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Comment by highace | Hacker News Reader

As a developer I can't imagine buying anything other than a Macbook Pro, and I mainly use Windows.

The build quality is top of the line, the drivers are solid, and everything just works. The trackpad is industry leading, and the keyboard is great too. Performance is exceptional, especially in the 15" which comes with a HQ processor (not ultrabook-grade) and a discrete graphics card. It has a PCI-e SSD. The price is reasonable compared to the competition.

But despite being IMO the best laptop available, the main reason I choose them is because every so often I need to boot into OSX for testing, or to do something Mac-only. And nothing else can do that.

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You just described the XPS 15 9560... Except the Dell gets a mostly proper keyboard with real function keys (this matters greatly to me as a programmer). It's not ThinkPad grade, yet close. (I've tested my colleague's top spec model).

As for Apple, it's a shame they don't ship 32gb laptops with touch screens.

I'm currently on an ageing OG X1 Carbon (i7/8/256), which has a sensational keyboard and track pointer, with a superb light and strong chassis; for my next, I'm hoping they'll upgrade the core count to 4+ and memory to 32, and an AMOLED display.

I completely agree about the function keys. That's the only reason I haven't upgraded my 2015 Macbook pro.

In my experience with this new XPS 15 9560, the touch screen is only marginally useful. It doesn't seem to play well with screen pens, so it's just a thing to smudge your finger grease on if you want to show off.

I've found that it was useless until you start to learn what apps end up having a better experience with touch.

I use it a lot for document reviews, working with spreadsheets, and anywhere that touch corresponds more with manipulation of the object on screen.

I completely disregard it when the laptop is docked though. For me, mouse/kb habits take over.

As a counterpoint, I have a lenovo p50 and I couldn't possibly be happier. I'm frequently developing on a Scala backend with a mobile frontend. If you don't want memory pressure, 16GB just won't do it, but my 64GB does phenomenally.

And since I'm often working in Kenya it can be quite difficult to get service for Apple, having parts I can switch out with a screwdriver is a huge blessing. And it's stupidly tough, I've fallen directly on it and it's survived in the past.

I am also developer and I changed last year from Mac to Dell XPS 13". I would have stayed on Mac but the new keyboard felt strange, touchbar is... well I felt it is time to try something new. One surprising feature that I though I would never use is touch screen. I really like it and I thought it would be useless.

There are some things that I think could be better. I think Windows is a bit ugly, hardware does not feel polished like in Apple but it's not nowhere as bad as Dells used to be. The only thing I go back to Mac when I need to do iOS stuff and sometimes when i get something from designers in Sketch format but it is unlikely that I will return to MBP anytime soon.

That's interesting about the touchscreen? Do you feel any need to get a 2-in-1 or is he simple touchscreen sufficient? I'd interested in a 2-in-1, but they don't run Linux real well and there are other issues, including cost. But if the touchscreen is useful enough, then maybe an XPS 13 along with a tablet would be a good idea.

Simple touch screen is definitely enough for me. I don't feel I need tablet. I have Ipad and I hardly use it.

I find myself touching the screen when reading, on actionable wizards etc. So, it is mostly usability bonus for stuff that I could do in mouse. Funny thing is that I really didn't notice first that I started to touch screen.

I have W10 running on a 2012 Panasonic ToughBook that has a touch screen. For quite some time I believed that a touch screen was hokey and no one wanted to get smudges on the screen. But I've got to say that once you start using it, whether to click on links, launch apps, or whatever, especially with the large tiles in W10, it becomes very natural. I do think, however, that it is more natural with smaller machines where the screen is just physically closer to you...like on the XPS 13.

Doesn't it bother you to be led around by the nose like that?

Apple refuses to open up their dev space, like the worst kind of community citizen, and your response is to support that behaviour?

I support companies that release high quality products.

I use the XPS 15 in an office with only mac users and this machine is just more powerful since Apple wont update the Macbook Pro line with developers in mind. I hated working on an under performing laptop when I was using the macs.

More powerful in what way? Processing power?

Processor is a little more powerful, testing shows them comparable in some testing since Apple can tune the chips a little more then Dell is allowed to. I have twice as much ram which is the real big leap forward, my hard drive seems to be a little faster also.

The specs would agree with you, but my real life side-by-side experience only demonstrates that the XPS is better for gaming. For everything else, my old rMBP is as fast or faster.

And my Mac runs for weeks, sometimes > 2 months, without a reboot. I've had to reboot the XPS on average twice a week (due to crashes, or updates, or really weird performance drops).

Not needing to reboot is a massively underrated feature imo

My real life side by side test show that turning off my machine at the end of the day isn't a big deal. The fact that I can run 2-3 VMs when the rest of my team can barely run one is a big deal. More ram is a huge benefit, everything I run in the linux subsystem runs faster than the macs I work next to.

Yeah, 32 vs 16 GB is truly a massive difference when doing virtualization. When you consider that the base OS and core apps (dev env/browsers) take up something like 2-3GB, you're more than doubling the available memory for VMs.

Most of what you said applies to Surface Books and Surface Pros, you should check them out if you work on Windows. I'm pretty happy with my SP4 myself.

I don't doubt that, I've tried them and they're good too. No native OSX though.

As a fellow developer, I purchased a xps 15 with the 1080p screen. The keyboard is top notch, minus the fact it doesn't have a dedicated end key. The touch pad is good enough as I don't need it very often in the IDE world. The windows 10 touch pad gestures work great. I would highly recomend it.

Same..Look at the comments for an XPS/whatever manufacturer flagship device release and you'll find mostly 'this works great except sometimes it explodes' and then back and forth a bunch of times where someone claims that it works for them, while someone else brings up something else that randomly doesn't work for them.

No thanks..

Heck just look in the comments on this very Hacker News post...

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