I am the proud owner of a mid-2015 15″ MacBook Pro. Normally I replace my Macs every 2.5 years or so. But I’ve had this one for five years. Why have I held onto it for so long? We’ll there’s a few reasons. First there was the infamous Butterfly Keyboard. I saw numerous clients of mine have to deal with failures of those keyboards, sometimes multiple failures, and I wasn’t going to be them. And because of that I actively discouraged my clients from buying them for that reason as well. Now that Apple has abandoned the Butterfly Keyboard and returned to a more traditional design that is far more reliable, I should be free to replace my MacBook Pro. Right?
Well no.
The new reason as to why I am not upgrading is that Apple MacBooks come with 720p webcams that have horrible resolution and are pretty much useless in any lighting condition. And the fact that video calls are very much a standard thing these days because of the pandemic, it highlights the fact that Apple is stuck with tech from 2010 in their notebooks. Including ones that they released in the last couple of months. And what’s really sad about this situation is that the cameras in pretty much any iPhone has a front facing camera that crushes anything in a MacBook with ease. And they both come from the same company.
What’s up with that?
The fact that I spend a lot of my day on video calls has made me strongly consider getting a Windows 10 laptop to replace this MacBook Pro. The reason being that pretty much any Windows 10 laptop comes with a much better camera than anything that Apple offers in a MacBook. Which shows you how far behind Apple has fallen.
All of that leads me to this: Apple, if you’re reading this post, please update the cameras in your MacBooks. Like right now. 720p is beyond lame when it comes to cameras. I mean it was state of the art in 2010. But it’s 2020 and 2010 called to get its tech back. I know you just refreshed a bunch of notebooks recently. But in this era of work from home, this is something that cannot wait. So I hope that you’ll step up and improve the front facing cameras in all your notebooks ASAP.
Microsoft Releases Out Of Band Patch To Fix Printing Issues With Windows 10
Posted in Commentary with tags Microsoft on June 18, 2020 by itnerdMicrosoft has released an out of band patch that you should run and download to fix printing issues that they created when they released this latest round of Patch Tuesday updates. Strangely, it was announced via Twitter:
In my mind, out of band updates, meaning that they aren’t part of Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday update cycle aren’t optional. But in this case, if you don’t have problems printing to a directly attached printer, you shouldn’t install this. That brings me to what version of Windows 10 are covered by this update. Versions 1803, 1809, 1903 and 1909 are covered by this update. “Other affected versions of Windows will have updates released in the coming days,” Microsoft added. Thus if you’re on Windows 10 version 2004, and you have a dead printer, you’ll have a little longer to wait.
At the end of the day, this situation can be summed up like this:
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