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Waiting for the 2018 MBP
- Thread starter benface
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Just another windows machine. If you are with windows yes it is wonderful machine atleast in US. they don’t have good after sales support here in Australia.
Seems like the keyboard issue is even more prevalent - the online entrepreneur sphere I’m in has a great number of people who JUST (like just) realised the keyboard issue is widespread. Many are thankful for the petition that they just found, realising they’re not alone. 2017s too.
Now I’m really worried for the 2018s
Now I’m really worried for the 2018s
50% If I HAVE to give it a number.
Technically... Vega is out. And there should be a mobile part that's ready, but noone really knows.
This fact severly lowers the likelihood.
On the other hand... Polaris was also NOT available prior to the 2016 MBP release, so history could repeat itself and the 2018MBP is the first one to ship with an actual Vega GPU.
I've stood with money in hand since 2016 ready to buy a MBP. First a maxed out 15". Then I started thinking maybe it's just not worth it and a 13" is better. Then I started looking at alternatives, and set myself up with a temporary mITX build to bridge the gap. But now I'm thinking if I'm going to pay premium for a MBP, and then have it fail after 18 months with no reasonable way to fix it -- that's just dumb. So I don't think I'm getting a MBP until there's clear indication that the keyboard is reliable. Regardless of whatever specs they come up with on June 4.Seems like the keyboard issue is even more prevalent - the online entrepreneur sphere I’m in has a great number of people who JUST (like just) realised the keyboard issue is widespread. Many are thankful for the petition that they just found, realising they’re not alone. 2017s too.
Now I’m really worried for the 2018s
I've voted with my money, but that's probably not going to influence Apple a lot. But if mainstream users like your peers (wrt how far they push a computer) start perceiving that the MBP have a keyboard problem, then that can likely snowball into a major thing for Apple. Not that I particularly wish them problems, I just want them to build decent hardware and own up to their mistakes.
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Your number may be right. I just think it would be weird to put out something that doesn't have a Vega label on it. Relabel the current chips Vega if need be, I just think it would be a weird marketing move to not have something Vega in there. Not that I necessarily agree with that practice, but it would make Apple sense in an Apple world to do so.
I agree, though I do desperately need a MBP. They’ve since switched to the Airs and MacBooks mostly. But I don’t think anything less than a MBP can handle my design workload.
It’s all very disappointing of course. I’m at the point (like many) who’s sick of Apple products but too lazy to switch. I’ve tried a Windows and Android phone, but honestly I just dislike the interface.
Reluctantly a iPhone 8 purchaser and prolly the MBP 2018 too.
I agree, though I do desperately need a MBP. They’ve since switched to the Airs and MacBooks mostly. But I don’t think anything less than a MBP can handle my design workload.
It’s all very disappointing of course. I’m at the point (like many) who’s sick of Apple products but too lazy to switch. I’ve tried a Windows and Android phone, but honestly I just dislike the interface.
Reluctantly a iPhone 8 purchaser and prolly the MBP 2018 too.
Oh dear. I guess you should go to one of those much more reliable brands then. Hang on, there arent any........ they all have issues.
Don’t understand the purpose of this comment. I’ve never complained much or asked for much, I only needed an improvement for a more reliable keyboard. Problems or not, I don’t think it is too much to ask for a S$3000+ laptop to not have keyboard hardware issues. It was just a worry, which many have expressed here.
But hey, whatever makes you feel better.
Not the only one, though with me it's nothing to do with looks, just the idea of having more screen in the same size laptop (better than same screen in a smaller laptop IMO).
However, I don't for one moment believe that is happening this year - if the do anything at all in that regard, it will come with the next shell redesign.
its irrelevant to me what you do mate. Who says your keyboard will have issues though, just because some other people do.
It's like I wont walk out the front door as I know people get run over.
You can buy warrenties so whats the problem?
Loads of tech that I have owned that is non Apple has had issues. I have only ever had one issue with Apple. So I will take my chances.
Just an FYI I have 2 2016 MBP with 0 issues.
Or follow the words of @notjonyive on twitter and buy a new computer every time a key gets stuck on the current one. What's the problem?
As far as I know they use bezels since they provide a "frame" for the screen and allow you to focus on the contents better. I haven't spent much time working with borderless displays, so I have no idea whether it makes a difference or not. Of course borderless looks better.
The OS is my reason for sticking with Apple, not the hardware. As it is it's easy to port between Linux and MacOS, and I have full bash shell support, but MacOS also offers me a wider range of commercial software in addition to open source. I suppose there's a laziness element in that it's less work to maintain. But if they change the OS in future in a way that doesn't suit me I'll be back to PC hardware and Linux, with obviously a much wider range of hardware options. If I was genuinely sick of them though I'd just switch now.I agree, though I do desperately need a MBP. They’ve since switched to the Airs and MacBooks mostly. But I don’t think anything less than a MBP can handle my design workload.
It’s all very disappointing of course. I’m at the point (like many) who’s sick of Apple products but too lazy to switch. I’ve tried a Windows and Android phone, but honestly I just dislike the interface.
Reluctantly a iPhone 8 purchaser and prolly the MBP 2018 too.
For phones you are using my principle: choose the OS, then choose the hardware. Though I know it's heretical here, as well as off-topic in this thread, but the interface is actually my reason for not using an iPhone
.One thing to keep in mind is that there is more reason now than ever why some people may want to keep their laptops around for longer, and then reliability becomes more noticeable and valuable. I can't say if laptops are less reliable now, but the performance leap from one model to the next is generally quite small compared to, say 15 years ago. This means the incentive to upgrade for performance reasons is smaller than ever, and we often see people in this thread posting about their 5+ year old MBP's. I think it's generally a good thing that this option exists, and electronic devices should absolutely be built to last for at least as long as they are reasonably usable.
If a failing keyboard renders the device unusable after 18 months, and there are no reasonable repair options, that's really about as counter productive as you can get. This is Apple, who pride themselves with recycling computers, and building devices from recycled material. They pride themselves with being this green manufacturer, but you'd think that the very first step would be to build products that last, and that can be modified over time to increased storage needs for example.
Apple is exploiting the crap out of everything and everyone they can, and it's amazing to see some of the exploitees in this thread actually defending this practice. All manufacturers do this to some extent, it's just that Apple takes it much further than anyone else.
If a failing keyboard renders the device unusable after 18 months, and there are no reasonable repair options, that's really about as counter productive as you can get. This is Apple, who pride themselves with recycling computers, and building devices from recycled material. They pride themselves with being this green manufacturer, but you'd think that the very first step would be to build products that last, and that can be modified over time to increased storage needs for example.
Apple is exploiting the crap out of everything and everyone they can, and it's amazing to see some of the exploitees in this thread actually defending this practice. All manufacturers do this to some extent, it's just that Apple takes it much further than anyone else.
Just wondering then why Apple tends to come out on top of customer satisfaction surveys.
I am not defending the keyboard issue at all but it is anecdotal still at present, and lots of people seem satisfied.
There are plenty of products out there that are a lot worse than Apples for longevity and quality of manufacture and design. They certainly don’t push it further than everyone else, and I confidently buy from them, which I cannot say for a lot of others brands.
It is anecdotal, but it also really doesn't matter. There's been enough anecdotal evidence to at least convince me that the problem is real. I wouldn't presume to know how large it is, or if it's even larger than 2015 models. But it doesn't matter. If you get a device and it doesn't fail, then you don't care. If you get a device and it does fail, then you still don't care if it breaks for 1% of users or 10% of users. It broke for you, and you end up taking a €3k loss. At that point, I bet you're going to be fairly interested in getting it repaired in a reasonable manner, especially if the device is designed from the start to be overly fragile for the expected use case.
So if I make a €3k investment and expect it to last 60 months and it only lasts 18 months, that changes the value proposition quite significantly. Which is pretty much why I have gone from convinced to not convinced. If you want to remain convinced, that's fine with me.
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I'm completely with you. I grew up on Unix. I want a Unix system that "just works" for the most part, looks good, and has access to commercial software when I need it. MacOS is the perfect fit for me. I could do with Linux, certainly, but it really lacks so much compared to MacOS. Windows is nowhere on the scale, it's good for gaming and web browsing but I'm very hesitant to trust it with anything even remotely important.
You are absolutely correct with the first part, but your final concluding seems quite far fetched. First of all, yes, there should be no doubt that the new keyboards have a design issue and because of that suffer from a higher failure rate. But we do not much hard data to actually quantify the issue, which is where the real problem starts. You have folks here basically claiming that all of the keyboards are broken and folks saying that they won't buy a laptop with a broken keyboard and now you talk about exploitation. What do we actually know though? The only data we have is what digitaltrends have collected: https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/macbook-pro-keyboard-failure-rate-double-older-models/
From here, we see that the keyboard failure rates on the newer MBP are double of the previous models (from 5% to 11% of warranty cases). We don't know of course how many failure rates in proportion to laptops sold there are, but if we assume a conservative 10% failure rate for two years and that otherwise the reliability has not suffered, then the increase of keyboard failures would put the overall failure rate at around 11%. If instead we assume a more optimistic overall failure rate at around 6%, then the failing keyboard would put it up to 6.5%.
Don't get me wrong, this is a substantially increased chance of failure (a very important point that digitaltrends raises is a much higher change of repeated failure) and Apple absolutely must offer extended warranty on this. But overall, the whole story is kind of blown out of proportion, don't you think? The overall failure rates are within what is normal for the market. And even if we assume that the keyboard failure rate has went up 5 times, we are still at 7.2% -12% of total failures — which is still within the regular failure rates for laptops.
Again, I am not defending Apple here or justifying their mistakes — they obviously blundered and they better offer some sort of compensation in return (5 years extended warranty on the keyboard should do it). And sure, if you are worried about it, then go an buy some other laptop. But if you expect higher reliability from other brands, you are most likely deluding yourself. Marginal overall increase of failures due to issue-laden keyboard simply doesn't have that much of an impact on MBP's reliability.
I agree completely about macOS being the perfect hybrid between a GUI with commercial software and GNU command line tools. I very much appreciate it that way, too. However, if Apple would screw up, I couldn't live with Linux as a desktop OS. Aside from the lack of support for commercial software, Linux just isn't polished or stable enough as a desktop OS. Believe me, I've tried it a *lot* since I first installed Linux back in 1992 (pre v1.0). On my last try, everything worked fine on bog standard hardware. Then, a simple upgrade broke my graphics card. That's plainly unacceptable for a desktop OS.
I am actually looking forward to find out what Apple's plans are with ARM. To me, it sounds exciting. Intel is facing problems so severe I'm tempted to short its shares. AMD is an okay alternative. But with ARM, Apple has control over the processor and the chipset. Too many people whining about 32GB? Let's add that ourselves. Also, it has the potential of tightly integrating workflows on iOS and macOS devices.
Have you tried Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)? It's really quite impressive. It installs a Linux side-to-side with your Windows and translates the Linux kernel calls into Windows calls. So except if you're a driver developer, everything should just work. There are a few differences with macOS, though. To start, you must install this on Windows whereas in macOS, it's already there. Also, I still prefer the macOS GUI. But as far as the command line goes, you get Linux, period. Hard to beat that.
I am glad you always spend time developing a coherent argument with figures.
Me, I have given up with the irrationality some people have. Your final sentences say it all.
You're right, the exploitation thing is mostly a separate argument and I didn't quite connect the two in the post. The keyboard issue is an example of it, but would in itself not at all be reason to make that point. I could expand on my reasoning, but it's not really something I'm super keen on because it can get so infected. As it is, that was a separate argument that didn't necessarily belong in that post.
Well, most things that find public attention end up being blown out of proportion in some way, and I don't necessarily mean to contribute to that. To me, it wasn't a big deal until I realized that Apple really do go out of their way to push their responsibility over to the customer. I mean, things break. There's nothing new about that, nothing surprising, and at these (speculated) failure rates it's... not really reason to panic. But if Apple wants my money, they need to convince me that whenever issues happen, whether they are manufacturing issues, design issues or whatever, they're going to take responsibility for problems that they caused. Or at the very VERY least make it possible for me to repair it myself.
Thing is... with issues like these it's always out of proportion. Up until now I'm pretty sure it has been suppressed out of proportion. I don't think the average mainstream MBP customer is even aware that there is an issue. And when they catch on, it's going to be blown out of proportion the other way. Just like all the exploding phones or battery drain issues or whatever. Neither is a "true" representation of reality (for whatever definition of true you like) but all that really matters is customer perception. It's just a bit sad that it appears to take a media explosion on this issue for Apple to really address it.
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I haven't, though I have used cygwin for a long time and it achieves something very similar. And that's fine... technically most of what I want to do works just fine there. Or I can run Linux in a VM, and I do this as well. Works well enough.
Except it's still Windows....
Even disregarding the fact that it spies on me... it also doesn't allow me to be in control of my own computer. It decides on its own when and which updates to install. My main computer is currently broken, and I strongly suspect it's something to do with some Windows update (having ruled out everything else). A few times I have had Windows update just perform an update, discard my work in progress, and simply reboot without my consent. And I could go on and on, but I don't really need to. Windows is a necessary evil for me, and I'm doing all I can to reduce the necessity of it.