Apple has lost that magic it had. It's no longer a special company where people used to wait for hours at a time to buy a phone. Apple isn't that company anymore, where someone with good taste used to make your choices for you, and they somehow knew what you couldn't quite articulate.
There was an iPhone, an iPad, a MacBook Air, and a MacBook Pro. If you wanted the experience of an Apple phone, you bought an iPhone. You didn't go around asking if you should buy an Xr, Xs, or X, 9, 7, or iPhone googol. You went to the store and bought an iPhone. The product categories were clear. The vision behind them was clearer. Everything just made sense. And it worked too!
Apple doesn't make sense anymore.
I have a top of the line MacBook Pro 2016 that I can't type on. I am the professional these machines are meant to target. My use case isn't "hardcore" or "niche." It's that of most entrepreneurs, programmers, and designers. I wanted a machine that I could carry around in my backpack with good-enough battery life that could let me work from a coffee shop. Nothing fancy. Nothing complicated. Just a machine that a woman can use at a coffee shop with her soy latte.
What I got for my thousands of dollars is a machine that can't be used without its cradle. The keyboard has stopped working correctly despite weekly cleaning. I am worried that the screen will stop working too. And I don't have the time to take my machine back to the store and get it replaced because I'm so busy that I can't live without my computer.
Apple was supposed to be the company that made computers for people who do stuff. Now, it's a dividend machine that happens to make crappy computers.
I'm currently dealing with the keyboard having a few broken keys, and waiting for a few more before I get it fixed. I got mine in 2017.
I have a Macbook air from 2013 that I have put through much worse conditions. The battery isn't doing too good, but the keyboard still works fine.
I don't think I'll buy another Mac unless they start putting usability over being 1mm thinner. I would happily have a slightly thicker Macbook Pro, to have a usable keyboard.
There is this really weird hindsight about Apple products that I just don't understand.
Apple products have always had weird quirks and defects. Always. All of them. The joke about Apple was to make sure you ALWAYS got AppleCare, because the odds of a failure within three years were high and for most repairs you were looking at a minimum of $300. Any repair of a logic board was $600+.
I've been using a Mac as my primary machine since the Intel transition in 2006. Every single one has had an repair bill covered by AppleCare that was larger than the cost of AppleCare itself. The video card on the logic board on my first Core Duo iMac failed at some point. $800 repair. My polycarbonate MacBook had the super drive fail. That was like $250 alone. Something else failed with that one but I can't remember. Battery or trackpad maybe. My MacBook Air from 2012 — the screen delaminated — $300 for a new screen + labor that I don't recall. Had it replaced right before the warranty expired, but it's happened again with the replacement as well. And it will eventually happen to every single MacBook Air ever made.
Mac products are not designed to last (that's not saying that they can't, but they aren't designed to). They are not designed to be repaired. Never have been. They are designed to get you into a 3-5 year upgrade cycle. Once you realize that it's actually quite freeing because you just don't worry about it the same way you don't worry about the quirks in a leased car. You buy a $3,000 MBP and keep it for three years. You sell it for $1,000 when the warranty expires and get the new one for $3,000. It ends up costing you $55/mo forever, but you always have a new model MBP. That's the Apple model, and that's the way it's always been. If you want a computer that's designed to last you get a ThinkPad or a business-grade Dell/HP.
And yet here I am with a 2010 11” MacBook Air desperately hoping for it to break so I can justify a replacement (just not yet because the new keyboards are crap).
I have three iMacs from a Strawberry second gen, one of the last white polycarbonate models (first core 2 duo?) and a 27” iMac in the enclosure with the really thin edge.
I have an iPhone 4 which doesn’t run anything I am interested in using, an iPhone 6 which is way overdue for a battery replacement.
To get close to the type of problems you have, I’d have to talk about the various Wintel laptops I have had over the years which ended up failing due to external or internal power supply issues, GPUs that just stop working, and batteries that just give up.
I have come to accept that Apple is forever, and I only rent time on a Wintel.
I've either been friends with IT that bought 25 laptops a year, or done the buying myself for about the last decade. The new Macs have widespread reliability issues that were previously highly atypical. The genius bars have also gone to shit; it's now much less common to be able to get instore repairs. The new thing with the 2016 and on series is a joke of a warranty where the device disappears for at minimum the better part of a week.
The combination has me struggling to figure out what we buy.
> There was an iPhone, an iPad, a MacBook Air, and a MacBook Pro. If you wanted the experience of an Apple phone, you bought an iPhone. You didn't go around asking if you should buy an Xr, Xs, or X, 9, 7, or iPhone googol. You went to the store and bought an iPhone. The product categories were clear. The vision behind them was clearer. Everything just made sense. And it worked too!
But back then, people were complaining that there weren't enough choices. A lot of people wanted a bigger phone than the single iPhone size, but at the same time a lot of people would have stopped using iPhones if the single product offering grew to the Xs MAX size.
While I do miss the simplicity of the choices, I'm one of those people who most likely would have switched to Android if I couldn't get a small iPhone. I think the one flavor of MacOS is the most important place where they should offer just one model, and fortunately they still do.
Of course Apple have stopped selling the SE which was the only phone they had for people with smaller hands than the top decile. Extra choice is clearly not the reason for their loss of direction.
Sadly, the SE is dead. The best you can hope for is that there are is a little refurbished stock available in a usable configuration, but that chance is already slim and dwindling.
Again, they are not refurbished, and this would be obvious if you'd bothered to look. The banner at the top of the page says "refurbished clearance", but that's only because Apple's site categories aren't neatly divided. These are not refurbished, they are brand new.
What can be more frustrating than to leave your laptop, multiple times, for days, in an apple store to repair the awful keyboard that they managed to create?
Typical Thinkpad users don't even use the touchpad. They use the Trackpoint. If I had the option, I would configure my Thinkpad BTO without a Touchpad. The Thinkpad Trackpoint (not Dell, HP, or anyone else) is still superior in my opinion to the Touchpad on the MacBook Pro.
I own a top of the line BTO 2017 and 2018 MacBook Pro 15".
I've purchased a 2017 MacBook and three MacBook Pros (2007 15", 2009, and 2014) and while these are used every day, it's my Carbon X1 (third generation) which really shines. It has three "input modes" (TrackPoint, touch screen, and TouchPad, a great keyboard, and a 14" matte screen that doesn't reflect light. To top it off, the X1 is less expensive with specs better than any MacBook Pro. I'm an Apple/MacBook Pro fan, but (to echo others here) if I had to decide today on a new laptop it would be the X1 6th generation. I agree that Apple is losing its way when it comes to laptops.
That being said, the X1 touch pad with Synaptics software can't match a Mac touchpad. If you're not willing to make a compromise on this specific requirement then stick with your Mac.
I've used multiple generations of ThinkPad X1 Carbon at my past 3 full-time gigs, and the touchpad works great in Linux relative to any other laptop I've tried.
A large part of the reason the Mac touchpad works so well is tuning in software. I doubt you could come close to tuning it as finely under Linux, but it works well enough.
Well, it's not that hard to configure touchpad on GNU/Linux to feel even better than on macOS. What's actually hard is getting all the apps to make any use of your touchpad gestures and to not do it in a simple binary trigger way.
When you are next time in one of those coffee shops, I suggest you to look around to spot people with latest macbooks. Then ask yourself what category of users they belong to. And whether their primary use case is the same as yours.
It is. Doing emails, calls, documents, a little bit of programming, lots of design stuff. Oh and very few of them like the newer machines. They're all tired of how crappy they can be.
This has come up before when I criticize Apple's current product line. I think it's an Apple-specific no true Scotsman fallacy. I buy their products. I own an iPad.I will own an Apple Watch. I had an iPod. I've had three MacBooks. I've used iMacs since I was a little girl. My school had the sunflower iMac way back when and it was the best computer I had ever used.
I think I'm fairly representative of their userbase.
> a little bit of programming, lots of design stuff.
> very few of them like the newer machines.
This is exactly my point. I used to be a mac fan for many years. Now all it is good for is hanging on Facebook, news websites and occasionally doing stuff in Google Docs. Basically a stylish Chromebook equivalent. This is the pattern I've been seeing for the last couple of years.
Serious design people seem to be moving to Windows, programmers - to the same direction, sometimes to Linux.
I see “serious design people” using non-laptop macs, and using iPads and/or iPhones instead of laptops for portable devices. There are a few who use Windows, but they are almost uniformly unhappy about it.
The people I see who are most happy with Windows are (still) mostly there for gaming.
Right, so that bolsters OP's point that the categories are so muddled that they no longer really exist. Apple used to cater to both specific markets -- "pro" and "consumer". Now they just label all their machines "pro", despite their evident consumer targeting.
Not a lot of people know this because most people will try to get the problem fixed, but the problem will actually fix itself after enough time and use. The problem with the keyboard design is actually two fold: particulate AND keys slightly out of tolerances. You will notice that the problem almost always gets worse when the computer gets warm. E, C, X, R and a lot of keys on the left side of the keyboard seem to be the most troublesome when it gets warm. The keys expand and start to actually "click" different. The sound is audibly different. It actually drove me crazy when I first got it. It took almost a year for all the keys to have the same tone, and the S key is still ever so slightly softer than the rest.
I have a 2016 MBP and after about 3-6 months I started getting stuck and repeating keys. I was going to take it to the Apple Store to get replaced, but just sort of struggled through it for another 3 months or so as I missed appointment after appointment because I was busy. The problem is now entirely gone and all the keys click the same. I actually had this same thing happen with another 2016 MBP. With enough use, the keys break in and no longer stick.
This is, obviously, a ridiculous solution—if you can even call it that. But an aged keyboard is actually more reliable than a new one.
The fix for this wasn't just adding in a layer to keep the dust out, but getting tighter tolerances on the butterfly mechanism itself and designed around the expansion issue or using different/better materials.
Spraying with compressed air as instructed fixed my 2018 model's E key temporarily, yet lodged debris under my space bar, causing the right side to lose all clickiness. No amount of compressed air could get it to work again, so I brought it in and Apple replaced the keyboard (free under Applecare, otherwise $290).
I don't trust that it won't break again, so I switched to Linux on a Thinkpad (and all the hassle that entails) after 14 years of using Apple laptops.
It doesn't make a difference for the newer keyboard style. The space between the keycap and the board is so small that it's very hard to blow anything out.
It's somewhat buried in the OP, but if you're having this problem as well (particularly with repeated keys, as I am with a brand new fully-loaded MacBook Pro 2018) and don't have time to wait for your keyboard to "bake," I've had some success with https://github.com/aahung/Unshaky as a customizable software debouncing solution. Having occasional "aardvark -> ardvark" errors from aggressive debouncing of my repeating A key is superior to haaving aall my text look like this. It's not perfect, though, and I've had to delete multiple words in this post even with it on.
I hate how addicted I am to Apple's still-glorious desktop UI, font rendering, and trackpad dynamics. Their other hardware choices make me detest their brand. But there's no other way to get my "fix."
Maybe people could publicly shame Apple by bringing their brand new MBPs to various Cupertino coffee establishments and then plugging in big old Dell keyboards to actually use them.
Maybe we could crowdfund a PR agency to package up an easy-to-publish news story on this phenomenon, per [0]? Bring more attention to the phenomenon in a way that's visible to actual Apple shareholders.
I don't have the patience to go through that, especially considering I had my keyboard swapped last week and keys are already behaving differently again, and I've got a new Genius appointment for tomorrow.
I have an original keyboard without the membrane on my main machine and I've been thinking about taking it in to get the upgraded one. But I really don't want to go through breaking in another keyboard if I get a new one with a few wonky keys.
If anything what Apple really needs to do is find either a new material or a new manufacturing process that allows for more expansion of the key and mechanism under heat stress without sticking. This doesn't fix the particulate issue, which ultimate triggers the problem, but it does allow for a lot more particulate to accumulate before the problem renders the keyboard unusable.
It's a corp machine, and we're the IT department, and my boss has already said that if it happens for a third time, he's going to tell our rep to swap it out for an 18 SKU with the butterfly v3.
My understanding is that the best they can upgrade you to is if you're on the v1 keyboard is the v2, as the battery shaping on the v3 bottom case doesn't align with the 2017 logic board, so they can't actually upgrade you to the keyboard with the rubber crumb condom.
I have two kinds of key problems with my MBP. The first is when pressing a key doesn't enter a character on screen. The second is when pressing a key enters two characters on screen.
Like you, I have found continued use to be a solution for the first problem. To speed up the process you can press down very hard on an affected key. My guess is that this eventually breaks apart any particles that were blocking the key from working.
I haven't found a solution to the second problem though.
I honestly don't think they will ever fix it. Why should they? People keep buying the product!
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.
The thinkpad carbon x1 has been a dream for me, I highly recommend it to my nerdy and lost Macbook brethren. However, I'm already on linux and have lived life out of emacs for decades, so I am biased.
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.
For most people: either Adobe Creative Cloud or a stable OS underneath that doesn’t have “turn it off and back on, and then try reinstalling the driver” as a super-frequent troubleshooting step.
Note that I’m not saying the Apple experience is obviously better; there aren’t good options for many of us. Personally, I’m still using a 2011 MBP that I haven’t been willing to upgrade. :-(
> arm processor which will do away with throttling and fans
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.
Man I hope they don't listen to requests like these. I'm all for an improved screen, arm processor w/ better thermals, better and more reliable keyboard, but the design needs to move forward not backward. I can't imagine how anyone can use a 2012-2015 macbook and think the chassis and keyboard should be reverted to that in 2020. I mean it was great at the time, but would be horribly outclassed today.
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.
> I can't imagine how anyone can use a 2012-2015 macbook and think the chassis and keyboard should be reverted to that in 2020. I mean it was great at the time, but would be horribly outclassed today.
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.
The 2016-2019 macbooks feel much more modern. They're lighter, thinner, the touchpad is nicer, more uniform, and though the touch bar isn't terribly useful it looks quite nice. It's overall just a much sleeker and more modern machine.
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.
We are talking about less than a half pound difference of weight between the 2015 and 2016. Whether or not you relieved yourself this afternoon would be a greater delta. Difference in thinness is 0.12" between the two. The bezels are slightly tighter on the 2016 machine but unless you are looking for it with both machines in front of you, I don't think you will notice this. I don't think these changes in geometry make the 2015 chassis "horribly outclassed" today.
I do notice it though. Half a pound isn't trivial when talking about a 3 pound device.
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.
The new touchpad and touchbar could also be used on a new design which allows enough for a high-quality keyboard. I've never been struck by the weight or size reductions but the low-end keyboard feel is constantly noticeable.
I don't think anyone is saying there's no room for improvement but I would really like it if the requirement was that they fit a high-quality keyboard in even if it meant being 10% thicker. My home laptop is still a 2010 MBA because, even after almost a decade of heavy use, it still feels better than the brand new keyboards — that's completely ridiculous.
Well, unfortunately this will probably never be the case. I actually don't mind the new keyboard at all. It's not my favorite, but I actually would rather have the extra thinness than extra action, and believe it or not I prefer it over the 2015 macbook keys (overall I mostly use desktop keyboard though). And it seems the market is mostly in agreement.
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.
Okay, fine. Then Apple should go out and copy any modern ultra-book and throw away the keyboard design they currently have.
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.
Well nothing's "wrong" per say, but since we're talking opinions here I don't think it was thin or light enough, I don't care for mag safe (I'm generally careful where I put cords and find mag safe annoying if anything), actually like the new keyboard better (though I don't care for either that much), and much prefer having 4 interchangeable USB-C/TB3 ports that I can use for anything (video/audio output, midi, external storage, power out or in, etc). Sure I have to have a dongle or two, but I've actually found that to be not a big deal and overall pretty nice. And that's just the things you highlighted, not mention other things like the better touchpad, better speakers, brighter screen, finger-reader, etc.
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."
Funny you mention magsafe, because that was defective too. They settled a class action but didn't actually fix anything. It would slowly toast it's own cable (probably due to dust in the connection) until the insulation frayed and you had to buy a new charger. Of course they would blame you for abusing the cable.
Just because something is a few years old doesn't mean it's old technology or that it's less good. IBM Model M keyboards, for example, are still fantastic 30 years later.
To be sure older != quality. My point was that many of the design choices they made were indeed of better quality, and rather than just revert to the old way I hope they refine the direction so we keep said positive momentum just with more durability.
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 make it a personal policy to never recommend a hackintosh to someone, as it does require some work (albeit, it was less work to install macOS than Windows 10 [but both were relatively pain-free installs]).
How is it less work to install macOS than Windows 10? I personally ran a Hackintosh for two years, bought all the right parts according to Tony Mac, and after getting tired of fiddling each time with the upgrade cycle of the OS, I just went full in with Windows 10, and it was dead simple to install and setup, and it's been stable, simple, and reliable.
No thanks on going back to Magsafe. On a 2009 machine I went through 3 chargers and you could only buy from Apple. With USB C I can at least buy a third party adapter and replace the cable if it brakes.
With how much money they make from iOS vs mac, I don't see how shareholders are doing anything but screaming at them to ditch the expensive legacy platform called mac. As soon as xcode can run on a iPad pro, I think they drop (""sunset"") macos.
>As soon as xcode can run on a iPad pro, I think they drop (""sunset"") macos.
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?
Many Apple engineers aren't particularly happy with the current hardware choices. The teams in charge of hardware don't really care what the software people want.
If I needed a Mac, and the OS+software were the same, I think I'd prefer an iPad Pro with a mechanical keyboard over any of the low-travel laptop keyboards
Been a Mac user since the very early fat Macs. Love Macs. Will miss iTerm. Can’t stand the new keyboards, let alone their reliability issues, my fingers feel like they are typing directly on a desk/concrete. Fingers hurt.
Went to Dell XPS 13. Awesome
Machines. Run Linux great. Got given a Thinkpad T407 and fell absolutely in love with the keyboard. It may not be perfect, but comparing side by side with the MBP 2017 one, it’s so much better that I can’t believe I put up with the MBP one.
I have a Dell XPS (2018?), 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, i7 and 3 year on-site warranty. I am running Linux Mint on it for Android development (Windows is much slower for building Android apps, because NTFS is slow at handling lots of small files - http://www.bitsnbites.eu/benchmarking-os-primitives/). I am really satisfied with the notebook and I had a Macbook for about a year before buying the XPS. There basically maybe 2 things I don't like - the camera position is weird, it's in the lower left corner so you get recorded from a weird angle, I think they moved the camera in the latest model? And, typically Linux, sometimes I have echo and mic problems but Zoom seems to be reliable. No issues other than that.
X1 Carbon if you don't need >16GB RAM. Otherwise P52 if you don't mind running Windows or Linux with NVidia binary drivers - 3K USD gets you 6core i7, 4K display, 32GB RAM 2x512GB NVME / 500GB spinning. That's without deals - which there always are.
Hell yes, that P52 sounds great! I only wish I could use AMD graphics so I could run OSX for a while … just to help with the transition.
I moved to Mac in 2001 after frustration with Windows ME and then XP. Now, I’m having frustration with multiple hardware generations on Mac, and it’s clearly time to make a change. To say I’m in the walled garden is an understatement.
Getting out of the Apple ecosystem is going to take time , plenty of money, patience, and I assume lot’s of sacrifice (I really don’t want to give up my trackpad). I don’t even know where to start, but I suppose buying a new laptop and finding a good distro (thinking Deepin) to put on it will be the best starting point.
I think I'd get the most recent XPS 13. It's (so far) been the most compatible with Ubuntu Linux (with all my data science tools on it), performs excellent. Love the screen (dell seems to be really good in the monitor space these days), and... they fixed the camera location. (as someone else mentioned). There are some great deals to be had as well (if you keep your eye out, or have a passport membership).
The Thinkpad feels...older... like a comfortable friend that's been around a long time. Works great, but the Dell feels more modern. The touch stick... awesome if you like them. (pointy device in the center of the keyboard, can't remember the name).
I'm often curious to what everyone (dev types, I'm assuming here) us a lot of trackpad for? I"m typically using "space bar" to scroll web pages, and often option-up/down for paging up and down.
I do love and think my MB Air trackpad is superior, but it's never been a deal breaker when I use my Lenovo at work.
This is the one I have (alongside the XPS 13). I'm loving this keyboard more and more every day, and can no longer stand using the Apple one even the slightest bit. (I now only use the MBP with the older generation bluetooth/wireless keyboard - the one without the numeric keypad, with the older style chiclet keys).
I may be missing your point, but if you enjoyed the iTerm hotkey feature on OSX you should take a look at Guake[0] which is available on most linux distros.
I will miss iTerm as well, but I'm not worried. I feel fairly secure in the knowledge that there's lots of terminal goodies in the Linux userland that do the same things iTerm does.
WSL for Windows with Ubuntu works... okay. I think they're totally on the right track, but it's still not smooth. I get terminal emulation problems a lot, and the weird display of the filesystem and the file corruption issues plague me.
I think the thing that most attracted me to the Mac ecosystem (for a long time) was the underlying shell (I do mainly data science, security and shell / sysadmin style work). Now that Windows is headed in this direction...
For all of these - I really wish for a faster video card in all of them. I like to run two P2715Q Dell 4k monitors for my work (thinking about the newer 34" ones), and all of these machines lag somewhat with that. (No, I haven't tried the EGPU for the Mac yet).
Apple keyboard related tale, though not an Apple butterfly keyboard:
I had to call Apple support yesterday to register an AppleCare Protection Plan agreement. The way this works is you first get routed to someone who takes some notes about your case, then that person sends you to the correct specialist.
Anyway, after waiting on hold a short while (Apple lets you choose your genre of on-hold music or wait in silence... though normally they call you but for some reason they kept getting my voice mail so I had to call them), the woman who picked up starting asking me for information.
Thwack, thwack, thwack I hear as she’s typing, like fire crackers going off. Eventually I couldn’t take it anymore so
I said: “that is not an Apple
Keyboard you’re typing on!”
“Nope,” she said. “I spilled water on my Apple keyboard earlier today and it stopped working, so I pulled out this old PC keyboard I had. But I hate it. I texted my husband and asked him to go buy me a new Apple keyboard.” (It seemed like she was working from home.)
So I told her some people really prefer those mechanical switch keyboards, that they probably wouldn’t stop working from a bit of water, but maybe her Apple keyboard would start working again when it dried out. “I hope so,” she said, “Because I really prefer it for typing and my husband balked at the $100 cost of a new Apple keyboard.” (Obviously she meant an external Magic keyboard and not a MacBook PoS keyboard.)
(Aside: I’d consider it a public service if the WSJ would make this article available for free. I love the toggle switches! I was unable to make an outline.com link but I could read it by following the link from a Google search in an incognito window.)
Sci-Hub can make the argument that the material it makes available is largely publicly funded research, which the public paid the creators for already by funding that research. That argument doesn't apply to the WSJ.
As one of the early engineers of the company, I have a 2015 Macbook Pro. New engineers with their new touch bar Macbook Pro are jealous. Other than some minor battery degradation it hasn't failed me. I'm holding on to this as long as possible.
Yeah, this is like 90% of it. They passed the point of diminishing returns from thin/light back in the early 20-teens, especially for "Pro" laptops. For a pro laptop I want power, battery life, and durability far more than thin/light.
>“We are aware that a small number of users are having issues with their third-generation butterfly keyboard and for that we are sorry,” an Apple spokesman told Stern in a statement. “The vast majority of Mac notebook customers are having a positive experience with the new keyboard.”
Doubt it. Both me and my manager have 2016 MacBook Pros and we both have had issues. I at least have randomly repeating B's. Not sure what my manager had, but he seemed to be more affected/annoyed than I was. Luckily I have external keyboards at the office and home, so I can avoid using the keyboard and not break it even further.
The butterfly keyboard itself wouldn't be so bad were it not for the failures. It wouldn't be as good as the old MacBook Pro keyboards, since whenever I use my old 2011 MacBook Pro, I am surprised by how nice the keyboard on it feels.
Thank You Apple. Finally you have the courage to admit it. ( Although in both cases they were under the pressure of media and press )
Unfortunately the extended warranty programme [1] still does not include MacBook 2018. Now they have acknowledge it, at least there is hope this will change. I could never understand why Apple don't have some internal guidelines on it, even if it was out of warranty they could have fix it for free as Standard Procedure, without actually admitting it was a problem. Instead they try to charge people outrageous repair price on it.
Keyboard, TB3 Charging, Internal Display Connector, Trackpad False positives, and numbers other small things I can't remember. I am hoping 2019 Apple will have a MacBook Pro redesign that fixes all of these issues.
Also please read this fine lines it might be very interesting for some:
>If you believe your MacBook or MacBook Pro was affected by this issue, and you paid to have your keyboard repaired, you can contact Apple about a refund.
> I am hoping 2019 Apple will have a MacBook Pro redesign that fixes all of these issues.
I hope so too, but I'm not optimistic unless there are leadership changes. They've triple downed on this and it's still an issue. We definitely won't see scissor keys again, Apple isn't going to undermine their narrative like that, but I hope whatever comes after the butterfly was developed in a completely separate building than wherever they house the butterfly keyboard team. Poor engineering from the start, embarrassing half measures since, Jobs would have cleared house years ago.
Apple needs to simply put all their products and features through "what would Steve Jobs have done" filter. He would have probably thrown the butterfly design out the window and ask them to come up with a better design.
You're certainly not wrong, but the hockey puck was fairly quickly discontinued and replaced (within a year or two) by the "Apple Pro Mouse", which itself wasn't discontinued for 4 or 5 years.
Would that be the same filter he used back in 2010 when he responded to complaints about the iPhone 4 reception issue by stating "don't hold it that way" ;)
I always felt laptop keyboards/key caps were ALWAYS flimsy feeling. I guess just the older ones you could pull off and replace. But I never was a huge fan of the earlier chiclets either.
My 2011 MBP's keys were solid. Had a great feel to them and I never had an issue with keys failing or becoming stuck. I even had a few incidents where I spilled a beer on my keyboard and it was completely fine afterwards.
I now have a 2017 MBP and I hate these keys. The H is always sticking (no spills even) and the keys don't have that nice soft feel to them. I've interrupted a meeting or two with how loud this keyboard is as well... Definitely a step in the wrong direction IMO
I'm surprised people are still buying these models with all the issues with keyboards, GPU glitches, T2 chip, etc.
The repair program doesn't really solve anything. I'm willing to bet most MBP owners do not have a second Mac to keep working while it is being repaired.
Also, at least in Mexico, Apple is being super strict about which machines go into the repair program. I know a couple of people with keyboard problems that were told there was no problem with the keyboard.
Love the new keyboards. Not been a problem for me. Love the size too. The 15in is about as heavy as the old 13in, making it very portable. Had to sacrifice some keyboard depth for that but so worth it.
For anyone working for extended periods of time, you will benefit greatly from having an external keyboard. Preferably one that tilts up in the middle. Why anyone would want a bigger laptop that they use at home to type on the laptop's native keyboard is beyond me.
So if I follow you, the argument is that the new built-in keyboards are great because you don't use them, and you find the idea that people would want to be able to type for extended periods on their portable computer "beyond you"?
If I wanted a big mechanical keyboard on my desk at home and a nearly unusable keyboard when I'm elsewhere, I'd get an iPad and a desktop. I want a laptop.
The new keyboards are great because they reduce the size of a portable computer, which makes the portable part of the computer even better.
If you want a less portable computer so that you can type at work and at home on its keyboard, you'd be missing out on the _much_ better desktop keyboards that can be had instead.
The new keyboard made the computer 0.12" thinner than the 2015, and the new computer is less than half pound lighter with less battery capacity. To me, these are huge sacrifices in usability for what, another 0.12" and half pound in my bag? Great! Now I've saved enough space to upgrade my 70 sheet spiral notebook to a 100 sheet monster.
Fair enough :) If MacOS is mandatory, the X1 won't be an option. I just gave it as an example that you absolutely can have both portability and a good keyboard at the same time.
Are you seriously saying that it’s fine to sell a laptop with no usable keyboard because you just type on it on an external keyboard?
or you are one of the few lucky ones that actually use it and it’s still good for more than 6 months in a row?
I'm trying to figure out why people care so much about the difference between 4 and 4.5 pound laptop? They are still so much lighter than the old days, both extremely portable, etc...
Not to mention the weight and tangle of all the dongles and needing to store them when moving around....
I really hate the keyboard on most laptops. XPS's I don't like and new macbooks seem the worst. Anyone recommend any? Thinkpads seem good, and many HPs.
I thought Apple's laptop keyboards were great prior to the butterfly era. They never felt quite as good as their old desktop keyboards—which were and are my favorite—but more than adequate for a laptop.
I had to briefly use a Macbook two designs old a while back—the thicker aluminum kind, that could still accommodate a disc drive—and wow, I'd forgotten how much better that keyboard was than the one after, even, let alone the loud-as-hell, uncomfortable butterfly ones. It felt great—probably about as good as a laptop keyboard could be. I want that kind back. The tiny bit of extra travel and slightly softer action made a huge difference.
I've enjoyed the keyboard on my System76 laptop. Granted that's a special case since they're not for everyone (Linux-focused).
I've found most laptop keyboards at least adequate, the MacBook that I'm forced to use for work is the first one that is objectively terrible. I've been told the ones <= 2015 were better in the keyboard department.
I got a Pixelbook last week and have been using it as my everyday laptop for the last few days. Hands-down best keyboard I've used in a long time, probably better than the older Macbook ones.
Yeah I don't know where that Pixelbook keyboard came from (does Google have people engineering keyboards?) but it's crazy good. Thin, too - so no excuse for Apple's new keyboards.
Dell Alienware - "baller" would be my technical judgement.
Long key travel, large layout. Makes programming comfortable again.
Gaming laptops in general seem to be nearly "no compromise" products. Battery life is as good as it can be - they max-out the watt-hours permitted by airlines. Keyboards can be massive. Screens, sound systems. Recently the weight has been reduced through clever hardware engineering:
You know there's something wrong with the "pro" laptop market (and with Apple) when engineers start moving to "gaming laptops" to get serious work done.
It's a marketing term. Many "gaming" laptops are quite well-built and it would be silly to ignore them, even for "real work". (Unless you need the sort of reliability that can only be had by moving to Xeon/EPYC cpus, ECC memory and Quadro/FirePro graphics, of course.)
Oh, I agree totally. That's why I put "gaming laptop" in quotes. I could care less what they're called; as long as it's better as a development laptop than a MacBook Pro I'm interested ;-)
Have worked on Mac's, XPS's and HP's in the past but once I got on Thinkpad, never looked back. My current system(for past 5 years now) is a trusty X1 Carbon that has seen some rough times but has never failed me. Thinking of upgrading later this year to a newer version of the same line.
Go for it - I went with an X1C6 as a replacement for my old macbook pro, and I couldn't be happier. Excellent keyboard and no issues running linux. The only setting I've changed from my default ubuntu was to install and use the kde plasma desktop to avoid scaling issues, and it's perfect. You'll love the form factor as well.
I've been using an X1 Yoga (1st gen) for almost 3 years and it's been great as well. I would probably go Carbon next time as I don't use the yoga function that often. But I don't think I could switch to anything else after using this laptop keyboard (and if it breaks I can just replace it myself).
How's the touchpad? What's kept me on Apple is the ability to actually use the MacBook Pro as a portable computer, not just a crappy desktop you can drag between the power and mouse+keyboard stations that you need to get work done without swearing at it constantly or frowning while you watch the battery life indicator plummet.
The keyboard and port situations are both pushing the MacBook far enough out of that "close the lid and go, no worries" sweet spot it used to fall so solidly into that I'm eyeing other options, but I have some very bad memories of both battery life and trackpads on non-Apple machines, and my (limited!) interactions with such more recently haven't made me optimistic.
Just to offer another perspective on the battery front, that only really matters for casual browsing. Anytime real work is done on a machine, you'll be plugging in within a few hours on everything anyway.
If you're doing CPU/IO intensive development work, they all fall down so quickly that I don't think it matters on the differences. It's really a browsing/videos metric, which is relatively unimportant to me when buying a workstation class laptop. I don't think I'd buy any laptop based on battery life as a primary factor, and the overall usability situation for most stuff on the market isn't as grave as it used to be (which your post accurately recalls).
I've owned the XPS15 with 6-core 8th gen Intel (maxing out the scales at 97Wh battery) and have a Thinkpad X1 Extreme. I've had MBPs in the past too.
For the touchpad on Thinkpads, I think they're pretty good if you're on Windows, most are anymore with MS Windows Precision drivers as the Thinkpads use. For me, a major driver for me towards these is the Trackpoint.
Depending on your usecase, my favorite machines on the market today are the X1 Extreme (development), X1 Yoga (consulting/development), Samsung Notebook 9 Pen 13" (home), and Macbook Air (home).
I admit that the touchpad isn't as smooth and gesture driven as the mac but I'm not the user those are really meant for. I spend most of my time on the keyboard writing code and living in the "cloud" which makes using mouse a drag anyway. So all I'm looking for is a powerful machine that doesn't hog resources on useless stuff, with sturdy keyboard(physical keys please, none of that touch bar BS), can support dual/multi boot and works with all the peripherals I need. Thinkpads work better than most without the significant price overhead.
One of my dystopian future scenarios has no Thinkpad's in it :D
Thinkpads are great (T series) - Especially like the carbon X1s as they work great with Linux. It has been my primary driver for a while now with zero issues.
I switched to a ThinkPad after many years of using MacBooks, and it has just a lovely keyboard to use. The tactile response is very similar to Cherry MX Brown switches (quiet, but still has that "click" feel).
Current gen MacBook pros can’t fit latest intel processors into that thin body. Other vendors already leave mbps in the dust performance wise. That fact makes me hopeful that apple will have to go thicker for the next mbp generation and that will maybe warrant a better keyboard.
This form-over-usability-and-function madness has to end.
It's insane what a mac user must go through even to attempt to repair this themselves. Another reason it's important to support right to repair, https://repair.org/.
Extending the warranty of the MacBook's with the keyboards that have issues isn't enough. They should be under warranty indefinitely or made affordable to replace, even if it's at a loss for AAPL.
Biggest downside to the Lenovo X1 Carbon is you can't buy it without an OS. You have to pay the Microsoft tax even though it works well with Linux drivers.
They should have done one paragraph without the Es and Rs to make the point and then had it read as normal. I bet a lot of would be readers aren't bothering with this otherwise good article because of it.
I was planning to buy Macbook 2018 next week now after seeing all this complaints, i think I should wait for the 2019 model. Anyone with an idea when the next release would be?
MacBook updates of 2016 and onwards are an example of “don’t fix it if ain’t broken”. There isn’t much choice on the market though. MacOS is something special still.
I just got the latest air and it has the same keyboard that current mbps have. They’ve added some rubber membranes, so it’s hopefully less prone to broken keys, but there are reports that the problem still exists, unfortunately.
There was an iPhone, an iPad, a MacBook Air, and a MacBook Pro. If you wanted the experience of an Apple phone, you bought an iPhone. You didn't go around asking if you should buy an Xr, Xs, or X, 9, 7, or iPhone googol. You went to the store and bought an iPhone. The product categories were clear. The vision behind them was clearer. Everything just made sense. And it worked too!
Apple doesn't make sense anymore.
I have a top of the line MacBook Pro 2016 that I can't type on. I am the professional these machines are meant to target. My use case isn't "hardcore" or "niche." It's that of most entrepreneurs, programmers, and designers. I wanted a machine that I could carry around in my backpack with good-enough battery life that could let me work from a coffee shop. Nothing fancy. Nothing complicated. Just a machine that a woman can use at a coffee shop with her soy latte.
What I got for my thousands of dollars is a machine that can't be used without its cradle. The keyboard has stopped working correctly despite weekly cleaning. I am worried that the screen will stop working too. And I don't have the time to take my machine back to the store and get it replaced because I'm so busy that I can't live without my computer.
Apple was supposed to be the company that made computers for people who do stuff. Now, it's a dividend machine that happens to make crappy computers.