Potentially the longest thread in history...

Ahhh feck. Someone told me the keyboard got "redesigned" back to raised chiclet style -_- turns out nope, just "new materials!".
Personally I hate the zero travel flat unresponsive feel to them, but I could forgive that as personal preference IF they worked correctly. I've had to book in 5/6 MBPs we have for keyboard replacements, one of them twice, and one of them like 4 times now. And ofc because the keyboard is glued to the top case and battery it means I have to book it in and collect days later, which is **** when it's a CTO build with a giant *** SSD in it that means I can't just restore the TM backup to a spare mbp -_- ARGH. Only slightly bitter about the whole experience :p
The most telling thing is the company having to respond with extended warranty periods for this specific issue, then they go and release the new/improved model *without* changing the underlying hardware causing the ****ing issues? God damn if that doesn't say enough about what Apple care about these days idk what does. Long gone are the days of "it just works"
 
Ahhh feck. Someone told me the keyboard got "redesigned" back to raised chiclet style -_- turns out nope, just "new materials!".
Personally I hate the zero travel flat unresponsive feel to them, but I could forgive that as personal preference IF they worked correctly. I've had to book in 5/6 MBPs we have for keyboard replacements, one of them twice, and one of them like 4 times now. And ofc because the keyboard is glued to the top case and battery it means I have to book it in and collect days later, which is **** when it's a CTO build with a giant *** SSD in it that means I can't just restore the TM backup to a spare mbp -_- ARGH. Only slightly bitter about the whole experience :p
The most telling thing is the company having to respond with extended warranty periods for this specific issue, then they go and release the new/improved model *without* changing the underlying hardware causing the ****ing issues? God damn if that doesn't say enough about what Apple care about these days idk what does. Long gone are the days of "it just works"

They added the 2019 models with the supposedly improved keyboard straight to the replacement program, so I guess they know it's still not fixed. I think it's an inherent design flaw, so the only fix is to replace it with a completely new design. I havn't seen anyone report keyboard issues with the 2019 but it's only been out a month or two, i'm sure they'll crop up shortly.

They are bringing out a brand new class of Macbook later this year which is supposed to be above the Pro. It's be the equivalent of the Mac Pro apparently and will *start* at over $3000, and this apparently will have the new keyboard.

Basically they tried to design something new and fancy and it bit them in the ***. On the one hand I like it when companies try to design new ****, on the other hand keyboards have been around for 50 years and the technology is well established, why do they have to reinvent the wheel when there are old existing designs that work very well such as on thinkpads ? I hope they didn't do it just to shave 1mm off the chassis thickness.

Other than the keyboard, I still prefer the hardware to windows laptops I looked at. The speakers are sweet, the trackpad is best, the screen is best calibrated, TouchID is dope and I even like the Touchbar and find myself using it in some genuinely useful ways. That is just preference though, I can see why other people would prefer F keys too.
 
Oh yeah the rest of the hardware is sweet as, I still can't find a non-apple machine that fully compares tbh.
But seriously. A company with BIRRIONS of revenue and they can't do some quality control tests on the keyboards? It's clear even the most basic stress test would've caught these issues, which is why I have no doubt that Apple is/was fully aware of what they were releasing and did anyway because they decided the tradeoffs were worth it. It's the old "**** our airbags are faulty, but recall will cost more than settling lawsuits for the ones who do fail/die so **** em."
Or in this case "the vast majority of our 'power users' don't type very well/hard, and will try to keep the macs in immaculate condition because they're more like a fashion item than tech, and they'll care more about thin/light soooo yup lots of kbs will break but **** em it's worth it for our $ bottom line". But I do think Apple underestimated exactly how bad the design was going to end up being
 
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Oh yeah the rest of the hardware is sweet as, I still can't find a non-apple machine that fully compares tbh.
But seriously. A company with BIRRIONS of revenue and they can't do some quality control tests on the keyboards? It's clear even the most basic stress test would've caught these issues, which is why I have no doubt that Apple is/was fully aware of what they were releasing and did anyway because they decided the tradeoffs were worth it. It's the old "**** our airbags are faulty, but recall will cost more than settling lawsuits for the ones who do fail/die so **** em."
Or in this case "the vast majority of our 'power users' don't type very well/hard, and will try to keep the macs in immaculate condition because they're more like a fashion item than tech, and they'll care more about thin/light soooo yup lots of kbs will break but **** em it's worth it for our $ bottom line". But I do think Apple underestimated exactly how bad the design was going to end up being

I am sure they did know before it went live, but my guess is at the start of the program there was kind of "meh, it's only a keyboard, there won't be any issues" so the SMT just kind of assumed all would be good and the true extent of the issue was only discovered too late in the design process to do anything about other than cancel the project. They probably weighed up the numbers and new a keyboard replacement program was cheaper than delaying the 2016 Macbook release by a year to redesign the keyboard. Probably the wrong decision, as it harmed their reputation.

On the other hand, they announced Air Power and then seemed quite happy to cancel it to much embarrassment... so maybe they didn't know - or at least didn't know how bad the issue was ?
 
Fwiw I haven't ever started a job where the first few weeks didn't suck, but pretty **** if nobody's even training you or checking up on progress to see there's an obvious issue with the direction you're being given (or rather the lack thereof).
 
Okay probably noone cares about this but I am INCREDIBLY bored at work, so I am gonna do a "Day 3 on Mac" update.

BAD:
I got the Logitech MX Master 2S for my Mac, it *technically works* without any software. But acceleration is awful, the scrolling is awful, it was just a way worse experience than on Windows. To get rid of acceleration and set a good sensitivity, get really nice smooth scrolling, and introduce middle mouse click pan and drag, has required 3 different utilities. *facepalm*. I'm using about 200MB of RAM just on background utilties that make the mouse nice to use. Ofcourse you get perfectly smooth scrolling and cursor using the Apple mouse, so this is Apple being ****ty as usual.

The default Window snapping on MacOS Mojave is slow and limited (long click maximize button to snap left or right). Quickly and nicely fixed with BetterSnapTool which brings it to a level above what Windows offers, but, it should just work that well by default. Not sure if this is Apple or Valve being ****ty, but Steam doesn't support window snapping no matter what and it's very annoying.

Touchbar is too dim and too low res. I want retina touchbar display @ 500nits. It works nicely and I do like it, but I want better fidelity. Also the left edge of the touchbar is 5mm indented from the lefthand extent of the keyboard and it triggers me slightly.

GOOD:

Calibrated display is nice and I like Truetone. Speakers are ridiculously loud and clear for a laptop. MacOS does have some nice stuff built in, I like the trackpad gestures for managing multiple desktops and such. Just done better than Win10. Picture in Picture videos is great for YouTube and stuff when I want to work on other stuff. Thunderbolt 3 is just awesome, but this isn't really Mac specific. Integration with all my iOS devices is obviously better than Windows. Spotlight search is approximately 93x better than Windows search.

So far so good then, just some typical Apple 'gotcha's.
 
Perfect time to plug Everything search tool again :p I cannot overstate how ****ing awesome this program is. Ended up setting it up at work as a bunch of services, then each dept auto connects to the ETP instance that matches their clearance level. *Instant* searches of all their mapped network drives + local drive

Today we're having a meeting about home security, this should be a fun one -_- probably gonna get told we're "not taking security seriously" again, ironically by the person who wants to mix business & personal environments so they don't have to be inconvenienced.
 
Found out something interesting about my car audio setup yesterday after having a discussion with another guy. Apparently the stock amps are connected with the stock harness via RCA out not high freq input. So that would definitely also hamper audio big time. Can't wait to just rip this **** out honestly.

Time to rant about my job a little bit. Anybody really get tired of their boss stepping on toes just to look good? Like total yes man ****? Mine has his desk in a different building about 20 minutes away, the place I used to work at or the "main plant". We have a system here and due process. Any time he comes he always goes against what we have been doing just to "please" people. Our job really isn't to convenience people to the point of dependence. We check out laptops for people on travel, she deals with company iPhones that are permanent assets (not temp for travel), deal with the "office supplies" part of tech which includes keeping our "tech" vending machine stocked, starting to schedule tours, and provide a nice place for people without real office space or a conference room to have a meeting with our VTC/couch setup on top of the stuff I do for iLab (which is now going to include green screen / VR work).

Anyways we have a 1:1 ratio of laptops to chargers, people conveniently "forget" or misplace their charger and get told to come here to get a replacement. Absolutely not, that's a support ticket issue. What's he do? Say sure give them one anyway. I'm like uhhh no. We have 50 laptops, 50 chargers, 10 tablets, 10 chargers. I give one away, it spreads and now I have 50 laptops and no chargers probably in less than 2 weeks. Tries to argue chargers are office supplies, actually looks it up, realizes it's IT and we don't deal with that (aka I was right), and says well I'm going to talk to somebody to order a bunch. Bruh. These people need to get out of the mindset that Lockheed makes billions they can afford it and learn to take care of their ****. Due process is you lose your charger? They need to talk to their manager to put in a ticket so the ITRA and manager can keep track of that. Not just give them out willy nilly so people can continue that ****ty mindset. Just like what they do with company iPhones. You lose it? *insert that's a paddlin meme*.

How about company air cards? Domestic travel ONLY! The MCC boss (who I used to work for a month ago) does NOT want air cards here for a specific reason. That reason being the connection to this building is **** and he doesn't want people checking out air cards just to have a faster connection since they have a 5GB data plan anyways. Since this building is VOIP only and no plans to use anything but Skype for business that 5GB will go away quick. What's he do? Grab 5 from the plant and say check them out anyway, even though the AT&T plans will expire in 30 days from grabbing them. Fast forward to this week. Monday I have a guy needing an air card, he says give him one even though it'll be useless by Friday. I tell him it's not in our system to check out, he gives it away anyways. Now we will have one guy going around saying we have air cards THEN spends an hour in a meeting trying to change the asset so it's for our building. Even though I said I tried that, it won't work and nobody knows where the database is hosted to change it.

Not only that, we leave at 4PM and he stays well later into the night because he always rolls up around 1PMish. Every time I walk in around 7:20am ****'s always ****ed with. Have to go back and put everything back into place. Like bruh, wtf are you doing at night? This morning I walk in and notice all the screens have been changed and my imaging station was messed with. Have to rewire my KVM and put our hours back on the software site to load onto our Crestron because he took them off. (Not like anybody reads it anyways).
 
Ffs had my first gold sweat oh****.jpg moment on the job.

So I am tasked with my first pre-production server upgrade for an important customer. I did it on my own for the first time with noone from the team watching what I do. Takes me 20 minutes and as far as I am aware, it all went smoothly.

15 minutes later we get a IM message from the 3rd line support team like "have you guys done anything, X customers production server is on the fritz and they can't do anything". I instantly get a cold sweat like, oh ****, have I accidentally installed pre-prod upgrade on the prod server ? *fail*.

After a considerable time of ****ting myself, it is confirmed that I did indeed do the work correctly on the Pre Prod server, the 'issue' is nothing to do with me. It later transpires there is no issue at all, said customer was supposed to raise a change request, but accidentally raised a P1 incident request.

Panic over :p
 
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