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Comment by gpanders | Hacker News Reader

While I also find these changes to macOS alarming and disappointing, I still vastly prefer macOS to Windows.

My 2013 Macbook Pro is also still the best laptop I have ever used (I also have a 2017 Macbook Pro for work and I have to admit that the newer models rightfully earn their bad reputation).

If Apple continues to head in this direction, I think the right move is to migrate to Linux. Windows is a huge step back, as far as I'm concerned.

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There are plenty of comparisons online showing for the same price as a Mac you can get a PC that will edit your photos, compress your videos, render your 3D architecture 3x to 4x as fast as the fastest Mac you can buy. If you're a professional might be throwing money down the toilet waiting for your mac depending on your use case.

Note: I'm not a mac hater. I have 2, one I use every day and love it. I also have a PC I use every day. I still found the comparison videos enlightening.

I’m very curious to see whether this is still true once Apple starts shipping Pro machines with Apple Silicon processors. What if it’s not? How would that change the balance?

That's a big "maybe", because apparently for them it's just a way to stop using Intel's outdated technology.

AMD is currently running circles around Intel and won't be that easy to beat, especially because they have much lower prices.

While I haven't seen those comparisons, I did do a similar one myself. Like GP, I have a 2013 mbp. It still works perfectly and handles whatever I throw at it. As it's getting long in the tooth and it could end up not working anymore, and also because I got curious with the release of the 16" mbp, I looked a bit at the market, and also at similar offerings from Lenovo, HP and Dell.

You are right, for the price of a 16" MBP with 64 GB RAM and 1 TB SSD, I could buy a maxed out Lenovo X1E with 2 SSDs, so I could dual boot windows and Linux (I use Photoshop / Lightroom for personal photography but can't stand Windows otherwise). Oh, and I'd probably have more than enough left to go on a trip somewhere and actually use the mobile part of the laptop.

So yes, on pure performance numbers, I completely agree. However, that's really not the whole story. Not everybody needs absolute maximum performance. I wouldn't still be happy with my 7 yo mac if I did.

I use my laptop every day for (hopefully) years and years. So I care about other things. First and most important of all, the touchpad. I've tried Lenovo (T series), Dell XPS and HP Elitebook models. They all absolutely suck compared to a mbp. A friend has a 2-3 yo Dell XPS. The palmrest plastic is all sticky, the screen is wobbly the touchpad is a nightmare (sometimes it clicks on its own). I have an HP from work I sometimes use. The junction between the palm rest and the body isn't level, so after a few hours of working on it my wrists are raw from rubbing on the body. The same laptop has a power light right in front of the screen that is blinding. I had to cover it with a piece of aluminum foil to be able to work in the evening. These kinds of annoyances make it worth it for me to spend the extra cash on a mbp that will just get out of my way and let me work.

Try Razer stuff.

Isn't that as expensive as a mbp though?

Razer Blade 15 Studio Edition - OLED 4K Touch 60Hz - Quadro RTX 5000 - Mercury

    Intel Core i7-10875H
    Windows 10 Pro
    15.6" 60Hz OLED 4K Touch
    Quadro RTX 5000
    32GB RAM, 1TB SSD

US$4,299.99

16-inch MacBook Pro - Space Gray 2.4GHz 8‑core 9th‑generation Intel Core i9 processor, Turbo Boost up to 5.0GHz 64GB 2666MHz DDR4 memory AMD Radeon Pro 5500M with 8GB of GDDR6 memory 1TB SSD storage

$3,899.00

Worth considering that Razer has a far superior GPU https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-Quadro-RTX-5000...

Different enough that certain pro workflows (e.g GPU rendering) would be feasible on that machine that are not on the MacBook

Actually, this is the wrong comparison (at least for me). I went from a 2017 15" MBP that was around 3.5k EUR to a ThinkPad T495 (with AMD hardware) for around 1k EUR and I also maxed out the RAM to 32GB for another EUR 150. I couldn't be happier.

You mention the worse touch pad, and I agree, it took me a week to adjust... but on the other hand, the keyboard of the ThinkPad is so much better, in fact it might be the best keyboard I have ever used (not only on a laptop, and I have used mechanical keyboards).

Also, KDE/Kubuntu seems to have progressed so far over the past 10 years (since I used it last) that it feels better than Mac OS to me currently.

The only pain point remains my photography workflow, which I still haven't migrated and for that I still use the MBP... If I manage to migrate that, I don't think I'm going back to the Apple ecosystem soon.

Currently I feel much more productive at my programming workflow than with the MBP. Doing mostly TypeScript, OCaml and Rust development. And that for about 1/3 of the cost.

Does that come with a 4k screen? I don't remember seeing any AMD models - I only looked at models that had that option and no soldered RAM.

It does not, probably the new model that came out recently (called T14) will have that, I haven't researched.

I've been checking the last few years, all laptops with 32G (which is my main requirement) are about the same price (2000 GBP), except that, of course, Macs have superior build quality and software.

I bought one of these last year; the specs still look about the same AFAICS. Paid just a smidgeon over 2K€ with 64 GB RAM and 2 TB SSD. A little better than 2K GBP for 32 GB.

https://bestware.com/en/schenker-slim-15-red-edition.html

You may be surprised how much equivalent laptops from other OEMs have caught up. The Dell XPS is very similar to the Macbook Pro, and Dell supports Ubuntu on it.

How do the trackpad and battery life compare?

Have yet to see a non Mac track pad that has more than two gestures..

If you use Wayland (which... has its issues, but maybe they're better now?) on an XPS 13 Developer Edition... or even my junk Chromebook with MrChromebox's firmware installed so I can install Linux, you can get all sorts of gestures that are more than just "two gestures." Heck, even Windows supports gestures just fine. So...

I have yet to encounter any non-Mac trackpad gestures that don't feel cheap, laggy, and/or too unreliable to bother committing to muscle memory. Apple's trackpad haptics and OS-level gesture support are second to none.

then use keyboard combinations. they are faster and much more reliable. I am using a wayland window manager called sway, and while im pretty sure you can do everything with a mouse, you can configure it to do a lot of things with the keyboard. for example, I found the three-finger-tap which is used for copying and pasting was too difficult and slow, so i just bound it to mod+c and mod+v

I was gonna reply with this as well, but you just about nailed it. When my hands are almost 99% on the keyboard (especially when programming, or even while browsing the internet), why should I bother moving my hands back to the mouse when I can just use my comfortable and reliable keyboard?

Try fusuma (gem install fusuma, may need user adding to input group to run, or run it with sudo).

Gestures on trackpad for recent (libinput) Linux. It runs xdotool to stuff the keyboard buffer with keystrokes when it sees certain gestures. E.g. three finger swipe left and right do Alt-Left and Alt-Right, which have the effect of Back and Forward in the browser and some other browsing apps (e.g. IntelliJ). Four-finger swipe left and right switches desktop on my machine. It's one more finger than Mac but probably required not to conflict with two finger scroll.

Trackpad gestures are not the same as a keyboard shortcut. A shortcut runs one command as a discrete event, whereas a gesture is continuous e.g. what % zoom did your pinch gesture represent.

Eh. That's not what I understand by gestures. Mouse gestures - they're also a thing - generally use a sequence of orthogonal mouse movements for a single command. Most Mac gestures are discrete, not continuous. Pinch to zoom is in the minority, and is more like a multitouch input than a gesture per se. Phone gestures too are generally discrete; the exceptions are zooming and rotating, and rotating is sufficiently fiddly it isn't seen much outside map apps.

> Mac gestures are discrete, not continuous

Continuous: pinch zoom, rotate, swipe between pages, swipe between virtual desktops, swipe between fullscreen apps, show notification center, show all windows on current desktop ("Mission Control"), show all application windows ("App Exposé"), show Launchpad, show desktop

Discrete: browser back/forward I guess?

Battery on my recent Dell is over 10 hours with Firefox usage.

Leaps and bounds ahead of where things were at 4 years ago.

Libinput, while less fully featured than synaptics, seems to have a better physics model for the trackpad pointer translation. It still doesn't have fractional scrolling though, every scroll is still a discrete increment.

The XPS line had some of the worst speakers I’ve ever heard on a laptop up until the 2020 revision- and some of the worst build quality issues I’ve ever experienced with a laptop.

My 2019 XPS 15 went through eight at-home repair visits after hardware failures within four months. Can honestly say I’ve never used a less reliable machine- and every unit I’ve ever touched has had some of the worst coil wine issues I’ve ever encountered in any computer.

“Very similar” doesn’t really count for much.

My sown owns XPS 15 (2019) and had just one issue (no hibernation on "lid close" event), which was fixed (although it wasn't simple).

Build quality is amazing, keyboard is great, screen is awesome (4k, hdr, touch).

It has the exact amount of ports my son needs, it can run games and it's weight is good to take it to the school.

As someone who's returned their 2020 XPS 15, I can say that it hasn't gotten better. I can't speak for how well the hardware endures but it does have various flaws. Also didn't find the speakers to be good. Sounded worse than the SB2 I was replacing.

Running an MBP now, but if sticking with Windows was important I'd have chosen a ThinkPad.

If we're sharing anecdotes I also have a XPS13 9650 which is now over 4 years old and I never had any issues whatsoever with it. Runs Linux since day one and I could not be happier.

I switched to a Dell XPS last year, then sold it on ebay 6 months later and bought a new Mac. WSL is a cool idea, but is still a bolt on solution, I was constantly fighting with it on windows with my unix-oriented workflow, trying to get apps and packages to work correctly.

The trackpad feels like it's from 2012. The speakers are very bad. The fans are constantly whirring. It misses on all the details, while also making it harder to do my job.

>The trackpad feels like it's from 2012. The speakers are very bad. The fans are constantly whirring.

It’s sad because the XPS is beautiful, but these same issues plague every Dell, HP, and basically non-Apple laptop. Even the most premium lineup (Envy, XPS, etc.)

How many years and fancy designs will it take before PC OEMs actually develop an excellent trackpad, not use tinfoil speakers, and use silent fans?

Apple has patents on their trackpad. Dell etc. are literally not allowed to make good trackpads.

Apple has so many patents that it’s impossible to design a good, or even decent trackpad?

>WSL is a cool idea, but is still a bolt on solution, I was constantly fighting with it on windows with my unix-oriented workflow

I wonder why not use Linux at that point tho?

Battery life and hardware support. You'd get better battery life and thermals running Linux in Virtualbox on a Windows/Mac laptop than on bare metal. I'm a Linux enthusiast but every time I use it on a laptop is pain. Laptops are like phones in that they need deep integration with the OS to be usable long-term. The best way to use Linux is on a desktop that you build and can control what hardware is used. (The desktop with multiple monitors is a superior form factor IMO for getting work done.)

My experience is that Ubuntu with tlp has better battery life than Windows though. (Granted, I last compared this in 2016).

I got a MacBook-air sized xps, and the hardware is fantastic, better than any MacBook imo - the bezel alone makes it so.

But I have never had a laptop that gave me as much trouble with Linux. I bought two of them over the course of a couple of years, and both the one that shipped with Windows and the one that shipped with Ubuntu had CONSTANT hardware compat issues.

This was a while ago (after the reboot of the line), so the build quality and compatibility may each have gotten better/worse.

> If Apple continues to head in this direction, I think the right move is to migrate to Linux. Windows is a huge step back, as far as I'm concerned.

Linux desktop has so many hidden problems, especially on laptops, you're definitely better off going the Windows route, unless your time is free.

Care to enlighten? I've been using all three, and I'd rate Linux to be miles ahead of MacOs, which is a few steps ahead of Windows.

For what an OS should do, Linux does it far better, and Windows does it terribly with its ancient nt kernel.

Then it comes down to usability for end user, gnome gets out of the way, and allows pretty good customization. MacOs is pretty mediocre and restrictive. And Windows is again pretty bad.

Then it comes to software availability, which is a bit a chicken and egg issue that I don't find too much value in. If the software availability restricts you, then you got to do what you got to do, with the options available.

Then it comes to value for hardware. And here, oh my how things have changed in the past 5-10 years. If you don't buy a mac for the software availability, or for some other restriction, you are literally making a terrible purchase. You get a far worse computer for more than twice the cost. This is no exaggeration. Upgrading components when buying is somewhere between twice and ten times more expensive than the equivalent components.

>If you don't buy a mac for the software availability, or for some other restriction, you are literally making a terrible purchase.

I laughed. A lot. The whole thread is full of people noting the level of hardware and software polish on offer from Apple but unavailable elsewhere, and the seamlessness of working in a MacOS + iOS + WatchOS world and how nice that is, and your takeaway is that we're all dumbasses making the wrong choice.

Peak HN right there, boyo.

You laughed a lot at that? Well, you do you. Also, there is no need to call yourself dumbass. It's OK to value things in different ways. Apparently, you value the walled garden and the benefits therein. That is OK. I personally do not see that value, and I would call it a terrible purchase. For me, computing power and flexibility is more important. It's also not like build quantity is exclusive to Apple. As a final takeaway, calling strangers 'boyo', that does make you look like a dumbass.

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