Apple MacBook Pro 2017

A 2017 MPB is still my daily driver. The only thing having me switch to a M3 at the moment is I'm finally done with that horrible keyboard. Battery life is getting a bit annoying, but otherwise it's chugged away ever since I got the thing on release day. That said, the M series laptops are such a huge step forward it's a little mind blowing!

I used a 2017 at work for a year and eventually decided to move back to a 2015 -- I just couldn't do the keyboard any more. I also recently purchased a refurbished 2015 with top tier specs as a personal laptop. Apple has definitely lost out on thousands of dollars of revenue from just me due to the touchbar/butterfly keyboard feel/butterfly keyboard reliability/usb-c only decisions. And don't even get me started on my inability to replace my iPhone SE with a decent, small phone.

I switched to a T480 from a crappy macbook pro 2017. I enjoyed the switch to use linux fulltime but ultimately I was let down by the Intel processor that would throttle very badly. Compiling code was a nightmare. Ive since switched back to the M1 macbook pro which I plan to keep as long as possible and probably switch to linux when macos inevitably decides my hardware is too old to support. I would love to have a non-apple future, though.

I also don't care what Jobs would have thought, but I do refuse to use forced advertising products, so... Related to your second paragraph, I have a 2017 MBP that just end-of-lifed so we're gonna try Linux on that. And the M line is fast . A pretty good computer for the money. That said, I hear getting Linux running on those platforms is troublesome and may be a path that Apple is actively fighting against. And if I can't install Linux, that makes the computer premature landfill fodder which pisses me off. I love the Framework concept, but you'll pay for the privilege. Not sure what's next for me.

I had to do this to my 2012 MBP (along with fixing the gpu solder problem) and I found it wasn't that hard to disassemble / reassemble. Also replacing the battery, upgrading the ram/storage was very easy to do. Contrast this to my 2017 MBP which has to score on the top 10 list of worst apple products of all time as far as quality and ease of repair go. Have these new M3/4 MPBs gone back at all to being easy to dismantle or change the battery in? The OP with their M1 mentioned tearing overly thin ribbon cables.

I had a 2017 Macbook Pro and had to change display twice, motherboard, battery twice, and SSD. It still continued to give problems, after having basically changed every piece. Turns out the problems where coming from the power brick/charger.

> You're just making up facts [...] Here's objective facts and my experiences that I used to draw my conclusions. My final Android phones were: [1] a Samsung A7 (2017), which included a non-replaceable battery, shipped with Android 6 (2015), officially supported Android 8 (2017; theoretical first-party security patches which it never received were offered until 2021), no longer receives updates even from LineageOS, and never ran postmarketOS; and [2] a Nokia 3 (2017), which had pretty much the same story (support ended on Android 9). In 2019, someone gave me an old, smashed [3] iPhone 7 (2016), and the phone literally worked better than any Android phone I've owned before, including either of the two above. Since it was already physically falling apart, I took the liberty of getting [4] an iPhone SE (2020), which is still with me; the 7 continued to serve in the family for a couple more years. [1]: https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_a7_(2017)-8335.php [2]: https://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_3-8572.php [3]: https://www.gsmarena.com/apple_iphone_7-8064.php [4]: https://www.gsmarena.com/apple_iphone_se_(2020)-10170.php > All my non-Mac computers I'm using here have been around way longer than two years. I have a 2002 TiBook, which, believe me or not, continues to outlive my T61 and X200. My MBP (2017) had a spicy pillow though (which Apple repaired for free, outside of warranty). > [...] to protect your beloved brand/cult. I'm not a cultist, I'm a pragmatist. I used t…

> The problem with putting keys on the keyboard that radically change depending on context is that you cannot use them from memory just like the other keys. Yes, this is one of the tradeoffs the Touch Bar makes in order to have a dynamically changing touch interface. I wouldn't really call it a "problem", though many do in light of the Touch Bar taking the space of function keys. I do miss the function keys, but I also sort of like the Touch Bar in certain circumstances. Anecdotally, I was pretty fed up with my 2017 MacBook Pro (butterfly keyboard) and so made the change to the 16-inch. Apparently, I've gotten so used to the soft "Esc" key that I frequently rest my finger on the 16-inch's physical "Esc" key for a few monents before realizing I actually have to push down to activate it.

My first laptop was an Apple PowerBook 140 and I've owned a succession of Mac laptops since then (Wallstreet, G4 Aluminum, 2012 & 2017 Macbook Pro) and yet I'm typing this on a Surface Pro because I had such a poor experience with the 2017 Macbook Pro that I'll probably never go back. That keyboard was such junk that I literally feel like Apple robbed me. I really regret not returning the computer within the two week window for a full refund. I realize this rant isn't very productive but I still hope the ghost of Steve Jobs reads it.

I picked up one of the 2017 MBPs with the first gen butterfly keyboard and although I’ve not had a key failure due to the dust issue, barely a day goes by without a coworker asking if I have something against my laptop because of how loud it makes my typing sound. The second generation ones are a significant improvement over the first but even those have other slight quirks, such as random double typing even on fresh devices. When I’m at home I’m happily back on my 2013 rMBP with the old fashioned keyboard, and if it was my money again tomorrow I’d think very carefully about what to buy, but still probably end up with a MacBook.

From the top comment: >This is exactly what Apple has been going through in the last year, exacting a level of polish that is on par if not above what they released last year, but still leaving nagging doubts in the hearts of the faithful. The one thing that would silence critics and quell fears would be that something twice as revolutionary as the original iPhone be straight up imagined, developed, and hoisted by the post-Jobs Apple--just to claim par. I guess they decided to stop trying. My 2017 MBP is hands-down the worst computing device I've ever owned. It has nothing to do with my perception of Steve Jobs because I didn't start using Apple laptops until 2014. Performance seems barely better than my 2013, the super-awkward keyboard is just as bad as everyone says it is, and I started having hardware issues after just a few months. I loved Jiro Dreams of Sushi. It was very interesting, but I agree there's a dark side to that level of perfectionism. His non-relative employee had to wash dishes for years before they would even let him try to make sushi, and then he gets to spend several more years making the same kind of sushi. Being told that he sucks at his job the entire time. I can believe that Jiro makes really good sushi. I can't believe that all of the stupid, obsessive little things he does makes a significant difference in the quality. If you perform an objective analysis of his restaurant operation, instead of buying into the philosophy that he's some kind of sush

I on the other hand wouldn't mind if they made the laptop a little bit thicker in exchange for better battery life. When the discrete graphics chip is being used, plus a retina display, and or several dongles plugged in for ethernet, usb-a or whatever, battery life on my 2017 MBP while doing development work is maybe 3-4 hours. It was quite a shock to go to that from the 8-9 hours I used to get from my older MacBook air. Whereas previously I would leave certain apps (notably image editing apps or VMs) open while developing, I now find myself opening them, doing a task and then closing them so as not to activate the discrete graphics chip and drain the battery.

Similar story here. I managed to spill coffee on my MacBook Pro 2015, which I had been really happy with -- great performance (max out with CPU, RAM and 1TB SSD). I got the new 2017 model, and really hated the keyboard, but also really disliked the Touch Bar and lack of Escape button. I'm not at all concerned with the lack of USB or SD card reader, though I was disappointed with the lack of performance improvements over the 2015 model. So I returned it, and bought a brand new 2015 model. Except it turns out they changed it! It no longer has a dedicated AMD graphics card. It's an integrated Intel Iris Pro with less VRAM, and it seems really underpowered compared to the old AMD Radeon on my previous model. The lower graphics performance is especially noticeable if you turn the Retina setting to scaled (like 1.5x, which I prefer). It's not just that apps render a bit more slowly -- I get the sense that there's some GPU memory transfer bottleneck that's happening that causes sudden pauses in UI rendering across the entire OS. And it's something that makes the whole computer slow down with use; rebooting (or restarting Safari) speeds things up again. Typing in Slack or VSCode has noticeable lag, and switching between Spaces results in a significant pause, and the switching animation stutters something fierce. I would go so far as to say that scaled Retina is unusable on this model. I looked the model ID, and it's "MacBookPro11,4". The model that has a dedicated GPU is "MacBookPro1

My wife's 2017 MBP has gotten so dog-slow since Apple dropped support for it that it can't handle more than 3 Chrome tabs at a time now. The reality of Apple products is that the manufacturer sees them as eminently disposable. As early ARM macbooks age, the ability to run something, anything that isn't MacOS will be an asset. Otherwise, they're all landfill fodder.