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For years I've been very happy, productive, and at times stubbornly loyal on my Linux / Lenovo setup, but it seems that so many of my colleagues have embraced M

For years I've been very happy, productive, and at times stubbornly loyal on my Linux / Lenovo setup, but it seems that so many of my colleagues have embraced Mac that it's gotten harder and harder to not be on the bandwagon. I recently hit the point of deciding maybe I should just have a Mac, but I seem to have done so after Macbook Pros have passed their peak. I don't follow consumer hardware trends much, so what does HN think - is it now too late to be getting on the Macbook Pro Kool-Aid? Will other platforms make a comeback soon? edit: I'm aware this article is about the desktops, but it seems to be part of a trend that Apple isn't that focused on the workstation-use-case anymore, and is pushing ever more into mobile.

AdmiralAsshat 7y ago
The System76 Thelio seems to be picking up steam for a high-end native-Linux desktop.
a-afterglow 7y ago
Personally, I'll avoid any Apple products just because of the not uncommon horror stories I hear from customer service.
- mfatica 7y ago
  To be fair what PC company does not have horror stories when it comes to customer service? The only exception I've personally experienced is Dell enterprise support, but that's a far reach from what any consumer will have.
  - dvtrn 7y ago
    Strictly when it comes to customer service? Maybe Razer? Their prices are definitely horror inducing for some of their peripherals, otoh...but that’s probably applicable to a large part of the “gaming peripherals” market.
    - gambiting 7y ago
      Wait, what? I own a razer laptop but I bought it with knowledge that if anything goes wrong Razer support is worse than useless.
      - dvtrn 7y ago
        YMMV? I have the last generation blade laptop, and granted Ive only had two tickets opened with support but they were (at least in my experience) surprisingly fast and on the money with both experiences. I didn’t want to speak for everyone so that’s why I posited the italicized “Maybe” because PC support is like throwing darts at a dart board. From ten miles away. With headwind.
        myoon 7y ago
        If you go to the Razer subreddit, there's reasonable consensus that buying from the Microsoft Store, Best Buy, etc. is highly recommended for the extended warranty, which you will have a high chance of using if you regularly game on it.
        dvtrn 7y ago
        Interesting. Both of my problems were hardware related (usb port and a power adapter), but I wouldn’t consider myself a “hardcore” gamer, I bought my Razer Blade to play a specific game (The Dishonored trilogy) at the time because I travelled quite often for work and had the disposable funds for it. Maybe I got extremely lucky with my build, who knows. Sucks to hear other people are having such a frustrating go at things. Price aside I’ve had a pleasant experience with Razer.
        gambiting 7y ago
        In my experience Razer is both good and bad - good because literally any issue you have with your laptop they will just offer to replace it, bad because the replacement can take 4+ weeks. I'm also slightly worried that it's literally impossible to buy any replacement parts from them, if the need ever arises. From companies like Dell or HP you can order literally any part, down to individual switches, if you know the part number.
  - a-afterglow 7y ago
    That's true. If I had an SV engineer salary I probably wouldn't think it too much. But the cheapest MacBook Pro is a quarter of my yearly earnings, so right now I will choose what is cheaper to maintain.
  - rchaud 7y ago
    In college, I worked at my school's IT helpdesk, and have bought Latitude and Vostro models ever since. Next Business Day support, no questions asked. You don't have to be part of a corporation to get that level of service. I had a busted heat sink on my cheap $500 vostro, and they sent a technician over to fix it.
mfatica 7y ago
It does seem like Macbook Pros have been on the decline. But this new Mac Pro feels like Apple turning back to the workstation use case anymore, especially with a quad-GPU option. I'm hoping the departure of Jony Ive will turn the Macbook Pros back in the right direction.
save_ferris 7y ago
IMO The current MacBook design iteration has mostly been a disappointment. The hardware quality has materially worsened over the previous generation, with numerous reports of keyboard, screen, and speaker issues. They sacrificed far too much in order to achieve the thin form factor. The touchbar is also a terrible joke. I’ve had two current-gen MBPs through work and both of them have completely convinced me against buying my own. They’re both so inferior to the design of the previous generation.
- reymus 7y ago
  Your points are completely valid, I get your frustration. But you are comparing against previous generations of MacBooks. I would like to know your thoughts when comparing against e.g. a top tier ThinkPad running Windows or Linux.
  - save_ferris 7y ago
    I can’t honestly give you that comparison because I’ve never used a thinkpad long enough to get to know it. I’ve been Mac-only for 8 years now, but I’m looking around to see if the community decides on a solid MBP replacement of my old MBP dies.
  - mattnewton 7y ago
    I couldn’t use it long enough to unlearn using the trackpad as a crutch. Thinkpad trackpads are pretty terrible by comparison. I also hated trying to use windows and didn’t want to keep maintaining a Linux install, though that might have gotten better lately. I am going to ride out my personal 2013 mbp until they fix the keyboards on the new machines. I have a new one at work, and each incremental fix still breaks after a while and I don’t think they have ironed it out. It’s a beautiful feeling machine and I want to love it. However, you can get everything else perfect and screw up the keyboard, and it doesn’t matter because I can’t get work done. If they don’t get it right by the time my current MBP dies completely I guess I’ll see how far Linux has come. I’d suggest the same for you - even as an apple shareholder and former employee I can’t recommend a programmer buy a laptop with such an unreliable keyboard. But if they nail the keyboard in the next generation, absolutely hop aboard the bandwagon. Pretty much it comes down to the flaky keyboards for me. USBC support is just getting better, the displays and trackpad are still best in class, and a lightweight aluminum unibody design is something I didn’t think I would miss but you absolutely do. The OS is widely supported by a community of other developers, and it is super easy to set up a productive development environment. And the OS is widely supported by hardware and software vendors too, so you don’t have to fight compatibility issues nearly as much as Linux.
throwayEngineer 7y ago
Given Apple's track record of being anti consumer and anti developer, I consider it bad capitalism to purchase anything from Apple. It would be like buying from BP after the oil spill. I kind of assume HN knows the endless list of Apple sins, but if you didn't, their closed off system is the opposite of Linux mentality. I don't think you will be happy, and you make like worse for your fellow developers and masses of humans.
lioeters 7y ago
> Macbook Pros have passed their peak As someone who has used a number of Mac(book)s for years, I agree with this general (or a vocal minority's) consensus. It's a beautiful machine: great OS, hardware integration is (mostly) top notch, and a lot of pro-grade hard/software for multimedia production are only available on the Mac. And yet, the 2013 Macbook Pro (maxed out beyond recommended specs) is the last Apple-built computer I will buy. I recently built myself a PC that dual-boots macOS and Linux, and am looking at Thinkpads for my next laptop. I don't know if "the tide" is moving to Linux, but at least I am, and being the most computer-savvy person in my social circle, I'm recommending everyone I know to not buy a Mac/book. It's probably the best computer in the market for that form factor, but the company has given the users too many reasons to move away.
- TallGuyShort 7y ago
  Totally tangential rant here, but when I've had family or close friends (the kind who would come to me for free tech support and who I would generally indulge) ask me for recommendations, I've told them that I don't know Mac products well enough to recommend / recommend against them, but that if they get iOS or Macs, I simply won't be in a position to help them. Almost invariably they get the Apple device, need help, can't get it from Apple, and come back to me. Can't stand it. And if I ever have a glitch they'll say, "but Apple stuff just works..."
  - rbritton 7y ago
    The only difference when they do choose the products you recommend (in my case it is Apple), they come to you first before even trying the manufacturer's support.
    - TallGuyShort 7y ago
      I don't mind that - I can almost always fix an Android or PC glitch myself. It's the look of disbelief when I tell them I have no idea if their iPad is supposed to do that or not, followed by, "but you're a techy person".
- 7y ago
asark 7y ago
There were basically three things that made Macbooks very appealing to developers before: 1) Very good hardware at a not-huge markup when compared apples-to-apples (haha) with Wintel hardware. 2) Unixy OS with outstanding Just Works but it's not your fault should it fail to Just Work, as in "ugh Tom's laptop won't connect to the projector again, because he insists on running Linux." 3) Excellent pick-up-and-go, thanks to a good, if not comprehensive, port selection, the best touchpad in the industry by a long shot and the only one I've ever used that doesn't make me start looking around the room for a mouse or feel like I need to keep one in my laptop bag, and battery life much better than the typical "get you from one outlet to another" of many (especially budget and midrange) Windows devices, while also being (yeah, yeah) thin and light. You could just grab your laptop and go, and be ready for most things, for most of a workday, no power cord, no mouse, no anything. The 1st and 3rd of these have suffered a lot lately, with large price hikes putting them solidly back in the "LOL WUT?" pricing territory they periodically flirt with, and 3 thanks to #DongleLife making it pretty much impossible to plug anything "in the wild" into a Macbook at all without an adapter, and the keyboard going from good-enough to fairly-crappy. I'm hoping for fixes to some of the problems and for some of the "...and all those improvements, and we're also dropping the price $200!" announcements they did pretty regularly there for a while, because man, I still don't see any real competition for them out there, despite their missteps.
- callmeal 7y ago
  > the keyboard going from good-enough to fairly-crappy. And don't forget the ginormous trackpad where your typing ends up in weird places because your palm or your wrist touched it unexpectedly. And forget it if you had the shift key pressed - very easy to have a large chunk of the document you're working on disappear making you wonder wtf just happened.
  - mrunkel 7y ago
    Do you actually use a mac? Because I've NEVER had that happen to me. Ever. The trackpad software is exceptionally good at detect errant touches. Maybe my experience is abnormal.
lol_jono 7y ago
Consider the Thinkpad X1 Carbon lineup or the model up, the Thinkpad P1
arebours 7y ago
I was you 2 years ago. Now after experiencing failed keyboard, battery and overall poor performance in my MBP I'm back with linux on a thinkpad. I'm curious about Windows though. A bit of advice: if you end up buying a macbook give it some time and don't move your whole life into the ecosystem. It's incredibly hard to move out. You can't just export all your photo albums, Things tasks, and so on.
brandonmenc 7y ago
> Macbook Pros have passed their peak There's this weird idea that the quality of Apple products has just always steadily increased over time until this most recent MacBook Pro. If you've been using Macs long enough, you'll remember various iBook debacles, the horrific 2006 MacBook, the utterly bizarre 3rd gen iPod, and other past missteps. They'll bounce back (even though I actually love the current MBPs).
ipodopt 7y ago
You may like these: https://puri.sm/ https://puri.sm/ I recently was frustrated with Apple because my past two Macbook Pros broke and they refused service on the known issues because I had missed the recall windows (one was brought in before there was a recall and after).
idDriven 7y ago
If you're open to Windows consider checking out the Razer Blade 15" laptop. I'm biased because I play video games but it's as nicely made as any computer apple ever made, with great hardware.
sfifs 7y ago
I was about to. Then I heard quite a few of my colleagues who used Mac had endless keyboard problems and surffered from lack of function keys in the high end laptop which was a good 1000 dollars more expensive than similarly specced ThinkPad and stuck with using windows with tLinux layer. Maybe with Ive gone, they'll finally make a competitive laptop.
mrunkel 7y ago
The iMac Pro is a fantastic machine, so if you want a workstation, that's probably your best bet. Hell, even the 27" iMac is a great "everyday driver." I do software development + sysadmin and am very happy with my iMac. (Retina 5K 27", 3.6G i9, 64GB RAM)

AdmiralAsshat 7y ago

The System76 Thelio seems to be picking up steam for a high-end native-Linux desktop.

a-afterglow 7y ago

Personally, I'll avoid any Apple products just because of the not uncommon horror stories I hear from customer service.

mfatica 7y ago
To be fair what PC company does not have horror stories when it comes to customer service? The only exception I've personally experienced is Dell enterprise support, but that's a far reach from what any consumer will have.
- dvtrn 7y ago
  Strictly when it comes to customer service? Maybe Razer? Their prices are definitely horror inducing for some of their peripherals, otoh...but that’s probably applicable to a large part of the “gaming peripherals” market.
  - gambiting 7y ago
    Wait, what? I own a razer laptop but I bought it with knowledge that if anything goes wrong Razer support is worse than useless.
    - dvtrn 7y ago
      YMMV? I have the last generation blade laptop, and granted Ive only had two tickets opened with support but they were (at least in my experience) surprisingly fast and on the money with both experiences. I didn’t want to speak for everyone so that’s why I posited the italicized “Maybe” because PC support is like throwing darts at a dart board. From ten miles away. With headwind.
      - myoon 7y ago
        If you go to the Razer subreddit, there's reasonable consensus that buying from the Microsoft Store, Best Buy, etc. is highly recommended for the extended warranty, which you will have a high chance of using if you regularly game on it.
        dvtrn 7y ago
        Interesting. Both of my problems were hardware related (usb port and a power adapter), but I wouldn’t consider myself a “hardcore” gamer, I bought my Razer Blade to play a specific game (The Dishonored trilogy) at the time because I travelled quite often for work and had the disposable funds for it. Maybe I got extremely lucky with my build, who knows. Sucks to hear other people are having such a frustrating go at things. Price aside I’ve had a pleasant experience with Razer.
        gambiting 7y ago
        In my experience Razer is both good and bad - good because literally any issue you have with your laptop they will just offer to replace it, bad because the replacement can take 4+ weeks. I'm also slightly worried that it's literally impossible to buy any replacement parts from them, if the need ever arises. From companies like Dell or HP you can order literally any part, down to individual switches, if you know the part number.
- a-afterglow 7y ago
  That's true. If I had an SV engineer salary I probably wouldn't think it too much. But the cheapest MacBook Pro is a quarter of my yearly earnings, so right now I will choose what is cheaper to maintain.
- rchaud 7y ago
  In college, I worked at my school's IT helpdesk, and have bought Latitude and Vostro models ever since. Next Business Day support, no questions asked. You don't have to be part of a corporation to get that level of service. I had a busted heat sink on my cheap $500 vostro, and they sent a technician over to fix it.

mfatica 7y ago

It does seem like Macbook Pros have been on the decline. But this new Mac Pro feels like Apple turning back to the workstation use case anymore, especially with a quad-GPU option. I'm hoping the departure of Jony Ive will turn the Macbook Pros back in the right direction.

save_ferris 7y ago

IMO The current MacBook design iteration has mostly been a disappointment. The hardware quality has materially worsened over the previous generation, with numerous reports of keyboard, screen, and speaker issues. They sacrificed far too much in order to achieve the thin form factor. The touchbar is also a terrible joke. I’ve had two current-gen MBPs through work and both of them have completely convinced me against buying my own. They’re both so inferior to the design of the previous generation.

reymus 7y ago
Your points are completely valid, I get your frustration. But you are comparing against previous generations of MacBooks. I would like to know your thoughts when comparing against e.g. a top tier ThinkPad running Windows or Linux.
- save_ferris 7y ago
  I can’t honestly give you that comparison because I’ve never used a thinkpad long enough to get to know it. I’ve been Mac-only for 8 years now, but I’m looking around to see if the community decides on a solid MBP replacement of my old MBP dies.
- mattnewton 7y ago
  I couldn’t use it long enough to unlearn using the trackpad as a crutch. Thinkpad trackpads are pretty terrible by comparison. I also hated trying to use windows and didn’t want to keep maintaining a Linux install, though that might have gotten better lately. I am going to ride out my personal 2013 mbp until they fix the keyboards on the new machines. I have a new one at work, and each incremental fix still breaks after a while and I don’t think they have ironed it out. It’s a beautiful feeling machine and I want to love it. However, you can get everything else perfect and screw up the keyboard, and it doesn’t matter because I can’t get work done. If they don’t get it right by the time my current MBP dies completely I guess I’ll see how far Linux has come. I’d suggest the same for you - even as an apple shareholder and former employee I can’t recommend a programmer buy a laptop with such an unreliable keyboard. But if they nail the keyboard in the next generation, absolutely hop aboard the bandwagon. Pretty much it comes down to the flaky keyboards for me. USBC support is just getting better, the displays and trackpad are still best in class, and a lightweight aluminum unibody design is something I didn’t think I would miss but you absolutely do. The OS is widely supported by a community of other developers, and it is super easy to set up a productive development environment. And the OS is widely supported by hardware and software vendors too, so you don’t have to fight compatibility issues nearly as much as Linux.

throwayEngineer 7y ago

Given Apple's track record of being anti consumer and anti developer, I consider it bad capitalism to purchase anything from Apple. It would be like buying from BP after the oil spill. I kind of assume HN knows the endless list of Apple sins, but if you didn't, their closed off system is the opposite of Linux mentality. I don't think you will be happy, and you make like worse for your fellow developers and masses of humans.

lioeters 7y ago

> Macbook Pros have passed their peak As someone who has used a number of Mac(book)s for years, I agree with this general (or a vocal minority's) consensus. It's a beautiful machine: great OS, hardware integration is (mostly) top notch, and a lot of pro-grade hard/software for multimedia production are only available on the Mac. And yet, the 2013 Macbook Pro (maxed out beyond recommended specs) is the last Apple-built computer I will buy. I recently built myself a PC that dual-boots macOS and Linux, and am looking at Thinkpads for my next laptop. I don't know if "the tide" is moving to Linux, but at least I am, and being the most computer-savvy person in my social circle, I'm recommending everyone I know to not buy a Mac/book. It's probably the best computer in the market for that form factor, but the company has given the users too many reasons to move away.

TallGuyShort 7y ago
Totally tangential rant here, but when I've had family or close friends (the kind who would come to me for free tech support and who I would generally indulge) ask me for recommendations, I've told them that I don't know Mac products well enough to recommend / recommend against them, but that if they get iOS or Macs, I simply won't be in a position to help them. Almost invariably they get the Apple device, need help, can't get it from Apple, and come back to me. Can't stand it. And if I ever have a glitch they'll say, "but Apple stuff just works..."
- rbritton 7y ago
  The only difference when they do choose the products you recommend (in my case it is Apple), they come to you first before even trying the manufacturer's support.
  - TallGuyShort 7y ago
    I don't mind that - I can almost always fix an Android or PC glitch myself. It's the look of disbelief when I tell them I have no idea if their iPad is supposed to do that or not, followed by, "but you're a techy person".
7y ago

asark 7y ago

There were basically three things that made Macbooks very appealing to developers before: 1) Very good hardware at a not-huge markup when compared apples-to-apples (haha) with Wintel hardware. 2) Unixy OS with outstanding Just Works but it's not your fault should it fail to Just Work, as in "ugh Tom's laptop won't connect to the projector again, because he insists on running Linux." 3) Excellent pick-up-and-go, thanks to a good, if not comprehensive, port selection, the best touchpad in the industry by a long shot and the only one I've ever used that doesn't make me start looking around the room for a mouse or feel like I need to keep one in my laptop bag, and battery life much better than the typical "get you from one outlet to another" of many (especially budget and midrange) Windows devices, while also being (yeah, yeah) thin and light. You could just grab your laptop and go, and be ready for most things, for most of a workday, no power cord, no mouse, no anything. The 1st and 3rd of these have suffered a lot lately, with large price hikes putting them solidly back in the "LOL WUT?" pricing territory they periodically flirt with, and 3 thanks to #DongleLife making it pretty much impossible to plug anything "in the wild" into a Macbook at all without an adapter, and the keyboard going from good-enough to fairly-crappy. I'm hoping for fixes to some of the problems and for some of the "...and all those improvements, and we're also dropping the price $200!" announcements they did pretty regularly there for a while, because man, I still don't see any real competition for them out there, despite their missteps.

callmeal 7y ago
> the keyboard going from good-enough to fairly-crappy. And don't forget the ginormous trackpad where your typing ends up in weird places because your palm or your wrist touched it unexpectedly. And forget it if you had the shift key pressed - very easy to have a large chunk of the document you're working on disappear making you wonder wtf just happened.
- mrunkel 7y ago
  Do you actually use a mac? Because I've NEVER had that happen to me. Ever. The trackpad software is exceptionally good at detect errant touches. Maybe my experience is abnormal.

lol_jono 7y ago

Consider the Thinkpad X1 Carbon lineup or the model up, the Thinkpad P1

arebours 7y ago

I was you 2 years ago. Now after experiencing failed keyboard, battery and overall poor performance in my MBP I'm back with linux on a thinkpad. I'm curious about Windows though. A bit of advice: if you end up buying a macbook give it some time and don't move your whole life into the ecosystem. It's incredibly hard to move out. You can't just export all your photo albums, Things tasks, and so on.

brandonmenc 7y ago

> Macbook Pros have passed their peak There's this weird idea that the quality of Apple products has just always steadily increased over time until this most recent MacBook Pro. If you've been using Macs long enough, you'll remember various iBook debacles, the horrific 2006 MacBook, the utterly bizarre 3rd gen iPod, and other past missteps. They'll bounce back (even though I actually love the current MBPs).

ipodopt 7y ago

You may like these: https://puri.sm/ https://puri.sm/ I recently was frustrated with Apple because my past two Macbook Pros broke and they refused service on the known issues because I had missed the recall windows (one was brought in before there was a recall and after).

idDriven 7y ago

If you're open to Windows consider checking out the Razer Blade 15" laptop. I'm biased because I play video games but it's as nicely made as any computer apple ever made, with great hardware.

sfifs 7y ago

I was about to. Then I heard quite a few of my colleagues who used Mac had endless keyboard problems and surffered from lack of function keys in the high end laptop which was a good 1000 dollars more expensive than similarly specced ThinkPad and stuck with using windows with tLinux layer. Maybe with Ive gone, they'll finally make a competitive laptop.

mrunkel 7y ago

The iMac Pro is a fantastic machine, so if you want a workstation, that's probably your best bet. Hell, even the 27" iMac is a great "everyday driver." I do software development + sysadmin and am very happy with my iMac. (Retina 5K 27", 3.6G i9, 64GB RAM)