robert xu

computers

i got a new macbook pro two days ago. and wow does the keyboard feel weird.

in a way, the keyboard feels very fragile – like if I typed too hard, the keys would just fall apart. there's no travel distance on these new butterfly keys and that's just... really strange to me.

i'm used to typing very quickly and hard on any sort of keyboard, so using a keyboard like the ones the previous macbooks had is really really good for me because i know when i'm hitting keys and when i'm not. i emphasize again the travel distance the key has to go to hit the bottom because i use mechanical keyboards when i'm not using a laptop, and i really really need to feel the distance.

oh, and the touch bar. can we talk about the touch bar? it's weird for me to reach up and hit escape, only to feel a screen there. i've had to double take a couple of times already because i thought it didn't work, and it's so jarring.

there are some good touchbar presets for bettertouchtool, though, and thankfully I had a license for that before because bettertouchtool was the only thing that could snap windows for me correctly on a mac. i plan on trying out goldenchaos-btt and aquatouch-btt and seeing what works for me.

docks: why are all the docks so expensive? in a way, i kind of get it, but man this really hurts. also, i'd really like a dongle that could give me a 85w pd charge that could also pass through but also i realise how much that won't happen. i saw there was an anker one that could do that but required a 100w pd charger that seems to be no longer sold, so that sucks.

arq isn't backing up, because for some reason when it makes the ?lifecycle call to s3 it thinks the date is 1398. i remember when i initially started the laptop the date was far back in the past, but NTP should've fixed that. resetting pram/nvram didn't help. no idea what to do. emailed arq support; let's see what happens.

i've only had this mbp for about 48 hours, so i'll probably document more of my thoughts as i get them.

(i didn't write this post on that macbook though – i'm using my old one. i'll have to try it sometime.)

#computers #laptops #macbook #macbookpro #mbp

Discuss...