I don’t get all the hate on the new MacBook Pros. I have a 2016 with TouchBar. It’s not a beast but it’s definitely faster compared to the 2015 model I replaced.
Apple replaced the best programmer's laptop on the market (their previous-gen MBP) with the MBP model that they sell now. It's not a bad laptop per se, it's just that it's not a programmer's laptop.
Apple sells the MBA which doesn't have enough pixel density to support tmux with multiple panes.
Apple sells the MB and the MBP with that execrable butterfly keyboard which is terrible for touch-typing for long periods.
There's nothing else anymore. They stopped selling that Ivy-bridge-era MBP model they were keeping around for serious touch-typists. Everyone I know who has one of these turkeys defends the keyboard, but then admits that, "anyways, I usually use an external keyboard anyhow." I need the built-in keyboard to be useable and Apple has given up on making those.
I'd buy a new programmer's laptop from Apple, but they just don't make those anymore. Apple took something we loved away from us - that's why the new MBP gets so much hate.
I'm not an expert in keyboard, I'm just a software developer that spends a bunch of time in front of a computer: I had some adjustment period to the new keyboard but now I'm used to it and it feels perfectly fine.
What is the problem with "touch-typists" and the new keyboard? Is the layout different in such a way that confuses you? Is it the lack of feedback from the touchbar?
If you're a vim user the touch bar mbp is pretty much a no-go. Most users just map capslock to escape and they're mostly okay, but if you're like me and like to map capslock to delete, then having to press escape on the touchbar just doesn't work. (i've tried to map some other key to escape, but haven't found anything that feels natural)
US users can map caps lock to esc an be fine with it, but pretty much the rest of the world uses more characters than english does. Many people use caps lock as a switch to the local keyboard layout. This way you can get the best of both worlds.
Yeah. But I found it didn’t make sense to me, my muscle memory is for my pinky to reach up. Hitting a flat surface was less weird than hitting caps lock.
I have a 2016 touchbar MacBook Pro. I’ve been learning vim, but I agree using escape is hard with the touchbar. I ended up mapping “jj” to escape. Seems to work well and keeps my fingers on the home row.
The keys don't have enough tactile feedback. That tricks (my) brain into hitting the keys harder because they instill less confidence. That's exhausting when typing for a few hours.
The ESC key issue isn't as bad - I have 'jk' remapped to ESC anyways. But the lack of feedback with the butterfly keys makes my hands feel like I'm setting myself up for repetitive stress injury.
The keyboard is just awful. Can anyone honestly say that they prefer the feel of the butterfly keys?
> Apple sells the MB and the MBP with that execrable butterfly keyboard which is terrible for touch-typing for long periods.
The MacBook and MacBook Pro's keyboards are markedly different. Sure, they're both butterfly, but MacBook Pro's keyboard is a lot more clickly/springy than MacBook's, which I can only describe as mushy. Have you tried using them for an extended period of time?
God I love my MacBook Air 2013 keyboard. I still think it’s tons better than the 2018 MacBook Pro crap. The MBP was given to me my the employer but I don’t quite enjoy typing. It’s like walking on grass vs walking on tarmac. One just makes your fingers so goddamn happy when you type. The MBP keyboard keys get stuck all the time. The spacebar get stuck at times! WTF! That’s just terrible engineering.
Steve jobs or whoever it was doing QA, I gotta say really had a knack for what is usable and makes the evokes a feel good emotion. The new macs nowadays look beautiful but horribly lack in usability in many ways. Steve Apple was very focused on usability. Aesthetics came later, now it’s the reverse.
Steve jobs or whoever it was doing QA, I gotta say really had a knack for what is usable and makes the evokes a feel good emotion. The new macs nowadays look beautiful but horribly lack in usability in many ways. Steve Apple was very focused on usability. Aesthetics came later, now it’s the reverse.
Agreed, and there's a name for this. It's 'bullshit'.
Making a laptop with a terrible keyboard to save 2-3mm of thickness when no one really cares about such extremes of thinness. That's bullshit.
Making a laptop with largely unsupported USB-C ports and nothing else. No transition-year with both new and old ports, just tossing the old ports out abruptly and making customers buy fucking dongles. That's bullshit.
Eliminating function keys for a gimmicky touch screen which almost no one will use on a day-to-day basis a month after buying the laptop. That's bullshit.
The MacBook Pro gets all the hate because is the only model even worth talking about...at this point if you buy a MacBook Air with its 4yo internals and 8yo screen you end up feeling they took you for a chump, so you buy a $2000 machine when you only needed a $1000 one but then the keyboard breaks.
hahaha my exact experience. 5 trips to the apple store and finally my 2017 13 inch pro is usable. I've had the battery, screen, and keyboard all replaced under warrantee. Easily the worst experience Ive had with an Apple product.
I do get angry when something breaks and I need to pay for a fix, obviously, but generally I'm a lot less annoyed when the company offers to fix something at no cost/under warranty/free replacement/whatever. Forgive and forget?
How about it not breaking in the first place? When people talk about their Macs with pride, the first thing you'll probably hear is "Apple has the best build quality".
A 2017 13" Macbook Pro should not require 5 service trips in its first year. Warranty or not, we're not talking about some $200 piece of crap that's made in China, we're talking about a premium laptop at a premium price.
I guess I’ve just never had to deal with, or see anyone else have to deal with repeated repairs. And yes, I agree that this isn’t a great look for Apple. But it’s better that everything’s fixed for free than the alternative.
after the second or third trip, they should have just given a new replacement one. 5 replacements (if I read that right) would be classified as a 'lemon' under car laws in many cases.
When it's getting repaired, you don't have access to that same laptop. For professionals, it's a waste of time and an interruption to our ability to output.
I bout a full spec XPS 9560, the second time my '16 MBP went in for repairs. The same generation CPU, the same storage (2TB) and double the RAM... and it's $1000 less than the full spec MBP.
I wonder how long before a lot more folks come to the conclusion that Apple premiums aren't worth paying anymore.
I have a 10yo Acer laptop that at the time cost me about 500$ which up to this day required no fix or trip to the repair shop.
If I had spent 4x the cash and still was forced to take the laptop to the shop 5 times to fix a myriad of design and production problems for a product that is marketed as high-end and professional-grade, I can assure you I wouldn't forgive, much less forget.
I guess I’ve just never experienced the kind of hardware failures that everyone else is mentioning, so I don’t have a lot of experience with how they actually occur. I’m not saying that they don’t happen, but I have no idea if these are early failures or the middle of the bathtub curve.
They are not building what people actually want. A modern macbook pro with F keys and a physical escape key instead of a Touchbar and ports that actually get used in addition to USB-c (USB, HDMI, maybe a memory card reader). They are so out of touch it's a joke. I'm not sure how they are managing to make each iteration of the Macbook Pro worse except for the actual specs.
Is that what people want, or is that what you want? I couldn't care less about a row of keys I never use, so I'm not sure you speak for everyone when you say what "people" actually want.
What this person wants is a home, end, forward delete, pgup and pgdn key on the keyboard, which the touchbar lets me have. Funny how what "the people" want manages to line up exactly with your expectations and doesn't match mine at all.
Exactly right. And I made the jump and bought a USB-C monitor which plugs right into the MBP and charges and connects video in the same connector (which is awesome). Then I bought the USB C to Lightning cable, which fast charges my iPhone. I wish Apple had gone with USB C for the iPhone instead of Lightning, but I think they are too deep in with Lightning at this point.
I have the HDMI/old-USB to USB C dongle, but I hardly ever use it these days.
I think that's what a lot of people want, at least in my circle of friends who have the Touchbar and they absolutely hate it, mainly because of the escape key, accidental touches of the touch bar being annoying, and it being a visual distraction (minor issue IMO, unless you work in lowlight conditions a lot).
I wish Apple would go back to the 2012 models and just refresh the internals.
The full size SD card slot is important to photo/videographers, a market that Apple seems to be taking for granted recently. The range of "professional" users that the Macbook Pro is actually appealing to seems to be getting narrower and narrower over time.
Can attest as a non-pro photographer (but as someone who cares a lot about photography), that the SD card built in is not that important. I tend to use a dock/reader anyway because most of my cameras use CF or mini SD. True, full sized SD cards are actually not used in any equipment I have now.
CF has always been used in high end bodies, but most of them still have a secondary SD card slot. And these days SD is fast enough to be used as the primary card and there are flagships like the Sony A9 that only take dual SD cards.
well... sprite wants it and I want it. and some colleagues want it too. So... "people" - yeah - "people" want it. Not just sprite.
There's not a lot I can do to register dissatisfaction with Apple's direction. I bought a 2016 mbp, then returned it (for a variety of reasons) - many of which have been beaten to death here in the last 18 months.
I use both the F-keys and Home, End, Insert, Delete, PgUp, and PgDown on my laptop. The two use cases can co-exist, but it seems Apple doesn't want to bother appealing to those who want both.
HDMI isn't dead and it pisses me off that they sacrificed it in exchange for any amount of thinness. I don't notice how things my laptop is day to day, but I definitely notice when I can't plug into a projector.
As a professional I encounter still too many VGA only projectors in clients offices, but HDMI is the dominating standard by far. So many people use TV in their conference room and that is not going to change any time soon. Getting rid of the HDMI port to save a few mm of thickness is just plain stupid.
I watched my boss buying a new MBP on day one. Months later I still laugh when I see him fiddling with adapters that never work reliably.
I'm yet to see a TV with USB C inputs. Unless of course , if you're suggesting dongle-hell as an alternative for all missing ports, in which case, whatever few mm you save in thin laptops are gained back and more by much fatter dongles you have to carry around (or forget).
That is not how Apple works, the reason they do such drastic changes like dropping support for floppy/cd drives, usb A ports is because they want to move the industry forward.
The keyboard fails are double the rate of the old model, which elevates it from "very rare" to "rare." The problem is that the repair was $700, so the folks to whom it happened (including myself) were very, very vocal.
I've had two of the new pros for the last ~year (one for work and one at home) and haven't had any keyboard issues on either. I don't doubt that it's a problem but it probably gets blown a little bit out of proportion
I’ve had a 2017 MacBook Pro in daily heavy use for a year now - no keyboard troubles.
Our IT Department anecdotally reports that about 15% of the 2016 models had issues, and fewer of the 2017 models. Nearly all of our 2500 employees have MBPs or iMacs of some sort.
I've heard similar reports from the IT department at my employer as well. However, on my personal computer (and I've seen similar with a few friends), I've had to have the keyboard repaired 3 times. This makes me suspect there's something that aggravates the issue, or that a lot of people use external keyboards (which a glance around the office suggests is true). The majority of the keys that have failed on my computer have been in the areas that get hot when the processor is under load.
Our sample size is smaller but we are closer to 40% with models needing multiple fixes. It doesn't help that most of our people are traveling with them and working in various environments. The few that uses them as desktop workstations (with external keyboard constantly plugged in) have a lot less issues.
Mine's a year and a half old now, no problems here. Works like a charm.
I should note that roughly 25% of that time has been on an external keyboard (Apple display, MBP lid closed), so it might not see as much use as others.
