Erica Sadun - Falling back to a 2015 MBP

[turbineseaplane]

Great read here and lots of interesting points and admissions, many in favor of the newer machines.

One big exception?
Ports

Apple screwed this up I think...particularly doing it as early as they did.
Some heavily used built in legacy ports are a HUGE quality of life thing for many people.

Link

 

[Lobwedgephil]

Have a working link? Would be interested in reading this.

 

[ugru]

Falling back to an older MBP

I just recently switched from a 2018 15″ MBP back to my 2015 13″ and I thought I’d share some of my reactions to the change. My meandering and unstructured thoughts follow. Unexpe…

ericasadun.com

 

[turbineseaplane]

Have a working link? Would be interested in reading this.

Fixed. Sorry.

 

[e1me5]

Nah.. I will never give up the versatility of TB3 ports to the dumbness of USBs.

 

[Howard2k]

It's going to suck having to carry a dock with me in order to use something like HDMI.

I see the benefits of TB3, but a smattering of real ports would still be great.

 

[turbineseaplane]

Nah.. I will never give up the versatility of TB3 ports to the dumbness of USBs.

What did you think of the rest of her article and other points?

 

[konqerror]

Nah.. I will never give up the versatility of TB3 ports to the dumbness of USBs.

Agreed. You can use any port on any side. You don't fumble with orientation. You can have single-cable docking (Display, power, Ethernet, USB). You can have arbitrary combinations of outputs: i.e. 2 HDMI, 1 DP 1 HDMI, 2 DP, 4 USB, 2 Ethernet 2 DP. You can use non-proprietary charging that works with the rest of your devices, when I travel I bring exactly one dual-port brick now. The iPhone is now the sore thumb with Lightning.

 

[Queen6]

Lack of common use ports in an allegedly professional class notebook is a joke. No one is suggesting that Apple reverts, equally being totally reliant on dongles for basic connectivity is poor move at best.

Many I know including myself dumped Apple for professional use for this and the atrocious Butterfly Keyboard "Pro my Arse"

Q-6

 

[turbineseaplane]

Agreed. You can use any port on any side. You don't fumble with orientation. You can have single-cable docking (Display, power, Ethernet, USB). You can have arbitrary combinations of outputs: i.e. 2 HDMI, 1 DP 1 HDMI, 2 DP, 4 USB, 2 Ethernet 2 DP. You can use non-proprietary charging that works with the rest of your devices, when I travel I bring exactly one dual-port brick now. The iPhone is now the sore thumb with Lightning.

What did you think of the rest of her article and other points?

 

[konqerror]

What did you think of the rest of her article and other points?

Her points were hard to follow but in my opinion:

• The old keyboards were crap in feel. Mushy. The new butterfly, minus the breakage, is much better.
• There are a few useful cases for Touch Bar. Not revolutionary, but doesn't get in the way.
• Fingerprint does work well, however Watch unlock is more convenient if you use it in closed-lid or you use it with an external keyboard (you have to reach over).
• The big issue is Apple still hasn't made a fingerprint Touch Bar external keyboard. Not just for the desktops, but for people who dock their laptops. In my opinion, that's a major reason why it hasn't taken off yet.
• Huge new touchpad is better, though I'm saying that from a 15 inch.
• I never used the SD card. I bought enough storage to begin with, and I don't trust external card or USB storage. Corruption issues are common if you try to use it as a disk.

 

[turbineseaplane]

Her points were hard to follow

Interesting.
I actually really enjoyed her conversational style about it and had no trouble following her points.

For me a lot of times a contextual commentary is much more helpful than just bullet point lists

 

[retta283]

Her points were hard to follow but in my opinion:

• The old keyboards were crap in feel. Mushy. The new butterfly, minus the breakage, is much better.
• There are a few useful cases for Touch Bar. Not revolutionary, but doesn't get in the way.
• Fingerprint does work well, however Watch unlock is more convenient if you use it in closed-lid or you use it with an external keyboard (you have to reach over).
• The big issue is Apple still hasn't made a fingerprint Touch Bar external keyboard. Not just for the desktops, but for people who dock their laptops. In my opinion, that's a major reason why it hasn't taken off yet.
• Huge new touchpad is better, though I'm saying that from a 15 inch.
• I never used the SD card. I bought enough storage to begin with, and I don't trust external card or USB storage. Corruption issues are common if you try to use it as a disk.

Would you rather have a keyboard that feels mushy or one that can fail at any moment? I'd take reliable over feel most cases.

Photographers love the SD card slot. Very easy to import photo/video. Without it they either need a USB-C to SD or a USB-C to USB-A for the camera cord. The thickness of the port is not an issue either.

 

[e1me5]

What did you think of the rest of her article and other points?

Well in general I agree: newer is better than older. I had a classic 2012 15" MBP before I bought my 2018 i9 and I agree to most points. Newer keyboard has a much better feeling than the old ones, when I have to use my old MBP it feels like i am typing on a pillow. Trackpad, well, is bigger but it never gets into the way. Easier for the gestures. Feeling is the same, you can't improve perfection. TouchBar, I miss it when I use other laptops, so that means its a good upgrade. I don't miss at all the SD card slot, as it is the first thing that fails on a MB, it doesn't ever last a year. I always use a card reader that has multiple slots for different card types as I own cameras that record on different memory cards. Its a reflex move to get the card reader when I want to offload a card so it is actually slower to remember that for the certain card I have a built in port.

 

[jerryk]

One person's opinion. My opinion is I like my 2018 15" more than I did my 2015 15". And I was so wary of the 2016+ MBPs that I kept my 2015 for a month or so.

I found I adapted to the new keyboard quickly and have never had an issues with it.

The touchbar is a mixed bag. I like the controls better, love sliders for volume and brightness. And in Powerpoint is cool to see tiny slide previews/reviews for the earlier and later slides.

USB-C is just better to me. One cable for all my devices and a set of dongles I can use on my MBP, iPad pro, or Galaxy S10+. A single dongle let's me access SD cards, projectors, TVs, ethernet, USB drives and other peripherals on all devices. Can't imagine ever going back to USB-A.

 

[konqerror]

Would you rather have a keyboard that feels mushy or one that can fail at any moment? I'd take reliable over feel most cases.

Except they don't "fail at any moment," the problem is exaggerated. Dust gets down and it starts to miss keystrokes. Hitting the faulty key several times will fix it most of the time, if not blowing at it with your mouth will do the trick.

Photographers love the SD card slot. Very easy to import photo/video. Without it they either need a USB-C to SD or a USB-C to USB-A for the camera cord. The thickness of the port is not an issue either.

The SD card slot is slow and also a dust ingress point (PC laptops seem to always have a blank there). They were USB 2.0 on older models, and they never supported UHS-II. Also, it's no longer relevant for pro video as it once was, as those have switched to larger, faster form factors.

 

[poorcody]

One more opioion. My 2016 15" MBP has been my daily driver for three years now (can't believe it's been that long). Still hands-down the best laptop I have ever had. I actually find the butteryfly faster to type on, never had a keyboard problem, love the Touchbar for macros, and frankly would choose the flexibility of the TB-3 ports over single-function ports.

There have been a couple of times when I forgot an HDMI adapter and wish I had it, but frankly there were times when I forgot my DVI adapter or DisplayPort adapter or whatever on older laptops. At least with dongles you get to use the ports in any combination you want. And a single plug-in for power, monitor, external dock, etc. is really nice.

My only complaint: my SSD is full, and the only way I can upgrade now is with a new machine. I don't want a new one, I want to keep this one. Made a mistake not going bigger initially, but the price was a bit of a shock back then. (Now I actually find it a decent value all things considered.) An SD-slot might be nice to add some low-speed storage in my case, so I think I do miss that a bit too. But soldered SSDs really suck.

 

[jerryk]

...

My only complaint: my SSD is full, and the only way I can upgrade now is with a new machine. I don't want a new one, I want to keep this one. Made a mistake not going bigger initially, but the price was a bit of a shock back then.

Same complaint. I needed to remove things I installed "just in case" like a Windows VM and some of the big apps in the Adobe CC suite. Next time, 1 TB for sure