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This post on HN yesterday fixed my problems of the last 5-7 days. I use a TB 2 Hub hooked up to a 2018 MBP to 2 4k monitors, a USB mic, etc. And I've noticed t

• StavrosK 7y ago
  What's the state of hackintoshes currently? Maybe that would be a good compromise?
  • atonse 7y ago
    They keep getting better, but you always have the fear of one software update bricking your device because some engineer at Apple woke up on the wrong side of the bed one day and put in something in the bootloader that only works on Apple hardware. It would work if I kept this laptop as my backup (can't stop working for a day or two while I fix all that stuff).
    • Wowfunhappy 7y ago
      I said this repeatedly in a Hackintosh thread on HN last week: I have never had a point release break Hackintosh. Especially these days with bootloader kext injection, it’s really quite rare. Whole version upgrades are another story, but you shouldn’t just install those on a whim anyway. Also, if you’re on Hackintosh, Apple isn’t touching your bootloader!
  • throwaway888abc 7y ago
    Apart from very useful, also very easy to setup https://github.com/foxlet/macOS-Simple-KVM https://github.com/foxlet/macOS-Simple-KVM
    • StavrosK 7y ago
      Hmm, what's performance like on that? It feels like running under QEMU would be pretty slow.
      • Wowfunhappy 7y ago
        It’a a type 1 hypervisor so not bad. But, I wouldn’t do it on a laptop. You need to pass through a gpu for it to work acceptably.
        • StavrosK 7y ago
          I'm going to try this on my Linux desktop right now. It might prove to be a good way to run Photoshop on Linux, though I'm not too hopeful... Thanks for the tip!
          • Wowfunhappy 7y ago
            If you just want to run Photoshop etc, you’ll have a much easier time with a Windows VM! If you need to run, say, Sketch or Omnigraffle, then it would make more sense!
            • StavrosK 7y ago
              I tried a Windows VM but it was unworkably slow :/ I've been dual-booting.
              • Wowfunhappy 7y ago
                Are you using KVM, and are you using GPU passthrough? Those two things together are what's able to provide close-to-native performance.
  • Wowfunhappy 7y ago
    They’re fantastic on desktop and have been for more than a decade, once you get past a setup process which can be quite painful (although isn’t always). But laptops are a lot trickier. You need drivers (or patches) for a lot of extra hardware (your trackpad, your battery-level-reader, the screen brightness controller, etc); you need sleep and cpu power management to work; you usually can’t just swap out the wifi card with a Mac-compatible one, etc. It can absolutely be done, but you need to do a lot of research on compatibility beforehand. And as a result, you may discover your options aren’t really all that much better than they were in Real Mac land. I would go for it (ie start doing research) only if there’s something specific you really want in a laptop that Apple simply doesn’t offer. A touch screen, for instance.
    • mmm_grayons 7y ago
      It's not necessarily finding drivers that's the problem so much as correctly patching the ACPI tables so drivers can find stuff, especially on laptops, excluding some stuff like wireless cards which often have sketchy to no driver support. Options are certainly better than in real mac land, but be prepared to spend at least a week working through every device one-by-one. Once it's working, though, it's stable.
      • Wowfunhappy 7y ago
        It's not just finding compatible wireless that's a problem! You can also mostly eliminate: • Any laptop with an nVidia GPU • Any laptop that uses switchable graphics (unless you're okay with terrible battery life from the GPU being always on) • Any AMD laptop (because even with custom cpu patches, the integrated graphics won't work). That's a lot of laptops, particularly in the type of segments people would likely be most interested in, since Apple doesn't make them. Combined with the aforementioned wifi compatibility problems, you really need to do your research first!
• jfkebwjsbx 7y ago
  > unparalleled retina support on macOS What are you referring to? Windows has hires, wide gamut support. If you are talking about the icon mess that Windows is nowadays, then I agree. But I hardly care about icons in the operating system. If you want a powerful system, an 8-core 16-thread Zen2 Ryzen with an RTX 2080 Super is a beast for the same kind of prices you get a Macbook Pro.
  • atonse 7y ago
    I'm talking about how the magnification for third party apps is often weird. SQL Server Management studio for me is almost always in the wrong zoom factor. RDP gets confused. Etc. Most of these things have probably been fixed, but I'm not sure. Windows devs?
    • recursive 7y ago
      SSMS has the worst text rendering of any tool I regularly use on windows. It's not a tie. I'm not sure how this is possible, since SSMS is built on a Visual Studio shell, but I see what I see.
      • atonse 7y ago
        Its out of the box configs are horrible. They use Courier New. Although I haven't regularly used SSMS in a while (thanks to Azure Data Studio), the first thing I used to do was change the fonts to the "new" (15 year old) ClearType fonts. Like Consolas everywhere. Then it looks way better.
    • nrki 7y ago
      It's not fixed. Many, many apps go haywire for me in HiDPI.
      • ladzoppelin 7y ago
        Right click on the icon and look at the compatibility tab.
  • 7y ago
• hcnews 7y ago
  Can you link to the post?
  • atonse 7y ago
    Sorry this is the post I'm talking about. I first saw it yesterday and then tried to change up my configuration of USB C cables hooked up and it's been better since. I have 3 cables hooked up. First is for the apple TB3 to TB2 adapter so I can reuse my TB2 hub. Second is a USB C to DisplayPort cable for my second 4k monitor (cuz I couldn't run both 4Ks off the hub), and the third is power.
  • dickfickling 7y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22949580 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22949580
    • dang 7y ago
      We've merged those comments into this thread.
• arcticfox 7y ago
  YMMV but switching from laptop OS X to desktop Linux has been a gamechanger for me. Far cheaper, and the power / UX of a mid-range 2020 desktop blows my 2019 Macbook Pro completely out of the water for my usecase. Code is a joy again. When I do use my Macbook on the go, I generally use VSCode remotely connected to my desktop because it's so much faster. I also use Regolith Linux, which is a noob-friendly tiling window manager version of Ubuntu, and it feels so slick with multiple monitors.
  • read_if_gay_ 7y ago
    I switched from a macOS laptop to a Linux laptop and it’s been completely the opposite for me. I’ve been spending so much time fighting the OS, I’m actually considering buying a Mac again even though the laptop is just a few months old. You can call me too incompetent or whatever but I’ve been running into stupidly obscure bugs that even stumped some of my Linux guru friends. Just as one example of many, when the device is connected to a Thunderbolt display the Intel wifi driver crashes and restarts periodically which freezes USB input for about 15 seconds every time. This issue persisted across different Linux distributions, kernels and firmware versions. Don’t ask how long it took to figure this out. I have now connected a USB wifi dongle to the displays USB hub. I really miss the plug+play nature of macOS, I think Linux has it advantages and it might be better on desktops but it’s just been horrible for me on a laptop. I might have to try a MacBook plus a fast Linux desktop next.
    • xnyan 7y ago
      I’ve had the same experience. Using windows and linux now, it’s shocking but windows has been a pretty good experience for getting work done.
    • gen220 7y ago
      Linux laptops are a mixed bag, to say the least. One-off "precision tuned" (vs commodity) hardware is often to blame. In general, if you want a stable linux laptop experience, you should be buying old. It's not very attractive, but it is sustainable -- which is it's own kind of attractive! :) In general, my experience using debian-based distros as a laptop driver have been more or less frictionless. I use an older lenovo thinkpad (x1 carbon, 1st generation, purchased for like $200 secondhand a year and a half ago). In general, thinkpads have a reputation for having a plug+play linux experience, once you boot for the first time. I'd recommend giving them a try before throwing in the towel, if you have any patience in reserve. You can get pre-owned (older=more stable linux support) t-series thinkpads with very nice specs, especially if you're willing to trade off display resolution. Plus the parts that die (batteries, ram) are all commodity and replaceable, you could presumably run with the same laptop for a decade, if you're in to that sort of thing.
• artursapek 7y ago
  After using Macs for years I switched to Ubuntu about 3 years ago and am completely used to it now. I don't miss Mac OS at all, except for Adobe software support :(
• colordrops 7y ago
  As others have mentioned here, if you are willing to meet the OS half way, then Linux is the way to go. With enough customization, you won't want to go back to any other OS. I use XMonad + tmux + vim, so everything is fast, keyboard driven, and minimal, and working with a mouse pointer to arrange windows is now arcane and clunky to me. Equivalent setups with Windows and Mac are sub-optimal since there is only so much you can hack the window manager to do what you want. But you do need to go through some legwork and a learning curve get Linux working for you.
  • tracker1 7y ago
    I jumped to Linux in October when I built my new desktop... so many issues... After so much time battling with MacOS and Linux Desktop on different issues... was actually surprised how much I like WSL2 in Windows of all things. Only been using it since early March, had to jump back to windows for a project. Definitely a better experience than I remember a year and a half or so ago. The new MS terminal works pretty well, and the Docker WSL2 support is very seamless. VS Code with WSL extensions works great. I spend most of my time in that space and have had so few issues. Note: editing \\wsl$ files in windows is a little slow, same for wsl editing mounted windows drives... but in the sandbox has been really great.
    • colordrops 7y ago
      Yeah I hear you. It took me over a decade before I stopped bouncing off of Linux and going back to windows or Mac. It took more knowledge about working with Linux subsystems, as well as building a stable config that I checked into git. As mentioned, you really have to meet it half way, but once you get over that hump it is definitely more productive and simple than Mac and windows.
• caycep 7y ago
  How much is an Apple motherboard design issue vs. a USB C issue? W/ the new ARM news coming out, I kinda wonder if the Intel line is on life support and Mac engineering attention is all-in on the new ARM macs?
• logjammin 7y ago
  "I swear, I wish I didn't love macOS so much (or wasn't so heavily invested in it), or I'd happily ditch it for a really powerful thermally cooled desktop and use that as my machine." I was you at this time about two years ago. Exact same thing. Fed up with Apple hardware bullshit, and with their pricing. With Apple in general. I had a sick iMac (as sick as an iMac can be, I mean). Loved and was invested in OSX. But something tipped the scales. Can't remember what specifically, but I said "fuck it" and put the machine on Craigslist. Got a buyer immediately, and lost very little money on a three year old machine. Took the cash, plus a little more, and built a PC. A liquid cooled PC. An egregious, so-ugly-it's-kinda-neat monster with tubes and a radiator and fans and the whole deal. I run Windows 10 Pro and Ubuntu. Neither is perfect for me. Windows especially can be maddening. My personal pet peeve is the lack of powerful device search -- in OSX, I could use Spotlight or better yet Alfred to look inside PDFs, for example. SOL on that in W10. But it was worth it. My AMD-powered PC smokes anything in my Zip code, I'm pretty sure, and it's more than enough for my work needs (and my work does actually put the thing through its paces.) I miss OSX, but not enough to go back.
  • netsec_burn 7y ago
    What about Hackintosh? Seems like you have the specs.
    • logjammin 7y ago
      Yeah that's a great point. I thought about it initially, but I got a little nervous (perhaps unjustifiably) about the Hackintosh universe being a little slapdash and then about Apple maybe issuing some under the radar OS update that bricks my machine. I'm catastrophizing, maybe, but I never pulled the trigger. That said, I never actually put in the 3-4hrs of reading I'd need to do, so I definitely wouldn't rule it out. Do you have experience with doing the Hackintosh thing at all?
      • ac4tw 7y ago
        I did the Hackintosh thing for a friend on one of those 10” HP mini-laptop 5 years ago. It was delightful when it worked, however every macOS update (or OS-X back then) was a toothache—usually culminating in 2-7 hrs of googling/re-configuring etc. It wouldn’t have been so bad if the machine wasn’t this person’s main machine, or if I had waited longer before updating (so known procedures to make things work were available and not still being understood and developed by the community). Might be a very different experience on a desktop, but definitely read up on the update experience and time-cost if you go this route.
• jiux 7y ago
  I prefer Apple just like you. With that said, I have been noticing more and more people building these insanely powerful desktop machines (a lot of times for less than a MacBook Pro) to keep at home. Here is where it gets interesting - then the same group of people start walking around with a burner Chromebook that was bought on the cheap with nothing more than a shell with SSH or just simply remote into their desktop via apache guacamole. Technology is pretty neat.
• elAhmo 7y ago
  I did something similar, but just got a MacMini which is to rather old but quite powerful, has a lot of RAM and it is more enjoyable to work on with the setup I have (keyboard, mouse, monitor). I still use MBP for travelling but not when at home.
• runjake 7y ago
  > or I'd happily ditch it for a really powerful thermally cooled desktop and use that as my machine I returned my 2018 Mac Mini because I was frustrated with all the constraints: - eGPU required a PC-like external chassis, totally defeating the point of the Mini. - Want to upgrade the storage? You need an external drive chassis and a free TB3 port. - Only 2 type-A USB ports I got fed up with it and returned the Mini. So, I ended up building a really nice mini-ITX Hackintosh for the same price as what I paid for the Mini. It's got a couple NVMe sticks in it, and a 10tb hdd. The whole thing is about the same size as an eGPU chassis alone. It's quiet, it stays cool, and is relatively rock-solid. That was almost 18 months ago and I still don't regret it a bit. It's the "Mac" for me.