
New MacBook Pro Is Not a Laptop for Developers Anymore - alexeysemeney
https://blog.devteam.space/new-macbook-pro-is-not-a-laptop-for-developers-anymore-d0d4b1b8b7de#.tpt1vssco
======
ericjang
I dislike this post intensely. The opinion comes across as uncharitable, as
the author probably has not used this Macbook Pro yet. How can you
(alexeysemeney) be so sure?

I consider myself a developer, and I almost never use the Fn and ESC keys on
my Mac. Everybody uses the computer differently, but I'm pretty sure this is
not a deal-breaker for most. One could also argue that the touch bar might
lead to innovative developer tools, such as timeline interfaces for Replay
Debugging. There are already a lot of applications in the content creation
(Photoshop, Illustrator, Maya) space, which developers frequently use to
create assets.

~~~
bisby
As a vim user, esc is pretty important.

I would say the author clearly knows very little computer specs:

"The MacBook Pro had options with 2.4 gigahertz dual-core processors back in
2010. Anything new in 2016? Not really, well… nope."

Because a 2010 2.4ghz dual core is identical to a 2016 2.4 ghz dual core.... I
thought we got over comparing processors purely by their clock speed a long
time ago. (I will agree that theyve been going with lower and lower power to
allow for better battery life, this is a terrible way to make the comparison.
Id much rather see a processor comparison graph here).

Personally I think this is a terrible decision, but then again, I think using
a laptop keyboard for programming is a terrible decision too. I need multiple
monitors and an external keyboard to get anything done, so I typically use a
desktop, and then use a lightweight laptop (basically a chromebook) to remote
into the desktop if I absolutely need to be mobile.

Also, "What other people are saying" and then listing 4 anecdotal quotes seems
pretty uncompelling.

I imagine this is not a great developer's laptop. But apple fanboys will keep
buying it and either stop using vim just so they can keep using apple or buy
an external keyboard. And Im really not sure what else you could really want
out of a laptop then.

~~~
readitmeow
What does an external keyboard give you that you can't get from a laptop
keyboard? I like the macbook pro keyboard. I plug in two monitors and I'm good
to go. Vim users should remap somewhere closer. I use cap locks. Will that not
be possible anymore?

~~~
justinmayer
Not only is it possible, but Apple supports mapping Caps Lock to Escape by
default as of macOS Sierra 10.12.1:
[https://i.imgur.com/2oMcDRg.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/2oMcDRg.jpg)

~~~
elcritch
It'd be awesome if the caps lock key was led screen as well and showed it's
current mapping. That'd be pretty sweet.

------
mikeash
I'm always amazed at how techies are so often unable to consider other
people's points of view. You'd think I'd be used to it by now, but no.

If you don't like the new design, that's totally fine. I've seen a lot of
people saying that. But when you say that the new design is bad for
_everybody_ , or bad for millions of people you haven't met, based solely on
your own personal reasons, you've lost it.

I'm a developer. The only reason I'm not buying one of these is because what I
currently have is just fine, and I don't feel like spending the money. The
touch bar looks really cool. It might not end up being very useful, but I
think I'd like to have it. If it's not useful, well, no big deal.

Function keys? Never use 'em. Escape key? Having it available as a touch
button doesn't seem like a major problem. If it turns out to be, then I'll
learn or configure some other shortcut for it and get on with my life.

Now, _that 's just me_. Your opinion may differ, and that's fine. I just ask
you to have the same attitude. It's silly to say that this machine "is not a
laptop for developers." It's not a laptop for _you_ , apparently, and for
people with similar needs and opinions. But not all developers are you.

~~~
51Cards
Here is my issue with the new touch bar as a general UI element. Things meant
for fingers should have tactile feedback unless you're also looking at the
same location (like a touch screen) where you can get visual feedback. This
offers no tactile response when used, and its layout changes constantly, thus
it needs to be looked at to use it. That means you have to shift your vision
focus from screen to keyboard repeatedly as you move through apps (or even
while in the same app if they make the content dynamic). To me this is bad UI
design at a fundamental level.

I can see this being handy as a "slider" style control (though a touch pad
edge could be as well). Otherwise though, especially when used as "buttons" my
opinion is that it is going to be very tiresome to use extensively and slow
general interactions down. If you need this kind of interaction style it
should be on a touch screen without forcing the eyes to change focus or
monitor changes in peripheral vision.

TLDR There is a reason we touch type. Touch. Exactly what this is missing.

~~~
542458
I type a lot. But 99+% of that is A-Z and common symbols. While I normally
touch type, I use the function row so infrequently that I don't have the
muscle memory to correctly locate the f-keys. The only ones I can do blind are
esc, volume up and volume down, and even those I only type rarely. All the
rest require me to stop and look at the labels on the keys.

Furthermore, I'm not really using the key shape for those to hit them. I'm
mostly just hitting them based on their relative position from the home row.
So IMHO at least this wouldn't really affect me - If I end up with one of
these laptops I'll still probably be able to hit the few I do infrequently use
without looking just fine, and for all the rest I'm looking for labels
anyways.

------
jws
Bah, these entitled kids. I guess being old enough to remember keyboards
_before_ they had escape keys helps, but ␛ is just keyboard syntactic sugar
for _control left square bracket_. Read your ASCII table! C-[ is even a
quicker type avoiding RSIs from all those long pinky reaches.

(More seriously, as much as it bothers me to retrain my pinky, most uses of
the escape key would be many times better if the lefthand side of the touch
bar had a word for the function, like _stop being full screen_ , _cancel_ ,
_leave menu_ , or whatever. The function would then be discoverable instead of
secret lore.)

~~~
cypres
I had no idea you could use C-[ as ESC

~~~
mrweasel
It's also a kinda crappy alternative, because it's not possible on a large
number of non-English keyboard. Ctrl+c is also an option, although I think
there's a slight difference.

~~~
EdiX
ESC is 0x1B, traditionally the CTRL key reset the two highest bit of the ASCII
code, [ is 0x5B, if you reset the two highest bits of 0x5B you get 0x1B which
is why ESC and CTRL-[ are the same thing.

CTRL-C is completely different.

------
slg
This doesn't even get into the dongle problem. The simplest example is that if
you want to hook up Apple's flagship phone up to their flagship laptop for
development, you need a dongle. And if you want to share one of their flagship
wired headphones between the two devices, you need another dongle. Therefore
if you want to connect three of Apple's flagship devices together on a daily
basis, you can't go anywhere without bringing at least two dongles with you.

~~~
pilif
_> you need a dongle_

or an USB-C to Lightning cable. Those exist. And so do any USB-C to any other
USB-Plug cables.

Considering that Apple revises their hardware builds about every four years,
it makes sense to move to strictly USB-C now as two years from now, I'm quite
sure no more peripheral will come out that has anything but USB-C.

So within the next 2-3 years you'll have collected heaps of USB-C cables that
will connect your devices directly to your MacBook Pro. No dongles what so
ever.

USB-C is so much better than anything other USB that came before to the point
where it can (and will) easily replace not only all other existing USB plugs
out there, including on the device end (where there's a mess between USB-B,
USB Mini and USB Micro right now) but also has the potential to replace the
various ways how we currently connect screens (DisplayPort, DVI, HDMI, or even
VGA).

Going purely USB-C means that they could optimise as much as possible for this
new connector without thinking of wasting space for a useless connector three
years down the road, especially as you can convert USB-C to any other USB, but
if they added an USB-A port, that would not be useful for anything but USB-A
plugs.

~~~
dan1234
I think Apple could’ve avoided a lot of the hate if they’d bundled a few of
the more common adapters as standard, to ease people through the transition to
using USB-C for everything.

If I bought a new MBP today, I’d need:

* a Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) to Thunderbolt 2 Adapter at £49

* a USB-C Digital AV Multiport Adapter (giving HDMI and a USB port) at £69

* a USB-C to USB Adapter at £19

That’s £137 just to connect the things I have currently connected to my 2015
MBP (external monitor, Thunderbolt HD, my phone and a USB->FTDI programmer).

~~~
ageektrapped
Couldn't agree more. I priced Macbook Pro 15" plus adapters in CDN $ and got
sticker shock.

~~~
akramhussein
Did the same in UK. They also bumped the prices in the UK for all machines due
to the fall in GBP. Double shock.

~~~
pulse7
Did you vote for brexit? ;-)

~~~
akramhussein
No

------
laddng
I've had a good, satisfying run with MacBook Pros, but now I'm stepping off
the Apple train. I understand that Apple is trying to go in a new direction
with the new MacBook Pros, and I won't complain about it. I am now simply
moving to an Arch Linux setup on an old Lenovo Thinkpad Carbon X1 to continue
living inside the Terminal.

~~~
peatmoss
A couple years back, I was (increasingly un)happily using Mac OS X on a MBP. I
made the switch back to a Free *nix and a tiling window manager.

While it's gotten some eye-rolls from tech friends, the UX of my current
system is amazing. I have an almost vanilla Xmonad configuration, combined
with dmenu, and passwordstore / dmenu integration. It simply rocks.

I anticipate soon starting a new job with a firm that has more or less
standardized around Apple hardware. I find myself kind of dreading going back
to a Mac. I may decide to be "that guy" and ask for something like the
Thinkpad Carbon X1 in lieu of the standard issue equipment.

~~~
Symbiote
Ask.

I was given a Macbook, and thought I'd get used to it, but I couldn't. Basic
stuff is broken, like maximizing a window. Focus-follows-mouse doesn't work
properly, and multiple windows from the same application are broken -- I'm not
sure what the "correct" way to switch between multiple Firefox windows is, but
it's clunky.

Linux on the Macbook can probably work if you're determined, but I'm
(obviously) not a fan of Apple hardware. It was much easier to take a spare
Dell desktop -- which has twice the RAM and a better CPU than the Macbook.

~~~
cpr
Standard way to switch between application windows is command-backquote.
(cmd-`) Works great.

~~~
deong
It does work great, meaning that it reliably executes the intended
functionality correctly. My problem is that the intended functionality is not
what I want. I have lots of terminals, Emacs windows, browser windows, etc.
open at any given time, and I want my window manager to be agnostic to which
is which. When I signal "focus next window", I want that to both jump between
windows of an application AND jump to a window of another application,
whichever is next in the focus ring. You can't (easily at least) do that on a
Mac.

~~~
njitram
I installed [https://bahoom.com/hyperswitch](https://bahoom.com/hyperswitch)
to get this behavior (it even has thumbnails of the window), but ideally you
would have that option out of the box indeed.

------
rayiner
Honest question: what's the alternative? I've got a 2013 rMBP 15 inch. What's
my next machine? I'm not willing to regress on display (220 ppi or better),
screen size, or battery life (8-9 hours real use). I might regress on quad
core to dual core if everything else is perfect.

EDIT: The XPS 15 gets more like 5-6 hours with the high res display by my
understanding. The Surface Book has the right combination of resolution and
battery life, but 15.4" to 13.5" is a big step down if you're used to working
with side by side windows. Is there anything out there I've overlooked?

~~~
dorianm
I see a lot of people choosing the XPS (including Linus).

I tried it and for those who prefer Linux it's pretty great!

~~~
uw_rob
The one issue I have with the XPS is that the camera is in the bottom corner
instead of at the top. Although the slick bezel looks great, I just don't
think the trade off was worth it.

~~~
Spooks
I think the trade off of small bezel for the camera being at the bottom really
justifies it. I am commuting and bringing my laptop around more than I am on
the camera.

If I am skyping and the person I am skyping with has upward view of me, I
don't really see an issue with that.

------
ObjectiveSub
You immediately lost any credibility when you complained that the 2.4 GHz
processor is the "same" as the one back in 2010. Clock rate has nothing to do
with performance these days. Skylake is 25-35% faster across the board (and
multiples faster for number crunching) than whatever Nehalem or Core2 was in
the Macbooks in 2010.

~~~
tibbon
I get though that it doesn't feel like Moore's Law type growth for system
speed though, which is perhaps what people are hoping for. I have a hard time
imagining that the 2016 model feels 16x as fast as the 2010 model.

I've got a 2010 MBP with an SSD, and it feels pretty much the same as my 2013
with an SDD, and expect this 2016 one to feel roughly about the same for most
tasks (35% isn't a difference I'll notice for most tasks)

~~~
andromeduck
Moore's law died a decade ago.

------
nartsbtaa
There's room for debate about the new Macbook Pro, but this post is bad.

#1 - The touch bar is dynamic and contextual. It's likely that you can enable
the traditional ESC/Fx row when you're using Terminal, your editor, etc. It's
extremely unlikely that the ESC key is gone forever, given that existing
software relies on it.

#2 - RAM is a valid point, but this part is wrong/dishonest: _" The MacBook
Pro had options with 2.4 gigahertz dual-core processors back in 2010. Anything
new in 2016? Not really, well... nope."_ The 13" MBP now has a 2.9 GHz dual-
core Intel Core i5, upgradable to 3.3 GHz. The 15" MBP now has a 2.6 GHz quad-
core Intel Core i7.

#3 - So there are four negative snarky people on Twitter. Not a surprise. And
they're just repeating issues #1 and #2.

This is a garbage post. A much better critical article is linked here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12817332](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12817332)

------
shenanigoat
Dramatic click bait IMO. You could really hack that touchbar to do some great
productivity enhancements.

~~~
uw_rob
Maybe you could enlighten me to some of the possibilities. Besides a slider,
I'm not really seeing much productivity enhancements that functions keys
cannot do.

~~~
gtsteve
I guess you can have virtual function keys as well as buttons for specific
terminals. It depends how locked down the SDK is - knowing Apple it'll
probably become more extensible as time goes on. I imagine that when IDEs can
integrate with it, you'll be able to get some pretty nice features.

You can also show stuff like CI status, notifications for IMs, etc.

~~~
tomswartz07
Here's the thing though:

How is that any better or different than notifications that already exist on
your system?

GitLab has web browser notifications that trigger on CI builds.

Literally every instant messaging service has notification systems that work
on the OS.

What is the added benefit of putting it off of the main screen and on a small
1" tall screen where you have your hands?

------
blowski
I was waiting for the new Macbook Pros as I need to buy a new laptop, and was
going to give my old Macbook Pro (2014 model) to my wife. But given that they
have nothing of value (I don't care about gimmicks like the new touch bar),
I've decided to abandon Mac and go back to Linux.

I'm just a typical web developer, running a bunch of virtual machines, and an
IDE. Any recommendations? I saw the Dell XPS 15 for around £1,300:
[https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B018FSX9GA/](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B018FSX9GA/)

Any others? I'm not a Linux diehard, so I'd probably go with Ubuntu.

~~~
matwood
Good luck with HiDPI. It is very application dependent, so I would check what
you typically use. From what I have tried and read, macOS handles HiDPI and
multi-monitors much better than any other OS out there right now.

I'm so used to HiDPI just working on my MBP that I never even realized it was
an issue on the other OSes until I started thinking about switching.

~~~
easytiger
> multi-monitors much better than any other OS out there right now.

No it doesn't. OSX in fact has a completely innane behaviour when a MBPr is
connected to an external monitor. Meaning you have to mirror or put it in
clamshell mode. You can't extend the monitor ontot he laptop screen. Works
perfectly well in Linux for me.

~~~
matwood
Huh? I have 2 external monitors (connected using DP) and my laptop running as
1 large desktop right now. Both externals are 1920x1200 running off a rMBP.
Dragging windows around scales properly and mostly works.

Last time I tried this on Linux it was a mess, particularly when moving
windows from the HiDPI to the normal and back.

------
azmenak
As a developer and an Apple user for last decade, this has certainly been the
most disappointing Keynote I've ever seen from Apple. I do think, however,
some of these concerns are overblown.

If you're a VIM user and haven't tried overriding the Caps Lock key to be an
Esc key, you should give it a try, it has made VIM a much better experience
for many people.

On the memory side, doing development work I can hardly think of a time when
16GB was limiting on the RAM side, and I hardly notice the performance hit
when using swap on the incredibly fast SSD.

And the processors have definitely improved, I'm currently running a 15" MBP
Late 2013 at 2.0GHz. The new base models are starting on newer architecture at
2.7GHz.

Having said that, I'm still not sure whether I'm going to be upgrading any
time soon...

~~~
matwood
The problem is that as soon as you need a VM (and doing any web development
typically needs one to test IE/edge with), you're pushing your RAM limits.

------
dvcrn
To be honest, the only thing that's causing me to say it's not a "developer
machine" is the keyboard. It features the same butterfly switches that the 12"
MacBook has and my good are they horrible. I seriously can't imagine writing
long sessions of code with this mushy keyboard.

I don't get it. With the new touch bar and stereo speakers they WANT us to use
the MacBook as is, without external keyboard and then they give us these
dreadful switches that almost feel like you're pressing a sheet of paper.

I understand that for the 12" MacBook they wanted a machine as thin as
possible and the keyboard was too thick. But why oh why ok the pro lineup.

I actually REALLY really liked the type feeling of MacBook keyboards

~~~
jaxondu
The new MacBook Pro uses version 2 of the butterfly keyboard. Not the same one
as 12" MacBook. Verdict is still out how much is the improvement.

~~~
PolCPP
The onsite reviewer from the verge says its pretty much the same. Maybe a lil
more travel but they feel the same.

So i guess that version 2 thing is just pure marketing to avoid people raging

------
mschip
I'm no Apple fanboy nor apologist, but this sentiment is everywhere and
overtly dramatic. They continue to provide a 13" model with function keys as
an alternative. If that machine isn't fast enough you probably aren't a
"developer" anyways. Also, I rarely use the keyboard on my mac because I use
it on a stand with an additional monitor. If you want to complain about the
new Mac, complain about price or the fact that the touch bar is unusable in an
ergonomic setting, just don't act like you can't still use VIM.

~~~
dep_b
I concur. I have a problem with the (European) price hike and the RAM cap, for
the rest it's not going to be worse for me at all.

I really only used the volume keys and esc keys really and once in a blue
Monday the brightness controls. The On / Off switch will be replace by the
TouchID input I assume.

I'm really not sure what I even had to expect more from this update than what
I've got.

------
ixtli
Sadly this seems to be the same old pile-on that happens after every apple
product announcement:

> #1. No Escape and function keys [...] The Escape and Function keys on the
> laptops have been abandoned in favor of a touch bar that changed depending
> on the application that is being used.

They went out of their way to display the escape key and many other contextual
keys with Terminal.app in the foreground† They did this despite it being
possibly the least "sexy" demonstration of the hardware. This article seems to
have been written after skimming some reporting on the keynote without
researching the specifics.

† [http://live.arstechnica.com/hello-again-apples-
october-2016-...](http://live.arstechnica.com/hello-again-apples-
october-2016-mac-
event/images/Screen%20Shot%202016-10-27%20at%201.49.43%20PM.png)

~~~
easytiger
yea because a soft key in a different location is the same as a tactile key
where it has always been.

~~~
ixtli
It's programmable. I'm sure iTerm2 will allow you to make the whole damn thing
an escape key if you want. Also sure, its not a physical button, but it's
still pretty dishonest to go around saying they removed the key and thus it is
no longer a "developer computer." This pretty clearly implies that the
functionality is lost which is easily proven false.

I'm not even trying to _defend_ Apple here. I don't even really like laptops,
though I might have to buy one. I just hate these surface-y pile-ons that
happen after every hardware announcement that seem an attempt to mask an
aesthetic argument of "i don't like apple's products" as technical one.

------
hellofunk
> This isn’t to say that the touch bar is an inherently bad idea. You could
> locate it on top of the Esc and function keys instead of eliminating them
> entirely! Something like this: <image>

Not that there aren't worthy talking points in this article, but it's really
annoying when a blogger has the arrogance to photoshop some keyboard image
together and proclaim it's a better design than what a gigantic company
carefully came up with.

Apple has its own reasons for doing things and they aren't going to please
everybody, but does this Alexey Semeney fellow actually think Apple didn't
consider all the possibilities before removing a whole bunch of keys from the
keyboard? Apple might be a lot of things, but careless is not usually one of
them.

~~~
uw_rob
Although people place a lot of trust in Apple, I think the proverb of "trust
but verify" applies here. We shouldn't just take it on faith that Apple has
made the correct choice.

~~~
hellofunk
What does "correct" mean? They are at least consistent. For decades they
remove major hardware controls and ports that were initially thought to be
critical for use. They were the first to get rid of CD drives, floppy drives,
the list is quite long.

~~~
Caprinicus
The reality is that apple has been pretty much universally right whenever they
ditch something "way too soon". There's never been a moment when a year down
the line apple realized "wait, this USB thing is never going to catch on, go
back to the old ports we were wrong!"

------
cypres
It's funny they bring up devs using vim, because the only vim key they removed
is Esc, which a lot of vim devs remaps to caps-lock or similar anyways.

I almost never use the F keys, so if they kept the Esc key but removed the
rest it would be perfect :)

~~~
gre
I don't know anyone who remaps capslock to esc. It just sounds like something
that is fun to say on hackernews. You didn't even say you use it, you said a
lot of vim devs do, to which i would counter--they dont.

The better choice is remapping capslock to ctrl.

~~~
hultner
I do! I'm both a heavy vim user and have my ESC remapped to capslock. And
otherwise ESC=>^] anyway so you can always do that (however it's a bit awkward
so I'd rather use capslock).

Another thing I really do think deserves to be mentioned is which developer do
really spend extended amount of time on the laptop keyboard when not
traveling? Both at home and work I'm using the Microsoft Sculpt keyboard and
keep the laptop docked with 3 external displays, with these new 5k-monitors
two will probably be enough.

------
solatic
Lenovo introduced a Touch Bar (Adaptive Keyboard strip) in the Thinkpad X1
Carbon in 2014. It flopped so hard that Lenovo pulled it and reinstituted a
normal function row in the 2015 refresh.

Why does Apple get a pass? No physical keys means not being able to find
functionality by touch alone means no muscle memory means no productivity.
This isn't a hypothesis, this is a proven market reaction to Lenovo's design
choices.

~~~
moderation
I ran Xubuntu on one of the 2014 X1 Carbons and can confirm the adaptive
keyboard strip is terrible. It worked but was clumsy at best. I just upgraded
to the t460s with 24G RAM and proper function and escape keys. Great light
weight Linux laptop.

------
Alex3917
Currently every time I open iTerm, I need to change directory into my project,
spin up my virtual env, and then initialize some stuff within my virtualenv.

Now I can map those commands to icons in the toolbar, rather than having to
page through the history command each time. How is that not a huge improvement
for developers? Any time you can replace a command or alias with a visual icon
that's a significant reduction in cognitive overhead.

While the fact that you can only get 16 gigs of RAM is annoying, the fact that
the SSD is 50% faster at least ameliorates this somewhat. And the fact that
there are seemingly several low hanging fruit things that Apple can make to
improve the product, while annoying to people like me who needed to purchase
one of these today, at least shows that they will probably continue to make
improvements to the lineup.

~~~
ThePawnBreak
> Now I can map those commands to icons in the toolbar, rather than having to
> page through the history command each time.

Why not just create a bash function? Call it setupproj1, write the commands
you need in a function ~/.bash_profile, export the function and that's it!

~~~
airblade
Even better, install Alfred and bind a hotkey to your bash function.

------
AdmiralAsshat
It's worth noting that only the higher-end of the new MBP's have the Touch
Bar. The lower end still has a traditional function row:

[http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/10/no-new-macbook-airs-
as-...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/10/no-new-macbook-airs-as-apple-
instead-makes-lower-end-1500-macbook-pro/)

So I suppose in theory if you wanted something _new_ but without breaking your
workflow, you could just go for that one.

~~~
endemic
The frustrating thing is that machine only has 2 USB ports, rather than 4. So
one port for power and another for a single wired accessory. I guess buying a
dongle isn't a huge deal, but kind of frustrating that you'd have to spend
more money for what I would expect to be included functionality for a "pro"
machine.

------
kelsus
I had to scroll pretty far down the page to get to comments that weren't about
the escape and function keys and vim. It's the other stuff that really
matters. In 2007 and 08 when Jobs was alive there was absolutely no question
that MBPs were the absolute best laptops in the world. There were maybe a few
huge gamer laptops with faster specs, but nothing had excellent specs in such
a small and well build package. This is no longer the case.

If I were NVidia I'd be making a very big deal that not even the initial
development of that cool new depth of field stuff on iPhone 7 could be done on
any Apple computer.

Another major point is that this thread says apple is leaving developers
behind. Sure it might only be leaving VR, gaming, and AI developers behind,
but wait, where is the industry going?

More fuel for the fire. Apple proudly claims they have the biggest gaming
platform in the world with iPhone. They just lucked into it. They never
purposefully set out to make a gaming platform. But now that they have it they
should own it. Imagine how thrilled the world would have been if Cook had
stood on stage and said something like "and now for the first time ever
because of this amazing new GPU, you can play your favorite games on your
Macbook Pro on ultra at 60 frames per second." It would have blown the doors
off Apple stock. Macbook Pro is about PRO users not about executives that need
13 hours of battery life to give Keynote presentations. People would have been
completely happy with even a little _increase_ in width and weight and
_decrease_ in battery life for the sake of a major performance upgrade in
memory and GPU.

------
ameesdotme
> The MacBook Pro had options with 2.4 gigahertz dual-core processors back in
> 2010. Anything new in 2016? Not really, well… nope.

I find it very hard to believe that these processors perform on the same level
as the ones in 2010. Equal cores / GHz does not mean equal performance.

~~~
fisherjeff
Agreed. Not only is there no option less than 2.9 GHz on the touch bar Macbook
Pro, but I'm also not sure how a developer could equate a Core2 Duo with a
Skylake core i5/i7.

------
ebbv
This article is terrible. I am not pleased with the new MBP models but the
reasoning in this article is beyond stupid.

1\. No Esc and Function keys? They are available and I'd wager you can change
the settings on the touch bar to make them available. They demo'd the
customizability of the bar. I'm not keen on the bar but it's not because it
takes away options, it's because it's unnecessary complexity and will
encourage bad application design.

2\. No RAM improvements? The RAM is faster. The included RAM has increased.
This is just factually wrong.

3\. Judging CPUs on clock speed? What is this 1995? Clock speeds have been
constant for a decade. The performance still increase and the power
consumption improves as well. Come on.

I'm bent out of shape about the new MacBooks because they've gotten rid of one
of my top 3 reasons for choosing MBPs for the last 10 years; MagSafe. MagSafe
has saved my laptops dozens of times, literally. Removing it means that if I
got one of these new machines I would never be able to use it plugged in on my
couch. I'd be putting it at too much risk. It means any time you have it
plugged in you have to be super conscious of where your power cord is and
who's walking by it. They got rid of it I assume just to save a few mm's of
thickness?

On top of that the TouchBar is a gimmicky feature I'd never ask for and have
no use for. So much of my work is web based and cannot (as far as I know) take
advantage of it. It adds tons of unnecessary complexity. Plus I'm sure it
doesn't do any favors for battery life.

My rMBP is four years old and for the first time in a decade I'm finding
myself not excited to upgrade. The addition of TouchID is nice. The loss of
MagSafe and addition of the TouchBar are terrible decisions by Apple and make
me question if they know what they're doing.

------
suprgeek
What they could have done (one or more):

1) Bezel-less display

2) Full Touch screen

3) Detachable Screen - IPad Pro +

4) Stylus input (from Apple Pencil)

5) 15-20 hr battery life

6) NVidia Graphics

7) 64 Gb Ram option

8) Kept the HDMI & SDXC port

What they did do:

1) Gimmicky Touch bar - Useless when you close the MBP & Dock; Hard to do for
touch typists

2) Hiked the prices by crazy margins

3) Pegged the RAM at 16 Gb Max

4) Battery is not much better

5) All in on USB-C - Get ready for Dongle-o-rama

Feels like a pure greedy money grab with nothing to justify it. Steve must be
spinning in his grave.

~~~
geophile
Please -- no touchscreen, not on a laptop. It seems very uncomfortable; it
smudges the screen, which I cannot stand; and if there is a touchscreen then
apps will start exploiting it, making it more and more difficult to not
actually touch the screen.

------
otterley
I think there are some technological limitations behind the 16GB maximum RAM
configuration. The highest-density DDR3 DRAM packages I could find that run at
the rated speed are 8 gigabits, which means 16 chips are required on the
board. There probably just isn't enough room there for 16 more chips.

16-gigabit packages are slowly arriving on the market, but I imagine it'll be
a couple more years before they're available at the right speed and sufficient
quality/quantity to include in a future MBP model.

~~~
elcct
They could use ddr4, cpu supports it

~~~
otterley
You can't fit DDR4 SODIMMs on a notebook of this form factor. And this
processor generation doesn't support LPDDR4 memory yet.

~~~
elcct
Indeed it doesnt support LPDDR4, I was wrong. Thanks!

------
mindcrash
> #1. No Escape and function keys

The new MacBook Pro _has_ Escape and function keys. You just need to summon
them now if you want them. Phil Schiller even showed this in the demo!

Also, context aware actions are much more useful. You saw that they even
included a whole set for developers (and XCode) right? And you can bet other
tools will soon follow.

> #2 Power. Almost no improvement for RAM and a processor

That it doesnt have a new CPU is not Apple's fault. It's Intels. Apple wants
their professional equipment to have _at least_ a quadcore processor. The
latest generation Intel processors, Kaby Lake, currently only has dual core
processors available which is a absolute disaster for people who actually need
fast multicore processing. So because of this they used a Skylake quadcore.
Which IMO isnt a disaster since it is _still_ the fastest quadcore x86 CPU
architecture out there.

Regarding RAM I think 16 Gigs is more than enough for any purpose.

~~~
sjm
There might be some useful things in the Xcode set, but anything that can't be
done with a shortcut already? I find Cmd+<key> far easier to hit than reaching
up to the F-keys. I imagine more-so if that action now has no tactility.

------
the_mitsuhiko
Honestly, the only thing I will miss is the escape button but that was
misplaced on the keyboard anyways. 10.12.1 added support for making caps lock
into an escape key and that's if anything an improvement over where escape was
before.

~~~
lghh
I agree that caps lock is an improvement over escape's location. But, if
you're like me, you also find it to be an improvement over control's location
so you have caps lock mapped to that already so rebinding esc to caps lock is
not an option.

~~~
peller
You can have the best of both worlds on *nix: tap == ESC, hold == CTRL
[http://www.economyofeffort.com/2014/08/11/beyond-ctrl-
remap-...](http://www.economyofeffort.com/2014/08/11/beyond-ctrl-remap-make-
that-caps-lock-key-useful/)

~~~
fabiant7t
Interesting, but on macOS 10.12.x it must be Karabiner-Elements and at least
the UI does not make me replicate this behavior.

~~~
fabiant7t
Editing the JSON config will do the trick as described here:
[https://github.com/tekezo/Karabiner-
Elements/issues/8](https://github.com/tekezo/Karabiner-Elements/issues/8)

There is also a solution for Hammerspoon users here:
[https://gist.github.com/arbelt/b91e1f38a0880afb316dd5b573275...](https://gist.github.com/arbelt/b91e1f38a0880afb316dd5b5732759f1)

~~~
sirn
Or Keyboard Maestro:
[http://apple.stackexchange.com/a/256055](http://apple.stackexchange.com/a/256055)

[https://files.grid.in.th/11RiNt.png](https://files.grid.in.th/11RiNt.png)

------
jpalomaki
I wouldn't really blame Apple for not coming up with faster CPU. Things have
changed and the times when you got the double speed every few years are over.
And I don't know if it is actually a bad thing. This means your hardware does
not get old so fast and there's less reasons to update every two years.

The article also claims that you can get comparable hardware from any other
vendor for for $1.5k. I wish this was true. Unfortunately it is not at all
easy to find good alternatives for Macbook Pro. Even if you don't put limit on
the budget. Especially when you limit the search for quad core CPUs, there's
not that much choice (HP ZBook, Dell XPS, Lenovo T460P or P50). And then you
are still stuck with Windows or can you get one of those with Linux pre-
installed and supported?

------
happywolf
I am a developer and I have a mechanical keyboard hooked up to the rig, so I
seldom use the mac keyboard anyway. My main complaint would be the hardware
doesn't seem to get better. The USB-C ports I do see them coming, but given my
2014 MBP is still running strong, I will hold on to upgrade for a little
longer.

Nah, I am completely out from Linux around 5 years ago. Had spent my fair
share of time and effort (~10years) using Linux, solving some corner cases
that hit me along the way. To me, using Linux is just like driving on a
highway with sink holes sprinkled along, the ride will be gay and smooth
_until_ you hit those holes. Either you fix those yourself (It is open-source
remember!?) or hope for some kind souls to help out.

Thanks but thanks...

------
davesque
Isn't that image with the red 'ESC' and 'F1' text not an official Apple image
but an image that was made by speculating Apple fans during the lead up to the
official product launch? It seems dishonest and manipulative to use that image
to make the point that Apple has completely eliminated the escape key.
Official Apple images might have featured the touch escape key in that
position on the touch bar, weakening the author's argument. Even though I'm
also not a fan of the latest Macbooks, it's dumb to stretch the truth to make
your point.

------
geophile
It's not just the function and escape keys.

\- The rollout of USBC has been a mess. Apparently you now need to purchase a
separate cable to connect your iphone to the new MBP.

\- I haven't tried the new keyboard, but from what I've read, it is less like
the old MBP keyboard, which was quite good, and more like the awful MacBook
keyboard.

\- The generally horrible design of their major desktop apps.

\- The disaster that is Apple's cloud strategy. Too many ids, too difficult to
know what is physically where and how to get it where you want.

I haven't yet played with the new MBP, but I am seriously wondering whether my
current MBP is my last one.

------
geodel
Strange arguments in threads about new MBP. It is well known much more
powerful laptop computers are available to developers for many many years. It
is the nice combination of weight/size/screen/touchpad and Unix like OS all in
one package that made people look beyond relative shortcomings. Individually
none of the feature may be best but all above average together in one machine
is not so common.

Advanced users might very well buy an objectively better computer than Apple's
if they so wish. People are reacting as if Apple mandated touch bar in all
computers in market.

------
kylebenzle
All Lenovo would need to do is start supporting Unbuntu on their ThinkPad line
and Apple would be in big trouble overnight. With then Thinkpads they are
doing the opposite, locking Linux users out instead!

~~~
gshakir
Totally agree with you. Ubuntu needs to have a mainstream manufacturer to go
big. MBP is perfect so far because of the combo of UNIX and Office products
and support for various softwares.

------
guelo
Everybody is talking about the ESC key but I think the function keys are even
worse. My editor has tons of fn key bindings and I touch type them without
looking down many times a day. You can imagine being able to touch type a
virtual ESC key since it would hopefully be at the far edge of the strip, but
for fn you'll have to look down every time.

Let's face it, the bean counters at Apple only care about the iPhone. They've
put their b teams to work on the Macs. And the engineers at Apple that
actually have to use the laptops obviously have no say.

------
hellofunk
I'd like to see stats on how my VIM users actually still use the ESC key. Most
(including me) have mapped this to Caps-lock a long time ago because the Esc
key for a long time has not been in the same place on any keyboard as it was
when VIM was originally created.

~~~
tstrimple
If you don't have the data, you have no position saying _most_ vim users do
anything. There is no reasonable way to assume that _most_ users of any
software make the same configuration changes away from default.

~~~
hellofunk
Which is why I said "I'd like to see stats"...

------
mamon
Fn keys are heavily used in Intellij and Eclipse. Basically, that OLED strip
is a "no go" for me. I'm trying to decide between buying Dell XPS 13 right
away or waiting for XPS 15 refresh. Any other suggestions are welcomed.

~~~
shagie
This setup certainly makes IDEs cry. That said, I'm willing to wait a revision
or two of IntelliJ to see what they come out with while I enjoy the use of my
2014 MBP.

------
heisenbit
Who is buying these new MacBook Pro's? Serious where the heck do the guys in
Apples Mac division see the market?

\- Developers? Not excited. Disk speed better that is relevant. CPU less so.
But ESC and RAM not acceptable if anyone is looking into a machine to last 3
years.

\- Gamers? PCs offer a better price / performance relationship.

\- Personal users? Win10 vs. OSX has advanced a lot compared to Win XP vs OSX.
Secure enclave to make Apple Pay purchases? With what money after buying the
laptop?

\- Managers? At this price point? Maybe the show-off kind in the C suite.

\- Employees? It would make sense as it is cheaper to support but at this
price penetration into the enterprise - which is all the Apple/IBM
relationship is about has no chance.

One of the challenges running businesses that are in different markets where
one has a different market position is dealing with the very different
margins. Laptops everywhere else except in Apple land are low margin. IOS is
high margin but it is in an exceptional position. Pretending that Macs are in
the same is foolish.

Missteps can happen. I'm sure it will show in sales. Let's just hope they are
able to adjust course quickly enough.

------
landonalder
While the RAM complaints are valid, I don't know anyone who actually uses
their laptop keyboard for serious development. Almost all of these laptops
spend 90% of their time docked somewhere with a real keyboard hooked up.

~~~
mirashii
The plural of anecdote is not data. I know many people who do use their laptop
keyboard, myself included.

~~~
Skunkleton
For me, the MBP was all about the nice screen, the touchpad, the keyboard, and
the build quality. If you are only using it docked, none of these really
matter.

------
trymas
> The MacBook Pro had options with 2.4 gigahertz dual-core processors back in
> 2010. Anything new in 2016? Not really, well… nope.

I feel the OP's disappointment but oh my.. does he really do not understand
that cpu's clock speed is not the main comparing factor between processors?

It's like saying he will not buy a car with 2.0L engine, because they were
making such capacity engines 50years ago

------
aethos
I have to say, this feels like a lazy hype-train post. Everyone is complaining
about the lack of the esc key, but I'm sure it won't be so bad. It does depend
somewhat on how integrations work with the bar. I could imagine hopping
between files and functions in your IDE using the bar. And surely you would be
able to map the section where esc was to esc?

------
musesum
I've bought every single MBP since 2007, when I switched over from Windows to
focus on iOS. This may be the first one I skip. Not sure.

PRO: My muscle memory is solidly in the MacOS+Xcode camp. Switching from ctrl
key to command key for basic operations resulted in my RSI injury going away.
Why? My guess: because the thumb is now the pivot point for commands, instead
of the pinky. As a result, my hands splay inwards instead of outwards. Back
during my MS-Win days, the solution was to get a split keyboard for the
desktop. No longer need that.

CON: The main problem a dynamic set of keys is that you have to look at them.
Each eye saccade wastes 200 milliseconds. I also assign app shortcuts with
cmd-option-fn and use divvy + cmd-option-fn to assign reorganize window
placement.

Plus, I wanna play with ML using CUDA. Am missing the Nvidia GPU that came
with my 2013 MBP.

------
dorianm
There is a MacBook with escape and functions keys still available. So the
choice is still there.

Personally I think the touch bar could be great for programmers so I'm gonna
take that.

~~~
haddr
Sure, the specs of this choice shouldn't be called Pro any more I guess.

------
andrethegiant
I don't understand the lack of escape/function keys argument. Isn't the touch
bar powered by software? Can't you put whatever keys you want there? It's
sounding to me like the argument from people who were opposed to a touchscreen
mobile keyboard.

------
rbanffy
I get it may not be the laptop for the developer who wrote the article, but I
see no big issue with the new Macbook Pro.

I want a well-built laptop with a decent Unix-like OS, long battery life and a
good screen and keyboard for when I'm not on my desk. When I'm on my desk,
which is most of the time, I have a big screen and a keyboard attached. If I
really cared about portability, I probably could get by with a MacBook.

TB3 promises a single cable to connect the screen, keyboard and power. I like
that (I currently connect 2). Will I need to get a new monitor? Yes. It
happens every couple years anyway. I once had a wonderful Intergraph CRT that
could go all the way up to 2048x1536 and I miss it, but things change and we
eventually move on.

------
blinkingled
I'm sure the Touch Bar can be integrated with MacVim or VS Code etc to show
keys that just look like regular Fn keys - that's not the problem developers
would be irked of - it's just another thing to hack.

Really problematic however is that the 15" starts at $2399, is still capped at
16GB soldered RAM, the port situation isn't convenient (esp if you've an
iPhone), the obsession with thinness continues at the expense of battery life
and if you had to ding the Touch Bar it feels gimmicky.

There are much better games in PC town - don't even need to run Linux if
you're not into it - Windows 10 is pretty good and with Ubuntu/bash built in,
install a X server you're good to go.

~~~
SliderUp
People (especially long time Apple users) really underestimate how nice
Windows + Cygwin (or bash, etc) can be, on really powerful laptops, at much
nicer price points.

------
po-tee-weet
What a terrible article. It compares how the processor speed has remained the
same from 2008 without mentioning the architectural changes.

There are reasons why I think the new macbook is less suited for developers,
but not these reasons. This article is entirely misleading.

------
jkrems
Since the article doesn't even mention that the escape functionality is still
there (although it's no longer a physical key but a touch button), I'm going
to assume that its only source is jokes on twitter.

~~~
Skunkleton
Did you see how they had to peck type on the Touch Bar in the demo? How is
this an improvement for me?

------
mamcx
Do you remember "Human Interface"?

Moving to touch-screen for thing that _need_ to be tactile is a _betrayal_ of
the ergonomics of a laptop. Is as demand the use of a mouse in a iPad. Is not
what the machine is.

I think the touch pad is a nice gimmick, and maybe, could be get some useful
applications. But the removal of the Esc + F-Keys break a lot of the
workflows. This is also the trend of make keyboards worse and worse with each
iteration.

Is ironic that people demand good touch pad and complain when is bad, but
think is ok when the keyboards get worse.

------
kaolinite
I'm on mobile so not sure if anyone else has pointed this out but Apple
mentioned in the keynote that the escape key is still present when using the
terminal. There is also a way to bring up the full row of function keys.

Personally I think this is the great advantage of the touch bar. The only app
that I personally use the Esc key in has it available, but all other apps use
the space for more appropriate shortcuts. Plus it can be customised too
(finally I can add a screenshot button!), although not per app yet, as far as
I can tell.

------
zitterbewegung
Do we really need 10 blog posts basically saying the same thing with extremely
low effort on the frontpage?

------
Friedduck
The people who disagree with the post are ignoring the argument because it may
not apply to their specific circumstance. It is a real setback to those of us
who rely on those keys (features, really) but more worryingly a design
direction that offers a net decrease in usability.

All MacBooks already have a touch surface that currently performs the
functions shown in the touch bar demo. While I can see the appeal of some
scenarios where it accelerates what might otherwise require lengthy finger
travel on the touchpad, that doesn't come anywhere close to offsetting the
loss of the function keys.

Virtually all of the MacBooks we buy we set up with Parallels or Fusion, and
the F keys are absolutely necessary for Windows functionality. Having to break
concentration to look at where the keys are, or their state, is a profound
productivity drag.

Doubt that I'm right? Use an iPad instead of your physical keyboard for a week
and let us know the results.

On a sidebar this reminds me a lot of the move to touch screens in cars, and
the resulting challenges. Touch surfaces are great but not the answer to
everything.

------
satysin
The Esc key is annoying but not a big deal for me. What I _am_ worried about
is the new butterfly switches. I have used a MacBook with butterfly switches
quite a bit and it is not a nice writing experience. It feels like I am using
a Blackberry or old Nokia phone.

With Bash on Ubuntu on Windows I think my next machine will be a Dell XPS 15
or ThinkPad T560. Probably the Dell as it comes with a quad-core for like £50
more. Plus a nicer screen (according to reviews).

------
acdha
This seems like a combination of trolling for page-views and begging the
question of whether your personal tastes are universally shared.

Nobody has even used the touch bar yet so we don't know how well the escape +
function key mode works for the average developer, or how often the wins of
other features (e.g. the dedicated “man page” button shown in the screenshots,
the kinds of context-sensitive things something like a debugger, browser dev
tools, etc. could do, etc.) would balance out the lost of a physical key.

There's a small mistake in assuming that the quad-core 2.4GHz processor you
got in 2010 is exactly the same as the 2016 Skylake version, and I think that
masks a much larger question: how many people actually need more CPU or even
RAM? Some developers definitely do – if you're working with a 20GB model,
there's no alternative – but a large number don't.

For me, most of my development laptop hardware requirements plateaued
somewhere around the MacBook Air somewhere around the 2010-12 range because
this thing called the cloud happened and most of the work which can't be done
on a small laptop with an SSD also isn't a good fit for a slightly larger
laptop. Everything else I'd look for are different areas like screen size.

------
mschuster91
Why Apple doesn't offer swappable RAM any more, the disks in a weird format
instead of SATA, glued batteries, ... is all about one thing: making more
money.

See, I have a Fall 2011 MBP. Its battery still sports 3-4h usage, and it's
rare that I max out the 16GB RAM. I have virtually no reason to upgrade.

Now, with one of the new(ish) MBPs: Want to upgrade the RAM because you
thought "oh, 8GB will be sufficient"? Straight outta luck. Want to upgrade the
disk because 512GB SSD isn't big enough? Straight outta luck (because it's
likely to be expensive as hell compared to an ordinary mass market Samsung 850
SSD). Want to replace the battery in 4 years? Quite likely going to be
impossible. Anything broken (scratched/smashed screen, broken touchpad, worn
out keyboard)? Have fun spending $$$$ in the Apple Store because it's a PITA
to replace anything.

Except for the disk, if you want to upgrade anything you MUST shell out
serious amounts of cash for a new mac.

That you'll need to part with even more cash in order to use basic interfaces
(Ethernet, SD cards, Firewire to just name a few) sucks even more - and
dongles are far more likely to just break, e.g. if your laptop gets fallen
from your desk by a playful cat...

------
whalesalad
The new TouchBar is fully defeatable and can behave exactly like an old school
fn key row.

This post is totally devoid of substance and should actually be flagged.

~~~
ixtli
This sort of surface-y anger makes the rounds every time apple does _anything_
to their hardware.

~~~
whywhywhywhy
What were people upset about with the last retina macbook pro refresh?

~~~
ixtli
I can't source this at all but I remember getting into an argument (maybe on
reddit?) about how the lack of changes after almost two years between
refreshes meant the product line was "dead" or that apple could no longer
innovate.

Edit: It just seems to me that if they do nothing it means that steve job's
death is also the death of apple, but if they do something big its an
indication that they've forsaken their core user base.

------
xbryanx
I'm always confused by the interface outrage from hard core devs around new
laptops. As a dev, I spend the absolute minimum time possible developing by
interfacing with my MacBook itself. 98% of the time I'm plugged into a
mechanical keyboard, giant monitors, and a real sound system. My MacBook sits
to the side and only gets touched when I'm on an airplane or a meeting.

~~~
rglullis
I was thinking the same, and I realized the answer is simple: it is not "hard
core devs".

Who cares so much about 6+ hours of battery life, if most of the time you are
just at your workplace - whether at the office or at home? People whose
workplace is at neither of those, and instead they work in some damn coffee
shop.

~~~
SliderUp
This is true; but to me, the problem is the diminutive RAM/CPU/drive profile.
Just not enough horsepower. The touch panel would bug, but I rarely use my
laptop mobile. But my 64G Windows gaming laptop kills my 2014 MBP for perf.
That seems to be nothing that is going to change soon.

------
bitwize
So use an editor that supports a _modern_ UI, like Sublime Text or Atom, and
not something originally designed for an ADM-3A terminal.

~~~
AlexMuir
Good luck using Sublime or atom over SSH.

~~~
foxylion
Sometimes I've a feeling that some people really like it complicated. Today it
is no mysterium to mount a remote machine via SSH and edit all the files using
atom/sublime/vs code/... so mostly no need for a terminal editor on a remote
server.

And have you ever tried to use a terminal (editor) on remote over a connection
with high latency? Awful.

~~~
colemickens
1\. VS Code doesn't support SSH/SCP/SFTP natively, and Windows/Mac support for
sshfs is non-existent/bad. Not to mention it breaks down in tons of cases,
especially low latency or dropped connections. And even in Linux, depending on
where you mount to, you can basically hork your system to the point where it
requires a reboot.

2\. Gotta agree with easytiger. I work all the time from 3G tether connection.
Mosh makes it a breeze.

------
drinchev
Wow, guys... We are all developers, but most of us work for companies. So next
time your boss asks you : "What do you want as your primary machine?" I bet
you will reply : "Latest MacBook Pro".

That simply sums it up. There's no better alternative at this point. You can't
reply "I want a Thinkpad and make it Hackintosh" or smth.

------
rch
I'm not a fan of the _bar_ , but I'd really like mechanical keys with
individual oled screens on the fn row.

------
PerfectElement
I'm thinking about getting a Surface Book for my next laptop, since I've been
spending a lot of time on Parallels using Visual Studio.

My only concern is the tracking pad. Is it possible to replicate the 3 and 4
finger gestures using the Surface Book trackpad? I don't think I can live
without swiping to move between desktops.

------
dpc_pw
Surprisingly for myself I'm going to write a comment defending Apple somewhat.

First specs - are we real tech people, or ignorant crowd? RAM is not only the
amount of it. Previous MacBooks had 1066MHz memories, current one
1866MHz/2133MHz. And CPU power is not only the frequency. I have upgraded my
desktop from 5 year old i7 to new i7. Both have similar frequencies and number
of cores, but new one supports faster buses (like memory) and is in fact
noticeably faster!

I am a big Vim/Neovim/Spacemacs user and I have CapsLock mapped to Esc. And
you should do to, before you develop problems with your hands.

Now, would I buy new MacBook Pro? Hell no. I didn't back then, and I won't
now. I'll keep my Linux box. And that touch bar is silly. But all these crying
is so silly, and I think mostly motivated by trying to attract audience on
your blogs and get some publicity.

------
noob--dev
Mixed feelings about this. Everyone says: "if you dont like MBP there are
dozens of options in these brands" etc. That leaves you basically: Linux or
Windows.

If you are a 100% developer, Linux is obviously the option to go. But if you
happen to be a hybrid and use some kind of design graphic tools, such as
anything from Adobe, then you are forced to stay with Windows.

The new Surface Book looks awesome, but its running Windows 10! 16GB of ram
means nothing under window. The whole system itself needs those 16GB and
eventually it becomes a dinosaur that will expand itself and use the 1TB of
space you put in there.

Want it or not, so many people are still forced to stay with Apple for those
reasons, and they know it. They can literally do whatever they want and these
people will have to keep using MBP.

------
tibbon
Aside from cost, is there any reasonable technical reason to not have 32/64GB
options available? My desktop in 2000 had 2GB of ram, and I'm shocked that 16
years later my laptop maxes at 16GB. I remember in 2009 building a server with
32GB and the memory was only a few hundred for decent ECC RAM.

------
mrsheen
Linux/Mac/Vim/Emacs user here. Every ui/hardware update yields wave of
discontent. People will always complain if they have to change their habits.
Alexey don't tell me that you cannot live without these keys :) Re. unchanged
performance - 95% of us don't need more.

------
leejo
I'm a long time vim user, and i have the following in my .vimrc:

    
    
        nnoremap <F2> T
        nnoremap <F3> t
        nnoremap <F4> set invnumber<CR>
        nnoremap <F5> N<CR>
        nnoremap <F6> n<CR>
    

So you think i'd be annoyed about the culling of the Esc and function keys?
Not really, mac keyboards are terrible for typing IMO/IME so i always have an
external one hooked up.

The lack of decent updates to the RAM and CPU bug me more given the price
increase. Here i am running 5 VMs so that's sucking up almost 1/2 of my 16GB
of RAM. Chrome is eating a good chunk of the rest and i don't have many long
lived tabs.

And at home i have over 500GB of photos alone so would like a machine that
doesn't have a tiny storage option as the default config. But alas...

------
hashkb
Apple has been backing away from power users for years. Ever since they
removed dual monitor full screen, imo. My MacBooks don't have Mac OS on them
and I'm never buying another one. The premium price used to get you the best
product... now it's an accessory.

------
nfriedly
I'm a developer with a 2-year-old macbook pro right now, and while I'm not
going to run out and buy a brand new one right now, I wouldn't have a problem
with the new ones if it were time to upgrade today. I'd have to replace my
thunderbolt 2 dock with a thunderbolt 3 one (or maybe just a dongle?), and I'd
probably want at least one USB-A dongle, but meh... it doesn't seem like a big
deal to me.

I rarely use the function keys, and aside from exiting full-screen youtube
videos, I don't use escape all that often either. I can imagine I'd use the
new touch bar at least as much as I use that current row of buttons.

I do think it's funny that Macbooks are now standardized on USB-C +
headphones, while iPhones aren't.

------
davej
My understanding is that the escape key is there by default but the active
application can choose to override it. I don't need the escape while I'm using
Spotify.

I quite like the new Macbooks. Would have been nice to have a 32GB RAM option
but I can survive with 16GB to be honest.

------
mrweasel
Sure I would like Apple just have kept the keyboard as is, and not having the
ESC key is going to take some getting used to, but even as a Vim user it's a
solvable problem.

Depending on your workflow and platform choices, you don't even need to
upgrade your Macbook Pro, the last to generation are perfectly fine for a very
large number of people.

Scott Hanselmans comment that not having a ESC key for Vim is messing with
Apple core audience the just plain stupid. The VAST majority of Apple MacBook
Pro customer aren't installing Vim.

Only having USB-C connectors seems like pushing it in terms of how fast you
can expect users to adapt and it's going to be an adaptor hell for a year or
two.

------
bandrami
Looks like an entire generation of javascript devs is going to have to learn
how to do ^[

------
malensek
Just curious: how many folks can accurately touch-type the Fn-keys? Personally
they're too far away from the home row for me to hit accurately, but maybe
that's because I use too many different keyboards and they're all slightly
different with spacing. The esc key is easy with it being located in the
corner, though.

So in my case, I would already look down to hit an F-key, and I imagine
functionality such as "compile" would now be represented by a touch button. So
no problem there. And point #2 is just ridiculous -- today's MacBook CPUs and
Memory are faster and consume less power than they did 6 years ago.

~~~
optionalparens
Touch typing or not, I think you are missing an important point here with
regard to programming - tactile feedback. Doubly so with anyone that uses
mechanical keyboards like me.

For example, you may not know where the "f8" key is on your keyboard, but once
you look down and locate it, you won't have trouble repeatedly pressing it,
accurately, with velocity. A good example of where and why this pattern
happens is debugging. A lot of IDEs and editors are setup by default to use
f-keys for debug or other ancillary functions like build, specific menus, etc.
I believe IntelliJ and Visual Studio in at least a few default setups and
versions did this.

More specifically, I can't imagine pressing a touch button possibly dozens of
times, sometimes rapidly to advance through a bunch of break points, set new
break points, eval things, etc. It is true you could just map these to other
keys, but that becomes an issue with anything that is using default key maps
for functions as I describe. Additionally, touch buttons promote people to
start using more and more keyboard chords as they start shuffling around
things in their keymaps, which a lot of people dislike. I'm an Emacs and
IntelliJ user primarily, so the former and my arthritis in my hands are well
acquainted with regard to keyboard chords and complex mapping sequences.

I have not used this keyboard obviously, but it seems to me from my
experiences using similar tech that this is only good for much lesser used
macro-like or launch actions. Useful still, yes, but I don't think it is a 1:1
replacement for function keys. I said it in another article and I'll say it
here, I don't think this keyboard setup is aimed at programmers, but for most
consumers it is likely just fine as much as I hate it. As for value added,
that's another discussion.

I do know that if I ever buy or am forced to use one of these, it will always
be with my own keyboard. I don't mind the chiclets as much as some people, but
at home or the office I use external monitors and mechanical keyboards
whenever I can.

------
askopress
I suppose a front-end developer isn't considered a developer? Linux doesn't
work for me as we need Photoshop and Sketch and well, Linux kind of looks ugly
as well (with the notable exception of Elementary OS, which tries to be the OS
X/macOS of Linux).

It's also mentioned that the ESC key will still be there, and you can map your
own keys to the Touch Bar as well, it just won't be a physical key anymore.
This generalization that just because you can't use Vim anymore (which you
can) the entire MacBook brand is gone to shit (which it hasn't) or worse, that
Apple is stupid (it's not).

------
ohstopitu
I was very very against the new Macbook Pro yesterday and I made up my mind to
get the new Razer Blade Stealth (for daily computing/dev) and a mac mini (for
iOS dev).

But after watching a few first hands-on with it, I intend to give it a try
when I can, at the store to see if it's really as bad I've made it out in my
head. If I don't mind it too much, I'll probably get the new Macbook pro 15"
\- i7 quad core/16 GB Ram/256 GB SSD (~ $3000 CAD + tax).

A good night's sleep can give you a new perspective on things.

BTW those who want to utilize Apple's "student discount"...it's around $50 off
:/

------
antaviana
If you already have a Mac, the upside of this release of limited machines (up
to 16GB) is that it will intrinsically force Mac developers to refrend from
designing BigMemory applications.

So if I currently have a 16GB Mac, it is likely that its useful life will be
longer than if 32GB or 64GB Macs suddenly become mainstream and you find that
your 16GB Mac cannot run anymore the latest and greatest apps so you are
forced to buy a new Mac.

This also sort of happens with the Windows ecosystem, where the RAM-based
licensing of Windows 10 for OEMs naturally drives manufacturers to offer
machines with less RAM so its pricing is more attractive.

------
cerrelio
None of the article's points is relevant.

1\. Function keys were a convenience. You can map ESC to other physical keys.

2\. 16GB RAM and processor are fine, if you're still able to fit your
processing in that configuration. Otherwise you're probably using a laptop as
a terminal to a computing cluster (AWS/cloud/etc), which have more computing
power and memory than an Apple warehouse.

3\. Who cares what people on Twitter are saying.

The MacBook Pro was never meant to be a developer's machine. Any developer
with half a brain knows there are more configurable and cheaper laptops out
there. MBP is mostly for conspicuous consumption.

~~~
overgard
Well, at my last two jobs my work computer was a macbook pro, and my current
job it's a macbook pro. So, three separate employers seem to disagree with
you.

------
Disruptive_Dave
This is what they call "newsjacking" \- and a really bad version of it.

------
jlebar
Guys.

You can configure the touch bar thing.

Let's give it a try before raging over it? Otherwise this and the other recent
HN threads may be this year's version of the famous Slashdot "Apple introduces
the iPod" thread.

------
drewg123
My biggest complaint is that they increased the size of the touchpad. I _HATE_
touchpads, as the cursor tends to shoot off into space when I accidentally
touch it with the heel of my hand when typing. The last thing I want is a
larger touchpad.

If they're going to steal innovations from Thinkpads, I really wish they'd
have taken the eraser nub instead. Back when I had a Thinkpad (running linux)
as my work laptop, I would just disable the touchpad in the BIOS and use the
eraser nub. The eraser nub is the thing I miss most from the thinkpad.

~~~
xigency
> I HATE touchpads, as the cursor tends to shoot off into space when I
> accidentally touch it with the heel of my hand when typing.

Apple touchpads don't have this "feature".

------
christiansmith
Lack of physical escape key with vi is not a problem for me. An old trick is
to remap caps lock (never used) to Ctrl (constantly used), which is easier to
reach from "asdfhjkl" hand positioning. Then Ctrl-C is mapped to escape, and I
never have to reach up to the fn row from the home row. Makes working with vi
a bit more seamless and this lack of fn row is a moot point. So maybe we have
to change few key bindings for ancient but still useful software. Really not a
deal killer.

------
webXL
A physical ESC isn't that important because multiple presses are idempotent
usually; there's only one dialog in the foreground of the active application
(at least there should be) or you're only in one insert mode. I also don't see
this being a big deal for key-combos. As long as it's available in apps that
make use of it or Apple let's you enable it, and there's a way for you to
learn where it is by touch, this shouldn't be that big of a deal.

------
JunkDNA
Not to go too far off topic, but I'm surprised at the number of vim users in
this thread who still use the escape key and haven't mapped it to something
that doesn't require you to move your finger to the most inconvenient spot of
the entire keyboard. Sometime 10 years ago I took someone's advice and
remapped jj to escape in my vimrc. By far one of the best changes I've ever
made. the speed gain is significant (unless your name is JJ Abrams)

------
lr
I thought the current application determined what is displayed in that area?
How do we know the Terminal won't cause the escape and FN keys to appear? Same
for TextMate, Atom, etc.? Yes, Apple owns the default Terminal app so there is
no controlling what happens with it (or is there, i.e., can you, via
preferences define what you want to show up regardless of what the app
chooses...). But the makers of TextMate, Atom, and IDEs can decide to make the
function keys show up, no?

------
pi-rat
Maybe not a good laptop for vim users, but it's the perfect Emacs laptop.

[http://imgur.com/a/G6WOk](http://imgur.com/a/G6WOk)

------
copperx
I know the post is complaining about removing physical keys, but wasn't it
completely idiotic to have removed the SD card slot? I know that most people
don't use it. And maybe having it in the 13" is overkill, but what about
keeping it in the 15" one Apple? It's a "Pro" computer, and the most common
use case isn't for developers, but hobby, prosumer, and pro photographers, who
use (gasp!) dedicated cameras with SD memory.

------
michaelkaufman
The reason I'm not impressed with the new Macbook Pro is I, like a huge
percentage of developers I know, use the computer as a 3rd monitor and use a
different keyboard than the built in one. I'm not going to reach 3 ft away to
hit a Spotify shortcut on the TouchBar ever when I can use my finger on my
magic trackpad to do it in a fraction of the time. WTF. And will the function
keys on my keyboard of choice even work now?

------
Isamu
I believe the short video that introduced the new MBP showed the ESC key in
the system bar in the first few seconds, they practically zoomed in on that
ESC key. And it showed up in other configurations, just not all of them.

I would think if you are in a shell or similar context, the ESC will be there
in the expected place. Why don't you wait and try it out at the Apple store?

No, let's fly to the internet to dash off a disposable opinion.

------
devnull255
Well, according to info about the new MacBook, news of the the function keys'
death has been greatly exaggerated.

"Access the function keys by holding down the FN key on the keyboard." \--
[http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/](http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/)

One might also optimistically hope that the touchbar itself has some practical
level of re-programmability.

------
mynameishere
I can't believe people are debating whether or not you need function and
escape keys. It's just...are Apple people living in another universe? The
escape key is used by _nearly every application_. Are you not aware of this?
The function keys are used by _nearly every non-game application_. Cripe. Did
you people buy your premium CPU-holding boxes just to use vim?

~~~
frou_dh
> The function keys are used by nearly every non-game application

Used OS X much, have you?

The primacy of the Command ⌘ key (which is distinct from Ctrl) has, in
practice, given keyboard-shortcutting on Mac a different structure to what's
traditional elsewhere.

------
Sk1pp
I don't understand, this insane hype over the removing the esc key. I use vim
on a daily basis, and there are several ways in vim, or in the system to remap
the keys. But above all that I'm pretty sure they said yesterday in the
presentation that the esc key would just be on the touch bar when the terminal
is open. And if that's the case its a simple signal to the OS.

------
gshakir
I am sticking with MBP for the combination of UNIX, MS Office and support for
software like Turbotax etc. Ubuntu is not an option for me yet, since
LibreOffice has lot of kinks. My only gripe is that processor and memory did
not get an upgrade. Touch bar is a nice touch, we have to wait and see how it
plays out.

Oh, I like Apple commitment privacy compared to MS.

------
mwill
I may be asking too much here, but I hope someone comes along with a laptop
with amazing build quality, amazing linux support, and hackintosh support
(XCode).

I've been holding off replacing my old MBP because none of the new models have
wowed me. I got a laptop sized tumor on my budget just waiting to be removed
by some company with a viable product.

~~~
theseoafs
No laptop will ever come along with "Hackintosh support" because that would be
illegal.

------
nojvek
I really hope my current air doesn't breakdown. It's proper USB ports, fn keys
and built in hdmi port. I use fn and esc every single day. Fn6-8 are debugging
continue, break etc shortcuts.

I see absolutely zero value in buying the new iPhone or Mac line. Why apple
why? Precisely this reason why I am selling all my stock in Apple.

------
jabzd
In one keynote I went from being excited about what was coming to feeling held
hostage, yet ignored, in the Apple ecosystem due to iOS app development. 16gb
of RAM is just too limiting for some workloads.

I may need to outfit my team with powerful linux desktops and low end macbooks
for app development and remote/emergency work.

------
bfrog
Apple users these days must be masochist to keep coming back for more year
after year.

It used to be a joke... [http://www.theonion.com/video/apple-introduces-
revolutionary...](http://www.theonion.com/video/apple-introduces-
revolutionary-new-laptop-with-no--14299)

------
the_watcher
No escape and function keys? Seriously? I've been using Karabiner (now
Karabiner-Elements, which is rapidly becoming fully featured) to remap those
keys for years anyway, since they're already located in a place that makes me
hate having to use them.

The most useful key remapping, by the way, is Caps Lock to Escape.

------
goerz
As someone doing highly CPU intensive computations, I would have appreciated
more than 2 cores (or 4, with hyperthreading, I assume) in the 13' MBP.
Granted, most of the time I can use my 80 core remote compute node, but it
would still be nice to have a bit more parallel CPU power for local
development

------
Imagenuity
Apple needs a built-in, system level, per-app configurable Touch Bar settings
tool. Apps may provide their own configurations, but they have to be
customizable.

Only by putting this in as part of the system settings, will a standardized
way of apps making touchbars and users making customizations work across all
apps.

------
ilolu
Lots of people point out about touch bar being context sensitive. Why cant
each app have context sensitive widget bar. Or why not just have another
context sensitive menu bar which each apps can customize. Are we not getting
the same user experience but with a mouse/trackpad instead of a touch bar ?

------
elcct
Ubuntu for Windows works really well (on insider preview) and since then I
have no desire to even look at mac...

------
radium3d
I feel like removing the function keys their original idea to where they
couldn't go back when they were first conceived. It will be better to know
what their function is without having to look it up in a manual. It makes the
function keys on older computers look like index cards in a library.

------
whywhywhywhy
I'd actually say devs (web/mobile) are one of the only professionals served by
this laptop. They don't need high powered GPUs.

This however is a massive kick in the face to anyone working in design, art,
3D, video editing or effects.

The only other professional this seems to target is the professional blogger.

------
pat2man
As an iOS developer I've been waiting for a single feature: the ability to
drive a 5k monitor. Bonus for a single cable that I can plug in vs power +
DisplayPort. Apple finally delivered. The fact that any manufacturer can
develop such a monitor now is just a bonus.

------
vazamb
I don't really understand the outrage about the touchpad when the actual
keyboard is likely a far worse problem. Unless they have significantly upped
their game from the 12 inch MacBook I don't see anyone typing on that keyboard
for longer than 10 minutes.

~~~
djrogers
They went out of their way to point out that it's not the same keyboard as the
12". Aside from that, there are plenty of opal who are more than happy with
that keyboard - personal preference is just that, personal.

------
k_bx
Why doesn't anyone mention that Apple still sells the 13" version without that
touchbar?

------
Philipp__
Ok, I think Apple is not hitting the Dev group of consumers at all. But what I
certainly do not want to do is judge a machine that I have not tried. Yeah, I
am almost 100% I won't buy this machine, no reason, cause I use maxed out 13"
I bought 9 months ago, but I will go to a store and spend some time with it,
and after that come to the internet and tell my impression.

Markets and products change over time, sometimes for worse, sometimes for
better. Nobody is forcing anyone to buy this machine, yes it is expensive, yes
it is not geared towards Pro consumers as we all used to think and expected
from this one the same, yes it is Apple on the verge of their creativity. So
what? It has never been better situation with alternative laptops and hybrids.
You have fantastic products from Microsoft and Dell!

What is my opinion on this whole thing, is that with laptops we got to the
point of saturation. They started as big and clunky boxes in 90s, to a slimmer
but still heavy and chunky plastic bricks in early 2000s. Then we got aluminum
body, after that CPUs staled with performance, and went with the rout of lower
voltage, which allowed for longer battery life and less heat exhaustion. Then
aluminum bodies went really slim, tablets and touch screens came in play,
opening whole new market of hybrids.

And now we come back to the point where we say, we do not want gimmicks in our
laptops, that's okay, Apple shoulda have given the option of non Touch Bar 15"
MBP, but it would require further price tweaking. And then we come to the
point of price. Yeah it is going up! We had a period from 2012 to 2016 where
computers were pretty affordable, in terms where you get solid battery life
and computer performance with at least FHD screen slight under thousand
dollars. Now market is shrinking, because of the nature of technology and
innovation, market got saturated, and we are here where we are. I just do not
understand people screaming all over the internet. I mean I was too when I
watched the presentation, this isn't the Apple I fell in love with more than
10 years ago. But what can you do... When the time comes for purchase of my
new computer (I am Software Engineer, so quite niche market) I will evaluate
every option with my head cool. Yeah, I like UNIX and I was using Mac
computers for more than 10 years, but Microsoft has never been stronger with
hardware and PC games, and Dell is fine too. That is the good thing both for
whole market and Apple fans, because change is needed inside Apple! When their
money and stocks start to go down the sink that will make them realize and
fight for the lost costumers. Have a nice day, just my 2c.

------
fatbird
Very few vi power users actually use the ESC key, I think: the first tip given
to everyone trying to transition to vi is to remap jj to ESC so you can do so
without leaving the home row.

The RAM bugs me; replacing the F row with the touchstrip doesn't.

------
winebaths
While there's a lot in here that I can agree with, this one stands out like a
sore thumb...

> The MacBook Pro had options with 2.4 gigahertz dual-core processors back in
> 2010. Anything new in 2016? Not really, well… nope.

Aren't we done the whole gigahertz race?

~~~
ngcazz
author clearly doesn't care to understand about hardware.

------
radus
If you don't mind an additional dongle, maybe the following can help:
[https://github.com/alevchuk/vim-clutch](https://github.com/alevchuk/vim-
clutch)

------
mixmastamyk
Yep, I'm another developer who rarely uses Escape or the F keys. I moved Ctrl
to Caps Lock, and you can put Escape there too if you are a hardcore vim/emacs
user. It's better on the hands and faster.

Second, my current laptop has 8GB ram and it is more than enough to edit text
files. The only time it could potentially be a problem is when running VMs,
but as it is I can run two or three at a time with 1GB a piece no sweat.
Combined with the cloud and ssh I'm not sure that 16GB is a burden to many.

As an aside I used to work at a vfx company in the late 90's. We'd do
simulations such as tornados that ate RAM for breakfast and would run on a
full SGI Origin 3k across 16 CPUs. Guess how much ram it had and used? Yes, 16
GB. The idea that we have an Origin in our laps under 2kg would have impressed
the younger me.

------
oldmanjay
People like to use rhetoric to pretend that their opinion is universal as a
preventative measure for suppressing disagreement. Programmers, unfortunately,
like to apply this to things that are transparently subjective, targeted at an
intelligent audience that often takes umbrage to being told what to think.

I feel like I should flag this article for being nothing more than rhetorical
rabble-rousing[0], but frankly so many people have been arguing to let HN go
to shit because that's the sort of comment community they want, so I'm more
inclined to leave this particular cesspit bubbling.

[0] Here's the sort of logic the article employs: > There are ~ 19 million
developers in the world. And Apple has managed to sell ~19 million Macs over
the past 4 quarters. What a coincidence!

~~~
erikb
The best way for smart people to kill a community is to go somewhere else.
Because when the smart people are gone, there is nothing interesting left in
the community to follow. Therefore that's an option I want to suggest to you.
Let us stupid people destroy ourselves here. Thanks.

~~~
oldmanjay
No. I don't much care about your opinion of me, as is only appropriate.

------
cflynnus
I feel like I can boil this post down to:

1\. There's no escape key! 2\. It has roughly the same specs as existing MBPs

ergo now totally useless for developers

Anyone sw developer that cares about the escape key remapped it to the caps
lock key years ago

------
rickcogley
My PFU HHKB external 'board has an Esc key, and there's usually a way to map
things anyway. Not sure what the fuss is about.

------
amorphid
I haven't been this upset since Chrome removed using the backspace key as a
back button, and it took me a few minutes to find a chrome extension that
allowed me to replicate the functionality.

------
Orangeair
I'm surprised that so many people use them even today. Unless you're fully
ingrained into the Mac ecosystem, there are just too many idiosyncrasies that
make moving between platforms in possible, like the use of the 'command' key
which no other platform in the world uses, or the weird placement of the
control key which completely negates years of muscle memory (a trend which
some Windows laptops are unfortunately beginning to follow, even in business-
class machines; thankfully mine at least lets me rebind it in the BIOS).

Honest question for people who develop on Macs: Do you exclusively develop on
them, or have you just learned to put up with differences between it and
Linux/Windows?

~~~
lewiscollard
I use a MBP[1] at my day job and Linux on my personal machines.[2] I am a
developer at a digital design agency so my priorities may not line up with
those of other developers, but MBPs rock for what I do because:

1) Photoshop (the designers use Photoshop, so this largely rules out using
Linux boxes)

2) Extremely colour-accurate display out of the box (PC displays have always
been a bit of a crapshoot on this count in my experience)

3) Being Unix

3a) A real command line (admittedly I haven't tried the Ubuntu-on-Windows
thing)

4) I'm not paying for it!

Speaking only for me, switching between using two platforms has really not a
problem for me - I do it every day. When I first went into this job I was
worried that a Mac was going to be a very difficult transition to make, but it
turned out to be straightforward - just needed a little muscle-memory
retraining :)

[1] Never really sure if this should be "an" or "a"...

[2] Written from my 2006 Thinkpad of Death :)

(edited: linebreaks)

------
sametmax
All softwares, including wim, will come with a plugin (or a built in feature)
to display a custom menu on it, including the equivalent of an escape key. And
you can bet the first app to be developpped will be something to display the
old Fx bar in the widget.

I usually really dislike apple politics, being a linux boy myself, but I can
see how this, while causing some issues, can be an interesting tool.

You want people to innovate and cry when they do so. It doesn't work that way.

Let the community try to work with it for a bit to see if interesting patterns
emerge before judging.

And come on, 16GB limit? I got 32 just in case, but currenly, I can't reach
14GB without forcing myself to open everything I can. This is complaining for
complaining.

~~~
edgan
Between VMs, Chrome, maybe Chromium/Firefox/Safari it is easy to get to 16gb

~~~
sametmax
With docker, firefox, chrome and the android emulator running, I can't reach
14GB. I probably could by faking it, but I've been dev on an 4 Go machine for
years and it was ok.

------
mgberlin
At first I was ornery about the touch bar thing. Then I remembered I'm using a
Kinesis Advantage that has soft function keys, which I've touched about 3
times in the past year.

------
mediter
The author is just complaining, but has not done any amount of in-depth
analysis of the feasibility of customizing the touch bar in the apps
developers use!

------
marky421
Why no mention of the lack of MagSafe? I can't count the number of times that
brilliant little connector saved my laptop from certain death. So sad to see
it's gone.

------
the_duke
The escape key always seemed a horrible choice for such an essential key in
vim.

I mapped it to capslock like 2 days after starting with Vim.

Many people also use "jj" or something similar.

------
davidcollantes
It is not only developers, this change also kills the MBP for gamers. My child
has all the function keys mapped to spells in World of Warcraft (including
ESC).

------
raverbashing
You can use the Caps Lock as ESC key, for example

I suppose also there's a terminal mode with ESC and the other keys (or iTerm
might do that)

But yeah, the RAM issue is not good

------
nashashmi
A possible substitute for vim keyboards is that touch bar will display vim
power commands. losing escape may not be such a big deal for them.

but other users ...

------
TheHippo
I lost it at:

> There are ~ 19 million developers in the world. And Apple has managed to
> sell ~19 million Macs over the past 4 quarters. What a coincidence!

------
Yabood
The real concern for me is the trackpad. It's size makes it impossible not to
rest both palms on it when using they keyboard.

------
adolfoabegg
well, if you you want a touchbarless macbook pro then get a 13' touchbarless
macbook pro. Just came to mind this thought "Maybe they're selling that one as
part of a sales control group". But then: it's Apple, they just do whatever
they think is innovative.

Do you think system76.com is a good alternative from the developers point of
view?

------
lasermike026
Isn't the apple market getting soft? The app gold rush is over and it never
was a very good deal to begin with. Apple wants a cut of your development
profits, they can yank your app or worse, yank your developer account
arbitrarily. Swift, while not finished yet, commodifies the the apple dev
market further. I don't think devs have a choice, they have to move on to
other markets.

The esc and F key is a red herring. I do most of my coding on a Das Keyboard.

------
matchagaucho
So many DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) features are mapped to function keys.

Is Apple abandoning their digital recording arts audience too?

------
goerz
For people who really need to touch-type function keys, I would recommend
remapping ALT+1 -> F1, ALT+2 -> F2, etc.

------
tigroferoce
Am I the only one here who noticed that there IS a version without touch bar
and with plain old function keys?

~~~
graycrow
Yes, but only 13" with slower CPU and 50% less USB ports.

------
WallyAmerica
The touch bar is customizable. Surely they will allow users to add an esc key
on their touch screen, right?

------
velocitypsycho
While I understand people's frustrations. Couldn't the escape key be on the
toolbar when in Vim?

------
Tloewald
I don't use vim and consider myself highly biased towards guis despite being a
long time programmer. I am also an Apple user since the Apple II, and owned
the original inside Mac and Human Interface Guidelines books.

Even for me, losing the escape key is a bit scary. It may be mitigated by
customization of the bar. Function keys have always been dumb and replacing
them with dynamic controls is awesome.

------
strictnein
Google cache, since it's down currently:
[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:UleFaa...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:UleFaabtM4kJ:https://blog.devteam.space/new-
macbook-pro-is-not-a-laptop-for-developers-
anymore-d0d4b1b8b7de+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

------
uber1geek
Connecting an iPhone 7 to the new macbook pro requires a $19 Adapter. This is
beyond a joke now Apple!

------
visionscaper
According to Apple's presentation, the function keys are available when you
press the Fn key!

------
SocratesV
I remap my CTRL to CAPS LOCK because it's more convenient.

Have come across a lot of Vim power users that do the same with ESC. Or buy
the model without the Touch Bar.

Can we stop with the drama now? It's becoming pathetic.

Apologies for the bluntness.

P.S.: more RAM and CPU? Get a desktop or buy another laptop. Since when was
Apple the fastest, more bang for your money? This was clearly not a specs bump
iteration.

~~~
overcast
There was really nothing preventing Apple from offering 32GB and even 64GB
chips. 16GB MAX is pathetic for $3000. What's with the old chipset/cpu? DDR3?

~~~
SocratesV
Those that do need more RAM are probably are already using desktop options. I
understand it would be nice to have more RAM by default or optional, I would
also like it since I tend to keep my laptops for a long time (current one is a
2008 13'' Macbook Unibody), but there's always a reason for not doing it,
either it be technical, economical or commercial. It's not a decision you take
on a whim.

They introduced a major piece of hardware to the configuration and reduced
size and weight. Making other changes would be increasing the risk of
something going wrong. That's my take at least.

You can probably expect the specs bump within the next year. :)

If you are going for price, criticising Apple's pricing is by now a tradition.
I thought we had established that Apple is not where you get more bang for
your buck. You buy it for the OS and construction quality (and now the
ecosystem of services).

~~~
overcast
Actually, you used to get pretty solid performance for the price/form factor
from Apple. For instance when I purchase my Mac Pro desktop in 2008. It was a
RIDICULOUSLY good deal for what you got. The Xeon processors alone were $1500
each on NewEgg the day I purchased it. They've just progressively gone less
and less value, as the years have gone by.

~~~
SocratesV
Not doubting the price you were seeing in NewEgg, but find it hard to believe
you couldn't build your own PC with the same CPU and equivalent RAM, GPU,
cheaper by sourcing the parts from retail stores yourself.

Was it a case where Apple was getting an incredibly good deal on those?

~~~
overcast
Yes, they basically bought up the entire market on those Xeons, and that 2008
line was THE Mac Pro to buy into. I'm still using it today, zero issues!
Except of course the whole Apple no longer supporting it with their Sierra OS.
There were articles on it comparing sourcing yourself, and you really couldn't
just throw together a workstation grade PC like this for that price.

$3000 got you 2 x 2.8ghz Quad core Xeons, up to 64GB of FB-DIMM ECC, 4 x drive
bays + 2 x CD bays.

There isn't much this thing still can't handle, it's just being phased out,
and eventually it won't turn on one day.

------
abakker
Does nobody use external keyboards?

------
briankwest
I'm pretty sure I can adjust to the soft esc key, If not then evolution is a
myth. :)

------
alexeysemeney
folks, thanks for all your comments, didn't expect that. The main issue with
the keys appears when you have a full-size keyboard and a laptop with a
different set of major keys. And there is one more thing — tactile feedback.

~~~
hellofunk
In your experience getting actual work done with the new touch bar, what was
your personal feedback on how it felt not to have the tactile feedback?

------
joshmn
So how long before we see a "function row extension" that plugs in via usb?

------
weavie
It looks like they have also removed the § key. How am I going to type § now?

------
asimpletune
"The MacBook Pro had options with 2.4 gigahertz dual-core processors back in
2010. Anything new in 2016?"

This was really disappointing to read. Aside from the total lack of
imagination and overall butt hurt tone, the author demonstrated a lack of
basic understanding of performance.

------
realworldview
Worst HN post and comments ever. Sounds like a kindergarten fracas.

------
pjmlp
I really dislike the tone of this kind of blog posts, as if one is only
allowed to be called developer when using UNIX, vi and Emacs.

I don't want a portable PDP-11, rather a Xerox PARC workstation, a BeOS,
Amiga, Atari, Acorn, Oberon System 3...

------
xyproto
True ViM users have already mapped Esc to the Caps Lock key.

------
WhitneyLand
don't the majority of developers work with the lid closed using an Extertal
monitor and keyboard?

i only use the internal keyboard when traveling.

------
mtw
I'm not sure what are the alternatives though. You still need a mac as a
developer for mobile app development or even checking out rendering.

------
chrismatheson
Your developers. Stop moaning about lack of this or that key and just remap
the existing keys.

------
kagaw
R.I.P F5! :-)

------
SamUK96
True developers used MacBooks?

I was talking to a washed-up developer today who swears by them actually.
Every single reason was totally bogus. It went something like this:

Reason 1) "They come with native SSH capabilities"

Me) "Uh, you can just get Putty for windows. It takes 20 seconds."

Reason 2) "MacOS uses the PC's hardware more efficiently"

Me) "Uh, it's because it's a very basic OS and has _much_ less the deal with,
i.e less threads to micromanage, so it's not really 'efficiency'. Also, Apple
products have very poor hardware specs for the price, so the performance ends
up the same if not worse than an equivalent windows machine, even when
factoring in poorer hardware utilization efficiency."

Reason 3) "B-but, Photoshop and video-editing software runs better on MacOS."

Me) "No. It doesn't. It really doesn't. What the hell"

Honestly, there is no getting through to them.

~~~
wyager
> True developers used MacBooks?

Yes, three out of four tech companies I've been employed at and many more I've
visited have been mac shops.

Your made-up justifications don't even touch on the real reasons people prefer
macs a lot of the time; it's UNIX, it's easy to use, and the hardware is high-
quality.

I think this might just be bait, but I do hear comments like this all the time
off HN, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

~~~
SamUK96
>the hardware is high-quality.

On the outside, maybe? The internal components of Apple products are
notoriously planned and built for obsolescence and failure to keep you trendy
folk giving them money, line after line (and then charge you to fix the
failures!)

>it's UNIX

People would use Linux if the platform had the money to bribe software makers
to support them. That's a "forced-reason", and not a positive design point of
Apple itself.

>made-up justifications

Call everything you don't agree with "made-up"?

But seriously though, the reasons that devs use macs are mostly forced/non-
reasons:

a) Earn a tonne of money and terrible value is not a problem for them

b) Need it since the thing they are developing needs to be tested on macs

c) Need UNIX and software that supports running on it.

d) etc.

After a while, you realise most of the reasons why any developer ever buys
Apple starts with "need", which, hopefully, you should understand is a
statement to the marketing, underhand, and monopolistic tactics of Apple
(forcing you to "need" their products, rather than want them)

