My next laptop isn't gonna be a Mac | Hacker News Reader

My next laptop isn't gonna be a Mac

tenfourfox.blogspot.com

59 pointsksec42 comments

Is the author of the article actually complaining about not being able to run 68K Mac software in 2018? The last 68K Mac came out in 1994.

Why shouldn't Apple remove insecure ftp and telnet from the default installation? You can still install it if you really need it but who in this day and age would use anything that transmits passwords over plaintext?

As far as complaining about no desktop for Pros, I've read nothing but good things about the iMac Pro.

There are a lot of real complaints about the Mac -the Mac Mini not being upgraded in 4 years, the Mac Pro not being seriously upgraded in 5, the MacBook line being dated and not keeping up with latest innovations, etc.

I'm going to regret this, but as the author of the blog post, let me be explicit about what I'm complaining about.

Apple used to care that their stuff kept working. The 68K example was that you could buy a computer, in 2005, that would still run software from 1990 or so. Now I'm worried about a computer I bought in 2014 being still able to run software which may have been updated last only a couple years before that. I don't think Apple cares much about this anymore.

As far as telnet and ftp, I'll even concede no one would probably use at least password secured stuff over cleartext in a WAN context (anonymous FTP is arguable). But "just install it from Homebrew" is only a solution as long as Apple lets it be a solution; see previous paragraph.

The iMac Pro is not a Mac Pro. It's an all-in-one desktop with high-end features. That appeals to certain people, but not to me. And I don't care for x86, never have.

If the post makes much about these issues and more than you think is warranted, it's mostly because they do personally matter to me, but I think they're emblematic of bigger problems with Apple. IMHO, Apple doesn't have an interest in legacy users, and certainly not in legacy users that have professional needs.

Clearly, pretty much everyone in this thread disagrees, and that's fine. Good luck with it.

I'm not disagreeing with your right to your opinion - just that I think you have rose colored glasses on about Apple and their quest to maintain backwards compatibility.

The Mac came out in 1984 and was incompatible with the Apple //e.

System 7 back in 1992 broke a number of old apps.

The 040 line came out and broke a number of apps.

Sure you could run 68K Mac apps on the first PPC Macs but they were dreadfully slow and people ended up buying SpeedDoubler by Connectix with a much improved emulator.

Have you forgotten about all of the apps that broke that weren't "32 bit clean" and the ones that broke that used self modifying code when the '040 came out?

But in all of those cases there was a mitigation. Apps that weren't 32-bit clean could be run in 24-bit mode, at least for those machines that supported it. The '040 had a cache switch. Heck, there was an IIe card for certain models (though I think the Mac vs Apple II example is a little unfair; the systems really have almost nothing in common architecturally, far less than even Intel and Power Macs have in common).

For that matter, the 68K performance problem was mostly an issue for the 603. It wasn't an issue on the 601, which had sufficient cache, nor for the 603e which quickly displaced it. And when the PCI Power Macs came out, Apple had a much better dynamic compilation translator available.

In none of these cases was the answer "too bad."

To flip your question around, would you argue that Apple's backwards compatibility right now about the same as it was previously? Objectively I don't think the evidence supports that.

Yes. My first Mac in 1992 was a Mac LCII with a //e card. Before that, I had an Apple //e. But the card only worked on a few Macs, was discontinued a few years later, and never supported the //gs.

Just like Apple made a software emulator for the 68K. They could have done the same for the Apple //e. There was a third party software Apple emulator that worked fine on my 16Mhz LCII called Stop The Madness.

I had a 6100/60 - that was my 2nd Mac. It ran 68K software at about the speed of a 25Mhz 68030 Mac and slightly slower than my by then LCII with a 68030/40Mhz accelerator.

All that being said, I left the Mac around 1998 and didn't come back until the G4 Mac Mini in 2004 and the Intel Core Duo Mac Mini in 2006 and left again around 2008.

The Mac outside of the iMacs are in sad shape now. I probably will get another Mac this year just because I want a real Unix environment with more polish and It's the only computer that I can do iOS development. I think the 5K iMac is a decent buy.

> They could have done the same for the Apple //e.

Well, actually, they did, there was Gus (for the IIgs, but that would run IIe stuff, of course). In fairness this didn't have wide distribution and is best described as unofficial, but it existed. http://macgui.com/downloads/?file_id=14109&keywords=gus

Anyway, I actually do agree the 5K iMac is a nice computer for the right person. I don't like high-end AIOs because I rarely upgrade all the components simultaneously, but I can't deny it's slick.

Context: this guy maintains a version of Firefox for PowerPC Macs, TenFourFox. He’s enough of a POWER architecture die-hard that he complains about $1800 laptops, but is cool to plunk down $4800 on a new POWER9 workstation that will run none of the 68k Mac OS tools that he finds speedy.

Modern Apple has plenty of faults, but shipping x64 machines is not high up my list.

My biggest problem with the current MacBook line up is the much higher price, reduced feature set and the widely reported hardware quality issues with keyboards, speakers and body rattles.

I won’t be buying a Mac with the current keyboard simply because I don’t want the risk of it failing, not that I can afford one. Fortunately my mid 2014 15” is still going strong.

iirc the first generation 2012 15” also has all kinds of problems. I’m hoping Apple get their act together, and USB C is more ubiquitous, by the time I have to upgrade.

(I’m also lucky enough to have a couple of work supplied machines of all types)

USB-C is already pretty ubiquitous, but I agree. I don't understand why they dumbed down the mbp - the 'plain' macbook is more than good enough for most consumers and I'm sure they would've loved the touchbar and whatnot.

Obviously I don't want them to make the pro into an ugly thinkpad style thing for the sake of more battery and ports, but I think plenty of people would've been perfectly fine with the new mbp mostly just being an upgrade to internals and maybe the screen. Instead, they dumped the Esc key for a novelty feature pretty much nobody really cares about, dumped the awesome magsafe charging, and got rid of a bunch of ports - not that the old version had a ton in the first place - for pretty much no good reason.

If there were another laptop on the market that Just Worked™ anywhere near as well as the mbp, I definitely would've switched but as it is I'm sticking to my late 2014 model and hoping the next gen mbp is less of a flop.

It's so ubiquitous that the newest iPhones still come with USB-A->Lightning cables. You can't plug one on a brand new MacBook Pro without a dongle or buying a new cable.

My computer after MacBook Pro is PC with i5 7600 and I couldn't be happier. Total cost was around $1200 and I got much more powerful system than my old MacBook for which I paid $2500. Processor is not throttled mobile nonsense. I bought 16 GB RAM for few hundred bucks and if I want, I can buy another 16GB and put it there. Windows 10 is actually good enough (it's the first Windows that's actually quite usable for me) and with all those bugs in new macOS I'm not regretting about switching, I only regret about investing so much money in Mac software.

I guess MacBooks are good for people who don't want to tinker with hardware or who don't want to use Windows or Linux and ready to pay a lot of money for this. I was hyped in the past about it, but it turned out that my priorities are just very different.

Also, contrary to popular beliefs, I've found Apple's engineering very poor, hardware is very unreliable and in many cases it seems to be done on purpose. Apple is the only manufacturer, whose cords are wearing out, I never encountered that with other manufacturers and I encountered that with every Apple device I owned (2 macbooks, iPhone, iPad, iPod).

That said, I really like iOS, so, I guess, I'll still buy iPhone. And that's the only reason I'm still looking into Macs (I like integration between iOS and macOS). The only computer that I'm interested in is new Mac Pro, so I'll wait and see what they'll make. But it's very unlikely that they'll make a compelling computer, IMO.

I have a 6yo T420 with a Samsung SSD and 16GB of RAM. It was $400 with a new battery. It easily outperforms the MBP 2015 monster I had before on my daily programming tasks.

Point being. Most hardware is overkill anyway. You'll want enough RAM and the fastest SSD you can afford.

I hope you're right, I just bought an IBM stamped (so maybe not Lenovo made) T61p off ebay to have a go with. It's not arrived yet but every review says the hardware is bulletproof.

I know it's very old but hopefully once I've finished putting the SSD in and a lightweight Linux distro it'll be enough to work on.

I have a 4 year old W530 and I built my own PC this year for the first time in over a decade. There's no comparison. If you can deal with the lack of portability, you'll see a huge benefit.

Also, if you're a programmer, there's no such thing as "most hardware is overkill anyway." Not in this age of bloated and slow software and tools. It's worth it anytime you can shave a couple of seconds off the time it takes to compile and/or interpret software. When it's something you do a couple hundred times a day, the time you save adds up fast.

I build a $3000 beast like half a year before i bought the laptop. I also had a MBP 2015 before. While given i dont do compiled language very often i dont fully agree. My VM startup times barely differ (dont most scripting languages boot single core anyway?) but i notice a real difference when working with huge databases compared to my MBP because i simply have better RAM and a faster SSD. However surely my desktop build was even faster.

Yes, single core speeds matter quite a bit. I can get faster single core clock speeds for a desktop for a lot cheaper. It is useful to have a lot of cores for running multiple VMs, but I would agree it's not worth spending 3k+ for a 16 core machine unless you're doing something that can utilize those cores.

In my mind, where the desktop rules is ram, bus speeds and cost. You can build multiple desktops for the price of a similarly priced MBP.

The only thing that still keeps me MacOS is the trackpad.

When my MBA 13" breaks, I will just replace it with another MBA 13", which I already did two times. One got orange juice, the other vomit of my son.

But what if the MBA 13" is not available anymore?

It will be somewhat difficult for me to find a replacement. Perhaps a Surface Book but will xfce handle the trackpad as smoothly as the MBA? But how to find out for myself without risking a purchase first?

Did anyone install Linux on a Surface Book and compare the smoothness of the trackpad with the one of the MBA?

Microsoft Stores tend to have the surface books for demo. You could boot from USB to try xfce. You can also just buy one from a store with a lenient return policy.

Good idea! Will try this out.

Please share your results.

This will take some time, a few months to up to a year. Sorry.

However there's already one insight: Yesterday I tried out the track pad of the Surface 1 and just tactically it does not feel the same as the MBA. Perhaps Surface 2 is better, we will see in March 2018.

Context: my primary system for both development and personal use has been Ubuntu for a while, but several years ago I picked up a MBP as a secondary laptop and for testing/spot-checking that cross-platform stuff actually worked well across platforms. When I first got the MacBook, I instantly realized that it was by far the best touchpad I've ever used, to the point of being somewhat embarrassed about the state of hardware on Wintel laptops. The display was one of the best ever at the time, too.

Recommendation: You should seriously consider giving one of the higher end Chromebooks a shot. I think their image has continued to be tarnished by the fact that when they were first introduced—and even for several years after—buying a Chromebook meant you were getting a near-disposable, low-end, plasticy ARM-based machine (that didn't run a "real" offline OS, either). Fact is, today there are really nice x86 Chromebooks with good build quality. I have a Dell Chromebook 13. The touchpad is just as good as the MacBook's (albeit slightly smaller), a 1080p (matte!) display that's actually better than the one on the non-retina MacBook, it's lightweight, it has long battery life (~8-12 hours?), and (continuing somewhat with the tone of the article) it runs coreboot. You can wipe ChromeOS and install another distro.

The biggest downsides are three, and they're all to do with the keyboard:

- The power/sleep button is in a weird spot, so sometimes I hit it when I'm an awkward posture and not touch typing.

- The row of function keys (which have Mac-style glyphs instead of Fnum printed on them) only go to F10, so you may need to remap some apps that use F11 and F12.

- There are no context menu and Super (Windows) keys where Wintel users would expect them to be between Ctrl and Alt. Given that you're coming from a Mac, this shouldn't be a problem. Caps Lock is also gone, but that's because that's where the Super key has been moved to.

The SSD is also tiny, but it's user serviceable/upgradeable, and has a microSD slot.

Also, when you reboot, it complains that ChromeOS is missing; you have to press Ctrl+L instead to move forward, and there's no on-screen reminder (a la "press any key to continue"). What the on-screen reminder does say is to press space to restore ChromeOS. If you've upgraded the SSD, though, there will be no ChromeOS recovery partition, so it's guaranteed not to succeed. What I don't know is whether your installation will be hosed in the process, however. I haven't tried. Assume that it will, and take it as a fortnightly reminder to make those backups that you already know you should be doing.

My next laptop became a Threadripper desktop and the old laptop is only used for travel now.

Here is a PC-Partpicker recipe for my Threadripper machine.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/6JRNJV

1x Corsair 600Q (Can really recommend this case)

1x ASUS Prime X399-A Socket TR4 E-ATX

1x AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X s-TR4

1x Corsair Hydro Series H100i v2 CPU Cooler

1x Samsung 960 Pro 512GB M.2 PCI Express 3.0 x4 (NVMe)

1x Seagate IronWolf 4TB 3.5" SATA-600

4x G.Skill Flare X AMD Series 16GB 3200MHz DDR4

1x Corsair RMx Series RM850x 850Watt 80 PLUS Gold

Any opinions on going Threadripper over dual xeon?

I'm a fan of a market with competition, the CPU market has not had a lot of that the past years, so I support AMD right.

Also, Threadripper is the best choice for price/performance, also easier to build a quiet single "cpu" machine, than a dual setup.

Not being on Facebook, what does

"contains speculative fixes for hangs on Facebook"

mean?

I suspect it's as it reads. This blog appears to be about a browser codebase/product. I'm guessing a report that "it hangs on Facebook.com".

The sentence is saying that there was a bug in a previous version of TenFourFox that caused the browser to hang when browsing to Facebook, and they speculate that they have fixed the bug in this release.

ah sorry about that, the cookie warning was folded over the subtitle and missed that line; wrongly assumed it was an operating system.

I didn't even know people are working on this kind of stuff.. and on a lot of other fronts too, Apple is losing its edge by not having the newer form factors like 2 in 1s and detachables. so much potential there.. but it's really not their bread and butter any more..

For people who are frustrated about Apple's software quality (the OP seems to be one of them), that would only make matters worse because additional form factors = even more bugs.

> Apple is losing its edge by not having the newer form factors

I think that the iPad Pro is supposed to cover that base.

(This is not an endorsement of the iPad Pro. I agree with your point, and I'm very happy with just having replaced my 2014 Macbook Pro with a Lenovo X1 Yoga.)

My next laptop is a phone with bluetooth keyboard.

I thing the idea of 'personal computer' you always carry with you is obsolete. Every geek has multiple laptops and workstations, just swap those as needed.

Headline: refers to a laptop

Article: several hundred words about an architecture that is not currently available in a laptop form factor and probably never will be.

I'm sure the vast majority of consumers hate the Touch Bar because they're used to the escape key when they Vim.

The Talos is interesting but $3700 as an entry point is pretty painful.

Good for you, still millions of users will by apple products because they are simple to use out of box. People here are only thinking about their power user experience forgetting that most users don't give a damn about that and are whining that apple forget about "pro" users.

Apple never was design for being pro. Also argument about cost is silly. Apple products cost almost the same as high-end computers are Samsung flagship phones. Don't forget about high price of Microsoft products... World is about money and that will never change and voice of pro users will never be heard as they don't make that much money on you.

To emphasize, I'm not an Apple fanboy.

I found the argument about cost even sillier than you described. If Apple were to continue to support devices that are 10+ years old (those that shipped with PPC arch) and didn't drop support for obsolete products, the price would be far higher for each device.

>Apple never was design for being pro.

It was, but not for pro software engineers, but for pro designers, film editors, etc.

Well another reason most Pros chooses Apple is because of its Hardware quality. Not just paper Spec, but the actual quality of hardware, from power supply, USB plugs, keyboard, trackpad, Screen and many others.

Apple used to have many best in the Notebook segments. The problem is ( no idea why ) HP and Dell which dont used to compete on quality now has fairly decent Notebooks.

And since Apple has stepped back in a few areas, all of a sudden the price becomes a little hard to swallow. Arguably Windows has gotten better as well, while the macOS seems to be, having more and more unnecessary issues.

One way I dont buy the sales matrix argument, there are more people drawn into the Apple Mac ecosystem then ever, thanks to iPhone. Apple is now a luxury brand, and people will buy into the brand whether it is the best or good enough. And for certain older Apple users would remember:

It's a bar of excellence that merely good isn't good enough. It has to be great.

- Steve Jobs.

I won't be buying a mac anytime soon. Because my mid-2013 one still serves me well for all my audio work, web dev and graphics programming needs.

When it fails I'll buy another.

PCs are great too.

Why are we still having these pissing contests?

Sorry, but anyone who writes this sort of thing cannot be considered representative of any meaningfully-large consumer group (emphasis mine): “I bought the Talos II because I wanted something non-x86 without lurking proprietary obscenities like the Intel Management Engine (or even AMD's Platform Secure Processor) that was nevertheless powerful enough to match those chips in power, and the only thing practical and even close to it is modern Power ISA.”

Reply on news.ycombinator.com