While I totally agree with you about the new MBP, please just know that the XPS 15 isn't without it's problems too! It must just be that Windows users are more used to lower quality hardware/software that such things are accepted...
I really like my XPS 15 as it is fast and as compact as a MBP, but:
- Microsoft Surface Bluetooth mouse and keyboard don't work anymore after an idle period of maybe 10 minutes. Have to disable/enable Bluetooth to get it working again. I reverted to RF dongle keyboard and use the Surface Mouse with the included USB cable.
- I had a huge number of BSOD early on. It's still not perfect, but almost fine now.
- The web cam is at the worst possible position. It films your fingers and breast, rather than head!
- The microphone is even worse, no one will hear you talking.
- Headphone with microphone works fine. But after unplugging I don't have any sound anymore. Sleep/wake fixes it...
- I obviously do miss some of the Mac apps like OmniFocus, Pixelmator, xScope and others while working in Windows.
Go into device manager and disable their power saving settings. I had disconnection issues once or twice a week with my MS Designer Mouse and this fixed it.
Found this article that shows where it is: https://www.howtogeek.com/189856/ask-htg-how-can-i-keep-my-b...
I searched the web, updated Dell drivers, found some Reddit thread where they explained cryptic settings in the device manager... All of that didn't help. I gave up when I found yet another blog post where a guy even replaces the internal bluetooth kit of his XPS 15!
In the hope that this fixes it once and for all: Thank you so much!
Tomorrow I'll test the Microsoft Surface mouse, AKA Microsoft Modern mouse.
As someone who's going bald, this is a feature rather than a bug.
Of course, I'd like 4 cameras on the corners and software that allows me to shift a virtual camera to the center of whatever video conference tool I'm using.
BTW, that would be a brilliant new feature for Apple laptops of the future. That and chroma/motion key built in the camera video processing pipelines or, perhaps, the full set of iPhone image processing options.
I don't think filming my neck-rolls and the inside of my nostrils is much of a feature.
- So the bluetooth issue may be fixed with some stupidly hidden Windows setting in the device manager.
- I forgot to mention that 3 of our XPS 9550 had their trackpad (and battery) replaced after the batteries inflated and pushed the trackpad out of the case. Luckily this happened a few weeks before the end of the 2 year warranty.
I’m seriously worried that the platform I’ve been so comfortable with the past 10 years will fall in disrepair because of some ill-advised management that chose to chase some other innovation...
It’s another problem I don’t need
The larger point about recognizing that we’ve plateaued on size & weight benefits is important, though. As long as we need keyboards there’s not much point in taking on all of the other compromises.
Every single Apple's competitor delivers laptops with 32+ GB of RAM, and MacBooks are stuck at 16GB and there's no one to blame for it but Apple.
This is only partially correct: those are separate models which are bigger and have worse power and heat characteristics. Every laptop which is similar to Apple's shares the 16GB limit for the same reason; the difference is that Apple has decided not to offer that second tier.
MacBook Pro, a first-tier plaything. If they do finally release a "second tier", what the hell are they going to call it? MacBook Super Pro?
Fine, I'll take 32Gb of RAM and a less than a week of standby time thanks.
Can you elaborate on this? Is this related to DDR4LP? Is there a connection?
https://ark.intel.com/products/97462/Intel-Core-i7-7920HQ-Pr...
I don't think PCIe lanes and low power ram are directly related, but it is just another sign of Intel attempting to control the market via feature segregation.
The CPU only has 16 PCIe lanes. Which is flat out retarded when 4 of them will be used by NVMe, and 8 (and really 16 should be) can be used by video. This only leaves 4 additional PCIe lanes for any other devices, including USB-C and thunderbolt.
Simply put, if there were any competition in the market, that CPU look much different. Low power ram and 8 more PCIe lanes at least.
Portable, powerful, comes with USB Type A and C ports, Thunderbolt 3 and comes with one of the best keyboards in laptops.
https://www.dell.com/community/XPS/XPS-13-9370-Keyboard-Skip...
It took months for a BIOS release to make the keyboard workable.
Now if only they could get the webcam to work..
What ever was the point of making this thing razer thin? What bizarre, mythical user did they have in mind that just couldn't stand a few cm of extra 'bulk'? None of this makes any sense, except it being a case of design driven engineering run amok.
I could be misremembering, and it frustrates me either way, but I was certain that Intel also held some blame for this?
I wanted to have a desktop that I could leave on without it taking lots of power (CO2 matters) or needing a wind-tunnel grade fan to keep it cool (noise matters). So it had some variant of what Apple used. In my opinion this CPU was a dud, I had to upgrade the BIOS numerous times and it wasn't any quicker than my elderly i5 powered laptop. Plus it wasn't as silent as hoped:
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/boards-kits...
Apple used the same RAM limited CPU in 2015:
https://www.apple.com/shop/product/G0QP3LL/A/refurbished-133...
The subsequent products with the useless keyboard were to use iterations of this lemon of a CPU.
My Intel NUC is actually in a drawer unused. I had lost a couple of keys on the elderly i5 laptop, I bought a new backlit keyboard for that on ebay, it came from China in an incredible 3 days and cost ~£50 including shipping. This is the keyboard I am using right now. It actually looks super cool as the laptop was originally all in silver, the replacement keyboard and surround is black and the design looks so good because the mousepad is still silver coloured. It looks like a high end German product due to that colourway combo.
The logic board would also have the redesigned and bigger for the new chipset, putting pressure on battery space. You see Microsoft making the same choice as Apple with the new Surface laptop.
Fortunately Intel are launching new mobile chips with support for fast, low power LPDDR3E memory over 16GB this year.
Got a free replacement though.
If your work or personal use can so freely change Operating Systems, then, I guess I consider you lucky.
I can't really do my job from a Windows box without significant pain. I could probably use Linux, but it would add some additional frustration.
I need it on whatever machine is my development machine. Clojure REPLs are memory intensive. I'm sitting at 7GB in use right now, mostly thanks to Chrome, even without anything major running.
I could probably squeeze under 16GB if I was aggressive about shutting down server applications (e.g. Apache and MySQL) I'm not using at that moment and only starting them up when I need them, but that's just adding more chores to my workflow.
Having more than 16GB of RAM just means I never need to worry about it. It's one less headache to deal with.
yet I don't feel like switching away from Mac is a realistic option for me. There are a ton of apps on which I depend. Can't exactly stick them in a docker image.
But here is the following: Apple is really improving. It is just not meeting the expectations of its demanding users (and rightly so since we are paying a premium for Apple hardware).
I remember getting sick of macOS Sierra and decided to rollback to Mavericks. Holly crap, I then just realized how much more polished Sierra is with all its issues. The external screen resolutions were screwed, can no longer answer calls through my mac, notes no longer sync and a dozen other things that I just "assumed".
These advances are probably building technical debt. But also they are what attaching people to the Apple ecosystem.
I get my airpods connected to my iPhone easily and without issues. Then I quickly switch the input to my Mac. Then back to my iPhone. Good luck getting that to work correctly on Windows software and other hardware.
I love and miss the aesthetics of macOS and Magic Mouse swipes. However let's face it, Apple alone cannot stand the pace. It just cannot compete with hordes of companies from all over the world who do their part of job really really good. Gigabyte, ASUS, Samsung, Intel, Crucial, NVidia, AMD, Dell to name a few plus many other small and big suppliers vs Apple Goliath. Battle result is predetermined by the forces of nature. Apple gonna lose in the long run.
The question is, is apple really going backwards, or is it a case of "I don't like change".
The longer you use something, the more you don't like anything different. Is USB-C really a step back from magsafe? Is removing the function keys really a step back? How about removing 3.5mm jacks from a phone?
I've used /etc/network/interfaces to configure my network for 2 decades. Netplan is thus stupid and terrible. Except if I look at it objectively netplan is better. It deprecates those nice comfy hacks and configs I don't even think about, so of course I don't like it.
My local hifi shop tell me that the bose qc35s jumped off the shelves like hotcakes compared with the 25s, because they were wireless and rechargable. I don't like them because I like 3.5mm. But as the man said:
Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty- five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.
A single port on a mobile device for power OR audio? That port is NOT USB-C?
Trying to sell the market a set of customizable function bar replacement versus a touch screen?
You can classify MacBook users into two groups: people who hook up their laptops to lots of stuff, and people who don't. The people who hook up their laptop to lots of stuff are the kind of people who get to work, hook up their laptop to power + keyboard + mouse + headphones + maybe Ethernet + maybe other peripherals, at a desk where all this stuff is static. For those people, USB-C is a major improvement over MagSafe. The odds that your power cable is going to be tripped over with proper cable management at your desk is vanishingly small and the convenience gained by only plugging in one cable is enormous.
On the other hand you have the people who bring their laptops and power adapters with them to Starbucks or the university library or their co-founder's apartment, and are constantly looking for a power socket. You know, the ones in this thread complaining about the keyboard (because they never use an external keyboard) and won't buy anything else anyway (because they love the trackpad and never use an external mouse). For those people, USB-C is a major regression from MagSafe because even if Apple provided a USB-C dock in the box for free, for them it would be collecting dust in the bottom of a closet somewhere.
But this is typical for Apple, whose corporate ethos seems to consider the notion that allowing the customer to have a choice is a bad thing. Which means that the question isn't whether USB-C is a regression over MagSafe or not, it's whether you belong to Apple's core market segment and fit into Apple's core product strategy, which holds that the word "regression" is simply not part of the vocabulary used in the conversation revolving around Apple's products. Improvements are all doubleplusgood changes, simple as that.
Yes, this.
It's odd though, the apple ecosystem has "always worked" if you stuck with it, where linux and windows have needed various amounts of firtling (customising your workspace, switching etc)
People who plug in perhiphials seem to be against what I understood apple's view to be. I guess they want those of us who just have a laptop and don't connect anything up to be using ipads instead (perhaps that explains their choice to downgrade the keyboard --- you either dock into a fixed workstation with a decent keyboard, or you use a touchscreen. Eventually I wouldn't be surprised if the keyboard is completely removed from apple laptops. And we'll all be shocked. )
* I don't miss the CD rom at all - even at the time. I think that was a totally valid design change
* I love QC35's and BT headphones in general, the convenience is undeniable
* I even like a bunch of soundcloud mumble rap, that's supposed to be anathema to my generation
* All that said, I can't stand the new Apple keyboard, it completely ruins typing, which is sort of a fundamental part of using a computer
I guess I'm saying it's possible to appreciate some change, while not appreciating other would-be innovations. I really have a hard time seeing how this keyboard is in any way a positive change - there isn't really much benefit to having a bad keyboard. It's all negatives, unless saving a literal couple of millimeters in machine thickness is somehow super desirable.
Without a single doubt in my mind.
For magsafe, yes. But overall, I like the move to USB-C. I plug 1/2 as many things into my computer each time I sit at the desk as I used to. Once these docks come down a bit more in price I'll plug a single wire into my computer at the desk.
> Is removing the function keys really a step back?
Not sure. Right now I'm indifferent.
> How about removing 3.5mm jacks from a phone?
Definitely a tempest in a teapot.
As an aside, the few people I know with 2017 MBPs all like the keyboard. None of us have had issues so I'm sure that makes a difference. Personally, I like the key travel and how quickly I can type on the new keyboard.
They won’t support 32Gb ram because it might decrease battery life and requires them to reengineer the logic board but they’re totally cool with a fragile ass keyboard GLUED to a battery! Really there’s no way to call this anything other than insanity.
I remember the media used to talk about the ‘halo effect’ - well I’m someone who has Almost every MBP between 2002-2012 and every iPhone until the 7 plus.... right now I doubt they’ll make a real pro laptop and so I’m likely gonna switch to a Dell XPS. /end frustration