Using the 2016 MacBook Pro as a development machine | Hacker News Reader

Using the 2016 MacBook Pro as a development machine

medium.com

57 pointstechterrier68 comments

I have a thunderbolt monitor that I bought 1 month before this was released. With that I only plug in the power and thunderbolt cable (thunderbolt disk and USB keyboard and mouse and Ethernet are on the monitor). When I travel I need the HDMI for presentation. I tried the new keyboard (my friend has one). Hate it.

In my family we have 3 iPhones, 4 iPads, MacBook and MacBook Pro. Heck we still have 2 iPods connected in the car. I have 2 old time capsules (turned off now).

I will be looking at a Windows or Linux laptop to replace my MacBook Pro when it dies.

Apple, your new MacBook Pro is pushing an all Apple house out of your eco system. Once I change the laptop, maybe I should look at an android phone?

> Once I change the laptop, maybe I should look at an android phone?

FWIW, I run a MacPro, MacBookPro, family has iPhones/iPads, office runs on iMacs/MacBookPros. Owned every iPhone generation since the first, and I switched to a Pixel XL last week. My experience has been very pleasant.

It probably doesn't hurt that software/services wise I'm much deeper into Google's ecosystem than Apple's. I don't find Siri useful, iCloud is a mess that I only have for holding phone backups and a @mac.com email address I never use. I pay for G Suite, Google Music and Dropbox rather than the equivalent Apple services, so maybe it was a little easier than it would be for others.

I haven't decided where to go after my mid-2015 MBP is to be replaced. I hope there are better options by then.

I tried an android back around the Galaxy Note 2 time frame and disliked it immensely. The inconsistency of the interface was the biggest issue (yes I put stock on the phone). I have played with some of the newer phones on the newer releases and it seems to be much better. Still not as clean as IOS but getting there.

We use have a ton of things in iTunes but that really does not matter much as the songs are downloaded and other systems will play them now.

The biggest issue I have is I have used OS X since the Alpha of NEXT on a dual 533 PPC G4. I used NEXT and Solaris before that. I really do hate Windows. I have 2 Intel Compute keys for the TVs at home and Windows 10 is a pain (run Kodi, and only Kodi on the system). The idea of using it on a laptop everyday fills me with fear. As my company does everything in Google Docs, a Linux laptop seems like the answer.

I want something no bigger then the MacBook13 with 32GB of RAM and solid keyboard.

Anyone have a recommendation?

Funny enough on the Window side before anyone grips - I got an MCSE back when it was on NT 3.51. I know Window well. I just hate it.

> I have a thunderbolt monitor that I bought 1 month before this was released.

I would expect such an obvious technophile to have greater awareness of what's going on in Apple products. The Thunderbolt Display hadn't been updated since its introduction in 2011 and was discontinued in June, seems like a risky purchase.

Note you can use a Thunderbolt Display with MacBook Pros with USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 ports: "For Mac models with Thunderbolt 3, you can use a use a Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) to Thunderbolt 2 Adapter to connect to Thunderbolt devices like displays and external disks." However, "Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) to Thunderbolt 2 Adapter doesn't support connections to Mini DisplayPort displays" (emphasis added). [0]

> I need the HDMI for presentation

What's so unacceptable about using an adapter? Did you boycott MacBook Pros until they added an HDMI port on their Mid 2012 models? No MacBook Pro ever had a built-in VGA port, the previous (and still pretty common) standard for connecting to projectors and displays in rooms (vs. a monitor on a desk).

> I tried the new keyboard (my friend has one). Hate it.

I have concerns (mine hasn't arrived yet) but I also know I already use an external keyboard far more often than the built-in one. I know keyboard feel is something people get very attached to and I can sort of understand why that could be sufficient to drive someone to a platform change.

> Apple, your new MacBook Pro is pushing an all Apple house out of your eco system.

I don't understand why, your other Apple stuff can happily coexist a non-Apple laptop. If Apple only sold iPhones and iPads to Mac owners, they'd be a much poorer company. USB-C is a new standard, Google has already started using it on Chromebooks and Android phones. The USB-C connector type has been certified for use as an HDMI connector. It's going to be everywhere, Apple's just ahead of the pack, similar to when it adopted the original USB on the original iMac.

I wish Apple used USB-C on the iPhone 7 but I fear they never will because it's thicker than Lightning (and USB Mini) and they're obsessed with thinness.

[0] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204154

I in no way said I bought an Apple Thunderbolt Display. The fact is I purchased a LG and paid more for it because of the single connection.

As to the HDMI I own about 20 display port to VGA because I would forget to bring the adapter and have to buy a new one (100k miles per year, 10 years 3 startups - and yes, I did have a big win - I just like building new stuff). Having the HDMI made that a non-issue. Now I am back to dang, did I remember the adapter?!?!?!

The point about co-existence is pretty simple, now that I am looking beyond the walled garden I am and not hard locked it allows me to consider other replacements.

I am a hard core engineer that made the jump to the sales and marketing side and lesson number one is never ever ever allow your competition a foot hole, as they will land, grab and expand. Push me off the MacBook Pro (Pro is the key word here) and you have done exactly that.

I can deal with the USB-C to be honest - I will buy a dock that does the Thnderbolt but the HDMI and the keyboard are just not well reasoned.

As the support document I quoted notes, if the display is Thunderbolt and not merely Mini DisplayPort (and it must be Thunderbolt since you mention the single cable carrying non-video protocols), you wouldn't need a dock, just a Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 adapter.

Thanks, I will have a look, but the lack of HDMI and the keyboard is the real deal breaker.

> A significant source of consternation, amongst software engineers at least was the confiscation of the function and escape keys. Well I didn’t much miss them. Every time I went for the escape key, it’s graphical facsimile was there and did the job.

My feelings as well, after playing with a store demo machine for ~30 minutes, mostly in Terminal.app/vim. There were/are so many people complaining about the lack of an escape key, making silly memes to that effect, etc. Yet, in practice, it works just fine. Terminal.app has been updated to take advantage of the touch bar too, both allowing you to quickly assign a new background color to the window, and to take the currently-typed command and open up a man page for it in a new window. Not essential functionality by any means, but little things which you might actually integrate into your workflow.

I dunno, trying to press Esc and getting that glossy no-response touch feedback is still bothering me after two weeks of using it. It might be "acceptable" and something you get use to... but it's worse. Just like I keep being reminded how much better old keyboard is when I do anything on my 2014 MBP. Touchbar sits empty 90% of the time, and when it's not, it just duplicates functions that are easier to do with actual key combos. I really don't get why it doesn't have haptic feedback like the touchpad to mitigate at least some of the bad glossy touch feeling :/

... or how I get reminded I didn't have to look for damn dongles every damn time I want to plug in a HDMI projector for a talk, a USB stick or a phone.

It's something you get used to. We, after all, got used to Win dows Vista, HP printers and other terrible products. It's still an annoying step back and it's actually bothering me more than I though it would.

You can switch the capslock key for escape if you really miss it. It's under System Preferences > Keyboard > Modifier Keys.

Right but then I'm changing standard keyboard layout so as soon as I go to another computer muscle memory is screwed.

Honestly would it really kill them to have a top spec MBP without the touchbar? I mean would it really kill them to just not have the touchbar at all since it doesn't actually solve anything or do anything better?

Just a terrible gimmick honestly.

> Just a terrible gimmick honestly

in your opinion

In most people's opinion.

What about when you want to hover over a key to tap it repeatedly, like F8 and F9 for stepping through debugging? Similar to hovering over the tuner seek buttons on a touch screen car radio, I don't know how people do that without looking and without a physical button to rest on.

Likewise - there are at least 4 F-keys I regularly use: rename, find-usages, step-over, step-into. Much of what my IDE does is accessible via vi/vim key bindings (e.g. - ctags like "go to definition" key combo), but I still use the F-keys.

The touch bar is a horrible gimmick, and forces you to use an external keyboard for Real Work (TM).

That, and mag-safe was one of the best ideas, ever.

Technically, you could map jk or something in your ~/.vimrc in order to exit insertion mode, which would avoid the whole issue.

  :imap jk <Esc>

(I don't personally use this, but one of my friends swears by it)

I'm a "developer" in the sense that I have developed things but I better not leave my day job.

For me, at least, I thought the touchbar represented a HUGE boost to productivity WHEN I coupled it with BetterTouchTool. Whenever I would use atom/sublime, there were lots of handy key bindings that I could either not remember for the life of me or which were kinda annoying to press. Well, I decided to take a couple hours and dedicate that time to putting those on the touchbar with BTT. For me at least, it has been glorious. Now really handy options for code traversal are RIGHT THERE as buttons on the screen, and now I use them constantly. I understand that for real power users they would have already memorize the key bindings or would have re-mapped them, but for me this was a crucial feature to actually getting me to use them regularly.

That sounds pretty cool, but I am concerned that I would become too reliant on the touch bar shortcuts. When I dock at my desk for the day, plugged into a keyboard and monitors, the shortcuts would be just out of reach. Working all day on the laptop keyboard and screen sounds like an ergonomic nightmare. I guess I will wait until there is a detached keyboard with touchpad built in.

That's a good point. At work/home I've had setup with multiple monitors, but always using the laptop as the keyboard. I hadn't thought about the fact that if I develop muscle memory with this set-up, loosing it may be unfortunate.

You do realise that you could've just printed out the shortcuts and have them nearby for a week? It's enough to pick them up.

The problem with the touchbar is that it's not haptic, it moves your eyes from the screen and fingers from the keyboard.

That's a fair point -- I think a lot of it too was that some of the default bindings just felt awkward for me to reach/would break the flow of my typing, so I never bothered with it. Again, though, I know I could've just remapped them to something I felt more comfortable. I take the point that the touch bar probably just provided that nudge for me to invest some time into this, but I suspect that the experience that I have with it would not quite have been the same. YMMV, of course.

The biggest issue I see with the new MBP is that the iPhone 7 (released only a couple months prior) is essentially incompatible out of the box. The connectors are incompatible, and the headphones are not interchangeable without a dongle.

Apple used to go to great lengths to make their devices work great together, so it boggles the mind that the iPhone and Mac teams didn't coordinate the switch to USB-C.

The article even links to another post which makes it seem like Google's Nexus works better with the MBP than the iPhone - https://medium.com/@ageitgey/the-new-macbook-pro-is-kind-of-...

Who plugs their phone into their mac anymore?

iOS developers, but even those days are probably numbered. I remember XCode having a wireless build-and-run-on-device option in an old beta a few versions ago.

All iOS developers?

On the other hand, I can quickcharge my Google Pixel XL with the MacBook charger, which is convenient.

Makes you think huh?

I don't get it, are you saying Apple should've shipped 2 Lightning cables in the iPhone 7 box? One that would be useless unless you happened to buy a USB-C MacBook?

The iPhone is a device for everybody, and accordingly, it ships with a charging/data cable that fits the most ports across all modern computers and chargers.

They should have put a USB-c into the iPhone.

But then they can't have their special snowflake ecosystem of overpriced accessories.

I agree but as I wrote in another comment, I fear they never will because it's thicker than Lightning (and USB Mini) and they're obsessed with thinness.

Okay, put a USB-C port on the phone. Now what? Make the other end also USB-C so it plugs into virtually nothing?

Also, weren't we talking about the non-phone side in the first place?

A better move might have been to ship it with a USB-C/Thunderbolt cable, and a small adapter for USB-C -> USB. That way it still works out of the box, they get to keep their dongle eco-system and it pushes the new USB-C standard and accordingly both the Macbook and Macbook Pro.

He/she means iPhone should have come out with usb-c port instead of lightning port

I agree with this, but I also feel like there are better options out there right now. I don't feel super compelled to throw $2k to a company that wants to treat their customers with contempt and call it courageous.

Have you used the machine? The touchbar is delightful. Trying to find new ways of pleasing customers is not contempt.

I have zero use for a touchbar. I dont have a vendetta against apple, if they come out with a machine that is usefull to me I'll happily buy it, but this current attempt is just a macbook air + a gimmick, when what I wanted was a useful work laptop.

No, contempt is when you remove a ubiquitous audio jack and replace it with a de-facto proprietary connector that requires an extra adapter to do the same thing it did before. And then have the cheek to call this "brave" and good for the customer.

Or when you release a machine with one USB port to be shared with charging and peripherals.

Or (opinion alert) when you take progressive steps to lock down your system more and more and more at the expense of power users.

    Run whatever the user wants -> Run signed code only with an override -> Run signed only with an override that reverts back after a period of time -> (exercise for the reader)

Or (2x opinion alert) when you compromise on battery life and muscle memory (and hence usability) for a misfeature that adds questionable value that nobody actually wanted in the first place.

Apple's all about pleasing their customers perhaps, but at some point, their customer stopped being me and started being someone else. And this is sad, because OS X is the only nix-like out there that gives anything resembling the faintest hint of a shit about design and UX.

The author of the article put it well: The relentless and opportunistic penny-pinching is intentional though, and leaves a sour taste.

I totally agree. I was a happy apple customer and I'd like to be again, but the current direction is bad for me.

Not OP, but as far as the direction many developers seem to leaning right now, your opinion might be the more unusual case. I did try the TouchBar, and not only did I find it not delightful, but it was so obviously going to be not a useful tool for me that I'd go out of my way to have a computer that didn't have one, even if there was no price difference.

I don't think that this is just an anti-progress mentality either. My dynamic functions already had a home before the TouchBar: on my screen. That way, they're their at eye level and easily accessible via keyboard shortcut. Especially because it doesn't have anything like tactile feedback, the TouchBar really adds nothing to this equation (unless maybe you're a very heavy emoji user or want the equivalent of a dynamic nyancat sticker [1]).

I realize that I feel more strongly about it than most, but other reactions I've read or heard are almost universally nonplussed. Even people who are normally absolute Apple apologists, like the cast of Accidental Tech Podcast [2], seem to be having trouble finding nice things to say about it. Not a good sign.

[1] https://github.com/avatsaev/touchbar_nyancat

[2] http://atp.fm/episodes/195

This discounts the ulterior motives I believe Apple has, but:

1. Shrink the trackpad back to the size it was in 2015 and prior.

2. Leave the Touchbar where it is and move the keyboard down to where it was in 2015 and prior.

3. Add back the Esc/Fn key row.

So it's not really as good as the old one, except for the nice screen and it hasn't been dropped on the floor yet. I'll at least wait until the reports of logic board failure to see whether it also takes down the soldered-on SSD.

From the article: "Overall, I’m very happy with it. It works better than the machine it replaces in all the ways that matter to me."

Their statements don't support that conclusion though. The keyboard is thinner but okay, the ports are currently inconvenient but will be okay, the missing magsafe is kind of a problem, but with the right cabling will be okay... I see what they said, but their points say this laptop is "kind of okay". It doesn't warrant the kind of enthusiasm that accompanies every Apple release. If I were to plot the quality of the last few laptops on a line, this one would give it a trajectory that suggests I should see what other vendors are doing.

Can anybody share their experience of using the new Macbook Pro with Xcode? How's the performance? Touch bar any useful?

Considering Xcode works just fine with 8GB of RAM on a big project I don't see what the issue would be.

Not looking for issues here, more for improvements. On the Apple event we could see a couple uses of touchbar in Apple's software - Final Cut, Mail etc. but not much focus was put on Xcode. I'm wondering if they came up with anything useful ideas for developers.

Every time I hear about the touch bar and how it's just as good if not better than having real escape and function keys, I think of the MacBook Wheel from that Onion video fake-news piece (in which the entire keyboard and trackpad were replaced wih a giant iPod wheel), and wonder if in five years Apple actually did ship a MacBook Wheel, Apple diehards will reassure us that it's just as powerful a machine to use for development, if not more so, than a laptop with a real keyboard.

My fingers just can't get used to touch gadgets. For keyboard input I need real keys.

Is satire called fake news now?

At least since the mid-90s when Norm MacDonald opened the SNL Weekend Update with "And now the fake news."

More recently, the "fake news" controversy was caused, in part, by sites that ran satirical articles without making it clear that these were satire. They would then be reblogged on Facebook and so forth by people who thought they were genuine.

There were other dimensions to fake news, but that's part of it.

For god's sake, please, some company make a quality developer laptop with a retina-like screen.

There are loads of other laptops with a higher pixel density than the macbooks. The real advantage they have is OSXs superior hidpi support.

Unless you're talking about the color reproduction which I can't really comment on. Not really important for devs though.

Aren't linux distros good enough in hdpi support these days?

It's less the distros, more the applications themselves that really fail the test. I use ubuntu on a Razer Blade 2016 and it's great but a few apps are horrible scales (due to lack of HiDPI iconography etc.)

Even windows has issues here and there with scaling. Apple really has the best tech here. That said, I switched from a rMBP to the Blade, wasn't excited about the new Macbook Pro's at all. It's a shame too, i've had 10 Macbook Pro's over the past few years, doubt i'm going back now unless the price really drops.

I just got a new hidpi linux laptop. It indeed works good enough on its own, but when I plug monitors in of varying resolutions it is pretty atrocious.

My current work setup is currently 2 1080p monitors, so to work around the weird scaling I just set the laptop display to 1080p when I am docked.

Point being, might as well just buy a laptop with equal or lower resolution to your external monitor(s).

The 2015 rMBP seems to be the only thing left.

Razer Blade Stealth?

While I have this same feeling, I think we (jointly) suffer for everyone wanting different things. I'd like a smaller (13" ish) size laptop with a handful of ports (e.g. 2x USB-A, 1x NIC, 1x external display port of _some type_ - that's it) but that's not everybody's "thing". I am definitely of the opinion, though, of having a functional thing over the "latest and greatest" (looking at you USB-C).

You mean like Lenovo, or Dell, or Razer, or any one of about 10 manufacturers who have been producing quality developer laptops for the past few years (or longer, in Lenovo's case)?

Everyone else _has_ caught up with Apple. Windows 10 is actually pretty good, and Linux works great on most laptops now. There's plenty of options for developers.

I'm picking up an XPS 15 after the next refresh in January since it seems that it'll come with Kaby Lake H CPUs and (probably) an Nvidia GTX 1050.

I actually enjoyed the article he linked to just as much:

https://medium.com/@ageitgey/the-new-macbook-pro-is-kind-of-...

discussed a week ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13045797

Somebody I know has one and the hinge felt loose from the moment it was opened. The screen wobbles back and forth like a worn out old Macbook Pro. I haven't seen this mentioned in any reviews -- can anybody comment?

Take it to the Apple Store if it's wobbly -- that's not normal.

It certainly isn't - the hinge on mine is significantly more sticky than my previous MacBook Pro Retina, which was in turn much more solid than my MacBook Air (at it's best), and when that hinge got wobbly they replaced it.

I have two colleagues that both got 13" MBPE (MBP Escape button version) and none of the screens are wobbly by any means. They are perfectly weighted like the previous versions if not better. 15" may be slightly different due to size, but it shouldn't wobble.

I also bought the new macbook pro 2016 (15" base), I've been a linux user for 10 years (xUbuntu) and have been liking it quite a lot. The build quality really is spectacular. The speaker are MILES ahead of any laptop speaker I have, my favorite feature of the new MBP. I also have a 2 year old MSI GS60 with a 970m for games. I with they kept the escape key though, the function keys, while used, I can live without. I've had to remap some keys in sublime, which took me a few days to get used to, but that's all. I use VI bindings but have been using CAPS(remapped)+F as escape since forever (I know it's bad, and it sucks when I don't/can't update my vimrc in new servers but it so easy I can't go back).

The dongles I don't care much about, it's a hassle but not that bad. I bought an AUKEY 4 usb hub plus hdmi which takes care of usb and video for work (I only have a 1080p monitor at work so the crappy hdmi is enough).

One thing that does bug me is the soldered on SSD. It's great and really fast but was, IMHO, a horrible design decison. Not being able to pop out the drive of a dead or old computer is rediculous. I actually had an SSD die on me a month ago and lost a week of work I hadn't pushed (I know I'm wrong but it's been so many years since an HDD failure I got sloppy). If this happens with the MBP it'll probably render it unusable or will probably be a VERY expensive repair. Forget about planned obsolescence, this is planned BUTTF*ING, no vaseline. Given that I know one day I'll be royally screwed, now I push to git more often.

Also, I depended on co-workers to build iOS apps, which was the main reason I got an apple, don't think I would have gotten one if apple let me build in linux though just because of the price. Screw xcode.

All in all, is it worth it? Don't know, as a developement machine for work it's great. Speakers, like I said and also touchid are great. Touchbar is only really good for changing volume or brightness with a slider, which I enjoy but is not really worth it. For everything else, as a developer, if I'm looking down at my keyboard or touchbar while programming I consider I'm 'doing it wrong'. Finally, this isn't new to mac developers except for the size but the trackpad is great! I've always hated trackpads and carried my much beloved logitech marathon mouse. For the first time I actually don't feel the need for a mouse. The gestures, palm recognition, etc. is very well sorted out. Occasionally I get some palm rejection problems because of the side of the trackpad but it's rare.

my 2 cents.

Cheers

No word about the ability to connect to 2x 5K monitors at full 60hz (no other notebook can do this).

Or 4x 4K @60Hz again: (no other notebook can do this).

Out of curiosity, what profession/role do you suppose can make good use out of all that real estate?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com