I choked on my beer

The 13" MBP has a 54Whr battery, the 15" an 83Whr battery.

https://www.casa.gov.au/standard-page/travelling-safely-batt...

https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/as...

https://www.apple.com/au/macbook-pro/specs/

Lines 7-8: https://www.phmsa.dot.gov/safe-travel/batteries

In your FAA document, page 2, line 3.

I’m finding it hard to see a scenario where I would prefer a charger over a little additional weight on the laptop itself.

But guess what? It doesn't really matter. I'd still pick the 2014 chassis if it was specced the same as the 2018.

I do hope the next chassis will fix the keyboard and maybe even add back the sd-card reader, not to mention introduce top spec non-touchbar models.

If they just extended the bulge a centimeter out to the edges it wouldn't look as slim but it would easily be able to fit magsafe, USB-A, HDMI, and maybe even RJ45.

Let's add a few millimeters back and give us MagSafe and the old keyboard.

I think between 2013 and 2018 I went through three replacement MagSafe 2 adapters at $75 a pop.

The MagSafe idea I miss. Their implementation? No.

I wonder whether it's related to the push to be more environmentally friendly.

It really has to be a nightmare trying to optimize cables for environmental friendliness, especially in an environment where the looks are so important. I don't know about all the options as I'm not in the business, especially for white cables there simply doesn't seem to be many, or even any reasonable option.

Notably, the newer generation of chargers seems to have replaceable cables. Maybe that's the least bad?

That's an interesting take. I don't think it holds up because their charge cables have been falling apart before the charger reaches end of life for at least as long as I've been using MacBooks, so 13 years.

I bought a 2018 15' MBP last week. I wanted the 2018 model for the 6 core CPU, so did not have a choice regarding the TouchBar.

Here are some of the issues I've experienced since the purchase:

1. I keep on hitting escape multiple times because I don't know if I've touched it or not. More often than not, I will press it one time too many or not trigger it at all. I don't look down at the keyboard when I type.

2. I switched the TouchBar to show function keys (f1, f2, etc) by default. I plugged in an external monitor and was prompted if I want to extend the screen or mirror it. After selecting one of the options, there is NO WAY to change your external display settings using any keyboard shortcuts.

3. Every time I want to change volume or brightness, I have to look down at the TouchBar. It gets annoying, it is unnecessary, and again I have to look at the damn TouchBar to be sure how much I've lowered/increased the volume/brightness.

4. I use vim. It is a nuance.

I bought this to do development work, mainly because I highly value the trackpad and OSX user experience. But to be honest, I am contemplating returning it within the 14 day window because how fucking annoying the TouchBar is. Knowing that without this gimmick, the device would have more battery, more space to accommodate a proper keyboard mechanism, just makes me wonder how much out of touch with the users must the designer or product manager at Apple be? Not to mention that without it, MBP would probably cost around $150-$200 less.

The TouchBar is utter garbage. Why slap it on a $2,000+ "pro" machine? It makes the MBP line up an expensive gimmick toy for rich kids. Total cashgrab and disdain towards their customer segment who rely on these machines for actual work.

I won't go into details about the butterfly keyboard and magsafe. While those decisions are unpopular, they aren't as debilitating as the TouchBar.

I remember Steve Jobs talking about the downfall of Xerox being caused by marketing people taking over control of sales and product development. Now Apple is following the same footsteps. They're abandoning good and sound designs which got them to where they are now.

Sorry, but I had to rant. The TouchBar is utter garbage.

I was ready for an upgrade from my 2013 MBP, so I went with a Dell XPS 15. Really no complaints about it, although it is heavy/large for lugging around to a quick coffee shop jaunt. I picked up a refurb Surface Pro i5 for those, which I am just now getting around to setting up.

The XPS 15 trackpad is slightly worse than my 2013 MacBook's, but I use it mainly as a desktop replacement (it literally replaced a Skylake i7 Hackintosh I was using as my desktop.) Everything else works well.

I have WSL set up on Windows 10, which is really, really neat. It's a full Ubuntu instance in a window, without the overhead of a standard virtual machine. I had an entire LAMP development set up on it in under an hour (and most of that time was just waiting for it to run updates.)

I mainly use the Adobe suite, a web browser, and now that I'm writing software again, a LAMP stack. The XPS 15 is a perfect fit for this. I did turn automatic updates off when I first got the computer, so it prompts me to run the "seasonal" updates, not unlike macOS. Everything else was super easy to get used to.

also fyi you can map caps lock to esc so that resolves your esc issue at the least

I'm holding onto my 2015 for dear life but it's still going very strong, i imagine i can keep using it a few more years at least

People kept saying the same thing about wanting 32GB memory in a laptop. Look what happened.

szggzs27's workflow could be vastly different than yours, and in no way invalidates either, but assuming that there's no need for a 6 core in a laptop is profoundly judgmental and ignorant.

Well maintained 2015 MBP on ebay are too expensive for the kind of hardware that they have. In my opinion, at least.

The Carbon X1 has a nice 2560x1440 HDR screen and similar form factor.

Then they also have the X1 Extreme and P1 if you want 64GB of memory or a 15" version. And the T480S which hyou can still upgrade yourself, but isn't quite as slim.

I went from MacOS to Fedora and haven't really looked back. I have old Macs as boxes for Logic Pro, for iOS builds, and for the occasional Photoshop work, but I don't find myself needing to carry them with me anymore.

For me, and I suspect for a lot of folks, desktop Linux is probably good enough (and, for me, enjoyable in a way that MacOS used to be but isn't anymore) to be very productive and Lenovo's hardware is fantastic.

Except work reliably without me having to waste time fiddling around with drivers and settings.

A few weeks ago, I installed Ubuntu 18.04, the latest LTS version, on my desktop. So, this isn't some nerdy Arch or Gentoo setup, it is basically the most mainstream GNU/Linux-based OS you could possibly imagine. I couldn't even log in because the Nouveau driver would crash every time I tried. (Maybe they've never tested it on a 4K display? Or with my specific card? Who knows.)

Also, Ctrl+Alt+FN to go to a TTY did not work, so I couldn't even fix it by installing the proprietary Nvidia drivers from there.

I was able to log in by changing to a non-default desktop environment, or maybe login/display manager? I don't remember the details. Anyway, it "worked", with slideshow-tier FPS, until I installed the proprietary drivers and everything was fine.

This isn't a fluke -- it is consistent with almost 15 years of experiences trying to use GNU/Linux on the desktop.

Something like this has simply never happened to me when using an Apple product.

For desktop especially, I've had close to zero problems over most of that time, and especially recently, though I admit that I've always used the proprietary Nvidia drivers.

My desktops have always been generic, build your own affairs, with relatively slower/older graphics cards up until the past five years, where I've been getting one generation back from the high end Nvidia cards.

There's no question that the hardware integration for OSX is better. But, for desktop at least, in my experience, Linux has been pretty close for quite a while, though I know my experience has been better than what others have reported.

These days having to fiddle with drivers on Linux is a rarer and rarer occasion. I haven't had to worry about this ever since I ditched my NVIDIA card a couple of years ago.

You need to do some research when buying hardware that is compatible with Linux -- this is why everyone in this thread recommends Lenovo X1. It's more expensive than other laptops, but it is really compatible Linux hardware.

Also it takes some time to get driver support into Linux kernel, so for average hardware that doesn't specifically supports Linux, I'd expect about 6 months to a year after hardware release; also for a jump in video quality -- it takes Xorg some time to get proper video support, though I saw Lenovo Yoga machines working with 4K just fine a few years ago. (Disclaimer Lenovo Yoga is not as well supported in linux as Lenovo X1 carbon)

Nvidia is notoriously hostile to linux, which made it a no-go for me and I'm sticking to either AMD or Intel for my video cards, where everything works flawlessly.

I believe the point the parent is making that Apple hardware is now bad enough that having Linux on well supported hardware, would require less fiddling and would provide better user experience.

Exactly. Business-class machines will generally do you just fine.

My experience: most of the Lenovo T, X, and P laptops, modulo some of the tablet/Yoga features, work out of the box. I had a HP Spectre x360 13" before a Lenovo (took it back for other reasons, didn't like the keyboard) in early 2018 and it worked out of the box--and with a 4K display besides. I've used Dell's XPS 13 and XPS 15, and they worked out of the box, too.

I realized last week that I at this point can safely assume that stuff is gonna just work with my machines. I plugged in a Lenovo Thunderbolt 3 dock with two monitors, headphones, Ethernet, and a bunch of USB devices and I didn't even stop to think first whether or not that it'd break. It didn't. It is predictably acceptable, today, in 2019.

It's emphatically not perfect. I have complaints. But the showstoppers are gone, if you buy mainstream gear.

NVidia 1070 Ti

> You need to do some research when buying hardware that is compatible with Linux

This backs up my point -- I don't have to waste time researching anything with macOS.

> Nvidia is notoriously hostile to linux

That may be true, but as a user, I don't care why macOS works better, or whether it's fair. I just care that it does.

> I'm sticking to either AMD or Intel for my video cards, where everything works flawlessly.

Not an option if you need CUDA support.

> I believe the point the parent is making that Apple hardware is now bad enough that having Linux on well supported hardware, would require less fiddling

Researching what hardware is supported counts as fiddling.

You are comparing apples and oranges by complaining that Linux didn’t work on a laptop where it didn’t come preinstalled, whereas OSX worked on one where it did. If you tried to install OSX on the laptop you installed Linux on instead it would almost certainly fail, and if itnworked it would be because of orders of magnitude more research needed to build a hackintosh.

In a comparison with Windows Linux might fail the “install on a random laptop and have it working” test, but certainly not against OSX.

But even now, desktop Linux is constantly broken. I just recently spent an hour getting wifi drivers to work again, and switched back because I remembered just how frustrating it is to have everything feel like it’s “third world” computing.

I ask because, in the context of this thread, everything works on the Lenovo laptops that have been mentioned. I've got two (a work and a home one, one with a discrete GPU and one without) and I dropped Fedora on them and it just worked. I keep my Macs for stuff I can't do (as mentioned elsewhere, Logic Pro and the occasional iOS build), but I've been running FC28 and then FC29 as a baseline OS for a year now with no trouble. Probably my only complaint is that the IR camera is higher in the load list than the visible-light camera so I have to remember to select the correct one for teleconferences, but if that's the biggest issue I've got with it...man, that's a pretty good place, for me.

There is definitely janky hardware out there. Would never say otherwise. But most of the time, business hardware from the big manufacturers, especially ones that will sell you a Linux laptop, will set-and-forget.

I have a Mac laptop because: 1) the battery life is outstanding, this is OS and hardware, 2) it just works from the standpoint of roaming between networks and connecting periferals (all be it through limited port options), 3) the experience is generally one of it just works with zero thought.

Now I won’t lie, I’ve considered Lenovo, it’s definitely on my list of what I would choose to replace my Mac laptop with, but I have plenty of experience with Windows, don’t like it. I have plenty of experience with Linux, don’t want to deal with issues when I’m disconnected and remote. So while Apple has hit a stumbling block here, for me it’s still the best experience that I’ve had using a computer.

Maybe to some people that makes sense, but to me that's the equivalent of uninstalling a version of .NET in Windows and then being greeted with a command line version of Windows on your next reboot.

It's been a long time since I used apt, but you were almost certainly warned.

Consider using ASDF for userland Python version management in the future on both MacOS and Linux.

Choices imply the ability to make a bad one. And it's a fairly recoverable one in your case, so I gotta say the criticism feels weak.

Sure you are.

It's a shame that hardware manufacturers with closed, low quality, drivers taint the image of an excellent OS for power users. However, being power users and all, the extra step of using only good hardware is not too much to ask.

My life is basically 3 browsers and Adobe CC and a code editor and a bunch of cloud file stores. I also connect to a pile of cloud Linux VMs in AWS and GCP, but I can use any decent terminal app for that. (Biggest problem for me is, access to my Photos on Windows, for personal life stuff.. but I can keep the old MacBook around for that).

I know a few people who need new hardware now and would consider buying a Windows laptop now for a year until the news is that Apple has fixed their stuff. And who's to say it's that much of an issue that people won't stick with Windows even then?

I'll also add: the new iMac Pros are nice, but the issues they've had with the Mac Pros make me wonder if they can even get a new notebook hardware line "right".

I like having Messages on my desktop, but I also sit at my desktop with an iPad and an iPhone. When my MacBook Air dies, I'll need a machine I don't hate.

Turns out, I probably hate Windows less than I hate new Apple laptop hardware.

I've got an AMD Ryzen powered Acer with Ubuntu, it runs better than when it had Windows on it.

The T490...is a regression, more in line with the T480s, and it makes me sad.

I am literally buying an extra T480 to put away until I need it.

Lenovo X1 Carbon? That's what I bought instead of a MacBook Pro 13, and I absolutely love it.

No Magsafe connector, but two Thunderbolt 3 ports, USB-C charging (even via low-end chargers, like a Nintendo Switch adapter), two full-size USB ports, HDMI out, the best laptop keyboard I've ever used, a 4K HDR screen, etc.

Yes, it's slightly thicker than a MacBook. But it uses that space to be such a better computer.

But I am so much happier with everything else that I am willing to put up with it.

The main difference is that some of the pad click actions I found frustrating and unintuitive, but I now use the buttons which work fine.

I moved from Linux to a Mac for work a while ago, and I can't stand how terrible the dock and window system is.

* Alt-tab is useless. It has no way to choose a particular window without raising all the windows of the same application in the current workplace.

* What's worse, it will move workflows if there's no window open in this one.

* There's no way to say "open this application" to the dock without right clicking. Clicking an icon is a bet on whether it will open a new window, raise all the windows of the application over whatever you are doing, or move workspaces for no particular reason.

The whole system seems to be done for a one-window-per-application workflow which doesn't exist in 2019. My usual workspace has a Vim window, a terminal, and several Firefox windows open; it's impossible to move comfortably between windows without using Mission Control each time. Windows 95 had better window navigation than MacOS Mojave.

it is crazy how bad windows management is on Mac. Every Mac users that I know have installed some softwares (like spectacle) to help with this. Some people must make a lot of money selling software that solve these issues.

What's crazy is that it is still not built in.

Snapping windows on the sides is something that have existed for a really long time on other systems.

You can do a side-by-side split of two windows by long-pressing the full-screen button, but it would be nice to have something with a little more versatility out of the box. I used to use a program that let me snap windows to the sides Windows-style, but it got in the way of other gestures and I almost always just want two windows side-by-side anyway so I just use the built-in functionality now.

Let's say I'm focused on my terminal, and I want to focus on the Firefox window that's besides me. The shortcut is Alt-tab Alt-~, but after doing the first key:

1. All Firefox windows in the current workspace go to the top of my screen

2. If there were no Firefox windows in the current workspace, OSX helpfully moves to the next one.

3. Even after that happens, I need to cycle among all Firefox windows. There's no way to Alt-tab repeatedly between pairs of windows of different applications.

Once you pick the a window, it will be foregrounded. Everything else will stay the same.

Think about it, if you have N apps open with M windows each, then on macOS you need at most N+M key presses to reach your desired window, while on Windows you may need up to NM key presses.

23 years ago, Windows allowed me to do this in 1 or 2 clicks without looking. Now it's either a lot of clicks and observation or making a mess of my workspace.

I’ve also mapped a four finger down gesture to open App exposé.

I'd encourage you to check out the Dell XPS series. My XPS 15 with a 4k display seems higher quality than the macbook display. It looks really good. It also has USB A and USB C ports, and even comes with an escape key! And Linux support is top notch.

Also it seems like an admission of defeat on the touchbar. I don't see how adoption would ever happen if the only people with access to this hardware spent 2K+ on their device.

Too bad it's so anemic.

I wonder how the Air would compare to an iPad pro in benchmarks.

Apple replaced them during my update too

I’ve not heard about anyone else having this problem with loose USB-C sockets

I. of course have. keyboard. issues. as well – in case the random periods. and multiple spaces thing did not. make it obvious.

Figured this would. be a good time to. not correct the. issues. Along with the space bar my left command key doesn't always register, its shit.

We have external monitors/kb/mouse through OWC Thunderbolt 3 Docks and we have a lot of trouble with the connectors on the Macbook making everything unreliable.

The whole thing is a little crazy since the OWC dock is as expensive as an iPad or a cheap windows machine.

-> (===) <- squeeze the rounded ends in just a tiny bit.

(Edited to add: the goal is to bow outwards the straight sides of the plug just enough to provide grip without preventing it from being inserted into the socket)

Also, what is up with macbookpro's Bluetooth? Everyone at my office has the 13" and no one can use Bluetooth consistantly. Lost connections, no connections, etc.

The power cable was the wobbliest, but is now quite firm again

I think the USB-C port would be better in the back of the laptop instead of on the side where it gets in the way & becomes loose if you use it anywhere other than a flat surface.

The touchbar is dumb and should just go. No physical escape key is such a braindead move it makes me lose respect for Apple.

Magsafe I'm kind of mixed on. Magsafe was awesome, but it also got super hot -- so hot that I'd have to change how I was sitting on the bed or couch. Haven't had that problem with the USB one.

The lack of ports is dumb too. My previous macbook was plenty light -- I don't need a thinner/lighter laptop. But thank god they left in the audio jack.

The ginormous trackpad is another braindead move. Do all Apple designers have tiny hands?

It feels like consumers are the users that would like to look down from the screen to see a small second touchscreen.

They should fire whoever designed the arrow key layout. The up and down keys(the ones used most often) are super tiny. I regularly find myself wanting to hit up and accidentally hitting down or left.

  the removal of the escape key (I'm a vim user)

HTH

The macbook touchbar is a disgrace and I have NEVER seen anybody use it to improve on their workflow.

But fast forward several years later to the 2018 model, and I've come to really appreciate it.

Even as a heavy user of keyboard shortcuts, I rarely, if ever, use function keys.

The only regular usage that comes to mind is editing markup in the Chrome dev tools (F2 shortcut). And I rarely used the Escape key. After remapping caps lock to control, and then using control+[ for escape, you're free to use Vim, Emacs, etc. without getting carpal tunnel. I cannot fathom people actually hitting escape on a regular basis when using Vim; that seems like ergonomic egregiousness :-).

In some ways, I find the touch bar to be _more_ efficient than dedicated function keys. Changing the brightness and volume, for example, require only a single motion--tap and move the slider to the desired setting (no need to tap first, and then slide). So instead of repeatedly tapping a dedicated key, you can immediately dial-in the desired setting.

Also, I've found when watching videos or music, having a large slider on the touch bar to adjust the video position is pretty nice. Very easy to jump around.

And context-sensitive shortcuts are generally well-designed. Some things I've found useful on the touch bar include screenshots--a visual representation of the various options are shown on the screen (current window/full-screen/or region), along with options for where to save the screenshot.

Other useful features include tab-preview and switching in Safari, word suggestions as you're typing, and type to Siri (e.g. once enabled, you can tap the Siri icon and say "remind me to do X in Y hours"). Not to mention other useful tidbits like emojis when using iMessage.

I can see how people might dismiss the touch bar without having explored its capabilities--but there's no denying the innovation behind context-sensitive dynamic keys. Overall, I'm a big fan.

On Linux (specifically gnome), the situation is a bit different as function keys tend to be more prevalent.

To be real though I don't like the touch bar either.

And I'm trying to train myself to use jj instead of ESC.

But still. I miss my ESC / hardware volume / hardware brightness buttons etc.

Instead of using jj or escape in Vim/Spacemacs, I just use control+[.

With caps lock mapped as control, it's a single fast motion--left pinky to caps lock, and right pinky to [. I've been using this setup for years. It's one of the first things I setup on a new computer/OS.

Mapping caps lock to control also has other benefits. You can quickly zip around the terminal using control+a/e/k/y/d/r etc. As an added bonus, the same keyboard shortcuts work equally well on both macOS and Linux [1].

[1] https://www.ostechnix.com/list-useful-bash-keyboard-shortcut...

I am 50/50 VIM / EMacs so the it's important for my control key to be on the home row.

I'm not sure why keyboards even have caps lock. It's rude in chat right :-) I started with Sun keyboards where control was on the home row. I guess if one spends hours typing long capitalized acronyms daily, then it makes sense.

It's personal preference in the end. I certainly wont buy another MBP - my 2016 has had 4 trips to the Apple store since I bought it for key replacements.

Personally, I prefer the Control-[ combo as it allows me to slide my left pinky slightly from the home row and right pinky 45 degrees up and right to produces an ESC. Over the years it has made having to hunt for a physical ESC key quite irritating for the few programs which require it :-).

HTH

  " j + k = normal mode
  inoremap jk <esc>
  inoremap kj <esc>

And it has the added benefit that, if you type it when already in normal mode, it's effectively a no-op (as opposed to jj, which will move the cursor two lines down).

With caps lock remapped to Ctrl its easy to reach from the home keys and requires no Vim configuration.

I have my fingers crossed that they will redesign the MBP and fix the keyboard before my 2013 dies. Hope springs eternal.

My personal machine's still a 2014. Keyboard's much better (almost as good as the design that came before it), I don't miss the larger touchpad at all when I'm on mine with its smaller one, and I do not want to pay extra money for a touchbar that I basically have to disable first thing to have a usable machine. Oh and I have to disable force-touch because otherwise I can't reliably click-n-drag files. So all the new fancy stuff I turn off because I can't use the machine with them on.

Getting rid of the long cable for the charging brick while raising prices is a slap in the face, too. Oh and all my stuff's still USB-A. Friggin' Apple. I hate that they can mess up so badly and still be far enough ahead of the competition that it's hard to switch.

you can't feel what "key" you will be pressing

you get no feedback when you press a "key"

for the last one, there is an app which makes the touchpad vibrate... which really isn't the same feeling though

so yeah... that touchbar is a useless POS...

Prior to this laptop I would upgrade every two years.

I'm not sure about the Macbook's bundled SSD.

For the Lenovo, I'm incorporating the cost of upgrading to a 1TB Samsung 970 Evo Plus NVMe SSD (which has a stated sequential read/write speed of 3500/3300 MB/s).

And because the Lenovo is not using a proprietary connector (as my current Macbook is) and does not have soldered RAM (as my current Macbook does), I can upgrade both of those components down the line too.

In particular I am a stickler for the mac touchpad quality and, while Dell doesn't quite match it, it's well within the tolerable range for me.

The 4K screen and touch sensitivity are nice bonuses — I didn't think I'd ever use the touch but I have come to using it a lot in casual interactions, e.g. during meetings.

Come on over to the Linux side of the house! Between system76, ZaReason, Purism & Dell, there are some great options for a developer laptop.

And you get to customise a system which works for you, which I consider a plus.

As am I. It finally made me move ESC to Caps Lock and it's actually way better IMO.

Agree with all of your other points though.

Hey me too. I wonder how many of us there are?

  imap jj <ESC>

What MacBook doesn't have any standard USB ports?

Not everything I connect to a USB-C port works.

Not in the sense of "if you buy a device, this is probably the connector it has". The fact that it's defined by USB-IF or whoever doesn't mean that USB-C devices are common or inexpensive.