What's been going wrong with MacBooks recently? (Ex 2015 MBP owner...)

[Mewcenary]

Hey,

My last MBP was a 2015 model. I loved it. "It just worked", which is the mark of any great device. I also have a 2011 (!) MacBook Air still kicking around, although the keyboard is a bit funky now.

I've been in Windows World for a while now (and, to be fair, Windows 10 is pretty great -- especially with WSL2 now featured). However, I can't deny that the new M1 Macs are exceptionally tempting, so I've been taking a look. Plus I have the option of a new Mac via work (the default would be a 16" MBP though....)

However, I'm a bit concerned about how, to be blunt, Apple seem to have lost their way with the MacBook line (M1 aside!). From reading this forum I've seeing some not-uncommon issues like:

* Keyboards (OK, now resolved, but that was a pretty horrific one)
* External displays being glitchy (Weird colours, scaling not right), but working fine with other laptops
* Thermal issues and huge fan noise (MBP 16) when using external displays
* Bluetooth just being a bit 'iffy'
* Various threads on kernel panics, needing to reboot to fix Wifi not working, or other issues.

What's happened to the Macs and MacOS I used to love?!! It feels like some sort of backwards world. Windows was traditionally the OS you had to reboot just in case a lot of the time, now it seems the other way round (I've made significant hardware changes to my main Windows box, and not had to reinstall, which was pretty much the thing you HAD to do a few years back).

I'd love to dip my toe back in the Mac water again, as I love the whole Unix-y OS aspects, and I'm typing this right now on my wife's iMac which is looking gorgeous with the latest Big Sur (And none of the issues I mentioned above kicking in, but it is a late 2014 model....)

 

[consumeritis]

I went from a 2015 MBP to the 2020 MBA and I feel like I have been really lucky, skipped all the keyboard/overheating nonsense and jumped back in to Apple at the right time.

M1 does seem to have problems with external displays, maybe wait for the M2 to see if Apple make improvements.

Fan noise appears to be gone now that ARM is so much more power efficient.

Bluetooth is always terrible in my experience, on any computer.

On forums like this I feel like you get three kinds of people:

• People who want to make an expensive purchase and are looking for ways to justify it.
• People who've just bought an expensive computer and want validation that they made the right choice.
• People who are unhappy and are having problems, and want to complain/ask advice/vent.

Every computer potentially has problems.

Personally the worst issue I have had with Apple hardware was staingate (twice) on my 2015 MBP. Both times a trip to the Apple store got me a same-day display replacement for free. The third screen has held up perfectly with no more coating problem (touch wood). That's customer service that I have never had anywhere else.

My Apple laptops have been so great for so long that I find it a struggle to switch back to Windows, now, especially as a developer. WSL2 goes back to having two separate silos - this side Unix, that side Windows - and for me personally it can't compete with just having a proper shell integrated into the OS.

People talk about Apple fanboyism a lot but as good as Windows laptops have become I feel like it's still hard to compete with Apple on build quality and customer service. Maybe the Surface laptops are up there.

I will say on the PC side some of the convertibles with an integrated pen for painting/drawing have been tempting. Windows is still better for games. M1 is still in the early stages of getting compatible software, even as great as Rosetta is. And the 'walled garden' is definitely a thing, though on macOS the walls are (so far?) not all that high.