
Seven years later, I bought a new MacBook. For the first time, I don't love it - notRobot
https://cfenollosa.com/blog/seven-years-later-i-bought-a-new-macbook-for-the-first-time-i-dont-love-it.html
======
rednum
I did switch from 2012 Macbook Air to 2019 Macbook Pro a few weeks ago and I
can't agree more with the article. One of the reasons I'm using Mac instead of
Linux is that I make music. And the new Macbook sucks for this purpose: the
same recording settings I used on my old laptop are not usable on the new one.
90% of time things work fine, but sometimes I get glitches and pops in the
middle of the recording. Why? Who knows. I did everything I could like closing
other apps, disabling ton of things running in background; I freeze tracks in
my DAW but things still break sometimes. I really hope some update from
Ableton/Apple fixes things soon; if not I'm considering downgrade from
Catalina.

But wait, there's more! Sometimes I got glitches even when I'm not recording
but playing tracks. I have this problem on literally the same Ableton projects
that used to "just work" on the old machine (same number of tracks/plugins).
The workaround is to restart the laptop. Seriously, it feels like Windows XP
all over. I can't imagine playing live shows with such unreliable setup -
fortunately I just make tracks for my own, but if I were to go out for some
kind of jam session or open mic I'd consider switching to Windows.

EDIT: One more thing that sucks about new MacOS: dropping 32 bit
compatibility. RIP all 32 bit VSTs. Fortunately I don't use that many plugins
and it turned out everything I really care about has 64 bit version. But if it
didn't, then I'd hold on to the old OS as long as possible.

~~~
karatestomp
My wife's been having repeated AV glitches on her '19 Macbook Air. Video audio
cuts out after a few minutes very frequently, across browsers and even on
_local players_ and for audio on locally-downloaded podcasts. Video calls do
similar things, which has, you know, been a problem. Best I can figure is
there are some bad software + hardware glitches with some of the Siri-related
stuff and maybe the fingerprint chip. Disabled Siri but it still happens.
Apple store's seen it and reset it and been like, meh, it's fine, but it's
very much not.

Never seen this kind of flakey-out-of-the-box bullshit from Apple. I really
need a new machine but I'm holding out for a better run than what they have
now. And maybe some undoing of their recent price hikes (they used to _drop_
prices, substantially, with some frequency, in the distant past of a few years
ago and earlier). Plus all the damn dongles. My '14 has lots of ports and zero
USB-C and those ports are great, and I still don't have anything that's USB-C
aside from adapters for work laptops, so... why do I want _only_ USB-C again,
and no other ports at all? Maybe in another 5-7 years it'll make sense. Give
them time to switch all their iDevices to USB-C and for me to replace all
those (they last many years, that's why we buy them). Then at least my laptop
and iPads and iPhones and such can share peripherals, which is _moving toward_
some kind of benefit to offset the loss of ports.

~~~
cannam
> I still don't have anything that's USB-C aside from adapters for work laptop

The USB-C thing is culturally a bit curious. It's been three or four years
since reviewers of laptops and the like started complaining if they didn't
have USB-C ports - but there still seems to be very little need for them. The
few devices I've acquired that have a USB-C socket on the device have all come
with a cable having a USB3 type A plug on the other end, never a C to C cable.

(I see the article mentions this, but I found it striking because to
facilitate home working I've just bought two new devices with USB-C at the
device end, and both came with cables to an A socket)

~~~
Nextgrid
USB-C is garbage from so many perspectives.

User friendliness is a problem. There's no easy way to tell what protocols a
USB-C device actually supports, whether it's USB 2, USB 3, DisplayPort, etc.

USB-C hubs are not possible like you could do with USB 2 or 3, so you're
always limited to the number of USB-C ports on your machine. The only possible
hubs are those that give out USB-A ports, which is fine now because most
peripherals are still USB-A, but will become a problem when peripherals start
using USB-C themselves.

~~~
IceWreck
> USB-C hubs are not possible like you could do with USB 2 or 3

TIL. Why is this not possible?

~~~
Nextgrid
You'd probably find a more authoritative source and better documentation by
searching, but here's my understanding of it:

USB-C can be used with alternate modes like DisplayPort or Thunderbolt, where
the wires are no longer transmitting USB data but are used as a dumb pipe for
the underlying protocol.

If you get a hub it can choose to either operate in the following conditions
(depending on its type and capabilities):

* Upstream port is in USB mode, it can provide USB 2 and 3 to downstream ports, however the downstream device can no longer use DisplayPort or Thunderbolt.

* Upstream port is divided into USB 3 lanes and DisplayPort lanes. The DisplayPort side can be mapped to _a single_ downstream port, but there is less USB 3 bandwidth available to share across the remaining ports. Still no luck if a downstream device wants to use Thunderbolt.

* Upstream port is Thunderbolt. Since TB is essentially PCI Express the hub could pass through some TB lanes to _a single_ downstream port while having its own USB 3 controller to provide the USB side of things. Still no luck for DisplayPort downstream devices.

This doesn't even address the issue that not all devices can do Thunderbolt
(my 12-inch Macbook can't) and it becomes very hard to find a hub that will
actually work and do what you want. It took quite a bit of research for me to
understand the specs so I could find a solution to do both 4K 60Hz video _and_
USB (2 only, not enough bandwidth for 3) on my MacBook with a single USB-C
port.

I won't even get into the bullshit naming conventions they use that they
decided to apply retroactively. WTF is USB 3.1 Gen 1? Is the next one gonna be
called USB 10 X Pro Max?

~~~
meroje
But I don't need or care about all that, what I need is a hub just like we had
all those years that gives usb3 connectivity in a c form factor to 5 devices
or more. If I need more there are plenty docking stations available.

edit: I also looked for a usb A hub with usb-c upstream, still no luck and
stuck with a hub+power adapter and dinky otg a-to-c.

~~~
Nextgrid
As far as I know the spec doesn't allow it for some reason. I guess one reason
could be the power side (which I haven't mentioned and I am not familiar with
it)?

Let's assume the hub requests 19V from the upstream port. Unless it has built-
in, variable, per-port voltage regulation, it will not be able to respond to
power requests from the downstream devices if they differ from what is coming
from the upstream port.

This isn't a problem when providing USB-A ports because you either request 5V
from upstream and pass it through or request a higher voltage and have a
single 5V regulator and pass its output to the downstream ports.

~~~
Kirby64
See, you could technically design something that does that. Per-port up to
100W charging it definitely possible. Basically you have a USB PD controller
on every port with dynamic voltage control.

This is all possible, it's just a HUGE pain in the ass (and costs a lot) to
design that way. The problem is you essentially end up with potentially a
giant, VERY expensive USB hub. And no one wants to spend $400 on a USB hub.

~~~
Nextgrid
Which is why USB-C is bad, nobody asked for a protocol where the benefits are
marginal but the downside (one of many) is that a proper hub that replicates
the behavior of previous generations now costs more, and since nobody would
pay that much, economies of scale don't apply and thus it doesn't exist _at
all_ or is available as very niche specialized units (kinda like opto-isolated
USB hubs which go for $200.

You could also theoretically use 10Gbit Ethernet to transfer data from your
phone but we don't go around putting SFP slots on phones because we don't want
every single cable or charger to cost $100 and be more complex (thus more
prone to failure) than needed.

~~~
Kirby64
The thing is, you're not replacing it with something identical. If you want to
replicate the behavior of a previous generation USB2 hub, I don't think it
would even be that expensive. You just need a USB port controller on each port
and negotiate 5V, 1.5A on each of them in addition to the standard USB hub. It
would be a bit more expensive, but not terribly so. USB3 may be similar but
require some extra switches...

The ask for the 'really expensive' $400 one has vastly more options and
capabilities than the traditional USB hub. It's basically a Thunderbolt hub
with even more complexity, so it's not unreasonable to think those would be
damn expensive.

I'm honestly not sure why no one has made a standard USB2.0 Type-C hub.
There's really nothing stopping you from doing it. I guess maybe because it
could be confusing for a consumer? I agree, that's a huge issue with Type-C
right now. It's very unclear by looking at the port (or the cable) what it's
actually capable of. If you're lucky there will be a tiny symbol indicating
some subset of functionality, but often times there isn't.

------
modernerd
The XPS 17 will be my next “MacBook”.

It should be out this month and it ticks all the boxes for me (great screen,
supposedly good cooling, user-replaceable SSD/RAM, acceptable weight and size
for a 17" laptop).

[https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/13/21257006/dell-
xps-17-15-r...](https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/13/21257006/dell-
xps-17-15-redesign-specs-features-update-2020)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyRUWM_LOPQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyRUWM_LOPQ)

I've been trying Windows again after ~20 years on Macs (via a borrowed Lenovo
Carbon X1 and then a second-hand XPS 15) and — unlike the author here — I'm
surprised how much better it has gotten.

Having fully expected to buy a Windows laptop and just run Linux on it, I'm
happy enough with the general Windows experience and the new WSL2/Windows
Terminal/VS Code improvements that switching full-time makes sense for me.

The perks for me over macOS are the widely increased hardware choice, improved
repairability/upgradeability, access to Windows-only software/games, better
default desktop environment (window snapping/management, keyboard shortcuts
for apps in the taskbar), and being able to boot real Linux images within ~1
second and work out of them comfortably.

The perks for me over Linux are the ability to run Adobe and other Windows
apps, lower manual maintenance, fewer rabbit holes (I used Arch for about a
year and found I was personally prone to exploring Arch instead of doing pet
projects), better general integration with video cards, authentication
hardware (fingerprint sensors/Windows Hello), projectors/external monitors, as
well as a generally better experience with power management, wake-from-sleep,
and connecting/reconnecting to Wi-Fi.

~~~
blunte
I hope you like high heat, high fan noise, and thermal throttling issues
(common XPS issues that myself and others have experienced). I hope you also
like random Wifi failures, random freeze-the-world-while-some-app-is-having-a-
network-timeout issues.

macOS is getting worse, no doubt. But Windows still has multiple unacceptable
problems (ungodly slow unzipping, still!, random heavy lag or freezing,
surprise 30 minute Windows Update installations happening during a reboot you
had to do during important work, etc. etc.)

Plus, the day to day file management story is still sub-par in Windows. If
you've gotten used to Quicklook on a Mac (because it's so handy), you're SOL
on Windows. How hard is it to provide a spacebar activated preview popup?

PDF reading and printing is still a nightmare on Windows compared to macOS.
Again I refer to Quicklook, whereby you can open and scan/read a PDF near
instantaneously; in Windows it's slow and clumsy. Saving (printing) anything
as a PDF on a Mac is fast and easy. In Windows it's a slow, multi-click
process.

And Linux... on the desktop... still not there. Yes with the right hardware
and the right drivers and config, distros like Fedora can be pretty close to
perfect. But you still have HiDPI problems sometimes (Windows does as well),
random UI-related service crashes, app/package-system conflicts (since there
is no one standard package management system that all apps agree upon), and
more.

Sadly, the entire computing experience has peaked and declined in the last few
years. That said, macOS is still the best desktop OS for everything but
gaming.

~~~
jboog
I'm sure the bugs you mention about Windows exist and are terrible, but I made
the switch to Windows after converting to Mac ~9 years ago and I haven't
experienced anything but very minor annoyances.

I still prefer the Mac OS experience, design, and usability, but the price
premium for Apple products is not worth this modest improvement. I still have
and enjoy my Iphone Xs but might consider switching to Android in a couple
years whenever I need to upgrade.

~~~
fortran77
I switched to Windows 10 about 3 years ago. Absolutely no problems. I'm
careful to stay on the "happy path", but my Lenovo laptop works fine out of
the box, and my Supermicro based desktop dual-Xeon workstation works great,
too. Speedy and reliable.

------
mstudio
Totally agree. After reading so many reviews panning the new MBPs, I ended up
replacing my ancient 2011 MBP with a 2015 model. You can still find
new/unopened or relatively unused models on eBay. I love this laptop. i7, 16GB
memory, AMD Radeon R9, great keyboard with F-keys... plus, it has all the
standard ports I need: USB, HDMI, Thunderbolt. All for much less money than a
new machine from Apple. No complaints at all.

~~~
ksec
This. Funny last time I wrote about the same large trackpad issue on HN I was
heavily downvoted.

And despite how many have said this new magic keyboard is better. I still dont
get it. It felt _exactly_ the same as the previous butterfly keyboard, and to
me it felt awful. The 2015 scissors keyboard is still million times better.
1.5mm of Key Travel, 60g grams of actuation force was the perfect combination.
The newer Keyboard is meshy. I haven't heard anyone that hate the older one,
so switching back wouldn't actually cause any issues. And I cant be the only
one who dislike the new keyboard.

I wish Apple just make a MacBook Pro Classic. Remake the 2015 MacBook Pro with
a faster processor. That's it. Nothing more. Dont touch anything else. Same
Screen, MagSafe, No Touch Bar, Perfect Keyboard and TouchPad. While I would
love to have the new speaker I could do without it incase Apple mess things up
again. And if even a new CPU is too much to ask, just give me the old 2015
MacBook Pro with Maxed out Config for the same price.

At the moment I am worried once I have to replace my 2015 MacBook Pro I would
left with no choice.

And for what is worth, Apple stop mentioning their Mac user satisfaction in
their Investor meeting.

~~~
boudewijnrempt
Honestly, compared to the 2007(?) 17" macbook pro and especially to the
pismo... I find that my 2015 15" Macbook Pro already had an unpleasant
keyboard, with wobbly keys and too little travel.

I think the pismo and the 17" where the only macs that I have ever owned that
I really liked...

~~~
ksec
Definitely agree on wobbly keys and that is something better on the newer
Butterfly / Magic Keyboard. I just wouldn't trade it with Key travel though.

I _think_ the pre 2015 / 17" Macbook Keyboard had 1.8mm Key Travel. And 1.5mm
felt different but not bad. I tried the Surface Pro which said it had 1.3mm
Key Travel. And to me that is about as low as it can go before the typing
experience deteriorate rapidly. I remember reading somewhere there are certain
laptop with 1.1mm Key travel but they compensate it with higher actuation
force, so instead of 60g it was something like 70g to make up for the
difference.

------
rafamvc
Wsl 2 is incredible. Got a 1000 dollars dell desktop and it is insanely faster
than my Mac. Windows has improved a lot, and Linux based development on
windows is a lot easier now. 5 years ago I would have quit a job if they asked
me to use windows. Macos is still marginally better but not worth the cost
IMHO.

~~~
fuzzy2
Windows (the technology) is okay. Not good, but okay. Windows (the experience)
degrades every day. Everything is slow even though the specs are good.
Granted, corporate “additions” like O365 ATP don’t help and aren’t part of the
core system. But many users have to bear with them nonetheless.

And have you looked through the diagnostic data Windows sends? That cannot be
turned off without hacks? They get live notifications when you add or remove
hardware, software, when an application has crashed (even when error reporting
is off), …. The data contains unique identifiers for your system and user. I
don’t even want to know what’s sent when you select full diagnostics.

Windows is a privacy and performance nightmare. It’s good for two things only:
corporate environments (manageability) and games.

\---

Well, sorry about that. Just had to get this off my chest.

~~~
raverbashing
Would it be feasible to run a Windows Pro or Server version in a laptop?

(or at least shut all the "windows 10" stuff and return to something that look
like Windows 2000?)

~~~
thegagne
Even server includes candy crush and all the junk.

~~~
ImprobableTruth
I'd be pretty surprised if that's true. I've recently switched to windows 10
pro and I don't have candy crush or anything installed.

~~~
criddell
Was there a Candy Crush ad in the menu that would install it as soon as you
click on int?

~~~
ImprobableTruth
No, I specifically looked to remove any crapware and was surprised that there
wasn't anything. I also just did a search for candy crush and I only got the
website.

~~~
jdsully
I'm on Pro and while Candy Crush was removed, I now have Farm Hero's Saga and
something called "Groove Music". Netflix also somehow made its way there even
though I've never once tried to watch it on this PC.

They are less brazen about it, I had to look in my Applications list.

~~~
criddell
I think Groove/Zune Music is Microsoft's music player.

------
habosa
This is a good overview and I agree with almost all of the points. For the
last 20 years I have owned nothing but Mac computers (going back to OS 9
days).

I have a MacBook Pro for work so 5 years ago I bought myself a $750 Asus
Zenbook and installed Windows and Ubuntu on it, expecting to just use the
Ubuntu partition.

With the release of WSL, suddenly my Windows laptop is my favorite machine for
both personal use and for development. It's just _so nice_ to have all the
Linux developer tools side-by-side with every major desktop app/game on the
Windows side.

I will likely never buy another Mac computer with my own money, Windows + WSL
has won me over.

(Aside: I recently switched from Android to iOS after 10 years. If you had
told me back then I'd be an iPhone / Windows user I'd be stunned)

~~~
hcurtiss
As an iPhone user, I really do appreciate the integration with MacOS. Mostly
iMessage and FaceTime.

------
buro9
Just got my first MBP.

Found problems with USB devices on day 1 with USB 2.0 devices intermittently
freezing.

Documented
[https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/gp5b1z/usb_20_issues_o...](https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/gp5b1z/usb_20_issues_on_new_macbook_pro_13_2020/)
, and there is a workaround... do not use any hub that shows a USB 2.0 device
to the Mac, find and use a USB-C hub that presents everything as USB 3.0 to
the Mac even if it's USB 2.0

I believe that this is a Catalina software bug, and now I have a workaround I
am happy. Sucks for those who can't figure out the debugging though.

~~~
dustingetz
literally the reason to drop $3k on a mac is to never have to debug

~~~
MikeTaylor
Exactly! Exactly!

------
fluffything
I also still have the same MacBook air as the author and have been wanting to
upgrade for... 2 years or so.

Not only the Webcam is a downgrade. You also loose Magsafe. Not a big loss,
but a downgrade none the less.

> The touchbar. [...] Regular users probably find it useful and cute.

No they don't. My GF bought herself a new Macbook because... she has an iPhone
and thought "For what I use the computer, any computer suffices". She just
needs a laptop for browsing the web and replying to emails, and got a 2k$
machine for it...

Anyways, it turns out she is super annoyed at the Touchbar because it
registers accidental presses when she press a number key... so her windows
will just scramble around in the middle of a sentence, and she hates that.

I'm trying to convince her to sell it used, take a couple of hundred dollars
price hit, and buy something that would make her happier. For her needs,
literally any laptop would do.

Any laptop but Apple's. I also thought that the Touchbar was only a "show"
gimmick to get non-pro users buy pro laptops, but for users that can't figure
out how to turn it off, its something that makes them regret buying an Apple
product, which at least with my GF, its a first.

~~~
baxtr
Maybe I am dumb and stupid, but I actually like the Touch Bar... ESC key is a
bit annoying but I don't mind it that much.

~~~
aequitas
I was sceptical about the Touchbar at first, but then when I got my hand on it
to test and really do some actual work, the usefulness of the contextual
actions really grew on me. Then it dawned that I would only be using the
Touchbar half of the time, since the other half I have my Macbook "docked" and
am using an external keyboard. So I can probably never adapt the Touchbar into
an daily workflow. Unless Apple releases an external keyboard with Touchbar, I
wouldn't mind the cable, but the price will probably be a no-go.

------
toxican
The touchbar is super useless unless you install something like MTMR[1] to
customize it. The downside of course is that you need to be comfortable with
some code to modify it outside of any pre-defined profiles. But even then I
don't find myself using it much.

Also while Mac's aren't meant for gaming, when I do game I find the touchbar
to be a poor replacement for the F keys. I play WoW and have F1-F5 bound to
certain abilities and having zero tactile feedback during something as fast-
paced as combat is frustrating.

Additionally, totally agree with the webcam complaint. I don't use it very
often, but I was definitely expecting more from it when I first used it. A $2k
laptop should have a better camera than my ~$600 laptop from a few years ago.

All that being said, I do also agree with the praise-worthy part of the post.
I've really enjoyed how intertwined my iPhone and Mac experience are. Being
able to effortlessly take/make calls and texts from my laptop without having
to install an app on the phone or waste a bunch of time configuring things is
really wonderful.

The speakers are also wonderful and the laptop itself runs surprisingly
silently, even under high-load.

[1] - [https://github.com/Toxblh/MTMR](https://github.com/Toxblh/MTMR)

~~~
mthoms
I've found this tiny utility a great help. It provides haptic feedback for all
touch bar presses (BetterTouchTool also has this feature).

[https://github.com/niw/HapticKey](https://github.com/niw/HapticKey)

~~~
toxican
Looks like MTMR supports it as well, but I didn't have any luck getting it to
work. HapticKey is working great though. For as good a job as Apple did with
making the iPhone's button and the touchpad feel really responsive, I'm amazed
they didn't bother doing the same with the touchbar.

------
leetrout
I bought the 2018 air. I loathe it. What a waste of money and junk keyboard.

That said my new job gave me a System 76 laptop and I’ve been delighted all
week with it. I don’t care for the offset keyboard but at least it actually
works correctly. If it had better palm detection on the trackpad it would be
the best laptop I’ve owned since my 2013 MBP (which is still goin strong).

~~~
ct520
I hear you, trackpads have kept me in Mac camp for awhile. I loathe the glass
ones Apple switched to though. I bought the 13 inch with emjoi bar when it
came out. Returned it. Recently bought the 16inch when it came out. Like the
new keyboard but ended up returning it as it got insanely loud when plugging
in external display.

Hard to beat my 2013 mbp retina I guess I’ll stay with it for now.

~~~
leetrout
My previous job gave me a 2019 MBP and it was always whirring away. It would
have spells where nothing would be stable. IntelliJ (Ruby mine) would hang for
a couple seconds every 20-30 seconds, zoom would crash repeatedly and say
there was an error with the system audio and if it would start back up with
out restarting the system everyone would sound like they were a robot. I
installed boom audio (which is one step away from adware / malware these days)
and it surprisingly got more stable.

I’m excited to try windows with WSL2 soon. I don’t see going back to a new Mac
any time soon based on how easy PopOS / Ubuntu has been.

------
SCdF
> By the way, not including the extension cord is unacceptable. This cord is
> not only a convenience, but it increases safety, because it's the only way
> to have earth grounding for the laptop. Without it, rubbing your fingers on
> the surface of the computer generates this weird vibration due to static.

.... THAT'S WHAT THAT IS?

I have wondered for _years_ why my laptop sometimes feels that way. Another
mystery solved!

~~~
Gracana
As others have said, that's not it. It's the line filter capacitors in the
power supply. There's two types: X capacitors which filter differential noise
(between line and neutral) and Y capacitors which filter common mode noise
(between line and chassis.) Some small AC current (microamps) will pass
through the Y capacitor to the chassis. If the chassis is ungrounded, you may
be able to feel the current when you touch it.

~~~
lostlogin
> you may be able to feel the current when you touch it.

Are there people who can’t feel it? It really is gross and people comment on
it as soon as they touch it.

~~~
Gracana
I don't have a macbook so I can't comment on it, but I have a touhgbook with
thinkpad power supply, and I feel it only on my wrists when I'm _well_
grounded. Can't feel it on my fingers or palms.

------
tpush
"8-9 hours with all apps closed except Safari. Browsing lightly, with an
occasional video, and brightness at the literal minimum. This brightness level
is only realistic if it's night time. In a normally lit environment you need
to set the brightness level at around 50%."

"When I push the laptop a bit more, with a few Docker containers, Pycharm
running, Google Chrome with some Docs opened, and brightness near the maximum,
I get around 4 hours."

Honest question for those of you who have Dell XPS 13s, ThinkPad X1 Carbons
and so on, what battery life are you getting? Dell for example advertises 12
hours. Are these figures realistic?

Are MacBooks not the battery champs anymore?

~~~
pachico
I have an xps 13 bought 5 years ago. I'm getting also around 8-9 hours of
browsing time if I occasionally open YouTube. Quite more if I only code and
don't spawn docker apps like databases. Spoiler, I use Xubuntu with CPU
frequency set to power save but again, I've used this laptop massively during
around 5 years already.

~~~
georgyo
My four year old XPS lasts an entire 10 minutes on battery doing nothing at
all.

Though when I got it, it very easily lasted the entire day, even if watching
videos and such.

~~~
pachico
Sad to hear that. But yes, once the battery is replaced you'll get again a
more than decent laptop. Mine has 8gb of ram, which is still enough for most
of what I do, including running VMs and docker compose intensively.

------
petercooper
I should note that most of this is rather subjective. It's a personal blog so
that's totally fine, but I don't think it should sway you doing your own
analysis. I've owned nearly every MBP release/bump since 2007 and the 16" MBP
is by far the best IMHO and certainly a huge jump up from the 2016-2018 era
disasters. Also as a touch typist, I was worried the huge trackpad might be an
impediment, but it hasn't turned out to be so I can only assume we have
different hand posture.

~~~
cerberusss
Yup, owning the 16", I also have the same experience; the huge trackpad is
fine. The blog writer bought the 13" though, maybe that is one part of his
problem.

~~~
petercooper
Ah, maybe! I tried a 13" once and gave it to an employee after a few weeks as
it was infuriatingly small. If the 13" has the same trackpad size as the 16",
that would probably be a real impediment.

------
losvedir
Very interesting post. I actually have been feeling almost the opposite
lately.

My work laptop is a 2017 MacBook Pro, and a couple months ago I dusted off my
old personal laptop, a Mid-2013 MacBook Air to work on a side project.

The thing that blew me away is the Air feels a lot snappier! I honestly don't
know what it is, and think I must have done something to my work laptop. I
notice it most with VSCode, which seems to respond with less latency to
interactions than on the Air.

I was idly thinking about upgrading the machine to the newest Air, but I'm
sort of worried that whatever slowness is infecting my 2017 Pro might also
apply to the new Airs. I'm not really a hardware guy but could it be, like, a
different sort of SSD or RAM or something?

~~~
rcarmo
Even though the Code team has gone to excruciating lengths to reduce input
latency, there is a lot of cruft in any OS. I have noticed that Windows and
Linux have, in general, quicker _perceived_ response time than macOS, which I
partially attributed to smoother animations and an overall sense that the
machine is doing a _lot_ in the background (Spotlight, for instance, has been
a constant pain.)

------
HugoDaniel
I have the new 16 MBP and love the touch bar. I find it much easier to change
brightness/sound (place the finger and drag); I find it much easier to control
apps, like music, safari, and all, and the habituation period was shorter than
with the keys back in the day (when i started using macs).

I would love to be able to easily customize the touch bar though, the author
mentions BetterTouchTool, looks good, might be worth it.

Like the author I also have some problems with Catalina: the subtle hangs
drive me nuts, the bugs with the True Tone going pale, the gpu's going crazy
just because they want

PS: Apple - please consider improving your AirPlay video support or doing some
other protocol for it. It sucks having to use cables for even HDMI video
playback on a secondary screen. (or place back the display port / HDMI
entrance)

~~~
mrweasel
If Apple had two versions of their laptops, one with the touch bar and one
without, I feel pretty confident that the version with the standard F-keys
would outsell the touch bar.

I mentioned this before, but the real proof that the touch bar isn't for
professionals is that you can't buy an Apple keyboard with the touch bar.
Local labor laws require that I have a "external" keyboard when working at my
desk, so the touch bar is pretty worthless, unless it was available on the
standard alone keyboards as well, and it's not.

Personally I prefer the old keyboard because I find it easier to change volume
and brightness using a key and not a slider, but that's personal preference.

~~~
sneak
> _Local labor laws require that I have a "external" keyboard when working at
> my desk_

Whaaa? Why? Where?

~~~
mrweasel
Denmark, among others I assume. Using your laptop, without external monitor
and keyboard is only allowed as an exception, even when working from home, and
only for a short period of time.

You can use the laptop monitor as a secondary display. It's a pretty good law,
which forces employers to provide you with an ergonomically sound work
environment. You're also required to have a height adjustable desk and
chair... and a window.

~~~
rcarmo
Honest question: How does that work for remote? I do have a home office with a
window, chair and whatnot, but many of my colleagues don't.

~~~
mrweasel
Your employer is legally required to provide you with chair, desk, keyboard,
monitor and mouse if you work from home and don’t have these things already.

During the corona lock down my boss told us to get anything we required from
the office. If you couldn’t pick it up, an intern would take the company van
and deliver anything you’d need.

------
Nextgrid
I've written about my experience with macOS Catalina on an earlier thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23273467](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23273467)

Since then there have been new developments:

Had a meeting yesterday, 5 minutes before the scheduled time (which is
normally plenty of time when your tools work as expected) I start up Zoom and
create the meeting. Guess what? The thing now just freezes completely and it's
not just Zoom, the system UI (dock, menu bar, etc) becomes sluggish. This used
to work fine before upgrading to Catalina. Force-quitting Zoom fixed it, so
I'm assuming something Zoom is doing (that used to work fine) is enough to
completely freeze the system UI.

Eventually gave up on Zoom and used FaceTime. In the middle of the call the UI
froze for ~10 seconds - no video, no mouse, but audio was still working. I
assumed it would crash but thankfully it recovered.

Finally after the call I left the machine unattended for a minute and when I
got back it was on the full disk encryption password screen so it had
rebooted. Turns out it crashed because WindowServer stopped responding. I
heard about those issues but always though it's related to the newer models
with discrete GPUs and I didn't have to worry about it with my low-end Macbook
with Intel graphics. I guess I was wrong.

Mail is still playing the new mail sound randomly when archiving/moving _read_
messages, and I ended up disabling the sound completely. I didn't know it was
possible to screw up something so simple.

I am now thinking of downgrading and using Catalina (for Xcode) on a separate
machine. I am not sure what to do when it goes out of support though, seems
like nowadays every OS became equally shit.

~~~
proverbialbunny
Have you figured it out? It sounds like a hard drive issue and you have some
important system file or swap located on a part of the solid state that locks
up, but not enough for the hardware to mark it as bad.

If you format there is a chance the issue will go away. I had similar symptoms
even after formatting on a 2015 MBP, so I formatted, wrote a 4GB file to the
HDD, then after that everything worked fine. Amusingly if I tried to copy the
file to a thumb drive it would time out trying to copy it. I couldn't figure
out how to mark the bad sectors, so hacky solution, but it worked for me.

~~~
Nextgrid
Disk IO is working fine, if not I'd experience these issues all the time.

The issue is that a combination of camera access, hardware video
encoding/decoding (for video conferencing) and bluetooth earphones (AirPods)
is now able to crash WindowServer.

This used to work totally fine on a previous version so it's clearly a solved
problem. Maybe Apple should stop "fixing" things that ain't broke?

But hey, there is a silver lining to this, at least now I can enjoy Apple TV+
on my _work machine_. That's exactly what I always wanted. /s

~~~
proverbialbunny
It's a one off issue specific to you so it's a hardware issue.

(Corrupt data, like if windows server has a bad bit, counts as a hardware
issue.)

------
unbendable
I am coming from an T440p (Ubuntu 18.04) to an MacBook Pro 16 and i feel all
his points.

I want to add how bad some parts of the Mac UX are. GNOME surely has some
really really bad UX decisions but overall I think (hold on tight) GNOME is
better than Mac in terms of UX. My MacBook is simply not designed for pro
users.

I might add that the Mac is far more stable than Ubuntu and looks better but
in the end as far as I am concerned the t440p is just the better option for
pro users.

~~~
soal
You are not alone. My work machine is Mac and after Fedora with GNOME on
personal laptop I feel constantly annoyed by basic UX stuff like window and
workspace management.

------
theandrewbailey
> First, it's impossible to get a terminal screen without anti-aliasing. My
> favorite font, IBM VGA8, is unreadable when anti aliased, which is a real
> shame, because I've been using it since the 90s, and I prefer non-anti-
> aliased fonts on terminals.

That's a great font, but unless you're using it at 15 (16?) point exactly,
it's a mess. For those places, I use Nouveau IBM instead. It tries to recreate
the shapes with nice vectors (like someone used one of those pixel art
upscalers), instead of emulating pixels in the font.

[https://www.dafont.com/nouveau-ibm.font](https://www.dafont.com/nouveau-
ibm.font)

~~~
carlesfe
Thank you! I will give it a try

------
harryf
These days owning a MacBook feels like being in an abusive relationship. The
sex is still great but price you pay for being slowly distanced from your
friends, family and peripherals is high.

~~~
klmadfejno
This does not feel representative of how people describe abusive relationships
to me.

~~~
whycombagator
Me either, but maybe it's a description from the other side than what you are
assuming.

------
DCKing
I bought a 2012 MacBook Air when it was new with the 8GB RAM upgrade, and it's
the best computer hardware I've ever purchased. The 2013 Macbook Air the
author uses was only an upgrade in CPU and Wifi. I still use mine almost
daily, although I only do hobby projects on it. Upgraded the SSD last year and
replaced battery a few times, and it's really still an extremely capable thing
while being thin, light, with a great keyboard and trackpad.

But I'm afraid Catalina is the end of the line for its major updates. This was
the most expensive computer I've ever bought with my own money, and I've
learned the lesson that it pays off to spend money on good hardware. But I
can't seem to find to find a great true successor yet.

I understand that Windows can service me just fine, but I really want to avoid
paying money/time/attention/dependance into fixing its user privacy hostility.
I use Linux on the desktop, but on the desktop I can tolerate its papercuts -
coming from a seamless touchpad/software/wifi/battery life/display scaling
experience on a Mac is hard sell to spend more time being a sysadmin (I know
it's gotten better - but I think it would still require too much of my time).
This year's MacBook Air looks actually great, but Apple looks to be replacing
it with an ARM laptop next year. I'm actually excited for that change, but I'm
not really super enthusiastic about being early adopter or the implications
for the support lifecycle of their Intel Macs. In any case, being able to
replace the battery or SSD is a big question mark (or just a big 'no') in any
Apple hardware now.

When I bought my Macbook in 2012 I never expected 1) to have it last for eight
years and 2) that finding a replacement would be such a game of tradeoffs.

~~~
anddyyyu
Same. Best personal computer ever made, my 2012 11” MacBook Air is the last
computer I ever want to own.

I dropped it on a concrete floor my first day of class, at the prototyping
lab. The impact bent the corner of the screen chassis near the hinge. I bent
it back with pliers and filed away what metal prevented it shutting.

I still use this laptop daily. Not for work, obviously. But that’s not it’s
role.

It is my personal computer. There are others like it, but it is mine.

------
iamben
I bought a top spec Air just after it came out a few months back to replace my
2013 Air that I loved but was finally dying (seven years with the same
computer!). I kind of love it, but it's not the same as my love for the 2013
one. I have 16gb of RAM and an I7 and I have to deal with the fan every time
I'm on a video call, never mind using a "powerful" app. It's incredibly
frustrating, because some of those apps didn't start on the fan on the 2013
one.

------
paulcarroty
mbp2020 - [https://cfenollosa.com/blog/img/cam-
mbp.jpg](https://cfenollosa.com/blog/img/cam-mbp.jpg)

air2013 - [https://cfenollosa.com/blog/img/cam-
mba.jpg](https://cfenollosa.com/blog/img/cam-mba.jpg)

iphonese2016 - [https://cfenollosa.com/blog/img/cam-
se.jpg](https://cfenollosa.com/blog/img/cam-se.jpg)

Perfect illustration of "Apple is iphone-first company".

~~~
Foivos
A lot of it has to do with how laptop web cams work in general and it is not
only Apple's problem [1].

A way to improve this situation a bit would be to be able to use the camera of
an iPhone as a web cam, either over USB or wifi. You still have the
compression and USB transfer, but at least you use the better optics of the
phone. There are third party tools, such as EpocCam, that can do it, but
require the installation of drivers. This should be a first party solution, in
the same fashion as the "take photo" option from the right click menu on Mac
OS, which uses an iPhone to take a photo and paste it directly on the open
application of the computer.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BLgS7m0W94](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BLgS7m0W94)

~~~
whywhywhywhy
Microsoft solved the laptop camera problem just fine in their $399 Surface Go
model [0]. Just takes a team that cares about the product enough to solve
these tech issues I guess.

[0] [https://images.idgesg.net/images/article/2020/05/lenovo-
thin...](https://images.idgesg.net/images/article/2020/05/lenovo-
thinkpad-x1-carbon-vs-surface-go-2-selfie-100841556-orig.jpg)

Image on the right is from the Go.

------
saltcod
100000% on the size of the trackpad. It's comically, needlessly large. The
size of the 2012 generation's trackpad is the perfect size — big enough for
your fingers to find it, small enough to barely even need palm rejection.

------
wil421
My 2017 MBP 15 has a major issue with my LG HDR monitor since a recent
Catalina update. The Mac will output an HDR signal on wake up which causes the
monitor to go to full brightness and turn on the quasi HDR feature. The HDR
checkbox in Display settings says it’s off. I have to check and uncheck the
checkbox 5 or 6 times to get it to turn off.

[https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/catalinas-hdr-bug-
with-...](https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/catalinas-hdr-bug-with-
external-display.2228052/)

------
niemenmaa
Quite many people are unhappy with their newer Macbook experiences! Sad to see
the quality drop in Apple products.

I'll add mine to the list:

My 2012 MacBook Air has been my favourite laptop I used it for five years and
my parents two after that. One of the best 700 hundred euros (student
discount) I've spent. Then for my work I got previously used ~2014 MBP it
worked well. Solid "Apple quality". Then I got an "upgrade" (i think it was
2018 MBP) and it was the most unpleasant experience I have yet to have with
computers. Luckily I didn't have to pay for it, but still - so many problems
that are unacceptable for any laptop. It really got me out of the Apple fanboy
train.

\- Keyboard didn't work if the computer got too hot (which it did) \- Some
buttons didn't properly as dust or some particles got under them \- Same
problems with the trackpad than the article writer \- Don't even get me
started with the touchbar (why?!) \- Battery life disappointed as I was
expecting it to atleast compare with the 2020 Air's (of course my expectations
might have been the problem here) \- If external monitors were hooked up and
you woke up the laptop there as 25% that it froze completely and you had to
reboot

The laptop got sent to maintenance - they dusted the keyboard but other
problems persisted. After one year of that pain I went back to studying and
bought used Thinkpad X220 and installed Arch. That is now my favourite
computer!

Last month I bought XPS 13 for programming since x220's CPU doesn't support
virtualization. It runs manjaro and is like 2014 MBP was - does the job really
well. After finally going full into Linux world I wonder if I'll ever come
back.

------
gumby
I mostly agree with this analysis. As far as the webcam goes: you can use your
iphone (just select it as a video camera) and get a really good webcam image.
It also eliminates the issue where the other person on the call appears to be
looking down all the time -- they are always looking away from the camera
anyway(unless you print something to hold your phone in place) so you don't
think they're not paying attention.

It was a good insight that the Touch Bar is a feature designed for non-pro
users!

There are a few things I disagree with but they are all in the matters of
taste. I don't have any problems with the big touchpad, but that could be
related to the fact that I don't care about the "wrist rests" \-- if my hands
were to contact the cover anyway I think they'd be misaligned and at risk of
carpal tunnel syndrome (piano teachers and typing teachers -- back when they
existed -- taught you to maintain a straight line from top of hand to top of
forearm for this very reason.

I do have a problem with the common refrain of "this is not a pro machine".
It's just a name for differentiating their product line. I'm a pro -- full-
time software developer -- and the feature sets seem designed for me precisely
(almost never plug anything into my machine for example). Other people are
also pros but use their machines in different ways and probably considered my
use case absurd. I have assumed Apple collected info on how people use their
machines to figure out, for example, whether the SD slot was worth it (I
talked about a card slot with Steve Jobs 20 years ago and he was very
dismissive, on some grounds that were reasonable for the time).

I always enable telemetry on my Macs and on most apps, as I figure the
developers might use the info to improve the product the way I use it (I'd
like to know that info for my code!). I know a lot of people do not do so from
privacy concerns. I wonder if my feeling that "this machine is right for me"
is because those of us willing to enable telemetry are overweighted in Apple's
beliefs of use patterns. I'm not aware that they survey users in the
traditional way, though probably they do do that as well.

------
whywhywhywhy
The webcam is inexcusable, if Microsoft can put such a high quality webcam in
their $399 Surface Go then what on earth is Apple's excuse in their $2000
laptops?

We've actually started using a Surface Go for all our video tutorial recording
in my work just because it looks more professional than MacBook Pro webcam
footage.

------
joeberon
Honestly the first time I've ever heard someone complain about a macbook
trackpad

~~~
harpratap
I agree with the author. I never used all the space dedicated to this
trackpad, seems like a waste. That and I cannot get used to this "3D Touch"
trackpad compared to the older clicky ones. 99% of the time I'm going along
just fine and randomly I cannot seem to select a line or something and it
infuriates me when that dictionary lookup thing pops up instead.

------
lordnacho
Just got my new MBP 16 inch yesterday, a replacement for my 2015 MBP 15 inch.

It's been pretty smooth sailing thus far, no big disappointments. My main
reason for replacing the 2015 was to get more CPU power and memory, but the
2015 was actually doing ok, not insanely slow yet.

In terms of power I can now have all my tabs open, including heavy ones like
Facebook, while running several different IDEs, and changing between things
takes no time at all. Compiling is measurably faster.

The migration tool seems to work, it moved everything including stuff you
might forget like your ssh config file. Even the bash history is there, and
all the apps are in the dock in the order they were in on the old machine.
Homebrew seemed to need a bundle command, but that fixed itself easily.

Touch bar is weird. I've basically set it to display F keys, because I can't
figure out how to get iTerm2's hotkey to replace the Siri icon. If I could do
that, I might not mind, but I go to terminal so often I need it to be a single
key. So for now, Touch Bar is a small minus for me. The ESC key is still there
so that's fine.

The screen is nicer than the 2015 one, marginally. Something about the colors
and the size, I guess the bezel is now pretty much where it can be
aesthetically. I wouldn't want it closer to the edge.

The keyboard is good. I tried my wife's butterfly type keyboard and thought it
was terrible, luckily she likes it. This keyboard has slightly less travel
than the old one, but somehow it feels like I can type faster without it
feeling weird.

Main thing is there's been no terrible surprises in moving the stuff over to a
new machine. Back in the day when I was a kid it would take a whole day to
install software, you would always forget to move something, and there would
always be some unexpected hitch.

I haven't run into Catalina slowness issues that people have mentioned, only
things like the removal of kexts, which wasn't huge for me.

~~~
dep_b
I moved my dock to the bar with Pock and I have some of the most used buttons
(brightness, volume, mute and night mode) right there. I also added a negative
spacing between the icons so they're really close now. Now every time I can
expect the same thing to be in the same place on the Touch Bar. And together
with the slightly increased resolution and size the screen feels a lot bigger
than the 15".

The only thing that doesn't work is tap-and-slide on the volume slider.

------
x3haloed
Don’t buy an older model with the butterfly keyboard and avoid touchbar where
possible. Problem solved. I actually disagree with the trackpad complaints.
I’ve never used a better trackpad in my life. It’s really a joy, and palm
rejection is not perfect, but close enough that it doesn’t bother me.

------
paganel
Not a laptop but I just wanted to add that the latest Mac Mini does a decent
job. Also, not being a laptop forces me to avoid work while sitting in a cafe
or when going out on a short trip. I mostly do backend work with some front-
end work mixed in lately, but no graphical-intensive stuff.

------
brandon272
I find USB-C to an almost scandalous regression in technology. Few people seem
to be talking about it given how much frustration I would think there is over
it.

My MBP has 2 USB-C ports. That’s all. Of these ports, the options to expand
off of them are slim to nil. I have not encountered a single hub or multi port
adapter, _including Apple’s_ that works properly or reliably.

Essentially it is a situation where I cannot use more than two of my USB-C
ports at once, which usually means I can only use one, as the other is always
reserved for charging.

The hubs are trash. The adapters are trash. Near all of them are from brands I
have never heard of.

The whole thing just seems broken. But notebook manufacturers, especially
Apple, have now been doubling down on it for years now.

~~~
whywhywhywhy
My work laptop is one of the 2 port Pros too. To make matters worse it's the
lowest space spec too.

Total nightmare using this for video work, not enough space to store the video
files so have to use an external drive, dongles are not reliable enough to
keep a drive mounted so have to dedicate one port to that, second port has my
screen but when my battery goes low I have to go back to editing just on the
laptop screen because I have to plug the power back in.

It's just compromise after compromise and for what? What did I as a user as a
customer gain here?

------
partyboat1586
My main issue with the new MacBook pros is they are slow. They overheat and
then throttle the CPU regularly. Too much was sacrificed to make them so slim.
(I got the 2019 13 inch top spec)

I built a small form factor hackintosh with an i5 9600K + 32GB RAM and it's a
completely different experience. Smooth as butter, never throttles. iOS apps
compile in a third of the time and my IDE doesn't grind to a halt while I'm
compiling. Doing work on my MacBook now feels like a chore in comparison. Not
to mention the hackintosh cost less than half what the MacBook cost.

------
bpodgursky
I don't understand how people don't go crazy from the the MBP overheating
issues. It's gotten to the point where I've broken out my 2012 ThinkPad to
offload anything CPU-intensive. If I have high-compute stuff running in the
background, I can barely type, the keyboard gets so uncomfortably hot! (not to
mention the loud, ineffective fan)

(and let's not even talk about how useless it is as a laptop)

I would pay an extra $200 just to get a MBP which was 50% THICKER, if it got
proper airflow to the internals and cooled down properly.

------
kakuri
What is the obsession with laptops? While I fully understand they have their
uses, I don't understand why someone who is employed full-time doing
programming would cripple their own work environment by using a laptop. I've
been hearing and reading about laptop complaints for years from "professional"
programmers. It's very easy to avoid so many problems by building your own
desktop. If money isn't an issue then just buy one prebuilt.

~~~
jlokier
A lot of people don't do all their work sat in the same spot all day.

------
llampx
The author pretty much proves why Apple doesn't listen to any of the ranty
feedback from Apple lovers (not to be confused with Apple users)

The author time and again says he'd pay for this feature or pay to not have
the touchbar, whereas he could have put his money where his mouth is and
bought a Thinkpad or XPS or Latitude etc.

He's doing himself a disservice by continuing to buy Macs and we're doing
ourselves a disservice by up voting articles like this one.

~~~
niemenmaa
Yeah. To each of their own, but I was actually surprised that the verdict in
the end was "When combined with an iPhone it makes for an unbeatable user
experience."

I loved Macs after using my 2012 Air for five years (my parents used it until
last year) and MBP 2015 for work. Then they got me MPB 2018 and that was
enough Apple for me. It was absolutely terrible. I don't care how many times I
have to reinstall Arch to my Dell XPS 13, it's still a better experience.

------
pocw
I still roll an old Macbook Air for my primary computer. It really sucks under
Catalina. I used to run two browsers, one for work and one for personal. Now I
just run the work one. I often find myself evicting things from RAM so I can
get my job done. Nerfing the ram slots was the first unforgivable sin. Don't
get me started on usb-c and the thrice damned touchbar. At least they gave us
the escape key back.

I'm tempted to upgrade, but this article is not helping. Maybe I'll get an Air
with 16gb and call it good. My favorite recent machine purchase was a
Chromebook Pixel i7 with 16GB of ram. The only problems are the locked rom and
the nerfed storage. Both of which I've worked around. It's my primary pen-test
machine and the most capable machine in my fleet. If only the Linux trackpad
drivers were better. (fingers crossed
[https://bill.harding.blog/2020/04/26/linux-touchpad-like-
a-m...](https://bill.harding.blog/2020/04/26/linux-touchpad-like-a-macbook-
pro-may-2020-update/))

If I could buy a machine like the Chromebook (that I was allowed to install
linux on) I'd drop Apple in a heartbeat.

------
sylens
This is a really solid, nuanced review that I felt was pretty fair given my
experience with this latest crop of Macbooks.

I've posted in the past that I feel like Surface Book is a device that is not
aimed at me. Sadly, I am starting to feel the same about Macbooks. The
touchbar is an active hindrance to me and them replacing core macOS
applications with Catalyst alternatives (like Apple Music replacing iTunes)
makes the experience more frustrating and less useful.

------
jungletime
I have a 2013 macbook. But I think I will update to a hackintosh, and an ipad
as my next two computers.

I never built a hackintosh, but saw some guides on youtube. Seems simple
enough. I do occasional video editing in final cut, and programming.

The 2013 13 inch macbook, has been good so far. But 98% of the time its
connected to an external monitor and mouse and keyboard. The 13 inch macbook
is still too big to use on an airplane seat. For the occasional travel, I
think an ipad will work better for that and in bed.

The biggest gripes for me are with the macbook/os

1\. It came with 128 GB, which I partitioned to use half with windows. I'm
running out of space all the time.

2\. It came with 2 usb ports and 2 lightning ports. I have never used a
lighting port, but I'm always short a usb port. I use a dongle for external
mouse and keyboard, so it takes up one usb port. But if I want to edit a
movie, or files. I hook up an external drive and then I'm short a USB port. I
wish there was a lightning 2 port to USB cable. I use a USB hub, but it craps
out eventually.

3\. I dread updating, because recreating my python and windows programming
environments would take a month.

4\. I hate "Finder". It does weird things all the time. Takes 3 seconds to
create a folder. Moving files requires a holding down a key. Windows explorer
was much more snappier and useful.

5\. My trash bin accumulates things which it won't let me delete.

I'm budgeting $750 hackintosh and $300 ipad. I think will give me more power
and portability. Plush I'll still have my old macbook.

Maybe I'll budget $200 for a good mechanical keyboard and mouse this time.

------
dangus
I think it’s a list of many valid criticisms, but it’s just so tiring at this
point. We’ve been talking about the Touch Bar and the ports for almost 5 years
now.

I hate to be that person saying “if you don’t like it, don’t buy it” but
that’s absolutely the case here. People are handcuffing themselves to macOS
for no reason even though they admit they don’t love it like they did 6-8
years ago.

The integration is nice but there are alternatives. You can integrate Android
with Windows or Linux, often with more freedom. You can use platform agnostic
apps and services for your workflows. What Apple offers with continuity is
great but not worth living with a machine that doesn’t work with your other
needs.

Personally, I still have a Mac and iPhone, and I don’t really have the same
issues as the author (I think palm rejection works fine, I think the touch bar
is fine - and Apple’s most popular laptop doesn’t even have it) but you can be
certain that when their time is up I’m not going to keep a closed mind to
other options.

------
luord
Meanwhile, I'm pretty happy with the laptop I bought from system76 and am
eagerly waiting for the one they're building themselves. I was assigned a mac
for my most recent job and I barely touch it.

Many people are mentioning wsl in the comments and not only that really
doesn't make up for all of windows's shortcomings, I still think it's a new
first step in MS's traditional EEE ("look, developers! You don't need to use
linux anymore, you can run your setup directly from windows now!"). Not
coincidentally, wsl2 seems like a slow move into the "extend" step.

I don't think they'll ever manage to extinguish Linux, but it certainly won't
be thanks to the developers who are doing microsoft's job of pretending that
wsl is the ideal and giving it free publicity. If one needs Linux tools that
much, one should just use it.

------
linuxhansl
I have a MacBook Pro from work, and a Lenovo X1E Gen2 with Linux (Fedora KDE
spin) at home. The Lenovo is slightly newer, but the two are roughly
equivalent.

The Linux machine needs work for setup. The laptop shipped with Windows, so
installing Linux is on you - but Levono started shipping some of their laptops
with Linux. I pretty much just installed Fedora from a live CD.

Once setup, it is faster, KDE is easier to use - I realize that is subjective,
has better heat management, lighter, an even better keyboard - Lenovo is known
for that, and is more reliable.

With a good deal the X1E also costs 30-40% less than the equivalent MacBook
Pro.

I like the MacBook as well, I just think it does not justify the price and if
you are a little bit tech-savvy there are better or at least equivalent
options out there.

Edit: I also have a 2013 Lenovo T440p that I gave to my son, it's still a
strong and fast laptop - and the improvements in Fedora/Linux made is _faster_
over time, not slower!

------
GekkePrutser
This blog seems to be down.

Yeah I can't deal with the new keyboards myself. Especially the butterfly
ones, but even the new redesigned ones are too thin for me. Edit: Lol, the
page works again and the keyboard is the one thing he does like :) I can't
imagine this but I did notice the new keyboards are highly polarising. Some
people love them, some hate them (like me). I really love the keyboards on the
thicker thinkpad laptops I use in work as well (I use many computers in work
;) )

In addition you now have to pay full price for upgrades as everything is
soldered, and the platform is being dumbed down to the level of iPad Plus. I'm
just not really interested anymore. I still use them for work (with external
keyboard) but the attraction of a great strong POSIX compliant platform with a
good user interface is long gone.

~~~
bootlooped
I have always been in disbelief of people who have to type for a living and
also like Mac keyboards. It's like somebody told the designers "make it as
close to a flat sheet of aluminum as you possibly can". I'll give it that it
looks clean and elegant, but the actual tactile experience is garbage.

~~~
dnh44
I’ve been using a 12 inch MacBook for the last four years and it’s got one of
the keyboards that no one seems to like.

However if I hadn’t read it here I wouldn’t have thought there was anything
wrong with it and most of my job involves typing.

In fact I think the keyboard is quite great. I do type quite softly and
quietly though. For me using other keyboards feels like walking in sand and
that my fingers have to work a lot harder.

------
FillardMillmore
I've only ever owned iMacs when it comes to Apple. Recently, after a little
research, I decided to spring for a used 2015 MacBook Pro 15''. Though there
are conflicting opinions among Apple fans, many fondly remember this model as
one of the last great models. With a quad-core i7 CPU, 1TB SSD drive and 16 GB
of RAM, it still runs like a dream. The Retina screen makes everything look
colorful and glossy. The keyboard predates the butterfly, so it is a joy to
type on. Not to mention this model comes with an HDMI port, 2 USB-A ports, and
an SD card reader.

I can probably run this thing for another 3-4 years until support ends - and
even after that, I could keep on using it. No regrets so far.

------
lolcopterpilot
I have a work Macbook Pro that I requested in anticipation of better quality
compared to others. Ended up being disappointed, it's just as crap as my other
laptops. Build quality is iffy, it has heat problems comparable to the lowest
quality gaming laptops, the keyboard is garbage and the touchbar is the most
useless piece of tech I've used in a long time. And this is probably even more
subjective but OSX Catalina is quite slow and the free tooling I am used to
now costs money. I also heard bad things about Applecare in my country but I
have no personal experience.

Since I have other issues also with not having Nvidia GPU, I can't wait to
dump this hardware.

------
devmunchies
> became unusable due to macOS, not hardware, issues

I'm on a 2013 iMac and i was 2.5 years behind on OS upgrading. I just upgraded
last week and now i get the beach ball spinner when opening a directory in the
finder. It is absolutely OS related.

------
rooam-dev
My biggest concern/blocker is the soldered storage.

1st - if it fails during warranty, how do I send it for repair safely (as in
my data be safe)?

2nd - it decreases its value imho. I mean how many people buy/trust used
storage? I wouldn't.

~~~
foldr
>as in my data be safe

You should have disk encryption turned on. I would not worry unless you think
there is someone who is willing to spend an enormous amount of time and effort
to access your data.

~~~
rooam-dev
Thank you.

------
pmarreck
I feel like the lack of Jobs' influence is finally making its broad
appearance.

Anyway, Catalina upset me so much (I had no idea how much 32 bit stuff I still
wanted to work!) that instead of downgrading my main machine to Mojave, I'm
going with a Linux system from System76. My Macs that have not been upgraded
to Catalina will remain at Mojave, or, should they be old enough to not make
it to Mojave, I will be installing a compatible Linux distro on them to keep
up to date with security issues.

------
lm2s
>When video conferencing or under high stress like running multiple VMs the
system would miss key presses or mouse clicks. I'm not saying that the system
was laggy, which it was, and it is expected. Rather, that I would type the
word "macbook" and the system would register "mok", for example.

To the key missing part, my hunch is that this is happening because of
software workarounds that Apple did on macOS to reduce the problems in their
previous keyboards clusterf*ck.

------
pkz
I have been looking for a replacement 13" laptop and for the first time in
many years I am looking at getting a Win 10 laptop (heres hoping WSL2 will be
the saviour for decent development setup). But is is hard finding decent 13"
hardware that doesn't have annoying drawbacks. Hard to believe but there seems
to be a market segment for a new laptop manufacturer that produces three
models that are continuously refreshed every second year or so.

------
qfwfq_
> This situation is very annoying, especially for a touch typist as my fingers
> are always on hjkl and my thumb on the spacebar. This makes my thumb knuckle
> constantly brush the trackpad and activate it.

I thought standard touch typing position was _index_ fingers on the notches (f
& j in US QWERTY). With that & some fairly large hands, the trackpad rests
comfortably outside of my palm area? the trackpad seems pretty well-designed
to just miss the palm in standard position.

------
ashtonkem
Out of curiosity I rebooted my Ubuntu partition for the first time in a while.
I run NixOS and Windows 10 on the same box, so this gives me a good
performance baseline.

The experience was _awful_. Ubuntu is so. fricking. slow. And when upgrading
from 18.04 (it’s been a while) to something newer, it locked me out of my
account. I can’t login now, which is less than great.

I’ve come to appreciate the overall experience with OSX. Are there warts?
Sure. But on the whole it’s worth the premium, IMO.

------
gjmacd
When Pro tools, Reason and all the major "creative" apps decide to port over
to Linux (remember, Microsoft's desktop is moving in this direction), I think
the macbook's days will be numbered when you can get a similar device in
formfactor and quality for 1/3 of the price running Linux... I actually think
Apple doesn't care. They want people to buy iPad's and iPhones and get out of
the laptop and desktop business.

~~~
jshen
Where can you get a similar device and form factor for 1/3 the price?

------
technotarek
“Sometimes, after resuming from sleep, the laptop doesn't detect its own
keyboard. I can assure you, the keyboard was there indeed, and note how the
dock is still the default one. This happened to me minutes after setting up
the computer for the first time, before I had any chance to install software
or change any settings.”

Glad to hear it’s not just me. I think I solved this by re-enabling Bluetooth
(2020 MBA). The OP says he hadn’t changed any settings yet though.

~~~
technotarek
For anyone else that stumbles upon this post because of this issue -- please
upvote the issue on Apple Communities:
[https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251455368](https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251455368)

------
vanusa
Short run-down of issues with my late-2019 Air:

* Effectively can't play YouTube videos _at all_ if the browser gets even just a wee bit busy (say, 30 tabs or so, including the usual portion of busy news sites). By "not at all" I mean the output starts getting so shoppy (and the controls so unresponsive) that it's just not worth the bother. By contrast my 2013-2016 Airs could do on the order of 50+ fully loaded YT tabs without much sign of strain (beyond starting to get a bit slow at the controls).

* While we're at it -- even standalone audio files are dodgy (if the environment is just a bit loaded). It's like the audio interface itself is perpetually hosed / overloaded.

* This despite a 2x upgrade in ram, and 4x upgrade in SSD space that I thought would take care of most of my performance issues.

* My UX experience was generally consistent on 2010-2016 models. That is, everything you hovered over / clicked / dragged behaved "the way a mac should" \-- without having to even think about it. But with the 2019 model (Catalina) it seems they have to "improve" a lot of these default behaviors, which took weeks of trial and error to figure out (some of which I still am figuring out).

* It freezes up (requiring reboot) way more than it should (and correspondingly seems less tolerant of high browser loads). It's never a great experience when a laptop freezes up to to high load (which is of course perfectly avoidable). But I had to push my 2013-2016 _really_ far to get it into the same level of instability. Basically it seems it can take only 1/4 the load of my earlier models.

* USB-C (which is just plain dodgy, and there's only _one_ free slot. Can anyone explain what they were thinking with that?)

* Other stuff I'm probably too burned out by my overall experience with this thing to bring to the foreground of consciousness.

The only problem is - I'm still basically addicted to Macs (and have had
consistently less than happy experience with Linux-based desktops over the
years). Largely due to the overall UX, screen + audio quality (along with
lightness and thinness). And (when the used to be reliable) their stability
and low overall maintenance footprint.

With that said - is there _any_ current offering from Apple that's at least
reasonably stable (particularly in regard to browser load and audio issues)?

Or if not - what open source notebook offerings are people using these days
(that are reasonably decent in terms of screen quality and overall
responsiveness)?

------
werber
I go between last years Pro for work and this years Air for all things
personal and I loathe the Pro. This years keyboard on the Air is by far the
best typing experience I’ve ever had on a laptop. I have no idea why they are
leaning so hard into the Touchbar, it is the most frustrating “innovation”. I
frequently accidentally perform actions and need to break flow to look at it
to do actions as simple as changing the volume.

~~~
jamesu
One other quirk with the touchbar I've noticed is when the machine starts
overheating, the touchbar feels noticeably hotter... sometimes to the point of
becoming painful to touch.

They should probably rename it to the torturebar.

------
thedanbob
I completely agree with the author in that my 2013 MBA is the best laptop I've
ever used. It's not my daily driver so I should be able to get quite a few
more years of life out of it. And I also agree that for the brief period when
macOS had Continuity but wasn't intolerably bad in other areas, it really was
a magical experience. That's the one thing I really miss from going all Linux.

------
musicale
> the palm rejection algoritm is not good enough

Ugh, this is my main complaint about the last edition MacBook Pro - worse than
the butterfly keyboard (which I had to replace twice but which currently
works.)

It's baffling because palm rejection worked flawlessly for me on the smaller
trackpad on the 2012 MacBook Pro as well as the entire screen of the 11" iPad
pro.

------
fxtentacle
I had problems opening the page from Germany. Here's an archive.org link:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20200602104512/https://cfenollos...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200602104512/https://cfenollosa.com/blog/seven-
years-later-i-bought-a-new-macbook-for-the-first-time-i-dont-love-it.html)

------
ziml77
I don't understand what Apple is doing with the touchbar. Before I used it, I
was thinking that the gimmick didn't look as bad as people were making it out
to be. After I used it, I returned the laptop.

Why does it activate without any haptic feedback just from brushing against
it? Obviously they know how to do both of those things; it's how the trackpad
on the same device works!

------
maxbaines
Thank you this confirms my moving away from MBP because of touch-bar, perhaps
somewhat easier as I love Windows so the Surface range was perfect.

------
tln
I can't believe the screen wasn't seen as an upgrade. Going from non-retina
300 nits to retina 500 nits with crazy good color?

------
StreamBright
It is kind of sad that Apple lost its way. We used to be excited about new
releases, now I only want to make sure auto-update is disabled and the new
hardware did not remove half of the ports again. Time to seriously consider an
alternative operating system for me after being on MacOS for 10 years. I
cannot be put up with it anymore.

------
g_delgado14
I was in the market recently for a new laptop after owning 2 different MB pros
since 2011. I ended up buying a System76 linux laptop and couldn't be happier.
It's cheaper and it's built for software devs. The keyboard is amazing. Only
real downside is the trackpad isn't as good. But I use a mouse anyways.

------
panpanna
> When I push the laptop a bit more ... I get around 4 hours. In comparison,
> that figure is reasonable. Overall, it's not bad, but I expected more.

How can this be "reasonable" from a new laptop?

Maybe that's typo because I can get more from a five years old laptop under
similar load.

(Although to be fair, my containers are first class citizens)

~~~
slantyyz
I don't think I've ever gotten close to the advertised battery life from any
new laptop, Mac or Windows, but I probably use a lot of apps and settings that
aren't battery friendly (e.g., I prefer a brighter than average display).

So when I do get 4h of battery life, I'm pretty happy.

~~~
panpanna
Well, I have had _some_ laptops even exceededing their advertised 10+ hrs
battery life but only under a _specific_ configuration (basically the one it
came with. An OS reinstall would kill the battery life).

Also, things have improved significantly in linux-land. Someone finally had
time to turn off unused peripherals in the kernel and battery life doubled
over night

------
thr0w__4w4y
Many people have said this many times, but love him or hate him, Steve Jobs
did a good job of keeping this kind of stuff from deteriorating. (Sure there
was AntennaGate and "You're holding it wrong", that wasn't Apple's or Jobs'
best moment for sure...)

------
whalesalad
My mid-2012 air was also the best machine I’ve ever owned. The chassis and
portability could not be beat. I have a well equipped 2018 Pro now, but it’s
not the same. I like having a serious H series processor and 32GB of ram, but
the 15” chassis is just too big.

------
nakodari
Great writeup! I am still on Macbook Pro 2013, the best 13” laptop ever build
by Apple. I refuse to upgrade. All new Macbooks have disappointed me. I hope
the upcoming 14” Macbook Pro will be better and without the touchbar so I can
finally upgrade.

~~~
benologist
I have the 2013 13" too and it's been such a great computer but two things
stifle its longevity - two cores and no upgrades. The 14" is going to have
ample cores for years to come and with upgradable ram and storage it could
easily serve for over a decade. But while everything is soldered on the only
upgrade option is to sell the laptop back to Apple at a massive discount. I
don't know if it's just resentment but it feels like a dark pattern to fuel
Apple with spare parts and refurbished machines to resell. The model to buy,
for me, is the one after the EU forces Apple to use socketed components.

------
rb808
I am actually thinking of buying MBP for the first time ever. I just want a
good screen, good keyboard and unix like os. Lower models are actually
relatively good value now compared to X1/XPS. I still dont like the company or
design though.

------
cosmotic
"[bad retina support] is not Apple's fault"

Yes it is. Apple chose a resolution that was not 1/nth as dense and thus
everything non-retina needs a lot more work to fix. Apple could have
implemented and tested it better. This is 100% on them.

------
brandonmenc
> I have found myself unconsciously raising my palms and placing them at a
> different angle. This may lead to RSI, which I have suffered from in the
> past.

Probably not.

This position eliminates wrist bending and yaw, which will help you avoid RSI.

------
2snakes
I have a new macbook air i5 and the only thing that I can't do on it is use
Chrome bc the fan kicks on way too easily when browsing or watching. I was
happy that using safari alleviates this issue entirely.

------
jimnotgym
I moved from Mac to Windows to Linux to Windows.

I wanted things to 'just work' so bought an expensive mac. It was very good at
syncing iTunes and stuff like that. I found I kept needing Windows only
software...

So moved to Windows. It was fine. No problems except iTunes looked weird, but
I got my work done easier.

Then I started to code more so went to Linux on one computer and Windows with
a Linux VM on other.

As life developed I used Linux less and MS Office more. I write more reports
than code now! Since WSL I dropped Linux on the desktop and went Windows
everywhere.

I notice now that the only people who complain about Windows are the mac
users. I personally find a mac really limiting, and MS Office sucks on a mac.
I'm happy with Windows 10, and my users don't suffer many issues compared to
my mac users.

------
indigodaddy
I knew I recognized that name... it’s the bashblog guy! I’ve been meaning to
try out bashblog for years, and may do so soon for the blog I’ve been dragging
my feet on for forever..

------
Wowfunhappy
At least half of the author's issues, and basically all of the bigger
ones—come back to the trackpad's palm rejection not working for him.

I wonder why that is. It works perfectly for me.

------
unixhero
Get the Lenovo Thinkpad 490. It's the laptop of 2019-2020.

~~~
dzonga
same machine. 2nd best I ever owned after my 2012 13" macbook pro.

------
egberts1
I just sent in my late-2011 MacBook Pro for LCD and keyboard replacement.
Still refuse to touch anything that has a glassy surface for a keyboard.

------
cargoshipit
I have a 16" mbp and enjoy it quite a lot. I don't put my fingers in dumb
places and I don't have any problems with the OS. Astounding.

------
wdb
I have to admit that the webcam on the MacBook aren't quite for years, don't
understand they can't put a better one in.

------
mister_hn
why don't you return it back then and buy something better? Isn't there a
money-back guarantee for the first X days?

~~~
GolDDranks
The problem is that there isn't anything better. The author said that he hates
using Windows and his experimentation with Linux wasn't an entire success.
That limits him to Macs. The 2016-2018 models were a disaster. The only
reasonable choice left is the choice he made.

~~~
mister_hn
nothing better?

Well, questioning about Linux depends really on what kind of distribution the
author used previously. Some are less efficient than others.

Considering hardware, the whole set of AMD Ryzen3 and Ryzen4 based laptops are
much better than a MacBook, in computing power, flexibility, energy efficiency
and lately also in price, plus they have the advantage that you can later
upgrade SSD or RAM, while on MBP everything is soldered and you're out of luck
later on.

The day MacOS will be fully virtualized, it might be the doom of the MBP and
iMac.

------
dariosalvi78
wait until the keyboard becomes useless as it happened to the 4 MacBook Pros I
have owned in the last 5 years.

~~~
Xenoamorphous
They’ve switched back to the previous mechanism and ditched the butterfly one
for the latest models AFAIK.

------
bromonkey
Arch Linux still runs great on the 2013 MacBooks (if you don't need any Mac
only software.)

------
p0nce
Quality doesn't really matter for status objects, they just have to be the
most expensive.

------
ubercow13
>it's impossible to get a terminal screen without anti-aliasing. My favorite
font, IBM VGA8, is unreadable when anti aliased

You could try scaling your favourite bitmap font 2-3x up - I did this with
mine when switching to a 4k laptop. Unless this means that terminals no longer
support bitmap fonts at all.

------
dep_b
I don't have palm rejection problems at all, touch typist since forever.

------
ap46
They need to get Nvidia GPUs, AMD/ARM CPUs & a 1080p camera FFS

------
modzu
this review nails it. 2015 mbp in my case. all it needs is a faster cpu and a
couple of usb3 ports to replace the thunderbolt and it would be money. well at
least we had a golden age

------
glennos
Couldn’t agree more about the Touch bar, it makes my MacBook worse.

------
m4tthumphrey
I am not looking forward to the day my 2015 MBP dies :(

------
coronadisaster
The last one you bought was desinged by Steve Jobs

------
radicalbyte
I love my 2013 rMBP, it's still plenty fast enough but it really needs a new
battery. As long as the board is fine I'll do whatever is needed to keep it
going.

------
ppeetteerr
Why didn't he get a newer MacBook Air?

------
garmaine
Why didn't you get a 2017 Air? It sounds like that would have been exactly
what you're looking for--a performance boost but with the old build quality.

------
inieves
get the 2015 mba, you would have been happier

stay 1 minor release behind major releases of apple hardware, you will be
happiest

------
ben7799
I've always been more of a desktop user myself. My first computer I bought
with my own money was a Windows laptop in 1995 when I went to college. Mac
really wasn't an option then, Classic Mac OS was terrible for a CS student,
didn't run any of the required software I needed, and were super expensive.
That was pretty much Apple's darkest hour. Laptops were stupid expensive back
then, so 1997, 2000, 2003, etc.. I built/rebuilt my own homebuilt desktops on
the cheap.

2004 I got a Mac Mini. 2006 I got a Mac Pro.

2012 Apple pissed me off dropping support for the Mac Pro, so I went back to a
homebuilt windows desktop. Actually used a case I had laying around from
2004-2005 as well. Less than 1/3 the investment of the Mac Pro. That machine
is still in service now with just a better video card + SSD. Great machine,
still very snappy, but I am getting tempted to rebuild it.

Also grabbed a Surface Pro i5 for $800 in 2017. Very happy with that machine,
but it gets used for home consumer type stuff and not development work.

In the meantime I've had a whole bunch of Macbook Pros for work from
2012-2020.

The 2018 15" MBP I have right now is by far the most disappointing Mac
experience..

A lot of my issue is that I work on a product that runs in Docker... docker
sucks on Mac IMO, and most of my issues are around needing more RAM & CPU for
hyperkit & docker to suck down.. but the Mac is rampant with high latency in
the UI and other issues that drive me nuts.

\- Keyboard is starting to fail, and it sucks, not even comfortable. I'm stuck
at home so it's trickier for IT to give me a new MBP. When I was going to the
office I could mostly ignore the KB and use external, circumstances around
lockdown have meant more use of the internal KB issues.

\- Hate the touchbar, never gotten any decent use out of it. And I use vi
plenty of course.

\- I have some of the palm rejection issues the blogger mentions but that's
not so bad.

\- OSX seems to be bottom of the barrel when it goes into swap, linux and
windows both seem to handle high memory usage better.

\- USB-C has been nothing but a PITA. Didn't need so many dongles with the
older Macbook Pro and the USB-C doesn't buy me much. I have yet to have any
device with a USB-C plug that can plug right into the MBP 2 years later.

\- Quality of audio on the headphone jack is horrific on my 2018 MBP... it has
the most noise of any PC I've ever had, not even in the same ballparks as my
previous MBP which was great. Not sure what's going on here.

\- Battery life on MBP is fine except when using docker or running builds.
Then it's like an hour or two.

------
MattyMc
Outstanding review.

------
dividedbyzero
I own a 2013 13" Macbook Pro and currently use a 2017 13" Macbook Pro at work,
and I like the 2017 better.

The only gripes I have with the 2017 machine are the butterfly keyboard (which
never broke, but just doesn't feel good), the lack of an ESC key, and the
"space grey" color.

From trying out a 2020 13", the new keyboard actually feels like an
improvement over the 2013 one, so I guess that's fixed. It has a physical ESC
key, so that's fixed too, and ... there's always the silver model, but my
employer couldn't procure that at the time, and I guess it's not such a big
deal really; I just like shiny things I guess.

On the upside: I can get a tiny machine with 32GB RAM now with a UNIX on it
that doesn't require me to be my own Linux sysadmin, which is something I know
fairly well how to do (I do admin a number of servers, and have had at least a
dozen forays into Linux on desktops) but absolutely don't enjoy to the point
where I'd rather use Windows 8.

Besides, Touch ID is something I've grown to miss on the 2013 one, since I
hate typing long passwords over and over again, and it even works for
1Password and apparently is reasonably safe at that.

I have a 34" USB-C screen, which makes USB-C a really nice experience; single
wire and I get display, a couple of USB devices (including my mechanical
keyboard), LAN access, sound and power. Everything works out of the box, no
issues so far with the 2017 Macbook. On the 2013 one, I had to use three
cables for that (those Thunderbolt 2 docks never felt like good value for the
money) and it turns out USB 3.0 does have its limitations.

I even like the touchbar. I'm fairly disinterested in peak keyboard speed and
efficiency, I don't need a debugger that often really, and I'm bad at
memorizing keyboard shortcuts anyway, so I like being able to get a
discoverable set of shortcuts on the touchbar. Setting brightness and volume
has a lot more granularity, that's nice too. I have a button to mute my
microphone on there as well that shows the current muteness state, useful for
conference calls in Teams (its mute shortcut is weird, plus this way I don't
show up as muted, which is better sometimes) and I look forward to trying out
BetterTouchTool. I've seen other people use theirs as some kind of makeshift
faders and fairly precise "analog" sliders for image processing and the like –
not quite as nice as having dedicated devices for it, sure, but it's always
there. I thought I'd hate it since the overall tone in the developer community
towards the touchbar is incredibly negative, but I'm fine with it and I would
pick the touchbar version over a F-key one any day even at modest cost (but I
need the ESC key; leaving that out actually did make a difference for me.)

Haven't tried Catalina yet myself, but most of an office full of devs
seemingly didn't have much trouble with it (the rest has yet to switch), so I
guess I'll see what I find when I upgrade; I'm backing up my email just in
case. But in the end it's probably still a UNIX that doesn't require me to
become a hobby sysadmin and reboot after using the wrong projector, so I'll
probably still be happier than with Linux, and somehow I just can't grow to
like Windows.

That's just my personal experience, n=1 and all, and I don't use my machines
to make music or develop in emacs all day at maximum keystroke throughput and
so on, and I might hate the experience if I did, but as things stand, I'm
currently still feel kinda positive towards Macbooks.

------
snarfy
You're holding it wrong.

------
pritovido
"Apple engineers, do you know who is the target audience for these machines?"

I believe Apple knows who is the target audience for those machines better
than this man.

Pro means "Professional" and that includes Graphic and sound designers, web
programmers and (specially if you spend a little time in Apple Store and just
observe) entrepreneurs that need (or want and could pay for it) powerful
portable machines.

Not being able to display "IBM VGA8" being a screen "drawback" is like calling
a drawback of mother cars that you could not pick cherries like with old cars,
too fast and too low roof.

Most people prefer antialiased fonts instead of blocky, so his drawback is a
feature for most people.

[https://xkcd.com/1172/](https://xkcd.com/1172/)

~~~
ZanyProgrammer
"I believe Apple knows who is the target audience for those machines better
than this man"

There's a substantial number of Mac users who are devs who seem like they are
in an abusive relationship with Apple, and will put up with all sorts of
changes that are looked at negatively by developers.

------
Asuchug4
Why would you need to love a computer? It is just a tool. I don't except a new
model to change my life.

~~~
mprev
If you spend hours upon hours each day using that tool to be productive, then
the quality of experience it delivers _does_ change your life.

If you're constantly fighting against a jammed keyboard, that affects your
productivity, which most likely affects your happiness.

------
sandy_mdez
Oh God.. First time I was hearing someone doesnt like mac book pro.

