Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 813 posts

Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

#361

Post by ramblerman »

JabavuAdams wrote: post #200

** "I don't want to use a Mac" ** "I've had these problems with Mac" Reasonable response: Cool, use what works for you. EDIT> Here are some suggestions that match your constraints. Annoying response 1: You should reconsider because Mac works great for me. Annoying response 2: Your problems aren't real problems. Annoying response 3: Let's live debug your problems in this thread to see if they're real problems. Guys. I…

Your comment is currently on top, so instead of laptop recommendations, we have yet another navel gazing meta discussion about HN and it's tendencies.

Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

#362

Post by Ragnarork »

cruano wrote: post #218
JabavuAdams wrote: post #200

** "I don't want to use a Mac" ** "I've had these problems with Mac" Reasonable response: Cool, use what works for you. EDIT> Here are some suggestions that match your constraints. Annoying response 1: You should reconsider because Mac works great for me. Annoying response 2: Your problems aren't real problems. Annoying response 3: Let's live debug your problems in this thread to see if they're real problems. Guys. I…

Should have put that on the title I mean, it's already kind of stupid to want to avoid something the whole industry uses, from big tech to startups. In particular, when you have a very hard set of requirements that historically no one gets right except for you know who.

> something the whole industry uses

Citation needed. With actual stats to back it up.

The reasonable answer at the end of the day remains

> Cool, use what works for you.

There are use cases where Macs are useless or such a PITA to work with (ugh native compilation), others where they're kinda necessary (i.e. iOS development), and there's been no info about this from OP, so the most reasonable thing to do is still to acknowledge they have a good reason, and stop forcing Macs into the suggestions, even more so by using baseless arguments.

Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

#363

Post by moreira »

brimble wrote: post #320
selfmodruntime wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still install Linux on a mac (which is what I did) and still get a powerful and beautiful machine, if you so desire.

The OS and first-party software are at least 50% of the reason I buy Mac hardware, personally. Safari (+20% battery life), Notes (missing a couple features I'd like, but has also never crashed or glitched on me in a decade of use, so...), Pages, Numbers, Keynote, Digital Color Meter, Preview (I love Preview), the excellent and remarkably low-latency Terminal, Mail, et c. Take those away and I'd just go back to buying…

> Take those away and I'd just go back to buying used Windows laptops on Ebay, putting Linux on them, and being sad.

Same.

It's also interesting to think of this in terms of the real $ value of the OS. If I had to choose between a $1000 Windows laptop or a $2000 macOS laptop, I'd still go for the macOS laptop, even if they had the same specs. The specs of a laptop matter far less to me than the OS and surrounding ecosystem.

Same as how a $10K Mac Studio would still be useless for gaming. Could have the world's best GPU, and it would still have no value to anyone looking for a gaming computer.

Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

#364

Post by ajennings »

shultays wrote: post #358
ajennings wrote: post #339

I bought a Librem 15 before the 14 existed. I was very happy with it (including battery life/suspend) for about a year and used it with Linux as my daily driver. Then hardware started to fail and now it freezes randomly. (I've replaced the memory. Must be the mainboard?) Maybe I was unlucky. Also, the 14 may be more reliable. After that, I almost bought a Librem 14, but I took a chance on the Framework. The only real…

Why the number goes backward?

Screen size. They had a 13 and 15.

Now they just sell their second-generation flagship, the 14.

Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

#365

Post by matwood »

kibwen wrote: post #284
oauea wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting how cult-like mac users are.

Apple is a luxury fashion company and Apple hardware is a way for people to express social status, which means convincing as many other people as possible that Apple is desirable in order to elevate the effectiveness of their social status signaling. It's the same as any other luxury fashion brand, e.g. Louis Vuitton. The value is not in the function of the product itself, but in the perception of status that it enge…

> social status signaling

The same way you're attempting to social signal by putting Apple down as a luxury fashion company?

Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

#366

Post by prmoustache »

martinald wrote: post #28
Casteil wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely not mature enough for a daily driver. It's an alpha, and there are significant things that don't work yet including HDMI, displayport, thunderbolt, GPU acceleration, video acceleration, and sleep/deep idle. https://asahilinux.org/2022/03/asahi-linux-alpha-release/

I've rarely seen a Linux laptop with solid display out, GPU acceleration and sleep/wake ever though...

No issue on my two thinkpads (E580 and Yoga 390), my Dell Latitude 5310, my GPD Pocket 2 in that regard.

I have an HP elitebook 8140p that works well with netflix, hbomax and youtube but seems to have lower framerates with other video streaming services. Not sure if it because it uses the nouveau driver or because it is just more than a decade old.

Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

#367

Post by bluefirebrand »

rileyphone wrote: post #337
bluefirebrand wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I mean, it's already kind of stupid to want to avoid something the whole industry uses, from big tech to startups Windows still owns the market to a substantial degree, Macos is still a niche OS. Maybe you've seen a trend of software companies moving to Macos, but it's definitely not the standard by any means.

That's not entirely true these days, Mac market share has gone up from 5% to ~15% in the last 10 years while Windows sits on its hands. https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide...

I'm not sure how you can look at Windows: 75% MacOs: 15%

and then try and dispute what I said. Those numbers aren't even close.

Sure, maybe MacOs is growing, and less niche than it used to be. I'm not disputing that.

But come on here.

Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

#368

Post by boringg »

brimble wrote: post #320
selfmodruntime wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still install Linux on a mac (which is what I did) and still get a powerful and beautiful machine, if you so desire.

The OS and first-party software are at least 50% of the reason I buy Mac hardware, personally. Safari (+20% battery life), Notes (missing a couple features I'd like, but has also never crashed or glitched on me in a decade of use, so...), Pages, Numbers, Keynote, Digital Color Meter, Preview (I love Preview), the excellent and remarkably low-latency Terminal, Mail, et c. Take those away and I'd just go back to buying…

Just started notes a couples weeks ago. Fantastic - disappointed I missed this for so long. Agree preview is great for what it is. Probably should go back to safari instead of chrome.

Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

#369

Post by ParsnipsOfSnail »

Bought an XPS 15 9500 last March, ticks these boxes for me. I think these laptops are underrated as Linux machines, frequently overshadowed by ThinkPads.

- Good linux support, only had to manually install one driver.

- Good durability. I'm very careless with my devices, all my laptops have broken at the hinges at least once. This one has held up after multiple hard drops.

- Very quiet, fan noise barely noticeable even under load.

- You can upgrade the memory

- Easy to take apart and service as a user, which is great since I'm going to break something and have to service it eventually. Dell XPSs have always been the best for this IMO, at least of the mainstream laptops I've used.

TLDR: Good combo of linux+repairable+quality+rugged

Re: Ask HN: What’s a good laptop for software development at around $2k?

#370

Post by esaym »

xvello wrote: post #147
radicalbyte wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only particularly disappointing thing is that the battery drains mega fast while suspended That's a killer - it's 2022 and Apple are still the only company who can get that right. I'd switch over to a Framework in an instant (for dual-boot Linux/Windows) if they could fix that.

Intel has removed support for S3 sleep from their platform, so every laptop with 11th+ generation Intel is plagued with this issue. Dell even put out an advisory that a sleeping laptop is not safe to store in a backpack anymore! AMD still supports S3 sleep on their Ryzen processors, but you'll need to check user feedback to make sure that the vendor did their job implementing it properly. In S3 sleep, the UEFI/BIOS i…

>Intel has removed support for S3 sleep from their platform

Wait what? How is that allowed?? What is the replacement?

Post reply on HN