The folks that have invested in the Apple ecosystem are the most fucked - it's difficult to actually replace each part, and I don't begrudge anyone for deciding that spending $$$ instead of time is a good trade off.
Not if you want desktop performance comparable to a Core i7/i9. The ARM64 A## chips can perform like desktop chips but they can't sustain that performance without thermal throttling. To offer sustained performance they'll need cooling (and probably also more cache, deeper pipelines, etc.).
ARM64 is not really that much more efficient than X64. It's slightly more efficient due to simpler instruction encoding but it's not huge. Instruction decoding is not the majority of the silicon on a modern chip.
Despite various issues with the new mac design, it was a good step forward and by most measures makes the previous generation feel old by comparison. Yes maybe they're over-optimizing for lightness and thinness, but these are indeed important aspects of a portable device and should not be ignored entirely.
They just need to correct the balance a bit more toward the middle, not go back in time.
Can you explain in detail why you believe this to be true? Once they hit the natural thickness limits of a keyboard device there really hasn't been any meaningful change. I periodically interact with a range of them and the only thing I can say for a certainty is that the older keyboards feel better and I have to check the system profile to know what the rest of the hardware is like.
I'm not a design expert by any means so I probably can't give as good of a detailed account as others could, but I know when I use my 2015 macbook pro after using my 2018, or after using an XPS or pixelbook, it feels much older than 3 years.
Maybe it's just in my head, as I noted I'm not a design expert, I mostly just know how it "feels." And to me the 2015 design does feel outclassed by most any ultrabook around this year, including modern macbooks.
For sure, as noted I'm all for that. I don't think we need to move back to 2015 to accomplish that though.
High action keyboards will continue to be phased out by thinner devices and more touch. Many will lament it, but I don't see moving back.
By what?
I personally think my 2015 Macbook keyboard feels pretty good. I also spend a heck of a lot more time typing on my Macbook than one-handing it, so the whole "thinness matters more than usage/responsiveness/reliability" thing doesn't really make sense to me as a tradeoff. I can't think of single time I've ever pulled out my Macbook and thought, "this keyboard isn't cutting it anymore."
But even if we decide that 2015 keyboards are all rubbish, other keyboards on other laptops being sold today do not have so many problems that users have literally written software to combat them by suppressing keystrokes. I don't care what design Apple regresses to or who they want to copy, but they need to start copying someone.
To my mind, it's pretty obvious that this is a architectural problem with the core design of butterfly keyboards. After multiple generations of the same problem, it doesn't look like it's a manufacturing defect or an anomaly. It looks like the butterfly keyboard is just plain and simple bad design. Apple wants to talk about being brave, they should be brave enough to throw out the keyboard and put in something else, even if that something else is just a carbon copy of a standard, modern ultrabook keyboard. I understand that the butterfly keyboard was very hard to build, and I'm very impressed with the tech that went into it, but if you want to make an exceptional product you have to be willing to occasionally kill your darlings.
I mean I get why people have preferences for the things you mentioned, but I'd call them appeals to "comfort and familiar" not "state of the art."
Not all of us.
I was saving up for a high-end MBP but the 2018s came out with essentially the same design and little public acknowledgement of the keyboard flaw, so I ended up building a rather beefy hackintosh with that money, instead.
I miss the portability, but gained power, thermal headroom, the ability to upgrade/replace individual parts, and a ton of expansion. It is glorious. And I paid a fraction of what I would have paid Apple.
I've had too many hackintosh headaches in the past decade.
That said, I cover my build here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19433038
How many people on the Apple engineering team are just screaming to work full time using nothing but iPads? How many Apple designers are waiting to get rid of their iMac Pros and switch to using whatever Photoshop version is available on the iPad? Or do you think Apple would give them Windows desktops to work on?
At this point, I'm on a 2012 MBPr and I keep on deferring to the next year and waiting to see if it's resolved. They are pushing me ever year to say F-it and build a hackintosh.
I'm holding out some hope for the new rumoured 16" to come back to the original 2012-2015 design, but I know Apple is belligerent and will release an even thinner design!
My dream spec would be:
- the 2012-2015 chassis
- improved 4k oled screen and bezel less design
- arm processor which will do away with throttling and fans
- no touchbar
- 2012-2015 keyboard
- 2012-2015 touchpad not the massive one in newer models
- magsafe
I can wait a couple of years, but in 2021... Apple won't get my money anymore.