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Ask HN: Is the new MacBook Pro worth its value for a developer?

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Re: Ask HN: Is the new MacBook Pro worth its value for a developer?

#101

Post by krob »

There is only 2 good reasons to buy a mac. Applications you use are Mac dependent, you need crazy long battery life. I haven't used a chrome book, I have heard they're pretty good. Considering those things, if you want to get power, buy a Dell Precision or an HP Zbook, or a Lenovo T series laptop. Dell Precision laptops are built like tanks, real workstation workhorses. Dell/Zbook/lenovo laptops will never give you fantastic battery life, but boy will they blow the doors performance-wise off anything apple has to offer you. If you do open source development, moving to kubuntu w/ plasma will feel quite comfortable for most people. Use Latte-Dock, boom, got your osx style doc, and it's fast. Font rendering on linux these days is insanely nice, fonts are bold, crisp. The only negative these days I say is go with AMD chips on the laptops since they have better support and don't have screen tearing like nvidia does atm due to lack of proper vsync support.

Vmware, so long as you run it on a non-ntfs partition will run insanely fast. I run windows 10 on vmware, and it runs fantastic.

My laptop is a Dell Precision 7510 w/ 64gb of ram, 512gb NVME Samsung Evo 950, + 2tb Samsung Evo 850, Quadro M2000M w/ Intel graphics. Runs beautifully on linux. Just don't expect to get fantastic battery life from it in linux as right now, that is the only thing that I think needs a lot of work. Windows got horrible battery life as well. I think Apple with osx has windows & linux beat on battery life.

Also.. with regard to keyboards, if you type fast, just say you're a touch typist, I'd say that Dell Precision & Lenovo keyboards are some of the best out there for typing for long time. If say you type 60wpm+ you'll enjoy them considerably. If you type for any duration on a mac, the tips of your fingers over time will start to feel a stabbing feeling, I don't get this with my dell. I do have a Late 2014 model mac laptop which I just replaced the keyboard, and I still have this problem with the laptop, something to do with short key travel.

Re: Ask HN: Is the new MacBook Pro worth its value for a developer?

#102

Post by r00fus »

tomcam wrote: post #7

No. I bought the $3,500 version on the advice of my partner and feel cruelly ripped off. The keyboard, which I dislike, has already been replaced. The Apple Store guy tried to accuse me of getting water on the keyboard, but that is incorrect. My partner’s identical machine also needed the keyboard and motherboard replaced. He got a loaner (I didn’t) and they tried to accuse him of the same thing. I would much rather…

Did you get a 2018 version?

Re: Ask HN: Is the new MacBook Pro worth its value for a developer?

#103

Post by r00fus »

whitepoplar wrote: post #26
barkingcat wrote: post #19

You don't need to buy new. I find this "new everything" by default to be very sad. As a developer, you'd be well served by a 2015 (if you like the old keyboard), 2016 or 2017 MacBook Pro. Why do you want to spend so much money to pay for Apple Corporate to get even wealthier? Even something like a certified refurbish machine will get you what you need (with full Apple warranty), AND leave you enough money for periphe…

I've owned a 2016/17 MacBook Pro. Don't do it, OP. The '16/17 models feature the defective keyboard that will eventually break. Plus, they don't have the T2 chip. I currently own a 2018 MacBook Pro which I like very much, but don't love. I paid $1,599 for it (13" 8GB/256GB w/ Touch Bar) here: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1423729-REG/apple_mr9...

What's the benefit of the T2 chip? Your other criticisms of the 16/17 model years are valid.

Re: Ask HN: Is the new MacBook Pro worth its value for a developer?

#104

Post by richrichardsson »

ajeet_dhaliwal wrote: post #93
universenz wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bruv, look into BetterTouchTool to only enable the touchbar input by using a modification key like fn being pressed first. Still displays info but doesn’t respond without the modifier. It’ll remove at least some if your frustration.

I wonder how many people in the world outside the London UK area know what Bruv means.

Unless you live under a rock, I'd say everyone in the UK understands what that means, otherwise it's no great leap of the imagination to hazard a guess, or there's always that new-fangled search thingamy that can help ;-)

Re: Ask HN: Is the new MacBook Pro worth its value for a developer?

#105

Post by d3sandoval »

ioddly wrote: post #6
jryan49 wrote: post #4

I'm a PC person and just got a brand new Macbook Pro 2018 i7 16GB of RAM for work. The keyboard is pretty terrible if you're used to mechanical keys. The trackpad (with the "taptic feedback") while strange and annoying at first, grew on me and is nice. MacOS for Java dev has been fine. The touchbar is fairly useless, but I was able to bind escape to caps lock very easily, muscle memory though is still a problem. I pe…

> The touchbar is fairly useless, but I was able to bind escape to caps lock very easily, muscle memory though is still a problem I started using a 2017 Macbook Pro last week. First thing I did with the touch bar was set it to be all function keys rather than app-specific stuff. I still miss the feedback of hitting the escape key, but otherwise it's okay.

There's quite a few apps (both open source and proprietary) that enable haptic feedback for the touchbar. I recommend trying them out if you're missing the feeling of actually touching the escape key.

I think they leverage the same feedback mechanism that the track pad uses to make it feel like you're actually clicking.

Links: - https://www.haptictouchbar.com - https://github.com/niw/HapticKey - https://community.folivora.ai/t/touchbar-haptic-feedback-imp...

Re: Ask HN: Is the new MacBook Pro worth its value for a developer?

#106

Post by memco »

jryan49 wrote: post #4

I'm a PC person and just got a brand new Macbook Pro 2018 i7 16GB of RAM for work. The keyboard is pretty terrible if you're used to mechanical keys. The trackpad (with the "taptic feedback") while strange and annoying at first, grew on me and is nice. MacOS for Java dev has been fine. The touchbar is fairly useless, but I was able to bind escape to caps lock very easily, muscle memory though is still a problem. I pe…

One thing I didn’t know until I had owned my MacBook Pro for awhile is that the haptics for the trackpad can be changed. I always felt the click was too shallow and I had hard time dragging files. When I played with the settings I learned that there is options for deeper presses. I also learned that there is actually two clicks: one shallow one deep, which I disabled since I don’t see a need. If you haven’t investigated the settings I suggest playing around and finding a comfortable setup.

Re: Ask HN: Is the new MacBook Pro worth its value for a developer?

#107

Post by Macha »

Razengan wrote: post #27

NOTE: New low-end MacBooks may be announced in 2 weeks or next month. Have you identified how much RAM and disk space you actually need for your workflow? If you just want something “good enough” you might be able to make do with even the $1300 Core m3, 8GB, 256GB, 12” MacBook [0], or even a PC running macOS in a VM. Otherwise the answer is “as much as you can afford.” I haven’t compared markets lately, but I think t…

For a Java developer, Eclipse and IntelliJ will happily eat over 8GB on a midsize project, especially if Spring + related plugins are involved.

For a Javascript developer, a typical webpack based build chain in live reload mode + chrome debugger + app using a front end framework will also easily go over 8GB.

So for the two most common classes of developer, I couldn't reccomend a 8GB MBP. At work I need to work on both, and my 16GB MBP is woefully inadequate. Chrome debugger + (VS Code or IntelliJ) is enough to summon this screen: https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fi.stack.imgu...

Re: Ask HN: Is the new MacBook Pro worth its value for a developer?

#108

Post by pritambarhate »

drcongo wrote: post #79

Absolutely not. I have the top of the range 15" MacBook Pro and I despise it, it's without question the worst computer I've ever owned. 1. The Touch Bar is appalling if you're at all a touch typist. It puts destructive actions just an accidental brush of the finger tip away. 2. The keyboard is failing all over the place. My left command key has fallen off, and three keys occasionally stick resulting in double entries…

Are you running Docker by any chance? I have seen that if I have Docker running and I close the lid of the machine, next time I want to use it, it reboots from a crash.

But if I remember to quit Docker ok once I am done with it, I don't see this problem.

Re: Ask HN: Is the new MacBook Pro worth its value for a developer?

#109

Post by dbattaglia »

People talk a lot about how awful the virtual escape key is (it is terrible), but another big problem is trying to use an IDE debugger with the touch bar function keys. The problem for me is, I want to rest my fingers on the keys and you just can’t do it since they are a touch screen. Even the IntelliJ first class touchbar support just doesn’t cut it. It just makes me miss Visual Studio on a boring old Dell keyboard.

Re: Ask HN: Is the new MacBook Pro worth its value for a developer?

#110

Post by mr-ron »

drcongo wrote: post #79

Absolutely not. I have the top of the range 15" MacBook Pro and I despise it, it's without question the worst computer I've ever owned. 1. The Touch Bar is appalling if you're at all a touch typist. It puts destructive actions just an accidental brush of the finger tip away. 2. The keyboard is failing all over the place. My left command key has fallen off, and three keys occasionally stick resulting in double entries…

Couldn't agree with you more. The new MacBooks are lemons.

The giant trackpad is a huge complaint of mine I don't hear a lot. Why on Earth would apple make it so big??

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