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The quote is a bit out of context. The sentence right above it: >It makes almost nothing worse and almost everything better, finally bringing the Mac Mini into
by realradicalwash 8y ago
The quote is a bit out of context. The sentence right above it:
>It makes almost nothing worse and almost everything better, finally bringing the Mac Mini into the modern age.
So, no, it's not "yayy" because it "hasn't gotten worse", it's "yayy", because "[it makes] almost everything better".
- drcongo 8y agoAnyone who owns a MacBook Pro with Touch Bar will definitely be saying "yay it hasn't gotten worse!" about these.
- wlesieutre 8y agoI don't dislike the touchbar, I'm just annoyed at having to pay so much for something I'm ambivalent about.
- sigzero 8y agoExactly!
- rorykoehler 8y agoI don't understand why it isn't just an option. If you want it give you can pay for it.
- bunderbunder 8y agoProbably because it can't be made to be "just an option". Having seen teardowns of a MacBook, I'm pretty sure that one without a touchbar would be more-or-less a completely different computer - different keyboard, yes. To accomplish that, though, you'd need to also make a different housing to accommodate it, and a different motherboard, too, because this stuff's all soldered together as a single unit these days. And for all that, people would still be griping about the keyboard and the monoport.
- robotresearcher 8y agoThey sell a version without a touchbar. https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro
- wlesieutre 8y agoA low end 2-port version, yes. They ignored those for the 2018 MBP refresh, probably because the new Macbook Air was coming. I'd bet on the full keyboard MBP getting discontinued now that it's out, or best case having the 2017 hang around while the touchbar models continue to see updates.
- dwaite 8y agoI doubt the "MacBook Escape" (13" non-touchbar) will be revved, because it will either be met by the air or an eventual revved MacBook focusing on ultraportable demographics. The Escape has higher powered CPUs than the Air or MacBook, but I don't think anyone is buying from those three based on horsepower.
- bunderbunder 8y agoRight. But, echoing what I said, it's not "just an option" - it's a whole different model that they happen to be selling under the same name. Different CPU options, different monitors, different port configuration, etc. They don't even have the same number of microphones.
- wild_preference 8y agoHate it or not, Apple has to make it relatively commonplace if they want macOS apps to bother developing for it instead of ignoring it. Their short-term goal is 100% of MBP users, and surely, eventually 100% of all macOS laptop users. Keeping it optional indefinitely, then, defeats this goal.
- Wowfunhappy 8y agoThen is it going to come to desktop machines too, where people often use battery-powered Bluetooth keyboards, or peripherals not made by Apple? What about the tiny 12 inch Macbook? I don't see how this thing is practical across the entire Mac line.
- antsar 8y agoFrom Apple's perspective, extending this to desktops kills two birds with one stone. 1. Widespread touchbar adoption 2. Increased sales of Apple keyboards
- copperx 8y agoI don't see how you can add the Touchbar to desktops without creating a wired keyboard or adding an expensive big battery to it and jacking the price to $200. Actually, I do: They'll raise the price of the cheapest iMac configuration and include the keyboard in the box. After seeing the starting Mac Mini prices, it makes total sense.
- wild_preference 8y agoThe 12-inch Macbook has an F-key row which is what gets replaced with the touch bar. I only estimated that they were going for 100% laptop coverage. But I can imagine a future where Apple keyboards have a touch bar option. Though not as important because Macbook touch bar penetration can drive developers to integrate with it, alone. At which point it's not much different than gestures when it comes to answering your questions. What happens when you use a Logitech mouse on your macOS desktop instead of a Magic Trackpad? Note that touch bar integration cannot have unique features, so it's never required. The challenge is to get developers to care about it which is the prerequisite for users to care about it.
- crad 8y agoI'm pretty happy with mine, but thanks for speaking for us all with your sweeping generalization.
- pentae 8y agoI'm terribly unhappy with mine and so is everyone else I know, so i'm pretty pleased with it
- copperx 8y agoI like the Touchbar more than most of my other colleagues like the Touchbar. And I hate the Touchbar.
- phaus 8y agoI work at a company where most of us use Macs. Everyone that has upgraded from a 2013-2015 MBP to the touchbar model absolutely hates it, including me. There's gotta be someone around here that actually likes it, but I haven't met them yet. Its OK if you like it. I'm sure lots of people do, but you know damn well significantly more people have had issues with this laptop than normal, so I'm not sure why you're implying otherwise. The keyboard is by far the worst I've ever used, and I've owned a variety of $200 Wal-Mart black friday laptops and a couple of netbooks, in addition to some high end stuff. I had a friend with an older MBP attempt to show me something using my computer and he could barely type on it without frequent mistakes. Within a minute he was getting frustrated. It just feels terrible. I never thought anything would be worse than typing on a touch-screen but Apple's engineers have accomplished a horrifying miracle. Its like they intentionally tried to design something that's as loud as a mechanical keyboard while still having worse tactile feedback than a $5.00 rubber dome keyboard. On top of that, its not noticeably faster, after 4.5 years it still maxed out @ 16GB Ram (They fixed this in 2018 but its too late), which is not enough for my use case + it died after 3 months (Not the keyboard, it was a power issue). This is both the most expensive and the worst computer I've ever owned. The 2013 MBP I'm using now as a loaner while I get my new one fixed is, to quote Steve Jobs "Like getting a glass of ice water in hell." It just works.
- deleted 8y ago
- rootusrootus 8y agoI don't mind the touchbar. It has it's moments. I just wish they had included it in addition to the normal keyboard, rather than replacing the top row.
- dwaite 8y agoI think really the goal was replacing the top row in the first place - the function keys are generally useless except for ancient legacy compatibility, advanced user's macros, and media control. But the sides of the function keys are the escape and power keys, so the row itself couldn't go away I wish the Touch Bar was farther offset, 50-100% taller for a better display area, and that the escape and touch id/power buttons were distinct. I also wish there was a standard way for applications to advertise functions for it (I have some really useful tools that are third party, such as mic mute).
- stephenr 8y agoI don't have a problem with the Touch Bar. It's kind of handy for occasional things that are context specific and normally involve using the mouse.
- babypuncher 8y agoI think the thing people have a problem with is the atrocious new keyboard
- stephenr 8y agoIt's taking me some time to get used to, I'll grant you that. I'll be getting a 2018 Mac Mini once they're available for order here, so this machine will see much less use then, just basically if I need to be able to do something while travelling (which isn't that frequent).
- Elidrake24 8y agoChiming in to agree that it wasn't a problem here. Though I also never understood why someone would be crazy enough to leave ESC as the default keybinding anyhow.
- TomVDB 8y agoSome people use both ESC and Caps Lock all the time. How else would you bind ESC?
- rthille 8y agoCaps-Lock is a waste of a key. NeXT had it right by using Command-Shift (without any other keys) to turn on/off Caps-Lock.
- TomVDB 8y agoI learned high speed touch typing in the eighties, with included heavy use of the caps-lock. There is nothing wasteful about it when you've been trained that way.
- leoc 8y agoWell, tbh, if it's simply a choice of which key to map to the currently-Caps Lock key then Escape should be the winner even if exiling Caps Lock to the Touch Bar would cause significant annoyance to some heavy users. However, while users are mostly just faced with perhaps-hard choices about how to remap the given keys, the keyboard manufacturer and integrator Apple had many other options. Caps Lock is currently 2U wide on both ISO and ANSI layouts https://i.ytimg.com/vi/3tJagPz-xIw/maxresdefault.jpg https://i.ytimg.com/vi/3tJagPz-xIw/maxresdefault.jpg , so it could fairly comfortably be split into a 1U Esc and Caps Lock. You could even give Escape the outside position: that's not a big reach, just the mirror-image of the ISO English # key and more convenient than Esc's existing position in both ANSI and ISO, and there's an arguable case for not putting Esc on too much of a hair-trigger position near the home row anyway. Alternatively you could carve a 1U key out from the right of the right Shift, which is pretty uselessly overlong on both ISO and ANSI.
- 8y ago
- simonh 8y agoAnd now the top thread is dominated by an argument about laptop keyboards, for a device that isn't a laptop and doesn't even come with a keyboard.
- Nexxxeh 8y agoBut to be fair, the device is made by Apple and the discussion speaks to how Apple treats its consumers.
- cptskippy 8y agoI don't think that really changed the implication. Regardless of whether he's speaking specifically about the Mac Mini, about Apple products in general, or about the entire industry; he's still saying that it's bucking the trend of "being a series of compromises and disappointments sold as innovation" and that almost everything is genuinely an improvement.
- maggit 8y agoNo, that quote is not out of context at all. The expectation that Apple would in some way ruin the Mac Mini in the next update is the topic of several of the first paragraphs in the article. The gist is indeed "It hasn't gotten worse! Yayy!" Granted, that's not all of it. He is celebrating that it's gotten better, but he is also specifically celebrating that it hasn't lost many advantages.
- Tactic 8y agoGiven the use of the word "donglage" I suspect it was a somewhat snarky reference to the iphone and the disappearing head phone jack.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- chaosphere2112 8y agoIt's actually a reference to the USB-C ecosystem for the laptop line; Marco and his cohosts on the Accidental Tech Podcast have burned a lot of time griping about the state of connecting things to a laptop. Not so much time on the head phone jack, which was mostly a no-op for them (since it was paired with the airpods).
- solidr53 8y agoI'm going to hold on to my Mid-2015 MacBook Pro for dear life. I'm hoping it will be good for 3 more years.
- lurcio 8y agoYou might be alright - I'm still on a 2009 MBP 13" (4Gb SSD) and a 2010 17" (8Gb, SSD) hands down the best money I ever spent.
- JohnBooty 8y agoYou're not alone. I actually bought one refurb from Apple this year and I plan on extending the AppleCare to the full 3 years.
- nonamenoslogan 8y agoI'm using a 17" 2010 at work with an i7, SSD upgrade, and 16Gb of RAM and its plenty fast still. At home I've got a 2010 Air that begs for more RAM yet still runs as well as when I bought it including 3+ hours of battery life depending on if I am surfing or writing. 2010-2012 was a high point in Mac laptops.
- bookofjoe 8y agoMy mid-2012 MacBook Pro works like a dream and has never had a problem, FWIW.