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I'm off the Apple train. I honestly don't trust them to make reliable hardware anymore. They've had three years to fix this mess but they have shown zero initia

I'm off the Apple train. I honestly don't trust them to make reliable hardware anymore. They've had three years to fix this mess but they have shown zero initiative or intention to do it. Apple has consistently shown that it cares more about form over function. No one needs their laptops to be any thinner than they already are. And no one needs the useless, expensive touchbar.

riffraff 7y ago
I plan to hold on to my 2015 mbp for a couple more years, since it's still functional enough. My hope is that Jony Ive leaving Apple might lead to some improvements, though I'm doubtful since Apple will still depend on his design firm.
kristiandupont 7y ago
I just bought a second hand 2015 macbook pro and I hope it will last me years. But I was looking at Surface books and unless something changes, I too will be off Macbooks. Which sucks because if I could just keep the exterior and have better cpu+ram+hdd, I'd be perfectly happy.
- hypersoar 7y ago
  I have a Surface Pro 4, and I like it but have a warning: Surface devices cannot be repaired. At all. If anything goes wrong with your Surface Book, you only option is to swap it out with a refurb. If you're out-of-warranty, this costs $600 for the Book.
coldtea 7y ago
>Apple has consistently shown that it cares more about form over function. No one needs their laptops to be any thinner than they already are Well, this depends. Here's how a user put it: "I have to admit being a bit baffled by how nobody else seems to have done what Apple did with the Macbook Air - even several years after the first release, the other notebook vendors continue to push those ugly and clunky things. Yes, there are vendors that have tried to emulate it, but usually pretty badly. I don't think I'm unusual in preferring my laptop to be thin and light. (...) A notebook that weighs more than a kilo is simply not a good thing (yeah, I’m using the smaller 11″ macbook air, and I think weight could still be improved on, but at least it’s very close to the magical 1kg limit)." - Linus Torvalds (Later he stopped using Apple laptops for the even lighter/thinner chromebooks).
- C1sc0cat 7y ago
  I wonder what Linus would have made of the Compaq Portable or an Osbourn 1 back in the day.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    He would have made do, for lack of alternatives (and a lack of technology to make things lighter then). But that's hardly a justification when alternatives exist and the technology allows it.
- isostatic 7y ago
  There are two types of laptop users - those wanting a portable machine, light, good enough for a short amount of ssh or vim and maybe a webpage or two The other type are those looking for a luggable desktop, those who hotdesk but don’t really work on the go. There’s then who want both, but that has proven to be a mugs game. No matter how much money you throw at it you end up with compromises on portability it power. I for one stick with a 2015 era desktop and a 2013 11” MacBook air and don’t have problems.
  - gimboland 7y ago
    Nah, I don't fit into either of your categories. I'm perfectly happy with my 2015 13" MBP; I use it as my main machine, every day, doing my job as a dev: most of the time, at home, it's driving two monitors (and acting as a third screen itself), though right now I'm working in a cafe for a change. In both circumstances it's a great, sufficiently powerful, nice-to-use machine which I'm productive on. Getting this right _is_ possible. I do fear the day I have to "upgrade" though...
- systemtest 7y ago
  For a 13 inch or smaller laptop it is understandable to strike a balance between size, battery and specifications. A 15 inch laptop is never going to be portable or easy to carry. We don't care about thickness. Just make it a bit thicker to add a full-travel keyboard.
rubber_duck 7y ago
I think the problem is deeper - their largest customer base probably cares about those things - have you seen how many people now days use MB for office work ? It became a status symbol, keyboard issues aside - they will be perfectly happy if their machine thermal throttles at 50% load because they never even hit 50% load. And it being thicker a few mm. to get proper thermals is a big deal to that audience (my impressions from talking to a few). I was unfortunate enough that I needed to get a Mac and since I wasn't paying I went for I9 2018 MBP with Vega - this thing sucks horribly - it overheats constantly, blows loudly, the OSX is very unstable - common freezes and getting my 5K thunderbolt monitor to work reliably is a PITA - pray it doesn't lockup on monitor plugin or that it detects the monitors USB hub without a restart - I had to go to a beta to get support for it when I bought it... And not to mention no touch option in a 4k$ device ! Lenovo X1 Carbon running windows is far superior experience for me. Also a big fan of Yoga line for more casual use - GF has one and going from random typing to tablet in bed or in chair is amazing and pair surfing with touch on a large screen is a great experience.
- mcv 7y ago
  I've been looking at Yoga devices, but holding one in tablet form, my fingers were groping in the keyboard on the back: not exactly comfortable. How is that experience for you? I'm strongly leaning towards a Thinkpad as replacement for my old Macbook, also because of their excellent keyboards. The only downside is that they don't have a 17" laptop without a separate GPU.
  - rubber_duck 7y ago
    Did you try a model which retracts the keys when it folds ? You can still feel the keys but you cant press and its not as big deal. But don't expect real tabled experience - its too big for one hand use - the way we use it is like bed/couch browsing so we either post it up or something similar or we watch some shows on it. For example we are rebuilding our apartment right now and scrolling through pages/clicking images etc. together with touch on a large screen is amazing and especially cool in pair - one person can navigate but the other can just take over when they want. For shopping browsing it's amazing. Even in laptop mode I feel the touch is intuitive and useful, especially if you don't have a mouse - the experience is way better than a trackpad (even the MBP one).
PunksATawnyFill 7y ago
Apple has insulted users and embarrassed itself with this dogshit keyboard and the pathetic emoji bar... on a $4000 "pro" computer, no less. Then there's the glued-together chassis, the soldered-in RAM and drives... when those go bad (and they will), you get to just throw the computer away instead of performing a routine replacement. Apple's shoddily-made computers should be hanging from pegs in blister packs at Walgreen's. It's too bad that Apple has given up on real computers. And Windows is a pathetic mess... so in the end, computers are returning whence they came: to the domain of scientists, hobbyists, and other serious users.
- puranjay 7y ago
  I didn't realize how great upgradable components really are until recently. I had a 2.5 year old Lenovo laptop with a fast processor (i7 at 2.8Ghz). Upgraded the RAM to 16GB and replaced the HDD with a SDD. The thing now runs way faster and feels brand new.
bsder 7y ago
Ayup. Finally broke down and bought a Lenovo X1 Carbon 7th Gen running Windows 10 and Debian dual booted. I have a useful keyboard, Bluetooth that doesn't randomly die, graphics drivers that don't suck and a MATTE SCREEN. I didn't even realize that you could get a laptop with one anymore--I practically cried tears of joy when I opened it up and didn't see a reflection in the screen. I'm slowly transitioning off of my 2015 Macbook Pro Retina to Linux on the Lenovo. I've had a few issues, but I can't say that my OS X experience has been all roses either. The OS X machine randomly loses Bluetooth, drops my printer at irregular intervals, and occasionally won't find my monitor's highest resolutions. To be honest, Linux really isn't that much more annoying than OS X anymore. Linux has gotten better, but OS X feels like it has gotten a LOT worse.
- pizzapill 7y ago
  > MATTE SCREEN Some of the old thinkpads had a display where you could turn off the backlight outside and use the sunlight.
hrktb 7y ago
What train are you boarding on ? Apple was an oasis of reliable design because short of Lenovo and Dell other brands were horrible in critical ways(e.g. no decent *nix support, or lack of decent international keyboard), and Thinkpads have a very opinionated design to put it mildly, leaving only Dell for a lot of us. I kinda hate the current crop of MacBooks, but I am not sure I want a Dell either. For people listening to ATP, I see it as the same issue as John Siracusa and his Oxo cheese grater, there's just no obvious good replacement.
- jcranberry 7y ago
  What's wrong with Dell? Their XPS and Precision lines are good, and have Linux support.

riffraff 7y ago

I plan to hold on to my 2015 mbp for a couple more years, since it's still functional enough. My hope is that Jony Ive leaving Apple might lead to some improvements, though I'm doubtful since Apple will still depend on his design firm.

kristiandupont 7y ago

I just bought a second hand 2015 macbook pro and I hope it will last me years. But I was looking at Surface books and unless something changes, I too will be off Macbooks. Which sucks because if I could just keep the exterior and have better cpu+ram+hdd, I'd be perfectly happy.

hypersoar 7y ago
I have a Surface Pro 4, and I like it but have a warning: Surface devices cannot be repaired. At all. If anything goes wrong with your Surface Book, you only option is to swap it out with a refurb. If you're out-of-warranty, this costs $600 for the Book.

coldtea 7y ago

>Apple has consistently shown that it cares more about form over function. No one needs their laptops to be any thinner than they already are Well, this depends. Here's how a user put it: "I have to admit being a bit baffled by how nobody else seems to have done what Apple did with the Macbook Air - even several years after the first release, the other notebook vendors continue to push those ugly and clunky things. Yes, there are vendors that have tried to emulate it, but usually pretty badly. I don't think I'm unusual in preferring my laptop to be thin and light. (...) A notebook that weighs more than a kilo is simply not a good thing (yeah, I’m using the smaller 11″ macbook air, and I think weight could still be improved on, but at least it’s very close to the magical 1kg limit)." - Linus Torvalds (Later he stopped using Apple laptops for the even lighter/thinner chromebooks).

C1sc0cat 7y ago
I wonder what Linus would have made of the Compaq Portable or an Osbourn 1 back in the day.
- coldtea 7y ago
  He would have made do, for lack of alternatives (and a lack of technology to make things lighter then). But that's hardly a justification when alternatives exist and the technology allows it.
isostatic 7y ago
There are two types of laptop users - those wanting a portable machine, light, good enough for a short amount of ssh or vim and maybe a webpage or two The other type are those looking for a luggable desktop, those who hotdesk but don’t really work on the go. There’s then who want both, but that has proven to be a mugs game. No matter how much money you throw at it you end up with compromises on portability it power. I for one stick with a 2015 era desktop and a 2013 11” MacBook air and don’t have problems.
- gimboland 7y ago
  Nah, I don't fit into either of your categories. I'm perfectly happy with my 2015 13" MBP; I use it as my main machine, every day, doing my job as a dev: most of the time, at home, it's driving two monitors (and acting as a third screen itself), though right now I'm working in a cafe for a change. In both circumstances it's a great, sufficiently powerful, nice-to-use machine which I'm productive on. Getting this right _is_ possible. I do fear the day I have to "upgrade" though...
systemtest 7y ago
For a 13 inch or smaller laptop it is understandable to strike a balance between size, battery and specifications. A 15 inch laptop is never going to be portable or easy to carry. We don't care about thickness. Just make it a bit thicker to add a full-travel keyboard.

rubber_duck 7y ago

I think the problem is deeper - their largest customer base probably cares about those things - have you seen how many people now days use MB for office work ? It became a status symbol, keyboard issues aside - they will be perfectly happy if their machine thermal throttles at 50% load because they never even hit 50% load. And it being thicker a few mm. to get proper thermals is a big deal to that audience (my impressions from talking to a few). I was unfortunate enough that I needed to get a Mac and since I wasn't paying I went for I9 2018 MBP with Vega - this thing sucks horribly - it overheats constantly, blows loudly, the OSX is very unstable - common freezes and getting my 5K thunderbolt monitor to work reliably is a PITA - pray it doesn't lockup on monitor plugin or that it detects the monitors USB hub without a restart - I had to go to a beta to get support for it when I bought it... And not to mention no touch option in a 4k$ device ! Lenovo X1 Carbon running windows is far superior experience for me. Also a big fan of Yoga line for more casual use - GF has one and going from random typing to tablet in bed or in chair is amazing and pair surfing with touch on a large screen is a great experience.

mcv 7y ago
I've been looking at Yoga devices, but holding one in tablet form, my fingers were groping in the keyboard on the back: not exactly comfortable. How is that experience for you? I'm strongly leaning towards a Thinkpad as replacement for my old Macbook, also because of their excellent keyboards. The only downside is that they don't have a 17" laptop without a separate GPU.
- rubber_duck 7y ago
  Did you try a model which retracts the keys when it folds ? You can still feel the keys but you cant press and its not as big deal. But don't expect real tabled experience - its too big for one hand use - the way we use it is like bed/couch browsing so we either post it up or something similar or we watch some shows on it. For example we are rebuilding our apartment right now and scrolling through pages/clicking images etc. together with touch on a large screen is amazing and especially cool in pair - one person can navigate but the other can just take over when they want. For shopping browsing it's amazing. Even in laptop mode I feel the touch is intuitive and useful, especially if you don't have a mouse - the experience is way better than a trackpad (even the MBP one).

PunksATawnyFill 7y ago

Apple has insulted users and embarrassed itself with this dogshit keyboard and the pathetic emoji bar... on a $4000 "pro" computer, no less. Then there's the glued-together chassis, the soldered-in RAM and drives... when those go bad (and they will), you get to just throw the computer away instead of performing a routine replacement. Apple's shoddily-made computers should be hanging from pegs in blister packs at Walgreen's. It's too bad that Apple has given up on real computers. And Windows is a pathetic mess... so in the end, computers are returning whence they came: to the domain of scientists, hobbyists, and other serious users.

puranjay 7y ago
I didn't realize how great upgradable components really are until recently. I had a 2.5 year old Lenovo laptop with a fast processor (i7 at 2.8Ghz). Upgraded the RAM to 16GB and replaced the HDD with a SDD. The thing now runs way faster and feels brand new.

bsder 7y ago

Ayup. Finally broke down and bought a Lenovo X1 Carbon 7th Gen running Windows 10 and Debian dual booted. I have a useful keyboard, Bluetooth that doesn't randomly die, graphics drivers that don't suck and a MATTE SCREEN. I didn't even realize that you could get a laptop with one anymore--I practically cried tears of joy when I opened it up and didn't see a reflection in the screen. I'm slowly transitioning off of my 2015 Macbook Pro Retina to Linux on the Lenovo. I've had a few issues, but I can't say that my OS X experience has been all roses either. The OS X machine randomly loses Bluetooth, drops my printer at irregular intervals, and occasionally won't find my monitor's highest resolutions. To be honest, Linux really isn't that much more annoying than OS X anymore. Linux has gotten better, but OS X feels like it has gotten a LOT worse.

pizzapill 7y ago
> MATTE SCREEN Some of the old thinkpads had a display where you could turn off the backlight outside and use the sunlight.

hrktb 7y ago

What train are you boarding on ? Apple was an oasis of reliable design because short of Lenovo and Dell other brands were horrible in critical ways(e.g. no decent *nix support, or lack of decent international keyboard), and Thinkpads have a very opinionated design to put it mildly, leaving only Dell for a lot of us. I kinda hate the current crop of MacBooks, but I am not sure I want a Dell either. For people listening to ATP, I see it as the same issue as John Siracusa and his Oxo cheese grater, there's just no obvious good replacement.

jcranberry 7y ago
What's wrong with Dell? Their XPS and Precision lines are good, and have Linux support.