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My search for a MacBook Pro alternative
- brianwawok 10y agoWhat about something Sager / System76
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- leggomylibro 10y agoI used to have good luck with those, but the last one I ordered had a dodgy GPU and lackluster build quality; I had to RMA it, which was a bitter pill considering how much I'd liked the brand. But the previous machine I had from them was going on 6 years old, and after that experience I wasn't confident about owning one of their modern machines for that long out of warranty. (Full disclosure, I actually ordered from Eurocom, not System76, but they sell the same base models. No complaints about Eurocom, which is a terrific company, just the machines that they rebrand.) I wound up with an Asus UX303UB - it was about $500 cheaper, much lighter, slimmer, sturdier, included a touchscreen, and had better or equal components on all counts except the discrete GPU, which is a fairly wimpy 940m but good enough for my purposes. It also works great out of the box with Mint 18 / Xenial. My only complaint is that the design doesn't emphasize replaceable parts, but the important parts still seem to be accessible and you pay a price for slimness. Sadly, I'm not sure how much life the Sager / Clevo kind of brands have left in them, if they can't corner the 'durable and functional brick' market anymore. There are some genuinely solid prosumer offerings, these days.
- sankyo 10y agoI also concluded Dell XPS 13 or Thinkpad Carbon, but never did a writeup. Still have not bought anything. I want: 16GB, no touch bar, good keyboard, retina screen. I want a stripped down OS X, there are so many processes on El Capitain that just take up memory, distract me, and clutter my screen. I want zfs, not apfs. I do not want to lose weekends trying to get the webcam or the fans working in Ubuntu. I'll miss homebrew if I use Ubuntu. I feel like a person with no country. Somebody please pick up the torch that Apple dropped and make a laptop for developers.
- supercoder 10y ago"16GB, no touch bar, good keyboard, retina screen." Apple literally sells this configuration
- eropple 10y agoThey do, which is why, for my personal list, I have an addendum: "and a future for the model line." The non-touch-bar Macbook Pro has no future and after using the touch bar I really don't like it in a way I've never had an Apple product bite me. The reason this matters is that I'm at a good point in my professional life to switch away from Apple and to fully Linux for development and Windows for Adobe and other media tools--which is why I probably am going to.
- makecheck 10y agoI suspect that as early as the next version, they’ll add tactile feedback to the bar; they already know how to do it, they probably just made a judgment call to release on time. With that addition the bar would feel essentially like a keyboard and solve the biggest issues I think.
- eropple 10y agoIt's not tactile feedback, for me. It's that I can't touch-type on it because there are no keys. I really do want function keys, not widgets, for how I use a computer. I don't look down at the keyboard when I'm typing, I'm not going to want to do it to change brightness or volume or whatever, to say nothing of trying to send F-keys to parallels or whatever. And I also use vim. Blindly mashing at the top corner of my keyboard and having to wait until I can register "OK, I'm in command mode now" from the status bar was gross. I think that the Touch Bar exists only and one-hundred-percent because Apple doesn't want to hurt the iPad. It doesn't even theoretically offer improvements over an on-screen toolbar with touch capability.
- macintux 10y ago
- abrowne 10y agoI've been looking at the HP Elitebook 1030. Since it's a "business" model, you can even custom order it without Windows (they install FreeDOS) and a matte screen. But since it's a "business" model I can't find much in the way of people who've actually tried it with Linux. But HP claims I can return a custom order, so I might just try it. If only it had USB-C charging...
- andrewflnr 10y agoI was pretty close to deciding on the XPS13 until I realized it only supports Ethernet by a thunderbolt dongle, and Linux doesn't seem to support thunderbolt hot plugging. So basically I wouldn't be able to plug in an Ethernet cable without rebooting. Are there any good Linux laptops that don't rely on thunderbolt, or am I making to big a deal of it?
- abrowne 10y agoWhy not USB 3 or USB-C? (The TB3 port is also a USB-C port.) E.g. http://plugable.com/products/usb3-e1000/ http://plugable.com/products/usb3-e1000/ or http://plugable.com/products/usbc-e1000/ http://plugable.com/products/usbc-e1000/
- izacus 10y agoIf you plug in a USB-C / USB3 Ethernet dongle, it'll work fine.
- DoofusOfDeath 10y agoIf you don't mind going for a larger laptop, I've had wonderful experiences with Dell Mobile Precision laptops and Linux.
- matt4077 10y agoSo the result is... three notebooks with the same processor and SSD capacity as the MBP, two of which also max out at 16GB? I mean – the "reasoning" at the start is: With every passing year, the latest and the greatest in software is becoming more CPU hungry and memory intensive. Therefore, it is important to have at least 16 GB memory and the latest processors in my machine. But it appears the real differences are simply price[0] and his preference for cheap plastic housings? Also: Lenovo has a long tradition of making laptops that last for many years. Their ThinkPad flagship line of laptops is targeted at developers and business users and has a cult following among this user base. No. IBM had a long history. Lenovo has a long history of preinstalling crapware, and making enough money off it to buy the Thinkpad line. Made for professionals on the go... Oh! This is a Lenovo PR effort. Sorry for disturbing, please move on. [0]: Possibly. Considering the whole article boils down to nothing but price, it's surprisingly laking any information about the prices
- jamespo 10y agoThinkpad X1 is a great machine, have you used one?
- einfach 10y agoDoesn't the XPS 13 come with Kaby Lake? My understanding is that the new MBP does come with the previous generation.
- Spooky23 10y agoYou're spot on here. I've been critical and bitchy about Apple of late, but they make the best laptops in the world, period. Just the touchpad alone tells the story. People claim that they need to do all sorts of things to justify 32GB laptops or running a dozen VMs. I don't see any evidence that these people really exist in significant numbers.
- guelo 10y agoOne of the things that's been infuriating me about the Macbook line is Apple's refusal to go above 16GB. I'm constantly hitting that limit with my VM heavy workload and bloated tools. In my search I keep coming back to the Thinkpad T460p wondering if the bulky plastic case is worth the tradeoff for the raw power. It's maddening I can't have both.
- thatswrong0 10y agoTo be fair, this seems to be a limitation from Intel (not supporting over 16 gigs of LPDDR4 RAM), not Apple.
- guelo 10y agoIf the T460p can do it Apple could too.
- toasterlovin 10y agoYou said earlier: "In my search I keep coming back to the Thinkpad T460p wondering if the bulky plastic case is worth the tradeoff for the raw power. It's maddening I can't have both." That's the thing. It's a trade off. If Apple could make a laptop with >16GB RAM AND a sleek design AND good battery life, they would do that. But they can't.
- dingaling 10y ago> not supporting over 16 gigs of LPDDR4 RAM The limitation is actually 16GB of of LPDDR3. Intel Skylake CPUs support up to 128GB of unbuffered DDR4, depending upon chipset, and don't support LPDDR4 at all at present. Apple chose to use the older, lower-power RAM specification and thus adopted the limitation. If they'd left the battery capacity unchanged then perhaps they could have used DDR4 but apparently their priority was reduced overall volume.
- waspleg 10y agoYou could just have a desktop with vastly better specs. My 4 year old full tower still has better specs in almost every way than top end laptops do. I don't understand the obsession with laptops. They have shit keyboards, small screens, are far more fragile, have less room to work (don't like having to clown-car my arms to type/use a touchpad), are generally under powered yet still exceedingly expensive. Yea, I have one at home and 2 at work - but I also have an illicit desktop at work (actually not allowed... for no reason). The laptop's ONLY advantage is in portability, imo. But then I've never sat in a noisy coffee shop or whatever on one. I don't see the appeal in that either - I make my own coffee (roast/grind/boiled filtered water/french press) which is better quality for less money. To each their own I guess.
- FreedomToCreate 10y agoApple achieved the perfect personal computer back in 2013. OSX Lion running on the 13 or 15 inch retina was a killer product. Now they are regressing.
- matt4077 10y agoNo worries. In two or three years we can collectively weep in reminiscence of Apple's glorious days, when they sold the first gen with the TouchBar and macOS Sierra. That was a great combo for professionals! 10h battery life! The ak47 keyboard! One plug to rule them all! Now they're wasting their time with useless gimmicks like HoloSiri and I still can't get more than 128GB of RAM.
- FreedomToCreate 10y agoActually if you look at the reviews for the 2013-2014 MacBook Pros, there unanimously near perfect or perfect on every major tech site. Its very hard to find actual criticism for those models from when they were released. This doesn't hold true for the current gen, which outside of design choices, have legitimate hardware issues like poor battery life, inconsistent palm rejection on the mouse, and last gen processors.
- threeseed 10y agoWeird. People were complaining about those models too. And I honestly think Sierra is a great OS and improving with every point release. I am on the final beta for 10.12.2 and it's by far the best OS release I've used so far.
- serge2k 10y agoStill a great laptop. Battery life is a bit down, but it's still good enough for day to day at home (can't use it for work. :/ ).
- johne20 10y agoI wish it was just a hardware search, but I always find the other OS alternatives have a gotcha or two for my needs. Off topic, I have the new mac book pro 15" model (coming from 13" macbook), and I have started to have severe wrist pain. I am not sure if it is because of the new gigantic trackpad or keyboard. I am trying everything short of returning it for now. Any one else having this issue?
- analog31 10y agoThis is not intended in any way to be critical of Apple for not offering a touch screen model. But if someone is already inclined to look for a non-Apple notebook, a touch screen system might be worth trying. I have a problem with all trackpads, possibly just due to poor hand to eye coordination. I'm a double bassist, so maybe I'm just ham fisted. But I find that a touch screen system is so much more comfortable, that I put up with the OS and with fingerprints.
- tiglionabbit 10y agoIs it carpal tunnel syndrome? Try to avoid resting your wrist on a surface while typing. Also consider a better keyboard layout like dvorak or colemak.
- johne20 10y agoThanks for advice. I have had what I imagine is carpal tunnel syndrome 5-7 years ago but it had went away when I stopped using a mouse and just used trackpad. This feels just like that again. To avoid resting wrists, do you generally use a pad that supports your forearms then or just hold arms/wrists up? My pain has always been just my right wrist which I use on trackpad.
- toasterlovin 10y agoWhen I get pain in my right hand/wrist after extensive trackpad use, I just switch hands. I'm a little slower with my left, but overall it's a good solution for me.
- 10y ago
- echelon 10y agoI got the latest gen Thinkpad X1 Carbon, and I couldn't be happier. The keyboard is fantastic, and it's powerful despite how feather light it is. I'm only disappointed by the tinny speakers.
- cpfohl 10y agoThis. Loved the Carbon, eventually traded it in for a mac, but only because I couldn't figure out why our unit tests didn't pass on any linux variant I tried. (Super weird).
- mewse 10y agoThis is always the proper way to fix a failing unit test.
- BerislavLopac 10y agoI was recently in position to choose a new laptop, and in the end opted for T460s rather than X1 Carbon. It is essentially a slightly thicker and barely heavier sibling, with more memory (20GB), two batteries, and an Ethernet port.
- AndyMcConachie 10y ago"With every passing year, the latest and the greatest in software is becoming more CPU hungry and memory intensive. " Maybe we shouldn't be calling it the latest and greatest? Maybe it's just the latest?
- makecheck 10y agoNot all uses of extra resources are bad. A “good” use of CPU or memory is any added safety such as guards against memory corruption, extra checks at run time, cryptography, etc. It may also be that in order to add sanity to web browsing, E-mail, etc. you must devote cycles to spam detection or removal of other unwanted content. Some of these things are only being done now because computers are finally good enough. Unfortunately, there are plenty of wasteful examples too. One seems to be pure laziness. There are programs, I’m convinced, that have some kind of gigantic VM in them just to ease porting efforts; probably emulating half a damned operating system just to save somebody a few weeks of coding (heaven forbid they learn something new about each target OS instead of just trying to make a quick buck). It’s disgusting on the desktop but even worse on mobile where every short-cut by a developer literally cost users money in data, battery life, etc.
- rayiner 10y agoI think part of the frustration with the new MBP is the realization that the alternatives are kinda shoddy. The "state of Linux on Mac" article that hit the front page recently was really a reminder about the attention to detail that makes Macs great. Whereas other manufacturers keep dedicated GPU framebuffers powered up even when using integrated graphics (because the display is connected to the GPU), Apple connects the display to a custom multiplexer so the dedicated GPU can be completely powered down. Thunderbolt controllers draw 2W at idle, so Apple implements a non-standard ACPI function to power the chip down when nothing is plugged in. I've been looking to replace a 2013 15" rMBP and nothing else fits the bill. I can get a T560 with a low-power dual core CPU that weighs almost a pound more when you configure it with a battery as big as the one in the MBP. Or I can get an XPS 15 where you can either get a Retina display or 10 hours of battery life, but not both. Surface Book comes close but it's only 13". And Microsoft had a ton of execution problems with power management and sleep. Apparently building a good laptop is really hard. Even Apple seems to have fucked up power management and GPU integration in the latest MBP.
- eropple 10y ago> Thunderbolt controllers draw 2W at idle Shit, seriously? Do you have a cite for this? 'Cause that's wild.
- grayrest 10y agoI'm also not thrilled with the current round of Apple hardware. The main thing that will keep me on MacOS for this round is that I really like the extra modifier key. Dropping it means I have to change up all my keyboard shortcuts and/or reconfigure everything to use the windows key as super or hyper. I'll overpay this round and see what's up in 5 years.
- philsnow 10y agocmd / option / control / shift "win" / alt / control / shift what's the extra modifier on the macbook keyboard? > have to change up all my keyboard shortcuts and/or reconfigure everything to use the windows key as super or hyper having a single modifier dedicated to my window manager is something I _sorely_ miss, using a MBP. cmd is used for everything, I don't want to use trackpad motions to reach other desktops. Just a huge disaster. Hammerspoon is likely going to be the only reason I ever consider buying a MBP.
- holografix 10y agoI wouldn't consider purchasing a laptop with a non "retina" screen in 2016. Back a few years ago when I bought a 15' retina pro the leap in usability was tremendous. Other laptops' screens and displays looked terribly outdated in comparison. Give me a slower processor, even a smaller hd - but I need the super-high-res screen.
- mynameishere 10y agoHonestly, why? What's the difference? Are you a graphic designer? ED: Note to joshkpeterson--you are apparently hellbanned.
- scott_karana 10y agoThey look amazing. Everything else looks shabby when you switch.
- joshkpeterson 10y agoFront end devs should probably have one so they're not blind to certain issues that a large % of their users will see.
- spronkey 10y agoThere is actually one really useful factor, which is being able to view phone displays at 100% resolution without scrolling.
- superuser2 10y agoLooks far nicer, and drastically less eye strain looking at text all day.
- rockdoe 10y agoText (and general glyph) rendering is way sharper. Causes less eyestrain.
- hobarrera 10y agoMeh, that's just relative. My eyesight is poor enough for me to be unable to tell the difference. There's lot of us out there. I, personally, have NO benefit in paying for such a high-res screen, because I literally cannot see the difference.
- cheriot 10y agoDoes anyone use linux on a laptop and mind mentioning the battery life they get? I joke that I'm trapped by apple because it's the only way to get battery life and POSIX on the same machine.
- divbit 10y agoI ran lubuntu full time from 2012-2015 on my main laptop (also had a windows.tablet for onenote), and the battery life was better than the original installed os. I'm not sure about full Ubuntu..
- stormbrew 10y agoI use Ubuntu on a tricked out yoga 900 and I plug it in about once every two days or so when I'm using it somewhat actively. At full charge it reports having 9-11h of charge, but I've never verified that that's accurate. I haven't really felt much need to because that's pretty much a "don't worry about it" amount of time between charges for me. Mind you it doesn't have a dedicated GPU, but I would avoid that like a plague on a laptop running Linux for various reasons. Intel graphics tend to just work.
- habitue 10y agoI use Ubuntu 16.04 on an X1 carbon 4th gen and the battery life is fine, I haven't had to worry about it. Probably 7-8 hours of normal coding, browsing etc?
- favadi 10y agoI installed Ubuntu MacBook Pro 2015, without any modification they get like 1-2 hours battery life, with powertop/TLP installed it can last for 4-5 hours. Stock macOS lasts 9-10 hours for me.
- lhl 10y agoI picked up an X250 last year w/ the extended 6-cell battery primarily for the better battery life. With TLP setup, I'm able to get 8-10hrs of battery life w/o issues (I've gotten up to 13hrs if all I'm doing is editing text). According to powertop, I can get power usage to go to over 18W on full load (100% CPU/DRAM, 100% display backlight), but under my normal setup (wifi, 30% display backlight) idle power consumption is about 4.8W - my idle states never goes below C6/pc6 even running the latest 4.8 kernels. (Did the SATA power state stuff ever get fixed?)
- gentleteblor 10y agoI've also been looking for a replacement to an aging ThinkPad. My favorite option right now is the fashionably boring p50 from Lenovo. It's heavy and ugly. But you can get it with Xeon processor, multi TB drives and 64GB RAM. Swoon.
- hellogoodbyeeee 10y agoThe Thinkpad's trackpad might be worse than Apple's, but it is a moot point. Once you get used to the red nipple joystick thing, there is no going back. This probably sounds silly, but it really is a game changer once you get used to not having to pick up your hands from the keyboard to move the mouse.
- habitue 10y agoThe track pad on the X1 carbon is worse than Apple's, but the keyboard is heavenly.
- tossacct9r34 10y agoThe Dell 5510 is available with Ubuntu via their Developer Edition line. nVidia Quadro graphics, up to 32GB RAM, and a mobile Xeon flavor CPU. You have to click through to the Customize & Buy screen to see the option to ship with Ubuntu: http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/555/campaigns/xps-linux-laptop http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/555/campaigns/xps-linux-lapt...
- lambdacomplete 10y agoThe author is missing two HUGE points in favor of MBPs: battery life and assistance. Just today I went out at around 12 PM, worked non-stop in a nice cafe' until around 4:30 PM, went to buy some stuff, worked for 2 more hours, came back and realized I still had 30% left. That's insane (I'm using multiple VMs, IDEs, Chrome etc.). Especially considering that I feel the upgrade to Sierra has decreased battery life considerably. Now, THAT's what you want from a laptop. Good performance, great materials and not having to panic if you forget the charger at home. Apple's customer care and global warranty are universally known. They will even replace your battery for free (under warranty or Apple care) if its capacity goes below 80% (http://www.apple.com/batteries/service-and-recycling/ http://www.apple.com/batteries/service-and-recycling/). (MBP early 2015 with 16 GB RAM, 512 GB SSD) Note: I'm not an Apple fanboy (my phone is Android, never owned an iPhone) but when a product is great you just have to admit it.
- spacesword 10y agoThis is no longer true with the 2016 MacBook Pro's. So far I love my new Mac, but the battery is absolute crap.
- alfalfasprout 10y agoAgreed. Battery life on my 2016 15" MBP is abysmal. I get maybe 4 hours of web browsing time. Open up an IDE and it drops to like 3 hours.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- pentae 10y agoReset your SMC - took me from 5 hours up to 9 1/2
- quanticle 10y agoWindows laptops' battery life have improved considerably as of late. I've been able to do cross-country (6-ish hours) flights with my Thinkpad and still come out with about 40-50% of my battery remaining. That's doing Python development with PyCharm and running HyperV VM instances. Neither of those things are especially known for positively impacting power usage.
- sydd 10y agoIm actually looking for the same thing, my shortlist is very similar to OP's except that I find 13" laptops too small. Sadly this seriously restricts the choices you can make, all the hype now is these devices. I think I'll settle for the XPS 15, it has amazing design, good specs, my only issue is that the SSD models are a bit too expensive.
- jerf 10y agoIf you're feeling saucy, it's easy to buy a non-SSD model and then buy an SSD to stick in it. The downside is you end up with the smaller battery to accommodate the hard drive. (Unless you consider that an upside, in which case, win.)
- mcescalante 10y agothe i7 in the maxed out Pro is quad-core, not "dual core". I didn't really get anything from this piece at all.
- sillylogger 10y agoYou might want to check on that. In my country, it is listed as dual-core.
- hartator 10y agoI have one. I can confirm it's Quad core, not dual. Might be a typo on marketing material.
- hartator 10y agoHardware Overview: Model Name: MacBook Pro Model Identifier: MacBookPro13,3 Processor Name: Intel Core i7 Processor Speed: 2.6 GHz Number of Processors: 1 Total Number of Cores: 4 L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB L3 Cache: 6 MB Memory: 16 GB Boot ROM Version: MBP133.0226.B00 SMC Version (system): 2.38f5
- ulfw 10y agoThat is hyper-threaded virtual cores. Only got 2 real ones.
- microtherion 10y agoThe 13" models have dual core i5, the 15" models quad core i7.
- wrs 10y agoMacBooks are supposedly "overpriced", except he couldn't find any entirely comparable hardware--not even counting the value of having macOS. So in what sense are they overpriced? It seems the other manufacturers care about this market niche even less than Apple does.
- dilap 10y agoThey're overpriced compared to what we had back in the day with the mb airs -- great performance and specs, sitting in the $1000-$1500 price slot, $2K pimped.
- paulcole 10y agofunny, when I go to the grocery store, their oranges are way more expensive than the apples I bought a decade ago.
- jychang 10y agoEh, I use a Macbook Pro as my primary machine, and that's overselling it. Sure, the people who say "look at this $700 machine with the same specs as a Macbook Pro" are stupid, but there's a couple of comparable laptops. Most notably, the Dell XPS 15 even puts the MBP to shame in some areas, and it basically runs linux out of the box despite what this article says. I'd get it if I wasn't happy with my current 15 inch rMBP.
- makomk 10y agoMacBooks are generally fairly reasonably priced so long as you want the exact, precise hardware configuration they want, with no feature they don't offer or that are madatory but you don't need. Also, I'm pretty sure none of the MacBooks meet his "Linux compatible out the box" criteria either.
- superuser2 10y agoThey're "overpriced" because you can buy more GHz, cores, GB ram, and GB storage for drastically less money. What you can't find is screen resolution, quality of the keyboard, trackpad, and hinge, battery life, and general polish ("marketing") along with the other specs, while still costing less.
- sigjuice 10y agoI would pay touchbar prices for a 15" MacBook Pro which has function keys instead. I tried one at an Apple store recently typing in vim for nearly an hour. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't bring myself to like the touchbar :/
- nathancahill 10y agoI've preemptively aliased my escape key to caps lock on my 2012 MBP to get ready for the inevitable day I'm going to have to upgrade. It took about a day to get used to.
- garblegarble 10y agoIt's not quite the same (muscle memory retraining required) but I've changed the keyboard configuration on my Mac so that Caps Lock maps to Escape (I realised I never used the caps lock key when I was writing COBOL and I'd kept my pinky on the shift key most of the day - so the Caps Lock key on my Mac has always been bound to nothing until recently). It's not perfect but it does mean you get that nice tactile feedback that you'd get with the real escape key. I think it'd be interesting to see what vim would be like if there was touch bar support (hoping iTerm will do something here eventually) and I could have my most common commands be bound to a 'key'
- 3327 10y agoAHHH You missed the best machine thats under the radar. SAMSUNG series 9. runs linux like none other and is a fantastic machine in 15 inch lighter than all the competitors.
- edblarney 10y agoThat's a lot of work. Shame on those manufacturers for making their products so difficult to dissect. I agree with the sentiment of 'keeping alternatives', but given how much we use our laptops, I'm willing to pay an extra $500 for a 'known quantity' (the high end laptops by those mfgs. are generally expensive, i.e. maybe $500 cheaper than Macs, if that). Thanks for doing this, I'm going to stick with my Mac. Happy to consider alternatives as they come about.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- akhilcacharya 10y agoMeh, I don't think it's time to look for a MBPr replacement yet. The 2015 model is still pretty decent.
- codeisawesome 10y agoEvery time I read one of these articles I feel thankful for what I already have, my beloved Macbook Pro without the touchbar madness. I don't know what I'm going to do when this thing eventually croaks.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- ksec 10y agoThe biggest complain for new MBP, is memory. And those who complain the loudest..... are ... programmers. Not Graphics Designer, Video Editors. Programmers. Specifically Programmers who uses lots ( or more then a few ) VMs. May be as programmer, you should really care about what your programs resources usage are. The problem is i am seeing lots of bloat in Apps. And i still dont understand why you need 4 VM in a programmer's workflow. It seems something that is deeply flawed. What a lot of these people are complaining then, is simply price. But APPLE HAS NEVER, in the life time of the company, offered cheap or value ( Tech Spec ) for money machines. Their product with new design, whether you like it or not, has always been EXTRA expensive on the first cycle.
- meesterdude 10y agoI laughed at this, because for me it's true. But they I got a little annoyed: > May be as programmer, you should really care about what your programs resources usage are. Maybe you shouldn't tell others how to do their jobs or how they should prioritize their work :) But for me it's because I distribute my Rspec specs across a bunch of VM's to cut down test time. Anyway, I think the new machines are overpriced and have poor specs and execution. You could say they added their value in other ways, but thats been on the slip for a while now too.
- lhl 10y agoOne thing that this and many other analyses seem to fail to distinguish when comparing MBPs is that the 13" and 15" models are two very distinct lines. The 13" are basically an ultraportable, with 15W "U" processors and the 15" are thin and light workstation class machines - they have Intel's beefiest 45W "HQ" processors (and the option of an overpriced mid-tier mobile GPU). Almost all of this article's recommendations are for a MBP 13 replacement, which IMO is less compelling - you can get some things that are cheaper (and w/o a soldered in SSD), but nothing that's outright better, especially when things like fit and finish and battery life are taken into account. I think the best alternative now is the new HP Spectre x360 - it has a FHD screen with comparable color gamut, comparable battery life, and you can get twice the RAM/storage as the MBP 13 while still paying 1/3 less. If battery life (and a high-end CPU) is important to you, then your best option for a 2016 MBP 15 alternative... is probably the 2015 MBP 15. Battery life is the real razor here. The 2016 MBP 15 does 10h on wifi, 8.6h w/ h.264 playback, but a measly 0.9h under full load. The 2015 MBP 15 will get you 7.5h on wifi, 6.8h w/ h.264, but 1.75h under full load. The i7-4770HQ/i7-4870HQ/i7-4980HQs, while older, actually performs about the same/better to the new Skylake processors. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Of all the PCs out there, I'd say the XPS 15 9550 might be the closest competition - it has a great 100% sRGB / 89% Adobe RGB UHD screen option and is half the price of a similarly speced 2016 MBP 15 (although you'd probably be able to find a 2015 for around the same price) but half the battery life (just over 5 hours) when on wifi, and even close to a year in, still has some buggy firmware (screen flicker at lower levels, waking up from sleep under vibration) that sadly seems typical for PC vendors. [1] IMO, the most compelling reason to get a PC laptop is if you need a beefier GPU, but you'll need to be aware that you'll be making some trade-offs (and making a time investment for swapping OS's). (Screen gamut and battery numbers are all from Notebookcheck, who seem to do the best laptop reviews around.) [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/5g0lh7/new_bios_1216_released_for_xps_15_9550/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/comments/5g0lh7/new_bios_1216_...
- YZF 10y agoI've used an MBP for the last two years (15" model) and had to replace it as it got damaged. The biggest issue I had with it was the keyboard. I didn't like it. I come from a 327X keyboard tradition :) I found the build quality, the weight, the display, the battery life to be quite awesome. It was also pretty quiet. I looked at the new MBP and didn't like the price (even though the company pays) and didn't like the new touch bar, I use the function keys. I also didn't like the changes to the ports. I'm typing this from my new Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga. So far I like it. It does have a cheaper feel but I find I type faster on this keyboard (though they seem to have copied some of Apples' bad design, IBM ThinkPads used to have nicer keyboards). The display is good. There's a built-in digitizer and stylus (which I haven't tried yet). Being able to flip the display around and stand it upside down is a big space saver where it comes to using external keyboards (which I'll probably do most of the time). It's lighter than the MBP (14" vs. 15" though). Being able to flip the display around to make a thick tablet seems like a nice feature, we'll see how much I end using it. It's a little noisier than the MBP. Battery life seems good so far. I have my HDMI port, DisplayPort, and 3 USB ports. If the MBP was slightly cheaper, lost the touchbar, kept the HDMI port I'd probably go for it. If it could do this Yoga flip/stand that'd be a nice bonus. Page-up/down would be nice too ;)
- rebootthesystem 10y agoI got one of these during the last sale (paid under $1,000): https://goo.gl/qlBt8A https://goo.gl/qlBt8A Very nice machine. Used it on two coast-to-coast flights. Plenty of battery life left after the flights. I see some reviews from people claiming it overheated and failed. Well, if you read their reviews they actually say stuff like "what's the point of a laptop if you can't put it on your lap". One look at the machine and you see it has a vent on the bottom and one on the side. Which means that if you block the bottom vent by having it on your lap or on a blanket while in bed, well, you are going to cook it. And cook it these people did. Gotta use your brains folks! Even laptops without the need for cooling airflow can overheat if placed on something like a blanket or the carpet. That said, this is a common design "feature" of many laptops. Not a deal-breaker at all. In my case I always conscious of this stuff (probably because of being an engineer) and it has never been an issue. I keep a "lap desk" just like this one by my bed and couch just for this reason: https://goo.gl/hS9pd3 https://goo.gl/hS9pd3 I should have bought half a dozen of them.
- NiceGuy_Ty 10y agoI've given up on trying to find the perfect developer laptop and have instead gone for the desktop/chrome book combo. I built a desktop with equivalent hardware specs to the MB Pro (2x8GB Ram, Intel i5-6600 3.30 GHZ, 750GB SSD, and a GeForce 1060 6G video card) for a little under a thousand dollars, and I dual booted it with Windows 10 and Fedora 25. I set up Ubuntu 14 with Crouton on my Acer Chromebook 14. I basically have it in my bag all the time, and when I'm doing work on the go I'm in Ubuntu, and I'm in ChromeOS while in class/Internet surfing. Essentially I do school work and hobby programming on my desktop, actual work on the computer in my workplace, and for everything between I have my chrome book. Between github and Dropbox (and my work's ssh server) I don't have problems syncing anything. Plus that's still cheaper than the bottom of line 13 inch MB Pro.
- hobarrera 10y agoThe begining of this article explains pretty well why I prefer an MBA to anything else. For other companies, the same product line has completely different products, with different build qualities, specs, compatibility, etc. With an MBA, I can just pick it up, and stick ArchLinux onto it. No need to check if this particular one had the bad build quality or not. Other companies need to start learning from this example and get their shit together. We don't want 20 product lines, which each vary every month. We want to be able to pick a laptop without a week's worth of research!
- ourcat 10y agoThe first link to the ThinkPad X1 is broken. Pointing to 'op.lenovo.com' instead of 'shop.lenovo.com'
- ld00d 10y agoAm I the only one that has been just fine with 8GB RAM? I'm running glassfish, IntelliJ, and serving JS over gulp. I have multiple browsers open with lots of tabs. I also have several other applications running. I have yet to notice a problem with RAM.
- tbrock 10y agoThis guy fails to mention that the CPUs in the X1 and MacBook Pro are in a different league. The ULV chips in the X1 are comparable to the non touchbar pro and MacBook but not the one with the touchbar with the big boy CPU.