On Mar 14, 2017, at 10:59 PM, Harry Jacobson-Beyer <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
> Why wouldn’t you buy a Mac laptop? My main reason is price. I would want to get a MacBook Pro i7 with 16 GB of RAM and a 1 TB SSD. Apple’s price for such a machine is about $2700, and it’s not upgradable — ever. There are several comparable machines for as much as $1000 less; e.g., Dell XPS13. I could easily switch to Linux as my main operating system, so buying one of the alternatives wouldn’t be that much of a shock. Here are some other things that aren’t deal-breakers, but annoyances, with the 2016 MacBook Pro. • They no longer have the MagSafe power connection. This has saved my machine many times. • The “breathing” light on the front is no longer there. Without it, it’s hard to tell if the machine is really asleep when the lid is closed. Also, the glowing Apple logo on the case is gone. This isn’t a big deal, but it was a nice distinctive feature in these days when all laptops look pretty much the same. • I don’t care for the new low-depth clicky keyboard. Its key travel is really short in order to make the whole machine thinner. I don’t know of anyone who has “thinner” as a high priority, except, apparently, Jony Ive. I’d trade a millimeter or two of thin for more battery and a keyboard with more throw. • They’ve fallen behind the industry by using the older Intel Skylake series of processors instead of the Kaby Lake series. This was no doubt a trade-off because Intel couldn’t manufacture the volume they needed, but Dell, HP and Asus somehow use the newer chips. • You can’t get more than 16 GB of RAM — ever — for the machine. And it’s $200 to jump from 8 GB to 16 GB. I want some future-proofing. I’m often running memory-hungry programs like Sage and Mathematica. Right now, 16 GB is plenty, but the handwriting is on the wall. • The $400 to go from a 512 GB SSD to a 1T SSD is ridiculous. If you buy a machine with a 512 GB SSD you can never, ever upgrade it as SSD prices fall. • There’s no external video port. I use my laptop connected to a projector a lot. Apple has made sure I'd have to buy one more $40 dongle for the USB C/Thunderbolt ports. Of course, I’d leave it in whatever room I was using it and would have to buy another… • I haven’t decided if the Touch Bar is really useful or just a gimmick. None of the software I use has been upgraded to support it yet, but I do use the function keys and escape a lot. They’re now buried in the Touch Bar which makes we touch-typists look at the keyboard. After typing all of this, be aware that I’ve not made up my mind. After using Mac laptops for many years, it would be a mental jolt to switch. But, I have the feeling Apple is designing their machines for a different audience. My needs are very different from the businessman who spends his whole day in Excel/Word/PowerPoint/Outlook. I also think there’s too much boutique and not enough toolbox in the new machines. L^2
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