New Macbook Pro with Touch Bar

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vivalarevolución
formerly prdlm2009

17 Nov 2016, 21:54

jacobolus wrote: Reportedly the new Macbook Pro keyboards are noticeably different than the ones in the 12" Macbook, and feel better. (I haven’t tried them, so that’s second-hand.)
My brother got one, not sure if it has arrived yet, but I hope he brings it when he visits in December.

jacobolus

17 Nov 2016, 23:17

The trade-off for thin-ness is potentially worth it. Anyone who cares deeply about the keyboard can bring something external. I wonder if it’s possible to temporarily disable the primary keyboard so that an external board can be put over the top, leaving the touch bar in reach. I must admit, being thin is pretty nice on the go. I have been occasionally going out with just an iPad (with a bunch of pdf books/papers I want to read, its web browser, and the ability to write stuff with the pen; can’t really do programming work on it), and having something only half as thick/heavy in my bag is pretty nice compared to the laptop.

Scissor-switch keyboards (and other keyboards of similar total height) have never been *that* exciting. I think my favorite post-1990s "laptop" keyswitch is the one from the ~2004 era Apple PowerBooks, but that one is significantly thicker than the current Apple laptop keyboards, much less the new ones.

Short-throw Topre are really nice switches, but also *much* thicker than modern laptops allow.

If someone threw a huge pile of R&D money at the problem, something in the ~2mm key travel distance range with similar total depth to 2010-generation scissor switches could probably be made that was almost as nice to type on as real keyboards from the 80s. But that’s now both too thick and too overbudget for most modern laptops, so nobody is going to bother.

(Similarly, if you had tens of millions of dollars of R&D budget and 3.5–4mm travel distance, and modern manufacturing tolerances/materials/etc., I think switches could be made which were substantially nicer than any keyboard switches ever made. But again, it’s probably not going to happen.)

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Julle

26 Nov 2016, 00:04

Julle wrote:
Julle wrote: So, each and every one of these new Macbooks has the SSD storage soldered on the motherboard.
Removable SSD but with a proprietary connector. RAM is soldered on. :roll:
I stand corrected once again. The SSD is soldered on on the touchbar models. https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook ... down/73480

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vivalarevolución
formerly prdlm2009

26 Nov 2016, 01:21

I was able to check out the new Macbook Pros and the 12-inch Macbook today. Overall, they look great and extremely thin, as usual for Macs. Despite the almost no-travel keyboards, they are low force and my typing was as accurate as any other laptop keyboard I have used. That surprised me, but how it would fare over a long period of typing, I don't know. The trackpad keeps getting better.

About the touch bar. Definitely an interesting concept, but the usability seems limited at this point. I tried it in a few applications, but I did not find much use for the application-specific functions and strayed away from them while I used the application. When I would use the touch bar, my hands would drift towards the screen thinking it was a touchscreen as well, but of course it is not a touchscreen. I found the lack of tactile feedback to be slightly annoying, as I would like to have tactile feedback for a button I am pushing repeatedly. You can tap a button on the touch bar and it reveals all the usual top row commands, or hold the bottom row FN key and get the f-keys.

But these opinions were all from very limited usage. If I took some time to get used to it, my opinions probably would change.

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alienman82

26 Nov 2016, 02:04

removed.
Last edited by alienman82 on 02 Mar 2018, 03:14, edited 1 time in total.

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vivalarevolución
formerly prdlm2009

26 Nov 2016, 14:16

alienman82 wrote: it really is a shame about the keyboard. Love my XPS keyboard, but it's breaking, and I'll be needing a new laptop soon
The keyboard to me was fine, surprisingly. Despite the lack of key travel, my typing was as accurate as anything else. In addition, it was low force, and I like low force keyboards.

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chuckdee

26 Nov 2016, 17:07

alienman82 wrote: it really is a shame about the keyboard. Love my XPS keyboard, but it's breaking, and I'll be needing a new laptop soon
Just got an XPS 13 a little less than a year ago. It's a really good all around machine, so you might look at going back to the well, so to speak.

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alienman82

26 Nov 2016, 21:21

removed.
Last edited by alienman82 on 02 Mar 2018, 03:14, edited 1 time in total.

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TuxKey
LLAP

30 Nov 2016, 11:51

as an it pro i use a mid 2012 Macbook Pro with quadCore i7 upgraded the mem to 16gig and upgraded the storage to a 512gig SSD and bought a dvd-drive caddy so i can build in a second SSD. The main reasons why i bought that model is because i read that apple was going to discontinue the matt screen and hardwired ethernet. This current model doesn't deserve the name PRO. unless you think a pro is someone that uses Final Cut and nothing else. it seems dominated buy thinness and looks rather than reparability this is the first model that i know of that got such a low score from i-fix-it on the repair scale..Considering all that i thing the touch bar is a gimmick trying to solve a problem that was never there. And creating lots of new problems a potential customer never had be four. now you can go out and buy a stack of dongles..And keep in mind they need to be MFI certified to guaranty they work and keep working after an update..
i’m a firm believer that tech should solve existing problems for us not create new ones.

If your considering the new MBP i would suggest you look in to an older model. Only thing i came a cross that could be a deal breaker for sum is the fact that the max external resolution is 2560*1600 with my current old 30-inch that works out great.

But i would love to upgrade this screen for the new LG 38UC99-W 3840x1600.
For now it looks like this is going to be my last macbook pro. And windows is no option so Linux here i come..

a bit of extra info..i bought my current macbook pro 15 inch jan-2013 for €2237 added a OCZ Vertex 512gig for €450
sum Corsair mem 16gig for €84 totalling €2777 current 15 inch would cost me €3200.
And then come the adapters / dongles ..Ethernet €30 , SD-card reader €41 usb-c to usb €9 .....making the grand Total €3303
Yep that's €100 of dongles and that's just the ones i picked up in a rush i also added an extension cable you know the one you used to get with your macbook.. that one is €25 it's only fair considering we used to get.


What can you do / build your self for that kind of €€€ (pricing gathered on 28 okt 2016 dutch sites)
CPU is a 6 core beast..probably my next linux beast..


Case: Fractal Design Define R4 Zwart €90
Powersuply: EVGA SuperNOVA 750 G2 €129
Moederbord: Asus P9D WS €234
CPU; core i7-5930K (Boxed) €610
CPU Cooler Noctua NH-D15 €89
CaseFan: Noctua NF-A15 PWM (140mm) €22,50
GPU Passive: Palit GeForce GTX 750 Ti €137
DDR4: G.Skill Ripjaws 4 F4-2400C15Q-32GRB €210
----------------
(Sub)Totaal: €1521,50

SSD 2 x Crucial MX300 m.2 525GB €128 x2 €256
---------------
(Sub)Totaal €1777,50

LG 38UC99-W 3840x1600 € 1300
21:10 aspect 38 inch
----------------------------------
(Sub) Totaal €3077,50

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vivalarevolución
formerly prdlm2009

30 Nov 2016, 15:34

You make a good point about introducing a technology that might create more problems than it solves. I think what you are getting for the money is the deciding factor for many people with this latest Macbook generation (especially non-US customers). I was able to try out many of the newest Windows laptops and Macs over the past couple weeks, and Apple still has the most impressive hardware-software combination. Windows still feels like a clunky mess, which makes Macs more appealing. Running Linux on a Windows computer is the cheapest and most practical option for most people, but Linux has some serious deficiencies, as most of us know.

andrewjoy

30 Nov 2016, 15:51

For a general user OSX may be fine , but in a corporate environment its no end of hassle.

The replacement of OSX Server with the server.app application is a joke , its unstable and has many problems with ACLs and permissions, if you re-create everything fresh it works , but don't you dare try to upgrade without wiping your OD or you will be chasing around permissions issues forever. Give me Active Directory ANY days its vastly superior in every single way.

In the latest version of OSX you cannot chose what to sync with a remote profile , its all or nothing so no longer can you backup the documents and desktop folder to the server you have to back up 50 gigs of music too , wooo !

Nothing is tested , ever . New update bricks software for absolutely no reason, and no you cannot roll back you will use the OS we tell you to , and like it .

Want a properly configured server, nope xserve is dead , want boot drive mirroring for redundancy , nah who would want that , they want a thinner server !!!! If you don't want to offer it fine , then stop selling server.app.

Want to attach external storage or expand your server with 10gigE or whatever , NOPE don't be silly who needs faster interconnects, hell we use bluetooth for everything , connect to that 100 TB raid via bluetooth , we can remove all connectors and make your server waterproof ! For all your underwater server needs !

Microsoft are no saints by any means , and yes they have killed large portions of there test group , but all of the corporate stuff server, exchange , AD etc is still tested rigorously and is not sent anywhere near GM without being rock solid.

The only thing good about apples business and server offering is its cheap, but honestly you get what you pay for

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vivalarevolución
formerly prdlm2009

30 Nov 2016, 16:18

I can't comment on the business offerings from Apple. As a consumer and not a professional user, the greatest appeal of a Mac is the ease of use and robustness of the operating system and the quality of the laptop. But the price I have to pay for what I get now is simply too much.

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alh84001
v.001

30 Nov 2016, 16:38

vivalarevolución wrote: robustness of the operating system and the quality of the laptop
I'm sorry to say, but from my experience, I can no longer call OS X robust. Gone are the glory days where it was rock solid and dependable. It started going downhill somewhere after (Snow) Leopard.

andrewjoy

30 Nov 2016, 16:41

vivalarevolución wrote: professional user, the greatest appeal of a Mac is the ease of use and robustness of the operating system.

I would have to disagree there , the OS is in no way robust form my experience ( i manage about 55-60 macs and 2 OSX servers ( if you can call them that anymore)

OSX was stable back in the snow leo days when they bothered to test properly , now i find something broken or strange in every single version although to give them credit 10.12 is not too bad so far , not found that much thats broken apart from the needless bricking of some old software and a few bugs with login items not doing as they are told, it also still has that annoying bug where you get a messed up keychain and have to can the whole user account, i mean they could let local or domain admin delete the keychian and let the user make a new one but if they did that things would be simple and you know .... work.

The way that things like stickies or notes or favourites are stored in some arcane voodoo format in the library folder ( appdata to windows users) is not helpful ether for backup or transferring stuff between computers / users when something does go wrong.

Don't get me wrong i want to like macs , they are built well, the physical case at least the logic boards are a joke. I also like the look and feel of the OS even if there are major flaws with it .

But some of this shit they are pulling is just not acceptable. Spending that much on a laptop with 4 USBc ports a crap CPU a crap GPU and solderd in ram and even a fucking SSD on all but the none touch bar 13 is just insane , who would do it unless all you care about is it looking sexy on your desk ?

And the loss of magsafe is just crazy i don't get it , it was one of the genuine things apple came up with that was a massive leap forwards, it has saved countless laptops from a smash on the floor or a junked connector, and to say " oh all pc laptops have the same issue. First of all No, no they don't, Every laptop i have been inside has a barrel connector thats on a connector or is a sub board with an interconnect , easy and simple to fix , try fixing a busted USB'c at home without expensive soldering gear and inspection gear. Second , just beacuse they do a thing does not mean you should!


There are things i like about the new MBP, a focus on a better keyboard is good even if it is not that successful. Large trackpad is cool , the screen is loverly and ... and .. , well thats about it.

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alienman82

30 Nov 2016, 16:54

removed.
Last edited by alienman82 on 02 Mar 2018, 03:20, edited 1 time in total.

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vivalarevolución
formerly prdlm2009

30 Nov 2016, 20:01

Well, Mac OS seems rather robust to me, because I'm jacking around with a different Linux distribution every month. But I don't use it in a professional, business, or server environment, so I'll take you all's word for it.

The track pad and screen are definitely top notch. I didnt feel like the keyboard was necessarily better, but it allows Apple to make thinner laptops and feels pretty good for a keyboard with almost no key travel. A low actuation force with almost no key travel was a good move for that new keyboard, that way you don't have to slam on the keys.
Last edited by vivalarevolución on 30 Nov 2016, 20:23, edited 2 times in total.

andrewjoy

30 Nov 2016, 20:08

Or they could have put the new keyboard in the old rMBP shell and put in more battery and real ports ! Win win for all :).

I use a 2015 rMBP and honestly i think its by far thin enough , looks and feels nice , why change ?

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matt3o
-[°_°]-

30 Nov 2016, 20:12

alh84001 wrote: I'm sorry to say, but from my experience, I can no longer call OS X robust. Gone are the glory days where it was rock solid and dependable. It started going downhill somewhere after (Snow) Leopard.
I made this few months ago:

OSX versions expectation vs software quality
Image

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vivalarevolución
formerly prdlm2009

30 Nov 2016, 20:27

matt3o wrote:
alh84001 wrote: I'm sorry to say, but from my experience, I can no longer call OS X robust. Gone are the glory days where it was rock solid and dependable. It started going downhill somewhere after (Snow) Leopard.
I made this few months ago:

OSX versions expectation vs software quality
Image
Lol.

jacobolus

30 Nov 2016, 23:49

What's the scale here? I assume every version of windows is somewhere well off the bottom of the page, both in expectations and quality?

Anyway, there was definitely quite a bit of up-and-down bounce between versions. The releases somewhat alternated between new features and bug fixes.

From a new-features-are-useful perspective, the high point for me was 10.4. For stability, probably 10.6 and 10.8.

There’s no way the current releases can be considered worse than 10.0–10.2 though. Some of the recent additions are superfluous and kind of tacky, but for the most part everything that was there in the middle years of OS X is still there now.

In my opinion the real problems with OS X are about third-party software: the combination of the web and mobile have leeched talent away, and there’s much less exciting work being done on desktop software. This isn’t really the OS X team’s fault though.

This is of a parcel with a more general problem, which is that not too many young people rising in their careers are interested in reworking core parts of basic infrastructure which have become entrenched in the culture. Basic file management could use a serious overhaul, but there hasn’t been much if any interesting work on it since the 1980s. The basic concepts of desktop application software haven’t much changed since the early 1990s. There are sporadic interesting prototypes at academic research labs, but nothing very serious.

There’s nothing much being done at Microsoft, Google, in the Linux world, or anywhere else that is working to challenge the basics now taken for granted. Microsoft has their big surface table thing, but it’s just running the same old mouse + keyboard software.

The iPad was (one of) Apple’s alternative vision(s), but it’s not being driven in a powerful enough direction to really rival the desktop.
Last edited by jacobolus on 01 Dec 2016, 00:02, edited 1 time in total.

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fohat
Elder Messenger

30 Nov 2016, 23:56

jacobolus wrote:
I assume every version of windows is somewhere well off the bottom of the page, both in expectations and quality?
If you aren't an early adopter, Windows is OK. I found 98, XP, and 7 to be easily good enough, but I waited at least 1-2 years before getting on board.

10 has been excellent overall, very few complaints, but I didn't upgrade until a week before the free offer ran out. But I did a thorough housecleaning originally and try to stay on top of the junk.

jacobolus

01 Dec 2016, 00:04

The experience of Windows is like Stockholm syndrome. If you’re coming to it fresh, nothing makes sense and the whole thing is and endless frustration. Nothing quite works the way it logically should. The rough ideas seem to be there, but the every detail of the implementation is somewhere between ill-fitting and completely broken. It’s like it was designed by a team of thousands of autistic sadists who all hated each-other.

After decades of bad experiences you just learn to live with it. But like any battered spouse, you’d be better off if you ran away and never looked back.

axtran

01 Dec 2016, 00:35

Chromebooks handle most use cases for me (consumption, Mac Pro for creation). The components I enjoyed about my old MacBook (12" Retina) is honestly addressed by my Dell Chromebook 13 - 7310.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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vivalarevolución
formerly prdlm2009

01 Dec 2016, 01:23

jacobolus wrote: The experience of Windows is like Stockholm syndrome. If you’re coming to it fresh, nothing makes sense and the whole thing is and endless frustration. Nothing quite works the way it logically should. The rough ideas seem to be there, but the every detail of the implementation is somewhere between ill-fitting and completely broken. It’s like it was designed by a team of thousands of autistic sadists who all hated each-other.

After decades of bad experiences you just learn to live with it. But like any battered spouse, you’d be better off if you ran away and never looked back.
Lol, this is great analogy. After years of using Mac OS, Chrome OS, and various forms of Linux, every time I try Windows, it feels like a complete mess. I use Windows 7 at work, but in a limited capacity. It does fine for a classic OS experience.
axtran wrote: Chromebooks handle most use cases for me (consumption, Mac Pro for creation). The components I enjoyed about my old MacBook (12" Retina) is honestly addressed by my Dell Chromebook 13 - 7310.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I have that same Chromebook (for now, I'm trying to sell it). As I have said before, Chrome OS is great for most basic tasks and most Chromebooks can be modified to run Linux. My biggest beef with Chromebooks is that to get one with decent specs (i-series processor, 8GB RAM, a decent screen, non-plastic body), the price started to rival a mid-range Windows laptop. At that point, you can get a decent Windows laptop and just put your choice of Linux.

axtran

01 Dec 2016, 07:49

Hmm, what's the specs on yours? I have the i3/8gb/32gb one and I love it!


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vivalarevolución
formerly prdlm2009

01 Dec 2016, 14:37

axtran wrote: Hmm, what's the specs on yours? I have the i3/8gb/32gb one and I love it!

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Same as yours, except 4GB RAM, which isn't enough for me, and a touchscreen, which isn't very useful on a laptop without a 360-degree hinge and Chrome OS is not that touchscreen friendly. Those are the reasons I'm selling it.

I do like the Dell Chromebook, though, it is a great device. Wish more Chromebooks were built to this quality.
Last edited by vivalarevolución on 01 Dec 2016, 16:09, edited 1 time in total.

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matt3o
-[°_°]-

01 Dec 2016, 15:02

I followed Apple and always owned a mac up to snow leopard/lion and I really loved it. At some point the direction changed, less resources to macos, convergence between mobile and desktop OS, the app store madness and partly the new adobe licencing policy (not apple fault of course).

I finally switched 100% to linux (always actually used it) and after the initial frustrating period I learned to love the extreme customizability (down to the kernel). It is not for everybody, but the hipster who spends €2500 in a mac laptop to write the food blog makes me smile... but if she's happy all is good with the world.

I wanted to change my mac, to get an i7 with 512gb I'd need €2400+all the dongles (note, without touchbar). While I was happy to pay the apple tax in the past, the macos alone simply doesn't justify the price anymore (TO ME! YMMV).

face

01 Dec 2016, 15:23

Linux doesn't help if you want to use any "normal" programs like Office 365 or stuff, I myself need that **** because the documents I work with have to be compatible to other users. For coding, Matlab and apps like that Linux is fine, but I was always held back by this. It's just: if you want something to work without hazzle - or work at all - like a photo scanner or something without configuring it to death, you end up using Windows anyway.

andrewjoy

01 Dec 2016, 15:38

Who the hell wants to use office 365 ? Whats wrong with the combination of libreoffice and google docs.

There is a reason you should not transfer documents in a format like .doc .docx .pages .odf or whatever, you don't know how they will look on another computer, the plague of muppets who transfer word processing files around is so annoying , i mean would you send somone a photo in photoshop format , or send a normal user the sorce code for there app and say good luck ?

No you would not , so why do people do it with documents ? If somone asks for .doc or .docx i ether ignore them and send a pdf or simply refuse to send it .

There is something called pdf, this is what its for .

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matt3o
-[°_°]-

01 Dec 2016, 15:48

thanks god I never needed office, not on mac nor on linux. sometimes I get that powerpoint or keynote file, I simply ask for pdf or ignore them :)

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