7 ms·

For me -- and, I suspect, many others -- this is too little too late. Just a few months ago, I spent somewhere around $4500 (all-in) putting together a new wor

For me -- and, I suspect, many others -- this is too little too late. Just a few months ago, I spent somewhere around $4500 (all-in) putting together a new workstation. It runs Linux instead of OS X and this has led to me using my (4-year-old) ThinkPad more than my (18-month-old) MacBook Pro (when I'm "on the go"). I actually plan on selling the MBP; I just haven't gotten around to it yet. I'm sure this is great news -- and long-awaited -- to many people... but some of us got tired of waiting.

jacquesm 10y ago
You can run linux on the MBP. It's a pretty good combination.
- edraferi 10y ago
  Sure, but why pay the apple tax if you're not going to use the whole package?
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    He already has one.
    - icebraining 10y ago
      Not selling it is equivalent to choosing to buy (a used) one.
      - jakobegger 10y ago
        For an economist, yes. For normal human beings, no.
      - mikeash 10y ago
        Transaction costs (both the explicit "we take a percentage" kind, and the hidden ones like the risk of being ripped off) are pretty significant, so no, not really.
        icebraining 10y ago
        Not in my experience, but in any case, it's still equivalent to buying at that reduced price.
        skinnymuch 10y ago
        It's not equivalent. Buying is far easier than selling.
        jacquesm 10y ago
        > Buying is far easier than selling. That's an essential insight for anybody that ever wants to run a business, and it is why sales people get paid the big bucks and purchasers are only as good as the discounts they get.
        skinnymuch 10y ago
        Hah. Very true. Unrelated, but nice to have interacted with you on HN! I've seen your handle and comments hundreds of times by now.
        icebraining 10y ago
        That's included in the spread I mentioned as "reduced price". Unless you're saying that the expected value of selling it is literally lower than throwing it in the trash, my point stands.
        skinnymuch 10y ago
        I'm confused about the reduced price. Everything isn't about money when we are talking about non-large sums. Selling something like an electronic can be a huge hassle for some people. On second thought, I guess if you can just sell it to some service. Or say, Best Buy, then there's a point there for reduced price (at a high degree :p).
- j_s 10y ago
  Not sure on the specifics of an 18-month-old MBP vs. this list, but nothing is guaranteed. https://github.com/Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux https://github.com/Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux State of Linux on the MacBook Pro 2016 Not Working: • Audio input & output • Bluetooth • Keyboard backlight • Suspend & Hibernation • Touch ID • Wi-Fi
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    Kernel 4.9 fixes a bunch of those (the Wi-Fi for instance). I've had a similar experience with the Air but it works well with the newer kernels (including the SSD, which was the main problem for me).
    - AlgorithmicTime 10y ago
      But not the keyboard and touchpad.
  - Bluestrike2 10y ago
    When you start getting into Hackintoshes or running non-OSX operating systems on Macs (aside from Windows and Boot Camp), things can get iffy in some situations. That list is pretty nasty, though I'm fairly surprised someone got the damned Touch Bar working for Linux. But if there's one good thing at play, it's that there's a fairly active community that tries to tackle these problems.
  - AsyncAwait 10y ago
    The 2015 MBP works very well out of the box, the 2016 refresh has a bunch of custom chips, so it's not really surprising.
- izacus 10y ago
  They tend to run worse than equivalent ThinkPads though, mostly due to prioprietary nature of power saving APIs and thus you lose battery life (and quiet).
- manyxcxi 10y ago
  I'll second that. I've had very good luck with my conversion on my old MBP so far. I have a late 2009 kicking around the house, basically a web browsing computer or backup machine if I leave my newer model in the office, etc. Since I couldn't get the latest macOS on it I figured I'd just wipe it and install a Linux distro- all told I was maybe an hour into the process and had Ubuntu 16.10 running like a champ. The built in Ethernet was a life saver because I had to replace the WiFi drivers and there were a few power settings I tweaked. A few weeks post install I've tweaked touchpad settings and various other things, except for the WiFi, it worked nearly straight out of the gate, and it was certainly functional immediately post-install. Known limitations that affect me are pretty much limited to Thunderbolt hotswap (you've got to boot with the TB hardware plugged in), lid close/sleep is pretty finicky (I feel like this has always been the case with every Linux laptop I've ever run), and the iSight drivers for the built in web cam have some issues therefor preventing some smart screen dimming functionality. If I actually took the time to patch the drivers this sounds like it's resolvable but I really just don't care. Battery life is tough to gauge because it's so old and I didn't benchmark it pre-Linux but I'm getting about 2-2.5 hours out of it while writing code. Obviously not great, but I doubt I was getting that much more w/ OS X. This machine was my daily workhorse for a couple of years, it's got plenty of cycles on the battery. With auto screen dimming or GPU optimizations, this could likely get improved. Really, the only thing I'm finding now is that I'm not a huge fan of the default Ubuntu 16.10 desktop and I'll probably start hopping distros since it's been a while since I was running a Linux desktop as a main OS. I would say that from a completely subjective standpoint it feels every bit as snappy in standard use as OS X did and it will likely keep this machine quite useful for as long as it holds together.
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    Lubuntu desktop may be more to your liking, it's very simple (almost spartan).
    - cryptarch 10y ago
      I'd recommend Xubuntu (XFCE instead of LXDE) instead, because LXDE is more buggy, less polished and not much lighter than XFCE.
jug 10y ago
It's never too late for me to look at potentially better alternatives. I would never work myself into a situation where switching to an alternative major OS would be extremely hard. But sure, depending on what you work with, that can of course happen -- issues like software unavailable on said target platform. Disregarding that though, I prefer not to close doors by free will.
jt2190 10y ago
Mac Pro, not MacBook Pro.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
intoverflow2 10y ago
Same I was a huge mac fan, switched during the TiBook era a good 14 years ago used them throughout my professional career (designer, 3D, animation, creative tech) but after waiting and waiting for a pro refresh with Nvidia I bit the bullet and built a PC in December. I would have been willing to spend several thousand £ on a Mac Pro that met my needs, ended up having my needs met by a PC with a GTX 1080 that cost less than the baseline iMac and within 15 minutes of 3D rendering using CUDA and Octane render I asked myself why I didn't do this years ago and my wallet thanks me. Now I don't really see the point in going back to Apple, feels like they've only just decided to care about pro users again and this was probably a decision that came out of a meeting where it was 50/50 if the line was killed or rebooted.
- ianai 10y ago
  I really wonder what that meeting was like. But you know it happened.
TwoNineA 10y ago
Same for me. Built my first PC in ages, 8 core Ryzen, 32 Gigs of RAM, NVME SSD, 1060 GTX, all below 2000$. Running Ubuntu on it for now, works very well.
- AsyncAwait 10y ago
  > 8 core Ryzen Neat, I hope AMD sells a lot of these chips to get back on its feet.
chefandy 10y ago
Especially since the whole virtual escape key thing– being a default layout vim user for 20+ years– I'd love to follow suit, but I need Adobe Creative Suite. The tools available on Linux aren't even ballpark. Getting OS X on a VM has always been fussy and frustrating, and if I wanted to work with Windows I'd just use a Windows laptop. On top of that, the apple magic trackpad is just great. Fussing with extracted bootcamp drivers to get it to work on a virtualized windows so I can run some essential software? No thanks. I need quick access to a comfortable, familiar replacement environment if something goes wrong with my regular computer. I can't afford to futz around with that stuff.
- bathyspheric 10y ago
  My only vim customization is `:imap kj <Esc>`. Takes 10s to write into a .vimrc on any new computer.
  - cschep 10y ago
    the ONLY one?! wow.
    - lsiebert 10y ago
      some people differentiate between customisation and setting flags like turning on syntax highlighting, fwiw.
    - bathyspheric 10y ago
      My daily drive is spacemacs, all the tweaking is there.
      - cschep 10y ago
        ahh, that makes a lot more sense. :)
  - weaksauce 10y ago
    I remap jk too so you just mash them both at the same time and it doesn't matter the order.
redm 10y ago
I use Mac OS because I like a reliable and functional workstation. I switched from Windows to OS X (at the time) specifically because of reliability. The biggest challenge then was application availability. We have some big Linux advocates in our company, so I've also tried switching to Linux twice before going to OS X, a couple of years apart. The claim from them was always the same, Linux is ready for the Desktop. The problem is that it's been "ready for the desktop" for ten years. I can't imagine ever going to Linux over Mac OS.
d_theorist 10y ago
Too late maybe (at least for your personal upgrade cycle), but I don't see how a complete re-think using a modular design, pro monitors, and up-to-date components can be too little. What more were you hoping for?
013a 10y ago
Don't be so dramatic. There's a massive silent majority who will not leave OSX. The new MacBook Pros are literally some of the best machines Apple has ever produced, and a renewed focus toward pro users for the 2017 refresh (with 32gb of RAM) and a refresh of the Mac Pro will easily re-secure Apple's preeminent position in this space.
Fomite 10y ago
I never thought I'd be in this category, but I am. I went from a 100% Mac environment to my home computer being a windows PC I built, and the major workhorse for my lab being a linux workstation running Scientific Linux. I've still got my Macbook Pro, so we'll see how things develop, but I've already started the process of migrating away, and if we're looking at 2018 it'll be pretty far along by that time.
Ar-Curunir 10y ago
Just FYI, I run Linux mostly fine on my Macbook Pro.

jacquesm 10y ago

You can run linux on the MBP. It's a pretty good combination.

edraferi 10y ago
Sure, but why pay the apple tax if you're not going to use the whole package?
- jacquesm 10y ago
  He already has one.
  - icebraining 10y ago
    Not selling it is equivalent to choosing to buy (a used) one.
    - jakobegger 10y ago
      For an economist, yes. For normal human beings, no.
    - mikeash 10y ago
      Transaction costs (both the explicit "we take a percentage" kind, and the hidden ones like the risk of being ripped off) are pretty significant, so no, not really.
      - icebraining 10y ago
        Not in my experience, but in any case, it's still equivalent to buying at that reduced price.
        skinnymuch 10y ago
        It's not equivalent. Buying is far easier than selling.
        jacquesm 10y ago
        > Buying is far easier than selling. That's an essential insight for anybody that ever wants to run a business, and it is why sales people get paid the big bucks and purchasers are only as good as the discounts they get.
        skinnymuch 10y ago
        Hah. Very true. Unrelated, but nice to have interacted with you on HN! I've seen your handle and comments hundreds of times by now.
        icebraining 10y ago
        That's included in the spread I mentioned as "reduced price". Unless you're saying that the expected value of selling it is literally lower than throwing it in the trash, my point stands.
        skinnymuch 10y ago
        I'm confused about the reduced price. Everything isn't about money when we are talking about non-large sums. Selling something like an electronic can be a huge hassle for some people. On second thought, I guess if you can just sell it to some service. Or say, Best Buy, then there's a point there for reduced price (at a high degree :p).
j_s 10y ago
Not sure on the specifics of an 18-month-old MBP vs. this list, but nothing is guaranteed. https://github.com/Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux https://github.com/Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux State of Linux on the MacBook Pro 2016 Not Working: • Audio input & output • Bluetooth • Keyboard backlight • Suspend & Hibernation • Touch ID • Wi-Fi
- jacquesm 10y ago
  Kernel 4.9 fixes a bunch of those (the Wi-Fi for instance). I've had a similar experience with the Air but it works well with the newer kernels (including the SSD, which was the main problem for me).
  - AlgorithmicTime 10y ago
    But not the keyboard and touchpad.
- Bluestrike2 10y ago
  When you start getting into Hackintoshes or running non-OSX operating systems on Macs (aside from Windows and Boot Camp), things can get iffy in some situations. That list is pretty nasty, though I'm fairly surprised someone got the damned Touch Bar working for Linux. But if there's one good thing at play, it's that there's a fairly active community that tries to tackle these problems.
- AsyncAwait 10y ago
  The 2015 MBP works very well out of the box, the 2016 refresh has a bunch of custom chips, so it's not really surprising.
izacus 10y ago
They tend to run worse than equivalent ThinkPads though, mostly due to prioprietary nature of power saving APIs and thus you lose battery life (and quiet).
manyxcxi 10y ago
I'll second that. I've had very good luck with my conversion on my old MBP so far. I have a late 2009 kicking around the house, basically a web browsing computer or backup machine if I leave my newer model in the office, etc. Since I couldn't get the latest macOS on it I figured I'd just wipe it and install a Linux distro- all told I was maybe an hour into the process and had Ubuntu 16.10 running like a champ. The built in Ethernet was a life saver because I had to replace the WiFi drivers and there were a few power settings I tweaked. A few weeks post install I've tweaked touchpad settings and various other things, except for the WiFi, it worked nearly straight out of the gate, and it was certainly functional immediately post-install. Known limitations that affect me are pretty much limited to Thunderbolt hotswap (you've got to boot with the TB hardware plugged in), lid close/sleep is pretty finicky (I feel like this has always been the case with every Linux laptop I've ever run), and the iSight drivers for the built in web cam have some issues therefor preventing some smart screen dimming functionality. If I actually took the time to patch the drivers this sounds like it's resolvable but I really just don't care. Battery life is tough to gauge because it's so old and I didn't benchmark it pre-Linux but I'm getting about 2-2.5 hours out of it while writing code. Obviously not great, but I doubt I was getting that much more w/ OS X. This machine was my daily workhorse for a couple of years, it's got plenty of cycles on the battery. With auto screen dimming or GPU optimizations, this could likely get improved. Really, the only thing I'm finding now is that I'm not a huge fan of the default Ubuntu 16.10 desktop and I'll probably start hopping distros since it's been a while since I was running a Linux desktop as a main OS. I would say that from a completely subjective standpoint it feels every bit as snappy in standard use as OS X did and it will likely keep this machine quite useful for as long as it holds together.
- jacquesm 10y ago
  Lubuntu desktop may be more to your liking, it's very simple (almost spartan).
  - cryptarch 10y ago
    I'd recommend Xubuntu (XFCE instead of LXDE) instead, because LXDE is more buggy, less polished and not much lighter than XFCE.

jug 10y ago

It's never too late for me to look at potentially better alternatives. I would never work myself into a situation where switching to an alternative major OS would be extremely hard. But sure, depending on what you work with, that can of course happen -- issues like software unavailable on said target platform. Disregarding that though, I prefer not to close doors by free will.

jt2190 10y ago

Mac Pro, not MacBook Pro.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

intoverflow2 10y ago

Same I was a huge mac fan, switched during the TiBook era a good 14 years ago used them throughout my professional career (designer, 3D, animation, creative tech) but after waiting and waiting for a pro refresh with Nvidia I bit the bullet and built a PC in December. I would have been willing to spend several thousand £ on a Mac Pro that met my needs, ended up having my needs met by a PC with a GTX 1080 that cost less than the baseline iMac and within 15 minutes of 3D rendering using CUDA and Octane render I asked myself why I didn't do this years ago and my wallet thanks me. Now I don't really see the point in going back to Apple, feels like they've only just decided to care about pro users again and this was probably a decision that came out of a meeting where it was 50/50 if the line was killed or rebooted.

ianai 10y ago
I really wonder what that meeting was like. But you know it happened.

TwoNineA 10y ago

Same for me. Built my first PC in ages, 8 core Ryzen, 32 Gigs of RAM, NVME SSD, 1060 GTX, all below 2000$. Running Ubuntu on it for now, works very well.

AsyncAwait 10y ago
> 8 core Ryzen Neat, I hope AMD sells a lot of these chips to get back on its feet.

chefandy 10y ago

Especially since the whole virtual escape key thing– being a default layout vim user for 20+ years– I'd love to follow suit, but I need Adobe Creative Suite. The tools available on Linux aren't even ballpark. Getting OS X on a VM has always been fussy and frustrating, and if I wanted to work with Windows I'd just use a Windows laptop. On top of that, the apple magic trackpad is just great. Fussing with extracted bootcamp drivers to get it to work on a virtualized windows so I can run some essential software? No thanks. I need quick access to a comfortable, familiar replacement environment if something goes wrong with my regular computer. I can't afford to futz around with that stuff.

bathyspheric 10y ago
My only vim customization is `:imap kj <Esc>`. Takes 10s to write into a .vimrc on any new computer.
- cschep 10y ago
  the ONLY one?! wow.
  - lsiebert 10y ago
    some people differentiate between customisation and setting flags like turning on syntax highlighting, fwiw.
  - bathyspheric 10y ago
    My daily drive is spacemacs, all the tweaking is there.
    - cschep 10y ago
      ahh, that makes a lot more sense. :)
- weaksauce 10y ago
  I remap jk too so you just mash them both at the same time and it doesn't matter the order.

redm 10y ago

I use Mac OS because I like a reliable and functional workstation. I switched from Windows to OS X (at the time) specifically because of reliability. The biggest challenge then was application availability. We have some big Linux advocates in our company, so I've also tried switching to Linux twice before going to OS X, a couple of years apart. The claim from them was always the same, Linux is ready for the Desktop. The problem is that it's been "ready for the desktop" for ten years. I can't imagine ever going to Linux over Mac OS.

d_theorist 10y ago

Too late maybe (at least for your personal upgrade cycle), but I don't see how a complete re-think using a modular design, pro monitors, and up-to-date components can be too little. What more were you hoping for?

013a 10y ago

Don't be so dramatic. There's a massive silent majority who will not leave OSX. The new MacBook Pros are literally some of the best machines Apple has ever produced, and a renewed focus toward pro users for the 2017 refresh (with 32gb of RAM) and a refresh of the Mac Pro will easily re-secure Apple's preeminent position in this space.

Fomite 10y ago

I never thought I'd be in this category, but I am. I went from a 100% Mac environment to my home computer being a windows PC I built, and the major workhorse for my lab being a linux workstation running Scientific Linux. I've still got my Macbook Pro, so we'll see how things develop, but I've already started the process of migrating away, and if we're looking at 2018 it'll be pretty far along by that time.

Ar-Curunir 10y ago

Just FYI, I run Linux mostly fine on my Macbook Pro.