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I've been putting off buying a new laptop over concerns about the keyboard and overall fragileness. I was debating ditching Mac for the first time in like 15yea
by lando2319 8y ago
I've been putting off buying a new laptop over concerns about the keyboard and overall fragileness. I was debating ditching Mac for the first time in like 15years. This makes me more likely to choose Mac since they are admitting it's a problem and they'll fix it out of warranty without question.
My big concern was getting the extended warranty and then having it break just outside the warranty period leaving me stuck with a big repair bill.
Personally I still think they should make a 32Gig Memory MacBook Pro, that's built like a tank, maybe it weighs 5+ pounds, who cares, people who want a light fragile comp can just get the non-Pro model.
edit: updated "4 pounds" to "5+ pounds" since apparently it's already 4.5 pounds
- gowld 8y agoMany would agree with you, but Steve Jobs was always committed to putting OK functionality that fits inside the best form. Maybe one day Apple will change to allow best functionality in an OK form (where "OK" was "insanely great just 10 years ago. ) It's likely be >4lb though: today's 15" MBP is 4.5lbs.
- lando2319 8y agoI do iOS development and using XCode with Macs with 8G Ram is so slow it's borderline unusable. It just feels like 16G Ram (the max for mac laptops) is going to be too slow in a couple years or so.
- Theodores 8y agoThey will have a new machine for you to buy in 2 years time where the SSD doubles up as RAM and VRAM meaning you will have a gigabyte of RAM. Furthermore, since they will have an ARM chip in them by then you will be glad to see the back of your x86 legacy machine.
- jwandborg 8y agoI suspect you would have said the same thing two years ago.
- tom_ 8y agoThat was what I was wondering about when I bought my Macbook Pro in 2015 - but I'm still using it. I have to run 2 VMs plus Xcode before the RAM becomes a noticeable problem, and even then it's perfectly usable in practice. (Switching between VMs is not instant, but the very fast SSD means I'm not waiting for too long.) I think a quad core CPU would be a much more useful upgrade than more RAM. And come to think of it, it was also what I was wondering when I bought my desktop PC in 2012, and I'm still using that, too. I'm not saying it's unreasonable or foolish to be concerned - far from it, given that the RAM can't be upgraded - but I still do wonder when the tipping point for this will actually be reached in practice. During my formative years, you were doing well to get 3 years out of a PC, and now here I am with a laptop that's that old, figuring it will last at least a couple more years...
- coatmatter 8y agoIt almost sounds as if you'd be more productive if you spent the time and effort to set up a Hackintosh with 32GB+ of RAM?
- bdcravens 8y agoI'd be okay with a larger/heavier machine. The last gen retina display is IMO the best combination of size and power. Given they've been able to cram more performance into the thinner current gen, I imagine getting 32gb and adequate battery life in a slightly thicker form factor is doable.
- Bud 8y agoNo, it's 4.02 pounds. This isn't hard to look up. https://support.apple.com/kb/SP756?locale=en_US https://support.apple.com/kb/SP756?locale=en_US
- Mister_Snuggles 8y ago> Personally I still think they should make a 32Gig Memory MacBook Pro I agree with this sentiment. The last upgrade I got at work was very lackluster - I went from a 4-year-old MacBook Pro to a brand new one. I still have the same amount of RAM, and the work I do isn't usually processor constrained. It's functionally no different from what it replaced. I do like the TouchBar and Touch ID though.
- seunosewa 8y agoWhat do you like about the TouchBar?
- Mister_Snuggles 8y agoHonestly, I’m still not fully over the “new/shiny” phase, so I think that’s the main reason I like it right now. I can see some useful things about it. Deleting messages in Mail.app is a tap on the TouchBar vs Cmd-Delete, which is a bit of a wash. Switching months in Calendar.app is quicker and easier with the TouchBar. Access to the formatting options in Word and Outlook is nice. On the downside though, I spend a lot of time (at work) with the computer plugged into two monitors and a USB keyboard. In this situation, the TouchBar is basically useless so that really limits how much it will get integrated into regular use.
- andromeduck 8y agoThey'll almost certainly do it once intel gets it's act together and ships CNL
- ravitation 8y agoI feel like you could easily get something like that in the form factor of the 3rd generation (pre-touch bar) MacBook Pro, which was under 5 pounds.
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- moonman272 8y agoI personally think this issue is overblown in terms of frequency in the internet outrage echo chamber. So so many of these devices among the people I work with professionally, not a single failure out of anyone I’ve ever met. Yet, reading Apple posts online, you would think every MacBook Pro sold has a failing keyboard.
- nicolas_t 8y agoIt's anecdotal but everyone I work with who has a new mbp has had at least one keyboard failure...
- michaelbuckbee 8y agoIt seems very much like a usage issue. My friends that take their macbooks to the coffee shop, traveling, use it on the train, etc. all have had keyboard issues. I work from home with an external keyboard and monitor and honestly might as well have a desktop for all the MBP leaves my room (and ancedatally) others with a similar usage pattern aren't having the issues.
- iEchoic 8y agoYeah, this is what it has been in our experience as well. They seem to fail pretty predictably after a lot of heavy usage, but many laptops don't reach that.
- arcticfox 8y agoRight, the people that are using their notebook keyboards end up with issues and those that don't...don't
- EpicEng 8y agoSo people who actually use the keyboard tend to have more issues with said keyboard. Shocking.
- toyg 8y agoI actually use it very very rarely, and still my B key is borked. Believe me, these keyboards are just terrible.
- chipotle_coyote 8y agoThere's a non-zero chance that starting this program now means the next release of the MacBook and MacBook Pro lines is going to have another keyboard redesign. I don't mean that to sound conspiratorial, but this is an admission of a problem that's attracted a lot of attention over the last ~12 months that they've been conspicuously silent on, and this makes me suspect that they at least think they've gotten the bugs worked out. (Said bugs are apparently dust mites.) I'd like to see at least one MacBook Pro model that at least threw the SD slot and HDMI port back in. And, sure, USB-A, but I suspect that ship has sailed no matter how much of a mess USB-C objectively is. Of course, I'd like to just see the MBP models all switch to the Magic Keyboard design even though it will -- gasp! -- make the machine a millimeter thicker...
- mortenjorck 8y agoIt would be very un-Apple-like to backtrack on USB (much as I'd like them to), but reintroducing HDMI and SD wouldn't be a backtrack. The difference is that one could reasonably assert that the industry will eventually migrate away from USB-A (even if the timeframe for that is highly debatable). But there is no case at all to be made for moving away from HDMI or SD – the idea of using USB-C ports instead of HDMI on TVs and projectors is only in its earliest proposals, and there is nothing on the camera industry's horizon to replace SD cards with any kind of USB-C compatible media. USB-A may be superseded (if only technically) by USB-C, but HDMI and SD have no current successor.
- currysausage 8y ago> This makes me more likely to choose Mac since they are admitting it's a problem and they'll fix it out of warranty without question. Only within 4 years after sale. If I spend more than $2000 on a laptop, I expect it to last 7 years minimum.
- ethagknight 8y agoFor what it’s worth, my 15” MacBook Pro touchbar has had bad keyboard problems, and Apple Genius Bar has been very helpful in resolving, aside from the annoyance of my having made 3 trips to the Apple store for keyboard issues. At my last visit, Apple decided to replace my top case for free to fix the keyboard (which they should have done from the start, but whatev) AND the genius decided to go ahead and have them replace my display because it was marred up pretty bad. All out of warranty and all for free. Prior to this last visit, I (like you) was thinking “no way am I spending $2400 on another Apple laptop” if the quality isn’t there, without a beefier warranty. Gladly, Apple stepped up. Everything else about the laptop is excellent, I even like the new keyboard feel, but a Pro computer must be a workhorse and stand up to vigorous typing 6+ hrs a day. I know other people have been burned where maybe I was fortunate, but at least my experience has been relatively rosy. (I’ll be honest though, The touch bar is dumb and Apple should have given it more thought and functionality before rolling it out. I would do without it if it didn’t otherwise require me to buy a nerfed laptop)