10 ms·

After Mac?

101 points by emilong 10y ago

peatmoss 10y ago
I feel like Ubuntu has been the F/OSS replacement for OSX for some time. Unfortunately, I feel like the strengths of a Free *nix (Don't like the UX? Change it.) are exactly the things that prevent a critical mass. Sadly, a critical mass of support seems to be crucial for things like hardware drivers and commercial software with roots in the shrinkwrap era (Photoshop, Office, etc?).
- lucideer 10y ago
  elementaryOS seemed to be angling more directly for that market (Ubuntu was always quite Mac-ish, at least up until Unity, but still very much looked to attract a more general userbase - e.g. targeting installers at Windows users, etc.), but I think elementaryOS is probably a bit young to take full advantage right now. They may have gone a little too far on the "simplicity" side for power users coming from MacOS.
  - peatmoss 10y ago
    I always felt that ElementaryOS was a skin-deep clone. I'm not sure that having a little bit different UX is the reason Ubuntu hasn't achieved blessed third OS status from the Adobes of the world. I think it has more to do with there not being a unified homogenous target to code for. If the FOSS world wanted to reimplement our own Mac, I've always thought that doubling down on GNUStep would have made the most sense. If Linux + GNUstep were closer to source-compatible with the Mac, with a comparable desktop environment to boot, more of those apps would have likely made the jump. Even that I'm not sure about now though. Had GNUstep been a viable daily-use platform back in the early 2000s when OSX was ascendant, I think we'd have a different landscape today. Now with the web dominating so much, native app compatibility is less important than it was. You just need to be a big enough target for commercial vendors to care about. With luck, Chromebooks will help sort out the hardware compatibility issues as more and more of the chipsets are mainlined into the Linux kernel. In terms of software compatibility, I don't know, maybe desktop Android apps will ultimately be what we coalesce around.
  - rcarmo 10y ago
    I'm good with it. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12830761 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12830761 for more. Then again, I am not the typical macOS power user and just want a good, stable UNIX with an interface I don't (ever) have to tweak.
  - dkuntz2 10y ago
    What do you mean by "up until Unity"? Unity has always looked like a macOS desktop clone, from having the menu bar always on top, and integrating a dock by default. Unity seems significantly closer to the macOS desktop compared to the old Gnome 2 setup.
    - lucideer 10y ago
      Unity still has its macish elements, true, but I think the post-Unity GTK+ and general in-default-app experiences tended to move toward "doing their own thing", rather than aping Windows or macOS. Also, while the Unity side dock is iconified like macOS', I think it's functionality more different than the old Gnome2 bottom panel was from the macOS dock. All subjective I guess.
- kyriakos 10y ago
  I think Microsoft's move to add bash on Windows was very well calculated. They have an OS that runs on a huge number of devices giving buyers options, with mainstream driver support, compatibility with most commercial software, and good development tools for the platform. By adding bash gives OSX users who are dissatisfied with the latest Apple hardware a chance to jump ship. At the same time Windows/Linux dual-boot users who also happen to be gamers will find themselves using Linux less.
  - pjmlp 10y ago
    The thing is that this backslash is mainly driven by the vocal UNIX developers that migrated to Apple hardware due to the underlying UNIX. However for those of us that actually care about macOS software written in Objective-C and Swift, macOS is as good as always.
  - Yetanfou 10y ago
    Sooo.... if Microsoft really wants to be 'smart'... they sort-of allow someone to develop a 'Mac OS' subsystem to run on Windows. They can not do this officially as they'd have layers of lawyers upon them in an instant but since they have extensive experience with subversive operations it should be possible to get the thing running in a rather short time. Maybe they should have a chat with the GNUStep folks to see if they have some converging targets. Having a Mac OS compatibility layer on other systems would enable gradual migration, not something Apple will be wildly enthusiastic about but - if implemented correctly - not something they can do much about either apart from restricting access to Apple-created software to Apple-created hardware and operating environments (something they already do as far as I know).
    - kyriakos 10y ago
      I don't see the reason for this. OSX (or Windows) at this time are not something special, dev tools except the platform specific stuff are cross platform. Creative software exists for both (more on Windows actually). What would a compatibility layer with OSX on Windows offer that you can't already do other than ios app packaging and deployment (cause even that you can already develop on other platforms if you don't use the official tools). So even if technically is doable it's really not worth the legal backfire.
rjzzleep 10y ago
Every time I mention the biggest flaw of the Linux desktop people freak out and point me to Qt. I know QT but the effort of making a half decent GUI app in QT is way above the effort it takes with Cocoa. I very much remember the development and push of cocoa and the slow transition away from carbon and quickdraw. I believe NSDrawer was something that first showed up in third party code and then was adopted in Cocoa. Apple has constantly refined their toolkit by looking at well designed apps. Everything on Linux seems to be doing the exact opposite. Although GTK was developed out of Gimp it's so much easier to make a good looking photo editor on Mac than it is on any other platform. Until we sit down and design a good looking and easy to use GUI toolkit we can forget about decent Gui applications on Linux. (with a focus on easy to use)
- pabloski 10y ago
  Huh? Never heard of QML?
  - pjmlp 10y ago
    Every time I checked Qt blogs it seems there is a new QML flavour. Not really inspiring. Also not everyone jumps of joy to use JavaScript to describe GUIs.
    - vmasto 10y ago
      This has changed a lot with React. Honestly I jump with joy every time I start a new react project.
  - usernam 10y ago
    Can you point to some well designed QML interfaces? I can spot QML from the ill-fitting looks and mostly poorly though-of interaction. People think QML has magic powers, but in reality any UI designed in 5 minutes has only the value of a 5 minute interface. To me QML is the biggest mistake in Qt5.
    - pjmlp 10y ago
pavs 10y ago
Linux can look nice. Unfortunately not by default. https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/top/ https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/top/
- izacus 10y ago
  elementaryOS IMO looks more than nice by default.
  - dkuntz2 10y ago
    If only they worked to make Pantheon work well with other operating systems, instead of forking off as a separate one. And picking Ubuntu as the base to fork off is not the best choice.
- wz1000 10y ago
  Plasma 5 looks good and feels polished by default. I do most of my work on my desktop, and wouldn't give up my highly configured xmonad+emacs setup for anything. But I recently got a new laptop and decided to go with KDE and was blown away by the polish. The style of all the GUI apps I use is consistent and I can press a button to switch to a nice, consistent dark mode. I have encountered absolutely no issues with screen tearing or performance, with were common when I used linux on previous laptops. I've faced no issues with fonts after installing Google's noto font package. KWin's external monitor support is also satisfactory. I haven't used recent versions of GNOME/Cinnamon/Unity, so can't comment on them, but KDE Connect is the killer KDE feature for me. I love the integration between all the apps on the KDE ecosystem. The calendar syncs to my Google calendar, and my contacts and mail are handled by KDE too. I didn't need to install a thing apart from the KDE workspace and apps for any of this. I've even switched to using the Breeze theme on my xmonad desktop.
- santaclaus 10y ago
  I've been bugging the sys admins at work to fix the fonts on our RHEL boxes for months...
Alex3917 10y ago
The reason you can't get 32 gigs of memory is because Skylake (and Kaby Lake) don't support mobile DDR4 memory, which is necessary to make power consumption low enough for a laptop. This isn't Apple's fault. Short of making a 7 pound windows-style gaming laptop, there's not really much that they can do until 2018 when Cannonlake comes out.
- votr 10y ago
  It's rumored that the Surface Book 2 will use Kaby Lake and have a 32GB option. So does this mean the only way MS can support that is by increasing size and weight to 7lbs+?
  - Alex3917 10y ago
    Well either they need to use a lower TDP cpu/gpu or else make it bigger. Either way, TANSTAAFL.
- sirmike_ 10y ago
  Bologna. Dell and system 76 offer current and last gen Intel processors in excess of 16 GB of RAM going up to 64 in the case of system 76.
  - Veen 10y ago
    Yeah, but what sort of battery life are they getting? It's not that you can't have more RAM with those processors, it's that you can't have more energy efficient mobile RAM.
    - gcr 10y ago
      Is it possible for a machine to dynamically turn the power to RAM blocks on and off? In periods of low use, the OS may choose to swap most of the RAM to disk and switch it off to save energy.
      - Mandatum 10y ago
bluejekyll 10y ago
I totally agree with this article. I have a MacBook Pro circa 2015, and it's awesome. I haven't touched the new machines, but they aren't inspiring, though the black option is really nice to see :) I haven't touched the keyboard, which it sounds like they changed. I really like the one on the generation I have, and I also like the wireless model that Apple came out with. Anyone know if it matches the wireless keyboard? Cause I like that one, short throw and large quiet key movement. In terms of the touch bar, eh, I really like the idea of having thumbprint access to the computer. I hope this is accessible to other applications. As a developer I'm minorly annoyed at losing function keys for certain tasks, but maybe I can utilize it to create custom keys and icons in different contexts, which could be really cool. Otherwise, while it doesn't offend me, it's definitely not worth upgrading to. But IMO, like this article, it's still the best Unix OS based laptop on the market (yes I know it's XNU, but it's 100% posix and full BSD subsystem, which is better than windows' posix mode and Linux veneer). Anyway, while it isn't better than my current machine, it is thinner and lighter which are nice haves, and I might actually like the new keyboard.
- sotojuan 10y ago
  Hope my 2015 Macbook lives forever D:
- extra88 10y ago
  I briefly tried the keyboard on a 2016 12-inch MacBook in an Apple Store and didn't like how "shallow" it felt relative to other Apple keyboards I've used. I hope the 2016 MBP's keyboard isn't like the 12-inch MacBook but it's not a deal-breaker. I'm not excited by the Touch Bar but I'm not concerned about it either. I think it will take some time to see how useful it is and how committed Apple is to it (e.g. will it appear on a keyboard peripheral soon). You don't lose function keys entirely, you can always call them up by pressing in the fn key. The Touch ID is available to developers, 1Password will support using it to unlock a vault instead of entering your Master password, same as they do in their iOS app. I don't care about them being thinner but appreciate them being half a pound lighter. The was achieved, in part, by having a smaller battery, 24% smaller in the 15-inch model, but they claim the 2016 model can get 10 hours of use, vs. 9 hours with the Mid 2015 model.
pault 10y ago
I've been using macs exclusively for 10+ years, and my next work machine will be a Razer Blade Stealth with the Core external GPU Dock. http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-systems/razer-blade-stealth http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-systems/razer-blade-stealth
- rcarmo 10y ago
  That's not available outside the US, or is it?
  - skeptic2718 10y ago
    razerzone.com seems to be available in many countries.
    - rcarmo 10y ago
      I meant the laptop.
  - guessmyname 10y ago
    > While we are trying to reach all our customers and fans in every > corner of the world, security and warranty issues prevent us from > doing so at this point. We currently ship to the following countries: > http://www.razerzone.com/store/shipping-guide#destinations http://www.razerzone.com/store/shipping-guide#destinations
- skeptic2718 10y ago
  MacBook Pro - 6th-gen i5 2.9/3.3GHz, 8GB 2133MHz memory, 512GB PCIe SSD, Intel HD 550 iGPU, 2560x1600 screen, aluminum body - US$ 1999 Razer Blade Stealth - 7th-gen i7 2.7GHz/3.5GHz, 16GB 1866MHz memory, 1TB PCIe SSD, Intel HD 620, 3840x2160 screen, aluminum body - US$ 1999
  - Bud 10y ago
    And the Razer will be heavier, have half the battery life, inferior fit and finish, plus you're cherry-picking MB Pro configs to intentionally leave out the i7 and higher-end graphics options. Also, 3840x2160 screen on a laptop is stupid; you're paying extra and paying a large performance penalty to get 4k on a screen on which you can't even really appreciate and use the higher res.
frik 10y ago
Not just Apple with MacBook/macOS. What does a post Windows 10 future look like? So many things are not okay, I simply refuse it and stay with Win7 for some time. Microsoft like Apple doesn't care anymore about power user. Apple still makes at least good iPhone/iPads, MS is worse on everything nowadays (XBox, Surface, WinStore, WinPhone, destroying BIOS with DRM EFI) but paying trolls. A paradigm shift - desktop gets less and less used, I am hoping for a Android/Fuchsia OS on notebook. Today many things are done on mobile iOS and Android - I just want to connect it to a huge TV/projector/monitor and keyboard and mouse and use it for work too.
- aweb 10y ago
  I'm sorry but I find this to be a weird assertion when you see how much more detailed Windows 10's Task Manager is, or the fact that you can have a Linux subsystem running on Windows since the summer. What makes you think that MS doesn't care about the power user when all signs point to the contrary?
  - XaYdEk 10y ago
    I'd like an answer too. I'm a Linux guy and Win7 is the last I will ever use personally for my own machines (unless I really need it for work, which case I'll VM it anyway). But my reasons are different, I really don't think they ruined it that much for power users, but it's other details that annoy the hell out of me. Like default online accounts, way too much telemetry data being sent and it still feels like it was designed for a tablet (even Enterprise versions). It is pushing too much for the always-online, always-connected computing experience, which feels like turning PCs back into terminals. @aweb I dunno, it seems they just moved services and startup from msconfig to the task manager. The Linux subsystem is nice, very nice, actually, the one thing I really liked.
droopyEyelids 10y ago
>So, there are new MacBooks and many people are unhappy I'm seeing this sentiment repeated quite a bit, and I'm surprised because it's almost a pre-literate view of things. Whenever something changes with regards to human life, there is a brief window for content generators to capture increased attention by writing a timely article. Content creators get more attention (which directly translates into revenue) if the content is contentious, or can be forced into 'explaining' a larger trend. Understanding this is basic Internet literacy. "Many people" are not unhappy- that is just the content machine striving to grab your attention.
tlow 10y ago
Apple laptop hardware seems to be best in class in terms of performance, support and longevity. I have some complaints about the way that macOS (or OSX) has progressed. My computer feels more like a Windows 8 desktop running a tablet operating system than ever before. Core usability features that I love have morphed and changed (exposé, spaces). I have more but that's not the point. The point is, despite my personal feelings that macOS continues to decline in quality, I haven't found any hardware that is in any way comparable. I use a 13" Macbook Air base model and I've used the Dell XPS 13 clone. The Dell has a basically unusable trackpad while the air has the best trackpad on the market. Little things like this make a big difference. Longevity is another big one.
- erokar 10y ago
  How is the XPS a Macbook Air clone? Because it has aluminium on the outside? The XPS looks better than any of the Macbooks if you ask me.
  - tlow 10y ago
    It does not work well. In particular, the Dell trackpad has either bad hardware or drivers or both, but it so bad that it significantly detracts from the product's usability.
  - Nition 10y ago
    I don't know about the recent models, but the original Studio XPS 13 (2009) literally used exactly the same basic hardware as the 13" MacBook air at the time. I wouldn't be surprised if they've continued that trend to at least a lesser extent.
    - swozey 10y ago
      The XPS line is on Kaby Lake now so they're literally a generation ahead of the just announced MBPs.
- alvarosevilla95 10y ago
  I feel the same way. While I don't like the way macos has progressed recently, and I think the new MBP is almost a joke, I can't find any other brand that offers a good computer with a comparable trackpad, battery life and build quality. On top of this, Apple's support has spoiled me, and I can't imagine having to go through Dell's for example now. Lastly, while macos may have been lacking recently, as a developer having a unix OS of course is way better than Windows, while Linux has some issues when it comes to using it as a leisure computer. Right now I'm really happy my 2012 rMBP is still working amazingly, as for the first time I can't seem to find a single laptop I would want to buy.
macawfish 10y ago
Gnome 3 with extensions is really lovely now, heads up.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
macawfish 10y ago
Gnome 3 with extensions is really lovely now, heads up.
thaw13579 10y ago
After spending the last week using the Linux subsystem for Windows, I can see myself potentially using it exclusively for development (assuming they iron of bugs and make GUi programs perform well). I wonder, have others used it and gotten a sense of how much they can depend on it?
- DoofusOfDeath 10y ago
  There are two reasons I'm avoiding Windows 10 for anything important: (1) I can't significantly control the timing of when OS patches get installed, and (2) the plausible risk of unacceptable spying by MS. So even if W10's Linux subsystem ran flawlessly, I don't trust host OS in general to provide a reliable, acceptable environment. I'm curious if you have the same concerns.
seiferteric 10y ago
I use linux exclusively so I am a bit biased. I have used Mac in the past, but I just don't see the value when all I ever need is a web browser and a terminal and I'm set. There's no question that their hardware is the best though. My question is, what's stopping a company like Canonical from polishing Ubuntu to be on par with MacOS in looks and ease of use then designing the "perfect" developer laptop? Seems like they should have done this years ago.
- Russell91 10y ago
  Their hardware is not the best anymore. Just visited the Palo Alto Apple store and I'm pretty sure a Microsoft Surface Tablet has a better keyboard than the new MacBook Pro. They really smushed down the keyboard to make the whole configuration thinner, but whereas the old Pro's were halfway between the quality of a dome keyboard and a mechanical keyboard IMO, the new ones are even worse than domes.
  - seiferteric 10y ago
    Another crazy dream I have for a real developer laptop would be to have like a port with real gpio pins. Since parallel ports went the way of the dodo, there is no simple way to interface with home built electronics anymore. I got a raspberry pi 3 recently and have been having a lot of fun with it. Also a built in fpga would be cool. You would be able to do a lot of prototyping that way, basically make computers fun again instead of a locked down albeit polished appliance.
  - erokar 10y ago
    I certainly didn't like the shallow keyboard on the Macbook. I don't even particularly like the keyboard on the Macbook Air I'm typing this on because of the short key travel. But I'm curious as to whether I could get used to the new butterly keyboards. Also, would be interesting what an ergonimcs expert would have to say about them.
- noir_lord 10y ago
  I don't think that Canonical necessarily needs to design the perfect developer laptop (hardware is hard, expensive and time consuming) rather they could do a deal with one of the current top tier non-apple manufacturers (Dell, Thinkpads or maybe Asus) and then provide complete support for that machine with a complete focus on the out the box polish. I'm running Xubuntu on an old(ish) Vostro 3750 and with the exception of it's somewhat mediocre touchpad (Alps sucks) literally everything works exactly as you'd expect but that wasn't the case when this was a new machine (certain bits where flaky but got fixed over the following year), if they could provide the experience I have now on a 3 year old machine on a brand new machine with top of the line hardware then they'd be onto a bit of a winner, it would certainly top any list I'd look at for a while since my primary requirement for any hardware is does this work properly on Linux already.
trapperkeeper79 10y ago
I bought a Windows laptop this year after being a long time Mac user. I still have Macs in the house, and use a beefy 15 inch Macbook Pro for work. I'm pleasantly surprised by my Win 10 experience. It isn't as polished as a Mac but hey .. I have touchscreen, new processor, lots of ports (which I care about) and almost half the price of an entry level Macbook pro. The cost isn't a big factor .. I would have loved to buy an expensive Macbook with beefy hw specs. What is being sold right now isn't for me.
- mercer 10y ago
  Which laptop did you get?
  - trapperkeeper79 10y ago
    HP Spectre (the one before the latest once since the latest doesn't have a regular HDMI connector). It is pretty decent .. the only con is the trackpad. I fooled around with the settings to make it livable and also use it with an external keyboard and mouse when I'm coding at home. The windows subsystem for linux is pretty rad.
deleted 10y ago
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tgarma1234 10y ago
I have a MacBook air 13", the basic one with 4GB of ram and a small SSD. It works fine. I can't really see why it would need to get a whole lot better honestly. If I need a "big" computer then I use my desktop, and if I just want to read then I use my tablet or my phone. I would buy another apple laptop sure but not because of the specs really. They are just good computers in a world where there are lots and lots of good computers. I think apple is right to just keep on keeping on with these machines anyway because there isn't much innovation in terms of parts happening now. Touchscreens are a gimmick to me and newer cpus are only a little better and not worth the price of the upgrade. New computer specs are basically about as exciting as reading about innovations in Refrigerators or other durable goods.
- swozey 10y ago
  The goal for a lot of us is to not need a "desktop" to do our "big" work. That's the thing. This was the Macbook Pro line, meaning you'd carry it home and to work and plug it into a dock/monitors and never need a "big" computer.
  - tgarma1234 10y ago
    In that case it seems like using "big" desktop computers on Azure or AWS is right around the corner, especially if you factor in better internet speeds to make the remote desktop experience more seemless, so that the client computer doesn't need all that much power. It just doesn't seem like there is a future in developing computers with massive specs as personal machines anymore. If there was a market in it that was profitable, then the analysts at all of the major companies would know it. They seem to see that there isn't a market worth investing in.
    - swozey 10y ago
      There is a HUGE monetary and time benefit to having developers spin up docker/vagrant environments to run integration/etc tests on their laptops before it hits CI/CD systems so I completely disagree. People thought we'd offload developer computing to the "cloud" 5 years ago. It's not coming soon, I doubt it's coming in the next 5-10 years if you're making applications that now rely on microservices, kubernetes, etc. AWS charges by the hour, GCP charges in 1 minute increments after the first 10 minutes. That all is extremely costly if you have a number of developers sending all of their tests through those systems.
jsz0 10y ago
> I want a meat-grinder CPU to make photo-editing Isn't Apple using the latest & greatest Intel mobile CPUs? > I want a modern video card so game-playing is cool when I feel like it. I don't know much about gaming but isn't the Radeon HD in the 15" model based on the latest AMD architecture? I can't even find any benchmarks for it so are you sure it's not good enough? > I want ludicrously excessive amounts of memory. Do your memory requirements take disk IO speed into consideration? When you can read from disk at 3GB/sec I'm not sure the old assumptions about memory capacity hold true anymore. > I want lots of connectors so I can plug in my current USB drives and mouse and keyboard. USB-C is great for this. You can connect all your accessories to a hub and only need to plugin one cable for power, external display, storage, input devices, etc. > I want a PS Card reader because I shoot RAW so my photo files are huge and they ingest faster from a card USB-C card readers cost about $10-$15 so you could probably just buy a few of them if you're concerned about losing them. Most of them are multi-card readers too so you're actually gaining functionality in the process. Also when newer/faster SD standards come out in the future you can simply buy a new USB-C card reader instead of being stuck with the one built into your computer.
- vladimir-y 10y ago
  > Isn't Apple using the latest & greatest Intel mobile CPUs? Surely Apple is not using latest Intel mobile CPUs, not the Kaby Lake. > Do your memory requirements take disk IO speed into consideration? When you can read from disk at 3GB/sec I'm not sure the old assumptions about memory capacity hold true anymore. Why should I use SSD instead of RAM? I use SDD for the persistent storage. Why in general you should look for a trade-off when other laptops manufacturers do ship a decent laptops. > USB-C is great for this. You can connect all your accessories to a hub and only need to plugin one cable for power, external display, storage, input devices, etc. Yeh, a hub ... which you will have to take with you every time. > USB-C card readers cost about ... Yeh, a USB-C card reader ... which you will have to take with you every time.
  - jsz0 10y ago
    > Surely Apple is not using latest Intel mobile CPUs, not the Kaby Lake. Ah I must have missed that in all the hysteria over the TouchBar and USB-C. That is valid criticism especially for the 13" model that would benefit from a faster integrated GPU. > Why should I use SSD instead of RAM? The benefit of faster disk IO you can shuffle things in and out of memory faster. In the case of a photographer dealing with lots of relatively small files faster disk IO can be more important than raw memory capacity. In other scenarios raw memory capacity is more important. In every scenario raw memory capacity and faster disk IO is great but there are tradeoffs to that also mainly weight, battery life and cost. > Why in general you should look for a trade-off when other laptops manufacturers do ship a decent laptops. There are many factors to consider and different people have different priorities. > Yeh, a hub ... which you will have to take with you every time. Along with all the accessories you're already lugging around to plug into it? Never really understood this argument.

101 points by emilong 10y ago

I feel like Ubuntu has been the F/OSS replacement for OSX for some time. Unfortunately, I feel like the strengths of a Free *nix (Don't like the UX? Change it.) are exactly the things that prevent a critical mass. Sadly, a critical mass of support seems to be crucial for things like hardware drivers and commercial software with roots in the shrinkwrap era (Photoshop, Office, etc?).

lucideer 10y ago
elementaryOS seemed to be angling more directly for that market (Ubuntu was always quite Mac-ish, at least up until Unity, but still very much looked to attract a more general userbase - e.g. targeting installers at Windows users, etc.), but I think elementaryOS is probably a bit young to take full advantage right now. They may have gone a little too far on the "simplicity" side for power users coming from MacOS.
- peatmoss 10y ago
  I always felt that ElementaryOS was a skin-deep clone. I'm not sure that having a little bit different UX is the reason Ubuntu hasn't achieved blessed third OS status from the Adobes of the world. I think it has more to do with there not being a unified homogenous target to code for. If the FOSS world wanted to reimplement our own Mac, I've always thought that doubling down on GNUStep would have made the most sense. If Linux + GNUstep were closer to source-compatible with the Mac, with a comparable desktop environment to boot, more of those apps would have likely made the jump. Even that I'm not sure about now though. Had GNUstep been a viable daily-use platform back in the early 2000s when OSX was ascendant, I think we'd have a different landscape today. Now with the web dominating so much, native app compatibility is less important than it was. You just need to be a big enough target for commercial vendors to care about. With luck, Chromebooks will help sort out the hardware compatibility issues as more and more of the chipsets are mainlined into the Linux kernel. In terms of software compatibility, I don't know, maybe desktop Android apps will ultimately be what we coalesce around.
- rcarmo 10y ago
  I'm good with it. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12830761 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12830761 for more. Then again, I am not the typical macOS power user and just want a good, stable UNIX with an interface I don't (ever) have to tweak.
- dkuntz2 10y ago
  What do you mean by "up until Unity"? Unity has always looked like a macOS desktop clone, from having the menu bar always on top, and integrating a dock by default. Unity seems significantly closer to the macOS desktop compared to the old Gnome 2 setup.
  - lucideer 10y ago
    Unity still has its macish elements, true, but I think the post-Unity GTK+ and general in-default-app experiences tended to move toward "doing their own thing", rather than aping Windows or macOS. Also, while the Unity side dock is iconified like macOS', I think it's functionality more different than the old Gnome2 bottom panel was from the macOS dock. All subjective I guess.
kyriakos 10y ago
I think Microsoft's move to add bash on Windows was very well calculated. They have an OS that runs on a huge number of devices giving buyers options, with mainstream driver support, compatibility with most commercial software, and good development tools for the platform. By adding bash gives OSX users who are dissatisfied with the latest Apple hardware a chance to jump ship. At the same time Windows/Linux dual-boot users who also happen to be gamers will find themselves using Linux less.
- pjmlp 10y ago
  The thing is that this backslash is mainly driven by the vocal UNIX developers that migrated to Apple hardware due to the underlying UNIX. However for those of us that actually care about macOS software written in Objective-C and Swift, macOS is as good as always.
- Yetanfou 10y ago
  Sooo.... if Microsoft really wants to be 'smart'... they sort-of allow someone to develop a 'Mac OS' subsystem to run on Windows. They can not do this officially as they'd have layers of lawyers upon them in an instant but since they have extensive experience with subversive operations it should be possible to get the thing running in a rather short time. Maybe they should have a chat with the GNUStep folks to see if they have some converging targets. Having a Mac OS compatibility layer on other systems would enable gradual migration, not something Apple will be wildly enthusiastic about but - if implemented correctly - not something they can do much about either apart from restricting access to Apple-created software to Apple-created hardware and operating environments (something they already do as far as I know).
  - kyriakos 10y ago
    I don't see the reason for this. OSX (or Windows) at this time are not something special, dev tools except the platform specific stuff are cross platform. Creative software exists for both (more on Windows actually). What would a compatibility layer with OSX on Windows offer that you can't already do other than ios app packaging and deployment (cause even that you can already develop on other platforms if you don't use the official tools). So even if technically is doable it's really not worth the legal backfire.

rjzzleep 10y ago

Every time I mention the biggest flaw of the Linux desktop people freak out and point me to Qt. I know QT but the effort of making a half decent GUI app in QT is way above the effort it takes with Cocoa. I very much remember the development and push of cocoa and the slow transition away from carbon and quickdraw. I believe NSDrawer was something that first showed up in third party code and then was adopted in Cocoa. Apple has constantly refined their toolkit by looking at well designed apps. Everything on Linux seems to be doing the exact opposite. Although GTK was developed out of Gimp it's so much easier to make a good looking photo editor on Mac than it is on any other platform. Until we sit down and design a good looking and easy to use GUI toolkit we can forget about decent Gui applications on Linux. (with a focus on easy to use)

pabloski 10y ago
Huh? Never heard of QML?
- pjmlp 10y ago
  Every time I checked Qt blogs it seems there is a new QML flavour. Not really inspiring. Also not everyone jumps of joy to use JavaScript to describe GUIs.
  - vmasto 10y ago
    This has changed a lot with React. Honestly I jump with joy every time I start a new react project.
- usernam 10y ago
  Can you point to some well designed QML interfaces? I can spot QML from the ill-fitting looks and mostly poorly though-of interaction. People think QML has magic powers, but in reality any UI designed in 5 minutes has only the value of a 5 minute interface. To me QML is the biggest mistake in Qt5.
  - pjmlp 10y ago

pavs 10y ago

Linux can look nice. Unfortunately not by default. https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/top/ https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/top/

izacus 10y ago
elementaryOS IMO looks more than nice by default.
- dkuntz2 10y ago
  If only they worked to make Pantheon work well with other operating systems, instead of forking off as a separate one. And picking Ubuntu as the base to fork off is not the best choice.
wz1000 10y ago
Plasma 5 looks good and feels polished by default. I do most of my work on my desktop, and wouldn't give up my highly configured xmonad+emacs setup for anything. But I recently got a new laptop and decided to go with KDE and was blown away by the polish. The style of all the GUI apps I use is consistent and I can press a button to switch to a nice, consistent dark mode. I have encountered absolutely no issues with screen tearing or performance, with were common when I used linux on previous laptops. I've faced no issues with fonts after installing Google's noto font package. KWin's external monitor support is also satisfactory. I haven't used recent versions of GNOME/Cinnamon/Unity, so can't comment on them, but KDE Connect is the killer KDE feature for me. I love the integration between all the apps on the KDE ecosystem. The calendar syncs to my Google calendar, and my contacts and mail are handled by KDE too. I didn't need to install a thing apart from the KDE workspace and apps for any of this. I've even switched to using the Breeze theme on my xmonad desktop.
santaclaus 10y ago
I've been bugging the sys admins at work to fix the fonts on our RHEL boxes for months...

Alex3917 10y ago

The reason you can't get 32 gigs of memory is because Skylake (and Kaby Lake) don't support mobile DDR4 memory, which is necessary to make power consumption low enough for a laptop. This isn't Apple's fault. Short of making a 7 pound windows-style gaming laptop, there's not really much that they can do until 2018 when Cannonlake comes out.

votr 10y ago
It's rumored that the Surface Book 2 will use Kaby Lake and have a 32GB option. So does this mean the only way MS can support that is by increasing size and weight to 7lbs+?
- Alex3917 10y ago
  Well either they need to use a lower TDP cpu/gpu or else make it bigger. Either way, TANSTAAFL.
sirmike_ 10y ago
Bologna. Dell and system 76 offer current and last gen Intel processors in excess of 16 GB of RAM going up to 64 in the case of system 76.
- Veen 10y ago
  Yeah, but what sort of battery life are they getting? It's not that you can't have more RAM with those processors, it's that you can't have more energy efficient mobile RAM.
  - gcr 10y ago
    Is it possible for a machine to dynamically turn the power to RAM blocks on and off? In periods of low use, the OS may choose to swap most of the RAM to disk and switch it off to save energy.
    - Mandatum 10y ago

bluejekyll 10y ago

I totally agree with this article. I have a MacBook Pro circa 2015, and it's awesome. I haven't touched the new machines, but they aren't inspiring, though the black option is really nice to see :) I haven't touched the keyboard, which it sounds like they changed. I really like the one on the generation I have, and I also like the wireless model that Apple came out with. Anyone know if it matches the wireless keyboard? Cause I like that one, short throw and large quiet key movement. In terms of the touch bar, eh, I really like the idea of having thumbprint access to the computer. I hope this is accessible to other applications. As a developer I'm minorly annoyed at losing function keys for certain tasks, but maybe I can utilize it to create custom keys and icons in different contexts, which could be really cool. Otherwise, while it doesn't offend me, it's definitely not worth upgrading to. But IMO, like this article, it's still the best Unix OS based laptop on the market (yes I know it's XNU, but it's 100% posix and full BSD subsystem, which is better than windows' posix mode and Linux veneer). Anyway, while it isn't better than my current machine, it is thinner and lighter which are nice haves, and I might actually like the new keyboard.

sotojuan 10y ago
Hope my 2015 Macbook lives forever D:
extra88 10y ago
I briefly tried the keyboard on a 2016 12-inch MacBook in an Apple Store and didn't like how "shallow" it felt relative to other Apple keyboards I've used. I hope the 2016 MBP's keyboard isn't like the 12-inch MacBook but it's not a deal-breaker. I'm not excited by the Touch Bar but I'm not concerned about it either. I think it will take some time to see how useful it is and how committed Apple is to it (e.g. will it appear on a keyboard peripheral soon). You don't lose function keys entirely, you can always call them up by pressing in the fn key. The Touch ID is available to developers, 1Password will support using it to unlock a vault instead of entering your Master password, same as they do in their iOS app. I don't care about them being thinner but appreciate them being half a pound lighter. The was achieved, in part, by having a smaller battery, 24% smaller in the 15-inch model, but they claim the 2016 model can get 10 hours of use, vs. 9 hours with the Mid 2015 model.

pault 10y ago

I've been using macs exclusively for 10+ years, and my next work machine will be a Razer Blade Stealth with the Core external GPU Dock. http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-systems/razer-blade-stealth http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-systems/razer-blade-stealth

rcarmo 10y ago
That's not available outside the US, or is it?
- skeptic2718 10y ago
  razerzone.com seems to be available in many countries.
  - rcarmo 10y ago
    I meant the laptop.
- guessmyname 10y ago
  > While we are trying to reach all our customers and fans in every > corner of the world, security and warranty issues prevent us from > doing so at this point. We currently ship to the following countries: > http://www.razerzone.com/store/shipping-guide#destinations http://www.razerzone.com/store/shipping-guide#destinations
skeptic2718 10y ago
MacBook Pro - 6th-gen i5 2.9/3.3GHz, 8GB 2133MHz memory, 512GB PCIe SSD, Intel HD 550 iGPU, 2560x1600 screen, aluminum body - US$ 1999 Razer Blade Stealth - 7th-gen i7 2.7GHz/3.5GHz, 16GB 1866MHz memory, 1TB PCIe SSD, Intel HD 620, 3840x2160 screen, aluminum body - US$ 1999
- Bud 10y ago
  And the Razer will be heavier, have half the battery life, inferior fit and finish, plus you're cherry-picking MB Pro configs to intentionally leave out the i7 and higher-end graphics options. Also, 3840x2160 screen on a laptop is stupid; you're paying extra and paying a large performance penalty to get 4k on a screen on which you can't even really appreciate and use the higher res.

frik 10y ago

Not just Apple with MacBook/macOS. What does a post Windows 10 future look like? So many things are not okay, I simply refuse it and stay with Win7 for some time. Microsoft like Apple doesn't care anymore about power user. Apple still makes at least good iPhone/iPads, MS is worse on everything nowadays (XBox, Surface, WinStore, WinPhone, destroying BIOS with DRM EFI) but paying trolls. A paradigm shift - desktop gets less and less used, I am hoping for a Android/Fuchsia OS on notebook. Today many things are done on mobile iOS and Android - I just want to connect it to a huge TV/projector/monitor and keyboard and mouse and use it for work too.

aweb 10y ago
I'm sorry but I find this to be a weird assertion when you see how much more detailed Windows 10's Task Manager is, or the fact that you can have a Linux subsystem running on Windows since the summer. What makes you think that MS doesn't care about the power user when all signs point to the contrary?
- XaYdEk 10y ago
  I'd like an answer too. I'm a Linux guy and Win7 is the last I will ever use personally for my own machines (unless I really need it for work, which case I'll VM it anyway). But my reasons are different, I really don't think they ruined it that much for power users, but it's other details that annoy the hell out of me. Like default online accounts, way too much telemetry data being sent and it still feels like it was designed for a tablet (even Enterprise versions). It is pushing too much for the always-online, always-connected computing experience, which feels like turning PCs back into terminals. @aweb I dunno, it seems they just moved services and startup from msconfig to the task manager. The Linux subsystem is nice, very nice, actually, the one thing I really liked.

droopyEyelids 10y ago

>So, there are new MacBooks and many people are unhappy I'm seeing this sentiment repeated quite a bit, and I'm surprised because it's almost a pre-literate view of things. Whenever something changes with regards to human life, there is a brief window for content generators to capture increased attention by writing a timely article. Content creators get more attention (which directly translates into revenue) if the content is contentious, or can be forced into 'explaining' a larger trend. Understanding this is basic Internet literacy. "Many people" are not unhappy- that is just the content machine striving to grab your attention.

tlow 10y ago

Apple laptop hardware seems to be best in class in terms of performance, support and longevity. I have some complaints about the way that macOS (or OSX) has progressed. My computer feels more like a Windows 8 desktop running a tablet operating system than ever before. Core usability features that I love have morphed and changed (exposé, spaces). I have more but that's not the point. The point is, despite my personal feelings that macOS continues to decline in quality, I haven't found any hardware that is in any way comparable. I use a 13" Macbook Air base model and I've used the Dell XPS 13 clone. The Dell has a basically unusable trackpad while the air has the best trackpad on the market. Little things like this make a big difference. Longevity is another big one.

erokar 10y ago
How is the XPS a Macbook Air clone? Because it has aluminium on the outside? The XPS looks better than any of the Macbooks if you ask me.
- tlow 10y ago
  It does not work well. In particular, the Dell trackpad has either bad hardware or drivers or both, but it so bad that it significantly detracts from the product's usability.
- Nition 10y ago
  I don't know about the recent models, but the original Studio XPS 13 (2009) literally used exactly the same basic hardware as the 13" MacBook air at the time. I wouldn't be surprised if they've continued that trend to at least a lesser extent.
  - swozey 10y ago
    The XPS line is on Kaby Lake now so they're literally a generation ahead of the just announced MBPs.
alvarosevilla95 10y ago
I feel the same way. While I don't like the way macos has progressed recently, and I think the new MBP is almost a joke, I can't find any other brand that offers a good computer with a comparable trackpad, battery life and build quality. On top of this, Apple's support has spoiled me, and I can't imagine having to go through Dell's for example now. Lastly, while macos may have been lacking recently, as a developer having a unix OS of course is way better than Windows, while Linux has some issues when it comes to using it as a leisure computer. Right now I'm really happy my 2012 rMBP is still working amazingly, as for the first time I can't seem to find a single laptop I would want to buy.

macawfish 10y ago

Gnome 3 with extensions is really lovely now, heads up.

deleted 10y ago
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macawfish 10y ago

Gnome 3 with extensions is really lovely now, heads up.

thaw13579 10y ago

After spending the last week using the Linux subsystem for Windows, I can see myself potentially using it exclusively for development (assuming they iron of bugs and make GUi programs perform well). I wonder, have others used it and gotten a sense of how much they can depend on it?

DoofusOfDeath 10y ago
There are two reasons I'm avoiding Windows 10 for anything important: (1) I can't significantly control the timing of when OS patches get installed, and (2) the plausible risk of unacceptable spying by MS. So even if W10's Linux subsystem ran flawlessly, I don't trust host OS in general to provide a reliable, acceptable environment. I'm curious if you have the same concerns.

seiferteric 10y ago

I use linux exclusively so I am a bit biased. I have used Mac in the past, but I just don't see the value when all I ever need is a web browser and a terminal and I'm set. There's no question that their hardware is the best though. My question is, what's stopping a company like Canonical from polishing Ubuntu to be on par with MacOS in looks and ease of use then designing the "perfect" developer laptop? Seems like they should have done this years ago.

Russell91 10y ago
Their hardware is not the best anymore. Just visited the Palo Alto Apple store and I'm pretty sure a Microsoft Surface Tablet has a better keyboard than the new MacBook Pro. They really smushed down the keyboard to make the whole configuration thinner, but whereas the old Pro's were halfway between the quality of a dome keyboard and a mechanical keyboard IMO, the new ones are even worse than domes.
- seiferteric 10y ago
  Another crazy dream I have for a real developer laptop would be to have like a port with real gpio pins. Since parallel ports went the way of the dodo, there is no simple way to interface with home built electronics anymore. I got a raspberry pi 3 recently and have been having a lot of fun with it. Also a built in fpga would be cool. You would be able to do a lot of prototyping that way, basically make computers fun again instead of a locked down albeit polished appliance.
- erokar 10y ago
  I certainly didn't like the shallow keyboard on the Macbook. I don't even particularly like the keyboard on the Macbook Air I'm typing this on because of the short key travel. But I'm curious as to whether I could get used to the new butterly keyboards. Also, would be interesting what an ergonimcs expert would have to say about them.
noir_lord 10y ago
I don't think that Canonical necessarily needs to design the perfect developer laptop (hardware is hard, expensive and time consuming) rather they could do a deal with one of the current top tier non-apple manufacturers (Dell, Thinkpads or maybe Asus) and then provide complete support for that machine with a complete focus on the out the box polish. I'm running Xubuntu on an old(ish) Vostro 3750 and with the exception of it's somewhat mediocre touchpad (Alps sucks) literally everything works exactly as you'd expect but that wasn't the case when this was a new machine (certain bits where flaky but got fixed over the following year), if they could provide the experience I have now on a 3 year old machine on a brand new machine with top of the line hardware then they'd be onto a bit of a winner, it would certainly top any list I'd look at for a while since my primary requirement for any hardware is does this work properly on Linux already.

trapperkeeper79 10y ago

I bought a Windows laptop this year after being a long time Mac user. I still have Macs in the house, and use a beefy 15 inch Macbook Pro for work. I'm pleasantly surprised by my Win 10 experience. It isn't as polished as a Mac but hey .. I have touchscreen, new processor, lots of ports (which I care about) and almost half the price of an entry level Macbook pro. The cost isn't a big factor .. I would have loved to buy an expensive Macbook with beefy hw specs. What is being sold right now isn't for me.

mercer 10y ago
Which laptop did you get?
- trapperkeeper79 10y ago
  HP Spectre (the one before the latest once since the latest doesn't have a regular HDMI connector). It is pretty decent .. the only con is the trackpad. I fooled around with the settings to make it livable and also use it with an external keyboard and mouse when I'm coding at home. The windows subsystem for linux is pretty rad.

deleted 10y ago

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tgarma1234 10y ago

I have a MacBook air 13", the basic one with 4GB of ram and a small SSD. It works fine. I can't really see why it would need to get a whole lot better honestly. If I need a "big" computer then I use my desktop, and if I just want to read then I use my tablet or my phone. I would buy another apple laptop sure but not because of the specs really. They are just good computers in a world where there are lots and lots of good computers. I think apple is right to just keep on keeping on with these machines anyway because there isn't much innovation in terms of parts happening now. Touchscreens are a gimmick to me and newer cpus are only a little better and not worth the price of the upgrade. New computer specs are basically about as exciting as reading about innovations in Refrigerators or other durable goods.

swozey 10y ago
The goal for a lot of us is to not need a "desktop" to do our "big" work. That's the thing. This was the Macbook Pro line, meaning you'd carry it home and to work and plug it into a dock/monitors and never need a "big" computer.
- tgarma1234 10y ago
  In that case it seems like using "big" desktop computers on Azure or AWS is right around the corner, especially if you factor in better internet speeds to make the remote desktop experience more seemless, so that the client computer doesn't need all that much power. It just doesn't seem like there is a future in developing computers with massive specs as personal machines anymore. If there was a market in it that was profitable, then the analysts at all of the major companies would know it. They seem to see that there isn't a market worth investing in.
  - swozey 10y ago
    There is a HUGE monetary and time benefit to having developers spin up docker/vagrant environments to run integration/etc tests on their laptops before it hits CI/CD systems so I completely disagree. People thought we'd offload developer computing to the "cloud" 5 years ago. It's not coming soon, I doubt it's coming in the next 5-10 years if you're making applications that now rely on microservices, kubernetes, etc. AWS charges by the hour, GCP charges in 1 minute increments after the first 10 minutes. That all is extremely costly if you have a number of developers sending all of their tests through those systems.

jsz0 10y ago

> I want a meat-grinder CPU to make photo-editing Isn't Apple using the latest & greatest Intel mobile CPUs? > I want a modern video card so game-playing is cool when I feel like it. I don't know much about gaming but isn't the Radeon HD in the 15" model based on the latest AMD architecture? I can't even find any benchmarks for it so are you sure it's not good enough? > I want ludicrously excessive amounts of memory. Do your memory requirements take disk IO speed into consideration? When you can read from disk at 3GB/sec I'm not sure the old assumptions about memory capacity hold true anymore. > I want lots of connectors so I can plug in my current USB drives and mouse and keyboard. USB-C is great for this. You can connect all your accessories to a hub and only need to plugin one cable for power, external display, storage, input devices, etc. > I want a PS Card reader because I shoot RAW so my photo files are huge and they ingest faster from a card USB-C card readers cost about $10-$15 so you could probably just buy a few of them if you're concerned about losing them. Most of them are multi-card readers too so you're actually gaining functionality in the process. Also when newer/faster SD standards come out in the future you can simply buy a new USB-C card reader instead of being stuck with the one built into your computer.

vladimir-y 10y ago
> Isn't Apple using the latest & greatest Intel mobile CPUs? Surely Apple is not using latest Intel mobile CPUs, not the Kaby Lake. > Do your memory requirements take disk IO speed into consideration? When you can read from disk at 3GB/sec I'm not sure the old assumptions about memory capacity hold true anymore. Why should I use SSD instead of RAM? I use SDD for the persistent storage. Why in general you should look for a trade-off when other laptops manufacturers do ship a decent laptops. > USB-C is great for this. You can connect all your accessories to a hub and only need to plugin one cable for power, external display, storage, input devices, etc. Yeh, a hub ... which you will have to take with you every time. > USB-C card readers cost about ... Yeh, a USB-C card reader ... which you will have to take with you every time.
- jsz0 10y ago
  > Surely Apple is not using latest Intel mobile CPUs, not the Kaby Lake. Ah I must have missed that in all the hysteria over the TouchBar and USB-C. That is valid criticism especially for the 13" model that would benefit from a faster integrated GPU. > Why should I use SSD instead of RAM? The benefit of faster disk IO you can shuffle things in and out of memory faster. In the case of a photographer dealing with lots of relatively small files faster disk IO can be more important than raw memory capacity. In other scenarios raw memory capacity is more important. In every scenario raw memory capacity and faster disk IO is great but there are tradeoffs to that also mainly weight, battery life and cost. > Why in general you should look for a trade-off when other laptops manufacturers do ship a decent laptops. There are many factors to consider and different people have different priorities. > Yeh, a hub ... which you will have to take with you every time. Along with all the accessories you're already lugging around to plug into it? Never really understood this argument.