Benjamin Button reviews the new MacBook Pro

boing
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And? A good battery would have compensated the loss of power. Of course, to add that you couldn’t have shaved 10% thickness.

Again, they could have simply switched to dGPUs everywhere, with a beefy battery. If you let other people do the job for you, you can’t complain if they do it badly. But again, GOTTA BE THIN…

People keep repeating this, but I really don’t think so. It’s one thing to manufacture the odd little dedicated chip, quite another to build a workstation-grade cpu in the necessary quantities without spending a fortune. Tim Cook was likely in the room when the switch to Intel happened, and he likes to keep the company as light as possible through the production chain.

I agree USB-C is the less controversial choice; I think losing magsafe without a real replacement and dropping the iconic backlit logo really are choices that will significantly sabotage sales more than Donglegate, on par with not having 32gb of ram. Ive’s obsession for thinness was fun for a while but it’s now a liability.

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Increasingly, it appears that they don’t really sell their ‘pro’ line to professionals. What they do sell is all very nice and shiny by the standards of its niche; but it isn’t very…‘pro’.

They haven’t sold anything with redundant PSUs since they killed the 2009-era xserve in 2011. They haven’t sold anything with more than one CPU socket since they killed the 2012 mac pro. They don’t do upgradeable GPUs anymore; and the FirePro D700 is closing in on being 3 years old(and hopefully nobody needs Nvidia for anything…). And now their latest and shiniest laptop cannot be had with more than 16GB of RAM.

They certainly bring some nice polish to their products; but their complete disinterest in the high end just keeps getting more noticeable.

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All of the developers at my job (a well known ecommerce company) use MacBook Pros to do their work, as do many of the serious developers I know elsewhere. Apple has made a name for having well-built powerful laptops with a relatively developer friendly OS. They may not be used in the datacenter, but you’ll see them in abundance at pretty much every hackathon.

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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, only having the option for 256 GB of storage in the 13" MBP is abject bullshit, especially when the cheapo model without any of the slick new stuff can go up to 1TB.

As usual, Apple’s configuration choices simply baffle me.

As I sit here with my Surface Book (which is actually pretty damn good) and curse the location of the power port being on the right side when I would rather have it on the left, that’s one nice thing about the 4 USB-C ports

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https://twitter.com/razer/status/793499214311411713

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Maybe the appeal eludes me, but why?

Dongles have always been things I’ve carried. Switching to USB-C doesn’t change that, unless most devices are going to eventually use USB-C. Will they change as rapidly if the ports aren’t changed?

I remember carrying some pretty thick SCSI cables and adapters during the day. (Remember those?) Even the plethora of FireWire hardware I’ve toted is preferable to that. So I guess I don’t see much of an issue carrying adapters.

The only complaint I can lodge is that there appears to be two fewer ports on this model than there is on Tully-Monster, my current MBP.

Completely fair, of course.

I just wonder, when I finally get around to upgrading my MBP2015, with it even be an issue then?

Not sure how I feel about that video display strip thing. I like the idea of solid buttons, but contextual, customizable buttons (for Maya/LW3D or the like) would certainly override most of the negative feels I have—if I even have them.

And I tend to not pay much attention to the wants/needs of programmers, not really being one. I do use the escape key a lot, though.

I doubt there is a single “Pro Standard” which can be followed by a manufacturer. Pros use general purpose computers for that reason. And objectively, the new MBP obviously fulfills that role.

Point. But we were talking about laptops. How upgradable does it really need to be? I’m not likely to pay a great deal of games on mine, so GPU requirements for Pro apps like Maya or Lightwave are less pertinent, especially these days.

Color is better on iPad Pro than it is on a Cintiq. Less mess. Fewer cables. Astropad appears to be viable as an option for an external display with a desktop or laptop, but I’ve not tried it myself yet.

Ew, no.

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Sic my dog?
Siphon my diesel?
Shower my dandelions?

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I’d think it would be the other waty around. Surely far more people have read T.H. White than seen Benjamin Button, though both are eminently worth checking out.

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I doubt it. Most people have never heard of T.H. White whereas Button was a popular movie.

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White’s been read by virtually every English major for generations. I love that movie, but how many people really see even a blockbuster worldwide?

I dunno. Not like I have stats. You could be right.

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Don’t think it even needs people to have seen the movie, all it needs is them to know what it’s about. So, you say Merlin, I’ll think of the bearded guy from the Disney cartoon or the whiny kid from the TV series, but with Benjamin Button, the reverse time thing is about the only thing I know about the movie. Not that I’ve seen it. Or read the book, either. :slight_smile:

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Didn’t know there was a TV series. But I hadn’t thought about the Disney movie. I find most Disney fare easily forgettable.

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I dunno about English majors. Are there a lot of those? More than watch a hollywood blockbuster?
I have a liberal arts Master’s degree and I’ve never read White, certainly not in school. I’ve actually never heard of his work being assigned in school but then I’m in my 40s so what do I know?

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Excaliber!!!

excalibur-1981-14-g.jpg1200×793 155 KB

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John Hurt was good in it, but I’d watch him read a cereal packet. Had an awful lot of whiny Arthurian angsty kids but it wasn’t terrible, kinda Smallville-like.

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I’d think so. Seemed like it freshman year anyway. Perhaps most of them used it as a placeholder.

I love that move!

Interesting. Maybe I’ll check it out. I liked Smallville for the first two seasons or so. Then it got boring, IMHO. I still think Michael Rosenbaum is one of the most underrated actors of the 21st century.

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Don’t expect much more than a YA sword-and-sorcery-lite and you’ll probably quite enjoy it.
No depth to it, but it’s fun enough on it’s own terms with Arthur being a colossal douche most of the time. John Hurt does the voice of the dragon and is properly RADA about it.

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There’s a dongle for that!

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As long as the dongle is beautifully, unapologetically plastic, I’m good.

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I would so very much like to think you’re right.

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