I've finally found a Windows laptop worth ditching the MacBook for
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macOS is a unix, but it's not a linux. You probably will end up running in containers anyway, because it's just too different from your servers (e.g. provisioning scripts will not run correctly), and windows supports those containers just fine.
Even if you're not running in containers, you'll probably still be fine. I've been doing web dev for a while on windows and mac (node, php, java, ...) and haven't had major issues getting my workflows to carry over. The only thing that can cause problems are windows file path issues (or rather web app code assuming *nix paths), and for that there is WSL.
Another possible thing you may like about macOS is the unix command line, which is a fair argument, but between msys, wsl and powershell (which is equally powerful yet different) I don't miss anything myself. Again, the command line tools on the mac are subtly different from those on linux, so your shell scripts don't automatically carry over to the server. YMMV.
Finally we get to the UI. If you're hooked on mac-only software, ok fine. There are good alternatives though. For example, I switched from textmate to visual studio code so I could bounce between OS's. Otherwise I find it to be an even mix. Windows task view is similar to mission control. Windows does window docking better than the mac. The mac does system updates better than windows. Windows does gaming support better than the mac. The mac does consistent UI design better than windows. Windows has touch screens, the mac has better trackpads. It all balances out.
I like living on both sides of the fence. It makes me feel like I'm not locked into a platform.
To be fair, that's true of MacOS and Windows too, but Ubuntu makes it easiest to try / think it might be a good idea.
The things they change from Debian are usually things I disapprove of, such as communicating with proprietary services. I think it also tracks user analytics by default, unlike Debian which shows you a modal during installation asking for permission to regularly keep track of your installed packages; and they set the default value to "disabled".
It keeps the body light, rigid, and cool. No plastic vents to form cracks. No flex when I hold it from a corner. No sweaty palms from the warm plastic. No seams around the screen to collect dust.
Nothing I've seen comes close. If it wasn't a work machine I'd throw Ubuntu or Arch over it in a heartbeat. Mac OS isn't bad, it's just not close a good linux set up.
Windows has plenty of warts that I doubt WSL will resolve (can't delete open files, spectacular suicide if you use symlinks or junctions on system resources, different administrative abstractions and CLI tools, that sort of thing) but I might be willing to give it a spin if someone other than microsoft says nice things about it.
I don't buy the "I've used OSX for so long I can't possibly adapt my workflow to Windows" argument. It took me a few days to get used to the new idioms, but it wasn't that bad. Then again, I've been pretty OS agnostic for my career - Irix, SunOS/Solaris, Linux, OSX, and now Windows+WSL. Other than the part of my career when I was doing systems research and had to care about OS-specific details (e.g., writing Linux kernel modules), I haven't really found it hard to adapt to new environments and be happily productive.
It isn’t perfect, but it’s good enough that I don’t notice the warts too frequently. I’m not very fickle though: at this point in my career, I’ve come to the conclusion that all systems suck in their own special ways.
It's available in Google's cache.[1]
[1] http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:/...
Then when you talk about Windows vs MacOS, I could write a huge long list of reasons life (my life) is so much more productive and less sucky on the Mac.
I think the people that prefer PCs are people using just one or two programs that happen to work well there (or games). But try a wide variety of activities and you find so many little rough edges and missing features/integrations compared to MacOS.
Then if you're a developer targeting Linux for production, there's just no question that your life will be less painful if you're developing in MacOS compared to Windows. I have gotten most things to work eventually in Windows, but it will often be the last platform supported by a given language or set of dev tools. WSL is much better than nothing, but it's not a complete answer (yet... ever...?)
On the other hand, for daily use, Windows 7 was snappier and less in my way than win10 is. Some changes really feel like steps backward.
OSX has plenty of flaws, but it (generally) stays out of your way, is a less hostile development environment, and is compatible with all the things you need. I feel like the Linux folks are attacking this problem by trying to create distros that are easier and easier to use, which is great, but it doesn't solve the compatibility piece, which is this weird chicken and egg thing (consumers still don't want to figure out how to use Wine). Luckily, gaming seems to be making progress here?
Take the webcams out of laptops and you can have a thin bezel without awkward webcam placement.
Realistically, how many people shell out for a MacBook but don't have the (usually much cheaper) iPhone or iPad? I don't need forward-facing cameras on all my devices.
I haven't added a webcam to my desktop builds in, I don't know, 10 years? Don't need it on my laptop either.
Is it really a hardware issue though? Seems more like a MacOS vs Windows problem.
Current problem: My ThinkPad docking station has a GPU multiplexer that prevents it from being able to drive two external monitors. Doesn't look like there's a solution at all.
The solution I've ended up on is a HP 13 G1 Chromebook. 95% of what I need to do at home I can do there or SSHed in to my AWS machine: OpenVPN to work, SSH to work, all the stuff in the browser.
My requirements at home are fairly minimal these days. To the point that I just have a base Ubuntu 18.04 install on the ThinkPad with OpenVPN set up and some keys.
This has been an ongoing experiment and it honestly is working out amazingly. This is very good hardware, great display (3200x1800), no worries about the software. It was $500 refurb, and I've been very happy with it. Around the same time I got an Acer for around $250 and the hardware was nowhere near as good.
Depending on what you need to do with it, a Chromebook might do the job.
Which ThinkPad do/did you have?
I'm not a ThinkPad fan, but a lot of my co-workers have ThinkPad X1s with a docking station and are able to drive two external monitors plus the built-in display. Most use Windows, some use Linux, all seem to work fine.
I'm using a 2017 15" MacBook Pro and am able to drive two external monitors plus the built-in display as well. This requires a couple of adapters, but I've got it down to one thing that needs to be plugged in. It's very flaky though.
Honestly, the ThinkPads my co-workers use do this a lot better than the MBP does.
Owning and using three laptops sounds crazy, especially if you travel a lot, but you could still launch Chrome on a Thinkpad and do most of the stuff that falls outside of your main task, you could get away with just carrying one for a trip!
Why wait for the holy grail if you could just treat your laptops as dedicated hardware appliances optimized for each task?
I'm tired of playing "Will I get to do what I want, or will I spend 40 minutes waiting for Windows Update." I'm tired of "Windows Antimalware FooBarBaz" chewing up 80% of my CPU and spinning my fans up. etc.
I use OS X because it mostly works and mostly stays the hell out of my way.
This is what the Linux Desktop folks never got. I don't want <jazz hands> SNAZZY </jazz hands>. I want mostly works and mostly stays the hell out of my way.
Unfortunately, coding that is a lot of not very fun hard work.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:KDcITNl...
I wager the MBP probably has a slightly faster SSD (but macOS and APFS's performance penalties may nullify this hardware advantage).
If your use case does not need this level of performance, adjust your perspective accordingly.
[1] Yeah, yeah, Dell will almost certainly beat Apple to market on Coffee Lake processors. In fact, they're most likely already available in the XPS 15 line.
Meanwhile, the XPS has 6-core (Coffee Lake), and can sustain 4.1Ghz indefinitely.
It's a very noticeable difference.
http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-8750H-vs-...
Never really got the appeal of xps over same specced Inspiron, don't see anything worth paying around twice the price for.
Other distros did not work well out of the box. Ubuntu seems to have the out-of-the-box experience nailed (although I had to install and adjust tlp to get good battery life - now it's much better than it was under Windows)
When I installed 18.04 on my XPS 15 I had an issue with power consumption being way too high even with tlp installed (13W on idle), but I used powerstat to investigate and found that runtime power management was not being enabled for my discrete GPU. The tlp defaults must have changed at some point between 16.04 and 18.04. So I set RUNTIME_PM_DRIVER_BLACKLIST="" in /etc/default/tlp and now get <4.5W on idle, which gives about 12 hours of battery.
I would prefer for it all to work perfectly without any configuration, of course, but then you have to accept ridiculously thin and overpriced hardware from Apple :)
Nevertheless, Apple continues to try to piss me off (keyboard gate anyone?) so I'd better keep informed:
Does the XPS on Linux go to sleep when you close the lid and wake up when you open it without incident? Network, sound etc continue to work without hassle?
I can name only ONE. The Ms surface book 2 which came like a year ago. Everything else has an unusable 16:9 screen. I bought the MBP retina 2015 just for the nice 16:10 screen.
I'm genuinely curious what you use your computer for - what kind of work, or if for entertainment etc..
Install Linux or similarly mature desktop distro.
Done.
It's not that hard.
Me, I'm perfectly OK with 12.5" at 1366x768, because anything that requires more will be done on my 27" monitor anyway.
Like probably a lot of other people, I buy Macs because they run macOS, and not because the hardware is great. (Although most of the time, the hardware is also great.)