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Comment by micaksica | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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

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.

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.

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).

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

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