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Comment by beat | Hacker News Reader

My main computer is a five year old 17" MBP. I've upgraded it to the max and done repairs to maintain it. I need the computational power - I use it for programming, photo editing at scale, and recording/mixing music.

It would cost me $3000 to replace it with a computer that is not significantly more powerful, has a smaller screen and less I/O functionality, and would be incompatible with my audio interface unless I daisy-chain multiple adapters to get Firewire. Fuck that, as long as possible.

This week, my mother's crappy Windows computer died, and I bought her a Chromebook. It was great! I'm now seriously considering getting a Chromebook for myself for day-to-day web browsing and such, and retiring the MBP to music and photos only. If I can figure out how to run Vagrant on one, I'll probably switch for development, too (or maybe I'll just start paying for a cloud-based dev environment).

Meanwhile, I keep having computer envy for a friend's MS Surface Pro. It's the first time I've ever looked longingly from a MacBook to a Windows machine! But frankly, it does things my Mac doesn't do, and the build quality is on par.

Someone please tell Apple than when you need to hold a press conference to convince people you're committed to your product, you're not committed to your product.

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>My main computer is a five year old 17" MBP. I've upgraded it to the max and done repairs to maintain it. I need the computational power - I use it for programming, photo editing at scale, and recording/mixing music. It would cost me $3000 to replace it with a computer that is not significantly more powerful

Compared to a five year old 17"? More like double the power. And unbelievably faster SSD (even if you have an aftermarket SSD on your 17", it will be nowhere near as fast as the ones in current MPBr unless you pay top dollar).

>has a smaller screen

Smaller but hi-dpi, and with far greater color accuracy and brightness. Also, you can hook up an external monitor, apparently lugging 17" beasts around wasn't popular enough to carry the models forward.

>and less I/O functionality

Actually way way more. Less varied ports (basically 2 types: 4 USB-C and 1 headphone), but way way more I/O power and connectivity.

>and would be incompatible with my audio interface unless I daisy-chain multiple adapters to get Firewire.

Or just get a USB-C to Firewire adapter of hub. Daisy chain multiple adapters? Huh?

Does a USB-C to FireWire exist?

TB2->FW + TB3->TB2 in theory. http://www.apple.com/shop/product/MD464LL/A/apple-thunderbol...

Exactly the chain of adapters that beat was complaining of.

FireWire has been dead for years, it's time for an upgrade.

Firewire is very much alive in my house. Why is it "dead"? Why do I have to upgrade?

You don't have to upgrade. Don't upgrade... but if you do, there are adapters for you that will allow you to continue using your old gear.

It's not just hardware. Apple has officially abandoned Firewire protocol maintenance. We're okay at the moment, but how many more MacOS upgrades will we have where Firewire still works?

And I'm not an outlier case. There are a lot of audio professionals and semi-pros that depend on old Firewire interfaces. These were Apple's market for selling high-end laptops! This is basically just disregard for your oldest and frankly most profitable customers. If I didn't feel like a new MBP would actually be sacrificing functionality, I'd probably have upgraded already. Instead, I'm considering a platform switch. That's bad.

They clearly are not Apple's most profitable customers if they're abandoning the tech. If they were Apple's most profitable customers, you'd see Firewire on everything.

I should clarify that I meant that Apple is abandoning the tech, not the customers.

out of interest, which platform still has better firewire support? most windows laptops don't have them either.

btw, as someone who didn't use firewire, i hated that port. waste of space, could have used an extra usb port instead. and it wasn't like there was a lot of gear that used it, unlike e.g. ethernet or vga which sometimes came in handy (i also loath vga).

In the beginning, USB1 was no competition for Firewire. 12Mbps vs 400Mbps.

USB2 was more competitive, but Firewire stuck around due to its lower latency for audio applications.

FireWire is a EOL technology at this point so why would they be continuing to work on the protocol ?

And actually you aren't Apple's most profitable customer since you are still clamouring for old technologies. It's early adopters that upgrade every year that are the most valuable to Apple.

You could replace FireWire in that sentence with LaserDiscs, BetaMax etc. Fact is some technologies just don't take off enough to warrant long term support.

We're living in a transitory period as we move from a world of wires and connectors to a wireless world. This is the pain we have to endure as technology is pushed forward.

If it were up to the luddites and their obsession with compatibility, a laptop would have a dvd drive, firewire, usb-a, usb-c, thunderbolt, hdmi, dvi, vga, sd, microsd,vga, and display port all in one laptop chassis.

Having one single port, that can do all those things and do them just as well, is a far preferable alternative. Couple that with the future transition to wireless-only technology, and we're on our way to the future.

As soon as someone invents an isochronous wireless interface with guaranteed throughput and latency, I'm sure all the recording studios will switch to that.

Buy a desktop or a special interface port if you need something specialized.

His point is that fundamental physics and information theory limit how good a wireless link can be. So wired links will always perform better and therefore high-end audio engineering will run cables forever.

Technically, you could create an isosynchronous wireless protocol. But 802.11 ain't it, and neither is Bluetooth. Both are very tolerant of lag and have little guarantee of latency.

"Buy a desktop" in a thread about deficiencies in Apple laptops is a joke, right?

It's not a deficiency. Laptops can't do everything. Apple can't build a computer that caters to every edge case. That's why I don't complain that I can't play the latest video games on my laptop, or run 50 VM boxes or something.

But I'm not complaining that it can't do something magical and new. I'm complaining that it can't do what the same product could do from the same vendor five years ago.

That's not my point. The new MacBooks may be disappointing, but they exist. The Mac Pro, iMac and Mac Mini didn't even get a refresh.

Doubt it, they won't have any peripherals for their aging unconnected G4 tower.

There will be no purely wireless ever. Wired interfaces have too many advantages coming directly from physics and their reliability is unparalelled.

Personally I dont use anything wireless apart from WiFi, and even then only on my laptop

You know what you find if you open up a wireless router? Wires!

(Well traces anyway, but you know what I mean.)

This Luddite has rather a lot of money invested in a professional grade audio interface. Replacing it with modern connectivity would be upwards of a thousand dollars. Ouch. And it works perfectly. Why am I throwing away hardware that I like and trust for the relentless march to the future?

Any recording interface more substantial than a headphone jack is wired. It's going to remain that way for a while. Audio is a quasi-realtime problem with a lot of bandwidth. Neither Bluetooth nor 802.11 are really reliable enough for the task, and won't be for some time to come.

Preserving investment in hardware that works, rather than making a risky expenditure on hardware that may or many not work (and will change process), isn't "Luddite". It's realist. We have the same problem with much more static tech, like ATMs and voting machines. The "one single port" dream you're spouting? I've heard that dream before. It was called "Firewire" back then. Another decade or so, and we'll be digging Lightning connectors out of our junk drawer and saying "Hey, remember this? Do we even need to keep this anymore?"

But this is where I get pragmatic. I know I have compatibility issues, so I'm looking at semi-retiring the MBP just for the heavy lifting and compatibility of audio, and maybe looking at what else can be done about photo editing. And a Chromebook for web browsing and other not-hard-work sounds better and better all the time.

> Why am I throwing away hardware that I like and trust for the relentless march to the future?

It's all part of change. It's inconvenient(change) when done well, and absolutely show-stopping when done poorly. Apple took a ham-fisted approach to this, and decided you should go through that right now. Not a lot of choice left to people like you(those with significant hardware investments) beyond using refurb gear, or spending a large sum on a brand new set of hardware and accessories(which will go through this same cycle again in the future).

It kind of all stinks, but there isn't a terrible lot us little people can do about it.

> ... professional grade audio interface.

What is that interface? And it's not supported through the USB-C interface?

Apogee Ensemble Firewire. A Thunderbolt replacement would be $2500. There are other, less expensive options, but I'm still stuck with a minimum of $300 (new interface that supports ADAT, reuse the Ensemble with that) and probably upwards of $1000 to get equivalent functionality. This, on top of the cost of a new computer.

Yeah it may suck for you, but it won't suck for the people that buy whatever this equipment is and then use it over USB-C once that company makes the conversion.

It's like if we had no common way of measuring things. Imagine having to walk around with like 10 different tape measures because there was no standard. It's stupid. All of these different port interfaces are just like that.

Yeah. It's no big deal. Santa will be coming by real soon with new shiny USB Type C toys to replace our obsolete ones. It's a good thing Santa can write blank checks.

Many interfaces of yore didn't do USB (especially ones with lotsa I/O). So many jumped on the FW train due to bandwidth and the fact that USB 3.0 just wasn't in audio hardware developer's sights.

What's the big issue with slapping a USB c adapter onto your audio interface and considering it a $30 upgrade? USB c is objectively better.

Look up the latency in the USB specs. There is a reason that professional audio equipment used FireWire. Thunderbolt is better, and there is some equipment available for it, but frankly it is overkill. And even then it only works with some USB-C ports, with some cables.

Should have stuck with ADAT!!!

They're still putting that crap* in interfaces!

*Note, I say "crap" only because I'm not cool enough to have any ADAT interfaces.

Why would you throw away hardware that works? Your current computer still works with it, right? And if that stops working and you need to get another computer, there are adapters that will make it work with the new hardware that don't require you to spend thousands. I don't see the issue here. If the hardware is more important to you, buy the adapters needed. If the computer is more important, buy the new hardware to go with it. The new computers don't suddenly cause your perfectly good hardware to be unusable.

You as the individual don't matter. Parts will fail, components will need to be replaced, time moves forward. The future will be those same devices (or similar) using a single cable that will be compatible with everything, or it will be wireless. If for some reason it's not, then you just buy an adapter (which people do now anyway).

Your view is short-sighted. You're saying "What about me? What about right now?".

I'm a customer. Of course I matter. They're losing sales because they're not giving me any reason to stay, and multiple reasons to go. That matters.

Suppose I bite the bullet and switch to Windows? Apple's lost me then. They're not going to win me back. And that's not just the Mac. That's maybe my next phone. My next pad. My next router (oh wait, they're getting out of the wireless router game too).

Losing customers who have been with them for decades, who have spent thousands and thousands of dollars on their products and will stop? That fucking well matters.

I do dislike them exiting the router business.

As for losing customers, well, then we will look at the sales numbers.

I wasn't "happy" with the new MacBook Pro lineup, but I personally love the direction they're going. The only bad thing is the price increase, but they will drop the price.

But for your "I'm a customer I matter" comment. No you don't. Apple isn't going to let people who want a gigantic laptop with a million different ports get in the way of a wireless or standardized port world. I hate the fact that my work monitors have all these connections. You have all these cords coming out, different port types that do the same thing, and how many times has somebody gone to a meeting only to have to bring some dongle or find out that they have hdmi and the conference room is vga only or something? All of that is stupid. It's 2016. We can do better. I don't want to be tethered to the wall or a some device like a slave.

> The only bad thing is the price increase, but they will drop the price.

Out of pure curiosity, when's the last time Apple lowered the price of an existing product?

Last time I bought a new Mac was five years ago, but at that time their website had a quiet corner where you could buy the remaining stock of the previous models at a substantially reduced price. They also sold refurbs of current and previous models with further discounts. I bought just after a new-model announcement, and got the machine I'd been looking at the previous week for ~25% off.

So basically, Apple has chosen a direction, and that direction may make sense, but it involves abandoning longtime loyal customers who were/are dependent on parts of the Apple ecosystem they're no longer supporting.

Wasn't that my original argument?

One single cable or one single port? I thought the problem with the USB Type-C port was that there is a myriad of different USB C cables that "fit" into the port but each cable has different capabilities and thus your device may only work with a certain USB C cable.

http://blog.fosketts.net/2016/10/29/total-nightmare-usb-c-th...

Many inexpensive USB C docks will have firewire. And I've used fw interfaces in the past for audio, I honestly prefer newer options but hey if it works just don't update anything and you'll be find until it dies.

The pain is completely self imposed. Wired ports and wireless technology are not mutually exclusive. USB-C is great bit there's no reason to remove all other ports. Technology will get adopted. It doesn't have to be forced.

IMO they should have given us one transition model before going all USBC. Leave one USBA, HDMI, sdcard slot (my wife and I use it all the time, and it is the pro after all, used by many in graphics arts, film, and photography). Downgrade power to USBC (yeah, losing magsafe or moving it to a dongle is a downgrade) if you must, replace the thunderbolts and other USBA with USBC.

That way I'd have a chance to actually pick up any USBC devices whatsoever before moving to a laptop that can only connect to USBC without dongles. 'Cuz right now I have zero, and so does my Mac-only office. Even the couple of USBC Android testing phones floating around come with a to-A USB cable, so I'd have to buy a new cable for them.

The people who compared the USB-C move to Apple's past moves were completely ignoring that in the past Apple replaced the FLoppy drive with the CD rom, but still kept all the other ports around.

This time round Apple has replaced every port with a USB-C port, which means I don't need to transition only 1 interface. I need to transition all.

And the most painful part about this move is they are doing it to the product line that in the past was loved because it came with USB + FW400 + FW800 + Video + Magsafe. IOW, a design goal for the Pro line used to be easy compatibility so professionals could end up in any situation and have a great chance of getting their computers to work with their environment without any adapters.

> Apple replaced the FLoppy drive with the CD rom, but still kept all the other ports around.

What? That's not even close to true. The iMac replaced all of Apple's then-standard ports with USB. ADB: gone. Serial: gone. SCSI: gone.

Yes, but that was consumer / education market gear first (iMac) as I recall.

More or less back on topic ... I bought a HP Probook for my on-the-road studies/work last cycle because I needed a portable that I could do _work_ with and repairability, matte screen, mouse buttons, VGA, HDMI, and whole lot of other things were much more important to me than width or mass or shiny. It came with Windows and it's well supported.

I would like to get another 17" macbook pro someday (mine is pretty old and 80% retired), and this move and the messaging around it suggests that Apple doesn't care to make one. It's no surprise, but it still stings a bit, and as noted else where it is breathtakingly clumsy for their remaining mac business (as is that press conference).

Except there needs to be some BENEFITS on the other side. What you're saying is he should upgrade for the sake of upgrading, at great cost, to something that will do effectively the same thing except in a bass-ackwards fashion.

I'm not opposed on principle to a Macbook with a touchbar but I'm not buying, why? Because it has plus or minus the same specs as my current model which also connects to my monitors and everything else I use. Why would I impose that cost and pain on myself? Just to have the latest and greatest for the sake of it? Screw that, I'd rather be a luddite than a lemming.

Let me see... My laptop has a DVD drive, USB 3 (A), HDMI, SD, and microSD. I already had to buy a DVI adaptor, and already had a VGA one.

It works well. I just miss a 4rt USB port.

You know what works better? One cable that does all of that or no cables at all.

This is exactly the type of attitude that makes me dread the future. Why invest in technology at all?

Wires are great, honestly. Easy to debug and use. The original zero config.

I can tell you never used token ring. :)

Ha! Even Ethernet used to be a lot fiddlier in the '90s, when you had to worry about crossover vs patch cables.

How about trying to find the PC with the beaconing condition? That shuts down the entire ring? Usually someone copied another DOS PC configuration that uses the same Token Ring address. Engineers were good for that. 1994 or 1995 and they bought a new PC and instead of filling out sheets to have IT set up the PC they tried to do it themselves.

Technology in this context isn't an investment. Wires aren't investments. Wires are a cost. Imagine if your kids grow up and never have to buy a single cable for anything. How much money would that save them over their lives? What if these kids grow up in a world where things are connected, seemingly alive, because they just know about the presence of other things and can "talk" to those things and do your bidding?

This is what we're moving to. It sucks that people can't see that.

This is only going to happen in the professional audio world if you can build wireless protocols with sufficient reliability in terms of latency - bandwidth isn't the problem, latency is. Neither Bluetooth nor 802.11 are designed for guaranteed latency. Firewire was designed explicitly for it. USB not so much, but it can be adequately faked. But wireless? I don't see that happening anytime soon. Right now, I can't get my computer to reliably do Bluetooth from ten feet away to handle a single one-way stereo stream. That's crap.

So this wireless dream future? It's just a dream, for those who have more demanding needs than surfing the web.

I can't agree more. Wires are the best. Unfortunately we're in the rapidly shrinking minority. Most people would rather put up with regressions in reliability and debugability in the name of ease of use.

I lived in a house with several roomates for a year or so, and I never ever had a problem with the internet because I used an ethernet cable. My roomates went through 3 wireless routers and a wireless repeater and they were never able to completely solve the myriad of issues that comes with wireless technology on a congested spectrum.

It really boggles my mind that they'd allow themselves to be frustrated, waste many combined hours of their life troubleshooting, and spend hundreds of dollars on network hardware when the solution is SO SIMPLE and dates back to 1970s.

My laptop has nearly all of those ports, and more besides. It's fantastic. The obsession with light weight and slimness is silly. Lugging around a five pound or even ten pound laptop is not that much of a burden.

Wireless technology needs to get a whole lot more reliable to get its foot in my door.

I don't really care for making the laptops increasingly thin, but the ports are just nonsense. Carrying around a 10 pound laptop with a trunk full of adapters is going to be a thing of the past and I can't wait for the future.

The problem with USB-C as "the one port to rule them all" is that it is impossible to produce a cheap cable and still meet the design spec. Even major smartphone manufacturers have been caught including underspec cables with their phones that damage one device or the other right out of the box. This isn't just limited to USB-A to USB-C cables, there are plenty of USB-C to USB-C cables that pose a potential threat when pushed to their power transmission limits.

USB-C was a great idea taken one step too far. USB-C would be perfect if it hadn't been saddled with the requirement to handle 100 Watts of power. That's an overkill requirement for a feature that wasn't demanded by anyone aside from OEMs looking to cut an additional charging port off the bill of materials.

If you're only using FireWire at a desk, look at thunderbolt docks. OWC's TB3 dock will have a FireWire 800 port.

It's a bit pricey at $300, but will also get you a power supply (so you can leave the original in your bag), displayport, gigabit ethernet, S/PDIF, and a bunch of USB-A all over a single cable.

If only there were a wired protocol that is high-speed, has a standard connector, can deliver power, and has both bandwidth and latency controls ... wouldn't that be wonderful? Then we wouldn't have to reinvent all of these wires.

(Yes, sarcasm. That protocol is called Ethernet. And basically every high-speed interface we currently have is a bad reimplementation of it for political reasons.)

How I long for the day when I can configure the subnet mask of my mouse, the mDNS settings of my graphics card, and the routing table of my PCH!

(Yes, sarcasm. Two can play.)

You know using IP is not a requirement for using Ethernet.

Yes, I do.

ethernet has as much to do with TCP/IP and DNS as does radio waves with FM radio.

ethernet is a wire protocol upon which a TCP/IP stack runs on top of. if USB looked a lot more like ethernet, it would be far easier to write drivers for devices.

USB and PCIe are not layer 2 protocols, they're vertical over layers 1-6 so I filled in the blanks of the proposal, such as it was. If you want to pick nits, do it with bsder, comparing the two is his idea.

> it would be far easier to write drivers for devices

I can only assume this comes from a place of "I know a bit about ethernet and would like to transfer that knowledge to the embedded space." It certainly doesn't come from a place of "I write drivers for the USB and PCIe stacks and think ethernet would make my job easier."

There's also the matter of what HW/FW likes, which probably has greater bearing on the situation than what SW likes, and I can assure you that they'd be even less enthusiastic about the replacement than I am. Proof: they've got a choice! If they wanted to use ethernet, they could just do it. They don't. For good reason.

Ethernet is not as cheap as USB 2 for low-cost/low-performance devices. And it's not as fast (plus higher overhead) than Thunderbolt for high perfomance applications. Thunderbolt is (very loosely speaking) PCIe extended outside of the computer.

(And yes, I'm assuming bare ethernet frames, not IP or such)

100Gb ethernet seems to be faster than Thunderbolt (max 40Gb). PCI Express v4 x16 does win at ~250Gb, but 400Gb ethernet is in the works.

We're not talking Ethernet vs USB 2.0. USB 2.0 wins in terms of cheapness.

However, Ethernet IS cheaper than USB 3.0. And Ethernet is significantly less complex. Look at carnage from all the audio interface people trying to come to grips with Thunderbolt and USB 3.0. Whereas, people implement gigabit Ethernet interfaces all the time.

And this dovetails with USB 2.0. In terms of complexity, I have found that Ethernet wins. I have started removing USB 2.0 from anything I can and replacing it with Ethernet when possible. USB 2.0 is such a pain to handle in terms of drivers while Ethernet "just works".

Good luck with 40Gb/s speeds or pushing 100W on ethernet. (Sure you could use HDBaseT for 100W but we're talking about getting rid of adapters right?) It's definitely not just for political reasons, that's disingenuous at best.

Is there any reason we couldn't switch to a dual optic fibre (for signal) and copper (for power) ethernet?

100Gb ethernet has been around since 2010.

There is no good reason why USB 3.0 wasn't USB 2.0 spliced with Ethernet other than politics. It wasn't cheaper. It wasn't faster. The drivers weren't better. The connector wasn't smaller.

However, HDMI (which is primarily four pairs of high speed serial--just like Ethernet) and later Displayport became the "solution" because of all the people pushing HDCP.

Thunderbolt was the "solution" to the fact that USB 3.0 wasn't coming down the pipe fast enough. And that drivers were just too complicated. Why solve the simple problem of loading a driver at boot time when you can just give the peripheral complete control over a system bus? What could possibly go wrong?

USB 3.0 is an "evolution" over 2.0 in the way that a jackalope is an evolution--splicing two completely unrelated things together (USB 2.0 spliced with 4 high speed pairs--just like Ethernet). But you can't charge a licensing fee for Ethernet ...

Ethernet does not have any of the guarantees that 1394 offers.

At the physical layer, gigabit PHYs can be used to send any logical protocol you want. You could implement something akin to 1394 over 1000base-T.

Incorrect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-Sensitive_Networking

> it will be nowhere near as fast as the ones in current MPBr unless you pay top dollar

Even with top dollar you cannot squeeze more than ~550 MB/s out of SATA3, compared to the ostensibly 2+ GB/s in the new MBPrs with NVMe.

Heh I have recently upgraded to a SATA3 SSD in my 2012 MBP and was amazed at the speed. The NVMe ones seem insane.

Anything is better than the 5200rpm Toshiba drive my MacBook came with, that's for sure!!

yes. totally.

i'm surprised Apple even offers mechanical hard drives in their Macs any more. they're soooooooo slow. they make the whole machine feel like a wet sponge.

Storage. 1TB+ SSDs are still quite pricey.

But, for the system drive, the drive that's inside the machine where the OS is installed and loaded from, the drive that cannot be (easily) replaced on most Macs -- why, nowadays, would anyone buying a new computer they're going to use for several years want that drive to be an old-school, 200 MB/s HDD?

Apple still gives users the option to buy the slow system drive (i.e. shoot themselves in the foot) rather than forcing them to ante up for (at least a 256GB) flash system drive.

But, given it's Apple we're talking about, I find it really, really weird. Historically, Apple is notorious for denying the user these kinds of choices (e.g. a floppy disk drive, optical drive, user upgradeable RAM ...)

But slow system drives? Apple lets people buy those all day long. I don't get it.

I bought a 1TB SATA Samsung 850 Evo for my MacBook and it is like a new machine. So so so slow before this.

The high-end processor on the 2011 Macbook Pro was the 2860QM. Current options on the 15" are the 6700HQ, which is about 1% faster on single threads and 14% faster on multiple threads, and the 6920HQ, which is about 23% faster on single threads and 36% faster on multiple threads.

For the C++ codebase I work with my 6700 compiles 4.5 MLOC of code in a little less than half the time my 2nd gen i7 does. Hardly scientific, but the 6th i7s are really fast.

This is probably due to the improved storage iops of a PCIe flash drive more than the CPU.

And more available memory, letting the OS cache more files in RAM.

the 2011s may not have offered it as configured by apple, but they will use 16g ram if you buy 8g dimms.

They do. Apple claims 8 GB is the max, but mine works fine with 16 GB.

The older machine as 32 GB of RAM and the newer has 64gb. This could potentially be an issue, but generally the build consumes no more than 6GB leaving a leaving amount unused. Memory bandwidth is more likely.

But really I am building C++, all the parsing and re-parsing is stupidly CPU intensive. most 5400 rpm drives can feed the compiler fast enough to keep them saturated.

The remaining memory will be used as a crazy fast file cache. As far as 5400rpm drives that may be true if it was just a linear read, but the real problem is latency.

The rest of the RAM could be used as a file cache, but it is a moot point. 100% CPU use on each of the 4/8 cores/threads. Nothing but more CPU horsepower will significantly speed that up.

If you look at a detailed graph of CPU usage you should see a pumping action as the CPU goes full bore and then stalls out waiting for data. Filling in those stalls is what gives you the extra performance.

What is your preferred tool for gathering this kind of detailed data?

On windows It's WPR and WPA. In sure Linux/Mac has similar system wide profilers. WPA will give you detailed wait analysis.

I don't have windows. I will google for "systemwide profilers". Thank you.

I doubt this will change anything, (because the compilation time decreased as CPU time was added) but the information could be helpful in other situations.

With a hot cache, your disk is only going to do writes (and waiting on those writes is the reason why they suggest a make -jN with N higher than the number of cores). All reads are going to be serviced from memory. All writes will also go to the cache and will be coalesced on close().

Both machines have a RAID 1 of the same model of SSD (2x Corsair force 3 GTs) and no PCIE involved. Each gets about 1.1 gb/s when I benchmark it in Bonnie++.

That and all 8 cores (I am counting the HT threads as cores) in the system monitor are fully saturated on both machines until the the linking stage of the build. I have a great deal of confidence the newer CPUs are significantly for at least building C++ code when disk bandwidth is not an issue.

Source? Or did you just compare clock rates? Intel has improved single-thread performance by much more than 1% from Sandy Bridge to Skylake

Going by benchmark aggregates from PassMark.

2860QM: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-2860QM...

6700HQ: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-6700HQ...

6920HQ: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-6920HQ...

Interesting. For comparison, Geekbench 4 single/multi-core results (from https://browser.primatelabs.com/mac-benchmarks):

MacBook Pro (17-inch Late 2011, i7-2860QM): 3180 / 9593

MacBook Pro (15-inch Late 2016, i7-6700HQ): 3968 (+24%) / 12189 (+27%)

MacBook Pro (15-inch Late 2016, i7-6820HQ): 4093 (+29%) / 12883 (+26%)

Nice comparison, thanks. I wanted to stress "about" since no benchmark is going to be identical to real world performance.

A top dollar SSD over SATA III will be about 1/6 the speed of the new NVMe connected SSDs. Are there good options for external PCIe hard drives using Thunderbolt 2?

Also @beat forgot to say "matte display". MATTE. Mine is a 6 year old 17 inches MBP and I still use it for everything.

It's still current. I can also rip CDs with it (it is handy children) :)

I've even found a VERY simple way to dual boot Windows 10 on it after trying to get the instructions I found everywhere to work (after Apple made sure it was indeed difficult).

I even play games on it.

To me it was the reference developer laptop and still is.

I would pay as much as $5000 for a 17 inches Retina Matte MBP, the same SSD speed as the TouchBar models, the Pascal chipset, an 8 core i7 and 64GB of RAM and I do not think I am alone in that category.

what's a CD?

"What's a record?"

"It's like an old-fashioned CD."

"What's a CD?"

I agree with you, and I feel Apple is leaving money on the table by not doing this.

I notice that you quoted this part:

> I've upgraded it to the max and done repairs to maintain it.

but didn't mention it in your retort to the rest of that paragraph.

You can't upgrade the new macbooks. I am typing this from a 2015 Macbook Pro Retina, I bought it with the biggest hard drive they offered at the time, and am currently doing development off a thunderbolt hard drive. Do you know how much that sucks?

I would do anything to be able to just open up my computer and pop in more RAM or a bigger SSD, like I used to do with my matte 15" macbook. That macbook lasted me so long, and so many RAM upgrades / network card installations (for Bluetooth 4.0) / etc etc.

I've been using this computer for almost three years, I have have to go through a lot of trouble to do my work on it (I work at a .NET shop), and I'm strongly considering just getting a Windows 10 laptop instead of dealing with this mess. It sucks to have to carry around a hard drive for my SQL back-ups because I can't upgrade the hard drive in my computer.

> I have have to go through a lot of trouble to do my work on it (I work at a .NET shop), and I'm strongly considering just getting a Windows 10 laptop instead of dealing with this mess.

If you work at a .NET shop, why would you NOT use Windows 10? Seems like you're swimming against the current.

I work on the mobile ecosystem for Stack Overflow. I run the team that makes our Android and iOS apps, so I need Xcode at the very least. I also feel more comfortable on a UNIX environment because I know the tools more.

Most of the developers at the company either get a Macbook Pro and use Parallels for Windows (Boot Camp leads to headaches because you can't resize the partitions later on without deleting everything and reformatting, or paying for Paragon NTFS for Mac, which might still crash and lose all your data!), or build their own Windows desktop.

I'd rather continue using a laptop, since sometimes I work from an office sometimes I work from home and sometimes (like right now) I work from random locations while visiting family.

At home I mostly use a Linux desktop, I've been looking at System76 laptops but nothing grabs my eye.

None of the Win10 laptops have grabbed my eye either, it seems that Windows laptops that are performant are either massive gaming "laptops" or severely lacking in some other way (although maybe now that the new Dell XPS has the newest discrete GPUs, maybe).

Your code doesn't fit in 1TB? What kind of development is that?

Not the code, the databases. And actually the specific databases I need to run (we have minimal PII scrubbed versions we use for local testing) could live on my internal HD but I don't have enough storage for all my files + the backup files of the DBs for restoring + the restored database files.

I wonder if any of the AWS stuff would help with this. An EC2 instance or something. Sure there would be latency but if the data processing is mostly kept local to the AMI, it might work. But then I don't know your workflow.

Yeah we've been talking about setting up once-a-week-restored dev instances that people who aren't making database migrations / schema changes can point their codebase at so they don't have to have _all_ the databases. It's a struggle though, especially since most of the other devs have desktops with RAIDs of TBs of space haha.

You can upgrade the storage in the 2015 Macbook Pros, but the RAM is soldered on.

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+15-Inch+Retina+Disp...

The newer Macbook Pros you can't upograde the storage, and yeah, that really sucks. I get that most people don't upgrade anyway, but I spend a lot of time showing people how much faster systems can be with a few hundred bucks of upgrades when those same upgrades would have cost them a thousand or more at purchase time.

Now if I want something future-proof I efectively have to max it out even if I don't need those specs now, so I have to pay $3500 instead of $2500 because in five years I'll need that extra oomph and it's technically still cost-effective over the long term even if it's ridiculous now (and in a year or so these laptops will come down in price anyway).

>Smaller but hi-dpi, and with far greater color accuracy and brightness. Also, you can hook up an external monitor, apparently lugging 17" beasts around wasn't popular enough to carry the models forward.

Size on the screen does matter, I'd rather the screen do the work than my eyes.

With a 17 inches I don't need to hook up an external monitor. I am able to work at full proficiency anywhere.

>Actually way way more. Less varied ports (basically 2 types: 4 USB-C and 1 headphone), but way way more I/O power and connectivity.

If you don't mind paying for and carrying around a dozen dongles. Also no ethernet port. And you're forgetting about the ExpressCard slot...

I did take a close look at the Surface Pro. Sorry, the build quality is nowhere near a MacBook Pro. Secondly, I found the touch screen very gimmicky. I tried using it for a week and found that my hand just hurt lifting it up repeatedly and also hated switching context from the keyboard to the screen. Not to mention, the screen was full of smudge marks after awhile.

To be honest, I really found myself using the keyboard and touchpad the most on the Surface and when you think about it, the MacBook Pro has the best touch pad. I think Apple needs to do some minor things to get the MacBook Pro back on track:

- Fix the battery issue. They really need to fix that from a hardware perspective. Also, the OS needs to be optimized to preserve battery. The burden can't be fully on hardware.

- Put magsafe back or some sort of USB-C magsafe solution.

- Bump the specs. The whole point of the Pro is it is leap years ahead of everyone on processor, HD, and RAM.

- The keyboard is getting better, but I still think it needs more travel time.

- The screen could be further to the edges a bit for a more modern look.

- The ports. Look, I get it, you want to embrace the future but then please include free cables to help in the transition. A power extension cable was not even included in this MacBook pro release, that is just sad.

> Secondly, I found the touch screen very gimmicky. I tried using it for a week and found that my hand just hurt lifting it up repeatedly and also hated switching context from the keyboard to the screen.

I agree, but on the other hand, I'm yet to find something that requires the use of the touchscreen. So I don't use it. Unless I'm carrying it around like a tablet, in which case it's a great feature to have.

Yeah but you paid the money, reliability, and weight penalties for a touchscreen for no reason.

Not no reason - as I said, the tablet mode is useful. Just not in the scenario when you're normally be using a keyboard and trackpad.

I bought the Dell XPS 13 with the hidpi display. I didn't buy it for the touchscreen and I couldn't buy it without if I wanted the resolution.

I'd have happily paid less for the same resolution but longer battery life (low power for driving the touch sensor and more for driving the display to a greater brightness to support the same display brightness).

I figure I should have put up with a lower resolution display tbh, which is sad.

Personally, I find FHD on a 13-inch screen perfectly fine. One might be able to distinguish between FHD and QHD on the screen, but definitely not at a regular viewing distance. This way, I don't have to deal with any of the issues that HiDPI typically brings as well.

What I really wanted was a non-touch FHD Developer Edition with Rose Gold, but c'est la vie. It's been one of my favorite laptops.

Yeah, like I said, I should have just stuck with the FHD display :( Tradeoffs...

The touch screen on the Surface has one killer application: scrolling while reading. It's very natural to scroll content with a thumb on the edge of the screen.

Yes, but you have to lift your arm up. It is far far faster to scroll through a web page with the touchpad.

Lift your arm up? I can rest my arm on the desk and have my thumb in the lower right corner of the screen. It's actually much nicer than having my hand in front of me slightly raised to have two fingers to scroll with. Try it now.

Yes, but then you just have one hand on the keyboard. So now to type, you have to bring your right hand down, and resume typing. The distance there is greater vs. using the touchpad. I just have to flick my wrist and boom, I am on the touch pad scrolling. On Surface, assuming I hate the touchpad and want to use the screen, I have to take my hand off the keyboard, put it on the screen and start scrolling.

If having your hands on the keyboard is so important, on a Surface you can just scroll with the arrow keys, the way Flying Spaghetti Monster intended.

Why do you assume that you have to use the screen or the touchpad exclusively? Surely if you're going to be fliting back and froth between keyboard and scrolling you'll use the touchpad but if you're reading a longer form article you rest your hand on the desk with your thumb on the screen and scroll comfortably. Both can work.

Screen scrolling is for those cases where you do not need to type. Which is actually a lot of online content consumption these days.

If you never do prolonged reading on your devices, then yes, it's not a scenario for you specifically. But many people find it quite useful.

Not if you're using it in tablet mode.

You're starting to sound like one of those funny infomercials where everything is black and white and the actor fumbles with some overtly awkward action, that is otherwise mundane... Holding their outstretched arm up over their head with their other arm, a grimace of strain on their face, trying to scroll with their pinky finger. All the while the voice-over is asking why you'd subject yourself to this.

It's a, very natural, quarter inch movement of your thumb while your arm rests comfortably on the table. Not unlike having your hand on your coffee mug.

I think the point, though, is that your hand wouldn't naturally rest on the table near the screen like that. The main reason you're comfortable doing that is because you know you can scroll with your hand in that position. The natural resting position would be to relax your hands off the keyboard after typing and that puts it squarely in the area of the (comically) huge trackpad.

Bingo. Your hand is already there, no need to leave the workspace. There is no need to move up they keyboard and to the right and then up the screen to scroll.

The hundreds of millions of people that have used a mouse can attest to how 'natural' it is.

Except that the mouse is an example of being completely unnatural... The whole point of the positioning on the trackpad is that it's right there when you relax your hands from the keyboard. Otherwise, you'd see computers with trackpads above the keyboard. The positioning of a mouse may be a reflex from usage, but it's the exact opposite of natural.

I wish the trackpad was above the keyboard. I am constantly accidentally switching focus or selecting things while I am typing.

Enjoy your rheumatory problems in the future

I'm reading this right now (well, thirty seconds ago, before I started typing) on a touch-screen Chromebook. My right hand was resting on the table in a vertical orientation with the edge of my hand on the table, my finger loosely resting on the back of the screen, and my thumb on the touchscreen scrolling up and down. Very smooth, very natural.

Conversely, scrolling up and down this text box using the trackpad is tiny, cramped, constrained motions of my finger on the touchpad.

> It is far far faster to scroll through a web page with the touchpad.

This is true if you are the only one using it. If people are standing around you or over your shoulder, and you are all interacting with the screen - then a touchable screen is more quickly usable than shuffling who-has-the-keyboard-mouse. Not saying you are wrong, but there are scenarios where a touch screen is the "best" of the available IO options.

So now I have to let other people touch my screen? Best argument against a touchscreen ever :-).

Seriously though, I'd probably prefer a touchscreen and normal keyboard to the touch bar -- at least I'm already looking at the screen.

This sounds like everyone here is about to get into an argument over hand position. I feel like the hand being positioned hear the bottom of the computer is the result of you knowing that you can scroll with your thumb like that. Wouldn't your natural position after using the keyboard be to just relax your hands which would put it right near the trackpad? It seems like moving your hands out to the side of the computer/table/desk is a self-fulfilling improvement as you most likely wouldn't put your hands there if there wasn't a touchscreen. There would be no benefit or convenience to it otherwise. On top of that, you'll most likely still have one hand resting near the keyboard for typing which further worsens the inconvenience.

This is in tablet "mode" right? Otherwise it would be easier to use a two-finger scroll on the touchpad (for me anyway).

The Surface's touch screen is not meant for full-time use. It's a hybrid device. If you need a pure tablet, get a pure tablet. I really like my ThinkPad Yoga's hybrid featureset.

I hate to say it, but this post definitely has the ring of fanboyism.

The build quality of the Surface is "nowhere near a MacBook Pro" ... without specifying anything that's actually worse.

The point of the MBP is "always to be leap years ahead" on specs, but in reality, they never really are; they're usually comparable to other high-end laptops, although they are normally the priciest by about $1k and among the least repairable/extensible.

Speaking of gimmicks, you've apparently seriously suggested that Apple just need to make even thinner edges.

Maybe I'm just a tasteless philistine like all the other non-Mac users, but personally I think you may've had a bit too much kool-aid.

I used a 2007 MBP as my main computer for a while (and it was my only laptop for years), and I've also used a work-issued 2013 MBP for extended periods of time. There are certainly nice things about Macs (I ended up loving the Retina display much more than I expected to), but they're not the end-all be-all.

While I agree with you on a few points, I think it gets drowned out by the ring of anti-fanboyism too.

The build quality on MacBooks is well-known in the industry and, if you go to a Microsoft Store (or own one), it's readily visible that the build quality isn't on par. Don't get me wrong, it's really good, but it's not MacBook good. This isn't the greatest example because I don't own one, but look at this shot (https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-QM003_MSFTst_P...) and compare even the fit and finish of the cutouts.

As for the specs, I don't know where you got that the point of the MBP is to be leap years ahead on specs and I'm pretty sure this is a straw man that you set up just to argue against it. Apple has never been about pushing specs but only the overall experience of using their machines. In fact, in a lot of benchmarks, Apple devices outperform similarly (or even better) spec'd PCs simply because of Apple's ecosystem advantage.

You're right that they're not the end-all be-all, but you should probably make sure you're being objective yourself before suggesting that someone else has had too much kool-aid.

>As for the specs, I don't know where you got that the point of the MBP is to be leap years ahead on specs and I'm pretty sure this is a straw man that you set up just to argue against it.

The post I replied to says:

"- Bump the specs. The whole point of the Pro is it is leap years ahead of everyone on processor, HD, and RAM."

Apologies. Just carry that over to their post then. That has never been the point of the Pro.

Not to suggest you're wrong, but the picture you linked is one of Surface Studio. (There are other things wrong with that machine that I won't get into.)

Do you have any evidence regarding the fit and finish of the Surface Pro (which was what the original question was about) wrt Macbook Pros?

Again, not saying you're wrong, just the picture you linked doesn't say that.

Edit: changed Surface Book to Surface Pro

Ugh. I am totally off my game today. Here's the ports on the Surface Pro (https://cdn2.macworld.co.uk/cmsdata/reviews/3648915/new_macb...)

It may not even be a fair comparison since the Surface has to accommodate the screen going in either direction and the design plays a big part in the visual appeal for the Macbooks, but it just doesn't look as polished to me. Again, I think the only way to really see and feel the difference is to go to a Microsoft Store and check it out for yourself. If you're lucky enough to have an Apple Store and a Microsoft Store near each other, it'll be even more obvious, in my opinion.

Thank you for the updated picture. That is now the Surface Book (not the Surface Pro). Maybe third time's the charm? :)

I happen to live in the Bay Area, and there's a mall here where there are an Apple Store and a MS store literally opposite each other. I've fondled both laptops (MBP, Surface Book -- never was a big fan of the Surface Pro) and my impressions about the hardware were as follows:

1) The new MBP is really just that, the new MBP. The touch strip novelty factor wore off for me very quickly. The build quality is nice (to be expected of MBPs, surely) although I did feel like sometimes the screen didn't want to close all the way in. I think the fact that it only has USB-C ports is going to bug me, a lot.

2) I didn't really know what to expect for the Surface Book. I was pleasantly surprised by the hinge -- it's very solid. Weight distribution is a concern; the laptop is definitely top heavy due to its motherboard placement behind the screen. The screen latch is cool but I have concerns about longevity, although it felt /really/ solid. I tried to separate the screen without unlatching it and there was no give.

To my untrained eyes, I'd say the new MBP and the Surface Book are about on par, build quality wise. Admittedly I didn't take a good look at the port cutouts on the Surface Book to see if they line up.

WRT Surface Pro, I just don't feel like I'm the target audience. I type very quickly and very loudly, and I would probably break the type cover in short order. The touch pad is too small for me. For these reasons I never gave it a fair shake, so I don't have much to say about its build quality.

> Fix the battery issue.

I don't think there is any hardware/software issues for the poor battery performance in latest MacBook Pro. The TouchBar uses AppleWatch CPU under the hood, and anything with a screen will suck up battery rather badly. They might be able to squeeze some more juice by software update. Its likely noticeable improvement will come with the refresh next year. The one thing Apple needs to do is the price. Many are pissed that they pay so much premium but get worst battery performance than last year model.

The parent article has the first good explanation I've seen for the battery issues in the new MacBook Pro. Apparently they wanted to use a fancy non-square battery but it failed some tests so they reverted to a much smaller square battery at the last minute, thus the significant drop in capacity.

I really like the touchscreen on my Surface Pro and don't find it gimmicky. It's very useful, especially to scroll while reading an article, or to use it in "tablet mode," or just to hit buttons on command prompts. I don't use it for everything, but it is good at making small efficiency improvements in my overall life with my computer. Not accusing you of anything, but I suspect if Apple released a laptop with a touchscreen, people like you would change their tunes on calling it "gimmicky."

You had me at scrolling. Apple is in denial. If nothing else it's the number of times I've witnessed someone try to manipulate the OS on a MacBook only to find themselves dumpfounded, "duh it's not a touchscreen". Well maybe it should be

I really think those people would be better off with an iPad. At least that is the skill level you are describing.

Bit harsh on the downvotes, I agree somewhat. There's a disconnect here, I guess myself and electic are still under the impression "Pro" stands for professional. I would hate to sacrifice even more battery life for a touch screen. Fact is, if you use external monitors, touch screens are never going to work very well.

And seriously, if web browsing is your main use-case, a MBP is overkill.

People who use a touchscreen laptop are used to scrolling with a touchscreen. It has nothing to do with skill level of the user.

Keyboard shortcuts help for scrolling and jumping to the beginning and end of a long page. Use the arrow keys in conjunction with the fn key.

>It's very useful, especially to scroll while reading an article

I don't understand why someone using a laptop would want to scroll by lifting their arm up to the screen, rather than just moving two fingers on the touchpad where their hand is already resting.

When reading more than few lines of text on the screen, my hands do not tend to remain on the keyboard. They instead drift up the sides of the computer, making the screen closer than the touchpad.

Not to mention, having the option to use both certainly doesn't harm anyone.

> They instead drift up the sides of the computer, making the screen closer than the touchpad.

Isn't that uncomfortable?

Apparently not. My father got a HP netbook/tablet and feels super comfortable with it, scrolling and zooming in with gestures on the screen. I never thought it'd be comfortable (for scrolling I'm super used to the mouse wheel, a habit he never caught), but to him it came naturally and he certainly wants it on any other device.

Nope. Well, no more uncomfortable than working on a laptop without an external monitor ever is.

Merely taking my hands off the keyboard is enough for them to move out and away, since I have to "swing" them in to use the keyboard to begin with. This leaves them inches from the screen in the best case, and nowhere near the computer in the worse case.

> They instead drift up the sides of the computer, making the screen closer than the touchpad.

Hmm… if you did that on a new MacBook Pro, wouldn't drifting up the side leave your thumbs somewhere near the Touch Bar? Maybe Apple should add support for scrolling on its edges. Of course, that'd still be a much smaller target than the screen... on the other hand, it would work regardless of window positioning and even with an external monitor.

I'm only speculating, since I don't think I've gotten into that habit myself (not having a touchscreen).

I suspect they might be holding it like a tablet. There are plenty of situations (riding on transit, for example) where the tablet form factor is more appropriate.

I used to have a SP3. When you're just reading something, your hand tends to end up resting along the right side of the computer, and you scroll in the corner of the screen using your thumb. It's more comfortable than scrolling with a trackpad.

I think a lot of this depends on the individual. My natural preference is to use the touch screen. It's not about what's "better" in absolute terms, but what requires the least amount of thought/brain power for the person (my guess is that time is a major factor of the cost calculation - it's quicker to do what is natural). The cost of hand motions isn't significant by comparison.

> rather than just moving two fingers on the touchpad where their hand is already resting.

My hands tend to rest on the mouse or table when reading. It's actually quicker and less conscious to 'flick' the screen when reading than to break focus to find a trackpad and scroll that way.

Oddly I found the kickstand on the Surface Pro irritating to work with because the device becomes impossible to use on your lap, as you need to put the Surface quite far up your leg, and then the kickstand is further along than the length of your leg (hanging over your knees). So it becomes impractical to use.

The OS has done quite well to optimise battery I thought - App Nap has been great. If I reboot my MBP into Windows (so same hardware, different OS), I get worse battery life.

Agree with the ports - the Surface Pro I use at work has 1 USB port so plug in a wired mouse and you can't plug in your USB key. Despite the love of wifi, ports are a great way to keep your device useful.

I agree the kickstand is horrible. I bought an aftermarket case (manvex) which makes it much easier to use on non-flat surfaces. I think there's other brands with similar things.

I have this problem too. They could've mostly solved it by just making the keyboard work wirelessly while detached. (Surface with kickstand on the coffee table, keyboard in my lap.)

> Not to mention, the screen was full of smudge marks after awhile.

This! I can't even get to the other complaints myself because this one triggers my OCD almost immediately into the experience.

> I did take a close look at the Surface Pro. Sorry, the build quality is nowhere near a MacBook Pro.

Shrug, not my experience.

Don't force the touchscreen. Just use it when it makes sense. I've found it's a very natural way to press buttons (because you can just... press the button), particularly when I'm using the keyboard (e.g. filling in a multi-page form, or writing generally) - must nicer than pushing a pointer around to the right place. And it's nice when dragging and dropping, and there are a few games that play nicely that way. And being able to draw/write on it is very nice occasionally. But sure, most of the time I don't use the touchscreen. But even if you ignore the touch aspect, it's a beautiful screen. I've also fallen in love with 3:2 - it seems to strike the right balance between vertical space for development and rectangular enough for watching movies on. At least for me.

> Not to mention, the screen was full of smudge marks after awhile.

That seems like something that shouldn't be happening, assuming your hands were clean? It doesn't happen on mine.

> Don't force the touchscreen. Just use it when it makes sense.

This is like saying "Don't force the new touch bar on macbook pro. Just use it when it makes sense.". A lot of people are pissed about how useless the touch bar is. You can make the same argument about this but the thing is, they could have done better. There's nothing wrong with people criticizing something that's bad. Sure you can just "NOT use it". But these are features designed to be used, and when it doesn't make sense in many cases, it probably means it's badly thought out.

>That seems like something that shouldn't be happening, assuming your hands were clean? It doesn't happen on mine.

Good for you for having the most sanitary hand in the world. For the rest of actual human beings, everyone knows that touching any glass surface leaves smudge, not just computers. I'm fine with logical arguments but please don't deny what everyone knows as fact, because that doesn't fly, and brings credibility of the rest of your arguments down to zero.

The difference being that the touchscreen doesn't take away anything, while the touchbar replaces function keys. You could circumvent this by getting the smaller pro, though.

I own an SP3 and the touchscreen is a blessing. Ironically, even more so because the touchpad on the sp3 is crap, but either way, I seem to know my fingers more than mouse pointers on the screen and prefer to touch the screen as often as possible.

It's not for everyone, but for me, I can dual boot Linux on it, write code, still keep MagSafe charging, have a USB port, AND disconnect the keyboard at the end of the way to watch a movie on a kickstand tablet, AND throw it in my bag and forget it's there, for much less money than a macbook. I love the thing to death.

Also, the screen can be cleaned with a cloth or the bottom of your shirt, like most of us do with our phones. That might be annoying but doesn't sound like a deal breaker.

I find the trackpad to be quite good compared to most other Windows PCs, but it is on the small side. I haven't tried the SP4 keyboard yet where it is slightly larger.

The touch capability is interesting in that I've found that I've begun using it along with the pen more and more over time. The pen has really grown on me as I've discovered more ways to put it to use. For the first year that I owned my SP3 I rarely used the pen, but now I use it almost every day. Being able to switch from full on tablet and pen back to keyboard and mouse mode is pretty killer and I plan to continue using this form factor for the foreseeable future.

> The difference being that the touchscreen doesn't take away anything,

it takes away "thinness". I wanted a thinner screen and when the computer MUST have a touchscreen, then I lose the thinnness.

> This is like saying "Don't force the new touch bar on macbook pro. Just use it when it makes sense.". A lot of people are pissed about how useless the touch bar is. You can make the same argument about this but the thing is, they could have done better. There's nothing wrong with people criticizing something that's bad.

I think people are more annoyed about losing the physical function keys. Honestly the touchscreen is niche functionality unless you're an artist or something, and if it were a choice between a brighter/sharper/clearer non-touch screen and a touchscreen I would absolutely go for the former. But like I said, the surface book screen is really good even if you ignore the touch aspect - at which point the touch really does just become an enhancement, and the little enhancements add up.

> For the rest of actual human beings, everyone knows that touching any glass surface leaves smudge, not just computers.

Indeed, which is why I was very surprised when it didn't happen (it did on previous laptops I've used). But it doesn't seem to. I figured the anti-grease coatings or whatever they use must've got a lot better. (Modern phones are the same - whatever it is that makes the screens smudge they seem to have found some way to deal with it. So it's not like this is magical technology).

Regarding the touchscreen, I have a Thinkpad with a touchscreen. If you ask me how I used a touchscreen six months ago I'd say probably never. It wasn't until I got a loaner that didn't have a touchscreen that I realized how much I used it. I was constantly trying to use the touchscreen when I was doing things like scroll the webpage when I was immersively reading. I actually didn't realize I was using it until I no longer had it.

I couldn't agree more. The Surface Pro and Surface Book are in a completely different (lower) category of build quality compared to the new MBP. Also, the touchpads on the Surface products are nowhere near as good as I was led to expect from online comments. The Surface touchpads are passable at best by late 2016 standards and, again, are in a different category than the new MBP trackpads.

I have a retina Macbook Pro (15") that I absolutely love, but I have to say the touchpad on the new MacBook Pros just doesn't feel right to me. I've played with them in the store, and maybe I could get used to it, but its mostly the size. It just seems overly large and my palms end up on it. Although to be honest I use my MacBook with a couple of dell p2715q's hooked to it, and I use a magic trackpad and keyboard separately now.

I'll admit the touchpad on the new 15" seemed comically large at first. I actually laughed a bit when I first saw it.

Now I'm used to it though and really appreciate the extra size. Granted, I use BetterTouchTool a lot with lots of custom gestures.

> Fix the battery issue. They really need to fix that from a hardware perspective. Also, the OS needs to be optimized to preserve battery. The burden can't be fully on hardware.

They actually have been doing this for the past few years—for instance, when you ask the OS for a timer, the timer you get will be ±10% of what you requested so that a bunch of timers can go off all at once. This way the CPU can sleep, wake up, take care of all of them, and then go back to sleep. (You can say 'no really it needs to be exactly this time', but most of the time you don't need that). Other things as well, but that's the one that's stuck in my brain.

They only have been doing that for the past few years? Android did that in 2009

>The keyboard is getting better, but I still think it needs more travel time.

I wish Apple would use the same keys that they use on the new Magic Keyboard. Definitely less travel than outgoing MacBook Pros but still clicky and usable.

> The screen could be further to the edges a bit for a more modern look.

I have the new MBP 13" (love it), but the one thing that annoys me slightly is the smudges on the edge of the screen from opening it, or adjusting the screen angle.

It's impossible not to get marks on the screen. As it is, they're in the thin bezel area and not on the actual screen. I'm not sure I'd want the screen to go all the way to the edge...

Why not get a cheap powerful desktop for heavyweight processing, and a cheap lightweight laptop for mobility? $3K is a ridiculous amount of money considering modern options.

Examples:

Dual Xeon E5-2690 + 64GB RAM + 1TB HDD = $1250

http://www.ebay.com/itm/391654102568

Dual Xeon X5670 + 128GB RAM + 2TB HDD = $1600

http://www.ebay.com/itm/361745717969

Dual Xeon E5-2670 + 128GB RAM + 8TB HDD = $1900

http://www.ebay.com/itm/172218395641

I would agree. I would not want to do serious editing on a laptop that costs >2x, has half the ram and like a third of the CPU/GPU power. Just not worth the money and time. So much longer waiting for renders...

Half the ram? Where are you finding a macbook with 32gb of ram?

Ah yea I suppose depending on your workload. I've never hit much more than 30-40G doing editing work, I guess some people might use more.

As always, depends on usage.

Great idea. I might get a cheesegrater Mac when my MBP dies and then a cheaper laptop to remote?

Those are some really interesting options. I recently picked up a new Asus Zenbook ux330ua (basically Macbook Air, but significantly better specs and ~$500 less) for mobile use and was going to start looking for a new desktop option.

I really like building my own systems, so buying one prebuilt would be strange, but that's some serious hardware for pretty nice prices.

You could, but you have to be really careful with the motherboard socket, because Intel went a bit crazy with LGA2011:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7773/intels-three-versions-of-...

Yeah, if I built my own, I would probably end up just going with an i7-6700K and something like this:

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/GsX88K

Meh. I'd rather get one of the dual-xeon setups I listed. For the same price you're getting a quarter of the ram, half the processing power, a quarter of the CPU cache. It will do better in single-threaded apps, so it all depends on the tasks you're facing. I do lots of 3D rendering, so I'd pick more cores, RAM and cache.

The other advantages of your setup are power efficiency and NVMe.

Oh, and btw, you will save yourself a ton of money if you just bid on the components on eBay. Take, for instance the CPU. You're going to pay $325 for it. Now check how much they auction for:

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_sacat=0&_sop=15&LH...

if you're going THERE, why not get a cloud VM and a chromebook?

Is there any cloud VM actually support nesting VM inside it? (I need to run Vagrant with VirtualBox as a provider due to availability of images.)

Because

1) If you're processing huge files, you need a very fast internet, which very few people have.

2) Lots of software doesn't exist in the cloud version.

3) It's actually quite expensive to rent something with such specs.

Sometimes you want a GPU near a display.

> Chromebook

It's amazing how much of a good quality machine with great battery life you get today for $299, especially compared to what you used to get with a netbook just a few years ago - my son was using my old laptop and installing things left and right on it including adware some times and I let him go crazy because I don't want him growing up just knowing about the web and the browser. I still let him use that as a tinkering machine after a bit of security 101 but I got him a Acer 14" Chromebook recently and I was seriously blown away how good it felt, how decent the screen was and just how long it lasts!

Same experience with the Chromebook. What I love is the logging in and the computer is you with no signs of any other accounts.

This makes quickly using another computer so easy.

ChomeOS is also noticeably faster than the same hardware with MacOS or Windows.

I bought a Chromebook Pixel out of curiosity and have loved every minute of it. It's fun and really slick, and even as the most expensive, by far, it's still a fraction the cost. It was easy to put Linux on it for real dev, and I keep hearing about more and more methods (https://mrchromebox.tech). Plus it has all the Play Store apps now. Everyone I know is just waiting for work to buy them a Surface, but doesn't want to pay for it themselves.

The big thing that has deterred me so far, is that I heard it's not really usable unless you're cool with having a google account. Despite having one, I thought it was a bit offputting for that to be a dependency.

Well, yeah, I suppose it's like needing an AppleID for mobile devices. ChromeOS is web based, so a lot of it is tied to their services. Like the free drive storage you get with it.

From what I've heard, throwing Linux in it works really well from a compatibility standpoint (and obviously doesn't require a Google account). I believe Linus was using a pixel as his dev laptop some time back.

There's s two ways to use Linux. You can load something called Crouton which runs inside of ChromeOS and basically exposes Linux. But this method everything goes away on reboot. Maybe way to fix.

The other is to replace ChromeOS with Linux. No different from buying a Windows laptop and replacing Windows with Linux.

Crouton doesn't necessarily go away on reboot. You just have to consistently boot into Developer Mode to keep it (and the rest of your data). You just get a warning and the option to do so each time it boots. That's how I've been doing it, though I hardly ever shut the thing down.

I switched to a Pixel earlier this year and it's been fantastic.

I primarily run https://galliumos.org, but keep ChromeOS around for casual use. I'd highly recommend GalliumOS to people interested in putting linux on it: it makes things like the custom keyboard layout work out of the box.

> It would cost me $3000 to replace it with a computer that is not significantly more powerful, has a smaller screen and less I/O functionality, and would be incompatible with my audio interface unless I daisy-chain multiple adapters to get Firewire. Fuck that, as long as possible.

To be fair, with the new Macs you still get to daisy chain adapters...

Here's the thing, nobody can take away how great the Macs we have now were when they came out. The fact that it was so well built and so powerful that you're still using it after 5 years speaks exactly to what we loved about them.

But the new MBPs aren't the same. They're just as expensive as they always were, but they don't have forward-looking specs. Unlike the old ones, we don't see the new ones being machines we can keep around for the next 5 years.

I've got a 2013 MBP and it's got virtually identical specs as the new 2016s. (Used similarly upgraded from base units both times -- with Apple care this cost ~$3,300 then and would cost ~$3,300 now.)

--- 2013 MBP

16 GB RAM

NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M with 2GB memory

2.3 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7

512 GB SSD

Apple Build Quality

--- 2016 MBP ($2,800)

http://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro?product=MLH42L...

16 GB RAM

Radeon Pro 455 with 2GB memory

2.7 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7

512 GB SSD

Apple Build Quality

--- 2016 Razer Blade ($2,200)

http://www.razerzone.com/store/razer-blade-gtx970m

16 GB RAM

NVIDIA® GeForce GTX 970M with 6GB memory

2.6GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7

512 GB SSD

Razer Build Quality

If you can build your own, and don't want to stick to the apple ecosystem; the 4 core intel cpu + 970 gfx starts around a thousand: https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/VhyP8K

If you can wait until February, AMD Zen is coming out, so no matter which camp (amd/intel) you are in, all prices should go down for the given level of performance.

--- 2016 Razer Blade ($2,099)

16 GB System Memory (DDR4, 2133 MHz)

NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1060 (6GB GDDR5 VRAM)

Intel® Core i7-6700HQ Quad-Core Processor (2.6GHz / 3.5GHz)

256GB (PCIe M.2) options for 512/1024

14.0-in. IGZO QHD+, 3200x1800, capacitive multi-touch

http://www.razerzone.com/store/razer-blade#QHD+%20-%20256GB

What you linked to isn't 2016 Blade.

Good catch. I linked the 2015 model.

> 14.0-in. IGZO QHD+, 3200x1800

16:9 is kinda crappy, but 3200x1800 is resolution that works nicely at @2x. Seems better than both the MBP (too low for @2x) and 4K (too high for @2x, too low for @3x).

That's not $2,099. It's 2,999.99€

What's the battery and noise/heat level like on those?

> What's the battery and noise/heat level like on those?

If you have to ask this question, a gaming laptop is not for you.

That answers the question then. A portable computer, not a laptop.

Same boat as you. I have a late-2011 17" MBP with an i7, maxed out RAM, and a 512GB SSD. I think that the graphics processor is starting to fail and I'm starting to experience some very odd DNS-related issues with the OS.

I am very unsatisfied with my replacement options.

If the GPU fails and you want to fix it this seems to be the only "permanent" solution: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Apple-Macbook-Pro-A1297-820-2914-B-1...

US $14.81 reballing = someone heats up your GPU with a paint gun to make it "work" for about a day to a week.

its a scam

That's just the price of diagnostics. If you read further you'll see that the full repair price is £169 + shipping. But yes, that confused me at first as well. They replace the GPU and use lead solder.

Charging "diagnostic" fee is also a scam ;-).

The sad reality is there doesnt exist a reliable source of _real_ new replacement GPU chips. Almost every single chip from china is either a pull from dead laptop or old stock(1). Chinese counterfeit markings, clean them up and sell as new.

The absolute best case scenario is you get really new old stock and it will survive at least 2 years, but in reality it will most probably be a pull from recycled trash with week-month lifespan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OogV7pbqEGQ

1- Nvidia chips were ALL factory defective (bad underfill between die and bga carrier), every single GPU at least up to FERMI has a limited life span dependent on thermal stress. Nvidia had to issue huge recall and restart manufacturing of ancient chips with fixed underfill formula - they only did a limited run for select partners (Dell, Apple) and those chips are pretty much _gone_ from the market.

At least with the AMD 67X0 models of the MBP the problem isn't the chip itself, but the solder connection (or lack thereof). Same issue as the XBOX 360 RROD. So just replacing from lead free solder to lead solder does the trick.

My GPU failed. The Apple stores offers (or at least offered) a $300 "We will fix anything wrong with your MBP" deal. They replaced the motherboard. Now, that is a great example of "Why buy Apple?" You think I'm gonna get a deal like that from Dell?

Yes. Actually, I got a 5 year warranty from Dell where such a replacement was free.

1) They don't do that with the MBP from 2010. Not even if you bought the 3 year extended warranty. Worse, it can break again, at any time, because it is a hardware defect. 2) Only after extensive pressure did Apple start this project, and only for 2011 MBPs.

I far prefer my MBP but I used to have Dell CompleteCover or something like that and they sent a technician over to meet me in a new city I traveled to. I landed there, the guy arrived to fix it, replaced my motherboard, and gave me the fixed product while I spent my time doing other things. Fairly convenient.

Laptop was okay, though. Much rather have something that doesn't need that.

That specific MBP has an issue with the logic board that they will replace for free. I used to have glitches as well and took it in and got a replacement. It's only until the end of the year so I would go and get them to have a look before the new year.

Wait, really?!~

In the same boat with a maxed out 2010 17" MBP. RAM is maxed and I've upgraded the HD 3 times.

The lack of a new 17" is blocking my upgrade entirely and has me shopping for Linux laptops at the point that it finally dies. I use my laptop as a second screen when I work and a screen smaller than 17 makes it less functional in terms of readability from a distance.

I don't know how the Linux support is, but if you're looking for a 17" performance machine I've read good things about the Razer Blade Pro.

http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/20/13344566/razer-blade-pro-...

http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-systems/razer-blade-pro

4K, 32 GB DDR4, dual PCIe SSDs, i7-6700HQ, GTX 1080 (a real desktop one apparently), SDXC reader, Thunderbolt 3, plus a full compliment of legacy ports.

Doesn't come cheap at $3,699, but you can save $10 if you sign up for their newsletter ;)

Razer Blade Pro comes with a desktop gtx 1080, which is a much more powerfull beast than a 1060.

Whoops, typo on my part. Thanks.

What about battery life?

About 4 hours

NICE

I will patiently await Linux reviews of it...but that looks awesome.

For what it's worth, when I switched from Windows I was looking for a 17" macbook because I have a vision issue. I ended up buying a used 15" retina MBP and it's actually easier on my eyes than my 17" Windows laptop was. The retina makes a huge difference and the weight/form factor is very convenient.

The 17" MBP is such a beautiful and usable machine. I've been using a rMBP from 2012 until recently, but when Apple announced the new 2016 MBP I went and got a mint maxed out late 2011 17" instead. Just to give it a try really. I now love everything about it (especially the keyboard and the screen). Serviceability and the fact that you can run a 4TB RAID 0 or a 2TB RAID 1 is a huge bonus as well.

Regardless of the justifications Apple may have to continue on their current path, it personally (and very subjectively) makes me sad. They used to be a tent pole in my digital life, but now I feel we've lost touch with each other...

I have a Microsoft Surface Pro 3 with i7 processor and I would not trade my Macbook Pro (3 1/2 years old) for it. The Surface frequently heats up to be too hot to hold as a tablet and just isn't nearly as fast.

There must be something wrong with it then if it heats up too hot to hold, and its i7 doesn't make it more performant than an old MBP

The overheat problem is quite common with i7 Surface Pro 3. See also Microsoft Community thread[1]. Personally I have the i7 512GB but do not have the overheat issue, although I do have the problem of the fan running very loud sometimes under light usage.

[1]: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/forum/surfpro3-s...

Too be too hot to hold doesn't mean it's blistering hot just not comfortable to hold.

I switched from a MBP to a Surface, and eventually to a $500 generic "hybrid" laptop (with decent Linux support).

Turns out moving to the cloud for developer work and not playing videogames on my laptop really cuts down on my computer needs. (Also, saving that much money justifies more cell data to tether with, so it's actually more convenient at times.)

YMMV though, because I worked in ML, and so had to make the cloud move because no laptop was going to be a 4GPU, 32core machine, much less a cluster of them. Once that's your workflow anyway, the switch in hardware is pretty seamless.

What brand/model is your generic hybrid?

Dell Inspiron 13, 5000 Series 2-in-1.

It's not fabulous, and most of the criticisms are correct, but it was $500-600 when I was looking to buy, and has done reasonably well.

Mostly, it was just a choice to save $1-2k on a laptop (every 1-2 years) and spend the money on cellphone data and lattes.

Which cloud host do you use? Isn't in expensive to get the kind of specs you want?

What can the Surface do that your Mac cant? Use a pen?

The build quality of the Surface have gotten better with each iteration but they are still far below the Macbooks. I have had 3 of them, and I have a lot of friends that use the Surface due to work. I believe one guy is on his 4 Surface 3 now, due to repeated quality problems in hardware.

I am on my 2 Surface 3 now.

The list of hardware issues for Surface 2 and Surface 3 is long and painful.

I dont have insight into 4 yet, but I am told it is better.

Sounds like you are pretty happy with your MacBook Pro. Awesome.

If you want to replace it, maybe you should get a MS Surface Pro, and let us know how that works out for you.

BTW did Apple hold a press conference? I thought it was just an internal memo type thing for the employees, no?

> This week, my mother's crappy Windows computer died, and I bought her a Chromebook. It was great! I'm now seriously considering getting a Chromebook for myself for day-to-day web browsing and such, and retiring the MBP to music and photos only. If I can figure out how to run Vagrant on one

This is tricky, the vagrant part. Virtualization extensions aren't compiled for the chromeos kernel. You can do it, but it requires downloading the chromeos kernel source, configuring the modules to be compiled, recompiling and booting with that. This means substantially more work if you want to upgrade the software, since each upgrade means you have to repeat the kernel compilation step.

The development side of it is simpler though - you can load whatever you want on it once you put it into development mode.

tldr; it's possible, but not without some time and effort, and it may not be worth your time. When I need to vagrant on a chromebook, it starts and ends with SSH'ing to a linux machine that can run vagrant.

Which Chromebook do you use?

I've bought Acer R11 to myself, and gave my MBPr to my wife. Of course it is a huge downgrade, but my idea is to relax from writing code in the evenings for a few months, and then later install some linux on it.

It is very portable, and tablet mode is nice, but performance in web apps is pretty bad (so I even use MBP to use for stuff like AirBnB) – they work, but with quite frustrating experience. I am fine with it, but if someone will decide to go with it, be careful that it is really slow machine.

I still think though that for linux that would be more than enough.

I got an HP something-or-other for my mother, but I took an Acer for a spin at Best Buy and was really impressed. Unfortunately, all of Amazon, Best Buy, and Newegg were out of stock for the Acer model I wanted, and she lives in another state, so I got her the HP instead (similar specs, a bit more $$).

I have a 15" 2012 MBP Retina that still works amazingly well. But... I wanted to do side project work on the train ride to/from work and the MBP is just too big for my backpack and cumbersome to use if I'm sitting next to someone else.

I picked up a Chromebook so I'd have a smaller (11") device to work on. I did a bunch of research and ended up with an Acer C720-3404 (a specific model that has 4GB of RAM, when most only have 2GB, and has a legit Core i3 CPU instead of a Celeron, so it actually had great horsepower. And I managed to find one with an upgraded 128GB SSD for $150 on craigslist. I spent a bunch of time messing around with it and ended up with an EFI boot system, Clover bootloader, and a triple boot setup with Windows 10, Ubuntu 16.10 & Mac OS X El Capitan. Sounds great, but it has its downsides. Win10 has to run in some test mode so the custom drivers will work, OSX wifi is flakey and stops working periodically, Linux would randomly crash and I was never able to get the trackpad setup juuuuuuust right so I can use the smaller keyboard without my palms causing issues. I was able to get some work done with it, but eventually it turned into me spending more time maintaining the system than being productive.

So I'm selling the Chromebook and I bought a 2013 MacBook Air to replace it. I spent probably 4x as much on the Air, but it just works, I can triple boot it the same way if I want, and it has a Core i7 and 8GB of RAM, and the battery life is like 10+ hours. That and the overall quality is just better.

The Chromebook was fun to mess around with, but I'm more productive with a Mac.

I just can't wrap my head around the idea of a 15" laptop being too big to fit in a backpack or work on comfortably. On the other hand, these tiny laptops that people wax poetically about seem comically small to me. In college, I had a 10" Asus eeePC that I picked up cheap to take to class, since my main computer was a beastly 17" HP, and there was no way in hell that that would balance on the tiny little flip-up desk arms on lecture auditorium seats. I couldn't physically fit both hands on the keyboard, and had to learn how to type with just my left hand. It was passable for typing a few notes and dicking around on the internet, but I cannot fathom trying to actually do work on it, simply because of the ergonomics of something that tiny.

Even going up to the 13" form-factor that appears to be all the rage these days, it's tough when I hold one up next to one of the 27" monitors attached to my desktop, and notice that it is only one quarter of the screen area. And I've got four of those arranged 2x2 at my desk.

I'm in the same boat. I still use my 2011 MBP for development work, and I will continue to use it until it falls apart, but I don't think I'm going to buy a new Macbook to replace it.

I love that I can open this one up and upgrade the hell out of it. It's got a better SSD than Apple ever sold for it, and more memory than Apple claims is possible. I doubt a processor upgrade is possible, but if it was, I'd be in the market for one.

> less I/O functionality

ThunderBolt 3 is certainly not less IO functionality. It provides the highest performing / most versatile IO that's ever been available in a laptop before. I get your point that it's not exactly the physical connector you need but that's a small price to pay for what is pretty close to desktop level expansion on a laptop.

> maybe I'll just start paying for a cloud-based dev environment

That's really the best option for developers in most cases. I can't imagine ever going back to being limited by the resources of any individual computer (much less a laptop) when cloud resources are so inexpensive and offer so many other advantages.

Have to agree with you. I'm still lugging around my 2011 17" MBP. For work I've been issued a recent 13"(not the newest MBP) and it does not perform significantly better than my 2011.

I'd have long ago just settled on a linux laptop if I wasn't dependent on the media apps on the mac(Logic Pro & FCPX).

I might look at Windows a little more seriously depending on how Bash for Windows development comes a long. Currently it is not feasible to develop in my stack on Windows though without a VM.

>Chromebook

It might be usable for some stuff, but if you don't devmode it (mine's a school computer, so I can't), it's really insufficient for a wide variety of tasks. It does (credit to Google) have a very good SSH client, and (credit to the mosh team) have a very good Mosh client, so if you've got a fast network and you're an emacs/vi/vim user, it's okay for dev work, but it's not ideal.

And it's rubbish for games.

> This week, my mother's crappy Windows computer died, and I bought her a Chromebook. It was great!

Yeah, no kidding. I have a $160 Toshiba Chromebook that is great for most tasks.

Apple's risk in dropping the Premiere/FCP crowd is that the mass audience they are seeking will discover how good Chromebooks are, and the price tradeoff, and use them with Google cloud services for pretty much everything.

Indeed. One of the big selling points of Macs was that they weren't running Microsoft Virus Studio, and didn't turn into a filthy pit of malware when handed to someone without a degree in computer security.

Chromebooks are probably more secure than Macs.

Do they all still have abysmal screen resolutions? All the ones I keep seeing have resolutions from the 1990s.

The one I got my mother has 1920x1280. I set that as a minimum requirement, because the cheap Windows junker I bought her four years ago had that resolution.

That's good to hear - actually a better resolution than my 2012 MacBook (should have got the higher res one but with DVD drive).

What make/model is that Chromebook, out of interest?

Several Chromebooks have FHD IPS displays; the HP Chromebook 13 is available with a 3,200 x 1,800 display.

Can I ask what your MacBook's current specs are? I love my 5-year-old 13" MBP, but IIRC $3000 was close to the cost of a fully-upgraded top-end 17" MBP in 2011. It's hard to imagine how a similarly-specced machine could cost the same five years later.

You can use a chromebook for music too, if you use crouton it allows you to shut off cras (the chromeos audio system) and fire up jackd, you can run open source stuff like audacity and ardour but if you have an intel chromebook you can even run Renoise and Bitwig.

Yeah that's just not correct.

The CPUs and GPUs from 5 years ago were good but the current generation of intel cpus are much faster and the video cards are in an entirely different realm.

Source: owned 2011 MacBook Pro that was decked out, own current MacBook Pro

Someone please tell Apple than when you need to hold a press conference to convince people you're committed to your product, you're not committed to your product.

Wouldn't Apple have to do that first so that someone can then tell them?

> run Vagrant on one

I'm running Arch on a Chromebook (an Acer one).

If I can figure out how to run Vagrant on one

You could ssh into another computer.

I may wind up doing just that, or using Koding or Cloud9 or some other cloud-based dev environment. My work tends to want a 2gb vagrant instance, and even a DigitalOcean VM starts getting me into the price range of a cloud dev environment.

I honestly doubt it would cost $3000 to replace your 5 year old macbook.

I also have the same type of maxed-out 2011 17" MacBook Pro.

The replacement for that I am looking at costs $3500-$4200.

Sorry that's just not possible. There are gamer targeted systems that are better specs than anything apple ever made (even after market upgrades) in the sun $2k range.

The problem is, they don't run macOS. And if your whole work-environment is centered around macOS, it is not an easy choice to leave that behind, and consequently, hardware upgrades don't come cheap.

Sure but that's a different point.

No, if he wants to be a replacement, one has to assume he wants to be compatible and keep using the applications he currently uses. Any non-Mac system might be an "alternative" but not a "replacement".

$2k buys a lot of applications

The problem is with changing the software environment. Most applications are not available on all operation systems. So your hunt starts for solutions where the application is not available on other operation systems.

But it won't buy the magical ability for a built PC to run macOS. I don't care about the applications, I care about the underlying OS

It's not just applications, it's time.

I'm in the middle of producing a 17 song concept album. If I switch platforms, I have to completely redo all my mixes and learn a whole lot of new tooling. What's the cost of that? Dozens of hours of my time...

No, that was exactly their point.

You responded to a different point.

>There are gamer targeted systems that are better specs than anything apple ever made

Which is irrelevant. I don't a "gamer system". I want thin, light, excellent construction, and good battery life, great trackpad, and a good enough CPU/GPU to achieve all that.

Comparable Mac and PC systems for that cost $2000 and way up...

Sure. But the post I was replying to said $3500-$4200.

Yeah, but he also wanted the 1TB ultra-fast SSD option. The comparable standalone SSD modules at that speed go for $800 or so.

The cheapest I can get into a 15" MBP with a terabyte of storage (and I need a terabyte) is $2999.

So the reason the replacement is so expensive is because you've coupled yourself to a particular OS and so your replacing a macbook with another macbook. Even though there being other cheaper and more powerful options.

I assumed that when the poster said replace the macbook, they were specifically talking about replacing it with the same thing. Obviously one can get a windows laptop with those specs for MUCH cheaper. Replacement in this context = replace with the same thing.

To wit:

"It would cost $150,000 to replace my Porsche!" You don't argue that one can buy a Nissan Leaf to replace it for $9k.

Software on one OS is not the same on another OS, despite cross-platform apps getting better.

What else could I run Logic on btw?

Only if you need the touchbar. The non-touchbar model can be had for $2599, including the horribly overpriced 1 TB upgrade. If you can figure out how to use an external drive (Samsung T3 is $349, tiny and performance should be roughly on par with an internal drive), you can knock another $250 off that and still have the 256 GB that comes with the standard configuration. As a plus, the T3 is trivially upgradable when storage prices inevitably fall over the next couple of years. Even if you chose a Mac alternative with user-accessible internal storage, the process of swapping out the drive would be somewhat involved and require an OS re-install.

I've never understood the obsession with having a ton of internal storage in your laptop. I'd rather buy external storage since it allows me to upgrade my laptop independent of my data and makes migrations easier. It also saves money given how much cheaper external storage is and becomes over the life of the laptop.

I don't want to have to carry around an external drive with me almost everywhere I go, just so I can do my work and listen to my tunes. I don't have to do that now!

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