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Ask HN: Why does everyone use a MacBook Pro despite saying they suck?

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Re: Ask HN: Why does everyone use a MacBook Pro despite saying they suck?

#71

Post by School-Cotton »

mrguyorama wrote: post #64
OneFishTaco wrote: post #14

Because 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 som…

> despite AMD drivers not being the happiest all the time

This is something you will not have to even think about on a healthy mac, as long as the hardware is not damaged in some way.

> 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 (...) , and has had several kernel panics just this year, which are caused by OSX itself according to the dump.

Your mac has hardware problems -- ask for a new one, if possible.

Re: Ask HN: Why does everyone use a MacBook Pro despite saying they suck?

#73

Post by vaygr »

towndrunk wrote: post #61
vaygr wrote: post #56

Lenovo X1 Carbon user here. Never touched any Apple product in my entire life.

Do you have the touch screen? If so, thoughts?

Yeah, I do. Just wanted to try it a couple of years ago. Honestly -- not worth it (on Linux HiDPI is not there where I wanted it to be, plus with my love of bitmap fonts, it can be hard), especially in a heavily shortcut-powered WM (I use Fluxbox and bspwm occasionally). But that's just me.

My next workhorse will still be X1 nextgen, but with regular 1080p resolution and matte screen. Much much better. Like my Zenbook at home -- which is ideal for me, but less powerful for work-related tasks.

Re: Ask HN: Why does everyone use a MacBook Pro despite saying they suck?

#74

Post by batbomb »

sontek wrote: post #26

I'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…

Can you define "bad hardware"? To my coworkers, this usually means they can't get the largest amount of RAM on the mac that they can get when they buy a $WINTEL.

On the flipside, their battery life always ends up worse and they go through twice as many machines in the same time frame, which is _much_ more annoying. A week of productivity loss a year isn't worth the cost savings.

The cost issue is always strange one for me. Most employers are happy to drop $2500 on a laptop. If you are purchasing it yourself, fine, but that's usually not the case for a work machine.

Re: Ask HN: Why does everyone use a MacBook Pro despite saying they suck?

#75

Post by jinushaun »

Who says they suck? They very much DO NOT suck. Every time I use a PC laptop, I am reminded why I use Bootcamp or a VM for Windows on an MBP.

However, I need a new laptop and I really don't want the Touch Bar MBPs. :( I don't know anyone that likes them.

Re: Ask HN: Why does everyone use a MacBook Pro despite saying they suck?

#76

Post by WaltPurvis »

Scramblejams wrote: post #54
OneFishTaco wrote: post #14

Because 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.

The downvotes for you are puzzling. At work I compile a large project in VS2017 multiple times per day, and my machine will intermittently bluescreen during the compile. Happens to a number of my coworkers as well. W10 has come a long, long way since the unstable foundations of its forebears, but my personal experience with it still includes more crashes than I can write off as flaky hardware/drivers or mere chance.

Anecdotes are fun. Here's mine: It's been literally 7 or 8 years since I've had a Windows machine (desktop or laptop) blue screen on me.

(Although I admit I've primarily used a Mac the past couple years, so maybe Window 10 has degraded recently.)

Re: Ask HN: Why does everyone use a MacBook Pro despite saying they suck?

#80

Post by quantumofmalice »

Because, like monarchy, they are still the least worst option when considering both the OS and hardware combined, for most people.

The issues with the latest macbooks are real and severe, but running windows or linux, even on nice hardware like an X1, remains a sufficiently annoying and disruptive change to stop people. We can all hope that eventually this will change, but as of right now I don't see a forcing function.

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