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Comment by johnnyb9 | Hacker News Reader

I bought a Dell XPS 9550 with terrible coil whine from the Microsoft Store about two years ago. Thinking I was just unlucky, I did an exchange (MS Store) to a different unit. This one had no coil whine, but would not wake up from sleep about half the time.

If you think Apple has fallen in terms of quality, you have no idea how low they would have to fall to match Dell's.

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> If you think Apple has fallen in terms of quality

I don't. I've found Apple (hardware) to be reliable and long-lasting. It's the developer-hostile designs where I think they've gone crazy.

It just seems like consumers don't care that the MacBook design is hostile to connectivity (my biggest issue) or developers in general. They're used to it from Apple, and want the latest and greatest regardless. Apple is honing in on that market, like it or not.

I don't find Apple designs hostile at all for Objective-C and Swift developers, their main developer customer base.

I disagree with the last part of this sentence. I know a lot of developers, the vast majority of whom have preferred Apple laptops for years, and very few of whom develop in Objective-C and Swift. I agree with a lot of other commenters that Apple are becoming more and more complacent and arrogant about the developer part of their customer base, which I think is larger than perhaps they realise.

Then they should have bought a laptop with a pure GNU/Linux or BSD variant, and help companies that target UNIX developers stay in business.

Pure UNIX server software was never the developers target market of neither NeXT or Apple.

UNIX compatibility was always just a means to port UNIX workstation software into their OSes, not as a means to write UNIX server software.

Just like Microsoft did in the past and is now doing it again.

Their developer target market are the ones using their sancioned languages and SDKs.

I don't see how choice of programming platform & language has much to do with the need for real keyboards, function keys, ports, etc. Nor is it true that most developers using macbooks are only or even primarily 'Objective-C and Swift developers').

It is true, however that those developers I know who have a choice (ie. because they don't have a huge professional investment in Apple's platforms) are seeking alternatives to macbooks for their next replacement machines.

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