10 ms·

This is the thing. I was as bored by the new MBPs as everyone else, but they really do still seem to have a combination of power, screen quality, portability, a

This is the thing. I was as bored by the new MBPs as everyone else, but they really do still seem to have a combination of power, screen quality, portability, and battery life that isn't matched elsewhere (not to mention the more intangible benefits e.g. great touchpads). Every time someone tells me about a PC laptop that supposedly beats the Apple equivalent, the PC ends up either not being a reasonable equivalent or falls flat in at least one of the areas I mentioned. Maybe if the price is right then making sacrifices is fine, but that's up to the individual buyer. Speaking for myself, a boring computer that's quietly excellent is exactly what I want. My biggest problem with the new MBPs is that i think the Touch Bar is a gimmick and losing the physical escape key is a real bummer.

draugadrotten 10y ago
> great touchpads That's it. I could live without most of what Apple laptops offer, but the touchpads are the selling point for me. I just love them. They actually WORK. I haven't found a single Windows laptop that have an equally great touchpad. The Dell touchpads certainly don't, they are very sensitive to "palm" presses. Are there any good ones out there?
- temac 10y ago
  Touchpads of Thinkpads is OK, although a little buggy (they insist in breaking your middle button being the middle click, unless you restore some registry key to historical values, but then this now unsupported function seems to degrade with time and mandatory driver updates...) and using remote desktop sometimes break two finger scrolling for 5 minutes... (I would really want to know what happens technically, this seems only a truly horrible design would yield that behavior...) I just tested palm rejection (I don't need it 99.99% of the time) and out of 2 tries it failed once and produced zooms commands. So yeah, it's probably worse than a mac, but stays usable enough for me. (Warning: I'm more specifically talking about a T530, some Thinkpad like T440/T540 have extremely terrible touchpads, and I don't now much about the very last models) For the recent laptops maybe precision touchpads are good, but IIRC sadly not every vendor are shipping in that mode. On my side I'm extremely annoyed by the current tendency of most 15.6" to have a keyboard with a numeric keypad. That shifts your default position to the left, which is not ok for my taste on a 15.6" (would be ok on a 17"). When looking at powerful recent laptops around 15", I only found the MBP (but I don't like the last one for various reasons), the XPS15 / Precision 5510 and the HP ZBook Studio G3. But the last one seems to have heat problems, and XPS15 have had QC issues. OTOH at least with PC you still sometimes have the option for matte screens. So yeah choosing a laptop is kind of difficult, especially if you have criteria on lots of point. I doubt I'll ever get the one I really want (ex: I found 16:9 aspect ratio idiotic, but I don't like glossy screens...). I can live with my T530 for a few more years, given it has 16GB of RAM and a SSD.
- CivilianZero 10y ago
  This 100%. I use a Razer laptop on the regular and as good as the trackpad is (and it's better than a lot of PC trackpads) I still regularly encounter issues with it or just notice little shortcomings everywhere.
- erikpukinskis 10y ago
  For what it's worth, my 2012 MBA touchpad is glitchy as shit. I don't really consider this a computer I control, so much as I make gesture suggestions and then wait to see what the computer thinks it should do. That said, if you have a good one, I do agree Apple touchpads are great.
bluedino 10y ago
>> I was as bored by the new MBPs as everyone else, but they really do still seem to have a combination of power, screen quality, portability, and battery life that isn't matched elsewhere A laptop is a tool. Does a carpenter want the newest saw even though his works fine? Does an auto mechanic want a new wrench just because?
- CivilianZero 10y ago
  Do those people also spend the rest of their time using those things for personal use? Probably not. And while metaphors are nice, you can't really compare a laptop to a piece of metal attached to a handle.

draugadrotten 10y ago

> great touchpads That's it. I could live without most of what Apple laptops offer, but the touchpads are the selling point for me. I just love them. They actually WORK. I haven't found a single Windows laptop that have an equally great touchpad. The Dell touchpads certainly don't, they are very sensitive to "palm" presses. Are there any good ones out there?

temac 10y ago
Touchpads of Thinkpads is OK, although a little buggy (they insist in breaking your middle button being the middle click, unless you restore some registry key to historical values, but then this now unsupported function seems to degrade with time and mandatory driver updates...) and using remote desktop sometimes break two finger scrolling for 5 minutes... (I would really want to know what happens technically, this seems only a truly horrible design would yield that behavior...) I just tested palm rejection (I don't need it 99.99% of the time) and out of 2 tries it failed once and produced zooms commands. So yeah, it's probably worse than a mac, but stays usable enough for me. (Warning: I'm more specifically talking about a T530, some Thinkpad like T440/T540 have extremely terrible touchpads, and I don't now much about the very last models) For the recent laptops maybe precision touchpads are good, but IIRC sadly not every vendor are shipping in that mode. On my side I'm extremely annoyed by the current tendency of most 15.6" to have a keyboard with a numeric keypad. That shifts your default position to the left, which is not ok for my taste on a 15.6" (would be ok on a 17"). When looking at powerful recent laptops around 15", I only found the MBP (but I don't like the last one for various reasons), the XPS15 / Precision 5510 and the HP ZBook Studio G3. But the last one seems to have heat problems, and XPS15 have had QC issues. OTOH at least with PC you still sometimes have the option for matte screens. So yeah choosing a laptop is kind of difficult, especially if you have criteria on lots of point. I doubt I'll ever get the one I really want (ex: I found 16:9 aspect ratio idiotic, but I don't like glossy screens...). I can live with my T530 for a few more years, given it has 16GB of RAM and a SSD.
CivilianZero 10y ago
This 100%. I use a Razer laptop on the regular and as good as the trackpad is (and it's better than a lot of PC trackpads) I still regularly encounter issues with it or just notice little shortcomings everywhere.
erikpukinskis 10y ago
For what it's worth, my 2012 MBA touchpad is glitchy as shit. I don't really consider this a computer I control, so much as I make gesture suggestions and then wait to see what the computer thinks it should do. That said, if you have a good one, I do agree Apple touchpads are great.

bluedino 10y ago

>> I was as bored by the new MBPs as everyone else, but they really do still seem to have a combination of power, screen quality, portability, and battery life that isn't matched elsewhere A laptop is a tool. Does a carpenter want the newest saw even though his works fine? Does an auto mechanic want a new wrench just because?

CivilianZero 10y ago
Do those people also spend the rest of their time using those things for personal use? Probably not. And while metaphors are nice, you can't really compare a laptop to a piece of metal attached to a handle.