[lostgame]

> Then lastly macOS. I have had a mac since 2011. I am having a hard time with the direction Apple is going with their laptops.

This, a thousand times this. I had a discussion earlier this week with the owner of a Mac repair shop of 15+ years here in Toronto, who lamented the release of any Mac portable since 2015 - saying 'thank God for the 2012-2015 units, or I would be out of business.'

I told him I'd been buying Macs for 15 years, and during especially times like buying my first iBook at age 15, I absolutely relied on, and still rely on, purchasing a laptop with the intent to upgrade the RAM and the HDD/SSD in the future.

With the laptops continually increasing in price, justified by tacking on useless features nobody wants, and then preventing upgrades, the laptops are out of reach for me to justify as an intermediate iOS developer. The 2017 models locked to 16GB are already virtually obsolete to a serious developer or film editor.

I will not, would not, on principle, buy a computer whose hard drive is soldered to the Logic Board, if only for the sake of retaining the hard drive itself aside from the laptop.

There is no possible, potential benefit a soldered hard drive, or soldered RAM, gives me, and the detriments far, far outweigh any benefits.

Previously, if the hard drive or RAM got corrupted or damaged, I could replace those parts the same day. What now?

Truly - and I mean truly, butterfly keyboard and lack of ports aside, even internally, Apple has finally gone from questionably being form of over function, to its focus on form over function being a literal insult to its long term dedicated users, and simply not responding to criticisms.

So the media laughs at the Touch Bar, fans and critics deride it, and Apple's response - to cancel the non-touch bar version of the 13" MacBook Pro.

[b3b0p]

You mention the RAM and hard drive, but it irks me more my keyboard is not replaceable. It's the most used moving component of the entire unit. It's exposed and susceptible to damage the easiest. I've hated every MacBook Pro since the release of the unibody. My favorite was the PowerBook 12 and 17.

I've had a MacBook/PowerBook Pro (and Thinkpad) since Titanium and the First MacBook Pro and if it wasn't for the fact of macOS and the convenience of being in the Apple ecosystem with their iPhone, TV, HomePod(s), Watch, Music, and iCloud I would be back on Linux (I actually came from FreeBSD on my Thinkpad). I'm currently using a 2017 and 2018 MacBook Pro. The 2017 would be great except the keyboard (and of course the soldered RAM/HDD) is absolutely trash. The 2018 is much better, but nothing like a Thinkpad. I also miss the Trackpoint, but the Apple Trackpad is good.

I miss my Thinkpad (+ BSD) bad, but being an iOS / web developer and entrenched in the Apple ecosystem (which I honestly like the convenience) I feel stuck and hard to even get a secondary machine. I even leave a fully maxed out P53 and P1 (I can't decide which one I want) in my Lenovo cart ready to buy at a given moment.

[acollins1331]

What's so good about the apple ecosystem everyone hounds about? I don't see why you'd want to lock yourself into paying 5x more for every tech product you'd ever want. All of that stuff has an Android equivalent and Bluetooth now. It's not 2011.

[b3b0p]

You get more than just the eco system which is must just part of the experience. The hardware is that much better. It boils down to you get what you pay for. I value the convenience of what I need or want just working as well as the quality of the devices, especially compared to the alternatives. It's also not 5x as much, but I'm thinking you were exaggerating.

[lostgame]

> My favorite was the PowerBook 12 and 17.

Golden, golden days. Every other film editor and director I've ever met, I've had a talk about how blessed the 17" G4 was (at the time).

[m463]

The keyboard keys fit the shape of your fingers.

[b3b0p]

You could also walk into the Apple store. Go to the back corner. Pick up a box with a new battery in it for $119 (iirc). Buy it and walk out with a new battery. All in a single day. You could also order them online.

Mind-blowing.

[spronkey]

And replace them yourself without catching on fire, or whatever "safety" issue they keep blabbering on about...

Ho-lee sheee-yt

[spronkey]

The screen bezel was symmetrical enough to keep my OCD in check.

[dariosalvi78]

I have had 3 MacBookPro in the last 4 years. Had to, because of some development for iOS I had to at my job.

Never had a Mac before, everybody was saying they were fantastic. You'll see, coming from Windows, what a difference, they would say.

The first had some serious hardware failure which made it reset at random times. With time the resets became more frequent until it became impossible to use it. I gave it back to IT with the order to destroy it.

The second had the infamous keyboard. God knows how much I hated it. Random keys wouldn't work, but most commonly the ones you need more, like shift. Thanks Apple. Went to IT and told them to throw it in the bin.

This last one I got has the horrid touch-bar which starts the bloody Siri 3 to 5 times a day because my finger randomly flies by the up-right corner of the laptop (typically when I am looking for the backspace). I hate it. The network sometimes goes away, for unknown reasons, until I reset the network card. Recently, the screen sometimes shows some worrisome fast-disappearing black areas.

You'll see, they would say. Very reliable, they would say.

[koffiezet]

I've had a few Macs - and my 2013 MacBook Air is still going very strong, but my 1yo MacBook Pro's keyboard has been replaced already, which is a serious issue, to the point where I doubt my next laptop will be a Mac again for that alone.

Other than that though, I think you might just have been unlucky. In professional env, I've seen bad units with pretty much every brand out-there. It shouldn't happen, but it does. In my experience, Apple will replace these without much fuzz, but their service, certainly towards businesses, is a far cry from that of for example Dell.

The Touch Bar complaint is just you not investing enough time with the system to get to know it. You can disable siri, and completely customise the touch bar.

[JMTQp8lwXL]

Have you tried customizing your touchbar to address at least that annoyance? Obviously things like butterfly keys you can't do much about, but you can do something about the touchbar.

[lostgame]

I am so sad this has been your experience. From my first iBook G3 in 2004 to my last 2012 13" I have only ever had the most positive experience with the combination of hardware and software.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

[squiggleblaz]

My wife has my old 2012 MacBook Retina for some hobby iOS development. Apparently all her friends are envious because it's the last Mac that doesn't suck. I don't know if it's true or not - but I replaced that one with a Dell because, as I always do when I buy a new machine, I consider my needs, the cost, and the benefits of the hardware, and for the first time in a decade Apple didn't come up on top. So maybe I agree with them too.

[pms]

I switched from Linux to Mac about six years ago, because I believed it's better. Now I think that it wasn't worth it and I'm not even talking about money. It's overhyped. From the start, I was annoyed by various things (some things worked just better on my old Ubuntu), but recently I'm becoming fed up with it, mostly because of carbon, finder, lacking bash utils, touch bar, and crashes. I'll be switching back to Linux+Windows.

[lostgame]

> carbon

What? I haven't dealt with Carbon API's in forever. Care to add more detail?

[pms]

I meant that Mojave does not support Nvidia drivers [1]. Sorry, I've confused Carbon with Metal, the 3d graphics API.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/marcochiappetta/2018/12/11/appl...

[WWLink]

There were also a ton of people asking for a lower end Mac Pro. So what does Apple do? Make the highest of highest end computers ever! $6000!

It's like their product management is run by sadistic assholes.

[chipotle_coyote]

I know of a ton of people asking for a MacBook Pro with a keyboard that doesn't suck, but I genuinely haven't heard many people asking for a "lower end Mac Pro." The trashcan Mac Pro, love it or hate it, clearly positioned the line as the intended spiritual successor to old SGI workstations -- the ones that started around $10K in 1999 money -- and the new Mac Pro is doubling down on that.

"Lower end Mac Pro" sounds an awful lot like the "xMac," a Mac that would be more like an iMac but a box that takes cards, which is something that some folks have wanted for literally two decades at this point. It's clearly not what Apple wants to bring to market. The low-end headless desktop Mac is the Mac mini -- and I suspect it would be a great machine for a lot of developers. That doesn't mean it's what you want, and I'm not saying you're wrong to want something else! I am saying, though, that "Apple won't make my dream Mac" isn't a sign of sadism.

[spronkey]

Such a ridiculous stance for Apple. I am 100% convinced that the xMac would double their desktop computer market share.

[lostgame]

I agree. Their decisions seem almost intentionally against what their vocal user base is asking for.

From removing the non-touch bar MacBook Pro model, to the ghastly price of the new Mac Pro, to their refusal to create an upgraded iPhone SE-sized model - Apple has started to shove things down the user base's throat now more than ever.

Apple has always been guilty of this to some extent, but for me, it's offerings worked with me, my workflow, and their direction grew with me - I embraced the move to Intel, because, as a developer, being able to dual-boot, and eventually even virtualize the dual-boot with parallels, was excellent for me. (Waiting for Office 2008 and the Universal Adobe CS3 package, however...)

The point is - Apple has always at least provided options in the past that were, well, options. At this point, there is no option in Apple's lineup I would keep for free - I'd simply rather sell a new MBP and create a hackintoshed Lenovo ThinkPad in a heartbeat than actually use any of their offerings on the daily, which I can say from experience, as I happen to have to use both on the daily.

[spronkey]

Completely agree. I've been saying this since 2012 when the Retina machines came out, and skeptical since 2009 when they moved to non-user-replaceable batteries in the MacBook Pros.

I don't think I've actually ever had a non-Apple main notebook, and that goes back to the 1990s!

That said, I only tolerate the 2013-2015 rMBPs, use one for my main personal and work laptops, but the soldered RAM pisses me off (a lot, because my personal machine only has 8GB and my god is it hard to find a 16GB model for a reasonable price in the used market), and the proprietary storage irks me. Thankfully 10.13 supports NVMe with an adaptor, which to me basically confirms that there was zero reason for Apple to use the proprietary stupid thing in the first place.

As for any machine they've built after 2016, well, I don't want them. I don't want a butterfly keyboard with no travel that breaks with a skin flake. I don't want screens that stop working because they use a flex cable connector that's too short. I don't want a touchbar if it means no function row. I don't want to give up MagSafe. I don't want to give up my SD card slot. I don't want to give up USB Type A. I don't want a massive trackpad, and I don't want the fscking T2 chip.

In fact, the only things on the >2016 machines I do want are the faster CPUs and GPUs, the better quality displays, and Touch ID!

... As for Lenovo though, they're slowly into Apple 2.0. Have you seen the T/X x90 and X1 series? Soldered RAM. At least they still make the X1 Extreme and P series.

[ericd]

It’s easy to dismiss since it was obsolete for so long, but the new Mac Mini is actually a pretty capable machine - 6 reasonably fast cores, 32 gigs of ram, fast storage, and 10 GbE onboard. I’ve been extremely happy with it.

[dagw]

And if you need it you can add an external GPU for an extra graphics boost.

[linhares]

But nothing from nvidia, correct?

[dagw]

Currently no, or at least not if you want to run the latest version of MacOS.