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Ask HN: Are there any reasonable alternatives to MacBook Pro for developer?

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Re: Ask HN: Are there any reasonable alternatives to MacBook Pro for developer?

#301

Post by LordDragonfang »

linkmotif wrote: post #264
CoffeeOnWrite wrote: post #194

I’m on my 4th Thinkpad T-series - T520, T530, T450s, T460s - each one was a a winner. I ditched the T5XX series when they borked the keyboard layout by adding a numpad. Used to run Ubuntu, now I run Debian, stable or testing depending on point in release cycle at install time. I plan to take another look at Ubuntu now that they gave up on Unity. A coworker is happily on the T470s (first USB-C in the series). I always…

I don’t really understand how people overlook the whole Chinese government thing with regard to Lenovo. Can someone shed light on this? I would be very uncomfortable using Lenovo, and I’m not even a huge privacy person. But Lenovos must be bugged by the Chinese. How could they not be?

I'm confused as to why anyone would strongly believe something like this without any tangible evidence. For one thing, there are hundreds of hardware hackers that look for things like this, so it seems like if it were an issue one of them would have found evidence of it. For another, China knows this and wouldn't want to risk their global reputation in trade for something (spying on average citizens) that would have very little payoff compared to the long-term economic damage it would do.

Besides, as another commentator pointed out, if you're going to be worried about a country spying on you, it should at least be your own country.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any reasonable alternatives to MacBook Pro for developer?

#302

Post by eof »

shazow wrote: post #265
aviraldg wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do your co-workers not have issues with HiDPI support on Linux? I've heard it's not the best experience and can require quite some fiddling to get working correctly.

The bad news: There's no unified HiDPI solution on Linux that works well end-to-end. The good news: You don't really need one. Bumping the font configuration fixes 80% of the scenarios, and the rest I tweak on a case-by-case basis. The good standards-conforming apps (e.g. modern terminals, browsers, etc) automatically multiply the font sizes by your screen DPI. Most desktop managers have a scale sliders for the GUI s…

my system76 handles 4k perfectly

Re: Ask HN: Are there any reasonable alternatives to MacBook Pro for developer?

#303

Post by rcarmo »

147 wrote: post #209
tootie wrote: post #87

Not a hardware req, but I've recently become quite enamored with Win 10 + WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) after years of using a Mac. WSL lets you run a lightweight Linux shell (Ubuntu, SUSE, Kali are supported atm) without a VM. It's purely for command-line purposes, no X, but that's fine for me. Windows for UI, then I can run all my bash in the Ubuntu shell almost seamlessly. You can run the shell directly from s…

I couldn’t find a terminal I liked on windows. Got any suggestions?

wsltty. Accept no substitutes if you use WSL.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any reasonable alternatives to MacBook Pro for developer?

#304

Post by mst »

sxg wrote: post #135
shazow wrote: post #89

I switched from a 2014 13" Retina MBP to a 2018 Thinkpad X1 Carbon (6th gen) and I'm extremely happy with it. https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-X1-Carbon-2018... is the most objective/detailed review I've seen. One of my biggest anxieties was the fear of "upgrading" to an inferior device after a decade of being on Apple devices. Thankfully, that has not been the case. - The 14" WQHD HDR screen is remarkab…

What's your opinion on the trackpad? The thing I love most about MBPs is the trackpad—the size, responsiveness, gestures, and being clickable everywhere make it feel great to use. My girlfriend has a Lenovo T460, and I've been a little disappointed with the trackpad on that laptop.

"Better than everybody except Apple, not quite as good as Apple" is roughly my opinion. I usually turn it off on a thinkpad since I vastly prefer the trackpoint but Apple's trackpads are, at least to my mind, noticeably superior, just not enough to make me give up my trackpoint.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any reasonable alternatives to MacBook Pro for developer?

#306

Post by forapurpose »

LordDragonfang wrote: post #301
linkmotif wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t really understand how people overlook the whole Chinese government thing with regard to Lenovo. Can someone shed light on this? I would be very uncomfortable using Lenovo, and I’m not even a huge privacy person. But Lenovos must be bugged by the Chinese. How could they not be?

I'm confused as to why anyone would strongly believe something like this without any tangible evidence. For one thing, there are hundreds of hardware hackers that look for things like this, so it seems like if it were an issue one of them would have found evidence of it. For another, China knows this and wouldn't want to risk their global reputation in trade for something (spying on average citizens) that would have…

There is a lot of tangible evidence of Chinese government engaging in mass hacking. It's not a courtroom; I don't have to wait for a smoking gun; maybe there already are some.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any reasonable alternatives to MacBook Pro for developer?

#307

Post by forapurpose »

confounded wrote: post #293
linkmotif wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t really understand how people overlook the whole Chinese government thing with regard to Lenovo. Can someone shed light on this? I would be very uncomfortable using Lenovo, and I’m not even a huge privacy person. But Lenovos must be bugged by the Chinese. How could they not be?

Where would such a bug be? If you’re installing Linux, that wipes out software bugs (seems the most likely place to me). Lenovo provide details about the components and design, which means you could verify/replace things if you like. ThinkPads are trusted enough by the USG for various uses (though they seem to prefer Dell). Personally I’m more freaked out by Intel’s Management Engine.

> If you’re installing Linux, that wipes out software bugs

Linux would address OS bugs, and it brings bugs of its own. All your applications also could be exploited.

> Intel’s Management Engine

That and other pre-boot subsystems are exploitable by adversaries.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any reasonable alternatives to MacBook Pro for developer?

#308

Post by saltcured »

jhoechtl wrote: post #244
aviraldg wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do your co-workers not have issues with HiDPI support on Linux? I've heard it's not the best experience and can require quite some fiddling to get working correctly.

HiDPI on Linux is pretty much non existent. I am telling from experience. I have booth a decent 4K external monitor and a HiDPI IPS internal display. The only setup which is ok in the sense of least horrible is Gnome mutter Wayland with experimental per monitor fractional scaling enabled. And this one is only ok if you can restrict yourself to the few ported pure GTK3 Gnome apps. Which means not that much. No Firefox…

So, what exactly is it that you expect as "HiDPI" support which is missing? As far as I can recall, it has been possible to configure the actual physical size/DPI for a monitor for many, many years. Any properly functioning X application should then be able to draw things a correct size on the screen, e.g. fonts sized in points or images and figures scaled to actual widths. I think this infrastructure may even pre-date the switch from XFree86 to Xorg. Is your complaint that there are still some applications which ignore this monitor DPI metadata or which do other pixel-based techniques?

Like the previous poster, I stick to 1920x1080 on my 14-inch class Thinkpad. In my office I have dual 28-inch 4K monitors. These have identical dot pitch to my Thinkpad, so each monitor is like having a 2x2 array of my Thinkpad screens. When I made sure the monitors were set with the correct DPI, everything worked exactly as I would expect. Whatever rendered as one pixel on my laptop would also be one pixel on my workstation, and I just had 8 times more real estate on my dual monitor desktop. But, I sit further from the monitors than I do my laptop screen while also using them for much longer stretches of time. So, I adjusted the workstation to pretend it had higher DPI so that things would render a little bigger.

It's been a few years, but I think I may have had to separately adjust Firefox because it has some of its own weird assumptions about fonts and DPI that I assume come from their renderer straddling several different platforms. I also had to adjust emacs and xterm to change from my decades old fixed font preferences to start using scalable fonts.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any reasonable alternatives to MacBook Pro for developer?

#309

Post by Rotareti »

sxg wrote: post #135
shazow wrote: post #89

I switched from a 2014 13" Retina MBP to a 2018 Thinkpad X1 Carbon (6th gen) and I'm extremely happy with it. https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-X1-Carbon-2018... is the most objective/detailed review I've seen. One of my biggest anxieties was the fear of "upgrading" to an inferior device after a decade of being on Apple devices. Thankfully, that has not been the case. - The 14" WQHD HDR screen is remarkab…

What's your opinion on the trackpad? The thing I love most about MBPs is the trackpad—the size, responsiveness, gestures, and being clickable everywhere make it feel great to use. My girlfriend has a Lenovo T460, and I've been a little disappointed with the trackpad on that laptop.

I use an x230 (amazing little machine). I deactivated the touchpad in favor of the trackpoint. I would go nuts if I had to move my hand back and forth in order to move the cursor. If your profession involves a lot of typing, the trackpoint is the pointing device of choice, IMHO.

If you happen to use the trackpoint, I suggest replacing the default rubber piece with a concave one. Here is an example: [0].

https://superuser.com/a/854794/431390

Re: Ask HN: Are there any reasonable alternatives to MacBook Pro for developer?

#310

Post by peterashwell »

alexandercrohde wrote: post #298

As somebody who got later into macbooks, and begrudingly had to admit they were objectively superior, here's what I'd like to know about a competitor. 1. Does the screen ever flicker? 2. Has a key ever come off? 3. Does it ever fail to sleep when you close the lid 4. Would you worry if you drop it from waste height 5 times (closed, but running, onto a hard-wood floor) ? 5. Have you had any driver problems, have you e…

big +1 to this response. I got a lenovo (thinkpad x series) and it hit 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, and 7, obviously implying 4.

I tried really, really hard to like the lenovo. It just was not built good enough for every day use. It was just a piece of shit.

One more very important point:

If it breaks and you need support, what happens then?

MBP: take it in to a nearby apple store. if not immediate fix or replacement then very rapid turnaround

Lenovo: Send it to china! and wait 6 weeks and maybe you'll get the right computer back, and maybe the problem will be fixed

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