'The 2018 MacBook Pro Keyboard Drives Me Crazy' (ryanbigg.com) 302
Ryan Bigg: I recently upgraded from a 2015 MacBook Pro to a 2018 MacBook Pro. So I've been using this computer as a work computer for almost 3 months now and, my god, the keyboard drives me mental. Even writing this blog post now on the train and there's:
duplicated "o's" that I've had to go back and fix, or missing ones -- guess how fun it is to write a book about a Toy Robot with this particular problem
double spaces -- or no spaces
a Command key that registers 9 out of every 10 times
words like "times" that inexplicably get spelled like "timies", or "about" that gets spelled like "abouot"
Apple is all about the thinness of their laptops. I do not particularly care about the thinness of this device. For the most part, it sits on one of two desks that I use or it sits on my lap on the train. Maybe I use it on the couch from time-to-time. I do not care about the thinness of this device while I am using it. I only care about it when I store it away, in my backpack. This keyboard has a key travel distance that, I am sure, is measured in microns or perhaps nanometers. It feels like I am typing on a concrete slab. Key presses inexplicably duplicate. Or don't register at all. All for thinness. This keyboard is a catastrophic engineering failure, designed by a company that should know better. A company with more money in the bank than several countries combined. This keyboard would be, by far, the part of the MacBook Pro that is used the most by everybody who owns one, and it is so poorly engineered for the pursuit of thinness. The author is a junior engineering program lead at Culture Amp, an analytics platform that specializes in staff surveying and analytics.
duplicated "o's" that I've had to go back and fix, or missing ones -- guess how fun it is to write a book about a Toy Robot with this particular problem
double spaces -- or no spaces
a Command key that registers 9 out of every 10 times
words like "times" that inexplicably get spelled like "timies", or "about" that gets spelled like "abouot"
Apple is all about the thinness of their laptops. I do not particularly care about the thinness of this device. For the most part, it sits on one of two desks that I use or it sits on my lap on the train. Maybe I use it on the couch from time-to-time. I do not care about the thinness of this device while I am using it. I only care about it when I store it away, in my backpack. This keyboard has a key travel distance that, I am sure, is measured in microns or perhaps nanometers. It feels like I am typing on a concrete slab. Key presses inexplicably duplicate. Or don't register at all. All for thinness. This keyboard is a catastrophic engineering failure, designed by a company that should know better. A company with more money in the bank than several countries combined. This keyboard would be, by far, the part of the MacBook Pro that is used the most by everybody who owns one, and it is so poorly engineered for the pursuit of thinness. The author is a junior engineering program lead at Culture Amp, an analytics platform that specializes in staff surveying and analytics.
It was a step backwards.... (Score:2)
...from my 2011 MBP, but the trackpad is a step forward. Switching back and forth is difficult.
Interestingly, the one time my 2017 13" MBP had a keyboard problem (the "F" key didn't work) it disappeared when I brought it in for service. Only difference between home and the service center was that I'd powered it off when I dropped it off--which I hadn't gone since I got it. Firmware glitch? Dunno, but it's been fine ever since
Still feels flimsy as hell, though.
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...from my 2011 MBP, but the trackpad is a step forward. Switching back and forth is difficult.
I own a 17" 2011 MPB, and have a 15" 2018 MBP for work. The 2011 keyboard is by far superior. I usually use a mouse with my laptops though, as I can't stand the trackpads. Can't say I really noticed a difference between either one in that regard though.
Point of order? (Score:2)
Just out of curiosity why are we talking about 2018 MBPs when it is now 2019? Months ago I bought a MBP and it is a 2019 and it works fine, keyboard and all.
I just finished a project where I wrote about 70,000 words and about 30-40% of them were on the laptop keyboard. The biggest issue is that it gets hot AF.
I think the author is angling for a free upgrade or something.
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Exactly. He probably doesn't even have the latest iPhone.
junior engineering program lead at Culture Amp (Score:2, Funny)
"The author is a junior engineering program lead at Culture Amp, an analytics platform that specializes in staff surveying and analytics."
I can picture the guy now with his horn rimmed glasses and beard and his Starbucks cup getting angry over his $4,000 Apple laptop.
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Ooops, just visited his website. I was 100% spot on. He has it all: an expert in framework du jour, out of work but a "mentor". I would totally hire this guy. Love those types of Millenials.
Take it back to Apple (Score:4, Informative)
Apple have a worldwide replacement program for these keyboards.
If you're getting stuck keys, or duplicated keys, they will replace it - even if the laptop is out of warranty.
When they replace it, it's a full top-case replacement - so that means you also get a new trackpad and a new battery.
The keyboard mech is replaced with the newer, and ever so slightly better, mech from the 2019 model.
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Yeah, they tried blowing out my keys first, and then replaced some of the keycaps. As the mechanism for the butterfly keys is so fragile, they damaged the E key when they were switching out keycaps. It worked for 2-3 days and then broke worse than before.
The second time I took it in, they replaced the entire top case.
It was a pain to be without my laptop for 5 days, but it was worth it. It was wearing through some of the keycaps, so got an entire new keyboard. The new mechanism is a bit better than the old
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> 14-day no-questions-asked full-money-back returns
If you want to be nice, ask if they have any refurb units available. I've done that a couple of times since I felt guilty.
So do something about it (Score:2)
Macbooks have always been a problem... (Score:2)
... for me, at least. I guess my hands are just too big for a Mac. Their keyboards are just a little bit smaller than any other keyboards I've used over the years and I'm constantly hitting keys adjacent to the ones I wanted to press. At least when I was using an employer's Macbook while at home I could plug in a Model M (via an adapter) and type with a far lower error rate. (I doubt any of the Macphiles in the office would have put up with one of my Model Ms for very long.)
Someone at work thought I'd be h
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That's mostly because the tops of the keys are flat, in the name of modern design (which unfortunately nearly everyone now copies). Desktop keyboards (and Thinkpad and older laptop keyboards) are sculpted slightly concave, to direct your finger towards the middle of the key for improved usability. I never understood why everyone raved about Mac keyboards - they look nice and the keypress mechanism used to be fine, but the feel of the
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I am typing on a Logitech TK420 wireless keyboard/trackpad right now, and although it is very much a bog standard scissor switch design and doesn't feel all that great, it's not awful either, and the keys are NOT flat (all four edges are level but the middle is low). They're ever so slightly dished, which over the course of multiple keystrokes tends to pull the fingers back toward the centers of the keys. They look flat to match the current aesthetic trends, but they don't feel like it, and that is perfect.
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Also I wouldn't want a bump on D and H because WASD.
Thin is the wrong goal (Score:2)
My 10 month old Dell drives me nuts (Score:2)
My point? Um, Apple bad? I dunno, just saying.
Heh. Trying to type in the left b r right to get my paragraphs right (dafuq
Get a new keyboard and replace it (Score:2)
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Holding onto my Air (Score:2)
I have a 2014 MacBook Air that I am looking to upgrade, but the keyboard issue is the one thing that is making me want to delay the upgrade.
Sure there is that issue with a minimum spec only containing a 128GB SSD, but at least thatâ(TM)s an issue that throwing stupid money at will allow me to upgrade.
I just hope Apple will come to its senses, but at this point I am not seeing any pigs with flight clearance?
Impatient with muscle memory? (Score:2)
Albeit mine is a 2017 model, the keyboard is my favorite feature about the pro and probably the best keyboard I've had on a laptop. Yeah, there is the issue about shit getting stuck under the keys, but just slap a keyboard jelly over it from Amazon and it's still a joy to type on.
agree (Score:2)
I've had the keyboard replaced twice. This mbp has been back for issues 3 times. There's no apple store near me, so each time is at least 2 week
The perfect keyboard (Score:2)
In my opinion, the 2012 MBP had a perfect keyboard, and it was only a little thicker than the butterfly.
The entire unit was probably 0.3" thicker and probably half a pound heavier. But the used experience was superior. It had ports, and an Escape key. I wish they kept that form factor, and just updated the components. I would gladly buy one.
Yes, they can go smaller, thinner, lighter, but they paid too high a price in usability and fragility.
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The entire unit was probably 0.3" thicker and probably half a pound heavier. But the used experience was superior. It had ports, and an Escape key.
It didn't occur to me til I read that since the escape key is part of the touchbar on mine, that it doesn't physically exist on the lower-end models without the touchbar. Ugh, that sucks.
Same here (Score:2)
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My daily driver keyboard (Cherry G86 series) is actually designed for Point of Sale use. It is spill-resistant and has drain holes. This makes sense -- obviously you can't be taking a retail register out of service during business hours just because it got something spilled on it.
Use An External Keyboard? (Score:2)
I use an external keyboard (that works like I want it to work)!
There are lots of cabled and wireless keyboard that work just like you want them to work.
So why whine?
Are you that needy for attention?
Law of laptops (Score:2)
All laptops suck.
Thinkpads suck less than others.
Macbook Pros have had good moments (Score:2)
The 2012 MacBook Pro was pretty good. Some of the older MacBook Pros had good ideas too... like a user REMOVABLE keyboard to access the RAM, or long long ago the powerbook you could drive a car over without breaking or the powerbook you could pour the water out of the keyboard after a spill.
Apple has been screwing up with nobody to tell them what direction makes sense. It's like most people who make movie sequels who are clueless why the 1st film was a big success.
Apple should promote accessories... Such a
I spent $12k on a an Apple Laptop.. and... (Score:2)
Twelve thousand dollars on a laptop?! (Score:3)
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They were great. Some of the best Macs and MacBookPros were made in the 2009-2012 era. Then Steve died and the clowns took over. Now everything is glued and soldered together, except that the current Mac Mini finally has socketed RAM again... I think. At least design isn't quite as bad as in the '90s, but it's close. (the 8100 and 4400 were really bad, but at least you could still replace the RAM and hard disk)
Subjects Suck (Score:2)
Apple is all about the thinness of their laptops. I do not particularly care about the thinness of this device.
And yet you were stupid enough to buy an Apple device.
Done with Apple (Score:3)
After decades of supporting their hardware, including these fancy overpriced hipster-oriented designer laptops with as few ports as possible I've recently moved on to more practical offerings at down-to-earth prices, be it from Dell, ASUS or Lenovo. Keeping the status symbol in the coatcheck hasn't been as difficult as anticipated, and Windows 10 or Ubuntu are pretty damn usable for most tasks. Not to say anything of the cornucopia of fantastic software now available to me, compared to the lackluster offerings that run on OS-X. Yes, WineBottler [kronenberg.org] does help with that sometimes, but at the end of the day it's about the software, not the OS.
It's always useful to keep in mind that (rather than our opinions on their designs) public companies only care about a single thing: $$. So vote with your wallet, this is the only language they ever seem to understand.
Now OTOH, if the complaint is about clinging to status symbol brands no matter the cost in wasted productivity, not sure this is the right forum to discuss such matters.
Keyboard: Meh. Trackpad? Ugh! (Score:2)
I have a late 2018 and I'm becoming accustomed to typing on this keyboard. It's sub-optimal, I'd say. Definitely not one of my favorite set of keys to be banging out long dissertations on. What I abhor, however, is the sheer size of the trackpad. It's... like... WAY too fricken large. I understand that having plenty of space on the trackpad makes navigating mouse-driven applications easier. But the damned thing takes up almost half of the surface the keyboard is on. And that's ludicrous. The surface
Never bought a computer based on its thinness (Score:3)
What I do want (in order of preference)
Upgradeable RAM
Upgradeable SSD
Connectivity without having to buy a million bloody dongles.
Good keyboard
Good screen
Good trackpad
Good battery life
I still mourn the death of my 2013 MBP, I still consider it a superior machine for my needs.
NEVER once in my life have I pulled out a set of callipers or a micrometer and said..."Ohh its 0.1mm thinner than last years model, I must have it"
Not one customer has ever considered how sleek the whole supply chain is, no one except management cares.
So, Apple get your shit together or get out of the game
Fortunately I am not deep into the Apple ecosystem and I can afford to leave, and I know of others who now run Hackintosh's
You are NOT too big to fail.
The Ghost of Steve Jobs says... (Score:2)
Buy a proper keyboard, notebook keyboard SUCK (Score:2)
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MSI makes some laptops with mechanical keyboards. If you can afford prices that make Apple look like a bargain...
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MSI laptops are a much better deal, hardware/spec-wise.
However, you'll need to get used to having no actual Home and End keys.
*looks around*
Or so I hear.
It's a laptop (Score:2)
The keyboard is the most important part that you can't easily change. At least if the track pad sucks it's not too terrible to bring a small mouse. With a rotten keyboard you're going to be stuck using it at least sometime as a small external keyboard isn't quite so practical to use in situ.
If you bought a laptop based on what logo it has or what operating system it uses, then you probably missed the point of computer ownership.
Moot point (Score:2)
Apple is reportedly moving away from these keyboards in their later 2019 and 2020 models
https://www.macworld.com/artic... [macworld.com]
So for everyone who hates them: we know. And Apple knows. And they're going back to the old stuff. So you can stop writing these hot take op-ed pieces about a solved problem.
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Nothing moot when the laptops have other design flaws too. Hope you Macbook doesn't roast your crotch or burn your house to the ground.
what rock have you been hiding under? (Score:2)
Seriously, did you just noticed this? As a writer, I had to switch off Mac two years ago. Sucks, is what it is. It I guess I should have known better than to put my faith in a dictatorship...
I, for one, am willing... (Score:2)
Apple's keyboard repair program (Score:2)
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Re:Perhaps fix your repeat settings (Score:5, Interesting)
I have to disagree. I'm currently typing this on a 2015 MacBook Pro. I did, for some weeks, have to use a 2017 MacBook Pro. I've also used the (now discontinued) ultra-thin MacBook on many occasions.
The keyboard on this 2015 laptop is just ridiculously better than the butterfly keyboard Apple now uses exclusively. It really feels like Apple is trying to get people used to typing on a slab of metal so they can, at some point, move to a haptic keyboard without 99% of their customer base revolting.
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I'd disagree too. I don't recall being bitterly disappointed by a laptop keyboard a decade ago, and even in today's lineup the keyboard on a Thinkpad is pretty good. Oldly, the keyboard on the cheaper ones are often better than the most expensive ones where they go for that extra 0.5mm of thinness.
But the keyboard on my current Dell XPS does indeed fall into the "bitterly disappointing" category. The layout sucked from day 1 as it has no dedicated home, page up and page down (and so on) keys. The feel w
Keyboards are so Naughties (Score:5, Funny)
Only an aging slash dotter would be using a keyboard for anything.
All the cool kids are using touch. Possibly with Hey Sirri!
Get with the program! Apple is not interested in dinosaurs.
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"The layout sucked from day 1 as it has no dedicated home, page up and page down (and so on) keys"
Keyboard layout can be such an annoyance that it's the first thing I look for in laptop screenshots when considering purchasing. If they layout sucks, I know I'll always hate the computer.
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It's also a good marketing trick by laptop vendors. For the Lenovo Carbon, every second release was just Lenovo undoing the disastrous design changes they'd made in the previous release, forcing everyone to buy a new laptop. So Gen1 = great, Gen2 = total disaster, Gen3 = rolled back to Gen1, and so on. First time a friend of mine saw a Gen2 keyboard - he'd skipped from Gen1 to Gen 3 or so and had never seen a Gen2 - he was so appalled he wanted to take it outside and shoot it. He decided on .223 to prol
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The right way to fix this is to assign control keys to be cursor movement keys: ^H for left arrow, ^J for down arrow, ...^N for page down etc.
My Windows keyboard has worked like that since Windows 3.1. It's a tiny piece of software that grabs the keystrokes before any apps see them, and passes them on modified so that if the key is down, the key produces a left arrow. (Actually, if the ^Q has been pressed, the H key would produce a left arrow, until ^Q is pressed again. The means "select".) The resu
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Tell me more! like a link
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I've set this up in KDE's System Settings -> Shortcuts -> Custom Shortcuts.
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Neither did I. Then websites got clever about re-purposing key settings, there started being multiple divisions on the webpage which all scroll differently, etc. Sometimes it's the only way for me to go down on the page without taking my hand off my keyboard and putting it on my mouse.
Which I fucking hate.
Don't get started on the lets-hide-the-scrollbars-so-we-can-have-20-more-pixels-of-screen-real-estate trend.
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I use the sixpack” (that's how I call the Ins/Home/PgUp/Del/End/PgDn group) all the time. Selecting parts of text (from the cursor to the beginning or end of row), selecting files in Total Commander (with Insert), moving through items in a list (Page up/Page Down) and deleting stuff, those keys are important. One does not realize how important something else until it's missing.
The empty space above arrow keys group is also important to me. I have the habit of resting my right hand fingers on that area
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Did they get really bad starting with the 2016 model? My wife got a 2016 and I remember it being terrible. Her brand new model is so bad that I refuse to touch it. When she needs some help or something I have to go get my Lenovo from 2017, since it has an acceptable keyboard.
Somehow, she manages to edit Latex on that new Macbook Pro. I don't understand how. I'd lose my mind.
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> Lenovo from 2017, since it has an acceptable keyboard
They are arguably the best on the market. My only complaint is that the metal bar under the space bar that spreads out the load so you can hit it anywhere and still have the button in the middle press doesn't work well, so if you tap it at the edges it often doesn't work even though it feels like it did. I end up with missing spaces between words. The rest of the machine... meh, but the keyboard is great.
The Apple aluminum wired, the one with the num
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Fn-arrow up and down?
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It started with the 12" Macbook in 2015 (now discontinued). In 2016, they moved to the butterfly keyboard on Macbook Pros. Macbook Air was only recently converted to butterfly keyboard, some time in 2019 I think.
International Settings (Score:4, Funny)
"about" that gets spelled like "abouot"
Clearly he has the keyboard set to Canadian.
Re: Perhaps fix your repeat settings (Score:4)
We're Not As Young As We'd Like (Score:3)
Re:Perhaps fix your repeat settings (Score:5, Informative)
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The new Macbook Pro keyboard is atrocious. MUCH worse than my own Lenovo P71, or even a new Dell Precision 5520. It's chicklet, defined. But the best part was the "smart touch bar", when I was setting up the Mac for the corporate environment, I noticed the second time I went to type in my password a second time, my password showed up on the touch bar! Great - show it in plain text to ANYONE who can look at my keyboard... Thanks, Apple!
If you are using "LastPass", then that is a bug in the Application:
http://techgeek.com.au/2016/11... [techgeek.com.au]
I find NO other references to Touch Bar "Password-Revealing" other than in conjunction with LastPass. Hardly Apple's fault.
Plus, I'd imagine that most people with a Touch Bar MacBook Pro will switch to using TouchID whenever possible.
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Re: Perhaps fix your repeat settings (Score:3)
I've had a 2011 MacBook, 2015 , and a 2017. The 2017 got stolen when some creep burglarised my home. The 2017 was one of the snappiest machines I've ever owned but the keyboard and trackbar where pure cancer to use. The trackbar was constantly misfiring and that was only when it worked at all. It regularly crashed. The keyboard was awful and had almost no travel and one of the keys constantly got stuck from what I assume was something like a bread crumb. Coupled with the fact the only ports where USB-C , a
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I can type all day long on my 2015 Macbook Air.
I'm ready to kill puppies after about 5 minutes on a butterfly Mac keyboard.
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Re:Wow! Living in a timewarp? (Score:4)
Maybe you did not read the beginning of the summary:
Maybe, like some people on this forum, he thought people were exaggerating or just being annoyed at the difference in key travel. But now that he has to use the butterfly keyboard he's realizing how big of a failure that keyboard actually is, just four years later.
Re:Get a different computer. (Score:5, Informative)
All Apple laptops now use the freakin' butterfly keyboard. Buying a different model will not solve his issue.
And no, switching to a Windows laptop is not a solution because people buy Macs for macOS, not the hardware.
Your suggestion is as useless as telling an Xbox user to switch to a Playstation, or vice versa.
Re:Get a different computer. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't like something and you buy it anyway, that's your own damn fault. And you're just ensuring the design will continue by voting that you actually like it with your dollars. You can't possibly be this thick. "I like Mac OS so I'm going to accept crap that comes with it." That is what you're saying. You're saying you like their OS so much that you don't care what piece of crap computer they put it on, you'll still buy it. The only way you'll ever get their OS on a computer you actually want to use is if you stop buying the ones you don't want to use and tell them why you don't want to use it. Duh.
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But what are people supposed to do? It's fine if you can buy a Mac mini, iMac or Mac Pro since you can buy and use whatever USB keyboard you want.
But what if you need a laptop? Is everyone supposed to buy used Apple laptops from 2015 or earlier?
There's hundreds of thousands of buyers out there who buy MacBooks to write emails, post on FaceBook and watch YouTube. They'll probably never have a problem with the keyboards because they don't use them much. And you think that, let's say 10% of people, not buying
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Buy something NOT FROM APPLE, duh?
No Xcode on non-Mac (Score:3)
Something NOT FROM APPLE will not legally run Xcode. Is there a practical way to develop iOS applications for your boss/client without even once using Xcode? Or do you consider the keyboard problem worth quitting an iOS app development job that feeds your family?
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> Is everyone supposed to buy used Apple laptops from 2015 or earlier?
Yes. It's what I have done.
> not buying MacBooks will make Apple listen?
Yes. Apple has already seen their sales dip, and it is rumored that they will be discontinuing the butterfly keyboard. (https://bgr.com/2019/07/25/macbook-pro-keyboard-scissor-butterfly-design/)
Re:Get a different computer. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't like something and you buy it anyway, that's your own damn fault.
Any alternative will also have flaws. There is no perfect computer. Nor is there a perfect car or spouse. They all have flaws.
My laptop is a MacBook Pro. The keyboard sucks. But there are enough other advantages that I choose to use it anyway.
Like the submitter, I would be happy to sacrifice a few mm of thinness for a better keyboard.
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> If you don't like something and you buy it anyway, that's your own damn fault
So you shouldn't be allowed to tell them how to improve it?
Complaining has its upsides.
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I am typing this on one I only bought a couple months ago. The lady next to me was asking the mac guy which laptop to buy and I steered her towards it too, although obviously the mac guy was trying to get her to use the new ones.
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That's funny, people who buy Macs can't bitch about the hardware and are supposed to switch to Windows, but then people with Windows laptops only bitch about the spyware and the telemetry.
So no, needing macOS is not only tied to software only available on that platform, sometimes it's also a deep dislike of anything related to Microsoft.
As for the console comparison, you know I was talking about exclusive games. You can't play Destiny 2 on Playstation, for example. And if you read one of my other posts, it'
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You can't play Destiny 2 on Playstation, for example.
Oh fuck, I'd guess better take mine back and get a refund coz apparently I'm not supposed to be playing Destiny 2 on Playstation. lol, wut?
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And for some people MacOS does that better than Windows. For some people, Windows does that better. For some people, Linux does that better.
But we aren't yet at a stage where personal preference in an OS has no weight - we are decades off an OS becoming a trivially interchangeable commodity, so please stop acting as if they are.
I'm much more productive in OSX than Windows, and Im a pro-Microsoft guy writ
Re:Get a different computer. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm much more productive in OSX than Windows, and Im a pro-Microsoft guy writing .Net Core code all day. So I choose OSX (and I also have no issues with the butterfly keyboards).
As an IT Director who's managed multiple companies -- each with a marketing department that always demands Mac's -- I hear this statement a lot. It's always perplexed me. Productivity generally is a function of the app you're producing in, not the OS you're working on. From what I've seen, the OS is used mostly for file management and the copy/paste functions, so there is minimal opportunity for the OS to affect productivity. Apps like Photoshop are functionally identical between MacOS and Windows. So could you please give some detail as to how Mac's make you "much more productive" than the alternatives? I've asked this question many times and never received any substantive response other than "I just like MacOS more" which hardly justifies something like "I'm much more productive in OSX."
Meanwhile, I had to fork out $3200 for a single MacBook Pro with a 256GB SSD just a couple of weeks ago for a new marketing employee, even though a Dell XPS with better specs would've cost the company roughly half that. Multiply that many times over for the average-sized marketing department for a 1000-person company and it's not a small difference. Add in the extra expense of supporting an entirely different OS and hardware platform -- support training, troubleshooting enterprise integration, hardware spares, etc. -- and the impact on the bottom line makes it difficult to justify the "I'm more productive" argument.
Note I've heard the tired, old arguments that "Windows crashes all the time" and "Windows gets more viruses." Neither are true for properly-managed corporate laptops. I wonder how much of the "I'm more productive" argument hinges on people who haven't *tried* being productive on Windows in the last decade.
Re:Get a different computer. (Score:5, Insightful)
And as part of my day to day job, I have at least a dozen apps open, in addition to extensive terminals, Finder windows and other OS supplied features such as multiple desktops, gestures and other things.
And no, a WSL terminal on Windows does not feel the same as an iTerm terminal on OSX. Yes, functionally they provide the same thing (a shell environment) but theres more to it than that.
You are asking someone to justify a personal choice, which is why you get nebulous answers - can't you simply accept that someone prefers one thing over another, and is more comfortable in one thing than another (and both of those things contribute to being more productive)? Why not?
Thats the issue here - you can't accept that a personal preference exists.
I spent 2007-2016 on various versions of Windows doing .Net development in my professional time, then I switched to OSX doing .Net Core, then I was forced to go back to Windows doing .Net Core for the first half of 2018 and have been back on OSX since then. So yes, I have good experience and know what the alternatives are.
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"a WSL terminal on Windows does not feel the same as an iTerm terminal on OSX. Yes, functionally they provide the same thing (a shell environment) but theres more to it than that." But that's what prisoner-of-enigma is asking. What is the "more"? Is it *just* personal preference? If so, is it worth the price tag?
BTW, Win10 has multiple desktops, and gestures (if you're using a trackpad). And the Windows File Explorer now has tabs, which I'm told is one of the things Finder had that Windows (previously)
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I used Macs for years, but I switched to Dells (Precision desktop and Latitude notebook) because Apple's new hardware is terrible, and I don't like the direction they've taken with their supplied applications. There's still stuff I miss:
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Long-time Macuser, currently taking a coding class. With finance weenies who insist on Windows. Sometimes other people finish the exercise first, and help me, sometimes I get done first and try to help them.
Mostly I do fine, but many times I have to have them click their trackpads because the left-click I use on my MacBook brings up the contextual menu on Windows. I don't know why. I never had the problem with full-seized mice, but these damn trackpads flummox me. I'm better with the keyboard, because the o
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Productivity is a result of a number of factors. The program/app is one. The GUI environment is another. It can be entirely true that some people are just more productive under a particular environment.
Myself, I run Linux/Enlightenment on my work laptop. My particular setup of menus, gadgets, virtual desktops, and key sequences would be next to impossible to replicate on another system. All those are a function of my GUI environment, not the application.
If you have to deal with a multitude of files, yo
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> The OS's job is to manage hardware resources and get out of my way of what I want to do on the machine.
Exactly why I don't run Windows. It is crap at managing resources.
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And here we go, another pointless rant by someone who thinks all users can switch to another OS without any problem.
Imagine you're an Xbox fan. All your games, your accounts, your friends, your scores/trophees/achievements/whatever are tied to Xbox and Microsoft accounts.
The new Xbox comes out and it's a fucking piece of shit.
And then an idiot comes and tells you that if Xbox is a piece of shit, you should just drop everything you have invested in Xbox and switch to Playstation, because all consoles are the
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Imagine you're an Xbox fan. All your games, your accounts, your friends, your scores/trophees/achievements/whatever are tied to Xbox and Microsoft accounts.
The new Xbox comes out and it's a fucking piece of shit.
And then an idiot comes and tells you that if Xbox is a piece of shit, you should just drop everything you have invested in Xbox and switch to Playstation, because all consoles are the same.
If you go ahead and buy the new piece of shit Xbox anyway, you deserve all the taunting you get.
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Which first ones? They've been making them for at least two decades now. I never had any problems with the Aluminum or Unibody era keyboards, other than the key tops wearing out after a few years. Some of their earlier laptop keyboards could even be replaced without tools! And I don't see why complaining about a bad keyboard (the first Retina butterfly keyboard?) is the reason a change results in another bad keyboard, except for Apple continuing to be willfully stupid with form over function.
Dammit Steve,