I used a macbook for almost 2 years and genuinely don't understand how people can tolerate these machines. My wrists would be cut up all the time to the point where I looked like I was self harming myself and the glary screen is entirely unsuable anywhere but a darkest basement. Not to mention the terrible keyboard. To this day I'm perplexed how macbooks have such high desirability by full time developers when they're almost unusable.
I hear people complain about laptop ergonomics all of the time and I don't understand it. I have zero issues with either of my Macbooks. I can go for hours and not be fatigued.
If I have it in my lap, the outer ball of each wrist is resting on the body to the left and right of the trackpad and that means my forearms are angled upwards, away from the edges. They never rest on the edge of the laptop until I use the trackpad, and then the puffy outer pad of my palm is resting on the laptop edge. Still very comfortable.
If I'm using it at a desk it's the same story. My seat is high enough (relative to the desk) that my forearms lift up and away from the laptop. Never resting on the edge.
Are people seated so low so that the desk height is at breast level and they're making T-Rex arms to reach the keyboard? It seems so intuitively obvious to avoid such positions.
That sounds like you have your desk too low. You're going to get some major repetitive strain injuries in 10-20 years.
If you have your arms at your sides, elbows should bend 90 degrees. Then just move your arms slightly forward and you'll end up somewhere around 95 degrees. Now you can rest your forearms on the desk. This won't save you from all kinds of RSI, but it might help your wrists, elbows and shoulder joints last a bit longer.
Having the desk low, the chair high, or putting a laptop on your lap is okay. Having the desk or table "high" (i.e. at normal height for writing with a pen or eating a meal) is generally worse but not an insurmountable problem.
In either case, the most important thing is to keep your wrists in as straight and neutral position as possible, with your palms and wrists "floating" rather than resting on anything while actively typing. Having the wrists either flexed downward or extended upward is a really bad idea. Having the wrists turned out to the side isn't great either, but not as bad.
The keyboard should be positioned close enough to your body so that your shoulders can be relaxed with your upper arms hanging loosely. The laptop surface should be roughly parallel to your forearms, so if you have a high desk or table relative to your torso you will need to prop up the far side to tilt it up a bit.
You don’t even need 20 years, I spent the better part of a year in my mid 20s in pain because I was typing with my wrists at an upward angle like GP is describing.
Ergonomics is one of those things where you don't understand it until it effects you. Everyone can tolerate discomfort at some level and at different levels but obviously there best practices that manufacturers can partake in to make hardware more ergonomic.
For example, the monitor should be at eye level vertically but with laptop that's very hard to accomplish unless you position yourself in a reclined fashion to bring down your eye level closer to your lap - on a macbook you get wrist cuts like this.
One of the most important thing that makes a good ergonomic laptop is the ways it accomodates as many positions and setup as posible so your can rotate your working position to avoid excessive strain on one particular area. So when your back is tired you slouch down, when your wrists are tired you straighten up, when your eyes are tired you adjust the display brightness/theme etc.
When taken seriously it's totally possible to work safely even in poor conditions like outside or on a train but devices that completely ignore ergonomics just don't even give you the chance.
This is slightly misleading advice. The ideal place for the display has the top of the display at roughly eye level, or for a very large display maybe slightly above, which puts most of the display below eye level. Humans actually have great ability to look slightly downward for long periods of time while doing stuff with their hands, even while keeping their head held up straight, and indeed our eyes can more comfortably focus on close objects in the lower part of our field of view than straight ahead. What you don't want to do is slouch or bend your neck too much.
A laptop display attached to the keyboard usually isn't an ideal placement, but it's generally not too bad.
Welcome to "tech neck" - upper crossed syndrome, from looking slightly down.
You're inviting some surprising symptoms, not just neck and back pain, but things like numbness, tingling, or pain shooting down your arms. Really not fun.
Key posture correction seems to be pulling head back. Some physical therapy exercises can help as well.
In trying to picture this, I suppose there are certainly some stock photo models who'd feel the sharp edges:
google.com/images?q=person+using+laptop
I totally know what you mean about shifting positions. All the positions I've been in where I've felt the edges have been quite unergonomic, but perhaps not for everyone.
You may have smaller hands (no offense meant); imagining my hands in the position you explained, my fingers would be well outside of where they need to be. I have the same issue as OP, the corners dig into my heel/wrist area. I do have big banana hands though.
People come in all sorts of different shapes, sizes, and configurations. I don't have any pressure on the sharp edges in my normal day-to-day, and I'm having a little trouble figuring out how I'd contort myself to change that, so that particular issue is fine.
The glare is annoying. I would like to work outside more often.
Mind you, I don't really like the poor isolation and floating ground causing a tingling sensation when you touch it while charging, the lid hinge doesn't quite have enough internal resistance, the keys get stuck way too easily, etc. The sharp-corners build defect is fine for me though.
I’m really flummoxed at why the MacBooks continue to be spicy. When using then laptop with a charger using the grounded cable on the socket side there used to be no spice. Now that adapters are mostly only used with two prong connectors the spicyness is ubiquitous.
I recall audio equipment also not being grounded because the industry prefers not being grounded over being accidentally grounded to two different grounds causing voltage transients. Maybe the same reason now also applies to MacBooks? Or does someone know another reason why the outer shell of a MacBook is still spicy.
Yes, the electrical shocks are very annoying! I don't know if it's related to an older/failing battery but I've certainly noticed this on an old Macbook Pro. Thanks for mentioning this - I guess at 24VDC it isn't a regulatory issue but it really does feel like a small insect sting or something and it's irritating.
My newer Air doesn't seem to have this problem. Also the screen is brighter, together with a mat finish it is better for using outside.
It happens new too, and it's not the DC side of things. The AC -> DC component has some AC leakage, and the default of bad two-prong charging blocks basically guarantees you'll have issues.
I normally "fix" it by using a USB-C charging brick and cord from a better company (somehow they're all fine even ungrounded), but the factory default is bad.
Laptops are unergonomic by default, no matter how you position them, either the screen is too low or the keyboard is too high. I think most developers just use them docked with an external monitor and keyboard most of the time (I certainly do).
it's not a binary equation. My thinkpad is plenty ergonomic for a full work day on the road. Sure the monitor position is suboptimal but keyboard is brilliant, no sharp edges, no screen glare and there's a trackpoint. It's no home setup obviously but at least I don't actively suffer when I do need to use a portable computer for it's primary purpose.
This is why I prefer tactile (not clicky) mechanical keyboards to linear mechanical or "mushy" non-mechanical desktop keyboards: they're easy to reliably trigger without full travel.
I also like the short-travel Apple keyboards, though, and if Apple made a tenkeyless Magic Keyboard with the standard layout for cursor movement keys, I'd probably be using it.
As others have mentioned: battery, build quality, Linux-ish ecosystem. If I could get all three in another laptop I would go for it, but nothing comes close at the moment. There was a very brief moment in time where the XPS came close, and then the M series rolled out and eradicated the competition on performance + battery life.
There's no way you can cut your wrists on the edge of a MacBook. To do that, you would have to be leaning straight-armed with all of your weight on the edge of the keyboard, which is a typing style that I've never seen. Mac keyboards are some of the best that I've ever used. There's nothing special about the Mac screen one way or the other.
You sound very confident. My M1 mbp’s edges are uncomfortable enough against my wrist/heel (?) area that I use an external keyboard even when on the couch.
Could it slice me open? Probably not without effort. Is it sharp, and sharp enough to cause discomfort? Definitely.
I don't like the sharp corners either and I fully support the modifications in the article, but to be completely fair to the design, if your wrists are digging into the corners you're at the wrong angle. If you're habitually typing with bent wrists you're going to have problems. The "butterfly" keyboard was also (famously) terrible, but the newer ones, especially with the proper inverted-T cursor keys, are fine (for a laptop) imho. My ideal laptop keyboard would be split and orthogonal, but that's far too weird to make it anywhere close to mass production.
I have also been using Macbooks for around 10 years, Airs and Pros, and usually my wrists are on the flat part, when docked I used a keyboard.
Keyboard on Macs is pretty much good, other than the early butterfly version, rest is definitely above average and it just feels good. Glare is a problem, but darkest basement is an overstatement.
It might not fit your workflow or you might be expecting super niche, but it is the worlds most popular laptop for both regular users and developers for a reason. Input devices and screen are significant part of the Macbook appeal, so definitely not almost unusable.
I agee, the keyboards are terrible. The last time I felt the MacBook Pro had a "good" keyboard was in 2007. It's been the flat chiclet-style "island" keys for a while now. I'd pay for more for a thicker MacBook with a real keyboard.
Oh yeah I hate those sharp edges on MacBooks. The old pre-unibody macbooks were great but I can't stand anything that came after it. Always had red lines on my wrists. These days I'm completely off Mac luckily.
And yes the keyboards are terrible too. Up to 2015 it was OK but I can't work with the butterfly ones and the "new and improved" scissor ones that came after that. They still have a lot less travel than the ones from up to 2015.
I never sanded my metal macbooks though I did do so with a plastic one I had. I just didn't really use them much as laptop anymore.
I have a plastic case which helps with the bottom, and when I'm at an angle where my wrist rests against the edge, I have a wrist brace thing that takes the edge off (literally).
It's been a problem for a decade (or more?) but, for me, it's not just the sharp edge, it's also the angle of the keyboard.
My Dell XPS is almost as sharp (there's a microscopic chamfer, which won't be enough to explain the difference), but because the body is wedge-shaped, the keyboard sits at a slight angle which makes it feel so much better to me. Propping the back of the Macbook on something helps - only needs to be 2-3mm to make a difference.
It's like the static electricity issues that plagued them in the 2010s. They produced shocks that were actually painful, the sort that I've only experienced before from CRT screens in metal housings. The chargers contained a grounding pin internally, but it wasn't actually connected to anything. Utter madness, and would have been such an easy thing to fix - but it persisted until they replaced the charging port with usb-c.
Every single time I get up and then sit back down, I have to brace myself for electrical impact. Maybe it's the universe telling me to stop working (or stop taking breaks... hmm).
> dead battery? mac wont start for 15 min on connecting power
Having just received an M4 in the mail with a completely flat battery, I can confirm this is nearer 10 seconds on Apple silicon (you are correct it used to be this way on Intel Macs)
Having an M1 and an M2, no it isn't. Takes at least 5 minutes on the 65W charger to get bootable from a full drain. Maybe something changed with the newer models but it isn't a benefit across all Apple Silicon.
The build quality and least-nonsense OS is why I like it. Huge caveat though, I keep it plugged into a KVM setup so I don't actually use it directly, but I do keep it open on the side of my desk for meetings.
I remember multiple reviews of other laptops that indeed came close in all of those categories. So those statements are objectively wrong.
Problem is that I dont remember which, and if I remembered the model might very well not be in stock anymore. The other vendors with their always changing lineup of models make that impossible by choice.
The HP ZBook G1a comes close in computing power, screen, sound and trackpad quality - but not at all in battery life: about 7 hours. It's also pretty overpriced, but discounts are common.
"comes close" in itself is a very relative concept. So how can you claim my statements are "objectively wrong"?. Depends on how close "close" is, right.
If you can provide me an example of a laptop that beats one of those categories, it's objectively wrong. In all other cases, nope.
My only complaint is with the EN-international keyboard my company prefers - there is no way to reverse the tilde key position back to the same place next to 1 on the US keyboard. The OS knows what keyboard the laptop has and refuses to change it.
You can see how I did mine here if you're interested:
https://github.com/bruse/dotfiles/tree/main/macOS (I suspect com.local.KeyRemapping.plist is most interesting, but the key layout file is there too, with some comments on how it was generated).
> Trackpad: I don't use a mouse anymore, no other laptop comes close
I always hear this but don't get it. Every time I use a Mac laptop, I hate the touchpad. Maybe it's the defaults but I don't feel it's more accurate or anything... Why do people think it's good? A certain acceleration profile?
I much prefer the commodity Synaptics trackpads I've had on my last 2 laptops, running Linux with Gnome and now Hyprland. I just crank the sensitivity, have all the gestures enabled, tap to click and 2 finger reverse scrolling and am happy.
I hate the tap to click, so that's probably our difference. I really want to physically click, and a tap should do nothing. I always get fake clicks in the other case.
Dragging also becomes more natural when you have a real click.
The trackpad is also big enough to easily cover the whole screen.
> Dragging also becomes more natural when you have a real click
Agree to disagree. I find tap to click + hold turns into a double tap but hold on the second tap which I find quite intuitive. And two finger tap is "right click".
> The trackpad is also big enough to easily cover the whole screen.
So is mine with the sensitivity up. But I don't have to move my hand at all, only my fingers.
> I hate the tap to click, so that's probably our difference
Ok fair enough. I have noticed most Macs I use for whatever reason don't have tap to click enabled. So larger size + probably a nicer click could be reasons.
I run a non-retina 30" Apple Cinema Display right now. There are some blurry text bugs, but that's super rare and I think has to do with me having a mix of non-retina and retina displays hooked up.
But imo the rendering is still pretty good. Unlike on linux where I constantly see incorrect kerning.
It's definitely possible to bypass fingerprinting (just take a look at countless web scraping services that manage to do that) but consumer browser actively reject this.
If I were to wear a tin-foil hat I'd say that fingerprinting is a spyware feature not a bug but it can also be explained by the fact that current web market relies on fingerprinting too much thus blocking adoption of anti-fingerprinting features. Firefox half-ass tried to but now all the anti-fingerprint features are hidden deep in the about:config somewhere because people rather see less captchas than have privacy.
Unfortunately, there's no way to patch fingerprint ressistance into a compiled browser and even then nobody actually wants this because then cloudflare won't let you visit any web page.
The only way to get anti-fingeprinting would be to force it on everyone so that the tools that rely on it would be forced to respect the user. Considering that 2 major browsers are owned by mega corporations and 3rd one by a leech that just exists to leech billions from the first two we'll never actually defeat web fingerprinting until something absolutely catastrophic happens forcing everyone to start paying attention.
Very little potential to be used for good and quite some potential to be used for bad. I think the ratio is particularly damning, rather than the total evil.
Japanese "shutter sound" requirement is peak "we regulate ourselves" outcome - completely ineffecitve nuisance that provides an illusion of effectiveness to the illiterate.
Microsoft hasn't been able to get marketplace in any other consumer product line. This seems pretty clear that Windows team is mostly just coasting on the fact that Windows is being forced upon people and frankly most people don't even understand what's an operating system so this strategy has been and will continue working well.
I'm Lithuanian familiar with soviet type of corruption and post soviet Lithuania which did a lot to remove corruption (also live in asia rn) and your assessment is somewhat correct but it's a terrible system.
The availability of corruption is a huge grease for economic activity and weirdly - order - but soviet type of corruption has a massive flaw that bad corruption bets (big impact, high publicity) would be mostly unpunished. In asia however it's quite interesting how the face saving and family culture corrects for that a bit as bad corruption bets will backfire despite lack of legal framework for cleanup.
Unfortunately it's _not_ equal opportunity corruption as low economic classes are left out and suffer the most, the cruelty of these systems are really hard to put in the words of a single comment. This also creates a massive overhead for corruption beaurocracy where entire positions are found not on actual product or activity but corruption "middle managers".
So despite your friends take this is not a good system on it's own and merely a relief for terrible autocratic rule. Autocrats actually actively allow corruption as this relief is what keeps them in power precisely because people with some power get a relief and poor class bears the slave worker burden.
You are missing the point entirely. It's about how retaining human exposure in the societal loops is playing a vital role in keeping people connected and engaged. I'm an European living in Thailand and I see this difference first hand - the auntie doing local food deliveries or uncle selling food from a cart really connect people a billion times more than a super market would.
My long term prediction is that we we'll be taking curator-like roles much more seriously due to automation, as having human in the loop is not only needed for debugging automation issues but maintaining healthy society loops as well.
This is not a new argument either. Since the inception of cities we know that connection is being lost in extreme efficiency. Ladies delivering yogurt is just trading efficiency for connection.
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