Edit: Should mention I have only restarted it two or three times in those 3 weeks so it has had plenty of time to crash
I do have one weird issue which seems related to installing the Mojave beta which is the machine will randomly wake up from sleep and play the power connected chime then go back to sleep. Very strange and only started happening when I installed the Mojave beta so I am assuming it is some kind of firmware bug as it is a beta after all.
Other than that this machine is perfect. Keyboard is great and much quieter than the previous butterfly models. Screen is gorgeous and with the addition of True Tone it is even more lovely. I didn't realise just how blue my XPS 15 screen is compared to the MBP. Plus it is almost always silent and stays cool even with a moderate workload. Obviously if I do anything serious it gets warm and the fans kick in but for regular work in IntelliJ and Xcode it is cool and quiet.
I am getting around 10h battery life as well for normal work, about 12 for web/Netflix.
I had a Surface Book 2 which was one of the worst laptop experiences I have had in the past decade and it was close to the MBP in price. Microsoft waaaay over-engineered the Surface Book just to be unique yet still don't have the software experience good enough to be totally reliable.
I have never had my MBP fail to wake from sleep like my Surface Book for example. Or the daily need to detach/reattach from the base so that the backlight for the keys works properly, etc. So many weird quirks with that thing.
And there are detailed guides from iFixit about how exactly to do it.
And the computers are almost exactly the same to open. I just replaced the thermal paste on my 2017 MBP and it was just as easy as my 2012 one.
Going to strongly disagree with you here as this seems like major shilling.
XPS 13 keyboard while not the best, is still miles better than the 2018 Macbook Pro keyboard which is a complete disgrace to typing. I have to jump over to my external keyboard when using my MacBook Pro at work.
The only downside is it is only thunderbolt 2, and they recently went away with external GPU support for new macOS updates.
I paid $1500 for mine in practically brand new mint condition on amazon, buying a new a 2018 version was $2500 roughly for something that also had 512 GB SSD.
I find the macbookpro has way better ergonomic features than windows laptops. Also, programming environment is just so much nicer IMO on mac.
TBH it's the MB Pro + OS X combo that works so well. MB Pro + Windows is definitely sub-par... lot of other great laptops for that. I've never tried Linux on a MB Pro.
The only issue is that the trackpad drivers aren't so good. Stick to OS X if you're a trackpad gesture power user.
Thinking of just getting my battery replaced instead, but I'll consider looking at the 2015s
That's what my windows desktop PC is for
How is that a benefit? I love the new big touchpad on latest macbooks, it works perfectly
Really? I had a Mac for a few years, but I found that I didn't like the environment as much as either Windows or Linux. A lot of programming environments work best on a Linux-like environment and don't do so well on something BSD-like (such as MacOS). There's a lot of open source software that only works on Windows and Linux, too... MacOS has such a small market share that many open source developers just ignore it.
Native folder navigation and terminal is much nicer on macOS. MacOS has better 3rd party programs for productivity in programming IMO. Iterm2 allows you to have multiple custom terminals all on one screen, and can be a transparent overlay so you don't have to swap between apps as often. The best 3rd party terminal I have found was cmder on windows, but it would always give me path developmental issues that had no explicable causes why something failed. Something that failed in MS-DOS, would work in gitbash, but fail in cmder. The solution was to just uninstall and reinstall everything many times, or just do a restore point.
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Docking experience on macOS has a nice native feel to it, I prefer its transitions as well. In windows, I would run a combination of taskbar tweaks include resizing all app icons, adding blank exe spacer shortcuts, and run autohotkey scripts in the background. Windows definitely still has way more customization methods using 3rd party apps than does mac.
Macbook pros have a superior experience when it comes to handling things on a single screen. Its just convenient to use native gestures on the trackpad and move across your terminal VS browser VS website. I prefer a double monitor experience on macbook pros as well. Its just so much easier treating that monitor as a seperate "desktop space" rather than one jointed area like in windows. I've owned 2 windows laptops before this. Also, the hardware on a 2015 macbook pro is definitely much nicer (better form factor for its value) than any windows laptop I've used before.
MacOS handles dependency issues much better than windows. Every app just lives in its own tiny little folder, also downloading and installing things is just so much easier. Using unarchiver on macOS is just a one click install for most things. With windows I ran revo uninstaller, but in MacOS there is an equivalent called AppCleaner.
In macOS, when I install things I use homebrew (e.g. nodeJS). With windows its always been a full uninstall using a fully packaged exe or msi file type.
MacOS does have some programs that really suck compared to windows. My favorite apps in windows are shareX / greenshot, macOS has no close equivalents to it. I use this to make gif documentation logs during webdevelopment all the time, its very handy. I haven't really given Wine (running windows apps on mac) a try though. MacOS doesn't have an app like "timesnapper" which I use in webdevelopment in sysadmin work, which helps me play back my entire day to see what I did. Helps in catching which settings caused which errors during development, and also its good for post documentation reasons as well. MacOS had no equivalent unless you intend on running OBS software all day long or used special custom applescripts
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When I develop on a windows machine it seems like there is just so many more potential bugs I have to face. When I go look up a solution, its more scattered because people have windows 8 laptops. Or 8.1, which is just a whole set of other problems. Or they are still using windows 7, some are using the latest windows 10, etc. Sometimes I'll try every possible solution to that issue, none of them work, I'll try it 10 different ways, no go. I end up just giving up honestly, its not fun when you are fighting unforseen issues and can't get into what actually matters.
With macOS its a little more uniform, since things aren't scattered windows7,8,8.1,10 issues. Everyone has the same problem, so chances are higher there's going to be some solutions out there that would actually work. Since the experience is also more consistent across both the hardware+software, there is also less unknowns.
With windows I would run into potential hardware issues and software problems as well. My old windows 8.1 laptop could not upgrade to windows 10 due to intel L2 caching error upgrades, drivers would fail, etc.
I haven't really tried a pure native desktop Mac experience though, but I still definitely prefer windows for this. Probably because I'm so used to windows.
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I like having both a windows desktop and macbookpro laptop experience so I can get the best of both worlds
I used a personal linux laptop for 2 years, mostly when my windows laptop went to shit from poor performance issues. Linux just has such a huge lack of apps that I rely on everyday in either macOS or windows.
Also, macOS just has better native multimedia experience and graphic design programs well, so there's that. Nothing really compares to Apple Sketch on windows. iMovie is far superior to windows movie, etc. MacOS just has more batteries included programs that don't suck than windows
I find that in some instances, windows development is treated as an afterthought. In some cases, its macOS. Just depends on what it is IMO. With MacOS, its more tailored toward designers and graphic artists, so webdevelopment (which is what I do) is just a better overall experience
I tend to shy away from tools whenever I can, because everything has a maintenance & learning cost associated with it. Also, because I tend to have a lot of things open at the same time, virtualization really slows me down whenever I have to jump into the virtualized OS's keyboard / mouse / etc.
Down the road I might start using docker images + docker hub if I feel that the benefits (isolating test environments, debugging issues cross platform, deploying) of using virtualization outweighs its cons (maintenance, setting up, memorizing new commands, constantly running commands, etc). As of now I don't have much of a use case for it though.
While I agree, I wouldn't call HDMI, USB and SD Card legacy ports. They are actively being developed and enhanced at the moment. The only thing is that they weren't invented by Apple.
Way things are going I'll be very surprised if my next machine is a Macbook when my 2015 needs replacing.
Edit: now I can't unsee that MBP has its trackpad right of home key center :)
These two things are the biggest issues every time I ponder moving to Linux (Windows is not an option or I'd look at the Surface alternatives). The P1 does indeed look very interesting otherwise.
fun fact. Fedora is what RedHat uses to test and flesh out all the fancy features coming in CentOS 8 & RHEL 8. I think Fedora 25 or 26 is what those OSs are being build from.
Oh I didn’t know that. Will look into that!
I will never ever buy a Lenovo. It doesn't matter that it didn't affect the ThinkPad line.
Which tbf Lenovo cocked up a couple of weeks ago and hosed the SSD firmware so it didn't boot. Luckily i'm not a moron so everything was backed up, they sent a new SSD and they picked up the old one to recover, which I assume will be a hardware firmware flash. I don't need the backup, but I am looking forward to Lenovo spending the money for the pickup/flash/delivery to make sure it costs them as much money as possible so they don't do this again.
https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/943m9o/x1c6_ssd_f...
How about we stick to the facts we know, which is that all manufacturers but Apple have done these incredibly user hostile things.
With the amount of attention on them, if they did it, it’s bound to come out sooner or later.
Until then, though..
But I think the real culprit is that all of the organizations the grandparent poster listed distribute proprietary software which is untrustworthy to begin with. Proprietary malware isn't hard to find (see https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/ for an organized set of links) whether it came with the OS pre-installed on the computer or installed later. So long as it adversely affects the user and leaves the user with no permission to inspect, alter, and share the software (only permission to run the malware) the situation is bad.
Clevo. They are a whitebox laptop manufacturer so you will find they are OEM for several smaller brands like MSI, Sager, and others. Yes they are Chinese market, but every laptop is made in China these days, even the big American names, so that part is unavoidable. If that truly is an issue you can't get around, you'll be happy to know that System76 is moving towards producing its devices in house in the United States[1], though I have no idea if the recent tariff wars have affected that situation.
[1] https://opensource.com/article/18/4/system76-us-manufacturin...
https://bsdly.blogspot.com/2017/07/openbsd-and-modern-laptop...
Zbooks seem to continue the tradition. Dell's Precisions are great, too.
Haven't had experience with the newer Thinkpads, the design, materials and being owned by a Chinese megacorp kind of drove me away.
0) https://www.macrumors.com/2017/02/09/icloud-storing-deleted-...
Can you explain more?
1) You can find a couple of threads where people either say Wistron makes Lenovo Thinkpads, and even one where someone finds the Wistron name on a X1 Carbon box they were shipped: http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/x1-carbon-shipping-t...
2) Wistron is a spinoff of Acer. Specifically the Manufacturing/R&D wing of Acer. However, that spinoff happened in 2000, so there really isn't a connection between Acer and Wistron anymore: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wistron
This is a nice 2009 article about Wistron: https://www.forbes.com/global/2009/1214/technology-wistron-s...
If you have a larger tinfoil hat you can always libreboot an x220.
It certainly was the best I worked with until two years ago, for several years. Sure, it’s got its quirks, but they help you a lot to learn new stuff, and after that, it’s much easier to set it up again in case you needed (I only needed it once every two years or so).
It's also surprisingly stable.
I think a higher bar to entry often keeps things better quality (coming from the dev world I am thinking about Django deployment versus PHP deployment). Arch was too much of a pain for me to install last time I checked, and its going to be way too much effort for anyone relatively new to Linux.
Don't get me wrong, technically you can make Ubuntu just as flexible but you have to try to configure it that way. All the conveniences they brought into these distros for simple package management actually sets you up for failure when you are doing larger upgrades. Not to mention that the packages in their repos are often out of date.
I never had my Arch box fail me across upgrades, allowing me to actually be current in the code I run.
It's a healthy middle between Gentoo and CentOS if you don't want to build it all from source but yet still be current.
Even opkg and some IPAs are better than the package manager experience I had with apt-get or yum/dnf.
And despite the name, it's pretty solid, I don't remember the last issue I had with it.
With luck it will be less than $1M/yr.
This is why people don't use homebrew anymore, either. If you're running a Mac you dev in a Docker container that reflects your production environment.
That doesn't mean they're developing against Arch.
Running old Linux versions on new laptops is going to be a frustrating experience; ideally all the device drivers you need are mainlined into the kernel of your distribution so you won't have to mess with those yourself.
If you like Red Hat stuff (which I do), install Fedora 28. It's on my Thinkpad right now, and works flawless.
It's hard to really recommend the X1 (or T480s) as a developer machine, IMO.
Thank god for strong EU consumer laws that I got my money back.
Also the fact Lenovo refuse to offer an option to switch between S3 and S0i3 sleep in the BIOS is very frustrating on a business laptop. They only support S0i3 which doesn't even play well with Microsoft's own Modern Standby so is almost pointless for me. Almost daily I would open my bag up to a super hot laptop and almost zero battery as it didn't actually go to sleep like expected.
Only issue is battery life, maybe 4-7 hours with VSCode, Slack etc, but maybe you can’t complain too much given these are electron apps.
I have a precision 5520 and haven’t had a single Linux/hardware related issue, before that I had a Thinkpad x201s, and an x201 before that- and further back still I had a T400.
It’s been more than a decade since I’ve personally seen a Linux+hardware issue.
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That said, the value of a MacBook is the build quality of the device and the application ecosystem. Try getting Skype for business and outlook working on a Linux laptop. :/
I am also not sure about the build quality. Despite the keyboard, MacBooks are very well designed and built devices.
(I'm not a fan of the XPS 13 or 15; the keyboard is a little clicky and the touchpad is not good.)
This is a solvable problem that I expect to improve, albeit probably not any time soon, and I'm still incredibly frustrated by it right now. Seriously people, just test your software, even a little bit, on a convertible device.
But... if you're not an artist, and you're not using a tablet, and you have someone who can even just help you get set up a little, you kinda, maybe, probably should be at least looking at Linux? Especially if you're using a computer as a professional.
It used to not be this way at all, but I think that modern Linux is generally way more stable than Mac or Windows, and is generally easier to work with for professionals. It's starting to reach the point where it may be easier for low-tech users as well, since you can get someone else to set up a computer with exactly the stuff you want, and then only install security updates.
It's a major selling point for me to be able to go to someone and say, "Hey, Ubuntu will support an LTS for 5 years. You won't need to change a single thing about your interface, and everything will just keep working."
But no, touch screens are what I meant. There's also a scenario where someone is moving away from Mac specifically because they're looking at convertibles like a Surface Book. Maybe before this point they were doing drawing on an iPad, or a wacom tablet. Apple had and still has a huge userbase of artists.
Say that you're one of those artists trying to transition to (opinion me) a superior hardware medium for doing artwork, where you have more control over buying hardware brands you think will be reliable or flexible or portable, and where you can get the advantages of running a full-fledged OS on your tablet. You can buy a PC convertible and install Linux on it. But you won't be happy with how Linux runs on those devices (also opinion me).
I'm sure there's some kind of experimental driver support at least, but it has to actually be good.
You're probably not wrong. If you're looking at a new Macbook maybe there's at least good odds you already don't care about touch? In which case, it's not a bad idea to at least think about Linux, especially since you're already familiar with more than a few of the command line conventions.
Driver support is great, but driver support is not the problem for any Linux touch interface, that's been a solved issue for some time - the applications need to catch up to the usability level of stuff like Clip Studio. I fully expect that it will happen some day, but probably not for a while.
That being said, thanks for the suggestion, I really appreciate it. I'm still running Linux on my drawing tablet, I'm just putting up with everything that comes with it. If you had managed to find an app that had slipped past me when I was testing all of this stuff, you would have just made my tablet experience way better.
I think the use case is a little esoteric in our community, I've been seriously thinking about trying my hand at creating an application to address my needs when I get some downtime from my contract work.
I can’t subscribe to that. It’s ok, but it still requires permanent hand holding. Stuff randomly breaks with updates, for example since the last update I can’t scan any more. I also can’t print any more on my networked printer that’s connected to my mac server.
Docking support is pretty awkward IME.
Multimonitor support is also "rough" to say the least.
They're pretty bad with touch/styluses.
Multi-GPU (while I'm against multiple system GPUs) support is problematic.
Power usage is also inferior, which bothers me as I prefer things greener than not, if possible. Not to mention the inconvenience.
If you're just utilizing a laptop like one would in the 80s or 90s, no problem at all, I agree. If you're trying to push the limits, hook up 3 monitors and expect it to "just work" or worse, "keep working" once you set it up.. dock/undock, use a stylus on the screen. Anything beyond firing up a terminal and a browser? Hasn't ever worked well for me. I prefer Windows10 from everything else, but also don't mind macOS (though it's similarly limited like desktop Linux is) and for a distro to just reach for and install, Linux Mint was impressive for usability. Antergos was my rolling distro goto but I prefer Mint's model of Ubuntu LTS but with continual updates to fix bugs. Constant rolling updates is not good IMO and neither is a (largely) code-frozen Ubuntu LTS release. Linux Mint nails the sweet spot there.
But yeah, other than Linux Mint, I can't really use it with how much I demand out of my machines. I consider myself a power user but I don't want to dig into the X11 codebase ever again when I have other things to take care of, some of that code hasn't been touched in 20 years (and that's a bad thing, because much needs updated).
Apple or Samsung is what I've come to. Of the Macbooks, I prefer the MPB13 non-touchbar, it not only misses the touchbar but also has no dGPU for increased reliability. It's just the simple sort of design that I tend to go for and it's solid. But if you don't like that, then take a look at the Samsung 9 Pro. They're available at Best Buy and have the traditional "good price per specs" PC argument going for them (I'll take build quality over specs anyday but that's just me), but reviews and teardowns all give me a ton of confidence in them. They also have the SPen and 2-in-1 capability which is a pretty nice value add. In my experience, Dell/HP/Lenovo never did figure out how to build a good laptop in 30 years, and given the latest Dell XPS reviews, they aren't going to start now. Lenovo's decline is more recent, after the IBM divestiture of course.
I'm sure no one is going to like this, everyone thinks something like a Lenovo X220 with Ubuntu is the only way to go, but I actually prefer Windows 10 to both macOS and desktop Linux (though I have a place in my heart for Linux Mint for sure and I quite liked Antergos for a rolling distro when I used it). With the Samsung 9 Pro, it's almost guaranteed to lose the SPen features if you insist on avoiding Windows not to mention harming the battery life.
The OSX86 Project[1] is pretty much all you’ll need for instructions for getting a hackintosh setup running. And if you’re interested in building one from scratch, the OSX86 Project lists compatible hardware so you can know what you’re buying will work.
If you don’t mind having to do a bit of reading and tinkering to get it working, it’s a solid way to be able to use OS X on non-Apple hardware. But, if you’d rather have something you can just install and forget, you’re better off just installing your favorite Linux distro, or buying a Mac.
I wonder if it might be possible somehow under Boot Camp. Or if on a machine as beefy as a Mac Pro if a VM would be good enough. I don't know enough about either to say definitively.
The dealbreaker for me is no ctrl key in the corner
System Preferences > Keyboard > Modifier Keys
The reason they don't support it is likely because there's not the demand among their customer base, as most people who want a GNU/Linux OS on a laptop go for Thinkpad or Dell due to better compatibility and other reasons.
Wow, they’re not even trying with the naming.