Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro? • Hacker News Board

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

#571

Post by rtdp » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 4:51 AM UTC

derriz wrote: post #256

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 tried this switch (2015 MBP 13 to top-spec XPS 13) about a year ago and was not so happy with it. The reasons that I remember: - Unless watching movies (not something I used it for) the wide screen aspect ratio was a big step down for productivity. IDEs, browsers, etc. all feel very cramped compared to on a more square 13" MBP. - With Ubuntu pre-installed, out of the box, the sleep/hibernate mode used about 25% bat…

The better battery usage and wi-fi are some of the basic things that don't work out of the box even on a preinstalled ubuntu on XPS are real let down. These are the same problems I faced when I had used Linux laptops before, and so now happily settled with 15" mac pro since past 5 years - no issues whatsoever.

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

#572

Post by crispinb » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 5:42 AM UTC

vips7L wrote: post #566

crispinb wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Use Windows versions of things, not things compiled under Cygwin or MinGW This seems like an oddly outdated notion in the WSL era.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…

I'm curious what cli tool you find is better on linux? Imo WSL is fighting windows, especially WSL2, as it locks you out of the windows filesystem and you need special plugins to edit your code. For my workflow (node,electron,java) all of the tools are already cross platform and any shell tools are usually covered by powershell. I do admit though doing C development is probably more difficult as getting ports of thin…

> I'm curious what cli tool you find is better on linux?

It's not so much individual tools being better, but rather the whole unix shell ecosystem is still very much the dev default that everything command-related 'just works' from linux shells. Kind of the opposite from the GUI situation.

WSL2 doesn't lock you out of the windows filesystem, it just slows it down. I found when working in Windows I preferred keeping everything in the WSL2 image, for speed & simplicity (no messing about with wslpath!). So to that extent I agree with your 'fighting Windows' comment.

I don't want to exaggerate the differences - everything works in both, particularly in an age where developer toolchains are becoming ever more platform neutral (node, go, rust, java etc).

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

#573

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 6:11 AM UTC

adamsea wrote: post #220

computerex wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it is a very unusual metaphor, I don't see how it is misogyny or derogatory against women. This is wildly off-topic but I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.

> “I might stumble a bit and touch her in ways she doesn't like, but overall we get the job done and nothing is broken afterwards.”

[deleted]

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

#574

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 6:11 AM UTC

xfr wrote: post #201

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…

This is straight up misogynistic and is a great example of why women are driven away from our industry, because of language like this.

[deleted]

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

#575

Post by dang » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 6:26 AM UTC

dotancohen wrote: post #457

dekhn wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, a little feedback from a wise person who has been on the internet for a while: while you probably thought this was a clever analogy, you would do a lot better not saying things like "I might stumble a bit and touch her in ways she doesn't like". try to avoid gender-specific analogies in computing. You may think you are being clever, but you're really just making yourself look like a cad (And not everybody will gi…

Thank you for the feedback. What is the problem with gender-specific analogies in computing? If I'm making an analogy with relationships, and I am a man, why wouldn't I use a female for the other half?

There's a subtle distinction here so please bear with me.

I guess that to some extent this exchange is affected by being cross-cultural without the participants being aware of it. The fine-pointed contemporary standards that currently apply in—for example—the major cities of the U.S. are not in circulation worldwide. This leads to misunderstanding and excessive harshness. People read comments as if they were written by their next-cubicle neighbor instead of someone on the other side of the world. Does that matter? I think it does; we instinctively make allowances for who the other person is and where they're coming from, in the interests of getting along. Alas, on a text-based internet forum that information isn't available, making tolerance harder. This can easily make the difference between thinking "god, what an asshole" and thinking, "wow, what a pleasant and articulate person". Unfortunately for us all here, the bias is always toward the asshole bit, not the pleasant bit.

Because this bias is so strong and so poorly understood, as moderators we normally urge tolerance and ask readers to stretch a bit to understand each other. In fact I was just writing a defense of your original post in that spirit. But then I figured I'd better read it thoroughly, and noticed this:

> I might stumble a bit and touch her in ways she doesn't like, but overall we get the job done and nothing is broken afterwards

That one sentence is in a different category from the rest of what you wrote. It's one thing to use gendered relationship analogies in a technical discussion. In many places where HN readers reside, that now feels anachronistic and crude—a bit like "take my wife, please" jokes—but is easy enough to give the benefit of the doubt to. But when you take it as far as a sexual analogy that toys with ambiguity around consent, that's crossing into a different zone altogether.

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

#576

Post by morphar » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 6:46 AM UTC

kgarten wrote: post #535

morphar wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not sure I can take him too serious. I have now 3 laptops from purism (2 old 13” and one 15” ). they are great. He’s mostly talking about the phone project (which is hard). Don’t know about Purism, yet have friends who worked with/on Jolla and his comments sound too harsh. PinePhone is interesting, yet haven’t seen much and I doubt they will be doing better ... Jolla shipped (yes with some proprietary blobs ), but wa…

Thank you for sharing that! I was ready to ditch Apple entirely, before I read that interview. But maybe I should just with the 13" Purism and a PinePhone :)

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

#577

Post by morphar » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 6:48 AM UTC

kgarten wrote: post #537

morphar wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Would also argue that Purism is still better than Dell, Huawaii or any other laptop manufacturer :)

No doubt! My biggest worry would be whether the phone/company still exists in a year.

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

#578

Post by EnderMB » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 8:16 AM UTC

I've sung it's praises for years on here, and I'll do it again.

The Surface Book is the best laptop I've owned. The build quality is better than the MBP, and despite owning it for years it's as fast as it was when I first bought it. I've had zero issues with it, and I use it almost daily.

It's also not a bad Linux laptop, if that's your thing. I find myself booting into Debian less and less nowadays, but if you want to mainly use Linux it's possible.

My sole gripe with it is that the trackpad isn't as good as the MBP, but it's very close.

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

#579

Post by drclau » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 8:46 AM UTC

ryanmccullagh wrote: post #562

drclau wrote: post #379

@ryanmccullagh, can you please specify what the problem was? I have a MBP w/ Touch Bar, and the battery just started to swell some half a year after running out of the 2 years (European) warranty. However, I contacted Apple, they directed me to an authorised service and I got the top case with battery (it's glued in), keyboard and trackpad, and the bottom plate replaced free of charge. No questions asked. Note that m…

3 things broke. First it was a dead pixel on the screen, second was a reproducible kernel panic (using any video chat application would panic the kernel.). The last and hopefully final issue was the keyboard issue (double keys, and weird issues with the key not pressing sometimes). Each time I’ve had an issue, Apple has honored the terms of their warranty. However, I value my time and frankly don’t like going to the…

Thanks for sharing. I did not expect 3 completely different issues to occur on a single machine in such a short time interval after purchase. I understand your dissatisfaction.

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

#580

Post by stringParameter » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 10:12 AM UTC

I was in the same position, and last year (2018) bought a ThinkPad T480S - bought on a student discount and stuck an extra drive in the m.2 slot for the WWAN card (used a Toshiba RC-100). I upgraded to 3-year next-business-day for £60.

It's an absolute delight to work on. It's repairable, has ports, lovely 1440p display, it's upgradable, it has a good battery life.

The added advantage is I seem to have absorbed a good deal of knowledge about computers and Unix since switching. I didn't realise how ignorant I was when I was blindly strolling the paths of Apple's walled garden.