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New MacBook Pro Is Not a Laptop for Developers Anymore
- weavie 10y agoIt looks like they have also removed the § key. How am I going to type § now?
- realworldview 10y agoWorst HN post and comments ever. Sounds like a kindergarten fracas.
- vazamb 10y agoI don't really understand the outrage about the touchpad when the actual keyboard is likely a far worse problem. Unless they have significantly upped their game from the 12 inch MacBook I don't see anyone typing on that keyboard for longer than 10 minutes.
- djrogers 10y agoThey went out of their way to point out that it's not the same keyboard as the 12". Aside from that, there are plenty of opal who are more than happy with that keyboard - personal preference is just that, personal.
- rch 10y agoI'm not a fan of the bar, but I'd really like mechanical keys with individual oled screens on the fn row.
- trymas 10y ago> The MacBook Pro had options with 2.4 gigahertz dual-core processors back in 2010. Anything new in 2016? Not really, well… nope. I feel the OP's disappointment but oh my.. does he really do not understand that cpu's clock speed is not the main comparing factor between processors? It's like saying he will not buy a car with 2.0L engine, because they were making such capacity engines 50years ago
- mixmastamyk 10y agoYep, I'm another developer who rarely uses Escape or the F keys. I moved Ctrl to Caps Lock, and you can put Escape there too if you are a hardcore vim/emacs user. It's better on the hands and faster. Second, my current laptop has 8GB ram and it is more than enough to edit text files. The only time it could potentially be a problem is when running VMs, but as it is I can run two or three at a time with 1GB a piece no sweat. Combined with the cloud and ssh I'm not sure that 16GB is a burden to many. As an aside I used to work at a vfx company in the late 90's. We'd do simulations such as tornados that ate RAM for breakfast and would run on a full SGI Origin 3k across 16 CPUs. Guess how much ram it had and used? Yes, 16 GB. The idea that we have an Origin in our laps under 2kg would have impressed the younger me.
- briankwest 10y agoI'm pretty sure I can adjust to the soft esc key, If not then evolution is a myth. :)
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- musesum 10y agoI've bought every single MBP since 2007, when I switched over from Windows to focus on iOS. This may be the first one I skip. Not sure. PRO: My muscle memory is solidly in the MacOS+Xcode camp. Switching from ctrl key to command key for basic operations resulted in my RSI injury going away. Why? My guess: because the thumb is now the pivot point for commands, instead of the pinky. As a result, my hands splay inwards instead of outwards. Back during my MS-Win days, the solution was to get a split keyboard for the desktop. No longer need that. CON: The main problem a dynamic set of keys is that you have to look at them. Each eye saccade wastes 200 milliseconds. I also assign app shortcuts with cmd-option-fn and use divvy + cmd-option-fn to assign reorganize window placement. Plus, I wanna play with ML using CUDA. Am missing the Nvidia GPU that came with my 2013 MBP.
- copperx 10y agoI know the post is complaining about removing physical keys, but wasn't it completely idiotic to have removed the SD card slot? I know that most people don't use it. And maybe having it in the 13" is overkill, but what about keeping it in the 15" one Apple? It's a "Pro" computer, and the most common use case isn't for developers, but hobby, prosumer, and pro photographers, who use (gasp!) dedicated cameras with SD memory.
- tigroferoce 10y agoAm I the only one here who noticed that there IS a version without touch bar and with plain old function keys?
- graycrow 10y agoYes, but only 13" with slower CPU and 50% less USB ports.
- mikeash 10y agoI'm always amazed at how techies are so often unable to consider other people's points of view. You'd think I'd be used to it by now, but no. If you don't like the new design, that's totally fine. I've seen a lot of people saying that. But when you say that the new design is bad for everybody, or bad for millions of people you haven't met, based solely on your own personal reasons, you've lost it. I'm a developer. The only reason I'm not buying one of these is because what I currently have is just fine, and I don't feel like spending the money. The touch bar looks really cool. It might not end up being very useful, but I think I'd like to have it. If it's not useful, well, no big deal. Function keys? Never use 'em. Escape key? Having it available as a touch button doesn't seem like a major problem. If it turns out to be, then I'll learn or configure some other shortcut for it and get on with my life. Now, that's just me. Your opinion may differ, and that's fine. I just ask you to have the same attitude. It's silly to say that this machine "is not a laptop for developers." It's not a laptop for you, apparently, and for people with similar needs and opinions. But not all developers are you.
- 51Cards 10y agoHere is my issue with the new touch bar as a general UI element. Things meant for fingers should have tactile feedback unless you're also looking at the same location (like a touch screen) where you can get visual feedback. This offers no tactile response when used, and its layout changes constantly, thus it needs to be looked at to use it. That means you have to shift your vision focus from screen to keyboard repeatedly as you move through apps (or even while in the same app if they make the content dynamic). To me this is bad UI design at a fundamental level. I can see this being handy as a "slider" style control (though a touch pad edge could be as well). Otherwise though, especially when used as "buttons" my opinion is that it is going to be very tiresome to use extensively and slow general interactions down. If you need this kind of interaction style it should be on a touch screen without forcing the eyes to change focus or monitor changes in peripheral vision. TLDR There is a reason we touch type. Touch. Exactly what this is missing.
- djrogers 10y agoI think the idea here is that it's easier to look down than it is to spend a long period of time holding your arm up to a laptop screen. Either you're moving you're eyes off the screen or lifting your hands up off the keyboard - I'd say there are arguments for and against each, and I look forward to seeing how this solution actually works in use as opposed to the armchair theories we've been seeing.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- the_mitsuhiko 10y agoHonestly, the only thing I will miss is the escape button but that was misplaced on the keyboard anyways. 10.12.1 added support for making caps lock into an escape key and that's if anything an improvement over where escape was before.
- vbezhenar 10y agoI use caps lock as control.
- the_mitsuhiko 10y agoThen you can now use control as escape if you so desire.
- lghh 10y agoI agree that caps lock is an improvement over escape's location. But, if you're like me, you also find it to be an improvement over control's location so you have caps lock mapped to that already so rebinding esc to caps lock is not an option.
- peller 10y agoYou can have the best of both worlds on *nix: tap == ESC, hold == CTRL http://www.economyofeffort.com/2014/08/11/beyond-ctrl-remap-make-that-caps-lock-key-useful/ http://www.economyofeffort.com/2014/08/11/beyond-ctrl-remap-...
- bitwize 10y agoSo use an editor that supports a modern UI, like Sublime Text or Atom, and not something originally designed for an ADM-3A terminal.
- Skunkleton 10y agoI'm sorry, what constitutes a modern UI? And what do ST or Atom do that hasn't existed for decades in one form or another?
- rblatz 10y agoLack of depending on the function keys and the escape key to do basic text editing.
- bitwize 10y agoConformance with Apple's UI standards, or at least something resembling them. Escape and f-keys are used to send commands to the computer, not to enter text. Apple feels that this is better achieved with touch, gestures, and the mouse, so they've removed the temptation for developers to fall into old bad habits. See also: the removal of arrow keys on the original Mac.
- rayiner 10y agoOr use Emacs? ESC is bound by default to Meta, which is otherwise available on both sides of the space bar by hitting option/alt.
- AlexMuir 10y agoGood luck using Sublime or atom over SSH.
- seanwilson 10y agoI've never understood this argument where you limit yourself to something that will work in the worst case scenario. For programming projects as well, the only time I'm using SSH directly is to troubleshoot rare server issues. Besides this, server admin should be automated/scripted so I'm not doing complicated edits over SSH.
- jkrems 10y agoSince the article doesn't even mention that the escape functionality is still there (although it's no longer a physical key but a touch button), I'm going to assume that its only source is jokes on twitter.
- Skunkleton 10y agoDid you see how they had to peck type on the Touch Bar in the demo? How is this an improvement for me?
- shenanigoat 10y agoDramatic click bait IMO. You could really hack that touchbar to do some great productivity enhancements.
- vegabook 10y agoNo the 16gig thing is real. It's a travesty that 32GB is not an option.
- robtaylor 10y agoJust need the 'Macbook Is DEAD' style articles...
- uw_rob 10y agoMaybe you could enlighten me to some of the possibilities. Besides a slider, I'm not really seeing much productivity enhancements that functions keys cannot do.
- raverbashing 10y agoDynamic function keys (are you in insert mode? some functions show up. Normal? different functions) Also you don't need to remember which key does which
- asragab 10y agoNot sure if there will be TouchBar user interface toolkit for java applications, but I spend a lot of time in IntelliJ. It would be great if the TouchBar rather than having to remember mappings, could have sets of labels [Step In, Step over...] during an active debug session or a different set during editing or presentation modes. Currently, the solution is to have myriad toolbars and icons bespeckle the window frame, which can be distracting and confusing, and all together take up some valuable laptop screen real estate.
- VT_Drew 10y agoWhy is everyone so upset about this? It is a dynamic part of the keyboard. I would be shocked if there was no option to set it "classic mode" for certain applications (or even universally if you wanted), which would have the ESC key and the function keys. Why the opposition? Having a dynamic part of a keyboard is pretty innovative, what are some of the possibilities, I am not 100% sure but I am sure that developers will find neat and useful (and probably unexpected by us and by apple) things to use it for.
- dorianm 10y agoThere is a MacBook with escape and functions keys still available. So the choice is still there. Personally I think the touch bar could be great for programmers so I'm gonna take that.
- haddr 10y agoSure, the specs of this choice shouldn't be called Pro any more I guess.
- rayiner 10y agoHonest question: what's the alternative? I've got a 2013 rMBP 15 inch. What's my next machine? I'm not willing to regress on display (220 ppi or better), screen size, or battery life (8-9 hours real use). I might regress on quad core to dual core if everything else is perfect. EDIT: The XPS 15 gets more like 5-6 hours with the high res display by my understanding. The Surface Book has the right combination of resolution and battery life, but 15.4" to 13.5" is a big step down if you're used to working with side by side windows. Is there anything out there I've overlooked?
- overcast 10y agoI would say for a machine that is only three years old, just wait? I mean, if it's working well for you now, why are you considering upgrading? I'm sitting here on a 2008 Mac Pro, and was hoping to move to a mobile solution. But 16GB of RAM just isn't going to cut it for the VM's and what not a run. So I guess I'll just be running this into the ground.
- bradstewart 10y agoMicrosoft's Surface Book.
- sheeshkebab 10y agoSurface boook is just as gimped - 16gb ram, about same cpus, same expensive storage, and other gimmicks (detacheable screen won't do you much good in helping to develop stuff)
- strictnein 10y agoEscape key included
- masklinn 10y ago> about same cpus That's charitable. It has a dual-core 15W TDP CPUs, the 13" touchbar uses a dual-core 25W CPU and the 15" uses a quad-core 45W CPU. Incidentally, all Kaby Lake laptops use either 4.5W duals or 15W duals, there's nothing else out yet.
- jws 10y agoBah, these entitled kids. I guess being old enough to remember keyboards before they had escape keys helps, but ␛ is just keyboard syntactic sugar for control left square bracket. Read your ASCII table! C-[ is even a quicker type avoiding RSIs from all those long pinky reaches. (More seriously, as much as it bothers me to retrain my pinky, most uses of the escape key would be many times better if the lefthand side of the touch bar had a word for the function, like stop being full screen, cancel, leave menu, or whatever. The function would then be discoverable instead of secret lore.)
- cypres 10y agoI had no idea you could use C-[ as ESC
- Theodores 10y agoI wonder how many vim users have tried using CTRL + [ for the first time today. Muscle memory being what it is I fully expect that nobody will swap over to this new and improved Apple way of pressing the Escape key.
- 3chelon 10y agoAnd vi too - works just fine, but you have a valid point about muscle memory, which is pretty much the only kind of memory many of us have left when it comes to vi-like editors, since the key sequences disappeared from our brains decades ago!
- mst 10y agoMuch to my surprise, after I was forced by circumstances to use Ctrl+[ for a month or so, I found I didn't actually want to go back to Esc. Had it only been a week or two I suspect my muscle memory wouldn't've shifted though.
- mrweasel 10y agoIt's also a kinda crappy alternative, because it's not possible on a large number of non-English keyboard. Ctrl+c is also an option, although I think there's a slight difference.
- ameesdotme 10y ago> The MacBook Pro had options with 2.4 gigahertz dual-core processors back in 2010. Anything new in 2016? Not really, well… nope. I find it very hard to believe that these processors perform on the same level as the ones in 2010. Equal cores / GHz does not mean equal performance.
- fisherjeff 10y agoAgreed. Not only is there no option less than 2.9 GHz on the touch bar Macbook Pro, but I'm also not sure how a developer could equate a Core2 Duo with a Skylake core i5/i7.
- landonalder 10y agoWhile the RAM complaints are valid, I don't know anyone who actually uses their laptop keyboard for serious development. Almost all of these laptops spend 90% of their time docked somewhere with a real keyboard hooked up.
- mirashii 10y agoThe plural of anecdote is not data. I know many people who do use their laptop keyboard, myself included.
- Skunkleton 10y agoFor me, the MBP was all about the nice screen, the touchpad, the keyboard, and the build quality. If you are only using it docked, none of these really matter.
- strictnein 10y ago> "The plural of anecdote is not data." An anecdote is a single data point. So numerous anecdotes would, in fact, be data.
- boobsbr 10y agoSo the touch bar is useless in 90% of the time.
- Bartweiss 10y agoAnd so is the entire keyboard on the MBP I currently work on. That doesn't mean I don't appreciate it 10% of the time.
- Disruptive_Dave 10y agoThis is what they call "newsjacking" - and a really bad version of it.
- winebaths 10y agoWhile there's a lot in here that I can agree with, this one stands out like a sore thumb... > The MacBook Pro had options with 2.4 gigahertz dual-core processors back in 2010. Anything new in 2016? Not really, well… nope. Aren't we done the whole gigahertz race?
- ngcazz 10y agoauthor clearly doesn't care to understand about hardware.
- laddng 10y agoI've had a good, satisfying run with MacBook Pros, but now I'm stepping off the Apple train. I understand that Apple is trying to go in a new direction with the new MacBook Pros, and I won't complain about it. I am now simply moving to an Arch Linux setup on an old Lenovo Thinkpad Carbon X1 to continue living inside the Terminal.
- jdc0589 10y agoI'm not suggesting you do this, for legal reasons blah blah blah, but putting together a hackintosh is pretty easy these days if you really like osx.
- matt_wulfeck 10y agoHow easy is it to maintain? Last I heard every update breaks everything.
- pavelmelnichuk 10y agonah it's not bad. Sometimes you just need to reinstall the same audio kernels, etc (depending on your hardware). There are many guides to find compatible hardware
- __abc 10y agolink?
- Tinyyy 10y agoIt’s not. You’re pretty much stuck on a static OS unless you want to spend hours dealing with various problems each update.
- kentt 10y agoI used a hackintosh for a year for development. It took a day to setup, which is of course a lot more work than for a typical osx experience. However, once setup it was better than the mac pro I was using. Might have even been more stable. Upgrades were a bit of a hassle, but not horrible.
- aethos 10y agoI have to say, this feels like a lazy hype-train post. Everyone is complaining about the lack of the esc key, but I'm sure it won't be so bad. It does depend somewhat on how integrations work with the bar. I could imagine hopping between files and functions in your IDE using the bar. And surely you would be able to map the section where esc was to esc?
- hellofunk 10y ago> This isn’t to say that the touch bar is an inherently bad idea. You could locate it on top of the Esc and function keys instead of eliminating them entirely! Something like this: <image> Not that there aren't worthy talking points in this article, but it's really annoying when a blogger has the arrogance to photoshop some keyboard image together and proclaim it's a better design than what a gigantic company carefully came up with. Apple has its own reasons for doing things and they aren't going to please everybody, but does this Alexey Semeney fellow actually think Apple didn't consider all the possibilities before removing a whole bunch of keys from the keyboard? Apple might be a lot of things, but careless is not usually one of them.
- uw_rob 10y agoAlthough people place a lot of trust in Apple, I think the proverb of "trust but verify" applies here. We shouldn't just take it on faith that Apple has made the correct choice.
- hellofunk 10y agoWhat does "correct" mean? They are at least consistent. For decades they remove major hardware controls and ports that were initially thought to be critical for use. They were the first to get rid of CD drives, floppy drives, the list is quite long.
- uw_rob 10y agoThe best definition I can come up with is that Apple does not regret removing it in the future. I suspect they will be correct. I don't see people passing up on MBPs over this, and in 5-10 years people will stop missing the function keys.
- Caprinicus 10y agoThe reality is that apple has been pretty much universally right whenever they ditch something "way too soon". There's never been a moment when a year down the line apple realized "wait, this USB thing is never going to catch on, go back to the old ports we were wrong!"
- raverbashing 10y agoYou can use the Caps Lock as ESC key, for example I suppose also there's a terminal mode with ESC and the other keys (or iTerm might do that) But yeah, the RAM issue is not good
- slg 10y agoThis doesn't even get into the dongle problem. The simplest example is that if you want to hook up Apple's flagship phone up to their flagship laptop for development, you need a dongle. And if you want to share one of their flagship wired headphones between the two devices, you need another dongle. Therefore if you want to connect three of Apple's flagship devices together on a daily basis, you can't go anywhere without bringing at least two dongles with you.
- ChrisBland 10y agoIf I want to use it to connect to my Apple Thunderbolt Display, add another dongle.
- masklinn 10y ago> The simplest example is that if you want to hook up Apple's flagship phone up to their flagship laptop for development, you need a dongle. Why would you bother with a dongle when you can get a Type C — Lightning cable for the same price?
- matthewmcg 10y agoI agree with you, but it seems they are already selling a USB-C to lightning cable. http://www.apple.com/shop/product/MK0X2AM/A/usb-c-to-lightning-cable-1-m http://www.apple.com/shop/product/MK0X2AM/A/usb-c-to-lightni... a.k.a the "lightning to thunderbolt" cable.
- cypres 10y agoIt's funny they bring up devs using vim, because the only vim key they removed is Esc, which a lot of vim devs remaps to caps-lock or similar anyways. I almost never use the F keys, so if they kept the Esc key but removed the rest it would be perfect :)
- gre 10y agoI don't know anyone who remaps capslock to esc. It just sounds like something that is fun to say on hackernews. You didn't even say you use it, you said a lot of vim devs do, to which i would counter--they dont. The better choice is remapping capslock to ctrl.
- manulp 10y agoI know a lot of people doing that. Personally, I map caps lock to esc when pressed, and ctrl when pressed with another key. The best of both worlds.
- yoz-y 10y agoI do. And judging from the list of articles that explain on how to do it for various platforms I suppose a lot of people do. The carabiner-elements is a whole (popular) program to do just that (by default, it has more options as well)
- hultner 10y agoI do! I'm both a heavy vim user and have my ESC remapped to capslock. And otherwise ESC=>^] anyway so you can always do that (however it's a bit awkward so I'd rather use capslock). Another thing I really do think deserves to be mentioned is which developer do really spend extended amount of time on the laptop keyboard when not traveling? Both at home and work I'm using the Microsoft Sculpt keyboard and keep the laptop docked with 3 external displays, with these new 5k-monitors two will probably be enough.
- tuckermi 10y agoI'm not the GP, but for what it's worth I do remap capslock to esc. I mostly use a Kinesis Advantage keyboard where the escape key is one of the chiclet rubber keys, so using vim (at all) really begs for either a remapped esc or brain-retraining to use ctrl-[. I'm not sure if it's a better or worse choice to remap capslock to ctrl - but it's certainly viable. The old Sun keyboards used to have that layout...
- AdmiralAsshat 10y agoIt's worth noting that only the higher-end of the new MBP's have the Touch Bar. The lower end still has a traditional function row: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/10/no-new-macbook-airs-as-apple-instead-makes-lower-end-1500-macbook-pro/ http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/10/no-new-macbook-airs-as-... So I suppose in theory if you wanted something new but without breaking your workflow, you could just go for that one.
- sashaafm 10y agoYeah buying a new product which is more expensive than last year's and with worse specs.
- 51Cards 10y agoNote that that is only the very base 13" model. You can't get the 15" without the Touch Bar.
- mcintyre1994 10y agoAny idea why it only has 2 USB ports? Seems like an intentional crippling.
- endemic 10y agoThe frustrating thing is that machine only has 2 USB ports, rather than 4. So one port for power and another for a single wired accessory. I guess buying a dongle isn't a huge deal, but kind of frustrating that you'd have to spend more money for what I would expect to be included functionality for a "pro" machine.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- strictnein 10y agoGoogle cache, since it's down currently: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:UleFaabtM4kJ:https://blog.devteam.space/new-macbook-pro-is-not-a-laptop-for-developers-anymore-d0d4b1b8b7de+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:UleFaa...
- blowski 10y agoI was waiting for the new Macbook Pros as I need to buy a new laptop, and was going to give my old Macbook Pro (2014 model) to my wife. But given that they have nothing of value (I don't care about gimmicks like the new touch bar), I've decided to abandon Mac and go back to Linux. I'm just a typical web developer, running a bunch of virtual machines, and an IDE. Any recommendations? I saw the Dell XPS 15 for around £1,300: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B018FSX9GA/ https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B018FSX9GA/ Any others? I'm not a Linux diehard, so I'd probably go with Ubuntu.
- aesthetics1 10y agoThe XPS machines (both the 13 and the 15) are excellent. I haven't found anything else that compares across the board.
- blowski 10y agoI had an XPS 13 in 2008, and was really happy with it. The quality was much higher than most of the Dell laptops I've seen. Do you know how well they work with Linux?
- aesthetics1 10y agoThey work excellent with Linux. Dell actually sells a "Developer Edition" of the XPS line with Ubuntu pre-installed.
- blowski 10y agoSeems like the Developer Edition is EOL in the UK at least. I'll look for some reviews about the standard edition.
- Brakenshire 10y agoThere was a new update a month or two back, I think they're just waiting for it to filter through to the UK.
- ericjang 10y agoI dislike this post intensely. The opinion comes across as uncharitable, as the author probably has not used this Macbook Pro yet. How can you (alexeysemeney) be so sure? I consider myself a developer, and I almost never use the Fn and ESC keys on my Mac. Everybody uses the computer differently, but I'm pretty sure this is not a deal-breaker for most. One could also argue that the touch bar might lead to innovative developer tools, such as timeline interfaces for Replay Debugging. There are already a lot of applications in the content creation (Photoshop, Illustrator, Maya) space, which developers frequently use to create assets.
- ag_47 10y agohmm, looking at the comments -- am I the only who uses Fn + Arrow Keys for Page Up/Down and Home/End purposes? How can you not?
- jobigoud 10y agoI realize I don't know the first thing about MacBook keyboards. Are you saying they don't have Page up, Page down, Home and End? Maybe a Windows thing but I use Function keys everyday, F3 for incremental search, F5, F9, F10, F11 for debugging. Not having these keys would be handicapping.
- gurkendoktor 10y agoHome/end are not really necessary on a Mac, where you can use cmd+arrow keys instead (left=start of line, right=end of line, up=start of document, down=end of document). The function keys are also not commonly used by apps because the system maps them to brightness control, volume, play/pause etc. by default and you need to use the Fn key to produce the actual function key keystrokes. The convention for incremental search is: cmd+F to open the find dialog, cmd+G for "Find Next" (which is great because it's right next to cmd+F), and cmd+E cmd+G for "search for selection". Every macOS app works that way and the F3 key will not be missed. It's really not that bad. The only key I miss on Mac keyboards is forward delete (Del).
- adolfoabegg 10y agowell, if you you want a touchbarless macbook pro then get a 13' touchbarless macbook pro. Just came to mind this thought "Maybe they're selling that one as part of a sales control group". But then: it's Apple, they just do whatever they think is innovative. Do you think system76.com is a good alternative from the developers point of view?
- kylebenzle 10y agoAll Lenovo would need to do is start supporting Unbuntu on their ThinkPad line and Apple would be in big trouble overnight. With then Thinkpads they are doing the opposite, locking Linux users out instead!
- gshakir 10y agoTotally agree with you. Ubuntu needs to have a mainstream manufacturer to go big. MBP is perfect so far because of the combo of UNIX and Office products and support for various softwares.
- zitterbewegung 10y agoDo we really need 10 blog posts basically saying the same thing with extremely low effort on the frontpage?
- hellofunk 10y agoI'd like to see stats on how my VIM users actually still use the ESC key. Most (including me) have mapped this to Caps-lock a long time ago because the Esc key for a long time has not been in the same place on any keyboard as it was when VIM was originally created.
- bananicorn 10y agoThere sure are some to be found - I personally find it too hard to override my habit of reaching for the upper left corner for esc. And believe me, I tried the caps-lock as esc key, but I kept hitting either shift or tab as well... Might just be a matter of practice though. Currently my caps-lock key is still remapped to esc since accidentially hitting caps lock is the worst.
- tstrimple 10y agoIf you don't have the data, you have no position saying most vim users do anything. There is no reasonable way to assume that most users of any software make the same configuration changes away from default.
- hellofunk 10y agoWhich is why I said "I'd like to see stats"...
- azmenak 10y agoAs a developer and an Apple user for last decade, this has certainly been the most disappointing Keynote I've ever seen from Apple. I do think, however, some of these concerns are overblown. If you're a VIM user and haven't tried overriding the Caps Lock key to be an Esc key, you should give it a try, it has made VIM a much better experience for many people. On the memory side, doing development work I can hardly think of a time when 16GB was limiting on the RAM side, and I hardly notice the performance hit when using swap on the incredibly fast SSD. And the processors have definitely improved, I'm currently running a 15" MBP Late 2013 at 2.0GHz. The new base models are starting on newer architecture at 2.7GHz. Having said that, I'm still not sure whether I'm going to be upgrading any time soon...
- EdwardDiego 10y ago> On the memory side, doing development work I can hardly think of a time when 16GB was limiting on the RAM side I can, but then we're probably developing different things in different ways.
- matwood 10y agoThe problem is that as soon as you need a VM (and doing any web development typically needs one to test IE/edge with), you're pushing your RAM limits.
- mschip 10y agoI'm no Apple fanboy nor apologist, but this sentiment is everywhere and overtly dramatic. They continue to provide a 13" model with function keys as an alternative. If that machine isn't fast enough you probably aren't a "developer" anyways. Also, I rarely use the keyboard on my mac because I use it on a stand with an additional monitor. If you want to complain about the new Mac, complain about price or the fact that the touch bar is unusable in an ergonomic setting, just don't act like you can't still use VIM.
- dep_b 10y agoI concur. I have a problem with the (European) price hike and the RAM cap, for the rest it's not going to be worse for me at all. I really only used the volume keys and esc keys really and once in a blue Monday the brightness controls. The On / Off switch will be replace by the TouchID input I assume. I'm really not sure what I even had to expect more from this update than what I've got.
- sametmax 10y agoAll softwares, including wim, will come with a plugin (or a built in feature) to display a custom menu on it, including the equivalent of an escape key. And you can bet the first app to be developpped will be something to display the old Fx bar in the widget. I usually really dislike apple politics, being a linux boy myself, but I can see how this, while causing some issues, can be an interesting tool. You want people to innovate and cry when they do so. It doesn't work that way. Let the community try to work with it for a bit to see if interesting patterns emerge before judging. And come on, 16GB limit? I got 32 just in case, but currenly, I can't reach 14GB without forcing myself to open everything I can. This is complaining for complaining.
- amorphid 10y agoI haven't been this upset since Chrome removed using the backspace key as a back button, and it took me a few minutes to find a chrome extension that allowed me to replicate the functionality.
- bandrami 10y agoLooks like an entire generation of javascript devs is going to have to learn how to do ^[
- Philipp__ 10y agoOk, I think Apple is not hitting the Dev group of consumers at all. But what I certainly do not want to do is judge a machine that I have not tried. Yeah, I am almost 100% I won't buy this machine, no reason, cause I use maxed out 13" I bought 9 months ago, but I will go to a store and spend some time with it, and after that come to the internet and tell my impression. Markets and products change over time, sometimes for worse, sometimes for better. Nobody is forcing anyone to buy this machine, yes it is expensive, yes it is not geared towards Pro consumers as we all used to think and expected from this one the same, yes it is Apple on the verge of their creativity. So what? It has never been better situation with alternative laptops and hybrids. You have fantastic products from Microsoft and Dell! What is my opinion on this whole thing, is that with laptops we got to the point of saturation. They started as big and clunky boxes in 90s, to a slimmer but still heavy and chunky plastic bricks in early 2000s. Then we got aluminum body, after that CPUs staled with performance, and went with the rout of lower voltage, which allowed for longer battery life and less heat exhaustion. Then aluminum bodies went really slim, tablets and touch screens came in play, opening whole new market of hybrids. And now we come back to the point where we say, we do not want gimmicks in our laptops, that's okay, Apple shoulda have given the option of non Touch Bar 15" MBP, but it would require further price tweaking. And then we come to the point of price. Yeah it is going up! We had a period from 2012 to 2016 where computers were pretty affordable, in terms where you get solid battery life and computer performance with at least FHD screen slight under thousand dollars. Now market is shrinking, because of the nature of technology and innovation, market got saturated, and we are here where we are. I just do not understand people screaming all over the internet. I mean I was too when I watched the presentation, this isn't the Apple I fell in love with more than 10 years ago. But what can you do... When the time comes for purchase of my new computer (I am Software Engineer, so quite niche market) I will evaluate every option with my head cool. Yeah, I like UNIX and I was using Mac computers for more than 10 years, but Microsoft has never been stronger with hardware and PC games, and Dell is fine too. That is the good thing both for whole market and Apple fans, because change is needed inside Apple! When their money and stocks start to go down the sink that will make them realize and fight for the lost costumers. Have a nice day, just my 2c.
- leejo 10y agoI'm a long time vim user, and i have the following in my .vimrc: nnoremap <F2> T nnoremap <F3> t nnoremap <F4> set invnumber<CR> nnoremap <F5> N<CR> nnoremap <F6> n<CR> So you think i'd be annoyed about the culling of the Esc and function keys? Not really, mac keyboards are terrible for typing IMO/IME so i always have an external one hooked up. The lack of decent updates to the RAM and CPU bug me more given the price increase. Here i am running 5 VMs so that's sucking up almost 1/2 of my 16GB of RAM. Chrome is eating a good chunk of the rest and i don't have many long lived tabs. And at home i have over 500GB of photos alone so would like a machine that doesn't have a tiny storage option as the default config. But alas...
- po-tee-weet 10y agoWhat a terrible article. It compares how the processor speed has remained the same from 2008 without mentioning the architectural changes. There are reasons why I think the new macbook is less suited for developers, but not these reasons. This article is entirely misleading.
- mindcrash 10y ago> #1. No Escape and function keys The new MacBook Pro has Escape and function keys. You just need to summon them now if you want them. Phil Schiller even showed this in the demo! Also, context aware actions are much more useful. You saw that they even included a whole set for developers (and XCode) right? And you can bet other tools will soon follow. > #2 Power. Almost no improvement for RAM and a processor That it doesnt have a new CPU is not Apple's fault. It's Intels. Apple wants their professional equipment to have at least a quadcore processor. The latest generation Intel processors, Kaby Lake, currently only has dual core processors available which is a absolute disaster for people who actually need fast multicore processing. So because of this they used a Skylake quadcore. Which IMO isnt a disaster since it is still the fastest quadcore x86 CPU architecture out there. Regarding RAM I think 16 Gigs is more than enough for any purpose.
- sjm 10y agoThere might be some useful things in the Xcode set, but anything that can't be done with a shortcut already? I find Cmd+<key> far easier to hit than reaching up to the F-keys. I imagine more-so if that action now has no tactility.
- Alex3917 10y agoCurrently every time I open iTerm, I need to change directory into my project, spin up my virtual env, and then initialize some stuff within my virtualenv. Now I can map those commands to icons in the toolbar, rather than having to page through the history command each time. How is that not a huge improvement for developers? Any time you can replace a command or alias with a visual icon that's a significant reduction in cognitive overhead. While the fact that you can only get 16 gigs of RAM is annoying, the fact that the SSD is 50% faster at least ameliorates this somewhat. And the fact that there are seemingly several low hanging fruit things that Apple can make to improve the product, while annoying to people like me who needed to purchase one of these today, at least shows that they will probably continue to make improvements to the lineup.
- ThePawnBreak 10y ago> Now I can map those commands to icons in the toolbar, rather than having to page through the history command each time. Why not just create a bash function? Call it setupproj1, write the commands you need in a function ~/.bash_profile, export the function and that's it!
- airblade 10y agoEven better, install Alfred and bind a hotkey to your bash function.
- the_duke 10y agoThe escape key always seemed a horrible choice for such an essential key in vim. I mapped it to capslock like 2 days after starting with Vim. Many people also use "jj" or something similar.
- solatic 10y agoLenovo introduced a Touch Bar (Adaptive Keyboard strip) in the Thinkpad X1 Carbon in 2014. It flopped so hard that Lenovo pulled it and reinstituted a normal function row in the 2015 refresh. Why does Apple get a pass? No physical keys means not being able to find functionality by touch alone means no muscle memory means no productivity. This isn't a hypothesis, this is a proven market reaction to Lenovo's design choices.
- moderation 10y agoI ran Xubuntu on one of the 2014 X1 Carbons and can confirm the adaptive keyboard strip is terrible. It worked but was clumsy at best. I just upgraded to the t460s with 24G RAM and proper function and escape keys. Great light weight Linux laptop.
- Bartweiss 10y agoI assume Apple is trying their usual model of duplicating failed projects later, and with better design. I'm not sure it will work here - the lack of physical feedback is inherent to the design - but they don't shy away from reviving other people's failures. Better layout and contextual buttons will help, although I doubt they'll make me happy with the system. I still remember having an old Acer with a touch bar - some lunatic put a "disable wifi" setting on the thing, and then cranked the sensitivity way too high.
- sosborn 10y ago> Why does Apple get a pass? Do you remember trackpads before Apple got them right?
- mrweasel 10y agoSure I would like Apple just have kept the keyboard as is, and not having the ESC key is going to take some getting used to, but even as a Vim user it's a solvable problem. Depending on your workflow and platform choices, you don't even need to upgrade your Macbook Pro, the last to generation are perfectly fine for a very large number of people. Scott Hanselmans comment that not having a ESC key for Vim is messing with Apple core audience the just plain stupid. The VAST majority of Apple MacBook Pro customer aren't installing Vim. Only having USB-C connectors seems like pushing it in terms of how fast you can expect users to adapt and it's going to be an adaptor hell for a year or two.
- xbryanx 10y agoI'm always confused by the interface outrage from hard core devs around new laptops. As a dev, I spend the absolute minimum time possible developing by interfacing with my MacBook itself. 98% of the time I'm plugged into a mechanical keyboard, giant monitors, and a real sound system. My MacBook sits to the side and only gets touched when I'm on an airplane or a meeting.
- rglullis 10y agoI was thinking the same, and I realized the answer is simple: it is not "hard core devs". Who cares so much about 6+ hours of battery life, if most of the time you are just at your workplace - whether at the office or at home? People whose workplace is at neither of those, and instead they work in some damn coffee shop.
- SliderUp 10y agoThis is true; but to me, the problem is the diminutive RAM/CPU/drive profile. Just not enough horsepower. The touch panel would bug, but I rarely use my laptop mobile. But my 64G Windows gaming laptop kills my 2014 MBP for perf. That seems to be nothing that is going to change soon.
- acdha 10y agoThis seems like a combination of trolling for page-views and begging the question of whether your personal tastes are universally shared. Nobody has even used the touch bar yet so we don't know how well the escape + function key mode works for the average developer, or how often the wins of other features (e.g. the dedicated “man page” button shown in the screenshots, the kinds of context-sensitive things something like a debugger, browser dev tools, etc. could do, etc.) would balance out the lost of a physical key. There's a small mistake in assuming that the quad-core 2.4GHz processor you got in 2010 is exactly the same as the 2016 Skylake version, and I think that masks a much larger question: how many people actually need more CPU or even RAM? Some developers definitely do – if you're working with a 20GB model, there's no alternative – but a large number don't. For me, most of my development laptop hardware requirements plateaued somewhere around the MacBook Air somewhere around the 2010-12 range because this thing called the cloud happened and most of the work which can't be done on a small laptop with an SSD also isn't a good fit for a slightly larger laptop. Everything else I'd look for are different areas like screen size.
- SamUK96 10y agoTrue developers used MacBooks? I was talking to a washed-up developer today who swears by them actually. Every single reason was totally bogus. It went something like this: Reason 1) "They come with native SSH capabilities" Me) "Uh, you can just get Putty for windows. It takes 20 seconds." Reason 2) "MacOS uses the PC's hardware more efficiently" Me) "Uh, it's because it's a very basic OS and has much less the deal with, i.e less threads to micromanage, so it's not really 'efficiency'. Also, Apple products have very poor hardware specs for the price, so the performance ends up the same if not worse than an equivalent windows machine, even when factoring in poorer hardware utilization efficiency." Reason 3) "B-but, Photoshop and video-editing software runs better on MacOS." Me) "No. It doesn't. It really doesn't. What the hell" Honestly, there is no getting through to them.
- wyager 10y ago> True developers used MacBooks? Yes, three out of four tech companies I've been employed at and many more I've visited have been mac shops. Your made-up justifications don't even touch on the real reasons people prefer macs a lot of the time; it's UNIX, it's easy to use, and the hardware is high-quality. I think this might just be bait, but I do hear comments like this all the time off HN, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.
- SamUK96 10y ago>the hardware is high-quality. On the outside, maybe? The internal components of Apple products are notoriously planned and built for obsolescence and failure to keep you trendy folk giving them money, line after line (and then charge you to fix the failures!) >it's UNIX People would use Linux if the platform had the money to bribe software makers to support them. That's a "forced-reason", and not a positive design point of Apple itself. >made-up justifications Call everything you don't agree with "made-up"? But seriously though, the reasons that devs use macs are mostly forced/non-reasons: a) Earn a tonne of money and terrible value is not a problem for them b) Need it since the thing they are developing needs to be tested on macs c) Need UNIX and software that supports running on it. d) etc. After a while, you realise most of the reasons why any developer ever buys Apple starts with "need", which, hopefully, you should understand is a statement to the marketing, underhand, and monopolistic tactics of Apple (forcing you to "need" their products, rather than want them)
- hashkb 10y agoApple has been backing away from power users for years. Ever since they removed dual monitor full screen, imo. My MacBooks don't have Mac OS on them and I'm never buying another one. The premium price used to get you the best product... now it's an accessory.
- radium3d 10y agoI feel like removing the function keys their original idea to where they couldn't go back when they were first conceived. It will be better to know what their function is without having to look it up in a manual. It makes the function keys on older computers look like index cards in a library.
- dvcrn 10y agoTo be honest, the only thing that's causing me to say it's not a "developer machine" is the keyboard. It features the same butterfly switches that the 12" MacBook has and my good are they horrible. I seriously can't imagine writing long sessions of code with this mushy keyboard. I don't get it. With the new touch bar and stereo speakers they WANT us to use the MacBook as is, without external keyboard and then they give us these dreadful switches that almost feel like you're pressing a sheet of paper. I understand that for the 12" MacBook they wanted a machine as thin as possible and the keyboard was too thick. But why oh why ok the pro lineup. I actually REALLY really liked the type feeling of MacBook keyboards
- jaxondu 10y agoThe new MacBook Pro uses version 2 of the butterfly keyboard. Not the same one as 12" MacBook. Verdict is still out how much is the improvement.
- PolCPP 10y agoThe onsite reviewer from the verge says its pretty much the same. Maybe a lil more travel but they feel the same. So i guess that version 2 thing is just pure marketing to avoid people raging
- jabzd 10y agoIn one keynote I went from being excited about what was coming to feeling held hostage, yet ignored, in the Apple ecosystem due to iOS app development. 16gb of RAM is just too limiting for some workloads. I may need to outfit my team with powerful linux desktops and low end macbooks for app development and remote/emergency work.
- ixtli 10y agoSadly this seems to be the same old pile-on that happens after every apple product announcement: > #1. No Escape and function keys [...] The Escape and Function keys on the laptops have been abandoned in favor of a touch bar that changed depending on the application that is being used. They went out of their way to display the escape key and many other contextual keys with Terminal.app in the foreground† They did this despite it being possibly the least "sexy" demonstration of the hardware. This article seems to have been written after skimming some reporting on the keynote without researching the specifics. † http://live.arstechnica.com/hello-again-apples-october-2016-mac-event/images/Screen%20Shot%202016-10-27%20at%201.49.43%20PM.png http://live.arstechnica.com/hello-again-apples-october-2016-...
- easytiger 10y agoyea because a soft key in a different location is the same as a tactile key where it has always been.
- ixtli 10y agoIt's programmable. I'm sure iTerm2 will allow you to make the whole damn thing an escape key if you want. Also sure, its not a physical button, but it's still pretty dishonest to go around saying they removed the key and thus it is no longer a "developer computer." This pretty clearly implies that the functionality is lost which is easily proven false. I'm not even trying to _defend_ Apple here. I don't even really like laptops, though I might have to buy one. I just hate these surface-y pile-ons that happen after every hardware announcement that seem an attempt to mask an aesthetic argument of "i don't like apple's products" as technical one.
- ObjectiveSub 10y agoYou immediately lost any credibility when you complained that the 2.4 GHz processor is the "same" as the one back in 2010. Clock rate has nothing to do with performance these days. Skylake is 25-35% faster across the board (and multiples faster for number crunching) than whatever Nehalem or Core2 was in the Macbooks in 2010.
- fisherjeff 10y agoActually, according to a few cobbled together Anandtech pieces, I think the IPC improvement may be closer to the 80-90% range. http://www.anandtech.com/show/7003/the-haswell-review-intel-core-i74770k-i54560k-tested/6 http://www.anandtech.com/show/7003/the-haswell-review-intel-... http://www.anandtech.com/show/9483/intel-skylake-review-6700k-6600k-ddr4-ddr3-ipc-6th-generation/9 http://www.anandtech.com/show/9483/intel-skylake-review-6700...
- tibbon 10y agoI get though that it doesn't feel like Moore's Law type growth for system speed though, which is perhaps what people are hoping for. I have a hard time imagining that the 2016 model feels 16x as fast as the 2010 model. I've got a 2010 MBP with an SSD, and it feels pretty much the same as my 2013 with an SDD, and expect this 2016 one to feel roughly about the same for most tasks (35% isn't a difference I'll notice for most tasks)
- andromeduck 10y agoMoore's law died a decade ago.
- jansenv 10y ago25% faster is still a joke. I want 100%!
- Caprinicus 10y agoIt's probably closer to 90% as another person notes, with far greater power efficiency. If that's not enough, feel free to complain to intel or alternatively, the laws of physics If you expected shit to shrink linearly over time, our transistors would be occupying negative space right now. If you expected clocks to increase linearly, we'd need liquid nitrogen and shit would be full on behaving like waves. That is the reality until we leave silicon land.
- whalesalad 10y agoThe new TouchBar is fully defeatable and can behave exactly like an old school fn key row. This post is totally devoid of substance and should actually be flagged.
- ixtli 10y agoThis sort of surface-y anger makes the rounds every time apple does _anything_ to their hardware.
- whywhywhywhy 10y agoWhat were people upset about with the last retina macbook pro refresh?
- ixtli 10y agoI can't source this at all but I remember getting into an argument (maybe on reddit?) about how the lack of changes after almost two years between refreshes meant the product line was "dead" or that apple could no longer innovate. Edit: It just seems to me that if they do nothing it means that steve job's death is also the death of apple, but if they do something big its an indication that they've forsaken their core user base.
- whywhywhywhy 10y agoWhat were people upset about with the last retina macbook pro refresh?
- Etheryte 10y agoNo tactile feedback means no go for many people for obvious reasons.
- drewg123 10y agoMy biggest complaint is that they increased the size of the touchpad. I HATE touchpads, as the cursor tends to shoot off into space when I accidentally touch it with the heel of my hand when typing. The last thing I want is a larger touchpad. If they're going to steal innovations from Thinkpads, I really wish they'd have taken the eraser nub instead. Back when I had a Thinkpad (running linux) as my work laptop, I would just disable the touchpad in the BIOS and use the eraser nub. The eraser nub is the thing I miss most from the thinkpad.
- cbr 10y agoI HATE touchpads, as the cursor tends to shoot off into space when I accidentally touch it with the heel of my hand when typing. Have you used a macbook touchpad? I hated this about touchpads, got a macbook from work in ~2010, and have never had this happen to me in 6+ years of using mine.
- xigency 10y ago> I HATE touchpads, as the cursor tends to shoot off into space when I accidentally touch it with the heel of my hand when typing. Apple touchpads don't have this "feature".
- fatbird 10y agoVery few vi power users actually use the ESC key, I think: the first tip given to everyone trying to transition to vi is to remap jj to ESC so you can do so without leaving the home row. The RAM bugs me; replacing the F row with the touchstrip doesn't.
- davej 10y agoMy understanding is that the escape key is there by default but the active application can choose to override it. I don't need the escape while I'm using Spotify. I quite like the new Macbooks. Would have been nice to have a 32GB RAM option but I can survive with 16GB to be honest.
- blinkingled 10y agoI'm sure the Touch Bar can be integrated with MacVim or VS Code etc to show keys that just look like regular Fn keys - that's not the problem developers would be irked of - it's just another thing to hack. Really problematic however is that the 15" starts at $2399, is still capped at 16GB soldered RAM, the port situation isn't convenient (esp if you've an iPhone), the obsession with thinness continues at the expense of battery life and if you had to ding the Touch Bar it feels gimmicky. There are much better games in PC town - don't even need to run Linux if you're not into it - Windows 10 is pretty good and with Ubuntu/bash built in, install a X server you're good to go.
- SliderUp 10y agoPeople (especially long time Apple users) really underestimate how nice Windows + Cygwin (or bash, etc) can be, on really powerful laptops, at much nicer price points.
- Isamu 10y agoI believe the short video that introduced the new MBP showed the ESC key in the system bar in the first few seconds, they practically zoomed in on that ESC key. And it showed up in other configurations, just not all of them. I would think if you are in a shell or similar context, the ESC will be there in the expected place. Why don't you wait and try it out at the Apple store? No, let's fly to the internet to dash off a disposable opinion.
- happywolf 10y agoI am a developer and I have a mechanical keyboard hooked up to the rig, so I seldom use the mac keyboard anyway. My main complaint would be the hardware doesn't seem to get better. The USB-C ports I do see them coming, but given my 2014 MBP is still running strong, I will hold on to upgrade for a little longer. Nah, I am completely out from Linux around 5 years ago. Had spent my fair share of time and effort (~10years) using Linux, solving some corner cases that hit me along the way. To me, using Linux is just like driving on a highway with sink holes sprinkled along, the ride will be gay and smooth _until_ you hit those holes. Either you fix those yourself (It is open-source remember!?) or hope for some kind souls to help out. Thanks but thanks...
- ilolu 10y agoLots of people point out about touch bar being context sensitive. Why cant each app have context sensitive widget bar. Or why not just have another context sensitive menu bar which each apps can customize. Are we not getting the same user experience but with a mouse/trackpad instead of a touch bar ?
- mgberlin 10y agoAt first I was ornery about the touch bar thing. Then I remembered I'm using a Kinesis Advantage that has soft function keys, which I've touched about 3 times in the past year.
- WallyAmerica 10y agoThe touch bar is customizable. Surely they will allow users to add an esc key on their touch screen, right?
- ebbv 10y agoThis article is terrible. I am not pleased with the new MBP models but the reasoning in this article is beyond stupid. 1. No Esc and Function keys? They are available and I'd wager you can change the settings on the touch bar to make them available. They demo'd the customizability of the bar. I'm not keen on the bar but it's not because it takes away options, it's because it's unnecessary complexity and will encourage bad application design. 2. No RAM improvements? The RAM is faster. The included RAM has increased. This is just factually wrong. 3. Judging CPUs on clock speed? What is this 1995? Clock speeds have been constant for a decade. The performance still increase and the power consumption improves as well. Come on. I'm bent out of shape about the new MacBooks because they've gotten rid of one of my top 3 reasons for choosing MBPs for the last 10 years; MagSafe. MagSafe has saved my laptops dozens of times, literally. Removing it means that if I got one of these new machines I would never be able to use it plugged in on my couch. I'd be putting it at too much risk. It means any time you have it plugged in you have to be super conscious of where your power cord is and who's walking by it. They got rid of it I assume just to save a few mm's of thickness? On top of that the TouchBar is a gimmicky feature I'd never ask for and have no use for. So much of my work is web based and cannot (as far as I know) take advantage of it. It adds tons of unnecessary complexity. Plus I'm sure it doesn't do any favors for battery life. My rMBP is four years old and for the first time in a decade I'm finding myself not excited to upgrade. The addition of TouchID is nice. The loss of MagSafe and addition of the TouchBar are terrible decisions by Apple and make me question if they know what they're doing.
- velocitypsycho 10y agoWhile I understand people's frustrations. Couldn't the escape key be on the toolbar when in Vim?
- Sk1pp 10y agoI don't understand, this insane hype over the removing the esc key. I use vim on a daily basis, and there are several ways in vim, or in the system to remap the keys. But above all that I'm pretty sure they said yesterday in the presentation that the esc key would just be on the touch bar when the terminal is open. And if that's the case its a simple signal to the OS.
- malensek 10y agoJust curious: how many folks can accurately touch-type the Fn-keys? Personally they're too far away from the home row for me to hit accurately, but maybe that's because I use too many different keyboards and they're all slightly different with spacing. The esc key is easy with it being located in the corner, though. So in my case, I would already look down to hit an F-key, and I imagine functionality such as "compile" would now be represented by a touch button. So no problem there. And point #2 is just ridiculous -- today's MacBook CPUs and Memory are faster and consume less power than they did 6 years ago.
- Bartweiss 10y agoHonestly, I've always felt that Fn keys were an outdated and faulty design. They're too far away to reach gracefully, usually offset from the standard zig-zag of other keys, and awkwardly multi-roled with screen/sound options on most keyboards. If I'm in an IDE that uses a function key for something like 'compile', I usually rebind it for my own sanity. I have mixed feelings about this update (contextual buttons are often terrible, and I don't mind escape), but losing Fn won't really matter.
- criddell 10y agoI work on a Windows machine, but I rely very heavily on function keys and have don't have to look at them. F1 for help F2 for jump to bookmark F3 for search F4 for next error F5 for debug - go (I live in Visual Studio) etc... For the longest time, I stuck with a keyboard that had the function keys on the left and I still think that's a superior layout for my purposes.
- optionalparens 10y agoTouch typing or not, I think you are missing an important point here with regard to programming - tactile feedback. Doubly so with anyone that uses mechanical keyboards like me. For example, you may not know where the "f8" key is on your keyboard, but once you look down and locate it, you won't have trouble repeatedly pressing it, accurately, with velocity. A good example of where and why this pattern happens is debugging. A lot of IDEs and editors are setup by default to use f-keys for debug or other ancillary functions like build, specific menus, etc. I believe IntelliJ and Visual Studio in at least a few default setups and versions did this. More specifically, I can't imagine pressing a touch button possibly dozens of times, sometimes rapidly to advance through a bunch of break points, set new break points, eval things, etc. It is true you could just map these to other keys, but that becomes an issue with anything that is using default key maps for functions as I describe. Additionally, touch buttons promote people to start using more and more keyboard chords as they start shuffling around things in their keymaps, which a lot of people dislike. I'm an Emacs and IntelliJ user primarily, so the former and my arthritis in my hands are well acquainted with regard to keyboard chords and complex mapping sequences. I have not used this keyboard obviously, but it seems to me from my experiences using similar tech that this is only good for much lesser used macro-like or launch actions. Useful still, yes, but I don't think it is a 1:1 replacement for function keys. I said it in another article and I'll say it here, I don't think this keyboard setup is aimed at programmers, but for most consumers it is likely just fine as much as I hate it. As for value added, that's another discussion. I do know that if I ever buy or am forced to use one of these, it will always be with my own keyboard. I don't mind the chiclets as much as some people, but at home or the office I use external monitors and mechanical keyboards whenever I can.
- elcct 10y agoUbuntu for Windows works really well (on insider preview) and since then I have no desire to even look at mac...
- jpalomaki 10y agoI wouldn't really blame Apple for not coming up with faster CPU. Things have changed and the times when you got the double speed every few years are over. And I don't know if it is actually a bad thing. This means your hardware does not get old so fast and there's less reasons to update every two years. The article also claims that you can get comparable hardware from any other vendor for for $1.5k. I wish this was true. Unfortunately it is not at all easy to find good alternatives for Macbook Pro. Even if you don't put limit on the budget. Especially when you limit the search for quad core CPUs, there's not that much choice (HP ZBook, Dell XPS, Lenovo T460P or P50). And then you are still stuck with Windows or can you get one of those with Linux pre-installed and supported?
- mamon 10y agoFn keys are heavily used in Intellij and Eclipse. Basically, that OLED strip is a "no go" for me. I'm trying to decide between buying Dell XPS 13 right away or waiting for XPS 15 refresh. Any other suggestions are welcomed.
- pjmlp 10y agoI really dislike the tone of this kind of blog posts, as if one is only allowed to be called developer when using UNIX, vi and Emacs. I don't want a portable PDP-11, rather a Xerox PARC workstation, a BeOS, Amiga, Atari, Acorn, Oberon System 3...
- SocratesV 10y agoI remap my CTRL to CAPS LOCK because it's more convenient. Have come across a lot of Vim power users that do the same with ESC. Or buy the model without the Touch Bar. Can we stop with the drama now? It's becoming pathetic. Apologies for the bluntness. P.S.: more RAM and CPU? Get a desktop or buy another laptop. Since when was Apple the fastest, more bang for your money? This was clearly not a specs bump iteration.
- overcast 10y agoThere was really nothing preventing Apple from offering 32GB and even 64GB chips. 16GB MAX is pathetic for $3000. What's with the old chipset/cpu? DDR3?
- SocratesV 10y agoThose that do need more RAM are probably are already using desktop options. I understand it would be nice to have more RAM by default or optional, I would also like it since I tend to keep my laptops for a long time (current one is a 2008 13'' Macbook Unibody), but there's always a reason for not doing it, either it be technical, economical or commercial. It's not a decision you take on a whim. They introduced a major piece of hardware to the configuration and reduced size and weight. Making other changes would be increasing the risk of something going wrong. That's my take at least. You can probably expect the specs bump within the next year. :) If you are going for price, criticising Apple's pricing is by now a tradition. I thought we had established that Apple is not where you get more bang for your buck. You buy it for the OS and construction quality (and now the ecosystem of services).
- overcast 10y agoActually, you used to get pretty solid performance for the price/form factor from Apple. For instance when I purchase my Mac Pro desktop in 2008. It was a RIDICULOUSLY good deal for what you got. The Xeon processors alone were $1500 each on NewEgg the day I purchased it. They've just progressively gone less and less value, as the years have gone by.
- Tloewald 10y agoI don't use vim and consider myself highly biased towards guis despite being a long time programmer. I am also an Apple user since the Apple II, and owned the original inside Mac and Human Interface Guidelines books. Even for me, losing the escape key is a bit scary. It may be mitigated by customization of the bar. Function keys have always been dumb and replacing them with dynamic controls is awesome.
- goerz 10y agoAs someone doing highly CPU intensive computations, I would have appreciated more than 2 cores (or 4, with hyperthreading, I assume) in the 13' MBP. Granted, most of the time I can use my 80 core remote compute node, but it would still be nice to have a bit more parallel CPU power for local development
- geodel 10y agoStrange arguments in threads about new MBP. It is well known much more powerful laptop computers are available to developers for many many years. It is the nice combination of weight/size/screen/touchpad and Unix like OS all in one package that made people look beyond relative shortcomings. Individually none of the feature may be best but all above average together in one machine is not so common. Advanced users might very well buy an objectively better computer than Apple's if they so wish. People are reacting as if Apple mandated touch bar in all computers in market.
- michaelkaufman 10y agoThe reason I'm not impressed with the new Macbook Pro is I, like a huge percentage of developers I know, use the computer as a 3rd monitor and use a different keyboard than the built in one. I'm not going to reach 3 ft away to hit a Spotify shortcut on the TouchBar ever when I can use my finger on my magic trackpad to do it in a fraction of the time. WTF. And will the function keys on my keyboard of choice even work now?
- nojvek 10y agoI really hope my current air doesn't breakdown. It's proper USB ports, fn keys and built in hdmi port. I use fn and esc every single day. Fn6-8 are debugging continue, break etc shortcuts. I see absolutely zero value in buying the new iPhone or Mac line. Why apple why? Precisely this reason why I am selling all my stock in Apple.
- gshakir 10y agoI am sticking with MBP for the combination of UNIX, MS Office and support for software like Turbotax etc. Ubuntu is not an option for me yet, since LibreOffice has lot of kinks. My only gripe is that processor and memory did not get an upgrade. Touch bar is a nice touch, we have to wait and see how it plays out. Oh, I like Apple commitment privacy compared to MS.
- kagaw 10y agoR.I.P F5! :-)
- kaolinite 10y agoI'm on mobile so not sure if anyone else has pointed this out but Apple mentioned in the keynote that the escape key is still present when using the terminal. There is also a way to bring up the full row of function keys. Personally I think this is the great advantage of the touch bar. The only app that I personally use the Esc key in has it available, but all other apps use the space for more appropriate shortcuts. Plus it can be customised too (finally I can add a screenshot button!), although not per app yet, as far as I can tell.
- mwill 10y agoI may be asking too much here, but I hope someone comes along with a laptop with amazing build quality, amazing linux support, and hackintosh support (XCode). I've been holding off replacing my old MBP because none of the new models have wowed me. I got a laptop sized tumor on my budget just waiting to be removed by some company with a viable product.
- theseoafs 10y agoNo laptop will ever come along with "Hackintosh support" because that would be illegal.
- goerz 10y agoFor people who really need to touch-type function keys, I would recommend remapping ALT+1 -> F1, ALT+2 -> F2, etc.
- whywhywhywhy 10y agoI'd actually say devs (web/mobile) are one of the only professionals served by this laptop. They don't need high powered GPUs. This however is a massive kick in the face to anyone working in design, art, 3D, video editing or effects. The only other professional this seems to target is the professional blogger.
- pi-rat 10y agoMaybe not a good laptop for vim users, but it's the perfect Emacs laptop. http://imgur.com/a/G6WOk http://imgur.com/a/G6WOk
- nashashmi 10y agoA possible substitute for vim keyboards is that touch bar will display vim power commands. losing escape may not be such a big deal for them. but other users ...
- guelo 10y agoEverybody is talking about the ESC key but I think the function keys are even worse. My editor has tons of fn key bindings and I touch type them without looking down many times a day. You can imagine being able to touch type a virtual ESC key since it would hopefully be at the far edge of the strip, but for fn you'll have to look down every time. Let's face it, the bean counters at Apple only care about the iPhone. They've put their b teams to work on the Macs. And the engineers at Apple that actually have to use the laptops obviously have no say.
- ohstopitu 10y agoI was very very against the new Macbook Pro yesterday and I made up my mind to get the new Razer Blade Stealth (for daily computing/dev) and a mac mini (for iOS dev). But after watching a few first hands-on with it, I intend to give it a try when I can, at the store to see if it's really as bad I've made it out in my head. If I don't mind it too much, I'll probably get the new Macbook pro 15" - i7 quad core/16 GB Ram/256 GB SSD (~ $3000 CAD + tax). A good night's sleep can give you a new perspective on things. BTW those who want to utilize Apple's "student discount"...it's around $50 off :/
- asimpletune 10y ago"The MacBook Pro had options with 2.4 gigahertz dual-core processors back in 2010. Anything new in 2016?" This was really disappointing to read. Aside from the total lack of imagination and overall butt hurt tone, the author demonstrated a lack of basic understanding of performance.
- joshmn 10y agoSo how long before we see a "function row extension" that plugs in via usb?
- the_watcher 10y agoNo escape and function keys? Seriously? I've been using Karabiner (now Karabiner-Elements, which is rapidly becoming fully featured) to remap those keys for years anyway, since they're already located in a place that makes me hate having to use them. The most useful key remapping, by the way, is Caps Lock to Escape.
- WhitneyLand 10y agodon't the majority of developers work with the lid closed using an Extertal monitor and keyboard? i only use the internal keyboard when traveling.
- k_bx 10y agoWhy doesn't anyone mention that Apple still sells the 13" version without that touchbar?
- xyproto 10y agoTrue ViM users have already mapped Esc to the Caps Lock key.
- Yabood 10y agoThe real concern for me is the trackpad. It's size makes it impossible not to rest both palms on it when using they keyboard.
- devnull255 10y agoWell, according to info about the new MacBook, news of the the function keys' death has been greatly exaggerated. "Access the function keys by holding down the FN key on the keyboard." -- http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/ http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/ One might also optimistically hope that the touchbar itself has some practical level of re-programmability.
- otterley 10y agoI think there are some technological limitations behind the 16GB maximum RAM configuration. The highest-density DDR3 DRAM packages I could find that run at the rated speed are 8 gigabits, which means 16 chips are required on the board. There probably just isn't enough room there for 16 more chips. 16-gigabit packages are slowly arriving on the market, but I imagine it'll be a couple more years before they're available at the right speed and sufficient quality/quantity to include in a future MBP model.
- otterley 10y agoCorrection: It's a CPU limitation when used with LPDDR3 modules. See http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/core/7th-gen-core-family-mobile-u-y-processor-lines-datasheet-vol-1.html http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/core/7th-g... (See section 2.1.1.3, "LPDDR3 supported memory devices")
- elcct 10y agoThey could use ddr4, cpu supports it
- pat2man 10y agoAs an iOS developer I've been waiting for a single feature: the ability to drive a 5k monitor. Bonus for a single cable that I can plug in vs power + DisplayPort. Apple finally delivered. The fact that any manufacturer can develop such a monitor now is just a bonus.
- PerfectElement 10y agoI'm thinking about getting a Surface Book for my next laptop, since I've been spending a lot of time on Parallels using Visual Studio. My only concern is the tracking pad. Is it possible to replicate the 3 and 4 finger gestures using the Surface Book trackpad? I don't think I can live without swiping to move between desktops.
- mynameishere 10y agoI can't believe people are debating whether or not you need function and escape keys. It's just...are Apple people living in another universe? The escape key is used by nearly every application. Are you not aware of this? The function keys are used by nearly every non-game application. Cripe. Did you people buy your premium CPU-holding boxes just to use vim?
- frou_dh 10y ago> The function keys are used by nearly every non-game application Used OS X much, have you? The primacy of the Command ⌘ key (which is distinct from Ctrl) has, in practice, given keyboard-shortcutting on Mac a different structure to what's traditional elsewhere.
- lasermike026 10y agoIsn't the apple market getting soft? The app gold rush is over and it never was a very good deal to begin with. Apple wants a cut of your development profits, they can yank your app or worse, yank your developer account arbitrarily. Swift, while not finished yet, commodifies the the apple dev market further. I don't think devs have a choice, they have to move on to other markets. The esc and F key is a red herring. I do most of my coding on a Das Keyboard.
- Orangeair 10y agoI'm surprised that so many people use them even today. Unless you're fully ingrained into the Mac ecosystem, there are just too many idiosyncrasies that make moving between platforms in possible, like the use of the 'command' key which no other platform in the world uses, or the weird placement of the control key which completely negates years of muscle memory (a trend which some Windows laptops are unfortunately beginning to follow, even in business-class machines; thankfully mine at least lets me rebind it in the BIOS). Honest question for people who develop on Macs: Do you exclusively develop on them, or have you just learned to put up with differences between it and Linux/Windows?
- lewiscollard 10y agoI use a MBP[1] at my day job and Linux on my personal machines.[2] I am a developer at a digital design agency so my priorities may not line up with those of other developers, but MBPs rock for what I do because: 1) Photoshop (the designers use Photoshop, so this largely rules out using Linux boxes) 2) Extremely colour-accurate display out of the box (PC displays have always been a bit of a crapshoot on this count in my experience) 3) Being Unix 3a) A real command line (admittedly I haven't tried the Ubuntu-on-Windows thing) 4) I'm not paying for it! Speaking only for me, switching between using two platforms has really not a problem for me - I do it every day. When I first went into this job I was worried that a Mac was going to be a very difficult transition to make, but it turned out to be straightforward - just needed a little muscle-memory retraining :) [1] Never really sure if this should be "an" or "a"... [2] Written from my 2006 Thinkpad of Death :) (edited: linebreaks)
- abakker 10y agoDoes nobody use external keyboards?
- mrsheen 10y agoLinux/Mac/Vim/Emacs user here. Every ui/hardware update yields wave of discontent. People will always complain if they have to change their habits. Alexey don't tell me that you cannot live without these keys :) Re. unchanged performance - 95% of us don't need more.
- andrethegiant 10y agoI don't understand the lack of escape/function keys argument. Isn't the touch bar powered by software? Can't you put whatever keys you want there? It's sounding to me like the argument from people who were opposed to a touchscreen mobile keyboard.
- rbanffy 10y agoI get it may not be the laptop for the developer who wrote the article, but I see no big issue with the new Macbook Pro. I want a well-built laptop with a decent Unix-like OS, long battery life and a good screen and keyboard for when I'm not on my desk. When I'm on my desk, which is most of the time, I have a big screen and a keyboard attached. If I really cared about portability, I probably could get by with a MacBook. TB3 promises a single cable to connect the screen, keyboard and power. I like that (I currently connect 2). Will I need to get a new monitor? Yes. It happens every couple years anyway. I once had a wonderful Intergraph CRT that could go all the way up to 2048x1536 and I miss it, but things change and we eventually move on.
- davidcollantes 10y agoIt is not only developers, this change also kills the MBP for gamers. My child has all the function keys mapped to spells in World of Warcraft (including ESC).
- nartsbtaa 10y agoThere's room for debate about the new Macbook Pro, but this post is bad. #1 - The touch bar is dynamic and contextual. It's likely that you can enable the traditional ESC/Fx row when you're using Terminal, your editor, etc. It's extremely unlikely that the ESC key is gone forever, given that existing software relies on it. #2 - RAM is a valid point, but this part is wrong/dishonest: "The MacBook Pro had options with 2.4 gigahertz dual-core processors back in 2010. Anything new in 2016? Not really, well... nope." The 13" MBP now has a 2.9 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5, upgradable to 3.3 GHz. The 15" MBP now has a 2.6 GHz quad-core Intel Core i7. #3 - So there are four negative snarky people on Twitter. Not a surprise. And they're just repeating issues #1 and #2. This is a garbage post. A much better critical article is linked here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12817332 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12817332
- suprgeek 10y agoWhat they could have done (one or more): 1) Bezel-less display 2) Full Touch screen 3) Detachable Screen - IPad Pro + 4) Stylus input (from Apple Pencil) 5) 15-20 hr battery life 6) NVidia Graphics 7) 64 Gb Ram option 8) Kept the HDMI & SDXC port What they did do: 1) Gimmicky Touch bar - Useless when you close the MBP & Dock; Hard to do for touch typists 2) Hiked the prices by crazy margins 3) Pegged the RAM at 16 Gb Max 4) Battery is not much better 5) All in on USB-C - Get ready for Dongle-o-rama Feels like a pure greedy money grab with nothing to justify it. Steve must be spinning in his grave.
- geophile 10y agoPlease -- no touchscreen, not on a laptop. It seems very uncomfortable; it smudges the screen, which I cannot stand; and if there is a touchscreen then apps will start exploiting it, making it more and more difficult to not actually touch the screen.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- gnashville 10y ago> What they did do: Not really surprised by any of it except number 3.
- cflynnus 10y agoI feel like I can boil this post down to: 1. There's no escape key! 2. It has roughly the same specs as existing MBPs ergo now totally useless for developers Anyone sw developer that cares about the escape key remapped it to the caps lock key years ago
- jlebar 10y agoGuys. You can configure the touch bar thing. Let's give it a try before raging over it? Otherwise this and the other recent HN threads may be this year's version of the famous Slashdot "Apple introduces the iPod" thread.
- tibbon 10y agoAside from cost, is there any reasonable technical reason to not have 32/64GB options available? My desktop in 2000 had 2GB of ram, and I'm shocked that 16 years later my laptop maxes at 16GB. I remember in 2009 building a server with 32GB and the memory was only a few hundred for decent ECC RAM.
- antaviana 10y agoIf you already have a Mac, the upside of this release of limited machines (up to 16GB) is that it will intrinsically force Mac developers to refrend from designing BigMemory applications. So if I currently have a 16GB Mac, it is likely that its useful life will be longer than if 32GB or 64GB Macs suddenly become mainstream and you find that your 16GB Mac cannot run anymore the latest and greatest apps so you are forced to buy a new Mac. This also sort of happens with the Windows ecosystem, where the RAM-based licensing of Windows 10 for OEMs naturally drives manufacturers to offer machines with less RAM so its pricing is more attractive.
- geophile 10y agoIt's not just the function and escape keys. - The rollout of USBC has been a mess. Apparently you now need to purchase a separate cable to connect your iphone to the new MBP. - I haven't tried the new keyboard, but from what I've read, it is less like the old MBP keyboard, which was quite good, and more like the awful MacBook keyboard. - The generally horrible design of their major desktop apps. - The disaster that is Apple's cloud strategy. Too many ids, too difficult to know what is physically where and how to get it where you want. I haven't yet played with the new MBP, but I am seriously wondering whether my current MBP is my last one.
- heisenbit 10y agoWho is buying these new MacBook Pro's? Serious where the heck do the guys in Apples Mac division see the market? - Developers? Not excited. Disk speed better that is relevant. CPU less so. But ESC and RAM not acceptable if anyone is looking into a machine to last 3 years. - Gamers? PCs offer a better price / performance relationship. - Personal users? Win10 vs. OSX has advanced a lot compared to Win XP vs OSX. Secure enclave to make Apple Pay purchases? With what money after buying the laptop? - Managers? At this price point? Maybe the show-off kind in the C suite. - Employees? It would make sense as it is cheaper to support but at this price penetration into the enterprise - which is all the Apple/IBM relationship is about has no chance. One of the challenges running businesses that are in different markets where one has a different market position is dealing with the very different margins. Laptops everywhere else except in Apple land are low margin. IOS is high margin but it is in an exceptional position. Pretending that Macs are in the same is foolish. Missteps can happen. I'm sure it will show in sales. Let's just hope they are able to adjust course quickly enough.
- matchagaucho 10y agoSo many DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) features are mapped to function keys. Is Apple abandoning their digital recording arts audience too?
- lr 10y agoI thought the current application determined what is displayed in that area? How do we know the Terminal won't cause the escape and FN keys to appear? Same for TextMate, Atom, etc.? Yes, Apple owns the default Terminal app so there is no controlling what happens with it (or is there, i.e., can you, via preferences define what you want to show up regardless of what the app chooses...). But the makers of TextMate, Atom, and IDEs can decide to make the function keys show up, no?
- kelsus 10y agoI had to scroll pretty far down the page to get to comments that weren't about the escape and function keys and vim. It's the other stuff that really matters. In 2007 and 08 when Jobs was alive there was absolutely no question that MBPs were the absolute best laptops in the world. There were maybe a few huge gamer laptops with faster specs, but nothing had excellent specs in such a small and well build package. This is no longer the case. If I were NVidia I'd be making a very big deal that not even the initial development of that cool new depth of field stuff on iPhone 7 could be done on any Apple computer. Another major point is that this thread says apple is leaving developers behind. Sure it might only be leaving VR, gaming, and AI developers behind, but wait, where is the industry going? More fuel for the fire. Apple proudly claims they have the biggest gaming platform in the world with iPhone. They just lucked into it. They never purposefully set out to make a gaming platform. But now that they have it they should own it. Imagine how thrilled the world would have been if Cook had stood on stage and said something like "and now for the first time ever because of this amazing new GPU, you can play your favorite games on your Macbook Pro on ultra at 60 frames per second." It would have blown the doors off Apple stock. Macbook Pro is about PRO users not about executives that need 13 hours of battery life to give Keynote presentations. People would have been completely happy with even a little increase in width and weight and decrease in battery life for the sake of a major performance upgrade in memory and GPU.
- kelsus 10y agoI had to scroll pretty far down the page to get to comments that weren't about the escape and function keys and vim. It's the other stuff that really matters. In 2007 and 08 when Jobs was alive there was absolutely no question that MBPs were the absolute best laptops in the world. There were maybe a few huge gamer laptops with faster specs, but nothing had excellent specs in such a small and well build package. This is no longer the case. If I were NVidia I'd be making a very big deal that not even the initial development of that cool new depth of field stuff on iPhone 7 could be done on any Apple computer. Another major point is that this thread says apple is leaving developers behind. Sure it might only be leaving VR, gaming, and AI developers behind, but wait, where is the industry going? More fuel for the fire. Apple proudly claims they have the biggest gaming platform in the world with iPhone. They just lucked into it. They never purposefully set out to make a gaming platform. But now that they have it they should own it. Imagine how thrilled the world would have been if Cook had stood on stage and said something like "and now for the first time ever because of this amazing new GPU, you can play your favorite games on your Macbook Pro on ultra at 60 frames per second." It would have blown the doors off Apple stock. Macbook Pro is about PRO users not about executives that need 13 hours of battery life to give Keynote presentations. People would have been completely happy with even a little increase in width and weight and decrease in battery life for the sake of a major performance upgrade in memory and GPU.
- davesque 10y agoIsn't that image with the red 'ESC' and 'F1' text not an official Apple image but an image that was made by speculating Apple fans during the lead up to the official product launch? It seems dishonest and manipulative to use that image to make the point that Apple has completely eliminated the escape key. Official Apple images might have featured the touch escape key in that position on the touch bar, weakening the author's argument. Even though I'm also not a fan of the latest Macbooks, it's dumb to stretch the truth to make your point.
- alexeysemeney 10y agofolks, thanks for all your comments, didn't expect that. The main issue with the keys appears when you have a full-size keyboard and a laptop with a different set of major keys. And there is one more thing — tactile feedback.
- hellofunk 10y agoIn your experience getting actual work done with the new touch bar, what was your personal feedback on how it felt not to have the tactile feedback?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- marky421 10y agoWhy no mention of the lack of MagSafe? I can't count the number of times that brilliant little connector saved my laptop from certain death. So sad to see it's gone.
- radus 10y agoIf you don't mind an additional dongle, maybe the following can help: https://github.com/alevchuk/vim-clutch https://github.com/alevchuk/vim-clutch
- webXL 10y agoA physical ESC isn't that important because multiple presses are idempotent usually; there's only one dialog in the foreground of the active application (at least there should be) or you're only in one insert mode. I also don't see this being a big deal for key-combos. As long as it's available in apps that make use of it or Apple let's you enable it, and there's a way for you to learn where it is by touch, this shouldn't be that big of a deal.
- chrismatheson 10y agoYour developers. Stop moaning about lack of this or that key and just remap the existing keys.
- askopress 10y agoI suppose a front-end developer isn't considered a developer? Linux doesn't work for me as we need Photoshop and Sketch and well, Linux kind of looks ugly as well (with the notable exception of Elementary OS, which tries to be the OS X/macOS of Linux). It's also mentioned that the ESC key will still be there, and you can map your own keys to the Touch Bar as well, it just won't be a physical key anymore. This generalization that just because you can't use Vim anymore (which you can) the entire MacBook brand is gone to shit (which it hasn't) or worse, that Apple is stupid (it's not).
- mamcx 10y agoDo you remember "Human Interface"? Moving to touch-screen for thing that need to be tactile is a betrayal of the ergonomics of a laptop. Is as demand the use of a mouse in a iPad. Is not what the machine is. I think the touch pad is a nice gimmick, and maybe, could be get some useful applications. But the removal of the Esc + F-Keys break a lot of the workflows. This is also the trend of make keyboards worse and worse with each iteration. Is ironic that people demand good touch pad and complain when is bad, but think is ok when the keyboards get worse.
- satysin 10y agoThe Esc key is annoying but not a big deal for me. What I am worried about is the new butterfly switches. I have used a MacBook with butterfly switches quite a bit and it is not a nice writing experience. It feels like I am using a Blackberry or old Nokia phone. With Bash on Ubuntu on Windows I think my next machine will be a Dell XPS 15 or ThinkPad T560. Probably the Dell as it comes with a quad-core for like £50 more. Plus a nicer screen (according to reviews).
- nfriedly 10y agoI'm a developer with a 2-year-old macbook pro right now, and while I'm not going to run out and buy a brand new one right now, I wouldn't have a problem with the new ones if it were time to upgrade today. I'd have to replace my thunderbolt 2 dock with a thunderbolt 3 one (or maybe just a dongle?), and I'd probably want at least one USB-A dongle, but meh... it doesn't seem like a big deal to me. I rarely use the function keys, and aside from exiting full-screen youtube videos, I don't use escape all that often either. I can imagine I'd use the new touch bar at least as much as I use that current row of buttons. I do think it's funny that Macbooks are now standardized on USB-C + headphones, while iPhones aren't.
- TheHippo 10y agoI lost it at: > There are ~ 19 million developers in the world. And Apple has managed to sell ~19 million Macs over the past 4 quarters. What a coincidence!
- mtw 10y agoI'm not sure what are the alternatives though. You still need a mac as a developer for mobile app development or even checking out rendering.
- christiansmith 10y agoLack of physical escape key with vi is not a problem for me. An old trick is to remap caps lock (never used) to Ctrl (constantly used), which is easier to reach from "asdfhjkl" hand positioning. Then Ctrl-C is mapped to escape, and I never have to reach up to the fn row from the home row. Makes working with vi a bit more seamless and this lack of fn row is a moot point. So maybe we have to change few key bindings for ancient but still useful software. Really not a deal killer.
- uber1geek 10y agoConnecting an iPhone 7 to the new macbook pro requires a $19 Adapter. This is beyond a joke now Apple!
- cerrelio 10y agoNone of the article's points is relevant. 1. Function keys were a convenience. You can map ESC to other physical keys. 2. 16GB RAM and processor are fine, if you're still able to fit your processing in that configuration. Otherwise you're probably using a laptop as a terminal to a computing cluster (AWS/cloud/etc), which have more computing power and memory than an Apple warehouse. 3. Who cares what people on Twitter are saying. The MacBook Pro was never meant to be a developer's machine. Any developer with half a brain knows there are more configurable and cheaper laptops out there. MBP is mostly for conspicuous consumption.
- overgard 10y agoWell, at my last two jobs my work computer was a macbook pro, and my current job it's a macbook pro. So, three separate employers seem to disagree with you.
- mschuster91 10y agoWhy Apple doesn't offer swappable RAM any more, the disks in a weird format instead of SATA, glued batteries, ... is all about one thing: making more money. See, I have a Fall 2011 MBP. Its battery still sports 3-4h usage, and it's rare that I max out the 16GB RAM. I have virtually no reason to upgrade. Now, with one of the new(ish) MBPs: Want to upgrade the RAM because you thought "oh, 8GB will be sufficient"? Straight outta luck. Want to upgrade the disk because 512GB SSD isn't big enough? Straight outta luck (because it's likely to be expensive as hell compared to an ordinary mass market Samsung 850 SSD). Want to replace the battery in 4 years? Quite likely going to be impossible. Anything broken (scratched/smashed screen, broken touchpad, worn out keyboard)? Have fun spending $$$$ in the Apple Store because it's a PITA to replace anything. Except for the disk, if you want to upgrade anything you MUST shell out serious amounts of cash for a new mac. That you'll need to part with even more cash in order to use basic interfaces (Ethernet, SD cards, Firewire to just name a few) sucks even more - and dongles are far more likely to just break, e.g. if your laptop gets fallen from your desk by a playful cat...
- bfrog 10y agoApple users these days must be masochist to keep coming back for more year after year. It used to be a joke... http://www.theonion.com/video/apple-introduces-revolutionary-new-laptop-with-no--14299 http://www.theonion.com/video/apple-introduces-revolutionary...
- oldmanjay 10y agoPeople like to use rhetoric to pretend that their opinion is universal as a preventative measure for suppressing disagreement. Programmers, unfortunately, like to apply this to things that are transparently subjective, targeted at an intelligent audience that often takes umbrage to being told what to think. I feel like I should flag this article for being nothing more than rhetorical rabble-rousing[0], but frankly so many people have been arguing to let HN go to shit because that's the sort of comment community they want, so I'm more inclined to leave this particular cesspit bubbling. [0] Here's the sort of logic the article employs: > There are ~ 19 million developers in the world. And Apple has managed to sell ~19 million Macs over the past 4 quarters. What a coincidence!
- erikb 10y agoThe best way for smart people to kill a community is to go somewhere else. Because when the smart people are gone, there is nothing interesting left in the community to follow. Therefore that's an option I want to suggest to you. Let us stupid people destroy ourselves here. Thanks.
- oldmanjay 10y agoNo. I don't much care about your opinion of me, as is only appropriate.
- Imagenuity 10y agoApple needs a built-in, system level, per-app configurable Touch Bar settings tool. Apps may provide their own configurations, but they have to be customizable. Only by putting this in as part of the system settings, will a standardized way of apps making touchbars and users making customizations work across all apps.
- dpc_pw 10y agoSurprisingly for myself I'm going to write a comment defending Apple somewhat. First specs - are we real tech people, or ignorant crowd? RAM is not only the amount of it. Previous MacBooks had 1066MHz memories, current one 1866MHz/2133MHz. And CPU power is not only the frequency. I have upgraded my desktop from 5 year old i7 to new i7. Both have similar frequencies and number of cores, but new one supports faster buses (like memory) and is in fact noticeably faster! I am a big Vim/Neovim/Spacemacs user and I have CapsLock mapped to Esc. And you should do to, before you develop problems with your hands. Now, would I buy new MacBook Pro? Hell no. I didn't back then, and I won't now. I'll keep my Linux box. And that touch bar is silly. But all these crying is so silly, and I think mostly motivated by trying to attract audience on your blogs and get some publicity.
- visionscaper 10y agoAccording to Apple's presentation, the function keys are available when you press the Fn key!
- drinchev 10y agoWow, guys... We are all developers, but most of us work for companies. So next time your boss asks you : "What do you want as your primary machine?" I bet you will reply : "Latest MacBook Pro". That simply sums it up. There's no better alternative at this point. You can't reply "I want a Thinkpad and make it Hackintosh" or smth.
- JunkDNA 10y agoNot to go too far off topic, but I'm surprised at the number of vim users in this thread who still use the escape key and haven't mapped it to something that doesn't require you to move your finger to the most inconvenient spot of the entire keyboard. Sometime 10 years ago I took someone's advice and remapped jj to escape in my vimrc. By far one of the best changes I've ever made. the speed gain is significant (unless your name is JJ Abrams)
- noob--dev 10y agoMixed feelings about this. Everyone says: "if you dont like MBP there are dozens of options in these brands" etc. That leaves you basically: Linux or Windows. If you are a 100% developer, Linux is obviously the option to go. But if you happen to be a hybrid and use some kind of design graphic tools, such as anything from Adobe, then you are forced to stay with Windows. The new Surface Book looks awesome, but its running Windows 10! 16GB of ram means nothing under window. The whole system itself needs those 16GB and eventually it becomes a dinosaur that will expand itself and use the 1TB of space you put in there. Want it or not, so many people are still forced to stay with Apple for those reasons, and they know it. They can literally do whatever they want and these people will have to keep using MBP.
- mediter 10y agoThe author is just complaining, but has not done any amount of in-depth analysis of the feasibility of customizing the touch bar in the apps developers use!
- Friedduck 10y agoThe people who disagree with the post are ignoring the argument because it may not apply to their specific circumstance. It is a real setback to those of us who rely on those keys (features, really) but more worryingly a design direction that offers a net decrease in usability. All MacBooks already have a touch surface that currently performs the functions shown in the touch bar demo. While I can see the appeal of some scenarios where it accelerates what might otherwise require lengthy finger travel on the touchpad, that doesn't come anywhere close to offsetting the loss of the function keys. Virtually all of the MacBooks we buy we set up with Parallels or Fusion, and the F keys are absolutely necessary for Windows functionality. Having to break concentration to look at where the keys are, or their state, is a profound productivity drag. Doubt that I'm right? Use an iPad instead of your physical keyboard for a week and let us know the results. On a sidebar this reminds me a lot of the move to touch screens in cars, and the resulting challenges. Touch surfaces are great but not the answer to everything.
- rickcogley 10y agoMy PFU HHKB external 'board has an Esc key, and there's usually a way to map things anyway. Not sure what the fuss is about.