I used to be a huge ThinkPad fan, but their wilderness years of bad displays and constant keyboard rearrangement turned me off, so I thought I'd try using my MBPR for Windows work instead. Turns out to be a very nice Windows machine, with the bonus of being able to boot into macOS too. (I can also run Windows under Parallels in macOS and that works pretty well, but running Windows native in a Boot Camp partition is more responsive.)
The only serious function key issue is the lack of the little gaps between F4-F5 and F8-F9. If you don't use the function keys much, you'd be surprised how important those gaps are for a touch typist. Lenovo even ditched the gaps for a while (and they had their own misguided experiment with a touch panel in the second gen X1 Carbon), but now the gaps are back - and they finally have good displays again.
ThinkPads also have the Home/End/PgUp/PgDn keys instead of the crazy contorted Fn+arrow combinations you have to use on a Mac keyboard.
I've gotten pretty used to these Mac keyboard issues by now, but losing the function keys? That's a bit much. Looks like my next Windows machine will be another ThinkPad.
- Lack of tactile feedback makes them imprecise (is my finger over the button?)
- Imperfect sensitivity means even if you touch the correct area, 5% of the time the touch won't register. If it does, there's still the problem of response time (eg: it's easier to quickly type "AAAAA" on a mechanical keyboard).
- "Hover hand": resting your fingers on a touch screen is risky, so the ergonomics aren't great. If you relax with your hand on a touchscreen, you're liable to accidentally trigger a command.
I can live with it, if it's just the Fn keys, but I consider it a slightly unfavorable trade-off.
What really ruined this event for me is the rumor sites. Nothing Apple announces this month could possibly interest me as much as the rumored 2018 E-Ink keyboard. I've wanted such a keyboard since the Lebedev first announced their LED model, back in 2007 (earlier even?). I can't wait!
It's something Lenovo already tried and was hated for with the X1 Carbon (luckily they removed the useless OLED gimmick thing in a next iteration). [0]
[0] http://core0.staticworld.net/images/article/2014/04/lenovoca...
Now good luck finding a laptop with the right keyboard.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/
https://www.massdrop.com/mechanical-keyboards
So yes, exist people that build customized keyboards or (maybe) better, give info in how build your own.
If you're referring to laptop keyboard layouts, I agree. So much wasted space on your average macbook for the scrunched up keys they give you. If you're referring to keyboards in general, well, I disagree. There's a lot of custom options out there for almost every keyboard layout you could ever want.
It's safe to say you're not really Apple's target market :)
Personally, I won't believe this OLED thingie until I actually see it with my own eyes, but with the right support in the OS APIs, might turn out to be a shot in the arm for the laptop concept. Imagine replacing the whole keyboard with an ipad-like touchscreen? Sure, abhorrent for a programmer, but quite exciting for everyone else. I wouldn't be surprised if this was the actual long-term endgame, for which an OLED strip is just a trial balloon.
That said, I'm not sure I agree. It's not just programmers who benefit from physical keyboards, but everyone who types. And that's a lot of people. I've tried typing on an iPad and an Android tablet, and it's pretty awkward compared with a physical keyboard.
OTOH, a friend has a touchscreen ThinkPad, and while she is a touch typist, she uses the touchscreen all the time. It makes me a little crazy to see her tapping the screen to do things that would be much easier with the TrackPoint or touchpad and buttons, but I just bite my tongue and let her have at it. :-)
[0]: http://10gui.com
tl;dr USB Type-C, Thunderbolt 3
So no, sticks vs soldered DIMM doesn't really make any difference in today's market for people who want more than 16 GB of memory.
(On the other hand, soldered battery is stupid and I tolerate it only because they're really good batteries.)
Apple doesn't really build their hardware so that it's "developer-oriented", so it's unlikely you'll see 32 GB of RAM anytime soon. Perhaps 8, 12 or 16 GB.
As a user of a modern web browser, yeah, 8GB by default isn't going to cut it anymore. Browsers leak like sieves and routinely I have to kill them once they hit 10+GB.
32GB is not even outlandish. It's a simple upgrade. The memory controllers support it. Apple can charge a fortune for it since it's "memory down" instead of DIMMs. Why wouldn't they do it?
>mac mini with A10 CPU
>MacBook air with the same guts as arm mini
>MacBook pros that are more powerful but not more powerfuller enough to satiate tech bloggers
>RIP in peace Mac Pro tower
>a Siri box for your house
It's not like a program made for amd64 processor could just run on an ARM one, so most programs people know and love just wont work. Also, emulating 64/32 bit is a pain and very slow for ARM.
It seems quite possible that Apple is pushing iPad pro for work to get "desktop" programs working well on the chip, but it seems a bit of a ways offs to have those power efficient A chips anywhere outside of mobile...
If Apple really wanted it to happen, they'd make the Mac App Store suck less.
http://mashable.com/2016/10/03/tim-cook-augmented-reality/#Z...
> It is expected to do away with the USB-A port, HDMI port, and SD card slot, featuring just four USB-C ports based on part leaks, and it is said to include support for USB 3.1 and Thunderbolt 3.
The four USB-C port configuration will be interesting. As far as I can tell the rumor stems from leaked housing shots (maybe prototypes) [1] which show four slots, two on each side.
The Wikipedia page about Thunderbolt[2] says:
> Intel offers three versions of the controller:
> - one "DP" version that uses a PCIe 3.0 ×4 link to provide two Thunderbolt 3 ports (DSL6540)
>- one "SP" version that uses a PCIe 3.0 ×4 link to provide one Thunderbolt 3 port (DSL6340)
>- an "LP" (Low Power) version that uses a PCIe 3.0 ×2 link to provide one Thunderbolt 3 port (JHL6240).
This means either not all USB-C ports will be Thunderbolt 3 ports or the machines will have to have two DSL6540's on board. I don't know the cost of this chips but I think this could be expensive. On the other hand: same connector with different capabilities? - not Apple's style.
[1] https://www.idropnews.com/2016/06/01/photos-of-new-macbook-p...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbolt_(interface)#Thunde...
This is Apple hardware - even if it's not the best, most advanced hardware out there, it will still fly off the shelves because of the fans/fanboys/startups.
I haven't seen anybody exploring how this will be implemented though: is Apple likely to borrow the secure enclave or other tech they use in the iPhone?
†I mean, they have a public document detailing the iOS security architecture, so they're at least proud of it. And of course, they went to court over it.
Wouldn't be happy with this carrying an mbp around with instant LEO access ~ https://duckduckgo.com/?q=fingerprints+iphone+fbi
If Apple starts shipping a Secure Enclave or some kind of hardware-backed crypto store it will enable a bunch of interesting use cases that are decoupled from the fingerprint reader itself.
For example it might be possible to build tooling allowing an AWS signing key to be stored in-hardware where it can't be scraped by malware on a developer's laptop. Same for SSH keys. And once you have those primitives you can build whole new protocols on top (eg, https://blog.trailofbits.com/2016/02/09/tidas-a-new-service-...).
Or they could be boring and just exploit the SGX on Skylake chips.
A10 is an APU from AMD, and is x86_64 based with an GPU on the same die.[1]
[1] https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-an-AMD-...
