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Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?

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Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?

#381

Post by asjw »

FussyZeus wrote: post #313
cytzol wrote: post #253

Earlier 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…

People always criticize the lack of customization too as though it's an inherent flaw, like things must be customizable or not be good and I disagree. I love having my Windows Desktop to tinker on, but my Macbook is my workhorse. I don't care if I can customize it to any great degree. I've paid a lot of money for that machine and I expect it to work, without troubleshooting, and without fiddling. I akin it more to go…

Except you are paying 150 $ for a dinner and they are serving you a very over priced average meal and you can't even add anything to it to make it better.

Do you want some oil on it(ram)?

It's 80 euros because you have to ask the chef assistant (apple store)

Do you want different kind of pasta which is the standard for that receipe? (Nvidia GPU)

You can't

So what are you really paying for?

The forniture?

I go to a museum if I wanna see some fine classy decor...

Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?

#382

Post by seized »

tjpnz wrote: post #193
dotancohen wrote: post #186

Earlier 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…

Why the downvotes?

Because it's an analogy for user preference files in drunken frat boy language... And no one here is a drunk frat boy. So it just comes off as tasteless and creepy.

Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?

#383

Post by sandreas »

tristanperry wrote: post #331
sandreas wrote: post #325

I like this question because I'm in a similar situation with my MacBook Pro 2015 despite having bought a MBP 2019, because i was not convinced of the quality... Unfortunately i did not find a real alternative for now... My thoughts about alternatives are: # Software / OS: - Hackintosh - I don't want to bug around with hackish scripts or repeating the whole procedure on upgrades, so I refuse to do this. - Elementary O…

I have a Clevo N131WU and whilst Clevo's are good for the price, the poor battery life and loud fans (without their Windows-only 'Control Centre' software) would prevent me buying one again. It's definitely not a MBP competitor.

Cool, thank you for this feedback. Are you aware of NBFC (https://github.com/hirschmann/nbfc)? Not that this is relevant to Clevo beeing no competitor but perhaps you can take control of your fan - afaik it is known to work on linux systems.

Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?

#384

Post by sandreas »

okennedy wrote: post #332
sandreas wrote: post #325

I like this question because I'm in a similar situation with my MacBook Pro 2015 despite having bought a MBP 2019, because i was not convinced of the quality... Unfortunately i did not find a real alternative for now... My thoughts about alternatives are: # Software / OS: - Hackintosh - I don't want to bug around with hackish scripts or repeating the whole procedure on upgrades, so I refuse to do this. - Elementary O…

Two other hardware resources to consider: Purism ( https://puri.sm ) and System76 ( https://system76.com/ ). Both of which actively target Linux with their hardware. Both have OS distributions tailored to their hardware (less need for tinkering), and both (to varying degrees) attempt to keep hardware and software as open as possible.

Cool thank you. I'll definitely take a look at this ones.

Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?

#386

Post by asjw »

oarsinsync wrote: post #88
mherrmann wrote: post #48

I switched from MBP to a Dell XPS 13 with Ubuntu. I compare the experience to living in a hotel vs. living at home [1]. In a hotel (=on Mac), everything is stylish and cared for, but you have very little freedom to change things. At home (=on Linux), you need to do the dishes yourself but there's no external agenda. It's simply yours. I'm very happy with the switch. Though I'm on (Debian+) Xfce now instead of Ubuntu…

I love this analogy, and it's remarkable at how much sense it makes when I look at the choices I make in my day to day life generally. Hotel-chic is very clean, very minimal, very sparse. Just enough to have the necessary conveniences that appeal to everyone, with absolutely nothing personalised for any individual. As of about 10 years ago, I made a conscious choice to stop customising my desktop (and then later, mob…

> Hotel-chic is very clean, very minimal, very sparse. Just enough to have the necessary conveniences that appeal to everyone, with absolutely nothing personalised for any individual.

It is also terrible if you stay there for more than a couple of days.

Apple is not an hotel, it is a fast food with overpriced menus because they use expensive ingredients, charge 2x the price because of their fancy plates, but what you get it's still an overpriced hamburger.

It's like ordering a 25$ cheeseburger from McDonald because it's made with a percentage of Kobe beef

Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?

#387

Post by tinus_hn »

asjw wrote: post #381
FussyZeus wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People always criticize the lack of customization too as though it's an inherent flaw, like things must be customizable or not be good and I disagree. I love having my Windows Desktop to tinker on, but my Macbook is my workhorse. I don't care if I can customize it to any great degree. I've paid a lot of money for that machine and I expect it to work, without troubleshooting, and without fiddling. I akin it more to go…

Except you are paying 150 $ for a dinner and they are serving you a very over priced average meal and you can't even add anything to it to make it better. Do you want some oil on it(ram)? It's 80 euros because you have to ask the chef assistant (apple store) Do you want different kind of pasta which is the standard for that receipe? (Nvidia GPU) You can't So what are you really paying for? The forniture? I go to a mu…

In an expensive restaurant adding salt or oil to your meal is an insult to the chef.

Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?

#388

Post by SPBS »

okennedy wrote: post #330
cytzol wrote: post #253

Earlier 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…

Once upon a time this was true. User-facing documentation was scarce (usually requiring internet searches). However, between unofficial package managers like homebrew, the excellent efforts of a few devs (LaunchBar/Quicksilver, PathFinder, Little Snitch, etc...), `osascript`, and the internet providing defaults documentation for obscure apple apps, I always felt like I could get the system to behave the way I needed…

What cmd-key shortcuts are you thinking of? FWIW every apple filepicker window I come across I can utilise the following shortcuts consistently, which is very nice:

Cmd-Shift-A: Open Applications folder

Cmd-Shift-H: Open Home folder

Cmd-Shift-D: Open Desktop folder

Cmd-Shift-O: Open Documents folder

Cmd-Option-L: Open Downloads folder

Cmd-Shift-L: Open Library folder

Cmd-Shift-.: Toggle Hidden Files

Cmd-[: Back

Cmd-]: Forward

Cmd-Up: Up

Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?

#389

Post by asjw »

gigatexal wrote: post #129
mherrmann wrote: post #48

I switched from MBP to a Dell XPS 13 with Ubuntu. I compare the experience to living in a hotel vs. living at home [1]. In a hotel (=on Mac), everything is stylish and cared for, but you have very little freedom to change things. At home (=on Linux), you need to do the dishes yourself but there's no external agenda. It's simply yours. I'm very happy with the switch. Though I'm on (Debian+) Xfce now instead of Ubuntu…

Give me the hotel then because I want to spend my time doing work not having to do laundry or cut the lawn.

The hotel "because I don't want to do laundry" is the worst choice immaginabile

If you can afford hotel prices to actually live inside a nice one (more than 12 sq meters), you can afford 5 people doing your laundry and other chores at your house

Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?

#390

Post by journalctl »

robert_foss wrote: post #299
cytzol wrote: post #253

Earlier 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.

I don’t... I don’t want to rebuild my kernel? I want my goddamn computer to compute. I want to get my work done, then maybe order Chipotle. At least the Mac sleeps properly when I close the lid, unlike every Linux laptop I’ve ever had.
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