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Comment by prewett | Hacker News Reader

Everyone seems to be saying the specs are bad, but what exactly is everyone upset about? (Genuine question) You can configure it with the Radeon 460, which seems like a top-end chip [1]. Apple's slideshow shows it being 1.8X faster than then 450. You can configure it with a 2.9 GHz, quad-core i7 with boost up to 3.8 GHz, which seems pretty top-end for a mobile chip, and it's not like 2.9/3.5 GHz is that bad. So it's last-year's generation, it's not like the one released last month is a huge leap ahead. Besides, as a developer, I'm rarely CPU constrained even on my 2009 laptop, unless I'm doing Swift in Xcode or RAW photo editing. You can get 1TB or even 2TB SSD. The only thing you can't get is over 16 GB of RAM, and mitchty's post suggests it is because of CPU/chipset limitations.

So what more does everyone (not just HN) think Apple should be offering?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AMD_graphics_processin...

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>Radeon 460

AMD GPU. Inefficient / power-hungry. This means that battery life will be destroyed. Also, have fun with those endless driver issues.

Also, the configuration you quote costs around £2,500+, which is a total rip-off. You could get a laptop with better components from basically any company that exists (even Razer!), and still have enough money left over to buy a second-hand car or a medium/top-of-the-range desktop.

They've shot themselves in the foot.

I was going to contest that, saying that you can't find a more powerful laptop with that kind of weight, but holy fuck, Razer Blade actually packs a full quad-core CPU and GTX1060 into a 14" laptop that weights just 1.89kg.

Even Razer?

Razer are one of the best companies out there for well designed high end Windows laptops.

I was talking about price as another comment said. Although Razer are well built, you do pay the price. Personally I think their products are worth it, some don't however.

Apple though...they bring poor value to a new level. A new dimension. A new universe not thought possible in the realm for expensive polished turds.

I don't know anything about that company, but I think he was talking about price.

A keyboard that doesn't feel like typing on an iPad ?! I am struggling to understand how mbp owners are planning to code or write documents on that keyboard.

while this is butterfly-v2, not v1, reviewers seems to agree that it's still a "butterfly" keyboard with extremely little travel space.

also, nice to have: sd reader, hdmi, esc-button.

"Feels like typing on an iPad" is so far from the truth it's laughable. Maybe try actually using one (and for more than 30 seconds) before spouting off about it.

I'm typing this on a "butterfly-v1" right now. I (subjectively, I know) prefer it to the old MBP/Air keyboard. The travel is less but it has a very crisp and positive feel. It's not bad at all.

I spent three days trying to type on a MacBook before my hands hurt too much to continue. I returned the computer.

"Typing on an iPad" is an accurate description of how that keyboard felt to me.

Clearly some people like this keyboard design, while others do not. It's not helpful to dismiss opinions about it out of hand.

And what really stings is that the iPad Pro keyboard cover is actually a better keyboard with more travel than the ones on the new Macbooks.

I was referring to the poster I replied to, who had (it seemed, though reading again I might be wrong) not actually used one but was parroting hyperbole they had heard elsewhere.

We have a general problem right now of an echochamber of loud and uninformed opinions on something almost nobody has actually even seen or touched.

I touch-type, and my touch sense replaces my eyes when my fingers are navigating the keyboard. E.g. to find the Cmd button, place your thumb on the Space bar and move it sideways until you cross the gap to the next button. That would be Cmd. But the keys on the new keyboard are so flat that I can't sense the gap by touch alone. This is akin to blinding me.

Also, the inverted-T arrow keys are gone. I used the feeling of aluminum as a hint to position my right hand over the arrow keys. No more aluminum space, so I can't tell between right-Alt and left-arrow by touch anymore, so now I mix between them.

These two were the reasons why I hated the new Magic Keyboard and threw it away after a month of non-stop cursing.

Having said that, I don't care about the amount of travel.

I write almost everything on a 12" MacBook these days. Coming from a previous 15" MBP it was jarring at first, but I got used to it very quickly (a day later I wasn't thinking about it at all).

What made you switch to the macbook? What kind of work do you use it for? Do you have another machine? I'm curious as to who uses these apart from people with very basic computing needs. They seem to be very limited machines (though admittedly I've never used one).

I found myself needing to buy a new Mac laptop around May/June, and getting a Pro model at that point time seemed like a waste of money when the update was around the corner. So I decided to get a maxed-out MacBook instead, with the best CPU and SSD options available.

I do have an iMac as well, but I've been traveling a lot in recent months, so the MacBook has become my main computer. It's simultaneously brilliant and incredibly frustrating...

The CPU is a Core m7 that does "TurboBoost" up to 3.1 GHz, but the base frequency is only 1.3 GHz. Because the computer doesn't have a fan, it throttles very rapidly. Encoding video is hopeless, as it can keep up the max speed for maybe half a second and then performance just collapses. Most other tasks are fine -- that burst of 3.1 GHz performance goes surprisingly far in practice.

The portability is incredible, and the dongles suck. The HDMI+USB adapter is ridiculously expensive and absolutely necessary; it's an ugly piece of plastic; worse, after just 4 months the HDMI port is already flaking out.

I'm probably going to get a new MacBook Pro to replace this pink little weirdo, but it has been an interesting experiment.

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