
Surviving the New MacBook Pro - z92
http://bradfrost.com/blog/post/surviving-the-new-macbook-pro/
======
nrjames
I have a mostly maxed-out 15" new MBP. I love it. Now that I'm used to the new
keyboard, I can type much faster than with the older ones and it feels far
less mushy. I never have problems with stuck keys, audio, etc. From time to
time, I see some graphical artifacts around in the window shadows when I first
open it up after sleeping, but they go away after a moment.

The biggest annoyance, to me, is the placement of a touch bar hotspot above
the delete key. I hit it all the time. At first, by default, Siri was there. I
switched it to be the "show desktop" button, but what I really want to do is
to shift everything to the left so that nothing is above the delete key.

Even with that, however, I've adjusted my typing so that I rarely hit the
touch bar above the delete key.

I've never had battery problems, the USB-C ports don't bother me because I
rarely have anything plugged into the laptop other than the power cable, and
in my work environments, we use Apple TVs for conference room televisions, so
I can just connect wirelessly to show presentations.

I was skeptical when I bought it, due to all of the moaning that shows up here
on HN, but all in all, I'm really enjoying this computer and I'm glad that I
replaced my old MBP with it.

~~~
jghn
I'm curious to see how the keyboards hold up. I have a 2016 12" rMB. I believe
that's the same keyboard as the new MBP. It's less than a year old and some of
the keys are starting to become unresponsive. Admittedly I'm a very "hard"
typist, but still.

I actually quite like typing on this keyboard, although it was weird at first,
but I wonder how these things are going to hold up.

~~~
saurik
I was actually warned by the Apple Store when I got it how fragile the
keyboard is and that if even small amounts of stuff got on the keyboard it
would interfere with the keys due to the lack of any space below the key cap.

------
wazoox
I've bought a new MacBook pro. It works reasonably well, but :

it is seriously bug-ridden. For instance, at times the Finder won't allow any
drag and drop operation (you need to kill it). Access to network shares is hit
and miss. Globally the OS X Finder has been a pretty poor piece of essential
software since... Developer Preview? :/

The absence of at least one standard USB port is really annoying, you need an
adapter to plug in just about anything, a thumb drive, a phone, a mouse... any
of the bazillions of USB gizmos and cables everyone has lying around in his
house or at work. Wherever you are, you need to have this stupid adapter at
hand. It's incredibly annoying; in practice you have to carry your nice, sleek
laptop with a constantly dangling white protrusion on a side.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
Finder really needs some attention beyond adding features like tagging that
add complexity without, as far as I can tell, bringing any real benefit.

I want a Finder that's keyboard-accessible, that lets me easily restart it
when it crashes, that doesn't frustrate my efforts to view certain hidden
files. I'd still take it over windows explorer, on balance, but only barely,
and that's pretty damning.

I've recently started using fman [0] which seems a promising alternative.

[0] [https://fman.io](https://fman.io)

~~~
arthurfm
_I want a Finder that 's keyboard-accessible, that lets me easily restart it
when it crashes, that doesn't frustrate my efforts to view certain hidden
files._

Forklift 3 would also meet those criteria.

[http://binarynights.com/forklift/](http://binarynights.com/forklift/)

------
mpweiher
Disagree almost completely. Just came back from a trip and charging was much
better than before. Between us we had:

    
    
       1 new MBP, 1 MB 12"
       2 iPhones
       1 iPad
       1 Micro-USB device (Neo Smartpen)
    
    

We only needed 1 charger and 3 cables: 1 USB-C/USB-C, 1 USB-C/Lightning, 1
USB-C/Micro-USB. (We carried a second charger just in case).

We could charge either of the laptops, any of the devices directly or any of
the devices via the charging MBP (or from the battery of either non-connected
laptop).

On all our previous/recent trips, keeping devices charged was always a
problem, this time it was completely effortless.

While I don't have the problems with the TouchBar the author describes, so far
it has been largely uneventful for me (and yes, TouchID is _great_!). However,
I think the _potential_ is fantastic for integrating textual input with
controls in ways that just hasn't been possible before.

I implemented a very preliminary version of scrubbing inline numbers in my
CodeDraw live coding/graphics environment and it makes a _huge_ difference.
Before, you had to select the number, then either (a) fiddle with some
gestures combining modifier keys and the mouse or (b) move the mouse to a
separate on-screen widget. With the TouchBar, just select and scrub. Yes, it
seems like a subtle difference when described in text, but the difference in
actual interaction is YUGE :-)

~~~
bitexploder
I am not familiar with your software, but would a standard keyboard shortcut
work for your common case of adjusting a number? j/k or some such mnemonic for
up down?

~~~
mpweiher
Not when you're inside a text editor, just hitting j or k would replace the
selected number with j or k.

Of course you can use command/option or some such, maybe with arrows, but
still the problem is that it's incredibly cumbersome compared to scrubbing
using a slider. Much greater range and finer control when you have visual
feedback.

I do think that the common use of the TouchBar as a set of function keys is
not particularly useful.

~~~
bitexploder
Got it. That makes sense. That is a pretty neat use case if it is sensitive
enough.

------
late2part
_I just want a computer that boots up reliably, plays audio and video, allows
me to work for more than a couple hours before dying, and has a keyboard that
doesn’t freak out on me._

You had one. You gave it to your brother.

~~~
jakelazaroff
So he should use that computer for the rest of his life? He had to upgrade
_sometime_.

~~~
toomuchtodo
You don't have to upgrade. Lots of still functional pre-courage Macs you can
buy.

~~~
jameskegel
"pre-courage", I must admit, while accurate, I had a chuckle.

------
uptownJimmy
This is definitely a stumble for Apple, that much is beyond debate.

But as someone who uses both 2012 MBP and new HP Win10 laptops every day for
work and play, let me say this: the Windows world might seem suddenly
enticing, but you will NOT find greener pastures there, on average. That
ecosystem is still a mess.

~~~
Joeri
I think it's very personal which platform you prefer. I also spend equal time
on windows and mac and lately find myself preferring windows more.

One thing that's definitely terrible on windows 10 are the updates. Stuff
breaking after forced updates is normal now. This week a whole bunch of
colleagues got a forced update at 10 am which broke their laptop keyboard.
Apparently our IT dept is to blame for the unlucky timing, but microsoft are
the ones that broke the keyboard. Every win10 device I have has had something
break after a forced update. I can always fix it, but I don't know how non-
technical people deal with this.

~~~
pyrophane
I've heard MS is shoving ads into various parts of the OS. Is that something
you notice?

~~~
bwoj
I've been reasonably happy with a laptop I've had running Windows 7. Then it
stealth-updated itself to Windows 10. I turned off most of the ads, but the
lock screen still had ads. I had to turn of some service with an incongruous
name to kill those but Cortana still shows up on the lock screen telling me to
talk to it. Like I'm going to do that?

Also, the start menu is all fubared. I end up using search from the start
menu, which works but is really slow. I'll get the search box and type
something into it and it's 30 seconds to a minute before my text shows up
there, usually missing the first 2-3 characters I typed... but not always.

Microsoft needs to have a good hard look at why they had so much trouble
moving people off of XP. It's like they hit an inflection point there with the
least amount of suckage.

------
cdnsteve
There's no power button. Lip flip is your new button except when your computer
is stuck in some kind of sleep mode and won't wake up. Flipping g the lid
doesn't wake it up. Tried multiple times. Tried force quit keys.. nope. Tried
attaching power... Nope. About 20 minutes later it decides to come back to
life.

Luckily this only happens to me in the morning while working from home. But it
could happen before a big presentation, meeting, etc. It's terrible.

~~~
rockshassa
the touch ID button is the power button

~~~
ceejayoz
No _hardware_ power button, then. Which is a problem if the software locks up,
as my 2014 MBP does occasionally.

~~~
nrjames
The Touch ID button is a hardware power button. It clicks down like any other
old MBP power button.

------
acomjean
Its 2017 and we developers still don't have an OS/Laptop combo that delights
us. Its a series of compromises, particularly with linux.

I'm wondering why there isn't a linux on laptop combo thats just great. Lack
of resources? Demand? Is linux so fragmented that it can't martial the dev
effort on laptops?

~~~
JupiterMoon
Driver support. App support. Which form a vicious cycle together with demand.

EDIT That's not to say that there aren't options that aren't great for given
use-cases. E.g. as a developer I'm very happy with my linux-on-laptop. But if
someone sends me an Office doc I am in a position to tell them to send me
plain text or pdf or I won't be reading it. Not everyone is.

~~~
bitexploder
Libre office generally just works. I have real Word in Wine that works fine
too.

But yeah apps can be tricky. I am happy with my laptop as well (Linux).

~~~
jameskegel
if Libreoffice works fine, why have "real" Word at all?

~~~
bitexploder
For viewing. For most things. Once in a while libre will mangle a file or
subtly change formatting. For viewing 100%. For editing 90%. For the other
rare times Real Word.

------
bigd
I stand with OP on the bugs. I own top of the line 15in, and can confirm audio
freezes, glitches and ffs sometime also random reboots.

~~~
chadcmulligan
maybe it's broken? mine works fine. Might be worth a call to the genii.

Edit: Why the downvote?

~~~
taylodl
_Why the downvote?_

Because Apple-bashing is all the rage right now on HN. Even if Apple were to
achieve "five nines" glitch-free manufacturing, which is very hard to do,
there'd still be problems with 1 in 10,000 units sold. And that's considered
_excellent_ quality. I used to work in the hardware space. Software people
don't often appreciate you can't simply crank out perfect replicas of a
design.

~~~
stinos
_Apple-bashing is all the rage right now on HN_

More like _< insert anything here>-bashing has been and always will be all the
rage on any internet forum_? At least to me HN looks quite diverse and I don't
have the impression there is a big undeniable bias towards a single
platform/tool/... and all seems fair. Which of course might mean in some cases
where some product is actually not top notch the 'average' of the comments
will be towards the negative side but that is exactly what should happen and
the opposite should be true as well.

------
sheeshkebab
Windows laptops are hit and miss as well, nothing new, move along. Maybe when
windows becomes Linux fully, I'll switch.

These described MBP glitches sound bad but don't sound like a trip to the
neighborhood Apple Store couldn't fix.

------
smoyer
I survived my rMBP by trading up to a Lenovo X1 Carbon (with XUbuntu). The
hardware is great and it's close to indestructible. Curiously, my biggest beef
with the rMBP was Mac OSX and some of the custom hardware wouldn't support
Linux.

------
kstenerud
The worst part of the new laptop is the damn keyboard. Keys keep getting
stuck, which severely slows down my typing. And it's intermittent. At any
given time I have about 1-2 keys stuck, but it always changes.

~~~
krrrh
I would definitely take it in if this is the case. I have had no problems with
the new keyboard and have come to vastly prefer it to the old MacBook Air
keyboard I had been using. I feel like I type faster on it and with greater
certainty.

------
canttestthis
I really dislike the new keyboard and it might be the reason I end up
returning my new MBP. The key presses feel inconsistent (escape/arrow keys
need a harder press for no clear reason), the tactile feedback isn't great...
I wish I waited until the next MBP generation while they fix it.

------
dep_b
Having an x86 laptop that Just Worked between 2006 and 2016 was the anomaly,
not the experience of a laptop owner described in this story.

I'll happily wait out this first generation while they iron out the problems
until the next iteration of it. Seems like my maxed out 2015 was a great buy
after all.

------
jck
It blows my mind that it is not even an option to buy a computer built by
another vendor.

~~~
jameskegel
I'm noticing this also, there is somewhat of an accepted "uniform" and
"toolset" for the SV life.

------
owenwil
I have had the same experience; the Bluetooth stack is awful, the touch bar
locks up constantly (or displays nothing at all), glitches often, crashes far
more than my previous model and... is just awful in general. The switch to
USB-C is actually a non-issue for me, and I find it quite convenient now that
I have all the right cables, but the machine itself, while the hardware is
well refined, is just awful

------
matt4077
"Surviving"? Really? It's a notebook. It's better than last year's. It's
better than 95% of all currently used notebooks.

You will not die. You will live to gripe about another non-issue next year.

------
JustSomeNobody
Wait, there's no charging light anymore? That's actually pretty sad. I like
that on mine.

~~~
Alex3917
There's no need for a charging light because it's USB-C, so you know whether
it's plugged in or not. Whereas with the MagSafe it could be only partially
connected, and the only way to know that was the light. You still need to know
whether the plug is actually plugged into the wall, but you can just look at
the menu bar for that.

~~~
needcaffeine
The charging light also tells me whether or not my laptop is done charging by
means of an orange or green light.

~~~
bluedino
There's no charging light on the iPad or iPhone either

~~~
striking
Yeah, the difference there is that you have to crack open your laptop or power
it on to know if it's charging if there's no light. iPad? Press a button. Now
you know if you're good or not.

Audio feedback isn't too useful either

------
_ph_
I have the previous generation 15 inch MB Pro and it is an amazing machine.
But despite its maximum (for air travel) sized 100 Wh battery, it can have run
times below 2 hours - that is, if a process loads the machine. So, if you are
getting really bad run times with your laptops, check the system load. Even
rather inconspicuous processes can drag your battery down. Be it a web page or
something else. Safari should throttle webpages shown in hidden tabs, but
check it. For Chrome, there are tools like the "big suspender" which can save
memory and cpu resources.

~~~
krrrh
I would love a utility that watched for fast battery drops and then alerted me
or automatically killed a process based on rules. The few times I've had
battery issues with the new MBP I've checked Activity Monitor to find that
something like iTunes has become unresponsive and is pinning a core at 100%,
but often not before losing 30% of a charge.

~~~
_ph_
I keep the cpu monitor part of the activity monitor running in the dock icon
and keep an eye on it. It should be completely zero when I am not interacting
with the machine. Maybe I am too old, but watching the cpu monitor on any
machine I am working on is as natural to me, as watching the rev counter of my
car when I am driving :).

~~~
manquer
Ovetime the activity monitor also consumes significant battery...

~~~
_ph_
The activity monitor when run as an icon should consume no noticeable energy,
it is <1% power usage - a single "nasty" tab can load the cpu 10-30% or more.
I think this is a good trade off, especially when the run time does not match
the expectations.

------
fred_is_fred
I had a 2012 MBP that was dying and I replaced it with a Windows10 laptop
(Spectre from HP). After setting up bash on here, I'm pretty happy and in some
respects happier. There's some weird things still (pasting into a terminal is
one), but I can no longer justify the 2x cost for a Mac that is buggy,
limited, and has crap I don't want forced on me.

------
carsongross
Truly this is a terrible laptop. I use a USB dock so the awful keyboard,
oversized mousepad (with attendant accidental bumps) and pointless touch bar
(oh, hey, I accidentally bumped mute again) don't matter that much.

However, at least once a week, when switching between the dock and home, my
mac goes into flicker mode, requiring a hard reboot. Insanity.

To make matters worse, the power key (the Touch ID key) is unlabeled and
doesn't look like a pressable key. And now that apple has removed its boot up
sound, for no good reason, I don't know if I've successfully rebooted until
seconds after I press the power button.

The audio occasionally craps out and randomly decides not to select the right
output when I plug in to my dock.

I've been a mac guy since college in 1994. This may be my last mac.

~~~
ashark
> However, at least once a week, when switching between the dock and home, my
> mac goes into flicker mode, requiring a hard reboot. Insanity.

Discrete graphics, or Intel?

~~~
carsongross
Intel Iris Graphics 550 1536MB

------
itsdrewmiller
I have the new 15" (after using the 2013 version almost since release) and I
haven't noticed a disparity in bugs - both have been extremely reliable
machines.

That touch bar thing has never happened to me. Still hate it, though. :)

This sounds like you should just take it in for a replacement to me.

------
ssijak
I also have audio/mic glitches. More often when I airplay to my av receiver or
after I plug/unplug headphones.

But whatever, every mac had some problems. Previously I had wifi problems, now
I do not have those.

------
simonhughes22
I hate it for all the reasons you describe. The power connector and excellent
battery life were some of the best things about the old MBP, and I can't stand
the new keyboard.

------
talldan
In my experience, the double login issue seems to happen when restoring after
having run out of battery. It happens on my ~2013 macbook as well.

A completely unscientific assessment is that the first login is to authorise
restoration of the session. Unfortunately it seems like that authorisation
can't be passed onto the session itself, so that also needs unlocking.

~~~
epochwolf
This happens if you have full disk encryption enabled. If the laptop goes into
hibernation, the disk is no longer mounted. So you need to enter your password
to mount the drive which then drops you into the lock screen to enter your
password again.

Ideally, the computer should be able to know you just woke the computer from
hibernation and skip the second lock screen but I don't think the systems are
integrated enough to do that right now. :)

------
skyisblue
The most annoying thing with the new power connector is the lack of a light
indicator showing that your laptop is charging.

------
daveambrose
One of the biggest announces is lack of operability w. the previous Apple LED
display. I've had to cycle through a few cable dongles at this point to then
find out none connect to the LED display.

Instead, I ordered the Dell P2715Q 27" monitor and then purchased a
DisplayPort to USC-C cable. It works perfectly and decently priced at $530.

------
valuearb
Whats been frustrating lately is that Apple has by far* the most profitable PC
Hardware business on the planet, yet they seem to put less and less effort
into it.

The battery life on the new MBP is apparently limited because the fitted
sealed battery didn't pass testing, so they had to revert to a more standard
(smaller) battery. Supposedly they also kept a 16 gig ram limit because they
can't get the newest Intel CPUs needed for a better memory controller in
enough volume.

Thats been a constant refrain the last 4 years, their volumes are now big
enough that they are highly dependent on Intel release cycles and volume ramp,
and Intel is always late. So they are always delaying new hardware, and in
this case, releasing them in sub-par form because they decided they couldn't
wait any longer.

But if you are the worlds most successful maker of laptops, it seems like you
can have multiple development teams for your key products. Essentially why
wasn't the old MBP being revved every year with faster CPUs so they could wait
until everything came together for the new design? Instead they let the lineup
get stale and forced out the new one prematurely.

Why can't they rev the Mac Pro with updated GPUS and CPUs at least every 15
months or so? Why can't they rev every product from Mini to iMac like that?
What's the point of having the highest margins if you can't keep your
offerings up to date? It just doesn't seem that expensive to keep an extra
design team working on each multibillion dollar product so you can have more
iterations.

Unfortunately Occams Razor is telling me that Apple's Mac margins aren't so
good anymore, and that the finance department is tightening the screws in a
misguided strategy to try to maintain them at historic levels. Their mac
revenues actually declined over 2014-2016 ($24B -> $25B -> $23B) so maybe
that's evidence of margin compression as well as the stale products.

It's obviously hell to be a PC maker if you aren't Apple. Margins are almost
zero and now your OS maker is competing directly with you. But the downward
trend continues there doesn't seem to be any hope of bottoming at any stable
reasonable profits/margins, it's worse than the Airline business at this
point. Maybe Apple's Mac business just gets dragged farther and farther down
as well.

* The math is that Apple has a 6-7% world wide share of PC sales by units, but it's average sales price is around $1200 vs. the rest of the market's $500, so Apple gets around 15% of world PC revenues, making it one of the largest PC vendors by revenues ($23B in 2016). But Apple makes around 15-20% margins while the other PC venders are stuck at 2-3%, so Apple makes as much in profits as the rest of the market combined.

This obviously ignores MSFT's Windows revenues, and whether it includes the
Surface business doesn't matter because it's not profitable yet.

------
rtiwary
Battery life is nowhere near 10 hours, sometimes I can barely get even 4-5

------
m3kw9
I have a 2016 pro and only annoyance is touch bar glitch and accidental
touches sometimes. The issue with ports isn't an issue if you just think about
it. Is like having 4 USB 3.0 ports and complaining about it

------
markive
Apple audio especially with Airpods is full of glitches..

------
Prego
Why deal with these issues when there are great Windows 10 options from many
vendors?

~~~
motoboi
The real stopper is the unix-like environment. With MacOS you have (or used to
have) a very good UI environment, but could just open a terminal and have all
the unix goodness.

I know windows have a terminal too, but apart from being black, they are
completely different. PowerShell was promising but cannot (IMHO) replace the
old fashioned Bourne Again Shell.

All this makes sad, because my MBP is quite old and the prospect of having to
deal with windows again just makes me cry.

~~~
matthewking
Windows 10 has a bash shell now via WSL (Windows subsystem for Linux):
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Subsystem_for_Linux](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Subsystem_for_Linux)

