I'm super happy with my HP envy 13' with AMD Ryzen & vega graphics.
Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?
351–360 of 628 posts
Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?
#352Adding my 2 cents on this since I've recently migrated from my old macbook 2015 to a System76 Gazelle (linux/Pop_OS). My comments are coming from the perspective of a web developer / trader (i make websites and trade futures+equities for a living) - with a Linux preference (i dislike Windows).
- Dell XPS_13 - Thinkpad (x1 carbon) - Purism - System76 (looked through all their laptpp offerings)
I chose Sys76 because I really wanted better hardware (I wanted _alot_ of RAM), which admittedly isn't a normal requirement for most users.
- Dell XPS 13 - totally anectodal, but I have a few friends who really dislike this laptop because of lots of little issues. Then again, I also know people who love it. My friend lent me his old one and I kept having issues with drivers and the OS just randomly crashing... so I passed on it
- Thinkpad X1-carbon - build quality feels awesome. I really like the trackpoint thingy, but the trackpad itself I thought was horrible. Also dislike the keyboard in general. I've read a bunch of mostly positive reviews though, so I might actually buy one to try in the future.
- Purism - seemed ok, but after looking at the hardware I could get on the Sys76 I liked the latter better.
- Sys76 Gazelle - Opted for this one since the hardware for the price seemed much better than the alternatives. Despite many people complaining that they're marked up Clevo's, I still found them the best when comparing price/hardware.
For about $2,000 USD, I was able to get what I wanted - 6GB GTX 1660 (cuda) - 64 gb ram - 1tb nvme
Compared to the macbook, after a few months use, I honestly miss the mac. There's awesome things to this laptop, but at the end of the day linux just doesn't play nice with everything compared to macs. Slow lagging in general (mac is much more 'snappy') when doing basic things like opening and dragging window panes. Random weird behavior when plugging in peripherals (plugging hdmi will shift some of my fn keys around, wtf?). The keyboard is awesome, the trackpad is ok, but NOTHING compares to the mac's trackpad. The mac display blows the Gazelle's display out of the water. I can't use some apps - Sketch, etc.. on this since it's linux. Battery life is so bad it's laughable.
IMHO, there is no feasible alternative, just a series of tradeoffs only your personal needs can decide. I really wish apple would offer a true "pro" user option - let me upgrade my hardware. Weight/size be damned, I basically want a desktop I can carry in my bookbag.
Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?
#353Windows 10 on good hardware is very, very nice. My advice is "don't fight windows". I've seen many people try to make Windows like Unix. Don't. Use Windows versions of things, not things compiled under Cygwin or MinGW. Learn to use Powershell and Powershell scripting language. I do development (C/C++/CUDA/Erlang/Python) all day long on Windows 10 and in addition use desktop applications like Microsoft Office and Adob…
WSL is miraculous. But Powershell is also very capable. I also highly recommend using chocolatey as your package manager. Makes it super easy to stay up to date with dev tools. It's nuts that the GitHub official docs still recommend Git Bash when git for Powershell works perfectly fine.
Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?
#354Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I compare the experience to living in a hotel vs. living at home This is very apt. If we've all grown out of our parents' basements when we left /., then let me share my own analogy. When SSHing into different servers I used to bring my .vimrc and .bashrc along with me, because how could you live without them? Likewise for switching computers, you bring along your config files. When a new job required me to be at l…
This is straight up misogynistic and is a great example of why women are driven away from our industry, because of language like this.
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Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?
#355I am seriously considering Purism Librem 13 ( https://puri.sm/products/librem-13/ ) as a replacement for my MBP. I haven't had any hands on experience with it though, so if anybody have tried it, I would love to hear about your experience. I like the privacy first approach and I think it is becoming more and more essential to have this kind of alternative.
And then this landed on HN:
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Zlatan-T...
Basically Zlatan Todoric the former CTO of Purism calls Purism's claims "shady" :(
Too bad... I had high hopes for Purism.
Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?
#356I have been using a Rev1 Surface Laptop as a development machine for over a year - here are my notes after six months: - https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2019/05/11/2030 Full disclosure: I work at Microsoft. I also still use Macs (and will keep using them regardless-for instance, I use a 5K iMac a lot of the time I work remotely) and have kept a Mac-centric blog for sixteen years, so I think I can be pretty straightfo…
The Lenovo X1 you hated, was it the Carbon or another in the X1 series?
The Carbon. I think I have a blog post about it, but my overall experience with it was lousy - spongy keyboard, dim screen, atrocious touchpad... I could go on.
Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?
#357I am seriously considering Purism Librem 13 ( https://puri.sm/products/librem-13/ ) as a replacement for my MBP. I haven't had any hands on experience with it though, so if anybody have tried it, I would love to hear about your experience. I like the privacy first approach and I think it is becoming more and more essential to have this kind of alternative.
It sound very good. I would love to have a feedback on this product because I think it expensive (start at 1100€ for 8 GO RAM + 250 GO ...)
According to the article I just shared, it seems like it's not just expensive, but unnecessarily expensive :(
Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?
#358Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have been working on Windows machines (C# ftw) for a while now. I hate it. Everything. Kafkaesque configuration UIs, horrible window management, mouse acceleration is off, font rendering is atrocious, the updates make me unreasonably angry, mixed design systems leave me confused, File Explorer isn’t even trying, many apps are downright insulting, and the entire thing just reeks of PMs in ill-fitting suits prodding th…
Don’t forget the ads. Ads, even in the powershell. Telemetry of everything. Automatic installs of OneDrive, Microsoft Teams, etc. Fuck Windows. It sucks.
As someone else pointed out, Enterprise versions don‘t get ads.
As for teams, enterprises love teams since it comes with the Office license anyway.
Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?
#359Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In a hotel (=on Mac), everything is stylish and cared for, but you have very little freedom to change things. I've heard this over and over — that Macs are locked-down, uncustomisable machines — and I don't agree with it at all. I use replacements for almost all the built-in apps. I use a custom launcher. My editor config Git repo is approaching ten years old, and my shell config Git repo is almost eight. There are…
There's no real package manager. You can't rebuild your kernel. You can't upgrade your hardware. Once your HW is unsupported by Apple you're stuck with an old OS that is unsupported by third party software as well.
As to your last point regarding incompatible hardware, you can use tools like this to patch the installer.
Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?
#360Similar story to OP. The MBP I acquired in 2017 has been undergoing rapid disintegration while the 2013 model it replaced is still working just fine. After stressing over the problem that nothing seemed comparable spec-wise, System 76 released their Adder WS and after reading some testimonials from users online I made the leap back to Linux. So far, I am very pleased with the choice. Here is what I love about it: - A…
> - The keyboard has a numpad so home row is offset to the left
I'm personally waiting for one of their more powerful laptops to have a centered keyboard. The current models that feature centered keyboards offer 17W TDP CPUs, which just aren't quite enough for my taste.