8 ms·

Surviving the New MacBook Pro

121 points by z92 10y ago

mpweiher 10y ago
Disagree almost completely. Just came back from a trip and charging was much better than before. Between us we had: 1 new MBP, 1 MB 12" 2 iPhones 1 iPad 1 Micro-USB device (Neo Smartpen) We only needed 1 charger and 3 cables: 1 USB-C/USB-C, 1 USB-C/Lightning, 1 USB-C/Micro-USB. (We carried a second charger just in case). We could charge either of the laptops, any of the devices directly or any of the devices via the charging MBP (or from the battery of either non-connected laptop). On all our previous/recent trips, keeping devices charged was always a problem, this time it was completely effortless. While I don't have the problems with the TouchBar the author describes, so far it has been largely uneventful for me (and yes, TouchID is great!). However, I think the potential is fantastic for integrating textual input with controls in ways that just hasn't been possible before. I implemented a very preliminary version of scrubbing inline numbers in my CodeDraw live coding/graphics environment and it makes a huge difference. Before, you had to select the number, then either (a) fiddle with some gestures combining modifier keys and the mouse or (b) move the mouse to a separate on-screen widget. With the TouchBar, just select and scrub. Yes, it seems like a subtle difference when described in text, but the difference in actual interaction is YUGE :-)
- bitexploder 10y ago
  I am not familiar with your software, but would a standard keyboard shortcut work for your common case of adjusting a number? j/k or some such mnemonic for up down?
  - mpweiher 10y ago
    Not when you're inside a text editor, just hitting j or k would replace the selected number with j or k. Of course you can use command/option or some such, maybe with arrows, but still the problem is that it's incredibly cumbersome compared to scrubbing using a slider. Much greater range and finer control when you have visual feedback. I do think that the common use of the TouchBar as a set of function keys is not particularly useful.
    - bitexploder 10y ago
      Got it. That makes sense. That is a pretty neat use case if it is sensitive enough.
bigd 10y ago
I stand with OP on the bugs. I own top of the line 15in, and can confirm audio freezes, glitches and ffs sometime also random reboots.
- chadcmulligan 10y ago
  maybe it's broken? mine works fine. Might be worth a call to the genii. Edit: Why the downvote?
  - taylodl 10y ago
    Why the downvote? Because Apple-bashing is all the rage right now on HN. Even if Apple were to achieve "five nines" glitch-free manufacturing, which is very hard to do, there'd still be problems with 1 in 10,000 units sold. And that's considered excellent quality. I used to work in the hardware space. Software people don't often appreciate you can't simply crank out perfect replicas of a design.
    - stinos 10y ago
      Apple-bashing is all the rage right now on HN More like <insert anything here>-bashing has been and always will be all the rage on any internet forum? At least to me HN looks quite diverse and I don't have the impression there is a big undeniable bias towards a single platform/tool/... and all seems fair. Which of course might mean in some cases where some product is actually not top notch the 'average' of the comments will be towards the negative side but that is exactly what should happen and the opposite should be true as well.
    - valuearb 10y ago
      Analytical people tend to be critical. For example, don't get me started on Android. "So you must like your iPhone then?" Yes, but let me tell you about the things I don't like about it...
    - chadcmulligan 10y ago
      I don't think I was apple bashing - just the contrary. I have one and think it's great - I develop for Apple products, I said maybe his was broken. A bit confused...
ssijak 10y ago
I also have audio/mic glitches. More often when I airplay to my av receiver or after I plug/unplug headphones. But whatever, every mac had some problems. Previously I had wifi problems, now I do not have those.
owenwil 10y ago
I have had the same experience; the Bluetooth stack is awful, the touch bar locks up constantly (or displays nothing at all), glitches often, crashes far more than my previous model and... is just awful in general. The switch to USB-C is actually a non-issue for me, and I find it quite convenient now that I have all the right cables, but the machine itself, while the hardware is well refined, is just awful
Prego 10y ago
Why deal with these issues when there are great Windows 10 options from many vendors?
- askmike 10y ago
  I rather move to linux than to Windows, I'd say I am definitely not the only developer to say so.
  - kogepathic 10y ago
    > I rather move to linux than to Windows I use Linux daily on my desktop. Never really liked Windows because cmd was always a terrible cripple compared to *NIX. But recently I've heard very good things from people about the new Linux subsystem in Windows 10. There's still a lot of software that doesn't run on Linux (e.g. management utilities for enterprise systems, old/obscure utilities) even in WINE. Can anyone who regularly uses Linux comment on how it is to us the Linux subsystem on Windows? It is good enough or still rough on the edges?
    - bitexploder 10y ago
      Vmware workstation... :)
    - Baeocystin 10y ago
      It is far better than it has any right to be, considering the work they have to do in the background to get it to live happily in NTFS. It still has a way to go, but you can get real work done. My Linux-of-choice remains Ubuntu on a VM on my Surface, but having the subsystem installed as well is nice. If they keep at it, I can see ditching the VM in a few more revs. X doesn't officially work yet, although you can hack around and get it kinda-sorta going.
- GhostVII 10y ago
  Because unix
- motoboi 10y ago
sheeshkebab 10y ago
Windows laptops are hit and miss as well, nothing new, move along. Maybe when windows becomes Linux fully, I'll switch. These described MBP glitches sound bad but don't sound like a trip to the neighborhood Apple Store couldn't fix.
JustSomeNobody 10y ago
Wait, there's no charging light anymore? That's actually pretty sad. I like that on mine.
- Alex3917 10y ago
  There's no need for a charging light because it's USB-C, so you know whether it's plugged in or not. Whereas with the MagSafe it could be only partially connected, and the only way to know that was the light. You still need to know whether the plug is actually plugged into the wall, but you can just look at the menu bar for that.
  - imron 10y ago
    > but you can just look at the menu bar for that. Not if the lid is closed.
  - needcaffeine 10y ago
    The charging light also tells me whether or not my laptop is done charging by means of an orange or green light.
    - bluedino 10y ago
      There's no charging light on the iPad or iPhone either
      - rorykoehler 10y ago
        Which sucks. I can't count the amount of times I've plugged in my iPad to charge and forgotten to check if the wall socket is switched on. On my android phone on the other hand I've never had this problem because there is an led which tells me if it's charging or not
      - striking 10y ago
        Yeah, the difference there is that you have to crack open your laptop or power it on to know if it's charging if there's no light. iPad? Press a button. Now you know if you're good or not. Audio feedback isn't too useful either
acomjean 10y ago
Its 2017 and we developers still don't have an OS/Laptop combo that delights us. Its a series of compromises, particularly with linux. I'm wondering why there isn't a linux on laptop combo thats just great. Lack of resources? Demand? Is linux so fragmented that it can't martial the dev effort on laptops?
- JupiterMoon 10y ago
  Driver support. App support. Which form a vicious cycle together with demand. EDIT That's not to say that there aren't options that aren't great for given use-cases. E.g. as a developer I'm very happy with my linux-on-laptop. But if someone sends me an Office doc I am in a position to tell them to send me plain text or pdf or I won't be reading it. Not everyone is.
  - bitexploder 10y ago
    Libre office generally just works. I have real Word in Wine that works fine too. But yeah apps can be tricky. I am happy with my laptop as well (Linux).
    - jameskegel 10y ago
      if Libreoffice works fine, why have "real" Word at all?
      - bitexploder 10y ago
        For viewing. For most things. Once in a while libre will mangle a file or subtly change formatting. For viewing 100%. For editing 90%. For the other rare times Real Word.
- washadjeffmad 10y ago
  What would you say is missing or handled worse than in comparable scenarios on mobile hardware in Mac/Win? Not everything-- just something that stood out to you or that you felt that you should have been able to do but couldn't easily.
uptownJimmy 10y ago
This is definitely a stumble for Apple, that much is beyond debate. But as someone who uses both 2012 MBP and new HP Win10 laptops every day for work and play, let me say this: the Windows world might seem suddenly enticing, but you will NOT find greener pastures there, on average. That ecosystem is still a mess.
- Joeri 10y ago
  I think it's very personal which platform you prefer. I also spend equal time on windows and mac and lately find myself preferring windows more. One thing that's definitely terrible on windows 10 are the updates. Stuff breaking after forced updates is normal now. This week a whole bunch of colleagues got a forced update at 10 am which broke their laptop keyboard. Apparently our IT dept is to blame for the unlucky timing, but microsoft are the ones that broke the keyboard. Every win10 device I have has had something break after a forced update. I can always fix it, but I don't know how non-technical people deal with this.
  - pyrophane 10y ago
    I've heard MS is shoving ads into various parts of the OS. Is that something you notice?
    - bwoj 10y ago
      I've been reasonably happy with a laptop I've had running Windows 7. Then it stealth-updated itself to Windows 10. I turned off most of the ads, but the lock screen still had ads. I had to turn of some service with an incongruous name to kill those but Cortana still shows up on the lock screen telling me to talk to it. Like I'm going to do that? Also, the start menu is all fubared. I end up using search from the start menu, which works but is really slow. I'll get the search box and type something into it and it's 30 seconds to a minute before my text shows up there, usually missing the first 2-3 characters I typed... but not always. Microsoft needs to have a good hard look at why they had so much trouble moving people off of XP. It's like they hit an inflection point there with the least amount of suckage.
    - 10y ago
canttestthis 10y ago
I really dislike the new keyboard and it might be the reason I end up returning my new MBP. The key presses feel inconsistent (escape/arrow keys need a harder press for no clear reason), the tactile feedback isn't great... I wish I waited until the next MBP generation while they fix it.
late2part 10y ago
I just want a computer that boots up reliably, plays audio and video, allows me to work for more than a couple hours before dying, and has a keyboard that doesn’t freak out on me. You had one. You gave it to your brother.
- jakelazaroff 10y ago
  So he should use that computer for the rest of his life? He had to upgrade sometime.
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    You don't have to upgrade. Lots of still functional pre-courage Macs you can buy.
    - jameskegel 10y ago
      "pre-courage", I must admit, while accurate, I had a chuckle.
  - overcast 10y ago
    2008 Mac Pro tower, still going. Probably won't ever upgrade until it dies. Then who knows what that will be, potentially PC, as Apple hates power users now.
    - gibbitz 10y ago
      Running xubuntu on my 2007 now. Will do the same on less expensive pc hardware when it dies. Apple wants to only sell iphones, so they're weaning users off their computers in the same order they weaned them on: starting with power users and long-time users.
  - pyrophane 10y ago
    I believe the conventional wisdom says to wait for the at least the second generation of a new product to buy it. While the MacBook Pro is not a new product, if you crave stability then skip any redesign year.
wazoox 10y ago
I've bought a new MacBook pro. It works reasonably well, but : it is seriously bug-ridden. For instance, at times the Finder won't allow any drag and drop operation (you need to kill it). Access to network shares is hit and miss. Globally the OS X Finder has been a pretty poor piece of essential software since... Developer Preview? :/ The absence of at least one standard USB port is really annoying, you need an adapter to plug in just about anything, a thumb drive, a phone, a mouse... any of the bazillions of USB gizmos and cables everyone has lying around in his house or at work. Wherever you are, you need to have this stupid adapter at hand. It's incredibly annoying; in practice you have to carry your nice, sleek laptop with a constantly dangling white protrusion on a side.
- oneeyedpigeon 10y ago
  Finder really needs some attention beyond adding features like tagging that add complexity without, as far as I can tell, bringing any real benefit. I want a Finder that's keyboard-accessible, that lets me easily restart it when it crashes, that doesn't frustrate my efforts to view certain hidden files. I'd still take it over windows explorer, on balance, but only barely, and that's pretty damning. I've recently started using fman [0] which seems a promising alternative. [0] https://fman.io https://fman.io
  - nortoncommander 10y ago
    fman looks awesome...Norton Commander for mac.
  - arthurfm 10y ago
    I want a Finder that's keyboard-accessible, that lets me easily restart it when it crashes, that doesn't frustrate my efforts to view certain hidden files. Forklift 3 would also meet those criteria. http://binarynights.com/forklift/ http://binarynights.com/forklift/
- falcolas 10y ago
  Regarding finder, one of the best things I ever did was enable "Quit" for it. Now I can easily handle when it bugs out like every other program... "Turn it off and back on again" defaults write com.apple.Finder QuitMenuItem -bool true
cdnsteve 10y ago
There's no power button. Lip flip is your new button except when your computer is stuck in some kind of sleep mode and won't wake up. Flipping g the lid doesn't wake it up. Tried multiple times. Tried force quit keys.. nope. Tried attaching power... Nope. About 20 minutes later it decides to come back to life. Luckily this only happens to me in the morning while working from home. But it could happen before a big presentation, meeting, etc. It's terrible.
- rockshassa 10y ago
  the touch ID button is the power button
  - ceejayoz 10y ago
    No hardware power button, then. Which is a problem if the software locks up, as my 2014 MBP does occasionally.
    - nrjames 10y ago
      The Touch ID button is a hardware power button. It clicks down like any other old MBP power button.
  - carsongross 10y ago
    In fairness this is almost impossible to guess: the is no label and no indication you can press the thing. It was only muscle memory and the fact that my mac now goes into flicker-mode weekly that lead me to discover this.
talldan 10y ago
In my experience, the double login issue seems to happen when restoring after having run out of battery. It happens on my ~2013 macbook as well. A completely unscientific assessment is that the first login is to authorise restoration of the session. Unfortunately it seems like that authorisation can't be passed onto the session itself, so that also needs unlocking.
- epochwolf 10y ago
  This happens if you have full disk encryption enabled. If the laptop goes into hibernation, the disk is no longer mounted. So you need to enter your password to mount the drive which then drops you into the lock screen to enter your password again. Ideally, the computer should be able to know you just woke the computer from hibernation and skip the second lock screen but I don't think the systems are integrated enough to do that right now. :)
dep_b 10y ago
Having an x86 laptop that Just Worked between 2006 and 2016 was the anomaly, not the experience of a laptop owner described in this story. I'll happily wait out this first generation while they iron out the problems until the next iteration of it. Seems like my maxed out 2015 was a great buy after all.
itsdrewmiller 10y ago
I have the new 15" (after using the 2013 version almost since release) and I haven't noticed a disparity in bugs - both have been extremely reliable machines. That touch bar thing has never happened to me. Still hate it, though. :) This sounds like you should just take it in for a replacement to me.
kstenerud 10y ago
The worst part of the new laptop is the damn keyboard. Keys keep getting stuck, which severely slows down my typing. And it's intermittent. At any given time I have about 1-2 keys stuck, but it always changes.
- krrrh 10y ago
  I would definitely take it in if this is the case. I have had no problems with the new keyboard and have come to vastly prefer it to the old MacBook Air keyboard I had been using. I feel like I type faster on it and with greater certainty.
nrjames 10y ago
I have a mostly maxed-out 15" new MBP. I love it. Now that I'm used to the new keyboard, I can type much faster than with the older ones and it feels far less mushy. I never have problems with stuck keys, audio, etc. From time to time, I see some graphical artifacts around in the window shadows when I first open it up after sleeping, but they go away after a moment. The biggest annoyance, to me, is the placement of a touch bar hotspot above the delete key. I hit it all the time. At first, by default, Siri was there. I switched it to be the "show desktop" button, but what I really want to do is to shift everything to the left so that nothing is above the delete key. Even with that, however, I've adjusted my typing so that I rarely hit the touch bar above the delete key. I've never had battery problems, the USB-C ports don't bother me because I rarely have anything plugged into the laptop other than the power cable, and in my work environments, we use Apple TVs for conference room televisions, so I can just connect wirelessly to show presentations. I was skeptical when I bought it, due to all of the moaning that shows up here on HN, but all in all, I'm really enjoying this computer and I'm glad that I replaced my old MBP with it.
- jameskegel 10y ago
  You listed several things you don't like about it, and then said all in all you like it. To me, that seems a tad incongruent. I'm not sure if you actually enjoy it or if you're conditioning yourself to justify its presence because you have one. Sounds like the moaning is justified.
  - ryanwaggoner 10y ago
    How condescending. OP mentioned one thing that was an annoyance, and it sounds like it doesn't come close to overwhelming the things OP likes about it. The totally irrational hate this MBP has received is really funny to me. It turns out nerds are super conservative. Change anything and they act like it's the end of the world. And God forbid you should say you actually like the change and then you get people popping up telling you that you're wrong, you can't trust your own preferences, and you actually don't like it. It's a slightly modified laptop with a few changes that most people don't care about or prefer. Get over it.
jck 10y ago
It blows my mind that it is not even an option to buy a computer built by another vendor.
- jameskegel 10y ago
  I'm noticing this also, there is somewhat of an accepted "uniform" and "toolset" for the SV life.
- ReverseCold 10y ago
  MacOS is great for development, and has tons better app support than Linux. Some people consider that worth the extra $X over a Windows laptop. No, hackintoshes require a lot of effort.
smoyer 10y ago
I survived my rMBP by trading up to a Lenovo X1 Carbon (with XUbuntu). The hardware is great and it's close to indestructible. Curiously, my biggest beef with the rMBP was Mac OSX and some of the custom hardware wouldn't support Linux.
_ph_ 10y ago
I have the previous generation 15 inch MB Pro and it is an amazing machine. But despite its maximum (for air travel) sized 100 Wh battery, it can have run times below 2 hours - that is, if a process loads the machine. So, if you are getting really bad run times with your laptops, check the system load. Even rather inconspicuous processes can drag your battery down. Be it a web page or something else. Safari should throttle webpages shown in hidden tabs, but check it. For Chrome, there are tools like the "big suspender" which can save memory and cpu resources.
- krrrh 10y ago
  I would love a utility that watched for fast battery drops and then alerted me or automatically killed a process based on rules. The few times I've had battery issues with the new MBP I've checked Activity Monitor to find that something like iTunes has become unresponsive and is pinning a core at 100%, but often not before losing 30% of a charge.
  - _ph_ 10y ago
    I keep the cpu monitor part of the activity monitor running in the dock icon and keep an eye on it. It should be completely zero when I am not interacting with the machine. Maybe I am too old, but watching the cpu monitor on any machine I am working on is as natural to me, as watching the rev counter of my car when I am driving :).
    - manquer 10y ago
      Ovetime the activity monitor also consumes significant battery...
      - _ph_ 10y ago
        The activity monitor when run as an icon should consume no noticeable energy, it is <1% power usage - a single "nasty" tab can load the cpu 10-30% or more. I think this is a good trade off, especially when the run time does not match the expectations.
markive 10y ago
Apple audio especially with Airpods is full of glitches..
carsongross 10y ago
Truly this is a terrible laptop. I use a USB dock so the awful keyboard, oversized mousepad (with attendant accidental bumps) and pointless touch bar (oh, hey, I accidentally bumped mute again) don't matter that much. However, at least once a week, when switching between the dock and home, my mac goes into flicker mode, requiring a hard reboot. Insanity. To make matters worse, the power key (the Touch ID key) is unlabeled and doesn't look like a pressable key. And now that apple has removed its boot up sound, for no good reason, I don't know if I've successfully rebooted until seconds after I press the power button. The audio occasionally craps out and randomly decides not to select the right output when I plug in to my dock. I've been a mac guy since college in 1994. This may be my last mac.
- ashark 10y ago
  > However, at least once a week, when switching between the dock and home, my mac goes into flicker mode, requiring a hard reboot. Insanity. Discrete graphics, or Intel?
  - carsongross 10y ago
    Intel Iris Graphics 550 1536MB
matt4077 10y ago
"Surviving"? Really? It's a notebook. It's better than last year's. It's better than 95% of all currently used notebooks. You will not die. You will live to gripe about another non-issue next year.
m3kw9 10y ago
I have a 2016 pro and only annoyance is touch bar glitch and accidental touches sometimes. The issue with ports isn't an issue if you just think about it. Is like having 4 USB 3.0 ports and complaining about it
daveambrose 10y ago
One of the biggest announces is lack of operability w. the previous Apple LED display. I've had to cycle through a few cable dongles at this point to then find out none connect to the LED display. Instead, I ordered the Dell P2715Q 27" monitor and then purchased a DisplayPort to USC-C cable. It works perfectly and decently priced at $530.
simonhughes22 10y ago
I hate it for all the reasons you describe. The power connector and excellent battery life were some of the best things about the old MBP, and I can't stand the new keyboard.
fred_is_fred 10y ago
I had a 2012 MBP that was dying and I replaced it with a Windows10 laptop (Spectre from HP). After setting up bash on here, I'm pretty happy and in some respects happier. There's some weird things still (pasting into a terminal is one), but I can no longer justify the 2x cost for a Mac that is buggy, limited, and has crap I don't want forced on me.
getrealkid 10y ago
Oh please, "Surviving..."? Lemme guess, another liberal snowflake article probably written by the same person who wants "How to survive not getting what you want" comfort classes added to their their local college's curriculum. Give me a fucking break
valuearb 10y ago
Whats been frustrating lately is that Apple has by far* the most profitable PC Hardware business on the planet, yet they seem to put less and less effort into it. The battery life on the new MBP is apparently limited because the fitted sealed battery didn't pass testing, so they had to revert to a more standard (smaller) battery. Supposedly they also kept a 16 gig ram limit because they can't get the newest Intel CPUs needed for a better memory controller in enough volume. Thats been a constant refrain the last 4 years, their volumes are now big enough that they are highly dependent on Intel release cycles and volume ramp, and Intel is always late. So they are always delaying new hardware, and in this case, releasing them in sub-par form because they decided they couldn't wait any longer. But if you are the worlds most successful maker of laptops, it seems like you can have multiple development teams for your key products. Essentially why wasn't the old MBP being revved every year with faster CPUs so they could wait until everything came together for the new design? Instead they let the lineup get stale and forced out the new one prematurely. Why can't they rev the Mac Pro with updated GPUS and CPUs at least every 15 months or so? Why can't they rev every product from Mini to iMac like that? What's the point of having the highest margins if you can't keep your offerings up to date? It just doesn't seem that expensive to keep an extra design team working on each multibillion dollar product so you can have more iterations. Unfortunately Occams Razor is telling me that Apple's Mac margins aren't so good anymore, and that the finance department is tightening the screws in a misguided strategy to try to maintain them at historic levels. Their mac revenues actually declined over 2014-2016 ($24B -> $25B -> $23B) so maybe that's evidence of margin compression as well as the stale products. It's obviously hell to be a PC maker if you aren't Apple. Margins are almost zero and now your OS maker is competing directly with you. But the downward trend continues there doesn't seem to be any hope of bottoming at any stable reasonable profits/margins, it's worse than the Airline business at this point. Maybe Apple's Mac business just gets dragged farther and farther down as well. * The math is that Apple has a 6-7% world wide share of PC sales by units, but it's average sales price is around $1200 vs. the rest of the market's $500, so Apple gets around 15% of world PC revenues, making it one of the largest PC vendors by revenues ($23B in 2016). But Apple makes around 15-20% margins while the other PC venders are stuck at 2-3%, so Apple makes as much in profits as the rest of the market combined. This obviously ignores MSFT's Windows revenues, and whether it includes the Surface business doesn't matter because it's not profitable yet.
skyisblue 10y ago
The most annoying thing with the new power connector is the lack of a light indicator showing that your laptop is charging.
rtiwary 10y ago
Battery life is nowhere near 10 hours, sometimes I can barely get even 4-5

121 points by z92 10y ago

Disagree almost completely. Just came back from a trip and charging was much better than before. Between us we had: 1 new MBP, 1 MB 12" 2 iPhones 1 iPad 1 Micro-USB device (Neo Smartpen) We only needed 1 charger and 3 cables: 1 USB-C/USB-C, 1 USB-C/Lightning, 1 USB-C/Micro-USB. (We carried a second charger just in case). We could charge either of the laptops, any of the devices directly or any of the devices via the charging MBP (or from the battery of either non-connected laptop). On all our previous/recent trips, keeping devices charged was always a problem, this time it was completely effortless. While I don't have the problems with the TouchBar the author describes, so far it has been largely uneventful for me (and yes, TouchID is great!). However, I think the potential is fantastic for integrating textual input with controls in ways that just hasn't been possible before. I implemented a very preliminary version of scrubbing inline numbers in my CodeDraw live coding/graphics environment and it makes a huge difference. Before, you had to select the number, then either (a) fiddle with some gestures combining modifier keys and the mouse or (b) move the mouse to a separate on-screen widget. With the TouchBar, just select and scrub. Yes, it seems like a subtle difference when described in text, but the difference in actual interaction is YUGE :-)

bitexploder 10y ago
I am not familiar with your software, but would a standard keyboard shortcut work for your common case of adjusting a number? j/k or some such mnemonic for up down?
- mpweiher 10y ago
  Not when you're inside a text editor, just hitting j or k would replace the selected number with j or k. Of course you can use command/option or some such, maybe with arrows, but still the problem is that it's incredibly cumbersome compared to scrubbing using a slider. Much greater range and finer control when you have visual feedback. I do think that the common use of the TouchBar as a set of function keys is not particularly useful.
  - bitexploder 10y ago
    Got it. That makes sense. That is a pretty neat use case if it is sensitive enough.

bigd 10y ago

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

chadcmulligan 10y ago
maybe it's broken? mine works fine. Might be worth a call to the genii. Edit: Why the downvote?
- taylodl 10y ago
  Why the downvote? Because Apple-bashing is all the rage right now on HN. Even if Apple were to achieve "five nines" glitch-free manufacturing, which is very hard to do, there'd still be problems with 1 in 10,000 units sold. And that's considered excellent quality. I used to work in the hardware space. Software people don't often appreciate you can't simply crank out perfect replicas of a design.
  - stinos 10y ago
    Apple-bashing is all the rage right now on HN More like <insert anything here>-bashing has been and always will be all the rage on any internet forum? At least to me HN looks quite diverse and I don't have the impression there is a big undeniable bias towards a single platform/tool/... and all seems fair. Which of course might mean in some cases where some product is actually not top notch the 'average' of the comments will be towards the negative side but that is exactly what should happen and the opposite should be true as well.
  - valuearb 10y ago
    Analytical people tend to be critical. For example, don't get me started on Android. "So you must like your iPhone then?" Yes, but let me tell you about the things I don't like about it...
  - chadcmulligan 10y ago
    I don't think I was apple bashing - just the contrary. I have one and think it's great - I develop for Apple products, I said maybe his was broken. A bit confused...

ssijak 10y ago

I also have audio/mic glitches. More often when I airplay to my av receiver or after I plug/unplug headphones. But whatever, every mac had some problems. Previously I had wifi problems, now I do not have those.

owenwil 10y ago

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

Prego 10y ago

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

askmike 10y ago
I rather move to linux than to Windows, I'd say I am definitely not the only developer to say so.
- kogepathic 10y ago
  > I rather move to linux than to Windows I use Linux daily on my desktop. Never really liked Windows because cmd was always a terrible cripple compared to *NIX. But recently I've heard very good things from people about the new Linux subsystem in Windows 10. There's still a lot of software that doesn't run on Linux (e.g. management utilities for enterprise systems, old/obscure utilities) even in WINE. Can anyone who regularly uses Linux comment on how it is to us the Linux subsystem on Windows? It is good enough or still rough on the edges?
  - bitexploder 10y ago
    Vmware workstation... :)
  - Baeocystin 10y ago
    It is far better than it has any right to be, considering the work they have to do in the background to get it to live happily in NTFS. It still has a way to go, but you can get real work done. My Linux-of-choice remains Ubuntu on a VM on my Surface, but having the subsystem installed as well is nice. If they keep at it, I can see ditching the VM in a few more revs. X doesn't officially work yet, although you can hack around and get it kinda-sorta going.
GhostVII 10y ago
Because unix
motoboi 10y ago

sheeshkebab 10y ago

Windows laptops are hit and miss as well, nothing new, move along. Maybe when windows becomes Linux fully, I'll switch. These described MBP glitches sound bad but don't sound like a trip to the neighborhood Apple Store couldn't fix.

JustSomeNobody 10y ago

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

Alex3917 10y ago
There's no need for a charging light because it's USB-C, so you know whether it's plugged in or not. Whereas with the MagSafe it could be only partially connected, and the only way to know that was the light. You still need to know whether the plug is actually plugged into the wall, but you can just look at the menu bar for that.
- imron 10y ago
  > but you can just look at the menu bar for that. Not if the lid is closed.
- needcaffeine 10y ago
  The charging light also tells me whether or not my laptop is done charging by means of an orange or green light.
  - bluedino 10y ago
    There's no charging light on the iPad or iPhone either
    - rorykoehler 10y ago
      Which sucks. I can't count the amount of times I've plugged in my iPad to charge and forgotten to check if the wall socket is switched on. On my android phone on the other hand I've never had this problem because there is an led which tells me if it's charging or not
    - striking 10y ago
      Yeah, the difference there is that you have to crack open your laptop or power it on to know if it's charging if there's no light. iPad? Press a button. Now you know if you're good or not. Audio feedback isn't too useful either

acomjean 10y ago

Its 2017 and we developers still don't have an OS/Laptop combo that delights us. Its a series of compromises, particularly with linux. I'm wondering why there isn't a linux on laptop combo thats just great. Lack of resources? Demand? Is linux so fragmented that it can't martial the dev effort on laptops?

JupiterMoon 10y ago
Driver support. App support. Which form a vicious cycle together with demand. EDIT That's not to say that there aren't options that aren't great for given use-cases. E.g. as a developer I'm very happy with my linux-on-laptop. But if someone sends me an Office doc I am in a position to tell them to send me plain text or pdf or I won't be reading it. Not everyone is.
- bitexploder 10y ago
  Libre office generally just works. I have real Word in Wine that works fine too. But yeah apps can be tricky. I am happy with my laptop as well (Linux).
  - jameskegel 10y ago
    if Libreoffice works fine, why have "real" Word at all?
    - bitexploder 10y ago
      For viewing. For most things. Once in a while libre will mangle a file or subtly change formatting. For viewing 100%. For editing 90%. For the other rare times Real Word.
washadjeffmad 10y ago
What would you say is missing or handled worse than in comparable scenarios on mobile hardware in Mac/Win? Not everything-- just something that stood out to you or that you felt that you should have been able to do but couldn't easily.

uptownJimmy 10y ago

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

Joeri 10y ago
I think it's very personal which platform you prefer. I also spend equal time on windows and mac and lately find myself preferring windows more. One thing that's definitely terrible on windows 10 are the updates. Stuff breaking after forced updates is normal now. This week a whole bunch of colleagues got a forced update at 10 am which broke their laptop keyboard. Apparently our IT dept is to blame for the unlucky timing, but microsoft are the ones that broke the keyboard. Every win10 device I have has had something break after a forced update. I can always fix it, but I don't know how non-technical people deal with this.
- pyrophane 10y ago
  I've heard MS is shoving ads into various parts of the OS. Is that something you notice?
  - bwoj 10y ago
    I've been reasonably happy with a laptop I've had running Windows 7. Then it stealth-updated itself to Windows 10. I turned off most of the ads, but the lock screen still had ads. I had to turn of some service with an incongruous name to kill those but Cortana still shows up on the lock screen telling me to talk to it. Like I'm going to do that? Also, the start menu is all fubared. I end up using search from the start menu, which works but is really slow. I'll get the search box and type something into it and it's 30 seconds to a minute before my text shows up there, usually missing the first 2-3 characters I typed... but not always. Microsoft needs to have a good hard look at why they had so much trouble moving people off of XP. It's like they hit an inflection point there with the least amount of suckage.
  - 10y ago

canttestthis 10y ago

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

late2part 10y ago

I just want a computer that boots up reliably, plays audio and video, allows me to work for more than a couple hours before dying, and has a keyboard that doesn’t freak out on me. You had one. You gave it to your brother.

jakelazaroff 10y ago
So he should use that computer for the rest of his life? He had to upgrade sometime.
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  You don't have to upgrade. Lots of still functional pre-courage Macs you can buy.
  - jameskegel 10y ago
    "pre-courage", I must admit, while accurate, I had a chuckle.
- overcast 10y ago
  2008 Mac Pro tower, still going. Probably won't ever upgrade until it dies. Then who knows what that will be, potentially PC, as Apple hates power users now.
  - gibbitz 10y ago
    Running xubuntu on my 2007 now. Will do the same on less expensive pc hardware when it dies. Apple wants to only sell iphones, so they're weaning users off their computers in the same order they weaned them on: starting with power users and long-time users.
- pyrophane 10y ago
  I believe the conventional wisdom says to wait for the at least the second generation of a new product to buy it. While the MacBook Pro is not a new product, if you crave stability then skip any redesign year.

wazoox 10y ago

I've bought a new MacBook pro. It works reasonably well, but : it is seriously bug-ridden. For instance, at times the Finder won't allow any drag and drop operation (you need to kill it). Access to network shares is hit and miss. Globally the OS X Finder has been a pretty poor piece of essential software since... Developer Preview? :/ The absence of at least one standard USB port is really annoying, you need an adapter to plug in just about anything, a thumb drive, a phone, a mouse... any of the bazillions of USB gizmos and cables everyone has lying around in his house or at work. Wherever you are, you need to have this stupid adapter at hand. It's incredibly annoying; in practice you have to carry your nice, sleek laptop with a constantly dangling white protrusion on a side.

oneeyedpigeon 10y ago
Finder really needs some attention beyond adding features like tagging that add complexity without, as far as I can tell, bringing any real benefit. I want a Finder that's keyboard-accessible, that lets me easily restart it when it crashes, that doesn't frustrate my efforts to view certain hidden files. I'd still take it over windows explorer, on balance, but only barely, and that's pretty damning. I've recently started using fman [0] which seems a promising alternative. [0] https://fman.io https://fman.io
- nortoncommander 10y ago
  fman looks awesome...Norton Commander for mac.
- arthurfm 10y ago
  I want a Finder that's keyboard-accessible, that lets me easily restart it when it crashes, that doesn't frustrate my efforts to view certain hidden files. Forklift 3 would also meet those criteria. http://binarynights.com/forklift/ http://binarynights.com/forklift/
falcolas 10y ago
Regarding finder, one of the best things I ever did was enable "Quit" for it. Now I can easily handle when it bugs out like every other program... "Turn it off and back on again" defaults write com.apple.Finder QuitMenuItem -bool true

cdnsteve 10y ago

There's no power button. Lip flip is your new button except when your computer is stuck in some kind of sleep mode and won't wake up. Flipping g the lid doesn't wake it up. Tried multiple times. Tried force quit keys.. nope. Tried attaching power... Nope. About 20 minutes later it decides to come back to life. Luckily this only happens to me in the morning while working from home. But it could happen before a big presentation, meeting, etc. It's terrible.

rockshassa 10y ago
the touch ID button is the power button
- ceejayoz 10y ago
  No hardware power button, then. Which is a problem if the software locks up, as my 2014 MBP does occasionally.
  - nrjames 10y ago
    The Touch ID button is a hardware power button. It clicks down like any other old MBP power button.
- carsongross 10y ago
  In fairness this is almost impossible to guess: the is no label and no indication you can press the thing. It was only muscle memory and the fact that my mac now goes into flicker-mode weekly that lead me to discover this.

talldan 10y ago

In my experience, the double login issue seems to happen when restoring after having run out of battery. It happens on my ~2013 macbook as well. A completely unscientific assessment is that the first login is to authorise restoration of the session. Unfortunately it seems like that authorisation can't be passed onto the session itself, so that also needs unlocking.

epochwolf 10y ago
This happens if you have full disk encryption enabled. If the laptop goes into hibernation, the disk is no longer mounted. So you need to enter your password to mount the drive which then drops you into the lock screen to enter your password again. Ideally, the computer should be able to know you just woke the computer from hibernation and skip the second lock screen but I don't think the systems are integrated enough to do that right now. :)

dep_b 10y ago

Having an x86 laptop that Just Worked between 2006 and 2016 was the anomaly, not the experience of a laptop owner described in this story. I'll happily wait out this first generation while they iron out the problems until the next iteration of it. Seems like my maxed out 2015 was a great buy after all.

itsdrewmiller 10y ago

I have the new 15" (after using the 2013 version almost since release) and I haven't noticed a disparity in bugs - both have been extremely reliable machines. That touch bar thing has never happened to me. Still hate it, though. :) This sounds like you should just take it in for a replacement to me.

kstenerud 10y ago

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

krrrh 10y ago
I would definitely take it in if this is the case. I have had no problems with the new keyboard and have come to vastly prefer it to the old MacBook Air keyboard I had been using. I feel like I type faster on it and with greater certainty.

nrjames 10y ago

I have a mostly maxed-out 15" new MBP. I love it. Now that I'm used to the new keyboard, I can type much faster than with the older ones and it feels far less mushy. I never have problems with stuck keys, audio, etc. From time to time, I see some graphical artifacts around in the window shadows when I first open it up after sleeping, but they go away after a moment. The biggest annoyance, to me, is the placement of a touch bar hotspot above the delete key. I hit it all the time. At first, by default, Siri was there. I switched it to be the "show desktop" button, but what I really want to do is to shift everything to the left so that nothing is above the delete key. Even with that, however, I've adjusted my typing so that I rarely hit the touch bar above the delete key. I've never had battery problems, the USB-C ports don't bother me because I rarely have anything plugged into the laptop other than the power cable, and in my work environments, we use Apple TVs for conference room televisions, so I can just connect wirelessly to show presentations. I was skeptical when I bought it, due to all of the moaning that shows up here on HN, but all in all, I'm really enjoying this computer and I'm glad that I replaced my old MBP with it.

jameskegel 10y ago
You listed several things you don't like about it, and then said all in all you like it. To me, that seems a tad incongruent. I'm not sure if you actually enjoy it or if you're conditioning yourself to justify its presence because you have one. Sounds like the moaning is justified.
- ryanwaggoner 10y ago
  How condescending. OP mentioned one thing that was an annoyance, and it sounds like it doesn't come close to overwhelming the things OP likes about it. The totally irrational hate this MBP has received is really funny to me. It turns out nerds are super conservative. Change anything and they act like it's the end of the world. And God forbid you should say you actually like the change and then you get people popping up telling you that you're wrong, you can't trust your own preferences, and you actually don't like it. It's a slightly modified laptop with a few changes that most people don't care about or prefer. Get over it.

jck 10y ago

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

jameskegel 10y ago
I'm noticing this also, there is somewhat of an accepted "uniform" and "toolset" for the SV life.
ReverseCold 10y ago
MacOS is great for development, and has tons better app support than Linux. Some people consider that worth the extra $X over a Windows laptop. No, hackintoshes require a lot of effort.

smoyer 10y ago

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

_ph_ 10y ago

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

krrrh 10y ago
I would love a utility that watched for fast battery drops and then alerted me or automatically killed a process based on rules. The few times I've had battery issues with the new MBP I've checked Activity Monitor to find that something like iTunes has become unresponsive and is pinning a core at 100%, but often not before losing 30% of a charge.
- _ph_ 10y ago
  I keep the cpu monitor part of the activity monitor running in the dock icon and keep an eye on it. It should be completely zero when I am not interacting with the machine. Maybe I am too old, but watching the cpu monitor on any machine I am working on is as natural to me, as watching the rev counter of my car when I am driving :).
  - manquer 10y ago
    Ovetime the activity monitor also consumes significant battery...
    - _ph_ 10y ago
      The activity monitor when run as an icon should consume no noticeable energy, it is <1% power usage - a single "nasty" tab can load the cpu 10-30% or more. I think this is a good trade off, especially when the run time does not match the expectations.

markive 10y ago

Apple audio especially with Airpods is full of glitches..

carsongross 10y ago

Truly this is a terrible laptop. I use a USB dock so the awful keyboard, oversized mousepad (with attendant accidental bumps) and pointless touch bar (oh, hey, I accidentally bumped mute again) don't matter that much. However, at least once a week, when switching between the dock and home, my mac goes into flicker mode, requiring a hard reboot. Insanity. To make matters worse, the power key (the Touch ID key) is unlabeled and doesn't look like a pressable key. And now that apple has removed its boot up sound, for no good reason, I don't know if I've successfully rebooted until seconds after I press the power button. The audio occasionally craps out and randomly decides not to select the right output when I plug in to my dock. I've been a mac guy since college in 1994. This may be my last mac.

ashark 10y ago
> However, at least once a week, when switching between the dock and home, my mac goes into flicker mode, requiring a hard reboot. Insanity. Discrete graphics, or Intel?
- carsongross 10y ago
  Intel Iris Graphics 550 1536MB

matt4077 10y ago

"Surviving"? Really? It's a notebook. It's better than last year's. It's better than 95% of all currently used notebooks. You will not die. You will live to gripe about another non-issue next year.

m3kw9 10y ago

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

daveambrose 10y ago

One of the biggest announces is lack of operability w. the previous Apple LED display. I've had to cycle through a few cable dongles at this point to then find out none connect to the LED display. Instead, I ordered the Dell P2715Q 27" monitor and then purchased a DisplayPort to USC-C cable. It works perfectly and decently priced at $530.

simonhughes22 10y ago

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

fred_is_fred 10y ago

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

getrealkid 10y ago

Oh please, "Surviving..."? Lemme guess, another liberal snowflake article probably written by the same person who wants "How to survive not getting what you want" comfort classes added to their their local college's curriculum. Give me a fucking break

valuearb 10y ago

Whats been frustrating lately is that Apple has by far* the most profitable PC Hardware business on the planet, yet they seem to put less and less effort into it. The battery life on the new MBP is apparently limited because the fitted sealed battery didn't pass testing, so they had to revert to a more standard (smaller) battery. Supposedly they also kept a 16 gig ram limit because they can't get the newest Intel CPUs needed for a better memory controller in enough volume. Thats been a constant refrain the last 4 years, their volumes are now big enough that they are highly dependent on Intel release cycles and volume ramp, and Intel is always late. So they are always delaying new hardware, and in this case, releasing them in sub-par form because they decided they couldn't wait any longer. But if you are the worlds most successful maker of laptops, it seems like you can have multiple development teams for your key products. Essentially why wasn't the old MBP being revved every year with faster CPUs so they could wait until everything came together for the new design? Instead they let the lineup get stale and forced out the new one prematurely. Why can't they rev the Mac Pro with updated GPUS and CPUs at least every 15 months or so? Why can't they rev every product from Mini to iMac like that? What's the point of having the highest margins if you can't keep your offerings up to date? It just doesn't seem that expensive to keep an extra design team working on each multibillion dollar product so you can have more iterations. Unfortunately Occams Razor is telling me that Apple's Mac margins aren't so good anymore, and that the finance department is tightening the screws in a misguided strategy to try to maintain them at historic levels. Their mac revenues actually declined over 2014-2016 ($24B -> $25B -> $23B) so maybe that's evidence of margin compression as well as the stale products. It's obviously hell to be a PC maker if you aren't Apple. Margins are almost zero and now your OS maker is competing directly with you. But the downward trend continues there doesn't seem to be any hope of bottoming at any stable reasonable profits/margins, it's worse than the Airline business at this point. Maybe Apple's Mac business just gets dragged farther and farther down as well. * The math is that Apple has a 6-7% world wide share of PC sales by units, but it's average sales price is around $1200 vs. the rest of the market's $500, so Apple gets around 15% of world PC revenues, making it one of the largest PC vendors by revenues ($23B in 2016). But Apple makes around 15-20% margins while the other PC venders are stuck at 2-3%, so Apple makes as much in profits as the rest of the market combined. This obviously ignores MSFT's Windows revenues, and whether it includes the Surface business doesn't matter because it's not profitable yet.

skyisblue 10y ago

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

rtiwary 10y ago

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