Apple 2019: writing a post summarizing Apple products' issues will compel a point by point response in which a fanboy will either tell you "works for me" or "you're holding it wrong".
[0] https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/03/rude-or-mean-comput...
It shows a disregard for the facts that some may rightfully call "flamebait".
As a condescending elitist hipster latte drinker on an ultralight convertible Lenovo Yoga + Windows 10, I feel excluded. The days that condescending elitist hipster latte drinkers only used Mac have long passed.
“Oh, please. People don’t _actually use_ macs while drinking their lattes anymore (except maybe ironically). Lenovo (running Windows with the Linux Subsystem enabled) is the only halfway decent way to get work done. Unless of course you’re one of those hipsters running Arch. I’ve been meaning to try that, actually.” -actual 2019 computing hipster, probably
I've been using Arch since '06, back when Judd was still in charge and the repos were divided up in terms of "stuff Judd maintains" and "stuff other devs maintain." It was this small community project that nobody had really heard about, and I got so used to it just not being a thing that when (sometime in the range of '10 - '12?) folks started talking about it as a hipster thing, it really took me by surprise. A few years later it seemed like it was just one of the more well known "hands on" distros with great docs, and I was glad to have that phase be done with.
(I'm about to. Probably to a Thinkpad with some Linux.)
Last year I had a lot of problems with this. It was pretty common[1] that USB-C to HDMI cables would work at first and then stop working in a particular port. Sometimes rebooting helped. Sometimes swapping the cable for another in the same port helped. Sometimes using another port immediately helped. There was never a good explanation for why this was happening; most resources blamed the cables. After some software update last year, suddenly all these bad cables are fine in any port.
As of this summer, there's a shiny new issue where connecting to GMail (at least) from System Preferences doesn't work, which I discovered through changing my password recently. SysPref claims it needs to open a Google login in Safari (even though that isn't my system browser!), but when Safari opens, it's to a blank page. Again, searching makes this seem like a pretty well-known problem, but no one has a solution, and Apple seems silent on it, and enough people do not have the problem that a common response is that those of us experiencing the issue must be doing or have done something wrong. And maybe we are(!), but I'd sure like to know what.
> 3. If you have a tech support issue go into the Apple Store and work with them 1-1.
Well, that literally hadn't occurred to me (for problem 2, above); I would have assumed store employees don't know anything one couldn't google immediately?
[1] I was quite annoyed that this went on long enough for me to have an opinion like "pretty common" for these connections not to work sometimes, over more than half a dozen such cables.
- Switch the USB-C port from one to another - Open up my laptop from clamshell mode and switch the cables around - Unplug my monitor - Restart my computer
The nuclear option of rebooting my computer and monitor always seems to work.
I know its a problem with the macOS somewhere but Apple just doesn't seem to be focused on fixing these types of things. Even if you file a bug report it disappears into the ether and is never heard from again.
but hey at least it works. on my linux laptop it allways forgets the layout that i had and resorts to puting the external monitor right, and dont ger me started on X and fractional scalling.
Scaling is a mess though, totally agree with that.
i dont know why it does need to run the external monitor to 2x if i want 1x. and i lost way to much time playing with the setup. ubuntu 1904, if you have any new ideas im willing to try it.
For proper mixed dpi under Linux, you must use Wayland. But then, under Wayland, the fractional scaling is still not done (the wayland apps will work fine at given fractional scale, but x11 app will be @1 upsampled, i.e. blurry. That includes the browsers).
(No, I don't know why it still isn't fixed yet.)
i cannot run it at 200, 150 is perfect, i need fractional scaling
Was this feature removed from OSX? Or did OP try it already and it didn't help much? Honest question here; I haven't touched a mac in over a decade.
Fixed the issue for me.
I've got an LG one at home, and heading into work where I have 2 27" monitors, but only 1440p always feels like a downgrade.
I have a 4k display, and when I select the "Looks like 3840 x 2160" option, UI elements are too small. Selecting "Looks like 2560 x 1440" results in blurry fonts. So I've selected "Looks like 1920 x 1080", and thanks to Retina, fonts are crystal clear. Unfortunately, UI elements (such as the menu bar at the top of the screen) are pretty gigantic now, but I live with it.
https://github.com/LumingYin/macOSLucidaGrande
Note for me, this makes the ••• dots go away when typing passwords into system prompts. Fine!
Really skimped and got a peasant model there, eh?
(Note that this is sarcasm directed at Apple’s pricing, not at rusk, who I assume is a very decent human being.)
At least this was my experience a few years back.
It's the best service shop I've dealt with.
What if it was stolen or broken entirely instead of "SSD needs replacement"?
Then there would be nobody to replace it for you (in a month or a day), but you'd still have work to do. At best you would buy a new one, set it up again, and lose a few days to get back on track while your customers wait.
And that's assuming you have the credit at hand then and there (and you don't need to do any market research, but can just grab a machine).
Granted that's still better support as non-business you'd get from one of the PC OEMs, but still crap.
Where I'm from, all official Apple premium resellers do the job just fine.
FTFY.
I don’t care if there’s an Apple-store 50km away if I need my computer working now.
Maybe we should specify it to mean USB ports you can use for something without an adapter.
- Run a display
- Charge my laptop
- Charge a phone
- Connect a drive
I can even use a single port to both charge the laptop and run a screen with multiple USB devices attached to it.
I now need to daisy chain converters to use my PS/2 mouse on my MacBook though, so that's a bit of a hassle.
It’d be fun if at least the iPhone was chargeable with usb-c, but even that requires an adapter.
Also, there are usb-c to lightning cables, so I'm not sure why you think you need an adapter.
Charge, drive 2 displays, use a YubiKey, connect to a wired network and have a spare USB for charging my phone or connect a Time Machine backup.
Without daisy chain or a hub that's no longer possible.
I know I'm an outlier but still, new laptops offer less and less ports, including my Lenovo T580, and that's a shame for some.
Wait... why can't you do that anymore? I charge, drive 2 displays, and have several chargers and USB devices plugged in just via the 4 USB-C/Thunderbolt ports. Is your complaint the number of ports or the fact that they're USB-C? It sounds like the specific benefit was only the variety of ports unless I'm reading this wrong...
You may have missed the YubiKey and the wired network. :-)
About a year later, the stand became a little loose so over the course of the day it would end up tilting down.
Apple sympathised this was the 2nd time I had to send it in for a repair, they ended replacing with a similar specced iMac from the current year. They also give me the opportunity to upgrade any components I wanted just like if I was buying new. They also give me another 3 years of Apple Care. Ended up upgrading the CPU and GPU for about £300 and getting a brand new 2018 iMac
Obviously this is anecdotal but its things like this which keep me going back to Apple.
Despite being out of the 1 year warranty without Apple Care, the woman who took my computer put in a work order to have the top case replaced and handed me a new battery off the shelf and rang it up $0.00
My friend was free as I was walking out of the store, and asked what it was I came in for. I explained about the top case and battery and when he realized I was getting the repair and replacement for free, he looked incredulous and said that he would've charged anyone for both of those without warranty or AppleCare.
No charge.
Accidental Damage adds $49, $99, $129, $199, $219.
Does two years of Apple Care get you on site and accidental coverage for under $200? Oh and no deductible. Apples per incident Accidental Damage on a Covered AppleCare+ device is $99-299.
Not to mention a bunch of other weird things, like relocking 10 seconds after I login occasionally and having to restart so my headphone jack works (2017 macbook pro).
I have relatively other complaints (keyboard, dongles) as a first time mac user, but weird stuff like the above does remind me of past linux experiences.
That is similar to Catalina with its too many new untested features.
Then they fixed the bugs in Snow Leopard.
The severity of Catalina's bugs are much greater than Snow Leopard. For example, there is now simultaneously a Mail deletion bug and iCloud bug to ruin your data across all machines.
Catalina needs a Snow Catalina.
This Macbook Pro has an actual keyboard, magsafe power port, continues to function great, works great with external monitors (HDMI port). Other than feeling squeezed for RAM and that the CPU isn't the fastest anymore, it was well worth the purchase price.
Since then the hardware has gotten worse, and with MacOS Catalina, the software is worse as well (the removal of 32-bit support affects my workflow; I can't use MacOS Catalina).
The sad thing is, nothing else has really gotten better. I'm leaning toward side-grading to Linux, but there's risk involved in buying a full-spec machine for Linux and perhaps finding it doesn't do everything I need it to do.
At my office all Mac users get cheap multi port usb-c dongles and they’re terrible. The HDMI connections display content that’s too contrast-y and end up giving users headaches. It’s very frustrating.
In the meantime, Windows "just works."
Only if you get one with a Touch Bar - which are the more expensive end of the MBP range.
However many users don’t like the Touch Bar. For myself, I used escape and the F-keys a lot and the idea of remapping caps lock is really more of a kludge than a proper fix (not least of all because I do frequently hope between USB keyboards and Linux laptops as well - so pressing caps lock isn’t a habit I particularly want ingrained into muscle memory).
Given the premium you pay for Apple and the form factor of USB-C, having more than 2 ports shouldn’t be a feature reserved for the upper tiers of MacBook Pro’s. In fact it never used to be back before MBPs took on the design stylings of their “Air” counterparts.
So they hiked the prices in order to give me a "feature" I wouldn't care about even if it did work well, and have to effectively disable to be able to use the laptop. Thanks.
If they'd kept prices about the same (the modest spec bump certainly didn't justify such a large increase...) and left off the damn touchbar I'd be on a new one now. Still on my 2014 instead, tempted to drop a few hundred on a fast Dell or Lenovo and stick Linux on it but knowing it'd just piss me off so much I'd return it. Really wish anyone would give them some real competition on their OS.
All MBPs in my company have 2 USB-C ports because my company (like many others) only buys the cheapest model of laptops.
1 port? Apple, I will go ahead and follow the USB C revolution. But you think that'll happen with effectively 1 port?
You can change it to behave that way for all usb keyboards and you can also use xmodmap or a program called xcape to add dual functionality to the key in linux.
YMMV but the appeal of MBPs for me was never OSX/macOS but rather the build quality of their hardware. I don't feel that's the case any longer. I guess if Macs are your main platform then remapping might be a more favourable option but for people where the MBP is the outlier (like myself) changing everything else to fit is just bad advice.
Caps lock being on the home row is a bad design in my opinion. Remapping it to something useful is making your hardware work for you, not against you. You obviously can't make your coworkers change their behavior but you're completely in control of your own, where most of your work is likely being done.
It seems like you are using different keyboards constantly so fixing it on one laptop maybe doesn't offer you much benefit. I doubt that everyone that reads this is constantly changing keyboards, though. For those it would certainly be beneficial unless they are for whatever reason using caps lock frequently.
They concluded with it. Resorting to it would mean that they had no other arguments to make.
Not once the order was not correct when reconnecting.
Not had that problem personally in at least 3 MacOS major releases. What version of MacOS are you using?
Agreed. It always surprises me to see this kind of text in an argument outside of a grade school schoolyard. I've never once read anything like this and thought to myself, "Well, that proves it! This guy's right!"
I agree with what you're saying, but as a pedantic factual correction, the 13" MacBook Pro has two.
Meanwhile HP doesn’t want to fix my work Zbook because while the high pitch fan whine is annoying, the computer still functions. Keys and the little mouse button are falling off after one year.
In my experience Lenovo Thinkpad hardware customer service easily beats Apple in efficiency and speed. You spend considerably less time debating the topic than with Apple and Dell. "Hey this is broken, did you try this, ok send it in, we will ship you a box." Or for less than $100 you can have 2-3 years on-site. On a higher end X1 Carbon right now 2 year on site with accidental damage (ad is usually depot only, but the on site covers normal failures) is less than $200. 5 days to get my laptop back to me would feel slow.
Apple's adapter only goes to 4k@30Hz. Which have you found to work? My monitor only has usb-c and two 4k hdmi@60 and two HDMI 4k@30.
It's also annoying that Netflix on Mac doesn't do 4k where even my lowly Surface Go does.
https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MUF82AM/A/usb-c-digital-a...
Apple Store is a crowd of tired as hell staff who's only desire is to get rid of you.
2. I just downloaded Caret (Markdown editor) from their website and used Homebrew to install a CLI tool. Nothing has changed between the current OSX and previous ones.
3. If you have a tech support issue go into the Apple Store and work with them 1-1. Very rare to find anything that someone in the store doesn't know.
4. MacBook Pro has 4 USB-C ports.
5. If you resort to calling groups of people "condescending elitist hipster latte drinkers" then pretty sure you've lost the argument.