chia

loopless said:

I am completely shocked when I see people using their credit cards  with "tap to pay".   No biometrics. Just tap the card.

Everywhere else in the known  universe they require a PIN.

then sadly you don’t know or have traveled far in the known universe: there’s no PIN with tap to pay right across the U.K, as with the European Union countries I’ve travelled in too.

The notion of entering a PIN defeats the  very aim of making Tap to Pay convenient to use, though the value of a single tap to pay transaction using a card is limited to £100,  and other countries probably have similar limits. The PIN is required only for transactions above that amount or for occasional “spot checks” by the card issuing financial institution.

”Tap to Pay” with Apple Pay is different as the user is verified by their device, allowing a higher value to be tapped, usually the retailer’s floor limit. 

baconstang said:

I wonder if they'll be offering a USB-C to 3.5mm dongle for the new phones?

https://www.apple.com/uk/shop/product/MU7E2ZM/A/usb-c-to-35mm-headphone-jack-adapter

GeorgeBMac said:

Meet my grandson.  He asked for a MacBook for Christmas so I got him one -- thinking he would use it for school (little knowing that Corona Virus was coming right around the corner).   But soon i saw it sitting all lonely in a corner by itself.   It turns out both he and his mom hate MacOS and refused to use it.

So, I installed WIndows 10 under Bootcamp.   Now he uses it everyday and his mom wants one too and has been trying to steal his -- but he'll have none of it!  They both love his MacBook Air now that it runs Windows 10.

That's a damning indictment of Windows laptop manufacturers: it means Apple unintentionally makes better Windows computers than makers for whom Windows is their primary focus.

shrave10 said:

Don't trust the emf radiation field around these things.  It has not been mass tested enough.  Will let other guinea pigs test it out for me and maybe revisit the tech in ten years.  

I’m impressed you’ve been brave enough to suffer the emf field from whatever device you have used to make your post. In view of the fact that anything that uses electricity, or has electricity flowing through it, generates an emf field, I do hope, for your peace of mind, that you don’t have electricity in your home. 

https://www.who.int/peh-emf/about/WhatisEMF/en/index3.html

entropys said:

It is a dilemma. I would want to buy MBPs for my daughters, but I am sure the younger one would probably want the gold MBA. Maybe the money and weight saved would go to a USB hub so when inevitably one of her friends want to give her something on a USB stick she can actually use it.

on the touchbar issue: I think adoption would be easier if Apple actually went all in. Where is the magic keyboard with a Touch Bar? Will the Mac Pro, iMac pro and the iMac end up with the touchbar? because i suspect one reason there is still grief about it (apart from raising the cost of the notebook) is it isn’t universal enough for a critical mass of developers to bother taking advantage of it.

As someone who six months ago, purchased a refurbished 2018 4 port MacBook Pro 13", after ten years of using a 2008 Metal Unibody MacBook, I'm very glad for the much lighter weight of the new computer when lugging it around: it's much lighter, even when you're carrying around together with a USB-C hub that's about the size and weight of a disposable cigarette lighter.  I'm very happy with the total flexibility in port functionality that ThunderBolt 3 provides; I've had to buy adaptors each time I've changed my Mac over the years, in fact when going from my desktop Performa to an iBook with the newly introduced USB ports I even had to ditch peripherals too: a printer and a Zip drive.  If anything, I've had to get the least number of adaptors with my most recent transition, only a USB-C hub and a USB-C to DisplayPort cable, to be able to fully use all my existing equipment.

As for USB sticks, it really isn't a problem keeping a cigarette lighter USB-C hub inside your laptop bag for if and when it is needed.  There are also many readily available flash drives that now have dual connectors for USB-C and USB-A:  https://www.sandisk.com/home/mobile-device-storage/ultra-dual-drive-usb-type-c

I myself love the TouchBar and am surprised by the variety of functions which it conveniently offers: for example, in Safari it shows small graphics depicting the open tabs of a window, enabling the user to rapidly switch tabs with a touch of the finger.  It's useful for word and emoji suggestion in Messages, being able to scrub back and forth through   a movie for playback or editing.  I'm still learning what apps offer as developers start writing more and more for it.

Six months on, the keyboard for my 2018 model is still going strong.  I've seen how many people criticise the shallow depth and feel of these current keyboards.  Whilst I recall my surprise and dismay as to the feel of the keyboard when I first purchased the MacBook Pro, it is true that you get used to it, and I am currently very happy to type on it, if anything I have found it far more accurate and responsive than the keyboard on my 2008 Unibody MacBook.

As for the choice presented in this article?  Well, I would have purchased the 2019 MacBook Pro with two Thunderbolt 3 ports and Touch Bar, if it was available six month ago, especially as I rarely use more than two ports on my machine (It's wonderful to be able to plug everything, power,  hub, monitor and external drive all into the single thunderbolt 3 port).
Nevertheless I'm happy for the six months of use I've already had from this insanely fast but light MacBook Pro, hand on my heart it is the best Macintosh I have ever bought.