I'm seriously giving thoughts to getting a MacBook Pro for myself, I spend most of the time doing python, php and web development related stuff. I was wondering what sort of annoyances bother a macbook user ? and has anyone faced problems with installing Ubuntu on it (not a VM) ?
What are some common Mac annoyances that you face day to day?
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Re: What are some common Mac annoyances that you face day to day?
#2Why would you get an MBP just to install any other OS on it?
I've owned a couple (15" MBP currently), and I think there is more durable hardware out there that can be had cheaper.
I don't really have any annoyances with OSX or the MBP hardware. That is not to say it is perfect, just that I knew what to expect going in, and that there is no all around perfect OS or hardware. I do find the overall annoyances much less than when I've had to work on plastic (Thinkpad) laptops with Windows.
Re: What are some common Mac annoyances that you face day to day?
#3Why would you get an MBP just to install any other OS on it? I've owned a couple (15" MBP currently), and I think there is more durable hardware out there that can be had cheaper. I don't really have any annoyances with OSX or the MBP hardware. That is not to say it is perfect, just that I knew what to expect going in, and that there is no all around perfect OS or hardware. I do find the overall annoyances much less…
I agree, If you are going to install Linux, even something as "it just works" as Ubuntu there are better laptops to choose for hardware support. I still think there are fan sensor/control issues that require a bit of a hack to get working even semi correctly.
Several of the OSX annoyance I have faced came from switching to a mac from Linux using a tiling windows manager. I found some software "SizeUp" http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/ that lets me do similar keyboard controlled tiling of windows and with few other cheap apps I'm almost 100% keyboard :)
Re: What are some common Mac annoyances that you face day to day?
#4Not having a MAC to begin with.
Re: What are some common Mac annoyances that you face day to day?
#5Inability to resize windows from any corner except the bottom right.
Re: What are some common Mac annoyances that you face day to day?
#6I can't think of any common annoyances. I come from the Linux desktop world, so having a GUI that works right is great. It was hard to get used to the close in the top left and drag in the bottom right only at first but I don't even notice that anymore.
Under the hood it is Unix, includes Python and wxPython by default, Xcode is free and an awesome development environment so I can do as much and more than I can with a Linux box.
If you need to run Ubuntu, just do it in Parallels, otherwise your annoyance is going to be having to reboot into OSX.
Re: What are some common Mac annoyances that you face day to day?
#7Inability to resize windows from any corner except the bottom right.
This might help.
Re: What are some common Mac annoyances that you face day to day?
#8I had tons of hardware problems.
It’s just that I could be an outlier, these kinds of stories are always so freaking anecdotal and not really a help when deciding what to buy.
My screen failed and was exchanged. Then my main board failed and was exchanged. Now everything seems to be working fine. Oh, yeah. I nearly forgot, my DVD drive was unable to burn anything so it was exchanged. The exchanged drive was also unable to burn anything and was exchanged again. After those two tries it finally worked. And I already destroyed two batteries. After mere 110 cycles both were unable to hold much charge (they lasted for 30 min or less). Both were exchanged.
All this, and the MBP is not even two years old. Since I have Apple Care I didn’t have to pay for labour or parts, but I had to pay for transport to and from the few places in Germany where Apple hardware is repaired and I didn’t have my laptop for several weeks in the span of those last few months.
I hope that’s all for now because I actually still like my MBP. I planned to buy a new one at the earliest in three years, but after all those failures I don’t have much hope that my MBP is going to make it.
But: it simply cannot be the case that every or even a big percentage of Macs fail like this. With Apple having to pay for two batteries, one whole screen, a main board and two DVD drives plus all the labour they certainly didn’t make any profit from my purchase.
Re: What are some common Mac annoyances that you face day to day?
#9The custom "framework" system for Ruby and Python is a minor annoyance when you want to customize or upgrade them. Apple puts python in one place, the python community installers put it in another, and neither is where you'd install it on your own. Although installing most things and building from source are pretty much the same as with linux, if there is already an apple-installed version you might find you need to so some minor surgery (make a symlink or two) after an initial install. In most cases, using macports works just like any other package manager and, as a bonus, keeps everything segregated into its own directory tree, so many people use that when possible.
Still, these issues are minor and infrequent. Linux installs aren't always painless and will require triage from time to time, too. But compared to doing the same stuff on windows, well ...
Re: What are some common Mac annoyances that you face day to day?
#10One thing I miss from Windows-- the ability to easily access any menu item from the keyboard (not just items that have a defined keyboard shortcut). Yes, it can be done, but not "out of the box" using individual keystrokes to navigate each level of the hierarchy.