I don't know why people love this brand so much. My work-mandated MacBooks have been the worst machines I've ever used.
Shitty Bluetooth, terrible keyboard, unreadable glossy screen, accidentally active trackpad, slow and heavy, cold metal feel.
Finder is the worst navigation experience in the world. Windows 95 and the first version of Nautilus were better. Why does it try to pretend like there is no filesystem?
My Thinkpad is much better and hasn't needed a refresh.
I switched from a MacBook to ThinkPad T480 with Archlinux and it's the best decision I've ever done in my software development career. I don't understand the obsession for macs as a developer machine when every year macOS just keeps getting heavier and slower with unnecessary translucency and animations and less reliable hardware. My colleague had to send his mac in twice already for keyboard and speaker repair on a fairly new mac. Not to mention some ThinkPads are a fraction of the cost and upgradable.
You can send ThinkPads in for repair too if you have the warranty. MacOS may be the most cohesive unix OS but it's functionality and capabilities are restricted and limited unlike any other linux desktop environment.
> Why does it try to pretend like there is no filesystem?
I've seen this complaint before from Windows users interacting with Finder, but I've never understood where it is coming from.
Aside from the "Recents" tab, everything is organized into files and folders, just like any other file system explorer. The sidebar is mostly shortcuts to different folders, and I always navigate down in a nested folder hierarchy to find my files.
Is it that the "Recents" tab is the default view that gives this impression?
Officially that’s true, but I’ve been running OSX since at least .8, and in practice it just does not honour the “I want all finder windows like this” ideal.
As I posted elsewhere in these comments, this does not bring up the current path. To get the current path (into your clipboard, but not into any text field) you can hit Cmd+Opt+C.
Over here it copies the current path or the path to the currently selected file, which is frustrating. My hammerspoon script that tries to do cmd+l has now grown to 5 hotkeys, one of which is executed only conditionally.
There's a "Show Path Bar" setting accessible from the View menu in Finder. You can see the file's path right from the Get Info menu and drag and drop it into a terminal or whatever and have the path immediately available. You can copy a file's path by holding the option key with the right click menu is open.
It's pretty accessible. Most of the complaints I see regarding Finder seem to be a result of trying to use a Mac in the same way as another OS. It's different, but takes just a quick search to find all the shortcuts and stuff and it's very simple.
These are great Finder tips, but they all involve the mouse, which I find mildly infuriating.
Command-Option-C: copy the full path of the selected file or folder as plaintext, with space characters not escaped with backslashes.
Command-C, then Command-V into a terminal prompt: paste the full path of the copied file or folder, with space characters backslash-escaped. Tested in Terminal and iTerm2.
In file dialogs, like saving a file, you can start typing a path and it will pop up. You can also drag and drop a folder into the save dialog to save it there.
You can see your current path on the bottom of the window if you enable it in the options of Finder. But you can just click it, you can't actually edit it and hit enter to go to a different path. We simply don't have the technology yet ;)
You can make finder show the current path (including file path) with Cmd+Option+P. You can manipulate the path with Cmd+Shift+G. These options are also right there in the menus.
Cmd+Shift+G does not seem to default to the current location. Over here, I just tried it and got ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData. I haven't been there in months. So it's a significant step down from hitting Cmd+L in a browser.
The actual keyboard shortcut, if you'd like to reproduce the behavior you get with Cmd+L in a browser, is Cmd+Opt+C Cmd+Shift+G Cmd+V.
You can start typing a relative path and that works from the directory you're in. If you have folder/sub and you are in folder, you can type 'sub/' to enter it. Only navigating up is not possible I think.
I don't know about others, but I think there might be an inertia component to it.
I first used mac os seriously starting with 10.5, when it was possible to it run on a PC, and I was lucky enough to have a compatible enough PC.
The experience was unbelievable to me. Everything was so smooth and snappy. I was using mainly linux at the time, with KDE. I naturally wanted to get an actual mac, especially since I was tired of the plastic laptops of the time, failing in random ways, being noisy, shoddy linux support, etc.
My current daily driver is a late 2013 15" MBP and it is honestly the best computer I've ever had. It's almost 7 years old and it never had any kind of problem whatsoever. Connectivity is superb (integrated optical out, sd card, thunderbolt, 4K60 output, HDMI). The only thing I sometimes missed was an ethernet port (I work in operations). I actually enjoy the touch of the metal, prefer it to the plasticky PCs. Yes, the glossy screen is sometimes a pain, but it's actually usable outside whereas my work PC with the matte screen is a mess. Performance is sufficient for my needs, though, granted, I don't do heavy lifting with it.
While I love the computer itself and used to love mac os, I do have the feeling that it's gone downhill. As others have noted, there's random lagging in Safari, random system services start using the cpu at 100% for no reason, etc.
So I guess my point is that a lot of people used to love the mac ecosystem, which I think was really great, and they still want to love it despite the drop in quality, maybe hoping it's only temporary. There might also be some kind of "brand loyalty" / "emotional investment" going on. Although, as far as I'm concerned, I seem to be looking much more at thinkpads as a possible replacement if I had to get a new computer right now.
My work-mandated MacBooks have been the worst machines I've ever used.
Hardware aside, I honestly don't understand why anyone who writes software would write software on a closed source OS.
The excuse I most often hear is that "they have better things to do than mess with Linux configuration". That's a healthy viewpoint, for say, a scientist or an artist. But if a software developer does not like hacking around with software they are probably in the wrong career. In my opinion, giving up control over your most important tools for a bit of short term convenience is bad economics.
When I was 14yo hacking around in Linux was fun because I had a lot of free time, now I'm an adult and have other obligations I need my work computer to just work. Apple has been getting worse at the 'it just works' stuff but it's still lower maintenance than a customised Linux distro. Its not that I don't enjoy fiddling and tinkering, I still might play with Linux on the weekend, I just can't have it as my daily driver.
Then don't maintain a customized distro? I use Manjaro at home and Mac at work, and the user experience is far better on Manjaro without any tweaking. Also it's easier to install the developer tools I need, but that depends on your use-case of course.
Just need to find the right distro. I can't stand Ubuntu because it has too many commercial interests attached and its bloated but it's the safest choice because its the most battle tested. The first thing I notice about Manjaro is that their website layout doesn't work on mobile, call me superficial but it makes me question their attention to detail.
Yeah, it's got less cruft than Ubuntu. Apple doesn't need to put adware into their OS because they make enough money from selling hardware and appstore commissions.
Try Manjaro. I've switched from Ubuntu to Manjaro a few months ago and I don't think I'll ever look back. Latest kernel and Gnome version make a huge difference in performance and stability (that was the main reason I switched, Ubuntu desktop kept breaking for some reason) and Pacman is a dream. I used to just apt update everything, which was nice, but now with snaps you don't know what you get and you sometimes need to download some deb or add a repo. Pacman has everything (when enabling AUT) and I haven't even touched the terminal for it, because the UI is so good.
I think the fiddling and tinkering thing is usually massively overstated. Linux can be a perfectly reliable daily driver with no regular tinkering. Windows is the high-maintenance daily driver IME.
I guess it's been a while. Last time I played around with Linux properly was around 2009. Having worked with Ubuntu servers as recently as 2018 though I did find getting python 3.7 up and running a bit of a pain, with differences in the process for minor versions of Ubuntu.
Not to diminish any of your problems; and I'm aware that this is not (yet) reality in most places, but:
1.) I absolutely agree on the Ubuntu front (though I don't believe for a second that things are better elsewhere. E.g.: Python on Windows is way worse in my experience). But I dislike Ubuntu (and Debian, for that matter) for many related experiences I had in the past.
2.) I'd say, though, that you're missing out on good containerization solutions if you're wrestling with Python installations on a server distribution.
3.) Most importantly: Where things like Docker or LXC don't apply (or don't apply as much; like development/desktop usage), the single best concept I've encountered so far would be the way NixOS and Guix handle installations. I sincerely hope that model will take off in the next couple of years. And I'm pretty sure that if it takes off, it will be on either Linux (most likely) or BSD.
I've worked with Docker before but I found it too resource intensive on my local machine. I now use docker to get consistent deployments but for local dev I find it too heavy. I'll have to look into NixOS and Guix
As a mac user i shifted all my development to use containers for deps management and runtime efficiency. My thought process was this would also translate well to a productive move to Linux (i have similar concerns to you) and it just so happens to also work with my cicd platform. The biggest pain on linux is dependency management across a variety of languages and software stacks. I believe you can be productive on Linux today with a similar approach.
I have tried using Docker but I find it's just a little too resource intensive. I prefer to have a local Postgres instance for development and then deploy to a test environment to check it will work on the real infrastructure.
I have a hackintosh for iOS development (faster build times than a MacBook without paying for a MacPro). It's a lot of work to get it up and running, maybe 8 - 12 hours if you've never done it before plus an additional 12 hours getting Bluetooth, WiFi, USB mapping and iMessage working but it's worth it. Once it is up and running it does 'just work' plus it's a hell of a lot cheaper. The only thing you have to worry about is doing it all again in 6-12 months if you want to stay on the latest OSX.
> if a software developer does not like hacking around with software they are probably in the wrong career
This is some gatekeeping right here. There's a lot more to developing software than hacking and dealing with low level linux configuration just to get my graphics and sound working at the same time after a system update
Because my customers are 90% on Windows and most of the rest are on Mac and it's them I need to worry about. Hence I develop in Windows and test on Mac.
I also agree with the first 2, BT is inconsistent, i hate the keyboard and i would easily switch it with my MBP 2014 one. Screen is fine for me, and it overheats so much that does not have this cold metal feel. :D
In general i can live with the all the aforementioned, but i hated the previous 2 year period with the random Wifi disconnection issues; it sometimes made my work unbearable.
Hence, i would say that the biggest issue with MBPs is the deterioration in apple software.
I had the same problem with my 2012 MBP constantly overheating until I recently opened it up and removed a pad of dust that had accumulated between each fan. There was no way for the hot air to escape anymore. Problem solved, I've not even heard the fans run once since.
> Why does it try to pretend like there is no filesystem
I've had sane settings for macos for years and migrated with them.
But I've set up a fresh machine recently and I will say the default settings for macos have changed. There are a lot of annoying "recent apps" and "recent files" and non-filesystem things in sidebars that I keep banging my head against.
It takes a while to set it up to do just simple files and folders.
I do keep applications and utilities in the dock, and set that up as:
Reading about Macs, I'm beginning to suspect that different vintages are very different.
I'm no Mac fanboy, at all. But I love my 2014 MBP, best money I ever spent on tech. Its 2020 now, it runs like new, withstood mechanical stress, battery still holds all day with careful use. Bluetooth works fine. Keyboard is fine for laptop. CPU is fine for intensive calculations. Terminal is as good as Linux. Homebrew 'just works'; I can't count how many times I got my apt package manager into a major pickle, that required awkward backtracks. I went through a number of system upgrades that didn't break anything. 'Setting up' the computer involved powering it up, I didn't have to debug my hardware like I had to every time with new/upgraded Linux.
This is 180 deg different to my Linux experience, never mind Windows (that's a disaster). Linux is cute, but caused me issues with all the points above.
Sounds like this is very different to your experience, so much so that perhaps it is just that Macs have a large variance in quality over the years. Reading what I see now, I'm not sure I would buy another Mac. This makes me sad - my trusty 2014 MBP is the perfect computer, as far as I'm concerned, but surely at this age its days are counted.
People who seem to share this opinion often mention the 2014 vintage.
> Finder is the worst navigation experience in the world.
Because you just can't abstract away the existence of a filesystem to create a "simpler" experience for some users. You just have to teach them how to use one and avoid letting them shoot themselves in the foot.
I'm genuinely curious what you hate about Finder. What makes you think it tries to pretend that there is no file system?
I personally love Miller Columns and the lack of them in any other file browser is one of many things keeping me from switching to Linux. Navigating my entire file system just with arrow keys feels like a breeze.
If I remember correctly, Windows 95 opened a new window for every folder you clicked on. I recall very messy desktops on being five levels deep.
Have you gave ranger file manager a try for miller column layout? It's a cli which you can enable drag and drop for files, and the vim keybindings for navigation and copy/pasting, plus the file preview makes it an awesome choice for moving around quickly.
Looks like the author has been using mac since 2014.
Pretty sure he will come back to MacBooks after using something else for a while.
MacBooks are considered one of the best not because they don't have any problems, but because they have the least amount of them.
I switched to Mac 2 years ago and not looking back. Even though I am using 2017MBP with garbage keyboard, I replaced it for free and can replace again for few more years so it's not even a problem.
I needed to buy a Mac this year. I rarely work out of my home office these days, so after reading up on people's negative experiences with the new MacBooks, I've settled on a Mac Mini.
Half a year later, and it's... okay. It gets the job done. But then so does my old trusty Asus UX32LN (i7-4500, 8 GB RAM), running Ubuntu with all the hardware working out of the box. I've had more hardware glitches with the Mini so far than I'd had with the UX32LN.
Software-wise, I don't feel much difference. I pretty much live in Emacs and the browser, and both work everywhere. I like the polished feel of macOS (although I've had a brief encountered with it in the Snow Leopard days and it felt _more_ polished back then), but I do miss the customizability of Linux (the macOS maximize/fullscreen experience is subpar).
I've been considering a Mac Mini as an alternative to a laptop.. would you mind expanding on the hardware glitches you've been encountering? Is it any faster than a laptop or about the same?
I think that somewhere between 2006-2013 was something of a quality age for MacBooks.
The issues that came, like the keyboard, or lack of repair DIY ability coincided with the advent of the iPhone. The question at the moment is whether 2019 and 2020 is a quality age for MacBooks or not, and I don't know the answer to that, but it does appear like 2012 MacBooks are more resilient than 2019 ones.
I think a Frankenstein Dell XPS / MacBook is round about time now from some company X.
I was a long-term Mac user (>10 years) and switched do Windows and Linux. I will „never“ go back to a Mac.
One of the reasons was that I couldn‘t make Mail.app working with Exchange/Microsoft 365 (especially shared mailboxes) and the other that Docker is so slow (volumes with many files are unusable). It‘s sad to not have a single OS for everything. I now need Windows to write e-mail and Linux to do my work.
I would have kept a Mac and installed Linux in dual-boot but I need something that „just works“ because I need to do work sometime and I wasn‘t sure enough that it will work smooth.
I used to use my personal mbp for work, since I found windows extremely annoying for operations work (it's only getting slightly better with alacritty and windows terminal...) and my client wouldn't provide me a mac. Almost two years ago I tried installing Arch linux on the laptop they provided which was gathering dust, and I was surprised that almost everything worked perfectly out of the box (except for the fingerprint reader).
They're using Office 365 too, so I tried using it in the browser (Firefox) and I loved it so much that I can't use the local outlook client anymore. It just feels sluggish, and I hate that I have to let go of the slider when scrolling to see the message list update. I don't think shared mailboxes are handled very well, though.
I agree, being grown up with Linux/Mac and then starting to use Windows is like „why can‘t i do that through a terminal“ all the time.
Online Office 365 is not a workable solution, because I‘m a contractor and need to use up to 3 exchange accounts within a single day. And that‘s a lot of logout-login if done in the browser. Chrome (profiles) is not an option for me.
Yes and no. I bought a 2018 MBP to replace my 2016 MBP. After about a year I sold it (another nice feature of Apple stuff is that you can actually sell it for reasonable prices in my country), and I’m now back to using my 2016 MBP.
So it’s not just that everything else is worse, which I agree with, it’s also that Apple is getting worse.
I do not really want to bash MacBook here as Apple does what it wants and that it how it should be. The other manufacturers do the same.
I have no real problems with my Windows and Linux setups though. I had a loaner MBP and Mac Mini for about a year for testing purposes and frankly I did not see a single thing (OS/hardware) that would cause me to switch. So your statement about "the least amount of problems" is likely what you feel personally and does not really translate to what somebody else would fine.
Even if MacBooks have the least amount of problems, there is almost nothing you can do, when problems occur, unless you have extended warranty. My first MacBook died (one year old) and I couldn't even take out the SSD to back up any data.
I've had a 2017 TouchBar 15" model since it was brand new. Almost all of the issues listed in the article annoy me (particularly Bluetooth...)
Problems with the hardware:
- When I use any of the USB-C ports on the left to charge it, performance tanks... why? because for some reason it overheats when you do this and the CPU gets throttled.
- When I use a high-speed USB-C device (USB 3.1, Displayport, etc) in the ports on the left, the WiFi stops working. This always seems to get blamed on cheap cables, but this answer does not satisfy me.
- The TouchBar is awful in many ways, but the most fundemental failure is that it regularly doesn't detect key presses! I tap a key, I can see the "highlight" effect, but nothing happens.
My gripes with macOS:
- Performance when using an external monitor is pretty poor. When I have my Dell U2720Q connected, WindowServer starts using more CPU and the interface gets noticably sluggish.
- With the macbook having "the fastest SSD on a laptop" and APFS being "designed for SSDs", I expect some decent performance when dealing with disk IO. But particularly Archive utility is always very slow to extract files, and Finder always has a (small, but annoying) delay when listing folder contents.
- Updates take ages and are MASSIVE.
- The XCode 12 update, which I had to rush to download after apple released iOS 14 with no warning, was 11GB and took ages to download, and ages to extract and install.
- macOS minor updates also have large downloads and take between 30-60 minutes to install
I’ve also had a 15” 2017 MBP since new. I’ve not experienced any of the issues you mention.
However:
* I had to pay to replace the screen when it suffered the well-recognised broken ribbon cable issue. Unfortunately, Apple only offer free replacements for the 13” model, not the 15” - which is just outrageous, given the identical mechanism of failure. (Some weird ‘Fight Club’ calculations on the background there, I suspect.)
* USB-C connections are very unstable (physically) - like, hold your breath and don’t make any sudden moves while you’re copying large files via that route
* For some reason only some of the four USB-C ports work for video. This has changed - pretty sure they all did when it was new.
* My battery is shot and giving me the service message after about 310 cycles. It’s meant to last 1000, apparently. (I should get in touch with Apple, but after the screen debacle I just get a sense of weariness at the thought.)
At some point I’ll need to replace it... and I have no idea what I’ll do. I like MacOS (up to Mojave, at least) and the idea of going back to Windows or struggling with Linux makes me shudder. But likewise I’m not going to buy another Mac laptop, given the huge range of issues they now suffer.
Maybe this is what Jobs meant when (referring to Tim Cook) he shook his head and said he’s “not a product guy”? Apple are ultra-successful, but the essential quality of their products is on a downwards trajectory.
Updates are not incremental. You get the whole new thing, even if the diff would have been 1 character. Combine that with the fact that AIUI, DMGs and XIPs are stuck with deflate/gzip or bzip2, all of which are slow by modern standards, and you're on for some pain. Also, macOS may not have enough entries in its inode cache for the number of files there are in Xcode (although I haven't looked how many there are, maybe it's fine)
I actually had a poke around the XIP format after I was particlarly annoyed after the XCode update.
For XCode: The XIP contained some kind of DEFLATE'd index I didn't bother with. Most of the meat was an uncompressed "PBXZ" stream, which contained various LZMA compressed CPIO chunks.
“It’s still the best general-purpose computer user experience available from anyone, but I see little evidence that anyone with their hands on the steering wheel understands why the good parts are good.“
I like the Mac platform and still prefer it over the alternatives, but this sentence really sums up my thoughts about the development of macOS.
Ok you dropped $8k or something on a new MacBook and now feel it should be perfect - most of that was the 4tb SSD anyway. Yeah the processor is the same as before. Intel has made basically no real cpu progress since the last MacBook. Before spending that much money maybe check some benchmarks?
If you think Bluetooth is lame on MacBooks try even activating BT on Intel NUC, Dell Latitude, etc.
If I had to pick few strong arguments against MacBooks these would be miserable memory options for both RAM and hard drive, and overall extortionist prices in Europe.
Almost exactly a year ago I got a brand new Mac Book Pro 13" from my company (everyone else has it, so why not). It's unix, so better to use that than Windows (Linux was not really an option). For the price, performance and reliability are laughable. It was already in repair for the peeling keys issue - the warranty process was nothing to gloat about (no Apple Stores around here, just some official repair partners it seems). Not what I expected from an expensive piece of hardware, thank god I did not pay for it.
Regarding the general software experience, even after a year of constant use, I can say that for me personally, a half-decent Linux distro has a lot better usability. I still don't exactly get how Finder works (when does it show me the list view, when the broken folder view with a unnecessary scrollbar - as there is enough space to show all of the icons), the whole app ecosystem is a shock, where it's normal that basic tools (like FTP Client) cost 50EUR or come crippled (Like FileZilla). It's a horrible feeling coming from OSS world.
One UX example I like to show to people is, that on my Ubuntu based home laptop, after connecting Logitech mouse, I get it's battery indicator automatically integrated in the same place with my laptop (and other) batteries. Smooth, no-frills. Something that "the most user friendly system in the world" lacks. And I could go on and on and on... At first I was thinking that it's just the change and I will get used to OS X, but looks like this ain't happening.
I like the touchpad and screen, but I mostly use external screen and mouse anyway.
> a half-decent Linux distro has a lot better usability
Has not been my experience with either Arch/kde or Ubuntu at all, but to each their own. They have their own strengths but usability isn't one of them IMO.
> the whole app ecosystem is a shock, where it's normal that basic tools (like FTP Client) cost 50EUR or come crippled (Like FileZilla). It's a horrible feeling coming from OSS world.
OSS versions of tools like FTP clients exist in the macOS world as well[0]. Theres a small but high quality ecosystem of independant mac software thats been around for a long time.
Have you tried using cyberduck? The Official download (and I just did a quick search and did not find a fork) prevents shutdown with a donation nag. I also threw a quick look at the list, no FTP clients there.
> the whole app ecosystem is a shock, where it's normal that basic tools (like FTP Client) cost 50EUR or come crippled (Like FileZilla). It's a horrible feeling coming from OSS world.
Yeah ofcourse I did - the only thing that makes the whole experiance bearable. Without it, I don't know how anyone would do dev stuff on a Mac. It has pleanty of good software, but not including FileZilla (because of bundled crapware). Cyberduck cask is just the official one bundled, so I guess still the nag-screen-preventing-shutdown.
Been there and jumped ship. The last “MacBook” I owned was the 2018 MacBook Air of the high end variety. The thing gave me a serious rash on my arms and they keyboardd keeepppttt ddooiinngg thhiiiss. So it was returned after two weeks. I flirted with the Mac mini as a desktop this year with an iPad Pro as a portable computer. Both are gone now as well. This is the first time I’ve not had an apple computer since 2004. The next upgrade cycle gouging and the ARM uncertainty buried it for me finally.
My conclusions are that the entire brand lacks substance and the productivity gains are marketing. The prices are quite frankly ridiculous especially here in the UK. The cloud offering is buggy, unreliable and inferior to just about everyone else. The things are an administrative and tooling nightmare. The software is mostly inferior and suffers from terribly discoverability problems and it’s really difficult to drive from a keyboard. I think a lot of it is running a hype train. Look at iOS 14. I can’t actually think of a single new feature or function that actually made any difference to me. But oh so much marketing.
When I sold my Apple kit recently I replaced it with a custom build Ryzen 3700X, 64Gb RAM, 1Tb NVMe SSD, GeForce 1660, 27” 4K display, Cherry MX keyboard. The iPad was replaced with a Lenovo T495s. I had change left after selling the Apple stuff. If I wanted to buy that sort of power in the Apple ecosystem I’d be down an additional £2000. I use Office 365 personal for cloud stuff. It just works.
Edit: when I look back I don’t look back fondly at my previous MacBooks. They were universally trouble in some way or another from thermal issues to fragility and unreliability. What was I thinking.
I do feel like things have gone downhill. I bought a mid-2009 13” MacBook Pro which easily lasted 9 years (with an ssd upgrade and more ram added at some point) and was honestly the best laptop I’ve owned.
I was hooked and hyped to get the new 2016 MacBook Pro. Talk about polar opposite experience:
* The keyboard is terrible (replaced 3 times already),
* Touchbar is meh (if you touchtype when do ever look at it - this feels like a thing that’d be more useful for entry level machines where you are likely to find hunt-and-peck typists) and it now flickers in the corner occasionally.
* The fan is noisy
* I can no longer upgrade the ram or internal storage
* I’ve gone almost completely usb-c but the lack of usb-a and hdmi is still annoying on occasions - especially on a pro machine
On the good side
* the speakers are amazing
* the “retina” display is crisp and bright
* it’s amazingly small and light
What’s really killing Macs right now is the software-side “it just works” seems like a thing of the past e.g.
* I used to chuckle at people on windows when waking from sleep but Macs (possibly because of FileVault) feel just as slow now
* As mentioned in the post general Bluetooth flakiness (tbf it does seem like the latest patch release or two of Catalina seems to have got on top of this now)
* Using spaces (inc animation) for full-screen and making that what happens for the maximise button - just weird and clunky
* General system responsiveness - it just feels sluggish
I really can’t believe the turn around - they’ve managed to turn a customer-for-life to now I’m seriously considering getting a Linux-based laptop instead.
The Bluetooth unpairing is a frequent annoyance, Apple denied it was a problem when I called them about it. Losing audio and mouse for 30 seconds during conference calls is very annoying.
I’ve used windows for years, got fed up of having to reset windows every few months because of crap every app installs and it doesn’t take long for the is to be slow and things start to go wrong.
I tried using linux for a few years but it never quite worked as I wanted, I’d have to run VMware for all the apps I wanted and that wasn’t a great experience and I ended up just booting linux to start windows and use that with the same problems I always had (needed to keep resetting windows).
I switched to mac last year and haven’t had any trouble, finder is a bit odd and not great but everything else works well. For the few apps I really need windows for parallels works but I only neee like two apps in it so it is much cleaner and I don’t have to keep resetting it.
My work laptop is a 2019 Mac with 32GB of RAM and a 6-core Intel chip. My home machine is a mid 2015 with 4 cores and 16gb ram.
For the life of me, I cannot discern any performance difference between the two. One thing I can discern is that the screen on the newer one has a big yellowish blob all around the edges of it, its left command key works half the time and it crashes constantly. I am so happy when I get to return to working on my home machine and god forbid it finally shits the bed on me because I have no idea what I would get next.
That’s whole other ordeal. This was a replacement for a broken machine I _had_. And now I have to wait til January to get a new one. I think I’ll just use my external keyboard and monitor for a while.
The performance issue feels a lot like it's the result of Apple's approach to CPU performance. There's a short boost in clock speed, after which the processor almost immediately overloads the power delivery and cooling system and clocks down to base clock.
This means the laptop feels incredibly quick for launching programs and doing short intensive tasks without turning on the fan because the processor unleashes hidden performance when you do something that you'd expect to be slow. It looks and feels like magic to people coming from other platforms, which is probably what Apple is going for with their designs.
However, this also artificially limits the CPU performance because of aesthetics and form over function. Long-duration workloads like games suffer from substandard processor performance at the cost of the device, which is multiplied by the stupidly high resolution requiring more rendering power. It's even worse in bootcamp because Windows can't use many of the sensors and power features because of a lack of drivers.
Perhaps Apple knows their own chips will net about the same performance as their current limited CPUs for a lower cost and it doesn't want to redesign the experience to make effective use of Intel's turbo frequencies. Even though AMD is surpassing Intel as we speak, their high-end processors are incredibly fast if you just give them some space. They suck in a lot more power that way, but giving people the option to choose performance over battery life would probably solve a lot of grips for Apple users who only use the laptop at work or at home, near a wall plug where they can recharge whenever.
I am really impressed with Apple's speakers though, I don't think there's anything that comes close to their laptop speakers.
> There's a short boost in clock speed, after which the processor almost immediately overloads the power delivery and cooling system and clocks down to base clock.
But it's not just Apple doing this. It's literally the principle behind ultrabooks in general.
If you don't want this you have to go back to big fat workstation laptops or slightly less fat gaming laptops, which in turn were designed for 14 year olds and usually have a shitty touchpad.
This is like the complete opposite of every comment I see here, which is quite interesting! Touch Bar is great, Safari is meh, doesn’t feel faster than a fairly old machine, likes a hub. I’m curious if the author could take a look at Activity Monitor and see if there’s any obvious culprits there.
It does this since macOS Catalina and it drives me up the wall. Since it’s spending all that processing power on redrawing the stupid table view I just keep it hidden until I need it.
I also wondered what this is. Is NSTableView that resource intensive? I've had good experience with it on my own projects with it redrawing quite a lot of items but I'm not a macOS developer so I don't know it too deeply.
No, there’s just something wrong with what Activity Monitor is doing. It was fine the release before and since Catalina the list is really bad it doesn’t do column sizing right either.
It’s interesting, I think I have exactly the opposite experiences here on a 2018 15” (personally owned) and a 2019 16” (work laptop).
For Bluetooth, I flat never have problems. I use Bluetooth headphones (Sony) and a Mac keyboard and touchpad, and they genuinely do just work - I don’t get spurious disconnects and everything sounds just fine. I have far more problems with BT on Windows 10 than on Mac - with devices failing to connect after the laptop is turned on and off, etc. Mac supports both AAC and aptX for audio codecs, too - so it works with pretty much any audio gear just fine.
It’s not going to feel faster on a single thread - because intel are not really any faster on a single thread. Having six cores is nice though!
The rest is all very subjective and it’s fair to have a difference of opinion there, though.
Is there a laptop comparably silent, though? I have a corporate Lenovo X1 Carbon (6th gen) which feels like having a vacuum cleaner on all the time. In comparison my private 13" MacBook Pro (2018) is absolutely silent unless running some simulation.
You should try disabling processor boost. This causes Windows to drive processor hard even for no apparent reason and fans go nuts. To do this, merge this registry key, go to Power mode Options, CPU and then set Processor boost mode to disable from Aggressive.
I have the same X1, same with two others on my team, and none of us are experiencing any fan issues like yours. Its silent most of the time, even with CPU intensive work.
I went from an iMac 2011 to a Lenovo i5 USFF device w/ NVME drive, at work with Ubuntu 18 + Gnome 3 and never looked back. Even the desktop experience is more pleasant. Needless to say anything about the speed, feels like a roadbike compared to a beach cruiser. Installing dev tools is a breeze compared to the Mac. Instead of Homebrew installing N^e deps with unstandard config and symlinks I just apt install and everything us fetched and installed quickly without wasting my time and patience. Still remember the 2000's when we used to praise the Mac GUI and every second WM would copy its looks. Those days are over. I wish we had something similar for mobile.
"Performance · It just doesn’t feel any faster than the 2014 15" MBP it replaced."
I have a new 13inch MacBook that does indeed feel quite fast. I suspect this is because I havent turned on harddisk encryption (despite being regularly nagged to do so)
On new Macs the T2 processor should really bring down the overhead of this to basically zero. Perhaps you should try turning it on and seeing how it goes (although if you really care about security, it might not work all that well right now).
My 2017 13" is riddled with hardware issues all of which are due to the subpar thermals:
1. The haptic feedback on the trackpad stops working when the machine gets hot.
2. Once the upper part of the chassis becomes hot enough, part of the screen gets black lines and ghosting which gets worse as I continue to use it until it goes completely black (this is because the T-CON board is very close to the heatsink).
3. The SSD conveniently failed 1 month after the warranty ended. The official repair cost was about 50% of the cost of the machine. Luckily this was the last Macbook to have non-soldered SSD, and I got a replacement from AliExpress for $50.
Oddly, I've never run into the infamous keyboard issue.
One of the reasons I love getting second-hand hardware is that it's already been burned in, and if anything was going to go wrong, it already has. Ten years and counting for computers, less than that for mobile devices.
I was hesitant to write about this in my comment, but yes, this is actually a higher-weight motivator for me.
Whenever I buy something new I feel like I am making myself complicit to everything that went into making it, and I know it ain't pretty, so why do it when I don't have to.
My top-level motivation for starting out was just to reduce my monthly/annual expenditures so that I could "downshift".
I'm about to upgrade my old 2012 MR Pro this year and with the recent Pro negativity am now unsure if I should go Pro again or just get the latest gen Air - seems that the processor is the same, I'd go 13 inch anyway, memory/hd I can upgrade to levels I'm comfortable with and don't need the Touch Bar. Is the graphics card a lot slower/unusable if I fire up Creative Cloud Apps just every once in a while? I do use it like 10 hours per day - but 0 gaming, just coding/design mostly with an external screen..
Anyone else thinking about this? Is the Pro worth it over Air?
I changed my 2018 TouchBar 13" MB Pro to 2020 i7 MB Air just to get rid of the touchbar, which I hate.
So far, I'm quite happy. It's not crazy fast, especially in react native + android emulator, but for now I won't change it until good ARM version ships.
The cooling on the Air is worse as there's no heatpipe from the processor to the fan. If you care about performance I'd suggest you probably should take a look at the Pro.
the 16" has 3072x1920 whereas the 15" 2014 had 2880x1800 - so maybe driving 23k extra pixels is a problem!
Seriously thou, mine does struggle when driving the retina display and a 4k especially with games refreshing at 50+ fps.
I have had blutooth struggles too - until I bought a Bose head set, which works perfectly with the macbook all the time and even displays great range and resilience to things like walls. The magic keypad and trackpad have always worked perfectly - conclusion 3rd party protocols and chipsets can be crap.
Touchbar/control strip is brilliant, especially for powerpoint, the extra preview is perfect.
Take the new Ryzen 4800 series, bolt it on a sub-1000 dollar Asus laptop and put on Windows-Subsystem-Linux 2 (WSL2), you get native Linux development on a laptop that can play high res games.
A while back I figured out why my AirPods (connected to my Mac) sound bad sometimes: some apps (especially those that use a microphone) force a different codec. If you hold down the option key and click on the Bluetooth menubar icon, then go down to your headphones, you can see the active codec in the pop-out menu. It should be AAC. When some apps are open, the codec switches to SCO and music sounds so much worse... https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208896
The 2019 Macbook Pro has to be one of the worst macs I've ever used. It feels like a culmination of software and hardware design disasters, as a lot of comments here suggest. But for me, the biggest let down is there's all this fancy hardware: fast ssd, high core count cpu - but it isn't perceptively or objectively (in a real workload) any faster than the half decade old hardware it replaced apart from synthetic hw benchmarks.
I'm seriously looking at switching back to either a windows or linux powered machine.
The Bluetooth issue is the one that really bit me. For about six months I thought BT on my 2017 MBP was physically broken. I tried a half dozen fixes, updates, and workarounds but it still couldn't pair to anything. Then, magically, it started working again. Just flaky for no reason.
Also, it's ridiculous that a $2800 machine needs an ugly-as-sin $250 extra box to have decent connectivity to monitors etc. The $800 machine I'm using right now has that connectivity out of the box, in a sleeker form factor.
I bought a MacBook for music production and I like it a lot, it's snappier than my dell xps 13. My only gripe is I still cannot get over the lack of delete key. I hate it so much.
Cool and how do I delete the entire word in front of the cursor? On windows thats easy, control + delete. On Mac, somehow I never remember how to do it and end up deleting the entire line of text. It's just stupid.
Also, want to delete a file? Yeah that's going to be a different keystroke, the delete is only for text.
But wait, you'd think that surely you could just remap that little fingerprint key which does absolutely nothing when pressed? Nope, it's unmappable. :-)
> Cool and how do I delete the entire word in front of the cursor? On windows thats easy, control + delete.
On macOS it's option+delete.
> On Mac, somehow I never remember how to do it and end up deleting the entire line of text. It's just stupid.
It's stupid that the shortcut on MacOS is different than on Windows and you can't remember it?
> Also, want to delete a file? Yeah that's going to be a different keystroke, the delete is only for text.
AFAIK there is no macOS shortcut to delete a file in Finder. There is a shortcut to move a file to Trash. This is a different action than deleting text (there is no Trash for text), so I think it's fair to use a slightly different shortcut (command-delete).
> AFAIK there is no macOS shortcut to delete a file in Finder. There is a shortcut to move a file to Trash. This is a different action than deleting text (there is no Trash for text), so I think it's fair to use a slightly different shortcut (command-delete).
What I meant was that I forgot that holding option when the Menu is open will show the alternative shortcuts. No need for external cheatsheets or apps.
> On Mac, somehow I never remember how to do it and end up deleting the entire line of text. It's just stupid.
I agree that switching hence and forth between the two systems is a bit annoying. I configured AutoHotKey on Windows to get my Mac-shortcuts there. (Command being Alt).
What's "the obvious thing" largely depends on what you're used to.
Apple has labelled the key in the upper-right corner "delete" for the last 30 years. It deletes selected objects, or without selection letters or objects to the left of the cursor. In Terminal, it sends ASCII-127 (DEL), not ASCII-8 (BS), just like ancient DEC terminals.
Most PC vendors labelled the key in that position "backspace". Without selection it deletes letters or objects to the left of the cursor, and with selected objects it may or may not delete them. In most Windows and Linux terminals, it sends ASCII-127 (DEL), not ASCII-8 (BS).
Given all of this, it not at all obvious to me that the key should really be named "backspace" rather than "delete".
By that reasoning everything in Windows is obvious since 90% of the other computers on the planet run Windows. So why not just stick with Windows and stop complaining that things work differently on non-Windows computers.
That logic is perfectly sound. When something becomes ubiquitous it certainly does become the obvious thing to everybody. That's why in modern times it's more obvious for people to toast bread in a toaster and not in a frying pan like they might have done in the past.
Aside from that - explicitly having both Backspace and Delete is also obviously better than having only one of them and hiding the other beneath a multi-key shortcut.
You mistook pointing out a flaw for complaining though. I'm not complaining since I'm not stuck on a Mac. I keep one around for doing iOS things and for helping Mac users figure out how to do things.
Personally, I prefer to use a Linux desktop system that draws deeply from the Windows UI and currently that is Manjaro with XFCE. With that I get the best parts of Windows, I can customize it to do just about anything I want and it's even more stable than Mac or Windows.
Yes, but the whole idea that you could take such a component away is typically Apple operating in their 'we know better' mentality. Maybe they do know better. But you don't force all of your users into a corner like this without giving them an alternative.
We have an entire generation of developers who earnestly believe Apple computers are their only option for a dev machine. I absolutely guarantee that the author of this article will choose another Macbook Pro when it comes time to replace this one he hates.
There are other computers out there. Better ones. More interesting ones with funky form factors, if that's what you're into. There are faster ones, lighter ones, ones with touch screens and ones with far, far better keyboards.
I got my first windows laptop in 10 years last April, and I love it more than my last thre MacBooks. Some people will swear windows UX is terrible, but I’m a huge fan of Windows 10. The only thing I miss are a few apps, like OmniFocus and iMessage (since I still use iPhones).
It’s funny. At one time, the integration between iOS and OSX was a selling point. Now, with so much cloud support, OSX integration doesn’t matter. In some ways, Apple made decoupling from their ecosystem very easy.
I love the build quality of Lenovo's laptops, but what am I supposed to use, Windows?, nah, you have to jump through hoops to get a decent shell, plus terrible UI inconsistency. A Linux distro would be nice tbh, but the applications I use are not available for that. I honestly don't have any complaints about my macbook pro 2019. I love the build quality, OS, the consistency with the family of products and the app ecosystem.
I wish somebody could sell hackintosh-ready laptops in the form factor of 2012-2015 mbps, just with newer processors and USB-C. That’s it. I would buy 5 tomorrow.
Screen at least should be decently bright. Make sure you don’t have autobrightness on or “slightly dim when on battery power” checked when outdoors.
I use my 2017 air outdoors. It’s not great, wouldn’t want to be using things with black backgrounds, but it’s doable. And pros have a lot more nits than it.
If you have those things off and it’s duller than other laptops that aren’t specifically built for outdoor use then yeah you might have a lemon.
Ya I have a 2018 15” and I feel the same way. It’s slow and the fan runs constantly and battery sucks.
And so I’ve gone back to Windows. I get devices and an OS that works with everything and WSL2 + Windows Terminal give me a great Linux dev environment (or multiple!) with almost no battery cost.
I also run a laptop with Ubuntu, but it’s Linux so still fussy.
I can’t believe I’m saying this but Microsoft has got it figured out.
Apple is extremely user hostile and their lobbying efforts are especially disturbing. Their devices can be nice if you want something that's hardware-standardized and you don't care about price-value ratio or ethics or their lobbying or closedness. But you are relying on them being successful in setting the device up exactly how you need it. In OP's case, standardized hardware failed to guarantee good performance and now he's stuck with a high-priced device with poor upgradeablity.
Also, the Lightroom subjective experience as a measurement is a bit problematic, because Adobe products are the kind that prioritize featurefulness (aka bling) over performance and stability. I know it's a popular product suite: feel free to express opposite impressions. Adobe's answer to this (and it's not really fair to single Adobe out) is that you just need a beefier machine; that way the performance issues are offloaded to the user. I suspect that they constantly buy the fastest machines for their developers, because that way developers don't notice performance problems, so no time is spent on fixing performance.
I wish these developer companies would have a limit on how recent their dev hardware can be (or how powerful). That would cause them to address performance and save users a lot of money on upgrades. There would be other desirable secondary effects because addressing performance might lead to addressing technical debt (Adobe Photoshop has color management bugs dating back decades).
Apple were interested in making sleeker machines not faster machines.
They went so overboard that yes while the CPUs, SSDs and RAM are all faster the overall machines don’t feel faster in general use and yes do feel buggy.
Apple had to admit an embarrassing mistake with the MacPro fiasco, then another one with the keyboard. Eventually they’ll fess up to screwing up the MBP and MacOS itself.
Still using my mid 2014 Macbook Pro. It's running really smoothly with updated software.
The outside is prestine as it always has been. I used it extensively in cafes, but the battery is still fine. I work up to 8hrs a day with it and I love it.
Very hesitant to get a new once though. Especially with everyone still complaining!
Yep, bluetooth is lame. The ecosystem could actually be considered defamation against Harald Bluetooth at this point. If he wasn't long dead.
The place this is killing me is Lightroom.
Sure. From the Lightroom FAQ: Drawing to the screen can be slow when Lightroom is using the entire screen of a high-resolution display. Also: don't use Lightroom in 2020 if you want to experience a responsive UI.
To make professional use of a MacBook Pro, you need a CalDigit TS3+
Wrong. The CalDigit TS3+ lacks a PS/2 port, used by all true professionals. I mean, where would you even plug a mouse in? It's so lame.
MacOS[...]It’s still the best general-purpose computer user experience available from anyone
OK. But you still hate it. I guess George Bernard Shaw did say that all progress relies upon the unreasonable person. Actually, he said that all progress relies upon the unreasonable man, and he was opposed to vaccination, so let's not put too much store by his utterances.
The keyboard is neither better nor worse than my 2014 machine. Shouldn’t I expect progress in five years?
What progress are you expecting from a machine that converts finger waggles into alphanumeric characters?
I no longer want to buy high end laptop without 4K OLED screen and discrete NVidia 2080 GPU. This allows to use laptop for ray traced gaming as well as deep learning. The VSCode looks beautiful.
Intel is not responsible for the software problems or keyboard issues.
>> The ARM MacBooks will change everything.
Remains to be seen.
I really hope they are. My 2010 MacBook Air was hands down the best portable I've ever owned. It lasted for nearly nine years and was still running surprisingly well until the end.
I am really hesitant to get an Apple replacement given the issues brought up in these comments and Apple Silicon on the horizon.
Keyboard issues and software issues are indeed not Intel’s fault. In fact, Intel failing to make their process changes, means we have Intel to thank for Apple either speeding up their transition or for it happening it all.
The Apple build quality is second to none. That my 2013 MacBook Pro is still going strong is a testament to that. And the keyboard fiasco means they had a time when form won over function but I see them reverting to the old keyboard as function coming back into relevance.
I’m hoping for an Apple Silicon MacBook Air or something equivalent to to replace my heavy pro — but it’d be for personal use not professional given my reservations posted above and since Desktop Linux has come so far.
To all the down-voters: think about it. The chips in the phones are not actively cooled and run circles around their Intel equivalents. Apple won’t change the thinness and cooling characteristics of their laptops but were likely hoping Intel would improve their processes such that they’d run cooler. Now that Apple will have control over the silicon and even have the actively cooled potential performance should rise not to mention all the acceleration they’re building into the chips themselves. I don’t have hard evidence other than the initial performance of the dev kits and the utmost bullish take on Apple’s in-house chip designers: I don’t know why anyone would bet against them.
That being said I think the OS is holding the platform back a ton. For me Docker is a huge part of my workflow and the need for a Linux VM is a deal breaker on my Mac. Spinning up docker means my mac’s fans scream at almost 100%. I hate that. Since moving to an admittedly uglier Dell Linux laptop (not an XPS) I don’t have that same issue.
I can't upvote more on the docker comment.
Docker in OSX is terrible, it has caused tons of problems on every single developer with a MBP i know, while in other platforms is so much better.
Still the same issue of CISC v RISC. The ARM ISA as I understand it is simpler hence why when well architected it will be faster especially with a 2T dollar company behind it.
It has absolutely nothing to do with CISC vs RISC. x86 ( with all modern instruction sets add on ) is Complex, doesn't make a less complex ISA like ARMv8 RISC.
Those were dual-cores for 13'' models and quad-cores for 15'' models.
Since Kaby Lake-R however, on the same manufacturing process (with some refinements), core counts increased massively on the Intel side. That made power usage more than double with the increased turbos too.
Judging how well the iPhone processors perform in compute tasks, one can expect even higher performance when there is 10x the thermal budget avialable, as in a 16" laptop. There is all reason to expect impressive performance.
I too have fallen out of love with my Mac for similar reasons. However I think once the ARM based platform is properly integrated it will change a lot of this.
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Shitty Bluetooth, terrible keyboard, unreadable glossy screen, accidentally active trackpad, slow and heavy, cold metal feel.
Finder is the worst navigation experience in the world. Windows 95 and the first version of Nautilus were better. Why does it try to pretend like there is no filesystem?
My Thinkpad is much better and hasn't needed a refresh.