8 ms·

Do you like the MacBook but don't like the OS? go ahead and change it, you can have triple boot. Tiny fonts and pop ups doesn't have anything to do with the ma

by xlayn 11y ago

Do you like the MacBook but don't like the OS? go ahead and change it, you can have triple boot. Tiny fonts and pop ups doesn't have anything to do with the machine you are going to buy (unless you also want the website). HP makes the elitebook, magnesium construction a la thinkpad. And last but not least I would like to give this entry the RAGE post award, nomination points for What I want is a computer with: -Decent build quality -Decent performance and battery life -A decent website. It doesn't have to be an icon of web design, like apple.com. It can be simple and utilitarian, like an Amazon page. It just has to be honest and up to date. It should contain pictures, text, and a Buy button. -A clean OS without crapware or malware factory installed Is that too much to ask? Make one and you can have my money! Apple, Lenovo, Microsoft and HP make systems like the one you want, you can install your choice of OS and buy it on Amazon or eBay if you want. Bonus points for calling apple website an icon of web design when it weights almost 100mb. Rage score 9/10.

voltagex_ 11y ago
Add me to the rage brigade. I think the OP has missed the Microsoft "Signature" edition products. They're a clean Windows 10 image and you buy direct from Microsoft. I just wish they'd sell me the XPS 13 9350 (the highest spec'd one) in Australia. Edit: AFAICT a lot of the battery life on a MacBook comes from the way OS X works - friends who use Bootcamp tell me it significantly reduces their battery time.
- wldcordeiro 11y ago
  That's lame they don't sell those there. I got a 9350 myself and loaded Ubuntu onto it and it's been fantastic. What do they limit you to? Just the basic XPS 13 models? Also, what if someone in the US bought one and had it shipped to Australia? Is that doable?
  - voltagex_ 11y ago
    I shouldn't complain too much, the 8GB / 256GB version is the highest they offer here. It's just that I'd like to run VMs on the thing and 16GB of RAM is needed. My other constraint is weight, for $REASONS - I don't really want something >1.5KG.
  - voltagex_ 11y ago
    Depending on how many rules you'd like to break I'd be likely to be charged 10% GST on import when it got to Australian Customs.
- dcposch 11y ago
  > I think the OP has missed the Microsoft "Signature" edition products. They're a clean Windows 10 image Yeah that sounds interesting. Looks like they have Lenovo hardware too. I'll check them out.
  - tallanvor 11y ago
    They do. I bought a Lenovo from the Microsoft store. No crapware at all (well, you can debate about some of the driver update software both from Lenovo and Intel, but definitely no added root certificates and such).
- ashark 11y ago
  > Edit: AFAICT a lot of the battery life on a MacBook comes from the way OS X works - friends who use Bootcamp tell me it significantly reduces their battery time. It's not just OSX—even using Safari instead of Chrome or Firefox adds over an hour to my battery life (god knows there's no other reason to use it). As of ~1 year ago when I worked somewhere that required me to use lots of tablets from both Apple and a variety of top Android manufacturers on a regular basis, battery life (especially idle battery life) on the Apple devices was borderline miraculous while the Android devices seemed to treat the battery like an infinite resource—the difference was not subtle. I'd love a world in which it seems like any company other than Apple holds battery life as a high priority. My observation has been that we do not live in that world. They're the only hardware manufacturer I've seen that gives more-or-less honest battery life estimates in their marketing, and those figures are not low. It'd be really, really hard for me to jump ship solely for that reason.
- radicalbyte 11y ago
  Correct, using OSX I still get 7-8hrs battery life from a 2 year old MBP. Windows 10 via dual-boot empties the battery in around 3hrs.
- lmm 11y ago
  If Windows gets bad battery life on MacBooks then that's an indictment of Apple's windows drivers. Just one poorly written driver can ruin your battery life, and that's a place where the MS "hardware manufacturers write the drivers for their hardware" model really falls down - there are Windows laptops where you can nearly double the battery life by fixing the touchpad driver, or the webcam driver, or, .... In theory a manufacturer/integrator should be auditing the drivers they're shipping and making sure the whole thing works together. Maybe the signature edition programme will improve this.
  - voltagex_ 11y ago
    On Windows, is there any way to tell if one driver in particular is behaving badly?
    - lmm 11y ago
      There are tools, I remember reading a blog post that did an analysis. I don't know the details though.
ktRolster 11y ago
> Bonus points for calling apple website an icon of web design when it weights almost 100mb. Plus calling Amazon.com 'simple and utilitarian' is questionable. Does anyone really care a whole lot about the HP website?
- ihartley 11y ago
  It could really stand to suck a little less. Based on this thread I went to checkout the Elitebook line and the "View all notebook products" link from the Elitebook line page just goes to a promo for some new one that isn't available yet, and when you go to the shop it just takes you to search results with 217 results for "elitebook"
  - bdavisx 11y ago
    Yep, there's no way to filter on things that I really care about. 217 results, sure, I'll read each one, make notes and then choose.
dcposch 11y ago
> Rage score 9/10. LOL. Yes, that's fair. I was frustrated with Lenovo's website for all the reasons I described. > Bonus points for calling apple website an icon of web design when it weights almost 100mb. Apple's website is an icon of web design. It's 100MB not because of needless JS & ad tracker bloat, but because of high res images. Just look at it. It's gorgeous: http://www.apple.com/macbook/ http://www.apple.com/macbook/
- natch 11y ago
  What bothered me was this paragraph: >Apple has great design Functional design. A lot of haters misunderstand it as style. >but Uh-oh >they sell things that are locked down, both physically and in software. OK, I guess you read that on the Internet. But you should question it. When I bought my first Mac the first thing I did before buying it was call Apple support and check whether I could open it and upgrade the hard drive without voiding the warranty. The answer? YES. Same goes for memory, etc. Was true then, is true today. Although for some models the options are now removed due to technical limitations put in place not because Apple is trying to offend you, but because that's how they get the battery life you like. In my experience Apple is very cool about user upgrades. What they're not cool about is stuff like putting in third party batteries, which then explode, and then asking Apple to eat the cost for that. Um, no. On the software side, of course Apple doesn't want to set all its users up with totally vulnerable systems that can lead to all manner of harm. But it doesn't prevent more advanced users like us from doing what we want to on our own systems. Feel free to install Linux, even though it's already a UNIX machine, whatever... So you don't have to let the software factor in to your decision about a machine. >You're not supposed to open them, you're not supposed to replace parts It's just normal life that some things can be replaced, and some can't. This isn't specific to Apple. If you attempt to open a lithium battery, it may burst into flames. Therefore, they are made, deliberately, to be hard to open. And you being not supposed to open them is a correct thing, not a problem. We don't know the story behind pentalobe screws But I imagine maybe third party battery replacement businesses were getting out of control, leading to damaged phones and fires, and that little side industry needed a speed bump while it got its batteries up to snuff. Who knows. It's easy to think up legitimate reasons rather than "Apple hates your freedoms." But bashing Apple is just the cool thing to do, right? > and if they break you're supposed to take them to your nearest "Genius Bar". Not my style. I would encourage you to think beyond style. I build my own PCs too but the Geniuses are backed by a truly awesome knowledge base with problems, troubleshooting tools, solutions, and discretionary power to make you very, very happy when things go wrong, if you're not a dick about things. >Also, Apple makes beautiful hardware Functional. I'm sure beauty is also a goal but I think a lot of it comes as a side effect of the intrinsic functional nature of every detail. But yeah, it's beautiful too. >but their software is getting worse. You read this on the internet too. Please. Think for yourself. Of course their software has problems. All software has problems. Apple's software is taking on HUGE challenges, basically helping each person manage all their information, and responsibly, which means with security measures in place, which are there to reduce the likelihood of actual harmful real threats to their users. Yes, it's complicated. All that being said... I agree with one thing, which is that it would be great if there were more fantastic machines out there, from more vendors. But I think to make machines really great, they would inevitably end up including some of the features that you diss when talking about Apple, like security features and tradeoffs on end-user upgradability in return for other benefits.
SwellJoe 11y ago
"HP makes the elitebook, magnesium construction a la thinkpad." I've been burned so badly by an HP laptop, that I'm unlikely to ever buy another HP product in any category. It is horrifically bad. Damned near everything is wrong with it. It also had some crapware, and the system restore partition didn't work...so I had a dead laptop for two weeks waiting for physical restore media to arrive (that I paid $10+shipping for). Specs were great, among the highest end available at the time. The quality, on the other hand, has been worse than any computer I've ever owned. I guess is isn't all that constructive as comments go, but I feel ethically obligated to steer people away from considering HP laptops.
- DKnoll 11y ago
  The HP consumer and enterprise lines are vastly different in terms of quality. By the way, upon first boot of an HP laptop you will be prompted to burn recovery DVDs. $10 is actually pretty reasonable compared to what others would charge you.
- derefr 11y ago
  HP's consumer and enterprise divisions are effectively separate companies (and, in fact, were acquired from separate sources.) The enterprise "workstation" laptops are some of the best-put-together, simplest-to-repair, most-natively-well-supported-without-needing-drivers, and otherwise most "obvious" in their design machines I've ever had the pleasure of refurbishing. The EliteBook line is the one laptop where seeing inside actually made me want to own it more. (And I did buy one, and it was an excellent machine that served me well for years and would still be decently competitive today.) Other neat thing: the EliteBooks I was refurbishing tended to be 2007 models—but they came with fully-working UEFI, hidden under a "this is only a prototype implementation" warning. It was fun playing with 64-bit Windows 8 on them; none of the other machines in the shop could make heads or tails of the W8 install discs. They also tended to come with fingerprint sensors. I got used to unlocking my laptop with my thumb long before TouchID was a thing.
  - manyxcxi 11y ago
    A 2007 (maybe 2006) HP EliteBook was the last non MacBook Pro laptop I had. I loved that thing and it was incredibly easy to add my own RAM and an SSD to. Pretty sure it maxed out at 8GB. I'm sure they're sleeker now but that thing was pretty thick and the batteries on them seemed to wear down and die very fast. Bonus points for having an AWESOME dock that worked near flawlessly in Windows 7 for me, not so much, but not bad with Ubuntu 10 Desktop. Also you could get extended batteries and the batteries swapped easily, so I had a pair that could get me through a day at a client's site with no power if I needed. I can't imagine I'll go back, I love my MBPs, but I would check out the latest EliteBooks if I was going that way again.
noobermin 11y ago
>Do you like the MacBook but don't like the OS? go ahead and change it, you can have triple boot. Sometimes[0]. P.S., if you're interested in helping, we'd all appreciate it! [0] https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=99891 https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=99891
debaserab2 11y ago
> Bonus points for calling apple website an icon of web design when it weights almost 100mb. Huh? My chrome network panel registered 13.3k for apple.com
- miahi 11y ago
  The html part only is 25KB; you got 13k because you had everything cached from previous sessions.
  - debaserab2 11y ago
    You're right, however, a full page load with caching disabled was 747k. Heavy, but nowhere near 100mb. Where's the source on that?
    - debaserab2 11y ago
      Wow, ok - go ahead and down vote me on that without commenting. I was genuinely curious if there was some part of their site that actually was 100mb (it sounds extremely crazy but sadly feasible).
beloch 11y ago
Question for those running Linux on an Apple laptop: If you had a hardware failure, did having a non-Apple-approved OS cause any problems when you tried to get it fixed?
- maccard 11y ago
  I had a motherboard fail on a 2011 MacBook Pro running Windows 7 - I just wiped the drive on another Mac and put it back in and have it to them. No questions asked.
  - beloch 11y ago
    Why did you do this? Did you believe that if they knew you were running Win7 they'd void your warranty?
    - maccard 11y ago
      I didn't know whether or not it would and for the 10 minutes it took, it was worth it to not have to stand in the Apple Store and explain why I was running Windows and not OS X.
jandrese 11y ago
Lucky thing he wasn't shopping a couple of years ago when it was near impossible to buy a PC laptop with a screen at any resolution other than 1366x768. Also, I know they're uncool and all, but the author should really look at the Dell XPS series. They're rather expensive but hit most all of his points. Here's a review of the XPS 15: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/01/dell-xps-15-review-a-bigger-version-of-the-best-pc-laptop/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/01/dell-xps-15-review-a-...
alex_duf 11y ago
Except when buying a computer from Apple or Lenovo (or pretty much anyone really), you also pay for the software that is installed on it. Yes you can change it, but it's the equivalent of buying a car and change the wheels when you get it.
cyphar 11y ago
The latest MacBook (2015) doesn't use USB internally for the keyboard and touchpad. As a result, Linux doesn't support it. I was thinking about writing patches to fix it (it does boot) but it looks far too complicated (I'm not even sure if the "protocol" is the same over different serial protocols).

by xlayn 11y ago

voltagex_ 11y ago

Add me to the rage brigade. I think the OP has missed the Microsoft "Signature" edition products. They're a clean Windows 10 image and you buy direct from Microsoft. I just wish they'd sell me the XPS 13 9350 (the highest spec'd one) in Australia. Edit: AFAICT a lot of the battery life on a MacBook comes from the way OS X works - friends who use Bootcamp tell me it significantly reduces their battery time.

wldcordeiro 11y ago
That's lame they don't sell those there. I got a 9350 myself and loaded Ubuntu onto it and it's been fantastic. What do they limit you to? Just the basic XPS 13 models? Also, what if someone in the US bought one and had it shipped to Australia? Is that doable?
- voltagex_ 11y ago
  I shouldn't complain too much, the 8GB / 256GB version is the highest they offer here. It's just that I'd like to run VMs on the thing and 16GB of RAM is needed. My other constraint is weight, for $REASONS - I don't really want something >1.5KG.
- voltagex_ 11y ago
  Depending on how many rules you'd like to break I'd be likely to be charged 10% GST on import when it got to Australian Customs.
dcposch 11y ago
> I think the OP has missed the Microsoft "Signature" edition products. They're a clean Windows 10 image Yeah that sounds interesting. Looks like they have Lenovo hardware too. I'll check them out.
- tallanvor 11y ago
  They do. I bought a Lenovo from the Microsoft store. No crapware at all (well, you can debate about some of the driver update software both from Lenovo and Intel, but definitely no added root certificates and such).
ashark 11y ago
> Edit: AFAICT a lot of the battery life on a MacBook comes from the way OS X works - friends who use Bootcamp tell me it significantly reduces their battery time. It's not just OSX—even using Safari instead of Chrome or Firefox adds over an hour to my battery life (god knows there's no other reason to use it). As of ~1 year ago when I worked somewhere that required me to use lots of tablets from both Apple and a variety of top Android manufacturers on a regular basis, battery life (especially idle battery life) on the Apple devices was borderline miraculous while the Android devices seemed to treat the battery like an infinite resource—the difference was not subtle. I'd love a world in which it seems like any company other than Apple holds battery life as a high priority. My observation has been that we do not live in that world. They're the only hardware manufacturer I've seen that gives more-or-less honest battery life estimates in their marketing, and those figures are not low. It'd be really, really hard for me to jump ship solely for that reason.
radicalbyte 11y ago
Correct, using OSX I still get 7-8hrs battery life from a 2 year old MBP. Windows 10 via dual-boot empties the battery in around 3hrs.
lmm 11y ago
If Windows gets bad battery life on MacBooks then that's an indictment of Apple's windows drivers. Just one poorly written driver can ruin your battery life, and that's a place where the MS "hardware manufacturers write the drivers for their hardware" model really falls down - there are Windows laptops where you can nearly double the battery life by fixing the touchpad driver, or the webcam driver, or, .... In theory a manufacturer/integrator should be auditing the drivers they're shipping and making sure the whole thing works together. Maybe the signature edition programme will improve this.
- voltagex_ 11y ago
  On Windows, is there any way to tell if one driver in particular is behaving badly?
  - lmm 11y ago
    There are tools, I remember reading a blog post that did an analysis. I don't know the details though.

ktRolster 11y ago

> Bonus points for calling apple website an icon of web design when it weights almost 100mb. Plus calling Amazon.com 'simple and utilitarian' is questionable. Does anyone really care a whole lot about the HP website?

ihartley 11y ago
It could really stand to suck a little less. Based on this thread I went to checkout the Elitebook line and the "View all notebook products" link from the Elitebook line page just goes to a promo for some new one that isn't available yet, and when you go to the shop it just takes you to search results with 217 results for "elitebook"
- bdavisx 11y ago
  Yep, there's no way to filter on things that I really care about. 217 results, sure, I'll read each one, make notes and then choose.

dcposch 11y ago

> Rage score 9/10. LOL. Yes, that's fair. I was frustrated with Lenovo's website for all the reasons I described. > Bonus points for calling apple website an icon of web design when it weights almost 100mb. Apple's website is an icon of web design. It's 100MB not because of needless JS & ad tracker bloat, but because of high res images. Just look at it. It's gorgeous: http://www.apple.com/macbook/ http://www.apple.com/macbook/

natch 11y ago
What bothered me was this paragraph: >Apple has great design Functional design. A lot of haters misunderstand it as style. >but Uh-oh >they sell things that are locked down, both physically and in software. OK, I guess you read that on the Internet. But you should question it. When I bought my first Mac the first thing I did before buying it was call Apple support and check whether I could open it and upgrade the hard drive without voiding the warranty. The answer? YES. Same goes for memory, etc. Was true then, is true today. Although for some models the options are now removed due to technical limitations put in place not because Apple is trying to offend you, but because that's how they get the battery life you like. In my experience Apple is very cool about user upgrades. What they're not cool about is stuff like putting in third party batteries, which then explode, and then asking Apple to eat the cost for that. Um, no. On the software side, of course Apple doesn't want to set all its users up with totally vulnerable systems that can lead to all manner of harm. But it doesn't prevent more advanced users like us from doing what we want to on our own systems. Feel free to install Linux, even though it's already a UNIX machine, whatever... So you don't have to let the software factor in to your decision about a machine. >You're not supposed to open them, you're not supposed to replace parts It's just normal life that some things can be replaced, and some can't. This isn't specific to Apple. If you attempt to open a lithium battery, it may burst into flames. Therefore, they are made, deliberately, to be hard to open. And you being not supposed to open them is a correct thing, not a problem. We don't know the story behind pentalobe screws But I imagine maybe third party battery replacement businesses were getting out of control, leading to damaged phones and fires, and that little side industry needed a speed bump while it got its batteries up to snuff. Who knows. It's easy to think up legitimate reasons rather than "Apple hates your freedoms." But bashing Apple is just the cool thing to do, right? > and if they break you're supposed to take them to your nearest "Genius Bar". Not my style. I would encourage you to think beyond style. I build my own PCs too but the Geniuses are backed by a truly awesome knowledge base with problems, troubleshooting tools, solutions, and discretionary power to make you very, very happy when things go wrong, if you're not a dick about things. >Also, Apple makes beautiful hardware Functional. I'm sure beauty is also a goal but I think a lot of it comes as a side effect of the intrinsic functional nature of every detail. But yeah, it's beautiful too. >but their software is getting worse. You read this on the internet too. Please. Think for yourself. Of course their software has problems. All software has problems. Apple's software is taking on HUGE challenges, basically helping each person manage all their information, and responsibly, which means with security measures in place, which are there to reduce the likelihood of actual harmful real threats to their users. Yes, it's complicated. All that being said... I agree with one thing, which is that it would be great if there were more fantastic machines out there, from more vendors. But I think to make machines really great, they would inevitably end up including some of the features that you diss when talking about Apple, like security features and tradeoffs on end-user upgradability in return for other benefits.

SwellJoe 11y ago

"HP makes the elitebook, magnesium construction a la thinkpad." I've been burned so badly by an HP laptop, that I'm unlikely to ever buy another HP product in any category. It is horrifically bad. Damned near everything is wrong with it. It also had some crapware, and the system restore partition didn't work...so I had a dead laptop for two weeks waiting for physical restore media to arrive (that I paid $10+shipping for). Specs were great, among the highest end available at the time. The quality, on the other hand, has been worse than any computer I've ever owned. I guess is isn't all that constructive as comments go, but I feel ethically obligated to steer people away from considering HP laptops.

DKnoll 11y ago
The HP consumer and enterprise lines are vastly different in terms of quality. By the way, upon first boot of an HP laptop you will be prompted to burn recovery DVDs. $10 is actually pretty reasonable compared to what others would charge you.
derefr 11y ago
HP's consumer and enterprise divisions are effectively separate companies (and, in fact, were acquired from separate sources.) The enterprise "workstation" laptops are some of the best-put-together, simplest-to-repair, most-natively-well-supported-without-needing-drivers, and otherwise most "obvious" in their design machines I've ever had the pleasure of refurbishing. The EliteBook line is the one laptop where seeing inside actually made me want to own it more. (And I did buy one, and it was an excellent machine that served me well for years and would still be decently competitive today.) Other neat thing: the EliteBooks I was refurbishing tended to be 2007 models—but they came with fully-working UEFI, hidden under a "this is only a prototype implementation" warning. It was fun playing with 64-bit Windows 8 on them; none of the other machines in the shop could make heads or tails of the W8 install discs. They also tended to come with fingerprint sensors. I got used to unlocking my laptop with my thumb long before TouchID was a thing.
- manyxcxi 11y ago
  A 2007 (maybe 2006) HP EliteBook was the last non MacBook Pro laptop I had. I loved that thing and it was incredibly easy to add my own RAM and an SSD to. Pretty sure it maxed out at 8GB. I'm sure they're sleeker now but that thing was pretty thick and the batteries on them seemed to wear down and die very fast. Bonus points for having an AWESOME dock that worked near flawlessly in Windows 7 for me, not so much, but not bad with Ubuntu 10 Desktop. Also you could get extended batteries and the batteries swapped easily, so I had a pair that could get me through a day at a client's site with no power if I needed. I can't imagine I'll go back, I love my MBPs, but I would check out the latest EliteBooks if I was going that way again.

noobermin 11y ago

>Do you like the MacBook but don't like the OS? go ahead and change it, you can have triple boot. Sometimes[0]. P.S., if you're interested in helping, we'd all appreciate it! [0] https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=99891 https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=99891

debaserab2 11y ago

> Bonus points for calling apple website an icon of web design when it weights almost 100mb. Huh? My chrome network panel registered 13.3k for apple.com

miahi 11y ago
The html part only is 25KB; you got 13k because you had everything cached from previous sessions.
- debaserab2 11y ago
  You're right, however, a full page load with caching disabled was 747k. Heavy, but nowhere near 100mb. Where's the source on that?
  - debaserab2 11y ago
    Wow, ok - go ahead and down vote me on that without commenting. I was genuinely curious if there was some part of their site that actually was 100mb (it sounds extremely crazy but sadly feasible).

beloch 11y ago

Question for those running Linux on an Apple laptop: If you had a hardware failure, did having a non-Apple-approved OS cause any problems when you tried to get it fixed?

maccard 11y ago
I had a motherboard fail on a 2011 MacBook Pro running Windows 7 - I just wiped the drive on another Mac and put it back in and have it to them. No questions asked.
- beloch 11y ago
  Why did you do this? Did you believe that if they knew you were running Win7 they'd void your warranty?
  - maccard 11y ago
    I didn't know whether or not it would and for the 10 minutes it took, it was worth it to not have to stand in the Apple Store and explain why I was running Windows and not OS X.

jandrese 11y ago

Lucky thing he wasn't shopping a couple of years ago when it was near impossible to buy a PC laptop with a screen at any resolution other than 1366x768. Also, I know they're uncool and all, but the author should really look at the Dell XPS series. They're rather expensive but hit most all of his points. Here's a review of the XPS 15: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/01/dell-xps-15-review-a-bigger-version-of-the-best-pc-laptop/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/01/dell-xps-15-review-a-...

alex_duf 11y ago

Except when buying a computer from Apple or Lenovo (or pretty much anyone really), you also pay for the software that is installed on it. Yes you can change it, but it's the equivalent of buying a car and change the wheels when you get it.

cyphar 11y ago

The latest MacBook (2015) doesn't use USB internally for the keyboard and touchpad. As a result, Linux doesn't support it. I was thinking about writing patches to fix it (it does boot) but it looks far too complicated (I'm not even sure if the "protocol" is the same over different serial protocols).