10 ms·

‘Low End’ Means Good Enough

106 points by protomyth 9y ago

lucidguppy 9y ago
I wonder what would have been if Apple kept pushing the AppleII line in a much more gradual tech road map. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7h4tepFbMso https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7h4tepFbMso In my opinion - computers should still have a boot to basic with a simple interface to vga graphics and passable sound. Something like pico-8 but a better editor with VI bindings. :-) It's a good thing we have the raspberry pi.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  That's a software problem, not a hardware problem. Nothing stops you from creating a 'boot to basic' image from power-on. Whether it would get much traction is another thing. Expectations are rather higher now than they were in the 70's and early 80's. Even a mouse was a pretty rare peripheral in those days (and would set you back some serious money).
- sehugg 9y ago
  Well, we had the awesome IIGS (and the horrible Apple III :^P)
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - Narishma 9y ago
    Too bad it was intentionally crippled so as not to create competition for the more expensive (and technically inferior in many ways) Macs of the time.
    - fzzzy 9y ago
      Can you elaborate? I hadn't heard this before. I remember the IIgs being a pretty sweet machine.
      - Narishma 9y ago
        The main thing I remember being crippled on the IIGS was the CPU clock speed. The 8-bit guy did a video about this a while ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7h4tepFbMso https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7h4tepFbMso
- II2II 9y ago
  You're looking for a New World PowerMac. If you hold down the right key combination while turning it on, you will land in Open Firmware. While quite different from BASIC, it is a programming environment similar to the olden days. And is the Rasberry Pi comment a reference to RISC OS, with its ability to access BBC BASIC by pressing F12 and typing a quick command?
bluedino 9y ago
>> From a practicality standpoint, the top choice would be that last generation 2011 17″ MacBook Pro This is actually a bad idea - the 2011 15/17" MacBook Pros have dying graphics chips, that Apple stoppped repairing at the end of last year.
- javiramos 9y ago
  I echo this - I have a 2011 15" MacBook Pro. I have changed the graphics chip twice. Hoping it doesn't fail again. Apple has replaced them for free.
- matwood 9y ago
  My wife still uses my 2011 17" MBP. The graphics has been replaced once for free. If it were not for the failing graphics chips, it's definitely 'good enough'.
  - douche 9y ago
    I'm pretty convinced that a 17" mac book with a semi-modern graphics card would be the best machine on the market. And I hate Apple.
  - gcb0 9y ago
    if you buy one used, they won't replace the graphics for free. my employer still have "late 2012" MBP with the nvidia-of-death cards as I call them, and apple haven't replaced any of them. Even in 2013. This whole article is a disservice. You do not need a second machine to write. And even if I needed, i'd use a machine that runs the latest linux with all the security considerations of a modern system, and then I would just install my text editor and nothing else. This is nothing but a gateway drug for people to join the mac cult. Meh. Not even an expensive mac is any good. let alone a free one. As mac fans always reminds us: you get what you pay for. And free+mac tax = lousy machine.
i336_ 9y ago
Question. There are several mentions of $gigantic_resolution either providing the same or less display area than $smaller_resolution. Are there any hacks that can convince macOS (or the older versions of OS X described in this article) not to treat the display as HiDPI? Yeah, I realize the machine will abruptly feel like it needs a magnifying glass to use, but in a pinch (laptop on lap <2ft from eyes) it might work for some (insert standard disclaimers here about eyes being non-replaceable and needing to last the distance). Also. The late-2015 21″ iMac is ~$1.5k+, and "has a multi-core Geekbench score of 5623." Then the late-2011 17″ MacBook Pro which is ~$1.3k checks in with a "9240 Geekbench score". Is there some datapoint I'm missing here?
- jolux 9y ago
  >Are there any hacks that can convince macOS (or the older versions of OS X described in this article) not to treat the display as HiDPI? You can change the display scaling directly in system preferences, I can crank mine all the way up to 1920 x 1200 scale (Late 2016 15"). Beyond that, there's QuickRes: https://www.thnkdev.com/QuickRes/ https://www.thnkdev.com/QuickRes/
  - to3m 9y ago
    Another option is RDM, which is free: https://github.com/avibrazil/RDM https://github.com/avibrazil/RDM (RDM has never had an official home, I don't think, and I don't remember where I got my copy from. Think it was a link from reddit. So I can't comment about this particular version, which I found via Google just now.)
- bluedino 9y ago
  >> Are there any hacks that can convince macOS (or the older versions of OS X described in this article) not to treat the display as HiDPI? SwitchResX and others allow you to use your Retina Mac at its native resolution
- coldtea 9y ago
  >Are there any hacks that can convince macOS (or the older versions of OS X described in this article) not to treat the display as HiDPI? Yeah, I realize the machine will abruptly feel like it needs a magnifying glass to use, but in a pinch (laptop on lap <2ft from eyes) it might work for some (insert standard disclaimers here about eyes being non-replaceable and needing to last the distance). macOs already supports several resolutions higher than the standard 1/2native which is what Retina uses (half the native pixels at each dimension for twice the resolution). IIRC, already the "default" resolution on newer MBPr with the touch strip is higher than the 1/2native (that used to be the default on retina laptops). There are also apps like: https://www.thnkdev.com/QuickRes/ https://www.thnkdev.com/QuickRes/ and http://www.madrau.com/ http://www.madrau.com/ for more flexibility and full-native resolution even. That said, the full native retina resolution on something like a 15" screen doesn't make any sense to me except for some special circumstances (maybe 4k movie viewing, but doesn't that already use the full resolution?). >The late-2015 21″ iMac is ~$1.5k+, and "has a multi-core Geekbench score of 5623." Then the late-2011 17″ MacBook Pro which is ~$1.3k checks in with a "9240 Geekbench score". Is there some datapoint I'm missing here? Yes, one is a GeekBench 3 score, the other is a GeekBench 4 score. Scores of 3 and 4 editions of the GeekBench suite are not comparable.
sfled 9y ago
I use a 1998 "Wallstreet" PowerBook G3 running OS 9.2 and MS Office 98 for word processing, some email, and spreadsheets. No Wi-Fi, so I tether it to another laptop via Ethernet.
- Bjartr 9y ago
  Why not just use the other laptop?
  - PeCaN 9y ago
    Probably widescreen with a flimsy keyboard, while older laptops are more likely to be 4:3 with a nicer keyboard. Or maybe to avoid getting distracted by all the stuff available on newer computers (going to guess much of the internet is not easily accessible from Mac OS 9.2). Or maybe just cuz it's cool.
  - nicky0 9y ago
    It's probably Windows or some shit.
- Baeocystin 9y ago
  I liked the keyboards (and the amount of space available for resting your wrists) on those.
- morganvachon 9y ago
  I love the G3 PowerBooks! I drove a Pismo upgraded with the G4 card, maxed memory, and a CardBus Wi-Fi card for N150 speeds in OS X; I dual booted 9.2 and 10.4 Tiger. I built that machine from three broken PowerBooks in 2006 and used it daily until my ex-wife took it in the divorce back in 2010 (she hated Macs but she knew it would hurt me to take it). Otherwise I'd probably still be using it for basic tasks like distraction-free writing or classic Mac games.
mechagodzilla 9y ago
My SO is still using a 13" early-2011 MBP, recently upgraded with an SSD and 16GB of RAM, and running the latest OSX release. With only it's original 4GB of ram it was constantly swapping on more recent releases of OSX, which was pretty painful, but it operates just fine now. A brand new 13" MBP would have longer battery life, weigh less, and have a High-DPI display, but wouldn't really be any faster in day-to-day use (and it wouldn't even support more RAM!). I was pretty surprised by how little computers had improved in the last six years.
- Baeocystin 9y ago
  I just picked up a 2011-era Air for a client. Honestly, after installing a new battery, it barely felt any different than what is available today.
  - erikpukinskis 9y ago
    That's my daily driver. It's amazing. I looked at About This Mac recently and was shocked that it's 6 years old! I could've sworn I had bought something newer. Time flies on a good machine.
    - Baeocystin 9y ago
      I'm more of a PC guy, but I have to admit, I really liked it. Good screen, great keyboard and touchpad. Good battery life once I swapping in a new pack. (Significant minus for those stupid non-standard screws, though.) I could easily see using one as my daily use machine if I was in a more mac-centric environment without feeling like I was missing anything at all.
imwally 9y ago
>> I can’t get too excited about the 2016 13″ MacBook Pro with 2 Thunderbolt ports. It has a Retina Display, but its 2560 x 1600 pixel display shows no more than my current MacBook’s 1280 x 800 display. Huh? Out of the box resolution is 1440x900 and maxes out at 1680x1050 (without using a 3rd party application like SwitchResX). Apple used to set the default to 1280x800 but this is no longer the case.
- jeffhuys 9y ago
  The author doesn't know what he's talking about. Credibility of the website goes down a lot, even though the main idea is good.
  - owenversteeg 9y ago
    It's one mistake for crying out loud. If you're at all interested in a brand new Macbook you aren't going to be considering a laptop from a decade ago, so it also is completely immaterial.
crowell 9y ago
It's pretty hard to take this article seriously. The author writes "I don’t consider Windows good enough. Historically there have been to many ways to compromise a Windows-based computer, and new techniques keep showing up with alarming regularity." And then later "I am writing this on my newest computer, a Late 2008 Aluminum MacBook running OS X 10.11 El Capitan" If you're going to knock Windows on a lack of security, at the very least do as much as you can do to protect yourself on a Mac. Note the long list of security fixes in the latest version of MacOS https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201222 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201222
- crowell 9y ago
  also on newer machines you get more security features, such as SMAP/SMEP which were introduced in the Broadwell chips (2015 macs?)
- patrickmn 9y ago
  Yeah, the security track record of post-Vista Windows is far better than OS X.
  - EGreg 9y ago
    Anecdotally, I have never had a virus on Mac (that I detected) and neither did any friends, but Windows got infected all the time. This was true going back to Windows 95.
    - hvidgaard 9y ago
      Anecdotally, I've never had a virus on Windows dating back to Win98. But my extended family have had multiple on OSX. My point is that both are very vulnerable, precautions are what keeps you safe.
      - FussyZeus 9y ago
        OSX has a more solid track record, but Windows has also undergone a lot of change since the Vista rebuild to address many of it's more trivial exploits. Anyone remember when you could click Cancel in the login screen and get access to the desktop? Good times. :)
twblalock 9y ago
One of the interesting developments over the past decade is that computers remain usable for much longer than they used to, unless you are a gamer or need to do heavy programming work. My 2011 Macbook Pro is still perfectly usable for everything a normal person would want to do with a computer. So is my parents' 2012(?) Mac Mini. I just bumped the RAM up to 8GB on both of those computers and they are just fine for web browsing, word processing, and HD video playback. I suspect that Apple's problem selling iPads is related to this -- my iPad Air 2 is never noticeably slow doing any task, and I know people with pre-Air iPads who are perfectly happy with them. These are people who have plenty of money to buy a new iPad and would do so if theirs felt slow; they just don't notice any drawbacks to using an older one.
- cynicalbastard 9y ago
  i recently bought an ipad pro, and the new was announced a couple weeks later. in the past, this would have bothered me, and i surely would have found out some roundabout way to swap for the new one. i don't know if it's me, or the level of modern technology, but this time around, i just don't really care enough to do anything about it. i'm sure it will be fine for close to 10 years.
- scarface74 9y ago
  I can go back even further. While not useful as a full blown Mac -- i.e. A computer sold by Apple running Mac OS -- my parents still occasionally use my 2006 era Core Duo Mac Mini with 1.5 Gb of RAM. I put Windows 7 on it and they run Office and Chrome on it. It runs surprisingly well. The wifi is crap - 802.11g but it does have Gig-e Ethernet.
  - kogepathic 9y ago
    > The wifi is crap - 802.11g Just buy a dual-band 802.11n or 802.11ac USB WiFi adapter, you can buy them for less than $20. [0] You won't get more than 20MByte/s over USB 2.0, but it should still be a massive improvement over 802.11g. [0]https://www.amazon.com/TP-Link-Archer-T4UH-Wireless-Adapter/dp/B00TQD235C/ https://www.amazon.com/TP-Link-Archer-T4UH-Wireless-Adapter/...
kraig911 9y ago
I thought the nostalgia of the cult of mac from the early 00's was long and dead... but I guess old habits die hard. I wonder what it will be like when the next generation talks about browser versions because to me that's basically the future. Most of the applications I use vary a tiny bit from mac to windows. Gmail, Sublime, Adobe Illustrator, Dropbox... the applications seem to match closer in parity whilst the OS's that host them get more different. Also his mention of Windows security is a little tired.
- ido 9y ago
  For young people today, their computers are their phones.
triangleman 9y ago
Still running my late 2006 aluminum Core 2 Duo Macbook pro, upgraded, with 10.6.8 snow leopard. Unfortunately it occupies an awkward space between homebrew and the "tigerbrew" fork... Everything tries to compile and often fails because of out of date compilers. I think I'm trying to run too much locally, so these days I am still getting a lot done using cloud VM's. A computer like that really helps you write efficient javascript.
JustFYI 9y ago
42/60 GB available, so no. It's just a slow POS.
- dang 9y ago
  We've banned this account for breaking the HN guidelines repeatedly. This comment was merely unsubstantive, but others you've posted have been much worse. If you don't want to be banned on HN, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and promise to follow the site rules in the future. But please don't create accounts to break the rules with. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14535697 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14535697 and marked it off-topic.
anotheryou 9y ago
for text anything with a terminal is fine... If it can do vim and owncloud I'd be golden for text. I do however work with media, so no, low end is not good at all.
epmaybe 9y ago
To add to the critiques: the usable space on a 13" retina MacBook pro can be increased in the software to support up to 1680x1050 if I'm not mistaken. Further, there are apps that can extend that up to the native resolution.
- Domenic_S 9y ago
  Correct. I'm on a 13" mid-2014 mbp scaled to 1680 x 1050.
owenversteeg 9y ago
So I recently switched from a brand new top of the line Ideapad Yoga to an older Thinkpad from 2012. Sure, it's kind of thick. 1.2" thick actually. But it has a 3.8GHz processor that can actually sit at 3.8GHz for a very long time because of the giant fans and fat copper heat pipes, and it has 8GB of ram upgradeable to 16, and a decent solid state drive. It looks like a giant hunking black thing, and I love it. Doesn't look expensive, so it won't get stolen, and it cost me $250, so even if it does it won't be the end of the world. I think there'll be a minor trend of people keeping the same laptops they have, or buying older laptops to save money, now that improvements have stagnated. Processors are literally getting slower - I challenge you to find a laptop today that is faster than my X230T. Sure, manufacturers might claim a higher clock speed, but with modern horrible thermal management they can only sit there for brief amounts of time. The X230T can literally sit all day at 3.8GHz, and fairly quietly too. Sure you can go 0.6GHz faster, with the Alienware 18 with a 4.4GHz processor, but that costs six thousand dollars, is as thick as six laptops stacked on top of each other, and is twenty two inches measured diagonally. Oh yeah, and people found that because of heat problems the processor wasn't able to reach the clock speeds claimed. This review [0] shows that it only got to 3.2GHz, which is substantially slower than my $250 laptop. Oh yeah, and that laptop easily goes over 100F on the outside of the case in normal use, so not only will your legs be crushed by the 12 pound 22" monstrosity they'll also be burned if you dare put it on your lap. [0] https://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Alienware-18-Notebook.102566.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Alienware-18-Notebook.1...
- ddorian43 9y ago
  Please link to your laptop.
  - Danihan 9y ago
    I think it's basically this, but he might have a tablet version. http://www.ebay.com/itm/IBM-Lenovo-X230-Tablet-Core-i7-3520M-2-90GHz-16GB-240GB-SSD-Windows10-/162547315338?hash=item25d893328a:g:MV4AAOSwiOFZOmEw http://www.ebay.com/itm/IBM-Lenovo-X230-Tablet-Core-i7-3520M...
- Sorreah 9y ago
PeterStuer 9y ago
A IIcx with the full page display, 6.0.8 and Word 5.1 was a great writing environment. In some ways I'd still prefer it to my current Word 2016.

106 points by protomyth 9y ago

I wonder what would have been if Apple kept pushing the AppleII line in a much more gradual tech road map. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7h4tepFbMso https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7h4tepFbMso In my opinion - computers should still have a boot to basic with a simple interface to vga graphics and passable sound. Something like pico-8 but a better editor with VI bindings. :-) It's a good thing we have the raspberry pi.

jacquesm 9y ago
That's a software problem, not a hardware problem. Nothing stops you from creating a 'boot to basic' image from power-on. Whether it would get much traction is another thing. Expectations are rather higher now than they were in the 70's and early 80's. Even a mouse was a pretty rare peripheral in those days (and would set you back some serious money).
sehugg 9y ago
Well, we had the awesome IIGS (and the horrible Apple III :^P)
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- Narishma 9y ago
  Too bad it was intentionally crippled so as not to create competition for the more expensive (and technically inferior in many ways) Macs of the time.
  - fzzzy 9y ago
    Can you elaborate? I hadn't heard this before. I remember the IIgs being a pretty sweet machine.
    - Narishma 9y ago
      The main thing I remember being crippled on the IIGS was the CPU clock speed. The 8-bit guy did a video about this a while ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7h4tepFbMso https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7h4tepFbMso
II2II 9y ago
You're looking for a New World PowerMac. If you hold down the right key combination while turning it on, you will land in Open Firmware. While quite different from BASIC, it is a programming environment similar to the olden days. And is the Rasberry Pi comment a reference to RISC OS, with its ability to access BBC BASIC by pressing F12 and typing a quick command?

bluedino 9y ago

>> From a practicality standpoint, the top choice would be that last generation 2011 17″ MacBook Pro This is actually a bad idea - the 2011 15/17" MacBook Pros have dying graphics chips, that Apple stoppped repairing at the end of last year.

javiramos 9y ago
I echo this - I have a 2011 15" MacBook Pro. I have changed the graphics chip twice. Hoping it doesn't fail again. Apple has replaced them for free.
matwood 9y ago
My wife still uses my 2011 17" MBP. The graphics has been replaced once for free. If it were not for the failing graphics chips, it's definitely 'good enough'.
- douche 9y ago
  I'm pretty convinced that a 17" mac book with a semi-modern graphics card would be the best machine on the market. And I hate Apple.
- gcb0 9y ago
  if you buy one used, they won't replace the graphics for free. my employer still have "late 2012" MBP with the nvidia-of-death cards as I call them, and apple haven't replaced any of them. Even in 2013. This whole article is a disservice. You do not need a second machine to write. And even if I needed, i'd use a machine that runs the latest linux with all the security considerations of a modern system, and then I would just install my text editor and nothing else. This is nothing but a gateway drug for people to join the mac cult. Meh. Not even an expensive mac is any good. let alone a free one. As mac fans always reminds us: you get what you pay for. And free+mac tax = lousy machine.

i336_ 9y ago

Question. There are several mentions of $gigantic_resolution either providing the same or less display area than $smaller_resolution. Are there any hacks that can convince macOS (or the older versions of OS X described in this article) not to treat the display as HiDPI? Yeah, I realize the machine will abruptly feel like it needs a magnifying glass to use, but in a pinch (laptop on lap <2ft from eyes) it might work for some (insert standard disclaimers here about eyes being non-replaceable and needing to last the distance). Also. The late-2015 21″ iMac is ~$1.5k+, and "has a multi-core Geekbench score of 5623." Then the late-2011 17″ MacBook Pro which is ~$1.3k checks in with a "9240 Geekbench score". Is there some datapoint I'm missing here?

jolux 9y ago
>Are there any hacks that can convince macOS (or the older versions of OS X described in this article) not to treat the display as HiDPI? You can change the display scaling directly in system preferences, I can crank mine all the way up to 1920 x 1200 scale (Late 2016 15"). Beyond that, there's QuickRes: https://www.thnkdev.com/QuickRes/ https://www.thnkdev.com/QuickRes/
- to3m 9y ago
  Another option is RDM, which is free: https://github.com/avibrazil/RDM https://github.com/avibrazil/RDM (RDM has never had an official home, I don't think, and I don't remember where I got my copy from. Think it was a link from reddit. So I can't comment about this particular version, which I found via Google just now.)
bluedino 9y ago
>> Are there any hacks that can convince macOS (or the older versions of OS X described in this article) not to treat the display as HiDPI? SwitchResX and others allow you to use your Retina Mac at its native resolution
coldtea 9y ago
>Are there any hacks that can convince macOS (or the older versions of OS X described in this article) not to treat the display as HiDPI? Yeah, I realize the machine will abruptly feel like it needs a magnifying glass to use, but in a pinch (laptop on lap <2ft from eyes) it might work for some (insert standard disclaimers here about eyes being non-replaceable and needing to last the distance). macOs already supports several resolutions higher than the standard 1/2native which is what Retina uses (half the native pixels at each dimension for twice the resolution). IIRC, already the "default" resolution on newer MBPr with the touch strip is higher than the 1/2native (that used to be the default on retina laptops). There are also apps like: https://www.thnkdev.com/QuickRes/ https://www.thnkdev.com/QuickRes/ and http://www.madrau.com/ http://www.madrau.com/ for more flexibility and full-native resolution even. That said, the full native retina resolution on something like a 15" screen doesn't make any sense to me except for some special circumstances (maybe 4k movie viewing, but doesn't that already use the full resolution?). >The late-2015 21″ iMac is ~$1.5k+, and "has a multi-core Geekbench score of 5623." Then the late-2011 17″ MacBook Pro which is ~$1.3k checks in with a "9240 Geekbench score". Is there some datapoint I'm missing here? Yes, one is a GeekBench 3 score, the other is a GeekBench 4 score. Scores of 3 and 4 editions of the GeekBench suite are not comparable.

sfled 9y ago

I use a 1998 "Wallstreet" PowerBook G3 running OS 9.2 and MS Office 98 for word processing, some email, and spreadsheets. No Wi-Fi, so I tether it to another laptop via Ethernet.

Bjartr 9y ago
Why not just use the other laptop?
- PeCaN 9y ago
  Probably widescreen with a flimsy keyboard, while older laptops are more likely to be 4:3 with a nicer keyboard. Or maybe to avoid getting distracted by all the stuff available on newer computers (going to guess much of the internet is not easily accessible from Mac OS 9.2). Or maybe just cuz it's cool.
- nicky0 9y ago
  It's probably Windows or some shit.
Baeocystin 9y ago
I liked the keyboards (and the amount of space available for resting your wrists) on those.
morganvachon 9y ago
I love the G3 PowerBooks! I drove a Pismo upgraded with the G4 card, maxed memory, and a CardBus Wi-Fi card for N150 speeds in OS X; I dual booted 9.2 and 10.4 Tiger. I built that machine from three broken PowerBooks in 2006 and used it daily until my ex-wife took it in the divorce back in 2010 (she hated Macs but she knew it would hurt me to take it). Otherwise I'd probably still be using it for basic tasks like distraction-free writing or classic Mac games.

mechagodzilla 9y ago

My SO is still using a 13" early-2011 MBP, recently upgraded with an SSD and 16GB of RAM, and running the latest OSX release. With only it's original 4GB of ram it was constantly swapping on more recent releases of OSX, which was pretty painful, but it operates just fine now. A brand new 13" MBP would have longer battery life, weigh less, and have a High-DPI display, but wouldn't really be any faster in day-to-day use (and it wouldn't even support more RAM!). I was pretty surprised by how little computers had improved in the last six years.

Baeocystin 9y ago
I just picked up a 2011-era Air for a client. Honestly, after installing a new battery, it barely felt any different than what is available today.
- erikpukinskis 9y ago
  That's my daily driver. It's amazing. I looked at About This Mac recently and was shocked that it's 6 years old! I could've sworn I had bought something newer. Time flies on a good machine.
  - Baeocystin 9y ago
    I'm more of a PC guy, but I have to admit, I really liked it. Good screen, great keyboard and touchpad. Good battery life once I swapping in a new pack. (Significant minus for those stupid non-standard screws, though.) I could easily see using one as my daily use machine if I was in a more mac-centric environment without feeling like I was missing anything at all.

imwally 9y ago

>> I can’t get too excited about the 2016 13″ MacBook Pro with 2 Thunderbolt ports. It has a Retina Display, but its 2560 x 1600 pixel display shows no more than my current MacBook’s 1280 x 800 display. Huh? Out of the box resolution is 1440x900 and maxes out at 1680x1050 (without using a 3rd party application like SwitchResX). Apple used to set the default to 1280x800 but this is no longer the case.

jeffhuys 9y ago
The author doesn't know what he's talking about. Credibility of the website goes down a lot, even though the main idea is good.
- owenversteeg 9y ago
  It's one mistake for crying out loud. If you're at all interested in a brand new Macbook you aren't going to be considering a laptop from a decade ago, so it also is completely immaterial.

crowell 9y ago

It's pretty hard to take this article seriously. The author writes "I don’t consider Windows good enough. Historically there have been to many ways to compromise a Windows-based computer, and new techniques keep showing up with alarming regularity." And then later "I am writing this on my newest computer, a Late 2008 Aluminum MacBook running OS X 10.11 El Capitan" If you're going to knock Windows on a lack of security, at the very least do as much as you can do to protect yourself on a Mac. Note the long list of security fixes in the latest version of MacOS https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201222 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201222

crowell 9y ago
also on newer machines you get more security features, such as SMAP/SMEP which were introduced in the Broadwell chips (2015 macs?)
patrickmn 9y ago
Yeah, the security track record of post-Vista Windows is far better than OS X.
- EGreg 9y ago
  Anecdotally, I have never had a virus on Mac (that I detected) and neither did any friends, but Windows got infected all the time. This was true going back to Windows 95.
  - hvidgaard 9y ago
    Anecdotally, I've never had a virus on Windows dating back to Win98. But my extended family have had multiple on OSX. My point is that both are very vulnerable, precautions are what keeps you safe.
    - FussyZeus 9y ago
      OSX has a more solid track record, but Windows has also undergone a lot of change since the Vista rebuild to address many of it's more trivial exploits. Anyone remember when you could click Cancel in the login screen and get access to the desktop? Good times. :)

twblalock 9y ago

One of the interesting developments over the past decade is that computers remain usable for much longer than they used to, unless you are a gamer or need to do heavy programming work. My 2011 Macbook Pro is still perfectly usable for everything a normal person would want to do with a computer. So is my parents' 2012(?) Mac Mini. I just bumped the RAM up to 8GB on both of those computers and they are just fine for web browsing, word processing, and HD video playback. I suspect that Apple's problem selling iPads is related to this -- my iPad Air 2 is never noticeably slow doing any task, and I know people with pre-Air iPads who are perfectly happy with them. These are people who have plenty of money to buy a new iPad and would do so if theirs felt slow; they just don't notice any drawbacks to using an older one.

cynicalbastard 9y ago
i recently bought an ipad pro, and the new was announced a couple weeks later. in the past, this would have bothered me, and i surely would have found out some roundabout way to swap for the new one. i don't know if it's me, or the level of modern technology, but this time around, i just don't really care enough to do anything about it. i'm sure it will be fine for close to 10 years.
scarface74 9y ago
I can go back even further. While not useful as a full blown Mac -- i.e. A computer sold by Apple running Mac OS -- my parents still occasionally use my 2006 era Core Duo Mac Mini with 1.5 Gb of RAM. I put Windows 7 on it and they run Office and Chrome on it. It runs surprisingly well. The wifi is crap - 802.11g but it does have Gig-e Ethernet.
- kogepathic 9y ago
  > The wifi is crap - 802.11g Just buy a dual-band 802.11n or 802.11ac USB WiFi adapter, you can buy them for less than $20. [0] You won't get more than 20MByte/s over USB 2.0, but it should still be a massive improvement over 802.11g. [0]https://www.amazon.com/TP-Link-Archer-T4UH-Wireless-Adapter/dp/B00TQD235C/ https://www.amazon.com/TP-Link-Archer-T4UH-Wireless-Adapter/...

kraig911 9y ago

I thought the nostalgia of the cult of mac from the early 00's was long and dead... but I guess old habits die hard. I wonder what it will be like when the next generation talks about browser versions because to me that's basically the future. Most of the applications I use vary a tiny bit from mac to windows. Gmail, Sublime, Adobe Illustrator, Dropbox... the applications seem to match closer in parity whilst the OS's that host them get more different. Also his mention of Windows security is a little tired.

ido 9y ago
For young people today, their computers are their phones.

triangleman 9y ago

Still running my late 2006 aluminum Core 2 Duo Macbook pro, upgraded, with 10.6.8 snow leopard. Unfortunately it occupies an awkward space between homebrew and the "tigerbrew" fork... Everything tries to compile and often fails because of out of date compilers. I think I'm trying to run too much locally, so these days I am still getting a lot done using cloud VM's. A computer like that really helps you write efficient javascript.

JustFYI 9y ago

42/60 GB available, so no. It's just a slow POS.

dang 9y ago
We've banned this account for breaking the HN guidelines repeatedly. This comment was merely unsubstantive, but others you've posted have been much worse. If you don't want to be banned on HN, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and promise to follow the site rules in the future. But please don't create accounts to break the rules with. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14535697 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14535697 and marked it off-topic.

anotheryou 9y ago

for text anything with a terminal is fine... If it can do vim and owncloud I'd be golden for text. I do however work with media, so no, low end is not good at all.

epmaybe 9y ago

To add to the critiques: the usable space on a 13" retina MacBook pro can be increased in the software to support up to 1680x1050 if I'm not mistaken. Further, there are apps that can extend that up to the native resolution.

Domenic_S 9y ago
Correct. I'm on a 13" mid-2014 mbp scaled to 1680 x 1050.

owenversteeg 9y ago

So I recently switched from a brand new top of the line Ideapad Yoga to an older Thinkpad from 2012. Sure, it's kind of thick. 1.2" thick actually. But it has a 3.8GHz processor that can actually sit at 3.8GHz for a very long time because of the giant fans and fat copper heat pipes, and it has 8GB of ram upgradeable to 16, and a decent solid state drive. It looks like a giant hunking black thing, and I love it. Doesn't look expensive, so it won't get stolen, and it cost me $250, so even if it does it won't be the end of the world. I think there'll be a minor trend of people keeping the same laptops they have, or buying older laptops to save money, now that improvements have stagnated. Processors are literally getting slower - I challenge you to find a laptop today that is faster than my X230T. Sure, manufacturers might claim a higher clock speed, but with modern horrible thermal management they can only sit there for brief amounts of time. The X230T can literally sit all day at 3.8GHz, and fairly quietly too. Sure you can go 0.6GHz faster, with the Alienware 18 with a 4.4GHz processor, but that costs six thousand dollars, is as thick as six laptops stacked on top of each other, and is twenty two inches measured diagonally. Oh yeah, and people found that because of heat problems the processor wasn't able to reach the clock speeds claimed. This review [0] shows that it only got to 3.2GHz, which is substantially slower than my $250 laptop. Oh yeah, and that laptop easily goes over 100F on the outside of the case in normal use, so not only will your legs be crushed by the 12 pound 22" monstrosity they'll also be burned if you dare put it on your lap. [0] https://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Alienware-18-Notebook.102566.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Alienware-18-Notebook.1...

ddorian43 9y ago
Please link to your laptop.
- Danihan 9y ago
  I think it's basically this, but he might have a tablet version. http://www.ebay.com/itm/IBM-Lenovo-X230-Tablet-Core-i7-3520M-2-90GHz-16GB-240GB-SSD-Windows10-/162547315338?hash=item25d893328a:g:MV4AAOSwiOFZOmEw http://www.ebay.com/itm/IBM-Lenovo-X230-Tablet-Core-i7-3520M...
Sorreah 9y ago

PeterStuer 9y ago

A IIcx with the full page display, 6.0.8 and Word 5.1 was a great writing environment. In some ways I'd still prefer it to my current Word 2016.