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Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

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Re: Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

#391

Post by hiram112 »

obstinate wrote: post #138
taigeair wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate on its impact on how you do development? One reason I still have a mac is because it's so developer friendly. Linux is very time-consuming to make things work with and is incompatible with various hardware. Also some mac software is great.

When I develop on Windows, I use a full-screen Ubuntu VM. It's not meaningfully different from having a Linux machine at the scale of work I'm doing.

Same, though I used to use Fedora.

The Win 10 Linux subsystem is still a mess, though it is improving in beta versions.

Re: Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

#392

Post by ufo »

m_mueller wrote: post #168
bsg75 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I always return to XFCE. It may not be rapidly evolving, but if I'm running a Linux desktop, I want simple.

On what Distro though? What should I try if I want something that pretty much works out of the box i.e. has acceptable battery life + WiFi + Sound + Suspend mode on a Macbook / Latitude / Thinkpad without me having to set up config files according to all kinds of internet sources for a day... or even a week?

XFCE is very stable so it should work almost exactly the same on every distro. Just pick the one that you like the most / is easier to install for you / etc.

KDE is a bigger and more complex system so it works a bit differently depending on what distribution you use. Some distros like KDE Neon always have the most recent KDE while other like OpenSUSE Leap prefer to use stable versions of the applications.

When it comes to wifi/sound/etc it has to do with whether the driver for that contains binary blobs. Some distros don't ship blobs due to security and/or software freedom concerns while other distros have a more relaxed policy when it comes to proprietary software.

Thinkpads have a reputation for being very easy to run Linux on. You should expect everything to work out of the box. For the Dell computer you might have to install drivers separately but you can't tell for sure without knowing the exact model you have. You could do a test drive with a Live USB to check out. I wouldn't expect things to work out of the box on the macbook though. Apple isn't very Linux friendly and their macbooks have many specialized components that are only found on Apple products so Linux support is not very good. But even then, some dedicated hackers still try to reverse engineer them so you might have better support if you have an older model instead of the latest macbook.

The following table can help a bit with determining if wifi will work on your computer:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_open-source_wire...

Re: Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

#393

Post by Lio »

nicky0 wrote: post #226
x0x0 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just bought a new mid 2015 mbp for that reason. Beyond the $300 price increase, there's an additional $400 backdoor price increase for additional chargers and a pile of dongles to replace all the functionality that currently works. Not throwing in a single usb-A port was the final fuck you that tipped me over the edge to the older generation.

$400 for dongles? Got a breakdown on that?

Not the original poster but I'll have a go...

1. OWC Thunderbolt 3 dock so I can connect my existing monitor and wired network (not yet available): $279.

2. Replacement for my USB-A Superdrive: $39.99

3. Thunderbolt 3 hdmi media kit for presentations: $49

4. USB-C SD card reader: $29

5. USB-C to Lightning cable: $20

6. USB-C to USB-A dongle so I can connect my ANT+ dongle: $9

7. Power supply extension cable (you don't get that included anymore): $19

8. Probably would want a USB-C to microUSB lead too (although I could go through the USB-A adapter with existing cables): $19

Total: $463.99

That doesn't seem too outlandish a set up for me. I haven't included an extra PSU, VGA or TB3 to TB2 for example.

Now I live in the UK and the exchange rate isn't doing us any favours at the moment so all of the above will be somewhat more expensive too.

Re: Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

#394

Post by ake1 »

bosie wrote: post #251
SkyMarshal wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny I'm the exact opposite. Only on a MBPr for the hardware, otherwise would prefer Linux to OSX. Lightweight tiling window manager + Vim keybinds for all apps = super efficient. With OSX I actually have to use the mouse. How quaint.

how do you get vim keybinds in every app?

pretty much everything has a vi-mode these days. all shells, tmux, browser via extension (vimperator/vimium/cvim/surfingkeys) or by default (uzbl et al), wm by configuration or default (bspwm/i3/awesome etc.). intellij even has support for an .ideavimrc which surprisingly works quite well.

Re: Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

#395

Post by mikegerwitz »

lobster_johnson wrote: post #141
enjo wrote: post #17

The latest rev pushed me to a PC for the first time in like 15 years. It's partly because I didn't love the new Macbook Pro, but also cause hey..change is fun sometimes. I'm very happy with my new Surface Book. I never thought I'd like the touchscreen as much as I do. I LOVE being able to go to tablet mode for calls and stuff where I sort of want to just wander around. The pen has completely changed how I do flow-cha…

I'm also considering a switch, but Windows drives me up the wall whenever I touch it. macOS has been getting uglier and more awkward to use the last few years, but Windows is still the king of ugly. So I've been considering Linux as my first option. I fired up a few VMs and dipped my toes in various Linux desktop environments: Elementary, Fedora 25, and Ubuntu (Unity) so far. These are all GNOME 3 variants. And... oh…

> they're still figuring out what it's supposed to even be

"It" can be any distro. GNU/Linux distros aren't a single entity, and they never will settle on a common interface---that's a good thing. Larger distros like Ubuntu will, but if you're going to adopt this perspective, you'll need to start thinking about the individual distributions and companies/communities behind them rather than "the" GNU/Linux desktop.

Re: Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

#396

Post by dkersten »

setq wrote: post #208
nextos wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try something without any design at all, like Linux with a tiling window manager and some minimal applications.

This is what I use Windows for. It's an SSH terminal that has a web browser and plays music (via groove which is actually quite good)

My previous laptop was a windows machine that acted as a web browser, music/video player and VirtualBox host. All of my work was done in linux in virtualbox (and my SSH terminal was also bash running on linux in virtualbox).

My linux environment was very minimal though (mostly living in the terminal, used a tiling WM, vim as my editor). In many ways my mac environment isn't that different except without the tiling WM.

That setup worked quite well, although used more resources than if I hadn't used Virtualbox.

Re: Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

#397

Post by tdkl »

m12k wrote: post #316

It's actually kind of amazing to see the discourse shift against Apple and the new MacBook Pro to the point where it seems almost self-reinforcing. Like someone turned the reality distortion field on backwards or something. I've been wanting a mac laptop the size and weight of a MacBook Air 13" but with a retina display for years, and the ability to connect usb, power and external display with just a single cable is…

> Apple hasn't made a really revolutionary product since Jobs died.

It's more about regression for cosmetic reasons then not being revolutionary. There's potential with development of newer hardware and yet they use it to make slimmer devices and with less ports. Smaller motherboard ? Instead of slimming the shell, make it thicker and use the rest for batteries. 50 hour battery laptop, now that's revolutionary.

Re: Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

#399

Post by matwood »

BoorishBears wrote: post #124
taigeair wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate on its impact on how you do development? One reason I still have a mac is because it's so developer friendly. Linux is very time-consuming to make things work with and is incompatible with various hardware. Also some mac software is great.

I have a Zenbook. Windows for development isn't nearly as convinent as OSX. Yes there's lots of customization you can do to make it bearable. Powershell isn't as awful as CMD, but projects aren't supporting Powershell as much as bash any time this decade AFAIK. The Linux subsystem works, but the flow between Windows and Linux is lacking. I tried Linux. Linux doesn't handle my mix of high DPI and normal DPI monitors (…

> Linux doesn't handle my mix of high DPI and normal DPI monitors (every month I'm told Wayland is going to support it "soon") so I can't use it.

This, this, this. I have been trying off and on for a couple years to move from MacOS to Linux and the HiDPI situation is a mess. Apparently it's not much better in Windows, so maybe if someone is coming from Windows they are used to problems. But, coming from MacOS where I have a rMBP and a mix of HiDPI and HD monitors and they all 'just work' I had assumed that was the state of the industry for a long time. Once I started reading up on the issue it became apparent in the HiDPI world it is MacOS >>>>>>> Windows > Linux.

The last time I brought this up on HN, someone responded saying I didn't need HiDPI :/

Re: Tim Cook assures employees that Apple is committed to the Mac

#400

Post by wildmusings »

Personally, luxury laptop lines don't make sense for me at this point. There was a time when it was the only way to get decent hardware, but those days are long gone.

Four years ago I spilled water on my 2009 17" MBP (RIP) and Apple wanted $1200 for the repair. Instead, I spent ~$1300, including three-year accident-protection insurance where they show up at your house THE NEXT DAY, on a Thinkpad T530 and I couldn't be happier with it. Quad-core i7, discrete Nvidia GPU, 15" 1080p display, 2 USB 2.0 ports, 2 USB 3.0 ports, ethernet, displayport, firewire, DVD drive, 300GB HDD. I've since upgraded to a 500GB SSD (and put the old HDD where the DVD drive was) and to 16GB of RAM. Due to the internal metal frame, I'm sure I could drop the thing repeatedly without consequence.

Yeah, it's not thin and weighs 1.5 pounds more than a 15" MBP. The extra-capacity battery I ordered it with is losing some capacity, but good thing I can just pop it out for a new one with the flick of a switch. This computer will still be kicking ass in four more years.

EDIT: I dug up the invoice: http://imgur.com/a/cT55A . $1380 including the three-year warranty/accident-insurance. Apparently I can put a mobile broadband card in this thing, cool!

Further edit: Perhaps I overstated in my first sentence. I really don't mean to put down Macs. I loved my 17" MBP and the 13" company-issued MBP I used at an internship in 2013. Their screens, even pre-retina, are beautiful. The OS and hardware worked perfectly together, e.g. smooth touchpad actions like scrolling and zooming. Though I haven't used the new machines everyone is complaining about, my experiences with Apple hardware have only been great. But what I value in a computer just doesn't align with the value that premium ultra-thin laptops provide.

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