MacBook Pro (2016) disappointment pushes some Apple loyalists to Ubuntu Linux

I think you are simplifying the argument a bit too much by ignoring price.

In Europe (Dublin) I would have to pay 3750 EUR to get a macbook pro (without kaby lake and with 16gigs of ram)

I bought my 2012 retina model with 16gigs of ram 4 years ago for 2050 EUR

The price bump is the thing that puts me off the most.

And while the change to USB-C is a step forward did they really need to completely abandon Thunderbolt 2 ports, couldn't they have had a transition with at least one port on the new MBPs?

Yeh I know it's not Apple's way, but forcing to discard a bunch of perfectly usable dongles and buy a new set isn't very customer friendly and that's before asking the question of why do I need to even buy $100 of dongles to connect a $2000 laptop to my keyboard, monitor, network etc.

Compared to the older models I'm effectively getting less at a higher price point.

The Magsafe is missing - it saved me quite a few times and is very convenient.

Work with a DSLR (SD-Card) and USB-Sticks now requires adapters.

Yes, Apple is moving forward and these incompatibilities are others peoples fault who live in the past and didn't yet move on to an all-Apple ecosystem. But the sad truth is that - while I don't dislike MacOS - I don't need it. I can live with Windows or Linux just as well. I might just go back again.

> I wonder how many people have tried it out?

I don't know about you, but I don't need to "try out" what 16GB feels like in person.

> The 16GB RAM limit is fine for all my needs. My work laptop has 16GB and it can accommodate all my needs just fine

Will 16GB still be fine for your needs in 2-3 years time (or whatever the tail-end of your upgrade cycle is)? The only reason I can still use a computer from 2010(!) is because I was able to upgrade the RAM; the factory-installed 4GB was more than enough for me then.

Using a said to be the most cutting edge laptop along with these fantastic various adapters will make you a new joke in the office...

> ...but my experience with macOS has been so overwhelmingly positive... I dislike the closed nature of macOS...

Generally, the only reason to buy a Mac is to run the Mac OS. So, if you like Apple's business model and you want more of that, then keep buying Macs by all means.

I don't get why anyone would want to keep voting for Apple's tyrannical style of doing business though. If you enjoy freedom, do not give your money to Apple and please support the business model that you like.

Personally, I buy all of my Apple products used or refurbished from third parties so that Apple never gets any of my money. If you value freedom but you still need to interact with iOS as a developer for now, while it's still popular (hopefully not forever), buying non-new stuff is the way to go.

The article's title alone is already a prime example of a very well crafted clickbait for the HN crowd.

I couldn't agree more. Especially this part really makes me smash my head against the wall:

"Instead of 16GB of RAM as found on the Apple, I configured with 32GB (you can go up to 64GB if needed). By default, it comes with a 6GB Nvidia GTX 1060. The price? Less than $2,000! In other words, the System76 machine with much better specs is less expensive than Apple's."

I'm not an Apple fanboy but since the company I work for provides us with any hardware we want, most of us use Macbook Pros. The thing is, sure, it might have 16GB more RAM but it looks like a huge black brick. I'm not even going to start talking more about design but how can you even compare 2.49kg weight to 1.83kg of the Macbook Pro?

Upvoted. I read the news expecting something new, but I'm left with a question: is it me or these laptops look awful compared to a mac? OK all the nice specs but I still need a portable computer. If I was open to buy something so bulky I would probably be looking into desktop PCs...

I'd be really curious if they'd cite sales numbers.

So far they're just getting excited about a spike in traffic. Which doesn't surprise me thanks to all these baity articles, comparing the MBP to various alternatives.

So there's the question. Is this just a side-effect of all the ranty articles, or are people actually 'switching'.

It's OK, though. At least we finally have a place to discuss the new MacBook Pro.

When I first used Linux I installed Slackware which used the KDE Desktop environment which asked me which key binding layout style I wanted: Mac, Windows or a more Linux centric style. Not sure why I never see those options when I setup a desktop environment anymore but Linux has several. I highly recommend KDE because it is highly customizable just don't know where those options disappeared off to. I always remembered it because I thought it was so considerate.

I guess we come from different backgrounds, what puts me off on a mac is the inconsistency between Control and Command shortcuts which makes it even worse on a terminal app, I prefer the Linux ones.

What model of Thinkpad? I'm another one considering jumping since the announcement. :(

What do you wish you had?

> Do you guys run kubernetes on it, or why you need more memory?

Yes we do. Though 16GB is well enough for that.

I'd like to run cloudera on it :)

Containers only get you so far. Windows e.g. tends to be a real memory hog, especially older versions (Windows Update alone can need 4+ GB RAM… per VM).

And if you can't shove everything into The Cloud® because your country is lagging behind on decent internet connections and 1 MBit uplink is the best you can get… well.

Personally I have two development 'modes', depending on what kind of project I'm working on. One which I can easily do on something like an MBA with 4 GB of RAM and one which I really want at least 32 GB of RAM and decent Nvidia card. The new MBP falls in between these two modes and as such I can't see the niche it would fill for me.

Yeah, I kinda agree. But it really depends on use case though. I do data analysis and I have a beefy server that I log on to for heavy duty tasks, so I'll probably not use my macbook for anything that requires more than 16gb.

People that need more memory are most likely to be the ones commenting regarding memory. I suspect that the majority of developers aren't going to need more memory, at least not for 99% of their job.

Also no doubt people want a bump on the specs from the last generation, even if it isn't needed.

I'm running a lot of tools in parallel and you need memory especially when you're doing memory tracing and debugging, which is kind of obvious. I mean, when you load 4 GB memory dumps, you tend to run out of memory pretty fast ;-) Couple this with a compiler that watches for file changes and constantly recompiles stuff in the background, runs tests and so on and with a full fledged IDE, like IntelliJ IDEA, with a browser loaded with stuff and things get painful.

I'm working on a MacBook Pro with 8 GB of RAM and it constantly swaps to disk. Thank heavens I have an SSD, because otherwise it would have been unusable.

As to your response, dude, this attitude of "you're holding it wrong" is iconic of Apple. I mean I don't know what people are talking about, as Steve's spirit is very much alive at Apple and within its user base and I never liked it.

There's a significant speed increase going from 4GB to 8GB RAM.

Having a single GUI-supported VM with 4 gigs is a no-go. You must also use a very light IDE, vim/Sublime/etc.

Chrome alone takes 12G currently. I have multiple opened Chrome windows with about a dozen tabs each. One window for youtube and other sites that tend to make sounds, one for each client project I'm currently working on, and one for each personal project.

Filling up 16G is pretty easy if you seldomly shut down the PC.

I have 32 GB of RAM on my main computer and that actually saves me from having multiple computers as I use a couple of VM's (at least one running all the time) and the typical memory usage is between 18 and 28 GB. I could probably live with 24 GB most of the time, but not with 16 GB or less. I have 8 GB on my laptop in the office and I use it only for email and browsing and to remote desktop to bigger boxes. But my laptop does not have "Pro" in the name and it's dirt cheap.

I understand that disappointment, but it is inevitable with two trends: the end of Moore's law for CPUs and the fact that four year-old specs are good for the bulk of users doesn't help to drive prices down.

The primary thing that has been improving since 2012 is the death of spinning platters across the boards (though a lot of sub-$1000 laptops still seem to have them) and larger SSDs in base models.

Of course, for some scenarios newer generation CPUs help tremendously. E.g. AVX2 can be a large improvement if your work relies a lot on SIMD instructions.

Desktops are in the same boat. I've been looking around to replace my SEVEN year old desktop. CPU performance, going by PassMark score, looks to be about twice as fast now as mine.

Twice the speed is a nice upgrade, but only doubling the speed over seven years? I think about a seven year span like 1994-2001 and going from a 486 DX to a Pentium 4 would have been a whole different story.

This hits the nail on the head. Most complains are about how cpu performance is stalling.

Apple is not competing against bulky, gamer-style laptops. For a thin laptop, the new mbp is extremely powerful.

Even if the fully upgraded, 15 inches mbp is sold at an astonishing €4999. Well, it's company's expense, right? :)

It's even more true for the Air, which is pretty much identical. I bought a 4/128/i5 machine in 2011 and I'm thinking of buying basically the same machine again. A bit faster RAM/disk/CPU/USB, sure, but everything else remains unchanged. It's a shame they're likely to discontinue this, because it's a magnificent machine for ~£1000. It's held on like a charm, it has most of the ports one needs - all it could use is a USB-C in place one of the USBs, drop the charging port and you can release it again. Without this, Apple won't have an all-around entry-level laptop, they will have the tiny, port stripped 12" and then a £1500 Pro.

There's a reason the 13" Air was the laptop to buy five years ago. I'd be sad to see it go. Unless Apple manages to release a 13" laptop closer to the £1000 mark, I don't know what I'll buy when my trusty old one stops operating. Perhaps you could drop the retina screen and the dedicated graphics card? Reuse the shell, change the internals. Please.

Same here, I am not going to buy the 2016 model of MBP since it does not offer anything to __me__ over my current one (MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015)).

Slightly off topic but new models from Apple tend have serious issues in terms of reliability. Our office has many new MB Airs and they regularly freeze up with the latest macOS and only power off & power on helps. Another disappointment is the new iPhone 7, not having audio jack, offering zero alternatives to audiofile users to listen to lossless audio on their phone (using the external DAC is a joke). I am not sure where Apple is headed nowadays but it seems it is not for me anymore. I am going to use iPhone 6s until it breaks down and move over to a different platform. If Apple does not get their shit together with MPB I will do the same as well.

http://www.recode.net/2016/9/14/12904906/apple-iphone-7-audi...

I'm still not sure what's keeping them, do they think it's a waste of time or too little ROI?

I just wish somebody would make a replacement that made everybody want to switch away from Photoshop and all the other Adobe products and onto the replacement, and be satisfied with it.

Adobe is too comfortable. They have no reason to fix their software which is basically some of the worst software I have tried to use professionally. It's so bad that the reason I don't use Lightroom and Photoshop is not because of the subscription based pricing of Adobe CC, but because that even though Lightroom and Photoshop is more powerful than say Pixelmator, Gimp, Inkscape, Sketch, (Apple) Photos, Affinity Photos, and what have we, the rest of the software - and by that I mean the windows, the buttons, the settings, basically the UI and UX - everything except for the actual algorithms that alters your photos/videos/graphics - is awful. Complete shit. Oh, and don't get me started on the the Adobe update thing that sits and runs in the background of your Mac constantly which you have to install Photoshop and the rest of the family through.

Until a real contender threatens Adobe, they won't do anything about it because right now they can ship complete bullshit that runs on both Mac and Windows and make a lot of money doing that terrible job, which satisfies them because they can keep more money themself instead of on people that could make their products better.

Please, Adobe, make your software great again, and make it run on all the platforms. Right now it's utter crap. Fix it!

> I just wish adobe would get their act together and release photoshop and friends for linux.

Never going to happen, there is no lucrative market on Linux for these kind of tools, Adobe isn't going invest millions for a handful of potential users. Even smaller players don't bother with Linux. MacOS is still where the money is for tools for creatives.

My friend uses Adobe products with WINE. Some plugins don't work but otherwise usable.

I think your "death by a thousand cuts" comment really resonates with me; but it is a point against MacOS (and Windows!), not for.

Yes, most things "just work". But if something just doesn't quite work in the way you want it to, you often have to move heaven and earth to hack around the problem, maybe even "accepting" that there's nothing you can do, and constantly suffer that irritation every time you butt up against it.

Personally, I have always preferred having my environment "just-so". After suffering constant little niggles when I'm forced to use MacOS or Windows, it's wonderfully refreshing to come home to my configured linux system.

That's a cool conky setup, do you have any files available publicly to checkout?

I second this. I have switched from Windows 7 to Xubuntu and have never looked back. It runs smoothly on a X61 IBM Notebook with 4 GB RAM. If I have to use an expensive software suite that is only available on Windows/MacOS, I Switch to virtualized Windows 7 mashine.

I built my own last time I bought and the other thing you can't test is how noisy they are.

My laptop occasionally sounds like a plane taking off.

It's marketing. Blatant ad. System76 had build quality issues in the past; no idea if they've fixed their issues in the present.

Nope, but used some other Clevo (the OEM that S76 gets their laptops from) laptops. They're fine. Decent specs, decent performance, but build quality is not always great and battery life is generally pretty bad.

Same cpu, same ram, same number of ports, less storage options and half the battery life.

Good question!

> Ubuntu on Windows in Insider Preview is really usable.

For anyone trying this, remember to enable QuickEdit Mode under the command prompt's properties.

I don't recall what all the defaults were, but I do have everything checked now (except use Legacy Mode)

Alternatively to window's cmd prompt: https://conemu.github.io/en/BashOnWindows.html