Maybe instead we could have a row of keys that provide some sort of function, and maybe a key that allows the user to escape. That would be a pretty useful feature that I can guarantee I would use dozens or hundreds of times a day.

I'm considering replacing my MacBook Pro soon, and I might have to drop macOS from my 3 OS lineup. I can't justify an expensive but locked down desktop machine, so if the laptops aren't meeting my needs either then goodbye Apple.

After much debate I decided to take a chance on a surface book. I figured I'd try it, try and get my dev environment in a decent place, and see how I felt about windows after 30 days, with the idea that I might have to return it if things didn't work out. I'm 6 days in, and I can pretty safely say there's no way I'm going back to apple. Windows has managed not to suck at all, my dev environment is arguably better than what I had before, and I'm absolutely loving the machine itself. Most joyful new laptop experience in many years.

I switched to Linux and felt the same feeling you did though. Happiness to be back in a nice new system where I feel at home!

- sharing screen in hangouts puts chrome on every virtual desktop so now you can't click on chrome to navigate to that desktop

- slack crashes silently every 24 hours

- virtual desktops is a mess, if one window overflows into another desktop, then when you click on that app ubuntu will take you to the desktop where you see the least amount of your application, usually just a few pixels on the top of the screen

- copy-paste sucks balls, in some applications it's ctrl-c in others its shift-ctrl-c and some applications will copy to clipboard if you select a string

- keyboard support is terrible, in intellij i can't type `or ´ or ~ but I can type all those in gedit and then i have to copy paste them over

- ctrl-a and ctrl-e don't work in most applications, even though these are old school shortcuts that work nearly everywhere on a mac

- installing applications is always terrible on ubuntu. You can install from their app-store, if that works (50/50 odds) but you can't get intellij there, or sublime. To install sublime I had to find a blog post with 4-5 steps I needed to do. For intellij I also found a blogpost, but when I need to upgrade intellij I couldn't find it anymore and had to delete everything inside my intellij folder and copy a new intellij in.

there are three main was of "installing applications on ubuntu":

1. main software repositories; this is essentially 1-click install (if you go through the software management application) 2. installing from a PPA (e.g. Sublime); this is 1-line copy/execute (add-apt-repository XYZ), then update (apt update) and 1-click install 3. rarely, you install binaries directly; this is a double click.

none of them is terrible. the vast majority of the Ubuntu/Debian linux software is provided and installed via 1. (update obsessed users use 2.), which is a much faster workflow than windows, and immensely safer.

If a software is fidgety in a version 3 installer, it has nothing to do with Linux, as it's almost exactly the counterpart of the typical windows installation, it's just badly packaged by the developer; binary installers are a small minority anyway.

> copy-paste sucks balls, in some applications it's ctrl-c in others its shift-ctrl-c and some applications will copy to clipboard if you select a string

this is not correct. Ctrl+C/V are the standard, the exception (not "some applications") being the terminal, because Ctrl+C has different semantics.

> keyboard support is terrible, in intellij i can't type `or ´ or ~ but I can type all those in gedit and then i have to copy paste them over

you may have a misconfigured keyboard. run the live version of ubuntu, test the keyboard with the installer, then configure the same on your installed system.

> this is not correct. Ctrl+C/V are the standard, the exception (not "some applications") being the terminal, because Ctrl+C has different semantics.

I agree that it sucks (in a CMD shell). It's the reason I switched to a Mac when I became a developer. Maybe it's come a long way. I've heard good things about PowerShell, too, but honestly haven't played with it much.

As far as the Linux subsystem, I wouldn't use it for anything serious. It choked the first time I tried installing Elixir. I'd probably rely on a Vagrant VM running in VirtualBox (or whatever VM host makes the most sense on Windows).

Also, I don't have to restart my wifi 5 times a day anymore, which is kind of a nice win.

EDIT: Oops, I thought these were complaints about windows (highly plausible!). actually it's unix under windows. Apologies.

I can only guess the desktop you used but I assume we talk about Unity/Wayland. Ubuntu removed Unity meanwhile for the Way cleaner Gnome Shell (however I don't know if they have some custom bullshit in there again)

Shortcuts are often miss configured on system level. I noticed nonsense issues therelike as well on Ubuntu.

There are highly different software repository concepts like pacman and the AUR on arch where you have a package selection right there you could never experience anywhere else.

What I am trying to say is that there is no one Linux, I don't like vanilla Ubuntu. However having used any OS in the recent years I love going back to MY Linux.

Edit:// oh the shortcuts are also likely due to the VM I just realized

He's also running unknown version of Ubuntu, probably old, that he doesn't know how to use properly. Odds are really great he's one of those that pastes unknown terminal commands from blog posts to achieve goals he doesn't quite understand and his install is screwed up in some way that would require hours of troubleshooting or 30 minutes to install over top of.

Its like reading an analysis of Chinese quisine written by a guy who only buys past date 99c frozen dinners.

Unfortunately, I'm not aware of any way to turn off this behavior.

The shortcuts for text fields on Windows are not consistent either, are they?

I am very used to the organization of shortcuts on macOS, especially those for text editing. Strangely, that's what I miss on Linux the most now. However, it's probably easier to provide them to users when there is only one mainstream GUI toolkit (and, for instance, in Office for mac some of those shortcuts don't work).

I have 3 different distros running on as many machines all work fine and one is based on ubuntu LTS. Probably what you should be running but whatever.

"- keyboard support is terrible, in intellij i can't type `or ´ or ~ but I can type all those in gedit and then i have to copy paste them over"

Do you really believe people have this issue? Do you think we all have emailed ourselves documents full of all the characters are OS are too broken to recognize? Something is screwed up about how your vm or your vm software is configured that you are blaming on the OS. I have used over a dozen distros in a multitude of versions and none had any problem with hitting a key and having a character appear on the screen.

"virtual desktops is a mess, if one window overflows into another desktop, then when you click on that app ubuntu will take you to the desktop where you see the least amount of your application, usually just a few pixels on the top of the screen"

This sounds sub-optimal but may I suggest you keep windows on one screen. Most environments provide a hotkey to move a window to a certain screen and many provide hotkeys to resize it to either fill the entire screen or some portion thereof like the left/right/top/bottom half or just drag the window all the way onto the screen you intend to use it on.

Personally I prefer the way i3wm handles virtual desktops. They are PER monitor. Optimally you just assign each workspace to a particular output. Example 1-5 on left monitor 6-0 on right and switch a given output and to a given workspace with one click of super or cmd + number.

Want to view your chat app on the right monitor while leaving your browser alone on the left cmd + 7. Its also substantially lightweight which means it would work better on a vm.

The great thing about it is that there isn't ONE way to handle virtual desktops there are a bunch of different environments available one of which probably works optimally for you.

"- ctrl-a and ctrl-e don't work in most applications, even though these are old school shortcuts that work nearly everywhere on a mac"

Many applications are configurable but honestly different environments different conventions this isn't a bug its just a difference.

"- installing applications is always terrible on ubuntu. You can install from their app-store, if that works (50/50 odds) but you can't get intellij there, or sublime. To install sublime I had to find a blog post with 4-5 steps I needed to do. For intellij I also found a blogpost, but when I need to upgrade intellij I couldn't find it anymore and had to delete everything inside my intellij folder and copy a new intellij in."

Installing applications is fantastically easy and works every single time. Most common stuff is available in the repo and you can apt install foo or use the gui if you like.

Most less common stuff is available in a 3rd party repo. If you need such the workflow is google ppa somesoftware note the ppa involved and run

add-apt-repository ppa:something apt-get update apt install foo

if you get bored and want to automate that in fish

    function ppa
	 sudo add-apt-repository ppa:$argv
         sudo apt-get update
         if [ $argv[2..-1] ]
              sudo apt install $argv[2..-1]
         end
    end

example want newer gimp

ppa otto-kesselgulasch/gimp gimp

When you say it works 50/50 you don't mean that it fails half the time you mean that it installs almost all things just fine save for a few quite frankly mediocre poorly chosen apps that you simultaneously actually pay money for but don't get good support for your environment.

This is probably because your environment is some 7 year old version of ubuntu that is similar to what your servers are running. Seriously the last time I installed intelij I just had to unzip an archive, add to path, and tell it where to get java. This "Install" in /opt actually survived multiple distros and worked without complaint.

Shockingly the instructions you found on the internet probably didn't cover the case of running new sofware on an obsolete base.

Ubuntu Unity was always too opinionated and lacked the necessary UX testing IMO. (Yep, they seemed to have tested it, but not on enough power users; some power users (a lot of them around here it seems) love Unity. Others like me find it a producrivity disaster, probably for some of the same reasons as you found.

That said, a lot of the rest seems like a mix of misunderstandings and broken config either in the host or in the VM.

what the hell does ctrl-e do?

in the mean time I'm stuck just like you in the world of linux. My primary desktop pc for the past 9 months was my galaxy note 8 with a usb c to hdmi adapter. it has an incredible chromebook like UI when docked and has all the linux tools i need! I've even been able to write an app and submit it to the app store all from there. You really cant go back after you've tried one device life and it makes filming and editing content for my youtube channel seamless since video never leaves the 256gb SD card inside my phone.

Huawei has a similar mode and i cant wait for google to support it. they do natively support windowed mode and moving apps freely but i mean just add a chromebook ui to the screen when u dock a pixel 3 and you will be golden :)

Can a machine have "insanely good IO" if dongles are required for everything from iPhones to hard drives to memory cards? I could agree that a machine with 4 thunderbolt ports on top of the regular complement of power, USB-A, and SD slots would be insanely great. But I'm living the dongle life and not loving it.

Four thunderbolt ports is great. One adapter to plug in all of the things you mentioned is also great. iPhones and hard drives don't need dongles, they just need cables. A USB-C to USB-B 3.1 cable is $1.33 from Monoprice; USB 2.0 version is just $1.12. Not too shabby.

For iPhones: the only times I've had to plug my iPhone into my laptop is doing development, but a cable for that only costs $20.

But let's compare it to the previous (2015) MacBook Pro: two USB ports and two Thunderbolt-and-Displayport ports, and HDMI. Five ports total, but no flexibility. Our office was full of DP-to-DVI dongles already, so swapping one dongle for another seems like a no-op. Difference now is that we can buy USB-C monitors which also serve as a power source and a USB hub, meaning one cable to plug in my entire desk. That's something you can't really get on the old MacBooks (at least, not without spending a lot more than it costs to do it on the new MacBooks.

So yeah, the machine has "insanely good IO", and once the rest of the world catches up it'll be even better.

I understand the desire to make the machine thin, which means the old USB had to go. But taking out the SD card slot makes it seem like they don't want you to have an easy way to add more onboard (-ish) storage space.

I mean, that's the thing. Apple jumped ahead, and USB-C just isn't common. (At least, for me. I can't name any device I've used or even heard of that uses USB-C.) So, it's a less than practical option if you're in the market for a laptop, not so much insanely good.

I wouldn't buy a computer with only serial and parallel ports because none of my devices use them, and I wouldn't buy a computer with only USB-C ports, because none of my devices use them.

Though to be fair the Mavic Air controller charges with micro USB

USB-C to X cables solve most of the problems, but I have a 3-port USB-C to USB-A dongle for legacy stuff ...

I never understood this complaint. AFAIK, I've never seen a macbook with a lightning port or the older 13-pin iphone port. If someone had an iphone, they had a USB-A to lighnting cable. Now they need a USB-C to lightning cable. Then you can use the macbook to charge your phone, or the usb-c charger that charges your laptop to charge your phone. Or yes, you can get a usb-c to usb-a dongle - but you can just as easily get the appropriate cable. I'm also seeing that Apple is going to start producing usb-c chargers for iphones and ipads (with a usb-c to lightning cable) in the near future.

I'm a macbook + android user, so I've had USB-C phones for a while, so now I can use the same cable and charger for my laptop or my phone.

iPhones don't come with these, so it basically means you have to go out and buy another cable, which won't work with any of the wall charger power bricks that came with your previous iPhones. I understand a change needs to be made at some point, but it's strange for Apple to ship computers with no ports that are compatible with their iPhones.

I work in many environments and just bring a charge cable with me.

Of course, the iphone was just one of many things that I was noting isn’t compatible. External hard drives? Thumb drives? SD cards? All easily plugged into my previous Apple laptop, but require a dongle here. I have a mini-hub, but even that isn’t great because it can’t charge anything.

$9.99 on Amazon. So I spent $30.

The problem is that when they purchased the iPhone, it came with said cable.

I purchased an iPhoneX this year and it comes with, you guessed it, a USB-A cable. So in order to connect it to my new Apple laptop I need to buy either a $20 cable or a special dongle? If Apple wants to go all in on USB-C then they shouldn’t still be shipping their top of the line “futuristic” phone with USB-A cables.

But obviously they already know that they would have gotten many dissatisfied customers complaining about having to buy a cable just to ‘connect their phone to their iTunes’ if they did that.

ideally i need to get a copy of OpenJDK installed and build with gradle but this was much easier.

Expo also allows you to build an iOS blob from Android entirely assuming you have a way to get it onto an iphone through testflight.

I shut it down before a trip to Montreal; two weeks later I came back and it wouldn't boot. No idea why. Had to restore from a previous system snapshot and re-install a bunch of drivers and windows updates.

It's a lot better than it was, but there's still strange, ridiculous stuff that crops up seemingly out of nowhere.

Perhaps do a "sudo apt-get update" (updates the local resources of apt, not the packages themselves) so that when you do a "apt search" or "show" in the future it has something to show?

What does configuring IDE things have to do with Windows? Wouldn't IntelliJ have the same reasonable defaults on Linux and macOS? Or is it a different product somehow (haven't used it myself.)

You'll never see that time again.

The big drawback for me for the surface book would seem to be the subpar support for other OSs.

Pen support is better than the original surface pro's, which I believe were wacom. Hard to pin that on pen tech vs OS improvements, though. The pen needing a Quad-A battery is a bit annoying, but they're not too hard to find, and just one lasts a long time.

Battery life with a detached screen is short, but you'll only really need it detached if you're walking around with it. If you're sitting or lying down, you can just attach it backwards and fold it back onto the keyboard. Heavier, but not to the point of annoyance, and it gives it a nice tilt for reading things if it's on a desk.

Battery life with the keyboard attached is incredible, especially if you can dim the monitor a bit and run in battery saving mode. (The battery saver mode does have a pretty significant perf hit, though). Just don't try to use it at full speed, at least with an i7 and discrete GPU - I can kill my battery in under 2 hours if I try to run something like a graphics-intensive game. For dev stuff I've never had a problem.

Multi-OS support is probably an issue, though WSL does seem to do a pretty good job of most things.

It's probably my favorite work laptop to date. The only minor gripe is that I haven't been able to find a good combination of settings to prevent accidental touchpad activation while typing.

People also often mention coil whine which I haven't noticed on this model, the 15" might be different.

I don't know why you think Dell is "very low quality". I've seen Dell laptops last for years under heavy usage.

Then get chocolatey

https://imgur.com/a/cFgvQaH

It runs on Windows too, but I prefer it on Mac, as I don't like the Windows font rendering on HiDPI displays.

App is Hyper, https://hyper.is

You want the builds that use xterm.js from VS Code, their performance is much, much more like iTerm/Terminal.app.

Color scheme is Ocean Dark, from the hyperterm-base16-ocean-dark plugin.

Shell is ZSH, using prezto and a hacked up custom prompt.

Font is a custom build of Iosevka Term, weight bold, 13px. Using Greyscale font rendering, not subpixel, on Mojave DP3.

https://be5invis.github.io/Iosevka/

Commands for custom build:

make custom-config design='v-zero-dotted v-asterisk-low v-tilde-low v-underscore-low v-at-short v-brace-straight term' weights='book medium'

make custom && make custom-web

If you're not on Mojave, you can force the rendering to look like that for Hyper with this command:

defaults write co.zeit.hyper.helper AppleFontSmoothing -int 0

Otherwise it will be a bit heavy.

Yet, the customizability rocks, and since xterm.js now renders using Canvas, performance is decent, and with my incoming MBP 32GB, I can afford the memory hit even more!

Although installing the plugins is asking for your fans to spin up.

If you really want to start making old-timey admonitions, check out https://www.npmjs.com/package/hyperpower :)

I actually just got a new Dell XPS and took the opportunity to setup my shell exactly the way I wanted it.

https://imgur.com/a/GhemUQG

I use psreadline, oneget, conemu, powershell, oh-my-posh and posh-git.

  let g:solarized_termcolors=256
  set term=screen-256color
  set t_ut=

You may have had a common issue with the 2015 Macbook Pros, literally tens of thousands of people have Googled that problem on Youtube. Apple won’t admit that it’s a problem with hose models but if you take it to an Apple Store they’ll conveniently take $500 to replace the keyboard.

Anyways it’s an introduced bug due to a design flaw in the models released in 2015. They placed the ribbon cable flat on top of the battery on those models, and when the battery heats up and expands, as it does, it damages the ribbon cable. Prior models had the ribbon cable avoiding the battery by going around it. You can fix it yourself by replacing the ribbon cable. The ribbon cable costs $10 online and it’s the first thing you see when you open up the macbook, you don’t have to dig to get to it. No special equipment needed besides the screws to get the Macbook open.

The trackpad and keyboard both use the ribbon cable, so when it fails completely, both the trackpad and keyboard will stop responding.. With the exception of the power button.

It’s a toss-up if it’s the same issue with only one key being unresponsive. Could just be a bad key. But I’d give it a shot since it’s only a $10 fix with a t6 screwdriver. Or if you want, mail it to me and I’ll fix it and use the laptop as a secondary computer to run my data visualization computations =D

- Ctrl-shift-esc (opens the task manager in Windows), and

- Trying to close dialogs when I'm not sure which button is "go away".

CAPSLOCK -> CTRL LEFT CTRL -> ESC

It's not great, but it works. The last time I had to deal with a company who put the ESC key in a weird place was back in college where we have several of these HP Apollo/720 keyboards:

https://alum.wpi.edu/~tfraser/Machines/hpapollo720.jpg

:-)

Having said that, yes, Apple should allow individuals to, for example, always require the touch bar to provide an escape key (or any other key) on the far left (or anywhere else on the touch bar). The user should get to control what the touch bar does through an easy and powerful interface and API (so third parties can extend the capabilities). Can we even make touch bar keys act as new meta keys? That would rule! The benefit of the Apple approach is that even if this has not been done yet, it's all software: it could be done.

As far as Windows, I guess it must come down to which features are important to you, and personal taste. I use Windows a lot, and have owned a Surface Pro, and boy I hated it. The very, very best thing about Windows is the Linux compatibility layer, and even that's not as good as if it were a real Unix-like platform all the way down.

I am indeed glad you're happy with your laptop (seriously; not sarcasm), but I've been there, done that, and hated it.

I suffered the temporary pain of switching to OSX in '06 because I'm not religious about these things, and at that time macbooks running OSX were providing an exceptional environment for devs like me. It was a hard transition, but after a couple of months I was (mostly) fine. A fair amount has changed in the world in 12 years, and I'm no longer convinced that OSX inherently provides the best environment for a dev. I figured give windows a shot and see how it goes. It took me 24 hours to get the machine in a state where I could work as before (this would have been impossible on a windows box in 2006), and the question now becomes, why would I go back? It's only been a week, so perhaps windows will show me why very soon, but my gut feeling is it won't.

Also worth considering, is that from about 2000 onwards, apple was catering to open source focussed devs, at the exact moment that microsoft was making their lives impossible. I think that trend may have been reversed. Every upgrade to OSX for the past six years or so has represented more pain than pleasure for me. YMMV, but microsoft's offerings, even when flawed seem to be headed in the right direction.

As far as the comment, yeah, I was a little snarky I suppose, but a common response to complaints about the lack of an escape key is "you don't actually need one". I'm sorry, but I do. Ok, I don't need one. but I really want one, and this is a laptop we're talking about, and I use it as a laptop most of the time. I also want ports, a headphone jack, etc. But the escape key is for me the last straw, and enough of an incentive to actually look on the other side of the fence, which I've avoided doing for 12 years. I like what I see there.

The key actually extends to the edge of the touchbar even though the graphic for it does not.

There's at least 2-3mm of dead space on the LHS of the bar.

You can do both. Have it act as ctrl when held (for shortcuts) and as Esc when released on its own:

https://github.com/alols/xcape

I presume there is similar software for windows.

What about your ctrl key? You could remap that to esc.

I am browsing the thread out of FOMO and don't feel any urge to switch back.

Finally, I installed vagrant under windows, with virtualbox. I haven't used that before, but I think it could provide another alternative dev environment in case WSL turns out to be unreliable. My ultimate fallback plan was always to use vmware or similar and just run unix for dev, windows for things like excel, but my feeling is I'm not going to have to do that.

Most mac apps don't use function keys as shortcuts, so the old keyboard ended up being used for media keys (volume, brightness, play/pause, etc.).

The touch bar gives me a better version of that (I actually get a volume slider), plus more apps actually make use of that space to provide useful shortcuts now. And the scrub bar for media playback is really great when you have audio playing in the background.

Yes, you lose tactile feedback. But battery life doesn't seem to be a big problem. At least for me, it's been net positive.

The touchbar hate is not trendy. It's based in specific complaints.

If, on the balance of how you evaluate the problems and benefits of the touchbar, it's useful for you, great. That doesn't mean the primary reason people express a distaste for the touchbar is essentially a social fashion.

At the same time, I just wanted to point out that there are at least some developers who do prefer it, and that the dislike isn't universal.

My mid-2012 MPB is in need of a replacement, but the butterfly keyboard is a dealbreaker. I'm not thrilled with the touch bar, generally supportive of USB-C (although I miss magsafe), will tolerate the glossy screen and oversized trackpad, and don't give two hoots about the fingerprint reader. If Apple could see fit to provide a current gen MBP with a proper keyboard I'd buy one in a heartbeat. As it is, when my MBP dies for good I'm almost certainly moving to a Linux laptop.

It's definitely trendy.

Take your MacBook Pro, put it in a room indoors, and flick the lights on and off in that room several times a second. You’ll notice high CPU usage on a process called “TouchBarServer”, as it tries to adjust itself to the changing light levels so it can display its screen. For some reason, as it does this, it lags the entire rest of the computer: scrolling will freeze every couple of seconds, clicks won’t register, the mouse will lag, and keystrokes will just be ignored.

Why would you do this, you might ask? I work on trains a lot, and I get this same flicker effect as the trees by the tracks go past. As they pass the windows of the train, it’s like a bright light source is being rapidly turned on and off.

I don’t ever use the Touch Bar — nor did I want one — but merely having one renders my laptop unusably slow for two hours every day. I hate this computer.

I would have preferred buttons, but I'm pretty adaptable and can deal with the touchbar if I have too. But what really gets me is that mine frequently crashes and when it crashes it's impossible to control system volume. And since trying to mute or lower the volume is one of the specific situations that causes it to crash, it results in one of the worst user experiences you could have.

If you haven't done so already, I strongly encourage you to file a bug report with Apple at https://bugreport.apple.com

I've got a 2015 for personal use and a 2016 for work and I can honestly say that at the end of the day I'm thrilled to work on a machine that doesn't get in my way. They had it so right and really, really dropped the ball for me.

I'd absolutely buy a new $3000 MBP if it was the new specs inside the 2015 body. As-is, I think my next machine will be Windows.

More flexible is great, sliding for volume is great, I have no conceptual problems with the touchbar except that I don't want another screen.

The one situation I can imagine the Touchbar brightness concerning me is when I'm on a plane. They always turn the cabin lights out, and I'm aware that I need to turn the brightness right down on my laptop when I'm in economy class, so I don't bother those around me. A quiet keyboard is also important on a plane.

I've not used newer Macs except in the store, so I don't know if the touchbar brightness is actually an issue or not. I definitely like my physical volume buttons for making sure my laptop is muted while flying though.

I am convinced that the only people complaining about this have either never used this laptop or have such sensitive eyes that daytime light would render them permanently blind. And I say this as someone who was excited by the possibilities of the Touch Bar but have so far been underwhelmed and wants to go back to the physical keys.

Does it really help the conversation to say things like this?

> I am convinced that the only people complaining about this have either never used this laptop or have such sensitive eyes that daytime light would render them permanently blind

It's really not bright. I'd guess it's probably less bright than the keyboard backlight, which also isn't bright (but is at least dimmable). It's so not bright that I've literally never noticed the thing at night in well over a year of regular use. Whatever number of lumens it outputs is so far below the brightness of the main display that it's all but unnoticeable in use.

I cover my monitor's power LED as well as the status screen on the receiver for my wireless headset. I run F.lux on the reddest settings when I'm within 1-2 hours of bedtime. (and after that I don't run any screens)

I have no issues with daylight brightness, but must carefully control lighting at night due to a broken circadian rhythm. Trust me, I don't need to own it to know that it's too bright. Especially if F.lux is not supported, which it is not last time I checked.

If you're not willing to consider that your concern is unfounded, then you shouldn't be offended when other people dismiss your concern.

Trust me, for me, it's not an unfounded concern.

My personal laptop is MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014).

I will NEVER EVER pay with my own money for a touchbar mac book.

My number one rule when getting a laptop is a good keyboard. Period.

Plus the USB-C drivers for external displays in the new mac books is complete trash. Misaligned windows, constantly forgetting window positions, occasionally completely not working.

The MBP line of computers keeps on getting worse and worse.

No thanks. Plus the keyboard will likely have the same issues my 2016 version has. I’ve had keys replaced 4 times already.

I especially like the way the toucher handles dual screen brightness, 1 press and it brings up a brightness control for each screen.

1. You can swipe in each direction to quickly adjust 2. You can tap and drag to finely adjust

That's the only part I really can't lose.

I like the volume slider fwiw but the regular ones worked fine too.. it is a small bonus with a massive drawback .. of course I don't like it.

Not to mention that I don't ever look at my keyboard when typing, so touchbar is just a annoying glow at the periphery of my vision.

Replacing tactile buttons with a second blinding photon emitter is not progress as far as I'm concerned.

I understand all the benefits you quote, and I'm not just complaining because it's "trendy". If it was eink, I wouldn't care at all. But it's another backlit screen shining in my face. No thanks.

I don't understand what I'm supposed to do with a touchbar, or how to otherwise remap all of these shortcuts... Sticking to my 2015 MBP for now, but I really hope Apple get their act together and release a developer-friendly model (because otherwise I'm a huge fan).

What modifier are you using for the arrow keys? Aren't they all taken already?

Nonetheless you can just turn the F keys back on.

I agree though, IntelliJ is my biggest worry when it comes to the Touch Bar.

How is a touch volume slider better? Using modifier keys you can achieve any level of precision from keyboard volume keys, without looking down to find and watch what you tap. There are also slider controls already, using the mouse (both in the menu bar and System Preferences).

The Touch Bar likely sips power, but the real issue with it is the lost battery capacity beneath it (The non-touchbar models have larger batteries at 54 watt hours)

The Touch Bar is great, Apple just isn't going far enough.

For an example of when capacitive touch wonts work but the laptop would, simply get your finger a little bit wet.

The scenario I'm imagining is opening your computer only to discover that had closed it in the middle of a youtube video or something the night before, and it just continues playing where it left off. A crime of the highest order in OS design, to be sure, but hardly a rare occurrence.

I was imagining someone wearing a glove, but you are right that a certain amount of water will start causing issues. I think it would be difficult to pool enough water on both the touch bar and the trackpad outside of a catastrophe.

I can’t get sound to continue emitting after closing the lid. I’m sure an app can be developed to make that happen, but it wouldn’t be something commonly used. The most likely candidate seems to me to be something like audio performance software, but a person in that situation wouldn’t be using the speakers as an out and would be used to quickly dealing with software/hardware quirks.

Researching this conversation has been fun. :)

I use F12 throughout the day to open iTerm and Cmd+F2 to open Spotlight, and the escape key is obviously generally useful. Losing equivalent dedicated buttons/shortcuts would be a dealbreaker, but otherwise I could take or leave the function keys.

Edit: If yes to the above, are there any situations in which my configured dedicated buttons might conditionally disappear?

System Preferences allows you to do some limited customization of what buttons show up, including adding a dedicated Spotlight button. (I replaced the Siri button with that on mine.) See: https://www.howtogeek.com/303733/how-to-add-or-remove-icons-...

Beyond that, BetterTouchTool allows more advanced customization of the touchbar. I've never used it, but it's worth a look. See: https://www.howtogeek.com/307468/how-to-add-custom-buttons-t... and https://folivora.ai/

Many buy MBPs for the perceived quality of hardware, and install Windows or Linux as their primary OS.

If done right, it is completely possible. But the old neck beards will certainly have a conniption fit.

[1] https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=%23&ved...

If there were little localized bumps every time my fingers moved outside the area of a given letter, and if the keys could tell the difference between resting, setting, and actually typing, then I'm not sure there would be any problem.

Make sure you choose the real keyboard if you also have a Yubikey plugged in :)

I have this setup, and it is great. After you switch capslock to be Ctrl, just run (at startup):

    xcape -e 'Control_L=Escape'

If by hires screen you mean WQHD, I am wondering what you do with absence of proper fractional scaling support by desktop environments (and how workarounds interact with external monitors).

Absolutely gorgeous machine.

[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/8flj0i/t480_power...

https://store.artlebedev.com/electronics/devices/optimus-pop...

To me, this is the best of both worlds. Just put the default keys to start and then let your users pick if they want to. I prefer individual keys to tapping a screen, which is why I use a laptop and not an iPad.

It's the worst invention. Anyone who worked on it should feel bad about their existence -- like drawing mustaches on the Mona Lisa. The 2013 MBP was a perfect laptop (for the time). It's nice they finally got around to adding more RAM... that's about all I would have wanted to change on the 2013 MBP.

The problem with f.lux is that it makes reading on the computer at night TOO comfortable. I was consistently staying up way past my bed time, and suffering for it.

Removing f.lux made it easier to go to sleep earlier. Sometimes comfort isn't worth it. I prefer getting my sleep.

I'd also say that these new Macs are the most unpopular ones among devs. It's just that we are so used to MacOS :|

Seriously though, I share your frustration in regards to both f.lux and external monitor/stand use. It would be nice to be able to dynamically disable the Touchbar in a user configurable way.

Just this week I noticed with surprise that I'm actually using the touchbar 'productively' in this fashion - but its been a long time coming.

However I'd throw away this newfound appreciation of the touchBar in an instant, if both of these apps just .. you know .. had icons for the task. Maybe some sort of strip of icons, even ...

- Dongles still needed

- Touch bar can't be dimmed

As for the idea, well if touch keyboards are so great why have they invested so much effort in adding a physical keyboard to their Pro touch devices.

I'm going to wait a year, maybe 18 months for feedback before I consider upgrading. Why they couldn't grab a 2012-2015 model and upgrade the guts? No touchbar, smaller touchpad than the newer macbooks, but updated specs? Call it Macbook Developer... We build the software for the "Pros" after all.

I just don't get it.

The niche developer/macrumors posters will never be happy regardless of what Apple does. Better to focus on the 90% of customers who buy products and make up 10% of the complaints then to focus on the 10% of customers who make up 90% of the complaints.

> Better to focus on the 90% of customers who buy products

So either you're wrong, or Apple's PR team is really bad positioning their product. From the Press Release itself in the first few paragraphs:

ideal for manipulating large data sets, performing complex simulations, creating multi-track audio projects or doing advanced image processing or film editing.

Already the most popular notebook for developers around the world, the new MacBook Pro can compile code faster and run multiple virtual machines and test environments easier than before.

MacBook Pro now delivers faster performance for complex simulations and data manipulation.

With the new MacBook Pro, developers can compile code faster and more easily run multiple virtual machines and test environments.

Aren't those all features described exactly for the "niche developer/macrumors posters"?!

This would be similar to, for example, many sportswear brands who say they are for professional athletes, but whose primary consumer base is... not.

In both cases, they may still attract the audience they claim to target, but in practice, that niche market makes up only a small fraction of their total sales.

I think this is actually sometimes about minimalism. I'd rather have one nice, good, high-quality thing than to accumulate junk over the years as I get deeper into a hobby. The longest hike I've done was a three-day section hike on the AT, but I have ultralight hiking and camping gear. I know, in the future, when I have more time, I'll do longer and more frequent hikes, and even now, lighter is more comfortable to carry.

There's also the Paradox of Choice. Upper middle class folks are strapped for time and flush with cash. Would I rather spend two hours reading reviews to find out whether the discount pocket knife is really as good for my purposes as a Benchmade, or just make the purchase secure in the knowledge that I bought a well-regarded brand with excellent customer service? Maybe I overpaid, but the speed and hassle-free nature of the transaction are worth it.

"Signal"

There is a lot of signaling going on, using these product choices. And Apple's at the top of the heap.

It has transitioned from "tech" to "brand".

I've seen people write off William Gibson's more recent work, that takes this on as a central topic for examination and exposition. It may not be as... "awesome" as the universe of Molly and Wintermute. But it's a very good and engaging application of creating writing to this topic. Recommended.

Oh, I really enjoy prep-work. I have to admit, I like using a nice, sharp knife (plus, it's much safer).

I hate doing prep-work at other peoples houses. The knives are just so dull.

So, I spend more money on knives than I should because I enjoy good knives and get lots of good use out of them.

https://www.amazon.com/Victorinox-Fibrox-Chefs-Knife-8-Inch/...

I currently have a 2012 MBP Retina, but am not sure if I want my next laptop to be another MBP or just the regular MacBook. I really like the 15” screen and would have a hard time giving that up. I wish they had a regular MacBook with a high quality screen, battery, and keyboard and not much else.

I suppose it depends on the desktop! I just moved from a MacBook Pro to a Dell XPS 15. I thought I'd replace the MBP with the Dell, but I ended up replacing my desktop machine with the Dell, and still using the MacBook in my dining room.

The XPS 15 I bought has an i9, 32GB RAM, and 1TB SSD for $1100 less than the equivalent MacBook. My workload is primarily Adobe- and WordPress-centric, with some coding and article writing thrown in for good measure.

I do video editing, photo editing, and run code with zero issues. The i9 beats the pants off my Skylake i7 desktop. And it's portable! And the screen is amazing. I have it hooked up to my 5K monitor in my home office, and it's gorgeous.

Since my workload is 98% Chrome, Adobe products, Microsoft products, or text editors, everything was pretty much identical from one platform to another. I turned off automatic updates on Windows 10 (I do this on my Mac too) and had no issues at all migrating over.

I don't think I'll be buying a new Mac at this point.

That's true for most gaming rigs and high-end Windows laptops ;-)

"stalk your ex on Facebook, 37% faster"

"Cat videos on youtube look great in Retina full screen"

"Your stolen music files sound fab thanks to deeper bass response from the stereo speakers"

"chat with your dumb friends for hours, with a new longer-lasting battery"

"call in sick without removing your phone from its case, thanks to bluetooth."

Other than dying batteries, or physical damage (broken trackpad/keyboard) I seriously wonder why the average person needs anything but the most basic laptop when a $99 android phone is in all measures more powerful than a 10 year old laptop but we're doing basically the same activities: surf the web, chat, email. Very, very few people create content. Most consume.

[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/h264ify/aleakchihd...

“Managing data and complex simulations” seems to allude to ‘em Excel jockeys who should be using a humble database and/or are running some kind of what-if calculations.

Anything else either quickly gets offloaded to one of my group's servers with 64-80 threads and 100s of GB of RAM or, if it's even bigger, to the local HPC cluster with 1000s of CPUs.

Even without access to existing resources: I'm having a hard time imagining a situation where, if I have a fixed budget of ~3-5k to do computational work, it'd be better for me to spend that on a top-end MBP than a two-piece solution of laptop+linux server.

Edge case, sure, but shrug

How's the rabies situation there? Are people still doing multicompartment SIR models? That kind of stuff is hard to parralelize.

And yeah, people still use compartmental models pretty heavily. A lot of my stuff is stochastic (it's about the beginning or end of epidemics, or in small populations) so that's nicely parallel.

Yes, and, trust me, most developers I know who got newer MBPs are pretty happy with theirs. I know I am and I hope I get one of these newer ones next week. 6 cores and 32 gigs of DDR4 make a lot of a difference. The vi users make jokes about the Esc key, of course (but I'm into Emacs, so no problem for me). One company I know of offered the "classic" model for those who wanted to have it and nobody took the offer.

Among developers, the 10% troublesome to 90% happy rate seems to be present.

I, personally, have different priorities and have no problem with thicker laptops. My next personal one will probably be a maxed out Lenovo or Dell XPS, since they are cheaper than Macs at the cost of features I don't really need (high-fidelity screen, for instance).

I had a new MBP for a few months and hated it.

As soon as an old MBP freed up, I traded in for it. SO much happier, and my friends are jealous.

And I pretty much live in emacs. Where I use the escape key regularly. C-x ESC ESC is one of my go-tos.

YMMV.

My esc key has been caps-lock for the past like 6 years, so that isn't an issue. (HIGHLY recommend this either way)

I don't use the touchbar too much (just like I didn't use the f bar too much), but the sliding action for volume control and a few others is nice.

I just open the macOS preferences, and remap Caps Lock to Control. Then escape becomes a Caps Lock + [ combination. Simple, and no fumbling around for an Escape key.

This also works well on both macOS and Linux, especially when moving about the command line (e.g. Ctrl+A / Ctrl+E to move to the beginning/end of the current line, respectively). See [1] for more shortcuts. Especially useful is Ctrl+K to cut text after the cursor, and then Ctrl+Y to paste it back.

Of course, the regular control key will do the same thing. But using Caps Lock as control reduces strain, at least for me. In fact, it's the first change I make on macOS, Linux, and Windows.

And on Ubuntu, gnome-tweak-tool makes it trivial to make Caps Lock and additional Control key (if you really need Caps Lock, you can also swap Caps Lock and Control).

[1] https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/ubuntu/keyboard-shortcuts-fo...

When I am forced to move to a new machine I am strongly considering grabbing a Dell or Lenovo and throwing Ubuntu on it. Experience has been that bad.

(a habit I picked up on DEC and Wyse and etc... terminals where the key labeled ESC was in different locations)

Even if they provide 64 GB, it will never be enough RAM. OSX is dogshit at memory management, with massive memory leaks. On my work laptop (-1 generation), I have 16 GB. Normal workloads (i.e. not even developer workloads/compilation tasks) consume memory to the point where I’m constantly swapping. Until they fix their shit, I’m not going to buy a new one, nor will I ask my company (I am good friends with IT) to refresh.

I run Chrome and Slack on Windows and I never have had memory issues. Using Occam’s Razor, it has to be an issue with memory management at the OS level. I’ve also run Chrome and Slack on Linux - 1/10th of the memory footprint. I will write a blogpost in the future about it.

Given a choice between a sexy MacBook Pro design and a pro-developer feature, Apple will choose the sexy design everytime.

> Already the most popular notebook for developers around the world, the new MacBook Pro can compile code faster and run multiple virtual machines and test environments easier than before.

What we want is a functional keyboard. They are losing this market-share quickly but you're right maybe they don't care about this market anymore. They must not since they aren't doing anything about it.

Ah but you can still tell something. If there's anything to the idea that a picture sends a message or that there's such a thing as "visual language," this group of photos is loudly and stubbornly doubling down on "Thin is all that matters."

Customer: "Does the keyboard work this time?"

Apple: "IT'S THIN!"

Considering that the drive toward thinness is precisely what's ruining the keyboards, that tells you plenty, without even reading anything.

When the next generation of north/southbridge motherboard appeared and sound wasn't a priority for motherboard builders only then journalists noticed what they missed.

This is standard operating practice for an international firm like Apple. The first set of images doesn't show certain details because you want it to have broad appeal. Since Apple keyboards come in a dozen or so different configurations for different markets, you show the more vague master images.

Once the global media outlets have had their splash, then the regionals will get images with more details. In this case, the regional keyboards.

Sorry. No conspiracy here. Just good marketing.

(I’ve just looked at some of their locations, and German seems to use photos with German text on screen, while Greek seems to use photos with English on screen).

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

In particular:

What we want is a functional keyboard.

This is your opinion, but it's not necessarily the majority opinion. For example, I would rather Apple focus on other parts of the computer than the keyboard. The keyboard just isn't that meaningful to me, and I'm just as productive a developer without whatever platonic ideal of a keyboard Apple could put on the thing.

I think a lot of people vastly overestimate the number of Apple customers who have an opinion about this, because it's relatively easy to see complaints on HN, blogs or tech journalism.

I honestly don't know how any of the other market shares can put up with this failing keyboard either. For students, teachers, scientists .. any one that uses a keyboard frequently... it would have to be real hard to write a paper with keys that fail or keys that start repeating constantly.

This is a good point, which I acknowledge. Maybe I've been lucky with my keyboard. But while you point this out, I think most folks complaining about the keyboard are not acknowledging the other side - that it may not be as important as they think it is either. Hence my original comment indicating my own opinion.

> For students, teachers, scientists .. any one that uses a keyboard frequently... it would have to be real hard to write a paper with keys that fail or keys that start repeating constantly.

For what it's worth, I wrote a ~170 page paper (in LaTeX) on a 2016 MacBook Pro. I cared a lot more about screen real estate than the keyboard, so I added a few monitors. All anyone seems to be able to provide is an exchange of anecdotal evidence for or against the keyboard. If there's a real issue I'm not defending it. But I am saying it might not be worth it for Apple to fix it depending on incidence rate, and it might not be as prevalent as the tech blogging/journalism sphere would have us believe.

If your keyboard ever breaks and you find yourself unable to type, then you will discover why people with defective keyboards think its super important. Until then you can minimize the impact it has on people all day long as they cannot type properly without an external keyboard. I'm sure Apple recalled the keyboard because there was nothing wrong and some bloggers went crazy...

To make this particular point painfully clear, I didn't postulate the problem is not widespread because literally only bloggers have the problem, and there are relatively few bloggers. My postulate was that the problem seems more widespread than it is due to the magnifying effect journalism and blogging has. If you disagree then critique the point I made, not the contrived false equivalence you seem to think I made.

Other than that yes, I've had a broken keyboard on a laptop, and no, I'm not minimizing anything. Devil's advocacy and a request for some quantitative evidence (which was elsewhere provided, and to which I conceded) does not constitute minimization or dismissal of a problem. This especially:

> I'm sure Apple recalled the keyboard because there was nothing wrong and some bloggers went crazy...

is a false dichotomy, and one which I did not make.

It could be the ambiguous way you've phrased this, but if I'm reading this right, then that's what you're not getting: a lot of people actually do have this problem. Not just bloggers.

"millions"? Let's not spout hyperbole here. You can't say that without some backup.

Actually the opposite is true.

Apple itself has said it is a tiny, tiny percentage of users. If they were to lie about this then it would be an SEC violation since they would be lying to markets about potential impact of replacements/lawsuits.

I've used every MacBook model and the new ones have unacceptably bad keyboards. I am in an office with dozens of broken ones and the things have become a joke amongst the developers. The IT department got so tired of Apple's time to repair them that they started just ordering extra keys from third party websites for $20/each.

I worked at Apple with Steve Jobs and I can assure you he would not say that the keyboard isn't meaningful and its fine if its broken. There is a reason all the major Apple bloggers have written piece after piece about their poor reliability and repairability. If your space bar breaks with one piece of dust you need to replace the entire top of the computer including the battery since its glued to it.

This is a deliberate misreading of what I said. My point is that reasonable people can disagree about what a "functional keyboard" is for software development. You're free to disagree with me, but don't accuse me of being under a "reality distortion field." And for what it's worth, the comment of mine that you responded to is talking about design and aesthetic choices. You're primarily talking about hardware faults and reliability.

We want a functional keyboard. This is not about reasonable people disagreeing. If your space bar does not work, your keyboard is broken and typing sucks.

My problem with the keyboard is just reliability - I now keep a can of compressed air at my desk just because a key is going to get screwed up at least once a month. And I have one key that is particularly bad, so I assume some piece of dust is just trapped under the key and the compressed air pushes it somewhere until it eventually falls back into place. I'm waiting a little longer to bring it in for repair in hopes that they start using this new v3 keyboard as a replacement - maybe it secretly fixes the dust issue (And they don't want to say it because that would be admitting that there was a problem.)

But I have heard that they were replacing older keyboards (2016) with 2017 models (You could easily tell because they add new symbols above control/option.) I wonder if they'll be doing replacements with 2018 keys now. It would be really nice - the keyboard reliability is pretty much my only complaint, minus not having a physical escape key.

Personally, I think that the loss of Jobs has created a serious leadership problem, because so much of the company's direction was led by the personal taste of one man. Apple has retained the institutional knowledge and habits accrued during that era, but it hasn't found a satisfactory replacement for the functions that Jobs performed. It has retained an obsessive focus, but it has lost the compass that guided that focus towards the user experience. They know how to do thinner, lighter, fewer ports and so they keep doing it, but there's no why. So many aspects of Apple's corporate culture are uniquely ritualistic, but the meaning of those rituals died with Jobs.

Apple is one of the most valuable and critically examined companies in the world, with 125,000 employees and end-to-end vertical integration across its hardware and software development process. In consideration of feedback from design decisions, like choosing to develop progressively thinner products, removing physical function keys and implementing touchbars, why would Apple make those decisions? More importantly, why would Apple double down on these decisions in a line refresh of the product 18 months after the initial launch? Presumably Apple is well aware of the number of developers who use their machines, and presumably Apple is aware of developer feedback (again: basic competency as an organization).

So let's reframe this question as follows: why would Apple, with all its resources and talent for research and development, choose to double down on a controversial design mandate instead of rolling back the keyboard to the version most widely praised? A very reasonable answer is that customers in the aggregate - developers included - don't care that much about the touchbar or the virtual function keys, and will continue to buy the products.

Regardless of my own opinion about the keyboard design, I try to approach this from the perspective that as a single individual with vastly fewer resources than Apple, I likely have a fundamentally less perfect understanding of Apple's product goals, customer demographic and design initiatives. So if I see an incongruence that seems to have a simple answer ("Why doesn't Apple just do the thing everyone clearly wants"), my instinct is that my priors are incorrect and/or it's actually not simple at all.

Because their approach to design is completely unique. Their industrial design studio is small, insular and incredibly secretive. That studio has almost complete independence; most Apple employees won't see a new product until the design is finalised and ready for launch. They have an overt belief in the wisdom of ignoring user feedback and media criticism, going back to the original Macintosh. They don't think that their role is to provide people with what they want, but what they should want.

https://www.amazon.com/Inside-Apple-Americas-Admired-Secreti...

That approach is one of Apple's greatest assets. They were right to ignore the people who said that a computer needed serial ports and a floppy disk drive. They were right to ignore the people who said that a phone needed buttons. They're willing to ignore conventional wisdom and the demands of the market in favour of a singular design vision for what technology should be. They're willing to tell their customers trust us, this is for the best. That approach is necessary if you're going to be a highly innovative company that creates entire new categories of product, but it's not right 100% of the time and it can be infuriatingly stubborn.

The strain relief on the MagSafe connector was too short. Any cable manufacturer would tell you that it was too short. Any electrical engineer would tell you that it was too short. The internet was full of pictures of frayed (and sometimes charred) MagSafe cables. The Apple store website was full of one-star reviews for MagSafe power adaptors that had frayed. Apple did nothing for over five years until a class action forced their hand; they offered replacements, but didn't fix the defect.

But I find jdietrich's argument totally plausible. They could have tons of negative user feedback that they ignored. "They" probably being a handful of designers (so the total number of talented people at Apple is basically irrelevant). Apple's always had a certain arrogance. They (believe they) know what customers want better than their customers do: in this case a thinner and thinner laptop. Sometimes they're right. Sometimes they lose their way and I end up with a really expensive MacBook Pro that I hate typing on.

I've certainly seen a few cases inside Google where a small team ignored dogfood feedback from other Googlers ("you aren't the user", basically), then were shocked when they got the same feedback from real users. It's absolutely possible for a small number of people inside a giant organization to make decisions that later bite them. I don't have any particular reason to believe Apple's immune to this.

Think of the thickness thing - Apple made billions of dollars before it wasn't even possible to make razor thin laptops. Is razor-thinness, to the point of losing port connectivity in a Pro device, really necessary or optimal?

It's worth noting that they did change the keyboard on these new models, and I would guess they did so to avoid extending their special keyboard replacement program they have fro the current one.

They don't want to improve the keyboard, because it would make the laptop slightly less thin, and the people with the power, (the design department) don't want that.

Just because Apple has lots of people working there, doesn't mean that the RIGHT people are in charge.

No company is perfect. And although apples religious focus on design has helped it in the past, this time it seems to have hurt thebl company.

And maybe they will learn from their mistakes or maybe they wont.

Your question has already been answered by Apple with the current generation of problematic keyboards.

They already had a mature, reliable keyboard that felt pretty good and was not noisy. It was not "broke" and did not need "fixing".

They presumably chose to "improve" it with the current one so that their computers could be a little bit thinner and that Jony Ive could brag about the new technology in a video during a keynote.

It could be that it would be a huge public image loss to admit that they were wrong about this. No matter how Apple phrases it, it's always look bad to say "we've spent the last 2-3 years telling you this was a technical achievement, turns out we were wrong." One of Apple's biggest marketing angles is "we put the work in and get it right the first time." That's going to be something that people mock them over, regardless of whether or not it's the right decision to make.

It also might open the floodgates on more expensive litigation and warranty requirements in the future. Apple's current warranty that they just rolled out is only valid up to 3 years after the initial purchase. Is a judge more likely to force them to extend it if a lawyer can argue in court "they lacked so much confidence that they reverted their own design?" Are their significant investments into blocking Right to Repair going to be hampered by that kind of public admission?

They've also invested large amounts of money into the current manufacturing process and design. Their recent decision to discontinue the 2015 model might point to this being about manufacturing costs - you could ask the same question of that decision: "why not allow the holdouts to keep purchasing the older model?"

Along with that, it could also be sunk-cost fallacy at play. One way to check if Apple has a problem with sunk-cost is to look back in the past to see if they've exhibited a pattern of doubling down on controversial decisions and rejecting criticism or blaming customers for issues.

It also could just be that the keyboard looks sexier in advertisements, and perhaps Apple optimizes for advertisements over extended customer experience because they have enough built up goodwill and reputation to do so. The devices might sell better right now when marketed as futuristic status symbols, rather than as practical machines.

Finally, don't dismiss the idea that it could just be the result of designers and engineers running wild without enough practical input to reign them in. I'm all for giving companies the benefit of the doubt, and I understand what you're getting at. But you should apply your philosophy in moderation or else someday you'll find yourself defending Microsoft Bob. Companies are made of people after all.

That's ridiculous. The keyboard is probably the most important feature for someone who codes. You're basically saying, "Whatever Apple sells I will buy, regardless of its qualities." That strikes me as a strange stance to take.

No it isn’t. Plenty of people use external keyboards. I do, for one.

I'm not "basically saying whatever Apple sells I will buy", and to think that would indicate you have an unrealistically uncharitable interpretation of my comment. In fact, I explicitly stated elsewhere in this thread that screen real estate matters to me.

If you feel strongly about the keyboard, that's fine. But that's not intrinsic to your capacity as a developer, it's just your opinion about its suitability for your purpose. Reasonable people can disagree over the importance of a keyboard.

If Apple decided to go for a chiclet, or other variety of keyboard, I probably wouldn't care. I'd deal with that. In this case, though, I pretty much have to expect (based on news and class action lawsuits) that it will stop working correctly, in a matter of months, in a way which directly impacts my productivity. I'll use one at work if I have to, but there's no way I'd buy one for home while the keyboard is that unreliable.

I find that people who take themselves very seriously tend to project their preferences on others.

As it relates to laptops for developers-- not agreeing on things like keyboards, matte screens, aspect ratios, touchscreens, etc. - that can elicit very strong absolutist responses from them.

This is true, but not everyone is picky about keyboards.

I started using mechanicals in the 80s, and I know a lot of people think it's the only way to type, but I actually don't like mechanicals any more.

Today, I use a dome keyboard (shudder!) as my daily driver and I can adapt to most keyboards, regardless of feel.

So while I get what you're saying, the OP is probably implying that he/she can adapt to different keyboard types -- as such keyboard type is not a meaningful selection criterion for him/her.

When I search for information about this, I come up with articles like [1]. But none of the data is provided and the analysis isn't exactly...rigorous, to put it charitably.

EDIT: Why in the world has this been downvoted to -3?! This is a reasonable comment to make complete with an example. If you disagree, blindly downvoting isn't informative of anything except that you don't like a comment.

_________________

1. https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/04/30/2016-macbook-pro-...

Apple has that information, and they've decided it's a big enough problem to issue a repair program and adjust the keyboard in the new version:

https://www.apple.com/support/keyboard-service-program-for-m...

So, in answer to your question, yes we do have an authoritative source - Apple.

I'll concede that the hardware flaws - independent of personal taste about the touchbar or function keys - is a major problem then.

"how many relevant ports does it have? will I have to carry around a dongle to do the same things I can do on my 2015 MBP without a dongle? oh wait.. nope still need dongles."

And then "Wait why is the 13 inch form factor not even getting discrete graphics processing, nor up to 32GB ram?"

A dysfunctional keyboard is a no-no, because I need a functional keyboard. But in general I'm not bothered at all about the other things that are important to other people, such as key travel, etc. So I haven't been vocal about it.

Marketing 101. The majority of smokers weren't cowboys.

That "most popular" is marketing - they have all of the developers running OSX and most of those are probably on MBP or Air, where developers using Windows or Linux are fragmented across multiple models from multiple manufacturers.

This means that developers are more likely to be regularly using software that actually depends on the keys they stripped off to make the touchbar, and/or software with sub-par to nonexistent touchbar support.

At my desk I have a Topre Realforce 88UB 45g keyboard that cost me like £200, a Razer Blackwidow for gaming, and a Microsoft Sculpt to switch it up.

I'm fairly big on keyboards, but I do love the new MBP keyboard.

I can't remember the old one enough now (I had the 2014 model previously), but I know I spoke of it as the best laptop keyboard - so I agree I probably rate it more than this one, BUT I am so used to typing on this now that I really don't think about the keyboard as a con in the slightest - you have to sit with it for a few weeks and you'll be flying - I break 120wpm on this because there is practically no travel.

What I DO hate, is that effing touchbar. Worst design decision on this laptop. I am 'over' it in that I can work fine with it and don't feel like it hinders me anymore, but everytime I look at it I get annoyed they are still sticking with it.

The only two cons of this MBP now it has a spec refresh -> touchbar sucks and not having ONE USB-A slot really pisses me off everytime I reach for the adapter...

Then they started handing out post-2015 MBP to others and so I've used them a bit. There is zero chance now that a MBP will be my next laptop.

are they really though? or are people complaining but still buying it?

Haven't done a survey, but quite a few folks I know who work at Mac shops report that their employers have been steering clear of the new MacBooks and just trying to keep the older models they already have alive, while also looking seriously into the feasibility of switching to PCs running Linux if they don't get their act together.

Making the keyboard reliable would help, but that touchbar is also a legitimate ergonomic concern for anyone who uses software that requires you to be banging on F-keys all day.

This is ultimately what I ended up having to do; not really by choice. My 2015 MBP was stolen, considered looking for a refurb model but found myself test driving an HP Spectre x360-a minute with the keyboard, another few minutes Googling linux driver support on my phone and some other specs. I was walking out the door with the new purchase 15 minutes later.

It's been a couple of days now, I still haven't gotten around to throwing *nix at it, but for a majority of purposes WSL is getting me by pretty nicely enough. A few days of getting a fresh Windows installation and ridding myself of all that retail bloatware, I'm actually not having a bad time with Windows 10 given it's the first time I've dailied a windows machine since XPSP1.

That's how far I'm going to avoid the new mbp because key input means that much to me-given how much time I spend in text fields, but this is a really enjoyable machine so far. After 3 years though my eyes definitely got used to the retina display, and this screen just can't match the color variation or the deep darks-then again it also may be the high gloss touch screen.

Second, it would involve a ton of product testing, and tedious ironing out of rough edges. Every single time an installation or upgrade fails, or runs into a strange error needing obscure forum searches to fix it, that's a problem.

Third, they'd have to seriously cozy up to proprietary software vendors for application support. This one is unfortunately an endless time and money sink, and can't pay off until they have enough users that they don't need to do it anymore. Thankfully F/OSS options provide some limits on this, but not entirely. Many times there are F/OSS options that are usable, but the proprietary ones are better (and worth paying for).

This is just a few thoughts off the top of my head. Its not well researched or thought out, but a starting point for a conversation.

Second, Linux systems have a bit of a jerry-rigged feel to them that needs to be addressed. Things like fd.o and the FHS are intended to help this, but don't go far enough. Compare this to FreeBSD, where every decision about which packages are used in the base install, what the filesystem hierarchy is, etc. is well documented and cohesive. Linux can't go mainstream until, say, a runit-based distro has no references to systemd in its documentation.

It's not a bad move - if you can maximize the return on DisplayPort monitors, USB keyboards, HDMI cables and MagSafe chargers, it makes sense. Keep in mind the company will eventually have to move to USB-C, as the MacBook Air is the only remaining MagSafe laptop and I won't bet on its longevity. OTOH, the old-style MBPs are enough for most uses, as are the Air for anyone who can live within 8GB.

Not necessarily. A minority of machines are Macs, and I wouldn't be surprised if not wanting to deal with the whole USB-C thing right now is yet another incentive for IT to be interested in ditching Apple.

My office is a great example of this. Hundreds of developers here, and I've seen exactly one of the touchbar MBPs in the office. The CIO hates them with a passion, and nobody's demanding them, so it's 2014/2015 MBPs for everyone. There are a lot of Airs, too, but I've seen zero Macbooks.

We have about 20% of people with 2017 MacBook Pros, including, myself.

I was very happy with every single MacBook Air since I had one (which I think might have been 3rd generation?), and in fact purchased every single MacBook Air thereafter. People really liked the original Retina MacBook Pros.

This idea that these Pro customers who regularly spend $3,000 on their computers are a fickle whiny bunch who are never happy about anything and have always found something to be upset about is complete fantasy and ignores the reality of an actual degradation in quality.

We didn't just imagine the extension of the warranty on MacBook Pros with butterfly keyboards: Apple had to take action because the computers were ACTUALLY BREAKING. I own one of these, my t key ACTUALLY FELL OFF. I'm not just trying to come up with arbitrary reasons to hate on Apple, the "t" key is not some ivory tower feature only some 10% niche care about, this is a serious quality problem.

No one is saying they shouldn't innovate and come up with gimmicks to sell new computers. In fact, the T2 gimmick might be perfect: they get to tell "the common user" that the computer now runs Siri without compromising existing behavior -- brilliant! Compare this to the Touch Bar, which while flashy infuriates me every single day as I repeatedly mute and unmute my computer as my pinky brushes the touch bar so delicately I don't even register the feeling on my finger.

/S

We all want a solid and reliable UNIX-based OS, but we also want an OS that won't be treated as a bastard child by hardware and software vendors. As much as we all love the world of free software, sometimes we actually do want/need to use commercial software as well.

Apple has given us what we fundamentally want, so we just put up with all the baggage that comes along with it. After all, what else are we going to do? Use Windows?

Ubuntu has been a fine OS for me. It's not perfect, but it serves its purpose well enough.

But there's something far worse: killer apps (for some professionals and hobbyists) only exist for Mac OSX and Windows. I'm looking at you, Adobe.

I've been using a 8th gen computer for a year and I haven't had any problems. On the contrary the hevc hardware decoder/encoder works on linux, but I couldn't get it to work on Windows.

On the other hand Windows looks more polished than KDE and GNOME.

Curious. Have you tried Gnome Shell or recent KDE or some modern Linux desktop like that for a while?

Because I always assumed MacOS as a Unix with shiny UI as well, however once I worked on one for a year or two I realized it long lost its uniqness. In many ways the UI is closer to Windows 7 than Windows 10 is. And things like Unity/Gnome Shell or even win 10 long went in a more productivity focused UI concept.

Apple still have the tooling for the 2015 Macbook Pro. The NRE costs to put a modern processor in that chassis would be relatively modes, because it's a much larger chassis with a more straightforward thermal design. The market for such a machine might not be large, but it's extremely important for the health of their ecosystem, because developers developers developers.

Personally, I think that the post-Jobs Apple has developed a nasty case of cargo cultism. Obsessive focus on the user experience has transmuted into obsessive focus on arbitrary design goals - thinner, lighter, fewer ports. They're making record profits thanks to the huge margins on iPhones and the strong vendor lock-in on iOS, but they're burning the goodwill that kept them alive during the lean years. If Apple can't find a way to delight customers rather than frustrate them, they're facing a serious long-term problem.

I honestly don't see how their current laptop line-up makes any sense for consumers (and shareholders). If the TouchBar really makes it easier for non-nerds to find shortcuts, why only offer it in high-end laptops?

The above is to disagree with all of your specific arguments, but I do not disagree with your implied conclusion -- I don't think the touch bar is universally loved. I suspect most consumers do not care about it one way or the other, and I think it was a mistake that Apple should kill.

One of the key tenets of touch typing instruction is to NOT LOOK at the keyboard. And the lack of universal control over iTunes is admittedly a first world problem however they didn't replace it with anything meaningful. I've had this machine for 18 months and I have found zero utility in the touch bar.

I'm very curious to try the new BlackMagic eGPU though!

Though honestly, I was never much for the f keys beyond the browser and in Visual Studio. So the loss of those keys didn't hit me as much as it has others.

Maybe it helps the laptop feel more highend/luxury?

The "niche developer/macrumors posters" were extremely happy with it before, and were hearty advocates of it.

Further, I would say that developers/enthusiasts comprise a very high percentage of macbook purchasers.

This is a long trend that goes back to the old PowerBook days.

Yet the same group that was so vocal in denouncing the new model is suddenly a huge fan of it when a new-new model comes in.

And so the cycle repeats.

I mean, the people who don't like it are in their right to have that opinion. It sucks when your use case gets fucked. But when the removal of the ESC key is your reason to bemoan the sure death of the MacBook, you gotta at least be aware that you are in a tiny, tiny minority.

I always have an external keyboard around for any serious dev work. That way you can pick any style you want, clicky mechanical or wireless or whatever.

And you base this assumption on?

Every action from Apple in these last few years have gone towards the wishes of the average developer/enthusiast.

Worse keyboards, useless gimmicks, gimped CPUs, fewer ports, less repairability/configurability.

If they consider developers/enthusiasts as their main audience, they have a really weird way of catering to them.

And since Mac sales have been at least steady over the last years, developers/enthusiasts have a really weird way of showing their discontent.

https://bgr.com/2018/01/14/mac-sales-2017-marketshare-pc-dec...

"developers/enthusiasts have a really weird way of showing their discontent"

If you want to use xcode, you have no choice[1]. If you're in the ecosystem, you have no choice. So you complain about it and hope they change it the next time around.

[1]-I remote desktop to my desktop, but eh.

My brother works at an Apple shop, and the vast majority of people he has to attend come from all walks of life, they are not developers/enthusiasts.

If 27% of all developers are using Macs (as the stackoverflow survey indicates) and the machines are replaced after 4.5 years then developers would be buying ~1.2 million Macs per year, 27% of all Macs sold.

In terms of revenue developers are probably an even larger share, perhaps a third? That's still not the majority, but it's certainly very significant even assuming that Mac users are overrepresented in the stackoverflow survey.

Know any other data?

Microsoft is trying to push back on this by making it impossible to support Windows 10. We'll see how that goes.

When I was responsible for this at a large enterprise, I was buying 40k devices a year, every year. The Mac component was about 1,500/year. That dropped to 50 when the new keyboards came out and started failing. Losing a few hundred sales isn't a big deal, but some of that money that was going to MacBooks went elsewhere.

I think this is the longest i've held onto a computer.

My work laptop was actually the same generation, until IT recently upgraded me to one of the new-keyboard models. I don't like how loud the keyboard is, and I don't like the touchbar. (sorry, I actually need to press "Esc" and also use non-beautifully-designed software that sometimes uses Fn keys.)

Needless to say, I have absolutely no desire to upgrade my personal laptop. When I do, I can only hope Apple has moved past this, or the F/OSS world has finally acknowledged that the touchbar actually needs to be supported.

That being said, for a personal development machine, I would much rather have a 27 inch 5K iMac with the same specs. Work provides me a decent laptop.

Me and some other pro users were insta-buys for the new machines. But then they had few ports and no function keys. We're still on 2015 machines.

I'm holding out for the mac pro, but I would have bought 1-2 macbook pros if they had been suitable.

It really isn't. In some localized niches, perhaps. Overall, no.

As argued by Paul Graham:

"So what, the business world may say. Who cares if hackers like Apple again? How big is the hacker market, after all?

Quite small, but important out of proportion to its size. When it comes to computers, what hackers are doing now, everyone will be doing in ten years. Almost all technology, from Unix to bitmapped displays to the Web, became popular first within CS departments and research labs, and gradually spread to the rest of the world."

http://www.paulgraham.com/mac.html

If that were the case, Apple wouldn't be selling tons of iPhone's in their "wall gardens" and DRM'd media content and the "Year of the Linux Desktop" would have come ages ago....

The number of people with HN-grade "techie" friends is a rounding error.

If I was on android/PC they would have bought those, for tech support reasons.

I've influenced some friends, too. Word of mouth is the most powerful form of marketing, and professional users talk about their machines a lot.

(Devs, video editors, writers, designers, photographers, etc)

I may be wrong, but I'm highly skeptical that your parents had to be convinced to be a Macbook on the merits of it's technical prowess in relation to other competition. They probably just respect your opinion on technology regardless of what it is.

“There’s a App for That” <—- who makes the apps?

If that weren't the case Samsung wouldn't be the most profitable Android manufacturer with their crappy bespoked custom Android version.

As someone who was a massive fan of Apple MacBooks and recommended them to other people, I don’t do that now. I highly unrecommend them nowadays. I’ve personally in fact bought older second MacBooks since they last longer and work better than the new ones.

So it slowly adds up. Microsoft surface is already making a good dent in what was a loyal Mac Pro market.

It's not just developers and MacRumors posters. Joe Rogan - the comedian and MMA commentator - did a massive unprompted rant on how poor (and he didn't use the word 'poor') the Apple keyboard was on his recent podcast (3rd most popular podcast in the world http://www.itunescharts.net/us/charts/podcasts/).

The keyboard affects anyone who types. It's not a niche group of obsessives at all.

I know a lot of his followers on Twitter are super loyal to the brands he promotes.

I'm in complete agreement with him. In their obsession to make the thing thinner and fancier they have rendered it less usable. They've locked themselves into a marketing pattern that precludes them from having a "if it ain't broke" mindset.

I use it as my home-notebook and iOS development.

> They didn't do that because it is not what most people want.

What's your basis for saying that, besides the assumption that Apple can't be wrong, so whatever it's doing must be what people actually want?

Apple has a habit of designing from an ivory tower and not admitting to its mistakes. I would say it's arguable that their design priorities are currently out of whack: chasing thinness when you're going from 1.5in to 0.75in is one thing, it's quite another when you're going from 18mm to 15mm. It may not be a fatal mistake for them, but it's evidence that they may longer deserve the design deference they've traditionally gotten.

> Apple has to make changes that will sell more laptops to the masses to maximize shareholder value.

Many of those changes could be characterized as pointless sidegrades: merely change for change's sake.

No one wants that touchbar and Apple themselves just replaced the keyboard so to say its what consumers want is just pure fantasy. There's no data yet. Maybe they'll want this new keyboard but you're assuming anything Apple does is what the consumer wants.

While it's easy to say "just trust apple, they're doing it for the shareholders," I think it's also fair to say that they're losing their touch in this venue.

It used to be the only reason you didn't buy a Mac for pro creative-type work was the price. Now there are many great reasons from ergonomics to computing power.

That's not entirely accurate. The original 15 inch Retina Macbook Pro is an ideal laptop as far as I'm concerned. I'm still holding on to mine for home use. It was extremely well received in development communities at the time of release. On the other hand I have 2017 Touchbar Pro from work and it's horrendous for undocked use, borderline unusable.

Apple isn't where it is today because of TV advertising. It's where it is because of brand advocates like the people who are now complaining about the new products.

And you don't ask people what they think, you observe their behavior and hope you can make sense of it. People have no fucking clue what they want. You would have to be insane to ask people for their _opinions_ and expect something you can work with.

For normal humans, having a card slot and being able to use old chargers and accessories is a real consideration.

If you can’t reuse that stuff anyway, then fenestrating may become less distasteful.

Bingo. Most people on this site don't realize they are in the minority.

(Not that Jobs wasn't a Dire Marketroid himself, but at least he knew that practical and functional sells better in the long run than snazzy but busted.)

There are still some available in the Apple Store under the clearance section (https://www.apple.com/shop/browse/home/specialdeals/clearanc...). Definitely your last chance to get this model new from Apple.

Didn't care for the touch bar - yes, hey, apparently all the cool kids 'remap' their ESC key, and many did it I guess 20 years ago(!), but I've got decades of muscle memory to overcome. But beyond that, yeah sure it was thinner and sexier, but had a 20% smaller battery, and for the work I do, I guess I'm not 'pro' enough, but never managed more than about 4 hours max of real work.

The 2015 model was 'good enough' in most respects, and better in others (keyboard, battery), and... cheaper.

Always interested to see and try the newer models, but probably won't upgrade in 2018 or 2019 without some massive reason to do so.

EDIT - well, the 32g option might be a worthwhile reason to upgrade. And the battery looks slightly larger than the 2016 model.

However, Apple has previously led the market in power optimizations. I'm not confident they'll do that this time.

(Edit: Though these new MBPs apparently have a new third generation keyboard, so not exactly identical.)

[1] https://www.apple.com/support/keyboard-service-program-for-m...

Check Apple's refurb store: https://www.apple.com/shop/browse/home/specialdeals/mac/macb...

Also, Woot: https://computers.woot.com/plus/refurbished-macbooks-macbook...

They've played this thinness and flashy lights game too much too long. My new Lenovo T480S (24GB DDR4, is coming next week :) Sweet Linux with i3 tiled window manager. All the ports & productivity I can ask for.

I'm voting with my wallet and my vote doesn't go to Apple.

That was the best developer laptop I had. The missing 2" on the 15" just makes the IDE too narrow.

All the bezel-shrinking R&D being done for phones has to reach laptops at some point. I'm seriously losing half an inch of luggable-but-not-lookable space on each side of the screen, plus a good inch below. (I have like the most common 13" Dell in the world; just walking around in the study room of the library I see three more.)

I frequently put Apple's 17" laptop in a backpack/case slot designed for 15" normal laptops, and it fit just fine.

I have no idea why this style isn't more popular. Maybe it seems too fragile to consumers?

Of course the effective pixels per inch may make some features too small but the effective PPI of 1680x1050 on a current 15" MacBook Pro is lower than the actual PPI of the last 17" MacBook Pro's screen:

147 PPI 15.4" 1920x1200 133 PPI 17" 1920x1200 129 PPI 15.4" 1680x1050 116 PPI 17" 1680x1050 110 PPI 15.4" 144x900

Then a few years passed, and Apple went all-in on high-DPI "Retina" displays, while the whole PC laptop world had a great display regression.

The linked Apple release just says:

> an improved third-generation keyboard for quieter typing

That would have been far more desirable.

I am repulsed by the Touch Bar, and the keyboard which is widely reported to be notoriously unreliable and requiring very expensive repairs does not inspire confidence.

Sigh.

I notice you don't quote two paragraphs right before that:

> The butterfly keyboard design Apple introduced in 2016 has been divisive. Some people really like it, claiming it has fast travel and a sturdy, responsive feel to it. Others feel it's uncomfortable to type on. We haven't seen a keyboard this polarizing in a long time; it's a point of passionate disagreement even among Ars Technica reviews staff.

The reaction is mixed, even among people who compare laptops to each other for a living. But you make it sound like anybody who knows what they're doing would prefer the old model.

This is after an (at the time) abnormally long period of little to no substantial updates to the laptops. If you remember at the time, people were worrying about the lack of a new laptop the way they worry now about the Mac Pro. It's really not completely fair to state this metric without the realization that there was a lot of pent up demand for modern components, which would probably overrule any other issues. I was one of the people that bought the 2016 model -- and I'm not happy (not least of which because one of the keys literally fell off), so "fastest selling" != "well received". As it stands now, for me the defining quality of the hardware is that it is the easiest way to run macOS. The fact that the 2015 model and the Air keep selling so well is in my opinion a better demonstration of the "reception" of this new MacBook.

> The reaction is mixed, even among people who compare laptops to each other for a living. But you make it sound like anybody who knows what they're doing would prefer the old model.

This is also just not a fair representation of the actual state of affairs. Regardless of whether the keyboards are enjoyable when functional, the reality is that they have quality issues. Apple having to create a program for replacing the keyboards since they break so often is just a fact. Interestingly enough, I'm in this camp: I really have no issue with the new keyboard except for the fact that the keys break. Well, that and the Touch Bar which is a separate topic.

what I mean is, if they are selling a ton and its sustained best case scenario), then they talk about that number (thats the proportional term) -- they say things like "we are shipping 1k units per day and projected to hit 50k per month soon".

If they are they aren't selling very many, then they find the derivative of the number sold and see when it is the highest.. "like in a weekend we sold 1 million units!!"

And then if its a slow burn after a period of time they eventually tell you a cumulative number that have sold (integral). "There have been 100 million macs sold to date.." that kind of thing..

So when somebody says "fastest selling", that gives me pause because it basically can mean whatever you want it to mean -- that somehow they have a metric of sales within a period of time of their choosing that was higher than other previous devices. That could literally be because of their ability to fulfill them compared to previously.

Anyway, I'm still holding onto my MBP 2012 and waiting for basically a lighter version of it that has the ability to replace internal M.2 cards (not proprietary), ability to max out my ram and also doesn't have a touchbar.. I mean that touchbar is so lame.. what a waste of effort/time on apples side.. also, talk about fixing something that wasn't broken -- the trackpad.. basically up until the force trackpad people thought it was better than anything else out there by a factor of 10, and apple then changes it and basically everybody says its substantially worse feeling except novice users who know no different..

Isn't that mostly because they let the Macbook Air languish, rather than either upgrading it or letting it drop to netbook-level pricing.

So lots of people (myself included) who wanted a Mac laptop bought the Pro one instead.

P.S.: I don't even think touch-only input is neccessarily a bad idea. All Apple has to do to make it work is to implement some kind of really good haptic feedback which also allows to feel individual keys. I even expected that for this iteration of the MBP for the Touchbar.

> What is that? A non-moving keyboard where a feedback is faked convinvingly enough via localized haptic feedback.

> See iPhone home button and MBP trackpad.

https://mobile.twitter.com/keff85/status/1011350819210498050

With haptic feedback and perhaps different locations/placement, it has the potential to augment or even transform the ways we interact with the computer.

Put another way, the current problems are not insurmountable. Changing habits is not easy. What if there are better options than current keyboards? All I'm saying is consider what might be in the works.

To be clear, I'm not saying that we should blindly accept anything Apple does. But we should not blindly assume that their decisions are based on the worst intentions, either.

While I'll admit there are cool things you can do with embedded OLED displays, the keys they sacrificed for it are keys I actually need to press. Regularly.

Color me optimisitic, but I'm hopeful a new arm-based mac will come earlier than 2020, though.

The amount of money spent on the TouchBar has nothing to do with anything. Apple makes a new set of chips for each new iPhone, iPad and Mac; they have the in-house expertise and the budget to make whatever they want whenever they want.

It's not like the Mac division has it's own profit/lost statement it has to worry about.

The main reason why it's taken this long to get MacBook Pros to this level of performance is due to delays by Intel; simple as that.

I just looked up my laptop's info: 2.7 GHz Intel Core i7 from 2012. So you are telling me 6 years later, I can get a 2.9GHz 6‑core 8th‑generation Intel Core i7 processor for ~$2800. So Moore's law was incorrect?

Historically speaking transistors and performance were coincidentally related: More transistors helped do more things at once, and tinier transistors ran faster than bigger ones.

Now we're at a different inflection point where the transistors aren't shrinking as quickly, but the dies themselves are getting bigger and the chips are growing more complex in terms of 3D structure. There's more transistors in there, but the easy gains in terms of pitch reduction leading to higher clock-speeds are gone.

If we'd been on the same track as before you'd have a ~140GHz CPU. Instead you have a 2.9GHz one because physics is a buzzkill.

Here's an older article discussing the problem from 2012 but the same trend has held: https://www.extremetech.com/computing/116561-the-death-of-cp...

Transistor counts continue to climb but power consumption, clock speeds and performance per clock have all hit a wall.

Anyway, yes, this is why a lot of people, myself included, think the new MBPs are not at all worth the price, especially if you have an older one. There is essentially no reason for me to ever upgrade from my late 2013 model unless it completely breaks. I love this computer, it was probably one of the best purchases I've ever made

If we're going to be rational, we can't wave it all off as marketing or shiny toys, we have to accept that if they are consistently selling tons of products at high margins, they are delivering value, and the market is voting for that value with their pocketbooks.

If we say, "Well, their prices are out of whack with their value because we can get the exact same thing from Bob's Motherboards for half the price," then we are wilfully choosing to emphasize the part of their value that their customers don't care about, while ignoring the part of their value that customers care about.

- The hardware (particularly the keyboard and massive trackpad) is great

- apt-get on WSL is better than homebrew will ever be (powershell too if you have the time to learn it)

- Windows 10 has a dedicated team working on it (Apple has merged iOS and macOS teams since a few years ago, which may be because iOS makes a lot more money).

I bought a first generation Surfacebook a few years ago because I couldn't wait any longer for Apple to release their new MBP range, and I'm glad I didn't wait. It's the best laptop I've ever owned.

Even though I've moved away from .NET dev and work mostly with Ruby and Node it's still my favourite machine to use. I run Debian with minimal problems, and I'm started to get more into WSL, which seems to work brilliantly for all the use cases I've thrown at it.

If the numbers are strong on people moving from MBP to the Surfacebook, then it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility for it to become a real option for developers, regardless of whether they want to use Windows or not.

I still love my 2013 Macbook Pro, but I'm probably not going to be buying a Mac again until they make something of similar usability and flexibility (mostly the keyboard and the ports).

I run Mavericks in a VM to do Mac builds for Electron, and it works fine if you've got plenty of RAM and a fast SSD.

This. I love this about most modern PC laptops. Sometimes you get some driver issues like I did on this MSI where I had to go through a kernel mailing list and use some python scripts to extract the firmware from Windows to get Wi-Fi working:

https://penguindreams.org/blog/msi-ws60-running-linux/

But that was also a gaming laptop. Every Dell and HP I've purchased in the past few years works perfectly with the mainline kernel. I've never had an issue with missing Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or video drivers for years in a PC laptop.

Trying to get Linux working on a MacBook is a fucking nightmare:

https://penguindreams.org/blog/linux-on-a-macbook-pro-14-3/

I prefer i3/tiling window managers and package management to Win/Mac and I'd hate to work at a job where I'm forced to use either.

However, the base model has weak specs and the upgrades get pretty pricey. So it's similar to MBP in that way, at least

I tried running Docker on it, which was a disaster. WSL doesn't seem to fully implement things that Docker or other Linux apps require. Various network things seem to be half working or absent.

I don't want to start an argument with you on this, I'm glad your experience has been different to mine. I've started using WSL as a simple shell to access a Fedora VM running under Hyper-V.

I’ve also switched from MBP to Surface, couldn’t be happier. Great keyboard, great 3:2 screen (since you can’t buy 4:3 anymore), nice trackpad, WSL is great too. Rather than complain, vote with your wallet.

I've been running a ZBook G3 with Debian 9 and have been having a pretty good experience so far. The laptop feels pretty good but I'm sure a MacBook Pro would be a step up in terms of hardware quality.

XCode even connects over WiFi to my iPhone when both are on the same network, but I did have to jump through a few hoops to get it all working

Edit: changed emulator to simulator (which is true, it's x64 iOS).

Apt is so different from homebrew that I don’t think they’re worth comparing directly. Fwiw people run homebrew on ubuntu, presumably because it is «better» (i.e has something to offer over) than apt.

And there’s a lot of applications that don’t work under WSL - a while back, not a single haskell app worked. (I haven’t bothered checking)

Do I like more than Ubuntu (which I use personally)? No, but I find it to be pretty easy to use.

Also, the Ubuntu subsystem has been fantastic for working on remote Linux servers. I was using git bash (or Ubuntu in Virtual Box) previously, but I don't need that anymore. It will freeze once in a while, but it's trivial to get going again.

But just things like the network settings - they have been making getting to Network and Sharing Centre harder each big update, and the replacement (the new metro-style settings app) is just rubbish in comparison. You can't change an IP address in it, can't easily get to the network status, etc... Network and Sharing Centre wasn't even that good but it would be a big improvement to just can the settings app and go back to the Windows 7 control panel...

That being said, I don't mind Win 10 when I have to use it. I use it for games and Adobe products and I find it really nice and prefer it to macOS easily.

My main box at home and my laptop at work are both Linux though. Gentoo for life! When it comes to development nothing compares to a good tiling window manager and a solid Linux ecosystem.

I really wanted to like it, and the concept could perhaps eventually be good, but the current implementation is infuriatingly bad:

• I need more than one tap to change the brightness, volume or skip to the next song.

• The buttons are in different locations depending on context, so it's not possible to use it by muscle memory.

• TouchBar automatically goes to sleep, making the previous two points worse.

• It's not even that good for its intended purpose. Previews of things on it are too tiny. Most actions still require multiple taps, and it's in the uncanny valley between direct and indirect manipulation.

Fingerprint sensor is convenient, but the TouchBar ended up being a gimmick, not a pro feature.

You can add Volume/Brighness Up/Down buttons to the "always-on" touchbar by going to View -> Customize Touch Bar on the finder.

You can also start sliding from the "open slider" button without releasing your finger, which is more granular and IMO much nicer than having to press many times to adjust volume. If they only removed that giant pop-up on the screen with the current brightness and volume it would be a big improvement.

The lack of direct volume control really annoyed me. I probably should have poked around the config instead of just being annoyed about it.

But an even bigger problem for me is the price increase. The base TB version costs 200€ more (or 400€ if you'd buy the nTB 128gb version). With ne nTB version not getting the update, the updated MBP is too expensive compared to non Apple machienes.

But I really love using it for escape. I'm on a 2014 model but not going to the corner for escape is great. Plus I'm about to get one of these new ones, and I feel prepared since I have zero usage of the top row (other than the special functions).

    {
        "description": "Change caps_lock to hyper/escape.",
        "from": {
            "key_code": "caps_lock",
            "modifiers": {
                "optional": [
                    "any"
                ]
            }
        },
        "to": [
            {
                "key_code": "left_shift",
                "modifiers": [
                    "left_command",
                    "left_control",
                    "left_option"
                ]
            }
        ],
        "to_if_alone": [
            {
                "key_code": "escape"
            }
        ],
        "type": "basic"
    }

There are tons of settings posted on Github, and I just modified someone else's to get:

    {"description":"Change right_shift alone to delete_forward",
    "manipulators":[{
    "from":{"key_code":"right_shift","modifiers":{"optional":["any"]}},
    "to":[{"key_code":"right_shift"}],
    "to_if_alone":[{"key_code":"delete_forward"}],
    "type":"basic"}]}

A non-Apple device will do all the same stuff. It just might not do it the exact way you like out of the box.

I pay the Apple tax (albeit exceedingly infrequently) because I can afford it & it reduces friction in my life, not because I have no other options.

It's a good enough effect, though, I will probably keep it. Thanks for the suggestion.

I discovered recently that you could just do a "quick swipe" (very fast) on the button in the right direction on both the volume and brightness virtual button to apply the expected effect. Good enough for my usage.

That way you can just drag the mouse to the lower-right corner and black the screen anytime you like ...

Other than that, I like the 2017 keyboard (assuming mine doesn't break) and touch bar.

Clean != good. These are tools, not pieces of art.

Look at how many people here recommend rebinding caps lock to "esc" and control to caps lock and all other sorts of editing to the keys... should you remind them that rebinding keys is unnatural and the tool should be used the same way it's always been?

I guess it stems from the fact that I've never understood the argument that the touch bar took away the "esc" key... but on every touch bar MBP I see at the Apple Store, the esc key is still there, still right where it was, and still has the same functionality. The only difference is now if you don't use the esc key, you have the ability to remove it and put a more useful key there instead. But somehow this is a bad thing. I don't understand it.

If it's a tool, like you claim, it should be useful for getting work done. But instead you seem to actually want it to be made according to your exact design and visual preferences, which to me sounds more like you're actually looking for a piece of art.

Replacing the top row with the touch bar, in this analogy, is like someone else coming into your workshop and replacing several tools’ grips with big padded things that completely ruins the physical feedback you expect to feel, and never realized you used for fine control until you didn’t have it.

For me when I switched to a Mac, the hardest thing to get used to was the lack of a forward delete key (the Windows-style use of the delete key) and having to use a key combination instead. Even today I still struggle with the lack of pgup and pgdn keys, and the lack of home and end.

In light of commonly-used keys that are actually missing, I just struggle to accept the idea that the Esc key being a touch button but still existing is a hill worth dying on. Especially when, since the touch bar is customizable, everyone can now swap their (relatively) useless F1-F12 keys for the (relatively) more useful Home, End, Forward Delete, Page Up, and Page Down keys. Or whatever else they want it to be.

To me, it's like the digital equivalent to swapping a workshop's dedicated phillips-head screwdriver with one that lets you switch ends to be phillips or flathead or torx or whatever. Some small number of people may complain "but it's not the same way it's always been!", but it sure does make life a lot easier for a lot more people.

"It's not the same way it's always been" has been Apple's driving mission since... well basically forever. Think Different, right?

My only complaint with the touchbar is its too easy to accidentally engage Siri.

Other than that it’s a good idea IMO.

The touchpad is fine for that. No need for duplicating functionality.

You can remove the Siri shortcut in the system preferences.

System Preferences > Keyboard > Customize Control Strip

You left out how easy it is to accidentally brush with a finger and trigger various actions that you didn't want to do.

Especially infuriating when using Calculator and clear a result or turn a multiplication in to an addition.

It is, but they didn't update the model at all.

[0]: http://vas3k.com/blog/touchbar/

For what it's worth, if you tap and hold the brightness and volume buttons, it turns into a slider under your finger that you can immediately use. One tap + drag.

It's the one thing I miss about the Touch Bar after leaving it for the MacBook Escape.

this is the dealbreaker for me. :( i hope they release a model without the touch bar in the future

Happily, you don't - tap and hold the button on the touchbar and drag your finger from there. You do not need to move your finger to the slider. Same works for volume. Tap, hold, drag. Not sure about skipping songs.

Not true; you can change them by beginning a slide over the brightness/volume (and maybe other buttons that expand into a slider) in a single gesture without lifting your finger.

But discrete graphics aren't needed for lots and lots of other software either.

Programming/compiling not-withstanding there are many tasks today that are CPU intensive.

Plus, real professionals use slack, so that extra memory is needed.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/12/17563640/apple-macbook-pr...

https://support.apple.com/en-ca/ht205662

I don't care if Apple has a 4 year warranty program for the keyboard. The fact is, I can't give up my main laptop for 2-5 days every 6 months to have them fix it for free.

Take my laptop in to be repaired, buy a brand new MBP at the same time. Load everything onto the new laptop using a time machine backup (takes about 2 hours), and use that while they're repairing my laptop.

When my laptop is fixed, I pick it up and return the one I bought at the same time for a full refund.

It's a bit of fuss making sure I keep the 'free-hire' laptop completely pristine, but it's fun to use a brand new machine every so often.

I imagine the vast majority of people using MBPs also have a credit card. I think you're imagining a problem here.

A grain of salt (ahem) would be much more believable.

This is of course PR bs to prevent adding more wood to the bonfire.

Anyway, I’m pleased that Apple updated its MacBook Pro lineup today, and I hope that Apple will start regularly updating its Macs again. Competition is very important in the personal computing marketplace. I’m glad that Windows 10 is working well for me, and I hope that Apple will still be a force in computing so that way Microsoft won’t get lazy again like they did in the dark ages of Internet Explorer 6. I have a Mac Pro I still use regularly as a desktop at home, and so I still have one foot in the Mac ecosystem.

I have anecdotally found that just replacing a spinning disk with a nice SSD is enough for win10 to shine.

My next personal computer will be a Mac. I’ve had a few in the past. But it will either be a 5K iMac or a hopefully updated Mac Mini. With the Mac you get a true Unix environment and the flexibility to develop for any platform - .Net Core, Android, iOS, etc. and in a pinch you can run Windows.

[0] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10

It's about deployment. Anytime you use Windows in a cloud hosted environment, you end up spending more on licensing and needing larger instances -- increasing the costs and startup time. I can easily development on Windows and auto deploy on Linux instances when I'm using either Python, C#, or NodeJS. But if I am going to be using Unix like environments anyway for deployment, why not use a Unix environment for development? MacOS gives you the best of both worlds -- a Unix environment for development and polish for everything else.

Most importantly. You the lose the flexibility of developing for two of the four major platform targets -MacOS and iOS. I don’t see a future of developing for MacOS but that may change with Apple’s announced efforts of unifying the APIs for Mac and iOS.

[0]: Obviously certain types of development, like iOS, are inherently and unavoidably OS-specific, but for them this discussion isn't relevant either way.

There's one other thing that I like too; it's linux.

If I bought a macbook I'd definitely leave OSX on it, OSX is a decent system but the lack of decent window manager, the fact that I can't navigate with just a keyboard and the fact that I don't have the ability to mount linux-y/windows-y filesystems except fat is an annoyance too. But they're not annoying enough to make a good Mac Laptop a half-decent linux laptop.

Have an old M4700 here, thinking of upgrading to the 5530, but am not sure what thermal effects of going slimmer/lighter has had on the new design.

(example: compressing things for more than 3~ minutes with xz)

Once the fans are spinning it's rather loud but around the same level as a 15" macbook pro (which my colleague has)

This is why I won't run Windows 10. It's spyware you pay for. No thanks!

Regardless of its price I still won't willing run spyware on my hardware.

These guys are working on a version of the Cog VM that will run on its own, and also working on the relevant Squeak / Pharo libraries that could use it (they need the equivalent of "drivers" — these dudes are even implementing tcp in Smalltalk).

Check it out. Let me know what you think.

[1] https://github.com/nopsys/CogNOS

I've given up running Linux natively on my computers and I'm trying to find the best Windows 10 workflow

To be honest, I could probably get away with doing my work on a 2001 PowerBook G4 Titanium if it weren't for the browser situation for PowerPC Macs these days, but I love having a powerful yet lightweight laptop with a six-core Intel Core i7-8750H, a 4K screen, and a fast SSD at my disposal.

There are ads... baked into the OS?

Where are all these ads that people complain about? Is it the half pre-installed apps that come with your computer that you can promptly uninstall?

https://www.pcgamer.com/how-to-ditch-the-ads-in-the-windows-...

Under the default and recommended settings, it sends telemetry, and occasionally asks you to rate how likely you are recommending win10 to a friend.

When you launch Firefox or Chrome for the first time, a popup appears from the start bar, saying something like "Have you tried Edge? Edge is XX% faster than firefox/Chrome".

Basically you have to be prepared for a new product placement everytime you launch a Micrsoft app for the first time.

I've related on reddit that psychologically, this feels like the difference between being in your own house and being a house guest of an old acquaintance trying to get you into their MLM scheme.

Mid 80s to mid 90s: Apple 2 and Mac

Mid 90s to mid 00's: Windows

Mid 00s to Mid 10s: OSX

Mid 10s to Present: Windows 8/10

Hardware is slightly less polished, but no major complaints there (except for how poor the buying experience was).

Still, keyboard works. It would take something amazing to win me back (like a custom CPU that just completely redefines what we expect from battery life and performance)

What it came down to for me is that I've been using the same window manager shortcuts since the late 80s, and I can't make them work with OSX. Eg, I use focus-follows mouse, and some strange mouse-button + ALT key combos to move/raise/iconify windows. The loss of focus follows mouse is what really drove me nuts. I was forever deleting emails because I'd move my mouse to a terminal or emacs window and start typing, like I'd done for the last 20+ years, but without a click "random stuff" was happening in Mail, which was still getting the keystrokes.

I don't think this is true.

Ubuntu is far less consistent with keyboard shortcuts and menu bars from app to app (OSX has this nailed). This is overwhelming my biggest problem. cmd+c, cmd+v for copy and paste across all apps. Not all apps minus terminal. Double click URL portion in firefox, entire url is highlighted, double click url part in other places, only that word/segment is highlight (I guess it's this 8 year old bug? https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=611162)

Sublime sometimes opens with the menu shown, sometimes with it hidden (I've tried to script this, doesn't always work). Sometimes the window shows up minimized (scripting this catch 90% of the cases)

On quit, Firefox always restores the DDG and Amazon search options, but not the other ones. Why can't it remember this? (there are other cases of partial configuration amnesia for various apps)

"Ubuntu Software" doesn't list available updates for installed "Add-ons", you have to remove and and re-add when you know one exists. It also doesn't let you "search" installed even if you're on the installed tab.

When my I wake my screen up, there's a brief flash of my unlocked screen (someone could theoretically take a picture) before the lock screen comes up.

In OSX and android I just enter my carriers free wifi settings and it works. In Ubuntu, I'm given a bunch of detailed options, and I've yet to find the magical combination that works.

While on battery, the time remaining can be comically off when waking from sleep (23 hours, really?!). I've also had it say 10 minutes left when it shut down.

There are plenty of apps on extensions.gnome.org (available in "Ubuntu Software") that constantly crash gnome. Go through systemd logs, find which ones are causing the problem, try to fix or uninstall.

The list goes on and on. Correct battery time, configurations that stick, consistency from app to app are polish, not preferences.

I really wish one of the major *ix toolkits/desktops would make some effort to attract or accommodate Mac refugees or dual OS users. I just wanna type Ctrl-W to erase a word and GUI-W to close a window — consistently.

Note that you can change terminal to use ctrl-c and ctrl-v for copy/paste. Then if you want to interrupt a running program, use ctrl-shift-c (which as far as the shell is concerned is the same as ctrl-c).

After a year of using Sublime on Ubuntu for work, I have yet to have this issue happen. Even if it does happen, it seems like an application issue not an OS issue.

> On quit, Firefox always restores the DDG and Amazon search options, but not the other ones.

Same case, Firefox on Ubuntu for years and never had any kind of application amnesia.

> When my I wake my screen up, there's a brief flash of my unlocked screen (someone could theoretically take a picture) before the lock screen comes up.

What DE were you using, and what screensaver application? The only time I've had that happen was on old hardware without much support, and I'm still not sure what the entire cause of the issue was.

> While on battery, the time remaining can be comically off when waking from sleep (23 hours, really?!). I've also had it say 10 minutes left when it shut down.

That seems like an issue with hardware as much as with the OS. The only time my battery has reported inaccurate information was when the BIOS was also having trouble detecting battery stats.

Everything you've mentioned has been pretty anecdotal, as has everything I've mentioned. The biggest advantage of OS X is that you have guaranteed hardware support so you don't have to worry about half of the issues you've mentioned. I admit that it does take some tweaking occasionally, but for the most part Linux just works now.

This is a killer for me and I am trying to solve it currently ...

I ran Snow Leopard from 2009-2018 and had FFM due to "mondomouse" but that is no longer published or supported.

Now that I have upgraded (my 2009 mac pro) to Yosemite, I sort of have a FFM solution with a tool called dwellclick and one modification[1] but it's not perfect.

HOWEVER, it appears that there is a new accessibility option in High Sierra that allows you to turn on FFM without third party software. Not helpful for me because I can't install High Sierra on a 2009 mac pro ...

[1] defaults write com.pilotmoon.DwellClick MoveDistancePixels -float 600

(Free, OSS)

I felt that Fedora was smoother, way more responsive on the same hardware (and yes, comparing fresh macOS to fresh Linux install), more consistent and more intuitive, and more usable. The only thing I can think of that's better on macOS is the touchpad, which to the best of my knowledge is a gift given to us mortals by the gods.

Oh, and the macOS default wallpaper is better.

That's the same situation as for ios/android really, it's not a deal breaker, but the quality of life difference is clear.

A cool but probably useless feature in the Chinese IME for Mac is the ability to draw Hanzi on the trackpad as a giant digitizer.

Internationalization wise, I could never dream of using a computer in any language other than English, despite it not being my mother tongue.

I'm absolutely unwilling to give up the Mac trackpad. When I see people who aren't artists using mice I have to question their value system, or assume they haven't discovered the absolute joy that is "tap to click".

Obviously the configuration matters a great deal.