Lenovo X1 Carbon user here. Never touched any Apple product in my entire life.
Do you have the touch screen? If so, thoughts?
Ask HN: Why does everyone use a MacBook Pro despite saying they suck?
61–70 of 116 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why does everyone use a MacBook Pro despite saying they suck?
#62I've been using macbooks full time for 3 years now and I hate them. They are bad hardware for a high price tag. As a developer they are the perfect middle ground. OSX runs everything I usually run in Linux and I have all the paid for software I'd run on windows (Photoshop, Lightroom, etc). Prior to switching to mac I just dual booted windows and linux depending on what I needed. Then sketch came out and it was only O…
Windows Insider Preview with Ubuntu for Windows is what you want now if you really don't care for macOS or Apple hardware.
I haven’t used Windows in a while. Do you still have to run your own virus scanner or is it built in now ?
Re: Ask HN: Why does everyone use a MacBook Pro despite saying they suck?
#63My 2012 MBP is still going strong and I see no need to replace it. That never happend to me with Windows laptops that I used for a decade before that.
I love the trackpad of MBPs. The aesthetics and physical build are good. The OS hardly ever gets in my way. The UI has been stable and usable and improving over the last 6 years of use. Apple's hardware service has been great (had video card issue a couple of years ago - $200 flat rate fix got me new motherboard, new screen with top cover, new video card). It has all the ports I need. Magsafe connector is genious. The display is crystal clear and high res.
I have had a genuinely good experience with my 2012 MBP. Barring bad hardware luck and missteps by Apple like the touch bar, people complaining about MBPs are being nitpicky.
Re: Ask HN: Why does everyone use a MacBook Pro despite saying they suck?
#64Because I got tired of the blue screens of death, and despite the MBP being way over priced it does one thing very well... it works 99% of the time. Plus it looks cool, if you care about that sort of thing.
I'll never understand the "stability" argument for macs. I have a gaming desktop at home that I also use for personal projects. In a decade, I have had zero bluescreens, despite AMD drivers not being the happiest all the time, and doing sketchy things with homemade code that I possibly shouldn't.
Meanwhile, my OSX work laptop needs to be restarted multiple times a week, or the wifi gets temperamental and programs somehow start to accumulate and eat all the available CPU and RAM, it restarts itself periodically with zero warning (thank goodness for the "open everything up exactly how it was" feature, pretty much necessary at this point, compare that with Windows, where I'm glad for the once a month forced restart because otherwise I'd never close out of way too much software), and has had several kernel panics just this year, which are caused by OSX itself according to the dump. It regularly struggles to do basic things, like dismiss the screensaver on wakeup. It truly is a finicky and pathetic system to me, and the only reason I'm okay with using it is that it has SLIGHTLY better support for POSIX than Windows 7, and because I'm required by my work to use it.
Re: Ask HN: Why does everyone use a MacBook Pro despite saying they suck?
#65for me, it's because nothing matches MBPs trackpad. I never feel I need a mouse using a MBP, but on both Windows and Linux notebooks, I really need a mouse and sit down in front of a table to be productive.
I significantly dislike not having actual trackpad buttons. Using a macbook trackpad for an entire workday makes my fingers feel very strange
Re: Ask HN: Why does everyone use a MacBook Pro despite saying they suck?
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Windows Insider Preview with Ubuntu for Windows is what you want now if you really don't care for macOS or Apple hardware.
I haven’t used Windows in a while. Do you still have to run your own virus scanner or is it built in now ?
Windows Defender is built-in and is good enough IMHO. But AFAIK you can still install something else on top, if you don't trust Microsoft.
Re: Ask HN: Why does everyone use a MacBook Pro despite saying they suck?
#67I have been a Mac user for less than 5 years now, and have used 4 Macs ranging from 2012 to 2017 models. I don't think they suck.
For most purposes, even dev ones, they are very nice. Stable, reliable, performant. They might not be the top-of-the-line laptops but they are awesome at getting things done - as long as you don't want to impose your own requirements on it (OS, storage, RAM, etc.)
I do have to agree that they are damn expensive though. I cringe at the thought of replacing my old one and am NOT doing that unless its imperative. :|
Re: Ask HN: Why does everyone use a MacBook Pro despite saying they suck?
#68Because of Terminal. It means most software you would use on a web server will install easily with the help of HomeBrew etc... I've seen developers waste an entire week trying to get basic things like docker to run on Windows... I'm sure things have gotten better in Windows land, but now that I already have my Macbook, the impetus for change is just not there...
I have read a fair bit about Python being a mess on Macs recently, and a few years ago Java was apparently a mess. I don't use a mac so I wouldn't know, but is it really just a case of installing things easily on a Mac?
If it's available on Homebrew and up to date(!), then most of the time it's two or three commands to install. However, when homebrew doesn't do the job 100%, then you are likely better off trying to build from source rather than play around with how homebrew works to "fix" its install
Re: Ask HN: Why does everyone use a MacBook Pro despite saying they suck?
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, there is a huge gap. Windows has way better development tools and the OS is leaps ahead of the Mac OS.
That depends on your tools and platforms of choice. For most open source stuff, Windows has less support than Linux and macOS because it usually requires tweaks (build tools, libs, etc).
I usually see this as a purposeful choice of open source teams and developers. It's not like you CAN'T create an easy and thorough build process for Windows machines. Even if you ignore turning it into a VS solution, batch files can do the job, but nobody is willing to do the extra work because they personally don't use Windows so it won't benefit them.
Re: Ask HN: Why does everyone use a MacBook Pro despite saying they suck?
#70Same reason I wear Nike's despite them being uncomfortable. Brand ego