Ryan Mikulovsky’s micro.blog

The MacOS app Amphetamine is pretty slick. As promised, it keeps my MacBook Air awake even if the lid is closed and there is no external display attached. So now I can run it as a part-time file server (via SFTP and Secure ShellFish for iOS). At least, that’s the plan. Since it is running on a laptop, I really appreciate the audio alert it’ll give if I unplug the MBA while Amphetamine is keeping it awake. Now that MacOS 10.15.5 has battery aging management, now is the time to try this out.

My goal is to somehow simplify things by no longer needing an aging QNAP NAS and using a single platform. I love the idea of having a spare laptop but also actively using it and getting more value out of it.

Since 2010, I have always had a 13” Mac laptop — now I’m on a 16” MacBook Pro and I love it. I upgraded from a 2018 MacBook Air.

I waited for the new 13” MBP. The new 13” MBP had the necessary Magic keyboard but didn’t satisfy in terms of evolution: its screen was not 14” as rumored; it has the same thermal system; the same speakers; and the same mic. However, the latest 13-inch MBP has slightly better single thread CPU performance than the base 16” MBP I got. Finally, it seemed as if the latest 10th gen Intel chips that might work for the 16” wouldn’t provide too much of a performance boost (no wonder there’s so much interest in ARM). And I might be waiting a while for that. Assuming the 16” ever gets a refresh before the surmised ARM revolution.

What did I want? I really wanted the wide color gamut of the MBP since I’m a prolific photo taker and editor. In addition, I really wanted a laptop that will last beyond three years (like my first ever 2010 13” MBP, RIP)— even if ARM becomes a thing. A laptop that has enough CPU cores for ARM emulation, if needed (though I suspect for a few years  apps will be delivered as dual Intel-ARM binaries).

I use x86 Windows 10 in VMWare and on my 2018 MacBook Air, it was nearly unusable. So the 100% base 16” MBP seemed like a good fit. 

So without a solid evolution of the 13”, the 16” began to look pretty nice. 

Now, my Windows 10 VM can take over two of six cores and four gigs of ram without any noticeable system impact. Also, it is now apparent 16 gigs of ram really is the sweet spot for my use cases. And it is awesome to use a 16” screen on my lap wherever I want. For basic things, like writing to my blog in MarsEdit, it never gets warm enough to notice. Oh, and yes, photos look so very good and editing on this 16" screen is a dream. I’m uh also taking a liking to the Touch Bar.

For the Touch Bar, I just wish I could enable the expanded control strip without losing app-specific controls. For example,  if I’m in an app with Touch Bar support, it should show the app’s controls with a shrunk control strip. However, if I’m viewing just the desktop, the Touch Bar should immediately show me the expanded control strip — I don’t want to press the <.