Actually the new Google Pixelbook Go looks like it could be a 2019 version of the old plastic MacBooks, which were beautifully functional.
Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?
481–490 of 628 posts
Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?
#482Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Tl;dr: Customization is highly overrated. False. Adding 16GB or 32GB RAM makes real difference to any machine. But it's not profitable for Apple, they want you to buy new one.
Apple is not even close to being the only company selling laptops with soldered RAM. All the popular competitors to the MacBook Pro have soldered RAM including the XPS 13 and ThinkPad X1 Carbon. Really the truth of the matter is that for 95%+ of people, RAM requirements have completed plateaued in the last 5-8 years or so.
> Apple is not even close to being the only company selling laptops with soldered RAM.
They were certanly the first to implement that and starters of the wider trend.
Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?
#483I was looking for something like that a few months back, took a gamble on LG Gram. I have been using MBP(work) and Gram(home) side by side for past 3 months. Given the price and performance Gram for me hits it out of the park. Cherry on top is that it's just ~900gms, with USB and HDMI, also upgradable ram.
Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?
#484Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps the mild cognitive dissonance caused by the choice of reference points. Possibly also cross-domain projection of various strongly held views.
Some very vocal, very opinionated people are on a crusade to remove the idea that man with woman, or woman with man, is the default configuration for sex. They actively downvote any comments that suggest that M-F is "normal" all over the internet, from Reddit to StackOverflow. I would say it's been happening for a while but the past few months have been very extreme.
It could simply be a single person with multiple accounts trying to manipulate the overarching discussions through downvotes. The downvoting patterns sometimes raise an eyebrow for me too.
That type of behavior is termed "Call-out culture," or "Cancel culture."
Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?
#485Aside from all the bitterness about ports, touch-bars, lock-in, blah-blah, I have a sincere question. Does anybody know a comparably DURABLE competitor? I have 99% confidence I could knock my macbook air off my bed (while on) 100 times in a row with 0 consequences. I've never had a key come off, had the screen flicker, had a battery problem, had an overheat. I'd be curious if anybody thinks there's any other laptop c…
Panasonic Toughbooks. Many of them are certified under milspec standards for durability. Drop it off your bed? You can drop safely drop several of them from the top of a telephone pole.
Also see the Panasonic Let's Note series, though I have not experienced any of the post-2013 (or so) models. Very light weight, extremely durable (not as durable as official Toughbooks). Feels a little cheap at first (too light weight?). I used to regularly prop a T5 on the floor against the counter as a make-shift step ladder.
A caveat: Let's Note machines are user hostile if you are the sort of person who likes opening up & doing your own repairs. I barely get over it for Let's Note.
Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?
#486X1 Carbon is a really nice device. Its pretty reliable, Linux friendly and has no spyware installed like some other Lenovo lines. But no matter what laptop you pick, its gonna take you a couple of weeks until you are comfortable with it. But it will happen eventually. Laptops have the same interface after all. Switching the entire software stack from Mac to any other OS is probably the main struggle. Try a couple of…
In love with my X1 Carbon. Great form factor, runs Debian without issues, and has been a perfect replacement for my old MacBook.
Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?
#487Earlier quoted context omitted.
I second a ThinkPad with XFCE (such as Xubuntu) as the best combination. A few things which, although obvious in retrospect, I had to learn the hard way: • Get a ThinkPad with physical buttons under the touchpad, if you like to track with your index finger and click with the thumb. I made the mistake of getting the kind where you push the entire touchpad, and it's very hard to use. Apple's was at least useable, this…
There are not many ThinkPads with Ethernet ports. T4??p or P?? are the only ones left, IIRC. Others have either no port or a difficult to use clapet.
My T480s does have an Ethernet port. I believe T490s lost it but the T490 (which has similar size to the T480s) still has it.
Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?
#488Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you used a recent model? The T490/T590 is pretty awful. They keyboard has been getting worse with each new release. The battery is now integrated. Not enough USB ports. And to top it off, there's no "p" model, which means a brand new T490 is hardly any faster than my three year old T460p. But hey, they're thinner now, which I'm sure makes some marketeer somewhere very happy for reasons I'll never understand. Edi…
T480 is a quad and will destroy a T460
I'm not talking T460, I'm talking T460p. It comes with an i7-6820HQ. Also quad core. The T480 comes with an i7-8650U.
CPUBenchmark.net scores them 8757 and 8669 respectively. There's no "destroying" of any kind going on.
Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?
#489I 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’d get a Thinkpad!
Compatibility wise the dell is great but build quality is lacking. The Thinkpads (X, T, Carbons) are all light years ahead and have similar - if not better - compatibility out of the box.
I have a X1 Carbon 6th gen and the battery life is awesome and everything besides the fingerprint reader works out of the box.
Re: Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?
#490Windows 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…
> Use Windows versions of things, not things compiled under Cygwin or MinGW
This seems like an oddly outdated notion in the WSL era. Having used Windows 10 f/t in 2018, I'd say 'use Linux versions of commandline dev tools, not Windows'.
Mostly though I agree that Windows 10 is a decent and viable Desktop OS. It does have some problems. The task bar is an appalling bit of Stalinist design (insisting on obscuring parts of running apps even when on auto-hide), and much of the Microsoft-supplied software (eg. Mail, Calendar) is terribly amateurish. If you use the Insiders builds (tempting because of WSL2), it's pretty buggy. But most of the fundamental stuff works extremely well.
All of the OSs available have their irritations, but I don't think those of Windows are any more egregious or numerous than the competitors. Certainly MacOS (my main OS for many years prior to 2018) has become irrelevant to me because of absurd price-gouging and fake keyboards.
What eventually pulled me off Windows towards Linux is largely the development experience and the filesystem. But then I have to put up with its egregious hdpi & multimonitor support and general GUI flakiness.
There are no good OSs in 2019, just balances of tradeoffs for your particular purposes & preferences.