Suggestions for improving the MacBook Pro

boing
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I’m a major keyboard and trackpad snob. For many, many years Apple simply had the best of both on their laptops and was the benchmark for me.

Sadly as soon as I sat down to actually try out a new MacBook and MacBook Pro, while the trackpad was great as expected, the keyboard was a huge “NOPE”. With the extremely short travel and harsh feel, I found it to be terrible to type on. It’s was almost as bad as using one of those awful Surface Touch Covers. I can’t imagine writing e-mails, let alone coding on one of those. The Touch Bar was a gimmicky mess as well for all the reasons that have been covered in great depth by others and I won’t regurgitate them here.

As far as I’m concerned, Apple still wins when it comes to great trackpads, but Microsoft has out-Appled Apple with great keyboards on the Surface Book line. I have a Surface Book as a work laptop, and that thing is a joy to type on.

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Late December last year my faithful 2011 MBA developed fat battery in a bad way. I replaced it with a 13" MBP w/ touch bar and loaded options. Been quite happy with the MBP even having typed hundreds of pages of text without a problem. Took me a day or so to get used to the new KB but that’s it. I’ve found the touch bar handy, not world changing but not a gimmick either. After almost a year of use I can’t say I’m unhappy with my decision.

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I suggest they remove some of it’s ports.

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Here’s a cool trick for improving the MacBook Pro: sell it on eBay, buy a used ThinkPad, install Linux.

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Same! Have a 2010 MBP and live and die by gfxCardStatus app. I dont play many games so I didnt really miss the nVidia chip that much. I’d like to “upgrade” by buying a 2015 or 2016, but even used, those still cost $2k or so. Really shitty that Mac no longer supports 10.8.6. I cant really get a handle on which OS I should upgrade to, there being so goddamn many between 10.8 and 10.15.

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I replaced the cap that makes that thing die. 5 bucks and some soldering, done!

I have my work machines left at El Cap, and the 2010 is High on Sierra. El Cap is the last os that lets you repair permissions, which in spite of the reports to the contrary, still works on the old machines I fix

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I dunno, it probably wouldn’t be a simple solder job given how tiny and tightly packed the surface mount components are on that motherboard. Definitely not a job for a beginner but certainly repairable (as Louis Rossman frequently demonstrates on his wonderful YouTube channel).

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I’m surprised that RAM didn’t get a nod. The fact that the cannot-get-more-for-any-amount-of-money value hasn’t budged since mid/late 2010-mid 2011 is…unimpressive.

Makes me wonder if the other problems are just that much more urgent; or if mac pros mostly do pro things that don’t lean too hard on RAM.

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I guess maybe 2015 was the ideal time to get Tully Monster (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015).

I rarely run out. That being said, I have occasionally run out. But 16 GB is pretty workable, and I don’t have a desktop.

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I think my MBP was either the last or next-to-last before the touchbar and USB-C developments, so great timing as far as I’m concerned. It’s still better than required and I expect it has a good few years left it in - our home iMac is nearly a decade old and remains usable (and supported, crucially - though it does have the advantage of accessible RAM slots).

The keyboard is my biggest gripe, having owned a few earlier-gen Apple laptops. The space bar is the worst offender- I suspect it only has a single switch in the centre, meaning hitting it at the edge with your thumb is a gamble with fairly poor odds, and has frustrated me on numerous occasions.

I do wonder how I’d get on without a classic USB port (or two), but historically I seem to adapt fine to these kind of situations, so my general approach is not to worry about it. If my MPB jumped in front of a bus tomorrow and was replaced with a new model, I think I could bear that terrible burden quite stoically.

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If anything like me, history would repeat itself for you. I replaced a few cables with C to whatever was needed on the other end and got a pair of C to A adapters for $6 and promptly forgot about the “issue”.

I’ll admit to missing magsafe for power though.

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Yeah, 16GB is plenty to adequate for quite a few applications; I know I only tend to hammer on my RAM above that area when VM farming or doing other atypically intensive stuff.

It’s more of a concern on "that’s the most money can buy on the highest end of their laptop range and it hasn’t budged in 5ish years(even as thunderbolt peripherals are marketed as enabling fairly heavy use cases by laptop standards and VMs show no sign of becoming less popular for both Dev/testing and relatively mainstream copy-of-Windows-and-baulky-program-in-Parallels uses).

When comparing to laptops generally the MacBook pro is reasonably generously specced(especially for it’s size, weight, and noise level); but since Apple is the only vendor of machines that can run OSX, it’s a bit of an issue that the absolute top of what they offer is “eh, pretty nice compared to the average”; with pretty much zero for anyone who needs more. Most people don’t; and that’s why ‘mobile workstations’ are a bit of a niche on the PC side; but still me people do; and Apple seems more interested in treating ‘Pro’ as 'high spec consumer’s than they are in catering to that.

It’s not as though most laptop users need 64GB of RAM; but they have the option; and that value has more or less closely tracked what the tech allows.

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I‘ve a pro with touchbar, and i admit i don‘t use the touchbar much, on the keyboard, i have an issue with the arrow buttons, i keep hitting the wrong one and it‘s especially annoying with autocomplete where it jumps to the least relevant suggestion. I haven‘t had any issue with how the keyboard feels otherwise.

I was initially skeptical of just having usb-c ports, but after shelling out for extra adapters, i do see huge advantages, mostly that i can plug anything into any port, which solves some placement issues, and i no longer feel limited by having smaller numbers of specialised ports.

Eg, plugging in two displays or more on my old mbp, i had one hdmi, then another adapter for hdmi to tb. That issue is gone with usb-hdmi adapters, although i still need adapters, it‘s the same throughout.

Tbh, i always had a collection of adapters, but it‘s easier to manage now, and more flexible.

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I have a touchbar 15" Macbook Pro. It is not bad at all, but there are some areas I dislike.

o The case (and I hated this on my 2009 MBP too) has edges and corners that are razor-sharp which is utterly stupid. The case comes to a point around the opening where you stick your finger to lift the lid, and it’s dangerous. The bottom side also is very sharp where the back hinge is so I am worried about tearing my pants.

o The lid closes so tightly that you can hurt yourself if it closes on skin. The lid does not open to a wide enough angle, so that if you are sitting back in an easy chair you cannot always open the display to a wide enough angle that it is easy to read. So I would like the display to open all the way to flat even.

o Keyboard is not great - I find myself either slapping at the keys or hitting lower row keys with my fingernails by accident. Also for me the shift key sometimes made a clacking sound, apparently keys are sometimes sensitive to dirt or something getting under them, since it fixed itself. I wish I could get awesome cherry type keys, I got a fully loaded MBP that should last me 5-10 years like my last one, but the keyboard doesn’t feel great and my palms tend to hurt from the case, I wonder if that is due to it being aluminum or from sharp edges.

o More USB-C connectors and docks should be sold. I have trouble finding the kind I need. For example a simple connector that converts micro-USB like android phones use to USB-C would be very useful. I use the Apple dongle that includes a VGA and USB port, and plug into that a cable that has male USB and male micro-USB cable to connect my Android phone but the dongle is bulky. I did find one tiny USB-C to micro USB adapter in a convenience store but the gender is wrong for replacing the dongle.

o Notification to install high sierra update could not be easily ignored

o Should include a system-wide equalizer. I don’t trust downloading software not from the app store, and one I did try (EqMac2 on github / appstore) is getting there although some issues which I reported.

o Should provide a way to run iOS apps, for example I have Bose QuietComfort 35 II headphones with ClearMic boom, they are pretty good for the price. But I need my phone to run the Bose app in order to control the noise cancellation level. I don’t want to have to get out my phone. Same for an authorization app like Okta, I should be able to do something like Whatsapp where I link my phone (android or iOS) to my Mac and I can run mobile apps. Not talking about an emulator.

o Difficult to find software in app store and cannot filter on free. Apple has enough money they should approach developers to get their sofrware onto the app store since there should be a lot more available

o The crazy love for 2 mm high text, such as seen in the app store and elsewhere. That’s just nutty, though saved by the awesome hardware zoom.

o I had a bazillion chrome tabs and somehow the memory got used up (memory pressure 100%) which was cool, but I saw things starting to slow to a crawl and freeze which is silly. Should be able to limit resource usage of an application more intelligently even if the application is at fault, and reduce power usage because the battery got used up much more quickly than would expect

o TextEdit is so useful it really hurts that it crashes very often. I think it happens sometimes when you have pasted HTML into it…

o Make it easier to develop new things for touch bar without programming.

o Would be cool if Apple provided solar and wind powered free charging stations like Tesla!

o Everyone at Starbucks has one. Need more colors…

Well I love my Mac aside from these things!

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My wife got me a new 13" MBP with the new touchbar for my bday. I stared at it for 4 days, and just couldn’t do it. Back to the factory, in exchange for the 15" model that still retains function keys, the magsafe power, USB ports and SD reader.

Almost every single feature in the new models are a comedy of high-concept bad decisions with little to no value for the user. Nothing Apple added in serves as a benefit to sensible hardware decisions or usability. It’s gimmicks, all the way down. Never mind upgrading the memory or processor, let’s rip out a connector that’s in overwhelmingly wide use, and force all our users to string together unwieldy dongles.

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designed by people who get free IT, laptops, and accessories, and don’t do their actual work on them

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I’ve tried doing that on the laptop and then traveling, but I must be doing something wrong there; I had issues with connecting with Virtual Box VMs when I left the home network and set up at (say) the Starbucks at Target (no problems at a real Starbucks though, but that’s not always convenient). (I hate using the default window since Copy-Paste don’t seem to be supported at all, so I really prefer to use Terminal.) So now I just do most of that sort of deal off of our home office server.

But usually when I run out of RAM, I’m just painting in Photoshop. (I paint at a very high resolution and sometimes use hundreds of layers.)

I have to confess, I just don’t bother any more with other OSes other than Linux (and then that’s only for server stuff)—or other laptops. I just get frustrated with build issues and, I just seemed to be cursed when it comes to reliability. I’ve got an ok track record with Apple’s hardware, but pre-magsafe power connectors were devastating. (And not even Apple can Scott-proof against my water spilling powers.)

Since I’ve come to loathe shopping for hardware, that saves time (though I sometimes hear good things about the Surface from other artists—no pressure sensitivity is kind of a dealbreaker for me, though). I think it says something about the state of computing in general that almost anything will be good enough for the most part—even when it comes to laptops.

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High Sierra uses more of my RAM than Sierra did. Could be inefficient coding. (Boo! hiss!). Could be Space–time tradeoffs. (About damn time!)

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I’m running that, too. I haven’t hit the ceiling like I had with Yosemite/El Capitan yet, but I am behind in a bunch of projects…