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Comment by kar1181 | Hacker News Reader

I'm not on the forgive train yet, but with the Apple computer ecosystem (as in things that look and behave like a PC-esque device) becoming increasingly hostile, I'm actually seriously considering going back to Windows.

The deal breaker is having a unix shell. I have worked on a system with a native unix environment for a decade and a half, going back to to the windows shell is not an option.

Thankfully, the Linux Subsystem for windows works pretty well already and with some further iteration I think it could become viable for most of my development needs.

When that happens I don't feel any loyalty to apple and will happily move over.

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If the Apple computer ecosystem is becoming hostile, what does that make the Microsoft ecosystem? Apple isn't the one that tried to foist a tablet paradigm on desktop/laptop users. It's not the one whose flagship "PC" is a touchscreen convertible gimmick. In my view, the rMBP is the best "traditional PC" anybody makes. No touchscreen, no detachable or convertible gimmicks. Just a big screen (can I get a 15" surface book?), quad core processor, and the biggest battery anyone has shoved into a sub-5 lb laptop. Also an OS that hasn't changed more than superficially in a decade.

> Apple isn't the one that tried to foist a tablet paradigm on desktop/laptop users

Which they walked back heavily after the overwhelmingly negative reception. A company that makes mistakes isn't a bad thing as long as they listen to their customers and are willing to admit when something isn't working. Would you rather no one ever try anything new?

> In my view, the rMBP is the best "traditional PC" anybody makes. No touchscreen...

Only for the next hour or so.

> It's not the one whose flagship "PC" is a touchscreen convertible gimmick.

If you don't want that one, the OEMs will happily sell you laptops that don't have those things. Dell and HP have actually gotten their act together and are making pretty good ones.. That's what makes it an "ecosystem", something Apple can't really claim. What if you want a 17" MacBook, or one with a gaming GPU? You're SOL.

HP doesn't have anything comparable to an rMBP. Their 15" laptops are either low-end, or x360 convertibles. Also they have tiny batteries (under 60 watt-hours in 15" models).

The XPS15 is the closest rMBP competitor, but even that has a smaller battery, and much worse battery life with high-DPI screen (only moderately worse battery life with 1080p screen).

The closest competitor to the rMBP is the T560. It's more than half a pound heavier with extended battery, has only a 1080p screen, and only a dual-core rather than quad-core processor.

I suggest you do some more research on PC equivalents. From Lenovo, the X1 Carbon is probably closest to an rMBP in terms of target market and price. It's also a pound lighter, has a user replaceable battery, matte screen, no glass parts, better keyboard, NVMe SSD interface, better wifi reception and a power cable that is robust and won't fray. Yes there are also many points in the MBPs favour. We have both macs and PCs in our household and I get tired of Apple fans that constantly claim the MBP is somehow unmatched in design and quality. It isn't. It makes many tradeoffs.

Apologies for the rant

Apple took so long getting Skylake rMBPs out I've looked at pretty much every competitor. They all compromise on key things like screen and battery life.

The X1 Carbon is a 14" laptop (Lenovo doesn't really make a flagship 15" laptop). The battery is not replaceable on the fly, which is a big problem because it's only 50 watt-hours (versus 75 on the 13" rMBP and 100 on the 15" rMBP). The screen is meh (PWM). The keyboard is good, though.

The Thinkpad's vaunted build quality is also mostly a pre-Lenovo thing. I have a T450s through work, and the backlight bleed is atrocious and the keyboard is warped and sticks up near the palm rest.

It's true that the MBP is unique in getting that capacity of battery into a small chassis, but the trade-off is that it's glued in and not user replaceable. The T460 does at least offer battery hotswap at the expense of thinness. The screen situation is unfortunately a lottery, which is also true of Apple machines, though perhaps to a lesser extent. My X1 Carbon Gen4 doesn't have a PWM screen or backlight bleed, I can't fault it.

The only thing the rMBP has going for it is a good display. Go do some research on Dell and HP's small business laptops. They blow the rMBP out of the water wrt to value. The Latitude 5 and 7 series by Dell in particular are fucking awesome.

What about it is awesome? I'm looking at an Inspiron 15 5000. With quad-core CPU, 8GB, and 256GB SSD, it's $1,750! That's $50 cheaper than the equivalent rMBP 15", with worse screen, smaller battery (84 watt-hours versus 100), and no Iris Pro. It's also substantially heavier with the 6-cell.

He's not talking about the crappy consumer-class Inspiron, he's talking about the business-class Latitude laptops. Apples are just cheap, consumer crap compared to those.

You're comparing apples to oranges.

Could you point me to the right spot? I thought I better check it out since I just ordered a new MBP, and figured I have time to cancel.

Best 15" model I could find was the latitude 15 5000. 47 WHr batter. 4.6 lbs. Almost twice as thick.

I run Windows on my MBP and MP, and it's a better experience than running Windows anywhere else I've seen. Since I install Windows from MSDN there's no bloat. My son uses it on his MB for gaming, and it's perfectly fine.

It's been said the best Windows laptop is a Macbook and I totally agree with that.

And no escape key anymore.

Setting aside iOS, how is macOS hostile? Admittedly, I'm just a user and not creating software to deliver to customers when I'm on it (professionally, my work runs on Windows and Linux, not macOS). But it doesn't seem to be terribly user hostile to me.

For me personally, it's more the threat of hostility to come that's unsettling.

Apple has gutted formerly excellent programs meant for professionals. I believe the photography and videography fields had controversies. But I'll speak to what I use personally.

Apple had an excellent word processor, Pages. It could be used for print publishing. Then in 2013 they rewrote Pages to sync is with iOS.

In doing so they removed most of the features professional writers needed. Many authors, such as myself, were left stranded.

The old program still runs, but eventually an OS X update will break it.

Increasingly Apple has turned away from its professional user base, and caters to mass needs. This is shortsighted, as the pro users tend to be evangelists, and also the ones that create software. Every developer apple loses to Microsoft hurts its ecosystem.

But, all that said, I find OS X is generally still great. I'm just....uneasy in a way I never was before. And I'm glad Microsoft is now a viable alternative. I never thought I would say that, and that says something about Apple.

Thanks for the reply.

I'd forgotten about, mostly because I don't use them, their applications. I'd used Pages ages ago in grad school, but that's before 2013 so I didn't experience that transition.

I do realize I'm probably a bit of an outlier. I primarily use Safari, Mail.app, and a terminal with tmux and emacs. Scrivener, as well, when I'm in a more creative phase. The handful of other apps I use haven't had any problems (that I've noticed) with recent OS updates.

I will concede that, regarding hardware, they're heading towards a gray area for me. I really like the idea of the MacBook, but dislike the single connector (we'll see what happens today). And the relative stagnation of their hardware is annoying for many. But the 2012 rMBP has lasted quite well for me, I've only recently begun to notice issues with the battery life and I'm pretty sure that's because I forgot to turn off Docker (wanting to understand containers/VMs better, trying to bring my current office's development workflow into the 21st century).

EDIT: Given my relatively low resource use on the laptop, the reason I don't go with Linux is (from another post the other day), I got tired of trying to make things work on laptops. Along with rayiner, the MBP is a really solid and reliable laptop, and I want the Unix-underpinnings of OS X, without the hassle I experienced in Linux. Building a new desktop soon so I'll install linux there, see if things have changed enough for me.

As the quality of 3rd party Mac software has improved, Apple has stepped back their own software products. To me, that makes good sense.

Back when they were struggling with relevance, they had to supply it all. Who else would? They wanted to be the "digital hub," digital hub software wasn't available, so they had to provide it themselves.

That's not the situation anymore. Adobe stuff is great and it runs on Macs. Microsoft stuff is great and it runs on Macs. Google stuff is great and it runs on Macs. Why should Apple try to compete with all them?

I disagree that Apple is turning away from professional users. They still sell great computers for professionals. They're just stepping back from trying to compete in the space of professional application software. That's not hostility, that's focus.

I know some customers really liked the Apple productivity products, and disappointed that they've been scaled back or killed. But I think it's a good move, and I hope Apple continues to focus more resources on improving their OS, developer tools, security, and services.

Here's my hot take. I use a Mac at work, Linux at home, and occasionally boot into Windows 10.

When I upgraded my Macbook Air to Mavericks (10.9), the Wi-fi died. I had to wipe the drive and reinstall from scratch. Not good for a computer that doesn't even have an Ethernet port. When I upgraded to Yosemite (10.10), the installation process stalled for three or four days. Why? I don't know, maybe because I had LaTeX installed, that's the best I could surmise. When I upgraded to El Capitan (10.11), a bunch of my software broke. Apps breaking upon OS upgrade is classic Apple, admittedly, but it's not a good look as a third strike after the previous two upgrades. I've been using OS X since 10.1.

In general, I just don't agree with the direction they're taking with the OS. The low contrast and unreadable fonts. The constant nagging from the software updater. The way they're hiding more and more functionality behind the option button. The severe reduction of functionality in previously wonderful apps like Pages. I understand the feelings of instability mentioned elsewhere. The ship does not appear to be on a steady course, Apple is not articulating a clear vision for the future of macOS, and it's hard to get a read on where the OS is going next. Even Microsoft wins here because you can reasonably expect all your apps to continue soldiering on, and you can see how MS is striving toward an overall aesthetic, even if Windows undergoes significant changes from release to release.

And macOS cannot be considered apart from its hardware, because that's Apple's bargain with its customers. The laptops are nice, but everything else sucks. The hardware is ancient. Maybe that will change today, but how long until the next upgrade?

I'm in the same boat as you. What do you think is still missing in their Linux subsystem? I haven't gotten to play around with it yet, but my list of demands is pretty small:

- tmux works

- vim works

- bash works like on a Mac

Processes don't work quite the same. There's no sysv init or systemd. There's not good user separation within the shell (run all as root) and the file permissions in places where the subsystem meet the PC are weird.

Those were my first impressions. I'm cautiously optimistic about it though, and confident they'll work out the kinks with time. But right now it's still better to be on BSD/Mac if you like a unix-like development environment without running linux.

I'm curious what your use case for those are.

Are you needing to `init 1` or `systemctl isolate rescue.target`?

Or is it perhaps a need to `systemctl status` on services?

I might just not be that experienced with the wide use-cases for these applications, but what are your hypothetical use cases?

Really I just want a way to write simple service scripts and have the OS keep them alive. upstart, sysv init, systemd, whatever works...

I don't like logging into my dev box and then manually starting one-off scripts for all of the services that I like running (docker, dnsmasq, apt-cache, foo.py, etc etc).

Then use the Ubuntu-packaged runit or daemontools; or port s6, perp, daemontools-encore, or nosh.

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11416376

* http://jdebp.eu./FGA/daemontools-family.html

I don't know whether the Debian-packaged nosh will install on Ubuntu as it stands.

* http://jdebp.eu./Softwares/nosh/debian-binary-packages.html

Your first impressions did not include reading the release notes. (-: The authors made it very clear that it does not "run all as root".

* http://askubuntu.com/a/754951/43344

Last I checked, inotify didn't work and there were lots of cross platform quirks. This becomes rather important once you want to use the WSL for running your dev toolchain (think build tools, dev servers, whatever) but Windows apps for development (Sublime, VS Code, whatever).

On that level, even the Termux app on Android gives you a workable environment. Also the other necessities like git and Node.js.

That's the reason I'm currently working on an Android tablet, though Chrome OS is also promising.

> bash works like on a Mac

It actually works better. Since everything is completely updated. In line with Ubuntu 16.

What do you think is still missing in their Linux subsystem?

A tiling and scriptable window manager.

Pandoc doesn't work, or any threaded Haskell rts application. Not enough ioctl's and other things are supported needless to say.

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