When my MacBook Pro was offering to liquefy itself, my wife asked if I would be needing a new one. I said no, because of ports, no DVD drive, and the dumbass touch bar instead of function keys. Then the problem was apparently solved anyway, but if it hadn’t happened, I’d have probably gotten whatever the last model year was that still had a DVD drive. I use mine with some regularity, reading and writing.
XPS 15 here just because portability isn’t such a concern and it’s my best computing buy yet. XPS 13 for the wife is next on my purchase list.
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Thunderbolt should not be necessary for fully competent charging; that’s a USB Power Delivery thing (indeed, Apple even sells a power delivery thing that apparently doesn’t bother with USB3 support; which is licit; USB-C can be USB 2 with suitable connector); but the overall state of that particular slice of the market is…tepid at best.
The (not cheap) additional fiddly signal integrity stuff required to make Thunderbolt work properly could be paired with hilariously defective power delivery interpretations; but since any sort of Thunderbolt support aside from blatant fraud means that you are dealing with a $30-$50 piece of hardware there appears to be less of a range of downmarket offerings.
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That thing you never use when you hand-write, insert in an envelope, stick on a stamp and post, containing your reply, to the BB post room fast enough to get ‘printed’ before the thread automatically closes.
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Kicking them weekly is fine. Dropping them daily is fine. Drop-kicking them ever, though …
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Ah, no. It kept functioning until I finally did the update.
I tried an iPad as my main mobile computer before deciding I just don’t like the form factor.
I have a desktop computer so the mobile is for me about use on the couch, in bed, even on the toilet. On lap. Places where the stands requiring a flat surface are useless. For extended use having a weighted base that holds the screen up wins, well, hands down. I tried a lot of accessories trying to find something that would hold the iPad screen up as well as a laptop, but basically you have to add so much weight to the base that it weighs as much as a laptop to get the screen stable. And then you are constantly taking the iPad out of the stand to use naked, which is also a pain.
And then there are a surprising number of websites that simply don’t offer some functions on the mobile formatted iPad site. Spreadsheets just aren’t usable for me without a trackpad or mouse. Having a real file system makes many things easier.
I wish Apple would make a 17” 4K+ screen for the MBP but I suspect given the current trajectory that will be never.
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since the keyboard sucks most people i work with keep their macbook pro docked at all times and use an external keyboard. which of course doesn’t have a touchbar. so most of their workflow is done without one, switching to one isn’t an automatic reach making the touchbar mostly a useless novelty. without an external keyboard with a touchbar it will always just be a novelty.
i opted for the new model without one, planning on upgrading as soon as coffeelake is added. hoping against all hopes that 2018 sees a macbook pro with coffeelake with the huge gains that offers (30%+) along with support for 32gb of ram and more cores (at least 4 up to 16). coffeelake is one of those “worth waiting for” bumps. plus, rumor has it they are fixing the darn keyboard.
of course, then i read that apple is switching from intel processors in 2020 to their own and trying to move the desktop closer to the mobile os. bleck. i hate iOS. smdh. wtf apple? didn’t you learn?
i love OSX and apple computers, or at least i have for a while, but i’m sensing that once again things are shifting …damn pendulum of advancement.
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You can add a mouse to iOS if you JailBreak and add BTStacks, in fact you can add quite a few other types of BT devices once you have a proper BT stack. iOS even supports a cursor, they just don’t want you to use one so they removed much of the BT stack from their implementation to limit device usage to their few approved products.
I personally find that how select, copy, paste, is implemented on mobile is soooooo slow and inefficient compared to the laser precision and speed that the same operation takes with a mouse.
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there are sites to calculate optimal viewing distance based on pixel density and your vision.
if you can see pixels you are likely sitting too close for your eyes.
of course with laptops the distance you sit from the screen isn’t as flexible so you might just have to deal until either you get older eyes or they release a better screen. 
Can confirm, the keyboard on the current MBP not only sucks to use but the crazy short throw on the keys means even the tiniest of particles will cause a jam. Space bar crapping out is a frequent occurrence. The touch bar is dumb, too. A solution nobody asked for to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. I’d rather have a physical row of keys. And #donglelife really sucks. Apple’s stupid obsession with thinness over function is just mind boggling. Apple has really lost the plot with their current lineup and I’m speaking as someone that’s a long time fan of their products.
I really want to get a new Mac as my daily driver, ideally a laptop because I’m so space constrained here, but the current batch is just so damn unappealing I can’t bring myself to get one at the time.
The Surface Book is a damn good laptop (other than it’s dumb f-lock crap which drives me nuts). Wonderful keyboard, great track pad, excellent display. Now if only it ran MacOS…
I’m about to replace the hard drive on my 2013 mini because my 2016 mini is a piece of crap.
So maybe? it might be a better ‘computer’ than they’re turning out in that price range, at the moment.
Which worked surprisingly often, when it was Steve doing it.
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It’s not like there weren’t plenty of dumb ideas under his watch (like the awful hockey puck mouse on the original iMac) but it seems like these days Apple is obsessed with thinness above all else which just leads to unnecessary design compromises. The previous gen Mac Pro was damn near perfect.
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‘watch’ you say?
I think he just chose 1 winner in 10 more than most people. like 4 in 10 on an average day, where you and I might get 3 in 10 on our good days. Plenty of misses to go around! Nobody and certainly not me is perfect.
Woz was responsible for my favorite machine.
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