I'm very happy with the switch. Though I'm on (Debian+) Xfce now instead of Ubuntu and would go for a ThinkPad instead of the XPS, because 1) I want a 14" screen 2) the XPS's fan is too loud, especially when Skyping 3) the XPS's camera is placed at the bottom of the screen instead of at the top, so people you have video calls with look up your nostrils.
I've heard this over and over — that Macs are locked-down, uncustomisable machines — and I don't agree with it at all.
I use replacements for almost all the built-in apps. I use a custom launcher. My editor config Git repo is approaching ten years old, and my shell config Git repo is almost eight. There are standard interfaces to per-application Preferences and keyboard shortcuts. When I sit down to use someone else's Mac, I have no idea how to use it!
What changes am I missing? The only thing I can think of is that I can't use a different window manager or a different kernel, but I'm fine with those already.
Hotel-chic is very clean, very minimal, very sparse. Just enough to have the necessary conveniences that appeal to everyone, with absolutely nothing personalised for any individual.
As of about 10 years ago, I made a conscious choice to stop customising my desktop (and then later, mobile) experience away from the defaults as much as possible, as I was fed up of having to document and then re-deploy all of my customisations every time I had to reinstall for whatever reason, which was far too frequent for my liking.
At the same time, I'd been moving home roughly every year for the 7 years prior already, and had grown weary of all my physical effects. I started disposing of more and more of my things (inadvertently marie kondo-ing my life before it was a "thing" I was aware of) and decreasing the personalisation of my physical space down more and more.
I now essentially live a hotel-esque lifestyle, with most of my personal customisations fitting in a small corner of the room. Added bonus of this is with the frequent travel I need to do for work, I can take one or two items with me, and the hotel room instantly feels like home.
I guess this explains why I'm relatively happy as an Apple user. The lack of customisation doesn't bother me, as I don't customise anything outside of the bare minimums (wallpaper and privacy settings, thats about it).
It also explains how I'm able to use Windows 10 at work without killing anyone, while my colleagues are all using tiling window managers under Linux and looking at me like I'm crazy for not wanting to spend a week tweaking and customising my environment....
- Unless watching movies (not something I used it for) the wide screen aspect ratio was a big step down for productivity. IDEs, browsers, etc. all feel very cramped compared to on a more square 13" MBP.
- With Ubuntu pre-installed, out of the box, the sleep/hibernate mode used about 25% battery per 12 hours of sleep. I was able to configure a working sleep mode but this is the sort of basic functionality I expect to work on a high-end laptop.
- Multi-monitor - with mixed DPI - just never worked and I tried every suggestion I could find.
- Overall battery management was poorer - probably not Dell's fault as I expect this is an issue with the way Linux applications are written. A regular pattern was re-starting applications whenever the fan would start whirring up.
- This could be an issue with our set-up but I had to write a script that ran in the background to refresh the WiFi connection. There was some ARP issue that I wasn't able to (nor had time to) fully debug.
- This is pretty subjective, but I found the keyboard to be cramped an unergonomic.
I actually wanted to like this as I've primarily used Linux on my desktops for a couple of decades.
The camera is no longer placed at the bottom of the screen in the newest model (9380), they moved it up top
Btw, Xfce is a desktop environment while Ubuntu is a distribution. Perhaps you meant to write you're on Xfce instead of Gnome?
A few things which, although obvious in retrospect, I had to learn the hard way:
• Get a ThinkPad with physical buttons under the touchpad, if you like to track with your index finger and click with the thumb. I made the mistake of getting the kind where you push the entire touchpad, and it's very hard to use. Apple's was at least useable, this is not.
• Get a ThinkPad with a physical Ethernet port. USB dongles are finicky and unstable on Linux, and there are places / desks / offices where the WiFi is flaky.
• Choose the stable release of a well-supported OS (Ubuntu, Mint... whatever) because the beta / newest / testing version will make you lose time on bugs and freezes.
You can customize your room (your Window Manager, Terminal, etc...) but when you try to make yourself at home in the bathroom or kitchen (use and/or customize common applications), you run into issues. [1]
Since everyone has a different preferences, you have to make compromises.
On Mac, all apps follow similar guidelines. And the end result are beautiful, powerful, intuitive and feature-rich native applications, that make the best use of all the available system features.
1. The thermal situation on newer Thinkpads needs to be called out. Even with undervolting, there doesn’t seem to be a sweet spot where you can avoid regular throttling without the CPU hitting unsafe temperatures. I’ve heard it can be somewhat remedied by applying more thermal paste to the CPU than the meager amount Lenovo provides out of the box (doing it yourself voids your warranty). Ultimately, I think there is a clear regression in the thermal design between Lenovo’s newer laptops and classic Thinkpads like the X200. The internals just aren’t designed to properly dissipate heat and while it’s nice that the fan is quiet, I wish it did more to cool the device. This seems to be a common issue not just with the T480 but other newer Thinkpads like the X1 Carbon. If anyone has any advice here beyond iuvolt, throttled etc. please let me know.
2. My model has a WQHD display and I use an external monitor with the same resolution but a lower DPI. Linux in 2019 is still a bit dicey when it comes to mixed DPI setups. GTK+ 3.0 applications on Wayland scale perfectly between displays but Firefox is a bit buggy and Electron apps are laughably bad. It has come a long way for sure but there’s still work to be done.
All that said, I’m coming from a 2017 MacBook Pro that had way more issues from the failing keyboard to dead speakers and screen burn-in. I’m happier with the Thinkpad and enjoy using it as my daily driver. It’s a solid machine and the keyboard and port selection are perfect. No issues with running Linux on this device either. Everything just worked on a clean install and I’m able to do everything I did before on macOS whether it be software development, multimedia creation or just personal computing. The “hotel vs. home” analogy you used is dead-on and speaks to what I’ve always loved about Linux. I’ll take an OS that lets me tailor my own software experience over the proprietary equivalent any day.
Dell Thunderbolt Dock (TB16) is is disappointment. Others report problems as well.
This is no longer the case in the latest gen, they've placed it back at the top on a very thin bezel still.
Never again.
Glad to see my suggestion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17314002 worked then :) But I run it once in my startup script along with my xmodmap changes and it seems fine to me...
Compatibility wise the dell is great but build quality is lacking. The Thinkpads (X, T, Carbons) are all light years ahead and have similar - if not better - compatibility out of the box.
I have a X1 Carbon 6th gen and the battery life is awesome and everything besides the fingerprint reader works out of the box.
(I also find many Dell and Thinkpad models to be as good as if not better laptops than MacBooks).
For me, I had requirements that were previously met in the MBP: good battery life, good processing power, and not too bulky. I didn't really care about camera or touch screen or fingerprint reader. Based on this, I finally found the Dell Precision 5520 which is the workstation version of the Dell XPS 15". Everything was configurable (OS, CPU, GPU, RAM, battery, screen) and with a good build quality and small form factor. Ubuntu 16.04 LTS was an option, meaning drivers were configured and supported by Dell – a relief, after some experiences using Linux on laptops years ago. Now I've changed the OS to Manjaro, added a 2nd RAM stick for a total of 32GB, configured a bit the power settings with `powertop` and I'm really happy with my portable powerhorse lasting >10h when coding.
As for the Dell client service, I happened to use it a month ago because my 2 years old battery was now swollen. As I took the 3-year warranty extension "Next business day", I called on Monday and Tuesday the technician was there to change battery and touchpad (that can sometimes break when the battery swells) and it was all. Fast and convenient !
But no matter what laptop you pick, its gonna take you a couple of weeks until you are comfortable with it. But it will happen eventually. Laptops have the same interface after all.
Switching the entire software stack from Mac to any other OS is probably the main struggle.
Try a couple of Linuxes or Windows for a few weeks until you find the sweet spot. Between Mac, Windows and major Linux distributions, there is none that is objectively better anymore(for developer experience). Its a matter of preference and habit.
Generally, Linux works fine on the ThinkPads, as does Windows. But neither of them work as smoothly as a Mac OS for me. Especially when it comes to multi-monitors. They also don't handle different resolutions nearly as well (4k, standard, etc). I usually run dual-boot because I'm not 100% happy with either.
However, for the most part, I can do things like plug my USB-C LG 4k monitor into a ThinkPad with Linux or Windows 10 and it works just fine. But, a couple reboots later I might have to re-configure all my externals (various 1440p and 1080p monitors).
The trackpad on the MacBooks is beyond anything you will get on a ThinkPad. They are usable, they also have the trackpoint, but they don't have the 'flickability' that the Macs have. The keyboards are also better than anything you'll find elsewhere.
The place where the ThinkPads really win is cost and flexibility. Plus, they have all the ports you would expect.
Do you need a beast of a 'portable workstation'? You can configure a P5x on Lenovo.com with 64-128GB of RAM, 3x2GB SSD's in it, and you're still cheaper than a maxed out 15" MBP with 1/3rd the capacity.
Do you want a thin and light travel machine? You have the X2x0 and the X1. Neither share the footprint of the 12" MacBook but they have real processors, and you can upgrade the RAM and SSD with standard parts.
And then if you just want a 'laptop', you have the T3x0, T4x0, T5x0, if you need a 'workstation' there's the X1 Extreme, P1, P5x. Enough options to make it confusing.
We have XPS 13's at work, but I don't care for them too much. They feel chintzy, 4k @ 13" isn't ideal for me (the screens are high quality, though). The shiny bezel around the entire laptop gets all scratched up and cheap looking very quickly as well.
I'm going to be in the market for a new <= 14" soon but want more ram than the X1 carbon offers. A T490 caps out at 40gb and has decent specs on paper, I'd be interested to hear others' thoughts on the model though.
My advice is "don't fight windows". I've seen many people try to make Windows like Unix. Don't. Use Windows versions of things, not things compiled under Cygwin or MinGW. Learn to use Powershell and Powershell scripting language.
I do development (C/C++/CUDA/Erlang/Python) all day long on Windows 10 and in addition use desktop applications like Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Cloud.
No problems whatsoever. My main machine -- a Surface Book -- has had no issues. It sleeps, hibernates, manages power, perfectly. The keyboard feels good and is dirt tolerant. (I also have a lightweight travel notebook -- a lenovo yoga -- that "just works" though it's a little underpowered for major development work)
I hate it. Everything.
Kafkaesque configuration UIs, horrible window management, mouse acceleration is off, font rendering is atrocious, the updates make me unreasonably angry, mixed design systems leave me confused, File Explorer isn’t even trying, many apps are downright insulting, and the entire thing just reeks of PMs in ill-fitting suits prodding things this way and that with their doughy fingers.
And I need to install a linux subsystem to make it just about usable.
It’s a shame, because I do like the look of their Surface line.
This seems like an oddly outdated notion in the WSL era. Having used Windows 10 f/t in 2018, I'd say 'use Linux versions of commandline dev tools, not Windows'.
Mostly though I agree that Windows 10 is a decent and viable Desktop OS. It does have some problems. The task bar is an appalling bit of Stalinist design (insisting on obscuring parts of running apps even when on auto-hide), and much of the Microsoft-supplied software (eg. Mail, Calendar) is terribly amateurish. If you use the Insiders builds (tempting because of WSL2), it's pretty buggy. But most of the fundamental stuff works extremely well.
All of the OSs available have their irritations, but I don't think those of Windows are any more egregious or numerous than the competitors. Certainly MacOS (my main OS for many years prior to 2018) has become irrelevant to me because of absurd price-gouging and fake keyboards.
What eventually pulled me off Windows towards Linux is largely the development experience and the filesystem. But then I have to put up with its egregious hdpi & multimonitor support and general GUI flakiness.
There are no good OSs in 2019, just balances of tradeoffs for your particular purposes & preferences.
YMMV. I tried PS for a few years and just couldn't get into it. Installed WSL as soon as that came out and haven't touched PS since.
Trackpad difference is negligible, keyboard has real key travel and feels great to type on, pen support without buying a $1000 iPad, light and thin but with both usb-a and c.
Don’t even mind using Windows, I still like MacOS but until a hardware option exists again that serves my needs then I’m being forced to look elsewhere. (Linux isn’t an option in my case due to Adobe)
I liked the comment below describing Hotels (Mac) Vs home (ThinkPads). It's true that if you can be bothered to tweak and install some stuff then you end up with something of your own. Your way.
Never used Macs as old enough to remember the "no one got sacked for buying IBM" saying and it's true even if it is now Lenovo.
I'm now running a Yoga x390. It was the most I've ever spent on a laptop, and it was worth every penny. It's the perfect size, weight, battery life, performance combination, and is an absolute treat to use.
The Thinkpad feels cheap and poorly built compared to the MBP. The plastic creaks and it feels like it's going to fall apart when I carry it with one hand. The trackpad isn't nearly as good, and I had to dig into the X11 configuration to make it work reasonably. I've only had it for 10 months, and I'm already worried that the USB-C plug may be breaking.
Meanwhile, the MBP has sustained 6 years of abuse and still feels solid and works great.
As far as specs go, the Thinkpad is fine, but I'd be sad if I had to buy one with my own money.
I got an X260 on Ebay for ~EUR220 to replace an MBP whose screen went bad. The screen and touchpad are no match for the MBP, but it sparks joy in a way the MBP never did.
I imagine the drive and RAM would be first two items for the change, what about the CPU?
The hardware issue is the right side of the touchpad seems to be setup as a right click space. I want one finger left click no matter where I am on the touch pad and two finger right click. Reaching to the left side of the touchpad to click is super annoying and I often accidentally drag a tan instead of clicking on it.
Posting that in hopes someone knows a way to make the touchpad just one big space.
(Pair the ThinkPad with a Linux desktop using an external USB "ThinkPad-style" keyboard, and you've got TrackPoints + exactly the same keyboard layout (and OS layout/key bindings, etc) across laptop and desktop.)
I hope the next generation fixes this and/or we finally get good nvidia drivers.
Been using it on my Thinkpad P1 works well for my workflow, I almost always use the iGPU and for tasks that need dGPU
I am usually plugged into power. I get good battery life this way.
But I agree, MX250 option isn't worth it for the amount of GPU power it gives and the complications it brings under Linux.
>I hope the next generation fixes this and/or we finally get good nvidia drivers.
GPU offloading is being worked on by nvidia[2] so there is indeed hope.
[2] https://www.linuxuprising.com/2019/08/nvidia-43517-linux-bet...
The problem is that the NVidia card never enters its high power saving states even when it's disabled.
I lose about 20% battery on standby overnight.
The T480 running Ubuntu really hit a sweet spot for me. I could get 32GB of memory (double the memory of other developer laptop options) and it has hot-swappable batteries for extended coding sessions off plug. I'm not a huge fan of dongles either, so the built-in ports (ethernet, HDMI, MicroSD card slot, etc.) were nice.
If it is the keyboard then it’s 4 years, not 3 (https://support.apple.com/keyboard-service-program-for-mac-n...).
After going through three repair cycles Apple replaced mine with a brand new (faster) 2018 model, I didn't even have to ask for it. It was a bit of a drag to backup/restore the machine a bunch of times but Apple's service was top notch.
- https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2019/05/11/2030
Full disclosure: I work at Microsoft. I also still use Macs (and will keep using them regardless-for instance, I use a 5K iMac a lot of the time I work remotely) and have kept a Mac-centric blog for sixteen years, so I think I can be pretty straightforward and direct about this:
The Surface Laptop is at least as good as the MacBook (hardware-wise), and depending on what you do (for instance, if you can take advantage of WSL2 and the new Linux environment that comes with it), it may well be better. IMMV.
Hardware-wise, I cannot fault it except in the number of ports (new models changed that a bit). Having moved from a Lenovo X1 (which I hated) to it, and having avoided the hassles involved in the Surface Book (the hinge and detachable screen make for a wobbly, temperamental machine IMHO, and I’m not alone in thinking that), I’d say it is a great machine.
(I still carry around a Surface Pro 4 because it is only a slight bit smaller and lighter, but the Laptop has a nicer screen)
That's why I went for a T-series Thinkpad and am still using it. It's not as lightweight or slim but in exchange more powerful than equally priced ultrabooks/convertibles and easy to repair and upgrade. That's a trade-off I'm happy to make.
So please post at least some information for this aspect, which is one of the things the OP explicitly listed.
Some examples:
- Would you be able to do some solid Photoshop/Sketch/Gimp/Inkscape/Blender work with the touchpad/knob of your proposed MBP-replacement?
- Can you comfortably and efficiently organize your photos/files&folders with it?
What I do now is set up virtual desktops on my server and connect to it via Chrome Remote Desktop from the C302. I have a Thinkpad for when I need to travel, but it really sucks having to switch back to a mouse (the touchpad on that thing is horrible).
* System 76 Oryx Pro (aluminium, official Linux support, US shipping, flaky hardware, poor battery)
* Prostar Clevo P960 (rebadge of System 76 Oryx Pro)
* Huawei MateBook X Pro (aluminium, good Linux support)
* Razer laptops (aluminium, no good Linux support)
* Chuwi LapBook Plus (aluminium, good Linux support, poor battery, poor CPU, cheap)
* Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro (aluminium, good Linux support)
* Purism Librem 13
There was a HN thread recently about Huawei MateBook X Pro: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21170765
And also one about System 76: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21216195
I've also used a Dell XPS 15 9570 for the past year and a half which I spent $2.6k on (similar to this https://amzn.to/33PA53x). Specs-wise it's awesome and blows the MBP out of the park particularly when you factor in the price. But I've had a lot of issues with it unfortunately, having to get it repaired twice, and then another couple times I've had the screen just start glitching and crashing, both times resolving it via reinstalling Windows (seems to have been problems with the drivers). Outside of that, the laptop itself is a bit thicker and heavier than a MBP, the battery life is pretty weak (4 hours maybe?), it gets very hot and the fans get really loud, and the Wifi card sucks. Although the 4k screen is beautiful with fantastic anti-reflection, I've found that I prefer the 16:10 aspect ratio of the LG Gram and MBP vs. the 16:9 of the Dell since the former feels way bigger and I find having a taller screen more convenient (eg. for coding).
Ultimately it comes down to your preferences. Do you prioritize having the best specs? Then between the two you should get a Dell XPS 15 or alternatively a Dell Precision 5540 (very similar to the XPS 15, but more geared towards 3D work). If on the other hand you value portability but love having a large screen, I highly recommend the LG Gram 17. I don't think there's ever been a 17" laptop as light and portable as this one.
Ever since I received my LG, I stopped using my Dell. Unless you're doing a ton of video editing, 3d graphics work, or gaming, you really don't need more than 16gb RAM and an i7 processor. For stuff like coding and browsing the web, I certainly don't notice any performance difference (haven't tested more intensive stuff yet).
The LG gram 17 is a machine of pure compromise in pursuit of lightness. The material is carbon magnesium and pressing down on any part of the machine results in a disconcerting flex. The inside of the chassis you see a lot of empty space. The battery, while certainly more than sufficient, is still quite a bit smaller than it could be (72wh). The space inside could easily accommodate the maximum TSA allowed 100wh battery. The keyboard is cludgy, the speakers kind of suck, and the trackpad is nowhere close to what Apple is doing.
Still, the device is in a class of its own. It has a beautiful 17 inch 16:10 display, eschews a discrete gpu for battery and heat improvements which is unheard of in a 17 inch form factor, and is incredibly light, like you've said. I'm glad that the device exists. I hope LG keeps producing it, and I hope that other companies steal the idea.
The 16:10 screen is excellent. The battery life for me is about 16 hours, enough for a 2-day stretch, and I can go on a short business trip without ever having to plug in.
I transferred my 3 year old Fedora install with dd from an XPS 13, and then upgraded from 29 to 30 with zero issues.
Edit to add: Mine fits in a backpack meant for a 15" laptop.
I would suggest you hold off any laptop decision until then.
I'd rather not volunteer $3000 to be a guinea pig for Apple's keyboard design gremlins. If they went back to the 2016 model and just slapped a new motherboard inside and made the battery larger, then yeah, it'd be a no brainer. But I can't imagine them being that smart about it given the past few years of evidence to the contrary.
Are you really confident this first new batch will be ok?
I, too, was fed up with Apple’s rising MBP prices and flimsy design. I need a functional and long-lasting dev machine. The XPS (and probably Precision) series checked the boxes. It has ports when I need them. Easy to take apart and upgrade. Form, but not at the cost of function.
The recent addition of Linux support is very nice and I'm looking forward to its continuing evolution: https://support.google.com/pixelbook/answer/9031351?hl=en
Perhaps the new Pixelbook Go will tilt the scales for me: https://store.google.com/product/pixelbook_go
Eventually I pulled the trigger on a “big” chromebook, the Lenovo Yoga C630, with an i5-U processor and 8Gb of ram, as a trial period device (I had toyed around with a couple sub-$300 chromebooks before), and then the mbp died (pink screen, boot-loops), and I’ve been using the chromebook ever since. It’s pretty good, and steadily improving - at this point, it runs ChromeOS, android apps, and containerized linux simultaneously. My only regret about the thing is that I accidentally got the model without the backlit keyboard.
As a device, it’s a little larger than I would like, but it pays for that with a quite nice screen (I have the FHD version; the 4K display model gives up too much battery life for my taste). I still occasionally look at the Dell XPS13 or the Thinkpad X1 in stores, but it’s hard for me to justify spending 4* what the C630 cost me for either of those devices, especially since the XPS13 seems to have some hardware quality problems and the Thinkpad loses the portability that I would like from the XPS13.
I had hopes for the Pixelbook Go, but they were quickly dashed by the leaks then killed by the launch - it’s expensive and underpowered for a chromebook — costs more for less oomph than the chromebook I already have. I also had hopes for a new mbp with a new (old, really) keyboard, but that just doesn’t seem likely, so I’m not holding my breath.
The feel of the keyboard & trackpad were important to me, and the 4K display option covers 100% of the Adobe RGB color palette. I rarely use the Yoga's tablet feature, but as a Photoshop user it has sometimes been useful for photo editing with the built-in stylus. There's a built-in microSD card slot in the 3rd Gen & I put a giant microSD card in there for extra internal data storage (eg MP3 collection). The SSD is user upgradeable but I've had problems trying to get the SSD screw out myself.
There's a lot of small irritations and frustrations compared with the Mac to overcome, but the X1 Yoga has been far more reliable than my MacBook Pro. No problems in a year, whereas the Mac over the same time would have had 3 - 4 weeks of downtime due to repairs. It turns out reliability is more important to me, I need to get work done.
I'd also seriously consider the Surface Book / Surface Laptop range, I very nearly chose a Surface Book 2 until I saw the ThinkPad X1.
2. I hope Apple fails, it seems obvious Tim Cook is lacking the awful tasing medicine Steve Jobs once had.
Unfortunately it wont happen. iOS developers will need a Mac anyway, and along with those Professionals that uses MacBook, the MacBook will continue to do well and Apple will look at the sales Data and say everything is fine. ( Apple's definition of Professional is very Narrow, and programmers dont fit into that category )
We are close to 5 years mark since the butterfly Keyboard was fist introduced on MacBook in early 2015.
https://www.techradar.com/news/all-macbooks-will-ditch-the-b...
I must say that even though I an very fond of the Lenovo keyboards - and they are great. The overall feel of a MacBook is just better. The keyboard pre-butterfly is one of the best ever. The trackpad is another level even though sitting with the T460s and T470s at work, it seemed like their trackpads was on par, but they really are not.
The X1 Carbon should be up there, but there is just something about the full experience of the product where MBP wins out. That is at least my experience going a bit back and forth.
[0]: https://system76.com/laptops
[1]: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-x/X1-...
My 2014 MBP causes me issues only after an hour or two. And their newer keyboards... well, I'm just not even going to go there. The old ibm/lenovo thinkpad keyboards (before chick-lets) were the best.
Lenovo is an option too, but I'd rather support a Linux oriented company with Linux-first laptops (I also find it a hard pill to swallow to ever buy a Lenovo again, after all the spyware shenanigans).
Keyboard is great. Trackpoint is great. Trackpad is OK. Screen is great (I have the 4k and just run it at 1080p to simplify my life) - but the colors and brightness are amazing. Performance is great.
Basically Zlatan Todoric the former CTO of Purism calls Purism's claims "shady" :(
Too bad... I had high hopes for Purism.
Though I haven't had a problem with the keyboard (likely thanks to the latest generation of it and my silicone cover), I know that lots of people have. Apple deserves criticism for that, but at least it sounds like the next MBP is going to have a new keyboard design.
Hardware aside, I don't want to run Windows or Linux. Apple would have to screw up even worse than this keyboard thing to get me to switch.
Some observations of the 5520:
- con: really really stupid web cam position: it is at the bottom left of the screen so in any video calls it is basically looking up your nose and if you are typing there are GIANT fingers on screen obscuring your face.
- pro&con: feels well built (metal frame), but it is bulky and feels very heavy
- pro: keyboard is nice to type on
- con: trackpad is nice but sometimes the clicks get "stuck" and you end up inadvertently "dragging" things (e.g. tabs) when you try to click. This might be drivers - who knows.
- pro: It has a little button on the side you can press which shows the rough battery charge level (5 LEDs light up for 20/40/60/80/100%)
- con: there is no "scoop" to make opening the lid easy, so you need to use two hands.
- con: fan is loud and seems to be on almost all the time
It is ok but I have not been particularly pleased with it - the webcam position, the trackpad, and the sheer bulk are the killers. I wont opt for one of these again - probably go for a thinkpad carbon next.
Not sure if you're aware, but this great feature was copied directly from Apple, who then dropped it for no good reason.
Higher end stuff like their xps 15 or 7530 are also very good.
Getting Retina to not eat battery life has been a little tricky though. On a non retina system, I got down to 1W idle, whereas it was 15W idle on a retina system. With Firefox, 2-5W non Retina, but 25-35W for Retina. This will inevitably improve, but it's something to watch out for. On Windows, it's less of a problem, as they seem to run a lot of the graphics on the Intel GPU, only switching to discrete when required.
- yes, I need a *nix OS - I need to run Adobe CC (Photoshop, Lightroom) and Sketch
I code for iOS occasionally (be it via Unity or XCode).
I don’t mind tweaking my OS and making it mine. What I do mind is having to tweak stuff when I don’t have the time to do it, but things are broken.
Did anyone manage to work with these tools efficiently here on a linux machine? I always end up coming back.
As far as Adobe CC, you’ll need macOS or Windows. On linux that would mean going the windows in a vm route. I wouldn’t try getting CC to run in wine, it is unlikely to work well and likely to break even if it does. Windows with wsl is an option, but the shell is never as smoothly integrated as in macOS or linux. I went the wsl way for a few years, and it was fine, but I’m on ubuntu now and it is definitely better.
I just ditched adobe’s tools altogether. My use of them was rare enough. Not everyone can do that.
After stressing over the problem that nothing seemed comparable spec-wise, System 76 released their Adder WS and after reading some testimonials from users online I made the leap back to Linux.
So far, I am very pleased with the choice. Here is what I love about it:
- Amazing 4K OLED display configured with pixel scaling a la Retina out of the box
- Suspend / resume "just works" every time (very different from my past Linux user experiences years ago)
- Connecting an external display "just works" like my MBP
- Pop OS is a well-designed, pretty Ubuntu variant that doesn't get in the way
- I'm really productive on it (I haven't wasted any time trying to get things to work)
- Very high-end hardware all around
Things I don't love about it:
- Battery life is atrocious
- The keyboard has a numpad so home row is offset to the left
- It is rather big (though not gigantic)
- It is rather ugly (though not hideous)
- Huge power brick with a short cable
I can't speak for long-term durability. I guess I will get back to you in a few years.
I'm personally waiting for one of their more powerful laptops to have a centered keyboard. The current models that feature centered keyboards offer 17W TDP CPUs, which just aren't quite enough for my taste.
I've read varying reports of the build quality and it's one of the reasons I've not bothered with System 76 - I fear it will be inferior to a Dell/Lenovo product.
Downsides are a terrible webcam and all the scandals surrounding Huawei.
Yeah I have no idea why other manufacturers haven't looked at this machine and taken away just how good it is. I'd buy a Dell or Lenovo version of the Matebook X Pro in a heartbeat, if they were smart enough to stick to some of its design principles and refine them.
3:2 is a wonderful display ratio for laptops. It's a very nice compromise between widescreen and the venerable 4:3 ratio, and makes it a much more usable machine for hackers and writers alike. I own an older Chromebook Pixel that I still use for travel purposes, and even despite its tininess, it's still one of my favorite machines just for the display aspect ratio, even if it spent several years being a pain in the ass thanks to Google not upstreaming the Linux drivers and not putting enough flash memory onboard despite it being a "premium" machine...
The Matebook X Pro features an Macbook-like touchpad, a chicklet keyboard that actually feels decent and is reliable at the same time, but maybe has a little less refinement than the Macbook Pro in some areas too - putting both its USB-C ports on the same side so you can't charge it from either side, as an example, and people are pretty hit/miss on the idea of having the webcam in the keyboard (not something I personally mind; I prefer having a hideaway camera over a piece of electrical tape on my machine).
However, the real killer about the Matebook X Pro now is that its design is a little over three years old. It's two Intel mobile CPU revisions out of date, and its nVidia MX150 chip wasn't great when it was new in early 2017 - Intel's Iris graphics are more compelling for the power budget on these machines (yes, the nVidia chip is still a little faster at the top end, but at the cost of 2.5x the power usage). And just from all of the various improvements made over the past few years, you're going to be able to squeeze out a couple extra hours of battery life from the platform alone, which is really still a killer feature for laptops.
So quite frankly, if we're talking about buying machines as out of date as the Matebook X Pro... why wouldn't you buy the all-around better machine: a new old stock Macbook Pro from before the butterfly keyboard disaster?
Build is not exactly as sturdy or precise as a MacBook (the aluminum is thinner), but it does look as good.
If you want to make a hackintosh the only thing that won't work is the wifi card, which you can replace for about 50€. On Linux everything works perfectly.
Unfortunately mine spontaneously stopped booting and charging one day. This issue has not been documented on the english speaking forum (it's not the dead battery issue, which I had and the forum helped me solve by linking me to a replacement part on Aliexpress) and since this device isn't sold anywhere outside of China you can be damn sure that Xiaomi won't care. While nicely many replacement parts can be found on Aliexpress (battery, case, keyboard), board replacement parts or schematics don't seem to be available on the english internet. Maybe if you live or have friends in Shenzen the situation will look different for you.
Since OP doesn't seem to be looking for any trouble with repairs I don't think I'd recommend a Xiaomi laptop (I still consider them a good cheap option), but rather something from a business line of a company that is known for good customer support, like Lenovo or Dell (which my new computer, the 5285 tablet is from and I'm fairly happy with).
Well, I've had 5 or so MBs and MBPs since 2003 and hardly ever needed a repair (I had to repair an iMac once). So what happened to one machine, which could have been part of a faulty production run is not necessarily indicative.
In general, the fact the MBPs have higher satisfaction rates, and command higher second-hand prices and maintain them longer should be an indicator that (again, in general) they are more reliable rather than less.
That said, if they do fail (which they still can), Apple is hardly the faster company to give you a replacement machine, or to fix your old one. And in countries without official Apple Stores even more so.
One thing I will say though is that you don’t get the same resale value. I sold my MBP for around 80% of its original cost after one years usage, my surface pro on the other hand pretty much lost all of its value the moment I walked out the shop.
As a long time Mac user, the switch was surprisingly easy. I do miss not having iMessage and a few other Mac ecosystem tools, but with more and more of my friends switching to android it’s becoming less and less of an issue. Over all the Microsoft surface line feels like products that Apple should have designed.
I'd recommend just sticking with windows and not overwriting it with ubuntu unless you have some very specific needs. Some important desktop applications like photoshop do not work on ubuntu and WSL takes care of almost everything ubuntu can do.
I've got an XPS 13 for work which is nice too but runs windows. Pros and cons are:
ThinkPad: Better keyboard by far, more rugged, better bios for Linux that supports normal sleep states
XPS: Can charge on either side, better speakers
The biggest turn-off really is the nVidia graphics chip (which I really don't want, but all models seem to have) and gen 9 processor (which is probably why they don't offer the machine without a discrete GPU). The price is also a little on the higher end of what I'd like to spend, but on the flip side of that, Lenovo has an excellent warranty program including battery replacement and accidental damage replacement options - as it's likely the trend of me holding on to laptops for longer periods of time will continue, that's a really nice to have selling point.
And sadly, for me, that's as close as I can get to a machine I find acceptable... which is why I haven't pulled the trigger on buying one yet. It feels awful walking into a compromise purchase simply because laptop manufacturers have completely given up on you. So awful I just haven't been able to bring myself to do it, despite my Macbook Pro's decrepit state.
I'm considering this combination of ThinkPad X1 Carbon + Fedora. May I ask what kind of tweaks are necessary/recommended?
Given Windows is much much worse than OS X for tech stuff, there isn’t really an alternative. Macs have gotten worse, less reliable, design is tanking, software becoming buggy, but it’s still much better than the alternatives. So stick with the MBP and buy a stress ball and punch bags to cope.
I personally prefer Windows laptops with UHD/QHD screens because I can put much more info on it (e.g. 3 vertical code windows or two vertical web browsers). The Mac won't let me set that high a DPI, even if the resolution is theoretically there. Also the 4:3 Mac screen ratio many times results in the bottom part of the screen obscured by fingers, e.g. bed coding.
That said, the best I've found is Lenovo Yoga 920 and Dell XPS 15. The Dell can be fitted with 64 GB ram e.g. if you run VMs, and since you mention amazing graphics, the OLED version says Hi to the Macbook Pro, from another universe (in other words the Mac display looks like utter trash compared to it).
In all cases, you need to clean-reinstall from a Microsoft provided Windows installer (to get rid of the massive preinstalled, buggy and inefficient bloatware), and run ThrottleStop to undervolt the machine to avoid the extra heat and boost the battery performance. Write down what you do, and over time you will develop your "install script". Chocolatey is your friend.
HTH
My thoughts about alternatives are:
# Software / OS:
- Hackintosh - I don't want to bug around with hackish scripts or repeating the whole procedure on upgrades, so I refuse to do this.
- Elementary OS - Linux with UI similar to MacOS (at least kind of) including Apps for the most common Tasks like mail, calendar, etc.
- Manjaro Linux - Rising star of the distros, presentations i saw looked pretty good. Based on archlinux - so there is some things to learn ;)
- Ubuntu / Xubuntu / Mint - well, i know them but working with them for mee feels by far not as good as with MacOS.
# Hardware:
- Lenovo Thinkpad T4X0S - Good value, great linux support, business quality
- Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon - Pretty expensive but high end and man what a display
- CLEVO N141CU (https://clevo-computer.com/en/laptops-configurator/purpose/b...) - a colleague recommended this manufacturer, i don't have any clue if this is a good value thing, but it looks very similar to a MBP with all the connectors you can think of
I have 99% confidence I could knock my macbook air off my bed (while on) 100 times in a row with 0 consequences. I've never had a key come off, had the screen flicker, had a battery problem, had an overheat.
I'd be curious if anybody thinks there's any other laptop comparably reliable.
You're likely talking about the internals which on mine seem ok. Except my right speaker makes crackle sounds 100% of the time. It's so distracting that the few times I've brought it on trips and used it to watch movies I've gone out of my way to find speakers and an aux cable.
My 2015 definitely seemed like a work horse.
Beyond that there are rugged PCs like Toughbooks. You can literally throw them through the window and they won't mind (we actually tested that). You probably don't need that though. These things are heavy, expensive, and generally underspecced.
I plan to settle on Windows 10 Pro + Ubuntu WSL. I don't need top specs (i5 and 16GB RAM are enough for me), but build quality (touchpad, screen, robustness) and weight are most important.
Playing with Surface Pro 6 in shop I kinda like it, but I can't find XPS or X1 to lay my hands on.
How is the build quality between Surface Pro, XPS and X1? Which one has the best touchpad, screen?
Thinkpad has had a stellar reputation for sturdy quality since forever, and the X1 Extreme seems like a fairly good compromise between power, size, and other concerns. It's not 17" because the only 17" Thinkpads are the monstrous P73s.
According to reviews, it's quieter than my old Macbook (which was extremely noisy), but I intend to make it quieter by repasting and undervolting, which seems to be a fairly common procedure for Thinkpads.
Also, if it breaks down during the first 3 years, I get on-site support, so I don't have to go anywhere when it breaks down; they come to me.
(My specs: 32 GB (still upgradable to 64GB), i7-9850H, 2x 1TB SSD (one for Windows, one for Linux perhaps) and the 4K OLED screen. I expect this to last me for quite a while.)
>Also, if it breaks down during the first 3 years, I get on-site support,
Aren't these two statements mutually exclusive?
Overall it is pretty good, but nowhere near the finish of an Apple laptop. The X1E has terrible coil whine, and the fan is noisy. I have Windows 10 and Linux installed, both have it's problems. Windows has all sorts of power management issues out of the box, it still won't suspend reliably when you close the lid. Linux support for the dual GPU situation is also pretty bad, and the $400 Thunderbolt dock is a hit-and-mis on both Linux and Windows.
I'm quite happy with the X1E though, the screen and keyboard are gorgeous. The ability to play some games on the GPU is also nice. But the experience is just not as polished as I had with my MBP. My MBP lasted for 6 year (professional daily use) and for some reason I don't expect the X1E to last that long (though I bought it, like you did, with the assumption it would last me at least 5 years).
If only Apple were to offer decent support and a build a new laptop for true professional use...
> According to reviews, it's quieter than my old Macbook (which was extremely noisy)
FWIW, this only happens when dust gets in the fan of a MBP, they are normally super quiet. I've written about it before on HN, if you open the bottom lid and remove the dust your MBP should be quiet again :)
The hardware is fantastic. Build quality is great, the keyboard is great, the screen is great, the selection of ports is great. It's not cheap though, price is very close to an MBP.
The software part is not so great. I tried Windows for a short while, but it's just a disaster. It's slow and inconsistent. I tried WSL, but it feels so alpha for now.
So quickly I decided to move Ubuntu. Overall Ubuntu feels so much better than Windows, but the caveat is hardware support. Thinkpads supposedly have very good Linux support, however, the microphone and the fingerprint reader didn't work. After googling a lot I found a way of making the mic work by manually compiling a kernel. No solution for the fingerprint reader yet. And the volume controls don't work properly, there are a few workarounds, but none fixes the issue 100%.
Another issue on Linux is that none of the stable web browsers (Firefox, Chrome) have hardware video decoding enabled, so watching YouTube drains your battery. I'm now using a Chromium Beta build which seems to be the only alternative for now.
Using Linux requires you to google and apply a ton of small fixes to make some things better. Things like installing TLP to have decent battery life, hacking grub fonts so that they don't appear tiny on the 4k screen and stuff like that.
The hardware issues are quite frustrating, but I know those will be resolved at some point. My Thinkpad model is fairly new. The lesson here is: if you want Linux to work out of the box on your hardware, don't get the latest model.
On the positive side, I'm really loving Ubuntu and Gnome. I don't have plans to move back to Mac, even if they fix their crappy new keyboards. The fact that you can make Linux work the way you want is very rewarding even if it takes some time to google and hack around. But I understand that not everyone likes to do that.
I was afraid of the 15" being too big but as I'm not using much external screens anymore, this is the perfect size - the laptop is also very light and portable, given it's a 15"...
The GeForce graphic card is awesome. So are the 2x pcie and additional RAM slots. Bonus for the mate screen.
Small minus to the battery life, who averages to 5-8hrs (max). Otherwise it's an amazing, durable, efficient machine that does the job, at probably replaces well a MBP. Also, Windows 10 isn't perfect but I'm finding it pretty good after all. I use HyperV Linux VMs for dev and the overhead is totally acceptable.
Of course they are bigger than an XPS 13, but if you are like me and mostly work from office and home, it’s not really an issue.
Ho and it’s gaming-ready too (got a gtx2080 in my current laptop).
My previous laptop before that was the first gen of retina MBP (2012) and the only thing I miss from it is the almost double battery life I had over the Alienware.
Windows 10 Pro with WSL is MUCH better than I expected it to be. Download Conemu, Terminus or similar as a terminal and you may as well be running Linux. Download VxXsrcv and you can even run the Linux version of your IDE. I run the Linux versions Emacs, IntelliJ and Pycharm, not the Windows versions.
Hardware wise, the Trackpad is worse but I don't really miss it. Keyboard is much better. Lots of ports. Great screen, though most of my time is spent connected to an external monitor, keyboard and mouse. Multi-monitor support is good. Only annoyance is that if the screens sleep all your applications get moved to whatever monitor you set as primary but this is a minor annoyance.
Ubuntu runs great but since I can ssh to multiple machines running Linux already, and I can run WSL, I really don't feel the need for Linux on the machine itself.
Less thermal throttling. Battery life is decent. I get a real 8 hours in battery save mode even with IntelliJ or Pycharm running, so long as I've set things up in the IDE to save battery by not continuously re-indexing things. Most Thinkpads are rated Milspec 1 so the keyboard isn't going to die with the first spec of dust and the machine will survive minor mistreatment. Windows with WSL basically gives me everything I need.
I bought a Macbook the week Apple released OSX and have been an Apple fanboy for years but at this point for what I do, as someone doing a fair bit of programming, it's an inferior machine.
I've also tried the various Dell XPS machines. They frankly aren't really comparable to Thinkpads in how well they are built or fit and finish. The XPS 15 is a direct competitor to the P1 Gen2 (or X1 Extreme) and in my opinion if you use both for a week, there is no comparison. I have friends who have also switched to Thinkpads and/or Dell XPS machines so I was able to compare directly before I bought them.
It's bulkier. the screen is non-retina and a worse aspect ratio. The fan is noisier. Turns out none of these things bother me anywhere close to what I expected. Hardware-wise, the only annoying thing has been the terrible speakers. Then again, I'm usually on headphones. I miss USB-C ports and USB-C charging, but not too badly.
On the other hand, I had almost forgotten what a good laptop keyboard felt like, and after getting used to the trackpoint, I like it a lot.
I still use a Mac for work, but as a lot of my favorite Mac software has gone subscription-only or subscription-preferred, I've gradually moved more toward open-source options: password-store from 1Password, org-agenda from OmniFocus, etc. So the change wasn't as big or as hard as I was expecting. Decoupling from iCloud will definitely be a thing (photos, iTunes Match, etc.), but I'll figure it out.
edit: Forgot to mention matte screen! Don't know why all the manufacturers thought glossy was the way to go, but it's nice not having to stare at a reflection of the room around me all the time.
The big downside is battery life. On both the ThinkPads I've had, the battery life has been roughly 4-6 hours, despite my attempts to improve it with Powertop and/or TLP, and despite keeping the external graphics card shut down. I find that pretty painful; I like to work outside most of the day when the weather's decent, and now I have to be meticulous about plugging in whenever I go inside for a bit. If it weren't for having it charge up over lunch, there's no way it would make it through my day.
Some folks seem to get better battery life with some ThinkPads running Linux, but I haven't been able to pull it off. In fairness, I do a fair amount of CPU-heavy work -- but I was doing the same kind of work on MBP, and the battery life was much better.
Battery life isn't one of the things Mac books have ever had going for them in my experience.
I also have personally owned several, and have faced no problems. Could be that I have incredibly good luck :) As further anecdote, I've ran Linux on my computers for almost 2 decades now, and I'm really enjoying macbooks and imacs as a replacement for them.
Worst case scenario, I might just get a cloud Mac for iOS development concerns and VNC/SSH into it from whatever machine. It will actually be a bit of a shock for me to go full-time Windows 10, as I alternate between OSX/WIN10 at a rate of about 30/70 on a daily basis. I really have no strong allegiance either way. Both operating systems are incredible, but I will have to award some bonus points to Apple for that extra bump in UX quality. You can almost constantly feel as if OSX and the hardware were designed by the same engineer when you use things like their touchpad.
One other thing I would say is that if Apple released a clone of this exact machine I have today (the late 2013 13" retina MBP) with modern CPU/Memory/GPU/SSD and maybe USB-C, I would be stoked and would likely purchase it immediately. The changes made to the newest models are dealbreakers for me - Particularly the touchpad & keyboard (AKA the most important aspects).
Has anyone tried moving from Mac to ChromeOS?
I do like the look and feel of the hardware: nice screen, decent keyboard and touch pad, and a thin metal body which feels really solid. The silicone palm rests start to yellow a bit, but really increase comfort. Overall, I'm happy with the hardware.
The software is an interesting concept, and actually the reason I bought it. I like the idea of a minimal, verified Linux that only runs Chrome, and (WIP) Linux containers for everything else.
I've had many issues that disrupted my work, and required switching to different release channels. Obviously this is on me for choosing to use the "Beta" container support feature, but I am still annoyed by it often because somehow bugs make their way through all those channels: Canary -> Dev -> Beta -> and even down to Stable. Several times I was forced to move to a higher channel to escape a serious / disruptive issue, only to encounter different issues. And then moving back down again requires a "powerwash", wiping all your data. So I feel like I'm just being chased around by issues that should have been resolved in a higher channel.
As a result, there tends to be nothing on this machine that isn't in the cloud somewhere. I suppose that's a good thing.
Trust is another issue, entirely. I'm looking for something else. I may install an alt OS like Gallium.
Also: feather-light magnesium casing, gorgeous 300nit 2500x1600 screen, and 100% open-source: no blobs, no IME, no PSP. Coreboot, baby. No stupid Google G-chip.
Even recompiled the Embedded Controller firmware -- and not just for geek points. I customized the charging+wake behavior so it will wake immediately when AC power is applied even if the lid is closed -- never could get my mac to do that reliably, despite lots of third-party hacks claiming to make it happen. So now when I get home all I have to do is plug in AC power and I can access files on the laptop over the network -- no need to log in to the laptop, open the lid, or connect an external display. If it's got AC power it's awake and on the network.
Bonus: they're so cheap I bought several, and don't have to worry about damage. They take abuse amazingly well due to the alloy casing and the fact that they weigh so little. I expect to use these laptops for the next 6-8 years.
It's much heavier though, but at that much more repairable and sturdier.
But hey, they're thinner now, which I'm sure makes some marketeer somewhere very happy for reasons I'll never understand.
Edit: the P43 seems pretty interesting, so there's that option.
It doesn't have a great graphics card, but I don't do much of that anyway
My own MBP (late 2018) also just went in for its 3rd repair to the keyboard, it’s ridiculous.
I absolutely love everything about the MacBook and Apple ecosystem but god the keyboards are such an embarrassment.
All anecdotal of course but at the office many of our MacBooks have keyboard issues. And quite some people I know also have issues with the keyboard. Just from my observations the problem is gigantic and I wonder if Apple knows this; almost everyone I talked to about the issue is not willing to have it repaired and just live with the shitty keyboard, because they don’t want to wait 2+ weeks for Apple to repair it.
I’m nowhere near the point of switching to something else because I don’t want Windows or Linux, but I cannot wait for Apple to get their shit together with their keyboards.
I have a MBP w/ Touch Bar, and the battery just started to swell some half a year after running out of the 2 years (European) warranty. However, I contacted Apple, they directed me to an authorised service and I got the top case with battery (it's glued in), keyboard and trackpad, and the bottom plate replaced free of charge. No questions asked. Note that my machine is not part of the recent battery recall.
It would have taken 4 days (they say up to 5 days), however I opted to pay a small fee and take the notebook home and bring it back in when the replacement parts arrived. Took 2-3h to get everything done after the parts arrived.
All things considered, I'm quite pleased with Apple service, even though they don't have an official presence here, except for authorised services.
Each time I’ve had an issue, Apple has honored the terms of their warranty. However, I value my time and frankly don’t like going to the Apple Store every 3 months and doing the run around.
The Pixelbook itself is excellent hardware with a top notch screen, trackpad and keyboard.
What I'll definitely do is get a Thinkpad Carbon X1 and put elementary OS on it. The Thinkpad line has been around for ages and are praised upon. It's fairly linux-friendly, and elementary OS is a great distro, stable enough to work on, and its polish and attention to detail resonates with a MacOS user.
I've been using elementary OS on a VM in my gaming PC and it's been working flawlessly. Really like this distro.
It's an absolute delight to work on. It's repairable, has ports, lovely 1440p display, it's upgradable, it has a good battery life.
The added advantage is I seem to have absorbed a good deal of knowledge about computers and Unix since switching. I didn't realise how ignorant I was when I was blindly strolling the paths of Apple's walled garden.
The Surface Book is the best laptop I've owned. The build quality is better than the MBP, and despite owning it for years it's as fast as it was when I first bought it. I've had zero issues with it, and I use it almost daily.
It's also not a bad Linux laptop, if that's your thing. I find myself booting into Debian less and less nowadays, but if you want to mainly use Linux it's possible.
My sole gripe with it is that the trackpad isn't as good as the MBP, but it's very close.
It’s starting to finally show its age, I switched to a Dell for a week after my adapter died, but went straight back to it once I was able. 13” screen and I still preferred it over the Dell (speed & comfort may have been an issue, too). Probably will be replacing it with a similar model (matte screen, though, this time, for sure).
So, if you start being more flexible in some areas you have more choices.
For example, how about a Ryzen desktop + a no fuss laptop for when you are mobile? (This assumes you mostly work in one office on the desktop, but also want to be mobile).
Depending how used you are to macOS you'll probably come back to Apple. Maybe buy an use / refurbished MBP.
I run Ubuntu on it and currently my Nvidia drivers are not loading correctly so it's running on the intel integrated graphics. When they were, all GUI applications would crash when waking up from sleep. Will have to look into it and figure out if I can find a stable configuration.
One downside of switching is that work software for Macs are very well built. Webstorm feels clunkier on Windows than Mac, for example.
I wish I could recommend something, but nothing seems to meet the weight, quality, power match.
HP Pavilion has the weight and power of a MBP, and the tablet mode is fun. But the touchpad is terrible.
Dell XPS has power and a good build, but is too heavy if you like to lug around two laptops like me.
MS Surfacebook seems nice, but some friends report that it it's also similarly fragile.
- Dell XPS_13 - Thinkpad (x1 carbon) - Purism - System76 (looked through all their laptpp offerings)
I chose Sys76 because I really wanted better hardware (I wanted _alot_ of RAM), which admittedly isn't a normal requirement for most users.
- Dell XPS 13 - totally anectodal, but I have a few friends who really dislike this laptop because of lots of little issues. Then again, I also know people who love it. My friend lent me his old one and I kept having issues with drivers and the OS just randomly crashing... so I passed on it
- Thinkpad X1-carbon - build quality feels awesome. I really like the trackpoint thingy, but the trackpad itself I thought was horrible. Also dislike the keyboard in general. I've read a bunch of mostly positive reviews though, so I might actually buy one to try in the future.
- Purism - seemed ok, but after looking at the hardware I could get on the Sys76 I liked the latter better.
- Sys76 Gazelle - Opted for this one since the hardware for the price seemed much better than the alternatives. Despite many people complaining that they're marked up Clevo's, I still found them the best when comparing price/hardware.
For about $2,000 USD, I was able to get what I wanted - 6GB GTX 1660 (cuda) - 64 gb ram - 1tb nvme
Compared to the macbook, after a few months use, I honestly miss the mac. There's awesome things to this laptop, but at the end of the day linux just doesn't play nice with everything compared to macs. Slow lagging in general (mac is much more 'snappy') when doing basic things like opening and dragging window panes. Random weird behavior when plugging in peripherals (plugging hdmi will shift some of my fn keys around, wtf?). The keyboard is awesome, the trackpad is ok, but NOTHING compares to the mac's trackpad. The mac display blows the Gazelle's display out of the water. I can't use some apps - Sketch, etc.. on this since it's linux. Battery life is so bad it's laughable.
IMHO, there is no feasible alternative, just a series of tradeoffs only your personal needs can decide. I really wish apple would offer a true "pro" user option - let me upgrade my hardware. Weight/size be damned, I basically want a desktop I can carry in my bookbag.
One of the big problem is airdrop + other macos only tools like keynote. Its hard to quit those.
That sucks, but I think you've just had bad luck. The quality, longetivity, and service of Apple hardware through Apple stores isn't perfect, but it's been consistently better than the alternatives for me and everyone else I know. Sorry your experience has been bad.
I'm curious what you've had to get repaired?
The second best is the new Surface Laptop. Unfortunately its screen is not quite as highres as the Samsung.
If you're looking for something as reliable as 2015 or macbook pro's that don't have butterfly keyboards then maybe this isn't a good choice. But specwise it's even better (display and internals) and the trackpad is probably best in all windows computers (they're basically trying to mimic macbooks).
However, like I said before, they aren't exactly the most reliable laptops, but when they work, they work REALLY well
Closest I’ve used is the Surface line but it’s not nearly as good.
I’m still using a donglebook. My work gave me one and I had bought one so I have a spare for when one is being repaired.
The keyboards are utter shit, the usb C charging is a big downgrade, and the touch pads are now so big they often get in the way of typing.
The 2012 MacBook Pro Retina I bought before my 2018 Donglebook still hasn’t had issues.
The P52S has two batteries, all major hardware ports (including ethernet) and a SIM card slot. It had a (lower end) Nvidia card. Conveniently Pop_OS! comes bundled with Nvidia drivers.
Closest replacement for macOS/MBP I've found.
https://www.asus.com/au/Laptops/ZenBook-Series-Home/
Not associated with Asus in any way...
Has anyone encountered a similar experience and can suggest remedies?
I am worried about the thermals, the i7 seems like it will likely throttle quite a bit.
I absolutely love the form factor though. I've been hoping for 5 years that Apple would release a convertible/2-n-1 style laptop and blow the Surface out of the water.
I'm very happy with it - it's a tidy little machine, build quality is good, it has a nice 4K screen, great specs incl a good GPU, all the holes and slots I could ask for, and the battery lasts something like 10hrs (GPU usage destroys this though obviously)
If you can live without Mac OS, there are a number of top notch laptops out there calling your name.
My takeaway: other laptops also have bugs; I'm back to using a MBP & I hope the next-gen MBPs are good again.
The keyboard on Surface Laptop is also superior, and I never liked the touchpad. Big touch screen fan!
What feels less nice is the screen attachment, it seems less stable. The MBP has a nicer mechanism for locking in I think.
You know, with every product released, someone's invariably going to be the outlier... you know, the guy who buys a lemon, then gets another lemon, then gets ANOTHER lemon. Each lemon probability is small, but even with 3 in a row there's still a chance.
Is there a systematic (not just anecdotal) issue with Apple quality? Evidence?
My day to day work is done on a 15 inch LG Gram + Ubutu 18.04.
I just love it: super lightweight, fast, rugged (been dropped easyly 10 times, still working fine)
The dev env is vastly superior to what I had on my MBP where I constantly found myself struggling with out-of-date software and OSS stuff that just plain doesn't work on the mac.
Next business day on-site repair is usually included, so if something goes wrong then it will be fixed very quickly as a technician will be sent to you with the necessary parts.
I love it when companies actually stands behind their products.
So, now I have 2 newish laptops. I think Macbook is still better when I code anything else than .NET. Thanks to the terminal. Matebook in hardware is better, really good screen. Also it looks good. After all it is Macbook Air knock off.
I've always wanted to buy a MacBook Pro, mostly for music production, but the ThinkPad is a fine beast by itself. For music, I use Studio One 4 on Win 10.
It looks like NVIDIA's drivers support PRIME for sharing between integrated and discrete GPUs these days.
I'll stick with my mac(s) for the foreseeable future. I have 2 MacPros (2011 cheese graters) and 2 mac pros, 2014 and 2017. I read most of the complaints (about Macs) here, and most of them are thin reasons to "not" use a mac.
- I literally NEVER turn my MBP's off. Just sleep them.
This works flawlessly 99.5% (estimated) of the time. I've never seen another notebook with Windows (especially) or Linux that could handle that. Nobody here claims that they do (so far) -- I read one complaint about power usage on a Linux pad.. so I assume this is still the case. Sleep mode sucks on most non-mac, not OSX machines
- Trackpad. Nothing touches the Mac trackpad. Nothing.
- App availability
I have so many QUALITY apps I've gotten on mac that just have no equivalents in Linux. Seriously, a TON, and more all the time. You can't even compare Pixelmator to Gimp, and the list of apps that are much better on OSX goes on and on.
- No Sweat OS Linux is great if you want to configure the shit out of your system. OSX is great if you want to NOT THINK MUCH about your system and just work. I prefer to spend my time working.
So, it's not all roses, we all hear the issues, keyboards have issues, apple does not play nice with NVidia (sucks having a MacPro right now), hardware IS more expensive... but, don't get fooled by the "Grass is greener on the other side" -- you'll have to keep convincing yourself it was a good mood, every single day.
Good luck with that
This series looks rugged, haven't heard it mentioned here (as far as I can remember)
Also, there're rumors on MBP 16" with a fixed(?) keyboard...
Also, great keyboards.
Another key factor for me is that unlike Apple, Asus offers good video cards!
Dell XPS ThinkPad Lenovo X1 Carbon
I use a Dell XPS with only 8GB RAM. This can be tight at times. I switched to Ubuntu based Bodhi Linux and I am pretty happy about it. The RAM footprint is very very low and the system is very snappy.
The webcam is at a strange place, yet you can be sure it is off and not recording you, I just put the laptop on a book and it looks fine for telcos.
Dell and Lenovo are a no go for me.
Compared to Dell/Lenovo, Huawei didn't put spyware on their computers yet :)
If you want a decent linux laptop, I also use a Pruism Librem 15 ... Great, the best if you are looking for a secure machine. It's my private one. Huawei for work.
We also know cisco and other American companies worked closely with the NSA and put backdoors in their software and hardware.
Yes, Huawei is close to the Chinese government and there are definitely issues with that. Yes, they had spyware on some phones. Still no documented case of spyware on their computers :)
Is docker on Windows reasonable with battery?
It is not aluminium but looks good. No outward signs that it has a gaming design.
I've seen a few System 76 laptops at tech events around Boulder/Denver and they seem solid as well.
IMHO there are alternatives, but none is chaper than the MBP. Dell hardware is crap, too many complaints online. I would like Lenovo P1. More expensive than MBP…
Asus Zenbook + Linux
Lenovo Carbon + Linux
Dell XPS + Linux
Surface Book 2 + Windows + WSL
3 things broke. First it was a dead pixel on the screen, second was a reproducible kernel panic (using any video chat application would panic the kernel.). The last and hopefully final issue was the keyboard issue (double keys, and weird issues with the key not pressing sometimes).
Ram y SSD que se están soldando no es un problema para mí, ¿necesita actualizar? Venda su MBP y compre el nuevo (los dispositivos Apple conservan mucho valor)
I agree with the general consensus here however — Apple needs to get its shit together and stop pursuing meaningless marketing metrics and start making great computers again.
SWEs / tech people (myself included) probably overestimate their importance vis-a-vis Apple, but it would really only take one great alternative from Razer or Lenovo or a new company to cause a mass exodus. That will definitely not be good for Apple.
At this point I use Apple because they piss me off slightly less than the alternatives let me down aesthetically. It’s hubris for Apple to assume that will always be the case.
Touch pad is not quite as good, but the rest of the hardware is up to spec. The 4K screen is arguably better than a MBP.