{"id":1889,"date":"2021-10-06T20:20:03","date_gmt":"2021-10-07T00:20:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lowtek.ca\/roo\/?p=1889"},"modified":"2021-10-06T20:21:10","modified_gmt":"2021-10-07T00:21:10","slug":"a-tale-of-two-macbooks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lowtek.ca\/roo\/2021\/a-tale-of-two-macbooks\/","title":{"rendered":"A Tale of Two Macbooks"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

I like many have been, and continue to, work from home. You may have also heard of the chip shortage<\/a> making things like laptops a bit more difficult to get your hands on, especially at the scale of a large company. This has delayed the usual upgrade cycle, and meant I was using a machine with no AppleCare warranty.<\/p>\n

Up until recently I’ve been using a 2017 macbook pro – yes, the one with the bad butterfly key-switches<\/a> – that is until recently.<\/p>\n

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Right from the start the keyboard had given me problems. In the first few weeks my W key was janky and needed extra presses to work. It sorted itself out after a little while and I discovered that if I was careful about dust\/crumbs I could avoid problems. When problems happened, giving it a good shake upside-down would help remedy the issue.<\/p>\n

In this case the F key started jamming, then broke off entirely. Normal typing would dislodge the key and was generally a pain. Apparently once one key busts off, others are not far behind. This was proved out by a coworker of mine in the same situation, but with 2 busted keys. I guess it was time for a replacement.<\/p>\n

After the usual paperwork, I was back in business – sort of, as the first replacement had a busted microphone and that makes participating in emeetings sort of tough. The second replacement arrived, this was a 2019 with a bit of warranty left and everything works. So now you know why the lead picture has 3 macbooks in it.<\/p>\n

The first replacement was a 2018 machine, a little faster<\/a> than the 2017 but basically on par. I won’t mention much about this because I only had that a day give or take. This is why the post is a tale of 2 macbooks and not 3.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The 2017 was a great machine aside from the keyboard and the cursed touchbar<\/a>. I don’t regret giving up my previous pre-touchbar macbook pro, because the 2017 was pretty slick and had USB-C charging.<\/p>\n

The battery data from the 2017 does tell a longevity story<\/p>\n

Battery Information:\r\n\r\nFirmware Version: 702\r\nCell Revision: 3925\r\nFull Charge Capacity (mAh): 5238\r\nState of Charge (%): 71\r\nHealth Information:\r\n  Cycle Count: 781\r\n  Condition: Normal<\/pre>\n
It had reasonable performance up to the day I stopped using it. Not bad for a 4+ year old machine. The Geekbench score was 867 single-core, 3363 multi-core<\/a>. I also really liked the stickers I’d accumulated over time.<\/p>\n
\"\"<\/p>\n
The 2019, while a previously used machine it has a noticeably better keyboard<\/a>. The keys feel a bit more muted, and seem to have a little more travel. It’s sticker free still, just a boring space grey slab.<\/p>\n
\"\"<\/p>\n
This was still a nice upgrade. Intel i7 -> i9. 4-core -> 8-core. Faster memory 2133 -> 2400. The Geekbench numbers are nicer too: 1059 single-core, 6074 multi-core<\/a>, a pretty big numbers jump. It does seem a little faster but you get used to the modest speed increase pretty quickly.<\/p>\n
Let’s look at the battery stats<\/p>\n
Battery Information:\r\nFirmware Version:\t901\r\nCell Revision:\t1734\r\nFull Charge Capacity (mAh):\t5952\r\nState of Charge (%):\t79\r\nHealth Information:\r\n  Cycle Count:\t168\r\n  Condition:\tNormal\r\n<\/pre>\n
There is a nice bump in Full Charge Capacity (+714<\/span> mAh).. but things get pretty mysterious when we talk about batteries. It seems the 2017 design capacity was 6669 mAh<\/a>, and the 2019 design capacity was 8790 mAh.<\/a>\u00a0 I’m sure the cycle count factors in here (781 vs 168), as well as many other variables such as charge rates etc.<\/p>\n
While I was sad to see the well stickered and travelled laptop go, having a fully working keyboard is a joy you quickly take for granted. I’m still looking forward to a real hardware upgrade to a non-touchbar machine, maybe with the M1X or whatever comes after it. Oh, and 32GB of RAM would be very nice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I like many have been, and continue to, work from home. You may have also heard of the chip shortage making things like laptops a bit more difficult to get your hands on, especially at the scale of a large company. This has delayed the usual upgrade cycle, and meant I was using a machine … Continue reading “A Tale of Two Macbooks”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gadgets","category-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lowtek.ca\/roo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lowtek.ca\/roo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lowtek.ca\/roo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lowtek.ca\/roo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lowtek.ca\/roo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1889"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lowtek.ca\/roo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1899,"href":"https:\/\/lowtek.ca\/roo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1889\/revisions\/1899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lowtek.ca\/roo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lowtek.ca\/roo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lowtek.ca\/roo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}