Headline: refers to a laptop
Article: several hundred words about an architecture that is not currently available in a laptop form factor and probably never will be.
My next laptop isn't gonna be a Mac
31–40 of 45 posts
Re: My next laptop isn't gonna be a Mac
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a 6yo T420 with a Samsung SSD and 16GB of RAM. It was $400 with a new battery. It easily outperforms the MBP 2015 monster I had before on my daily programming tasks. Point being. Most hardware is overkill anyway. You'll want enough RAM and the fastest SSD you can afford.
I have a 4 year old W530 and I built my own PC this year for the first time in over a decade. There's no comparison. If you can deal with the lack of portability, you'll see a huge benefit. Also, if you're a programmer, there's no such thing as "most hardware is overkill anyway." Not in this age of bloated and slow software and tools. It's worth it anytime you can shave a couple of seconds off the time it takes to co…
I build a $3000 beast like half a year before i bought the laptop. I also had a MBP 2015 before. While given i dont do compiled language very often i dont fully agree. My VM startup times barely differ (dont most scripting languages boot single core anyway?) but i notice a real difference when working with huge databases compared to my MBP because i simply have better RAM and a faster SSD. However surely my desktop build was even faster.
Re: My next laptop isn't gonna be a Mac
#33I won't be buying a mac anytime soon.
Because my mid-2013 one still serves me well for all my audio work, web dev and graphics programming needs.
When it fails I'll buy another.
PCs are great too.
Why are we still having these pissing contests?
Re: My next laptop isn't gonna be a Mac
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a 4 year old W530 and I built my own PC this year for the first time in over a decade. There's no comparison. If you can deal with the lack of portability, you'll see a huge benefit. Also, if you're a programmer, there's no such thing as "most hardware is overkill anyway." Not in this age of bloated and slow software and tools. It's worth it anytime you can shave a couple of seconds off the time it takes to co…
I build a $3000 beast like half a year before i bought the laptop. I also had a MBP 2015 before. While given i dont do compiled language very often i dont fully agree. My VM startup times barely differ (dont most scripting languages boot single core anyway?) but i notice a real difference when working with huge databases compared to my MBP because i simply have better RAM and a faster SSD. However surely my desktop b…
Yes, single core speeds matter quite a bit. I can get faster single core clock speeds for a desktop for a lot cheaper. It is useful to have a lot of cores for running multiple VMs, but I would agree it's not worth spending 3k+ for a 16 core machine unless you're doing something that can utilize those cores.
In my mind, where the desktop rules is ram, bus speeds and cost. You can build multiple desktops for the price of a similarly priced MBP.
Re: My next laptop isn't gonna be a Mac
#35The only thing that still keeps me MacOS is the trackpad. When my MBA 13" breaks, I will just replace it with another MBA 13", which I already did two times. One got orange juice, the other vomit of my son. But what if the MBA 13" is not available anymore? It will be somewhat difficult for me to find a replacement. Perhaps a Surface Book but will xfce handle the trackpad as smoothly as the MBA? But how to find out fo…
Context: my primary system for both development and personal use has been Ubuntu for a while, but several years ago I picked up a MBP as a secondary laptop and for testing/spot-checking that cross-platform stuff actually worked well across platforms. When I first got the MacBook, I instantly realized that it was by far the best touchpad I've ever used, to the point of being somewhat embarrassed about the state of hardware on Wintel laptops. The display was one of the best ever at the time, too.
Recommendation: You should seriously consider giving one of the higher end Chromebooks a shot. I think their image has continued to be tarnished by the fact that when they were first introduced—and even for several years after—buying a Chromebook meant you were getting a near-disposable, low-end, plasticy ARM-based machine (that didn't run a "real" offline OS, either). Fact is, today there are really nice x86 Chromebooks with good build quality. I have a Dell Chromebook 13. The touchpad is just as good as the MacBook's (albeit slightly smaller), a 1080p (matte!) display that's actually better than the one on the non-retina MacBook, it's lightweight, it has long battery life (~8-12 hours?), and (continuing somewhat with the tone of the article) it runs coreboot. You can wipe ChromeOS and install another distro.
The biggest downsides are three, and they're all to do with the keyboard:
- The power/sleep button is in a weird spot, so sometimes I hit it when I'm an awkward posture and not touch typing.
- The row of function keys (which have Mac-style glyphs instead of Fnum printed on them) only go to F10, so you may need to remap some apps that use F11 and F12.
- There are no context menu and Super (Windows) keys where Wintel users would expect them to be between Ctrl and Alt. Given that you're coming from a Mac, this shouldn't be a problem. Caps Lock is also gone, but that's because that's where the Super key has been moved to.
The SSD is also tiny, but it's user serviceable/upgradeable, and has a microSD slot.
Also, when you reboot, it complains that ChromeOS is missing; you have to press Ctrl+L instead to move forward, and there's no on-screen reminder (a la "press any key to continue"). What the on-screen reminder does say is to press space to restore ChromeOS. If you've upgraded the SSD, though, there will be no ChromeOS recovery partition, so it's guaranteed not to succeed. What I don't know is whether your installation will be hosed in the process, however. I haven't tried. Assume that it will, and take it as a fortnightly reminder to make those backups that you already know you should be doing.
Re: My next laptop isn't gonna be a Mac
#36My biggest problem with the current MacBook line up is the much higher price, reduced feature set and the widely reported hardware quality issues with keyboards, speakers and body rattles. I won’t be buying a Mac with the current keyboard simply because I don’t want the risk of it failing, not that I can afford one. Fortunately my mid 2014 15” is still going strong. iirc the first generation 2012 15” also has all kin…
USB-C is already pretty ubiquitous, but I agree. I don't understand why they dumbed down the mbp - the 'plain' macbook is more than good enough for most consumers and I'm sure they would've loved the touchbar and whatnot.
Obviously I don't want them to make the pro into an ugly thinkpad style thing for the sake of more battery and ports, but I think plenty of people would've been perfectly fine with the new mbp mostly just being an upgrade to internals and maybe the screen. Instead, they dumped the Esc key for a novelty feature pretty much nobody really cares about, dumped the awesome magsafe charging, and got rid of a bunch of ports - not that the old version had a ton in the first place - for pretty much no good reason.
If there were another laptop on the market that Just Worked™ anywhere near as well as the mbp, I definitely would've switched but as it is I'm sticking to my late 2014 model and hoping the next gen mbp is less of a flop.
Re: My next laptop isn't gonna be a Mac
#37Is the author of the article actually complaining about not being able to run 68K Mac software in 2018? The last 68K Mac came out in 1994. Why shouldn't Apple remove insecure ftp and telnet from the default installation? You can still install it if you really need it but who in this day and age would use anything that transmits passwords over plaintext? As far as complaining about no desktop for Pros, I've read nothi…
I'm going to regret this, but as the author of the blog post, let me be explicit about what I'm complaining about.
Apple used to care that their stuff kept working. The 68K example was that you could buy a computer, in 2005, that would still run software from 1990 or so. Now I'm worried about a computer I bought in 2014 being still able to run software which may have been updated last only a couple years before that. I don't think Apple cares much about this anymore.
As far as telnet and ftp, I'll even concede no one would probably use at least password secured stuff over cleartext in a WAN context (anonymous FTP is arguable). But "just install it from Homebrew" is only a solution as long as Apple lets it be a solution; see previous paragraph.
The iMac Pro is not a Mac Pro. It's an all-in-one desktop with high-end features. That appeals to certain people, but not to me. And I don't care for x86, never have.
If the post makes much about these issues and more than you think is warranted, it's mostly because they do personally matter to me, but I think they're emblematic of bigger problems with Apple. IMHO, Apple doesn't have an interest in legacy users, and certainly not in legacy users that have professional needs.
Clearly, pretty much everyone in this thread disagrees, and that's fine. Good luck with it.
Re: My next laptop isn't gonna be a Mac
#38Re: My next laptop isn't gonna be a Mac
#39My biggest problem with the current MacBook line up is the much higher price, reduced feature set and the widely reported hardware quality issues with keyboards, speakers and body rattles. I won’t be buying a Mac with the current keyboard simply because I don’t want the risk of it failing, not that I can afford one. Fortunately my mid 2014 15” is still going strong. iirc the first generation 2012 15” also has all kin…
USB-C is already pretty ubiquitous, but I agree. I don't understand why they dumbed down the mbp - the 'plain' macbook is more than good enough for most consumers and I'm sure they would've loved the touchbar and whatnot. Obviously I don't want them to make the pro into an ugly thinkpad style thing for the sake of more battery and ports, but I think plenty of people would've been perfectly fine with the new mbp mostl…
It's so ubiquitous that the newest iPhones still come with USB-A->Lightning cables. You can't plug one on a brand new MacBook Pro without a dongle or buying a new cable.
Re: My next laptop isn't gonna be a Mac
#40Is the author of the article actually complaining about not being able to run 68K Mac software in 2018? The last 68K Mac came out in 1994. Why shouldn't Apple remove insecure ftp and telnet from the default installation? You can still install it if you really need it but who in this day and age would use anything that transmits passwords over plaintext? As far as complaining about no desktop for Pros, I've read nothi…
I'm going to regret this, but as the author of the blog post, let me be explicit about what I'm complaining about. Apple used to care that their stuff kept working. The 68K example was that you could buy a computer, in 2005, that would still run software from 1990 or so. Now I'm worried about a computer I bought in 2014 being still able to run software which may have been updated last only a couple years before that.…
I'm not disagreeing with your right to your opinion - just that I think you have rose colored glasses on about Apple and their quest to maintain backwards compatibility.
The Mac came out in 1984 and was incompatible with the Apple //e.
System 7 back in 1992 broke a number of old apps.
The 040 line came out and broke a number of apps.
Sure you could run 68K Mac apps on the first PPC Macs but they were dreadfully slow and people ended up buying SpeedDoubler by Connectix with a much improved emulator.
Have you forgotten about all of the apps that broke that weren't "32 bit clean" and the ones that broke that used self modifying code when the '040 came out?