I am still having a really hard time finding a reason to upgrade my late-2013 MBP (which I am currently typing this on) to any of their newer hardware. Every generation that came out was "meh, 5% more perf, 10% more bullshit compromise".
At this point, I am looking forward to October 22nd. I will be checking out the new surface laptops as a replacement. I think I was already sold when the presenter removed the top cover on stage. I really enjoy the UX that macOS affords, but Apple is simultaneously so abusive to developers and tinkerers. It's hard to reason with and I just feel like I am done with them at this point. I'll get a new battery installed on this machine and keep it around as an emergency iOS app build agent (for as long as latest Xcode->macOS->my hardware are supported, that is).
Ideally, we move all of our client's B2B apps onto UWP/Android/PWA so I don't even have to maintain a build path to the hellhole that is iOS applications. My life as a developer could just consist of a Microsoft/Android stack and that would be so wonderful. I'd never have to leave visual studio again.
Surface laptops meaning Windows? Windows may offer more customization freedom than macOS but privacy wise, Windows is a much bigger offender.
If you can look at your DNS queries on your home network (pihole can be one option), I encourage you to compare macOS to Windows. Windows regularly phones home in many different ways. Personally on top of the pihole block lists, I've blocked about 15 other domains Windows phones home with. Every update seems to add more domains. I haven't blocked a single domain for macOS or seen any blocked domains for macOS.
The only way to get a telemetry free Windows is via LTSB (probably can not acquire it legally as a consumer), or to keep up with modifying updates and/or block lists. Not sure if that is any better than macOS's "bullshit compromise"s.
I use a highly stripped-down version of LTSC for Windows VMs and it still has tons of telemetry. Furthermore, DNS-based blocking is ineffective; it hardcodes fallback IP addresses if it gets an NXDOMAIN for telemetry domains. The only way I've found to permanently kill it is with sniproxy or the like, though I'm sure once they upgrade to TLS 1.3 that will stop working too.
I’m going to go with a privacy centered Linux machine (https://puri.sm). Since most of the problems I have with MacOS/iOS are related to Apple locking the user out of controlling their own machine. Microsoft and Android machine manufacturers do something similar by locking users into bloatware and update policies, it’s just a general business trend of profiting from restricting user control. Until consumers begin to punish this behavior with their wallets, it will keep getting worse.
Only 802.11n and no TB3 unfortunately are deal breakers for me, otherwise I'd consider this option. Thankfully both Lenovo Thinkpads and Dell XPS machines work well with Linux.
Maybe other models are different, but I was never able to get my XPS 9550’s TB3 to work in Ubuntu or Arch. If I could I’d have kept it but like you that was a dealbreaker for me.
Thinkpads are still good, however it annoys me that even the T series is being pushed towards the Mac design, when they already have other lines like the Mac (X1 being most notable). Don't mess with the formula, please!
Thinkpads are still good, however it annoys me that even the T series is being pushed towards the Mac design
Long ago, the marketing across the computer industry started to push changes that made many things less comfortable for developers. A certain company on a turnaround, willing to do things different embraced the needs of developers. This was part of their "in" to winning over the technorati and becoming "cool."
Now, that company has achieved dominance in their chosen markets, and the kind of "cool" which results from catering to developers is no longer their priority. If anything, they have developers dancing to their tune.
Certain Thinkpads also long catered to programmers and certain kinds of content creators. Now the same forces from marketing departments are at play once again, and yet another company on a turnaround is looking to win over the technorati by prioritizing a developer-centric kind of "cool."
That is simply untrue. You can uninstall approximately half of the bloatware, and on occasion they do reappear after 'feature updates'.
Win 10 Pro comes with the following, all of which have the "Uninstall" disabled:
Xbox Game Bar
Your Phone
Maps
Camera
And this is after removing many other apps that are objectively bloatware. Myself and many others I've spoken to simply want Win10Pro to be closer to LTSB than Home. It doesn't need to be stable enough to run unattended for years at a time, it just needs to be lightweight and without the Start Menu being populated with dozens of things a power user will never touch.
I'm sure if I cared enough there's some hacky way to remove them (at least superficially), but I've been down that road enough times only to have it all reversed after an update.
Straightforward in the same sense that "getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem" is "trivial"[1].
The modern style for shell commands on Windows is to name them exactly “Verb-Noun”, where neither “Verb” nor “Noun” have hyphens. If you are interested in what is possible, spend some time investigating the available nouns in whatever problem domain you are working with.
Boot usb linux, delete whatever programs you don't want in windows, including windows update, windows update repair services, and whatever else. Boot windows without internet, use the firewall to make sure nothing gets updated or reinstalled.
I guess you missed the "Back when I still had windows" text in my comment, but I could quantify this.
I removed windows a year ago from my last machine and it still had this behaviour. If they now allow uninstalling all bundled apps easily without them coming back after updates then props to them. It's not what I hear from colleagues that still have windows though.
Very literally just went through fixing Teams on a family member's laptop. They kept uninstalling it, and upon next boot, their computer was unresponsive for 10+ minutes as Teams reinstalled itself.
After some digging, it turns out there's a separate installer you have to uninstall. Since when do you have to uninstall installers?
This was on a fully up to date, modern Windows laptop.
I don't see how the Windows registry is markedly different from dwrites in macOS. And on the Mac, there's about an order of magnitude less BS to begin with. Maybe two orders.
I have both a 2015 MBP (same model as the 2013) and the latest 2019 MBP. The 2019 is almost better in every way (except for the dongles). FWIW, I did a Thunderbolt transfer from my 2015 to 2019 and it was pretty much a carbon copy of all my settings.
I recommend you actually try it out yourself before making a judgment.
I'm the NOT the original parent, but I am a developer, and use a 2018 MacBook Pro (15-inch). I'm a heavy vi user (vim actually.) I did not particularly care for advice to remap the escape key in vi to caps lock. So I just use the virtual escape key on the touch bar. It was odd initially not have haptic feedback on the escape key, but I got used to it and my typing speed in vi is almost as fast as it is on a normal keyboard (But definitely not as fast as it would be on a real keyboard). I have no real use for the touchbar. Occasionally, I use it to switch between browser tabs, and adjust video volume and scrub backwards and forwards in Premier Pro. But I don't really need it. I don't hate with a passion either. It's just there.
I'm using a MBP 2015 myself, so I do have an escape key. Regardless I bound it to my Caps Lock key because that's the position I use on my personal custom keyboards. You can do this natively in "System Preferences > Keyboard > Modifier Keys". You can change all your modifier keys there to whatever modifier key you like.
I very much prefer typing on a separate keyboard though, I don't really understand the people who just work straight on their laptop all day. Get yourself a screen (or more than 1) and work with a keyboard and mouse, far better ergonomically.
I actually love my MBP 2015's keyboard, and the trackpad is for me the ergonomically-superior choice. I don't have any wrist pain no matter how long I work on it, and the gestures are brilliant and useful.
The screen size is the only problem, but the built-in display is gorgeous and sharp, so it mostly makes up for it for me.
Yup, I'm actually a pretty heavy Vim user. I did the whole "remap caps to escape" thing long ago, so not having a physical escape button wasn't an issue for me.
Function keys have been replaced by touchscreen equivalents, but that's not all they are. Some of the buttons act like sliders, so you can actually press-and-slide them (like volume), which is faster than repeatedly tapping physical buttons to do the same thing.
Being able to customize what buttons appear is also great because I can now have a lock screen button that I tap to lock my laptop.
Oh, wow. I had completely forgotten that "repeated button pressing to change volume" was a thing. Thank you. Apparently I like the Touch Bar more than I realized.
I am a developer (20 years professional experience) and I have both the 2015 Pro and 2018 Pro.
You do get used to the tactile-less-ness of the touchbar for the escape key. And I've yet to find a use for the function keys. Can't remember a single case of needing a function key in the last 5 years at least.
Why are you looking for a reason to upgrade? If you don’t have a reason to upgrade that is a positive, not a negative. Lots of MacBook Pro users seem to be upset they don’t have a good reason to spend thousands of dollars on a new laptop.
It's taken a little out of context. I'm in the same boat as the parent and it's more that I need to upgrade but the offerings just aren't great currently.
Some of my issues are I need a faster CPU, more RAM, larger storage, SSS, better graphics cards, and some nice to haves are a larger screen and better speakers, mic, and camera.
Right now I see nothing but complaints about the keyboards, touch bars, and the fact that everything is now embedded so you can't really upgrade components.
Touchpad has started to go out. I purchased a kit to open this thing up and do a replacement but I ran out of motivation. The screen hinge is also partially busted due to my negligence. The repair of that aspect of the machine is simply beyond my level of care, so I am at a point where I would like to just hit the reset button and get a new machine. 6 years is an extremely good run for any computer I own.
Exactly. If you looked at my order history at Apple you'll see I order a new MacBook Pro every year. By that end of a week, the laptop is back in Apple's hands and I'm receiving a full refund.
Unfortunately all their "efforts" to fix the keyboard are absolute rubbish and the Touch Bar continues to be an anti-feature with no place in a serious laptop.
I'll see your mid-2012 mbp and raise you a late-2010 mba. It's slow now, and the processor lacks some features I need for work (docker stuff), but otherwise it runs well enough. I'm hoping it lasts another year so it can claim a full decade of service.
My work machine on the other hand is a 2016 mbp (with touchbar and butterfly keyboard). I swear the thing is haunted from all its weirdness and glitching. Then there's the keyboard...
I was so sad when I found out my trusty 17" 2010 MBP would not be supported by Mojave.
It's totally serviceable under El Capitan.
It's sluggish with supported versions, though. As a CI box for PhotoStructure, tests take literally 2x longer under Sierra and High Sierra than they do under El Capitan.
MacBook Air Retina, We now have many reports of Retina MacBook Air's CPU dying. And it isn't even out for long, and most suspect it has to do with its new cooling method.
MacBook Pro, while we all know the Keyboard sucks, and Touch Bar is either a love it or hate it addition, I am glad there are more people voicing the big trackpad is simply a bad design. It increase false positives which is very annoying to some people.
Basically the I am looking at the whole MacBook Lineup and it seems everything is step backward. I surely hope the rumoured new MacBook Pro coming this October will fix all of these issues.
I think the parent commenter is referring to the enlarged trackpads present on all thunderbolt 3 MacBooks, as compared with the smaller trackpad on the previous models.
Like parent, I really like new big trackpad. I really wish people would accept both this and butterfly keyboard discussions as preferences, not “objectively better choices”.
After getting a ThinkPad. I could never go any other laptop... the track pad may not be as good but I rarely ever use it. Compared to the keyboard which I use 99% of the time.
Same reason you'd want a bigger mouse pad with turned down sensitivity, it's more precise and you have more space. Also having no mechanical click is a huge plus. It still feels like you do, but it's even all across it.
The Apple Magic Touchpad 2 and the 2015 MBPs have the smaller touchpads without force feedback but without the mechanical clicks (they come out of the speakers). I got mine set to silent. This is in contrast to the 2014 and before versions. By the way, Louis Rossmann considers the 2014 MBPs to be best bang of the buck because they have the least amount of hardware flaws, and are relatively serviceable and provide decent performance.
Double the cores, but my 13" 2013 MBP had 16GB of RAM and I'm pretty sure I couldn't choose more than that for my 13" 2019 model.
The 2013 didn't have touchbar, had a higher resolution display, a keyboard I didn't worry about and I ended up going down from the 1TB SSD the 2013 had because prices didn't seem to justify it for me vs. using more external storage.
I totally get struggling to justify an upgrade. I pretty much did it just because clients were commenting on the age of it as if I was making bad choices. If I wasn't tied into using Apple for my main client I'd have put Linux on something else.
Not only double the cores, also a more efficient and quicker CPU (though with Intel that does not say much in the ~2014-2020 era). DDR4 as well, I guess. With 16 GB RAM you can also easily spin up things like Docker or VMs.
Not sure I really need 8+ cores and 32G of RAM on a personal computer. I think there's some sort of max complexity ratio between the human mind and your equipment that, if you exceed it, means you'll never really know what's going on in there. I'd argue that 4 cores and 16G RAM already exceeds that threshold, by a lot.
I thought the same thing, but between browsers, email apps like Outlook, Electron apps like Slack, a virtual machine or two...16GB isn't what it once was.
Just a suggestion, use Slack from a web browser instead. I usually pin frequently used websites like Gmail, Slack, etc. and turn on desktop notifications. So, there is no overhead of running a separate electron instance.
20 years ago someone probably said the same thing about a machine so crappy you wouldn't consider using it for a second.
The primary change in complexity is in between 1 core and more than one core not a particular core count and we exceeded the ability of one operator to understand everything that is going on in there before you were born.
Using a slower machine with less ram and cores wont make it easier for you to understand it will just mean waiting longer for it to compile.
As an early and faithful Be user, I remember the odd looks I got when I chanted mantra “One processor per person is not enough!” back in the second half of the nineties. Oh, how times have changed!
I recently upgraded to an 8 core mbp with 32 gigs of ram. Makes for a much smoother system when I'm running a virtualized guest OS (I can give the virtual OS 8 gigs of ram and 2 dedicated cores) or both an android and ios emulator without any slowdown on my machine.
most people don't do anything that would warrant these specs though
Although things you can do doesn't actually change. I'd say the doubled cpu and memory improve the user experience as you no longer need to close program due to memory and cpu inefficient. You can just let them open and switch back as you want. Doesn't means anything for people doesn't use computer in this way though.
Your still burning significant CPU resources and turning that RAM on (rather than power gating it) to run Electron apps in the backgrohnd, hence why it tanks battery life on laptops.
I don't know if they ever went live with their tablet design but I recall reading LKML emails several years ago using / improving movable memory code so they could easily hibernate or drop chunks of RAM, so their tablet wouldn't have to maintain refresh on 8 GB of RAM when they only needed 1.
Most operating systems have chosen a different tradeoff, reducing fresh reads from persistent storage, keeping files cached in RAM, which may work out to equivalent power savings.
I would argue that software devs should be restricted to older equipment- I develop on an older ThinkPad with 8GB & dual core. I think the devs who manage to create things like Slack & the new Gmail interface should try using their products on something other than the newest gen hardware. I've noticed the same tendency myself--when I was developing on my (overpowered) desktop I didn't have to pay any attention to performance and the quality of my work suffered.
I've held the exact same belief, that all software (including OS!) should be developed on 5-10 year old hardware, not only so that it actually works on 5-10 year old hardware, but so that it works even better on the newer stuff.
Same here - my mac air 11” from 2012 is more than sufficient to run my terminal windows into aws. I should get a new one but at this point, I feel like Kramer in that episode where he tried to see how far he could test drive a car after the empty light came on.
There's a growing movement of people that believe all the power we put into computers goes to waste by adding layers of abstraction and I agree with them. VS Code currently sits at 550 Mb RAM idle. We could increase the performance and longevity of our hardware by fixing our software. The excess gain in performance could be used to do something useful instead of adding another VM on top of a VM inside a sandbox.
I completely agree with you. My Mac Plus from 1986 still feels snappier than a modern Mac in many ways despite having several orders of magnitude less storage, memory, and clock speed. That's because it was programmed close to the metal by excellent programmers. But you'll never get the Apple of today to build software that doesn't encourage people to upgrade their hardware.
AmigaOS and BeOS were other examples of this phenomenon. The world needs a new OS to show what really can be done on modern hardware.
Response time. The time between clicking the mouse and seeing a change on screen feels instantaneous; there's just no hesitation or lag for the most part. Compute-intensive tasks can't compete of course, but response time has gotten much worse in modern operating systems, especially mobile ones. It's quite common on a modern Mac for a scroll of a Finder window to put up a spinning beachball. Wristwatch cursors happened on classic Macs too, but never for something as trivial as a scroll. Part of the problem is that we're still using O[n] algorithms where n is a lot bigger than it used to be, but another part is that we no longer write UI code with an emphasis on quick response time.
All that and for the average consumer most of their software is 3-5 years behind everything else. The desktop experience is silky smooth 95% of the time and that’s the only thing keeping me there. That 5% is starting to become a problem for me, though. I got an LG 5k display that apple helped develop, it was the display they tried to sell with MacBook pros in apple stores. If I try to use it with my lid open the graphics hw overheats and the screen freezes and flickers. I have to use the screen with the lid closed. Unacceptable for a $5k setup.
That’s in addition to a series of other annoying hardware issues with that laptop. Don’t get me started about the keyboard.
You do realize that macOS isn't the only piece of software that Apple makes?
So, specifically, Siri is definitely 3-5 years behind alexa/google assistant, I won't engage with someone who claims otherwise. iMessage is garbage unless everyone you talk to is on apple hardware. Maps was garbage until recently though I still get bad directions (thanks carplay!). Icloud works alright but there are better _and_ cheaper solutions...
Do OSs have "revolutionary" features? Take MacOS from 5 years ago and compare it to today's, what revolutionary features did it get?
Under "nice to have" and took forever for other OSs to get them:
- TrueOS (I think that is the name of PCBSD now?) has lifepresever: snapshots, rollback etc. nicely integrated.
Similarly for linux (snapper) or nixOS.
- virtual desktops took forever to finally be included in windows.
- MacOS continuity is a nice copy of kde connect.
- Sidecar is a nice copy of astropad etc.
- Things like Linux on DeX, whatever windows calls its implementation, MaruOS, Motorola Atrix... have been tried again and again, but are still not there yet.
- Windows had pen support since XP, but the app ecosystem is basically only OneNote and a few art apps. In contrast apple has been dragging their feet forever before finally offering their pencil, but quickly got a much bigger ecosystem of apps tailored to it. Maybe 10X will finally change that, but I am not optimistic anymore.
Workspaces and virtual desktops where the best for a long time. There’s a lot of very impressive stuff the KDE people do, I don’t use it because personally I prefer a ver very simple DE.
The "way iMessage works" is not a "social trick". End-to-end encryption, reliability, multimedia features, and a commitment to user privacy are not "social tricks".
Don't get me started on wireless interference (another one of petty problems that comes with a "Pro" machine)
For some odd reason, when I use an adapter, the following happens:
1. The dongle (USB A to C or even a simple HDMI dongle) has some weird interference with my wireless connection. It happens everywhere I go as well (not limited to my wifi) So I always have to have 1 port connected to ethernet. Guess what? the MacBook "Pro" I have (with function keys) only has 2 ports! So it's either another dongle or a MacBook I can use with only 1 port.
2. Another really weird thing is after getting one of these apple dongles and plugging in ethernet and everything; then unplugging it from my macbook, my phone and any nearby devices lose internet connection. I can't explain it other than some literal sheild the dongle makes that prevents my phone from working.
In conclusion:
There are a lot of petty little flaws that make the $1k+ (or $2,3k+) MacBook Pro bad. I mean wireless interference is something I really shouldn't be worrying about.
This is specific to USB-C and unshielded cabling. It's the same issue that Louis Rossman tried to blame on the new MacBooks until his Dell laptop started doing the same thing with the adapter. Especially for powered USB devices, unshielded cables will cause all kinds of interference. Make sure that whatever adapters you're getting are properly shielded and/or switch completed to USB-C to avoid these situations.
I'm not a fan of his. Although I think he's super-smart and one of the few people I would actually trust to repair my devices on a component level, I really hate his click-bait videos when they're anti-Apple and/or pro-Right-to-Repair and he intentionally omits or mischaracterizes things to make the discussion more sensational.
This USB shielding issue is one of those times. He spent almost an hour bitching about how Apple had skimped out on the new Touch Bar MacBooks and how they couldn't even get basic WiFi working and then, when it was pointed out that it was likely due to his cables and it happened in another video, he completely ignored it and never corrected the initial video to explain that it had nothing to do with the MacBook. His only admission ever has been on a buried comment in a Reddit post where a user flat-out asked him to confirm the case.
His whole assessment of Apple with regard to right-to-repair is also really disingenuous and he constantly brings up PC Kompaniet (do a Google search if you're not familiar) as an example of Apple being hard on the little guy without mentioning that "the little guy" was actually doing exactly what Apple accused them of but stopped doing it when it went to court and the court decided to dismiss the case on the grounds that the offending behavior had been terminated. Since that other portion didn't fit his narrative and would no longer support his stance that Apple is the big, bad corporate enemy of small repair shops, he just ignores it.
He's funny but I would take everything he says with a grain of salt. He's a YouTube personality, after all.
Would recommend anyone else who's a fan to take this grain of salt as well. I take him superficially most of the time since clearly he has a bias against Apple.
You had a choice to get 4 USB-C ports instead, if that was a big deal. And there are numerous affordable port expanders that will give you multiple USB-A ports, HDMI, Ethernet, a card reader, power in, using only 1 port. So this isn't really an intractable problem.
There is no "Apple dongle" that does what you describe, so I would surmise that you got a cheap unshielded product. I would return that product and get something that is built right. Your wireless interference issue has nothing whatsoever to do with the MB Pro itself.
There isn't a 4 USB-C port version of the MBP w/ function keys. If there was, I'd definitely buy it. But recently Apple even slashed those... which is somewhat disappointing since after using the touch-bar here and there on others computers somewhat regularly, I can't get myself to love it as much as having real function keys that aren't "unreliable" (or don't pop up at the right time).
As others have said, regardless of Apple dongle or not wireless interference seems to be a problem that expands the Apple domain.
If you want to hear another issue with the MBP, when charging you can sometimes feel some charge on the restpads next to the touchpad... which I've heard from electrical engineers is a really silly and trivial thing a Pro machine should probably not have.
BTW, how is Visual Studio for Android? I've only ever used IntelliJ/Android Studio, and it seems like this is the best supported environment since it is the "official" one, but I'm curious about the other side.
I work with video most of my waking hours and the 2019 MacBook Pro fully-optioned out has finally allowed me to not be tethered to my desktop for work and has easily paid for itself in time saved.
I have a late-2013 as well, but was advised by a Genius that as of this month, the machines will be classified vintage (though not yet reflected on their vintage products list). Moving forward, official repairs will be next to impossible. This came about as I noticed minor warping of the bottom case, which is likely from the battery beginning to swell, meaning that a battery replacement automatically gets a topcover replacement. Because of the swelling, the Genius said that a depot repair was not possible and would have to be done in-store.
I authorized the repair, and the Genius placed an order for the new part, but with no guarantee of availability. This was several weeks ago, and never got a call back. So I'm on my own.
Currently, the machine nets $360 on Apple's trade-in site, but am loathing getting a new one with a subpar keyboard and poor thermals. I may just get the iFixit battery kit ($100) and try to replace it myself.
At this point, I am looking forward to October 22nd. I will be checking out the new surface laptops as a replacement. I think I was already sold when the presenter removed the top cover on stage. I really enjoy the UX that macOS affords, but Apple is simultaneously so abusive to developers and tinkerers. It's hard to reason with and I just feel like I am done with them at this point. I'll get a new battery installed on this machine and keep it around as an emergency iOS app build agent (for as long as latest Xcode->macOS->my hardware are supported, that is).
Ideally, we move all of our client's B2B apps onto UWP/Android/PWA so I don't even have to maintain a build path to the hellhole that is iOS applications. My life as a developer could just consist of a Microsoft/Android stack and that would be so wonderful. I'd never have to leave visual studio again.