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I'm sorry, but I see this as uncalled-for cynicism for the sake of it. Can you point me to an alternative to Apple hardware that is as polished and solid as App
by caiob 8y ago
I'm sorry, but I see this as uncalled-for cynicism for the sake of it. Can you point me to an alternative to Apple hardware that is as polished and solid as Apple's MacBooks?
- cimmanom 8y agoBut does that matter when you need a laptop with 32GB of RAM?
- slantyyz 8y agoForget 32GB, looks like 128GB RAM laptops have just arrived: https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/6/13/17458712/lenovo-thinkpad-p52-128gb-dell-workstation https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/6/13/17458712/l...
- caiob 8y agoBut what about battery life?
- slantyyz 8y agoIf you're the type of user who actually needs 128GB of RAM in a laptop, you're generally willing to make the trade-off on battery life.
- cimmanom 8y agoSarcasm? I'd take a MacBook Pro a pound heavier and several mm thicker in order to have more RAM. I'd also gladly accept 5 hours of battery instead of 10 (or 2 instead of 4) when 95% of the reason I want a laptop instead of a desktop is not to unplug entirely but to shuttle it between home, work, the coffee shop, my desk, the couch, etc. It used to be that enough of Apple's customers were using their computers for workstation-class workloads (photo and video editing, software compilation, data processing) that there was good reason to provide us a workstation-class portable, not just a notebook-class ultra-light (which even the MBP counts as by my standards). You'd think that now that Apple is making such inroads in enterprise and needs developers on their platform to support the iOS App Store that they'd see the value in continuing to make such a machine available.
- slantyyz 8y ago> I'd take a MacBook Pro a pound heavier and several mm thicker in order to have more RAM. So basically, an old unibody Macbook Pro could achieve that. Even though I left Mac, that unibody design is probably my favorite laptop form factor ever. It balanced size and functionality (and end user expandability) perfectly. The only time you needed a dongle was if you were going to hook it up to an HDMI/DVI/VGA monitor. Otherwise everything was self contained.
- cimmanom 8y agoYup. Too bad a 2012 MBP won't support 32GB. Also, the latest generation of MBPs is thinner and lighter than the original retina display versions. You might be able to get passable battery life with the higher-energy-consumption chipset that apparently is necessary for >16GB if they just went back up to the old retina form factor.
- caiob 8y agoNo sarcasm. I'm genuinely curious about it. You gotta admit that most customers would take the former over the latter though. Less than 1% of their user-base needs a laptop with 128+GB of RAM.
- slantyyz 8y agoThe problem is the product lines are muddy now. "Pro" on the laptop line no longer has the same meaning as "Pro" on the desktop line. It used to mean "workstation class" on both lines. "Workstation class" meant that you had more upgradeability and performance options. "Pro" as it relates to Macbooks simply means "premium". There's nothing wrong with premium, the Macbook Pros are still very performant, but you're going to lose the people who put high value on what "Pro" used to mean for Apple laptops. If you look at Dell, Lenovo and others, they offer "workstation" class laptops for their "pro" markets. They're not the highest volume sellers, but they don't alienate any of those users by forcing them to switch to their "premium" business laptops.
- cimmanom 8y ago
- rorski 8y agohttp://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/xps-13-laptop/spd/xps-13-9370-laptop http://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/xps-13-laptop/sp...
- jnwatson 8y agoNot in my experience. We have 6 of them running Ubuntu. Constant heating/throttling problems. A persistent USB power problem. Frequent kernel oopses. Coming from a Mac, stuff that just works there is a constant struggle on the Dell XPS 13. It is pretty though.
- emodendroket 8y agoMy experience with Linux drivers has always been dicey... do they also have lots of issues running Windows? Heat and throttling problems are, in my experience, endemic to Macbooks too.
- chncdcksn 8y agoPurchased one about a year ago. Screen, sound card, and keyboard needed to be replaced on arrival. Replaced the screen and sound card under warranty and sold it disclosing that the keyboard’s spacebar sometimes inserted two spaces on one press. Have Dell’s QA issues on this laptop gotten any better?
- 51Cards 8y agoI'll throw Lenovo and the Dell XPS line to start. Sadly the line I loved, the VAIO Z, is gone now but hardware wise they were excellent too.
- JDWolf 8y agorecently bought a top of the line ideapad, after removing all the bloatware and adjusting the settings and registry for speed, it still went slow in a way that could not be captured in performance monitors, took it back and got an old thinkpad with new ram/ssd/battery that works perfectly
- doktrin 8y agoSpec wise every single PC manufacturer has more performant machines than Apple at the same price point, and I at least definitely wouldn't describe the current line of Macbooks as polished or solid. My personal experience, at least, has been the complete opposite - a machine that's basically falling apart after 1 year with multiple hardware problems.
- caiob 8y agoperformant != polished
- doktrin 8y agoyeah man like I said my experience is that macbooks these days are anything but polished - in the sense that even when everything works, the experience has some fundamental flaws (sub-par keyboard, unnecessary smartbar, dongle bonanza). That's not polished. IMO both Dell and Lenovo make machines that are either as good or better visually than current gen macbooks, and they absolutely stomp Apple on performance.
- slantyyz 8y agoHardware-wise, my ASUS 15" Zenbook Pro (UX501VW) is about as polished as my old 2011 15" Macbook Pro (the 15" unibodies were my favorite Apple form factor ever). And I paid less than half of what I paid for my old MBP. Sure, you can get nitpicky, but for the stuff I care about and notice, they're pretty much the same. Worth noting, I consider ASUS to be a second tier PC brand, generally a notch below the likes of a Lenovo, Dell or HP business laptop.
- berbec 8y agoCause that's what we need: Shiny, slow computers! Sign me up for a bakers dozen. I don't understand the fanboy defence of everything apple does, even the obviously stupid stuff. Upgrade the hardware is such a no brainer every hardware manufacturer does it nearly yearly. Except apple.
- sidr 8y agoMBPs circa 2014 were/are more polished and solid than brand new 2018 MBPs. They've actually taken steps back in offering anti-features that their users don't want.
- krylon 8y agoI have an Asus ZenBook running GNU/Linux that I am very happy with.