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Actually the Mac sales aren’t that surprising to me; lousy keyboards were preventing everyone I knew (including me) from upgrading. They finally shipped someth
by makecheck 6y ago
Actually the Mac sales aren’t that surprising to me; lousy keyboards were preventing everyone I knew (including me) from upgrading. They finally shipped something reasonable that would sell. Now if they just get rid of Touch Bar they’ll make up the rest.
- ryanSrich 6y agoApple should make the macbook pro a lot more customizable IMO. Have multiple keyboard types, add/remove touch bar, add/remove ability to upgrade RAM after purchase, customize number of ports and port types, etc. I know a lot of people (myself included) that would gladly pay for those types of upgrades.
- dzhiurgis 6y agoI’ve always said they need to separate dev from creative machines. For most devs keyboard is way more important than gpu or display color accuracy. Maybe that could be the differentiator for Apple Silicon. Keep x86 for devs who need compatibility. Creatives who need compute. Or they could just keep pushing iPad as creatives device even further...
- auggierose 6y agoI'd argue if a "dev" doesn't need more compute than a "creative", he or she is doing obsolete work.
- theodric 6y agoYeah who needs functional base system libraries when you could be working on MACHINE LEARNING instead Grow up
- auggierose 6y agoA computer is for computing. If you don't have demanding computations to run, you are most likely waisting the potential of your machine(s), and not pushing your art to the limit. If you don't do that, you are obsolete. Who said anything about MACHINE LEARNING?
- slivanes 6y agoWhy are you typing this message on your computer or phone? You are not maxing the CPU and drive out to 100%.
- snakeboy 6y agoI have the impression that a dev workflow resembles: 1. Editing code locally 2. Running expensive computation on a remote compute/database server Creatives need to edit massive complex files with sophisticated real-time simulation of their contents. Devs are editing text files...
- _-___________-_ 6y agoI’m guessing you don’t work in a compiled language...
- dzhiurgis 6y agoLemme know languages compile on a GPU
- ryanSrich 6y agoStrange comment if you've ever worked in either role. I need a much more powerful computer to render a video or voxel than I do to build an entire SaaS application.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- steve_adams_86 6y agoThat’s a nice thought, but their manufacturing process doesn’t seem easy to make more modular. The inside of these machines tends to be an elaborate, compact mesh of components, not well suited to accommodating much customization outside of the specs of perfectly compatible components. I imagine a different keyboard would require space to accommodate both types in any chassis, otherwise making multiple processes for each chassis and keyboard. That gets expensive fast. It also increases surface area for problems, which is expensive in terms of customer support, preparing and fixing processes, reputation, etc. Their limited options are partially to ensure quality, reduce price points, and decrease time to market. It’s a trade off. I’m personally content with their choice - it’s why I tend to stick with their hardware. I could be wrong. This is just my uninformed take on it.
- _ph_ 6y agoThat would indeed be a dream. There is definitely a space in the lineup for a machine which does offer reasonably upgradable components, like battery, memory and storage, as well as better repairability. There are enough professionals, who would be willing to pay for such a machine and bear it, it if gets larger than the current machines. Maybe in an 18" form factor as the followup to the long-discontinued 17" MB Pro. I can understand that Apple has a tradition of being an extremely streamlined company with a small lineup. That was essential to its grows in the early 2000ths. But it is now a 2 trillion company, so they should allow for a bit more variety (how many different iPads do they sell?) just to make more customers happy/able to choose Apple hardware at all.
- bradgessler 6y agoThey could definitely open up the Touch Bar a bit more and let developers build something for it that’s actually useful.
- sgerenser 6y agoI’m not a fan of it in general, but the Touch Bar is surprisingly open. Have you checked out BetterTouchTool?
- kaixi 6y agoI love the TouchBar!
- specktr 6y agoWhat’s your usecase for it? My work laptop has one and I use it to change the brightness of my screen and to lock it. That’s it. I really miss the physical escape key, especially when using vim...
- kaixi 6y ago- One tap to enter Picture-in-picture mode in Safari when watching YouTube. - Choosing an emoji in WhatsApp Desktop. - Pausing and seeing a podcast's listening progress in Apple Podcasts, even when the app is in the background. - Compiling in Android Studio. I have a physical ESC key, so I don't have a problem with the touchbar.
- dylan604 6y ago> Pausing and seeing a podcast's listening progress in Apple Podcasts, even when the app is in the background. How do you have a background app's control in the TouchBar so that the foreground app's controls are not displayed?
- easton 6y agoYou may already know this, but you can remap your Caps Lock to escape if you don't use it (System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Modifier Keys). It keeps you on home row too, which is nice for vim.
- ksec 6y agoJust re-release the 2015 MacBook Pro as MacBook Classic. Classic Keyboard ( Scissors, with decent Key Travel ), Classic MagSafe, Classic "Sane" Sized TrackPad ( so you dont get as much or zero false positives ), SD Card, HDMI. Change the USB port to USB-C and upgrade the CPU. That's it. Dont touch anything else.
- iandinwoodie 6y agoImagine the sales that would generate
- solarkraft 6y agoTotally agreed! I use one for work and seriously considered buying one privately. Pros: - It doesn't have the new square styling I find ugly - The trackpad is reasonably sized - It already has the force touch trackpad Cons: - The bezels are looking a bit thick nowadays (though not preposterously so) - The processor is getting a bit slow for heavy tasks - It can't output 4k@60hz via HDMI (only realized that one recently) - It doesn't have USB-C This model with upgraded internals, ports (and upgradability, come on) would be a very solid offer.
- charliemil4 6y agoTheir best keyboard was around ~2008 with the aluminum shaped keys — I’d rather have that keyboard with the added thickness any-day.
- valleyjo 6y agoKinda pathetic on Apple that the thing we want the most is like 7+ years old design
- Polylactic_acid 6y agoIs it pathetic that we find 100+ year old buildings and designs beautiful? Aesthetics are reasonably consistent outside of design trends and hype. The old macbook was and always will be very nice.
- bdcravens 6y ago
- billyhoffman 6y agoWhat about Apples history makes leads someone to think they would ever allow customers to 1) select different types of keyboards for their laptops 2) define the number/ types of ports in the same laptop SKU? I’m not criticizing your desire to want those things. But this feels like you are defining some ideal and then lamenting the company for not delivering you ideal, when their history shows they don’t believe in that ideal at all.
- microtherion 6y agoIn Mac sales, there was probably going to be a question of whether the announced ARM transition would osbourne Intel Mac sales (or maybe, conversely, get everybody to buy one last Intel Mac before their model was discontinued?).
- simonh 6y agoI’m an iMac guy and firmly in the second camp. I also want to be able to dual boot into a windows 10, and be able to run Windows and Linux VMs, so the recent iMac update was a no brainier. Should last me 6 to 8 years. I’ll worry about VMs on AS Macs then.
- mh8h 6y agoThe tricky part is that, if Apple supports the OS on the old architecture as long as they did during the last transition, the Intel macs of today will only get support for two major OS versions after Big Sur.
- AnthonyMouse 6y agoWe're not even sure if they're going to phase out the old architecture or just sell them concurrently for an arbitrarily long period of time. What do they put in the next Mac Pro that can make it competitive with a 64-core Threadripper, if not a 64-core Threadripper?
- my123 6y agoApple said that the transition period was two years. For the Mac Pro that's a good question, wonder if they'll use merchant arm chips there instead of their own ones.
- _-___________-_ 6y agoWhich merchant ARM chips would come even close to a 64-core threadripper?
- baggy_trough 6y agoSet "Touch Bar shows F1, F2, etc. Keys" for a somewhat less horrifying Touch Bar experience.
- bsder 6y agoThat and people buying the one last x86 Mac before the changeover. This is likely the last Mac I will ever buy so I maxed it out for maximum longevity--that's going to help Apple's quarterly numbers for sure. I have been gradually shifting to my Lenovo Carbon X1 running Linux over time. Linux support is still not quite there for external thunderbolt docks and multiple displays, but it's really close.
- _ph_ 6y agoYes, I am waiting on a 16" MB Pro too, they have very long delivery times. I need x86 support, so it was now or never :).
- m463 6y agoI think with people sitting at home on their computer all day, including basically everyone starting the new school year, that all electronic device manufacturers are getting a big boost.
- rconti 6y agoI'm surprised they're selling any; I don't regret buying my Air in March, but I'd still be holding off if I had known ARM models were coming soon.
- AnthonyMouse 6y agoThat's why they're selling now. Get one that can still run the existing installed base of applications without translation and natively virtualize x64 Windows and Linux. Let the other guy suffer Rosetta and transition bugs. Then the kinks will have been worked out by the time you want to replace the one you just bought.
- rconti 6y agoThe conventional wisdom is this is why products aren't typically pre-announced, and why Apple says things like "transition will occur over a period of 2 years" and then actually happens in 6 months, like the Intel transition. That the new machines will be significantly faster. This commentary was all over every Intel->ARM thread, until today, when suddenly every comment seemed to be that people were obviously buying Intel Macs to avoid having to buy ARM. Which doesn't really make sense -- you can always buy an Intel Mac up to and including the day the ARM machines drop. Probably at a steep discount, too. Probably some time after the ARM machines come out. There's no hurry.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago> you can always buy an Intel Mac up to and including the day the ARM machines drop. You can, but when you know they're about to switch architectures, it's a pretty good guess that what they're not about to do is announce a whole new slate of devices using the old architecture. So even if they still sell them in two years, they'll probably still be the same specs, and without a price cut so as to discourage people from buying the existing one instead of the new one. So if you know you're going to buy the existing one, there's little reason to wait. Especially when they have a record of claiming they'll sell them for two years and then stopping after six months.
- jonpurdy 6y agoI’m one of them. Bought a used 2015 13” back in 2017 just to get the old keyboard back. Sold it a few months ago for the 2020 13”.
- mortenjorck 6y agoThe core mistake Apple made with the Touch Bar was to focus on application-specific actions rather than cross-application ones, something BetterTouchTool actually remedies quite well. It never made sense to duplicate actions that professional users already know the keyboard shortcuts for. You already have muscle memory for all of those, and even if you're learning a new app, it's faster long-term to learn the shortcut than to look down and hit a non-tactile spot on the Touch Bar every time. For controlling other applications than the currently active one, however, the Touch Bar is great. I have BetterTouchTool set up to show my currently playing music, my next calendar appointment, and the weather, plus BTT's built-in clipboard management tool. I actually miss it when I'm working on my non-Touch Bar personal laptop.
- breck 6y agoMy hunch was that TouchBar wasn't about the keyboard, it was about the screen. They were looking to do away with the laptop screen entirely, and the keyboard would be the computer. You would always need to plug your laptop into an external display. Many people mostly just plug their laptop into external monitors anyway. The benefit is you could cut the cost of the laptop drastically and make it more robust. But to do that, you would still need some display on the keyboard for various scenarios (mostly to resolve any connection issues with the display), hence the TouchBar. But just a theory.
- Polylactic_acid 6y agoImo the core mistake is that it replaced the top row of buttons. Those media keys are super useful very frequently. Having to tap the expand button and wait for an animation makes them much less useful. They had plenty of space to leave the old row in and make the touchbar for application specific buttons.
- ncrmro 6y agoIf you hold the volume or brightness button and start dragging you don’t have to wait for the animation
- perryizgr8 6y ago
- andy9775 6y agoYup, kept my 2015 13" pro till I bought the 16" a few months ago. The touch bar is meh for me though. I find it quicker to change volume with physical keys than touch bar but it's not a huge issue. However, love that the physical escape came back. That was big.
- 0df8dkdf 6y ago> Now if they just get rid of Touch Bar they’ll make up the rest. thanks you for mentioning that it is one of most annoying thing about the new mac!