[stickfigure]

I just last week bought a pristine, maxed-out 2015 MacBook Pro. Yet I think you're wrong about most of this.

* I hate magsafe. I've owned a dozen of these and almost all of them have come apart just behind the magsafe connector. Expensive, proprietary, and fragile. I would much much rather have USB-C than shell out $90 every two years.

* USB-C is great. A bunch of different ports means carrying a bunch of different cables, so it doesn't matter what's on the computer-side. USB-C to microusb is no different than the USB-A to microusb. Actually it's better; the tiny dongles give you options without carrying a multitude of cables.

* The touchbar is meh. I would probably enjoy having dedicated Step In/Step Over/Step Out buttons when debugging, but I'm not willing to pay $300 for that.

The real problems with the new machines, which pushed me into buying a 2015 model, are:

* The new keyboard. The ergonomics are fine, but I am hard on keyboards and nevertheless expect 5+ years of duty (my last machine was bought new in 2013, and just wasn't cutting it with 8G of RAM). I can't have an unreliable and expensive keyboard.

* The price. A reasonably spec'd MBP is now pushing $3k. It's just too much! The specs of a modern maxed-out MBP are nearly identical to the 2015 model I just bought. Critically, I can't get more than 16G of RAM in a 13" form factor (and I'd really rather have something smaller). I bought a functionally equivalent machine and paid less than a third of what a new one costs.

I don't want a sexy svelte fragile expensive luxury status symbol. I want a rugged capital good that will reliably allow me to work for the next half-decade.

[laumars]

USB-C is a clusterfuck and Apple forcing that as their only connector is just plain bad design.

I have a MBP but opted for the non-touchbar model because I happen to like the escape key (lots of time spent in vi - amongst other things). My MBP only comes with TWO USB-C ports. That means I have no choice but to carry around a dongle when before I rarely used to. What's worse, the charger uses one of those ports and most dongles are garbage that die after 3 months (finding one that doesn't is an expensive game of pot luck). To add insult to injury, one of the USB ports on the MBP has now stopped working as a display out (the USB-C connector is just garbage - but that's only one of the many reasons USB-C is a clusterfuck).

And as for the keyboard, how anyone can say "the ergonomics are fine" - particularly when you're a self-confessed hard typist - is just weird. It's by far and away the worst laptop keyboard I've ever typed on. It's no exaggeration that I prefer the keyboard on budget laptops and those things are cheap and nasty (but at least they work and don't send uncomfortable shock waves back up your fingers as you press the keys)

The new MBP's are what you'd design a laptop for looks rather than actual everyday usage. The fact it comes with a "Pro" label is really just an insult to everyone's intelligence.

[JadeNB]

> I have a MBP but opted for the non-touchbar model because I happen to like the escape key (lots of time spent in vi - amongst other things).

Incidentally, the worry isn't about no ESC key but the opposite. There's still the soft key on the touchbar, right where muscle memory expects it; but, since my finger hovers there by default, I frequently find myself triggering it unexpectedly. I eventually realised that a lot of what I thought were bugs were caused by my ESC-ing out of some intended action without being aware of it.

[jacobolus]

> when you're a self-confessed hard typist

Whether or not you stick with the keyboard you dislike, you should try to fix this if possible. RSI is no joke, and “hard typing” causes excessive impact on your joints irrespective of keyboard.

You want to be using just enough force to reliably actuate the key.

(This is one reason that bad rubber dome keyboards are terrible: they don’t reliably actuate unless you really mash them, which trains people to type much too hard.)

[stickfigure]

FWIW the parent misunderstood me; I said "I'm hard on keyboards" - mostly due to environment. I don't think I press particularly hard.

[gxx]

USB C connectors are rated for a life of 10,000 cycles the same as USB micro. If your computer has only two USB C ports, especially if one is always used for charging leaving only one for general use, they will wear out faster than if you had a say a power jack and two or three USB ports plus maybe an HDMI port.

[bmurphy1976]

> The new keyboard. The ergonomics are fine, but I am hard on keyboards and nevertheless expect 5+ years of duty (my last machine was bought new in 2013, and just wasn't cutting it with 8G of RAM). I can't have an unreliable and expensive keyboard.

I just don't get it. I've had my MPB with the new keyboard for 9 months now and I hate it more than ever. The ergonomics are absolutely terrible, the layout (particularly the arrow keys is terrible) the feedback is terrible, the fragility is terrible, the touchbar is terrible.

9 months and I still can't type for shit on this keyboard. This is coming from somebody who can type over 100 WPM with 98% accuracy. On a normal keyboard, when warmed up, I can correct many mistakes without even looking at the keyboard OR the monitor. I just know I made a mistake and my fingers know what to do to fix it (a side-effect of having done dictation and typing out handwritten papers/notes professionally for a couple years).

They keyboard is objective crap. It's past time for it to go, or at least give us an option.

[HeWhoLurksLate]

Personally, I have an older wired Apple "chiclet" keyboard (short-throw, not long) and I can hit ~120 WPM on it- which is way above the 90 WPM max I get on a clicky mechanical keyboard (Cherry Blue / Green / Red).

I don't like their new keyboards, and I have a Lenovo Thinkpad keyboard which I love to use, too, but Apple's slightly older keyboards have a spot in my heart.

[nxc18]

I just switched to the Apple keyboard at work from my CODE keyboard (too loud in conference calls and I always forget to unmute) and I was shocked to find I’m faster on the Apple keyboard, even without any time to get used to it.

The MBP keyboard is still a POS though.

[gxx]

Soon after buying a 2016 Macbook Pro quicly I learned from personal experience how fragile thekeyboards were. Ater it was repaired under warranty I quickly sold it and bought two maxed out 2015 MacBook Pros hoping they would last until Apple got around to fixing the keyboard. It looks like my bet will be rewarded.

Also contributing to my decision is that the Touch Bar did not work for me at all. I have less than perfect eyesight. I need keys with tactile feedback and that don't move around to be sure I'm sure I'm accurately hitting the right key.

I do still have a non-touchbar 13 inch 2017 MacBook Pro that I use from time to time. I move around a lot and work in many locations. I've cursed Apple many times when suddenly needing to connect to an older USB or HDMI device but not having my dongle collection with me this time... The need to carry dongles seems like a kludge that detracts from the elegrant compactness the computer itself.

[dasil003]

I’m only two months in having been clinging to my 2015 MBP until recently forced to upgrade by my company. Now I feel borderline incompetent at times when I can’t hit the arrow keys or escape smoothly. One solution is to use an external keyboard, but then I won’t adapt to the new feel and I’ll be stuck like this forever, unable to type competently in a meeting or any other time I’m away from my desk.

I could probably get used to the feel of the latest butterfly keys, but the arrow keys and virtual escape key and to a lesser extent virtual F-keys are intolerable. It’s like has Jony Ive ever had to type something? Hell no, he has people to do that for him, the important thing is everything he touches look immaculate in a 90-degree closeup and framed above his mantel.

[bmurphy1976]

You should make the caps lock key your escape key, that's what I do. It's vastly superior to the touchbar escape key. In fact, I even prefer it to a regular escape key at this point, although my muscle memory does cause problems when I use somebody else's computer.

I removed the escape key from my touchbar entirely because I kept accidentally brushing it when I went to type ` or ~. I also had the lock screen widget on the touchbar for a couple months, but I removed that because again I kept accidentally brushing that and locking my laptop when I meant to hit delete.

I think you are right, Ivy probably never really used the keyboard. He probably has a desk both at home and at work with the magic keyboard and that keyboard is decent enough. The couple hours he spends on the plane travelling between Cupertino and London isn't enough time for him to build up empathy for what the rest of us have to go through.

[dasil003]

Already use it for Ctrl in the UNIX tradition, and it's really hard to change that muscle memory.

[jacobolus]

If you get a Japanese layout keyboard, you get a bunch of extra free keys which you use for whatever you want. https://i.imgur.com/tuCklIJ.jpg

Particularly handy are the extra thumb keys (I use the one to the right of the spacebar for backwards delete, but vim users could put escape there.). Also control is in the right place and caps lock is in the hard-to-reach corner, where it should be.

One especially nice approach is to re-map all of the right-hand letter keys one position over to the right, spreading the hands apart, making right enter and shift more accessible, and leaving an extra column of easily accessible index-finger keys in the middle of the keyboard.

[dasil003]

Oof, the vertical return key on the UK keyboard almost made me tear my hair out when I did a 3-year stint in London :)

[Xcelerate]

I have caps lock mapped to Ctrl and Ctrl mapped to Esc. Seems to work pretty well.

[keldaris]

> I don't want a sexy svelte fragile expensive luxury status symbol. I want a rugged capital good that will reliably allow me to work for the next half-decade.

Then why are you looking at Apple products at all? You're looking for a ThinkPad or an EliteBook. Fragile expensive luxury status symbols are exactly what Apple makes and always has ever since Jobs. Now they're just more blatant about it.

[JadeNB]

> You're looking for a ThinkPad or an EliteBook.

I've seen such recommendations before, so my first non-Mac purchase in a decade (~2014) was a ThinkPad. I used to love the nub in the '90s, and I got used to it again, but otherwise the keyboard was horrible, and I eventually had to replace it. (A big plus: it was really easy to do.) Right out of the box I had a dead pixel on the screen, and, when I told customer support, they said that they regarded a certain number of dead pixels as normal, and would not replace it.

I'm sure I just had a bad experience, but I have never had either of these problems with any Mac purchase (aside from the fucked-up-by-design modern keyboards).

[keldaris]

Yup, non-corporate customer support is terrible. The bright side is, everything is easily replaceable (or at least used to be until very recently) and if you don't want to do it yourself, chances are you can find a cheap third party tech to replace any screen, keyboard, etc.

Also, for what it's worth, in over a decade of using and recommending ThinkPads, I've never encountered a bad keyboard before. Dead pixels are fairly common, though.

[Bud]

That's just plain nonsense, and reveals that you've never actually supported 100 or 1000 laptops at once and become familiar with real-life failure rates of PC laptops from 2005-2015 vs. Macs.

[keldaris]

If you have good statistics on real-life failure rates between Macs and ThinkPads/EliteBooks that contradict me (hopefully going past 2015, when Mac build quality really went down), by all means share them. I don't work in IT support and never claimed that I did.

[stickfigure]

This seems like a weird question. I like OSX well enough and I would rather not incur the cost of switching to a different software toolchain.

[HeWhoLurksLate]

Thing is, they used to not be very fragile (at least, not in comparison to how they are now.)

Mind you, ThinkPads have arguably gotten less easy to repair since then, too.

[keldaris]

ThinkPads have certainly gotten steadily worse over the years, along with every other laptop, but relative to the rest they still seem to be the most sensible choice. Personally, I just use and maintain a collection of old ThinkPads for laptops, relegating real work to the desktop.

[bitL]

> shell out $90 every two years

More like $15 if you don't mind 3rd party adapters...

> I would probably enjoy having dedicated Step In/Step Over/Step Out buttons when debugging

This is the main drawback of current MacBooks, difficult to debug with them.

> A reasonably spec'd MBP is now pushing $3k

Yeah, on the other hand 13" now has a quadcore i7 that is faster than 4790k. 16GB RAM limit is too low (32GB chips are available) and SSDs are way overpriced. Latest butterfly keyboard is much better than the previous variants; touchbar is the only thing that really kills it for serious developers.