MacBook Pro 16" 2019 Teardown
ifixit.com
ifixit.com
It's never going to happen but I'd love to see a return of the Aluminum / Titanium PowerBook keyboard.
Personally I wish sommeone went back to the keyboards used on IBM 5140 or IBM P70. Probably not too likely though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC_Convertible https://deskthority.net/wiki/IBM_P70/P75_keyboard
This is a joke btw.
I plug a mechanical keyboard into my laptop all the time, because it's easier on my fingers. A thicker laptop that I can type on is better for me than carrying around a separate mech and putting the laptop on a nearby flat surface instead of my lap.
For example: https://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/msi-gt75vr-titan-p...
I mean, at 4.5kg it's extremely heavy for a laptop, but it does have a mechanical keyboard and very beefy spec.
I got a couple of NOS Mac Portable replacement keyboards on ebay a few years ago, but never got around to putting them into a working case.
And I also did not like the feel Put it this way I brought in an old Zenith keyboard from a p90 system from the mid 90's to use instead.
I have been to an Apple Store recently to try out the MBP16's keyboard and it's good - but not as good as the one I'm typing this on.
I also don't understand the obsession with key stability on the corners. I like the instability. I use it when I'm touch typing - it gives my fingers a lot more tactile feedback.
Sloppiness shouldn’t make it feel better.
If my finger presses 10% of the wrong key and 90% of the right one, key stability on the corners will mean the keyboard registers both. On the 2015 keyboard it only registers the one I meant. The fact that it wobbles also gives my fingers an extra milisecond to adjust position if it feels it's wrong.
It's also more obvious when I did hit the wrong place and I can automatically reach for the backspace/delete key without even thinking or noticing the wrong key visually on screen.
It's overall a more fluid typing experience.
This is especially useful when I'm typing at night or if my fingers are not moving optimally - like when they're cold or otherwise tight or tired.
This!. Along with smaller Keys and hence more spacing between keys. Little things like these you dont appreciate but you will notice once they are gone.
I love the instability.
Again, good. But could be better.
Everything else seems like a toy keyboard in comparison.
I just got the Magic Keyboard and it’s still growing on me after a few days.
For me, at least, the Magic Keyboard is the happy medium between the too short action on the 2016-19 Pro keyboards, and the too deep action on the 2015 and earlier,
I'm not even used to typing on the MBP2015 anymore, but every time I pick it up (which is every few weeks in general) it's just great.
The Magic Keyboard (both the external ones and the MBP16's) is good, just not as good.
It has 1mmb of key travel, which is less than the 1.25mm of the external Magic Keyboard. It's also less than the 1.35mm of the 2015 MBP. But it's much more than the 0.5mm travel of the Butterfly keyboard.
This is all to say that although the 16" MBP has a new scissor-based keyboard, it's not quite fair to say it's the same as the Magic Keyboard. And although it probably fixes all of the keyboard woes of the past couple years, I would still wait a few months and see.
It is a rechargeable Bluetooth keyboard, no real magic, little innovation.
It is a very nice Bluetooth keyboard though, reliable, easy to clean, feels higher quality
Sometimes I get a similar feeling as the MBP keyboard in that it seems to "miss" keystrokes, or get them in the wrong order. Though admittedly the worse MBP characteristic of doubling or tripling up a single keystroke is not there.
Reading about all the keyboard woes others had, I've been wondering if I am just lucky. In November 2018 I've traveled to another town with my laptop (in the sleeve, as usual). This was single day travel and it turned out that I've didn't even have to pull it from the bag a single time. After coming home 10 hours later I've pulled my laptop from the sleeve and pressed "R" key. It didn't "click". I've pressed it again. It didn't click either, but it sticked to the tip of my finger and popped out of its slot. I was now part of the people blessed with keyboard fault.
"Never" is a bold word, and it's worth highlighting things like a hard-to-replace/repair keyboard to keep on that tiny bit of pressure to change (how often have you been in a meeting where "customers aren't asking for this" came up as a justification to not make a change?).
Also, just to let people KNOW - when buying a laptop you may not be considering if the keyboard is easy to service. Plenty of developers on any given day are making their first foray into these sorts of decisions, and there's nothing wrong with pointing out that which is obvious if you've been following for a decade but not if you're new to it.
Which carries with it a significant piece of information: Someone saying this is claiming that there is some structural or cultural obstacle, and that the company would have to change its nature in order to effect the requried change.
That was the case with Microsoft and Linux as well.
The new one looks nice too, though it seems significantly overpriced.
There seems to have been a large cultural shift at Apple toward extreme form-over-function around the time of the intel transition. I still have to deal with Macs because my wife uses them, and they've only been getting worse. Personally, I've been on PCs running Linux for several years now.
Presumably Apple is working harder on fixing all of those things than Microsoft, but maybe issues like that are why we still haven't seen an ARM MacBook yet.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/5/20948092/microsoft-surfac...
Apple killing off 32-bit app support (and Carbon, QuickTime API, etc) is probably them preparing for an ARM transition. Any app that managed to make that transition is well-prepared for a pretty trivial "just change the compile target and press the button" ARM port.
Apple would be betting on Mac app devs quickly getting ARM ports of their apps out there. In the Microsoft ecosystem there's zero chance of that happening, so they have to rely much more heavily on emulation.
There's also a chance Apple could do some kind of bitcode magic[0], but they don't enable bitcode on the Mac App Store yet, so that is probably not in the cards [0] https://www.highcaffeinecontent.com/blog/20190518-Translatin...
As long as the products are not repairable, we should call Apple out for not being as environment friendly, as they try to present themselves.
If you throw away a machine, that for any other brand could have been quickly repaired because it is totalled, this is not environmental friendly, even if Apple recycles the aluminum afterwards.
Most people don't care one way or the other as long as they end up with a functioning machine. They don't care about how the wheels end up getting turned as long as they get turned. If anything, replacing a larger component rather than diagnosing and fixing individual components should be faster. If someone has to solder or work on transistors, your repair could definitely take weeks and that time only goes up with the number of repairs necessary for all customers.
>If you throw away a machine
If you throw away a machine, that's on you. Apple, and most other PC manufacturers, offer some kind of machine recycling. That process includes recycling the raw materials and disassembling and reusing components. Unless we're talking about machines that are 7+ years, those components can still be used for warranty repairs and other assemblies. It's exactly why Apple stops servicing devices that are that old and instead only offers recycling for them. When the warranty claims go down, the parts needed go down.
And if people don't care about the time, they do care about the cost. It makes a difference whether a broken keyboard costs $100 or $600 to repair. In the latter case, the machine often is totalled. And then it doesn't matter how nicely you recycle the aluminium, the machine could have been used for many more years, if it could have been repaired.
Or asked the other way around: if Apple can so nicely reuse the parts, why do they charge more than the cost for the broken part? If they would replace broken keyboards for $100, few would ask, how they do it. Why don't they fix a broken SSD for $200?
None of those things are as simple as you're making them out to be in the form/spec of the Macbook.
>And if people don't care about the time, they do care about the cost.
Apparently not as Apple has the highest customer service scores in the entire computing industry by a large margin. People care about having working computers and, by and large, people who buy Apple computers buy them knowing that out of warranty repairs may be expensive.
>why do they charge more than the cost for the broken part?
Because it's costly to recycle those parts. You can be cheap or you can be sustainable. Right now, you can't really be both.
None of those things are as simple as you're making them out to be in the form/spec of the Macbook.
The things aren't as difficult as you make them. There are plenty of devices which have reasonable repairablity without being larger than the MacBook.
>And if people don't care about the time, they do care about the cost.
Apparently not as Apple has the highest customer service scores in the entire computing industry by a large margin. People care about having working computers and, by and large, people who buy Apple computers buy them knowing that out of warranty repairs may be expensive.
Most people who buy Apple computers don't know about the costs of out-of-warranty repairs. It will be interesting to see how big the shitstorm will be once people have to throw away their butterfly-keyboard machines becaus thy can't typ th lttr "E".
>why do they charge more than the cost for the broken part?
Because it's costly to recycle those parts. You can be cheap or you can be sustainable. Right now, you can't really be both.
Yeah, as if it would cost $500 to recyle a pound of aluminium. They do it because they have to machine a new part and want to push the money on the customer. But with a proper design, you wouldn't have to throw away large parts of your laptop for minor repairs.
Name one. You've made a lot of empty claims in your posts without backing up a single one. I don't even know why I'm responding to you anymore, you clearly have an axe to grind since you're responding to almost every person that disagrees with you.
By the way, this laptop scores 9 out of 10 on ifixit: https://de.ifixit.com/Anleitung/EliteBook+1050+Repairability...
Another 9: https://de.ifixit.com/Anleitung/Samsung+Series+9+15-Inch+Rep...
The MB Pro used to score a 7 (https://de.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Pro+15-Inch+Unibody+M...). It would still house a 2.5" HD and a DVD drive, so it could be a lot smaller with a SSD.
Apple will have two options then: drop out of the EU market (which they won't do, 500M consumers waiting to be fleeced) or follow the law.
Assuming given the extra decade, Apple's keys are hopefully more durable, but it's still no pain free job either.
The only cases where I have personally seen that a whole keyboard replacement was needed were those caused by a liquid spill, but Apple is never going to cover those since they could easily damage the logic board and you wouldn't be "safe" even after months.
But yes, at the end of the day using screws instead of rivets would be better for everyone
I consider the statements of Apple about the environment friendlyness of their devices phony, as long as a keyboard defect can total the device or at least mean, that large parts of the device have to be changed, which aren't defective.
Let's hope that the new keyboard is robust enough to make it a non-issue. But if Apple is committed to their design and think it is unlikely to ever break, why doesn't Apple price a keyboard replacement at the same price like other laptops?
It's a tough question to definitively answer. Are there greater environmental costs to producing and using screws rather than rivets? If so, how does that balance against the environmental costs of replacing failed computers?
It's possible that a fixed keyboard could be the correct choice if their new keyboard fails in low enough numbers.
And in any case, even if it were a theoretical environmental gain - should the burdon for that lie on the consumer, who randomly looses her or his device, just so that every laptop is a tiny bit more efficient (and the effect would be really tiny)? Shouldn't in this case Apple carry the additional cost for repairs?
Where can I raise a mob to clamor about it so I can have the full-sized keys back in 3 years?
https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/11/15/heres-what-the-16...
Well even your article say the 2016 keyboard are the same to 2017 and 2018 which is 0.6-0.7mm. Although the general accepted Key Travel for 2016 - 2019 15"MBP are 0.5mm.
I was so unsatisfied with many changes ranging from the keyboard disaster to the loss of ports that are still industry standard and used every day for some years to come.
Probably this is the start for Apple to find back to some quality and say goodbye to strange experiments. Users should feel good using a device and not pay a lot of $$$ to become Beta-Test Lab Rats.
The most of my customers still need a lot of "obsolete" connectors as well as my devices which I won't replace just because they have no USB-C yet.
In 5-10 years maybe but they will come up with other standards until then and the race will go on. I think it is a matter of your domain(s) how cutting-edge your choices can be.
The new butterfly system was cheaper to produce than the old one. Old keyboard design were more complicated. And the keys made from a more sturdy plastic. I have removed and replaced several keys on both kind keyboard and I broke partially 2 key from the new keyboard, using a more fragile plastic but none of the old version, this taking account to the fact that the new key were more easy to remove.
The USB-C choice was also about reducing cost. Integrate 2 USB-C is less expensive than integrate 1 power input, 2 thunderbolts, 2 USB 3, 1 card reader, and 1 hdmi output.
Removing the MacSafe for the cheap defective usb-c power plug (after 1 year, the cable don't stay stuck anymore in the USB-C, causing the macbook battery to discharge without useur knowledge, and forcing him to push back the cable a least 10 time as day because of the low quality of the component, no matter the cable you used to plug your macbook) was also about cutting cost.
On the pretense to changing design and and adopting new trends, the have cut cost by reducing the quality and the number of feature of their computer.
That's how they became the richest company in the world.
One of the USP's for Apple devices for me always was the quality of materials and production. Weakening this point of reference by opting for poor quality materials and implementing strange new designs that break fast is poor product management in my opinion.
I don't see that behavior in Apple's past so often - the opposite is true.
Look at the iPhones for example: The early models had a plastic case and buttons and then they introduces more metal etc. somewhere around the 4/5s.
The same happened with their notebooks: They started with cheap plastic cases and upgraded to metal. Nice.
There is more products where they excelled at improving the features and the quality. If it is their choice to leave this USP in the dust they will loose customers like me because quality, good materials and stuff like that are very important for some people.
It feels clumsily large, especially since we’re coming from MacBook 13s. She kept asking me if I’d heard any rumors about when new 13s would come out. She went in pretty determined to get a new machine but decided to wait.
The struggle continues for us 13ers I’m afraid. Not really excited to drop $3K+ on an even larger form factor I haven’t been excited about for upwards of 5 years (and being forced to upgrade to Catalina) just to fix what is now universally understood to be a defective keyboard design.
I’m fairly convinced that this whole speaker business was to have something, anything, to differentiate it from the current models other than fixing the keyboard, and probably delayed this release. Someone said “we can’t seriously just ship a new laptop, with the same CPU as the current models, and just fix the keyboards!” It wouldn’t surprise me if the 13s haven’t come out yet for a similar reason.
FTFY. No Gen 1 Apple product has been without it's flaws. Some just take time to make themselves known.
64GB of RAM and 8TB of SSD are great, that’s why I have a desktop computer with those specs for half the price. I love big screens too, which is why I have an actual big monitor on my desktop, not “big considering the form factor it’s in”. Getting those specs on the MacBook Pro puts you into the $6K territory, so I don’t think for most people that’s actually a difference. The absolute upper bound has increased, but what I get for the price I just paid about a year ago isn’t that much different.
Meanwhile, my laptop is for mobility and not where I boil the ocean. Sure, I’ve wanted 32GB on my 13 inch for years, still waiting though.
Look, I get that there exists a market for super high end laptops, but there is arguably a much larger market for, like, mobile laptops that can type correctly. It’s annoying that I have to get pushed into the ultra niche high end laptop market, with specs that I specifically don’t even care that much about (I have no use for a better graphics card, especially an AMD graphics card that ensures I can’t use it for ML), just to get a keyboard that puts one e on the screen when I hit the e key once.
The old 15.4 inch at $2699.00 (vs. 16 inch at $2399) was also 512GB, 16GB RAM, and 2.6GHz. This is absolutely a modest perf bump -- however it really sucks if you feel like you have to pay this price again for nearly identical specs to really just get the new keyboard. Yes, if you were really hoping for amazing... laptop speakers, then paying full price again may make a lot of sense. But the reality is that for most people (those not spending $6K), this computer is not that much different from the one that already exists, except for the keyboard actually working. My response was for the comment stating surprise that I "just" saw this as a keyboard fix. I stand by my position that this is absolutely the case at most of the reasonable (common?) price points.
What do you mean by "legally possible on a laptop"? My current machine (some rugged mobile power house) got 120Wh and I really don't wanna get arrested. Please enlighten me.
Ask a high school dropout!
So does Apple, funnily enough.
They usually contain compressed fluorocarbons like difluoroethane. These are toxic chemicals, which are also potent greenhouse gases. Their casual use for cleaning should be discouraged.
Otherwise I'll use a vacuum or duster, if it's not delicate electronics.
I got one for around 60 USD and unless the motor breaks it should last forever. There are also screen and electronic safe wet wipes for cleaning phones and other messes that a vacuum would not solve.
You aren't the one shifting the earth's atmosphere, it's greenhouse gases from the millions of cars,from industry and deforestation.
Everyone could start smoking cigarettes and spraying aerosol into their laptop once a day and you wouldn't make a dent in the ozone comparatively
The primary concern is that many of them are catalysts with very very long active lifespans. As a catalyst (not a consumable reactant), a single CFC molecule is capable of destroying hundreds of thousands of ozone molecules in the upper atmosphere (or more). It's the catalytic nature that makes these things problematic and accumulative even in small amounts. The accumulation of these long-lived gasses would be measurable if everyone were blasting their laptop once a day, which is precisely why a number of them are banned completely. The ones generally used now are relatively better, but there is still plenty of reason to avoid emitting them if possible.
Cigarette smoke isn't comparable when it comes to environmental concern, nor are most common combustion byproducts. Those definitely cause concern for different reasons, but aren't directly comparable to environmental concerns raised by CFCs.
Another thing to do is opening the bottom an removing as much of the dust buildup as possible, that shit alone explains a lot of the “my computer gets slower with age”.
Given a choice, I would much rather have had the 64 gig rather than a new keyboard. A keyboard you can put a cover on. There's no mitigating 16 gig.
With this release however, Apple chose to give us both, as well as a GPU with 8. So yeah, the machine is a significant upgrade. Anyone saying otherwise is probably in a demographic where they really don't need the GPU or the extra ram. So they don't see the value in them.
But how you gonna get that workstation to the location where the client is shooting?
The “but why would you want a powerful portable machine” argument has always seemed really strange to me. It’s the same reason I’d want any portable machine.
I get what you are pointing at, but it's a tradeoff only regarding what you prioritise. We still can improve on both fronts with different approaches.
Those bulky desktops of yore are now clustered pizza boxes.
I also find it to be a pain in the ass to unplug and plug laptops in to docking stations; you get up for a meeting, none of your windows are where you left them when you get back. So I just use an iPad and ssh to where I need to work. This doesn't work for everyone, but since I mostly only use a web browser and a tmux session, it works fine for me. And thus, I don't have to deal with configuring multiple computers or carrying around a heavy laptop. Great when you travel; it's hard to say "no computer this trip!" and the iPad fills the gap nicely. If you are travelling for work, there will be a computer with an ssh client on it for you when you arrive. If you are travelling for fun, you probably don't want to spend a ton of time on the computer, but it's nice to be able to watch a movie in your hotel room or peruse an ebook before bed. So I just have a very powerful workstation and a very underpowered non-laptop, and get what I think the best of both worlds is.
But many people really like having the same setup at home, at work, and when travelling, and for those people, the beefy laptop seems like the right solution. (They probably also use programs that were developed after 1980, and need the GUI anyway. I think I would be stuck if I needed to use Fusion 360 or lay out a PCB while out and about with my iPad. But it's never come up for me.)
(My experience is based on my 2015 Macbook that I had at work. It didn't have a docking station, so every meeting that you took it to involved unplugging at least 4 cables; power, USB hub, 2 monitors. OS X appeared to be worse than Linux at handling displays going away, so it was always a major undertaking for something that should not be a major undertaking. I'm not really a Mac person, though, so maybe I was doing it wrong.
My personal laptop was a Surface Pro. I never used it except when travelling, so whenever I arrived at my destination it would turn on and say "hey you haven't updated me for like 3 months, this is a major crisis and I am going to freak out until updates are installed. This requires 1TB of data and 12 hours. Have fun! Oh by the way, all your settings are gone now and if you change them, I will also change them for you on your desktop at home when you log back in! Fun stuff! Value add! Innovation!"
No more.)
Unless they also give you nice laptop stands to put on your "freestyle" desk?
Beyond that, I address most of the others in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21570906
Maybe 6 max.
I doubt Apple will make a new 13" just for the Keyboard. It will require some other improvements, like for the 16", they got larger display, better CPU and GPU. The problem with the 13" is they dont come with Discreet GPU, which means Apple will have to wait for new Intel Icelake, with Better CPU and iGPU before releasing an update.
Intel Icelake platform will also come with WiFi6.
I am not sure if Apple want to release a 13"MBP with better Wireless Spec than its bigger 16" brother. So the likelihood of 13" releases is when they update their 16" again with Icelake as well.
But the problem with Intel Icelake is 10nm. And judging from the current retail Icelake solutions, the chances of Intel lying again with 10nm yield is extremely high. And that is why all of a sudden you see Intel PR and Marketing team on fire in the past few months, keep sharing their roadmap and their forth coming tech. From GPU to OneAPI etc.
May be in Intel will finally fix their 10nm problem in time for another update in WWDC or earlier, if not I hope Apple will switch to AMD.
Edit: And I would also like to point out, the so called Better Thermals, Bigger Battery, only when comparing to 2016+ MBP, they are roughly the same in 2015 MBP.
Apple will certainly upgrade the 13" model as well next year, maybe moving to a 14" format.
They really wanted to release this 16" sooner because the 15" was by far the most criticized one and they wanted to show to the "Pro" market that they're still there.
And this is Apple -- they don't have to, or feel the need to, justify anything. If they released the 2018 15" with just a new keyboard the world would be over the moon because otherwise it's a close to perfect laptop. They took quite a few steps further surprising a lot of people.
As an aside, I've had my MBP for about a year now. I've typed barely a paragraph on it. I've always used a magic keyboard and mouse with -- yup, even when mobile -- because I cannot stand "laptop warmth" under my hands. So I've inadvertently gotten around the shite keyboard because of another weird hangup.
...yet I've seriously considered getting the new one. Keyboard doesn't bother me at all given my weird usage, but the other changes, particularly the much better speakers, seriously interests me.
I would not use clumsily large to describe it, my work laptop is a clumsily large hp zBook. Not one will ever mug me for it because I could throw it at them. They’d probably get a concussion.
Apple listened to customers and built the 16”. The CPUs are intel’s problem not apple. The 16” is Apple saying they were wrong and fixing issues.
Yes I was one of those people who originally thought the travel was too small but after using it for a couple hours I found the low travel was a huge relief to Carpal Tunnel and I also typed much faster.
Maybe I have the only keyboard that “works” but I love me some butterfly keyboards.
Still like my keyboard, and would be happy to have it back if Apple fixed the reliability issues.
FWIW, I like the iPad keyboard feel, too.
https://howchoo.com/g/njiwm2flndj/disable-double-space-bar-p...
I switched to the X1C7 and will prioritize key travel and response from now on.
But that's still victim blaming. There are plenty of keyboard designs which are not this fragile, and you shouldn't have to dust-proof your workspace to avoid hardware failures. We're not making CPUs here.
They are definitely unreliable and shouldn't break so easy, but every issue I've had has resolved itself
About a year since I did that and the key funkiness is slowly coming back for the last two weeks. Hopefully I only need another Apple Store trip and their compressed air to fix it.
Different strokes? (sorry, couldn't resist)
But like you, I haven't had a key go bad (yet?). I'm sure some folks did not like the butterfly feel, but I think a lot of the frustration started with how easily it broke.
I'm also curious as to if the keyboards are different sizes on 13in v. 15in models. As in, are all the problems/complaints stemming from the 13in models?
They did four iterations on the original design and never made a variant where you didn’t have to replace the entire top case because of some cookie crumbs. It’s just insane.
All they had to do was redesign the hooks under the keys. I’m no engineer, but when I look at them it doesn’t seem like some kind of impossible challenge.
The Touch Bar can also be pretty handy, especially if you customize it with third-party apps like BetterTouchTool. I certainly use it more than I ever used F# keys.
The thing that turned me against the butterfly keyboard were the reliability issues. I've had to get replacements for broken keyboards three times: spacebar stopped working, `f` ended up double typing every single time, and capslock (I remap to Ctrl) would 'stick' for a few seconds when pressed.
But it was a nice typing experience for a while. At least, until I get the new Mac!
Anyone who works in a shop with a large population of Macs will have see them fail in droves. My 2016 has had the B and V keys fail, a couple keys falling out, and now spacebar and a few other keys come out duplicates every other sentence.
I also have a 2018 MBP from work and the keyboard is shit. Within 3 weeks it was doubletyping and putting random .'s everywhere.
I was days away from buying the top end Vaio and then I heard the news about the new MBP and decided to go for the MBP instead.
I use it on my work computer (2018 15" MBP). Does a very good job of detecting these double key presses and mitigating them transparently.
You should be able to get the keyboard replaced for free, I just haven't found the time yet to go to an Apple store, but you shouldn't need to pay money and upgrade to fix this issue.
For anyone else having this problem, the new MBPs ship with the same autocorrect "feature" that comes on iOS where when you press spacebar twice (or, I should say, your keyboard thinks you pressed the spacebar twice) it inserts a period automatically. In addition, newer MBPs automatically capitalize and autocorrect spelling, like on mobile.
You can disable this. I did, and, I don't think any desktop computer should be telling me how to type. I don't need help when I have a full keyboard. System Prefs > Keyboard > Text.
I agree.. seems like Apple derped there. The auto-correct was because typing on a smartphone is a lot harder, but some genius must've thought "Hey, why don't we use this software on our desktops too?". Also holding down a hardware key to get to accented characters, oh fuck, how is that ergonomic?
I think it's a good addition for when you very occasionally need to type a particular accented character, since you can visually see the options. Of course if you are going to type it a lot you're better off learning the Option key combo.
For instance I would have to look up how to directly type "ł" since I rarely need to type a Polish name... but I can get it in 1 second by holding down "l". Very handy!
What's more, you can't even type ł on the standard Apple layout. Sure, you could use the Apple Extended keyboard layout that handles more characters than what's used in Western Europe, but you'll lose ≈ (irritatingly, the Extended layout isn't a strict superset of the standard layout). I type ≈ more often than I type ł or ć or ō, so the hold-key behavior is a handy addition.
I don't have one, but I just can't fathom how you can't make use of it? I'm looking forward to using it for all kinds of things -- notifications, quick glance information, context aware keys, and more.
I kind of felt Apple rushed as the problem with Keyboard were big enough and Apple had to release something to calm the market, not to mention Intel 10nm Icelake is late as usual.
And of all the thing Apple backtrack, I really wish they bring back AirPort Extreme.
There is always something new just around the corner.
True, but something new isn't always something better, and isn't always worth waiting for. Aka 2016 - 2019 MBP 15". And in the above cases, I consider Icelake IPC and Security improvement along with WiFI 6 to be quite a significant upgrade, not the same could be said for the past 3 update of MacBook Pro.
For me it’s also less about what next upgrade might bring but also what next upgrade does to the resale price. I’m sure those offloading a 15” 2018 will feel the price drop now.
I have a 13” 2018 and I am seriously considering replacing with the maxed out 16” with 2tb.
But the struggle is real, this is essentially a first gen device despite the somewhat small design changes. What if they release a new version in half a year? Definitely not an easy decision for a laptop that costs 5k€
Agree as well, something that was in mind but didn't wrote it out in my last reply. There was of course the assumption Intel execute, which isn't something Apple can control.
At least Intel has shipped its Icelake in extremely small quantities. I actually rather hope Intel do miss their deadline so Apple has an excuses to switch to AMD or ARM.
I think anyone who remembers the 'Do not buy the 2015 MBP, Skylake is right around the corner and it will bring such improvements you should definitely wait' knows that it's senseless to tell people to wait for Apple to release a 16 incher with 10nm processors if they want a new laptop.
There's multiple reasons why: 10nm higher powered chips are not ready and we all know about how much Intel is struggling with 10nm, Apple's release cycle is rather unpredictable, what if the switch to ARM is next year, should we wait longer...?
Something "Newer, Better, Shinier" is always around the corner and unless it's very close to release or the current product has genuine flaws, it makes little sense to wait.
I found the post informative and useful, with details that I hadn’t been aware of.
I found the rebuttals to it to be dismissive and full of obvious well known information and anecdotes that did not bear repeating in a forum like this one where we are well aware of the nature of incremental technology advances.
Unfortunately the times of "the next thing is basically strictly better than the previous thing" have disappeared
This ifixit article says, "Once again, the keyboard assembly is riveted down. Though the switches are likely less vulnerable to crumbly assailants, the keyboard itself isn't any more repairable than the Butterfly boards."
That directly contradicts statements from Apple to The Verge. https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/13/20962380/apples-16-inch-...
"Apple says that it has done extra work to stabilize the keycaps, made them slightly smaller so there’s more space between the keys, and that if a key breaks you can just replace that one key without taking apart the whole laptop."
This seems like a strange thing for Apple to lie about. What's the real truth here, I wonder?
EDIT: It seems that ifixit is just wrong about this, and the keyboard is at least somewhat more repairable than the butterfly model. The keycaps are replaceable (allowing you to spray compressed air directly onto debris) and the white part of the switch is replaceable.
I don't know of any Apple laptop that ever had replacable keyswitches.
Way to play with my heart, iFixit.
[1] - https://snapnator.com/
Not sure what is the allusion to here, but anyone else noticed static discharge you get after airport xray scans your macbook?
* 16x Micron MT40A1G8SA-075 8 Gb DDR4 SDRAM (16 GB total)
* 4x Samsung K4Z80325BC-HC14 8 Gb GDDR6 RAM (4 GB total)
> News flash: there's not even a dust-proofing membrane on these new switches. We're inclined to take this as a very good sign. (It means we can finally eat Doritos during teardowns again.)
That sounds counter-intuitive. Can someone explain?
I mean, I was very happy about the Laptop 3 repairability, but if the MBP is 1/10, then 5/10 looks a bit too much to me.
From a hardware eng perspective, is there a clear advantage for hardwiring components?
Yeah: it saves space and reduces complexity. A more modular MacBook would almost certainly be missing features or be bigger/thicker.
https://www.pcworld.com/article/253151/eu_law_forces_apple_t...
So just a few hundred additional bucks wasted.
You mention a mandatory 1 year so I assume you’re non-US and I don’t know what it would be for you.
Now, to be fair, I was a first-gen MacBook owner, and suffered from the issue with the magnetic latch cracking the topcase plastic and the plastic itself getting stained. I'm pretty sure I had that topcase replaced at least four or five times over the course of the computer's life, several of them out of the Apple Care period. That was a while ago, but at least back then, Apple were good about taking care of people once they'd come around to acknowledging a flaw.
Pluses:
The trackpad can still be removed and replaced with very little drama.
Minuses
Minor components are modular, but the processor, RAM, and flash memory are soldered to the logic board.
Glue and/or rivets secure the keyboard, battery, speakers, and Touch Bar, making those components a tricky fix.
The Touch ID sensor is the power switch and is locked to the logic board, greatly complicating repairs.
HN is not without it's fanboys.
Or it could just be that it was presented as a fact with no surround discussion? No HN value-add, as it were.
Having the lowest repairability possible should not be acceptable for such a high-end machine.
Microsoft Surface Laptop 3 got 5/10 (23 October 2019)
https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Microsoft+Surface+Laptop+3+(...
Let the market decide what it wants. There’s space for all kinds os laptops and gadgets.
Or are you saying you should be able to take OSX elsewhere? it's not a "monopoly" that Apple built OSX and only support it on their own hardware. It is not monopolistic to build something supported on one platform and not others.
Given that OSX and Linux are so similar under the hood and that standing up a VM is so easy, I've never really seen the point of installing linux except to say you can.
Similar in what way?
`ls`, `mv`, `cp` and other command line utility functions work relatively similarly across OSX and Linux. OSX has a package manager (brew) that works similarly to Package Managers found on Linux, etc...
If you learn to use Linux, switching to OSX is relatively painless compared to Windows (although WSL might have changed that)
To be clear, it's not supported by Apple. I've also been favoring MacPorts, lately because of brew's broken file ownership model.
http://www.nextop.de/NeXTstep_3.3_Developer_Documentation/
https://www.amazon.com/Mac-OS-Internals-Approach-paperback/d...
https://www.amazon.com/Mac-OS-iOS-Internals-Apples/dp/111805...
We should not let the market and consumers preference decide on this. We need informed, resonnable and thoughful decisions. If it leads to laptops a bit more heavy and thick but less wasteful, so be it. Convenience cannot be demanded at any cost. Anyway, repairable is convenient.
Apple Forces Recyclers to Shred All iPhones and MacBooks - https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/yp73jw/apple-recycling-ip...
Anyway, the best waste is the one that does not exist, recycling should be last resort since it's often far from perfect and costly too. So we should reduce the amount of things we need to recycle in the first place. As for computer parts, I cannot see how it can be efficient.
Reusing working stuff is good though, obviously.
Apple forces recyclers to shred because they determined those devices are not fit for resale and they don’t want recyclers reselling them, like they said they would in the article. This happens to 1/3 of trade-ins, see link below.
Apple forces recyclers to shred perfectly good hardware indiscriminately, against their will, so it does not hurt Apple's bottom line. When you are the richest company in the world, surely you can do better. There is no excuse.
I cannot take Apple's own 2 MB, 55 request loading marketing material about environment as a reliable source.
No. I’m stating that policy changed after this article was published, who knows maybe it was in response to this article, so the facts may have changed. The age of the article is not relevant I was just showing the timeline.
> Apple forces recyclers to shred perfectly good hardware indiscriminately
Says the recyclers. Apple says they are not perfectly good hardware, otherwise they would have refurbished it themselves. I also believe Apple maximizes profit which is why I believe if it was reliably repairable, they would have done it. A refurbishment unit has to fetch more than a recycled unit.
> No. I’m stating that policy changed after this article was published, who knows maybe it was in response to this article, so the facts may have changed
Ok, that was a more charitable and likely interpretation of your message. A bit of bad faith unfortunately slipped in my last comment. Sorry for that.
I looked at how to recycle of my old Color laser printer and the instructions on PA’s web site were to out it into the blue bin. They show GP this on the sides of some of the trucks too. I did so (almost completely filled the bin and weighed a ton) but they took it without a qualm.
By your logic why stop at laptops, why not demand tablets and even smart watches be treated the same. the reason is simple really, the reliability of these devices is very good and companies like Apple have highly developed processes in place to recycle the failures they do encounter.
we would never survive in a world were consumer electronics were lego like in their manufacturing. you think we have waste issues now, it is far more likely a laptop or desktop would be recycled than individual components which when failed many would just toss like they toss one use batteries found in many devices.
As for tablets, you can change the screen or the battery on an iPad 2 for instance - though not easily -, and its form factor was perfectly fine. A bit thicker would not make it horrible so I am sure it is also possible to design a repairable tablet and I think Fairphone proved that it is possible for phones too (although the Fairphone seems a bit thick, granted).
As for smartwatches, I'd argue that while there are valid use cases for them, most people certainly don't need them, so it should not be a big concern. Almost everybody has a phone now, and people who really want to wear the time on their arm can get a regular watch that will last decades instead of a smartwatch. We don't need to carry two computers 24-7. I hope this market is niche and remains niche. But I certainly can imagine that you don't need to glue the battery to the screen in a smartwatch neither anyway.
I mean, this seems like a good enough reason to me[1].
> Let the market decide what it wants.
Discussing pros and cons of a product is part of how the market figures out value.
Competitors seem to be able to maintain a lightweight form factor without completely sacrificing repairability.
I asked what was the exact nature of the problem. The answer was "Electrical", whatever that means.
I think it was the worst repair experience I ever had. I would have ended up paying half to two thirds the price of the mac probably because of a broken tiny component somewhere. Also I'm not allowed to keep broken components for later personal inspection (apparently apple does not allow it).
I'd take lower repairability over a spyware OS any day of the week.
Both are bad things and should be boycotted anyway.
Install FreeDOS on a desktop and move on.
Edit: and, as the next commenter says...:
That's just like, your opinion dude. Take a look at the logic board. Given the thinness of the device, every piece of it is designed and stuck in place. Nothing here is plug/play. If modularity is important to someone, and thinness is not, then they're free to look elsewhere for a machine.
Just wait until you see cell phones.
Edit: I thought this was implied, but to clarify I meant "expandable without increasing the footprint of the device".
A little annoying that certain things aren't simple a socket that can be replaced though.
I'm one of those people who pays ~$60/month on Apple's 0% iPhone loan plan. When my phone is paid off in a couple of months I would gladly pay $100/month for a 0% Apple loan on a low- to mid-range MacBook. I wonder if this will ever become an option.
I'm mostly interested in the enhanced cooling. If it's really that much better, it may be time to upgrade. Has anyone had similar experiences?
I get that it's not their primary audience but surely of all the keys you'd want to mini-fy cursor would be one of the last?
Great job, really awesome for the environment Apple.
example RAM is soldered to the logic board!
Also, SSD drives have a limited number of write cyclew before they stop working, usually some 10's of TBW (terabytes written). For normal users, it will take them a very long time to wear out the drive. Conversely, developers and power user types may find their setups doing 50GB or more of writes per day. So for example, if a drive is rated for 75TBW, a power user could wear it out after only a couple of years.
I have some Samsung SSDs at home where I regularly track and monitor the write usage, and I'm always surprised at how many writes occur on my [often idle] Windows machine. Background OS and application activity is my hypothesis for the cause. The primary windows partition drive will probably need replacing within a year, and will have lasted three or four years.
But even I don't seriously fear my MacBook pro SSD will die because of write load. I've done the math, and I should be good for way longer than the projected use of the laptop.
My actual annoyance is the inability to upgrade. I would love to make use of the currently laughable prices for m.2 SSDs and upgrade the 1TB internal storage to 2TB or more. But I can't, thanks to soldered storage.
Surface X is 0.28 inches thick and has a door on the back for accessing the SSD. Apple could do better.
Apple has a fairly comprehensive recycling system, to strip their own systems apart and reclaim reusable components. Are you suggesting when people take their MacBooks to get replaced that Apple are just throwing them in a landfill or something?
The next best thing to recycling (from an environmental standpoint) is being able to repair and continue usage. However Apple's hardware becomes more and more unfix-able (actually impossible, because parts are basically tailored to a single device, thus there can't be secondary parts, and Apple doesn't provide them at all). Go down the rabbit hole yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTpHa70DDX0
For most other laptops, repair or replacement of common components doesn't depend so much on the manufacturer. The skill and equipment required to do the repair is significantly reduced. All else being equal, this makes it more likely that the laptop will be repaired rather than discarded.
How many (in percentage terms) of laptops will ever need repairs, how many of those will actually be repaired (as opposed to consumers just deciding to buy something new, even if repair would be relatively easy and cheap), and then finally, what percentage of these defective laptops will actually been thrown away without any form of recycling? I'm pretty sure that if you do the math, in the grand scheme of things, these numbers will be utterly irrelevant except for HN talking points.
I would recommend spending public outrage about environmental concerns on areas where it really matters instead, such as e.g. food waste, plastic bags, energy efficiency etc. I'm pretty sure that even a tiny, tiny fraction improvement there would offset the environmental impact of the worldwide total of laptops that cannot or will not be repaired after they break down.
Whether end-users try to repair their laptops depends in part on their expectations; and their expectations depend a lot on how repair-able laptops are in general. My second-to-last laptop, a Dell, lasted me nearly a decade. I upgraded the hard disk, upgraded the memory, and replaced the inverter in the display twice. I mainly replaced it because it was about 4x the weight of newer laptops, and had started eating batteries. There's no reason more laptops couldn't last as long.
The point is, that if it weren't for the fact that I explicitly asked her to let me have a look to see if I could repair it, she would have thrown it out even though it was perfectly possible to repair it (it's working 100% fine again now). My mother is not the exception, she's the rule. I would guess over 90% of people don't bother to repair 5-year old laptops, under any circumstance. They just write it off and get a new one.
That's why I was saying all these discussions about how repairability of laptops impacts the environment are largely moot. Probably better incentives to promote proper recycling (e.g. a tax on electronics that gets re-imbursed when you properly dispose them) would have much more positive effect compared to improved repairability.
If you have devices that have "simple" faults (bad RAM,storage,wifi card etc) that would normally be a simple swap out, but now can only be repaired with a high degree of skill (micro soldering) and access to a parts supply which is intentionally restricted and knowledge which intentionally obfuscated (take you pick of Louis Rossman repair videos on youtube)then those products will skip this second life and head straight to material recovery rather than re-use. so >How many (in percentage terms) of laptops will ever need repairs as long as it's non zero then it's irrelevant >how many of those will actually be repaired For apple products this is rapidly approaching actual zero while for others it's non-zero
Basically Apple need to want this change. They need to... be brave? To... think different?
Users complaining that laptops are too easy to repair seems absurd to me but then again, I'm not an Apple customer.
if you want cheap devices that can be fixed by the side of the road there are countless windows laptops. countless.
but when you've got a laptop that costs more to repair, then you can expect its re-sell value to stay high.
the cheaper it is to repair, the cheaper the device gets.
the more expensive the repairs, the more expensive the device.
Also Apple devices on average have much longer service lives than devices from most other manufacturers. On average they stay usable longer, and even when they are replaced they're more likely to be handed on and keep in use even without upgradability. This is why they retain more of their second hand value. That factor alone is dramatically more significant from a whole lifecycle impact point of view.
The elephant in the room are repairs. Due to the design, too many repairs are not economic, so machines get thrown away early. Repairs, which should cost way less with a design that at least allows repairability.
Probably yes and that is also probably because behaviors like this. Manufacturers have trained consumers for years that upgrading of fixing stuff is not worth it. Personally, I have upgraded every laptop I have ever owned. This isn't possible with todays Macbooks.
> Also Apple devices on average have much longer service lives than devices from most other manufacturers
Bullshit, if anything I believe the opposite is true. What is your source for this?
In my experience this is true, but not for technical reasons. It just seems to me that there a lot of people happily using almost 10 years old macbooks just because they want a macbook, but probably can't afford a new one.
Just try to sell a 6/7 years old mac and then try doing the same with a Windows laptop from the same year: you'll sell the mac much more quickly, for a higher price.
I think that old macbooks still have a market, most old laptops don't, but this is just my impression.
A larger percentage however needs repairs (apple care sells well for a reason). A 1/10 score means that a "repair" will basically be throwing (large parts of) the laptop away and exchanging it for a new one.
Similarly recycling is made much harder by this design.
> This is why they retain more of their second hand value.
And because there is large base of people paying that much for them. A high-priced sony vaio, elitebook, thinkpad etc. stays usable just as long and there is large interest in the secondary market (e.g. see reddit's /r/thinkpad) but at much lower prices. Macbook buyers instead treat them as design objects first (which keep value) and computers second.
It's not actually possible to buy a new Mac with less than 8GB RAM these days, and that seems likely to be plenty for a typical user for the lifetime of a machine bought today. 128 GB SSD is a bit tight, but flash drives are cheap. I see it the opposite way, in the past minimum Mac specs always seemed miserly, but nowadays they're pretty capable.
My only issue with it is the battery which will fail sooner or later, but it shouln't be too hard to remove it.
What about batteries, they're basically consumables.
I still remember a friend of mine breaking a single usb port on his macbook, he had to change half the components, the bill was something like $1.5k for a $2k macbook.
On all the retinas you have to separate them from the chassis using a thread (something like a fishing line). It's not too hard to do, but it's not fun neither.
In the case of Apple products, it can save you a pile of money.
The last Mac I bought was the early 2011 MBP (yeah, -that- lemon), and Apple's prices for RAM and storage were ridiculously above market prices.
I was able to max out the specs of my MBP more cheaply by buying my own parts, and upgrading to larger faster storage at my own timeline. Heck, you could even get a cage to replace the optical drive on those MBPs and put in another 2.5" drive (which I did, and it was a very bad decision, especially for battery life).
I don’t have a Mac, and I think they should be more repairable, but I still think they’re ahead of most the rest.
I used to have Macbooks, I upgraded them with new disks and memory. Today that would not have been possible which is one big reason I would never buy a macbook to begin with.
This behavior is bad for all consumers of their products and should not be defended with anecdotal stuff like "people don't throw away their macbooks" which is easily refuted by going to a garbage site.
Anecdotally (which is all your point boils down to) I know that businesses rarely upgrade machines. Home users rarely do either. Gamers and enthusiasts are the people that tend repair or upgrade. These people are a vanishingly small number. I have no problem with Apple, or anyone else, replacing broken or damaged items with new/refurbished ones, so long as they are responsible with the disposal or reuse of the damaged article. Apple demonstrably are.
Apple offer free recycling[0] and it’s available in most countries, if not all. It is reasonably well publicised and easily searchable. If an individual chooses to dispose of a device in an inappropriate way, that’s on them, not the manufacturer of the device.
> I’ve never known anyone to throw away a Mac
I'm just telling you that there are people who do that. What are your sources for that business don't upgrade machines? In my experience, business are often the kind of places that actually do upgrade their machines but of course not if it is macs since they cannot be upgraded.
I have never said anything negative about their recycling program. But it still is more resource heavy and more polluting than simply continued use of a product when you upgrade parts.
This seems like its explicitly your problem given that apple will take and recycle your old macbooks for free if they are worthless and if they arent they will take them for a credit.
Many people with the overheating 2011 MBPs did.
Even within my very small social circle, I knew of three 2011 15" MBPs (including my own). Of those 3, all of them had to get the recall service, and since then, 2 of those MBPs have become bricks/e-waste.
I've gone through a lot of laptops (PC and Mac, my first was a Powerbook 170), and the only one to ever crap out on me was that 2011 MBP.
When it was working, it was one of the best laptops I ever had. When it had issues, I felt like Apple couldn't care less about the issue. It's pretty well documented that Apple pretended the problem didn't exist for quite some time.
The first logic board replacement (during AppleCare) had the exact same defect as the original board. It displayed the same symptoms within a couple of months, and then it totally crapped out right after AppleCare ended, and there was no way I was going to pay $500+ CAD to replace the logic board with yet another defective board.
I was lucky that the recall was announced before I recycled it (I ended up having to buy a new laptop in the meantime). The recall board has since died as well. The saddest thing is that computer (quad core i7 with 16gb ram) would still be more than usable today if it still worked.
I was completely locked into the Apple ecosystem prior to my 2011 MBP experience. And while I realize that the 2011 MBP is an outlier in terms of Apple product quality, the experience pretty much guaranteed that I'll never buy an Apple product again. There were so many ways they could have made me whole, but instead, they just kept providing a fix to a design defect with another defective part.
If they're soldered you need to replace everything. How is that not worse?
Not that there would be any proof in the comment, no. For example, how do Lenovo, Samsung or Dell handle this stuff and can you explain why their approaches produce less waste? Of course not, but let's put some hate into the HN comment section!
A centrally managed maintenance process where Apple hardware is managed and its waste properly disposed off (recycling, proper sorting of waste, secure handling of toxic materials...) vs. risks like customers putting Li-Ion batteries into their home trash causing landfill fires. And throw the left-over SSDs and RAM right into the mix as well.
No, it's just about hating on Apple without any evidence or data to back it up. Mimimi Apple ecologically bad but I won't tell you why or how others are evidently making it better!
Which leads to this link: https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Microsoft+Surface+Laptop+3+(...
Microsoft just released Surface X with a door on the back for replacing the drive. The device is 0.28 inches thick.
Thinkpad X1 Carbon and Dell XPS both have replaceable drives. From opening the case. If anything I'm struggling to find another laptop maker who solders the drives to the boards like Apple does...
Drive failure isn't a possibility, it's a certainty and soldering them to the board creates a hard deadline when the laptop turns from a computer to a brick.
And the parts that I wasn't using after the upgrade I've all sold to other people who had their mobo or battery fail. Nothing was wasted.
All this and I've got a pretty slick looking powerful laptop!
If Microsoft can do it, Apple could do it too and even improve upon it.
Also I can't see why the original comment is about "hating on Apple". All I see is legitimate criticism about some issues with Apple products, that apparently many other people have too. Your comment on the other side is very emotional and full of snide remarks.
Here you go:
https://www.ifixit.com/laptop-repairability?sort=score
HP, Dell, LG, Acer and even Samsung manages to do a lot better. Lenovo is also very simple to at least change battery, ram and disk. I know this since I own one and have added memory and disk.
On the Thinkpad versions the battery is located outside and can be switched without even having to open the machine at all.
> can you explain why their approaches produce less waste?
Yes, by letting me as a consumer change parts myself for the only cost of purchasing the actual part that needs changing or upgrading, the increase the service life of the machine I purchased.
Also, by not participating in this anti-consumer behavior, I can take said machine into a third party service shop and get it repaired there. I don't have to wait weeks for the proper parts to arrive and so on and I can get it fixed the same day.
I am not hating, I am stating a fact. By indirectly forcing people to buy new machines instead of repairing their old ones that often work perfectly well, except for maybe 1 thing that is broken or needs an update, they increase their environmental impact for no other reason than profit on their part.
Apple can do better and Apple have done better in the past.
Except the huge part that you're missing is that, when they do a swap or a replacement at an Apple store, they don't just throw away the hardware. They send it back to be disassembled, tested, and remanufactured. They re-use a vast amount of these components and all of their warranty devices are remanufactured from good, tested components that were pieced out of larger components. Just because they don't do individual component repairs at the stores doesn't mean it's unfixable hardware.
I wonder what would happen in a hypothetical world where there were pro and non-Pro Apple laptops, but the only real difference between them were that the Pro laptops had replaceable parts, and were however much larger/heavier/pricier they need to be to make that happen, while the non-Pro ones are all soldered and riveted together.
My guess is that the ones that are soldered together vastly outsell the pro line because that's what most Apple consumers want. And then economies of scale kick in until everyone's just mad that Apple is charging $500 "tax" just to be able to replace the hard drive and upgrade the RAM.
If you want to run MacOSX legally without risking a lawsuit from Apple (they even went after a repair shop, FFS), you must use their hardware, as per the license agreement.
They went after the repair shop for copyright infringement which the shop was guilty of. That's not the same thing at all.
1) Overlay multiple transparent keys on a single display. This works OK in concept, but is hard to do mechanically gracefully. You would also end up with parallax issues with the touch functionality, if you could even get multi-point touch functionality working on key-faces like that.
2) Keys with small displays and captouch sensors in them: The display tech isn't quite there yet for this, AFAICT. I've seen demos of small, single-color OLEDS embedded in buttons, but none with touch overlays and nothing with a higher end display in them. Additionally, due to the bezel and gaps between the keys, it would be very difficult to get a consistent image across multiple keys/displays.
They look quite similar to the vents found in the Early 2015 Macbook Pro!
Rossman's video from January details the stupidity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzjoELvrkYo
Apparently what happens is the liquid crystal particles separate from the grid and float around the screen, creating orange splotches that are very, very annoying. If you tilt the screen, over an hour the splotches will move around .. I've gotten to the point where I don't take my MBP 2018 off the desk just so that I don't have to watch the progress of the splotches over the day ..
Very annoying. I hope they've fixed it, and I hope Apple are forced to replace these screens.
While I agree with them in broad strokes I also disagree on some points but that’s not the end of the world. We just disagree and that’s alright.
There is no reason to prefer MLC these days. TLC has plenty of write endurance for client/consumer usage. MLC offers theoretical advantages in performance and endurance, but these are absolutely not worth the higher cost that comes from lower density. (And that's comparing 3D MLC against 3D TLC; high-density planar MLC loses against 3D TLC on all counts.) There is a niche market for SLC NAND in high-performance server applications that need the lowest possible latency from their SSDs, and Samsung and Toshiba are currently manufacturing memory to suit this use case. But it again has density too low for multi-TB SSDs to fit into a laptop.
MLC stores 2 bits per cell, TLC store 3, and QLC stores 4. MLC is the fastest and most reliable form, while QLC is the cheapest.
The MacBook Pro likely uses TLC like the vast majority of current consumer machines. Apple's SSDs are typically among the fastest available, but I haven't been able to find anything about reliability.
An Apple laptop would have been shipped off who knows where for three weeks, if fixing that part were even possible.
The Mac Pro will feature modular SSDs (and they aren‘t even super fast). I wonder if Apple will use something proprietary or standard M.2 NVMe modules. They probably can‘t offer PCIe 4.0 slots since they‘re using Intel which is trailing behind.
To me, what you can do with it and the kinds of jobs it enables is what makes a computer pro or not.
If you need it for a living, it's a no brainer. Is it malfunctioning? Take it to an Apple store, grab a brand new device, restore it from Time Machine and resume where you left off. You could be back up and running in a couple of hours as if nothing had happened. You could potentially waste a lot more than that trying to troubleshoot and then ordering new parts.
That only works if you have good Apple Store coverage though. Otherwise, the table flips.
People who are using these computers "professionally" mostly don't want to fiddle with modifying them. They want a computer that will be reliable, and whose failure will cost them the smallest work interruption.
But the name does lubricate the purchasing decision for many people.
You could make the cpu, gpu, ram and ssd user replaceable. But then you need bigger connectors, meaning you fit less stuff in.
There’s barely any unused space inside.
If you want something you can replace parts on, get a Thinkpad.
As someone who carries a MBP every day, the focus on portability is something I appreciate. So for me, I’m happy to take that trade off.
Well, no. I got issued a 2018 MBP 15" and it's an alumninum brick twice as heavy as any X-series thinkpad and twice as fragile (screen broke twice by just gripping the lid at the display bezel).
This is an accessoire, not a portable device.
We don't expect to be able to upgrade lots of things that are tools used by professionals, including the engine and transmission of a truck used for deliveries, or a hammer. And yet, those things can clearly be intended for professional sales based on capabilities and reliability at the time of sale.
With laptops, some laptops really can be upgraded - especially larger, heavier ones. Ironically, sometimes heavier ones that have easy to access panels for upgrades are cheaper. But as a provider of laptops, there would be a balance between allowing those upgrades, and guaranteeing levels of performance and reliability.
Personally, I won't buy a desktop - I'll buy parts (with options for later upgrades) and I'll build it. But I won't claim that it's therefore a device for professionals. Rather, it's a device specifically for me! With a laptop, which is increasingly the tool of choice for many professionals, being able to upgrade does tend to mean you'll get a longer life out of it. That's a good thing, but it's only one of many ways to measure whether a laptop is good for your professional needs. My employer provided me with a Macbook Pro, and it works well for my tasks as is, without needing upgrades. But in the past, I've had computers that slowed my performance down, and had to be upgraded or replaced. And in each case, the time savings multiplied by my hourly rate made replacing the hardware trivial in comparison.
So does that mean Apple is taking advantage of businesses by selling a professional tool that cannot be upgraded? Maybe. Maybe that was your point all along? But it's not an uncommon practice, and our best option to get around this is to choose an alternative device that better fits what we value. (That's why people love Windows and Linux - lots more choice!)
The issue arises when you want a laptop you can pull apart and fix yourself AND macOS. You can’t buy something else.
It doesn't have to be 2 hours. It doesn't have to be more than 5-10 minutes.
> I can just pay upfront to get a maxed out RAM and Hard drive.
Yes, but you can't pay upfront and get a SSD that will be launched in 2023. You'll be forever stuck with whatever tech was available at the time of purchase.
> I honestly don’t underatand this constant complaining about repairing laptops yourselves. What a waste of time! Leave it to the Apple store techs to do it for you.
Apple can't repair them either, the design is unrepairable, that's why the failing keyboards were such a fuck-up. They had to throw away the whole top half of the chassis because keyboard was riveted to it. It's as anti-consumer and anti-environment as it gets. Given the growing electronic waste problem, I expect such practices to be outlawed sooner or later, and I'm somewhat surprised that Apple isn't already positioning itself as leader in long-lasting products that extract maximum value from natural resources put into them. Repairability and upgradability are cornerstones of environmentally responsible business, but Apple seems to be heading in the opposite direction.
Given that the SSDs you can buy right now outstrip the IO bandwidth your laptop CPU provides, the only real benefit that upgrading to future SSDs could provide would be a better price per GB. If you're seriously concerned about wanting more storage a few years down the road, you probably also want to buy a machine now and immediately upgrade it with aftermarket storage.
Yeah, when their batteries swell up twice in 3 years, and they take 11 days each time and you're out of your main workstation for that long? See how that compares with an hour fixing it yourself.
Well, if you use this professionally, grab the max memory and storage available. Done.
It's not like you could stuff 256GB of RAM in the future, chipsets have limitations.
As for storage, that's only the internal storage. It has fast ports for a reason.
Upgradability is good, but it is worth much more for non-professionals. This allows someone to buy a machine today for lighter tasks and then later on re-purpose it for heavier workloads should the need arise.
> I hate the wobbly feeling that the scissor mechanism produces. Apple didn't need to return to the scissor mechanism, it should have reiterated the design. I'm very disappointed that Apple just gave up & used the safe way of regressing back.
> It feels like Apple is losing the spirit of doing things itself, whether other people dislikes it. Apple is more and more becoming a usual company that just does what consumers demands. And I'm sad with that.