Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Mistake One

Marco Arment (tweet):

I hate typing on it, I hate the trackpad, it’s slower than I expected, the screen is noticeably blurry from non-native scaling to get reasonable screen space, and I don’t even find it very comfortable to use in my lap because it’s too small.

[…]

The 11-inch MacBook Air shows that the MacBook’s compromises have nothing to do with going Retina — the One has roughly the same GPU, less horsepower, less space, less weight, and a smaller battery, yet still drives a Retina screen perfectly well. Apple could have made a Retina MacBook Air instead of (or in addition to) this new MacBook, but chose not to.

[…]

This concerns me more than you probably think it should. Not only does it represent compromised standards in areas I believe are important, but it suggests that they don’t have many better ideas to advance the products beyond making them thinner, and they’re willing to sacrifice anything to keep that going.

He hates the new trackpad so much that he just bought a discontinued MacBook Pro with the old one. I think everyone else I’ve read has liked it, though. I remain happy with my new Air.

Update (2015-06-23): Matt Gemmell:

It did take a day to adjust, and maybe two days to learn to trust myself again without glancing over.

[…]

Otherwise, I was fluent and back up to speed with the new keyboard within an hour of switching over. It’s just not as different in use as it at first seems.

4 Comments RSS · Twitter


I've long been a tap-to-click touchpad user; I don't get the click-to-tap crowd. I'm looking forward to trying one out. I'm also a fan of mechanical keyboards; I'm hoping the feel of the keyboard is similar. The keys on the MacBook Pro are just too mushy after using a nice mechanical keyboard.


Personally, I already thought the the previous trackpad switch (from trackpad + button to clickable trackpad) was a step in the wrong direction from a usability/ergonomics point of view. I'm surprised that it works as well as it does, but my trackpad still screws up once or twice a day, when it wrongly interprets an attempt at scrolling as a three-finger-swipe (because my thumb touched the area where the button used to be), and I unexpectedly find myself in a different Space, or when everything suddenly freezes for a few seconds as my Mac renders a wrongly triggered Mission Control.


The MacBook trackpad is not bad in my opinion. I didn't see a noticeable difference with the one of the previous MacBook Pro Retina.

The Keyboard is not good for my typing but it may depend on users. It almost feels like typing on an iPad display.


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