Ask HN: MacBook Pro still preferred laptop for non-MS development?

I do development with a maxed out 2011 11" MacBook Air. It's tiny, just bigger than an iPad but has a 1.8 GHz i7, 256 GB SSD and 4 GB which has been adequate.

The screen is small but I don't do much development where I don't have a large external monitor. In my home office I use a pricey Thunderbolt Display which gives very good docking capabilities with a simple connection.

I love the nearly invisible weight and very portable size. Highly recommended if your responsibilities don't require massive hardware capabilities.

The hardware is definitely solid, whether you go for macbook pro, which has faster cpu but needs aftermarket SSD, or macbook air that is slower but has SSD integrated and has better resolution.

The OS ... depends on what are you developing. Mac OS is about as good for consuming stuff as windows 7, i.e. pretty good. For developing web apps, with textmate and github you're golden. But for full scale unix coding, you can't get better than Linux, in the amount of helpful software available, and while homebrew is cool, it has long way to go from aptitude.

Also, Apple kind of screwed up things with their throwing out of gcc (which was obsolete and strange version anyway) so you can't even compile lot of FOSS on Mac OS right now, especially multimedia software.

EDIT: for the record, I'm using old old old 2007 Macbook with OCZ SSD.

Where did you get that information?

New MacBook Pro models are coming soon. At the very least, Apple will likely release new models with Ivy Bridge CPUs sometime between now and mid-summer.

Further, there's long been rumors that Apple was re-working the entire "Pro" line to be more like the Air. So people are speculating that the new Pros will be much thinner and drop optical drives, gain SSDs by default and (I hope) have a dual SSD & HD configuration. (so you have the speed of SSD for your boot disk and applications but an HD to store volumous data like photos and video.)

This is rumor, of course, but it seems very logical. Apple is not a company that normally keeps legacy technology around and the DVD has become pretty legacy. There is a very active modding community replacing their DVD drive with a second hard drive or SSD, enough that companies like OWC make special parts for it, so I think Apple's a little behind the curve on booting that legacy technology. (Personally I think they intended to do it last year with the 2011 models, but held off because of a delay in some aspect of the design.)

Even if you don't end up preferring the new model, the older models will get cheap when they're announced.

I've gone shopping looking at other laptops periodically, but the unibody construction of the MacBooks makes them unbeatable. You don't' realize how flimsy plastic laptops feel until you've a unibody. Even the fairly robust aluminum and titanium MacBooks feel flimsy by comparison.

These days so much of the quality of a laptop is very hidden- for instance, putting four WiFi antennas in the MacBook Pro is not something most people know about, and when shopping most people look to see that "wifi is built in" to all the other models, but I've never seen a review that compared the performance of Wifi across models and thus lowest price suppliers are naturally just going to put one wifi antenna in there. And this goes one down the line, chipsets, discrete components, etc. All of these things do have a perceivable improvement on your use of the machine (e.g.: staying in a hotel and not having to set a chair right by the door to get wifi, but being able to sit on the bed. Would you, sitting by that door, think "gee, if I'd gotten a macbook I wouldn't have this problem"? unlikely.)

Plus, if there is ever a problem, getting warranty coverage from other laptop makers is a PITA. Especially compared to walking into any Apple store worldwide and having your machine fixed within 30 minutes on the spot. (They do repairs in the store, and since they have a minimum number of models they have the parts they need on hand, but if they don't they're only a day or two away...)

So, I'd say the Apple Store itself is a big advantage for MacBook Pros, but that only works if you have an Apple store nearby.

Finally, I'd be wary of non Samsung SSDs. I've owned two SSDs: an Intel and a Sandforce based one, and I've had four SSD failure so far. The Intel failed 1 year after buying it taking all of its data (and it had been 2 days since I'd backed up) with it. The replacement is still working. The Sandforce drive failed THREE TIMES. First time sent it back and they flashed it, second time they replaced the drive, third time I gave up on SSDs and went back to spinning rust.[1] Those three failure were within 8 months- the first time it failed was within 2 weeks.

The problem with SSDs doesn't seem to be flash wearing out (not within 2weeks-1year) but with the controllers wedging themselves because they've got a very difficult job managing the flash (and not a lot of RAM and are screwed if they lose power while live data is in the RAM). Since they're doing compression and all kinds of magical tricks to get performance and "manage" the data, that's what causes trouble. Samsung SSDs which aren't nearly as managed, and are just just a bunch of flash, seems to be much more reliable.

So, I won't use an SSD again until its under Apple's warranty because I can just then drop it off at an apple store if it gets wedged, and I think the ones Apple ships are a lot less likely to get wedged and I'll have my time machine drive connected all the time so the oldest my backup would be is an hour.

I can't speak to running Linux, but a recent interview with Linus on TechCrunch he said he was using a Macbook Air (because he wants a silent computer) and so I presume that means that Linux will run fine on MacBooks.

[1] I'm using only spinning rust. my co founder now has that intel ssd. Still likes the speed but I worry that it will fail again.

Personally I would pick Thinkpad or Dell - you can check "compatibility" of specific model with drivers shipped in linux kernel - so you don't have to mess with drivers at all. At least that's what I always do - never had an issue with compatiblity with linux nowdays, just buy what you know will be supported best.

I think it more depends what you want to develop, i've often heard that it's less hassle to play with python etc. on linux than on a bsd.