photoeditor

I trust the subtext of this release is that it's really there to fix all the bugs in Ventura and reverse some of the cruft of the past 20 years. Still the improved password management and conferencing features are nice.

I wonder if the new widgets will be seamless across platforms (i.e. with Watch and I-Devices)

And back to regular programming. 5G won't be useful to most people unless and until carriers use the bandwidth to increase data limits. There may be minor benefits for IOT services in areas that are built up enough to support a 5G network given the very sparse wireless network we have in the US by global standards.

tmay said:

I get why you hate Trump, but what I can't comprehend is how you became such an apologist for the the Chinese Government. Seriously, are you not up on current events?

It's damned rare to find Trump opponents who are apologists for the Chinese government. In reality Trump has done more to benefit China at US expense than any US president, even more so that Clinton who prematurely let them into the WTO. Killing the TPP was a disaster because it prevented the formation of a new 'inner club" of nations around the United States that would partly reverse the WTO mistake; the frolicking with North Korea in practice plays right into Chinese hands, and so does the trade war which the Trump administration has foolishly fought out mostly over raw materials rather than finished goods, playing right to China's strength. Even if you accept that a trade war is good policy -- which it rarely is for the country that's in a trade deficit as opposed to surplus, and therefore rarely good for a country like the US -- this one still flunks because it couldn't have been designed better for China by the Chinese themselves.

Nothing contradictory that I see about them. The phone was doing pretty poorly in the "tests" on rough outdoor concrete, but quite well in the "tests" on smooth and finished indoor concrete. Even in the corner test a drop on a hard, rough, abrasive surface is going to be tougher than a drop on a smooth one.

I personally love the butterfly keyboard from an ergonomic standpoint, and the post-2016 MacBook Pro design in general (I have one of the 2017 models), but there are a couple of caveats. First off, the 2016 model was very poor; imprecise and prone to not registering strokes, and resulted in my holding back on a workplace purchase--the 2017 is a major, major improvement for my typing not only on the 2016 model but also on previous generation Macbook Pros. Second, I've used this 2017 butterfly MBP from the start with one of those silicone keyboard covers and would never dare to use it without on account of how tight the key clearances are; too easy for even a very small piece of dust to jam the key.

Additionally, I've tended over the years to be an early adopter of new keyboard designs, with ever lighter-weight actions, and it has profoundly altered the way I type in a way that primes me for the butterfly keyboard. That is to say I type fairly lightly even though very quickly; it would require too much physical effort at this point for me to make an impression on a traditional typewriter, there'd be major problems on a membrane-style keyboard with traditional full-size keys, and may even be trouble with one of the very fine keyboards from the late 1980s to early 1990s with individual mechanical switches on each key like the Apple Extended, or recent knockoffs thereof such as certain Matias products. And i go faster on the butterfly keyboard even than on the Retina, which in turn was faster for me than earlier Apple laptops.

So the butterfly keyboard on the 2017 (and presumably this would also apply to the 2018) is a very practical solution for me that produces a keyboard with a more precise action for my current typing style, but for most people? I have my doubts, because people who type heavier than I do may run into trouble over time with reliability. It poses a dilemma for Apple....do you stick with it and try to gradually convert people to lighter typing or do you pull back to something like the robust, if rather mushy, keyboard on the Retina models?

I also have to confess I've had a replacement of the top case including the keyboard within the first month...but not due to the keyboard key switch action itself -- rather the glue holding in the metal backplate under the keyboard unit came unattached, resulting in the whole computer quite literally clanking as I typed due to the backplate bouncing up and down inside the case. Not exactly a ringing quality endorsement there.