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Comment by cs702 | Hacker News Reader

The fact that this post is on the front page is evidence that the most demanding users of laptops, including software developers, feel they are being IGNORED by Apple.

I believe this creates a window of opportunity for other vendors to offer top-of-the-line Linux/Unix-friendly laptops. Many people here, including me, would jump at the chance to buy a high-quality Linux laptop without the MacBook Pro's nonsensical limitations.

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Truth. As somebody who has used Linux on Thinkpads for years, I know there's a lot of suppressed demand there too. A lot of people feel that things have gone steadily downhill since Lenovo took over.

Indeed. I'd already bailed for a ThinkPad a few months ago, but the rest of our office was still solidly Mac. My company was ready to upgrade, but the new MacBook Pro isn't going to be a good fit for us. That's about $25K we will be spending elsewhere.

I didn't leave Apple; Apple left me.

I know we're not meant to do "me too" comments on HackerNews but me too.

For the life of me I do not know why one of the top Linux distro makers hasn't attempted this. Or even a consortium of them? The top ten distros on Distrowatch are:

   1 	Mint
   2 	Debian
   3 	Ubuntu
   4 	openSUSE
   5 	elementary
   6 	Manjaro
   7 	Fedora
   8 	Zorin
   9 	CentOS
   10 	Arch

If they partnered with a hardware maker like Lenovo or Dell or Asus or whoever they could jump-start a whole new world. Chromebooks show it can be done.

It would have to be a hardware manufacturer choosing a Linux distribution. They would have to expect more sales than the cost of development. Contrast that with market share and growth of the Linux desktop. It's historically not been worth it to them.

https://system76.com

It's not as pretty as a Macbook, but they do exist.

I am looking forward to a diaspora of developers from MacOS adding a lot of activity and tooling to popular Linux distros.

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