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Comment by chadgeidel | Hacker News Reader

Build quality. It's difficult to find a computer that matches the quality of a MacBook for fit and finish, trackpad quality, and battery life.

I haven't used the new one, but the 2015 models were among the best hardware on the market - regardless of what OS was installed.

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While Macs have fantastic build quality, there are now premium-level PCs that are catching up to it. The new EliteBook Folio is a Core M-powered, Thunderbolt-containing replacement for the 12" MacBook (not Pro); the Razer series appear to be built just as well as Macs from my time with them hands-on as well.

Personally, I don't care so much about "build quality" in terms of materials used. If the hardware works I'm happy, and the Thinkpad is fine to me.

There are some competitors in the 12-13" range. Nothing that matches it in battery life though: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/11/review-cheapest-2016-ma.... And there is no competition for the 15" that doesn't have serious flaws (HiDPI display or 10+ hours battery life, but not both).

The hardest part for me was finding a 15" PC laptop without the retarded number pad. I'm quite happy with my Dell M5510, but it was basically the only alternative to a MBP.

Yes, this drives me insane too, and is the thing that I hate about the "workstation class" devices. I don't use the number pad and I don't want it, thank you. It trips me up whenever I have to use one and I have to offset my hands from the display.

I would have really loved one when I was doing a lot of data entry in a previous job. Instead I just got a USB keyboard with a number pad, I understand that my niche desires don't necessarily make for a mass-market desirable device.

Even as a frequent user of the numpad, I'd rather carry a USB numpad around than deal with the asymmetry caused by putting one in a laptop.

A laptop isn't a suitable tool for frequent data entry.

(By regulation, in some countries, like the UK)

There's people like me who want the number pad. Also I can't live without separate home & end keys.

I have no problem with offering the numpad as an option for users who do a lot of numerical entry. I just don't want the damn thing forced on me.

It may be fine, but the disk speeds on the latest Macs are amazing. There is no laptop that matches that I'm aware of.

Unless I'm missing something: Huh? Apple is just using regular NVMe/M.2 SSDs, nothing special about them. Lots of laptops have the option for M.2 NVMe SSDs, and most newer desktop motherboards have the slot for it.

Just as a sticking point, Apple's SSDs are not, and have never been, regular NVMe or M.2. They have always used their own stupid custom proprietary connector, despite basically implementing most of the relevant standard (NVMe/PCIe/SATA).

A lot of laptops that advertise NVMe SSDs are using inferior TLC-based or non-Samsung SSDs to check that box. Apple's not alone at the top (especially when aftermarket upgrades are taken into account), but they have been pretty good about using the fastest PCIe SSD that money could buy at the time of release.

True, but I don't think that's common near the price point of Apple hardware.

It's also not uncommon in the "lower ranks". I just bought a 800 € ultrabook with a 256 GB Samsung PM961 SSD (NVMe, 2.8 / 1.1 GB/s) and the Skylake i7 for example.

Also, don't forget that one can buy a Samsung 960 Pro in a machine that comes with a cheaper SSD but uses a standard M.2 NVMe slot, and ditch the original SSD, for cheaper than any of Apple's capacity upgrades.

The Samsung PM961 is not top of the line. It's one of the more recent TLC-based alternatives that shares a controller with the top of the line products, but it's inherently slower and less power efficient.

The latest MBP leapfrogged the rest of the market again

Specs seem to be 3.1 GB/s read and 2.1 GB/s write speed. While that's faster than most M.2 SSDs, equally-or-better specced SSDs are already on the market, eg. Samsung 960 Pro (3.5 / 2.1 GB/s).

It's kinda disingenuous to say that the 960 Pro is already on the market when it's not for sale yet.

Assuming you are using Linux and you have gobs of RAM, the 15-20% difference you will see between an mSATA SSD and NVMe is negligible for most common workloads/applications, as you will be likely pulling things from the RAM cache. The Linux box I'm writing this on only has 8 GB RAM and my whole system is only using 1.1G, leaving 6+ GB RAM as a RAM cache for read files. On 16 GB systems it's even better.

For more info: http://www.linuxatemyram.com/play.html

Umm, they're using PCIe SSDs so you can just go get another laptop with one. Like this ASUS: http://amzn.to/2eGg2KM

> 512GB SSD with transfer speeds of 1400MB/s and 16GB DDR4 RAM

The build quality of MacBook Pro is generally good, but it's still hit and miss especially for a premium priced machine. For example, the film layer on my display is currently peeling off, similar to this: http://cdn.macrumors.com/article-new/2015/03/Retina-MacBook-...

This is a 2015 model.

I didn't know this issue happened on the 2015 model as well... I've got the mid 2014 model and it has the exact same issue. They call it staingate [0], and it seems that they've replaced screens with the issue (for free). I have yet to request that, however...

[0] http://www.staingate.org/

I was very disappointed to find it on a 2015 model as well.

The "staingate" name is odd, it's definitely not staining, the laminate just wipes right off with little effort.

They chose for 'staingate' as it looks like regular stains (like the ones you get with dirty hands on your screen). One of my colleague had the same issue (of course, same serie macbooks) but his was just in the middle of his screen. He tried everything to get it away (he said it randomly appeared; he used cleaning wipes daily)... I wonder how many people are still walking around with damaged screens...

Is there any chance of getting this replaced by the Apple Store? I think I was quoted $900AUD.

Yep, Apple are replacing these for free.

This is a result of improper care and applying harsh cleaning chemicals that remove the glare resistant coating - this is not a result of bad quality.

Wrong, you made an inaccurate assumption.

I use a microfiber cloth to remove dust from the MacBook Pro display. Never have used a chemical once, there is no need if you are dusting a display.

I'd take a video and show you how you can scrape off the laminate with quite literally anything, but I have nothing to prove to you. Besides, as another commenter has pointed out, Apple is apparently replacing these screens if you can handle to be away from your work machine for the repair time.

It's build quality.

Only, it's also happening on my 15 inch MacBook Pro screen, which has never been touched with anything else than the cloth it came with and purified water.

I bought it brand new knowing about Staingate and purposefully treated the screen with kid gloves, yet here we are.

I've told friends and family numerous times to throw away that "LCD/Screen cleaning" crap that they were upsold at BestBuy and to just use (preferably distilled) water and a microfiber cloth. That combo will get rid of 99% of smudges and will get rid of them safely! All those commercial screen cleaners contain crap like ammonia and other chemicals that can take off screen coatings.

Build quality is awesome. But parts themselves are just ordinary cheap things which fail. And some of them are just an example of poor engineering. I use rmbp 15". My audio port failed in funny way. It's combination of audio port and laser port in one hole. There's some kind of switch there and it's stuck, so computer thinks that I plugged optical cord and refuses to play sound at all. And it's actually not that rare problem, it happens. Some people had luck with wooden stick, didn't work for me. So I basically have to pay some crazy bucks to replace motherboard because of bad port and bad driver, which can't switch to audio (fun thing is, Windows driver can do it).

Terrible keyboard, terrible cords, glued battery (really???), display which can't forget previous image (crystallization or w/e it's called), terrible mic. Macbooks are not that good.

"Build quality" on a Mac to me, overall, is usually quite manic. Some things are really good - the finish quality on the materials used is always excellent, hinges are always excellent and long lasting, trackpads, keyboards etc are always finished to high quality and installed with a good degree of precision - you don't see too many uneven gaps etc.

In saying that, you're absolutely right about things like the poor quality cables, idiotic glued batteries, and parts that can't be easily replaced. Even i.e. keyboards - I've replaced Thinkpad keyboards before when they have worn out, simply because the new keyboard feels a lot nicer than a cleaned up abused one.

> So I basically have to pay some crazy bucks to replace motherboard

Really? I'd imagine there must be a decent repair guy who can simply replace (or just remove) that audio port?

I really like ThinkPads. People keep claiming that build quality has gotten worse, but that doesn't match up with my impression and experience. The T and X series laptops are very well built. The screens aren't as nice as Apple's, and I can't comment on the touchpads (I exclusively use the TrackPoint), but overall they're great machines (and cheap, compared to MacBooks).

Spec-wise the screens are not as nice. In practice, for coding, I would much rather have the anti-glare matte screen of the kind that comes standard on Thinkpads.

ThinkPad's displays have historically been embarrassingly poor for the price of the machines. Only recently do they have displays that I would consider adequate.

Only a few years ago with their IPS upgrades on i.e. X220s, X230s, suffered from numerous issues (poor gamut, image retention).

I Bought a MacBook a few years ago, the keyboard broke a few times, and the frame was full of cracks even though I was really careful with it. I don't believe one second the quality of the MacBook is better, especially for the price I paid at the time ( + Apple Care cost ). It might be easier to find spare parts for Apple devices but that's it.

Yikes. I don't have much experience with the MacBook line, but I wouldn't call myself careful with my machines and have never seen anything like that!

Real question: Is battery life a benefit when you're running an OS other than macOS? Doesn't macOS have optimizations that make it better at battery consumption than other OSes?

Of course, macOS has better battery management than recent versions of Windows, but a "barebones" install of Windows (drivers and the tools you use without a bunch of services that run all the time) does have good battery life.

I think Apple generally puts more watt-hours in their systems as well, but don't quote me on that. :-)

Not anymore with their thinness obsession :-(

I think the Surface line matches the build quality on macs, but the Linux story is about the same on those...

Razer Blade

Are you able to have a functioning linux installation with a razer blade, without doing too much sorcery? For example, this is the case for plenty of Dells that I have tried. I have never used a razer blade, but I have been through the forums and it seems that having linux work properly is not that straightforward.

I have a 2015 Razer Blade Pro and it worked very well under Ubuntu 16.04. The touchpad, touch screen, wifi, etc. all worked well, at least on newer Linux kernels (the trackpad had issues on older kernels). I did some 3D graphics work, and the Nvidia drivers were much better than other drivers I've used on Linux. There wasn't really any "sorcery" involved from my experience; I just installed from the official iso.

I followed this guy's blog for some further configuration: https://alexcabal.com/get-a-working-touchpad-on-a-14-razer-b...

My main problem was that battery life was pretty abysmal under Linux. With Windows, I would get 4-5 hours under light usage, but under Ubuntu I would pretty much only get ~2-2.5 hours, even without doing much on it. Stressing the CPU/GPU made it die even faster. But that thing isn't really known for its battery life anyways.

Unfortunately I don't have Ubuntu installed on it anymore because I couldn't get Windows and Ubuntu to happily coexist side-by-side. Windows (10) always gave me a boot failure when Ubuntu was installed next to it.

A friend had the same problem, of windows and ubuntu not willing to share the same machine on another laptop (acer). He was able to solve it by disabling secure boot and using UEFI as boot mode plus one magical command to show grub boot menu. Maybe it is worth a try, if you have not already.

My issue with Razer: As far as I can tell, they only ship laptops with the country's keyboard layout. I move around a lot and always buy laptops with US keyboard layout. At the moment, I'm in Germany and can only order Razer Blades with the awful German layout :( I know, pretty niche, but both Apple and Dell allow you to do this.

This page gives a drop-down with the choice of an American or Nordic layout. There's clearly something dodgy with the site, when the German page offers me the Nordic layout.

http://www.razerzone.com/de-de/store/razer-blade-2015

Thanks for your detective work. Unfortunately that's the 2015 Razer Blade, not the 2016 model. Very weird site indeed.

that's not true and you know it. please stop repeating nonsense.

everyone who argues that and then try to prove their point ends up comparing budget pcs. so tiring.

also my company is full of 2012 and 2013 macbook pros that crash and burn with several hardware video card build issues that for some reason it was never able/willing to return.

I've used lots of Windows laptops at home and work over the years. From $800 to custom-built $3k business-class workhorses. I maintain my claim that the build quality and integration on a MacBook is still among the best.

I'll agree that the build quality is excellent but the promise of the stability of an OS built for hardware from the same vendor has been a disappointment. OS X on my late 2012 13" MBP Retina has been the most unstable platform I have used in years. It completely freezes on me about once a month.

I haven't had a blue screen of death or lockup on the various Windows laptops I've been forced to use for work since some time in the mid 2000s. My desktop machine runs Ubuntu and I have not had any stability issues over several versions.

When I replace my MBP it will be with a laptop running some flavor of Linux.

I must say i probably have lot of luck. I have 2011 nonretina macbook pro without ssd and i never had problems. I even dropped it once on hard ground (slipped from opened bag pocked). I use it every day, abuse it, travel all the time i do cpu intensive shit and even 3D sometimes. It still works very well without single repair (just added 16gb ram).

I never was much of a apple fan but this notebook was so good investment. I wish i would get something equaly good again. Unfortunately all that unrepairable glued bullshit is just sad.

$150 Chromebook works great and runs Ubuntu with crouton.

$150 isn't a very good status symbol.

Linux isn't, either... Otherwise, it's great!

You'd be surprised. When I was in college I saw a lot of people running Linux and showing off how cool it was. They were l33t because they had Linux. Uncommon things are very cool in the right audience. Plus, people in CS majors see their heroes using Linux for work and want to emulate them. For us, it's just another tool to get the job done. For them, it's getting a jump start on how they imagine their lives will be in a few years.

My 18 yr old cousin drives a 1988 Volvo with holes in the floor and a missing second gear, and he's the cool one in his group. Because he has the most inconvenient car. That's cool in his group.

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