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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: 3, Interesting) by EEMac on Wednesday July 25 2018, @06:28PM (4 children)
I heard exactly this in an academic meeting recently. Someone brought in a Thinkpad, and the person next to me said, "Professors keep getting these old-style Thinkpads! I guess, once you learn to manipulate it, you don't want to learn something new."
Thinkpads are functional, practical, durable, have good keyboards . . . none of that was a consideration for this person. Looking like this year's "thing" is evidently what's important.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Wednesday July 25 2018, @10:09PM (1 child)
Also, there's no value in learning something new just because it is new. I don't mind learning something new if I get a sufficient advantage from the new way of doing things. I do mind learning something new just because someone decided that things must be done differently now because the old way to do them is too “old-fashioned”.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Thursday July 26 2018, @01:48AM
That's because you have experience, and are not an easily manipulated youngling.
I remember amazing young programmers on my team because I could edit code so much faster with vi than they could with the IDEs they had been trained to use in India. They were still clicking on drop-down menu after drop-down menu to do what I could do with a keystroke.
So, yeah, do things with the most efficiency possible. If that means a new way, use the new way. But if the old way is superior, shrug off the fashionistas and keep on keepin' on.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Thursday July 26 2018, @09:57AM (1 child)
have good keyboards
They did. Upto about the T420/X220. Then they went which chiclets and dropped the 7 row keyboard. Hell the x1 dropped escape and function keys (and capslock)
(Score: 2) by Walzmyn on Thursday July 26 2018, @07:01PM
which I still don't understand. They're customer base is begging them to put 7 rows back and many of the vocal ones want a 3:2 (or 2:3, i never remember which is which) screen. But nope. They're following the crappy Macs