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Comment by tandr | Hacker News Reader

> Apple should be losing devs in favor of other better platforms, not the other way around.

So far, good hardware, close-to-*ix-OS software, and penetration are kind of make them a hard competitor to beat.

What other "better" platforms are you thinking about?

Linux? It's as close to *ix as you can get without time traveling to ancient AT&T sites and beholding original Unix boxen. Good hardware exists, even if it takes more effort to learn how to source it. Penetration shows Linux is about the same minority Desktop OS as macOS is in general (even if statistics among Developers is sometimes lopsided).

Windows? Microsoft hate and distrust aside, they are a company founded for Developers, by Developers and in general the "Developers, Developers, Developers" mantra still resonates through the halls and they try to make life easy as they can for developers. (They publish debugging symbols of the entire OS just about, as a specifically referenced point elsewhere in this thread, which affected the specific complaints of the article. Even all of the "developer unfriendly" complaints about their more recent platforms/SDKs/toolkits have mostly been walked back or are still in the process of evolving.) Just as with Linux systems, plenty of good hardware exists even if it is harder to find. WSL1 and WSL2 provide a bunch of options for how "close to *ix" you want to get. It's hard to beat Windows on penetration, because it is still the majority OS for most of the mainstream world.

System76 is one: https://system76.com/

Edit: and don't forget that ElementaryOS gets you pretty damned close to the Mac UI experience. I personally prefer GNOME, which seemingly steals inspiration from across the industry, so it's different but also really slick (the use of Super/Winkey as both alt-tab and the launcher is genius).

Hmm...maybe. I know several people who have System76 laptops and none of them would say that they're made well. At best they seem to tolerate poor Clevo-rebrand construction out of a desire to support a libre ecosystem. Complaints like needing to reboot to switch between integrated and discrete graphics, low quality screens, extreme fan noise that then interferes heavily with the microphone, and terribly overpromised battery life are the norm. Has something changed very recently?

I don't know about older models, but my Lemur Pro laptop (released last summer) has been pretty awesome so far, and their cousins about battery life were spot on.

I have a Sytem76 Oryx as my personal dev machine and a new macbook pro at work. The System76 was much more trouble to setup initially, but has been better in almost every way since then. The Oryx fan can be kind of loud, but the fan on my new macbook is CRAZY loud when it kicks on.

I like the thicker case as well. The mac just feels too flimsy when I'm banging away on the keyboard.

Honestly, I was thinking on "better" as in "more developer-friendly", especially regarding the phrase I quoted... i.e. Microsoft Windows.

As for myself, I work on Linux systems, so my preferred platform would be a beefy PC with some Linux distro.

Yes, Apple makes good hardware. Or, at least lets say they worked hard on creating a distinctive perception about their quality on the consumer's minds. On the other hand, for some reason people tend to avoid spending similar amounts of money in the other ecosystems (or that's what I feel in my circles). I mean, try spending the same money that you would pay for the latest iPhone or Macbook, and you will get a fabulously spec'd Android phone or laptop.

Ye olde "Thinkpad + Linux" is unironically one of the best options around. I've owned 3 or 4 Thinkpads, and all of them run Linux like they were designed for it. Considering the security issues and hidden analytics in Big Sur, there are plenty of better platforms around. If you're looking to outright replace MacOS, KDE will mostly do the trick. It's super customizable, and contains all of the MacOS idiosyncratic staples (Global menu, dock bar, you get the point). With that, you get perfect Unix compatibility and software freedom, and you're only losing a few proprietary apps in the migration process.

think pads have pre installed fedora or ubuntu dells have pre installed ubuntu system76 was already mentioned with linux preinstalls. and for those wanting to go a step further into the boot chain (sans chip manufacturer blobs), there is purism https://puri.sm/products/librem-14/

personally, I've been really enjoying the Thinkpad 14s AMD - 8 core / 16 thread / 32gb of ram in under 3lbs, shame about the screen though.

System76 is the best linux-first manufacturer I've found.

Second best is Dell[0], I have used two generations of their Ubuntu-oriented XPS 13 or Precision laptops. They're fantastic.

[0] - https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/overview/cp/linuxsystem...

A thinkpad with Fedora?

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