Blog

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

When it was fast

There’s a new release of macOS version 27, and I have to say it’s the first time my M1 Max MacBook Pro is starting to feel sluggish. (The latest Apple chip is the M6.) Adobe Lightroom importing doesn’t feel as snappy as before. More than one Google Chrome tab? Forget about it.

And that’s the problem with computer chips chasing after better performance year after year. The software running on those chips expand to fill the provided bandwidth. Hardware and software progresses symbiotically. With more power, comes more code to use that extra power.

Older hardware gets forsaken and disregarded. My M1 laptop fully supports macOS 27, but let’s be honest, macOS 27 is written for a newer and faster platform. Why wouldn’t Apple optimize their newest operating system to run maximally with their latest hardware? They then throttle down the performance to fit the smaller performance envelopes of the older stuff. Game developers aren’t using the less powerful XBOX Series S as the benchmark; they code for the Series X, then scale it back for the poverty XBOX.

Just as Series S does not run games as well as Series X, my M1 MacBook Pro isn’t running macOS 27 as smoothly as an M5 MacBook Pro. By design.

It didn’t feel this way at first, of course. Any current model year Mac computer feels completely speedy and snappy when first purchased. Even Intel-powered Macs, horrendously slow by today’s standards, was fully adequate when launched. It’s after the first year of ownership, and subsequent years later, when the OS upgrades accumulate, that the sluggishness creeps in. Until about five years later and you feel compelled to upgrade because it all just feels a bit slow.

I will not be buying a new computer this year. The ongoing war in Iran and the latent inflation to come (we haven’t yet seen the full results of the oil shock), it’s important to have reserves for the truly necessary. Because those necessities will and are costing more.

You all are nasty

Part of my duties as IT support is to facilitate fixing laptops when they break. And let me tell you, the sanitary condition of some of these is utterly disgusting. I don’t quite understand how someone can look at a screen caked with various oils and reckon that to be “normal.” I mean, it’s got to be normal for them, right? Otherwise they would have cleaned it already.

One time I had a user complain about the laptop display getting fuzzier as he used it from new. You guessed it: it was a dirt and oil that was progressively getting stuck onto the screen. A classic case of problem existing between keyboard and chair.

I understand everybody has a different conception of cleanliness. But I bet we can all agree the definition of absolute clean: when a device is brand new (or a car is brand new). You would be rightly pissed if you opened a sealed MacBook Pro, freshly purchased from the store, only to find a lid with a smudge on it. Meanwhile, people are capable of using a computer with a smudge for a very long time, so long as the smudging was done by the user.

I reckon people also tend to be more cavalier with items that they don’t feel a sense of ownership with. Say, a work-issued computer. It costs the user absolutely nothing. Things given freely don’t tend to last very well. Just look at public housing. Compare that to a personally purchased MacBook Pro costing many thousands of dollars: I would hope users are more inclined to take care of that. Because they have skin in the game.

When the penalty of ruining a work laptop is essentially nothing (we simply issue them another), the incentive to take care of devices is completely absent. Needlessly to say, I wear gloves at all times when handling user machines. For my protection.

Dell support

At work we deploy, on the PC side, mainly Dell computers. Word on the street (I don’t handle purchasing) is Dell is a fantastic vendor to work with, and the discount we get is hefty. As well it should be, with the amount of hardware we buy.

Obviously, on the Mac side it’s just Apple.

As personnel on the support side, I can say Dell computers can do with better quality control from the factory. Every batch we buy, there seems to be always a few computers that need immediate servicing. During the pandemic, we bought hundreds of Dell laptops, of which dozens had to be serviced because of poor fit and finish (a trackpad should click). I get it, pandemic times were uniquely funky, but the batch of Mac laptops we bought from Apple had zero such issues.

Good news for Dell is that the servicing is solid. Though that’s a back-handed compliment, isn’t it? I reckon companies would want to put out a product so reliably good that the end-user never has to know about after-purchase servicing. Nevertheless, if Dell isn’t capable of ratcheting up its quality control, at least it’s super easy to get items fixed.

So long as the product is under basic servicing warranty (we prepay for four years for everything we buy), Dell can dispatch third-party technicians to your location within business days. Or, if the customer is not in a hurry, an overnight prepaid mail-in option is also available (the Dell repair facility is in Houston). All of this can be initiated on the Dell support website via chat, which is great for people like me who avoids using the telephone as much as possible.

It still won’t pry the MacBook Pro out of my hands. But, if I ever need to run a Windows PC, A Dell-branded unit is a fine option. Even if it malfunctions within the first week of use, Dell support will get it fixed with haste.

The laptop part of a laptop

I’ve owned this fantastically engineered Apple MacBook Pro 16-inch (M1 Max) for two and a half years now. The laptop has spent most of that time docked to an external monitor. On a recent curious check with the coconutBattery app, this very MacBook Pro I am typing on has only got 14 battery cycles on it. Perhaps I should have bought a Mac mini instead…

Ah yes, I remember why I bought a beefy Mac laptop instead of a desktop. If life situation ever changes, and I need to move in quick order, a laptop is far easier to haul around with me. My entire digital life in a four and half pound machine. I would sell the monitor and the extra nice-to-have peripherals, and take just the MacBook Pro.

It used to be that it’s superbly unhealthy for laptop batteries to be constantly plugged into power. At my work, I’ve seen plenty of bulging batteries due to users never using their laptops as a laptop. However, in recent years, Apple has done a tremendous job in managing its laptop batteries - automatically - within the operating system. MacOS learns the usage pattern and adjusts the charge levels accordingly. My MacBook Pro is kept at a 80 percent charge at all times, because I never take unplug it from the monitor.

I was pleasantly surprised to read in the same coconutBattery report the battery still has 96% of its design capacity. To put it another way: it has only degraded 4% from new. I am very happy with that. Barring some unexpected monetary windfall that probably should go towards investments, I plan to use this M1 Max MacBook Pro for many more years. It’s good to see the battery is self-managed for maximum longevity.

What the heck are you doing, Windows laptop manufacturers?

That's exactly how it works

It seems people like to fight against the laws of physics.

I had one customer come in saying the battery life on her 2020 13-inch MacBook Pro is not to her satisfaction. Duh - of course not! A Mac laptop with an Intel processor and a three-year-old battery is not going to have great battery life. Degradation alone (roughly 20%, I later found out using coconutBattery) will negatively affect the experience continuously. The laptop will never be as good as it were fresh out of the box. That’s just the way it is with any device that runs on battery - even that Tesla Model Y of yours.

On top of that, I found out the user prefers to crank up the display brightness to the maximum, with a dozen apps running concurrently. Sorry, even the laptop with the best-rated battery life will suffer under those usage conditions.

Another customer brought in a Dell Precision 7680 workstation laptop complaining of, you guessed it, adverse battery life. He said the battery was draining even when the laptop is plugged into power. Unfortunately, that is by design. That Precision laptop features a desktop-grade Intel processor and an Nvidia RTX secondary GPU. Meaning: it will run very hot and draw lots of power. So much power that the 240-watt AC adapter cannot supply enough juice under full load - hence the aforementioned battery drain.

You cannot buy a glorified gaming PC laptop and then expect excellent battery life. That’s like buying a full-size truck and then complain about the horrible gas mileage. Laws of physics remain undefeated.

I would like a better keyboard

The annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is happening right now in Las Vegas. The particular segment I always enjoy to read about is PC laptops. A bit of window shopping, you know? My daily-driver laptop is a 202116-inch MacBook Pro (M1 Max), and it’s interesting to see what the Windows side has to offer. Can there be a compelling enough PC product to sway me out of a decade plus loyalty to team Apple?

I am still waiting.

There is one component in modern PC laptops that I do wish Apple offered on its MacBook line: a better keyboard. As an often typist (see: this blog), a laptop with a solid typing experience is a must for me. After the butterfly keyboard debacle, the MacBook lineup has finally returned to a keyboard with good feel and reliability. I still have not found another non-Apple laptop than can match a MacBook for key-deck solidity.

What certain PC laptops do offer though, is better key switches. Mechanical keyboards are super popular these days (except for your office mates who have to hear all that click-clacking from your typing), and certain laptop-makers offer laptops with really thin-profile mechanical keys. My dream typing-focused laptop would be a 13-inch MacBook Air fitted with such keys. Most dreams never come true, obviously.

Other than that, I do not want for anything else with my 16-inch MacBook Pro that the PC camp can sway me over. The build-quality is absolute precision, the 120 Hz mini-LED display is bright and gorgeous, and the M1 Max still chews through everything I need it to do. Best of all, the battery life is unparalleled. In terms of performance per unit of energy, PC laptops have yet to be in even the same neighborhood ever since Apple switched over to its own silicon. It remains amazing to see that after a full work-day, there’s still half battery left on my work-issue M2 MacBook Pro.

I’ve literally heard users complain about the drastically reduced battery life when we give them an Intel-era MacBook Pro, whilst their Apple Silicon MacBook Pro is in service. Horrible batter life is a feature, not a bug, sir.

Emergency cash

It was an unceremoniously start to this week of vacation. The latest macOS update - 13.5 - released on Tuesday, and it utterly broke my M1 MacBook Pro. You know the part where an update asks you to restart the device? Well, my Mac laptop did not restart, could not be restarted, and generally become unresponsive. The sucky thing about modern Macs is that there aren’t much buttons to press, no secret reset handshakes. Just about the only thing to do is hold down the power button for 10 seconds, and then press it again. That’s all an end user can do if their MacBook Pro is dead.

Well, not exactly all. If you happen to have another Mac lying around (few seldom do, I would reckon), you can connect that to the “dead” Mac via the included USB-C charging cable. Download and fire up Apple Configurator, press a sequence of buttons on the dead Mac to put it in DFU mode, then maybe there’s a chance the unresponsive computer can be revived.

Fortunately for me, I do have another MacBook Air lying around. Unfortunately for me, reviving the MacBook Pro using Apple Configurator did not work. The macOS 13.5 release so completely broke the machine it necessitated a visit to the local Apple Store. Good thing I live two blocks from one.

Bad thing my nearly two-years old MacBook Pro is out of warranty. When a Mac laptop is dead like it is, it usually means a logic board (otherwise known as the motherboard on PCs) replacement. For a 16-inch MacBook Pro, that means a flat charge of $850. Not an insignificant sum, though for a laptop that costs $3,600 new (I had opted for some upgrades), it’s not really that bad. What sucks is that I am now out the $850, all because of a faulty OS update. Negotiation with the head Genius Bar person did not net me any monetary sympathies, just some personal ones.

Funny enough, the same person asked me if I needed a moment to think about the $850 charge. While I recognize it’s a hefty sum for some people, ultimately I need a working computer! Unceremoniously forking over that money hurts, sure, but it’s not going to wreck my finances one bit. I mean, you’re able to come up with $850 easily in an emergency, right?