Everyone talks about the downsides of the new MacBooks. No one talks about about how they reduced the size of the internal battery by 30%, effectively added a second screen, improved overall performance, and still kept the same battery life.
or... arguably kept the 'same' battery life as previous devices, but added more battery draining 'stuff'.
I had one, and returned it, partially for battery life. I'm doing a lot of development (intellij/phpstorm/virtualbox/etc). The battery life wasn't bad - at heavy use, I could get perhaps 6 hours of 'real' usage, but... It was $3700, which was a bit much for my blood given the battery shortcomings (and a few other reasons). But mostly price/performance relative to my workload. For $1200/less I got an approximately similar 2015 model with more battery, and a slightly heavier weight.
*I was incorrect and noted normal macbooks, not MBP. Normal macbooks are terrible in price to performance, MBP is better, ignoring all the other things about it.
When I say MacBooks... I mean the MacBook Pros. As in, what this article is talking about. Apple never reduced the size of the MB battery by 30%. Or added a second screen. Or kept performance they same (they improved performance gen-over-gen with the MB). Use your head. Apply some context.
Apple gets bashed every time they release something, remember everyone making fun of the iPad, or even the iPhone?
> reduced the size of the internal battery by 30%
I'll talk about that. Keep the battery the same damn size and give us more battery life.
> effectively added a second screen
Plenty of people have been talking about the touch bar.
> improved overall performance
If it didn't do that the world would have a new source of non-coal energy, Mac fans screaming at the top of their lungs!
What Apple lacks is the moment is coherency. The iPhone comes with a headset and charging cable that won't work with a Mac. When I plugged my earphones+remote into an iMac and the remote worked, that was magical. This is just silly.
The Mac Pro was resurrected and promptly abandoned. iMacs are MIA. Apple stuff doesn't work with other Apple stuff. More "it just works" please.
GP is raising attention to the fact that battery life hasn't decreased, not that people aren't paying attention to the other features. Sure, people talk about the smaller battery, screen, and performance increases. But it's an achievement that these were added without absolutely gutting the MacBooks' battery life.
What? Battery life has decreased considerably. People and tests show exactly that. I don't think there's any testing that shows that battery life is the same as in the 2015 model.
Even this article:
> It’s also in line with people reporting that under high load the new MBP lasts a shorter amount of time than the earlier models.
I think sidlls is really pointing out the present/future value of money calcations. It's 100% accurate if you invested in a flat rate, guaranteed interest, investment.
Most people (think: GNU wizards) who do projects like this don't want to monetize; not for capability reasons, but for philosophical and social reasons. They think monetization is against some principal of free software, or their morals, or that people will stop using their software if they do, or, simply: they're lazy and just want to code, without worrying about menial things like income.
And then, when they can't afford to work on their project anymore, they want our pity. They don't have mine.
It is his responsibility to capture the value of his work. The world does not owe him this. The world doesn't owe him anything unless he demands it.
You're asking to have your cake and eat it to: Give software away (altruism) but also feel guilty when he complains that he doesn't have any money. You can't have both.
Honestly, I'm 100% more fine with Apple spying on me than pretty much anyone else. I'm less perturbed with the entire concept of spying than I am with who is doing it.
It is so concerning to me that the company has committed to spending an average of $400M per year on cloud infra when their revenue is only $200M, and they've revealed that user growth slowed from 17% to 3% in the quarter Insta released Stories.
It'd be one thing if they were going to use some of the IPO money to cost-optimize revenue, but I get the feeling that they need to focus on growing revenue due to how Insta Stories gutted them in 2016. That means hiring more people and writing bigger checks to Google.
And they're branding themselves as a "camera company." Their hardware division does not contribute materially to revenue (not profit: Revenue), and practically every other consumer camera company, from Kodak to GoPro, is dying.
> I can't wait until they are connected and I can issue a command to move streaming from one device to another one in another room
Google Home can do this to a degree today. You are capable of saying things like "Play X on my TV." if your TV is wired up with a ChromeCast.
In general, Google Home is very far ahead of Alexa. I agree with the opinion that Alexa is a glorified radio, but I don't believe that opinion extends to all devices in that class. I think its just because Alexa is overrated and not very powerful.
You give a really vanilla use case and than suggest Google Home is superior. Can you give me a use case where it actually demonstrates it is far ahead.
The Chromecast example isn't supporting your claim in my opinion.
Entertainment is the biggest use care for these devices IMO; Music and TV. I haven't used an Echo in a while, but it had nothing for TV and wasn't that great at music at the time. Does it have good support for both now?
I always try all these things as I am a junky like that but these things seem to have such limited use cases. Looking up and playing things on chromecast, for me, is faster using my phone than speech will ever be. So is controlling things in the house and with a phone I can open the catflap without waking my wife talking to Alexa. Switching on and off things is okish (phone or even a normal lightswitch are still faster and less hassle imho), but trying to look up what that great song from that obscure Norwegian black metal band was, of which the name is something Alexa does not parse and will take me 10 minutes to properly explain while it makes me sound like robot doing it; while via my phone I google it in seconds. I am really not convinced if this is not just gadgets because of gadgets. Or maybe I am just weird. Which is fine too.
Where it really shines for me is playing the latest podcast on YouTube or continuing a Netflix show where I left off.
Being able to say "Watch Breaking bad on the living room TV" and have Netflix pop-up and start playing right where I left off, or being able to say "play the latest off topic podcast on the bedroom TV" and have it startup right away is really nice.
I've also got a lot of home automation stuff so that combined with telling it to turn lights on/off is fantastic.
My nightly routine is to tell it to turn the bedroom lights on, get ready for bed, tell it to play the show I'm watching, then when I'm in bed and comfy tell it to turn all lights off.
I don't think it's fully there yet, but I really disagree that it's more convenient to use a phone app than a Google Home. Alexa is worse here since skills are clunky, and while I agree that voice isn't the best setup in bedrooms with multiple people, it's definitely easier to say "Hey Google, open catflap" than futzing with a phone.
For me, simply being able to turn my TV + soundbar on/off with Google Home + IFTTT + Harmony Hub, while being a stupid amount of duct tape, has made me no longer need to hunt for where the TV or sound bar remote are any more. Being able to pause/resume shows on my Roku with the same setup avoids me having to get my phone out, unlock it, open the Roku app and press the pause button. It's pretty convenient. Is it life changing? No. Could I just stop losing the remotes? No :p
I have also found myself listening to a lot more music with the google home since I can just turn it on with my voice when I crawl out of bed. Not sure if that's a good fit for metal of any kind though.
I don't think it's truly life changing, few things are, but well executed voice control is truly convenient.
Keyword being yet. Recently Plex announced integration with Alexa. Nvidia Shield recently saw Amazon Video app. It is really just a matter of time before skills to play video on devices like the audio is available.
Did you seriously just suggest that Amazon is generally regarded as a pleasant place to work? Amazon, the company that not 3 months ago, had an employee attempt to kill himself by jumping off of one of their buildings after being put on an "employee improvement plan" [1].
