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I completely agree. I only really switched to OSX because getting node tools to work on windows and cygwin is a pita.
by simonlc 11y ago
I completely agree. I only really switched to OSX because getting node tools to work on windows and cygwin is a pita.
- tostitos1979 11y agoI've been "stuck" with a 2010 Macbook since Apple isn't refreshing it's laptop hardware soon enough. Plus I'm sick of soldered in RAM and other BS. For devs that do heavy Linux work (but have stuck with a Mac OS for GUI/app reasons), is it time to move (back) to Windows? If so, what would be a good laptop to get at the moment?
- sixothree 11y agoThinkpad T460s. I have the T450s and like it plenty. It's definitely up there with macbook build quality.
- meddlepal 11y agoThe T540p isn't though. I hate mine.
- criddell 11y agoI have a ThinkPad Yoga and an older ThinkPad T520. Both are pretty awful machines. Plus I really don't trust Lenovo anymore. If I were buying a Windows machine, the only one I would consider is the Microsoft Surface Book.
- peternicky 11y agowhy don't you trust Lenovo?
- jjawssd 11y agobad build quality. also had issues with humming and generally falling apart in subtle ways while macbooks never do.
- meddlepal 11y agoLots of cheap plastic. I don't love Apple products but the build quality of their products makes PC vendor laptops and desktops look really bad.
- se6 11y agoI prefer a great deal plastic to environmental foe aluminium. To me their use of aluminium is a very good reason not to buy Apple hardware. I have a Dell M3800 right now, and the build quality is very good. Thin, light, excellent 4K touch screen, good battery life, I easily added a second HDD to it. Not to mention that every thing works perfectly well under Linux.
- criddell 11y ago> good battery life What? The M3800 had terrible battery life under Windows and it was even worse under Linux.
- r3bl 11y agoI'm pretty sure that the answer comes down to one word: Superfish. Although, in my opinion, I wouldn't trust any laptop hardware company out there enough to use the system that came pre-installed with it, but that's for another discussion.
- criddell 11y agoThere has been a string of things, including Superfish. There was also the Lenovo Solution Center problem. And the Lenovo BIOS shenanigans (or was it the Lenovo Service Engine?). There have just been too many lapses in judgement at Lenovo. Either their competence is slipping or their ethics are. Either way, I'm done with them for now.
- snuxoll 11y agoDell's Inspiron line is my go-to for portable workstations. Run Linux straight on them, or if GNOME/KDE aren't your cup of tea just run Windows and put your distro of choice in a VM (I just run Fedora on everything but my gaming PC, personally). I'm personally using a Dell XPS 13 (2014), soldered in RAM, but I did buy an ultraportable and 8GB is more than sufficient to do my all my personal work on. Work supplied me with a Lenovo W540 that is substantially more flexible, but it weighs as much as a couple bricks and I usually just leave it at home on the dock.
- jpalomaki 11y agoI don't have hands on experience, but Dell XPS 15 looks like an interesting option for thoaw looking for Windows laptop that is close to 15" Macbook Pro (quad core, sleek etc).
- NateDad 11y agoI have the XPS 15. It is almost identical to a Macbook Pro. Build quality is really awesome. Super super happy with it. The new one with the infinity edge screen is super friggin' sexy, and will absolutely be my next computer. I know a bunch of other devs on the XPS 15 as well, also very happy (we run Ubuntu, but I'm sure it's even better in Windows).
- Pwngea 11y agoWhich one do you have? How is it specs-wise?
- NateDad 11y agoI have one that is now 2.5 years old. Specs-wise, it was basically top of the line. Quad Core i7, 16GB RAM, 500GB SSD, 3200x1800 touchscreen, GeForce 750m GPU (which was one of the best mobile GPUs back then). It has a lot of nice touches that lower end models don't have, like 2 or 3 USB3 ports, with 2 or 3 USB ports that have power even when the laptop is off (super handy for charging a phone on an airplane while your laptop is still in your bag, for example). Wireless N networking, HDMI and MiniDP connections, able to drive two external monitors at once along with the laptop screen (up to 1920x1200 over HDMI and 4k over miniDP). The touchpad is pretty decent. backlit chicklet keyboard with variable brightness. SD card slot, 1/4" headset port... the only thing it's missing is an ethernet port, but that's just because it's too thin for the port. A USB3 gigabit ethernet adapter is cheap and works great. And it's pretty damn light for a 15" laptop. Easily one-handable (I think it's like 2 pounds IIRC). And what's great is that you can crack it open and replace stuff - I swapped out the hard drive and replaced a malfunctioning battery myself with just a torx screw driver (super tiny torx, but still, no glue or special tools or anything). It was pretty expensive - like $1900 IIRC. You're paying for the high res screen, better build quality, and thinness/lightness. But it's still like $500+ less than an equivalent macbook.
- matt_wulfeck 11y agoI would say no, especially if your mac had an i7 and reasonable amounts of ram.
- x1798DE 11y agoWhy not move to Linux?
- matt_wulfeck 11y agoJust out of curiosity, what does a Linux desktop offer that's not also natively offered in Mac and also highly polished? Every year I try a switch to Linux desktop. This year I made it as far as trying to get multiple monitors working well. I also dabbed in gaming. In the end I went back to my work=Mac game=Windows duopoly.
- toyg 11y agoSome tools (docker etc) are typically borne on linux and later (not always) ported to OsX. Nothing you cannot get around with a bit of emulation, of course, but it can be painful at times. The whole python ecosystem is also better on Linux overall. Anything strictly desktop-oriented is better on OSX of course.
- zeveb 11y ago> Just out of curiosity, what does a Linux desktop offer that's not also natively offered in Mac and also highly polished? A GNU userland. A plethora of tiling window managers. A selection of clean terminals. Every single thing Debian's or Arch's repos offer which one must turn to brew for. And of course there's freedom too, which is nice. > Every year I try a switch to Linux desktop. This year I made it as far as trying to get multiple monitors working well. I've got multiple monitors running on Linux, over HDMI, at home & at work, at differing resolutions & orientations. I use arandr-configured xrandr scripts which set my desired orientation with a quick keystroke in my window manager. What more does one need?
- matt_wulfeck 11y agoMaybe HDMI is better supported that DisplayPort.
- diyorgasms 11y ago
- leshow 11y agowhy not just stay on linux
- zeveb 11y ago> For devs that do heavy Linux work (but have stuck with a Mac OS for GUI/app reasons), is it time to move (back) to Windows? Why not just use Linux? It has a GUI. It has apps. It does everything a modern desktop or laptop needs to do. It really is great.
- trill1 11y agoRight! This whole thread has me scratching my head. Not long ago Microsoft schemed to stomp out Linux and now they've had a change of heart? Fuck Microsoft! To this day even they engage in anti-competitive bundling with OEMs, not to mention their seedy history in relation to open source.
- khattam 11y ago>Why not just use Linux? I would LOVE to ditch OS X and run Linux on it, only problem is NO DISTRO supports latest hardware. There are always things that don't work and it gets tiring. I tried to run Ubuntu on my old Dell Laptop... there would always be some issues related to graphics card, wifi or some shit, overheating, battery drain... or something not working. At the end, had to go for Windows with Ubuntu on vagrant boxes and Desktop Ubuntu in Virtualbox. Then on my new Macbook Pro, I wanted to run Ubuntu 14.04... but of course, so many things don't work... like right clicking on the touch pad, WiFi or such simplest of features you'd expect to be supported in such widely available and pretty standard hardware... but NOPE. So, it's vagrant and Virtualbox running mostly Ubuntu on OS X again. I am actually considering installing Windows and running Linux on a VM inside it.
- JdeBP 11y agoWith UbuntuBSD (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11326681 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11326681) the equivalent question is "Why not just use PC-BSD?"
- deckar01 11y agoGo to a brick and mortar electronics store, pick out a laptop that meets your desired specs, and do something realistic with it for a while. There are lots of little things I took for granted about Apple MacBooks that no Windows laptops could match. Touch pad, high dpi display, and cooling were never quite done right, but they are crucial for every day operations.
- cheapsteak 11y agoI'm with you on the touch pad, three-finger touch-drag in particular is something I've not found a PC do well; my PCs' scroll simulated scroll momentum is also buggy (scroll, stop scrolling, Ctrl+click to open new tab, messes up the font size instead because it's still stimulating mouse wheel movement) I'm surprised to hear someone preferring macbooks cooling though, my macbook always gets so hot relative to other laptops
- willtim 11y agoI would suggest not trying to source quality hardware from an electronics store. For software development, Thinkpads more then compete with MacBooks, the keyboard is considerably better too.
- deckar01 11y agoI just meant electronics stores have display models you can try before buying. I think my local stores carry Thinkpads, maybe they were IdeaPads.
- skrebbel 11y agoWait, getting node to work on windows is a pita? I know of no language runtime and ecosystem that has better cross-platform support than Node (hm ok maybe Java also). I develop solely on Windows (I just like it better) and virtually all of NPM just works on my box. Even stuff people never tested elsewhere than on their Macs, it just works. Express, webpack, mocha, phantomjs, it's really quite impressive if you ask me.
- itsananderson 11y ago99% of the painful Node stuff on Windows comes down to native packages. To even compile, you have to install Visual Studio. Then you have to hope the module developer has a build definition that even works for Windows.
- edwinyzh 11y agoCorrect! The last time I wanted to npm-install a CLI but it needs gyp, I'm not familiar with the node thingy and I gave up after several failed attemps including installing the VC++ runtime, Python, etc....
- hatsix 11y agoWindows Path issues and compiling native code. Between those two things, nearly everything I've ever tried on windows has failed.
- girvo 11y agonode-gyp, though. In my experience, it's the native packages that cause problems, which is honestly to be expected because building a native library for Node to bind to in a cross-platform way is always going to be somewhat painful.