Ask HN: What is the best laptop on the market for programming right now?
Ultrabooks are a given in my opinion. I'm curious to hear yours though.
Your $1200 buys you more than your $1000 for an "Ultrabook"
13" is a great size (I don't miss the extra 2" from my Pro), and it's unbelievably svelte. If I take the bus, I just throw it under my arm - no bag, no charger - just my MacBook Air. It's plenty fast. The screen has great color, and will go as bright or as dim as you need.
Heed this man's advice - get an Air.
17" Dell <- beginning of college
13" Lenovo T61 <- end of college
13" Macbook <- post-college
11" Macbook Air <- latest
These have all gotten better, faster, and more powerful. They've gotten smaller. I feel like I've done a lot of different types of work: I ran gentoo on the T61 for a few months, did some photoshop work on the 13" macbook, and everything in between. The Macbook Air's CPU has a lower clock speed, but it literally hasn't been a problem. The combination of long battery life, being incredibly light, and the speed of the SSD makes me 100% recommend a macbook air of whatever size you like.
Thinkpads are definitely popular for a reason, but it's been a few years since I've used one. I'm sure there is a similar offering that has all the same sorts of benefits -- I'd wonder about battery life, though.
Light, durable, great keyboard, fantastic display, support for the biggest three OSs.
If Apple really releases the next Macbook Pros with the Air form factor and retina display, it will really be a no brainer.
As an alternative, I have been always fond of Lenovo laptops (T41/T61), although I honestly haven't tried their ultrabooks.
Looke here: http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/
If the manage to offer doubled resolution while maintaining the same interface form factor like they did with the iOs devices... wow, can't wait.
MacBook Pro is the dream machine for a developer. But if you're not in a hurry, I suggest waiting for a while. Rumors say a 15" Air-ish MacBook Pro is on its way (with fast, quad core processors and 4-8 GB ram).
I have to oppose this. OS X's Mission Control is not at all good for a developer. Not at all as efficient as using some window manager with dedicated and numbered desktops, e.g. Xmonad.
The other thing which annoyed me when I worked with OS X machine was the absence of a good package manager for every application. I had to use my Macbook for work when I was working from home. I had to install GCC and MySQL, which took almost an hour of my precious time. Never had that kind of problems with Arch or Ubuntu.
Use brew to install command line apps and other utilities.
Use Linux in a VM and install servers and what not in the VM. Use file system sharing to make the Linux side appear seem less.
Too bad that other manufacturers don't build as good hardware as Apple. And too bad Apple hardware is often propiertary, so it might be hard to install Linux to it (not always, though).
My choice has been a separate work computer with two monitors, a mouse, a keyboard and Arch Linux. At home I have two computers: iMac for television and MacBook for upstairs Minecraft computer. Win-win.
not cool.
That said, I use linux VMs on my macs all the time. It feels natural, in fact it feels RIGHT. When I was mostly using desktop linux, I still did the bulk of my server side work in VMs under VMWare Workstation. So not much has changed, just that my window manager is made by apple.
You're quite right that it wasn't as easy as ubuntu, but things have got infinitely better in the past year. `brew` is now comparable to `apt-get` (for everything I've tried at least).
And I'm positive things will improve still. About 70% on this topic recommended MacBooks. Last year, it'd been 50%.
There is still important stuff missing. I'd like to have rc.d for daemons and the ability to change the awful desktop to more powerful window manager.
I still like macs, but not as my work computer.
i've been trying to weigh this up for a while Macbook Air vs Thinkpad x220, seems close.. this reviewer is pretty expansive and (just) gives it to the x220...
not sure tho, ppl here seem to LOVE MBA's.
I love my Air, it's easily a very solid machine. But the small screen size can be a little constraining, and the machine does noticeably lack power. Not having a dedicated graphics card also limits you from trying out things like WebGL. And anytime you hit a Flash-based website, your MBA will sound like a jet engine.
I think if you're very mobile (i.e. travel a lot) go with the Air. If you're at home most of the time, get an iMac and an 11" air for the few times that you are mobile. If you need the best of both worlds, go with a MacBook Pro.
My next machine will be a 15" next gen MacBook Pro. Those should incorporate design elements from the Air in a more powerful package.
Thinkpads clearly are a second choice as long as price does not matter.
And yes - I've used most available hardware and OSes for several years.
But i own a Macbook pro 13" and i'm loving it . The track pad and the keys are unmatchable IMO.
I've been pretty happy with it, but I've never had another laptop, so I can't really compare.
It's reasonably weighty: I've walked half hour journeys with it, which makes my arm ache. You'll likely want a shoulder strap if you're going to be carrying it around a lot.
I also usually take a mouse along with me. While it's mainly for gaming, it's very helpful for coding as well. If you're a VIM or Emacs expert maybe you'll disagree.
What does that mean? Do you have an example comparing it to non-'readline-style' shortcuts?
So I believe non-readline-style shortcuts would refer to, for example, C-A to select all text.
Also I find the keyboard on the Thinkpad (slightly) better, but the trackpad is worse. Then again it does have trackpoint which some people really like.
Very fast