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from the renewed-interest-in-Compaq-Portable-computers dept.
Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd
The pursuit of thinner, lighter laptops, a trend driven by Apple, means we have screwed ourselves out of performance.
Over the last few days we’ve seen outcry about Apple’s new MacBook Pro, which offers an optional top-end i9 processor, and how its performance is throttled to the point of parody as the laptop heats up over time.
Sparked by a video from YouTuber Dave Lee, who demonstrates that the only way to get Apple’s quoted performance from the MacBook Pro is by keeping it in a refrigerator, the outcry has been brutal.
Thousands of comments on the video say things like “Wow if it cant even maintain stock speeds that's pretty sad” and “Apple should offer a fridge that goes with the Macbook i9,” but the sobering reality is that this practice is normal across laptops—we’re just starting to see it more often.
[...] If Pro users really were Apple’s target market, the company could redesign these laptops to use the older, thicker MacBook Pro form factor from 2015. With that available space, and improvements in processor design, it would be able to better cool the same hardware and squeeze out more performance—but it’ll never happen. Thicker laptops would mean admitting failure.
Thinner and lighter is great, and if we’re honest, we’re all sucked in by the allure. The unfortunate reality for those of us that need these machines for work is that it’s just not good enough, and we’d welcome thicker machines in exchange for hardware that isn’t constrained by heat. Apple insists these new MacBooks are for ‘pro users,’ and while it has some of the best-in-class hardware design out there today, it simply doesn’t hold up if you push them hard enough.
The MacBook Pro isn’t designed for pro users at all, it’s a slick marketing machine designed to sell to the wealthy ‘prosumer’ that wouldn’t notice anyway. That much has been clear since the introduction of the Touch Bar and death of the SD slot—and it’s making a ton of money anyway.
Source: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/9kmkve/thinner-and-lighter-laptops-have-screwed-us-all
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday July 25 2018, @04:17PM (6 children)
My personal laptop is a 17" System76 Bonobo Extreme (the BONX8). It's at least an inch thick. It's a bit more than four years old now, but I've never once felt it was slow, never once felt a need to upgrade, never had any issues with this thing. Handles everything I throw it at and more...really the only sign that it isn't brand new is the dust. And the battery life, but it's a 17" behemoth so the battery life wasn't all that great to begin with. I don't really see the attraction of these ultra thin systems. Even this thing is portable enough, although I *have* briefly considered buying a cheap heap of garbage just to have something with better battery life. But I'd rather have high power and a big screen over something as thin as a razor and even more fragile...
And I don't seem to be alone in that...I literally have never once heard anyone talking about wanting a thinner or smaller laptop*. Never. People decide on their budget, they decide on an OS, and then they find something that matches. I've seen people with $2000 to blow convince themselves that they NEED to spend $2000 on a PC when all they plan on doing with it is checking Facebook. But if they've only got $500, and they're the same kind of user, they'll buy a cheap Dell. What people care about in my experience is the capacity of the hard drive and the size of the screen. The thin and light crap, as far as I can tell, is just one marketing department buying the BS that another marketing department is spewing out. It's sales droids eating their own tail. But of course if that's what is marketed and that's what is available then that's what people have to buy.
*This doesn't necessarily apply to phones though...I think the Galaxy S5 is thin enough, and I refuse to buy a phone without a removable battery and SD card slot which I realize is gonna add a millimeter or two...however, I still think thin matters more for a phone because phones aren't really designed to be standalone devices anymore. You don't buy that kind of phone without buying a case -- unless you've got more money than sense -- so the phone needs to be small enough that you can stick a big beefy Otterbox around it without it becoming too bulky. But a laptop should be solid enough to survive on its own.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 25 2018, @04:41PM
Thin and light has it's place, but not in a product that's marketed as Pro.
World+dog has copied the MacBook Air since its introduction because there are people who are willing to accept a non-pro-grade notebook computer in exchange for thin and light. The pro-grade notebook owners are willing to accept something larger and heavier in order to accommodate better features: more connectors, more (and expandable) RAM, more (and upgradable) storage, replaceable (ideally even swapable) battery, ...
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday July 25 2018, @04:48PM (1 child)
I had a Galaxy S5 until not too long ago. It doesn't seem to be supported with software updates any more, so I finally gave up on it, and got a (used) LG V10, which is a little newer. It's great: it also has a removable battery and SD card slot, and mine has a nice beefy Otterbox Defender on it too. But it is huge, and is considered a "phablet", so it might be too big for you. I like it though. It's still getting updates (for now) and is pretty snappy, unlike the S5. It isn't IP67 though.
I'll probably upgrade to an LG V20 next year. The V30, however, dropped the removable battery IIRC, so I'm not sure where to go in 2020.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday July 25 2018, @06:18PM
I put LineageOS on my S5 a couple years back. It's absolutely fantastic. I kinda want a new phone, but I've been saying that for almost two years now and still haven't bought one :) I replaced the battery in my S5 a couple months back and I've upgraded the SD card at least twice...it's been through a lot and it's still pretty much the ideal mobile device as far as I'm concerned. I probably don't want anything too much larger...I could maybe go a tiny bit bigger, but the S5 already barely fits when I stuff it in the cup holder in my car, and it's probably about as large as I could comfortably fit in my front pocket. My previous S3 was definitely too small, but I'm perfectly happy with the size of the S5.
I'm considering getting an LG G5 soon though because that's the best I've seen so far. Been eyeing that one for years, eventually figured it was too old and I needed to start my search over again, so I did, and after a few days of searching I ended up back on the G5. In the past two years it seems that nobody has made a single device that I wouldn't consider a downgrade. But the G5 has marginally better specs than my S5, it's pretty cheap these days on Amazon, and it seems to be well supported for LineageOS...that's the one other criteria I forgot to mention, but that's not particularly difficult to meet these days. I've been told the G5 has some potential hardware issues...but I'll probably take that risk since it's the best option I can find. But maybe I'll get lucky and some manufacturer will stop being an idiot by the time I'm ready to buy this thing, because it's probably going to be a little while...my S5 is still a great phone so replacing it is near the bottom of my priorities. I've got some other toys on my Sparkfun and Newegg wishlists that I want to get first...
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Wednesday July 25 2018, @07:13PM (1 child)
There are two types of machines. The notebooks, which should weigh as little as possible, use a small amount of space, but have a good keyboard and battery that lasts all day, and the "luggable", which is a powerful laptop that you can easily move from desk to desk, decent graphics, tons of disk space, tons of memory, tons of connectivity (ethernet - maybe 2, plenty of usb ports, sd reader, etc), some form of battery, maybe 90 minutes.
Both have their places. On the "notebook" side, macbook airs, or even ipads with keyboard attachments, fit the need.
However Apple's "luggable" side, which was the Pro, has lost sight of what "pro"s want.
Not a problem for me, my luggable is a still serviceable 8 year old thinkpad, which cost about $3k to start with, but that's about $1/day. My 2013 macbook air meets the notebook requirement - I use that when I bounce from room to room when I go to the office.
buy a phone without a removable battery
I'm curious. How many batteries do you have for that phone? The last phone I had where I had more than one battery was in 1999.
My iphone SE is 2 years old and still keeps a charge all day -- haven't had to go for a mophie or other external battery case yet. My previous phone was an 5S, and that only died after landing face first with a slate tile in a garden. I did get the screen fixed, but it was never really the same, so I replaced it when it was about 3 years old.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by urza9814 on Wednesday July 25 2018, @08:43PM
Technically speaking I do have two batteries for it. I don't use both of them though, I just replaced it and still have the old one laying around somewhere. But it's not about carrying multiple batteries -- I've got USB power banks for that. It's about extending the lifespan of the device itself. Batteries are usually the first thing to fail IME (My S5 made it about two years before the battery would only last a few hours...but I tend to be on it constantly, with the vast majority of my battery life going to YouTube.)
I've done battery replacements on iPods and iPhones which didn't have "replaceable batteries"; it's certainly possible...but much like your screen repair, I've found that the devices are never quite the same again. Prying something apart with a screwdriver when it wasn't designed to be opened tends to do that. And the non-replaceable batteries seem to get more and more difficult to replace with every new release, which means more and more risk of bricking your device in the process. I don't really want to be soldering a lithium ion battery in general, and especially not in an expensive device that I rely on every day for which I don't have a spare. At this point, a mobile device with a replaceable battery and an SD card is pretty much good until you physically destroy it. Could last a decade or more. But without those features it's got a maximum lifespan of two to three years.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday July 25 2018, @11:26PM
> You don't buy that kind of phone without buying a case -- unless you've got more money than sense
My bosses bought my last two phones, but not cases. I've never used a case on my phones, and in 17 years, I've never broken a phone, despite mostly having sliders, which are clearly more fragile. I maybe drop my phone once every couple years.
Then again, I'm not a slave to the screen, and I respect the expensive toy by handling it correctly and teaching little ones to be careful.
( I don't want an all-glass phone, plastic back FTW! )
Stop thinking everyone has to have a case. Stop thinking designers make phones small and fragile thinking of cases.
I totally agree with having a giant serviceable laptop. But, I used to have an 11-pound monster (desktop Pentium 4), and I know why most people would rather travel with something more reasonable.