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> This is the same for laptops, but most of the people (I assume?) buy Macbooks for programming which is... kinda weird, since it's difficult to repair. Person

> This is the same for laptops, but most of the people (I assume?) buy Macbooks for programming which is... kinda weird, since it's difficult to repair. Personally, I don't think I've found anything that beats Apple's laptop trackpads, and I think that my UX matters more than repairability. Then again, I'm still using a 2013 MacBook Pro with an upgraded NVMe SSD.

franga2000 5y ago
Idk, not being able to get it fixed without data loss in the case of even a minor hw failure seems like pretty bad UX to me...
- BeFlatXIII 5y ago
  …and all the time you’re not having your MacBook in for repair, its trackpad is still night & day better than its competitors. This was true in 2009 and somehow remains true in 2021 (though it would be a very pleasant surprise to be proven wrong)
  - franga2000 5y ago
    I've heard the latest Surface lineup and the XPS 13 have trackpads that seriously rival Apple's. Up until a few years ago, however, it was true that nothing came close to Apple. Although personally, the lack of a touchscreen on any of Apple's laptops is much more of a dealbreaker for me and despite working remotely, I really don't use a trackpad for work all that often. I imagine RSI would be unavoidable if you used it constantly, wouldn't it?
    - BeFlatXIII 5y ago
      I’ll have to test those out the next time I’m in a store with an electronics department. I don’t have any desire to re-learn Windows as my main OS, but having some hand-on demo would still be more than the approximately zero Windows usage I’ve had in the past 5 years. I never considered the RSI angle about the attraction of touch screens. I still have exactly zero desire to do serious work on a touchscreen where I’d have my fingerprints overlapping the display. Plus, I imagine touchscreens would be less ergonomic than a trackpad in a normal laptop form factor.
      - franga2000 5y ago
        Regarding RSI, I was thinking more trackpad vs mouse, not trackpad vs touchscreen - I want a touchscreen (with a stylus) for other reasons like photo editing and taking notes. In theory, a trackpad looks to me like a device perfectly designed to cause RSI, so I always carry a mouse with me, but I know many people use them a lot without any issues. And yeah, I totally get not wanting to use Windows on a daily basis - win10 is a mess and I really only keep it installed for Adobe software and a few games. But the hardware of "Windows" laptops is quite competitive with Apple's these days.
- aeontech 5y ago
  If you don’t have a (preferably bootable) backup that you can use any time your machine explodes / gets dropped / gets soaked in coffee / gets a random hardware failure / gets hit by a ransomware / is stolen - then you have a serious redundancy problem no matter what OS you are running. On any OS you use it’s possible to have both a long-term backup and a bootable drive clone that is synced from your internal drive and updated on a schedule. I haven’t needed to use it often, but when I did it was priceless to be back up and running 30 minutes later without having to waste two days setting up a new machine or losing any data.
  - swiley 5y ago
    meh, acumulating state is bad. You're much better off with automations That can recreate your environment than bootable backups.
  - franga2000 5y ago
    Of yeah, definitely, and Apple makes it far easier than other OS vendors. But I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of people don't actually do that - even programmers, sysadmins, etc.
    - ValentineC 5y ago
      > Of yeah, definitely, and Apple makes it far easier than other OS vendors. Unfortunately, it seems like the Apple Fabric storage system on the M1 laptops broke bootable backups, and it's possible that Apple has no plans to fix this: https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/05/24/apples-moves-point-to-a-future-with-no-bootable-backups-says-developer https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/05/24/apples-moves-poin...
MereInterest 5y ago
> Personally, I don't think I've found anything that beats Apple's laptop trackpads, Trackoads are one of those items that I don't know of a good way to compare them, because most differences become unnoticeable habits over time. Sure, there's an obvious difference between a 20-year old copier whose buttons require a small hammer to activate and modern capacitative touchscreens, but beyond that I can't tell much difference. Definitely if I use the trackpad on a new computer or on somebody else's computer, it feels wrong. The mouse moves to quickly or too slowly. The mouse continues moving after I thought I lifted my finger up, or stops slightly too soon. But those feel more like acclimatizing to a particular set of device parameters, rather than there being anything actually better or worse with the device.
MonaroVXR 5y ago
You're totally right. I am using my unibody ASUS from 2013 with upgraded SATA SSD.

franga2000 5y ago

Idk, not being able to get it fixed without data loss in the case of even a minor hw failure seems like pretty bad UX to me...

BeFlatXIII 5y ago
…and all the time you’re not having your MacBook in for repair, its trackpad is still night & day better than its competitors. This was true in 2009 and somehow remains true in 2021 (though it would be a very pleasant surprise to be proven wrong)
- franga2000 5y ago
  I've heard the latest Surface lineup and the XPS 13 have trackpads that seriously rival Apple's. Up until a few years ago, however, it was true that nothing came close to Apple. Although personally, the lack of a touchscreen on any of Apple's laptops is much more of a dealbreaker for me and despite working remotely, I really don't use a trackpad for work all that often. I imagine RSI would be unavoidable if you used it constantly, wouldn't it?
  - BeFlatXIII 5y ago
    I’ll have to test those out the next time I’m in a store with an electronics department. I don’t have any desire to re-learn Windows as my main OS, but having some hand-on demo would still be more than the approximately zero Windows usage I’ve had in the past 5 years. I never considered the RSI angle about the attraction of touch screens. I still have exactly zero desire to do serious work on a touchscreen where I’d have my fingerprints overlapping the display. Plus, I imagine touchscreens would be less ergonomic than a trackpad in a normal laptop form factor.
    - franga2000 5y ago
      Regarding RSI, I was thinking more trackpad vs mouse, not trackpad vs touchscreen - I want a touchscreen (with a stylus) for other reasons like photo editing and taking notes. In theory, a trackpad looks to me like a device perfectly designed to cause RSI, so I always carry a mouse with me, but I know many people use them a lot without any issues. And yeah, I totally get not wanting to use Windows on a daily basis - win10 is a mess and I really only keep it installed for Adobe software and a few games. But the hardware of "Windows" laptops is quite competitive with Apple's these days.
aeontech 5y ago
If you don’t have a (preferably bootable) backup that you can use any time your machine explodes / gets dropped / gets soaked in coffee / gets a random hardware failure / gets hit by a ransomware / is stolen - then you have a serious redundancy problem no matter what OS you are running. On any OS you use it’s possible to have both a long-term backup and a bootable drive clone that is synced from your internal drive and updated on a schedule. I haven’t needed to use it often, but when I did it was priceless to be back up and running 30 minutes later without having to waste two days setting up a new machine or losing any data.
- swiley 5y ago
  meh, acumulating state is bad. You're much better off with automations That can recreate your environment than bootable backups.
- franga2000 5y ago
  Of yeah, definitely, and Apple makes it far easier than other OS vendors. But I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of people don't actually do that - even programmers, sysadmins, etc.
  - ValentineC 5y ago
    > Of yeah, definitely, and Apple makes it far easier than other OS vendors. Unfortunately, it seems like the Apple Fabric storage system on the M1 laptops broke bootable backups, and it's possible that Apple has no plans to fix this: https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/05/24/apples-moves-point-to-a-future-with-no-bootable-backups-says-developer https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/05/24/apples-moves-poin...

MereInterest 5y ago

> Personally, I don't think I've found anything that beats Apple's laptop trackpads, Trackoads are one of those items that I don't know of a good way to compare them, because most differences become unnoticeable habits over time. Sure, there's an obvious difference between a 20-year old copier whose buttons require a small hammer to activate and modern capacitative touchscreens, but beyond that I can't tell much difference. Definitely if I use the trackpad on a new computer or on somebody else's computer, it feels wrong. The mouse moves to quickly or too slowly. The mouse continues moving after I thought I lifted my finger up, or stops slightly too soon. But those feel more like acclimatizing to a particular set of device parameters, rather than there being anything actually better or worse with the device.

MonaroVXR 5y ago

You're totally right. I am using my unibody ASUS from 2013 with upgraded SATA SSD.