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> I think part of the frustration with the new MBP is the realization that the alternatives are kinda shoddy.

After the MBP unveiling I spent a good few hours researching alternatives, for the first time since I moved to Apple about 10 years ago. Despite the fact that I found a number of options multiple hundreds of euros cheaper than the new MBP for similar or better 'specs', I still ended up with some kind of MacBook as the best option.

For the first time I feel 'held hostage' by Apple, except that I can't really blame them for the lack of quality elsewhere. I can't help but feel a bit silly about being angry at Apple for selling their products at a price point that is acceptable to me (barely), even though that strikes me as exactly the thing a company should be doing...

Get a thinkpad X220, get the large battery for ~15hr continuous use or large battery + slice for much much longer then that.

Both with wifi and I'm usually running CLion or PyCharm while also browsing the web (Firefox/Chrome). All you need to do is install TLP.

Thinkpads are also the only reasonable computer I've found with a docking feature. My thinkpad is now also my main desktop.

I'm looking for a replacement for my 15". The extra space is glorious for people who actually use their laptops as laptops, instead of docked all the time. My T450s gets 12+ hours with the extended battery, but 14" just isn't enough (and the "IPS FHD" display is at best mediocre).

I'm in college and I sit in class ignoring my professors all day. The extra space is unneeded for most tasks. The only thing I wouldn't want to do is watch movies on it. It's perfectly fine to do so long as you've got a way to organize windows and such.

Some peopel just use workspaces. I just remember where I put things.

> Thunderbolt controllers draw 2W at idle

Shit, seriously? Do you have a cite for this? 'Cause that's wild.

https://lwn.net/Articles/707616/

Wow. Explains a little bit about battery life when Thunderbolt devices are active. Thanks.

That's approximately enough power to lift 2 apples up 1 meter in 1 second. Crazy.

Really? Interesting measure. Where did you get that?

Technically, it's approximately enough to accelerate one 15" MBP at one meter/second, with a bit left over to compensate for friction.

High school teacher.

Convert watts to horse power :)

> Whereas other manufacturers keep dedicated GPU framebuffers powered up even when using integrated graphics (because the display is connected to the GPU), Apple connects the display to a custom multiplexer so the dedicated GPU can be completely powered down. I'm pretty sure it's the other way around: the IGPU does the displaying and the DGPU just does 3D acceleration. Other manufacturers don't have a hardware mux because hardware muxes are expensive, and instead have driver support for handing over rendered frames from the DGPU to the IGPU for display. Indeed, NVIDIA has actually made GPUs with no display hardware on them at all, intended for exactly this application.

Get a T460. After extensive research I settled on this machine since the specs are very well balanced. You can get >15 hour battery life on this machine on both windows and linux and it is practically silent all the time.

I've got a T450s. The T460 is in many ways a downgrade from the T450s--no magnesium case, etc. It's also a major downgrade from the MBP. Dual-core rather than quad core, 14" rather than 15", no high-DPI display, SATA rather than NVMe. I think the touchpad and screen are similar to the T450s, and both those are very mediocre. The battery life is great, though, with the 6-cell.

Its the only T series laptop in the T46x generation that has a removable external battery.

a. Its built like a tank

b. It doesnt offer either a dgpu or a high resolution screen. For me this is a positive. On every recent laptop I have tried I have come to regret a high dpi screen or a discrete gpu since both those things compromise on battery and thermals extensively. Giving up on these two features means you win a lot back in terms of real world comfort. This includes my 2013 Mac Pro with the Nvidia card - the thermals / battery life on that are iffy. Apple does better than other vendors at extracting battery life out of a discrete GPU but that is not saying much.

c. I own some Intel 750 nvme drives on my desktop. For all the work I do I dont see a measurable improvement when I am using those over the sata drive that comes with the T460.

d. I do admit that over time I have begun to lean into the less is more philosophy when it comes to hardware.

e. Getting 15 hours of real world battery and then hot swapping the external to get 9 / 10 more really changes the way I use this thing.

This is only the second machine I have owned where I am tempted to order a second machine to stash away for future use.

> a. Its built like a tank

But less so than a T450s. Lenovo inexplicably limited the top-of-the-line magnesium shell to the slim-and-light 460s which has a non-replacable battery.

> high resolution screen.

That's a deal breaker for me. I'm not going back to reading text through a low-res screen. My 2013 rMBP 15" manages to get a solid 8-10 hours despite the retina display. PC manufacturers can't execute that because they're all jumping on the "4k" bandwagon, and there is no power-efficient 4k display on the market right now.

When I realised the cheapest 15' retina pro no longer included a dedicated GPU I was forced to look for alternatives.

I liked the idea of a touch screen and a believable stylus input - got a Surface Book with the dGPU - pretty happy.

But yeah it's 13'

All the new 15" MBPs have a dedicated GPU.

This is not true, as the GP said, the $2000 MBP 15 does not have a dGPU: http://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro/15-inch

(scroll down to see the $2000 model)

That's not a new MBP model, it's a 2015 model, hence the Thunderbolt 2 ports, not Thunderbolt 3 ports.

Well technically he said "cheapest" not "new". Bit of a moot point though.

@holografix: the cheapest 15' retina pro no longer included a dedicated GPU

@rayiner: All the new 15" MBPs have a dedicated GPU.

@lhl: This is not true,

Two different people. holografix never said cheapest, rayiner did.

But it's not "no longer." This machine (it's the 2015 rMBP) has not included a dGPU for as long as I can remember.