard, there's only the keycap and the scissor plastic thingy beneath it, you can literally repair it with a bit of superglue if you're lucky.

Was it Apple who told you this? Or a 3rd party service center? A reseller? What country did they try to pull this off in?

>At least Microsoft has courage.

Is this the same Microsoft whose original Surface Laptop got the lowest repairability score that iFixit has ever given?

>According to iFixit, the Surface Laptop isn’t repairable at all. In fact, it got a 0 out of 10 for repairability and was labeled a “glue-filled monstrosity.” Ouch. That’s never happened before. The lowest scores previously were a 1 out of 10 for all previous iterations of the Surface Pro

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/251046-ifixit-labels-s...

Is the battery replaceable, though? The Surface Laptop 3 also had some repairable parts, but the big disappointment in my mind was the glued-in battery.[1] Batteries are consumable and are guaranteed to start wearing down within a few years, whereas the SSD, keyboard, monitor, etc. are likely to last a long time, so it was surprising that they advertised its repairability even with this significant omission.

I feel weird using my MacBook Pro, knowing it's essentially a ticking time bomb, with its slowly degrading battery that can't be replaced.

[1] https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Microsoft+Surface+Laptop+3+(...

I worked in computer/phone repair and a bit of design,

You can see [1] that they are using multiple cells essentially taped together to make their "battery". This isn't uncommon, especially recently in smaller devices, as it lets them fit unusual shapes and other size issues, and saves space because you don't need a shell around them. The biggest (only?) issue is that you have a very delicate batteries taped together, if ripped/torn they may explode. To add to this, because they aren't riggedly attached, they are more prone to movement (and thus tearing). Their solution was to use adhesive across the bottom to make sure they are all firmly in place [0].

From a repair perspective this isn't great. It's not hard to remove if you have a heated plate, isopropyl, and patience, but not very user friendly. The best thing they could do to fix this would be to give the battery a rigid enclosure, but that will of course eat up valuable space, and I have no idea how that would affect the rest of their design. They could also use different tape that's easier to remove, but they may see the taped-together battery as something they don't want to be liable for people replacing (in case they tear it), so I really think the best solution is a rigid shell for the batteries.

tldr; This appears to mostly be a design limitation instead of a purposeful decision. I wish they'd change their design instead though....

[0] https://guide-images.cdn.ifixit.com/igi/FkZHQOAv2sPqKSBE.med...

[1] https://guide-images.cdn.ifixit.com/igi/VJBBLeHLWsRBQeIS.med...

Yes, of course it’s a design Limitation or, as I‘d call it, trade-off. A very few conspiracy theorists may belief it’s “planned obsolescence”. But a model that just places a larger premium on thinness than HN professes to do is far better at explaining this and a number of similar decisions by all sorts of companies.

It could be that apple places a greater premium on thinness and that position just so happens to have as a byproduct early obsolescence and better profits. But I don't see why that's any more plausible than what you call conspiracy theories.

Planned obsolescence is not a conspiracy - it's a business decision.

From the company with industry leading support periods, device lifetimes and second hand value retention. If their intention is to deprecate devices early, they're objectively doing an incredibly terrible job at it.

Durability and cost are usually polar opposites.

I suppose planned obsolescence is not the best term to describe it however engineers do certainly factor in product lifetime (as much as they can) into their designs.

I'm looking at my GF, she's on the couch, watching an online uni lecture and writing Markdown on my 7yo MacBook Pro. Original battery, updated from Mavericks all the way to Big Sur. Runs fine, a few hours of battery life. My dad has a 2014 Mac Mini, currently on Catalina, runs fine. My sister's BF also has MacBook Pro that he's been abusing for the last six years. His battery is almost dead, but the machine itself runs fine. My ex-GF is still rocking her iPad Mini (the first retina model) that she bought in 2014. She loves the thing and the thing loves her back.

If Apple is in the business of early or planned obsolescence, they're fucking terrible at it.

We have had countless corporate conspiracies for hundreds of years, from the Standard Oil collusion with railroads to remove competing oil companies, Automanufactureres conspiracy to remove streetcard, The Phoebus cartel limiting lightbulb longevity and FAANG anti-poaching agreement designed to depress developer salaries.

What the hell has to happen for you to realize corporations are not your friends and 'mah free market' becomes mafia without law enforcement.

None of that means that the battery design is planned obsolescence.

Hi. I’m an actual socialist. I think it’s also harmful to any cause limiting the power and harm of capitalism to treat all capitalists as if they have identical behavior and preferences. Apple is surely a giant corporation with several horrible business practices and undue power. But knowing how they behave is important. They’re often accused of tactics that their corporate peers engage, because the outcomes look similar. Planned obsolescence is one of the most common accusations. But they generally provide more support for device longevity in the spaces they compete.

They just don’t provide products full of modular junk. They mostly try not to serve the junk market altogether. And sure, that skews their prices higher, and limits what you can do after buying the device. But they’re serving mostly mid-high end markets who would rather pay more than repair or replace. People who voluntarily accept the limitations they place on their devices.

A better criticism of their place in the market is how they distort “externalities”. Manufacturing labor costs and treatment, mining impact. The places they are renowned for outplaying every competitor.

That’s where their abuse lies. They don’t care if you swap out a battery, they just don’t care if you can either. They care about offering consumer-luxury products no one else can. If you follow that money, it’s their supply chain who hurts, not their clientele.

Apple literally was caught using software upgrades to make older devices perform worse.

https://www.npr.org/2020/11/18/936268845/apple-agrees-to-pay...

But this about more than just Apple. It is about corporates in general. I don't think a "corporates are evil" mantra explains everything - or even anything useful.

Product Designers are humans, CEOs are humans, all the employees are humans.(Unless ... Aliens ... :-) ) Some humans are better at whatever task than others, but all are operating under their motivational influences.

Get enough people together under one banner, someone will do something poor under that banner's name.

> Apple literally was caught using software upgrades to make older devices perform worse.

...which if you bothered to read even the article you linked, you'd know had to do with ensuring that battery voltage wouldn't drop low enough for the device to randomly shut itself off, a result which itself became a problem due to the actual longevity of their devices.

You can certainly argue that they should have communicated this with their customers, though I'd argue that the vast majority would not notice nor care, while a lot more people would certainly notice their devices randomly shutting off.

Another case of a lie--or misunderstanding due to reposting clickbait without engaging critical thinking--circumnavigating the globe at internet speed while the truth is still putting on its pants.

More interesting is to look at what Google did for Nexus Phones with the same issue.

>If you're among those affected, your phone will randomly shut down and completely die, even though your battery indicator might have said you had plenty of juice left. It's not a simple system crash, because your phone will stay dead until you connect it to a charger

https://android.gadgethacks.com/news/nexus-6p-battery-random...

Instead of fixing the issue, Google's solution was to tell you to buy a new phone.

To paraphrase the original GP: "corporations can't be trusted"

My point was that Apple is a corporation and so deserves the same suspicion as all the rest.

You've just added another data point to "corporations can't be trusted". Yep, Google is a corporation and can't be trusted either.

Sorry, but there is quite a bit of difference between "we don't like the way you explained your fix for the issue" and "screw you, buy a new phone".

I think you and I are making different points rather than arguing over one.

You seem to be saying Apple is better than [insert other corporation here] in some way. I see that as irrelevant.

I am saying that corporations - in the larger picture - can't be trusted.

Apple, and in this case Google, behaving poorly reflects that.

We certainly see things very differently if you think "screw you" and "here, let me fix your out of warranty phone" are even remotely the same thing.

The fact Apple lost the court case suggests it ultimately wasn't "here, let me fix your out of warranty phone".

No, it was the fact that Apple fixed people's out of warranty phone so that it wouldn't suddenly go dead that suggests they fixed it.

Google, on the other hand, lost it's court case after refusing to fix a known defect that had Nexus phones die while reporting they had more than a 50% charge remaining, and staying dead until you connected them to a charger.

>Nexus 6P owners eligible for up to $400 from Huawei and Google in class action settlement

https://www.androidcentral.com/nexus-6p-owners-eligible-400-...

Reading articles isn't a problem.

Apples approach to "assuming everyone's device behaves the same way" (quotes because I don't honestly think any qualified engineer would make that assumption.) was wrong.

Some people use their phones less. My father doesn't turn his phone ON unless he wants to make a call.(Frustrating though that is...)

This makes a difference to battery performance as they don't just age out sitting in a box but through use as well. But here's Apple's take: https://www.apple.com/au/batteries/why-lithium-ion/

" For instance, you might use 75 per cent of your battery’s capacity one day, then recharge it fully overnight. If you use 25 per cent the next day, you will have discharged a total of 100 per cent, and the two days will add up to one charge cycle. It could take several days to complete a cycle. The capacity of any type of battery will diminish after a certain amount of recharging. "

Some people used their phone a lot and had batteries replaced - either through Apple or not.

And some human within Apple signed off on a solution to effectively make everyones older phone worse.

What else could they have done? Well, from my original NPR link: "Starting in 2018, iPhone users have been able to better control an iPhone's battery life and check on the health of the battery, along with allowing users to turn off iPhone battery throttling"

Make no mistake, Apple acted poorly. But they do better now. Whether that is because they were caught or not, we will never know.

I like many of the things Apple does. I have a lot of respect for their trailblazing. Screens seemed stuck in 1920x1080 hell until Apple unplugged screen development again.

But they are a corporation like any other and can't be trusted.

The throttling of the cpu was tied directly to the health of the battery [1], not simply by the device you were using.

There is plenty of things to be critical of Apple and any corporation for and you don't need to spread misinformation in order to do so. You can even be critical about how they approached this, but your original claim that you doubled down on is simply false.

[1] https://twitter.com/_inside/status/942817814531969024

Your twitter link didn't shed much light for me on this particular issue but:

With yourself and a coincidental comment making such reasonable corrections I investigated further.

Posted below for posterity, not necessarily you.

The reddit post that started it all: https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/7inu45/psa_iphone_s...

Finally, from the horses mouth:https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208387

"iOS 11.3 and later improve this performance management feature"

and

"iPhone 8 and later use a more advanced hardware and software ..[snip].. As a result, the impacts of performance management may be less noticeable on iPhone 8 and later."

My conclusion: It is true that Apple was only targeting phones with dodgy(to a degree of approximation) batteries.

OTOH, Apple does a better job now. Both in execution and communication.

Whether Apple would have reached this achievement without batterygate is unknowable.

My apologies for spreading misinformation, thank you for your patience.

> Apple literally was caught using software upgrades to make older devices perform worse

You've literally just proved the point the parent comment was making.

The same outcome is not always equal to the same behaviour. The devices throttled themselves because worn batteries could not handle the sudden power spike needed by the CPU. You can very easily verify this by turning off the software fix on an affected phone—start pushing it and it literally just shuts off.

Apple still behaved deplorably here: as soon as this software kludge was triggered, it should have popped up a warning saying "hey your battery is no good, go get it replaced. Your phone will perform way slower in the meantime".

They undoubtedly sold more iPhones by not doing so. But they didn't slow down perfectly functional old phones, they slowed down phones which were effectively faulty.

I don't think I proved the parents case at all. I was supporting the idea that corporations can't be trusted.

Apple was held up as some kind of paragon exception to this. It isn't.

1. slowing devices without telling anyone what they were doing.

2. assuming all their older devices were in the same state or had the same use cases. Replaced your phone battery recently? Who cares, you go slow anyway.

The combination of 1+2 combined with a loyal fanbase (or trapped in the ecosystem depending on your views) does seem awfully suspicious regarding manipulated obsolescence and worth investigation.

The article linked has Apple losing a court case in this regard.

So the point still stands, don't trust corporations, including Apple.

If you want to say that Apple is better than other corporations. Well that is a different point. You still can't trust them.

> assuming all their older devices were in the same state or had the same use cases. Replaced your phone battery recently? Who cares, you go slow anyway

Sorry to be nitpicky, but this is actually not the case.

The whole reason this was initially discovered was because someone on reddit ran Geekbench before and after a battery replacement and got a huge performance increase. Not telling users is inexcusable, but phones where the battery was fully functional continued to run at full speed regardless of age.

> You still can't trust them

On this point I 100% agree!

With yourself and a coincidental comment making such reasonable corrections I investigated further.

Posted below for posterity, not necessarily you.

The reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/7inu45/psa_iphone_s...

Finally, from the horses mouth:https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208387

"iOS 11.3 and later improve this performance management feature"

and

"iPhone 8 and later use a more advanced hardware and software ..[snip].. As a result, the impacts of performance management may be less noticeable on iPhone 8 and later."

My conclusion: It is true that Apple was only targeting phones with dodgy(to a degree of approximation) batteries.

OTOH, Apple does a better job now. Both in execution and communication.

Whether Apple would have reached this achievement without batterygate is unknowable.

My apologies for spreading misinformation, thank you for your patience.

Edit:snipped some bits for conciseness.

They didn't perform worse. It was a trade off between cpu performance and battery performance. They choose longer battery life over raw cpu performance. I think that's a valid tradeoff to make for a device that should last through the day on a single battery charge.

Worse is subjective, I accept.

Battery life vs speed vs reliability. Different people cut it different ways.

I think the issue was that everyone got the one solution without Apple telling them. So for a lot of people, it was perceived as worse.

Huh? The battery on every MacBook is replaceable

> Apple offers a battery replacement service for all MacBook, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro notebooks with built-in batteries.

https://www.apple.com/batteries/service-and-recycling/

A glued in battery on any laptop/tablet/phone is awful. My sister replaced her battery on her 2011 MacBook Air and used it just fine for a decade. Didn’t need to replace any of the other parts.

The glue in a Macbook for the battery is wholly unnecessary when it can be pointed out that the argument for glue (waterproofing) doesn't even apply in their laptop space.

It's meant to make end user replacement of the battery as difficult as possible.

I’m confused. Why would water proofing be less applicable to a (or their) laptop products?

Keyboard and chassis isn't waterproof on Macbooks, thus, the common argument for glued in batteries on other Apple devices (iPhone) in that it aides with waterproofing is rendered moot when it comes to Macbooks.

> Do you use your laptop in the rain ?

No but I use it next to glasses of water?

> Do you use your phone in the rain ?

When I have to. I walk my dog in a rainy city.

Edit: do you use your desktop in the rain? Maybe I’m missing a use case I don’t understand. Because so far we’ve ruled out any water-tolerance cases I can think of.

Water resistance =/= waterproofing.

Also, the keyboard and chassis in a Macbook are neither water resistant or waterproof.

> Water resistance =/= waterproofing.

I know that but don’t understand the point of distinguishing here. Waterproofing a battery achieves water resistance. In either case the claim was that it isn’t applicable for their portables.

> Also, the keyboard and chassis in a Macbook are neither water resistant or waterproof.

I’m still not understanding how this distinction matters. You claimed waterproofing wasn’t applicable to these devices. How does saying it’s not done well enough support that? Are you just arguing to argue?

Tell me why, in any circumstance, waterproofing a battery is where you'd stop.

You still need to waterproof the circuitry, the connectors, the components like the screen.

The original point was thus:

The argument for making a battery non-user-serviceable and glued into the device (as it is on the iPhones) was to retain waterproofing/water resistance.

THIS DOES NOT APPLY TO MACBOOKS YET THE BATTERIES ARE STILL GLUED IN.

Okay I think I better understand your point but I think it’s just a logic error.

If I understand, you’re saying the inconsistency of waterproofing one part and not waterproofing others suggests insincerity of the stated waterproofing motivation for the battery.

There are two (related) things wrong with that reasoning:

1. It assumes that any kind of water protection must be holistic to be sincere. This rules out any notion of prioritized iteration. It’s like saying (sorry, car metaphor incoming) seatbelts aren’t a real safety measure because other parts of the car haven’t been revised for the same kinds of risks seatbelts prevent or mitigate.

2. The batteries we’re talking about are substantially more fire prone when exposed to water than the rest of the device. That alone justifies prioritizing water safety measures for the battery ahead of any other component.

I would bet you good money it was driven by some sort of rel test (drop, vibration, etc.). Glue can be a lifesaver when the design isn't passing. No manufacturing engineer will want to add an adhesive step to the assembly just to make things more difficult for end users.

2014/2015 MBP - The battery rattles around inside if not glued in place. Sometimes it is needed.

> It's meant to make end user replacement of the battery as difficult as possible.

Any difficulty they add is additional difficulty for the thousands of Apple employees they hire to replace the batteries, so they definitely don't add it just to make it harder.

Don't they charge for replacing it?

They do, but they could probably charge the same and pocket more without all the glue.

I've replaced the batteries in a handful of iPhones over the years and it's never been particularly awkward. The glue is just enough to hold the battery firmly in place, it's never been a significant obstacle to replacement. I don't know about the laptops.

> no more absurdly large trackpad that has easy false positive when you are typing on it.

What are you doing to get those? I've never had issues with that, and I absolutely love the large trackpad on my MacBook

Yeah, I love it as well. Zero false positives ever. If there's one thing Apple does right, it's a killer trackpad.

I have that issue, I managed to make it a lot better by disabling almost every touchpad gesture on my mac.

How big are your hands ? A significant number of people have issues and have had to change their typing style.

I think it is the wrong trade off.

>I’d still prefer a smaller trackpad to avoid accidental input. And it looks like the edges and indentation in front of the trackpad remain sharp, as if you aren’t supposed to put your hands near there [1] .

You are trading absolute best for some people at the expense or annoyance for some people. The older trackpad isn't small either.

Which is exactly the same thing with TouchBar and Keyboard.

Some loves the butterfly keyboard, but they dont hate the old scissors keyboard. There are lots of people who hated the butterfly.

[1] https://mjtsai.com/blog/2019/11/14/the-16-inch-macbook-pro/

Hard agree. OP seems a bit pedantic looking for bullet points. Personally the trackpad on this is pure downside.

Couldn't disagree more. I've always had false positive issues with Apple's trackpads. The newer ones are slightly better in terms of accuracy, but they're so absurdly large that it still happens more often than it used to - and this is across 4+ macbooks and multiple generations, so it's not just a faulty model, and I'm not the only person I know with this issue.

I absolutely abhor 16:9 on laptops, one of the reasons why I'm using a macbook air is for the excellent 16:10 screen. If you go shopping for ordinary PC laptops in the $1000-1300 (USD) price range at a place like Best Buy and take a look at the quality of the LCDs, it's amazing how many absolutely shit 16:9 1920x1080 displays are being sold on machines at the same price as the macbook air's higher-dpi retina display.

16:9 on a desktop seems to be unavoidable these days, and indeed there's the whole popular trend of ultrawide/ultrawide-and-curved monitors now which go way beyond that.

I'm curious: why do you care about aspect ratio vs. (effective) resolution? Seems like an odd thing to focus on, when it has nothing to do with how much stuff you can display on screen. Do you mean at comparable sizes?

I care about both simultaneously - in my experience the common 1920x1080 laptop panels also have poor color rendition, poor brightness and overall image quality, in addition to not being a suitable dpi. I can see the blockiness and jagginess in fonts and GUI at 1920x1080 native.

And scrolling vertically for anything is painful on a small 16:9 screen. The macbook happens to have both 16:10 aspect ratio and a higher quality LCD.

But lower resolution than a 4k 16:9 display (and no oled). So the question is why to prefer lower res 16:10 (lower in both directions) to 16:9? You just have strictly more screen, which seems better.

I was comparing laptops in the price range mentioned above, MacBook air vs 1080p laptops. If you go up to around $2000, then the windows 10 laptops start to have 4k screens.

4k gets you sharper text but the distance of the display away from you makes for diminishing returns in sharpness combined with horrific battery life and still 16:9. The macbook is very much a happy middle for normal use but I'm sure a Samsung Galaxy Book 4K is the best movie laptop ever

I don't mind 16:9 so much as the incredibly poor choices for resolution and panel quality I'm faced with on most Windows laptops lately. It feels like TV salespeople took over and completely ignored what actually makes sense for a laptop.

1080p and 4K are both terrible choices for 13-14" screens, yet that's all you see anymore, and even on higher end models trying to get accurate info on panel quality and color accuracy is a nightmare.

> Surface Connect - Is that Microsoft version of MagSafe?

Basically. I was disappointed to see it on my 2nd or 3rd generation. I thought we were past the days of proprietary connectors.

The video mentions that the Surface 4 USB-C port allows charging, which is great.

The Surface Laptop 3 supports it as well. The proprietary Surface connector needs to go away. I've had Surface devices for years, so I have plenty of the chargers around - and I hate them. They fall out, they break, they die. My Surface Dock lasted less than a year before its connector wouldn't connect again.

I'm disappointed they've still stuck with it. I'd MUCH rather have another USB-C port on the other side so I could charge it from either direction. I carry around a USB-C charger that charges all of my devices. I never want to have to carry around a proprietary brick again.

They kept this one for a few generations now/across a few models.

I wish they made it open.

A bad proprietary connector at that. The device side has failed on me a few times, requiring replacements. After about a year the connector needs to be pulled at just the right angle to charge the device. It would slowly get worse until I couldn't get it to make a connection at all.

I'm sure the issue is that I have it plugged in while it's on my lap a lot of the time, but barrel plugs and USB-C have not given me any issues under the same conditions.

Just wipe it down with a bit of alcohol (while unplugged from the wall of course). I’ve found the connector tends to wear from “sparking” when connecting and disconnecting and gets a thin layer of carbon on it.

The Surface connector is fine, and has the added benefit of being magnetic, unlike any other connector available. For basic charging it’s very easy to get a USBC to Surface Connect cable, or if you really want you can use the USBC port directly for charging. The magnetics really make a difference in portability and I would not want to give it up.

Sort of. It includes the ability to hook up to a docking station and pass USB, video, and Ethernet through the plug.

I use the dock for my Surface Book. With the dedicated GPU it comfortably drives two extra screens through the dock. If you don’t plan on using the dock though, it’s just another proprietary power plug.

Out of curiosity, what's your monitor resolution? I had some issues driving 2 4k screens with the surface dock, but 2k is working okay.

It’s driving two 1920x1200 displays. Then again I’m also using a first gen Surface Book and first gen dock, so this was well before 4K displays were becoming common.

Not entirely accurate. It's a dock connector, not just power. The $160 USD dock gives you two more USB-C display adapters, two USB-C ports, 2 USB-A ports, an ethernet port and 170W (if I recall) adapter. It's big but incredibly useful for a desktop dock. Slip one reversable magnetic connector in and you've got all your accessories out of the box. If you just want to charge, USB-C is fine.

I actually feel cramped on 3:2. It's great if I maximize one window, but as soon as I try to split the width between two windows, everything is too narrow. It's especially bad when the windows are Firefox with Tree Style Tab and an IDE with a project navigation pane.

Wouldn't this depend on how the ratio is achieved?

For example, with 16:9 → 16:10, you're often just gaining some vertical pixels (like 1920x1080 vs 1920x1200), so everything that was comfortable on 16:9 is equally workable on 16:10.

Yes it does depend on that, but usually there's some width lost for the gained height. You don't even need to measure it against another display to know that's the case. If you only add pixels to the top of a display, the diagonal size will increase. So if the display isn't any larger then it means that the horizontal size of the screen was reduced. That of course also means that each pixel is smaller. Depending on how much smaller, you might need to scale everything on the display up which has the same effect on fitting things in as having fewer pixels.

Yeah I’ve maximized my use of a wide screen. Dock on the side and tree style tabs is the way to go IMO.

> Replaceable SSD, Keyboard, and Monitor for easy repair. Wow.

I realize that making a replaceable battery is not easy this days, but I would like to see manufacturers at least not make it absurdly hard to replace. Here's hoping MS didn't use too much glue and tape to secure the battery in place on the Surface Laptop 4...

In what sense is it "not easy these days"? The Panasonic "Let's Note" series (Japan only) has had models with two batteries -- one internal, and one removable (hot-swappable) that you could charge with USB while the laptop keeps running on the main battery. I'm not sure why our imagination for laptops is so limited.

Lenovo did that for a while. I believe they called it Power Bridge.

Have you seen the internals of a Macbook? There is no single battery, it's a few batteries (wired in series I believe)[0]

Making the battery removable would compromise on other parts of the design. Personally, a replaceable battery is very low on my list of wants.

[0] https://www.ifixit.com/Store/Mac/MacBook-Pro-15-Inch-Retina-...

Having irreplaceable batteries makes your device have a very short lifespan. This is horrible for the environment. I'm typing this on a pixel 1 that I've replaced the battery in, and have used for 4+ years.

Laptops should have replaceable batteries. Period. If you get a new laptop every 2 years and don't know what it's like to have a perfectly good MacBook with 30minutes of battery life, then maybe you can just imagine being in that position and consider how globally impactful this anti consumer practice is.

> perfectly good MacBook with 30minutes of battery life

What the heck, all MacBook batteries are replaceable! Apple will do it for you in the first 6 years or so, and after that there are still 3rd party shops who will happily replace it.

I mean that many laptops (especially thin ones) have batteries glued in. For modern form factors, an easily removable battery is a no-go, I get that. But there are things designers can do to make replacing the battery easier or harder. Making the housing very difficult to take apart, using lots of glue, etc. should be avoided. If at least a technician (like people who repair phones) can easily replace a battery in a few minutes, this will extend the lifespan of laptops.

> Ignoring the Software, this Laptop looks exceptionally good!

Paying attention to the software, WSL2 is one of the most convenient ways to run nix. No more messing with homebrew, you get real apt-get (and the breadth of packages and speed of updates that come from running real Ubuntu or Debian) or whatever else you want.

I really need to read up more on WSL2, but I'm on a windows box so rarely I haven't spent the cycles on it. However, every single time I am on a windows box, I really wish I had it setup for WSL2. Every other box I connect to has essentially the same CLI features, until those rare times I hit a windows box. <shudder>

I had a Surface Pro for a few years, it ran GNOME like a champ. These Windows laptops also have pretty good Linux support afaik, so the software issue isn't that big of a deal!

I remember those kernel patches fondly.

Is there a Ubuntu image that supports SL4?

(Microsoft has still not yet released one for SL3, to the best of my knowledge.)

I was never happy with this. It's fine if you use it as a laptop, but the pen input was laggy, the OSK was finnicky, and there's no OneNote equivalent on Linux.

It's the other way around: Linux has some extra support for these laptops. And of course the place where extra support is required is the input devices. Despite Microsoft kinda pushing the industry to standardize on HID over I2C, they themselves now do HID over… uh… a custom protocol that runs over UART of all things.

https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/driver-api/surface_ag...

https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/hid/hid.git/...

Well at least it is HID inside I guess.

Meanwhile Apple used a custom simple protocol over SPI for the Broadwell-Kaby Lake generations (and now Apple Silicon), but the few "T2" generations went back to USB… over some truly cursed custom T2 USB host controller https://github.com/MCMrARM/mbp2018-bridge-drv (WTF)

---

Also many Surface devices used awful Marvell Wi-Fi :/ At least the "Laptop 3" generation switched to Intel on Intel models and Qualcomm (seems like ath10k) on AMD ones.

Replying to the question about the surface connect. Yes, it's a magnetic charger that includes USB, display, and a few other wires. It's awesome.

Former surface firmware engineer, opinions are my own.

On the dock front, I recommend putting it on the left for a 16:10 display.

I almost never use the dock on the bottom anymore. I find this a lot more useful, and it fits with the aspect ratio of the screens that are being shipped.

Best solution is to just have the dock hidden.

I've been playing with the option in macOS to hide the menu bar as well. The extra screen space is significant to me. The one draw back is that I have a habit of glancing up at the clock from time to time. Now, that's hidden, and I find myself totally losing track of time. Not such a big deal now for WFH, but I do spend more time on things than I would if the clock were still in view. Other than that, I don't miss the menu bar either.

On the left and hidden. Code and English documents are top-left biased, so this position means as well as being near the menu bar it's typically closer to your pointer position than the bottom is. Also, I like to add my Application folder to the dock as a more-compact replacement for Launchpad.

> Instead Apple went to 1.0mm Key travel in their magic keyboard just to save face

I never got used to butterfly keyboard, even though I had one for more than 2 years. The new ones might not be the same as the old school, but feel amazing from the get go.

Is there a Linux distribution for it? Because I'm not putting up with Windows.

This is the most important question. This thing is a toy for me unless it can run Linux on metal.

> the old perfect MacBook Scissors Keyboard

No way, the unibody MacBook Pro (2008-2011) had the perfect keyboard. I still have my 17”. The Retina’s keyboard was a painful downgrade that I never got used to.

> Surface Connect - Is that Microsoft version of MagSafe?

Yes & No; its Microsoft's proprietary version of Thunderbolt 3, which does have magnetic connect/disconnect.

All of these things are nice, but they're easier to throw in than improving the operating system, and that's the biggest differentiator.

Surface Connect is a lot more than just MagSafe. It’s much more akin to thunderbolt with a magnetic plug. It combines power delivery and data transfer so you can power the laptop or plug in a full docking station using the same port. Sure it’s proprietary but I wish it was more widely adopted.

> And then Browsers address bar, tab bar,

Edgium now allows the browser tab to be a vertical column, rather than a horizontal row, which is nice. I hope other browsers copy that.

Laptop vertical space is why I always setup my docks on the left or right. And one of the reasons I still use Firefox Tree Style Tab even though Mozilla keeps making it harder and harder to use.

3:2 and 16:10 are very very close.

3:2 is 15:10. It’s a pretty big deal, almost as big as going from 16:9 to 16:10

More vertical space is a win in my book.

If only they hadn't done away with 4:3:

    >>> 4/3
    1.3333333333333333
    
    >>> 3/2
    1.5
    
    >>> 16/10
    1.6
    
    >>> 16/9
    1.7777777777777777

I use an external portrait monitor for this reason, and it is quite luxurious. So much less scrolling.

Also, if one is complaining about the dock, move it to the side.

I (literally) went the opposite direction with a 32:9 monitor. I guess everyone's got their preferences!

If big enough and hi-res enough, it could be doable.

Also if you often do multiple things at once.

I find most of the time, I'm looking at one or two long documents (web page, source code) and running shells on my landscape laptop monitor so the combo works perfectly for me.

I'm usually gaming (immersion is better in superwide) or I'm writing code (more real estate for uncollapsed visual studio windows) or browsing the web with netflix etc snapped to the side.

However I must note that superwide monitors are absolutely unusable in windows without PowerToys FancyZones functionality.

It absolutely make sense to have 16:9 or even 21:9 on a Desktop.

On a Laptop it is different though.

My portrait monitor is 5:4 (or rather 4:5), which at 1.25 is a very generous area. Especially if using it to display content in A4, which has an aspect ratio of ~1.4 (it’s actually sqrt(2))

Is it giving more vertical space, or taking away horizontal space? A 16:9 screen would be fine if it had the same vertical resolution as the 3:2 screens. In that case you work off the center of the screen and put various gadget items to either side. Or for the larger screen laptops that include a number keypad, put your workspace on the left 80% and things like your Slack / chat and email notifications on the right side.

Actually come to think of it, a perfect window manager would be something that allows for overlapping windows in the central region, and lets you have adjustable left/right regions as tiling window areas. Combined with something that can tell an application which region it is in, so it can adjust the interface (optionally) to fit that region's purpose and limitations.

3:2 is 16:10.667

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