7 ms·

The nice thing about my 2015 Macbook Pro is that it's useful without any accessories. I can just throw it in a bag and walk out the door. It's got enough batte

by yarcob 6y ago

The nice thing about my 2015 Macbook Pro is that it's useful without any accessories. I can just throw it in a bag and walk out the door. It's got enough battery life that I usually don't need to bring a charger. It has all the ports that I ever need. I can hook it up to a projector with the built in HDMI port, I can put in the SD card from my camera, or I can quickly copy files from someones thumb drive. I don't need to think about bringing the right kind of cables for what I'm planning to do. Sure, the new Macs are a lot faster, but every Mac released after 2015 would be a downgrade for me.

oneplane 6y ago
I have the 2015, 2017 and a 2020 and they are pretty much all the same that way. None need a power source for normal workdays, I don't have a camera that needs to have memory cards swapped out, and all presenter displays are either ClickShare or AppleTV and thus wireless. I don't accept random mass storage devices, and for those few times that I do want one I use a multiport adapter which works with both the 2015 and all the newer ones (USB-C and USB-A connectors), which I also use for when WiFi is down and you need Ethernet. It's not much bigger than any Ethernet adapter anyway.
spijdar 6y ago
It's great that the built in ports cover all your needs, but my experience with laptops has been more complicated. You use a projector as an example of a use for your HDMI port. In my limited experience doing presentations, I've run across a mixture of HDMI, VGA, and even DisplayPort for some reason. Once, even though I was using a Dell Precision with built in HDMI and VGA, I ended up using a usb-c dongle with combo HDMI+VGA+DP ports I keep in my bag. My coworker had to wait for someone to get a more specific passive converter for their laptop which didn't have usb-c. Obviously YMMV, but I've found the combo of usb-c plus a compact multi port adapter to be indispensable, even on a laptop with a crap-ton of ports.
shrimpx 6y ago
My take is Jony Ive went extreme on form factor and totally lost his grip on users. He wanted an objectively perfect, extremely thin portless wireless machine. Now that he’s gone the design team is descending from the Ivery tower and undoing his work, meeting users halfway again.
- aledalgrande 6y ago
  Yeah totally sounds like with Steve gone, there was nobody anchoring him to the ground.
- yarcob 6y ago
  I really hope that you're right, but to be honest I'm not holding my breath. I also don't think the 2015 Macbooks were perfect, it's just that I don't care about any of the new things Apple has introduced. What I would really like would be a cellular modem so I don't have to bother with hotspots on the train and maybe a stylus for marking up screenshots. For my use cases, Apple expects me to carry a Macbook, an iPad, a stylus, and a pouch filled with dongles. I'm envious of the Windows folks, they get to have a single device that does it all.
  - uncledave 6y ago
    I just moved away from windows because while the devices do everything they don't work properly. I've now switched to a Mac Mini for a desktop and I use an 11" iPad Pro and apple pencil for everything that isn't code on the road. I've got to the age where I'm not sitting hunched over a laptop working for half a day and there's not much point in having a laptop if it's going to be docked all day.
  - i_am_proteus 6y ago
    Why are you envious of Windows folks? Windows hardware is generally cheaper, so if you're using Macintosh, you could ostensibly afford Windows.
    - vb6sp6 6y ago
      if your workflow depends on macOS then it doesn't matter how cheap windows is
  - Kognito 6y ago
    Given Apple have gone cellular with everything all the way down to the Watch, I’m always amazed they never included it in a Macbook.
behnamoh 6y ago
Agreed. I wouldn’t touch any post-2015 MBP, but I wish I had bought one with dedicated graphics card. With each new version of macOS, things have gotten so much slower and laggy, even though I have disabled almost every unnecessary process and app in the OS. The other day, I was working with a 2011 MBP with graphics crad and Chrome was much faster in that compared to my 2015 MBP. I think the graphics card does improve web surfing quite a bit.
- alisonkisk 6y ago
  The dedicated graphics cards have a terrible feisgn flaw that burns 10-20W at idle when an external monitor is plugged in. This is a problem daily, while a non-dGPU laptop handles external monitor just fine.
  - behnamoh 6y ago
    No it doesn't. My MBP can't handle a 27 inch external monitor without putting so much pressure on the CPU. If it had a dedicated GPU, that would take care of video output and not make the mac drain its battery by having the CPU fans at +6500 RPM all the time.
gxnxcxcx 6y ago
The 2015 MBP is also the last one that still has built-in optical audio output, via mini-TOSLINK.
alisonkisk 6y ago
An HDMI cable is an accessory. CompactFlash card doesn't fit in an SD port.
- DWakefield 6y ago
  Any projector setup worth having would have an HDMI cable ready for you. A 5.25" floppy diskette won't fit an a CompactFlash slot. What's your point? I can come up with silly excuses too.
- yarcob 6y ago
  Almost every place that has a projector also has an HDMI cable installed. I haven't used a CF card in the last 10 years or so, but SD cards show up frequently. (Cameras, Rasberry Pi, Prusa 3D printers). For the Raspberry Pi I needed to use an adaptor because it uses smaller cards, but still better than no card reader at all. But of course that's just my experience. If you use CF a lot, an SD slot won't help.
chandra381 6y ago
Oh absolutely. As a product designer, I was worried that it may be rendered obsolete, but the industry standard for design tools have moved into cloud-based browser solutions, so it will still be useful forever

by yarcob 6y ago

oneplane 6y ago

I have the 2015, 2017 and a 2020 and they are pretty much all the same that way. None need a power source for normal workdays, I don't have a camera that needs to have memory cards swapped out, and all presenter displays are either ClickShare or AppleTV and thus wireless. I don't accept random mass storage devices, and for those few times that I do want one I use a multiport adapter which works with both the 2015 and all the newer ones (USB-C and USB-A connectors), which I also use for when WiFi is down and you need Ethernet. It's not much bigger than any Ethernet adapter anyway.

spijdar 6y ago

It's great that the built in ports cover all your needs, but my experience with laptops has been more complicated. You use a projector as an example of a use for your HDMI port. In my limited experience doing presentations, I've run across a mixture of HDMI, VGA, and even DisplayPort for some reason. Once, even though I was using a Dell Precision with built in HDMI and VGA, I ended up using a usb-c dongle with combo HDMI+VGA+DP ports I keep in my bag. My coworker had to wait for someone to get a more specific passive converter for their laptop which didn't have usb-c. Obviously YMMV, but I've found the combo of usb-c plus a compact multi port adapter to be indispensable, even on a laptop with a crap-ton of ports.

shrimpx 6y ago

My take is Jony Ive went extreme on form factor and totally lost his grip on users. He wanted an objectively perfect, extremely thin portless wireless machine. Now that he’s gone the design team is descending from the Ivery tower and undoing his work, meeting users halfway again.

aledalgrande 6y ago
Yeah totally sounds like with Steve gone, there was nobody anchoring him to the ground.
yarcob 6y ago
I really hope that you're right, but to be honest I'm not holding my breath. I also don't think the 2015 Macbooks were perfect, it's just that I don't care about any of the new things Apple has introduced. What I would really like would be a cellular modem so I don't have to bother with hotspots on the train and maybe a stylus for marking up screenshots. For my use cases, Apple expects me to carry a Macbook, an iPad, a stylus, and a pouch filled with dongles. I'm envious of the Windows folks, they get to have a single device that does it all.
- uncledave 6y ago
  I just moved away from windows because while the devices do everything they don't work properly. I've now switched to a Mac Mini for a desktop and I use an 11" iPad Pro and apple pencil for everything that isn't code on the road. I've got to the age where I'm not sitting hunched over a laptop working for half a day and there's not much point in having a laptop if it's going to be docked all day.
- i_am_proteus 6y ago
  Why are you envious of Windows folks? Windows hardware is generally cheaper, so if you're using Macintosh, you could ostensibly afford Windows.
  - vb6sp6 6y ago
    if your workflow depends on macOS then it doesn't matter how cheap windows is
- Kognito 6y ago
  Given Apple have gone cellular with everything all the way down to the Watch, I’m always amazed they never included it in a Macbook.

behnamoh 6y ago

Agreed. I wouldn’t touch any post-2015 MBP, but I wish I had bought one with dedicated graphics card. With each new version of macOS, things have gotten so much slower and laggy, even though I have disabled almost every unnecessary process and app in the OS. The other day, I was working with a 2011 MBP with graphics crad and Chrome was much faster in that compared to my 2015 MBP. I think the graphics card does improve web surfing quite a bit.

alisonkisk 6y ago
The dedicated graphics cards have a terrible feisgn flaw that burns 10-20W at idle when an external monitor is plugged in. This is a problem daily, while a non-dGPU laptop handles external monitor just fine.
- behnamoh 6y ago
  No it doesn't. My MBP can't handle a 27 inch external monitor without putting so much pressure on the CPU. If it had a dedicated GPU, that would take care of video output and not make the mac drain its battery by having the CPU fans at +6500 RPM all the time.

gxnxcxcx 6y ago

The 2015 MBP is also the last one that still has built-in optical audio output, via mini-TOSLINK.

alisonkisk 6y ago

An HDMI cable is an accessory. CompactFlash card doesn't fit in an SD port.

DWakefield 6y ago
Any projector setup worth having would have an HDMI cable ready for you. A 5.25" floppy diskette won't fit an a CompactFlash slot. What's your point? I can come up with silly excuses too.
yarcob 6y ago
Almost every place that has a projector also has an HDMI cable installed. I haven't used a CF card in the last 10 years or so, but SD cards show up frequently. (Cameras, Rasberry Pi, Prusa 3D printers). For the Raspberry Pi I needed to use an adaptor because it uses smaller cards, but still better than no card reader at all. But of course that's just my experience. If you use CF a lot, an SD slot won't help.

chandra381 6y ago

Oh absolutely. As a product designer, I was worried that it may be rendered obsolete, but the industry standard for design tools have moved into cloud-based browser solutions, so it will still be useful forever