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There is only 2 good reasons to buy a mac. Applications you use are Mac dependent, you need crazy long battery life. I haven't used a chrome book, I have heard
by krob 8y ago
There is only 2 good reasons to buy a mac. Applications you use are Mac dependent, you need crazy long battery life. I haven't used a chrome book, I have heard they're pretty good. Considering those things, if you want to get power, buy a Dell Precision or an HP Zbook, or a Lenovo T series laptop. Dell Precision laptops are built like tanks, real workstation workhorses. Dell/Zbook/lenovo laptops will never give you fantastic battery life, but boy will they blow the doors performance-wise off anything apple has to offer you. If you do open source development, moving to kubuntu w/ plasma will feel quite comfortable for most people. Use Latte-Dock, boom, got your osx style doc, and it's fast. Font rendering on linux these days is insanely nice, fonts are bold, crisp. The only negative these days I say is go with AMD chips on the laptops since they have better support and don't have screen tearing like nvidia does atm due to lack of proper vsync support.
Vmware, so long as you run it on a non-ntfs partition will run insanely fast. I run windows 10 on vmware, and it runs fantastic.
My laptop is a Dell Precision 7510 w/ 64gb of ram, 512gb NVME Samsung Evo 950, + 2tb Samsung Evo 850, Quadro M2000M w/ Intel graphics. Runs beautifully on linux. Just don't expect to get fantastic battery life from it in linux as right now, that is the only thing that I think needs a lot of work. Windows got horrible battery life as well. I think Apple with osx has windows & linux beat on battery life.
Also.. with regard to keyboards, if you type fast, just say you're a touch typist, I'd say that Dell Precision & Lenovo keyboards are some of the best out there for typing for long time. If say you type 60wpm+ you'll enjoy them considerably. If you type for any duration on a mac, the tips of your fingers over time will start to feel a stabbing feeling, I don't get this with my dell. I do have a Late 2014 model mac laptop which I just replaced the keyboard, and I still have this problem with the laptop, something to do with short key travel.
- FabHK 8y agoThe MB Pro the OP is asking about doesn’t even have crazy long battery life though. Its battery stores less energy than the MB Air IIRC. My 2016 MBP ‘Escape’ gives up after about 4 hours with not much more than Safari browser and an editor running.
- jsjohnst 8y agoCheck energy consumption tab in activity viewer. Something is likely vampiring power without you realizing.
- krob 8y agoYes, did that. Nothing showed up :/
- FabHK 8y agoNeither here. Safari was chugging along, WindowServer, bla bla. Nothing suspicious. I should add that a "Service Battery" warning has popped up recently, so maybe it's just an issue with my machine. Will bring it in.
- jsjohnst 8y ago> I should add that a "Service Battery" warning has popped up recently, so maybe it's just an issue with my machine. Yep, all 2016 MBPs have terrible battery life, when they have faulty batteries and are directly telling you that’s the issue!
- FabHK 8y agoThat battery warning came only recently. Battery life has been terrible all along. Anecdata, anecdata. But again, the design capacity of the MBP battery is less than that of the MB Air. It’s a questionable trade-off for a “pro” machine.
- jsjohnst 8y ago> the design capacity of the MBP battery is less than that of the MB Air. Correct, the MB Air is rated at 12hrs for “wireless web”, the MB Pro is 10hrs for “wireless web”. > It’s a questionable trade-off for a “pro” machine. You must have a very opinionated view of “pro” that doesn’t fit the normal reality. A usual “pro” (at least in Apple’s context) is usually (but obviously not always) sitting somewhere with a power outlet. The battery is intended for meetings or other moderate duration periods of disconnect. If you want a laptop for being completely mobile, then go with one designed for that purpose (MacBook, MacBook Air, iPad w/ keyboard). If you want desktop class performance in a portable form factor, then there are trade-offs, and battery being one of the heaviest parts, that’s usually it. While I think Apple’s obsession with thinness at all costs is questionable to me, laptop weight being as minimal as possible isn’t, especially to my back that carries it each day.
- slipwalker 8y ago> There is only 2 good reasons to buy a mac. Applications you use are Mac dependent, you need crazy long battery life. how about compiling valid ( apple store's compatible ) iOS apps ?... Xcode falls into the first category, i reckon. Is there any viable alternatives ? My trials with hackintoshed VMs ( host is running Linux ) is not good at all. Frustrating, actually.