Live data from Hacker News

How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

bloomberg.com

211–220 of 587 posts

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#211
post #4

For me, there's still no alternative. And I also will not recommend anything but a Mac to friends and family. They just have the best personal computer on the market, period.

>> And I also will not recommend anything but a Mac to friends and family. They just have the best personal computer on the market, period.

Shouldn't you at least ask what your friends and family intend to do with their computer?

Macs are great in general, but they're not great at everything, so you shouldn't just give a blanket recommendation for a Mac without considering how it's going to be used.

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#212
post #164

After being an Apple "Loyalist" for over 15 years, I recently sold my rMBP and built a desktop (i7 4790k, GTX 1080, 16Gb DDR3 @ 2933Mhz). It was by far the best hardware decision I have ever made. Building the system was an absolute blast. Plus, I now have an extremely powerful PC with first class Linux support, tons of I/O ports, and no vendor lock in. The best part is it cost me about 1/3 of the price of a (maxed-o…

I am puzzled about missing homebrew.. You said you are installing Xubuntu, which comes with an excellent package manager with less issued than a brew user is likely to run into.

I think it's probably because Homebrew has all the obscure packages one might ever need, and packages in Homebrew are quite up-to-date even though it may not be extensively tested. For example, I use cocot quite often (for dealing with SJIS systems), and while cocot is in Homebrew, it's not in the Ubuntu's official repository.

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#213
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FireWire has been dead for years, it's time for an upgrade.

Firewire is very much alive in my house. Why is it "dead"? Why do I have to upgrade?

You don't have to upgrade. Don't upgrade... but if you do, there are adapters for you that will allow you to continue using your old gear.

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly the chain of adapters that beat was complaining of.

We're living in a transitory period as we move from a world of wires and connectors to a wireless world. This is the pain we have to endure as technology is pushed forward. If it were up to the luddites and their obsession with compatibility, a laptop would have a dvd drive, firewire, usb-a, usb-c, thunderbolt, hdmi, dvi, vga, sd, microsd,vga, and display port all in one laptop chassis. Having one single port, that c…

This is exactly the type of attitude that makes me dread the future. Why invest in technology at all?

Wires are great, honestly. Easy to debug and use. The original zero config.

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#215
post #46
post #16

My main computer is a five year old 17" MBP. I've upgraded it to the max and done repairs to maintain it. I need the computational power - I use it for programming, photo editing at scale, and recording/mixing music. It would cost me $3000 to replace it with a computer that is not significantly more powerful, has a smaller screen and less I/O functionality, and would be incompatible with my audio interface unless I d…

I bought a Chromebook Pixel out of curiosity and have loved every minute of it. It's fun and really slick, and even as the most expensive, by far, it's still a fraction the cost. It was easy to put Linux on it for real dev, and I keep hearing about more and more methods ( https://mrchromebox.tech ). Plus it has all the Play Store apps now. Everyone I know is just waiting for work to buy them a Surface, but doesn't wa…

I switched to a Pixel earlier this year and it's been fantastic.

I primarily run https://galliumos.org, but keep ChromeOS around for casual use. I'd highly recommend GalliumOS to people interested in putting linux on it: it makes things like the custom keyboard layout work out of the box.

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly the chain of adapters that beat was complaining of.

We're living in a transitory period as we move from a world of wires and connectors to a wireless world. This is the pain we have to endure as technology is pushed forward. If it were up to the luddites and their obsession with compatibility, a laptop would have a dvd drive, firewire, usb-a, usb-c, thunderbolt, hdmi, dvi, vga, sd, microsd,vga, and display port all in one laptop chassis. Having one single port, that c…

My laptop has nearly all of those ports, and more besides. It's fantastic. The obsession with light weight and slimness is silly. Lugging around a five pound or even ten pound laptop is not that much of a burden.

Wireless technology needs to get a whole lot more reliable to get its foot in my door.

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#217
post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused why the presence of Xcode would prevent one from using a Mac with whatever IDE they preferred. Atom, IntelliJ, VSCode, Sublime, VIM, etc... all work just fine on Macs.

Call me when "brew install visualstudio" works.

https://www.visualstudio.com/vs/visual-studio-mac/

..of course it won't help you with c++ development.

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#218

And that could be the beginning of the end. Yes, it might be slow; however, once devs start migrating to other platforms, it could become a serious hit on Apple.

Most of the people I work with use Python, Swift/Obj-C, Sketch, and Ruby. Every single one has a Mac laptop. I don't see any of these people switching soon. I've played around with Linux (Elementary and Fedora) and it's usable for most of the Ruby and Python guys, but it's just not the same. Not the same attention to detail (even with macOS shortcomings) and not the same apps. Windows 10, similar thing. It's getting…

Most people I know in the Python universe bought Macs because for the past 5-6 years other PC makers would have hundreds of models and one or two decent ones... and those are usually special order or "business" computers you can't just run out and buy. OS wasn't the issue. Actually, MacOS is a PITA compared to Linux if you are developing for Linux... file locations are different, commands are different enough and GNU gettext makes autocomplete in the terminal work much better (i.e. tab completion for command parameters and other such magic).

When you buy a Mac, it's the same thing if you get it from Apple or at any retailer.

I ended up on Mac because Dell delayed an XPS-13 three times. I had to go to PyCon, so we ended up buying a MacBook Pro the day before I left. I've got two laptops since then, and both have been Macs because I can just go get one... they are all good computers.

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how the Linux support is, but if you're looking for a 17" performance machine I've read good things about the Razer Blade Pro. http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/20/13344566/razer-blade-pro-... http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-systems/razer-blade-pro 4K, 32 GB DDR4, dual PCIe SSDs, i7-6700HQ, GTX 1080 (a real desktop one apparently), SDXC reader, Thunderbolt 3, plus a full compliment of legacy ports. Doesn't…

Razer Blade Pro comes with a desktop gtx 1080, which is a much more powerfull beast than a 1060.

Whoops, typo on my part. Thanks.

Re: How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

#220

Admittedly, for my needs the 15" models are not great. Writing and some computer programming/big data. I prefer longer battery life and a lighter/smaller 15" unit. The new unit claims to have about 2 hours more battery life than the 2015 model (see tables of battery life near end) [1]. Also important to me is nearby Apple stores to get my Mac problems looked into if I need it. Could somebody please be specific as to…

The actual problem for me (audio engineer/music production) isn't so much the new machine itself, it's that after /years/ of stagnation, at a much-hyped keynote titled "Hello Again", referencing the original Mac launch, it's the only machine we got, and it's not much better than the machine that came before it.

Essentially what this signaled to me, and a lot of other people, is that Apple has lost sight of the distinction between its Pro models and its consumer stuff. The touchbar is an interesting innovation, sure, but it's better served, at least at first, as a gimmick for their consumer devices. There were a lot of design decisions that add a lot of cost for people in a lot of Creative Professional segments, including Audio and Video production, without really adding that much functionality. Sure you can use the touchbar as a scrub-wheel in ProTools-- if Avid gets around to coding it in. But even that isn't worth the $400 price bump, when most Audio guys have their own DAW controllers already. That now need adaptors.

Furthermore, if you want a dedicated OS X desktop machine for your studio, what are your options? You can pay through the nose for a Mac Pro that has a couple thousand dollars worth of (now outdated) graphics cards that you don't need, along with an extra grand for a rackmounting solution that will convert your thunderbolt ports to PCI for your HDX/Dante/whatever setup, or you can buy a Mac Mini (which is itself direly in need of a refresh) and be severely limited by your RAM. And spend an extra grand to install your HDX card.

So I suppose to answer your question, the rage is less about what the new rMBP isn't doing for people, and more about what wasn't released alongside it.

Post reply on HN