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You really start appreciating macOS when you go and install Linux on laptop and use it for a month. I had a same issue, I was in Apple camp for 10 years (as of

You really start appreciating macOS when you go and install Linux on laptop and use it for a month. I had a same issue, I was in Apple camp for 10 years (as of this year). And I was like things suck now, Snow Leopard days yada yada yada... And then I installed Arch. Oh god... I mean, the worst thing is I can use Linux only as pure text/terminal UI. Although Gnome looks more polished than ever, whole UI/UX thing on Linux just can't be compared to macOS and Cocoa. What I didn't like with OPs post is that Apple isn't making machine specifically for you, nor for developers. Why their machines had so much success since Jobs return was that they were making machines that were equally loved by music/video/content creators, developers, mothers/fathers/grandparents, students etc etc... If you aren't satisfied with your dev. environment go spin up a VM, rent a server or just get other machine that will fulfill your needs. Where this post gets right is keyboards. Reliability has been number one aspect that Apple created as part of their brand's identity. I won't buy new machine until they do something about those crappy keyboards. And I would like to see them move from Intel. I would like to see how Apple do their own in-house development on CPU, or go with AMD.

BlackjackCF 8y ago
Yup, agreed here. I shared the sentiments that this post had. Then I got a XPS 15" and booted ElementaryOS on it and trying to deal with the resolution issues from the 4K display was just a huge headache. Also, say what you will about the MBP, even though I paid $2k for my XPS, it still wasn't nearly as nice as the MBP's touchpad, etc. I would definitely still pay a premium for that MBP hardware.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  > booted ElementaryOS on it and trying to deal with the resolution issues from the 4K display was just a huge headache Jeez. The sentence, "I booted distro-X on it and trying to deal with the resolution issues from was just a huge headache," is still true in 2018. People were saying things like this about Linux 15 years ago!
  - Symbiote 8y ago
    Windows 10 has resolution issues with HiDPI displays. I find KDE to be fine with a single 4K display. I think the difficulties come with mixing a standard and a HiDPI screen.
    - jay-saint 8y ago
      Definitely this, I have a Thinkpad with Ubuntu 18.04, built in 4k display with 2 external 2k displays. I spent way too much time trying to get it to work. I just resorted to change magnification each time I dock/undock
    - davidp 8y ago
      Agreed. Pre-Wayland, Linux/X typically needs to treat all your screens as viewports onto a single virtual screen, which of course has to have a single DPI. This is a more common use case than some folks might imagine. My laptop screen is HiDPI, but as soon as I plug into a projector or screen sharing device that acts as a second display, things get realllllly weird: Linux/X does not know how to dynamically change screen DPI without logout/login. I work around it by just running my laptop screen at "low" DPI. I don't miss it TBH; I suspect that many people who do notice it have better eyesight than me (possibly an age thing). Wayland is supposed to help with this to some extent, but it's not yet ready for prime time.
    - lostmsu 8y ago
      What kind of issues? O-o
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - wlesieutre 8y ago
    And 4K is an easy one if you just want doubled density 1080p! I tried to set up a fractional scale once on a Surface Pro (Windows defaults to 1.5x) and the answer is "Set 2x in the UI, then configure xrandr to scale it back down 0.75x" This was a few years ago, maybe things have improved.
  - 8y ago
- zlynx 8y ago
  You should have tried Fedora with Wayland Gnome. Its been working pretty well with HiDPI since F-25 and it's F-28 now. Fedora still has some issues with mixing 1x and 2x DPI screens, but heh, so does Windows. And yeah, you still have to manually edit the fonts for the virtual consoles and the GRUB boot, if you care. Otherwise keep a magnifier handy to edit the boot commands. ;-)
matwood 8y ago
Spot on. I remember not long ago trying to replace my MBP with a linux box and asking/complaining about the HiDPI situation on linux on some forum. One the responses I received was no one needs HiDPI. Huh? I'm hoping this is just a down period for Apple. They have had issues before and corrected them, so we'll see.
- sbr464 8y ago
  Elementary OS Linux supports HiDPI pretty well.
  - bodi 8y ago
    Disclaimer I bought and supported Elementary OS last year. It's definitely got potential. Then you run straight into the braindead lack of UI decisions or "opinionated design" and are just kind of like ugh.. Ok.
- bitL 8y ago
  Linux Mint + Cinnamon (or even + Macbuntu + Docky if you want to feel like on Mac, including switching flat dock to 3D if you liked Mavericks), then in General settings choose HiDPI in the first option. I run like that for 3 years already, on 3x 4k monitors. You can thank me later ;-)
- dfox 8y ago
  What is somewhat ironic is that X11 is DPI aware at least since R6 (early 90's or so). But most modern applications tend to ignore that because it caused "stuff to look wrong" (as in not exactly pixel-exact same everywhere). FWIW Windows' GDI also has some DPI awareness since forever, but it didn't really work well to the extent of even Windows components having totally broken UI for anything other than 75dpi (caused by mixing of units in UI definition).
addicted 8y ago
While you are right that Apple isn't making machines specifically for the OP, the Pro was intended specifically for people like the OP. And the new MBP seems to have very different design goals than ealier MBPs. An obvious example is the ports. Older MBPs were renowned for the many different types of ports they supported. The new MBP seems to be geared towards people who use Macs for Office work, but want the most expensive version of a mac portable they can find. Before writing this comment I was gonna add that Apple's definition of Pro seems to have reduced to people who deal with videos and photos, but if they were catering to that audience they would have left the SD card reader in. The main difference between the old Apple portable lineup and the new one appears to me that in the old one, the Macbook, Air and the Pro all had overlapping but different design goals. Today's devices all seem to have the same primary design goals, with the differences existing so they can be slotted in different price brackets.
- arebop 8y ago
  The crappy GPUs make the MBPs much less appealing for video work than they used to be, compared to other laptops that are better able to cope with modern demands (4k, HDR, noise reduction, stabilization, etc.). So maybe scratch another profession off that list.
  - closeparen 8y ago
    Adobe Premier runs just fine on Windows, an ecosystem where raw power comes much cheaper. It wasn’t so much lackluster GPUs as the decline of Final Cut Pro.
- goalieca 8y ago
  I actually don’t mind giving up the ports on the mbp when these self-powered USB c docks have (HDMI, 3xUSB3, sd, micro sd, gigabit Ethernet, and power) The hubs are pretty small. And fit in travel bags nicely. They actually make pretty good dicking stations too
  - misnome 8y ago
    I felt this for a while, but then I went to do something on my old 2011 MacBook Air and it was a breath of fresh air to just plug things in (DisplayPort! USB-A!) and not have to go hunting for myriad dongles.
brightball 8y ago
I continued on with my 17" 2011 MBP for years and finally committed to switch to Linux last year when Apple's hardware policy became clear. I didn't want to do toe-in-the-water trial, so I researched for a while until I settled on something and ended up with a Dell Precision 7710. I really wanted to have a support line I could call if there was a problem and the Dell Developer Edition option has been excellent for that. It was not easy at first. I experimented with a lot of distros (Arch is not for the faint of heart) and ended up settling on Fedora 25 at the time. I really enjoyed it for about 6 months until I had to upgrade to Fedora 26 and my machine got frozen in this weird between-upgrades state. After that I decided to give Mint 18.3 w/ Cinnamon a try and I've been a very happy camper ever since. It's been an absolute joy to work with. Timeshift is pretty great too. 19 just hit beta and I'm looking forward to the upgrade. When I have to get on a Mac now, it feels clunky and in-the-way. I was an avid Mac user for 10+ years...even appeared as the Mac in one of those local "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC ads"...but I'll say it right now, it would take a job requirement to get me to go back at this point.
- megaman22 8y ago
  It's insane that they don't support a 17" option still. Those machines were beasts. If I could have afforded to spend twice the money on a laptop at the time, I would have gotten one - I still probably should have with the number of HPs and Dells and Asuss I've gone through since.
  - brightball 8y ago
    A friend of my just replaced his motherboard to keep it going. My laptop is my 3rd screen...not having a 17" is not at option as far as I'm concerned.
    - noir_lord 8y ago
      I went from a 17" Dell (1600x900) to a 14" Thinkpad (2560x1440) - It mattered a lot less than I expected and the hidpi is lovely.
wheels 8y ago
Odd. I've been waiting for a Macbook Pro that has something that excites me for a while (as my present one is 7 years old) and kind of gave up when the most recent Macbooks were announced. I threw some more RAM and a 4 core CPU in a desktop that I'd previously been using as a PVR, and have gotten along with GNOME just fine. While a lot of folks dislike GNOME 3, I actually find it to be one of the more innovative and interesting desktops going around at the moment (including macOS and the various Windows iterations). Oddly, the main thing I miss is that, while Mail.app has loads of annoyances, it still seems to do better with large IMAP folder better than anything on Linux except Thunderbird (which I find a bit clunky in the interface). Were it not for music production software, I'd be very tempted to do a wholesale switch (in my case back to Linux, as it's what I used in the decade before I got my first Mac).
- brightball 8y ago
  Now that Thunderbird is under active development again it should improve. The beta seems a good bit snappier.
- cmsj 8y ago
  "Were it not for" is exactly why Linux is such a sub-par desktop experience. GNOME/KDE are fine, but they're just the desktop shell, what is missing is high quality apps. If all you need is a terminal and a browser, then sure, Linux has you more than covered, but the apps for just about everything else are either lacking in UX or features or both. I ran nothing but Linux from 1997 to 2010 and I switched to macOS full time in 2011 when I came home from the birth of my son, and decided to take all of the photos of the pregnancy and birth, import them into iPhoto and use the book designer to order a big printed photo book. It was so nice to be able to do that at all, so easy to do, and the results so pleasing, that I immediately demoted my Linux partition to a VM and haven't looked back :)
  - emilsedgh 8y ago
    > KDE and Gnome are not only desktop shells. This is just not true. KDE and Gnome both have a huge app offering.
  - 8y ago
cormman 8y ago
> And then I installed Arch It's so cool to hate on Ubuntu, but it's the best desktop linux experience. You did yourself a disservice. What shines for linux is the package manager as a 1rst class citizen. I've had all sorts of issues with `brew` and no issues with `apt`
- ghaff 8y ago
  There are a few long-time MacOS design decisions that puzzle me. The lack of proper package management is one. Of course, the same might be said of Windows--although it's different enough from *nix that it's at least somewhat understandable. The other one is the limitations of the Finder. There are better third-party apps but they don't integrate as first-class citizens.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    Not all UNIXes have package management.
    - patrickg_zill 8y ago
      Which one doesn't? Solaris, Irix, SCO and everyone else I can think of does.
      - majewsky 8y ago
        From the top of my head, CoreOS. (It's built with Gentoo tooling, but intentionally ships without emerge etc. because you're supposed to use it as a base for Docker.)
      - pjmlp 8y ago
        Embedded UNIX like OSes, mainframes with POSIX system? Last time I used Solaris, around 2004, it had single application packages, like rpm before yum, meaning I had to manually track down the dependencies from Sun repositories.
  - kbob 8y ago
anothergoogler 8y ago
The problem is you expected an Arch Linux laptop install to "just work" when you were new to desktop Linux in general. Linux really isn't a "just work" desktop OS and it caters to power users. You might try Ubuntu as your first Linux distribution, but you will be continually frustrated if you expect a fresh Linux desktop install to fit like a glove.
- Philipp__ 8y ago
  Used Gentoo and FreeBSD for years. I knew what i was up to with Arch. I’ve used it in high school for few years with different desktop env. So I think I was more than prepared for Linux experience. Operating systems are my fetish if I may say so. :P
  - pphysch 8y ago
    If you can't handle a terminal-only environment, or even see it as less preferable to a desktop (you can install any WM you please in 15 minutes), it seems a bit disingenuous to claim you are "more than prepared for Linux experience".
- IOT_Apprentice 8y ago
  How long has Linux been around? Why haven't "power user 10x developer/hackers" solved building a Linux desktop that fits like a glove? That works out of the box with modern hardware for wifi, video, audio, bluetooth etc.?
eosrei 8y ago
Preface: I am a full-time Linux user, who has used both Mac and Windows extensively. My systems run Ubuntu with MATE, but I'd accept Mint/Cinnamon or GNOME too. Snow Leopard was nine years ago to be fair. The UI/UX of Linux has come a long way since then, but the UI/UX could be optimized further. What is wrong with it? To cover the common issues first: WiFi - Was an issue, but hasn't been on my machines at least six years. Sleep - Was an issue, but hasn't been on my machines at least four years. I've had this machine up to 60 day uptime, so 50+ sleeps, only restarting for the kernel update for example. HiDPI - Still an issue, but the apologist says "It was new tech! Just like the other two." Progress is being made, but it will be a while until seamless. Due to my familiarity (with all three OSs) my UI/UX views may be incorrect for new users. I don't want a flame war. I want to know what else needs to be done in Ubuntu 18.04 GNOME and/or Mint/MATE. I'll file issues, create bug reports, and perhaps fix some things myself. It's easier to see this forest from another forest. Edit: Further down the comments I found "Bluetooth" I'm going to look into it.
- harperlee 8y ago
  My biggest gripe with MacOS by far is that I can't hibernate. There is only this "sleep" mode that makes whatever it wants, with the promise that it will Just Work. I frequently find my laptop with an empty battery because who knows what. And a laptop that does not power up when you expect is the second worst kind of laptop (at least you don't lose the data, which would be the worst case). When searching for solutions, internet delivers hypertechnical answers that are reminiscent of when I was dealing with a Linux laptop (pmset -g assertions browsing). To me, apple as a "Unix that Just Works" is a failure. The hardware is high quality, but the brand-and-software premium price has stopped being a good deal for me.
  - blacksmith_tb 8y ago
    Tweaking prefs could help, make sure 'App Nap' is off, and see what the pmset hibernatemode is set to, it sounds like you want mode '1'.
  - gowld 8y ago
    https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/51725/do-macbooks-have-a-true-hibernate-option https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/51725/do-macbooks-...
simonebrunozzi 8y ago
Keyboard on Macbook Pro: it sucks big time. Can't believe how they shipped it this way.
ilikehurdles 8y ago
Arch is an OS for people who like hacking together an OS. For a full desktop experience, OpenSUSE, Ubuntu flavors, Elementary, and many other distributions are probably a better way to go.
peferron 8y ago
> You really start appreciating macOS when you go and install Linux on laptop and use it for a month Actually, the opposite happened to me: I started really disliking macOS after switching to Ubuntu + i3 on my main development machine. That's on a desktop computer though, not a laptop, so I didn't run into any Linux issues regarding battery & sleep. The experience might not be as good on a laptop, especially if the hardware is worse than my 2015 rMBP, which unfortunately seems quite common for non-Mac laptops even today.
dilatedmind 8y ago
i have both a mac book pro, and ubuntu running on a xps 13. the mac book has infintely better hardware: better keyboard, touchpad, screen, battery life. I think the real issue is laptops suck. I would rather have a mechanical keyboard, real mouse, and a 24" screen at eye level.
willtim 8y ago
> whole UI/UX thing on Linux just can't be compared to macOS and Cocoa. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I much prefer the look and feel of my i3/polybar setup. As a professional developer, I am not the target audience for Apple's UI.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  Those guys and gals creating Mac specific software are professional developers and pretty much the target audience of Apple's UI.
  - pphysch 8y ago
    They are "pretty much" not--it's the 10s of millions of non-developer consumers that drive Apple's UI/UX.
    - pjmlp 8y ago
      You should experience attending a WWDC, even if virtually.
      - pphysch 8y ago
        If we are talking developer tools, sure, they are developer oriented by definition. The overall Apple UX is clearly inheriting from the other side of the spectrum. Headless Linux is massively popular among developers for a reason, and not because the average developer is stuck-up.
        pjmlp 8y ago
        There are many developers on Apple systems that care about their exclusive Apple users, using macOS, iOS, tvOS and watchOS native APIs. They really care about the UI/UX that they provide to their users and what graphical tooling and OS APIs can make their jobs easy. Then there those using Apple computers as pretty GNU/Linux replacements, doing development work that should actually be done in a GNU/Linux distribution. Developer is not only someone coding away UNIX CLI apps.
yayana 8y ago
I don't know what to say about your comparisons.. I find all desktop OSes unusable at the moment and I think that is more embarrassing for Windows and OsX than Linux, since Linux has a lot of other places it can be besides desktop. As a developer I am going back to pure window managers without the "environment" of gnome or KDE. For non-developers, Tablets seem to be dieing so I guess you are supposed to keep a larger phone at home.
deleted 8y ago
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bitL 8y ago
Get a Linux Mint/Cinnamon on a notebook with 3k/4k HiDPI screen, 32GB RAM, install MacBuntu & Docky, and then come back to tell us about your experience ;-) It doesn't feel like a wannabe Mac slap-on anymore. I use such setup for some local users and it is smooth as on a Mac. I even had people asking me during a video call where I shared my desktop what kind of macOS mod it was.
merinowool 8y ago
I don't know. I had to use Mac at work and I hated it. It seems like for every stupid thing you needed to install an app or something. I had to spend considerable amount of time to make os x usable in dev scenario, whereas when I compare it to Ubuntu, Ubuntu has everything working out of the box. I am glad I don't have to use OS X any more.
awinder 8y ago
> Why their machines had so much success since Jobs return was that they were making machines that were equally loved by music/video/content creators, developers, mothers/fathers/grandparents, students etc etc... If you aren't satisfied with your dev. environment go spin up a VM, rent a server or just get other machine that will fulfill your needs. So Apple used to make machines that delighted all audiences, they now don't, so one of those audience (developers) needs to get in line and change. O...k? Apple should actually go out and understand why developers are lukewarm on their machines, and if they're not or just ignoring one of those audiences, then they're doing so at their own peril.
- yayana 8y ago
  Your comment seems pretty accurate to me, and developers are especially relevant since they are forced to use OsX if they want to do anything for the other parts of the apple ecosystem. Parts that are apparently important enough to ignore desktop will begin to suffer from less 3rd party developers and more hostile cross platform developers.. The intern who has to make it work in Windows store then having to find and try to boot the iMac to sign the iPhone binaries is the fast death of desktop and the slow death of Apple's profit centers.
- mikhailt 8y ago
  > Apple should actually go out and understand why developers are lukewarm on their machines, and if they're not or just ignoring one of those audiences, then they're doing so at their own peril. They did but only recently, it's why they've redoing MacPro and released iMac Pro, which was a good step in a way but it didn't help. They've admitted to failing the devs on this in that rare interview last year when they were talking about Mac Pro. The question is, will they apply the same lessons to MacBook Pro? They need to step up on the next generation and if they fail to do so, Microsoft is getting my money as I liked playing with Surface Book.
farresito 8y ago
You don't go to Arch for the UI/UX. I have used Windows, Mac, and Linux (Ubuntu, Fedora, and Arch). My experience with Arch (i3wm) has been vastly superior to anything I have used before. I would not trade it for anything. The thing about it is it caters to a certain group of people, and if you are not one of those, then you won't have a good time with it.
chewz 8y ago
I had enough of macOS disaster so I have installed ChromeOS on my Macbook Pro Retina and Debian Stretch via crouton. Never looked back - it is excellent combo of graphical environment of ChromeOS which really just works and Debian in terminal with zsh, Vim and all...
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asdgionionio 8y ago
>And then I installed Arch. Well that's your problem. You used a distro specifically designed to be spartan. The UI/UX of Arch can't be compared to macOS and Cocoa. No one would dispute that, not even Arch developers. But that says almost nothing about the UI/UX of, say, Ubuntu, which is quite polished indeed.
leephillips 8y ago
That's odd. After having to deal with MacOS for a while, I really appreciated Linux.
onyva 8y ago
Same here. It was the touch bar that did it for me. Didn’t mind the ports. Dell XPS with fedora 28 is so much faster, quieter and comfortable than any MacBook I had before (3 in total). Last MacBook I had bricked on me while I was trying to shut it down while at the library. It didn’t shutdown but started heating up in my bagpack. I noticed the smell and was able to take it out and open the lid and let it die naturally. Best thing about Apple though is still their ethical and generous customer service. Dell customer service is truly disgusting. At least in Germany. Would probably not buy a new Dell laptop but look for something else.
bitofhope 8y ago
>the worst thing is I can use Linux only as pure text/terminal UI Genuinely curious, but why on earth would you install Arch of all things, then? Surely you would have preferred any of the myriad distros that come with a desktop environment preinstalled? Even on Arch, GNOME is just a pacman command away. You don't have to run i3 with anime wallpaper.
albutr 8y ago
So far I've had a good experience with Kubuntu on an old Lenovo ideapad from ~7 years ago, after throwing a new SSD in to replace the old HDD. Everything so far has worked out of the box without any problems, I was able to get both MATLAB and Mendeley (the only two programs I was concerned would give me issues) up and running without any problem for my research, and I configured the desktop environment so it looks and functions almost identical to MacOS (at least for how I usually use MacOS, and with a few changes that I feel are more aesthetically pleasing). I tried this because my main 2015 macbook pro somehow developed an swollen battery, which has caused the case to warp really badly (wobbles distractingly when typing). There are reports that this swelling can, predictably, lead to explosions [1]. The ETA for arrival+service of new battery was ~ a week, full cost to me, and no loaner program. Pretty ridiculous for a known hardware defect. [1]https://medium.com/@dourvaris/my-2015-macbook-pro-retina-exploded-119ea5ea9d1f https://medium.com/@dourvaris/my-2015-macbook-pro-retina-exp...
- albutr 8y ago
  Pretty sure that no one will see this, but just to make a correction in case someone does, the new battery was totally covered even though the machine was out of warranty, and I dropped it off saturday afternoon and the machine was sent out, repaired, and ready to pick up tuesday morning. Surprisingly a really painless experience.
liquidify 8y ago
I agree with you. To me the 2 primary blunders are the keyboard / touch-bar and the removal of the magsafe. But the other things together are indicative of a train on the wrong track.

BlackjackCF 8y ago

Yup, agreed here. I shared the sentiments that this post had. Then I got a XPS 15" and booted ElementaryOS on it and trying to deal with the resolution issues from the 4K display was just a huge headache. Also, say what you will about the MBP, even though I paid $2k for my XPS, it still wasn't nearly as nice as the MBP's touchpad, etc. I would definitely still pay a premium for that MBP hardware.

stcredzero 8y ago
> booted ElementaryOS on it and trying to deal with the resolution issues from the 4K display was just a huge headache Jeez. The sentence, "I booted distro-X on it and trying to deal with the resolution issues from was just a huge headache," is still true in 2018. People were saying things like this about Linux 15 years ago!
- Symbiote 8y ago
  Windows 10 has resolution issues with HiDPI displays. I find KDE to be fine with a single 4K display. I think the difficulties come with mixing a standard and a HiDPI screen.
  - jay-saint 8y ago
    Definitely this, I have a Thinkpad with Ubuntu 18.04, built in 4k display with 2 external 2k displays. I spent way too much time trying to get it to work. I just resorted to change magnification each time I dock/undock
  - davidp 8y ago
    Agreed. Pre-Wayland, Linux/X typically needs to treat all your screens as viewports onto a single virtual screen, which of course has to have a single DPI. This is a more common use case than some folks might imagine. My laptop screen is HiDPI, but as soon as I plug into a projector or screen sharing device that acts as a second display, things get realllllly weird: Linux/X does not know how to dynamically change screen DPI without logout/login. I work around it by just running my laptop screen at "low" DPI. I don't miss it TBH; I suspect that many people who do notice it have better eyesight than me (possibly an age thing). Wayland is supposed to help with this to some extent, but it's not yet ready for prime time.
  - lostmsu 8y ago
    What kind of issues? O-o
- deleted 8y ago
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- wlesieutre 8y ago
  And 4K is an easy one if you just want doubled density 1080p! I tried to set up a fractional scale once on a Surface Pro (Windows defaults to 1.5x) and the answer is "Set 2x in the UI, then configure xrandr to scale it back down 0.75x" This was a few years ago, maybe things have improved.
- 8y ago
zlynx 8y ago
You should have tried Fedora with Wayland Gnome. Its been working pretty well with HiDPI since F-25 and it's F-28 now. Fedora still has some issues with mixing 1x and 2x DPI screens, but heh, so does Windows. And yeah, you still have to manually edit the fonts for the virtual consoles and the GRUB boot, if you care. Otherwise keep a magnifier handy to edit the boot commands. ;-)

matwood 8y ago

Spot on. I remember not long ago trying to replace my MBP with a linux box and asking/complaining about the HiDPI situation on linux on some forum. One the responses I received was no one needs HiDPI. Huh? I'm hoping this is just a down period for Apple. They have had issues before and corrected them, so we'll see.

sbr464 8y ago
Elementary OS Linux supports HiDPI pretty well.
- bodi 8y ago
  Disclaimer I bought and supported Elementary OS last year. It's definitely got potential. Then you run straight into the braindead lack of UI decisions or "opinionated design" and are just kind of like ugh.. Ok.
bitL 8y ago
Linux Mint + Cinnamon (or even + Macbuntu + Docky if you want to feel like on Mac, including switching flat dock to 3D if you liked Mavericks), then in General settings choose HiDPI in the first option. I run like that for 3 years already, on 3x 4k monitors. You can thank me later ;-)
dfox 8y ago
What is somewhat ironic is that X11 is DPI aware at least since R6 (early 90's or so). But most modern applications tend to ignore that because it caused "stuff to look wrong" (as in not exactly pixel-exact same everywhere). FWIW Windows' GDI also has some DPI awareness since forever, but it didn't really work well to the extent of even Windows components having totally broken UI for anything other than 75dpi (caused by mixing of units in UI definition).

addicted 8y ago

While you are right that Apple isn't making machines specifically for the OP, the Pro was intended specifically for people like the OP. And the new MBP seems to have very different design goals than ealier MBPs. An obvious example is the ports. Older MBPs were renowned for the many different types of ports they supported. The new MBP seems to be geared towards people who use Macs for Office work, but want the most expensive version of a mac portable they can find. Before writing this comment I was gonna add that Apple's definition of Pro seems to have reduced to people who deal with videos and photos, but if they were catering to that audience they would have left the SD card reader in. The main difference between the old Apple portable lineup and the new one appears to me that in the old one, the Macbook, Air and the Pro all had overlapping but different design goals. Today's devices all seem to have the same primary design goals, with the differences existing so they can be slotted in different price brackets.

arebop 8y ago
The crappy GPUs make the MBPs much less appealing for video work than they used to be, compared to other laptops that are better able to cope with modern demands (4k, HDR, noise reduction, stabilization, etc.). So maybe scratch another profession off that list.
- closeparen 8y ago
  Adobe Premier runs just fine on Windows, an ecosystem where raw power comes much cheaper. It wasn’t so much lackluster GPUs as the decline of Final Cut Pro.
goalieca 8y ago
I actually don’t mind giving up the ports on the mbp when these self-powered USB c docks have (HDMI, 3xUSB3, sd, micro sd, gigabit Ethernet, and power) The hubs are pretty small. And fit in travel bags nicely. They actually make pretty good dicking stations too
- misnome 8y ago
  I felt this for a while, but then I went to do something on my old 2011 MacBook Air and it was a breath of fresh air to just plug things in (DisplayPort! USB-A!) and not have to go hunting for myriad dongles.

brightball 8y ago

I continued on with my 17" 2011 MBP for years and finally committed to switch to Linux last year when Apple's hardware policy became clear. I didn't want to do toe-in-the-water trial, so I researched for a while until I settled on something and ended up with a Dell Precision 7710. I really wanted to have a support line I could call if there was a problem and the Dell Developer Edition option has been excellent for that. It was not easy at first. I experimented with a lot of distros (Arch is not for the faint of heart) and ended up settling on Fedora 25 at the time. I really enjoyed it for about 6 months until I had to upgrade to Fedora 26 and my machine got frozen in this weird between-upgrades state. After that I decided to give Mint 18.3 w/ Cinnamon a try and I've been a very happy camper ever since. It's been an absolute joy to work with. Timeshift is pretty great too. 19 just hit beta and I'm looking forward to the upgrade. When I have to get on a Mac now, it feels clunky and in-the-way. I was an avid Mac user for 10+ years...even appeared as the Mac in one of those local "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC ads"...but I'll say it right now, it would take a job requirement to get me to go back at this point.

megaman22 8y ago
It's insane that they don't support a 17" option still. Those machines were beasts. If I could have afforded to spend twice the money on a laptop at the time, I would have gotten one - I still probably should have with the number of HPs and Dells and Asuss I've gone through since.
- brightball 8y ago
  A friend of my just replaced his motherboard to keep it going. My laptop is my 3rd screen...not having a 17" is not at option as far as I'm concerned.
  - noir_lord 8y ago
    I went from a 17" Dell (1600x900) to a 14" Thinkpad (2560x1440) - It mattered a lot less than I expected and the hidpi is lovely.

wheels 8y ago

Odd. I've been waiting for a Macbook Pro that has something that excites me for a while (as my present one is 7 years old) and kind of gave up when the most recent Macbooks were announced. I threw some more RAM and a 4 core CPU in a desktop that I'd previously been using as a PVR, and have gotten along with GNOME just fine. While a lot of folks dislike GNOME 3, I actually find it to be one of the more innovative and interesting desktops going around at the moment (including macOS and the various Windows iterations). Oddly, the main thing I miss is that, while Mail.app has loads of annoyances, it still seems to do better with large IMAP folder better than anything on Linux except Thunderbird (which I find a bit clunky in the interface). Were it not for music production software, I'd be very tempted to do a wholesale switch (in my case back to Linux, as it's what I used in the decade before I got my first Mac).

brightball 8y ago
Now that Thunderbird is under active development again it should improve. The beta seems a good bit snappier.
cmsj 8y ago
"Were it not for" is exactly why Linux is such a sub-par desktop experience. GNOME/KDE are fine, but they're just the desktop shell, what is missing is high quality apps. If all you need is a terminal and a browser, then sure, Linux has you more than covered, but the apps for just about everything else are either lacking in UX or features or both. I ran nothing but Linux from 1997 to 2010 and I switched to macOS full time in 2011 when I came home from the birth of my son, and decided to take all of the photos of the pregnancy and birth, import them into iPhoto and use the book designer to order a big printed photo book. It was so nice to be able to do that at all, so easy to do, and the results so pleasing, that I immediately demoted my Linux partition to a VM and haven't looked back :)
- emilsedgh 8y ago
  > KDE and Gnome are not only desktop shells. This is just not true. KDE and Gnome both have a huge app offering.
- 8y ago

cormman 8y ago

> And then I installed Arch It's so cool to hate on Ubuntu, but it's the best desktop linux experience. You did yourself a disservice. What shines for linux is the package manager as a 1rst class citizen. I've had all sorts of issues with `brew` and no issues with `apt`

ghaff 8y ago
There are a few long-time MacOS design decisions that puzzle me. The lack of proper package management is one. Of course, the same might be said of Windows--although it's different enough from *nix that it's at least somewhat understandable. The other one is the limitations of the Finder. There are better third-party apps but they don't integrate as first-class citizens.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  Not all UNIXes have package management.
  - patrickg_zill 8y ago
    Which one doesn't? Solaris, Irix, SCO and everyone else I can think of does.
    - majewsky 8y ago
      From the top of my head, CoreOS. (It's built with Gentoo tooling, but intentionally ships without emerge etc. because you're supposed to use it as a base for Docker.)
    - pjmlp 8y ago
      Embedded UNIX like OSes, mainframes with POSIX system? Last time I used Solaris, around 2004, it had single application packages, like rpm before yum, meaning I had to manually track down the dependencies from Sun repositories.
- kbob 8y ago

anothergoogler 8y ago

The problem is you expected an Arch Linux laptop install to "just work" when you were new to desktop Linux in general. Linux really isn't a "just work" desktop OS and it caters to power users. You might try Ubuntu as your first Linux distribution, but you will be continually frustrated if you expect a fresh Linux desktop install to fit like a glove.

Philipp__ 8y ago
Used Gentoo and FreeBSD for years. I knew what i was up to with Arch. I’ve used it in high school for few years with different desktop env. So I think I was more than prepared for Linux experience. Operating systems are my fetish if I may say so. :P
- pphysch 8y ago
  If you can't handle a terminal-only environment, or even see it as less preferable to a desktop (you can install any WM you please in 15 minutes), it seems a bit disingenuous to claim you are "more than prepared for Linux experience".
IOT_Apprentice 8y ago
How long has Linux been around? Why haven't "power user 10x developer/hackers" solved building a Linux desktop that fits like a glove? That works out of the box with modern hardware for wifi, video, audio, bluetooth etc.?

eosrei 8y ago

Preface: I am a full-time Linux user, who has used both Mac and Windows extensively. My systems run Ubuntu with MATE, but I'd accept Mint/Cinnamon or GNOME too. Snow Leopard was nine years ago to be fair. The UI/UX of Linux has come a long way since then, but the UI/UX could be optimized further. What is wrong with it? To cover the common issues first: WiFi - Was an issue, but hasn't been on my machines at least six years. Sleep - Was an issue, but hasn't been on my machines at least four years. I've had this machine up to 60 day uptime, so 50+ sleeps, only restarting for the kernel update for example. HiDPI - Still an issue, but the apologist says "It was new tech! Just like the other two." Progress is being made, but it will be a while until seamless. Due to my familiarity (with all three OSs) my UI/UX views may be incorrect for new users. I don't want a flame war. I want to know what else needs to be done in Ubuntu 18.04 GNOME and/or Mint/MATE. I'll file issues, create bug reports, and perhaps fix some things myself. It's easier to see this forest from another forest. Edit: Further down the comments I found "Bluetooth" I'm going to look into it.

harperlee 8y ago
My biggest gripe with MacOS by far is that I can't hibernate. There is only this "sleep" mode that makes whatever it wants, with the promise that it will Just Work. I frequently find my laptop with an empty battery because who knows what. And a laptop that does not power up when you expect is the second worst kind of laptop (at least you don't lose the data, which would be the worst case). When searching for solutions, internet delivers hypertechnical answers that are reminiscent of when I was dealing with a Linux laptop (pmset -g assertions browsing). To me, apple as a "Unix that Just Works" is a failure. The hardware is high quality, but the brand-and-software premium price has stopped being a good deal for me.
- blacksmith_tb 8y ago
  Tweaking prefs could help, make sure 'App Nap' is off, and see what the pmset hibernatemode is set to, it sounds like you want mode '1'.
- gowld 8y ago
  https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/51725/do-macbooks-have-a-true-hibernate-option https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/51725/do-macbooks-...

simonebrunozzi 8y ago

Keyboard on Macbook Pro: it sucks big time. Can't believe how they shipped it this way.

ilikehurdles 8y ago

Arch is an OS for people who like hacking together an OS. For a full desktop experience, OpenSUSE, Ubuntu flavors, Elementary, and many other distributions are probably a better way to go.

peferron 8y ago

> You really start appreciating macOS when you go and install Linux on laptop and use it for a month Actually, the opposite happened to me: I started really disliking macOS after switching to Ubuntu + i3 on my main development machine. That's on a desktop computer though, not a laptop, so I didn't run into any Linux issues regarding battery & sleep. The experience might not be as good on a laptop, especially if the hardware is worse than my 2015 rMBP, which unfortunately seems quite common for non-Mac laptops even today.

dilatedmind 8y ago

i have both a mac book pro, and ubuntu running on a xps 13. the mac book has infintely better hardware: better keyboard, touchpad, screen, battery life. I think the real issue is laptops suck. I would rather have a mechanical keyboard, real mouse, and a 24" screen at eye level.

willtim 8y ago

> whole UI/UX thing on Linux just can't be compared to macOS and Cocoa. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I much prefer the look and feel of my i3/polybar setup. As a professional developer, I am not the target audience for Apple's UI.

pjmlp 8y ago
Those guys and gals creating Mac specific software are professional developers and pretty much the target audience of Apple's UI.
- pphysch 8y ago
  They are "pretty much" not--it's the 10s of millions of non-developer consumers that drive Apple's UI/UX.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    You should experience attending a WWDC, even if virtually.
    - pphysch 8y ago
      If we are talking developer tools, sure, they are developer oriented by definition. The overall Apple UX is clearly inheriting from the other side of the spectrum. Headless Linux is massively popular among developers for a reason, and not because the average developer is stuck-up.
      - pjmlp 8y ago
        There are many developers on Apple systems that care about their exclusive Apple users, using macOS, iOS, tvOS and watchOS native APIs. They really care about the UI/UX that they provide to their users and what graphical tooling and OS APIs can make their jobs easy. Then there those using Apple computers as pretty GNU/Linux replacements, doing development work that should actually be done in a GNU/Linux distribution. Developer is not only someone coding away UNIX CLI apps.

yayana 8y ago

I don't know what to say about your comparisons.. I find all desktop OSes unusable at the moment and I think that is more embarrassing for Windows and OsX than Linux, since Linux has a lot of other places it can be besides desktop. As a developer I am going back to pure window managers without the "environment" of gnome or KDE. For non-developers, Tablets seem to be dieing so I guess you are supposed to keep a larger phone at home.

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bitL 8y ago

Get a Linux Mint/Cinnamon on a notebook with 3k/4k HiDPI screen, 32GB RAM, install MacBuntu & Docky, and then come back to tell us about your experience ;-) It doesn't feel like a wannabe Mac slap-on anymore. I use such setup for some local users and it is smooth as on a Mac. I even had people asking me during a video call where I shared my desktop what kind of macOS mod it was.

merinowool 8y ago

I don't know. I had to use Mac at work and I hated it. It seems like for every stupid thing you needed to install an app or something. I had to spend considerable amount of time to make os x usable in dev scenario, whereas when I compare it to Ubuntu, Ubuntu has everything working out of the box. I am glad I don't have to use OS X any more.

awinder 8y ago

> Why their machines had so much success since Jobs return was that they were making machines that were equally loved by music/video/content creators, developers, mothers/fathers/grandparents, students etc etc... If you aren't satisfied with your dev. environment go spin up a VM, rent a server or just get other machine that will fulfill your needs. So Apple used to make machines that delighted all audiences, they now don't, so one of those audience (developers) needs to get in line and change. O...k? Apple should actually go out and understand why developers are lukewarm on their machines, and if they're not or just ignoring one of those audiences, then they're doing so at their own peril.

yayana 8y ago
Your comment seems pretty accurate to me, and developers are especially relevant since they are forced to use OsX if they want to do anything for the other parts of the apple ecosystem. Parts that are apparently important enough to ignore desktop will begin to suffer from less 3rd party developers and more hostile cross platform developers.. The intern who has to make it work in Windows store then having to find and try to boot the iMac to sign the iPhone binaries is the fast death of desktop and the slow death of Apple's profit centers.
mikhailt 8y ago
> Apple should actually go out and understand why developers are lukewarm on their machines, and if they're not or just ignoring one of those audiences, then they're doing so at their own peril. They did but only recently, it's why they've redoing MacPro and released iMac Pro, which was a good step in a way but it didn't help. They've admitted to failing the devs on this in that rare interview last year when they were talking about Mac Pro. The question is, will they apply the same lessons to MacBook Pro? They need to step up on the next generation and if they fail to do so, Microsoft is getting my money as I liked playing with Surface Book.

farresito 8y ago

You don't go to Arch for the UI/UX. I have used Windows, Mac, and Linux (Ubuntu, Fedora, and Arch). My experience with Arch (i3wm) has been vastly superior to anything I have used before. I would not trade it for anything. The thing about it is it caters to a certain group of people, and if you are not one of those, then you won't have a good time with it.

chewz 8y ago

I had enough of macOS disaster so I have installed ChromeOS on my Macbook Pro Retina and Debian Stretch via crouton. Never looked back - it is excellent combo of graphical environment of ChromeOS which really just works and Debian in terminal with zsh, Vim and all...

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asdgionionio 8y ago

>And then I installed Arch. Well that's your problem. You used a distro specifically designed to be spartan. The UI/UX of Arch can't be compared to macOS and Cocoa. No one would dispute that, not even Arch developers. But that says almost nothing about the UI/UX of, say, Ubuntu, which is quite polished indeed.

leephillips 8y ago

That's odd. After having to deal with MacOS for a while, I really appreciated Linux.

onyva 8y ago

Same here. It was the touch bar that did it for me. Didn’t mind the ports. Dell XPS with fedora 28 is so much faster, quieter and comfortable than any MacBook I had before (3 in total). Last MacBook I had bricked on me while I was trying to shut it down while at the library. It didn’t shutdown but started heating up in my bagpack. I noticed the smell and was able to take it out and open the lid and let it die naturally. Best thing about Apple though is still their ethical and generous customer service. Dell customer service is truly disgusting. At least in Germany. Would probably not buy a new Dell laptop but look for something else.

bitofhope 8y ago

>the worst thing is I can use Linux only as pure text/terminal UI Genuinely curious, but why on earth would you install Arch of all things, then? Surely you would have preferred any of the myriad distros that come with a desktop environment preinstalled? Even on Arch, GNOME is just a pacman command away. You don't have to run i3 with anime wallpaper.

albutr 8y ago

So far I've had a good experience with Kubuntu on an old Lenovo ideapad from ~7 years ago, after throwing a new SSD in to replace the old HDD. Everything so far has worked out of the box without any problems, I was able to get both MATLAB and Mendeley (the only two programs I was concerned would give me issues) up and running without any problem for my research, and I configured the desktop environment so it looks and functions almost identical to MacOS (at least for how I usually use MacOS, and with a few changes that I feel are more aesthetically pleasing). I tried this because my main 2015 macbook pro somehow developed an swollen battery, which has caused the case to warp really badly (wobbles distractingly when typing). There are reports that this swelling can, predictably, lead to explosions [1]. The ETA for arrival+service of new battery was ~ a week, full cost to me, and no loaner program. Pretty ridiculous for a known hardware defect. [1]https://medium.com/@dourvaris/my-2015-macbook-pro-retina-exploded-119ea5ea9d1f https://medium.com/@dourvaris/my-2015-macbook-pro-retina-exp...

albutr 8y ago
Pretty sure that no one will see this, but just to make a correction in case someone does, the new battery was totally covered even though the machine was out of warranty, and I dropped it off saturday afternoon and the machine was sent out, repaired, and ready to pick up tuesday morning. Surprisingly a really painless experience.

liquidify 8y ago

I agree with you. To me the 2 primary blunders are the keyboard / touch-bar and the removal of the magsafe. But the other things together are indicative of a train on the wrong track.