6 ms·

Well this is purely anecdotal, but at least 70% of the developers, IT workers, and researchers that I know are using prior generation MacBook Pro hardware (the

Well this is purely anecdotal, but at least 70% of the developers, IT workers, and researchers that I know are using prior generation MacBook Pro hardware (the ones without the touch bar or terrible keyboard, and with ports) and are intentionally using the older OSX versions. I know several people who traded in 2016/2017 models for 2015 models because it's literally an upgrade; get an older machine and you suddenly have usable ports, a keyboard that works, and an escape key, what a luxury. I also know a fair amount of people getting Thinkpad and even Surfaces.

vanilla_nut 9y ago
An especially unfortunate truth is that many developers have grown so afraid of workflow-breaking bugs that they're willing to risk security flaws just so they can get work done. The things I would do (and pay) for 2010-Apple tier hardware built for CentOS in both laptop and phone form factors...
- notadoc 9y ago
  > An especially unfortunate truth is that many developers have grown so afraid of workflow-breaking bugs that they're willing to risk security flaws just so they can get work done. Can't blame them. Ultimately, it's productivity that pays the bills.
- linkmotif 9y ago
  > The things I would do (and pay) for 2010-Apple tier hardware built for CentOS Isn’t it remarkable this still doesn’t exist? Build quality still does not compare in the PC world. Yet, I’m on a MBA3,2 (late 2010) and it’s great. Still running Yosemite. It’s got 4gb ram but handles running 10 JVMs with modest heaps for development no problem. Stable and runs for months without issue. I’d love more RAM and more cores but none of these computers seem worth it. I considered buying a 2015 MPB the other month only to learn that Apple glues the battery to the top case. So to replace the battery you need to replace the whole top case. Insane.
  - 0xabe 9y ago
    “Insanely great”
  - eropple 9y ago
    > Isn’t it remarkable this still doesn’t exist? Build quality still does not compare in the PC world. Razer comes close, though I wouldn't buy them because of the compensating-for-something #branding on the machines. The Alienware 13 I can personally vouch for as being better than my last MacBook Pro for sure. And the keyboard is like an old ThinkPad's but not quite so heavy. Still not a fan of the alien logo, but at least it's tiny.
  - somethingsimple 9y ago
    > Yet, I’m on a MBA3,2 (late 2010) and it’s great. Still running Yosemite. It’s got 4gb ram but handles running 10 JVMs with modest heaps for development no problem. Stable and runs for months without issue. I’d love more RAM and more cores but none of these computers seem worth it. I have the same hardware but unfortunately my experience is the exact opposite. It’s barely usable. I literally can’t browse JavaScript-heavy websites (e.g. Gmail). I wonder if having kept up with the OS releases has anything to do with it (I’m on High Sierra).
    - linkmotif 9y ago
      Weird! I’m sorry to hear that. My fan starts whirring on video/graphics heavy sites, like landing pages with huge videos or overwrought effects. But sites like Gmail are totally fine. Maybe it is the OS updates? I almost pulled the trigger and updated the other day but I’ll hold off now with this story. Gah, that is frustrating.
    - tomxor 9y ago
      I'm using an MBP5,1 (2 years older than yours) as my main personal machine still, it's quite comparable to your MBA3,1, (P8600 vs SL9600), both Core2Duo roughly same clock speed, same RAM and bus speed etc, but different GPUs, also I added an x25-M SSD back when that was "new" :P it's lasted well... I'll admit some of the really heavy websites are crap, but that's mostly because the websites are crap and wont be smooth on anything than the latest i7. Generally I have no problem with gmail or google maps which are reasonably heavy. Depending on what version of OS X you are using that might be the culprit, OS X is a pretty heavy OS, especially post 10.6. For me 10.6 was o-k but changing to linux and a tiling window manager freed up a lot of resources, I never end up paging out with web browsing even though it's only 4GiB, additionally I find graphics are faster on linux but that may be GPU and driver specific due to Apple's underclocking tactics. If I hadn't switched I would probably have ditched this hardware by now. Alternatively the GPU difference between these machines may explain web browsing speed considering how much stuff is hardware accelerated these days. I think this era of hardware is pretty linux friendly if you wanted to try it, you don't have dual GPU which is the biggest pain for linux too... there is no issue with mac EFI from grub anymore so should be zero configuration install for you, at the most you might have to manually select the proprietary drivers for your GPU for reasonable performance.
- ajmurmann 9y ago
  It's not always even bugs though. I remember back in ~2013 OS X updates would regularly break my Postgres setup because Apple like to muck around with it on every release. Postgres.app solved that, but the disregard for developer issues has been somewhat annoying since a longer time. And then you have a IDE like XCode that feels many years behind any JetBrains IDE lacking basic refactoring tools.
- voltagex_ 9y ago
  Have you tried a Dell XPS 9350?
- Decade 9y ago
  > 2010-Apple tier hardware built for CentOS Librem? https://puri.sm https://puri.sm
Posibyte 9y ago
Also anecdotal, but this is also what we're doing at our company too. Most of us have the 2015 era Macbook pros, and run a split between 10.9 and 10.10. Others that aren't using that gen are using Thinkpads with full keyboards on them with Ubuntu. It's not ideal, but our environment is rock solid for what we need, and newer software that we need still supports us just fine.
djsumdog 9y ago
I've been lucky that with my past three jobs, I've been able to use Linux naively. One place just had custom desktops, another HP workstations and the last I got a Dell laptop. I ran openSUSE on the HP, and Gentoo on the other two. One of the shops was an open source shop, so all 150+ of us ran some Linux distro (mostly Ubuntu/Debain, some Arch, some Mint .. I was the only Gentoo) except for the graphics people who got Windows or Macs. But I was surprised at the other two shops, there were very few Linux users. There were some here and there around the company, but I'd usually be the only one on my team who ran Linux naively with Windows in a VM.
- visarga 9y ago
  > I've been able to use Linux naively Hehe
- tomxor 9y ago
  I'm in a similar scenario, we basically get freedom of choice over OS, with the caveat of being responsible for our own installs of course. This works well small scale with competent devs you can trust to take care of their own OS (we help each other out if needed obviously, but the point is that you become fairly self sufficient in that respect, no "IT dep" needed). I know there are reasons this can't happen at large corporations such as security... more to do with contracts and culpability than measurable security improvement AFAIK. I can't quite imagine _not_ having control over my work environment in this way in a job anymore and do greatly appreciate it. It's not all about familiarity, there are many objective reasons using certain proprietary OS can be a significant drain and inefficient, even more so for development work. This freedom would be a significant factor in considering a new job for me, even over pay because it's a big part of my "happiness" and "sanity" factor in the job.
iamdave 9y ago
> but at least 70% of the developers, IT workers, and researchers that I know are using prior generation MacBook Pro hardware You can have my 2015 MBP when you pry it from my cold dead hands. But yes. We recently sold off a bunch of hardware resulting from workforce reductions; I clued a friend in on this and he was begging me to nab him a 2015 MBP. The obsession is real, it is the last truly great Macbook in a while, in my own opinion.
- sulam 9y ago
  The 2015 MBP is the one I don’t use any more but keep anyway because I know it will never fail me. I also stay one version behind on it, so it’s the only system I have using Sierra still. But my main system now is an iMac pro and you would have to send in troops to separate me from it. Although I still can’t stand their crappy keyboards, regardless of color.
- tomxor 9y ago
  I believe those are also the last linux friendly ones so you know that once you either get too sick of the newer OS X whatevercat or the version your are stuck on stops receiving security updates you still have useful hardware.
SomeHacker44 9y ago
This. Although I didn't redowngrade to the non touch bar, I literally hate it and stare enviously at my colleagues running Dell and Lenovo Linux laptops with 32GB of RAM, etc. I am still hoping for Apple to get its act together but I am done with the crappy non Pro "Pro" consumer junk laptops.
- rsynnott 9y ago
  There will almost certainly be 32GB MBPs this year when Cannon Lake shows up. Assuming it isn’t delayed again, naturally.
  - SomeHacker44 9y ago
    I would not bet big money on new CPUs arriving as previously scheduled. There is about to be a major re-think on CPU architecture with security in mind - or so I would hope.
alasdair_ 9y ago
My employer has a shiny new 2017 MBP for me that I have yet to touch because there are SO MANY issues with both the hardware (the need for four different dongles and no escape key) to the security issues to the fact a lot of core software still doesn't work solidly. I'm sticking with the 2015 MBP they gave me before.
JustSomeNobody 9y ago
And arguably better battery life.

vanilla_nut 9y ago

An especially unfortunate truth is that many developers have grown so afraid of workflow-breaking bugs that they're willing to risk security flaws just so they can get work done. The things I would do (and pay) for 2010-Apple tier hardware built for CentOS in both laptop and phone form factors...

notadoc 9y ago
> An especially unfortunate truth is that many developers have grown so afraid of workflow-breaking bugs that they're willing to risk security flaws just so they can get work done. Can't blame them. Ultimately, it's productivity that pays the bills.
linkmotif 9y ago
> The things I would do (and pay) for 2010-Apple tier hardware built for CentOS Isn’t it remarkable this still doesn’t exist? Build quality still does not compare in the PC world. Yet, I’m on a MBA3,2 (late 2010) and it’s great. Still running Yosemite. It’s got 4gb ram but handles running 10 JVMs with modest heaps for development no problem. Stable and runs for months without issue. I’d love more RAM and more cores but none of these computers seem worth it. I considered buying a 2015 MPB the other month only to learn that Apple glues the battery to the top case. So to replace the battery you need to replace the whole top case. Insane.
- 0xabe 9y ago
  “Insanely great”
- eropple 9y ago
  > Isn’t it remarkable this still doesn’t exist? Build quality still does not compare in the PC world. Razer comes close, though I wouldn't buy them because of the compensating-for-something #branding on the machines. The Alienware 13 I can personally vouch for as being better than my last MacBook Pro for sure. And the keyboard is like an old ThinkPad's but not quite so heavy. Still not a fan of the alien logo, but at least it's tiny.
- somethingsimple 9y ago
  > Yet, I’m on a MBA3,2 (late 2010) and it’s great. Still running Yosemite. It’s got 4gb ram but handles running 10 JVMs with modest heaps for development no problem. Stable and runs for months without issue. I’d love more RAM and more cores but none of these computers seem worth it. I have the same hardware but unfortunately my experience is the exact opposite. It’s barely usable. I literally can’t browse JavaScript-heavy websites (e.g. Gmail). I wonder if having kept up with the OS releases has anything to do with it (I’m on High Sierra).
  - linkmotif 9y ago
    Weird! I’m sorry to hear that. My fan starts whirring on video/graphics heavy sites, like landing pages with huge videos or overwrought effects. But sites like Gmail are totally fine. Maybe it is the OS updates? I almost pulled the trigger and updated the other day but I’ll hold off now with this story. Gah, that is frustrating.
  - tomxor 9y ago
    I'm using an MBP5,1 (2 years older than yours) as my main personal machine still, it's quite comparable to your MBA3,1, (P8600 vs SL9600), both Core2Duo roughly same clock speed, same RAM and bus speed etc, but different GPUs, also I added an x25-M SSD back when that was "new" :P it's lasted well... I'll admit some of the really heavy websites are crap, but that's mostly because the websites are crap and wont be smooth on anything than the latest i7. Generally I have no problem with gmail or google maps which are reasonably heavy. Depending on what version of OS X you are using that might be the culprit, OS X is a pretty heavy OS, especially post 10.6. For me 10.6 was o-k but changing to linux and a tiling window manager freed up a lot of resources, I never end up paging out with web browsing even though it's only 4GiB, additionally I find graphics are faster on linux but that may be GPU and driver specific due to Apple's underclocking tactics. If I hadn't switched I would probably have ditched this hardware by now. Alternatively the GPU difference between these machines may explain web browsing speed considering how much stuff is hardware accelerated these days. I think this era of hardware is pretty linux friendly if you wanted to try it, you don't have dual GPU which is the biggest pain for linux too... there is no issue with mac EFI from grub anymore so should be zero configuration install for you, at the most you might have to manually select the proprietary drivers for your GPU for reasonable performance.
ajmurmann 9y ago
It's not always even bugs though. I remember back in ~2013 OS X updates would regularly break my Postgres setup because Apple like to muck around with it on every release. Postgres.app solved that, but the disregard for developer issues has been somewhat annoying since a longer time. And then you have a IDE like XCode that feels many years behind any JetBrains IDE lacking basic refactoring tools.
voltagex_ 9y ago
Have you tried a Dell XPS 9350?
Decade 9y ago
> 2010-Apple tier hardware built for CentOS Librem? https://puri.sm https://puri.sm

Posibyte 9y ago

Also anecdotal, but this is also what we're doing at our company too. Most of us have the 2015 era Macbook pros, and run a split between 10.9 and 10.10. Others that aren't using that gen are using Thinkpads with full keyboards on them with Ubuntu. It's not ideal, but our environment is rock solid for what we need, and newer software that we need still supports us just fine.

djsumdog 9y ago

I've been lucky that with my past three jobs, I've been able to use Linux naively. One place just had custom desktops, another HP workstations and the last I got a Dell laptop. I ran openSUSE on the HP, and Gentoo on the other two. One of the shops was an open source shop, so all 150+ of us ran some Linux distro (mostly Ubuntu/Debain, some Arch, some Mint .. I was the only Gentoo) except for the graphics people who got Windows or Macs. But I was surprised at the other two shops, there were very few Linux users. There were some here and there around the company, but I'd usually be the only one on my team who ran Linux naively with Windows in a VM.

visarga 9y ago
> I've been able to use Linux naively Hehe
tomxor 9y ago
I'm in a similar scenario, we basically get freedom of choice over OS, with the caveat of being responsible for our own installs of course. This works well small scale with competent devs you can trust to take care of their own OS (we help each other out if needed obviously, but the point is that you become fairly self sufficient in that respect, no "IT dep" needed). I know there are reasons this can't happen at large corporations such as security... more to do with contracts and culpability than measurable security improvement AFAIK. I can't quite imagine _not_ having control over my work environment in this way in a job anymore and do greatly appreciate it. It's not all about familiarity, there are many objective reasons using certain proprietary OS can be a significant drain and inefficient, even more so for development work. This freedom would be a significant factor in considering a new job for me, even over pay because it's a big part of my "happiness" and "sanity" factor in the job.

iamdave 9y ago

> but at least 70% of the developers, IT workers, and researchers that I know are using prior generation MacBook Pro hardware You can have my 2015 MBP when you pry it from my cold dead hands. But yes. We recently sold off a bunch of hardware resulting from workforce reductions; I clued a friend in on this and he was begging me to nab him a 2015 MBP. The obsession is real, it is the last truly great Macbook in a while, in my own opinion.

sulam 9y ago
The 2015 MBP is the one I don’t use any more but keep anyway because I know it will never fail me. I also stay one version behind on it, so it’s the only system I have using Sierra still. But my main system now is an iMac pro and you would have to send in troops to separate me from it. Although I still can’t stand their crappy keyboards, regardless of color.
tomxor 9y ago
I believe those are also the last linux friendly ones so you know that once you either get too sick of the newer OS X whatevercat or the version your are stuck on stops receiving security updates you still have useful hardware.

SomeHacker44 9y ago

This. Although I didn't redowngrade to the non touch bar, I literally hate it and stare enviously at my colleagues running Dell and Lenovo Linux laptops with 32GB of RAM, etc. I am still hoping for Apple to get its act together but I am done with the crappy non Pro "Pro" consumer junk laptops.

rsynnott 9y ago
There will almost certainly be 32GB MBPs this year when Cannon Lake shows up. Assuming it isn’t delayed again, naturally.
- SomeHacker44 9y ago
  I would not bet big money on new CPUs arriving as previously scheduled. There is about to be a major re-think on CPU architecture with security in mind - or so I would hope.

alasdair_ 9y ago

My employer has a shiny new 2017 MBP for me that I have yet to touch because there are SO MANY issues with both the hardware (the need for four different dongles and no escape key) to the security issues to the fact a lot of core software still doesn't work solidly. I'm sticking with the 2015 MBP they gave me before.

JustSomeNobody 9y ago

And arguably better battery life.