Blog

Short blog posts, journal entries, and random thoughts. Topics include a mix of personal and the world at large.

Trading it in

In the quest to consolidate and simplify my life, in preparation for the time when COVID is over and we all go back to what once was normal (as of this writing, hopefully early next year?), I am selling my barely a year old 15-inch Macbook Pro. The laptop was bought as a bandaid option during a difficult time last year - when my main computer the iMac was unceremoniously taken away from me - and as specified it doesn’t fit what I need going forward. While indeed I am taking a rather huge chunk of loss in depreciation, sometimes in life you have to spend the money to get what you want.

I am stingy 95% of the time so I can afford to spend somewhat frivolously during the small 5%. Exhibit A: the GT3.

Anyways, the 2019 version of the 15-inch Macbook Pro is a fantastic machine, but the reason I am trading it in (for cash to be used on a future Macbook Pro) is because the particular unit I bought is lacking in storage space and memory. Apple’s largest laptop is appropriately expensive, and speccing for larger SSD drives and extra RAM increases the price rather dramatically. It was an emergency situation at the time of purchase of my 15-inch unit, so I didn’t have the foresight (or money, honestly) to spec the machine the way I would have liked. “Poverty spec” - the absolute base model - was what I ended up purchasing.

Armed with only a 256 GB SSD drive, space becomes precious really quickly, especially dealing with 100 MB RAW files from the Sony A7R2 and 4K footage from the GoPro. I am not able to fit my music collection onto the main drive itself, because it would take up half the room. To listen to music I had to plug in an external drive, which is slightly burdensome and a hassle if I wanted to move the Macbook somewhere off the desk. The goal with whatever Macbook Pro I buy in the future is to opt for enough hard-drive space that I can fit the entirety of my digital life onto the laptop and still have vast amount of space in reserves for my photography and video projects. I want to be able to just grab that one computer and take everything with me wherever.

One laptop to hold them all. Tolkien would be proud, I’m sure.

The typist

It’s been a long time since I bought my first mechanical keyboard, way back when it was a weird and quirky niche of the overall computing peripheral market. Why would anyone want a relatively huge keyboard with incredibly loud keys? Especially when Apple practically ushered in an era of small “chiclet” style keys with very flat caps and small travel. Mechanical keyboards were suppose to be a relic of the past, back when the biggest name in technology was IBM.

I purchased a mechanical keyboard because I think of myself as some sort of a writer, and as we all know, an artist is only as good as his tools (am I right?). I’ve read online from serious typists about the beauty of mechanical keys and how the tactile feeling really contribute to a satisfying and comfortable typing experience. I didn’t exactly think of it that way: back in those days the thought of spending a hundred dollars on yet another computer accessory was irresistible. I mean, I truly need it so I can type better!

Indeed I quite enjoy the feel of typing on a mechanical keyboard, though to say it contributed positively to my writing would be a lie. Much like a fancy sports car, it’s a nice thing to have, but functionally it’s the same as any other car. In recent years I’ve actually stopped using a mechanical keyboard because of how unwieldy it is compared to the modern wireless units. In these contemporary times when technologies are run wirelessly, any remaining vestige of cables stands out way too much. So I went for the aesthetics play, opting for form over function.

Because back in the days before the proliferation of mechanical keyboards (to where every major manufacturer has one), you were stuck with buying these behemoths that did not come in wireless versions. Worse if you’re Mac user like me: good luck finding a keyboard with the appropriate Mac-specific keys. Fast forward to now, not only can I easily find mechanical keyboards geared towards Apple laptops, the boards have also gotten much slimmer in build, and many bluetooth versions can be found for sale. It’s a supremely good time if you’re in the market right now, though sadly I am of a stage in life where spending a hundred dollars on a redundant accessory is not something to do.

Maybe if I sell my admittedly fabulous Das Keyboard…

The Macbook Pro got refreshed?!

Such is the state of the current situation that yesterday Apple released an update to the 13-inch Macbook Pro and I didn’t find out about it until this morning. Without the ability to gather into fancy auditoriums to launch products - replete with a live video of course, these silent releases from Apple get lost with all the other more pressing news that’s going on right now. Maybe this isn’t the time to get excited about a refreshed laptop when a fifth of the country is unemployed, and the economic outlook is massively uncertain.

Personally, I am not looking to spend money on anything that isn’t essential. This is not meant as criticism towards those of you who are lucky to still be employed, and the dreariness of being stuck at home every single day is best interrupted by a few joyful online shopping sessions. I’ve heard from a podcast that distributors of aftermarket automotive parts are having their best month, because the bored enthusiasts with money are finally getting around to their respective car projects.

If only I had a garage.

Anyways, the newly updated 13-inch Macbook Pro signals the final phase-out of the much-maligned ‘butterfly’ keyboard. Every single new laptop Apple now sells has the revised ‘scissor’ keyboard mechanism that promises to not commit seppuku at the first hint of a bread crumb. As an owner of a 2019 15-inch Macbook Pro, I have to say I dearly love the typing feel of the butterfly mechanism, though indeed I have to clean the deck religiously because I don’t want it to fail. Like an Italian sports car, when it works, it performs beautifully, but more often than not it’s going to be in the shop for repairs.

But car enthusiasts love Italian sports cars; I’m pretty sure I’m the only one who loves the butterfly keyboard - its terrible reliability be damned, and am sad to see it sunset into the annals of Apple’s audacious failures. I’m certainly going to enjoy typing on my Apple laptop for many more years to come; now is not the time to upgrade to the latest and greatest simply because I have the money.

Fancy seeing out these British exports in Guangzhou.

I'm not getting the new Mac Pro

Seriously, I am not preordering the new Mac Pro. One, and most importantly, because I can’t afford it, and two, because I think the new Mac Pro is a machine for the true pros, and I’m not a professional - yet. Apple likes to use the word ‘Pro’ for its products to denote the higher end model, whether or not the particular product really deserves the moniker. On the Macbook line, going ‘Pro’ is the only way to get a screen larger than 13 inches. You want the highest spec iPhone possible? The iPhone 11 ‘Pro’ is the model to buy.

However, there are a few times that when Apple uses ‘Pro’ in its products, it truly means it’s geared towards professionals. The iMac Pro is such a machine, and now the new Mac Pro - alongside the $6,000 Pro Display XDR monitor - brings more computing power than the typical consumer can possibly use to the market. It’s a sort of thing that you’d want your respective creative company to purchase for you, rather than forking over the at least $5,999 starting price yourself. It’s pro-grade stuff for the people that need it, though it’s good to know there’s finally a Mac that can run Google Chrome smoothly - with only two tabs open.

You and I surely do not need the hefty specs of the Mac Pro, even if we can afford the entry price. I’m sure technophiles with an inclination towards spending their disposable income on the latest tech gadgets will scoop up the new Mac Pro to showoff on instagram. Like Porsche owners who switch cars every time a new model comes out, these tech nerds will upgrade to the latest and greatest products just to say they have it (I’m guilty as charged with regards to the yearly iPhone upgrade). Good for those people, because I’d be doing the same thing if my car enthusiasm didn’t take up so much of my own disposable dollars.

It’s a shame how adult sensibilities will stop you from doing something you wanted to do as a child. I’ve always been enamored with Apple’s Mac Pro line dating back to the legendary G4 Cube design, and had this belief that when I grow up to a steady paycheck, I’d buy a Mac Pro for myself - simply to have it because it looks so cool and awesome. Fast forward to present, and I wouldn’t think to buy a thing where its utility value for me is so small. I’m quite happy with my 15-inch Macbook Pro, and for what I do with it, there’s no reason to upgrade to the new Mac Pro.

Besides, I’ve come to enjoy the portability potential of the Mac laptop, even though currently 99% of the time it’s plugged into power on the desk. You just never know when you might have to move out in quick notice.

I'm not getting the 16-inch Macbook Pro

Let’s note for the record that I have - thus far - uphold my pledge to not buy the AirPods Pro.

So trust me when I say this: I am not buying the new 16-inch Macbook Pro that Apple announced yesterday. Not that I don’t want to, because let’s face it who amongst us techies wouldn’t want the latest and greatest from Apple - or any other company. My personal obstacle preventing me from buying the 16-inch Mac laptop is that I am currently typing this on a 2019 edition 15-inch Macbook Pro, which I had just bought a few months ago. It would be highly reckless to get the new 16-inch unit and then have to figure out some way to offload this still very fresh 15-inch, for presumably a considerable loss of the original $2,300 I paid.

Don’t let the Porsche fool you: I can’t make cavalier money moves like that.

At least internally the 16-inch Macbook Pro is largely the same as the now discontinued 15-inch version: it retains 9th-generation Intel processors, though graphic power gets a slight bump thanks to updated chips from AMD. You can now spec memory up to 64 gigabytes and hard-drive space up to 8 terabytes, which is quite insane on both counts. A videographer can literally import and edit 8K content right on the laptop, with no need for external Thunderbolt storage. Apple isn’t messing around with the ‘Pro’ designation, though you’ll just have to ignore the fact the webcam is still has a paltry 720P resolution. I guess Apple thinks professionals aren’t frequent users of video conferencing.

The biggest point of contention with the current era of Apple laptops is the wildly unreliable ‘butterfly’ keyboard, and in response Apple has finally switched back to the ‘scissor’ mechanism in the 16-inch Macbook Pro. If you like typing on the latest magic keyboards that comes bundled with iMacs (I don’t) then Apple says you’re going to enjoy a similar experience on the 16-inch laptop. This change is a mix for me, because I absolutely love the tactile feel of the butterfly mechanism, though I can understand the frustration of users from the standpoint that no matter how great it feels to type, a keyboard is utterly useless if it malfunctions frequently. I clean the deck of my 15-inch Macbook Pro religiously to hopefully avoid the fate many owners have succumbed to.

The one feature I am truly jealous of in the new 16-inch Macbook Pro - not the physical escape key or the massively better sounding speakers - is the return of the ‘inverse-T’ arrow key layout. For as much as I love the butterfly keyboard, the placement the arrow keys is the worse ergonomic design Apple has ever produced. The full-height left and right keys make it frustratingly impossible to use the arrow grid by touch alone. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve mistakenly hit the shift key thinking it was the up arrow. Future owners of the 16-inch Macbook Pro are a lucky bunch indeed.

Sadly I’ve still got a few more years yet with the 15-inch Macbook Pro. God willing the butterfly keyboard doesn’t fail on me.

USB-C dongle life

Due to life circumstances, my trusty 5K iMac (2017 edition) got removed from my possession, and needing a replacement device to do all my creative stuff, I recently acquired a 2019 15-inch Macbook Pro. I’ve gone mobile again, after five years of running desktop macs of varying style. The immediate reaction isn’t from the nearly half-size reduction on screen real estate, but rather the sheer advancement in computing power in only two years’ time.

The 5K iMac remains a beast of a machine: 3.4GHz quad core chip, 40 gigabytes of ram, and 512 gigabytes of super fast storage. It handled everything I needed to do creatively, so of course I had zero plans to replace it anytime soon; unfortunately, other plans got in the way. Armed with a 9th-generation Intel processor with six cores, my new Macbook Pro absolutely chews through 85 MB RAW files as if they were iPhone jpegs. Making adjustments to photos is incredibly immediate, with no discernible lag; it makes the 5K iMac feel rather stilted in comparison, a difference I didn’t even know existed.

Latest Apple computer is fast. News at 11!

Ever since the latest restyle of the Macbook Pro was introduced back in 2016, the constant joke is that owners have to live the ‘dongle life’. In the constant pursuit of forcing users to buy high-margin accessories, Apple engineered the Macbook Pro with only four USB-C ports as IO. USB-C was relatively nascent technology back in 2016, and three years later, the landscape hasn’t exactly improved. Other than a GoPro 7, none of my other peripherals and electronic devices offers a USB-C connection, so in order to use this new Macbook Pro, I am indeed living the dongle life.

It’s absolutely absurd that fresh out of their respective retail boxes, the latest iPhone is (still) unable to connect directly to the latest Macbook Pro.

But there’s another problem: official dongles made by Apple are not exactly cheap. For a basic USB-C to SD card adapter - replicating the SD card slot that’s built-in to the iMac, Apple charges $39. An external display adapter is even worse: $69 if you wish to plug your Macbook Pro into a TV.

Seeing that I just dropped over $2000 on the laptop itself, I am actively fighting having to spend additionally on extra dongles. Thankfully, I actually do have USB-C to USB-A adapter, so I’ve been using that for everything. The process can be somewhat cumbersome: what was once a simple motion of taking the SD out of the camera and plugging it in to iMac, is now a multi-step challenge involving the camera itself, a USB cable, and the aforementioned USB-C adapter. Transfer over camera USB is much slower than the card straight in, too, so that’s quite a pain when dealing with many gigabytes of photos.

I think soon I just might give in and get a small docking station, with all the IO I’ll ever need.

Going backwards on technology

It’s interesting how we get used to certain new features in cars, and when that gets taken away, it’s a bit jarring and uncomfortable. Case in point, plenty of new cars have this feature called ‘keyless go’, in which the key remains forever in the driver’s pocket, and utilizing sensors and buttons, doors can be locked and unlocked, and the engine can be turned on with the push of a button. It’s all very clever in allowing freedom from fumbling with keys, and you get super used to simply opening the door and pushing the engine start button.

My first exposure to the keyless go technology was rather reluctantly. It was a few years back during my search for a Mazda MX-5, and due to less fortunate financial capabilities compared to the present, I was cornered into finding the most striped-out, poverty-spec example possible. The new ND generation of the Miata have only just been released, so not many cars were actually yet on dealership lots. After some searching, I was able locate a base sample that was actually en route to the dealer, but there was a problem: the car had the keyless go option fitted, for the princely price of $150 dollars.

Which is to say it was cheap enough for me to overlook it. I’m sure the likes of Porsche charges many times more for that same feature in their cars. So my Miata ended up with keyless go, and indeed it was pleasant and convenient to not have to ever take out the key to operate the car. The only way it could’ve been better would be if the car also locked itself once it detects I’m a certain distance away from it; seems like a natural extension of that particular feature set.

Anyways, fast-forward to this January when I bought the 911 GT3, a six-figure car of 2015 vintage that doesn’t have keyless go; I’m not sure it was even an option available on the GT3 trim. You can imagine the confusion of my muscle memory the first few times driving it: I’d approach the car with the key still in my pocket, expecting to able to simply press a button on the door handle to open, only to be jolted out of rhythm with the realization that I do in fact need the physical key. It’s like returning to using paper maps after years of benefiting from the convenience of Google Maps.

Complicating things further is the fact other cars in our family all have keyless go, so often times operating the GT3 feels like a throwback to an arcane era. Of course, I’d forget about that as soon as I turn the engine over and that atmospheric flat-six starts making its melodious noise.