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> There is absolutely no way in hell a keyboard like this should be found on a laptop favored by software engineers.

I don't quite get it. Why are software engineers favoring such a laptop? Shouldn't this be worded the other way around? "There is no way a laptop with a keyboard like this should be favored by software engineers"...?

It's tiny, super light, has decent battery, an "ok" CPU, 16GB ram and you can hook up a whole bunch of external peripherals including GPU via thunderbolt 3. It also doesn't have the coil whine the xps has and arguably better worldwide support when you use the premium partners rather than the apple store itself. In general the Macbooks aren't that much more expensive than the alternatives.

Not that I'm directly comparing it to the xps, since the macbook pro is probably more closely related to the xps, but still there's no other device with 16gb RAM in that segment. In terms of CPU the performance is pretty much on par with the Macbook air although it's CPU was last updated in 2015

I don't have one. I still use my 4 year old Macbook air. The only thing that bothers me is that I usually dual boot with linux and the newer macbooks are getting worse to run linux on.

When comparing to dell, I invite you to compare it to the latitude rather than xps. Latitudes are much more functional, not meant to be a fashion statement, have a keyboard with page up/down keys (which few other laptop keyboard have), while being light, powerful and upgradable. The only problem is that the fingerprint reader sucks.

> not meant to be a fashion statement

Is this a polite way of saying they're ugly?

Another way of thinking about this is that Dell made little to no compromises on function for aesthetics.

Don't have anything to say about your comparison, seems fair to me. One thing I personally add to it, though, is the price difference for the replacement keyboard and the difficulty of replacement procedure. Any keyboard may fail due to user spilling stuff on it, and in case of XPS, you could fairly easily splice in another one.

I no longer do.

My last MacBook was a 2013. It has 16GB RAM and a 1TB SSD and I still use it. I'm somewhat desensitised to the price creep because I buy on the business but it just doesn't seem like I'm in the target market anymore.

I really like the aesthetic of a case that isn't a wedge shaped lump of plastic but that only gets you so far. I've bought an Intel Hades Canyon, put Linux on it and moved most of my development over to it. I'll probably get an XPS to put Linux on for when I'm on the move.

I am baffled though; the issues seem to be so widely felt I don't understand why a company with such wealth can't throw us a bone like the slightly thicker dev oriented machine suggested above. I'd have thought it in their interest but I guess not.

> I am baffled though; the issues seem to be so widely felt I don't understand why a company with such wealth can't throw us a bone like the slightly thicker dev oriented machine suggested above. I'd have thought it in their interest but I guess not.

Even if they were interested, are we sure apple can still operate efficiently? A lot of large companies, including HP and Microsoft, hit a point where they have trouble getting even relatively simple things done (like replacing a keyboard).

Yeah, looks as though they've more than doubled from ~60k employees in 2011. I've no idea how you scale a business like Apples at that rate effectively.

In fairness, they’ve purchased a lot of other companies and software. I’ll bet much of the increase is in software or the acquisitions they’ve made.

Meeting with a team this month from Apple on a product purchased from the company I work for that (to my knowledge) had far fewer engineers—or at least engineers who would work with external engineers to the project.

They meant that the MBP in general is favoured by software developers (especially until 2016), and the post-2016 MBP is the successor to that but doesn't live up to the reputation.

Anyone doing iOS app development effectively has no other choice.

> but why not just launch a developer line? Make it thicker, heavier, give it more battery, a keyboard with a proper amount of travel, larger keys, more keys, whatever. Ditch the retarded touch bar. More ram. More config options. More ports.

Creating a new line probably costs Apple hundreds of millions in R&D costs, to say nothing of the opportunity costs from putting some of their best hardware engineers on this project. I would imagine that Tim Cook looks at the dev market, compares to the cost, and says “no fucking way”.

Of course add to that the fact that “heavy and thick” is not a plus to most software devs either. The real market is probably much smaller than you’d like to believe.

HP, Thinkpad and Dell seem to find enough market to bother.

I sincerely doubt a model variant costs hundreds of millions either, or the majority of the laptop market would be unsustainable.

> I sincerely doubt a model variant costs hundreds of millions either, or the majority of the laptop market would be unsustainable.

Yeah, but the majority of the laptop market aren't doing brain-damaged things like removing ESC keys, adding pointless touchbars and designing keyboards which are beautiful to look at but which fail at actual typing. And the majority of the laptop market don't have to pay for Sir Jonathan Ive to remove all colour, ornament, affordance and delight from the design, moving as close to a featureless white rounded-rectangular prism as possible as he can for this iteration.

It wouldn't surprise me if Apple have to pay an order of magnitude (or two) per model, just to end up with something which is ultimately sub-par.

Thicker with more ports is not a “variant”. That’s an entirely custom housing with a different battery and possibly a different board to support the new ports. This is equivalent to the split between MacBook and MacBook Pro.

Dell, HP, and Lenovo also do not do what Apple is asked to do here. You can buy a thick heavy laptop from Dell. You cannot, however, buy a slightly thicker, slightly heavier XPS 13. If you want the flagship “ultra book”, you buy the one they sell. Otherwise you buy the plastic Inspiron or whatever which is an entirely different class of product and does not feel particularly premium.

> Otherwise you buy the plastic Inspiron or whatever

Aluminium body is now premium? How about not sacrificing cpu life for fan noise? Or repairability. Or non-soldiered on ssd? Working keyboard? Why's that not premium?

> Aluminium body is now premium?

Yes. I’m not sure what it accomplishes for you to feign ignorance here. When Apple started selling aluminum laptops, it was a big deal because it made everything on the market look low quality in comparison.

> How about not sacrificing cpu life for fan noise? Or repairability. Or non-soldiered on ssd? Working keyboard? Why's that not premium?

Because it’s not. Noisy fan to protect the CPU seems like the opposite of premium. Putting seat covers over the leather in a Mercedes is similarly not premium, because the experience suffers, even if the end result is better durability.

Non-soldered SSD? A thicker laptop for self-serve SSD swaps does not seem at all premium. Doing physical maintenance on my laptop in general does not feel premium. I expect it to work as I bought it. And yes, I would love it if I could cheap out and buy a basic laptop and upgrade it myself for half the cost, but that’s really not the premium experience. That’s the Honda Civic experience.

Keyboard? Shrug. They fucked up the design. Sucks, but Rolex has probably had to do some repairs in warranty before, too.

There are different plastics. And you came off like aluminium is the only thing that defines premium experience. For me premium experience also includes some baseline functionality. Level of keyboard noise I'm not embarrassed about. Peace of mind when I turn my laptop for repairs when I image ssd beforehand. Running my laptop at temperatures that are more reasonable for me. That's premium experience for me, not completely arbitrary 2 mm lesser thickness and pre-1888[1] precious[2] metals.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer_process

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Monument#Aluminum_a...

I already decided to not buy a new MacBook, and now i’m making a similar decision with the iPhone after 6 years. My main issue is instability of the OS. I could list issues for an hour, but it also doesn’t help that I can’t reliably connect remove photos on my phone via Linux, since apparently Apple changes important things about the connection protocol every 3-6 months. The instability of spellcheck is shocking too - ever since 10.5, it mishandles edited text in a very nonfunctional way.

If Apple is going to make iOS buggy and second rate, there goes my main reason to use an iPhone. Same with Mac hardware. Those are the parts that are supposed to be the good things about Apple - iOS and MacBook hardware quality were my reasons to buy their products.

Oh, and even worse, I can’t even connect my phone to my MacBook currently, which is running Sierra. I suppose Apple doesn’t consider that a priority because they assume you can upgrade. Sadly, the MB won’t upgrade to High Sierra - it gives an incomprehensible error every time after about 20 minutes.

I was Apple from the Macintosh SE until a couple years ago. Finally had enough and put the (significant) effort into shifting over. It took some time getting used to Windows again (hadn't really used it since 98SE other than sporadically), updating all my habits and muscle memory, etc.

Haven't regretted it once.

The machine I built for half the price of the equivalent Mac STILL makes me feel all warm and happy a year later. It feels weird to have more performance than I'd ever need, while spending so little. Windows 10 is perfectly usable, unlike multiple predecessors. WSL is amazing, and basically gives you that *nix-terminal-in-an-instance feel that used to be a unique feature of OSX.

It's easier than ever to switch, and there's less reasons than ever not to. Apple is treading dangerous waters I reckon. I seriously think if more Apple users knew how far Windows PCs had come, they'd be switching now, as I know I myself held off for a fair while just because I was hesitant to believe it had gotten that much better.

Based on the comment, I'm assuming you built a desktop system. Is there an equivalent for laptops? I keep looking at Surface books, and... get tempted, then read about something that seems like a major flaw, so I hold off. $3k would be a lot to drop on a machine, so... I want some assurances it would be worthwhile switching from a MBP (2015).

Dell XPS 13 is my primary choice for last 5 years (I had 2 work laptops from this product line and still own a model from 2015). The only bug in it is a nosecam.

And the wretched touchpad with its constant false triggers. I love my XPS 13, but I always use it with mouse, as the touchpad is so terrible.

Never had this problem.

Curious: Linux, or windows? Make sure you're using libinput if on linux, it'll solve that outright.

for 3K you could look at most of the premium brands and from a hardware point of view, I'd say you have a good chance of finding something that suits your needs.

Dell XPS 13 are popular and can be shipped and supported with Linux out of the box as well as Windows. XPS 15 can be an option if you're ok with some added weight and want more power.

Lenovo T-Series have been around for ages and generally have quite robust hardware. There's also the Carbon X1 if you want something lighter, or the Thinkpad P1 if you want more power.

HP Elitebooks - Similar to the other two these have a good range of options and good hardware build generally.

On the Microsoft side there's the Surface Pro's and also the surface book, which is very pricey but again has some nice hardware.

Of course all this depends on what you're looking for from a laptop, what is "worthwhile" is a personal judgement :)

I’ll never buy another xps after my experience with the xps 13. Trackpad was near useless due to outright user abuse. Tried any driver tricks and hacks I could find to little help. Plus windows just doesn’t do 4k acceptably.

I guess mileage varies on these things, laptop choice is quite a personal affair. Personally I'm relatively fine with Windows 4K perf. (running a Dell Precision 7520)...

I'd heavily recommend the lenovo x1 line, I'm using the x1c5 (gen5) without issue. Love it in every regard, and it doesn't hurt that it's lighter than the macbook by a heavy margin.

That's what I'm most afraid of if apple doesn't veer from its current path. I can't go back to windows. I've used windows, Mac OS, and Ubuntu, and windows was the worst OS for me.

Almost every single tool/technology that I've come across in the last couple years has separate laborious and annoying installation instructions for windows. Many don't even support windows at the start.

Unless Microsoft rewrites windows as a *nix OS from scratch (not gonna happen), I don't see myself being willing to go back to it.

The Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) lets you run unmodified Linux binaries in a Windows terminal.

You can install Ubuntu from the Windows App Store and it’s the real thing, not an emulation layer like Cygwin. You don’t need separate install instructions — just follow the ones for Ubuntu.

It’s really an underappreciated amazing feature of modern Windows: you can run an entire Linux userland on the same kernel.

I’ll second this. I found the emulators like Cygwin a bit clunky for my tastes. The WSL is a great compromise.

It's handy, I'll give you that. Until this bug (feature?) is sorted, it's dangerous: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2016/11/17/do-n...

The Linux files live in a separate location from the standard Windows folders that Explorer exposes. I've never had a problem with accidentally stumbling into my Linux tree from the Windows GUI.

Understood, I'd launch editors from the wsl & end up blowing up all of my work without thinking. It's hard to get out of the habit of typing `atom .` inside a folder.

Oh well, linux works for me :)

I do love Homebrew but windows has chocolatey which is an analog or you could just use the windows Linux subsystem and use the native apt or yum tools.

> I'm not sure if Apple is seeing the writing on the wall here, but why not just launch a developer line? Make it thicker, heavier, give it more battery, a keyboard with a proper amount of travel, larger keys, more keys, whatever. Ditch the retarded touch bar. More ram. More config options. More ports.

I would celebrate this if not for the fact that they'd find a way charge €3000-5000 for it. RIP if you like to use a MacBook as a university student.

> What? Don't care about the people who work on iOS/macOS software professionally? Don't need us? Why don't you go talk to Microsoft about that.

All the Macs together present about 5-10% of Apple's revenue. On their scale, that's still a big chunk of money, but that figure makes it quite obvious why it takes the bank bench to the iPhone. Hell, I'm surprised they put as much effort in their iPads, considering those also only present ~10% of their revenue. The iPhones are the big money maker with around 70% of their revenue.

a developer model without a touchbar would mean nothing would ever get written for the touchbar.