oh yeah i’m definitely excited about it in the abstract way i’m excited about all huge tech shifts that i won’t have hardware compatible with for like 5 years. i guess i don’t understand why global implementation is so patchy but that’s ok, they’ll figure it out eventually rite
this is interesting to me! are you mostly running non-graphics-intensive stuff on your XPS or is there some sort of configuration you have that lets you use it for games?
Non-graphics intense stuff. I mean it’s my personal laptop in general, but in practice I use my work laptop’s web browser for most personal stuff, so it winds up being used mostly for Windows games. IMO trying to get a laptop for demanding games is a fool’s errand because you end up with a beast which is neither portable nor as powerful as you’d like, so I didn’t try.
I might’ve gotten a Mac as personal laptop if I didn’t care about games, but it’s nice that USB-C lets me use both Mac and Windows and not have to manage two kinds of chargers.
I do all my gaming on my desktop which I will soon-ish upgrade to a GTX 1080, so I’m more than ok with having a Mac as a work computer exclusively.
Anyway, due to other factors, my need for a laptop is suddenly not so urgent anymore. I will wait and see how the scene looks like after the next generation of MacBook Pros is announced
Windows desktop + Macbook-of-some-kind is still really hard to argue with after a decade
like there are times when you stagger the upgrade of one or the other or maybe switch one of them to Linux for a little while but that logic is pretty darn reliable
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i have a new mbp for work and once i (begrudgingly) bought adapters the usb thing isn’t as annoying as it could be. docking with one port is real nice. i wouldn’t want one for my music work tho, that’s a bit too much money spent on dongles.
the touch bar is mostly silly and if i could do it over i’d get the model without, but hey work bought it so i’m not gonna fuss too much.
if you use vim (or really spend any amount of time in a text editor) the virtual escape key is a tragedy. it’s also a tragedy they only make the regular macbook with awful specs in rose gold
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i ordered a laptop wholesale in august through a friend of a friend because i am poor enough that the promise of avoiding 15-or-whatever-percent markup turned my eyes into cartoon dollar signs
after however long a run-around it’s been (“we thought we had it in stock but it’s back-ordered; oh our supplier has it! oh, nope it’s back-ordered from them too and they won’t return my calls,” etc etc) i got this today
so now i am thinking about
i can’t justify buying shit new (my desktop still has a 6+ year old cpu/mobo, that’s where i’m at right now) but if there’s a good model choice to get used or refurbished or whatever i’d like to know before i give up and buy a windows 10 laptop only to put arch on it…again -_-
if graphics acceleration at least exists for the purposes of testing performance while writing opengl shaders or w/e that’s good enough for my purposes, beyond that all i really want is a “just works” computer for use around campus…acceptable screen and build quality and battery life and responsiveness and w/e and doesn’t become a jet engine when i open photoshop. i feel like these shouldn’t be near-$1000 qualifications but ? ? ?
Don’t do it :[
Yeah, in light of Apple’s general software trajectory + their stance toward General Computing, I’m very turned off from their products, even if they did happen to release a Pro laptop that didn’t suck for the first time in ~4 years.
between the i5-8269 coffee lake lineup making it seem likely they’ll finally put a 28w package in the non-touchbar model for lack of an alternative rather than handicap it the way they did for the past two years, them finally admitting the keyboards were awful, and the move to a quad core in the 13", I’m expecting this year’s MBP to be the first one mostly worth buying in years
still annoyed about 14nm and LPDDR3 but those are fairly abstract complaints if all the other platform features have caught up, I might just keep an eye on their refurbished stock while I wait for ice lake if the 16gb/512gb configuration is <$1500
I would be breaking my rule about never ever getting a new architecture when it’s expected to be succeeded by a shrink though because the shrink is always so much better than you expect it to be after all the new stuff, it does at least mean they’re vaguely on track
my 2012 pre-retina mpb still going strong over here, and that’s good because if i had to buy a new macbook today i’d be very displeased. i am kinda nervous though and wondering if i should buy one of the 2015 models before they officially discontinue them.
yeah I think this year is honestly the first time it’ll cross over from “just get a 2012-2014 model secondhand” and even then I’d like to wait one more
the spec differences from 2012 almost right up to now are minimal, I wouldn’t bother with a small precautionary upgrade
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it’s still gonna be like $2700 for a laptop with a mid-range AMD GPU
oh I definitely wouldn’t buy an AMD GPU model, the 13" without touchbar generally just have Intel
also, it’ll be more like $2000 at most spec’ed the way I want it, less if I can wait for refurb, and I have a very clear idea of what the competition costs and what I’m missing
they didn’t refresh the non touchbar version!! Dammit!!
They demoed with programmers but cruelly denied them function keys, a true display of Apple’s S&M kink
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seriously, just when I thought they were going to gradually start making something worth buying again after four years
they’re also only offering the 8259U and the 8559U rather than the obvious sweet spot 8269U which is just annoying
man Apple’s product people are the worst lately
Didn’t they used to get first crack at a new Intel chipset? Are they chilly now that Apple is showing them up?