I Hate the New Macbooks | Hacker News Reader

I Hate the New Macbooks

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32 pointsekianjo28 comments

That was quite the rant. There's a bunch of stuff to object to in it, but limiting my criticism to the complaint that perplexes me the most frequently: ...Why are people so caught up on the number of connectors? Why is it difficult to have a hub at your desk to plug your accessories into? When I'm at work, generally need more screen real estate than when I'm relaxing at home. Is it that unreasonable to assume that the vast majority of professionals work from the same desk each day and so can deal with having a hub or some external monitors for the time they're doing actual work?

[edit: grammar/wording]

At work, I have a Belkin dock Velcro'd to the back of my 27" monitor. It handles all of my ports, and I only have to supply the slab with power and Thunderbolt.

This article is intentionally inflammatory and whingey.

I get that the macbook works for your story, and that's great. But the problem is that other peoples' stories of using a laptop are often uncomfortable-to-impossible to achieve with a mac.

Is it that unreasonable to assume that the vast majority of professionals work from the same desk each day

No, but it would be unreasonable to assume that they do "actual work" exclusively or near-excursively from that desk. I have a mac at my work desk, and could have gotten a macbook too, but the reason I chose a thinkpad is the frequency I'm using peripherals in a meeting room. And nothing fancy either, often just a mouse, display out and network.

Why is it difficult to have a hub at your desk to plug your accessories into?

I guess I assume that the point of having a laptop is portable convenience, even if that makes me unreasonable. I don't find it unusual to want to do "actual work" from collaborative areas like meeting rooms, electronics labs or a co-workers desk. Or from home, or business travel.

Well, I think you're making the assumption that the target user of a Macbook is a professional that has a hub and keeps it at her desk. I think the normal usage for a laptop is the mobility, for both professionals and non-professionals or not. I can stick it in my bag and carry it to a Starbucks or to my apartment or to work. I can take it to meet clients, or I can work on the train home. I can use it at my desk, on a chair in the lobby, or in a meeting room. Mobility is the biggest advantage to having a laptop. If I was always using a hub at a desk, then I might as well just have a desktop with dedicated monitors, yes?

Recently, I bought a Macbook Pro 13" and it was unusable for me. The effective resolution is to large in the standard pixel doubling mode. Switching it to something smaller cripples the operating system. Since I switch workspaces quite frequently, I can't live with a stuttering animation. That would have driven me crazy.

Not only that, the panel (or diffuser oder backlight or whatever is in there) is loose. So if you tilt it, it's going to move and make a soft but audible sound. I had two brand new Macbook Pros which had that issue. One of them should have been repaired but I was told that it is "normal."

Look, we've moved away from spindles to No More Moving Parts. And they tell me, that the display panel moves around depending on the direction of gravitation?

These things pretty much make the Macbook Pro such an annoying computer that I couldn't use it and sent it back.

The sad part about the rant of the article's author and my complaints is that there is nowhere else to go once you've been locked into OS X. It becomes a question of what is the least terrible choice.

You wait generation after generation hoping they'd make a computer that is just right for you. But they won't. That's the point where you end up ranting on the internet or otherwise get really pissed.

And once you decide to go Linux, you might end up happier but you can forget any interoperability between Linux and OS X/iOS. That is, if you care about that. I don't even care about the last 321 iOS interoperability features for OS X. I just want a computer that works like I want it, not like Apple wants it.

Just bought the new MBP this week. Personally:

Ethernet Port: Don't need

Optical Drive: Don't need, but took my old one out to make room for a hard drive in my previous MBP and put it in a case so I have it if I need it. Haven't actually used it since (about two years ago).

17" was always too big for me to lug around, always preferred the 15" (and always upgraded display to get more resolution which is not needed with retina). For me 15" is the right combination of screen real-estate and size.

And I actually appreciate the slimmer design and lighter profile. It's noticeable over my almost 5 year old MBP that I'm upgrading from.

My only lament is that I wish everything wasn't soldered in so I could replace/upgrade it myself, but that's not just an Apple problem, most laptops are going that way in the name of decreasing size.

I'm pretty happy with this new kit actually, but I've only used it for a few days thus far.

I agree with your points. This guy writes like an angry 13 year old. I use an MBP at work every single day and I've never had any problems with power. Thunderbolt is a good standard so that is a very weak argument. And seriously LOL if you're using CD/DVD media in 2015. Can't video edit on a 15" monitor? Try getting better skills.

The lack of ports (notably ethernet) is minorly annoying to me, but much worse than that is the totally inadequate cooling. My 2013 15" MBP quickly overheats and thermally throttles when compiling. Maxing the fans doesn't help much -- there are only tiny slits for air intakes.

>> CD Drive

It's 2015. Very, very few people need that.

>> Ethernet

Probably should be on a pro laptop but again it's not used very much anymore.

>> 17" screen

Doesn't the addition of retina resolution to the 15" make up for this?

Also this is nothing to do with the new MacBooks as those things have been gone for quite a while now.

I'd love a 17" rMBP. It would still be lighter than the older 15" MBPs with optical drives.

I'm sure there are some pro users who need ethernet ports (e.g. for tethered shooting with a pro camera body at sporting events where wifi is not even an option).

Ethernet is great if you want network stability and speed.

Or the ability to directly wire to factory-fresh "192.168.0.1" routers/switches/etc.

I certainly think Apple would sell a lot of 17" MBPs that were thick enough to house an optical drive or extra battery in the space.

But I love the new rMBPs, and I suspect more pros enjoy the weight savings, battery life, and fantastic displays than are irked by the lack of an optical drive.

A lot of as in "a quarter of a million a year for a few years running"? I doubt it, and I guess that may not even be what they would need to make it a successful product at their scale (by my counting on apple.com, they now have 6 different notebook form factors and 5 different desktop ones, and Google tells me they sold over 19M Macs in 2014)

Add in that most of the 17" models sold likely would cost them a sale of a smaller one, and I doubt the numbers would add up for them.

It sounds like you need a desktop.

or even just a modern workstation

I've the new macbook 12" for 2 weeks and I am back to a max-out 15" mid-2015. Yeah, it was slow but I miss the form factor so much, I am going to buy it back. You can really fall in love with it.

Any idea how the 12" compares to the Macbook Air in terms of performance? I'm running a 2014 13", the i5 CPU is fine for my needs but more memory (I've got 4GB) would be good when running VMs.

Should be comparable or faster. Scored ~2300 single core ~5500 multi core (Geekbench) with a 1.2Ghz.

Agreed. I really love my 12" greybook - the 15" feels absolutely GIGANTIC after a couple of weeks on the Macbook. I've got a 27" iMac on my desk for when I need some real horsepower, but I find myself using the 12" 95% of the time.

Reminds me of http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2003/08/25

Agree: Ethernet on Pro models, 17" option (probably has more to do with battery life than finding screens)

Disagree: CD drive (that's over), 2nd Thunderbolt

Ethernet and 17" and possibly some extra USB on the pro is good but yeah hardly anybody needs an optical drive.

I don't get the 17", they were insanely big and heavy. The 15" rMBP can run in the same effective screen resolution, while also being significantly smaller and lighter. Wins all round!

You obviously have much younger eyes.

Maybe you should buy an actual desktop, not a laptop.

People work from coffee shops now, they work on the train, on the plane, they bring their laptops to the "war room" at work for important meetings. They move from desk to desk for pair programming sessions. Can you imagine how much of a pain it would be with 17'' laptops?

Stop bitching about a tool that is not designed to address your needs.

Man-up and run Linux on a ThinkPad

No complaints about the chiclet keyboards?

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